Podcasts about electronic data systems

It's fair to say that the robots aren't coming, they're already here. Not a week goes by that we don't see a brand new article about some new self-driving car, another A.I company bursting onto the scene, or full on i-Robot style machines marching down an aisle. It's hard not to be unnerved by the impact robotics and machine learning can have on the workforce, and there's a lot of unknown factors we're going to have to deal with in the not-too-far-off future. That's where today's guest Dan Mantz hopes to make things a little easier for us. He's spent the last 30 years working in the field of robots; for private sector companies such as GM, FANUC America, or Electronic Data Systems, and educational institutes like WPI, Kettering University, and the Forbes Nonprofit Council.  Dan now serves as the CEO and Chairman of the Board of the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation, or the REC. The REC's mission is to provide every educator with workforce readiness programs to increase student engagement in STEM programs. They hold hundreds of events every year that host over 1 Million students from over 70 countries, leveraging the power of competition and play to educate their students. We caught up with Dan to chat about how we can leverage our schools, private industries, and government to better educate people about robotics, and also how to build a more harmonious relationship between people and robots in the workplace. And finally, Dan shared with us how competition and play is one of the most effective ways to teach, even something as seemingly complicated as robotics. Whether you're a middle manager or CEO, this is definitely an episode you're not going to want to miss, so with that…let's bring it in!

Issa Jouaneh is President, Connections, at Emerald, and is responsible for leading the strategic oversight and growth optimization of the company's core business, comprised of 140+ leading events, trade shows, and conferences. Issa joined Emerald in March 2021 as Executive Vice President of Emerald Xcelerator, leading the company's market diversification strategy through new shows, partnerships, and sub-expo launches. Issa has over 20 years of experience leading multidisciplinary, cross-functional teams across a wide range of industries. His professional journey includes leading technology, application, and web development teams at Electronic Data Systems and a 14-year tenure at The American Express Company and American Express Global Business Travel. He ultimately served as Senior Vice President and General Manager, leading American Express Meetings & Events globally, where he successfully led the transformation of the business, tripling its size and reaching over 2,400 employees in 25+ proprietary countries. Issa holds a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering from McGill University and a Master of Business Administration from Schulich School of Business at York University.

Unlocking Sales Success: Key Traits of Ross Perot That Every Sales Professional Should Embrace Pt 2 Welcome to The Closers Inner Circle Podcast with your hosts, Ben Gay III and Denise Griffitts. In today's episode, we continue our exploration of the extraordinary life and career of Ross Perot, a man celebrated as one of the greatest salespeople in history. Perot's journey from a top salesperson at IBM to the founder of Electronic Data Systems showcases his innovative spirit and relentless drive, which significantly impacted the data processing industry and business practices worldwide. Today we will turn to page 98 of "The Closers Pt 2" to examine Ross Perot's key thoughts and principles that contributed to his legendary success. Ben Gay III will guide us through an analysis of what set Perot apart from others with similar or even greater talent. Join us as we uncover the insights from Perot's life that continue to inspire and influence the world of sales and business. Find us on the web: Denise Griffitts LinkedIn | Ben Gay III LinkedIn  This episode of The Closers Inner Circle Podcast is sponsored by The Closers, also known as the Sales Bibles by Ben Gay III. These vital resources are crafted to enhance your sales skills and transform your business approach. Whether you're an experienced professional or just starting out, The Closers offers essential insights and strategies to help you reach your goals. The Closers Books 

Unlocking Sales Success: Key Traits of Ross Perot That Every Sales Professional Should Embrace Welcome to The Closers Inner Circle Podcast with hosts Ben Gay III and Denise Griffitts. Today, we delve into the remarkable life of Ross Perot, a figure who is likely to be remembered as one of the greatest salespeople in history. With a fortune that once placed him among the wealthiest individuals in America, Perot was not just a successful businessman; he was a trailblazer in the world of sales and entrepreneurship. Starting his career as a superstar salesperson at IBM, Perot showcased his exceptional talent by becoming the top sales representative at the company. He then founded Electronic Data Systems, where he revolutionized the data processing industry. His innovative approach and relentless drive paved the way for significant advancements in business practices across the globe. In Perot's Secret from The Closers Pt 2, Ben Gay III delves into the question of what makes one person as successful as Ross Perot (1930-2019) while another person with seemingly equal or greater talent does little by comparison. Ross Perot attributed his success to several key traits and principles that he consistently applied throughout his life and career. Please open up your book to page 97. Join us as we explore the lessons from Perot's extraordinary journey and uncover the secrets behind his legendary success in sales and business. Find us on the web: Denise Griffitts LinkedIn | Ben Gay III LinkedIn | The Closers Books 

My guest in this episode is Chris Rawley. Chris is a retired Navy Reserve Captain, founded Harvest Returns in 2016 to democratize agricultural investments. During his 30-year military career, Rawley served in leadership roles across naval, expeditionary, and joint special operations units, deploying to regions such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa, the Middle East, and the Western Pacific. His corporate management experience spans Jones Lang LaSalle, Electronic Data Systems, L-3 Communications, and he was a defense consultant for the U.S. Special Operations Command. An experienced real estate and agricultural investor, Rawley also invests in early-stage agriculture and food companies, including Jai Kisan, an Indian Agri-FinTech company, and advises the AgTech start-up AgroFides. He holds a degree from Texas A&M University, an MBA from George Washington University, and is a graduate of the U.S. Naval War College. Rawley authored "Unconventional Warfare 2.0" and enjoys water sports. Interview Links: Harvest Returns website: https://www.harvestreturns.com/. Subscribe To Our Weekly Newsletter: The Wealth Dojo: https://subscribe.wealthdojo.ai/ Download all the Niches Trilogy Books: The 21 Best Cashflow Niches Digital: ⁠⁠https://www.cashflowninjaprograms.com/the-21-best-cashflow-niches-book⁠⁠ Audio: ⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/21-best-cashflow-niches⁠ The 21 Most Unique Cashflow Niches Digital: ⁠⁠https://www.cashflowninjaprograms.com/the-21-most-unique-cashflow-niches⁠⁠ Audio: ⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/21-most-unique-niches⁠ The 21 Best Cash Growth Niches Digital: ⁠https://www.cashflowninjaprograms.com/the-21-best-cash-growth-niches⁠⁠ Audio: ⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/21-cash-growth-niches Listen To Cashflow Ninja Podcasts: Cashflow Ninja ⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/cashflowninja⁠ Cashflow Investing Secrets ⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/cashflowinvestingsecrets⁠ Cashflow Ninja Banking ⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/cashflow-ninja-banking⁠ Connect With Us: Website: http://cashflowninja.com Podcast: http://resetinvestingsecrets.com Podcast: http://cashflowinvestingsecrets.com Podcast: http://cashflowninjabanking.com Substack: https://mclaubscher.substack.com/ Amazon Audible: https://a.co/d/1xfM1Vx Amazon Audible: https://a.co/d/aGzudX0 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cashflowninja/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mclaubscher Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecashflowninja/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cashflowninja Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mclaubscher/ Gab: https://gab.com/cashflowninja Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/Cashflowninja Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/c-329875

This episode of Veteran On the Move features Joe Crane interviewing Navy veteran Ray Garfield, Chairman and Co-Founder of Garfield Public/Private LLC. Ray graduated from the Naval Academy and served as a Naval Aviator before an injury forced him to transition out of the military. He leveraged his skills by landing a recruiting role at Electronic Data Systems under Ross Perot. Ray's ambition led him to pursue a career in real estate, where he built and eventually sold a successful company. The episode dives into the diverse opportunities within the real estate industry, and how Ray's skills have evolved throughout his career. Listen in to learn how Garfield Public/Private LLC uses innovative financing solutions to bring hotels, convention centers, and other large-scale projects to life in cities across the country. Episode Resources:  Garfield Public/Private   About Our Guest    As Chairman and Co-Founder of Garfield Public/Private LLC, Ray Garfield focuses primarily on leading the financing and legal team to engineer creative financing structures and secure capital for public/private developments. Ray is a 1966 graduate of the United States Naval Academy where he was on the football and track teams. After graduation, was commissioned as an Ensign in the Navy and served as a Naval Aviator. As a veteran with leadership experience both in the military and in the business world (running a development partnership alongside his son), Ray can give great insight into how a career in the military prepared him for entrepreneurship and his current role at Garfield Public/Private.   Join the conversation on Facebook! Check out Veteran on the Move on Facebook to connect with our guests and other listeners. A place where you can network with other like-minded veterans who are transitioning to entrepreneurship and get updates on people, programs and resources to help you in YOUR transition to entrepreneurship.   About Our Sponsors Navy Federal Credit Union   Becoming a member at Navy Federal Credit Union could help you earn more and save more. Their certificate options could earn you more than standard savings accounts with competitive rates. Not all financial institutions offer you as many choices for savings options as Navy Federal does. For example, you could start your savings journey with a low minimum deposit, add money at any time and watch your savings GROW! Thanks to flexible terms, you can use Navy Federal's savings options for all kinds of goals—short or long-term. Considering a big home improvement project? Maybe you want to consolidate debt? You could borrow up to 100% of your home's equity with a Fixed-Rate Home Equity Loan with ZERO closing costs, or easily borrow as you go with a Home Equity Line of Credit. BOTH options could help make life's big expenses seem more manageable. To learn more, visit NavyFederal.org. At Navy Federal, our members are the mission.      Incogni Every year, both the number and scope of data breaches worldwide are rising. According to the 2022 Annual Data Breach Report by the Identity Theft Resource Center, the number of victims has gone up nearly 41.5% from 2021. These data brokers aggregate your personal information including your names and aliases, Social Security number, login credentials, home address, location history, online activity, and much more.  In a nutshell, your personal information is being sold or published online without you even knowing about it. The good news is that you have the right to protect your privacy and request that data brokers delete the information they hold about you. The bad news is that it would take you years to do it manually, just once. And you'd need to repeat the process every few months as data brokers continue collecting your data and creating new records. Incogni reaches out to data brokers on your behalf, requests your personal data removal, and deals with any objections.

