Podcast appearances and mentions of Craig Smith

Companies are spending billions building AI factories, but most of them can't tell you why their AI workloads are failing, whether their GPUs are actually being used, or what their infrastructure is going to cost them when agents start running at scale. Paul Appleby, CEO of Virtana, joins Craig Smith to discuss the findings of their AI Factory Reality Check study, a research report that reveals a striking and underappreciated gap between the pace of AI infrastructure investment and the governance needed to run it safely and efficiently. Six in ten enterprises, the study found, cannot automatically identify root cause when an AI workload fails, a problem that compounds fast once you're running critical services on AI infrastructure at scale. The conversation covers the mechanics of Virtana's observability platform, capturing 20,000 metrics per second across the entire AI stack, correlating them in real time, and increasingly using agentic capabilities to remediate failures automatically, but its most important insights are structural. Appleby makes a sharp observation that cuts through a lot of AI optimism: token costs are falling, but token consumption is exploding, meaning the total cost of running agentic AI systems is still going up even as the per-unit price drops. He also tracks a cultural shift inside enterprises - IT resilience reporting that used to happen annually now happens weekly - as evidence that technology risk has become a board-level conversation in a way it simply wasn't before. The result is a conversation that's less about the promise of AI and more about what it actually takes to make it work at production scale. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

Can God use your brokenness to become your greatest blessing? In this message from our Bad Blood series, Pastor Craig Smith walks through Genesis 32 and Jacob's unforgettable wrestling match with God. It's a story about fear, faith, surrender, and discovering that God doesn't always remove our struggles—sometimes He uses them to transform us. Jacob spent his life fighting for blessings from other people. But after one night wrestling with God, everything changed. He received a new name, a new identity, and a deeper understanding that the greatest blessing isn't what God gives—it's God Himself. If you're walking through disappointment, uncertainty, or a season that feels broken, this message offers hope that God may be doing more than you can see. In this message, you'll discover: Why fear isn't the opposite of faith How to fight fear with God's promises Why God redirected Jacob's strength instead of removing it What it means to wrestle with God How brokenness can become the pathway to blessing No matter where you are today, God hasn't let go of you.

AI is moving faster than enterprise security systems were designed to handle. In this episode of Eye on A.I., Craig Smith speaks with Bradon Rogers, Chief Customer Officer at Island, Island about how companies are struggling to govern the rise of AI agents, browser-based workflows, and unsanctioned AI tools inside the workplace. The conversation explores why traditional "block-and-control" security models are breaking down and how a new approach, embedding policy directly into the browser and user workflows, may offer a path forward. It also dives into emerging risks like prompt injection and autonomous agent behavior, and why enterprises are increasingly becoming multi-AI environments by default. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

Most AI is built for people sitting at desks. Kriti Sharma builds it for the people who work in refineries, aircraft hangars, and utility networks responding to wildfires at 4 a.m. and she spends weekends on-site with them to make sure what she builds actually holds up. In this episode, Kriti joins Craig Smith to discuss what industrial AI really looks like when failure genuinely isn't an option, and why the gap between an impressive AI pilot and a production-grade AI system is so much wider in the physical world than most technology companies appreciate. The conversation is grounded in three specific products from Nexus Black, the elite AI unit Kriti leads inside IFS. The first is Resolve, a predictive maintenance platform built in close collaboration with William Grant's - the distillery behind Glenfiddich and Hendricks Gin - that is projected to save £8.4 million per year at a single factory by reading complex engineering schematics, identifying failure patterns before they occur, and giving frontline technicians step-by-step guidance on their phones without requiring them to remove a safety glove to type. The second is an airworthiness compliance tool for commercial airlines that automates a process currently consuming weeks of human engineering time, where a single mistake carries regulatory fines of up to $20 million and grounding a fleet costs $140 million per day. The third is a disaster response coordination system for utilities, built in partnership with Anthropic, designed to help field crews coordinate during wildfires, hurricanes, and grid outages in ways that, as a California disaster responder told Kriti directly after the most recent wildfire season, will get communities back online and hospitals lit up faster than ever before. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

Pat welcomes Craig Smith and Megan Stemm of the "SamePageCast" back to the show to discuss the 10th Anniversary release of The Monkees "Good Times!" album. We cover the Deluxe Edition with all the bonus tracks!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What is an AI agent, really? Strip away the hype, and it's a model with access - to tools, APIs, databases, email, anything that lets it take real action instead of just generating text. That access is exactly where the risk lives, and Devvret Rishi, GM of AI at Rubrik, and former co-founder & CEO of Predibase, joins Craig Smith with a string of real-world incidents that make the case concrete: AWS reporting four major outages in 90 days after deploying coding agents, a Meta-related agent that deleted someone's emails while they were actively asking it to stop, and Rubrik's own internal pilot catching incidents that, without governance in place, would have gone unnoticed. The conversation lays out the impossible choice most enterprises are facing right now - block AI agents and forfeit the ROI boards are demanding, or grant access and hope nothing breaks - and walks through how Rubrik's approach uses small, fine-tuned AI models to enforce plain-English security policies on every single agent action in real time. It closes on one of the most underexamined risks ahead: as agents increasingly talk to other agents to get work done, a layer of activity is forming that no human is watching, and the question of who's accountable when something goes wrong in that layer is only getting more urgent. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

Have you ever felt stuck, in a job, a relationship, or a pattern you just can't shake? This weekend, we're opening Genesis 31 to learn what it means to leave what limits you and step into what God has next.

