Podcasts about delegating

Receive the unfiltered memos I send my team as we scale Acquisition.com to $1B+:https://leilahormozi.com/subscribe Don't judge your boss by what you see, because their most important responsibilities are not necessarily visible. In this episode, Leila breaks down the iceberg illusion of leadership and why an employee might be oblivious to 90% of the work that's done by their leader. And entrepreneurs must train their team members to think, decide, and act like owners.In this episode00:00 How empathy for a boss can change career trajectory02:00 The iceberg illusion of leadership04:29 Leadership lessons from Phil Jackson's triangle offense05:56 Delegating decisions vs. delegating tasks08:26 Scheduling absence and training replacements More Value:Get your personalized $100m scaling roadmap: https://www.acquisition.com/roadmap Read the unfiltered memos I send my team as we scale Acquisition.com to $1B+: https://leilahormozi.com/subscribeReceive a curated set of internal memos from the past year at Acquisition.com: https://leilahormozi.com/acq Watch my latest YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/@leilahormozi/featuredLearn how to scale your business to millions of dollars in annual revenue: https://www.acquisition.com/ DISCLOSURE Information shared here is for educational purposes only. Individuals and business owners should evaluate their own business strategies, and identify any potential risks. The information shared here is not a guarantee of success. Your results may vary. Copyright © 2026.

Most agents who struggle with time blocking think the problem is discipline. It's not. The problem is that you've trained every person in your life to interrupt you, and you don't even know you did it.You're not behind because you're lazy. You're behind because your business is running you instead of the other way around. Every offer that pops up gets presented immediately. Every call gets answered. Every problem that isn't yours becomes yours. That's not being professional. That's playing whack a mole with your livelihood.Here's what actually works:✅ Time blocking for real estate agents is not about a pretty calendar. It's about rigid flexibility, the building's burning down, you stop. Everything else waits. Those 3 hours in the morning are what make the whole machine run. Stop letting people steal them.✅ The truth about outsourcing your ISA will surprise you. Training in-house callers sounds smart until you see what it does to your margin. One agent went from 25% to 50% profit just by switching to an outsourced model. You don't get what you expect, you get what you inspect, and most of you can't inspect yourself, let alone a calling team.✅ Delegating in real estate the right way means solving the biggest problem in the equation and paying someone else to carry the rest. Probate leads and cash offer funnels handled by a telemarketer team you don't have to babysit, that's the real estate lead generation system that actually scales.✅ High producers hunt their business. They protect their real estate prospecting system like it's the heartbeat of the whole operation. Because it is.Stop making your business harder than it needs to be.

In this episode of The Side Hustle Squad Podcast, we sit down with Lamont Hairston from Hairston Property Management to talk about something every business owner eventually faces — health, recovery, and the importance of having a backup plan. Lamont opens up about dealing with hip pain for more than two years before ultimately undergoing a full hip replacement surgery. We discuss the physical and mental toll it took on him, what recovery has looked like, and how it forced him to think differently about his business operations. This episode is a reminder that as entrepreneurs, we often push through pain and put ourselves last while focusing on customers, employees, and growth. But what happens when your body tells you to slow down? We also dive into: Why every business owner needs contingency plans in place Delegating work and building relationships with trusted companies Creating systems so your business can survive without you The importance of yearly physicals, blood work, and preventative healthcare Thinking long-term instead of just surviving the daily grind Lessons learned from being forced to step away from the field A powerful conversation about health, leadership, and building a business that supports your life — not one that completely depends on you.

Entrepreneurship, business growth, leadership, and buying back your time — in this episode, Kevin and Chris break down why the goal of business should never be to "escape" work completely… but to build a life and business you actually enjoy being part of. They talk about the difference between removing yourself from low-value tasks vs removing yourself from your purpose altogether. The conversation covers building strong teams, creating opportunities for others, staying in your genius zone, and why many successful entrepreneurs continue building long after they've already "made it." This episode also dives into: Why retirement can feel empty for entrepreneurs Building a business that sharpens you instead of drains you Delegating the right things as you scale Staying focused on the few things that actually move the needle Creating wealth and opportunities for your team Why purpose matters more than just money The mindset behind long-term business growth Buying back time the right way Kevin and Chris also share real stories about entrepreneurs after major exits, building winning teams, and how the best operators stay focused on what they do best while empowering others around them. ⏱️ Timestamps: 00:00 Why the dream isn't retirement 02:10 The danger of losing purpose after success 05:18 Business as the ultimate self-development tool 09:07 Building winners around you 12:45 Why making your team wealthy matters 16:20 Focus only on the few things that matter 20:11 Buying back your time the right way 24:02 Staying in your genius zone 28:15 Delegating what drains you 31:44 Build a table big enough for everyone to eat 35:08 Final thoughts on purpose, growth, and fulfillment If you enjoy these conversations around blue collar business growth, scaling, leadership, acquisitions, and building real companies, subscribe for more episodes from Blue Collar Millionaire. Check out BoardRoom Elite and get in the room with operators, investors, and owners who are actually doing this every day.

In this episode of High Velocity Radio, Lee Kantor interviews Kelly Lorenzen, CEO of KLM Consulting, Marketing and Management. Kelly explains how her firm acts as “business owner duplicates,” helping family-owned businesses in industries like healthcare, construction, and e-commerce with strategy and hands-on implementation. Drawing from personal experiences with burnout and a breast cancer diagnosis, […]

You need to view AI as your new, highly capable digital staff. Today, we're giving you 4 key strategies to delegate to AI and buy your time back effectively.

Fan Mail: Tell Wendy how you're saying yes to yourself!Join Wendy for her dreamy Summer Solstice White Party on Saturday June 20, 2026 —an al fresco evening of delicious food, intention-setting, and celebration at the Phineas Wright House. Wear white, gather at the long table in the field, and toast to the season ahead. Save you seat here: phineaswrighthouse.com/the-shop/p/summer-solstice-white-partyIn this episode, Wendy sits down with Laurie Maddalena, leadership consultant who started her business nearly two decades ago and has raised three children while building it. Laurie spent years wrestling with the question: Can I be ambitious and a great mom? They explore:Why asking for support isn't weakness—it's healthy modeling for your childrenHow to confront the narrative that "I'm the mom so I should do it all"Why intentionality matters more than perfection when juggling multiple rolesLaurie struggled to write her book for years until her husband said, "Just go away a few nights a month and work on it." She couldn't believe he was offering. Her internal narrative was screaming: I'm the mom, I'm the person who should be doing these things. But she did it anyway, finished the book, and is still doing the work of believing she doesn't have to do it all alone.This is a conversation about leaning into support and remembering that being ambitious doesn't come at the expense of being a great mom.Connect with Laurie:Website: LaurieMaddalena.comGet her book, The Elevated Leader: https://amzn.to/49HTvLSLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lauriemaddalenaInstagram: instagram.com/lauriemaddalena________________________________________________________________________________________Connect with Wendy:LinkedinInstagram: @wendy.harropFacebook: Phineas Wright HouseWebsite: Phineas Wright House PWH Farm StaysPWH Curated Experience and TravelInterested in being a guest on the show? Send your pitch to podcast@phineaswrighthouse.comPodcast Production By Shannon Warner of Resonant Collective Want to start your own podcast? Let's chat!If this episode resonated, follow Say YES to Yourself! and leave a  5-star review. It helps more women in midlife discover the tools, stories, and community that make saying YES not only possible, but powerful.

In this episode, Kevin Marron and Chris Garrison break down the truth about buying back your time, passive income, and why most entrepreneurs are not built to sit on the beach doing nothing. They talk about the reality behind social media's "absentee owner" lifestyle and why real business owners still need purpose, problems to solve, and something meaningful to build. The conversation also covers delegation, scaling, removing draining tasks, hiring the right people, and how to elevate yourself into higher-value responsibilities instead of trying to escape work completely. If you are a blue collar business owner trying to grow, step out of day-to-day operations, and build something bigger without losing your drive, this episode will hit home. Topics covered in this episode: Buying back your time the right way Why passive income is oversold Delegating without disconnecting The entrepreneur dopamine cycle Scaling from technician to owner Removing draining tasks from your life Why real operators stay involved Building teams and specialized roles The myth of the absentee owner Growing into higher-level leadership ⏱️ Chapters: 00:00 The "Buy Back Your Time" Trend 02:05 Why Entrepreneurs Need Problems to Solve 05:18 The Myth of Passive Income 08:07 Why Most Owners Go Back to Work 11:04 Buying Back Time the Right Way 14:22 Delegating Draining Tasks 17:40 From Technician to Business Owner 21:12 Why Staying Involved Matters 24:05 Scaling With Specialized People 27:15 Final Thoughts + Board Room Elite If you enjoy these conversations around blue collar business growth, scaling, leadership, acquisitions, and building real companies, subscribe for more episodes from Blue Collar Millionaire. Check out BoardRoom Elite and get in the room with operators, investors, and owners who are actually doing this every day.

Most leaders think their biggest problem is delegation. But what if delegation was never the real issue? In this powerful episode, Lisa GoldenthaL breaks down why so many founders, CEOs, and senior leaders stay trapped in operational chaos even after following every leadership and productivity framework they were taught. You will discover why tasks keep boomeranging back to you, why your team still depends on your approval, and why scaling becomes impossible when the leader remains the company's operating system. Lisa G. explains the critical shift from delegating tasks to architecting outcomes — and why sustainable growth only happens when businesses are built on leadership systems, emotional regulation, accountability, and decision-making structures that function without constant founder intervention. Inside this episode: • Why traditional delegation advice keeps failing • The hidden reason your team escalates everything back to you • The difference between managers and true leadership architects • How to stop becoming the bottleneck in your business • What companies need to scale beyond founder dependency • The leadership operating system every growing business requires If you are exhausted from carrying the weight of every decision, solving every emergency, and being the glue holding everything together, this conversation will change how you lead forever. Listen now and learn how to stop managing the chaos — and start architecting a business that can scale without you at the center of it.

You hired someone good. The work was fine. You still sent the late-night Slack message, redirected the task, and checked in on something that had already been handled.This episode looks at what the research suggests is actually driving that pattern. Not trust issues. Not a bad hire. A specific kind of perfectionism that shows up differently in people with ADHD.Two studies help explain it. A 2016 study found perfectionism was the most common cognitive distortion in adults formally diagnosed with ADHD, endorsed by 55% of the sample. It was not close. A 2023 study then looked at what kind of perfectionism. Their findings indicate ADHD founders are not setting impossibly high standards. They are feeling the gap between what they expected and what was delivered more intensely than others. What drove avoidance most strongly was not perfectionism in the traditional sense, but the persistent feeling of falling short, even when the original standard was reasonable.Delegation becomes the thing most associated with that painful shortfall. So the brain starts treating it as a threat.Friday's episode covers the practical side: how to structure delegation so the gap is smaller from the start and your perfectionism has less to react to.What We Cover:Why ADHD perfectionism research suggests it is not about high standards but about feeling any shortfall more acutely than othersHow the discrepancy between expected and actual output drives avoidance in ADHD founders specificallyThe two scenarios where delegation breaks down even when the team is competent and the work is solidWhy the founder who re-enters delegated work is not micromanaging but responding to a learned pattern of emotional painWhat Friday's episode will cover on structuring delegation to reduce that gap from the start P.S. Losing work because the admin layer around your business can't keep up with you? Invisible Systems is a 90-day done-for-you sprint where I (Skye) extract the processes from your head, build the operating layer, and find the right person to run it. Six spots left at the founding price, book a call at invisiblesystem.co

Podcast: PrOTect It All (LS 27 · TOP 10% what is this?)Episode: AI in OT Cybersecurity: Real-World Risks, Smarter Defenses & the Future of Critical InfrastructurePub date: 2026-05-18Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationAI is rapidly transforming cybersecurity but are critical infrastructure environments ready for what comes next? In this episode of Protect It All, host Aaron Crow sits down with longtime colleague and cybersecurity expert Clark Liu to explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping both IT and OT security operations. From incident response and compliance frameworks to workforce shifts and operational resilience, Aaron and Clark unpack the real-world opportunities and very real risks of integrating AI into industrial environments. Together, they tackle the evolving role of frameworks like NERC CIP and NIST, the challenges of balancing compliance with actual security outcomes, and how organizations can responsibly adopt AI without increasing exposure. You'll learn: How AI is changing OT and IT cybersecurity operations The role of AI in incident response, documentation, and monitoring Why compliance frameworks alone don't guarantee resilience The risks of adopting AI without strong operational foundations How organizations can prepare for AI-powered threats and workforce changes Practical insights for balancing innovation, budgets, and security priorities Whether you're leading OT security, managing critical infrastructure, or evaluating AI adoption in your organization, this episode delivers practical guidance for navigating cybersecurity's next major shift. Tune in to learn how AI is transforming cyber defense and what organizations must do to stay resilient only on Protect It All. Key Moments;  05:33 Understanding cybersecurity compliance frameworks 07:11 Overlooked vulnerabilities in systems 09:59 Balancing multiple firewall vendors 15:17 Delegating tasks to AI 19:11 Importance of documenting commits 21:51 Hospital system shutdown crisis 25:11 AI uncovering software vulnerabilities 26:37 Engineers implementing AI in automation 31:26 AI tools and personal security 32:55 Password security practices 36:46 Using AI for basic tasks 39:38 Transition to off-the-shelf software 42:29 Going back to basics with appliances 47:02 Excitement About Future AI Capabilities Guest Profile :  Clark Liu is a veteran OT cybersecurity expert and one of the original contributors to the NERC CIP standards. With nearly two decades in energy and critical infrastructure security - including leadership roles at EY and GALLO - Clark specializes in OT risk management, compliance strategy, and securing industrial operations from the plant floor to the cloud. How to connect Clark:  LinkedIn :  https://www.linkedin.com/in/clarkliu/ Connect With Aaron Crow: Website: www.corvosec.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronccrow Learn more about PrOTect IT All: Email: info@protectitall.co  Website: https://protectitall.co/  X: https://twitter.com/protectitall  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PrOTectITAll  FaceBook:  https://facebook.com/protectitallpodcast To be a guest or suggest a guest/episode, please email us at info@protectitall.co Please leave us a review on Apple/Spotify Podcasts: Apple   - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/protect-it-all/id1727211124 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1Vvi0euj3rE8xObK0yvYi4The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Aaron Crow, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

In this episode, Ali Damron shares insights on navigating the emotional and physical challenges that come with busy seasons, hormonal fluctuations, and life's unpredictability. Whether you're dealing with perimenopausal symptoms, overwhelming schedules, or emotional stress, this discussion offers practical advice rooted in understanding and neuroscience. Key Topics: How busy seasons, like end-of-school chaos, amplify emotional stress and overwhelm Recognizing that feelings of anxiety, irritability, or fatigue are normal responses to societal pressures and hormonal shifts The importance of acknowledgment, acceptance, and support during demanding times The impact of hormonal fluctuations in perimenopause on mood, sleep, and resilience Practical self-care strategies: prioritization, trusting others, decreasing mental load The significance of establishing routines: regular meals, hydration, sleep hygiene, movement, and mindfulness How to reduce unnecessary mental and emotional clutter by trusting others and minimizing over-communication The concept of "Recovery on the Run": integrating supportive practices into daily life Timestamps: (00:00) - Introduction: Recognizing seasonal overwhelm and the importance of support (02:36) - The peak of busy end-of-school activities and managing emotional load (04:53) - Normalizing feelings of sadness and anxiety as part of life's chapters (09:16) - Understanding how societal over-stimulation and chronic stress affect our nervous systems (12:44) - Comparing childhood summer freedom to today's over-scheduled summers (13:47) - The intersection of perimenopause, hormonal fluctuations, and emotional reactivity (16:19) - How hormonal shifts increase anxiety and stress sensitivity (18:28) - Managing mental overload and the importance of reducing attempts at control (20:28) - Practical steps for prioritization and gut-checking daily routines (22:34) - Delegating, trusting others, and loosening control in parenting and daily tasks (27:46) - Foundations for hormonal resilience: nutrition, hydration, sleep, movement (30:24) - The simple power of breakfast and hydration for stabilizing mood and energy (32:11) - Setting boundaries with screen time and daily commitments (34:03) - Embracing ebbs and flows; supporting your body's natural rhythm (36:17) - Actionable tips: integrating recovery into busy lives and seeking help Remember, supporting your nervous system and managing expectations are key. By slowing down, trusting others, and taking small daily steps, you can navigate stressful seasons with resilience. If you're feeling overwhelmed, reach out—help is available, and recovery can be integrated into your busy life. Ali's Resources:  Consults with Ali  BIOptimizers Magnesium Breakthrough 10% off using code ALIDAMRON10 www.alidamron.com/magnesium Master Your Perimenopause Course + Toolkit "Am I in Perimenopause?" Checklist.  What Hormone is Imbalanced? Quiz! Fullscript (Get 25% off all supplements) "How To Balance Your Hormones For Better Sleep, Mood, Periods and Energy" Free, On Demand Training Website  Ali's Instagram Ali's Facebook Group: Holistic Health with Ali Damron 

Send us Fan MailThe world can feel quite stressful sometimes and it's really important to find ways of not making things worse for ourselves.One of those ways is to learn how to let go of some things and find the best ways to delegate.Support the showJoin the Patreon community https://www.patreon.com/richardnichollsSocial Media LinksBluesky https://bsky.app/profile/richardnicholls.netThreads https://www.threads.net/@richardnichollsrealInstagram https://www.instagram.com/richardnichollsrealFacebook https://www.facebook.com/RichardNichollsAuthorYoutube https://www.youtube.com/richardnichollsTikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@richardnichollsauthorX https://x.com/richardnicholls

