Podcasts about general managers

The Storm does not cover athletes or gear or hot tubs or whisky bars or helicopters or bros jumping off things. I'm focused on the lift-served skiing world that 99 percent of skiers actually inhabit, and I'm covering it year-round. To support this mission of independent ski journalism, please subscribe to the free or paid versions of the email newsletter.WhoGreg Pack, President and General Manager of Mt. Hood Meadows, OregonRecorded onApril 28, 2025About Mt. Hood MeadowsClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Drake Family (and other minority shareholders)Located in: Mt. Hood, OregonYear founded: 1968Pass affiliations:* Indy Pass – 2 days, select blackouts* Indy+ Pass – 2 days, no blackoutsClosest neighboring U.S. ski areas: Summit (:17), Mt. Hood Skibowl (:19), Cooper Spur (:23), Timberline (:26)Base elevation: 4,528 feetSummit elevation: 7,305 feet at top of Cascade Express; 9,000 feet at top of hike-to permit area; 11,249 feet at summit of Mount HoodVertical drop: 2,777 feet lift-served; 4,472 hike-to inbounds; 6,721 feet from Mount Hood summitSkiable acres: 2,150Average annual snowfall: 430 inchesTrail count: 87 (15% beginner, 40% intermediate, 15% advanced, 30% expert)Lift count: 11 (1 six-pack, 5 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 3 doubles, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog's inventory of Mount Hood Meadows' lift fleet)About Cooper SpurClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Drake FamilyLocated in: Mt. Hood, OregonYear founded: 1927Pass affiliations: Indy Pass, Indy+ Pass – 2 days, no blackoutsClosest neighboring U.S. ski areas: Mt. Hood Meadows (:22), Summit (:29), Mt. Hood Skibowl (:30), Timberline (:37)Base elevation: 3,969 feetSummit elevation: 4,400 feetVertical drop: 431 feetSkiable acres: 50Average annual snowfall: 250 inchesTrail count: 9 (1 most difficult, 7 more difficult, 1 easier)Lift count: 2 (1 double, 1 ropetow – view Lift Blog's inventory of Cooper Spur's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himVolcanoes are weird. Oh look, an exploding mountain. Because that seems reasonable. Volcanoes sound like something imagined, like dragons or teleportation or dinosaurs*. “So let me get this straight,” I imagine some puzzled Appalachian miner, circa 1852, responding to the fellow across the fire as he tells of his adventures in the Oregon Territory, “you expect me to believe that out thataways they got themselves mountains that just blow their roofs off whenever they feel like it, and shoot off fire and rocks and gas for 50 mile or more, and no one never knows when it's a'comin'? You must think I'm dumber'n that there tree stump.”Turns out volcanoes are real. How humanity survived past day one I have no idea. But here we are, skiing on volcanoes instead of tossing our virgins from the rim as a way of asking the nice mountain to please not explode (seriously how did anyone make it out of the past alive?).And one of the volcanoes we can ski on is Mount Hood. This actually seems more unbelievable to me than the concept of a vengeful nuclear mountain. PNW Nature Bros shield every blade of grass like they're guarding Fort Knox. When, in 2014, federal scientists proposed installing four monitoring stations on Hood, which the U.S. Geological Survey ranks as the sixth-highest threat to erupt out of America's 161 active volcanoes, these morons stalled the process for six years. “I think it is so important to have places like that where we can just step back, out of respect and humility, and appreciate nature for what it is,” a Wilderness Watch official told The New York Times. Personally I think it's so important to install basic monitoring infrastructure so that thousands of people are not incinerated in a predictable volcanic eruption. While “Japan, Iceland and Chile smother their high-threat volcanoes in scientific instruments,” The Times wrote, American Granola Bros say things like, “This is more proof that the Forest Service has abandoned any pretense of administering wilderness as per the letter or spirit of the Wilderness Act.” And Hood and the nation's other volcanoes cackle madly. “These idiots are dumber than the human-sacrifice people,” they say just before belching up an ash cloud that could take down a 747. When officials finally installed these instrument clusters on Hood in 2020, they occupied three boxes that look to be approximately the size of a convenience-store ice freezer, which feels like an acceptable trade-off to mass death and airplanes falling out of the sky.I know that as an outdoor writer I'm supposed to be all pissed off if anyone anywhere suggests any use of even a centimeter of undeveloped land other than giving it back to the deer in a treaty printed on recycled Styrofoam and signed with human blood to symbolize the life we've looted from nature by commandeering 108 square feet to potentially protect millions of lives from volcanic eruption, but this sort of trivial protectionism and willful denial that humans ought to have rights too is the kind of brainless uncompromising overreach that I fear will one day lead to a massive over-correction at the other extreme, in which a federal government exhausted with never being able to do anything strips away or massively dilutes land protections that allow anyone to do anything they can afford. And that's when we get Monster Pete's Arctic Dune Buggies setting up a casino/coal mine/rhinoceros-hunting ranch on the Eliot Glacier and it's like thanks Bros I hope that was worth it to stall the placement of gardenshed-sized public safety infrastructure for six years.Anyway, given the trouble U.S. officials have with installing necessary things on Mount Hood, it's incredible how many unnecessary ones our ancestors were able to build. But in 1927 the good old boys hacked their way into the wilderness and said, “by gum what a spot for snoskiing” and built a bunch of ski areas. And today 31 lifts serve four Mt. Hood ski areas covering a combined 4,845 acres:Which I'm just like, do these Wilderness Watch people not know about this? Perhaps if this and similar groups truly cared about the environmental integrity of Mount Hood they would invest their time, energy, and attention into a long-term regional infrastructure plan that identified parcels for concentrated mixed-use development and non-personal-car-based transit options to mitigate the impact of thousands of skiers traveling up the mountain daily from Portland, rather than in delaying the installation of basic monitoring equipment that notifies humanity of a civilization-shattering volcanic eruption before it happens. But then again I am probably not considering how this would impact the integrity of squirrel poop decomposition below 6,000 feet and the concomitant impacts on pinestand soil erosion which of course would basically end life as we know it on planet Earth.OK this went sideways let me try to salvage it.*Whoops I know dinosaurs were real; I meant to write “the moon landing.” How embarrassing.What we talked aboutA strong 2024-25; recruiting employees in mountains with little nearby housing; why Meadows doesn't compete with Timberline for summer skiing; bye-bye Blue double, Meadows' last standing opening-year chairlift; what it takes to keep an old Riblet operating; the reliability of old versus new chairlifts; Blue's slow-motion demolition and which relics might remain long term; the logic of getting a free anytime buddy lift ticket with your season pass; thoughts on ski area software providers that take a percentage of all sales; why Meadows and Cooper Spur have no pass reciprocity; the ongoing Cooper Spur land exchange; the value of Cooper Spur and Summit on a volcano with three large ski areas; why Meadows hasn't backed away from reciprocal agreements; why Meadows chose Indy over Epic, Ikon, or Mountain Collective; becoming a ski kid when you're not from a ski family; landing at Mountain Creek, New Jersey after a Colorado ski career; how Moonlight Basin started as an independent ski area and eventually became part of Big Sky; the tension underlying Telluride; how the Drake Family, who has managed the ski area since inception, makes decisions; a board that reinvests 100 percent of earnings back into the mountain; why we need large independents in a consolidating world; being independent is “our badge of honor”; whether ownership wants to remain independent long term; potential next lift upgrades; a potential all-new lift line and small expansion; thoughts on a better Heather lift; wild Hood weather and the upper limits of lift service; considering surface lifts on the upper mountain; the challenges of running Cascade Express; the future of the Daisy and Easy Rider doubles; more potential future expansion; and whether we could ever see a ski connection with Timberline Lodge.Why now was a good time for this interviewIt's kind of dumb that 210 episodes into this podcast I've only recorded one Oregon ep: Timberline Lodge President Jeff Kohnstamm, more than three years ago. While Oregon only has 11 active ski areas, and the state ranks 11th-ish in skier visits, it's an important ski state. PNW skiers treat skiing like the Northeast treats baseball or the Midwest treats football or D.C. treats politics: rabid beyond reason. That explains the eight Idaho pods and half dozen each in Washington and B.C. These episodes hit like a hash stand at a Dead show. So why so few Oregon eps?Eh, no reason in particular. There isn't a ski area in North America that I don't want to feature on the podcast, but I can't just order them online like a pizza. Relationships, more than anything, drive the podcast, and The Storm's schedule is primarily opportunity driven. I invite folks on as I meet them or when they do something cool. And sometimes we can connect right away and sometimes it takes months or even years, even if they want to do it. Sometimes we're waiting on contracts or approvals so we can discuss some big project in depth. It can take time to build trust, or to convince a non-podcast person that they have a great story to tell.So we finally get to Meadows. Not to be It-Must-Be-Nice Bro about benefits that arise from clear deliberate life choices, but It must be nice to live in the PNW, where every city sits within 90 minutes of a ripping, open-until-Memorial-Day skyscraper that gets carpet bombed with 400 annual inches but receives between one and four out-of-state visitors per winter. Yeah the ski areas are busy anyway because they don't have enough of them, but busy with Subaru-driving Granola Bros is different than busy with Subaru-driving Granola Bros + Texas Bro whose cowboy boots aren't clicking in right + Florida Bro who bought a Trans Am for his boa constrictor + Midwest Bro rocking Olin 210s he found in Gramp's garage + Hella Rad Cali Bro + New Yorker Bro asking what time they groom Corbet's + Aussie Bro touring the Rockies on a seven-week long weekend + Euro Bro rocking 65 cm underfoot on a two-foot powder day. I have no issue with tourists mind you because I am one but there is something amazing about a ski area that is gigantic and snowy and covered in modern infrastructure while simultaneously being unknown outside of its area code.Yes this is hyperbole. But while everyone in Portland knows that Meadows has the best parking lot views in America and a statistical profile that matches up with Beaver Creek and as many detachable chairlifts as Snowbasin or Snowbird and more snow than Steamboat or Jackson or Palisades or Pow Mow, most of the rest of the world doesn't, and I think they should.Why you should ski Mt. Hood Meadows and Cooper SpurIt's interesting that the 4,845 combined skiable acres of Hood's four ski areas are just a touch larger than the 4,323 acres at Mt. Bachelor, which as far as I know has operated as a single interconnected facility since its 1958 founding. Both are volcanoes whose ski areas operate on U.S. Forest Service land a commutable distance from demographically similar markets, providing a case study in distributed versus centralized management.Bachelor in many ways delivers a better experience. Bachelor's snow is almost always drier and better, an outlier in the kingdom of Cascade Concrete. Skiers can move contiguously across its full acreage, an impossible mission on Balkanized Hood. The mountain runs an efficient, mostly modern 15 lifts to Hood's wild 31, which includes a dozen detachables but also a half dozen vintage Riblet doubles with no safety bars. Bachelor's lifts scale the summit, rather than stopping thousands of feet short as they do on Hood. While neither are Colorado-grade destination ski areas, metro Portland is stuffed with 25 times more people than Bend, and Hood ski areas have an everbusy feel that skiers can often outrun at Bachelor. Bachelor is closer to its mothership – just 26 minutes from Bend to Portland's hour-to-two-hour commutes up to the ski areas. And Bachelor, accessible on all versions of the Ikon Pass and not hamstrung by the confusing counter-branding of multiple ski areas with similar names occupying the same mountain, presents a more clearcut target for the mainstream skier.But Mount Hood's quirky scatterplot ski centers reward skiers in other ways. Four distinct ski areas means four distinct ski cultures, each with its own pace, purpose, customs, traditions, and orientation to the outside world. Timberline Lodge is a funky mix of summertime Bro parks, Government Camp greens, St. Bernards, and its upscale landmark namesake hotel. Cooper Spur is tucked-away, low-key, low-vert family resort skiing. Meadows sprawls, big and steep, with Hood's most interesting terrain. And low-altitude, closest-to-the-city Skibowl is night-lit slowpoke with a vintage all-Riblet lift fleet. Your Epic and Ikon passes are no good here, though Indy gets you Meadows and Cooper Spur. Walk-up lift tickets (still the only way to buy them at Skibowl), are more tier-varied and affordable than those at Bachelor, which can exceed $200 on peak days (though Bachelor heavily discounts access to its beginner lifts, with free access to select novice areas). Bachelor's $1,299 season pass is 30 percent more expensive than Meadows'.This dynamic, of course, showcases single-entity efficiency and market capture versus the messy choice of competition. Yes Free Market Bro you are right sometimes. Hood's ski areas have more inherent motivators to fight on price, forge allegiances like the Timberline-Skibowl joint season pass, invest in risks like night and summer skiing, and run wonky low-tide lift ticket deals. Empowering this flexibility: all four Hood ski areas remain locally owned – Meadows and T-Line by their founding families. Bachelor, of course, is a fiefdom of Park City, Utah-based Powdr, which owns a half-dozen other ski areas across the West.I don't think that Hood is better than Bachelor or that Bachelor is better than Hood. They're different, and you should ski both. But however you dissect the niceties of these not-really-competing-but-close-enough-that-a-comarison-makes-sense ski centers, the on-the-ground reality adds up to this: Hood locals, in general, are a far more contented gang than Bachelor Bros. I don't have any way to quantify this, and Bachelor has its partisans. But I talk to skiers all over the country, all the time. Skiers will complain about anything, and online guttings of even the most beloved mountains exist. But talk to enough people and strong enough patterns emerge to understand that, in general, locals are happy with Mammoth and Alpine Meadows and Sierra-at-Tahoe and A-Basin and Copper and Bridger Bowl and Nub's Nob and Perfect North and Elk and Plattekill and Berkshire East and Smuggs and Loon and Saddleback and, mostly, the Hood ski areas. And locals are generally less happy with Camelback and Seven Springs and Park City and Sunrise and Shasta and Stratton and, lately, former locals' faves Sugarbush and Wildcat. And, as far as I can tell, Bachelor.Potential explanations for Hood happiness versus Bachelor blues abound, all of them partial, none completely satisfactory, all asterisked with the vagaries of skiing and skiers and weather and luck. But my sense is this: Meadows, Timberline, and Skibowl locals are generally content not because they have better skiing than everyplace else or because their ski areas are some grand bargain or because they're not crowded or because they have the best lift systems or terrain parks or grooming or snow conditions, but because Hood, in its haphazard and confounding-to-outsiders borders and layout, has forced its varied operators to hyper-adapt to niche needs in the local market while liberating them from the all-things-to-everyone imperative thrust on isolated operations like Bachelor. They have to decide what they're good at and be good at that all the time, because they have no other option. Hood operators can't be Vail-owned Paoli Peaks, turning in 25-day ski seasons and saying well it's Indiana what do you expect? They have to be independent Perfect North, striving always for triple-digit operating days and saying it's Indiana and we're doing this anyway because if we don't you'll stop coming and we'll all be broke.In this way Hood is a snapshot of old skiing, pre-consolidation, pre-national pass, pre-social media platforms that flung open global windows onto local mountains. Other than Timberline summer parks no one is asking these places to be anything other than very good local ski areas serving rabid local skiers. And they're doing a damn good job.Podcast NotesOn Meadows and Timberline Lodge opening and closing datesOne of the most baffling set of basic facts to get straight in American skiing is the number of ski areas on Mount Hood and the distinction between them. Part of the reason for this is the volcano's famous summer skiing, which takes place not at either of the eponymous ski areas – Mt. Hood Meadows or Mt. Hood Skibowl – but at the awkwardly named Timberline Lodge, which sounds more like a hipster cocktail lounge with a 19th-century fur-trapper aesthetic than the name of a ski resort (which is why no one actually calls it “Timberline Lodge”; I do so only to avoid confusion with the ski area in West Virginia, because people are constantly getting Appalachian ski areas mixed up with those in the Cascades). I couldn't find a comprehensive list of historic closing dates for Meadows and Timberline, but the basic distinction is this: Meadows tends to wrap winter sometime between late April and late May. Timberline goes into August and beyond when it can. Why doesn't Meadows push its season when it is right next door and probably could? We discuss in the pod.On Riblet clipsFun fact about defunct-as-a-company-even-though-a-couple-hundred-of-their-machines-are-still-spinning Riblet chairlifts: rather than clamping on like a vice grip, the end of each chair is woven into the rope via something called an “insert clip.” I wrote about this in my Wildcat pod last year:On Alpental Chair 2A small but vocal segment of Broseph McBros with nothing better to do always reflexively oppose the demolition of legacy fixed-grip lifts to make way for modern machines. Pack does a great job laying out why it's harder to maintain older chairlifts than many skiers may think. I wrote about this here:On Blue's breakover towers and unload rampWe also dropped photos of this into the video version of the pod:On the Cooper Spur land exchangeHere's a somewhat-dated and very biased-against-the-ski-area infographic summarizing the proposed land swap between Meadows and the U.S. Forest Service, from the Cooper Spur Wild & Free Coalition, an organization that “first came together in 2002 to fight Mt. Hood Meadows' plans to develop a sprawling destination resort on the slopes of Mt. Hood near Cooper Spur”:While I find the sanctimonious language in this timeline off-putting, I'm more sympathetic to Enviro Bro here than I was with the eruption-detection controversy discussed up top. Opposing small-footprint, high-impact catastrophe-monitoring equipment on an active volcano to save five bushes but potentially endanger millions of human lives is foolish. But checking sprawling wilderness development by identifying smaller parcels adjacent to already-disturbed lands as alternative sites for denser, hopefully walkable, hopefully mixed-use projects is exactly the sort of thing that every mountain community ought to prioritize.On the combination of Summit and Timberline LodgeThe small Summit Pass ski area in Government Camp operated as an independent entity from its 1927 founding until Timberline Lodge purchased the ski area in 2018. In 2021, the owners connected the two – at least in one direction. Skiers can move 4,540 vertical feet from the top of Timberline's Palmer chair to the base of Summit. While Palmer tends to open late in the season and Summit tends to close early, and while skiers will have to ride shuttles back up to the Timberline lifts until the resort builds a much anticipated gondola connecting the full height, this is technically America's largest lift-served vertical drop.On Meadows' reciprocalsMeadows only has three season pass reciprocal partners, but they're all aspirational spots that passholders would actually travel for: Baker, Schweitzer, and Whitefish. I ask Pack why he continues to offer these exchanges even as larger ski areas such as Brundage and Tamarack move away from them. One bit of context I neglected to include, however, is that neighboring Timberline Lodge and Mount Hood Skibowl not only offer a joint pass, but are longtime members of Powder Alliance, which is an incredible regional reciprocal pass that's free for passholders at any of these mountains:On Ski Broadmoor, ColoradoColorado Springs is less convenient to skiing than the name implies – skiers are driving a couple of hours, minimum, to access Monarch or the Summit County ski areas. So I was surprised, when I looked up Pack's original home mountain of Ski Broadmoor, to see that it sat on the city's outskirts:This was never a big ski area, with 600 vertical feet served by an “America The Beautiful Lift” that sounds as though it was named by Donald Trump:The “famous” Broadmoor Hotel built and operated the ski area, according to Colorado Ski History. They sold the hotel in 1986 to the city, which promptly sold it to Vail Associates (now Vail Resorts), in 1988. Vail closed the ski area in 1991 – the only mountain they ever surrendered on. I'll update all my charts and such to reflect this soon.On pre-high-speed KeystoneIt's kind of amazing that Keystone, which now spins seven high-speed chairlifts, didn't install its first detachable until 1990, nearly a decade after neighboring Breckenridge installed the world's first, in 1981. As with many resorts that have aggressively modernized, this means that Keystone once ran more chairlifts than it does today. When Pack started his ski career at the mountain in 1989, Keystone ran 10 frontside aerial lifts (8 doubles, 1 triple, 1 gondola) compared to just six today (2 doubles, 2 sixers, a high-speed quad, and a higher-capacity gondy).On Mountain CreekI've talked about the bananas-ness of Mountain Creek many times. I love this unhinged New Jersey bump in the same way I loved my crazy late uncle who would get wasted at the Bay City fireworks and yell at people driving Toyotas to “Buy American!” (This was the ‘80s in Michigan, dudes. I don't know what to tell you. The auto industry was falling apart and everybody was tripping, especially dudes who worked in – or, in my uncle's case, adjacent to (steel) – the auto industry.)On IntrawestOne of the reasons I did this insane timeline project was so that I would no longer have to sink 30 minutes into Google every time someone said the word “Intrawest.” The timeline was a pain in the ass, but worth it, because now whenever I think “wait exactly what did Intrawest own and when?” I can just say “oh yeah I already did that here you go”:On Moonlight Basin and merging with Big SkyIt's kind of weird how many now-united ski areas started out as separate operations: Beaver Creek and Arrowhead (merged 1997), Canyons and Park City (2014), Whistler and Blackcomb (1997), Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley (connected via gondola in 2022), Carinthia and Mount Snow (1986), Sugarbush and Mount Ellen (connected via chairlift in 1995). Sometimes – Beaver Creek, Mount Snow – the terrain and culture mergers are seamless. Other times – Alpine and the Palisades side of what is now Palisades Tahoe – the connection feels like opening a store that sells four-wheelers and 74-piece high-end dinnerware sets. Like, these things don't go together, Man. But when Big Sky absorbed Moonlight Basin and Spanish Peaks in 2013, everyone immediately forgot that it was ever any different. This suggests that Big Sky's 2032 Yellowstone Club acquisition will be seamless.**Kidding, Brah. Maybe.On Lehman BrothersNearly two decades later, it's still astonishing how quickly Lehman Brothers, in business for 158 years, collapsed in 2008.On the “mutiny” at TellurideEvery now and then, a reader will ask the very reasonable question about why I never pay any attention to Telluride, one of America's great ski resorts, and one that Pack once led. Mostly it's because management is unstable, making long-term skier experience stories of the sort I mostly focus on hard to tell. And management is mostly unstable because the resort's owner is, by all accounts, willful and boorish and sort of unhinged. Blevins, in The Colorado Sun's “Outsider” newsletter earlier this week:A few months ago, locals in Telluride and Mountain Village began publicly blasting the resort's owner, a rare revolt by a community that has grown weary of the erratic Chuck Horning.For years, residents around the resort had quietly lamented the antics and decisions of the temperamental Horning, the 81-year-old California real estate investor who acquired Telluride Ski & Golf Resort in 2004. It's the only resort Horning has ever owned and over the last 21 years, he has fired several veteran ski area executives — including, earlier this year, his son, Chad.Now, unnamed locals have launched a website, publicly detailing the resort owner's messy management of the Telluride ski area and other businesses across the country.“For years, Chuck Horning has caused harm to us all, both individually and collectively,” reads the opening paragraph of ChuckChuck.ski — which originated when a Telluride councilman in March said that it was “time to chuck Chuck.” “The community deserves something better. For years, we've whispered about the stories, the incidents, the poor decisions we've witnessed. Those stories should no longer be kept secret from everyone that relies on our ski resort for our wellbeing.”The chuckchuck.ski site drags skeletons out of Horning's closet. There are a lot of skeletons in there. The website details a long history of lawsuits across the country accusing Horning and the Newport Federal Financial investment firm he founded in 1970 of fraud.It's a pretty amazing site.On Bogus BasinI was surprised that ostensibly for-profit Meadows regularly re-invests 100 percent of profits into the ski area. Such a model is more typical for explicitly nonprofit outfits such as Bogus Basin, Idaho. Longtime GM Brad Wilson outlined how that ski area functions a few years back:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Here's my interview with Ziad Asghar, Qualcomm's Senior Vice President & General Manager of XR & Spatial Computing, that was conducted on Wednesday, June 11, 2025 at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, CA. See more context in the rough transcript below. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Today's show features: Jason Graciano, Partner & General Manager of White Plains Honda Kevin Wruck, General Manager of Dahl Hyundai Mazda Subaru La Crosse This episode is brought to you by: Drive For Life Foundation – Join us in making a difference at the 43rd Drive for Life Gala on Thursday, September 25, 2025—celebrating over four decades and $6.3 million raised for impactful causes. Sponsors make this legacy possible, and your support directly fuels our mission. Visit ⁠⁠https://www.driveforlifefoundation.com/sponsors.htm⁠⁠ to become a sponsor before the August 24 deadline. Check out Car Dealership Guy's stuff: CDG News ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://news.dealershipguy.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ CDG Jobs ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://jobs.dealershipguy.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ CDG Recruiting ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.cdgrecruiting.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ My Socials: X ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/GuyDealership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/cardealershipguy/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@guydealership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/cardealershipguy/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Threads ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.threads.net/@cardealershipguy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077402857683⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Everything else ➤⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ dealershipguy.com

