Podcasts about Excel

Most "core modernization" programs fail for one boring reason: fragmentation. Not the tech. The contract sequencing, the handoffs, the Excel that becomes the unofficial system of record-and the silent operational risk that follows. If you're still running underwriting, claims, billing, and reinsurance as separate truths, you're not modernizing. You're just integrating failure modes. Rob Lewis, CEO of INTX Insurance Software, has built and operated carriers and a reinsurer across Africa, Europe, and now the U.S .- and he's watched the same breakdown repeat: end-to-end change gets blocked by sunk contracts, so teams stitch together workarounds and call it progress. His most telling data point: a material share of underwriters still rely on Excel as the "core," even inside serious organizations. Join live if you want to pressure-test your own replacement path-what to replace first, what not to touch, and where "phase it in" quietly guarantees permanent manual work. #InsurTech #InsuranceOperations 

From the "Seduction Phase" of agentic AI to the terrifying prospect of human cognitive atrophy. We debate the rise of Claude Bot and local LLMs, breakdown Dario Amadei's warning of a "country of geniuses," and ask if we are becoming nothing more than "Meat AI." Plus, how to position your portfolio when capital eats labor.Welcome to the Alfalfa Podcast

This was a fun mid-week crossword, built with HI (Human Intelligence), with just a skosh of (non-AI) assistance from Excel. (See the xwordinfo.com entry for the gory details). The theme was, well, punny, and the surrounding clues intriguing. We liked 1D, It goes down in flames, ASH; a reference to a lady desperately in need of Aveda, 5D, Monster whose gaze remained lethal after her death, MEDUSA; and our favorite artist, 47D, Painter Matisse, HENRI. Mais oui!Show note imagery: Your typical Wisconsin ICEHUTWe love feedback! Send us a text...Contact Info:We love listener mail! Drop us a line, crosswordpodcast@icloud.com.Also, we're on FaceBook, so feel free to drop by there and strike up a conversation!

In this episode I sit down with the evil genius, who built an entire custom app using AI. And we're giving you the prompt FOR FREE! You take our prompt, implement it in your context, and you have a fun, custom sniper game for your next summer camp, winter retrat or d-now! [FREE] AI SNIPER APP BUILDER https://www.patreon.com/posts/free-ai-sniper-147099707?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link SHOW NOTES Shownotes & Transcripts https://www.hybridministry.xyz/186 ❄️ WINTER SOCIAL MEDIA PACK https://www.patreon.com/posts/winter-seasonal-144943791?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link HYBRID HERO MEMBERS GET IT FREE! https://www.patreon.com/hybridministry

A winter sporting trailblazer! Alisa is an Olympic gold medallist and current Chef de Mission for Australia’s Winter Olympic team, leading the next generation on the world’s biggest stage. Her full story shows why she is one of the toughest, most resilient guests we have ever featured on the Howie Games. But first, we have some fun as we discover a self-confessed science nerd who loves history, and can knock out a mean Excel spreadsheet — or serve ice cream with equal confidence. Plus, her love for Collingwood. Alisa is Chef de Mission of Australia’s Winter Olympic team, which takes on the world from Feburary 6 to Feburary 22. It is a once-in-a-generation mix of experience and youth, with five recent Olympic medallists, exciting teenage talent, and 26 World Cup medals this season showing we belong on the world stage. As Chef de Mission, Alisa Camplin will be building camaraderie and focusing on helping every athlete — from medal contenders to first-timers — deliver their best performance. Come on you Aussies!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Understanding your numbers and keeping up to date on your finances is key to the success of your business.  When you actively keep a pulse on your business finances, you will certainly make better business decisions.  If you are thinking that you are just not a numbers person, you're not good when it comes to numbers or math, or you are afraid to make a mistake, I want to help you overcome these fears.  I get it, and I know how numbers or finances are not everybody's strength or zone of genius.  I will admit, however, that I love working with numbers, and I've never been afraid of them, but I have other areas in my business that I don't have those same strong strengths in, and I struggle in these areas much like I am sure you struggle with your finances, so I totally understand where you are coming from.  In today's podcast episode, I am going to help you overcome your fear of numbers and how you can let them help you succeed in your business. If you are using a computerized software system like QuickBooks, Xero, Wave, or FreshBooks for your business finances, or if you are doing your bookkeeping manually with an Excel spreadsheet or even a Google Document, you can use your numbers to help you understand your business finances.  I'll have solutions for what you can do if you think numbers and finances are boring or time-consuming as well.  It's okay to have these thoughts or fears, but you and I both know that when you own your own business, there are things you need to do for your business to make an impact not only on your bottom line or your income, but for your business to succeed in other areas as well.  It's time for you to break these fears or habits that may be holding you back and start this new year off in the right direction.  Whether you are starting a business or side hustle, you're a self-employed individual, a solopreneur, entrepreneur, mompreneur, freelancer, small business owner, a remote, virtual, online, or in-house bookkeeper or accountant, a virtual assistant or VA, or other professional; you can overcome these obstacles so that you can enjoy, yes, I said enjoy, your business and your business finances.  If you are looking back at the last year and are thinking about how far behind your bookkeeping or finances are, and just how much work you need to do to catch up on your bookkeeping to get ready for the upcoming tax deadline, listen in I promise I have some solutions for you…   Join us in a community built specifically for accountants and high-stress professionals.  You'll receive support, accountability, and a community that understands what you're going through. We focus on stress reduction, increasing productivity, time management, goal achievement, health, happiness, and desired lifestyle:  https://www.financialadventure.com/community Schedule your Complimentary Stress Audit And Clarity Session, where we'll work together to create a clear and focused plan and overcome the obstacles that stand in your way so that you can move forward and immediately start enjoying your life with less stress, increased productivity, and more time to spend doing what you love with the people you care about: https://www.financialadventure.com/work-with-me Accountants, CPAs, Bookkeepers, Tax Preparers & Financial Professionals, sign up here to get updates on upcoming opportunities & grab the Audit Of Your Well-Being & Balance Guide here: https://www.financialadventure.com/accountant Ready to set up your business?  I have a program to help you get your business set up so that you can start making money.  Sign up for this program here: https://www.financialadventure.com/start Are you ready to try coaching?  Schedule an Introductory Coaching Session today.  You'll have the opportunity to see how you like coaching with an Introductory Coaching Session: https://www.financialadventure.com/intro Join us in the Mastering Your Small Business Finances PROFIT LAB if you are ready to take control of your business finances and create the profitable business you are striving for.  Are you ready to generate revenues and increase the profit in your business: https://www.financialadventure.com/profit If You Are Ready To Choose, Start Or Grow Your Side Hustle, Get Your Free Checklist And Assessment Here: https://www.financialadventure.com/sidehustle Grab Your FREE guide:  5 Essential Strategies For Stress-Free Bookkeeping: https://www.financialadventure.com/5essentials Your FREE Online Virtual Bookkeeping Business Starter Guide & Success Path Is Waiting For You: https://www.financialadventure.com/starterguide Join Our Facebook Community:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/womenbusinessownersultimatediybookkeepingboutique The Strategic Bookkeeping Academy, including Bookkeeping Basics, is open for registration!  You can learn more and sign up here: https://www.financialadventure.com/sba Looking for a payroll solution for your business?  You can get an exclusive 15% discount on your payroll services when you sign up here: https://www.financialadventure.com/adp QuickBooks Online - Save 30% Your First 6 Months: https://www.financialadventure.com/quickbooks Sign up for a virtual coffee chat to see if starting a Bookkeeping Business is right for you: https://www.financialadventure.com/discovery Show Notes:  https://www.financialadventure.com This podcast is sponsored by Financial Adventure, LLC ~ visit https://www.financialadventure.com for additional information and free resources.

¿Y si el dinero fuera el espejo más incómodo que tienes… no por lo que refleja en tu cuenta, sino por lo que revela de lo que crees que mereces? En este episodio de Más Cabrona que Bonita hablamos del dinero como lo que realmente es: una historia hecha de decisiones, miedos y deseos. Porque cada peso que mueves es una microdecisión emocional, y no hay Excel que esconda desde dónde estás decidiendo. Exploramos por qué tu cerebro se pone cavernícola cuando abres la app del banco (culpa, miedo, euforia… bienvenida a ser humana) y cómo lo que manda no son los números: es la emoción detrás del número. Y te dejo preguntas-espejo para curiosearte sin juicio: ¿Esto que estoy comprando lo hago por deseo… ¿o por comparación? ¿Esto que estoy postergando es prudencia… ¿o es miedo? ¿Esto que cobro refleja lo que vale mi trabajo… ¿o lo que creo que merezco? Hablamos también de la vergüenza: esa emoción silenciosa que te hace tomar decisiones financieras más pequeñas de lo que realmente puedes. Porque ahí está la paradoja: el dinero puede darte libertad… pero solo si primero entiendes de qué querías liberarte. Y muchas veces, no buscamos dinero: buscamos permiso. Permiso para descansar, decidir, no explicar… y tener elección. Y esa, para mí, es la nueva definición del lujo.

In this message, we explore the biblical meaning and purpose of the anointing—not as a special experience for a few, but as a reality for every believer who is born of God. Scripture reveals that Jesus is the Messiah, the Anointed One, and that His anointing doesn't stop with Him—it flows into His body, the Church.Using the life of Moses and other biblical examples, this teaching shows how the anointing turns ordinary moments into holy ground, equips believers for impossible assignments, and sustains us through adversity. The anointing does not remove challenges, but it empowers us to overcome them. From Pharaoh to the Red Sea, from resistance to victory, God proves again and again that what He calls, He also equips.This message emphasizes that in the New Covenant, the anointing no longer comes upon select individuals for temporary tasks—it lives within every believer through Christ. No matter the opposition, pressure, or season, the anointing of God enables us to stand firm, move forward, and walk in victory.If you've ever wondered how to face adversity with confidence, live with spiritual authority, and rely on God's power instead of your own strength, this message is a reminder that you are anointed, called, and built to overcome.___Are you new to Westside and want more information or you made a decision today to follow Jesus? Fill out a connect card so our team can help resource you in your walk with God.wcspokane.com/connectHow can we pray for you? wcspokane.com/prayerOnline Giving:wcspokane.com/give Support the show

Home inspection is one of the most popular second careers and side businesses for first responders, and for good reason. In this episode of The Ride Along Home Inspection Podcast, we talk with a working firefighter and home inspector about why firefighters, EMTs, and other first responders often excel as home inspectors. We break down how skills from emergency response—risk assessment, situational awareness, building knowledge, and communication under pressure—translate directly into better home inspections. We also discuss how inspection experience can make first responders safer and more effective in their primary careers. Whether you're a firefighter, EMT, or police officer exploring home inspection as a second career, or a homebuyer curious why inspectors with first-responder backgrounds bring extra value, this episode explains the crossover skills, challenges, and real-world benefits from both sides of the job. Chapters:  00:00 Home Inspection Basics: What Inspectors Look for and Why It Matters 05:33 Firefighters as Home Inspectors: Why First Responders Excel in Inspections 11:13 Home Inspection Safety: Identifying Fire, Electrical, and Life-Safety Risks 16:45 How Home Inspectors Explain Safety Hazards to Homebuyers 22:25 Real Fire Hazards Found During Home Inspections (Real-World Examples) 27:50 Home Inspection Takeaways for Buyers, Inspectors, and First Responders The Links: Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://pages.theridealong.show/newsletter  Leave us a VOICEMAIL here: http://theridealong.show  Key Points: - Why home inspection works as a second career - Skills firefighters bring to inspections - Inspection training vs fire training - Advice for first responders getting started - How Ryan Miller integrates his firefighting experience into home inspections - Effective communication is key in delivering inspection findings - Home inspectors should educate clients about real hazards - Fire safety knowledge enhances home inspection practices - Understanding structural integrity is crucial for both firefighters and inspectors - Home inspections can reveal hidden dangers in properties - The importance of addressing common fire hazards like dryer vents - Inspectors should balance honesty with sensitivity to clients' concerns. - Real estate agents and buyers must understand the implications of inspection reports - The role of the home inspector is to inform, not to kill deals.    

In this episode, Chris shares his real investment banking recruiting journey—from a non-target school, with no finance background, to finally landing an offer after multiple Superday rejections. We cover: What it's like recruiting without knowing the “finance language” Dealing with imposter syndrome in IB recruiting Aggressive networking and using platforms like Wall Street Oasis Why most Superdays end in rejection What actually made the difference in getting the offer This is a must-watch for students trying to break into investment banking, finance, or Wall Street from a non-traditional background.

Microsoft is expanding further on what the free Copilot Chat will cover in Outlook mailboxes. But it will complicate how to describe the difference between free, unlicensed Copilot and licensed M365 Copilot. We also discuss adding watermarks to GenAI created and altered content. Also how the new Agent Mode works in PowerPoint to make changes to your presentations. 0:00 Welcome 2:24 New features coming to Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat for Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint - MC1187671 6:29 Microsoft Purview: Data Loss Prevention - DLP support for Fabric warehouses - MC1219530 9:27 Agent Mode in Microsoft Copilot for PowerPoint for the web - MC1219792 17:01 Brand impersonation protection for Teams Calling - MC1219793 21:49 New policy to add watermarks to content generated or altered by using AI in Microsoft 365 - MC1221451

What if you could eliminate hours of busywork, replace third-party tools, and unlock operational efficiency all with tools you already have?In this episode of the Multifamily Collective, Mike Brewer welcomes Jonathan Buckelew, co-founder of the CRE AI Studio, to share real stories, live demos, and practical tools that are reshaping how multifamily operators work.We discuss tactical ways to use AI in Excel, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot to streamline leasing, budgeting, asset management, and more.Jonathan walks us through:- How he saved $5K per property by using AI to generate exterior design mockups.- What 200+ PropTech vendor calls taught him about the difference between promise and performance.- Why your AI output is only as good as your input strategy and how to personalize models like ChatGPT or Claude for your business.- How to build automations and custom dashboards without knowing how to code.- The key reason AI won't replace humans but will replace those who don't use it.This conversation is for the curious operator, the skeptical owner, and anyone serious about staying relevant in an AI-powered industry.Hit that subscribe button to keep your edge sharp. The future isn't waiting—and neither should you.Blog: https://www.multifamilycollective.comSupport comes from: https://www.365connect.com/?utm_campaign=mmnHosted by: https://www.multifamilymedianetwork.com

What does it really mean to excel as a follower of Christ? In the final message of the Windows series, we explore how God calls every believer to live with purpose, discipline, and excellence—not for personal success, but for His glory.Drawing from 2 Peter 1 and other key Scriptures, this sermon challenges us to examine our priorities, measure our spiritual growth, and align our lives around what truly matters. You'll hear why understanding your God-given function is essential, how excellence requires focus and trust, and why living well, loving well, and serving well are not optional for the Christian life.This message encourages believers to slow down, trust God more deeply, and stop spreading themselves too thin so they can fully live out the purpose God created them for.New Vision Church – Fayetteville, GeorgiaA community to belong, be loved, and believe.

Hello and Welcome to the DX Corner for yourweekly Dose of DX. I'm Bill, AJ8B.I mentioned previously that I would be addressing two issues, as I do at the beginning of each year. The first is my goals for 2026. We accomplished that last week. The second issue was to share those contests that I have participated in over the years. I have found them to be excellent opportunities to improve your skills, garner you some new band slots and potentially some ATNOS. The dates that I am referring to include the State QSO Parties, international DX contests, and regional DX contests. I have worked many normally difficult entities during contests and found it very easy (sometimes) to get them in the log. I have about 90 dates that I would suggest that you keep in mind. However, you don't need to write them down. I have created two items to make it easy for you. There is a list of dates andcontests in both .pdf and Excel format. Both files can be found at www.aj8b.com/files. Let me know if you have any questions. If you are somewhat skilled with Excel, you can create a CSV file from the Excel workbook and import it in to your personal calendar.The following DX information comes from Bernie, W3UR, editor of the DailyDX, the WeeklyDX, and the How's DX column in QST. If you would like a free 2-week trial of the DailyDX, your only source of real-time DX information, justdrop me a note at thedxmentor@gmail.comKP5/NP3VI, Desecheo Island, makes history  - At its four-day mark, KP5/NP3VI has made over 10,000 QSOs on all continents. Their goal is to make over 100,000 QSOsduring their 30 days on the air. J5 - Guinea-Bissau - Bavarian Contest Club members will be operating J51A from Guinea-Bissau in February/March 2026. The location is on the island's northern shore with an unobstructed view over water, using generator power 24/7 due to lack of public electricity. Their  main goal is to provide contacts from Guinea-Bissau, which is ranked as number  85 worldwide, and number 53 in Asia. QSL cards and LoTW confirmations will be managed through Club Log OQRS, and donations are welcome via Club Log.H4 - Solomon Islands - DL2GAC, Bernhard now in the Solomon Islands as H44MS until mid-May.  He departed India last Wednesday, arriving in the Solomons' capital on Friday.  He is renewing his H44MS license, which was scheduled to expire in early February.  He will move to his "usual QTH" there tomorrow or Wednesday.  He has taken with him a Hexbeam that covers 20-6, to replace his old tri-bander that covered 20-10.  He says the weather is poor, lots of rain, no sunshine.  He plans to mostly be on 40M this time, with a dipole 20M high in a palm tree near the ocean. V6 - Federated States of Micronesia - Yesterday afterarriving on Chuuk (OC-011), JA1XGI (Haru) reports his amplifier was likely damaged during airport transport. Nevertheless, he has been active as V6CU25, operating FT8 and CW on 160, 40, 30, 20, and 15 meters. S21WD – Bangladesh 2026: Project Update - The NextGeneration DX Club is pleased to announce a major milestone for its upcoming Bangladesh DXpedition: the callsign S21WD has been officially issued for the project. The DXpedition will be active for 12 days and operate on 160 through 10 meters, including 5 MHz (60 m), using CW, SSB, RTTY, and FT8. In addition, activity via the QO-100 satellite is planned using CW, SSB, and FT4. I mentioned that the KP5 DXpedition to Desecheo was racking up record numbers and they were working all continents. If you would like to learn more about this DXpedition, check out the DX Mentor podcast and YouTube channel. AJ8B and W8GEX had a great discussion with team leader, Otis, NP4G, about all aspects of the DesecheoDXpedition. Give it a listen and let me know what you think!  Until next week, this is Bill, AJ8B saying 73 and thanks to my XYL Karen for her love and support. IHope to hear you in the pileups! Have a great DX week! 

Carla McCall shares insights on the challenges faced by the accounting profession, including workload, work-life balance, and the AICPA's role. She addresses misconceptions about the responsibilities of the AICPA, discusses her firm's approach to managing work hours and culture transformation, and highlights the need for creative solutions to attract new talent. The discussion also explores the systemic issue of overwork in large accounting firms and the potential measures that could alleviate these pressures.Meet Our Guest, Carla McCallhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/carlamccallaaf/Need CPE?Get CPE for listening to podcasts with Earmark: https://earmarkcpe.comSubscribe to the Earmark Podcast: https://podcast.earmarkcpe.comGet in TouchThanks for listening and the great reviews! We appreciate you! Follow and tweet @BlakeTOliver and @DavidLeary. Find us on Facebook and Instagram. If you like what you hear, please do us a favor and write a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Call us and leave a voicemail; maybe we'll play it on the show. DIAL (202) 695-1040.SponsorshipsAre you interested in sponsoring The Accounting Podcast? For details, read the prospectus.Need Accounting Conference Info? Check out our new website - accountingconferences.comLimited edition shirts, stickers, and other necessitiesTeePublic Store: http://cloudacctpod.link/merchSubscribeApple Podcasts: http://cloudacctpod.link/ApplePodcastsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAccountingPodcastSpotify: http://cloudacctpod.link/SpotifyPodchaser: http://cloudacctpod.link/podchaserStitcher: http://cloudacctpod.link/StitcherOvercast: http://cloudacctpod.link/OvercastClassifiedsWant to get the word out about your newsletter, webinar, party, Facebook group, podcast, e-book, job posting, or that fancy Excel macro you just created? Let the listeners of The Accounting Podcast know by running a classified ad. Go here to create your classified ad: https://cloudacctpod.link/RunClassifiedAdTranscriptsThe full transcript for this episode is available by clicking on the Transcript tab at the top of this page

You built an agency you’re proud of. So why does your website still feature that glowing tribute to someone you wouldn’t recommend today, or explain services you stopped offering three years ago? In this episode, Chip and Gini tackle the unsexy but critical task of auditing your agency’s website content. They share practical approaches for identifying what needs updating, what deserves deletion, and how to prioritize your efforts when you’re staring down hundreds (or thousands) of outdated pages. The conversation covers everything from quick wins—like updating your homepage and key pages—to strategic decisions about high-traffic content that no longer serves your business. Gini shares her process for using tools like Screaming Frog to audit content systematically, while Chip emphasizes the importance of focusing on human users rather than chasing every algorithm change. They also dive into the balance between refreshing old content and creating new material, with specific guidance on when each approach makes sense. The episode wraps with a reminder that consistency matters more than perfection—especially when AI is increasingly using your bio and content to determine whether to recommend you. If your website is starting to feel like a liability rather than an asset, this episode offers a manageable roadmap to get it back on track without turning it into a year-long project. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “First and foremost, focus on the end user’s experience. And only after that, think about, okay, are there tweaks or additions I could make in order to help the search engines or the AI spiders or that kind of thing?” Gini Dietrich: “I would rather have accurate numbers so I know exactly what my pipeline looks like, my lead generation looks like, what my lead nurturing looks like, and be able to work it backwards.” Chip Griffin: “If you’re getting a lot of traffic to a page that either is not as relevant as it should be or not as accurate as it should be given the way the world has changed, you know, those are ones that you want to address.” Gini Dietrich: “AI notices inconsistencies. So if you are inconsistent across different websites, social media, all the places that you are online, you are not going to show up in AI answers no matter how good your content is.” Turn ideas into action Audit your homepage today. Open your website and read your homepage copy with fresh eyes—does it accurately reflect who you serve, what you do, and where your agency stands today? If not, block two hours this week to rewrite it. This is your most important page and the fastest way to stop misrepresenting your business. Check Google Analytics for your top 20 pages. Identify which pages drive the most traffic, then ask yourself if each one still serves your business or if you’re just attracting irrelevant visitors. Kill off pages that generate traffic but don’t support your current positioning—inflated vanity metrics aren’t worth the confusion. Ensure bio consistency across platforms. Compare your bio on your website, LinkedIn, and other platforms where you appear. Make them consistent (accounting for character limits) so AI can confidently present you as an option when people search for expertise in your area. Related Real talk about agency websites How to think about your agency's website View Transcript The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy. Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And Gini, I’m old. Gini Dietrich: Yes, you are. Chip Griffin: But you know what else is old? Gini Dietrich: What else? Chip Griffin: Some of the content on my website. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, sure. Mine too. Yeah. Chip Griffin: It’s, it’s one of the perils of having been around for a while. Gini Dietrich: Yes, indeed. Chip Griffin: Both as a human, as a business. And so we have a lot of content out there on the website that maybe isn’t as current as we’d like it to be. Some of it I haven’t looked at in many years, so I don’t even know if it’s up to date or not. Gini Dietrich: Sure. Chip Griffin: I’m sure that many of our listeners have content on their website or maybe entire websites that are old and out of date. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: So my question to you is, how should we be thinking about this kind of, how do we deal with this problem? Or we, we can’t just spend, I mean, I, I don’t know about you, but my website’s got over a thousand different pieces of content on it. Oh yeah. Now I think most of our listeners probably don’t have websites with quite that much content on it, but some do, and even if you’ve only got a couple hundred, you know, that’s still a substantial body of content that you need to audit in some fashion. So what, what do you do about that? Gini Dietrich: You know, it’s funny, this conversation is happening right now because about a week ago, right after the holidays, I got an email from a friend that said, Hey, uh, I don’t know if you know this or not, but you have a blog post from, from 13 years ago, literally 13 years ago, praising Elon Musk. And I was like, well, let’s delete that! But like, I don’t know how she found that. She must have been searching on the site for something and found it. Right. So I think it’s important to do an audit and I did delete it. I moved it to the trash. But, I think it is important to do an audit. We have a client that said to us, we don’t think we need new content. We have plenty. And we went in and we’re like, okay, great. Let’s do an audit and see. And we audited it and they do have plenty of content, but the most recent is two and a half years old. So one of the things that we’re working on with them right now, well, twofold. One is going through the audit that we did to see what needs to stay with an update, a refresh, and what should be deleted. There are lots of, there’s lot, there’s lots of content on their site. And actually this will appeal to many of you listeners too. There’s content on their website that has some great SEO value. You know, showing up first in Google results and things like that. So you don’t wanna get rid of that content, but it probably needs a good update. It probably needs to be refreshed. It probably needs new quotes, new experts, new expertise, new statistics, whatever it happens to be. So that’s what I would do. It’s pretty easy. We use, Screaming Frog to do the audit, so it’ll, it will look at your entire website and then give you an Excel list of all of your links, and then you can go and you can tell it I want dates and topic and all that kind of stuff. And you can go through that fairly easily to say, this is old, we don’t need that. Move that to a different tab. This is good stuff. We don’t wanna lose it. And then I would compare that to what you’re keep, I would compare what you’re keeping to do a Google search. Are you show, are those links showing up in Google? And I would also ask AI. Are you showing, is AI showing that content in its answers. So you probably, I would venture to guess, like you and me, we, it would be a really big undertaking ’cause we have years and years of content. But for most agency owners, I would guess it’s probably a, I dunno… And you can use AI to help you, but it’s probably a two or three hour thing that you can split up over several weeks, right? To get it done. But 100% you should be, you should have an up update up to date website overall, and you should be updating content so that it’s refreshed, not necessarily the URL, but updating the content inside the article or the blog post or the page or whatever it happens to be. Chip Griffin: Yeah. And I, I think the advice to sort of just kind of, you know, go through a list of it is a really good starting point. Whether you use some third party tool, or frankly, if your website isn’t too huge, if you just go into WordPress and start scrolling back through the pages and posts. Mm-hmm. And just looking at the headlines, it at least, you know, things that are obviously in need of help will jump out at you. Yeah. Or you know, that you praise somebody that doesn’t make sense or whatever. And, and we have to keep in mind that, that sometimes that old content might be a year old, it might be 10 years old, right? It might still need some sort of an updating. The other thing that’s, that’s often helpful is just to go into, you know, something simple like your Google Analytics and just look at, you know, the top 20, 30, 40 pages in terms of traffic and just ask, are all of these pages the way I still want to present myself in whatever the current year is that you’re listening to us? Because, you know, that can be a really helpful way of prioritizing what you wanna address, what you wanna update. And particularly if you’re getting a lot of traffic to a page that either is not as relevant as it should be or not as accurate as it should be given the, the way the world has changed. You know, those are ones that you want to address. I, to me, one of the interesting cases is, you know what, and I’ve seen this a lot, and I, some of the organizations I’ve worked with have had this issue where you’ve got a page that gets a ton of traffic, but it’s frankly totally irrelevant to what they do today. Right. It’s still, it’s still an accurate bit of content, which is why it keeps getting traffic, you know, because it’s answering whatever question the searcher may have had, but it doesn’t really benefit the organization other than it does produce a fair amount of inbound traffic. So, to me, those are interesting cases. Trying to figure out what you do with those. And, if you talk to different SEO experts, you sometimes hear different bits of advice on this, right? Because some are like, well, you know, you, you’re still getting people clicking over to your site, and that’s a good signal for the search engines, so that’s good. The problem is if the signal is that you’re relevant for something that you really aren’t relevant for. Right. So, doesn’t really help you. My general inclination is if it’s completely irrelevant to what you do today, I would kill it off and sacrifice the traffic. But that’s, that’s my perspective on that. No, I totally agree with that. Either way you should make a conscious decision about it. Gini Dietrich: I totally agree with that because I think you’re right. If it’s not some, if it’s irrelevant, if you’re bringing irrelevant traffic to your website, your numbers are inflated. So I would rather have accurate numbers so I know exactly what my pipeline looks like, my lead generation looks like, what my lead nurturing looks like, and be able to work it backwards. Right. So I completely agree with you and like I said, I killed that article from 13 years ago. Because that’s not how I feel about that man anymore. So, yeah. At all. Chip Griffin: Yeah. Well, for, for many years on my personal blog, the highest trafficked post was one, was sort of a throwaway post I did on a camera backpack, that I got like 20 years ago. And it just, it scored, it turned out it was a popular model of the backpack, and so it got a ton of traffic from people who were considering buying it. Obviously that didn’t help me at all. Gini Dietrich: Not at all. Right. Chip Griffin: Because that, I mean, you know, I didn’t pitch camera backpacks or anything like that, you know, I didn’t sell ’em, I didn’t even have an affiliate link in or anything like that. So what, you know, what was the value of it? Pretty much nothing. You know, it felt nice to see all the spikes in traffic that it generated. Sure. Of course. But yeah. But it wasn’t particularly useful, so, and those are the kinds of things that, that many of us may, you know, maybe we just had a comment on our blog about some story of the day. And it just took off and for whatever reason still sticks around. But it’s not really what our agency is about, so doesn’t really help. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I would really look at, I mean, some of your ideas, especially if you don’t have a ton of content like we do going, just going through WordPress and looking to see. I would start with the content on your website specifically, what’s on your homepage? Does it represent who you are and what you stand for today? Does it accurately reflect where you are today? I would venture to guess the answer for most of us is no. I would start there at least with the homepage and your top three or four pages, so probably your services page, probably your about us page. Maybe a resources page, depending on, again, look at your Google Analytics. Then once you’ve done that, then I would definitely go through WordPress and go through any content that you have, podcasts, recordings, videos, blog posts, whatever it happens to be. Go through all of those and then divide and conquer and say, yeah, we’re gonna have to update these. It may take me all year, but I’m gonna do one a week and I’m gonna update one a week. And it suddenly, you’re taking small bites of the elephant and you can get it done by year’s end. Chip Griffin: I love your advice to look at the homepage and other key pages before worrying about, you know, old blog posts and that kind of thing, because many, many agencies neglect their websites. Until they decide all of a sudden, this is how I’m gonna get new business. And so then they over invest in time and money Yes. In their websites. Yes. So it, it, it does seem to be a story of extremes most of the time, but, but looking at that homepage of your website and making sure that it accurately reflects the business that you are: who you serve, what you do, and that it is very crystal clear about those things on your homepage. Very first step. Do not pass go. Do not do anything else. Just get that done first. Then I would say, look at the about page and make sure that it accurately reflects who you and your team are. Make sure that the right people are there. Make sure that your bio is accurate and up to date. Make sure that your photo is up to date and have a photo, by the way, because people like to deal with other people. Yep. And as someone who does professional headshots for people on the side, I gotta tell you, you gotta have something that’s within the last five years at least. I mean, if I put up a photo on the website of me with hair, that’s just, that’s not, that doesn’t make any sense. And yet I see plenty of people, Gini Dietrich: no, Chip Griffin: who have photos on their websites. And then I meet them and I’m like, this is not even in the ballpark. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, you’re right. The other thing I will say to that, and this is incredibly important, is that AI notices inconsistencies. So if you are inconsistent across different, the websites, social media, all the places that you are online, you are not going to show up in AI answers no matter how good your content is. So when you’re doing that audit, I would also audit your bio. Your bio that’s on the website compared to what it’s on LinkedIn compared to what it is on all the other social media platforms. If you have YouTube or a podcast platform, compare it to there. If you have a newsletter, compare it to there. Like ensure that it is the exact same bio, not, not, little changes based on the platform. I mean, you’ll have to make it smaller for Twitter than you would for LinkedIn, right? But it has to be consistent because if it’s not, AI gets confused and doesn’t know what to do, and so it just doesn’t present you as an option. So as you’re doing that audit, I would ensure that the bio, your own bio and then the bios of your key leadership or key team members are consistent across every platform on the internet, because that’s incredibly important with AI today. Chip Griffin: Yes. At the same time, what I would say to you is AI and SEO are very important. More important are the humans who actually visit your website. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: And so there’s lots of advice out there, including what we’re talking about here that will help you from an AI and SEO standpoint. However, it should never, ever, ever be at the expense of the actual user’s experience. Gini Dietrich: No, never. Right. Chip Griffin: And increasingly, I’m seeing websites that are being tailored for how they think that AI will be reading and indexing their sites. And so, for example, they shift almost entirely to a Q&A format because AI, generally speaking, loves the Q&A format in order to stock the answers that it gives to people. However, that’s not always the best user experience. Sometimes you need to present things in more of a compelling story like way. And trust me, the AI will figure it out. It may not be as great at it today. It may prefer the Q, but it’s going to improve over time. And it’s the same thing as for years, people would chase the latest algorithm change at Google. And that’s fantastic until they change it in three months or six months. Right. And so what are you gonna do? Just keep updating your website? Well, if you’re an SEO agency, you love that, right? Because. You know, you can just tell the clients, well, you know the latest version, now you gotta do this. So you remember all that work we did in January? It’s June now. I’ll do it again. We’re gonna redo all of that for you, right? I mean, it’s a great full employment act for SEO experts. However, it is not generally a good user experience, nor frankly, a particularly good use of resources. So first and foremost, focus on the end user’s experience. And only after that, think about, okay. Are there tweaks or additions I could make in order to help the search engines or the AI spiders or that kind of thing? Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I think the point you make about how Google updated updates it algorithm like real often and that you are trying to keep up is, is ludicrous, but it’s something that we’ve always been aware of and I think the strategy has not changed. If you always write, produce, not just write, but create content that’s compelling to a human. The algorithms and the AI are going to love it so that doesn’t matter. Are there things you can do to help it and AI find you? Sure you can do Q&A’s, you can do the, but that we do that stuff and this is gonna get techy, but we do that stuff on no follow sites, so it doesn’t show up in Google. It doesn’t show up in our navigation. It’s only there for the AI bots, right? So there are things that you could do for sure. But if you always put the human beings first, it’s going to work no matter what happens with AI, and no matter what happens with the algorithms. Google came out, gosh, several years ago now, and said, if you’re focused on expertise, experience, authority, and trust, those are the, those are how we’re using, that’s how we’re floating stuff to the top. So I think that’s really good advice because that is always going to A, make your content different, and B, make it valuable to humans. So if you’re always demonstrating your expertise that nobody else has and your experience that nobody else has, that will build authority and trust in both places. Chip Griffin: Well, I mean, the irony is that all of the experts will help you to chase the algorithms and the technology, but the reality is that all of the search engines and all of the AI engines, they’re all chasing the user. All they’re trying to do is try to deliver what a real person wants. Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: And so it’s ironic that, that we set them aside, the humans aside to chase the technology when the technology is chasing the people. So it’s kind of a weird circle and I’ve consistently maintained for 20 plus years. If you focus on the user, you’ll get to the right place. You may not be there today. And, and it, it’s gonna ebb and flow over time as algorithms and technology changes. But chase the user because that’s how you sell your business. That’s how you find new clients and that’s how you keep people happy. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s, yes. Focus on the humans first. That’s always been the advice. That strategy has not changed. The tools change, the tactics change, the execution changes, but the strategy remains the same. Chip Griffin: So let’s say, you know, you’re, you’ve gone through this audit on your website. You’ve chucked out the things like the praise of Elon Musk that you don’t want on there anymore. You’ve gotten rid of the content that’s no longer relevant to the business that you are today. So now you’re left with some things that you could update, you know, maybe you could strengthen them. They’re not obviously wrong. They’re still pretty good. How do you decide where you want to invest your energy as far as which of these do you update? Which of those do you flesh out and make bigger deals? Because I think that’s where the real challenge comes in. You know, do you, are you better off updating old content or are you better off creating new content? Gini Dietrich: I think it depends, which is the tagline to this podcast, of course, but, it depends on a few things. One, if you, if there’s older content that you can refresh and update with minimal resources, like it’s just a five or 10 minute, gosh, this needs to change, this needs to change, and then I republish it and it’s showing up in Google results. I think it’s probably worth doing it. Obviously if it doesn’t support or reflect where you are right now, I would not worry about it. But if there are things where you have some SEO value or AI is using it to bring real humans to your website based on the questions they’re ans they’re asking and it’s accurate, then I would take a few minutes to update it. And like I said, maybe you, you create a list of things that you need to do and you just check one off a week. Right? And then I would focus my efforts on new stuff. So where are we now? What are we thinking? How are we? How have we evolved? What kinds of things are we offering to the industry? That kind of stuff. So I would first focus on the stuff that you can repurpose because it’s easier and it’s a smaller lift, and you still have the value of SEO from that perspective, and then focus on the new. But like I said, if your website in general, your homepage, your about us page are not updated, I would start there. Chip Griffin: And I think it’s important that you, as you’re looking at the old content, that you’re thinking about refreshing that, that you don’t look at it through the lens of I could make this perfect if I spent some more time on it. It really, you have to see that there’s some, that the outcome for the user, again, going back to the person on the other end, is meaningfully different because of the additional work that you’ve put in. I mean, if it’s just simply that it’s phrased better, it’s organized, neater. It’s, you know, a little bit clearer that that’s probably not enough for me. Right. But if you’re able to, you know, things have changed between then and now as far as either what’s going on in the world, what’s out there, what your knowledge is, and you can, you can make it 50% better. Okay. Now you’re talking about something that, that may be worth the investment of time and energy, but if it’s, you know, if you’re just, you know, kind of polishing. That generally isn’t gonna pay off. Gini Dietrich: Totally agree with it. Yep. Totally agree. Yeah. If it’s new, like if it’s your thinking has evolved and it supports that and you just need to polish that piece or you know, like… We are constantly evolving the PESO model. And so I’m always looking at that content to say, oh gosh, that doesn’t represent where it is anymore. Right? Do I wanna put a date on this or a year in the content so that anybody who visits it understands that this is three years old. Do I wanna delete it? Like, so I, you know, I’m constantly. Our marketing team and I are constantly looking at those kinds of things, so I totally agree. If it’s just a polish, I wouldn’t spend the time. But if it’s evolved thinking, if it’s new services, if it’s new products, if it’s new IP, if it’s, you know, those kinds of things, then I would definitely include it. Chip Griffin: Absolutely. Well, hopefully we’ve given people some good ideas so that they can take a fresh look at their website as we start the year. And figure out, you know, what they might wanna tweak, improve, get rid of, hide from, any of those things. And it, it doesn’t have to be a giant project as you suggested. No. It can be the kind of thing where you chip away at one piece of content a week or something like that and you’ll see a meaningful difference over the course of time. Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Yep. Get it done. Get that homepage updated. Chip Griffin: So with that, we will draw this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast to a close. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich, Chip Griffin: and it does depend.

