Podcasts about COO

The low-budget horror film ‘Backrooms' is the surprise hit of the summer so far, netting more than $200 million globally in its leap from YouTube to the big screen. But among the film's producers is a Hollywood heavyweight: Peter Chernin. As the former president and COO of News Corp. and chairman and CEO of the Fox Group, Peter greenlit huge hits like “Titanic” and “Avatar,” before moving on to found both North Road and The Chernin Group. Kara and Peter talk about why “Backrooms” appealed to young audiences, how Hollywood has played it too safe over the last decade, and what it needs to do to get back to making the kinds of movies people want to see. They also talk about how AI could impact the movie-making business and why he's not opposed to Paramount's merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.  A note to listeners: This episode was recorded before the Justice Department approved Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery late Friday.  Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AI may change software overnight, but company building still takes time.Ryan Smith explains why, despite the pace of AI, “the race is going to be way longer than anyone thinks.”He reflects on Qualtrics surviving multiple market cycles and ultimately being acquired by SAP for $8 billion days before going public.Guest: Ryan Smith, co-founder QualtricsConnect with Ryan SmithXLinkedInConnect with Joubin:XLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.comFollow Grit: LinkedInX​Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

Join Adam Larson as he sits down with Ali Hussain, founder and CEO of Tabs, for a candid conversation about redefining the landscape of accounting and finance through AI-powered technology. Ali shares his journey from COO to entrepreneur, the real struggles finance teams face with outdated tools, and why party tricks in AI aren't enough for meaningful change. Get an inside look at what it means to build agents that work alongside humans, not just automate tasks—and what this shift means for teams, roles, and leadership in finance and accounting. You'll hear practical advice for embracing AI without falling for hype, smart ways to upgrade your finance stack, and raw stories about rethinking culture and managing people in a fast-evolving landscape. If you're ready to move beyond the buzzwords and get real about what AI can do for your finance team, you'll want to listen in on this one.

In this episode of the Industry Spotlight, joining host Sam D'Arc are Frederick Grimm, Co-Founder and COO of AppraisalPro, and Danny Galat, General Sales Manager at Lithia Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram of Bend, to discuss how dealers are using real-time diagnostic scanning to stop taking hidden mechanical losses on trade-ins and turn a wholesale department that was bleeding money into one that's actually profitable. Danny walks through the $8,000 Ford Raptor miss that kept him up at night and drove him to find a better way to appraise used vehicles. The numbers that follow are hard to ignore: 20% of trade-in appraisals show a check engine light cleared within the last 50 miles, the average dealer is sitting on $15,000 to $20,000 in hidden reconditioning costs every month, and Danny's wholesale department swung from a loss to a profit by more than 300% in a single year. Frederick also breaks down how the tool detects odometer rollback and VIN fraud before a bad deal makes it onto your lot. This episode of the Car Dealership Guy Podcast is brought to you by AppraisalPro. Topics: 03:25 The $8,000 Raptor Miss That Changed Everything. 04:50 Why Warm Engines Hide Costly Problems. 06:10 The 30-Second Appraisal That Saves Thousands. 07:30 The Customer Who Got Caught Red-Handed. 09:00 Why Every Salesperson Needs A Lanyard Now. 10:10 The 10 Million Scans Powering Your Appraisals. 12:40 20% Of Trade-Ins Had Their Codes Cleared. 13:50 $15-20K In Hidden Recon Costs Found Monthly. 16:30 From Wholesale Loss To Profit In One Year. 17:50 The 300% Profit Swing You Can't Ignore. 18:30 Why 94% Of Dealers Convert After The Trial. 20:00 The $5,000 Guarantee You Need To Take. AppraisalPro - AppraisalPRO helps dealers instantly uncover the true mechanical reconditioning costs of trade-ins before they buy them, helping reduce surprises and protect profitability. The platform can also detect recently cleared check engine lights and hidden issues that may otherwise go unnoticed during the appraisal process. Start your free trial @ here! Check out Car Dealership Guy's stuff: For dealers: CDG Circles ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cdgcircles.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Industry job board ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://jobs.dealershipguy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Dealership recruiting ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.cdgrecruiting.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Fix your dealership's social media ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.trynomad.co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Request to be a podcast guest ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.cdgguest.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ For industry vendors: Advertise with Car Dealership Guy ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.cdgpartner.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Industry job board ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://jobs.dealershipguy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Request to be a podcast guest ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.cdgguest.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Car Dealership Guy Socials: X ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠x.com/GuyDealership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/cardealershipguy/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tiktok.com/@guydealership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linkedin.com/company/cardealershipguy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Threads ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠threads.net/@cardealershipguy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077402857683⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Everything else ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠dealershipguy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Charles is joined by Eva Ados, COO of ER Shares, to discuss the high-stakes potential of a SpaceX IPO and the company's infrastructure moat, why they are blocking Wall Street hedge funds from hijacking the XOVR ETF, and the strong fundamentals of companies like Anduril and Astera Labs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to another episode of Leaders in Tech! In this episode, host David Mansilla sits down with Bill Phillips, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and former Chief Information Officer (CIO) of University Health in San Antonio, Texas.Bill shares his highly inspiring personal story: how discovering he was colorblind shattered his early plans of becoming an electrician, and how that exact roadblock redirected him into a brilliant, lifelong career in technology and healthcare operations.

In this episode of Electric People, host Ty Williams sits down with Sunrun Chief Operating Officer Patrick Kent (PK) for a masterclass on navigating massive career growth and leading with operational excellence. Drawing on his 12-year journey from a frontline sales representative to the COO of the clean energy leader, PK shares his transformative philosophy of acting as a "referee" rather than a "judge and jury" by establishing clear, unwavering expectations. The conversation dives deep into his high-stakes overhaul of Sunrun's operations, breaking down how he rejected "false trade-offs" (lazy binary thinking), structured the business around four core pillars, and bridged the historical gap between sales and operations. PK also outlines his ruthless problem-solving framework—tearing complex challenges apart, prioritizing ruthlessly, and engineering rollouts so simple they are impossible to miss—offering essential blueprints for anyone striving to build a bulletproof professional foundation.

When everything is a scam, of course they aren't going to talk! PLUS, Luke Wake, attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation's Separation of Powers practice, tells Shaun about a case he is working on challenging the Bank Secrecy Act where the government gives the Treasury permission to spy on your financial transactions. And Joe Persaud, COO of the American Transit Insurance Company, discusses the opportunistic fraud in the transportation sector and how using blockchain technology as a solution to stop the fraud.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

BONUS: Why Your Organization Is Still a Factory — And What an Octopus Can Teach You About Transformation Phil Le-Brun and Dr. Jana Werner both work inside Amazon, advising Fortune 500 leaders on transformation. But before Amazon, they spent decades in the trenches — Phil as International CIO of McDonald's, Jana leading change in banking and logistics. Together they wrote The Octopus Organization (HBR Press) to explain why most companies are still running on a hundred-year-old factory model, and what the alternative looks like. "We Want to Help You Make Your Own New Interesting Mistakes" "We keep saying, as Phil likes to say, can we help you make your own new interesting mistakes and avoid the mistakes that we see again and again."   Jana and Phil are both practitioners who have led large-scale changes — and made mistakes they're now happy to share. Jana describes working with incredible, smart, thoughtful people inside large organizations who weren't trusted, weren't allowed to do the work they could do, and couldn't be their best selves. She managed to turn teams considered underperforming into rock stars simply by listening and giving them space. Phil saw the same pattern at McDonald's — incredible people who knew the answers but weren't allowed to act on them. A disastrous standardization push from 2002 to 2004 taught him that top-down efficiency mandates don't work. The CEO left, and Phil got the opportunity to tap into people lower in the organization, define a common mission, and start building from there. The Factory Model Nobody Questions "There was no upside for her people taking ownership because you could have career-limiting effects if you made a mistake, if you were seen to be making a mistake or overstepping."   Jana shared two sides of the same problem. A CEO of a large investment company told her he has to sign off on every small decision — and his people assume he wants to. Neither side wants this, but nobody questions the processes in place. On the other side, a COO told Jana "my people don't want ownership." After half an hour of coaching, the COO realized there was no upside for her people to take ownership — mistakes meant career-limiting consequences. Jana is honest about her own experience too: a team member told her she was micromanaging, and she denied it. They created a secret signal — scratching an ear in meetings whenever she micromanaged. He was scratching a lot. Phil adds that what he calls "yoga babble" — abstractions like "we're going to become an agile platform-based culture" — lets leaders avoid saying what they actually mean. Nobody challenges it because the boss said it, and it sounds sort of right. The result: completely meaningless direction. The Octopus — Distributed Intelligence in Practice "It has two thirds of its intelligence, its neurons, in its arms. The arms connect independently — they don't always need a central brain, but they also have one, so they can stay aligned but also work independently."   The octopus has distributed neural clusters in each arm. It can adapt, shape-shift, change the texture of its skin, and even alter its RNA to switch between cold and hot water within hours. For Jana and Phil, this is the organizational metaphor: teams that can think locally and act without waiting for permission from the center, while staying aligned on mission. Phil translates this for team leaders of 8-10 people inside traditional enterprises:   Put together teams with cognitive diversity and encourage constructive conflict — what Linda Hill at Harvard Business School calls "creative abrasion" Invest in the storming, norming, performing cycle instead of cutting through it Leave the "how" to the team — the leader's job is the "why" and the "what" Don't jump to the answer — Einstein said if you have an hour to solve a problem, spend 55 minutes understanding the problem Start executing quickly through rapid experimentation; you can't plan your way to success in novel situations Don't Build the Pedestal — The Monkey Comes First "Get to the most tricky problems first, and try and solve them. If you can't, figure out fast — and if you can't, just stop, because your whole project is useless."   Astro Teller, CEO of Alphabet X's Moonshot Labs, says: "If you want to teach a monkey on a pedestal to recite Shakespeare, don't start by building the pedestal." Jana explains that organizations, once they get a project through the gauntlet of approvals and business cases, start working on the easy, visible things to show progress — the pedestal. But if you can't get the monkey to speak, the pedestal is useless. The counterintuitive move: when passionate people dispassionately tell you the hard problem isn't solvable, give them hugs, put them on a pedestal themselves, give them bonuses — because they just freed up resources for something better. Phil reinforces that this isn't a money problem. At McDonald's, before building a handheld order-taking device, they built a block of wood to test how comfortable it was to hold. Organizations waste far more money trying to plan for things they can't possibly plan for than they would by running quick experiments. Single-Threaded Leaders — The Pig at Breakfast "Who's that person waking up every morning saying, are we actually putting the focus on the things that are going to get us to the finish line of delivering value — not within my function, but across the organization?"   Phil tells the classic joke: a pig and chicken are walking down the road. The chicken says "let's open a restaurant." The pig asks what they'll sell. "Ham and eggs, of course," says the chicken. The pig stops: "I need to be far more committed than you." Organizations are full of chickens — people who lay their half-baked decisions, want to sign off, want to say no. What's needed are pigs. Amazon calls them single-threaded leaders. Apple calls them directly responsible individuals. The key: one person owns an initiative end to end, waking up every morning focused on delivering value across the organization, not just within their function. Mow the Lawn — Bureaucracy Grows While You Sleep "Your bureaucracy grows while you sleep. Think about your bureaucracy like mowing a lawn. You can't mow a lawn once."   Jana references Parkinson's Law — a senior Royal Navy leader found that even as the fleet shrank, the number of administrators grew by 5-10% annually. This applies to every organization. Middle managers fill their time by adding processes. One person's mistake becomes a process that penalizes 10,000 people. The solution is continuous gardening. At Google, a senior leader added positive friction: if you want more than 5 interviews in the hiring process, you need my approval. At Amazon, the principle "invent and simplify" asks everyone every year: what are we simplifying? The simplification work has to come from those closest to the problems — most leaders don't know half of what people are actually doing. Innovation Belongs to Everyone — Not a Lab "Psychological safety — it's not even a prefrontal cortex thing, it's not a conscious thought, it's that fight-or-flight reaction you have in the moment."   Phil makes the case that innovation starts with psychological safety at the team level, not an organization-wide mandate. It's the team leader asking questions, being humble, responding to disagreement with "tell me more" instead of "I don't agree." It means celebrating intelligent failures — someone who tested a hypothesis, found it didn't work, and stopped. At Amazon town halls, executives open by making fun of Amazon's failures, like the Fire Phone. The message: if you're thinking big, you'll also fail. The Fire Phone didn't work, but it informed future hardware investments. The only true failure is not learning from experimentation. Phil and Jana both emphasize that once leaders experience what happens when people are truly freed to do their best work, they get addicted to it. About Phil Le-Brun and Dr. Jana Werner Phil Le-Brun is the former International CIO of McDonald's and now leads the AWS Executives in Residence team, advising Fortune 500 leaders on transformation. Dr. Jana Werner is an Executive in Residence at AWS who built their EMEA transformation practice after leading digital change in financial services. Together they wrote The Octopus Organization: A Guide to Thriving in a World of Continuous Transformation (HBR Press).   You can link with Phil Le-Brun on LinkedIn and Jana Werner on LinkedIn.   Book site: theoctopusorganization.com Book on Amazon: The Octopus Organization

Rachel Maeng joins Eric Kasimov to talk about NIL, college sports, influencer marketing, athlete brands, and the money changing the system.Rachel is a former Rutgers student-athlete, fractional COO, NIL strategist, and founder who built and sold an influencer agency. She explains why real NIL is different from revenue sharing, why college sports keeps getting more expensive, and why access still matters.Topics covered:Why influencer marketing is the prequel to NILWhat real NIL actually looks likeHow revenue sharing and roster caps changed college sportsWhy paid athletes face more fan pressureWhy sports has turned into a money gameThe gap between top programs and everyone elseHow recruiting rankings and camps shape opportunityWhy athletes are being asked to become media companiesWhy internships, mentors, peers, and sponsors matterChapters in This Episode00:00 — Rachel Maeng on her current work00:34 — Fractional COO work, NIL, and representation01:42 — Rutgers, student government, and alumni advocacy03:27 — Rutgers in the Big Ten and the reach of major universities05:13 — Why Rachel chose Rutgers06:55 — Big schools, small schools, and the future of college athletics07:18 — Women's flag football and Title IX09:23 — Cutting sports, roster caps, and international athletes12:57 — Syracuse, football spending, and donor ROI14:14 — Why college teams are hiring GMs16:16 — Student fees, tuition, and the cost of college sports18:00 — NIL money, fan pressure, and athlete criticism19:39 — Recruiting rankings, camps, and access22:43 — College sports deficits and the money problem25:36 — The growing gap between top programs and everyone else27:10 — Recruiting facilities, spending, and shared governance29:13 — Sports betting, expansion, and more games32:10 — Rachel's view on NIL35:43 — Why Rachel watches more college sports now37:35 — Flag football, NFL expansion, and global growth39:17 — Youth sports, cost, and the money game43:55 — Athletes as media companies46:15 — TikTok, creator marketing, and the road to NIL48:31 — Advice for young women in sports and business54:50 — AAPI representation and women in sports business57:50 — Sponsors, mentors, peers, and building community59:10 — Internships, networking, and real career experience1:03:38 — The enrollment cliff and the future of college1:10:37 — Staying curious through podcasts, documentaries, and daily learning1:11:26 — LA, the Olympics, and travel realities1:15:51 — How to find Rachel MaengConnect with Rachel Maeng:X | LinkedIn | InstagramConnect with Eric & SportsEpreneur:SportsEpreneur.com | X | LinkedInEric on LinkedIn | XRelated SportsEpreneur NIL ContentDid You Know You're Paying for College Sports?Brendan Sorsby Bet on His Own Team and Is Somehow Still Eligible to PlayThe Protect College Sports Act Explained: NIL, Transfers, Antitrust, and the Future of College Sports

Most leaders learn to read a company by its story. Colleen Gallagher learned to read it by its numbers.In this episode, AJ Vaughan sits down with Colleen Gallagher, CEO of Textio, the HR technology company that has spent more than a decade helping some of the largest organizations in the world write sharper job postings and make better hiring decisions.Colleen did not come up the traditional people path. She started in consulting, running diligence on companies being bought, sold, and financed, learning to assess a business fast by how it made money and where it put that money to work. That foundation carried her from CFO to COO to CEO of Textio, and it still shapes how she leads.We get into:How finance gives you visibility into the entire organization instead of a single trackWhy strategy is really the allocation of two limited resources, money and timeWhat it takes to assess the health of any business quickly, starting from the invoice level upThe thinking behind Lavalier, Textio's new interview intelligence platform, is built to keep hiring anchored to skills and evidence instead of opinionWhere hiring decisions are heading as the evidence underneath them gets strongerIf you care about the financial logic underlying people's decisions, this conversation is for you.Learn more about Textio: https://textio.com/The Business of Alignment is where workforce leaders name what is actually true about the future of work.

