Podcasts about Fantastic

THE FANTASTIC POUR Brett welcomes FW All-Star Siskoid to the Fantasti-Lounge for a new edition of the Fantastic Pour! We talk Godzilla, mix up a brandy sidecar cocktail, and read Godzilla: King of the Monsters #16. Join us in the Fantasti-Lounge as we discuss What does Godzilla eat? Improv in Canada. Cattle rustlin'. And much, much more! Secret Pour-igins: Sidecar Cocktail: The Kaiju Cowboy Ingredients (per drink): 2 oz. brandy 1 oz. orange liqueur (such as Cointreau) ½ oz. lemon juice, freshly squeezed Garnish: orange twist Garnish: sugar rim (optional) Instructions (per drink) Coat the rim of a coupe glass with sugar, if desired, and set aside. Add the cognac, orange liqueur and lemon juice to a shaker with ice and shake until well-chilled. Strain into the prepared glass. Garnish with an orange twist. Comic: Godzilla: King of the Monsters vol.1 #16, Marvel Comics, 1978 Have a question or comment? E-MAIL: fwpodcasts@gmail.com You can find The Fantastic Pour on these platforms: Apple Podcasts Amazon Music Spotify The Fantastic Pour podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK: Fire & Water website: http://fireandwaterpodcast.com Fire & Water Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/FWPodcastNetwork Fire & Water on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fireandwaterpodcast Fire & Water on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/fwpodcasts.bsky.social Fire & Water Podcast Network on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fwpodcasts Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcasts Brett can be found on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/imagine8design/ and Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/imagine8design.bsky.social

Sean Burke having a fantastic start yesterday bonus 557 Mon, 20 Jul 2026 19:58:13 +0000 4dim1UWpSftlPyI3LM63IGD1ItjPAmUt mlb,chicago white sox,sports Spiegel & Holmes Show mlb,chicago white sox,sports Sean Burke having a fantastic start yesterday Matt Spiegel and Laurence Holmes bring you Chicago sports talk with great opinions, guests and fun. Join Spiegel and Holmes as they discuss the Bears, Blackhawks, Bulls, Cubs and White Sox and delve into the biggest sports storylines of the day. Recurring guests include former Bears coach Dave Wannstedt, former Bears center Olin Kreutz, Cubs manager Craig Counsell, Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner and MLB Network personality Jon Morosi. Catch the show live Monday through Friday from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. CT on 104.3 The Score, the exclusive audio home of the Cubs and the Bulls, or on the Audacy app. © 2026 Audacy, Inc. Sports https://player.amperwavepodcasting.com?feed-link=

Peter and Ronan (fresh from Birkdale) are back in studio to review Ryan Fox's Open Championship victory. The New Zealander joined Michael Campbell and Bob Charles in earning a men's major victory with a thoroughly impressive display on the back nine where he reached out and grabbed the Claret Jug with both hands with four birdies in his last six holes and two in his last three.There were also plenty of other storylines and the lads dive in to discuss Bryson DeChambeau, Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry while there are worrying signs for Tommy Fleetwood.

Welcome back to the Sorry to Interrupt podcast! Tom and Sean are back for a Sunday afternoon edition of the pod as they react to Ryan Fox chasing down the lead and winning this year's Open Championship at Royal Birkdale. The guys break down his great weekend including his sensational performance on the back 9 on Sunday and discuss how his victory will stack amongst previous Open winners. Next, they work the leaderboard and offer thoughts on Cam Young's great showing, Scottie's putter once again falling short as well as other notable performances from the weekend. Lastly, they give their thoughts on Bryson DeChambeau's wild weekend and put a bow on this year's Majors season. Everyone enjoy the pod!

Jesse and Jenn sat down with Madia expecting the conversation to begin and end with birds. But immediately the magic of tapping, EFT, or Emotional Freedom Technique, came up and off we went. There is a FANTASTIC mini-episode that spun out of our initial conversation, so look for that next week!One quote from Madia I came back to again and again after we quit recording? "You can't give yourself messages you won't believe."Wow.Please have a listen to BOTH episodes. Madia is something special.Special Guest LinksMadia on SubstackMadia's book, The Impractical Guide to Keeping Geese: How & why to raise the world's most underrated and unfairly criticized domestic birdMadia on InstagramThe Emerald podcastAnimal Speak: The Spiritual and Magical Powers of Creatures Great and Small, Ted Andrews The Nuthatch: https://open.substack.com/pub/ornis/p/the-nuthatch?r=47trr4&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true https://ornis.substack.com/p/sight-on-site?r=47trr4Listen to the Birds (notes on ornithomancy): https://ornis.substack.com/p/listen-to-the-birds?r=47trr4 Send us Fan MailIf you are searching for a fresh, binge-able podcast, this might be the one for you!Support the showSupport Curious Cat, an independent, human-made podcast!***Curious Cat Podcast on Substack!***Buy Curious Cat Podcast a Coffee!

Episode 400.Four hundred episodes ago, this podcast started as a conversation. A microphone. A walk. A thought. A man trying to figure himself out.Today, it's become a living record of transformation.We've talked about faith, addiction, kidney failure, loneliness, purpose, leadership, music, relationships, self-worth, discipline, God, forgiveness, walking, healing, and becoming. We've cried together, laughed together, failed together, and grown together.But this episode isn't about celebrating 400 episodes.It's about asking a harder question:Where are your daily habits taking you?Because whether you realize it or not, you are currently in the process of landing somewhere. Your decisions are creating a destination. Your routines are building a future. Your standards are determining your outcome.In Episode 400, I challenge myself and every listener to stop waiting, stop negotiating with our potential, and commit to becoming the person we're capable of being.This isn't about perfection.It's about progress.It's about being Fantastic and Only Improving.Welcome to the Road to Victory.

For the CEOs out there, how are you planning out your weeks to keep your business humming for the short and long terms? Kiera talks about what it means to plan and delegate as the leader of your company, as well as three tips that CEOs of multi-million-dollar practices live by when it comes to success. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (00:01) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera, and I hope you are having an awesome day today. I hope that you're loving your life. I hope that you remember that we just are so lucky to live this life, that we are so lucky to work in dentistry, that we get to have our life calling. I am just so excited to podcast with you. I am coming in off the road. You guys know that when I've been on the road, it's a great time. I love seeing offices in person. I love working with teams. I love seeing how very simple.   pieces can actually help out a practice. And it was really, really fun. So I'm just excited. I'm I'm lit up and I hope you are too. So today I wanted to go through just a fun ⁓ I realize a lot of people listening and a lot of our clients and even myself included, a lot of what we're trying to accomplish as business owners is how do we become the CEO of our business and how do we block that CEO time and how do we actually work on the business? Like everybody says like you got to work on the business and not in the business. And I just get annoyed with that. I'm like, okay, but great. Like   Tell me what that actually means. Tell me what I'm supposed to do. And so today I wanted to break it into very much a what exactly does that mean? How do I actually do it myself as a CEO? Giving you guys some tips of what do you do on Sundays or when you block your time? How do you set up your week for success? So I think a lot of time it's ⁓ there was I think it's like if you fail to plan, you set yourself up for failure, something like that. Like there's a quote, I'm sure I could have done a better job on that.   But it's so many times people come in and they feel like they're just very reactive instead of proactive. And early in my career, there was a great client of mine who was like, Kiera, do you know how I prep for coaching calls? And I was like, How? He's like, I go to a coffee shop, I spend 30 minutes preparing for a call, I sit there, I ponder, I make sure that I'm very intentional. He's Do you know how sometimes you feel like you come into calls? Mind you guys, this is like Kiera, like two weeks into owning her own business. And I was like, He's like, You feel like you just rush to the call and ⁓   At that time he wasn't wrong. And it was a really great thing for me to recognize and I think about that often of what are we doing with our weeks as CEOs? Are we running into them haphazardly, not even prepared? Or are we like the client was where we take the time to plan, to prepare, to see what we can actually delegate to our team, to other team members on it, or are we just in reactive mode? I think it's more the how proactive are we versus how roactive are we. So I want to just walk you guys through specifically what I personally do, things that have worked well for my success, things that have worked well for clients that we work with.   To hopefully give you just some good tips of how you can set yourself up as a CEO and maybe start doing things a little bit differently. Like they say, success leaves clues. So let's give everybody clues and tools and different things that we all can do together. So that's what I wanted to do. ⁓ and also just realizing like you genuinely don't find time to work on your business. You don't find time to be a great leader. You don't find time for this. You have to create and make that time. So ⁓ one thing that I noticed is like,   we're going to work on how to stop reacting and be a bit more proactive. So I think when I look at it, you're trying to be a doctor, a manager, HR, scheduler, problem solver, like just answering all the problems and you're trying to do it in real time rather than sitting there focusing. And I will say when I look down the line, I can tell when I've been proactive and I can also tell when I've been very reactive. So I just wanted to kind of give you like three tips how specifically I do it, what I do, and what I've seen other offices do and other doctors do that are very successful. And like I said,   The my elite practices who are the multi-millions, who have multi-offices, who have their lives where it feels like they just have it together, these are things that they all do too. Now, how you do it, when you do it, that's gonna be up to you. But all of us do a lot of the same things. So ⁓ number one for me, I block my time on Sundays. So you can do it whenever. I do not like having the Sunday scaries. I don't like walking into my week. I also don't like to plan on Fridays. So whatever it is, I'm usually downright tired on Friday. And so   that's not usually my best day. So for me, it's on Sunday. So it takes me about I usually plan 30 minutes to an hour, is how long it takes. ⁓ and I still have a physical planner. So, however, it's gonna work well for you. But I like to see physical space. I'm a very visual person, and so I like to see my physical space. So I actually walk through and I go through my entire week. I map out exactly what is there, what's on the calendar, and I I go out four weeks. So I'm looking ahead to see.   What things are on the books, what meetings do I have? You could be looking at your production. So you could be looking to see what do you have coming up? What projects are coming up? What pieces are coming up. ⁓ like right now, mid-year, I'm looking at my taxes. So I'm looking in the different buckets of from as a CEO in the business, like what's my profitability, what's my culture, where are we headed? It's about to be mid-year. So I'm looking to see what what pieces do I need to get done there. I'm also looking for me, I've got podcasting, I've got meetings, I've got   Bookkeepers. I've got different people that I'm meeting with. And so where is that at? And I always am looking four weeks out. Now, office managers should also be doing this as well. So this is for doctors and OMs. What do I have coming? Like what's coming up on the schedule? What are the team challenges? I'm looking to see what team things need to get done. What projects are we doing? What initiatives are we rolling for this week, for the next week, and the following? What I found is when I'm on a four week run, I'm able to catch things, I'm able to ha better utilize my time.   I'm able to see like, gosh, we've got vacations coming up. Do we need to do more production right now? So I really, I personally, Kiera Dent loves looking four weeks out. So looking to see where it is. ⁓ and then I look at this week. So by looking four weeks out, I'm able to say like, where am I maybe put in meetings that I don't need to be a part of? ⁓ where am I missing? What team members are going to be out? What things do I need to proactively plan for? So I'm really looking and like overseeing a lot of those scheduling pieces. Now managers should be doing this as well, looking to see.   Do we have our schedules covered? Do we have different pieces? For me, I'm looking to see who can I delegate, who on my leadership teams in and out, consultants being on the road for you when our associates out. And I think when we proactively can look at this, we can look at our production. We can look at where am I working on the business? What big projects and initiatives do I want to get done? So for me, I just noticed that where it's at. I really do think doctors who are looking at their production a week out, two weeks out, three weeks out, four weeks out, you're going to be a lot more proactive and   I know a lot of dentists get into the rut of just kind of being robotic. Like we go and we do our exams. When you're constantly looking at your week, what is my production? What's my dollar per hour? How am I looking? What were my cases? Reviewing my cases last week, which closed, which didn't close, looking at my PL, looking at my numbers, looking at my meeting with my office manager, what things are on my plate that I could delegate to my office manager. I'm always looking. I also have a list of things that I write down. you can have it as a a digital version or you can have it as a paper version. I technically do both.   ⁓ but really looking to see what is my game plan. So that way when I walk in on Monday, it's very much prepared. I also am planning my leadership meetings. What things does my leadership team need to have in place? What do my consultants need to have in place? ⁓ what do I need to be relaying to our COO and our CFO and what things do I need to have them working on as the CEO? Like at the end of the day, the CEO, we are orchestrating. Yes, we do have a lot of people that work for us and with us. ⁓ but I'm orchestrating of   Who do I need? What meetings do I need to have? Where do I need to make sure that I'm running these pieces? So maybe you're looking at what do I need to get my lead hygienist to be working on? What things if my dental assistants could take over would help me out? How are our supplies? What are our budgets? This isn't saying you're managing the practice. And I hope that you're hearing of you're looking at to me, I feel like I'm kind of doing an inventory. It's almost like I'm going to go grocery shopping. Like what's the inventory of my business? Where are things and what do I need to have the different departments do? Because if I can proactively just   get people working on one or two projects throughout the week that don't rely on me, we're able to make a lot of movement and momentum. And I've actually found my friend and I, really, really successful CEO. We were talking about that. And he said, Kiera, could your business sustain without you being there for a month? And I thought about it and I was like, actually yes. Like I'm very proud of our team. I'm very proud of what we built. They could last a month without me being here. I've tried it, I've tested it, I know for a fact they can, I know they could go for longer than a month. But he said, but will they grow without you there?   And I've thought about that a lot. And so for me, when I'm taking my CEO time and I'm blocking my week, it's I believe we're almost like the wind in the sails. Our team is the boat. Our team is the sails. You as a CEO need to be the wind. So how are we going to grow? How can we work through our team and not have everything sitting on our shoulders? I'm very, very cognitive of what meetings am I in, what what projects are being assigned to me, what projects are assigned out there, what things have I not followed up on.   Who do I need to follow up on to make sure things are moving? And I will say it just it takes that load ⁓ off of my brain and allows me to really be present and to step into Monday in that week very confident, but also not just the week. We're looking at the month. And so we're always in this proactive piece. So really looking at the financials, looking at the business acumen, looking at what my OM should be doing, and then who can I delegate to? So the next piece to this is once I have it all mapped, once I've looked at it, once I've removed it.   Then I'm gonna be delegating. So I literally have a list of here's all the items Kiera has on her. Are these things really for me? Or who's better at that, who's more equipped, and who actually has the time to do it? So I will delegate out projects or tasks. Or if I know I have a big project coming up, so maybe we're working on operations manual, or maybe you're working on an Invisalign promo, or maybe you're working on ⁓ getting your hygiene period protocol written.   Are there people that can help you with this project that are just as good, if not better than you, that you could delegate out tasks to them? So I'm I'm really thinking in it's not even project management. It's more like, okay, I need to get these projects done. Who has time? Who's available to do this? And also whose responsibility is this? If Kiera's not the only one who can do it as a CEO, it doesn't sit on my plate. I'm going to pass it to somebody else. If it truly is only something me as a CEO can do, and that's not out of pride, ego, or things that I like.   I need to delegate it and make sure it's followed up with. So I look at my personal assistant, I look at my EA, what things can they take on? I look at our marketing team, our sales team, our rev team, our CRO, our CFO, our COO. Which ones of those can take these projects on? Who do I need to follow up with? So like truly, you delegate out to the team around you and you make sure that you're utilizing each of them. And so ⁓ I really think it's just a valuable thing. I think it sets you up for success. I know it sets you up for success.   And it's also working through your team. ⁓ we've been talking about this a lot in our leadership meetings and on our leadership team of how do you work, like how do you get everything done? And I think there's different types of leaders. There's those who want to just do it all themselves, and then there's those who work through their team. And working through your team is delegation, it's elevation, it's not abdication. It is really working through your team, meaning all of us are working together, all of us are getting the projects done. One person's not carrying the weight, and the rest of us are just sitting there.   on the boat alongside them, but we are working through the team. And this is how you prevent burnout. This is how we prevent having things stack up. This is how you're able to again be that like wind that pushes through the sales. So how do I work through my team? Because there's always a lot more that needs to be done that can't get done. How do I look at my systems? How do I review different pieces? I got to scratch those itches like maybe our finances aren't as tight. Maybe our billing's not as tight. Like let me look through this. It doesn't mean I need to do a deep dive. I can delegate and say, hey Sarah, I'm curious about our EOBs.   Can you take a look through the last three months and give me an assessment of where we're at? Like should take you about an hour. Do you have time to do that this week? I'd love that. And I'd love a report back by Friday. Absolutely got you. I make a note of the things I should follow up on as well because I don't like to delegate. I don't like to ask and then not follow up. And that's something that I will say I'm not naturally gifted at and something I have work really hard at. But really, it's a how do I plan my week? How do I work through my team? And then the next piece is when I do delegate, delegate outcomes not.   tasks. I think that this is such a a beautiful, different frame of mind to think of. ⁓ so with a team instead of calling overdue patients, it would be like you own the schedule, ⁓ I need you to call as many unscheduled or recare patients to get it full and to report your progress weekly. That's a different thing. So now it's a it's an outcome of owning the schedule rather than calling undue pay like overdue patients. Instead of working on our AR, it's we need to have our collections at 98%. We need, ⁓   are over 90 to be less than 15%, ⁓ or like go down the line of one month's worth of of production or and collections. So this way they're able to work on these items, report back to you, and to really have ownership over an outcome rather than a task. ⁓ this year's theme in our company is outcomes over activity. I'm really big on people owning an outcome, driving metrics, ⁓ and being owners over that and to really shine in their own direction. And so for you to   To give that ownership, ownership creates accountability. Delegation really will work when responsibly has a name attached to it. So what are we delegating? ⁓ and look to see what is that task? Does it align, making sure you have a really clear accountability chart too or organizational chart? Who does what in your organization? For me, I pull that out every single week and I'm like, okay, I've got these tasks. Who's the right person in the right seat to do this task and requirement? And who can I give ownership to this? So as we're looking at it, I think it's a   Can I block my week, my month, the next couple of weeks and look at it? Am I looking at my production? Am I looking at my overhead? Am I looking at my profitability? Am I game planning for that? Then am I taking that game plan to leadership? What are the issues that are outstanding? What things still are sitting on my mind that are taking up a mental load? Can I add that to my leadership team's agenda so that way it's off my mental load and it's there and then it's delegated, it's followed up on, it has accountability for it. Truly, like where are the parking lots for your brain? So it doesn't sit there and churn. Like,   I love our leadership meeting where we're able to put these items on there. What about in our hygiene department and our dental assistant department with my OM? Do I have agendas for those? So as I'm going through my week, these items that need to get done and resolved, is there a parking lot so I can relay this information? Do you have the meetings in place for me? I really love like every week. And people are like, you have so many meetings. And ⁓ I'm a proponent of less meetings, but meetings that are very effective. And I do run off the model of traction. So it's an every single week, it's a 90 minute.   leadership meeting and then we do have department meetings and I used to feel like it was so much. ⁓ but when meetings are run and they're run very effectively, which I believe the L10 model is one of the most effective meetings that are always productive as long as you're actually running them, calling out metrics and focusing on the most important things. We parking lot these issues that come up. That way there feels like it's a space for it. For me as a CEO, a lot more could move forward because I'm not having it sit on my brain, sit on my plate. There's a space where things can get delegated and discussed through.   and then having those direct reports, report back and having the follow-through follow-up. I found so many dentists get stuck because I feel like we have this churn in our brain, but there's nowhere to put it. There's no follow back loop from our office manager or management team back to us to say where are things at. So having those set cadence of meetings where I can delegate out, we can report up, we can work through our team, really allows the entire organization to move quicker and faster. There are some departments that might not need a weekly meeting. I found that hygiene.   Once your hygiene department's running and they're hitting their metrics and they're doing a great job, they're usually like once a month. And what they really prefer in hygiene is they're going to want to have trainings in CE and looking at our metrics and seeing how do we work as a department. But really, hygiene oftentimes is a self-sufficient department. Doctors, once month calibration is usually sufficient unless I've got an issue where I'm onboarding a new doctor. ⁓ dental assistant department, depending upon how they are, a lot of times they do need weekly training. ⁓ full team training oftentimes can be once once a month, and that's very effective and efficient.   Doctor and OM meetings every single week, non-negotiable. Leadership meetings every single week, non-negotiable. Those are things that I'm absolutely meeting with. ⁓ those things then can move forward. Billing meeting every single month. So that way you've got places, you've got agendas, you've got set times are set. And then we need to have some type of project management software where you as a CEO know all the projects moving forward have deadlines. They've got people assigned to them so it can loop back to you.   So hopefully that's just helpful for you ⁓ to stop like putting out constant fires, to stop having it churn in the back of your brain to have some structure, to be able to get that leadership structure in place. Because I found that ⁓ if you're trying to be the superhero and do it all, that's where burnout happens. that's where a lot of teams feel less empowered. That's also where you're actually enabling your team to not be there. Like you solving all their problems feels like you're helping them out, but it's actually creating dependency and it's creating burnout on you.   So what should happen is when teams ask questions and they immediately get answers, we gotta have it to where they can solve their own problems. If you as the owner are jumping in to solve patient issues or problems within the practice all the time, you have an empowered and lifted a leadership team. If the office manager is coming to you solving every single problem, like they've got to really be empowered to do this. And so really also teaching our teams to come up with their recommendations. What are three solutions to this problem? what options have you considered? What do you think we should do?   But really start helping your team and expecting them and rolling that culture out so that way as problems evolve and resolve, it's not just sitting on you. So hopefully that was helpful of prepping it on Sunday, how far out I look, what things I'm looking for, what we teach our doctors to do, what we help our leadership teams with our offices do, to really be able to scale, to have stability, to have like consistency. I think that that's one of the greatest things we're looking for is we want this structure, we want scalability, and we want it to be able to have great stewardship over our practices. So   If this is something you're struggling with, if you're like, my gosh, like this is my life, I feel like it's on that constant hamster will loop in the background where I never can let go. I feel like I don't know how to prep. Try it. Try prepping Sunday. Try prepping your week out. Reach out. ⁓ I think a lot of you are great clinicians and you do an amazing job. You have a very creative mind, maybe not a management mind. And so ⁓ I think sometimes that management skill needs to be taught, it needs to be trained, and it needs to be given to you in organization and structure. So reach out. I'd love to help you.   We help create those leadership systems and help build in accountability and help you delegate with confidence and how to help your team elevate to that level because they might not know either. So if you're looking for answers, great news, today's the day. Reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. But I really just encourage and implore each of you to try and whatever it is, if it's a fr Friday for you, if it's a Sunday for you, look down the line, look at your emails, look at your tasks, look to see how you can work through that team.   Look one week out, two weeks out, four weeks out. Look at your production, look at where we're at, look at our billing, look at our collections. Really start to get into the mode of being a CEO. And right now you might be like, I don't even know what to do. Fantastic. Block the time. And I promise you, the more you do it and the consistent you are at it, the more it will start to become a habit, the more you're starting to see things because it's a consistent piece. Get those meetings, get those agendas lined up so you've got a parking lot for those ideas. Really start to build that structure. And I promise you, things will be so much easier for you. As always.   We are here. This is what we do. We're experts at it. So reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team  

Check Out BioVitalis Peptides: https://biovitalis.org/ (Use Promo Code: GSD10 for 10% off)   Check Out Jim Brown's Substack Blog: https://substack.com/@forj   *Disclaimer: This NOT medical advice. Please make sure to seek your own medical professional for medical advice.   Questions Asked/Discussed On This Podcast:   Question1 : I just bought DSIP and Pinealon to help with sleep. I'm trying to find a dosing recommendation for using the 2 in conjunction. Thanks guys, LOVE THE PODCAST!   Question 2: Thanks for the great information every week. What do u guys consider healthy fasted blood sugar levels when running HGH , and at what point do you consider coming off and resetting insulin sensitivity? Thank you   Question 3: What did you use gluathione for and when do you think its useful? I used to drink heavily and thinking of adding for liver health/repair   Question4 : Thank you both for all the valuable information. Watch you guys every Sunday. Couple of questions. 1st I just ordered some 5mg PDE 5 capsules and I want to use them to help with enlarged prostate. I read that it really helps improve the weak urinary flow by relaxing the prostate muscle. Doesn't actually shrink the prostate but helps with the flow. I also take finasteride to help shrink the prostate. Any knowledge on this. And question 2 interested in Kisspeptin myself but im on TRT and I heard I does nothing for you if your on TRT. Again their is always various of options. What do you guys think on this subject. Thanks again for all that you guys do. Keep up the great work.

100 Bullets: U.S. of Anger, Challenges of Doom, What If… Secret Wars, Killer Influences, Last Starfighter, Beast of Boriken, Dead Acre, Power Rangers Unlimited, Through the Black Gate, Iron Lung, Minions vs. Monsters, Invisible Man, Fire Power   Weekly Reviews Details and Credits: DC 100 Bullets: The U.S. Of Anger 1 by Brian Azzarello, Eduardo Risso Marvel Challenges of Doom: Mr. Fantastic 1 by Al Ewing, Mike Henderson, Mattia Iacono Marvel Swimsuit Special: Brand New Beach Day 1 by Daniel Kibblesmith, Alessandro Miracolo, Jesus Aburtov Rainbow Rowell, Phil Noto Anthony Oliveira, Pablo Collar, Rachelle Rosenberg Dan Schkade, Rachelle Rosenberg Cody Ziglar, David Baldeon, Edgar Delgado Star Wars: Rogue One – Saw Gerrera 1 by Marc Bernardin, Gabriel Guzman, Federico Blee What If…? Secret Wars 1 by Alex Paknadel, Cafu, David Curiel Marvel Unlimited Infinity Comics: Alien: The Friendliest Facehugger 10 by Jason Loo, Goodman Yamada Redwing: Independence Day 5 by Juan Ponce, Pablo Collar Realmguard 1 by Preeti Chhibber, Lorenzo Tammetta X-Men '97: Strike Files 1 by Steve Foxe, Marcio Fiorito Alien Valiant Beyond: Tales of the Shadowman – Legacy of LeRoi 1 by AJ Ampadu, Sergio Monjes, Ludwig Laguna Olimba Archie Archie Comics Celebrates America's 250th Boom Power Rangers Unlimited 1 by Kenny Porter, Joey Esposito, Alessio Zonno, Raul Angulo Dark Horse The Beast of Boriken: A True Weird Story 1 by Julio Anta, Daniel Irizarri, Patricio Delpeche Justin Jordan, Tony Akins Shaolin Cowboy: Staying A.I.Live 1 by Geoff Darrow, Ian Herring, Alina Bartolini, Lea Mascareno Dynamite Red Sonja Noir: The Plunder & the Princess 1 by David Avallone, Edson Novais, Adriano Augusto Vampirella Summer Special 2026 by Erica Schultz, Adriano Melo, Ceci de la Cruz IDW Killer Influences 1 by Joey Esposito, Valeria Burzo, Inaki Azpiazu Image StarHenge Book Two: A Kiss for Atticus 1 by Liam Sharp Mad Cave Last Starfighter 1 by Ben Raab, Deric Hughes, Willi Roberts, Agnese Pozza, Francesco Segala Oni Adventure Time Quadruple Feature 1 by Mariko Tamaki, Brenda Hickey, Leonardo Ito Faceless and the Family: Maze of the Mechanical Aliens 1 by Matt Lesniewski Vault Dead Acre: Black Badge 1 by Cullen Bunn, Riley Brown, Jorge Ramirez, Rhett Bruno, Jaime Castle OGN Countdown Declaration / Emancipation Illustrated by R. Sikoryak Disney's Frozen Classic Comic Collection Billy B Brown Mystery Club: Spooky House Fartboy and Reaky Dog: Dino Doom Legend of Vox Machina: Whitestone Chronicles Vol 3 – The Briarwoods Stone of Sheero: Fall of Sheero Katie the Cat Sitter: Villain Con Through the Black Gate by Alfredo Caceres TV Bear final season My Adventures With Superman 3.4 X-Men Season Two premiere Movies Iron Lung Minions vs. Monsters Additional Reviews: Universal Monsters: Invisible Man Fire Power v1 News: Blade game maybe canceled, Siren Head movie in development, Star Wars: Jedi Visions mini series to focus on single narrative (The Ninth Jedi), Bone Parish in development as TV series, Lemire leaving JSA with #24, Last Kids on Earth live-action reboot for Disney+, another Drawn & Quarterly controversy, Mr. Terrific possibly getting a TV show, Biker Mice From Mars/Judge Dredd crossover, Daniel Warren Johnson new series Trailers: Comics Countdown (01 July 2026): Absolute Martian Manhunter 12 by Deniz Camp, Javier Rodriguez Deadman 2 by W. Maxwell Prince, Martin Morazzo, Chris O'Halloran Absolute Green Lantern 16 by Al Ewing, Sid Kotian, Prasad Rao Radiant Black 43 by Kyle Higgins, Michael Busittil, Giona Zefiro, Marcelo Costa Event Horizon: Inferno 3 by Christian Ward, Robert Carey, Xenon Honchar Royals 4 by Derk Kirk Kim, Jacob Perz Minor Arcana 16 by Jeff Lemire, Letizia Cadonici, Patricio Delpeche Mortal Thor 12 by Al Ewing, Jesus Saiz, Matt Milla Batgirl 21 by Tate Brombal, Stephen Segovia, Rain Beredo Batman 11 by Matt Fraction, Jorge Jimenez, Tomeu Morey  

The eleventh installment of Fresh Immigrants, Rotten Fascists forces us to confront what happens when hateful ideologies spread to children, and features Taika Waititi prancing around as an imaginary Hitler. It's JOJO RABBIT!Thank you for checking this new project out, whether you are a long-time Contrarians fan or someone who's just trying to listen to people talking positively about immigrants and negatively about fascism. If you have any recommendations for future entries in the series, let us know!Many thanks to the amazing Jordan Cooper for composing our intro and outro. Fantastic collaborator to work with - and he has a They Might Be Giants podcast: DON'T LET'S START. You can also check out Jordan's band TROUBLE'S AFOOT on Bandcamp!- Interested in more Contrarians goodness? Join THE CONTRARIANS SUPPLEMENTS on our Patreon Page! Deleted clips, extended plugs, bonus episodes free from the Tomatometer shackles… It's everything a Contrarians devotee would want!- Our YouTube page is live! Get some visual Contrarians delight with our Contrarians Warm-Ups and other fun videos!- Our buddy Cory Ahre is being kind enough to lend a hand with the editing of some of our videos. If you like his style, wait until you see what he does over on his YouTube Channel.- THE LATE NIGHT GRIN isn't just a show about wrestling: it's a brand, a lifestyle. And they're very supportive of our Contrarian endeavors, so we'd like to return the favor. Check out their YouTube Channel! You might even spot Alex there from time to time.- Hans Rothgiesser, the man behind our logo, can be reached at @mildemoniospe on Instagram or you can email him at mildemonios@hotmail.com in case you ever need a logo (or comics) produced. And you can listen to him talk about economy on his new TV show, VALOR AGREGADO. Aaaaand you can also check out all the stuff he's written on his own website. He has a new book: a sort of Economics For Dummies called MARGINAL. Ask him about it!

Tommy Rooney was alongside James O'Donoghue in Croke Park as Mayo earned a comfortable victory over Louth to progress to the All Ireland final. Tommy also got the post-match thoughts of Mayo boss Andy Moran and Louth manager Gavin Devlin.Gaelic football on Off the Ball brought to you by Movember Ahead of the Game, already reaching over 16,500 players, parents and coaches across Irish clubs with the tools to look after their mental health. Visit aheadofthegame.movember.com to find out how you can be part of it.