You woke up with a full to-do list and hit the ground running. Emails, errands, client work, family obligations — all of it pulling at you before you've even had your coffee.But here's the thing: being busy isn't the same as being intentional.If you've ever reached the end of a full, exhausting day and thought — wait, what did I actually accomplish? — this episode is for you. The problem isn't that you're not working hard enough. It's that you're pouring energy into a mountain of tasks without first anchoring back to the one thing that actually matters: your goal.In this quick tip episode, Lianne Kim shares the single question she asks every client who comes to her feeling overwhelmed, scattered, or stuck in that relentless hamster-wheel energy. It takes two minutes. It costs nothing. And it will completely change the way you approach your day.In‌ ‌this‌ ‌episode,‌ ‌you'll discover:‌Why doing more tasks is not the same as making progress — and how to tell the differenceThe one question Lianne asks every overwhelmed client before anything elseHow to quickly audit your to-do list and identify what's actually moving you toward your goal versus what's just noiseWhy your most productive hours are probably being wasted on low-priority tasks — and how to fix itA simple two-minute exercise to reconnect with your goals and bring clarity back to your weekTimestamps:‌ ‌00:00 – Introduction and a quick ask: leave a review if this show has helped you!01:00 – Today's quick tip: Goals before actions02:00 – Why we lose sight of our goals in the middle of all the doing03:00 – The webinar isn't the goal — here's what actually is05:00 – How front-loading your day with low-level tasks is draining your best energy07:00 – Delegating, eliminating, and questioning the tasks on your plate08:00 – How to stop chasing and start choosing your actions with intention09:00 – Your action for today: the two-minute goal reset—‌Connect with me:  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/liannekimcoach  Instagram: @liannekimcoachJoin the Mamas & Co. community to get access to valuable resources and the support of likeminded mompreneurs and mentors: https://www.mamasandco.com Instagram: @mamasandcoPodcasting support:https://theultimatecreative.com 

Send us Fan MailWelcome to episode 247 of the Laundromat Resource Podcast! In this special AI masterclass, Jordan Berry welcomes back Barbara Wardell and Ernesto Cullari of Cullari and Wardell Marketing & Ad Agency. This episode dives deep into how laundromat owners can harness the rapidly evolving power of artificial intelligence in their businesses—ranging from cutting-edge chatbots and unified communication platforms to leveraging automation tools pioneered in the healthcare sector.Whether you're just curious about AI basics, want to streamline customer interactions, or are ready to upgrade your marketing, Barbara Wardell and Ernesto Cullari break down both DIY AI steps and advanced solutions that could put your laundromat on the map. Plus, hear about upcoming opportunities to get your own AI questions answered LIVE and learn how these tools can build customer trust, increase profitability, and transform your operations—no matter your current tech level. Get ready to take your laundromat business into the future!In this episode, Jordan, Ernesto and Barbara Discuss:00:00 Live Q&A on AI for business07:50 AI's practical applications in industries11:09 Exploring AI in business analytics20:49 ChatGPT's impact on search and SEO24:01 Challenges in the laundry industry29:45 Using WiFi to build relationships35:43 AI agents vs. basic chat widgets37:38 Delegating tasks for consistency46:04 Using language detection and geolocation51:23 Helping laundromats with local SEO54:26 Introducing Active Geo technology01:01:56 Discussing our tech stack01:05:17 Ensuring system uptime and integration01:10:42 Communicating and serving customers01:16:40 Solving efficiency in laundromats01:20:41 Researching AI masterclass resourcesConnect with Ernesto & Barbara:cullarimedia.comartemistargeting.comcwadagency.comTo book a call: https://calendar.app.google/oT2pvzGDkzy8xrju7732-939-5790Check out LUKE: luke.careFree Strategy Zoom Call with Jordan:https://calendly.com/laundromatresource/free-strategy-call?back=1

Sometimes, the biggest growth lever is hiding in plain sight: the client experience advisors are already delivering every single day. In this episode of The WealthStack Podcast, host Shannon Rosic speaks with Brooke Cecil, vice president of client relations and talent at BELAY Solutions, to unpack why operational support, delegation and consistency are becoming critical pieces of the modern advisory firm. Brooke also shares practical ways to measure delegation, reduce burnout and create more room for client-facing work. Key takeaways: Where operational breakdowns most often happen inside advisory firms How delegation helps advisors create more capacity without sacrificing service quality  How advisors can identify the first tasks they should hand off BELAY's “six Ts” framework for identifying what advisors should stop doing Why inbox zero may be overrated  Resources: Listen to WealthStack on Wealth Management Subscribe and listen to WealthStack on Apple Podcasts Subscribe and listen to WealthStack on Spotify BELAY's free resource, 15 Ways to Deliver More Value to Your Clients Connect with Shannon Rosic: Shannon Rosic WealthStack website Wealth Management Connect with Brooke Cecil: LinkedIn: Brooke Cecil LinkedIn: BELAY Website: BELAY About Our Guest: Brooke Cecil is the Vice President of Client Relations and Talent at BELAY, where she works closely with financial advisors and organizations to strengthen their operational support and improve client experience. With nearly 13 years at BELAY, she brings a strong focus on helping firms balance growth with consistency by freeing advisors from administrative bottlenecks. Brooke's work centers on building systems and support structures that allow advisors to spend more time on relationships, which she sees as the core driver of referrals and long-term growth.

If You're a FAN leave me a message :-)In this episode of The Executive Five, I tackle a costly executive leadership mistake: delegating execution while still expecting strategy to succeed. When senior leaders drift too far from follow-through, accountability weakens, standards slip, and business momentum starts to die beneath polished plans. This five-minute executive leadership podcast gives you three sharp moves to strengthen strategy execution, leadership accountability, team performance, and operational discipline without falling into micromanagement.  #ExecutiveLeadership #LeadershipDevelopment #TeamEmpowerment #Delegation #ExecutiveCoaching #HighPerformanceTeams #LeadershipMindset #DecisionMaking #ManagementLeadership #OrganizationalDevelopment #StrategicLeadership #LeadershipCommunication #TeamDevelopment #BusinessLeadership #EmpoweringLeaders Support the showContact me:Daniel@the-success-blueprint.co.zawww.mindworx.bizdaniel@mindsworx.comInstagram: @Mindworx_Coaching

Hi Mamas,  We've decluttered your home…  Your closets…  Your digital life…  Your paperwork…  But today… we're decluttering the most important place of all — your mind.  Because mental clutter is one of the biggest reasons working moms feel overwhelmed. The constant mental to-do list, responsibilities, worries, and decisions create stress, anxiety, and the feeling of always being behind.  In this episode, we're walking through simple, realistic ways to declutter your mind, reduce mental load, and create more calm and clarity in your day.  When you declutter your mind:  You think more clearly   You reduce overwhelm   You stop feeling behind   You improve focus and productivity   You create more presence with your family   This episode is the final piece of the Declutter Your Life Series and helps you bring everything together.    In This Episode  How to do a brain dump to clear mental clutter   Organizing your thoughts and tasks   Weekly planning to reduce overwhelm   Journaling to release mental stress   Setting boundaries to reduce mental noise   Limiting distractions (especially phone use)   Delegating tasks to lighten your mental load   Creating routines to reduce decision fatigue   The 2-minute rule to stop task buildup   Keeping a notebook for mental downloads   Practicing mindfulness and mental resets   Taking breaks to reduce overwhelm   Asking for support when you need it   Using gratitude to shift mindset   Taking a mental health day to reset  Other Episodes Mentioned:  EP 4. Start Your Days With Calm Instead of Chaos: 10 Tips For A Better Morning Routine  End Your Days With Calm Instead Of Chaos: 10 Tips For A Better Nighttime Routin 

In this episode of Missperceived, Leah paints a painfully familiar picture: you finally hand off a task—signing the permission slip, managing a parent's medication, organizing a meal—and instead of feeling lighter, you feel more anxious. You worry they'll forget, won't follow instructions, or won't do it the way you know would make your child or parent feel truly cared for.Leah unpacks why delegation is so emotionally loaded, especially for women who've been set up as default caregivers for kids, partners, friends, coworkers, and aging parents. She connects this to a growing care crisis, where more and more women are being squeezed between supporting their own households and looking after older relatives, often at the cost of their paid work and wellbeing. Drawing on her book Drained: Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More and her “audit” tool, she shares how to decide what to hand off, who to trust with it, and—crucially—how to stop tracking and overthinking once you've delegated, so other people actually get the chance to step up and grow.Follow Leah: @prof.leahruppanner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Watch the full episode on our YouTube channel: youtube.com/@mreapodcastLauren Lucas is back, and she is bringing the next wave of AI with her.Since her last visit, Lauren has taken 48 flights to teach real estate agents how to use AI in a real way. She is still running a real estate team closing around 300 deals a year, and she is still not a “tech person.” That is what makes this talk so good.We dig into AI agents: what they are, how they work, what they cost, and how we can start using them without getting buried in tech talk. Lauren breaks down how to build one agent for one job, like pulling market data, finding FSBOs and expired listings, drafting content, updating CRM gaps, or helping with tax prep.Lauren also gives us a clear warning. AI can do the work, but we still need to protect client data, guard our passwords, and keep a human in the loop. The real estate agents who learn this now will have a major edge. The real estate agents who ignore it may soon feel like they're trying to work without a cell phone.Start small. Build one AI agent. Give it one clear task. Learn by doing.Resources:Follow Lauren Lucas on Instagram: @laurenlucas_reOrder the Millionaire Real Estate Agent Playbook | Volume 3Connect with Jason:LinkedinProduced by NOVAThis podcast is for general informational purposes only. The views, thoughts, and opinions of the guest represent those of the guest and not  Keller Williams Realty, LLC and its affiliates, and should not be construed as financial, economic, legal, tax, or other advice. This podcast is provided without any warranty, or guarantee of its accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or results from using the information.WARNING! You must comply with the TCPA and any other federal, state or local laws, including for B2B calls and texts. Never call or text a number on any Do Not Call list, and do not use an autodialer or artificial voice or prerecorded messages without proper consent. Contact your attorney to ensure your compliance.Any text or materials generated by artificial intelligence (AI) should be reviewed for accuracy and reliability as there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies. The use of generative AI is subject to limitations, including the availability and quality of the training data used to train the AI model used. Users should exercise caution and independently verify any information or output generated by the AI system utilized and should apply their own judgment and critical thinking when interpreting and utilizing the outputs of generative AI.

Authority requires more than expertise. It demands intentional delegation and the courage to stop doing everything yourself. This episode of the Influential Voices of Authority Podcast features host Erik K. Johnson and guest Louis Swart, a serial entrepreneur who has mastered the art of leveraging teams and systems to scale businesses and build undeniable authority in any niche.   Important Links: Louis' free guide: 150 Things You Can Delegate Today: http://www.PodcastTalentCoach.com/delegate Explore Louis' services and agency: ironbrij.com.au Connect with Louis Swart: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/louistswart Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachlouistswart LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachlouisswart/ Book your Podcast Authority Audit with Erik: https://podcasttalentcoach.com/coaching   Subscribe to the podcast: Apple Podcasts: http://www.PodcastTalentCoach.com/apple Spotify: http://www.PodcastTalentCoach.com/spotify Website: http://www.PodcastTalentCoach.com/podcasts   Episode Segments: 00:09 "How to Get Noticed and Build Authority" 01:10 "Grow Your Authority with Podcast Appearances" 02:45 "Overcoming the Little Voice and Imposter Syndrome" 03:16 "Start Small and Grow Your Confidence" 04:36 "From Mouse Business to Plumbing Empire" 07:09 "The Harsh Reality of Doing Everything Yourself" 08:54 "Scaling Up to a Multi-Million Dollar Exit" 12:52 "Coaches' Biggest Challenge: Doing It All Alone" 13:27 "The 2,000 Hour Rule: Valuing Your Time" 15:41 "Delegating for Exponential Growth" 17:49 "The Gut Punch of Business Reality" 21:04 "Testing Offers and Letting the Market Decide" 22:09 "How Solopreneurs Can Start Delegating" 24:00 "Agency vs. DIY: Pitfalls in Hiring Help" 27:30 "3 Essential Delegation Strategies for Success" 31:28 "Success Story: Freeing Up Headspace for Growth" 34:54 "Why Visibility Is Non-Negotiable" 36:09 "Strangers Who Feel Like Friends: The Authority Effect" 37:30 "150 Things You Can Delegate—Free Resource" 38:44 "If I Started Over: Lessons in Testing and Sales" 40:08 "Why Selling Is Service" 41:35 "Access to Instant Team Resources" 42:37 "How to Connect with Lou and Take Action" 51:21 "Supporting Healthcare Authorities: Erik's Mission"   Key Takeaways: - Why Authority Requires Delegation Louis and Erik unwrap the damaging myth that solopreneurs should do it all themselves. True authority comes when you focus on what only you can do and delegate the rest.   - From Struggling Owner to Systemized Success Louis shares how failing to delegate destroyed the value of his first business, while embracing systems and teams produced a multi-million dollar exit the second time around.   - 3 Simple Delegation Habits Louis' practical strategies to vet, communicate with, and empower virtual assistants.   - The Competitive Edge: Podcast Interviews Visibility through interviews not only builds instant credibility but provides endless social content to multiply your reach, and curb imposter syndrome.   - Let the Market Decide: Test and Iterate Stop guessing. Launch, test, and double down on what your clients will actually pay for.   - Free Your Headspace Clients who delegate find more clarity, creativity, and revenue. Louis' framework shows how to systemize your business and finally become the public face of your brand.   Episode Highlights: The emotional impact of learning your business is worthless if you don't delegate Why working only in your business means nobody wants to buy it How to ensure virtual assistants deliver results without overwhelm or culture clash The power of social proof: leveraging podcast appearances and "starstruck" moments Setting a true hourly value for your leadership, and avoiding $10 tasks Why testing different markets beats gut feelings or friends' opinions   Resources: Get Louis' free guide: 150 Things You Can Delegate Today: http://www.PodcastTalentCoach.com/delegate Explore Louis' services and agency: ironbrij.com.au Connect with Louis Swart: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/louistswart Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachlouistswart LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachlouisswart/   Ready to strategically grow your podcast authority? Book your Podcast Authority Audit with Erik: https://podcasttalentcoach.com/coaching   Next Week: Next week Erik sits down with Dr. Paul Etchison, a dentist who turned his podcast into the engine behind a million-dollar coaching business. You'll discover how he transforms cold leads into a steady stream of high-value, ready-to-buy clients.   PODCAST AUTHORITY AUDIT You've published the episodes. You've stayed consistent. You know your content is good. And yet… You're not being seen as the authority in your niche Your podcast isn't creating the level of influence or opportunity you expected People listen—but they don't take action And you sound professional… but not unforgettable The truth? Consistency alone doesn't create authority. Intentional leadership does. Are you ready to turn your podcast into an authority engine and not just more content? Would you like to move from best-kept secret to recognized authority? Let me audit your podcast and find the gaps. Go to www.PodcastTalentCoach.com/coaching, click the button and apply to have a chat with me. We will uncover your authority positioning problem, develop your plan to succeed, and see how I can help and support you to achieve your podcast goals. Get your Podcast Authority Audit at www.PodcastTalentCoach.com/coaching.

Ready to get design support for your business and your team? The Co+Creation Design Club is open now: https://whitedeer.com.au/designclub If you've ever looked at your team's graphics and thought "it's not quite right... but I can't explain why", I sat down with Sarah Greener, business coach for ambitious women who want thriving businesses and full, well-rounded lives, to chat about what changed to help her team stop guessing designs. Sarah is not a designer. She'd be the first to tell you that. But her business doubled the year after her rebrand, and clients are now signing at $12,000 USD simply from seeing her brand and resonating. Before they've downloaded a freebie. Before they've booked a call. Just from first impression alone. We pull back the curtain on exactly what her content operation looks like, how she went from "just put something out" to having a professional creative director in her corner, and what changed when her team started getting real design support through the Co+Creation Design Club. We cover: Why "good enough" branding quietly caps your growth, and what Sarah did about it The difference between delegating and abdicating design What Sarah's content approval process looked like before and after joining the club How the club plugged directly into her existing team structure without adding extra load Why consistent, professional visuals carried her business through a difficult personal season What she'd tell any business owner sitting on the fence about this kind of investment Timestamps Intro 0:00 Sarah's Rebrand 3:15 Sarah's Content Creation Process 5:15 The Missing Piece in Sarah's Business 7:15 Difference between Delegating and Abdicating 7:47 What being a Good Boss Looks Like 13:15 The Co+Creation Design Club Onboarding Process 16:00 Importance of Strategic Design 25:00 Value of a Consistent Brand 29:13 Attracting Ideal Clients 32:15 Importance of Consistency 34:15 Value of Design Support 40:37 What Sarah would tell someone about the Club 45:50 More about Sarah 48:30 Wrap Up 52:07 ABOUT SARAH: Sarah Greener is a business consultant, founder of The Moxie Movement, and the author of The Off Switch. She has spent 20 years building, buying, and selling businesses across multiple industries — including a boat charter company, a restaurant, retail, ecommerce and an Airbnb — while raising a family and relocating internationally. Her work is built on one plainly stated premise: the business advice most women are following was designed for someone without a second full-time job called parenting. Through The Moxie Movement, Sarah helps established business owners rebuild the structure of their business and their life so that both run properly, at the same time, without one costing the other. She works with women building businesses strong enough to run without them, profitable enough to pay them properly, and designed to outlast them. CONNECT WITH SARAH:https://www.instagram.com/sarahgreenercoachhttps://the-moxie-movement.captivate.fmhttps://themoxiemovement.com Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/69Cz9iVmZQk Read on the Blog: https://whitedeer.com.au/ep264/ WORK WITH JACQUI: // DIY Design My Biz: The best course for business owners DIYing their own brand and graphics in Canva. Learn more: https://whitedeer.com.au/diy-dmb // The Co+Creation Design Club: Design WITH the help of a professional designer in this high-touch coaching space: https://whitedeer.com.au/designclub // Design Studio: If you're after fully done-for-you design services my studio team can help! https://whitedeer.com.au/designstudio