Mike Hazen discusses why the Arizona Diamondbacks did not trade Zac Gallen ahead of the trade deadline, if they could bring Gallen back next season and if he thinks they are set up better for the future after the deadline.  

Welcome to Industry Spotlight—a focused series hosted by Sam D'Arc, highlighting standout dealerships and innovative companies, and exploring the trends driving success in today's automotive market. Today, Sam sits down with Matt Hogan, General Manager of Taverna INFINITI North Miami, and Omar Mohammad, CEO of Nomad Content Studio. This episode is brought to you by: Nomad Content Studio - $3.50 per lead. $105 per car buyer. That's what an Infiniti store in Florida is getting using Nomad Content Studio's Done-For-You social video system. Millions in sales, viral reach, and buyers who stop price shopping and come straight to the store. Nomad Content Studio has done it for EV Auto, Morgan Auto Group, and George Saliba—now they'll do it for you. Book a call and get 20% OFF your first month. Offer expires 08/15/25: ⁠http://www.trynomad.co Need help finding top automotive talent? Get started here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.cdgrecruiting.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Interested in advertising with Car Dealership Guy? Drop us a line here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://cdgpartner.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Interested in being considered as a guest on the podcast? Add your name here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3Suismu⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Topics: 01:20 Why switch to a new car franchise? 03:56 How does social media transform auto sales? 06:23 What are the best viral content strategies for dealers? 14:32 The five social media content buckets for dealerships 20:24 Overcoming generational gaps in automotive marketing 21:54 How to adapt automotive marketing to the digital age 24:11 How do you track ROI from social media? 26:24 Cost per lead / car buyer from social media 28:06 What is the future of social selling? Check out Car Dealership Guy's stuff: CDG News ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://news.dealershipguy.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ CDG Jobs ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://jobs.dealershipguy.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ CDG Recruiting ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.cdgrecruiting.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ My Socials: X ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠x.com/GuyDealership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/cardealershipguy/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tiktok.com/@guydealership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linkedin.com/company/cardealershipguy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Threads ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠threads.net/@cardealershipguy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077402857683⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Everything else ➤ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠dealershipguy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.

Hello, hello! On this episode of Good Garbage, we are joined by Sunder Balakrishnan, General Manager of NatureTech India. This conversation delves into the world of biopolymers, exploring the challenges and innovations shaping the industry. From the intricacies of sourcing biopolymers in India to the evolving landscape of sustainable materials, Sunder shares insights from his 20-year journey in the field. Never miss an episode by following us on all our socials by clicking on the link below!https://linktr.ee/goodgarbagepodcastDon't forget to turn on your notifications and leave us a review ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Something epic is brewing on this week's episode! Nora and Craig are joined by a Beer-y special guest whose story has more twists and inspiring turns than a bourbon barrel aged stout! Ryan McCullough is the General Manager at Allagash Brewery in Portland Maine but his road to this prestigious role was full of wild tales and examples of Stubborn Positivity. Listen in as he shares how he and his family worked toward a very Hoppy life in the beautiful state of Maine! Check out Allagash's Instagram: @allagashtastingroom, @allagashbrewingVisit our Website : ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.fredtheafghan.com/stubbornlypositive⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join Our Patreon Pack for Video Episodes and so much more: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.patreon.com/StubbornlyPositive⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us on Instagram! @StubbornlyPositive

Today's episode, we sit down with Daniel McGarry, the Regional Director of Revenue Management of Stonebridge, and an HSMAI Rising Leader. From mowing lawns in Lancaster to managing revenue strategy across historic Marriott tribute properties, Daniel shares his unique journey through hospitality — and the lessons he's learned along the way.We dive into:The evolution of revenue management — from gut instinct to AI-powered strategyHow to separate signal from noise in a data-saturated worldThe future of profit-focused hospitality and the rise of commercial servicesWhy storytelling might be the most underrated skill in revenue strategyWhat it really takes to align sales, marketing, and revenue around a shared goalWhether you're a hospitality pro or just curious about how data and experience collide in modern hotels, this conversation is packed with insight, laughs, and a whole lot of value.Watch the FULL EPISODE on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qN31gPuxpws Join the conversation on today's episode on The Modern Hotelier LinkedIn pageThe Modern Hotelier is produced, edited, and published by Make More MediaLinks:Daniel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-mcgarry-2baa958a/Stonebridge Companies: https://www.sbcos.com/ For full show notes head to: https://themodernhotelier.com/episode/194Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-...Connect with Steve and David:Steve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/%F0%9F%8E...David: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-mil.

  YMC Special Episode - A Conversation With Dan Melnick On this very special edition of the YMC podcast, your hosts Jay Gilbert and Mike Etchart sat down with Dan Melnick, General Manager of Bandcamp for an interesting and wide ranging conversation.   Subscribe to the newsletter! YourMorning.Coffee

Dan is joined by Kaihan Ashtiani, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of atomic layer deposition and chemical vapor deposition metals in Lam's Deposition Business Unit. Kaihan has more than 30 years of experience in technical and management roles, working on a variety of semiconductor tools and processes. Dan explores… Read More

Matan Lerner, the new general manager of the King David Hotel, talks with James Shillinglaw of Insider Travel Report about the most famous hotel in Jerusalem, Israel and arguably the Middle East. Lerner tells us how he rose quickly in the Dan Hotels group to take the top job overseeing the company's crown jewel. He details the history of the King David and what he wants to do with the legacy he's been given. For more information, visit www.danhotels.com. All our Insider Travel Report video interviews are archived and available on our Youtube channel (youtube.com/insidertravelreport), and as podcasts with the same title on: Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Listen Notes, Podchaser, TuneIn + Alexa, Podbean,  iHeartRadio,  Google, Amazon Music/Audible, Deezer, Podcast Addict, and iTunes Apple Podcasts, which supports Overcast, Pocket Cast, Castro and Castbox.

Welcome to WHCB's Prayer Time! The host of Prayer Time is our General Manager, Dr. Kenneth C. Hill, and the broadcast airs on 91.5 FM and WHCBRadio.org each morning at 6 AM. Do you have questions or prayer requests? Please send them through our website! You can send us a message, give online, and listen online at WHCBRadio.org. Thanks for listening to Prayer Time!Support the show: http://www.whcbradio.orgSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this episode the boys are joined by current President of Hockey Operations and General Manager for the Columbus blue jackets and former Hurricanes GM Don Waddell. He talks about his time in Atlanta and Carolina, the Sedin draft “rules” and much more. Check out our Sponsors!

Guest: Ken Eissing, a coach at CEO Coaching International. Ken has served as President, COO, General Manager, or Advisor in the Technology, Media, Telecom, and BPO Financial Services industries in public and private entities ranging from Fortune 100 to less than $20 million businesses. Quick Background: Is your sales team consistently clearing the bar, month after month? Great. Then it's time to raise the bar.  Left to their own devices, even the best salespeople will take the path of least resistance to hitting their targets and getting paid. This misalignment between what's good for your people and what's good for the business will eventually lead to a plateau -- and that's the last place you want to be with competition rising, tariffs looming, and AI disrupting.  The CEO needs to keep every piece of the sales process -- from what you're selling to the quality of the team doing the selling -- on an upward trajectory that drives the whole company towards its long-term goals.  On this classic episode, Ken Eissing discusses six ways CEOs can assemble, manage, and motivate a top sales team that will drive fast growth and Make BIG Happen.

Welcome to The Bundle, our regular series on the sports media and streaming marketplace with co-hosts Yannick Ramcke, General Manager of OTT at the streaming service OneFootball and Murray Barnett, founder of 26West Consulting and formerly of F1, World Rugby and ESPN International.This episode of the Unofficial Partner podcast is brought to you by Sid Lee Sport.Sid Lee Sport is a new breed of agency that combines world class creativity with deep sponsorship expertise, flawless operational delivery, and a culture of marketing effectiveness. They have a creative philosophy of producing famous campaigns and activations that build buzz and conversation in a category that too often looks and sounds the same. And they're pioneering a new standard of effectiveness in sports marketing, using econometrics and attribution models to go beyond traditional media ROI.So if you're looking for an agency to take your brand to the top, get in touch with the team at Sid Lee Sport, where brands become champions.Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 400 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner' on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app. If you're interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us via the website.

The Jerry & Jerry Show headlines: Tyler Jones Named UVA Football General Manager Jones Will Run Cap Of Football, Hoops, Baseball Takeaways From 2025 ACC Media Days Tony Elliott Gives Insight Into His Play Calling Role Coastal Carolina at Virginia, 8/30, 6 PM Kickoff Varina Defensive Tackle Picks UVA Over Va Tech UVA Football Training Camp Starts This Week NC Central Coach Claims Virginia Tech Tampered Read Viewer & Listener Comments Live On-Air Jerry Ratcliffe & Jerry Miller were live on The Jerry & Jerry Show! The Jerry & Jerry Show airs live Tuesday from 10:15 am – 11:15 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The Jerry & Jerry Show on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Fountain, Amazon Music, Audible and iLoveCVille.com.