Reptilians are drinking and smoking inside Mount Shasta while sex trafficking children. This is according to James Gilliland in an interview with friend of the show Nino Rodriguez. James tells Nino Bigfoot is a transdimensional spirit and possibly Chinese. We find out it's illegal to hunt Bigfoot in Skamania County. E-mails from Max Spiers to Sarah R Adams have leaked and you'll never believe it, but she's a bad person. Fantastic stuff for this week's Space Weirdo Friday!If you enjoyed the show, please Like & Subscribe to our channel and share the links. This show can be found @hiddeninplainsightradio on Instagram and @thehiddenpod on Twitter.Follow us on Kick: kick.com/hiddeninplainsightradioJoin the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hiddeninplainsightpodiTunes Link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-in-plain-sight/id1488538144?i=1000459997594Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5zsntvl63Do7m9gNTD8Za2?si=MczvbuMlRuCbmWChclVUZARumble Link: https://rumble.com/c/hiddeninplainsight

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Hi Creative! As I prepare for motherhood, continue building my business, Lauren LoGrasso Productions, release my next single and get the show ready for maternity leave, I realize need a little space to make the best work for you.  Therefore I have decided that I will [most likely] do best of episodes for the rest of July so I can get ahead and bring you brand new content in August and September while I'm out learning how to be a Mom! I might pop in with a solo or one with me and my hubby talking about prepping for parenthood, but otherwise, you're going to hear some of my fave episodes and ones I am re-listening to at this point in my journey! Also! I am putting out a new song on Friday, July 10th! Please pre-save it here: https://ffm.to/walkingonair2026 In the meantime, check out this FANTASTIC episode with Breathwork practitioner, Terry Moseley and hear you you can use breathwork in your life and creativity + my WILD first time doing breathwork including getting a visit from my ancestors! Original Description: Have you ever considered how the simple act of breathing could unlock profound changes in your mental, emotional, and physical well-being? Today's guest is Terry Moseley. She is a seasoned expert in breathwork and healing. She created Bionic Breathwork, which is based upon breathing techniques backed by science to help you begin to move through trauma, release old patterns and more. Today, Terry will teach you about the transformative power of breathwork and how it can not only enhance your daily life but also lead to deep healing and personal growth.From this conversation you'll learn:-What breathwork is-How it can help you release trauma-The Full Story of my (Lauren's) WILD breathwork experience--this is a must-hear!-What functional freeze is and how to get out of it -The connection between breathwork and therapeutic psychedelics & how to know which one is right for you-AND we will even walk you through a little breathwork at the end of the pod!Try a FREE Bionic Breathwork Class with Terry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpzBk3wXYWc

Space man Professor Brian Cox tells us all about Emergence World Tour, which kicks off in October.Former World Cup winner Emmanuel Petit pops in ahead of France's match against Morocco.Fantastic frontman Serge Pizzorno gives us an insight into Kasabian's new album Act III.And in Norwegian of The Day, Chris speaks to Norway's 2026 Eurovision representative Jonas Lovv.Catch TFI Unplugged on Channel 4 at 11:05pm on Friday nights and on the Virgin Radio UK YouTube channel! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Scott Edelman has published 135+ short stories, many of which have been collected in These Words Are Haunted, What Will Come After, Tell Me Like You Done Before, Things That Never Happened, and 101 Things to Do Before You're Downloaded. He has been a Stoker Award finalist eight times. Additionally, he has hosted the 2026 Hugo Awards finalist Eating the Fantastic interview podcast since February 2016.This story is original to StarShipSofa.Narration by: Brian RollinsBrian Rollins is a voice actor living in Colorado with his wife. He's the prolific narrator behind the Glen & Tyler series as well as the Uncommon Bonds fantasy adventure series. In addition to audiobooks, he's the host and creator of the Dorky Geeky Nerdy Trivia Podcast. You can find Brian at TheVoicesInMyHead.com. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://youtu.be/_i6C7OstTEI Courtney Berry, President and Co-founder of Bandits & Friends, is driven by a desire to build an advertising agency where trust, creativity, meaningful relationships, and building energy instead of burnout replace bureaucracy and transactional client engagements. Inspired to create more opportunities for women in executive leadership and eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy, Courtney founded Bandits & Friends to prove there is a better way to build both an agency and lasting client partnerships.  In this conversation, Courtney introduces the Bandits & Friends Growth Flywheel: Choose the Right Opportunity, Create Clarity, Empower Ownership, Protect Your Point of View, and Build Energy Instead of Burnout. She explains why selecting the right clients is the foundation of sustainable growth, how clarity and ownership eliminate friction, and why agencies create the most value when they offer strategic judgment instead of simply executing requests. Courtney also explains how trust creates a self-reinforcing growth flywheel and how Bandits & Friends leverages culture, AI, and fractional talent to scale without sacrificing creativity or client relationships. — Build Energy Instead of Burnout with Courtney Berry  Good day, everyone. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and today my guest is Courtney Berry, the President and Co-founder of Bandits & Friends, a full-service creative advertising agency that specializes in stealing attention for brands. Courtney, welcome to the show.  Thank you, Steve. Thanks for having me. It’s good to see you.  Well, you have to tell us first about the choice of the brand—Bandits & Friends. I mean, bandit is not typically something that people would want to start building trust with. But obviously your brand is an award-winning one, so you must be doing something right.  That’s right. Well, we’re in the world of advertising. It’s all about branding, so we had to make sure that we had a good name to back it up. Our name, Bandits & Friends, is as much an operating ethos as it is a name. Bandits—we steal attention on behalf of brands. And Friends, that part of the equation, is how we refer to our clients.Share on X We actually try to never even use the word client in our agency because it creates a certain kind of them-versus-us mentality. And so that’s how we got to the name. We liked that it really infused the way that we operated as much as who we were at the end of the day.  Yeah, I like it. And how do clients react to being called friends? Do they take it at face value, or do you choose clients that you feel could fit—could become friends? How do you do that?  That is a great question. One, when we started, we fully thought the Bandits part of the equation was going to be the thing that potential clients really liked. We thought they would understand that that’s exactly what they’re going to an agency for. But what we have found is that it’s the Friends part of the equation that they have all sparked to so much more. Because sometimes it is a very transactional relationship between clients and agencies.  Sometimes there’s a strong difference of opinion when it comes to certain things, and that can create tension between clients and agencies. So when we talk about friendship, what we really mean is that the basis of all of it is trust. We have to trust each other in terms of the brief being right. We have to trust each other to have really honest conversations with one another to get to the real solution that we’re all trying to reach. Friends don’t waste each other’s money at the end of the day. We don’t want to waste our clients’ money, and we don’t want them to waste ours.  Also, friends are really looking for the best for each other. When we want the best for our clients, and they also want the best for us—because friendship really does go two ways—that's a really important component.Share on X And to your other point, not every client is a friend. Not every client really wants to play in that world of having a back-and-forth relationship, with give and take. If that’s not something they’re interested in, then at the end of the day, they’re probably not the right fit for us and our agency culture. It really resonates with me. I used to be kind of an agency owner. It was an investment banking firm. Whenever we had a friendly relationship with a client who really trusted our judgment, who would let us lead, and who would not be receptive to divide-and-rule tactics from acquirers, then we could get so much more out of the transaction.  Absolutely.  We could negotiate harder because we knew they had our back, and we could really push the envelope to get the best results for them. If we didn’t have that, then it was much harder.  It’s so true. When you don’t have that kind of trusting foundation, there’s an element of fear. There’s an element of fear that they’re not going to do good work for me, or they’re going to overcharge me, or they’re going to do a bait and switch. So yeah, you’re exactly right. It’s the same kind of philosophy and mentality in order to get to better work for them and better outcomes.  Yeah. Yeah, love it. Love it. So let me ask you, what is your personal “why,” and how are you manifesting it in Bandits & Friends?  Yes. I had to think about this question a lot, Steve. Unfortunately, I don’t really have a positive answer for this one. I listened to all of your other podcasts, and I thought, “Oh man, mine’s a little bit of a Debbie Downer.” But I guess it is what it is. I started Bandits & Friends because I was really frustrated by two things. First, when I looked around the industry, there just weren’t many examples of women in real power.  In my last role before starting this agency, there wasn’t a single woman in the C-suite of the holding company that I was working for. Not one. There weren’t women making the biggest decisions. There weren’t many examples of the career path that I was looking for. At some point, I realized I could either wait for someone else to carve out that path or I could be the one to help create it for myself and help create a lot of the opportunities that I wish I had seen. So that’s the first one.  The second one—and I think it really manifests itself in an independent agency culture—is that I was really fed up with the bureaucracy of everything. There was too much energy in our industry being spent on politics, approvals, or process instead of the things that make our work happen: the people, the clients, and the work itself. So I really wanted to build a company that could move faster, trust people more, and focus on the things that actually matter.  What we’re being paid for is to focus our time and energy on our clients’ businesses and on creativity. Removing all the bureaucracy really allows us to focus on that. So I guess, to sum up those two things—and really 343: Build Energy Instead of Burnout with Courtney BerryShare on X  Yeah. I mean, Steve Jobs said there are two functions in business: marketing and innovation. In some ways, those two things are the same because if you don’t keep innovating in marketing, you’re not going to steal anyone’s attention. And you have to remove the bureaucracy to create a culture where people can be creative. That’s right. I love it. That is very interesting.  So tell me about this framework. This is a podcast about frameworks. Maybe it’s a little bit misworded in the description that it’s a shortcut. It doesn’t have to be a shortcut. It’s more of a mental model. It’s a way of looking at and simplifying the world that allows you to do good work or create that Bandits impact. So what’s a framework that you could share with the listeners?  Yeah. To your point, I think it’s more of a mentality and approach versus steps that we take because we don’t work in a very linear business. Often, things are running on parallel paths. The way that I try to approach things—and really what ultimately becomes the culture that we're trying to create at this agency—is removing friction to create momentum.Share on X Because if we’re ever static, we’re wasting our money or we’re wasting our clients’ money. Or, to your earlier point, it means that someone else is going to be able to steal attention before we can on behalf of the brands that we work for.  So, removing friction to create momentum. There are kind of five different components that I’ve thought about for this. The first one, which seems so basic, is that I think a lot of times we get so excited by an opportunity that we forget to stop and ask, “Are we choosing the right opportunity for us and what we can do for the brand?” Because not every opportunity that comes across our desk deserves that momentum. When we first get an RFP or an RFI, or some kind of pitch that’s going to happen, we really ask ourselves two things.  One: Can we make money? Sometimes, in this business, you can’t. The answer is no. The other question that we ask ourselves is, “Can we make great creative?” If neither one of those things is true, we move on, and that helps prevent wasting energy and wasting time. If we can’t answer those questions, then we ask more questions of the prospective client. A lot of times, those clients can’t answer either one of those questions, and in those cases, we also move on. So the first step is really about choosing the right opportunities that we think deserve momentum and deserve the stealing of attention.Share on X  The second point is clarity. I think that, in order to be a great leader, you have to be decisive. You have to be someone who is willing to make decisions when no one else can, or no one else is really tasked with making those decisions. So we’re all about creating clarity because momentum really dies in a world of ambiguity. We’re asking ourselves, “What are we solving for? Who owns this? What does success look like? What is the budget?” Don’t ever leave a meeting without knowing the next steps. I think this is also a step that a lot of people skip, or maybe shortchange, and then you’re going to pay for it later.  Third one is all around ownership. When you’re kind of just starting out, you’re just getting going. At the lowest level, people operate with the mindset of, “I do what is assigned to me.” Right? And then managers get to that managerial level, and they’re all about managing on outcomes. “I’m going to make sure this thing that is my responsibility is going to succeed.” Ultimately, what we’re trying to build are the highest-operating types of people who say, “If I see a gap, I close it.” It might be a gap where no one has assigned the task yet, or no one has even identified that it is a gap.  No one owns the problem, but they see it, they own it, and they move it forward. So we're really trying to create that culture where we don't wait for permission to solve problems, and we don't wait for those problems to even be identified.Share on X And that’s where we can really add value to our clients. We don’t wait for that ownership. We just kind of assume that it’s ours, and we run with it.  Love it.  The fourth piece is protecting our point of view. This is probably one of the most difficult. But as a creative agency, we really don’t exist to execute instructions. We exist to bring judgment to a brief. We talk a lot about partnership, and especially at Bandits & Friends, obviously friendship. But what that really means is that we’re not adding value if we’re simply taking instructions and just executing what’s already known. The best agencies come in to provide perspective and judgment because every single time there’s an opinion in the room, if we surrender our point of view, we’re no longer providing that value.  If you think about it, the Apple “1984” commercial, right? That almost didn’t air because Apple’s board hated it. They wanted to pull it. They didn’t want it to go anywhere. So if they had listened to every stakeholder concern, then arguably one of the best ads that a gazillion people are aware of would’ve never existed. It would’ve never aired. So that is a daily struggle and a daily debate for us. But I can’t even believe I’m going to say this on the record, but in our business, the customer is not always right.  We have to make sure that we can defend why we believe that or why we think that there might be a better path forward for them to consider. And last but not least, honestly, it's about having fun. I think a big part for us is that we have to build energy among both our employees and the clients that we're serving instead of burnout.Share on X Again, it’s not always easy, and it’s not just necessarily a cultural thing. It is very behavioral in terms of the way that we do things, the way that we operate under stress, and the way that we take feedback. But the work itself is hard enough already. I’ve never seen people do their best work in a miserable state or a miserable environment.  Again, that goes for both employees and clients. When we do talk about our clients, we often talk about one of our goals being to try to be the best part of their day, and to be the ones who are actually going to have the best meeting they've had that entire week.Share on X And if we only achieve that 50% of the time, at least it’s 50% more fun than they would’ve had otherwise. So, choosing the right opportunities, bringing clarity to what those opportunities are, empowering ownership, protecting our point of view, and having some fun while we’re doing it.  Wow. You really did a good job. I hope you won’t send me a bill for coming up with that. But I resonate with it. Just to your last point, we’re in the experience economy, right? People don’t just want to buy a service. They want to buy an experience. They want to feel good about the process of why they’re doing this ad or why they believe in this creative.  You want to energize them as well because they ultimately have to sell it. If they don’t believe in it and aren’t excited about it, then it’s not going to work as well. I have the same view with my clients. I typically see them once a quarter, and I know that I have to show up. I have to recharge them so that they come out of the meeting feeling like they want to tear apart the next quarter. Yes. That’s right. Otherwise, what separates you from someone else who can tactically and executionally do the exact same thing that anyone else can?  Or AI, even. I mean…  Oh, 100%. Yeah.  I think the emotional part is our competitive advantage compared to AI. Yes. Love it. So, Courtney, tell me, what drives growth in Bandits & Friends? It’s what I’ve been referring to, I guess, kind of throughout our whole conversation, which is, again, maybe on the surface, a little oversimplified. But for us, the biggest driver of growth is trust. Again, it goes back to our philosophy of treating clients like friends, not just because it's a nice thing to say, but because trusted relationships are where the best work happens.Share on X So that becomes the most scalable asset that we have. When you really think about it, creativity—the business that we’re in—is very vulnerable.  So first, you need trust in order to create great work. Then great work creates more trust with the clients you’re working with. That trust can lead to referrals. It can lead to recommendations, which is where a lot of our new business comes from. Those create more opportunities. We’re in a people business at the end of the day. When referrals create opportunities, we’re attracting more talent.  The talent that we have here wants to stay longer, and they want to give more because they’re working on fun and exciting opportunities, briefs, and brands. Then you have talent that creates better work. So it becomes this flywheel at the end of the day. It’s something that we really feel responsible for every time we’re taking on a new friend at the agency. Do we feel like we have the right kind of chemistry to build trust with them in order to create that flywheel? Our clients don’t necessarily hire us because we’re the cheapest.  They don’t necessarily hire us because we have the biggest team. They hire us because they trust our judgment, and they trust the way that we operate. Once that exists, everything starts to open up. Everything starts to move faster. When you can move faster, get to more work, and get that work out into the world, that continues to open up more opportunities and more growth at the end of the day.Share on X  Yeah, I love that. Do you find that you have to lead with your own trust to get trust?  That is such a great question. Yes. I think that we have to prove that we are trusting that they’re coming to us with all of the information that they can give us. I have to trust that they’re being transparent and truthful about the budget they’re giving us. I have to trust, to be honest, that this is a real opportunity they’re coming to us with, that has been approved by all the necessary parties, and that it’s something that’s actually going to move forward and happen.  It’s really hard to do when you’re picking up a call from somebody you’ve never worked with before. You have to assume good intent. At least starting from that place of positivity, I think can help to then create that path towards the ongoing conversations, us proving that we have trust in everything that they’re telling us, so that then they return that same favor to us. Yeah. I mean, sometimes I get the criticism that I’m too trusting of people. Yeah. But it’s a little bit like optimism. If you don’t have optimism, then you have no positive vision to strive for. If you don’t trust people, you have no chance to earn their trust.  Right.  Maybe it’s vulnerability. It’s something to do with vulnerability. Right. But you’re totally right. You definitely have to have those guardrails around trust to make sure that your trust and your optimism aren’t clouding your judgment at the end of the day. That is one of the hardest things, I think, that we have to do with new opportunities because you’re making a lot of assumptions. Sometimes those assumptions are stated, and sometimes they’re not, and you just have to roll with it. Obviously, you win some, you lose some. But hopefully, the more we do it, the more it becomes that positive net effect.  Yeah. So, Courtney, what is something that you’re actively trying to figure out in your business?  Well, I won’t talk about AI because I feel like everyone’s talking about AI, but that is definitely an obvious answer. Operationally, are we using all of the best tools that are out there? Are we staying compliant with our agency agreements and client agreements when we introduce some of those new AI tools? And then, of course, in the world of creativity, everybody’s really questioning how much we should be using AI in final assets versus the human part of things.  From our perspective right now, we’re interested in exploring. We’re interested in understanding how things can continue to help us remove friction from a process in order to get to those fast-moving flywheels that we want everyone at the agency to be operating on. But also, how do we make sure that we’re continuing to bring craft and fidelity to all of the campaigns that we’re working on? So AI is a very obvious one. I think the other thing we’re really trying to figure out at the agency is scaling. The more we’re trying to grow, the more we’re trying to scale.  The processes and behaviors that you have as a young agency can be quite different from those of a more mature agency with several hundred people. What we’re trying to instill is making sure that the behaviors and processes we’re creating and adopting now are scalable for the future. Sometimes that’s easy to figure out, and other times it’s something we really have to evaluate and take into consideration. For example, time sheets. That’s not something we care to do at an independent agency.  One, we think they’re wildly inaccurate. As somebody who used to work at a bunch of holding companies, my Wi-Fi would be turned off if I didn’t enter my time sheets within a certain amount of time. But I think they’re wildly inaccurate. We’re not lawyers. We’re not accountants. We don’t turn our brains off by the hour. We’re constantly thinking about the briefs that we have. I’ve been challenged multiple times on whether that’s a scalable behavior and process for the future.  When you’re several hundred people, you’re going to want to know exactly how much time so-and-so spent on which project. I just don’t think it’s necessary for us. I think there’s a level of organization that we can bring to the way we operate where something like a time sheet is going to be obsolete in our future. But it really all comes down to how we scale and whether we’re making the right choices every single day to support that scale and that growth. Yeah, this is fascinating. Peter Drucker said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Some people say that the most enduring professional service businesses build a unique culture, and that becomes their competitive advantage. So they’re scaling the culture rather than the frameworks, the processes, or whatever else they have. That’s an interesting idea.  As an agency co-founder, what would your advice be to other professionals—maybe on Madison Avenue or wherever they are—working in professional services in some kind of leadership position and thinking about breaking out to do their own thing? What’s one thing you would advise them that maybe wasn’t obvious to you when you got started?  I think, first, if people are really thinking about it and weighing the pros and the cons, if you’re not willing to take a bet on yourself, then that’s a larger conceptual, philosophical conversation that you need to have with yourself. I think, at the end of the day, that’s one of the ultimate things that pushed me forward to start this agency. I wanted to take a bet on myself.  I felt like I had proven myself in a number of different opportunities and roles, and that I was ready for it. If it failed, then all right—that’s a problem for another day. Honestly, on a very tactical level, I think today’s world and the way that we operate in a remote and very fractional sense has been one of the most helpful things for us as an agency. I didn’t know about the world of fractional bookkeeping, fractional CFOs, fractional benefits and payroll providers, or fractional HR.  That creates so much back-office power for us. And it’s so important in terms of making sure that, again, we have behaviors and processes that can scale, where we don’t necessarily have to have all of those employees from an overhead standpoint. That has truly been eye-opening for me in terms of the world that exists outside of hiring full-time employees and this ecosystem that’s there that so many people can tap into in order to really have that firepower to show up in a very legitimate and credible way. Wow. Okay. That’s great. You’re running a remote business, you have fractional people, and you’re leveraging AI without hurting the creativity, hopefully. That’s a model for the 2020s—or the 2030s, potentially. Fantastic. So if someone is yearning for the kind of creative juice that your team is bringing, and they have a product or service that they want to steal some attention for, where can they learn more about Bandits & Friends, and where can they connect with you? Sure. Anyone can go to our website at banditsandfriends.com, or they can email us at hifriend@banditsandfriends.com. We’d love to have a conversation with anyone who’s ready to steal attention and operate with that mindset and philosophy of trust and friendship in order to get to the best ideas that are really going to help drive business results. All right. Well, if you want to befriend Courtney and her friends at Bandits & Friends, then reach out to her. So, Courtney Berry, President and Co-founder of Bandits & Friends, thanks for coming and sharing your unique ideas with us. And if you enjoyed listening, stay tuned to our YouTube channel, follow us, and give us a review. Thanks for coming, and thanks for listening. Important Links: Courtney's  LinkedIn Courtney's  website Courtney's email: hifriend@banditsandfriends.com

In today's episode we talk a lot about how great the World Cup has been so far, we draft some of the worst situations to be in, Zach learns a new way to pee, Danny puts some respect on the Nacho Cheese Dorito, we answer some questions from the breadsticks, and more!! Be sure to tune in every Monday for a new episode! | Episode 230

