Podcasts about CSL

In this episode of Yet Another Value Podcast, host Andrew Walker interviews the first-year Columbia MBA team who unanimously won the 18th Annual Pershing Square Challenge with their investment thesis on Carlisle Companies (CSL). The team—Tuan, Dimitry, and Erik—shares their detailed research into the commercial roofing giant, exploring its competitive moats, sticky customer relationships, management alignment, valuation framework, and opportunities for expansion. They discuss their firsthand trade show research, unique insight into labor dynamics, and responses to key concerns like cyclicality and pricing power. The conversation also covers the company's history, recent transformation, and what could keep an investor up at night.You can find the team's CSL pitch deck here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mn4ib4897o8gfpgdzs03c/CSL-US-Carlisle-Pershing-Square-Challenge-Presentation_YAVB_Abridged.pdf?rlkey=ck47pu6samrrnctwlfyr536hc&e=1&st=nj9zt415&dl=0______________________________________________________________________[00:00:00] Intro to podcast and guests[00:02:44] Guest introductions and backgrounds[00:05:35] Overview of Carlisle Companies[00:08:32] Pitch background and idea process[00:13:03] Unique research: trade show visits[00:19:28] Carlisle's competitive advantages[00:24:58] Sticky customer and contractor base[00:30:00] Valuation and IRR framework[00:35:14] Management's strategy and alignment[00:42:07] Target 2030 growth breakdown[00:46:20] QXO, Beacon, and distribution impact[00:52:22] Risks and margin sustainability[00:54:28] Potential new entrants: Berkshire risk[00:56:33] Labor shortages and benefits[01:00:17] Leverage and capital allocation debate[01:02:56] Final reflections and thank yousLinks:Yet Another Value Blog - https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com See our legal disclaimer here: https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/p/legal-and-disclaimer

The ASX 200 wilted slightly from 8400, to close up only 46 points at 8344, touching a 3-month high. Today, it was all about resources as BHP, RIO, and FMG rallied. The gold sector, too, was back in demand, with GMD up 4.4% and NEM rising 3.6% after a bruising week. LYC bounced too much 2.7% with LTR continuing to find friends and shorts covering. Up another 3.2%. In oil and gas, WDS unchanged and STO rose 0.5%, with uranium stocks giving back some recent gains, PDN down 8.0%, and BOE off 7.2%. Banks took a breather with NAB pushing higher again, CBA off slightly, and MQG fell 1.5% with IAG down 2.8%. The Big Bank Basket $267.18 (+0.1%) Financials were stronger, PNI up 2.8% and IFL rising 1.2%.  ZIP is up another 2.4%. REITs also benefitted from lower yields and pushed higher, GMG up 2.9% and SCG rising 2.5%.  Healthcare was better as CSL rose 1.4% with industrials a slight green tinge. TCL is up 0.9%, and QAN is doing well, Retail is, too, ahead of RBA next week. Tech slipped, XRO was down 1.1%, and WTC was off 2.2%. The All-Tech Index is down 0.1%. In corporate news, APX jumped 18.7% on an update at the AGM, NWH shrugged off Valhalla news, and DXS went down 1.1% after APAC moved on breach of contracts.  Nothing locally on the economic front, Japanese GDP fell slightly, and China and HK went down 0.6%. 10-year yields down to 4.45%.Want to invest with Marcus Today? The Managed Strategy Portfolio is designed for investors seeking exposure to our strategy while we do the hard work for you. If you're looking for personal financial advice, our friends at Clime Investment Management can help. Their team of licensed advisers operates across most states, offering tailored financial planning services.  Why not sign up for a free trial? Gain access to expert insights, research, and analysis to become a better investor.

Gaming giant Aristocrat Leisure brought in a rise in profit, but the market was unimpressed by what it heard. MARKET WRAP: ASX200: up 0.13% to 8,279 GOLD: $3,254 US/oz BITCOIN: $159,417 AUD The Energy sector was the strongest with Brent crude back over $66 US a barrel. Woodside Energy were beneficiaries, up 3.4%, Life360 rose another 9.5% after its earnings yesterday. Up over 1% were Wesfarmers, REA Group and Brambles Aristocrat Leisure reported growth in revenue of 9% and a 6% lift in profit. Shares closed 8.9% lower to $62.10. Bain Capital withdrew its bid for Insignia Financial, seeing the wealth management company fall 15.8% to $3.37. CSL, Goodman Group and Transurban all down. CURRENCY UPDATE: AUD/USD: 65.0 US cents AUD/GBP: 48.7 pence AUD/EUR: 57 Euro cents AUD/JPY: 95 Japanese yen AUD/NZD: 1.09 NZ dollars See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The ASX 200 was up 11 at 8280 (0.1%), with some big movers hurting positive sentiments. ALL had an 8.9% fall on an earnings miss, and MQG slid 1.6% as ASIC looks at short selling reports. CBA reported a better-than-expected number and rose 0.8% with the Big Bank Basket up to $263.99 (+0.6%). NAB is rallying hard again. Insurers were better, SUN was up 0.9% with financials mixed, IFL toppled 15.8% as Bain pulled the plug, GQG saw some profit-taking, and XYZ and ZIP both showed a clean pair of heels. REITs remain under some pressure as yields hit 4.47% in the 10s. Healthcare slipped, CSL down 0.4% and SIG falling 2.3% with PME pushing higher again. Retail stocks slipped a little, APE down 2.4% on a broker downgrade, but JBH up 0.6%. ALL weighed on the sector. Tech stocks built on Tuesday's gains, WTC down 0.6% and the All-Tech Index up 1.5%. Resources were a mixed bag. BHP and RIO were around 0.5% higher, FMG was moving 2.2% higher, gold miners were mixed, GMD up 3.5% and CYL up 6.4% with NEM down 2.0%. MIN rose 4.0%, and LTR continues to roar ahead in the lithium space, up another 6.1%. Oil and gas better, WDS up 3.4% as oil prices rose, and it signed a deal with Aramco in Louisiana. In corporate news, MYX back from a trading pause as the US regulatory deadline draws close. On the economic front, wage growth came in at 3.4%, slightly higher than expected. Asian markets mixed, with Japan down 0.2%, HK up 1.7%, and China up 0.9%.  Want to invest with Marcus Today? The Managed Strategy Portfolio is designed for investors seeking exposure to our strategy while we do the hard work for you. If you're looking for personal financial advice, our friends at Clime Investment Management can help. Their team of licensed advisers operates across most states, offering tailored financial planning services.  Why not sign up for a free trial? Gain access to expert insights, research, and analysis to become a better investor.

Ep. 311 Nurturing Connections - Rev. Sue MillerBorn From the Sunday Service at the Center for Spiritual Living in Redding on 5-11-25

Another solid day with the ASX 200 up 27 points to 8178 (+0.3%). NAB (+1.6%) results helped, but the news of Bessent heading for a Swiss showdown with Chinese counterparties on trade, popped US futures higher and commodity stocks were back on. China also cut rates.  BHP up 0.9% with RIO up 0.6%. Gold miners were solid on bullion's rise, SPR up 0.9%, and VAU doing better, up 3.3%. NST fell 2.6% though with WGX up 2.9%. Lithium stocks better, LTR up 7.8% on WA loans, PLS rallied 4.8% and MIN up 2.6%. LYC slipped as US/China relations improved. Oil and gas stocks also bounced. WDS up 1.7% and STO up 2.0%. Uranium stocks were once again in demand as shorts continue to cover, BOE updated the market and ran hard, up 12.4%. PDN up 4.4%. Banks stalled with the Big Bank Basket flat at $263.60. NAB (+1.6%) the standout and CBA (-0.5%) the problem child. Other financials doing well. MQG rose 0.9% despite news from ASIC on serious breaches. ASX up 2.5% and PNI up 4.3%. ZIP presented at the Macquarie conference and rose 13.0%. Industrials were mixed, CSL fell 3.0% with TLX down too but RMD up 0.9%. REITs were positive. Tech slipped, XRO down 0.3% and WTC off 0.4%. The index slipping 0.2%. Retail recovered from early JBH losses, PMV up 2.6% and TPW on an update rose 8.0%.In corporate news, no real bad news from Macquarie Conference. NXL slammed 16.0% on an uncertain update, KLS ran hard, up 18.3%, on a positive briefing. On the economic front, all eyes on the Fed and China stimulated again with more rate cuts. Asian markets slightly positive. Japan up 0.5%. 10-year yields steady at 4.29%. Dow futures up 0.5%, NASDAQ futures up 0.6%.Want to invest with Marcus Today? The Managed Strategy Portfolio is designed for investors seeking exposure to our strategy while we do the hard work for you. If you're looking for personal financial advice, our friends at Clime Investment Management can help. Their team of licensed advisers operates across most states, offering tailored financial planning services.  Why not sign up for a free trial? Gain access to expert insights, research, and analysis to become a better investor.

This is the Fear and Greed Afternoon Report - everything you need to know about what happened in the markets, economy and world of business today, in just a few minutes. ASX flat Macquarie conference Recriminations for the Libs Wisetech warning CSL vaccine pain Support the show: http://fearandgreed.com.auSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The ASX 200 fell for the second straight session, recovering from early lows, dropping 6 points to 8151 (-0.1%). Mixed sector performance. Healthcare worst performing sector. Pulled down by two biggest names. CSL (-2.5%) down as it flagged vaccine scepticism in US as a challenge. SIG (-6.7%) down after it took a $42.4m hit in transaction costs so far in FY25. Disappointment of WBC (-2.0%) earnings continued to weigh on Banks and broader index. CBA flat, Big Bank Basket down to $263.69 (0.6%). Other financials fared better. MQG (+0.8%) up as its conference kicked off. Also up are RPL (+0.9%), XYZ (+0.7%). REITs up as RBA rate decision draws nearer. Two weeks today. GMG up 0.2%, MGR up 0.9%. Tech more mixed. WTC down 2.2% as it stayed quiet on guidance give tariff difficulties. NXT jumped 8.3% as it smashed utilisation record on AI demand. Added to Growth on Friday.Want to invest with Marcus Today? The Managed Strategy Portfolio is designed for investors seeking exposure to our strategy while we do the hard work for you. If you're looking for personal financial advice, our friends at Clime Investment Management can help. Their team of licensed advisers operates across most states, offering tailored financial planning services.  Why not sign up for a free trial? Gain access to expert insights, research, and analysis to become a better investor.

Ep. 310 Confidence! - Rev. Sue MillerBorn From the Sunday Service at the Center for Spiritual Living in Redding on 5-4-25

The ASX 200 jumped out of the box to finish up 29 points to 7997 (0.4%) as some caution crept in as the day wore on. CBA turned negative, not helping as NAB soared 1.7% and the Big Bank Basket fell to $260.16 (-0.2%). Financials were generally firm, AMP finding a few new friends up 2.5% and XYZ bouncing slightly. GQG fell 1.4% and PNI popped 2.7%. REITs were mixed, GMG rose 0.8%. Healthcare stocks back in favour, RMD up 2.4% and even CSL put on 1.0% with PME up 3.7%. TLX fell 6.6% on FDA news. Industrials were positive with WES up 1.4% and the tech space better, XRO up 1.9% and the Index up 1.3%. Retailers getting a boost with JBH up 1.5% and AX1 rising 1.7%. HVN also put on 2.4%. In resources, gold miners continued to see profit taking as bullion slipped further as risks cooled. NEM fell 1.3% with VAU down 2.3% and GMD falling 3.6%. Lithium stocks are under pressure again, with LTR down 4.4% and PLS falling 2.4%. BHP slid 1.1% with RIO unchanged. LYC led rare earth stocks higher on its quarterly, uranium stocks saw modest moves with STO up 2.2% and WDS gaining 1.8%. In corporate news, BVS slid 11.2% on a surprise CEO resignation. AGI rose 31.1% as minority shareholder bid 100c for remaining shares. Nothing on the economic front today. China making some noises about stimulus and protecting jobs. Asian markets firmed, Japan up 0.4%, China unchanged and HK up 0.1%. 10-year yields falling to 4.16%.Want to invest with Marcus Today? The Managed Strategy Portfolio is designed for investors seeking exposure to our strategy while we do the hard work for you.If you're looking for personal financial advice, our friends at Clime Investment Management can help. Their team of licensed advisers operates across most states, offering tailored financial planning services.  Why not sign up for a free trial? Gain access to expert insights, research, and analysis to become a better investor.

Ep. 309 Watering the Seeds of Resilience - Rev. Dr. Andrea Asebedo From the Sunday Service at the Center for Spiritual Living in Redding on 4-27-25

Ep. 308 Embracing Transformation - Rev. Sue MillerBorn From the Sunday Service at the Center for Spiritual Living in Redding on 4-20-25

Wall St closed modestly lower on Tuesday as investors shifted focus from tariffs to first quarter earnings results. The Dow Jones lost 0.38%, the S&P500 fell 0.17% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq ended the day down 0.05%. Bank of America rose 3.6% yesterday after exceeding analysts' expectations for Q1 results, while Untied Airlines and Netflix are also expected to report this week. Boeing shares fell more than 2% though on Tuesday on reports that Beijing ordered Chinese airlines not to take anymore of the company's planes.In Europe overnight, markets in the region rose amid investor optimism of further tariff exemptions to come from the White House. The STOXX 600 rose 1.6%, Germany's DAX added 1.3%, the French CAC gained 0.9% and, in the UK, the FTSE100 ended the day up 1.5%.Across the Asia region on Tuesday, markets mostly rose in the region as a tech rally boosted investor sentiment. Japan's Nikkei rose 0.84%, South Korea's Kospi Index gained 0.88%, India's Nifty 50 rose 2.18% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng ended the day up 0.23%.The local market rallied for a second session on Tuesday with a gain of 0.17% after a day of relative calm with minimal news on the tariff front out of the White House. Investors increasingly sought out defensive stocks on Tuesday with CSL and CBA rising 2.56% and 0.87% respectively.The high growth tech sector came under pressure on Tuesday despite strength on the Nasdaq on Monday and Trump's exemption of key tech tariffs. KFC Australia operator Collins Food Group fell over 7.7% on Tuesday after announcing the results of its strategic review including the exiting of its Taco Bell operations in Australia and further expansion of KFC into Germany.Accent Group on the other hand rallied over 4.5% after announcing it will launch and operate leading global sports retailing business, Sports Direct to Australia and New Zealand. The leading Australian retailer also announced a long-term strategic relationship with Frasers Group, a global retailer of sports, premium and luxury brands based in London, with Frasers also increasing its stake in Accent Group to 19.57%.What to watch today:The Aussie dollar has further strengthened against the greenback to buy 63.48 US cents, 90.82 Japanese Yen, 48.08 British Pence and 1 New Zealand dollar and 8 cents.On the commodities front this morning, oil is trading 0.33% lower at US$61.32/barrel, gold is up 0.5% at US$3227.51/ounce and iron ore is up 0.13% at US$100.08/tonne. Ahead of the midweek trading session the SPI futures are anticipating the ASX will open the day down just 0.04% Trading Idea.s:Bell Potter has downgraded the rating on Evolution Mining (ASX:EVN) from a buy to a hold and have raised the 12-month price target on the gold and copper miner from $7.89 to $8.10 following the release of the company's March quarter report which came in strong as Bell Potter was expecting. The downgrade to a hold simply follows recent share price appreciation.Trading Central has identified a bullish signal on Universal Stores (ASX:UNI) following the formation of a pattern over a period of 38-days which is roughly the same amount of time the share price may rise from the close of $7.46 to the range of $10.10 to $10.70 according to standard principles of technical analysis.