Stage 2 Capital General Partner Liz Christo joins the show to discuss the disconnect between venture expectations and reality in the software market. The conversation covers the hidden costs of the new build versus buy debate, the structural changes happening within modern sales organizations, and whether traditional B2B SaaS go-to-market strategies and moats still matter when AI coding tools make software replication cheaper than ever. Key Takeaways: -The shift toward building internal AI tools instead of buying SaaS products overlooks long-term technical debt, as Liz Christo points out that "there's like a huge amount of cost buried behind the scenes that we're not really talking about today because it's still like sexy and fun." -Founders are artificially inflating their Total Addressable Market to meet new venture capital baseline expectations, with Liz Christo noting that "pitch decks read like really ridiculous right now where everybody wants to tell the story of like a $10 billion outcome because that's the new milestone that got set." -Revenue Operations is becoming the most direct path to the Chief Revenue Officer seat in AI-first organizations, which Sam Jacobs explains is "because as we use fewer humans and more agents, the sort of the half technical, the semi-technical capabilities of most RevOps people will translate into orchestrating armies of agents." -Delegating analysis and writing to AI risks destroying strategic judgment across go-to-market teams, a trend Liz Christo summarizes by stating, "I think we are producing an incredible amount of content that's not getting consumed... I just think we're like losing the ability to think and we're not teaching junior employees how to do it." Connect with the Hosts & Guests: Host: Sam Jacobs - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samfjacobs/  Host: AJ Bruno - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajbruno3/  Host: Asad Zaman - https://www.linkedin.com/in/azaman1/  Guest: Liz Christo - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizchristo/   Topline is more than a YouTube Channel: Subscribe to Topline Newsletter: https://toplinemedia.substack.com/ Tune into Topline Podcast, the #1 podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-podcast Join the free Topline Slack channel to connect with 600+ revenue leaders to keep the conversation going beyond the podcast: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-slack   Chapters:  00:00 Intro and Cold Open 02:41 The New Build vs Buy Debate 06:10 Engineers in Every Department 10:48 Pitch Decks and 10B Dollar TAMs 17:53 Venture Capital Funding Quiz 23:43 AI Memos and Critical Thinking 42:41 Software Moats and Switching Costs 47:46 Bulls vs Bears Segment 48:23 RevOps as a Path to CRO 51:25 The Future of SDR Managers 55:14 Is Clay Actually Undervalued 59:12 Odds of Hitting 50M ARR  

Is the secret to a longer, healthier life hiding in the Book of Numbers? Dr. David Thomson brings his expertise in physiology and aging to uncover why complaining might be killing you, spiritually and physically, and why keeping your eyes on Jesus Christ changes everything.YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/iTm4P3OpCbAFREE PDF DOWNLOADS OF followHIM QUOTE BOOKSNew Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastNTBookOld Testament: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastOTBookBook of Mormon: https://tinyurl.com/PodcastBMBook WEEKLY NEWSLETTERhttps://tinyurl.com/followHIMnewsletter SOCIAL MEDIAInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followHIMpodcastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastTIMECODE:00:00 - Part 1 - Dr. David Thomson00:38 Giants vs. Grasshoppers02:27 Teaser 03:43 The Bronze Serpent: Beholding vs Glancing08:57 Complaining to one another vs Talking to the Lord15:18 The Rabble:Who do we listen to?24:55 Why study aging?26:54 Aaron's Death30:44 President Nelson: Length vs. Quality of Life31:46 Positive mindset and cognitive health35:42 Elder Boyd K. Packer: Staying engaged in the gospel43:07 The 4 Big Levers for healthy aging51:20 Delegating the Spirit: Moses and the Seventy53:20 Being set apart59:52 Criticizing vs sustaining1:03:14 Gaining a testimony of living apostles1:05:17 Miriam's leprosy–consequences and mercy1:09:46 Waiting for Miriam1:10:58 End of Part 1 - Dr. David ThomsonThanks to the followHIM team:Steve & Shannon Sorensen: Cofounder, Executive Producer, SponsorDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing, SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Editor, Show NotesWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish TranscriptsAmelia Kabwika: Portuguese TranscriptsHeather Barlow: Communications DirectorSydney Smith: Social Media, Graphic Design "Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com

AI Agile promises easier work, but it creates a leadership trap for anyone trying to stand out. When leaders turn to AI Agile for content, resumes, or pitches, the output becomes uniform and robotic, blending into the surrounding noise. Distinction requires consistent effort in uncomfortable areas: making direct outreach, stating difficult positions, and drawing connections others overlook. AI Agile excels with patterns and averages, while humans provide the vision, novel combinations, and genuine attention that drive results. AI Agile Comfort Takes Hold Comfort has taken hold. AI Agile accelerates writing, image creation, and social posts, which feels efficient. However, the generated material follows a predictable rhythm and tone, similar to formulaic music. This appears in articles, headlines, and newsletters, lacking distinctiveness and appearing across platforms. Many accept it as sufficient because of the speed, leading to widespread adoption and reduced variety. AI Agile Fails to Break Through The underlying challenge persists. Efforts to achieve visibility on social media rely on AI Agile claims about algorithms, yet identical approaches from all users return the situation to uniformity. Without a clear personal voice, connections fail to form, and influence does not expand. Applications for roles, outreach for opportunities, and scheduling now operate at an unsustainable pace, where AI Agile delivers only standard results. Counter AI Agile with Fundamentals A return to fundamentals addresses this. Counter tendencies toward minimal effort, standardized automation, and imitation. Favor straightforward methods over convenience. Each day, select tasks that demand more than the baseline expectation. Complete work now that positions you ahead later. Conduct outreach without prior notice. Present observations in original terms. Identify trends before they gain attention. AI Agile Limits Exploration AI Agile processes existing data and projections effectively but cannot pursue uncharted paths or generate true invention. Moments of insight occur during routine activities like showers or commutes, outside structured inputs. Leadership involves decisions under uncertainty, which AI Agile avoids. Routine execution suits automated systems and those who follow established paths. Those who direct outcomes shape what comes next. Practical Steps Beyond AI Agile Select one challenging action daily, drawn from routines of established performers, and complete it. Assign AI Agile to repetitive tasks where individual judgment adds no advantage, such as outdated mechanical processes, while retaining direct interactions. Maintain control over initial ideas, extended thoughts, and exploratory findings without external processing. Understand core methods thoroughly, including variables like proportions and duration, to achieve reliable outcomes with variation. Delegate routine elements to AI Agile, allowing focus on structural improvements that reduce pressure and repetition. Essential contributions remain uniquely human: understanding context, demonstrating attention, and recognizing opportunities. Delegating these reduces necessity for human involvement. Want to learn more about elite leadership? Forge Lightning supports the development of leaders equipped to navigate ahead. Forge Genesis assists those recognizing the need for independent ventures in these shifting times. Contact chris@badassagile.com or visit learning.fusechamber.com to learn more (links below). If you like this episode, you may also like: Will AI Save Agile? The Real AI Opportunity **FORGE GENESIS IS HERE** All the skills you need to stop relying on job postings and start enjoying the freedom of an Agile career on YOUR terms. First cohort starts in Q1 2026 https://learning.fusechamber.com/forge-genesis **THE ALL NEW FORGE LIGHTNING** 12 Weeks to elite leadership! https://learning.fusechamber.com/forge-lightning **JOIN MY BETA COMMUNITY FOR AGILE ENTREPRENEURS AND INTRAPRENEURS** The latest wave in professional Agile careers. Get the support you need to Forge Your Freedom! Join for FREE here: https://learning.fusechamber.com/offers/Sa3udEgz **GET THE BUSINESS OUTCOMES PARTNER PLAYBOOK** Learn how to deliver undeniable ROI that saves your job and accelerates your future https://learning.fusechamber.com/outcomes-partner-playbook **CHECK OUT ALL MY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES HERE:** https://learning.fusechamber.com **ELEVATE YOUR PROFESSIONAL STORYTELLING – Now Live!** The most coveted communications skill – now at your fingertips! https://learning.fusechamber.com/storytelling **JOIN THE FORGE*** New cohorts for Fall 2025!  Email for more information: contact@badassagile.com We’re also on YouTube! Follow the podcast, enjoy some panel/guest commentary, and get some quick tips and guidance from me: https://www.youtube.com/c/BadassAgilea ****** Follow The LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/badass-agile ****** Our mission is to create an elite tribe of leaders who focus on who they need to become in order to lead and inspire, and to be the best agile podcast and resource for effective mindset and leadership game. Contact us (contact@badassagile.com) for elite-level performance and agile coaching, speaking engagements, team-level and executive mindset/agile training, and licensing options for modern, high-impact, bite-sized learning and educational content.

Quick SummaryFresh off their biggest event yet — an 80-woman gathering that left attendees floating out of the venue — Kelsey and Em sit down for an honest, behind-the-scenes debrief. From what went wrong to what made it magical, they share the real story of growing Wave Live Events with heart and intention.In This EpisodeHow to resource yourself (and your household) in the week before a big eventThe mindset shift that kept them grounded when things went sidewaysThe biggest level-ups from past events — including finally taking up space on their own stageWhy their event feels different from every other women's networking eventFunny behind-the-scenes moments: construction, agenda glitches, and rolling with itHow their kids stuffed every swag bag — and what that means about building a businessPost-event processing: the crash, the recovery, and the lessons carried forwardWhat's coming next for Wave: micro events, new cities, and protecting the community's soulKey TakeawaysProtect your energy before a big event — Have an honest conversation with your support system early. Ask for help before you desperately need it.Presence over perfection — The most valuable thing you bring to your event is your energetic presence, not a flawless run-of-show.Asking for help is a level-up, not a weakness — Delegating details lets you zoom out, see the big picture, and show up better.To teach women to take up space, you have to take up space yourself — Stop hiding behind other people's stages. Your community wants to hear from you.Heart-centered beats ego-forward every time — Five deep connections at an event are worth more than 45 business cards you'll never remember.Memorable Quotes"There is no perfect time for anything. You just have to do it.""If we're teaching other women to take up more space, we need to be taking up more space ourselves.""You leave some events feeling more disconnected than when you arrived — even in a room of a hundred people. We never want Wave to be that."Resources & References MentionedKelsey's Instagram: @KelseyReidlKelsey's Website: KelseyReidl.comEmily's Instagram: @itsemilyelliotWave for Women Instagram: @waveforwomenWave Live Events — two signature events per year + upcoming micro/pop-up eventsLocations coming: Ontario towns, Ottawa, BC, Prince Edward CountyAbout Your HostsEmily is a mindset coach and co-founder of Wave for Women, passionate about helping female entrepreneurs feel seen, confident, and connected. Kelsey brings an events background and a natural gift for gathering people, building rooms where women can go deep, do business together, and walk away transformed.

Read the unfiltered memos I send my team as we scale Acquisition.com to $1B+:https://leilahormozi.com/subscribe The difference between leaders who grow and those who plateau is learning how to step back and trust their teams. In this episode, Leila breaks down how leaders can shift from being the star player to being the coach. She emphasizes the power of delegating decisions (not just tasks) and creating psychological safety so that teams can perform without constant oversight.In this episode00:00 The Phil Jackson paradox: change how you think about yourself06:56 Psychological safety: the foundation of high-performing teams08:19 Practical steps to delegate better 10:02 The "iceberg illusion" of leadership14:32 Applying the Triangle Offense system of leadership15:59 Delegating leadership decisions and not just tasksMore Value:Get your personalized $100m scaling roadmap: https://www.acquisition.com/roadmap Read the unfiltered memos I send my team as we scale Acquisition.com to $1B+: https://leilahormozi.com/subscribeReceive a curated set of internal memos from the past year at Acquisition.com: https://leilahormozi.com/acqDISCLOSURE Information shared here is for educational purposes only. Individuals and business owners should evaluate their own business strategies, and identify any potential risks. The information shared here is not a guarantee of success. Your results may vary. Copyright © 2026.

Today, let's dip into the world of mindset to talk about something I see come up over and over again as most CEOs grow their staging business. Not strategy, not pricing, and believe it, not even systems. It is guilt. And not in the way you might think. I am talking about the guilt that creeps in when you try to step back, when you hand something off to a capable team member you trained really well, and then you become what I can only describe as a weirdo lurker. Checking in, hovering, making sure it all got done.  Sounds familiar? In this episode, I share my own experience delegating, how I thought I set my little bird free and then very much did not, and what I eventually understood about why.  I have found the thing about guilt that nobody really talks about: it is not a character flaw and it is not a sign something went wrong. It is a signal, pointing you directly to the belief that has not caught up to where you are going yet. Once you understand that, everything changes and you can be what your staging business needs you to be.   What You'll Learn: Why stepping back feels uncomfortable even when your team is fully capable How guilt disguises itself as "being a good business owner" The identity shift every staging CEO has to make as they grow The one question that reveals the belief driving your guilt   RESOURCES:   Apply for Private Coaching: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/privatecoachingapp Enroll in Staging Business School Accelerate Track: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/accelerate Join the Staging Business School Growth Track Waitlist: www.rethinkhomeinteriors.com/growth Follow the Staging Business School on Instagram: www.instagram.com/stagingbusinessschool Follow Lori on Instagram: www.instagram.com/rethinkhome If you want to learn how to streamline your operations so you can grow with less stress and burnout in your staging business, enrollment is open for Staging Business School Accelerate Track. I'd love to see you in the classroom!   ENJOY THE SHOW? Leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts so that more Staging CEOs find it. Also, include links to your socials so that more Staging CEOs can find you. Follow over on Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Audible.

Are you holding onto tasks that are slowing down your growth? What could change if you focused only on the work you do best? Is your business limited by your […] The post Delegating Tasks Efficiently and Effectively | GP 324 appeared first on How to Start, Grow, and Scale a Private Practice | Practice of the Practice.