Unlocking billions in cloud marketplace revenue. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ This powerful panel discussion featuring leaders from Google, Tackle, and dbt Labs dives deep into the explosive growth of cloud marketplaces and the radical shift toward AI-driven go-to-market strategies. With hyperscaler backlogs nearing half a trillion dollars, the conversation unpacks how top-tier organizations are transforming their compensation models, aligning executive buy-in, and navigating the complexities of co-selling to capture committed customer budgets. From the rise of AI agents acting as metered SaaS to the essential operational investments required to scale marketplace revenue from 10% to over 50%, this session provides an actionable roadmap for software companies ready to dominate the 2026 partner ecosystem. https://youtu.be/LSj49f5FEII Key Takeaways Hyperscaler backlog commitments represent a massive, nearly half-trillion-dollar addressable market that completely changes the budgeting conversation. Successful marketplace selling requires complete executive alignment, right down to the CFO, and strategic adjustments like spiffing sales teams for marketplace transactions. The AI category is experiencing staggering 18x year-over-year growth, forcing companies to pivot toward an “agent-first” go-to-market model. Shifting from traditional channels to cloud go-to-market demands a multi-year, intentional investment in operations, people, and technology. System integrators are evolving into software companies as they build orchestration agents to manage fragmented, end-to-end workflows. Leveraging cloud commitments bypasses standard 12-15 month budget cycles, allowing for significantly faster deal closures and larger initial lands. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Google Cloud Marketplace, hyperscaler backlog, cloud commitments, co-selling strategies, AI agents, metered SaaS, product-led growth, rev ops, B2B sales transformation, ecosystem shift, channel strategy, system integrators, Deal registration, private offer APIs, digital transformation, software procurement. Transcript: Insight to Revenue- The State of Cloud GTM [00:00:00] Dai Vu: These are all things everyone has to do to get to that first five to 10 deals, and then 10, 20, 30% of your business through Marketplace. [00:00:09] Vince Menzione: You can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us, the way Hyperscalers are partnering, how AI is remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:21] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and each week I sit down with leaders at the intersection of technology. Partnerships and outcomes. The voices shaping how ecosystems actually work. We talk about what’s real, what’s changing, and what it takes to lead in this era where the partner channel isn’t just part of the strategy. [00:00:43] Vince Menzione: It is the strategy because being in the room changes [00:00:46] John Janke: everything. Let’s start. [00:00:52] Vince Menzione: And we have an incredible session. The way that we wanted today to, to, to start the day up was like, let’s talk about what’s happening right now and let’s get three leaders in this space to come up and talk about the world and how it’s a rapidly evolving. So I want to invite to the stage dvu from Google is a great friend of Ultimate Partner. [00:01:14] Vince Menzione: Are you guys ready? Are you guys micd up already? Okay, good. Good. John Yanke, the CEO and Founder of Tackle, and Sean Todo, who is an incredible leader with DBT, but also an old friend of mine. We worked together on Microsoft Days. Good to see you gentlemen. Thanks Sean. Great to have you with us. [00:01:37] John Janke: They stuck me on the side ’cause they said I’d block the screen if I sat in the middle. [00:01:41] Shawn Toldo: You still block it a little bit. [00:01:42] John Janke: And that picture’s from like 1985. I, I, we do have to get that. I had way darker hair. It was, uh, 10 year, 10 years at a startup. Makes you turn white. [00:01:52] Shawn Toldo: Mine’s the exact same right now. So it’s all good. [00:01:55] Shawn Toldo: Mine’s AI generated. Yeah. [00:01:57] Vince Menzione: Well, you know, guys, I just took it all off at that point, you know, it’s like good. Yeah, but you lose enough of it. You pull it out over the years. Yeah. So, uh, some really exciting times. Uh, you, we gotta spend some time at you at our breakfast. That’s right. A couple weeks ago. [00:02:13] Dai Vu: A lot of folks here, too. [00:02:14] Vince Menzione: A lot of folks that are here were at that breakfast, and I thought we’d spend a few moments with you talking about all the exciting things that have been happening at, at Google. I mean the, yeah, the businesses just to, first of all, the numbers were house. Outstanding. Congratulations. [00:02:28] Dai Vu: That’s right. [00:02:28] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:02:28] Vince Menzione: Really, some really great numbers. Commitments are off the charts. [00:02:32] Dai Vu: Yes. [00:02:32] Vince Menzione: Crazy off the charts. [00:02:33] Dai Vu: Yes. [00:02:34] Vince Menzione: Yes. Uh, and then there’s a lot happening in this little world called ai, which makes a ton of sense. Yep. I was critical about Google in the beginning because you had all the assets, but Microsoft leaned in first. [00:02:45] Vince Menzione: Uh, but now it’s like things have evolved, uh, quite a bit since those first days. Absolutely. In, in November of 2022. So, uh, take us through a little bit. Let’s, let’s go through [00:02:56] Dai Vu: it. Yeah. I could talk for quite a bit of time because obviously we came out next, yeah. At the end of April, and then we had our earnings announced, but shortly thereafter. [00:03:03] Dai Vu: But, but real quick on next, uh, for folks who attended, uh, you know, the way they framed, uh, the discussion was they showed this AI integrated stack, and that’s how they frame the keynote because we position ourselves as being the only vendor that provides this. Fully integrated stack from custom silicon all the way to the apps and agents. [00:03:23] Dai Vu: And a lot of the announcements were, were focused in those areas. Um, uh, I won’t go through the, the long list, but I think the big ones coming out of next were, uh, certainly the eighth generation TPU we announced, so we actually split this into two specialized chips for training and inference. Uh, so that’s, uh, that was a big piece. [00:03:41] Dai Vu: Uh, but the big one that we announced was this, uh, Gemini Enterprise. Uh, agent platform. So think of it as the comprehensive platform for companies to basically build scale, govern and optimize their agents. And of course, once they have that, they can bring that into, uh, what we call a Gen Gemini enterprise app, which is really the front door for AI for. [00:04:03] Dai Vu: All customers and all employees to manage a mix of agents, um, as part of their daily workflow. And, uh, and a big part of it is, you know, certainly they’ll have some custom agents, but we think a lot of the agents will come from the ecosystem. And obviously there was a big announcement around what we’re doing there. [00:04:21] Dai Vu: Um, and in fact, one of the things that’s interesting is this shows the evolution of, of marketplace in our, in our partnership, which is we’ve taken a lot of the marketplace experience. And brought it into Gemini exp uh, Gemini Enterprise app, right? So search, discovery, uh, the ability to invoke agents, uh, in context. [00:04:39] Dai Vu: I think that’s gonna be very powerful as we think about the evolution, uh, of, of go to market. And then the last thing maybe I’ll highlight is this, um, is. 750 million, uh, investment fund that we’re gonna drive with the broad partnership. So this cuts across all partner types, global system integrators, uh, uh, you know, AI, pure plays, uh, ISVs, uh, the big management consultants as well, uh, because we recognize that partners are gonna be critical to drive business transformation with our end customers. [00:05:08] Dai Vu: So we’re investing around things like. Technical enablement, access to our product teams, access to our FDE for deployment engineers, and then a lot of incentives to drive usage and deployment. So, um, so a lot of, a lot of activity and obviously the ecosystem’s gonna be very critical for us to drive that impact’s. [00:05:25] Dai Vu: Fine. And the last thing, I know we’ve going on and on fine, but the last thing I’ll just mention is just on the earnings announcement, uh, Vince touched on the backlog, so people have been tracking Yeah. Two quarters ago. We were 155 billion on the backlog, and then a quarter later we were 240 billion. And then in the last quarter, just recently, 462 billion. [00:05:46] Dai Vu: So obviously that’s a, a massive signal of customer intent, but more importantly, it’s a, it’s, it’s a addressable market for this ecosystem to go after as well. [00:05:54] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Almost a half a trillion dollars. Yes. In commitment. So a lot, a lot of reason why we should be on the marketplace. [00:06:01] Dai Vu: Absolutely. Absolutely. [00:06:02] Vince Menzione: Um, each of these gentlemen have some things to talk about as well, about their companies and the exciting things that have been happening. [00:06:08] Vince Menzione: I’m gonna start, John, I’m gonna start with you because Tackle has, has transformed quite a bit since the last time you were on stage with us. I thought maybe introduce the company. Take us through the transformation and then we’re gonna do the same thing with Sean with his organization. [00:06:21] John Janke: Yeah. Thanks. Uh, thanks Vince. [00:06:23] John Janke: Great to see everybody. Uh, John Yanke, GM of Tackle at App Direct. So the big news there is Tackle was acquired in Q4 by a company called App Direct, and I think the why behind this app, direct Powers, marketplaces, they run 400 marketplaces around the world for telcos, for ISVs, for system integrators, channel partners. [00:06:42] John Janke: And we were talk like, when you build a marketplace and diagnose this, stocking the shelves is actually really hard. Uh, and we were talking to them about how could we connect the dots between the hyperscaler marketplaces, the iscs we support, and these additional routes to market. Uh, and that became more strategic and we ended up joining forces in December. [00:07:00] John Janke: And since then, the other part that’s really hard when you build a marketplace is how do you generate demand? Uh, so four weeks ago we acquired a company called Partner Stack. And Partner Stack does affiliate content. They have an affiliate content platform that allows you to connect with 150,000 content providers to be able to start to tell your story to drive leads to. [00:07:23] John Janke: Marketplace. So we think there is a tremendous opportunity to continue. We’re in the earliest days. I think the, you know, Jay, I was with Jay at Channel Partners a few weeks ago and he is like, we under called it, he didn’t say this on stage yesterday, but he is like, uh, the 82% growth. He’s like, we totally under called it. [00:07:40] John Janke: Uh, and I think just listening to dies commit level increase mm-hmm. Reinforces the fact that we’ve under called it. But I also think we’re at this tipping point in the market where all of the new capabilities coming out, we have to all rethink our better together stories. So I think the challenge to all partner leaders, it’s like, how do we. [00:07:58] John Janke: Figure that out. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a fun time. As we transform the way we worked. We wrote the first helping people kind of list, launch and sell through the marketplaces. And now to be able to take that to the next level to hopefully unlock the next a hundred billion of marketplace throughput. [00:08:13] Vince Menzione: And are we at a hundred billion? [00:08:15] Vince Menzione: ’cause that was the number, right? [00:08:16] John Janke: I mean that’s, that’s, that’s the number that’s talked about. I mean, we’re seeing the data signals we see, I mean, we will process 20 billion plus this year. Uh, and that number’s growing faster than Jay’s stated number. So I think we’re excited to see where this year lands. [00:08:30] Vince Menzione: We’ve come a long way from three years ago and we all got on stage and talked about marketplaces together. Right. It’s been, it’s been amazing. And then Sean, let’s talk about DBT. You’ve had some excitement. I know some things maybe we can’t even talk about yet on stage. [00:08:43] Shawn Toldo: Uh, yeah, go ahead. [00:08:44] Vince Menzione: No, I was saying I, I could, I’ll pre-announce things, but No, I’m just, uh, tell, tell us about DBT for those who don’t know in the room, sure. [00:08:49] Vince Menzione: Mean Yeah, that might help. [00:08:51] Shawn Toldo: So, uh, Sean Todo, I lead the partner business at DBT. I’ve been here about 18 months. Um, DBT really started as an open source tool. That help data engineers be successful in SQL transformation with cloud data warehouses? Right. And so back even to the Redshift days now into what I would call more the BigQuery, snowflake, Databricks fabric led days, um, DBT is the tool of choice amongst the data engineering community in terms of how they wanna drive SQL transformation. [00:09:21] Shawn Toldo: And so more recently, we kind of jumped into this kind of paid world. Which is why we needed to bring in additional experience leadership around go to market product, sales, et cetera. And so when I walked in the door, one of the things I noticed really quickly was we were running on AWS, which was great. [00:09:40] Shawn Toldo: We were doing some AWS marketplace stuff. We were running on Azure in Europe only. And one of my first strategies was we have to be everywhere, right customer. We have to meet customers where they are. And so we, uh, made some major investments to be on Google Cloud platform to then be able to really take advantage of marketplace, to then really be able to take advantage of the co-sell opportunities that exist in the field from a day, day-to-day AI perspective with Google. [00:10:07] Shawn Toldo: And it has been a hell of a ride. We launched on, uh, Google Marketplace in July of last year. We went to Google next and we were Google Partner of the Year. Wow. For data and analytics in a very rapid way. We’re now in three, uh, data centers around the, the world. So we’re here in the us, we’re in Frankfurt, we’re in uh, uh, UK as well. [00:10:30] Shawn Toldo: And so it’s been a pleasure to work with D and the broader team. Because the enablement we’ve had and the support we’ve had from that group has really helped our growth be up and to the right. The data point I would give is that when I walked in the door, we were 10% of our business from an A RR perspective was transacting through marketplace. [00:10:48] Shawn Toldo: Last quarter we cracked 40%. Whoa. We will be at north of 50, uh, next quarter. [00:10:53] Dai Vu: Wow. [00:10:54] Shawn Toldo: The other piece that Vince was talking about is we’re getting ready to merge with a company called Five Tran. And so there will be a new company name at some point down the road. Uh, pay attention on June 1st for a public announcement around that merger. [00:11:06] Shawn Toldo: Uh, but we’re really looking forward to what we’re gonna be able to do with folks like DI and the Google team as well as others in the ecosystem. Um, ’cause I think in this data world that we’ve played for so long. This trusted foundational element of data and what it’s gonna mean to context in the AI world. [00:11:23] Shawn Toldo: We’re in a very interesting place to really continue our growth rate at a high level. [00:11:28] John Janke: Yeah, that maybe just a comment something there. Start there. I think we, we used to hear people say we wanted to be strategic with cloud, go to market and get to say 10 or 20% of revenue. I think this like 40, 50%. Yeah. Th that’s where people are setting the bar these days. [00:11:43] John Janke: Yeah. So the numbers are getting really crazy. Yeah. Uh, and people are showing up and being like, I have to go big. Mm-hmm. So a huge change over the last few years. [00:11:52] Vince Menzione: Yep. What’s the experience you’re seeing as well? I mean, it, it was a huge amount of buzz at next. [00:11:57] Dai Vu: Yeah. I mean, so interestingly, um, you know, typically when, when people get started on the, on the marketplace in Cosal journey, I always try to caution them and say, this is, uh, this is like a multi-year. [00:12:07] Dai Vu: Yeah. Uh, process. You have to be very intentional. You have to invest. It’s not gonna be a thing where you just list and, and, and, and, and, and sort of this channel opens up. So in some ways, Sean is describing an acceleration that is not common, right? Uh, so they’ve done, we’ve done some amazing things together and we hope to keep that acceleration going. [00:12:22] Vince Menzione: What does that require, by the way? Is it engineering resource? I mean, there’s, I talk about executive commitment and maniacal focus. Yeah. But it’s all those things, right? [00:12:29] Shawn Toldo: Well, all of it. But we went to a QBR in Austin, and I put up a slide and I said, we have to do this. And everybody in our ETE agreed. So when you have a chief financial officer that’s bought into the partner business. [00:12:43] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. And I guess qualifying coming into this role at this company, I qualified the C-level staff. Uh, like are they really serious about partner or not? And it’s one of the reasons I took the role. So I think executive commitment was one thing. I think the second thing is we were really well supported, um, by the Google team across the board, right? [00:13:02] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. So folks, Indy’s team that we would work with regularly on, these are the things you need to do to have an effective marketplace offering. Here’s what you need to do operationally with folks like John and team and others that are in the market, right? That helped us a ton to be able to scale. And then the other thing that we did is we changed comp. [00:13:20] Shawn Toldo: So from our VP of sales levels down, we have a 5% kicker for everything that goes through marketplace. [00:13:26] Vince Menzione: Hear [00:13:26] Shawn Toldo: that everyone. So as soon as we incented the sales team, I love that, right? We, we created the foundation on the partner side, but then from top down on the sales side, they were all in. And as a result of that, the question would become, okay, which marketplace stage two sales cycle are we gonna go use? [00:13:42] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:13:43] Shawn Toldo: Who’s the right partner to go partner with? And then my team is reaching out to make sure that co-sell connection happens. [00:13:48] Vince Menzione: That is such a best practice, Sean, to, because there is, as a seller out in the field and we talk about, you talk to John, talks about rev ops all the time. But getting rev ops eng getting the field engaged in the right way. [00:14:01] Vince Menzione: ’cause it feels like it’s more work for them. ’cause they have to think, they have to have more conversations with their customer about their cloud commitments and things like that. Mm-hmm. And then getting them incentive to do the right things. The right behavior. [00:14:12] John Janke: Yeah. It’s a strategy process. People, technology problem. [00:14:17] John Janke: Yeah. It’s not just some flip API automation, go list something if you don’t like that top down view. I think the other thing. Like there’s a, there’s a theme in startups where VCs fund second time founders. I think Sean and team have done this before and they took a lot of learnings over the years and reapplied them, which I think helps them go faster. [00:14:36] John Janke: It’s like that second time. Yeah. Second time cloud go to market Founder theme. [00:14:41] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Yeah. Um, so we could talk about the platform and all the changes there on the. The, the commitments and everything. Mm-hmm. Uh, what separates ISPs generating real incremental revenue on your, in your marketplace? What, what do you see? [00:14:58] Dai Vu: Yeah, so I mean, I, I think there are a couple things. Number one is, uh, the, the foundation has to be, uh, this better together story, uh, with Google Cloud. Um, so this idea that what, you know, what do you bring, what does the Google platform bring and how does that drive impact with customers? And I think this is the reason why Sean and DBT Labs has been very effective. [00:15:16] Dai Vu: ’cause our field recognized they, they can recognize that better together story and communicate it to their customers. So I think that’s the foundation. For everything. Right. And I think as you get started, uh, you know, we do tell partners that they probably need to lean in a little bit, uh, in terms of focus, uh, you know, pick a vertical, a customer segment, um, you know, a geography where they’re particularly strong and, you know, get that momentum going. [00:15:39] Dai Vu: And once you do that, the field knows about it and starts to pull you into deals. Um, so I think that’s the other big opportunity. And then the other thing I just mentioned. Which, uh, the panel already touched on, which is be very intentional around all the things you need to do to invest. Whether it’s like, uh, you know, the business functional alignment, uh, the policies around like, uh, pricing and, and comp, uh, making sure you have the operational capabilities. [00:16:02] Dai Vu: These are all things everyone has to do to get to that. First five to 10 deals, and then 10, 20, 30% of your business through marketplace. And not to, not to top you Sean, but our very top partners are driving 80 to 90% of their business on marketplace. And in fact, some of these partners are actually only marketplace first, uh, uh, because they started out that way. [00:16:21] Dai Vu: Obviously it’s the bigger challenge if you have an existing channel, you’re trying to shift that. But, uh, the aspiration to be more marketplace focus, uh, is up there. [00:16:28] Shawn Toldo: So I just set a new goal for the business plan for me. So that’s exciting. I love it. Looking forward to seeing you in six months on that. [00:16:35] Shawn Toldo: It’s good. [00:16:36] Vince Menzione: I love [00:16:37] Dai Vu: it. Work together on that. [00:16:38] Vince Menzione: Well, di I’m just gonna add, add this because I, I got to see operationally with some of the things you do. Mm-hmm. You, you have an overlay organization. [00:16:45] Dai Vu: Yes. Yes. [00:16:46] Vince Menzione: And so you put accelerants in place within your own organization Yeah. To drive the ISVs into the, into the lines of business. [00:16:54] Vince Menzione: Right. You have, you, you do some of that to accelerate. [00:16:57] Dai Vu: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think this is somewhat unique. I don’t, I don’t wanna speak to the other [00:17:00] Shawn Toldo: hyperscalers, [00:17:01] Dai Vu: but we do have, um, uh, you gotta know the field roles, right? [00:17:04] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. So [00:17:04] Dai Vu: obviously at Google Cloud in the regions, we have, uh, ISV sales specialists who are effectively quoted on marketplace revenue, right? [00:17:12] Dai Vu: So they’re a hundred percent focused on that. And, uh, in addition to that, uh, we also have these, uh, co-sell teams, partner teams where, you know, opportunistically if there’s an opportunity, uh, in a, in a, in a particular area. This team is responsible for connecting the regional sales leadership, uh, the regional, uh, sales teams with, with the partner on the opportunity. [00:17:32] Dai Vu: So there’s a lot of things we’re doing to sort of accelerate that. And of course, the foundation for all this is, you know, our, our, you know, registering deals. And as you definitely get started on that, it’s very important to be very mindful around when you register deals. Uh, be very clear around what the ask and the engagement is with the field reps. [00:17:51] Dai Vu: But once you have that going and get the right rhythm, it becomes sort of a natural way to sort of register all your deals and get that engagement. And then, um, and then maybe the last thing I would say is it isn’t always the sales specialists. It’s, you know, the FSR, our field sales rep as well as our customer engineers are also very motivated. [00:18:08] Dai Vu: To work, uh, with, uh, with our partners because they know that this, you know, whether it be solution completeness or it’s part of a bigger workload or helps unlock greenfield opportunity, they really are motivated to engage with the partners. [00:18:21] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:18:22] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. I’ll just add, I’ll just add to that statement too. I think, um, it’s one thing to have a story as it relates to. [00:18:30] Shawn Toldo: Google Cloud and what you do with marketplace. It’s another thing to have a story in terms of how you impact data and analytics in our world. And there’s a set of specialist sellers inside of Google mm-hmm. That really care about us because we drive a lot faster consumption of big query. And our ability to tell that story across the world effectively has really created a pull now. [00:18:54] Shawn Toldo: And so I, I would say it’s almost, you know, back to, you know, being 12 years at Microsoft and watching kind of that. Phase and how that went. As we went to the cloud and we picked specialty areas, um, Google is doing that as well and they’re doing it extremely fast in a very, very productive way with partners. [00:19:12] Shawn Toldo: And so, you know, I’ll get comments from like Levi who runs west in north region for us, and he’s a, he was at Google next and he was like, I, I gotta, I, I just gotta go to bed. I’m tired. Like we wore him out over two days with their sales team and gave him a host of follow ups and actions related to specific sales areas as well as specific accounts. [00:19:34] Shawn Toldo: And I think that’s the other thing that, um, Google’s done a good job of, but we’ve pushed and we’ve had to work really hard to earn that seat at the table. To help make those people successful from a comp perspective inside of Google as well. [00:19:45] John Janke: Yeah, and this is a huge failure zone for partners with the clouds because they think enablement’s a one and done thing. [00:19:51] John Janke: Like I did a training for the field and I told them the better together story. That doesn’t work. Like you have to literally. Have consistency around this message every day. Oftentimes you need experts who can partner with your reps to give them the confidence. ’cause they may be able to ask the first line question, but someone asks a follow up and they fold up ’cause they know your product. [00:20:11] John Janke: That’s right. They don’s don’t understand all of the nuances of Google and the clouds and the questions that may come back. But if you do that well, it is a huge unlock. [00:20:20] Vince Menzione: Talk about the coaching you provided on the tackle side of that as well and kind of helping. Through this maturity model? [00:20:26] John Janke: Yeah. I mean we, we, over the years, I mean we started as a pure SaaS company and over the years our customers would consistently ask us for more help and we would struggle to figure out how to do that, and we had to invest in services and we actually acquired a company. [00:20:42] John Janke: Five years ago now, that was the foundation. Aaron Feiger, who’s in the room. The core consulting was the foundation of our services business. And that continues to evolve with us. And you know, we see customers at scale saying, I wanna operate my cloud, go-to market really consistently, and I want you to do all the backend operations so my teams can be outselling our products, selling the better together value with Google and others, and not have to figure out how to run the machinery. [00:21:09] John Janke: So we’ve invested a lot there. We have services around strategy, like how to help people think about their business strategy and translate it into a better together story and able to get executive buy-in. And then we have coaching, which is really a phone, a friend, because I think these things get complicated. [00:21:24] John Janke: And I had a customer who was doing the largest deal in their company history. It was the end of the quarter and it was Friday, and they’re like, this is going to be the most complex transaction we’ve ever done and we have no idea how to do it. Our team gets on the phone with them, they work through, what are you selling? [00:21:40] John Janke: How are you selling it? Is your listing set up the right way? Can we actually create all the offers? In a way you have confidence to execute. ’cause those are failure modes. You try to build a cloud, go to market business, and you mess up the largest deal in the company. On the last day of the quarter, uh, that’s something you can’t recover from. [00:21:55] John Janke: So we try to really wrap support around our customers to help them have the confidence to grow. [00:22:02] Vince Menzione: Di you’ve seen tremendous growth in marketplace. Mm-hmm. We don’t publish the numbers specifically. Yeah. We kind of try to figure it out on the back end, but [00:22:09] Dai Vu: Yep. [00:22:09] Vince Menzione: I know you’re accelerated. Your, your marketplace numbers are astounding. [00:22:13] Dai Vu: Yes. I can share some numbers, if that’s [00:22:15] Vince Menzione: okay. Please. Yeah, let’s go. [00:22:18] Dai Vu: So, um. I would say that for a few years now, we’ve been talking about growth. So we’ve been consistently, uh, you know, north of a hundred percent year over year growth. Uh, for the last few years we’ve been processing, uh, what I say, uh, billions of dollars, uh, annually and, uh, uh, millions of transactions. [00:22:36] Dai Vu: And again, that’s for a few years now. Now for 24 to 25, that full year we also doubled. Wow. Uh, which is, uh, which is amazing when you think about the scale in which we operate. But more importantly, if you look at specific category areas, right? So, you know, historically, marketplace has always cater to, uh, those solution pillars that are tied to cloud migrations, like, uh, like security and data and analytics. [00:22:59] Dai Vu: And those continue to be very strong areas for us. But the biggest growth area is, uh, is in the areas of business app. So obviously, you know, the, the ServiceNow workday, uh, Salesforce of the world, as well as the AI category. So one number that we threw out next was 18 x. Year over year growth for the AI category. [00:23:17] Dai Vu: Wow. So in one year now, a lot of it is models, right? So foundational models with our, with our ecosystem. But a lot of that is around agents. So this whole agent go to market model is gonna be, continue to grow and it’s gonna be a huge focus area for, for the coming years. [00:23:32] Vince Menzione: Fantastic. Yeah. Fantastic growth. [00:23:34] Shawn Toldo: Yeah, and, and I’ll add, Diane and I talked about this at Google next. This is a. Very complex thing for DBT, where today we sell seats. [00:23:42] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Yeah. [00:23:43] Shawn Toldo: To data engineers. [00:23:44] Yeah. [00:23:44] Shawn Toldo: And now we have all these agentic things that are hitting our engine. And di and I are talking and we’re like, okay, so how does this work in an ag agentic marketplace? [00:23:54] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. Kind of a scenario. And what should we build? Where should we play it? ’cause we’re gonna spin the meter in a different way, so to speak. [00:24:01] Dai Vu: Yep. [00:24:01] Shawn Toldo: And so candidly, we got stuff to figure out related to that. Um, I think what’s been fascinating for DBT is our partner ecosystem changed overnight. So now it’s like I talked to x.ai on Monday. [00:24:15] Shawn Toldo: Mm-hmm. We got time with open AI on Thursday and we have a call with Anthropic and our, uh, CEO and co-founder and uh, chief Product Officer next week. [00:24:26] Vince Menzione: Mm. [00:24:27] Shawn Toldo: We don’t have anybody managing those partners. [00:24:29] Vince Menzione: Right. [00:24:30] Shawn Toldo: Today our focus is on managing the large, uh, hyperscalers plus Snowflake and, uh, Databricks. [00:24:36] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. [00:24:36] Shawn Toldo: And then the SI ecosystem and some tech partners. So we’re having to like, to your point on Agile yesterday. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Like we’re having to change our strategy, operating model and organizational model to support that. And candidly, we don’t have all the answers yet, so we have a lot of things to figure out fast, which is a little bit scary. [00:24:54] Shawn Toldo: And challenging, but it’s also a huge opportunity we have to kind of embrace and get into. Yeah. [00:24:59] Vince Menzione: And they’re figuring out as well. ’cause they’re, they’re new to partnering as well. Yeah. As organizations [00:25:03] John Janke: and these AI agents. I think to demystify for a lot of people, and what Sean said is totally right. [00:25:08] John Janke: They’re disrupting everyone’s business model. But in reality from a marketplace standpoint, they’re metered SaaS. This is a thing that’s existed for a long time. Yeah. They look like product-led growth products. There is a lot of patterns around how product-led growth products work in marketplace. Mm-hmm. [00:25:24] John Janke: But you have to bring your business strategy, your product and pricing strategy to those two categories. Metered SaaS and product-led growth. Put that all together to get cross-functional alignment. So we are seeing like. A lot of people get tripped up here and it really does go back to more of the company strategy, product strategy questions, and a lot of partner leaders are not in the room for those conversations. [00:25:48] John Janke: So I think at, at this point in time, as you see big pivots with the partners to go all in on agents, you have to go elevate. Those discussions to be like, what is our plan here? ’cause I, I mean, pricing and packaging will be the thing that trips almost everyone up. [00:26:02] Dai Vu: If I could, if I just build on what John John mentioned, um, so I do agree. [00:26:06] Dai Vu: P it looks a lot like POG, but, uh, but the difference I think is POG has. More historically been in like the data and developer space, now it’s like the general business user, right? So this idea that you want a business user to be able to search and discover, um, agents that could actually be part of their like everyday workflow is going to be very critical. [00:26:26] Dai Vu: And uh, you know, I do think that when we think about the ecosystem building agents. Uh, you know, a lot of the ISV partners aren’t necessarily gonna own end-to-end workflows, right? They’ll, they’ll have a very specific, uh, domain and scope area, but you have to enable yourself to be orchestrated and managed by, you know, orchestration agents or, or, or meta agents that are gonna span end, end workflows. [00:26:49] Dai Vu: And sometimes that includes system integrators and, and others who can stitch that, that automation. So I think, I think that’s, that’s one piece of it. But the other area that I think is gonna be different is, um. There’s going to be a lot of agents. I mean, literally you’re gonna have a very fragmented set of, uh, uh, of players, right? [00:27:07] Dai Vu: It’s not just gonna be the incumbents, it’s gonna be a lot of disruptors and, and, and, and startups. And so the, uh, for the incumbents in the room, it is a mandate that you need to, to innovate because if you do not identify and go to like an agent first, go to market model. Uh, you’re gonna be, you know, disintermediated. [00:27:25] Dai Vu: Somebody’s gonna go build an agent that’s going to leverage you as a dumb database. Um, and they’re gonna own the workflow. So you have to, you have to push the, the, the, the limits here. And I think it’s creates a big opportunity for everyone in this room. [00:27:39] John Janke: I’m going off script. I’m curious. Let’s do it. I’m curious on your take on the system integrators. [00:27:44] John Janke: ’cause I think this, this puts like they’re all, a lot of them are creating agents for people and I think that’s turning them almost more into software companies than they’ve ever been. [00:27:53] Dai Vu: They are, and I think they’re, you know, obviously they’re being, uh, impacted from like, you know, typical like, you know, SOW you know, time and materials type type business models. [00:28:02] Dai Vu: But I do think they play a big role because a lot of the system integrators are bringing, um, you know, vertical and business process expertise. And, um, like I said, I said before, a lot of the ISVs are not gonna necessarily have big enough scope in their area to own end-to-end workflows. And that’s really the promise of agents, right? [00:28:20] Dai Vu: You really need. This cognitive, you know, reasoning, planning, executing across end to end workflows. And I think, you know, the system integrators are gonna bring that capability either, either through, you know, these custom, uh, orchestration or meta agents or if they’re able to productize that and bring that to a model, they can also sort of go through the marketplace model as well. [00:28:41] Dai Vu: So who knows is how it’s gonna evolve. But you know, we’ve always been talking about. Marketplace being a broader opportunity for all partner business models. And I think that will extend to not only, uh, you know, traditional sort of, uh, sell and services partners, but also some of these system integrators as well. [00:28:58] Shawn Toldo: If I could comment on that, please. Yeah. I, I was in London two weeks ago and we did an SI partner day. Mm-hmm. We had 25 sis in a room, probably about 50 people. We had no, um, hyperscalers or cloud data warehouse providers. And when we started talking about open data infrastructure. The role that they can play. [00:29:17] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. [00:29:18] Shawn Toldo: Cross platform in a cost efficient manner for customers and the advisory orientation of that. They all leaned in and we, we stopped talking and they started talking. [00:29:28] Vince Menzione: Right. [00:29:28] Shawn Toldo: So they’re all facing this kind of same problem, which is actually causing a little bit of a shift, I think, in how they think about, I’m a Databricks partner. [00:29:38] Shawn Toldo: Uh, you sure you wanna do that? [00:29:39] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:29:40] Shawn Toldo: So this, this whole thing that’s kind of evolved in the last six to 12 months, when you kind of pick one horse to ride, I, I would tell you be cautious about what that means. You may pick a horse to lead with mm-hmm. But you’re gonna have to flank yourself a bit in terms of other providers that can help you be successful with that, that that partner you’re gonna roll with. [00:30:00] Vince Menzione: So you’re suggesting data vendor agnostic. [00:30:04] Shawn Toldo: I’m suggesting you really have to think about your strategy. Yeah. Because I think the AI, AI disruption is gonna make you think about that strategy. [00:30:13] John Janke: Yeah, I mean there’s, someone mentioned anthropics First Partner Summit. I was not there, but I’ve heard from a bunch of people were there. [00:30:20] John Janke: You know, they had a hundred partners in the room. 95 of them were system integrators. Five were technology companies, the three Clouds, Databricks and Snowflake. Like if you just think about the, the one of the major disruptors in ai, ISVs, were not in the mix. So I, I think, are they trying to disrupt all of us? [00:30:40] John Janke: Uh, do they need us? And they haven’t figured out how to work with us. I, I think. It’s, it’s, [00:30:44] Vince Menzione: and I’ve heard they only have five people in their partner organization, so I just, it’s, [00:30:49] Shawn Toldo: it’s 11 now, but it’s 11, [00:30:51] Vince Menzione: so it was five [00:30:51] Shawn Toldo: last growing fast in the, in the new company I have 50. So like, to put it in perspective, they have to make some pretty big priority. [00:30:59] John Janke: Yeah. And everyone’s been there a hot second, [00:31:00] Vince Menzione: like, right, exactly. Yeah, they, well, we will talk about the learnings we’ve had over the years, getting to where they need to get to. It’s exciting times. We got a lot to talk about here. Um, I, you know, we have about 15 minutes. I I, I want to kind of gauge, ’cause we could talk, we, we have a few things we could talk about, I could ask about, but I want to see if there’s an, like, an interest in opening up to the room for questions. [00:31:25] Vince Menzione: ’cause I feel like we’ve got a very interesting group here. [00:31:28] Shawn Toldo: You got a hand here? [00:31:29] Vince Menzione: Uh, are there hands that wanna Yeah, there’s some people that wanna ask some questions. So Yeah. We have a mic? Yeah, [00:31:37] Dai Vu: we have [00:31:37] Shawn Toldo: a mic. We, [00:31:37] Vince Menzione: we [00:31:38] Shawn Toldo: got one here. [00:31:38] Vince Menzione: We got one here. One here. Thank you. Sorry we went off script, but [00:31:44] Shawn Toldo: that’s fine. [00:31:45] Vince Menzione: It’s fine. [00:31:45] Dai Vu: Off [00:31:45] Vince Menzione: script. Better is good. [00:31:46] Shawn Toldo: I’m sure you planted the questions outta anyway. It’s okay. We [00:31:48] Vince Menzione: did, we did. [00:31:55] Audience Guest: Okay. All Eva, Sean Lightner, quick question to your, uh, increase on the marketplace, and you said you spiff the salespeople by fifth percent. 5%. Mm-hmm. So, and that obviously drives a very large adoption of, uh, marketplace transactions. How are you accounting for the margin you’re losing on, uh, you know, going through the marketplace? [00:32:14] Audience Guest: And also have you done analysis? I’m sure you have, how much is, uh, shape shifting or shifting from existing versus incremental? [00:32:22] Shawn Toldo: Yeah, it’s a great question. Um, um, lemme make three points. Number one, the backlog statement makes the margin statement not matter. So do you wanna play in that space where a customer’s already bought or not? [00:32:36] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. Or do you wanna force a budget conversation that you have to drive on your own in a direct model? That to me, I think it was 484 4 62 [00:32:43] Dai Vu: 4 6 [00:32:44] Shawn Toldo: 2. [00:32:44] Vince Menzione: That’s new Tam available to you? [00:32:46] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. That, that’s just with one. Right. And we are, we are, uh, running on four marketplaces. So that just increases our tam and makes our, our sellers lives easier. [00:32:55] Shawn Toldo: So on that piece, yes, there’s an expense, but we believe it’s right for growth. So there’s a balance there. Um, I think the, and then the second part of your question again. Sorry, [00:33:05] Vince Menzione: shapeshift. [00:33:05] Shawn Toldo: Oh, shift. We, we actually don’t think we would’ve won the business. So if I go back to our Q4 and I can probably point to three or four deals that went, um, Google Marketplace, we would not have won those deals because we couldn’t have created the budget cycle and that quarter. [00:33:23] Shawn Toldo: To make it happen. Generally a budget cycle is gonna take anywhere from 12 to 15 months. Bingo. Because of the spend that was available to us, we were able to close it in that quarter, and we had the largest Q4 in company history. [00:33:35] Vince Menzione: That is such an important point. I’m sorry. [00:33:37] Dai Vu: Okay. [00:33:38] Vince Menzione: But I, I just wanna, that is such an important point of the budget cycle. [00:33:42] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:33:43] Vince Menzione: Being a year to a year and a half versus being able to tap into a commitment that’s already been made. Yeah, so I just emphasize that [00:33:51] Dai Vu: I was, I was just gonna add real quick, even, even when we see sort of a, uh, a channel shift renewal, which is, you know, it’s on partner paper and it moves to marketplace as part of the renewals, we do consistently see that the, uh, renewal rates on marketplace and the incremental a CB on the expansion and new opportunities tend to be better when it’s on the platform marketplace than than offline. [00:34:12] Dai Vu: And that’s why partners choose to continue to drive renewals on marketplace at a reduced to rev share. But uh, because they see that that growth, [00:34:20] John Janke: we, we, sorry. [00:34:22] Shawn Toldo: We see that as well. Yeah. And I would also make the statement on our land business, when we go through marketplace, we are two x higher across marketplaces. [00:34:30] Shawn Toldo: We’re three x higher with them. [00:34:32] John Janke: Yeah, I think separate new from renewals and then instrument deeply. [00:34:37] Shawn Toldo: Yeah, [00:34:38] John Janke: go proactively talk to your CFO and your head of rev ops to understand their mindset. Because I was with a billion dollar seller a couple weeks ago, their CFO still creates friction in the process, even though they’re selling a billion dollars through these channels. [00:34:52] John Janke: But when they broke it down, their deals are three times bigger. They do them faster. They use more components of the product, which I thought was a really cool one. So customers who buy this platform, many component platforms through a marketplace, end up using six components of the product. Versus a normal land customer who uses two increases gross in net retention. [00:35:12] John Janke: So you have to get to the point where you have the data and you can tell that story real really clearly to your finance team to get support ’cause that they will trip you up if you don’t get them on board. [00:35:23] Vince Menzione: And you’re saying there’s friction in that company. I’m just kind of curious ’cause a billion dollar company. [00:35:27] John Janke: There’s a billion dollar marketplace seller [00:35:29] Vince Menzione: market marketplace company. That’s what I meant. Yeah. But, but the fact that this, their CFO friction, like, is it, is it because they’re not doing a good enough job or? [00:35:37] John Janke: Uh, in, of educating, I, the root of the question is from this person is, would they win without it? [00:35:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:35:45] Shawn Toldo: Oh, and is it worth the three points? [00:35:46] John Janke: Right. It’s, it is And, and I think some pe like to me, it’s the cheapest channel in the world. Yeah. Like with committed budget and people to support you winning. Like the, that formula, the math is so simple. [00:35:57] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. For, for a company of our size to go to like the classic resell ecosystem, I gotta walk in with 30 points. [00:36:02] John Janke: Yeah. [00:36:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:36:03] Shawn Toldo: It, it’s an illogical conversation. Outside of public sector and growth, you know, geos around the world. And so I, I’ve been lucky to have a CFO that I haven’t had that challenge with, at least at DBTI should say. [00:36:19] Vince Menzione: Really great insights. I think we have, we have another hand up here. [00:36:28] Audience Guest: Yeah. Thanks Susan. The question is for Dai. Uh, my name is Latif Hamani. I’m the founder of Partner System ai. Um, so what we’ve done is we’ve built a, a co-sell AI agent mm-hmm. That your partners can use to Yeah. Reduce all the friction in the co-sell with you. Uh, the questions that I have is, I guess I should back up, so XAWS Madison with a very large alliances, and then I worked, went on the other side. [00:36:55] Audience Guest: For software companies, and even though I had an operational team, I was spending two to three hours on on the keyboard, right? Mm-hmm. Deal registration, emails that can’t be automated, et cetera. So the question that I have for you is, I’d love for you to validate that. You know, unless you are one of the big companies, one of the big enterprises, if you go to the lower end of the enterprise or the mid market, uh, would you validate that there is a challenge? [00:37:20] Audience Guest: There’s a lot of friction for a smaller company. Mm-hmm. Uh, ’cause these marketplaces are complex. Yeah. The cosell is complex. Uh, that there’s an opportunity to really break down that friction with some automation and ai. [00:37:33] Dai Vu: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, we have already been, uh, part of the journey to remove some of the, uh, the friction as part of that selling and purchasing journey. [00:37:43] Dai Vu: Uh. We’re not quite there yet. But, uh, we’ve done things like we have, uh, you know, private offer APIs. We, uh, we have co-sell, uh, registration automation. Um, you know, we have tools like, uh, propensity to buy, tooling to help, uh, partners do, uh, more targeted efforts. Um, but the a i piece is still coming. Um, so I think, uh, the idea here is that we have launched a number of agents as part of our, um. [00:38:08] Dai Vu: Uh, part of our, uh, Google Cloud Partner network, partner hub. Uh, so these are, uh, agents that are gonna do a bunch of things to help partners as part of their workflow, but we’re gonna extend this to the marketplace and ISV area as well. Uh, so I think there’s a lot of opportunity. So, uh, I know there’s probably a lot of feedback in friction, uh, in, in certain parts. [00:38:29] Dai Vu: So we can, we can go tackle together. [00:38:32] Vince Menzione: Hey. There you go. There was a little [00:38:34] Dai Vu: plug [00:38:34] Shawn Toldo: there for tackle. Exactly. [00:38:37] Dai Vu: Uh, and I wanted, and just to be clear, I want to take a look at it from the end to end, uh, uh, flow, right? It shouldn’t just be just marketplace. It should be all the way from like, you know, top of the funnel, demand generation, all the way to like post transaction follow up. [00:38:51] Dai Vu: So we really need to take a look at, at the, the end, end flows and figure out a way we can remove some of that friction [00:38:56] Vince Menzione: three sense. [00:38:57] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:38:59] Vince Menzione: Any more questions [00:39:00] Audience Guest: back here? Hey. Hey guys. This, this is a really good discussion. Uh, di this question’s primarily, uh, from, I’m interested in the hyperscaler response. [00:39:09] Audience Guest: Yep. Uh, but all of you, uh, can you talk about the patterns or say more about the patterns between. Um, the consumption of just platform capabilities versus industry workflows. Mm-hmm. And how industry where I, I mean, I, I, my sense is that industry workflows are becoming more [00:39:27] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:39:28] Audience Guest: Uh, the easier thing for enterprises and SMBs to buy. [00:39:33] Audience Guest: Yeah. Especially SMBs, I think. Um, but say more about those patterns that you’re seeing develop and kind of what is. Uh, who are, where, where are those kind of, where is the demand being driven? Is it, is it, yeah. The search and discover in the marketplace, or is it being led by field sales of mm-hmm. Either GCP or partners? [00:39:55] Dai Vu: Yeah, so let me, I’ll mention a couple, a couple areas where, where it’s growing. So I think number one I mentioned before about some of these large horizontal business apps that we’re partnering with, right? Um, and, uh, and of course the fact that we’re, we’re, we’re transacting them through marketplace is, is a huge. [00:40:14] Dai Vu: Evolution from a few years ago. So who would’ve thought you would be buying like, you know, a hundred million dollars a CB deals, uh, through, through marketplace with like a Salesforce or a ServiceNow workday. But it’s happening now. And to be clear, all these. Horizontal business app. They’re not doing this in a very, you know, opportunistic, transactional way. [00:40:32] Dai Vu: They basically see marketplace and cloud go to market as a strategic growth lever for them. So that’s one big area. So from just a pure large deal perspective. Okay. Then you mentioned before around sort of corporate and SMB. Well, we find that a lot of the big opportunities are mostly around as they scale their business, uh, they’re not necessarily looking for things in the traditional sort of infrastructure space, but they’re looking for, you know, full SaaS applications to help scale their business, right? [00:40:58] Dai Vu: So it would be CRM, finance, hr, these types of solutions to become very attractive for some of this, uh, downstream market. And then lastly, as I mentioned before, which is, uh, when we think about this gentrification and owning, um. Uh, driving, uh, this business process and vertical, the ISVs become very important along with the services partners who bring that domain expertise to drive the end to end workflow. [00:41:25] Dai Vu: So I think that’s gonna be increasingly important. So those are three areas I think we need to watch out for. We. Okay. [00:41:30] John Janke: Maybe one thing, like as the cloud commit grows inside of companies, it’s shifted from being an engineering department, IT department budget line item to a corporate finance budget line item. [00:41:40] John Janke: Typically one of the top five to 10 expenses in a company. So that has shifted. Who is thinking about optimizing? The cloud commit with marketplace contracts. And that opens, that’s really opened up the avenue in addition to like these biz apps, vertical apps players. Yeah. Like having success. So I, I do think even inside your own company, evaluating where your cloud commits are, who owns them and are they thinking about the intersection of marketplace? [00:42:06] John Janke: ’cause I, I think it’s smaller companies, they’re still figuring it out. I run into engineering leaders who still own the commits, uh, but in medium to large companies. Very different. [00:42:16] Vince Menzione: Really good point. Because it, you know this, the optics change dramatically, right? This large commitment is now at the board level, [00:42:23] John Janke: right? [00:42:23] John Janke: And then you do have to teach your sellers as a vertical or business application player how to ask that question. ’cause the first resistance everybody says is, oh my, my person, my stakeholder, we. Manufacturing vertical application provider talking at an event last week, and they’re like, the shop floor manufacturing owner doesn’t know anything about the cloud commit. [00:42:43] John Janke: But if they ask the question, be like, Hey, do you guys have a strategic relationship with Google? Would it be easier to buy our product on the bill? Eight out of 10 times they get a yes. So [00:42:52] Vince Menzione: which is why the 5% comes in And that really accelerates the conversation happening. Yeah. We’ve got three more minutes. [00:43:01] Vince Menzione: Um, if we don’t have any other questions, I ha I have one for each of you really about the maturity model and partners are in the room that are not committed yet, right? We’ve talked about some very significant DBTs doing some incredible things, right? So we, there’s maybe a sense that like we, you, you are working with the be the biggest and the best out there, but what about everyone else that’s in the room that maybe isn’t committed yet? [00:43:23] Vince Menzione: And maybe they’re in motion, but they need some help and advice on what to go do next. What? What would you say die first? [00:43:30] Dai Vu: So they’re early stage, [00:43:31] Vince Menzione: early, early stage or not, they’re not on board yet. They’re not, yeah. They’re not with you yet. [00:43:35] Dai Vu: Yeah. So I’ll, I’ll go back to my earlier comment, which is that as you go into the journey, just be very intentional about what you need to do from an operational, investment people, uh, technology perspective. [00:43:47] Dai Vu: Uh, because it could be, it could be a multi-year journey. Um, uh, so I’d say go into it with the right expectations as opposed to thinking it’s going to be some accelerated six month thing that Sean has been driving here. It’s, he’s the outlier. [00:43:59] Shawn Toldo: But, but the reason for the outlier, [00:44:00] Dai Vu: yeah. [00:44:01] Shawn Toldo: And just to add to the intentional point Yeah. [00:44:02] Shawn Toldo: Is, you know, hire the right people. Right. So, somebody told me a long time ago, uh, hire slow, fire fast. That’s a really, really, really good principle that I take. Mm-hmm. I don’t like the fire part, obviously, but just for context, I, I am very lucky to have a great set of leaders that we were able to add people in. [00:44:24] Shawn Toldo: When I walked in the door, we had a person that was leading the Snowflake and AWS partnership. I had nobody on GCPI had nobody on Microsoft. I had nobody on Databricks. And then we made prioritization decisions on where we’re gonna go next. And so we hired people that had the experience and could drive the outcome in the right way. [00:44:43] Shawn Toldo: But we were very thoughtful about when we made those decisions on a quarterly basis, not a daily basis. So who you’re gonna bet on and then who you’re gonna put in the seat to make that bet come to life, I think is a really important thing as well. [00:44:58] John Janke: Yeah. [00:44:58] Vince Menzione: John, you worked with the be biggest and the best out there, so Yeah, sorry. [00:45:01] John Janke: Well, I think there’s the, like there’s the bottoms up and the tops down. Like seven years ago, this was all bottoms up. It was a partner leader who thought launching a marketplace would be good and they would go figure out how to do some deals and then sell their way up. Today there’s a lot more top down where people get it. [00:45:17] John Janke: But you can evaluate top down pretty fast. ’cause if you go talk to your CEO, you talk to your head of product, you talk to your CFO, and they have an allergic reaction to these concepts. You know, you have to go bottoms up. But there also are success story examples in every single ISV category that exists. [00:45:33] John Janke: Like this is not just security and data and DevOp like the, I think the ServiceNow. Salesforce workday. Examples are really great, like the marketing tech examples, more and more business of vertical apps every day. So I do think you can look at those people who’ve been successful. Maybe they’re your competitors, maybe they’re people you aspire to be and reference them as you’re trying to figure out how to do top down. [00:45:55] John Janke: But like you need both. You can’t win long term unless you get top down and bottom up aligned. [00:46:01] Shawn Toldo: And, and when I, when I would go ask for resourcing, I would always get the question, do, could you go faster with more? And I’d say, no. Gimme the one or two humans here, let me go prove it out and I’ll come back. [00:46:13] Shawn Toldo: So there’s a little bit of a strategy in doing that, that you’re gonna get more over time when you’re, you know, very measured in how you go ask for investment and resource. And so I would just add that point also. [00:46:27] Vince Menzione: Was, was hiring a significant component of your executive commitment, Sean? I mean, [00:46:33] Shawn Toldo: yes. So when I walked in the door at DBT, we had eight people in the partner organization. [00:46:38] Shawn Toldo: Today we have 25, and that was 18 months ago. But that did not happen. I didn’t go in and ask for, you know, that 16 people. Right. I asked over time in a very measured way with, you know, the programs and strategy team, like, what can we also support? You don’t want to bring somebody in to go do something and you don’t have the programs and operations side to support it ’cause they’ll fail. [00:47:01] Shawn Toldo: So we’ve been very thoughtful about how we’ve done that as well. [00:47:04] Vince Menzione: Die from you. I know you had something. [00:47:06] Dai Vu: No, no, no. I, I was good. [00:47:08] Vince Menzione: What is the one thing that people in this room need to go better and differently? Is there one, is there one specific thing other than what we’ve already discussed, did we miss anything? [00:47:16] Dai Vu: No, I would just, the whole identification. So obviously, uh, identifying this is not just like slapping a chat bot, but more around thinking all the things we talked about, product commercials, but also go to market where it’s agent first, where you can surface your agent in a workflow like Gemini Enterprise app. [00:47:34] Dai Vu: That’s gonna drive high alignment with how we work and go to market with Google. [00:47:38] Vince Menzione: Awesome. [00:47:38] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:47:40] Vince Menzione: Wow. Good stuff. Yeah. Very good session. [00:47:44] Dai Vu: Thank [00:47:44] Vince Menzione: you guys. What do you think? Everyone? Thank you very much. [00:47:47] Shawn Toldo: Thanks for listening to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. [00:47:50] Vince Menzione: If today’s conversation resonated, share it with a partner leader in your network. [00:47:55] Vince Menzione: Subscribe where you listen, and head over to the ultimate partner.com. For show notes related content and the resources for this episode. And if you haven’t already, now’s the time to register for the Ultimate Partner Live Event in Reston, Virginia, [00:48:11] John Janke: October 26th through October 28th. [00:48:14] Vince Menzione: Until next time, keep showing up in the rooms that matter because being in the room changes everything [00:48:22] I.