The U.S. Army War College (USAWC) recently hosted its 2025 Homeland Defense Symposium, gathering experts to tackle the complex issues of defending the homeland. A key focus was clarifying the difference between Homeland Security (law enforcement and emergency response) and Homeland Defense (military protection against external threats). Bert Tussing, Director of the Homeland Defense and Security Issues Group at the USAWC's Center for Strategic Leadership, joined host Ron Granieri in the studio to discuss the major themes of the symposium. Participants emphasized the importance of preparedness, highlighting that future conflicts are likely to reach U.S. soil. The discussions emphasized the need for a whole-of-society approach, integrating not just federal agencies but also state and local governments, the private sector, and the general public into defense strategies. The term homeland defense may be unfamiliar to many listeners more accustomed to the phrase Homeland Security. These differences are significant even if the policies are intended to be complementary. Bert Tussing is Director of the Homeland Defense and Security Issues Group at the U.S. Army War College's Center for Strategic Leadership (CSL). He joined CSL in October 1999, following nearly 25 years in the United States Marine Corps. He is a distinguished graduate of both the Marine Corps Command and Staff College and the Naval War College and holds master's degrees in National Security Strategy and Military Strategic Studies. In May of 2014 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters by Northwestern State University in recognition of his work in Homeland Security, Homeland Defense and Educational initiatives surrounding those topics. The views expressed in this presentation are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, U.S. Army, or Department of Defense. Photo Description: A fervent advocate for issues of homeland defense and security, Professor Bert Tussing, Director of the Homeland Defense and Security Issues Group at the U.S. Army War College's Center for Strategic Leadership, recently gave a lecture titled "Evolving Direction of Homeland Defense" to the USAWC class of 2025. Photo Credit: U.S. Army War College

Collins Foods will offload Taco Bell, but can it be blamed on the rise of Guzman y Gomez? MARKET WRAP: ASX200: up 0.17% to 7,761 GOLD: $3,246 US/oz BITCOIN: $135,130 AUD Collins shares down almost 8% to $8.00, while rival GYG falling 0.3% to $33.40. Evolution Mining hit a record high today up just under 4% to $8.21 CSL had a healthy day up 2.6% to $244.10 but still well off its 52 week high of $313.55. Resmed also a touch higher The big 4 banks were all higher led by Westpac up 0.8% to $30.76. BHP and RIO both up with Fortescue the standout up 0.8% to $15.32 Treasury Wine stocks fell 3.4% to $8.30. Wesfarmers marginally weaker to $74.21 Aristocrat Leisure also fell 1.2% to $62.21. Star Entertainment released its half year results, posting a loss of $300 million for the half. CURRENCY UPDATE: AUD/USD: 63.6 US cents AUD/GBP: 48.1 pence AUD/EUR: 56 Euro cents AUD/JPY: 91 Japanese yen AUD/NZD: 1.07 NZ dollars See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The ASX 200 consolidated the move yesterday with a gain of 13 points to 7762. Easter is calling it seems. Banks were the key with the Big Bank Basket up to $250.19 (0.6%). CBA up 0.5% and MQG gaining 0.8% too. Other financials were a little soggy, GQG down 1.9% with HUB falling 2.9% despite good FUA numbers. PNI dropped 5.0%. REITs eased back too, GMG down 1.2% and SCG down 0.9%. Healthcare saw CSL better despite threats from Trump to put tariffs on pharma; Industrials drifted lower. WOW down 1.8% with REA off 1.8% and tech under some pressure. WTC down 2.2% with XRO falling 1.5% as the All-Tech index dropped 0.8%. Retail generally slipped with SUL off 2.9% and FLT falling 2.8%. Resources were flat in the main; EVN had a great quarterly and rose 3.9%, whilst other gold miners saw some profit-taking; BHP, RIO, and FMG showed slight gains. LYC and other rare earth stocks in demand,  as China blocks exports. Uranium and coal stocks falling away, NXG down 2.6% and NHC off 1.3%. In corporate news, BGL resumed trade down % as it raised $156m to buy back its hedge. CKF fell 7.7% on news it will close Taco Bell. PPT fell 1.4% as money left the building and AX1 up 4.7% on news of Sports Direct launch. On the economic front, The RBA minutes left the door open for a possible May rate cut. Asian markets mixed, Japan up 0.9%, HK down 0.3% and China down 0.3%. 10-year yields falling to 4.35%.Want to invest with Marcus Today? The Managed Strategy Portfolio is designed for investors seeking exposure to our strategy while we do the hard work for you.If you're looking for personal financial advice, our friends at Clime Investment Management can help. Their team of licensed advisers operates across most states, offering tailored financial planning services.  Why not sign up for a free trial? Gain access to expert insights, research, and analysis to become a better investor.

Ep. 307 Visioning Beyond the Horizon - Rev. Sue MillerBorn From the Sunday Service at the Center for Spiritual Living in Redding on 4-13-25

The ASX best day in five years up 335 points to 7710 although off early opening highs. Remarkably stable after the initial surge and fall back. Waiting for more information perhaps. Resources were the big winners today, BHP up 5.4% and RIO and FMG a similar rise, shorts getting hurt in MIN up 18.1% and S32 rising 9.5% with the gold miners also very positive. In AUD terms bullion fell but NEM up 4.0% and NST rising 5.1%. Lithium stocks recovered as shorts covered positions, LTR up 15.1% and PLS rising 12.7%. BSL rallied 8.0% and even JHX up 12.0%. Oil and gas showed strength as crude rallied, WDS up 4.7% and STO gaining 4.1%. Uranium stocks were back in fashion, no fall out today, PDN up 17.4% and DYL rallying a dizzying 15.9%. Banks were firm too although off early highs, CBA up 3.6% and WBC gaining 4.9% with MQG up 5.5%. Insurers and financials were very positive, GQG up 3.4% and XYZ rising 13.3% with ZIP rallying 20.7%. QBE up 4.4% and MPL rising 3.7%. Healthcare stocks were better, CSL recovered 3.5% and PME gained 8.4%. Across the board gains in industrials, WES up 2.6% and GMG rising 6.6%. Tech in demand, WTC rallied another 8.0% with XRO up 6.2% and the All -Tech Index up 6.8%. Retailers did well, JBH up 6.6% and travel stocks in demand. In corporate news, QUB got ACCC approvals, ABB rose 4.9% after announcing plans to expand its mobile network. Nothing on the economic front locally. Deutsche pulled back its call for an emergency 50bps rate cut and in Asia, China saw more evidence of deflation and a weakening yuan. Asian market burst higher, Japan up 8.3% with HK up 2.6% and China up 1.3%. 10-year yields slid to 4.33%.Want to invest with Marcus Today? The Managed Strategy Portfolio is designed for investors seeking exposure to our strategy while we do the hard work for you. If you're looking for personal financial advice, our friends at Clime Investment Management can help. Their team of licensed advisers operates across most states, offering tailored financial planning services.  Why not sign up for a free trial? Gain access to expert insights, research, and analysis to become a better investor.

A Chinese slowdown will hurt commodity prices, while health care stocks were weaker on the threat of pharmaceutical tariffs. ASX200: down 1.80% to 7,375 GOLD: $3,068 US/oz BITCOIN: $128,573 AUD Star Entertainment told the market a $750 million refinancing lifeline from Salter Brothers needed to ensure its survival was no longer on the table. Star shares remain suspended. Stockland rose 0.6 per cent to $5.04, and Charter Hall increased more than 3 per cent to $17.32. Mirvac was steady at $2.13 and Goodman rose more than 3% to $30.11 Kelsian transported itself 4.3% higher after it said it was looking to offload its tourism business. CSL and Cochler both up more than 1.6% to close at $255 and $269 respectively. BHP down 1.6% to $38.25, RIO down 1.6% to $115.15, Fortescue down 1.7% to to $15.37 Karoon Energy also fell just under 1% to $1.60 despite a broker upgrade. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

China will not back down from US threats of further tariffs, with the trade war threatening to escalate further. MARKET WRAP: ASX200: up 2.27%, 7,510 GOLD: $3,022 US/oz BITCOIN: $130,534 AUD Cochlear told the market it would continue to maintain its duty-free status despite US tariffs, helping it to rise 1.2% to $256.36. Guzman y Gomez showed a gain in sales growth and across its US network, with shares up a tasty 3.7% to $31.10 Wisetech up over 5%, Xero 4.3% higher and Life360 up almost 8%. Fortescue up 3.5%, Wesfarmers rising 3% and CSL gaining 1.6%. Domain Holdings the worst of the Top 200 sliding 5.1% to $3.91. While Transurban was down 0.3% and James Hardie dropped 2.5%. CURRENCY UPDATE: AUD/USD: 60.6 US cents AUD/GBP: 47.5 pence AUD/EUR: 55 Euro cents AUD/JPY: 89 Japanese yen AUD/NZD: 1.08 NZ dollars See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Brian springs an awful Aslan casting surprise on Nate, and the results are delightful. The SASF discussion of Greta Gerwig's new Netflix Narnia series ranges far afield. Planet Narnia, which book of the series is Nate's favorite, Lewis's repeated character archetypes, adaptation of books to film... this one has all things Lewis. Including Nate's claim that Edmund / Eustace / Digory all behave the way they do because CSL had thumbs that couldn't bend.

Ep. 306 What is in Your Consciousness - Rev. Sue MillerBorn From the Sunday Service at the Center for Spiritual Living in Redding on 4-6-25

Ep. 305 Our True Self Blossoms - Johanne Carreau, RScP From the Sunday Service at the Center for Spiritual Living in Redding on 3-30-25

Danny Moses is joined by Ivy Zelman, Founder and Executive VP of Zelman Associates, to discuss her career and insights into the housing market. Ivy shares her journey from a financial analyst at Solomon Brothers in the 1990s to becoming a renowned figure in the housing sector. They delve into her famous predictions on the housing market downturn, the impacts of the 2008 financial crisis, and her strategies for maintaining accurate market forecasts. The conversation also explores current market challenges such as affordability, immigration, tariffs, and declining home sales, along with her perspectives on builders, mortgage rates, and industry consolidation. Ivy also shares details about her memoir 'Gimme Shelter' and her ongoing work at Zelman Associates. On The Tape on X: https://x.com/OnTheTapePod Danny Moses on X: https://x.com/dmoses34 Ivy Zelman's Stock Disclosures: AMWD, BLD, BLDR, CSL, FBHS, IBP, MBC, RMAX, SWK, BZH, CCS, HOV, KBH, LEN, MDC, MHO, MTH, PMH, TOL & TMHC Stock Ownership: Analyst: No Analyst's Family: No Analyst's Firm: No Investment Banking Client: No Other Conflicts: Yes – Zelman has received compensation for products or services other than investment banking services.   DFH Stock Ownership: Analyst: No Analyst's Family: No Analyst's Firm: No Investment Banking Client: Yes Other Conflicts: Yes – Zelman has received compensation for products or services other than investment banking services -- ABOUT THE SHOW For decades, Danny has seen it all on Wall Street and has built his reputation on integrity, curiosity and skepticism that he will bring with him each week. Having traded through the Great Financial Crisis and being featured in "The Big Short" is only part of the experiences Danny wants to share with the listener. This weekly podcast cuts through market noise, offering entertaining and informative discussions with expert guests giving their views of the financial world and the human side of it. Whether you're a seasoned investor or just getting started, On The Tape provides something for all listeners. Follow Danny on X: @dmoses34 The financial opinions expressed are for information purposes only. The opinions expressed by the hosts and participants are not an attempt to influence specific trading behavior, investments, or strategies. Past performance does not necessarily predict future outcomes. No specific results or profits are assured when relying on this content. Before making any investment or trade, evaluate its suitability for your circumstances and consider consulting your own financial or investment advisor. The financial products discussed in 'On The Tape' carry a high level of risk and may not be appropriate for many investors. If you have uncertainties, it's advisable to seek professional advice. Remember that trading involves a risk to your capital, so only invest money that you can afford to lose. Derivatives are not suitable for all investors and involve the risk of losing more than the amount originally deposited and any profit you might have made. This communication is not a recommendation or offer to buy, sell or retain any specific investment or service.

