Podcasts about CRMS

When your business depends on appointments, renewals, and repeat clients, dropped follow-ups and scattered notes are expensive problems. Handwritten reminders, sticky notes, and overcomplicated CRMs often create more friction than they solve. Today's guest, Jan Levine, CEO of ClientPulse Ltd, explains how he used Voice First AI to rescue his own rapidly growing financial practice from that chaos and then transformed his solution into a powerful platform that helps other service-based businesses stay organized, responsive, and consistently top-of-mind with their clients. In this episode of Marketer of the Day, Jan walks us through how voice-driven client management can replace tedious data entry and outdated workflows. Instead of typing notes or wrestling with bloated software, agents, advisors, salon owners, repair shops, and other professionals can simply talk into their phone as they leave a client meeting. Client Pulse automatically extracts the key details, contact info, assets, preferences, next steps, and appointment times, updates the record, sends a thank-you email, and schedules reminders, all in seconds. Jan dig into one of the biggest fears around automation and AI: that it will feel cold, fake, and impersonal. Jan explains how he intentionally designed Client Pulse to do the opposite, using AI to create more human, personal communication at scale. From birthday and anniversary reminders that prompt you to record a quick, personalized video, to one-click follow-up calls and policy renewal reminders, the system keeps you consistently present in your clients' lives without feeling like yet another generic, system-generated message. You'll also hear how Jan has extended this technology beyond business into family life. He demonstrates a simple visual “family wall” interface built for grandparents, where each grandchild is represented by a photo. With a single click, Grandma or Grandpa can start a video call, send a message, or trigger reminders like “take your medication” or “call Mom,” all powered by the same AI-assisted reminder engine. It's a compelling example of how voice, automation, and smart prompts can make life easier, not more complicated. https://youtu.be/NGymQYnyBdA?si=xL7V0EmTiivDaxE9 If you've ever felt guilty about weak follow-up, missed appointments, or losing client details in notes and memory, this episode will open your eyes to what's now possible. You'll learn how voice-first AI, personalized automation, and smart reminders can help you show up more consistently, deepen relationships, and grow your business, without adding more tech headaches to your day. Stay tuned to discover how Client Pulse can turn everyday conversations into organized, meaningful, high-touch client experiences. Quotes: "The whole idea is to use the concept of AI and the power of a contact management system, melding them so that the contact is very personalized and very much one-on-one." "That's what this is all about, using AI to find a better way for people to care for and about each other." "All of these features are designed not to replace but to augment communication, not to have any negative effect on anything artificial, just the opposite, personalizing everything." Contact Details: The Faster You Automate, The Faster You Grow: Try ClientPulse Today Connect with Jan on LinkedIn for More AI strategies, Business Growth Tips, and Real-World Insights

In this episode of the Crazy Wisdom Podcast, host Stewart Alsop speaks with Aaron Neyer, founder of Parachute and community organizer in Boulder, about knowledge management, extended minds, and the intersection of AI with human consciousness. They explore how Parachute functions as a digital brain tool for organizing thoughts and information across fragmented systems, discuss the dangers of AI psychosis and over-reliance on technology, and debate open source AI development versus controlled releases by companies like Anthropic. The conversation weaves through topics including the limitations of metrics-driven business thinking, consciousness and relevance realization, the value of technological sabbaths, and Aaron's hope for locally-run open source models that protect personal data while still accessing more powerful gated models when needed. You can find Aaron's writing at unforced.org and unforced.substack.com, and learn more about Parachute at parachute.computer and parachute.computer/blog.Timestamps00:00 Stewart welcomes Aaron Neyer, founder of Parachute and Boulder community organizer, discussing the origin of Parachute's name from Frank Zappa's quote about open minds.05:00 Aaron explains Parachute as an extended mind tool for organizing notes, contacts and information across multiple platforms, emphasizing the distinction between primary mind and extended mind as interconnected systems.10:00 Discussion shifts to metrics-driven business culture and the limitations of pure rationality, exploring how Google's data-driven approach misses subjective experience and the whole picture of relationships.15:00 Aaron discusses AI's ability to help identify relevant variables across different domains and the dangers of AI psychosis, comparing it to cult dynamics and belief systems.20:00 The conversation covers AI sabbaths and nineties retreats as intentional breaks from technology, plus Aaron's experiences with electrical engineering and using AI to design circuits with Arduinos.25:00 Exploring forbidden knowledge and open source AI, Aaron discusses Anthropic's guardrails around powerful models while arguing for distributed access to prevent concentration of power.30:00 Deep dive into open source AI strategy, with Aaron highlighting NVIDIA's approach and the potential for running capable models locally while reserving ultra-intelligent models for complex research tasks.35:00 Aaron shares his vision for local Sonnet-class models handling personal data while accessing Fable-class models for deep research, and directs listeners to unforced.org and parachute.computer for his writing.Key Insights1. The philosophy behind Parachute stems from Frank Zappa's quote that the mind is like a parachute and doesn't work if it isn't open. Aaron Neyer explains that having an open mind is valuable, but it must be balanced with deep roots to avoid becoming untethered. He has experienced periods in his life where excessive openness led him to feel disconnected, teaching him that creativity and expansion need to be grounded in something substantial. This same principle applies to how we organize information digitally, where openness and interoperability allow our extended minds to become more connected and coherent, which in turn helps our primary minds think more clearly.2. Parachute is designed as an extended mind tool that addresses the fragmentation problem in how we currently manage information. Most people use multiple disconnected tools like Obsidian, Notion, Apple Notes, Google Keep, and various CRMs to organize their thoughts, notes, and relationships. These systems don't communicate well with each other, creating inefficiency and confusion. Parachute aims to create a simple, intuitive system where all this information can be organized in one place with true interoperability, allowing users to own their data and have it speak effectively with other tools, ultimately making our entire extended mind more functional.3. Understanding ourselves as unified body mind organisms rather than fragmented parts is essential for effectiveness. Living systems theory shows that any living system is three things: a membrane bound dissipative structure, a self regulating autopoietic network, and a cognitive process actively knowing the world. Western civilization since Descartes and Galileo has created artificial separation between body and mind, and between subjective and objective experience, which limits our effectiveness. The same fragmentation affects our digital technology, and recognizing both our biological and digital systems as coherent wholes rather than disconnected parts makes us vastly more capable.4. The relationship between data driven approaches and holistic thinking reveals important limitations in modern business and science. While working at Google, Aaron observed how data driven decision making can be powerful, but over reliance on metrics like ROI creates blindness to crucial unmeasurable factors like goodwill and relationship quality. This reflects a broader Western tendency to exclude subjective experience because it's difficult for objective science to measure. However, emotions, relationships, and other subjective elements are essential parts of reality, and focusing only on quantifiable metrics means missing the whole picture and ultimately becoming less effective despite appearing more rational.5. AI accelerates the ability to work with technical complexity by helping with relevance realization across domains where we lack expertise. In any specialized field, experts develop intuitive senses for which variables matter and can quickly identify problems, whether in computer troubleshooting, music, or cooking. AI's ability to generalize allows it to point people toward relevant solutions in areas where they haven't developed that intuitive expertise, effectively democratizing technical capability. This means people can direct their creativity more effectively across more domains, though it also raises concerns about giving powerful capabilities to those who may lack the wisdom to use them responsibly.6. The question of open source AI versus gated access involves complex tradeoffs between democratizing power and preventing harm. Aaron respects Anthropic's approach of creating guardrails around powerful models like Mythos, which would likely have caused significant system hacks if released without restrictions. However, this creates concerning power dynamics where only wealthy companies, governments, and their allies have access to the most powerful tools. NVIDIA offers hope through their truly open source approach including full training pipelines, and there may be a viable path where open source models at the Sonnet capability level handle most tasks locally while more powerful Fable class models remain gated for the most demanding work.7. Creating intentional breaks from AI and technology is essential for maintaining clear independent thinking. Aaron practices an AI Sabbath at least one day per week when he doesn't interact with AI, and he finds these are the days when he does his best thinking and journaling. Without these breaks, he finds himself constantly jumping between journaling and prompting AI rather than giving himself space for deep reflection. This pattern mirrors broader concerns about AI consistency creating cult like dynamics similar to organized religion, where constant immersion in a belief system or technology can lead to losing the ability to think independently, making periodic disconnection crucial for maintaining cognitive autonomy and clarity.

In this episode of The Friday Habit, Mark sits down with Kevin Downey, a Kansas City-based entrepreneur and recruitment leader who helps B2B companies build high-performing sales teams and create scalable lead-generation systems.Kevin shares how his early career in golf equipment sales eventually led him into entrepreneurship, recruiting, outbound sales, and email marketing. He explains why his first attempts at email outreach failed, what changed when he began writing emails like real phone conversations, and why properly structured email campaigns can deliver an unmatched return on investment.The conversation also explores how small businesses should approach their first sales hire, why commission-only roles frequently fail, and how Latin American business development representatives can help companies scale outbound activity at a manageable cost.Kevin also challenges one of the most common beliefs in modern sales: that cold calling no longer works. According to Kevin, activity still creates opportunities. The problem is not that calling has stopped working—it is that many representatives are not consistently making the calls.Whether you are building your first sales process, hiring a business development representative, or trying to generate more qualified B2B leads, this episode offers a practical look at the systems, activity, and execution required to grow.

What if the systems slowing down your business aren't your workflows, but the software you're forcing yourself to use?In this episode, I'm joined by Notion consultant and workflow strategist Ania Ha to pull back the curtain on the custom Notion workspace she built for my business. We talk about everything from team management and automations to the growing conversation around replacing traditional CRMs with personalized systems built in Notion.I share what it was like hiring someone to build my systems for the first time, how that experience completely changed the way I think about my own clients, and why I believe the best tech stack isn't always the one with the most features—it's the one that actually fits the way your brain works.Find It Quickly:00:25 - Meet Ania05:38 - Instagram Widget09:17 - Why Clients Hire Her13:11 - Learning Notion as a Client19:36 - Toggles and Dashboard Design21:47 - Team Tracking and Databases25:45 - CRM Alternatives Debate28:58 - Simple CRM Starts30:18 - Zapier and Breakpoints31:54 - Frankenstack vs Scaling33:44 - Notion Client Portals35:43 - Notion Pricing Advantage36:51 - Team Workflow Automation41:49 - DIY Automation Tweaks44:00 - Notion Second Brain46:23 - Design Views and Tables49:39 - Mobile App and Shortcuts50:26 - Ask an ExpertMentioned in this Episode:Notion: notion.comDubsado: coliejames.com/dubsadoHoneyBook: coliejames.com/honeybookAirtable: airtable.comGoogle Workspace: workspace.google.comZapier: zapier.comTidyCal: tidycal.comDescript: descript.com/?lmref=0HiLlgLoom: loom.comMetricool: metricool.comCanva: canva.comThe Subscriber Society: latitudelane.com/subscribe-societyLaunch Your Own Way: cominguproses.co/products/lyowConnect with the Guest:Website: shecreatesmgmt.comInstagram: instagram.com/shecreatesmgmtThreads: threads.com/@shecreatesmgmtTiktok: tiktok.com/@shecreatesmgmt

Finding great real estate deals starts with finding motivated sellers—and that's exactly what we dive into in this episode. I sit down with digital marketing expert and real estate investor Brian Driscoll to discuss how investors can generate high-quality direct-to-seller leads using Google Ads and other inbound marketing strategies. We compare inbound marketing with traditional methods like cold calling, driving for dollars, and purchased lists, and explain when each approach makes the most sense as your investing business grows. Brian also shares the systems successful investors use to convert more leads into deals, including why speed to lead is one of the biggest factors in closing profitable opportunities. We discuss CRMs, automation, lead management, negotiation, and why approaching sellers with a problem-solving mindset consistently outperforms high-pressure sales tactics. Whether you're wholesaling, flipping, buying rentals, or using creative financing strategies like lease options and seller financing, this episode is packed with practical advice to help you find more off-market opportunities and scale your real estate business.

What if the biggest bottleneck in your business isn't your team, your budget, or your idea, but simply the fact that you haven't asked AI the right question yet? In this episode of The Happy Hustle Podcast, Michael Ballard closes out our AI Masterclass Workshop with maybe the most tactical, business first talk of the whole event. Michael is the founder of SlashDev, a software development agency that builds websites, mobile apps, CRMs, and lead generation systems for clients across a wide range of industries. He studied finance and entrepreneurship at the University of Washington, and back when vision models were just starting to recognize objects, he spent a year deep in a machine learning program dreaming up things like inventory scanners. He later worked at Ericsson on their automation and AI team, watching firsthand how a massive company rolls out new technology slowly and carefully. For the past five years he has poured that experience into SlashDev, and if you have seen the Happy Hustle Club's software platform, the one built around our Ten Alignment System, that is his team's work too. This episode matters because Michael does not talk about AI like a shiny new toy. He talks about it like a business owner who has to justify every dollar spent. His whole framework comes down to three questions. Does this generate revenue? Does it cut costs? Does it improve the product? If the answer is no to all three, skip it, no matter how cool the demo looks. One of the most useful ideas he shares is running a full audit of your business using a tool like Claude Code. Talk through your marketing channels, your partnerships, your team, your SOPs, even the salaries tied to certain tasks, and ask AI what the highest value opportunities are. He points out something a lot of us miss, which is that if everyone in your industry is showing up to a certain conference or using a certain channel and you are not, that is free money sitting on the table. He also gets real about content. Michael says he genuinely dislikes making content and barely uses Instagram, yet his team used AI voice cloning and animation tools to produce reels that pulled in twelve million views without him ever sitting in front of a camera. That is not about replacing authenticity, it is about removing the excuse that content takes too much time. The lead generation piece might be the most eye opening stat in the whole talk. His team scraped 49,000 leads for 158 dollars and used AI to score over 3,600 of them as ideal fits, ready for custom outreach that used to take a whole team to pull off. He also walks through building AI systems that answer texts after hours so hot leads never go cold, and one that studies your best sales calls so your entire team starts closing the way your top performer already does. Michael does not shy away from the limits either. When a listener asked about HIPAA compliance for a medical business, he was honest that it is still a real legal risk worth caution, and he pointed to cloud providers with compliant setups as a starting point rather than pretending there is a shortcut. If you are running a business and wondering where to actually point AI first instead of just experimenting for the sake of it, this episode gives you the exact lens to look through. Go listen to the full conversation at https://caryjack.com/podcastin/ and start with just one high ROI move this week. That is usually all it takes to see what is possible. Connect with Michaelhttps://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100076038248142https://www.instagram.com/slashdev.iohttps://www.youtube.com/@slashdevio/featuredhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/slashdev-io/ Find Michael on this website: https://slashdev.io/ Connect with Cary!https://www.instagram.com/caryjack/https://www.facebook.com/SirCaryJackhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/cary-jack-kendzior/https://twitter.com/thehappyhustlehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFDNsD59tLxv2JfEuSsNMOQ/featured Get a copy of his new book, https://www.thehappyhustle.com/book Sign up for The Journey: 10 Days To Become a Happy Hustler Online Course @ https://thehappyhustle.com/thejourney/ Apply to the Montana Mastermind Epic Camping Adventure @ https://thehappyhustle.com/mastermind/ “It's time to Happy Hustle, a blissfully balanced life you love, full of passion, purpose, and positive impact!” Episode Sponsors: If you're feeling stressed, not sleeping great, or your energy's been kinda meh lately—let me put you on to something that's been a total game-changer for me: Magnesium Breakthrough by BiOptimizers. This ain't your average magnesium—it's got all 7 essential forms that your body needs to chill out, sleep deeper, and feel more balanced. I take it every night and legit notice the difference the next day. No more waking up groggy or tossing and turning all night If you're ready to sleep like a baby, calm your nervous system, and optimize your recovery, go grab yours now at https://www.bioptimizers.com/happy and use code HAPPY10 for 10% OFF. =================================================================== My Green Mattress If you've been waking up with back pain, feeling stiff, or just not getting that deep, quality sleep. This might be what you're missing: My Green Mattress. It's made with clean, non-toxic, and eco-friendly materials, so you're not just sleeping better, you're sleeping healthier too. The comfort and support are on another level, and you can really feel the difference night after night. If you're ready to invest in better sleep and better recovery, check it out at https://thehappyhustle.com/mygreenmattress =================================================================== Ozlo Sleep If you've been struggling to fall asleep, stay asleep, or just wake up feeling actually rested, let me put you on to something that's been a total game-changer: Ozlo Sleep. These aren't your typical sleep buds. They're designed to block out noise and help your brain fully relax, so you can drift off faster and stay in deep, uninterrupted sleep. Perfect if you're a light sleeper or just want that next-level rest. If you're ready to upgrade your sleep and wake up feeling recharged, check out https://ozlosleep.com and save $80 OFF using code HAPPY.