This Week on the Toy Power Podcast; we have Special Guest: Sean in the Studio to chat all things DC related, with a big focus on Batman & the wider Justice League themselves. Kicking things off, we have our routine Get-To-Know-You questions. Then with a Fantastic recent visit to see Sean's Awesome Collection in person; we highlight a few things to chat towards; including the very controversial & quickly banned Jarts Toy from the early 1960's. Then we get into a discussion about Batman. Everything from Batman 66' & why that particular TV Run is so special to Sean. Highlights about the Batmobile & it's Origins; all the way covering the dynamic characters in the Show! We next pivot across to the Ground-Breaking Toy-line that was Kenner Super Powers. With Sean's expertise about the line, the variants & waxing on just why this particular Toyline out-shines many other interpretations of Super Heroes in Toy form. Then backing up that Super Powers discussion; we entertain another segment of The Team! This round focusing purely on the Heroes from the Kenner Super Powers Run! (with a purpose adjustment to the line-up, so that some certain characters don't get all the Votes!) - Who would you have picked?? Enjoy this fun filled ep! In this episode we promote Sean's good friend Glenn Pluck - whom crates Fantastic Acrylic Cases for your Toys & Collectables. Be sure to check out his Business site: Ultimate Figure Protection on all the social sites or directly via his Website: www.ultimatefigureprotection.com Milestone Episode #450 will be Broadcast LIVE on Facebook & potentially other streams, on Saturday July 11th @8pm (Adelaide, South Australian time). Tune in for Visual Fun, Interaction & Give Aways! Support the show: http://patreon.com/toypowerpodcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Silver Quintette - "Sinner's Crossroads" [0:00:00] Shiloh Baptist Church Choir, Birmingham, Alabama - "The Lord is Blessing Me" [0:03:17] Gospel Messengers of Cincinnati, OH - "Never Alone" [0:08:35] Queen Mother Vera Hill - "God Is So Good" [0:14:20] Traveling Echoes - "You Ought To Been There" [0:18:33] Silvertone Echoes - "Pray on My Child" - Pray on My Child [0:23:37] Supreme Wonders - "When I Rose This Morning" [0:25:18] Sons of Jordan - "I Don't Know Why I Have to Cry" [0:30:01] Rising Star Gospel Singers of Eastover, SC - "No Where to Lay My Head" [0:36:13] J.T. Isom and the Spiritual Stars - "Not Uneasy" [0:39:45] Friendly Four of Selma, Alabama - "As Long As I Got Jesus" [0:43:07] Cliff Mason and the Gospel Truth - "Are You Ready" [0:47:29] Londonaires - "Don't Let Jesus Down" [https://sensationallondonaires.com/ Fantastic website on the Londonaires. Shouts to Pierre Redding.] [0:51:49] https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/165984

THIS WEEK: • BATMAN #11 • ABSOLUTE MARTIAN MANHUNTER #12 • ABSOLUTE GREEN LANTERN #16 • 100 BULLETS: THE US OF ANGER #1 • ABSOLUTE SUPERMAN #20 • CHALLENGES OF DOOM: MR FANTASTIC #1 • IRON MAN #7 (PALS POLL) [00:00:00] Opening [00:01:48] Batman #11 Review [00:18:47] Absolute Martian Manhunter #12 Review [00:32:01] Absolute Green Lantern #16 Review [00:45:26] 100 Bullets: U.S. of Anger #1 Review [00:55:15] Challenges of Doom: Mr. Fantastic #1 Review [01:04:39] Iron Man #7 Review [01:14:52] Sean's Stack Become a Patron  - https://www.patreon.com/thecomicspals?fan_landing=true Subscribe on YouTube -  youtube.com/thecomicspals?sub_confirm... Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/6RAX3sT Watch us LIVE on YouTube every: Thursday at 8 PM EST for Pals Pulls Saturday at 10:15 AM EST for The Comics Pals Podcast Pals Previews Uploaded Every Monday at 1PM EST Grab some merch here: https://streamlabs.com/thecomicspals/merch ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PodBean: https://thecomicspals.podbean.com/ X: https://twitter.com/thecomicspals  Bluesky: ‪@thecomicspals.bsky.social‬ Instagram: https://instagram.com/thecomicspals  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Pals: Sean: @SeansSoapbox Tyler: @TheTylerOlson Marco: @mrmarcoanimoto

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A 300' gash in the reflection pool in DC? There's only 1 person I can think of who could do that!WNBA is Fantastic. But people are trippin over Catlin again!All that & More!!!Don't forget to support our sponsor while using our promo code “STARTING5” for 20% off at Hooksrub.comJOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP!!!https://www.facebook.com/groups/577971386096987/?ref=shareTHESTARTING5SHOW@GMAIL.COMFOR EVERYTHING THE STARTING 5 PODCAST RELATED https://linktr.ee/THESTARTING5PODCAST#HooksRub #WeSmokeMeat, #HooksRubOnMyMeat, #HooksRub, #HooksRubsAndSpices, #HooksRubTheStarting5Collab, #thestarting5podcast

Delightful surprises abound as Jack & Geoff look at the final issue of Planet of the Apes vs. Fantastic Four! While Ape City burns, the Fantastic and Ape-tastic Fours work to transfer cosmic powers, stop the villainous General Ursus, Red Ghost and Doctor Doom, and figure out how to get home! But what of the Super Apes? This concluding chapter has a lot of ground to cover, and your Ape hosts are here with the insightful analysis and propensity for tangents only they could provide!

We open Monday with Linda Kearns sitting in for Dawn Stensland alongside producer Dan, tracking down a bizarre mystery keeping drivers guessing on the Schuylkill Expressway. After spotting highway signs warning that the Ben Franklin Bridge is set to close on July 2nd, the crew reacts to the absolute lack of information online from the Delaware River Port Authority regarding reopening times or detour specifics. We break down the frustration of everyday commuters navigating local transit blunders before shifting gears to a wild new Airbnb rental near Broad and South Street—a six-room apartment completely decked out in Philly Fanatic fur and green shag rugs that has the studio divided on cleanliness and mascot odors. The crew reacts to viral footage of Joe Biden appearing entirely lost and wandering around a stage at a Maryland Democratic Party gala, prompting a deep look into the tight choreography, red carpets, and Secret Service protocols that usually govern high-profile political events. Linda breaks down her personal experience speaking at a past Trump rally in Wilkes-Barre to illustrate how highly controlled these stages are, questioning why the current administration continues to allow these on-screen lapses. We also break down the breaking news of a major 5-4 Supreme Court decision upholding state laws that allow mail-in ballots to be counted if postmarked by election day, sparking a crucial debate about election integrity, ballot security, and the United States Postal Service's handling of mail processing. Ian McGuinness, co-founder of Surge Media, joins the studio to break down the reality of independent journalism on the streets and the left's attempt to control who gets to hold a microphone. We discuss his team's recent confrontations at the DC Pride Festival, including a viral moment where a protester demanded a "journalist ID" during a debate over voter ID laws, as well as an upcoming investigation into New York City pride organizers. The conversation wraps up with a critical look at political infighting, John Fetterman's recent Fox News appearances targeting local defiance of the Supreme Court, and a sharp debate regarding Donald Trump's targeted military operations in Iran versus his campaign promise of preventing foreign conflicts ahead of the upcoming midterms.

The Lawless adventure continues as Richard Sheaf returns to discuss a huge book about the life and work of Ron Turner. Get your copy on the Telos publishing site, and read more of Richard's writing about Ron Turner on his Boys Adventure Comics blog. You can also view some of the contents of Eric Parker's portfolio there as well.Also, visit the Book Palace for more superb books that Richard has worked on. And look for Justin Marriott's wonderful Battling Britons fanzines which Richard also contributes to. He is a busy man!You can find a list of all the upcoming books on the Facebook page, follow the podcast on instagram, Threads, Mastodon, and BlueSky. And email me comments and suggestions to MCBCpodcast@gmail.comMusic used in this episode is Circuit Breaker by the artist Robodub. Click here to listen to the episode online. Or Download here Right click and choose save link as to download to your computer.

THE FANTASTIC POUR Brett welcomes Doug Adamson to the Fantasti-Lounge for a new edition of the Fantastic Pour! We talk Blue Beetle, blend up a blue banana daquiri cocktail and mocktail, and read Blue Beetle #10. Join us in the Fantasti-Lounge as we discuss Castles in your neighborhood; Why Doug likes the Dolphins; The Chronos sandwich; Why is that green?! and much, much more! Secret Pour-igins: Banana Daquiri Cocktail: The Blue Banana Blue Beast Syrup recipe Add 2 cups water to pot and heat on low Stir in 1 cup sugar Squeeze 1 lemon and 1 orange into pot and stir Remove from heat and let cool Add 3 drops of blue food coloring and stir Place in container or cup and set aside MOCKTAIL Ingredients (per drink): 1 banana, sliced 1 cup pineapple chunks ½ cup Coconut Milk/Cream of Coconut 1 cup Pineapple Juice 1 oz. Blue Beetle syrup* 1 cup Ice Whipped Cream and maraschino cherry Instructions (per drink) Add the banana, pineapple, coconut milk, pineapple juice, and Blue Beetle syrup into a high-speed blender Add the ice and blend until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Pour into a hurricane or tall glass Garnish with whipped cream, a pineapple wedge, banana slice, or maraschino cherry COCKTAIL Ingredients (per drink): 1 banana, sliced 2 oz. White Rum or Coconut Rum 1 cup pineapple chunks ½ cup Coconut Milk/Cream of Coconut ½ cup Pineapple Juice 1 oz. Blue Beetle syrup* 1 cup Ice Whipped Cream and maraschino cherry Instructions (per drink) Add the rum, banana, pineapple, coconut milk, pineapple juice, and Blue Beetle syrup into a high-speed blender Add the ice and blend until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Pour into a hurricane or tall glass Garnish with whipped cream, a pineapple wedge, banana slice, or maraschino cherry Comic: Blue Beetle vol.1 #10, DC Comics, 1986 Have a question or comment? E-MAIL: fwpodcasts@gmail.com You can find The Fantastic Pour on these platforms: Apple Podcasts Amazon Music Spotify The Fantastic Pour podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK: Fire & Water website: http://fireandwaterpodcast.com Fire & Water Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/FWPodcastNetwork Fire & Water on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fireandwaterpodcast Fire & Water on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/fwpodcasts.bsky.social Fire & Water Podcast Network on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fwpodcasts Use our HASHTAG online: #FWPodcasts Brett can be found on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/imagine8design/ and Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/imagine8design.bsky.social

Toni LaMatta is a highly regarded spiritual coach, dynamic master teacher, internationally acclaimed speaker, accredited International Enneagram professional and Master Quantum living coach who served as a Catholic nun and pastoral associate for 16 years before discovering New Thought and becoming a minister over 30 years ago. Toni shares her fascinating journey and her diverse education driven by her passion for lifelong learning and self-discovery. She specializes in helping people move from fear to faith, how to trust themselves, listen to their body, follow their heart, and to break free from chronic self-doubt, fear-based overthinking, and the exhausting habit of seeking external reassurance. She explains why we stop trusting ourselves along with valuable insights and tips how we can all reclaim our inner authority by listening to our inner compass, including how to reconnect with ourselves by following a simple daily presence practice, how to listen to the voice of the spirit, how to live a life of joy, and not to take life so seriously. Download this wonderful, positive, uplifting, and informative episode to hear Toni's story and discover how you can listen to your inner compass and reclaim your personal authority. Fantastic information!   Connect with Toni: https://tonilamotta.com/ https://www.facebook.com/toni.lamotta https://www.youtube.com/@TheMidlifementor https://www.instagram.com/tonilamotta/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonillamotta/ https://www.espeakers.com/marketplace/profile/10943/inner-compass-coach   Want to be a guest on TheFemiNinjaProject? Send Cheryl Ilov a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1620842117560x116520069523704300

For travelers across Route 66, Meadow Gold Mack's in Tulsa is a must-stop. The twenty-foot-tall Bunyan-esque fiberglass muffler man out front is more than enough reason on its own, but head inside to see a collection of gifts and collectibles both quintessentially Oklahoma and unlike much else you'll encounter along your travels. Owner Mary Beth Babcock, Oklahoma Today's 2011 Oklahoman of the Year, is one of the key personalities to meet along the Mother Road. On this week's episode, we let Mary Beth show us around this shop of wonder with the kind of charm and cool that only she can muster.  Also on this week's episode, the editors share their favorite places to check out while in Tulsa, and podvents puts some heat on blacksmithing. You won't want to miss it!

Sports with Rod 6-22-2026 …The NASCAR Race was Fantastic! Cape Verde Does It Again …Be a Man Monday