I've been getting quite a few messages from business owners saying that they are struggling to create a budget for their business.  Some are just getting their business up and running, and others have been in business for a few years.  Either way, having a budget for your business will allow you to dictate how you want your money coming in and out of your business to flow.  When you don't have a budget, it is easy to lose track of your numbers or your goals for the year.  I often hear business owners say it is hard to create a budget, or they don't know where to start.  In today's podcast episode, I am going to dive into how you can easily create a simple budget for your business and how you can get started.  It doesn't have to be hard, and it doesn't need to take a long time when you know what you need to do in the first place.  So, whether you are using a computerized software system like QuickBooks, Xero, Wave, or FreshBooks for your business finances, or if you are doing your bookkeeping manually with an Excel spreadsheet or even a Google Document, knowing how you can create a simple and easy budget for your business will help you stick to your goals and allow you to track exactly how close you are to your original budget numbers.  Whether you are starting a business or side hustle, you're a self-employed individual, a solopreneur, entrepreneur, mompreneur, freelancer, small business owner, a remote, virtual, online, or in-house bookkeeper or accountant, a virtual assistant or VA, or other professional; you want to take the time to really look at your numbers, create a budget and use your budget as a compass to help guide your finances throughout the year… Join us in a community built specifically for accountants and high-stress professionals.  You'll receive support, accountability, and a community that understands what you're going through. We focus on stress reduction, increasing productivity, time management, goal achievement, health, happiness, and desired lifestyle:  https://www.financialadventure.com/community Schedule your Complimentary Stress Audit And Clarity Session, where we'll work together to create a clear and focused plan and overcome the obstacles that stand in your way so that you can move forward and immediately start enjoying your life with less stress, increased productivity, and more time to spend doing what you love with the people you care about: https://www.financialadventure.com/work-with-me Accountants, CPAs, Bookkeepers, Tax Preparers & Financial Professionals, sign up here to get updates on upcoming opportunities & grab the Audit Of Your Well-Being & Balance Guide here: https://www.financialadventure.com/accountant Ready to set up your business?  I have a program to help you get your business set up so that you can start making money.  Sign up for this program here: https://www.financialadventure.com/start Are you ready to try coaching?  Schedule an Introductory Coaching Session today.  You'll have the opportunity to see how you like coaching with an Introductory Coaching Session: https://www.financialadventure.com/intro Join us in the Mastering Your Small Business Finances PROFIT LAB if you are ready to take control of your business finances and create the profitable business you are striving for.  Are you ready to generate revenues and increase the profit in your business: https://www.financialadventure.com/profit If You Are Ready To Choose, Start Or Grow Your Side Hustle, Get Your Free Checklist And Assessment Here: https://www.financialadventure.com/sidehustle Grab Your FREE guide:  5 Essential Strategies For Stress-Free Bookkeeping: https://www.financialadventure.com/5essentials Your FREE Online Virtual Bookkeeping Business Starter Guide & Success Path Is Waiting For You: https://www.financialadventure.com/starterguide Join Our Facebook Community:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/womenbusinessownersultimatediybookkeepingboutique The Strategic Bookkeeping Academy, including Bookkeeping Basics, is open for registration!  You can learn more and sign up here: https://www.financialadventure.com/sba Looking for a payroll solution for your business?  You can get an exclusive 15% discount on your payroll services when you sign up here: https://www.financialadventure.com/adp QuickBooks Online - Save 30% Your First 6 Months: https://www.financialadventure.com/quickbooks Sign up for a virtual coffee chat to see if starting a Bookkeeping Business is right for you: https://www.financialadventure.com/discovery Show Notes:  https://www.financialadventure.com This podcast is sponsored by Financial Adventure, LLC ~ visit https://www.financialadventure.com for additional information and free resources.

What happens when you have the ‘perfect’ corporate job at a top-tier firm with a clear path to partnership, but deep down, you feel a pull towards something else? For Alex Marks, the founder of New York’s cult-favourite ‘Sushi Counter’, that pull wasn’t just a distraction - it was the catalyst for trading a high-flying legal career for a world of total uncertainty. Before she was serving thousands of rolls a day, Alex was a successful M&A lawyer at the top-tier firm Herbert Smith Freehills. She loved the late nights, the adrenaline, and the "in the trenches" camaraderie. But a dream transfer to New York became the catalyst for her pivot when she faced an immediate culture clash. Realising the US corporate world was an "individual sport" she didn't want to play, Alex was faced with a choice: Stay in a job that wasn't a fit, or risk it all. She chose risk. Pouring her entire $100,000 USD life savings into an idea, she quit her job and, a week later, signed a lease for a tiny shop to sell the Australian-style sushi she couldn't find anywhere in the city. In this episode of Pivot Club, Sarah Davidson speaks with Alex about this massive industry leap. They unpack the "messy middle" of her entire journey: From the "primitive" Excel model that convinced her to take the leap, to the humbling reality of hand-filling 50,000 soy sauce fish with a syringe in her living room. Alex shares the unfiltered story of how she navigated intense online backlash just one week after opening and how she scaled from a team of one (plus a supportive boyfriend) to a staff of 30. Join us for a raw and practical lesson in naive optimism, a look into the grit required to build a business from the ground up and a powerful reminder that sometimes, the fear of regret is far scarier than the fear of failure. THE END BITS: Want more from Sarah Davidson? Check out her podcast Seize The Yay. Discover more Mamamia podcasts here. Feedback: podcast@mamamia.com.au Share your story, feedback, or dilemma! Send us a voice message, and one of our Podcast Producers will get back to you ASAP. Rate or review us on Apple by clicking on the three dots in the top right-hand corner, click Go To Show then scroll down to the bottom of the page, click on the stars at the bottom and write a review. CREDITS: Guest: Alex Marks Host: Sarah Davidson Executive Producer: Courtney Ammenhauser Senior Producer: Sally Best Audio Producer: Thom Lion This show was brought to you in partnership with Charles Sturt University. Australia's largest and most experienced online uni. Take the next step. Search Charles Sturt University online. Complete our short survey about education for for a chance to win a $1,000 gift voucher in our quarterly draw! https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/8467038/Ch Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Playing #poker well can be viewed as making the highest-EV decision at every opportunity. In some situations, such as facing an all-in, calculating EV is relatively trivial. But what about more complex situations, particularly on early streets, where the EV formula is hard to apply? Enter EV modeling; an approach that estimates the EV of different actions by modeling multiple branches of the game tree. In this episode of the Red Chip Poker podcast, coach w34z3l presents several practical EV modeling methods so you can optimize your poker decisions.   TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Introduction to EV Modeling 0:23 What is EV Modeling? 3:15 Tools for EV Modeling 3:33 CardRunners EV (CREV) 6:02 Limitations of CREV 8:29 Excel and Spreadsheets 10:52 Solvers and EV Modeling 13:01 Why Solvers Don't Work for Exploitative EV 13:38 Node-Locking Misconception 17:07 The Ideal EV Modeling Tool 20:10 Practical EV Modeling Examples 24:56 Managing Model Complexity 25:30 Conclusion and Next Steps   **RELATED LINKS** - Join Red Chip PRO Now: https://redchippoker.com/pro-membership - The Exploitative Edge (Book): https://redchippoker.com/the-exploitative-edge - Poker Mastery 101 (Course): https://youtu.be/B8qidwy2UeU?si=A7G1_d1SYo2Ewrew - Poker Strategy Math Every Pro Knows: https://youtu.be/QqXzTxxMzjU?si=yA1-iTJ1ISz42gDT   **JOIN US ON DISCORD** Join our free poker Discord today: https://redchippoker.com/discord

Meu nome é Giancarlo Marx e hoje eu vou falar sobre o tema: O Sagrado e o Comum. Bem-vindo ao retorno do Ampulheta, sua pílula devocional no Blog da Crentassos. Vamos começar o ano de 2026 te convidando a olhar para onde quase ninguém olha: para o chão que você pisa. Janeiro costuma ser o mês em que corremos para o ‘sagrado’ tentando escapar de um cotidiano que nos parece cansativo. Afinal, a vida secular nos “roubou” quase todo o ano que acaba de se encerrar, não é verdade? Esta tendência de nos afastar da vida para nos refugiar na fé acaba se manifestando de diversas formas. Desde planos de leitura bíblica, compromisso devocional, até iniciativas mais místicas, como votos, simpatias e outros rituais. Aprendemos por anos a fio (infelizmente) que Deus habita o silêncio do santuário, mas se cala no barulho do trânsito ou no balcão da padaria. Mas o Salmo 24 é categórico: ‘Do Senhor é a terra e a sua plenitude, o mundo e aqueles que nele habitam’. Se a terra é do Senhor, não existe centímetro quadrado de realidade que não seja sagrado. Como diria Ricardo Gondim, a vida é ‘um susto’ de beleza, se soubermos olhar. Quando falamos em um Evangelho todo para o homem todo, este deveria ser um convite a refletirmos sobre um Deus que se importa com a sua planilha de Excel, com a qualidade do feijão no prato do brasileiro e com a justiça na sua rua tanto quanto aprecia a sua vida de oração. O sagrado não é o oposto do comum; o sagrado é o comum. Porém, visto com os olhos de Jesus. Neste início de ano, eu te convido a uma abordagem diferente. Pare de buscar a Deus apenas no ‘extraordinário’, no silêncio e na solitude. E comece a encontrá-lo na dignidade do seu trabalho, no respeito ao próximo, no cuidado com a cidade. Na preservação da criação e na sabedoria de quem pensa diferente de você. O Verbo se fez carne. E carne é matéria, é suor, é vida acontecendo, aqui e agora. Que 2026 seja o ano em que a fé e a vida fizeram as pazes dentro dos nossos corações. E a gente pare de separar o que Deus já uniu. Afinal, o que será que Deus pensa das coisas banais? Especialmente aquelas que acontecem entre a segunda-feira de manhã e a sexta-feira à noite? Bom, eu vou ficando por aqui. Um feliz Ano Novo e até o próximo Ampulheta. PARTICIPANTES:– Giancarlo Marx COISAS ÚTEIS:– Duração: 04m01s– Feed do Crentassos: Feed, RSS, Android e iTunes: crentassos.com.br/blog/tag/podcast/feed Para assinar no iTunes, clique na aba “Avançado”, e “Assinar Podcast”. Cole o endereço e confirme. Assim você recebe automaticamente os novos episódios.– Todos os “Ampulheta” CITADOS NO PROGRAMA:– Salmo 24 GRUPOS DE COMPARTILHAMENTO DA CRENTASSOS:– WhatsApp– Telegram JABÁS: REDES SOCIAIS: Críticas, comentários, sugestões para crentassos@gmail.com ou nos comentários desse post. OUÇA/BAIXE O PROGRAMA:The post O Sagrado e o Comum | Ampulheta 74 appeared first on Crentassos Produções Subversivas.