Mallory is joined by Megan Cabrera, Director of Strategic Enrollment Management at Okanagan College, about an enrollment trap she calls “residual momentum,” where funnels look stable after marketing spend is cut, then collapse years later. Megan recounts pulling investment from a long-time feeder market during a budget crunch; applications initially held steady, but after partner institutions became degree-granting competitors, yield dropped from 25–50 students to 3–5. They discuss why dashboards lag reality and what earlier signals to watch, including engagement velocity, market penetration, conversion quality, competitor visibility, and relationship health with high schools. Megan argues for integrated, cross-department KPIs to fix handoffs, shares a digital check-in system built with IT to improve service and capture friction-point data, and cautions that AI and CRMs worsen problems without connected systems, data governance, shared definitions, and clear ownership. Related Links: Structuring Transfer Enrollment for Student SuccessHigher Education Marketing Alignment: Why Breaking Down Silos Is No Longer OptionalHigher Ed Marketing's Next Role: Student Experience - - - -Connect With Our Host:Mallory Willsea https://www.linkedin.com/in/mallorywillsea/https://twitter.com/mallorywillseaAbout The Enrollify Podcast Network:The Higher Ed Pulse is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you'll like other Enrollify shows too!Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Key Takeaways Solgari's leading innovations: Grant explains that Solgari provides a customer engagement platform built on Azure that extends Microsoft Teams and Dynamics 365 (as well as other CRMs) to capture customer conversations and centralize that data for better engagement. Customers are adopting it to quickly solve specific engagement challenges, gain fast ROI, and apply it to AI strategies to drive more intelligent business outcomes. AI's role in customer engagement: Companies that centralize customer conversations into a single data platform gain an advantage because AI is only as effective as the data it can access. Grant says customer engagement is "ground zero for AI" as it enables capabilities like automation, sentiment analysis, and sales or service intelligence that improve customer satisfaction, reduce costs, and deliver measurable ROI. Use case: Grant shares details on Solgari's involvement with AMB Sports & Entertainment, who own the Atlanta Falcons. Solgari helped them unify fan engagement across voice, SMS, email, and WhatsApp within Microsoft Teams and Dynamics 365, creating a repository of fan conversations in Dataverse. By consolidating this data, AMB Sports & Entertainment is now well positioned to "create momentum around their AI strategy." Final thoughts: In closing, Grant shares why Solgari has shifted its customer and partner conversations away from product demos and toward business outcomes, showing how customer engagement data can evolve into valuable AI use cases over time. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

Hi, I'm Connor with Honor - message me here! Are you wasting money on third-party open house apps? In this episode, Connor with Honor breaks down the most efficient, cost-effective way to capture open house leads and instantly funnel them into your real estate database.

John talks about selling high-priced systems, learning customers' businesses, simplified CRMs, and much more! Before retiring as North American Sales Manager for Zünd Systemtechnik AG in 2019, John Cote had a long career in sales of capital equipment and systems. Over his career, John was in sales or sales management with several large and medium sized companies including Fuji Film and HP. He also owned a couple of his own companies in the marketing, graphics and photography fields. John has given a lot of thought to the types of personalities and characteristics which seem to be common to top notch sale people and how to manage teams of these diverse and sometimes troublesome folk. John not only managed successful sales and sales support teams but gave talks to management teams in his own and other companies about how to recruit and manage sales people and sales teams.

In Season 6, Episode #235 of Boroughs and Burbs, John Engel, Roberto Cabrera, and Scott Hobbs explore how today's most effective professionals are leveraging AI to work with greater intention, precision, and efficiency. From intelligent meeting summaries and next-generation CRMs to content strategy and relationship management, this conversation examines how technology is becoming a trusted partner—not a replacement—for expertise. The professionals who thrive tomorrow will be those who embrace innovation while preserving the personal relationships that define exceptional service.

George Wright III hosts Anthony Perera on The Daily Mastermind to discuss Perera's operator-first approach to building and investing in companies through his family office, Exuma Capital Partners. Perera shares his background scaling Air Pros USA from one HVAC truck to a $200M+ nationwide business and explains Exuma's thesis of acquiring founder-led companies typically earning $2–10M EBITDA, installing infrastructure (KPIs, CRM/ERP, leadership teams), driving organic growth and M&A, and positioning them for private equity acquisition. He emphasizes real-time visibility into leading indicators over month-end lagging reports, looks for fragmented, AI-resistant service industries, and describes operational upgrades like implementing CRMs and modern marketing. Perera highlights AI's ability to automate or augment nearly every business process and recounts pivoting inspected.com multiple times before scaling and exiting. Timestamps:02:03 — From Operator To Investor03:21 — Exuma Private Equity Starter Kit04:49 — Visibility And KPI Tracking06:17 — Fragmented Industries Thesis09:31 — Why Operators Win11:33 — Grooming COOs Into CEOs12:57 — Fast Operational Wins15:15 — AI For Service Businesses18:19 — Inspected Pivot Story21:27 — EOS And Portfolio Support22:23 — Exuma Priorities And Wrap UpThanks for listening, and Please Share this Episode with someone. It would really help us to grow our show and share these valuable tips and strategies with others. Have a great day.George Wright III“It's Never Too Late to Start Living the Life You Were Meant to Live”FREE Daily Mastermind Resources:CONNECT with George & Access Tons of ResourcesGet access to Proven Strategies and Time-Test Principles for Success. Plus, download and access tons of FREE resources and online events by joining our Exclusive Community of Entrepreneurs, Business Owners, and High Achievers like YOU.Join FREE at DailyMastermind.comFollow me on social media Facebook | Instagram | Linkedin | TikTok | YoutubeGrow Your Authority and Personal Brand with a FREE Interview in a Top Global Magazine HERE.Guest Bio:Anthony Perera is the Managing Partner of Exuma Capital Partners, a serial entrepreneur turned private equity investor. He has scaled multiple companies before launching Exuma Capital Partners, a family office focused on the lower middle market. Anthony brings the rare perspective of someone who has built, operated, and now acquires companies. His insights are especially relevant to operational private equity, AI disruption, and consolidation strategies. He emphasizes founder-led investing, operational scaling, and the opportunities in fragmented industries for value creation and roll-up strategies. He also discusses how AI will reshape middle-market businesses and why operator-led private equity is increasingly successful.Links:Website: https://www.exumacapital.com/LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/anthonypereraAdditional links: https://www.exumacapital.com/ | https://linkedin.com/in/anthonyperera

AI has made software easier than ever to build. That does not mean every internal tool should become the backbone of your business. In this episode, Bryan sits down with Chris Guthrie to break down the growing temptation inside cannabis companies to vibe code internal tools, dashboards, CRMs, ERPs, and operational systems in the name of saving money. The problem is not the first version. The problem is what happens two months later, when a field does not map, the workflow breaks, the person who built it is unavailable, and a production team is now relying on code nobody fully understands. Chris explains the difference between a useful AI-built prototype and an enterprise-grade system that can survive real operators, messy data, security needs, compliance, multiple departments, M&A diligence, and future FDA-style requirements. This conversation covers why descriptive data does not create predictive insight, why Google Sheets to vibe coding can become a path to failure, and why the real AI opportunity starts after the business has clean data, clean processes, and a system strong enough to trust. This episode covers: The weekend build that fails Descriptive data will not predict Clean books before M&A Chapters   00:00 The Rise of AI in Software Development 03:07 Challenges of Internal Software Development 06:09 Understanding What 'Works' in Software 09:10 The Risks of Vibe Coding 12:05 The Importance of Established Infrastructure 14:58 Cost Considerations in Software Development 17:56 Predictive Insights and Data Utilization 21:13 Defining Core Business Focus 23:17 The Challenges of AI Implementation 27:00 Understanding AI's Limitations 28:58 The Importance of Data Governance 31:11 Navigating Change Management in Cannabis 35:51 Preparing for Industry Evolution 40:09 The ROI of ERP Systems Our Links: Bryan Fields on Twitter The Dime on Twitter Extraction Teams: Want to cut costs and get more out of every run? Unlock hidden revenue by extracting more from the same input—with Newton Insights. At Eighth Revolution (8th Rev), we provide services from capital to cannabinoid and everything in between in the cannabinoid industry. The Dime is a top 5% most shared  global podcast The Dime is a top 10 Cannabis Podcast  The Dime has a New Website. Shhhh its not finished.

In this episode of the HVAC Know It All Business Edition Podcast, co-hosts Gary McCreadie and Furman Haynes from WorkHero sit down with Brynn Cooksey Sr, CEM, CMS. He is the Founder of Air Doctors Heating & Cooling and HVAC U (Building Scientists). He discuss the business side of home performance contracting and explains how contractors can build highly profitable businesses by focusing on diagnostics, customer education, and measurable results. The discussion explores customer qualification, maintenance retention, team training, operational systems, and the financial benefits of delivering complete solutions instead of simple equipment replacements. Brynn also shares practical advice for business owners looking to scale their companies through better processes, stronger customer relationships, and a commitment to quality. Brynn a leading training organization focused on HVAC, building science, and home performance. With experience in both utilities and contracting, Brynn has become a respected educator and industry leader, helping thousands of contractors improve their technical knowledge, business operations, and customer outcomes through data-driven solutions.   Expect To Learn: - Why not every homeowner is the right customer for your business - How home performance testing creates trust and supports premium pricing - The connection between quality installations, customer retention, and referrals - How Brynn trains employees to embrace building science principles - Why bigger-ticket projects can improve profitability and efficiency - The role of processes, CRMs, and administrative systems in scaling a business - Key hiring and financial lessons for contractors looking to grow sustainably   Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction 00:55 - Finding the Right Customers for Long-Term Success 02:10 - Building Customer Loyalty That Lasts for Generations 05:47 - Turning Expertise Into a Repeatable Business Model 08:08 - Creating a Training Culture That Scales 09:59 - Building Processes That Make Quality Consistent 10:33 - Why Bigger Tickets Create Better Business Outcomes 12:37 - Unlocking Revenue Beyond Equipment Replacement 13:19 - The Hidden Cost of Oversized Equipment 17:56 - Financial Lessons Every Contractor Needs to Learn 18:47 - Closing Thoughts   Follow our Guest Brynn Cooksey Sr, CEM, CMS: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theairdoctor/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theairdoctor313/    Company LinkedIn: Air Doctors Heating & Cooling: https://www.linkedin.com/company/airdoctorshvacservice/  HVAC U (Building Scientists): https://www.linkedin.com/company/hvac-ubuildingscientists/    Company Website:  Air Doctors Heating & Cooling: https://www.airdoctorshvacservice.com/  HVAC U (Building Scientists): https://www.hvactrain.com/  Company Instagram:  Air Doctors Heating & Cooling: https://www.instagram.com/airdoctorshvac  HVAC U (Building Scientists): https://www.instagram.com/hvac_university     Follow Gary McCreadie: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-mccreadie-38217a77/  Website: https://www.hvacknowitall.com  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/HVAC-Know-It-All-2/61569643061429/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hvacknowitall1/    Follow Furman Haynes:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/furmanhaynes/  WorkHero: https://www.linkedin.com/company/workherohvac/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workhero__/

Most business owners are chasing more leads while ignoring the biggest opportunity they already have, the customers they've already earned. In this episode Spencer explains why your existing customer list may be your most valuable asset and how adding complementary services can dramatically increase customer lifetime value without spending more on advertising. Learn how businesses like roofers, asphalt contractors, remodelers, retailers, and service companies can create recurring revenue by solving additional problems for the customers they already serve. Spencer also shares practical examples of using a CRM to automate follow-up campaigns, schedule recurring services, and generate new revenue with almost no extra effort. You'll also hear business insights from Alex Hormozi, Peter Drucker, and Jay Abraham on customer retention, increasing purchase frequency, and creating more value for every client. If you've ever wondered how to grow your business without constantly chasing new customers, this episode is for you. In this episode: Why your current customer list is worth more than you think How to identify new services your customers already need Simple examples of recurring revenue opportunities Using automation and CRMs to generate sales on autopilot How increasing customer lifetime value can transform your business Lessons from Alex Hormozi, Peter Drucker, and Jay Abraham Subscribe to the Idaho Business Podcast for practical, no-fluff strategies to help you build a stronger, more profitable business. If you are feeling the love, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you are!! If you'd like to be featured on an episode go to theidahobusinesspodcast.com to APPLY! Apple Podcasts Spotify  

Send us Fan MailWhat's really happening in your sales offices when you're not there? Leah Turner, national sales coach and trainer at Melinda Brody & Company, is back on the show for the 40th anniversary year of one of the most unique research studies in new home sales. In this episode, she and Anya Chrisanthon dig into the 2025 Annual Benchmark Report - and what the data reveals about where sales teams are winning and where they're still leaving sales on the table. Listen to a previous episode with Leah here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/secrets-to-successful-realtor-engagement-with-leah/id1602564768?i=1000623849874What video mystery shopping actually looks like Shoppers walk into your sales office with a hidden camera. The full interaction is recorded, scored, and sent to the sales manager. But what makes Melinda Brody & Company different is the one-on-one call before the shop - where the shopper is briefed on the specific challenges that sales manager wants to address. It's not a gotcha. It's a baseline.The builder story gap - still Only 49% of sales associates shared the builder story in 2025. Leah says the problem isn't awareness - it's the introduction. Salespeople don't know how to bring it up naturally. Her fix: start with "Have you ever built a new home before?" and let the answer lead you in. And whatever you do - say the builder's name. One associate described the warranty, the quality, and the energy efficiency for several minutes and never once said who the builder was.The model demo jump From 84% to 95% in one year. The biggest shift Leah has seen: top producers are bypassing the sales office entirely and taking buyers straight into the model. Into the kitchen. Let them walk. Join them. The forced "sit down in the sales office first" approach was raising everyone's anxiety - including the salesperson's.Closing is not a moment - it's the whole presentation Closing sits at 52%. Leah's take: salespeople treat closing like something that happens at the end, which makes it terrifying. If you ask "what's important to you in a home, a homesite, a builder, a community?" upfront - and customize everything around those answers - the close at the end is just a natural next step. You've earned the right to ask.The buyers walking in today are already qualified Buyers use technology to disqualify. If they made it through the research phase and walked into your sales office, they are interested. They are a hot lead. As Leah puts it - they're more like a B-back than a first-time visitor. Treat them that way.Follow-up jumped from 51% to 67% Technology and CRMs are helping. But Leah's warning: generic follow-up is worse than no follow-up. If your message is "thanks for coming out, call me if you have questions" - don't bother. Make it specific. Make it memorable. Reference something real from the presentation. Better yet - shoot a 30-second video of yourself.The cringiest things caught on camera Smoking cigarettes on the home site. Painting fingernails. Eating lunch. Not standing up when a prospect walks in. And the shift Leah has seen over the last ten years: top performers now ask to be video shopped. They want to see themselves. They want to improve.Connect with Leah: leah.turner@melindabrody.com Connect with Ben Marks: ben.marks@melindabrody.com Melinda Brody & Company on LinkedIn and FacebookAbout Anewgo Anewgo is an all-in-one new home sales and marketing platform. We equip builders with AI-ready homebuilder websites, interactive design tools, floorplans, sitemaps, AI Sales Assistants, and data analytics to create personalized buyer journeys. Learn more at anewgo.com or find every episode at anewgo.com/podcast.Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anewgo-of-new-home-sales/id1602564768

THE EVOLUTION OF TALENT CRMS (Building Talent Communities in the Agentic Era)   The recruitment technology stack is undergoing its most profound transformation since the shift from paper CVs to applicant tracking systems. Autonomous AI agents—capable of reasoning, planning, and executing complex workflows without human intervention—are now infiltrating every stage of the talent lifecycle, rendering traditional CRM architectures obsolete. The passive database of yesterday, where candidate records sat dormant until manually activated, is giving way to dynamic, self-orchestrating ecosystems where agents continuously nurture, assess, match, and engage talent at scale. For talent acquisition leaders, the question is no longer whether to adopt agentic technology, but whether their CRM infrastructure can survive the transition—or become a costly legacy anchor dragging strategy backward.     • From Database to Ecosystem – Why legacy CRM architectures, built for human-driven search-and-retrieve, collapse under the demands of autonomous agent orchestration   • Agentic Capabilities Defined – Distinguishing between automation (rule-based) and true agentic AI (goal-directed reasoning) in candidate engagement and pipeline management   • The Always-On Pipeline – How agentic CRMs transform talent pools from static repositories into living networks that self-nurture, self-qualify, and surface opportunities without recruiter intervention   • Hyper-Personalisation at Scale – Whether AI agents can replicate—or exceed—the authenticity of human relationship-building without triggering candidate alienation   • Data Sovereignty and Trust – Navigating the ethical and compliance minefield of agents autonomously interacting with candidates, processing sensitive data, and making consequential decisions   • The Recruiter Redefined – How agentic CRMs shift the human role from execution to exception-handling, strategy, and high-stakes relationship stewardship     • Measuring Agentic ROI – Moving beyond vanity metrics to evaluate whether autonomous systems genuinely improve quality of hire, time-to-productivity, and candidate experience   • Vendor Landscape Reality – Cutting through the marketing noise to identify which CRM platforms are genuinely agentic-ready versus those simply rebranding automation   Watch this essential discussion to future-proof your technology strategy. The agentic era will not wait for hesitant adopters—and the CRM decisions you make today will determine whether your function leads or is rendered redundant by those who moved faster.   We're on Friday 3rd July at 2pm BST. Register by clicking on the green button (save your spot) and follow the channel here (recommended).     Ep391 is supported by our friends at Joveo   High-Performance Recruitment Marketing Powered by Agentic AI. Integrated Talent Attraction - everything before the ATS.   Find out more here

Katie Williams, chief operating officer and co-founder of Tern, talks with James Shillinglaw of Insider Travel Report about how her company has become so successful in just three years, with its products and services adopted by many of the big agency consortia and host agencies. Tern is an all-in-one, cloud-based software platform built specifically for travel advisors and travel agencies that is designed to replace the patchwork of separate tools (CRMs, itinerary builders, commission trackers, email, spreadsheets) that advisors traditionally juggle. And now Tern is using AI to make it even easier for advisors to accomplish all these tasks so they can focus on selling travel. For more information, visit www.tern.travel.  All our Insider Travel Report video interviews are archived and available on our Youtube channel  (youtube.com/insidertravelreport), and as podcasts with the same title on: Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Listen Notes, Podchaser, TuneIn + Alexa, Podbean,  iHeartRadio,  Google, Amazon Music/Audible, Deezer, Podcast Addict, and iTunes Apple Podcasts, which supports Overcast, Pocket Cast, Castro and Castbox. 