We are back in Studio B for another episode of the podcast. All the main…

Re-releasing a Dental A-Team favorite… Ladies and gents, he's back. Dr. Dave Moghadam is again on the podcast, this time to talk with Kiera about quarterly team calibration. While there's no silver bullet A-to-Z cookbook for how to operate a practice, an outline certainly helps. Dr. Moghadam shares his outline for setting up the ideal quarterly calibration meeting: Start with the why (review practice's mission, vision, and values) Align over treatment, planning, and diagnosis Review what makes your practice stand out To keep things exciting each quarter, Kiera and Dr. Moghadam also chat about ways to shake up the meeting. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And today we are bringing you something so special. I am so excited because this is one of our most popular episodes from the archives. Whether you're hearing this for the first time or catching it again, I am so excited because it's jam packed with a ton of takeaways that you can start using right now in your practice. We have released thousands, literally thousands of episodes. And I wanted to start bringing a few of these amazing episodes back for you. So I hope you enjoy. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time.   on the Dental A Team podcast.   speaker-0 (00:32) and you guys, I am so jazzed to welcome back one of my favorite doctors, an office that we coach, and he just thinks outside the box.   This man is brilliant. He's grown a ton. I'm so proud of him. We've worked with him for quite a while. So welcome back to the show, Dr. Dave Moghadam. How are you?   speaker-1 (00:47) I'm doing wonderful Kiera. Thanks for having me. Super excited to be there.   speaker-0 (00:50) my gosh, absolutely. Well, when we were doing our last podcast, you were somebody that I just admire. One, you're a doctor. So you give a different perspective than I do. Two, you're brilliant. And three, you've got lots of cool topics that I'm excited to share. So I am Jazz. When we were on our last podcast, you came up with a few more. Today you just came up with another one. Guys, I will tease that one out. It's not today's podcast, but we will do it again. It's gonna be I T F U. So I hope you guys are excited for that.   I'm excited.   speaker-1 (01:17) That's the the closest I think I can get you to swearing.   speaker-0 (01:20) It   is the closest. but today we're gonna kind of dive into team quarterly calibration, which Dave, I will say, is probably one of my top doctors that thinks in systems, but not just thinks, actually executes. And you see massive growth and evolvement of your team. You were one of the offices who literally called me during COVID and said, Kiera, I'm gonna train my hygienist. What do you have on hygiene training? And I was like, Who are you? Fantastic. We have our hygiene training course. Like, here you go.   Try it out. We're beta testing right now anyway. But kind of let's take it away, Dave, on this team quarterly calibration because it's so needed. And I love that you've actually created a system around it that you've proven to be effective in your practices.   speaker-1 (01:59) Yeah, for sure. So I actually I I got the idea from another office that you work with that's in up upstate New York. Wonderful, amazing doctor. Really, I mean, really, really just drives home that aspect of really just thinking outside the box, having a crazy drive and really just executing. Really has a wonderful team in place there. Let's be real.   speaker-0 (02:20) He's   far away. Dave, you know he's far away. And I'm gonna say this like out loud because I know exactly who you're talking about. And I actually mentioned this to another doctor I was talking to today, and I said, let's be real. He's far away, and I visit him four times a year. Like we're talking opposite coast from me. And I said, and I truthfully do it because this man I think is such a brilliant leader, and I selfishly go to coach them to learn from him. So agreed, like just massive kudos want to bring this on. And you were mentioning he had a word document.   He's just brilliant and I'm so jazzed that you took some things that he did and spun it to your own. And I wanna point out, everybody listening, take what Dave's gonna share. He took it from somebody else. I don't think there's anything wrong in taking items, mimicking them, mirroring them, and recreating them for your practice. So please, please, please, like do exactly what Dave did. Take it and shout out to that office in New York. Thanks for paving the way for so many great ideas.   speaker-1 (03:14) Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think that's the best thing. I think when we all go ahead and, you know, take take ideas and expand on them and share them back and forth, you know, things really kind of get going. I'm always happy to, you know, help help out others in in the same way. But at the end of the day, I've tried to explain to people that I've shared, you know, a lot of my systems, my processes, my my things with is just because it's it good for me doesn't mean that it's gonna be good for you. You have to do the work, not because I want you to not, you know.   reap the the rewards of this, but because it it has to fit for your office and it has there needs to be some some ownership, some authorship from from your team and how things work as well. So I mean taking the concepts and expanding on them and making your own is gonna be the key in, you know, anything that we're gonna talk about today or just in in general, really.   speaker-0 (04:00) Totally agree. And Dave, you just drove home a really, really good point because I don't think that there actually is a plug and play. I don't think you go to the store, buy a system, come back to your practice and say, Okay, let's put it in, put the batteries in, read the instructions. I genuinely think, like you said, it's a concept, it's an idea that then needs to be transformed into your own practice. And I think so many offices get frustrated that they don't see momentum because they literally try to say, like, well, this is what Dave did. So take it, move it into my practice and hope that it goes on autopilot.   But they don't realize the countless hours you put in to making this work for your practice. So I love, love, love. And I hope all you guys heard that because I'll give you guys systems all day long on this podcast. It's what we do. We come to your practices and do it. Bottom line is there's a reason we don't have an A to Z cookbook as a consulting company. I don't believe it works. I believe you have to customize it to your practice to get momentum.   speaker-1 (04:49) You   can have an you can have an outline because even even even with making this, I mean, spoiler alert, like I made this, but then you know, six months later, a year later, like, you know what? Like, we should probably do this like this. It's a never ending, it's a never ending thing. It's just the way that things go. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean it's it's one of those things as you you grow and you learn. And the other thing that we'll get to is as as your team becomes more comfortable and they start to go ahead and give   their input about things, that's when it really kind of, you know, starts to hit its straw.   speaker-0 (05:20) Right, right. I agree. So we've teased it up enough, guys. So we've got this awesome team quarterly calibration. So Dave, kinda take it away again, and like you said, this is this is as of today, but I promise you, give Dave six months to a year and it will look it will look different. It will be fine tuned again. so I'm excited. Take us away.   speaker-1 (05:40) Yeah, so I I think the first thing is like ever every office, you know, in starting to create, you know, why you're there, what you're doing, all that stuff. In in one way or another, you sit down and you and you figure out your mission, your vision, your core values, like all these key concepts in, you know, any business. And that was something that we did really early on, as I was actually five, five years ago, probably right about now when this podcast is gonna air. first thing I did is I sat down and we kind of all talked together about what   What are we going to do? Why are we going to do it? You know, why are we here? So kind of reviewing those key concepts. And we we kind of cycle through, you know, reviewing those things on a weekly basis, but it's a good time to kind of highlight that in the beginning. of like, well, why are we here? What are we actually trying to do? Why are we going to make the decisions that we make on a daily basis? So that's the first thing. The other thing is like, well, what are the practice philosophies? Like, how are we going to treat and plan? Why are we doing things in that way? You know, this kind of stems off of that. And then   you know, we move towards, you know, in discussing things with patients, what's the way we're going to do that? You know, so the key concepts I always kind of bring out is, you know, what do we see? You know, what's going to happen if it's if it's not treated? What are the best options that, you know, you we can give somebody? And, you know, why is that better than other options? You know, so these are always the key points that I I want in the back of, you know, our team's mind when we we're talking about situations and things that we see.   And then other than that, I mean, I think it's two other big, big topics here. You know, what conditions, you know, are we going to encounter? And you know, how are we going to discuss those things and what is treatment planning generally like? And then what makes our office special? You know, really highlighting those things, like talking about these concepts. So this is, even though it was only a few minutes that I just went through that, if we're going to really go through everything in detail here, I mean that's a it's it's a couple hours. and   I mean, the point I'll I'll I'll get to here is, you know, maybe the first, second, third time, great, but at the end of the day, sometimes it becomes a lot. So you have to kinda eventually figure out ways, well, how are we going to mix things up? Because if you're lucky enough to continue to have the same team there for a long time, you're all gonna be sitting there twiddling your thumbs, being like, Okay, like I get it, but you know what's going on.   speaker-0 (07:46) Yeah, no, you're exactly right. And I think that that's why a lot of people love us because we'll bring in and shake things up and add some excitement. Cause you're right, it can get monotonous and tedious. But that doesn't mean because it becomes monotonous and tedious that we shouldn't continue to do it. Just change how we're doing it, look for ways to innovate it, and make it even better. So if I broke that down, Dave, it sounds like we start with kind of the why. Why are we doing this? What are our core values? Let's assess that, make sure those are aligned because that's gonna be the   the launch pad, if you will, to the next level. Then it sounds like it was treatment, planning, how we're diagnosing things, making sure that's all aligned. And then the third piece would be on what makes us special, what makes us different, what's our wow factor, if you will. And those are kind of the three points. And please feel free to add in any gaps that I left out because I don't know your outline. So I'm I'm learning right along with the listeners, right?   speaker-1 (08:35) Yeah.   So I mean that that's the basics of it. The one thing that's kind of like a little bit misleading is like with the treatment plan and stuff like that. Like what I've done is kind of gone and I've gone off of that that doctor's kind of like general template and added more is like condition by condition. You know, so maybe like 10, 15, you know, things that you wanna list out. And you don't have to you're never gonna hit everything. You know, so you want to kind of get, you know, 80% of what we're you know, what are gonna encounter on a daily basis?   And I think the way to really think about this is the the concept that you guys really drive home very well is what would doctor do? Yep. That's kind of like this is like that on steroids. The problem is when you do that like this much, at a certain point it becomes kind of like hiring. So I think it's nice. We now we kind of quickly will go through some of this as a review, but I think a way that we could probably improve more is if let's say, you know, once a month or so I kind of just did a smattering of, you know, some examples like that to kind of just really freshen things up.   And a lot of times, you know, some of these things are like, yeah, these are the cool things that we're doing. But a lot of the pictures, a lot of the things that I share in this section is kind of like, hey, we thought it was going be like this, but guess what? It's like a bomb went off. Because I think it's very hard for somebody who's not, you know, in the the trenches in a sense, with a lot of these situations to really understand the extent which is actually helpful. Cause rather than, you know, let's say in in the the hygiene room, like   You know, when we're treatment planning, telling the patient, no problem, it's not going to be a big deal. We kind of say, you know, this is what it looks like in certain situations. We've seen things become like this, just you know, you know, so setting up that kind of worst case scenario, and that's like one of our and when we talk about like the philosophies that we talked about in the beginning, it's underpromise and over-delivered. Right. You know, we always want to talk about worst case scenario. We want to talk about the fact that, you know, in situations where we think that, you know,   further treatment like a root canal may be necessary. But that's that's a discussion even before an appointment is scheduled. Mm-hmm. That all has to be there. You know, it's nice to to to be positive and everything, but it's not nice when you you do that and then it's a it's a mess later.   speaker-0 (10:36) No, you're exactly right. And I, you know, my mind obviously went into system mode as you were talking. And I'm like, Dave, I got this great idea. take all your conditions and things that you look at, make them into twelve of them. Then every month on your quick check-in calibrations, you could have all twelve of those. So throughout the year you go through them and then each quarter you highlight maybe the three things you've gone over. That was my instant like, hey, this is how you could like keep it on a system on a regime.   or bring case studies every quarter that that you then would take because they've already learned for three months, then six months and n nine months and twelve months. but I I'm curious and I want to dive into the kind of nitty gritty of it. How do you set up these quarterly calibrations? Because I'm hearing like we want to talk about it, like you mentioned, like this treatment planning. It should be a discussion. but I also have watched and I know myself, I can sit and listen all day long.   But then when I'm asked to repeat or I'm asked to implement or I'm asked to talk about it, I go back to what I know. Even though I just heard it, I might catch one or two phrases. So do you role play it out? Is it more of a like C discussion and we all discuss how we're going to discuss like kind of walk me through what and do you do you block it out for a full day? Is this a one hour over lunch? Like, how does this kind of kind of look? I feel like I've got a general like outline of it, but then how do you actually execute on this?   speaker-1 (11:57) Yeah, so we'll so we'll we'll block out a a a couple hours, two or three hours, depending on you know the situation. Well, we and I've tried you know a bunch of different ways as far as like a lot of the things that you mentioned. I think the things that are that are most effective and most effective in general, which you know I used to do more so in the beginning, not so much right now, is really just kind of randomly like calling on people and kind of being like, Okay, like let's like this is the situation, like let's kind of talk it out. And it's a little uncomfortable at first, but it kind of, you know.   makes it really gets somebody involved in it. Now what I would do early on is kind of like pretend like you're you're the doctor. But what I've done to kind of mix it up a lot of times is kind of getting a couple of people involved where it's what it's fine. It's whatever their role is in the office, let's say in this situation, you know, sometimes we'll do that or we'll mix it up, but we try and go through the the different stages of let's say, you know, we found this as an emergency patient, let's say.   Yep. So you're gonna be the assistant, you're gonna be the doctor, and then you're gonna be the the front office person. You know what I'm saying? And kinda, you know, go through that step by step. So we can kind of work on the the workflow, like you know, the the basically the the timeline a patient would go would go through the office and everything in in that. So that is work well. Honestly, like as as I've done this longer and longer, sometimes it's just kinda like   It's like going through the motions and it's just kind of like, okay, you guys know this, let's go through this. And that really hasn't been so effective. So sometimes I'll kind of take a pause and I'll just even, you know, hop on you know, open dental and you know, think of like, okay, who have I seen like lately where this isn't just open up like the x-rays and kind of do examples like that. I think that's been a little bit more helpful. The hard thing is, I mean, it's you know, we're all busy. It takes a lot of time to try and go ahead and do all this stuff. But I think if I was able to get a little bit more   regimented in in mixing it up. But for the purposes of, you know, everybody listening, I think if you get a good, you know, outline together, you get things together, you know, this will afford you, you know, the ability to do this at least a couple of times and still be really effective. I blew the first handful of times I did it, even though it's like the same kind of thing, it's helpful and you you mix in some other stuff, but then it becomes kind of stale after a while. So you want to make sure you're bringing new examples or shaking things up or, you know, just kinda everybody kind of knows like, okay, yeah, we're gonna   calling you you randomly pay pay attention.   speaker-0 (14:14) Right. No, I love that. And it's funny that you said that because that's actually my trick in offices. People are always impressed that Kiera Dent can learn names very quickly in a practice. And I'm like, guys, the bottom line is the only reason, not the only, but one of the main driving reasons I learn names as soon as I go into a practice is one, people tend to like me a lot more if I remember their name. Two, I believe that if I'm gonna ask them to do something, I should at least know their name. And three is when I get to team meeting, you better believe I'm going to impress everyone and dazzle that I know your whole names.   But then I'm going to randomly call on every person and they're like, she now knows my name. So I think it's really wise. I was also thinking, Dave, it's fun to to hear your ideas and then also flip into consultant care mode too. And I'm like, gosh, like let's just take this and expand on it. some fun things for that excitement that making sure everyone's on their toes is you can actually like have them draw straws. So like here's the case study, everybody draws straws, and it's a doctor, it's a hygienist, it's a treatment coordinator and an assistant.   So they all have to draw straws and so it will if there's a natural excitement and terror and adrenaline rush real quick of here's the scenario, we're gonna role play this all the way through, draw straws of who's going to be who on this scenario. So then it's a constant shakeup. I also love the surprise and delight of asking people on the fly. But I really also love like and I was thinking like some way you could make this pretty simple for you quarterly is if you know that there's a a patient that that   you're working on that you're like, this would be a great example. Maybe have your assistant mark that appointment in red or something. So that way you are pulling those constantly, which I'm sure you're doing, but thinking of offices of like, how could you be building this up for the next month or two? Just highlight some appointments, bring those to the table, or I'll be honest, I just did a what would doctor do with a a practice the other day. ironically it's actually the same office we were talking about earlier. Funny, funny coincidence there.   But I just pulled up some FMXs on Google. Reason I did that was because sometimes if we know the patient, people get weird and they say, but that was Kiera and she's got a funny bite. And they have a thousand excuses versus just a FMX or just intraoral pictures maybe can help them see it. So Dave, it sounds like you guys I I love also hearing it's two to three hours, so that's helpful to know. Probably a couple case studies. Love the idea of different people role playing out different parts of that procedure.   And I will say   speaker-1 (16:34) Remember the so we didn't do straws when you kind of taught us this concept. Do you remember what we did?   speaker-0 (16:40) I I think I just like put like name tags on people. I don't I don't remember exactly   speaker-1 (16:45) So you got you ran out to what was it? Like I don't know, Michaels like some kind of Yeah. So we did that we did that one time too. I found them on Amazon and I got just to just to kind of mix things up. we basically got snowballs and you know, you people would kind of toss to the next person in the the line of the the patient experience. Yeah. Sometimes you just gotta do stuff like that to to to mix it up because otherwise, you know.   speaker-0 (16:51) Was it the snowballs? Yes.   Yeah, right.   speaker-1 (17:13) To sit there for more than like half an hour, yeah, everybody's either gonna fall asleep or you know, bang their heads against the wall.   speaker-0 (17:20) And I also think it's important, like another way I remember when I was in practice as an office manager, I got real sick of having to create all these because it like you said, it's a lot of time. But also if I'm always the teacher, how can I test my team's knowledge base? So also flipping the role and having some of them come of like, hey, here's here is the the piece of the treatment plan that we want to go through. So maybe it's root canals, maybe it's crowns, maybe it's implants, maybe it's on period.   And have somebody come with how they explain it to to also double check their knowledge base. So like set them up. Like you're gonna be presenting on this part, you're gonna be teaching this part. I think is also a really fun way to shake it up. But those snowballs, that was funny. It just happened to be what we found at the store. But guys, if you ever want a snowball that actually feels like a snowball, they're pretty it was actually pretty fun. I I do remember that actually.   speaker-1 (18:10) Pretty good. The ones that I found, not not so great.   speaker-0 (18:12) I think I actually found them, if you wanna know. Go scope in in Christmas time, holiday time. I think it was like Walgreens or like I think that that 'cause I had to just run to the store real fast and I was like, these look great. but I love that, Dave. I love that you're getting your team to I think the big piece that I'm hoping offices are taking away from this is there's consistency in calibration. And you have a set time. So every quarter   you know you're going to calibrate on some topic. We've got the why, why are we doing this? We've got the whole treatment plan and the procedures that we do in the practice, role-playing that out from start to finish. And then also you're doing the what makes us special. I really think that that cadence is brilliant. Even though it might feel routine and mundane, I might guess what working out is routine and mundane. But the long term effects of it when done consistently are health.   and wealth and growth and drive. And so yes, you've got to shake it up. Everybody gets into that workout like suck and it just becomes very boring and you don't want to go work out anymore. So you shake it up, you come up with new routines, you find different trainers, you find different ways to do it. But at the end of the day, you're still working out. Just like here at the end of the day, you're still calibrating. You're still training. So how does your team feel about this, Dave? Like do they, do they look forward to it? Do they say like, calibration? Like how does it tend to go?   That's my first question, then I've got a follow up to that one.   speaker-1 (19:32) Yeah, I don't know. I think I think it's hard to say. I think it's it's it's a mixed bag in a sense. You know, some people have been with me for a really   know a a lot at times with with stuff like that. I think it's nice to to kind of you know break up the schedule a little bit though because a lot of you know we do have our our weekly meetings, but still, you know, they're they're pretty short now. you know, given that we're not like we used to like eat while we were doing it. Now we kind of you know break that up, you know, based on our our protocols and everything like that. So it's like the shorter meetings. But it's nice to have a little bit more time in my mind then. but the other thing too that I that I wanted to to mention   is I think the way that I that look at things is is a is a little bit different now. So I think it makes it a little bit less in intimidating. I think when I kind of first started out with this, it was very much like, this is the script, like you gotta say it exactly like this. And I realized that that's insane, for lack of a better terms, because really at the at the end of the day, like the important thing in my mind is like the the the key concepts are there, that the points are coming across the right way, but it has to sound like Pira.   Right. You know what I'm saying? It has to sound like Dave. It has to sound like like an actual person. Like if it sounds like it just like a script, that like that defeats the purpose. The point of kind of us doing that is to have some uniformity in the concepts that are that are coming about. And so it builds trust with the patients. But if something sounds   phony, that's the opposite of it. So I've kind of gotten away from a little bit more of like you need to say this exact word like this to kind of like, you know, these these are like the concepts. And if somebody says things in like a way where it doesn't kind of, you know, do that, it's kind of like, hey, that that's great. Maybe, you know, this is like the point we're trying to get across, you know, next time try it like like this a little bit. but you know you you'd be surprised, just like with a lot of this stuff, you know, sometimes, you know, it really comes across super well the way somebody says something and it's completely   Unlike what we have written down, but it's the same idea. It just sounds like them.   speaker-0 (21:26) Totally. And I'm so glad you brought that up because again, I'm gonna tie back to why I don't believe in an A to Z cookbook. I believe in systems and processes, but I also believe in in change. Because yesterday I was interviewing a new consultant for Dental A Team and on our collection call protocol, she almost had the exact same style that we did. But she literally said, we we do a kind call. So we call the patient in a kind way. And I was like, my gosh, that's brilliant, because it just gave this whole new feel.   To a collections call versus like, I'm calling to collect money, and she called it a kind call. So to your point, you can actually find better verbiages, better ways when people do it their own way. But also don't be afraid to tell people if it comes across different because we don't hear ourselves. Dave, you're hearing me. I I can think and assume of how it's landing, but you're the one who's ultimately experiencing my words coming out. And so giving people feedback, some some some   I giggle because I've got some team members and like Kiera, I said it just like you, and I'm like, No. What I said was this. What you said is like that they're stupid and they're incompetent. Like that's how it came across. But they don't realize it. So I've even had certain team members record themselves. and then in a loving way, a very safe space where it's not judgmental, like playing it back. So sometimes even one on one, because that way they can actually hear themselves. So maybe even after calibration, you could spice it up this time, Dave, if you want.   have them role play these things and then have each person at least record themselves one time. you can have voice memos on your phone and have them actually listen back to see how it sounds because oftentimes like Dave, you and I actually chatted about how it sounded when you heard your podcast played back. You were like, I sound a lot different. I said, for my first like hundred and fifty, two hundred podcasts, I felt awkward. I still feel awkward, but it's becoming more normal. But we don't hear ourselves as much. So I think like that's also a piece to it of like   Giving people that autonomy, also some things of having them record themselves, I think can help because then it also helps show knowledge base. And selfishly, I'm also always thinking of systems that actually create a training bank for future employees because you've actually got great verbiage, great examples that you can plug in under those certain topics that future hires could actually hear. You could create a really awesome training bank that way as well.   speaker-1 (23:42) Yeah, I know for sure. That's one   speaker-0 (23:43) So fun. Dave, I love it. So guys, I would say try it out. Try Dave's model. but I I'm gonna ask real quick, give us like a quick synopsis of like going through the why. Like we dove a lot into the treatment, how to have the role play, all of that. How like what's that why part? Like, does that is it just like a quick quick synopsis of you kind of reinstating the vision, the core values, reminding people why we're here.   speaker-1 (24:05) Let me see. Hold on. Okay. So as far as as the why, I mean, we talked about mission, vision, core values, and we get to the philosophies of the practice. So the first thing is, you know, I we want to break down like what's what's our mission? So in our in our office, our mission is to exceed our patients' expectations. So, you know, what we've kind of talked about, well, what does that mean? You know, like how are we going to do that? We want to provide.   compassionate and practical dental care. That's the second part. So like what does that mean to everybody? We want to provide outstanding customer service. So once again, like, you know, what does that mean? How do we interact? Are we providing information up front? Are we staying on time and respecting people's time? What many amenities we're providing, you know, how are we doing follow-up? You know, all these things. And a lot of this is like, you know, we have it written out, but it's a little bit more of a discussion. And then the other thing too, our the last part of our our mission at our office is remaining at the forefront   Clinical advancement. So that's one of those things where when we first made this up, that was a big lie. I mean, everything was like analog paper, whatever. But you know, the then about, you know, a few months in, I got the itch and decided to to make some questionable financial decisions and just you know, go all in on everything because that's the way that I wanted to practice. So   speaker-0 (25:23) Yeah. I I   actually love that you broke that down. I love that you because sometimes as leaders when we build these visions, what we're envisioning is different than what our team actually does. So I love that you break it down like what does excellent customer service actually look like, feel like, what's the experience? Because then it becomes more tangible versus just words on a paper.   speaker-1 (25:42) Yeah. So that's that's the first chunk. The second chunk was what we talked about underpromise and overdeliver. You know, I think that's that's a big part of it. The third thing is what we kind of talked about of like, you know, how uniformity, you know, builds and maintains trust. And so there's that fine line of like, yeah, we want it to sound similar, but also not like it's cookie cutter and bake. Right. And then, you know, a couple other things. Like, I think pictures really helps or you know, pictures worth a thousand words. We want to take good pictures of what   we see so we can help explain something really well. And then the last chunk really is, you know, there are different types of of treatment. So there's stuff that's, you know, very important, more emergent, there's stuff that's preventative. And then, you know, the more elective, you know, cosmetic category of things. So we kind of talk about that. And that helps us, you know, figure out how do we want to, you know, prioritize everything. Sure. So that that's that's the the first big thing. And we dive into all that, you know, before we go into like the well how   speaker-0 (26:39) Yes. Which I actually think is really important. I'm I'm big on sequence matters and I love that you first go through who are we as a practice. Let's kind of give some tangibles on it because that actually can spur people to think differently of how they would explain treatment or explain how they're gonna talk to a patient on certain things, which I really, really love that you did that. So now looping all the way to the end, Dave, you said you also talk about what makes us special. So what does that look like on this calibration piece for you?   speaker-1 (27:05) So so basically this was another exercise we did at at some point. It was not one of the I didn't feel like if I just kind of sat there and I told people like, yeah, like this is why we're great, like that's that would be a big waste. Yeah. So I really we kind of we kind of sat down there and I said, like, let's just like get into it and you know, just call on everybody and say, Well, what do you think makes us stand out? You know, and we kind of just went through and and kind of really, you know.   speaker-0 (27:18) Sure.   speaker-1 (27:31) put together well, you know, what r what really sets us apart is as as an office. What are the things that we we try and do, you know? And as aside from that, even just some of the the basic stuff that a lot of offices have, even, but we want to make sure that we we're, you know, mentioning like, you know, like membership plan in in your office. Or if you do anything like, you know, like we do something that a lot of people do, like a whitening for life thing where it's basically they pay once and as long as they're coming regularly, you know, here you go. Right. You know, stuff like that. Just kind of like little things that, you know,   patients may may ask anybody in the office and be yeah, I don't know what that is. Like that that would be very like that would be not good.   speaker-0 (28:07) Yeah, absolutely. Well, because it's one of those things it's always funny. Offices, I I giggle a lot when offices tell me, Yeah, Kiera, I don't know what to do. Our patients, like, we do Invisalign in our practice, but they're still going to someone else. And I'm like, Because your patient doesn't know. Like, if they don't know all these things that you guys do, they will go somewhere else. They think you do their cleanings and you do their fillings. They don't realize that you do implants and ortho and sedation and Botox and all these other things. So I love that you   constantly remind your team of what makes your office special because in doing so, that's then what they're going to translate to the patients. It's like, I I heard a great quote that said, repetition is the mother of skill. And I love that because we can talk about it one time, but if we're constantly repeating it, like why do we get so good at our morning routines? Well, because we repeat it every single day, to where it's it's second nature for us. We don't even have to think about it. So I really love that you   You dive through the whole practice in a quick two to three hour thing. I love that it doesn't take all day. I love that it breaks out and shakes it up pre-scheduled out because this calibration is paramount. And I'm like, shoot, Dave, I'm like, I'm gonna go back and listen to this podcast. I'm gonna write these things down because I was thinking of consultant calibration. I have one once a month, but we don't go through the nitty-gritties of everything as consultant teams. And I've been watching as I've been doing client check-ins, that each consultant kind of has their own variance from office to office.   If we could start to bring those in, hear what the other people are saying, how they're saying it, similar to doctors, if doctors could hear how different doctors are diagnosing different ways that they're explaining treatment, it helps elevate your entire practice and patient experience. And I think at the end of the day, that's what this ultimately is all about. Because if your patient experience is awesome, coming from an awesome team experience, the whole practice is just going to elevate and everyone's going to feel much happier, less stressed and all around great. Cool.   speaker-1 (29:56) Yeah.   So I you know, all this stuff is is helpful. I mean the the the take home message is if it can't it can't get stale. So it always requires time and effort to to try and mix it up. And that's always hard to be able to do. But you know, you you you do what you can and and really at the end of the day, I mean, you know, the more you can do with this stuff, the better. The other thing that you were you were talking about, how our patients don't really know what we do and everything like that. I mean, I can't I can't preach that enough.   I mean, I think there are things that we can do way better to do that. simple thing that we did is we for a long time had like spear education videos looping in our waiting area. and it just really opened my eyes to the fact like sometimes like patient would come in and be like, I saw that video about that. Let's do that. my god, like this is like this is amazing, you know. So what we're what I'm working on right now is   We try and put together basically like a little little slideshow in the background that part of it will be kind of things as far as you know, some of the clinical things that we do. Part of it'll be like, you know, getting to know team members better. So like little fun facts, things like that, you know, other things that just like you know, somebody may see in the background and find interesting, you know, kind of like a little subliminal in a sense, but we want to try and find a balance where it's not like so in your face. But the important thing there is really.   People see this and they may not necessarily, you know, need the, you know, the the treatment or have the conditions that they see on the screen. But, you know, husband, wife, you know, mother, daughter, you know, who knows? And they may say, Hey, you know what? I saw this at at you know, my dentist, and the way that they do this looks pretty amazing. I've never like seen or heard of anything like that when they, you know, it seems like it was so much more involved. So that's that's a little project we have working on.   And it's a little project that I personally am not dealing with, which I'm very, very happy about. So we're slowly, slowly getting everybody to help.   speaker-0 (31:48) That's awesome. Well, and like you said, I think it's just an awareness piece. I think the more your patients can see it because the guys, I don't I don't need implants. Thankfully. my teeth are really straight. I hate my ding dang lateral number ten. If somebody wants to, you know, take me on as a patient, it just needs a quick rotation. That's all I need. but nobody ever asks me about it. But the   And Dave, I'm sure on Zoom right now is like looking in, like, here, let me see your tooth. but the bottom line is like it's an awareness piece, just because I don't need it as a patient. I am connected to a lot of friends and family. So if I hear it at work or I hear it with my family and they're like, I need somebody to do ortho. I'm like, my dentist does that. So again, it's just an awareness piece for your patients. So, Dave, so many pieces you pulled in here. I love going through the why, actually going through the pieces of your practice.   Then going into the tangibles of clinical, having case studies, examples, having people role play it out on different positions, and then going into what makes us special and reminding our practice of the things that we do offer. So it's a constant awareness and I love that you have this on a quarterly cadence. I think for all offices, I don't care how you do this, if it's once a year, if it's every four every three months, so four times a year, if you do it twice a year at retreats. I don't care, but I would strongly suggest each of you at least try to get this in. We're ending the year out. So I would say   At least w at a minimum one calibration. I would strongly suggest that four because again, repetition is the mother of skill that can really help out. So Dave, as always, brilliant podcast. Love learning from you. Love hearing the great things you're doing. It's been fun to watch you evolve as as a leader and as an owner and as a clinician over the years that I've known you. So thank you again for your time today. It was it was just awesome. I loved it.   Kiera Dent (33:24) Dental A Team listeners, I hope you loved revisiting this episode as much as I did. I hope that you found the nuggets, the pearls. You can see why we re-released this one because I truly want you to take away the best of the best of the best of the best. This episode truly hopefully sparked some new excitement, gave you some new ideas. I know sometimes when I go back and I look back on things that I've learned in the past, I'm able to re-implement because like that famous quote says, no man steps into the same river twice because neither he is the same man.   nor is the river the same. You are not the same as you were before, nor is your practice the same as it was before. Different things, different ideas, same principles. And I really want to highlight and hopefully you took today that sometimes all we need to do is simplify and put into place or to refine things that we've already been doing really, really well. If you love this episode, don't keep it to yourself, share it with a colleague or leave us a review and help more practices find the Dental A Team podcast. As always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.