281. Excel in Social Skills and Etiquette and Teach Your Children To Do The Same with Monica Irvine   Proverbs 20:11 NIV “Even small children are known by their actions, so is their conduct really pure and upright?”   Ephesians 4:32a AMP “Be kind and helpful to one another,”   *Transcription Below*   Monica Irvine, President and creator of The Etiquette Factory, LLC, is a master motivator and dedicated instructor who loves to help children and adults see the benefits and rewards of having proper etiquette, mastering professionalism and excelling in social skills. As a Certified Etiquette Instructor and working in the hospitality industry for 24 years, Mrs. Irvine specializes in etiquette and professional instruction to help ensure the success of each individual both personally and professionally.   Mrs. Irvine is the published author of three books on Etiquette and one book on Scheduling including: Etiquette for Beginners, Etiquette Intermediate, Etiquette Masters and A Schedule Makes for a Happy Family, in addition to authoring several monthly columns in national publications such as Everything Knoxville, The Homeschool Handbook and the Homeschool Magazine.   Mrs. Irvine is a national speaker, speaking to thousands of parents, educators and children every year.   Residing in Knoxville, TN with her husband, Mrs. Irvine spends her free time playing tennis, running and enjoying her family of three boys and a granddaughter.   You may contact Mrs. Irvine at monica@TheEtiquetteFactory.com  or via her website at www.TheEtiquetteFactory.com. Rise Up Parenting FUNdamentals 4 Kids Life Skills Essentials   Thank You to Our Sponsor: Sam Leman Eureka   Questions and Topics We Cover: What are some red flags we can identify in our lives if we are too busy and what wisdom do you recommend instead of our overstuffed schedules? As parents, why must we proactively teach these qualities to our children, rather than just instruct them in a moment of correction? Will you share stories of ways the Holy Spirit has nudged you to use etiquette and it resulted in something miraculous?    Other Savvy Sauce Episode Mentioned: Unexpected Grief and What Helped Me Through It Can Help You Too with Singer and Blogger, Brittany Price Brooker   Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website   Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)   Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”   Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”   Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”    Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”    Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”    Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”    John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”   Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”    Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”   Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”   Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession- to the praise of his glory.”   Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”   Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“   Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“   Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”   *Transcription*   Music: (0:00 – 0:10)   Laura Dugger: (0:11 - 2:19) Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host, Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.   The principles of honesty and integrity that Sam Leman founded his business on continue today, over 55 years later, at Sam Leman Chevrolet Eureka. Owned and operated by the Burchie family, Sam Leman in Eureka appreciates the support they've received from their customers all over central Illinois and beyond. Visit them today at LemanGM.com.   My guest for today is the charming Monica Irvine. She is president and creator of The Etiquette Factory. She's a master motivator and dedicated instructor who just loves helping children and adults to see the benefits and rewards of having proper etiquette. She also loves to help people master professionalism and excel in social skills.   So, she's going to give us insight into all of these ideas and share stories today for ways that we can actually seek the Lord and love others well and value people through the proper use of etiquette.   Here's our chat. Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Monica.   Monica Irvine: (2:19 - 2:20) Thank you. Thanks for having me, Laura.   Laura Dugger: (2:20 - 5:41) Well, I'm so excited to get a chat with you today, but let's just begin here. I'm so fascinated because you were born and raised in the South. Is that right?   Monica Irvine: Well, yes, Tennessee. Absolutely consider myself Southern.   Laura Dugger: I love it. And I grew up in the Midwest and got to live in the South for a few years. And I was very struck by the difference in manners. And I'm just curious if manners and etiquette were intentionally taught to you, both in your family and then just kind of in your Southern culture around you.   Monica Irvine: (2:20 - 5:32) Well, yes. So, when I think about being raised in the South, I think and maybe my mom and my grandmas were a little different. But what I would describe my upbringing is very particular, meaning everything was made special.   And my parents and my grandparents took a lot of pride in making things beautiful and lovely. And so, of course, my mom cooked every night. But like at my home growing up and we did not have a lot of money, just know that my parents struggled.   But my mother would never put a ketchup bottle on the table or a mayonnaise jar. Everything had to be put in little bowls with little spoons. And it's funny because my friends that I have today, I get given little spoons for birthdays and occasions because my friends all know how much I love little dainty things.   But, you know, and some people, you know, might think that's a little ridiculous. But I'll tell you something. I don't know that we need to eat that way every night, seven nights a week.   But it made dinner time feel special. And even the way my mother and my grandmothers kept their house, everything had its place. It was not messy.   We had clean homes. And I think it also just helped me be proud of my home. I mean, once again, we did not have a lot of money, but my friends thought my home was so nice.   Well, the reason it was so nice is because my mother kept such care of it. And so, I was raised with a lot of cousins and live close to both of my grandparents. And so even the outside of their homes, both sets of grandparents, everything was beautiful.   And so there was a lot of pride in who we are, how we presented ourselves. But you're going to laugh at this. So, my mom, my dad tells me this story that right after my mom and dad got married, my dad came home from work one day and my mom was ironing.   You know, she'd spend a whole day ironing every week or half a day. And my mom was ironing my dad's underwear. And my mom's name is Janice.   And he was like, “Janice, honey, what are you doing?” And “I know just ironing, Bob.” And he's like, “Babe, you don't need to iron my underwear.”   But, you know, the thing is, that to my mother and my grandmothers being a good wife and being a good mother meant making sure everyone in the family looked nice, that their clothes were clean, that the home was clean, that there was good food on the table. And that was part of their identity, of this is what it means to be a good wife and mother. And I love that about my upbringing.   Laura Dugger: (5:33 - 5:41) And do you have any reasons why you think that's changed a little bit over the years?   Monica Irvine: (5:42 - 8:34) Yeah, I think we've gotten lazy. Well, no, I just I think there you know, there's balance, right? There's when I look back, I can't really remember my mom playing with me.   But now, listen, I don't feel like I missed out, but I do recognize it. But I guess even as a little girl, sure, I would have loved my mom to play with me. But that's just not in my mind what moms did.   Moms cleaned house and made everything and cooked your meal. And so, I do. I'm grateful that as a society, we have adjusted somewhat.   Sometimes I believe too much but have adjusted in going. What's the most important things? And because I'm a big believer in playing with our children and our grandchildren and creating memories.   But now my family, my parents and we worked a lot together. Like if we were if the yard needed raking, it wasn't kids go rake the yard. Mom, dad, kids were in the yard raking.   If a car needed to be washed, it wasn't go wash the car. We were all out there washing the car. So, I think that's why I don't feel like I missed out because my family did so many things together.   Whereas today we're so separated. No parents give their children and babies phones and iPads so they'll just be quiet so they can get their important work done. Like grocery shopping or cooking.   And I just think that instead of teaching our children how to self-soothe and self-entertain and how to creatively play even by yourself, sometimes we just always believe there has to be a babysitter to distract our children from wanting mom and dad. It's just I you know, this could be a whole other talk, Laura, but I just you know, I see it. It breaks my heart sometimes on the lack of how often families work together, play together and do things together.   But now, you know, dad's watching his game in this room. Mom is in another room, maybe on her computer doing social media. The kids are in their rooms on their games.   And I see a lack of family unity. So once again, even though maybe my mom and dad didn't play with us and I'm glad we've shifted with that thought process. Still, we were a united family.   Laura Dugger: (8:35 - 8:56) I love that. And the Lord has clearly given you a passion for that instilling that in others. And He invited you into a journey that eventually led to The Etiquette Factory, which is the work that you get to do today.   So, can you share the impetus for that and what that journey looked like for you?   Monica Irvine: (8:56 - 13:54) I will. I love my company. I feel like it's just yet another beautiful adventure the Lord has allowed me to be on in my life.   And so, I feel like I'm just outside looking in at this beautiful little business that has allowed me to minister to children and adults in need. So, years ago, I was homeschooling our kids. I was homeschooling our youngest son at the time, and we were studying the life of President George Washington.   And I just kind of stumbled upon this list. It was called George Washington's Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior. It is a beautiful list of 110 chivalry skills.   And apparently, President Washington was encouraged to focus on some chivalry as was part of a formal education in those days. He found a French book that had these list of chivalry kind of considerations, and he copied them. He hand copied them, of course.   And we have that list of 110 chivalry skills in President Washington's handwriting. But as I started reading over this list, the Lord penetrated my heart. I just I was like, these are so beautiful.   I mean, some of them were kind of funny. Some of them were. It's not polite to remove lice from your companion in public, which I think is good to know.   But most of the beautiful chivalry skills were very applicable to today. And I was like I want my son to memorize these skills. So, we started memorizing one Washington skill a week.   And because they were written in that old English, you know, sometimes we were like, what does this mean? And it just I just decided for my son's sake, who was nine at the time, I wanted to just kind of make my own version. But what was so a light bulb moment for me is as we started making manners part of our daily discussion in school, I noticed a change in my child's behavior and my son would be like, “Mom, let's do another one. What's the next one? Let's do one more.”   And I found that so fascinating because, as you know, most of us parents, when we teach manners, we're teaching it in the moment, usually correcting bad behavior. It's not that that's our goal. It's just that that's when we think about it.   Our child says, or does something that's not the most polite, and all of a sudden we're going, “Oh, honey, no, honey, you can't say that. That's not polite.” And then we make the correction and then we teach the skill.   And what I learned and realized is that so often that's when I was teaching my children manners in the moment of correcting. And what I've learned about that is when we're being corrected, whether you're three years old or 30 years old, we harden our heart typically because it's self-preservation. You know, we stiffen up when someone's like, “Monica, you really shouldn't have.” I'm like, whoa.   And it's just because of our own pride. We don't like being called out and neither do our children, even when we're doing it gently and politely. It's still a correction.   And so, what I found is when our heart is hardened, as the scripture says, it's not the best time to absorb information. It's the opposite of being humble. To be humble means to be teachable.   To be hardened means to not be teachable. So, when we have a hardened heart, it's hard for us to absorb things of the spirit, which all truth comes from God. So, anything that is lovely of good rapport is of God.   So, when we're teaching our children to be kind and to have kind considerations for others, those are God's truths and God's truths cannot seep into the soul of our heart unless our heart is soft. And so that is what happened is I was like, today we're going to learn how to use our napkin properly. Or today we're going to learn how to apologize.   But how do you make it sound sincere and how do you be sincere when you don't really feel it? And so, as we started just working on one skill at a time, the conversations were typically beautiful. Parts were changed and behavior ended up changing.   And so really, that's what then later became The Etiquette Factory.   Laura Dugger: (13:55 - 14:20) I love that because I think it gives our children confidence because then they're equipped and prepared and understand what's expected of them in different situations or what can bless others in the way they act. But then I'm curious, you gave a few examples of those. Can you think of any of George Washington's chivalry lines that would still apply today?   Monica Irvine: (14:21 - 19:07) Yes, well, so I'm not quoting, I'm summarizing. So, for instance, one is it is not polite to hum or sing in the presence of others that would cause distraction. And so basically it's not polite to draw attention to ourselves but also draw attention or interrupt other people's day life when we haven't been invited to do so.   So let me give you this definition we use for etiquette. So, at The Etiquette Factory, etiquette is helping those around us to feel valued and to feel comfortable. Well, if I'm sitting there humming along, but the person beside me really doesn't want to hear my humming, then I might be causing that person to feel uncomfortable.   Same thing, you know, whenever I start off teaching a class, because usually when everyone thinks of manners, they think of table manners. Of course, there's so much more. But I use this example.   I say, well, if I were to come to your home and sit down and I started eating like a pig in the presence of your family, I mean, I'm chewing with my mouth open. I'm making a smacking my lips. I'm taking too big of bites and food is falling in my lap or I'm making a mess on the table.   Or I eat so fast that I am finished eating, getting up to leave. And you're just on your third bite of food. Well, any of those behaviors, I would be sending a message.   And that message is, look, I'm here for one person and that person is myself. I came to fill up my belly because I'm hungry. And beyond that, I really don't care.   I don't care if I'm making you uncomfortable. I don't care if I'm grossing you out. I don't care if you actually wanted to talk to me because I just came here to eat and I'm out of here.   You see, we don't realize it, but a lack of chivalry is called selfishness. A lack of chivalry is inward focused. When we focus outwardly on what message am I sending to those around me?   Am I sending a message of love and care and value? That is etiquette. I get emailed all the time and message like, “OK, Monica, I've got this shower I'm putting on.   And my daughter is not going to invite her work friends to the wedding. But is it OK if we invite all of them to a wedding shower?” And they'll go, so what's the etiquette rule?   Well, there is no etiquette rule about that, except etiquette is about helping those around us to feel valued. And so that's how I answer every question. I'm like, well, let me ask you if you were invited to a wedding shower, where you're asking her friends to shower your daughter with gifts and love to celebrate her wedding.   But yet those friends were not valued enough to invite to the wedding. How do you think it would make them feel? And so that's what the answer is with etiquette.   Now, there's exceptions. In fact, that case, that's a real email I got. And she ended up having the shower because her daughter went and told her co-worker who offered to give her a wedding shower.   “You know what? I thought that is so thoughtful. I'm so grateful that you were willing to do that. But we're having a very small, intimate wedding, you know, for financial reasons and intimacy reasons. And so, I just don't feel comfortable inviting people to bring gifts for me and knowing that we're just we're not going to be able to invite everyone to the wedding.”   And that co-worker said, “We don't care. We knew you were having a small wedding. We want to celebrate you.”   And so, you know, you can there be exceptions, but a lady and a gentleman always try to be very aware of those unspoken messages. And that guides our conversation, our answers, our actions. And that's what we teach children and adults to do at The Etiquette Factory.   Laura Dugger: (19:07 - 21:17) And now a brief message from our sponsor.   Sam Leman Chevrolet Eureka has been owned and operated by the Burchie family for over 25 years. A lot has changed in the car business since Sam and Stephen's grandfather, Sam Leman, opened his first Chevrolet dealership over 55 years ago.   If you visit their dealership today, though, you'll find that not everything has changed. They still operate their dealership like their grandfather did with honesty and integrity. Sam and Stephen understand that you have many different choices in where you buy or service your vehicle.   This is why they do everything they can to make the car buying process as easy and hassle free as possible. They are thankful for the many lasting friendships that began with a simple, welcome to Sam Leman's. Their customers keep coming back because they experience something different.   I've known Sam and Stephen and their wives my entire life, and I can vouch for their character and integrity, which makes it easy to highly recommend you check them out today. Your car buying process doesn't have to be something you dread, so come see for yourself at Sam Leman Chevrolet in Eureka. Sam and Stephen would love to see you, and they appreciate your business.   Learn more at their website, LemanEureka.com, or visit them on Facebook  by searching for Sam Leman Eureka. You can also call them at 309-467-2351. Thanks for your sponsorship.   I loved, this was a few months back, but we came to a homeschool convention, and I loved your talk on purposeful parenting. One thing that you said, just I think backing it up and looking at our family in general, you said, “If we're too busy to do the most important things, we're too busy. Stop allowing the adversary to tempt us to remain too busy.”   So, Monica, what wisdom can you share for maybe red flags that can help us identify when we're too busy to focus on the most important things, and what do you recommend instead of overstuffing our schedules and our lives?   Monica Irvine: (21:18 - 26:23) You know, that's a great question. Those are good questions that every family should ask themselves. You know, I think that if we are to strive to focus on the most important things, step number one is, has mom and dad identified the most important things?   Because if you don't know what your goal is, then you're not going to as easily recognize when something is interfering with your goal. So, for instance, maybe mom and dad sits down and says, “Well, our number one goal is to make sure that our children know Jesus Christ. And so, what do we need to do to make sure that we're doing our best to help our children know who He is?”   Well, and so a family might decide, well, we want to have daily scripture study and daily family and individual prayer. We want to make it a priority to be at church so that we can worship on the Sabbath, but also so that we can meet together with other like-minded Christians and minister to one another as we're taught by the Savior. That's important for us to do.   And perhaps we want to learn to do as the Savior does. And that's why we're going to learn of His attributes and try to follow in His footsteps and be a family of service. So, let's just say those are our four of the most important things.   If that's our goal, then hopefully mom and dad could recognize when we're starting to stumble off the path that leads to our goal. For instance, I can't tell you how many parents have come up to me after they hear me speak on this topic and say, “Monica, I wish I had heard you say this 10 years ago. But we got sucked up into the what the world has to offer, and we started allowing our children to play competitive sports on Sunday. And so, we stopped going to church years ago because there was always a championship game on Sunday morning and always another tournament. And we wanted our children to have, you know, college opportunities.”   And there's nothing wrong with college opportunities unless that college opportunity interferes with our most important goal. And so that's why first mom and dad have to decide what is the most important, because then it's easier to recognize when we are being tempted by the adversary to focus on what the world is trying to offer us.   And the world offers us shiny things that tempt our human nature to want to be popular and loved by all and wealthy. And so, we just have to always go back to our goals. You know, I've got families that say, “I wish we had eaten dinner together more often. But we allowed our children to be so scheduled that there was not one night or there was only one night a week that we actually sat down at the table together.”   You know, parents. You will regret that. And you can't take back these precious, very short years that you have your children under your roof in your home.   And you will be someone like me one day where all of my kids are graduating and grandchildren and all you live for is your children to come visit and your children to come have dinner. And so, when you allow the world to creep in and be more important than spending time with your family, time with the Lord, time on good and lovely things, you will regret it. And I just think that probably every year come January, mom and dad should sit down and go, let's look at last year.   What were we missing from our family schedule? What do we need to reevaluate whether that is the most important thing? And so that's something I think all of us have to do on a regular basis.   Laura Dugger: (26:24 - 27:20) I think you're hitting on something profound there, that reflection with the Lord or with our spouse. I think we have no excuse because if there is no spouse in the picture, we always have the Lord. But to be intentional, to take that time, maybe on a Sabbath and go through a few questions and reflect back.   I think that could save us from a lot of regret. So, I really appreciate that response. And going back to etiquette, then you've taught us that it is a learned behavior.   This isn't something that our children will just naturally pick up. It's best to do in times where their hearts are soft, so proactive if possible. But I'd love to know in your own life, when were times that the Holy Spirit nudged you to use etiquette and it resulted in something miraculous?   Monica Irvine: (27:21 - 32:56) Oh, goodness. Okay, well, to me, I think miraculous is seeing the Lord's divine hand in our life. I see the miracle of the Lord every day in my life.   But probably most often is when I kneel down at the end of a day, I repent daily because I need to daily. And it's always a little nervous because I pray and I ask the Lord, as sometimes I know what I need to repent of. I know that I recognized I stumbled that day on something, but sometimes I just I pray and I say, “Lord, you know, just help.”   If something needs to be brought to my mind that I need to repent of and that I need to do better, would you bring it to my mind at this time? And it wasn't that long ago that the Lord brought to my mind something that I had gotten in the habit of doing that I didn't feel like it was wrong, but it was wrong. And so, etiquette, one of the etiquette skills I teach everyone is that it's not polite for us to gossip.   A lady and a gentleman always draw attention to the lovely and wonderful things that other people do. Now, if there's a safety issue, that's different, but I'm just talking about we don't share negative things about other people. And so, it's something I teach every year, all year long.   But I feel like I've done so much better than I did twenty-five years ago when the Lord really chastised me one time for gossiping. But in the last couple of months, I had gotten in the habit of sharing with my husband. So sometimes, you know, when you share with your spouse that you kind of feel like that's a safe place that the same rules don't apply because you and your spouse kind of talk about everything.   And so, I was in the habit of sharing with my spouse something that I was worried about that another person in our family did. But I was constantly going, “Oh, I don't like that. They do this and I don't like that. They do this and I'm worried about it.” And I actually was worried about it. But I just was constantly kind of highlighting these things that I didn't like that someone in our family did.   Well, one night I was praying and asked the Lord to bring to my mind and the Lord brought that to my mind. And it was kind of like he said, “Monica, don't you remember that? If you're worried about someone. Instead of sharing those negative things, even with Charles, my husband, what would be more effective is if you prayed and asked me to bless that person, to help that person, you know, in the ways that they need help and ask me to help, you know, of ways that you could be a better example to that person. But you don't need to constantly draw attention because it's starting to make you be negative towards this person.”   And I just like right when the Lord said that to me, I was embarrassed. I was like, “Monica, that. Yeah. Like, how do you not know that? That you should know better than that.”   Well, so immediately I repented and I apologized to the Lord and I and I started doing what he asked me to do. And within just a couple of days, like I started just noticing all of the wonderful, lovely things that this person is and does. And so, just to me, that is miraculous and it happens all the time.   And if I'm humble enough to repent and to listen to the Lord, because the Lord wants to help us and he wants us to strive to be like him. But we've got to ask where we need to be corrected. And so, I teach etiquette, I teach we don't gossip.   And then lo and behold, I had kind of gotten myself in another trap again. You know, and I just I think it's a miracle what happens when we listen to the Lord. He immediately turns our mind to good, lovely, beautiful things and allows us to be a vessel of light instead of vessel of darkness.   And we can be that vessel of darkness just right inside our own marriage, even though we think that's kind of a safe place to maybe be a little looser with our tongue. So, there's one example.   Laura Dugger: (32:57 - 33:26) I love that. And I remember you also explaining whenever you get a thought in your head that you don't want to do, it's likely 100 percent from God. So, can you share a couple specific stories of times that that was the Holy Spirit telling you something that you didn't maybe want to do, but you obeyed?   I'm remembering something about a grocery store and another time separately about a phone call. Yeah.   Monica Irvine: (33:26 - 40:29) OK, well, I'll tell about the phone call just because it's less sad. So, yeah, one time there was this lady and she was just kind of investigating our church and starting to come to our church and kind of fill it out. So, I had just met her and I found out that her what led her to come looking for God is her husband was an addict and she was just at her wits end and their marriage and family was falling apart.   And so, she came looking for the for help for the Lord. And so, I learned a little bit about her story. I ended up taking her to one of those celebrate recovery places at another church because I knew they had a wonderful program.   And so, I had interacted with her a couple of times. I probably had only known her about a month when one night I was running late to take my kids to youth on Wednesday night and I was cooking some spaghetti and I was just, you know, cooking that spaghetti at the stove. And all of a sudden I had a thought come into my mind, “Call her.”   And, you know, I was like, oh, yeah, I do need to call her. I need to call and check on her. I will, you know, after church tonight.   And so, I, you know, kept cooking that spaghetti. And the second time the Spirit, because that's who it was talking to me, because that's who tells us to do good things. Not us, but God.   The Spirit said, “Monica, call her.” But I was running late and I was trying to get my kids fed and I was like, I will call her as soon as I get the kids fed, you know, drop them off at church and then I'll call her, you know, and so I really meant to call her. But I.   Finally, a third time, and it seems to always take me three times before I realize, OK, he means now. And so, a third time it was like “Monica call.” And so, it was so strong.   And I, I know it's the Lord, but I, I just turned the stove off. I went into my bedroom, got my phone out, dialed her number. And as it was ringing, she picked up the phone and all I heard was just some quiet sobbing.   And she couldn't speak. And I, you know, I said her name. I said, “Hey, so and so it's Monica. I just. I see that you're upset. I just wanted to call and check on you. In fact, the Lord insisted that I call and check on you.”   And then her, you know, her crying just continued. It wasn't until, you know, she had calmed down and she just said, you know, “Monica, I had been praying and just asking the Lord to just show me that, you know, show me that you care that this is happening to me.” Something like that.   And, you know, I, I, in that moment, my stomach kind of did that little knot because I knew how close I had come to just not calling. And sure, I could have called her an hour later. It would have been at least an hour later and maybe, you know, it would have mattered.   But the Lord knew that it mattered right in that moment. She needed an answer. She needed to know that the Lord was listening.   And I've learned that in my life, that whenever we get a thought that comes into our mind and that thought is to do something good, like calling someone, you all is a good thing. Visiting someone, writing a letter to someone. Those are good things.   And all good comes from the Lord. And sometimes I wonder, does the Lord trust me? Does he know I'll respond when the stakes are high?   You know, sometimes I think as we continue to learn how to hear the spirit, we have to practice. Oh, that was the spirit. And probably if you're like me, I've learned a lot about the spirit by not listening.   And then later going, “Oh, yeah, Lord, I did miss that. You tried. You tried to warn me, or you tried to get me to do that. And I dismissed it.”   But so, you all I just think it takes practice and I'm still practicing. But I do believe that especially when it's something that we don't really want to do or we think we don't have time. And I just realize I felt the Lord going, “Monica, do you not think I know you're cooking spaghetti? Do you not think I know you're running late? But right now, there's something more important I need you to do than to get your kids to church on time.”   And so, I think at some point we have to decide, do we trust Him or don't we? And if we trust Him, we have to trust Him completely. And that means when we receive a prompting that we will act quickly because the Lord knows what we're doing.   And He knows that we don't have the best relationship with that person. Yet you're feeling like you should call. He already knows that.   And it doesn't mean that everything's always going to turn out the way we think it will. Sometimes I think the Lord just wants us to know ourselves that we'll do what He asked us to do, regardless of how it will turn out. And sometimes I feel like the Lord has told me to do something and I did it and it didn't go well.   And I'm like, “Lord, like, why? Why?” And I know all of us, you all sit there and go, wait, was that my thought or was it God's thought?   And you know what I have learned is that just stop worrying about it. Just act in faith. And the Lord always backs up His people.   The Lord doesn't, as you and I are praying and striving to understand the Lord's will. And let's say we get an idea and so we act on it because we feel like it was a prompting and then it does not go well. I believe the Lord loves so much that you were trying to listen and be obedient and the blessings will come.   Sometimes we just don't know the timing or how, but we've just got to trust.   Laura Dugger: (40:29 - 43:59) I love that. And we never know what's happening on the other side of our obedience. And I'll link back to Brittany Price Brooker's episode because she was one who had lost her husband and was crying out to the Lord.   I think she was bathing her young children, and they didn't have food in the house and maybe they were sick. And the only thing that sounded good to their child was apples, but it was late at night. She couldn't go get them herself.   And she was just praying like, “Lord, do You see me? Do You know my needs? I need You to meet my needs.”   And right then the doorbell rings and somebody showed up and she said, “The Lord told me to buy you these apples and bring them to you.” And I think that highlights something else. You articulated it well when you say whenever you get that thought in your head that you something that you don't want to do, it's likely 100% from God.   I would say a lot of times too, it's also awkward or inconvenient. We don't know why. And then I think back to the Bible, Abraham was put in a very awkward situation with his son and Noah, that was very awkward to be building the boat when there wasn't rain.   But look at the blessing that comes on the other side of obedience. So, appreciate those stories are really helpful.   By now, I hope you've checked out our updated website, thesavvysauce.com, so that you can have access to all the additional freebies we are offering, including all of our previous articles and all of our previous episodes, which now include transcriptions. You will be equipped to have your own practical chats for intentional living when you read all the recommended questions in the articles or gain insight from expert guests and past episodes as you read through the transcriptions. Because many people have shared with us that they want to take notes on previous episodes, or maybe their spouse prefers to read our conversations rather than listen to them or watch them now that we're offering video rather than just audio. So, we heard all of that and we now have provided transcripts for all our episodes.   Just visit thesavvysauce.com. All of this is conveniently located under the tab show notes on our website. Happy reading.   So, at that same conference, when I heard you speak, you shared something that really stuck with me. This one was about our daughters. So, I want to talk about daughters first and then we'll move to sons.   But you mentioned there was this one study where over 3,000 men were surveyed. And they were asked, what's the number one quality that you desire in your wife? Either current wife or someday in the future when you're married.   And do you remember the response? Yeah, it was kindness. Kindness.   That she is kind. And so, I wondered, was there another side for the boys then too? What do you think women would say for their future or their current spouse?   What attribute do you think they would identify?   Monica Irvine: (44:00 - 47:35) It didn't have that for the other side, but a word that we don't use as much anymore. And I try to use it a lot is, I think most women, even if it wouldn't come to their mind immediately, once they heard it, they'd be like, oh, wait, no, yeah, that. And that is honorable.   They would want their husbands to be honorable. And to be honorable means that we do honorable things. And honorable things always 100 percent of the time require some level of sacrifice.   That's what makes them honorable when we sacrifice and give up our time, ourself in order to better someone else to help our country, our family, others. And so, I think today what we all want is for our spouses, husbands and wives to be kind and to live honorable lives. Those lives, it doesn't mean a perfect life, but to be honorable means we strive to have integrity.   We strive to be godly. We strive to do what we say we're going to do. We strive to live up to our divine nature as God called mothers and fathers and husbands.   And so, I would think to me that is the most important, because if you live an honorable life, then you honor God. You honor your marriage covenant. You honor your children by treating them and speaking to them with honor.   You honor your job. You make sure that you have integrity at work and that you're dependable. And the same goes for us women.   You know, but I think I think we all struggle with selfishness. I mean, that is ultimately what we struggle with every day is what do I want? What do I need?   What's important to me versus trying to live a selfless life for our spouse, for our family? Anyway, it would be interesting to do that survey, but I think what's so kind of funny about the kindness is that whenever I read that survey results that I had read years ago, when I say that to a crowd of women. And men, but when I say that to the crowd, you can always see I just see this rippling of women making this kind of gesture.   Or because they know that they could be more kind, because usually we can be kind to everyone in the world. But in the walls of our home, we struggle more with just kindness.   Laura Dugger: (47:37 - 48:00) And so if we go further upstream than before we're married, if that's what God has for us, what are practical ways that we can teach and instill kindness in our children and honorable character? Or any other practical tips for conduct?   Monica Irvine: (48:00 - 53:03) Yeah, well, I love when I do a workshop at a convention on a family of service, because honestly, when we have our children in our home, it's practice ground. We have once again a few years to help them learn to love the Lord and to love others. You know, the two great commandments, love me and love others.   Well, to me, the best way to teach our children to love God and love others is to get our children out and serving others. Because, as you know, typically, like, for instance, when someone calls us and says, “Oh, hey, Monica, hey, would you mind, you know, the Smith family, they just had their new baby. Do you think you could cook dinner for them one night next week?”   If you're like me, I'm going to say yes. And then I'm going to hang up. And then I'm going to have that anxiety because already my week is so full and I was already stressed out about how I was going to get all the things done I needed to get done.   And now I've just added another thing. And I'm not saying there are not times that we don't need to say no, because we absolutely have to say no sometimes. But my point is, I cook the dinner and I go drop it off.   And as I'm pulling, as we are pulling away from that home, how do we feel? Do we feel better or do we feel worse? Do we feel happy or do we feel sad?   Honestly, almost 100 percent of the time, y'all, we're going to feel happier. We're going to feel grateful. We're going to be grateful that we had the opportunity to cook that dinner for that sweet family.   We're going to be reminded of how sweet the Lord is to give us opportunities to be His hands and His feet and His mouth here on the earth. And so, we want our children to learn to love. To love others, but it takes practice.   It's not until you serve again and again and again that you start to realize that the secret to being happy, the secret to having peace in your life and love abounding in your home is when we lose ourselves in the service of others. It's the secret to fixing siblings arguing with each other. It's the secret to helping husbands and wives draw closer together and have more love for one another.   It's the secret to less contention overall, to more peace, to more joy and happiness is to lose ourselves in the service of others. And so, to me, if you want to raise if we want to raise honorable, kind, generous, compassionate, empathetic human beings, they've got to lose themselves. To find themselves and define God.   And so, yeah, I think that's the secret. And of course, Jesus Christ tried to teach us that over and over and over again. He tried to teach His disciples over and over again that if you love me.   Then love my sheep, feed my sheep, teach my sheep. And what's interesting is that you all. The more we do that, the more we serve and love others.   Do you know what I believe? I believe it's kind of like the Grinch. Remember when the Grinch's heart grew?   That's real. That's really what happens. The God expands our ability to love others.   And in doing that, it actually expands our deep love of God. I think it's so fascinating that that's the fruit of service is a deeper and abiding love of Jesus Christ. It seems like it would be the opposite, right?   Well, I've got to love Jesus more in order to have a greater desire to serve. But it's the opposite. He wants you to go serve when you don't really feel like it.   And he wants you to go serve when it's not convenient. And your kids are crying and no one wants to go rake her yard. And then the fruit of acting in faith and trusting God is the love.   Laura Dugger: (53:05 - 53:34) That's what I would do. That's so good. Such a good medicine or anecdote to selfishness and issues we're having in the home with our children and for ourselves.   Well, Monica, you have shared so much goodness with us throughout this conversation. Can you explain how you can help partner with us as parents to help us teach our children etiquette at neutral times? Like you said, when their hearts are softer?   Monica Irvine: (53:35 - 56:52) Yes. Yeah. So, we've got some awesome resources, parents.   And number one is we do have a parenting course called Rise Up Parenting. And it's just this beautiful 52-week course that you get lifetime access to in case it takes you three years to get through your 52 weeks. But it is a course for mom and dad, or mom, or dad by themselves.   But it's just a beautiful way to help parents focus on one parenting skill a week. I've learned that when we have purposeful parenting, when we focus on one improvement at a time because we can get so overwhelmed, like we want we want to teach our kids to be selfless and that be ambitious and to serve and share. And I mean, it's just, it's endless.   But the Lord is a house of order. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a house of order. And so as long as we're going in the right direction, y'all, we are successful.   And so, this parenting course teaches a biblical principle and then a parenting principle that are related and allows you to just make little increment steps of improvement. Because when mom and dad improve, it blesses your children. So that's the first resource.   And then the other two most popular resources is we just have two programs. We have a program called FUNdamentals4Kids that targets children preschool through about third grade. And it's so fun.   It's just these wonderful, fun board games, flashcards, songs, stories, crafts, where we try to encourage you to twice a week set aside 15 minutes of your school day for an official manners activity and watch what happens. So, we've organized it for you. And for the little kids, we found out that if they can play with it, sing about it, make some food with it, that it helps them to go, “Mom, let's do a manners lesson.”   And then they don't even know that they're being taught these beautiful, wonderful skills. So that is so wonderful. And then for kids about fourth grade through 12th grade, we have a course called Life Skills for You.   And it's just so fun and it's so effective. Basically, it's 142 little three-minute lessons. We once again just try to get you to commit to twice a week sitting down with your family, watching a three-minute lesson where I'm teaching the etiquette skill.   Plus, we show teenagers doing the skill the wrong way and the right way. So, it's kind of funny, but it just creates some really great conversation with the family. And so those are our top three selling product lines.   And you can find all of that on our website, theetiquettefactory.com.   Laura Dugger: (56:53 - 57:15) Thank you for sharing. We will certainly link to all of that in the show notes for today's episode. And Monica, you may be familiar that we are called The Savvy Sauce because savvy is synonymous with practical knowledge.   And so, this is my final question for you today. What is your savvy sauce? Yeah.   Oh, that's a hard one.   Monica Irvine: (57:15 - 59:06) I thought about this and I'm like, it's so hard. You all. Honestly, my savvy sauce is Jesus Christ.   It just is. I know sometimes we want the answer to be something else, but in all practical terms, it's Jesus. Meaning I start my morning out every day with Jesus.   I end every night with Jesus. I pray throughout the day and ask Him to help me make a decision. And I thank Him for all the beautiful things that happened to me throughout the day.   And I just He is this person, this real person that is at my side every day, all day, I hope. And that's how I do anything. That's why I am the mother that I am.   Not that I'm the best mother, but because of Him, I can mother and because of Him, I can be a good wife. And because of Him, I can be a good friend and I can minister to others through The Etiquette Factory. It's just it is Him.   And, you know, sometimes people will ask me, “Monica, I I want to have the knowledge you have or I want to be able to whatever parent the way it sounds like you parent.” And I'm like, you guys know, it's just it's called Jesus Christ. And Jesus will tell us all things that we should do.   And so my sauce is having a relationship with Jesus Christ. It truly is well said.   Laura Dugger: (59:06 - 59:24) And, Monica, you are such a gifted communicator and your heart of compassion is evident in your outward behavior. It's been such a joy to get to spend an hour with you today. So, I just want to say thank you for being my guest.   Monica Irvine: (59:24 - 59:43) Oh, thank you, Laura. And it's been such a joy. You're so kind.   And I appreciate the beautiful ministry that you're doing here on The Savvy Sauce. What a blessing for families to be able to just hear these resources that you've created. So, thank you.   Laura Dugger: (59:44 - 1:03:26) Thank you for being a part of it.   One more thing before you go, have you heard the term gospel before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you, but it starts with the bad news.   Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves. This means there's absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death, and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved.   We need a savior, but God loved us so much. He made a way for his only son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute. This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with him.   That is good news. Jesus lived the perfect life. We could never live and died in our place for our sin.   This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus. We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished. If we choose to receive what he has done for us, Romans 10:9 says, “that if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”   So, you pray with me now. Heavenly father, thank you for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to you.   Will you clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare you as Lord of their life? We trust you to work and change lives now for eternity. In Jesus name we pray.   Amen. If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring him for me. So, me for him, you get the opportunity to live your life for him.   And at this podcast, we're called The Savvy Sauce for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So, you're ready to get started.   First, tell someone, say it out loud, get a Bible. The first day I made this decision, my parents took me to Barnes and Noble and let me choose my own Bible. I selected the Quest NIV Bible and I love it.   You can start by reading the book of John. Also get connected locally, which just means tell someone who's a part of a church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you.   We want to celebrate with you too. So, feel free to leave a comment for us here. If you did make a decision to follow Christ, we also have show notes included where you can read scripture that describes this process.   And finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, “in the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.   And if you've already received this good news, I pray you have someone to share it with. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.

If you can't explain your deal in 60 seconds, you don't have a deal. You have confusion. In this episode, I break down why hiding behind spreadsheets kills momentum, confidence, and credibility with brokers, partners, and investors. Multifamily deals don't fall apart on paper first. They fall apart in your head. I walk through how real investors think about deals, how to explain fundamentals without Excel, and why clarity matters more than perfect underwriting. We talk markets, rents, expenses, cap rates, experience, and business plans—without rambling, jargon, or scenario overload. This episode is for anyone stuck "modeling one more version," second-guessing their numbers, or losing confidence mid-pitch. Simplicity creates clarity. Clarity creates confidence. Confidence creates momentum. Sharpen the axe. Stop overthinking. Start moving.

Jim and Saab have their differences–and that's why they work! This episode is for couples who love each other but don't do things the same way. One of you feels first, while the other thinks first. One adds to cart, and the other opens an Excel file. And somehow… it all still ends up working.We share the friction, the fights, and the small shifts in communication that helped us understand each other better over time. Because real love isn't about sameness, it's about learning how your differences fit, balance, and soften each other. Perfectly imperfect!This episode is powered by Cadbury Dairy Milk Valentine's packs! Use them as the perfect way to say to your loved ones, “I'm always late, you're always early” or “I go with the flow, you're the planner” They're available in stores nationwide and on Mondelez PH e-commerce sites.