“Manager and leader”? What's the difference. During my conversation this time with Scott Hanton, our guest, we will discuss this very point along with many other fascinating and interesting subjects. As Scott tells us at the beginning of this episode he grew up asking “why” about most anything you can think of. He always was a “why” asker. As he tells it, unlike many children who grow out of the phase of asking “why” he did not. He still asks “why” to this very day.   At the age of 13 Scott decided that he wanted to be a chemist. He tells us how this decision came about and why he has always stayed with it. Scott received his bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Michigan State and his PHD from the University of Wisconsin. Again, why he changed schools for his PHD work is an interesting story. As you will see, Scott tells stories in a unique and quite articulate way.   After his university days were over Scott went to work, yes as a chemist. He tells us about this and how after 20 years with one company how and why he moved to another company and somewhat out of constant lab work into some of the management, business and leadership side of a second company. He stayed there for ten years and was laid off during the pandemic. Scott then found employment as the editorial director of Lab Management Magazine where he got to bring his love of teaching to the forefront of his work.   My hour with Scott gives us all many insights into management, leadership and how to combine the two to create a strong teaming environment. I believe you will find Scott's thoughts extremely poignant and helpful in everything that you do.     About the Guest:   Scott Hanton is the Editorial Director of Lab Manager. He spent 30 years as a research chemist, lab manager, and business leader at Air Products and Intertek. Scott thrives on the challenges of problem-solving. He enjoys research, investigation, and collaboration. Scott is a people-centric, servant leader. He is motivated by developing environments where people can grow and succeed, and crafting roles for people that take advantage of their strengths.   Scott earned a BS in chemistry from Michigan State University and a PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is an active member of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the American Society of Mass Spectrometry (ASMS), and the Association of Lab Managers (ALMA). As a scientist Scott values curiosity, innovation, progress, and delivery of results. Scott has always been motivated by questions beginning with why. Studying physical chemistry in graduate school offered the opportunity to hone answers to these questions. As a professional scientist, Scott worked in analytical chemistry specializing in MALDI mass spectrometry and polymer characterization.   At Scott married his high school sweetheart, and they have one son. Scott is motivated by excellence, happiness, and kindness. He most enjoys helping people and solving problems. Away from work, Scott enjoys working outside in the yard, playing strategy games, and participating in different discussion groups.   Scott values having a growth mindset and is a life-long learner. He strives to learn something new everyday and from everyone. One of the great parts of being a trained research scientist is that failure really isn't part of his vocabulary. He experiments and either experiences success or learns something new. He values both individual and organizational learning.   Scott's current role at Lab Manager encompasses three major responsibilities: ·      Writing articles and giving presentations to share his experience with lab managers. ·      Driving the creation and growth of the Lab Manager Academy (https://labmanageracademy.com/) that currently contains three certificate programs: lab management, lab safety management, and lab quality management. ·      Helping people through his knowledge of science, scientists, management, and leadership. He is very happy sharing the accumulated wisdom of his experiences as a researcher, lab supervisor, and lab manager. Each article posted on Lab Manager addresses a decision that a lab manager needs to make. Lab management is full of decision-making, so helping people make better, faster, more complete decisions is very satisfying. Ways to connect with Scott:   https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-hanton/   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset where inclusion diversity and the unexpected meet, and mostly we get to deal with the unexpected, as opposed to inclusion or diversity. But that's okay, because unexpected is what makes life fun, and our guest today, Scott Hanton, will definitely be able to talk about that. Scott has been a research chemist. He comes from the chemistry world, so he and I in the past have compared notes, because, of course, I come from the physics world, and I love to tell people that the most important thing I learned about physics was that, unlike Doc Brown, although I do know how to build a bomb, unlike Doc Brown from Back to the Future, I'm not dumb enough to try to go steal fissionable material from a terrorist group to build the bomb. So, you know, I suppose that's a value, value lesson somewhere. But anyway, I am really glad that you're all here with us today, and we have lots to talk about. Scott, as I said, was in chemistry and research chemist, and now is the editorial supervisor and other things for a magazine called lab manager, and we will talk about that as well. So Scott, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad   Scott Hanton ** 02:38 you're here. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation with you today.   Michael Hingson ** 02:43 Well, I think it'll be a lot of fun, and looking forward to it. Now, you're in Michigan, right?   Scott Hanton ** 02:48 That's right. I live in South Lyon, Michigan,   Michael Hingson ** 02:51 ah, what's the weather back there today?   Scott Hanton ** 02:55 It's probably about 55 degrees and cloudy   Michael Hingson ** 02:58 here today. Well, it's still fairly sunny here, and we're actually, according to my iPhone, at 71 so it was up around 80 earlier in the week, but weather changes are still going to bring some cold for a while   Scott Hanton ** 03:15 in here in Michigan, I visited a customer earlier this week, and I drove by about 1000 orange barrels on the highway, which means it's spring, because there's only two seasons in Michigan, winter and construction.   Michael Hingson ** 03:29 There you go. Yeah, I know. I went to the University of California, Irvine, UCI. And if you ask somebody who doesn't know that UCI stands for University of California at Irvine. If you ask them what UCI stands for, they'll tell you, under construction indefinitely. Sounds right? Yeah. Well, it's been doing it ever since I was there a long time ago, and they they continue to grow. Now we're up to like 32,000 fresh, or excuse me, undergraduates at the university. And when I was there, there were 2700 students. So it's grown a little. That's   Scott Hanton ** 04:05 a lot of change. I'm used to big universities. I'm a graduate of both Michigan State and the University of Wisconsin. So these are big places.   Michael Hingson ** 04:13 Wow, yeah. So you're used to it. I really enjoyed it when it was a small campus. I'm glad I went there, and that was one of the reasons that caused me to go there, was because I knew I could probably get a little bit more visibility with instructors, and that would be helpful for me to get information when they didn't describe things well in class. And it generally worked out pretty well. So I can't complain a lot. Perfect. Glad it worked well for you, it did. Well, why don't you start, if you would, by telling us kind of about the early Scott growing up and all that sort of stuff.   Scott Hanton ** 04:49 I grew up in Michigan, in a town called Saginaw. I was blessed with a family that loved me and that, you know, I was raised in a very. Supportive environment. But young Scott asked, Why about everything you know, the way kids do? Yeah, right. And my mom would tell you that when I was a kid, why was my most favorite word? And most kids outgrow that. I never did, yeah, so Me neither. I still ask why all the time. It's still my most favorite word, and it caused me to want to go explore the sciences, because what I found, as I learned about science, was that I could get answers to why questions better in science than in other places.   Michael Hingson ** 05:34 Yeah, makes sense. So what kinds of questions did you ask about why? Well, I asked   Scott Hanton ** 05:43 all kinds of questions about why, like, why are we having that for dinner? Or, why is my bedtime so early? Those questions didn't have good answers, at least from my perspective, right? But I also asked questions like, why is grass green, and why is the sky blue? And studying physical chemistry at Michigan State answered those questions. And so   Michael Hingson ** 06:03 how early did you learn about Rayleigh scattering? But that's you know?   Scott Hanton ** 06:07 Well, I learned the basic concepts from a really important teacher in my life, Mr. Leeson was my seventh grade science teacher, and what I learned from him is that I could ask questions that weren't pertinent to what he was lecturing about, and that taught me a lot about the fact that science was a lot bigger than what we got in the curriculum or in the classroom. And so Mr. Leeson was a really important person in my development, and showed me that there was that science was a lot bigger than I thought it was as a student, but I didn't really learn about rally scattering until I got to college.   Michael Hingson ** 06:43 But at the same time, it sounds like he was willing to allow you to grow and and learn, which so many people aren't willing to do. They're too impatient.   Scott Hanton ** 06:58 He was a first year teacher the year I had him so he hadn't become cynical yet. So it was great to just be able to stay after class and ask him a question, or put my hand up in class and ask him a question. He also did a whole series of demonstrations that were fabulous and made the science come to life in a way that reading about it doesn't stir the imagination. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 07:23 I had teachers that did that too. I remember very well my freshman general science teacher in high school, Mr. Dills, and one day, and he loved to do kind of unique things, just to push the boundaries of students a little bit. He came in one day and he said, I got a pop quiz for everybody, which doesn't help me, because the pop quiz was in print, but he handed it out. And then he took me to the back of the room, and he said, You're not going to really be able to do this quiz. Let me tell you why. And he said, Oh, and one thing he said is, just be sure you follow all the instructions and you'll be fine on the test to everybody. He brought me back to the back of the room. He says, Well, here's the deal. He says, if people really read the instructions, what they'll do is they'll read the instruction that says, Read all the questions before you start answering, and if you get to the last question, it says answer only the first question, which is what is your name and and sure enough, of course, people didn't read the instructions. And he said, so I wouldn't be able to really deal with you with that one, with that whole thing, just because it wouldn't work well. And I said, I understand, but he loved to make students think, and I learned so much about the whole concept of realizing the need to observe and be observant in all that you do. And it was lessons like that from him that really helped a lot with that. For me,   Scott Hanton ** 08:48 I had a high school chemistry teacher named Mrs. Schultz, and the first experiment that we did in her class, in the first week of classes, was she wanted us to document all of the observations that we could make about a burning candle. And I was a hot shot student. Thought I, you know, owned the world, and I was going to ace this test. And, you know, I had maybe a dozen observations about a burning candle, and thought I had done a great job describing it, until she started sharing her list, and she probably had 80 observations about a burning candle, and it taught me the power of observation and the need to talk about the details of those observations and to be specific about what the observations were. And that experiment seems simple, light a candle and tell me what you see. Yeah, but that lesson has carried on with me now for more than approaching 50 years.   Michael Hingson ** 09:47 Let's see, as I recall, if you light a candle, what the center of the flame is actually pretty cool compared to the outside. It's more hollow. Now I wouldn't be able to easily tell that, because. Is my my process for observing doesn't really use eyesight to do that, so I I'm sure there are other technologies today that I could use to get more of that information. But   Scott Hanton ** 10:12 I'm also sure that that experiment could be re crafted so that it wasn't so visual, yeah, right, that there could be tactile experiments to tell me about observations or or audible experiments about observation, where you would excel in ways that I would suffer because I'm so visually dominant. The   Michael Hingson ** 10:33 issue, though, is that today, there's a lot more technology to do that than there was when I was in school and you were in school, but yeah, I think there is a lot available. There's a company called Independence Science, which is actually owned and run by Dr Cary sapollo. And Carrie is blind, and he is a blind chemist, and he wanted to help develop products for blind people to be able to deal with laboratory work. So he actually worked with a company that was, well, it's now Vernier education systems. They make a product called LabQuest with something like 80 different kinds of probes that you can attach to it, and the LabQuest will will provide visual interpretations of whatever the probes are showing carry, and independent science took that product and made it talk, so that There is now a Talking LabQuest. And the reality is that all those probes became usable because the LabQuest became accessible to be able to do that, and they put a lot of other things into it too. So it's more than just as a talking device, a lab device. It's got a periodic table in it. It's got a lot of other kinds of things that they just put in it as well. But it's really pretty cool because it now makes science a whole lot more accessible. I'm going to have to think about the different kinds of probes and how one could use that to look at a candle. I think that'd be kind of fun.   Scott Hanton ** 12:15 And it's just awesome to hear that there's innovation and space to make science more available to everybody. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 12:23 the real problem that we face is the one that we mostly always have faced, which is societal attitudes, as opposed to really being or not being able to do the experiments, is people think we can't, and that's the barrier that we always, usually have to overcome.   Scott Hanton ** 12:39 What I find in my time as a coach, mentor, supervisor, is that if somebody believes they can't do it, they can't do it. Yeah. And so it's often about overcoming their own mental limitations, the limitations that they've placed on themselves,   Michael Hingson ** 12:56 and that's right, or unfortunately, the limitations that other people place on us, and we, all too often and weigh too much, buy into those limitations. So it's it is something that we, especially in the sciences, should recognize that we shouldn't be doing so much of. I know that when I was at UC Irvine as a graduate student, I learned once that there was a letter in my file that a professor wrote. Fortunately, I never had him as a professor, but it and I was in my master's program at the time in physics, and this guy put a letter in my file saying that no blind person could ever absorb the material to get an advanced degree in physics at the University. Just put that in there, which is so unfortunate, because the real thing that is demonstrated there is a prejudice that no scientist should ever have.   Scott Hanton ** 13:51 I'm hopeful that as you graduated, there was a retraction letter in your file as well,   Michael Hingson ** 13:57 not that I ever heard, but yeah. Well, I'd already gotten my bachelor's degree, but yeah. But you know, things happen, but it is a it is a societal thing, and society all too often creates limitations, and sometimes we don't find them right away, but it is one of the big issues that, in general, we have to deal with. And on all too often, society does some pretty strange things because it doesn't understand what science is all about. I know when we were dealing with covid, when it all started, leaving the conspiracy theorists out of it. One of the things that I learned was that we have all these discussions about AI, if you will. But AI was one of the primary mechanisms that helped to develop the mRNA vaccines that are now still the primary things that we use to get vaccinated against covid, because they the artificial intelligence. I'm not sure how artificial. It is, but was able to craft what became the vaccine in a few days. And scientists acknowledged, if they had to do it totally on their own, it would take years to have done what AI did in a few days.   Scott Hanton ** 15:13 The AI technology is amazing and powerful, but it's not new. No, I met a person who shared her story about AI investigations and talked about what she was doing in this field 30 years ago. Yeah, in her master's work. And you know, I knew it wasn't brand new, but I didn't really realize how deep its roots went until I talked to her.   Michael Hingson ** 15:37 I worked as my first jobs out of college with Ray Kurzweil, who, of course, nowadays, is well known for the singularity and so on. But back then, he developed the first reading machine that blind people could use to read printed material. And one of the things that he put into that machine was the ability, as it scanned more material, to learn and better recognize the material. And so he was doing machine learning back in the 1970s   Scott Hanton ** 16:07 right? And all of this is, you know, as Newton said on the shoulders of giants, right, right? He said it a bit cynically, but it's still true that we all in science, we are learning from each other. We're learning from the broader community, and we're integrating that knowledge as we tackle the challenges that we are exploring.   Michael Hingson ** 16:27 So what got you to go into chemistry when you went into college?   Scott Hanton ** 16:33 That's a good question. So when I was 13 years old, I went on a youth a church group youth trip to another city, and so they split us up, and there were three of us from our group that stayed overnight in a host family. And at dinner that night, the father worked in a pharmaceutical company, and he talked about the work he was doing, and what he was doing was really synthetic chemistry around small molecule drug discovery. And for me, it was absolutely fascinating. I was thrilled at that information. I didn't know any scientists growing up, I had no adult input other than teachers about science, and I can remember going back home and my parents asking me how the trip went. And it's like, it's fantastic. I'm going to be a chemist. And they both looked at me like, what is that? How do you make money from it? How do you get that? My dad was a banker. My mom was a school teacher. They had no scientific background, but that that one conversation, such serendipity, right? One conversation when I was 13 years old, and I came home and said, I'm going to be a chemist, and I've never really deviated from that path. Did you have other siblings? Younger brother and another younger sister?   Michael Hingson ** 17:54 Okay? Did they go into science by any remote chance?   Scott Hanton ** 17:58 Not at all. So they were both seventh grade teachers for more than 30 years. So my brother taught math and English, and my sister teaches social studies.   Michael Hingson ** 18:10 Well, there you go. But that is also important. I actually wanted to teach physics, but jobs and other things and circumstances took me in different directions, but I think the reality is that I ended up going into sales. And what I realized, and it was partly because of a Dale Carnegie sales course I took, but I realized that good sales people are really teachers, because they're really teaching people about products or about things, and they're also sharp enough to recognize what their products might or might not do to help a customer. But that, again, not everyone does that, but so I figure I still was teaching, and today, being a public speaker, traveling the world, talking, of course, about teamwork and other things, it's still all about teaching.   Scott Hanton ** 18:57 I think I've always been a teacher, and if you talk to my coworkers along the way, I enjoy helping people. I enjoy sharing my knowledge. There's always been a teacher inside but only in this job as the editorial director at lab manager have I really been able to do it directly. So we've developed what we call the lab manager Academy, and I create e learning courses to help lab managers be more successful, and it's been a passion project for me, and it's been a load of fun.   Michael Hingson ** 19:30 And it doesn't get better than that. It's always great when it's a load of fun, yes,   Scott Hanton ** 19:35 well, so you left college and you got a bachelor's and a master's degree, right? No masters for me, that step you went right to the old PhD, yeah. So I went straight. I went graduated from Michigan State. So Michigan State was on terms back in those days. So graduated in June, got married in July, moved to Wisconsin in August. To graduate school at the end of August at the University of Wisconsin. Okay? And my second year as a graduate student, my professor asked me, Do you want to stop and complete a master's? And I said, Wait, tell me about this word stop. And he said, Well, you'd have to finish the Master's requirements and write a thesis, and that's going to take some time. And I said, Do I have to and he said, No, and I don't recommend it. Just keep going forward and finish your PhD. So that's   Michael Hingson ** 20:30 and what does your wife do?   Scott Hanton ** 20:33 So my wife also is in the graduate program at the University of Wisconsin, and she decided that a master's degree was the right answer for her, because she didn't want to be a PhD scientist in XYZ narrow band of science. She wanted to be a master of chemistry. Okay, and so we took different paths through graduate school, but each of us took the path that worked best for us, and each pass has great value, so we're both happy with the choices that we made,   Michael Hingson ** 21:06 and complement each other and also give you, still lots of great things to talk about over dinner.   Scott Hanton ** 21:12 Absolutely. And she took that master's degree, went into the pharmaceutical industry and largely behaved as a librarian in her first part of her career, she wasn't called a librarian, but what she really did was a lot of information integrating, and then moved into the Library Group, and was a corporate librarian for a long time, and then a community librarian. So that path worked brilliantly for her. She also has a Masters of Library Science. So I have one PhD. She has two Master's degree. I have one bachelor's degree. She has two bachelor's degree.   Michael Hingson ** 21:50 Oh, so you can have interesting discussions about who really progressed further,   21:54 absolutely.   Michael Hingson ** 21:57 Well, that's, that's, that's cute, though. Well, I I got my bachelor's and master's. My wife, who I didn't meet until years later, wanted to be a librarian, but she ended up getting a a Master's at USC in so in sociology and and ended up getting a teaching credential and going into teaching, and taught for 10 years, and then she decided she wanted to do something different, and became a travel agent, which she had a lot of fun with. That is different, it is, but she enjoyed it, and along the way, then we got married. It was a great marriage. She was in a wheelchair her whole life. So she read, I pushed, worked out well, complimentary skills, absolutely, which is the way, way it ought to be, you know, and we had a lot of fun with it. Unfortunately, she passed now two and a half years ago, but as I tell people, we were married 40 years, and I'm sure she's monitoring me from somewhere, and if I misbehave, I'm going to hear about it, so I try to just behave. Sounds like good advice. Yeah, probably certainly the safe way to go. But we, we, we had lots of neat discussions, and our our activities and our expertise did, in a lot of ways, complement each other, so it was a lot of fun. And as I said, she went to USC. I enjoyed listening to USC football because I thought that that particular college team had the best announcers in the business, least when when I was studying in Southern California, and then when we got married, we learned the the day we got married, the wedding was supposed to start at four, and it didn't start till later because people weren't showing up for the wedding. And we learned that everybody was sitting out in their cars waiting for the end of the USC Notre Dame game. And we knew that God was on our side when we learned that SC beat the snot out of Notre Dame. So there you go. Yeah. Yeah. Oh gosh, the rivalries we face. So what did you do after college?   Scott Hanton ** 24:09 So did my PhD at the University of Wisconsin. And one of the nice things, a fringe benefit of going to a big, important program to do your PhD, is that recruiters come to you. And so I was able to do 40 different, four, zero, 40 different interviews on campus without leaving Madison. And one of those interviews was with a company called Air Products. And that worked out, and they hired me. And so we moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania to go to work. I went to work at Air Products and and Helen found a role in the pharmaceutical industry at Merck. And so we did that for a long time. I was initially a research expert, a PhD expert doing lasers and materials and analytical stuff. And over the years. I progressed up the ladder from researcher to supervisor to what did we call it, group head to Section Manager, to operations manager, and ultimately to General Manager.   Michael Hingson ** 25:13 Well, at least being in Allentown, you were close to a Cracker Barrel restaurant. Yes, that is true. That was the closest to one to where we lived in New Jersey, so we visited it several times. That's how I know   Scott Hanton ** 25:26 about it. Maybe we were there at the same time. Michael, maybe this isn't our first. It's   Michael Hingson ** 25:31 very possible. But we enjoyed Cracker Barrel and enjoyed touring around Pennsylvania. So I should have asked, What prompted you to go to the University of Wisconsin to do your your graduate work, as opposed to staying in Michigan. So   Scott Hanton ** 25:47 my advisor at Michigan State, our advisor at Michigan State, told us, here's the top five schools, graduate programs in chemistry, apply to them all. Go to the one you get into. And so I got into three. Helen got into two. The one that was the same was Wisconsin. So that's where we went, yeah?   Michael Hingson ** 26:09 Well, then no better logic and argument than that.   Scott Hanton ** 26:14 It was a great Madison. Wisconsin is a beautiful city. It one of the things I really liked about the chemistry program there then, and it's still true now, is how well the faculty get along together so many collaborative projects and just friendliness throughout the hallways. And yes, they are all competing at some level for grant support, but they get along so well, and that makes it for a very strong community,   Michael Hingson ** 26:41 and it probably also means that oftentimes someone who's applying for something can enlist support from other people who are willing to help.   Scott Hanton ** 26:50 And as a graduate student, it meant that I had more than one professor that I could go to my advisor. There was a whole group of advisors who ran joint group meetings and would give us advice about our work or our writing or our approach, or just because we needed a pep talk, because completing a PhD is hard. Yeah, right, so that community was really important to me, and it's something I took away that when I started my industrial career, I had seen the value of community, and I wanted to build stronger communities wherever I went, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 27:26 So what does a company, does air products do   Scott Hanton ** 27:31 that's sort of in the name, right? They're an industrial gas company. Got some of their big, biggest products are taking air and separating it into its components of nitrogen, oxygen, oxygen, argon, whatever, right? But at that time, they also had a chemicals business and a semiconductor business, or electronics business. So there was a lot of chemistry going on, although a lot of my work colleagues were chemical engineers who were working on the gasses side of the business, we had significant number of chemistry, sorts material science, sorts of people who are working on the chemicals side. Now, over time, Air Products divested those businesses, and now it's much more of a true industrial gas company. But I had the opportunity to work in an integrated science company that did all sorts of things.   Michael Hingson ** 28:23 Yeah, and as as we know, certainly a little helium never hurt anyone.   Scott Hanton ** 28:30 No little helium, you know, raises people's spirits, it   Michael Hingson ** 28:34 does and their voices, it does. I I've visited helium tanks many times at UC Irvine when they had liquid helium, which was certainly a challenge because of how cold it had to be. But occasionally we would open a valve and little cold but useful helium gas would escape   Scott Hanton ** 28:56 very cold. Please be safe. Cryogens are are dangerous materials, and we gotta make sure we handle them with due respect.   Michael Hingson ** 29:05 Yeah, well, we, we all did and and didn't take too many chances. So it worked out pretty well. So you stayed in Allentown and you stayed with Air Products for how long   Scott Hanton ** 29:19 I was in Air Products for 20 years. So the analytical group that I was part of, we were about 92 or 93 people when I joined the company, when I just left after earning my PhD. After 20 years, that group was down to about 35 just progressive series of decisions that made the department smaller, and as the Department got smaller and smaller, we were worried about our abilities to sustain our work. And so a dear friend and a key colleague, Paula McDaniel, and I, worked to try to see what other kind of opportunities there were. Yeah. And so we reached out to a contract research organization called Intertech to see if they would be interested in maybe acquiring our analytical department. And when we called them, and by the way, we called them before we talked to our boss about it, she forgave us later, but when we called the guy on the end of the phone said, Wait a minute, let me get your file. And it's like, what you have a file on Air Products, analytical, really? Why? Well, it turned out that they had a file, and that they had an active Merger and Acquisition Group, and they wanted an integrated analytical department on the east coast of the US. And so we engaged in negotiation, and ultimately this analytical department was sold by Air Products to Intertech. So on Friday, we're a little cog in a giant engine of an global, international company, and our funding comes from Vice Presidents. And on Monday, we're a standalone business of 35 people, we need to write quotes in order to make money. So it was an enormous challenge to transition from a service organization to a business. But oh my goodness, did we learn a lot,   Michael Hingson ** 31:13 certainly a major paradigm shift,   Scott Hanton ** 31:18 and I was lucky that I lost the coin flip, and Paula won, and she said, I want to be business development director. And I said, thank God. So she went off to be the key salesperson, and Paula was utterly brilliant as a technical salesperson, and I became the operations manager, which allowed me to keep my hands dirty with the science and to work with the scientists and to build a system and a community that allowed us to be successful in a CRO world.   Michael Hingson ** 31:49 So at that time, when you became part, part of them, the new company, were you or the standalone business? Were you working in lab? Still yourself?   Scott Hanton ** 32:01 Yes. So I had the title Operations Manager and all of the scientific staff reported into me, but I was still the technical expert in some mass spectrometry techniques, particularly MALDI and also tough Sims, and so I still had hands on lab responsibility that I needed to deliver. And over time, I was able to train some people to take some of those responsibilities off. But when the weight of the world was particularly heavy, the place for me to go was in the lab and do some experiments.   Michael Hingson ** 32:34 Yeah, still so important to be able to keep your hand in into to know and understand. I know I had that same sort of need being the manager of an office and oftentimes working with other people who were the engineers, coming from a little bit of a technical background as well. I worked to always make sure I knew all I could about the products that I was dealing with and selling, and my sales people who worked for me constantly asked, How come, you know, all this stuff, and we don't then, my response always was, did you read the product bulletin that came out last week? Or have you kept up on the product bulletins? Because it's all right there, whether I actually physically repaired products or not, I knew how to do it. And so many times when I was involved in working with some of our engineers, I remember a few times our field support people, and we were working out of New Jersey, and then in New York at the time, in the World Trade Center, we had some customers up at Lockheed Martin, up in Syria, Rochester, I think it was. And the guys would go up, and then they'd call me on the phone, and we'd talk about it, and between us, we came up with some bright ideas. And I remember one day, all of a sudden, I get this phone call, and these guys are just bouncing off the walls, because whatever it was that was going on between them and me, we figured it out, and they put it in play and made it work, and they were all just as happy as clams at high tide, which is the way it ought to   Scott Hanton ** 34:13 be. It's great to work in a team that finds success. The longer I was in technical management, the more I enjoyed the success of the team. It didn't need to be my success anymore that helping the scientists be successful in their roles was truly satisfying,   Michael Hingson ** 34:33 and that helped you, by definition, be more successful in your role.   Scott Hanton ** 34:36 And no question, it could be seen as a selfish byproduct, but the fact is that it still felt really good.   Michael Hingson ** 34:43 Yeah, I hear you, because I know for me, I never thought about it as I've got to be successful. It's we've got problems to solve. Let's do it together. And I always told people that we're a team. And I have told every salesperson. I ever hired. I'm not here to boss you around. You've convinced me that you should be able to sell our products, and sometimes I found that they couldn't. But I said my job is to work with you to figure out how I can enhance what you do, and what skills do I bring to add value to you, because we've got to work together, and the people who understood that and who got it were always the most successful people that I ever had in my teams.   Scott Hanton ** 35:30 One of the things I strive to do as a leader of any organization is to understand the key strengths of the people on the team and to try to craft their roles in such a way that they spend the majority of their time executing their strengths. Yeah. I've also discovered that when I truly investigate poor performance, there's often a correlation between poor performance and people working in their weaknesses. Yeah, and if we can shift those jobs, change those roles, make change happen so that people can work more often in their strengths, then good things happen.   Michael Hingson ** 36:07 And if you can bring some of your skills into the mix and augment what they do, so much the better.   Scott Hanton ** 36:16 Yeah, because I'm just another member of the team, my role is different, but I need to also apply my strengths to the problems and be wary of my weaknesses, because as the leader of the organization, my words carried undue weight. Yeah, and if, if I was speaking or acting in a space where I was weak, people would still do what I said, because I had the most authority, and that was just a lose, lose proposition   Michael Hingson ** 36:43 by any standard. And and when you, when you operated to everyone's strengths, it always was a win. Yep, which is so cool. So you went to Intertech, and how long were you there?   Scott Hanton ** 36:57 I was at Intertech for 10 years, and work I can if you know, for any listeners out there who work in the CRO world, it is a tough business. It is a grind working in that business, yeah? So it was a lot of long hours and testy customers and shortages of materials and equipment that was a hard a hard a hard road to plow,   Michael Hingson ** 37:22 yeah, yeah, it gets to be frustrating. Sometimes it's what you got to do, but it still gets to be frustrating gets to be a challenge. The best part   Scott Hanton ** 37:32 for me was I had a great team. We had senior and junior scientists. They were good people. They worked hard. They fundamentally, they cared about the outcomes. And so it was a great group of people to work with. But the contract lab business is a tough business. Yeah, so when covid came, you know, the pandemic settles in, all the restrictions are coming upon us. I was tasked as the General Manager of the business with setting up all the protocols, you know, how are we going to meet the number of people this basing the masks, you know, how could we work with and we were essential as a lab, so we had to keep doing what we were doing. And it took me about a week to figure non stop work to figure out what our protocols were going to be, and the moment I turned them into my boss, then I got laid off. So what you want to do in a time of crisis is you want to let go of the the general manager, the safety manager, the quality manager and the Chief Scientist, because those are four people that you don't need during times of stress or challenge or crisis. On the plus side for me, getting laid off was a bad hour. It hurt my pride, but after an hour, I realized that all the things that I'd been stressing about for years trying to run this business were no longer my problem. Yeah, and I found that it was a tremendous weight lifted off my shoulders to not feel responsible for every problem and challenge that that business had.   Michael Hingson ** 39:14 And that's always a good blessing when you when you figure that out and don't worry about the the issues anymore. That's a good thing. It was certainly   Scott Hanton ** 39:25 good for me. Yeah, so I'm not going to recommend that people go get laid off. No world to get fired. But one problem that I had is because Paula and I worked to create that business, I sort of behaved like an owner, but was treated like an employee. And my recommendation to people is, remember, you're an employee, find some personal boundaries that protect you from the stress of the business, because you're not going to be rewarded or treated like an owner.   Michael Hingson ** 39:58 Yeah, because you're not because. Or not.   Scott Hanton ** 40:01 So I got laid off. It was in the height of the pandemic. So, you know, I'm too busy of a human being to sort of sit in a rocking chair and watch the birds fly by. That's not my style or my speed. So I started a consulting business, and that was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed doing the consulting work, but I learned something really important about myself, and that's that while I can sell and I can be an effective salesperson, I don't like selling, and as a company of one, when I didn't sell, I didn't make any money, yeah, and so I needed to figure out something else to do, because I really hated selling, and I wasn't doing it. I was procrastinating, and that made the business be unpredictable and very choppy   Michael Hingson ** 40:51 in that company of one, that guy who was working for you wasn't really doing all that you wanted.   Scott Hanton ** 40:56 Exactly the Yeah, you know me as the founder, was giving me as the salesman, a poor performance review was not meeting objectives. So I had a long time volunteer relationship with lab manager magazine. I had been writing articles for them and speaking for them in webinars and in conferences for a long time, probably more than 10 years, I would say, and they asked me as a consultant to produce a a to a proposal to create the lab manager Academy. So the the founder and owner of the the company, the lab X Media Group, you really saw the value of an academy, and they needed it done. They needed it done. They couldn't figure it out themselves. So I wrote the proposal. I had a good idea of how to do it, but I was new to consulting, and I struggled with, how do I get paid for this? And I had four ideas, but I didn't like them, so I slept on it, and in the morning I had a fifth, which said, hire me full time. I sent in the proposal. An hour later, I had a phone call. A week later, I had a job, so that worked out fantastic. And I've really enjoyed my time at lab manager magazine. Great people, fun work. It's really interesting to me to be valued for what I know rather than for what I can do. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 42:23 the two relate. But still, it does need to be more about what you know, what you really bring, as opposed to what you can do, because what you can do in general probably is an offshoot of what you know.   Scott Hanton ** 42:38 So this gives me the opportunity to help lots of people. So on the outside of the company, I'm writing articles, creating courses, giving talks to help lab managers. Because I was a lab manager for a long time, yeah, over 20 years, and I know what those challenges are. I know how hard that job is, and I know how many decisions lab managers need to make, and it's wonderful to be able to share my experience and help them, and I am motivated to help them. So was it hard? Oh, go ahead, on the inside, I'm literally an internal subject matter expert, and so I can coach and teach and help my colleagues with what's the science? What do lab managers really think? How do we pitch this so that it resonates with lab managers, and I think that helps make all of our products better and more successful.   Michael Hingson ** 43:31 So was it hard? Well, I guess best way to put it is that, was it really hard to switch from being a scientist to being a lab manager and then going into being a subject matter expert and really out of the laboratory. So   Scott Hanton ** 43:48 people ask me all the time, Scott, don't you miss being in the lab and doing experiments? And my answer is, I miss being in the lab. And I do miss being in the lab. You know, on very stressful days at Intertech, I'd go in the lab and I'd do an experiment, yeah, because it was fun, and I had more control over the how the experiment was run and what I would learn from it than I did running a business. But the flip side of that is, I do experiments all the time. What I learned as the general manager of a business was the scientific method works. Let's data hypothesis. Let's figure out how to test it. Let's gather data, and let's see if the hypothesis stands or falls. And we ran a business that way, I think, pretty successfully. And even now, in in media and publishing, we still run experiments all the time. And it's kind of funny that most of my editorial colleagues that I work with, they think my favorite word is experiment. My favorite word is still why, but we talk all the time now about doing experiments, and that was a new thing for them, but now we can do continual improvement more in a more dedicated way, and we do it a lot faster. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 45:00 yeah. So what's the hardest thing you think about being a lab manager?   Scott Hanton ** 45:06 I think the hardest thing about let me answer that with two. I'm not going to be able to narrow it down to one, so I'll give you two. The first one is you transform, maybe one day to the next, from really being in control of your science and working with whether it's animals or rocks or electrons or chemicals, whatever you're working with, having a great degree of knowledge and a lot of control, and the next day, you're hurting cats. And so it's about that transition from having control over your destiny to influencing people to get the work done, and working with people instead of working with experiments, that's really hard. The second is, as a lab manager, there's endless decisions, and so combating decision fatigue is a big deal, and everybody in the lab depends upon you for the decisions you make. And it's not that every decision has to be perfect, you know, that's just a different failure mode if you try to make perfect decisions, but every decision needs to be made promptly. And as a scientist, I could always make more data in order to make a better decision, but as a lab manager, I would often only have maybe 40 or 50% of the data I wanted, and a decision had to be made. And getting comfortable making decisions in the face of uncertainty is really hard.   Michael Hingson ** 46:29 So certainly, being a lab manager or Well, dealing with managers in the way we're talking about it here, has to be very stressful. How do you how do you cope with the stress?   Scott Hanton ** 46:42 So I think ways to cope with the stress successfully is, first of all, you've got to take care of yourself. You know, we've all flown on airplanes, and what is the safety person in the aisle or on the video? Do oxygen masks will fall from the ceiling, and what do we do with them? We put them on before we help somebody else, right? We all know that. But in the workplace, especially as a manager, it's hard to remember that as we care for our team and try and take care of our team, there might not be enough time or energy or capacity left to take care of ourselves, but if we don't fill that gas tank every day doing something, then we can't help our team. And so one way to deal with the stress is to make sure that you take care of yourself. So   Michael Hingson ** 47:28 what do you do? How do you deal with that? So   Scott Hanton ** 47:31 for me, ways that I can reinvigorate is one. I like being outside and get my hands dirty. So I'm not really a gardener, but I call myself a yard dinner. So I grow grass and I grow flowers, and I trim trees, and I want to go outside, and I want to see immediate return on my effort, and I want it to be better than when I started. And it's good if I have to clean from under my fingernails when I'm doing it. Another thing I like to do is I play all kinds of games I'm happy to play, sorry, with little kids, or I'll play complicated strategy games with people who want to sit at a table for three or four hours at a time. Yeah? And that allows my brain to spin and to work but on something completely different. Yeah. And another thing that's been important for me, especially when I was a lab manager is to be involved in youth coaching, so I coached kids soccer and basketball and baseball teams, and it's just beautiful to be out there on a field with a ball, with kids. And you know, the worries of the world just aren't there. The kids don't know anything about them. And it's fun to work with the ones who are really good, but it's equally fun to work with the ones who have never seen the ball before, and to help them do even the most basic things. And that kind of giving back and paying it forward, that sort of stuff fills my tank.   Michael Hingson ** 48:51 Yeah, I empathize a lot with with that. For me, I like to read. I've never been much of a gardener, but I also collect, as I mentioned before, old radio shows, and I do that because I'm fascinated by the history and all the things I learned from what people did in the 2030s, 40s and 50s, being on radio, much Less getting the opportunity to learn about the technical aspects of how they did it, because today it's so different in terms of how one edits, how one processes and deals with sounds and so on, but it's but it's fun to do something just totally different than way maybe what your normal Job would be, and and I do love to interact with with people. I love to play games, too. I don't get to do nearly as much of it as I'd like, but playing games is, is a lot of fun,   Scott Hanton ** 49:52 and I agree, and it it's fun, it's diverting, it's it helps me get into a flow so that I'm focused on. Me on one thing, and I have no idea how much time has gone by, and I don't really care. You know, people who play games with me might question this. I don't really care if I win or lose. Certainly I want to win, but it's more important to me that I play well, and if somebody plays better, good for   Michael Hingson ** 50:14 them, great. You'll learn from it. Exactly. Do you play   Scott Hanton ** 50:18 chess? I have played chess. I've played a lot of chess. What I've learned with chess is that I'm not an excellent I'm a good player, but not an excellent player. And when I run into excellent players, they will beat me without even breaking a sweat.   Michael Hingson ** 50:34 And again, in theory, you learn something from that.   Scott Hanton ** 50:37 What I found is that I don't really want to work that hard and yeah. And so by adding an element of chance or probability to the game, the people who focus on chess, where there are known answers and known situations, they get thrown off by the uncertainty of the of the flip the card or roll the dice. And my brain loves that uncertainty, so I tend to thrive. Maybe it's from my time in the lab with elements of uncertainty, where the chess players wilt under elements of uncertainty, and it's again, it's back to our strengths, right? That's something that I'm good at, so I'm gonna go do it. I've   Michael Hingson ** 51:20 always loved Trivial Pursuit. That's always been a fun game that I enjoy playing. I   Scott Hanton ** 51:25 do love Trivial Pursuit. I watch Jeopardy regularly. A funny story, when we moved into our new house in Pennsylvania, it was a great neighborhood. Loved the neighbors there. When we first moved in, they invited my wife and I to a game night. Excellent. We love games. We're going to play Trivial Pursuit. Awesome like Trivial Pursuit. We're going to play as couples. Bad idea, right? Let's play boys against the girls, or, let's say, random draws. No, we're playing as couples. Okay, so we played as couples. Helen and I won every game by a large margin. We were never invited back for game night. Yeah, invited back for lots of other things, but not game night.   Michael Hingson ** 52:06 One of the things that, and I've talked about it with people on this podcast before, is that all too often, when somebody reads a question from a trivial pursuit card, an answer pops in your head, then you went, Oh, that was too easy. That can't be the right answer. So you think about it, and you answer with something else, but invariably, that first answer was always the correct answer.   Scott Hanton ** 52:32 Yes, I'm I have learned to trust my intuition. Yeah. I learned, as a research scientist, that especially in talking to some of my peers, who are very dogmatic, very step by step scientists. And they lay out the 20 steps to that they felt would be successful. And they would do one at a time, one through 20. And that made them happy for me, I do one and two, and then I'd predict where that data led me, and I do experiment number seven, and if it worked, I'm off to eight. And so I they would do what, one step at a time, one to 20, and I'd sort of do 127, 1420, yeah. And that I learned that that intuition was powerful and valuable, and I've learned to trust it. And in my lab career, it served me really well. But also as a manager, it has served me well to trust my intuition, and at least to listen to it. And if I need to analyze it, I can do that, but I'm going to listen to it,   Michael Hingson ** 53:31 and that's the important thing, because invariably, it's going to give you useful information, and it may be telling you not what to do, but still trusting it and listening to it is so important, I've found that a lot over the years,   Scott Hanton ** 53:47 Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called Blink, where he talks about the power of the subconscious, and his claim is that the subconscious is 100,000 times smarter than our conscious brain, and I think when we are trusting our intuition, we're tapping into that super computer that's in our skulls. If you want to learn more, read blank. It's a great story.   Michael Hingson ** 54:10 I hear you. I agree. How can people learn to be better leaders and managers?   Scott Hanton ** 54:18 So I think it's there's really three normal ways that people do this. One is the power of experiment, right? And I did plenty of that, and I made tons of errors. It's painful. It's irritating, trial and error, but I used to tell people at Intertech that I was the general manager because I'd made the most mistakes, which gave me the most opportunity to learn. It was also partly because a lot of my peers wanted nothing to do with the job. You know, they wanted to be scientists. Another way is we, we get coached and mentored by people around us, and that is awesome if you have good supervisors, and it's tragic if you have bad supervisors, because you don't know any better and you take for granted. That the way it's been done is the way it needs to be done, and that prevents us from being generative leaders and questioning the status quo. So there's problems there, too. And I had both good and bad supervisors during my career. I had some awful, toxic human beings who were my supervisors, who did damage to me, and then I had some brilliant, caring, empathetic people who raised me up and helped me become the leader that I am today. So it's a bit of a crap shoot. The third way is go out and learn it from somebody who's done it right, and that's why we generated the lab manager Academy to try to codify all the mistakes I made and what are the learnings from them? And when I'm talking with learners who are in the program, it's we have a huge positive result feedback on our courses. And what I talk to people about who take our courses is I'm glad you appreciate what we've put together here. That makes me feel good. I'm glad it's helping you. But when these are my mistakes and the answers to my mistakes, when you make mistakes, you need to in the future, go make some courses and teach people what the lessons were from your mistakes and pay it forward. Yeah. So I recommend getting some training.   Michael Hingson ** 56:17 What's the difference between management and leadership?   Scott Hanton ** 56:21 I particularly love a quote from Peter Drucker. So Peter Drucker was a professor in California. You may have heard of him before.   Michael Hingson ** 56:29 I have. I never had the opportunity to meet him, but I read.   Scott Hanton ** 56:34 I didn't either material. I've read his books, and I think he is an insightful human being, yes. So the quote goes like this, management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things. So as a technical manager, there's a bunch of things we have to get right. We have to get safety right. We have to get quality right. There's an accuracy and precision that we need to get right for our outcomes and our results. Those are management tasks, but leadership is about doing the right things. And the interesting thing about that definition is it doesn't require a title or a role or any level of authority. So anyone can be a leader if you're consistently doing the right things, you are exhibiting leadership, and that could be from the person sweeping the floors or the person approving the budget, or anyone in between.   Michael Hingson ** 57:33 Yeah, I've heard that quote from him before, and absolutely agree with it. It makes a whole lot of sense.   Scott Hanton ** 57:41 Other definitions that I've seen trying to distinguish management and leadership tend to use the words manage and lead, and I don't like definitions that include the words that they're trying to define. They become circular at some level. This one, I think, is clear about it, what its intention is, and for me, it has worked through my career, and so the separation is valuable. I have authority. I'm the manager. I have accountability to get some stuff right, but anyone can lead, and everyone can lead, and the organization works so much better when it's full of leaders   Michael Hingson ** 58:21 and leaders who are willing to recognize when they bring something to the table, or if someone else can add value in ways that they can't, to be willing to let the other individual take the leadership position for a while.   Scott Hanton ** 58:40 Absolutely, and you know that really comes down to building an environment and a culture that's supportive. And so Amy Edmondson has written extensively on the importance of psychological safety, and that psychological safety hinges on what you just said, right? If the guy who sweeps the floor has an observation about the organization. Do they feel safe to go tell the person in charge that this observation, and if they feel safe, and if that leader is sufficiently vulnerable and humble to listen with curiosity about that observation, then everybody benefits, yeah, and the more safe everyone feels. We think about emotion. Emotional safety is they anyone can bring their best self to work, and psychological safety is they can contribute their ideas and observations with no threat of retaliation, then we have an environment where we're going to get the best out of everybody, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 59:46 which is the way it it really ought to be. And all too often we don't necessarily see it, but that is the way it ought   Scott Hanton ** 59:53 to be. Too many people are worried about credit, or, I don't know, worried about things that I don't see. Yeah, and they waste human potential, right? They they don't open their doors to hire anybody. They they judge people based on what they look like instead of who they are, or they box people in into roles, and don't let them flourish and Excel. And whenever you're doing those kinds of things, you're wasting human potential. And businesses, science and business are too hard to waste human potential. We need to take advantage of everything that people are willing to give. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:33 we've been doing this for quite a while already today. So I'm going to ask as a kind of a last question, what, what advice do you want to leave for people to think about going forward in their lives and in their careers?   Scott Hanton ** 1:00:48 So I was participating in a LinkedIn chat today where a professor was asking the question, what sort of advice would you wish you got when you were 21 Okay, so it was an interesting thread, and there was one contributor to the thread who said something I thought was particularly valuable. And she said, attitude matters. Attitude matters. We can't control what happens to us, but we can control how we deal with it and how we respond, right? And so I think if we can hold our attitude as our accountability, and we can direct our strengths and our talents to applying them against the challenges that the business or the science or the lab or the community faces, and we can go in with some positive attitude and positive desire for for change and improvement, and we can be vulnerable and humble enough to accept other people's ideas and to interact through discussion and healthy debate. Then everything's better. I also like Kelleher his quote he was the co founder of Southwest Airlines, and he said, when you're hiring, hire for attitude, train for skill. Attitude is so important. So I think, understand your attitude. Bring the attitude you want, the attitude you value, the attitude that's that's parallel to your core values. And then communicate to others about their attitude and how it's working or not working for them.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:31 And hopefully, if they have a positive or good enough attitude, they will take that into consideration and grow because of it absolutely   Scott Hanton ** 1:02:41 gives everybody the chance to be the best they can be.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:47 Well, Scott, this has been wonderful. If people want to reach out to you, how can they do that?   Scott Hanton ** 1:02:51 So LinkedIn is great. I've provided Michael my LinkedIn connection. So I would love to have people connect to me on LinkedIn or email. S Hanson at lab manager.com love to have interactions with the folks out there.   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:08 Well, I want to thank you for spending so much time. We'll have to do more of this.   Scott Hanton ** 1:03:13 Michael, I really enjoyed it. This was a fun conversation. It was stimulating. You asked good questio