Last 4 days before regular tickets sell out at AI Engineer World's Fair - this is the single biggest gathering of AI Engineers, Founders, Leaders, and Researchers in the world. Attendees get >$5000 worth of sponsor credits and talk tracks are looking FANTASTIC. Join us!The AI scaling debate always focuses on the question of “how do we get more GPUs?” but the better question may be: how do we make the most of ones we already have.The fact that a frontier lab like xAI could be running at sub-10% MFU (Model FLOPs Utilization) is just a hint at what the real problem may be.For context, older frontier-scale training runs were already much higher than 10%. GPT-3 was around 21% MFU. Gopher was around 32%. Megatron-Turing NLG was around 30%. PaLM reached around 46%. And our guest Anjney says best-in-class MFU today is closer to 60–70%.It's not necessarily that xAI is uniquely incompetent (it's clear they have talented folks) but rather the priorities may be flipped in the GPU arms race.While GPU access is a bottleneck, simply increasing CapEx won't automatically translate to better models as frontier AI is increasingly a systems problem: scheduling, utilization, networking, kernels, frameworks, data pipelines, parallelism, cluster reliability, and the thousand small decisions that determine whether your theoretical FLOPs become real training progress.From building Discord's developer platform and backing frontier AI companies like Anthropic, Mistral, Black Forest Labs, and Periodic Labs to now building AMP's independent compute grid, Anjney Midha has spent years close to the real bottlenecks of AI scaling. In this episode, Anjney joins swyx at Periodic Labs to unpack why the AI race is not just about buying more GPUs, why 95% utilization would have been considered an outage at Google, and why the next era of AI infrastructure has to be more aligned, more efficient, and more responsible.We go deep on AMP's vision for a compute grid that makes FLOPs flow like megawatts, the difference between full-stack AI labs and horizontal pooling, why AI data centers need community buy-in, and how compute markets could evolve into something closer to an independent system operator. Anjney also explains why DeepMind's unpublished research points to a market failure, why end-of-life prediction remains one of the most important AI applications he has thought about for fourteen years, and why “output maxing” may become a new discipline for frontier systems.We also discuss Anthropic's culture, why “luck favors the prepared mind” in coding models, how Claude cracked coding, why too much capital too early can make AI labs fragile, what Periodic Labs is trying to do with science and superconductors, why great researchers can become great CEOs, and why Silicon Valley is both deeply missionary and deeply mercenary.We discuss:* Why 95% utilization was considered an outage at Google* Why AI infrastructure waste compounds at frontier-lab scale* Why “move fast and break things” does not work for AI data centers* How data center backlash, power grids, and community incentives shape AI scaling* AMP's vision for making FLOPs flow like megawatts* Why compute needs an independent system operator* How interruptible demand and dynamic prioritization worked inside Google* Why DeepMind research hoarding creates negative externalities* AMP's 1.2GW base-load ambition and the need for 6GW of spike capacity* Why end-of-life prediction could become one of AI's most important healthcare applications* Frontier Systems, output maxing, and full-stack alignment* Why APIs and abstraction layers become lossy as organizations scale* Superconductors, standards, and the dream of lossless systems* SF Compute, open protocols, and the future of compute marketplaces* Why non-NVIDIA chips can still benefit from NVIDIA's reference architecture* Trust boundaries and why chip startups need visibility into future model architectures* Why VCs often underestimate researchers as CEOs* Scientists as star athletes of the mind* Why great CEOs need to be confrontational up and down the stack* Why leading the frontier matters more than “winning”* How Anthropic cracked coding* Why culture is fragile, not a permanent moat* Why hardship was a feature, not a bug, for Anthropic* Why Anthropic's P0 was coding from day one* Periodic Labs, physics as the constraint, and technical reality* Silicon Valley mercenaries, missionary teams, and what happens after a breakthroughAnjney Midha* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anjney* X: https://x.com/AnjneyMidhaAMP PBC* Website: https://amppublic.com/* X: https://x.com/amppublicTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction00:00:09 Why AI Compute Is Being Wasted00:03:17 Responsible Infrastructure and Data Center Backlash00:06:07 AMP Grid: Making FLOPs Flow Like Megawatts00:12:41 Foundry, Frontier Labs, and Research Hoarding00:14:42 Gigawatt-Scale Compute and End-of-Life Prediction00:24:08 Frontier Systems, Output Maxing, and Alignment00:27:38 Compute Markets, SF Compute, and Non-NVIDIA Chips00:32:57 Trust Boundaries, Co-Design, and Researcher CEOs00:38:17 AI Coachella and First-Principles Thinking00:42:43 Leading vs Winning in Frontier AI00:45:54 How Anthropic Cracked Coding00:48:25 Culture, Hardship, and Anthropic's P000:54:03 Periodic Labs, Physics, and Silicon Valley Mercenaries00:56:26 Rishi Valley, Singapore, and Money as a Measure00:58:47 Closing ThoughtsTranscriptIntroduction: Anjney Midha, AMP, and Compute WasteSwyx [00:00:00]: We're in Periodic Labs with Anjney Midha, CEO, founder of AMP. Welcome.Compute Utilization: Node Allocation, MFU, and AlignmentAnjney [00:00:09]: Thanks for having me. At Google, there are two types of utilization usually, right? That you're measuring in these clusters. One is node allocation, and then the other's MFU. Node utilization is usually like what percentage of cards in the data center are just, used, and that, if it's not at, 95%-Swyx [00:00:29]: There is no excuseAnjney [00:00:29]: There's no excuse, right? I think 95% at Google, which is where my co-founder, Seb, came from, he built the Borg, PBorg/GQM scheduler at Google, and there I think 95% was considered an outage, so 96% node utilization is, should be standard. And most single-tenant clusters are not running at that. So that's one. And then MFU should be, I would say the best in class today is somewhere between 60 and 70%. I think this is a leadership question, right? Fundamentally it's an alignment question, which is are the people who are funding the cluster and then deploying the cluster actually aligned? And sometimes theoretically they are, but in practice the number of people in the chain, the supply chain between, the capital and all the way to whoever's managing the cluster and then whoever's measuring what the output is, are just so many, degrees of separation away that, the, The Have you ever heard the radian metaphor, which is at the beginning of an arc, if you have two arcs that are two lines that are just off by a few degrees, that-Swyx [00:01:33]: It spreads outAnjney [00:01:34]: It spreads out, right? Or at scale. And I think what's happening is a lot of cluster implementations and infrastructure, a lot of frontier labs and other teams, that's what's happening, is they're, they initialize the plan, which is kind of like North Star with a team that wants to do good, but then they're, required to scale so fast instead of iteratively that the wastage just compounds really fast at scale. And so I think we know the answer, which is just do iterative bring ups. If you spend time with people who've been in the semiconductor industry or the DSN industry for a long time, this is not new, and I don't think AI should be an excuse. Sure. Something What is new? Okay. We have a lot of new capabilities, but that doesn't mean just abandon common sense. Common sense should always be in fashion. ? AI scaling doesn't change the in fact, if anything, AI scaling should be putting a premium on the value of common sense and infrastructure because the margin of error now is so much lower and the costs of wastage are so much higher. And the cost of wastage, by the way, is not just economic. I'm, obviously I'm, I'm an investor, or I'm an investor by background. Over the last few years now we're running an AI infrastructure business called, AMP. And I think that it's okay to say this time is different on the capabilities front. We are genuinely getting capabilities at, of the, of a kind we haven't had before. That doesn't give you an excuse to say this time is different for everything, especially infrastructure. So look, I love the hacker mindset and the hustler mindset. Now, that's great for the startup mindset, but you remember this moment where Zuck went from saying, “Move fast, break things” to, move-Responsible Infrastructure and Data Center BacklashSwyx [00:03:10]: Fast and stable infrastructureAnjney [00:03:11]: Move fast with stable infrastructure. I think now we need to move fast with, responsible infrastructure. People are going to ask where the impact is. There was a really In our class yesterday, Scott Nolan, who's the founder of General Matter, came by at Stanford to speak about energy bottlenecks. And he had a phenomenal idea. He said, “if you look at the marginal unit economics of compute per hour,” he goes, “let's call it, $4 an hour. If you're having to bring up a new data center in a new community, why not just say we're going to charge 4.50 an hour, and that marginal impact or that marginal increase, we just literally take that and give it to the local community as cash?” I can tell you as a customer of that compute, I would love that. I'd be happy to pay an additional 50 cents per hour at scale.Swyx [00:03:57]: Wow. Yeah.Anjney [00:03:58]: Because if that means the public benefit is so clear to the communities that the data centers are coming up in, I'm going to feel like that compute is much more reliable. Up to 20% of all data centers this year in the US, my understanding is are at risk.Swyx [00:04:13]: Of community backlash?Anjney [00:04:14]: Correct. Of not getting the community support they need to get brought up.Swyx [00:04:19]: Wow. That's a huge number.Anjney [00:04:20]: Yeah. Now, we, I think we should dig into what that number is. I think it's a little bit of overstated. These things can get over-reported, but it-Swyx [00:04:27]: They don't just care about jobs. They care about all the other stuff around it, right? They care about power grid, they care about environments-Anjney [00:04:33]: Power grid, permitting, and so on. And imagine I think if you said there's a new AI deal. If we're bringing up a data center in your community, we're actually going to reduce the cost of your electricity bill. Okay, now we're talking. Right? The community's going, “Okay. Now this is a deal. I feel like a partner in this.” Right now that's not happening. There will be audits, there will be investigations, and when the, when the regulators come, I don't know when it's going to be, the folks who are moving fast and breaking things in the name of AI progress better be prepared. That's certainly not how we're procuring compute. Or we're, we're trying as much as we can to work with partners who have long-term track records. Many of whom, by the way, are not, AI providers. I think this whole idea of neoclouds being somehow this new category is a lot of marketing speak. There are really good, reliable, trusted data center providers in America who've been around 20 plus years. I love those folks. They know how to Sure. Are they sponsoring happy hours at NeurIPS? No. Are they legibly listed in Build? No. Are they hanging out in my, in, situational awareness parties? No. But they're adults. I trust them.Swyx [00:05:44]: They can run LAN. They can run power.Anjney [00:05:45]: They can run LAN, power, and shell. They have credit histories. We sit down, we have a conversations. Many of them live in Silicon Valley. They've, they've had to deal with the boom and bust cycles of the internet, and I love those folks. They are stable infrastructure partners and thinkers. And I think there's a lot of short-term thinking going on in the compute layer, and it's going to catch up to us. It's not going to be good.AMP Grid: Making FLOPs Flow Like MegawattsSwyx [00:06:07]: You talk about aligning incentives, and, I would think that aligning incentives means you have the full stack in one company, which is xAI and OpenAI, right? So you as a standalone infrastructure layer, why are you somehow more aligned to your portfolio companies than people who just own the whole thing?Anjney [00:06:28]: In systems design, right, there's, there's two regimes of, architecture, right? You have integration, and then you have pooling and utilization, right? So the Or rather, the way to increase utilization often is you can do systems integration where you collapse a lot of process into one node, or you can pull out a process from a node and share that amongst various That resource amongst several different nodes. And so we see the AMP grid, which is, the, what, the system we're building here, which is basically a compute grid. We're trying to do for compute what the electric grid-Swyx [00:07:02]: PowerAnjney [00:07:02]: Yeah, what the power grid did for electricity. It-- this is a pooling and utilization layer across clouds, And so we're actually the opposite of a full stack integration like approach.Swyx [00:07:12]: Super horizontal.Anjney [00:07:13]: Where it's much more horizontal and it's, it's multi-cloud, it's multi-silicon. The goal is to try to make FLOPs flow like megawatts, and that is very hard to do today for many reasons. There's stranded pools of compute all over the place and there's no fungibility. And so right now we do it at the level of scheduling, and we often do it at the economic layer. But as we start to announce what we're working on, it's extraordinary like how many folks are coming out of the woodworks and saying, “Hey, I'm actually working on a way to make compute fungible at this part of the stack and that part of the stack.” And as a grid, we'd like all of these folks to participate on the grid. There's, people often ask me, “Andra, are you a new cloud?” And I go, “No, actually neoclouds are suppliers.” sometimes they'll ask, “Are you a venture capital firm?” I go, “No, actually they are, they are demand like sort of off-takers of the grid.” We see ourselves as what's called an independent system operator. So if you study the history of the electric grid, once it became legible to a lot of factories and industrial sort of participants that, hey, actually it turns out pooling is a good idea. We should pool our generators instead of all having a generator running at half capacity in our backyard. There was a need for an independent entity who could coordinate all these parties. Transmission line, power generation, facilities, transmission lines, factories, and that neutral coordination mechanism is very critical. In order-- If you study like the history of grids, the most enduring ones were those that never owned their own assets. They were ones that had, or often started with long-term anchors who are uncorrelated sources of demand, a steel factory, a shoe mill or whatever in a particular town who weren't competitive, where the steel factory want to spike up at night, the shoe mill wanted to spike up during the day. So then you pool and you share, right? So each of you is guaranteed some base load, but then you kind of schedule your spikes to drive a peak utilization across the town. The gold standard, so to speak, historically, has been these utility companies like PJM Interconnect in the northeast of America, where they, over many years became this what's called an ISO, an independent system operator of the grid. So that's how we see ourselves. Economically, that's what we are. From a technical perspective, we started at the scheduling layer because Seb and Mihai, who, run engineering here, built that at-Swyx [00:09:28]: Did your schedulingAnjney [00:09:28]: They did that at Google. And, -Swyx [00:09:32]: And you have infra shops from Discord as well.Anjney [00:09:35]: I have some.Swyx [00:09:35]: I don't know, I don't know if Discord is like the primary identity, but what-whatever, I'm just kind of-Anjney [00:09:39]: No, D-Discord was-Swyx [00:09:40]: Choosing a well-known name.Anjney [00:09:42]: Well, I So I was running the developer platform there. The internal infrastructure I was not responsible for. That was actually a guy by the name of Mark Smith, who was extraordinary. And yes, Discord did pool So Discord is actually a counter example. I had the chance to learn a lot about fully, full stack infra there because-Swyx [00:09:56]: It's the same thing, yeahAnjney [00:09:57]: It's the, it's the other architecture which is, Discord built its own WebRTC vo-voice and video infra. So like Discord did not use-Swyx [00:10:08]: For the calls, yeah.Anjney [00:10:09]: Yeah, did not For communication, Discord did not use third party infra. It was all built in-house. And then the way you maximize utilization was you pool demand from the world's 200 million plus monthly active gamers, right? And so that's, that's how those stacks were constructed. Again, in systems design, the two concepts that keep coming up over and over again are abstraction and composition, right? And-Swyx [00:10:31]: Bundling and unbundlingAnjney [00:10:33]: Bundling and unbundling, abstraction, composition, like verticalization and-Swyx [00:10:36]: HorizontalAnjney [00:10:36]: Horizontalization. So in that sense, AMP is an independent system operator of the grid. We pool demand, we pool supply from a number of partners we trust At about 1.3 gigawatt scale over four years. And then we pool demand from some of the world's best, research labs and so on. We're sitting at one, periodic labs who need extraordinary long-term demand. And the idea is that, each of them is guaranteed base load on the grid, but they can spike up and down flexibly on, for compute, with much shorter timelines as needed. That was roughly the design of the program I came up with at a16z called Oxygen. The same-- That was the same design of the GQM, BorgX, Borg GQM implementation at Google that Mihai and Seb had built. Which was that how do you allow, teams inside of Google, on the internal infrastructure to be guaranteed capacity, for their base workloads? But when they need to spike up on research, how could they ensure that was sufficiently there? And of course, the big innovation that was not discovered, but kind of implemented in the space, this infra space maybe three, four years ago at Google was the idea of interruptible demand, right? Where you just queue up a bunch of jobs and through this like sort of credit system, there can be a bidding mechanism.Swyx [00:11:53]: Like priorities.Anjney [00:11:54]: It's a dynamic prioritization Basically. And jobs can get interrupted based on somebody else who's saying, “what? I have 10 tokens, 10 credits I want to spend on this job.” Another like team lead, research lead is “Genie 3 or whatever is only worth five, credits, and NanoBanana2 is worth 10 credits,” and so the NanoBanana job gets priority. That's a, that's a made up example.Swyx [00:12:15]: It's very real. Brain Marketplace was real. And, we've, we've covered this on the pod with David Luan, who was-Anjney [00:12:20]: Oh, great. OkaySwyx [00:12:20]: Was there. And the criticism is that, well, actually sometimes you need central command to go all in on a thing. And actually sometimes capitalism via credits doesn't work. Not, this is not a criticism of AMP. I'm just saying, this is a thing that has been tried, internally within Google, and it led to Google missing GPT.Foundry, Frontier Labs, and Research HoardingAnjney [00:12:41]: Like, we structured ourself essentially very similarly to Google. We are structured as a holdings company. So, Alphabet holdings is Alphabet holdings, and then they've got these subsidiaries called Google and-Swyx [00:12:51]: Other betsAnjney [00:12:52]: Other bets and so on. We've got, AMP holdings, and we've got our infrastructure business, and then we've got a capital business called Foundry that incubates new frontier AI labs or invests in them as venture capital, like Periodic. We put a few hundred million dollars into Anthropic from our fund earlier this year. So wherever we feel like teams are making progress, especially researchers and so on who've pushed the frontier inside of existing labs like DeepMind, I find, there comes a point where they feel misaligned with the dictatorship of Alphabet holdings. And at that point, sometimes the dictatorship doesn't want them anymore. And they're “Thank you. You've done your job here. You've kind of helped us through the zero to one phase, and for whatever reason, we're going to deprioritize your amazing, omni model or whatever it is, and instead we're going to prioritize coding.” And, I think that's a tragedy, but I get it. They're Sergey and team are running their own business there. But that doesn't mean we the rest of us should sit around waiting for that progress to get unlocked for the rest of the world and humanity. If you think about how much extraordinary research has happened inside of DeepMind over the last 10 years, I, Demis and Sergey and those guys did such a great job. But at the end of the day, so much of that has never seen the light of day?Swyx [00:14:00]: Or they're like papers only, but they never actually shipped it to production or-Anjney [00:14:03]: What's worse is the paper is actually not even being published anymore ‘cause there's a six-month embargo inside of DeepMind, right? We've heard about this where a paper comes out, and then I think there's a six-month embargo window where if anybody on the business team says, “This could be interesting” It's embargoed for life.Swyx [00:14:18]: Exactly. So the stuff that gets published is the stuff that's not good enough.Anjney [00:14:21]: There's an adverse selection problem, basically. Yeah. At this point-Swyx [00:14:25]: It's, it's a common complaint at NeurIPS, by the way, that's “Well, why would I look at the papers that are the trash of GDM?”Anjney [00:14:31]: Again, I think it's a tragedy. I get it. They're running their business, but the rest of the I think there's negative externalities of research being hoarded, and so that'there's a market failure. And somebody needs to unlock that research, and we can't do it on our own. We only have 1.2 gigawatts of compute. That's nothing. That's about $40 billion of cloud spend. We're going to need a lot-Gigawatt-Scale Compute and End-of-Life PredictionSwyx [00:14:51]: By the way, is that's a new number. I haven't, haven't come across that gigawatt number. That's huge.Anjney [00:14:56]: Yeah. And to be clear, we haven't secured all of it. That's how much demand we have started to secure. I think publicly we haven't actually confirmed how much we have for this year. In order-Swyx [00:15:04]: Where do you want to get to?Anjney [00:15:06]: I think the steady state would be that we have a base load pool Of 1.2 gigawatts at all times Of base load capacity. For spike capacity, right now my estimate is we need roughly six gigawatts over the next four years for all our teams to feel like they were able to keep moving the frontier, whatever they're working on, whether it's, like superconductor discovery over here. There's a new investment we're working on right now, which is in the end of life prediction space in healthcare. It's extraordinary how much you can, you can give this was actually my graduate school work. I went to grad school for bioinformatics at Stanford Med. And I know we-Swyx [00:15:40]: Econ, MCS, bio.Anjney [00:15:41]: So my-- I was this really weird cat where, I was never satisfied with my major options. So at one point I was an econ major, then I was a CS major, then I was a MCS major called mathematical computational science, and they decided they were going to end that major. So I took all that coursework, and I applied it to grad school, my graduate degree in bioinformatics, which was the master's program, and then I thought I was going to do a PhD. I never ended up doing it. I dropped out and went to work at Kleiner. But I was lucky enough to apprentice with this professor at, Stanford Med. His name is Nigam Shah, and he was working on end of life prediction. Stanford is one of the only research facilities in America that has a longitudinal patient data set that's larger at scale. I think it's at least 12 million patient lives. The only larger data set is at the VA, the Veterans Affairs, of America. And to do research, like do any deep learning and so on that data set, it was called the STRIDE data set at that time, you had to be a Stanford Med School affiliate, which is why I went and enrolled in the bioinformatics department. End of deep learning was early. Nigam Shah had the visibility-- the vision to see that, you could do end of life prediction to help palliative care. In America, the, over 30% of all Medicare, Medicaid spend, at least at that time, was spent on end of life care. And what's we grew up in Asia, so we all-- Yeah, at least I won't speak for you, but I have A very different relationship with death than I find folks who grew up in America do. In America, spiritually and culturally, especially in Western societies where Christianity, the Christian tradition sort of frames death as this terminal point, there's often a judgment day and so on. The way we view death is with a finality. In Indian culture, in Hindu culture, death is one-Swyx [00:17:35]: Also, he's Buddhist as well.Anjney [00:17:36]: You're Buddhist, yeah. So it's one, it's one step in a journey of many lives, right? And so, I grew up in this city called Chennai in the south of India, and when people die, you dance on the street. There's like a procession where your body is carried to be cremated and your family, like celebrates and there's drums and so on. It's this huge thing. And, It's because the idea is that you're going to be reincarnated. You've been liberated from the responsibilities of this life, and now you're onto your next. It's a new It's like going off to a new college or whatever, right? And so it was so alien to me when I got here as an undergrad- That the medical system works backwards from that assumption that we have to view death as this terminal thing and delay it, postpone it's a bad thing. And so at the time, clinical decision support in the United States was this very primitive field. Even to this day, physicians in the United States often will tell you when you have a terminal disease, this is your, we've diagnosed you, which is great. Our ability to diagnose you is extraordinary. You have somewhere between six months to six years to live. What do you do with that information? The error bars are so high that then you In times of uncertainty, we default to culture, and when the culture is let's-- this is a bad thing, I've got to prolong my life, then you start doing things like And just to, just sort of from a systems perspective, what's going on there is Physicians often feel like they need to provide such high error bars because there's always some uncertainty in end of life diagnosis, and if you provide the wrong Diagnosis or recommendation to your patient, you can be sued for medical malpractice. And then your license can be taken away. It can be catastrophic for your career. In contrast, if in countries where that's not the case, what you often observe is that patients, physicians are quite prescriptive with their recommendation. They say, “Hey, this is your condition. The literature says that you probably have this much time on Earth left. My expert opinion is that you are an outlier or whatever.” And they try to be more prescriptive, and that empowers a patient, right? ‘Cause then a patient can say, “I trust my doctor. They said on average, I have six months to live, but if I do these things, I may have a shot because of my particular predispositions or my genetic history or whatever.” And that empowers you to go about your life in a actually more scientific way than leaning on religion, culture, spirituality, and so on. In contrast, here, because of that medical malpractice sort of thing looming over your head, a physician never gives you a clear recommendation. So instead you say, “Okay, Doc, well, let's try it all.” And then you start a whole regime of drugs and therapies, and then you often spend weeks and weeks in the hospital, and that deteriorates your quality of life. And when that deteriorates your quality of life, you instead of spending your last few days doing the things you love with your family, you're spending it on a hospital bed. And that ends up being thirty percent of Medicare and Medicaid. So it's worse for the patients. The doctors feel terrible. The American taxpayer is paying a huge amount of money. And so this is why Nigam Shah, who was this professor at Stanford, said, “Anjney, if there's “ I kind of sat down with him. I was this young, I'd, I was twenty-one, and I was “I want to work on a big problem.” He's “The big problem is end of life care.” And so we tried to do deep learning to say, to-- So we started trying to run deep learning on these tried patient data sets to say, “Could you have an AI system make a recommendation that is orders of magnitude more precise about how much time you have left once you've been diagnosed with a terminal condition than a human?” And then if we can get that precision to be high enough, then you can empower the patient. And it turns out the tech works. Like it's-- Once you get the data set, like RL works. Honestly, even regression models work. You don't need to get that fancy. At the time, we were just trying, doing like very simple neural nets.Swyx [00:21:54]: Simple solutions, yeah.Anjney [00:21:54]: Today, what we can do with RL is extraordinary. The problem remains then and now is regulatory, because you actually can't shift the burden of the wrong clinical diagnoses from the physician to the AI system. And so at that time, I got quite disillusioned ten years ago for, twelve years ago where, ‘cause I felt I just didn't have the resources to influence regulation. Today, I'm very lucky. I'm in a different place. I've, I'm a lot older, and so I've been spending a lot of time on my next incubation, which is how can we unlock the, patient empowerment by training AI models to do end of life prediction much, with much more precision and ac-Swyx [00:22:37]: Oh, wow. You're still focused on this the whole time.Anjney [00:22:40]: The-- I haven't been able to get, this out of my mind a single day for the last fourteen years. This is the hill I want, I would like to die on. There's two, I would say. What? I actually, I'd prefer not to die.Swyx [00:22:51]: Yeah, exactly.Anjney [00:22:52]: But I think two bipartisan issues, I think two issues that should be bipartisan in America are how do we empower patients to make the right clinical decisions at the end of their life, such that we're reducing the taxpayer burden with science? It's just good old science, and AI can help here. And the second is, net positive data centers, ‘cause I think that's the biggest critical bottleneck on training and good enough AI models to help people at the end of their life. So there's sort of two sides of the, of the same scaling bottleneck curve, but those two, we formed AMP as a public benefit corporation. My wife and I, who you've met, you've met Viv. Her passion is education. Her family is a long line of educators and so on, and, of physicists. And so this class is my attempt to stop being the black sheep of the family and be a, an educator. But if I'm not educating, the thing I would be doing is working, on these two problems, whether on the political spectrum or as a researcher back at, in some lab. And my hope is if anyone's listening to this podcast, if they're passionate about either of those two topics, I'd love to hear from them. We'll, we'll we can share the contact in the show notes, but, we're looking for people to join both of those missions on the, on the political side as well as on the medical side, on the research side.Frontier Systems, Output Maxing, and AlignmentSwyx [00:24:08]: You said, this is a discipline that you want to form. You call it's called variously called Frontier System. It's variously called One Person Frontier Lab. What is the ideal name or shape of this? Like the, what is the mission?Anjney [00:24:24]: Of the class?Swyx [00:24:26]: Of the discipline that you're, exploring, right? I The class is called Frontier Systems. But like for me, maybe one phrase is you're, you're just anti-waste, right? Which is wasting GPUs, wasting in human and Medicare. But is there, is there a broader theme that I'm, that maybe you can encapsulate more succinctly?Anjney [00:24:45]: Yeah. The, from an engineering perspective, it's very simple. It's output maxing. It's the, it's the department of output maxing.Swyx [00:24:51]: Making the most of what we have.Anjney [00:24:52]: Exactly. I'm a huge believer in optimal outcomes. I think both in America and other countries, we are losing our appreciation for nuance, and this is the thing of And AI is the same case, right? Oh, the bitter lesson holds. Okay, fine. But that doesn't mean you just like throw 500 GB300, 500,000 GB300s at your suboptimal model scaling and you waste a bunch of compute. It also doesn't mean that, the most optimal is to have like 50 different architectures where there isn't enough standardization. One of the reasons Anthropic has had extraordinary sort of velocity is ‘cause they picked the transform architecture and said, “This is simple. Let's double down on it,” right? And now luckily there's enough investment going to the space that we can afford other architectures, but at the time, investment was just too fragmented into other architectures, so that arguably unlocked scaling. So I think there's a philosophy. I think we all owe it to ourselves to do output maxing with a new capability called AI on a global level. I think if I was starting a new department at Stanford, depending on how fuzzy or technical I wanted to be, I'd probably call it the Department of Alignment. Like-Swyx [00:25:59]: It's an overloaded termAnjney [00:26:01]: But it is, But alignment really Is a hard problem. And I think when you unlock it, full stack alignment is super hard in any organization and in any system. Like in a, in a venture capital firm, if you can have full stack alignment between your limited partners and your, the founders who are creating the value and ultimately the public that owns the IPO stock, that is a gift that keeps giving. And when you study the history of these systems, when they start off, they usually start out small scale where the feedback loop is actually so tight that there's alignment. And then the more you try to scale, the more division of labor happens, the more specialization happens, and at each step you add abstractions. And wherever there's an API interface, there's like loss. There's communication loss. And so I think a really cool thing would be for us to figure out is there a way for us to have our cake and eat it too as an engineering discipline? Is there a way to actually scale up and scale out Without losing any alignment, without lossy transmission?Swyx [00:27:01]: You mean standards?Anjney [00:27:02]: So standards is one way. The other way is you just have net new capabilities. So like what we're trying to do here is discover new superconductors. A room temperature superconductor would be a lossless transmission mechanism for energy. We would have flying cars. We are right within a few years of having a new room temperature superconductor. So I think those are the two. You either have to standardize On protocols or API specs that allow lossless communication, or you can come up with a whole new capability that unlocks so much abundance, the standardization doesn't matter ‘cause you just unlock net new capacity. This, the, so this is what I spend my days thinking about these days.Compute Markets, SF Compute, and Non-NVIDIA ChipsSwyx [00:27:38]: No, I think every infra person at, who wants scale and wants to output max does eventually end up thinking about this. We don't have time to go into it, but we have done an episode with SF Compute-Anjney [00:27:50]: Oh, coolSwyx [00:27:50]: That is trying to standardize The futures contract for compute. I don't, I don't know how that's going by the way, but like at some point this will be public.Anjney [00:27:57]: Oh, I think Evan is awesome and SF Compute is the kind of effort that I hope we can accelerate because what often happens is these exchanges are very hard to get, they, it's hard to bootstrap them, right? Because they often require-- There's many inefficiencies between parties. There's trust boundary inefficiencies in infrastructure because you don't trust, one part of the stack doesn't trust another part of the stack to give them visibility. There's capital markets inefficiencies, there's operational efficiencies. So if you can inject like a single shock to the system of a ton of compute demand or supply, then you can accelerate, these new flywheels. And so my hope is one day, or soon, if SF Compute needs extra like has excess capacity, they just hook it up to the grid and they get flooded with demand from us. And on the other side, if they have a ton of demand but they don't have supply, they just again hook up to the grid and it's a two-way protocol where they can just hook up to our capacity. And I don't think we're too far from that. Today our working implementation of it is mostly through a group of labs, universities, and a few sort of trusted parties who are, who all feel like they're in alignment to borrow an over sort of used word. But our hope is to just have it be an open protocol that anyone can hook up to on-Swyx [00:29:20]: Hook up for demand or hook up for supply? In primarily demand, it sounds like. Like you-Anjney [00:29:25]: No, bothSwyx [00:29:26]: You would want to offer demand.Anjney [00:29:27]: Both. Yeah. Unfortunately, what's happened in the last six weeks is, we thought we'd have a bunch of excess capacity by the end of this year. It's all gone.Swyx [00:29:37]: It's exploding.Anjney [00:29:38]: It, yeah. It's all gone. And so I have, my text messages are full of friends, we know many of these people, these are founders who've raised billions of dollars in San Francisco going, “Oh, any chance you have like 50 nodes in the next few weeks?”Swyx [00:29:51]: What is the scope for, non-Nvidia, right? You have Lisa Su coming and, Rainer Pope as well. And so There is a lot of demand for, more performance Alternative architectures and all that. At the same time, this hurts your standardization.Anjney [00:30:11]: I don't think so. So actually Rainer's a great example, right? Rainer is a CEO and founder of, MatX. I actually had him by for office hours in the class earlier today, and there was an insight he brought up that I hadn't considered before, which is when they decided to pick the standard For their data center, they picked the NVIDIA reference architecture. So the MatX chips Just plug in to any site that has an NVIDIA bring up planned. And, the-Swyx [00:30:42]: It's just software then. It's, it's not the-Anjney [00:30:44]: A-Swyx [00:30:44]: Hardware.Anjney [00:30:46]: Well, from an input and IO perspective It's the same footprint as an NVIDIA rack.Swyx [00:30:52]: That makes sense.Anjney [00:30:53]: Where they have done, innovated a bunch from what I can tell is on systems co-design. Which is where a lot of the gains are to be had. And so he picked He was “Anjney, we, there's just so much work to do when you're building a new chip company.”Swyx [00:31:08]: Can't fight every front.Anjney [00:31:08]: You just can't fight on every front. So my question to him was, “Well, you're working on this new chip. Their tape-out is next year. What, who are you going to partner with to host the chips?” And he said, “Whoever will host them. That's just not, that's not my focus.” And I said, “But how did you “ you decided back to our earlier systems design question, he decided that, he didn't want to be a full, fully integrated chip provider. The bottleneck they're focused on is the logic die, and they, he feels they can crank out a ton of performance gains through co-design there. But then that means you delegate, to our question earlier, it, you he's the data center provider is a different part of the stack, and so then he's dependent on that part of the ecosystem to host his chips to get the performance gains to the customer. So now you have another abstraction, and you might have loss. So I asked him, “How do you prevent loss?” And back to your point, he said, “I just picked the NVIDIA standard ‘cause I didn't want to Like I wanted to piggyback off of an existing protocol.” And that, what's great about NVIDIA is that reference architecture is known.Swyx [00:32:15]: Open.Anjney [00:32:15]: It's open. They've published it. So Jensen's actually enabled someone like Rainer to build a chip company like MatX, and I don't see them as competitive. The compute demand is so high. Like, I don't I think NVIDIA's not able to meet the demands of production, so we just need more chips. And I think it's very smart what MatX has done, which is say, “We're just going to we're not going to innovate on the data center design ‘cause actually, thank you, Jensen, you've done all the hard work. Where we can innovate is somewhere else.” And I think that's, that's very healthy. I think that's how we unblock new bottlenecks. And my view is these, the, chip teams like MatX, who have arrived at the insight that co-design is the way, The primary bottleneck for them is trust boundary. To do co-design well, you need visibility into the next model generation as soon as possible ‘cause it takes two years to tape out. So if by the time I bring my chip to market, your model architecture's changed, I'm host. Now, when he was inside Google, he was sitting next to the Gemini team. He was on Palm or whatever.Trust Boundaries, Co-Design, and Researcher CEOsSwyx [00:33:19]: His co-founder was the, was one, was one of the Palm guys, I think.Anjney [00:33:23]: Yes. Yes, exactly. So when you're inside the trust boundary of Google, then your systems co-design loop is super tight. When you leave as a founder, one of the biggest risks you take is now you're outside the trust boundary. And so what I love doing is helping chip teams who can help us unlock more capacity for the independent ecosystem access to trust. Because when I If I've been, involved with a lab from day one, and I was lucky enough to work with Anthropic, and then I'm on the board of Mistral and helped Black Forest Labs get started. I think at this point I'm on six or seven different teams.Swyx [00:33:57]: Only six? I feel like my mental number was going to be 13, but yeah, it's-Anjney [00:34:02]: No, I go deep with one at a time.Swyx [00:34:04]: You're founding CEO of Arena.Anjney [00:34:07]: Nah, that was an, that was an-Swyx [00:34:08]: Administrative CEOAnjney [00:34:09]: It was an administrative five-month gig where Whalen and Anastasios were graduating from their PhDs, and they didn't need a product team. So I helped recruit the head of engineering product and design. But Anastasios has always been the CEO of that company. I played a pinch-hitting I'm an intern. I was CEO intern For five months. -Swyx [00:34:33]: I interviewed him, and he's he's very well-spoken. I think he's a debate, former debate, champion. But also very quantitative and mathematical, which is-Anjney [00:34:41]: He-Swyx [00:34:41]: Such a unicorn.Anjney [00:34:43]: See, what's amazing about him? If you look at his output, he's an output maxer. By the time he was graduating from his PhD, which he only graduated last year, he had published more work with a citation count than, people twice his age. But at the same time, he'd already started a project called LLM Arena that was being used by millions of people As a side project. And time and time again, what I've realized is venture capitalists suck at seeing human beings as, dynamic agents where-Swyx [00:35:14]: They want to put you in a boxAnjney [00:35:15]: They want to put you in a box.Swyx [00:35:15]: This is your thing.Anjney [00:35:16]: So the first time I got introduced to Anastasios, somebody had told me “Oh, he's amazing, but he's a researcher.” I was “what? What do you mean he's a researcher?” That's what-Swyx [00:35:28]: Like he's not a CEO, not a founder.Anjney [00:35:29]: Not a CEO, exactly. I was “Are you crazy? Do you Have you met Dario?” Dario's a scientist. He's gone from zero to, what will soon be a trillion-dollar company in four years. Being a CEO, nominally speaking, is not that hard. Being a good CEO is hard. Being a great CEO actually requires a level of performance that scientists who have already published at the top of their field have accomplished. It is super hard to be a competitive scientist. To publish in academia over the last 20, 30 years, to make it to the top of your discipline at a place like Berkeley, you are a star athlete. Like, you are an athlete of the mind, and you perform at the highest levels. And to get there, whether you're, Anastasios or Whalen at Berkeley, or you are Robin, who-Swyx [00:36:23]: BFL, yeahAnjney [00:36:24]: With Black Forest, who created Stable Diffusion, or if you're, like Guillaume at Meta, who created Llama before he started Mistral. The amount of human leadership you have to demonstrate to get the resources, like get the trust of the organization, publish it, put it up. I would just fund researchers all day Right? If who have contributed already to the field. If they've, if they've put SOTA out there, they're, they're star athletes already. If they haven't done SOTA Look, they can still be good CEOs, but then I find the failure mode is that they just don't want to be CEOs, they primarily want to publish, and that's okay, too. One of the things we do with the AMP Grid is we donate excess compute. We have two nonprofits, like university labs. We carved out like a couple thousand H100s. But I do think there's extraordinary research being done on university campuses. My father-in-law's a physicist. He's a professor. Extraordinary work in physics, and we need that. But if you want to be a CEO, what you need to be willing To do is be super confrontational, outside of science. Like within the scientific community, some of the best researchers are very confrontational about their convictions, right? This architecture is right. To be a great CEO, you basically have to be willing to be confrontational up and down the stack.Swyx [00:37:41]: To your own team.Anjney [00:37:42]: To your own team-Swyx [00:37:43]: To customersAnjney [00:37:43]: Hiring, recruiting customers. Well, I would say, Yeah, pretty much to everyone Everybody. Of course-Swyx [00:37:50]: I see, I feel a little bit of that in my own work, but yeah, I can't imagine the stakes that Dario has had to go through. It's, it's pretty insane.Anjney [00:37:56]: No, I don't think the stakes are that different From how you're feeling it, right? Stakes are personal scaling vectors, right? The stakes that seem so low to you, like having this podcast where you can talk to somebody and just have a you're an extraordinary communicator, right? Like already in this conversation, you've pulled more out of me than most people, and I've been on 12 podcasts in the last two weeks.AI Coachella and First-Principles ThinkingSwyx [00:38:17]: I think I, we've just seen each other enough that there's some base trust.Anjney [00:38:20]: There's base trust.Swyx [00:38:20]: And I think, and I know that you, that I've done my homework and like I know that trust is a big deal for you, so.Anjney [00:38:27]: I think trust is about consistency, and you and I have seen each other In the community for years, right? Like, I remember the first time we met was at NeurIPS in New Orleans. I don't know if you remember that, luncheon.Swyx [00:38:38]: Oh my God.Anjney [00:38:39]: Reiko had set up this Reiko's amazing, and he set up this luncheon and-Swyx [00:38:43]: Yeah, I was “Who's this Discord guy?” I'm “Okay.” But-Anjney [00:38:45]: No, you weren't-Swyx [00:38:46]: You were just “You made some investments.”Anjney [00:38:47]: You were much less polite. You were “Who's this VC?” You're like-Swyx [00:38:51]: No, I Was I? Oh my God.Anjney [00:38:53]: It was-Swyx [00:38:53]: I'm so sorryAnjney [00:38:53]: It was visible on your face.Swyx [00:38:54]: I'm so sorry. But you weren't, you weren't The introduction was bad. I was I didn't know who you were.Anjney [00:39:00]: The, see, this is the thing about context, right? Like, but then I think I heard your accent. And I was “Are you-”Swyx [00:39:06]: Singapore, yeahAnjney [00:39:06]: “Are you Singaporean?” And you're “Yeah.” And I said, “I went to high school, JC, in Singapore.” And then the ice broke. But This is the there are in the scientific community, sometimes the stakes are very high for people who haven't had the emotional, what is called EQ Coaching and mentorship, right? Which is like to have scientific impact, you often need to be a extraordinary emotional, like emotionally in tune person with the folks you're trying to influence. And so what comes so naturally to you is actually a super high stakes thing to other people. And so I wouldn't assume that Dario's more stressed out than you. These things are you'd be surprised how similar and small sometimes the problems are to you That some of the world's biggest, leaders are facing. And that's what I've learned from this class. The guest speakers are Sam, Satya, Jensen.Swyx [00:40:01]: AI Coachella.Anjney [00:40:02]: Yeah. It's AI Coachella, right? So we got to get all the headliners, and they're I'm very lucky that some of these people have either mentored me over the years or I've done business with them. And when you, take the performative stuff out and any assumptions you may have about these people that you read in the press or on Twitter, We're all just humans. We're all trying to get along. And what's so special about this moment is AI is forcing, like scaling, the bitter lesson is forcing a lot of people to revise their assumptions for how the world works and go back to first principles or go and educate themselves. So the kind of people I was, I won't name who this person is, but I was at an event last week in Texas and, ran to somebody who said, “Anjney, I came across the class. What do you think about real time action prediction models?” And I was, don't know how happy it made me feel when they asked me that question. I know they've done the work. They've challenged themselves. I'm, they didn't ask me, “What do you think of world models?” They said, “What do you think of n-”Swyx [00:41:04]: Real time action predictionAnjney [00:41:05]: “action, real time action prediction models?” World models, don't get me wrong, are cool and everything, but you and I both know that is a layer of abstraction that is sometimes not usefully precise enough. Right? Ours-Swyx [00:41:16]: There's like four different kinds of world models.Anjney [00:41:17]: Yes, exactly.Swyx [00:41:18]: We've done the part with general intuition, by the way, which is very focused on, -Anjney [00:41:22]: Oh, cool. Yes. I love Pim. Pim is great. And this is what I love about people who've done that level of work. They realize they're not in competition with people who the rest of the world thinks they're in competition with.Swyx [00:41:34]: Because they're not in the category, they're in the specific thing they're trying to do.Anjney [00:41:37]: They're focused on their mission, and they have a systems understanding of the bottleneck they're trying to solve. And when somebody else says, “I'm working on real time, action prediction models too,” Pim goes, “Oh, I love that person. I want, I can learn from them.” But the minute they're “Oh, that person's a world model person,” it's “like which type of world model person?” But mostly they're just trying to figure out if it's a waste of their time, because we don't have enough time. So, Pim, for example, is super, loves this other company I work with we've talked about called Black Forest Labs. And he's mentioned to me multiple times that he's so, He thinks what Flux is doing is really cool. Andy Blattman came by and spoke in the class. And what I find over and over again is for people who do the work, who can be usefully precise enough about like what is actually going on in the world of frontier research, The sense of camaraderie is still well and alive, but it gets lost sometimes when you have to like abstract The technical complexities in, business terms And then the VCs are “How are you different from that world model?” I'm going to say Where do I even start to explain this stuff? And then the misalignment creeps in.Leading vs. Winning in Frontier AISwyx [00:42:43]: This is good. Yeah, I think, people listening get a sense of, what it is like to operate at a real level, like yourself, rather than at, the journalist level, where you have to sort of put everyone in, a rough category and create a narrative of competition, and who's winning today, who's behind.Anjney [00:42:58]: It-- this idea of winning is so Weird to me.Swyx [00:43:03]: You do want to win. You want you want competitiveness.Anjney [00:43:06]: No, I think you want to lead.Swyx [00:43:07]: You want SOTA.Anjney [00:43:07]: No, I think you want to lead. Yes, so you want to push the frontier. You want to push the SOTA. You want to do something that hasn't been done before. You want to capture value, but you don't want to capture so much value that, people think you're unaligned with your mission or trying to do what's best for the world. You want to capture enough value that you can keep innovating, right? And I think that people want to lead, they don't really This idea of winning and losing, again, I love Jensen. He's a, he's a leader. The mindset that he talked about on Dwarkesh's podcast, right? He's “I didn't wake up with a loser mindset.” I think that was awesome, right? Because he's, he's an engineer. Dwarkesh has done the work. So there's at least-- even though the, to me, it was very obvious they're talking about the same thing, they just passed each other. They just had to basically, Jensen has this, five-layer cake abstraction of how the industry works. And Dwarkesh had, I think from that podcast, had more of, a pre-training, mid-training, post-training systems loop concept.Swyx [00:44:04]: It's just a factor of who he talks to, right? Again, it's very clear.Anjney [00:44:06]: It's the systems It's the abstraction, the mental models, the It's the whole-- Dude, so much of the problem in the world is reasoning by analogy. And then the assumptions that are held invisibly.Swyx [00:44:19]: Yeah, I've, I've said, this is actually the best time in human history for first principles thinkers. Because everything you think will happen is actually now coming true.Anjney [00:44:28]: Correct. And the venture capital community is, notorious for this, where people look-- In times of uncertainty, they, cling to axioms that ended up being true from the previous era, and they kind of like proclaim them with confidence as if they're truths, but they're not. And it's very important to see the distinction between a heuristic and an axiom. An axiom can be proven-Swyx [00:44:55]: Like from internal consistency point of viewAnjney [00:44:56]: With internal consistency. A heuristic is a way you kind of a shortcut. And my God, the number of people I have had to put up with over the last few years who proclaim-- use heuristics As axioms to judge people, to judge which companies are going to succeed or the number of people who are “Oh, yeah, Anthropic, they're just training models right now,” but this one continue.Swyx [00:45:22]: Because that's a B2B SaaS?Anjney [00:45:23]: Yeah, the, like Which over the fullness of time, if you squint at it, maybe. But the way you arrive there is so important that you can-- you just, you can dismiss people. Here's what happened, right? What happened is Anthropic basically achieved takeoff in October of last year. That training run-Swyx [00:45:41]: Whatever, three seven?Anjney [00:45:42]: I forget the numbers now, but whatever that checkpoint was-Swyx [00:45:45]: We saw the cognition.Anjney [00:45:46]: Yeah. Right? You probably-- The, to those of us in the community, especially once post-training was done and it was released in December-Swyx [00:45:52]: Yeah. Can I sneak a sneaky question in there? I don't know if you have a perspective, maybe you don't, I just The number one question is how did Anthropic crack coding, right? Because Claude One, Claude Two, okay, like it was part of it, but it wasn't a big deal. And the leading hypothesis, it's a lucky dice roll that was then compounded, right? Like it was like Mildly better, but then they saw it and they were “Okay, let's really invest.”How Anthropic Cracked CodingAnjney [00:46:17]: I had this very annoying teacher. I went to this boarding school called Rishi Valley in India, which is like this, bird preserve. It's like three hundred and fifty acres of bird preserve in rural India, and there was no technology for seven years. There was this teacher, I won't name them, but they would have this-- I hated it every time he said this to me. He was “Luck fa-favors the prepared mind,” which is like a common saying, but the way he delivered it, always grated me, ‘cause he was always I was always one of those kids who got, a good grade without trying very hard. ‘Cause like high middle school is not that hard if you, if you're generally, paying attention and so on. And there was this one time where I-- But then I would get an eighty percent grade, and he would keep pushing me to say “The reason you didn't get the ninety-five plus percent is because you're not that lucky.” And I would say, “What do you mean?” ‘Cause I would think that I deserved that grade, and I would sometimes argue with him. And he'd say, “You didn't have a prepared mind. If you want to get lucky again “ There was basically one time where I got like ninety-five or ninety-six on this, on this subject, and I, now that I felt entitled. I was “Okay, I'm going to keep doing this,” and I didn't. And then he was “Luck favors a prepared mind. You got lucky last time, but you got to stay prepared.” And I didn't understand what he meant. Now, as I'm older, I'm okay, these adults actually knew a thing or two. Anthropic has been the most prepared company for four years. And so then when the right, context data comes in, the right developers start sending in, the right context diffs, Sure, you could say you got lucky, but if you ask me, they're pr-pretty damn prepared with paranoia for like four years. And you have to remember, it was so hard for them to get going early on that they had to do so much more with so much less that you just have to be prepared to be so efficient.Swyx [00:48:06]: Yes. There's numbers on their burn compared to OpenAI. I've, I've written about it, but they are so much more efficient in their, in their tech stack.Anjney [00:48:14]: It's not even It's not funny.Swyx [00:48:14]: Not even close.Anjney [00:48:15]: Yeah. But it's so clear, right? Like how to output max for the world. They have been prepared, and you could call that luck, but Luck favors the prepared mind.Culture, Hardship, and Anthropic's P0Swyx [00:48:25]: This is one of those things that I was going over some of your old lectures and, you were data, people think it's a moat and actually it's culture and actually it's team Actually. And I, it's-- there's different levels of moats, and this is the ultimate one that determines everything else. Which you can then compoundAnjney [00:48:43]: You're saying culture is the ultimate moat? Yeah. But the thing about culture is it's very fragile. So moats, I don't think they're-- there's very few moats I found that are actually moats. They're-- It's, it's a nice concept, but in reality, you have to replenish your culture. Ben Horowitz was, the speaker in CS153 on Tuesday, and I asked him this question about the culture bottleneck in teams because, there are several AI teams-Swyx [00:49:09]: His book, Hard Things About Hard ThingsAnjney [00:49:11]: Hard Thing About Hard Things. But more concretely, there are so many AI labs today that have all the cash they need, they have all the compute they need, and they're still not able to ship anything SOTA. And then you start seeing people leave and so on, and my diagnosis, it's, is it's the culture. And so I asked him, Ben, they're-- He's been one of the most aggressive investors in AI labs. He goes back to this thing which resonates in my mind a lot. It-- When I used to work at a16z, I would, book a conference room, and right outside the conference room, which is closest to the toilet ‘cause it was the fastest way for me to go use the bathroom between Zoom meetings-Swyx [00:49:45]: Oh my God, I'll put maxing my toilet optimization. Okay, never mind.Anjney [00:49:48]: It was not healthy in hindsight, but maybe this is TMI. But anyway, outside that conference on the wall was this quote that was printed that said, “Culture is not a set of beliefs, it's a set of actions.” And it's by Bushido, is this, Japanese philosopher. And if you stop taking the actions that demonstrate the mission alignment to what you've said to your team and to your-- the world matters to you, then your culture starts to fray. So it's not actually a moat, I would say. It's a very brittle, fragile thing that requires daily tending to like a garden. But if you figure out the system to keep that garden tended, which I think ultimately comes down to knowing yourself ‘cause you most naturally, if you're authentic and so on, you'll naturally make trade-offs that seem effortless to you, but that reinforce your culture. And then That becomes this very hard thing for other people to catch up to. And at Anthropic, from day one, there was this mission like-- missionary like zeal and belief that, hey, these capabilities will scale. These systems are stochastic, not deterministic. There will be error bars, and until we crack interpretability, there's risk. And at some point, people will go-- stop using Claude just for coding. They'll use it in some mission-critical context where there's-- it'll throw off a bug, and then people are going to come blame them, and they want to be on the right side of history where they said, “Yes, this is a powerful technology. We think it's going to change the world, And we want to be very measured and scientific about the fact that, ‘Hey, guys, these are stats models, statistical models.' That's how statistics works.” ultimately, when you're training neural nets, it is just a statistical system. And I think that Belief that safety is important and that it might seem toy-like in the early days, and sometimes, you could say, “Anjney, they totally over-exaggerated the risk,” like two years ago when they said, “Let's not launch Claude One,” or whatever. Well, okay, maybe in hindsight, but hindsight is twenty/twenty. And at the time, they didn't know how that model would be used, and to them it felt existential if somebody came and said, “You weren't responsible. It-- This wrote a bug.” The liability associated with that is massive. So how do you prevent against that? Well, day in, day out, you say safety. And when you start deviating from that, you have the team hold you accountable, you have the world hold you accountable, and I think that becomes a moat over time. At some point, that moat will get challenged and so on, and then it become fragile. I hope it endures because that's the beauty of having founders run the show, ‘cause they can make really hard trade-offs to do mission alignment. The hardest part is in the earliest days when you don't have a group of people who are going through difficulty, stress, crisis together, then your culture doesn't get defined sharply enough, and that's what I'm worried about right now, is there's so much money going to these labs. There's no hardship. There's no-Swyx [00:52:50]: To anyone who knowsAnjney [00:52:51]: There's no to anyone who knows. And that, in hindsight, was a feature, not a bug for Anthropic. The number of people who said no, the number of people who said, “Sorry, we're all doing investors in OpenAI,” that is competitive difference. It forces you to really understand, what is the hill you want to die on at the expense of everything else. What's the P zero? And there, P zero from day one was coding. The reason, the mechanism system there was if we crack coding, Then we will crack AGI. Our mission is AGI. We want to get there safely. If we focus on codin

Episode 428:  Doctor Doom (Doom Prevails) & Fantastic 4

THE PROGRESSIVE TRACKS SHOW #670 (“But The View Is Fantastic… Down The Hill 2026”)​Mike explores artists performing at this year’s Down The Hill Festival in Rilaars, Belgium August 21st and 22nd, 2026.It’s gonna be a good time! [IMAGE: timbo] ​———————————————————————————————————————————— PLAYLIST: The Ultra Electric Mega Galactic – ” Unassigned Agent X-27 (Snippet)” from The Ultra Electric […]

What makes a phenomenal graduation party? Adam Carter sticks around with Chad to start the show to debate the ingredients to a memorable grad party.