Bio Luke Hohmann is Chief Innovation Officer of Applied Frameworks. Applied Frameworks helps companies create more profitable software-enabled solutions. A serial entrepreneur, Luke founded, bootstrapped, and sold the SaaS B2B collaboration software company Conteneo to Scaled Agile, Inc. Conteneo's Weave platform is now part of SAFe Studio. A SAFe® Fellow, prolific author, and trailblazing innovator, Luke's contributions to the global agile community include contributing to SAFe, five books, Profit Streams™, Innovation Games®, Participatory Budgeting at enterprise scale, and a pattern language for market-driven roadmapping. Luke is also co-founder of Every Voice Engaged Foundation, where he partnered with The Kettering Foundation to create Common Ground for Action, the world's first scalable platform for deliberative decision-making. Luke is a former National Junior Pairs Figure Skating Champion and has an M.S.E. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. Luke loves his wife and four kids, his wife's cooking, and long runs in the California sunshine and Santa Cruz mountains.    Interview Highlights 01:30 Organisational Behaviour & Cognitive Psychology 06:10 Serendipity 09:30 Entrepreneurship 16:15 Applied Frameworks 20:00 Sustainability 20:45 Software Profit Streams 23:00 Business Model Canvas 24:00 Value Proposition Canvas 24:45 Setting the Price 28:45 Customer Benefit Analysis 34:00 Participatory Budgeting 36:00 Value Stream Funding 37:30 The Color of Money 42:00 Private v Public Sector 49:00 ROI Analysis 51:00 Innovation Accounting    Connecting   LinkedIn: Luke Hohmann on LinkedIn Company Website: Applied Frameworks    Books & Resources   ·         Software Profit Streams(TM): A Guide to Designing a Sustainably Profitable Business: Jason Tanner, Luke Hohmann, Federico González ·         Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (The Strategyzer series): Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur ·         Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want (The Strategyzer Series): Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Gregory Bernarda, Alan Smith, Trish Papadakos ·         Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play: Luke Hohmann ·         The ‘Color of Money' Problem: Additional Guidance on Participatory Budgeting - Scaled Agile Framework ·         The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Eric Ries ·         Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change 2, Kent Beck, Cynthia Andres ·         The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering: Brooks, Frederick Phillips ·         Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud ·         Ponyboy: A Novel, Eliot Duncan ·         Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel, Bonnie Garmus, Miranda Raison, Bonnie Garmus, Pandora Sykes ·         What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, Oprah Winfrey, Bruce D. Perry ·         Training | Applied Frameworks   Episode Transcript Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener.  Ula Ojiaku   So I have with me Luke Hohmann, who is a four time author, three time founder, serial entrepreneur if I say, a SAFe fellow, so that's a Skilled Agile Framework fellow, keynote speaker and an internationally recognised expert in Agile software development. He is also a proud husband and a father of four. So, Luke, I am very honoured to have you on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. Thank you for making the time. Luke Hohmann Thank you so much for having me, I'm very happy to be here, and hi everyone who's listening. Ula Ojiaku Yes, I'm sure they're waving back at you as well. I always start my conversations with my guests to find out about them as individuals, you know, so who is Luke? You have a BSc in Computer Science and an MSc in Computer Science and Engineering, but you also studied Cognitive Psychology and Organisational Behaviour in addition to Data Structures and Artificial Intelligence. AI is now making waves and is kind of at the forefront, which is interesting, you had the foresight to also look into these. So my question is, what took you down this path? Luke Hohmann Sure. I had a humble beginning in the world of technology. I worked for a large company, Electronic Data Systems, and it was founded in the mid 60s by a gentleman named Ross Perot, and it became a very, very large company. So my first job at Electronic Data Systems was working in a data centre, and we know what data centres are, but back then, data centres were different because they were predominantly mainframe-based data centres, and I would crawl underneath the floor, cabling the computers and cabling networking equipment. Now, when we think networking, we're really thinking one of two kinds of networking. We think of wireless networking or we think of some form of internet networking, but back in those days, there were varieties of network protocols, literally the standards that we use now weren't invented yet. So it was mainframe networking protocols and dial ups and other forms of networking protocols. From there, I worked my way from beneath the ground up. I had some great managers who saw someone who was worthy of opportunity and they gave me opportunity and it was great. And then eventually I started working in electronic data systems and there was, the first wave of AI came in the mid 80s and that's when we were doing things like building expert systems, and I managed to create with a colleague of mine, who's emerged as my best friend, a very successful implementation of an expert system, an AI-based expert system at EDS, and that motivated me to finish off my college degree, I didn't have my college degree at the time. So EDS supported me in going to the University of Michigan, where as you said, I picked up my Bachelor's and Master's degree, and my advisor at the time was Elliot Soloway, and he was doing research in how programmers program, what are the knowledge structures, what are the ways in which we think when we're programming, and I picked up that research and built programming environments, along with educational material, trying to understand how programmers program and trying to build educational material to teach programming more effectively. That's important because it ignited a lifelong passion for developing education materials, etc. Now the cognitive psychology part was handled through that vein of work, the organisational behaviour work came as I was a student at Michigan. As many of us are when we're in college, we don't make a lot of money, or at university we're not wealthy and I needed a job and so the School of Organisational Behaviour had published some job postings and they needed programmers to program software for their organisational behaviour research, and I answered those ads and I became friends and did the research for many ground-breaking aspects of organisational behaviour and I programmed, and in the process of programming for the professors who were in the School of Organisational Behaviour they would teach me about organisational behaviour and I learned many things that at the time were not entirely clear to me, but then when I graduated from university and I became a manager and I also became more involved in the Agile movement, I had a very deep foundation that has served me very well in terms of what do we mean when we say culture, or what do we mean when we talk about organisational structures, both in the small and in the large, how do we organise effectively, when should we scale, when should we not scale, etc. So that's a bit about my history that I think in terms of the early days helped inform who I am today. Ula Ojiaku Wow, who would have thought, it just reminds me of the word serendipity, you know, I guess a happy coincidence, quote unquote, and would there be examples of where the cognitive psychology part of it also helped you work-wise? Luke Hohmann Yeah, a way to think about cognitive psychology and the branch that, I mean there's, psychology is a huge branch of study, right? So cognitive psychology tends to relate to how do we solve problems, and it tends to focus on problem solving where n = 1 and what I mean by n is the number of participants, and where n is just me as an individual, how do I solve the problems that I'm facing? How do I engage in de-compositional activities or refinement or sense making? Organisational behaviour deals with n > 1. So it can deal with a team of, a para-bond, two people solving problems. It can deal with a small team, and we know through many, many, many decades of research that optimal team structures are eight people or less. I mean, we've known this for, when I say decades I mean millennia. When you look at military structure and military strategy, we know that people need to be organised into much smaller groups to be effective in problem solving and to move quickly. And then in any organisational structure, there's some notion of a team of teams or team engagement. So cognitive psychology, I think, helps leaders understand individuals and their place within the team. And now we talk about, you know, in the Agile community, we talk about things like, I want T-shaped people, I want people with common skills and their area of expertise and by organising enough of the T's, I can create a whole and complete team. I often say I don't want my database designer designing my user interface and I don't want my user interface designer optimising my back end database queries, they're different skills. They're very educated people, they're very sophisticated, but there's also the natural feeling that you and I have about how do I gain a sense of self, how do I gain a sense of accomplishment, a sense of mastery? Part of gaining a sense of mastery is understanding who you are as a person, what you're good at. In Japanese, they would call that Ikigai, right, what are the intersections of, you know, what do I love, what am I good at, what can I make a living at and what do people need, right? All of these intersections occur on an individual level, and then by understanding that we can create more effective teams. Ula Ojiaku Thank you. I've really learned something key here, the relationship between cognitive psychology and organisational behaviour, so thanks for breaking it down. Now, can we go quickly to your entrepreneurship? So there must be three times you started three times a company and you've been successful in that area. What exactly drives you when it comes to establishing businesses and then knowing when to move on? Luke Hohmann Sure. I think it's a combination of reflecting on my childhood and then looking at how that informs someone when they're older, and then opportunities, like you said, serendipity, I think that's a really powerful word that you introduced and it's a really powerful concept because sometimes the serendipity is associated with just allowing yourself to pursue something that presents itself. But when I was young, my father died and my mum had to raise six kids on her own, so my dad died when I was four, my mum raised six kids on her own. We were not a wealthy family, and she was a school teacher and one of the things that happened was, even though she was a very skilled school teacher, there were budget cuts and it was a unionised structure, and even though she was ranked very highly, she lost her job because she was low on the hiring totem pole in terms of how the union worked. It was very hard and of course, it's always hard to make budget cuts and firing but I remember when I was very young making one of those choices saying, I want to work in a field where we are more oriented towards someone's performance and not oriented on when they were hired, or the colour of their skin, or their gender or other things that to me didn't make sense that people were making decisions against. And while it's not a perfect field for sure, and we've got lots of improvement, engineering in general, and of course software engineering and software development spoke to me because I could meet people who were diverse or more diverse than in other fields and I thought that was really good. In terms of being an entrepreneur, that happened serendipitously. I was at the time, before I became an entrepreneur in my last job, was working for an Israeli security firm, and years and years ago, I used to do software anti-piracy and software security through physical dongles. This was made by a company called Aladdin Knowledge Systems in Israel, and I was the head of Engineering and Product Management for the dongle group and then I moved into a role of Business Development for the company. I had a couple of great bosses, but I also learned how to do international management because I had development teams in Israel, I had development teams in Munich, I had development teams in Portland, Oregon, and in the Bay Area, and this was in the 2000s. This is kind of pre-Agile, pre-Salt Lake City, pre-Agile Manifesto, but we were figuring things out and blending and working together. I thought things were going pretty well and I enjoyed working for the Israelis and what we were doing, but then we had the first Gulf War and my wife and I felt that maybe traveling as I was, we weren't sure what was going to happen in the war, I should choose something different. Unfortunately, by that time, we had been through the dot-bomb crisis in Silicon Valley. So it's about 2002 at the time that this was going on, and there really weren't jobs, it was a very weird time in Silicon Valley. So in late 2002, I sent an email to a bunch of friends and I said, hey, I'm going to be a consultant, who wants to hire me, that was my marketing plan, not very clever, and someone called me and said, hey, I've got a problem and this is the kind of thing that you can fix, come consult with us. And I said, great. So I did that, and that started the cleverly named Luke Hohmann Consulting, but then one thing led to another and consulting led to opportunities and growth and I've never looked back. So I think that there is a myth about people who start companies where sometimes you have a plan and you go execute your plan. Sometimes you find the problem and you're solving a problem. Sometimes the problem is your own problem, as in my case I had two small kids and a mortgage and I needed to provide for my family, and so the best way to do that at the time was to become a consultant. Since then I have engaged in building companies, sometimes some with more planning, some with more business tools and of course as you grow as an entrepreneur you learn skills that they didn't teach you in school, like marketing and pricing and business planning etc. And so that's kind of how I got started, and now I have kind of come full circle. The last company, the second last company I started was Conteneo and we ended up selling that to Scaled Agile, and that's how I joined the Scaled Agile team and that was lovely, moving from a position of being a CEO and being responsible for certain things, to being able to be part of a team again, joining the framework team, working with Dean Leffingwell and other members of the framework team to evolve the SAFe framework, that was really lovely. And then of course you get this entrepreneurial itch and you want to do something else, and so I think it comes and goes and you kind of allow yourself those opportunities. Ula Ojiaku Wow, yours is an inspiring story. And so what are you now, so you've talked about your first two Startups which you sold, what are you doing now? Luke Hohmann Yeah, so where I'm at right now is I am the Chief Innovation Officer for a company, Applied Frameworks. Applied Frameworks is a boutique consulting firm that's in a transition to a product company. So if this arm represents our product revenue and this arm represents our services revenue, we're expanding our product and eventually we'll become a product company. And so then the question is, well, what is the product that we're working on? Well, if you look at the Agile community, we've spent a lot of time creating and delivering value, and that's really great. We have had, if you look at the Agile community, we've had amazing support from our business counterparts. They've shovelled literally millions and millions of dollars into Agile training and Agile tooling and Agile transformations, and we've seen a lot of benefit from the Agile community. And when I say Agile, I don't mean SAFe or Scrum or some particular flavour of Agile, I just mean Agile in general. There's been hundreds of millions of dollars to billions of dollars shoved into Agile and we've created a lot of value for that investment. We've got fewer bugs in our software because we've got so many teams doing XP driven practices like Test Driven Development, we've got faster response times because we've learned that we can create smaller releases and we've created infrastructure that lets us do deployments automatically, even if you're doing embedded systems, we figured out how to do over the air updates, we've figured out how to create infrastructure where the cars we're driving are now getting software updates. So we've created for our business leaders lots of value, but there's a problem in that value. Our business leaders now need us to create a profit, and creating value and creating a profit are two different things. And so in the pursuit of value, we have allowed our Agile community to avoid and or atrophy on skills that are vital to product management, and I'm a classically trained Product Manager, so I've done market segmentation and market valuation and market sizing, I've done pricing, I've done licensing, I've done acquisitions, I've done compliance. But when you look at the traditional definition of a Product Owner, it's a very small subset of that, especially in certain Agile methods where Product Owners are team centric, they're internal centric. That's okay, I'm not criticising that structure, but what's happened is we've got people who no longer know how to price, how to package, how to license products, and we're seeing companies fail, investor money wasted, too much time trying to figure things out when if we had simply approached the problem with an analysis of not just what am I providing to you in terms of value, but what is that value worth, and how do I structure an exchange where I give you value and you give me money? And that's how businesses survive, and I think what's really interesting about this in terms of Agile is Agile is very intimately tied to sustainability. One of the drivers of the Agile Movement was way back in the 2000s, we were having very unsustainable practices. People would be working 60, 80, death march weeks of grinding out programmers and grinding out people, and part of the Agile Movement was saying, wait a minute, this isn't sustainable, and even the notion of what is a sustainable pace is really vital, but a company cannot sustain itself without a profit, and if we don't actually evolve the Agile community from value streams into profit streams, we can't help our businesses survive. I sometimes ask developers, I say, raise your hand if you're really embracing the idea that your job is to make more money for your company than they pay you, that's called a profit, and if that's not happening, your company's going to fail. Ula Ojiaku They'll be out of a job. Luke Hohmann You'll be out of a job. So if you want to be self-interested about your future, help your company be successful, help them make a profit, and so where I'm at right now is Applied Frameworks has, with my co-author, Jason Tanner, we have published a bold and breakthrough new book called Software Profit Streams, and it's a book that describes how to do pricing and packaging for software enabled solutions. When we say software enabled solution, we mean a solution that has software in it somehow, could be embedded software in your microwave oven, it could be a hosted solution, it could be an API for a payment processor, it could be the software in your car that I talked about earlier. So software enabled solutions are the foundation, the fabric of our modern lives. As Mark Andreessen says software is eating the world, software is going to be in everything, and we need to know how to take the value that we are creating as engineers, as developers, and convert that into pricing and licensing choices that create sustainable profits. Ula Ojiaku Wow. It's as if you read my mind because I was going to ask you about your book, Software Profit Streams, A Guide to Designing a Sustainably Profitable Business. I also noticed that, you know, there is the Profit Stream Canvas that you and your co-author created. So let's assume I am a Product Manager and I've used this, let's assume I went down the path of using the Business Model Canvas and there is the Customer Value Proposition. So how do they complement? Luke Hohmann How do they all work together? I'm glad you asked that, I think that's a very insightful question and the reason it's so helpful is because, well partly because I'm also friends with Alex Osterwalder, I think he's a dear, he's a wonderful human, he's a dear friend. So let's look at the different elements of the different canvases, if you will, and why we think that this is needed. The Business Model Canvas is kind of how am I structuring my business itself, like what are my partners, my suppliers, my relationships, my channel strategy, my brand strategy with respect to my customer segments, and it includes elements of cost, which we're pretty good at. We're pretty good at knowing our costs and elements of revenue, but the key assumption of revenue, of course, is the selling price and the number of units sold. So, but if you look at the book, Business Model Generation, where the Business Model Canvas comes from, it doesn't actually talk about how to set the price. Is the video game going to be $49? Is it going to be $59, or £49 or £59? Well, there's a lot of thought that goes into that. Then we have the Value Proposition Canvas, which highlights what are the pains the customer is facing? What are the gains that the customer is facing? What are the jobs to be done of the customer? How does my solution relate to the jobs? How does it help solve the pain the customer is feeling? How does it create gain for the customer? But if you read those books, and both of those books are on my shelf because they're fantastic books, it doesn't talk about pricing. So let's say I create a gain for you. Well, how much can I charge you for the gain that I've created? How do I structure that relationship? And how do I know, going back to my Business Model Canvas, that I've got the right market segment, I've got the right investment strategy, I might need to make an investment in the first one or two releases of my software or my product before I start to make a per unit profit because I'm evolving, it's called the J curve and the J curve is how much money am I investing before I well, I have to be able to forecast that, I have to be able to model that, but the key input to that is what is the price, what is the mechanism of packaging that you're using, is it, for example, is it per user in a SAS environment or is it per company in a SAS environment? Is it a meter? Is it like an API transaction using Stripe or a payment processor, Adyen or Stripe or Paypal or any of the others that are out there? Or is it an API call where I'm charging a fraction of a penny for any API call? All of those elements have to be put into an economic model and a forecast has to be created. Now, what's missing about this is that the Business Model Canvas and the Value Proposition Canvas don't give you the insight on how to set the price, they just say there is a price and we're going to use it in our equations. So what we've done is we've said, look, setting the price is itself a complex system, and what I mean by a complex system is that, let's say that I wanted to do an annual license for a new SAS offering, but I offer that in Europe and now my solution is influenced or governed by GDPR compliance, where I have data retention and data privacy laws. So my technical architecture that has to enforce the license, also has to comply with something in terms of the market in which I'm selling. This complex system needs to be organised, and so what canvases do is in all of these cases, they let us take a complex system and put some structure behind the choices that we're making in that complex system so that we can make better choices in terms of system design. I know how I want this to work, I know how I want this to be structured, and therefore I can make system choices so the system is working in a way that benefits the stakeholders. Not just me, right, I'm not the only stakeholder, my customers are in this system, my suppliers are in this system, society itself might be in the system, depending on the system I'm building or the solution I'm building. So the canvases enable us to make system level choices that are hopefully more effective in achieving our goals. And like I said, the Business Model Canvas, the Value Proposition Canvas are fantastic, highly recommended, but they don't cover pricing. So we needed something to cover the actual pricing and packaging and licensing. Ula Ojiaku Well, that's awesome. So it's really more about going, taking a deeper dive into thoughtfully and structurally, if I may use that word, assessing the pricing. Luke Hohmann Yeah, absolutely. Ula Ojiaku Would you say that in doing this there would be some elements of, you know, testing and getting feedback from actual customers to know what price point makes sense? Luke Hohmann Absolutely. There's a number of ways in which customer engagement or customer testing is involved. The very first step that we advocate is a Customer Benefit Analysis, which is what are the actual benefits you're creating and how are your customers experiencing those benefits. Those experiences are both tangible and intangible and that's another one of the challenges that we face in the Agile community. In general, the Agile community spends a little bit more time on tangible or functional value than intangible value. So we, in terms of if I were to look at it in terms of a computer, we used to say speeds and feeds. How fast is the processor? How fast is the network? How much storage is on my disk space? Those are all functional elements. Over time as our computers have become plenty fast or plenty storage wise for most of our personal computing needs, we see elements of design come into play, elements of usability, elements of brand, and we see this in other areas. Cars have improved in quality so much that many of us, the durability of the car is no longer a significant attribute because all cars are pretty durable, they're pretty good, they're pretty well made. So now we look at brand, we look at style, we look at aesthetics, we look at even paying more for a car that aligns with our values in terms of the environment. I want to get an EV, why, because I want to be more environmentally conscious. That's a value driven, that's an intangible factor. And so our first step starts with Customer Benefit Analysis looking at both functional or tangible value and intangible value, and you can't do that, as you can imagine, you can't do that without having customer interaction and awareness with your stakeholders and your customers, and that also feeds throughout the whole pricing process. Eventually, you're going to put your product in a market, and that's a form itself of market research. Did customers buy, and if they didn't buy, why did they not buy? Is it poorly packaged or is it poorly priced? These are all elements that involve customers throughout the process. Ula Ojiaku If I may, I know we've been on the topic of your latest book Software Profit Streams. I'm just wondering, because I can't help but try to connect the dots and I'm wondering if there might be a connection to one of your books, Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play, something like buy a feature in your book, that kind of came to mind, could there be a way of using that as part of the engagement with customers in setting a pricing strategy? I may be wrong, I'm just asking a question. Luke Hohmann I think you're making a great connection. There's two forms of relationship that Innovation Games and the Innovation Games book have with Software Profit Streams. One is, as you correctly noted, just the basics of market research, where do key people have pains or gains and what it might be worth. That work is also included in Alex Osterwalder's books, Value Proposition Design for example, when I've been doing Value Proposition Design and I'm trying to figure out the customer pains, you can use the Innovation Games Speed Boat. And when I want to figure out the gains, I can use the Innovation Game Product Box. Similarly, when I'm figuring out pricing and licensing, a way, and it's a very astute idea, a way to understand price points of individual features is to do certain kinds of market research. One form of market research you can do is Buy-a-Feature, which gives a gauge of what people are willing or might be willing to pay for a feature. It can be a little tricky because the normal construction of Buy-a-Feature is based on cost. However, your insight is correct, you can extend Buy-a-Feature such that you're testing value as opposed to cost, and seeing what, if you take a feature that costs X, but inflate that cost by Y and a Buy-a-Feature game, if people still buy it, it's a strong signal strength that first they want it, and second it may be a feature that you can, when