Moyamoya Syndrome Stroke Recovery: Judy Kim Cage's Comeback From “Puff of Smoke” to Purpose At 4:00 AM, Judy Kim Cage woke up in pain so extreme that she was screaming, though she doesn't remember the scream. What she does remember is the “worst headache ever,” nausea, numbness, and then the terrifying truth: her left side was shutting down. Here's the part that makes her story hit even harder: Judy already lived with Moyamoya syndrome and had undergone brain surgeries years earlier. She genuinely believed she was “cured.” So when her stroke began, her brain fought the reality with everything it had. Denial, resistance, bargaining, and delay. And yet, Judy's story isn't about doom. It's about what Moyamoya syndrome stroke recovery can look like when you keep going, especially when recovery becomes less about “getting back to normal” and more about building a new, honest, meaningful life. What Is Moyamoya Syndrome (And Why It's Called “Puff of Smoke”) Moyamoya is a rare cerebrovascular disorder where the internal carotid arteries progressively narrow, reducing blood flow to the brain. The brain tries to compensate by creating fragile collateral vessels, thin-walled backups that can look like a “puff of smoke” on imaging. Those collateral vessels can become a risk. In Judy's case, the combination of her history, symptoms, and eventual deficits marked a devastating event that would reshape her life. The emotional gut punch wasn't only the stroke itself. It was the psychological whiplash of thinking you're safe… and discovering you're not. The First Enemy in Moyamoya Stroke Recovery: Denial Judy didn't just resist the hospital. She resisted the idea that this was happening at all. She'd been through countless ER visits in the past, having to explain Moyamoya to doctors, enduring tests, and then being told, “There's nothing we can do.” That history trained her to expect frustration and disappointment, not urgent help. So when her husband wanted to call emergency services, her reaction wasn't logical, it was emotional. It was the reflex of someone who'd been through too much. Denial isn't weakness. It's protection. It's your mind trying to buy time when the truth is too big to hold all at once. The Moment Reality Landed: “I Thought I Picked Up My Foot” In early recovery, Judy was convinced she could do what she used to do. Get up. Walk. Go to the bathroom. Handle it. But a powerful moment in rehab shifted everything: she was placed into an exoskeleton and realized her brain and body weren't speaking the same language. She believed she lifted her foot, then saw it hadn't moved for several seconds. That's when she finally had to admit what so many survivors eventually face: Recovery begins the moment you stop arguing with reality. Not because you “give up,” but because you stop wasting energy fighting what is and start investing energy into what can be. The Invisible Battle: Cognitive Fatigue and Energy Management If you're living through Moyamoya syndrome stroke recovery, it's easy for everyone (including you) to focus on the visible stuff: walking, arms, vision, and balance. But Judy's most persistent challenge wasn't always visible. It was cognitive fatigue, the kind that makes simple tasks feel impossible. Even something as ordinary as cleaning up an email inbox can become draining because it requires micro-decisions: categorize, prioritize, analyze, remember context, avoid mistakes. And then there's the emotional layer: when you're a perfectionist, errors feel personal. Judy described how fatigue increases mistakes, not because she doesn't care, but because the brain's bandwidth runs out. That's a brutal adjustment when your identity has always been built on competence. A practical shift that helped her Instead of trying to “finish” exhausting tasks in one heroic sprint, Judy learned to do small daily pieces. It's not glamorous, but it reduces cognitive load and protects energy. In other words: consistency beats intensity. Returning to Work After a Moyamoya Stroke: A Different Kind of Strength Judy's drive didn't disappear after her stroke. If anything, it became part of the recovery engine. She returned slowly, first restricted to a tiny number of hours. Even that was hard. But over time, she climbed back. She eventually returned full-time and later earned a promotion. That matters for one reason: it proves recovery doesn't have one shape. For some people, recovery is walking again. For others, it's parenting again. For others, it's working again without losing themselves to burnout. The goal isn't to recreate the old life perfectly. The goal is to build a life that fits who you are now. [Quote block mid-article] “If you couldn't make fun of it… it would be easier to fall into a pit of despair.” Humor Isn't Denial. It's a Tool. Judy doesn't pretend everything is okay. She's not selling toxic positivity. But she does use humor like a lever, something that lifts the emotional weight just enough to keep moving. She called her recovering left hand her “evil twin,” high-fived it when it improved, and looked for small “silver linings” not because the stroke was good, but because despair is dangerous. Laughter can't fix Moyamoya. But it can change what happens inside your nervous system: tension, stress response, mood, motivation, and your willingness to try again tomorrow. And sometimes, tomorrow is the whole win. Identity After Stroke: When “Big Stuff Became Small Stuff” One of the most profound shifts Judy described was this: the stroke changed her scale. Things that used to feel huge became small. Every day annoyances lost their power. It took something truly significant to rattle her. That's not magical thinking. That's a perspective earned the hard way. Many survivors quietly report this experience: once you've faced mortality and rebuilt your life from rubble, you stop wasting precious energy on what doesn't matter. Judy also found meaning in mentoring others because recovering alone can feel like walking through darkness without a map. Helping others doesn't erase what happened. But it can transform pain into purpose. If You're In Moyamoya Syndrome Stroke Recovery, Read This If your recovery feels messy… if you're exhausted by invisible symptoms… if the old “high achiever” version of you is fighting the new reality… You're not broken. You're adapting. And your next step doesn't have to be dramatic. It just has to be honest and repeatable: Simplify the day Protect energy Build routines Accept help Use humor when you can And find one person who understands Recovery is not a straight line. But it is possible to rebuild a life you actually want to live. If you want more support and guidance, you can also explore Bill's resources here: recoveryafterstroke.com/book patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please consult your doctor before making any changes to your health or recovery plan. Judy Kim Cage on Moyamoya Stroke Recovery, Cognitive Fatigue, and Finding Purpose Again She thought Moyamoya was “fixed.” Then a 4 AM headache proved otherwise. Judy's comeback will change how you see recovery. Judy’s Instagram Highlights: 00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction 01:43 Life Before the Stroke 11:17 The Moment of the Stroke 19:56 Moyamoya Syndrome Stroke Recovery 25:36 Cognitive Fatigue and Executive Functioning 34:50 Rehabilitation Experience 42:29 Using Humor in Recovery 46:59 Finding Purpose After Stroke 54:19 Judy’s Book: Super Survivor 01:05:20 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Transcript: Introduction and Guest Introduction Bill Gasiamis (00:00) Hey there, I’m Bill Gasiamis and this is the Recovery After Stroke podcast. Before we jump in a quick thank you to my Patreon supporters. You help cover the hosting costs after more than 10 years of doing this independently. And you make it possible for me to keep creating episodes for stroke survivors who need hope and real guidance. And thank you to everyone who supports the show in the everyday ways too. The YouTube commenters, the people leaving reviews on Spotify and Apple. The folks who bought my book and everyone who sticks around and doesn’t skip the ads. I see you and I appreciate you. Now I want you to hear this. My guest today, Judy Kim Cage, woke up at 4am with the worst headache of her life and she was so deep in denial that she threatened to divorce her husband if he called 911. Judy lives with Moyamoya syndrome, a rare cerebrovascular condition often described as the puff of smoke on imaging. She’d already had brain surgeries and believed she was cured until the stroke changed everything. Judy also wrote a book called Super Survivor and it’s all about how denial, resistance and persistence can lead to success and a better life after stroke. I’ll put the links in the show notes. In this conversation, we talk about Moyamoya Syndrome, stroke recovery, the rehab moment where reality finally landed. and what it’s like to rebuild life with cognitive fatigue and executive functioning challenges and how Judy used humor and purpose to keep moving forward without pretending recovery is easy. Let’s get into it. Judy Kim Cage, welcome to the podcast. Life Before Moyamoya Syndrome Judy Kim Cage (01:43) Thank you so much, Bill Bill Gasiamis (01:45) Thanks for being here. Can you paint us a picture of your life before the stroke? What were your days like? Judy Kim Cage (01:51) Hmm. Well, my life before the stroke was me trying to be a high achiever and a corporate nerd. I think so. I think so. I, you know, I was in the Future Business Leaders of America in high school and then carried that forward to an accounting degree. Bill Gasiamis (02:04) Did you achieve it? Judy Kim Cage (02:20) and finance and then ⁓ had gone to work for Deloitte and the big four. ⁓ And after that moved into ⁓ internal audit for commercial mortgage and then risk and banking and it all rolled into compliance, which is a kind of larger chunk there. But ⁓ yeah, I was living the corporate dream and Traveling every other week, basically so 50 % of the time, flying to Columbus, staying there, and then flying back home for the weekend and working in a rented office for the week after. And I did that for all of 2018. And then in 2019 is when my body said, hang on a second. And I had a stroke. Bill Gasiamis (03:17) How many hours a week do you think you were working? Judy Kim Cage (03:19) Well, not including the treble, ⁓ probably 50-55. Bill Gasiamis (03:26) Okay. Judy Kim Cage (03:26) Oh, wish, that wasn’t that that really wasn’t a ton compared to my Deloitte days where I’d be working up to 90 hours a week. Bill Gasiamis (03:37) Wow. in that time when you’re working 90 hours a week. Is there time for anything else? you get to squeeze in a run at the gym or do you get to squeeze in a cafe catch up with a friend or anything like that? Judy Kim Cage (03:51) There are people that do. think, yeah, I mean, on certain particular weekends and my friends, a lot of my friends were also working with me. So there was time to socialize. And then, of course, we would all let off some steam, you know, at the pub, you know, at the end of a week. But ⁓ yeah, I remember on one of my very first jobs, I had been so excited because I had signed up to take guitar lessons and I was not able to leave in order to get there in time. ⁓ so that took a backseat. Bill Gasiamis (04:40) Yes, it sounds like there’s potentially lots of things that took a backseat. Yeah, work tends to be like that can be all consuming and when friendships especially are within the work group as well, even more so because everyone’s doing the same thing and it’s just go, Judy Kim Cage (04:44) Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. We started as a cohort essentially of, I want to say 40 some people all around the same age. And then, you know, as the years ticked by, we started falling off as they do in that industry. Bill Gasiamis (05:19) Do you enjoy it though? Like, is there a part of you that enjoys the whole craziness of all the travel, all the hours, the work stuff? it? Is it like interesting? Judy Kim Cage (05:31) Yeah, I do love it. I actually do love my job. I love compliance. I love working within a legal mindset with other lawyers. And basically knowing that I’m pretty good at my job, that I can be very well organized, that it would be difficult even for a normal healthy person and challenging and that I can do well there. And yeah, no, was, when I had put in a year, when I was in ⁓ acute therapy, ⁓ I had spoken with a number of students and they had interviewed me as a patient, but also from the psych side of it all, ⁓ asking, well, what does it feel like to all of a sudden have your life stop? And I said, well, ⁓ and things got a bit emotional, I said, I felt like I was at the top of my game. I had finally achieved the job that I absolutely wanted, had desired. ⁓ I felt like I’d found a home where I was now going to retire. And all of a sudden that seems like it was no longer a possibility. Bill Gasiamis (06:55) So that’s a very common thing that strokes have over say who I interviewed. They say stuff like I was at the top of my game and there’s this ⁓ idea or sense that once you get to the top of the game, you stay there. There’s no getting down from the top of the game and that it just keeps going and keeps going. And, I think it’s more about fit. sounds like it’s more about fit. Like I found a place where I fit. found a place where I’m okay. or I do well, where I succeed, where people believe in me, where I have the support and the faith or whatever it is of my employers, my team. Is that kind of how you describe on top of your game or is it something different? Judy Kim Cage (07:41) I think it was all of those things, ⁓ but also, you know, definitely the kindness of people, the support of people, their faith in my ability to be smart and get things done. But then also ⁓ just the fact that I finally said, okay, this was not necessarily a direct from undergrad to here. However, I was able to take pieces of everything that I had done and put it together into a position that was essentially kind of created for me and then launched from there. So I felt as though it was essentially having climbed all of those stairs. So I was at the top. Yeah. you know, looking at my Lion King kingdom and yeah. Bill Gasiamis (08:43) just about to ascend and, and it was short lived by the sound of it. Judy Kim Cage (08:49) It was, it was, it was only one year beforehand, but I am actually still at the company now. I ⁓ had gone and done ⁓ well. So I was in the hospital for a few months and following that. Well, following the round of inpatient and the one round of outpatient, said, okay, I’m going back. And I decided, I absolutely insisted that I was going to go back. The doctor said, okay, you can only work four hours a week. I said, four hours a week, what are you talking about? ⁓ But then I realized that four hours a week was actually really challenging at that time. ⁓ And then ⁓ I climbed back up. was, you know, I’m driven by deadlines and… ⁓ I was working, you know, leveraging long-term disability. And then once I had worked too many hours after five years, you know, I graduated from that program, or rather I got booted out of the program. ⁓ And then a year later, I was actually, well, no, actually at the end of the five years I was promoted. So, ⁓ after coming back full time. Bill Gasiamis (10:20) Wow. So this was all in 2019, the stroke. You were 39 years old. Do you remember, do you remember the moment when you realized there was something wrong? We’ll be back with more of Judy’s remarkable story in just a moment. If you’re listening right now and you’re in that stage where recovery feels invisible, where the fatigue is heavy, your brain feels slower. or you’re trying to explain a rare condition like Moyamoya and nobody really gets it. I want you to hear this clearly. You’re not failing. You’re recovering. If you want extra support between episodes, you can check out my book at recoveryafterstroke.com slash book. And if you’d like to help keep this podcast going and support my mission to reach a thousand episodes, you can support the podcast at Patreon by visiting patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. All right, let’s get back to Judy. The Moment of the Stroke Judy Kim Cage (11:16) Yes, although I was in a lot of denial. ⁓ So we had just had dinner with ⁓ my stepdaughter and her husband ⁓ and ⁓ we were visiting them in Atlanta, Georgia. ⁓ And we said, OK, we’ll meet for brunch tomorrow. You know, great to see you. Have a good night. It was four in the morning and I was told I woke up screaming and I felt this horrible, horrible worst headache ever ⁓ on the right side. And I think because I have, I have Moyamoya syndrome, because of that and because I had had brain surgeries, ⁓ 10 years or back in December of 2008, I had a brain surgery on each side. And that at the time was the best of care that you could get. You know, that was essentially your cure. And so I thought I was cured. And so I thought I would never have a stroke. So when it was actually happening, I was in denial said there’s no way this could be happening. But the excess of pain, ⁓ the nausea and ⁓ it not going away after throwing up, the numbness ⁓ and then the eventual paralysis of my left side definitely ⁓ was evidence that something was very very wrong. Bill Gasiamis (13:09) So it was four in the morning, were you guys sleeping? Judy Kim Cage (13:14) ⁓ yeah, we were in bed. Yep. And yeah, I woke up screaming. According to my husband, I don’t remember the screaming part, but I remember all the pain. Bill Gasiamis (13:24) Yeah, did he ⁓ get you to hospital? Did he the emergency services? Judy Kim Cage (13:30) I apparently was kind of threatening to divorce him if he called 911. Bill Gasiamis (13:38) Wow, that’s a bit rough. Oh my lord. Judy Kim Cage (13:41) I know. mean, that could have been his out, but he didn’t. Bill Gasiamis (13:45) There’s worse things for a human to do than call 911 and get your support. Like marriages end for worse things than that. Judy Kim Cage (13:53) because I’ve been to the ER many, many, many times. And because of the Moyamoya, you would always, it being a rare disease, you would never be told, well, you would have to explain to all the doctors about what Moyamoya was, for one. For two, to say if I had a cold, for instance, that Moyamoya had nothing to do with it. Bill Gasiamis (14:11) Wow. Judy Kim Cage (14:19) But also, you know, they would give me an MRI, oof, the claustrophobia. I detested that. And I said, if you’re getting me into an MRI, please, please, please, a benzodiazepine would be incredible. Or just knock me out, whatever you need to do. But I’m not getting into that thing otherwise. But, you know, they would take the MRI, read it. and then say, hours and hours and hours later, there’s nothing we can do. The next course of action, if it was absolutely necessary, would be another surgery, which would have been bur holes that were drilled into my skull to relieve some sort of pressure. ⁓ In this particular case, the options were to ⁓ have a drain put in my skull. and then for me to be reliant on a ventilator. Or they said, you can have scans done every four hours and if the damage becomes too great, then we’ll move on. Otherwise, we’ll just keep tabs on it, essentially. Bill Gasiamis (15:37) Yeah. So I know that feeling because since my initial blade in February, 2012, I’ve lost count how many times I’ve been to the hospital for a scan that was unnecessary, but necessary at the time because you, you know, you tie yourself up in knots trying to work out, is this another one? Isn’t it another one? Is it, it, and then the only outcome that you can possibly come up with that puts your mind at ease and everybody else around you is let’s go and get a scan and then, and then move on with life. Once they tell you it was, ⁓ it was not another bleed or whatever. Yeah. However, three times I did go and three times there was a bleed. So it’s the whole, you know, how do you wrap your head around like which one isn’t the bleed, which one is the bleed and It’s a fricking nightmare if you ask me. And I seem to have now ⁓ transferred that concern to everybody else who has a headache. On the weekend, my son had a migraine. And I tell you what, because he was describing it as one of the worst headaches he had ever had, I just went into meltdown. I couldn’t cope. And it was like, go to the hospital, go to the hospital, go to… He didn’t go, he’s an adult, right? Makes his own decisions. But I was worried about it for days. And it wasn’t enough that even the next few days he was feeling better because I still have interviewed people who have had a headache for four or five or six days before they went to hospital and then they found that it was a stroke. it’s just become this crazy thing that I have to live with now. Judy Kim Cage (17:26) I essentially forced Rich to wait 12 hours before I called my vascular neurologist. And once I did, his office said, you need to go to the ER. And I said, okay, then that’s when I folded and said, all right, we’ll go. ⁓ And then, ⁓ you know, an ambulance came. Bill Gasiamis (17:35) Wow. Judy Kim Cage (17:53) took me out on a gurney and then took me to a mobile stroke unit, which there was only one of 11, there were only 11 in the country at the time. And they were able to scan me there and then had me basically interviewed by a neurologist via telecall. And this was, you know, before the days of teams and zoom and that we all tested out ⁓ from COVID. ⁓ yeah, that’s. Bill Gasiamis (18:35) That’s you, So then you get through that initial acute phase and then you wake up with a certain amount of deficits. Judy Kim Cage (18:37) Yeah. my gosh. ⁓ Well, yeah, absolutely. ⁓ Massive amounts of pain ⁓ from all the blood absorbing back into the brain. ⁓ The left side, my left side was paralyzed. My arm fell out of my shoulder socket. So it was hanging down loosely. ⁓ I had dropped foot, so I had to learn to walk again. Double vision and my facial group on the left and then. Bluff side neglect. Bill Gasiamis (19:31) Yeah. So, and then I see in our, in your notes, I see also you had diminished hearing, nerve pain, spasticity, cognitive fatigue, ⁓ bladder issues. You’d also triggered Ehlers-Danlos symptoms, whatever that is. Tell me about that. What’s that? Moyamoya Syndrome Stroke Recovery Judy Kim Cage (19:56) So I call myself a genetic mutant because the Moyamoya for one at the time I was diagnosed is discovered in 3.5 people out of a million. And then Ehlers-Danlos or EDS for short is also a genetic disorder. Well, certain versions are more genetic than others, but it is caused by a defect in your collagen, which makes up essentially your entire body. And so I have hypermobility, the blood, I have pots. So my, my blood basically remains down by my feet, it pulls at my feet. And so not enough of it gets up to my brain, which also could, you know, have affected the moimoya. But Essentially, it creates vestibular issues, these balance issues where it’s already bad enough that you have a stroke, but it’s another to be at the risk of falling all the time. Yeah. Or if you get up a little too fast, which I still do to this day, sometimes I’ll completely forget and I’ll just bounce up off the sofa to get myself a drink and I will sway and all of a sudden Bill Gasiamis (21:07) Yeah. Judy Kim Cage (21:22) onto the sofa or sit down right on the floor and say, okay, why did I not do the three-step plan to get up? ⁓ But sometimes it’s just too easy to forget. Bill Gasiamis (21:37) Yeah, yeah. You just act, you just move out of well habit or normal, normal ways that people move. And then you find yourself in a interesting situation. So I mean, how, how do you deal with all of that? Like you, you go from having experienced more and more by the way, let’s describe more and more a little bit, just so people know what it is. Judy Kim Cage (22:02) Absolutely. So, my way is a cerebrovascular disorder where your internal carotid progressively constricts. So for no known reason, no truly known reason. And so because it keeps shrinking and shrinking, not enough brain, blood gets to your brain. So what the brain decides to do to compensate is it will form these collateral vessels. And these collateral vessels, which there are many of them usually, you know, the longer this goes on, ⁓ they have very thin walls. So due to the combination of the thin walls, and if you have high blood pressure, these walls can break. And that is what happened in my case. ⁓ Well, the carotids will continue to occlude, but what happens is, ⁓ least with the surgery, they took my temporal artery, removed it from my scalp, had taken a plate off of my skull and stitched that. temporal artery onto my brain so that it would have a separate source of blood flow so that it was no longer reliant on this carotid. So we know that the carotid, sorry, that the temporal artery won’t fail out. ⁓ So usually, ⁓ and this was my surgery was actually done at Boston Children’s Hospital ⁓ by the man who pioneered the surgery. And he was basically head of neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s because they more often find this in children now. And the sooner they find it, the fewer collateral vessels will form once the surgery is performed. Bill Gasiamis (24:17) Okay, so the long-term risk is that it’s decreased, the risk of a blade decreases if they do the surgery early on too. I love that. Judy Kim Cage (24:25) The rest. But I was diagnosed at the age of 29. So I had quite a while of these collateral vessels forming in what they call a puff of smoke that appears on the MRI. ⁓ And that is what, you know, Moyamoya essentially means in Japanese, is translated to in Japanese, it’s puff of smoke. Bill Gasiamis (24:50) Wow, you have been going through this for a while then. So I can understand your whole mindset around doctors, another appointment, another MRI. Like I could totally, ⁓ it makes complete sense. You you’re over it after a certain amount of time. Yeah, I’m the same. I kind of get over it, but then I also have to take action because you know what we know what the previous Judy Kim Cage (25:07) Absolutely. Bill Gasiamis (25:19) outcome was and now you’re dealing with all of these deficits that you have to overcome. Which are the deficits that you’re still dealing with that are the most, well, the most sort of prolonged or challenging or whatever you want to call them, whatever. Cognitive Fatigue and Executive Functioning Judy Kim Cage (25:34) The most significant, I guess it’s the most wide ranging. But it is. ⁓ Energy management and cognitive fatigue. ⁓ I have issues with executive functioning. ⁓ Things are, you know, if I need to do sorting or filing. ⁓ That actually is. one of my least favorite things to do anymore. Whereas it was very easy at one point. ⁓ And now if I want to clean up my inbox, it is just a dreaded task. ⁓ And so now I’ve learned that if I do a little bit of it every day, then I don’t have, it doesn’t have to take nearly as long. ⁓ Bill Gasiamis (26:26) What it’s dreaded about it is it making decisions about where those emails belong, what to do to them or. Judy Kim Cage (26:33) Oh, no, it’s just the time and energy it takes to do it. It drains me very quickly. Because you have to evaluate and analyze every line as you’re deciding what project it belongs to. And there’s a strategic way to do it in terms of who you normally deal with on each project, etc. etc. This chunk of time, calendar dates you’ve worked on it, etc. But, know, That might by the time I get to this tedious task, I’m not thinking about it strategically. ⁓ Yeah, I’m just dragging each individual line item into a little folder. ⁓ So, ⁓ but yeah, like the cognitive deficits. gosh. mean, I’m working on a computer all day. I am definitely a corporate desk rat or mouse, you know, on the wheel. ⁓ And a lot of Excel spreadsheets and just a lot of very small print and sometimes I get to expand it. ⁓ And it really is just trying not to, well, the job involves making as few errors as you possibly can. Bill Gasiamis (28:01) Yeah. Judy Kim Cage (28:02) ⁓ Now when I get tired or overwhelmed or when I overdo it, which I frequently frequently do, ⁓ I find out that I’ve made more errors and I find out after the fact usually. So nothing that’s not reversible, nothing that’s not fixable, but it still is pretty disheartening for a perfectionist type such as myself. Bill Gasiamis (28:30) Wow. So the perfectionism also has to become something that you have to deal with even more so than before, because before you were probably capable of managing it now, you’re less capable. yeah, I understand. I’m not a perfectionist by all means. My wife can tend to be when she’s studying or something like that. And she suffers from, you know, spending Judy Kim Cage (28:46) the energy. Bill Gasiamis (29:00) potentially hours on three lines of a paragraph. Like she’s done that before and I’ll just, and I’ve gone into the room after three hours and her, and her going into the room was, I’m going to go in and do a few more lines because she was drained or tired or, you know, her brain wasn’t working properly or whatever. I’m just going to go do three more lines and three hours later, she’s still doing those three lines. It’s like, wow, you need to get out of the, you need to get out. need to, we need to. break this because it’s not, it’s not good. So I totally get what it’s liked to be like that. And then I have had the cognitive fatigue where emails were impossible. Spreadsheets forget about it. I never liked them anyway. And they were just absolutely forget about it. Um, I feel like they are just evil. I feel like the spreadsheets are evil, you know, all these things that you have to do in the background, forget about it. That’s unbelievable. So, um, What was it like when you first sort of woke up from the initial stroke, got out of your unconscious state and then realized you had to deal with all of this stuff? I know for some time you were probably unable to speak and were you ⁓ trapped inside your body? Is that right or? Judy Kim Cage (30:19) I was in the ICU. I was paralyzed on the left side, so I was not able to get up, not really able to move much. ⁓ I was not speaking too much, definitely not within the first week. I was in the ICU for 10 days. ⁓ And yeah, I just wasn’t able to do much other than scream from the beam. ⁓ And then I, once I became more aware, I insisted that I could get up and walk to the bathroom myself. I insisted that I could just sit up, get up, do all the things that I had done before. And it being a right side stroke as well, you know, I think helps contribute to the overestimation or the… just conceitedness, guess, and this self-confidence that I could just do anything. Yes, absolutely. And I was told time and time again, Judy, can’t walk, Judy, can’t go to the bathroom, Judy, you can’t do these things. And I was in absolute denial. And I would say, no, I can, I can get up. And meanwhile, I would say that Bill Gasiamis (31:30) Delusion Judy Kim Cage (31:51) husband was so afraid that I was going to physically try to get up and fall over, which would not have been good. ⁓ And so, you know, there was, there were some expletives involved. ⁓ And, ⁓ and then eventually once I was out of the ICU, ⁓ I didn’t truly accept that I couldn’t walk until Bill Gasiamis (32:00) but. Judy Kim Cage (32:20) one of the PT students had put me into an exoskeleton and I realized that my foot did not move at all, you know, like a full five seconds after I thought I picked it up. And I said, wait, hang on, what’s going on here? And I said, ⁓ okay, I guess I have to admit that I can’t walk. And then I can’t, I can’t sit upright. I can’t. You know, and like you had mentioned, you know, I had lost the signals from my brain to my bladder. They were slow or whatnot. And I was wetting the bed, like a child at a sleepover. And I was pretty horrified. And that happened for, you know, pretty much my, pretty much all my time at Kratie, except I got the timing down. ⁓ eventually, which was fantastic. But then when I moved to post-acute, ⁓ then I had to learn the timing all over again, just because, you know, of different, rules being different, the transfers being different, and then, ⁓ you know, just ⁓ the timing of when somebody would answer the call button, et cetera. Bill Gasiamis (33:45) Yeah. Do you, what was it like going to rehab? I was really excited about it. I was hanging out because I learned that I couldn’t walk when the nurse said to me, have you been to the toilet yet? And I said, no, I hadn’t been to the toilet. We’re talking hours after surgery, you know, maybe within the first eight or nine hours, something like that. And I went to put my left foot down onto the ground. She was going to help me. She was like a really petite Asian. framed lady and I’m and I’m probably two feet taller than her, something like that, and double her weight. And then she said, just put your hand on my shoulder and then I’ll support you. So I did that. I put my hand on her shoulder, stepped onto my left foot and then just collapsed straight onto the ground and realized, ⁓ no, I’m not walking. I can’t walk anymore. And then I was then waiting. hanging out to go to rehab was really excited about that. ⁓ What was it like for you? Moyamoya Syndrome Stroke Rehabilitation Experience Judy Kim Cage (34:48) Initially, well, do you so you mean. ⁓ Bill Gasiamis (34:56) Just as in like, were you aware that you could ⁓ improve things? Were you kind of like, we’re gonna overcome this type of stuff? Because you had a lot more things to overcome than I did. So it’s like, how is that? How do you frame that in your head? Were you the kind of person who was like, ⁓ rehab’s around the corner, let’s do that? Or were you kind of reluctant? Judy Kim Cage (35:19) It was a combination of two things. One, I had been dying to go home. I said, I absolutely, why can’t I go home? I was in the hospital for three weeks before we moved to the rehab hospital. And once we had done that, I was there basically for the entire weekend and then they do evaluations on Tuesday. And so I was told on Tuesday that I would be there for another at least four to six weeks. And so that was even before therapies really began. So there was a part of me saying, I don’t care, let me go home and I’ll do outpatient every day and everything will be fine. At least I get to go home. But then the other part. Bill Gasiamis (35:52) Thanks. Judy Kim Cage (36:11) said, okay, well, once I realized I was stuck and that I couldn’t escape, I couldn’t go anywhere, ⁓ I actually, I did love therapy. ⁓ I loved being in speech therapy, being in OTE, being in PT even, because my girls were fantastic. They were so caring, so understanding. They made jokes and also laughed at mine, which was even better. And when you’re not in therapy, especially on the weekends, you’re just in your room by yourself. And you’re not watching TV because that input is way too heavy. Listening to music. maybe a little bit here and there. ⁓ You know, all the things that you know and love are nowhere to be found, you know, really. ⁓ Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And I get claustrophobic in the MRI, in the hospital, et cetera. yeah. Bill Gasiamis (37:14) Oscillating. Yeah. I was on YouTube, searching YouTube videos that were about neuroplasticity, retraining the brain, that kind of stuff, meditations, type of thing. That really helped me on those weekends. The family was always around, but there was delays between family visits and what have you that couldn’t be there that entire time. ⁓ So I found that very interesting. And you know, rehab was a combination of frustration and excitement, excitement that I was getting the help, frustration that things weren’t moving as quickly as I wanted. ⁓ And I even remember the occupational therapist making us make breakfast. And I wouldn’t recommend this breakfast for stroke survivors. I think it was cereal and toast or something like that. And I remember being frustrated, why are they making me make it? My left side doesn’t work. Like I can barely walk. I cannot carry the glass with the tea or anything like that to me. What are these people doing? They should be doing it for us. I wasn’t aware. I wasn’t aware that that was part of the therapy. I just thought they were making us make our own bloody breakfast. I thought these people are so terrible. And it took a while for me to clue on like, ⁓ okay. Judy Kim Cage (38:44) you Bill Gasiamis (38:52) They want me to be able to do this when I get home. ⁓ understood. Took a while. I’m thick like that. Judy Kim Cage (39:00) Fortunately, wasn’t made to cook until close to the end. And also during outpatient, I was tasked to make kind of a larger, you know, crock pot dinner so that, you know, I could do that at home. Meanwhile, the irony of it all is that. I can cook and I used to love cooking, but I don’t do it nearly as much as I used to. So that skill did not really transfer over. ⁓ I have Post-it notes up by the microwave that tell me right hand only because if I use my left hand, the temperature differential I will burn myself ⁓ without even realizing it or even reaching for a certain part of a pan that I think is going to be safe and is somewhat heat resistant. And I touch it and then poof, well, you know, get a burn. So there are post-it notes everywhere. There’s one by the front door that says, watch the steps, because I had a couple of times flown down them and gashed my knee. Bill Gasiamis (40:13) Yeah. Judy Kim Cage (40:26) And it’s amazing actually how long a Post-It note with its temporary stick will stay up on a wall. Bill Gasiamis (40:35) Well, there’s another opportunity for you there, like do a project, ⁓ a longevity of Post-it Notes project, see how long we can get out of one application. Judy Kim Cage (40:46) Yeah, well, this one actually, so I think it was three months after I had moved in, which would have been 10 months into my stroke recovery. And that’s when I fell down these steps. And that’s when I put up the Post-It note. it has been, a piece of tape has been added to it. but it only fell down, I think, a couple of years ago. Bill Gasiamis (41:18) Yeah. So 3M need to shift their entire focus. I feel like 3M. Yeah. I think 3M needs to have a permanent ⁓ post-it note application, but easy to remove. if I want to take it down, like it’s permanent once I put it up, but if I want to take it down, it’s still easy to remove and it doesn’t ruin my paint or leave residue. Judy Kim Cage (41:44) They do actually have that tech. have it for, they call it command. It’s what they have for the hooks for photos and whatnot. And then if you pull the tab and then release it, it will come off and leave the wall undamaged, but it will otherwise stay there for a long. Bill Gasiamis (42:04) Yes, yes, I think you’re right. Most of the time it works, yes. Okay, well, we’re moving on to other things. You’ve overcome a lot of stuff. You’re dealing with a lot of stuff. And yet, you have this disposition, which is very chirpy and happy, go lucky. Is it real, that disposition, or is it just a facade? Using Humor in Moyamoya Syndrome and Stroke Recovery Judy Kim Cage (42:29) No, no, it’s real. It’s real. ⁓ I think I’ve always ⁓ tried to make light of things. ⁓ Humors, probably my first defense mechanism. ⁓ And I think that helped out a lot ⁓ in terms of recovery. And also, ⁓ it put my therapist in a great mood. Also, because not many people did that apparently. You know, most people curse them off or, you know, were kind of miserable. And there were times when I was miserable too. Absolutely. But, but I probably took it out more on my husband than I did the staff. And he, and he would call, you know, I said, I was so mean to you, Rich. was so mean to you. And he said, yeah, you were nicer to the nurses than to me. And I. I apologized for it, but at the same time I’m like, yeah, but sometimes, bud, you are so annoying. Bill Gasiamis (43:33) You had it coming. Judy Kim Cage (43:34) Yeah. Why are you so overprotective? Why do you point out every crack in the sidewalk? Why do you know, you still say I have to stop to tie up my hair when we’re walking on the sidewalk, you know, because you’re not supposed to do two things at once. ⁓ Yeah. So I felt as though I would make jokes all the time. I when my left hand would start to regain function. I called it my evil twin because I didn’t even recognize that it was mine. But then I would give it a high five every time I started gaining function back. And I would say things like, yeah, hey, evil twin, congrats. Or ⁓ I would say, I guess I don’t have to clean the house anymore. I don’t have to use my left hand to dust. I’m not capable of doing it. So why do it? Bill Gasiamis (44:29) Yeah. Judy Kim Cage (44:30) And I’m like, let’s always look for the silver lining. And it would usually be a joke. But, you know, if you couldn’t make fun of it or think about the ridiculousness of it, then I think it would be easier to fall into a pit of despair. Bill Gasiamis (44:48) I agree with you and laughing and all that releases, know, good endo, good endorphins and good neurochemicals and all that kind of stuff really does improve your blood pressure. It improves the way that your body feels, you know, the tightness in your muscles and all that kind of stuff. Everything improves when you laugh and you have to find funny things about a bad situation to laugh at, to kind of dial down the seriousness of the situation. can you know, really dial it down just by picking something strange that happened and laughing at it. I found myself doing that as well. And I’m similar in that I would go to rehab and they would, you know, we would chit chat like I am now with you and would have all sorts of conversations about all kinds of things. And the rehab was kind of like the, the, it was like the vessel, you know, to talk shit, have a laugh. ⁓ you know, be the clown of the rehab room. And I get it, everyone’s doing it tough, but it lightened the mood for everybody. You know, was, it’s a hard thing. You know, imagine it being just constantly and forever hard. And it was like, I don’t want to be that guy and wish they have fun as well. And, and I think my, my, my tough times were decreased as a result. Like, you know, those stuff, mental and emotional days, they, they come, but they go. then you have relief from them. And I think you need relief. Judy Kim Cage (46:23) Absolutely. Otherwise, just could feel perpetual and just never ending. ⁓ And why or how could you possibly survive feeling that way? Bill Gasiamis (46:39) Yeah. So who are you now? as in your, how does your idea of who you are sort of begin to shift after the initial acute phase and now six years in, almost seven years into your stroke journey? Finding Purpose After Stroke Judy Kim Cage (46:59) I think I am. I’m pretty confident in who I am, which is funny. ⁓ I ⁓ actually lean more into making more jokes or ⁓ lean into the fact that things don’t, they don’t have nearly the importance or the impact that you would otherwise think. ⁓ One of my sayings, I guess I say all the, you know, how they say don’t sweat the small stuff. my big stuff, like big stuff became small stuff, you know. So it would have to be something pretty big in order for me to really, really, you know, think about it. And a lot of the little things, you know, the nuisances in life and stuff, would usually just laugh or if I tripped or something, then I would just laugh at it and just keep moving on. ⁓ And I think, you know, It’s funny because some people will say, ⁓ gosh, like stop, you know, there is toxic positivity, right? And there’s plenty of that. And ⁓ I stay away from that, I think. But when I try to give people advice or a different outlook, ⁓ I do say, well, you you could think of it this way, you know. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows and flowers and, you know, care bears, but it is, you know, but it, but you can pull yourself out of a situation. You can try to figure out a way to work around it. You can, you know, choose differently for yourself, you know, do things that you love. You know, you’re only given a certain amount of limited time on the earth. So how do you want to spend it? And if you are on your deathbed, you know, would you have, do you have any regrets? You know, like you did read the books about, you know, that, ⁓ why am I forgetting? Doctors ⁓ that perform palliative care and, you know, they’ve written books about you know what people’s regrets have been after, know, once they are about to pass and you know, that not taking action was a regret. You know, like why didn’t I do this? Or why didn’t I do this? Why didn’t I try this? Like really, what would have been the downfall to trying something? ⁓ And I find that, you know, aside from just naturally being able to see things to laugh at or, or positive sides of things. ⁓ I tried, like, I wish that people could experience that without having gone through what we went through. ⁓ but that’s virtually impossible. I think. Bill Gasiamis (50:18) I think it’s impossible, totally, 100 % impossible because everybody thinks they’re doing okay until they’re not. You just cannot prevent somebody from going through something by taking the learning first. The learning has to come second. Sad as that is. Judy Kim Cage (50:39) ⁓ Well, and we all think we’re invincible to a large extent. ⁓ But ⁓ I think what I’ve been trying to do or me now, I’ve always, you know, volunteered in various ways, but now I take and hold extra value in being a mentor for other stroke patients. Bill Gasiamis (51:03) Yeah, yeah, that’s Judy Kim Cage (51:04) And for, you know, individuals that even just come up to me and talk about all of their medical problems, it doesn’t matter if it’s circulated or not, you know, it’s medically they’re like, there’s some white matter on my MRI, what do think I should do? I’m like, it’s not that simple of an answer. I think you should go to the doctor. Get on a list. Bill Gasiamis (51:29) Yeah. Your journey seems like you’re growing through this adversity, like as in it’s very post-traumatic growth type of experience here. Something that I talk about on my book, the unexpected way that a stroke became the best thing that happened. Not something that I recommend people experience to get to the other side of that, of course. But in hindsight, like it’s all those things that you’re describing. Judy’s Book: Super Survivor And I look at the chapters because in fact, you’ve written a book and it’s going to be out after this episode goes live, which is awesome. And the book that you’ve written is called Super Survivor. And indeed that is a fitting title. Indeed it is. How denial, resistance and persistence can lead to success and a better life after stroke. Right? So just looking at some of the chapters, there’s a lot of overlap there, right? And one of the chapters that there’s overlap in is the volunteering and purpose. I’ve got parts of my book that specifically talk about doing stuff for other people and how that supports recovery and how the people who said that stroke was the best thing that happened to them, the ones that I interviewed to gather the data, one of the main things that they were doing was helping other people, volunteering in some way, shape or form. And that helped shape their purpose in life. and their meaning in life. And it’s how I got there as well. It was like, okay, I’m gonna go and prevent stroke. I’m gonna go talk on behalf of the Stroke Foundation. We’re gonna raise awareness about what stroke is, how to take action on stroke, what to do if somebody’s having a stroke. And I started to feel like I gained a purpose in my life, which was gonna to not allow other people to go through what I went through. And then, With that came public speaking and then with that came the podcast and then the purpose grew and it became really ⁓ all encompassing. It’s like, wow, like I know what my mission is. I didn’t seek to find it. I stumbled across it and the chapter in my book is called stumbling into purpose because you can’t think it up. You just have to take action and then bam, bam, it appears. Like, is that your experience? Judy Kim Cage (53:53) ⁓ Well, so much of my identity had been wrapped up in my occupation. ⁓ And so when, you know, the stroke first happened, et cetera, but then as time has passed, ⁓ yeah, I’ve absolutely found more meaning in providing comfort to other stroke patients. whether it’s because they see me as inspiring that I was able to recover so quickly or that I was able to go back to work, you know, permanently. And just to give them hope, really. And ⁓ when I was in acute, I felt as though like, We do so much of the recovery alone ⁓ and there isn’t a ton of, you know, of course our therapists are fantastic and they’re, you know, they’re loving and they’re caring. But in terms of having to make it through, you know, certain darkness alone or, ⁓ you know, just feeling sorry for yourself even sometimes, or feeling like, hey, I can do everything, but nobody’s encouraging that. because they think it’s dangerous. ⁓ I had wished that, you know, there were more people who could understand ⁓ what survival and then recovery was, you know, truly like. And so I had read that in a number of books before hearing people tell me their stories in person because Emotionally, I absorbed too much of it. ⁓ I wanted to, I think I passed that five-year survival mark of the 26.7%, which I know varies for everybody. ⁓ at the same time, I said, wow, I did, I made it to the other side, I beat these odds. I think I wanted to keep it secret from all the people I worked with. which I still have actually, it won’t be for too much longer. ⁓ But ⁓ just being able to share that and to be vulnerable and to say all the deficits that I have and what I have overcome, ⁓ I think it’s also given people some hope that they can, if she was able to do it, then maybe it isn’t as tough as I think it is. Bill Gasiamis (56:43) Anyone can. Yeah, I love that. That’s kind of my approach to, you know, I’m just a average, humble, normal, amazing guy. You could do it too. You know, I could, I could teach you to what you need to do is learn. ⁓ but that’s true. It’s that it’s that we are, I get, I get people come on the podcast going, I’m so nervous to meet you. You’re on the, I’m on your podcast. Dude, you don’t know who I am. Like if you think I’m the podcast guy, you’ve got no idea. I’m in the back of my, in my garden, in a shed. what was something that’s meant to be a shed that looks like a studio and amazing and all this kind of stuff. Like, dude, I’m just. Judy Kim Cage (57:29) would not have known if you hadn’t told me. Bill Gasiamis (57:32) That’s right, because looks can be deceiving and that ideas that we get of people are just, you know, they’re just not accurate until we get to spend time with people and understand them. And I always try and play down who I am so that people can see that I am just a regular guy who went through this and had no, no equipment. had no ⁓ knowledge. had no skills overcoming learning. Like I just, I picked up what I needed when I could just so that I can stumble through to the next hurdle and stumble through that one and then keep going. I really want people to understand that even the people who appear to be super fabulous at everything, like they’re just not, nobody is that, everyone is just doing their best they can. Even the guy who’s got more money than you, a bigger house, whatever, a better investment, all that stuff, they’re all faking it until shit hits the fan and then they’ve got to really step up to be who they are. You know, that’s what I find. But attitude, mindset, ⁓ approach, know, laughing, doing things for other people all help. They are really important steps, you know. The other chapter that kind of. made me pay attention and take note ⁓ was you talk about the night everything changed, complicated medical history, lifesavers, volunteering and purpose, the caregivers, ⁓ easing back into life, which I think is a really important chapter, returning to work, which is really important. then chapter nine, life after stroke continued. That kind of really is something that made me pay attention because that’s exactly what it is, right? It’s life after stroke. It’s like a continuation. It’s a never ending kind of ⁓ unattainable thing. Judy Kim Cage (59:27) It just keeps rolling on. doesn’t stop. You know, even if you’ve gone through a hardship and overcome it, it doesn’t mean that life stops. You’ve got to keep learning these lessons over and over and over again. Even if you don’t want to learn them, however stubborn you are. ⁓ And I, you know, I one thing that I had written about was that I had resented ⁓ you know, what I had gone through for a little while. I said, why do I still have to learn the same lessons that everybody else has to learn? You know, if I’ve gone through this kind of transcendental thing, why do I still have to learn, you know, these other things? But then I realized that I was given the opportunity ⁓ from surviving, was given another chance to be able to truly realize what it was like to be happy and to live. And I’d never, I mean, I had, I had been depressed, you know, for an anxious for years. And, you know, I’ve been in therapy for years and, ⁓ you know, it really wasn’t truly until kind of getting this push of the fast forward button on learning lessons that it truly became happy, like true, true happiness. And I said, wow, that was the gift. And then to try to pass that on. Bill Gasiamis (1:01:10) It’s a pretty cool life hack. A shit way to experience it, but a pretty cool life hack. Judy Kim Cage (1:01:15) Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely don’t I don’t recommend it I don’t Bill Gasiamis (1:01:20) Yeah. You get the learning in a short amount of time instead of years of years of wisdom and developing and learning and overcoming, which you avoided up until your first, you know, 38 years. And then, you know, you then, and then you kind of all of a sudden go, okay, well, I really have to buckle down and do these, ⁓ these modules of learning and I’ve got no choice. And I was the same. ⁓ and I have my days, I have my Good days, bad days, and I even recently had a bit of a day where I said to my wife, I got diagnosed with high blood pressure, headaches, migraines, a whole bunch of stuff, and then just tomorrow, I’m I’ve had enough. Why do I need to to be diagnosed with more things? Why do I need to have more medical appointments? Enough, it’s enough. I need to stop this stuff. It’s not fun. And then it took me about half a day to get over myself and go, well, I shouldn’t be here, really. Technically, Somebody has three blades in the brain, you know, I don’t know, maybe 50 years ago, they weren’t gonna make it. So now you’ve made it also high blood pressure. If you had high blood pressure 50 years ago, there was nothing to do to treat it. It was just gonna be high until you had a heart attack or ⁓ a brain aneurysm burst or something. And it’s like, I get to live in a time when interventions are possible and it is a blip on the radar. Like just all you do is take this tablet and you’re fine. Not that I revert to give me the tablet solution. I don’t, I’m forever going under the underlying cause. I want to know what the underlying cause is trying to get to the bottom of all of that. But in the meantime, I can remain stable with this little tablet and ⁓ decrease the risk of another brain hemorrhage. So it’s cool, know, like whatever. And that kind of helps me get through the, why me days, you know, cause They’re there, they come, they turn up, especially if it’s been one day after the next where things have been really unwell and we’ve had to medical help or whatever. When it’s been kind of intense version of it, it’s like, okay, I don’t want any more of this. So I get the whole, I’ve experienced the whole spectrum in this last 13, 14 years. We’re coming up to, I think the 20th or 21st, I think is my, maybe the 25th of my anniversary of my brain surgery. Jeez, I’ve come a long way. It’s okay. It’ll be like 11 years since my brain surgery. A lot of good things have happened since then. We got to live life for another 13 years, 11 years. I keep forgetting the number, it doesn’t matter. Yeah. Judy Kim Cage (1:04:17) Mine will have been my 17th ⁓ anniversary of my brain surgery ⁓ will be in January, sorry, in December. And then the seventh anniversary of the stroke is in January. So lot of years. Bill Gasiamis (1:04:33) Yeah, yeah. A lot of years, a lot of years, great that they’ve happened and I’m really happy with that. Keep doing these podcasts, makes me forget about myself. It’s about other people, so that’s cool. know, meet people like you, putting out awesome books. And when I was going through early on, there wasn’t a lot of content. It was hard to get content on stroke surviving, recovery, all the deficits, all the problems. That’s part of the reason why I started this. And now I think I’ve interviewed maybe 20 or 30 people who have written a book about stroke, which means that the access to information and stories is huge, right? So much of it. ⁓ Your book comes out in early December. Where is it going to be available for people to buy? Conclusion and Final Thoughts Judy Kim Cage (1:05:20) It is currently available to download ⁓ through the Kindle app and through Amazon. The hard copies will be available to order through Amazon and hopefully in other booksellers, but that’s TBD. Bill Gasiamis (1:05:39) Yeah, well, we’ll have all the current links by then. We’ll have all the current links available in the show notes. ⁓ At the beginning of this episode, I would have already talked about the book and in your bio when I’m describing the episode and who I’m about to chat to. So people would have already heard that once and hopefully they’ll be hearing it again at the end of the episode. So guys, if you didn’t pay attention at the beginning, but now you’re at the end, it’s about to come. I’m going to give all the details. Judy Kim Cage (1:06:07) stuck around. Bill Gasiamis (1:06:09) Yeah. If you stuck around, give us a thumbs up, right? Stuck around in the comments or something, you know? ⁓ Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining me, reaching out, sharing your story. It is lovely to hear and I wish you well in all of your endeavors, your continued recovery. yeah, fantastic. Great stuff. Thank you so much. Thank you. Well, that’s a wrap for another episode. want to thank Judy for sharing her story so openly. The way she spoke about denial, rehab, reality, cognitive fatigue and rebuilding identity is going to help a lot of people feel less alone. If you’re watching on YouTube, let us know in the comments, what part of Moyamoya Syndrome stroke recovery has been the hardest to explain to other people for you? Was it the physical symptoms or is it the invisible ones? like fatigue and cognition. And if you’re listening on Spotify or Apple podcasts, please leave a review. It really helps other stroke survivors find these conversations when they need them most. Judy’s book is called Super Survivor, How Denial Resistance and Persistence can lead to success and a better life after stroke. And you’ll find the links in the show notes. And if you want more support from me, you can Grab a copy of my book at recoveryafterstroke.com/book, and you can become a Patreon supporter at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. It genuinely helps keep this show alive. Thanks again for being here. Remember you’re not alone in this recovery journey and I’ll see you in the next episode. Importantly, we present many podcasts designed to give you an insight and understanding into the experiences of other individuals. Opinions and treatment protocols discussed during any podcast are the individual’s own experience and we do not necessarily share the same opinion nor do we recommend any treatment protocol discussed. All content on this website and any linked blog, podcast or video material controlled this website or content is created and produced for informational purposes only and is largely based on the personal experience of Bill Gasiamis The content is intended to complement your medical treatment and support healing. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical and should not be relied on as health advice. The information is general and may not be suitable for your personal injuries, circumstances or health objectives. Do not use our content as a standalone resource to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease for therapeutic purposes or as a substitute for the advice of a health professional. 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However, third party links from our website are followed at your own risk and we are not responsible for any information you find there. The post Moyamoya Syndrome Stroke Recovery: How Judy Rebuilt Her Life After a “Puff of Smoke” Diagnosis appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