It costs up to $2 billion and fifteen years to develop a drug, and big pharma still fails half the time at the final stage. BullFrog AI founder, Chairman, and CEO Vin Singh joins Craig Smith with a clear diagnosis of why: the industry keeps picking the wrong drug target from the beginning, and no amount of downstream optimization fixes a fundamentally wrong starting point. Built on AI technology originally developed at Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Lab, BullFrog has assembled a three-stage platform that cleans messy clinical data, runs causal analysis to map disease pathways, and then ranks competing drug targets using a competitive framework that removes the subjectivity most pharmaceutical decision-making still relies on. The most striking results in this conversation come from two case studies: work with the Lieber Institute for Brain Development - analyzing thousands of post-mortem brains - that led to the identification of potential driver genes for depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia in months from data that researchers had spent fifteen years studying, and a pancreatic cancer trial where BullFrog's platform identified a patient subgroup with survival rates three times higher than the study average. Vin also delivers a candid assessment of the broader AI-pharma landscape: more than 90% of AI deals in the space are missing their milestones, most companies are wrapping open-source tools rather than building genuine technology, and the shakeout between players and pretenders is already well underway. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

After two years of AI pilots, enterprises are finally diagnosing what went wrong, and the answer keeps coming back to data. Alberto Pan, CTO of Denodo, joins Craig Smith to walk through the findings of the company's AI Trust Gap Report: a survey of 850 enterprise data leaders that reveals the dominant failure modes of enterprise AI agents are almost never the model's fault. They're caused by stale data, missing context, and inconsistent semantics across the hundreds of data sources agents need to access to do real work. Pan explains why traditional data warehouse and lake house architectures - built for analytics, not real-time decision-making - are creating an invisible ceiling on AI performance, and how Denodo's logical data management approach lets agents query data where it lives without centralizing it first, while enforcing consistent governance across every source in one place. The conversation also identifies two specific traps most organizations fall into as they try to scale AI - over-centralizing data into a single system, or building custom ad hoc data layers for every agent - and why both approaches collapse in a multi-agent world where agents need to cooperate, share context, and work from a common semantic foundation. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI. 

Sometimes the greatest blessing doesn't come from escaping a difficult situation—it comes from changing how you respond to it. In this episode of Continuing the Conversation, Craig Smith and Colin McFarland dive deeper into one of the most unusual stories in Genesis and unpack the sermon, "The Fastest Road to Blessing." Craig shares what it was like preparing one of the hardest passages he's ever preached, why Bible translation often involves interpretation, and how a fresh understanding of Jacob and Laban completely changed the message. Along the way, they explore practical questions we all wrestle with: How do you become a blessing in difficult relationships? When should you stay in a hard situation—and when is it time to leave? Why do we keep fighting for control instead of trusting God's faithfulness? How can wise community help us hear God's direction more clearly? Whether you're navigating conflict at work, tension in your family, or simply trying to trust God with what's next, this conversation offers practical wisdom you can apply today. If Sunday's message challenged you, this episode takes the conversation even further.

Discover entrepreneurship, innovation, business growth, scaling, and intellectual property strategies from successful founders and industry leaders. Richard Gearhart and Elizabeth Gearhart, co-hosts of the Passage to Profit Show have this discussion with Professional Speaker and Multimedia Retail Consultant Craig Smith, Chris Ryan from Chris Ryan Fitness and Jeff Sibel from Wealth Agent.  What makes people buy in an age of AI, algorithms, and endless marketing automation? Craig Smith, professional speaker, brand messaging expert, and veteran QVC host who has helped sell more than $1 billion in products across 4,500 live television broadcasts, reveals why storytelling and human connection still outperform technology. Craig shares the simple framework behind memorable brands—being clear, real, and repeatable—and explains how businesses can build loyal communities instead of chasing one-time sales. He also shares lessons from a major product launch failure, why authentic communication matters more than ever, and how entrepreneurs can create messages that customers actually remember.Read more at: https://www.craigsmithspeaks.com/ What does it really take to build lifelong health and fitness habits? Chris Ryan, Founder of Chris Ryan Fitness and one of America's Top 10 Trainers, shares why consistency matters more than motivation, how beginners can successfully start working out from home, and the mindset shifts that lead to lasting results. Chris discusses his journey from fitness modeling and national media appearances to becoming a founding trainer for Mirror, the fitness platform later acquired by Lululemon for $500 million. He also reveals practical advice on exercise, nutrition, habit formation, weight loss, and creating a supportive fitness community that helps people become healthier, stronger, and more confident at any age. Whether you're an entrepreneur, busy professional, parent, or someone looking to improve your health, this conversation delivers actionable strategies for building a better life through fitness. Read more at: http://chrisryanfitness.com/ What does it really take to retire comfortably without worrying about running out of money? Jeff Seibel, Founder of WealthAgent.com and creator of the Wealth Agent Institute, shares why he believes traditional retirement planning often falls short and how income-producing real estate can help create lasting financial security. Jeff discusses the importance of starting early, investing consistently, building retirement income instead of simply accumulating savings, and using real estate as a tool for long-term wealth creation. He also explains strategies involving rental properties, self-directed IRAs, 1031 exchanges, and retirement income planning that entrepreneurs, real estate professionals, and everyday investors can use to build a more predictable financial future. Read more at: https://www.wealthagent.com/ Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur, startup founder, inventor, or small business owner, the Passage to Profit Show is a leading podcast for insights on entrepreneurship, innovation, intellectual property and business strategy. Hosted by Richard Gearhart and Elizabeth Gearhart, the show features industry leaders, investors, and founders who share real-world lessons on scaling companies, protecting ideas, building generational wealth, and navigating today's evolving business landscape. Visit https://passagetoprofitshow.com/ for the latest episodes, expert interviews, and resources designed to help you grow, protect, and profit from your ideas. Chapters (00:00:00) - What separates entrepreneurs who succeed and those who stall(00:00:17) - The San Antonio Spurs Throw Down the Knicks Fan(00:01:41) - Are Commencement Speakers Getting Booed?(00:02:59) - Dunkin Donuts Barbie Donut(00:03:54) - What's The Weirdest Food Trend?(00:04:37) - Caviar On Everything(00:06:18) - Fooled by Money(00:07:17) - The One Decision That Changed My Career(00:08:36) - What Decision Changed the Trajectory of Your Business?(00:12:56) - Craig Smith: Human Connection Is the Ultimate Competitive Advantage(00:17:28) - In the Elevator With QVC's Amy Holmes(00:18:24) - On Training QVC Hosts(00:22:42) - Car Shield(00:23:49) - Better Health Insurance for You(00:24:49) - Passage to Profit: Your Brand Message(00:28:34) - Craig Smith: Brand Messages that weren't Clear(00:33:12) - Craig Smith on ChatGPT(00:33:39) - AI Use Cases(00:34:58) - How to Use AI in Real Estate(00:38:56) - Real AI Use Cases Business Owners Roundtable(00:39:25) - Debt Relief Hotline(00:41:48) - The World Cup: What to Do About Intellectual Property(00:47:22) - Chris Ryan Fitness(00:50:38) - What do you tell people who hate Working Out?(00:53:01) - Trainers at Lululemon(00:54:21) - Chris Farrell on Contending With the Insane(00:57:03) - How to Eat Healthly While Exercising(00:59:14) - Chris Ryan on Helping People Through the Pain of Working Out(01:01:49) - 3 Foods That Are Destroying People's Health(01:04:24) - How to Retire Comfortable?(01:06:24) - Should Real Estate Agents Advise People to Buy Real Estate?(01:11:49) - Retirement Wealth: Real Estate vs. Stocks(01:13:52) - How to Plan for Retirement (Entreprene(01:15:28) - How to Pass Your 401k and Real Estate on to Your Agents(01:18:55) - Craig Smith: Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind(01:19:39) - Chris Ryan on How to Keep Your Success Secret(01:20:37) - How to Get Out There in the Real Estate World(01:21:20) - Be Prepared to Change Your Job