Considering the World Cup, here are some Fantastic Cultural Differences

Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ https://youtu.be/j0TuosYDQe4?si=7mzUwBe4PrQ-eB2E In this insightful session from the Ultimate Partner Live event in Bellevue, Washington, Vince Menzione sits down with Stephen Boyle, Corporate Vice President for Enterprise Partners at Microsoft, to pull back the curtain on the tectonic shifts redefining the tech ecosystem. Boyle details Microsoft's massive organizational pivot into enterprise and SME/channel divisions , explaining how artificial intelligence acts as the foundational thread unifying systems integrators, software vendors, and digital natives. Moving past market noise surrounding competing foundational models , he highlights Microsoft's strategy to become the ultimate “platform of platforms” by prioritizing user choice, security, and trust. Emphasizing a shift away from infrastructure technicalities and toward practical business outcomes , Boyle delivers an urgent mandate for partners to scale technical talent, eliminate traditional operational silos, and brace for the incoming consumption-driven, agent-based future of enterprise computing. Key Takeaways Microsoft has restructured its global sales divisions into distinct Enterprise and SME/Channel organizations to better target its massive total addressable markets. Artificial intelligence is fundamentally altering the partner ecosystem by dismantling traditional software and systems integrator silos to build interconnected, multi-party solutions. Rather than forcing alignment to a singular model, Microsoft aims to be the definitive platform of platforms by offering extensive choice across over 1,100 language models. The enterprise landscape is rapidly moving past experimental AI pilot phases and entering production setups completely focused on transforming core business outcomes. Tomorrow's service organizations are aggressively evolving into software-minded operations that deploy repeatable, highly specialized internal autonomous agents. Managing tokens and monitoring usage metrics represents the emerging operational baseline for balancing efficiency against the scaling expenses of large language models. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags AI frontier, platform of platforms, enterprise partners, global systems integrators, digital natives, language models, token consumption, agent sprawl, citizen developers, shadow IT, business outcomes, technical enablement, marketplace growth, hyper-scalers, processing fluency, sovereign AI, industry ecosystems, data governance. Transcript [00:00:00] Stephen Boyle: This is the biggest, most transformative, iterative change in technology we’ve ever seen, where, if you wanna call it a paradigm shift or whatever word comes after paradigm shift. [00:00:12] Vince Menzione: We just came back from Ultimate Partner live in Bellevue, Washington, where we hosted incredible leaders for two amazing days. Come join us for this next session where we explore the tectonic shifts we’ve all been seeing. Uh, I am thrilled to invite our next guest up on stage. I’ve known this gentleman for several years back in my days at Microsoft, and, um, we’ve been friends, actually Microsoft, and then we both went and did different things, came he’s come back to Microsoft in a big way. [00:00:46] Vince Menzione: Uh, Steven Boyle, for those of you don’t know, is recently a named the C. We will talk about it in a second, but I, I need to announce you properly. Is the corporate vice president, which by the way in Microsoft is a big deal for enterprise partners. He and Nicole De and I would say are the two Microsoft leaders in the organization. [00:01:06] Vince Menzione: Nicole is the channel chief. Steven has a, a big remit and we’ll talk about that up on stage. But I’m just so delightful for his support and for making the time in a very busy week at Microsoft ’cause this is CEO summit this week to make some time to come with us and be on stage with me. Please welcome my good friend Steven Boyle. [00:01:29] Vince Menzione: Good to see you, sir. To see. So I’m gonna put you on this side. [00:01:33] Stephen Boyle: Okay. [00:01:35] Vince Menzione: The hot seat. So I’m gonna, I, I didn’t do a justice and I, I wanted you to explain your role. I, I think I know, but I think for the, for the people in the room, uh, talk to us what Enterprise Partners means at Microsoft and what that role remit and remit looks like. [00:01:50] Stephen Boyle: Um, CVPs may or may not be important, but one thing they don’t do is get invites to the CEO summit. So I’m super pleased to be here with you guys. No, no, it’s totally cool. It’s totally cool if that phone rings. No, I’m kidding. Doesn’t. So what does it mean? So I’d like quickly, um. January last year, uh, we split the sales organization into enterprise and small to medium enterprise and channel. [00:02:15] Stephen Boyle: You guys probably familiar with that? Nicole is the, uh, chief partner officer lives in the SMA and C world and drives the channel, um, drives our marketplace business and, and a lot of other things. Um, for that 60 billion, um, you know, total addressable market that we have. Down there in SME and C. Um, at the same time, we established enterprise partner as part of Nick Parker’s overall organization. [00:02:40] Stephen Boyle: Um, but for most of 2025 we ran it as global systems integrators and advisories, ISVs and digital natives. So three separate footprints all focused entirely on, on, on enterprise. Um, in December, January, we talked about establishing an enterprise partner leader that would. You know, aggregate all of this stuff. [00:03:00] Stephen Boyle: Um, I was fortunate to come through, um, some frankly, pretty hairy, uh, experiences, I bet with some of our senior leaders. Um, I, I’ve loved to [00:03:08] Vince Menzione: been in the room for that [00:03:09] Stephen Boyle: questions like, why Steven Boyle and things like that, right? And really have to dig deep to, uh, to justify. Anyway, uh, I’m blessed and honored, uh, to run that entire portfolio of partners, uh, for the entirety of the enterprise partner world, which now from a chief revenue officer perspective, belongs to Deb. [00:03:25] Stephen Boyle: Deb Co. So Deb is the enterprise leader for all of our sales that we do into that space. Awesome. Um, I have three regional leaders, Nina Harding here in the United States, Ehab Ra in in Europe, and Heather Gordon in Asia that mirror and replicate and flow down the things that we decide to do from a strategy perspective for the, uh, for the core. [00:03:45] Vince Menzione: And we love Nina. She’s been, she was at our last event, [00:03:47] Stephen Boyle: super, super lady. And, uh, you know, the US is still 50% of our overall business. [00:03:53] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:03:53] Stephen Boyle: Too big to fabric. Every time I talk to Nina, I’m like, Nina, you’re too big to fail. We can’t cover you anywhere else. So you know, you’ve gotta be successful here in the Americas. [00:04:01] Vince Menzione: So I think just for breaking it up, I, ’cause I do want to like, it’ll lead to the next question, right? So you have the global systems integrators, all these systems integrators. Essentially you have all of the software companies we used to call ISVs, we now call SDCs or software development corporations. [00:04:17] Vince Menzione: And then you also have the AI stack, I’ll call it. Right? So under Jason Grafe. Yeah. Many, many might know. Jason’s been a guest on the podcast and was Satya’s chief of staff at one time, eight years. Eight years. Wow. I didn’t realize there was that many. [00:04:31] Stephen Boyle: Carry carried a lot of bags for Satya over the years. [00:04:34] Vince Menzione: Unbelievable. Well, let’s, I mean, so AI is an important component, right? And you saw Jay’s, Jay talking, just talking about AI and all these things. I would love to start here, right? Because, uh, you’re, you’re, I wanna get your perspective as Microsoft, your perspective as Microsoft on the biggest shifts you’re seeing in defining this we’ll call AI Frontier. [00:04:54] Vince Menzione: We’re seeing right now, how should partners translate that into how they position and go to market externally? How, how do we need to think about this time? [00:05:02] Stephen Boyle: Yeah, that is, uh, that is a huge question and I’m not sure we’ve got enough time to go into the, into all of the detail. Um, so let me sort of up level it a little bit for you. [00:05:10] Stephen Boyle: And I think, look, the move that we meet at made a couple of months ago and pulling together those three aspects. Nicole had already done it in SME and C. Right. One partner organization across the world with a very common set of goals. We were working closely together, Sandy Gupta, on ISV, Jason on ai, and myself on on si. [00:05:29] Stephen Boyle: But we were still working closely together across silos. So the opportunity for me, 60 days into this role is AI just allows you to wire the partner ecosystem together differently. Right? And even if you look at how we’re going to market an AI today, um. You know, with, with, with chat GPT, with Claude, with Anthropic, um, I think there’s something like 1100 different, you know, language models on Microsoft today. [00:05:55] Stephen Boyle: So the way I think about AI is we are absolutely gonna be the ultimate platform of platforms. Yeah, choice is incredibly important. Um. It’s, it’s, you know, turn the clock back 12 months, everybody was chat gpt five point x, you know, and then six months ago it was Gemini and now it seems to be clawed. And honestly I don’t know what it’s gonna be next quarter. [00:06:15] Stephen Boyle: So the only thing I can do is offer you choice. [00:06:18] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:18] Stephen Boyle: And from a partner perspective, I think that minimizes or reduces the risk that you have betting on the Microsoft platform because you can go in a multitude of different directions. I know we’re not in Europe, but if you were in Europe and you were worried about G-G-D-P-R and Jay mentioned sovereignty, you’d probably be like lining up really closely to Misra. [00:06:37] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. And a bunch of other Europe, European partners. So wherever you are in the globe, I wanna be that platform choice. Um, and we will lead with our own first party solutions. I hope they’re not coming for me. Um. I parked safely in the hotel. It can’t be me. Um, but you weren’t vibe coding in the room. Um, but you know, wherever you are in the world, in whichever industry you are in, um, it is our intent to, to offer that platform of platforms and to give the broadest set of partners the opportunity to engage with us. [00:07:07] Vince Menzione: I think that’s really important because I, I have found, especially in the last month or two, people are, it’s almost like a knee jerk. Don’t you feel like people don’t know what to do? There’s been so much noise in the press and the media and, and the markets around open AI and anthropic especially. Where do I go? [00:07:26] Vince Menzione: Seems to be like when I, when I sit, I watch everybody in the room here. I think they’re, they’ve all been thinking that as well. So you can, [00:07:31] Stephen Boyle: there’s a, a little bit of a deer in the headlights moment. Yes. And even I like, I get that. Yeah. Um, you know, I saw, uh, Jay slides. Jay, love the presentation. Love the slides, man. [00:07:40] Stephen Boyle: I’m gonna steal several of them. Um, we’ll talk about that later. We, we [00:07:43] Vince Menzione: have the deck, [00:07:45] Stephen Boyle: but, but in all seriousness, you know, this, this is like. It’s a new paradigm. I will date myself a little bit. Some of you might heard me say this. I sold many computers in the 1980s. Mini computers. Some of you in the room are going, what’s a mini computer? [00:07:59] Stephen Boyle: Um, I sold client server for Sun Microsystems in the nineties. I sold an awful lot of Oracle databases in the Auts, I think they’re called, and I’ve done two stints with Microsoft. This is the biggest, most transformative. Iterative change in technology we’ve ever seen. What, if you wanna call it a paradigm shift or whatever word comes after paradigm shift. [00:08:18] Stephen Boyle: Um, and we are building intelligent systems at scale faster than we’ve ever seen. Scalable, mission critical solutions being implemented today inside of Microsoft and with our most important customers. So, and we can’t do it without partners, right? There is absolutely nothing we can do in this industry. I will, I will put the, you know, the elephant in the room out there. [00:08:40] Stephen Boyle: Our ISD organization has between five and 7,000 people. Our forward deployed engineering organization is about a thousand people. [00:08:47] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:08:48] Stephen Boyle: So when you look at the scale of the total addressable market that Jay just talked about. We are gonna service directly like this much [00:08:55] Vince Menzione: used to be 5%. Was it even, is it even that high? [00:08:58] Stephen Boyle: I doubt it’s, I doubt it’s even that. And the billions of dollars that we spend every year helping our customers transform to what we’re now calling frontier firms is gonna be, have to be driven with every single person in this room in some way, shape, or form. Judson is not asking Marla to significantly increase ISD. [00:09:15] Stephen Boyle: Not asking John to significantly increase FDE, although we probably will hire in that area just because of the, the newness and the, you know, bright shiny object that everybody’s like, oh, FDE, I’ve gotta have those. We’ve got a thousand already today that have been around in John’s organization for 10 plus years doing the things that we are doing today. [00:09:32] Stephen Boyle: But we are gonna build out that muscle. But the real way we’re gonna build out that muscle is with all of you in this room. That’s like categorical. That is my like, probably number one goal for the next one to three years is make sure that, that story that Jay just told about Microsoft not being involved in AstraZeneca. [00:09:48] Stephen Boyle: I probably won’t tell Judson that Jay, but I love the story. Um, like if you could all do that for me, like win, um, that is so, you know, from our worldwide learning, through our skilling enablement through our cloud solution architects that I personally own. We are pivoting aggressively towards making sure that the partners understand our platforms better than any other job, number one for me right now, if you don’t understand what I’m selling, like I’m kind of dead in the water obviously. [00:10:15] Stephen Boyle: Well, [00:10:15] Vince Menzione: I was gonna ask you why now? Why Microsoft? Why now? Right? Because there is a lot of noise. You know, Google just announced, you all announced your results on the same day, which was astounding. That was freaky, wasn’t it? It was. It was the first time. And the, the total commitment, customer commitment is over a trillion dollars now, I think 1.2 trillion is what I counted up. [00:10:33] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. [00:10:34] Vince Menzione: But it’s saying a lot about like, what do I do now, like as these partners in the room. Um, how, I think you kind of already, and you’ve talked about this, about differentiating where Microsoft is, I think J Slide does a lot of justice there. It says how, uh, Microsoft Partners came into the room, surrounded the customer. [00:10:52] Vince Menzione: It feels like Microsoft has always leaned in big time on partners. Uh, more so I would say than any other organization out there. What would [00:10:59] Stephen Boyle: you say Joe Roses, my chief of staff, business manager and so many other things was telling me last night that, you know, we used to say 500,000 partners. [00:11:05] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:11:06] Stephen Boyle: it’s a, it’s a significantly higher number than that as well. [00:11:09] Stephen Boyle: So there’s an element of, you know, back to the deer in the headlights, which partners are, are more important. One of my other phrases that I say on a regular basis, the winners and losers are yet to be decided in this next wave. Like, I want all of us to on the right side of that argument. Right? But, but it’s gonna be a challenge and, and companies are going through shifts. [00:11:28] Stephen Boyle: You know, Accenture, maybe, possibly doesn’t need 750,000 employees in the not too distant future. Maybe TCS at 600,000 doesn’t need 600,000 human employees. So we’re going through this dramatic shift of, you know, what’s the right balance going forward. What I would say about Microsoft is notwithstanding the fact that we’ve figured this out for 51 years, which is a little bit mind blowing, um, that you know, all the way back in the seventies we’ve gone through so many iterative changes. [00:11:56] Stephen Boyle: People have questioned just like they’ve questions. A lot of other technology companies, are you gonna be around for the long haul? I think we’ve proven time and time again, and I love Jay’s story. I’ve used that myself about how many companies disappear on a, on a decade to decade, you know, business. 10 years ago I had the opportunity to listen to Craig Clayton Christensen, who’s sadly no longer with us. [00:12:15] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. But you know, the books that he wrote and the story that he told to Microsoft 2014, we were nowhere in cloud. [00:12:21] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:12:22] Stephen Boyle: AWS was so far ahead of us, it was crazy. And he came in and he’s like. You know what? You guys need to be successful. You need to figure out how to cross this chasm again, and we’ve done it time and time again. [00:12:32] Stephen Boyle: You can go back. You know, Microsoft used to be known as a fast follower in ai. I don’t think we’re a fast follower. I think we’re right up there. We’re right at the front, but that race is still being run and the winners are losers are yet to be decided. [00:12:44] Vince Menzione: I was in that room with Clayton Christensen with you, by the way. [00:12:46] Vince Menzione: I remember, I remember that. That was at a Prism conference. [00:12:49] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. Yeah. [00:12:50] Vince Menzione: You men, you touched on this with the GSIs a little bit. How do you see the roles evolving? You know, we, we, we bucketed all, we’ve always been. Fantastic about bucketing ISVs or SDCs and sis and digital natives. Yeah. How does it, how does that all come together? [00:13:06] Vince Menzione: Does it come together any differently in this new AI platform era, or is it the same? [00:13:11] Stephen Boyle: I look, I, I’ve said this for a long time, like if you go into AstraZeneca, the six plus, you know, frontline partners, there’s probably a whole board of second, third tier that, that we don’t know about doing, you know, things across the AstraZeneca group. [00:13:25] Stephen Boyle: It takes several villages and sometimes a small town, especially in my world, in the enterprise world, strategic five hundreds. Yeah. Um, you know, we, we ran some reports a few years ago and it is shocking how many global systems integrators have a footprint in Shell or Exxon or, you know, bank of America or whatever else. [00:13:44] Stephen Boyle: So I’ve always believed that partner to partner is critical. Yeah. I think it became even more critical in the, in the AI world, and I’ll take my new friends at Anthropic. So I went to the first Anthropic partner Summit. Some of you might have been down there in, in San Diego, um, just a couple of months ago. [00:13:59] Stephen Boyle: Same partners, same people from the same partners. In the room, you know, talking about what they’re gonna do together with Anthropic. Um, and I’m looking out across this audience going, okay, well I know him and I know her and I know those guys, and like, I need to figure out how I’m gonna weave this together. [00:14:14] Stephen Boyle: So it’s not just an Accenture and Anthropic or an NTT data and anthropic, but it’s an NTT data plus anthropic plus Microsoft. Story going forward. And then who’s best at delivering those services capabilities? So it’s it at every juncture that I see in the, in the partner community, and this is the, the reason why I argued vehemently with Nick, that it has to be one organization I’m gonna create maybe given a little bit away. [00:14:40] Stephen Boyle: So if you’re recording, stop now. Um, I’m gonna create an enablement organization that is partner agnostic. I don’t necessarily care. I do care about the digital natives, but I don’t care about how I train them. Right. What I’m more important of is how do I train the digital natives in what the sis are doing, and how do I train the sis and what the ISVs Plus digital Natives are doing. [00:15:01] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:15:01] Stephen Boyle: That is my, that’s my game plan. If I fail there, then I think we fail to raise the bar and be differentiated in an AI world, and I’m not set up like that today. [00:15:12] Vince Menzione: I wanna, I wanna ask you, uh, uh, because I was looking at Jay’s slide and the, the managed piece is. And we have a lot of managed service providers in this room today. [00:15:20] Vince Menzione: A lot of them, by the way, come from the old school of managed services. The managed piece seems to be like, if I’m doing something today with ai, we’re gonna talk about security next, uh, up on stage here. It seems like there’s a new set of skills or a different approach to the customer, don’t you? Don’t you agree? [00:15:37] Stephen Boyle: I I [00:15:37] Vince Menzione: think you need to keep your hands on the steering wheel at all [00:15:39] Stephen Boyle: times. I think what it boils down to is you can’t do AI unless you do certain other things. [00:15:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:15:44] Stephen Boyle: Right. You could be a modern work specialist and you could make a lot of money being a modern work specialist, or you could be a, a dynamic specialist. [00:15:52] Stephen Boyle: We just held our, uh, inner A in a circle conference last last week, which I was disappointed to miss for the first time in a few years. Those, those days are, are, are fast becoming over. [00:16:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:16:04] Stephen Boyle: Um, why? Because everything that I’ve just said is tied together by ai. Yes. And in order to do good ai, you need good data. [00:16:12] Stephen Boyle: And in order to trust everything that you’re getting, as Judson talks about trust and intelligence, you need to wrap that in a really secure [00:16:19] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:16:19] Stephen Boyle: You know, en en environment. Now we will do our best to provide levels of security into how we deliver ai. But that’s not the end of the game, right? You have to take it all, all the way to the edge. [00:16:30] Stephen Boyle: So that’s why a siloed partner or a singular commercial solution area partner in Microsoft’s terms, has got to transform its business. ’cause if you’re gonna do ai, you’ve gotta do those other things as well. [00:16:41] Vince Menzione: Agreed. I must see the model changing, and in fact, I see like bigger organizations becoming managed service providers in many respects. [00:16:48] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, there’s still, there’s still a role for all the old terminology you mentioned is SV to sdc. Yeah. I’m like, I’m been around long enough. Look, it’s ANB still anv, it’s still an isv. Thank you. Independent software vendor. Um, and it’s, you know, where, where AI is allowing software to be, you know, frankly developed in a number of different places. [00:17:07] Stephen Boyle: We are all citizen developers. Um, you know, I was on a call with our internal leadership yesterday, um, and you guys might have heard this story ’cause I think it came out at Ignite. When we turn the agent 365, around and on ourselves. We found 130,000 agents running across Microsoft that had been developed and deployed internally with, I mean, you could call it shadow it. [00:17:28] Stephen Boyle: I guess that would be one phrase that you would use for it, but the reality is if you, if you haven’t got something to do your job today, you have the tools. To build it really, really fast. Um, and that, you know, that’s, that’s a great opportunity for people to be able to do their work, you know, in a better and in a different way. [00:17:45] Stephen Boyle: But it’s also a huge opportunity to make sure that data governance and security and all the other things that we need to deliver are there out of, out of the gate and out of the platform that we deliver. So security’s absolutely critical. Not saying that managed services won’t grow, um, at, at some level as well, but only if they transform into this multifaceted way. [00:18:04] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. Thinking [00:18:05] Vince Menzione: about, well, that’s what I was, I was gonna lead to here with innovating. It’s happening across, I mean, we’re talking about chips, we’re talking about foundational models, LLMs, we’re talking about applications, we’re talking about agents. How should we think about where to play and how to differentiate as partners in this room? [00:18:22] Stephen Boyle: I think. [00:18:25] Stephen Boyle: So look, I mean, one, one of the ways that Judson talks about it is I think silicon’s gonna change over time. Yes. NVIDIA’s definitely the 800 pound gorilla, maybe the 8,000 pound gorilla. Yeah. Uh, but you know, if you read the press, there’s, there’s things happening in, in different places as first party silicon, which we clearly are, are developing, um, in a quantum direction for sure. [00:18:45] Stephen Boyle: Um, there’s lots of different language models that haven’t even been launched on, on, on the marketplace yet, so. You know, Judson’s trying to uplevel our conversations. You’ll hear us talking about conversations more and more as we go into FY 27, um, that obviate all of those layers. Just like even when I was selling Sun Microsystems, it was about the business outcome and the business solution that we were solving for not necessarily the fastest piece of hardware or the best client service solution on, on the market. [00:19:17] Stephen Boyle: So I think what’s gonna happen over the next 12 to 24 months is we’ll have so many different models to choose from. We’ll have more silicon to choose from, but those won’t be the real buying decisions. The real buying decisions of what? How am I trying to transform my finance organization, my HR organization, and my supply chain? [00:19:36] Stephen Boyle: Because the underlying technology, Judson says commodity I, I guess I can go with that. It will be commoditized and we’ll really start to focus back on what the important things are. We’re moving a lot from pilot to production. You guys have probably seen that. The numbers that Jay just showed about how many. [00:19:52] Stephen Boyle: Projects are failing, is getting less and less because we’re getting smarter and smarter about what it takes to actually drive the business outcome. And I need all of us to be talking that same language. Yeah. Having conversations with head of HR about how we’re gonna transform human capital management in the, in the age of agents, if you like, like the underlying platform. [00:20:14] Stephen Boyle: It’s not, don’t worry about it. You wanna be on a secure platform. Don’t get me wrong. But at the same time, I don’t think we, we spent too much time worrying about that. [00:20:21] Vince Menzione: Yeah. We’re not, what you’re saying is we’re not spending enough time on outcomes. On the business outcomes. Right. And that’s where we need to focus. [00:20:27] Vince Menzione: We’re, we’re focusing on, I, I feel like we’re, it’s a signal to, to noise ratio that we’re living through right now. There’s too much noise. [00:20:33] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. [00:20:34] Vince Menzione: And we’re not focusing on the signal. I think that’s what you’re saying. [00:20:36] Stephen Boyle: I, it’s got to be, I mean, to be honest with you, it’s always been, you know, even when I sold what I would perceive, you know, sun in the nineties was a rockman ship to the stars and, you know, kind of sad what happened to that company. [00:20:47] Stephen Boyle: Um, but we, we were, we were fixated on, we had the best client server. But, but nobody was buying, you know, a piece of Sun hardware as a room heater, which is all it did, you know, like for the longest. But if you had SAP, if you had Cybase, if you had Bond, remember Bond, I mean all of those applications that drove the business outcomes, we’ve gotta get back to that kind of mentality. [00:21:09] Stephen Boyle: Yes. And worrying a little bit less about the underlying architecture. Yeah. It needs to be, it needs to be part of the conversation. ’cause it needs to deliver trust and security and intelligence and everything else. Then you need to rapidly move to what are you trying to achieve and how can we ensure the, the, the success of, of your business outcome. [00:21:27] Stephen Boyle: And look, I mean, Palantir pri you know, sort of came out and said, well, the way we do that is through forward deployed engineering. Um, and they stole the show. And, and, you know, they’re, they’re doing very well as a result of doing that. Uh, but if you go and talk to, um, Tom Siebel’s organization at C3 ai. [00:21:43] Stephen Boyle: They’ve had FDS for quite a while. You know, I told you about John Chuchu 10 years ago. John Chu, Chuck’s job was to go and get all the applications that we needed on the Microsoft phone. Remember that? [00:21:54] Vince Menzione: Yes. Um, [00:21:55] Stephen Boyle: you know, so we’ve pivoted John o over the years to doing what he’s doing now, which is to go sometimes in partnership with, with partners into the customer and say, what is it you’re trying to achieve? [00:22:05] Stephen Boyle: Let me show you how I can build that for you in three weeks or three months. That might have taken you three years. We literally just did a hackathon with one partner last, last, last week with, uh, with our ISE organization, the, the, the forward deployed, uh, group that John runs. Um, and one of the big customers said, I’ve just done in three days what would’ve taken me three months. [00:22:26] Stephen Boyle: Now he hasn’t productized it and rolled it out and blah, blah, blah. But the reality is that is how fast things are changing. And this was not a small company. This was a very, very large oil company, and they were like blown away by how much we can achieve. We’ve gotta do that at scale. [00:22:41] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:22:42] Stephen Boyle: You know, we, we have a commitment to scale our FDE community through partnerships to touch all of the S 500 in a very personalized way. [00:22:51] Stephen Boyle: And then, you know, at a slightly, you know, lower ratios down through the, through the majors and into, into Nicole’s SME and C world as well. [00:22:59] Vince Menzione: Jay talks about the decade of the ecosystem. He coined that term back, back on a podcast way back in nine, in, uh, in 2020. Microsoft has been at the, for, we used to call partner to partner back, back in the day. [00:23:10] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Do you remember those days? How do you think about this ecosystem evolving and what steps are you taking to help bring these organizations together? Because I, I, again, we look at the seven seats or 6.3 seats at the table. The customer has the power now that they didn’t have before. ’cause they have the commitment with like with Microsoft and they can buy off of the marketplace and pull together multiple organizations to go, go do that. [00:23:34] Vince Menzione: How do you think about helping to orchestrate that as the leader of the enterprise partner business? [00:23:39] Stephen Boyle: So I’ll start with a really big example, and I’ll try and sort of scale it down a little bit. But my friends at Accenture, with the Accenture, Microsoft Business Group, we spend an awful lot of time, you know, in, in each other’s pockets, in each other’s deals. [00:23:51] Stephen Boyle: We know everything that’s going on in the Accenture, Microsoft Business Group. And a couple of weeks, or maybe a month or so ago, I was told that the Microsoft Business Group is now larger than the SAP Business group. It probably flip flops. [00:24:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:24:04] Stephen Boyle: it won’t be too long before the Anthropic Business Group is bigger than both of those. [00:24:08] Stephen Boyle: So what I need my Microsoft team to do is to not spend all of their lives in the. A MBG, the Azure, the Accenture, Microsoft Business group, but to go make friends in the Anthropic Accenture Business group and frankly still to make friends in the SAP business group and maybe in the Oracle Business Group and the list goes on. [00:24:27] Stephen Boyle: So at a macro 11, in the very largest accounts where we haven multiple practices, where we haven’t spent time before, I’m gonna. Push my people into uncomfortable zones and I’m gonna push them to go into those other areas and I’m gonna load them up with technical talent and cloud solution architects and ai, you know, forward deployed engineers. [00:24:45] Stephen Boyle: And I’m gonna force different people to talk together that haven’t talked together. So I can do that in TCS. I can do that, Capgemini, I can do that. Um, you know, in Europe with Capgemini and Misra is a classic example. Um, with the, with the Indian sis, Indian based sis, they’re all big enough where I know all the practices exist. [00:25:04] Stephen Boyle: I just need to do a better job of, of talking to them. Now, when you downsize that into, you know, into a, a company that doesn’t have all of that scale, this the same truth still holds. I need to talk to people who aren’t necessarily motivated every single day to do something with Microsoft. I need to talk to people who are motivated to do something with an AI partner or even a traditional SaaS partner. [00:25:27] Stephen Boyle: I noticed yesterday, actually no, this morning I got a notification that we just passed, um, a billion dollars in revenue on the marketplace with ServiceNow. [00:25:35] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:25:36] Stephen Boyle: Um, and I think AWS announced the same thing, by the way this month as well. Um, so thank you to the ServiceNow people. Yeah. Um, you know, that is that there’s a tremendous demonstration of how far we’ve come in marketplace. [00:25:48] Stephen Boyle: ’cause that’s another one where we trailed AWS quite significantly. But with the right partnerships. And driving the right motions, we can, you know, we can definitely catch up and we will continue to pass, uh, some of, some of the other hyperscalers in, in, in that way. So really the bottom line to your question is partner to partner is still real. [00:26:08] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:26:08] Stephen Boyle: how we do it and what we use to tie things together. And I know that compensation drives behavior and we’re not gonna get into a compensation about like how we get compensated and everything else, but the reality is I’ve gotta break down those barriers and those silos and I’ve gotta deliver real meaningful enablement and practice development so that, so that the people who sit in the Anthropic business group and the people who sit in the Microsoft Business Group are spending as much time together as they are with me. [00:26:34] Stephen Boyle: That makes sense. Simply put, that’s what I, I need to achieve at scale rapidly. [00:26:40] Vince Menzione: So to, we’re getting close to time here, but as you look forward, what would define the most successful partnerships in this ecosystem? Is it, is it what you described, the opening up the aperture or for the, for the leaders in the room here today, what should they go do better and differently? [00:26:58] Stephen Boyle: Um, so obviously we’re closing out this fiscal, we’ve got Microsoft start and Microsoft start for partners coming up in July. Um, I mentioned the fact that we’re, we’re driving. Cu customer engagement through the lens of conversations and how do we achieve business outcomes? I would encourage you to, to gravitate, if you like, above the commercial solution areas where you might have understood, this is how I interact with Microsoft today. [00:27:23] Stephen Boyle: Um, and abstract it up to that AI layer. You know, think about trust, think about intelligence, think about business outcomes, and how do I potentially weave together a story? If I’m in the dynamic space, how do I get better in data? If I’m in the data space, how do I get better in. In that modern work environment, but really use AI as the overlay to, to help tie that together. [00:27:44] Stephen Boyle: That’s one thing. The second thing is if we’re not training you in the right direction, it’s stevenBoyle@microsoft.com. Let me know. Awesome. Um, we’ve got programmatic stuff, um, you know, and we’ve got high touch stuff as well. So I think this is, this is another time where Microsoft is gonna over pivot on all of the training and enablement that we need to do to make sure that you’re, you know, you’re grounded in our platform. [00:28:07] Stephen Boyle: Um, I think there’s a huge opportunity with this agenda future to become more of a software partner. You know, even the deepest services organizations are going to need agents, and the more successful ones will be the ones that can turn on those agents in a repeatable way. So. Our agents, the new SaaS. I’m not exactly saying that, but I think that the agen future is one where even the more services oriented companies will, will have teams of agents that they’re deploying. [00:28:35] Stephen Boyle: In fact, I had a very, very large systems integrator, um, in, in the EBC just about a month ago, three weeks ago. Um, and I was sat next to their head of consulting and he showed me what he called his God dashboard. Uh, and right in the middle of his God dashboard there are like 450 accounts. All of whom I recognized, ’cause they were all in the enterprise, right in the middle of his dashboard was, how many tokens am I spending? [00:29:00] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:29:01] Stephen Boyle: Like, not like what’s my daily runway? You know, not am I making a profit on that account or anything else like that is like, how many tokens have I consumed? Yeah. Because there is an awful lot of, that is the new juice, if you like. That’s, that’s driving the success. You can have the smartest people on the planet, but you’ve got to still arm them with all the best tools that are available out there. [00:29:22] Stephen Boyle: So it’s fascinating to listen to him, how he had gone through that thing of, you know, agent sprawl, how many are really working, how many are not working? How can we prove that? You can prove it through, you know, managing your tokens. There’s a new version of. Finops for tokens, for want of a better phrase, that’s gonna be critical for us all to understand. [00:29:40] Stephen Boyle: ’cause they’re not cheap, they’re not free, that’s for sure. And, and they might not be cheap if you’re not, if you’re not managing them and using them effectively. Yeah. So that’s the other thing that I would really get on top of. And, you know, we’re gonna make some announcements in the not too distant future about the consumption driven future. [00:29:56] Stephen Boyle: Um, that, that we will, that we will deliver with our first party and third party platforms going forward. So that’s another. Another critical thing [00:30:03] Vince Menzione: sounds like some exciting announcements. Pretty soon. [00:30:06] Stephen Boyle: Yeah, could look close. Quarter four, help me close. Quarter four. Yes. That’s priority number one, two, and three right now. [00:30:12] Stephen Boyle: Uh, but get ready for some, you know, for some new announcements in July. Um, look, the future is incredibly bright with Microsoft. It’s incredibly bright in the industry as a whole, right? I mean, let, let’s be honest, the, the growth targets that we will have for ne next year are astronomical, and we will not make them without the partner community that we have, without training and enabling the partner community that we need for tomorrow. [00:30:34] Stephen Boyle: So like, stay close, you know, stay engaged. Talk to your partner development managers, talk to the talk to field reps, talk to the accounts that that, that you are in, and stay as close as you possibly can to our emerging strategy. And, um, you know, look, I, I think if I had fivefold or tenfold the people I have today, I still wouldn’t be able to touch everybody that I would like to touch in the partner community. [00:30:58] Stephen Boyle: So I’ll apologize in advance. Um, but we’re gonna have some, you know, some really cool ways of learning. Um, and we’re gonna make sure that they’re available to the widest possible audience. [00:31:07] Vince Menzione: Well, we bring the practitioners and the experts in the room to help with that as well. Right? Yeah. Because you can’t always have a partner development manager tied to everybody in the room. [00:31:14] Stephen Boyle: I, I would do hackathons on AI every week with every partner and every part of the world, but I can’t. [00:31:19] Vince Menzione: Yeah, exactly. Well, so good to have you today. Thank you. So good to see you again. I don’t know what your schedule is like. I, we didn’t, we don’t have enough time for questions. [00:31:28] Stephen Boyle: That’s cool. [00:31:28] Vince Menzione: From the audience. [00:31:29] Stephen Boyle: I’m gonna stay around for a little [00:31:30] Vince Menzione: while this [00:31:30] Stephen Boyle: morning and I’m coming back [00:31:31] Vince Menzione: for cocktails. Alright, terrific. So. Stephen Boyle will be here for cocktail hour. Thank you. Four 30 and uh, I wanna thank you, sir. So good to have you. Thank you. Good to see you. Absolutely. [00:31:42] Stephen Boyle: So much. Absolutely. Hey, thanks everybody. [00:31:43] Stephen Boyle: Thanks for what you do today, and hopefully thank you for what you do tomorrow as well. [00:31:46] Vince Menzione: Thank you. An incredible leader. [00:31:49] Stephen Boyle: Don’t forget, ultimate [00:31:51] Vince Menzione: partner Alive is coming soon, June 18th at our executive breakfast in New York. I hope to see you there.Description The Future of Tech is Here. Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ I