Gary Mishuris is a CFA and managing partner of Silver Ring Value Partners who combines MIT computer science training with behavioral discipline to practice intrinsic value investing while pioneering practical AI integration in fundamental research.The episode is sponsored by TenzingMEMO — the AI-powered market intelligence platform I use daily for smarter company analysis. Code BILLIONS gets you an extended trial + 10% off.https://www.tenzingmemo.com/And if you haven't yet, find me on Substack!3:00 - Gary frames AI through personal experience: recalls Fidelity portfolio manager using legal pad instead of Excel 25 years ago—illustrates how refusing modern tools creates disadvantage, not discipline.5:30 - The two extremes of AI: Luddite view (AI pollutes your process) vs. magic genie fallacy (ask AI for winning stocks). Reality: AI enables more efficient work, but you still do the hard work.7:15 - “AI natives” concept: younger professionals naturally integrate AI like digital natives adopted technology. Gary warns against becoming dinosaurs by refusing to explore AI's capabilities.12:00 - Key insight: AI forces introspection about your investment process. Where do you add unique value and judgment? Where are repetitive tasks easily enhanced by machines? Must stay “on the loop” and verify outputs.22:00 - Practical AI applications: earnings call analysis, pattern recognition across transcripts, competitor analysis, business model breakdowns. AI excels at synthesis and organization tasks.35:00 - Critical limitation: AI hallucinates and makes mistakes. Never trust blindly. Use AI to generate drafts, frameworks, and organize information—then apply human judgment and verification.45:00 - Discussion of behavioral traps: AI can create illusion of thoroughness through volume. Don't confuse encyclopedic reports with quality analysis. Reference to Buffett's one-page 1951 Geico analysis.58:00 - Warning about endless research: Know when to stop turning rocks. AI makes it too easy to keep researching instead of making decisions. Investment case should fit on one page.1:05:00 - Shorting discussion: timing challenges, asymmetric risk. Emphasis on finding your own process—what works for others may not work for you.1:10:00 - Final wisdom: “Don't equate length with quality. Quality is quality”—whether generated with AI assistance or not. Process matters more than tools.Podcast Program – Disclosure StatementBlue Infinitas Capital, LLC is a registered investment adviser and the opinions expressed by the Firm's employees and podcast guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of Blue Infinitas Capital, LLC. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice.Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed.

A minute-long phone call from an unknown Phoenix number set off a chain of events that brought Garrett Nates back to Colorado to lead a 70-year-old church—and to champion a bold, sustainable plan to plant three new congregations in nine years across Northern Colorado. We open with the story behind that call and zoom out to the forces reshaping Longmont, a city wedged between Boulder and Fort Collins and serving as a gateway to the Rockies, where rapid growth has outpaced the number of healthy, gospel-centered churches.Garrett walks us through his journey: a childhood conversion, a teenage identity wrapped in soccer, and the pivotal moment when being cut from a college team cleared space for calling. He shares how mission trips that used soccer as a platform led to his first experience leading someone to faith, and how mentors at Biola and Wheaton helped him discover gifts for teaching and shepherding. That path wound through a vibrant season in youth and discipleship ministry, then into a lead role at a church embedded on the campus of Miami University, before years of daily prayer led back home to Colorado.Send us a textWe want to help you find your next steps in ministry.Connect here with EXCEL. Ministry Partner: Christian Community Credit Union

We must choose to practice biblical generosity, motivated by Christ's gracious example rather than mere agreement with its principles.

We must choose to practice biblical generosity, motivated by Christ's gracious example rather than mere agreement with its principles.

F2 is the AI platform for private markets investors, automating due diligence and portfolio monitoring workflows with agentic AI. After building ARK into a digital banking platform that scaled from tens of millions to tens of billions in loan volume, Donald Muir developed AI technology to automate debt placement on ARK's marketplace. When upmarket institutional lenders requested access to the AI for their entire deal flow—not just ARK's marketplace deals—Donald recognized the technology's standalone value. In this episode of BUILDERS, Donald shares how he's commercializing enterprise-grade AI for an industry where he personally spent years in the private equity bullpen, and how F2 is addressing the reliability and trust barriers that prevent AI adoption in high-stakes financial decision-making. Topics Discussed How F2 emerged from ARK's internal need to automate debt marketplace screening memos The technical approach to eliminating hallucination in Excel-based financial analysis Replicating private equity's "super day" interview format to prove AI capability with live deal data Sales team composition: hiring ex-finance professionals instead of traditional sales reps AI's role in evolving private equity analysts from menial tasks to system operators Product roadmap from due diligence to portfolio monitoring to deal syndication platform Maintaining operational independence while preserving strategic alignment with ARK GTM Lessons For B2B Founders Solve your own hardest problem first, then productize: Donald built F2's core technology to scale ARK's debt marketplace, focusing on the most difficult engineering challenge—reliable financial analysis of unstructured Excel data—because the marketplace required it. This resulted in technology that foundation models still haven't replicated over a year later. The aha moment came when institutional lenders wanted the AI for all their deal flow, not just marketplace transactions. Organic internal development created category-leading capabilities and validated product-market fit before commercialization. B2B founders should identify which internal operational challenges, if solved, could become standalone products serving the broader market. Design sales processes that mirror how your ICP evaluates talent: Donald replicated private equity's "super day" format where analyst candidates receive a data room, laptop without internet access, and three hours to produce an LBO model and investment thesis. F2 runs identical timed tests—customers send live deal data rooms under NDA, F2 generates investment committee memos using their templates, and presents same-day results. This proves the AI can perform at the standard funds use to evaluate human analysts they hire 18 months before start dates. B2B founders selling into industries with rigorous talent evaluation processes should reverse-engineer those frameworks into product demonstrations that speak to buyer expectations. Prioritize credibility over sales experience in technical markets: Donald's entire sales team consists of ex-finance professionals who lived in the seat—no traditional salespeople. These reps can screen-share investment memos created that morning and discuss them authentically with MDs and principals using industry-specific language. After 4.5 years running go-to-market at ARK, Donald teaches sales methodology to domain experts rather than teaching domain expertise to salespeople. For deals averaging half a billion dollars flowing through the platform, buyer credibility outweighs sales polish. B2B founders in specialized verticals should evaluate whether domain fluency or sales pedigree matters more for their specific buyer personas and deal complexity. Engineer for auditability before optimizing for speed: F2 focused on eliminating hallucination and achieving mathematical accuracy—solving what Donald calls the "reliability and trust" gap—before addressing workflow efficiency. The company name references the F2 keystroke used to audit Excel calculations at 3 AM in the PE bullpen. This positioning directly addresses the barrier preventing AI adoption for investment decisions: LLMs hallucinate, can't do math, and lack auditability. Only after proving the AI produces auditable, trustworthy output did F2 layer on speed benefits. B2B founders building for high-stakes decision environments should identify the fundamental trust barrier and make it the core technical focus before feature expansion. Leverage institutional knowledge as competitive differentiation: Beyond automating existing workflows, F2 enables firms to pipe in decades of institutional knowledge via API—instantly benchmarking new deals against thousands of historical transactions by vertical, revenue size, leverage levels, and management quality. This transforms screening memos from isolated analyses into context-rich evaluations informed by complete firm history. The AI doesn't just work faster; it has comprehensive context that individual analysts manually searching SharePoint folders could never access. B2B founders should identify where accumulated institutional data creates compounding value beyond point-in-time automation. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Episode Summary In this episode of Full Disclosure – Live!, DebtBook product leaders Stephen Yokim and James Perez sit down with Ana Machado, Director of Fiscal Services for Vista Unified School District in San Diego County, California, to discuss how school district finance teams balance broad operational responsibilities with tight reporting timelines — and how purpose-built software supports consistency, transparency, and team-wide confidence. Ana shares what her team oversees across Vista Unified's 27 campuses, including payroll, budgeting, accounting, purchasing, and procurement — plus managing general obligation bonds and certificates of participation tied to facilities. She highlights the importance of trust and transparency in public finance, and the role technology plays in building standardized processes across a large, segmented team. Ana also walks through Vista Unified's decision to adopt DebtBook in 2023 to support GASB 87 (leases) and GASB 96 (subscriptions) compliance. With hundreds of contracts to evaluate and new reporting requirements to meet, she explains why the district chose a structured system and hands-on implementation support over building everything in Excel. Today, DebtBook helps Vista Unified maintain clear schedules, generate reports and journal entries, and access the data needed to meet internal, state, and federal reporting deadlines. Finally, Ana shares how her team approaches professional development and knowledge-sharing — including how they use DebtBook University, webinars, and in-app chat support to reinforce training, navigate workflows, and onboard new staff. She closes with a look at what's ahead for Vista Unified: enrollment forecasting, budget development, and stakeholder engagement with the community and board of trustees. Featured Guest Ana Machado serves as Director of Fiscal Services for Vista Unified School District in San Diego County, California. In this role, she oversees fiscal services across the district, including accounting, budgeting, payroll, purchasing, and procurement. Ana joined Vista Unified in 2007, returned to the district in 2015, and has served as the Director of Fiscal Services since 2023. Top Takeaways From Session 03 (1) Standardization Builds Trust: With a broad finance operation supporting 27 campuses, Vista Unified prioritizes transparency and consistent processes — and views technology as a key driver of reliability across the team. (2) GASB 87 & 96 Compliance at Scale: Facing complex lease and subscription reporting requirements and hundreds of contracts to assess, Vista Unified implemented DebtBook in 2023 to create clear schedules, support journal entry reporting, and meet ongoing compliance needs. (3) Training That Scales With the Team: DebtBook University, webinars, and in-app support help reinforce knowledge, answer workflow questions quickly, and support onboarding as staff roles evolve over time.

Raids replaced audits, and guns replaced spreadsheets. Blake and David connect the dots from Minnesota's sprawling public-assistance fraud to a decade of IRS budget cuts and ICE crackdowns. You'll learn why enforcement shifted from prevention to raids, what California's one-time billionaire tax really proposes, how new AICPA rules could hit PE-backed firms, and why a botched audit didn't cost PwC its client, plus one pro tip to level up your Excel game.SponsorsOnPay - http://accountingpodcast.promo/onpayTaxBandits - http://accountingpodcast.promo/taxbanditsUNC - http://accountingpodcast.promo/uncChapters(00:00) - TAP 470 (00:33) - Minnesota Fraud Scandal Overview (03:18) - Historical Context and IRS Budget Cuts (08:34) - IRS and ICE Collaboration Issues (10:39) - Impact of Budget Cuts on Fraud (20:56) - Current Events and Political Reactions (26:17) - California Billionaire Tax Act (27:58) - Billionaire Tax Proposal Discussion (29:01) - Challenges of Implementing Wealth Tax (29:58) - Practical Concerns and Comparisons (34:24) - VRBO's Legal Battle with Michigan (36:46) - Private Equity and CPA Firms (47:17) - UNC Master of Accounting Program (51:11) - Excel World Championships Insights (55:27) - Earmark App for CPE Credits  Show NotesJudge hits pause on IRS sharing taxpayer information with ICE https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/judge-issues-order-blocking-irs-sharing-taxpayer-information-ice-rcna245262Federal Agents Pepper Spray Protesters During Tucson Taco Giro Raid https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/12/05/tucson-ice-raid-protests-taco-giroPoll: Nearly Half of Americans Think Their Financial Security Is Worsening https://www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/2025/12/29/poll-nearly-half-of-americans-think-their-financial-security-is-worsening/175587/California Billionaire Tax Act (2026 Billionaire Tax Act - PDF) https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/initiatives/pdfs/25-0024A1%20(Billionaire%20Tax%20).pdfVrbo Parent Company Sues Michigan Over $18.8 Million Tax Bill https://www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/2026/01/02/vrbo-parent-company-sues-michigan-over-18-8-million-tax-bill/175675/AICPA Seeks Comment on Ethics Rules Update for Alternative Practice Structures https://www.aicpa-cima.com/news/article/aicpa-seeks-comment-on-ethics-rules-update-for-alternative-practiceWH Smith asks shareholders to support PwC despite audit error https://www.internationalaccountingbulleteen.com/news/wh-smith-support-pwc-audit-error/I won the Microsoft Excel World Championship. Here's what every office worker should know about Excel. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/articles/won-microsoft-excel-world-championship-093001306.htmlNeed CPE?Get CPE for listening to podcasts with Earmark: https://earmarkcpe.comSubscribe to the Earmark Podcast: https://podcast.earmarkcpe.comGet in TouchThanks for listening and the great reviews! We appreciate you! Follow and tweet @BlakeTOliver and @DavidLeary. Find us on Facebook and Instagram. If you like what you hear, please do us a favor and write a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Call us and leave a voicemail; maybe we'll play it on the show. DIAL (202) 695-1040.SponsorshipsAre you interested in sponsoring The Accounting Podcast? For details, read the prospectus.Need Accounting Conference Info? Check out our new website - accountingconferences.comLimited edition shirts, stickers, and other necessitiesTeePublic Store: http://cloudacctpod.link/merchSubscribeApple Podcasts: http://cloudacctpod.link/ApplePodcastsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAccountingPodcastSpotify: http://cloudacctpod.link/SpotifyPodchaser: http://cloudacctpod.link/podchaserStitcher: http://cloudacctpod.link/StitcherOvercast: http://cloudacctpod.link/OvercastWant to get the word out about your newsletter, webinar, party, Facebook group, podcast, e-book, job posting, or that fancy Excel macro you just created? Let the listeners of The Accounting Podcast know by running a classified ad. Go here to create your classified ad: https://cloudacctpod.link/RunClassifiedAdTranscriptsThe full transcript for this episode is available by clicking on the Transcript tab at the top of this page

   This special episode of WarDocs celebrates the 125th anniversary of the Army Nurse Corps by featuring four distinguished commanders: Colonel Margaret Berryman, Colonel Crystal Belew, Colonel Sarah Eccleston, and Colonel Briana Perata. Each guest shares her personal journey from commissioning to leading complex medical formations, highlighting how their foundational experiences as a nurse prepared them for the rigors of command.     Colonel Berryman introduces her "Five Ps" leadership philosophy—People, Purpose, Preparation, Partnership, and Performance—emphasizing that people are the military's greatest competitive advantage. Colonel Belew discusses the importance of proactive thinking learned in the operating room and her philosophy of "authentically caring" for both the mission and the personnel.  Colonel Eccleston reflects on building resiliency as a critical care nurse during peak conflict periods in Iraq and Afghanistan, advising leaders to "grow where they are planted" by excelling in every assigned role. Finally, Colonel Perata outlines her "Three Pillars" of leadership: Grit, Growth, and Grace. She emphasizes the necessity of grit in making difficult decisions, the continuous need for leader development and feedback for growth, and the humanizing power of grace and humility. Collectively, these leaders demonstrate that the nursing profession fosters critical thinking, prioritization, and an unwavering focus on people—skills essential to successful command at any level.    The episode also highlights the profound impact of mentorship, showing how senior leaders can recognize potential and shape the careers of junior officers. These stories of dedication and service offer valuable lessons for all military medicine professionals, regardless of rank or corps. Chapters (01:17-12:12) Leadership Philosophies at Winn Army Community Hospital: Colonel Margaret Berryman (12:12-21:45) Operational Medical Support and Authentic Caring in Germany: Colonel Crystal Belew (21:45-37:44) Building Resiliency from the Bedside to Hospital Center Command: Colonel Sarah Eccleston (37:44-46:44) Grit, Growth, and Grace at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research: Colonel Briana Perata Chapter Summaries (01:17-12:12) Leadership Philosophies at Winn Army Community Hospital: Colonel Margaret Berryman discusses her 22-year career and her "Five Ps" philosophy: People, Purpose, Preparation, Partnership, and Performance. She emphasizes how staff nursing and strategic roles taught her to prioritize frontline personnel and recognize that policies can be questioned and changed to meet the mission. (12:12-21:45) Operational Medical Support and Authentic Caring in Germany: Colonel Crystal Belew describes her role leading operational medical support in Europe and Africa, noting how her background as a perioperative nurse taught her to think proactively and stay steps ahead. Her leadership philosophy focuses on "authentically caring" by being who you truly are with your troops and genuinely valuing people over the mission alone. (21:45-37:44) Building Resiliency from the Bedside to Hospital Center Command: Colonel Sarah Eccleston explains how nursing inherently builds leadership through independent decision-making and flexibility, specifically citing her experiences in critical care during war as foundational to her resiliency. She shares a mentor's advice to "grow where you are planted," illustrating how excelling in less-desired roles can actually provide the most significant preparation for future command. (37:44-46:44) Grit, Growth, and Grace at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research: Colonel Briana Perata discusses how the Nurse Corps teaches prioritization and tough decision-making early on, which she buckets into the pillars of Grit, Growth, and Grace. She emphasizes accountability through grit, continuous leader development through growth, and humanizing leadership with grace and humble gratitude. Take Home Messages Prioritize People as a Competitive Advantage: Leaders must recognize that their personnel are their most valuable asset and that taking care of people directly enables the success of the mission. By focusing on individual needs and professional development, a commander can foster a team that naturally achieves high-performance results. Cultivate Proactive Thinking: Skills learned in clinical environments, such as the ability to anticipate needs and think several steps ahead, are directly transferable to medical command. Being proactive allows leaders to manage requirements effectively and remain prepared for unexpected mission shifts. Excel by Growing Where You Are Planted: Every military assignment has a purpose, even those that may not align with an officer's immediate desires or specialized background. Excelling in these roles builds a diverse portfolio of leadership experiences and often provides the most critical preparation for future command responsibilities. Lead with Grit, Growth, and Grace: Effective command requires the grit to make unpopular but necessary decisions and hold others accountable to high standards. This must be balanced with a commitment to continuous growth through feedback and the grace to lead with humility and genuine appreciation for the team. Authentically Care for Your Formation: Leadership is more than just a title; it is about making a human connection and genuinely caring for the personnel under your command. When leaders are authentic and focus on how they make their team members feel, they build trust, respect, and a more cohesive, high-functioning medical team. Episode Keywords Army Nurse Corps, military medicine, 125th anniversary, medical command, nursing leadership, Walter Reed, Winn Army Community Hospital, 519th Hospital Center, 29th Hospital Center, critical care nursing, perioperative nursing, medical mission, leadership philosophy, Army medicine, health care management, hospital command, grit growth grace, five Ps leadership, military nurse, nursing career, US Army, WarDocs Honoring the Legacy and Preserving the History of Military Medicine The WarDocs Mission is to honor the legacy, preserve the oral history, and showcase career opportunities, unique expeditionary experiences, and achievements of Military Medicine. We foster patriotism and pride in Who we are, What we do, and, most importantly, How we serve Our Patients, the DoD, and Our Nation. Find out more and join Team WarDocs at https://www.wardocspodcast.com/ Check our list of previous guest episodes at https://www.wardocspodcast.com/our-guests Subscribe and Like our Videos on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@wardocspodcast Listen to the “What We Are For” Episode 47. https://bit.ly/3r87Afm WarDocs- The Military Medicine Podcast is a Non-Profit, Tax-exempt-501(c)(3) Veteran Run Organization run by volunteers. All donations are tax-deductible and go to honoring and preserving the history, experiences, successes, and lessons learned in Military Medicine. A tax receipt will be sent to you. WarDocs documents the experiences, contributions, and innovations of all military medicine Services, ranks, and Corps who are affectionately called "Docs" as a sign of respect, trust, and confidence on and off the battlefield, demonstrating dedication to the medical care of fellow comrades in arms.   Follow Us on Social Media Twitter: @wardocspodcast Facebook: WarDocs Podcast Instagram: @wardocspodcast LinkedIn: WarDocs-The Military Medicine Podcast YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@wardocspodcast

You want to make sure that you have everything done correctly in your business, right?  One of the many important year-end tasks is to make sure that you are correctly paying and classifying wages.  There are many different entity types that businesses can be set up as, and depending on how you're your business is set up will determine how you pay yourself as a business owner, shareholder, or officer, especially if you are considered an S Corporation.  In today's podcast episode, I am covering the essentials of what you need to do when it comes to compensation, especially for the S Corporations who need to pay a reasonable compensation to officers and shareholder-employees.  It doesn't matter if you are using a computerized software system like QuickBooks, Xero, Wave, or FreshBooks for your business finances or if you are doing your bookkeeping manually with an Excel spreadsheet or even a Google Document, you need to make sure you are recording your payroll correctly.  Whether you are starting a business or side hustle, you're a self-employed individual, a solopreneur, entrepreneur, mompreneur, freelancer, small business owner, a remote, virtual, online, or in-house bookkeeper or accountant, a virtual assistant or VA, or other professional; listen in so that you are aware of how to classify and pay your wages as a business owner and avoid one of the major red flags out there… Join us in a community built specifically for accountants and high-stress professionals.  You'll receive support, accountability, and a community that understands what you're going through. We focus on stress reduction, increasing productivity, time management, goal achievement, health, happiness, and desired lifestyle:  https://www.financialadventure.com/community Schedule your Complimentary Stress Audit And Clarity Session, where we'll work together to create a clear and focused plan and overcome the obstacles that stand in your way so that you can move forward and immediately start enjoying your life with less stress, increased productivity, and more time to spend doing what you love with the people you care about: https://www.financialadventure.com/work-with-me Accountants, CPAs, Bookkeepers, Tax Preparers & Financial Professionals, sign up here to get updates on upcoming opportunities & grab the Audit Of Your Well-Being & Balance Guide here: https://www.financialadventure.com/accountant Ready to set up your business?  I have a program to help you get your business set up so that you can start making money.  Sign up for this program here: https://www.financialadventure.com/start Are you ready to try coaching?  Schedule an Introductory Coaching Session today.  You'll have the opportunity to see how you like coaching with an Introductory Coaching Session: https://www.financialadventure.com/intro Join us in the Mastering Your Small Business Finances PROFIT LAB if you are ready to take control of your business finances and create the profitable business you are striving for.  Are you ready to generate revenues and increase the profit in your business: https://www.financialadventure.com/profit If You Are Ready To Choose, Start Or Grow Your Side Hustle, Get Your Free Checklist And Assessment Here: https://www.financialadventure.com/sidehustle Grab Your FREE guide:  5 Essential Strategies For Stress-Free Bookkeeping: https://www.financialadventure.com/5essentials Your FREE Online Virtual Bookkeeping Business Starter Guide & Success Path Is Waiting For You: https://www.financialadventure.com/starterguide Join Our Facebook Community:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/womenbusinessownersultimatediybookkeepingboutique The Strategic Bookkeeping Academy, including Bookkeeping Basics, is open for registration!  You can learn more and sign up here: https://www.financialadventure.com/sba Looking for a payroll solution for your business?  You can get an exclusive 15% discount on your payroll services when you sign up here: https://www.financialadventure.com/adp QuickBooks Online - Save 30% Your First 6 Months: https://www.financialadventure.com/quickbooks Sign up for a virtual coffee chat to see if starting a Bookkeeping Business is right for you: https://www.financialadventure.com/discovery Show Notes:  https://www.financialadventure.com This podcast is sponsored by Financial Adventure, LLC ~ visit https://www.financialadventure.com for additional information and free resources.

¿Qué pasa cuando el problema no es que “no sabes de finanzas”… sino que te saboteas cada vez que te acercas al dinero? En este episodio me siento con Marina Armendares, psicóloga que se enamoró de los números y que lo dice sin anestesia: el dinero no solo se administra, se procesa. Porque puedes tener el Excel perfecto y aun así vivir con ansiedad, culpa o vergüenza cada vez que revisas tu cuenta. Hablamos de la vergüenza financiera (esa que te hace esconderte), del control como mecanismo de supervivencia que a veces termina asfixiándote, y de por qué “ganar más” no arregla nada si sigues tomando decisiones desde el miedo. También entramos en lo que casi nadie quiere tocar: cómo tu relación con el dinero se mete en tu pareja, en tu emprendimiento, en tu energía… y en tu identidad. Es una conversación para quienes quieren ordenarse sin castigarse. Y para quienes están listas para dejar de repetir el mismo patrón con otra tarjeta, otro sueldo o otro “ahora sí”.