delivered, would motivate you to raise the price of your offering and create a better profit for your company. Ula Ojiaku Okay, well, thank you. I wasn't sure if I was on the right lines. Luke Hohmann It's a great connection. Ula Ojiaku Thanks again. I mean, it's not original. I'm just piggybacking on your ideas. So with respect to, if we, if you don't mind, let's shift gears a bit because I know that, or I'm aware that whilst you were with Scaled Agile Incorporated, you know, you played a key part in developing some of their courses, like the Product POPM, and I think the Portfolio Management, and there was the concept about Participatory Budgeting. Can we talk about that, please? Luke Hohmann I'd love to talk about that, I mean it's a huge passion of mine, absolutely. So in February of 2018, I started working with the framework team and in December of 2018, we talked about the possibility of what an acquisition might look like and the benefits it would create, which would be many. That closed in May of 2019, and in that timeframe, we were working on SAFe 5.0 and so there were a couple of areas in which I was able to make some contributions. One was in Agile product delivery competency, the other was in lean portfolio management. I had a significant hand in restructuring or adding the POPM, APM, and LPM courses, adding things like solutions by horizons to SAFe, taking the existing content on guardrails, expanding it a little bit, and of course, adding Participatory Budgeting, which is just a huge passion of mine. I've done Participatory Budgeting now for 20 years, I've helped organisations make more than five billions of dollars of investment spending choices at all levels of companies, myself and my colleagues at Applied Frameworks, and it just is a better way to make a shared decision. If you think about one of the examples they use about Participatory Budgeting, is my preferred form of fitness is I'm a runner and so, and my wife is also a fit person. So if she goes and buys a new pair of shoes or trainers and I go and buy a new pair of trainers, we don't care, because it's a small purchase. It's frequently made and it's within the pattern of our normal behaviour. However, if I were to go out and buy a new car without involving her, that feels different, right, it's a significant purchase, it requires budgeting and care, and is this car going to meet our needs? Our kids are older than your kids, so we have different needs and different requirements, and so I would be losing trust in my pair bond with my wife if I made a substantial purchase without her involvement. Well, corporations work the same way, because we're still people. So if I'm funding a value stream, I'm funding the consistent and reliable flow of valuable items, that's what value stream funding is supposed to do. However, if there is a significant investment to be made, even if the value stream can afford it, it should be introduced to the portfolio for no other reason than the social structure of healthy organisations says that we do better when we're talking about these things, that we don't go off on our own and make significant decisions without the input of others. That lowers transparency, that lowers trust. So I am a huge advocate of Participatory Budgeting, I'm very happy that it's included in SAFe as a recommended practice, both for market research and Buy-a-Feature in APM, but also more significantly, if you will, at the portfolio level for making investment decisions. And I'm really excited to share that we've just published an article a few weeks ago about Participatory Budgeting and what's called The Color of Money, and The Color of Money is sometimes when you have constraints on how you can spend money, and an example of a constraint is let's say that a government raised taxes to improve transportation infrastructure. Well, the money that they took in is constrained in a certain way. You can't spend it, for example, on education, and so we have to show how Participatory Budgeting can be adapted to have relationships between items like this item requires this item as a precedent or The Color of Money, constraints of funding items, but I'm a big believer, we just published that article and you can get that at the Scaled Agile website, I'm a big believer in the social power of making these financial decisions and the benefits that accrue to people and organisations when they collaborate in this manner. Ula Ojiaku Thanks for going into that, Luke. So, would there be, in your experience, any type of organisation that's participatory? It's not a leading question, it's just genuine, there are typically outliers and I'm wondering in your experience, and in your opinion, if there would be organisations that it might not work for? Luke Hohmann Surprisingly, no, but I want to add a few qualifications to the effective design of a Participatory Budgeting session. When people hear Participatory Budgeting, there's different ways that you would apply Participatory Budgeting in the public and private sector. So I've done citywide Participatory Budgeting in cities and if you're a citizen of a city and you meet the qualifications for voting within that jurisdiction, in the United States, it's typically that you're 18 years old, in some places you have to be a little older, in some places you might have other qualifications, but if you're qualified to participate as a citizen in democratic processes, then you should be able to participate in Participatory Budgeting sessions that are associated with things like how do we spend taxes or how do we make certain investments. In corporations it's not quite the same way. Just because you work at a company doesn't mean you should be included in portfolio management decisions that affect the entire company. You may not have the background, you may not have the training, you may be what my friends sometimes call a fresher. So I do a lot of work overseas, so freshers, they just may not have the experience to participate. So one thing that we look at in Participatory Budgeting and SAFe is who should be involved in the sessions, and that doesn't mean that every single employee should always be included, because their background, I mean, they may be a technical topic and maybe they don't have the right technical background. So we work a little bit harder in corporations to make sure the right people are there. Now, of course, if we're going to make a mistake, we tend to make the mistake of including more people than excluding, partly because in SAFe Participatory Budgeting, it's a group of people who are making a decision, not a one person, one vote, and that's really profoundly important because in a corporation, just like in a para-bond, your opinion matters to me, I want to know what you're thinking. If I'm looking in, I'll use SAFe terminology, if I'm looking at three epics that could advance our portfolio, and I'm a little unsure about two of those epics, like one of those epics, I'm like, yeah, this is a really good thing, I know a little bit about it, this matters, I'm going to fund this, but the other two I'm not so sure about, well, there's no way I can learn through reading alone what the opinions of other people are, because, again, there's these intangible factors. There's these elements that may not be included in an ROI analysis, it's kind of hard to talk about brand and an ROI analysis - we can, but it's hard, so I want to listen to how other people are talking about things, and through that, I can go, yeah, I can see the value, I didn't see it before, I'm going to join you in funding this. So that's among the ways in which Participatory Budgeting is a little different within the private sector and the public sector and within a company. The only other element that I would add is that Participatory Budgeting gives people the permission to stop funding items that are no longer likely to meet the investment or objectives of the company, or to change minds, and so one of the, again, this is a bit of an overhang in the Agile community, Agile teams are optimised for doing things that are small, things that can fit within a two or three week Sprint. That's great, no criticism there, but our customers and our stakeholders want big things that move the market needle, and the big things that move the market needle don't get done in two or three weeks, in general, and they rarely, like they require multiple teams working multiple weeks to create a really profoundly new important thing. And so what happens though, is that we need to make in a sense funding commitments for these big things, but we also have to have a way to change our mind, and so traditional funding processes, they let us make this big commitment, but they're not good at letting us change our mind, meaning they're not Agile. Participatory Budgeting gives us the best of both worlds. I can sit at the table with you and with our colleagues, we can commit to funding something that's big, but six months later, which is the recommended cadence from SAFe, I can come back to that table and reassess and we can all look at each other, because you know those moments, right, you've had that experience in visiting, because you're like looking around the table and you're like, yeah, this isn't working. And then in traditional funding, we keep funding what's not working because there's no built-in mechanism to easily change it, but in SAFe Participatory Budgeting, you and I can sit at the table and we can look at each other with our colleagues and say, yeah, you know, that initiative just, it's not working, well, let's change our mind, okay, what is the new thing that we can fund? What is the new epic? And that permission is so powerful within a corporation. Ula Ojiaku Thanks for sharing that, and whilst you were speaking, because again, me trying to connect the dots and thinking, for an organisation that has adopted SAFe or it's trying to scale Agility, because like you mentioned, Agile teams are optimised to iteratively develop or deliver, you know, small chunks over time, usually two to three weeks, but, like you said, there is a longer time horizon spanning months, even years into the future, sometimes for those worthwhile, meaty things to be delivered that moves the strategic needle if I may use that buzzword. So, let's say we at that lean portfolio level, we're looking at epics, right, and Participatory Budgeting, we are looking at initiatives on an epic to epic basis per se, where would the Lean Startup Cycle come in here? So is it that Participatory Budgeting could be a mechanism that is used for assessing, okay, this is the MVP features that have been developed and all that, the leading indicators we've gotten, that's presented to the group, and on that basis, we make that pivot or persevere or stop decision, would that fit in? Luke Hohmann Yeah, so let's, I mean, you're close, but let me make a few turns and then it'll click better. First, let's acknowledge that the SAFe approach to the Lean Startup Cycle is not the Eric Ries approach, there are some differences, but let's separate how I fund something from how I evaluate something. So if I'm going to engage in the SAFe Lean Startup Cycle, part of that engagement is to fund an MVP, which is going to prove or disprove a given hypothesis. So that's an expenditure of money. Now there's, if you think about the expenditure of money, there's minimally two steps in this process - there's spending enough money to conduct the experiments, and if those experiments are true, making another commitment to spend money again, that I want to spend it. The reason this is important is, let's say I had three experiments running in parallel and I'm going to use easy round numbers for a large corporation. Let's say I want to run three experiments in parallel, and each experiment costs me a million pounds. Okay. So now let's say that the commercialisation of each of those is an additional amount of money. So the portfolio team sits around the table and says, we have the money, we're going to fund all three. Okay, great. Well, it's an unlikely circumstance, but let's say all three are successful. Well, this is like a venture capitalist, and I have a talk that I give that relates the funding cycle of a venture capitalist to the funding cycle of an LPM team. While it's unlikely, you could have all three become successful, and this is what I call an oversubscribed portfolio. I've got three great initiatives, but I can still only fund one or two of them, I still have to make the choice. Now, of course, I'm going to look at my economics and let's say out of the three initiatives that were successfully proven through their hypothesis, let's say one of them is just clearly not as economically attractive, for whatever reason. Okay, we get rid of that one, now, I've got two, and if I can only fund one of them, and the ROI, the hard ROI is roughly the same, that's when Participatory Budgeting really shines, because we can have those leaders come back into the room, and they can say, which choice do we want to make now? So the evaluative aspect of the MVP is the leading indicators and the results of the proving or disproving of the hypotheses. We separate that from the funding choices, which is where Participatory Budgeting and LPM kick in. Ula Ojiaku Okay. So you've separated the proving or disproving the hypothesis of the feature, some of the features that will probably make up an epic. And you're saying the funding, the decision to fund the epic in the first place is a different conversation. And you've likened it to Venture Capital funding rounds. Where do they connect? Because if they're separate, what's the connecting thread between the two? Luke Hohmann The connected thread is the portfolio process, right? The actual process is the mechanism where we're connecting these things. Ula Ojiaku OK, no, thanks for the portfolio process. But there is something you mentioned, ROI - Return On Investment. And sometimes when you're developing new products, you don't know, you have assumptions. And any ROI, sorry to put it this way, but you're really plucking figures from the air, you know, you're modelling, but there is no certainty because you could hit the mark or you could go way off the mark. So where does that innovation accounting coming into place, especially if it's a product that's yet to make contact with, you know, real life users, the customers. Luke Hohmann Well, let's go back to something you said earlier, and what you talked earlier about was the relationship that you have in market researching customer interaction. In making a forecast, let's go ahead and look at the notion of building a new product within a company, and this is again where the Agile community sometimes doesn't want to look at numbers or quote, unquote get dirty, but we have to, because if I'm going to look at building a new idea, or taking a new idea into a product, I have to have a forecast of its viability. Is it economically viable? Is it a good choice? So innovation accounting is a way to look at certain data, but before, I'm going to steal a page, a quote, from one of my friends, Jeff Patton. The most expensive way to figure this out is to actually build the product. So what can I do that's less expensive than building the product itself? I can still do market research, but maybe I wouldn't do an innovation game, maybe I'd do a formal survey and I use a price point testing mechanism like Van Westendorp Price Point Analysis, which is a series of questions that you ask to triangulate on acceptable price ranges. I can do competitive benchmarking for similar products and services. What are people offering right now in the market? Now that again, if the product is completely novel, doing competitive benchmarking can be really hard. Right now, there's so many people doing streaming that we look at the competitive market, but when Netflix first offered streaming and it was the first one, their best approach was what we call reference pricing, which is, I have a reference price for how much I pay for my DVDs that I'm getting in the mail, I'm going to base my streaming service kind of on the reference pricing of entertainment, although that's not entirely clear that that was the best way to go, because you could also base the reference price on what you're paying for a movie ticket and how many, but then you look at consumption, right, because movie tickets are expensive, so I only go to a movie maybe once every other month, whereas streaming is cheap and so I can change my demand curve by lowering my price. But this is why it's such a hard science is because we have this notion of these swirling factors. Getting specifically back to your question about the price point, I do have to do some market research before I go into the market to get some forecasting and some confidence, and research gives me more confidence, and of course, once I'm in the market, I'll know how effective my research matched the market reality. Maybe my research was misleading, and of course, there's some skill in designing research, as you know, to get answers that have high quality signal strength. Ula Ojiaku Thanks for clarifying. That makes perfect sense to me. Luke Hohmann It's kind of like a forecast saying, like there's a group of Agile people who will say, like, you shouldn't make forecasts. Well, I don't understand that because that's like saying, and people will say, well, I can't predict the future. Well, okay, I can't predict when I'm going to retire, but I'm planning to retire. I don't know the date of my exact retirement, but my wife and I are planning our retirement, and we're saving, we're making certain investment choices for our future, because we expect to have a future together. Now our kids are older than yours. My kids are now in university, and so we're closer to retirement. So what I dislike about the Agile community is people will sometimes say, well, I don't know the certainty of the event, therefore, I can't plan for it. But that's really daft, because there are many places in like, you may not for the listeners, her daughter is a little younger than my kids, but they will be going to university one day, and depending on where they go, that's a financial choice. So you could say, well, I don't know when she's going to university, and I can't predict what university she's going to go to, therefore I'm not going to save any money. Really? That doesn't make no sense. So I really get very upset when you have people in the agile community will say things like road mapping or forecasting is not Agile. It's entirely Agile. How you treat it is Agile or not Agile. Like when my child comes up to me and says, hey, you know about that going to university thing, I was thinking of taking a gap year. Okay, wait a minute, that's a change. That doesn't mean no, it means you're laughing, right? But that's a change. And so we respond to change, but we still have a plan. Ula Ojiaku It makes sense. So the reason, and I completely resonate with everything you said, the reason I raised that ROI and it not being known is that in some situations, people might be tempted to use it to game the budget allocation decision making process. That's why I said you would pluck the ROI. Luke Hohmann Okay, let's talk about that. We actually address this in our recent paper, but I'll give you my personal experience. You are vastly more likely to get bad behaviour on ROI analysis when you do not do Participatory Budgeting, because there's no social construct to prevent bad behaviour. If I'm sitting down at a table and that's virtual or physical, it doesn't matter, but let's take a perfect optimum size for a Participatory Budgeting group. Six people, let's say I'm a Director or a Senior Director in a company, and I'm sitting at a table and there's another Senior Director who's a peer, maybe there's a VP, maybe there's a person from engineering, maybe there's a person from sales and we've got this mix of people and I'm sitting at that table. I am not incented to come in with an inflated ROI because those people are really intelligent and given enough time, they're not going to support my initiative because I'm fibbing, I'm lying. And I have a phrase for this, it's when ROI becomes RO-lie that it's dangerous. And so when I'm sitting at that table, what we find consistently, and one of the clients that we did a fair amount of Participatory Budgeting for years ago with Cisco, what we found was the leaders at Cisco were creating tighter, more believable, and more defensible economic projections, precisely because they knew that they were going to be sitting with their peers, and it didn't matter. It can go both ways. Sometimes people will overestimate the ROI or they underestimate the cost. Same outcome, right? I'm going to overestimate the benefit, and people would be like, yeah, I don't think you can build that product with three teams. You're going to need five or six teams and people go, oh, I can get it done with, you know, 20 people. Yeah, I don't think so, because two years ago, we built this product. It's very similar, and, you know, we thought we could get it done with 20 people and we couldn't. We really needed, you know, a bigger group. So you see the social construct creating a more believable set of results because people come to the Participatory Budgeting session knowing that their peers are in the room. And of course, we think we're smart, so our peers are as smart as we are, we're all smart people, and therefore, the social construct of Participatory Budgeting quite literally creates a better input, which creates a better output. Ula Ojiaku That makes sense, definitely. Thanks for sharing that. I've found that very, very insightful and something I can easily apply. The reasoning behind it, the social pressure, quote unquote, knowing that you're not just going to put the paper forward but you'd have to defend it in a credible, believable way make sense. So just to wrap up now, what books have you found yourself recommending to people the most, and why? Luke Hohmann It's so funny, I get yelled at by my wife for how many books I buy. She'll go like “It's Amazon again. Another book. You know, there's this thing called the library.” Ula Ojiaku You should do Participatory Budgeting for your books then sounds like, sorry. Luke Hohmann No, no, I don't, I'd lose. Gosh, I love so many books. So there's a few books that I consider to be my go-to references and my go-to classics, but I also recommend that people re-read books and sometimes I recommend re-reading books is because you're a different person, and as you age and as you grow and you see things differently and in fact, I'm right now re-reading and of course it goes faster, but I'm re-reading the original Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck, a fantastic book. I just finished reading a few new books, but let me let me give you a couple of classics that I think everyone in our field should read and why they should read them. I think everyone should read The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks because he really covers some very profound truths that haven't changed, things like Brooks Law, which is adding programmers to a late project, makes it later. He talks about the structure of teams and how to scale before scaling was big and important and cool. He talks about communication and conceptual integrity and the role of the architect. The other book that I'm going to give, which I hope is different than any book that anyone has ever given you, because it's one of my absolute favourite books and I give them away, is a book called Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Comics or graphic novels are an important medium for communication, and when we talk about storytelling and we talk about how to frame information and how to present information, understanding comics is profoundly insightful in terms of how to present, share, show information. A lot of times I think we make things harder than they should be. So when I'm working with executives and some of the clients that I work with personally, when we talk about our epics, we actually will tell stories about the hero's journey and we actually hire comic book artists to help the executives tell their story in a comic form or in a graphic novel form. So I absolutely love understanding comics. I think that that's really a profound book. Of course you mentioned Alex Osterwalder's books, Business Model Generation, Business Model Canvas. Those are fantastic books for Product Managers. I also, just looking at my own bookshelves, of course, Innovation Games for PMs, of course Software Profit Streams because we have to figure out how to create sustainability, but in reality there's so many books that we love and that we share and that we grow together when we're sharing books and I'll add one thing. Please don't only limit your books to technical books. We're humans too. I recently, this week and what I mean recent I mean literally this weekend I was visiting one of my kids in Vermont all the way across the country, and so on the plane ride I finished two books, one was a very profound and deeply written book called Ponyboy. And then another one was a very famous book on a woman protagonist who's successful in the 60s, Lessons in Chemistry, which is a new book that's out, and it was a super fun light read, some interesting lessons of course, because there's always lessons in books, and now if it's okay if I'm not overstepping my boundaries, what would be a book that you'd like me to read? I love to add books to my list. Ula Ojiaku Oh my gosh, I didn't know. You are the first guest ever who's twisted this on me, but I tend to read multiple books at a time. Luke Hohmann Only two. Ula Ojiaku Yeah, so, and I kind of switch, maybe put some on my bedside and you know there's some on my Kindle and in the car, just depending. So I'm reading multiple books at a time, but based on what you've said the one that comes to mind is the new book by Oprah Winfrey and it's titled What Happened to You? Understanding Trauma, because like you said, it's not just about reading technical books and we're human beings and we find out that people behave probably sometimes in ways that are different to us, and it's not about saying what's wrong with you, because there is a story that we might not have been privy to, you know, in terms of their childhood, how they grew up, which affected their worldview and how they are acting, so things don't just suddenly happen. And the question that we have been asked and we sometimes ask of people, and for me, I'm reading it from a parent's perspective because I understand that even more so that my actions, my choices, they play a huge, you know, part in shaping my children. So it's not saying what's wrong with you? You say, you know, what happened to you? And it traces back to, based on research, because she wrote it with a renowned psychologist, I don't know his field but a renowned psychologist, so neuroscience-based psychological research on human beings, attachment theory and all that, just showing how early childhood experiences, even as early as maybe a few months old, tend to affect people well into adulthood. So that would be my recommendation. Luke Hohmann Thank you so much. That's a gift. Ula Ojiaku Thank you. You're the first person to ask me. So, my pleasure. So, before we go to the final words, where can the audience find you, because you have a wealth of knowledge, a wealth of experience, and I am sure that people would want to get in touch with you, so how can they do this please? Luke Hohmann Yeah, well, they can get me on LinkedIn and they can find me at Applied Frameworks. I tell you, I teach classes that are known to be very profound because we always reserve, myself and the instructors at Applied Frameworks, we have very strong commitments to reserving class time for what we call the parking lot or the ask me anything question, which are many times after I've covered the core material in the class, having the opportunity to really frame how to apply something is really important. So I would definitely encourage people to take one of my classes because you'll not get the material, you'll get the reasons behind the material, which means you can apply it, but you'll also be able to ask us questions and our commitment as a company is you can ask us anything and if we don't know the answer, we'll help you find it. We'll help you find the expert or the person that you need talk to, to help you out and be successful. And then, and I think in terms of final words, I will simply ask people to remember that we get to work in the most amazing field building things for other people and it's joyful work, and we, one of my phrases is you're not doing Agile, if you're not having fun at work, there's something really wrong, there's something missing, yeah we need to retrospect and we need to improve and we need to reflect and all those important things, absolutely, but we should allow ourselves to experience the joy of serving others and being of service and building things that matter. Ula Ojiaku I love the concept of joyful Agile and getting joy in building things that matter, serving people and may I add also working together with amazing people, and for me it's been a joyful conversation with you, Luke, I really appreciate you making the time, I am definitely richer and more enlightened as a result of this conversation, so thank you so much once more. Luke Hohmann Thank you so much for having me here, thank you everyone for listening with us. Ula Ojiaku  My pleasure. That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless!   