NYU IHIF 2026 was full of insights and thought leadership from some of the best and brightest hospitality professionals in the industry.  In this episode of the Suite Spot, you will get to hear from some of the most influential and biggest names in hospitality in the exclusive interviews we were able to cover at the event.  NYU IHIF is the epicentre of hospitality brands, capital, and fast-paced dealmaking – opportunity moves fast, and so should you. This is where the rebound takes shape, where leaders uncover what's next, and where relationships turn into real transactions. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree and VP of Marketing here at Travel Media Group. Cassady Quintana: And I’m Cassady Quintana, Brand Ambassador here at TMG. Ryan Embree: And today we are fresh back from NYU IHIF 2026. My second time in attending this incredible event. Cassady, your first, what were your thoughts? Cassady Quintana: Yeah, I thought overall was a great event. A lot of optimism, especially as we’re heading into the summer season. So I thought, you know, the conversations that we heard on the panels and the ones that we were having with people were awesome, and a lot of you know, good things coming out of that. I feel like the biggest topics that I heard, there were three major takeaways I took from a lot of the panels and people we were talking to, but one being that K-shape economy that we’ve heard a lot about, right? We know that luxury is still outperforming while economy segments are feeling a little bit more of that pressure especially as we head into this summer season and looking at some of those trends. And then I think one of the biggest topics we have been talking about since the beginning of this year is the World Cup and how international travel we thought was gonna be booming. We were expecting a lot of busy hotels, but it’s kind of been on the softer side, and we’ve actually seen international travel dip a bit. So I think right now we’re kind of in that wait and see period of maybe you know people are waiting to see if their teams make it out of the group stages and then they’ll plan on booking a hotel. So keeping an eye on kind of that last minute travel. But the biggest topic that we were talking about a little bit last year, but the biggest one this year is AI and how hotels are using that within their systems. You know, there’s a lot of trends around using that for more personalization and being able to use it to look at your, you know, revenue optimization and how you’re performing online. So finding ways that we can use AI that doesn’t take the hospitality out of hospitality and doesn’t replace that human element. But that kind of went with that overarching theme of the entire event, which was sharpening the edge. So the thing I took from that is that the hotels that are really gonna win are the ones that are understanding their guests and using AI to further that, to further get to know their guests, to make that experience a little bit better. Ryan Embree: You know, and we had some incredible conversations and interviews with some professionals that we’re gonna share here in a second. But just to kind of jump on what Cassidy’s saying, we’re at a really cool inflection point in our industry right now as we go gear towards the busy travel season. So it’ll be interesting to see, you know, we had the opportunity to meet with development person from Minor hotels who’s looking to bring their brand into US and Canada, which will be very interesting. We know how they have a huge global footprint, a lot of interest early on in getting into the Americas. Uh, we then visited with AHLA and Kevin Carey and his team doing such wonderful work over there advocacy for our industry and some really cool initiatives that we were able to sit down with Kevin for a few minutes and chat about, uh, Jan Freitag from STR our hotel Data North Star and compass. They just released a revised forecast for the hospitality industry. So we went over some major points of that revised forecast and finally we got the opportunity to sit down with president and CEO Best Western Larry Cuculic. What a wonderful conversation about the best Western brand and how they are implementing, um, some of that AI and technology into their brand, and capitalizing on not only the World Cup, but also America 250. So wonderful insights that you’re only gonna find here on the sweet spot. Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoy these exclusive interviews from NYU IHIF 2026. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Sweet Spot. We are live on location at NYU IHIF 2026 here with Genna, the VP of US and Canada Development for Minor Hotels. Genna, thank you so much for taking the time to stop and the busy big apple and talk with us today. Genna Panagopoulos: Thanks for having me. Ryan Embree: Excited about, this show. A lot of energy, a lot of buzz. You know, when you come to an NYU talking to ownerships, a lot of capital here, what are the conversation kind of stem around, and what does a successful NYU show look like as you head back to your home base? Sure. Genna Panagopoulos: Successful NYU would really be finding some deals, perpetuating some deals. So hopefully advancing some opportunities and it’s really all about for right now because we’re relatively new into the region. Educating our owners and the, the broader development community. So, you know, some of, some of the players do already know us, but in the luxury space, but there’s a lot of people we gotta get out in front of and introduce Minor hotels to. Ryan Embree: And this is a great place and, obviously a great city to do that in. What has been kind of the feedback? I mean, you’ve been tasked with this enormous job. We have such a great brand, worldwide, you’re bringing it here to us, Canada, and North America. What have been some of those initial conversations and hearing that and initial interest and feedback from owners? Genna Panagopoulos: Yeah, we’ve had a lot of feedback and interest on Anantara. So some of our, you know, established luxury brands that are pretty well known when you know the luxury hotel space in a global environment. Sure. So those owners have actually come to us saying, we’re really excited about the opportunities here. So that’s one piece. Of course we have NH Hotels, NH collection, and NH, which are very well known brands, especially in Mediterranean, Europe. Yeah. And, Central and South America. So there’s excitement around that too. Ryan Embree: Does it help, I mean, having such an international brand, we got the World Cup here, right? In a couple months. You kind of using that as maybe some momentum as you kind of come into, and introduce this brand into the Americas. Genna Panagopoulos: Absolutely. There’s a lot of, you know, I’m also educating Minor of the markets we wanna be in and so that’s definitely helping as well and putting some places on the map. Ryan Embree: And let’s talk about that because there’s been some announced projects already right here actually in New York. Talk about that project a little bit. Genna Panagopoulos: Yes. Thanks for asking too. We have a Worsely Hotel that’s opening, here next year. It’s gonna be super exciting because Worsely is a restaurant brand that we are taking into the hotel space. So it’s the first of its kind and nowhere better than to start in New York comes from London. So there’s a lot of correlation between the two markets. Ryan Embree: One of a kind hospitality venue and a one of a kind city, so. Exactly. But another project we’re really excited about just ’cause we’re home based, obviously in Orlando right down the road, a bright line away in Miami. Talk to us a little bit about that project and how that’s different. Yeah, Genna Panagopoulos: It’s a high rise building built in Miami. Hasn’t started construction yet, but it’ll open in 2030. It’ll be an Anantara hotel with branded residences, both private branded residences and, um, ones that will be able to be rented to hotel guests as well. Super wellness oriented. There’s gonna be a really extensive spa. Right. Very experiential. Wonderful for the residents that are gonna be buying, the residence. Ryan Embree: It’s incredible. It sounds like you guys are really taking care of all of the kind of popular travel trends right now. Right. FMB has really had this resurgence in hospitality with the project here. Wellness, obviously a huge piece of what hospitality is leaning into and what travelers are looking forward to. So having that flexibility between the brands too, I’m sure is a definitely a fun place to be when having these conversations with owners. But you talked about another project in Turks and Caicos. Genna Panagopoulos: Turks and Caicos. So we have an Anantara in Turks and Caicos that I believe will open in 2029. So in order we’ll have one in New York next year, and then 29 on Ontario trips and Caicos 2030, Miami. Ryan Embree: So no shortage of news on the Minor Hotel side. Congratulations to you and your team. Thank you. As you wrap up, I mean, what’s your vision? What’s your goal? As you bring Minor Hotels into the North American region? Genna Panagopoulos: Yeah. Well, if I think about next year at NYU, I hope people, more people are coming towards us. Excited about us being a different brand a different mindset. So we offer, we think of ourselves a little bit differently from the parent brands that are already established here because we have, you know, ownership still of most of our portfolio or we lease most of our portfolio. Um, so I hope there’s more inbound traffic coming towards my way. I hope people generally just walking down the street know us a little bit more. Certainly. You know, white Lotus helped us with Anantara, so there’s a lot of people who Oh, yes, are are diehard Anantara fans because of that. But that’s what I’m hoping for. And eventually we’d love to have an office here. So as long as we do our, our, our work, right, we, we get a strong pipeline, we’ll be able to have an office, a regional office in, in North America. Ryan Embree: Incredible. Well, super exciting. Can’t wait to catch up on all the exciting projects that you have at Minor Hotels. This is the first of a couple collaborations we’ll be doing with Minor hotels, so make sure you stay tuned. Congratulations again, Genna. And thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. Genna Panagopoulos: Thanks for having me. Ryan Embree: Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. We are live on location, New York City at NYU IHIF. I’m here with Kevin Carey, President and CEO of the AHLA Foundation and COO of AHLA. Kevin, not your first time on the Suite Spot. Appreciate you taking some time and joining me here today. Kevin Carey: It’s lways a pleasure to spend time with you. Ryan Embree: Yeah, it’s fun.Incredible event so far. NYU obviously AHLA, AHLA Foundation Forward has a huge presence here. What does, you know, when you come to the event like this, we always talk in hospitality, these events are always going to exist no matter what. Technology comes down the pike because hospitality, we’re people, right. We like connecting. What is a successful NYU IHIF look like for you and your team? Kevin Carey: Well, It’s always an important period of time in the year at, as we approach midyear to check in with our members, to have that conversation about the advocacy issues we’re leading on behalf of the industry to hear how the business performance is tracking as well. And just to build enthusiasm and engagement for the events and the initiatives that we’re leading, not only in the association, but with the foundation as well. Ryan Embree: And none more important than the No Room for Trafficking initiative that you and your team have done some fabulous work on. I mean, we have all sorts of brands up on stage, sometimes with differing opinions here and there, but one cause that everyone in our industry has really gotten behind, and it’s the work of you and your team, is this No Room for Rrafficking? We always like to spread awareness of this. Talk to us a little about, about on that front and the progress you’re seeing and making. Kevin Carey: Well, this is a longstanding commitment that the industry has to human trafficking prevention and awareness. It started in 2019 with the development of the No Room For Trafficking Initiative and its focus on training and expanded in 2022 to include the Survivor Fund. So this is an area where AHLA and the foundation specifically serves as a convening entity to bring the industry together to rally around this important issue to work, to build awareness that’ll drive prevention of human trafficking, and also to gather funds to help support survivors. So this is a commitment not only on a longstanding basis, but also on a going forward basis as well. Ryan Embree: And such inspiring stories that you’ve told over the years. And people, you know, hoteliers and other people listening to this can really get behind and encourage people to kinda look at that initiative. Another kind of initiative that you’ve done in these events that, when we’re talking about these events is forward. We had a record breaking attendance a couple months ago in the spring. Talk to us about how that is. And you actually have some of those the forward initiatives here at NYU. Kevin Carey: We do within the foundation, our mission is to advance the workforce of the industry. And we do that through a focus not only on the current workforce, those over 2 million associates and colleagues who deliver hospitality day to day, but also how do we attract the future workforce to the industry. I talked about being a convening entity. The foundation brings together the industry across all segments. And there’s two areas where we believe we can make a difference. One is around human trafficking that we just spoke about, but also around the forward initiative which is geared towards, and its purposes to advance women in the hospitality industry and in leadership roles in the hospitality industry. So we were delighted to host our most recent forward conference in Atlanta, back in April. And the results were outstanding but really the momentum and the impact that that forward is having is really, which has us so enthusiastic and committed to this initiative moving forward. Ryan Embree: Yeah, that’s gotta be so cool to see industry leaders in hospitality raise their hands and want to be a part of this movement and really see the results from that. Kevin Carey: Well, it’s grown from just being a conference, that started in 2018 and had about 150 people at the first event to now over 1100 attendees. But as it as it has expanded from a conference to a leadership development curriculum. And you mentioned the forward exchange, which took place, here in New York earlier today, where it brought together over a hundred early and mid stage career and professionals of women and some men who are participating along with their peers to focus on networking and building those relationships so they can be well suited and take on roles, over time in the industry. Ryan Embree: Really cool to see. And again, probably some incredible stories coming from that over the years as the as the initiative matures. One thing that, that hospitality in general, really looking forward to, we got big summer, right? We’re usually really excited about summer is just ’cause of the travel season, kids being outta school. But this summer in particular, we’ve been looking forward to for a couple years. We got World Cup on the horizon, finally. We played just a couple miles from here and in America 250. What are you kind of hearing from hoteliers and how are AHLA really, gearing up for these big events, showcasing our industry? Kevin Carey: Well, these are really defining opportunities, for the industry to support those guests to welcome that demand, to drive the hospitality infrastructure over time. So there’s a lot of enthusiasm around the potential that that represents and as we’ve seen on stage already today the results in the first part of the year for the industry have been positive. a number of the outlooks are increasing the Revpar and ADR and other industry metrics, here with the these large events we are still waiting to see some of the demand materialize and we’re in a critical period of time right now, about 10 days out before the games to see that hopefully what’ll be a late surge in bookings, then translate into further business success for the industry. Ryan Embree: Yeah. Hopefully, and hopefully see that international travel continue to come back to North America, you know, a lot of hoteliers, hoping for that. Zooming in a little bit on a AHLA summertime, also time for interns, right. Come in and we’ve talked about this before. I mean, internships, mentorship in hospitality. So critical. I mean, throughout the years we’ve had these staffing shortages and we’ve talked about getting creative, our industry, getting creative on ways to fill those roles, internships being one of them. Talk about a little bit about the AHLA internship program and what these interns are are ready for this summer. Kevin Carey: Well, it’s not new. We’ve had a well established program from a number of years now. And, and we’re excited annually to bring a number of interns into our team across each function. we’ll have an interns in the government affairs team, in marketing, in the foundation. it’s so refreshing to engage them in our work to see their enthusiasm about their future to see them pick up valuable skills and experience of being in an office environment, learning more. And you know what? They, they have a real impact. They have some fun along the way as well and we have a wonderful session at the end where they get to present the results of some of the work in the initiatives that they’ve been working on. So it’s an annual opportunity that we look very forward to. And they’ll be starting just in about a week’s time. so it’ll be a great another repeatevent for us. Ryan Embree: Yeah. Love to see it. You know, again, any way that we can have more exposure to all sides of hospitality. Beause as we know, it’s not just, you know, the front desk. There’s so many elements to it and there’s none more demonstrated by how big our hospitality industry is than by the hospitality show that you put on. And this year is gonna be right in our backyard. In Miami, Florida. Get us a little bit excited about what we can expect at this year’s fourth annual. This is our fourth Hospitality Show, correct? Kevin Carey: So we started in Vegas, went to San Antonio, we’re in Denver last year. A lot of enthusiasm coming out of Denver for the content. And then what’s unique about the hospitality show is it’s really the only conference in the industry with a focus on operations and how operations is driving profitability. So there’s a terrific enthusiasm and people are looking forward to being in Miami, coming together in Q4, all segments of the industry represented. So we’ll have the brands we’ll have management companies, owners, service providers, suppliers, independent hotels also play an important role in the industry. So we’re about to open registration and that’ll really kickstart, the focus on November 2-4 in Miami. Ryan Embree: Well we’re looking forward to it. We’re hoping to go 4/4 on covering the hospitality show. Especially with it being right there in our backyard. Kevin, we know you’re busy. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today on some of these important initiatives. And hopefully we’ll see you in Miami in just a few months. Kevin Carey: Hopefully I have something else on. Ryan Embree: Alright. Appreciate it. Thanks. Kevin Carey: Thank you so much. Ryan Embree: Hello everyone. Ryan Embree. here live at NYU IHIF 2026 here with Jan the National Director of Hospitality Analytics at CoStar. Jan, you were just on a panel. Thanks for taking the time to jump off and speak with us. Jan Freitag: Absolutely. Ryan Embree: State of the state, love the name obviously you’re the north star of hospitality data out there. Jan, revised forecasts just came out. Talk to us a little bit about those points that you were sharing with the audience today. Jan Freitag: So we’re suggesting that RevPAR this year is gonna grow 2.8%, which is very different from the way we looked at the world at the ALIS Hotel Investment Conference. First quarter performance was much more stronger than we had expected than the public traded companies had expected the brands or the …. And a lot of them have revised their year end forecast up. So, you know, we followed suit. Now they, most of them just revised their forecast by the outperformance of Q1. But we’re suggesting No, no, there’s momentum. So we actually took our forecast up by a lot more to 2.8%, 2% driven by ADR and 0.8 by occupancy, which is really good to see. ’cause it implies that demand is outpacing supply. You know, so we get occupancy gains and then some pricing power. Ryan Embree: Love to see that. I mean we were here a year ago with Amanda who is talking about trying to decipher through the noise, a lot of noise right now. But great to see the momentum with those revisions and so important to have those revisions because the landscape can change ever so rapidly as you know. But talking about the supply, talk to us a little bit, go into a little bit more in depth and then obviously every market is different. What markets right now are running a little bit hot on supply? Jan Freitag: Yeah, so fational forecast for Supply goes to 0.4%, not a whole lot. Right. The long run average is 1.6, so we’re well below that. The number of rooms in construction used to be between, we know, 150,000 – 160,000. It’s now 140,000. So it’s sort of staying there. It’s just so expensive to get anything done. And interest rates are still high and could go higher. Who knows, we’re not making interest rate forecast. But you know, there’s definitely no longer this idea of how we should cut, you know, interest rates twice this year or so. I think those days are gone, you know, and so now the question is, okay, so where are people getting things done? And you can look at it by markets. So a couple of them are usual suspects. So Nashville, very strong, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Phoenix. So those are markets sort of in the smile states, sort of in the Sunbelt that still get a lot of people moving there. And you know, migration determines the economic performance. And so we’re seeing a lot more room supply growth there, but there’re just a lot of markets where it’s very, very hard to get anything done because of that higher cost of construction and of the higher interest rate. So I would single out those markets, but overall the picture is rather muted. On the supply side. So what that means then, for existing owners is the time to renovate is right now percent. Because you want to be the new kid on the block with the new hotel, there’s not a lot of new competition coming. This is time to renovate and really put your best foot forward. Ryan Embree: A hundred percent. And you know, one of the other topics we talked about, or you talked about rather on stage was segments right now luxury, doing very, very well leading the way. Obviously a lot of bifurcation, that K-shaped economy. What are you seeing across the segments right now? Jan Freitag: Yeah, I mean there are no wrong answers in luxury, right? I mean, luxury last year was the winner. This year is the winner. We’re projecting, very healthy RevPAR growth double of what we’re saying for the nation. We think the luxury class can materialize. And then what’s really nice to see is that for upscale upper midscale midscale, there’s also RevPAR growth there, which we hadn’t seen last year. And to me that speaks to the strength really of the American economy. But it sort of permeates toward all income classes. Now the exception is was and unfortunately will be likely the economy sector now even there we’re suggesting RevPAR’s growing, but it’s just, you know, 0.8% call that flat for all intent and purposes. Ryan Embree: International travel too, obviously World Cup on the heels of this. What are you see any interesting data points there you wanna share just right ahead of the America 250 and World Cup? Jan Freitag: There are two very different vibes coming from the panel that I was on. Adam Sacks prior to US presenting was talking about, oh wow, international inbound is really still quite a bit lower than it was in 2019. But the gentleman from the NTTO, the National Travel Tourism Organization was like, no, we’re projecting rock and roll, really strong growth of international inbound. The truth is probably gonna somewhere in the tween this year. World Cup is gonna drive a lot of international travelers. What I’m wondering about though is are some of those travelers basically stealing from 2025 and from 2027 and now they’re saying, oh, let’s not go in 25, let’s go in 26. And then when next year comes around, they’re like, we just went to the us you know, and not go in 27 either. So I just hope that the more positive spin from the government comes true and this and, and not that we’re just sort of packing everything into this year and then international inbound is gonna deteriorate. Ryan Embree: So many interesting data points. Anyone in particular you have your eyes on where, you know, obviously we love a nice rosy outlook and try to look for opportunities through all of the data that’s out there, but anyone’s that are like unexpected data points or something that you’re at least keeping an eye on right now? Jan Freitag: Yeah, so there are a couple, but the one that I’m really focused on is consumer price index. Everything is getting more expensive and so that means that hotels will see their cost increase. And the big question then is how much of that cost increase can they pass on to the customer? And I just told you that our ADR forecast for this year is 2% and inflation is gonna be what, 3.5 or something? I mean, it’s gonna be much more than that outpacing that. So that’s really the crux and I think that’s what we here at NYU, to talk to owners and investors and management companies have figure out, okay, so how can we keep our margins expanding even maybe how do you do that in this environment where top line growth may be not keeping pace with with inflation. So the CPI number is really something I’m keeping an eye on. Ryan Embree: Yeah, pretty challenging time right now. when it comes to margins and hospitality that we, again, trying to suss out and figure out here, what are those maybe opportunistic data points that you’re seeing that you’re saying this, this is really good, maybe unexpected on the other end of the spectrum? Jan Freitag: Yeah, I think the Americans are wealthier than they ever have been. And Adam Sachs has this fascinating data point where he shows at the emerge that the middle class in America is shrinking, but part of it is because a lot more people are rich. So people are moving up the income chain and that allows ’em then to spend more money on experiences, very clear that people favor experiences over goods. And we are right in that Suite Spot. Ryan Embree: That continues to be the experience over stuff. We love to see that. And then you’re kind of here celebrating an anniversary/birthday of your podcast, is it? You know you’re, you’re usually, typically used to be in the host, not so much the guests, so thank you. Tell us a little bit more and maybe where our hotel audience can find the insights that you provide. Jan Freitag: Yeah, and thank you for having me. So we have our own podcast. My colleague Isaac Collazo from STR and myself get together once a month. It’s called Tell Me More, A Hospitality Data podcast. And three years ago at juniors across the street over cheesecake, we sort of hatched the idea. And so now we’re, I don’t know, like, you know, almost 30 episodes into it. And we get together once a month and we just sort of riff on the data and hopefully you can join us. Ryan Embree: I love it. That’s awesome. Well, Jan, thank you so much. Very busy time. Appreciate you stopping by and talking to us. Jan Freitag: My pleasure. Thank you so much. Ryan Embree: Alright. Hello everyone. Ryan Embree here with the Suite Spot. We are live at NYU IHIF 2026 here with Larry Cuculic, President and CEO of BWH Hotels. Larry, thank you so much for taking time outta your busy schedule to join us here on the Suite Spot. Larry Cuculic: It’s my absolute pleasure. Thank you for the invitation and for allowing me to share some thoughts with regard to the success and BWH hotels. Ryan Embree: Yeah. We’ve got a lot to cover cause you’ve got a lot going on right now. But let’s start with this event, right? NYU IHIF, lot of major brands here what does a successful NYU look like for you and your team? Larry Cuculic: To us, a successful NYU is interacting with developers and investors such that they’re aware of what BWH has become. We’re now 18 brands, over 4,000 hotels in over a hundred countries and territories from premium economy up to luxury hotels. We acquired world hotels about six years ago. And so it really is continuing to educate about the possibilities of their associating with BWH hotels because we would be singularly focused on their success if they partner with us. And you’re also in a powerhouse panel tomorrow, the Executive Exchange Hospitality Performance Strategies for Success give our audience a little bit a sneak peek of what you’re gonna be talking about on stage. Larry Cuculic: Well, we’re gonna be talking about of course, the economy near term as well as long term projections for what that looks like. we’ll be talking about the importance of loyalty programs. We’ll be talking about the impact of really the economy and things like labor insurance and how we as brands need to focus on the success of our hotels by offering them programs to really offset that impact on net RevPAR. Ryan Embree: And I’m sure one of the subjects and topics that we brought up on your panel, certainly something we talk about these hospitality events is, AI and technology. And we had the privilege of having SVP and your CTO Bill Ryan on at the Hospitality Show a couple months in October, gave us a little bit of lay of the land when it came to AI and technology. How do you feel personally that this technology is really changing the way that travelers choose hotels, but also how they have their hotel experience, their guest experience? Larry Cuculic: Sure. So the first thing we’re doing is we’re reinvesting in our .com as well as our app. And we want them to be easy to use intuitive, but we also wanna make sure they have content that convinces guests when they’re shopping that our hotels will provide them kind of that customization and personalization. ’cause it’s not about a commodity, a hotel room, it’s about all those things that we can offer. By way of example we’re partnering with an AI agency to kind of harvest content with regard to where our hotels are located in those communities. At the same time, we’ll take that harvested content and we’ll filter it through our hoteliers who live in those communities and create the content that will be the AI answer when somebody’s looking for a place to stay. And they’ll know that we want them to have the best possible time while we’re in that community, not just staying with us as a hotel, that we recognize that people don’t want just to stay, they want really a journey. Ryan Embree: Yeah. Something that we aspire in hospitality to provide that not just a hotel stay, but an experience. And we talked to Joelle Park about the power of storytelling and how that can play a component in one of the best stories, obviously that you just had a really exciting announcement with is America 250 and the story of this great nation. So talk to us a little bit about that partnership and what BWH Hotels is doing with America 250. Larry Cuculic: Well, we are a sponsor of America 250, and we’re encouraging our hoteliers to embrace the 250th anniversary of the birth of our nation. And part of that is not just USA 250, we also have the 100th anniversary of Route 66. We have hotels that have been with us, believe it or not, we have a hotel that’s been with us 75 years. And it speaks to the heritage of our brand. So we’ll be leaning into the history of this great country. At the same time we’ll be leaning into the history of our great brand and encouraging people to travel and see the United States and all that it has to offer no matter where you go. And the beauty of our hotels we have 2200 of them in North America and wherever they’re going to go, we want them to know that we have a hotel that will meet their travel leads such that they can experience really the 250th anniversary of USA. Ryan Embree: Yeah. It’s a really exciting partnership right in at an inflection point with the World Cup as well. So introducing maybe some international travel also to the brand and the nation. You know, you’re a great following on LinkedIn. I encourage our audience, if you haven’t, make sure you follow Larry, but one of the things you’re reflecting on your North American regional conferences that you’ve done up to this point in 2026 and you quoted to say that you want BWH hotels to become the most welcoming brand in the world. What does that mean to you and how is your team working to achieve that? Larry Cuculic: Well, welcoming means that we’re gracious hosts, but it also means that we’re, I’ll call it easy to do business with understanding, being flexible and recognizing that we are somebody you’d want to be partners with. Whenever anyone walks into a hotel we should tell them, you know, welcome, we’re glad you’re here by way of example. But I used to think of it that way in terms of being gracious host and everything that happens at the hotel, but when I think of welcoming, I also want to think about our new.com and app. Again, it’s that ease of use and personalization so that when you go there, we know it’s you and we want to help you make good decisions with regard to travel. So welcoming is about ease of.com, the app we’re redoing our loyalty program. I think Joel probably talked to you about that. And we want the loyalty program to be welcoming as well. Well, what does that mean? Well, that means that when you interact with us, you’ll know how many points you have. You’ll know they never expire. You’ll know that you can use them to buy down the price of a room at any point. That you don’t have to, to have as many points for a full stay to leverage those points. It’s a value of the program. And of course welcoming. I always lean into the importance of being not just a gracious host, but somebody that appreciates our guests. To me, that’s welcoming because you have to recognize that people, they’re traveling with their families, it’s something that you wanna leave a terrific impression on them and their family. And you also want them to know that we appreciate that they’ve spent their hard-earned money staying with us. To me, that’s being appreciative gracious hosts. And that’s part of the welcoming. It’s not, the welcoming doesn’t just happen when they enter. Welcoming has to be entire stay. Ryan Embree: So key. And the brands that kind of make that connection with their travelers, especially in a time where, I mean, we just talked about in this interview AI technology, there’s way more places become disconnected, to find that connection, that human to human connection. Very important right now. So as we wrap up the interview, obviously at these events we’re always, whether it’s the hospitality data we’re looking into, whether it’s a conversation, we’re always trying to take a glimpse into the future, trying to predict that future. Larry what do you see, what’s your vision for the future of BWH Hotels. Larry Cuculic: People will always wanna travel. And for us, if we can become that welcoming brand that appreciates our guests, we will build that loyalty. When we build that loyalty, that program will grow. Our revenue delivery brand direct will grow which is the lowest cost for us in terms of that reservation for our hoteliers but what I think I would also offer to you is we’re also very focused on thoughtful growth. And what that means is if you grow your loyalty program, you also wanna make sure you have hotels that are in locations where guests want to go. Be it London, be it Rome, be it Frankfurt, be it Bangkok, no matter where it is around the world. And so, you know, we have a, a focus goal of 5,000 hotels, which means we will grow thoughtfully, but with our guests in mind. And because when we have a hotel join us, our sole focus is the success of that hotel as well as having a quality hotel where guests want to go. Ryan Embree: That’s awesome. Well, we wish you nothing but success. Hopefully maybe can join the Suite Spot when that 5,000 hotel opens and we can celebrate that together. But in the meantime, thank you, Larry, for taking the time out of your day to join us here on the Suite spot. Larry Cuculic: Well, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Very much appreciate it. Speaker 2: To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five star reading on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.