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HEREIn this Maximum Lawyer episode, Tyson Mutrux sits down with longtime friend of the show, automation and AI expert Kelsey Bratcher of Hired Gun Solutions to talk about the future of intake, phone answering, and legal tech. The conversation starts from a simple Facebook post about hiring an AI answering service and turns into a brutally honest breakdown of why most voice AI products are expensive, over‑engineered, and still not better than a well‑built DIY solution.Kelsey explains how tools like Retell let law firm owners build their own AI receptionist for a fraction of the cost of vendor setups, using the same documentation they already give Smith, Ruby, or Lex Reception. You'll hear practical guidance on scope, latency, and call flow, why “simple beats fancy,” and how to use AI plus APIs to replace low‑value data‑entry work while protecting the human parts of client communication. Tyson and Kelsey also zoom out to the bigger picture: migrations between case management systems, why legal tech pricing is broken, and how AI will reshape non‑lawyer roles inside law firms.What you'll learn:Why most AI answering services are overpriced and still average at intake.How to use Retell to build your own AI receptionist with your existing scripts.The importance of keeping scope narrow and latency low so calls feel natural.When AI can replace virtual receptionists and when you still need a human.Smart call‑flow tweaks (using caller ID, fewer confirmations) that boost conversion.Where outbound AI is risky and when it works for expected, simple calls.How Kelsey uses AI to build one‑off tools and migrations in hours, not days.Why legal tech pricing is broken and which non‑lawyer roles are most exposed.Highlights00:01 – How a Facebook post on AI receptionists sparked this episode.01:28 – Kelsey's “build your own on Retell” philosophy and cost breakdown.04:27 – Retell explained: connect language models and voice APIs without coding.06:34 – Do AI receptionists lose leads? Why scope and consistency matter.10:34 – Latency: the real make‑or‑break factor for voice AI.12:45 – Fixing annoying call flows: stop over‑confirming names and emails.14:12 – Why Kelsey avoids outbound AI for provider calls and sensitive data.17:18 – Using AI to build tools that talk to APIs instead of “agents clicking around.”22:25 – Five‑minute Codex app that fixed a multi‑hour data‑entry mistake.26:07 – Inside a multiplaintiff lawsuit tool tied into major CRMs.29:19 – Faster, cheaper case‑management migrations using AI‑built scripts.31:33 – Moving away from Zapier/Make in favor of AI‑built micro‑apps.33:32 – “Legal tech is going to get rock and rolled” and why.36:29 – The flat‑fee AI trap and token consumption.39:18 – Which non‑lawyer roles AI eats first and which survive.44:37 – First 30‑day steps to test voice AI in your firm.Connect with KelseyWebsite InstagramFacebook

This episode of Hustle Inspires Hustle features Alex Quin and Michelle as they break down the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence and how tools like ChatGPT and Claude are transforming the way businesses operate, create, and scale. The conversation dives deep into real-world applications of AI inside marketing agencies, content creation workflows, and the rise of AI agents reshaping entire industries.Together, they explore how different AI platforms serve different purposes—Claude's strength in reasoning, systems, and data analysis versus ChatGPT's power in creativity, image generation, and fast execution. They also unpack how entrepreneurs are now building automated workflows, SOPs, and even full “digital workers” using AI tools connected to CRMs, spreadsheets, and marketing systems.The episode also expands into the future of search, advertising, and SEO as AI shifts user behavior away from traditional Google searches toward conversational AI interfaces. Finally, they discuss the broader impact on jobs, emphasizing the urgency for professionals to adapt or risk falling behind in an AI-driven economy.Episode Outline:[00:00] Intro, life update, returning from hiatus, audience engagement [02:30] Why AI has become the main focus in their business and agency work [05:45] ChatGPT vs Claude overview and how each tool is being used today [09:10] Claude for reasoning, dashboards, data analysis, and system building [12:40] ChatGPT for creative work, images, and fast content generation [15:20] Building AI workflows across tools (hybrid systems and stacking platforms) [18:30] AI agents, automation, and replacing manual business processes [21:10] Real examples: CRMs, spreadsheets, emails, and marketing automation [23:00] The future of ads: intent-based search vs interest-based targeting [25:10] SEO shifts, AI search, and the decline of traditional Google traffic [26:30] The impact of AI on jobs, industries, and creative professionals [27:19] Final thoughts, urgency to adapt, and closing messageWisdom Nuggets:There Is No “Best AI Tool”: Success with AI comes from using the right tool for the right job—not choosing one platform over another. Claude and ChatGPT work best together, not in isolation.Systems Beat One-Off Prompts : The real advantage comes from building workflows, SOPs, and automated systems that run repeatedly—not just asking one-off questions.AI Agents Are the Next Workforce Layer : Businesses are quickly moving toward digital workers that handle emails, calls, data analysis, and operations with minimal human intervention.Search Behavior Is Changing Forever: Users are shifting from Google to AI chat interfaces, which will reshape SEO, PPC, and how businesses generate traffic and leads.Adaptation Is No Longer Optional: Industries are being reshaped in real time. The ability to learn and apply AI tools will determine who scales and who gets left behind.Power Quotes“Claude is better for reasoning. ChatGPT is better for creativity. The real power is using both together.” — Alex Quin“AI doesn't replace thinking—it replaces the repetition that slows you down.” — MichelleConnect with Michelle:Instagram: (https://www.instagram.com/michellechia)Linkedin: (https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-chia1/)Connect With the Podcast Host Alex Quin:Instagram: (https://www.instagram.com/alexquin)Twitter: (https://twitter.com/mralexquin)LinkedIn: (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mralexquin)Website: (https://alexquin.com)TikTok: (https://www.tiktok.com/@mralexquin)Books Mentioned:How to Market Your Restaurant Online — Alex QuinThe Digital Marketing Dictionary — Alex QuinPolo's Day at the Park — Alex Quin & Michelle's children's bookOur CommunityInstagram: (https://www.instagram.com/hustleinspireshustle)Twitter: (https://twitter.com/HustleInspires)LinkedIn: (https://www.linkedin.com/company/hustle-inspires-hustle)Website: (https://hustleinspireshustle.com)*This page may contain affiliate links or sponsored content. When you click on these links or engage with the sponsored content and make a purchase or take some other action, we may receive a commission or compensation at no additional cost to you. We only promote products or services that we genuinely believe will add value to our readers & listeners.*See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What tools should you have in your coaching practice? You do not need a full website, complicated tech stack, or every system perfectly built before you start financial coaching. But there are a few essential tools that can make things much smoother for both you and your clients as you start and grow your coaching practice. In this episode, Maria and Cody talk through four tool categories newer coaches should consider: schedulers, payment processors, CRMs, and budgeting tools. They discuss why scheduling links can reduce back-and-forth, why a professional payment processor matters, how a CRM can help you manage contacts and communication as your business grows, and why coaches need a budgeting tool that both they and their clients can access. They also talk about why a full website is not always the first thing a new coach needs, how free versions of tools can help you get started, and why the best tool is often the one that fits the way you actually work. If you are new to coaching, this episode will help you think through what you may need to get started. And if you have been coaching for a while, it may be a good opportunity to review the tools you are already using and decide what needs to be adjusted.

Send us Fan MailCapital is tight, and that changes everything, from how we fund inventory and expansion to how we think about risk. We talk through what happens when borrowing a few million dollars suddenly comes with painful rates, low leverage, and a lot more “no” than “yes.” If you run a shed dealership, portable building manufacturing operation, or rent-to-own program, this conversation is about staying alive long enough to win: cash reserves, liquidity, and making sure you can cover payroll, rent, and overhead when the market gets weird.We also dig into the rent-to-own side of the shed industry and why longer terms and lower money down can be both necessary for the consumer and challenging for investors. Deferred income changes your cash flow profile, and immature portfolios can bleed before the long-term yield shows up. That reality affects how investment funds view the whole space, and it influences whether your best next move is a financing portfolio, hard assets like land and a bigger plant, or a simpler plan that keeps dollars up front.Then we bring it down to the ground level: shed marketing, CRMs, online buying behavior, and the fast shift toward AI search. Google's AI Overview is already training customers to stop clicking, and that means your SEO, website content, and pay-per-click strategy must evolve. We also push back on the idea that AI can replace real work. Customers still want trust, clear answers, and a real person who delivers on time.If you found value here, subscribe, share this with another shed business owner, and leave us a review so more people can find these conversations.For more information or to know more about the Shed Geek Podcast visit us at our website.Would you like to receive our weekly newsletter?  Sign up on our website: shedgeek.comFollow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube at the handle @shedgeekpodcast.To be a guest on the Shed Geek Podcast visit our website and fill out the "Contact Us" form.To suggest show topics or ask questions you want answered email us at info@shedgeek.com.This episodes Sponsors:Studio Sponsor: Shed Geek MarketingVelocity 360RTO SmartShed Suite

In this podcast, I sat down with Ronan Leonard, founder of Intelligent Resourcing, to break down how he helps sales teams eliminate the 40% of their day spent manually researching companies and instead deliver real buying signals directly into the CRM so reps can take action. We talked about how fast AI is reshaping business models—Ronan compared it to waking up and finding the snow gone overnight—and why he refuses to build SaaS right now. He explained “dark data” hidden in sales call transcripts, how he enriches CRMs into “evergreen” systems, and how those insights feed content and GEO/answer optimization. We also covered tool-stack volatility, internal tooling vs productizing, structuring teams around learning speed, value-based pricing and price elasticity, and we had an honest disagreement on co-risking and revenue-share deals.01:36 AI Overwhelm and Pace03:19 Snowstorm Business Models04:13 No SaaS Moat Strategy05:09 Signals Into the CRM06:45 Dark Data and Transcripts08:55 Scaling Clients and LTV15:49 Team Structure and Learning19:41 Agents vs SOP Iteration24:39 Standardize Custom Work24:59 Value Based Pricing Framework27:48 Cost Savings Case Study30:16 Pricing as Perception31:49 Why Upside Deals Fail35:36 Confidence and Client Execution36:34 Staying Ahead of AI Curve39:37 Creativity and Feedback LoopsConnect with Ronan: • https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronan-leonard/https://intelligentresourcing.co/Connect with Raul: • Work with Raul: https://dogoodwork.io• Free Growth Resources: https://dogoodwork.io/resources• Connect with Raul on LinkedIn (DMs open): https://www.linkedin.com/in/dogoodwork/ 

George Wright III interviews Colton Page, managing partner at PlatPay, about how entrepreneurs lose money daily through overlooked payment infrastructure, hidden fees, fraud, and risk. Page explains that payment processing is more than “hooking up Stripe,” requiring proper architecture across gateways, CRMs, plugins, and banking relationships, including true redundancy across different banks rather than multiple processors tied to the same bank. They discuss trends like friendly fraud and chargebacks at scale, owner-operator versus enterprise roles, and growth leakage from unnoticed fees, downgrades, and declines, with examples of businesses overpaying by tens of thousands per month. Page outlines PlatPay's ability to interpret large, antiquated Visa data files to surface actionable insights, then layer secure AI in a dashboard to help owners make faster decisions. They preview Page's new podcast, Above the Edge, aimed at learning-focused founder operators through real, vulnerable conversations, and note challenges like Visa VAMP compliance and delayed visibility into penalties.00:00 AI vs Real Edge01:03 Welcome and Money Leaks02:37 Payments Misconceptions03:54 Fraud and Chargebacks04:44 Enterprise Operator Mindset06:09 Payment Infrastructure Strategy08:08 Why Start a Podcast10:04 Meaning of Above the Edge11:16 Ideal Listener and Vulnerability14:12 Hidden Costs of Scaling17:44 Downgrades Explained19:05 Data Files and AI Layer22:56 VAMP Compliance Risks27:25 Founder Mistakes and Audits30:06 Wrap Up and Next StepsThanks for listening, and Please Share this Episode with someone. It would really help us to grow our show and share these valuable tips and strategies with others. Have a great day.George Wright III“It's Never Too Late to Start Living the Life You Were Meant to Live”FREE Daily Mastermind Resources:CONNECT with George & Access Tons of ResourcesGet access to Proven Strategies and Time-Test Principles for Success. Plus, download and access tons of FREE resources and online events by joining our Exclusive Community of Entrepreneurs, Business Owners, and High Achievers like YOU.Join FREE at DailyMastermind.comFollow me on social media Facebook | Instagram | Linkedin | TikTok | YoutubeGrow Your Authority and Personal Brand with a FREE Interview in a Top Global Magazine HERE.Guest Bio:Colton Page is the Managing Partner of PLATPAY, an AI-powered financial company built on the belief that traditional financial systems are inefficient, opaque, and costly. Through PLATPAY, he helps enterprise merchants recover lost revenue using advanced AI tools for fraud detection, chargeback automation, compliance protection, and financial reconciliation. His work focuses on rebuilding financial infrastructure from the ground up with AI—helping businesses protect their revenue while enabling investors to grow their wealth more effectively.Links:Instagram https://www.instagram.com/coltenpage/LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/colten-page-1b32093a/Facebook https://www.facebook.com/colten.page.1

Jon Ferrara is the Founder and CEO of Nimble, a CRM company that helps businesses build and manage relationships through modern contact and relationship management tools. A pioneer in the CRM industry, he previously co-founded GoldMine Software, one of the earliest CRM platforms for small and mid-sized businesses. He has helped grow Nimble into a widely used platform with integrations across tools like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, as well as a strong presence in the Microsoft partner ecosystem. Jon is also known for his focus on authentic relationship-building, blending AI with human connection, and his journey toward purpose-driven leadership. In this episode… Managing business relationships today is a balance between efficiency and authenticity. While automation tools improve workflows, they can also make interactions feel impersonal. How can professionals use technology to grow relationships without losing the human connection? For Jon Ferrara, a CRM pioneer, building strong business relationships requires shifting away from systems focused only on pipelines and reporting and instead prioritizing tools that support real human connection. He explains that effective relationship management happens when contact records are automatically enriched from sources such as email and LinkedIn, allowing users to focus more on engagement than manual entry. He highlights the importance of making relationship-building accessible to everyone in an organization, not just sales teams. This approach helps businesses stay organized while still being deeply personal in their outreach. He also emphasizes blending AI with intentional human actions to build trust and long-term relationships. In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Jon Ferrara, Founder and CEO of Nimble, to discuss building technology that supports authentic relationship management. They explore why most CRMs fail at true connection, how AI can enhance — not replace — personalization, and how Nimble makes relationship-building easier across teams. Jon also shares lessons on service-driven business and personal resilience.