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Al Smith. Interview Purpose The purpose of this interview is to explore life transitions, resilience, and financial discipline through the lens of elite performance, using Al Smith’s journey from NFL All‑Pro to executive, entrepreneur, and community leader as a blueprint. The conversation highlights how preparation, education, mindset, and adaptability are essential when dreams evolve or abruptly change. This interview also serves to connect the experiences of professional athletes with those of small business owners and entrepreneurs, emphasizing that success in both arenas requires discipline, accountability, and long‑term thinking. Major Themes & Key Takeaways 1. Education as a Safety Net and Strategy Al Smith made the deliberate decision to finish his college degree before fully committing to the NFL, recognizing that professional sports offered no guarantees. This choice gave him leverage, confidence, and security—both mentally and financially—throughout his career. Key takeaway: Always secure something tangible before going “all in” on an uncertain opportunity. 2. Turning Fear into Fuel Smith openly discusses fear—fear of being cut, fear of competition, fear of uncertainty—and how he learned to convert fear into motivation rather than paralysis. He treated each season as if it were his last, approaching preparation with urgency and focus. Key takeaway: Fear is inevitable; how you respond to it determines longevity and success. 3. Competition Is Not the Enemy Competition played a central role in Smith’s development. Rather than avoiding it, he embraced it, understanding that growth requires discomfort. He credits adversity, pressure, and coaching challenges with sharpening his performance and character. Key takeaway: Competition strengthens discipline and reveals accountability. 4. Financial Literacy and Lifestyle Discipline Smith addresses the common financial pitfalls faced by professional athletes, many of which also apply to entrepreneurs: Lifestyle inflation Supporting others without boundaries Delegating financial decisions without understanding them Trying to maintain an image instead of sustainability Smith’s financial stability was aided by mentors, personal involvement in decisions, and a mindset focused on not owing—not just earning. Key takeaway: Financial success is not about income—it’s about control, habits, and awareness. 5. Mentorship and Environment Matter Smith emphasizes the value of surrounding himself with successful, disciplined people both on and off the field. Mentorship influenced how he thought about money, effort, competition, and leadership. Key takeaway: Proximity shapes thinking; environment influences outcomes. 6. Preparing for Life After the Dream Even while succeeding in the NFL, Smith planned for the transition ahead. This forward thinking led to opportunities in the front office, business, and leadership. He viewed this transition as a chance to open doors for others and to understand the business side of sports. Key takeaway: The end of one dream can be the beginning of a larger purpose. 7. Athletes and Entrepreneurs Face the Same Reality Smith draws a direct parallel between: Athletes competing yearly with no guarantees Entrepreneurs running businesses without security or routine Both require maximum effort, preparation beyond the clock, and resilience. Key takeaway: There is no 40‑hour workweek when you are building something of your own. Notable Quotes “I turned my fear into fire.” “There are no guarantees—every year is a one‑year deal.” “I treated every season like it was my last.” “You don’t want to owe. You want to own.” “Don’t be scared of competition.” “The gain outweighs the strain.” “Prepare so that if it ends tomorrow, you’re still standing.” Overall Message Al Smith’s interview is a powerful lesson in discipline, foresight, and adaptability. It reframes success as something built through preparation before opportunity arrives and sustained by humility, mentorship, and intentional decision‑making. His story reinforces that dreams evolve—but character, work ethic, and financial awareness determine whether those transitions become setbacks or stepping stones. #SHMS #BEST #STRAWSupport the show: https://www.steveharveyfm.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Al Smith. Interview Purpose The purpose of this interview is to explore life transitions, resilience, and financial discipline through the lens of elite performance, using Al Smith’s journey from NFL All‑Pro to executive, entrepreneur, and community leader as a blueprint. The conversation highlights how preparation, education, mindset, and adaptability are essential when dreams evolve or abruptly change. This interview also serves to connect the experiences of professional athletes with those of small business owners and entrepreneurs, emphasizing that success in both arenas requires discipline, accountability, and long‑term thinking. Major Themes & Key Takeaways 1. Education as a Safety Net and Strategy Al Smith made the deliberate decision to finish his college degree before fully committing to the NFL, recognizing that professional sports offered no guarantees. This choice gave him leverage, confidence, and security—both mentally and financially—throughout his career. Key takeaway: Always secure something tangible before going “all in” on an uncertain opportunity. 2. Turning Fear into Fuel Smith openly discusses fear—fear of being cut, fear of competition, fear of uncertainty—and how he learned to convert fear into motivation rather than paralysis. He treated each season as if it were his last, approaching preparation with urgency and focus. Key takeaway: Fear is inevitable; how you respond to it determines longevity and success. 3. Competition Is Not the Enemy Competition played a central role in Smith’s development. Rather than avoiding it, he embraced it, understanding that growth requires discomfort. He credits adversity, pressure, and coaching challenges with sharpening his performance and character. Key takeaway: Competition strengthens discipline and reveals accountability. 4. Financial Literacy and Lifestyle Discipline Smith addresses the common financial pitfalls faced by professional athletes, many of which also apply to entrepreneurs: Lifestyle inflation Supporting others without boundaries Delegating financial decisions without understanding them Trying to maintain an image instead of sustainability Smith’s financial stability was aided by mentors, personal involvement in decisions, and a mindset focused on not owing—not just earning. Key takeaway: Financial success is not about income—it’s about control, habits, and awareness. 5. Mentorship and Environment Matter Smith emphasizes the value of surrounding himself with successful, disciplined people both on and off the field. Mentorship influenced how he thought about money, effort, competition, and leadership. Key takeaway: Proximity shapes thinking; environment influences outcomes. 6. Preparing for Life After the Dream Even while succeeding in the NFL, Smith planned for the transition ahead. This forward thinking led to opportunities in the front office, business, and leadership. He viewed this transition as a chance to open doors for others and to understand the business side of sports. Key takeaway: The end of one dream can be the beginning of a larger purpose. 7. Athletes and Entrepreneurs Face the Same Reality Smith draws a direct parallel between: Athletes competing yearly with no guarantees Entrepreneurs running businesses without security or routine Both require maximum effort, preparation beyond the clock, and resilience. Key takeaway: There is no 40‑hour workweek when you are building something of your own. Notable Quotes “I turned my fear into fire.” “There are no guarantees—every year is a one‑year deal.” “I treated every season like it was my last.” “You don’t want to owe. You want to own.” “Don’t be scared of competition.” “The gain outweighs the strain.” “Prepare so that if it ends tomorrow, you’re still standing.” Overall Message Al Smith’s interview is a powerful lesson in discipline, foresight, and adaptability. It reframes success as something built through preparation before opportunity arrives and sustained by humility, mentorship, and intentional decision‑making. His story reinforces that dreams evolve—but character, work ethic, and financial awareness determine whether those transitions become setbacks or stepping stones. #SHMS #BEST #STRAWSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When clients come to Simple CFO, they almost always arrive with one version of their story — and leave the first 60 days with a completely different plan. In this episode, Cristina Gutierrez sits down with CFO Aaron Jurski to pull back the curtain on how he meets clients exactly where they are and transforms their financial clarity from the ground up.Aaron walks through real client case files — from a high-cash-flow commercial real estate investor drowning in unchecked subscriptions, to a Utah contractor who'd never built a budget, to a North Carolina investor sitting on $18M in assets but paying an unnecessary 18-20% on his debt. Each story reveals what it actually looks like when a fractional CFO steps in, asks the right questions, and builds a plan that matches the real business — not the one described in the sales call.Timeline Highlights[0:23] Introducing Aaron Jurski and his background in commercial real estate and private equity[1:54] The types of clients Aaron works with: contractors, developers, and experienced investors[3:30] How Simple CFO's methodology creates financial clarity and understanding[5:35] Case file #1: The high-cash-flow retail investor spending $600K/year with zero visibility[11:48] Case file #2: The Utah contractor six months behind on reconciliation with no budget[13:15] Building lender decks and helping emerging businesses access institutional financing[14:37] Why fewer KPIs are always better — and how to choose the right ones[16:16] The hidden cash flow hit of five-week payroll months[18:57] The common thread: every client needs visibility and understanding of their numbers[20:03] Why entrepreneurs manage from their bank balance — and what that costs them[21:13] The tax blindspot almost every small business owner shares[22:06] CFO vs. bookkeeper: the difference between ten feet and 10,000 feet[24:05] What the first 60 days with Aaron actually looks like[25:22] Case file #3: The North Carolina investor with 200 rentals and untapped institutional equity[33:38] Why DIY Profit First without a financial assessment funds bad habits instead of fixing them[35:29] The elevator pitch test: knowing your numbers in one sentence[38:23] Budget-to-actuals and why you should never keep adjusting the budget[39:34] The stoplight page, goal worksheets, and KPI tracking inside the Simple CFO dashboard[41:24] Delegating the right tasks so the owner can stay focused on driving revenueKey TakeawaysEvery client comes in with one story — and the first 60 days reveals a different one.Managing your business from your bank balance is the most common and most costly habit fractional CFOs see.High cash flow hides problems. It doesn't solve them.Fewer KPIs create more focus — six to twelve wash over each other.DIY Profit First without a financial assessment just funds the same bad habits in an organized way.A CFO operates at 10,000 feet. A bookkeeper works at ten feet. Both matter — but only one can set a plan.Untapped equity and unexamined debt structures are often worth more to a client than any new deal they're chasing.Links & Resources Book a free financial discovery call with the Simple CFO team: simplecfo.comClosing Thanks for listening to the Simple CFO Case Files on the Profit First for Real Estate Investors podcast. If Aaron's stories resonated with where you are in your business right now, make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode. And if you're ready to stop managing from your bank balance and start building real financial clarity, head to simplecfo.com and book your free discovery call today.

Many entrepreneurs feel like their business operations and life logistics are quietly running them, rather than the other way around. In this episode, we discuss how great support—through a virtual assistant or fractional chief of staff—not only boosts productivity but actually serves as a wellness strategy, helping founders reclaim their focus and peace of mind.Nikol's unconventional journey across Bulgaria, Germany, France, and Malta, and how her cross-cultural fluency shapes her approach to supporting founders.The nuanced differences between personal assistant, executive assistant, virtual assistant, and chief of staff—and how Nikol blends and evolves these roles based on client needs.Why genuine connection, trust, and relationship-building are the foundation for successful delegation and operational support.How AI tools are transforming workflows, automating repetitive tasks, and why staying on top of tech is now essential for assistants and chiefs of staff.The impact of outsourcing mental load—especially the “open tabs” in our brains—and how letting go can dramatically improve founders' mental health, focus, and creativity.TL;DR: Delegating operational complexity isn't just about saving time; it's an essential act of self-care and a wellness strategy for founders overloaded by their businesses. Building trust, leveraging AI, and embracing nuanced support empowers entrepreneurs to operate in their zone of genius—with fewer burdens, more clarity, and better health.Thank you for listening!If this episode inspired you, please screenshot and share it on social media—be sure to tag @meganswanwellness so we can cheer you on. Your support means the world!Connect with Megan SwanInstagram:http://www.instagram.com/meganswanwellnessLinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/megan-swan-wellnessWebsites: www.meganswanwellness.com + https://altavitahealth.ca/Subscribe to my Substack: ⁠⁠https://meganswan.substack.com/⁠⁠Connect with Nikol TotevaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikol-toteva/Keywordsvirtual assistant, chief of staff, delegation, business operations, workflow automation, AI in business, onboarding process, personal assistant, executive assistant, productivity, founder support, cross-cultural fluency, entrepreneurship, remote work, trust in business, task management, stress management, burnout prevention, mental health, outsourcing, business efficiency, operational systems, wellness strategy, personal organization, upwork, relationship building, workflow optimization, business automation tools, Claude AI, business growth

Stacie Staub built a life-first business model that prioritizes balance, culture, and long-term success while scaling to hundreds of agents without burnout or sacrificing personal fulfillment.See article: https://www.unitedstatesrealestateinvestor.com/burnout-created-breakthrough-building-a-life-first-business-with-stacie-staub/(00:00) - Introduction to The REI Agent Podcast and Guest Overview(01:45) - Meet Stacie Staub and Her Journey Into Real Estate(03:30) - Transition From Tech Career to Real Estate Sales(05:15) - Early Deals, Family Involvement, and Finding Passion(07:00) - Navigating Market Cycles and Building Experience(08:45) - Building a Team and Delegating for Growth(10:30) - Moving Into Leadership and Brokerage Ownership(12:15) - Leveraging Technology and Building a Smart Tech Stack(14:00) - Using Slack to Drive Culture and Communication(15:45) - Why an Independent Brokerage Model Still Wins(17:30) - Scaling to 400 Agents While Maintaining Culture(19:15) - Creating Strong Agent Relationships and Loyalty(21:00) - Mentorship Programs and Developing New Agents(22:45) - Growth Benefits for Mentors and Team Collaboration(24:30) - Redefining Success Through Work Life Balance(26:15) - The Phone Nanny Concept and Avoiding Burnout(28:00) - Creating Systems for Coverage and Agent Support(29:45) - Personal Growth Through New Challenges and Learning(31:30) - Writing a Book and Expanding Beyond Business(33:15) - Recognizing Burnout and Knowing When to Delegate(34:45) - Career Evolution and Staying Engaged Long Term(36:00) - Golden Nuggets Done Is Better Than Perfect(37:00) - Agents Are the Clients Mindset Shift(38:08) - Book Recommendations and Closing ThoughtsContact Stacie Staubhttps://westandmainhomes.com/agent/stacie-staubhttps://www.facebook.com/staciestaubrealtor/https://www.instagram.com/staciestaub/https://www.linkedin.com/in/staciestaub/https://www.youtube.com/@StacieStaub Success is not about doing more, it is about becoming more intentional with how you build your life and your business, and if this message hit home for you, visit https://reiagent.comIs success destroying your peace? Most pros grind until they break. Download The Investor's Life Balance Sheet: A Holistic Wealth Audit to see if you are building a legacy or heading for burnout. Presented by The REI Agent Podcast & United States Real Estate Investor® https://sendfox.com/lp/m4jrl

How do you build a clean-label snack brand from scratch?In Episode 208 of On The Delo, Shannon shares how she turned a home kitchen idea into The Best Bar — a handcrafted snack brand now sold across Arizona, from AJ's Fine Foods to the Grand Canyon and Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.What started with a $2,000 investment, a Vistaprint logo, and Arizona's cottage food law has grown into a six-year journey built on grit, consistency, and doing things differently.Delo and Shannon break down what it really takes to build a food business from the ground up — without cutting corners.From hand-chopping ingredients and fulfilling orders out of her own kitchen, to landing major retail placements, this is a story about building a brand with intention, not shortcuts.They also get into:Scaling without losing qualityClean-label products and ingredient integrityThe reality of hiring and growthSobriety, healing, and personal disciplineWhy sleep, gratitude, and routine matter more than most people thinkWhether you're building a product, growing a business, or just getting started, this episode is a real look at what it takes to turn something small into something sustainable.Chapter Guide (Timestamps):(0:00 - 2:35) Devour Phoenix Intro, Booth Memories & Event Prep Systems(2:36 - 6:21) Shannon's Origin Story: Minnesota Roots, DC Nannying & Learning to Cook(6:22 - 8:34) 10 Years in Wine Sales, Sommelier Cert & Choosing Sobriety 19 Years Ago(8:35 - 11:36) Foster Parenting, Health Turning Point & Giving Up Refined Sugars(11:37 - 14:10) Shannon's Kitchen Cottage Food Start, $2K Investment & the Birth of The Best Bar(14:11 - 17:05) AJ's Fine Foods, Peddler's Son Distribution & the Fox 10 Segment Moment(17:06 - 20:36) Hardest Part of Entrepreneurship: Hiring, Delegating & Work-Life Reality(20:37 - 23:56) 200 Trays a Week, 4,896 Bars in One Order & Hand-Making Every Single One(23:57 - 27:00) Bar Flavors Deep Dive: Original, Chocolate Chip, Cacao & Seed Bar Charity Tie-In(27:01 - 29:30) Scaling Challenges, Pitching Natural Grocers & Saying Yes Before You Know How(29:31 - 33:11) Healing Hospitality, Joy Bus Donations & Why Food and Community Go Together(33:12 - 36:15) Shannon Today vs. Shannon 2020: GCU Space, Grand Canyon Lodges & Personal Growth(36:16 - 42:00) Rapid Fire: Music, Cacao Bar Sleeper Pick, Sneakers, Beach Getaways & Grow Bigger

Want to know how top law firms scale without losing culture or trust? Steve Fretzin sits down with the founders of Omega Law Group to reveal the systems, partnerships, and strategies that turn strong teams into high-performing firms.   In this episode, Steve Fretzin, Shahab Mossavar-Rahmani, Robin Saghian, and Edwin Saghian discuss: Measuring performance and managing by data Forming and sustaining a strong law firm partnership Delegation of duties and staying in your lane Building culture, trust, and low-turnover teams Systems, structure, and mistakes made while scaling   Key Takeaways: You can't effectively manage or grow a firm if you're not rigorously measuring performance and outcomes. Shared values, trust, and low ego are the real foundations that allow partnerships to survive disagreement and big decisions. Delegating duties based on strengths—and then staying in your lane—unlocks scale in a way that “doing everything yourself” never can. A strong culture is intentional: clear expectations, honest feedback, and genuine investment in employees dramatically reduce turnover. Many growth bottlenecks come from hanging onto tasks too long; cutting your losses on mis-hires and outdated processes is essential.   "Our philosophy is, if you take care of the people that work with you, they'll take care of the clients." —  Shahab Mossavar-Rahmani   Check out my new show, Be That Lawyer Coaches Corner, and get the strategies I use with my clients to win more business and love your career again.   Ready to go from good to GOAT in your legal marketing game? Don't miss PIMCON—where the brightest minds in professional services gather to share what really works. Lock in your spot now: https://www.pimcon.org/   Thank you to our Sponsor! LEX Reception: https://www.lexreception.com/ Rankings.io: https://rankings.io/ Lawyer.com: https://www.lawyer.com/   Ready to grow your law practice without selling or chasing? Book your free 30-minute strategy session now—let's make this your breakout year: https://fretzin.com/   About Omega Law Group: Shahab Mossavar-Rahmani – Shahab is a founding partner at Omega Law Group, specializing in personal injury law. He brings extensive courtroom experience from his time as a deputy public defender in Orange County and has earned recognition from Super Lawyers and the National Trial Lawyers Top 100 for his litigation expertise. Robin Saghian – Robin co-founded Omega Law Group and focuses on personal injury and employment law. Known for his strong advocacy and client-centered approach, he has built a reputation for skillful litigation and successfully representing clients in complex civil cases. Edwin Saghian – Edwin is a founding partner at Omega Law Group, concentrating on personal injury cases, including car accidents, wrongful death, and class actions. He is recognized for his commitment to clients and hands-on courtroom experience, helping individuals secure favorable outcomes in challenging litigation.   Connect with Omega Law Group:  Website: https://www.omegalaw.com/   Connect with Steve Fretzin: LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin Twitter: @stevefretzin Instagram: @fretzinsteve Facebook: Fretzin, Inc. Website: Fretzin.com Email: Steve@Fretzin.com Book: Legal Business Development Isn't Rocket Science and more! YouTube: Steve Fretzin Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911   Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. 