Welcome to WHCB's Prayer Time! The host of Prayer Time is our General Manager, Dr. Kenneth C. Hill, and the broadcast airs on 91.5 FM and WHCBRadio.org each morning at 6 AM. Do you have questions or prayer requests? Please send them through our website! You can send us a message, give online, and listen online at WHCBRadio.org. Thanks for listening to Prayer Time!Support the show: http://www.whcbradio.orgSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dell Technologies has today announced the launch and availability of its next generation of flagship laptops, now rebranded under the new Dell Premium line. The Pro Max marks a new chapter in Dell's premium offering, replacing the XPS brand while retaining its hallmark craftsmanship, performance, and design. The new line includes the Dell 14 Premium and Dell 16 Premium and are positioned as the company's lead offering for users seeking high-performance, future-ready devices. The laptops are now available in Ireland. New Pro Max laptops have AI features Built on Intel Core Ultra 200H series processors, the Dell Premium range delivers significant gains in both performance and battery life. The 14.5-inch and 16.3-inch screens offer increased display real estate without expanding the devices' footprint, while OLED options with 4K resolution and 120Hz refresh rates provide enhanced visual quality. The range also includes features such as EyeSafe technology for reduced blue light exposure and Liquid Crystal Polymer fan blades designed for more efficient, quiet cooling. Kevin Terwilliger, Vice-President and General Manager of the PC Product Management Group, Dell Technologies said: "We're in a dynamic era where technology serves as both the tool and the canvas for ideas and innovation. Built for the power users, engineers, creators and AI developers transforming industries, these AI PCs not only handle the most demanding AI workflows but set the standard for performance and creativity. "Reliability, configurability, and performance aren't just features - they're the foundation. We know professionals need tools they can count on to tackle their most critical and impactful workloads, and that's what we deliver." Early benchmarks show up to 33% improved performance for general use and up to 21% faster speeds for lighter creative workloads. The 14-inch model offers up to 20 hours of streaming battery life, with the 16-inch version extending to 27 hours using energy-efficient 2K displays. Both laptops support memory speeds up to 8400MHz, while advanced multithreading improves performance for heavier workflows such as video editing or content processing. The Dell 16 Premium can be configured with up to Intel Core Ultra 9 processors and offers 45W sustained CPU power. An optional NVIDIA RTX 50 Series GPU delivers AI-enhanced graphics and DLSS 4 for accelerated image rendering, while Thunderbolt 5 connectivity (optional) supports transfer speeds up to 120Gbps and multi-monitor setups with up to four 8K displays. The smaller Dell 14 Premium model includes integrated graphics with 29% faster processing, and optional RTX 4050 GPU for enhanced creative performance. Both models support Wi-Fi 7 for improved network speed and responsiveness. Build quality and materials used by Dell remain a key focus, with both devices featuring CNC-machined aluminium, Gorilla Glass 3, and a streamlined edge-to-edge design. Sustainability measures have also been expanded, with the range meeting ENERGY STAR 9.0, EPEAT Gold Climate+, and integrating recycled aluminium and plastics in both construction and packaging. All devices ship with Windows 11 and include Copilot on Windows, Microsoft's integrated AI assistant. The release comes ahead of the October 2025 end-of-support date for Windows 10, as businesses and consumers here in Ireland prepare to upgrade to more secure and modern platforms. Pricing and Availability Dell 14 Premium starting at €1,899.00 is now available Dell 16 Premium starting at €1,998.99 is now available See more breaking stories here. More about Irish Tech News Irish Tech News are Ireland's No. 1 Online Tech Publication and often Ireland's No.1 Tech Podcast too. You can find hundreds of fantastic previous episodes and subscribe using whatever platform you like via our Anchor.fm page here: https://anchor.fm/irish-tech-news If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming Podcast email us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie now to discuss. Irish Tech News hav...