Karl Kottmeier, CEO and Paul Schubach, COO of EMP Metals (OTCQB: EMPPF | CSE: EMPS) believe the recent uptrend in lithium prices is sending a strong signal that it may be entering another bull cycle. The duo break down the main trends they're watching in the lithium market, as well as discussing how EMP Metals fits into the picture, with their plan to become a leading lithium producer in Saskatchewan.EMP Metals Website: https://empmetals.comFollow EMP Metals on X: https://x.com/EMP_MetalsCorpDisclaimer: Commodity Culture was compensated by EMP Metals for producing this interview. Jesse Day is not a shareholder of EMP Metals. Nothing contained in this video is to be construed as investment advice, do your own due diligence.Join the LIVE Commodity Culture Bootcamp June 27: https://join.jesseday.caSubscribe to the FREE Commodity Culture Newsletter: https://readplaza.com/commoditycultureFollow Jesse Day on X: https://x.com/jessebdayCommodity Culture on Youtube: https://youtube.com/c/CommodityCulture

What happens when you try to build a global movement teaching people how to breathe in an industry exploding with competition? Gary Torrens, co-founder and Second in Command at Soma Breath, sits down with Cameron Herold to reveal what most operators never say out loud. This conversation punches into operational realities: remote chaos, hiring struggles, visionary partner dynamics, and the brutal truth about what actually works when building a scalable certification business.Breathwork is everywhere, but Soma Breath's story is different. You'll hear how they went from wild psilocybin-fueled vision quests in Thailand to leading thousands of facilitators and facing the tough tradeoffs of pricing, growth, and culture. If you want to understand the Second in Command power dynamic and see the inside of a company growing faster than most can handle, this episode is your shortcut.Listen now or risk missing the real-world roadmap and the costly mistakes that separate scalable movements from also-rans. Only here: Gary's unfiltered answers and their playbook for the next stage.This episode is brought to you by our Silver Sponsor, Next Level Growth.They help COOs and leadership teams build Elite Organizations through a proven, customizable framework built around the Five Obsessions of Elite Organizations.If you and your leadership team are ready to operate at the next level, take the Elite Organizations Assessment and receive a free 20-page customized report based on your answers, plus a complimentary one-hour coaching session with a Next Level Growth Partner and Business Guide to begin implementing tools that will help you build an even more elite business.Complete the assessment here to get started - nextlevelgrowth.com/cooassessmentTimestamped Highlights06:53 – The unexpected business model nobody saw coming10:14 – Ancient breathing meets modern science: the strategy that sparked a movement13:10 – Why they priced the membership low—and the hidden risks17:16 – Remote chaos: problems they never saw coming with a global team22:10 – The controversial move to focus on city-based expansion24:19 – The real marketing mess they had to fix after explosive growth27:08 – The truth behind their biggest revenue engine34:07 – Gary's brutal leadership lesson that changed everythingAbout the GuestGary Torrens is co-founder and COO of Soma Breath. He helped turn a visionary idea blending ancient breathwork, modern science, and music into a global certification platform with 4,000+ facilitators. With a background in physics, finance, and digital marketing, Gary is known for building systems that scale impact, not just revenue.

Morgan Mizrahi is the Co-founder and COO of Rebillia, a subscription management platform that helps e-commerce, SaaS, and recurring revenue businesses automate billing, reduce churn, and grow revenue. An experienced e-commerce and retail leader, she brings hands-on insight into the challenges merchants face when scaling subscriptions. Morgan helped build Rebillia to provide flexible billing infrastructure, lifecycle management, and customer-centered workflows. She is also a podcast guest and industry voice on subscription commerce and long-term customer growth. In this episode… Traditional subscription models often lock customers into rigid plans. As expectations shift in the AI era, merchants need billing systems that adapt to customer behavior, changing preferences, and new revenue opportunities. What does a modern subscription model look like when it is built around choice instead of churn? For Morgan Mizrahi, a subscription commerce and e-commerce technology leader, the answer is flexibility. She explains how Rebillia challenges the old subscription playbook by helping merchants offer adjustable plans that customers can update throughout the subscription lifecycle. Instead of forcing buyers into one-size-fits-all recurring plans, this approach gives customers more control while helping businesses improve retention and increase lifetime value. Morgan also shares how flexible subscription infrastructure can support e-commerce, SaaS, AI-powered applications, and partnership-driven revenue models. In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Morgan Mizrahi, Co-founder and COO of Rebillia, to discuss the anti-subscription model for modern commerce. Morgan explains flexible billing, reducing churn through customer choice, and how AI agents and vibe coders are reshaping monetization. She also shares how partnerships create new revenue opportunities.

Christina Hello, everyone, I'm Christina Darnell, the managing editor of MinistryWatch. Welcome to the MinistryWatch podcast. In today's extra episode, I talk with Warren Smith about some news items that are slightly (even significantly) outside of our normal charity and philanthropy “beat.” So, Warren, what's up first? Warren Last Friday, just days before the Southern Baptist Convention gathered for its annual meeting in Orlando, Florida, SBC megachurch Pastor Jack Graham said in a social media post that the SBC has never had a “systematic sexual abuse crisis” and described what prompted a 2021 independent investigation by Guidepost Solutions as a “reckless hoax.” Christina Speaking of reckless, given all the evidence for serious issues in the SBC, that seems a pretty reckless thing to say. Warren Agreed. I have met Jack Graham a few times, and he seemed like a normal guy. I clearly missed the signs. This statement is so dislocated from reality as to make my head swim. Christina The Houston Chronicle documented nearly 400 cases of sexual abuse in Texas alone. The Guidepost Report on the SBC found hundreds more. Warren Graham's view seems to be that the problem was not systematic and was instead a function of how large the SBC is (“a few bad apples”). Even if that was true (and I do not think it was), the failure to respond quickly and adequately to survivors was surely systematic, a product of the culture of the SBC. That said, the SBC has, in recent years, taken solid steps toward reform. I applaud the denomination for that. But Graham's comments are not helping. Christina While we're on the subject of the Southern Baptist Convention, the SBC has released new demographic information, and Ryan Burge has analyzed it. Warren Here's a passage from one of his recent weekly newsletters: “I've said this on many occasions, but the rise of the SBC from 1945 through 1990 will never ever be replicated again in the history of American religion.” The SBC peaked at $16.2 million in 2006. Today it has about 12.3 million. This 25 percent decline in a generation is due to a lot of factors, including a general secularization of culture. But to claim that the sex abuse scandals played no role strains credulity. Christina The Southern Baptist Convention is meeting this week, but the SBC is not the only thing in the news. Warren That's right. A new study is out from Communio and the Institute for Family Studies. Among the findings: “Children raised in homes where faith is discussed regularly are more than twice as likely to attend church and say religion is very important to them when they become adults.” The study is called Passing the Torch: How Faith Moves Across Generations, and it claims to be the “most comprehensive examination to date of how parents successfully pass on faith to the next generation.” The report also found that when both parents attend church weekly, 41 percent of children do the same in adulthood, compared to 29 percent when only one parent attends. Children who report a strong relationship with both parents are 97 percent more likely of believing in God as adults than those with weaker parental relationships. Christina We do not often cover the Catholic Church, but a story from our hometown of Charlotte caught your attention this week. Warren Prosecutors say a Catholic Charities employee in Charlotte embezzled and laundered money by using a business credit card. The damage was more than $13,000. Leah Stewart, age 46, was arrested in late April. She faces felony charges over the unauthorized credit card charges. We do not cover Catholic charities much, but this one was in my hometown, so I could not help but notice. Also, it gives me another opportunity to note that we can learn from this situation. To find out how your organization can put safeguards in place to avoid financial fraud, click here. Christina And our last story is a bit of good news. Warren That's right. There's so much news about people doing bad things, it's nice sometimes to catch people doing good things, especially when they happen to be friends. Christina And one of them is right here in Charlotte. Warren That would be Rod Culbertson. He has “graduated” to emeritus status at Reformed Theological Seminary here in Charlotte after a long and distinguished career as a pastor, campus minister with Reformed University Fellowship, and a longtime professor at RTS. “Emeritus” is what you call someone who has retired but who does not believe in retirement as a biblical category! Christina And who's the other one. Maria Montserrat Alvarado, the current president and COO of U.S.-based Catholic media giant EWTN News, will lead the Vatican's communication office, the Vatican announced Tuesday (June 2). Montse, as I know her, is not yet 40 years of age, and she will be the youngest person to lead a Vatican dicastery in recent memory and the first woman who is not a religious sister to be a Vatican prefect, a task historically reserved for cardinals. When I first met Montse, nearly 20 years ago, she was barely in her 20s and working for The Becket Fund, the religious liberty legal organization. We have reported on their work often here at MinistryWatch. It was clear even then she was a rising star. Indeed, in 2017 she became the Executive Director there. So, Montse and Rod, I will be praying for you both as you enter news seasons of life and ministry. Christina Warren, we need to wrap things up here. Any final thoughts before we go? Warren I'm in Colorado Springs and Denver this week. I'll be doing a reader lunch in the Springs on Thursday and in Denver on Friday. Let me know if you would like to join us. My email is wsmith@ministrywatch.com. I also want to mention that June is the end of our fiscal year. We've had a good year, so far, but we still have about $45,000 that we need to raise between now and June 30. If that number sounds huge, I'd like to remind you that the average gift to MinistryWatch is less than $100. But they add up. If you have been listening to us here on the podcast for a while, but have never given, I'd like to ask you to consider a gift so MinistryWatch can continue our work. Just go to www.MinistryWatch.com/donate Christina That brings to a close this EXTRA episode of the podcast. The producer for today's program is Jeff McIntosh. I hope you'll join Warren and me again on Friday. We'll be bringing you the news of the week, from a MinistryWatch perspective. Until next time, may God bless you.

Big news: CrossFit is not for sale. Bruce Edwards, the new CEO made that a condition of taking the job.At the 2026 Two-Brain Summit in Chicago, Chris Cooper sat down live on stage with Bruce for a wide-ranging conversation about the future of CrossFit.Bruce isn't a newcomer to CrossFit. He was an original client of Greg Glassman in the late 1990s, one of the early guinea pigs who helped shape the methodology. He later owned CrossFit Aptos, served as COO of CrossFit and has now returned as CEO with a clear mandate: Fix the perception problem, rebuild affiliate value and bring the movement back to its roots.In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Chris asks the big questions affiliate owners are asking, and Bruce shares his honest vision for what comes next for CrossFit.Tune in to hear a candid conversation about CrossFit's future under Bruce's leadership.LinksGym Owners UnitedBook a Call0:00 - Intro0:20 - Why Bruce almost said no to the CEO role6:43 - CrossFit's North Star8:46 - The Games vs. the affiliate story13:22 - The future of CrossFit media15:00 - Do GLP-1s have a place in fitness?20:25 - Bruce's stance on partnerships28:15 - A message to de-affiliated owners30:07 - What affiliates should do right now

Sometimes the moments that challenge your identity the most end up reshaping your entire relationship with money. In this episode of Money Tales, Bobbie LaPorte shares what it looks like to navigate financial highs and lows with humility and resourcefulness. After years of corporate success, Bobbie found herself asking a very different question. What do you do when the path you expected disappears and you still need to move forward? Bobbie's story is candid and full of hard-earned perspective and thoughtful generosity. Bobbie is a leadership advisor, executive coach, Founder and CEO of Bobbie LaPorte & Associates, where she helps leaders navigate volatility, complexity, and constant change. She works with Fortune 500 companies, global organizations, and high growth start-ups to build confident leaders who can think and perform at their best when the ground is shifting. Bobbie brings rare credibility to the conversation, having served as a CEO, COO and CMO in multiple Fortune 50 companies, including IBM, GE, and UnitedHealthcare, as well as leading two healthcare technology start ups. Bobbie is the and author of When the Curveballs Keep Coming. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Master's in Positive Leadership and Strategy from IE University in Madrid. Known for blending real world executive experience with science-based insight, Bobbie helps leaders strengthen personal agency, confidence and decision making under pressure. Her work spans keynote talks, leadership workshops, enterprise learning programs and one on one executive coaching. When she's not working with leaders, Bobbie is training for her seventh Ironman triathlon—often alongside her two Golden Retrievers on Bay Area trails. Here are three money conversations this episode will help you navigate: 1. How your relationship with money is shaped early and evolves over time. Growing up between abundance and scarcity, Bobbie learned to be self-sufficient and still carries that lens into how she saves, spends and supports others today. 2. What it really takes to get through financial uncertainty. Bobbie shares the reality of starting over, including the humbling decision to take any job available while building something new, and how that shaped her confidence and independence. 3. How to define “enough” when success keeps raising the bar. Through her work with high-earning clients, Bobbie brings a grounded lens on balancing ambition and wealth with the relationships, health, time and everyday experiences that often get pushed aside in the pursuit of more. Follow Money Tales on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or YouTube Music for more real stories that inspire thoughtful, intentional decisions about money.