Shelia Anderson parlayed a love of learning into studying the emerging field of engineering when she began her undergraduate education. After gaining experience leading IT teams in the technology, airline, and insurance industries, she joined Aflac in the summer of 2022. Shelia joins Sam and Shervin to share how using artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the processing of somewhat routine insurance claims frees up staff members to spend more time serving customers and processing more complex, higher-value claims. She also discusses the types of skills she looks for in data science and engineering talent beyond technical capabilities, and why she believes the insurance industry offers a great opportunity for people interested in a career working with AI and machine learning. Read the episode transcript here. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. *NEW! For specific takeaways from this episode and guidance on how you can implement them in your own work, download our episode toolkit here. Guest bio: Shelia Anderson joined Aflac in July 2022 as senior vice president and CIO. She is responsible for overseeing the company's digital services division and driving technology strategy in support of the insurer's U.S. business. Anderson has a rich history as an executive leading the IT functions at Fortune 500 global organizations, including Liberty Mutual, USAA, HP, and Electronic Data Systems. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials. We want to know how you feel about Me, Myself, and AI. Please take a short, two-question survey.

Description: In this episode, I am speaking with Howard Waldstreicher. He is the author of Facebook's Oldest Intern: How a 60-year-old fitness trainer reinvented himself with the most unlikely of companies. This is a fascinating story of how Howard, who was totally screwed in the pandemic as a gym owner and fitness trainer, picked himself up and revived a previous career, and got hired at Facebook at the age of 60. Here is how Howard describes himself on his Amazon author page. Call him what you will - a gadfly, a shortie, or a squeaky-voiced Texas cowboy. But I had a blast working for Ross Perot. At age 26, this Queens-born boy got his first real job as a computer programmer for Perot's Electronic Data Systems in Plano, Texas. I liked the structure and the dress code: wingtip shoes, blue and grey suits, short haircuts, and conservative ties. In fact, if you dared to visit the bathroom without your jacket it was grounds for termination. These days, things are a little bit different. At 60 (61 now), I stumble out of bed, throw on some sweatpants, and meander to my desk. Nobody cares if I've brushed my hair or if I've showered, or if I'm wearing pants. After all, I work at Facebook. Wait, it's Meta now. Well, that's what the millennials tell me, anyway. They've helped me with a lot of stuff I don't know since I'm the oldest employee at the office, definitely top three. Thing is, despite the fact that it's the alter universe from Perot's clean-cut company, I absolutely freaking love it. I landed the job after a 20-year hiatus from the information technology world, during which time I ran a fitness center, was a tennis instructor, and had a family. So, not only did I leave my field, but I left the world of having to answer to a boss - at all. My adult kids thought my new gig was cool. No other employer would even speak to me about a job at my age. This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and be sure to pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition. For the full show notes and resources mentioned in the episode click here.  