To become a capital D - Delegator, we need tools like the MAP we discussed in the last episode.    But we also need to understand what happens to our bodies when we begin to let others do the work we have mastered.    In this episode, we delve into the neuroscience of delegation to see how the fight-or-flight response can make delegating much more difficult.    Want to scale your install capacity with less-experienced installers? visit www.noliftsystem.com   Keep Grinding! Aaron Crowley aaroncrowley.com

In today's ep, Sarah answers questions for the month of April! Topics include: Why no planner reviews lately + notes on spring releases Tips for reminding others of tasks you are attempting to delegate (with a listener tip as one possible answer!) To-be-read list management Struggles with planning vs execution Resources + Links: Simplified planners: emilyley.comHobonichi April start: https://www.1101.com/store/techo/en/lineup/Episode with Cal Newport: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LejRmFRxXbY&t=3702sEpisode on The Gap Between Planning and Doing: https://theshubox.com/2025/04/ep-245-the-gap-between-planning-and-doing.htmlCourses: BLPA2.0 is almost full - details at theshubox.com/coursesOUR SPONSORS: IXL: Best Laid Plans listeners can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up today at ⁠https://www.ixl.com/plans⁠ Mint Mobile: Shop affordable cell phone plans at ⁠mintmobile.com/BLP⁠ Green Chef: Healthy eating made easy. Visit ⁠greenchef.com/50bestlaid ⁠and use code 50bestlaid to get 50% your first month, then 20% off for two months. PrepDish: Healthy and strategic meal plans to fit your family's nutritional needs! Visit ⁠prepdish.com/plans⁠ for your first two weeks free! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stop treating AI as a sales shortcut and start redesigning your business from the ground up to survive the fastest technology adoption in history. In this episode, Ashok Shivanand deconstructs a recent workshop with veteran CEOs to reveal why so many established leaders are struggling with an AI confidence gap. We explore the dangerous instinct to "wait and see" and why delegating AI to your "defensive" executive team could be a terminal mistake for your operations. In this episode: The Redesign Imperative: Why the electric motor failed to increase factory output for 30 years and how that applies to your AI implementation today. Frontier Tools vs. Copilot: Why Microsoft Copilot might be limiting your team's vision and why you need to provide access to Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT. Playing Offense: How to identify "champions" in your organization to build a nucleus for institutional AI capability. The "Context First" Prompt: A simple, practical instruction that transforms AI from a basic search engine into a high-level thought partner. Mentioned in this episode... Claude AI (Claude.ai) ChatGPT Gemini Microsoft Copilot Convergence.fm Office Hours

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Al Smith. Interview Purpose The purpose of this interview is to explore life transitions, resilience, and financial discipline through the lens of elite performance, using Al Smith’s journey from NFL All‑Pro to executive, entrepreneur, and community leader as a blueprint. The conversation highlights how preparation, education, mindset, and adaptability are essential when dreams evolve or abruptly change. This interview also serves to connect the experiences of professional athletes with those of small business owners and entrepreneurs, emphasizing that success in both arenas requires discipline, accountability, and long‑term thinking. Major Themes & Key Takeaways 1. Education as a Safety Net and Strategy Al Smith made the deliberate decision to finish his college degree before fully committing to the NFL, recognizing that professional sports offered no guarantees. This choice gave him leverage, confidence, and security—both mentally and financially—throughout his career. Key takeaway: Always secure something tangible before going “all in” on an uncertain opportunity. 2. Turning Fear into Fuel Smith openly discusses fear—fear of being cut, fear of competition, fear of uncertainty—and how he learned to convert fear into motivation rather than paralysis. He treated each season as if it were his last, approaching preparation with urgency and focus. Key takeaway: Fear is inevitable; how you respond to it determines longevity and success. 3. Competition Is Not the Enemy Competition played a central role in Smith’s development. Rather than avoiding it, he embraced it, understanding that growth requires discomfort. He credits adversity, pressure, and coaching challenges with sharpening his performance and character. Key takeaway: Competition strengthens discipline and reveals accountability. 4. Financial Literacy and Lifestyle Discipline Smith addresses the common financial pitfalls faced by professional athletes, many of which also apply to entrepreneurs: Lifestyle inflation Supporting others without boundaries Delegating financial decisions without understanding them Trying to maintain an image instead of sustainability Smith’s financial stability was aided by mentors, personal involvement in decisions, and a mindset focused on not owing—not just earning. Key takeaway: Financial success is not about income—it’s about control, habits, and awareness. 5. Mentorship and Environment Matter Smith emphasizes the value of surrounding himself with successful, disciplined people both on and off the field. Mentorship influenced how he thought about money, effort, competition, and leadership. Key takeaway: Proximity shapes thinking; environment influences outcomes. 6. Preparing for Life After the Dream Even while succeeding in the NFL, Smith planned for the transition ahead. This forward thinking led to opportunities in the front office, business, and leadership. He viewed this transition as a chance to open doors for others and to understand the business side of sports. Key takeaway: The end of one dream can be the beginning of a larger purpose. 7. Athletes and Entrepreneurs Face the Same Reality Smith draws a direct parallel between: Athletes competing yearly with no guarantees Entrepreneurs running businesses without security or routine Both require maximum effort, preparation beyond the clock, and resilience. Key takeaway: There is no 40‑hour workweek when you are building something of your own. Notable Quotes “I turned my fear into fire.” “There are no guarantees—every year is a one‑year deal.” “I treated every season like it was my last.” “You don’t want to owe. You want to own.” “Don’t be scared of competition.” “The gain outweighs the strain.” “Prepare so that if it ends tomorrow, you’re still standing.” Overall Message Al Smith’s interview is a powerful lesson in discipline, foresight, and adaptability. It reframes success as something built through preparation before opportunity arrives and sustained by humility, mentorship, and intentional decision‑making. His story reinforces that dreams evolve—but character, work ethic, and financial awareness determine whether those transitions become setbacks or stepping stones. #SHMS #BEST #STRAWSteve Harvey Morning Show Online: http://www.steveharveyfm.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cameron is joined by Molly Bailey, a successful entrepreneur in the medical aesthetics field, and they discuss her journey from working as a medical assistant to becoming a physician assistant and eventually opening her own practice, Face Forward Regenerative Aesthetics. They delve into the challenges of entrepreneurship, the importance of building a personal brand, and the significance of comprehensive patient consultations. Molly emphasizes the need for trust and connection with patients, as well as the necessity of having a supportive team to navigate the complexities of running a medical practice. Cameron and Molly explore the evolving landscape of aesthetics, emphasizing the importance of building trust through expertise and the role of social media in establishing personal brands. They discuss the challenges of transitioning from traditional medical practices to aesthetic consultations, the significance of creating a unique brand identity, and the future trends in the aesthetics industry, including the integration of wellness and innovative treatments. They also highlight the necessity of being authentic and open in the face of criticism while navigating the complexities of patient care and the aesthetic market.Listen In!Thank you for listening to this episode of Medical Millionaire!Takeaways:Molly Bailey transitioned from working for a plastic surgeon to opening her own practice.Entrepreneurship requires a leap of faith and a willingness to learn.Building a personal brand is crucial for attracting patients.Comprehensive consultations are essential for understanding patient needs.Trust and rapport with patients are key to successful outcomes.Molly emphasizes the importance of surrounding oneself with knowledgeable people.Running a practice involves many challenges that are not taught in school.Delegating responsibilities is necessary for growth and efficiency.Molly's approach to aesthetics focuses on long-term patient goals.The relationship between provider and patient is a collaborative journey. Patients are desperate for information and transformation.Consultations in aesthetics involve a sales aspect.Building trust is crucial in patient relationships.Social media can create initial connections with patients.A unique brand identity can differentiate practitioners.Personal branding is a powerful marketing tool.Comfort with being cringy can lead to success.Safety in aesthetics should guide innovation.The future of aesthetics includes wellness and lifestyle integration.Understanding patient needs is key to effective consultations.Medical Millionaire: The Blueprint for Scaling a World-Class Medical Aesthetics PracticeWelcome to Medical Millionaire, the go-to podcast for forward-thinking Medspa owners, Medical Aesthetics leaders, Plastic Surgery & Dermatology practices, Concierge Wellness clinics, and Elective Healthcare entrepreneurs who are ready to scale with intention and operate like a true, high-performing business.If you're building, growing, optimizing, or preparing to exit your aesthetics or wellness practice, this show is your competitive advantage.Hosted by Cameron Hemphill Your Guide to Sustainable, Scalable Growth Your host, Cameron Hemphill, is one of the most trusted growth strategists in Medical Aesthetics and Elective Wellness.With over 10 years in the industry, Cameron has helped scale 1,000+ practices and more than 2,300 providers, working alongside the most recognized KOLs, national brands, EMRs, tech companies, and private equity groups, shaping the future of aesthetics. From marketing to operations, from finance to leadership, Cameron brings a real-world, data-driven perspective on what it takes to turn a practice into a powerful business engine.What This Podcast Is All About: Each episode takes you behind the scenes of the fastest-growing practices in the country, revealing the systems, strategies, and mindset required to win in today's Medical Aesthetics landscape.Expect tactical insights, step-by-step frameworks, and conversations with:Industry thought leadersTop injectors & medical directorsEMR & tech innovatorsOperations expertsMarketing strategistsPrivate equity & M&A advisorsWellness and longevity pioneersThis is where aesthetics, business, technology, and wellness converge. What You'll Learn on Medical Millionaire Every week, you'll access expert guidance to help you scale profitably and predictably, including:Marketing & Brand PositioningCRM + Lead Management SystemsPatient Acquisition & ConversionEMR Optimization & Tech Stack ArchitectureSales Psychology & Consultation MasteryFinance, KPIs, and Practice EconomicsOperational Workflows & AutomationIndustry Trends Backed by Real Benchmark DataPatient Retention & Lifetime Value ExpansionMindset, Leadership & Team DevelopmentWhether you're opening your first location or running a multi-million-dollar enterprise, you'll gain the clarity and direction to grow with confidence. A Show Designed for Every Stage of Practice Growth Medical Millionaire breaks down the journey into four essential stages, showing you exactly how to move from one to the next:Startup – Build the foundation and attract your first wave of patientsGrowth – Scale revenue, expand services, and strengthen operationsOptimize – Increase efficiency, margins, and customer experienceExit – Prepare your practice for maximum valuation and acquisitionIf You're Ready to Grow, This Is Where You Start. Tune in weekly for actionable insights, expert interviews, and the exact playbooks high-performing practices use to dominate their markets. This is the podcast for Medspa owners who want more than a job; they want a scalable, profitable, industry-leading business. Welcome to Medical Millionaire.Let's build your practice into the empire it deserves to be.

At some point, firm founders often find that their time is divided between attracting new clients and serving current ones (and running their business). This episode explores how it's possible to delegate technical work to a centralized planning team, segment clients by revenue, and leverage asynchronous communication tools to create client touchpoints while devoting significant time to closing new clients.  Jake Falcon, founder of Falcon Wealth Advisors, has built a $1 billion advisory firm for nearly 900 client households in part by focusing on his strengths as a 'rainmaker' bringing in new clients while stepping back from day-to-day planning analyses and regular client meetings. In this episode, Jake shares how abandoning scripts and prioritizing authentic connections transformed his business development. He also discusses how he's using Instagram to meet potential clients 'where they are' and demonstrate his authentic personality, why he invests client assets directly into stocks and bonds instead of mutual funds and ETFs, and how he hopes that bringing in direct business development hires will help his firm grow well into the future.    For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/484 

Training a salon manager is one of the things salon owners often get wrong, and most don't realise it until they've already hired the wrong person, put them on payroll, but still end up doing everything themselves. In this episode, I share a five-step framework for getting it right, from figuring out whether your business can actually support a manager right now, to the mindset shift that changes everything about how you lead.By the end of this episode, you'll know exactly what to define before you hand anything over, why hiring another version of yourself backfires, and how to release control in a way that builds real capability over time. Done right, a great manager doesn't take things away from you. They give you your life back.WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:The two pillars that underpin good management, and why most people are usually only good at oneWhy you need to consider the size of your business before you hire anyone into a management roleThe case against hiring a mini you and what to look for insteadHow to train for outcomes, not just tasks, so your manager can think, not just tick boxesThe "let the leash out slowly" approach to handing over control without chaosWhy getting it out of your head and onto paper is the non-negotiable first stepEPISODE TIMESTAMPS[00:00] Introduction: The challenge of training a salon manager[00:30] Why hiring a manager isn't as simple as it sounds[01:19] The real question: how do you let go without losing control?[01:45] The two pillars of management: people skills vs systems[03:18] Why most salon owners lean heavily to one side[04:11] The moment you realise you need help[05:04] The fear of hiring and trusting a manager[06:00] The two biggest obstacles: no systems and financial pressure[06:40] Why most salons can't afford a non-producing manager[07:18] Delegating vs dumping chaos[14:49] Recap of the 5-step framework[15:41] Why a great manager gives you back your life[16:04] How to get helpRESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