You're good at what you do. Your clients know it. The people who refer you know it.But your next ideal consulting client may have no idea you exist.That's the gap between being credible and becoming sought after.In this episode, Melisa Liberman shows independent consultants how to make lead generation easier by building an inbound lead system that helps more right-fit clients find you, trust you, and reach out already interested.You'll learn how to move beyond relying only on referrals, past clients, and inconsistent outreach by becoming more recognizable for the specific consulting work you want to be hired for.Melisa breaks down the three components of an inbound lead system for independent consultants:The inbound foundation: the specialization that makes you known for a specific problem, client, or outcomeThe sought-after mindset: the shift from hidden expert to obvious choiceThe inbound lead mechanism: the system that builds visibility, grows your audience, creates direct relationships, and keeps you top of mindYou'll also hear Melisa's own specialization example as a fractional COO for PE-backed tech startups, plus three real consultant examples using a podcast, speaking, and unattached networking to generate more right-fit opportunities.Listen to learn how to build visibility, differentiation, and demand in your consulting business, so lead generation gets easier the longer you do it.Timestamps for Key Moments:[00:00] Episode overview[00:05] Why becoming sought after changes everything[00:07] The 3-part inbound lead system[00:08] Component 1: Inbound Foundation[00:09] Two specialization blockers[00:15] The In-N-Out Burger specialization example[00:18] Fractional CRO example for PE-backed tech[00:22] Component 2: Sought-After Mindset[00:28] Component 3: Inbound Lead Mechanism[00:32] Podcast + diagnostics example[00:33] Speaking + white paper example[00:35] Unattached networking example[00:37] Next stepsResources Mentioned:Companion Resource: Lead Generation Effectiveness Scorecard: www.pipelinescorecard.comFull Show Notes https://shownotes.melisaliberman.com/episode-274Want More?Melisa's Books, Planners & Journals: https://linktr.ee/melisalibermanGet Melisa's Book: https://www.melisaliberman.com/bookVisit Melisa's Website: https://www.melisaliberman.com/Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melisa-libermanWant help achieving your consulting business goals? Melisa can help. Click here for more on coaching tailored to you as an independent consulting business owner.

How do you lead multiple dairy operations, oversee teams across several states, and still make it home for supper with three young children waiting for you?In this episode of the Uplevel Dairy Podcast, Peggy Coffeen sits down with Annie Vannurden, Managing Partner and COO of Silver Streak Dairies, part of the Pace Ag Group. Annie shares what it takes to create consistency across multiple dairy sites while building a culture centered around accountability, communication, employee development, and cow care.From managing site leaders and implementing systems that support growth to navigating the realities of motherhood while pursuing ambitious business goals, Annie offers practical insights for dairy producers, managers, and anyone leading teams in agriculture. Whether you're growing a dairy business, building leadership skills, or trying to balance family and career, this conversation is packed with actionable lessons and honest reflections from someone living it every day.This episode is brought to you by Zoetis. As the world's leading animal health company, Zoetis is dedicated to helping producers achieve healthy animals, healthy dairies and healthy food through their world-class portfolio. For more information, visit ⁠DairyWellness.com.⁠01:42 Meet Annie Van Irden01:59 Inside Pace Ag Merge03:43 COO Day To Day06:52 Consistency Across Sites10:18 Clarity And Communication12:55 Maturity And Priorities13:52 People Wins And Expansion17:49 Work Hat Home Hat22:06 Boundaries And Presence26:32 Mentors And Influence31:44 Support System At Home35:13 Planning Routines Calendar

In this episode of Leadership on the Links, Tyler Bloom is joined by Connor Healy, Superintendent at Conway Farms Golf Club in Lake Forest, Illinois, one of the premier private clubs on the North Shore of Chicago. Connor traces his career from an early start caddying at Ravisloe Country Club to working alongside respected industry mentors at Old Elm and Olympia Fields, before establishing a long-tenured career at Conway Farms. He also discusses his decision to pursue an MBA at DePaul University while serving as sole assistant through a major course renovation, a commitment that broadened his perspective on club leadership and helped position him for the superintendent role. This is a thoughtful conversation about professional development, team building, and what it means to lead with intention at a high-caliber private club. What You'll Learn in This Episode: How foundational experiences under respected mentors at Old Elm, Bel Air, and Olympia Fields shaped Connor's approach to the profession. Why pursuing an MBA while managing a course renovation demonstrated a level of commitment that resonated with club leadership. The value of cross-departmental relationships with the director of golf and COO in building the trust and credibility necessary for an internal promotion. How meaningful exposure to members, board meetings, and club committees distinguished Connor as a prepared and capable successor. Connor's approach to staff development: assessing individual goals, building on existing strengths, and supporting team members in finding the right opportunities for their growth. Why consistent, ongoing feedback and open communication are central to preparing assistant superintendents for the responsibilities of club leadership. A measured perspective on work-life balance and how thoughtful scheduling and clear expectations contribute to a more sustainable and professional work environment. Connor's involvement with the Super Scratch Foundation and his commitment to supporting the next generation of golf course management professionals.     Links and Resources Connor Healy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/connor-healy-2982a021/ Conway Farms Golf Club: https://www.conwayfarmsgolfclub.org/ Super Scratch Foundation: https://www.superscratchfoundation.org/ Bloom Golf Partners: https://bloomgolfpartners.com/  

Cam Darlington is Global Strategy Expert at Mitrade, the Australian-founded CFD trading platform regulated by ASIC in Australia and CySEC in Europe, offering forex, commodities, indices, shares, and crypto from a single account. A Nova Scotia native based in Hong Kong for the past eight years, Cam brings a dual perspective: a traditional finance background working with brokers expanding across Asia, and recent experience as co-founder and COO of easy.fun, a social trading app built on Solana and Hyperliquid. Why you should listen Cam has a name for the phenomenon most people inside traditional brokerages never see from the trenches: the convergence. TradFi and crypto are collapsing into a single market structure, and the pivot point, he argues, is Washington. With the CLARITY Act working through the Senate and President Trump signing the Integrating Financial Technology Innovation into Regulatory Frameworks executive order in May, digital asset brokers are being ushered toward the core plumbing of the US financial system, including direct access to Federal Reserve payment rails. Add growing regulatory comfort with tokenized stocks trading at parity with their underlying assets, and the discount problem that dogged early real-world-asset experiments like Robinhood's tokenized equities starts to disappear. Tokenized RWAs, Cam says, just became viable. The second-order effects are reshaping market infrastructure itself. When a broker like Robinhood can mint tokenized stocks on its own proprietary chain and handle execution and settlement in-house, it stops feeding liquidity to the public exchanges. Cam frames the exchange's recent moves, including its tokenization partnership with Kraken built on the xStocks framework, as a defensive response to exactly this threat. He speaks from experience here: his team at easy.fun integrated the xStocks API and saw firsthand how thin liquidity gets once you trade beyond Nvidia, Apple, and Tesla. Cam says players most at risk are the centralized crypto exchanges, squeezed between newly crypto-enabled traditional brokerages on one side and purpose-built DeFi venues like Hyperliquid on the other. For traders, Cam's message is about survival. The first year determines whether someone becomes a trader or a statistic, and he is scathing about platforms offering 1,000x leverage to beginners, which he likens to handing a brand-new driver a Ferrari and pointing at the motorway. He makes the case for starting on a regulated platform with guardrails, modest leverage, built-in TradingView charting, and daily strategy feeds, which is precisely the gap Mitrade aims to fill as a companion to a traditional brokerage account.  Supporting links Stabull Finance Mitrade Sign up to Mitrade Andy on Twitter Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Links:  China Maritime Report #52: Everything Everywhere All At Once: The Growing Complexity of PLA Amphibious Exercises: Direct link to China Maritime Report #52 China Maritime Studies Institute CMSI Reports LinkedIn IngeniSPACE News Site   Bio: Jason Wang is a national security researcher and COO of ingeniSPACE, a Silicon Valley geointelligence analytics house. Marvin Bernardo is a PhD candidate at the National Jung ju University, Taiwan, and serves as a maritime domain analyst at ingeniSPACE.

Episode 158 | With the 2026 FIFA World Cup finally set to kick off, DP & McGhee break down the biggest storylines surrounding the world's largest sporting event before welcoming Ed Horne, COO of On Location, the company helping deliver hospitality experiences for millions of fans. From tournament predictions and operational concerns to the business of premium experiences, this episode explores both the competition on the field and the massive industry supporting it.

Umar Aziz, Partner, Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel at DG Partners, joins Scott Brown to share lessons from a career that nearly took him into shipping brokerage before a major life event brought him back to law.In this episode of Lessons I Learned in Law, Umar reflects on how personal circumstances shaped the start of his legal career, including his decision to return to Clifford Chance after initially turning down his training contract. His first lesson is that there is more to life than work. Drawing on his own experiences of loss, family responsibility and high-pressure legal environments, he discusses the importance of building a full life outside the job — and why excellence matters across work, family, friendships and personal pursuits.His second lesson comes from advice he received early in his career: learn from the best bits of the lawyers around you. Umar explains why every lawyer you work with has something worth copying — and something worth leaving behind.His final lesson challenges the idea that lawyers should always try to “win” every point. Whether negotiating with clients, managing internal teams or building long-term business relationships, Umar argues that sustainable success comes from fairness, trust and mutual respect — not squeezing every last drop out of the other side.Along the way, Umar discusses moving from litigation into funds, the transition from private practice into DG Partners, his COO and GC role, and why full-contact karate helps him stay disciplined, present and switched off from work. This episode is brought to you in partnership with Wordsmith AI — the legal AI platform built specifically for in-house teams.Guest RecommendationsSport: Full-contact karate Sauce of choice: Buffalo or curry sauce Resources & Links Mentioned in This EpisodeRegister your interest in joining The Lodge In-house Legal Community: https://bit.ly/TheLodgebyHB Heriot Brown: https://heriotbrown.com/ Wordsmith AI: https://www.wordsmith.ai/ Legal Engineering Project Application form: https://wordsmith.fillout.com/legalengproject Listen to the PodcastSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/ Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/4 YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/Connect with Heriot Brownhttps://heriotbrown.com/ About Heriot Brown: At Heriot Brown, we help lawyers find fulfilment in their careers. Beyond recruitment, we foster a thriving community of in-house legal professionals who share insights, experiences, and growth opportunities.Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to Lessons I Learned in Law, leave a review, and share it with someone building their career in legal leadership.Chapters: 00:00 Intro – Umar Aziz & DG Partners   03:40 Turning down Clifford Chance twice   09:28 From private practice to GC & COO   16:12 Lesson 1 – There's more to life than work   24:03 Karate, resilience & switching off   30:08 Lesson 2 – Learn from great lawyers   34:22 Lesson 3 – Winning isn't everything   39:55 Building long-term relationships   44:31 GC, COO & wearing multiple hats   56:42 Hot or Not, AI & closing thoughts   

If you've ever walked away from a mastermind, a coaching call, or a well-meaning conversation with a colleague feeling more confused than when you started — this episode is going to name something you've probably been living with for a long time. It's not that there's too little advice out there. It's that most of us have never stopped to ask whether the advice we're taking is actually right for us, our business, and where we are right now.My guest today is Sandra Booker, founder of Sidekick COO and creator of Scale Society, a fractional COO who works with established online service providers to find the single constraint costing them the most time and money — and then designs the systems and team structures to solve it. Sandra is one of the most well-respected operators in the online business world, and this conversation is exactly as good as I knew it would be.What Sandra and I get into goes way beyond operations and systems. We talk about how to know when you actually need to hire someone versus when you need a better process, the art of pausing before reacting when urgency sets in, and Sandra's concept of "curating your room" — being intentional about whose voices you let influence your decisions, and why the most impressive person in the room isn't always the right one to listen to. Sandra also shares a super cool AI tool that she built and has been using in her own business that I cannot wait for you to hear about — and that I think is going to change how a lot of you are using AI.In this episode we talk about:Why the "self-made" entrepreneur is a myth — and what the business owners who actually build something have in common that nobody talks aboutHow to tell the difference between needing a team member, needing a system, or needing to pause and look at what's already in your businessThe real cost of making decisions from fear, urgency, or comparison — and what to do insteadSandra's concept of curating your room — why your business bestie might be exactly the wrong person to consult when you have a hard decision to makeThe AI tool Sandra built called “The Advisory Board” — and how you can do the same for yourselfWhy the right move in a revenue dip is almost always to look inside your existing business first — and what to look forHow to evaluate advice you're hearing — whether it's from a podcast, a mastermind, or someone making big revenue claims onlineYour next best business decision is probably not going to come from someone else's strategy. It's going to come from getting clearer on what's actually happening inside your own business — and this episode is going to help you do that!Design the room your decisions deserve with Sandra's AI Boardroom Blueprint.

Avison Young's Justin Cazana on Knoxville's office boom, nuclear-driven growth, why tertiary markets quietly survived the office crisis, and how to build a dominant local practice. The Crexi Podcast connects commercial real estate (CRE) professionals with industry insights built for smart decision-making. In each episode, we explore the latest trends, innovations and opportunities shaping commercial real estate, because we believe knowledge should move at the speed of ambition and every conversation should empower professionals to act with greater clarity and confidence. Justin Cazana is a third-generation real estate professional and principal at Avison Young in Knoxville. Before commercial real estate, he spent nearly a decade in sports broadcasting — calling minor league baseball, SEC football, and Fox Sports Net Olympic coverage — before the family business pulled him home. In this episode, Justin joins host Adam Siegel on why Knoxville's office market never really broke, what Oak Ridge and nuclear growth are doing to demand, and why investing in people is the unlock most brokers miss. Introducing Justin Cazana of Avison Young Knoxville Third-generation CRE: sweeping warehouses and dinner table deal talk From Auburn journalism to minor league baseball broadcasting Hall of Famers in the same league and why he eventually walked away Coming back to Knoxville and learning the business under his father Opening Cushman & Wakefield's Knoxville office in 2010 with seven brokers Managing people is the hardest part — and why hiring a COO changed everything The 10x mindset: what are the 20 things only you should be doing Assistants, VAs, and why every broker should view hires as investments Why they left Cushman for Avison Young in 2015 In tertiary markets, the relationship outlasts the flag every time Knoxville by the numbers: a million-person metro, 24M square feet of office Why tertiary market office never collapsed the way primary markets did Smaller tenants, local ownership, and coming back to the office faster after COVID The retention math: upgrading from Class C to Class A pays for itself How HR became the real estate decision-maker The 11-minute commute and what makes Knoxville an easy sell No income tax, four seasons, UT football, and a Cubs AA ballpark Oak Ridge, nuclear growth, and 180,000 square feet of engineering deals in one year 92% occupancy, a supply problem, and developers ready to build on lease-up Why institutional developers haven't moved in — and local developers fill the gap Downtown Knoxville: no new office building since 1992 The next three to five years: nuclear, airports, Smith & Wesson, and more   About Justin Cazana: Justin Cazana is a Principal and broker at Avison Young's Knoxville office, where he specializes in both tenant and landlord representation across office, industrial, and retail asset classes. He holds both the SIOR and CCIM designations and has deep expertise in the Knoxville market, where he has built a practice rooted in local market knowledge and client relationships. Justin's career path into commercial real estate was far from traditional. Before joining the industry, he worked in television and radio sports broadcasting, including minor league baseball, Fox Sports Net and Comcast Sports. After transitioning into commercial real estate over two decades ago, Justin played a key role in opening Cushman & Wakefield's Knoxville office and later helped lead the migration to Avison Young in 2015. Today, Justin works across most commercial asset classes but with a focus on the Knoxville market and has built a reputation as the go-to expert for understanding one of the country's fastest-growing tertiary markets. For show notes, past guests, and more CRE content, please check out Crexi's blog.Looking to stay ahead in commercial real estate? Visit Crexi to explore properties, analyze markets, and connect with opportunities nationwide. Follow Crexi:https://www.crexi.com/​ https://www.crexi.com/instagram​ https://www.crexi.com/facebook​ https://www.crexi.com/twitter​ https://www.crexi.com/linkedin​ https://www.youtube.com/crexi About Crexi:Crexi is reimagining commercial real estate with an AI-powered platform built to deliver smarter, more efficient solutions at every stage of the deal lifecycle. From real-time data and market insights with Crexi Intelligence, to targeted property marketing and seamless deal management through Crexi PRO, and a transparent, time-bound bidding experience with Crexi Auction— Crexi enables users to evaluate opportunities, maximize exposure, and close with speed and confidence. To date, Crexi has subsidized over $2.74 trillion in property value, 26 billion square feet listed, and supports a growing community of more than 23 million yearly users.