Celebrating 90 Years of Alcoholics Anonymous at the International Convention in Vancouver, BC, our podcast team Don, Olis and Sam welcomed a live audience to participate in the recording of the 200th episode of our "audio oddity" The AA Grapevine Half Hour Variety Hour. This week we use a full hour. Guests this episode include: Nathan, the host of the GSO's podcast Our Primary Purpose; David, a General Service Trustee and Chair of the Grapevine Board; Bob, the General Manager of the General Service Office; Chris, the Publisher of Grapevine; and Jennifer, an audience member from New Jersey. There's also a question and answer session with the audience.While we provide the podcast at no charge, we do have expenses. Grapevine is the only AA entity that does not accept direct contributions, so to support the AA Grapevine Podcast, please subscribe to Grapevine Magazine in print, online, or on the Grapevine app. You can also provide a subscription to someone in need through our "Carry the Message" program or purchase books or other items at aagrapevine.org/storeYou can email us at podcast@aagrapevine.org. To record an Ask-It-Basket question or a recovery-related joke, call 212-870-3418 or email a voice recording to podcast@aagrapevine.org

Dexcom generates more than $4 billion in annual revenue and has a market cap north of $30 billion, making it one of the biggest digital health companies in the world. And it all started with a better way to measure blood sugar.In this episode, Halle is joined by Kevin Sayer, CEO of Dexcom, the company that pioneered continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). Under Kevin's leadership, Dexcom scaled from $40 million to $4 billion in revenue, became the standard of care for people with diabetes, and is now expanding into consumer wellness with its direct-to-consumer product, Stelo.We cover:

Welcome to this episode of The New Warehouse Podcast, where Kevin chats with Alex Vinden, General Manager of Light Industrial at Instawork. Instawork is a flexible staffing platform redefining how warehouses meet labor demands. Alex dives into Instawork's tech-powered approach to temporary staffing, its role in collecting real-time labor data, and key insights from their latest State of Warehouse Labor report. As warehouses grapple with evolving labor needs and the uncertainty of tariffs, Alex breaks down the emerging trends and why flexibility is no longer optional; it's essential for attracting and retaining top warehouse talent.Learn more about Collision Awareness here. Lift smarter with TAWI Follow us on LinkedIn and YouTube.Support the show

Feeling overwhelmed trying to do all the things in your travel business? In this episode, Ros chats with her General Manager, Redrose, about knowing when it's time to get help. With years of experience in outsourcing, offshore recruitment, and managing global teams, Redrose shares real-world advice on spotting the signs of burnout, how to start outsourcing with confidence, and what tasks travel advisors should stop doing to focus on growth. You'll hear: The biggest red flags that mean it's time to delegate The systems you need (and don't) before hiring Simple mindset shifts for solo advisors How to use our free resource: 50 Things You Can Outsource in Your Travel Business This is a must-listen if you're ready to scale your business without burning out and want the tools to do it smartly. Grab the free checklist and learn more at: http://travelagentachievers.com/99 Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast app so you don't miss future episodes. If this resonated with you, please leave a review, it helps more travel professionals find us and grow stronger businesses. Ready to take the next step? Visit www.travelagentachievers.com for resources, tools, and to connect with our community.  

Matt McClain, General Manager and Executive Director of Trilith Live, offers a compelling vision for this groundbreaking entertainment complex in Georgia. He reveals how Trilith Live is not just a venue, but a pivotal part of a larger, visionary ecosystem designed to transform how audiences engage with live entertainment. Holistic Vision & Unmatched Experience: At the core of Trilith Live's identity is its holistic integration within the visionary Town of Trilith ecosystem, directly adjacent to Trilith Studios. This unique connection profoundly shapes its programming, design, and overall guest experience, setting it apart as a true entertainment complex in the Southeast. Cutting-Edge Technology & Future-Proof Production: Leveraging its direct ties to a leading film studio, Trilith Live prioritizes technological innovation. The complex integrates cutting-edge production capabilities and advanced audience engagement systems, both front-of-house and backstage. This ensures a future-proof, state-of-the-art entertainment experience for every performance. Deep Community Integration & Local Impact: Beyond ticket sales, Trilith Live is deeply committed to community integration and generating significant local impact within the Georgia community. It actively fosters local talent, creates economic opportunities, and strives to become a vibrant cultural cornerstone for residents beyond just event attendees. Versatile & Curated Programming Strategy: With its highly versatile space, Trilith Live employs a meticulous curated programming strategy. The philosophy centers on selecting diverse live music, theatrical productions, corporate events, and unique activations that resonate equally with a global audience drawn by the Trilith brand and its loyal local patrons. Sustainable Practices & Future Growth: Sustainability is a key priority in both Trilith Live's operations and design.Looking ahead, the complex foresees significant opportunities in scaling its offerings while navigating the challenges of maintaining its innovative edge and strong community focus amidst future growth. Defining "Live" in the Digital Age: In today's pervasive digital age, Trilith Live defines the essential value of 'live' entertainment by prioritizing truly immersive elements and unique fan experiences. The goal is to draw audiences away from their screens and into a captivating physical space that offers unparalleled engagement and unforgettable memories. Web: www.trilithlive.com About The Town at Trilith The Town at Trilith is a visionary 235-acre master-planned residential and mixed-use project situated in south metro Atlanta, Georgia. Conceived as a vibrant gathering place for creatives, artists, storytellers, and makers, this unique European-inspired community will feature 750 single-family homes, 600 multi-family lofts, 300 hotel rooms, and 270,000 square feet of exceptional restaurants, retail, office, and commercial space. The residential neighborhoods at Trilith proudly represent the largest geothermal community in the United States, with an impressive 51% of the development dedicated to lush green space, currently home to over 1,000 trees. Upon completion, residents will enjoy access to 15 miles of scenic nature trails, 54 acres of pristine forest, 19 superbly landscaped parks, and one of the most sophisticated and welcoming dog parks globally. For more information about Trilith, please visit Trilith.com. Get to Know Ash Brown: Your Go-To for Inspiration and Empowerment Looking for a motivational speaker, engaging blogger, or talented producer who radiates positive energy? Look no further than Ash Brown! This multi-talented American powerhouse is a captivating media personality, an excellent event host, and a passionate advocate for helping individuals reach their full potential. Her infectious energy and genuine desire to see others succeed make her a standout in the personal development space. Dive into Ash's World: AshSaidit.com & The Ash Said It Show AshSaidit.com: This vibrant lifestyle blog and event platform is your exclusive pass to Ash's world. Discover exclusive event invitations, honest product reviews, and a wealth of engaging, informative content. Ash's blog is the perfect destination to stay in the loop and get a daily dose of her unique personality and insights. The Ash Said It Show: Prepare to be inspired by Ash Brown's popular podcast! With over 2,000 episodes and half a million listens globally, "The Ash Said It Show" is a true powerhouse of motivation. Ash engages in insightful conversations with inspiring individuals and delves into topics that truly matter, offering listeners valuable life lessons and encouragement. Why Ash Brown Stands Out: Authenticity, Optimism, and Action What truly sets Ash Brown apart is her authentic approach to personal growth. She connects with her audience on a genuine level, offering practical advice and encouragement that feels like a conversation with a trusted friend. Ash doesn't shy away from life's challenges; instead, she provides the tools to tackle them head-on. Here's why Ash Brown is a leading voice in motivation and personal development: Sunshine Personified: Ash's inherent optimism is contagious. Her positive energy empowers listeners and readers, leaving them feeling more capable and ready to embrace new challenges. Keeping It Real: Ash offers relatable, unfiltered advice that resonates with people from all walks of life. 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11am-12pm Hour 2 - Zach Jones and Derek Kramer talk about the Dallas Cowboys and their blunders in recent years and why they continue to happen. The guys also talk about the cornerback battle in the Bills secondary and how Tre'Davious White will slot into the lineup.

My guest this week is Michael Larson, Executive Vice President & General Manager of the Schaumburg Boomers. He tells us his journey that led to his current position with the ball club and how they do things a little differently.