We're proud to release this ahead of Ryan's keynote at AIE Europe. Hit the bell, get notified when it is live! Attendees: come prepped for Ryan's AMA with Vibhu after.Move over, context engineering. Now it's time for Harness engineering and the age of the token billionaires.Ryan Lopopolo of OpenAI is leading that charge, recently publishing a lengthy essay on Harness Eng that has become the talk of the town:In it, Ryan peeled back the curtains on how the recently announced OpenAI Frontier team have become OpenAI's top Codex users, running a >1m LOC codebase with 0 human written code and, crucially for the Dark Factory fans, no human REVIEWED code before merge. Ryan is admirably evangelical about this, calling it borderline “negligent” if you aren't using >1B tokens a day (roughly $2-3k/day in token spend based on market rates and caching assumptions):Over the past five months, they ran an extreme experiment: building and shipping an internal beta product with zero manually written code. Through the experiment, they adopted a different model of engineering work: when the agent failed, instead of prompting it better or to “try harder,” the team would look at “what capability, context, or structure is missing?”The result was Symphony, “a ghost library” and reference Elixir implementation (by Alex Kotliarskyi) that sets up a massive system of Codex agents all extensively prompted with the specificity of a proper PRD spec, but without full implementation:The future starts taking shape as one where coding agents stop being copilots and start becoming real teammates anyone can use and Codex is doubling down on that mission with their Superbowl messaging of “you can just build things”.Across Codex, internal observability stacks, and the multi-agent orchestration system his team calls Symphony, Ryan has been pushing what happens when you optimize an entire codebase, workflow, and organization around agent legibility instead of human habit.We sat down with Ryan to dig into how OpenAI's internal teams actually use Codex, why the real bottleneck in AI-native software development is now human attention rather than tokens, how fast build loops, observability, specs, and skills let agents operate autonomously, why software increasingly needs to be written for the model as much as for the engineer, and how Frontier points toward a future where agents can safely do economically valuable work across the enterprise.We discuss:* Ryan's background from Snowflake, Brex, Stripe, and Citadel to OpenAI Frontier Product Exploration, where he works on new product development for deploying agents safely at enterprise scale* The origin of “harness engineering” and the constraint that kicked off the whole experiment: Ryan deliberately refused to write code himself so the agent had to do the job end to end* Building an internal product over five months with zero lines of human-written code, more than a million lines in the repo, and thousands of PRs across multiple Codex model generations* Why early Codex was painfully slow at first, and how the team learned to decompose tasks, build better primitives, and gradually turn the agent into a much faster engineer than any individual human* The obsession with fast build times: why one minute became the upper bound for the inner loop, and how the team repeatedly retooled the build system to keep agents productive* Why humans became the bottleneck, and how Ryan's team shifted from reviewing code directly to building systems, observability, and context that let agents review, fix, and merge work autonomously* Skills, docs, tests, markdown trackers, and quality scores as ways of encoding engineering taste and non-functional requirements directly into context the agent can use* The shift from predefined scaffolds to reasoning-model-led workflows, where the harness becomes the box and the model chooses how to proceed* Symphony, OpenAI's internal Elixir-based orchestration layer for spinning up, supervising, reworking, and coordinating large numbers of coding agents across tickets and repos* Why code is increasingly disposable, why worktrees and merge conflicts matter less when agents can resolve them, and what it really means to fully delegate the PR lifecycle* “Ghost libraries”, spec-driven software, and the idea that a coding agent can reproduce complex systems from a high-fidelity specification rather than shared source code* The broader future of Frontier: safely deploying observable, governable agents into enterprises, and building the collaboration, security, and control layers needed for real-world agentic workRyan Lopopolo* X: https://x.com/_lopopolo* Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlopopolo/* Website: https://hyperbo.la/contact/Timestamps00:00:00 Introduction: Harness Engineering and OpenAI Frontier00:02:20 Ryan's background and the “no human-written code” experiment00:08:48 Humans as the bottleneck: systems thinking, observability, and agent workflows00:12:24 Skills, scaffolds, and encoding engineering taste into context00:17:17 What humans still do, what agents already own, and why software must be agent-legible00:24:27 Delegating the PR lifecycle: worktrees, merge conflicts, and non-functional requirements00:31:57 Spec-driven software, “ghost libraries,” and the path to Symphony00:35:20 Symphony: orchestrating large numbers of coding agents00:43:42 Skill distillation, self-improving workflows, and team-wide learning00:50:04 CLI design, policy layers, and building token-efficient tools for agents00:59:43 What current models still struggle with: zero-to-one products and gnarly refactors01:02:05 Frontier's vision for enterprise AI deployment01:08:15 Culture, humor, and teaching agents how the company works01:12:29 Harness vs. training, Codex model progress, and “you can just do things”01:15:09 Bellevue, hiring, and OpenAI's expansion beyond San FranciscoTranscriptRyan Lopopolo: I do think that there is an interesting space to explore here with Codex, the harness, as part of building AI products, right? There's a ton of momentum around getting the models to be good at coding. We've seen big leaps in like the task complexity with each incremental model release where if you can figure out how to collapse a product that you're trying to.Build a user journey that you're trying to solve into code. It's pretty natural to use the Codex Harness to solve that problem for you. It's done all the wiring and lets you just communicate in prompts. To let the model cook, you have to step back, right? Like you need to take a systems thinking mindset to things and constantly be asking, where is the Asian making mistakes?Where am I spending my time? How can I not spend that time going forward? And then build confidence in the automation that I'm putting in place. So I have solved this part of the SDLC.swyx: [00:01:00] All right.[00:01:03] Meet Ryan swyx: We're in the studio with Ryan from OpenAI. Welcome.Ryan Lopopolo: Hi,swyx: Thanks for visiting San Francisco and thanks for spending some time with us.Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah, thank you. I'm super excited to be here.swyx: You wrote a blockbuster article on harness engineering. It's probably going to be the defining piece of this emerging discipline, huh?Ryan Lopopolo: Thank you. It is it's been fun to feel like we've defined the discourse in some sense.swyx: Let's contextualize a little bit, this first podcast you've ever done. Yes. And thank you for spending with us. What is, where is this coming from? What team are you in all that jazz?Ryan Lopopolo: Sure, sure.Ryan Lopopolo: I work on Frontier Product Exploration, new product development in the space of OpenAI Frontier, which is our enterprise platform for deploying agents safely at scale, with good governance in any business. And. The role of VMI team has been to figure out novel ways to deploy our models into package and products that we can sell as solutions to enterprises.swyx: And you have a background, I'll just squeeze it in there. Snowflake, brick, [00:02:00] stripe, citadel.Ryan Lopopolo: Yes. Yes. Same. Any kind of customerswyx: entire life. Yes. The exact kind of customer that you want to,Vibhu: so I'll say, I was actually, I didn't expect the background when I looked at your Twitter, I'm seeing the opposite.Stuff like this. So you've got the mindset of like full send AI, coding stuff about slop, like buckling in your laptop on your Waymo's. Yes. And then I look at your profile, I'm like, oh, you're just like, you're in the other end too. Oh, perfect. Makes perfect.Ryan Lopopolo: I it's quite fun to be AI maximalist if you're gonna live that persona.Open eye is the place to do it. And it'sswyx: token is what you say.Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah. Certainly helps that we have no rate limits internally. And I can go, like you said, full send at this stay.swyx: Yeah. Yeah. So the Frontier, and you're a special team within O Frontier.Ryan Lopopolo: We had been given some space to cook, which has been super, super exciting.[00:02:47] Zero Code ExperimentRyan Lopopolo: And this is why I started with kind of a out there constraint to not write any of the code myself. I was figuring if we're trying to make agents that can be deployed into end to enterprises, they should be [00:03:00] able to do all the things that I do. And having worked with these coding models, these coding harnesses over 6, 7, 8 months, I do feel like the models are there enough, the harnesses are there enough where they're isomorphic to me in capability and the ability to do the job.So starting with this constraint of I can't write the code meant that the only way I could do my job was to get the agent to do my job.Vibhu: And like a, just a bit of background before that. This is basically the article. So what you guys did is five months of working on an internal tool, zero lines of code over a mi, a million lines of code in the total code base.You say it was cenex, more like it was cenex faster than you would've. If you had done it by end. SoRyan Lopopolo: yeah, thatVibhu: was the mindset going into this, right?Ryan Lopopolo: That's right.[00:03:46] Model Upgrades LessonsRyan Lopopolo: Started with some of the very first versions of Codex CLI, with the Codex Mini model, which was obviously much less capable than the ones we have today.Which was also a very good constraint, right? Quite a visceral feeling to ask the [00:04:00] model to build you a product feature. And it just not being able to assemble the pieces together.Which kind of defined one of the mindsets we had for going into this, which is whenever the model just cannot, you always pop open at the task, double click into it, and build smaller building blocks that then you can reassemble into the broader objective.And it was quite painful to do this. Honestly, the first month and a half was. 10 times slower than I would be. But because we paid that cost, we ended up getting to something much more productive than any one engineer could be because we built the tools, the assembly station for the agent to do the whole thing.[00:04:43] Model Generations, Build Systems & Background ShellsRyan Lopopolo: But yeah, so onward to G BT 5, 5, 1, 5, 2, 5, 3, 5 4. To go through all these model generations and see their kind of corks and different working styles also meant we had to adapt the code base to change things up when the model was revved. [00:05:00] One interesting thing here is five two, the Codex harness at the time did not have background shells in it, which means we were able to rely on blocking scripts to perform long horizon work.But with five, three and background shells, it became less patient, less willing to block. So we had to retool the entire build system to complete in under a minute and. This is not a thing I would expect to be able to do in a code base where people have opinions. But because the only goal was to make the Asian productive over the course of a week, we went from a bespoke make file build to Basil, to turbo to nx and just left it there because builds were fast at that point.swyx: Interesting. Talk more about Turbo TenX. That's interesting ‘cause that's the other direction that other people have been doing.Ryan Lopopolo: Ultimately I have. Not a lot of experience with actual frontend repo architecture.swyx: You're talking that Jessica built the sky. So I'm like, I know the NX team. I know Turbo from Jared [00:06:00] Palmer.And I'm like, yeah, that's an interesting comparison.[00:06:02] One Minute Build LoopRyan Lopopolo: The hill we were climbing right, was make it fast.swyx: Is there a micro front end involved? Is it how how complex reactRyan Lopopolo: electron base single app sort of thingswyx: And must be under a minute. That's an interesting limitation. I'm actually not super familiar with the background shelf stuff.Probably was talked about in the fight three release.Ryan Lopopolo: BA basically means that codex is able to spawn commands in the background and then go continue to work while it waits for them to finish. So it can spawn an expensive build and then continue reviewing the code, for example.swyx: Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: And this helps it be more time efficient for the user invoking the harness.swyx: And I guess and just to really nail this, like what does one minute matter? Like why not five, okay, good. We want no. WeRyan Lopopolo: want the inner loop to be as fast as possible. Okay. One minute was just a nice round number and we were able to hit it.swyx: And if it doesn't complete, it kills it or some something,Ryan Lopopolo: No.We just take that as a signal that we need to stop what we're doing, double click, decompose a build graph a bit to get us to high back under so that we [00:07:00] can able the agent continue to operate.swyx: It's almost like you're, it's like a ratchet. It's like you're forcing build time discipline, because if you don't, it'll just grow and grow.That's right. And you mentioned that my current, like the software I work on currently is at 12 minutes. It sucks.Ryan Lopopolo: This has been my experience with platform teams in the past, where you have an envelope of acceptable build times and you let it go up to breach and then you spend two, three weeks to bring it back down to the lower end of the average low bed stop.But because tokens are so cheap Yeah. And we're so insanely parallel with the model, we can just constantly be gardening this thing to make sure that we maintain these in variants, which means. There's way less dispersion in the code and the SDLC, which means we can simplify in a way and rely on a lot more in variance as we write the software.[00:07:45] Observability, Traces & Local Dev StackVibhu: Lovely.[00:07:46] Humans Are BottleneckVibhu: You mentioned in your article, like humans became the bottleneck, right? You kicked off as a team of three people. You're putting out a million line of code, like 1500 prs, basically. What's the mindset there? So as much as code is disposable, you're doing a lot of review. A lot [00:08:00] of the article talks about how you wanna rephrase everything is prompting everything, is what the agent can't see.It's kind of garbage, right? You shouldn't have it in there. So what's like the high level of how you went about building it, and then how you address okay, humans are just PR review. Like how is human in the loop for this?Ryan Lopopolo: We've moved beyond even the humans reviewing the code as well.[00:08:19] Human Review, PR Automation & Agent Code ReviewRyan Lopopolo: Most of the human review is post merge at this point.But post, post merge, that's not even reviewed. That's justswyx: Oh, let's just make ourselves happy by YouRyan Lopopolo: haven't used fundamentally. The model is trivially paralyzable, right? As many GPUs and tokens as I am willing to spend, I can have capacity to work with my hood base.The only fundamentally scarce thing is the synchronous human attention of my team. There's only so many hours in the day we have to eat lunch. I would like to sleep, although it's quite difficult to, stop poking the machine because it makes me want to feed it. You have to step back, right?Like you need to take a systems thinking mindset to things and [00:09:00] constantly be asking where is the agent making mistakes? Where am I spending my time? How can I not spend that time going forward? And then build confidence in the automation that I'm putting in place. So I have solved this part of the SDLC, and usually what that has looked like is like we started needing to pay very close attention to the code because the agent did not have the right building blocks to produce.Modular software that decomposed appropriately that was reliable and observable and actually accrued a working front end in these things, right?[00:09:35] Observability First SetupRyan Lopopolo: So in order to not spend all of our time sitting in front of a terminal at most, doing one or two things at a time, invested in giving the model that observability, which is that that graph in the post here.swyx: Yeah. Let's walk through this traces and which existed firstRyan Lopopolo: we started with just the app and the whole rest of it. From vector through to all these login metrics, APIs was, I dunno, half an [00:10:00] afternoon of my time. We have intentionally chosen very high level fast developer tools. There's a ton of great stuff out there now.We use me a bunch, which makes it trivial to pull down all these go written Victoria Stack binaries in our local development. Tiny little bit of python glue to spin all these up. And off you go. One neat thing here is we have tried to invert things as much as possible, which is instead of setting up an environment to spawn the coding agent into, instead we spawn the coding agent, like that's the entry point.It's just Codex. And then we give Codex via skills and scripts the ability to boot the stack if it chooses to, and then tell it how to set some end variables. So the app and local Devrel points at this stack that it has chosen to spin up. And this I think is like the fundamental difference between reasoning models and the four ones and four ohs of the past, where these models could not think so you had to put them in [00:11:00] boxes with a predefined set of state transitions.Whereas here we have the model, the harness be the whole box. And give it a bunch of options for how to proceed with enough context for it to make intelligent choices. SoVibhu: sales, so like a lot of that is around scaffolding, right? Yes. Previous agents, you would define a scaffold. It would operate in that.Lube, try again. That's pivoted off from when we've had reasoning models. They're seeming to perform better when you don't have a scaffold, right? That's right.[00:11:28] Docs Skills GuardrailsVibhu: And you go into like niches here too, like your SPEC MD and like having a very short agent MG Agent md.swyx: Yes. Yes.Vibhu: Yeah. So you even lay out what it is here, but I likeswyx: the table contents.Vibhu: Yeah.swyx: Like stuff like this, it really helps guide people because everyone's trying to do this.Ryan Lopopolo: This structure also makes it super cheap to put new content into the repository to steer both the humans and the agents.swyx: You, you reinvented skills, right?Vibhu: One big agents andswyx: skills from first princip holdsRyan Lopopolo: all skills did not exist when we started doing this.Vibhu: You have a short [00:12:00] one 100 line overall table of contents and then you have little skills, right? Core beliefs, MD tech tracker. Yeah. Yeah. The scale is overRyan Lopopolo: The tech jet tracker and the quality score are pretty interesting because this is basically a tiny little scaffold, like a markdown table, which is a hook for Codex to review all the business logic that we have defined in the app, assess how it matches all these documented guardrails and propose follow up work for itself.Before beads and all these ticketing systems, we were just tracking follow up work as notes in a markdown file, which, we could spa an agent on Aron to burn down. There's this really neat thing that like the models fundamentally crave text. So a lot of what we have done here is figure out ways to inject textswyx: intoRyan Lopopolo: the system right when we get a page, because we're missing a timeout, for example.I can just add Codex in Slack on that page and say, I'm gonna fix this by adding a timeout. Please update our reliability documentation. To require that all network calls have [00:13:00] timeouts. So I have not only made a point in time fix, but also like durably encoded this process knowledge around what good looks like.swyx: Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: And we give that to the root coding agent as it goes and does the thing. But you can also use that to distill tests out of, or a code review agent, which is pointed at the same things to narrow the acceptable universe of the code that's produced.swyx: I think one of the concerns I have with that kind of stuff is you think you're making the right call by making, it's persisted for all time across everything.Yes. But then you didn't think about the exceptions that you need to make, right? And that you have to roll it back.Vibhu: Part of it isswyx: also sometimes it can follow your s instructions too.Vibhu: It's somewhat a skill, right? So it determines when it uses the tools, right? Like it's not like it'll run outta every call.It'll determine when it wants to check quality score, right?Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah. And we do in the prompts we give these agents, allow them to push back,[00:13:51] Agent Code Review RulesRyan Lopopolo: When we first started adding code review agents to the pr, it would be Codex, CLI. Locally writes the change, pushes up a PR on [00:14:00] those PR synchronizations of review agent fires.It posts a comment. We instruct Codex that it has to at least acknowledge and respond to that feedback. And initially the Codex driving the code author was willing to be bullied by the PR reviewer, which meant you could end up in a situation where things were not converging. So yeah, we had to,swyx: he's just a thrash.Ryan Lopopolo: We had to add more optionality to the prompts on both of these things, right? The reviewer agents were instructed to bias toward merging the thing to not surface anything greater than a P two in priority. We didn't really define P two, but we gave it, youswyx: did define P two.Ryan Lopopolo: We gave it a framework within which to score its outputswyx: and then greater than P zero is worse, right?Yes. P two is very good.Ryan Lopopolo: P zero is you will mute the code place ifswyx: you merch thisRyan Lopopolo: thing, right?swyx: Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: But also on the code authoring agent side, we also gave it the flexibility to either defer or push back against review feedback, right? This happens all the time, right? Like I happen to notice something and leave a code review, [00:15:00] which.Could blow up the scope by a factor of two. I usually don't mean for that to be addressed Exactly. In the moment. It's more of an FYI file it to the backlog, pick it up in the next fix it week sort of thing. And without the context that this is permissible, the coding agents are gonna bias toward what they do, which is following instructions.swyx: Yeah.[00:15:19] Autonomous Merging Flowswyx: I do wanted to check in on a couple things, right? Sure. All the coding review agent, it can merge autonomously. I think that's something that a lot of people aren't comfortable with. And you have a list here of how much agents do they do Product code and tests, CI configuration and release tooling, internal Devrel tools, documentation eval, harness review, comments, scripts that manage the repository itself, production dashboard definition files, like everything.Yes. And so they're just all churning at the same time, is there like a record that, that any human on the team pulls to stop everythingRyan Lopopolo: Because we are building a native application here. We're not doing continuous deploy. So there's still a human in the loop for cutting the release branch.I see. We require a blessed [00:16:00] human approved smoke test of the app before we promote it to distribution, these sort of things.swyx: So you're working on the app, you're not building like infrastructure where you have like nines of reliability, that kinda stuff?Ryan Lopopolo: That's correct. That's correct. Okay. And also like full recognition here that all of this activity took in a completely greenfield repository.There's. Should be no script that this applies generally toswyx: this is a production thing, you're gonna shipRyan Lopopolo: toswyx: customers. Of course. Yeah, of course. So this is realVibhu: And like one of the things there is, you mentioned you started this as a repo from scratch. The onboarding first month or so was pretty, it was like working backwards, right?Yeah. And then you had to work with the system and now you're at that point where you know, you're very autonomous. I'm curious like, okay, so what, how human in the loop is it? So what are the bottlenecks that you wish you could still automate? And part of that is also like, where do you see the model trajectory improving and offloading more human in the loop?We just got 5.4. It's a really good,Ryan Lopopolo: fantastic model, by the way.Vibhu: Yeah. Yeah. It's the first one that's merged. Top tier coding. So it's codex level coding and reasoning. So general reasoning both in one model. SoRyan Lopopolo: andVibhu: computer [00:17:00] use vision.Ryan Lopopolo: Now we now with five four, I can just have Codex write the blog post, whereas for this one I had to balance between chat.swyx: Oh, I need to, I might be out of a job. Oh my God.Ryan Lopopolo: Oh,swyx: I know. You just gave me an idea for a completely AI newsletter that five four could do. Yeah, I get it Now.Ryan Lopopolo: This sort of thing is just one example of closing the loop, right? Like the dashboard thing you mentioned. We have Codex authoring the Js ON, for the Grafana dashboards and publishing them and also responding to the pages, which means when it gets the page, it knows exactly which dashboards are defined and what alerts.What alert was triggered by which exact log in the code base. ‘cause all of this stuff is collated together.swyx: It has to own everything.Yes. Yeah. Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: And it means that if we have an outage that did not result in a page. It has the existing set of dashboards available to it. It has the existing set of metrics and logs and can figure out where the gaps in the dashboard are or [00:18:00] in the underlying metrics and fix them in one go.In the same way, you would have a full stack engineer be able to drive a feature from the backend all the way to the front end.Vibhu: So it, it seems like a lot of the work you guys had to do was you as a small team are fully working for a way that the model wants the software to be written. It's like less human legible for better. Code legibility, agent legibility. How do you think that affects broader teams? So one at OpenAI, do liaison, like this is how software should be written. Like I can imagine, say you join a new team with this methodology, this mindset there's ways that, teams do code review, teams write code, like teams are structured and a lot of it is for human legibility.So should we all swap? Like how does this play back one broader into OpenAI and then like broader into the software engineering, right? Is it like teams that pick this up will it's pretty drastic, right? You have to make a pretty big switch. Should they just full send Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: The mindset is very much that I'm removed from the process, right? I can't really have deep code level opinions about [00:19:00] things. It's as if I'm. Group tech leading a 500 person organization.Vibhu: Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: Like it's not appropriate for me to be in the weeds on every pr. This is why that post merge code review thing is like a good analog here, right?Like I have some representative sample of the code as it is written, and I have to use that to infer what the teams are struggling with, where they could use help, where they're already moving quickly and I can pivot my focus elsewhere.Vibhu: Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: So I don't really have too many opinions around the code as it is written.I do, however, have a command based class, which is used to have repeatable chunks of business logic that comes with tracing and metrics and observability for free. And the thing to focus on is not how that business logic is structured, but that it uses this primitive ‘cause I know that's gonna give leverage by default.Vibhu: Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah, back to that sort of systems stinking,Vibhu: and you have part of that in your blog post, enforcing architecture and ta taste how you set boundaries for what's used. There's also a section on redefining [00:20:00] engineering and stuff, but yeah, it's just, it's interesting to hear,Ryan Lopopolo: and as the models have gotten better, they have gotten better at proposing these abstractions to unblock themselves, which again, lets me move higher and higher up the stack to look deeper into the future on what ultimately blocked the team from shipping.swyx: Yeah. You mentioned so you, this is primarily a, it is like a 1 million line of code base electron app. But it manages its own services as well, so it's like a backend for front end type thing.Ryan Lopopolo: We do have a backend in there, but that's hosted in the cloud.Yeah. This sort of structure is actually within the separate main and render processesWithin theswyx: electric.That's just how electronic works.Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah, of course. So have also treated like. MVC style decomposition with the same level of rigor, which has been very fun.swyx: I have a fun pun. This is a tangent, NVC is model view controller. Any sort of full stack web Devrel knows that.But my AI native version of this is Model view Claw, the clause the harness.Ryan Lopopolo: That's right. That's right. I do think that there is an interesting space to [00:21:00] explore here with Codex, the harness as part of building AI products, right? There's a ton of momentum around getting the models to be good at coding.We've seen big leaps in like the task complexity with each incremental model release where if you can figure out how to collapse a product that you're trying to build, a user journey that you're trying to solve into code, it's pretty natural to use the Codex Harness to solve that problem for you. It's done all the wiring and lets you just communicate and prompts to let the model cook.Yeah. It's been very fun. And there's also a very engineering legible way of increasing capabil. It's fantastic, right? Yeah. Just give you, just give the model scripts, the same scripts you would already build for yourself.swyx: Yeah.Yeah. So for listeners, this is Ryan saying that software engineering or coding against will eat knowledge work like the non-coding parts that you would normally think.Oh, you have to build a separate agent for it. No, start a coding agent and go out from there. Which open Claw has like it's pie Underhood.Ryan Lopopolo: [00:22:00] Yes.Vibhu: Basically define your task in code. Everything is a codingswyx: agent by the way. Since I brought it up, it's probably the only place we bring it up. Is any open claw usage from you?Any?Ryan Lopopolo: No. No. Not for me. I don't have any spare Mac Minis rattling around my house.swyx: You can afford it? No. I just, I'm curious if it's changed anything in opening eye yet, but it's probably early days. And then the other, the other thing I, I wanna pull on here is like you mentioned ticketing systems and you mentioned prs and I'm wondering if both those things have to go away or be reinvented for this kind of coding.So the git itself and is like very hostile to multi-agent.Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah. We make very heavy use of work trees.swyx: But like even then, like I just did a, dropped a podcast yesterday with Cursors saying, and they said they're getting rid of work trees ‘cause it still has too many merge conflicts.It's still un too un unintuitive. But go ahead.Ryan Lopopolo: The models are really great at resolving merge conflicts. Yeah. And to get to a state where I'm not synchronously in the loop in my terminal, I almost don't care that there are mergeswyx: with disposable.[00:23:00] Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: We invoke a dollar land skill and that coaches codex to push the PR Wait for human and agent reviewers Wait for CI to be green.Fix the flakes if there are any merged upstream. If the PR comes into conflict, wait for everything to pass. Put it in the merge queue. Deal with flakes until it's in Maine. End. This is what it means to delegate fully, right? This is in a, very large model re probably a significant tax on humans to get PRS merged, but the agent is more than capable of doing this and I really don't have to think about it other than keep my laptop open.swyx: Yeah. I used to be much more of a control freak, but now I'm like, yeah, actually you could do a better job of this than me. Yeah. With the right context. Yes.[00:23:47] Encoding Requirementsswyx: Anything else in harness in general? Just this piece, I just wanna make sure we,Ryan Lopopolo: I think one thing that I maybe didn't make super clear in the article that I heard on Twitter as an interesting, that's respond [00:24:00]swyx: to them.What's the chatter and then what's your response?Ryan Lopopolo: Ultimately, all the things that we have encoded in docs and tests and review agents and all these things are ways to put all the non-functional requirements of building high scale, high quality, reliable software into a space that prompt injects the agent.We either write it down as docs, we add links where the error messages tell how to do the right thing. So the whole meta of the thing is to basically tease out of the heads of all the engineers on my team, what they think good looks like, what they would do by default, or what they would coach a new hire on the team to do to get things to merch.And that's why we pay attention to all the mistakes, mistakes that the agent makes, right? This is code being written that is misaligned with some as yet not written down, non-functional requirement.swyx: Sorry, what? Did the online people misunderstand orRyan Lopopolo: No,swyx: whatyouRyan Lopopolo: responded to? Somebody just literally said that.I was like, oh yeah,swyx: okay,Ryan Lopopolo: This is the [00:25:00] thing. This is what I've been doing. Oh, youswyx: agree? Yeah. I see. Interesting.Ryan Lopopolo: One other neat thing, which I did totally did not expect is folks were just. Taking the link to the article and giving it to pi or Codex and say, make my repo this,Vibhu: you achi a whole recursion.Ryan Lopopolo: And it was wildly effective. Really? It was wildly effective. NoVibhu: way. It just actually is something I tried with five, four yesterday. I didn't have time. Last time I was like out speaking of something, and this is one of my things, I was like, okay, I have this article. Can we just scaffold out what it would be like to run this?And I, I did it first as that and then I was like, okay, let me take another little side repo and say okay, if I was to fully automate this like this because I haven't written a line of code, it'sRyan Lopopolo: like over full, setVibhu: it right. The side thing I'm doing of voice. TTS I'm just like, slobbing out, whatever.It's nothing production. I'm like, how would I make this like this? And it's actually like a really good way. It's like a good way to learn what could be changed, what could be like, it's just a good analyzing, right? You give it all the codes, you give it all the context, you give it the article and it walks you through it very well.That's right. That's right.[00:25:57] Inlining Dependencies[00:25:57] Dependencies Going Away & Brett Taylor's Responseswyx: I guess one more thing before we go to Symphony is I wanted to cover [00:26:00] Brett Taylor's response. We had him on the show. He is your chairman, which is wild. Yeah. That he's reading your articles as well and like getting engaged in it. He says software dependencies are going away.Basically they can just be like vendored. Yes. Response.Ryan Lopopolo: Aswyx: hundred percent. A hundred percent agree. You still pro qr, you still pay Datadog. You still pay Temporal. Thank you.Ryan Lopopolo: Yep. The level of complexity of the dependencies that we can internalize is, I would say low, medium right now. Just based on model capability.What does the,swyx: what is medium?Ryan Lopopolo: I would say like a. A couple thousand line dependency is a thing that we could in-house No problem. Call in an afternoon of time. One neat thing about it is like probably most of that code you don't even need. Like by in-house and abstraction, you can strip away all the generic parts of it and only focus on what you need to enable the specific thing.Yes. You're building,swyx: I've been calling this the end of b******t plugins.Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah.swyx: Because there's so much when I published an open source thing, I want to accept everything, be liberal. I want to accept, this is post's law, but that means there's so much bloat. Yes. There's so much overhead.Ryan Lopopolo: One other neat thing about [00:27:00] this too is when we deploy Codex Security on the repo, it is able to deeply review and change. The internalized dependencies in a much lower friction way than it would be to like, push patches upstream, wait for them to be released, pull them down, make sure that's compatible with all the transitive I have in my repo and things like that.So it's also much lower friction to internalize some of these things if code is free. ‘cause the tokens are cheap sort of thing.swyx: Yeah. Yeah. I think like the only argument I have against this is basically scale testing, which obviously the larger pieces of software like Linux, MySQL, he calls up even the Datadog and Temporals and then maybe security testing where Yes.Classically, I think, is it linis tos, it said security open source is the best disinfectant.Ryan Lopopolo: Many eyes.swyx: Many eyes. And if inline your dependencies and code them up, you're gonna have to relearn mistakes from other people that Yep.Ryan Lopopolo: Yep. And to internalize that dependency, you're back to zero and you have to start.Reassembling all those bits and pieces to Yeah. Have [00:28:00] high confidence in the code as it is written. Yeah.Vibhu: Even part of the first intro of this, you basically mentioned like everything was written by codex, including internal tooling, right? So internal tooling, like when you're visualizing what's going on it's writing it for itself.swyx: Yeah. I'm built internal tools way I now, and like I just show them off and they're like, how long did you spend? And I didn't spend any time. I just prompted it,Ryan Lopopolo: very funny story here.swyx: Yeah, go ahead.Ryan Lopopolo: We had deployed our app to the first dozen users internally had some performance issues, so we asked them to export a trace for us get a tar ball, gave it to our on-call engineer, and he did a fantastic job of working with Codex to build this beautiful local Devrel tool, next JS app, the drag and drop the tar ball in, and it visualizes the entire trace.It's fantastic. Took an afternoon, but none of this was necessary. Because you could just spin up codex and give it the tar ball and ask the same thing and get the response immediately. So in a way, optimizing for human [00:29:00] legibility of that debugging process was wrong. It kept him in the loop unnecessarily when instead he could have just like Codex cooked for five minutes and gotten this same.swyx: Yeah, you verify your instincts here of this is how we used to do it. Or this is how I would have used to solve it.Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah. In this local observability stack. Like sure, you can de deploy Yeager to visualize the traces, but I wouldn't expect to be looking at the traces in the first place because I'm not gonna write the code to fix them.swyx: Yeah. So basically there needs to be like this kind of house stack and owning the whole loop. I think that is very well established. And it sounds like you might be like sharing more about that in the future, right?Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah. I think we're excited to do[00:29:36] Ghost Libraries Specs[00:29:36] Ghost Libraries & Distributing Software as SpecsRyan Lopopolo: We're gonna talk about Symphony in a little bit, but like the way we distribute it as a spec, which I think folks are calling Ghost Libraries on Twitter.This is like a such a cool name. It does mean it becomes much cheaper to share software with the world, right? You define a spec, how you could build your own specifying as much as is required for a coding agent to reassemble it [00:30:00] locally. The flow here is very cool. Like we have taken. All the scaffolding that has existed in our proprietary repo spun up a new one.Ask Codex with our repo as a reference. Write the spec. We tell it. Spin up a team ox spawn a disconnected codex to implement the spec. Wait for it to be done. Spawn another codex and another team ox to review the spec com or review the implementation compared to upstream and update the spec so it diverges less.And then you just loop over and over Ralph style until you get a spec that is with high fidelity able to reproduce the system as it is. It's fantastic.Vibhu: And you're basically, you're not really adding any of your human bias in there, right? That's correct. A lot of times people write a spec and be like, okay, I think it should be done this way, and you'll riff on something.And it's no, the agent could have just handled it like you're still scaffolding in a sense, right? I want it done this way. It can determine its spec better.swyx: That's right. That's right. Part of me it, I'm, I've been working a lot on evals recently, and part of me is wondering if [00:31:00] an agent can produce a spec that it cannot solve.Is it always capable of things that he can imagine or can you imagine things that it is impossible to do?Ryan Lopopolo: I think with Symphony, we, there's like this there's this axis where you have things that are easier, hard, or established or new, right? And I think things that are hard and new is still something that the models need humans.Yeah. Drive.swyx: Yeah. Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: But I think those other quadrants are largely salt. Given the right scaffold and the right thing that's gonna drive the agent to completion,swyx: it's crazy that it solved,Ryan Lopopolo: but it means that the humans, the ones with limited time and attention get to work on the hardest stuff, like the problems where it's pure white space out in front. Or like the deepest refactorings where you don't know what the proper shape of the interfaces are. And this is where I wanna spend my time. ‘cause it lets me set up for the next level of scale.swyx: Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Let's introduce Symphony.I think we've been mentioning it every now and then. Elixir. Interesting option.Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah.swyx: Yeah. I'm not,Ryan Lopopolo: again, like the [00:32:00] elixir manifestation here is just a derivative. Is it a modelswyx: chosen? Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah. Yeah. And it chose that because the process supervision and the gen servers are super amenable to the type of process orchestration that we're doing here.You are essentially spinning up little Damons for every task that is in execution and driving it to completion, which. Means the mall gets a ton of stuff for free by using Elixir and the Beam.swyx: I had to go do a crash course in Beam and Elixir, and I think most people are not operating at that scale of concurrency where you need that.But it is a good mental model for Resum ability and all those things. And these are things I care about. But tell me the story, the origin story of Symphony. What do you use it for? Is this, how did it form maybe any abandoned paths that you didn't take?[00:32:46] Terminal Free Orchestration[00:32:46] Symphony: Removing Humans from the LoopRyan Lopopolo: At the end of December we were at about three and a half PRS per engineer per day.This was before five two came out in the beginning of January. Everyone gets back from holiday with five two and no other work [00:33:00] on the repository. We were up in the five to 10 PRS per day per engineer. And I don't know about y'all, but like it's very taxing to constantly be switching like that. Like I was pretty tapped out at the end of the day, again, where are the humans spending their time? They're spending their time context switching between all these active tmox pains to drive the agent forward.swyx: Yeah. No way. Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: So let's again, build something to remove ourselves from the loop. And this is what frantic sprinted adapt here to find a way to remove the need for the human to sit in front of their terminal.So a lot of experimentation with Devrel boxes and, automatically spinning up agents, like it seems like a fantastic end state here, where my life is beach. I open live twice a day and say yes no to these things. Yeah. And this is again, a super, super interesting framing for how the work is done.Because I become more latency and sensitive. I have [00:34:00] way less attachment to the code as it is written. Like I've had close to zero investment in the actual authorship experience. So if it's garbage. I can just throw it away and not care too much about it. In Symphony, there's this like rework state where once the PR is proposed and it's escalated to the human for review, it should be a cheap review.It is either mergeable or it is not. And if it's not, you move it to rework. The elixir service will completely trash the entire work tree NPR and start it again from scratch. Okay. And this is that opportunity again to say, why was it trash right? What did the agent do that wasswyx: bad. Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: Fix that before moving the ticket toswyx: endRyan Lopopolo: of progress again.swyx: Yeah. Why is this not in codex app? I guess this, you guys are ahead of Codex app,Ryan Lopopolo: yeah, so the way the team has been working is basically to be as AI pilled as possible and spread ahead. And a lot of the things we have worked on have fallen out [00:35:00] into a lot of the products that we have.Like we were in deep consultation with the Codex team to. Have the Codex app be a thing that exists, right? To have skills be a thing that Codex is able to use. So we didn't have to roll our own to put automations into the product. So all of our automatic refactoring agents didn't have to be these hand rolled control loops.It has been really fantastic to be, in a way, un anchored to the product development of Frontier and Codex and just very quickly try to figure out what works and then later find the scalable thing that can be deployed widely. It's been a very fun way to operate. It's certainly chaotic. I have lost track very often of what the actual state of the code looks like.‘cause I'm not in the loop. There was. One point where we had wired playwright directly up to the Electron app. With MCPM CCPs, I'm pretty bearish on because the harness forcibly injects all those tokens in the [00:36:00] context, and I don't really get a say over it. They mess with auto compaction. The agent can forget how to use the tool.There's probably only what three calls in playwright that I actually ever want to use. So I pay the cost for a ton of things. Somebody vibed a local Damon that boots playwright and exposes a tiny little shim CLI to drive it. And I had zero idea that this had occurred because to me, I run Codex and it's able to, it's oh, it's better.Yeah. Like no knowledge of this at all. Uhhuh.[00:36:30] Multi Human ChaosRyan Lopopolo: So we have had like in human space to spend a lot of time doing synchronous knowledge sharing. We have a daily standup that's 45 minutes long because we almost have to. Fan out the understanding of the current state.swyx: Yeah, I was gonna say this is good for a single human multi-agent, but multi human, multi-agent is a whole like po like explosion of stuff.Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah. And that this is fundamentally why we have such a rigid, like 10,000 [00:37:00] engineer level architecture in the app because we have to find ways to carve up the space so people are not trampling on each other.swyx: Sorry, I don't get the 10,000 thing. Did I miss that?Ryan Lopopolo: The structure of the repository is like 500 NPM packages.It's like architecture to the excess for what you would consider, I think normal for a seven person team. But if every person is actually like 10 to 50. Then the like numbers on being super, super deep into decomposition and sharding and like proper interface boundaries make a lot more sense.swyx: Yeah. To me, that's why I talked about Microfund ends and I, an anex is from that world, but Cool. It is just coming back to, to, to this I dunno if you have other, thoughts on. Orchestrating so much work coin going through this. Is this enough? Is this like any aha moments?Vibhu: It'll be interesting to see like where, okay, so right now you pick linear as your issue tracker, right?swyx: Or it's like a is it actually linear? This is actually linear.[00:37:55] Linear vs Slack WorkflowVibhu: Oh, that's linear. It's linear.swyx: Oh I never looked atVibhu: video. The demo video I had to download to [00:38:00] run.swyx: So I, because I'm a Slack maxie, but Yeah, linear. Linear is also really good. Yes,Ryan Lopopolo: we do make a good use of Slack. We we fire off codex to do all these lotion, elasticity, fix ups, the things that like sync that knowledge into the repository.It's super cheap. Yeah.swyx: Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: Just do it in Codex.swyx: My biggest plug is OpenAI needs to build Slack. You need to own Slack. Build yours. Turn this into Slack.Ryan Lopopolo: I did read about it. Youswyx: did?Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah.[00:38:25] Collaboration Tools for AgentsRyan Lopopolo: I would say that if we think that we want these agents to do economically valuable work, which is like this is the mission, right?We want AI to be deployed widely, to do economically valuable work, then we need to find ways for them to naturally collaborate with humans, which means collaboration tooling, I think, is an interesting space to explore.swyx: Yeah, totally. Yeah. GitHub, slack, linear.Vibhu: Yeah, that was my thing. Okay, where do we see right now Codex has started Codex Model, then CLI, now there's an app, app can let me shoot off multiple Codex is in parallel, but there's no great team collaboration for Codex.And it [00:39:00] seems like your team had some say into what comes out, right? So you talked to ‘em, codex kind of was a thing. From there, if you guys are on the bound, what stuff that like, you might not focus on, but what do you expect other people to be building, right? So people that are like five x 50 Xing.Should you build stuff that's like very niche for your workflow, for your team? Should it be more general so other people can adopt? Is there a niche there? ‘Cause part of it is just okay, is everything just internal tooling? Do we have everything our own way? Like the way our team operates has our own ways that we like to communicate or is there a broader way to do it?Is it something like a issue tracker? Just thoughts if you wanna riff on that.[00:39:35] Standardizing Skills and CodeRyan Lopopolo: I think TBD we have not figured this out in a general way. I do think that there is leverage to be had in making the code and the processes as much the same as possible. If you think that code is context, code is prompts, it's better from the agent behavior perspective to be able to look in a package in directory X, Y, Z, and it not to have to page so [00:40:00] deeply into directory if you C, because they have the same structure, use the same language, they have the same patterns internally.And that same like leverage comes from aligning on a single set of skills that you're pouring every engineer's taste into to make sure that the agent is effective. So like in our code base, we have, I think, six skills. That's it. And if some part of the software development loop is not being covered, our first attempt is to encode it in one of the existing setup skills, which means that we can change the agent behavior.Yeah. More cheaply than changing the human driver behavior.swyx: Yeah.[00:40:39] Self Improvement via Logsswyx: Have you ever, have you experimented with agents changing their own behavior?Ryan Lopopolo: We do.swyx: Yeah. Or parent agent changing a subagents, behavior or something like that.Ryan Lopopolo: We have some bits for skill distillation. So for example, there's one neat thing you can do with Codex, which is just point it at its own session logs to ask it to tell you how you can use [00:41:00] the tool pedal better.swyx: It's like introspectionRyan Lopopolo: or ask it to do things. I useVibhu: this session better. What skills should Iswyx: high? I like the modification of, you can do, just do things to you can just ask agent to do things.Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah. You can just codex things. This is like a, this is like a silly emoji that we have, right? You can just codex things, you can just prompt things.It's really glorious future we live in, but okay, you can do that one-on-one. But we're actually slurping these up for the entire team into blob storage and. Running agent loops over them every day to figure out where as a team can we do better and how do we reflect that back into the repositories?Yes, though everybody benefits from everybody else's behavior for free. Same for like PR comments, right? These are all feedback. That means the code as written, deviated from what was good, a PR comment, a failed build. These are all signals that mean at some point the agent was missing context. We gotta figure out how toswyx: Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: Slurp it up and put it back in the reboot.swyx: By the way, I do this exactly right. I used to, when I use cloud code for [00:42:00] knowledge work, cloud cowork is like a nice product, right? Yes. In I think you would agree. I always have it tell me what do I do better next time? And that's the meta programming reflection thing.So I almost think like you have six reflection extraction levels in symphony and almost like the zero of layer. So the six levels are PO policy, configuration, coordination, execution, integration, observability. We've talked about a couple of these, but the zero layer is like the, okay, are we working well?Can we improve how we work? Yes. Can I modify my own workflow without MD or something? I don't know.Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course you can. Like this thing is also able to cut its own tickets ‘cause we give it full access.Yeah. Make it a ticket to have it cut. Tickets you can.Put in the ticket that you expect it to file as on follow up work,swyx: like Yeah. Self-modifying. Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah.[00:42:44] Tool Access and CLI FirstRyan Lopopolo: Put, don't put the agent in a box. Give the agent full accessibility over it. Domain.swyx: I had a mental reaction when you said don't put the agent in a box. So I think you should put it in a box. Like it's just that you're giving the box everything it needs.Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah. Context and tools.swyx: But we're like, as developers, we're used to calling [00:43:00] out to different systems, but here you use the open source things like the Prometheus, whatever, and you run it locally so that you can have the full loop. I assume.Ryan Lopopolo: Yep.Vibhu: I think likeRyan Lopopolo: another, you wanna minimize cloud, cloud dependencies.Vibhu: You also want to make sure that you think about what the agent has access to. What does it see? Does it go back into the loop, like from the most basic sense of you let it see its own like calls, traces it can determine where it went wrong. But are you feeding that back in? So you know, just the most basic level of you wanna see exactly what's input output, like does the agent have access to.What is being outputted, right? It can self-improve a lot of these things. It's allRyan Lopopolo: text, right? My job is to figure out ways to funnel text from one agent to the other.swyx: It's so strange like way back at the start of this whole AI wave Andre was like, English is the hottest day programming language.It's here, it's just Yeah. The feature as well.Vibhu: A lot of, okay. Like a lot of software, a lot of stuff. There's a gui, it's made for the human. We're seeing the evolution of CLI for everything, right? All tools have CLIs. Your agents can use [00:44:00] them well, do we get good vision? Do we get good little sandboxes?Like right now? It's a really effective way, right? Models love to use tools. They love the best. They love to read through text. So slap a CLI let it go loose. That works for everything.Ryan Lopopolo: It does. Yeah. Yeah.[00:44:14] UI Perception and RasterizingRyan Lopopolo: We've also been adapting nont, textual things to that shape in order to improve model behavior in some ways, right?We want the agent to be able to see the UI agents do not perceive visually in the same way that we do. They don't see a red box, they see red box button, right? They see these things in latent space. So if we want, Hey, yeah, I do. We haveswyx: a ding if that goes off every time. Alien spaceRyan Lopopolo: ding.Anyway if we wanna actually make it see the layout, it's almost easier to rasterize that image to ask EOR and feed it in to the agent. Ha. And there's no reason you can't do both, right? To like further refine how the model perceives the object it's [00:45:00] manipulating.swyx: Cool. Could we, you wanna talk about a couple more of these layers that might bear more introspection or that you have personal passion for?[00:45:07] Coordination Layer with ElixirRyan Lopopolo: I will say that the coordination layer here was a really tricky piece to get right.swyx: Let's do it. Yep. I'm all about that. And this is Temporal core.Ryan Lopopolo: This is where when we turn the spec into Elixir, where like the model takes a shortcut, right? Like it's oh, I have all these primitives that I can make use of in this lovely runtime that has native process supervision.Which is I think, a neat way to have taken the spec and made it more choices achievable by making choices that naturally mapswyx: Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: To the domain, right? In the same way that like you would prefer to have a TypeScript model repo if you are doing full stack web development, right? Because the ability to share types across the front end and backend reduces a lot of complexity.And becauseswyx: that's what graph kill used to be.Ryan Lopopolo: That's right. Andswyx: I don't know if it's still alive, butRyan Lopopolo: [00:46:00] no humans in the loop here. So like my own personal ability to write or not write elixir. Doesn't really have to bias us away from using the right tool for the job. It is just wild.swyx: Love it. I love it.Yeah. I wonder if any languages struggle more than others because of this? I feel like everyone has their own abstractions. That would make sense. But maybe it might be slower, it might be more faulty where like you'd have to just kick the server every now and then. I, I don't know. I think observability layer is really well understood.Integration layer, CP is dead. I think all these just like a really interesting hierarchy to travel up and down. It's common language for people working on the system to understandRyan Lopopolo: The policy stuff is really cool, right? Yeah. You don't really have to build a bunch of code to make sure the system wait for the, to passswyx: it's institutional knowledge.Ryan Lopopolo: Yeah. You just give it the G-H-C-L-I with some text that say CI has to pass. It makes the maintenance of these systems a lot easier.[00:46:57] Agent Friendly CLI Outputswyx: Do you think that CLI maintainers need to be [00:47:00] do anything special for agents or just as is? It's good because like I don't think when people made the G GitHub, CLI, they anticipated this happening.Ryan Lopopolo: That's correct. The GH CLI is fantastic. It's great super industry.swyx: Everyone go try GH repo create GH pull and then pull request number, right? GH HPR, like 1 53, whatever. And then it like pullsRyan Lopopolo: basically my only interaction with the GitHub web UI at this point is GH PR view dash web.Exactly. Glanceswyx: at the diffRyan Lopopolo: and be like Sure thing. Send it. Yeah. But the CLI are nice ‘cause they're super token efficient and they can be made more token efficient really easily. Like I'm sure you all have seen like I go to build Kite or Jenkins and I could just get this massive wall of build output.And in order to unblock the humans, your developer productivity team is almost certainly gonna write some code that parses the actual exception out of the build logs and sticks it in a sticky note at the top of the page. And you basically [00:48:00] want CLI to be structured in a similar way, right? You're gonna want to patch dash silent to prettier because the agent doesn't care that every file was already formatted.Just wants to know it's either formatted or not. So it can then go run a right command. Similarly, like in our PNPM distributed script runner, when we had one, when you do dash recursive, like it produces a absolute mountain of text. But all of that is for passing. Test suites. So we ended up wrapping all of this in another scriptswyx: to suppress the,Ryan Lopopolo: which you can vibe the channel only output the failing parts of the tests.swyx: You make a pipe errors versus the standard, standard out. I don't know. Okay. Whatever. Too much thinking have to do that. The CII used to maintain SCLI for my company and yeah, this is like core, very core to my heart. But you're vibing my job.Ryan Lopopolo: That's right.swyx: Cool. Any other things?This is a long spec. [00:49:00] I appreciate that. It's got a lot of strong opinions in here. Any other things that we should highlight? I think obviously you can spend the whole day going through some of these, but I do think that some of these have a lot of care or some of this you might wanna tell people, Hey, take this, but, make it your own.[00:49:15] Blueprint Spec and GuardrailsRyan Lopopolo: Fundamentally, software is made more flexible when it's able to adapt to the environment in which it is deployed, which means that things like linear or GitHub even are specified within the spec, but not required pieces of it. There's like a more platonic ideal of the thing that you could swap in like Jira or Bitbucket, for example.But being able to tightly specify things like the ID formats or how the Ralph Loop works for the individual agents. Basically means you can get up and running with a fully specified system quickly that you then evolve later on. I think we never intended for this to be a static spec that you can [00:50:00] never change.It's more like a blueprint to get something worth a starting point up and running.swyx: Yeah.Ryan Lopopolo: For you then to vibe later to your heart's content,swyx: you have like code and scripts in here where it's oh, I think this is a really good prompt. It's just a very long prompt.Ryan Lopopolo: Fundamentally, the agents are good at following instructions, so give them instructions.And it will, improve the reliability of the result. We, much like the way we use Symphony, we don't want folks to have to monitor the agent as it is vibing the system into existence. So being very opinionatedVery strict around what these success criteria are means that our deployment success rate goes up. Yeah. It means we don't have to get tickets on this thing.Vibhu: Think it all goes back to that like code to disposable, right? Like early on when you had CLI or you'd kick off a Codex run, it would take two hours. You would wanna monitor okay, I'm in the workflow of just using one.I don't want it to go down the wrong path. I'll cut it off and, just shoot off four, like that was my favorite thing of the Codex app, right? Yeah. Just Forex it like, [00:51:00] it's okay. One of them will probably be right, one of them might be better. Stop overthinking it. Like my first example was probably like deep research.When you put out deep research and I'd ask it something like, I asked it something about LLM, it thought it was legal something and spent an hour, came back with a report completely off the rails. And I was like, okay, I gotta monitor this thing a bit. No don't monitor it. Just you want to build it so it's that it, it goes the right way.And you don't wanna, you don't wanna sit there and babysit, right? You don't want to babysit your agentsRyan Lopopolo: with that deep research query that you made. Looking at the bad result, you probably figured out you needed to tweak your prompt Yeah. A bit, right? That's that guardrail that you fed back into the code base for the task, your prompt to further align the agent's execution.Same sort of concept supply there too.swyx: When you talk, how are the customers feelingRyan Lopopolo: for Symphony? I think we have none, right? This is a thing we have put out into theswyx: world. Symphony's internal, right? As long as you are happy, you are the customer. That'