The ASX 200 got close to cracking through the 8000 point mark, as better inflation numbers suggested again that rate cuts could be on the way. MARKET WRAP: ASX200: up 0.71%, 7,999 GOLD: $3,029 US/oz BITCOIN: $139,581 AUD Commbank up 1.1%, Westpac rising 1.2%, NAB picking up 0.7%, and ANZ jumping almost 3%. Brent Crude oil has steadily been rising in price, up over $73 US a barrel and helping the local energy sector. Santos rose 1.7%, while Woodside was up 0.4%. Vulcan rose 12.8% to $5.36 after one of its projects was listed as crucial for the European Commission’s critical minerals supply. Paladin Energy fell 11.6% to $5.65 after it pulled back on its guidance following heavy rainfall in its Namibian mine The half year results for telco Tuas showed a profit of $3 million, with shares down 7.5% to $5.80. CSL down 1.5%, Ramsay Health Care down 1.3% CURRENCY UPDATE: AUD/USD: 63.20 US cents AUD/GBP: 49.0 British pence AUD/EUR: 58 Euro cents AUD/JPY: 95 Japanese yen AUD/NZD: 1.10 NZ dollars See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ep. 304 Planting Intentions - Rev. Dr. Mary Mitchell From the Sunday Service at the Center for Spiritual Living in Redding on 3-23-25

In this special Open House episode, Sarah Doody sits down with Career Strategy Lab (CSL) alum Sarah Page to discuss her journey navigating the UX job market. From being laid off as a creative director to landing a Senior UX Designer role in health tech, Sarah shares the mindset shifts, job search strategies, and portfolio insights that helped her stand out.She also reveals the unexpected format of her interviews, how she positioned her diverse experience to appeal to hiring managers, and why letting go of what's out of your control is a game-changer in your job search.If you're struggling with rejection, resume gaps, or feeling “overqualified” and “underqualified” at the same time—this episode is for you!What You'll Learn:✅ Why job rejections often have nothing to do with you (and how to move forward)✅ The power of a well-structured portfolio—and why Figma slides worked better than a website✅ How to confidently position diverse experience (even across industries!)✅ The mental shift that helped Sarah stay motivated through uncertainty✅ How social proof (from hiring managers, peers, and CSL feedback) builds confidence✅ The real role of interviews (hint: sometimes it's just a vibe check!)✅ Why finding the right company fit matters more than tweaking your resume endlessly✅ How Sarah strategically approached salary negotiation and total compensationTimestamps01:50 Open House Overview03:22 Success Stories and Strategies05:47 Navigating the Job Market09:15 Interview Experiences13:45 Negotiating Job Offers17:08 Advice for Job Seekers20:45 Conclusion and Farewell

MARKET WRAP: ASX200: up 0.83%, 7,854 GOLD: $2,997 US/oz BITCOIN: $131,789 AUD BHP gained 2.4%, Fortescue rising 4.2%, and Rio Tinto up 1.8%. Mineral Resources was another miner getting a bump after a UBS upgrade of the company saw it gain more than 11% to $24.49 Confirmation of a merger between Spartan Resources and Ramelius Resources sent Spartan 9.1% higher – Ramelius going the other way by 0.9% The oil price pushing back over US $71 a barrel helped Woodside gain 1.9%. Most of the big banks finished higher, but NAB fell 0.2% to $33.24 after it announced changes to its executive team. Losses were felt in the Healthcare sector.. CSL dropped 0.9% and Resmed fell 1.3%. Telstra, Woolworths and Coles all down CURRENCY UPDATE: AUD/USD: 63.37 US cents AUD/GBP: 48.9 pence AUD/EUR: 58 Euro cents AUD/JPY: 94 Japanese yen AUD/NZD: 1.09 NZ dollars See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ep. 303 I'm Awake...Am I? - Rev. Lynn E. Fritz From the Sunday Service at the Center for Spiritual Living in Redding on 3-16-25

The Aussie market tumbled to a seven-month low, shedding $47 billion in a single day, with losses now totalling over $300 billion since February’s record high. The ASX 200 slipped into correction territory, down 10% from its peak, with widespread selling hitting 10 out of 11 sectors. Financials, the largest sector, saw their seventh straight day of declines, while a long list of major stocks, including CSL and Fortescue, hit 52-week lows. Trade tensions added to market uncertainty, with the US imposing fresh tariffs on Australian steel and aluminium, despite last-minute diplomatic efforts. Meanwhile, investors are closely watching US inflation data and potential interest rate moves, with hopes that bargain hunters could soon stabilise the market. The content in this podcast is prepared, approved and distributed in Australia by Commonwealth Securities Limited ABN 60 067 254 399 AFSL 238814. The information does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Consider the appropriateness of the information before acting and if necessary, seek appropriate professional advice.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ep. 302 Trusting the Still Small Voice - Rev. Sue MillerBorn From the Sunday Service at the Center for Spiritual Living in Redding on 3-9-25

With Donald Trump’s new tariff program hitting China hard, will Australia’s iron ore miners suffer in the process? MARKET WRAP: ASX200: down 0.58% to 8,198 GOLD: $2,903 US/oz BITCOIN: $134,474 AUD An oil price resulted in a 3.2% fall across Energy stocks, with Woodside falling over 3%, Santos was down 4.7%, and Ampol shed almost 2%. The threat of Cyclone Alfred saw insurers Suncorp and QBE both down 2%, while IAG was off by 1.7%. Origin dropped 4.2% and Nick Scali fell 3.9% as both traded ex-dividend. Qantas made it over $10 for the first time, rising 2.1% to $10.20. Health Care’s good day was led by CSL rising 1% and Resmed lifting 0.9%. Gains of more than 1% for Transurban, Evolution Mining, and Mirvac. CURRENCY UPDATE: AUD/USD: 62.06 US cents AUD/GBP: 48.9 pence AUD/EUR: 59 Euro cents AUD/JPY: 92 Japanese yen AUD/NZD: 1.10 NZ dollars See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ep. 301 Navigating the Tides of Life - Rev. Sue MillerBorn From the Sunday Service at the Center for Spiritual Living in Redding on 3-2-25