What if consciousness isn't a byproduct of complex brains, but a fundamental feature of reality itself, present, in some rudimentary form, all the way down to electrons and quarks? Philip Goff, a philosopher at Durham University and one of panpsychism's leading contemporary advocates, joins Craig Smith to make that case, arguing that modern science's founding move - separating the mathematical world physics studies from the subjective experience we know only from the inside - solved one problem while quietly creating another we've never resolved. The conversation inevitably turns to AI: could a large language model ever be conscious? Goff's answer is a careful, well-reasoned no, not because he thinks consciousness is magical, but because his framework treats it as something closer to the physical substance of reality than an abstract computation, making him skeptical that anything resembling current AI architecture could cross that threshold. Along the way, he tackles one of the genuine open mysteries in his field: if natural selection only cares about behavior, why did evolution bother making us conscious at all, and what would it even mean to find experimental evidence for an answer. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.v

What if the fastest road to blessing isn't about grabbing more, it's about giving more? This week, we dig into Genesis 30 and discover why the people God blesses most are the ones most focused on being a blessing to others.

In this episode, Craig Smith and special guest co-host Grant Dziak join me for a rapid-fire round of overrated and underrated topics across fitness, nutrition, supplementation, personal development, business, and more. From popular diet trends and training methods to mindset strategies, recovery tools, and everyday habits, we break down what we think deserves more attention—and what might be getting a little too much hype. This one is fast-paced, opinionated, and a lot of fun. Grant brought a unique perspective to the conversation, which made for some great discussion, debate, and laughs along the way. Whether you're looking to improve your health, grow your business, or simply challenge some of your current beliefs, this episode will give you plenty to think about.   Next Level Links: Work With a Nutrition Coach - Schedule A Consultation Nutrition Coaching - www.becomenextlevel.com   Partner Links: Try Thrive Lab Free For One Month - Start Here Order Supplements From Transform - Shop Here Order Supplements From Cured Nutrition - Shop Here Order Supplements From Legion (use code keynutrition for 20% off first order) - Shop Here   Be Featured on the Show: Apply to be a live calller guest on the show - Submit Application Here Submit Q&A Questions to be read live on the show - Submit Here   Free Guides: Eating Out Guide - Get The Guide High-Protein Fast Food Orders - Get the Guide Macro Food Options Guide - Get The Guide Join Us On Patreon - Join Here   Connect with us on Instagram: Host Brad Jensen – @thesoberbodybuilder Co-Host Craig Smith - @greatestdaymindset Guest Grant Dziak - @grantdziak Next Level Nutrition – @mynextlevelnutrition

Real love doesn't sit on the sidelines and hope things work out — it steps in, speaks up, and leads. This Father's Day message from Genesis 29-30 is a challenge to every husband and father who's been coasting.

Eighty percent of lung cancer cases are diagnosed too late, not because the signals aren't there, but because nobody was looking at the right moment. Prashant Warier, co-founder and CEO of Qure.ai, joins Craig Smith to explain how his company is changing that using a tool most people already encounter: the routine chest X-ray. Cure's Lung Nodule Malignancy Risk Score - validated in the CREATE study - analyzes X-rays people get for unrelated reasons, identifies high-risk nodules, and flags which patients need follow-up CT scans. The result is a detection rate of 54 positive patients out of 100 flagged as high-risk, compared to the 2 out of 100 found by standard CT screening programs. That's not a marginal improvement. That's a different category of outcome. The conversation covers the full landscape of where AI diagnostics actually stands today: the 15 million TB screening X-rays that Cure reads autonomously every year across 70 countries with no radiologist in the loop, because in many of those countries there are only two radiologists for the entire nation; the 26 FDA clearances and 200-plus published studies that underpin the company's clinical credibility; and the regulatory barriers that currently prevent patients from uploading their own scans and getting an AI read directly. Warier also makes his sharpest prediction: within 5 to 10 years, primary care will be AI-first, the first conversation you have when something feels wrong won't be with a doctor, it will be with an AI. Based on what Cure is already doing at scale today, that timeline is harder to dismiss than it might sound. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

Genpact surveyed 500 senior executives to understand why companies are investing in AI but not seeing the value, and what they found was both clarifying and uncomfortable. Sanjeev Vohra, Genpact's Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, joins Craig Smith to share the results: only 12% of companies qualify as genuine AI leaders, meaning they're deploying AI in production environments, generating measurable business outcomes, and have the governance systems in place to actually assess that value. The other 88% are somewhere between experimenting and stalled, and the most common culprit isn't the technology or the C-suite. It's what Vohra and his clients call the "frozen middle", the operationally stretched middle managers who are too busy to lead the transformation and too central to the business to be bypassed. The conversation covers the full landscape of what separates leaders from the rest: why co-pilots are a stepping stone that most companies are mistaking for the destination; why 99% of enterprises have no real AI governance program even as agents begin to proliferate; how Genpact's own CEO writing code on a Friday afternoon became the most powerful AI adoption signal in the company; and why Vohra's sharpest piece of advice is also the simplest, progress over perfection, because the companies still waiting for a complete roadmap before they start have already fallen behind. His formula for what's coming: engineers who are 10 times more productive, business professionals who are 3 times more capable, and organizations that treat that as a baseline expectation, not a stretch goal. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