Take advantage of this episode 70 of the Purpose-Driven Wealth podcast! Join us as we welcome Chris Rawley, a 29-year military veteran and founder of Harvest Returns, who discusses an innovative investment platform that brings together investors and farmers in the agriculture industry. Discover how Chris' extensive travels in Africa led him to invest in farms and start his platform, which democratizes access to agricultural investments beyond the reach of smaller farmers and those in niche agrarian spaces. From grass-fed cattle to indoor agriculture and hydroponics, we explore the many investment opportunities in this wide-open space, often providing safe and risk-adjusted yields. Tune in as we discuss everything from commodities and inflation to crowdfunding and different investment strategies within the industry. In this episode, you will learn about… Chris's background and how it led to his involvement in agricultural investing Harvest Returns, a platform for investing in agriculture, and the niche agricultural spaces it focuses on Indoor agriculture and its various types, including hydroponics, greenhouses, and vertical farms Investment opportunities in the agricultural space And so much more! About Chris Rawley: While serving as a career naval officer, Chris Rawley visited dozens of war-torn and poverty stricken countries and began to appreciate the importance of agriculture to every single person on earth. As a professional investor with this new found appreciation, he decided to invest in a farm, but quickly discovered that these types of assets were inaccessible to the average person. The problem drove him to create Harvest Returns in 2016 to democratize investments in agriculture. Rawley has held corporate management roles in Jones Lang LaSalle, Electronic Data Systems, L-3 Communications, and served as a defense consultant at Special Operations Command with Blackbird Technologies.  He has invested in real estate and income-producing agriculture for nearly two decades. Rawley is an angel investor in early stage agriculture and food companies, including the Indian agriculture FinTech company Jai Kisan. He serves on the advisory board of the AgTech start-up AgroFides. Catch Chris Rawley on... Website: https://www.harvestreturns.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/harvestreturns/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisrawley/ Connect with Mo Bina on… Website: https://www.high-risecapital.com/ Medium: https://mobina.medium.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5ISsEKBHlkX7lk9b68SKLA/featured Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/highrisecapital/ For more information on passive investing in commercial real estate, please check out our free eBook — More Doors, More Profits — by clicking here: https://www.high-risecapital.com/resources-index

Welcome to December 15, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate impossible jobs and inalienable rights.  One of the most successful television commercials of all time featured a mockumentary depiction of cat herding. The tongue in cheek interviews of rugged cowboys and their errant kitties aired during the Big Game of 2000. This ad put Electronic Data Systems in the spotlight as it perfectly highlighted the difficulty of leading a team. The earned PR benefits and multiple ad awards put EDS on top. Since then, the company founded by Ross Perot in 1962 was acquired by Hewlett Packard and following its history since is a bit like, well, herding cats. If your job feels like a struggle to maintain order you may want to celebrate Cat Herders Day, by taking the day off. During the First Constitutional Convention of 1787, the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution, though not everyone was satisfied with the results. Edmund Randolph, George Mason and Elbridge Gerry felt strongly that a separate document of individual rights should be made. James Madison of Virginia took up the cause and drafted such a list. These personal rights were trimmed down to 17 by the House and another 5 were removed by the Senate. Eventually 10 of the 12 were ratified by the States on December 15, 1791, and our Nation's Bill of Rights was formally adopted. This document holds even more relevance today and we celebrate Bill of Rights Day by remembering those who held firm to its creation.  I'm Anna Devere and I'm Marlo Anderson. Thanks for joining us as we Celebrate Every Day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Harvest Returns CEO Chris Rawley joins the show to talk about the different type of agricultural (AG) investments they offer. Harvest Returns has some unique investments including tech plays, indoor farming, cattle, aquaculture and more. Johnny and Derek discuss their thoughts on the food industry as a whole and whether they'd invest in these. The guys also do a quick followup on their car situations since they last spoke about them in ILAB 236. While serving as a career naval officer, Chris Rawley visited dozens of war-torn and poverty stricken countries and began to appreciate the importance of agriculture to every single person on earth. As a professional investor with this new found appreciation, he decided to invest in a farm, but quickly discovered that these types of assets were inaccessible to the average person. The problem drove him to create Harvest Returns in 2016 to democratize investments in agriculture. Rawley has held corporate management roles in Jones Lang LaSalle, Electronic Data Systems, L-3 Communications, and served as a defense consultant at Special Operations Command with Blackbird Technologies. He has invested in real estate and income-producing agriculture for nearly two decades. Rawley is an angel investor in early stage agriculture and food companies, including the Indian agriculture FinTech company Jai Kisan. He serves on the advisory board of the AgTech start-up AgroFides. Rawley is a Captain in the Navy Reserve, serving as the Reserve Chief of Staff for United States SIXTH Fleet, and provides oversight for more than 500 sailors operating across Europe and Africa. During his 29 year military career, Rawley has filled a variety of leadership positions in naval, expeditionary, and joint special operations units afloat and ashore. He has deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Western Pacific. Rawley has a degree from Texas A&M University, earned an MBA at George Washington University, and is a graduate of the U.S. Naval War College. He is the author of Unconventional Warfare 2.0 and an avid water sports enthusiast. Listen to ILAB 240 on iTunes here or subscribe on your favorite podcast app. Where we are: Johnny FD – Ukraine / IG @johnnyfdj Sam Marks – Barcelona / IG @imsammarks Derek Spartz – Los Angeles / IG @DerekRadio Sponsor: Netsuite Join the #1 Cloud Financial System now at Netsuite.com/ILAB and receive a special one-of-a-kind financing offer. Discussed Harvest Returns Harvest Returns | Facebook Harvest Returns | Twitter Harvest Returns | LinkedIn Harvest Returns | Instagram Like these investments? Try them with these special ILAB links: ArtofFX – Start with just a $10,000 account (reduced from $25,000) Fundrise – Start with only $1,000 into their REIT funds (non-accredited investors OK) *Johnny and Sam use all of the above services personally. Time Stamp: 12:22 – How did  you get into the agricultural space? 16:08 – What are your thoughts on the US agricultural system as compared to other countries? 18:59 – How is the agricultural market correlated to the stock market? 21:58 – Was it harder to invest in agriculture 15 years ago? 23:26 – Can you expand on corporate farming and technology? 25:24 – How do prices of crops vary year-to-year? 28:19 – What is AG tech? 30:01 – Are there any particular animals you prefer to invest in? 32:16 – What are some examples of indoor agriculture? 36:34 – What concerns are there about climate change? 39:58 – How do you come across these deals? 41:02 – Who can invest and where can you invest and how much does it cost to invest? 44:08 – Approximately how much assets do you have under management? 46:42 – How are the returns on investments done? 47:34 – How would you say your company is different from your competitors? 49:21 – What investment are you really excited about? If you enjoyed this episode, do us a favor and share it! Also if you haven't already, please take a minute to leave us a 5-star review on iTunes and claim your bonus here!  Copyright 2022. All rights reserved. Read our disclaimer here.

“[In contrast to] the ‘either/or', ‘right/wrong' mindset where there's nothing in between - paradoxical thinking would say, ‘What if it's both? What if there's value in understanding the first path, and value in equally understanding the other path, and even the third?' … It's about being able to hold that tension between paths.” – Renee Moorefield Finding comfort in the contradiction When we experience a paradox, we feel pulled in separate directions, without a clear or simple solution. Most of us find sitting with that paradox uncomfortable, which is why we tend to look for a quick and easy solution - something we can rally around as well as defend. Our brains to do not like open loops, which makes tolerating paradox uncomfortable and why we avoid the feeling of being stuck in the middle! Renee Moorefield's Be Well Lead Well Pulse assessment measures the wellbeing of leaders across 19 dimensions. Research conducted by external experts shows that when leaders have a strong sense of wellbeing, they're more able to thrive amidst paradoxical situations. They can more easily navigate opposing ideas, extract important elements from each, and propose integrated solutions. So when we expand our minds beyond the binary, we can avoid oversimplification and transcend it to create new, richer and more sustainable paths. Be Well Lead Well Pulse overview [04:12] “The Be Well Lead Well Pulse assessment is built on a framework of thriving, and the framework of thriving has 19 dimensions of wellbeing and stress resilience [that] feed into six dimensions…the framework was built to support leaders and all of us in having a sense of internal resourcefulness, and meet our complex demands.” Wellbeing and paradoxical leadership [24:06] “[You have] the ability to transcend the situation, because you're looking for other perspectives, so you're not stuck in the conflict. You're really looking at it like, ‘I wonder how this could be true,' almost with a sense of play and experimentation and looking for value - and then looking for another perspective that transcends what you feel you're in.” [23:25] “We found that leaders reporting high levels of well-being were 38% (so close to 40%) more apt to report scoring high in their ability to lead paradoxes.” Our brainstorm of practices [27:22] “A paradox is not a problem that can be solved easily…To understand, usually have to slow down and start asking questions and start seeking a new perspective that maybe you weren't taking on the situation.” [43:29] “As a daily routine, [start] a very basic mindfulness practice…the heart of mindfulness is about being present in the moment without judging it as good or bad, right or wrong, either/or…that alone can create insight, and possibly some movement, just becoming aware without judgment.” Previous episodes with Renee Moorefield: Episode 6: An Essential Link: Wellbeing and Leader Effectiveness https://rise-leaders.com/podcast?ppplayer=2166354b3000fc311ad1272907939efb&ppepisode=1bc82973e146e48e32750026acef538d Episode 24: Leadership, Ethnicity + Wellbeing | Renee Moorefield & Jane Cocking https://rise-leaders.com/podcast?ppplayer=2166354b3000fc311ad1272907939efb&ppepisode=56f067defda899999cbb06f0e8d904d6   Resources: Be Well Lead Well Pulse Insights:  Effectively Leading Through Paradox:  A Pivotal Role for Wellbeing https://www.bewellleadwell.com/effectively-leading-through-paradox/ Renee Moorefield https://www.linkedin.com/in/reneemoorefield/ Be Well Lead Well Pulse https://www.bewellleadwell.com/ Be Well Lead Well Pulse certification program in May 2022:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/be-well-lead-well-pulse-certification-a-remote-learning-experience-registration-258172730587 Thinking Hats - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Thinking_Hats EDS:  Electronic Data Systems:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Data_Systems Newsletter sign up: https://mailchi.mp/426e78bc9538/subscribe To discuss executive coaching, leadership development program design, and workshop facilitation, please visit: https://rise-leaders.com/contact-info/

Nicole Calhoun is a high-energy and results-oriented professional who has worked with diverse multi-cultural teams around the world. She brings 25 years of corporate and technology experience to her training workshops. Nicole's technical experience includes enterprise level technology systems with such roles as Software Engineering, Business Systems Analysis and Project Management.  Her industry knowledge includes Financial & Merchant Services, Retirement & Payroll Services, Manufacturing and Automotive.  Nicole's work experience includes companies like: JP Morgan Chase & Co., General Motors, Delphi, Detroit Diesel, National Steel Corporation and Electronic Data Systems (now DXC). As a certified John Maxwell Team trainer and coach, Nicole is prepared to deliver content that adds value through an inspiring, engaging, and exciting experience that you will enjoy.  CONNECT WITH NICOLEWebsite   LinkedIn  Learning Circle WaitlistEPISODE AND EMPOWERING WOMEN IN INDUSTRY LINKSSkills Assessment from NicolePresence by Amy CuddyAmy Cuddy TED Speaker PageBook:  Unlocking Your Authentic Self:  Overcoming Imposter Syndrome, Enhancing Self-confidence, and Banishing Self-doubtEmpowering Women WebsiteEmpowering Women Slack ChannelEmpowering Women Events (Including Meet Ups)QUOTES AND KEY TAKEAWAYS“The more I began working with women I began to realize I wasn't alone. We have this struggle, I realize, as women that we want to advance and we want more but we feel like we're stuck.”“One day I realized that we're not one of the guys and we're not supposed to be. Many times we start trying to emulate what is around us because we think that is how we want to advance.”“Yes we learn from each other, but we need to stay true to who we are. We need to be courageous enough to be who we are.”“What I've learned is we will never be fully satisfied until we find out who we are and allow that person to show up everywhere, even in the workplace.”“As women our tendency is to overlook our own value…. We tend to diminish our own work - what we have done and what we have accomplished. We play it down and praise the work of others.”“We're all a package of talents, skills, and abilities, but we don't even see them because we underplay our own accomplishments.”Executive Presence:  “Confidence gives that person that ‘wow factor'. When you become comfortable with who you are that confidence shows up.”Imposter Syndrome:  “No matter the level; we all struggle with it… It comes from a lack of self-discovery or when we're challenging our limits.”Universal Misconception of Humility: “This (self-promotion) doesn't feel right to because I was taught to be humble.”