With the Australian reporting season just about coming to an end, Nvidia has been a big focus for investors on Wall Street. MARKET WRAP: ASX200: up 0.33%, 8,268 GOLD: $2,909 US/oz BITCOIN: $136,955 AUD Qantas shares jumped another 5.6% on the day to $9.39 – and has gained more than 80% over the last year. Medibank Private announced better retention of clients and fewer claims shares up just under 10% to $4.42 Ramsay Health Care shares up more than 6% to $36.18 Infratil lifted more than 2% to $9.72 after an increase in shareholding from some board members. Sequoia reported 137% lift in profit - shares jumped more than 3% to 44 ½ cents. Perpetual fell just under 10% after a disappointing reporting result and again confirming the takeover from private equity firm KKR was off the table. Mercury New Zealand shares down 7% to $5.40 Pro medicus fell more than 3% to $263.08 and CSL fell 1.7% to $260.29 And Wisetech global have had a busy week, but shares were sold down today down to $93.99. CURRENCY UPDATE: AUD/USD: 62.95 US cents AUD/GBP: 49.7 pence AUD/EUR: 60 Euro cents AUD/JPY: 94 Japanese yen AUD/NZD: 1.10 NZ dollars See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Genevieve Hayes Consulting Episode 53: A Wake-Up Call from 3 Tech Leaders on Why You're Failing as a Data Scientist Are your data science projects failing to deliver real business value?What if the problem isn’t the technology or the organization, but your approach as a data scientist?With only 11% of data science models making it to deployment and close to 85% of big data projects failing, something clearly isn’t working.In this episode, three globally recognised analytics leaders, Bill Schmarzo, Mark Stouse and John Thompson, join Dr Genevieve Hayes to deliver a tough love wake-up call on why data scientists struggle to create business impact, and more importantly, how to fix it.This episode reveals:Why focusing purely on technical metrics like accuracy and precision is sabotaging your success — and what metrics actually matter to business leaders. [04:18]The critical mindset shift needed to transform from a back-room technical specialist into a valued business partner. [30:33]How to present data science insights in ways that drive action — and why your fancy graphs might be hurting rather than helping. [25:08]Why “data driven” isn’t enough, and how to adopt a “data informed” approach that delivers real business outcomes. [54:08] Guest Bio Bill Schmarzo, also known as “The Dean of Big Data,” is the AI and Data Customer Innovation Strategist for Dell Technologies' AI SPEAR team, and is the author of six books on blending data science, design thinking, and data economics from a value creation and delivery perspective. He is an avid blogger and is ranked as the #4 influencer worldwide in data science and big data by Onalytica and is also an adjunct professor at Iowa State University, where he teaches the “AI-Driven Innovation” class.Mark Stouse is the CEO of ProofAnalytics.ai, a causal AI company that helps companies understand and optimize their operational investments in light of their targeted objectives, time lag, and external factors. Known for his ability to bridge multiple business disciplines, he has successfully operationalized data science at scale across large enterprises, driven by his belief that data science’s primary purpose is enabling better business decisions.John Thompson is EY's Global Head of AI and is the author of four books on AI, data and analytics teams. He was named one of dataIQ's 100 most influential people in data in 2023 and is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Michigan, where he teaches a course based on his book “Building Analytics Teams”. Links Connect with Bill on LinkedInConnect with Mark on LinkedInConnect with John on LinkedIn Connect with Genevieve on LinkedInBe among the first to hear about the release of each new podcast episode by signing up HERE Read Full Transcript [00:00:00] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Hello, and welcome to Value Driven Data Science, the podcast that helps data scientists transform their technical expertise into tangible business value, career autonomy, and financial reward. I’m Dr. Genevieve Hayes, and today I’m joined by three globally recognized innovators and leaders in AI, analytics, and data science.[00:00:24] Bill Schmarzo, Mark Stouse, and John Thompson. Bill? Also known as the Dean of Big Data, is the AI and Data Customer Innovation Strategist for Dell Technologies AI Spear Team, and is the author of six books on blending data science, design thinking, and data economics from a value creation and delivery perspective.[00:00:49] He is an avid blogger and is ranked as the number four influencer worldwide in data science and big data Analytica. And he’s also an adjunct professor at Iowa State University, where he teaches AI driven innovation. Mark is the CEO of proofanalytics. ai, a causal AI company that helps organizations understand and optimize their operational investments in light of their targeted objectives, time lag and external factors.[00:01:23] Known for his ability to bridge multiple business disciplines, he has successfully operationalized data science at scale across large enterprises. Driven by his belief that data science’s primary purpose is enabling better business decisions. And John is EY’s global head of AI and is the author of four books on AI data and analytics teams.[00:01:49] He was named one of DataIQ’s 100 most influential people in data in 2023. and is also an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan, where he teaches a course based on his book, Building Analytics Teams. Today’s episode will be a tough love wake up call for data scientists on why you are failing to deliver real business value and more importantly, what you can do about it.[00:02:17] So get ready to boost your impact. Earn what you’re worth and rewrite your career algorithm. Bill, Mark, John, welcome to the show.[00:02:25] Mark Stouse: Thank[00:02:26] Bill Schmarzo: Thanks for having us.[00:02:27] John Thompson: to be here.[00:02:28] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Only 11 percent of data scientists say their models always deploy. Only 10 percent of companies obtain significant financial benefits from AI technologies and close to 85 percent of big data projects fail. These statistics, taken from research conducted by Rexa Analytics, the Boston Consulting Group and Gartner respectively, paint a grim view of what it’s like working as a data scientist.[00:02:57] The reality is, you’re probably going to fail. And when that reality occurs, it’s not uncommon for data scientists to blame either the executive for not understanding the brilliance of their work, or the corporate culture for not being ready for data science. And maybe this is true for some organizations.[00:03:20] Particularly those relatively new to the AI adoption path. But it’s now been almost 25 years since William Cleveland first coined the term data science. And as the explosive uptake of generative AI tools, such as chat GPT demonstrate with the right use case. People are very willing to take on AI technologies.[00:03:42] So perhaps it’s finally time to look in the mirror and face the truth. Perhaps the problem is you, the data scientist. But if this is the case, then don’t despair. In many organizations, the leadership just don’t have the time to provide data scientists with the feedback necessary to improve. But today, I’m sitting here with three of the world’s best to provide that advice just for you.[00:04:09] So, let’s cut to the chase what are the biggest mistakes you see data scientists making when it comes to demonstrating their value?[00:04:18] Mark Stouse: I think that you have to start with the fact that they’re not demonstrating their value, right? I mean, if you’re a CEO, a CFO, head of sales really doesn’t matter if you’re trying to make better business decisions over and over and over again. As Bill talks about a lot, the whole idea here is economic,[00:04:39] and it is. About engaging, triggering the laws of compounding you’ve got to be able to do stuff that makes that happen. Data management, for example, even though we all agree that it’s really necessary, particularly if you’re launching, you know, big data solutions. You can’t do this sequentially and be successful.[00:05:04] You’re going to have to find some areas probably using, you know, old fashioned math around causal analytics, multivariable linear regression, things like that, to at least get the ball rolling. In terms of delivering better value, the kind of value that business leaders actually see as valuable[00:05:29] I mean, one of the things that I feel like I say a lot is, you have to have an understanding of your mission, the mission of data science. As somebody who, as a business leader champions it. Is to help people make those better and better and better decisions. And if you’re not doing that, you’re not creating value.[00:05:52] Full stop.[00:05:53] Bill Schmarzo: Totally agree with Mark. I think you’re going to find that all three of us are in violent agreement on a lot of this stuff. What I find interesting is it isn’t just a data scientist fault. Genevieve, you made a comment that leadership lacks the time to provide guidance to data scientists. So if leadership Is it treating data and analytics as an economics conversation if they think it’s a technology conversation is something that should be handled by the CIO, you’ve already lost, you’ve already failed, you already know you failed,[00:06:24] Mark mentioned the fact that this requires the blending of both sides of the aisle. It requires a data scientist to have the right mindset to ask questions like what it is that we’re trying to achieve. How do we create value? What are our desired outcomes? What are the KPIs metrics around which are going to make your success?[00:06:39] Who are our key stakeholders? There’s a series of questions that the data scientist must be empowered to ask and the business Leadership needs to provide the time and people and resources to understand what we’re trying to accomplish. It means we can go back old school with Stephen Covey, begin with an end in mind.[00:07:01] What is it we’re trying to do? Are we trying to improve customer retention? We try to do, you know, reduce unplanned operational downtime or improve patient outcomes. What is it we’re trying to accomplish? The conversation must, must start there. And it has to start with business leadership, setting the direction, setting the charter, putting the posts out where we want to go, and then the data science team collaborating with the stakeholders to unleash that organizational tribal knowledge to actually solve[00:07:32] Dr Genevieve Hayes: think a lot of the problem comes with the fact that many business leaders see data science as being like an IT project. So, if you’ve got your Windows upgrade, the leadership It gives the financing to IT, IT goes along and does it. And then one morning you’re told, when you come into work, your computer will magically upgrade to the latest version of Windows.[00:07:55] So no one really gets bothered by it. And I think many business leaders treat data science as just another IT project like that. They think they can just Give the funding, the data scientists will go away and then they’ll come in one morning and the data science will magically be on their computer.[00:08:15] Bill Schmarzo: Yeah, magic happens, right? No, no, magic doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. There has to be that leadership commitment to be at the forefront, not just on the boat, but at the front of the boat saying this is the direction we’re going to go.[00:08:29] John Thompson: That’s the whole reason this book was written. The whole point is that, analytics projects are not tech projects. Analytics projects are cultural transformation projects, is what they are. And if you’re expecting the CEO, CFO, CIO, COO, whoever it is, to go out there and set the vision.[00:08:50] That’s never going to happen because they don’t understand technology, and they don’t understand data. They’d rather be working on building the next factory or buying another company or something like that. What really has to happen is the analytics team has to provide leadership to the leadership for them to understand what they’re going to do.[00:09:12] So when I have a project that we’re trying to do, my team is trying to do, and if we’re working for, let’s say, marketing, I go to the CMO and I say, look, you have to dedicate and commit. that your subject matter experts are going to be in all the meetings. Not just the kickoff meetings, not just the quarterly business review, the weekly meetings.[00:09:36] Because when we go off as an analytics professionals and do things on our own, we have no idea what the business runs like. , we did analytics at one company that I work for. We brought it back and we showed it to the they said, the numbers are wildly wrong. And we said, well, why? And they said, well, you probably don’t understand that what we do is illegal in 10 US states.[00:10:00] So you probably have the data from all those 10 states in the analysis. And we did. So, we took it all out and they look down there and go, you got it right. It’s kind of surprising. You didn’t know what you were doing and you got it right. So, it has to be a marriage of the subject matter experts in the business.[00:10:17] And the data scientists, you can’t go to the leadership and say, tell us what you want. They don’t know what they want. They’d want another horse in Henry Ford’s time, or they glue a, a Walkman onto a radio or something in Steve Jobs time. They don’t know what they want. So you have to come together.[00:10:36] And define it together and you have to work through the entire project together.[00:10:42] Mark Stouse: Yeah, I would add to that, okay, that a lot of times the SMEs also have major holes in their knowledge that the analytics are going to challenge and give them new information. And so I totally agree. I mean, this is an iterative learning exchange. That has profound cultural implications.[00:11:11] One of the things that AI is doing right now is it is introducing a level of transparency and accountability into operations, corporate operations, my operations, your operations, that honestly, none of us are really prepared for. None of us are really prepared for the level of learning that we’re going to have to do.[00:11:36] And very few of us are aware of how polymathic. Most of our challenges, our problems, our objectives really are one of the things that I love to talk about in this regard is analytics made me a much better person. That I once was because it showed me the extent of my ignorance.[00:12:01] And when I kind of came to grips with that and I started to use really the modicum of knowledge that I have as a way of curating my ignorance. And I got humble about it made a big difference[00:12:16] John Thompson: Well, that’s the same when I was working shoulder to shoulder with Bill, I just realized how stupid I was. So, then I just, really had to, come back and, say, oh, God nowhere near the summit, I have a long way to go.[00:12:31] Bill Schmarzo: Hey, hey, Genevie. Let me throw something out there at you and it builds on what John has said and really takes off on what Mark is talking about is that there is a cultural preparation. It needs to take place across organizations in order to learn to master the economies of learning,[00:12:48] the economies of learning, because you could argue in knowledge based industries that what you are learning is more important than what you know. And so if what you know has declining value, and what you’re learning has increasing value, then what Mark talked about, and John as well, both city presenting data and people saying, I didn’t know that was going on, right?[00:13:09] They had a certain impression. And if they have the wrong cultural mindset. They’re going to fight that knowledge. They’re going to fight that learning, oh, I’m going to get fired. I’m going to get punished. No, we need to create cultures that says that we are trying to master the economies and learning and you can’t learn if you’re not willing to fail.[00:13:29] And that is what is powerful about what AI can do for us. And I like to talk about how I’m a big fan of design thinking. I integrate design thinking into all my workshops and all my training because it’s designed to. Cultivate that human learning aspect. AI models are great at cultivating algorithmic learning.[00:13:50] And when you bring those two things together around a learning culture that says you’re going to try things, you’re going to fail, you’re going to learn, those are the organizations that are going to win.[00:13:59] John Thompson: Yeah, you know, to tie together what Mark and Bill are saying there is that, you need people to understand that they’re working from an outmoded view of the business. Now, it’s hard for them to hear that. It’s hard for them to realize it. And what I ask data scientists to do that work for me is when we get a project and we have an operational area, sales, marketing, logistics, finance, manufacturing, whatever it is.[00:14:26] They agreed that they’re going to go on the journey with us. We do something really simple. We do an exploratory data analysis. We look at means and modes and distributions and things like that. And we come back and we say, this is what the business looks like today. And most of the time they go, I had no idea.[00:14:44] You know, I didn’t know that our customers were all, for the most part, between 70 and 50. I had no idea that our price point was really 299. I thought it was 3, 299. So you then end up coming together. You end up with a shared understanding of the business. Now one of two things is generally going to happen.[00:15:05] The business is going to freak out and leave the project and say, I don’t want anything to do with this, or they’re going to lean into it and say, I was working from something that was, as Bill said, declining value. Okay. Now, if they’re open, like a AI model that’s being trained, if they’re open to learning, they can learn what the business looks like today, and we can help them predict what the business should look like tomorrow.[00:15:31] So we have a real issue here that the three of us have talked about it from three different perspectives. We’ve all seen it. We’ve all experienced it. It’s a real issue, we know how people can come together. The question is, will they?[00:15:46] Dr Genevieve Hayes: think part of the issue is that, particularly in the area of data science, there’s a marked lack of leadership because I think a lot of people don’t understand how to lead these projects. So you’ve got Many data scientists who are trained heavily in the whole technical aspect of data science, and one thing I’ve come across is, you know, data scientists who’ll say to me, my job is to do the technical work, tell me what to do.[00:16:23] I’ll go away and do it. Give it to you. And then you manager can go and do whatever you like with it.[00:16:29] Mark Stouse: Model fitment.[00:16:31] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Yeah. And then one thing I’ve experienced is many managers in data science are, you know, It’s often the area that they find difficult to find managers for, so we’ll often get people who have no data science experience whatsoever[00:16:46] and so I think part of the solution is teaching the data scientists that they have to start managing up because they’re the ones who understand what they’re doing the best, but no one’s telling them that because the people above them often don’t know that they should be telling the data[00:17:08] John Thompson: Well, if that’s the situation, they should just fire everybody and save the money. Because it’s never going to go anywhere. But Bill, you were going to say something. Go ahead.[00:17:16] Bill Schmarzo: Yeah, I was going to say, what’s interesting about Genevieve, what you’re saying is that I see this a lot in not just data scientists, but in a lot of people who are scared to show their ignorance in new situations. I think Mark talked about this, is it because they’re, you think about if you’re a data scientist, you probably have a math background. And in math, there’s always a right answer. In data science, there isn’t. There’s all kinds of potential answers, depending on the situation and the circumstances. I see this all the time, by the way, with our sales folks. Who are afraid we’re selling technology. We’re afraid to talk to the line of business because I don’t understand their business Well, you don’t need to understand their business, but you do need to become like socrates and start asking questions What are you trying to accomplish?[00:18:04] What are your goals? What are your desired outcomes? How do you measure success? Who are your stakeholders ? You have to be genuinely interested In their success and ask those kind of questions if you’re doing it to just kind of check a box off Then just get chad gpt to rattle it off But if you’re genuinely trying to understand what they’re trying to accomplish And then thinking about all these marvelous different tools you have because they’re only tools And how you can weave them together to help solve that now you’ve got That collaboration that john’s book talks about about bringing these teams together Yeah[00:18:39] Mark Stouse: is, famously paraphrased probably did actually say something like this, . But he’s famously paraphrased as saying that he would rather have a really smart question than the best answer in the world. And. I actually experienced that two days ago,[00:18:57] in a conversation with a prospect where I literally, I mean, totally knew nothing about their business. Zero, but I asked evidently really good questions. And so his impression of me at the end of the meeting was, golly, you know, so much about our business. And I wanted to say, yeah, cause you just educated me.[00:19:21] Right. You know, I do now. And so I think there’s actually a pattern here that’s really worth elevating. So what we are seeing right now with regard to data science teams is scary similar to what happened with it after Y2K, the business turned around and looked at him and said, seriously, we spend all that money,[00:19:45] I mean, what the heck? And so what happened? The CIO got, demoted organizationally pretty far down in the company wasn’t a true C suite member anymore. Typically the whole thing reported up into finance. The issue was not. Finance, believing that they knew it better than the it people,[00:20:09] it was, we are going to transform this profession from being a technology first profession to a business outcomes. First profession, a money first profession, an economics organization, that has more oftentimes than not been the outcome in the last 25 years. But I think that that’s exactly what’s going on right now with a lot of data science teams.[00:20:39] You know, I used to sit in technology briefing rooms, listening to CIOs and other people talk about their problems. And. This one CIO said, you know, what I did is I asked every single person in my organization around the world to go take a finance for non financial managers course at their local university.[00:21:06] They want credit for it. We’ll pay the bill. If they just want to audit it, they can do that. And they started really cross pollinating. These teams to give them more perspective about the business. I totally ripped that off because it just struck me as a CMO as being like, so many of these problems, you could just do a search and replace and get to marketing.[00:21:32] And so I started doing the same thing and I’ve made that suggestion to different CDOs, some of whom have actually done it. So it’s just kind of one of those things where you have to say, I need to know more. So this whole culture of being a specialist is changing from.[00:21:53] This, which, this is enough, this is okay , I’m making a vertical sign with my hand, to a T shaped thing, where the T is all about context. It’s all about everything. That’s not part of your. Profession[00:22:09] John Thompson: Yeah, well, I’m going to say that here’s another book that you should have your hands on. This is Aristotle. We can forget about Socrates. Aristotle’s the name. But you know. But , Bill’s always talking about Socrates. I’m an Aristotle guy myself. So, you[00:22:23] Bill Schmarzo: Okay, well I Socrates had a better jump shot. I’m sorry. He could really nail that[00:22:28] John Thompson: true. It’s true. Absolutely. Well, getting back , to the theme of the discussion, in 1 of the teams that I had at CSL bearing, which is an Australian company there in Melbourne, I took my data science team and I brought in speech coaches.[00:22:45] Presentation coaches people who understand business, people who understood how to talk about different things. And I ran them through a battery of classes. And I told them, you’re going to be in front of the CEO, you’re going to be in front of the EVP of finance, you’re going to be in front of all these different people, and you need to have the confidence to speak their language.[00:23:07] Whenever we had meetings, we talk data science talk, we talk data and integration and vectors and, algorithms and all that kind of stuff. But when we were in the finance meeting, we talked finance. That’s all we talked. And whenever we talked to anybody, we denominated all our conversations in money.[00:23:25] Whether it was drachma, yen, euros, pounds, whatever it was, we never talked about speeds and feeds and accuracy and results. We always talked about money. And if it didn’t make money, we didn’t do it. So, the other thing that we did that really made a difference was that when the data scientists and data scientists hate this, When they went into a meeting, and I was there, and even if I wasn’t there, they were giving the end users and executives recommendations.[00:23:57] They weren’t going in and showing a model and a result and walking out the door and go, well, you’re smart enough to interpret it. No, they’re not smart enough to interpret it. They actually told the marketing people. These are the 3 things you should do. And if your data scientists are not being predictive and recommending actions, they’re not doing their job.[00:24:18] Dr Genevieve Hayes: What’s the, so what test At the end of everything, you have to be able to say, so what does this mean to whoever your audience is?[00:24:25] Mark Stouse: That’s right. I mean, you have to be able to say well, if the business team can’t look at your output, your data science output, and know what to do with it, and know how to make a better decision, it’s like everything else that you did didn’t happen. I mean it, early in proof, we were working on. UX, because it became really clear that what was good for a data scientist wasn’t working. For like everybody else. And so we did a lot of research into it. Would you believe that business teams are okay with charts? Most of them, if they see a graph, they just totally freeze and it’s not because they’re stupid.[00:25:08] It’s because so many people had a bad experience in school with math. This is a psychological, this is an intellectual and they freeze. So in causal analytics, one of the challenges is that, I mean, this is pretty much functioning most of the time anyway, on time series data, so there is a graph,[00:25:31] this is kind of like a non negotiable, but we had a customer that was feeding data so fast into proof that the automatic recalc of the model was happening like lickety split. And that graph all of a sudden looked exactly like a GPS. It worked like a GPS. In fact, it really is a GPS. And so as soon as we stylized.[00:26:01] That graph to look more like a GPS track, all of a sudden everybody went, Oh,[00:26:10] Dr Genevieve Hayes: So I got rid of all the PTSD from high school maths and made it something familiar.[00:26:16] Mark Stouse: right. And so it’s very interesting. Totally,[00:26:21] Bill Schmarzo: very much mirrors what mark talked about So when I was the new vice president of advertiser analytics at yahoo we were trying to solve a problem to help our advertisers optimize their spend across the yahoo ad network and because I didn’t know anything about that industry We went out and my team went out and interviewed all these advertisers and their agencies.[00:26:41] And I was given two UEX people and zero data. Well, I did have one data scientist. But I had mostly UX people on this project. My boss there said, you’re going to want UX people. I was like, no, no, I need analytics. He said, trust me in UX people and the process we went through and I could spend an hour talking about the grand failure of the start and the reclamation of how it was saved at a bar after too many drinks at the Waldorf there in New York.[00:27:07] But what we’ve realized is that. For us to be effective for our target audience was which was media planners and buyers and campaign managers. That was our stakeholders. It wasn’t the analysts, it was our stakeholders. Like Mark said, the last thing they wanted to see was a chart. And like John said, what they wanted the application to do was to tell them what to do.[00:27:27] So we designed this user interface that on one side, think of it as a newspaper, said, this is what’s going on with your campaign. This audience is responding. These sites are this, these keywords are doing this. And the right hand side gave recommendations. We think you should move spend from this to this.[00:27:42] We think you should do this. And it had three buttons on this thing. You could accept it and it would kick into our advertising network and kick in. And we’d measure how effective that was. They could reject it. They didn’t think I was confident and we’d measure effectiveness or they could change it. And we found through our research by putting that change button in there that they had control, that adoption went through the roof.[00:28:08] When it was either yes or no, adoption was really hard, they hardly ever used it. Give them a chance to actually change it. That adoption went through the roof of the technology. So what John was saying about, you have to be able to really deliver recommendations, but you can’t have the system feel like it’s your overlord.[00:28:27] You’ve got to be like it’s your Yoda on your shoulder whispering to your saying, Hey, I think you should do this. And you’re going, eh, I like that. No, I don’t like this. I want to do that instead. And when you give them control, then the adoption process happens much smoother. But for us to deliver those kinds of results, we had to know in detail, what decisions are they trying to make?[00:28:45] How are they going to measure success? We had to really understand their business. And then the data and the analytics stuff was really easy because we knew what we had to do, but we also knew what we didn’t have to do. We didn’t have to boil the ocean. We were trying to answer basically 21 questions.[00:29:01] The media planners and buyers and the campaign managers had 21 decisions to make and we built analytics and recommendations for each Of those 21[00:29:10] John Thompson: We did the same thing, you know, it blends the two stories from Mark and Bill, we were working at CSL and we were trying to give the people tools to find the best next location for plasma donation centers. And, like you said, there were 50, 60 different salient factors they had, and when we presented to them in charts and graphs, Information overload.[00:29:34] They melted down. You can just see their brains coming out of their ears. But once we put it on a map and hit it all and put little dials that they could fiddle with, they ran with it.[00:29:49] Bill Schmarzo: brilliant[00:29:50] Mark Stouse: totally, totally agree with that. 100% you have to know what to give people and you have to know how to give them, control over some of it, nobody wants to be an automaton. And yet also they will totally lock up if you just give them the keys to the kingdom. Yeah.[00:30:09] Dr Genevieve Hayes: on what you’ve been saying in the discussion so far, what I’m hearing is that the critical difference between what data scientists think their role is and what business leaders actually need is the data scientists is. Well, the ones who aren’t performing well think their role is to just sit there in a back room and do technical work like they would have done in their university assignments.[00:30:33] What the business leaders need is someone who can work with them, ask the right questions in order to understand the needs of the business. make recommendations that answer those questions. But in answering those questions, we’re taking a data informed approach rather than a data driven approach. So you need to deliver the answers to those questions in such a way that you’re informing the business leaders and you’re delivering it in a way that Delivers the right user experience for them, rather than the user experience that the data scientists might want, which would be your high school maths graphs.[00:31:17] Is that a good summary?[00:31:20] John Thompson: Yeah, I think that’s a really good summary. You know, one of the things that Bill and I, and I believe Mark understands is we’re all working to change, you know, Bill and I are teaching at universities in the United States. I’m on the advisory board of about five. Major universities. And whenever I go in and talk to these universities and they say, Oh, well, we teach them, these algorithms and these mathematical techniques and these data science and this statistics.[00:31:48] And I’m like, you are setting these people up for failure. You need to have them have presentation skills, communication skills, collaboration. You need to take about a third of these credits out and change them out for soft skills because you said it Genevieve, the way we train people, young people in undergraduate and graduate is that they have a belief that they’re going to go sit in a room and fiddle with numbers.[00:32:13] That’s not going to be successful.[00:32:16] Mark Stouse: I would give one more point of dimensionality to this, which is a little more human, in some respects, and that is that I think that a lot of data scientists love the fact that they are seen as Merlin’s as shamans. And the problem that I personally witnessed this about two years ago is when you let business leaders persist in seeing you in those terms.[00:32:46] And when all of a sudden there was a major meltdown of some kind, in this case, it was interest rates, and they turn around and they say, as this one CEO said in this meeting Hey, I know you’ve been doing all kinds of really cool stuff back there with AI and everything else. And now I need help.[00:33:08] Okay. And the clear expectation was. I need it now, I need some brilliant insight now. And the answer that he got was, we’re not ready yet. We’re still doing the data management piece. And this CEO dropped the loudest F bomb. That I think I have ever heard from anybody in almost any situation,[00:33:36] and that guy, that data science leader was gone the very next day. Now, was that fair? No. Was it stupid? For the data science leader to say what he said. Yeah, it was really dumb.[00:33:52] Bill Schmarzo: Don’t you call that the tyranny of perfection mark? Is that your term that you always use? is that There’s this idea that I gotta get the data all right first before I can start doing analysis And I think it’s you I hear you say the tyranny of perfection is what hurts You Progress over perfection, learning over absolutes, and that’s part of the challenge is it’s never going to be perfect.[00:34:13] Your data is never going to be perfect, you got to use good enough data[00:34:17] Mark Stouse: It’s like the ultimate negative version of the waterfall.[00:34:22] John Thompson: Yeah,[00:34:23] Mark Stouse: yet we’re all supposedly living in agile paradise. And yet very few people actually operate[00:34:30] John Thompson: that’s 1 thing. I want to make sure that we get in the recording is that I’ve been on record for years and I’ve gone in front of audiences and said this over and over again. Agile and analytics don’t mix that is. There’s no way that those 2 go together. Agile is a babysitting methodology. Data scientists don’t do well with it.[00:34:50] So, you know, I’ll get hate mail for that, but I will die on that hill. But, the 1 thing that, Mark, I agree with 100 percent of what you said, but the answer itself or the clue itself is in the title. We’ve been talking about. It’s data science. It’s not magic. I get people coming and asking me to do magical things all the time.[00:35:11] And I’m like. Well, have you chipped all the people? Do you have all their brain waves? If you have that data set, I can probably analyze it. But, given that you don’t understand what’s going on inside their cranium, that’s magic. I can’t do that. We had the same situation when COVID hit, people weren’t leaving their house.[00:35:29] So they’re not donating plasma. It’s kind of obvious, so, people came to us and said, Hey, the world’s gone to hell in a handbasket in the last two weeks. The models aren’t working and I’m like, yeah, the world’s changed, give us four weeks to get a little bit of data.[00:35:43] We’ll start to give you a glimmer of what this world’s going to look like two months later. We had the models working back in single digit error terms, but when the world goes haywire, you’re not going to have any data, and then when the executives are yelling at you, you just have to say, look, this is modeling.[00:36:01] This is analytics. We have no precedent here.[00:36:05] Bill Schmarzo: to build on what John was just saying that the challenge that I’ve always seen with data science organizations is if they’re led by somebody with a software development background, getting back to the agile analytics thing, the problem with software development. is that software development defines the requirements for success.[00:36:23] Data science discovers them. It’s hard to make that a linear process. And so, if you came to me and said, Hey, Schmarz, you got a big, giant data science team. I had a great data science team at Hitachi. Holy cow, they were great. You said, hey, we need to solve this problem. When can you have it done?[00:36:38] I would say, I need to look at the problem. I need to start exploring it. I can’t give you a hard date. And that drove software development folks nuts. I need a date for when I, I don’t know, cause I’ve got to explore. I’m going to try lots of things. I’m going to fail a lot.[00:36:51] I’m going to try things that I know are going to fail because I can learn when I fail. And so, when you have an organization that has a software development mindset, , like John was talking about, they don’t understand the discovery and learning process that the data science process has to go through to discover the criteria for success.[00:37:09] Mark Stouse: right. It’s the difference between science and engineering.[00:37:13] John Thompson: Yes, exactly. And 1 of the things, 1 of the things that I’ve created, it’s, you know, everybody does it, but I have a term for it. It’s a personal project portfolio for data scientists. And every time I’ve done this and every team. Every data scientist has come to me individually and said, this is too much work.[00:37:32] It’s too hard. I can’t[00:37:34] Bill Schmarzo: Ha, ha, ha,[00:37:35] John Thompson: three months later, they go, this is the only way I want to work. And what you do is you give them enough work so when they run into roadblocks, they can stop working on that project. They can go out and take a swim or work on something else or go walk their dog or whatever.[00:37:53] It’s not the end of the world because the only project they’re working on can’t go forward. if they’ve got a bunch of projects to time slice on. And this happens all the time. You’re in, team meetings and you’re talking and all of a sudden the data scientist isn’t talking about that forecasting problem.[00:38:09] It’s like they ran into a roadblock. They hit a wall. Then a week later, they come in and they’re like, Oh, my God, when I was in the shower, I figured it out. You have to make time for cogitation, introspection, and eureka moments. That has to happen in data science.[00:38:28] Bill Schmarzo: That is great, John. I love that. That is wonderful.[00:38:30] Mark Stouse: And of course the problem is. Yeah. Is that you can’t predict any of that, that’s the part of this. There’s so much we can predict. Can’t predict that.[00:38:42] Bill Schmarzo: you know what you could do though? You could do Mark, you could prescribe that your data science team takes multiple showers every day to have more of those shower moments. See, that’s the problem. I see a correlation. If showers drive eureka moments, dang it.[00:38:54] Let’s give him more showers.[00:38:56] John Thompson: Yep. Just like firemen cause fires[00:38:59] Mark Stouse: Yeah, that’s an interesting correlation there, man.[00:39:05] Dr Genevieve Hayes: So, if businesses need something different from what the data scientists are offering, why don’t they just articulate that in the data scientist’s role description?[00:39:16] John Thompson: because they don’t know they need it.[00:39:17] Mark Stouse: Yeah. And I think also you gotta really remember who you’re dealing with here. I mean, the background of the average C suite member is not highly intellectual. That’s not an insult, that’s just they’re not deep thinkers. They don’t think a lot. They don’t[00:39:37] John Thompson: that with tech phobia.[00:39:38] Mark Stouse: tech phobia and a short termism perspective.[00:39:43] That arguably is kind of the worst of all the pieces.[00:39:48] John Thompson: storm. It’s a[00:39:49] Mark Stouse: It is, it is a[00:39:50] John Thompson: know, I, I had, I’ve had CEOs come to me and say, we’re in a real crisis here and you guys aren’t helping. I was like, well, how do you know we’re not helping? You never talked to us. And, in this situation, we had to actually analyze the entire problem and we’re a week away from making recommendations.[00:40:08] And I said that I said, we have an answer in 7 days. He goes, I need an answer today. I said, well, then you should go talk to someone else because in 7 days, I’ll have it. But now I don’t. So, I met with him a week later. I showed them all the data, all the analytics, all the recommendations. And they said to me, we don’t really think you understand the business well enough.[00:40:27] We in the C suite have looked at it and we don’t think that this will solve it. And I’m like, okay, fine, cool. No problem. So I left, and 2 weeks later, they called me in and said, well, we don’t have a better idea. So, what was that you said? And I said, well, we’ve coded it all into the operational systems.[00:40:43] All you have to do is say yes. And we’ll turn it on and it was 1 of the 1st times and only times in my life when the chart was going like this, we made all the changes and it went like that. It was a perfect fit. It worked like a charm and then, a month later, I guess it was about 6 months later, the CEO came around and said, wow, you guys really knew your stuff.[00:41:07] You really were able to help us. Turn this around and make it a benefit and we turned it around faster than any of the competitors did. And then he said, well, what would you like to do next? And I said, well, I resigned last week. So, , I’m going to go do it somewhere else.[00:41:22] And he’s like, what? You just made a huge difference in the business. And I said, yeah, you didn’t pay me anymore. You didn’t recognize me. And I’ve been here for nearly 4 years, and I’ve had to fight you tooth and nail for everything. I’m tired of it.[00:41:34] Mark Stouse: Yeah. That’s what’s called knowing your value. One of the things that I think is so ironic about this entire conversation is that if any function has the skillsets necessary to forecast and demonstrate their value as multipliers. Of business decisions, decision quality, decision outcomes it’s data science.[00:42:05] And yet they just kind of. It’s like not there. And when you say that to them, they kind of look at you kind of like, did you really just say that, and so it is, one of the things that I’ve learned from analytics is that in the average corporation, you have linear functions that are by definition, linear value creators.[00:42:32] Sales would be a great example. And then you have others that are non linear multipliers. Marketing is one, data science is another, the list is long, it’s always the non linear multipliers that get into trouble because they don’t know how to show their value. In the same way that a linear creator can show it[00:42:55] John Thompson: And I think that’s absolutely true, Mark. And what I’ve been saying, and Bill’s heard this until he’s sick of it. Is that, , data science always has to be denominated in currency. Always, if you can’t tell them in 6 months, you’re going to double the sales or in 3 months, you’re going to cut cost or in, , 5 months, you’re going to have double the customers.[00:43:17] If you’re not denominating that in currency and whatever currency they care about, you’re wasting your time.[00:43:23] Dr Genevieve Hayes: The problem is, every single data science book tells you that the metrics to evaluate models by are, precision, recall, accuracy, et[00:43:31] John Thompson: Yeah, but that’s technology. That’s not business.[00:43:34] Dr Genevieve Hayes: exactly. I’ve only ever seen one textbook where they say, those are technical metrics, but the metrics that really count are the business metrics, which are basically dollars and cents.[00:43:44] John Thompson: well, here’s the second one that says it.[00:43:46] Dr Genevieve Hayes: I will read that. For the audience it’s Business Analytics Teams by John Thompson.[00:43:51] John Thompson: building analytics[00:43:52] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Oh, sorry, Building[00:43:54] Mark Stouse: But, but I got to tell you seriously, the book that John wrote that everybody needs to read in business. Okay. Not just data scientists, but pretty much everybody. Is about causal AI. And it’s because almost all of the questions. In business are about, why did that happen? How did it happen? How long did it take for that to happen?[00:44:20] It’s causal. And so, I mean, when you really look at it that way and you start to say, well, what effects am I causing? What effects is my function causing, all of a sudden the scales kind of have a way of falling away from your eyes and you see things. Differently.[00:44:43] John Thompson: of you to say that about that book. I appreciate that.[00:44:46] Mark Stouse: That kick ass book, kick[00:44:48] John Thompson: Well, thank you. But, most people don’t understand that we’ve had analytical or foundational AI for 70 years. We’ve had generative AI for two, and we’ve had causal for a while, but only people understand it are the people on this call and Judea Pearl and maybe 10 others in the world, but we’re moving in a direction where those 3 families of AI are going to be working together in what I’m calling composite AI, which is the path to artificial, or as Bill says, average general intelligence or AGI.[00:45:24] But there are lots of eight eyes people talk about it as if it’s one thing and it’s[00:45:29] Mark Stouse: Yeah, correct. That’s right.[00:45:31] Dr Genevieve Hayes: I think part of the problem with causal AI is it’s just not taught in data science courses.[00:45:37] John Thompson: it was not taught anywhere. The only place it’s taught is UCLA.[00:45:40] Mark Stouse: But the other problem, which I think is where you’re going with it Genevieve is even 10 years ago, they weren’t even teaching multivariable linear regression as a cornerstone element of a data science program. So , they basically over rotated and again, I’m not knocking it.[00:46:01] I’m not knocking machine learning or anything like that. Okay. But they over rotated it and they turned it into some sort of Omni tool, that could do it all. And it can’t do it all.[00:46:15] Dr Genevieve Hayes: think part of the problem is the technical side of data science is the amalgamation of statistics and computer science . But many data science university courses arose out of the computer science departments. So they focused on the machine learning courses whereas many of those things like.[00:46:34] multivariable linear analysis and hypothesis testing, which leads to things like causal AI. They’re taught in the statistics courses that just don’t pop up in the data science programs.[00:46:46] Mark Stouse: Well, that’s certainly my experience. I teach at USC in the grad school and that’s the problem in a nutshell right there. In fact, we’re getting ready to have kind of a little convocation in LA about this very thing in a couple of months because it’s not sustainable.[00:47:05] Bill Schmarzo: Well, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go back a second. We talked about, measuring success as currency. I’m going to challenge that a little bit. We certainly need to think about how we create value, and value isn’t just currency. John held up a book earlier, and I’m going to hold up one now, Wealth of Nations,[00:47:23] John Thompson: Oh yeah.[00:47:25] Bill Schmarzo: Page 28, Adam Smith talks about value he talks about value creation, and it isn’t just about ROI or net present value. Value is a broad category. You got customer value, employee value, a partner stakeholder. You have society value, community value of environmental value.[00:47:43] We have ethical value. And as we look at the models that we are building, that were guided or data science teams to build, we need to broaden the definition of value. It isn’t sufficient if we can drive ROI, if it’s destroying our environment and putting people out of work. We need to think more holistically.[00:48:04] Adam Smith talks about this. Yeah, 1776. Good year, by the way, it’s ultimate old school, but it’s important when we are As a data science team working with the business that we’re broadening their discussions, I’ve had conversations with hospitals and banks recently. We run these workshops and one of the things I always do, I end up pausing about halfway through the workshop and say, what are your desired outcomes from a community perspective?[00:48:27] You sit inside a community or hospital. You have a community around you, a bank, you have a community around you. What are your desired outcomes for that community? How are you going to measure success? What are those KPIs and metrics? And they look at me like I got lobsters crawling out of my ears.[00:48:40] The thing is is that it’s critical if we’re going to Be in champion data science, especially with these tools like these new ai tools causal predictive generative autonomous, these tools allow us to deliver a much broader range of what value is And so I really rail against when somebody says, you know, and not trying to really somebody here but You know, we gotta deliver a better ROI.[00:49:05] How do you codify environmental and community impact into an ROI? Because ROI and a lot of financial metrics tend to be lagging indicators. And if you’re going to build AI models, you want to build them on leading indicators.[00:49:22] Mark Stouse: It’s a lagging efficiency metric,[00:49:24] Bill Schmarzo: Yeah, exactly. And AI doesn’t do a very good job of optimizing what’s already happened.[00:49:29] That’s not what it does.[00:49:30] John Thompson: sure.[00:49:31] Bill Schmarzo: I think part of the challenge, you’re going to hear this from John and from Mark as well, is that we broaden this conversation. We open our eyes because AI doesn’t need to just deliver on what’s happened in the past, looks at the historical data and just replicates that going forward.[00:49:45] That leads to confirmation bias of other things. We have a chance in AI through the AI utility function to define what it is we want our AI models to do. from environmental, society, community, ethical perspective. That is the huge opportunity, and Adam Smith says that so.[00:50:03] John Thompson: There you go. Adam Smith. I love it. Socrates, Aristotle, Adam[00:50:08] Bill Schmarzo: By the way, Adam Smith motivated this book that I wrote called The Economics of Data Analytics and Digital Transformation I wrote this book because I got sick and tired of walking into a business conversation and saying, Data, that’s technology. No, data, that’s economics.[00:50:25] Mark Stouse: and I’ll tell you what, you know what, Genevieve, I’m so cognizant of the fact in this conversation that the summer can’t come fast enough when I too will have a book,[00:50:39] John Thompson: yay.[00:50:41] Mark Stouse: yeah, I will say this, One of the things that if you use proof, you’ll see this, is that there’s a place where you can monetize in and out of a model, but money itself is not causal. It’s what you spend it on. That’s either causal or in some cases, not[00:51:01] That’s a really, really important nuance. It’s not in conflict with what John was saying about monetizing it. And it’s also not in conflict with what. My friend Schmarrs was saying about, ROI is so misused as a term in business. It’s just kind of nuts.[00:51:25] It’s more like a shorthand way of conveying, did we get value[00:51:31] John Thompson: yeah. And the reason I say that we denominated everything in currency is that’s generally one of the only ways. to get executives interested. If you go in and say, Oh, we’re going to improve this. We’re going to improve that. They’re like, I don’t care. If I say this project is going to take 6 months and it’s going to give you 42 million and it’s going to cost you nothing, then they’re like, tell me more, and going back to what Bill had said earlier, we need to open our aperture on what we do with these projects when we were at Dell or Bill and I swapped our times at Dell, we actually did a project with a hospital system in the United States and over 2 years.[00:52:11] We knocked down the incidence of post surgical sepsis by 72%. We saved a number of lives. We saved a lot of money, too, but we saves people’s lives. So analytics can do a lot. Most of the people are focused on. Oh, how fast can we optimize the search engine algorithm? Or, how can we get the advertisers more yield or more money?[00:52:32] There’s a lot of things we can do to make this world better. We just have to do it.[00:52:36] Mark Stouse: The fastest way to be more efficient is to be more effective, right? I mean, and so when I hear. CEOs and CFOs, because those are the people who use this language a lot. Talk about efficiency. I say, whoa, whoa, hold on. You’re not really talking about efficiency. You’re talking about cost cutting.[00:52:58] Those two things are very different. And it’s not that you shouldn’t cut costs if you need to, but it’s not efficiency. And ultimately you’re not going to cut your way into better effectiveness. It’s just not the way things go.[00:53:14] John Thompson: Amen.[00:53:15] Mark Stouse: And so, this is kind of like the old statement about physicists,[00:53:18] if they’re physicists long enough, they turn into philosophers. I think all three of us, have that going on. Because we have seen reality through a analytical lens for so long that you do actually get a philosophy of things.[00:53:38] Dr Genevieve Hayes: So what I’m hearing from all of you is that for data scientists to create value for the businesses that they’re working for, they need to start shifting their approach to basically look at how can we make the businesses needs. And how can we do that in a way that can be expressed in the business’s language, which is dollars and cents, but also, as Bill pointed out value in terms of the community environment.[00:54:08] So less financially tangible points of view.[00:54:11] Bill Schmarzo: And if I could just slightly add to that, I would say first thing that they need to do is to understand how does our organization create value for our constituents and stakeholders.[00:54:22] Start there. Great conversation. What are our desired outcomes? What are the key decisions? How do we measure success? If we have that conversation, by the way, it isn’t unusual to have that conversation with the business stakeholders and they go I’m not exactly sure.[00:54:37] John Thompson: I don’t know how that works.[00:54:38] Bill Schmarzo: Yeah. So you need to find what are you trying to improve customer retention? You’re trying to increase market share. What are you trying to accomplish and why and how are you going to measure success? So the fact that the data science team is asking that question, because like John said, data science can solve a whole myriad of problems.[00:54:54] It isn’t that it can’t solve. It can solve all kinds. That’s kind of the challenge. So understanding what problems we want to solve starts by understanding how does your organization create value. If you’re a hospital, like John said, reducing hospital acquired infections, reducing long term stay, whatever it might be.[00:55:09] There are some clear goals. Processes initiatives around which organizations are trying to create value[00:55:18] Dr Genevieve Hayes: So on that note, what is the single most important change our listeners could make tomorrow to accelerate their data science impact and results?[00:55:28] John Thompson: I’ll go first. And it’s to take your data science teams and not merge them into operational teams, but to introduce the executives that are in charge of these areas and have them have an agreement that they’re going to work together. Start there.[00:55:46] Bill Schmarzo: Start with how do you how does the organization create value? I mean understand that fundamentally ask those questions and keep asking until you find somebody in the organization who can say we’re trying to do this[00:55:57] Mark Stouse: to which I would just only add, don’t forget the people are people and they all have egos and they all want to appear smarter and smarter and smarter. And so if you help them do that, you will be forever in there must have list, it’s a great truth that I have found if you want to kind of leverage bills construct, it’s the economies of ego.[00:56:24] Bill Schmarzo: I like[00:56:24] John Thompson: right, Mark, wrap this up. When’s your book coming out? What’s the title?[00:56:28] Mark Stouse: It’s in July and I’ll be shot at dawn. But if I tell you the title, but so I interviewed several hundred fortune, 2000 CEOs and CFOs about how they see go to market. The changes that need to be made in go to market. The accountability for it all that kind of stuff. And so the purpose of this book really in 150, 160 pages is to say, Hey, they’re not all correct, but this is why they’re talking to you the way that they’re talking to you, and this is why they’re firing.[00:57:05] People in go to market and particularly in B2B at an unprecedented rate. And you could, without too much deviation, do a search and replace on marketing and sales and replace it with data science and you’d get largely the same stuff. LinkedIn,[00:57:25] Dr Genevieve Hayes: for listeners who want to get in contact with each of you, what can they do?[00:57:29] John Thompson: LinkedIn. John Thompson. That’s where I’m at.[00:57:32] Mark Stouse: Mark Stouse,[00:57:34] Bill Schmarzo: And not only connect there, but we have conversations all the time. The three of us are part of an amazing community of people who have really bright by diverse perspectives. And we get into some really great conversations. So not only connect with us, but participate, jump in. Don’t be afraid.[00:57:51] Dr Genevieve Hayes: And there you have it, another value packed episode to help you turn your data skills into serious clout, cash, and career freedom. If you found today’s episode useful and think others could benefit, please leave us a rating and review on your podcast platform of choice. That way we’ll be able to reach more data scientists just like you.[00:58:11] Thanks for joining me today, Bill, Mark, and John.[00:58:16] Mark Stouse: Great being with[00:58:16] John Thompson: was fun.[00:58:18] Dr Genevieve Hayes: And for those in the audience, thanks for listening. I’m Dr. Genevieve Hayes, and this has been value driven data science. The post Episode 53: A Wake-Up Call from 3 Tech Leaders on Why You're Failing as a Data Scientist first appeared on Genevieve Hayes Consulting and is written by Dr Genevieve Hayes.