Episode # 151 Handling quad pain with Craig Smith Jesse is joined by mentor Dr. Craig Smith this week to chat about how to handle an increase in cycling volume. If you step on the gas with your riding, how can you cope? This often results in some sore quads, what should you do? Craig gives us his thoughts from a physical therapist perspective. A great listen for anyone that might have a jump in volume!    Craig Smith -  https://smithperformancecenter.com/ Jesse Vondracek - https://topsteptraining.com/  

In this episode of The Brad Jensen Show, I'm joined by Craig Smith and Grant Dziak for a free-flowing conversation that took us in a direction I didn't expect—but one that I think will resonate with a lot of people. We dive deep into the topic of identity and the role labels play in our lives. We talk about how some labels can be incredibly damaging, keeping us stuck in patterns and beliefs that no longer serve us, while others can be empowering and help us become the person we want to be. We also discuss some of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to figure out who they are. Too often, we attach our identity to what we do, our accomplishments, our failures, or what other people think of us. But true growth happens when we start understanding who we are at our core—not just what we do. This conversation goes beyond fitness and gets into personal development, self-awareness, and the process of building an identity that supports the life you want to create. If you've ever felt limited by a label, struggled with self-doubt, or wondered how to become the person you're capable of being, I think you'll get a lot out of this episode.   Next Level Links: Work With a Nutrition Coach - Schedule A Consultation Nutrition Coaching - www.becomenextlevel.com   Partner Links: Try Thrive Lab Free For One Month - Start Here Order Supplements From Transform - Shop Here Order Supplements From Cured Nutrition - Shop Here Order Supplements From Legion (use code keynutrition for 20% off first order) - Shop Here   Be Featured on the Show: Apply to be a live calller guest on the show - Submit Application Here Submit Q&A Questions to be read live on the show - Submit Here   Free Guides: Eating Out Guide - Get The Guide High-Protein Fast Food Orders - Get the Guide Macro Food Options Guide - Get The Guide Join Us On Patreon - Join Here   Connect with us on Instagram: Host Brad Jensen – @thesoberbodybuilder Co-Host Craig Smith - @greatestdaymindset Guest Grant Dziak - @grantdziak Next Level Nutrition – @mynextlevelnutrition

The Global AI Summit just happened in New Delhi, and the message from India was clear: this country is no longer just writing code for the rest of the world. It's becoming an architect of the global AI order. Ivana Bartoletti, Chief Privacy and AI Governance Officer at Wipro and Council of Europe advisor, joins Craig Smith to unpack what that shift actually means. Her frame is the sharpest line of the episode: Europe writes the rules, the US writes the checks, and India is writing the code, in 22 languages. But she's careful to add that the AI race isn't just a technical one. It's about institutional capacity, the ability to absorb AI capability and drive it into real applications that serve real people at scale. The conversation ranges across the full landscape of AI's global moment: why companies that announced 100% AI replacement in customer service quietly had to rehire the humans they let go; why the popular narrative of "Europe regulates, America innovates" is a myth that doesn't survive contact with California's actual AI rules; and why India's strategic choice may prove to be the most durable positioning in a field where trust is becoming the scarcest resource. Bartoletti speaks from a genuinely rare vantage point: a European executive, sitting in Germany, working for an Indian company, advising the Council of Europe, watching the geopolitical AI order reorganize itself in real time. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

Ever feel like you're stuck repeating the same mistakes? Explore Jacob's story and learn how God helps us break unhealthy patterns, trust his timing, and experience the freedom found in following him.

One company now has more AI agents deployed in its organization than it has human employees. Slack's CMO Ryan Gavin dropped that stat into a conversation with Craig Smith, and then immediately identified the secondary problem it creates: when your digital workforce outnumbers your human one, how do employees know which agent to call for which task? That orchestration problem, and the conversational interface that solves it, is what this episode is really about. Gavin describes Slack bot's transformation from a notification tool into what he calls the ChatGPT moment for the enterprise, an AI that doesn't just understand the internet, but understands your business, your team, your customers, and your company's entire conversational history, all the way back to day one. The conversation covers the full arc of what this shift means in practice: a Salesforce executive walking into an unfamiliar meeting and being praised for their questions, because Slack bot had prepared them in minutes using the team's full history; a marketer who built his own data scientist agent over a weekend and is now completely unshackled from the bottleneck that was slowing him down; and Gavin's most honest admission, that he's been saying for years that AI won't replace jobs, but this is the first time he actually believes it, because the soul-crushing "work of work" is finally shrinking, and what's left is the kind of creative, high-energy output that people actually want to do. The inbox, he says, is a deathtrap in the AI era. The companies that figure out how to move beyond it will outperform their competitors by multiples. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

Zendesk went private two weeks before ChatGPT launched, and the moment it came out, it was obvious that customer service would never be the same again. Shashi Upadhyay, head of product, engineering, and AI at Zendesk, joins Craig Smith to explain what the company has built since: a self-improving AI system that doesn't just resolve tickets but learns from every failure, studies what the human did to fix it, and gets measurably better over time. He calls it the resolution learning loop, and for Zendesk's best customers, it's already resolving 70 to 90% of incoming tickets autonomously, up from the 10 to 20% that chatbots managed just a few years ago. The conversation goes deep on the engineering decisions that actually matter: why hallucination is a feature, not a bug, and why the real challenge is knowing exactly when to switch from creative AI to deterministic code; why Zendesk acquired Forethought and what made their approach to going live in days rather than months so valuable; and why, despite all the momentum, Upadhyay estimates we are only about 5% through the adoption of AI in customer service. The bottleneck isn't the technology, it's the change management required to restructure how human and AI workforces operate together. His vision of the end state is striking: personal AI agents talking directly to enterprise AI agents, resolving 90% of issues instantly, while humans focus exclusively on the complex, high-value interactions that genuinely require them. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