Welcome back to HALO Talks! In this episode, we're joined once again by Adam Sedlack, CEO of UFC Gym, for another conversation that explores the evolution of the brand since his last appearance in May, 2019. (Link below.) Adam takes us behind the scenes on navigating the challenges of COVID-19, transitioning to a franchise-focused, asset-light business model, and expanding globally, with UFC Gyms now operating in 48 countries and growing. You'll hear firsthand how strategic decisions protected both the UFC brand and its franchisees, why careful franchisee selection and capitalization are crucial, and how UFC Gym's new concepts, like boutique jiu-jitsu studios, are shaping the industry's future. Plus, Adam shares very candid advice for fitness entrepreneurs, his thoughts on brand partnerships, and what true community means inside—and outside—the gym doors. Whether you're a franchise veteran or just starting out, this episode is packed with a ton of takeaways.  Key themes discussed UFC Gym's global franchising strategy and expansion Navigating COVID-19 financial challenges without bankruptcy Franchisee support, training, and operational infrastructure Introducing UFC Gym Jiu Jitsu boutique model Importance of franchisee passion and capitalization Opportunities for gym conversions and management partnerships Synergies and potential for brand sponsorships in clubs A Few Key Takeaways 1.Asset-Light, Franchise-Focused Strategy Post-COVID: The organization shifted from owning corporate gyms, creating significant rent and debt liabilities, toward an asset-light, franchise-centric model. Assets were sold to well-capitalized franchisees, and proceeds were used to pay off debt, allowing the company to emerge stronger post-pandemic 06:07. 2. Disciplined Franchisee Selection: Success in franchising is not just about expansion but about choosing the right partners. The best franchisees are both properly capitalized and deeply passionate about the brand and its mission. A lack of either capital or passion is a deal-breaker, and sometimes it's about connecting people who have both qualities 20:39. 3. Global Expansion & Diversified Models: The brand is now developing in 48 countries, opening nearly one new gym every week, and is on track to increase that pace. Performance is especially strong in larger 30,000-40,000 square foot models. Additionally, they've launched a low-capital UFC Gym Jiu Jitsu studio to serve smaller markets and new owner-operator franchisees, expanding their reach and appeal 06:23. 4. Operational Infrastructure and Automation: To scale effectively, automation, robust systems, and support infrastructure are essential. The company leverages tools like Club Connect, comprehensive CRMs, and AI to support franchisees, enabling even average teams to perform at high levels by following well-crafted operational manuals 17:41. 5. Potential and Practice of Facility Conversions: There is growing opportunity in converting existing, often underperforming, fitness facilities (sometimes with landlords becoming franchisees) into refreshed UFC Gym-branded locations. The model is flexible, allowing for such conversions and even management partnerships where the UFC Gym team operates facilities on behalf of landlord-owners 26:24. Resources:  Adam Sedlack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamsedlack  UFC Gym: https://www.ufcgym.com Adam's first HALO Talks:  https://www.halotalks.com/adam-sedlack-president-ufc-gym (May 2019) Integrity Square: https://www.integritysq.com Prospect Wizard: https://www.theprospectwizard.com Promotion Vault: https://www.promotionvault.com HigherDose: https://www.higherdose.com

Scheduling is the #1 headache we hear about from painting contractors — and in this episode, Chris Moore pulls back the curtain on how to build a scheduling system that actually works for your painting company.If you're tired of juggling whiteboards, spreadsheets, and last-minute crew shuffles, this episode breaks down exactly how to bring structure (and sanity) to your week.What You'll Learn:Why there's no "perfect" scheduling solution — and the comforting truth that even the best-run painting companies don't operate at 100% efficiencyScheduling software options for painting contractors, from CRMs and project management tools to Google Calendar, Google Sheets, and yes — even the office whiteboardWhat information belongs in every job file — work orders, crew assignments, and the details that prevent costly miscommunicationHow to maximize crew efficiency by assigning a dedicated project manager, scheduling around crew strengths and weaknesses, and setting up dedicated teams (like cabinet crews)Weather-proofing your schedule — how to keep interior and commercial jobs in your pipeline to avoid rain delays killing your weekSetting expectations early with vague timeframes, Saturday work, and 10-hour days when rain days hitThe mindset shift: controlling what you can control so you can let go of what you can't (painters calling in sick, weather, etc.)Whether you're running a 5-person crew or scaling toward a fully systemized operation, this episode gives you practical, real-world frameworks to schedule smarter and run a more efficient painting business.

Fun chat with Phil McTaggart, Director of Internet Marketing at Johnson Auto Plaza in Colorado.Phil has one of the more interesting jobs in automotive right now: helping a successful, old-school dealership figure out how to balance decades of traditional advertising with the realities of digital marketing in 2026.We talk about everything from convincing ownership that paid search is a thing, to cleaning up CRMs with 17-year-old service leads still sitting in them, to why so many dealers ignore their most valuable asset: their customer data.Along the way, we debate high-funnel marketing, why sales teams should know what marketing campaigns are running, whether Amazon really wants to sell cars, and how AI might eventually judge your dealership based on a random Reddit comment from someone you've never met.We also discuss why dealerships overcomplicate things, why "because I listen to that radio station" is a terrible advertising strategy, and how Phil reinvented his career after a serious health diagnosis forced him off the showroom floor.If you're in automotive, you'll probably find yourself nodding along. If you're not, you'll at least learn why car guys can spend 20 minutes arguing about a CRM.Enjoy the conversation.

In this episode, I sit down with Kasey Jorgenson, broker and owner of Jorgenson Group Real Estate, to discuss how agents and brokerages can use AI to streamline operations, improve follow-up, and create more time for meaningful client relationships.  Kasey shares how his team is leveraging AI-powered workflows, automated task management, and custom-built assistants to reduce administrative burden and help agents focus on high-value activities. From using AI to prioritize daily tasks and review communications to building an internal AI assistant that helps identify opportunities and improve lead engagement, he provides practical examples that agents can implement today.   The conversation also explores how AI is changing the role of CRMs, why connectors and integrations are becoming increasingly important, and how even non-technical agents and brokers can begin building custom solutions to solve real business challenges. Kasey explains why AI should be viewed as a tool to enhance productivity and client service, not replace the human relationships that drive long-term success in real estate.   Guest: Kasey Jorgenson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaseyjorgenson/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kaseyjorgenson  Website:  https://jorgensonrealestate.com/ Host: Rajeev Sajja Website: http://www.realestateaiflash.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rsajja Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/rajeev_sajja LinkedIn: http://www.linkedIn.com/in/rsajja Rajeev's Resources:  Join our Instagram Real Estate AI Insiders Channel - https://ig.me/j/AbZCJG37DqBPPtxi/ Get 14 days Wispro Flow Pro Free Trial - https://ref.wisprflow.ai/rajeev-sajja  Subscribe to our weekly AI Newsletter: https://realestateai-flash.beehiiv.com/subscribe

In this episode of Future Finance, Paul Barnhurst and Glenn Hopper sit down with Ron Nachum, Founder and CEO of Sapien, to discuss how AI agents are transforming financial operations and decision-making for companies. Ron shares how Sapien leverages AI to unify siloed financial data, automate workflows, and provide actionable insights, helping companies unlock millions of dollars in hidden value while enabling employees to focus on strategic work.Ron Nachum is the founder and CEO of Sapien, an AI-native platform that deploys agents to understand and act on messy, siloed data across ERPs, data warehouses, CRMs, and spreadsheets. Ron studied at Harvard, where he focused on computer science, statistics, and applied AI research. He has spent years building AI solutions for finance and operational processes, creating systems that help companies make better, faster decisions and optimize their operations.In this episode, you will discover:AI can unlock value from messy, siloed financial dataSapien's platform automates reporting, forecasting, and operational decisionsHuman oversight and governance remain crucial for AI configurabilityTalent density and culture are key to scaling a young, fast-growing companyEarly entrepreneurial mindset shapes long-term innovationRon Nachum demonstrates how AI can revolutionize financial operations by turning siloed, messy data into actionable insights. Sapien's platform empowers companies to automate reporting, optimize decisions, and free employees to focus on high-value work. Ron emphasizes that combining AI with governance, configurability, and a talented team creates systems that not only deliver immediate value but also scale strategically.Follow Ron:Website: https://sapien.ai/newsLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ron-nachum/Follow Glenn:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gbhopperiiiFollow Paul:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thefpandaguyFollow QFlow.AI:Website - https://bit.ly/4i1EkjgFuture Finance is sponsored by QFlow.ai, the strategic finance platform solving the toughest part of planning and analysis: B2B revenue. Align sales, marketing, and finance, speed up decision-making, and lock in accountability with QFlow.ai. Stay tuned for a deeper understanding of how AI is shaping the future of finance and what it means for businesses and individuals alike.In Today's Episode:[00:00] – Trailer[03:15] – Data-Rich, Analysis-Poor Challenge[06:21] – Harvard & the Leap to Sapien[11:32] – AI Agents in Finance[17:01] – Balancing AI Flexibility & Guardrails[23:19] – Efficient & Secure Data Handling[26:34] – Making Insights Accessible to All Teams[30:45] – Configurability, Forecasting & Learning[38:22] – Real-World Impact & Optimizations[40:25] – Leading Young Teams with Experienced Advisor[46:11] – Early Entrepreneurial Ventures[49:13] – Closing Thoughts & Thanks

In this episode, Michael Blank sits down with investor and capital raiser Robyn Thompson to explore the mindset, systems, and strategies behind raising capital for multifamily deals. After transitioning from residential real estate and fix-and-flips, Robyn realized that her true strength wasn't finding deals—it was building relationships and connecting investors with opportunities. She shares her journey from raising her first $400,000 to helping secure more than $3 million across multiple deals, revealing the lessons she learned about overcoming fear, building credibility, leveraging CRMs, and creating a repeatable capital-raising process. If you've ever felt intimidated by raising money or unsure whether you're a deal finder or a capital raiser, this episode provides a practical roadmap for taking action and building confidence.Key TakeawaysYour First Capital Raise Will Feel Uncomfortable—Do It Anyway The hardest part of raising capital is starting the conversation. Confidence comes through repetition, and each conversation gets easier than the last.Play to Your Strengths Instead of Doing Everything Yourself Successful syndicators focus on their unique abilities, whether that's finding deals or raising capital, and partner with others who complement their skill sets.Lead with Education, Not the Deal Investors respond better when you focus on understanding their goals and educating them about their options instead of immediately pitching an opportunity.Systems and CRMs Create a Scalable Capital-Raising Business Organizing contacts, segmenting audiences, and consistently nurturing relationships through email, text, and social media turns capital raising into a repeatable process.Trust and Credibility Matter More Than Perfect Pitch Decks Investors want to work with someone who communicates clearly, understands their needs, and guides them confidently through the investment process.Scarcity and Clear Next Steps Drive Action Asking for allocation amounts, scheduling follow-up conversations, and communicating limited availability can significantly improve investor commitment.Connect with MichaelFacebookInstagramYouTubeTikTokResourcesTheFreedomPodcast.com Access the #1 FREE Apartment Investing Course (Apartments 101)Schedule a Free Strategy Session with Michael's Team of AdvisorsExplore Michael's Mentoring ProgramJoin the Nighthawk Equity Investor ClubReview the Podcast on Apple PodcastsSyndicated Deal AnalyzerGet the Book, Financial Freedom with Real Estate Investing by Michael BlankFor full episode show notes visit: https://themichaelblank.com/podcasts/session528/

On this week's episode of the Maximize Business Value Podcast, "Document Processes Without Slowing Down" host Kim Bentson is joined by Mastery Partners certified partners, Terry Chevalier and Gil Bean, to discuss “How do I know when investing in systems like EOS, CRMs, and project management software is actually worth it?"Listen to our podcast weekly to hear more from Mastery Partners and to receive relevant key content on your journey to maximizing your business value! #MasteryPartners #MaximizeBusinessValuePodcast #BusinessOwnerHotline #TRA #TransitionReadiness #ValueCreation #LeadershipGET THE BOOKSStart with Maximizing Business Value by Tom BronsonLearn More about Kim BentsonKim Bentson is an accomplished Strategic Manager with a proven track record of delivering results. Kim is a natural problem-solver who is passionate about helping businesses achieve their full potential and is committed to delivering her clients the highest level of service.Learn More about Terry ChevalierTerry Chevalier, owner and Managing Director of Sunstone Associates, offers over 25 years of telecommunications expertise, guiding companies through vast opportunities and challenges, including federal programs and high-value exits.Learn More about Gil BeanAs a Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA), Gil Bean applies his curiosity, empathy, and his desire to listen to maximize business value and preserve wealth. His strategic advisory leverages past success as an EOS Implementer and his long history in enterprise software sales, helping owners achieve clarity for their successful exit.Mastery PartnersElevating Businesses to Achieve The Business Owner's Dream Exit The unfortunate reality is that for every business that comes on the market (for whatever reason), only 17% of them achieve a successful exit. You read that right. 83% of attempted business transitions never reach the closing table. Mastery Partners is on a mission to change that. We ELEVATE businesses to achieve maximum value and reach that dream exit.Our objectives are simple - understand where the business is today, identify opportunities for dramatic improvement, and offer solutions to enhance the business, making it more marketable and valuable. And that all starts with understanding the business owner's definition of his or her dream exit.  Mastery has developed a 4-Step Process to help business owners achieve their dreams.STEP 1: Transition Readiness Assessment STEP 2: Roadmap for Value Acceleration STEP 3: Relentless Execution STEP 4: Decision: Now that desired results are achieved, the business is ready for the next step in the journey!CONNECT WITH MASTERY PARTNERS TO LEARN MORELinkedInWebsite© 2025 Mastery Partners, LLC.

In this "best of" episode, I'm sharing some golden nuggets from sales trailblazers, Jamie Crosby, Nick Kane, and Liz Heiman. They share the secrets behind scalable, trust-based referral selling to help you ditch haphazard "who do you know?" asks and start building referral systems that deliver. Today's show is packed with actionable advice on referral selling—the dos, the don'ts, and lessons learned from real-world sales situations. Outline of This Episode [00:41] Jamie Crosby's top three referral selling do's and don'ts [05:12] Importance of organically building relationships over time to generate referrals [06:28] Nick Kane on asking for referrals [11:41] Strategic networking using LinkedIn and CRMs [14:43] Liz Heiman on proactively reaching out for referrals [08:57] Checking in before asking referrals [17:09] Combining referrals with event networking [18:31] Referrals can be about more than just sales Earn It Before You Ask The first rule of referral selling is: never ask before you've earned it. Value comes before requests, and any referral agreement should always be transparent and in writing. Jamie Crosby suggests continually updating your referral sources—celebrate the wins and share the bumps in the road so they're never blindsided, a practice that deepens trust and professionalism. Jamie shares the story of when years of nurturing relationships paid off when, unprompted, multiple referral partners stood up to share testimonials about her business's impact. Thoughtfully built referral networks don't happen overnight, but their ripple effect can be truly magnificent.   Timing, Tact, and Tenacity For Nick Kane, excellence in service is the foundational "do"—without it, no referral program stands a chance. He underscores the importance of educating customers on referral benefits and making the process straightforward and enticing for them. The key differentiator is timing. Ask too early, and you risk coming off as transactional; wait too long, and you may miss your window.  Nick illustrates these principles with an example involving a multi-level referral chain to infiltrate a dream client account. By mapping connections, leaning on LinkedIn, and nurturing advocates at each step, he struck gold—not with a cold call, but a series of warm, credible introductions.    Don't Make It Hard Liz Heiman champions a methodical approach, have a written plan, be proactive (maybe pick up the phone!), and most importantly, don't dump all the legwork on your customer. Instead of vague or open-ended asks, she suggests specificity: do your homework and invite your customers to simply confirm or connect, not to brainstorm on your behalf. Liz also shares how blending event networking with referral requests can yield better introductions. By encouraging clients to bring contacts to meetings, dinners, or information sessions, you transform referrals from awkward asks into mutually beneficial experiences. This creates more natural, lower-pressure entry points for growing your network, and helps your advocates help you more easily. Connect with Jamie Crosby Jamie Crosbie on LinkedIn Jamie Crosbie on Twitter     Connect with Nick Kane Nick Kane on LinkedIn  Nick Kane on Twitter    Connect with Liz Heiman Liz Heiman on LinkedIn  Liz Heiman on Twitter  Connect With Paul Watts  LinkedIn Twitter    Subscribe to SALES REINVENTED Audio Production and Show Notes by PODCAST FAST TRACK https://www.podcastfasttrack.com  

Most real estate agents think they have a database. What they actually have is a collection of contacts they've never organized, updated, or consistently communicated with. In this episode, Tim and Julie Harris break down the real purpose of a database, why most CRMs fail to deliver results, and how agents can use AI without losing the human connection that actually creates listings. You'll learn why passive marketing is becoming less effective, how to leverage technology to organize your business, and why direct conversations with your sphere of influence and past clients remain the fastest path to predictable income. Tim and Julie also explain the growing role of AI in real estate, where social media is heading, and why agents who focus on relationships will continue to outperform agents who rely solely on automation. If you're looking for a practical strategy to generate more listings, more referrals, and a stronger real estate business in 2026, this episode will show you exactly where to focus your time and energy. Free training: HarrisRealEstateDaily.com Coaching: PremierCoaching.com Join eXp + Libertas: WhyLibertas.com/Harris Text Tim Direct: 512-758-0206 Opinions are my own and not the views of eXp Realty.