The servo wars are on, with Viva Energy affected by a huge sell-off after a profit downgrade. MARKET WRAP: ASX200: down 0.68%, 8,251 GOLD: $2,953 US/oz BITCOIN: $141,579 AUD Woolworths jumped 1%, they are expected to report tomorrow. Telix Pharmaceuticals up more than 2/1/2 % to $31.14 CSL is bouncing off 12 month lows up ½ % to $262 Zip jumped 13 per cent to $2.71 after its cash earnings more than doubled amid growing transactions and low bad debts. Nine Entertainment advanced more than 3% per cent to $1.69 despite reporting a 15 per cent fall in interim earnings Johns Lyng Group shares down more than 30% to $2.53 Viva Energy also disappointed the market with a weaker outlook. Shares down more the 25% to $1.75 Dominos shares down 10% to $28.89 GYG shares down 2 ½ per cent to $34.97. CURRENCY UPDATE: AUD/USD: 63.42 US cents AUD/GBP: 50.3 pence AUD/EUR: 60 Euro cents AUD/JPY: 94 Japanese yen AUD/NZD: 1.10 NZ dollars See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ep. 299 Ripples: The Art of Mindful Living - Rev. Sue MillerBorn From the Sunday Service at the Center for Spiritual Living in Redding on 2-16-25