In this episode of The Brad Jensen Show, Craig Smith and I sit down for a candid conversation about life, growth, and the importance of taking risks. We discuss Craig's decision to step into a new career opportunity, the fear and uncertainty that come with major life changes, and why so many people never give themselves the chance to see what's possible because they're unwilling to bet on themselves. This wasn't a structured episode with one main topic. Just two friends talking shop, sharing lessons, and exploring what it means to pursue growth even when it's uncomfortable. If you've ever felt stuck, scared to make a move, or needed a reminder to trust yourself, you'll enjoy this conversation.   Next Level Links: Work With a Nutrition Coach - Schedule A Consultation Nutrition Coaching - www.becomenextlevel.com   Partner Links: Try Thrive Lab Free For One Month - Start Here Order Supplements From Transform - Shop Here Order Supplements From Cured Nutrition - Shop Here Order Supplements From Legion (use code keynutrition for 20% off first order) - Shop Here   Be Featured on the Show: Apply to be a live calller guest on the show - Submit Application Here Submit Q&A Questions to be read live on the show - Submit Here   Free Guides: Eating Out Guide - Get The Guide High-Protein Fast Food Orders - Get the Guide Macro Food Options Guide - Get The Guide Join Us On Patreon - Join Here   Connect with us on Instagram: Host Brad Jensen – @thesoberbodybuilder Co-Host Craig Smith - @greatestdaymindset Next Level Nutrition – @mynextlevelnutrition

Have you ever found yourself somewhere you never planned to be and wondered, "How did I get here?" This week on Continuing the Conversation, Craig Smith and Abbey Davis dive deeper into the story of Jacob's famous dream and explore one of the most powerful themes in Scripture: God's grace comes to us long before we deserve it. As Jacob runs from the consequences of his own choices, God meets him in an unexpected place with an unexpected promise. Craig and Abby unpack the meaning behind Jacob's ladder, why grace is always God-initiated, and what it means to trust God's direction when life feels uncertain. In this episode, you'll discover: What Jacob's ladder actually represents Why Christianity is different from every other "stairway to heaven" How God's grace reaches us before we reach Him The subtle ways selfishness blocks our relationship with God Why Christians often struggle to celebrate grace in other people How spiritual growth changes the way we see others If you've ever wrestled with disappointment, consequences, comparison, or wondering where God is leading you, this conversation offers hope, perspective, and practical encouragement.

You got what you wanted and lost everything that mattered. Now you're alone in a place you never chose. But Jacob's story in Genesis 28 reveals something you need to hear: you're not as lost as you think. God doesn't wait for you to have it together. He meets you right there.

CapeTalk’s Sara-Jayne Makwala King is joined on Weekend Breakfast by Craig Smith, Senior technical marine specialist with WWF South Africa. Weekend Breakfast with Sara-Jayne Makwala King is the weekend breakfast show on CapeTalk. This 3-hour morning programme is the perfect (and perky!) way to kickstart your weekend. Author and journalist Sara-Jayne Makwala-King spends 3 hours interviewing a variety of guests about all things cultural and entertaining. The team keeps an eye on weekend news stories, but the focus remains on relaxation and restoration. Favourites include the weekly wellness check-in on Saturdays at 7:35am and heartfelt chats during the Sunday 9am profile interview. Listen live on Primedia+ Saturdays and Sundays between 07:00 and 10:00am (SA Time) to Weekend Breakfast with Sara-Jayne Makwala-King broadcast on CapeTalk https://buff.ly/NnFM3Nk For more from the show go to https://buff.ly/AgPbZi9 or find all the catch-up podcasts here https://buff.ly/j1EhEkZ Subscribe to the CapeTalk Daily and Weekly Newsletters https://buff.ly/sbvVZD5 Follow us on social media: CapeTalk on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@capetalk CapeTalk on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ CapeTalk on X: https://x.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CapeTalk567 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

AI agents can now connect to every tool your employees use. The problem is that connecting them and trusting them are two completely different things, and most enterprises have figured out the first without solving the second. Oren Michaels, co-founder and CEO of Barndoor AI, joins Craig Smith to explain why that gap is the defining challenge of the agentic enterprise era. His framework is simple and sharp: agents are like enthusiastic interns. They will absolutely do something when you ask them to. Whether it's what you intended is another matter, and when an agent can act across Salesforce, Slack, email, and calendar simultaneously, the blast radius of a misunderstood instruction is far larger than anything a human intern could cause. The conversation covers the 100,000 agent problem - the reality that each agent handling a discrete task needs its own set of rules about what it's allowed to do, and that number scales to a size no human team can govern manually - and why traditional identity management systems were never built for the failure modes AI agents create. The new threat isn't bad actors getting in; it's authorized people using allowed tools with agents that still do the wrong thing. Barn Door's governance layer sits between the agent and the tools it can access, specifying exactly what each agent is permitted to do in each context, and Venn brings that same capability to individuals who want to understand what's possible before their organizations catch up. This is one of the most practically useful conversations available about what enterprise AI governance actually looks like. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

Every time you hit a phone tree or a chatbot with canned answers, you're experiencing the gap between what AI can already do and what most companies are still delivering. Craig Smith sits down with Tom Chen, Chief Product Officer at Aircall, to explore why that gap is closing fast, and what it means for any business that relies on voice as a customer communication channel. Tom makes a case that is both practical and counterintuitive: AI voice agents aren't better than your best human rep, but they are better than your average one. They never get frustrated. Their patience is infinite. Their tone never changes. And they can handle 100 concurrent calls at a fraction of the cost of a human operation, without lunch breaks, without bad days, and without going off script. The conversation covers a finding that should change how any business thinks about AI adoption: when one of Aircall's customers gave callers the explicit choice between a human agent and a faster AI agent, far more people chose the AI than anyone expected, and satisfaction scores went up. Tom also identifies the real bottleneck that most businesses don't see coming: it's not the AI technology, which is increasingly commoditized. It's the tribal knowledge, the undocumented expertise that lives in the heads of long-tenured employees and never gets captured anywhere, that determines whether an AI agent performs well or not. Until that knowledge is surfaced, even the best voice agent will underperform. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

What if one of the biggest obstacles to God's blessing in your life is the belief that you need to become someone else first? In this episode of Continuing the Conversation, Craig Smith and Tanner Lowe dive deeper into the story of Isaac, Jacob, and Esau from the Bad Blood series. Together, they explore a surprising truth hidden within one of the Bible's most dysfunctional family stories: God's plan often conflicts with our preferences. Through a fascinating discussion on biblical interpretation, spiritual formation, and leadership, Craig unpacks why Isaac's passivity created ripple effects that impacted generations—and what that means for us today. In this conversation, you'll discover: Why God's plan and our preferences often collide The surprising role Isaac plays in the Jacob and Esau story How spiritual passivity affects the people around us Why following Jesus is about more than personal faith How God shapes our desires over time The difference between God's plan and God's purpose for your life If you've ever struggled to trust God's direction, wondered whether you're missing something He has for you, or felt pressure to become someone you're not, this episode offers practical wisdom and powerful encouragement.