In this episode of Millions Were Made, Jessica Marx is joined by Brooke Dumas to continue their onboarding series with a practical, implementation-focused discussion.Following Part 1, this episode outlines the exact 90-day onboarding framework they use with six and seven, and even eight-figure companies to ensure new hires are set up for long-term success. Drawing from their experience working directly inside growing organizations, Jessica and Brooke explain how structured onboarding reduces employee turnover, improves performance, and supports scalable growth.They walk through what effective onboarding looks like across the first 30, 60, and 90 days—emphasizing the importance of clear expectations, documented systems, and a gradual transition from training to execution.In this episode, they covered:Why onboarding should be structured before hiring beginsThe role of SOPs and documentation in employee successWhat to prioritize in the first 30 days of onboardingTransitioning from training to execution in a sustainable wayEstablishing clear communication expectations between founders and team membersThe importance of standardizing processes across roles and departmentsHow explaining the “why” improves employee decision-making and ownershipAligning onboarding systems with your leadership styleIf you are currently hiring or planning to expand your team, implementing a structured onboarding system is essential.So what are you waiting for? Tune in now—and don't forget to listen to Part 1 so you don't miss the full framework.Mini-timeline01:04–02:47 — Brooke's role as a fractional COO and onboarding specialist02:48–05:21 — Common hiring and onboarding challenges in scaling businesses05:22–07:18 — Where to begin when building an onboarding framework07:19–09:20 — The importance of prioritizing learning in the first 30 days09:21–11:10 — Risks of unstructured or “sink-or-swim” onboarding approaches11:11–12:51 — Standardizing processes to maintain consistent client experience12:52–14:11 — Building effective SOPs and internal documentation14:12–15:23 — Structuring the first 30 days with clear daily and weekly guidance15:24–16:52 — Aligning onboarding with business goals and direction16:53–18:57 — Setting communication expectations and reporting cadence18:58–20:29 — Teaching employees to think strategically through context and reasoning20:30–22:36 — Adapting onboarding to your leadership style22:37–24:11 — Balancing accessibility with autonomy24:12–26:56 — Overview of the 90-day onboarding framework and tools26:57–End — Additional resources and implementation supportResources90-Day Onboarding Framework (template and checklist: https://astounding-founder-8808.kit.com/products/onboarding-blueprint Follow @millionsweremade on Instagram for frameworks + strategy tipsConnect with Jessica:Instagram: @millionsweremade | @thejessicamarxWork with Jessica: Tailored Premier Website: Millions Were Made

Car Guy Coffee Podcast Presents #5Liner feat. Kelly Strausser Welcome to The #5Liner, the show dedicated to the individual journeys that power the automotive industry. It's not about the company; it's about the individual, their career, mindset, and personal story. In each episode, we sit down with a high-quality selection of Car Guys and Car Gals to get beyond the title and into the hard earned wisdom they've gained. Join us as we uncover the wins, challenges, and #5Liner takeaways that have shaped today's top talent.  In this episode of The Car Guy Coffee Podcast, hosts Lou Ramirez and Fred Lennartz welcome Kelly Strausser, COO of D&M Leasing in Dallas–Fort Worth and owner of Four Stars Auto Group, who shares his 30-year automotive journey and how his “why” evolved from financial success to serving employees, customers, and communities. 

In this educational wellness discussion, Regan Archibald explores emerging developments in regenerative medicine, with a focus on “mu cells” and their potential role in supporting the body's natural repair processes. He shares insights from recent research, personal experiences, and observations from global advancements in longevity and stem cell science, while emphasizing the importance of lifestyle habits such as movement, recovery, nutrition, stress management, and sleep. The conversation highlights a broader shift toward personalized wellness strategies, preventative health practices, and the integration of data, technology, and regenerative approaches to support long-term vitality and healthy aging.RESOURCES:Book Comprehensive Labs: https://agelessfuture.com/longevity-labs/FREE copy of The Peptide Blueprint: https://agelessfuture.com/blueprintSign up for future Health Accelerator Challenges calls LIVE! https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YZsiUMOzSyqcE8IinC5YEQ#/registrationBooks: https://www.amazon.com/Books-Regan-Archibald/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3ARegan%2BArchibaldArticles: https://medium.com/search?q=Regan+ArchibaldLIKE/FOLLOW/SUBSCRIBE:YouTube -https://www.youtube.com/@ReganArchibald / https://www.youtube.com/@Ageless.FutureLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/regan-archibald-ab70b813Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ageless.future/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AgelessFutureHealth/DISCLAIMER: This video is for educational purposes only and does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.  Many of the molecules discussed in this video are research compounds and are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for any specific medical use, indication, or condition. They are mentioned only in the context of existing scientific literature and ongoing research and are not being recommended, prescribed, sold, or offered through this video.  This content does not endorse or recommend any specific tests, products, procedures, or treatment protocols.References to our clinic are for general educational context only; investigational or non‑approved products are not available for direct ordering or prescribing based solely on viewing this content.  Do not start, stop, or change any medication, peptide, or supplement based on this video. All medical decisions must be made with a licensed prescribing clinician after a proper evaluation. No provider–patient relationship is created by viewing this content or contacting our clinic.  Regan Archibald is a Licensed Acupuncturist and longevity coach. He is not a medical doctor. Cade Archibald is COO and Co-Founder of Ageless Future, also not a medical doctor. All medical decisions, lab ordering, and prescribing in our clinic are performed only by our licensed medical team (MD, APRN, PA).  Viewers should follow the guidance of their own licensed clinicians and local health authorities regarding diagnosis and treatment decisions.

This is the second episode in our 3 episode segment Culture By Design in the Age of AI as part of our Coaching Transformation Series. This conversation is hosted by Dario Minaya, with insights from Susan Minaya, COO, Leadership Strategist and Executive Coach with Minaya Learning Global Solutions. This episode dives into how Culture Is Not a Vibe. It's a System. Stay tuned to learn more.

In this episode of the Crypto 101 Podcast, Kash Dhanda, COO of Jupiter, breaks down how Jupiter is evolving from Solana's leading DEX aggregator into a full DeFi super app. He explains how Jupiter helps users get the best trading routes, why Jupiter Lend is growing through its partnership with Bitwise and Ethena, and how the platform is prioritizing security after recent DeFi exploits. The conversation also covers Jupiter Mobile, stablecoin payments, tokenized equities, prediction markets, and why Solana is becoming a major hub for real financial activity beyond meme coins. Kash also explains how meme coin mania stress-tested Solana and helped strengthen the network for more serious DeFi, payments, and tokenization use cases.Check Out Scribe: Scribe.how/CRYPTO101Check Out Webroot: https://www.webroot.com/crypto101Check out Quince: https://quince.com/CRYPTO101Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/crypto101Check out Mars Men: https://mengotomars.comGet my #1 altcoin pick for this month.Get immediate access to my entire crypto portfolio for just $1.00 today! Get your FREE copy of "Crypto Revolution" and start making big profits from buying, selling,Get immediate access to my entire crypto portfolio.. just $1.00 today! Go here to get access: https://www.crypto101insider.com/cryptnation-directm6pypcy1?utm_source=Internal&utm_medium=YouTube&utm_content=Podcast&utm_term=20250916Get your FREE copy of "Crypto Revolution: Your Guide To The Future of Money". In this book, I reveal how to make (and keep) a fortune during this crypto bull run! http://www.cryptorevolution.com/free?utm_source=Internal&utm_medium=YouTube&utm_content=Podcast&utm_term=20250916Chapters00:09 - Kash Dhanda joins the Crypto 101 Podcast02:20 - Jupiter's vision as a DeFi super app03:35 - DEX aggregator vs decentralized exchange explained05:05 - Why Jupiter finds better liquidity for traders07:15 - Jupiter Lend, Bitwise, and Ethena partnership10:45 - How Jupiter's lending product works15:10 - Earning yield with stablecoins and Solana18:05 - DeFi security and lending risk management25:30 - Offerbook and peer-to-peer lending innovation31:15 - Solana payments, lending, and tokenized equitiesSubscribe to YouTube for Exclusive Content:https://www.youtube.com/@crypto101podcast?sub_confirmation=1Follow us on social media for leading-edge crypto updates and trade alerts:https://twitter.com/Crypto101Podhttps://instagram.com/crypto_101Guest Linkshttps://x.com/JupiterExchange?lang=en*This is NOT financial, tax, or legal advice*Boardwalk Flock LLC. All Rights Reserved  ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬Fog by DIZARO https://soundcloud.com/dizarofrCreative Commons — Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported — CC BY-ND 3.0 Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/Fog-DIZAROMusic promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/lAfbjt_rmE8▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬Our Sponsors:* Check out Mars Men: https://mengotomars.com* Check out NPR: https://npr.org* Check out Quince and use my code quince.com/crypto101 for a great deal: https://www.quince.com* Check out Scribe and use my code Scribe.how/CRYPTO101 for a great deal: https://scribe.com/Crypto101* Check out Shopify and use my code shopify.com/crypto101 for a great deal: https://www.shopify.com* Check out Webroot and use my code webroot.com/crypto101 for a great deal: https://www.webroot.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In deze aflevering gaat Manon Vandebergh dieper in op wat Phished doet en hoe haar eigen rol is mee gegroeid met het bedrijf. Phished helpt bedrijven om hun medewerkers digitaal weerbaarder te maken: het trainen van mensen om phishing en verdachte e-mails te herkennen, gekoppeld aan een technische assistent in de mailbox die meerdere analyses doet. Haar dagen starten met KPI's en rapportering, gevolgd door stand-ups, planningmeetings, rekrutering, strategie en veel afstemming tussen departementen. Phished groeide in vijf jaar van nul naar 120 medewerkers, 6.000 klanten en 2 miljoen getrainde medewerkers wereldwijd. De omzet verdubbelt elk jaar. Dat betekent dat het bedrijf zich om de twaalf maanden in een compleet andere realiteit bevindt. Manon begon aan de voordeur als office manager, kreeg nadien HR onder haar hoede, en zo via customer success naar operations. Ze bracht in elk departement structuur, visie en rapportering aan, en bouwde daarmee geloofwaardigheid op — tot ze gevraagd werd als Chief Operations Officer. Rekruteren is een van haar kernopdrachten, en vooral in tijden van AI kijkt ze verder dan pure kennis. Skills die AI niet kan vervangen — integriteit, sociale vaardigheden, veerkracht, flexibiliteit — wegen voor haar zwaarder. Ze spreekt ook openhartig over de pijn van schalen: niet iedereen groeit mee met elke fase, en soms moet je afscheid nemen van mensen die in een vorige fase geweldig werk hebben geleverd. Een andere les: successen vieren. Phished sluit deals af waar andere bedrijven van dromen, maar gaat vaak meteen door naar de volgende uitdaging. Manon werd recent verkozen tot Young ICT Lady of the Year, een titel die ze ook als verantwoordelijkheid ziet. Bij Phished schrijven ze vacatures bewust toegankelijker en laten ze kandidaten andere vrouwen zien in het rekruteringsproces. Ze combineert haar rol met sport — ze liep recent een marathon — en gelooft niet in een strikte work-life balance, zolang ze haar grenzen kent. Voor haar is CEO van je leven zijn: doen wat je graag doet, elke dag een betere versie van jezelf worden en dat combineren met zingeving. Trends is een podcastkanaal van de redactie van Trends.--- --- Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What if everything you know about starting and scaling a bank is wrong?In this Fan Favorite episode, Cameron Herold uncovers the real story behind WIO Bank with former COO Jamal Al Awadhi, a leader fueling the UAE's platform banking revolution. From Abu Dhabi's government-driven vision to the ferocious war for top talent, Jamal lays out how to break tradition, lead through chaos, and unlock transformative team culture.If you skip this episode, you'll miss out on first-hand insights into word-of-mouth-driven growth, the secret sauce for hiring resilient operators, and the unfiltered truth about working with sovereign wealth funds. Listen now to tap hard-won lessons you won't find anywhere else. Your next strategic leap could depend on it.Timestamped Highlights01:13 – The immigrant mindset shaping global leadership grit06:04 – The real reason WIO Bank launched in the UAE—exposed09:09 – Unpacking painful problems traditional banking ignored14:00 – Did regulations crush or catalyze digital banking?15:42 – Competing with legacy players: a blunt take on building trust18:04 – Why word-of-mouth blew up WIO's customer growth overnight26:57 – The resilience litmus test: how to hire for hypergrowth chaos37:02 – Inside the CEO-COO dynamic that keeps a rocketship on track43:36 – Game-changing leadership lessons that rewired Jamal's styleAbout the GuestJamal Al Awadhi was the Chief Operating Officer of WIO Bank, Abu Dhabi's breakout digital platform bank. With over a decade in marketing, strategy, and operations across industries, Jamal blends international perspective with deep regional expertise to drive game-changing innovation and hypergrowth at one of the UAE's fastest-scaling financial disruptors. Currently, he is the CEO of Al Hilal Bank.

Get Your Free After Crypto Guide Here: https://lp.bitcoinira.com/after-crypto======================Chris Kline is the co-founder and COO of Bitcoin IRA. In this conversation, we break down the biggest myths about bitcoin — including whether it's too late to buy, whether it's too volatile for retirement savings, and whether the government will ever ban it. We also discuss the strategic bitcoin reserve, quantum computing fears, and the convergence of AI and crypto.======================Arch Public is an agentic trading platform that automates the buying and selling of your preferred crypto strategies. Sign up today at https://www.archpublic.com and start your automated trading strategy for free. No catch. No hidden fees. Just smarter trading.======================0:00 - Intro0:31 - Myth #1: It's too late to buy bitcoin2:13 - Myth #2: Bitcoin is too volatile for retirement savings6:09 - Myth #3: The government will ban bitcoin10:50 - Myth #4: Quantum computing is a threat to bitcoin14:12 - Giveaway: 1914 Federal Reserve notes + Bitcoin IRA offer

Your ego isn't the enemy, but if you're not actively controlling it, it is running your team, your home, and your most important relationships. Jamie Cochran, COO of Echelon Front, has spent 13 years helping leaders fix the root cause most of them never look for.The Women's Leadership Assembly live event runs January 5–7, 2027 in Palm Springs. A free monthly webinar series runs year-round. More details here: https://events.echelonfront.com/product/assembly-004/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=22652941380&utm_content=&utm_term=&utm_source=google&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=22652941380&utm_content=&utm_term=&gadid=&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22662710098&gclid=CjwKCAjwxITRBhBYEiwA6mZm7VZs1jY-jUq1ugoigo8XEDkYsRsSEpOs2eblax5TQOW-9LT_K-hVhBoC1RkQAvD_BwEThank you to our sponsors:Timeline - Get 20% off your Mitopure order at https://bit.ly/4dW6BGN BodyHealth - Use the code LYON20 to get 20% off your first order https://bit.ly/4uR4NWB Upgrade your kitchen with Our Place today. Visit https://bit.ly/4dSD4Pz and use code DRLYON for 10% off sitewide.Explore More from Dr. Gabrielle LyonPremium Podcast Subscription: Ad-free episodes, key takeaway summaries, exclusive Q&A, and behind-the-scenes content https://foreverstrong.supercast.comWeekly newsletter: Recipes, podcast updates, and practical weekly insights https://drgabriellelyon.com/sign-up/Apply to become a patient: Personalized care with Dr. Lyon's clinical team https://drgabriellelyon.com/new-patient-inquiry/Find Jamie Cochran at: Website: https://echelonfront.com/YouTube: https://youtube.com/@echelonfront?si=2x5aCudkXTvicfJOInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamielynncochran/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamie.cochran.7/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-lynn-cochran-5ab79013Connect with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drgabriellelyon/TikTok: @drgabriellelyonX (Twitter): https://x.com/drgabriellelyonFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/doctorgabriellelyonChapters 00:00 ​Intro of Show01:33 The Spartan Warrior Selection02:25 Why Female Leadership Is Misunderstood06:35 Are Leadership Tools Evolving or Constant?07:12 What Is Extreme Ownership?11:44 Owning It All vs. Doing It All12:34 Female Leadership: Strength vs. Confidence vs. Aggression17:57 Imposter Syndrome: Healthy or Dangerous?23:37 Leadership Skills: Natural or Trainable?31:00 Detachment from Emotion: On Making Better Decisions32:32 Healthy Competition Against Women36:20 Jamie's Thyroid Cancer Diagnosis and Practicing Detachment48:12 Avoidant Leaders and Default Aggressive Bias for Action51:96 Top 3 Mistakes Leaders Make52:43 The Leadership Capital Framework57:54 The PIOS Framework: Problem, Impact, Ownership, Solution1:00:10 When to End a Professional Relationship1:04:29 The Women's Leadership Assembly: Origin Story1:07:05 Impact of Social Media on the Confidence of Young Girls1:13:35 Compounding Habits that Improve Leadership over Time1:14:55 Discipline as a Parenting Tool1:22:07 Recognising when your Leadership Capacity is Failing1:24:51 Women's Assembly in January 2027: Palm SpringsIf you found this episode valuable, share it with someone who would benefit from it.Disclaimers: This episode includes paid sponsorships. The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Podcast and YouTube are for general information purposes only and do not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast, YouTube, or materials linked from this podcast or YouTube is at the user's own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professional for any such conditions.

In this episode of the Untrapped Podcast, Keith Kalfas sits down with Arwin Rahmatpanah, COO and co-founder of ReBolt HQ, an AI website and marketing platform built for home service pros. Keith shares his own experience using Rebolt to rebuild his outdated landscaping website into a professional, SEO-focused site that is now bringing in high-quality leads. He talks about recent jobs that came directly through the new website and how the platform has helped position his business in a more premium way online. Arwin breaks down why ReBolt was created, the problems many contractors face with slow agencies, expensive website builds, and DIY platforms, and how AI can now help business owners launch a strong online presence much faster. They also talk about local SEO, Google Business Profiles, reviews, social media posting, AI-generated blog content, call tracking, and why contractors need to stay ahead as homeowners begin using search engines and tools like ChatGPT to find local service providers.   "Success is not owned. It's leased, and rent is due every day." – Arwin Rahmatpanah   What You'll Learn in This Episode: Why many home service businesses struggle with outdated websites and weak online presence How Rebolt uses AI to build SEO-optimized websites in minutes instead of weeks Why service pages, city pages, header tags, page speed, and mobile optimization matter for local rankings How Rebolt pulls real photos, reviews, and business details from Google Business Profiles and existing online assets How AI can turn job photos into social media captions and blog articles Why consistent reviews and review velocity can help businesses stay competitive on Google How call tracking and call summaries can help contractors understand and follow up with leads Why a professional website can attract more qualified customers and improve closing rates How AI tools can give small businesses more leverage without needing a full marketing agency Key Takeaways: AI can help contractors build a stronger online presence faster.. Instead of waiting weeks and spending thousands on a traditional website build, tools like ReBolt can use AI to create SEO-focused websites with service pages, city pages, reviews, real business photos, and optimized copy. Your Google Business Profile and reviews still matter a lot. Arwin explains that a strong digital presence is not just about having a nice website. Contractors also need consistent reviews, updated business information, and a healthy Google Business Profile to stay competitive in local search. AI works best when it helps business owners save time and take action. From social media posts and blog articles to review responses and call summaries, AI can remove a lot of the manual marketing work that contractors usually avoid or don't have time for.   Connect with Keith Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keithkalfas/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelandscapingemployeetrap Website: https://www.keithkalfas.com/resources Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@keith-kalfas   Connect with Arwin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arwin-rahmatpanah/ Website: builtright.co   Resources and Websites:  Build Your Site: https://www.keithkalfas.com/ReBolt Call Tracking Software: https://www.keithkalfas.com/CallRail Start Getting Leads Now https://www.footbridgemedia.com/keith The Untrapped Alliance: https://www.keithkalfas.com/alliance Resources You Need To Build A Successful Business https://www.keithkalfas.com/resources