Ep. 300 Letting Go: A New Way of Being Together - Rev. Sue MillerBorn From the Sunday Service at the Center for Spiritual Living in Redding on 2-23-25

Today in Lighting is brought to you by ETC, lighting controls solutions for every project. Learn more. Highlights today include: The February Issue of LM&M Is Available Now, Keystone, Signify, and The Super Bowl, ams OSRAM Reports Strong Q4 2024 Results, Orion Reports Higher Gross Margin, Regional Sales Manager with CSL.

The Aussie market struggled to hold onto gains today, with mixed earnings reports and ongoing tariff concerns shaping investor sentiment. CSL dragged the healthcare sector down due to weak flu vaccine sales and underwhelming earnings, while Nine Entertainment surged on optimism about the advertising market. Gold stocks shone as investors sought safe havens amid uncertainty, while industrials and tech performed well. The content in this podcast is prepared, approved and distributed in Australia by Commonwealth Securities Limited ABN 60 067 254 399 AFSL 238814. The information does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Consider the appropriateness of the information before acting and if necessary, seek appropriate professional advice.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Theemen haut: Dag vum 112, Mordprozess um Stater Geriicht, Liesmaschinn, ONG am Malawi a Revendiquatioune vun der CSL

The Aussie market started the week with a slight dip, narrowing early losses but still weighed down by ongoing uncertainty around tariffs. Reporting season is now in full swing, with major companies revealing their latest earnings. Market volatility remains high, particularly for sectors like tech and telecom, with WiseTech dropping on fresh controversies and lithium miner Pilbara sliding on weak commodity prices. Looking ahead, key earnings reports from heavyweights like CSL, Macquarie, and CBA will dominate the week, alongside economic updates on consumer and business confidence.The content in this podcast is prepared, approved and distributed in Australia by Commonwealth Securities Limited ABN 60 067 254 399 AFSL 238814. The information does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Consider the appropriateness of the information before acting and if necessary, seek appropriate professional advice.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ep. 298 You Are Enough: The Art of Happiness - Rev. Dr. Mary Mitchell From the Sunday Service at the Center for Spiritual Living in Redding on 2-9-25