Most AI systems follow a gradient, a mathematical slope that tells them exactly how to improve, step by step, toward a known goal. Neuroevolution doesn't follow any gradient. Instead, it runs hundreds or thousands of competing solutions simultaneously, spreads them across the space of possibilities as broadly as possible, and lets the best ones recombine, the same logic that drives biological evolution. The result, as Risto Miikkulainen explains to Craig Smith, is creativity: solutions that no human designer would have anticipated, that emerge routinely from the evolutionary process. Miikkulainen is a professor at UT Austin and VP of AI Research at Cognizant AI Labs, and he has been working on this field since the 1980s, which makes him both a historian of it and one of its most active frontiersmen. The conversation covers a remarkable range: a mystery model that outperformed every competitor in a recent stock trading competition with forensic footprints pointing to neuroevolutionary AI; Sakana AI's system that autonomously designed experiments, wrote a paper, and had it accepted at a major machine learning conference; and a pandemic decision system that trained overnight and made country-specific recommendations by morning, with Iceland actually following some of them, all the way to the prime minister. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

One in four people over 65 will experience a fall, and for most of them, the technology designed to help is a device that hasn't meaningfully changed since the 1980s. Chia-Lin Simmons, CEO of LogicMark, joined Craig Smith to make the case that this gap is both unnecessary and solvable, and that AI is finally making it possible to shift personal safety from reactive to predictive. Her company's Freedom Alert Max doesn't just detect falls after they happen, it builds a personalized digital twin of each user, tracking steps, sleep patterns, and medication adherence over time to identify the subtle signs of health decline that even daily caregivers often miss. The conversation is one of the most grounded and human discussions of applied AI you'll hear, covering why Apple Watch fall detection was engineered for crash detection, not elderly falls; why AI can flag a problem but a human needs to hear the breathing on the other end of the line; and why the 700,000 caregiver shortage in America makes technology like this not a luxury but a scaling mechanism. For anyone navigating aging parents, their own future, or the sandwich generation pressures in between, this episode is both practically useful and genuinely moving. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

Have you ever felt like you had to perform, pretend, or become someone else to earn approval from people, or even from God? This week we dig into one of the Bible's most dysfunctional family stories and discover that the blessing was never meant to be faked for.

Your child's data profile doesn't start when they get their first phone. It starts before they're born, the moment a parent emails a gynecologist or visits a fertility clinic website. That's the core argument behind Born Private, Proton's new initiative that lets parents reserve an email address for their child at birth, anchoring their digital identity in a privacy-preserving ecosystem before the profiling machine gets started. Craig Smith sits down with Eamonn Maguire, Engineering Director, Machine Learning & AI at Proton, who has spent his career at the intersection of data, security, and visualization to explore what's really happening to our data and what, if anything, we can do about it. The conversation covers the mechanics of how just three email sign-ups can allow Google to infer your age, politics, and religion; why OpenAI and Anthropic have shown "not much regard for the law" when it comes to training data and copyright; and why social media platforms are operating like unregulated gambling companies - engineering addiction with no structural incentive to stop. It's one of the most grounded, specific, and genuinely alarming conversations about digital privacy you'll hear, and it ends with a simple, actionable proposition: privacy should be a decision you make at birth, not a problem you try to solve after the damage is done. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

A fly with 100,000 neurons can fly, find food, and reproduce. A $100 million supercomputer cannot. Dr. Terry Sejnowski used that observation to silence a room full of MIT AI researchers in the 1980s, and it remains just as sharp today. Sejnowski is one of the foundational figures in the history of deep learning, co-inventor of the Boltzmann machine, and a professor at the Salk Institute who has spent his career studying both the brain and the machines we build to imitate it. In this conversation with Craig Smith, he turns that dual perspective on ChatGPT, and what he finds is something genuinely clarifying: not a human mind, not a threat to humanity, but an alien intelligence that has absorbed more knowledge than any brain ever could while remaining fundamentally empty when nobody is talking to it. The conversation covers the full landscape of what current AI is missing - from goals and reinforcement learning to the constant self-generated flow of thought that defines consciousness - and why the word "understanding" is so ambiguous that even the world's top cognitive scientists can't agree on whether ChatGPT has it. Sejnowski also makes the case that hallucinations aren't a flaw to be engineered away but the flip side of creativity itself, that we are in a pre-Copernican era when it comes to understanding intelligence, and that the real future of AI lies not in scaling language models further but in looking at what nature has already solved, from field mice to fruit flies. His new book is written for the general public and available now. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

Luiz Domingos has spent 25 years watching enterprise communications evolve, from IP telephony to cloud to AI, and his assessment of where things stand now is unusually concrete. Companies have moved past the strategy deck phase. AI is being embedded directly into contact centers, compliance workflows, and communication pipelines, and the question executives are asking has shifted from "which model is smartest" to "which deployment reduces friction and stays compliant." Domingos is direct about what gets in the way: you cannot pour AI into a legacy architecture and expect transformation, and cloud-only AI doesn't solve the latency or data sovereignty problems that regulated industries face every day. In this conversation with Craig Smith, Domingos covers the practical mechanics of how Mitel is applying AI across its portfolio, from real-time transcription and sentiment analytics in contact centers, to agentic workflows that turn conversations into automated tickets and follow-ups. He draws a clear line between AI agents (which give recommendations) and agentic AI (which takes actions), a distinction the market consistently confuses. He also makes a prediction worth noting: within five years, voice will replace the traditional app interface as the primary way people interact with enterprise AI systems. For any CIO or CTO trying to move from experimentation to real ROI, his framework - start with workflow friction, not pilots - is the most actionable takeaway in the episode.