Hello everyone! In light of the tragedies facing the world and America today, I found it timely to bring this talk to teachers. I don't believe there has ever been a time in modern history when our students need to be doing what matters most—exploring their thoughts and reflecting on the ideas, experiences, and lives of others. With the murder of George Floyd giving rise to Black Lives Matter protests across the globe, and an unprecedented pandemic changing everything about modern life, we need to become better teachers NOW. To help give us the tools to empower students in such a way, I brought on my friend Travis Crowder to discuss his approach to reading workshop, and more specifically, his use of journals as tools for student reflection. If you missed part one, check it out here.  If you've ever struggled with keeping a journal or binder neat (or useful), or wondered if there was a better way to get kids invested in their reading, this is the podcast for you.  Travis Crowder is the co-author of Sparks in the Dark, and his latest book, Reflective Readers is out now (and it is FANTASTIC.) This episode originally appeared as #167.

"McElroy & Cubelic In The Morning" airs 7am-10am weekdays on WJOX-94.5!!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The tenth installment of Fresh Immigrants, Rotten Fascists introduces us to the Gangoli family - first generation Indian immigrants to America. Familiar faces Irrfan Khan and Tabu play the parents, but the big marketing angle was Kal Penn's dramatic turn as their son, he of the multiple names throughout the movie. THE NAMESAKE, based on a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri, directed by Mira Nair, was certainly an important step in Penn branching out from his Harold and Kumar persona, but it's also a gentle, heartfelt portrayal of what it's like to have two homelands.Thank you for checking this new project out, whether you are a long-time Contrarians fan or someone who's just trying to listen to people talking positively about immigrants and negatively about fascism. If you have any recommendations for future entries in the series, let us know!Many thanks to the amazing Jordan Cooper for composing our intro and outro. Fantastic collaborator to work with - and he has a They Might Be Giants podcast: DON'T LET'S START. You can also check out Jordan's band TROUBLE'S AFOOT on Bandcamp!- Interested in more Contrarians goodness? Join THE CONTRARIANS SUPPLEMENTS on our Patreon Page! Deleted clips, extended plugs, bonus episodes free from the Tomatometer shackles… It's everything a Contrarians devotee would want!- Our YouTube page is live! Get some visual Contrarians delight with our Contrarians Warm-Ups and other fun videos!- Our buddy Cory Ahre is being kind enough to lend a hand with the editing of some of our videos. If you like his style, wait until you see what he does over on his YouTube Channel.- THE LATE NIGHT GRIN isn't just a show about wrestling: it's a brand, a lifestyle. And they're very supportive of our Contrarian endeavors, so we'd like to return the favor. Check out their YouTube Channel! You might even spot Alex there from time to time.- Hans Rothgiesser, the man behind our logo, can be reached at @mildemoniospe on Instagram or you can email him at mildemonios@hotmail.com in case you ever need a logo (or comics) produced. And you can listen to him talk about economy on his new TV show, VALOR AGREGADO. Aaaaand you can also check out all the stuff he's written on his own website. He has a new book: a sort of Economics For Dummies called MARGINAL. Ask him about it!

"McElroy & Cubelic In The Morning" airs 7am-10am weekdays on WJOX-94.5!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome back to the archive. In this special dual transmission, we turn our forensic radar toward a tiny, sun-bleached rock sitting in the literal centre of the Mediterranean Sea: the island of Malta.Built entirely out of soft, honey-coloured Globigerina limestone, Malta's hyper-dense historic cities are marvels of defensive architecture. In a space so profoundly compressed, where secrets are supposed to be impossible to keep, two completely different killers attempted to use the physical environment to construct the perfect cryptographic mystery.This week, we open two distinct historical drawers to execute a parallel forensic audit, proving that no matter how deep the water or how thick the limestone walls, the material signature of a crime can never be completely erased from the ledger.The Case Files Act I: The Marsamxett Harbor Torso Murder (1955) We descend into the post-WWII soot, coal grime, and severe economic desperation of the Valletta dockyards. When local fishermen haul up waterlogged burlap sacks from the silent depths of Marsamxett Harbour, they discover the cleanly dismembered torso of a missing dockyard clerk. The head and hands are entirely missing—a calculated tactical void designed to strip the victim of his biological identity. We trace the parallel micro-grooves of an industrial bone saw, a rare maritime double-hitch knot, and a single, crumpled scrap of local newspaper caught in a printing-press registration error that collapsed the dragnet directly onto a brutal domestic conspiracy.WHO was killed, and WHO killed them?? Act II: The Strait Street Locked-Room Inquest (1843) We slide the chronological grid back more than a century, climbing the steep stone steps into the dark, elite world of faded aristocracy along the infamous, vice-ridden corridor of Strada Stretta. A wealthy noblewoman is found smothered in her grand four-poster bed. The room is an airtight box: windows barred from within, the heavy oak door locked from the inside, and the key still resting firmly in the interior cylinder. Across the room, her private safe sits completely gutted. This wasn't a supernatural evasion—it was a masterful, low-fidelity mechanical deception. We dissect the material relics that unravelled the plot: an English gold pocket watch intentionally fractured to freeze the time at 3:14 AM, microscopic traces of white beeswax left deep inside a lock, and a simple silk thread trick that shattered an ironclad alibi.How....on earth did the key to the lock....remain stuck on the inside of the door opposed to the outside? In This Episode, We Explore: How hyper-compressed living spaces dictate the logistics of criminal concealment. The mechanical signatures left by industrial tools on bone structure. The physics of the classic "silk thread" locked-room exploit. How microscopic anomalies in everyday objects—from ink alignment to fractured brass gears—become permanent investigative anchors. Thank you so much for your support as always legend and have a FANTASTIC week ahead mates!!!

Hello everyone! In light of the tragedies facing the world and America today, I found it timely to bring this talk to teachers. I don't believe there has ever been a time in modern history when our students need to be doing what matters most—exploring their thoughts and reflecting on the ideas, experiences, and lives of others. To help give us the tools to empower students in such a way, I brought on my friend Travis Crowder to discuss his approach to reading workshop, and more specifically, his use of journals as tools for student reflection. If you've ever struggled with keeping a journal or binder neat (or useful), or wondered if there was a better way to get kids invested in their reading, this is the podcast for you.  Travis Crowder is the co-author of Sparks in the Dark, and his latest book, Reflective Readers is out now (and it is FANTASTIC.) This episode originally appeared as episode #166.  

Standing out as a dental practice is easier than you might think — and thank goodness for that! Kiera gives three steps to find what makes you and your practice unique even when you feel like you're as vanilla as can be. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I hope you're having an amazing day. I am so excited to podcast with you. I get so giddy when I know it's podcasting day and I literally can't sleep at night. I get so excited for the next day and I just really want to make sure that what I'm delivering for you and all the different podcasts are exactly what you need because I do believe that my job in this world is to positively impact the world of dentistry and give you quick tactical tips that are going to change your life, change your practice and make you   Remember why you chose dentistry. Dentistry should be fun, you guys. Owning a practice should be fun. And I know that it's not always going to be fun. I've accepted as a business owner, there's highs and lows, and that's just the flavor of business ownership that we sign up for. And so today I wanted to just give some quick tactical tips because I feel like so many of us are trying to figure out how can we stand out as dental practices without it being just about cost. There's so much more because we talk about marketing and you guys know my Achilles heel is marketing. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.   ⁓ But it's really truly how can you be your own brand, your own fragrance, your own style, and yet still attract the patients that you want. And I think it's actually easier than you might think because we help practices all the time stand out for who you want. And what I found is the number one most important thing when you're looking at your practice is be true to who you are. I remember I was reading the book Traction.   by Gina Wickman, guys know, shout out. I'm a big proponent of that book. do a lot of Dental A Team's version of traction. We have traction within Dental A Team. And, I remember at end of the book, they were talking about how, like, know thyself and be free as a visionary. And, ⁓ if that's who you are or you're an integrator, like know thyself and be free. And I think when it comes to your own practice, know thyself and be free and make sure it's what people want. And then make sure you're talking to those people. I think about, have some friends that are.   are very into nature and them getting on the podcast, I'm probably not going to attract the same type of people that I attract. I want people that are driven, growth minded, entrepreneurs, people that are seeking that next level, people that want to have fun in life. That's who Kirita is and that's my style. That's my brand. And I remember when I started Dental A Team, I had some people tell me that, Kirita, there's absolutely no way you're going to be able to impact everybody across the nation and that's not going to work for you as a consultant. And I am so grateful and thankful that I stuck true to my gut.   I struck two to who Kiera Dent is. And while at the same time I can say true to Kiera, I need to also know what the market's asking for. If I'm just here to talk kumbaya with you, I'm probably going to attract a different crowd. But the people who want to be with Kiera, who want to be a part of Dental A Team, it's crazy. At the masterminds, I look at our doctors and our office managers and they are very similar to who I am and who I am on the podcast. So if that resonates with you, come be a part of our community.   you can reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com or go to our website, book a call. I'd love to chat with you. And I do still vet a lot of the people coming into our company. And, ⁓ I want to make sure that you're a good match for us. And so I think when I'm looking at what can you do to stand out within your own practice and how can you compete? It's who are you and what makes you different. And if you don't know, go read your reviews, go read the Google reviews, go read to see. And if you read dental, interviews, they always talk about that. They're fun, that they're positive, that they changed my life, that they make dentistry so simple.   That is Kiera Dent to the core. wanted to be the Dr. Seuss of systems. I wanted to make doctors and teams have easy profitability without it being hard. And so when I look at the reviews, that is true core to Kiera. So I want you to say who's true core to you. ⁓ And a good way to do this is to go back to what your core actually is. So go back to what the core values are. Why did you even start the company? When I go back and I look at Kiera Dent, like what were my three core fundamentals? You can ask Tiff this was the beginning of day one. Like it was fun, do the right thing and ease.   from the beginning of time, it's always been what I've said. I said, if we're not having fun, I don't wanna do this. Like truly, it's a hobby for me, it's a good time. And now we've created into an incredible business. Do the right thing always. Like do the right thing for the customer, do the right thing for our team, do the right thing for our clients. Like that is what I want you to do. And I'm not gonna sit here and give you a rules of do the right thing. Like as a core individual, you need to have that to your core. To me, it's a, we over deliver. We always come to the table. Like I want you just to do the right thing. And that needs to be a moral compass for you.   And then ease, I don't need people who make it clunky hard, all the different pieces, I need you to make it easy. And that's been my model since the beginning of time, I wanted everything to be easy, do the right thing and fun. That's Kiera's core, that's who I am. And so for you to go back and it's core values versus aspirational values. And so I really want you to look at what are the core of your company? And is that fulfilling?   I remember there's dental office I opened, me and the doctor, her core was very edgy. would say edgy is probably one of our core values of that company. We were listening to Drake at six in the morning. Like that was our core and we wanted it to be this edgy vibe. were in downtown Denver. That's what we did and it attracted the right type of people. Now my parents, if they walked into that dental practice, there is absolutely no way in their right mind that they would want to stay there. But a lot of people in downtown Denver, we knew our avatar, we knew who we wanted. So we were going to attract that. So I really want you just to think of like,   How can you stand out? How can you make sure that this practice feels like home to you? So step one is go back to your core of why did you even start this business? And let's make sure that that's really incorporated in everything you do. Number two, I want you to really make sure that who you are fundamentally is what you're branding and what you're speaking to. ⁓ And then make sure the third thing is you look to see what do patients really want and what are they valuing? So.   I think so many practices, the reason you get lost in the mix is because you've just got standard marketing across the board. says like, we care about our patients. We have the exact same services listed. We've got generic online presence. There's nothing that identifies or differentiates you. There's a practice in California that I really love. And she said like, we love ⁓ changing the way people feel about going to the dentist. And I have another dentist who their tagline is to be the community, the, like the dentist that the community chooses.   ⁓ And I have another office that's like to change the way people feel about going to the dentist. And another one is to just be your foodie dentist. Those people, you guys, I didn't even pull up my notes. didn't look at it before I got on the podcast. Those are ones that I can just rift, repeat, remember because they stand out to me. They're not just generic marketing. And so for you, what is it that makes you stand out? I've got a doctor and he called it, ⁓ I think it's called Empower Dentistry.   ⁓ and I love that because his whole model is like empowering patients to be confident about their health, to be confident about their decision-making and really spend a lot of time educating his patients. So for you, like, what is that one thing for Kiera? You guys, I'm the Dr. Seuss of dentistry. I have a good time. have a lot of fun. I am not your standard consulting company. We do things very different at Dental A Team. I want people, we get the same type of results, if not better.   But we do it in Kiera Dent's way. We do it in a fun way. We do it in a way that makes team members happy. Our job is to light people up. Life's my passion, dentistry is my platform. That's Kiera Dent. And if that doesn't resonate you, then you're not gonna be listening to the podcast. But if it does resonate with you and you're like, yeah, I wanna have the best life and I wanna have team that's lit up and I wanna do it in an easy way, not a hard way. You guys, I'm not cookie cutter. If you want standard scripts on how we do X, Y, we have them, but that's not gonna be where I'm going to lead from. We're gonna lead from what's your vision and your practice to what did the numbers tell us? Then we're gonna implement systems based on that information.   That's how we operate. Most people are like, Hey, you want systems? Fantastic. Here are your systems. And I'm like, no, why am I coming in and giving teams more work? Like nobody wants that. What we want is what's the vision of the practice? What are the numbers tell us? Let's put systems into place that way. Again, it's all boiling it down to that ease, that simplicity that's going to guarantee results. So what is your clear differentiator? What's your clear identifier? And so when we have it, like, I don't want to be Chick-fil-A McDonald's.   like competing across the board. I want something that's going to make you resonate. I've got holistic dentists and it's like full comprehensive health for their patients is what they want them to have total wellness of health. And you might say like, but Kiera, I'm just like, like, I just do dentistry. I just want to do dentistry and I'm very vanilla. Like there is nothing that stands out about me. I do bread and butter dentistry. It's very simple. Well, I'll say vanilla is very great ice cream that a lot of people like.   How can we make your vanilla ice cream better than the next person's vanilla ice cream? So I just wanna highlight that no matter what you do, there is something that's your special sauce. There is something special and unique about you and your practice that's going to drive and resonate with other people. There's billions of people on the planet. You don't need all of them. You just need your core crew of people that want to come to you as a practice. So I would say, what is it of, how are you going to make sure people stand out to you?   and looking back at your core values, looking back to why, what makes you, you go look at the reviews and make sure does that speak? And if it does, amazing, keep doing more of that. And if it doesn't, let's change that and revamp it a little bit so that way you do feel like it's home. I have had so many offices try to be something they're not, they're like, well, Kiera, everyone says I need to be on social media and I don't like it. Then don't do it. Like you can be at home, you can be there, you can still like.   I am the silent dentist. Like don't like social media. Great. You're going to probably find people that don't like social media. So let's do flyers and mailers and other things that could attract people in. ⁓ Or find a team member that really is great at it so you don't have to do it. For me, you've got to show up a couple of times. That's part of being a business owner and I don't love it, but I'm going to be true to Kiera. You're going to be true to you. Be true to you because the thing is I want you to just feel like you're at home. When I get on the podcast, I get to just be Kiera.   This is Kiera unfiltered. It's funny when people get on our practice assessment calls or like wanting to work with us calls and we're assessing to see, are you a good fit for us and are we a good fit for you? I'm sitting in my studio. Like what you guys see is where I work every single day. The microphone, I don't usually talk to people on a microphone, but I will pull it on over so people can see it. Like I'm just Kiera. This is who you get. I'm real raw. Someone asked me a very personal question on a sales call the other day and I was like, you know what?   I am so grateful that you feel so comfortable to be able to ask me those questions. I'm Kiera. This is who I am. I always want people to feel like I'm just Kiera Dent from the block. Like I'm your next door neighbor. I'm the person who's not here to judge you. I'm here to give you a hand up. I'm not here to slap your hand, tell you you should have known that because you're a dentist. That's what I want people to feel. So I think it's a what's your core. And then also the second piece is what do you want people to feel when they come to your practice? Because that's going to help them laser in with you way more than anything else.   So looking at those core values, how do you want them to feel? For me, it is a no judgment zone in Dental A Team. Our whole team knows this. You like nobody should ever, like I will not hire people that are snooty tooty attitudey. Like I'm just not here for that. That's not our culture. That's not our brand. That's not who we are. Our brand and our style is very much a come as you are, we love you we're gonna take you to your goal, your vision. I'm not here for everybody to get to the DSO world. I want you to live your best life. Your practice should serve you your needs in your life, not the other way around. But I will tell you,   I did not have that refined on day one of opening this company. That has come over time of what do I want dentists to feel? What are people saying? What is it that sets me apart from other people? And I do believe that your practice and how you stand out is not a one and done check it off the box. My core, one and done. And as long as I don't deviate from that, I'm probably gonna be pretty solid. The second thing is who we are and our fundamentals, those have not changed. But how I talk to people, what I want people to feel when they come to our company.   That's morphed and evolved. It's always been a no judgment zone, but I think it's become more and more and I market that more and more and I want people to just feel safe. I want people to feel seen. I want people to feel heard. I realize as business owners, myself included, as I morphed and evolved, gosh, that's something I wanted. You could start to listen in to what your patients say. Why do they choose you? And you might even have people that you trust a lot. I have asked certain people like, why did you choose Dental A Team over somebody else? 95 % of the time it's because we don't judge. We aren't cookie cutter.   and we actually have been there, done that and do it successfully and we bring the team along. Those are typically the reasons people choose our company over someone else. And I always get energy, always. So I care, we love your energy. And I'm like, great. So they like a good time. They want somebody who's fun. That's my core value. So yeah, like we're getting it. But listen to why people are choosing you. Maybe it's the Google reviews. Maybe it's because you are the holistic dentist in your area. Maybe it's because all their friends and family trust you. Listen to that and brand with that.   People will tell you if you will listen why they choose you, why you're the best in their opinion. And if that's your favorite patient, do more of that. That's how you're going to stand out. Again, you're not going for the billing and you're going for your niche community of people that want to come to you. ⁓ I know I've got a pediatric dentist. He's so popular, like one of the top of the top of the top and he's just himself and he shares his real life. Some of you may be like, that's not me. Again.   You've got to do your differentiator based on who you are. If you're not loud and outlandish, don't be that online because they're going to come in and be like, it was a bait and switch. Like, wow, this person's dead in the water when I show up. Or if you're like dead in the water, but you're super outlandish in the practice, they might feel like, wow, that's very different. You need to have it where you guys are synced in. People feel like they can understand. People feel like they're on the same page with you. It feels the same. Like that's what branding is. This is how you differentiate is what our presence is online is who we are in person.   And so I would just say, take an exercise today. Go through and figure out what on earth do we need to do to stand out in our crowd? Number one, what's our core value? What do we stand for? Who's the core? What is the core of who we are? Number two, what do we people to feel? Read our reviews, how do we want them to feel? And then number three, how can I do more of that and has it evolved over time? Those would be like quick, simple three steps, but make sure online presence matches in-person presence. In-person presence matches online presence. Our online presence is fun.   There's dots, there's confetti, there's smiling, laughing people. That's not just pictures. When you're in an office, you're laughing your freaking head off. It's hilarious. We're having a good time because teams don't want to do hard. Teams don't want to have a non-fun. Why do I make the podcast? Yes, for a lot of value for you, but also for you to have your teams experience this before they even work with us. How can you test drive the car without test driving the car? Well, here's a great way to do it. How can people test drive your practice without doing it?   How can they say, my gosh, of all the dentists out there, I wanna work with you. And then I'm gonna say this, and I know this is annoying and I'm sorry, but this is another piece that you're gonna stand out and it's through your Google reviews. You've gotta be kicking it over there. If you need, talk to Swell. Swell.co, I think is their website. Tell them Dental A Team sent you, get the best deal. Zeke and I have known each other for eight years and he has never changed the pricing on the people I refer to him, which thank you, Zeke. Shout out to you. Swell is the best one I've ever met. I know there's a ton of them out there. I have like vetted all of them. Best of the best of the best.   So if you want a great one, like you've got to also be the best. And so I just did this with a team the other day ⁓ and I had all of them go leave reviews. I had all of them practice asking for reviews. And I taught them like, you can be the best dentist, but if you're not the best marketed dentist online, no one's gonna find you. And imagine me with my picket fence out there, like picketing, like save the teeth. If you're the best dentist in the best dental office, you have a moral obligation to save those teeth. People only have 28.   Some might have 32, but most of us only have 28. And we only have one shot at that. And I believe that people deserve the best of the best. So you also have an obligation to get those reviews up, to ask your patients to leave your reviews, but that's gonna tell you how you stand out. Please also make sure you have fun. Do things that light you up. Marketing is like, my gosh, it's my least favorite thing to do. But I realized, Kiera being Kiera and just showcasing that is marketing.   And I can have a truckload of fun with you guys on here. I can have a great time on the podcast. I can share all my wildest things. I can talk to you about whatever I want to talk to you about. And you can get to know Kiera, real Kiera. You can get to know Kiera Dent from the block. And that's where I realized like, this is fun for me. Now me going and making dumb social reels. Sorry, all you that love it. I'm not trying to diss on you at all. That's not a diss. I just absolutely loathe it. Like I would rather sit here and talk to you and give you like tactical tips than I would like making up a funny meme.   I'm a freaking hilarious human, but I don't like staged humor and I don't have a great marketer next to me and it just feels hard. That's not something that I'm like, yay, marketing day. Now if I had a marketer who lived next door to me and they're like, hey, I got seven ideas for you, let's roll. I would freaking love it. But make sure it's something that you jive and enjoy. And if you don't love it and then people are gonna feel it. Now, that doesn't mean it's uncomfortable. You gotta get out of your comfort zone. But if you absolutely loathe something, you guys like, I...   You have a marketer who did this and I felt like an idiot. I'm not good at remembering how to say things and being on script. Like I feel so dumb and so uncomfortable that I'd rather sit there and have you rift with me, like ask me questions like top, top dental softwares, top AI softwares, top practices, how they perform. What are the top five things that the most elite leaders do? I would rather do that. It's the same thing. I can still create reels, but they're conversations and topics that I know you guys want to hear. And I know you're going to have a good time hearing.   and I know I can give you amazing value without you ever working with me. That's Kiera Dent's MO. So what's your MO? What drives you? And if you need a minute, go take like two hours at a Starbucks, figure out what your core values are. What do you want people to feel when they come to your practice? And then look to see what is the core? What are the things that light you up? Again, maybe that you're not perfect at. I love to give tactical practical. And like I said, that morphed over time. What do I people to feel has morphed over time. So maybe do a revamp. See how can we stand out a little bit stronger?   and then ride it guys. Trust it, own it, embrace it, because the more confident you are in it, people are buying your confidence, they're not buying you. The reason people come to Dental A Team is because when I got on the podcast, you guys, I've been there, I've done it, I've seen it all, like you probably can't tell me something. I would love somebody to challenge me, bring me something I haven't ever heard before. But I have so much confidence that no matter which practice you are, where you're at, I know ways to turn your life around and your practice around and do it very quickly and easily.   I'm that confident. That's what you're buying. You're buying my 10 years of being on the freaking road going into 500 plus offices. That's why people sign up with Dental 18 plus they love our energy. Yeah, I'm a good time. So let's do it fun and let's share all that experience. Why are people signing up with you? What is the confidence you have? Are you the best at doing those fillings? Are you the best at doing those crowns? Highlight that, get excited about it. People are buying your confidence and the more confident you can be through your reviews, through your online presence, the more they're going to spy you. It's not their dentistry they're buying.   It's the confidence in you and your team. And if you can remember that, you will stand out of a crowd all day long. So I feel like I usually can do a quick wrap for you and like, here's the five things for you to take. Today, it's not, it's a rift. It's a, here are the ways that I see people stand out. Here are the ways that I've been able to stand out. Here's the ways that we've been able to change things for you. But I really feel like standing out is not about doing more. It's about doing the right thing that lights you up consistently. Getting on the podcast, do you know how many episodes I've recorded?   Do know how many times I pushed play over here and said, all right, let's go? Consistency can out deliver flash in the pan. I have been doing this for seven years now. Seven years we've been talking together. Seven years we've been hanging out. Almost 10 years I've been traveling to offices. That's consistency guys. And doing consistency, doing the right things consistently. It's not about doing more.   I didn't ratchet up our podcast amount, doing the same amount since the beginning of time, and that's still a lot. ⁓ But I think for you to stay consistent, speak your truth, people will come to you, I promise you. Don't think it's about doing more. Don't think it's about that. Just being aligned so where people can feel your true authenticity and your genuine love, people will buy that all day long. We're in a world inundated with noise and starving for wisdom.   Be that different voice, whatever yours is. And if we can help you in any way, if I can be your cheerleader, if our team can like help you see the goodness in you, because sometimes it's hard to see the goodness in you. We do this with offices, we help them out. I've got a doctor right now in California and we're helping her see like how she's fantastic to drive more patients to her practice. So reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Be proud of yourself. There are people that need you specifically. Not everybody wants you, not everybody wants Dental A Team, but the people who really do that resonate.   They're going to find me and my voice. why I ask you guys to share because you're listening. Please share with other people just like you because odds are if you like me, your friends are going to like me and we're going to be able to help them change the world of dentistry. Same thing. If your patients like you, odds are they've got friends and family that are going to love you as well. Ask them. Don't be afraid to get the reviews from them. And for all of you, I'm asking you today, if you love the podcast, leave us a Google review. Go leave me a review share because I need more people like you listening to this podcast.   I am on a mission to impact every single dental practice out there and to positively impact them and to change the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. And I can't do that alone. I need you to share. So share and ask your patients to do the same, but it's very hard for you to ask somebody when you haven't done it yourself. So if you've never left a Google review or it's been a while, go leave Dental A Team at Google review. We'll put it in the show notes. It's very easy for you. ⁓ and the second thing I would ask is share us with somebody, share the podcast with somebody today, share this episode with somebody shared in a Facebook group.   because you're gonna get more confidence and have your team do the same thing. You can have them listen to this episode, share with people, leave a review. I had an office, 10 people left me a review that day because they were having a hard time and feeling disingenuous asking for reviews. Get people comfortable, get people confident and they'll do it more often, same thing with you. And I'm a very easy person. Leave me a great review. You love the podcast, you're clearly giving your time to me. So leave a review, say how much you love it and then feel confident asking somebody and ask somebody today because more people need your dentistry.   More people need you to change their lives. It's your moral obligation to show up, do the right thing, have fun and do it with ease. Did you like those core values? That was a nice wrap for all of you. Thanks for listening. I adore you. I'm here to serve you on any level I can. Reach out, join us at an event, come to our mastermind, whatever it is, do something today. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team podcast.  

This is The Zone of Disruption! This is the I AM RAPAPORT: STEREO PODCAST! His name is Michael Rapaport aka The Gringo Mandingo aka aka The People's Pickle aka The Jewish Brad Pitt aka Captain Colitis aka The Disruptive Warrior aka Mayor Rapaport 2029 and he is here to discuss: Drake drops 3 albums in 1 day Fantastic 4 NBA Teams Left The Cleveland Cavaliers fan who ate horse crap Prediction for The New York Knickerbockers Rama Mamdani's Vile Playlist Swastika flag flown at NYU & the writing on the wall David Krumholtz talking crazy to The Dingo & a whole lotta mo'. This episode is not to be missed! CaptainPicks To Win In Sports Betting: https://www.winible.com/checkout/1357777109057032537?store_url=/captainpicks&c=kickoff Rate & Review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify Send questions & concerns to: iamrapaportpodcast@gmail.com Subscribe to Rapaport's Reality Feeds: iHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/867-rapaports-reality-with-keb-171162927/ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rapaports-reality-with-kebe-michael-rapaport/id1744160673 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3a9ArixCtWRhfpfo1Tz7MR Pandora: https://www.pandora.com/podcast/rapaports-reality-with-kebe-michael-rapaport/PC:1001087456 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a776919e-ad8c-4b4b-90c6-f28e41fe1d40/rapaports-reality-with-kebe-michael-rapaport Stand Up Comedy Tickets on sale at: MichaelRapaportComedy.com If you are interested in NCAA, MLB, NBA, NFL & UFC Picks/Parlays Follow @CaptainPicksWins on Instagram & subscribe to packages at www.CaptainPicks.com www.dbpodcasts.com Produced by DBPodcasts.comFollow @dbpodcasts, @iamrapaport, @michaelrapaport on TikTok, Twitter & InstagramMusic by Jansport J (Follow @JansportJ) www.JansportJMusic.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.