The Growing Investment Opportunities in Agriculture – Private Equity Profit Podcast with Seth Greene & Cliff Locks Episode 034 Chris Rawley Chris Rawley founded Harvest Returns in the fall of 2016 with the intention of providing farmers with flexible, responsive funding sources by connecting them to investors. His passion for bringing more people closer to the producers of their food is reflected in the company's motto of “Democratizing Investments in Agriculture.” He is the fund manager of the company's Sustainable Agriculture Opportunity Zone Fund. Rawley is a native of Dallas, Texas and currently resides in Fort Worth. After several years as an active duty naval officer, his interest in real asset investing began as a property manager with Jones Lang LaSalle, running a $100 million commercial portfolio in Dallas. Subsequent to that position, he held corporate management roles in Electronic Data Systems and L-3 Communications and served as a defense consultant at United States Special Operations Command with Blackbird Technologies. He has invested in residential and commercial real estate, including income-producing agriculture, for more than twenty years. Rawley is a Captain in the United States Navy Reserve having served in Afghanistan, Iraq, throughout Africa, the Persian Gulf, and Western Pacific. Listen to this informative Private Equity Profits episode with Chris Rawley about the investments opportunities in agriculture that are only going to grow.   Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week's show: How Chris' tour around the globe as a reservist highlighted for him investment opportunities in agriculture The appreciation for an automated platform that the real estate industry provided Chris Agriculture as one of the few industries that touch everyone on the planet The problems in our country's agricultural finance system Grass-fed as a growing brand to invest in Growing food indoors and how it creates a sustainable investment opportunity Technology's effect on agriculture's revolution The social benefits of investing in agriculture The benefits for farmers who seek out investors as opposed to traditional bank loans     Connect with Chris: Links Mentioned: www.harvestreturns.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/harvestreturns Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarvestReturns Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harvestreturns/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/harvest-returns/   Connect with Seth: seth@marketdominationllc.com   Connect with Cliff Website investmentcapitalgrowth.com Email cliff@investmentcapitalgrowth.com       Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today's episode of the mi-brand HQ podcast, I am speaking to Tony Glasby In March 2021, Tony joined PPRO gmbh as SVP for Banking & Payments Strategy. PPRO GmbH is a privately held Fintech company, headquartered in Germany with an ambition to be a leading global infrastructure provider for cross border payments. Leveraging on his 35+ year corporate career, and extensive Finance and Regulatory expertise, he will assist this highly talented team to realize its potential in a very fast evolving industry. Previously, after joining Ebay in 2010 as VP and Group Treasurer , Tony supported the separation of EBay Inc. and PayPal Inc. in 2015, where he led the Capital Structure & Treasury workstreams. After choosing to continue in his role at PayPal, he was responsible for their worldwide Treasury functions, which include capital markets, cash management, regulatory compliance support, financial strategy, foreign exchange, investments, insurance and capital allocation. Earlier in his career, he held various senior Finance and Business roles at HP Enterprise Services, Electronic Data Systems and Reed International PLC. He has worked in London, Dallas, Singapore and Silicon Valley. Tony is a Fellow of the Association of Corporate Treasurers, a Chartered Management Accountant and earned a BA Hons in Business from the University of Westminster, London. Tony and his wife, Julie, live in Texas and their daughter, Lauren, in Brooklyn. In his spare time, he enjoys wine collecting, football, rugby (watching) and golf. In today's episode, Tony discusses several themes – Sharing perspectives, learning and challenges during his 35 year accomplished career On Career Management and the early realisation that: ‘I Own My Own Career!' On Compensation: Focus on the value of the role to both you and the company, and less on the pay Be adaptable to change when it comes to Company Culture, Big vs Small organisations, and Remote v Office working Learning is a constant – keep up with the pace of change! You can connect with Tony on LinkedIn at – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-glasby-b010548a/ The Life Leadership Podcast – with Leila Singh, is all things Coaching, Career & Personal Branding! This podcast is for ambitious career professionals, especially aspiring executives, working in the technology industry, wanting to uncover your real potential, create new possibilities and accelerate your career - to BE DO & HAVE more, whilst redefining your success, in work, relationships, health and much more. Life Leadership: Creating a life and career of choice, fulfilment and new possibilities! As well as discussing common coaching topics and challenges that my clients overcome, I will also explore aspects of career advancement and personal branding in the workplace.  And of course, continue to interview high-achieving leaders and execs in the tech space, who have carved out a successful career in their field, overcome challenges, and are openly willing to share their career journey, learnings and insights with you. Please SUBSCRIBE to this podcast, leave a REVIEW and SHARE with those that may benefit from this content. If you would like to learn more about working with me, Direct Message me on LinkedIn or email me at ⁠⁠⁠hello@leilasingh.com⁠⁠⁠ Connect directly with me here - ⁠⁠⁠www.linkedin.com/in/leila-singh/⁠⁠⁠ Register here to receive your copy of The mi-brand Personal Brand Playbook - ⁠⁠⁠www.leilasingh.com/go/playbook⁠⁠⁠ And check out - >>> This article by https://BestPodcasts.co.uk, who curated a list of the Best Career Podcasts of 2023, offering unique and actionable insights to help you achieve your career goals - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.bestpodcasts.co.uk/best-career-podcasts/⁠⁠ with our podcast ‘Life Leadership' featuring in the Top 5!

Podbean HTML Code snippet:  ------------ Chris Rawley has held corporate management roles in Jones Lang LaSalle, Electronic Data Systems, L-3 Communications, and served as a defense consultant at Special Operations Command with Blackbird Technologies.  He has invested in real estate and income-producing agriculture for nearly two decades. Rawley is an angel investor in early-stage agriculture and food companies, including the Indian agriculture FinTech company Jai Kisan. He serves on the advisory board of the AgTech start-up AgroFides. Rawley is a Captain in the Navy Reserve, serving as the Reserve Chief of Staff for United States SIXTH Fleet, and provides oversight for more than 500 sailors operating across Europe and Africa. During his 29 year military career, Rawley has filled a variety of leadership positions in naval, expeditionary, and joint special operations units afloat and ashore. He has deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Western Pacific.  Rawley has a degree from Texas A&M University, earned an MBA at George Washington University, and is a graduate of the U.S. Naval War College.    [00:01 - 04:43] Opening Segment Get to know Chris Rawley Who is Chris and What is Harvest Returns? Real estate and farming    [04:44 - 09:56] Agriculture Investing  Where do I get started? Agricultural Financing Systems What's out there that's worth investing in? From wineries to elderberry farms   [09:57 - 24:28] Taking Food to the Next Level Return of Investment and Cash Flow Equity and Supplemental Debts Not necessarily premium products but all way nutritious and delicious Indoor Agriculture and Vertical Farms are Amazing! Chris talks about Hemp CBD Evaluating similar investments from the outside Projecting Commodity Prices   [24:29 - 31:26] Closing Segment Quick break for our sponsors Groundfloor offers short-term, high-yield real estate debt investments to the general public. Check www.passivewealthstrategy.com/groundfloor/ to get started. What is the best investment you've ever made other than your education? Harvest Returns Chris's worst investment In Dot-com Bubble What is the most important lesson that you've learned in business and investing? Risk management Connect with my guest. See the links below.   Tweetable Quotes: “Like real estate, agriculture is local.” - Chris Rawley “The end product, it's high quality. The way it's grown, I think, is a little bit sexier than growing in a field and is certainly, you know, more sustainable.” - Chris Rawley “You've got to really have a handle on your risk.” - Chris Rawley ------------ Connect with Chris Rawley through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.  Visit their website https://www.harvestreturns.com/.    Invest passively in multiple commercial real estate assets such as apartments, self storage, medical facilities, hotels and more through https://www.passivewealthstrategy.com/crowdstreet/ Participate directly in real estate investment loans on a fractional basis. Go to www.passivewealthstrategy.com/groundfloor/ and get ready to invest on your own terms.  LEAVE A REVIEW + help someone who wants to explode their business growth by sharing this episode or click here to listen to our previous episodes                     

Ross Perot built two powerhouse companies and changed the way politicians communicate with their constituents. Perot was an Eagle Scout who went on to join the US Naval Academy in 1949, and served in the Navy until the late 1950s. He then joined the IBM sales organization and one year ended up meeting his quota in the second week of the year. He had all kinds of ideas for new things to do and sell, but no one was interested. So he left and formed a new company called Electronic Data Systems, or EDS, in 1962. You see, these IBM mainframes weren't being used for time sharing so most of the time they were just sitting idle. So he could sell the unused time from one company to another. Perot learned from the best. As with IBM he maintained a strict dress code. Suits, no facial hair, and a high and tight crew cut as you'd find him still sporting years after his Navy days. And over time they figured out many of these companies didn't have anyone capable of running these machines in the first place, so they could also step in and become a technology outsourcer, doing maintenance and servicing machines. Not only that, but they were perfectly situated to help process all the data from the new Medicare and Medicaid programs that were just starting up. States had a lot of new paperwork to process and that meant computers. He hired Morton Meyerson out at Bell Helicopter in 1966, who would become the president and effectively created the outsourcing concept in computing. Meyerson would become the president of EDS before leaving to take a series of executive roles at other organizations, including the CTO at General Motors in the 1980s before retiring. EDS went public in 1968. He'd taken $1,000 in seed money from his wife Margot to start the company, and his stake was now worth $350 million, which would rise sharply in the ensuing years as the company grew. By the 1970s they were practically printing cash. They were the biggest insurance data provider and added credit unions then financial markets and were perfectly positioned to help build the data networks that ATMs and point of sale systems would use. By the start of 1980 they were sitting on a quarter billion dollars in revenues and 8,000 employees. They continued to expand into new industries with more transactional needs, adding airlines and travel. He sold in 1984 to General Motors for $2.5 billion and Perot got $700 million personally. Meyerson stayed on to run the company and by 1990 their revenues topped $5 billion and neared 50,000 employees. Perot just couldn't be done in business. He was good at it. So in 1988 he started another firm, Perot Systems. The company grew quickly. Perot knew how to sell, how to build sales teams, and how to listen to customers and build services products they wanted. Perot again looked for an effective leader and tapped Meyerson yet again, who became the CEO of Perot Systems from 1992 to 1998. Perot's son Ross Jr took over the company. In 2008, EDS and their 170,000 employees was sold to Hewlett-Packard for $13.9 billion and in 2009 Perot Systems was sold to Dell for $3.9 billion. Keep in mind that Morton Meyerson was a mentor to Michael Dell. When they were sold, Perot Systems had 23,000 employees and $2.8 billion in revenues. That's roughly a 1.4x multiple of revenues, which isn't as good as the roughly 2x multiple Perot got off EDS - but none too shabby given that by then multiples were down for outsourcers. Based on his work and that of others, they'd built two companies worth nearly $20 billion - before 2010, employing nearly 200,000 people. Along the way, Perot had some interesting impacts other than just building so many jobs for so many humans. He passed on an opportunity to invest in this little company called Microsoft. So when Steve Jobs left Apple and looked for investors he jumped on board, pumping $20 million into NeXT Computer, and getting a nice exit when the company went to Apple for nearly half a billion. Perot was philanthropic. He helped a lot of people coming home from various armed services in his lifetime. He was good to those he loved. He gave $10 million to have his friend Morton Meyerson's name put on the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's Symphony Center. And he was interested in no BS politics. Yet politics had been increasingly polarized since Nixon. So Perot also ran for president of the US in 1992, against George Bush and Bill Clinton. He didn't win but he flooded the airwaves with common sense arguments about government inefficiency and a declining market for doing business. He showed computer graphics with all the charts and graphs you can imagine. And while he didn't get even one vote in the electoral college did manage to get 19 percent of the vote. His message was one of populism. Take the country back, stop deficit spending just like he ran his companies, and that persists with various wings of especially the Republican Party to this day. Especially in Perot's home state of Texas. He didn't win, but he effectively helped define the Contract with America that that Newt Gingrich and the 90s era of oversized suit jacket Republicans used to as a strategy. He argued for things to help the common people - not politicians. Ironically, those that took much of his content actually did just the opposite, slowed down the political machine by polarizing the public. And allowed deficit spending to increase on their watch. He ran again in 1996 but this time got far less votes and didn't end up running for office again. He had a similar impact on IBM. Around 30 years after leaving the company, his success in services was one of the many inspirations for IBM pivoting into services as well. By then the services industry was big enough for plenty of companies to thrive and while sales could be competitive they all did well as personal computing put devices on desks across the world and those devices needed support. Perot died in 2019, one of the couple hundred richest people in the US. Navy Lieutenant. Founder. Philanthropist. Texan. Father. Husband. His impact on the technology industry was primarily around seeing waste. Wasted computing time. Wasted staffing where more efficient outsourcing paradigms were possible. He inspired massive shifts in the industry that persist to this day.