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert interviews Paul Putz, director of the Faith & Sports Institute at Baylor University, where he helps to lead and develop online programming and curriculum as well as assisting with communications and strategic planning. They discuss his journey from high school teacher and coach to historian, diving into insights from his new book, The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports. Putz reflects on the role of sports in K-12 education and the importance of of resilience, collaboration, and integrating faith into leadership in both education and sports. The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership. Each week, we'll talk to catalytic educators who are doing amazing work. The Center for School Leadership and Faith & Sports Institute are partnering together for a summer professional event! Join us for the FIT (faith-integration-transformation) Sports Leadership Summit! We will gather at Baylor to empower and equip Christian sports leaders in K-12 schools to lead, serve, and educate well as they pursue competitive excellence. Be encouraged. Mentioned: The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports by Paul Putz Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss. Faith & Sports Institute Youth Sports Summit  Connect with us: Baylor MA in School Leadership EdD in K-12 Educational Leadership Jon Eckert LinkedIn X: @eckertjon Center for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl   Jon Eckert: All right, so we've got Paul Putz here in the podcast studio and we get to talk about a new book. We get to talk about coaching, we get to talk about teaching. So Paul, it's a huge blessing to have you here today. Can you just give us a little bit of your background about how you got to this office today, where you came through as a student and professionally? Paul Putz: Yeah. Well, I started, we'll start with I'm a teacher at heart and was a teacher, a high school teacher. So I grew up in small town Nebraska and playing all the sports thinking that I'm going to become a coach. So I went off and played small college basketball and then wanted to hang around sports. And so I got my secondary ed degree, was a social studies teacher. And as I started teaching in Omaha, Nebraska, I had a sense of how important sports were to me in terms of forming me. I was a pretty good student too, but sports mattered to me on a deeper level. And so I was really intrigued about learning more about sports. As I'm teaching social studies classes, I'm thinking about, man, how historically did we get to a place where sports are part of a school curriculum where sports are actually seen as educational or sports are seen as formative? I was just so curious about that. So instead of becoming a coach as a high school teacher, I get my master's in history and I start exploring these questions about the history of sports and as connections with Christianity. So those sort of questions I was wrestling with as a high school teacher lead me to applying to Baylor, coming to Baylor to get a PhD teaching at Messiah University for a year, and then coming back to Truett Seminary where I lead the Faith & Sports Institute and have been involved with FSI for the past five years. Jon Eckert: So love the work you do. I also understand from guys who still are able to play basketball with you, I have not been able to, as my knee no longer allows it, but you have a nice mid-range game still. Paul Putz: Old school. We keep it old school. Yeah. Jon Eckert: That's great. That makes Nebraska and Indiana boys proud. So love that. And I love the journey that you took. You go into education thinking you're going to coach and you're going to teach, and then you go down this history path, which then leads you to leading a Faith & Sports Institute. So it's kind of funny the way the Lord weaves us through these paths. And then to this book that's been published by Oxford University Press, really nice book by the way. Paul Putz: Thank you. Jon Eckert: Much nicer production than I typically get in the books that I write. So I'm impressed with what Oxford's done with it. The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports. It says it's this fascinating look at the overlap and the way Christianity and major college sports and professional sports have been woven together starting in the 1920s. So tell us how you got to this book from that journey you just described. Paul Putz: Yeah, I think so many authors say their book is in some sense autobiographical. You have a question that you want to think about and in the process of exploring your own questions, you kind of realize, hey, other people might be asking these questions too. So that's how it started for me. I mentioned I'm growing up in Nebraska, I was a pastor's kid, I was also loving sports. And so this idea of being a Christian and being an athlete were so central to how I saw myself. And so when I did pursue the PhD and became a historian exploring sports in Christianity, it was my desire to figure out where did I come from? How was my high school basketball coach, Joel Heeser, who's a friend of mine now still coaching high school basketball? How did he learn what it means to be a Christian athlete, a Christian coach? And so out of that kind of sense of curiosity and a sense of where's my own place in this story, I went and do what historians do. So we go back to the archives and we try to look at the origins and we look at the cultural context and we try to figure out cause and change over time and how did this happen and how did it influence culture and how did culture influence what was going on? And so that's what I got to spend five years doing. It started as a PhD doctoral project. I'm going to archives across the US and I'm looking at memos and documents, and going to the libraries and just trying to tease out how this space to bring together sports and faith developed and then how it evolved and advanced to the place where it shaped my life and shaped the lives of so many others in America. Jon Eckert: That's well said and a great setup to the book. And one of the things that kind of blew my mind, and it's just in the introduction to your book, you have this comment here, "Compared with 100 years ago, there are far more athletes and coaches today willing to publicly champion Christianity as a formative influence in their lives." So I think sometimes in the US we feel like we're in this post-Christian world. And in some ways it's a very different world, especially when you hear athletes as soon as they're interviewed after a game, immediately giving credit to God and giving glory to God and the Steph Currys of the world and any number of football players. And you see this over and over and over again. And that wasn't the case a hundred years ago, probably because sports weren't as, they didn't have the platform that they do now. But as you've written the book, what do you attribute that to the most? I know that's the point of the whole book, but can you distill that down to two or three points for the people listening and why you think that's the case? Paul Putz: Yeah, what I try to suggest in the book is the blending of sports and Christianity kind of happens in two phases. And so I start in the 1920s, but there's this era before the 1920s, we'll say goes from after the Civil War until the 1920s. And it's during this era there's a movement called, muscular Christianity. And what muscular Christianity does is it helps Christians see the value of the body, the value of physical activity to moral formation. And it's out of muscular Christianity, which is a movement that starts in England and then it comes to the United States. It's out of muscular Christianity that a lot of these ideas about character formation in sports are developed. And it's why sports become connected to schools and education because people and school leaders are trying to figure out how do we channel this interest that our students have in athletic activity into productive ways so we can use it to form and shape them as good citizens. So muscular Christianity is kind of the first stage, which again connects sports to Christian mission with this character building way. And it has a profound effect. I mean, some of the sports we play today are products of muscular Christianity. And the classic example is basketball, 1891, James Naismith enrolls at a Christian college in Springfield, part of the YMCA. And when he enrolls at the school, he said his desire was to win men for the master through the gym. So he has a Christian purpose, a Christian mission at a Christian school, and he creates basketball to advance these muscular Christian ideas. Jon Eckert: And I didn't realize this, but in the book you highlight, Naismith is the only coach in Kansas history that has a losing record. Paul Putz: Only coach with a losing record. Jon Eckert: Because he didn't care. Paul Putz: He didn't... And this is such an important point because in that first era there were some real idealistic people like Naysmith who thought sport legitimately as first and foremost for moral formation, it's about developing people. Win or lose doesn't matter. So that's the first era. 1920s comes along and it's pretty clear that sports has developed into something else. Sports is connected to commercialization, winning comes first. Even at colleges it was supposed to be educational, but it's clear that at the college level, if you're a coach, you might be a great molder of young men, but if you don't win games, you're getting fired. Jon Eckert: Right. Paul Putz: So there's this sense in the 1920s, this reality sets in that sport is now commercialized. It's big time. And even though it's still connected to say college, at the big time level, that muscular Christian mission isn't there. So what my book tries to do is say, okay, when muscular Christianity is sort of on the back burner because we now have this big time sports structure in the 1920s where it's all commercialized, it's all celebrity, how do Christians still engage in that? How do they wrestle with that tension of a, when at all cost atmosphere, a space where Christians don't determine the culture of sports they're guests in this culture and how do they create a space to still cultivate and nurture Christian athletes and coaches there? And that's where we see in the 1920s, very few Christians able to navigate that. There's just a handful of them who can be in major league baseball or can be in big time college athletics and still feel strong about their Christian commitments. But a hundred years later, we now see all sorts of Christian athletes and coaches who are comfortable in those spaces. And you kind of asked what drove that. What I would say drives that is the formation of a community that was embedded within sports institutions, that creates a sense of shared mission, shared purpose, and that over generations continue to invite more people in, continue to develop and just kind of under the radar, ministry of presence was just there and available to help athletes and coaches identify as Christians in that space. So it really comes down to the creation of these networks and organizations like the Fellowship of Christian athletes, like athletes in action, like Pro Athletes Outreach, like Baseball Chapel, people starting something new and then sustaining it over time and seeing the ripple effects years later. Jon Eckert: The beautiful example and what I had just finished this summer, this, Path Lit by Lightning, it's the Jim Thorpe book. Have you read this? Paul Putz: Yes, I have. Fantastic book. Jon Eckert: Such a fascinating read, because it's in this, leading up to the 1920s, his career is this amateur versus professional, which he gets caught and just treated so poorly and Pop Warner, the king of amateur child sports that we have Pop Warner leagues all over, kind of a horrific human being in the way they exploited people and they did it through sports. But he started his career at the Carlisle Indian School, which was one of the horrific experiments in US history when we took students off from their families off of reservations to try to quote, unquote civilize them into these things. And sports were a major part of it. So in our conversation, I'd love to pivot a little bit, well maybe not even pivot, but integrate sports into what K-12 education has been because still most places other than maybe Friday night lights in Texas football, most K-12 sports are not big time sports yet that most of the athletes playing sports there. You would make the case that the extracurricular there is to support the moral development. It's not a huge money sport until you get into the AAU stuff and some of those things where you have revenue, but K-12 systems, it's still more about that and it's been used for a lot of good things. And then in some cases, in Jim Thorpe's example, it was good kind of. So could you integrate those a little bit and how you see K-12 sports still having an influence and where Christian coaches and Christian athletes have a spot in that? Paul Putz: Yeah, yeah, you're right. There is a difference. And that muscular Christian ideal still continues in some ways, certainly even at the big time sports level. There's elements of it, but especially I think when we get into K-12 or if we get into division three small colleges. Jon Eckert: Yes. Paul Putz: There's a better chance to I think fully integrate the sports experience with the mission of the school. And at the same time, I would say the trends that we see at the highest levels of sports, your professional leagues, those do filter down because kids are looking to athletes as celebrities and heroes. So they're emulating them in some ways. So even though at the K-12 level and the small college level, there's a difference structurally and financially, you still have people who are formed and shaped by what they're seeing in these images in this culture. Now at the same time, I do think in terms of the growth of sports in what we've seen, I think we saw really a century from the 1920s until the last 10 years of continual development of sports as a central part of education in the United States. And this was done intentionally through organizations and networks like coaches associations, high school athletic associations. These develop in the 1920s and after the 1940s and 1950s, they sort of take on this professional identity. There was a period in time where to be a coach at a high school, you were seen as like, well, you're not really part of what's going on at the school. And so it took time for coaches to establish a professional identity linking it with education. And that evolved over the course of, again, a hundred years from the 1920s into the present. But these coaches and athletic directors, I have a quote in my book where I mentioned this, they intentionally had this vision for cultivating in young people a love of sports, because they thought through sports we can instill good values for American citizens or if you're at a Christian school you can instill Christian values. And so at the K-12 level, sports were always connected with some sort of vision beyond just the game. It was more than a game. It was about who you're becoming as a person. It was about learning life lessons and it sounds like a platitude. We've all heard this and we've also, I'm sure seen hypocrisy where we know of a coach who says this, but it doesn't seem like it plays out that way. But there's also some deep truth to that. I think anyone listening to this, if you've played a sport at the high school level that formed and shaped you, maybe in some bad ways, but in some good ways too. And so I think there is a power to sports that continues to have relevance and resonance today. I will say in more recent years we're seeing some really big shifts with K-12 school. With club sports, with travel sports. And there's some ways that that sense of community identity that was tied into the school level, it doesn't exist everywhere. There's pockets where it does. But in some places, some of the best athletes are now not connected to their school. And so for the future, I worry about what will it look like in 40, 50, 60 years where sports could be such an important part of a community and neighborhood identity at a school level. Will that go away as more and more athletes maybe turn to different models to pursue their dreams and goals? Some people in education might say that's healthy. They might say we need to separate education from sports. For me, and maybe I'm naive, but I think there's something important and beautiful about linking sports to education. But we do have to have guard rails and we do have to have people fighting to do it the right way. Jon Eckert: I completely agree. I want to see sports, I want to see all extracurriculars integrated well into what's going on in the classroom. I think that provides more holistic place for kids to learn is where kids can be more engaged and kids can flourish in areas where they may not flourish in one classroom, but they might flourish with an instrument they might flourish in a club or with sports. And I think sports are a powerful place for that. I do know with some states moving to NIL deals for high school athletes, that completely changes the dynamic and is really disconcerting for me because in that case, unlike colleges where that athlete is generating revenue for the school, it's hard to argue that the gate attendance at the high school game is really that much impacted by an individual athlete. But that's coming and that is the world we're living in. And that's some of that trickle-down effect that you described. I never want to be the sky is falling person. I'm thrilled that we have a 12 team playoff system in college football. I'm also not ignorant of the fact that, that completely changes the dynamics of the economics of the sport. So what I'd like to say is Christian leaders, because our set in the Interfaith Sports Institute and the Center, we overlap in some really good ways. What I'd like to see is what you described about the athletes in the twenties and thirties, creating these associations and these communities that fly under the radar of just inviting people in because I think that's what as Christians we should be doing in whatever we're called to. So do you see overlap for Christian administrators and teachers for how we can represent Christ well in the platforms big or small that we have? Do you see any lessons that we can take away as educators from what you found from your athletes in the book? Paul Putz: I think so. I think probably one of the most important, or I guess if I were to highlight two things. One is I would say there's lots of different ways to do it. Jon Eckert: Yes. Paul Putz: I think sometimes a certain person or a certain organization, they come up with a way that works really well for them and then they hold fast to that as if this is the way, this is the biblical way, this is the Christian way. And what I would want to say is it's a part of a conversation. Different contexts need different resources, different methods. And the way God made us as a community talks about the diversity of strengths we have in giftings and callings. And so I think one thing to learn is you can learn from other people who have methods and approaches when it comes to integrating faith in sports. And you probably also have something to offer to that conversation too. So if we can hold what we do loosely, but also not in a way that shies away from the calling to step up as Christian leaders and to say there is a way to engage in sports that reflects my convictions, but then also in a way where there's a sense of humility that I can learn from others. I don't have it all figured out. A bunch of Christians before me have messed up as they're trying to do this, but they've also done some good stuff along the way. And I think that can give us freedom to try, probably to fail, but to maybe advance the conversation forward. So that's one piece. And the other piece is I think it's simply expect tension, expect that there's not an easy overlap between the culture of sports and Christianity. I think there are certain elements to sports that I'm really drawn to. I'm competitive. I love the competitiveness of sports. I want to have the winner. For me, there's a drive for all of that. Jon Eckert: You're not James Naismith, is that what you're saying? Paul Putz: I'm not. I love James Naismith, but for me, boy, I want to, I'm kind of like, I want to win. Jon Eckert: You can be John Wooden. He wanted win too. Paul Putz: There you go. That's right. He did it. The quiet winner. But biblically, there are all sorts of messages, passages, commands from Jesus that tell us that his kingdom is upside down. It's different than the way the world works. And sports culture so often has a certain way where we prioritize the winner. We maybe give our attention to the star athlete. And that type of culture, it's really difficult to fully, fully integrate that into this full-fledged view of Christian faith. And especially because sports is also a pluralistic space where you're going to have people of all different faith, traditions, race, ethnicity, backgrounds, which is beautiful. But it also means let's just have some realistic expectations for what we can accomplish in sports, realizing tension's going to exist. It's the already not yet tension. We live after Jesus's life, death and resurrection before he comes to make it fully complete. And so in the midst of that, we can witness to Christ's way right now and point to glimpses of his coming kingdom. But let's not have this sense of maybe an idealistic perfectionist bent that insists or expects that we're going to round out all the sharp edges of sports. There's going to be tension there. Jon Eckert: And so as educators, the beautiful thing, I got to teach coach for years and what I loved about it was I love basketball, but it wasn't going over the same play for the fourth year in a row. And the 50th practice that I've done it was seeing how individuals came to that and what skills you had and how you could put them in place to be successful. And so when I taught a science lab the 16th time I taught the science lab, I knew what was going to happen with the chemical reaction, but it was fun to see through the eyes of the kids that were there. So the more diverse and pluralistic the classroom of the team is, the more interesting it is to see that through all those different perspectives. And I think that's really how God sees us anyway. And so there's beauty in that and it's not a challenge to be overcome. It's the beauty of being in the world that every person is made in the image of God, whether they're the guy on the end of the bench or the best player on the team, or the kid that struggles in the science lab and flourishes in the art classroom. That kid is fascinating. And then you can't give up on that kid. And so the great coaches don't give up on players. It's why I'm super curious to see how Bill Belichick does at University of North Carolina, having been a pro coach for so many years where it is like, yeah, you've got to recruit well, but you also have to build a culture where your team, and that's harder to do now than ever because of what's going on in the transfer portal. And I don't like this, so I'm going to leave. And at least in the classroom, for the most part, we get a kid for the year and we get to be with them. We get to walk alongside them for a time and help them become more of who they're created to be and then pass them off to the next person. So I know in the Faith and Sports Institute, this is a lot of what you're trying to do through sports and how you integrate faith well. So talk a little bit about any events you have coming up or what you hope to do through that. Paul Putz: Yeah, well one thing we are excited about is the stuff we get to do with you, the Center for School Leadership. I think just over the past couple of years we've connected and collaborated. We've hung out and [inaudible 00:22:43] Jon Eckert: Board, you're on our advisory board board. Paul Putz: I often tell people, CSL think is one of the best things Baylor has going for it. And that's because I was a high school teacher and I see the sort of leaders that are developed through CSL. And so I immediately wanted to get connected and to see some overlap. I also knew sports is so central to education, and I know you have many coaches and athletic directors who come through your degree programs. And so it's been fun just to explore together some of the ways we can partner. So we do have, in June, we're actually going to be putting on at Baylor in conjunction with Baylor Athletics Center for School Leadership, faith and Sports Institute. We're going to have a little Christian Leadership Summit event. We're going to gather people together who are interested in these questions of faith and sport integration and how do you compete with excellence, but with Christian values and perspective. And so we're real excited about that. We have other events that we're doing in February, we're hosting a youth sports event, thinking about how the church navigates youth sports issues. And that's going to be February 7th and eighth here at Truett Seminary in Waco. And then in next summer, July, late July, we're hosting the Global Congress on Sport and Christianity. This is more of an academic gathering. We're bringing in scholars who do research on sports and Christianity, but we're also bringing in some thoughtful practitioners, some chaplains, some coaches, some athletic directors, people who have thought deeply about sports and faith. And it's a shared conversation. So a lot of what we try to do with the Faith and Sports Institute, convene people, have conversations, collaborate, bring people together. And we do have some grad programs and online certificate programs. So we have some educational pieces that are foundational to what we do, but also we have these just public facing programs and collaboration opportunities that I'm real excited about. Jon Eckert: Love that. And I love being at a place like Baylor where there's so many good things going on. As a center, we get to partner with you, we get to partner with Baylor Athletics. Anything Coach Drew does, I will happily support. Paul Putz: 100%. Jon Eckert: So we have so many great people like that. So that's a blessing. And I know we're almost out of time, so I'm going to do our lightning round because we really need to do the lightning round. But I want to start with this. What's the biggest challenge you see facing Christian coaches and educators right now? Paul Putz: I think it's margin and time, and the demands of the job. It seems there's more and more responsibility, and for good reasons. It's because there's these issues. It's mental health. We want to care for the kids. And there's all these challenges kids face now you need to figure that out, because if you're going to teach the kid, you better know what you're doing. And it just seems like I was last a high school teacher 11 years ago. I don't know that that world exists now 10 years later. It's totally different when I hear what educators are going through. I think for coaches as well, you've talked about it with NIL, it feels so new. I would just say some margin, some grace, some space, some sense of community. And then through that, maybe we can figure out some healthier rhythms because it's unsustainable with the way it is now. So that's one thing I see just with the people I've been around, and I know we've talked a little bit about this too, it's something... We need each other. At the end of the day, we need each other for this. Jon Eckert: Yeah. Best advice you've ever received? Paul Putz: I would say, I'm going to, boy, here's what I'll go with. John Wilson said this, "Let a thousand flowers bloom," was what he said. And he was talking about in the context of academics who kind of try to claim their territory, their space, and kind of own it. And his perspective was, let's encourage it all. Let's let it all grow. Don't try to cultivate your little space, a little thousand flowers bloom. It's going to look more beautiful and let's encourage one another along the way. And so that's the first thing that to mind. If I were to think more, I might have something else, but that's something I've been continually reminded of is how much we need each other and how much we need to encourage one another. And how much there is when we look out from ourselves and see the other work that's being accomplished. There's so much to support and encourage. Jon Eckert: That's good. I always like what comes to mind first. So that's good. Worst advice you've ever received? Paul Putz: Worst advice... Jon Eckert: Or given? Paul Putz: Or given? I've probably given some bad advice. I cannot think of... There's nothing specific that's coming to mind. That's for worst advice probably because sort of just went in one ear and out the other. Jon Eckert: That's good. Paul Putz: Gosh, I've run a total blank. You stumped me. [inaudible 00:27:39] Yeah. I'll circle back. I'm going to email you, if I can think of one after. Jon Eckert: You have to have gotten bad advice from a coach or from about coaching. That's where some of the worst advice I've ever received about coaching. Paul Putz: Well, I'll tell you. So this isn't necessarily advice, but I have heard a coach say, and this is about being a Christian, basically it was, "Hey, when you're a Christian, when you step onto that field, you're someone else. You're totally someone else. You can become whatever you want to be there." So there you go. That's some bad advice. Jon Eckert: Yeah. That's good. Paul Putz: As Christians, sports are part of life. So we don't separate who we are as Christians, we don't compartmentalize. So there you go. Worst advice is that you can separate who you are in the field to play. Jon Eckert: So if you had to distill down into a sentence your one takeaway piece of advice for somebody who wants to write a book, I talk to a lot of educators who run to write a book, you've now written a book. Any nugget that as an encouragement or as a discouragement, like, "Hey, think about this." What would you say? Paul Putz: I would say you got to write it for yourself. You got to care about it. And it's got to be important for you that you put this out because there's a ton of great books out there. You're not going to get rich off writing books. It's got to be because you're passionate about it. For yourself, not in the sense of to glorify yourself, for yourself in the sense that I have these words that I think could be helpful if I get it out. And the other thing is resilience. You got to be willing to sit down in that chair and write when you don't feel like it. Get that draft out, edit, revise. So it's resilience. And it's also a real calling that these words need to be out there. Jon Eckert: Yeah. Well, you said you were not going to make money on this. I've heard you refer to yourself as the John Grisham of sports historians. Paul Putz: There's only... Yeah, of sports and Christianity in America. Historians. There's like two of us. Jon Eckert: That's good. No, no, that's good. It's so true about the books and not getting rich, and you do have to have something that you feel so deeply that you need to get out there that it's going to drive you on those days you don't want to do it. So that's good advice. Last question, what makes you most hopeful as you look ahead, as an educator, as somebody who's interested in sports, what makes you most encouraged? Paul Putz: I think it's being around people who we're in this with, it's about the people we're in it with. There's a lot that I can get discouraged about when I see the news and it feels like there's so much that's changing. But then I'm around people who are saying, "You know what? This is a time we lived in. We didn't choose this time, but here we are, and what are we going to give up? We're going to say, oh, it's hopeless." No, it's the people. It's looking for people who want to find solutions and who realize young people are growing up. They're being shaped and formed right now. And if we're not in that work, what are we doing to shape the future? So that's more than anything. It's just being around people who are willing to put in the work, even in the face of the struggles. Jon Eckert: Well, until wrap up, I'm grateful that you decided not to take your talents to the NBA, but you brought them into academia and you brought those loves together. So I really appreciate your partnership and you being here today. Paul Putz: Thanks so much. Really appreciate you and the work you do.