Send us Fan MailMost women have spent years hearing the same fitness advice:Eat less.Exercise more.Do more cardio.Try harder.But what happens when you're doing all the "right" things and your body still isn't responding the way it used to?In this episode, Cody sits down with Ariana Hakman, Founder and COO of LunaFit, to discuss what women really need to know about fitness, muscle, metabolism, recovery, and aging well.Together they unpack why traditional fitness advice often falls short for women, especially during midlife, and why building strength may be one of the most important investments a woman can make for her future health.You'll learn:• Why fitness often feels harder as women age • What happens to muscle mass and metabolism over time • Common fitness myths women should stop believing • Why strength training matters for hormones, blood sugar, confidence, and longevity • How chronic stress impacts recovery and results • Signs your body may be under-recovered or overtrained • The role of protein, walking, sleep, and stress management in long-term health • How to create a sustainable fitness routine during busy seasons of life • Why fitness should be viewed as self-respect instead of punishment • What women can do now to remain strong, active, and independent for decades to comeThis conversation is a refreshing reminder that fitness isn't about becoming smaller.It's about becoming stronger.It's about having the energy, resilience, and confidence to fully participate in your life.Connect with Ariana Hakman & LunaFit:Website: https://lunafit.com Instagram: @lunafitapp TikTok: @lunafituniverseConnect with Cody:Website: https://mixhers.com use code Cody for 15% off Instagram: @codyjeansanders Instagram: @mixhersWant to learn more about Cody's HTMA Mineral Testing and CALM Program? Email Cody at cody@mixhers.com with the subject line HTMA or CALM. Looking for Hormone Replacement Therapy or Peptides?Work with Cody's Clinical TeamIf you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend who needs this conversation.Did you learn something new today? Be sure to subscribe to this podcast and share this episode with all the girls you love. We would appreciate it if you'd also leave us a rating and review on iTunes.Want to join our Mixhers Girl community and keep this conversation going? We'd love to hear your thoughts, feelings and experiences! Join us HERE!Join Mixhers email list and be the first to have access to new products and be the girl in the know!Follow Cody Instagram:@codyjeansanders

"We're seeing hurricanes, four of the 10 most damaging hurricanes in the United States happened in the last 10 years. Recovery and rebuild continues in many cases. Last year we had the world's most expensive wildfire on record in Los Angeles. These are market failures. Why are these things happening? Something is misaligned. Is it we're not taking care of the natural environment? Is it that our built environment, our buildings and our structures are not able to cope? Where are the policies? Where are the updated building codes?...Now these storms are happening more frequently and with greater intensity and impacting a lot more people, people, communities, companies. It's across the U.S. Everybody's being impacted. So that's the market failure. So how do we fix this?" Kanika Singh on Electric Ladies Podcast Every community in the U.S. and across the globe is now at risk from the ravages of climate change. What is your community doing to prepare? Kanika Singh calls these damages "market failures" because the market did not protect you/us from the damages. How? Listen to Kanika Singh, Director of Innovative Finance at the Milken Institute in this enlightening conversation with Electric Ladies Podcast host Joan Michelson. (You'll want to take notes.) You'll hear about: ●        How to identify the market failures in your community, area or region. ●        What the role and risk is of insurance companies in today's physical, economic and political climate. ●        Financial resources you might tap to make your homes and buildings more climate-resilient (including parts of the Inflation Reduction Act & Infrastructure Act that are still intact). ●        How to rebuild differently so your homes, businesses, schools etc. are more resilient. ●        Plus, career advice, such as: " Don't hesitate. Trust your gut…Try everything. Try what's out there, go for a walk. Clear your brain. The outdoors always helps. You will find something, and if you don't the first time around, that's still okay because we are getting chances…. Look, learn, but don't be afraid to take a chance, and if it doesn't work out, it's okay. I think we hold ourselves to very high and perhaps exacting standards of success sometimes. And that's not human. It's okay to be human." Kanika Singh on Electric Ladies Podcast  Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our podcasts, blog, events and special coaching offers.  You'll also like: ·       Impact Investing in New Hands - with Jolyne Caruso, Financial Executive, Investor and Wealth Advisor ·       How to Talk Climate In a Polarized Culture - with Katharine Hayhoe, Climate Scientist, Professor at Texas Tech University & Chief Scientist at The Nature Conservancy ·       How Hospitals Can Juggle 24/7 Care & Climate Impacts - Carol Gomes, CEO & COO, Stony Brook University Hospital ·       New Venture Capital Models For Women and CleanTech - Cecile Blilious, Veteran Venture Investor, Venture ESG, European Women in VC ·       Creativity & Relationships Secure Grants - with Megan Pater, CEO/Founder of Fund Nation and ECE Solutions ·       Investing in Companies For Social Impact - with Meredith Shields, CEO of Citi Impact Fund Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our podcasts, blog, events and special coaching offers. Thanks for subscribing on Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio and leaving us a review! Follow us on Twitter @joanmichelson

Jess Chan is the Founder and Executive Chair of Longplay Brands, a full-service retention and lifecycle marketing agency for DTC e-commerce brands. She is also the Founder and CEO of Backbone, an email strategy automation tool. As a former CMO of a multimillion-dollar DTC e-commerce company, Jess bootstrapped Longplay to seven figures in revenue within the first 18 months. She is a sought-after speaker, podcast guest, product developer, and consultant on topics like retention, lifecycle marketing, and progressive agency business modeling. Rachyl Neidecker is the CEO and Partner at Longplay Brands. She specializes in turning complex or broken business operations into scalable systems. Previously, Rachyl served as the COO and interim CEO of an eight-figure e-commerce brand, the Director of Operations at COO Alliance, and has consulted for companies with $10M–$100M+ in revenue. In this episode… E-commerce brands often chase stronger channels, faster tactics, or higher revenue goals without identifying whether the company's foundation can support the growth. When trust, profitability, and operations are misaligned, even strong marketing can amplify the wrong problems. So how can founders diagnose what's holding their business back? With expertise in lifecycle marketing and operational leadership, Jess Chan and Rachyl Neidecker point to a more disciplined way to scale. They recommend looking beyond surface metrics to identify root causes, such as brand inconsistency, product-market fit issues, over-discounting, weak customer education, bloated org structures, and hidden logistics costs. Instead of moving fast on foundational decisions, brands should slow down, inspect the full customer journey, build trust at every touchpoint, and optimize for profit and enterprise value — not just revenue. Sustainable growth comes from diagnosing the system before prescribing the tactic. In this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris sits down with Jess Chan and Rachyl Neidecker of Longplay Brands to discuss diagnosing e-commerce growth problems. They cover DTC brands' costly misdiagnoses, lifecycle metrics that reveal root causes, and the difference between scaling revenue, profit, and enterprise value.

The leadership style that got you promoted can quietly become the thing that holds you back. When you move from building great work to leading people, the rules change fast, especially for technical founders and high-performing individual contributors who suddenly wake up running a business instead of writing code.We sit down with Mike Krupit, a serial entrepreneur and executive coach who has lived the journey from software engineer to CTO, COO, and CEO across eight startups. Together, we break down why humans are not deterministic, why “best performer” promotions often fail, and why not everyone should be pushed into people management. We also dig into smarter organizational design: building roles around real strengths and creating dual career ladders so experts can grow without becoming reluctant managers.Then we tackle the pressure cooker topic leaders cannot avoid: AI disruption. Mike shares how to lead through uncertainty when technology moves faster than people can grow, why overcommunication beats silence, and how to run real two-way dialogue that addresses fear without pretending you have perfect answers. We close with a practical lens for situational leadership: knowing when to go into founder mode, when to step back into trust mode, and how to let teams learn through safe mistakes that build ownership.If you're focused on leadership development, change management, founder to CEO growth, or navigating AI at work, you'll leave with clear questions to ask and moves to try this week. Subscribe, share this with a leader who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Level up your leadership: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6 Can you defy the industry experts by refusing to compromise on your creative vision? When the entire gaming industry declares a genre dead and claims nobody is buying narrative-driven games anymore, most studios pack up and pivot. But the team at Adhoc Studio did the exact opposite; they stuck to their guns, bet on their passion, and shattered every single expectation. Their debut game, Dispatch, blew past the skeptics to achieve a 97% overwhelmingly positive rating on Steam and over four million copies sold worldwide. Bridging the gap between two fiercely distinct creative worlds, Nick Herman (Co-founder and COO) and Natalie Herman (Head of Production) joined Ben to break down how they pulled off this "magic trick" of a launch. Bringing a masterful blend of creative grit and operational expertise, Nick and Natalie pull back the curtain on what happens when you dare to build a studio on an original IP. In this conversation, they share the raw reality of navigating intense launch crises, managing the brutal push-and-pull of high-fidelity pre-rendered animation, and evolving from hands-on individual contributors into leaders who empower their team to shine. What You'll Learn in This Episode: How to combine a game development pipeline with a TV animation pipeline—even when the two systems were never designed to work together. Why putting story ahead of gameplay can create stronger emotional connections and make players care more about your characters. The secret to building a thriving remote studio culture without micromanaging your team. What happens behind the scenes when a major release gets hit by massive leaks—and how to keep your team focused through the chaos. How to identify hidden talent, give people real ownership, and build a team that stays with you for years. The biggest lessons learned from creating story-driven games that challenge conventional design rules. Why trust, autonomy, and creative freedom often outperform rigid management processes. The leadership principles that helped scale a studio while maintaining a strong creative culture. If you're a leader in game dev who is tired of copy-pasting the same safe mechanics and is ready to fight for an unconventional vision despite what the publishers say, this episode is for you. Learn more about Dispatch:

AI can now write code faster than any human alive, and most of the time it's more than good enough. That's the magic powering the entire vibe coding wave. But there's a category of software where "most of the time" just doesn't cut it: the code running a fighter jet, a power grid, an autonomous vehicle, a piece of medical hardware. When that code is wrong, the consequences aren't a bug. They're a recall, an accident, a national security incident.In this episode of Talking AI, Matt Paige sits down with Ryan Aytay, the former CEO of Tableau and now President and COO of CodeMetal, which just raised $125 million to close that gap. Ryan explains what he calls "the last mile" for mission-critical industries: the verification, validation, and provability layer that sits between AI-generated code and the systems where failure is catastrophic.The conversation covers why 99% correct is still failure in defense and autonomous systems, how CodeMetal translated a million lines of legacy C++ to Rust in weeks (like rewiring a city without the power going out), and why the real problem isn't code generation, it's behavioral assurance at scale. Ryan also shares how he's using AI to run a sub-100-person startup, why the biggest risk for any company right now is doing nothing, and what an operator who lived through 19 years of per-seat SaaS at Salesforce thinks about outcomes-based pricing in the age of AI.In this episode, you'll hear about:Why every AI coding tool says "almost, but not quite" when asked about production-ready guarantees. The difference between code generation and behavioral assurance at scale. How CodeMetal translates legacy C++ to Rust with provable correctness in weeks, not years. The concept of V&V (verification and validation) and why it's the missing layer in AI code gen. Real use cases in defense, autonomous vehicles, and simulation environments. Why hardware in the loop matters as much as human in the loop. How a sub-100-person company uses AI across M&A, recruiting, marketing, and operations. Ryan's take on token economics, outcomes-based pricing, and the SaaS evolution. Why the biggest risk is inaction, not AI errors. What attracted Ryan to CodeMetal after 19 years at Salesforce and leading Tableau.Key Moments02:47 — From Tableau fanboy to the trust gap in AI03:52 — Why Ryan left Salesforce/Tableau for CodeMetal05:55 — "Is it safe for the things I depend on every day?"06:45 — 99% correct is still failure for mission-critical systems08:20 — The sycophantic nature of AI: "Heck yeah, I can do that"09:22 — It's not a coding problem, it's a behavioral problem at scale11:22 — Human in the loop isn't enough: hardware in the loop14:30 — What is fuzzing? Formal methods explained in plain English16:02 — How a sub-100-person company leverages AI across every function18:19 — The Shopify mandate: using AI reflexively21:33 — Rewiring the city without the power going out: the million-line translation24:38 — Defense use cases: drones, autonomous vehicles, and simulation26:28 — "Prove is even a stronger word than guarantee"28:32 — Accountability and the coming wave of AI insurance32:54 — Token usage, the Uber CTO's blown budget, and outcomes-based pricing36:26 — SaaS isn't dead, it's evolving: Ryan's Salesforce/Tableau perspective40:08 — The biggest risk is doing nothing42:07 — Where to find CodeMetal (and they're hiring)Key LinksCodeMetalConnect with Ryan on LinkedInMentioned in this episode:AI Opportunity FinderFeeling overwhelmed by all the AI noise out there? The AI Opportunity Finder from HatchWorks cuts through the hype and gives you a clear starting point. In less than 5 minutes, you'll get tailored, high-impact AI use cases specific to your business—scored by ROI so you know exactly where to start. Whether you're looking to cut costs, automate tasks, or grow faster, this free tool gives you a personalized roadmap built for action.