In this first episode of Future Finance for 2026, hosts Paul Barnhurst and Glenn Hopper take time to reflect on how AI actually showed up in finance over the past year, and what that means going forward. Without a guest, the conversation focuses on real experiences, observations, and lessons from working directly with finance teams, CFOs, and operators who are navigating AI adoption day to day.Paul and Glenn discuss how individuals have become far more comfortable using AI tools in their own work, while companies as a whole have moved much more slowly. Topics include ongoing data quality problems, hesitation around governance and security, and why many organizations still struggle to integrate AI into core systems and workflows. They also share their thoughts on notable developments from 2025, including OpenAI's shift toward consumer use, Microsoft Copilot's mixed results, Google Gemini's rapid improvement, and Nvidia's continued growth.In this episode, you will discover:How AI adoption differs between individuals and organizationsWhy poor data quality still limits many finance teamsWhat recent changes from OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia suggestWhere Microsoft Copilot works well today and where it falls shortWhy automation and basic app-building are becoming more importantPaul and Glenn share concrete examples from Excel, Outlook, reporting, and close processes. They also emphasize that banning AI use is no longer realistic and that clear guidelines matter more than strict restrictions.Join hosts Glenn and Paul as they unravel the complexities of AI in finance.Follow Glenn:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gbhopperiiiFollow Paul:LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thefpandaguyFollow QFlow.AI:Website - https://bit.ly/4i1EkjgFuture Finance is sponsored by QFlow.ai, the strategic finance platform solving the toughest part of planning and analysis: B2B revenue. Align sales, marketing, and finance, speed up decision-making, and lock in accountability with QFlow.ai. Stay tuned for a deeper understanding of how AI is shaping the future of finance and what it means for businesses and individuals alike.In Today's Episode:[02:47] – How Individuals vs. Companies Used AI in 2025[06:12] – OpenAI, Monetization, and Market Signals[09:27] – Google Gemini's Turnaround[15:56] – Big Models vs. Specialized Tools[21:21] – Consumer AI and Platform Control[26:26] – Real Copilot Use Cases in Excel[35:28] – What Finance Professionals Should Focus on in 2026[39:31] – What Finance Leaders Need to Do Now[41:45] – Automation, Vibe Coding, and What's Next[43:07] – Final Thoughts and Closing

Attorney Arlene Haeggquist, survivor advocate and legal powerhouse, shares how women can take legal action against workplace sexual harassment, assault, and abuse. Learn documentation strategies, your legal rights, and how to empower yourself through the court process.   This episode covers: ✨ Workplace sexual harassment and assault—50% of women experience it ✨ How to document abuse for legal cases (emails, screenshots, timestamps) ✨ Your legal rights as a survivor of workplace abuse ✨ Breaking the silence: why reporting matters ✨ Building support systems during litigation ✨ Toxic workplace culture and power dynamics ✨ Healing from financial abuse and exploitation ✨ Arlene's story: From abuse survivor to advocate for thousands   Perfect for survivors, advocates, and anyone wanting to understand workplace rights, boundaries, and legal empowerment.   Your journey from victim to survivor to thriver starts here. If you're ready to reclaim your life and learn from others' healing journeys, hit subscribe and join our community of resilient souls. Have a story to share? Email us at HealingFromEmotionalAbusePod@gmail.com —we'd love to feature your questions, healing strategies, opinions and survivor testimonies on the podcast.   Transcript of Episode:    

Do we all really need a budget? And if we do… why does it feel so intimidating (and kind of boring)?In this episode, we’re reframing budgeting as something a little less restrictive—and a lot more useful. You’ll hear why budgets aren’t about rules, and how a good budget can actually help you say yes to more of the awesome stuff in life. We chat to Reagan White from Where’s My Money about how getting real with the numbers helped him avoid financial panic, and we ask Ruth Henderson (aka The Happy Saver) whow your personality can shape the kind of budget that actually sticks—especially when you’re budgeting with someone else. Plus, we’ve got a simple activity to help you plan for those sneaky annual expenses (hello birthdays and Christmas) before they sneak up on you again. This is the third episode of the Wealth Kick, a limited series to change your perspective on money for the new year. Until the end of January, we’re serving up a little financial soul-searching, easy exercises you can use anywhere, and a few wacky stories. This is the third episode of the Wealth Kick, a limited series to change your perspective on money for the new year. Until the end of January, we’re serving up a little financial soul-searching, easy exercises you can use anywhere, and a few wacky stories. Disclaimer: Shared Lunch is brought to you by Sharesies Limited (NZ) in New Zealand. It is not financial advice. Information provided is general only and current at the time it’s provided, and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation and needs. We do not provide recommendations and you should always read the disclosure documents available from the product issuer before making a financial decision. Our disclosure documents and terms and conditions can be found on our NZ website. Investing involves risk. You might lose the money you start with. If you require financial advice, you should consider speaking with a qualified financial advisor. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance. Appearance on Shared Lunch is not an endorsement by Sharesies of the views of the presenters, guests, or the entities they represent. Their views are their own.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is Stone Island actually worth the price? What lifestyle requires techwear? Is Timothee Chalamet overrated? Why does Lady Gaga feel less authentic than Charli XCX? What is gooning, and how did it end up in Harper's Bazaar? This week, Sol and Michael sit down with Shane O'Neill, writer for The Washington Post's twice-weekly pop culture newsletter "Seriously?," to unpack the weirdest corners of the internet and how they intersect with fashion, music, and modern masculinity.The trio explore the techwear vs. lifestyle debate, why Stone Island might be "a little more serious" than necessary, the complicated appeal of Timothee Chalamet vs. Pedro Pascal, and whether Madonna's Celebration Tour was genius or needed a creative director. Shane defends his take on why Charli XCX feels more genuine than Lady Gaga, the overlooked brilliance of the Blue Man Group's first album, and how his job at the Washington Post lets him explore everything from competitive Excel spreadsheet championships to extremely niche fetish communities on TikTok.The conversation goes off the deep end: gooning culture and how Shane learned about it years before it hit mainstream media, why Jeremy Scott is "the Taco Bell of fashion" (complimentary), the NFL's official stylist whose college thesis connected SpongeBob SquarePants to the Arab Spring uprisings (not a joke), and why most luxury fashion houses are actually perfume or shoe companies pretending to sell clothes. They also discuss the Ice Spice SpongeBob movie premiere outfit controversy, why people pay to stand motionless at techno clubs, and Warped Tour nostalgia.Other topics include: Devoa, the Saint Laurent SS16 Surf Sound collection, ASICS x Comme des Garçons sneakers, the oura ring and Palantir data concerns, extreme fitness culture and dissociation, Russian seal best friends named Kroshik and Shlissik, and competitive Excel spreadsheet merch.We hope you enjoy!Lots of love!Sol---Episode Tags: Shane O'Neill, Washington Post Seriously, fashion podcast 2026, gooning explained, gooning Harper's Bazaar, Jeremy Scott fashion, menswear podcast, streetwear podcast, archive fashion, internet subcultures, TikTok algorithm, competitive Excel spreadsheets, niche communities, oura ring review, Ice Spice stylist, men's fashion trends 2026, Kyle Smith NFL stylist, Alexander McQueen shoes Sol Thompson and Michael Smith explore the world and subcultures of fashion, interviewing creators, personalities, and industry insiders to highlight the new vanguard of the fashion world. Subscribe for weekly uploads of the podcast, and don't forgot to follow us on our social channels for additional content, and join our discord to access what we've dubbed “the happiest place in fashion”.Message us with Business Inquiries at pairofkingspod@gmail.comSubscribe to get early access to podcasts and videos, and participate in exclusive giveaways for $4 a month Links: Instagram TikTok Twitter/X Sol's Substack (One Size Fits All) Sol's Instagram Michael's Instagram Michael's TikTok

Tuck into Tuesday's helping of Dave's Bad Jokes.

Welcome back to #WithSONAR! This week, we're diving into Batch Rate Intelligence, SONAR's multi-lane pricing tool designed to support short-term pricing decisions and RFP strategy with downloadable, market-aligned rate intelligence. In this session, you'll learn how to: -Access Batch Rate Intelligence within SONAR applications -Upload lanes using the downloadable template or work directly in the UI -View real-time broker-to-carrier spot rates updated daily -Compare spot and contract rates (where available) to evaluate margin and spread -Understand lane scores to gauge capacity difficulty and pricing leverage -Monitor daily rejection rates to anticipate spot rate pressure -Export full datasets for Excel-based RFP analysis and customization Batch Rate Intelligence is an add-on within SONAR and is especially valuable as we head into RFP season, helping ensure your pricing reflects real-time market conditions.

Today's guest is Thomas Holmes, Chief Actuary for North America at Akur8. Holmes focuses on how actuarial teams can modernize pricing and reserving with automation and AI while maintaining governance and actuarial soundness. Thomas joins Emerj Editorial Director Matthew DeMello to discuss why pricing and reserving modernization is hard to execute in practice, and how insurers can adopt AI with the governance and explainability actuarial teams require. The conversation also covers starting with a clear problem statement, avoiding generic "bolt-on" AI approaches, and targeting small wins that deliver measurable workflow and cycle-time improvements. Want to share your AI adoption story with executive peers? Click emerj.com/expert2 for more information and to be a potential future guest on the 'AI in Business' podcast. This episode is sponsored by Akur8. Learn how brands work with Emerj and other Emerj Media options at emerj.com/ad1.

In this episode, 10 Family Office Myths exposed (and debunked). https://youtu.be/j1cgcZZcRBM Welcome back and Happy New Year on the Wealth Actually podcast. I’m Frazer Rice. We have a fun show today where we talk about 10 myths in the family office space. Mark Tepsich, who runs the family office governance practice at UBS is here as we dish into the ideas and concepts that are misunderstood in the family office world. Summary This conversation delves into the complexities and myths surrounding family offices, exploring their structure, governance, and the unique challenges they face in wealth management. The discussion highlights the importance of understanding the specific needs of families and the role of family offices in managing complexity and preserving wealth across generations. It also addresses common misconceptions about family offices, including their necessity, governance, and their relationship with institutional investors. Takeaways Family offices are established to manage complexity in wealth.Not all family offices are the same; each has unique needs.Governance frameworks are essential for effective family office management.Many family offices outsource functions rather than internalizing them.The myth that 85-90% of family offices shouldn’t exist is false.Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves is a debated concept in wealth preservation.Family offices need to adapt to the evolving needs of families.Investment functions in family offices are often secondary to administrative roles.Family offices are driven by complexity rather than just size.The future of family offices may involve more direct investment opportunities. Chapters: Family Office Confidential 00:00 Understanding Family Offices: Myths and Realities02:02 The Complexity of Family Office Structures04:37 Debunking Common Myths About Family Offices06:17 The Role of Outsourcing in Family Offices07:54 Generational Wealth: The Shirt Sleeves Myth10:51 Flexibility vs. Permanence in Family Offices12:48 Governance and Decision-Making in Family Offices15:49 Investment Functions in Family Offices18:05 Size vs. Complexity in Family Offices20:09 Family Offices vs. Institutional Capital21:19 The Aspirational Nature of Family Offices23:30 The Relationship Between Family Offices and Institutions25:36 Technology in Family Offices: Current Trends29:03 Family Offices and Private Equity: A Comparative Analysis Myths 85-95% of FO’s should not exist vs. “there is no such thing as a family office’ Family office internalize everything A Family Office Anchored by an operating business is the same that is one funded solely by liquidity event Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves is myth Family offices are designed to be permanent’ Family Offices don’t need high end (almost SOX) like governance Family Offices are driven by net worth (no, by complexity) Family Offices are built on a robust investment function (no, it”s complexity management- often rooted in bookkeeping and accounting) Family Offices are like institutional Capital (no, many more motivations than pure returns- including whimsy and the knee-jerk ability to override the IPS) Family Offices are the right result for a career (they could be, but it is extremely unlikely- a lot of things have to be “just right” and there is little to know patience for development Family Offices make great wealth clients (very much depends on the function and the product- they can be difficult consumers) Family office tech is best – in – breed (No and it probably never will be) Family offices shun Large institutions (Surprisingly, no- needed for deals, expertise, and most importnatly financing and introductions) Keywords family offices, wealth management, governance, investment strategies, family dynamics, myths, financial planning, family wealth, complexity management, family governance Transcript: Family Office Myths Busted Frazer Rice (00:04.462): Welcome board, Mark. Mark Tepsich: Hey, Frazer, good to see you again. Appreciate the opportunity. Frazer Rice: Likewise. So let’s get started first. We’re going to go into some of the myths around family offices. But you really participate in kind of an interesting subset of that in terms of helping families design and govern them. What exactly does that mean on a day-to-day basis for you? Mark Tepsich: Yeah, good question. So, you know, it means a couple of things, right? So if you think about a family office, you have families that are at the inception point, right? Where things are getting too complex for them. They need to set up some sort of infrastructure. And it’s really like, what is a family office? What can it do for me? What are the pros, cons, and trade-offs? Where do I start? What’s the infrastructure, the systems? Who do I hire? How do I structure a compensation? So you’ve got families maybe coming at it. From post liquidity event, maybe coming at it from, we need to lift up, lift out this embedded family office out of the business to, hey, we’re an existing family office. We’ve got, you know, we’re evolving, right? The family’s growing, their enterprise is changing, the world around us is changing. People are leaving the family office, the next gen’s getting incorporated into the family office in some way. We’ve got some questions that could be, how do we engage the next generation through the family office? Mark Tepsich (01:21.614): How do we make decisions, communicate around our shared assets and resources, which could be a portfolio, maybe even a business, or hey, how do we come together and hire? What is this profile of this person look like? Who should we hire and not hire? What’s the structure of their compensation, carry co-investment, leverage co-investment? What’s the tech stack look like across accounting, consulting, reporting? Now, how do we insource and outsource? So it’s sort of. I like to call it organizational capabilities. So, you know, sometimes it’s soup to nuts, like starting from zero, other times it’s, we’ve been around for a long time, but we have a couple of questions. So that’s kind of my day to day. And, you know, I’ve been living this really since 2008 pre-global financial crisis. Frazer Rice So we’re going to go into, I think, some of the craziness of the family office ecosystem where we have people who wear many hats, people who wear masks, some people who are jokers and other people who are really good technicians and provide a lot of great insight. One of the things you were talking about is that the different types of mandate can be different. And I think maybe one of the first myths we should tackle is the The bromide that if you’ve seen one family office, you’ve seen one family office, which is thrown around at every family office conference and everybody chuckles for a minute and then it sort of washes away and no one cares anymore. What do you think about that statement? Mark Tespich (03:19.006): So I don’t necessarily think it’s true. And here’s what I mean. Let’s make an analogy to this, right? A business needs certain core infrastructure to just operate, right? And using accounting back office, you know the inflows, the outflows, you know, if you’re make a decision, these are the steps you have to go through. And so a family office, right? It needs to incorporate that, but it needs to incorporate it with the family and the family enterprise that is existing for that family, right? So, yeah, each family office is different because each family is different, but that’s like saying you’ve seen one business, you’ve seen one business, right? The strategy could be, the culture could be different, but, you still need some core operating infrastructure. And again, there’s accounting infrastructure, and that’s the basics, right? So there’s a curl of truth, but largely I think that it is false. Well, and at the same time, yes, families are different, but in general, families are trying to get to the same place, which is, know, they want to steward the wealth. They want to make sure it benefits the family and the other constituencies. And they want to make sure that it’s preserved over time. And those functions, you know, it’s very infrequent. You’d find the functions not there. And so how you get from A to B may be different, as you said, but there are a lot of universal truths to setting one of these things up. Frazer Rice So one of the other myths that we’ve come across is the idea that 80 to 90 percent of family offices shouldn’t exist. is, people and families set these up for, let’s call it the wrong reasons. Maybe it’s fear of missing out, maybe it’s great cocktail party chatter, maybe it’s an overdiagnosis of their needs. What do you think about that? Mark Tepsich Again, false. know, family offices are largely a function. They largely exist because there’s a market scale here. And what I mean by that is when you look under the hood at a family office, you’ve got basics of an accounting firm. You’ve got basics of an investment slash wealth management firm. You’ve got the basics of a legal slash tax firm. And then you’ve got essentially everything in between. And when you look at professional service firms out there, They can’t provide all of those under one roof, whether compliance or regulatory reasons. But the other reason is because no business model out there can really scale the complexity that each one of these families has. So yeah, you could outforce a lot of this stuff, but at the end of the day, family offices often exist because of a market failure. so, false, 85 to 90 % of family offices should exist. Frazer Rice (05:41.164) One of the other things, I’ve been around enough of these getting set up, is that the family office, if we get into sort of a technical structure, such that you set up a structure so that you’re able to deduct the expenses related to administering the wealth around that, that’s a valid reason to do things in addition to the organizational component. So I agree with you that there’s, to say that they shouldn’t exist is sort of belying the notion that these functions should take place internally. And I think you spoke to that. And I guess that gets to another myth, which is that family offices should internalize all of these functions. You just talked about it a little bit, that that’s not a great business model either. Mark Tepsich No, mean, yeah, so, you know, 85 to 90 % of family members out there, you just use that statistic, outsource a fair amount of things, right? And what that means is let’s just use tax counsel, for instance, right? This is something that these issues exist in every family office, they exist for every individual, but at the end of the day, should you have, you know, a tax counsel in-house in a family office that’s only doing, you know, income tax advisor work? Probably not. For 95 % of family offices because the frequency just isn’t there, right? So, you if you look at general councils alone, right? So they should have a broader mandate than income tax. should have well-transferred estate planning. Every family has those issues, but do they have the frequency to warrant bringing that individual, that professional and the rate, the cost? Probably not. a lot, you know, most family offices outsource a fair amount of whether it’s investment management, manager selection and due diligence. So false. Most fair amount offices do outsource a fair amount. Frazer Rice (07:31.374) One the things, this is one of my favorite controversial topics in the family office ecosystem of vendors that are out there is this notion that shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves is a myth. that the, and for those who don’t know what that means is, know, the first generation has generated the wealth, the second one enjoys it. And then the third one for a variety of reasons is ill-equipped to carry the wealth forward. And then everyone kind of goes back. It transcends culture. It’s lily pad to lily pad. You know, there’s a British version and a Russian version and whatever version. But the advice ecosystem around this is such that there’s a lot of debate about the statistics that have, quote unquote, proven that. And I can listen to that and say, yes, those may be very narrow. But there is a myth out there that shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves is a myth. Maybe you have some comments on that. Mark Tepsich Man, this is a tough one. I will say this will probably be the toughest one. So I think once a family becomes wealthy, right? And you can kind of define that as, the wealth, meaning the financial wealth will last a few generations with really out, with really nobody working, right? Let’s just define it that way. It’ll last a couple of generations if you make some not dumb decisions, we’ll call it. I think such as the financial markets today, right, as long as you’re diversified, you will stay wealthy. Does that mean you are going to have the same amount per capita over time? Maybe not, right? So if you look at it today, is a nuclear family of four, and you look at it 50 years from now, and the family is 30 people, right? I don’t know what the growth rate would have to be on those assets. So I think the family will remain wealthy whether they remain, you know, on a per capita basis, right? That’s a different story. I think what this is missing, however, I think the numbers kind of overshadow what this is getting at. I think when you look at it, when you take a step back, that first generation wealth creator, right? Will the family continue to be builders and entrepreneurs down the road? Frazer Rice (09:50.26) That I think that’s the question. Will they continue to kind of reach their full potential? I think that is that should be the focus. I’m going to punt on this one. I think it’s TBD and it’s there’s no set answer. I think the idea that the returns, To get back to your point is that as you go from generation to generation, the complexity increases, I’d say geometrically. Whereas the assets in many ways are going to be designed to increase linearly. And so at some point it may be 14 generations down the line when you’ve got 300 people that you have to take care of, are those assets gonna be in place to be able to support the level of living that people expected in generation one, two, and three? I think that’s the equation we’re all trying to fight. And so I’d say while Shirt Sleeves to Shirt Sleeves isn’t necessarily a prophecy, it’s definitely something that has to be addressed. So I’m gonna say that the fact that Shirt Sleeves to Shirt Sleeves is a myth, I think that’s the myth. Mark Tepsich So that’s where I draw my line in the sand there. think there’s an equation you constantly have to fight. Okay, so here’s another one. Family offices are designed to be permanent. I happen to think that they start out trying to be permanent, but in actuality, they really have to be more flexible and flex with the needs of the family, even at the first or second generation. Yeah, I would agree. Often they’re established for a good reason, right? That reason is complexity. Whether that complexity continues to exist for the family is a different story, right? You might have a business being sold. The family might just say, “hey, we don’t need to do all these direct investments, these alternate investments. Let’s just keep it simple, keep it passive.” I don’t think they’re designed to be permanent. I think families don’t really think about that too much. They want to exist for probably the existing generation that’s leveraging it and they wanna transition it, to your point, be flexible over time. But I don’t think anyone like a business, right? If you think about a business, the business generally speaking, it’s meant to exist in a perpetuity. That’s why you have a business, right? It’s not a sole proprietorship, but a family office, I think it’s TBD, right? So, you know. I don’t think anyone’s setting up a family that will say this is going to exist a thousand years from now. And I think if they came out and said that, think that it would add question and motivations. Frazer Rice Maybe we may be welcoming the Martians, we may be speaking Mandarin. There’s a thousand things that could happen in between here and then, that’s for sure. Here’s a myth that I think you and I are both going to agree is one, which is that family offices, for the ones that we think are going to try to persist, don’t demand necessarily Sarbanes-Oxley or high-end governance. Mark Tepsich I think as family offices mature, meaning as the family evolves, they do need some sort of decision-making framework. Especially if they’re going to really come together and act like somewhat of an institution. What I mean by that is, under the hood of a family office or under the hood of a family, let’s say there’s 10 family members. Let’s say there’s 20 to 25 trusts within that. You know, you could come together and pull your assets, right? And pull your resources. That’s part of the reason for having a family office. And so you just have a larger pool of capital. When you’re doing that, you do need governance. Okay? But if you’re gonna have, it’s just like, hey, we’re gonna have our separate portfolios. We’re not gonna come together and have pooled investment vehicles. You might not need an investment company, okay? And there might be good reasons to have an investment committee. In fact, many the investment committees I see, they’re not like college endowments where, we got eight people or nine people on here. We need to agree at least have five people to agree to allocate to this manager or change the allocation or change the IPS, depending on where that authority resides. I often see many investment committees for families, hey, we’re just collaborative in nature. We’ll get together. We’re going to have a meeting and talk about different strategies. Different advisors, things we should be doing. But if they’ve always had to agree at the family business level, they might not wanna have that same construct in the family office slash investment portfolio. If they’ve always struggled, know, come into agreement at the family business, now they’re gonna like, hey, we’re gonna recreate this dynamic. don’t have a binding construct. In fact, we ran a report, it’s coming out hopefully in the next couple of weeks. on family enterprise governance and a component obviously is the investment committee. 70 % of the investment committees out there are advisory in nature, meaning they don’t make binding decisions. They take it back to the trustees or whoever the authority is and they say, hey, here’s what we think, right? So individual family investors, whoever that is, co-trustees, it’s a, okay. So I do think governance is important, but it depends on what you mean by that, right? Should there be an IPS in place? I 100 % think that each family investor should have an IPS in place. The biggest mistake I see there is, hey, we’ve got this shared pool of capital. We’ve got 50 trusts. We’ve got one single IPS, right? I think that is a big mistake. don’t think that’s good governance. So it really depends on what you mean, but I think, yes, there should be some decision-making framework that you’re following. Otherwise, what exactly are you? Adhering to it, right? Like, what is your framework? What is your decision making tree? Frazer Rice (15:53.902) On top of that, possible myth. Family offices are built on a robust investment function. I mean, yes, there are some that are like that, right? You know, there’s a big names out there, MSD, Pritzker, so on and so forth. Those are the exceptions rather than the rule. Most family offices, 85 to 90 % are formed to manage the complexity, right? So again, otherwise you’re gonna have all these outsourced providers and that just doesn’t make sense when you’re trying to make a decision, because you need all the different parts to come together. They’re often built as administrative functions first, rather than, we’re gonna go start the next, you know, a private equity firm. that’s false. Frazer Rice The, as I like to say, probably to the boredom of a lot of people who talk to me a lot is that a lot of these really are built on a bookkeeping or an accounting spine. You’ve got to manage the inflows and outflows of everything and keep track of what you have or else you can have a great investment function, but things are going to spill all over the place. Mark Tepsich (17:30.872) I’ll never say, yeah. mean, and that actually goes back to good governance, right? So I always say, it’s not provocative. I’ll say, listen, this is not a provocative answer, but you need to create that first. And most of the people that are considering this rate are business owners. So they’ll intuitively get that. In fact, that function might exist somewhere at the business, but it’s really not organized. And without that function, like, it’s hard to make a decision, right? If you’re going to allocate 20 % of your portfolio, to private equity drawdown vehicles. got cap calls, capital commitments, distributions, like that needs to be budgeted and forecasting, right? So a lot of these families will have, one nuclear family can have three to four homes, 10 bank accounts, 20 entities. It’s not like a single piggy bank that you could take cash out of and move it every which way, right? Those are owned by different vehicles, different trusts, different assets and things like that, so. Frazer Rice Here’s a myth that I espouse which is Family offices and whether you have one or not is driven solely by size whether you have five billion or two hundred million or something like that that if you aren’t a certain size you shouldn’t have one and if you’re Of a certain size you must have one. Mark Tepsich That’s a myth. It’s driven by complexity first. I’ve seen, I’ve spoken to people that are worth two to $3 billion. It’s concentrated in a few stocks, meaning like they were early stage employees, right? They’re still in it. They’re getting a healthy dividend at this point. Guy talked to couple years ago. He had two homes, two cars, probably 95 % of his network was tied up into two separate securities that were probably traded. And he’s like, I don’t think I need a family office. You want to know what one was, what it could do from. And I’m like, listen, if you don’t have the complexity, it probably doesn’t make sense. Okay, if you can make a decision within whatever framework you have, whatever complex you have. Now, the other, you know, there is a cost factor to it, right? It gets easier to start a family office, meaning hire a couple of people, if you’ve got the… asset base for it to make sense on a cost perspective. So most of the time it’s driven by complexity, but cost does become a factor, right? If you’re worth a hundred million dollars, you’re to go hire 10 people. That probably doesn’t make sense. Frazer Rice (19:28.342) Right. Well, on top of that too, if you, and there’s a sort of the difference between a family office driven by a liquidity event and meeting that’s, that’s all you have versus a family office that’s tethered or sorry, a family business that’s tethered to it, that is also generating cash flows to help pay for things that that’s a big part of the decision. Because if you’re hiring people, you know, a CIO minimum, absolute minimum is probably $500,000. They’re going to need people, you know, you’re looking at at least 3 million. just to get the thing up and running before you start figuring out what you actually have to do. And so the concept that the size is going to dictate completely, it underscores sort of that cost component that you described there. Frazer Rice This is an interesting one and I like this concept to talk about. Family offices are like institutional capital as investors. Mark Tepsich Again, myth, there are some, again, there are some that are like institutions. They have the size and the sophistication. Oftentimes you see them, they’re former PE or hedge fund founders, right? That just aren’t doing any more of it. They made their wealth in the financial ecosystem, in the markets. And so they’re very sophisticated. But by and large, I mean, they’re sort of quasi-institutional, right? So I’ve seen multi-billion dollar family offices that Again, they’re more of the administrative hub rather than, we’re gonna be splashing around and playing in the markets and using a lot of leverage and doing a lot of control equity investments. So by and large, it’s the myth. 85 to 90 % are institutional-like. They are there to fill a need and that need is complexity management. Frazer Rice Here’s one on a different angle, which is family offices are the goal for people in the wealth management industry to work for, meaning family offices are a great aspiration for people who work in the industry and that that’s universal. Mark Tepsich (21:34.35) Myth, I think it’s an option. I think it’s interesting. I think it is a growing opportunity for folks that work in, you know, maybe wealth management or investment management or the financial ecosystem. But you didn’t, again, family has been around for a long time, but they’ve really only became, you know, kind of popular post global financial crisis with the rise of PE because of ZERP. You know, I’ll talk to a lot of people that are like in the hedge fund ecosystem looking for a change, right? And I say like, listen, like these opportunities for you are out there, but it depends on the family. It depends on their compensation philosophy as on the culture that you’re going to have to live within. There’s a lot of key man risk. Is it an opportunity? Yes. But again, it is, it is family office by family office. Frazer Rice I tell people too, it’s for people who are used to having lots of clients or lots of institutional support that is going to be a shift. It’s different to have one client. It’s different to have a scenario where the business of a family office, the business model of that particular family office can change on a dime. And if you don’t share the last name of the family you’re working for, you could be in a tough spot. Mark Tepsich Yeah, “we’re gonna build out a sustainability impact portfolio. We’re gonna build out, we’re gonna have a direct investment initiative. We’re gonna allocate whatever, a few hundred million dollars to it.” That person, that professional gets there and then a year or two or three years goes by and the strategy changes because a family member too had to change a heart. And then it becomes, okay, why am I here? Where am I gonna go now? So again, they could be great opportunities. I had a great experience.but it really just depends on the family. Frazer Rice (23:26.894) Here’s one, and you’ve got UBS over your shoulder there, so this is dramatic foreshadowing in some ways, but I think it bears talking about. It’s that family offices shun the large institutions, and that they want it bespoke, they want something peculiar all the time. What do you think about that? Mark Tepsich No, I mean, it goes back to the earlier myth that, you know, basically we’re saying family office should, family office do outsource a lot, right? So again, most family offices are five to eight people, right? I call it family office island, meaning you’re there on the island and you’re like, what is going on outside of the island or off of the island? You know your island really well, right? You know the family, know all the facts inside and out, but they are, I mean, there’s a reason why all these institutions, including UBS, has built out the resources to cater to family offices, right? I’m the perfect example. They brought me on to help our clients build family offices, right? They would not do that if it was gonna cannibalize their business. So they could be great clients and other times it’s like, hey, we’re very insular and we’re gonna keep everything close to the vest. Again, it’s family office to family office. But by and large, they’re great wealth clients. Frazer Rice No, and they also, you know, they need institutions to partner with of size, whether it’s at custody or lending or any number of other functions that are out there. Sometimes, you know, the RIA space is such that, you know, they try to be all things to all people and the appeal of being in, you know, the billionaire space. It takes a lot of people and a lot of effort and frankly a different business model to deal with that and to just sort of wander in and say we’re great and we can do these things. I think that’s a short road for a lot of institutions. Frazer Rice (25:17.602) Again, like we are brutally honest too. And I’ll, and here’s what I mean by that. Well, like we’re rated a lot of things, but I’ll say like, listen, there’s things that we can’t do for you. We can’t be your accounting back office, right? Like we just don’t offer that. We don’t have it. We’ve got a couple firms that would do that. They’re pure plays on it. So they’ve got to be good at it. but you know, use the various institutions for what they’re good for. They’re, know, again, that’s why you’ve got a family office. You can kind of pick or choose and be agnostic as to what you’re using them for. Frazer Rice If we wind down here a couple of last ones: The tech that family offices rely on is going to be best in breed. Mark Tepsich I, listen, I have this power station all the time with family office meeting, like what, what, you know, what tech providers should we be looking at? Listen, family office have grown in, right over the past 10, 15 years that there’s not a question. they’re historically, right. had to use in a family office, had to take basically institutional tools, try to repurpose them for the family office and they just, they’re just kind of clunky, right? The family office is still a cottage industry. If you’re trying to sell the family offices, you’re selling the two firms with five to eight employees, right? So the tools are going to continue to get better. But in my opinion, they’re always going to lag the institutional tools and kind of sophistication. But that’s also because institutional tools are very kind of narrow and deep, whereas the family office tech tools, you’ve got the accelerated reporting, but it needs to link to the accounting. That’s an issue. And so the family of standard day is left with like a bunch of disparate fragmented systems that have a challenge talking to each other. With that said, AI, I’ve been talking to a lot of these sort of mom and pop shops, I’ll call them. They’re firms that are trying to incorporate AI to break down these walls. So it’s not fragmented disparate systems. I use the analogy of it’s like jailbreaking an iPhone. I don’t know where this is gonna be in a couple of years, but I think the tools are going to continue to improve. But again, you’re probably not going to take a family office tech tool and deploy it at institutional scale. So if that answers your question, I guess it’s a measure. Frazer Rice First of all, I think it’s going to take a long time before something, quote unquote, replaces Excel, which is still a powerful tool that is flexible and does what it says it’s going to do. And people use it sometimes at their own peril to be the underpinning of everything. the one thing I would add is that the mom and pop software components, I think, have a lot of great ideas. The total market to sell into that, though, does not necessarily make for a great software business. As you say, to get those tools that are specific and required at the family office level to be profitable, you got to figure out a way to sell that into something bigger. I’m not sure there is anything bigger. Mark Tepsich (28:49.358) Yeah, I mean, you’d be better selling it to, you know, small businesses, right? So, I mean, the tools are going to get better, but there’s been a lot of interest recently in the past couple years. I don’t think, I think most of them are not going to survive. I don’t want to say there’s only going to be a couple winners, but on the Consolidated Reported Front, I really think there’s only going be a couple winners because you need scale. And again, family office, if you’re looking to make a decision, you’re like, well, okay, well, 5,000 users use Adapar and 50 use this other platform. So which one are you gonna choose? You don’t wanna onboard to the one that has 50 and then three years down the road, they’re out of business, or there’s fold or something like that. So with scale comes a little bit of security that at least you know that a lot of other people are using. You could point to that. Frazer Rice Last question. Family offices will rival PE firms in terms of influence in the investing market? 85 to 90 % will not rival PE firms. That’s not what they’re set up for. That’s not the goal of most family offices. Again, it’s complexity management. Will some rival PE firms? Yeah. But again, you… Listen, I’ve seen some family office go out there and raise their party capital. When they do that, they’re not a family office anymore. They might have a component in there, but they’re private equity firms. What you’re getting at is private equity firms are raising a fund every couple of years. Can a family office do that? No, because once they do that, they will be a private equity firm. So PE by and large has an infinite capital source, as long as they are good at what they do, right? So with that said, you know, there’s a lot of entrepreneurs that are are post liquidity events have played in the direct investment space, they really wanna do it. They’re still young, right? They’re billers, operators created. They wanna do it from a different vantage point. They’re coming to a realization: “that w”We need to start a fund.” I really love that story because again, they’re founders and operators. They didn’t come from the financial ecosystem first to do this. So I think they’re putting a different spin on PE. I think it’s great for the PE industry as a whole, by the way. And I think, if you’re a founder or a business owner, you might have an easier time taking an equity investment from somebody like that, who’s known in that specific industry that they made their money in, who’s had to make payroll. And they probably have a different timeline than normal PE that’s looking to flip every three to five years. So I think as an investor, I think that would be an interesting investment opportunity, right? And so it’s like, okay, well, part of my PE allocation, you know, This might look interesting. I hesitate to make, you know, I’m not an investment person, so. Frazer Rice Great stuff. Mark, how do people find you and reach out? Mark Tepsich I’m on LinkedIn. I would attempt to just spell my name with my email address at ubs.com, but it’s very lengthy. You just hit me up on LinkedIn. But, Frasier, I appreciate the time. This was great. Frazer Rice I’ll have that in the show notes and as a final parting, we sort of listen to people say, the family space is getting loud. I’m not sure it is. I think the vendors are more loud than the family offices are. I don’t know what your experience is there. Mark Tepsich 100%, the family members themselves are still quiet. You don’t see them out there on LinkedIn. It is the ecosystem to your point around them that is getting loud, right? It’s LinkedIn. It’s like, you know, every time I’m on there, it’s like somebody’s got something to say about families, which is good. Again, if you think about every boom in history, they attract people, right? You could say the same thing about AI, right? But again, it’s become loud, but that’s the industry. It’s not the family offices themselves. Frazer Rice Great stuff. Thanks, Mark. Mark Tepsich Thank you, Frazer. Appreciate it. FAMILY OFFICE DEFINED MORE ON FAMILY OFFICE DESIGN WITH ED MARSHALL https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Actually-Intelligent-Decision-Making-1-ebook/dp/B07FPQJJQT/