Welcome to WHCB's Prayer Time! The host of Prayer Time is our General Manager, Dr. Kenneth C. Hill, and the broadcast airs on 91.5 FM and WHCBRadio.org each morning at 6 AM. Do you have questions or prayer requests? Please send them through our website! You can send us a message, give online, and listen online at WHCBRadio.org. Thanks for listening to Prayer Time!Support the show: http://www.whcbradio.orgSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Quaranteam-Northwest: Part 5 Lab work. Based on a post by Break The Bar. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels.   Time went quickly, but also seemed to go nowhere at all; only three days after the final demise of the house we'd moved the RVs four times and I decided we needed to figure out something at least semi-permanent. Even a week in the same spot would be preferable to constant movement. The space where my house had stood was now full of stacks and pallets of supplies, and Vanessa had a crew of almost two dozen of her 'gorillas' working to erect what would become the first of a dozen temporary bunkhouses for the incoming construction workers. She still seemed to be the only foreman on site, so I went looking for Vanessa. I found her at the water truck, splashing some water onto the back of her neck as she took a quick break. It had turned even hotter over the week, spring slipping fully into summer, and we were all starting to boil when we were outside. I'd quickly abandoned the feeling of needing to 'dress up' for everyone and I was down to athletic shorts and one of my sleeveless workout shirts; one of the few that were still 'mine' considering both Erica and Ivy had taken to wearing them as well. Vanessa was the boss however and had to set the example for the rest of the crew, so she was still wearing the jeans, long-sleeved t-shirt and her reflective vest of a dutiful construction foreman. "Hey, got a second?" I asked. "Oh, hey Harrison," she said, looking up as she continued splashing water onto the back of her neck. "Sorry I haven't come to check with you and the girls today, we had three more loads this morning of barracks pilings I had to get sorted, and the fucking surveyors are still bitching about not knowing where the sewage lines are going to come onto the property, as if I can fucking answer that question for them or something." "When's your Dad supposed to finally get on site?" I asked. Her father was supposed to be the General Manager of the entire construction project, but so far I had yet to have seen him. "Fuck, a few days still at least," Vanessa sighed. "I'm getting tired as shit of the phone tag." "Well, sorry if this is a big ask and causes you more headaches; any chance we could project ahead a bit and figure out where we can stash the RVs and everything where we're not going to need to move them for a while? Moving everything around is annoying by itself, but I've also noticed some of your guys are spending a lot of time wandering by the RVs whenever the girls are outside." "Fucking gorillas," Vanessa grunted and grimaced. "I mean, on the one hand, I get it; they are either cooped up in the motel or here working. I'm not exactly thrilled with the situation either. But they could keep it in their fucking pants too, ya know?" "Look, if we can find a spot, the way I see it we can use the RVs and Containers to set up a yard for us that's blocked from view. Then we can have some privacy and not feel cooped up in the RVs, and your guys aren't tempted to let their eyes wander," I said. "I figure it's a win-win." Vanessa smiled and patted my arm. "Harri, as long as you keep the fucking indoors, I'll see what I can do about getting you guys some more privacy." "What do you mean?" I asked, suddenly a little worried that Erica and I might have gotten caught at the Willow tree after all, or that maybe a surveyor had wandered up near the Spring without us hearing. "Nothing, nothing," Vanessa said. "I just; you know we can see the RVs rocking a bit, right? And I don't know who it is, but someone over in your camp is a screamer. We can hear her when she really gets going. Once the guys even gave you a standing ovation." "Fuck," I coughed, shaking my head. "I'm sorry. I think it's something to do with the vaccine. I've had more sex in the last four days than I have in the last four years. Honestly, I don't even know how I'm doing it; I ain't old, but I'm not a teenager either." "Well, god bless the vaccine I guess," Vanessa smirked. "And good for you. Just do me a favor and keep it inside the RVs 'till we can get you that privacy. We don't need the entire site shutting down to listen to you fucking your girlfriends." I shook my head again with a self-deprecating smirk. "Um, deal. I hope." That made Vanessa chuckle, and we parted ways for the afternoon. The next day, she came back in the morning and explained the plan she had worked out with the Surveyors and one of the tree-clearing crews. By mid-afternoon, a new swathe of the back end of the hill was bare of trees, and a bulldozer scooped dirt into the holes left by ripped-up stumps. By the time Vanessa left that evening, two of the storage containers had been shifted around by the 'gorillas' and positioned in an L-shape for us in the new location, and Leo and I moved the RVs to form the other two sides of a square. When Vanessa came by the next morning we'd hung up some old, heavy blankets at the corners to maximize our privacy, busted out the lawn chairs and barbecue, and were on our way to turning the space into an outdoor living room. Leo and I even went so far as to rig up an old bell we'd salvaged from the barn on a wooden post with a metal knocker on a string to serve as a doorbell. Erica was the one to answer Vanessa's ring of the bell, and she swept aside the blanket curtain. "Welcome to Casa de Black," she declared. "Jesus," Vanessa said, walking into our new home base. "You guys didn't want to wait, did you?" "Why would we?" Leo asked. "We don't know how long we're going to be living like this, so might as well make the most of it." Leo had decided to make one last addition to our current set-up, and had pulled a loose slab of wood from the container holding all his tools and was carving 'Speak Friend and Enter' into it the makeshift sign with his handheld angle grinder. He'd already been talking about using his torch to burn the wood before giving it a clear lacquer coat. "What can we do for you, Vanessa?" I asked. "Need some breakfast?" "Actually?" Vanessa chewed on the inside of her cheek for a second and peeked back outside the yard. "Breakfast would be fucking great. They're feeding us at the motel, but it's been the same instant oatmeal every fucking morning." "Well, we've yet to have our egg hookup dry out on us," I said. Old Mrs. Branston lived about fifteen minutes down the highway and had been selling eggs to three generations of my family; through the pandemic and quarantine we'd set up a system where I called ahead and she dropped off two dozen eggs at the end of her driveway, and I left a ten dollar bill in her mailbox. "How do you like them? I think I'm getting pretty good at using the grill with a frying pan." We hosted Vanessa for about fifteen minutes as I fried her up some over-easy eggs and some toast to go with it, and she started devouring the first two so quickly that I put another two in the pan for her immediately. While I cooked, she shared the most recent gossip running through the construction crews. "So the latest group to come in said they got tested four times before even leaving the airport," she said around a mouthful. "They were basically flown into Portland, put in little hygienic pods inside the terminals until they'd tested negative all four times, then escorted to military transports. I guess the army is our taxi service or something, and there are members of the national guard currently standing watch at all of the motels. It's kind of fucked up and feels like a prison, honestly. We're not even supposed to mingle outside with each other, despite the fact that we all work together here all day." "Who's feeding you all?" Danielle asked. "Just the people already working out there seems like a lot." "Some catering service is making these prepackaged meals," Vanessa said. "The breakfasts are shit, and the lunches are whatever. The dinners are Okay though; microwavable, and waiting for us when we get off shift." "Have you heard anything else out there about the vaccine?" I asked. "Hmm-Hmm," Vanessa shook her head. "But I mean, I spend my time working." "I'm still not seeing much online," Leo said. "Little whispers on social media, but then it disappears before it gets going." "That's kinda fucked up," Erica said. "We know it's real. The government must be censoring the information or something. "Well, whenever it happens, I don't know what I'll do," Vanessa sighed. "I like working too much, being my own woman. I bring in more cash in a year than almost every other person I graduated high school with, I've been doing it for years, and I don't have any debts. I can't just get tied down to some guy." "You would be surprised, Vanessa," Ivy spoke up. "I am this way too, no? I left home to make my way, and I am happy doing it. But now I am happy here, and am also safe from the sickness. It is not how I saw my life going, but c'est la vie, non?" Vanessa shrugged, and we moved on to some other topics until her radio squawked and she had to run off back to her work. By lunchtime I'd already done another two quick guides into the hills for the surveyors and Leo had gotten his nerd-sign carved out and torched, and he was spray lacquering it outside the yard with a facemask and safety goggles on to cut the strong fumes. He stopped the sprayer when he saw me approaching and stepped away from the sign. "Hey, you able to help me out with hanging this tonight?" he asked me. "Of course," I said. "I gotta help you fly your nerd flag somehow." "Yeah, says the guy with the Lord of the Rings concept art cycling as his desktop screen," Leo rolled his eyes. "It's for my work," I said. "Top-notch inspiration." And then I realized I hadn't opened my laptop in days; not since I'd finished the questionnaire that had led to Erica choosing me. And Ivy for that matter. I hadn't checked emails, I hadn't reached out to contacts. Fuck, I hadn't even sent in my last work-for-hire backgrounds. "Whatever," Leo laughed and punched me in the arm. "Look, when you go in there, just know it wasn't my idea, Okay? I only helped them move the stuff." "What does that mean?" I asked. "You'll see," Leo said cryptically. I ducked through the blanket door and immediately saw what Leo was talking about. Space had been cleared in the center of our sheltered yard for three of the heavy Adirondack deck chairs, and laying in those chairs were Danielle, Erica and Ivy. Each of them was wearing a bikini and were glistening with sunscreen and sweat from the sun as they tanned. They had a Bluetooth speaker playing songs from their phones; I suspected Erica was trying to convince the younger two women of the virtues of mid-2000s pop punk. "Oh, good," Erica said, grinning as she saw me coming into the yard. She lifted her glass. "Um, excuse me, waiter? We could use a top-up, please." I snorted and shook my head, walking over. All three of the women were in two-piece swimsuits, though I suspected Danielle and Ivy's were possibly part of their stripping gear rather than actual bikinis. Both of their suits were more string than fabric and left little to the imagination. Erica's was a bit more conservative, though really not by that much because of her swathe of cleavage. "What are we drinking today, ladies?" I asked. "I made up a pitcher of sangria," Erica said. "It's in the fridge in our place. You would be the absolute love of my life if you were to go get it for us, please?" "I thought I already was the love of your life?" I asked with a smile. "You are," Erica smiled back. "But this will get you to the front of the line for my next life, too. How about that?" "Does that go for all of you?" I asked. "Absolutely," Ivy grinned. "I think I could definitely do worse," Danielle grinned. "But I think Leo might have something to say about that." "Harri can take my brother," Erica chuckled. "Don't worry, Danni. Just sell your future soul to Harri, what's the worst that could happen?" "Fine. My future love life for a refill of sangria," Danielle giggled. I fetched the pitcher and poured for the three women, unable to wipe the grin from my lips as I watched and listened to them bantering back and forth happily. By mid-afternoon, the tanning was over and after a quick fuck in the RV Erica and I were lounging in the Adirondacks, each of us with a sketchbook in hand. "What are you working on?" I asked. "I know you've been as frustrated as I have over the last month." "A tattoo design for Ivy," Erica said, her brow creased as she tapped her pencil against her lips thoughtfully. "Now that I have a future canvas, I feel like I can concentrate again. Plus the sex helps a lot." You laughed and nodded. "Got your creative juices flowing, huh?" "Got all my juices flowing, baby," she grinned at me. "What about you? I've got Ivy, and Danielle wants me to design something for her now, too. What's got you drawing again?" I smiled a little and shrugged. "Just figured out my muse," I said. "And what's that?" she asked. "Come on, don't be shy." I turned my sketchbook around so that Erica could see the portrait I had been sketching of her. She looked at it and blushed, biting her lower lip. "Just the most beautiful thing in the world," I told her. "You know," Erica said. "It kinda looks like you're drawing me naked." "That's cause I'm drawing you from the shoulders up," I said. "Yeah, but would you?" she asked. "Would I what? Draw you naked?" "Or Ivy?" "Are you asking me to draw you like one of my French girls?" I asked. Erica barked out a laugh at the reference and threw her pencil at me. "Yes, maybe I am," she said. "Now give me back my pencil." "You threw it at me," I said, fetching it off the ground. "Come and get it." We ended up in each other's arms and making out, me halfway to taking her back into the RV for round two, when someone rang the doorbell. "Who is it?" I shouted over the wall. "It's me," Vanessa called and ducked through the blanket door without waiting for a response. "Sorry, but we've got a problem," she said. "I think I'm going to need you down at the road again." "Fuck," I said. "Is it Kara?" "It's a lot more than that bitch," Vanessa said. I changed and this time Vanessa drove us both down in her company-branded pickup truck. Erica, having already staked her claim on me in front of Kara in her eyes, decided to hang back and let Ivy finish what I'd started. I was sure sending me away with that picture in my mind was done on purpose. As we were nearing the bottom of the driveway, I could hear the noise of the protest through the closed windows and over the engine of the truck. "Fuck me," I said. "Yeah," Vanessa nodded. The end of the driveway was packed with people, shoulder to shoulder, blocking traffic. They were three rows deep and singing a protest chant. Every single one of them was dressed in bright colors, showing their allegiance to the Band and proudly shouting for all they were worth. Opposing them, about ten feet up the drive, was a slim, single row of burly construction workers just watching the protest happen. "Those guys really can't let themselves get baited," I said. "If something happens, it doesn't matter who said what or what can hold up in court. There'll be big, scary motherfuckers showing up wanting to do some damage and I don't think your boys are ready for that." "I know, I already told them," Vanessa said. "But I'll tell them again. You'd be surprised how much threatening someone's big, fat bonus checks can keep them calm and focused." We got out of the truck and I walked down to the line of workers, rubbing at the stubble on my chin as I considered the protestors. There were easily fifty of them blocking the driveway, and there was already a backup of two flatbed trucks on the highway, plus a half dozen cars that looked more like they just wanted to get by rather than come in. Another thirty or so protestors were strung out on either side of the highway in both directions, holding up signs and doing the organizational things to keep the protestors going. "Pretty good turnout," I said offhandedly. "A lot bigger than last time." "When was the last time?" Vanessa asked. "Five years ago," I said. "Kara tried to sue for an injunction on my father's Will, and about a dozen protestors showed up to the courthouse the day she got shot down." "Any chance they'll get tired and go home?" Vanessa asked. I scanned the crowd and the vehicles parked up and down the highway. I already knew there were about thirty military-age males in the protest, and I could see people opening the backs of vans where I spotted supply caches of water and food. I could also see the determination on the faces of the crowd, and hear the declarations of a couple of different women holding loudspeakers. The rhetoric, and emotions, were ramped up more than usual. The anti-government hate was high, and now that they knew they weren't fighting Me but rather the Government it seemed to steel their resolve. "Not a shot," I said. I stepped forward and the shouting got louder. Likely every single person in that crowd knew who I was, while I had no idea who most of them were. But with every step I took, they shouted louder. Finally, halfway between the lines, they seemed to be at a fever pitch and I just stopped and waited. They kept going for a good five minutes before Kara pushed her way through and walked up to me, masked behind those bandanas again. "I told you this would happen," Kara said over the shouting and chanting. "You didn't think I could do it, but look at us. Look at us, Harrison! We will not let this happen to our land." "Kara," I said loudly. "How do you think this ends?" "Only one way," Kara shouted. "The Feds surrender to our rightful claim, and stop their colonization efforts, and we take back what's ours." "This is dangerous, Kara," I said, gesturing at the crowd. "What?" she shouted back. "I said this is dangerous, Kara," I shouted. "Every person here is in danger." "Are you threatening us?" Kara shouted, playing it up for the crowd behind her. "Going to kill us, like your family has done for generations?" "Jesus fuck," I said, shaking my head. "Kara, this doesn't end the way you think it does. I'm going to pray for you, honest to God." Kara just held up her middle finger at me, pointed her other at Vanessa behind me, and turned and walked away to the cheers of her people. I shrugged and went back to Vanessa. "Yeah, they aren't leaving," I said. "I already called my Dad," Vanessa said. "He's coming down and will want to meet with you." "Sure," I nodded. "If they let him through." About thirty minutes later the protesters were still going strong, and another three flatbeds with either supplies or heavy machinery were backed up on the highway, along with dozens of cars. Vanessa was doing as much as she could to keep her workers at least a dozen yards away from the crowd of protestors; the last thing she wanted was for them to need to get quarantined waiting on a half dozen new tests. Or worse, actually catch something. I did my best to help her juggle phones, calling various General Foremen to get incoming trucks rerouted to staging areas and to keep those that were stuck in the traffic in their cabs or else they couldn't enter the site. Eventually she got a call, spoke quickly and then hung up. "Harri, this might be a big ask, but could you do me a favor?" she asked. "The government paid me a lot of money for my land and doing favors," I said. "But you've gone out of your way plenty for me and Leo and the girls. Favors come free to you, Vee." She rolled her eyes. "Who told you my brothers call me that?" "No one, just felt natural," I chuckled. "I call Erica 'E' sometimes, and I'm sure I'll end up calling Ivy 'I've' at some point." "Alright, well, 'H,'" she said. "My dad is parked down at the edge of the property on the highway and doesn't want to get too close to the traffic. Could you hike out to him and bring him back?" "Sure," I said. I looked up at the sun and then out at the woods. "Um, from here... it's probably faster if I grab an ATV. Would he be squeamish about riding double with me?" Vanessa snorted. "He probably wouldn't be, but he's also got a gut the size of your ATVs so it would be a tight fit." "Alright, guess we're hiking. I can rough it and reach him in about twenty minutes," I said. "I'll take a smoother way back for him, so we'll get here in under an hour." "Got it, I'll let him know you're on your way. Thanks," she said, patting my arm. "Try to take it easy on him, he growls like a bear but he's still my Dad." "Hey, he's the big man in charge. Gotta keep him happy or else I'll find myself with the worst workers for my house, right?" "Very true," she laughed. I started hiking back up the driveway a little ways, and then diverted into the woods, hoping that the protestors would miss that I was skirting away from them. I was very glad I had changed from my lounging around clothes; rough jeans and my hiking boots were a lot sturdier in the rocky bush than athletic shorts and sandals. The raucousness of the protestors was quickly muffled by the forest to a dull roar, and it felt good to get away from them. It was weird. After spending months in isolation with Leo and Erica, we'd been getting used to so many people around again with the workers and adding Ivy and Danielle to our weird little family dynamic. But a crowd like that, all packed together? That was exactly what the quarantine orders were warning against. "Harrison!" My name cut through the muffle of the trees and shrubs, and I turned and saw Kara quickly jogging through the woods to catch up with me. "Kara, what the fuck are you doing? You're trespassing," I said. "So throw me off your land," Kara said, coming to a stop about ten feet from me and putting her hands on her hips. "Oh wait, that's right, it's not your land anymore." I rolled my eyes. "You can take off the bandanas if you want. We're fine this far apart." She did so, pulling them down to hang around her neck. Kara was still as beautiful as the day we'd broken up, though she'd grown up a lot. Where I was such a mix that it was hard to tell I had any Native American in my bloodstream, she had that classic warm skin tone and thick black hair. She'd been taking care of herself well, fit and a little thinner than Erica was, but with a similar strong jawline to my girlfriend. Her lips were as full as I remembered though, and I could almost feel her kissing me again like all those years ago behind the corner of the biology classroom in high school, or laying out in the back of my old beater pickup under the stars. "What's going on, Harri?" she asked me. "I thought we'd at least hit a status quo or something." "Oh, the one where you file a lawsuit against me every couple of years, and the judge shuts you down, but I keep having to rack up legal fees?" "No," she said. "Well, sort of. I thought we were keeping things above board. No games, no gimmicks. Not getting historical." I grimaced. "Well, we did," I said. "So what the fuck?" she said, throwing her arms wide. "What the fuck is all of this?" "Kara, think about it for one fucking second without your prejudice. Imagine I'm not just doing this as a 'Fuck You' from my family tree to the Band," I said. "A week ago I wouldn't have thought any of this would be happening. A week ago I was happily living my life and would have stayed that way straight through the end of the world if I had to. Do you seriously think I've done this on some whim?" "Why, then? What are they doing? What are they offering you?" she demanded. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," I said. "And even if you did, I think you're too far into this already to walk it back with your people." "Try me," she said. "If you ever cared about me,” "Stop," I interrupted her. "You've used that line twice on me before, Kara. You used it when you broke up with me, and you used it again right after my father died. That line didn't work when I was at some of the lowest points in my life; do you seriously think I'll respond well to that here?" She grimaced, and I saw the realization in her eyes that I was right. That she had used that line before, and it had been pretty fucked up for her to do that. "I'm sorry," she said, and only partially through gritted teeth. "I shouldn't have done that." "Thank you," I said. My heart was pounding in my chest and I felt like I was in combat, just having this verbal sparring contest with her. I fucking hated her, but I also still knew she was the first girl I'd ever loved. The one that had broken my heart. The one that 'got away.' "Just explain it to me," Kara said, trying to be more even about it. "Please." I took a moment to breathe deeply. I wasn't barred from telling her anything. I'd tried to warn her when she'd shown up at the driveway before, but the thought of all those protestors at risk for the virus pushed me over the edge of trying to warn her again. "Kara, the government gave me the choice of accepting a huge payout for the land, or them kicking me out and taking it by eminent domain. Either way, they were going to take it and take it fast. I could either ride it, or die fighting it." "So what are they doing with it?" she asked. "Building homes," I said. "A whole gated community, it sounds like. Part of my payout was housing for myself, Leo and Valerie." "What the fuck? Why do they want a gated community way out here?" she asked. "Worst-case scenario shit," I said. "You mean the pandemic?" she asked. "Are you for fucking serious?" "Serious enough that my house got bulldozed a couple days ago," I said. "Gone. Like it was never even there." "This can't be real," Kara said. "This is absurd." "I told you that you wouldn't believe me," I said. "Well, if you were too much of a cunt to stop them, we will," Kara said, steeling herself again. "We'll have the local news down here by tomorrow, and if the Feds show up we'll have national news coverage by the end of the week." I had to try one more time. "Kara, this doesn't end the way you want it to. You're a dreamer, and I loved that about you when we were teens, but you know the real world doesn't just work like that." Kara narrowed her eyes. "Where are you going right now?" "What does that matter?" I asked. "Because I just followed you out into the woods after your little construction girlfriend was talking to you," she said. "She's not my girlfriend," I rolled my eyes. "Tell her that. She's flirting with you hard enough," Kara said. "I can see her doing it." "Even if she was, what does that have to do with you?" I asked. I knew I'd landed a blow because she got angry again. "Nothing," she said. "But I still want to know what you're doing." "I don't have to tell you that, Kara," I said. "I don't answer to you, I don't owe you anything, and I don't worship the ground you walk on. All I've got to say now is that you should go send all those people home, and hope that you haven't organized some super-spreader event here. For all the shit you've given me and my family, I don't want to see them all dead. I don't want to see you dead." Kara raised her bandanas again. "We're fighting the good fight. We're on the right side of this, Harrison. You're not." She turned and started walking back towards the road. "Fuck me," I sighed, shaking my head. That woman could still push my buttons almost fifteen years later. I pressed through the forest, making for the edge of the property and then diverting towards the road. When I reached it, I found a white and brown heavy pickup identical to Vanessa's idling on the gravel shoulder. The big guy in the driver's seat rolled down his window a crack. "What's up?" "I'm Harrison Black," I said. Another guy got out of the passenger seat and came around, slapping the hood. "Head on back to the motel," he said to the man in the truck. "I'll catch a ride back with my daughter." The guy in the truck nodded and waited for us both to back away before pulling a U-Turn and taking off down the highway. "So, you're the land guy, eh?" the man said, turning and offering me his hand. He was exactly as Vanessa had described; portly to the point of obese, with a gruff exterior that spoke of years handling his business in a rough industry and getting shit done. "I am," I said, taking his hand and shaking it firmly. "Your daughter has been fantastic to work with. Helpful and on task, and she keeps her guys in line." "I have no doubt," he said. "She grew up bossing her older brothers around and got the best of her mother and me. I'm Brent Peters, by the way. I'm sure we'll be speaking every once in a while through this project." "Good to meet you, sir," I said. "And I'm sure we will." I led Brent into the brush and got us through the roughest part until I could get us to one of the more used trails. It got a lot easier for him there, and once he had a chance to catch his breath he seemed to actually enjoy the chance to stretch his legs. He didn't know, or at least wasn't forthcoming, with any more information than Vanessa had been able to give about what was going on, but he did enjoy hearing about the sordid history of the land, my family and the Band. It took a little longer than I'd thought it would to get back to the driveway, Brent needing a couple of breaks, but we made it eventually. Vanessa grinned when she saw her father in a way that made me think she was going to run to him and hug him, but she never made the move. I had to assume that was a hard-trained response from her years working with the man; hugging your pops on a job site would probably lead to taking a lot of shit from your coworkers. Brent quickly got updated on the last hour of developments from Vanessa, and I saw his managerial side take over. Soon the line of construction workers were twenty yards back from the protestors, and he was stride-waddling forward with a medical mask stretched over his face. Kara met him halfway, and whatever they said seemed to go about as well as the talks I'd had with her myself. Again, she ended it by showing off for the protestors by giving him the double-birds. "Well, that went well," Brent sighed as he came back. "You were right, Harrison. They're stuck in. Wouldn't even help us get those trucks room to move or get out of the way of traffic." "She feels like she's got leverage," I guessed. "And they haven't had that on us for years now." "Well, I've officially done what I can," Brent said. "Time to do what every good GM does when shit like this happens." He took out his phone and started walking up the driveway away from Vanessa and me. "What's that?" I asked. "Call the client and tell them to un-fuck the situation," Vanessa smirked. The rest of the afternoon and evening was a long fucking day. There was no good way to get the workers on site off of it, and no good way to get new ones on, so Leo and I ended up walking several groups through the trails to get to the road in places out of sight of the protestors. And since the big crew vans were parked on site, Brent ended up getting access to school buses to come and pick up his guys. The second to last bus dropped off a dozen men who would take over watching the driveway and the protestors overnight; we'd already seen them breaking out tents and lanterns to hold their vigil; and the last bus out had Brent and Vanessa on board. "Client will be by in the morning," Brent said, and winked at me. "Don't you worry, bucko. You hold down the home front tonight, and the cavalry will be here in no time." "You got it," I said. "But whoever is coming, I suggest you make sure they know to take this seriously. The Band is riled up, and now they smell blood in the water. This isn't going away easily." "I'll pass that on to the Lieutenant Colonel," Brent nodded. He shook my hand again and stepped onto the bus. "See you tomorrow, H," Vanessa grinned at me. "Not if I see you first, Vee," I chuckled. She stepped up into the bus and I heard her voice raise immediately. "Alright, you Gorillas. Grab your fuckin' seats and stay there. I swear to Christ if one of you pisses me off, I'll confiscate your fuckin' dinner, got it?" I laughed, and could see the construction workers grinning in their seats as the bus did a three-point turn and pulled away. The sun was getting low when I finally hiked out of the bush and back into view of our little compound. Erica was waiting for me with a smile and a plate of stir fry. "What's the word, Harri?" "They're still down there," I said. "There are some workers keeping an eye on the driveway. Could you throw on a big pot of coffee for me and dig one of the thermoses out of storage?" "Harri, if they've got some of their workers down there, it's not your job to supervise. I'm sure Vanessa and her Dad left someone in charge." "They did," I said. "And I'm not going down there. I'm staying up here." I shoveled the stir fry down, relishing in the spicy kick Erica liked to cook with. Inside our little compound I gave Ivy a kiss, apologizing that I wouldn't be seeing her in bed for the night. Then I went to the storage container closest to my RV. The one with my gun safe. "What's the word?" Leo asked me when he found me. I had a lantern flashlight on and was loading rounds into my father's Model 700. "Jesus, Harri. What the fuck?" I doubted he was commenting on me loading the Remington hunting rifle. We'd used it plenty when we were hunting during deer season; it was a solid, reliable tool. No, I knew he was reacting to the other firearms I had out. My M9 was already holstered on my hip, a copy of my service sidearm that had served me so well through my tour and as an MP, and my DDM4V1 was laid out, waiting for me to do a quick check it was still in good order. "Just taking precautions," I said. I was already trying to get into the right mindset. "What does that even mean? What are you doing?" "There's about a hundred protesters down there, last I counted. More keep arriving," I told Leo, loading the last round into the 700 and checking the safety before setting it down. I fished a handful more.308's out of the ammo box in the safe and fed them into the bandolier shoulder strap for the hunting rifle. "Problem is, they're pissed off. Not just about the construction, but at all the other shit going on right now. And pissed-off people do dumb shit." "So what, you're going to go all Alamo on us?" Leo asked. "For real, Harri. Nothing's going to happen. They're down there, we're up here." "Leo," I said. "I'm not asking you to do anything you don't want to. The Bear shotgun is in my RV. Do me a favor and keep it handy tonight. If I miss something, I'd rather you have it than not." "Harri,” "Dude, just stop," I said. I'd finished with the.308s and started taking apart the DDM4V1 and giving it a quick clean. It was a budget purchase that I'd made prioritizing reliability over flashy shit, and the 'scary one' in my collection when it came to civilians. Erica hadn't even liked the idea of me owning it when we gave her the tour of my firearms and taught her the safety protocols for them. Leo had only ever fired it once. Both of the siblings had said the same thing; 'If you have the rifles and shotguns and the handgun, why do you need a machine gun?' This sort of thing was why I needed it. And it wasn't a 'machine gun.' "I'm not planning, or hoping, to kill someone tonight. If I have to use the DDM4 or my sidearm, something has gotten really fucked," I said. "But I'm also not taking any chances. Sometime tonight, there's going to be people sneaking up into the construction yard to cause mischief, and they aren't going to know the difference between the construction yard and where we're living. Maybe they hear us and they stay clear, or maybe they don't. I'm not taking that chance." Leo watched me cleaning my rifle, and glanced out at the darkening sky, and then back to me. "What should I do?" he asked. A wave of relief washed over me; it had been years since I'd served, and every instinct I had was telling me to do what I was doing, but that civilian part of my brain was second-guessing everything. Leo agreeing told me I was being logical, even if he didn't like it or I turned out to be wrong. "Just be with the girls tonight," I said. "I can handle the yard, you stay with them. Think of it like a shitty tower defense game. If I do my job, you'll never have to do anything." He nodded and left me to my work. Surprisingly, it was Danielle who came to see me next. "What can I do to help?" she asked. Her Australian accent was sounding stronger, the California valley girl part of it dropping with her serious demeanor. "Nothing, I've got it," I said. She'd caught me as I was strapping on my ghillie suit; another item that Leo and Erica had found silly to own considering we didn't need it for hunting deer. It had honestly been more of a gag item in my collection than anything until tonight. "Harrison, I'll remind you that my Dad was military, yeah?" she said. "I grew up outside the city. I know how to work a firearm." I took a breath and looked at her. Even at night, by the light of a lantern, she looked like an elven beauty despite the cutoff denim shorts and zippered knit sweater. "Can you handle a handgun?" I asked. "I've shot the head of an Eastern Brown from ten paces away when it was threatening to bite my dog," she said. "I assume that's a snake?" "A fucking poisonous one," Danielle said. "Alright," I nodded. "Under the passenger seat of my truck is a gun case with my pop's old 1911 and a couple of magazines. Hang on to it for tonight. Try not to freak out Erica or Ivy, and if you hear shots tonight don't let Leo come looking for me, let alone Erica and Ivy. If they leave the RVs it'll just make things worse." "Okay," she said with a serious nod, then stepped towards me, hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. "Thanks." "For what?" I asked as she stepped back. "For being the man I figured you were," she said. "Leo's all mine and I'm happy with that, but like I told you; you remind me of all the good parts of my Dad. I'm glad I have Leo and you around." She left to fetch the pistol, and I finished strapping on the ghillie suit and slung my two rifles over my shoulders and closed the gun safe. When I was finished slamming the storage container closed, I turned around to find Ivy and Erica both looking at me with their arms crossed. "Both of you, huh?" I asked. "Yes, both of us," Erica said. "United front," Ivy said. "Look,” "Shut up, Harrison," Erica said, and then they were both hugging me while being careful around the firearms. "Just be careful." "Extra careful," Ivy said, burying her face into the strings of the ghillie suit in my chest and then immediately pulling back with a wince. "Ugh, this smells terrible." "Yeah, well it's not exactly the sort of thing you clean very often," I shrugged. "Whatever," Erica said and kissed me. Ivy kissed me as well, looking at me with those big eyes of hers with concern. "So you're not going to try and convince me this isn't necessary?" I asked. "Wouldn't do anything except lead to a fight we couldn't win," Erica said. "You're too stubborn not to do it." "And too brave," Ivy added. "That too," Erica smiled sadly. Then she handed me the big thermos of coffee. "Come back to us in one piece." "I will," I said. "Don't worry. But if you two hear anything tonight, if there's any gunfire, don't come looking for me. Just stay in the RVs and hunker down from the windows. If you come looking for me, you'll add more danger and not take it away, alright?" They both agreed, though I could tell Erica didn't like it. I could only imagine her sprinting across the construction yard, bullets flying everywhere, screaming my name as she worried I'd been shot. Hell, she'd probably pick me up and carry me to safety if it were true, but she'd also likely never get to me in the first place if things were that bad. I kissed them both again, then stalked off into the night. I ended up settling into a nook on the side of the hill to the south of the construction yard, with a clear view of about two-thirds of the yard and most importantly the RV compound. I unslung my rifles and carefully positioned myself in a comfortable prone position I was going to be able to manage for a long time. I'd never gone through Sniper training, but I'd picked up enough from my Bootcamp, talking with other soldiers and from movies to know a thing or two; not to mention years of hunting. So I cracked the thermos and took a sip of the hot, strong coffee, and started my watch. I saw them moving through the trees at around 02:30 in the morning down on the east side of the yard near the driveway. They must have skirted around the construction worker picket line and followed the driveway up, but they were still in the shadows so I couldn't tell how many there were, or what they were carrying. The only reason I spotted them early at all was because someone was flicking a flashlight up occasionally. I had the 700 cradled in my arms, and I slowly rolled into position but didn't sight down the scope yet. I didn't have any night vision gear, and while the simple Leopold scope easily gave me the range to tag anything moving down there, I wouldn't know what I was hitting. They stopped at the edge of the tree line, and I could only imagine the nerves they were feeling looking out over the open area. There were seven portables set up holding various offices now, and half a dozen big crew vans that had been left behind for the night along with some of the company pickup trucks. The pilings and supplies to erect the bigger barracks were also looming in the big, open space. "Just take a look and leave," I muttered quietly to myself, willing whoever was down there to not make this worse than it could be. Five minutes went by before a figure began to creep out of the tree line, crossing the rise of the hill and slipping towards the yard. From the distance I was at, I couldn't see them clearly enough other than to tell they were probably wearing a backpack; not a big deal in and of itself, but my training was screaming at me. 'Anything' meant anything. That backpack could hold weapons, or communications equipment, or even an I E D. I sighted in on the figure. It was a man, military age but young. I couldn't see much of his face between the black bandana over his nose and mouth and a ball cap backwards on his head. My finger tightened just a fraction on the trigger when I saw the flash of metal in his hand, but my hesitation saved his life; he was carrying a can of spray paint. He reached what he thought was the shelter of the first building; and it was shelter if he thought a guard was patrolling inside the yard. But I wasn't inside the yard, and instead I was looking at him dead on along the length of the building as he took off his backpack and then turned, motioning back towards the tree line. A half dozen more figures began quickly creeping across the hillside. I had a choice; if that backpack was full of spray-paint and that was all they were there to do, it would be annoying vandalism at worst as long