United Kingdom, Accenture, American Express, ESOS, EY, Four Seasons Hotels, Google, NBC Universal  are his clientsFrm Royal Air Force Senior Officer, Frm. International Negotiator for the UK Government,  executive coach. Google, Accenture, American Express His first book, 'Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team', co-authored with Simon Sinek and David Mead. Peter gets up every day inspired to enable people to be extraordinary so that they can do extraordinary things. Collaborating with Simon Sinek for over 7 years, he was a founding Igniter and Implementation Specialist on the Start With Why team, teaching leaders and companies how to use the concept of Why."The first step is to distinguish leadership from management. “Management is about handling complexity,” explains Docker, while “leadership is about creating simplicity. It's about cutting through the noise, identifying what's really important, making it personal for people, bringing them together and connecting them.”  ~  Peter Docker in Venteur Magazine January 2023One of Peter's latest books, 'Leading from The Jumpseat: How to Create Extraordinary Opportunities by Handing Over Control'Peter's commercial and industry experience has been at the most senior levels in sectors including oil & gas, construction, mining, pharmaceuticals, banking, television, film, media, manufacturing and services - across more than 90 countries. His career has spanned professional pilot; leading an aviation training and standards organisation; teaching post-graduates at an international college; and running multi-billion dollar procurement projects. A former Royal Air Force senior officer, he has been a Force Commander during combat flying operations and has seen service across the world. He is a seasoned crisis manager, a former international negotiator for the UK Government and executive coach.© 2026 Building Abundant Success!!2026 All Rights ReservedJoin Me on ~ iHeart Media @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBASSpot Me on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yxuy23bAmazon Music ~ https://tinyurl.com/AmzBASAudacy:  https://tinyurl.com/BASAud