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Send us a textA peach label promised sunshine. The pour delivered wheat. That's where our night starts—expectations versus reality, how labels shape first sips, and the simple tricks that can rescue a subtle beer: the right glass, a slice of peach or orange, and a little patience. We get honest about why some wheat beers are easy on the palate but tough on the gut, and why “fruit” on a can doesn't always mean fruit on the tongue.Then the lights dim and the mood shifts. We pop Goose Island Bourbon County and everything slows down: deep aromas of smoke and oak, chocolate layered with vanilla and caramel, and a bourbon warmth that asks you to sit, swirl, and sip. We talk temperature and glassware, why this stout is a closer, and how it pairs with cigars or dark chocolate. We even stack it against Kentucky Bourbon Barrel and call a clear winner for balance and depth. If you're into barrel-aged stouts, this segment is your tasting roadmap.Between pours, life sneaks in. One of us steps into new responsibilities at work—scheduling trucks, printing orders, leveling up in Excel—while we swap a gnarly hygiene story that proves how tiny habits can keep a whole crew sick. We pull back the curtain on our show too: a new Facebook page, Buzzsprout link, and a look at growth across 66 countries. Seven seasons later, the formula still works—good friends, good beer, real laughs—and consistency beats perfection.If you like candid beer reviews, practical tasting tips, and the kind of banter that makes a week feel shorter, you're in the right place. Hit play, grab a glass, and tell us where you land: team wheat or team barrel-aged stout? Subscribe, share with a friend who loves big flavor, and drop a review with your top stout recommendation.Support the showwww.anotherreasontodrink.com

Eric LeVine didn't set out to build a startup. He was a Microsoft engineer during the dot-com boom who just wanted to keep track of the wine he owned. So he built a simple spreadsheet — an “Excel for wine” — to organize his own cellar. Friends started asking for access. Then friends of friends. In 2003, Eric put the tool online. That side project became CellarTracker. Today, it has 10M+ users, tracks over $21B worth of wine, and has quietly become the most trusted platform in the wine world. In this episode, Eric walks through turning a personal itch into global infrastructure, why obsession with data and community mattered more than monetization early on, and how CellarTracker now uses AI to help people know when to drink a bottle — not just what they own. Make sure to check out CellarTracker at: https://www.cellartracker.com/   Check out my new book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4kRKGTX Register for Starting Small Summit 2026: https://startingsmallmedia.org/startingsmallsummit Watch our mini-doc - Starting Small: The Raw Truth Behind Entrepreneurship and the American Dream: https://youtu.be/eHuq93wIxs0?si=eDB-ycngvWNapRLO Visit Starting Small Media: https://startingsmallmedia.org/ Subscribe to exclusive Starting Small emails: https://startingsmallmedia.org/newsletter-signup   Follow Starting Small: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/startingsmallpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Startingsmallpod/?modal=admin_todo_tour LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/cameronnagle   Starting Small is powered by Riverside.fm, the AI-powered platform that lets you record, edit, repurpose,and distribute studio-quality content as easily as if you had a crew behind you. Check them out now at https://riverside.com/

Think AI will free you from ‘mundane bookkeeping' so you can do advisory? Blake and David say it's the opposite. Hear how owners already use AI as a de facto CFO, why drafting narratives—not matching bank feeds—is the real win, what the ‘AI premium' means in a billable-hour world, and the two numbers firm owners should track in 2026: monthly recurring revenue and bottom-line profit.SponsorsUNC - http://accountingpodcast.promo/uncOnPay - http://accountingpodcast.promo/onpayTaxBandits - http://accountingpodcast.promo/taxbanditsChapters(01:35) - News Highlights and Sponsor Acknowledgements (03:56) - AI in Small Business Accounting (07:04) - AI's Impact on Accounting Tasks (10:01) - Thought Leader Survey on AI in Accounting (19:56) - AI Premium and Job Automation (25:27) - Survey Answers from Accounting Thought Leaders (25:54) - AI's Role in Strategy and Decision Making (28:24) - Impact of AI on Competitive Landscape (30:50) - AI's Effect on Costs in Accounting Firms (31:54) - AI Replacing Staff Accountants (33:24) - Personal Job Security and AI (41:05) - AI Influencers and Future Experiments (49:24) - Conclusion and CPE Information  Show NotesThese Small-Business Owners Are Putting AI to Good Use https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/small-business-ai-chatgpt-prompts-0c9a95c4 AI Thought Leaders Survey 2026: Process Predictions https://www.accountingtoday.com/list/ai-thought-leaders-survey-2026-process-predictions Tech Spending Outpacing People Spending as Firms Adopt AI https://www.accountingtoday.com/list/tech-spending-outpacing-people-spending-as-firms-adopt-ai How Much is the 'AI Premium?' https://www.accountingtoday.com/list/how-much-is-the-ai-premium AI Can't Replace Accountants. When Could It? https://www.accountingtoday.com/list/ai-cant-replace-accountants-when-could-it Accounting in 2026: The Year Ahead in Numbers https://www.accountingtoday.com/list/accounting-in-2026-the-year-ahead-in-numbers AI Vending Machine Lost $1,000 to Social Engineering https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-ai-claude-vending-machine-c7baef6f Anthropic's Project Vend Phase 2 https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-2 Trump Commutes Sentence of Private Equity CEO Convicted of Fraud https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/01/politics/david-gentile-trump-pardon Trump Commutes 7-Year Prison Sentence of Former Private Equity CEO David Gentile https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-commutes-7-year-prison-sentence-former-private-equity-ceo-david-rcna246744 California's Controversial Wealth Tax Proposal Leaves Billionaires With Little Way Out https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/08/california-wealth-tax-proposal-leaves-billionaires-with-little-way-out.html California Could Impose a Billionaire Tax. Here's How It Would Work https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-billionaire-tax-ballot-initiative-how-it-works/ New Tax on the Wealth of Billionaires https://lao.ca.gov/BallotAnalysis/Initiative/2025-024Need CPE?Get CPE for listening to podcasts with Earmark: https://earmarkcpe.comSubscribe to the Earmark Podcast: https://podcast.earmarkcpe.comGet in TouchThanks for listening and the great reviews! We appreciate you! Follow and tweet @BlakeTOliver and @DavidLeary. Find us on Facebook and Instagram. If you like what you hear, please do us a favor and write a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Call us and leave a voicemail; maybe we'll play it on the show. DIAL (202) 695-1040.SponsorshipsAre you interested in sponsoring The Accounting Podcast? For details, read the prospectus.Need Accounting Conference Info? Check out our new website - accountingconferences.comLimited edition shirts, stickers, and other necessitiesTeePublic Store: http://cloudacctpod.link/merchSubscribeApple Podcasts: http://cloudacctpod.link/ApplePodcastsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAccountingPodcastSpotify: http://cloudacctpod.link/SpotifyPodchaser: http://cloudacctpod.link/podchaserStitcher: http://cloudacctpod.link/StitcherOvercast: http://cloudacctpod.link/OvercastWant to get the word out about your newsletter, webinar, party, Facebook group, podcast, e-book, job posting, or that fancy Excel macro you just created? Let the listeners of The Accounting Podcast know by running a classified ad. Go here to create your classified ad: https://cloudacctpod.link/RunClassifiedAdTranscriptsThe full transcript for this episode is available by clicking on the Transcript tab at the top of this page