Axel sits down with Pat Carino — a multifamily developer, acquisitions professional at NRP Group, and co-founder of DealNav — for a wide-ranging conversation that spans institutional development, deal sourcing at the highest level, and the origin story of a software tool that Aligned Real Estate Partners actually uses in their own business.Pat breaks down the three-bucket deal sourcing framework he uses at the institutional level — brokers, referral network (architects, engineers, attorneys), and true off-market sourcing. The second half of the conversation dives into DealNav — what it is, why Pat built it, and why a purpose-built deal tracking CRM with a map beats bloated all-in-one platforms for acquisitions-focused operators. This episode is essential listening for any investor who wants to understand how deal sourcing is done at the institutional level — and how the same principles apply whether you're buying a 10-unit or a 300-unit ground-up development.Join us as we dive into:The three-phase development contract lifecycle: due diligence, entitlement approvals (6 months to 1+ year), and closing — and how it differs from a traditional value-add acquisitionThe three-bucket deal sourcing framework: broker deals, referral network (architects, engineers, land use attorneys, economic development offices), and true off-market direct-to-ownerThe story of a vacant 30,000 sq ft retail building: a two-year follow-up campaign, tracking down the decision-maker through her daughter's Instagram DM, and closing the deal after years of patient persistenceWhy having a CRM with clean notes, timestamped follow-up reminders, and a linked map is the only way to manage a multi-year, multi-contact off-market pipeline at scaleThe origin story of DealNav: from colored pins on a Jersey City poster board to an Excel/Google My Maps hybrid to a purpose-built SaaS product — and why 15 demos of competing CRMs came up shortThe three boxes DealNav was built to check: simplicity (prospecting only, no bloat), a map-first interface, and single-user affordable pricingHow DealNav became a deal source for Pat's institutional acquisitions work — and why building a real estate community and a real estate software company often leads to the same peopleWhat makes a good development site: rent comps that justify new construction, favorable taxes (or abatements), manageable affordability requirements, and the right construction typeSign up for the DealNav CRM HEREConnect with Pat Carino:Follow him on Twitter/XConnect with him on LinkedinLearn more about DealNavAre you looking to invest in real estate, but don't want to deal with the hassle of finding great deals, signing on debt, and managing tenants? Aligned Real Estate Partners provides investment opportunities to passive investors looking for the returns, stability, and tax benefits multifamily real estate offers, but without the work - join our investor club to be notified of future investment opportunities.Connect with Axel:Follow him on InstagramConnect with him on LinkedinSubscribe to our YouTube channelLearn more about Aligned Real Estate Partners

Daniel and James sit down with Adam Ryan, CEO and co-founder of Workweek, the media-tech company that's home to the five largest professional communities across fintech, HR, e-commerce, marketing, and healthcare. Adam built the company on a simple insight: the people with the most professional experience are the least likely to share it publicly. So he built Workweek to solve it, pulling from his days as the first hire and president of The Hustle before its sale to HubSpot.The conversation digs into Workweek's newly announced partner platform, which connects newsletter ad engagement signals directly back to advertiser CRMs. Adam shares that 95% of newsletter clicks today are bots, that his platform is matching 44% of Fortune 500 CRMs, and that sales teams are claiming 3-4x more credit than they deserve while marketing gets none. If you've ever wondered why proving newsletter ROI feels impossible, this episode explains exactly why and how Workweek is changing it.Thank you to our sponsors:​ AdQuick — ⁠adquick.com⁠​ ⁠Thrad.ai⁠ — ⁠thrad.ai⁠​ beehiiv — ⁠⁠beehiiv.com⁠​ The Farm — thefarmllp.com STAY CONNECTEDJames on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborowDaniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldrugerSubscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

Trae Sterling is a seasoned executive with more than three decades of experience spanning real estate, home warranty,  and insurance. Known for driving revenue growth, building high-performing teams, and executing strategic expansion initiatives, Trae has consistently delivered results across both B2B and B2C organizations. Currently serving as Executive Vice President and National Sales Director for Real Estate at Choice Home Warranty, Trae leads the company's national growth strategy within the real estate sector, leveraging a strong consumer foundation to expand market share and deepen industry partnerships. Throughout his career, Trae has held senior leadership roles with organizations including Home Warranty of America, Entitle Direct Group, First American Home Warranty, and American Home Shield. He has successfully led multi-state operations, managed large sales organizations, and implemented scalable growth strategies—earning recognition such as "Manager of the Year" and delivering consistent year-over-year performance gains. Trae's core strengths include integrated sales strategy, leadership development, performance management, and business expansion. He is widely respected for his ability to motivate teams, build strong partnerships, and translate complex business objectives into actionable results. A licensed real estate broker in Tennessee, Trae remains deeply connected to the industry that shaped his career. He is also actively involved in community service, supporting organizations such as Youth Villages and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.    In this episode, Karen and Trae discuss: Success Story of Trae Commit to Get Leads The fundamentals will still work. Use the technology and tools that are now available, like CRMs and automations, but you still have to go to the people who are producing to make contacts.  Consult to Sell Teach your consumers how you can solve their problems, even the ones they don't realize are a problem yet.  Connect to Build and Grow Utilize your database. Drip on your database every single month with information of value.  Success Thinking, Activities, and Vision Empower your team by asking what they want and putting them in the best spot to be able to do that.  Sweet Spot of Success   "I think one component that sometimes gets lost is if you're not having fun, you shouldn't do it." - Trae Sterling   Connect with Trae Sterling: Website: https://chwpro.com/  Email: tsterling@chwpro.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trae-sterling-2448709  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/silvertrae/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trae.sterling    About the Podcast Join host Karen Briscoe each month to learn how you can achieve success at a higher level by investing just 5 minutes a day! Tune in to hear powerful, inspirational success stories and expert insights from entrepreneurs, business owners, industry leaders, and real estate agents that will transform your business and life. Karen shares a-ha moments that have shaped her career and discusses key concepts from her book Real Estate Success in 5 Minutes a Day: Secrets of a Top Agent Revealed. Here's to your success in business and in life!   Connect with Karen Briscoe: Facebook: 5MinuteSuccess Website: 5MinuteSuccess.com Email: Karen@5MinuteSuccess.com   5 Minute Success Links Learn more about Karen's book, Real Estate Success in 5 Minutes a Day Karen also recommends Moira Lethbridge's book "Savvy Woman in 5 Minutes a Day." Subscribe to the 5 Minute Success Podcast   Spread the love and share the secrets of 5 Minute Success with your friends and colleagues!     Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

What happens when the mistake of a missed photo shoot turns into one of the most beloved CRMs for creative entrepreneurs? In this episode, I sat down with Dubsado co-founder and CEO Becca Berg to talk through building a SaaS company from scratch with her husband Jake, scaling to 30,000+ users, and why staying self-funded has shaped every decision they've made over the last decade.We talked about the real beginnings of Dubsado, the growing pains behind CRM development, why certain features take time, and what's actually coming inside Dubsado 3.0. Becca also opened up about one of the hardest moments in Dubsado history and how trusting her gut changed the way she leads the company today.If you've ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of the CRM so many creatives rely on every day, this episode is for you.Find It Quickly00:38 - Meet Becca03:50 - Dubsado's Origin Story08:10 - Building the First CRM10:13 - Customization as the Edge12:02 - First Customers and Milestones17:46 - Growing the Team22:42 - Why Stay Self Funded25:20 - Why Features Take Time29:25 - Scheduling Feedback to Release31:24 - New Form Builder Vision34:10 - Subscriptions and Checkout36:53 - Beyond Project Based Work42:25 - Hard Lessons and Payments Crisis45:24 - Stripe Migration and Sub Accounts48:53 - Dubsado 3.0 Sunset TimelineConnect with BeccaWebsite: Dubsado.comInstagram: instagram.com/dubsadoInstagram: instagram.com/beccaliz_Threads: threads.com/@beccaliz_

Brent Daniels breaks down the final marketing model that is absolutely crushing it in 2026 for wholesalers with a budget under $2,000 a month. Discover why Inexpensive Pay-Per-Lead (PPL) is the ultimate secret weapon for highly skilled communicators. Brent reveals how to leverage AI-driven CRMs to sift through cheap, non-exclusive leads and bubble the best prospects directly to the top of your pipeline.Plus, Brent shares exactly what you need to build the ultimate "prospecting cockpit" in your home office to keep you motivated, focused, and closing deals. If you want to know how to squeeze every drop of income out of your lead flow and adapt to the modern wholesaling landscape, this episode is your roadmap. Be a part of the TTP training program now.---------Show notes:(0:00) Beginning of today's episode(1:50) A recap of the Sniper List and Agent Referral Automation strategies(2:35) Why Inexpensive Pay-Per-Lead (PPL) is a goldmine for strong communicators(4:11) Legally using AI text automations in your CRM to sift through cheap leads(8:32) The strategy for monetizing retail leads by charging real estate agents a marketing fee(10:22) Getting discounted, aged leads through platforms like iSpeedToLead(16:40) Using Skip Genie and professional genealogists to track heirs for vacant properties(21:42) The four pillars of every seller conversation (condition, timeline, motivation, and price)(27:14) Brent's vision for live events and the upcoming release of his book, Wholesaling Launch(30:37) How to build the ultimate "prospecting cockpit" for your cold calling sessions(31:44) Why you must pay off your personal debts before buying investment assets(36:26) Celebrating the monumental 2,000th episode of the Wholesaling Inc. podcast----------Resources:REI PulseFollow Up BossProperty LeadsFizzyLeadsiSpeedToLeadLeadZoloReal Estate BeesPanda LeadsSkip GenieInvestorBaseInstagram: @realbrentdanielsTo speak with Brent or one of our other expert coaches call (281) 835-4201 or schedule your free discovery call here to learn about our mentorship programs and become part of the TribeGo to Wholesalingincgroup.com to become part of one of the fastest growing Facebook communities in the Wholesaling space. Get all of your burning Wholesaling questions answered, gain access to JV partnerships, and connect with other "success minded" Rhinos in the community.It's 100% free to join. The opportunities in this community  are endless, what are you waiting for?

Cost per lead is going up, sellers are harder to convert, and the wholesalers who aren't adapting are getting left behind. Steve Trang, founder of Objection Proof AI, breaks down the exact systems the top operators are running right now to stay ahead. You'll learn how AI is handling lead follow-up with zero burnout, why speed to lead under five seconds is the new standard, and how his clients are pulling deals out of CRMs their teams had already marked dead.   KEY TALKING POINTS: 0:00 - Intro 0:35 - The Three Things You'll Walk Away With 0:57 - The New Market Reality 6:28 - The Three Levers 10:06 - What Makes AI Efficient In Real Estate 12:14 - AI Conversion & Follow-Ups 15:11 - Outro   LINKS: Instagram: Steve Trang https://www.instagram.com/steve.trang/   Website: Objection Proof AI https://www.objectionproof.ai/   Instagram: David Lecko https://www.instagram.com/dlecko   Website: DealMachine https://www.dealmachine.com/pod   Instagram: Ryan Haywood https://www.instagram.com/heritage_home_investments   Website: Heritage Home Investments https://www.heritagehomeinvestments.com/

In this episode of the HVAC Know It All Business Edition Podcast, co-hosts Gary McCreadie and Furman Haynes from WorkHero sit down with Roland Ligtenberg, Co-Founder and SVP Growth & Innovation at Housecall Pro to discuss why cash flow is one of the most important factors for HVAC and home service businesses, especially in today's repair-focused economy. The conversation explores how CRMs and field service management software help contractors invoice faster, collect payments quicker, improve customer retention, and streamline operations. They also discuss the shift from replacement-heavy business models toward repair and service work, emphasizing the importance of technical training, customer experience, maintenance memberships, and operational efficiency. Roland explains how successful contractors are adapting to a repair-driven market by improving customer experience, speeding up payment collection, implementing maintenance memberships, and leveraging technology without losing the personal touch that homeowners value.   Expect to Learn: - Why fast invoicing directly impacts business cash flow - How CRMs help HVAC contractors collect COD payments faster - Why the industry is shifting from replacements to repairs - The importance of technical diagnostics over aggressive sales tactics - How maintenance memberships improve long-term customer retention - Why "happy calls" can generate more 5-star reviews and repeat business - How financing options increase estimate acceptance rates - The real impact of AI and private equity on the HVAC industry - Why local service businesses still hold a competitive advantage   Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction 00:52 - Importance of cash flow and invoicing quickly 01:46 - How Housecall Pro helps contractors collect COD payments onsite 04:39 - Cash flow vs profit margins in small business 05:47 - Shift toward repairs over replacements 11:04 - The value of technical training and diagnostics 12:01 - Marketing, maintenance plans, and customer touchpoints 12:27 - Why membership plans matter for long-term growth 13:02 - Refrigerant regulations and repair practices in Canada 14:36 - AI, private equity, and the future of HVAC businesses 19:19 - Rolan shares contact information and closing remarks   Want to learn how top HVAC contractors are improving cash flow, streamlining operations, and using AI without losing the personal touch? Connect with Roland Ligtenberg and discover how modern field service businesses are scaling smarter with tools like Housecall Pro.

Why do so many people consume business content every day but still feel stuck?In this episode of Mama's House To Penthouse, Prinston Hicks and DJ break down the difference between knowledge and real-world execution.They talk about:Why most entrepreneurs stay trapped in “learning mode”The difference between studying business and actually building oneHow school conditions people to avoid uncertaintyWhy field work creates confidenceBuilding systems, funnels, CRMs, and scalable businessesAI tools and adapting to rapidly changing marketsWhy environment and accountability matterHow to create success criteria that actually move your life forwardThis episode is packed with practical business advice, entrepreneurship mindset shifts, and real conversations about growth, execution, confidence, and building a business in the modern world.If you've been consuming motivation, courses, YouTube videos, or podcasts without seeing real progress, this episode is for you.Follow Mama's House To Penthouse for weekly conversations on entrepreneurship, mindset, business systems, sales, AI, and personal growth.00:00 Intro – Recording During A Houston Storm01:12 Houston Weather & Memorial Day Weekend Stories03:08 Jewelry Convention, Booths & Scaling Bigger05:20 Club Everywhere, Apps & The Future Of Nightlife07:02 AI, YouTube Algorithms & Business Research Tools09:15 Mama's House Mail – “Why Am I Not Making Progress?”10:42 The Trap Of Watching Too Much Business Content13:18 Why School Conditions People The Wrong Way16:10 Knowledge vs Real World Ability18:45 Boxing Analogy – Why Field Work Matters22:12 Why Entrepreneurs Need Both Learning & Action25:05 AI Is Changing Business Faster Than Ever28:10 Why Entrepreneurship Requires A Different Mindset31:45 Turning Knowledge Into Real Execution35:20 How To Create Success Criteria That Actually Work39:55 Building Funnels, CRMs & Scalable Systems44:10 Why Most People Never Feel Real Progress47:42 Thinking Bigger & Changing Your Standards51:30 Entrepreneurship, Sales & Real World Experience55:48 Why Community & Environment Matter59:25 The Psychology Of Failure & Success1:03:12 Business, Conditioning & Social Environments1:07:40 Why Mistakes Create Better Entrepreneurs1:11:18 Final Lessons On Progress & Execution1:14:42 Outro

Craig Klein is the Founder and CEO of SalesNexus, a CRM and sales automation platform built to help small and mid‑sized businesses grow more revenue through better follow‑up, stronger relationships, and smarter sales processes. With deep experience in sales, marketing, and technology, Craig has spent his career helping organizations streamline their sales functions while keeping the human connection at the core of every customer interaction.He is known for his practical approach to relationship‑based selling and his ability to translate complex systems into tools that empower teams to close more deals, nurture customers long‑term, and scale with intention. Craig regularly shares insights on sales strategy, CRM best practices, and creating cultures that support consistent performance and meaningful client engagement.SHOW SUMMARYIn this episode of the Selling from the Heart Podcast, Larry Levine and Darrell Amy sit down with Craig Klein to explore how AI and sales technology can strengthen authentic, relationship-driven selling rather than replace it.Craig shares how his perspective on sales evolved from chasing transactions to focusing on service, trust, and long-term relationships. Together, they unpack the rapid evolution of CRM and AI tools, discussing why human connection still matters most—especially in high-value, complex sales environments where trust and credibility drive decisions.The conversation dives into practical ways AI can support sales teams through smarter follow-up, onboarding, coaching, meeting preparation, and workflow automation. Craig also explains how organizations can use AI to eliminate “forgotten deals,” improve consistency, and free sales professionals from administrative tasks so they can spend more time building meaningful customer relationships.If you've wondered how to embrace AI without losing the heart of selling, this episode offers a grounded and practical roadmap for using technology to become more human—not less.KEY TAKEAWAYSAI and CRM tools should support authentic relationship-building, not replace human connectionHigh-trust, high-value sales still depend on real conversations and credibilityOne of AI's biggest opportunities is recovering missed follow-ups and forgotten dealsThe best sales technology removes busywork so salespeople can spend more time with customersIncremental daily improvements create stronger long-term sales performance than occasional major overhaulsAI-powered systems can streamline proposals, scheduling, onboarding, and customer communicationThe future of sales technology is “agentic AI,” where systems proactively assist salespeople behind the scenesContext-driven AI becomes significantly more powerful when connected to CRMs, contracts, proposals, and operational systemsHIGHLIGHT QUOTESTechnology should help you connect and have better conversations—not get in the way of them.The best salespeople understand that relationships still win. Great technology simply helps you focus more on people.Give before you ask. That mindset opens doors that go far beyond money.Nobody spends half a million dollars on a major purchase without building trust with someone first.AI should enhance the relational strength we already have with our customers—not replace authenticity.ADDITIONAL RESOURCESExplore the secrets of heart-centered leadership and thriving workplace cultures with Culture from the Heart Podcast! Nominate a visionary CEO at www.culturefromtheheart.com!Listen to Larry Levine's Bestselling Book: Selling in a Post-Trust World! Now available on Audible! Transform your sales approach with insights that matter.  Subscribe to The Selling from the Heart Podcast Youtube Channel! Stay updated with the latest episodes and leadership tips: Selling from the Heart YouTubeGet Your Daily Dose of Inspiration:Click Here for Your Daily Dose