Most directors trying to break into the VP level are focused on the wrong things. More certifications, deeper technical knowledge, better systems, none of it is what actually gets you there. Sean Barnes spent years forgetting his own journey from director to vice president, and in this episode, he gets back to it. He breaks down the real mindset and identity shifts that have to happen before the title ever comes, from how you build relationships with the executive team, to why you have to stop being the smartest person in the room, to the moment he realized he had to stop hiding behind the technology and start operating like a leader.   Key Moments 00:00 — Why Sean forgot his own journey from director to VP and why it matters 01:20 — Certifications won't get you there: the jump to VP is about thinking differently 01:46 — Your peers matter more than your team at the VP level 02:15 — Building real relationships with executives, not surface-level coffee chats 02:48 — Why understanding the infrastructure is not the same as understanding the business 03:50 — Getting out of the office and onto the shop floor 05:07 — Translating everything you do into business language 06:36 — Letting go of your identity as a technologist 08:32 — Extreme Ownership: delivering on every commitment you make 09:19 — How to push back on unrealistic deadlines from the start 10:09 — The promotion was never about the title, it was about the identity 10:57 — Looking up and out: learning to communicate and navigate the room 12:25 — Why playing the game isn't a dirty thing   Key Takeaways Your peers matter more than your team. At the director level you can win by running a strong department. At the VP level the executive team needs to see you as one of them, not just the person who keeps the lights on. Building real trust and alignment with those leaders is what opens the door.   You have to let go of your technical identity. The thing that made you great as a director can hold you back as an executive. Delegating, developing your team, and stepping away from being the smartest person in the room is what frees you up to operate at the level you're trying to reach.   Communicate outcomes not architecture. Nobody in the boardroom cares about the redundancies in your data center. They care about revenue, risk and results. When you learn to speak that language, you stop being the IT guy they dump work on and start being someone they bring to the table.   Podcast Show Notes – Episode 276 | 04.07.2025 Episode Title: Why Most Directors Never Make It to VP (And What Actually Changes)   Host: Sean Barnes Website: https://www.wolfexecutives.com   https://www.seanbarnes.com   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanbarnes/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/wolfexecutives https://www.linkedin.com/company/thewayofthewolf/ LinkedIn Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7284600567593684993/   Twitter: https://x.com/seanbarnes https://x.com/wolfexecutives   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_seanbarnes https://www.instagram.com/wolfexecutives   TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_seanbarnes   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theseanbarnes

Think of this episode as your comedy‑infused blueprint for escaping the founder prison."  Host Law Smith sits down with serial entrepreneur George Rivera, the man behind the Buy Back Time Formula, who built multiple seven‑, eight‑ and nine‑figure companies before realizing he'd accidentally locked himself in a golden cage. He recounts how his father's dying words ("don't miss Leo's games") forced him to tear down a $200M business that looked great on paper but left him exhausted and absent. Together they shred hustle culture, debate whether a hot dog is a sandwich and unpack why most productivity porn is just that—porn. Rivera explains the four‑burner theory and shares how a simple daily scorecard can calm your nerves and keep profits up while you take a two‑week vacation. He also invites listeners to his Founder Dad Dinners and reminds us we only get 18 summers with our kids. This episode blends practical tactics (delegate, automate, build systems) with laugh‑out‑loud moments and heartfelt stories. If you're a cash‑rich, time‑poor founder who hates glossy bro‑marketing, this irreverent chat will show you how to reclaim your time, scale your business and be present for what truly matters.   George Rivera is the founder of the Buy Back Time Formula, a movement designed to help overworked founders reclaim their lives by creating leverage in their businesses. After three decades as an entrepreneur, Rivera knows what it's like to build companies that look like success but feel like a prison. In the mid‑1990s he started a direct‑response business while still in high school and over the next 30 years he built multiple 7‑, 8‑ and 9‑figure ventures, including a supplement brand that surpassed $200 million in sales. With offices, teams and sales numbers most entrepreneurs dream about, Rivera appeared to "have it all." Yet he was miserable, overloaded and on the verge of walking away. The turning point came when his father, dying of cancer, told him: "Don't miss Leo's games – I missed too many of yours." Those words hit Rivera like a punch in the gut and pushed him to rebuild his business and personal life around what really matters. Rivera recognized that his success had cost him quality time with his family and joy with his son Leo. He stepped out from behind the scenes of his companies and began teaching other entrepreneurs how to eliminate, automate and delegate the work that keeps them chained to their desks. Today he guides high‑performing founders to escape the "job with overhead" trap, reclaim 15‑30+ hours per week and design businesses that run without them. His philosophy is simple: freedom comes from structure, not stamina. Instead of hustling 100‑hour weeks, he teaches systems like the daily scorecard that give owners a snapshot of the metrics that matter so they can make data‑driven decisions and sleep better. Rivera also hosts Founder Dad Dinners in Austin and online roundtables to help "cash‑rich, time‑poor" entrepreneurs build community and be present with their children, because, as he reminds us, we only get 18 summers with our kids. By helping leaders build structure, hire proactively and document processes, he shows that you can scale profits and show up for the moments that matter most. Rivera's story resonates because he's walked through founder prison and lived to tell the tale.   https://buybacktimeformula.com/ https://buybacktimeformula.com/media https://buybacktimeformula.com/book-266179 https://buybacktimeformula.com/ytbook https://buybacktimeformula.com/speaking https://18summersroundtable.com/ https://founderdaddinners.com/ https://www.georgerivera.com/ https://www.facebook.com/georgerivera77/ https://www.instagram.com/georgerivera1977/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-rivera-53b3296/ https://x.com/GeorgeR76991 https://www.youtube.com/@buybacktimeformula https://www.tiktok.com/@buybacktimeformula https://leointerviews.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@Leo_interviews

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Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and three-time NAACP Image Award-winning television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Alaysia Miller. A certified nurse practitioner, travel nurse practitioner, and founder of NP Luxe CPR, a Florida-based CPR training company. Alaysia discusses her journey from nurse to travel nurse practitioner, how frontline burnout pushed her into entrepreneurship, and why she launched a CPR education business. She explains the financial and lifestyle advantages of travel nursing, the importance of mentorship, the realities of entrepreneurship, and the major CPR survival gap in Black and underserved communities. Rushion and Alaysia also dive into leadership, negotiating contracts, building a lucrative CPR business, and empowering community health through education.