Ginny Hussey, General Manager of Canopy Portland Waterfront, brings a deep passion for hospitality and an abiding love for Maine to her leadership role in one of Portland's most dynamic hotels. Raised in Colorado Springs but with early connections to Biddeford Pool, Ginny moved to Maine with her family when she was in high school. After returning to Colorado for college, and gaining experience in the hospitality industry, Ginny returned to the Pine Tree state and enjoyed being part of the team that launched Portland's Press Hotel. Her deep local knowledge, commitment to authentic guest experiences, and dedication to showcasing Maine's food, art, and people make her a true ambassador for the region. Ginny thoughtfully guides visitors through Portland's vibrant culinary and cultural scene, reveals her favorite hidden gems, and discusses her work championing local art through initiatives like Canopy's Epic Grant for Maine College of Art & Design students. Whether it's welcoming guests at the front desk or connecting them to Maine's unique spirit, Ginny is shaping what it means to experience hospitality with heart. Join our conversation with Ginny Hussey today on Radio Maine—and don't forget to subscribe to the channel!

General Manager of the San Francisco Giants, Zack Minasian joins Murph & Markus to share his perspective on how the team will approach the trade deadline after acquiring Rafael Devers in June & to clarify Buster Posey's comments on the untouchable prospectsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

General Manager of the San Francisco Giants, Zack Minasian joins Murph & Markus to share his perspective on how the team will approach the trade deadline after acquiring Rafael Devers in June & to clarify Buster Posey's comments on the untouchable prospectsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ahead of Black Hat USA 2025, Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli sit down once again with Rupesh Chokshi, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Application Security Group at Akamai, for a forward-looking conversation on the state of AI security. From new threat trends to enterprise missteps, Rupesh lays out three focal points for this year's security conversation: protecting generative AI at runtime, addressing the surge in AI scraper bots, and defending the APIs that serve as the foundation for AI systems.Rupesh shares that Akamai is now detecting over 150 billion AI scraping attempts—a staggering signal of the scale and sophistication of machine-to-machine activity. These scraper bots are not only siphoning off data but also undermining digital business models by bypassing monetization channels, especially in publishing, media, and content-driven sectors.While AI introduces productivity gains and operational efficiency, it also introduces new and uncharted risks. Agentic AI, where autonomous systems operate on behalf of users or other systems, is pushing cybersecurity teams to rethink their strategies. Traditional firewalls aren't enough—because these threats don't behave like yesterday's attacks. Prompt injection, toxic output, and AI-generated hallucinations are some of the issues now surfacing in enterprise environments, with over 70% of organizations already experiencing AI-related incidents.This brings the focus to the runtime. Akamai's newly launched Firewall for AI is purpose-built to detect and mitigate risks in generative AI and LLM applications—without disrupting performance. Designed to flag issues like toxic output, remote code execution, or compliance violations, it operates with real-time visibility across inputs and outputs. It's not just about defense—it's about building trust as AI moves deeper into decision-making and workflow automation.CISOs, says Rupesh, need to shift from high-level discussions to deep, tactical understanding of where and how their organizations are deploying AI. This means not only securing AI but also working hand-in-hand with the business to establish governance, drive discovery, and embed security into the fabric of innovation.Learn more about Akamai: https://itspm.ag/akamailbwcNote: This story contains promotional content. Learn more.Guests:Rupesh Chokshi, SVP & General Manager, Application Security, Akamai | https://www.linkedin.com/in/rupeshchokshi/Hosts:Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine | Website: https://www.seanmartin.comMarco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine | Website: https://www.marcociappelli.com______________________ResourcesLearn more and catch more stories from Akamai: https://www.itspmagazine.com/directory/akamaiLearn more about ITSPmagazine Brand Story Podcasts: https://www.itspmagazine.com/purchase-programsNewsletter Archive: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/tune-into-the-latest-podcasts-7109347022809309184/Business Newsletter Signup: https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-business-updates-sign-upAre you interested in telling your story?https://www.itspmagazine.com/telling-your-story

In this episode of the Jered Williams show, Jered and his guest Eddie Barkers discuss the importance of understanding one's role as either a visionary or an integrator in a business. They share their experiences working together at Prospector, where Jered's visionary ideas and Eddie's integrator skills complemented each other perfectly. The conversation also touches on the challenges of implementing change, the benefits of a commission-based pay structure, and the value of keeping personal expenses low to allow for business growth. Overall, the episode highlights the significance of finding the right partner to balance out one's strengths and weaknesses, as well as the importance of reading the book "Rocket Fuel" to gain a deeper understanding of these complementary roles.

Coming Down the Pipe... [0:00] - The intro for Season 20 of The Pipeline Show [1:12] - The season 20 finale episode of The Pipeline Show begins with some news and notes before getting to the guest list. [10:38] - Guy Gadowsky is the head coach at Penn State and he joins me to discuss last season's trip to the Frozen Four, the returning players from that run, the incoming freshman class of CHL players like Gavin McKenna, Jackson Smith, Shea Van Olm and some transfer portal recruits like his son Mac Gadowsky. [40:50] - Alan Millar is the new full-time General Manager of Hockey Canada's Program of Excellence overseeing the U17, U18 and U20 squads. We discuss the upcoming Summer Showcase and Hlinka Gretzky Cup events and look ahead to the 2026 WJC in December.