The fastest way to lose a new pool service customer is painfully simple: let the call go to voicemail while you're out on route. I sit down with Nikki Acosta and Hal Denbar from Skimmer to talk about a practical use of AI that actually earns its keep, an AI phone receptionist built specifically for pool businesses. We get into what AI should do for operators, save time, reduce interruptions, and stop real revenue leaks, instead of adding another shiny tool to the pile.Nikki breaks down how Skimmer's AI Phone works day to day: answering during the hours you choose, asking the questions you design, and routing calls based on rules for existing customers versus brand-new leads. The system can collect contact info, address, service area details, and even pool type, then store the call data inside Skimmer and create a customer record automatically. We also talk about “custom knowledge” so you can embed troubleshooting steps and safety escalations, like when a caller reports smoke or a potential equipment hazard.Hal zooms out on what this means for growth in the pool industry. Bigger companies used to win by default because they could always pick up the phone. If a small operator can answer every call with an AI voice agent, the playing field shifts. We also dig into how to choose pool service software the smart way: stability, security, business continuity, and the ability to integrate with the rest of your tech stack through APIs and webhooks. If you're looking for pool route software, field service management tools, and a realistic approach to AI automation, this one delivers.Subscribe, share this with a pool pro who misses too many calls, and leave a review with your biggest customer communication headache. What would you want an AI receptionist to handle first?We talk with Nikki Acosta and Hal Denbar from Skimmer about why missed calls quietly crush pool service growth and how an AI phone receptionist can fix it without adding office overhead. We also get honest about AI hype, what “real” time savings look like, and why software stability and security matter as much as flashy features.  • AI overwhelm and a simple test for value: does it reduce real work  • How Skimmer AI Phone answers calls and routes them by rules  • Capturing lead details automatically and creating new customer records  • Using custom knowledge for troubleshooting, escalations, and safety  • Why always answering calls changes the growth advantage of big companies  • Pricing, 30-day free trial, and what setup looks like in practice  • What to look for in pool route software: uptime, security, long-term support  • Building an integration ecosystem with APIs, webhooks, CRMs, and ERPs  • Making software simple for techs in the field and back office teams  Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the pool guy coaching program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support from me. I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. Learn more at swimmingpoollearning.com.  If you want to try Skimmer for free, simply go to my website, swimmingpoollearning.com, and click on the skimmer banner that's on the home page of the website.  And if you want more podcasts, you can also go to that same site, swimmingpoollearning.com. On the banner, there's a podcast icon. Click on that, and there'll be over 1900 podcasts there for you to listen to at your leisure.  And if you're interested in the coaching program, you can learn more at pullguycoaching.com.  Send us Fan MailSupport the Pool Guy Podcast Show Sponsors! HASA https://bit.ly/HASAThe Bottom Feeder. Save $100 with Code: DVB100https://store.thebottomfeeder.com/Try Skimmer FREE for 30 days:https://getskimmer.com/poolguy Get UPA Liability Insurance $64 a month! https://forms.gle/F9YoTWNQ8WnvT4QBAPool Guy Coaching: https://bit.ly/40wFE6y