Keith talks with data-driven investor Neal Bawa, the "mad scientist of multifamily," about why apartment values have dropped 20%–30% while single-family prices have stayed resilient.  They break down how interest rate shocks, the homeowner lock-in effect, and a wave of new multifamily supply are reshaping returns for today's investors.  Keith and Neal also dissect the build-to-rent model—who it really serves, how apartment oversupply is pressuring its rents, and why pending legislation could upend the space.  Neal closes with a specific, data-backed timeline for when multifamily rents and values may finally turn the corner, giving listeners a concrete roadmap instead of vague market guesses. Resources: Grocapitus Website - https://www.grocapitus.com Multifamily U's Free eBook: Location Magic - https://multifamilyu.com/lp/location-magic-ebook/ Multifamily U's Investor Club – https://multifamilyu.com/club Episode Page: GetRichEducation.com/609 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit FreedomFamilyInvestments.com/GRE or text  FAMILY to 66866  Unlock truly passive real estate income—visit flockhomes.com/GRE today to see if your properties qualify for a 721 exchange with Flock Homes. To get in the best physical, mental, and professional shape of your life, go to DanielThomasHind.com and apply for Daniel's intensive 1-on-1 coaching for burnt-out entrepreneurs and executives. Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review"  For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— GREletter.com  Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold  0:00   Keith, welcome to GRE. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. The single-family real estate market is steady, but with apartment building values down 20 to 30% since 2022 when will the multifamily Armageddon end? We ask our qualified guest, and how will slowing birth rates in immigration affect real estate? And more today on Get Rich Education. You know, Mid South Home Buyers, that top Memphis turnkey provider. I learned that a secret weapon behind their explosive growth is more than just you buying their properties, it's an executive coach for nine years now, their CEO, Terry Kerr, and his COO, Pat Nix, have worked privately with a coach who I've now learned from too, and he doesn't market himself online anywhere. After 12 years behind the scenes, that coach is now making himself available exclusively for GRE listeners. His name is Daniel Thomas Hind. If you're a hard-charging business owner or investor who wants to get in the best shape of your life, physically, mentally, and professionally, you can fill out an application for a free consult. This is private one on one coaching for those willing to go to uncommon lengths to achieve uncommon results. Thanks to Daniel, we've all become better leaders, better operators, and better men. It started by showing up for ourselves. Now it's your turn. Go to Daniel Thomas hind.com H I N D, that's Daniel Thomas hind.com and sign up before Spotsville Flock homes helps multifamily owners exit the operator grind, whether it's your six plex or a 50 unit apartment, through a 721 exchange. This defers your capital gains tax. It's a strategy long used by institutions. Now you can swap tenants and toilets for passive income and zero management. Request your initial valuations. See if your property qualifies at flockhomes.com/gre That's F L O C K homes dot com slash G R E.   Neal Bawa  2:13   You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is Get Rich Education.   Keith Weinhold  2:29   Welcome to GRE from Valencia, Spain to Valencia, California, and across 188 nations worldwide. America's favorite shaved mammal on a microphone is back with you for another wealth building week. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you're listening to Get Rich Education. The world's biggest problems are the world's biggest businesses. That's not a coincidence, and that's why we discuss housing here. And there's been a chronic shortage of affordable housing last month at a commencement speech, Harrison Ford, yes, the guy that played both Han Solo and Indiana Jones, talked about how a fulfilling life has both passion and purpose. Passion is what gets you out of bed in the morning, purpose is what helps you sleep at night, you and I. We can bring this mindset to our lifestyle, to the business we do, and to our investing. Treating tenants well is what helps real estate investors sleep well at night. While we're doing well, we can be doing good too. Multifamily syndicators keep failing, going out of business, and losing all of their investors' money due to mortgage rate resets. It just keeps happening. What this really means, that these groups that pooled together investor money to buy apartment buildings, largely that were set up in 2022 and earlier keep blowing up almost fully due to the fact that interest rates reset higher. Some of them had a fixed rate for five years. Well, rates spiked four years ago, and that's why a lot of them have yet to blow up, and these apartments have lost so much value that no one will refinance them, you know. Even if that apartment operator increased the net operating income over the years, even if rents went up, it doesn't matter. So, you still haven't heard the last of it. Do you remember a couple years ago, when a lot of people in the apartment space, they were saying just stay alive till 25 and that nonsense, like if you keep your head above water until 2025 oh well, then rates are certainly going to fall, and everyone's going to be okay. Well, 2025 is long gone.    Keith Weinhold  5:01   Mortgage rates haven't fallen in any significant way, so that survive until 25 thing or whatever mantra derivative people used that was a farce, like I've said on the show here for years. You cannot predict interest rates, so I didn't make the call that they were going to go up or down at all, because you can't predict them, but so many people said, oh, rates will fall substantially by now, no way, you just can't make that assumption, you've got to take history over hunches, and all of that, a lot of those multifamily deals 100% depended. depended on refinancing at favorable rates, and that's exactly why they failed. A surefire way to look foolish is to predict interest rates. We'll talk more about the multifamily Armageddon with today's guest. I also want to get into what's called the 21st century road to housing act, because that became one of the most hotly debated housing policy provisions this year. And what this is, is a Senate bill, and it would require certain large institutional investors that develop these bills to rent single family communities. It would force them to sell those homes to individual buyers within seven years. So, in other words, what a big firm could do is build a neighborhood of rental homes, lease them for up to seven years, but they couldn't hold on to them any longer than that. They couldn't hold them indefinitely as rentals, this bill is not aimed at you, the individual investor. It is aimed at big institutions, and what I mean by that is that's generally defined as owning 350 or more homes. That's what we're talking about here. Small landlords and mom and pop investors are not the target, it targets corporate portfolios, and this means groups whose names you've probably heard of, like Blackstone, First Key Homes, Progress Residential, and Invitation Homes. They are some of the heavyweights that the government is looking to clamp down on, so whenever you hear someone talk about big Wall Street landlords, that is who they're talking about. Now, some groups are pretty worried about the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, like the NHB, that's the National Association of Home Builders, and a lot of multifamily groups are concerned, and why is that? Well, the effect is it could dramatically reduce new housing production.   Keith Weinhold  7:44   See, a big institution like First Key Homes or Blackstone, they wouldn't want to even get into this business anymore. They wouldn't want to build big build to rent communities anymore if they have to sell them all within seven years. See, they want to buy and hold for the long term, kind of like what you and I are doing, because you and I know that owning a group of selective buy and hold single family rentals is a really profitable place to be, but so if they don't want to build, then that creates a reduction in supply, which could make prices go up, and then obviously hurt those trying to afford their own home. Well, that would defeat the purpose of this whole thing. I mean, my gosh, this always seems to happen when government gets involved. So, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act could limit supply, which is the exact opposite of its intent to get first-time home buyers into their first home, and if this passes, it does have bipartisan support. This lower supply, then yes, indeed puts upward pressure on prices. Just amazing. So then it could actually go on to help the everyday mom and pop investor, like you and I, that already owns property, the individual at last check, though they're looking to pass a version that still restricts some of these giant institutions from getting into build to rents, but yet it does not have that seven year sale requirement. What's really important to remember here is that Washington, they're looking to stifle big Wall Street players from the rental market, which could reduce supply. They're not targeting individual investors. The context that's important is that these groups, they own 10s of 1000s of homes, they don't own hundreds of 1000s, and they don't own a million, so it's a really small percentage of the housing market, whatever direction policy breaks, then the headlines that it creates are just greater in magnitude than the effect on the market is. It's an important frame of reference here. Let's meet this week's guest. This week we're welcoming back a guest that we haven't heard from in a year or two in real estate circles. He is popularly known as the mad scientist of multifamily. He's quite an in-demand speaker. He has a $500 million multifamily portfolio that he essentially shares with over 1300 investors. He's sharp, a good educator, and a straight shooter. That's why he's here. It's a warm welcome back to Neal Bawa.   Neal Bawa  10:32   Thanks for having me on the show again. It's delightful to be here, and so many interesting things to talk about in the world these days.   Keith Weinhold  10:38   There really are.. I don't know if we can get it all in, Bawa is spelled B A W A. Neal, I want to get to your future housing market outlook later. How you think the future looks, including when multi families quasi Armageddon might end. But first, you're known as a data driven real estate guy. Tell us about that, and how being data driven makes you profitable.   Neal Bawa  11:03   I see concern, and I'll tell you why. The single family and multifamily market have been atrociously incredibly divergent since the first quarter of 2022 They have not tracked yet each other at all, even though if you look at the last 50 years, they tend to track each other. So you know, 2008 was a Armageddon for single family, Armageddon for multifamily, and they both sort of came up in 2012 2013 and then they had a really good time until Covid.   Keith Weinhold  11:30   Yeah,   Neal Bawa  11:31   but the second quarter of 2022 is when Fed started raising rates, and since then we've sort of slid - multifamily has gone down in terms of pricing between 20 and 30% depending upon the metro, you know, and depending upon whether it's new construction, new construction assets have gone down more than 30% and existing assets that are filled up have gone down by 20 to 30% depending upon the metro. So, metros that have a large amount of supply, closer to 30% decline in value, the metros that have less supply probably closer to 20% decline in value, right.   Keith Weinhold  12:03   Demand demand has been pretty resilient. It's more of a supply story.   Neal Bawa  12:06   It's a huge supply story, right. So, if you look at, you know, occupancy, essentially what's happened is there was so much supply that came in that really people started on those projects in 2022 maybe they didn't start a construction until 2023 they didn't finish construction until 2025 so they started leasing up in 2025 They had to give offer concessions two months, sometimes three months free, and so that pushed down the rents in 2025. And they're not done, because you typically can't rent an apartment in six months. If it's brand new, it's going to take you about 18 months to rent it, and sometimes 24 months, and so it's affected our rents in 2025 it's affecting our rents in 2026. Now it's unlikely to affect it in 2027 but we'll go there, you know, at a later stage. But at the moment, we, what we've seen is negative rent growth in the United States for multifamily for the last 12 to 15 months, and what I think is going to be negative rent growth in Q of this year and Q2 of this year, so Q1 was negative, Q2, which we are in now, is likely to be negative or flat now. Single family, on the other hand, has gone in a different direction, which has been very difficult to understand, and I believe it's taken me a while to really understand this, but I think I've finally figured it out. Single family prices are not down since 2022 which makes no sense at all, because the average mortgage in the United States today is almost double, almost double, not quite double, but almost double of what it was in at the beginning of 2022 when interest rates were about 3.3 3.4% Right now we're sitting around, you know, six and a half percent interest rates, so not quite doubled interest rates, but they've obviously gone up a fair bit, and as a result, your average, you know, mortgage has almost doubled, but home prices haven't dropped, which makes no sense if you really think about it, because home prices are a factor of demand, and they're also a factor of people's ability to pay, so if all of a sudden within four years you're paying, the mortgage is doubled, then less people are going to be able to buy, but it stayed up, the market has stayed up, and the biggest reason it stayed up is because of what is known as the lock-in effect. So, the US market typically has a million new homes every year, and there's more than a million existing homes that are transacted, right? So, it's an open market, it's a perfect competition market, but it hasn't been perfect competition for the last four years, because so many people locked in ridiculously low interest rates.    Neal Bawa  14:28   Perfect example, in 2021 and 2022 I have a 15 year mortgage at 1.75% If I sell my house back to myself, my mortgage quadruples, quadruples, right, because it goes from 1.75% to six and a half percent, so I can't even imagine even think about leaving my home, right, because it's just such a perfect loan. Most people don't have anywhere near 1.75% but there's lots of people with more mortgages in the 3% three and a half percent, and 4% range that basically can't go anywhere, and because those homes are not coming into the market. The last three years the market has had this unusual not enough supply factor, and that's been keeping prices up. That is ending. That is ending, because what we've been tracking is the percentage of homes in the United States that have low mortgages. Low is simply defined as anything under four and a half percent, and that percentage is going down each quarter, because you know divorces happen, deaths happen, you know people move for jobs, and so every time that happens, that locked in rate goes away, because you sell your home and move on, and so for a while that lock in effect was predominant, it was controlling everything, but as time has gone on, interest rates were higher in 2324 2526 For also almost four years have passed since the rate started going up. So each quarter the percentage of homes in the US that have these low interest rates has slowly moved down, and we're almost back to a normal timeframe.   Neal Bawa  15:53   And this is causing the single family market to not have a conniption, but we're starting to see a balancing of the market, where it's not just a buyer's market anymore, in some places it's actually seller's market, some places it's a buyer's market. So we're now starting to see home prices drop in number of markets in the United States. I can't say that they've dropped in super majors, but we're seeing a flattening out effect of home prices in most metros in the US, and there should be a flattening effect. Just to be blunt, I mean, obviously I own a bunch of single-family homes, so I just wanted them to keep going up for selfish reasons. But if you think about it, we had huge home price growth in like 30 plus percent in number of years, 2021 22 and even 23 and during those years, salaries only went up by two to 3% a year. In one year, they went up by 4% and rents also went up like crazy. There was a 2021 was 15% rent growth year. So, at some point, there had to be an adjustment, and we are in that period of adjustment where single family prices are basically flat on a national basis. Yes, going up in the San Francisco Bay Area because of AI, and going up in a couple other technology-heavy metros because of AI, but otherwise fairly flat, and I don't expect that to change for the next year. So, my forecast is next 12 to 18 months, home prices in the US are going to be flat on a nominal basis, they're going to be down on an inflation-adjusted basis, but you know, because of the Iran, more inflation's three and a half percent, so home prices should go up three and a half percent. So, if they stay where they are, well, they're really dropping three and a half percent.   Keith Weinhold  17:29   Yeah, before this year began, I released our forecast, it was for 2% nominal home price appreciation in the one to four unit space for the US this year, and I still like how that looks. There's so much to unpack with what you just talked about. In my view, there's nothing unusual at all that when mortgage rates rose sharply a few years ago, that home prices rose as well. Why? Because actually, that's what usually happens, which is counterintuitive to most people. In all of our lifetimes, residential real estate prices have only fallen significantly one time, that was around 2008 due to a number of unusual circumstances. The only thing that's a bit different this time is, of course, how fast rates increased in 2022 and 2023 and people wondering if residential real estate prices could still keep up, and they certainly have, but yeah, you brought up this dichotomy, this bifurcation about how the apartment market and the one to four unit space kind of separated from each other in 2022 or 2023 That's what's so interesting.   Neal Bawa  18:36   I do want to point out a couple things, though, and I don't want to be a Pollyanna here and talk about negative stuff, but I think that there's big difference between 2008 and that timeframe and where we are today, and that difference is, and it has multiple parts. Not all of your audience is aware of this. Until about 2012 the United States had very reasonable birth rates. You know, we were one of those countries that had avoided the debacle that Japan, Korea, China, and a number of other countries are seeing South Korea being the absolute worst, where basically they were producing one baby per generation, where you need about 2.2 babies just to kind of keep your population where it is, right, and the US was unusually high in that, and that we were still above that threshold, which meant that our population would continue to grow and not fall. Now, there was two reasons our population was growing: One, we had more than 2.2 babies per household, and second, we had a very significant amount of legal and a very significant amount of illegal or undocumented immigration. Right, so we had both of those pipelines today. All three of those have flipped, so the United States now basically looks like Korea or China or Japan in that every household is producing about one and a half babies, which means that our population growth, which hasn't stopped yet, because it takes a while for these things to catch. Up is likely to stop, like it's, and at some point decline again. Luckily, we're not there yet. The US is a fairly young population, unlike Japan, which is one of the oldest populations in the world. So, it'll, we'll still continue to see population growth, but there is no doubt. And you can ask Chat GPT, right? How has population growth in the United States slowed over the last 20 years.    Neal Bawa  19:22   Make me a graph, and it will make you a very nice graph, and you'll very clearly see there's a slowdown in population growth. The second part is both documented and undocumented immigration. It's my estimate that since this administration took over, somewhere between half 1,000,001 million people have left the United States. Now it's very difficult to get an actual number, as you can imagine. A number of these people were undocumented, so we didn't really know how many there were to begin with. And a number of them, when they left, they also left by an undocumented rate, that you know, path. So we've lost a bunch of those people, and also the people that have stayed in the country, we've lost a number of them in the workforce. Here's a perfect anecdote, Keith. About 33% of the construction workforce in the United States was undocumented, one in three. In Texas, as much as 40%   Keith Weinhold  19:45   Yeah, that's huge.   Neal Bawa  19:45   It's very significant. Number of those people don't show up for work anymore. I don't think they've left the US, at least I don't think so. But they don't show up for work anymore, because that's how they get caught, right. So, what we've seen is that the construction workforce in the United States has become been decimated over the last 12 months, and the impact is much greater in the second half of 2025 than the first half. Why? Because even though they wanted to do ICE enforcement, they just simply didn't have enough agents, enough facilities, enough judges. When the second half of last year, they sort of started catching up on that, hiring more agents, getting more facilities, getting more judges, and so we started to see a real challenge there. I have properties in 10 markets in the US, and what I can say is about seven of those markets, mostly Southern markets, I am beginning to see dropping occupancy related to this phenomenon. I'm seeing a reduction, and so markets like Georgia and Texas, Florida are more hit than my northern markets like Idaho. I haven't seen any impact at all, but these southern markets, multiple properties, multiple metros, I'm seeing this - people, mostly of Spanish, Mexican origin, not renewing leases. I don't know what they're doing. I don't know if they're sleeping in their cars. I don't know if they're basically just, you know, staying with mom or staying with, you know, some other family. But I'm seeing a very, very big pullback in my leases tied to this, and occupancy is dropping in those markets that are heavily Hispanic. And so I'm seeing the impact of that on landlords, but I also know that there's an impact on the US at all, and overall demand on rentals, whether it's single family or multifamily. This is a significant impact, because I don't think that the Republicans are going to make a U-turn on this. I don't want to get political, but you know, stating the obvious.   Keith Weinhold  19:45   Yes, United States had its biggest birth year in 2007 when there were more than 4 million babies born. The average age of the first time homebuyer today is 40 years old. If that holds true, that peak would take place in 2047 And then, yes, to your point about changes in immigration, yes, it sounds like a potentially a reduction in demand with what you're talking about, with some vacancies, and also maybe a reduction in supply when you have fewer construction workers to build these places as well, we're talking about building properties. Neal, I want to talk to you about the build to rent space. Somewhat is build to rent better than traditional real estate? I think that's what we really want to know. And for those that don't know, build to rent means when you construct a property where from day one that construction project is built for a tenant, not an owner occupant. I see a lot of pros and cons there. Can you talk to us about the trade-offs between build to rent and traditional real estate?   Neal Bawa  19:52   Yeah, if you think about it, it's a really terrible word, built to rent, because if you think about the word built to rent should be apartments, right, but actually doesn't mean apartments, right? So, built to rent actually means single family or town homes that were built to rent out, right? And then you're like, why don't they just said built to rent apartments and town homes? Well, you know, was too long an acronym, and we suck at acronyms anyway. But BTR, or built to rent, is essentially building single family or town homes, but specifically building them to rent, and it doesn't include any apartments at all, right? And the reason why the BTR market was growing in the last five or six years is that roughly 18 million American families can no longer afford to buy starter single family homes, you know, and by starter I mean, small old single-family homes. That's how Americans usually started, you know, in their 20s and 30s. They would buy these homes, some of them, but they would fix up, and then they over time, in their 30s, late 30s and 40s and 50s, they would upgrade, and then at starting the 50s, it would flatten out, and then the 60s, they would start to downgrade, right? That's been a typical thing that's happened in America for 56 5070, years. Well, that is, cannot happen anymore. And it broke in 2022 until 2022 It was a normal cycle beyond 2022 because interest rates almost doubled, and the mortgages almost doubled, but the incomes only increased by 10 to 20% There became this orphaned generation of Americans, roughly 18 million families, that simply cannot afford to buy that starter home, and they are now forever renters. They don't know it. They think that they're going to catch up at some point, but five minutes with an Excel spreadsheet, I could prove it to them that they're not going to catch up.    Neal Bawa  25:35   Maybe one in 100 families would see a very large increase in income, and that would result in them catching up, but for the most part, as a group, these 18 million families, they're forever enters as a group that didn't exist before 2021 right. It's entirely because of this outrageous increase in mortgages, while not seeing a drop in home prices, that led to this, and so those orphan families, they actually earn pretty well, so these are families that make 70, 80, $90,000 in mid markets. They make over $100,000 if they're living on the coasts or in expensive markets, and they still can't buy that, you know, starter home. And so they don't want to live in apartments. I have lots of apartments, old ones, new ones, and I want these people to live there, but they don't want to live there, and so they've been looking for an option, and that option has been developers like me building communities of 200 300 townhomes or single family homes with a small little yard, and then basically from day one, instead of selling them, renting them out, and then once you're done renting out the whole community with 200 tenants, then you sell that to an apartment company. You know, there's lots of apartment companies in the US that have 100,000 units. Well, they want to buy these because the turnover is lower. So, what happens is most of these town homes and single-family homes for rent. Families come in, and they typically rent for three to five years before they move, whereas in on my apartments I lose 40% of my tenants each year. So, if I have 200 tenants, I lose 80 of them every year, and I have to basically go back, clean up those units, deal with the vacancy. But when I have townhome communities like my Idaho Falls townhome community. I lose a tenant at roughly every four years, and so, as you can imagine, profitability goes up when turnover goes down, right?   Neal Bawa  27:31   Because you don't have that cost of turnover and vacancy, and so eventually those large landlords that are holding 100,000 units figured out, I like this, what Neal Bawa is doing, he's building these 200 townhomes, I want to buy these from him when they're rented. I don't want to build them, I don't want to lease them up, I just want to buy them when they're stabilized. And so BTR became that name for that marketplace where developers would build townhomes and single families, rent them out, and then sell them to institutional, and it was some—   Keith Weinhold  27:56   People think of fabulous institutionalization of the starter home.   Neal Bawa  28:00   And in many ways it is, because what happened is, for a while, these institutional players, like Blackstone and BlackRock, they were like, we are just going to go out and buy 50,000 single-family homes, and that's going to be the institutionalized. Well, that worked really well if you bought in 2008 2009 2010 2011 because you got them bought them at a discount, but when they started buying them in 2015, 16, 17, 18 at ever higher prices, they didn't make any money. So the vast majority of these public funds that were created to buy large amounts of single family have failed if they've purchased anything in the last seven or eight years. If they bought before that, they made huge amounts of money. Family homes are so expensive that basically buying them for rental did not make sense, so these companies have now pivoted to saying we'll only buy communities that have 100 or 200 or 300 of these homes, because then we get the benefits of having centralized leasing, centralized property management, centralized maintenance, and I don't have homes spread all over the metro, they're all in one place, and I can make more profit from that. In theory, that's been good, and you might think that I'm bullish on BTR, but I'm actually today bearish on BTR for one single reason. About seven months ago, Republicans started talking about a bill - I don't know what the name of the bill is, but what this bill does is it forces builds to rent developers like me within seven years of building the property to sell all of the homes in that property to single family tenants, not to Blackstone, not to Blackrock, but to single family tenants. Hasn't passed yet, but it passed the Senate with an 8910 vote, which means that both Democrats and Republicans wanted to vote for this. If it passes the House, and because Donald Trump himself is very heavily opposed to it, he's made it very clear he doesn't like this. He's a developer, obviously. It hasn't passed the House yet, but if it passes the house, that will destroy the build to rent market. No one will ever build build to rent, because the worst possible thing is I build this, and within seven years I have to actually sell it to individual buyers. If I do that, my banks are going to hate me and not give me loans to build BTR anymore. Obviously, there's going to be some grandfathering to the communities that I'm building now, or maybe even build the ones that I'm building in 2027 maybe grandfathered. It usually is, because you know, Congress never does anything retroactively, and they give you a year or two, but if it passes, it's doomsday for BTR. I hope it doesn't happen, but that's the way it's looking, because it's bipartisan. Bipartisan bills are more likely to pass   Keith Weinhold  30:40   Now for the mom and pop investor, the individual investor build to rents have obvious appeal due to your point about the lower turnover, lower maintenance costs on a new build, lower insurance costs often on a new build, and then there's the tenant appeal to a new build as well, but of course there is that investor downside. I think a lot of investors are aware of their thin initial cash flow that they're going to have on build to rent, but you know, Neal, another downside with build to rent, I think a lot of investors don't look at is, hey, just how many of these things are they building? Are they building 500 of them? Do I have some overbuild risk if I buy into this community that could suppress occupancy and rents for a while.   Neal Bawa  31:21   What we've seen is that when Built to Rent started out in 2017-2018 it was its own asset class. It wasn't competing with apartments, it wasn't competing with single family rentals, it was just its own thing. However, in the last two or three years, as more and more apartments flooded the marketplace, we had a glut. It moved away from that. It basically started getting affected, and the rent started falling, just like any other portion of the market. You know, think of it as three portions of market. There's the built to rent, which I described, you know, brand new single family homes, town homes per rent. There's the apartments, both brand new and existing, and there's the single family rentals, right, which there are millions of. What we are seeing now is it's become one market, right? All of them are affecting each other, and the apartments, which have a huge amount of glut, there's a massive amount of new apartments that have come in in the last two years, are really pushing the rents down for single family, they're pushing that rents down for BTR. So, at this point, what I would say to people that have this concern, Keith, is simply look at incoming apartment supply, because if you're in a marketplace, and I'll give you examples of really good markets that are crushed right now. If you're in a market that has a lot of incoming supply, whether you buy a single family rental, a quadplex, a 50 plex that's an apartment, or 100 unit BTR, you're going to suffer for rent growth if you have a lot of incoming supply in 2026 and that is across the board in every market in the US. Huntsville, Alabama is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting markets in the US for 5 year, 10 year growth, right?    Neal Bawa  32:54   If I had to say you don't need a loan, it's just your own cash, no investors, where would you put money in? It would be at the top of my list, not at the very top. Idaho Falls is definitely the number one market in the US in my list, but Huntsville is up there. But right now, do you know what rent growth in Huntsville is? Minus 2% negative 2% Why? Because there's 6000 units coming into a market that's, you know, 1/5 or 1/10 the size of Phoenix, right. It's 1/10 the size of Dallas, but it has half the units of Dallas or Phoenix coming in, and so rent growth is negative there. So, what I would say is today absolutely everyone that is an investor should understand that we live in the magic world of AI, and you should be talking with Chat GPT about incoming supply for any market that you're interested in, and using that to make your decisions, because all of these markets merged, BTR, new apartments, old apartments, single family, everything has emerged in the last 24 months, where they're all affecting each other, and if there's too much supply of any one kind, it's affecting all of the other markets, and that's the message that I have. And none of this is like you have to go buy a $25,000 software like Costar today. Chat GPT is your costar.   Keith Weinhold  34:11   You're listening to Get Rich Education. We're talking with the mad scientist of multifamily, Neal Bawa, where we come back, including what he thinks about recovery for the beleaguered multifamily market. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. 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What I like is that their team walks you through how it all works, so you can decide if it aligns with your portfolio and income goals. Every investment carries risk, and nothing is guaranteed, but with a track record of consistent on-time investor payouts, they built real credibility. Go to freedomfamilyinvestments.com to book a clarity call, or text family 268 66 That's Family 266 866    Speaker 1  36:00   This is the star of the A E Show, The Real Estate Commission. Todd Rollette. Listen to Get Rich Education with my friend Keith Weinhold, and don't quit your daydream.   Keith Weinhold  36:20   Welcome back to Get Rised Education. We're talking with Neal Bawa, a really sharp multifamily syndicator who's also highly data driven. And Neal, tell us more about the beleaguered multifamily market that had those aforementioned problems really cropping up in 2022 and we had a lot of supply and spiking rates. What does it look like for the path to recovery for the US multifamily market?   Neal Bawa  36:45   Luckily, demand is strong, and even though occupancies have dropped, typically the multifamily market, the large multifamily market in the US, tends to be between 95 and 96% occupied. Okay, and right now we're on 93% so that all that incoming supply means that about 7% of our apartments in the US are empty at the moment, we're trying to fill them, and we are seeing that occupancy drop, not across just new apartments that are leasing up, but also drop in class B and class C. We've also seen a huge increase in concessions, so I studied this quite obsessively, and I can tell you that 2026 in some markets is the recovery year, but not across the board in the United States, and the reason for that is sentiment. Once renters get used to huge amounts of concessions, it's like a drug, it takes a little while before you wean those renters off of those drugs, and so there's that hit right now. Every renter program,   Keith Weinhold  37:44   Everyone wants their freebie for good.    Neal Bawa  37:46   Yeah, exactly. It's like, hey, what, you're not giving me two months free? Hey, what, you're not even offering me one month free? It takes a while for that expectation to happen, because there's such a huge amount of concessions in the US. So, to me, there are a few markets, usually the smaller markets or very fast growing markets, where there's a recovery in 2026 but otherwise 2027 The first half of 2027 is recovery. The second half of 2027 is fast rent growth in a lot of markets. Why? Because remember, interest rates have been high since 2023 A lot of projects were started in 2022 went into construction in 23 came to market in 25 and 26 Lease ups are happening in 25 and 26 By early mid 27 these are all leased up, right? The second half of 2027 there isn't a lot of delivery in any of these big markets, because to deliver in the second half of 27 you would have started construction in that second half of 2025 and I counted those permits market by market. There's just not a lot, because by that time everyone knew that projects were not getting funded, everyone knew that interest rates were high, so there wasn't a lot of supply of new starts in the apartment market in the second half of 25 so there's not going to be a lot of delivery in the second half of 27 and all of the existing stuff would have been leased by then. So 2026 is one of those years where we could still see more concessions in the second half of 2026 I still see rent growth for apartments to be flat. You mentioned single family might be a little bit higher. It tends to be a little bit higher than apartments in terms of rent growth, but I think flat rent growth for 2026 is what I'm projecting. I'm projecting small rent growth in the first half of 2027 for most markets, and then I'm projecting robust rent growth, call it 3% or greater on an annualized basis, in the second half of 2027 and I'm projecting that most markets in the US that are not seeing a population drop, so count out places like Detroit are going to see a very aggressive rent growth, four or 5% rent growth, that's aggressive in our world, in 2028 28 and 29 are shaping up to be. Supply deficit years, years where supply is well under demand.   Keith Weinhold  40:05   It's pretty easy to project completions when you just go ahead and look at starts, and really, what you're counting is the story of absorption.   Neal Bawa  40:14   Yep, and what's nice about apartments is you can actually build a single family home in about nine months, right, but you can't build apartments in less than 24 months. There's just so much permitting issues, there's so many delivery issues, fire code issues, and so we have a crystal ball on the multifamily side that we are now getting better at using. I don't think the industry was very good at this in 2022 but now we're really all obsessed with how many permits does my metro have, and how many permits does my state, and how many permits does the US have? And everyone that I know in the industry that's data driven knows that there's a massive glut now, maybe a little bit of a glutton that remaining portion of 2026 equilibrium in 27 and a huge, huge supply deficit in 28 and 29 So everything that I'm doing is based on this, and this crystal ball actually works because of that two year gap between shovels in the ground and delivery,   Keith Weinhold  41:10   and it sounds like you've recommended Chat GPT as a go-to source for investors to look into these things, that happens to be my favorite one as well, and you are well, maybe it's a bit too much to say, but it almost feels like to me pioneering with the way that you use AI. In fact, I know before our show today you were running some other things in the background that made me wonder, hey, am I talking to the real Neil or the clone Neil? I know I've got the real Neil here, but why don't you tell us about how you're using AI to make data-driven decisions in real estate?   Neal Bawa  41:40   Sure, so the first thing is that we've completed our journey with the low hanging fruit of AI. Every single person in our company is fully trained on how to use Chat GPT. Most of our research-related processes are automated. For example, 100% of our investor updates are now written by Chat GPT. What we do is we go into our property manager meetings on Mondays or Tuesdays sit down with them, beat them up, and the transcript is then taken by our team in the Philippines. They take that transcript and put it into a pre-trained Chat GPT string, it's called a custom GPT, and the string took a while to train, but now that it's trained, all it needs is a transcript. We just copy paste it in, we don't give it any instructions, and it outputs a really wonderful investor update, right. And so our updates for our investors are 99% written by AI. Of course, we'll go in and add our comments at the end of the process. So we've automated investor updates, rent comps, so you know if we are underwriting a new property today, what we do is we simply go into a Google file and copy paste the address and hit enter roughly once a minute. A software, which is written by AI - we're not coders, but the software knows how to write code - it checks the file, if it sees a new address, it goes in there, grabs the address, and then it basically goes to apartments.com rent.com realtor.com and all of these places, and checks the rents for this particular property in two mile radius. It eliminates all the ones that don't match, like you don't want to match the rents of a 1970 or 80s built property with a brand new 25 built property. Those are not comps, it's not comparable. So it basically is very careful, it keeps a radius range of two miles, and also basically is a property of the same kind, you know, like it never matches up a three story property with a 10 story property. Those don't match, one of them obviously is more of a central business district or downtown sort of thing, and so it basically grabs all of those rent comps and then puts them into a file and posts in a Slack channel. Usually it takes it about 1213 minutes to do that, and so whoever put that address in about 12 minutes later goes into the Slack channel and says, "Hmm, these are all my rent comps, right? And boom, now you're basically, you have all these ready rent comps. So, what we've done is, we've automated a significant portion of what we are doing with both our property managers and inside the company with acquisitions and things like that, we're also scraping massive amounts of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, which we just couldn't deal with that data before, and building very beautiful, very interactive dashboards. We don't use Chat GPT for that. We find for dashboarding a tool called Claude, which is by a company called Anthropic, is much better, so we have currently over 150 interactive dashboards that Claude has created that update in real time and give us access to data. If anything, I find that we are in this incredible time where decision making has become much easier, as long as you spend time with these tools. So, in our company we have an absolute mandate that no one has broken for the last year. One year per day, people must program, and by programming we mean issuing common language instructions to tools and build dashboards and build software that automates our work. Have we laid off anyone because of this? I mean that. Be the next obvious question. The answer is no, because it's made it easier for us to serve a much larger audience, so it's easier to grow your company. We just are not hiring anyone, and we haven't hired anybody for the last 18 months, so we have a hiring freeze, but at the same time all of our people are employed because they're they're now much more valuable. So everyone in our company is now a programmer, and even though that sounds weird, it's completely true.   Neal Bawa  45:24   Every single person in our company writes code, and they write code by talking with Cloud Code or talking with Chat GPT, and then Chat GPT, of course, does the actual code writing, but people have become very, very good at answering questions and saying, "I want a dashboard like this, turn these radio buttons into drop boxes, and give me the last month, and last three months, and last 12 months, and do this, and do that, and connect this, and I also want to host this on a server, but I want to make sure that only I can see it. I need a password added. Imagine 1000 of these conversations happening in our company every day. Yeah, that's interesting. And what you just described   Keith Weinhold  46:00   there at Gro Capitas is somewhat of a microcosm for what's happening in the broader economy, where we've been in this low high or low fire environment for quite a while. Well, Neal, as we're winding down here, we recently had a new Fed chair come in. It seems incomprehensible to me that there could possibly be any rate cuts. I don't know how we could responsibly make a rate cut with all these inflationary layers. We had the pandemic, and then terrorists, and then the Iran war, and the energy shocks, and all these bottled up supply chains. What are your thoughts with regard to the Fed?   Neal Bawa  46:29   I still think that we'll get one rate cut, and that rate cut will be based on political pressure. So, for the first time ever, I have seen the Fed break into factions, so if you look at the latest Fed meeting, which happened, you know, there was dissent, there were two clear factions, so the Fed is becoming less data driven and more faction driven, and I think that one of the factions, which obviously wants rate cuts to go down, is going to triumph at some point later in the year, but until we get past the incredible increase in inflation because of the Iran war, I don't think that faction is going to win. Right, there's three or four people in that faction, that's not enough votes to get past the others. So I'm predicting no rate cuts until Q4 of this year. If the Fed was entirely logical, there should still not be a rate card in Q4, but I think it'll happen because there's political pressure.   Keith Weinhold  47:25   The preservation of independence is key. Neil Bhawa, this has been great, and a lot of people learn from you. You're a brilliant educator, as well as what you're doing in the multifamily space, and a lot of other places. So, if someone wants to connect with you, learn more about what you do. What's the best way for them to do that?   Neal Bawa  47:43   So we built a website called Multi Family University. It's completely free. There is no subscription. There's no upsell. We do not have an educational product, but what we do is each year we have 8-12 webinars that we create with their extraordinarily good looking thanks to the use of AI. Yay, and we share them with an audience, and usually between 5000 and 1000 people attend our webinars each year, of which roughly 1% become investors with us. The rest, the remaining 99% just continue to get free access to data, and we cover every imaginable real estate topic: Single family, multifamily, industrial hotels, self storage, Airbnb, and even controversial topics outside of real estate, like climate change or impact of climate change and impact of AI. So you know, multifamily university is the best place you can go to, multifamily you.com/club It's a free club, and it's free forever.   Keith Weinhold  48:42   Neal, it's been valuable to our audience. Thanks so much for coming back out of the show.   Neal Bawa  48:46   Thanks for having me.   Keith Weinhold  48:53   Oh, a terrific, wide-ranging chat with Neal. There, yes, this interesting 2022 divergence between single family and multifamily, the slowing birth rate, and how that won't really catch up with real estate in a big way for perhaps 20 plus more years. How single family rentals beat multifamily on the basis of tenant retention, and a lot more that we covered there, and he's got a good data driven timeline for apartments being back in favor by 2027 and 2028 After the interview, Neil and I chatted some more off Mike, and he would like to come back on the show next year. We're probably going to have him, because we have a lot more to talk about at that time. We can see if the multifamily market is really healing. Also, did you pick up on this? I wonder why, for his own home he would get a 15 year mortgage at 1.75% interest, so I'll have to ask him about that. That's surely a fantastic interest rate, but a 15 year loan rather than a 30 year that maybe he could have gotten at two and a half percent at the time. Well, 15 year probably. Is not the best use of capital, because it increases your equity position rapidly. When instead, those dollars could have been out in the market earning an actual return somewhere else. But he's a smart guy, he must have an answer. We can talk about that at that time. We've got a lot of terrific shows coming up here on the GRE podcast, specific learning episodes, where it's just me teaching you, as well as new guests and returning guests too. Until next week, I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your daydream.   Speaker 2  50:35   Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial, or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of Get Rich Education LLC exclusively.    Speaker 2  51:03   The preceding program was brought to you by Your Home for Wealth Building, getricheducation.com.  