Ep. 297 Emptiness: The Wonder of Interbeing - Rev. Sue MillerBorn From the Sunday Service at the Center for Spiritual Living in Redding on 2-2-25

In this inspiring episode of the Career Strategy Podcast, Sarah sits down with Steven, a Career Strategy Lab (CSL) alum who transitioned from uncertainty to launching his own UX research agency. Steven reflects on his journey, from overcoming self-doubt as a career switcher to building confidence, leveraging mentorship, and creating a sustainable business model. Sarah and Steven explore the role of community, structured career tools, and storytelling in navigating the job search and scaling an agency.What You'll Learn in This Episode:How to balance career switching and climbing in your professional narrative.The power of mentorship and community in building confidence and finding opportunities.How CSL's structured resources and critiques accelerate career progress.Tips for marketing and storytelling as a freelancer or agency owner.Why action, not perfection, is key to career success.Key Takeaways:Mentorship Creates Opportunities: Proactively seeking mentorship can open doors to projects and collaborations you may not have anticipated.Community Matters: A supportive environment accelerates learning, boosts confidence, and helps you see new possibilities for growth.Storytelling Sells: Strong communication and storytelling skills, honed through CSL, are vital for job seekers and agency owners alike.Action Over Perfection: A bias toward action—leveraging critiques and taking small steps—yields measurable results in the job market and beyond.Structure is Transformational: Tools like the career roadmap and portfolio critiques help organize thoughts and focus efforts for maximum impact.Timestamps00:30 Meet Your Hosts01:08 Episode Overview and Audience Context02:03 Steven's Career Journey02:55 Navigating Career Challenges07:57 Building Confidence and Community12:30 Applying Career Strategy to Business16:19 Final Thoughts and Advice18:50 Conclusion and FarewellResources Mentioned in This Episode:Career Strategy Lab – Transform your job search with step-by-step support and actionable insights.Connect with Sarah: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter.Share Your Feedback:Did you enjoy this episode? Let Sarah know! Email her at hello@sarahdoody.com or tag her on social media. Don't forget to rate us on Spotify or review us on Apple Podcasts if you found this episode helpful.

Ep. 296 Choosing Possibilities - Rev. Sue MillerBorn From the Sunday Service at the Center for Spiritual Living in Redding on 1-26-25 To learn more about our center, and to find ways to support our mission, please visit www.cslredding.org ----- ---- --- -- - Our Vision We inspire and empower people to live spiritually fulfilling lives. ----- ---- --- -- - Our Mission We are a welcoming and inclusive spiritual community, teaching and living the universal principles of Science of Mind®, to be the change we know is possible for the world. ----- ---- --- -- - A Local Community Center for Spiritual Living, Redding, serves Redding, Shasta County, California, and beyond.  An active member of the Shasta County Interfaith Forum, Center for Spiritual Living, Redding, welcomes all people from all faiths and from all walks of life.  Based on the metaphysical teachings of Earnest Holmes in The Science of Mind (Religious Science) the Center inspires individuals to lead spiritually fulfilling lives, and empowers people to find peace, love and happiness by connecting with God through affirmative prayer.  

Ep. 295  Divine Nature Flows - Rev. Sue MillerBorn From the Sunday Service at the Center for Spiritual Living in Redding on 1-19-25  

In this special "Open House" episode, Sarah sits down with Career Strategy Lab alum, Kristin, a former graphic design professor turned UX professional, who joined Career Strategy Lab (CSL) as a “switcher”—someone transitioning to a new role or industry. Despite her extensive experience, Kristin found herself stuck in a role where her creative skills were underutilized. After 165 days in the program, Kristin successfully landed a government contract position with the Department of Energy, achieving a 25% salary increase and a significant shift in her responsibilities. In this conversation, Kristin shares insights on how she leveraged CSL's structured approach, community support, and resources to transform her career trajectory.Key HighlightsCareer Roadmap: Kristin explains how creating a detailed career roadmap helped her clarify her goals, target her job search, and develop a focused strategy for her resume, LinkedIn, and portfolio.Community Support: The importance of accountability, shared experiences, and inspiration from the CSL community in staying motivated and improving her work.Portfolio Design: Why you don't need five projects in your portfolio to land a job—quality and clarity trump quantity every time. Kristin shares how she successfully showcased her skills with just two solid case studies and a smaller management-focused project.Mindset Shift: How CSL's mindset coaching calls provided support through the ups and downs of her job search, transforming feelings of inadequacy into confidence and resilience.Lessons Learned: Kristin's advice for future CSL participants: embrace structure, take feedback, and focus on progress over perfection.Takeaways for ListenersA career roadmap is essential for clarity and strategic job searching.Community and accountability can boost confidence and help you refine your work.Tailoring portfolios and resumes to hiring managers' needs leads to better results.Mindset work is as critical as tactical execution in a successful job search.Kristin's Advice for future CSL MembersEmbrace the Process: “The structure and critiques were key for me. Any little bit of progress is progress, so take advantage of the feedback and focus on moving forward.”Leverage the Templates: “The templates provided a foundation that made my work more focused and impactful.”Join the Community: “The mindset calls and peer feedback were game-changers for staying motivated and refining my approach.”Be Open to Growth: “It's okay to ask for help, and it's okay if it's not perfect. Focus on progress over perfection.”Timestamps02:11 Kristin's Current Role and Background03:54 Creating a Career Roadmap07:30 The Importance of Community and Accountability11:28 Tactical Advice for Job Seekers14:03 Final Thoughts and Advice18:02 Conclusion and FarewellResources MentionedCareer Strategy LabConnect with Sarah DoodyFollow Sarah on Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn for more career insights. Tag Sarah with your takeaways from this episode or send her a DM!

Meghana Shah is the co-founder and CEO of The Parasol Cooperative - a 501c3 nonprofit providing innovative technology solutions to support survivors and advocates of gender-based violence, domestic violence and human trafficking. She is the Global Head of Data and Analytics Capability for Commercial at CSL. Previously she held executive positions at Accenture and Bristol-Myers Squibb.