Training a frontier AI model today requires hundreds of thousands of GPUs, months of compute time, and a budget that only a handful of companies on earth can afford. Steffen Cruz, co-founder and CTO of Macrocosmos, thinks that model is about to break, and he's spending his time building what comes next. His project IOTA, operating within the BitTensor blockchain ecosystem, uses distributed training to split large language models across thousands of devices located around the world, coordinated by blockchain, and powered by surplus cheap energy wherever it exists. After nine months of research, the system can reproduce baseline benchmark performance using what Cruz calls "wonky vegetables" - unreliable, churning, globally distributed compute - and turn it into something indistinguishable from centralized training if you use the right approach. The conversation with Craig Smith covers the mechanics of how this actually works, why the blockchain's role is far narrower and more practical than most people assume, and why the Mac mini stockpiling trend creates an unexpected supply of distributed compute that can earn passive income when idle. Cruz's target: a 70 billion parameter model by mid-2025, trained at 10-20% of what it would cost through a hyperscaler, and aimed squarely at the legal firms, hospitals, and cash-strapped startups that have been waiting to train their own sovereign models but couldn't afford the price tag. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

Errol Gardner has spent 35 years advising the world's largest organizations through major technology transitions, and his assessment of where enterprise agentic AI actually stands is one of the most grounded you'll hear anywhere. His number: less than 1 out of 10 on a maturity scale. Not because the technology isn't ready, but because deploying agentic AI across an organization doesn't tweak how it works, it requires rebuilding how it works. And that is a fundamentally different kind of challenge than anything the AI hype cycle is currently acknowledging. In this conversation with Craig Smith, Gardner walks through why cloud adoption still hasn't reached 7 out of 10, what that means for agentic AI timelines, why the single biggest barrier to adoption is human resistance rather than technical limitation, and why governments will ultimately have to step in to manage workforce displacement at scale. He also raises a question that almost nobody is asking: is the value exchange between the technology sector and traditional industries sustainable in the long run? It's a conversation that doesn't just describe where AI is, it explains why the gap between the narrative and the reality has never been wider. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

Family tension. Generational mistakes. Repeating the same patterns over and over again. In this episode of Continuing the Conversation, Craig Smith and Colin McFarland dive deeper into Genesis and unpack the surprising purpose behind biblical history. Is the Bible just recording events… or is it trying to reshape how we see the world? From Jacob and Esau to Isaac's passivity, this conversation explores how unhealthy patterns get passed down through generations—and why God keeps inviting people into something different. You'll hear: Why Genesis is more than a history book How worldview formation shapes our lives today The hidden dysfunction underneath the Jacob and Esau story Why "following Jesus" is different than simply "knowing the Bible" How generational patterns continue unless someone breaks them This episode is honest, insightful, practical, and deeply relevant if you've ever looked at your family history and thought, "I don't want to repeat this anymore."

IBM's VP of Quantum Systems, Oliver Dial, has spent his career building quantum computers from the ground up, and he's unusually direct about what they can and can't do. In this conversation with Craig Smith, Oliver Dial walks through where the field actually stands in 2026: quantum utility was achieved in 2023, quantum advantage is the target for this year, and a fully error-corrected machine capable of tackling the hard problems is on IBM's roadmap for 2029. That last milestone, Dial says, now feels both achievable and terrifying. The episode is worth your time because Dial doesn't hype. He explains why IBM built a 1,000-qubit computer and then took it apart almost immediately, why Google's quantum advantage claims remain scientifically contested, and how a new error-correcting code IBM developed just reduced the qubit overhead required for fault-tolerant quantum computing by an order of magnitude. For anyone trying to understand what quantum computing will actually mean for their industry, and when, this is the clearest map of the road ahead available right now. If this conversation changed how you think about the future of computing, subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the researchers and builders shaping what comes next.

Esau didn't lose his birthright because it was taken, he traded it away because he was in a hurry. Find out what his story reveals about the blessings we're missing in our own lives.

Feeling exhausted? Overwhelmed? Like you're running on empty no matter how hard you try? In this powerful message from Isaiah 40:27–31, Pastor Craig Smith shares a hope-filled truth for anyone tired of just surviving. God never intended for you to carry life's weight alone—and He offers something better than grit, hustle, or trying harder. This message explores: Why overwhelm can make us feel forgotten by God The difference between a calling and a craving Why some of us are exhausted from running in the wrong direction How God renews strength for those who trust Him What it looks like to run without growing weary If you've been spiritually, emotionally, or mentally drained, this message is an invitation to slow down, refocus, and discover the strength only God can provide. Your exhaustion doesn't have to define you. There's hope. There's rest. And there's a better way forward.

Kris Lovejoy, Global Strategy Leader at Kyndryl, has spent her career at the intersection of IT infrastructure and security. Right now, she's one of the people enterprises call when they want to move from AI experimentation to real deployment. Her diagnosis is clear: agentic AI is a bullet train sitting on tracks built for 30 miles per hour. The technology is ready. Most organizations aren't, and the gap between a successful pilot and a production system running at scale is far wider than the hype suggests. In this conversation with Craig Smith, Lovejoy walks through why IT service management is the smartest entry point for agentic adoption, how cost savings of up to 90% in that area can fund broader modernization, and why the security risks in agentic systems are less about sophisticated hackers and more about misconfiguration, bad context, and human error. She closes with a specific prediction: half of traditional IT administration tasks will be handled by AI agents by 2031, and a surprising take on who will actually thrive in the agentic era: not coders, but people trained to ask the right questions. For anyone making decisions about AI adoption, this is the most practical conversation available right now. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

In this episode, Chris O'Donnell, the President of Select Service Division at Aimbridge Hospitality, shares how the balanced scorecard turns hotel operations into a meritocracy. You'll hear how Aimbridge cascades five universal metrics from CEO Craig Smith down to every property, why turnaround success starts with quick wins, and the bias-for-action principle Chris carries into every problem. A few more resources:If you're new to Hospitality Daily, start here. You can send me a message here with questions, comments, or guest suggestionsIf you want to get my summary and actionable insights from each episode delivered to your inbox each day, subscribe here for free.Follow Hospitality Daily and join the conversation on YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram.If you want to advertise on Hospitality Daily, here are the ways we can work together.If you found this episode interesting or helpful, send it to someone on your team so you can turn the ideas into action and benefit your business and the people you serve!Music for this show is produced by Clay Bassford of Bespoke Sound: Music Identity Design for Hospitality Brands