Storytelling by the speaker combined with audience participation is a winner.  We shouldn't go crazy and over do it of course, but we definitely should use this technique.   Whenever I am in the USA, I love watching the different television preachers in action.  I am not looking for salvation particularly, but I am looking for hints on how to work an audience.  Now obviously competing with their promises on how to get to heaven is going to be difficult, but we can see some things that work which we can use in business for ourselves.    They are master storytellers, usually using Bible incidents to make a point in the here and now.  The parables in the Bible are all mini-episodes, which teach a point about success.  As speakers, we have a topic to address, a key message we want communicate and the platform to do so.  How can we add stories to our talk which will bolster the point we are making?  The best stories are the ones people can see in their mind's eye.  It is a bit like reading a novel, after you have seen the video series or the movie based on the book.  You can easily picture the scenes, the situation, the characters, the backdrops, etc.   This is what we should be looking to create.  Short descriptions of incidents that inform a certain course of action.  There should be people involved, preferably people they know already.  We want locations they can imagine.  We weave our point into these stories and draw conclusions for the audience on what course they should take.    For example, if we wanted people to think about the importance of keeping key staff, we could tell a story like this one:  “The “top gun” sales guy gets the call from the big boss and is ushered into the plush Presidential office.  There he encounters the spacious room's dark paneled walls, the impressive hardbound books on the shelves, the massive mahogany desk, the expensive paintings, the carefully coiffed secretary - all the accoutrements of power and success.  Top gun had met his annual sales quota in just two weeks and was expecting the accolades deserving from such an achievement.  The discussion however was on lowering his commission rate, because he was making more money than the President.  Ross Perot left IBM and went on to create Electronic Data Systems and became a billionaire.  We want to make sure we create reward systems that keep our top talent and we as leaders need to take our egos out of the equation”.   Probably everyone has seen a movie scene with this type of décor or they could easily imagine it.  Now I could have just suggested the punch line – “throttle back on our egos, amply reward our stars and keep our top talent” but the lead up sets the scene for the audience and makes it more powerful.    I could have ramped it up even more by engaging the audience with some showmanship by then saying, “Bosses in the room, if you don't want to lose your top talent, say “no way”. Now I would say this, while cupping my hand to my ear, to draw out some responses. If it wasn't energetic enough, I could continue by saying, “Ah, I didn't catch that?” again, cupping my hand to my ear fishing for a response. After they answer “no way”, I could say, “That's right! I am with you, I don't want to lose any of my key people either! Now let me give you some ideas on how we can achieve that”, So we put it all together: “The “top gun” sales guy gets the call from the big boss and is ushered into the plush Presidential office.  There he encounters the spacious room's dark paneled walls, the impressive hardbound books on the shelves, the massive mahogany desk, the expensive paintings, the carefully coiffed secretary - all the accoutrements of power and success.  Top gun had met his annual sales quota in just two weeks and was expecting the accolades deserving from such an achievement.  The discussion however was on lowering his commission rate, because he was making more money than the President.  Ross Perot left IBM and went on to create Electronic Data Systems and became a billionaire.  We want to make sure we create reward systems that keep our top talent and we as leaders need to take our egos out of the equation. Bosses in the room, if you don't want to lose your top talent, say “no way”. Ah, I didn't catch that?  That's right! I am with you, I don't want to lose any of my key people either! Now let me give you some ideas on how we can achieve that”.   This is a simple example of combining storytelling, with a bit of showmanship.  We need to use this in moderation though or it can quickly feel manipulative.  It will however lift the energy in the audience and grab their attention, as you download your key points.  Try adding some stories into your next presentation and see where you can add in some showmanship as well, to engage with the audience members.  Let's become more memorable as presenters, but in a good way!!!

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 189, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: I'm On Cloud "Nine" 1: This Hugh Grant movie was based on the French film "Neuf mois". Nine Months. 2: This hit song begins "Tumble out of bed and stumble to the kitchen, pour myself a cup of ambition". "9 To 5". 3: In this comedy, dentist Matthew Perry meets up with hitman Bruce Willis. The Whole Nine Yards. 4: Jeri Ryan joined the crew on "Star Trek: Voyager" as the Borg with this 3-word name. Seven of Nine. 5: Taken from the title of a J.D. Salinger work, it was the name of Lisa Loeb's backing band. Nine Stories. Round 2. Category: Texas Tech 1: One of Texas' first railroads, the BBB and C, became the GH and SA, for Galveston, Harrisburg and this. San Antonio. 2: A museum of the history of looking for this stuff is a tourist attraction in Kilgore, Texas. oil. 3: Founded by Ross Perot in 1962, Electronic Data Systems got its first computer in 1965, this company's 1401. IBM. 4: Staley McBrayer of Fort Worth moved newspaper printing from the "hot" to the "cold" variety of this. typesetting. 5: Texas is a leading state in mining this element, atomic number 16 and in manufacturing its acid. sulphur. Round 3. Category: Meat And Potatoes 1: The original version of this toy included facial pieces to attach to a real spud. Mr. Potato Head. 2: The fungus phytophthora infestans caused this historic Irish tragedy. Irish potato famine. 3: In 1853 chef George Crum invented this snack as a joke when a customer said his fries were too thick. potato chips. 4: In Genesis, God told this man "Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you". Noah. 5: This premium cut of steak includes a t-bone and part of the tenderloin. porterhouse. Round 4. Category: The Hollywood Walk Of Fame 1: Stars in front of this famous theater include Basil Rathbone's, William Shatner's and Billy Graham's. Grauman's/Mann's Chinese Theater. 2: Marilyn Monroe's "McStar" shines in front of this Hollywood Boulevard eatery. McDonald's. 3: The stars run east and west on Hollywood Boulevard, and north and south on this street. Vine Street. 4: He's the only U.S. president you can step on. Ronald Reagan. 5: You don't have to "Imagine" that this musician's star is in front of Capitol Records...that's where it is. John Lennon. Round 5. Category: Middle Name Please 1: PresidentMaria Aquino. Corazon. 2: SingerMarie Warwick. Dionne. 3: President Ronald Reagan. Wilson. 4: DirectorErnst Bergman. Ingmar. 5: NovelistJanet Caldwell. Taylor. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!

What's attractive about agriculture?Types of investmentsWhat to look for in agriculture investment opportunitiesEstimated return on investmentIs it a good time to invest?The future of agricultureLife and Money Impact RoundWhat is the one thing to do now to live a meaningful and intentional life by design?What is one life or money hack that you can share to make an impact on others' lives?One thing to do right now to make the world a better placeABOUT CHRIS RAWLEYChris created Harvest Returns in 2016 with the intention of democratizing investments in agriculture. Rawley has held corporate management roles in Jones Lang LaSalle, Electronic Data Systems, L-3 Communications, and served as a defense consultant at Special Operations Command with Blackbird Technologies.  He has invested in real estate and income-producing agriculture for nearly two decades. Rawley is an angel investor in early-stage agriculture and food companies, including the Indian agriculture FinTech company Jai Kisan. He serves on the advisory board of the AgTech start-up AgroFides.CONNECT WITH CHRISWebsite: www.harvestreturns.comInstagram: @harvestreturnsTwitter: @HarvestReturnsFacebook: Harvest ReturnsLinkedin: Harvest ReturnsCONNECT WITH USTo connect with Annie and Julie, as well as with other Investing For Good listeners, and to get the latest scoop on new and upcoming episodes, join Life and Money Show Podcast Community on Facebook.To learn more about real estate syndication investment opportunities, join the Goodegg Investor Club.Be sure to also grab your free copy of the Investing For Good book (just pay S&H)--Thanks for listening, and until next time, keep investing for good!

Karima graduated as a Computer Scientist and began her career at Electronic Data Systems working with GM Financial. Later roles have included Client Services Director at White Clarke Group, Chief Information Officer at Mercedes Benz UK and a stint in Daimler AG in Stuttgart before setting up her own consultancy, Auto Novo in 2015. In this episode of Career-view Mirror we look back on Karima's career journey from convincing her parents in the 1990s that a computer science degree was a viable option to recently joining Volvo Financial Services UK as IT & Operations Director.On the way we talk about how she has succeeded in male dominated environments, chosen or been blessed with some great managers and mentors and been continuously energised by working in a job she loves.This episode of Career-view Mirror is brought to you by the Aquilae Academy. At the Academy we turn professional development into a team sport. We bring together small groups of leaders of comparable seniority from non-competing organisations to learn new concepts and grow together. They share experiences and challenges, support each other and hold each other accountable. For more information visit www.aquilae.co.uk/aquilae-academy If you enjoyed this podcast please take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback helps us grow.For details of our forthcoming guests follow us:Instagram @careerviewmirrorTwitter @cvmpodcastEpisode recorded on 29 January 2021

When Jennifer Nash was just 3 years old, she took classical ballet classes and piano lessons. She studied piano through high school and dreamt of attending Julliard to study classical piano. But her Dad wanted her to have ‘more practical skills’ to lean on, so she went to college and studied liberal arts. She triple majored in French, German and International Business, spending one of her undergraduate years in Germany. The bug bit Jennifer. She was wildly curious about what made people tick, how they made choices and took different actions.  After graduation, Jennifer went to work in the business world and soon felt like a round peg trying to fit into a square hole. She had this background that was rich in the arts and languages which gave her a unique way of looking at things. Jennifer was drawn to understanding people’s motivations and behaviors rather than operations or bottom line metrics. She decided to go to business school to expand her knowledge and found a discipline that was a good fit for her called management in organizations. It was primarily focused on the people side of business. Today, Jennifer Nash is an executive coach, consultant, advisor, author, and speaker. Her experience as both an executive and as a coach of high-performing leaders led her to create a heart-centered, relationship-based, and client-focused practice that helps executives get better at the human element of business.  In this week’s Work From The Inside Out podcast, learn more about Jennifer’s journey: Prior to launching Jennifer Nash Coaching & Consulting, Jennifer held executive and leadership roles at Deloitte Consulting LLP, Ford Motor Company, Kelly Services and Electronic Data Systems throughout her 25-year career.  Jennifer frequently contributes to Harvard Business Review Ascend and serves as an Executive, Leadership and Career Coach for the University of Michigan. Her forthcoming 2021 book is entitled Leading with Heart: The Human Element of Business™ Learn more and connect with Jennifer here: https://www.facebook.com/NashCoaching https://www.linkedin.com/company/NashCoaching @NashCoaching (Twitter) @DrJenniferNash (Instagram) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjJVvKJm20Y7Yjf-ONuYgsw Listen, subscribe and read show notes at www.tammygoolerloeb.com/podcasts/ - episode 104

This week's guest is Mariyah Saifuddin, the Founder of Innovative Solution Partners, a Michigan-based IT consulting firm specializing in helping businesses utilize data analytics to make effective decisions. Mariyah has 20+ years of IT and entrepreneurial experience, including work for Ernst & Young, Levy Home Entertainment, and Electronic Data Systems. She is a board member of the NAWBO Greater Detroit Chapter. She is also an alumnus of Emerging Leaders, Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Program, and a member of the Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC).Mariyah was surrounded by technology ever since she can remember. As the child of immigrant parents who ran a computer parts store, she grew up with technology and computers all around her. This early influence led her to get into IT and eventually start her own business in the tech industry. As the Founder and President of Innovative Solution Partners, Mariyah has used her position to further women's presence in the tech industry through various platforms and organizations.Thank you for listening; we hope Mariyah's story helps inspire others to grow their tech career. If you would like to learn more about Mariyah and her company, visit their site: https://www.isolutionpartners.com/

Andres is the Chief Executive Officer of Cognizant Softvision (a division of Cognizant Digital Business), a digital services company that sits at the intersection of strategy, design and execution for the world’s leading global brands. Andres has extensive experience in developing large-scale technology businesses. He is a proven leader in effectively deploying technology and business process strategies, leveraging his proficiency in Digital Strategy, Agility and Team Development, Game Development and Enterprise Software Architectures.    Andres’ vision and experience in identifying talent and the right resources have been pivotal to the company growth, from expansion into Canada to heightening superior delivery for customers looking to transform their organization. This is partly due to Softvision’s tremendous growth around digital capabilities. Today the company has delivery centers in U.S., Romania, Canada, Argentina, India, and Brazil.    With an entrepreneurial mindset, he drives the power of a digital economy to his clients and is passionate about creating digital experiences that simplify and enrich our lives. He is at the forefront of addressing the growing customer demand for digital IT services and has managed transformations for some of the largest and most technologically advanced companies in the world. Andres can bring together teams across the globe for world-class delivery, and his cutting-edge approach to digital is instrumental to Cognizant Softvision’s marquis clients.    Prior to Softvision, Andres was one of Globant's pioneers and recently served as the Chief Solutions Officer. His entrepreneurial skills kicked in and he successfully created multi-million-dollar practices, fostered a culture of continuous discovery, where design, technology, process and talent blended to drive digital innovation at scale for the company’s marquee global clients.  His areas of expertise include product development, agile transformation, and gaming. Before becoming Chief Solutions Officer, Andres founded and served as the EVP and GM of Globant’s gaming studio, leading business on the West Coast, as well as VP of Engineering and Director of Global Presales Consulting from the U.K. He held other positions at Synthesis Information Technology, Electronic Data Systems and Sistemas Estrategicos.   Andres is a frequent speaker and thought leader on how to scale digital innovation in organizations. He is a recognized speaker at  Agile Business Conference, Insight Innovation eXchange North America, the Omni-Channel Retail Conference, the Chief Strategy Officer Summit, SXSW Interactive and Zend Con. He also co-authored a book titled The Never-Ending Digital Journey: Creating New Consumer Experiences Through Technology. His second book, Transforming While Performing: How To Create A Culture Of Innovation With Partners, will be published this fall.   He started his career in Argentina as a software developer and holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Management and a Master’s degree in Software Engineering. Andres has lived in Buenos Aires, New York, London and California and is fluent in English, Spanish and Italian. Andres is also a trained classical pianist.

Remembering the Volkswagen Beetle, Ross Perot, Martin Charnin The Volkswagen Beetle was first built in 1938 in Nazi Germany as a cheap, reliable car for the common man. It became extremely popular in the United States in the 1950’s and especially in the 1960’s among the counterculture crowd. Ross Perot was the brash Texas billionaire who founded Electronic Data Systems and ran for president in 1992 and 1996. His 1992 campaign was extremely successful as he garnered more than 19 million votes. Martin Charnin was the Broadway writer and lyricist best known for his work on the 1977 musical Annie.