The Great Talent Redistribution: Where is Talent Actually Going in 2026 and beyond?  Is the start-up compensation model broken? How about big Big Tech? How about non-tech small & medium businesses? What is happening to talent, going forward? This and many other topics in this episode of Tech Deciphered. Navigation: Intro The Broken Contract? The Great Unbundling The Three (?) Destinations Alternative Cap Tables, Alternative Compensation Models Investor Landscape Fragmentation Operator Playbook and Predictions Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno Goncalves Pedro Introduction Welcome to episode 77 of Tech Deciphered. This episode will focus on the great talent redistribution. Where’s talent actually going in 2026 and beyond? The Silicon Valley deal of the last 30 years, very low salary, stock options, you will either sell for a ton of money or IPO, and everyone gets rich, is seemingly broken. Or is it really? The dominant narrative says the tech middle class is dying. We disagree. There is obviously a lot of stuff going on whereby big tech is partially barbelling. There’s a superstar concentration on the top. There’s a bit of a seemingly allowing of the belly. We’ll come back to that. We don’t quite believe that is totally true. There’s a collapse at entry level. The belly is migrating into three, potentially even more, very different destinations: AI native startups, human-verified premium businesses, and the read the industrialized middle of the S&P 500 and SMB world. Each has its own cap table, each will have its own compensation model, and each will have its own investor profile. In some ways, this is the third episode in our Reset trilogy. We started with episode 75 on the SaaS-apocalypse. We talked about the great private capital reset in episode 76, and now we talk about talent redistributions. Bertrand, exciting times, not always positive times.   Bertrand Schmitt Yeah, it’s exciting times because it’s a time of change. Of course, we have the doomsayers. If you listen to Dario Amodei of Anthropic, every white-collar job on Earth is going to disappear. I think I strongly disagree, and I suppose you too as well, we strongly disagree. It’s going to be more of a redistribution. If you look at the history of technology, this is what always happened. We forget how many jobs have disappeared over the past 150 years. We move from a time of 150 years ago. People were mostly in agriculture. Then you had a lot of weird jobs that disappeared from people transporting water to people bringing ice from the pools to people doing the job of computers. People forget that computer was a title given to human beings. We’re doing calculations. Then, of course, secretory jobs in the ’80s, ’90s, where suddenly anyone can type using a word processor, the rise of Excel, that sort of stuff. Many things have changed. Some jobs have indeed disappeared. Some jobs have totally transformed. Where you do these jobs have changed. I think we are at a similar stage where, thanks to AI, and I would say for now, or at least the rise of AI coding, there is a dramatic change happening. I don’t think it means that people will be without a job. It just means, from my perspective, that jobs are changing. You are not just doing a lowly coding level task that actually indeed could be replaced, but you are going to have more of builder type of mindset, a product manager type of mindset going forward. We also expect that the distribution of jobs, depending on the type of business, will be quite different.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro The Broken Contract? Maybe let’s reset a little bit to the broken contract, or if it’s really a broken contract. There’s been this image in technology and tech that basically you get paid very little to work in tech. You get a bunch of stock options. The earlier you are in the company, the higher the level of stock option grants you get. Then you make a ton of money at some point because the company will either sell or IPO, and that’s heard of it. Obviously, there’s a lot of movements happening right now that are changing how these dynamics work. The first part is obviously AI, and in some ways, AI is shrinking companies. It’s not unheard of that companies with as little as four or five people reach 50 million in ARR. There’s companies with one person that have gotten bought for hundreds of millions of dollars or billion of dollars. Obviously, things are moving very, very fast, and therefore, there isn’t a large employee cap table. How would you share the upside? Would you actually give a couple of percentage points to an early employee rather than your 0.2-0.5% kind of thing for early employees? The second part is a little bit the other side of the table, which is the IPO market is seemingly in a drought. There’s not much happening in IPOs. Maybe 2026, at some point, there will be an unlock, but right now, it’s seemingly difficult to get your upside. Even if you’re an employee, you have to wait a long time. The median time of IPO has climbed over 10, 11 years, the longest in over a decade. Basically, not only you have to wait a long time as if there is an IPO drought, like we might be going through right now, when do I actually get my cash back? Unless the company gets bought, maybe there are secondary transactions along the way, maybe there’s something else. But obviously there’s a little bit of a reduction and lowering of the upside seemingly for this contract and for this place. The easy conclusion that I think many are taking is, because of all of this and all the layoffs that are happening, even in big tech, that serve the tech middle class is dying, that basically AI screwing the workers, et cetera, there’s also a lot of discussion that even it might be affecting the entry-level jobs as well. Everyone coming out of undergrad right now can’t get a job, et cetera. There’s this doomsday scenario that you’re alluding to that everything is changing. We have a slightly different perspective. We think there’s a realignment of market. In layoffs, there was a lot of layoffs that were warranted. Big tech, in particular, had actually hoarded a lot of engineering capacity over the last decade or so. There’s a little bit of a realignment that needed to happen in any case. When everyone’s saying, “Well, AI is compressing everything,” well, it’s compressing right now, but we don’t think actually it’s going to compress over time. You’ll still need engineering and science talent to come on board for you to be able to scale up. It’s not like AI is going to take care of everything and teams are going to be five people for companies that are worth a trillion dollars. That’s not happening. Today’s thesis, I think a little bit of this doomsday scenario needs to be seen with a more nuanced lens. I think that’s how we’re framing today’s episode, that there’s a bit of a nuance, there are some extremes happening. We’re going to talk about those extremes, but ultimately, it’s not quite as simple as saying that the tech middle class is disappearing in early jobs are going to be a thing of the past.   Bertrand Schmitt At the same time, what you started with is true. I mean, that 50 million ARR company, just five people. At a bigger scale, that’s exactly the matrix for Anthropic. They have reached a stage where they are at a range of 12 million ARR per staff per employee. It’s metrics that are definitely never seen before. I don’t think any company raised to this level. Best in class, best run companies, one, two million per employees. I mean, that was your target if you can make it. We are definitely in a different game. But I think what matters at the end of the day, and that’s what we’re arguing, is that you have to see the big pictures. Yes, some positions might disappear inside some companies, but some other positions will be created in other companies. Usually, what people do is keep talking about the jobs who disappear and not looking at the bigger picture of jobs that are being created as well. What is true, and I think you alluded to that, is that the big tech the past 10, 15 years had some strategy of hoarding talent in a war where having the best talented people will make the difference in numbers, will make the difference between winning or losing. The Google of the world, the Microsoft of the world, the Amazon of the world, they were hoarding talent. They would try to make sure that they might not have such needs in talented number of people. But if they have the talent, it means their competitors didn’t have the talent. It means that the startup trying to reach scale couldn’t pay the giant salaries that the Google of the world were paying. There was definitely some hoarding. But it went so far in the 2020, 2021, that I think since then there has been a coming back to normal. There is also now in 2026, the recognition that it’s not true anymore. Yes, talent can be very valuable, but there is now a bigger and bigger gap between the extremely talented versus the rest that are merely talented because of AI. AI is able to replace at scale your software engineers, your software managers. I would say it’s quite new. I don’t think it was true a year ago. We’re really talking about a recent dramatic change in what can be achieved thanks to AI. We can see most of the big AI companies are moving to coding. It was started by Anthropic as a trend, OpenAI has followed through. Obviously, the Cursor of the world existed before, but they were not as successful. All the Chinese open-source models are moving very fast to coding optimization the past few weeks. It’s quite an incredible change. I think there is that dramatic change, recognition that coding can be done differently. As a result, we are going to see change in the distribution of jobs. I think it will start from the top because we see the news of the big Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and others who used to hold talented software developers to a change in realization that no, we actually need to invest in AI. We need to invest in compute because compute is going to do the job of most of these people. Therefore, we can’t pay for both at the same time, even us with all our money, we cannot. Wall Street is not going to let us do that. They start by removing a lot of position. I think we see that accelerating, quite frankly. We have only seen the beginning, but in the next 2 years, we see a dramatic shift. But I think my position, I guess yours, and you know as well, is that there will be a lot more opportunities created as well, probably by also entities.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro The Great Unbundling Yeah, there will be more opportunities created. The hoarding is just taken also a little bit of a different view. To your point, there’s hoarding of resources, compute, et cetera. But there’s also hoarding of top talent. We are seeing people getting paid, packages all in that could run up to 100 million, in some cases even over 100 million over several years. This is unheard of. I mean, an officer of Meta would make, I don’t know, maybe 20, 25 million a year. It’s like now there are people that are on the top end of AI researchers that are getting paid around that amount just to join some of these companies. There’s a little bit of a different hoarding. It’s very selective hoarding of certain talent. We’ve seen some acqui-hires. We’ve talked about it in previous episodes that are just literally about getting one or two people specifically to come on board. Alexander Wang, again, going to Meta to lead their intelligence labs there. I feel, I don’t know what you feel, but I feel this is a transition moment where there is overpaying for certain talent on the top of the market. At some point, this will stabilize. You can’t keep paying people 100 million over 4 years or something like that across the board. To your point, a lot of this is actually going to scale up quickly also on the AI side. There’s a little bit of a different hoarding happening on the top end, not just the resources, but also of people, which seems to give further this notion of barbell, that there’s two extremes, the haves and have-nots, the super-duper talented people that get paid a ton of money, tens of millions of dollars a year at the very least. Then the emptying of the middle where there’s a ton of tech layoffs going on in some ways, the belly, as they would call it, is being expelled. The middle market, the managers are being fired because there’s nothing to manage. There’s a lot of positions going away. In some cases, you might keep some of the more junior talent, but with a little bit of experience. But even the talent coming out of colleges is not getting hired either. It’s a little bit of a weird thing where there’s hoarding at the top, there’s an emptying of the belly, the middle, and then the early, early, early is also not getting recruited. It’s like what gives? How is this going to look in the future? I agree fully with you, Bertrand, that there’s a migration of this talent, not only to other companies, but also to other jobs. There will be new jobs that will emerge out of this. The DevOps, dev tools market didn’t exist until maybe 20 years ago at scale, and it got created. In some ways, we’re seeing there will be new markets, there will be new roles and new jobs that will be created around engineering teams going forward. We can’t anticipate all of them. But basically, the emptying of the belly is true as it’s happening right now. The low hiring on the early and the top end, getting tons of money. We think this is a transition to something else. There’s the hoarding of engineering in general is coming to an end at momentum. Now it’s time to rightsize teams, to get the right at the table, et cetera, and start figuring out what works and what doesn’t work. We’ve already had some horror stories coming out even from Amazon where they were breaking systems with their use of AI tools, and I’m sure it’s happening across the board. I’m on a board of a company and been tremendously affected by Meta and its algorithms, where basically because of advertising, there have been people served with ads for this specific company where the ad doesn’t match the company, so basic stuff like that. It’s been actually very, very difficult because in some ways, the company goes back to Meta. It’s like, “Hey, dudes, you guys are serving ads that are not even our ads with our copyright and stuff. How does this work?” They’re like, “Oh, it’s AI.” It’s like, “Well, it’s AI but can you give me my money back?” They’re like, “No, we won’t give you money back.” This creates huge issues for companies, for example, that are very dependent on advertising, which obviously there’s a lot of industries that are. They’re actually in production systems at scale. Meta is, I think now, the largest digital advertising in the world. I think they outgrew Google in one of the last quarters. Basically, this has a tremendous effect that systems that are in production at scale are getting inputs and changes driven by AI tooling, and somehow nobody can say what the hell is happening. Again, there will be a reckoning, there will be a redistribution, there will be a rightsizing of teams and an adequacy of teams going forward. I personally think this is a transition period.   Bertrand Schmitt I think we are moving from hoarding or software engineering to hoarding the top of the top scientists in AI and hoarding of GPUs, GPUs/data center. For me, it was quite interesting to see the deal of Cursor with xAI, where basically they couldn’t get access to computing resources to run their model. But xAI had, I forgot the exact numbers, but close to half a million GPUs that no one, I mean, “no one was using” because their services are not so successful yet in terms of AI chatbot and the like. Basically, suddenly they are like, “You know what? We control access to resource.” But the new resource is, again, a mix of extremely talented AI engineering or AI scientists versus GPUs/data center. There is this race of controlling boss and everything else is going to be collateral damage. Some examples, I think, are quite interesting. You talk about some example of Amazon, even some production issues. I remember reading a quick post-mortem of one of the issues, and the conclusion was it was AI, definitely part of the issue. But the other part of the issue was AI used by junior engineers. For me, it’s interesting. It shows that actually junior plus AI is actually a danger zone. That’s why many companies are going to be way more careful. “Why do we need the junior people if they are just playing with fire?” I think we go back to that situation of barbell, as you call it. The top talents are extremely valuable because they know how a production system works. They are here to develop better AI systems. But the junior guys playing with fires, yeah, maybe it’s cute in startups, but in a big time production environment, a different story.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro There will be a barbell with top-end talent super-mega paid and then mid-level talent that is individual contributors still doing a lot of great work, et cetera. Along the way, a lot of emptying of entry, a lot of emptying of the middle. Where does the talent go? The Three (?) Destinations I think we could say there’s three destinations for this talent. Maybe there’s four, maybe there’s more. Three that we can immediately identify. One is the AI native startup piece, where we have smaller teams that potentially get to a lot of revenue or top line over time, and where the Series Seed is the primary round, where we’re seeing Series Seed being raised of tens of millions of dollars, actually even hundreds of millions of dollars in Series Seed. In some ways, the stars there can get incredible compensations in terms of stock. They will stay for private and selling in secondaries later down the road because there’s so much capital at the table. Actually, in some ways, salaries are very high as well in some of these companies. It’s not like you’re trading off anything. You can get paid a lot of money. If your company at Series Seed for 10 or 15 employees has raised 50-$100 million, you can pay great salaries. In some ways, this is the extreme destination. The AI native startups that can make it is the extreme destination. Now, there aren’t a ton of AI native startups that can raise 50-100 million to 400 million in Series Seed, just to be clear. There’s a handful of hot deals in that space, but that’s one clear destination for top-end talent going through that. In that market, I think that’s one of the destinations. The second one is more what we would call the human-verified premium. It’s more of a play of companies that has still the need of human in the loop, either in terms of development, also in terms of activity, either because go-to markets are very intensive, and so therefore you need to have sales forces, partnership teams, et cetera. Or on the engineering side, it needs to have a lot of customization, integration. Companies are not just going to the, “Oh, you can come in and just apply your AI tooling and somehow magically the systems all work.” there needs to be quite a lot of and work and high touch work in getting stuff done. A significant part of that market, I’m not sure, is super VC investible. Maybe it’s a hybrid of private equity in VC, more PE style in many cases. It’s a PE-hold, sell to someone else market. As we’ve discussed in a previous episode on the SaaS-apocalypse, that hasn’t quite worked out for PEs. Question marks on how that human-verified premium market is going to evolve. But obviously, there’s a lot of work still to be done there, even on the engineering and science side. That’s the second potential destination. Then the third more aggressive destination is the reindustrialized middle companies that have a lot of specificity in going after small and medium businesses, local or regional affectations like ERPs or CRMs for specific markets, et cetera. Those are the three natural destinations. I would add the fourth, which is big tech. I mean, big tech doesn’t magically disappear, and I don’t think it fits neatly into any of these three markets. In some ways, big tech is now looking at the extreme for top talent a little bit like the AI native startup because they can pay. They can pay the 100 million every four years, et cetera. I do think it will typify taxonomically into a fourth type emerging, where, as we discussed, you’ll have top-end individual contributor talent. You’ll have the absolute top-end of the market because they can get paid. Then you’ll start having the emergence of earlier talent that is highly capable, et cetera. That will go back to a bit of a normal distribution in terms of talent on big tech. For me, those are the four destinations that I would put at the table.   Bertrand Schmitt For me, big tech moving to big tech, I’m not sure if it’s really a destination. I mean, yes, in some ways it’s a reshuffle between the big tech companies. They are definitely all fighting in some ways for some of the same people. I can see that dramatic shift where big tech has to remove a lot of positions in order to replace by AI. Again, I think at this stage, it’s mostly driven by AI coding. We are still at the beginning because this is brand-new phenomenon that AI coding is so successful at its task. I don’t think it was true even 6 months ago. Some companies, take Anthropic, take OpenAI, are definitely there or close to be there in terms of no more writing of a single line of code by a human, zero. This is, again, 6, 12 months ago. Not true. But now it’s true in a few top companies. Take OpenClaw as well, most successful GitHub project of all time, not a single line written by its author. It would have been impossible. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of line of code in a few months. It’s impossible to achieve that manually. If you look at the other big tech companies, the Google of the world, the Meta of the world, the Microsoft of the world, they are absolutely not there yet. They are going to be there because they have no choice. It’s you either go fast there or you die. You are not going to be able to survive competitors that are shipping 10, 50, 100 times faster than you are shipping. It’s a life and death situation. All the big tech companies are going to move, and mark my word, in the next 2 years from 10, 20% of AI-written code to 100%. During that transition, the next 2 years max, if you don’t do it in 2 years, you are going to die. Your stock price is going to crash. Then, of course, you will have to make changes. You will have to invest more in GPUs. You will have to invest less in your standard typical software engineer employees. Like you, I’m very optimistic that there are new buckets. AI-native startups definitely will be there. It will be transformational. Human-verified premium, very interesting category. In a way, it will be businesses that are inevitably less scalable through AI, and there is definitely a spot from there. I think the biggest would be the reindustrialized middle SMBs. Most of S&P 500 type of business are going to dramatically offer new software opportunities, new opportunity story to talented software employees because they will need to implement AI in everything they do. They will do it. They will need people who have software engineering knowledge in order to implement these systems. For them, what’s changing dramatically really is that thanks to much cheaper cost as thanks to AI coding, a lot of software projects that they couldn’t afford to do, that they couldn’t imagine doing by themselves, they are able to do it. They will invest in a lot more software capabilities than ever before. That will be a big game changer. And software, very tuned to their business model. There might be less buying of your traditional off-the-shelf SAF software and a lot more investment in a highly custom software by their own team, assisted with AI. I think that would be the part that is most transformed by all of this in a positive way.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro Alternative Cap Tables, Alternative Compensation Models This will lead to a very fundamental shift, right back to the broken contract. What does the new contract look like? It looks like alternative cap tables depending on which bucket are you transitioning into. If you’re going into your AI-native bucket, and you’re a top-end talent, you’re like, “Dude, I’m worth 100 million over 4 years, so just compensate me accordingly with a mix of options in the company plus my salary.” If you’re top 1%, you can probably get away with salaries that you’d get anyway at mid-level from 300K, 400K and above, and you can get actually a lot of options already in the company. A lot of this is happening right now. There’s a premium for AI, we know that. There’s a premium for AI at the top end of AI researching, in particular on companies that are doing hardcore research on staff AI engineers, so companies that require actual AI engineering. There is a premium that is significant. It could be as high as 18% over non-AI peers, and it widens actually with seniority, shockingly enough. This is more of an average than anything else. Now, for me, and it’s for debate, but the perspective is this extreme comp will need to compress at some point. There will still be the haves and have-nots paid much better than the have-nots, so to speak, but there will be a compression. The variance can’t be the variance we’re seeing today for absolute top-end talent. That said, there will be variants. We know that big tech for over a decade, decade and a half, for example, in the Bay Area, has been paying a lot of money for director and above levels that used to be the VPs, so a million, a million and a half a year, all in compensations. It’s not unheard of that this will actually increase after this stage. That said, I do think that the compensation extreme that we’re in will get diluted down the middle. It will actually come down at some point. It’s part of where we are today. As we know, it is still a bubble.   Bertrand Schmitt Yeah, it’s an interesting point. I think it’s possible. At the same time, that compression coming 2, 3, 5 years. At the same time, we have examples where there is no such compression. Take the top sports players in the world, golfing, basketball, NBA players. There has not really been any compression at all. For me, it’s interesting. If you look at the big tech companies, each being one of this top NBA team, why would such compression happen? As long as they are competing against each other and generating plenty of cash, I think there will be some fair question. We will see. I don’t have a strong opinion, but for me, it’s not a total given.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro For me, the shocking thing is the faster AI becomes better, the more that compression will happen, because at some point, it’s like, why do you need the top talent as well? I don’t know. It feels like you’re trying to evolve a system that’s there to replace you. It’s like, “Okay, I’m getting paid 100 million over the next 4 years”, and then you develop something that’s so good that replaces you. Thank you. That’s cool.   Bertrand Schmitt That’s a total possibility, yes, because we are in that very unusual market where the game is to only replace yourself and people like yourself. At some point, it is a possibility, I guess this one. Right now, we’re talking about replacing your “average software talent”. In 2 years, could we absolutely replace the absolute best top experts in the world? Probably. I think it’s just that at some point we’ll be reaching the stage where we strictly have no control anymore on our AI systems because no human is able to challenge and understand what’s produced. It’s not just a question of scale anymore. We’re talking about a gap in IQ, basically.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro Exactly. It will happen at some point in history. We don’t know exactly when. For the second bucket, the human-verified premium bucket, it’s difficult to see how an HVAC company or an HVAC roll-up of scale or a regional health care platform or high touch go-to-market, B2B, SaaS play, et cetera, for a vertical will compete. At the same end, they have to compete and they will compete. There will be more and more jobs, we believe, for engineering talent in these companies. They’ll have to be more and more AI-enabled themselves. The cash salaries will have to be competitive within the local markets, not necessarily with Silicon Valley. There will be potentially profit sharing and revenue sharing and actual dividends played at the table. The model there on the cap table needs to change a little bit, needs to be probably propped up more on salary and on some way of doing profit sharing or actually having dividends paid to employees and figuring out employee to equity in a more aggressive manner. This is the market that probably was already very attacked, so to speak, or let’s say, occupied by private equity firms. There are still obviously part of that model that would work well. There needs to be a fundamental shift, certainly on the quantum of salary compensation, dividend compensation, profit sharing, and all of that. Then last but not the least, obviously, we had the bucket around basically the reindustrialization of the middle, so everything else, which will take most of the belly that we were talking about. This is probably a poor analogy, the belly fat. It’s not belly fat, it’s people that were doing their jobs that now are getting disrupted. In some ways, that bucket will absorb a lot of that belly, will absorb a lot of talent. The small and medium businesses that Bertrand was saying will need to crucially become more AI, software-enabled by themselves, even with some core stuff and underpinnings that actually might not even require AI in terms of infrastructure platforms. There, you need to get properly paid. Again, how many people do you need in your engineering team if you’re a small business? Probably not a lot. It’s maybe you need one or two people and that’s it. They’ll need to be very nicely paid because they’re running the stuff in the rails. This is probably a market that over time, as AI gets more and more competent, will also be disrupted, but let’s not talk about the disruption to the disruption because otherwise, we’ll stay here the whole day, but certainly a market that has a lot of potential to shift and to absorb a lot of the moments that we’re seeing in terms of layoffs happening in the US in particular.   Bertrand Schmitt This category was a category that historically could not compete with Silicon Valley salaries, could not attract the most talented engineers. It’s not a category that didn’t want to bring these people on board. It’s a category that just couldn’t afford to bring this talent on board, typically. I think it would be a dramatic shift for them when suddenly there are opportunities to hire these people. There is an opportunity to hire them at maybe more reasonable prices from this company’s perspective. You talk about small companies, the great thing is that there are millions of small companies at some point. I think things could be truly transformational. Of course, some of these engineers, software engineers, might decide to become entrepreneurs on their own. Solo entrepreneurs, small businesses, build their own, easier to build their own product to market so to serve other companies. I think there will be quite dramatic changes because not all companies will be disrupted by AI as much, but not every company will benefit from improving processes, improving software through AI. At least early on, you will need this human touch to make it work inside a business. Interestingly enough, I was hearing that some companies like IBM were hiring more younger people to do the work of going to the client, understand their needs, propose implementation plans. That forward deployed engineer, those positions, I think there will be more and more available.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro Investor Landscape Fragmentation What happens to investor into the landscape? We already had an episode, the previous one, Episode 76, where we talked quite a lot about the big capital reset on the private equity and private reset, including venture capital. Just maybe to summarize, how does it align with the buckets that we’ve just been discussing? I think the AI-native bucket clearly is going to be the key bucket. There, we’re going to see two movements. One movement, which is the mega funds, as we discussed in the last episode, are no longer just VC funds. They’re really mostly multi-asset private equity funds, maybe even private equity hedge funds in some cases. Those funds will be all over the high-growth AI-native companies and will be pouring money into companies that are scaling really, really quickly. The early stage, so to speak, VCs, the actual VCs that will stay in the market will be the guys probably identifying the next big wave of AI-native companies. We’ve discussed that as well in the last episode, some research that we did at Chamaeleon that I shared in episode 76. We’ll see that as emerging. What happens to the second bucket, the bucket around human premium, human in the loop? Likely we’ll have more and more private equity capital going into it and the large-scale VC guys, the Thrives of the world, they’ve just announced Thrive Holdings, and others going after those markets as well. It’s trying to converge into the private equity market, which aligns with the point we made in the previous episode that the VC mega funds are no longer VC, that they are private equity, multi-asset class. They’re going after a bunch of things. There’s a conversion happening from VC into private equity. It was going to happen anyway because the private equity guys were coming into VC as well and the hedge funds were coming to VC as well. There’s a convergence in the middle of very, very large funds and large assets under management happening to go after some of these opportunities, certainly in Bucket B. Then this Bucket C, so to speak, the bucket of reindustrialization, as Bertrand was saying, very well, likely will be self-funded for a significant period of time. Will self-fund with their own cash flow. Doesn’t need to have a ton of capital intensity. Maybe you need one or two engineers to do stuff, but that’s it. You don’t need tons of capital. You didn’t need in the past, you won’t need it today. Not sure there’s going to be a fundamental shift to that market.   Bertrand Schmitt Yes, I certainly, overall, agree with you. That last pocket, probably little change to the capital and capital structure. Again, I see that as the biggest opportunity for a lot of people who might be less needed by big tech and also top tech companies. What is sure for the first category, the high native startups? I would say more overall in the VC ecosystem, there is no space left for SaaS anymore. I think SaaS, as we used to know it, is dead in some ways in the sense that new pure SaaS software startup are definitely out. Existing ones that are critical to run your infrastructure, the Salesforce of the world, I think they’re in a decent spot. Actually, interestingly, they changed their pricing model to now sell to AI agents, not just per seat. There is a change in pricing there. But this day and age of funding a pure SaaS software startup through VC money, no way. VC money going to AI-native startups, AI-focused startups, to biotech, to deep tech, to defense tech, yes. SaaS as a fundable category early on, I think it’s over.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro I’m a bit more nuanced as we shared in The SaaS Apocalypse episode. We can call it whatever we call. It’s applied AI is the new SaaS thing. Horizontal applied AI is the new horizontal SaaS or vertical applied AI is the new vertical SaaS. I agree in common with your point that very specific point solutions around SaaS will be disrupted by nature with all the easy stuff you can do today with AI. It will take a while. This is not something that’s going to happen this year. It’s going to happen over the next years. Maybe interesting to also talk about the exit markets. I think the IPO market, as we’ve also discussed in the past, there is, in my view, going to be a reopening of the IPO market, I think this year, probably later in the year, third or fourth quarter. The median time to IPO actually is going to be really weird because there’s going to be potentially some companies in the current landscape, bubble or no bubble, that are going to IPO, the OpenAIs of the world, Anthropics of the world, et cetera. There will be more and more aggression, I think, on M&A. Big tech has already shown it, that they want to buy into markets. Large non-tech companies have also started doing acquisitions in space. To prop up their IT teams, their engineering teams with this world that we’ve also discussed in previous episodes that I’m going to own my own engineering stack for now. As we see, that normally doesn’t withstand the test of time. At some point it will get unbundled and served by someone else. Then finally, the secondary market is very hot right now. Obviously, there’s heavy discounting on some areas, high premiums on others. The exit market, strangely enough, is going to be propped up, in my opinion, over the next year to 2 years, dramatically. Then we’ll see if there’s a big reckoning around the bubble that we are clearly in or not, if it’s a soft landing or hard landing. Definitely, there’s going to be a lot of exit paths over the next year to 2 years.   Bertrand Schmitt Concerning the “bubble”, I have two perspectives on this. One is it’s a bubble in the sense that money is going to a lot of players and some players are going to blow it up. There will be a concentration of players at the end, like it usually happens. If you look at, for instance, long time ago, the railway revolution, there was that intense influx of capital. At the end of the day, there was a dramatic change in transportation in the US and a complete railway system put in place. Yes, some investors lost money, some companies went bankrupt, but the transformation was fully real. There were a lot of top leaders at the end of this revolution. The change after that only happened, we guess, post-World War II, with the construction of the highway system and the rise of airlines and plane transportation overall. Here I feel it’s similar in the sense that, yes, there is a lot of money going in. Some players are going to blow it. They will misuse the money in different ways, but that’s part of dynamic allocation of capital. Of course, you make mistakes. That’s what happens. At the same time, I feel it’s a similar level in the sense of this is a dramatic change in the US infrastructure. This buildup of AI data centers filled with GPUs, integrated at scale with some of the best software in the world and running it, supported by a dramatic shift in energy infrastructure. This is for me similar to the Railroad Revolution. Some players might not own the data center they build because they didn’t manage well their debt, they didn’t manage to run proper software. You know what? They will get acquired by somebody else. I think we are at this level of fundamental transformation. The fact that in a matter of maybe 2 years, the move from 0% of code written by AI to 100 % written by AI is an insane dramatic shift. Just to be clear, when you move from manually coded to AI coded, we’re talking about a 100X difference in terms of speed at similar, if not better level of quality. The shift is dramatic, and on top of it, you don’t pay salaries anymore to achieve that. You pay CapEx, and with GPUs and OpEx with electricity. It’s a very big shift, positive shift in business model. New unions, no management over it, AI working 24/7. Personally, I think for me, bubble has a bad connotation in the sense of it was all for a waste. I don’t think it’s all for a waste. I think we are witnessing a dramatic revolution of our lifetimes, quite frankly, bigger than SaaS, bigger than mobile. From my perspective, it’s exciting times.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro Operator Playbook and Predictions Let’s move to if you are this person, what would you do in the future? Let’s start with two extremes and go from there. One is you’re non-tech, so you’re not an engineer, et cetera. You’re trying to figure out, how do I scale my activity? Maybe physical labor is where I want to go. It’s not, “Go west” anymore. Definitely not necessarily go west. You should go to, I guess, the states that have no sales tax with very cheap energy because that’s where the data centers are being built if you want to be in that market. Obviously, there’s a lot of stuff that needs to be done: HVAC, electricity work, et cetera. Don’t go west. Go low sales taxes, low cost of energy. That’s likely where the data centers are being built. You probably can just follow. There’s, I’m sure, some way for you to follow where the data centers are being built, but that’s next, I think on that extreme of the table. The other extreme of the table, let’s say you are super ambitious, maybe you’re no longer an engineer, but you’re a product manager in your prompt engineering. You could do prompt engineering all day long. You’re 28, 29-year-old superstar. What do you go and do? Likely either you start your own thing, start your own company because you’re so good at prompt engineering, you probably can do a lot of the code yourself, particularly if you have an engineering background, or you go and join very early an AI-native startup that you think has the chance of going through the roof, and you take a pretty good salary early on, a ton of upside on the company because guess what? Companies like that need product managers. They need people to figure out UX, UI. It’s not going to be, at least for now, yet AI figuring that out for you. Those are two extremes, just to give two of the extremes, like engineering, product management persona, and physical labor at the other extreme, non-tech, et cetera.   Bertrand Schmitt In some ways, every software engineering job is going to become the equivalent of a software engineering manager or a product manager, because suddenly you don’t have to do the coding anymore. You’re managing AI that is coding for you. Either you start to have some manager hat, but we saw the humans, so it’s a very different type of manager, obviously, or you are going to be really an empowered product manager. You’re skipping the middleman. You’re skipping the traditional engineering organization because your engineering organization is AI running and doing the work for you. I still believe that it requires some serious skills. I don’t believe in the vibe coder type of value proposition. I don’t believe in the prompt engineer becoming suddenly super incredible, able to manage that. I still think it requires some serious chops to do the best from all of this and to do it in a safe and sane way. It’s very easy to have poor taste, make mistakes. I don’t know you, but keep reading these stories on the heads of companies who lost everything because of the AI agents. That deleted stuff in production, and they had no backups or the backups weren’t deleted as well. Crazy situation. You cannot run companies like this if you let your agents running wild. You could argue it’s the early days. I would argue it that that issues would be there for a while. You need to have some engineering discipline at core in the company running the business to make sure things don’t go sideways because it would be easy for things to go sideways.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro I totally agree. If you’re thinking, Oh, should my kid go into science and engineering and computer science, et cetera? Absolutely, still, because of everything that Bertrand just said. You need to understand actually what code does and what technology does and what all of that does. That’s still a skill of the future. It’s not a skill of the past. In some ways, it’s still a skill of the future very much. Maybe let’s try two more extremes. Around the same level, the person that decided to do an AI native company bootstrapped initially, having difficulty raising a mega round, but could probably get away with raising a 2-3 million seed round, et cetera. Is that still viable? The answer is yes. There’s tremendous capital efficiency right now happening in the market still, 10 plus higher than if you were doing a SaaS company, and you were a founder in 2019 or something like that. That capital efficiency is going to reverberate. You can run a tighter team, smaller team. Actually, you don’t need that many salaries. If you’re a decent engineer as a founder or if you understand enough as a product manager to just generate that code, you can do a lot of stuff yourself, can bring in maybe one or two technical elements to the team early on as you would have done if you were bootstrapped anyway. There’s obviously a path for that. The other extreme is you’re in big tech, you’re level five, individual contributor, making a ton of money, or you were a manager, and you’re now out of a job, where do you go? You can go to a big company that is non-tech, S&P 500 company that’s non-tech, something like that. You join the company, you’ll probably get paid pretty well, maybe not as high as you were paid in big tech. There’s some stock at the table, but guess what? You’ll have probably more work-life balance than you ever did. That’s the trade-off. You’ll have a better job. On the upside, you can transform the company. You can help and be part of transforming a company from non-AI to AI-first or AI-enabled in the future, whatever BS that will look like in terms of the argumentation to the board. You can actually create tremendous productivity enhancements in a big non-tech company if you come with that background. Again, you’ll have certainly a better work-life balance, so not a bad deal, to be honest.   Bertrand Schmitt Also, to be clear, I talk a lot about AI coding because it’s truly transformational. You could argue that it’s going to be self-improving. We are in the situation of a self-improving AI that keeps improving itself thanks to automated coding. It’s a dramatic, virtuous loop. Obviously, AI is also going to improve everything else. It’s going to improve your marketing, it’s going to improve your search process, it’s going to improve your DNA. Improvements will be everywhere. It’s just that right now we are at a point in the quote-unquote revolution where there is one clear piece of the puzzle that is moving faster than the rest.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro Bertrand, the senior executives at non-tech don’t know anything about that. It could be just a great prompt engineer. That’s the only job you do. “I’m the chief marketing officer. I have someone below me that’s doing the whole work.” Nobody knows. Nobody’s the wiser, I guess. I’m being facetious, but not fully.   Bertrand Schmitt Yeah. There would be a transition period where what you described happen. I want to say, going back to AI coding, I think that the part of AI that as of today has reached a stage of limited AGI. We have reached, from my perspective, a limited type of AGI for coding. If you take coding as a discipline today, I think we reach AGI. If you go beyond coding, that’s true. If we are talking about coding, leveraging the latest LLMs: OPUS 4.7, ChatGPT 5.5, combined with Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode for harness, I think we’ve reached AGI in the context of coding. I’m not sure everyone fully realize that and the consequence of that. I think the rest is going to come as well. We are going to see that category by category, usually categories that are more scientific in nature, where you can replicate, where you can test easily, where you can create clear success. Metrics will be the “easiest” to follow in that direction of self-improvement. I just want to highlight that this part is truly transformational, the root cause of everything we’re talking about today. At the same time, it’s coming beyond coding.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro I think it is true. There are a couple of markets where that might not hold true, which is maybe the final path. If you’re thinking of starting your own business in plumbing and in HVAC maintenance and installation, this is a pretty good time for the reasons we already said before. There’s a lot of buildup of data centers and all that stuff, but also for other reasons, because it’s an activity that won’t be disrupted by AI yet. You need them embodied AI. You need physicality to AI to do stuff like actually fixing pipes.   Bertrand Schmitt Until Optimus replace you.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro Yeah, but if we’re 3, 4 years out in terms of a lot of these optimizations that we’re talking about at the software layer, we’re 10 years plus out on embodied AI, right?   Bertrand Schmitt Oh, yeah, it’s 10 years.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro We’ll probably be optimistic as we speak. That’s a nice business. I’m thinking of starting to go into that market. If you guys are interested in listening to this, just reach out to me. What’s the angle? I think there’s a lot of stuff you can do in the buildup of some of these businesses, plumbing, HVAC, all sorts of maintenance. There are markets that are just totally messed up. Handyman market in the US is totally messed up. There’s a bunch of companies out there that try to go after it with marketplaces and stuff. I honestly just start something from scratch, a small business, and go from there.   Bertrand Schmitt Yes. They’re an interesting middle. Think about accounting firms, consulting firms. I think they are not as easy to replace, but at the same time, there is no way on what they do is not going to be dramatically changed with AI. I don’t know if it’s 50, 80, 90% of the job, but this is changing quite dramatically, would be my expectation in the coming few years. Conclusion Thanks for listening episode 77 of Tech Deciphered about that great talent redistribution. As you heard it from us, we believe there is a dramatic change in play, enabled by AI coding, and that ultimately a lot of the big tech companies are changing their employee distribution, way more focused on the top talents and bringing more GPUs. As a result, we will see a change in their staffing. Some of this change will benefit AI-focused startups, but probably more likely will benefit the bigger SMBs, the S&P 500 companies of the world that will finally be able to bring inside and afford some of the talent that were in some ways trapped by the top 5, 10, 20 software companies of the world. Thank you, Nuno.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro Thank you, Bertrand