Leslie Kaz is the President & COO of Syndicated Insurance Agency, LLC — a national Medicare-focused FMO he co-founded in 2004 that now operates across 22 states with a network of over 120 agents and brokers. With over 30 years in the insurance industry and a unique background as a trained chef and café owner, Leslie brings a rare combination of operational depth, business acumen, and genuine passion for people. Under his leadership, Syndicated has grown by over 200% year over year. His mission is straightforward: empower agents to build real businesses and help seniors navigate Medicare with confidence.Learn more: http://www.877VIPQuote.comNot affiliated with the U.S. Government or Federal Medicare Program. We do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 29 organizations which offer 2694 products in your area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-MEDICARE, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your optionsInfluential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-leslie-kaz-president-founder-of-syndicated-insurance-agency-discussing-choosing-the-right-medicare-advisor

Leslie Kaz is the President & COO of Syndicated Insurance Agency, LLC — a national Medicare-focused FMO he co-founded in 2004 that now operates across 22 states with a network of over 120 agents and brokers. With over 30 years in the insurance industry and a unique background as a trained chef and café owner, Leslie brings a rare combination of operational depth, business acumen, and genuine passion for people. Under his leadership, Syndicated has grown by over 200% year over year. His mission is straightforward: empower agents to build real businesses and help seniors navigate Medicare with confidence.Learn more: http://www.877VIPQuote.comNot affiliated with the U.S. Government or Federal Medicare Program. We do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 29 organizations which offer 2694 products in your area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-MEDICARE, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your optionsInfluential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-leslie-kaz-president-founder-of-syndicated-insurance-agency-discussing-overcoming-medicare-enrollment-anxiety

We are no doubt navigating an incredible age of disruption. Technology, algorithms, politics, and societal pressures have changed the way we both think and work. But how do we break free from a system that was created to manipulate independent thought? In his latest book, The Tyranny of False Choices: A Guide To Authentic Decision-Making, author Rey Ramsey provides a timely and practical guide for modern leaders to better manage through tumultuous times. Using methods to support critical thinking, moral compass navigation, and resilience, Rey provides a roadmap to reclaiming courage and personal agency required in leadership in these times.rnrnRey Ramsey is President and CEO of the Nathan Cummings Foundation and a social justice entrepreneur who brings more than three decades of C-suite experience in the non-profit, public, and private sectors. Previously, Rey has served as Oregon's Director of Housing and Community Services, President and COO of Enterprise Community Partners, and Chairman of Habitat for Humanity International-to name a few.rnrnJoin us at the City Club as Cleveland Foundation's Lillian Kuri sits down with Rey Ramsey for a candid conversation about leadership in these times, and what it takes to reclaim independent thought in a world designed to manipulate it.

Leslie Kaz is the President & COO of Syndicated Insurance Agency, LLC — a national Medicare-focused FMO he co-founded in 2004 that now operates across 22 states with a network of over 120 agents and brokers. With over 30 years in the insurance industry and a unique background as a trained chef and café owner, Leslie brings a rare combination of operational depth, business acumen, and genuine passion for people. Under his leadership, Syndicated has grown by over 200% year over year. His mission is straightforward: empower agents to build real businesses and help seniors navigate Medicare with confidence.Learn more: http://www.877VIPQuote.comNot affiliated with the U.S. Government or Federal Medicare Program. We do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 29 organizations which offer 2694 products in your area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-MEDICARE, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your optionsInfluential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-leslie-kaz-president-founder-of-syndicated-insurance-agency-discussing-choosing-the-right-medicare-advisor

Leslie Kaz is the President & COO of Syndicated Insurance Agency, LLC — a national Medicare-focused FMO he co-founded in 2004 that now operates across 22 states with a network of over 120 agents and brokers. With over 30 years in the insurance industry and a unique background as a trained chef and café owner, Leslie brings a rare combination of operational depth, business acumen, and genuine passion for people. Under his leadership, Syndicated has grown by over 200% year over year. His mission is straightforward: empower agents to build real businesses and help seniors navigate Medicare with confidence.Learn more: http://www.877VIPQuote.comNot affiliated with the U.S. Government or Federal Medicare Program. We do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 29 organizations which offer 2694 products in your area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-MEDICARE, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your optionsInfluential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-leslie-kaz-president-founder-of-syndicated-insurance-agency-discussing-overcoming-medicare-enrollment-anxiety

Are you secretly running on empty, wondering if burnout is targeting you next?In this episode, Alen Voskanian, COO of Cedars-Sinai Medical Network and author, pulls back the curtain on the raw realities beneath operations leadership. From the constant grind of clinical environments to the personal toll of endless firefighting, Voskanian exposes why burnout hits high performers hardest and how ignoring your creative side can quietly sabotage your impact. This isn't just about wellness platitudes. It's a real-world look at chasing fulfillment, designing systems that beat chaos, and the unexpected arts that make leaders resilient.If you're a COO (or run with one), you can't afford to miss these insights. The game has changed. Listen now or risk staying stuck in cycles that will bury both your team and your spirit. This is the side of leadership nobody else is showing you.Sponsored byGenius Network - An exclusive community for highly successful entrepreneurs, connecting you with top-tier leaders, strategic insights, and powerful relationships to help you grow your business faster and smarter.Learn more: https://www.geniusnetwork.com/Timestamped Highlights00:25 – The real reason burnout is rampant among COOs and physicians04:12 – The under-the-radar roles that secretly prepared him for operations07:29 – Three unconventional ways to master leadership fast12:18 – Why stand-up comedy became his secret tool for resilience15:57 – The hidden danger in neglecting your creative life as a leader19:53 – Brutal realities of burnout nobody is willing to admit29:55 – How lean principles are quietly transforming healthcare operations39:09 – What people on their deathbeds taught him about fulfillment and regretAbout the GuestAlen Voskanian, MD, MBA, is the Vice President and COO of Cedars-Sinai Medical Network. A board-certified physician in Family Medicine and Hospice & Palliative Medicine, he's also an author and sought-after keynote speaker. Alen is known for transforming healthcare to improve access and quality. He holds degrees from UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, and an MBA from Indiana University. He's a former innovation advisor for CMS, a Cunniff-Dixon/Hastings Center Physician Award winner, and a Health Innovators Fellow with the Aspen Global Leadership Network.