Show Notes: 0:00 - Top Gun00:52 - Intro01:59 - Episode 7402:368 - Hauls & Shoutouts 26:06 - VS: Insects vs Insecticons, Terrorsaur vs Starscream 39:13 - Nerd News:Deaths:Denise Nickerson, 62, American actress (Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (Violet), Dark Shadows (Amy Collins), Smile), seizureFreddie Jones, 91, British actor, over 200 films and shows, (Dune (Thufir), Elephant Man, Firefox, Krull, Firestarter)Ross Perot, 89, American billionaire businessman, philanthropist and presidential candidate, founder of Electronic Data Systems and the Reform Party, leukemiaRip Torn, 88, American actor (Dodgeball, 30 Rock, The Larry Sanders Show, Men in Black), Emmy winner (1996)Eddie Jones, 84, American actor (Lois & Clark (Johnathan Kent), A League of Their Own, The Terminal) Trailers:Terminator: Dark Fate – San Diego Comic-Con Featurette - https://youtu.be/-iTco6JgZ4oTop Gun: Maverick - https://youtu.be/qSqVVswa420Jay and Silent Bob Reboot - https://youtu.be/xHvaWulHk5EIT CHAPTER TWO - https://youtu.be/xhJ5P7Up3jAAd Astra - https://youtu.be/nxi6rtBtBM0Good Boys - https://youtu.be/wnxz0TnHhd4The Red Sea Diving Resort - https://youtu.be/80WflPMzAcwNight Hunter - https://youtu.be/6Skd0JpY4TgAnother Life - https://youtu.be/qAtBbgtMnZ8 News:James Cameron Confirms Edward Furlong Will Return As John Connor In TERMINATOR: DARK FATEAGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. Will Officially End After Season 7 Airs In 2020GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS will arrive on Digital HD on August 6th and on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD on August 27th. Dark Phoenix arrives on Digital on September 3rd and 4k Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD on September 17th.THOR 4: Taika Waititi Will Return To Write & Direct RAGNAROK SequelSDCC 01:32:33 - Weird news:You've Got A Lot of Anger in YouTap: Add One Mana of Any Color to Your Mana PoolThere's a Starman waiting in the SkyWhen You're Hiding From the Cops But You Had Beans for Lunch Kentucky Fried StorePutin SteakBirthdays Are MagicTry Harder Next Time Where All The White Rainbows At?30% Cunts 01:45:00 - Toy News:3rd Party Panel TFconHaslab UnicronPAK reveals TIfa, Aerith, Sephiroth, Cloud with Hardy-Daytona and BarretTerry Bogard Storm Collectibles 03:11:16 - Listener's Questions EOL 

Leadership and Agile are not necessarily mutually inclusive; however, I believe that Agile needs to be a tool in the toolbox of leaders everyone. My guest on this episode believes that Agile and Leadership go firmly hand-in-hand. During this joint episode my guest Jeff Dalton and I discuss the similarities and differences of leadership and agile. A veteran technologist and IT leader, Jeff started as a software developer and has been a CEO, Chief Technology Executive, VP of Product Development, Director of Quality and Agile Evangelist for over 30 years including time with Ernst and Young, Electronic Data Systems, Hewlett Packard, Intellicorp, Polk, Broadsword, and AgileCxO. As a consultant, teacher, CMMI lead appraiser, and leadership coach he has worked with NASA, Boeing, Accenture, Bose, L3 Communications, Fiat Chrysler Automotive, General Motors, Ford, and various federal and state agencies to help them improve performance. Agile Leadership Topics During this joint episode, Jeff and I cover the following topics and much more: What Agile isThe importance of Trust in OrganizationsThe need for coaching in organizationsFuture of organization structures Guest Resources If you are interested in Jeff and his resources be sure to check out the following links: Jeff on LinkedInThe Great Big Agile Bookagilecxo.orgThe Agile Leadership Podcast Moving Forward Leadership Resources Keep on top of Moving Forward Leadership with all the resources which I have established for you: POWER Goals Program - If you are ready to stop complaining and start achieving those goals which you have been trying to achieve for some time now. Then stop chasing your dreams and start achieving them through my very own POWER Goals program. Learn about picking the right goals, figuring out how to achieve them, getting on track with achieving them and most importantly how to get back on track when you fail... because you will. Learn more here! Moving Forward Leadership Resources - Check out the Moving Forward Leadership Resources section where I list every single resource mentioned on the show. As well, there are books which I have read written or read personally and finally various types of services which I use and recommend. The 9 Foundations of Leadership – I’ve written this ebook for you all to get a base of your leadership skills. With this book, you will be able to begin to form your leadership style. For a small fee, you can get your journey started and get ahead of your peers! Just follow the link in the title, and your copy awaits you! Facebook Page – Check out updates from Moving Forward Leadership, as well when links and videos. Facebook Group – Come and let’s discuss leadership. I will swing by and answer any questions you have as well as provide advice and guidance for your situations. Twitter – Definitely subscribe here to find out when new episodes go live, or if I have a random idea to share with the world. Monthly Newsletter – Sign up for my newsletter and see what is happening in the background with me, read the most interesting articles in leadership, as well as get inside information from time-to-time on what I have upcoming! Email – Don’t hesitate to reach out to me with ideas, suggestions, comments or questions. I truly love hearing from you all! Where to Subscribe to Moving Forward Leadership Love the Moving Forward Leadership Podcast? Then subscribe to your favourite device and app! As well, please leave me a review! These reviews mean more to me than you could ever imagine.

Firing Up An Audience   Whenever I am in the USA, I love watching the different television preachers in action.  I am not looking for salvation particularly, but I am looking for hints on how to work an audience.  Now obviously competing with their promises on how to get to heaven is going to be difficult, but we can see some things that work which we can use in business for ourselves.    They are master storytellers, usually using Bible incidents to make a point in the here and now.  The parables in the Bible are all mini-episodes, which teach a point about success.  As speakers, we have a topic to address, a key message we want communicate and the platform to do so.  How can we add stories to our talk which will bolster the point we are making?  The best stories are the ones people can see in their mind's eye.  It is a bit like reading a novel, after you have seen the video series or the movie based on the book.  You can easily picture the scenes, the situation, the characters, the backdrops, etc.   This is what we should be looking to create.  Short descriptions of incidents that inform a certain course of action.  There should be people involved, preferably people they know already.  We want locations they can imagine.  We weave our point into these stories and draw conclusions for the audience on what course they should take.    For example, if we wanted people to think about the importance of keeping key staff, we could tell a story like this one:  “The “top gun” sales guy gets the call from the big boss and is ushered into the plush Presidential office. There he encounters the spacious room's dark paneled walls, the impressive hardbound books on the shelves, the massive mahogany desk, the expensive paintings, the carefully coiffed secretary - all the accoutrements of power and success.  Top gun had met his annual sales quota in just two weeks and was expecting the accolades deserving from such an achievement.  The discussion however was on lowering his commission rate, because he was making more money than the President.  Ross Perot left IBM and went on to create Electronic Data Systems and became a billionaire.  We want to make sure we create reward systems that keep our top talent and we as leaders need to take our egos out of the equation”.   Probably everyone has seen a movie scene with this type of décor or they could easily imagine it.  Now I could have just suggested the punch line – “throttle back on our egos, amply reward our stars and keep our top talent” but the lead up sets the scene for the audience and makes it more powerful.    I could have ramped it up even more by engaging the audience with some showmanship by then saying, “Bosses in the room, if you don't want to lose your top talent, say “no way”. Now I would say this, while cupping my hand to my ear, to draw out some responses. If it wasn't energetic enough, I could continue by saying, “Ah, I didn't catch that?” again, cupping my hand to my ear fishing for a response. After they answer “no way”, I could say, “That's right! I am with you, I don't want to lose any of my key people either! Now let me give you some ideas on how we can achieve that”, So we put it all together: “The “top gun” sales guy gets the call from the big boss and is ushered into the plush Presidential office.  There he encounters the spacious room's dark paneled walls, the impressive hardbound books on the shelves, the massive mahogany desk, the expensive paintings, the carefully coiffed secretary - all the accoutrements of power and success. Top gun had met his annual sales quota in just two weeks and was expecting the accolades deserving from such an achievement.  The discussion however was on lowering his commission rate, because he was making more money than the President.  Ross Perot left IBM and went on to create Electronic Data Systems and became a billionaire.  We want to make sure we create reward systems that keep our top talent and we as leaders need to take our egos out of the equation. Bosses in the room, if you don't want to lose your top talent, say “no way”. Ah, I didn't catch that?  That's right! I am with you, I don't want to lose any of my key people either! Now let me give you some ideas on how we can achieve that”.   This is a simple example of combining storytelling, with a bit of showmanship.  We need to use this in moderation though or it can quickly feel manipulative.  It will however lift the energy in the audience and grab their attention, as you download your key points.  Try adding some stories into your next presentation and see where you can add in some showmanship as well, to engage with the audience members.  Let's become more memorable as presenters, but in a good way!!!  

  In 2016 Chris Rawley, while visiting a farm investment in Central America, conceived the idea of building a crowdfunding platform to streamline agriculture investment. He soon founded Harvest Returns to bring that vision to reality. Rawley has held corporate management roles in Jones Lang LaSalle, Electronic Data Systems, L-3 Communications, and served as a defense consultant at Special Operations Command headquarters with Blackbird Technologies.  He has invested in real estate and income-producing agriculture for nearly two decades.  As a Captain in the United States Navy Reserve, Rawley is the Commanding Officer of a unit focused on building maritime security partnerships in the piracy-plagued Gulf of Guinea. During his military career, Rawley has previously served as Commander of Special Operations Command Forward, East Africa, where he led a multidisciplinary team of Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and support personnel focused on defeating Islamic extremists. He has also deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and Western Pacific. Interview Links: Harvest Returns Free Report If you have enjoyed our podcast, please share with friends and family Please Subscribe, Rate, and Review on Itunes so more people can find us! so more people can find us! Please Support Us by Becoming A Patron on Patreon Open Your Goldmoney Account & Get A 5% Bonus Support Our Sponsors Gelt Inc.,  is committed to providing investors with quality, cash-flowing investment opportunities and is seeking to acquire multifamily, retail, and mobile home park properties in the Western United States with an emphasis in California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, and Oregon. www.geltinc.com The Real Asset Investor, create value for investors looking for higher yield returns from real estate ventures domestically and also internationally and other real asset classes such as ATM's. www.therealassetinvestor.com Joint Ops Properties, have designed a system to take any beginner to an experienced deal making investor in the least amount of time, offering opportunities from basic education, coaching, bridge investing to turn-key investments in the cash flowing market of St. Louis, MO. www.jointopsproperties.com Norada Real Estate helps take the guesswork out of real estate investing.  By researching top real estate growth markets and structuring complete turnkey real estate investments, we help you succeed by minimizing risk and maximizing profitability. www.noradarealestate.com Valhalla Wealth Financial, reclaim the banking function within your own life with the premier strategies of the Wealthy. www.valhallawealth.com Audible, download any audio book for FREE when you try Audible for 30 days www.cashflowninjabook.com Thanks so much for joining me again. Have some feedback you’d like to share? Leave a note in the comment section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post! Also, please leave an honest review for the Cashflow Ninja Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show, and I read each and every one of them. And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates, please follow me on twitter @mclaubscher and Instagram, @cashflowninjapodcast. Until next time! Live a life of passion and purpose on YOUR terms, M.C. Laubscher

Michael Papanek talks collective resilience, group breakthroughs, and the action learning model.You'll Learn:The keys to building resilient work relationshipsHow to use the Heat Curve to achieve collective resilience and innovative breakthroughsIgnored, overlooked, and CRITICAL ground rules for meetingsAbout MichaelMichael Papanek specializes in leadership consultancy and providing strategies, tools and skills to enact change. He is the Principal Consultant and Founder of Michael Papanek Consulting, and has advised leaders from top companies including Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Prior to that, he worked in Interaction Associates as a General Manager and was a systems engineer at Electronic Data Systems.Items Mentioned in this Show:Book: From Breakdown to Breakthrough by Michael PapanekBook: The Truth Option by Will SchutzTool: RAPID, Bain's tool to clarify decision accountabilityWebsite: MichaelPapanek.comView transcript, show notes, and links at https://awesomeatyourjob.com/ep158See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Michael Papanek talks collective resilience, group breakthroughs, and the action learning model.You'll Learn:The keys to building resilient work relationshipsHow to use the Heat Curve to achieve collective resilience and innovative breakthroughsIgnored, overlooked, and CRITICAL ground rules for meetingsAbout MichaelMichael Papanek specializes in leadership consultancy and providing strategies, tools and skills to enact change. He is the Principal Consultant and Founder of Michael Papanek Consulting, and has advised leaders from top companies including Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Prior to that, he worked in Interaction Associates as a General Manager and was a systems engineer at Electronic Data Systems.Items Mentioned in this Show:Book: From Breakdown to Breakthrough by Michael PapanekBook: The Truth Option by Will SchutzTool: RAPID, Bain's tool to clarify decision accountabilityWebsite: MichaelPapanek.comView transcript, show notes, and links at https://awesomeatyourjob.com/ep158See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Michael Papanek talks collective resilience, group breakthroughs, and the action learning model.   You'll Learn: The keys to building resilient work relationships How to use the Heat Curve to achieve collective resilience and innovative breakthroughs Ignored, overlooked, and CRITICAL ground rules for meetings About Michael: Michael Papanek specializes in leadership consultancy and providing strategies, tools and skills to enact change. He is the Principal Consultant and Founder of Michael Papanek Consulting, and has advised leaders from top companies including Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Prior to that, he worked in Interaction Associates as a General Manager and was a systems engineer at Electronic Data Systems.   View transcript, show notes, and links at http://AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep158

On the Tuesday, September 2012 broadcast at 12 noon Pacific and 3PM Eastern, our special guest is Charles Saunders, MD, President, Strategic Diversification Aetna, where he is responsible for developing and operating non-insurance healthcare businesses that build on Aetna’s core strengths and address fundamental needs in healthcare. He has a broad background in healthcare business, operations and clinical care, crossing both payer and provider spaces in the U.S. and abroad.   Before joining Aetna, Dr. Saunders was an executive in residence with the global private equity firm of Warburg Pincus, where he advised the firm on healthcare services and information technology investments. Prior to that he served as Chairman and CEO of Broadlane, a technology-enabled hospital supply chain, group purchasing and clinical workforce management company. He has also served as the President of Healthcare Global Industry Solutions for Electronic Data Systems (now part of hp), Chief Medical Officer of Healtheon and WebMD since their early days as a start up, and was a Principal with the management consulting firm of AT Kearney, focusing on payers and healthcare systems.   As a provider, Dr. Saunders has held numerous leadership positions in healthcare delivery systems, including roles as an ED Director, EMS Medical Director and Executive Director of a Physician Hospital Organization (PHO), where he focused on implementing hospital-physician integration, managed care and capitation.    Dr. Saunders received his MD degree from Johns Hopkins University and is board certified in Internal Medicine and Emergency Medicine.   Join us!

Businessman Ross Perot runs for American presidency. Alistair Cooke analyses the man who founded Electronic Data Systems and owned General Motors.