Economists and politicians have turned him into a mascot for free-market ideology. Some on the left say the right has badly misread him. In this updated replay of a 2022 episode, we hold a very Smithy tug of war.   SOURCES: Eamonn Butler, co-founder and director of the Adam Smith Institute. Glory Liu, a political scientist and Adam Smith scholar at Georgetown University. Mariana Mazzucato, professor in the economics of innovation and public value at University College London. Dennis Rasmussen, a professor of political science at Syracuse University. Russ Roberts, president of Shalem College in in Jerusalem; host of the EconTalk podcast; and author. Craig Smith, Adam Smith Senior Lecturer in the Scottish Enlightenment at the University of Glasgow.   RESOURCES: Adam Smith's America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism, by Gloria Liu (2022). "Henry and Adam: A Deep and Special Friendship," by Benny Higgins (Adam Smith Panmure House Perspective, 2020). "Rescuing Adam Smith From Myth and Misrepresentation," (The Economist, 2018). The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought, by Dennis C. Rasmussen (2017). How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness, by Russ Roberts (2014). "British Privatization — Taking Capitalism to the People," by John Moore (Harvard Business Review, 1992). Free to Choose: A Personal Statement, by Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman (1990). The Essential Adam Smith, edited by Robert L. Heilbroner (1986). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith (1776). The Theory of Moral Sentiments, by Adam Smith (1759).   EXTRAS: "In Search of the Real Adam Smith," series by Freakonomics Radio (2022). Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Feeling overwhelmed? You're not alone—and you're not stuck. In this message from our Overcoming Overwhelm series, we explore a powerful truth: it's not the size of your problems that's crushing you—it's the size of your perspective. Through Isaiah 40, we're reminded that nothing compares to God. Not your stress. Not your fear. Not the weight you've been carrying. When life gets loud and heavy, it's easy to focus on what's right in front of you. But what if the answer isn't fixing your problems… but lifting your eyes? This message will help you: Reframe what's overwhelming you Recognize what you've been leaning on instead of God Take a practical step to bring God back into focus You don't need smaller problems. You need a bigger view of God.

Ever feel overwhelmed by life… like your problems are just too big? What if the issue isn't the size of your problems—but the way you see them? In this episode of Continuing the Conversation, Craig Smith and Colin McFarland unpack a powerful mindset shift from the Overcoming Overwhelmed series. They explore what it means to make God your "big hammer"—and how reframing your challenges through faith can move you from anxiety to anticipation. You'll hear: Why your perspective matters more than your situation A simple daily question that can reshape your thinking How God works through every situation—even the hard ones Why our understanding of God is often too small How to trust God when you can't fully understand Him If Sunday's message left you thinking, this conversation will help you take the next step.

AI has fundamentally changed the cybersecurity threat landscape, not by inventing new attack types, but by collapsing the timeline. The same tools that make software developers more productive are now being used by attackers to move from vulnerability disclosure to active exploit in a matter of hours. That shift, argues Loris Degioanni, CTO and founder of Sysdig, changes everything about how defense needs to work. In this episode, Craig Smith talks with Loris Degioanni about why human-centered security is becoming a structural liability, what "headless cloud security" means in practice, and why the coding agent (tools like Claude Code or Codex) may become the new operating system through which all enterprise security workflows run. It's a conversation about architecture, urgency, and what it actually means to fight a tank when you've been trained to use a baseball bat. If this conversation made you think differently about AI and security, subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and defending the future.

 Special guest interviewee this month is Craig Smith, joining Pete to tell all about his pre 1980s Star Wars collecting. Elsewhere the lads indulge in a little fantasy theme park fun, tell all about their latest finds with even Richard picking something up this month, and go international as Face-Off heads to Spain, Canada, Mexico and, err, Indonesia. Andy Preston takes the reigns as quizmaster, and the team picks the best new acquisitions from around the world, with a DT Ben, an prototype poster, a Vader / Chewie mix-up, soapy Star Wars and Italian stationery. In Rebel Briefings the boys look back at Live, selling See Threepio, modelling on Endor, Maul on telly, Japanese rocket robots, Vic Reeves paintwork, and Youngie Oldie Yoda. Licensee this month is Kenner's pre-school range, from Star Tots to talking telephones, and all things Ewok - Fire Cart, Family Hut, Woodland Wagon and more. A lesser known, and - maybe - under rated line? Find out more on the podcast! Plenty of bluster and banter alongside, you can find the podcast in all the usual places.

In this episode, I sat down with my cohost Craig Smith to break down my weekend at a local bodybuilding show and everything it brought up for me. We talked about how insane it is what the human body can achieve at that level—but also how misunderstood it is. A lot of people think you can just take steroids and look like that, and that's just not reality. It takes years of discipline, precision, and a level of commitment most people aren't willing to touch. That led into a bigger realization for me: I don't think I'll ever step on stage again. Not because I can't—but because I fully understand the level of sacrifice required, and I'm clear that it's not a price I'm willing to pay anymore. From there, we dove deep into the concept of sacrifice—what it actually means, how it scales with the size of your goals, and how most people say they want something without being honest about what it's going to cost them. At the end of the day, the conversation really came down to this: if you want something meaningful, it's going to require real trade-offs. And if you're not willing to make those sacrifices, you don't actually want the goal—you just like the idea of it.   Next Level Links: Work With a Nutrition Coach - Schedule A Consultation Nutrition Coaching - www.becomenextlevel.com   Partner Links: Try Thrive Lab Free For One Month - Start Here Order Supplements From Transform - Shop Here Order Supplements From Cured Nutrition - Shop Here Order Supplements From Legion (use code keynutrition for 20% off first order) - Shop Here   Be Featured on the Show: Apply to be a live calller guest on the show - Submit Application Here Submit Q&A Questions to be read live on the show - Submit Here   Free Guides: Eating Out Guide - Get The Guide High-Protein Fast Food Orders - Get the Guide Macro Food Options Guide - Get The Guide Join Us On Patreon - Join Here   Connect with us on Instagram: Host Brad Jensen – @thesoberbodybuilder Co-Host Craig Smith - @greatestdaymindset Next Level Nutrition – @mynextlevelnutrition