Happy New Year! You may have noticed that in 2025 we had moved toward YouTube as our primary podcasting platform. As we'll explain in the next State of Latent Space post, we'll be doubling down on Substack again and improving the experience for the over 100,000 of you who look out for our emails and website updates!We first mentioned Artificial Analysis in 2024, when it was still a side project in a Sydney basement. They then were one of the few Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross' AIGrant companies to raise a full seed round from them and have now become the independent gold standard for AI benchmarking—trusted by developers, enterprises, and every major lab to navigate the exploding landscape of models, providers, and capabilities.We have chatted with both Clementine Fourrier of HuggingFace's OpenLLM Leaderboard and (the freshly valued at $1.7B) Anastasios Angelopoulos of LMArena on their approaches to LLM evals and trendspotting, but Artificial Analysis have staked out an enduring and important place in the toolkit of the modern AI Engineer by doing the best job of independently running the most comprehensive set of evals across the widest range of open and closed models, and charting their progress for broad industry analyst use.George Cameron and Micah-Hill Smith have spent two years building Artificial Analysis into the platform that answers the questions no one else will: Which model is actually best for your use case? What are the real speed-cost trade-offs? And how open is “open” really?We discuss:* The origin story: built as a side project in 2023 while Micah was building a legal AI assistant, launched publicly in January 2024, and went viral after Swyx's retweet* Why they run evals themselves: labs prompt models differently, cherry-pick chain-of-thought examples (Google Gemini 1.0 Ultra used 32-shot prompts to beat GPT-4 on MMLU), and self-report inflated numbers* The mystery shopper policy: they register accounts not on their own domain and run intelligence + performance benchmarks incognito to prevent labs from serving different models on private endpoints* How they make money: enterprise benchmarking insights subscription (standardized reports on model deployment, serverless vs. managed vs. leasing chips) and private custom benchmarking for AI companies (no one pays to be on the public leaderboard)* The Intelligence Index (V3): synthesizes 10 eval datasets (MMLU, GPQA, agentic benchmarks, long-context reasoning) into a single score, with 95% confidence intervals via repeated runs* Omissions Index (hallucination rate): scores models from -100 to +100 (penalizing incorrect answers, rewarding ”I don't know”), and Claude models lead with the lowest hallucination rates despite not always being the smartest* GDP Val AA: their version of OpenAI's GDP-bench (44 white-collar tasks with spreadsheets, PDFs, PowerPoints), run through their Stirrup agent harness (up to 100 turns, code execution, web search, file system), graded by Gemini 3 Pro as an LLM judge (tested extensively, no self-preference bias)* The Openness Index: scores models 0-18 on transparency of pre-training data, post-training data, methodology, training code, and licensing (AI2 OLMo 2 leads, followed by Nous Hermes and NVIDIA Nemotron)* The smiling curve of AI costs: GPT-4-level intelligence is 100-1000x cheaper than at launch (thanks to smaller models like Amazon Nova), but frontier reasoning models in agentic workflows cost more than ever (sparsity, long context, multi-turn agents)* Why sparsity might go way lower than 5%: GPT-4.5 is ~5% active, Gemini models might be ~3%, and Omissions Index accuracy correlates with total parameters (not active), suggesting massive sparse models are the future* Token efficiency vs. turn efficiency: GPT-5 costs more per token but solves Tau-bench in fewer turns (cheaper overall), and models are getting better at using more tokens only when needed (5.1 Codex has tighter token distributions)* V4 of the Intelligence Index coming soon: adding GDP Val AA, Critical Point, hallucination rate, and dropping some saturated benchmarks (human-eval-style coding is now trivial for small models)Links to Artificial Analysis* Website: https://artificialanalysis.ai* George Cameron on X: https://x.com/georgecameron* Micah-Hill Smith on X: https://x.com/micahhsmithFull Episode on YouTubeTimestamps* 00:00 Introduction: Full Circle Moment and Artificial Analysis Origins* 01:19 Business Model: Independence and Revenue Streams* 04:33 Origin Story: From Legal AI to Benchmarking Need* 16:22 AI Grant and Moving to San Francisco* 19:21 Intelligence Index Evolution: From V1 to V3* 11:47 Benchmarking Challenges: Variance, Contamination, and Methodology* 13:52 Mystery Shopper Policy and Maintaining Independence* 28:01 New Benchmarks: Omissions Index for Hallucination Detection* 33:36 Critical Point: Hard Physics Problems and Research-Level Reasoning* 23:01 GDP Val AA: Agentic Benchmark for Real Work Tasks* 50:19 Stirrup Agent Harness: Open Source Agentic Framework* 52:43 Openness Index: Measuring Model Transparency Beyond Licenses* 58:25 The Smiling Curve: Cost Falling While Spend Rising* 1:02:32 Hardware Efficiency: Blackwell Gains and Sparsity Limits* 1:06:23 Reasoning Models and Token Efficiency: The Spectrum Emerges* 1:11:00 Multimodal Benchmarking: Image, Video, and Speech Arenas* 1:15:05 Looking Ahead: Intelligence Index V4 and Future Directions* 1:16:50 Closing: The Insatiable Demand for IntelligenceTranscriptMicah [00:00:06]: This is kind of a full circle moment for us in a way, because the first time artificial analysis got mentioned on a podcast was you and Alessio on Latent Space. Amazing.swyx [00:00:17]: Which was January 2024. I don't even remember doing that, but yeah, it was very influential to me. Yeah, I'm looking at AI News for Jan 17, or Jan 16, 2024. I said, this gem of a models and host comparison site was just launched. And then I put in a few screenshots, and I said, it's an independent third party. It clearly outlines the quality versus throughput trade-off, and it breaks out by model and hosting provider. I did give you s**t for missing fireworks, and how do you have a model benchmarking thing without fireworks? But you had together, you had perplexity, and I think we just started chatting there. Welcome, George and Micah, to Latent Space. I've been following your progress. Congrats on... It's been an amazing year. You guys have really come together to be the presumptive new gardener of AI, right? Which is something that...George [00:01:09]: Yeah, but you can't pay us for better results.swyx [00:01:12]: Yes, exactly.George [00:01:13]: Very important.Micah [00:01:14]: Start off with a spicy take.swyx [00:01:18]: Okay, how do I pay you?Micah [00:01:20]: Let's get right into that.swyx [00:01:21]: How do you make money?Micah [00:01:24]: Well, very happy to talk about that. So it's been a big journey the last couple of years. Artificial analysis is going to be two years old in January 2026. Which is pretty soon now. We first run the website for free, obviously, and give away a ton of data to help developers and companies navigate AI and make decisions about models, providers, technologies across the AI stack for building stuff. We're very committed to doing that and tend to keep doing that. We have, along the way, built a business that is working out pretty sustainably. We've got just over 20 people now and two main customer groups. So we want to be... We want to be who enterprise look to for data and insights on AI, so we want to help them with their decisions about models and technologies for building stuff. And then on the other side, we do private benchmarking for companies throughout the AI stack who build AI stuff. So no one pays to be on the website. We've been very clear about that from the very start because there's no use doing what we do unless it's independent AI benchmarking. Yeah. But turns out a bunch of our stuff can be pretty useful to companies building AI stuff.swyx [00:02:38]: And is it like, I am a Fortune 500, I need advisors on objective analysis, and I call you guys and you pull up a custom report for me, you come into my office and give me a workshop? What kind of engagement is that?George [00:02:53]: So we have a benchmarking and insight subscription, which looks like standardized reports that cover key topics or key challenges enterprises face when looking to understand AI and choose between all the technologies. And so, for instance, one of the report is a model deployment report, how to think about choosing between serverless inference, managed deployment solutions, or leasing chips. And running inference yourself is an example kind of decision that big enterprises face, and it's hard to reason through, like this AI stuff is really new to everybody. And so we try and help with our reports and insight subscription. Companies navigate that. We also do custom private benchmarking. And so that's very different from the public benchmarking that we publicize, and there's no commercial model around that. For private benchmarking, we'll at times create benchmarks, run benchmarks to specs that enterprises want. And we'll also do that sometimes for AI companies who have built things, and we help them understand what they've built with private benchmarking. Yeah. So that's a piece mainly that we've developed through trying to support everybody publicly with our public benchmarks. Yeah.swyx [00:04:09]: Let's talk about TechStack behind that. But okay, I'm going to rewind all the way to when you guys started this project. You were all the way in Sydney? Yeah. Well, Sydney, Australia for me.Micah [00:04:19]: George was an SF, but he's Australian, but he moved here already. Yeah.swyx [00:04:22]: And I remember I had the Zoom call with you. What was the impetus for starting artificial analysis in the first place? You know, you started with public benchmarks. And so let's start there. We'll go to the private benchmark. Yeah.George [00:04:33]: Why don't we even go back a little bit to like why we, you know, thought that it was needed? Yeah.Micah [00:04:40]: The story kind of begins like in 2022, 2023, like both George and I have been into AI stuff for quite a while. In 2023 specifically, I was trying to build a legal AI research assistant. So it actually worked pretty well for its era, I would say. Yeah. Yeah. So I was finding that the more you go into building something using LLMs, the more each bit of what you're doing ends up being a benchmarking problem. So had like this multistage algorithm thing, trying to figure out what the minimum viable model for each bit was, trying to optimize every bit of it as you build that out, right? Like you're trying to think about accuracy, a bunch of other metrics and performance and cost. And mostly just no one was doing anything to independently evaluate all the models. And certainly not to look at the trade-offs for speed and cost. So we basically set out just to build a thing that developers could look at to see the trade-offs between all of those things measured independently across all the models and providers. Honestly, it was probably meant to be a side project when we first started doing it.swyx [00:05:49]: Like we didn't like get together and say like, Hey, like we're going to stop working on all this stuff. I'm like, this is going to be our main thing. When I first called you, I think you hadn't decided on starting a company yet.Micah [00:05:58]: That's actually true. I don't even think we'd pause like, like George had an acquittance job. I didn't quit working on my legal AI thing. Like it was genuinely a side project.George [00:06:05]: We built it because we needed it as people building in the space and thought, Oh, other people might find it useful too. So we'll buy domain and link it to the Vercel deployment that we had and tweet about it. And, but very quickly it started getting attention. Thank you, Swyx for, I think doing an initial retweet and spotlighting it there. This project that we released. And then very quickly though, it was useful to others, but very quickly it became more useful as the number of models released accelerated. We had Mixtrel 8x7B and it was a key. That's a fun one. Yeah. Like a open source model that really changed the landscape and opened up people's eyes to other serverless inference providers and thinking about speed, thinking about cost. And so that was a key. And so it became more useful quite quickly. Yeah.swyx [00:07:02]: What I love talking to people like you who sit across the ecosystem is, well, I have theories about what people want, but you have data and that's obviously more relevant. But I want to stay on the origin story a little bit more. When you started out, I would say, I think the status quo at the time was every paper would come out and they would report their numbers versus competitor numbers. And that's basically it. And I remember I did the legwork. I think everyone has some knowledge. I think there's some version of Excel sheet or a Google sheet where you just like copy and paste the numbers from every paper and just post it up there. And then sometimes they don't line up because they're independently run. And so your numbers are going to look better than... Your reproductions of other people's numbers are going to look worse because you don't hold their models correctly or whatever the excuse is. I think then Stanford Helm, Percy Liang's project would also have some of these numbers. And I don't know if there's any other source that you can cite. The way that if I were to start artificial analysis at the same time you guys started, I would have used the Luther AI's eval framework harness. Yup.Micah [00:08:06]: Yup. That was some cool stuff. At the end of the day, running these evals, it's like if it's a simple Q&A eval, all you're doing is asking a list of questions and checking if the answers are right, which shouldn't be that crazy. But it turns out there are an enormous number of things that you've got control for. And I mean, back when we started the website. Yeah. Yeah. Like one of the reasons why we realized that we had to run the evals ourselves and couldn't just take rules from the labs was just that they would all prompt the models differently. And when you're competing over a few points, then you can pretty easily get- You can put the answer into the model. Yeah. That in the extreme. And like you get crazy cases like back when I'm Googled a Gemini 1.0 Ultra and needed a number that would say it was better than GPT-4 and like constructed, I think never published like chain of thought examples. 32 of them in every topic in MLU to run it, to get the score, like there are so many things that you- They never shipped Ultra, right? That's the one that never made it up. Not widely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure it existed, but yeah. So we were pretty sure that we needed to run them ourselves and just run them in the same way across all the models. Yeah. And we were, we also did certain from the start that you couldn't look at those in isolation. You needed to look at them alongside the cost and performance stuff. Yeah.swyx [00:09:24]: Okay. A couple of technical questions. I mean, so obviously I also thought about this and I didn't do it because of cost. Yep. Did you not worry about costs? Were you funded already? Clearly not, but you know. No. Well, we definitely weren't at the start.Micah [00:09:36]: So like, I mean, we're paying for it personally at the start. There's a lot of money. Well, the numbers weren't nearly as bad a couple of years ago. So we certainly incurred some costs, but we were probably in the order of like hundreds of dollars of spend across all the benchmarking that we were doing. Yeah. So nothing. Yeah. It was like kind of fine. Yeah. Yeah. These days that's gone up an enormous amount for a bunch of reasons that we can talk about. But yeah, it wasn't that bad because you can also remember that like the number of models we were dealing with was hardly any and the complexity of the stuff that we wanted to do to evaluate them was a lot less. Like we were just asking some Q&A type questions and then one specific thing was for a lot of evals initially, we were just like sampling an answer. You know, like, what's the answer for this? Like, we didn't want to go into the answer directly without letting the models think. We weren't even doing chain of thought stuff initially. And that was the most useful way to get some results initially. Yeah.swyx [00:10:33]: And so for people who haven't done this work, literally parsing the responses is a whole thing, right? Like because sometimes the models, the models can answer any way they feel fit and sometimes they actually do have the right answer, but they just returned the wrong format and they will get a zero for that unless you work it into your parser. And that involves more work. And so, I mean, but there's an open question whether you should give it points for not following your instructions on the format.Micah [00:11:00]: It depends what you're looking at, right? Because you can, if you're trying to see whether or not it can solve a particular type of reasoning problem, and you don't want to test it on its ability to do answer formatting at the same time, then you might want to use an LLM as answer extractor approach to make sure that you get the answer out no matter how unanswered. But these days, it's mostly less of a problem. Like, if you instruct a model and give it examples of what the answers should look like, it can get the answers in your format, and then you can do, like, a simple regex.swyx [00:11:28]: Yeah, yeah. And then there's other questions around, I guess, sometimes if you have a multiple choice question, sometimes there's a bias towards the first answer, so you have to randomize the responses. All these nuances, like, once you dig into benchmarks, you're like, I don't know how anyone believes the numbers on all these things. It's so dark magic.Micah [00:11:47]: You've also got, like… You've got, like, the different degrees of variance in different benchmarks, right? Yeah. So, if you run four-question multi-choice on a modern reasoning model at the temperatures suggested by the labs for their own models, the variance that you can see on a four-question multi-choice eval is pretty enormous if you only do a single run of it and it has a small number of questions, especially. So, like, one of the things that we do is run an enormous number of all of our evals when we're developing new ones and doing upgrades to our intelligence index to bring in new things. Yeah. So, that we can dial in the right number of repeats so that we can get to the 95% confidence intervals that we're comfortable with so that when we pull that together, we can be confident in intelligence index to at least as tight as, like, a plus or minus one at a 95% confidence. Yeah.swyx [00:12:32]: And, again, that just adds a straight multiple to the cost. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.George [00:12:37]: So, that's one of many reasons that cost has gone up a lot more than linearly over the last couple of years. We report a cost to run the artificial analysis. We report a cost to run the artificial analysis intelligence index on our website, and currently that's assuming one repeat in terms of how we report it because we want to reflect a bit about the weighting of the index. But our cost is actually a lot higher than what we report there because of the repeats.swyx [00:13:03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And probably this is true, but just checking, you don't have any special deals with the labs. They don't discount it. You just pay out of pocket or out of your sort of customer funds. Oh, there is a mix. So, the issue is that sometimes they may give you a special end point, which is… Ah, 100%.Micah [00:13:21]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. So, we laser focus, like, on everything we do on having the best independent metrics and making sure that no one can manipulate them in any way. There are quite a lot of processes we've developed over the last couple of years to make that true for, like, the one you bring up, like, right here of the fact that if we're working with a lab, if they're giving us a private endpoint to evaluate a model, that it is totally possible. That what's sitting behind that black box is not the same as they serve on a public endpoint. We're very aware of that. We have what we call a mystery shopper policy. And so, and we're totally transparent with all the labs we work with about this, that we will register accounts not on our own domain and run both intelligence evals and performance benchmarks… Yeah, that's the job. …without them being able to identify it. And no one's ever had a problem with that. Because, like, a thing that turns out to actually be quite a good… …good factor in the industry is that they all want to believe that none of their competitors could manipulate what we're doing either.swyx [00:14:23]: That's true. I never thought about that. I've been in the database data industry prior, and there's a lot of shenanigans around benchmarking, right? So I'm just kind of going through the mental laundry list. Did I miss anything else in this category of shenanigans? Oh, potential shenanigans.Micah [00:14:36]: I mean, okay, the biggest one, like, that I'll bring up, like, is more of a conceptual one, actually, than, like, direct shenanigans. It's that the things that get measured become things that get targeted by labs that they're trying to build, right? Exactly. So that doesn't mean anything that we should really call shenanigans. Like, I'm not talking about training on test set. But if you know that you're going to be great at another particular thing, if you're a researcher, there are a whole bunch of things that you can do to try to get better at that thing that preferably are going to be helpful for a wide range of how actual users want to use the thing that you're building. But will not necessarily work. Will not necessarily do that. So, for instance, the models are exceptional now at answering competition maths problems. There is some relevance of that type of reasoning, that type of work, to, like, how we might use modern coding agents and stuff. But it's clearly not one for one. So the thing that we have to be aware of is that once an eval becomes the thing that everyone's looking at, scores can get better on it without there being a reflection of overall generalized intelligence of these models. Getting better. That has been true for the last couple of years. It'll be true for the next couple of years. There's no silver bullet to defeat that other than building new stuff to stay relevant and measure the capabilities that matter most to real users. Yeah.swyx [00:15:58]: And we'll cover some of the new stuff that you guys are building as well, which is cool. Like, you used to just run other people's evals, but now you're coming up with your own. And I think, obviously, that is a necessary path once you're at the frontier. You've exhausted all the existing evals. I think the next point in history that I have for you is AI Grant that you guys decided to join and move here. What was it like? I think you were in, like, batch two? Batch four. Batch four. Okay.Micah [00:16:26]: I mean, it was great. Nat and Daniel are obviously great. And it's a really cool group of companies that we were in AI Grant alongside. It was really great to get Nat and Daniel on board. Obviously, they've done a whole lot of great work in the space with a lot of leading companies and were extremely aligned. With the mission of what we were trying to do. Like, we're not quite typical of, like, a lot of the other AI startups that they've invested in.swyx [00:16:53]: And they were very much here for the mission of what we want to do. Did they say any advice that really affected you in some way or, like, were one of the events very impactful? That's an interesting question.Micah [00:17:03]: I mean, I remember fondly a bunch of the speakers who came and did fireside chats at AI Grant.swyx [00:17:09]: Which is also, like, a crazy list. Yeah.George [00:17:11]: Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was something about, you know, speaking to Nat and Daniel about the challenges of working through a startup and just working through the questions that don't have, like, clear answers and how to work through those kind of methodically and just, like, work through the hard decisions. And they've been great mentors to us as we've built artificial analysis. Another benefit for us was that other companies in the batch and other companies in AI Grant are pushing the capabilities. Yeah. And I think that's a big part of what AI can do at this time. And so being in contact with them, making sure that artificial analysis is useful to them has been fantastic for supporting us in working out how should we build out artificial analysis to continue to being useful to those, like, you know, building on AI.swyx [00:17:59]: I think to some extent, I'm mixed opinion on that one because to some extent, your target audience is not people in AI Grants who are obviously at the frontier. Yeah. Do you disagree?Micah [00:18:09]: To some extent. To some extent. But then, so a lot of what the AI Grant companies are doing is taking capabilities coming out of the labs and trying to push the limits of what they can do across the entire stack for building great applications, which actually makes some of them pretty archetypical power users of artificial analysis. Some of the people with the strongest opinions about what we're doing well and what we're not doing well and what they want to see next from us. Yeah. Yeah. Because when you're building any kind of AI application now, chances are you're using a whole bunch of different models. You're maybe switching reasonably frequently for different models and different parts of your application to optimize what you're able to do with them at an accuracy level and to get better speed and cost characteristics. So for many of them, no, they're like not commercial customers of ours, like we don't charge for all our data on the website. Yeah. They are absolutely some of our power users.swyx [00:19:07]: So let's talk about just the evals as well. So you start out from the general like MMU and GPQA stuff. What's next? How do you sort of build up to the overall index? What was in V1 and how did you evolve it? Okay.Micah [00:19:22]: So first, just like background, like we're talking about the artificial analysis intelligence index, which is our synthesis metric that we pulled together currently from 10 different eval data sets to give what? We're pretty much the same as that. Pretty confident is the best single number to look at for how smart the models are. Obviously, it doesn't tell the whole story. That's why we published the whole website of all the charts to dive into every part of it and look at the trade-offs. But best single number. So right now, it's got a bunch of Q&A type data sets that have been very important to the industry, like a couple that you just mentioned. It's also got a couple of agentic data sets. It's got our own long context reasoning data set and some other use case focused stuff. As time goes on. The things that we're most interested in that are going to be important to the capabilities that are becoming more important for AI, what developers are caring about, are going to be first around agentic capabilities. So surprise, surprise. We're all loving our coding agents and how the model is going to perform like that and then do similar things for different types of work are really important to us. The linking to use cases to economically valuable use cases are extremely important to us. And then we've got some of the. Yeah. These things that the models still struggle with, like working really well over long contexts that are not going to go away as specific capabilities and use cases that we need to keep evaluating.swyx [00:20:46]: But I guess one thing I was driving was like the V1 versus the V2 and how bad it was over time.Micah [00:20:53]: Like how we've changed the index to where we are.swyx [00:20:55]: And I think that reflects on the change in the industry. Right. So that's a nice way to tell that story.Micah [00:21:00]: Well, V1 would be completely saturated right now. Almost every model coming out because doing things like writing the Python functions and human evil is now pretty trivial. It's easy to forget, actually, I think how much progress has been made in the last two years. Like we obviously play the game constantly of like the today's version versus last week's version and the week before and all of the small changes in the horse race between the current frontier and who has the best like smaller than 10B model like right now this week. Right. And that's very important to a lot of developers and people and especially in this particular city of San Francisco. But when you zoom out a couple of years ago, literally most of what we were doing to evaluate the models then would all be 100% solved by even pretty small models today. And that's been one of the key things, by the way, that's driven down the cost of intelligence at every tier of intelligence. We can talk about more in a bit. So V1, V2, V3, we made things harder. We covered a wider range of use cases. And we tried to get closer to things developers care about as opposed to like just the Q&A type stuff that MMLU and GPQA represented. Yeah.swyx [00:22:12]: I don't know if you have anything to add there. Or we could just go right into showing people the benchmark and like looking around and asking questions about it. Yeah.Micah [00:22:21]: Let's do it. Okay. This would be a pretty good way to chat about a few of the new things we've launched recently. Yeah.George [00:22:26]: And I think a little bit about the direction that we want to take it. And we want to push benchmarks. Currently, the intelligence index and evals focus a lot on kind of raw intelligence. But we kind of want to diversify how we think about intelligence. And we can talk about it. But kind of new evals that we've kind of built and partnered on focus on topics like hallucination. And we've got a lot of topics that I think are not covered by the current eval set that should be. And so we want to bring that forth. But before we get into that.swyx [00:23:01]: And so for listeners, just as a timestamp, right now, number one is Gemini 3 Pro High. Then followed by Cloud Opus at 70. Just 5.1 high. You don't have 5.2 yet. And Kimi K2 Thinking. Wow. Still hanging in there. So those are the top four. That will date this podcast quickly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love it. I love it. No, no. 100%. Look back this time next year and go, how cute. Yep.George [00:23:25]: Totally. A quick view of that is, okay, there's a lot. I love it. I love this chart. Yeah.Micah [00:23:30]: This is such a favorite, right? Yeah. And almost every talk that George or I give at conferences and stuff, we always put this one up first to just talk about situating where we are in this moment in history. This, I think, is the visual version of what I was saying before about the zooming out and remembering how much progress there's been. If we go back to just over a year ago, before 01, before Cloud Sonnet 3.5, we didn't have reasoning models or coding agents as a thing. And the game was very, very different. If we go back even a little bit before then, we're in the era where, when you look at this chart, open AI was untouchable for well over a year. And, I mean, you would remember that time period well of there being very open questions about whether or not AI was going to be competitive, like full stop, whether or not open AI would just run away with it, whether we would have a few frontier labs and no one else would really be able to do anything other than consume their APIs. I am quite happy overall that the world that we have ended up in is one where... Multi-model. Absolutely. And strictly more competitive every quarter over the last few years. Yeah. This year has been insane. Yeah.George [00:24:42]: You can see it. This chart with everything added is hard to read currently. There's so many dots on it, but I think it reflects a little bit what we felt, like how crazy it's been.swyx [00:24:54]: Why 14 as the default? Is that a manual choice? Because you've got service now in there that are less traditional names. Yeah.George [00:25:01]: It's models that we're kind of highlighting by default in our charts, in our intelligence index. Okay.swyx [00:25:07]: You just have a manually curated list of stuff.George [00:25:10]: Yeah, that's right. But something that I actually don't think every artificial analysis user knows is that you can customize our charts and choose what models are highlighted. Yeah. And so if we take off a few names, it gets a little easier to read.swyx [00:25:25]: Yeah, yeah. A little easier to read. Totally. Yeah. But I love that you can see the all one jump. Look at that. September 2024. And the DeepSeek jump. Yeah.George [00:25:34]: Which got close to OpenAI's leadership. They were so close. I think, yeah, we remember that moment. Around this time last year, actually.Micah [00:25:44]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. Yeah, well, a couple of weeks. It was Boxing Day in New Zealand when DeepSeek v3 came out. And we'd been tracking DeepSeek and a bunch of the other global players that were less known over the second half of 2024 and had run evals on the earlier ones and stuff. I very distinctly remember Boxing Day in New Zealand, because I was with family for Christmas and stuff, running the evals and getting back result by result on DeepSeek v3. So this was the first of their v3 architecture, the 671b MOE.Micah [00:26:19]: And we were very, very impressed. That was the moment where we were sure that DeepSeek was no longer just one of many players, but had jumped up to be a thing. The world really noticed when they followed that up with the RL working on top of v3 and R1 succeeding a few weeks later. But the groundwork for that absolutely was laid with just extremely strong base model, completely open weights that we had as the best open weights model. So, yeah, that's the thing that you really see in the game. But I think that we got a lot of good feedback on Boxing Day. us on Boxing Day last year.George [00:26:48]: Boxing Day is the day after Christmas for those not familiar.George [00:26:54]: I'm from Singapore.swyx [00:26:55]: A lot of us remember Boxing Day for a different reason, for the tsunami that happened. Oh, of course. Yeah, but that was a long time ago. So yeah. So this is the rough pitch of AAQI. Is it A-A-Q-I or A-A-I-I? I-I. Okay. Good memory, though.Micah [00:27:11]: I don't know. I'm not used to it. Once upon a time, we did call it Quality Index, and we would talk about quality, performance, and price, but we changed it to intelligence.George [00:27:20]: There's been a few naming changes. We added hardware benchmarking to the site, and so benchmarks at a kind of system level. And so then we changed our throughput metric to, we now call it output speed, and thenswyx [00:27:32]: throughput makes sense at a system level, so we took that name. Take me through more charts. What should people know? Obviously, the way you look at the site is probably different than how a beginner might look at it.Micah [00:27:42]: Yeah, that's fair. There's a lot of fun stuff to dive into. Maybe so we can hit past all the, like, we have lots and lots of emails and stuff. The interesting ones to talk about today that would be great to bring up are a few of our recent things, I think, that probably not many people will be familiar with yet. So first one of those is our omniscience index. So this one is a little bit different to most of the intelligence evils that we've run. We built it specifically to look at the embedded knowledge in the models and to test hallucination by looking at when the model doesn't know the answer, so not able to get it correct, what's its probability of saying, I don't know, or giving an incorrect answer. So the metric that we use for omniscience goes from negative 100 to positive 100. Because we're simply taking off a point if you give an incorrect answer to the question. We're pretty convinced that this is an example of where it makes most sense to do that, because it's strictly more helpful to say, I don't know, instead of giving a wrong answer to factual knowledge question. And one of our goals is to shift the incentive that evils create for models and the labs creating them to get higher scores. And almost every evil across all of AI up until this point, it's been graded by simple percentage correct as the main metric, the main thing that gets hyped. And so you should take a shot at everything. There's no incentive to say, I don't know. So we did that for this one here.swyx [00:29:22]: I think there's a general field of calibration as well, like the confidence in your answer versus the rightness of the answer. Yeah, we completely agree. Yeah. Yeah.George [00:29:31]: On that. And one reason that we didn't do that is because. Or put that into this index is that we think that the, the way to do that is not to ask the models how confident they are.swyx [00:29:43]: I don't know. Maybe it might be though. You put it like a JSON field, say, say confidence and maybe it spits out something. Yeah. You know, we have done a few evils podcasts over the, over the years. And when we did one with Clementine of hugging face, who maintains the open source leaderboard, and this was one of her top requests, which is some kind of hallucination slash lack of confidence calibration thing. And so, Hey, this is one of them.Micah [00:30:05]: And I mean, like anything that we do, it's not a perfect metric or the whole story of everything that you think about as hallucination. But yeah, it's pretty useful and has some interesting results. Like one of the things that we saw in the hallucination rate is that anthropics Claude models at the, the, the very left-hand side here with the lowest hallucination rates out of the models that we've evaluated amnesty is on. That is an interesting fact. I think it probably correlates with a lot of the previously, not really measured vibes stuff that people like about some of the Claude models. Is the dataset public or what's is it, is there a held out set? There's a hell of a set for this one. So we, we have published a public test set, but we we've only published 10% of it. The reason is that for this one here specifically, it would be very, very easy to like have data contamination because it is just factual knowledge questions. We would. We'll update it at a time to also prevent that, but with yeah, kept most of it held out so that we can keep it reliable for a long time. It leads us to a bunch of really cool things, including breakdown quite granularly by topic. And so we've got some of that disclosed on the website publicly right now, and there's lots more coming in terms of our ability to break out very specific topics. Yeah.swyx [00:31:23]: I would be interested. Let's, let's dwell a little bit on this hallucination one. I noticed that Haiku hallucinates less than Sonnet hallucinates less than Opus. And yeah. Would that be the other way around in a normal capability environments? I don't know. What's, what do you make of that?George [00:31:37]: One interesting aspect is that we've found that there's not really a, not a strong correlation between intelligence and hallucination, right? That's to say that the smarter the models are in a general sense, isn't correlated with their ability to, when they don't know something, say that they don't know. It's interesting that Gemini three pro preview was a big leap over here. Gemini 2.5. Flash and, and, and 2.5 pro, but, and if I add pro quickly here.swyx [00:32:07]: I bet pro's really good. Uh, actually no, I meant, I meant, uh, the GPT pros.George [00:32:12]: Oh yeah.swyx [00:32:13]: Cause GPT pros are rumored. We don't know for a fact that it's like eight runs and then with the LM judge on top. Yeah.George [00:32:20]: So we saw a big jump in, this is accuracy. So this is just percent that they get, uh, correct and Gemini three pro knew a lot more than the other models. And so big jump in accuracy. But relatively no change between the Google Gemini models, between releases. And the hallucination rate. Exactly. And so it's likely due to just kind of different post-training recipe, between the, the Claude models. Yeah.Micah [00:32:45]: Um, there's, there's driven this. Yeah. You can, uh, you can partially blame us and how we define intelligence having until now not defined hallucination as a negative in the way that we think about intelligence.swyx [00:32:56]: And so that's what we're changing. Uh, I know many smart people who are confidently incorrect.George [00:33:02]: Uh, look, look at that. That, that, that is very humans. Very true. And there's times and a place for that. I think our view is that hallucination rate makes sense in this context where it's around knowledge, but in many cases, people want the models to hallucinate, to have a go. Often that's the case in coding or when you're trying to generate newer ideas. One eval that we added to artificial analysis is, is, is critical point and it's really hard, uh, physics problems. Okay.swyx [00:33:32]: And is it sort of like a human eval type or something different or like a frontier math type?George [00:33:37]: It's not dissimilar to frontier frontier math. So these are kind of research questions that kind of academics in the physics physics world would be able to answer, but models really struggled to answer. So the top score here is not 9%.swyx [00:33:51]: And when the people that, that created this like Minway and, and, and actually off via who was kind of behind sweep and what organization is this? Oh, is this, it's Princeton.George [00:34:01]: Kind of range of academics from, from, uh, different academic institutions, really smart people. They talked about how they turn the models up in terms of the temperature as high temperature as they can, where they're trying to explore kind of new ideas in physics as a, as a thought partner, just because they, they want the models to hallucinate. Um, yeah, sometimes it's something new. Yeah, exactly.swyx [00:34:21]: Um, so not right in every situation, but, um, I think it makes sense, you know, to test hallucination in scenarios where it makes sense. Also, the obvious question is, uh, this is one of. Many that there is there, every lab has a system card that shows some kind of hallucination number, and you've chosen to not, uh, endorse that and you've made your own. And I think that's a, that's a choice. Um, totally in some sense, the rest of artificial analysis is public benchmarks that other people can independently rerun. You provide it as a service here. You have to fight the, well, who are we to, to like do this? And your, your answer is that we have a lot of customers and, you know, but like, I guess, how do you converge the individual?Micah [00:35:08]: I mean, I think, I think for hallucinations specifically, there are a bunch of different things that you might care about reasonably, and that you'd measure quite differently, like we've called this a amnesty and solutionation rate, not trying to declare the, like, it's humanity's last hallucination. You could, uh, you could have some interesting naming conventions and all this stuff. Um, the biggest picture answer to that. It's something that I actually wanted to mention. Just as George was explaining, critical point as well is, so as we go forward, we are building evals internally. We're partnering with academia and partnering with AI companies to build great evals. We have pretty strong views on, in various ways for different parts of the AI stack, where there are things that are not being measured well, or things that developers care about that should be measured more and better. And we intend to be doing that. We're not obsessed necessarily with that. Everything we do, we have to do entirely within our own team. Critical point. As a cool example of where we were a launch partner for it, working with academia, we've got some partnerships coming up with a couple of leading companies. Those ones, obviously we have to be careful with on some of the independent stuff, but with the right disclosure, like we're completely comfortable with that. A lot of the labs have released great data sets in the past that we've used to great success independently. And so it's between all of those techniques, we're going to be releasing more stuff in the future. Cool.swyx [00:36:26]: Let's cover the last couple. And then we'll, I want to talk about your trends analysis stuff, you know? Totally.Micah [00:36:31]: So that actually, I have one like little factoid on omniscience. If you go back up to accuracy on omniscience, an interesting thing about this accuracy metric is that it tracks more closely than anything else that we measure. The total parameter count of models makes a lot of sense intuitively, right? Because this is a knowledge eval. This is the pure knowledge metric. We're not looking at the index and the hallucination rate stuff that we think is much more about how the models are trained. This is just what facts did they recall? And yeah, it tracks parameter count extremely closely. Okay.swyx [00:37:05]: What's the rumored size of GPT-3 Pro? And to be clear, not confirmed for any official source, just rumors. But rumors do fly around. Rumors. I get, I hear all sorts of numbers. I don't know what to trust.Micah [00:37:17]: So if you, if you draw the line on omniscience accuracy versus total parameters, we've got all the open ways models, you can squint and see that likely the leading frontier models right now are quite a lot bigger than the ones that we're seeing right now. And the one trillion parameters that the open weights models cap out at, and the ones that we're looking at here, there's an interesting extra data point that Elon Musk revealed recently about XAI that for three trillion parameters for GROK 3 and 4, 6 trillion for GROK 5, but that's not out yet. Take those together, have a look. You might reasonably form a view that there's a pretty good chance that Gemini 3 Pro is bigger than that, that it could be in the 5 to 10 trillion parameters. To be clear, I have absolutely no idea, but just based on this chart, like that's where you would, you would land if you have a look at it. Yeah.swyx [00:38:07]: And to some extent, I actually kind of discourage people from guessing too much because what does it really matter? Like as long as they can serve it as a sustainable cost, that's about it. Like, yeah, totally.George [00:38:17]: They've also got different incentives in play compared to like open weights models who are thinking to supporting others in self-deployment for the labs who are doing inference at scale. It's I think less about total parameters in many cases. When thinking about inference costs and more around number of active parameters. And so there's a bit of an incentive towards larger sparser models. Agreed.Micah [00:38:38]: Understood. Yeah. Great. I mean, obviously if you're a developer or company using these things, not exactly as you say, it doesn't matter. You should be looking at all the different ways that we measure intelligence. You should be looking at cost to run index number and the different ways of thinking about token efficiency and cost efficiency based on the list prices, because that's all it matters.swyx [00:38:56]: It's not as good for the content creator rumor mill where I can say. Oh, GPT-4 is this small circle. Look at GPT-5 is this big circle. And then there used to be a thing for a while. Yeah.Micah [00:39:07]: But that is like on its own, actually a very interesting one, right? That is it just purely that chances are the last couple of years haven't seen a dramatic scaling up in the total size of these models. And so there's a lot of room to go up properly in total size of the models, especially with the upcoming hardware generations. Yes.swyx [00:39:29]: So, you know. Taking off my shitposting face for a minute. Yes. Yes. At the same time, I do feel like, you know, especially coming back from Europe, people do feel like Ilya is probably right that the paradigm is doesn't have many more orders of magnitude to scale out more. And therefore we need to start exploring at least a different path. GDPVal, I think it's like only like a month or so old. I was also very positive when it first came out. I actually talked to Tejo, who was the lead researcher on that. Oh, cool. And you have your own version.George [00:39:59]: It's a fantastic. It's a fantastic data set. Yeah.swyx [00:40:01]: And maybe it will recap for people who are still out of it. It's like 44 tasks based on some kind of GDP cutoff that's like meant to represent broad white collar work that is not just coding. Yeah.Micah [00:40:12]: Each of the tasks have a whole bunch of detailed instructions, some input files for a lot of them. It's within the 44 is divided into like two hundred and twenty two to five, maybe subtasks that are the level of that we run through the agenda. And yeah, they're really interesting. I will say that it doesn't. It doesn't necessarily capture like all the stuff that people do at work. No avail is perfect is always going to be more things to look at, largely because in order to make the tasks well enough to find that you can run them, they need to only have a handful of input files and very specific instructions for that task. And so I think the easiest way to think about them are that they're like quite hard take home exam tasks that you might do in an interview process.swyx [00:40:56]: Yeah, for listeners, it is not no longer like a long prompt. It is like, well, here's a zip file with like a spreadsheet or a PowerPoint deck or a PDF and go nuts and answer this question.George [00:41:06]: OpenAI released a great data set and they released a good paper which looks at performance across the different web chat bots on the data set. It's a great paper, encourage people to read it. What we've done is taken that data set and turned it into an eval that can be run on any model. So we created a reference agentic harness that can run. Run the models on the data set, and then we developed evaluator approach to compare outputs. That's kind of AI enabled, so it uses Gemini 3 Pro Preview to compare results, which we tested pretty comprehensively to ensure that it's aligned to human preferences. One data point there is that even as an evaluator, Gemini 3 Pro, interestingly, doesn't do actually that well. So that's kind of a good example of what we've done in GDPVal AA.swyx [00:42:01]: Yeah, the thing that you have to watch out for with LLM judge is self-preference that models usually prefer their own output, and in this case, it was not. Totally.Micah [00:42:08]: I think the way that we're thinking about the places where it makes sense to use an LLM as judge approach now, like quite different to some of the early LLM as judge stuff a couple of years ago, because some of that and MTV was a great project that was a good example of some of this a while ago was about judging conversations and like a lot of style type stuff. Here, we've got the task that the grader and grading model is doing is quite different to the task of taking the test. When you're taking the test, you've got all of the agentic tools you're working with, the code interpreter and web search, the file system to go through many, many turns to try to create the documents. Then on the other side, when we're grading it, we're running it through a pipeline to extract visual and text versions of the files and be able to provide that to Gemini, and we're providing the criteria for the task and getting it to pick which one more effectively meets the criteria of the task. Yeah. So we've got the task out of two potential outcomes. It turns out that we proved that it's just very, very good at getting that right, matched with human preference a lot of the time, because I think it's got the raw intelligence, but it's combined with the correct representation of the outputs, the fact that the outputs were created with an agentic task that is quite different to the way the grading model works, and we're comparing it against criteria, not just kind of zero shot trying to ask the model to pick which one is better.swyx [00:43:26]: Got it. Why is this an ELO? And not a percentage, like GDP-VAL?George [00:43:31]: So the outputs look like documents, and there's video outputs or audio outputs from some of the tasks. It has to make a video? Yeah, for some of the tasks. Some of the tasks.swyx [00:43:43]: What task is that?George [00:43:45]: I mean, it's in the data set. Like be a YouTuber? It's a marketing video.Micah [00:43:49]: Oh, wow. What? Like model has to go find clips on the internet and try to put it together. The models are not that good at doing that one, for now, to be clear. It's pretty hard to do that with a code editor. I mean, the computer stuff doesn't work quite well enough and so on and so on, but yeah.George [00:44:02]: And so there's no kind of ground truth, necessarily, to compare against, to work out percentage correct. It's hard to come up with correct or incorrect there. And so it's on a relative basis. And so we use an ELO approach to compare outputs from each of the models between the task.swyx [00:44:23]: You know what you should do? You should pay a contractor, a human, to do the same task. And then give it an ELO and then so you have, you have human there. It's just, I think what's helpful about GDPVal, the OpenAI one, is that 50% is meant to be normal human and maybe Domain Expert is higher than that, but 50% was the bar for like, well, if you've crossed 50, you are superhuman. Yeah.Micah [00:44:47]: So we like, haven't grounded this score in that exactly. I agree that it can be helpful, but we wanted to generalize this to a very large number. It's one of the reasons that presenting it as ELO is quite helpful and allows us to add models and it'll stay relevant for quite a long time. I also think it, it can be tricky looking at these exact tasks compared to the human performance, because the way that you would go about it as a human is quite different to how the models would go about it. Yeah.swyx [00:45:15]: I also liked that you included Lama 4 Maverick in there. Is that like just one last, like...Micah [00:45:20]: Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, it is the, it is the best model released by Meta. And... So it makes it into the homepage default set, still for now.George [00:45:31]: Other inclusion that's quite interesting is we also ran it across the latest versions of the web chatbots. And so we have...swyx [00:45:39]: Oh, that's right.George [00:45:40]: Oh, sorry.swyx [00:45:41]: I, yeah, I completely missed that. Okay.George [00:45:43]: No, not at all. So that, which has a checkered pattern. So that is their harness, not yours, is what you're saying. Exactly. And what's really interesting is that if you compare, for instance, Claude 4.5 Opus using the Claude web chatbot, it performs worse than the model in our agentic harness. And so in every case, the model performs better in our agentic harness than its web chatbot counterpart, the harness that they created.swyx [00:46:13]: Oh, my backwards explanation for that would be that, well, it's meant for consumer use cases and here you're pushing it for something.Micah [00:46:19]: The constraints are different and the amount of freedom that you can give the model is different. Also, you like have a cost goal. We let the models work as long as they want, basically. Yeah. Do you copy paste manually into the chatbot? Yeah. Yeah. That's, that was how we got the chatbot reference. We're not going to be keeping those updated at like quite the same scale as hundreds of models.swyx [00:46:38]: Well, so I don't know, talk to a browser base. They'll, they'll automate it for you. You know, like I have thought about like, well, we should turn these chatbot versions into an API because they are legitimately different agents in themselves. Yes. Right. Yeah.Micah [00:46:53]: And that's grown a huge amount of the last year, right? Like the tools. The tools that are available have actually diverged in my opinion, a fair bit across the major chatbot apps and the amount of data sources that you can connect them to have gone up a lot, meaning that your experience and the way you're using the model is more different than ever.swyx [00:47:10]: What tools and what data connections come to mind when you say what's interesting, what's notable work that people have done?Micah [00:47:15]: Oh, okay. So my favorite example on this is that until very recently, I would argue that it was basically impossible to get an LLM to draft an email for me in any useful way. Because most times that you're sending an email, you're not just writing something for the sake of writing it. Chances are context required is a whole bunch of historical emails. Maybe it's notes that you've made, maybe it's meeting notes, maybe it's, um, pulling something from your, um, any of like wherever you at work store stuff. So for me, like Google drive, one drive, um, in our super base databases, if we need to do some analysis or some data or something, preferably model can be plugged into all of those things and can go do some useful work based on it. The things that like I find most impressive currently that I am somewhat surprised work really well in late 2025, uh, that I can have models use super base MCP to query read only, of course, run a whole bunch of SQL queries to do pretty significant data analysis. And. And make charts and stuff and can read my Gmail and my notion. And okay. You actually use that. That's good. That's, that's, that's good. Is that a cloud thing? To various degrees of order, but chat GPD and Claude right now, I would say that this stuff like barely works in fairness right now. Like.George [00:48:33]: Because people are actually going to try this after they hear it. If you get an email from Micah, odds are it wasn't written by a chatbot.Micah [00:48:38]: So, yeah, I think it is true that I have never actually sent anyone an email drafted by a chatbot. Yet.swyx [00:48:46]: Um, and so you can, you can feel it right. And yeah, this time, this time next year, we'll come back and see where it's going. Totally. Um, super base shout out another famous Kiwi. Uh, I don't know if you've, you've any conversations with him about anything in particular on AI building and AI infra.George [00:49:03]: We have had, uh, Twitter DMS, um, with, with him because we're quite big, uh, super base users and power users. And we probably do some things more manually than we should in. In, in super base support line because you're, you're a little bit being super friendly. One extra, um, point regarding, um, GDP Val AA is that on the basis of the overperformance of the models compared to the chatbots turns out, we realized that, oh, like our reference harness that we built actually white works quite well on like gen generalist agentic tasks. This proves it in a sense. And so the agent harness is very. Minimalist. I think it follows some of the ideas that are in Claude code and we, all that we give it is context management capabilities, a web search, web browsing, uh, tool, uh, code execution, uh, environment. Anything else?Micah [00:50:02]: I mean, we can equip it with more tools, but like by default, yeah, that's it. We, we, we give it for GDP, a tool to, uh, view an image specifically, um, because the models, you know, can just use a terminal to pull stuff in text form into context. But to pull visual stuff into context, we had to give them a custom tool, but yeah, exactly. Um, you, you can explain an expert. No.George [00:50:21]: So it's, it, we turned out that we created a good generalist agentic harness. And so we, um, released that on, on GitHub yesterday. It's called stirrup. So if people want to check it out and, and it's a great, um, you know, base for, you know, generalist, uh, building a generalist agent for more specific tasks.Micah [00:50:39]: I'd say the best way to use it is get clone and then have your favorite coding. Agent make changes to it, to do whatever you want, because it's not that many lines of code and the coding agents can work with it. Super well.swyx [00:50:51]: Well, that's nice for the community to explore and share and hack on it. I think maybe in, in, in other similar environments, the terminal bench guys have done, uh, sort of the Harbor. Uh, and so it's, it's a, it's a bundle of, well, we need our minimal harness, which for them is terminus and we also need the RL environments or Docker deployment thing to, to run independently. So I don't know if you've looked at it. I don't know if you've looked at the harbor at all, is that, is that like a, a standard that people want to adopt?George [00:51:19]: Yeah, we've looked at it from a evals perspective and we love terminal bench and, and host benchmarks of, of, of terminal mention on artificial analysis. Um, we've looked at it from a, from a coding agent perspective, but could see it being a great, um, basis for any kind of agents. I think where we're getting to is that these models have gotten smart enough. They've gotten better, better tools that they can perform better when just given a minimalist. Set of tools and, and let them run, let the model control the, the agentic workflow rather than using another framework that's a bit more built out that tries to dictate the, dictate the flow. Awesome.swyx [00:51:56]: Let's cover the openness index and then let's go into the report stuff. Uh, so that's the, that's the last of the proprietary art numbers, I guess. I don't know how you sort of classify all these. Yeah.Micah [00:52:07]: Or call it, call it, let's call it the last of like the, the three new things that we're talking about from like the last few weeks. Um, cause I mean, there's a, we do a mix of stuff that. Where we're using open source, where we open source and what we do and, um, proprietary stuff that we don't always open source, like long context reasoning data set last year, we did open source. Um, and then all of the work on performance benchmarks across the site, some of them, we looking to open source, but some of them, like we're constantly iterating on and so on and so on and so on. So there's a huge mix, I would say, just of like stuff that is open source and not across the side. So that's a LCR for people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.swyx [00:52:41]: Uh, but let's, let's, let's talk about open.Micah [00:52:42]: Let's talk about openness index. This. Here is call it like a new way to think about how open models are. We, for a long time, have tracked where the models are open weights and what the licenses on them are. And that's like pretty useful. That tells you what you're allowed to do with the weights of a model, but there is this whole other dimension to how open models are. That is pretty important that we haven't tracked until now. And that's how much is disclosed about how it was made. So transparency about data, pre-training data and post-training data. And whether you're allowed to use that data and transparency about methodology and training code. So basically, those are the components. We bring them together to score an openness index for models so that you can in one place get this full picture of how open models are.swyx [00:53:32]: I feel like I've seen a couple other people try to do this, but they're not maintained. I do think this does matter. I don't know what the numbers mean apart from is there a max number? Is this out of 20?George [00:53:44]: It's out of 18 currently, and so we've got an openness index page, but essentially these are points, you get points for being more open across these different categories and the maximum you can achieve is 18. So AI2 with their extremely open OMO3 32B think model is the leader in a sense.swyx [00:54:04]: It's hooking face.George [00:54:05]: Oh, with their smaller model. It's coming soon. I think we need to run, we need to get the intelligence benchmarks right to get it on the site.swyx [00:54:12]: You can't have it open in the next. We can not include hooking face. We love hooking face. We'll have that, we'll have that up very soon. I mean, you know, the refined web and all that stuff. It's, it's amazing. Or is it called fine web? Fine web. Fine web.Micah [00:54:23]: Yeah, yeah, no, totally. Yep. One of the reasons this is cool, right, is that if you're trying to understand the holistic picture of the models and what you can do with all the stuff the company's contributing, this gives you that picture. And so we are going to keep it up to date alongside all the models that we do intelligence index on, on the site. And it's just an extra view to understand.swyx [00:54:43]: Can you scroll down to this? The, the, the, the trade-offs chart. Yeah, yeah. That one. Yeah. This, this really matters, right? Obviously, because you can b

Welcome back to another episode of School Counseling Simplified! Happy January! Today I am sharing some of my favorite school counseling systems for success and how setting up simple systems can save you time, reduce stress, and help you better serve your students. In this episode, I am taking you inside one of my most used systems, what I call the counseling hub. This system keeps everything organized in one place and helps ensure no student falls through the cracks. What is the counseling hub The counseling hub is made up of two core systems that work together: a counseling caseload and a counseling log. When combined, they give you a clear snapshot of who you are serving, what services you are providing, and where students are in the counseling process. Counseling caseload Your counseling caseload is a living document that lists students you see regularly, such as those in small groups or individual counseling. I love using Google Sheets for this, but Excel works just as well. In this caseload, I track student names, basic information, and counseling type. I color code by group name or service type so I can quickly see who is in which group. I also include whether the student was referred and who made the referral. Additional sections I recommend include guardian contact status, whether permission slips have been sent and returned, and any important notes. This allows you to quickly provide updates to administrators or teachers and ensures students are not overlooked. Counseling log The counseling log is your daily record of services provided. I organize mine by month and week to make reviewing data easier. Each entry includes the date, student name, area of need, teacher, counseling type, and session length. I also track strategies used, activities completed, and brief notes about student progress or affect. Confidentiality is always a priority, so notes should be objective and professional. I also include a column for parent or guardian communication so I can easily see when and how I connected with families during the week. Why the counseling hub works When your counseling caseload and counseling log work together, you have a clear and efficient system that supports data tracking, communication, and advocacy. This hub allows you to stay organized, make informed decisions, and confidently share the impact of your work. If you are feeling overwhelmed by paperwork or struggling to keep everything straight, this system can be a game changer. Small systems lead to big clarity and better outcomes for both counselors and students. Resources Mentioned: Join IMPACT Counseling Hub Connect with Rachel: TpT Store Blog Instagram Facebook Page Facebook Group Pinterest Youtube   More About School Counseling Simplified: School Counseling Simplified is a podcast offering easy to implement strategies for busy school counselors. The host, Rachel Davis from Bright Futures Counseling, shares tips and tricks she has learned from her years of experience as a school counselor both in the US and at an international school in Costa Rica. You can listen to School Counseling Simplified on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and more!  

How does $95 million go missing at a bank—and still get a clean audit? Blake and David unpack the Evolve Bank/Synapse meltdown, what auditors missed, and how SOC reports fall short. Plus: the penny shortage pushing cash rounding at the register, the shocking stat that even 29% of partners don't know partner pay, and the case for semiannual reporting. Walk away with practical takeaways for clients, staff, and your own firm.SponsorsCloud Accountant Staffing - http://accountingpodcast.promo/casOnPay - http://accountingpodcast.promo/onpayChapters(00:44) - The Penny Shortage Crisis (03:52) - Evolve Bank's $95 Million Scandal (17:12) - Earmark CPE and Other Podcast Recommendations (22:00) - Partner Salaries and Compensation Transparency (28:27) - Data Breach at SAX Accounting Firm (33:28) - Semi-Annual Reporting Debate (36:25) - Debating Semi-Annual Reporting (37:38) - Quarterly Reporting Games (38:25) - LinkedIn Comment: The Case for Quarterly Reports (39:11) - The Value of Financial Statements (39:58) - Challenges in Modern Accounting (46:57) - 2026 Accounting Predictions (52:01) - AI's Impact on Bookkeeping (01:09:08) - Closing Thoughts and Farewell  Show NotesSquare Enables Penny Rounding https://squareup.com/us/en/press/penny-rounding CFPB Allocates $46 Million To Synapse/Evolve Victims In First-Ever Fintech Bailout https://fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com/p/cfpb-allocates-46-million-to-synapseevolve The 2025 Accounting Today Salary Survey https://www.accountingtoday.com/list/the-2025-accounting-today-salary-survey The Ultimate 2026 Accounting Salary Guide https://blog.workday.com/en-us/ultimate-2026-accounting-salary-guide.html Deloitte's CTO: companies are spending 93% on tech and only 7% on people and that has to change https://fortune.com/2025/12/15/deloitte-cto-bill-briggs-what-really-scares-ceos-about-ai-human-resources/ Accounting firm waited 18 months to announce breach https://cybernews.com/security/sax-data-breach-quarter-million-exposed/ Should Public Companies Move to Semi-Annual Reporting? https://www.cpajournal.com/2025/12/19/should-public-companies-move-to-semi-annual-reporting/ United States Mint Hosts Historic Ceremonial Strike for Final Production of the Circulating One-Cent Coin https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/united-states-mint-hosts-historic-ceremonial-strike-for-final-production-of-the-circulating-one-cent-coinNeed CPE?Get CPE for listening to podcasts with Earmark: https://earmarkcpe.comSubscribe to the Earmark Podcast: https://podcast.earmarkcpe.comGet in TouchThanks for listening and the great reviews! We appreciate you! Follow and tweet @BlakeTOliver and @DavidLeary. Find us on Facebook and Instagram. If you like what you hear, please do us a favor and write a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Call us and leave a voicemail; maybe we'll play it on the show. DIAL (202) 695-1040.SponsorshipsAre you interested in sponsoring The Accounting Podcast? For details, read the prospectus.Need Accounting Conference Info? Check out our new website - accountingconferences.comLimited edition shirts, stickers, and other necessitiesTeePublic Store: http://cloudacctpod.link/merchSubscribeApple Podcasts: http://cloudacctpod.link/ApplePodcastsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAccountingPodcastSpotify: http://cloudacctpod.link/SpotifyPodchaser: http://cloudacctpod.link/podchaserStitcher: http://cloudacctpod.link/StitcherOvercast: http://cloudacctpod.link/OvercastClassifiedsWant to get the word out about your newsletter, webinar, party, Facebook group, podcast, e-book, job posting, or that fancy Excel macro you just created? Let the listeners of The Accounting Podcast know by running a classified ad. Go here to create your classified ad: https://cloudacctpod.link/RunClassifiedAdTranscriptsThe full transcript for this episode is available by clicking on the Transcript tab at the top of this page