General Manager of the San Francisco Giants, Zack Minasian joins Murph & Markus to share his perspective on how the team will approach the trade deadline after acquiring Rafael Devers in June & to clarify Buster Posey's comments on the untouchable prospectsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to WHCB's Prayer Time! The host of Prayer Time is our General Manager, Dr. Kenneth C. Hill, and the broadcast airs on 91.5 FM and WHCBRadio.org each morning at 6 AM. Do you have questions or prayer requests? Please send them through our website! You can send us a message, give online, and listen online at WHCBRadio.org. Thanks for listening to Prayer Time!Support the show: http://www.whcbradio.orgSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, hosts David Millili and Steve Carran sit down with Bill Graf, the visionary founder of ONDA Hotels, to uncover how a former finance exec traded spreadsheets for surf towns and is now building a hospitality brand for the modern traveler.Bill shares the bold story of how a sabbatical, a motorcycle, and a post-COVID pivot led to the creation of ONDA—a growing hotel brand designed to bring trusted, high-vibe stays to off-the-beaten-path destinations. From his first property in Costa Rica to his vision of scaling globally through a franchise model.In this episode, you'll learn about: How contrarian investing led him into hospitalityWhat “the vibe” really means and why it's everythingWhy ONDA is filling a massive gap in emerging travel marketsWhat it takes to build trust in remote, lifestyle-driven destinationsWatch the FULL EPISODE on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZEiYFVyL5vk Join the conversation on today's episode on The Modern Hotelier LinkedIn pageThe Modern Hotelier is produced, edited, and published by Make More MediaLinks:Bill on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamgraf/?originalSubdomain=crONDA: https://www.stayonda.com/For full show notes head to: https://themodernhotelier.com/episode/192Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-...Connect with Steve and David:Steve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/%F0%9F%8E...David: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-mil.

For lots of Austinites, the swag one gets for donating to our local NPR station, KUT, is a status symbol. Grackle-adorned totes and socks are practically a currency — this city loves the news station and its sister station, KUTX, which often showcases Austin musicians. But do Austinites love KUT enough to save it? The station is trying to raise $1.2 million to shore up what it lost when Congress rolled back funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports NPR and PBS. Host Nikki DaVaughn is joined by KUT's General Manager, Debbie Hiott, who also sits on NPR's board of directors, to talk about how the cuts will affect local programming, staffing, and more, especially at a time when local news deserts are expanding. Learn more about the sponsors of this July 24th episode: Babbel - Get up to 60% off at Babbel.com/CITYCAST Framebridge Cabana Club Austin Watershed Protection Want some more Austin news? Then make sure to sign up for our Hey Austin newsletter.  And don't forget– you can support this show and get great perks by becoming a City Cast Austin Neighbor at membership.citycast.fm.  Follow us @citycastaustin You can also text us or leave a voicemail.  Interested in advertising with City Cast? Find more info HERE 

In this conversation, April Franzino is joined by the Co-Founder of Oribe, Daniel Kaner, and the General Manager, Jessica Friedman. They discuss the inception and growth of their luxury haircare brand. They share insights into their innovative product development, strategic market positioning, and the significance of their signature fragrance. The duo reflects on the challenges faced during their journey, and their vision for the future of the brand, emphasizing the importance of storytelling and connection with customers. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beautybizshow/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

NFC North Training Camp Roundup: Bears, Lions, Packers, and Vikings—In this episode of ‘Who Will Be King' on the Fans First Sports Network, Pay from ‘Frustrated Chicago Sports Fans' Chicago Bears podcast, June and Foster from Detroit Lions ‘Bleachers to Speakers' podcast, and Dave from the Minnesota Vikings ‘Vikings 1st & SKOL' network provide a comprehensive roundup of the NFC North training camps. They dive deep into the latest updates, player performances, and injury reports from the Bears, Lions, Packers, and Vikings camps. Listen to insightful discussions about team strategies, player expectations, and key issues as the teams gear up for the upcoming season. 00:00 Introduction to NFC North Training Camps 00:52 Bears' High Hopes and Early Struggles 01:10 Lions' Injury Woes and Defensive Strategies 01:34 Packers' Playoff Aspirations and Position Experiments 01:49 Vikings' Quarterback Revolution 02:05 Round Table Banter and Rivalries 05:06 Heat Dome Challenges and Health Concerns 07:02 Detroit Lions' Injury Report and Player Updates 19:13 Chicago Bears' Training Camp Insights 19:47 Bears' Injury Updates and Player Expectations 21:37 Caleb Williams' Ambitious Goals 23:05 Bears' Training Camp Challenges 29:55 General Manager and Coaching Dynamics 32:14 NFC North Injury Reports 34:46 Rookie Running Back Updates 35:08 Kicker Injuries and Concerns 36:01 Vikings Training Camp Insights 39:42 J.J. McCarthy's Leadership 40:47 Running Back Committees 47:47 Terry McLaurin's Holdout Situation 51:36 Trey Hendrickson's Potential Move 55:15 Detroit Sports Updates 58:42 Podcast Sign-Off and Promotions FAN WITH US!!!  Follow us on Twitter ✖️ for more updates… Pay @TheRealPayday, host of Frustrated Chicago Sports Fan Channel, June @asgjune & M Foster @Mbrfosterchild, hosts of the Bleachers To Speakers [Lions] podcast, and Dave Stefano @Luft_Krigare, from @Vikings1stSKOL. This has been a joint podcast production partnered with Fans First Sports Network @FansFirstSN and Fans First Sports Network's NFL feed @FFSN_NFL. ___________________________________ ⭐️ Subscribe to us here! - Vikings 1st & SKOL, https://www.youtube.com/@vikings1stskol92 ⭐️ and here - Bleachers to Speakers, https://www.youtube.com/@BleachersToSpeakers-yq8tm ⭐️ and here - Frustrated Chicago Sports Fan Channel, https://www.youtube.com/@FrustratedChicago ⭐️ At Fans First Sports Network - https://www.ffsn.app/teams/minnesota-vikings/ ⭐️ On Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/vikings1standskol ⭐️ Catch it here: https://youtu.be/W4mUtiR_laI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mike Fitzgerald discusses how he is approaching the next eight days before the MLB trade deadline, if he thinks the Arizona Diamondbacks can buy and sell at the deadline and how this year's trade deadline is different from past trade deadlines he has been a

Today's episode, David Millili and Steve Carran sit down with Travis Mckie, former pro basketball player turned champion for independent hotels at AHLA (American Hotel & Lodging Association).Travis shares his fascinating journey from the courts of Wake Forest and international basketball leagues to leading the charge for boutique and independent hoteliers across the country. He opens up about what makes independent hotels so memorable, the shift in guest expectations, and how AHLA is reshaping its approach to support these unique properties.Highlights include:What makes today's travelers choose experience over standardAHLA's new benefits and programs tailored to independent hotelsMemorable stays like the Wigwam in ArizonaHow independent hoteliers can connect with AHLA and get involvedTune in to hear why the future of hospitality is anything but cookie-cutter — and how leaders like Travis are making sure independent hotels have a powerful seat at the table.Watch the FULL EPISODE on YouTube: https://youtu.be/jWqwLlodqTk Join the conversation on today's episode on The Modern Hotelier LinkedIn pageThe Modern Hotelier is produced, edited, and published by Make More MediaLinks:Travis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-mckie-68555b209/AHLA: https://www.ahla.com/For full show notes head to: https://themodernhotelier.com/episode/191Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-...Connect with Steve and David:Steve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/%F0%9F%8E...David: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-mil.

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Send us a textEpisode Summary: In this conversation, Sam Toles from Civic Social discusses the innovative approach of empowering Public Information Officers (PIOs) in local governments to effectively engage with their communities through social media. He emphasizes the importance of authenticity, strategic planning, and the need for a modern approach to communication that resonates with younger audiences. Toles shares insights on navigating social media algorithms, the significance of platforms like TikTok, and the pitfalls of relying on traditional marketing strategies and style guides. The discussion highlights the transformative potential of social media in public relations and the necessity for government agencies to adapt to the evolving digital landscape. In this conversation, Sam Toles and Robert Tornabene discuss the importance of social media in government communication, emphasizing the need for a culture of content creation within local government. They explore real-world case studies that demonstrate the positive impact of effective social media strategies, highlighting the role of public information officers (PIOs) in fostering community engagement and trust. Toles shares personal insights and anecdotes that illustrate the challenges and successes of implementing these strategies, ultimately advocating for a proactive approach to government communication.Sam's BIO: Sam Toles is a former local elected official and one of the world's top experts in digital media and communications.  Leveraging over two decades of experience at the intersection of content strategy, technology, and public service, Sam launched CiviSocial, a first-of-its-kind approach designed exclusively for local government communicators who want to cut through the noise, reduce the negativity, and reach their communities effectively.   Before founding CiviSocial, Sam served as Chief Content Officer at Bleacher Report and led digital media strategies at major brands including MGM Studios. He's also run a social media platform as the General Manager of Vimeo. His expertise in content creation, digital storytelling, and audience engagement has driven billions of interactions across the medium. Support the showOur premiere sponsor, Social News Desk, has an exclusive offer for PIO Podcast listeners. Head over to socialnewsdesk.com/pio to get three months free when a qualifying agency signs up.

Almost live from AirVenture 2025! Steve McCaughey is joined by Steve Guetter to discuss the incredible Fire Boss. Steve Guetter is not only the General Manager of Advanced Flight Training & Leasing, he is also a Seaplane Pilots Association Board Member and Minnesota Field Director.Join a great discussion between the two Steves focused on the amazing performance and capabilities of the Fire Boss. Listeners will gain insight into the training and operation of this legendary firefighter with a 59' wingspan and 1,600 hp engine.

What's Next in AI, Self-Service, and Customer Service?  Shep interviews Jay Patel, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco's Webex Customer Experience Solutions. He talks about how AI and innovative technologies are transforming contact centers to improve both customer and employee experiences.  This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:    How is AI transforming the customer service experience?  How is AI improving self-service options for businesses?  Will AI ever fully replace human customer service agents?  How can AI help reduce burnout and attrition rates among contact center agents?  What risks should companies watch out for as they adopt AI in customer service?   Top Takeaways:    Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the way companies and customers interact. With advancements such as smarter self-service options and AI-powered voice agents, companies can now resolve customer issues more quickly and intuitively. This leads to a more seamless and satisfying experience for both customers and customer service agents.  Many customers still prefer to call customer service, despite companies offering self-service options. In this year's Customer Service & CX Research, we found that 68% of customers still prefer to talk to a live customer service agent. Some self-service options may not always be as effective as companies and customers want them to be. However, self-service is expected to improve as AI becomes more intuitive and capable of handling more complex problems. When it is easier to use and more effective in resolving issues, customers may grow to trust and utilize self-service more frequently. While self-service tools continue to improve, many customers will still prefer to speak with a representative, especially for complex or emotionally charged issues. AI-powered voice agents are set to become more advanced, handling conversations "just like humans," allowing customers to get resolutions without waiting for a human agent to become available.  Customer expectations are higher than ever. They expect immediate answers and help when they reach out to a company. Companies must keep pace with this demand by ensuring they offer customer care options that are quick, reliable, and easy to use.   AI just doesn't help customers. It also helps employees by making their jobs easier and more fulfilling. For example, AI is used to provide agents with call history, so customers don't need to repeat themselves, and it can give agents the information they need to solve the customer's problems efficiently.  As companies use more AI tools, keeping their data safe and secure is more important than ever. Strong security policies and data protection help build trust, allowing customers to feel more comfortable using digital services.  Jay Patel shares information about Cisco's WebexOne 2025 in San Diego, California, from September 28 to October 1, 2025. This event will highlight real-world customer successes and the latest innovations in AI-driven customer experience technology.  Plus, Shep and Jay discuss the future risks and responsibilities that come with rapidly adopting AI in customer service. Tune in!  Quote:   "We've been speaking  a lot longer than we've been typing, and I think the most profound technology change we'll see soon is that machines will be able to understand us through voice."  About:    Jay Patel is the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco's Webex Customer Experience Solutions business, responsible for product development, engineering, operations, and go-to-market.    Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Our job is to recycle so that we can recover all of that scrap and goods that you and I are recycling in our garbage bins every week or recycling as we get new cars. And our job is to recover that because we make steel in a very clean and efficient process through what's called an electric arc furnace. So, we take all of that scrap, we melt it down, and we make new steel. It does not degrade. It has a continuous reusable life.…Depending on the different products of steel, that actually determines the recycled content that goes into them for the finishes and the quality of the steel that's needed.” Tabitha Stine on Electric Ladies Podcast With tariffs on steel and the Nippon Steel-U.S. Steel merger back in the news, we wanted to replay this important conversation on the impact of steel on the environment and how “recycled steel” works. “The production and use of materials such as cement, steel, and aluminum have a significant carbon footprint,” according to the UN, with construction 37% of emissions. But is recycled steel safe? Listen to Tabitha Stine, General Manager of Energy Solutions and Services at Nucor Corporation, which says it's “North America's largest steel manufacturer and recycler.” She'll explain how recycled steel is made and more in this fascinating conversation with Electric Ladies host Joan Michelson. They also share insightful career advice. You'll hear about: How recycled steel is made and where the steel comes from that is recycled. How structurally sound recycled steel is and how it's tested to make sure and meet building codes. Which industries use recycled steel, why, and how the demand and supply line up.   How the steel industry is adapting to ensure automobiles and buildings are resilient to the ravages of climate change, including innovations in the works. Plus, insightful career advice, such as… “Usually what holds people back is, people are not willing to raise their hand. And then you go 10 years and you haven't had guidance because maybe you have a manager that doesn't give you feedback. You have to advocate for yourself. You are your advocate. There are no others. You've got to assume nobody else will except for yourself and you go for it. And I would also stress that if you're also not mentoring others at every stage along your career, you're missing out on a big opportunity,” Tabitha Stine on Electric Ladies Podcast Read Joan's Forbes articles here. You'll also like: Marci Jenks, Eco-Materials Technologies, on green cement Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), on the politics of energy and infrastructure Erin McLaughlin, Senior Economist, The Conference Board, about her new report on buildings, climate change and carbon emissions. Katie McGinty, Chief Sustainability Officer, Johnson Controls, on the power of buildings. Anna Siefken, Deputy Director, Federal Energy Management Program, Dept. of Energy, on how the federal government reduces the energy use and carbon footprint of its 350,000 buildings. Laura Busse Dolan, CEO, Applied Imagination, which designs and builds miniature buildings from plants and botanicals. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our podcasts, blog, events and special coaching offers.. Thanks for subscribing on Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio and leaving us a review! Follow us on Twitter @joanmichelson

As Black Hat USA 2025 approaches, General Manager Steve Wylie joins Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli for the annual pre-conference conversation to highlight what's new—and what's next—for one of cybersecurity's most iconic events. This year's themes and expansions signal a strong return to growth, technical depth, and strategic investment.AI Everywhere—from Training to the Show FloorArtificial intelligence emerges as the dominant force across the agenda. From the main stage to the training rooms, Black Hat is packed with AI-related content designed to meet the rising demand for education and clarity. New this year is a comprehensive lineup of instructor-led AI courses and expanded AI tool showcases in the Arsenal and Arsenal Labs programs. As Wylie notes, three of the four Spotlight competition finalists—FireTail, Keep Aware, and Twine Security—are AI-driven solutions, underscoring the technology's influence on innovation.Investor Energy and Startup MomentumCybersecurity investment is back. That momentum is reflected in the expanded Innovators and Investors Summit and the largest-ever Startup Zone on the show floor, now hosting more than 80 companies. This year's program builds on last year's debut and aims to connect entrepreneurs, investors, and CISOs in a more targeted and collaborative setting.Expanding the Audience: New Summits and KeynotesTo better serve cybersecurity leaders across sectors, Black Hat has introduced new summits tailored to financial services and supply chain security. These gatherings offer strategic-level insights for professionals who don't typically engage in technical briefings. Meanwhile, the keynote lineup includes prominent voices from both public and private sectors—such as Miko Hyppönen, Nicole Perlroth, and Chris Inglis—offering grounded perspectives in a time of uncertainty.Interactive Additions and Community GrowthAttendees can expect hands-on experiences like a new drone hacking zone and an expanded hardware lab area. A Career Development Zone also debuts this year, offering sessions designed to help attendees build or pivot their cybersecurity careers.___________Guest: Steve Wylie, Vice President, Cybersecurity Market at Informa Tech and General Manager at Black Hat | On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/swylie650/Hosts:Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine | Website: https://www.seanmartin.comMarco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine | Website: https://www.marcociappelli.com___________Episode SponsorsThreatLocker: https://itspm.ag/threatlocker-r974BlackCloak: https://itspm.ag/itspbcwebAkamai: https://itspm.ag/akamailbwcDropzoneAI: https://itspm.ag/dropzoneai-641Stellar Cyber: https://itspm.ag/stellar-9dj3___________ResourcesLearn more and catch more stories from our Black Hat USA 2025 coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/bhusa25ITSPmagazine Webinar: What's Heating Up Before Black Hat 2025: Place Your Bet on the Top Trends Set to Shake Up this Year's Hacker Conference — An ITSPmagazine Thought Leadership Webinar | https://www.crowdcast.io/c/whats-heating-up-before-black-hat-2025-place-your-bet-on-the-top-trends-set-to-shake-up-this-years-hacker-conferenceCatch all of our event coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/technology-and-cybersecurity-conference-coverageWant to tell your Brand Story Briefing as part of our event coverage? Learn More

In this episode, hosts David Millili and Steve Carran sit down with Dean Stambules, Chief Investment Officer at Sage Hospitality Group, live from the ILC CONfab in Chicago.Dean shares his unique path into the hospitality world—from his family's deep roots in the industry to his early career in appraisal work that led to a passion for hotel investment. He offers a behind-the-scenes look at Sage Hospitality's growing independent hotel platform, including exciting properties like the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park and Circa 39 in Miami Beach.You'll also get an insider's preview of Dean's recent talk on deal-making, where he breaks down the complexities of hotel acquisitions, partnerships, and value creation—highlighting the transformative renovation of One Ocean Resort in Florida.If you're passionate about hospitality development, deal strategy, or just love hearing about iconic properties, this one's for you.Tune in now to hear:How Dean found his calling in hospitalityWhat's new with Sage and their growing portfolioA real-world case study of turning potential into profitThe value of independent hotel experiencesHow Sage marries design, operations, and investment to drive resultsWatch the FULL EPISODE on YouTube: https://youtu.be/60QBnHZtMtYJoin the conversation on today's episode on The Modern Hotelier LinkedIn pageThe Modern Hotelier is produced, edited, and published by Make More MediaLinks:Dean on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dean-stambules-30a11046/Sage Hospitality Group: https://sagehospitalitygroup.com/For full show notes head to: https://themodernhotelier.com/episode/190Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-...Connect with Steve and David:Steve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/%F0%9F%8E...David: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-mil.

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