Stop chasing empty leads and start closing actual business by tuning in to this episode with Josh Lyles of Salesdash CRM! Josh drops the unfiltered truth about why high-volume "posting and praying" is a dead strategy, breaking down how a hyper-focused, omni-channel prospecting methodology can completely transform your logistics sales pipeline. If you are tired of generic CRMs that fail your team and you are ready to learn the exact step-by-step strategy to turn regular connection touchpoints into long-term customer relationships, don't miss out on this conversation!   About Josh Lyles Josh Lyles is the founder of Salesdash CRM, which is a sales CRM specific for freight brokerages, agencies, and asset-based companies. Josh has previous experience in sales management within freight brokerage and also at Tesla.    Connect with Josh Website: https://salesdashcrm.com/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshlyles/  

In this episode of Storage Wins, Alex Pardo reconnects with Dan Wentzel after a long pause in the journey. Over the last several months, Dan's storage business has slowed dramatically due to life demands, limited time, family responsibilities, and the challenge of trying to balance business-building with being present at home.   But instead of avoiding the conversation, Alex leans directly into it.   What unfolds is one of the most transparent and honest coaching conversations of the entire series. Together, they unpack the emotional weight that comes with feeling stuck, comparing yourself to others, losing momentum, and questioning whether progress is even happening.   As the conversation progresses, Alex identifies a major issue that many new investors struggle with: focusing on the wrong things at the wrong time. Instead of spending valuable time building systems, refining processes, or worrying about operations, Alex challenges Dan to simplify everything down to one objective—finding deals.   The message becomes crystal clear: if you're trying to buy your first storage facility, your time should almost entirely be spent in the deal discovery phase. Conversations, underwriting, analyzing opportunities, and making offers matter far more than perfect systems, future operations, or hypothetical scenarios.   The episode also dives into the realities of partnerships, time constraints, and self-belief. Despite setbacks and slower-than-expected progress, Alex reinforces an important truth: the journey only fails if you quit.   This episode is a powerful reminder that progress often comes from simplifying, recommitting, and focusing relentlessly on what actually moves the needle.   ⸻   You'll Learn How To: • Simplify your focus when momentum stalls out • Prioritize revenue-generating activities over unnecessary systems • Avoid getting distracted by operations before you own a deal • Identify the difference between working in the business vs on the business • Maximize limited time by focusing on high-impact actions • Navigate partnerships and clearly define roles within a team • Rebuild confidence and momentum during difficult seasons   ⸻   What You'll Learn in This Episode:   [0:15] Why systems and processes matter—but timing matters more [1:37] Feeling stalled out, discouraged, and low on momentum [2:44] The emotional impact of comparison and adversity [3:14] Why the Storage Wins journey temporarily paused [4:10] Showing up even when life feels chaotic and difficult [5:17] The parallels between business setbacks and getting "tapped out" in jiu-jitsu [6:09] Why transparency and vulnerability matter during difficult seasons [6:27] Dan's first win: simply continuing to show up [7:01] Working with three other Storage Wins members to pursue deals [8:09] Challenges and opportunities of four-person partnerships [9:37] Identifying the real problem behind "not enough time" [10:15] The importance of planning your days and weeks intentionally [11:21] Peeling back the layers to uncover the root challenge [12:16] How systems and CRMs became a distraction from actual deal flow [14:15] The difference between working in the business vs on the business [16:01] Why limited time must be spent on activities that move the needle [17:12] Alex's frustration with focusing on operations too early [18:32] Why funding and operations should NOT be your current focus [19:38] Simplifying the business down to finding deals and making offers [20:30] Why underwriting should not become a bottleneck [21:18] Defining roles and responsibilities within the team [22:21] Identifying the true bottleneck: lack of underwriting volume [23:11] The only way this journey fails is if you quit [24:03] Rebuilding confidence and recommitting to the goal   Who This Episode Is For: • Investors who feel stalled out or discouraged in their journey • Listeners struggling to balance family, work, and business-building • Anyone overwhelmed by systems, tools, and operational complexity • Entrepreneurs trying to maximize limited time and energy • People stuck in learning mode instead of taking action • Investors pursuing their first self-storage deal   ⸻   Why You Should Listen:   Most people don't fail because they lack information.   They fail because they lose focus on what actually matters.   This episode strips away the noise and reminds you that buying your first storage facility doesn't require perfect systems, endless preparation, or knowing every future step in advance. It requires focused action, consistency, and the willingness to keep showing up even when progress feels slow.   If you've been stuck, overwhelmed, or distracted by things that don't truly move the needle, this conversation will help you simplify your approach and refocus on the actions that create real momentum.   Follow Alex Pardo here: • Alex Pardo Website: https://alexpardo.com/ • Alex Pardo Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alexpardo15 • Alex Pardo Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexpardo25 • Alex Pardo YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AlexPardo • Storage Wins Website: https://storagewins.com/   ⸻   Have conversations with at least three storage owners, brokers, private lenders, or equity partners inside the Storage Wins Facebook Group. Join for free here:   https://www.facebook.com/groups/322064908446514/

Systems over Sweat: Engineering Real Estate Automation with Keith GillispieIn a recent episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Podcast, host Josh Elledge sat down with Keith Gillispie, the Co-Founder of REI Automated, to break down how busy professionals can build a thriving real estate portfolio without sacrificing their primary careers. As a Marine Corps veteran and systems engineer, Keith managed to scale a real estate operation spanning 34 states while on active duty in Hawaii, leveraging strict discipline and hyper-efficient operational design. This conversation provides an essential, systems-driven blueprint for high-earning W-2 employees and executives who face severe time constraints but want to transition into asset-backed financial freedom using residential real estate.The Architecture of Leverage: Out-Benching Time Constraints through Automated PipelinesScaling a business with only one hour of available downtime per day requires a radical departure from traditional, hands-on real estate practices. Keith Gillispie explains that instead of relying on manual prospecting or local networking, busy professionals must adopt a systems-engineering mindset to turn fractional daily efforts into continuous operational results. By creating strict Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and deploying centralized CRM platforms, investors can confidently delegate repetitive tasks to global virtual assistants, ensuring that deal flow, lead management, and property analysis move forward automatically. This operational leverage completely detaches an investor's physical location and immediate schedule from their revenue-generating capacity, transforming a lack of time from an excuse into a catalyst for extreme operational efficiency.The macroeconomic landscape has fundamentally shifted, making passive buy-and-hold rental portfolios significantly more stable than highly volatile fixing-and-flipping or wholesaling models. Rapidly changing state legislation and regional market swings mean that holding residential real estate—specifically single-family homes and small multi-family units under four doors—offers the most predictable path to sustainable cash flow and capital preservation. Rather than chasing short-term transactional profits that expose the owner to massive tax liabilities and overhead risk, modern investors utilize tech-driven infrastructure to source and hold income-producing assets. This thesis-driven approach protects capital against inflation and provides a secure, predictable margin that traditional paper assets rarely replicate.Building an enterprise that operates seamlessly in the background also requires a deep commitment to personal balance and accountability. High-achievers frequently succumb to executive burnout by neglecting personal routines or failing to involve their families in their long-term entrepreneurial visions. Keith shares that true success is found when operational discipline is paired with intentional boundaries, allowing founders to step completely out of the "tactical firefighting" trap. By leveraging a comprehensive ecosystem that synthesizes specialized software, continuous education, and outside coaching, professionals can achieve a rare level of lifestyle freedom. This ensures that the ultimate reward of business optimization is not just increased profitability, but the reclamation of one's personal time and autonomy.About Keith GillispieKeith Gillispie is the Co-Founder of REI Automated and a decorated Marine Corps veteran with a specialized background in systems engineering. After successfully building his own nationwide real estate portfolio during his limited active-duty lunch breaks, Keith turned his proprietary frameworks into a scalable training and software ecosystem. He is a dedicated mentor who specializes in helping high-earning professionals replace administrative debt with automated real estate systems that drive long-term time and financial freedom.About REI AutomatedREI Automated is an all-in-one real estate investment infrastructure provider that combines advanced automation software, specialized marketing education, and elite coaching. Designed specifically for busy corporate professionals and W-2 employees, the platform provides custom-built CRMs, operational playbooks, and virtual assistant frameworks to streamline acquisitions. With over 570 clients and an unmatched success rate, REI Automated enables individuals to build scalable, passive residential rental portfolios across the United States.Links Mentioned in This EpisodeREI Automated Official Website: reiautomated.ioKeith Gillispie on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/keithgreiKey Episode HighlightsThe Lunch-Hour Leverage System: How to maximize single hours of daily productivity using automation to achieve full-time real estate results.Why Rentals Beat Flipping: Navigating current market volatility and shifting state legislation by prioritizing long-term buy-and-hold cash flow.The Three Pillars of Automation: Integrating dedicated CRMs, documented SOPs, and global virtual assistants to eliminate operational bottlenecks.The High-Earner W-2 Playbook: Tailoring real estate investment structures specifically to fit the constraints of demanding corporate careers.Military-Grade Operational Discipline: Applying systems engineering principles and rigorous routine management to ensure predictable business growth.ConclusionThe conversation with Keith Gillispie proves that a lack of time is never a barrier to entry when a business is backed by the right structural architecture. By implementing automated workflows and focusing strictly on high-yield cash-flowing residential rentals, busy professionals can systematically build an independent path to generational wealth.More from The Thoughtful Entrepreneur

#902 Think you need decades of experience to build a high-revenue business? Think again! In this episode, host Brien Gearin sits down with 21-year-old Jack Leimbach, founder of Tiger Window Cleaning in Auburn, Alabama — a college-student-run service pulling in $30K+ months. Jack shares how he turned a $200 Amazon squeegee kit into a thriving business by mastering door-to-door sales, leveraging TikTok scripts, scaling with Facebook ads, and leading a student-powered team. From landing his first $220 gig to building a fully automated service with CRMs, recurring plans, and two trucks, this is a masterclass in scrappy startup growth and operational grit. Whether you're in college or just starting out, Jack's story will inspire you to knock on doors — literally and figuratively! (Original Air Date - 9/9/25) What we discuss with Jack: + Started business at 19 in college + Learned door-to-door sales from TikTok + First job earned $220 + Hit $10K months during finals + Invested in water-fed pole system + Transitioned to Facebook ads for leads + Built team of Auburn students + Uses CRM to automate operations + Offers recurring service plans + Aims to sell business before graduation Thank you, Jack! Check out Tiger Window Cleaning at ⁠TWCAuburn.com⁠. Follow Jack on ⁠Facebook⁠ and ⁠Instagram⁠. Watch the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠video podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ of this episode! To get access to our FREE Business Training course go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠MillionaireUniversity.com/training⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. To get exclusive offers mentioned in this episode and to support the show, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠millionaireuniversity.com/sponsors⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices