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See what the team at The Successful Bookkeeper has on right now → AI is moving fast, and the bookkeeping profession is squarely in its path — but not in the way most people fear. In this episode, Michael Palmer sits down with AI strategist and educator Benjamin Tasker to talk about what the shift actually looks like on the ground, which skills will separate bookkeepers who thrive from those who stall, and how to start building your own AI system without a data science degree. Chapters [00:00] Welcome and Ben's Background [03:15] From Data Science to AI Education [08:00] AI's Real Impact on Bookkeeping [12:00] Human Judgment as the Key Check [15:30] Skills That Separate Thriving Bookkeepers [21:00] Data, Systems, and AI Strategy [25:00] Opportunities to Move Up the Value Chain [29:00] First Steps for Integrating AI [32:00] Client Expectations and Transparency [35:00] Fear, Mindset, and Where to Find Ben AI Will Elevate Bookkeeping, Not Replace It Ben is direct about the headline fear: bookkeepers are not going away. "AI will help elevate what a bookkeeper does," he says. The repetitive work — transaction coding, receipt capture, anomaly detection, drafting reports — gets absorbed by AI, which frees up the bookkeeper to move from data entry to data judgment. Think less time in the books and more time coaching clients on their financial pain points. AICPA and Intuit both point in the same direction: the future of the role looks a lot more like analytics and advisory than data input. The Two Skill Lanes Every Bookkeeper Should Know Ben references the World Economic Forum's skills taxonomy, which divides skills into two tracks. AI skills — analytical thinking, systems thinking, coding — pay a premium today, but AI will eventually encroach on those. Human skills — communication, empathy, leadership — are undervalued right now but will command a premium as AI can only mimic, never genuinely replace, them. "AI can put on a facade of empathy and compassion, but it really can't have it because it's robotic." For bookkeepers, the practical focus areas are AI supervision (checking outputs rigorously), advisory thinking, digital and data fluency, and transparent client communication. The Human in the Loop Is Not Optional Ben's background in healthcare data — building algorithms to predict sepsis risk from bedside monitors — gives him a sharp view on why human validation matters. A small data error that goes unchecked can cascade into a much larger problem. "A mistake, especially for a small business owner, could cost tens of thousands of dollars." Bookkeepers already understand this: the work is either right or it isn't. That precision mindset is exactly what responsible AI use demands, and it is a genuine competitive advantage for practitioners who carry it into their AI workflows. Data Is the Oil — Build a System, Not Just a Stack of Tools One of Ben's clearest points: buying an AI tool is not an AI strategy. The framework he outlines is straightforward — start with your data (client records, call transcripts, templates, Google Sheets), run it through a system you build and control, apply AI to it, then validate and iterate. "Just because you buy an AI tool doesn't mean you have an AI strategy or even an AI business." He encourages bookkeepers to build their own processing systems rather than relying entirely on third-party integrations that can change without warning. Start small — something as simple as having AI draft follow-up emails from call transcripts is a low-risk, high-value first step. Practical First Steps and Client Communication For bookkeepers ready to start, Ben's advice is to pick a low-stakes problem, solve it, and let that build confidence. Use AI to profile prospective clients from call transcripts, automate follow-up reminders, or create a client-facing dashboard from existing data. On the client side, transparency is non-negotiable: communicate that you are using AI, explain how it benefits them, and teach them how to give better inputs so they get better outputs. "By providing inputs and encouraging your customers to use AI to show them the benefits of it, they're going to become less resistant over time." That kind of teaching deepens the client relationship well beyond what traditional bookkeeping alone can offer. Links Mentioned Ben Tasker AI: bentaskerai.com Ben Tasker on LinkedIn World Economic Forum Skills Taxonomy (AI skills and human skills tracks) The Successful Bookkeeper Pure Bookkeeping About the Guest Benjamin Tasker is an AI strategist, educator, and speaker with over 10 years of experience in data science and artificial intelligence. His background spans healthcare predictive analytics, higher education, and enterprise AI strategy. Today he helps entrepreneurs and large organizations build the skills and systems they need to navigate the AI revolution. You can find his prompting frameworks, podcast appearances, and upcoming events at bentaskerai.com. About the hostMichael PalmerMichael Palmer is the host of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast and co-founder of Pure Bookkeeping and The Successful Bookkeeper. He started this work because of his father — a brilliant electrical contractor who worked twice as hard as he should have had to, because nobody on the financial side was in his corner. That gap is what The Successful Bookkeeper exists to close. His view: bookkeepers are the most undervalued force in small business — and every bookkeeper who builds a real business changes two families: theirs, and their clients'.
Scott and Wes sit down with Ben Vinegar, former Syntax GM and founder of Modem.dev, to geek out over terminal-maxxing, from SSH-based development and tmux workflows to AI-powered coding agents. Ben also demos two of his open source tools: Hunk, a slick terminal code reviewer with 4k+ GitHub stars, and TermDraw, a terminal-based diagramming tool that posts directly to your agent. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:49 Introduction to Modem and AI Project Management 01:40 Exploring Terminal Usage and Productivity 04:26 Setting Up Remote Development Environments 08:38 The Power of TMUX in Development 11:20 What makes TMUX splitting different? 12:46 Integrating AI with Terminal Workflows 14:56 The Future of Terminal Applications 17:31 Balancing GUIs and Terminal Interfaces getfresh.dev Ben's talk at AI Engineer Miami 24:39 Navigating Development Tools and Environments 26:44 The Balance of Security and Convenience in Coding 30:27 Cautionary Tales: The Risks of YOLO Mode 33:53 Innovative Tools for Enhanced Coding Experience 34:09 Hunk: Terminal code review. 41:39 TermDraw: A New Way to Visualize Code and Ideas 46:22 The Dynamics of Open Source Contributions 48:31 Visualizing Code: Tools and Techniques 50:54 Podcasting and Editing Processes State of Agentic Coding. Podguy: Agent-driven post-production workflow for video podcasts 56:23 Introducing Modem: A Product Intelligence Platform 01:01:39 Connecting Feedback to Product Development 01:03:15 Sick Picks Sick Picks Ben: Nirvanna: The Band - The Show - The Movie, Timecrimes Shameless Plugs Ben: https://modem.dev/ Hit us up on Socials! Syntax: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Wes: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Scott: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Randy: X Instagram YouTube Threads
"AI won't help you if you're still using clunky software with a six-month learning curve." – Anita Venkiteswaran, E3 TechIn today's episode of Bricks and Bytes, we sat down with Anita, the driving force behind E3 Tech's AI-powered M&A strategy in construction, alongside two of her platform companies: Rob Metz (Sylvan) and Chris Weaver (Egan).Tune in to hear about:✓ Why 25,000+ specialty contractors represent a massive M&A opportunity✓ How AI is finally solving construction's 40-year productivity decline✓ What jobsite credibility really means for founders building construction tech✓ Why unified AI systems beat fragmented "point solutions" every timeAvailable now on Spotify and YouTube.#aec #construction #constructiontech #bricksandbytes #bricksbytes #ai #vcChapters00:00 Intro01:39 Introduction to E3's Model and AI in M&A07:41 Identifying Ideal Acquisition Targets10:34 The Role of Technology in Modern Construction13:45 The Entrepreneur in Residence Model16:35 The Impact of AI on Construction Efficiency19:52 Building Relationships with AI Startups22:29 The Future of AI in Construction31:59 Leveraging AI for Contract Management32:42 The Evolution of VDC and BIM in Construction34:14 Enhancing Processes with Robotics and AI35:38 Attracting Talent through Technology36:38 AI Amplifying Human Expertise38:35 Transitioning Businesses and Succession Planning40:12 Navigating Business Ownership Transitions42:42 The Necessity of Adapting to Change46:41 Lessons Learned from Technological Implementation48:18 The Future of AI in Construction53:44 The Importance of Unified AI Solutions55:31 Integrating AI with Emerging Technologies58:27 Opportunities for Collaboration in the Industry
The TeacherCast Podcast – The TeacherCast Educational Network
Welcome to Digital Learning Today. In this episode, Jeff Bradbury explores the strategic systems that shape the future of education, focusing on Instructional Coaching, Artificial Intelligence, Professional Learning, and the latest Educational Technology Trends. In this episode, Lydia Hall from Adobe introduces Aqua, a free creative app for kids that fosters artistic expression and innovation. We explore how Aqua supports student creativity, privacy, and future skills, along with insights on integrating AI and tech tools in education. Become a High-Impact Leader: This episode is just the beginning. To get the complete blueprint for designing and implementing high-impact systems in your district, get your copy of my book, "Impact Standards." Strategic Vision for Digital Learning:Learn how to create a district-wide vision that aligns digital learning with your educational goals, transforming how standards-based instruction is designed and supported.Curriculum Design and Implementation:Discover practical strategies for integrating digital learning into existing curricula, creating vertical alignment of skills, and mapping digital learning across grade levels.Effective Instructional Coaching:Master the art of coaching people rather than technology, building relationships that drive success, and measuring impact through student engagement rather than just technology usage. Purchase your copy of “Impact Standards” on Amazon today! Chapters: 00:00 Introduction to Aqua by Adobe03:45 The Creative Playground for Kids05:47 The Development Journey of Aqua08:46 Empowering Young Entrepreneurs11:54 Integrating AI in Education14:54 Future of Aqua and Educational Technology Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Aqua by Adobe -https://aqua.adobe.comAdobe Creative Cloud -https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud.html About our Guest: Lydia Hall Lydia Hall is Venture Lead and Co-Founder of Project Aqua at Adobe, where she co-leads the company's first-ever product for kids and families. Built within Adobe's incubator program, Project Aqua was inspired by Lydia's experience as a parent. The app extends Adobe's creative ecosystem to young creators through art, design, and play in a safe, educational mobile environment. A serial founder and growth strategist, Lydia has held executive roles across four venture-backed startups. She founded her first company, an edtech platform, while attending Penn Law and Wharton; and later served as COO at Chalkup, a content collaboration platform acquired by Microsoft. Lydia participated in Y Combinator Imagine K12, and was recognized by the Forbes 30 Under 30. Outside of work, Lydia is a lifelong sailor and U.S. Sailing Association–certified coach. Competitive racing has shaped her approach to leadership — balancing focus and adaptability amid shifting winds, changing tides, and the occasional sea monster. Links of Interest LinkedIn -https://www.linkedin.com/in/lydiahallTwitter -https://twitter.com/lydiahall Let's Work Together Contact Me Today:https://www.teachercast.net/contact Follow on Social Media LinkedIn:https://www.teachercast.net/linkedinTwitter/X:https://www.teachercast.net/twitterBlueSky:https://bsky.app/profile/jeffreybradbury.bsky.socialYouTube:http://teachercast.net/youtube Subscribe to This Podcast Apple Podcasts:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-learning-today/id546631310Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/0n6S0WcyzQ1rpKWJ8iZPLJ?si=a1227a7c5e0b48e4 Check Out Additional TeacherCast Programming Digital Learning Today:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-learning-today/id546631310Ask the Tech Coach:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ask-the-tech-coach/id1067586243The Jeff Bradbury Showhttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-jeff-bradbury-show/id519685828 Book Jeff for your Next Event Jeff Bradbury (ISTE “20 to Watch” Award Winner and ISTE Certified Educator) is available for keynote speaking, workshop facilitation, and live event broadcasting. With expertise in educational technology and professional development, Jeff brings engaging content and practical strategies to conferences and professional learning events. Visit Jeff's Website:https://jeffreybradbury.comContact Jeff Directly:https://jeffreybradbury.com/contact/ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ [gravityform id="2" title="true"]
What does it take to move from AI hype to real marketing wins? In this episode, you'll see how leading brands put AI agents to work for smarter strategy, faster results, and campaigns that build authentic trust.And don't forget! You can crush your marketing strategy with just a few minutes a week by signing up for the StrategyCast Newsletter. You'll receive weekly bursts of marketing tips, clips, resources, and a whole lot more. Visit https://strategycast.com/ for more details.==Let's Break It Down==04:45 Understanding AI integration in businesses06:15 Integrating AI in marketing systems10:45 Optimizing Meta campaigns with AI12:46 AI's role in marketing evolution17:32 The importance of brand trust22:31 Customer perspective on ad content23:46 Different types of audience preferences28:16 Defining and solving business problems==Where You Can Find Us==Website: https://strategycast.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/strategy_cast/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/strategycast==Leave a Review==Hey there, StrategyCast fans!If you've found our tips and tricks on marketing strategies helpful in growing your business, we'd be thrilled if you could take a moment to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback not only supports us but also helps others discover how they can elevate their business game!
Learning the “basics” of AI begins with understanding how AI can help lighten the load family medicine educators carry every day in the clinic and classroom. In the first episode of our AI Deep Dive Summer Series, Drs Linda Chang and Rika Bajra discuss how AI has already affected medical education, from curriculum design and competency-based education to formative assessment and personalized learning. They show how AI literacy allows educators to reclaim time to focus on the human-centered aspects of patient care and medical education. And if you feel like it's too late to start learning about AI, they offer practical tips for both using and teaching AI in medical education. Hosted by Omari A. Hodge, MD, FAAFP and Jay-Sheree Allen Akambase, MDCopyright © Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, 2026Resources:Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Primary Care Curriculum (AiMPC) CourseEthical Use of AI in the Family Medicine Clinic - STFM WebinarAn Opportunity to Thrive - AI in Family Medicine - STFM PodcastEstablishing a National Framework for Family Medicine AI Centers of Excellence - Fam Med.Linda Chang, PharmD, MPHDr Chang is an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) College of Medicine Rockford, with a background as a board-certified clinical pharmacist, a degree in Public Health, and ongoing studies toward a Master's in Health Professions Education. She spent 17 years as faculty in the Family Medicine Residency Program and currently serves as the Pharmacology Theme Director at the College of Medicine, where she teaches evidence-based medicine and public health. Her work reflects an interdisciplinary approach to medical education that integrates clinical practice, public health, and emerging technologies. As co-director of the AI in Medicine theme at UIC, Dr Chang has co-led the development and implementation of a longitudinal, integrated AI in Medicine curriculum, a fourth-year elective course, and an AI in Medicine scholarly concentration program. Rika Bajra, MDDr Bajra is an Assistant Clinical Professor in Primary Care and Population Health at Stanford School of Medicine, where she practices as a family physician and teaches medical students as the Associate Director of the Clerkship in Family and Community Medicine. In her roles as Telehealth Co-Director and Telemedicine Education Curriculum Lead, she is focused on integrating technology tools into clinical practices and medical education through a primary care lens. She has previously developed telemedicine curricula with the STFM Telemedicine Task Force and received an Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) grant to create a longitudinal telemedicine curriculum. Currently, Dr Bajra is exploring the integration of artificial intelligence into the Family Medicine curriculum and its application in reducing faculty burden in Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) assessments. In her personal life, she lives with her husband and three boys and enjoys hiking and traveling.Link: https://www.stfm.org/stfmpodcast062026
As the world of AI expands and people are adopting new uses every day, Justin and Matt sat down with Sheila Anderson, Chief Data & Analytics Officer at Daktronics, to hear how the company is integrating AI into the business. The conversation covers best practices for AI, what Daktronics is using, how different business segments are capitalizing on AI efficiencies and more.
Reengineering the Revenue Engine: Scaling Sales Leadership with Greg GrandIn a recent episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Podcast, host Josh Elledge sat down with Greg Grand, the Founder and CEO of G Squared Advisors, to dismantle the operational inefficiencies plaguing modern sales organizations. Greg, an electrical engineer turned revenue architect who has built $200M sales teams for giants like Google and Apple, shares his expert perspective on why traditional sales management playbooks are collapsing in the digital age. This conversation serves as a data-driven masterclass for founders, fractional leaders, and executives looking to future-proof their pipelines by integrating advanced AI workflows, establishing strict tech governance, and maintaining the irreplaceable human element of high-ticket B2B sales.The Augmented Enterprise: Architecting the Future of B2B Sales through AI GovernanceThe current corporate directive to roll out an artificial intelligence strategy has left many sales leaders paralyzed, resulting in a dangerous disconnect where over 75% of organizations acknowledge the need for a tech-forward playbook but fewer than 10% successfully execute one. Greg Grand explains that this adoption gap stems from an initial failure in leadership philosophy; companies routinely make the mistake of chasing the trendiest software tools rather than mapping their existing sales processes to identify true operational bottlenecks. When executive teams fail to take ownership of technological integration, sales forces organically slide into "shadow AI"—a high-risk environment where individual contributors deploy unauthorized apps that leak proprietary data and fracture client messaging. True scale is achieved only when leadership builds a standardized, vetted suite of AI tools that act as strategic coworkers, taking over administrative tasks like prospect data compilation, first-draft content creation, and meeting preparation.By automating the time-consuming administrative debt that typically consumes a sales rep's day, an organization can radically reallocate its human capital toward real-time relationship building and strategic accounts. For instance, rather than forcing a representative to lose hours digging through LinkedIn profiles and recent financial statements before a pitch, customized AI workflows can instantly analyze prospect data to generate hyper-personalized agendas and predictive objection-handling guides. This shift moves AI out of the realm of basic data automation and into a role of strategic empowerment, even facilitating continuous internal coaching through automated sales simulations and role-play modules. Frontline reps can safely test their pitch mechanics against sophisticated digital personas, sharpening their communication skills in a controlled environment long before entering high-stakes client negotiations.Transitioning into an AI-forward organization also creates unique authority-building opportunities for executive leaders looking to capture market share through strategic earned media. Greg notes that while software optimizes internal pipelines, external growth requires thought leadership initiatives—such as intentional podcast guesting—to plant long-term authority seeds that attract high-quality inbound leads over months and years. However, much like corporate technology stacks, media outreach demands rigorous filtering; leaders must look past clunky, unverified matching databases and focus strictly on high-quality programs where their direct industry peers are actively contributing. When automated operational efficiency is paired with an authoritative, human-centric media strategy, small and medium-sized businesses can successfully strip away the operational friction that stalls growth, allowing the executive team to eventually exit tactical operations entirely.About Greg GrandGreg Grand is the Founder and CEO of G Squared Advisors and a veteran revenue strategist with an extensive background in electrical engineering and high-tech manufacturing sales. Having engineered multi-million dollar business lines for global enterprises, Greg now serves as a fractional Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) and consultant for small-to-mid-sized companies. He is the creator of the AI Sales Leader program, a specialized training ecosystem that helps modern corporate leaders combine structured execution frameworks with artificial intelligence to scale revenue.About G Squared AdvisorsG Squared Advisors is an elite strategic advisory firm that specializes in sales training, operational process engineering, and fractional sales leadership for mid-market businesses. The firm bridges the infrastructure gap facing rapidly growing sales teams by providing custom playbooks for account expansion, new business acquisition, and advanced technology adoption. Through their comprehensive corporate training programs, G Squared Advisors helps organizations build high-performing, self-sustaining sales engines that drive predictable enterprise valuation.Links Mentioned in This EpisodeG Squared Advisors Official Website: gsquaredadvisors.comGreg Grand on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/greggrandKey Episode HighlightsThe Process-First Mandate: Why successful AI integration requires mapping human sales workflows and identifying bottlenecks before purchasing software licenses.The Shadow AI Security Risk: Navigating the hidden liabilities of employee tool sprawl and establishing strong data governance with your legal team.AI as a Strategic Coworker: Utilizing tailored automation for real-time prospect research, messaging drafts, and instant presentation assembly.Automated Sales Role-Play: Leveraging artificial intelligence to simulate complex client objections and scale training across the frontline team.High-Value Media Authority: Shunning unverified pitching platforms to focus on high-quality podcast appearances that build long-term industry credibility.ConclusionThe conversation with Greg Grand highlights that artificial intelligence is not a threat to the human sales professional, but rather the ultimate vehicle for liberating their strategic capacity. By building a robust corporate framework around data governance and automated preparation, leaders can ensure their teams spend less time handling administrative tasks and more time securing high-value client relationships.More from The Thoughtful Entrepreneur
In this episode, Frank La Vigne sits down with his Red Hat colleague Christopher Newland for a deep dive into the evolving challenges and opportunities at the intersection of AI, open source, and enterprise technology.Fresh off attending both IBM Think and Red Hat Summit, Christopher Newland shares insights from two very different industry perspectives—executive strategy and hands-on engineering. Together, they explore the elusive “last mile” problem in AI adoption, the rise of agentic systems, the critical role of harnesses and runtimes, and why memory management is becoming the next frontier.Plus, they discuss the practical realities and future potential of tools like OpenShift AI, IBM Bob, and open source alternatives. Whether you're a developer grappling with implementation details or a leader focused on ROI, this episode has something for everyone navigating today's fast-changing AI landscape.LinksChristopher on LinkedIn -https://www.linkedin.com/in/cjnuland/Watch this episode on YouTube -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlkPPt5YeY0Time Stamps00:00 Comparing IBM Exec and Red Hat Conferences05:24 Challenges in AI implementation06:56 Challenges in scaling microservices11:38 Integrating AI with project management14:23 Debate on AI model vs. harness16:54 Discussing model evolution and limitations22:54 Affordable Power BI Courses Bundle25:19 Separating and managing runtimes27:02 Using semantic routing for requests30:15 Agent memory and compression basics36:02 New AI approach and vision38:49 Developing a multi-agent system40:40 Importance of data chunking
Podcast: Tech TransformedGuests: Maxim Fateev, Co-Founder and CTO, Temporal Technologies and Cornelia Davis, Developer Advocate, Temporal TechnologiesHost: Kevin Petrie, VP of Research at BARCArtificial Intelligence (AI) models have been breaking ground in the last three years. In the race to boost capabilities month by month among platforms like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google's Gemini models. However, for many enterprises, the main challenge is not creating AI prototypes; it's ensuring they can reliably support real business processes.In a recent episode of the Tech Transformed podcast, Kevin Petrie, VP of Research at BARC, hosted a discussion with Maxim Fateev, Co-Founder and CTO, Temporal Technologies and Cornelia Davis, Developer Advocate, Temporal Technologies. They talked about why enterprises find it hard to transition AI from experimentation to production and how infrastructure must change to support autonomous systems.Why AI Demos Break in the Real WorldAccording to Davis, many organisations make a common mistake: they focus on the "happy path" during experiments and overlook real-world operational challenges. “We have always ignored the non-functional requirements until we go to prod at our peril,” Davis said. “A lot of our experimentation is so focused on the models that we forget about the non-functional requirements.”This means developers often prioritise model performance but neglect reliability, scaling, and system resilience. Agent frameworks used in experiments—usually lightweight Python or TypeScript libraries—add to the issue.“What you're really building is a highly distributed system that's calling Large Language Models (LLMs) that will be rate-limited… networks are going to go down,” Davis explained. “When we move into prod, we haven't considered scale or instability.”As enterprises expand AI into their workflows, these overlooked details become imperative. A single outage, rate limit, or infrastructure failure can disrupt a complicated workflow that involves multiple AI steps.Also Watch: Developer Productivity 5X to 10X: Is Durable Execution the Answer to AI Orchestration Challenges?What Risks are Surfacing Since the Rise of Agentic Systems?The transition from simple AI workflows to autonomous agents adds a new layer of complexity. Traditional AI applications have predictable flows—such as summarising documents, tagging data, or creating recommendations. In contrast, agentic systems choose tools and decide on actions dynamically.“When we move from non-agentic to agentic, we introduce unpredictability,” Davis said. “The tools and the order they run in are unpredictable. Whether we go through the agentic loop once or a hundred times is unpredictable.”Such unpredictability creates new governance and compliance challenges, especially in regulated industries. “Enterprises are still responsible for predictable outcomes,” Davis noted. “We need stronger audit trails to understand why the agent made the decisions it did.”For enterprises, this means AI systems must ensure traceability, accountability, and compliance, even when decision paths differ from one interaction to another.Why is Durable Execution the New Foundation for Enterprise AIFateev argues that to manage such newly surfacing risks, enterprises need a new architectural layer focused on reliability. His concept, “Durable Execution,” aims to ensure that complex workflows keep running even when infrastructure fails.“You write code as if failures don't exist,” Fateev explained. “If a process crashes, we recover all the state and continue executing.” In practical terms, Durable Execution allows long-running AI workflows to survive interruptions—from network outages to system crashes—without losing progress or data.This is essential as agents start interacting with real systems and taking real actions. “The moment agents start acting on the external world—changing files, submitting orders—you absolutely don't want those things to get lost,” Fateev said.The Temporal co-founder further emphasised that enterprise AI will not completely replace traditional software systems.“You will always have deterministic code,” he said. “You can't imagine banks dynamically deciding what a money transfer means.”Instead, the future architecture will combine deterministic software with agents that interact through controlled tools and reliable communication layers.Also Watch: How Do You Make AI Agents Reliable at Scale?Key TakeawaysAI projects fail in production when non-functional requirements are ignoredAgentic systems bring unpredictability, making governance, traceability, and auditability essential.Lightweight experimentation frameworks aren't suited for enterprise workloads.Durable execution enables reliable AI workflows, ensuring processes continue despite infrastructure failures.Enterprise AI will blend deterministic software with agents.Chapters00:00 Introduction to AI's Impact on Business03:53 Challenges in Integrating AI into Business Workflows13:00 Understanding Non-Functional Requirements in AI19:14 The Role of Orchestration in AI Systems24:26 Exploring Durable Execution in AI Workflows30:28 Future Architectures for Autonomous AI Systems36:05 Key Takeaways for Executives in AI ImplementationFor more information, please visit em360tech.com and temporal.io.To learn more about Temporal and Durable Execution, follow:Temporal LinkedIn: Temporal TechnologiesTemporal X: @TemporalioTemporal YouTube: @TemporalioEM360Tech YouTube: @enterprisemanagement360EM360Tech LinkedIn: @EM360TechEM360Tech X: @EM360Tech#DurableExecution #EnterpriseAI #AIToProduction #AIOrchestration #TemporalTech #AutonomousAgents #SystemReliability #LLMs #TechTransformed #AIWorkflows
AI can write your design doc. It can build your storyboard. It can draft your script, your rubric, your assessment, your video outline, and half of your e-learning module before lunch. So what's left for the instructional designer?According to Jonathan De La Cruz, everything that actually matters.Jonathan is an instructional designer at a supply chain company and at a Plano, Texas startup building an AI-assisted learning management system. But before all of that, he was a music educator. He worked at DePauw University and Indiana University. He played mariachi on weekends, jazz combos, cathedral gigs, Costa Rican punk reggae, full symphonies. He didn't know "instructional designer" was a job title. He just knew he loved video editing, building websites, and figuring out how learning actually happens.In this conversation, Jonathan and I talk about the parts of instructional design AI is genuinely making faster and the parts no model will ever touch. The language you use when you collaborate. The way you receive feedback. The relationships you build before you ever press record on a training. The reason someone will or won't watch what you built.Jonathan also breaks down the custom AI agent he trained on his reviewers' feedback patterns to cut his iteration cycles from version 5 down to version 2. He shares how he manages a tech stack that includes Articulate, Camtasia, Arcade, Figma Make, Claude Code, Gemini, NotebookLM, and Perplexity, and why he just bought a Claude Code membership last week.If you're an instructional designer wondering where you still fit, an educator thinking about transitioning into ID, or anyone trying to figure out what the human in the loop actually does, this episode is for you.
What good is AI if you can't trust it? Everyone's racing to do more, build more, ship more agents. But if you're scanning an AI output and say it looks good enough, that isn't actually good enough. Especially when it comes to your company's finances. If you're a CFO, a finance leader, or running an SMB where one wrong number sends everything sideways, having trust in your AI is paramount.On today's show, we're getting into why the model alone won't save you, where finance pros should actually be spending their time now, and why most companies are thinking about AI risk backwards. Helping us break it down is Jeremiah Edwards, Head of Sage AI, from Sage Future last week.Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageToday's Episode on LinkedIn: Thoughts on this? Join the convo on LinkedIn and connect with other AI leaders.Upcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: info@youreverydayai.comConnect with Jordan on LinkedInTopics Covered in This Episode:AI Trust and Explainability in FinanceSage Copilot's New Agentic AI FeaturesFinancial Accuracy and Model Risk ManagementChain of Thought Reasoning in AI OutputsExplainability and Auditability for CFO ConfidenceHuman Agency and AI Automation in AccountingShadow IT Risks and Model IntegrationRisk Appetite for SMB Finance AI AdoptionOutlier Detection and Anomaly Monitoring with AIFuture-Proofing Financial Processes with AITimestamps:00:00 Discussing AI trust and auditing05:17 AI models and math capabilities update07:50 Importance of AI explainability12:39 AI in finance and time-saving13:52 Optimizing time with agentic AI18:18 Integrating AI into teams21:54 Using AI in different roles24:37 Adopting AI with real value26:59 Wrapping up and subscribingKeywords: AI you can trust, trustworthy AI, audit your AI, AI explainability, explainable AI, AI in finance, agentic AI, Sage Copilot, Sage AI, financial intelligence agent, AI governance, control plane, AI accuracy, chain of thought reasoning, Send Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Start Here ▶️Not sure where to start when it comes to AI? Start with our Start Here Series. You can listen to the first drop -- Episode 691 -- or get free access to our Inner Cricle community and all episodes: StartHereSeries.com Also, here's a link to the entire series on a Spotify playlist.
Decisions around the adoption of AI in healthcare need input from those who will be using it, hospital pharmacist Ella Shearing says AJP Podcast host Carlene McMaugh sits down with clinical pharmacist and Locumate marketing and brand manager, Ella Shearing, to discuss the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in pharmacy. A survey conducted by Shearing at a Sydney hospital found pharmacists were receptive to using the new technology (2 minutes 30), but understanding of AI was mixed (3:26). Shearing noted that while AI is already being used by pharmacists and other health practitioners for administrative tasks (7:03), decisions regarding how it is implemented need to take the views of frontline workers into account (16:13). “Just because we can adopt AI tools doesn't mean we should,” Shearing told McMaugh (17:12). Highlights include: 3:35 – Environmental costs of AI not well understood 9:25 – Barriers to taking AI into the clinical space 10:41 – Lack of transparency around AI software fuels hesitancy among some pharmacists 13:16 – High costs mean AI is unlikely to replace existing drug interaction software 14:25 – Integrating AI into electronic medical record systems (EMRs) “could be quite useful” 21:15 – AI could be used to generate medication charts for patients to take home and for providing information about Webster pack changes with patients' community pharmacies 22:15 – The best way to learn about AI is to use it 25:12: Development of guidelines and policies will be key to ensuring the safe and ethical use of AI in healthcare settings 26:14 – Pharmacists currently using AI are conservative about how they use it. You can access the full transcript of this podcast here. While we endeavour to ensure all important words and phrases are correct, please note there may be some minor inaccuracies in the transcription. ACCESS PODCAST TRANSCRIPT Go here for the full list of active AJP podcasts. These can also be accessed via Apple Podcasts and Spotify Carlene McMaugh
From CFO/CEO roles to running Boston Market Strategies (reviewing 450+ products), to re-engineering clinical trials at places like Penn and Drexel, Curtis has spent 38+ years bridging academia, industry, and investors. In 2009 he launched Eureka Connect, a behavioural science powerhouse that uses validated assessments to reveal exactly why you do what you do — your hardwired drives, ego, discipline, social skills, and more. The core value right now? Leadership is the bottleneck in biotech translation. Curtis shows how understanding behavioural mechanisms of action lets you build teams that don't just survive but actually deliver cures, close funding rounds, and scale without the usual ego explosions. Guest Links Eureka Connect: https://eurekaconnect.com Institute for Biomedical Entrepreneurship: https://ibeinc.org Edit your podcasts like a pro:https://get.descript.com/mrzy10nwivuq Join me as a guest or start your podcast journey:https://www.joinpodmatch.com/nickkuhne Timestamps 00:00 – Introduction & Curtis Sprouse's background 02:30 – What Eureka Connect actually does (behavioural mechanism of action) 06:45 – Why 30 minutes reveals more than you expect 09:30 – Building real trust and social skills in teams 11:45 – Why the Institute for Biomedical Entrepreneurship exists 14:00 – The knowledge gap vs funding gap in translation 17:30 – Real success stories and the power of the 1500-person network 20:15 – US reshoring, investment climate, and global collaboration 25:00 – What Curtis's year as CEO actually looks like 28:30 – Integrating AI into a 13-year-tenured team 32:45 – Behavioural science vs finance – where the real excitement is 35:30 – When to take the assessment (high school to C-suite) 37:45 – How to get involved with Eureka Connect and IBE Connect with me on:All my linksBecome a guestSign up for RiversideGet Descript #DigitalMarketing #Branding #PersonalBranding #MarketingInsights #SocialMediaStrategy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Master the Microsoft co-sell evolution today. Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this deep-dive panel discussion, industry experts Erin Figer, Erika Irby, and Reis Barrie celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Microsoft Co-Sell program by dissecting its evolution from its 2016 inception to today's data-driven, outcome-focused landscape. The group explores the critical shift from transactional sales to modern, frictionless co-sell motions, emphasizing the importance of signals, intentionality, and building credibility with Microsoft field teams. Whether you are navigating the complexities of the marketplace, struggling with reseller enablement, or looking to integrate AI into your sales process, this conversation offers actionable insights to align your organization's go-to-market strategy with Microsoft's evolving priorities and achieve results. https://youtu.be/KV1MGSoyWbQ Key Takeaways Effective co-selling has shifted from autonomous, fragmented motions to a highly collaborative, data-driven approach essential for modern cloud GTM strategies. Credibility is the currency of partnership; without trust from vendors and customers, technical go-to-market motions will fail to produce long-term outcomes. The “REO” (Reseller Enablement Offering) model is an operational unlock for ISVs to go global and sell local without the friction of multi-party private offers. Integrating AI into CRM systems is vital for identifying total addressable market (TAM) signals and maintaining sales velocity. “Don’t automate a bad process” remains the cardinal rule; technology should be used to refine existing, successful motions, not to propagate inefficient ones. The human element—community, in-person events, and empathy—is a necessary differentiator in an increasingly digital, automated B2B landscape. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags Microsoft Azure, Co-sell evolution, Hyperscaler strategy, SMB partner investment, Cloud Marketplace, Veeam GTM, Partner Center alignment, Channel enablement, REO, Cloud consumption, ISV scaling, Go-to-market optimization, Partner-led growth, Azure consumption, Channel friction reduction, Outcome-driven sales, Microsoft ecosystem, Revenue acceleration, Partner alignment. Transcript Erin Figer Panel For Cut Out [00:00:00] Vince Menzione: So when we, so, uh, this all started ’cause I was trying to figure out what was next when I left Microsoft and I had this woman who was doing work, actually starting the co-selling process when we first started doing co-selling. And she was working with one of our partners and she was working with my team when I was at Microsoft. [00:00:17] And then I said, this lady knows a lot about this stuff. So I reached out, I left Microsoft, I said, I think we can help each other. Like, I think we’re gonna, I got these companies that I spoke at Microsoft’s conference. They’re like, can you come help us out? And we teamed up. And, uh, we’ve been friends and doing fun stuff ever since. [00:00:34] And she’s spoken at just about every event in some capacity or another, whether it was on stage or a workshop. Aaron Feiger. And then, uh, I, I found, I also, through Aaron, I met this other gentleman who had another company and he was doing amazing work with ISVs or SDCs, uh, Reese Barry from Carve. And then, uh, when I think we started up the event, I mean, Erica Irby came to one of our first events and spoke on stage. [00:00:58] I was like, yeah, this. The person knows what she’s doing. So I’ve asked the three of them to come up and kind of round out and end the day, but all three of ’em have a tremendous, uh, background in this whole process of co-selling go to market strategies. And I thought you, you can, I’m just giving it over to the three of you. [00:01:17] Erin Figer: I we don’t need [00:01:18] Vince Menzione: a, you don’t needer you don’t need a clicker and you, you know what you’re all gonna be talking about. But these are some really smart people about how to partner with Microsoft. So, yeah. No, thank you for having us. [00:01:27] Erin Figer: Um, hello. Hello. I think this is on. All right. So actually we’re gonna do an exercise. [00:01:32] Um, I want everyone to close their eyes. Close your eyes. Close your eyes. All right. I want you to think back to January of 2016. What were you doing? Where were you in your career? What company were you working for? What was going on in your Microsoft partnership in January of 2016? Okay, Erica, what was happening for you? [00:01:59] Erika Irby: So, uh, is this on? Sorry, I cannot tell. Um, I was at Veeam for the first time. We had just launched our first, uh, endpoint backup, uh, product in April of the previous year because nobody knew what cloud was yet, and people were scared. So we had to launch that product. And we had a relationship with Microsoft in a sense that about 20% of our business sat on Hyper V. [00:02:25] That equated to about, I think like around 90 ish million dollars, which at the time was incredible for us. But to Microsoft was, you know, like, who are you guys again? And, um, we begged and begged to have any type of communication with them. Events. Funding nothing. We did not know what Azure consumption was. [00:02:43] We didn’t have any of that information. And if somebody would’ve told me at that time that nine years later we would sign a five year contract with them and have multiple products dedicated to Microsoft, I would’ve been like, y’all are bananas. [00:02:58] Erin Figer: Reese, what were you doing in January of 2016? [00:03:00] Reis Barrie: Uh, let’s see, Jan, 2016, I was moving from Orlando, Florida to Seattle, Washington, uh, sight unseen with no place to stay. [00:03:10] Uh, to take a job at a place called Microsoft or Consulting Gig, a place called Microsoft. Um, kicking off some of the cool motions that we’re, uh, we’re gonna talk about today, I think. [00:03:20] Erin Figer: Does anybody know the significance of January, 2016 in the audience? Any takers? It was the launch of Cosell officially for Microsoft. [00:03:31] Congratulations. We’re celebrating 10 years of officially. Problematizing how you connect with the Microsoft sales organization in a programmatic at scale way. And try to build meaningful relationships. And I have been helping partners since the inception of Microsoft’s Cosell program. Um, I was on the partner side, Reese was on the inside. [00:03:59] You were at a partner. So we have all seen the evolution of Cosell across all three hyperscalers launching, you know, their co-sell initiatives. So I just wanted to take a moment to recognize. I didn’t know how many people realized that it’s been 10 years, it’s 10 year anniversary. I think it’s a big milestone. [00:04:15] Huge. So. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we, you know, when they launched it, I went, I was consulting for a startup outta Boston and we were trying to get Microsoft’s attention, competitor to fame, and I went to the business development guy and said, uh, do you, did you just see this program that Microsoft launched? I think we should include this in our branding strategy and we should use co-sell as a way to get our brand out to Microsoft and be able to tell our story of who we are and what we’re doing and that we’re in their accounts and they don’t even know it. [00:04:55] ’cause we’re the startup out of Boston who switched over from AWS to Microsoft. And we did, and I put every single opportunity in the system I could for the first six months, which was the last six months of their fiscal year. We go to partner of the, we go to, what was it called? Them WPCI think at the time. [00:05:13] Mm-hmm. Uh, in Vegas. And Nasuni won wins like all four wards worldwide. US Education, healthcare Partner of the year because I put 117 deals in the system and then it seeded Na Sunni’s Marketing for the next two years. ’cause Microsoft gave them tons of money and attention and we were off to the races. [00:05:35] Right. And then it was, can you repeat that? And we went and repeated it with Red Hat and Rubrik and Nintex and Quest and. I don’t know, lots more. But it was, it’s been fun journey co-selling. And it’s interesting to see now, um, how we continue 10 years later to evolve co-sell. And so Erica, what were some of the takeaways you had today listening to the conversation about how co-sell, how you’re modernizing and co-sell is changing inside your organization, especially now being a boomerang. [00:06:08] Erika Irby: Yeah, well we call it a Veeam ring ’cause everything a veer ring, everything has to start with with Veeam. Well, one thing I was gonna comment on, I think I’m sitting here thinking how wild is it that back in the day we actually had to define that co-sell was an action that, that, you know, partners and vendors needed to take or, and different vendors and alliances. [00:06:25] I mean, now we can’t even imagine going to market without, you know, that, that attach. But at the time, we were just very autonomous and everybody sold their own product and it, it took like this actual motion, um, to get us working together. But now look at us. I mean, this community is incredible. And we can also see this by, and even when AGU was mentioning earlier, all the bosses he had in his room, I mean. [00:06:47] How many people like know each other. I mean, this is like part of that, that ecosystem. But today, um, a couple of things I took away, and by the way, we want a lot of interactions, so we’re going to kind of throw it back out at you guys. But for me, um, outcomes came up repeatedly that was mentioned multiple times about outcomes. [00:07:04] Um, speed with intentionality. I think that was super critical. We have to go to market. There has to be a sense of urgency, but if we’re not intentional, it’s like, what are we doing? It’s just like a big mess. Um, and then credibility. And this is something I think is super important, regardless of, um, all of our emotions, all of our go to market, all of the, the things that we do, if we are not credible or not building trust with our vendors, our, our co-partners, our customers, we will never be successful. [00:07:35] Um, so those are the three main things that I took away from, from everybody talking today. And I, I thought, I mean, to me personally, I thought those were pretty powerful. [00:07:42] Yeah. [00:07:42] Erika Irby: So we’d love to hear. [00:07:43] Erin Figer: Yeah. And I know Reese, you have been doing a lot around outcomes and changing kind of the cosal, um, intention. [00:07:54] Reis Barrie: Yeah. The, uh, the, just thinking back to today, like that was like such a, it was really a, a big key theme of today. Like everyone talked about, whether it’s pivot of, of sales, partnership, um, even when you’re talking about AI and some of the, the, uh. POC discussions. So the live like type of stuff, everything was centered around that narrative. [00:08:17] And so, um, and it’s the same with, it’s the same with partnerships. It’s the same with your co-sell motion, same with your benefits utilization, um, and the way you’re utilizing partnerships. And so that’s, that’s a huge, huge component of, um, what I also took away from today. Um, and then somebody, I think it was Mark who said it that I’m gonna, I’m gonna steal this because the, the whole, um. [00:08:40] Near and dear to my heart of like, don’t, don’t scale automate ai, A-I-F-I-A bad process. Like as someone who deals with like, for the most part, bad processes, like day in and day out, um, and trying to refine them and improve them. Like, that’s one of the first things that we, uh, that we talk to partners about when it comes to their partnership and, and the processes they have in place. [00:09:03] So those are like two really big, just takeaways from [00:09:06] Erin Figer: Yeah. Nice. So we’re here to learn from each other, right? Like this is an ultimate partner community of learning from each other. So I’d really love to hear from the audience, like what are some of the things you’re doing in your cloud? Go to market approach and co-selling that you’re trying out. [00:09:23] Either you tried it, you failed fast, you learned from that, that you can share those lessons learned or like what’s working and how are you changing to be more outcome driven in your cloud go to market, uh, approach. Any takers in wanting to experience share? Great. Give that man a mic. [00:09:50] Audience Member: The SMB investments. Um, these, these new, I don’t know what they are. I partner accelerators, PBAs, uh, there’s kind of something going on in the SMB space where it just seems like they’re coming outta the woodwork to come help. On deals. I’ve never seen Microsoft really embrace the customer that they, the way they have in SMB in the cos sells. [00:10:10] I’m not sure if anybody else is seen that, but seems to be working. It’s two things. One, you at Data 60 [00:10:22] America. [00:10:54] I think, I think part of the rarity there is that. Typically you wouldn’t get a seller attached, right? They’re unmanaged that they’re kind of in the nobody cares category, but, [00:11:06] um. So Microsoft made a huge investment in the distribution space saying we’re gonna lean on distribution to help enable our 165,000 indirect resellers that we have as a business. And part of that enablement goes back to field sales alignment. So there’s these roles, ca roles called um, partner Solutions Sellers, PS. [00:11:30] And so they’re aligned by, um, solutions architecture, if you will, for Microsoft. So, or cloud solution area, whatever the new term, modern work, uh, or, uh, AI work, AI workforce, um, data and ai. And so they are there to help support your deal. So it’s, it’s a huge investment and one that I would just can say continue to advocate for it if you’re seeing success with it, because I mean, we’re heading into FY 27 planning for Microsoft. [00:11:58] So. Like there, there could be role changes. So I would say if it, if it’s helpful, like make sure you’re talking positively about it. [00:12:05] Reis Barrie: Yeah, yeah. Just to, to your point, like I, I’d say like, um, in the last six to 12 months, like that’s been a, a thing that’s like we’ve to go back and like, I mean we manage a portfolio of a couple dozen, dozen partners at this point, and so we’ve had to go back and rewrite some of our playbooks, reeducate some of. [00:12:26] Uh, some of the partnership folks that we use because, um, historically you kind of get into this like void of, you’re in partner center, you’re picking, you know, account alignment and it’s not managed. And so it’s like, okay, I expect to do nothing with this deal on the Microsoft side from a co-sell standpoint. [00:12:42] Um, but that’s kind of, that’s changed quite a bit, um, in the last six months where, um, it’s not like a, it’s hard to create, it’s hard to create processes and dependence around it ’cause it’s not like a guarantee that you’ll get, you get engagement, but. Uh, you see more eng engagement, more on more and more deals. [00:12:58] Um, and so we’ve had to go back and work with some of our partners to rewrite some of our, uh, deal sharing playbooks to account for, uh, things like that, which is, it’s super cool to see, frankly, um, to see engagement on these, like predominantly. [00:13:12] Erin Figer: So in that motion. So first off, for the folks that are on the other side of this black curtain by the food station, if you guys could please stop the conversation. [00:13:19] It’s really hard to pay attention to what’s going on in this room. Um. Thank you. Thank [00:13:25] Erika Irby: you for saying that. [00:13:26] Erin Figer: That was a great, that was a great, that’s a great point. And what I wanna talk about next is like in order to kind of continue to evolve the playbooks and they’re changing and people are changing, and priorities are changing, what are some of the signals that you guys are using internally in your organization, whether you’re building or buying, um, but would love to learn from all of you. [00:13:46] What kind of signals are you looking at to help you continue to like co-innovate, co-sell, co-market? Um, in your go-to market strategies? [00:13:58] Audience Member: Yeah, [00:13:58] Erin Figer: please. Um, [00:14:00] Audience Member: well, I’m, I’m, we’re building everything from scratch right now because we’re brand is integration. [00:14:39] Like having our, our engineer be able to interact with product [00:14:43] Erin Figer: engineer. [00:14:50] I’m gonna pick on trend ’cause I had just spent last week with them and Sanjay, I think like what you guys are building internally, um, using signals, building it into an AI agent. To help you understand your tam, you wanna share a little bit. [00:15:06] Audience Member: Happy to, and I’ll disclose. The first thing I did was hire Aaron Feiger to run my co-sell operations, uh, for the, for the second time. [00:15:12] It’s [00:15:13] Erin Figer: nice to be a GDI again [00:15:14] Audience Member: for the second, so well planted. Um, but honestly, like I can’t have an environment where I fail my sellers, like this process has to be frictionless in co-sell and marketplace operations. Or I lose trust in my own house, let alone in my channel and in my customer base. So. Uh, building that strong foundation is like job number one. [00:15:34] I’ve been, I spent a decade at Trend. I’m back, uh, five weeks on the job now. Um, but I’d say we’ve built a multi hundred million dollar cloud marketplace business thinking highly transactional. And what we’re trying to pivot to is a highly dated driven approach where we can look at any cloud in any region around the world, figure out roughly how many accounts they have. [00:15:57] Figure out what those customers are spending and things that we can protect from a cybersecurity standpoint, knowing that four or 5% of that total spend will be spent on cybersecurity, doing an overlap of where I have existing customers in that drawing a tam, overlapping that with my incumbent partners to get the Venn diagram of like, where’s my sweet spot to move this forward? [00:16:18] And then where’s my blast radius? So when I sit down with a guy leading France, or a person leading healthcare. I can have a really specific opportunity about how to leverage my cloud partnerships to accelerate deals and expand growth in a very surgical, data-driven, propensity driven way. And it like totally changes the conversation. [00:16:40] And the other thing we’ve done because you get a lot of pushback and when you’re working with Microsoft, uh, I was chatting with a few folks today, like if you’re in cybersecurity, it’s not easy. They got a 25 billion ish dollars cybersecurity business. So you gotta find your swim lanes. And the dialogue I have now internally with my sellers is a major League baseball analogy, which is, if you play major league baseball and if you hit the ball 30% of the time, you’re gonna go to this little thing called the Hall of Fame, right? [00:17:07] If you bat 300, if you’re in sales and Microsoft, or Amazon or whoever helps you, 30% of the time, you’re gonna go to this thing called President’s Club. That’s the difference between sitting at home in Ohio and sitting with your beach. You know, your, your toes in the sand. So it’s, we’re really trying to change. [00:17:25] Uh, one of the first things I ask my team is, what’s our brand promise to our sales leaders and our sales team? And if you don’t know that answer, you got a fricking problem. So you gotta get that. What’s your Brene Brown would call it? What’s your North Star? What are your values? Whatcha are you gonna deliver? [00:17:38] Right? So you gotta get that right and then you gotta be relentless in making it frictionless. And then you gotta hire Aaron Fier to run your co-sell. [00:17:46] Erin Figer: Okay? Okay. And so, I mean, I think like that’s a trend that I’m seeing across the partners that I’ve been working with is how they’re using data and doing more data driven, um, decision making and getting to their TAM faster so that as they start to then look at this pathway of, okay, now I’m trying to go to market, what. [00:18:11] Programs does Microsoft have or my other partners have that I can use to move me down that path faster. But getting that tam and feeling more confident about it, like, this is the group, this is the subgroup that I’m gonna start with until I see something that says, oh, I need to deviate and do something different. [00:18:30] Um, so I’m definitely seeing that trend. Like what are you seeing, uh, what are you guys doing at Vem? [00:18:35] Erika Irby: Um, so a couple different things. So like you were saying, we, we do leverage, um, AI more, uh, recently for New Deal Reg, um, automation. And we lit, literally just launched it this week. So this is the week that it’s exciting until the, someone tries to use it for the first time and then for. [00:18:52] Um, so I can’t wait to see my emails later, but, um, it, it’s, we’re seeing like that, that that movement, which is, uh, definitely good for that. We have a task force internally for marketing, so trying to figure out how we’re gonna, um, you know, leverage that, uh, um, internally. And I think that Veeam, you know, they, they have been on the forefront of technology for, for a while. [00:19:12] You know, they were the first with the. Virtual backup and, you know, all these things, you know, really trying to be ahead of the thing, ahead of the game. But, um, one thing I, I, I love how many people brought up the intentionality and the mindfulness because I think sometimes we can easily. Put out a whole bunch of tools. [00:19:28] I love that you called out the point about the bad processes, um, because it actually, I think, can just create more confusion, more of a mess, and that, um, really mindfulness will be so much more beneficial, you know, down the road for your partners, for your customers, for everybody that has to, you know, do that interaction business with you. [00:19:47] I did wanna call out that I thought it was lovely that you had a positive comment about Microsoft. I dunno if I, [00:19:53] Audience Member: yeah, [00:19:53] Erika Irby: I like rarely hear that. So like, awesome. I hope that does get back to Microsoft. I hope that they do, um, continue that. I’m sure their SMB is quite a bit bigger than maybe others, but that is a massive install base for, for Veeam as well. [00:20:07] And even though we’re driving and trying to push into the enterprise, protecting that install base is just absolutely critical for success. [00:20:15] Erin Figer: What about you race? [00:20:17] Reis Barrie: So if I’m looking at like signals, I, I think. Uh, I’ll focus on too, I think you mentioned, uh, the, the cycles of change at Microsoft. Like it used to be an annual thing and now it’s like a, then it was a half base thing, and then it was a, now it’s a quarterly thing basically. [00:20:30] Um, but there’s also like, there’s, there’s big signals and small signals, and so annually we still get like that, like the, the, the guiding direction so that we can align. How we talk about ourselves, how we talk about our partnership, how, how we enable our sellers and whatnot. And then we got a lot of programmatic shifts from a, from a quarter to quarter standpoint. [00:20:50] Um, and so focusing on the, like these, um, these signals so we can align our, our messaging and our frameworks to align with, with, with our partnership, um, is, is one thing that’s, you know, super, super important to keep, keep tabs on. Um, and the second one, I’ll, I’ll give, you’ll. Mention is more on the cus sorry, uh, customer side, but like the seller enablement. [00:21:15] And so how is your, on the marketplace side, how, how are your sellers talking to your customers about marketplace? Um, are they, are they bringing up earlier in the, in the qualifying discussions of how does the customer prefer to buy? Um, are there fire drills with two weeks to go, um, till the, till the deal closes and now the customer wants to go marketplace and, and no one knows how to do it? [00:21:37] Um, seen that way too many times. Um, and so, but how, how, like studying kind of the, uh, maturity of our sales org to see well, like where, where, where is our, our, where are our sellers competent to have this marketplace discussion? Um, because I often relate, like, this is kinda a silly analogy, but I, I, simple stuff works really, really well with me. [00:22:00] But I like, have you ever been to a farmer’s market and you’re like nervous to buy something? ’cause you don’t know if they take credit card. [00:22:07] Audience Member: Yeah. [00:22:07] Reis Barrie: And so like to me, I’m like, okay, well, like it’s the same thing with Marketplace to me. And so like, it’s, it’s the same concept of you want your customer to be able to buy, they want the way that they would like to buy. [00:22:19] Um, and you want the person that they’re interacting with to be able to, um, facilitate that, that transaction in, in a way that feels frictionless. Yeah. Right. Uh, and so that’s a lot. Like, those are the kind of, the really two deep signals, um, that we, we look at a lot. [00:22:37] Erika Irby: I wanna make a comment on the marketplace. [00:22:38] So I don’t know if anybody else is experiencing this, you know, Veeam being an ISV, we have a really strong traditional, traditional channel motion. So, to your point about how sellers are, are managing the marketplace, to be totally honest, we struggle on, um, that, because right now it feels like a deal that goes to the marketplace is taken away from a reseller, and that reseller loses out then on that upfront margin and. [00:23:06] Um, there’s not a clean path necessarily for, you know, just because the, the deal happened there. They really, they still need to maintain that because they’re the one pri providing the services. And somebody had brought up earlier that, um, A SMB customer will never be successful without a partner. And I, I totally agree with that, but it’s like that part is missing. [00:23:26] So we almost need like a mindset change. In the channel where the marketplace is just a route to market and how the customer receives the product. It shouldn’t totally matter because at the end of the day, the, they still have to provide the services. It’s like, I could go to Home Depot and purchase a bunch of pipe for my house, but can I install it a thousand percent? [00:23:49] No. I would destroy my house. I used to have to have a plumber. So I think there’s, we could help our channel by changing that mindset, and at the same time, we, we need the marketplace owners to, to provide the benefits so that it is still very attractive for those traditional. Partners to, to push their customers there or else I, I think we’re just gonna constantly have that strife. [00:24:11] Erin Figer: Yeah. Does anyone in the audience, has anyone in the audience activated REO with Microsoft? You have? Yeah. So how’s it, like, how’s it going? Yeah, there’s Bump. Yeah. [00:24:32] Audience Member: How that shifts making people more effective in their roles individually. So we’re early stage of it, but it’s, it’s been a good experience. [00:24:42] Erin Figer: Has it helped to kind of unlock some of that friction with the resellers and continuing to include them to get to the s and b customers? [00:24:49] Audience Member: Yeah, I think the, the challenge that we’re working through right now is, you know, Erica may have said it, but it’s. [00:24:56] It’s not just the, the view of the marketplace taking people out of the equation, it’s how do we use the marketplace for, for co-innovation to keep people in it. So if, if, if it’s gonna take three to five of, of us in this room to deliver that spectrum to innovation for the customer. Um, how do we use the marketplace as a force multiplier of bringing that together and making that transaction easy? [00:25:21] Yeah. If, if our consumers are more and more influenced by Instagram and TikTok Shop Now buttons, like my husband’s texting me about my stuff that showed up today, [00:25:31] Erika Irby: which is none of his business. [00:25:32] Audience Member: None of your business. That’s right. Just put it [00:25:36] Erika Irby: in my room. Thank you. [00:25:37] Audience Member: If people are, people as consumers in the, in the u, us consumer based economy is driving more and more people through like that social experience of purchasing, that is an area where I do think Microsoft could help us and we could help ourselves in marketing how that, how we leverage it to be a force multiplier versus another omnichannel. [00:25:58] Well, [00:25:58] Erin Figer: so on that note, how many of you have put a button on your website? Click to buy? Yeah, [00:26:02] Audience Member: that’s, that’s where I’m at with our marketing team. [00:26:04] Erin Figer: Right? [00:26:04] Audience Member: Yeah. That’s, I think, the next evolution for us in the, in the REO piece. [00:26:08] Erin Figer: Yeah. Yeah. [00:26:10] Audience Member: I, I don’t want it on our website. I want to, I want it on my Instagram, my LinkedIn, my TikTok reels. [00:26:15] That’s, we’re going to, sir, it’s coming next week at our sales kickoff. Yeah. [00:26:21] Erin Figer: Nice, nice. Anybody else? Uh, activated. REO [00:26:28] besides the, you know, RE speed wagon? Uh, it’s the Microsoft Reseller Enablement. Um, offering, so like you activate your resellers to just take your listing and be able to do a private offer so that you don’t have to do multi-party private offers anymore. Your resellers can just take the listing and sell it directly, and they don’t have to wait for you to send them the offer. [00:26:52] Then they have to go do, so it takes out some of the steps and that friction in the process streamlines it and it allows them to like. Add on and do their own pricing. And then the reseller, however you have your arrangement with that reseller, continues to pay you in the back end for, um, selling that through the marketplace. [00:27:11] Erika Irby: I think I’m going to have you come and do a webinar for our Veeam partners to, to help them with that, because to your point, I don’t, I don’t think it’s as prevalent yet. It’s, it hasn’t really caught on. [00:27:21] Erin Figer: Yeah. It’s been really an unlock of, I had a large, um, ISV that I helped. We implemented REO internally, so they have 34 marketplace offerings and they have this initiative. [00:27:36] They wanted to go global, sell local, and so they launched five more publishing accounts and they came to me and said, we need to replicate our catalog five times 34. And I was like, oh God, please, no. And luckily like two months later, Microsoft, like GAed, uh, REO, and I was like, here’s your answer. We’re not going to do that. [00:27:58] We’re going to enable each of your publishing accounts to be resellers of your quote unquote gold standard publishing account, and that we actually implemented REO as an internal mechanism for them to issue their own publishing accounts, to resell private offers in local currencies. Um, and that was really an operational unlock for them. [00:28:25] All right. Anybody you wanna ask a question to the audience? [00:28:29] Audience Member: Okay. I’ll just keep going. [00:28:32] Erin Figer: Um, all right. So what are some other, um, signals or ways that you guys are evolving the way you’re co-selling? Um, does anybody else have some experience shares that they want to, to share with the audience? We’ve got, we’re using data, uh, we’re using some ai, we’re helping us get to our audience faster. [00:28:51] I really loved work span, um, building in an AI tool inside your CRM system, um, so that you can get some of those signals. Any other signals that you guys are using, uh, to change the way you’re co-selling? [00:29:07] It’s quiet on [00:29:07] Reis Barrie: Maybe, maybe I’ll share one, but Yeah. Yeah. So, um, just when it comes to, like, for us, account alignment to me is like one of the most important things and consistently doing, uh, you know, account planning and account alignment against Microsoft their accounts. Um, now it’s a bit interesting ’cause you can include some s and b stuff in there. [00:29:27] Um, but also, uh, Jason you mentioned up there, the. Uh, marketplace rewards, having the propensity mapping. And so looking at not only from an account alignment, um, what Microsoft accounts are, we, um, you know, areas are we most penetrated in, but also of those accounts, which ones are already buying on marketplace. [00:29:47] Uh, maybe have a commitment to Microsoft in, in some way to help us just further, uh, further target and focus on, you know, if we have 500 opportunities that we’re trying to, um. I’m trying to work through, um, to Sanjay’s point, like what’s, what’s the 30% that I’m gonna get my batting average on? Um, and so that constant account alignment to us is like a, is a huge, huge signal, um, for us to focus on. [00:30:14] Um, and then you can even take it a layer deeper to identify, okay, well if I’m looking like, do I have density within Nina had the, the ou up here on the screen. So do I have densities with density within like specific. Uh, verticals or regions, um, or segments that I should maybe if I just focused on that one segment or one vertical, um, you know, then all of a sudden I, I’m super successful having an executive sponsorship in that, uh, in that ou, something like that. [00:30:44] Um, and, but that, that’s all starting with, um, the foundations of that being that consistent account alignment and leveraging some of the, some of the propensity stuff that Microsoft is, is providing. [00:30:56] Erin Figer: And then making sure you’re like bringing it back into your CRM and storing it so that you can continue to use that information ongoing. [00:31:03] And we’re trying to figure out how to embed more and more. [00:31:37] And are you integrating like. Microsoft and other partners into that data as well. It’s like, this is a great partner. Incorporate them at this point in the journey. Yeah, we um. [00:31:50] When [00:31:50] Audience Member: you’re in the process with, with Microsoft, we haven’t opened it up externally, so that’s our crawl, walk, run is we’re, we’re trying this out internally. Let’s see if we can work the bugs out, get the agents working, and then how do we now go to our MSP community and offer this up as an agent they can use within their sales team. [00:32:08] And on the end of. We’re still working in the middle, but front end profiling, it’s helping a ton, um, and giving us a lot of good intel that the sellers are driving through the agent on the back end. It’s, it’s giving us not, um, just propensity data, but what’s resonating. So if we launched 12 products this year and we trained sellers on. [00:32:28] What’s hitting, where’s my pipeline velocity coming from? Where’s my close rate coming from? So that every month when we have our sales town hall, it’s like, here’s the top three sales motions that are actually driving pipeline and fast to cash close rates. [00:32:42] Erin Figer: And I gotta imagine that helps you get to your differentiators. [00:32:45] Audience Member: Oh [00:32:45] Erin Figer: yeah. And refining your superpower story. [00:32:48] Audience Member: That’s right. That’s. Yeah, because it’s for, for our sales team. I mean, we were talking about it earlier, it’s all about simplification. There’s so many options, so much noise. It’s like, just go focus on these three things and this is where you’re gonna deliver impact and outcomes to your customer. [00:33:01] And if we’re doing that, we’re all winning. [00:33:03] Erika Irby: Yeah. I, I, um, just recently, this is why one of the coolest things that Veeam has done, we just launched this tool called, um, expansion iq, and it’s part of our command, the expand motion this year where we’re really. Upselling and cross-selling our, um, install base. [00:33:17] This tool takes all the partners individual propensity data, puts it against four solution plays that we think are the main plays, and then provides them, this is what you could be earning if you took this motion. And then from a marketing perspective, we provide them. And to do this, here’s your campaign. [00:33:37] Here’s your this, here’s your that. Step one, send this email. Like very, very, you know, just, uh, planned out. And I loved what Nina said earlier today when she shared that, um, org chart. Essentially with all the different, um, industry focuses we are driving. One of our go to market actions is a Microsoft healthcare campaign. [00:33:56] That is like very, very specific, but it’s helping our partners in that manner. Could they go to their own database and pull their own and do all this stuff? Of course. But for our sellers to go blink and then give them a report and be like, here it is. It makes it so much more relevant. And then the steps just, they just hand that to their marketing org and then they’re just off and running. [00:34:18] Going back into your team to say, Hey, we rolled out these 12 things, only three landing. You gotta go back to the drawing on the other side. Or We need more money for these three. Yeah, but let’s figure what’s not with customer [00:34:38] to record the. [00:34:47] Audience Member: A better, faster, uh, listening post for, uh, can I talk really loud? Um, it’s, it’s, it’s helped turning on a listening post for our engineering, our marketing, our service delivery organization that would’ve taken months or quarters to get spun up in an executive board meeting or something. Right now they get it real time every week. [00:35:09] Okay. [00:35:09] Erin Figer: So what I’m hearing, like the theme here is to really like. Understand your sales process. Also, your co-sell sales process that runs in parallel with that. And how do you continue to serve up the right data at the right time to help your people take the right next action to continue to drive those outcomes that you’re looking for, but then also using data to circle it back, to say what’s working, what’s not working, to continue to refine that whole motion. [00:35:43] Um, so if you’re not doing that, I think that’s a big aha moment and takeaway, uh, from today’s session or from here today is like, okay, am I really identifying all the opportunities in my process to involve data to help my people continue to drive outcomes? [00:36:04] Audience Member: You [00:36:04] Erin Figer: have a, [00:36:05] Audience Member: you have your head in up back there, Gary. [00:36:06] Yeah. I, I couldn’t tell if, uh, you were prompting me when you asked that question and I, I didn’t want to, you know, do a shameless plug for cloud, but I think everybody [00:36:15] Erin Figer: should shamelessly plug, plug away. [00:36:16] Audience Member: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, you brought up a mitt and, uh, the co-sell thing, but it, it does relate to what Reese had said about, um, you know, the being at the farmer’s market and. [00:36:26] Not sure what, you know, can I use a credit card or not? And I think that, um, or [00:36:30] Erin Figer: can I use Apple Pay? I still ask. I’m like, do you, do you accept Apple Pay? [00:36:32] Audience Member: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it’s like, I think, uh, a lot of times you don’t understand the seller in that situation is not sure how to handle that conversation. So, and there’s not a lot of information about their, about that. [00:36:44] Like how to, when it comes to a seller talking about marketplace and asking about the commit. Because the commit obviously is one of the main drivers, right? 900 billion out there. And committed spend across all the hyperscalers. So how to actually bring that up with a customer and what if they don’t know, right? [00:37:05] So there’s a whole process that, you know, they, they need to be taught this. But the first thing that’s also come up multiple times is activating them also means how to engage them. So an approach there of how to engage your salespeople is critical because if salespeople aren’t in it, they’re nothing’s happening. [00:37:23] You’re not gonna do well with marketplace. And on the co-sell part, it’s kinda the same thing. The typical thing, and I remember talking to Aldo Desal about this at another Ultimate Partner event, but uh, you bring your salespeople into a call, like you set up a call with, with Microsoft and the seller comes in unprepared. [00:37:42] Typically they’re not sure what to say and it’s a little bit intimidating. How, how, how do I, you know, what do you do in this situation? Like, so you start talking about product ’cause that’s what you know, and it’s the last thing you want to do. You, you want to understand what they care about, like em stage and, and, uh, what’s your consumption story and what kind of MRR impact you’re gonna have. [00:38:03] So it’s, these things are just unusual topics for the salespeople to be prepared, uh, to talk about. But it’s critical if your salespeople are gonna be enabled that they can do that. So I think from a co-selling standpoint, that’s just what I want to mention. And by the way, we offered a tool that does that. [00:38:20] Erin Figer: Nice. Awesome. Thank you. Uh, I mean, I don’t know about you. Reese Cloud Atlas. Every time we helped an ISV with their cosell motion, we would say, okay, we’re ready to go share cos sells and drive introductions. Have you done your sales enablement? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve enabled the sellers we have, and then we launch like the first batch of cos sells and then they immediately come back. [00:38:43] Stop, stop, stop. Don’t share any more deals, like we’re causing too much confusion. Uh, we didn’t do our sales enablement. Wow. Grace, [00:38:52] Reis Barrie: I mean, sound [00:38:53] Erin Figer: familiar? [00:38:53] Reis Barrie: It sounds very familiar. It sounds too familiar. Uh, P-T-S-D-A little bit there, but the, uh, sorry, [00:38:58] Erika Irby: but that’s why you guys have jobs. [00:39:00] Reis Barrie: Yes. Go on. It’s, it’s, um, but this, you know, I, I always come back to the, the concept of like, if we showed up to a Microsoft co-sell call the way we do to a customer call, like, oh. [00:39:14] Erin Figer: It, [00:39:14] Reis Barrie: it would, it would be night and day difference of the value you’d get outta your Microsoft partnership and co-sell. That’s all. It’s [00:39:20] Erin Figer: Well, [00:39:20] Reis Barrie: but I think people [00:39:21] Erin Figer: forget Microsoft is your customer too. [00:39:23] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:39:23] Erin Figer: They’re your partner, but you have to sell to before you can sell with and through. So you first gotta like master the sell to. [00:39:30] Reis Barrie: Yeah, a hundred percent. So there, there’s there like, and then to your point, [00:39:34] Erin Figer: it’s still true. 10 years later, people, it’s still true. Back to the fundamentals, right? [00:39:39] Reis Barrie: Yeah. It’s, [00:39:40] Erin Figer: yes. Go for it. [00:39:44] Audience Member: The, um, Microsoft being customer, right? So, and I love what you said about sem uh, alignment. So we actually made it a point, um, in our co-sell process, we have a validation checkpoint with Microsoft. If we build a co-sell packages, um, we are an si We’re not primarily ISV, but I think that’s shifting as well gradually. [00:40:10] And ESI kind of becoming a little bit of ISV. Um, so why it’s important, I think like Ree said, like you come up, you show up to co-sell call and you just pitch your services or say, well, let’s do account planning with this and that. Right? But what if it doesn’t work in the field? So that validation became critical for us, and I can tell you that now we have success stories that are actually proven based on that multifaceted feedback, uh, as to it’s one thing to build it. [00:40:46] Yeah. But is it useful for seller, for Microsoft sellers actually in the field? Can they actually position it and help clients to be more successful? Because that’s the ultimate goal. So that validation became, uh, an important checkpoint for us, uh, to make those packages repeatable and successful for customers at the end of the day. [00:41:06] So when we talk about signals, you absolutely right. It’s not just customer signals like we use ZoomInfo, we use all this data points, et cetera, but it’s also signals from the field because while Microsoft is a huge organization, they’re also very dynamic. On very regular basis, a lot of things changed. So taking those signals into account, uh, has created that, what we call like, more of a holistic approach for us, uh, to make it more meaningful. [00:41:33] So [00:41:34] Erin Figer: I like it. And you made it sticky by making it like a required point in the sales process? Absolutely. That everyone stops. Take a moment. [00:41:41] Audience Member: Yeah. [00:41:41] Erin Figer: And make sure that we’re all on the same page. [00:41:43] Audience Member: Yeah. And I think for us as si it’s even more critical. Like I, I, I think there is a lot more to happen in marketplace as, as, as much as we talk about it, but being in si I, we still kind of figure it out, like how Mark marketplace actually becomes a place of transaction for a size. [00:42:01] Yeah. So that’s why, you know, we’re passionate about packages and it’s not just a matter of publishing it and say, oh, it’s co-sell ready? Then what? Yeah. Right. So yeah, so, so that’s why that, that checkpoint is very important for us. So [00:42:16] Erin Figer: definitely, definitely. I think you ladies over here in the corner had some, some hands up, Michelle and, and the other Michelle, Michelle Squared. [00:42:26] Audience Member: Thank you. Michelle Squared. I like it. Um, so. I’ve been a little quiet because I wanna just give my background. So I’m a global VP of channels and alliances and, um, I think it’s a bit of this, uh, the movement, right? So I love your farmer’s market analogy so much. I’m gonna steal that. Thank you. But the reason is because you don’t know unless you’re gonna meet your partners where you are or meet your customers where they are in that journey. [00:42:53] So the first time that they’re selling whatever their goods or wares are, and somebody says, do you take Apple Pay? That’s a clue. And then when you hear it over and over again, you realize there’s a correlation that there’s a need in the market. So in In my life, all roads read to Romes, right? Reseller and VARs, OEM, alliances, MSPs, MSPs, ISVs System integrators. [00:43:17] And as a partner leader, you wouldn’t necessarily think marketplace is first because you feel like you’re going around your partners. But am I meeting my partners where they are in their journey and choosing to procure the way they want to procure? And I think that’s the notion that I have a lot of learning from this team and everyone in this room to understand how do we in a company. [00:43:38] Prescribe the right solution to, to meet our partners in that journey. And I’ll use, kind of circling back to the MSP space, PAX eight, one of Microsoft’s largest partners created a marketplace dedicated to MSPs. And while I was the global Channel chief of SonicWall, a lot of partners said to me, I like you. [00:43:56] I like your products, I like your firewall, but unless you’re on the park, PAX eight Marketplace, I’m not gonna buy from you because they make my life frictionless. And easier to do business with. And I think that’s the motion that every vendor in this room needs to understand is, are we truly meeting our partners where they are? [00:44:14] PS I work for Carrero DDoS Solutions and come to talk to me about that. Thank you. [00:44:18] Erika Irby: Well, and a Guo owes you some money for that commercial right there. [00:44:30] Audience Member: From, we’re actually community first. Um, as an MSP, even though we’re national, like we really focus in on community local touch. Um. Like you said, um, um, Southern seldom me in a southern way. Like that’s what we focus on. I’m your [00:44:45] Erin Figer: huckleberry. [00:44:46] Audience Member: I love that. Exactly. Um, and we’re seeing a ton of success with actual in-person events now. [00:44:53] Like the majority of our business is come in, leads are coming from that right now. And even though, like I, I truly believe in digital first motions, we need to be on Instagram and have that self-serve motion as the next generation comes up in our. Buying and transitioning to their kids or whatever that looks like. [00:45:14] Like we have to remember that there’s also a trend of tactile in person people first coming with it. And so like we, I, I feel like there, there has to be that motion engaged and I would love to hear your thoughts around how are vendors thinking about engaging in that community driven approach, not just the platform itself. [00:45:37] Erika Irby: Yeah, I, I personally also, this is hilarious ’cause we’re like best friends, so we can talk about this later, but, um, from a Veeam perspective, Michelle, um, we are seeing a resurgence in like these thought leadership type of events. And I think there’s, this is, this is sort of related, but just to, this is kind of how I think about this. [00:45:57] Um, Barnes and Noble’s business has like gone through the roof lately, and they are, they’re actually like opening more stores, which is bananas because at one point they were like going outta business because nobody wanted to go and like, touch a book or talk to somebody. But that is changing, thank God. [00:46:11] Right? That is like changing and people are actually like becoming more social because they’re missing this. Um, my kids’ generation refers to places like Barnes and Nobles as the third place. Like this magical place that exists where you can talk to a real human that’s not on your phone. Like it’s, it’s amazing. [00:46:28] But anyways, we’re, I think we’re starting to see this in marketing. We used to like pump everything out digitally, but after a while people get that form and they’re like, I am not putting my dang information in this form. And then your ability to capture that lead completely dissipates. All it is, is, is now an impression, which is. [00:46:47] Fairly worthless. You can have millions of them and nothing happens. So we are definitely investing more into, um, uh, live events, but also with the live streaming because then people can, they’re still watching it live. They still have to register for it. They knew they couldn’t make it. So I think that there’s definitely that digital aspect that’s super helpful. [00:47:05] But a purely digital, you will never make that connection. [00:47:10] Erin Figer: Yeah, I mean, I think. Unfortunately, COVID made us, you know, all do things digitally. But now that we’re past that, getting back to that multifaceted approach, I think if we think about what’s going on in the B2C world, lots of communities within communities, there’s whole company’s getting created, like women are bringing women together to do craft circles. [00:47:37] And literally. Okay. But like I did that digitally. That was pretty awesome. I was like three years. That shameless plug. No, I, no. But like then now there’s like companies that are actually like renting space, bringing people together, like crafting and while they’re doing the activity, um, if anyone’s ever done therapy, a therapist will say. [00:48:01] You know, if you wanna get your kids talking, get them coloring, like distract them and they will start to open up. And so you distract people with an activity and they start to open up. And what they really are, thrive, like what they really need is in this digital world where we’re getting so much information, we still need. [00:48:22] The next layer of filter to help us vet out and validate and confirm like our thinking or like our suspicions on things like, am I in the right going down the right path? Is this the right direction? So there’s still a human element that needs to be involved in that buyer journey, and you’re seeing that with these little micro communities inside communities. [00:48:45] Um, and so I’ve. I mean, I love micro communities inside of bigger communities. I’ve started two of them, three of them. So I, it definitely, like, we need still that in person, uh, interaction and I love seeing it coming back in our space. [00:49:04] Erika Irby: I, I was just thinking about ear, the, the previous panel and the, the topic came up about who can assist partners as they transition from that direct to CSP motion. [00:49:15] And I mean, yes, it, I think Microsoft plays a role there, but I think it would behoove Microsoft to invest in these communities and they would enable that change. Yeah, [00:49:26] Erin Figer: yeah, yeah. There is a person inside of Microsoft who has that remit, but she’s like one person, one person trying to do that. I was like, wow. [00:49:36] Okay. Grace, what are you seeing amongst your partners and also your perspective with working with Microsoft? [00:49:42] Reis Barrie: Yeah, yeah. Um. There’s a really good, uh, the frontier study, the work like door work study that they did, um, which talks really heavily about just like in this, you know, post 20, you know, 2020 culture, how like the amount of busyness has just increased in an insane amount and how a, a really strong use case for AI is to buybacks from that time essentially, um, for us to, you know, return back to a, a normal state and I think social creatures, right? [00:50:10] And so, um, in this. I run a fully remote company, which is like a blessing and also like really interesting to try to create a really strong culture within people that are, you know, 13 times zones apart times. Um, and so it’s uh, it’s a really interesting thing and coming together and, um, into an in-person space or a place here or a place where you can actually talk to your customers, talk to, um. [00:50:39] Step away from that, like that busy day to day where like, I, I can’t even fit a 15 minute break in to grab lunch. You know, days like how much, supposed to find 15 minutes to just have a, a casual conversation and these types of events, which I’m sure Vince is cheering back there that we’re talking about this right now. [00:50:57] But the, uh, but these type of events, they let you decompress from that day and they let you kind of just have these really important conversations that, you know, bring us back to just being humans To me. [00:51:10] Erin Figer: And being human and co-selling with each other. And on that note, we’re 44 seconds over. Yeah, we’ll give it back to Vince, [00:51:18] Reis Barrie: but we were plugging Vince’s events, so I think we’re okay. [00:51:21] Vince Menzione: We One more question. We have one more question from, sorry. Oh yeah. [00:51:23] Reis Barrie: It’s [00:51:23] Audience Member: maybe more a, a shared just as we’re talking [00:51:25] Vince Menzione: by the clip, right. [00:51:27] Audience Member: And to compliment everything that you guys have been talking about around co-sell and. Getting ready in line with Microsoft to speak to the customer and speaking. So the signals that we’re going after are on the actual conversations that are happening in the conversation. [00:51:41] So aside from all the planning, which I agree on, we’re building agents to hear what’s going on on the calls with Microsoft, on the calls with customer, and grab those actual signals. Are we answering the questions in the right way? What types of questions are coming back to us that we weren’t able to answer. [00:51:58] Maybe we forgot some information that we planned on and thought about can we signal and provide that feedback to the user, the seller, or whatnot on the call. And so as we’re doing this, ’cause we’re in the communication space, so we have some self-interest here ’cause that’s sort of the future of our business. [00:52:12] But it’s a really interesting opportunity for us to grab these signals to improve how we’re selling with our customers, how our partners are selling with our customers, with Microsoft. It’s just an interesting way with everything that’s going on full circle, we’re trying to complete that sort of sales journey with AI and, and grab those signals and keep getting better all the time. [00:52:32] Erin Figer: Yeah, I love that. And I think it’s like the ongoing balance of people, process and technology and how do you continue to keep the human in the loop? It, as we continue to introduce and evolve AI and use of data in our companies is like continuing to be mindful about the human in the loop. Um, part of that journey. [00:52:54] So thank you all. [00:52:55] Vince Menzione: Very cool. Great conversation. [00:52:56] Erin Figer: Thanks for all the audience engagement. We appreciate it. [00:52:59] Vince Menzione: Co-selling the house, co-selling the house. [00:53:02] Audience Member: Thank you, Vince. [00:53:02] Vince Menzione: Thank you. And I remember that January, 2016. Yes.
What if AI could think more like a human - and what would that mean for education, teams, and leadership?In this episode, Ben and Steve sit down with Kathryn Jablokow, Dean of Engineering at Manhattan University, to explore one of the most fascinating ideas in AI right now: cognitive diversity. With 34 years in engineering education and groundbreaking research into how AI agents can mimic different thinking styles, Kathryn brings a perspective you won't hear anywhere else.We cover:- Why AI struggles to find what you actually want- Adaption-Innovation Theory and what it means for AI development- Using AI as a genuine team member not just a productivity tool- What engineering education needs to look like post-ChatGPT- Why understanding how your team thinks is the real unlock for AI- The problem with how schools teach teamwork (and why exams are part of the problem)Whether you're a school leader, educator, or just someone trying to make sense of where AI is heading - this one's for you.Chapters00:00 Introductions01:21 Kathryn Jablokow's Journey in Engineering Education06:38 Transforming Engineering Education at Manhattan University13:04 AI's Role in Education and Engineering20:06 Integrating AI as a Team Member24:09 The Future of AI in Education30:42 Navigating Disagreement in AI Development32:15 The Human Element in AI Interaction34:11 Cultural Perspectives on AI and Robotics36:33 Data Privacy and Environmental Concerns38:32 Job Displacement and Creation in the Age of AI43:28 Preparing Future Generations for an Evolving Job Market47:26 Mental Well-Being and Critical Thinking in EducationCheck out all about Edufuturists
Martin Helseth has always been drawn to the water. As a kid in Norway, he spent as much time beneath the surface as he did on it—free diving from a boat his father built, discovering a sense of calm and freedom below. Not long after, he found that same feeling in a rowing shell, first picking up the sport at age 10. Through persistence and a deep connection to the water, he rose through the Norwegian system to become a two-time Olympian, competing in both Tokyo and Paris. All the while, free diving remained a constant. In Norway's fjords and lakes, it became more than just an escape—it became a lens. What he saw below the surface was changing. Pollution and marine debris were becoming impossible to ignore. What started as solo cleanups in his spare time grew into something much bigger. Martin began mobilizing his local community, then the rowing world, turning his personal mission into a collective effort. In 2024, he was named a World Rowing Healthy Waters Alliance Ambassador. Now, in partnership with organizations like World Rowing, and the World Wildlife Fund, along with rowing clubs around the globe, Martin is helping lead a movement—one that connects athletes, waterways, and stewardship, and pushes the sport toward a more active role in protecting the environments it depends on. GUEST: Martin Helseth | Founder, Rewild Norway • CEO, Marea Oslo World Rowing Healthy Waters Alliance Ambassador IG: @martinhelseth / @rewildnorway / @mareaoslo / @nordic_endeavor_2026 This episode was made possible in part by RowSource and YOU our Supporters. QUICK LOOK 00:00 - Introduction 00:57 - Rachel and Tara reflect on using computers at the turn of the century 04:54 - Welcome and Steve's rowing week on a scale of 1-10: 10 (business) / 0 (no rowing) 05:30 - The Huddle 07:18 - The Hot Seat 08:48 - Steve's rowing origin story began as a freshman at Ohio State University looking for something to be a part of 11:24 - Volunteer coaching the club novice program at Ohio State started with sports physiology and sports psychology books, USRowing certs, and coaching mentors 14:12 - RegattaCentral was a planned leap of faith in 1999's nascent Internet landscape 22:05 - Row2k's 1997 launch, Active.com, Y2K, 9/11 25:19 - “I have and had a vision where to take the business.” Deep in the trenches of building the business, 27-year-old lines of code, and considering the “human factor” in pushing out updates 32:02 - Integrating AI to analyze data and see trends 33:14 - The big question everyone asks: “Where are the results?!" - When it comes to results, RegattaCentral partners with timing providers 35:43 - Tara's “thank you” to RegattaCentral 37:20 - Nearly 30 years on, RegattaCentral remains aligned with Steve's original vision, and works around unforeseen tech, cybersecurity, and compliance 39:00 - At the heart of RegattaCentral is the team 40:14 - Steady State Network news and notes To see photos of Martin, and get links to the people, organizations, and events mentioned in this episode, check out the show notes on our website. . Steady State Podcast is a production of Steady State Network. It is hosted and edited by Rachel Freedman and Tara Morgan. Tara provides additional audio engineering, books show guests, and is our sponsor and donor coordinator. Rachel writes our scripts and e-newsletter, and manages the website and social media. Our theme music is Open Mind by Soundroll. . SHOP SSN GEAR: www.steadystatenetwork.com/shop SIGN UP FOR THE SSN NEWSLETTER: www.steadystatenetwork.com/newsletter MAKE A DIFFERENCE: www.steadystatenetwork.com/support CONNECT: FB - /SteadyStateNetwork IG - @SteadyStateNetwork FB - /AllieswithOars IG - @AllieswithOars Connect on FB and IG with the hosts: Rachel Freedman - @RowSource Tara Morgan - @CmonBarber
In this episode of Business Brain, Shannon Jean and Dave Hamilton kick things off with the story behind the Candy Man documentary — the David Klein story of Jelly Belly fame — then pivot to a fun self-assessment: What’s Your Entrepreneurial Appetite? Take the quiz with them and figure out whether you’re wired to swing for the fences, build something steady, or side-hustle your way to freedom. It’s a charmed life when you actually know what flavor of entrepreneur you are before you chase the wrong dream. From there, you’ll get the finale of the Atypical College Path series. Shannon and Dave dig into backdooring college degree requirements (callback to BB648), how to honestly weigh the ROI of college or whatever education you’re paying for, and why integrating AI into the classroom isn’t optional anymore. They also point you toward Alpha School as a glimpse of what modern learning can look like when you stop forcing old models onto new realities. 00:00:00 Business Brain – The Entrepreneurs' Podcast #746 for Wednesday, April 22, 2026 April 22nd: National Jellybean Day Candy Man Documentary – The David Klein Story 00:02:21 What's Your Entrepreneurial Appetite? – Quiz! 00:12:36 SPONSOR: Granola is an AI-powered notepad built for the way real people actually meet, and it integrates seamlessly into the video conferencing tools you already use. Try Granola totally free for three months – just head to granola.ai/brain. 00:14:04 SPONSOR: Intuit QuickBooks Payroll is evolving beyond pay runs to support how you hire, onboard, manage, and retain your team. Learn more by visiting https://QuickBooks.com/workforce 00:15:22 The Finale of the Atypical College Path Backdooring College Degree Requirements (BB648) Look at the ROI of College (or whatever education you're going to pay for) Integrating AI into the classroom Check out Alpha School 00:26:07 Business Brain 746 Outtro Check out Business Brain Blueprints Tell Your Friends! Review Business Brain Subscribe to the show feedback@businessbrain.show Call/Text: (567) 274-6977 X/Twitter: @ShannonJean & @DaveHamilton, & @BizBrainShow LinkedIn: Shannon Jean, Dave Hamilton, & Business Brain Facebook: Dave Hamilton, Shannon Jean, & Business Brain The post What's Your Entrepreneurial Appetite? – Business Brain 746 appeared first on Business Brain - The Entrepreneurs' Podcast.
If you've ever wondered how AI can be used to deepen emotional intelligence, or you're searching for practical steps to drive meaningful change in your life, this episode will spark fresh insights and inspiration.Welcome to Spirit of EQ! I'm Eric Pennington, your host, and in this episode, I have the privilege of sitting down with Dr. Teresa Escrig, an expert in artificial intelligence, an entrepreneur, and a spiritual practitioner.Our conversation explores the fascinating intersection of AI and human consciousness, revealing how tools like ChatGPT can serve as powerful mirrors for our self-discovery and growth.Teresa Escrig shares her innovative “mirror method,” which is built around four key pillars: awareness, alignment, boundaries, and empowered decision-making.As we break down some common misconceptions about spirituality, we discuss the challenges of setting healthy boundaries, taking responsibility for our lives, and the ways technology can both amplify our strengths and reflect our struggles.This is a thought-provoking conversation connecting science, spirit, and everyday personal growth.Moments00:00 Integrating AI and Consciousness06:56 AI & Human Ascension Dialogue11:55 "Authenticity as Personal Value"16:55 "Alignment: Value, Purpose, Direction"26:04 "Demystifying Clarity and Focus"32:13 "Self-Knowledge for Life's Path"37:10 "Discovering Tools Within"39:50 "Transformation: Tools and Process"43:44 "Human Regression, AI Advancement"49:06 Rejecting Divisiveness for Positivity58:27 "Brain Makes Best-Guess Decisions"01:00:26 Rewiring Mindset for PositivityHere are my top 3 takeaways:AI as a Mirror for Growth: Teresa introduces the concept of using AI chatbots as a "mirror method"—a way to reflect on our own behaviors and patterns, helping us gain invaluable self-insight. When we interact intentionally, AI can amplify our awareness and support clearer, healthier decision-making.Four Pillars for Aligned Decision-Making: Teresa shares her four-pillar method (awareness, alignment, responsibility, and decision-making) that guides users to interact with AI (and people!) in ways that are consistent with their deepest values and goals.Empowerment Through Integration: Rather than viewing technology as something that divides or diminishes us, Teresa encourages us to integrate it into our self-development practices. When used mindfully, AI can accelerate both our emotional intelligence and spiritual evolution.In each episode, Jeff and Eric will talk about what emotional intelligence, or understanding your emotions, can do for you in your daily and work life. For more information, contact Eric or Jeff at info@spiritofeq.com, or go to their website, Spirit of EQ.You can follow The Spirit of EQ Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Android, or on your favorite podcast player.New episodes are available on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays every month!Please review our podcast on iTunes. Click on the link for an easy, step-by-step tutorial.Music from Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/roo-walker/deeperLicense code: PEYKDJHQNGSZXDUEWe hope you enjoy the podcast. Hopefully, you're tuning in on a regular basis. We'd love it if you would give us a great review on whatever platform you're listening to the podcast. It's so appreciative and helps us as we try to get more exposure for the work we do and the episodes that we publish. We're grateful to you as a listener. Secondly, our content is for educational purposes only. It's not intended by any stretch to diagnose or treat anything that may be occurring in your life or anyone else's life that you may be connected to through the podcast. And as always, we look forward to the next time that we're together. Take care.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/Spirit of EQMentioned in this episode:SEQ Development ReportThe SEQ Development Report is an innovative tool that combines emotional intelligence with one's spiritual life, distinct from religious contexts. The report helps individuals understand their connections with themselves, others, and their surroundings. It aims to identify areas in their lives that may need improvement and highlight their strengths, ultimately facilitating better navigation through life. To obtain the report, individuals need to contact Spirit of EQ via email at info@spiritofeq.com and complete an online assessment that takes about 15 to 20 minutes. After the assessment, a debrief session is required to review the comprehensive information provided in the report. Spirit of EQ also offers further coaching to support individuals in their personal development journey.Thanks for listening to Spirit of EQThis podcast was created to be a tool to primarily help you to discover and grow your EQ. Science and our own lived experiences confirm that the better we are at managing our emotions, the better we're going to be at making decisions. Which leads to a better life. And that's something we all want. We're glad that you've taken the time today to listen. We hope that something you hear will lead to a breakthrough. We'd really appreciate a review on your podcast platform. Please leave some comments about what you heard today, as well as follow and subscribe to the podcast. That way, you won't miss a single episode as we continue this journey.
AI agents are appearing across every enterprise platform, but most still struggle to move beyond scripted automation into systems that can reason, adapt, and operate within real workflows.On this episode of Ctrl + Alt + AI, Dimitri Sirota, speaks with Justin Heller, former Chief Data Officer at Synchrony Financial and Chief Data & AI Officer of Quantify Data Advisors, about how organizations can leverage their existing data to reduce cyber risks, manage unstructured data, and integrate AI effectively. Justin, formerly the Chief Data Officer at Synchrony Financial, shares insights on the evolving role of data governance in an AI-driven world and the importance of shifting from a "pilot" mentality to creating sustainable AI-driven business value. Tune in as they unpack the complexities of managing both structured and unstructured data, ensuring relevance, and achieving true data governance alignment with emerging AI technologies.What to expect:How organizations can use existing data assets to reduce cyber risks and enhance AI initiativesWhy relevance, not just accuracy, is the key to effective AI and data managementThe importance of connecting unstructured data, metadata, and AI systems for better decision-makingThings to listen for: (00:00) Meet Justin Heller(01:25) Justin's transition from CDO to data advisor(02:35) From structured to unstructured data in AI environments(04:24) Why context engineering is critical for AI-driven business decisions(06:00) Moving beyond AI pilot projects to sustainable value(08:30) How data stewards can work with AI tools(09:00) Integrating AI across existing business processes(10:03) Building governance models for unstructured data(13:00) AI in unstructured data repositories: Best practices(15:00) Measuring ROI from generative AI in enterprises(18:00) Cross-functional collaboration for effective AI implementation(20:00) The role of CDAOs in driving AI-related outcomes(21:30) Shifting from pilot programs to ongoing AI-driven business value
Today, Hunter was joined once again by Jennifer Sellitti, the Public Defender for the state of New Jersey. This time, Hunter and Jennifer discussed a slew of topics including her efforts to expand holistic defender services across the state and how her office is leading the way in integrating AI tools into their practice. Guest: Jennifer Sellitti, The Public Defender for the State of New Jersey Resources: Learn More About NJ Public Defense https://www.nj.gov/defender/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/89256782/ https://www.facebook.com/njopd https://www.facebook.com/njopd https://x.com/opd_nj Contact Hunter Parnell: Publicdefenseless@gmail.com Instagram @PublicDefenselessPodcast Twitter @PDefenselessPod www.publicdefenseless.com Subscribe to the Patreon www.patreon.com/PublicDefenselessPodcast Donate on PayPal https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=5KW7WMJWEXTAJ Donate on Stripe https://donate.stripe.com/7sI01tb2v3dwaM8cMN Trying to find a specific part of an episode? Use this link to search transcripts of every episode of the show! https://app.reduct.video/o/eca54fbf9f/p/d543070e6a/share/c34e85194394723d4131/home **** ALL OPINONS SHARED BY HOST HUNTER PARNELL DO NOT REFLECT THE THOUGHTS OR OPINIONS OF THE AURORA MUNICIPAL PUBLIC DEFENDER****
Listen on your podcast app: Resources Of This Episode: Find Tünde's websitehereConnect with Tünde onLinkedIn Summary Of This Episode: Click here to read the episode transcript The rules of the game have changed and waiting for things to go back to “normal” is no longer an option. AI is not just another tool. It's reshaping how you work, how you position yourself, and how you stay relevant in your business. And if you're a coach, consultant, or service-based entrepreneur, the question is no longer if it will impact you… but how you choose to respond. To discuss this topic, I invited Tünde Lukacs, founder of Change Republic and former Big Four partner who led large-scale AI transformation programs across Europe. Today, she helps leaders and professionals redefine their role and identity in the age of AI. You'll get a behind-the-scenes look at how Tünde is using AI in her business from building her own AI coach to creating scalable offers while staying grounded in ethics, trust, and human connection. This episode is both a reality check… and an opportunity. Because the time is now not to compete with AI, but to become more you than ever before. “AI can replace knowledge, but it can't replace your humanity.” What you will learn: How to face the threats of AI and stay relevant as a coach or consultantHow to use AI to elevate your business in terms of productivity and customer experienceHow to handle the ethical and legal aspects of using AI Chapters: [02:20] Tünde's Journey into AI and Coaching [05:25] Concerns and Opportunities for the Next Generation [07:46] Transitioning from Corporate to Coaching [09:17] Overcoming the Leap to Entrepreneurship [11:14] Strategic Launch of a Coaching Business [14:59] Helping Clients Navigate Careers in the AI Age [18:09] The Threats of AI in Professional Services [21:41] Emphasizing Human Experience Over Knowledge [22:35] Defining Your Competitive Advantage [23:34] Embracing AI in Coaching Practices [27:32] Integrating AI into Business Models [36:15] Legal and Ethical Considerations in AI Coaching [41:44] Authenticity in Marketing and Visibility Find this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3mYkldhc1eA Enjoyed this episode? Please leave a review Please leave a review or a comment to help me reach more people who need to hear this. Choose your favorite podcast app:
In this episode of the Millionaire Car Salesman Podcast, Sean V. Bradley sits down with Tasso Roumeliotis, CEO of Numa, to challenge one of the most accepted truths in automotive… and flip it on its head. "You are fundamentally in the retention business." - Tasso Roumeliotis Dealerships have relied on the same customer satisfaction metrics for decades. They check the scores, read the reports, and assume they understand their customers… but what if they don't? What if the way dealerships measure customer experience is not just outdated… but actually costing them revenue every single day? "The CSI score is effectively an autopsy report. And what we believe in the modern world is I need a heart rate monitor." - Tasso Roumeliotis This conversation dives into a major shift happening right now in automotive, one that's moving dealerships away from delayed feedback and into a world where customer experience can be seen, understood, and acted on in real time! Sean and Tasso explore what's really happening between the moment a customer interacts with your dealership and the moment you realize something went wrong… and why that gap is where the biggest opportunities are being lost. "Create visibility and if you measure it, it will improve, and it will get used." - Tasso Roumeliotis If you're a dealer, manager, or sales professional who wants to stay competitive in 2026 and beyond, this episode will make you rethink how you measure success, how you respond to customers, and what it actually takes to protect your revenue in today's market. Because the future of automotive isn't about reacting faster… it's about seeing what's happening before it's too late! Key Takeaways: ✅ Customer Experience is Key: Dealers are fundamentally in the retention business, and improving customer satisfaction through AI can help transform this experience effectively. ✅ Outdated CSI Systems: Current CSI systems function like "autopsy reports" instead of real-time monitoring. AI can provide a "live CSI," offering real-time insights for immediate action. ✅ Financial Implications: Retaining dissatisfied customers by solving their issues can convert heat cases into loyal customers, with a dramatic increase in retention profitability. ✅ AI in Automotive: AI can analyze numerous customer interactions effectively, helping managers understand where they stand and how to make proactive improvements. ✅ Leadership and Accountability: Visibility and accountability within dealership management can significantly improve customer satisfaction scores, reflecting in overall profitability and customer loyalty. About Tasso Roumeliotis Tasso Roumeliotis is co-founder and CEO of Numa, the leading AI platform for dealership customer operations. Under his leadership, Numa is building the AI-native dealership, helping dealers unify customer conversations across channels and deploy AI agents to drive significant gains in efficiency, revenue, and customer experience. Tasso is a serial entrepreneur and early pioneer in mobile and location-based technology. He previously founded Location Labs, scaling the company to more than 200 employees and leading its $220 million acquisition after building a profitable business with just $19 million in primary capital. Location Labs was recognized as an Inc. 500 company and achieved seven consecutive years of profitability. Earlier in his career, Tasso was Vice President at Claridge Investments, the Bronfman family office, and an associate in the merchant banking group at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. He began his career at Bain & Company. Tasso holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.Comm from McGill University. Revolutionizing Automotive Customer Experience with AI-Driven CSI Innovation In the car dealership industry, providing exceptional customer satisfaction has shifted from a mere goal to a definitive necessity for success. Tasso Roumeliotis and Sean V. Bradley have an insightful conversation about an innovative measure that can transform the traditional Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) into a real-time, dynamic, and data-driven strategy. Key Takeaways The Power of Real-Time CSI: Transitioning from an "autopsy" report of customer experience to a live, actionable "heart rate monitor" can significantly improve customer retention. Customer Retention as a Business Model: The real business of dealerships isn't just about selling cars; it's about retaining customers through exceptional service experiences. Leveraging AI for Maximum Impact: The integration of AI provides a comprehensive analysis of customer interactions, enabling dealership managers to proactively address issues and push customer satisfaction to new heights. Transforming the Dealership Landscape with Real-Time CSI Strategies In the ever-evolving automotive landscape, dealerships must move away from antiquated systems that provide outdated feedback. The traditional CSI scores, which usually come days after a customer's experience, are likened to "autopsy reports," as Tasso Roumeliotis aptly describes them. He suggests that they are outdated and ineffective in today's fast-paced, customer-centric environment. Enhancing Customer Retention with Immediate Feedback As Bradley states, "We are fundamentally in the retention business." A sharp focus on retaining customers, rather than merely pursuing new sales, leads to sustained profitability. The conversation unfolds around transforming tools used to gauge customer satisfaction from lagging to leading indicators. Unlike the traditional 45-day delayed feedback from CSI scores, a real-time feedback mechanism provides dealerships the opportunity to instantly correct course and mend customer relationships. "Don't tell me after the fact that this customer had a bad experience," Roumeliotis says. This shift from response-based surveys to continuous tracking of customer interactions represents a major leap in creating enhanced customer experiences. The Vital Role of AI in Analyzing Customer Interactions With the rise of AI technologies, dealerships can now analyze vast datasets to determine real-time customer satisfaction scores. Capturing every customer interaction through calls, texts, and emails, AI systems evaluate these interactions to provide a nuanced understanding of customer sentiment. Roumeliotis shares compelling figures: the possibility of converting a dissatisfied customer to a returning one increases to 70% when their issues are resolved promptly—a stark contrast to the mere 5% for unresolved cases. This level of insight allows managers to focus on "extinguishing heat cases," a term they use to describe potentially damaging customer experiences. "AI is going to really change the automotive industry," says Roumeliotis, showing how sentiment analysis and predictive models can not only gauge a customer's immediate state but also predict potential issues before they escalate. Revolutionizing Dealership Operations for Enhanced Performance Transitioning to real-time CSI means reinventing operational strategies within dealerships. By creating visibility, dealerships empower their employees with accountability and motivation. As Roumeliotis notes, some dealerships use digital monitor displays showing live CSI data, fostering a culture of transparency and motivation among staff. This notion complements Bradley's wisdom: "You can't just sell things and burn through customers." By providing both the customers and dealership staff with tools to improve interactions, businesses can better measure and manage success metrics across teams. Furthermore, the ways managers utilize the data are pivotal. Implementing dashboards equipped with the latest intelligence enables them to efficiently address potential pitfalls, significantly enhancing customer satisfaction as managers can address issues not as post-mortem observations, but as live currents needing steering. Integrating AI in Customer Experience Management for Dealerships Overall, the conversation between Roumeliotis and Bradley emphasizes a paradigm shift in customer experience management within the automotive industry. Integrating AI to exploit data points in real time, dealerships can now nurture a proactive approach to customer satisfaction. Such advancements channel the potential to radically transform how dealerships perceive and act upon customer service. "The dealership's ability to engage, rectify, and delight customers isn't just important—it's fundamental to a thriving business," Bradley concludes, reiterating the non-negotiable role of customer retention in the car industry's success story. In a market where competition is fierce, and customer expectations are soaring, transforming the once archaic CSI into a real-time strategic tool promises not only an improved customer journey but a substantial competitive advantage as well. Resources + Our Proud Sponsors: ➼ The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group: Join the #1 Automotive Sales Mastermind Facebook Group with over 29,000 automotive professionals worldwide. The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group is the go-to community for car salespeople, BDC agents, sales managers, general managers, and dealer principals looking to increase performance, income, and leadership skills. Inside the group, members collaborate daily on automotive sales strategies, lead handling, phone scripts, closing techniques, CRM best practices, dealership leadership, and accountability systems. Learn directly from top automotive trainers, industry mentors, and high-performing sales leaders who are actively winning in today's market. If you're serious about growing your automotive career, increasing car sales, and building long-term success, join The Millionaire Car Salesman Facebook Group today! ➼ Dealer Synergy: Dealer Synergy is the automotive industry's #1 Sales Training, Consulting, and Accountability Firm, with over 20 years of proven dealership success nationwide. We specialize in helping car dealerships increase sales, improve processes, and build high-performing Sales, Internet, and BDC departments from the ground up. Our expertise includes automotive phone scripts, rebuttals, CRM action plans, lead handling strategies, BDC workflows, Internet sales processes, management training, and accountability systems. Dealer Synergy partners directly with dealership leadership to align people, process, and technology, ensuring consistent results and scalable growth. From independent dealers to large dealer groups and OEM partnerships, Dealer Synergy delivers measurable performance improvements, stronger teams, and sustainable profitability. ➼ Bradley On Demand: Bradley On Demand is the automotive industry's most advanced interactive training, tracking, testing, and certification platform for car dealerships — built to develop top-performing teams across Sales, Internet Sales, BDC, CRM, Phone Skills, Leadership, and Management. In addition to LIVE virtual automotive training classes and a library of 9,000+ on-demand dealership training modules, Bradley On Demand now includes AI Phone Roleplaying and Coaching to help salespeople and BDC agents practice real dealership conversations before they ever get on the phone with customers. This AI-powered roleplay technology strengthens phone scripts, objection handling, appointment setting, lead follow-up, and closing skills, while providing measurable coaching feedback for continuous improvement. Bradley On Demand empowers dealerships to train faster, coach smarter, improve call performance, increase closing ratios, and sell more cars more profitably — all through structured, trackable, modern automotive training.
Before RegattaCentral became the go-to platform for regatta registration, it was just an idea sparked by an Ohio State alum and rowing coach who saw a better way. We talk with founder and president Steve Lopez about his lightbulb moment in 1999 that brought rowing and early internet technology together, and how his idea quietly reshaped regatta registration, data, and analytics. From fax machines, FedEx envelopes, and modems, to mobile-first design and data-driven insights, we trace the evolution of RegattaCentral from scrappy minimal viable product to an essential tool used by the global rowing community. QUICK LOOK 00:00 - Introduction 00:57 - Rachel and Tara reflect on using computers at the turn of the century 04:54 - Welcome and Steve's rowing week on a scale of 1-10: 10 (business) / 0 (no rowing) 05:30 - The Huddle 07:18 - The Hot Seat 08:48 - Steve's rowing origin story began as a freshman at Ohio State University looking for something to be a part of 11:24 - Volunteer coaching the club novice program at Ohio State started with sports physiology and sports psychology books, USRowing certs, and coaching mentors 14:12 - RegattaCentral was a planned leap of faith in 1999's nascent Internet landscape 22:05 - Row2k's 1997 launch, Active.com, Y2K, 9/11 25:19 - “I have and had a vision where to take the business.” Deep in the trenches of building the business, 27-year-old lines of code, and considering the “human factor” in pushing out updates 32:02 - Integrating AI to analyze data and see trends 33:14 - The big question everyone asks: “Where are the results?!" - When it comes to results, RegattaCentral partners with timing providers 35:43 - Tara's “thank you” to RegattaCentral 37:20 - Nearly 30 years on, RegattaCentral remains aligned with Steve's original vision, and works around unforeseen tech, cybersecurity, and compliance 39:00 - At the heart of RegattaCentral is the team 40:14 - Steady State Network news and notes . To see photos of Steve, and get links to the people, programs, and events mentioned in this episode, check out the show notes on our website. . This episode was made possible in part by RowSource and our Supporters. . Steady State Podcast is a production of Steady State Network. It is hosted and edited by Rachel Freedman and Tara Morgan. Tara provides additional audio engineering, books show guests, and is our sponsor and donor coordinator. Rachel writes our scripts and e-newsletter, and manages the website and social media. Our theme music is Open Mind by Soundroll. . SHOP SSN GEAR: www.steadystatenetwork.com/shop SIGN UP FOR THE SSN NEWSLETTER: www.steadystatenetwork.com/newsletter MAKE A DIFFERENCE: www.steadystatenetwork.com/support CONNECT: FB - /SteadyStateNetwork IG - @SteadyStateNetwork FB - /AllieswithOars IG - @AllieswithOars Connect on FB and IG with the hosts: Rachel Freedman - @RowSource Tara Morgan - @CmonBarber
In this episode, Maddie Lightening shares candid stories about common pitfalls in paid media management, the importance of leveraging AI wisely, and how to approach mistakes with a growth mindset. Discover practical advice on account structuring, controlling CPCs, and embracing experimentation to stay ahead in the fast-paced world of PPC.Main Topics Covered:The significance of proper account currency configuration and how currency conversion errors can impact reportingThe risks and lessons learned from outdated account structures, especially in Google AdsHow to implement CPC caps within bid strategies to regain control without performance lossThe importance of not just adopting AI but using it strategically and with purposeThe value of a "FAFO" mindset—try, fail, learn, and move forward in paid mediaTips for managing mistakes seamlessly, including transparency with clients and teamKey insights into seasonality and account adjustments during peak periodsCreative ways to break the rules with AI, like running targeted campaigns with unique placementsThe role of curiosity in PPC success — always testing and asking "what if?"Timestamps:00:00 - Introducing Maddie Lightening and her PPC background00:52 - Maddie's journey to Head of Paid Media at Hallam02:17 - Maddie's fun fact: from banana bread to F1 autographing03:40 - Navigating industry interests outside PPC04:36 - Common mistake: Currency conversion errors and reporting impact06:12 - Lessons from account structure mistakes inherited from other agencies07:52 - Handling performance drops without panic09:23 - When to restructure campaigns and assessing seasonal impacts11:23 - What could have been done differently during account restructuring12:44 - Client reactions to structural changes: fear vs. frustration14:23 - Managing CPC increases and external factors influencing CPCs18:38 - Implementing CPC caps in bid strategies for better control21:12 - Breaking rules: Running targeted campaigns with AI and Google restrictions22:30 - Advice for professionals discovering account mistakes23:35 - The importance of accountability and giving yourself grace25:22 - Maddie's PPC value: FAFO — fuck around and find out26:26 - Curiosity and testing as fundamental PPC skills27:32 - Overcoming fear of AI bans in agencies28:41 - Integrating AI into routine work—don't ban it, use it effectively30:07 - Avoiding common AI pitfalls: Providing enough context and data32:02 - The dangers of complete AI bans and staying adaptable33:55 - Future-proofing PPC strategies with AI and technology understanding36:39 - Maddie's fun movie title: “Rush” – PPC's fast-paced nature38:16 - Connect with Maddie on LinkedIn for more insightsResources & Links:LinkedIn - Maddie LighteningPPC Live Event ScheduleJoin us on SlackSubscribe to our Newsletter
Baltimore faces a set of deeply interconnected challenges: aging and unsafe housing, high energy costs for families with limited means, and a generation of underemployed youth struggling to access meaningful work. These overlapping issues reveal a systemic gap highlighting an opportunity to rethink how housing, workforce development, clean energy, and economic mobility can be addressed together.We invited Brendan McCluskey, President at Trident Builders, to share how his team is tackling these challenges through a bold and collaborative model. Brendan explains how Trident Builders is transforming vacant homes into energy-efficient housing using modular construction and solar technology while creating training and job pathways for underemployed youth. He also shares how partnerships across business, nonprofits, and community leaders are helping scale solutions.This discussion offers a compelling look at how one company is rethinking the role of business in solving complex social problems and how leaders across sectors can identify opportunities within their own work to build solutions that strengthen communities.Listen for insights on:Supporting small, community-based developers to keep wealth localCollaborating across sectors in addressing systemic community challengesConnecting environmental sustainability with economic mobility Watch this conversation on YouTube!Resources + Links:Brendan McCluskey's LinkedInTrident BuildersThe Bmore Co-Op (00:00) - Welcome to Purpose 360 (00:13) - Meet Brendan McCluskey, Trident Builders (02:45) - About Brendan (04:52) - Lessons from Parents (06:15) - Baltimore (07:21) - Revenue vs. Sustainable Systems (09:47) - 10,000 Small Businesses (11:33) - BMore Co-op (15:56) - Parts and Problems (18:26) - Equity (20:29) - Helping the Youth (22:31) - Modular Manufacturer (23:34) - Selecting the Right Partners (24:58) - Using Solar (27:50) - Example Project (29:47) - Advice for Young People (30:30) - Integrating AI (31:11) - Quick Takes (33:06) - Last Word (33:35) - Wrap Up
In this episode of the Talk Commerce podcast Live from Shoptalk, host Isaac Morey speaks with Karen Wood, the Chief Marketing Officer at Treasure Data. Filmed directly from the bustling show floor at Shoptalk in Las Vegas, this episode explores the practical application of artificial intelligence in modern marketing. The conversation highlights how businesses—ranging from mid-sized companies to large enterprises—can leverage their existing data to drive customer loyalty, identify brand advocates, and drastically improve operational efficiency.Key TakeawaysData Utilization: Many companies possess vast amounts of customer data but fail to maximize its potential for repeat business and loyalty.Identifying Advocates: Advanced propensity modeling and AI allow brands to identify potential and current brand advocates by synthesizing real-time data across various channels, including web activity and physical store interactions.Efficiency Gains: By utilizing AI, tasks that previously required weeks of work—such as audience segmentation and campaign activation—can now be executed in minutes using natural language commands.Mid-Market Support: Medium-sized businesses, which often have smaller, strapped teams, stand to benefit most from all-in-one AI marketing platforms that enable them to do more with fewer resources.The Reality of AI: Genuine expertise in AI is still evolving; successful adoption relies on continuous learning, testing, and incorporating real-world feedback into product development.Chapter Minutes:00:00 Introduction to Talk Commerce at Shoptalk00:16 Understanding the Treasure Data platform00:41 Unlocking customer data opportunities01:42 Identifying and cultivating brand advocates02:27 Integrating AI into the marketing stack04:14 AI solutions for mid-market businesses05:48 Introduction to the Marketing Super Agent06:55 Karen Wood's hot take on AI adoption07:54 Reflections on the Shoptalk experienceThis has been produced in cooperation with Content Cucumberhttps://www.contentcucumber.com/
Hewlett Packard Enterprise has been rethinking what it means to secure an enterprise network -- and the answer they keep arriving at is that security cannot be an afterthought. At RSAC Conference 2026, Mounir Hahad, Head of HPE Threat Labs, sat down with Sean Martin to walk through what that philosophy looks like in practice and what two major announcements at the show mean for security teams. One of those announcements is the HPE AI firewall -- a solution built specifically for organizations trying to govern how employees use generative AI tools without shutting down innovation. Mounir Hahad frames the challenge directly: gen AI has doubled the attack surface, and organizations that fail to act risk both data leakage and a loss of confidence in the technology itself. The AI firewall starts with visibility -- showing which AI services employees are using, what data is moving where, and whether private information is leaking to external services -- and then gives administrators the tools to set and enforce policy. The second announcement is the formal launch of HPE Threat Labs, which brings together threat research capabilities from both Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the former Juniper Networks. The combined team covers both threat analysis and vulnerability analysis -- capabilities that were previously siloed. HPE Threat Labs has published its inaugural In the Wild threat report, drawing on telemetry, honeypots, and open-source intelligence to give CISOs and decision makers a clear view of how cybercrime has industrialized, why attacks are increasingly targeted, and why high-confidence alerts matter more than ever. This is a Brand Highlight. A Brand Highlight is a ~5 minute introductory conversation designed to put a spotlight on the guest and their company. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#highlight GUEST Mounir Hahad, Head of HPE Threat Labs, Hewlett Packard Enterprise LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mounirhahad/ RESOURCES HPE Threat Labs: https://www.hpe.com HPE Threat Labs 2026 In the Wild Threat Report: https://www.hpe.com Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight KEYWORDS Mounir Hahad, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HPE, HPE Threat Labs, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand highlight, AI firewall, generative AI security, network security, threat intelligence, SASE, cybercrime, RSAC Conference 2026, threat research, enterprise security, AI governance, cybersecurity Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
In this episode, host Don Adeesha joins Mary Ford, co-founder of Smiley Aesthetics and Allergan Medical Institute faculty trainer , to tackle the practice owner's fear of the dilution effect when scaling. Mary argues that hands-on needle skills are rarely the main issue for new hires; instead, the true competency gap lies in a lack of deep knowledge regarding facial anatomy and product rheology. Mary breaks down the operational stress tests required before signing a lease for a second location , emphasizing that Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) must be repeatable, efficient, and tied to measurable KPIs. She highlights the importance of letting go of micromanaging exact injection styles and details how cultivating a consistently "warm" patient experience can build lifelong loyalty and even supersede less-than-ideal outcomes. Finally, Mary warns against the dangers of adopting clinical myths from viral social media posts , urging providers to use critical thinking and research to evaluate treatments. She shares how her clinics leverage AI and automation for administrative tasks so staff can focus purely on patient care , and challenges all practice owners to constantly ask the ultimate "why" behind their operational and clinical decisions.
Playspaces are often dismissed as “nice-to-haves” with their colorful swings, slides, and monkey bars, but KABOOM! was founded on the urgent belief that they are an essential community infrastructure. The organization's origin traces back to a tragic moment when two children lost their lives playing in an abandoned car because there was nowhere safe to play in their neighborhood. That devastating inequity sparked a movement to ensure that where a child lives does not determine whether they have access to safe, joyful play. Today, as KABOOM! celebrates 30 years, the organization has evolved from building individual playgrounds to advancing a data-driven, systems-level strategy to end playspace inequity for good.We invited Lysa Ratliff, CEO of KABOOM!, to talk about why play is a critical investment in children's futures and how meaningful, lasting impact happens when communities shape the solutions themselves. In this episode, Lysa shares how KABOOM!'s co-creation model ensures that playgrounds are designed with kids and neighbors, not simply delivered to them, leading to deeper stewardship and significantly higher usage. She also explores how collective action by residents, municipal leaders, and corporate partners helps scale long-term transformation. And importantly, she highlights the environmental and public health dimensions embedded in today's playground design. At its core, this work makes clear that designing for children is one of the most powerful strategies for shaping stronger communities and a more equitable future.Listen for insights on:Co-creating with residents for lasting neighborhood ownershipBuilding cross-sector partnerships that endureEmbedding climate resilience into community infrastructure Watch this episode on YouTube!Resources + Links:Lysa Ratliff's LinkedInWhat Is Playspace InequityThe City of Uvalde and KABOOM! (00:00) - Welcome to Purpose 360 (00:13) - Meet Lysa Ratliff from KABOOM! (02:43) - Lysa's Background (04:42) - Parental Influence (06:22) - KABOOM!'s Origin Story (08:38) - Why Access Matters (11:28) - Pivot Points (15:59) - The Co-Creation Process (18:56) - Build Day (20:56) - Uvalde Story (24:19) - Creating an Ecosystem (27:37) - Long-Term Partners (30:45) - Environmental Action (37:41) - Integrating AI (38:50) - Rapid Fire Questions (40:03) - Last Word (41:36) - Wrap Up
In this episode, host John Beckner is joined by Harry Travis, BSPharm, to discuss the intersection of AI and pharmacy. Harry outlines a three-tier approach to implementing AI into community pharmacy and emphasizes the potential of AI to innovate and optimize productivity, rather than replacing the role of pharmacy employees.
The Future of AI in Education: Ethical Innovation and Leadership with Rita Bateson - A Hachette Learning sponsored Episode. Join us as Dublin-based expert Rita Bateson shares insights on how educators and school leaders can harness AI's potential responsibly. From sustainability concerns to governance frameworks, discover practical strategies for integrating AI ethically in education to protect students and empower teachers. In this episode: The critical importance of sustainability and data center impact on AI's future How AI influences teaching practices and assessment reform Strategies for effective AI governance within schools Addressing ethical considerations and safeguarding student data Insights from Rita's extensive background in curriculum design and school leadership Practical frameworks for responsible AI deployment The emotional and social implications of AI for students and teachers Emerging trends and future scenarios in AI-driven education The importance of teacher agency, resilience, and human-centered values in AI integration Resources and tools to support schools in developing AI literacy Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction to AI and education's ethical landscape 00:31 - Rita Bateson's background and expertise 01:14 - Sustainability challenges posed by data centers in Ireland 01:53 - The environmental impact of AI models like Claude, Gemini, and OpenAI 02:18 - The importance of teaching students discernment in AI use 02:57 - Developing language around AI ethics and evaluation stations 03:45 - Balancing AI benefits with energy consumption concerns 04:38 - Faith in human feedback and the value of teacher-student relationships 05:17 - The role of school leadership in modeling responsible AI behaviors 05:34 - Sustainability and energy considerations in AI-generated content 06:22 - Risks and opportunities in AI dependency 07:21 - The transformative potential of AI in assessment and workplace readiness 07:50 - Leadership guidance in AI strategy and governance 08:18 - Integrating AI governance into school policies 08:49 - Rita's background in curriculum development and assessment 09:40 - The evolution of AI debates in education 10:22 - Challenges of misinformation, hallucinations, and bias 11:20 - Legal, privacy, and cybersecurity risks for schools 11:48 - Protecting student identities and images with responsible data use 12:23 - Teaching digital literacy and algorithmic immunity 13:01 - Embodiment, experiential learning, and non-screen-based AI education 13:51 - The importance of digital and AI strategies aligning 14:18 - Key leadership advice: Invest in understanding AI 14:41 - Reimagining opportunities for professional growth 15:58 - The power of cautious optimism and reflection 16:53 - Celebrating uniqueness and human voice amidst AI proliferation 17:07 - Encouraging productive struggle and resilience in students 18:14 - Clear rules and deliberate use of AI in classrooms 18:48 - Rita's book: scenarios, experiments, and case studies in ethical AI use 19:15 - Sentiment analysis, micro-moments, and voice recognition in AI 20:11 - Potential of world models and immersive environments 20:50 - Opportunities for specialized subjects and student-led world-building 22:23 - Preparing students with digital literacy for future skills 23:41 - Balancing sustainability and responsible use in AI deployment 24:46 - The importance of evaluation and teacher agency 25:56 - Resources: free AI courses and tools from Ablama Learning 26:44 - The significance of protecting and amplifying educators' voices 27:12 - Historical perspective: Dublin's intellectual legacy and innovative spirit 27:44 - Closing thoughts: the role of educators in safeguarding sacred texts of knowledge 28:02 - Final words and gratitude Resources & Links: Ablama Learning - AI Literacy Resources Free AI courses Hachette Learning Academy Books from Hachette Learning by Rita Bateson Connect with Rita Bateson: LinkedIn This episode spotlights how responsible leadership, grounded in ethics and sustainability, can steer the future of AI in education. Embrace the opportunities while safeguarding our planet and student futures.
This is a lead generation focused podcast about a novel B2B sales follow-up strategy.Summary of PodcastKey TakeawaysNovel Follow-Up Strategy: A third-party "good cop" provides hyper-relevant value (e.g., podcast intros) to prospects, bypassing their AI-filtered inboxes and achieving 70–80% reply rates.AI-Proofing Business: The strategy is designed to be AI-proof by focusing on human connection, a core element Adam believes AI cannot fully automate.AI's Primary Blocker: Kevin identified legacy systems as the main barrier to AI adoption in finance, not resistance to the technology itself.Podcast Book Opportunity: The podcast's 500+ episodes offer a rich source for an AI-assisted book, distilling key lessons and future-casting.The Problem: Ineffective Sales Follow-UpStandard "just checking in" emails are ineffective, especially with high-value prospects ($5M+ revenue) who use AI-powered inbox filters.These filters learn to ignore senders after 2–3 unanswered emails, causing messages to be routed to spam.Result: 66% of marketing-qualified leads are lost because they are not ready to buy immediately.The Solution: A "Good Cop" Follow-Up StrategyAdam's firm, SimpleWins.io, acts as a third-party "good cop" to maintain engagement with prospects outside the main sales cycle.Process:Web Listening: A team monitors public signals (news, podcasts, blogs) to identify a prospect's current, hyper-relevant goals.Value Delivery: The team offers non-sales-related value aligned with those goals (e.g., podcast intros, affiliate partnerships).Expert Positioning: The "good cop" builds a separate relationship, subtly reinforcing the client's expertise until the prospect is ready to buy.Result: This approach achieves 70–80% reply rates, far exceeding the typical 0–20% for standard sales emails.AI's Impact on Business & AutomationAdam's Perspective:AI will automate most administrative tasks, creating "super soldiers" who manage large pipelines with AI assistants.The core human element of understanding business needs will remain essential.Adam is in a "race" to automate his own business, noting AI reduced a software development task from 3 months to 14 minutes.Kevin's Perspective:The main barrier to AI adoption in finance is legacy systems, not human resistance.Integrating AI requires a major transformation, not a simple bolt-on.AI enables advanced capabilities like continuous, multi-scenario forecasting (e.g., Monte Carlo simulations) that are impractical for humans.The current focus in finance is on governance, data security, and fraud prevention. The Next 100 Days Podcast Co-HostsGraham ArrowsmithGraham founded Finely Fettled in 2014 to provide data from The UK High Net Worth Database to marketers targeting affluent and high-net-worth customers. He's the founder of MicroYES, a Partner for MeclabsAI, creating lead generation AI Agents & Workflows and introducing the MeclabsAI Platform. Graham also provides an Answer Engine Optimisation solution to get your website in shape to be found by LLMs.Kevin ApplebyKevin specialises in finance transformation and implementing business change. He's the COO of GrowCFO, which provides both community and CPD-accredited training designed to grow the next generation of finance leaders. You can find Kevin on LinkedIn and at kevinappleby.com
#ThisMorning | How #Hollywood is Integrating #AI #ArtificialIntelligence | Steven Diamond and Kerri Zane, Lumovex Media Group | #Tunein: broadcastretirementnetwork.com #Aging, #Finance, #Lifestyle, #Privacy, #Retirement, #wellness
What if artificial intelligence could actually make us more human at work? In Episode 253, Paul sits down with John Betancourt, Founder and CEO of Humantelligence, to explore how personalized AI coaching is reshaping leadership, hiring, collaboration, and workplace engagement. John's career spans global corporate leadership, executive search for private equity firms, and multiple startups. Through decades of observing culture fit, leadership failures, and executive misalignment, he uncovered a powerful insight: skills are commodities but psychology, culture fit, and behavior determine long-term success. Humantelligence was born from that realization. By combining psychometrics with AI, John is helping organizations scale leadership development and team effectiveness in ways that were previously only available to top executives. But this conversation goes deeper than business. It touches on resilience, exile, identity, spirituality, fatherhood, and what legacy truly means. This episode challenges entrepreneurs to think beyond revenue and ask a bigger question: How do we build companies that develop people, not just profits? Timestamps 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:00:59 – Career Overview and Corporate Foundations 00:02:11 – Executive Search and Culture Fit 00:03:37 – The Birth of Human Intelligence 00:06:51 – Integrating AI into Daily Workflow 00:09:57 – Driving Adoption Inside Companies 00:13:18 – AI, Innovation, and Conflict 00:15:18 – Career Risks and Global Experience 00:18:19 – Family Exile and Resilience 00:20:29 – Legacy and Spiritual Perspective 00:24:15 – Where to Connect Episode Resources Explore how Human Intelligence combines psychometrics and AI to help organizations improve hiring, leadership development, collaboration, and engagement at scale: https://humaintelligence.com Legacy Podcast: For more information about the Legacy Podcast and its co-hosts, visit https://businesslegacypodcast.com Leave a Review: If you enjoyed the episode, leave a review and rating on your preferred podcast platform. For more information: Visit https://businesslegacypodcast.com to access the show notes and additional resources on the episode.
Mentor Sessions Ep. 055: Sovereign Computing, AI Singularity, & Bitcoin BIP 110 Chaos with Matt HillWhat if cloud computing's hidden flaws—privacy invasion, censorship, skyrocketing costs, and inevitable hacks—are paving the way for AI overlords, rampant authoritarianism, and existential threats to humanity? In this explosive interview, Start9 Labs founder Matt Hill exposes why sovereign computing and bitcoin are the ultimate defense against Big Tech's grip, how we're already deep in the AI singularity where "no one knows what's about to happen," and the messy Bitcoin governance battle over BIP 110 that's splitting the community. Matt warns of a "global hack bloodbath" from cloud-based AI assistants stealing your life's keys, predicts software engineering's wipeout as AI democratizes power, and reveals Start9's roadmap for personal servers, routers, and local AI inference to reclaim digital freedom. Dive into Bitcoin's spam wars, where transaction filters act as rate limiters to deter attacks without consensus nukes, and why node operators hold the trump card in this technological arms race. For Bitcoiners obsessed with decentralization, self-custody, privacy tools, node running, open-source tech, and resisting centralized control, this episode is your blueprint to sovereignty in a world of surveillance and scams.About Matt Hill:Founder of Start9 Labs, pioneering sovereign computing for over six years.X: https://x.com/_MattHill_https://start9.com/Chapters:00:00:00 Teaser & Intro Clips00:01:39 Sovereign Computing Refresher00:05:26 Four Critical Flaws of Cloud Computing00:10:09 Human Vulnerabilities in Security00:10:24 Convincing People to Adopt Sovereign Tech00:13:56 Keeping Private Keys Safe00:14:18 Emerging AI Risks & Sovereign Lens00:15:59 Entering the AI Singularity00:20:05 Personal AI Assistants & Privacy Dangers00:25:02 Cloud AI Vulnerabilities Exposed00:28:39 Start9's Sovereign Computing Roadmap00:32:02 StartOS Major Update Details00:36:24 Router OS Announcement & Features00:39:43 Advanced Networking in StartOS00:40:42 Publishing Services Easily00:41:06 Integrating AI into StartOS00:43:50 AI Endgame: Express Will, Get Results00:46:38 Sovereign vs Centralized AI Futures00:50:58 Avoiding Violence Through Decentralization00:52:32 Bitcoin Development: Users vs Creators00:58:18 BIP 110 Overview & Messy Governance00:59:20 Predicting Contentious Soft Forks01:02:01 Node Operators' Political Power01:05:03 Economic Nodes Decide Bitcoin's Fate01:11:42 Dynamic Filters Proposal Explained01:17:08 Filters as Rate Limiters01:24:18 Deterring Spam with Policy Layers01:32:44 Forking as Ultimate Deterrent⚡ POWERED by Abundant Mines: Fully managed Bitcoin mining. Learn more at https://qrco.de/bgYKPB
CX Goalkeeper - Customer Experience, Business Transformation & Leadership
This episode explores the deep connection between psychology, company culture, and customer experience (CX). Katie Stabler shares practical advice, real stories, and actionable insights for CX leaders. Listeners will learn why strategy, employee involvement, and communication matter more than just technology or AI. About the guest: Katie is a Cheshire-based customer experience specialist, keynote and the published author of the best-selling CX-ISM. Dedicated to cultivating high-value customer experience through data, design and culture, she inspires organisations to do things differently. Her work is rooted in the psychology of customer perception and built on the belief that customer experience must evolve from a strategy you implement to a movement you lead. With over a decade in experience design, Katie founded CULTIVATE Customer Experience by Design, now in its fifth year of global operations, where she supports organisations around the world to unlock meaningful, measurable and sustainable customer experience transformation. Relevant links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-stabler-ccxp/ https://www.instagram.com/customerexperience_provocateur/ Keay Take-aways: Psychology drives CX success: Understanding feelings, memory, and perception is essential for effective customer experience. Culture is shown in tough times: True customer-centric culture appears when employees act right during challenges. Strategy beats tactics in CX: Long-term CX success needs a clear strategy, not just isolated projects or training. Chapters: 0:00 - Intro 0:35 - Game-Changing Moments in CX Career 1:22 - Book Insights: Philosophy of Customer Experience 2:48 - Bringing CX Philosophy to Life 3:37 - Understanding Psychological Elements in CX 6:01 - Growing as a CX Specialist 7:38 - Creating Customer-Centric Culture 10:44 - Integrating AI with Customer-Focused Employees 13:44 - Addressing AI's Impact on Employment 16:40 - Learning from CX Initiative Failures 19:32 - Strategic Approaches to CX Initiatives 23:09 - The True Measure of Customer Experience 23:56 - Conclusion and Final Thoughts Please, hit the follow button and leave your feedback: Apple Podcast: https://www.cxgoalkeeper.com/apple Spotify: https://www.cxgoalkeeper.com/spotify About the host: Gregorio Uglioni is a seasoned transformation leader with over 15 years of experience shaping business and digital change, consistently delivering service excellence and measurable impact. As an Associate Partner at Forward, he is recognized for his strategic vision, operational expertise, and ability to drive sustainable growth. A respected keynote speaker and host of the well-known global podcast Business Transformation Pitch with the CX Goalkeeper, Gregorio energizes and inspires organizations worldwide with his customer-centric approach to innovation. Follow Gregorio Uglioni on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregorio-uglioni/
The secret to truly enjoying your work, even in the age of AI? According to serial founder Dan Cumberland, it starts with eliminating friction and leveraging AI to become the creator you've always wanted to be. Most people think AI is just for marketing, or they make critical mistakes by relying on an individual chat's memory. In this episode, Dan dives deep into how high-earning creators and companies can implement human-centered AI systems that don't just save time, but actually help them connect more deeply with their audience and their own purpose. He shares actionable insights, practical examples, and crucial tips on how to build robust, portable context for your AI, transforming your business from the inside out.Timestamps:00:00 Introduction02:00 Simplifying email newsletters with AI automation05:07 Repurposing podcast content for TikTok09:06 The importance of bottleneck identification in AI workflows14:53 Context engineering: The foundation of effective AI use19:12 The benefits of portable AI context22:04 Crafting context documents for optimal AI output27:40 Why focusing on AI for operations is key31:03 Workflow design and the "sous chef" AI analogy35:28 Breaking down complex tasks for better AI results39:45 How AI generated content exploded traffic by 5x42:00 Utilizing Claude's skills and slash commands44:14 Integrating AI into your development environment with Cursor50:40 Optimizing idea capture systems with AI56:45 AI as a sounding board for human connection1:03:57 Redefining work in the age of AI1:08:40 Extending products with vibe-coded AI apps1:12:30 Documenting transformations for killer testimonialsIf you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe, share it with your friends, and leave a review. I read every single one.Learn more about the podcast: https://nathanbarry.com/showFollow Nathan:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nathanbarryLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanbarryX: https://twitter.com/nathanbarryYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thenathanbarryshowWebsite: https://nathanbarry.comKit: https://kit.comFollow Dan:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dancumberlandInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dancumberlandWebsite: https://dancumberlandlabs.comAI Growth Roundtable: https://aigrowthroundtable.comThe Meaning Movement: https://themeaningmovement.comFeatured in this episode:Kit: https://www.kit.comCursor: https://www.cursor.soWhisper Flow: https://whisperflow.ioAudio Pen: https://audiopen.aiFathom: https://fathom.videoGrain: https://grain.comZapier: https://zapier.com
So I finally convinced you that you can't ignore AI… and you're ready to implement it in your toy business. Go you. Love that for you.
In this episode of the Level Up Claims Podcast, host Galen Hair sits down with business attorney Matthew Fornaro, a commercial litigation and business law attorney who left Big Law to help small and mid-sized businesses prevent legal disasters before they start. Matthew shares what business owners get wrong about contracts, compliance, and professional budgeting—and why DIY agreements, AI-generated contracts, and "take it or leave it" commercial leases are ticking time bombs. He also breaks down the mindset shift required to treat your business like a profession—not a hobby—and why proactive legal strategy is always cheaper than reactive litigation. Highlights: • Why Big Law overstaffing creates hidden inefficiencies • The danger of AI-generated and DIY contracts • Common red flags in commercial leases • Why small businesses must budget for legal professionals • Proactive vs reactive legal strategy • How to build loyalty and long-term client relationships • Managing compliance before enforcement actions begin • Representing lawyers as clients (and why some can't turn it off) • Integrating AI responsibly into a law firm • What it really means to level up as a business owner Episode Resources: • Connect with Matthew Fornaro • https://fornarolegal.com • Connect with Galen M. Hair • https://insuranceclaimhq.com • hair@hairshunnarah.com • https://levelupclaim.com/
At Consensus Hong Kong 2026, David Sencil hosts a forward-looking discussion on how artificial intelligence is transforming finance and digital systems.Featuring:- Bryan Benson (CEO, Aurum)- Tobias Bauer (Co-Founder & GP, TBV)- Yat Siu (Chairman & Co-Founder, Animoca Brands)Topics include:- AI-native financial markets- The emergence of the agentic web- Stablecoins and global financial access- Digital identity and accountability- Centralization vs decentralization- Regulation and innovationAI is no longer optional for founders or financial institutions. It is becoming foundational infrastructure.Watch the full conversation to understand where finance is heading next.00:00 Introduction to AI and Finance02:50 The Underestimation of AI's Potential05:55 AI in Retail and Institutional Finance08:53 The Future of AI Finance12:02 Democratizing Financial Literacy through AI14:55 The Role of Blockchain in AI Finance18:13 The Evolution of the Internet of Value20:53 The Agentic Web and Its Implications23:47 Challenges and Concerns in AI and Finance28:43 Navigating AI Regulation and Its Challenges34:38 The Importance of Digital Identity in AI39:04 The Intersection of AI, Politics, and Regulation44:34 Integrating AI into Business Strategies51:57 The Future of AI: Opportunities and Challenges#Bitcoin #Crypto #ai
As property management faces rapid technological disruption, what happens to the businesses that refuse to adapt… or the ones that go all-in on AI and eliminate the human element entirely? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, Jason and Sarah Hull sit down with Joe Oliveri in Brisbane, Australia to unpack the accelerating AI revolution and what it means for the future of property management. With over 30 years in the industry and 16 years as an international real estate business coach, Joe shares why he believes the next three years will determine which companies survive, and which disappear. They explore the shift from traditional property manager roles to data-driven client relationship managers, how AI can transform processes like lease renewals, the risks of deepfakes and security threats, and why the winning formula will be a strategic blend of technology and human connection. You'll Learn (00:00) Introduction to AI in Property Management (00:40) The Evolution of Property Management (01:58) The Impact of AI on Property Management (05:35) Integrating AI with Human Interaction (10:30) AI's Role in Tenant Management (14:17) The Need for Verification in AI (16:30) The Future of AI in Property Management (21:44) Consequences of Ignoring AI (25:43) Finding Balance: AI and Human Roles Growth Quotables "If this industry does not change and truly understand AI, we're going to be irrelevant." "Three years is all we've got to make the changes." "AI isn't something that they can go back to their office and say, we're going to build this AI. Let the experts do it." Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason Hull (00:00) that companies will need to be able to make to keep up and really frankly, survive. It's recording. We can time up. Shifts in layout. Let's count. All right. You think it's going to work there or should we hold that? Well, we'll probably have to do this. All right. Cool. No introduction. Well, no. Just do it. I'm saying not the full intro that you normally do the way you read the entire thing. Just do a quick. You're not going to have all that when we're going to send it. OK. Do an intro, but you're not going to do the normal intro. All right. Put those somewhere. Hang them on your shirt or do something. Okay. That's very Brisbane. Well you have to fit in. When in Brisbane, do like Brisbane. Right, so we are... It wasn't pretty. Okay. Five, four, three, two... If you can see the camera, it can see you. Can you see the camera? can. You don't... can. Okay. Alright, you ready? Five, four, three, two, one. Alright, so I'm Jason Hull. This is Sarah Hull with DoorGrow and we are Hangout with Joe Oliveri. And we're in Brisbane. Brizzy. Brizzy, yeah. And you can't see but we're overlooking the beautiful city and the river right now. And what is this, a wine room? Yeah, this is our wine cellar. Private wine cellar. Private wine cellar. Okay. And so we're going to be chatting today about AI, the future, and how that's going to impact and affect property management. So, Jill, why don't you give people a little bit of background on yourself and who you are and how you got into property management. Yeah well that's a long story but I'll make it short. So I've been in the industry for about 30 years now so it makes me feel old when I say that. ⁓ But for the last 16 years I've been a real estate business coach and I've been lucky enough to coach people in Australia and the USA so I get a really good oversight of what's going on in the world. ⁓ But you know my focus for the last 16 years has been where is this industry going and how can we help businesses to get there and what do need to do? So basically, yeah, for the last 30 years, I've been doing property management and yeah, I think it's exciting where it's heading and through that journey, I met you guys, which is wonderful. So yeah, yeah. Yeah, fantastic. We've been able to have you out at one of our conference events and have you speak and yeah, it's been delightful. ⁓ I know, I mean, in 30 years, you've seen a lot of changes, but it's speeding up. Like we're in the middle of this AI revolution right now. Everything's changing dramatically. And so what are some of the things that you're noticing? And you have a process software called Thrusos, which we use to run our own operational side of our business. ⁓ What are some of the things that you are right now? thinking are going to happen and you're trying to figure out. Yeah, well, I'm actually concerned about the future for property management in a positive way. If you can kind of like say that. Because what I'm seeing is we are going through rapid change. I remember when I started in the industry 30 years ago, we were just introducing property management software. Everyone was still using spreadsheets and you know. paper documents and all sorts of things. ⁓ Carbon copy leases, know, that's how far back we go. And there was major pushback on property management software. And the pushback probably took about five years for the industry to completely transition to understanding you had to use software. Well, we don't have the luxury of five years anymore because my belief is it's changing so rapidly. And it's the consumer expectations that are going to force change that if this industry does not change and truly understand AI, we're going to be irrelevant. So I believe in three years time, we're going to see completely different roles in the way that we do things. in the next, like leading up to that three years, I believe that in the first year, we're going to see probably about 40 % of businesses starting to struggle and disappear. They're losing managements, clients are going elsewhere because they're expecting AI and seamless processes and interactions and tasking. And then that will speed up. And by the second year, we'll see 80%. And then we'll only have a small percentages. I know this seems like doomsday, but it's a reality. Only a small percentage of existing businesses that are around today who will be around in three years time. If they do not adopt AI and AI is very broad. So they've got to understand AI, but you know, that's my belief. That's what I'm seeing as well. So yeah, you know, we've got to sit up and take notice. Yeah. And I think a lot of the things that I've been noticing, some people kind of shift right away and some people are a little bit more reluctant to shift. Yes. And I think the ones that it's almost you need to find the balance. You don't want to go all in and all AI and you don't want to have no AI. You want to kind of find the right balance and that happy medium and really figure out what is the best way to utilize AI. and have a human component. Because I do not believe it will be able to be all AI. I just, think when it really comes down to it, it is a relationship business. It's a human to human contact business. really when things go wrong, humans want to talk with other humans who understand. They don't want, have you ever been on the phone and you're going, agent, agent, representative, and it's not. understanding and you're like, just get me to the human. do I, what button do I need to push? What option is it that I the human? And I think that will continue, that will prevail. However, AI is such a powerful tool that I think we just need to figure out what's the most complimentary way that the humans and the AI can interact together to provide an amazing experience so that the tenants are happy and the clients are happy and the property management business is happy. really be able to figure out what's the best way to do this. And something that you were telling me yesterday, I went, ⁓ she is so smart for doing that. Can you talk a bit about your, ⁓ tell us first about Flusos and what it is and how it works. And then tell me what you were chatting with me about at dinner last night about what you're going in and updating in Flusos because of all of the advancements in AI that are happening. Yeah, yeah, so you're 100 % right Sarah, you know, there will always be the human element. It's necessary. We're a service business. So people want the customer relationships. They want that person who lets them know, hey, this is all right. You know, we're going well here. But the role of the property manager has changed. There will always be a role for property managers, but not in the way that we see it today. And that's where we've got to make that transition. But one of the simplest flows to talk about, when I talk about flows, Flusos is workflows on all of the various tasks that we do. To help people understand how AI integrates with the human side of property management is if we look at a tenancy renewal. So when we're doing that renewal, there's so much that AI can do that takes away that you know, that personal kind of like input ⁓ into the task as in like if a property manager doesn't like a tenant, then you know, like it becomes personal. ⁓ If they do like the tenant and they've built this relationship with the tenant, where the tenant is making them feel like if the rent goes up, that the tenant will lose the home, the property manager gets too involved personally and emotionally. So to take away that very personal and emotional element and deal in the facts, if we look at, you know, a tenant renewal, AI has the ability, and this is what we're building into Flusos. So AI has the ability to go through and say, these renewals are due. It will then look at the tenant history to say, you know, how's the tenant pay the rent on time? Let's look at the in-resident inspections that we've done and we can see that the tenants looking after the property, abiding by the terms and conditions. Everything's going great. We can see in the system where the tenant has, you know, kind of like mentioned that they would like to renew, that their children go to the local school and they want to stay there through the primary. We've got all of this data that's built up. So AI will be able to go in and say, yeah, you know, like this tenant has mentioned they want to stay on. We look at their history. It's all good. We're also going to look at the market. And the market is determining that we can increase the rent to this much or it stays, it remains as it is. And we should offer a lease term of this length because AI will be able to determine what's going on in that marketplace. There could be infrastructure rebuilds going on, which could push people away from moving there. You know, just because we've got infrastructure being built, there is a building period that turns people off. So AI can look at all of that and then say, okay, this is what we should offer the tenant. Now, the property manager then looks at that and they can say, well, you know, this owner has this property as a ⁓ full-time ⁓ or permanent investment property, but we need to talk to them and say, hey, as an investment property, this is where we recommend that you, you know, take the property, increase the rent, offer renewal because of this. ⁓ And then the owner can make a decision. Now AI jumps in, does all the lease renewals, sends off the documents, updates the system. And the property manager's next role is talking to the owner and saying, congratulations, the tenants have signed the renewal. AI has then given them updates on your property is now achieving this in comparison to market. This is what the increase means to you in terms of dollars and percentage. And we become that voice of, you know, like ⁓ reason and congratulations and service. And the owners look to us for that because all the information that's given to them is not based on personal, ⁓ you know, thoughts on what's going on or emotion. So, yeah. And it makes it seem either that's the thing. No, I guess not. Oh, I think they're building over there. So maybe it'll be good and yet they're supposed to build a new stadium and that'll bring in. It's really figuring out things that we just don't know what the impact will truly be. And I love that it's kind of like, OK, have the human monitor the AI and have the AI do the heavy lifting. and then you kind of watch it, make sure it's doing the right thing, and then you get to be the human to human connection. Exactly. Let me be the one who calls the owner, but AI has done all the things for me, so it's kind of prepped it, gotten it ready, wrapped it up in a pretty package that now I can present to the owner, and I get to be almost a bearer of good news instead of the bearer of bad news. Exactly, exactly. And know, owners don't want to hear that you should renew the lease because they're a good tenant. Well, what constitutes a good tenant? They have to pay their rent on time. They have to look after the property. They have to look after the garden. So they've got to abide by the terms and conditions. It doesn't mean they're a good tenant. So owners don't want to hear that. The owners want to hear that they've abided by the terms and conditions. So we see no reason why they shouldn't be offered a renewal. I think one of the interesting challenges that are that's going to come with AI is that AI can make anything now. I can take a photo of you, I could use AI to make you say stuff and match your voice. And so the danger with AI is that I think we're gonna get to the point where people will only trust human in-person interactions to begin things or to end things or just, you know. And so there's gonna have to be this human element of verification unless there'll probably be some people that work this out. like some sort of verification system. You can load it up on your phone and verify that this is a real thing that you're talking to on Zoom or something. you know, that with all the AI slop as they're calling it and all of the fake videos and it's now becoming nobody believes anything. And so it's hard to know, is this really true? Is this actually the property manager that I'm talking to that is, you know, that I have this property and I'm the owner and you know, are they real? And so, am I giving them access? And so I think there's gonna need to be some sort of verification system in order for people to trust because people will trust, I think it'll get to the point where we'll just trust this. Like I can shake your hand, I can touch you, I you're real. I mean, we might all be fake on the I you don't know we just took a photo and write the whole podcast and do it and yes But they're really in Ulston That's right. Yeah There's been so much that's happened with deep fakes there've been yeah millions of dollars scammed and Now there's it it's getting so aggressive that it's recommended that if you are a human that recommends or that interacts regularly with another human, like you and your husband, for example, or you and your children, that you have a a safe word, a password, a verbal safe where if you get a phone call from what looks like and sounds like your daughter saying, mom, I'm stuck on the side of the road, please send me money, I need help, what's the word? What's the word? And then you know if that word isn't said, that is not my daughter even though it looks like it sounds like it. And I think that's going to be something that we need to kind of incorporate as well and for that reason I agree. I think that in-person, personal relationship will be more important than ever. Yes, I agree with that and this is something that's interesting you bring that up because I always had a safe word with my children. It was given. ⁓ It's something that I think property managers take for granted. They call owners and tenants and talk about all sorts of things without any sort of security check. So, you know, like if we're talking to the banks or, you know, anyone, we get a telecode or we've got to like key in what our personal sort of verification. Exactly. So I think that's another area, and I'm glad you brought that up because it's another area where industry has to step up. We've got to protect the data that we've got. We've got a lot of sensitive data there. So we've got to really look after that. But there will always be that human element in property management because people want to know that they're making the right decision. People want to chat about it. They want to go through and say, based on that data, would I be wrong in increasing the rent? It's like, no, a property manager is like, that's what the market is determining. So if the market determines a rental increase, then that's what the market is saying. Holding back rent only impacts every other investor in that market. I think it'll be interesting. So I think moving forward in the future, if we start to leverage AI, but we build our processes around things. you know, initiated in a way that it starts with a human and that sensitive touch points are done as a human and that we come up with our own verification methods, we're going to avoid some of these traps and our processes will have a longer life span. Yes, yes. You know, we won't have to, man, we have to change everything now with the, all these scammers are doing this one thing where they call up and pretend that they're you, you know. And so, yeah, because you can go on 11 Labs right now. You can upload your little recording of your voice and then you can have your voice and you can have it say anything. so, yeah, so I think that's going to be a challenge. And I think we're going to have to figure out a way to how do you how do you on a Zoom call with a remote owner that's out of state or out of country verify that each of you are an actual real physical human being. Somebody needs to invent that device that verifies it's like taking a blood sample. It's like they're human and it's it's like, this is the, this is actually Joe I'm talking to across the pond. So yeah. Okay. Yeah, it is important. And I think the other thing for the industry to understand is that, you know, AI isn't something that they can go back to their office and say, we're going to build this AI. ⁓ Let the experts do it. Let the experts who understand process and know, Sarah is a real expert on process and to have that level of expertise, it takes a lot of knowledge and a lot of like building and rebuilding and understanding and it's tweaked, you know, for different companies. But you know, like they shouldn't be taking this on themselves. Let the experts do it. And when we talk about, you know, our tech. We need tech stacks and there is a lot of different technology out there that we've got to build it all in together. Property managers can't do that. A lot of business leaders can't do it either. know, have faith in the experts. That's what I'm saying to the industry is have faith in the experts because, you know, they are doing a lot of work behind the scenes on making sure that AI is not a negative. impact to the industry is only making our industry sustainable and relevant into the future. mean that's going to be one of the temptations and dangers is that anyone can now go create any software. can load up lovable or any of these other tools and they can say make me a CRM or make me a property management software. But yeah the problem is you then have to become some sort of expert that's constantly communicating, fixing bugs, tweaking it, figuring it out. And if you can't or something breaks or something gets hacked, then you're at risk. Your whole business is now at risk. And yeah, so I think that, but in the future, everybody will be able to create anything. So I think the people that really thrive and survive and keep a job while AI kind of takes over, I believe will be those that are the artists. So we're going to shift away from it being about being a nerdy programmer. It's going to be those that have this creative thinking that they can think, how can I combine these tools? How can I connect these? How can we innovate this? And that's been one of the most fun things for me in playing with AI is now I get to be an artist with building systems and building things and creating things. Cause I can create things so quickly. Whereas before I would just think about all the things I wanted to do. And I'd be like, that'd be nice if somebody made that. And I'd be like, that's way too much work. I don't want to do that. but yeah, it's now you can just create anything and you can edit things quickly. You can have things reviewed. And so there's a lot of things that everybody's probably already using some of the AI tools right now, you know, like chat GPT and maybe Claude and perplexity and some of these things, but there's a lot of, you know, more advanced tools that are coming out that are going to make things even faster. And now AI is building AI and things are just speeding up. Jason Hull (22:01) is that we're gonna have a lot of tenants out of work. I think there's gonna be a lot of tenants that are like, hey, I just lost my job to AI. And so we've already replaced some roles and some functions of our team and maybe even a whole team member with some AI tools already. And so that's coming very quickly. And I think Elon Musk just said that in the next three to five years, the best surgeons in the world will be robots. And those are high paying, high functioning jobs that people put a lot of effort into, but he says they'll be better, more accurate. And so, do you want a really seasoned, older surgeon with maybe, he's human steady level hands, or do you want somebody that has laser precision that gets it right every time that's overseen by that person? I think the best blend is both. I want the AI laser precision with the human with all of the knowledge and experience to watch it and make sure that it's the right thing. if you did it that way, if a doctor just had a monitor, it eliminates the need for many of them. You now need one doctor to... multiple AI robots. Because you've got beta. think everything that's going to shift, AI is going to change so many things, which is great. It's still not going to be able to, I mean, how comfortable would you feel? Open heart surgery and that's the AI robot and you go, ⁓ do I want that thing cutting me open? ⁓ What's its track record? What if it glitches? What if it breaks down? Is it going to do the right thing? it know? What is it, you know, is it programmed? What if it dies in the middle of the surgery? Does it have a battery? There's a lot of things to think about. And does it care? Right. is it, what if it that eye robot where it's scanning and going, oh, it has an 11 % chance of survival. I'm done. Well, wait a second. Hold on. Do we, you know, do we keep going? So I think everything is going to come down to a blend. of AI and human and there's got to be both of those components. So can you maybe chat about, let's chat about kind of both ends of the spectrum here. What might happen to some property management companies that refuse to adopt AI? Where they go, I'm just not doing it. I'm not using AI. I'm staying old school. We don't want to learn anything. We don't want to do anything else. might you be a, what would you think the prediction would be on companies that just will not? Yes. Use it. That's a really good question because we kind of saw that with what happened with these old school companies ⁓ where they refused to have anything but the property management program, you know, where you store your data. ⁓ And they eventually were out of business. I mean, I'd go into these offices and they just have files everywhere, files covering the desk, they didn't know where anything was. But they refused to, you know, ⁓ use anything else than go to that paper file. And it was a mess. mean, how do you find paper? ⁓ So we saw those businesses gradually get out of business. They didn't have a business to sell, basically. So they might have been mighty in their day, but they were no longer mighty when technology just over. Now that took a long time to happen in the past. It's going to be more rapid now. So those businesses that refuse to adapt or adopt AI or understand it because a lot of them think we've got AI. It's like you don't have AI. GPD does not help you to manage process better. So if they don't then We're seeing it already Sarah and Jason. We're seeing that these companies that used to manage 500 or more managements are down to half of that and I'm selling one at the moment where they had 600 and we're just on the final figures today. They're down to 342. That's a lot of money that they've lost because they refuse to adapt new methods and they let the property managers determine what technology they would use. Because what happens if we allow staff to determine what technology we will use, then the staff just create or justify a reason for their position. We can't do that anymore. We've got to identify the task that a property manager does. And there's much less than what, you know, they did in the past. A property manager is basically just a client relationship manager now. They're reviewing data and interpreting that data to have conversations with the clients. And that's the way we've got to do it. And the other thing is, investors are changing too. So we're getting a lot of institutional investors. So institutional investors don't want to deal with, you know, mother head and type, you know, like, ⁓ the tenants are lovely and you know, you don't want to lose them and... you probably can't afford to do the maintenance and things like that. Institutional investors just want the facts so they can make a decision and quite often they don't want to make a decision they want the property manager to do what's needed. And AI will determine the necessary steps so the property manager becomes that person this has been done or they can look online through their portal. in I'm like, that's a long answer to your question. But you know, like I believe hand on heart and don't want to seem like I'm doing so sorry, I'm hitting the mic. that three years time is three years is all we've got to make the changes and to identify the tasks the property manager does. Because it's not the same anymore. I agree. And I think it's about shifting that shifting. It's about making that shift. And then conversely, let's talk about the other end of the spectrum because, okay, if you go, you know what, I'm sold, I'm doing everything AI. I'm firing my entire team, I'm letting AI do everything and we've seen some companies try to do this before, but now there's a lot of changes and AI can do a lot of things that before was not possible. So what would you say to the companies that are gonna go all in and they're gonna do all AI? Is that the solution? No, it's a happy blend of technology and team. So if you don't have the team there, property management is a service industry. So we have to remember that, you know, and our service is helping the clients to feel confident about decisions that they're making or instructions that they're giving. ⁓ So it is definitely a blend of ⁓ technology and team. but the team's role has changed. please don't think you can go in there and chat GBT is going to, you know, create all the conversations and, and, know, they're going to answer the phone and, and, you know, talk to the client and record it all. No, there needs to be human element. But again, I'll go back to it's the experts that will help you create that because it's very, very difficult to understand how to blend that technology and team. ⁓ without the kind of like the team having their say in it too. A lot of business owners let the team say too much and they make decisions based on team. We've seen that, or they take a vote. A vote, yes. My team, I hear that from our clients, and they go, well my team voted and what? Your team voted? No, no, no, no. that's good. They don't ever vote. Like, yeah, you know, eliminate my job. I'll vote yes for that. Yeah, yeah. No, no. Yeah, the challenge with team members is that they are not usually money driven the way entrepreneurs are. They're not focused on the money side of the business and they're focused on safety and security. And as AI comes, that's going to take a lot of that away. And so yeah, you don't want to have your team vote. This is, it's not like a It's not democracy. No, this is business. I believe in democratic principles, it's the business. But yeah, you can't place the burden of decision making on people that are wired to make decisions in a way that's not conducive. Yeah, it's all about them. And, you know, like it's important to understand how the team is thinking so that you can then help them adjust to it or no. that person's not going to come through with me. So you can make the decisions. no, know, team will always justify why they are needed in a business. Yeah. mean, the day may come with all the AI stuff and humans really, we tend to like each other. We like humans a bit. You know, we'll probably have labels on our business made with real humans. Real humans at our business and a real human answers the phone. No AI. You know, I mean, it might happen. So that could be interesting. So. One of the things that I also though, am thinking and maybe I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist or a little crazy, I don't know. But ⁓ when Trump went into Venezuela and extradited or took out that dictator that had taken over the government there and was causing a lot of problems, the people were very happy. But what was really interesting, what was unsaid or I didn't hear people talk about it much is the US government. Military whatever went in had the ability they turned off all the power to the entire city There were not even backups were working everything went out and went black. Mm-hmm and That's wild to think that we have the ability to just wipe out power and electricity I don't know if it was an EMP thing or Some people say solar flares can do this and maybe the government can do this kind of stuff. Who knows but the fact that technological data, power, electricity, all that can just shut off in an instant. How would we deal with that in a world where everything has become digital and everything has become AI? Will we have backups? Will we have keys? Will we be able to find things? ⁓ Will we know stuff? there's, think there, I mean, if that happens one time, it will be like change everything forever. Just like the pandemic changed everybody's perception forever about.
If you're enjoying the content, please like, subscribe, and comment! Anand's Links: Website: http://panandrao.com/ Podcast: https://aixhighered.com/ UMW: https://academics.umw.edu/center-for-ai/ Anand Rao is Professor and Chair of Communication and Digital Studies at the University of Mary Washington, where he founded the Center for AI and the Liberal Arts (CAILA). He serves as a Subject Matter Expert on AI Literacy for Oxford University Press and co-hosts the "AI x Higher Ed" podcast. _______________________ Follow us! @worldxppodcast Instagram - https://bit.ly/3eoBwyr @worldxppodcast Twitter - https://bit.ly/2Oa7Bzm Spotify - http://spoti.fi/3sZAUTG YouTube - http://bit.ly/3rxDvUL #ai #genai #artificialintelligence #intelligence #university #college #education #preparation #students #professor #career #tech #technology #communication #business #subscribe #explore #explorepage #podcastshow #longformpodcast #podcasts #podcaster #podcasting #worldxppodcast #viralvideo #youtubeshorts
The way organizations think about artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace has shifted dramatically over the past few years. While early conversations centered on isolated experiments and technological hype, organizations now face the much harder task of integrating AI into the fabric of how work gets done. We welcome Melissa Reeve, author of “Hyper Adaptive: Rewiring the Enterprise to Become AI Native,” to discuss what AI adoption really means for people, processes, and culture.Melissa tackles some tough questions about organizational complexity, shifting operating models, and the critical role of culture and systems thinking in successful AI integration. Listeners will get candid advice on starting small, experimenting with purpose, and preparing for the rewiring ahead. You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...03:38 Integrating AI into organizations12:47 AI Native enterprise structure15:51 Dynamic AI governance framework18:58 AI implementation foundations23:56 Process mapping for AI integration29:44 Balancing efficiency and leadership focus37:02 Start small with value streams40:59 Innovative organizational funding models42:14 Starting a skills-focused organization47:03 Digital Twins in Product TestingNavigating the AI Revolution at WorkMelissa Reeve's journey began on the factory floors of Toyota, learning firsthand how small process shifts can drive system-wide change. Building on years of research and influence from Lean, Agile, and DevOps practitioners, Reeve authored a five-stage maturity model she calls hyperadaptive, designed to guide organizations through the incremental steps needed to become truly AI-native.The five stages of Melissa's model:Foundation – Build organizational understanding of AI; create dynamic governance structures and clarify guardrails. Optimization – Identify and optimize business processes for AI interactions; move beyond basic experimentation. Agents & Automation – Develop and manage AI agents that execute tasks and processes autonomously. Rewiring – Shift organizational architecture from rigid hierarchies to flexible, value-stream teams funded and incentivized differently. Hyperadaptive – Fully sense-and-respond organizations capable of real-time adaptation.Melissa splits these into two main categories: Basecamp (the first three stages, where most companies currently operate) and the Emerging Frontier (rewiring and hyper adaptivity).Why Organizations Struggle with AI IntegrationAccording to Melissa, most organizations are stuck because they underestimate the support structures required for successful AI adoption. It's not just about updating technology, in fact, 70-80% of AI success depends on people, culture, and processes, not algorithms. Companies often rush to deploy AI agents or experiment without a clear North Star, leading to pilot fatigue and an 80% failure rate. Many organizations haven't even finished laying the foundational groundwork, such as establishing unified governance or mapping work processes.Another common pitfall is the tendency to try everything at once. Pressure for fast results drives teams to bite off too much, resulting in burnout and costly errors.Moving from Experimentation to Purposeful TransformationPlaying with AI is not a strategy. While experimentation is necessary, organizations must put bounds on these efforts, know why they're experimenting, what hypothesis they're testing, and what success will look like.One necessary precursor is getting to grips with how your organization actually works. Many leaders lack visibility into workflows, decisions, and skillsets, making process optimization difficult. Reeve suggests collaborative process mapping—sometimes supported by AI tools—to unlock tacit knowledge and identify where AI can augment or reinvent workflows.Organizing Around Value StreamsOne of the most transformative elements is the shift from function-based silos to cross-functional value stream teams. Melissa draws on examples from Toyota, Zappos, and Unilever—organizations that reimagine workflows, funding mechanisms, and team incentives to deliver value rather than preserve hierarchy. Dynamic budgeting, focused experimentation, and flexible team structures help organizations scale AI success without tearing up everything at once.Culture, Upskilling, and Durable SuccessAI's impact will be decided by how well organizations invest in people. Unilever's Future Fit program exemplifies this approach, aligning reskilling efforts to individual purpose and business needs. It's not algorithms that set successful organizations apart, but their ability to create cultures and support systems that empower people to adapt, reinvent themselves, and thrive amidst change.Start small, experiment with purpose, invest in support structures, and prepare to rewire not just technology, but how your organization thinks about work itself. AI may be the catalyst, but people, empowered and organized around value, are the key to lasting transformation. Resources & People MentionedHyperadaptive: Rewiring the Enterprise to Become AI-Native Connect with Melissa ReeveMelissa M. Reeve on LinkedIn Connect With Red Thread ResearchWebsite: Red Thread ResearchOn LinkedInOn FacebookOn TwitterSubscribe to WORKPLACE STORIES
Sun Raghupathi is CoFounder and CEO of Veda.DeFi is living through interesting times: record adoption, proven infrastructure, institutional interest—but low sentiment and struggling token prices. Sun calls this "the enterprise era for DeFi," where protocols that don't have a B2B strategy for the largest financial institutions may not survive. But here's the opportunity: for the first time, DeFi is actually ready for mainstream users. In fact, Kraken just launched new DeFi Earn vaults powered by Veda, giving millions of users instant access to onchain yields without leaving the Kraken app.In this episode, we cover:+ DeFi's enormous future in enterprise partnerships and distribution+ How Veda vaults work: custody, risk management, and yield strategies+ Breaking down Kraken's new DeFi Earn vaults+ Veda's business model and path to profitability------
Zevi Arnovitz is a product manager at Meta with no technical background who has figured out how to build and ship real products using AI. His engineering team at Meta asks him to teach them how he does what he does. In this episode, Zevi breaks down his complete AI workflow that allows non-technical people to build sophisticated products with Cursor.We discuss:1. The complete AI workflow that lets non-technical people build real products in Cursor2. How to use multiple AI models for different tasks (Claude for planning, Gemini for UI)3. Using slash commands to automate prompts4. Zevi's “peer review” technique, which uses different AI models to review each other's code5. Why this might be the best time to be a junior in tech, despite the challenging job market6. How Zevi used AI to prepare for his Meta PM interviews—Brought to you by:10Web—Vibe coding platform as an APIDX—The developer intelligence platform designed by leading researchersFramer—Build better websites faster—Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-non-technical-pms-guide-to-building-with-cursor—Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts:https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0—Where to find Zevi Arnovitz• X: https://x.com/ArnovitzZevi• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zev-arnovitz• Website: https://zeviarnovitz.com—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Zevi Arnovitz(04:48) Zevi's background and journey into AI(07:41) Overview of Zevi's AI workflow(14:41) Screenshare: Exploring Zevi's workflow in detail(17:18) Building a feature live: StudyMate app(30:52) Executing the plan with Cursor(38:32) Using multiple AI models for code review(40:40) Personifying AI models(43:37) Peer review process(45:40) The importance of postmortems(51:05) Integrating AI in large companies(53:42) How AI has impacted the PM role(57:02) How to improve AI outputs(58:15) AI-assisted job interviews(01:02:57) Failure corner(01:06:20) Lightning round and final thoughts—Referenced:• Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-super-ic-pm-tal-raviv• Wix: https://www.wix.com• Building AI Apps: From Idea to Viral in 30 Days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2w4y7pDi8w• Riley Brown on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMcoud_ZW7cfxeIugBflSBw• Greg Isenberg on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GregIsenberg• Bolt: https://bolt.new• Inside Bolt: From near-death to ~$40m ARR in 5 months—one of the fastest-growing products in history | Eric Simons (founder and CEO of StackBlitz): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-bolt-eric-simons• Lovable: https://lovable.dev• Building Lovable: $10M ARR in 60 days with 15 people | Anton Osika (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-lovable-anton-osika• StudyMate: https://studymate.live• Dibur2text: https://dibur2text.app• Claude: https://claude.ai• Everyone should be using Claude Code more: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/everyone-should-be-using-claude-code• Bun: https://bun.com• Zustand: https://zustand.docs.pmnd.rs/getting-started/introduction• Cursor: https://cursor.com• The rise of Cursor: The $300M ARR AI tool that engineers can't stop using | Michael Truell (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-rise-of-cursor-michael-truell• Wispr Flow: https://wisprflow.ai• Linear: https://linear.app• Linear's secret to building beloved B2B products | Nan Yu (Head of Product): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/linears-secret-to-building-beloved-b2b-products-nan-yu• Cursor Composer: https://cursor.com/blog/composer• Replit: https://replit.com• Behind the product: Replit | Amjad Masad (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/behind-the-product-replit-amjad-masad• Base44: https://base44.com• Solo founder, $80M exit, 6 months: The Base44 bootstrapped startup success story | Maor Shlomo: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-base44-bootstrapped-startup-success-story-maor-shlomo• v0: https://v0.app• Everyone's an engineer now: Inside v0's mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder & CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/everyones-an-engineer-now-guillermo-rauch• Cursor Browser mode: https://cursor.com/docs/agent/browser• Google Antigravity: https://antigravity.google• Grok: https://grok.com• Zapier: https://zapier.com• Airtable: https://www.airtable.com• Build Your Personal PM Productivity System & AI Copilot: https://maven.com/tal-raviv/product-manager-productivity-system• The definitive guide to mastering analytical thinking interviews: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-definitive-guide-to-mastering-f81• AI tools are overdelivering: results from our large-scale AI productivity survey: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/ai-tools-are-overdelivering-results-c08• Yaara Asaf on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaarasaf• The Pitt on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/The-Pitt-Season-1/dp/B0DNRR8QWD• Severance on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/severance/umc.cmc.1srk2goyh2q2zdxcx605w8vtx• Loom: https://www.loom.com• Cap: https://cap.so• Supercut: https://supercut.ai...References continued at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-non-technical-pms-guide-to-building-with-cursor—Recommended books:• The Fountainhead: https://www.amazon.com/Fountainhead-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191153• Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike: https://www.amazon.com/Shoe-Dog-Memoir-Creator-Nike/dp/1501135910• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success: https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com
In this episode, Anders Hansen shares his incredible evolution from performing magic to becoming a respected leader in personal development. He describes how reading The Power of Your Subconscious Mind shifted his understanding of human potential and set him on a path that eventually led to collaborating with Bob Proctor. Anders explains how these insights inspired him to create The Secret to Real Magic, a program that has helped thousands of clients and generated more than twelve million dollars in eight years. He reinforces the importance of aligning goals with deeper fulfillment, and how many people discover that the outcomes they chase are not always the ones they truly want. Business Illusions and the Path to Growth Anders breaks down the idea of illusions in business and how hidden limiting beliefs shape the way leaders think and act. Using the example of a multi dimensional domino brick, he illustrates how the mind fills in patterns based on assumptions rather than truth. He shares the five most common illusions that hold business owners back which include hustle and hype, luck, fear, lack and limitation, and the illusion of knowledge. Anders highlights that real change requires integrating knowledge into behavior and raising personal consciousness. Michael reflects on this idea and highlights how growth often emerges from challenging seasons. The conversation reinforces that goals should be rooted in desire and identity, not just performance metrics. Breaking Limiting Beliefs and Setting Bold Goals Michael and Anders explore how leaders can overcome self imposed limits. Michael shares his own journey of challenging income ceilings he once believed were fixed. They discuss the power of intentional affirmations, identity shaping goals, and learning from multiple motivational sources. The conversation provides practical tools for addressing negative thought cycles and cultivating a mindset that supports expansive possibility. Integrating AI and Human Leadership Anders offers a grounded perspective on the future of AI and leadership. He believes AI should amplify human strengths instead of becoming a substitute for them. Emotional intelligence and inner leadership will remain at the center of all high performance work. Anders also explains why his company shifted from online coaching to live experiential events. He believes that integration and genuine connection are fundamental human needs and essential for sustaining growth. He encourages listeners to begin with a free assessment designed to reveal hidden illusions and offers tools that help shift energy to support aligned goal creation. His message is clear. Information alone does not transform. Implementation does. Leadership Resources and How to Connect To explore Anders Hansen's work further, visit Instagram or Facebook and search for Real Anders Hansen. Comment with the words Breakfast Leadership to receive additional leadership and personal development resources mentioned in the show. Anders Hansen: The Illusionist Who Turns Transformation Into Reality Anders Hansen is more than an internationally recognized illusionist—he's a 7-figure CEO and the creative force behind Real Magic LLC. With over 20 years of stage magic fused seamlessly with world-class personal development, Anders has redefined transformation by making it tangible, entertaining, and life-changing. As a protégé of Bob Proctor, Anders co-created The Secret to Real Magic program, guiding over 10,000 people—including countless entrepreneurs—to break through limitations and unlock extraordinary results. His signature Real Magic LIVE© experience blurs the line between a show and a seminar, turning abstract concepts into unforgettable moments of clarity. To date, this work has generated more than $12M in revenue, proving that transformation can be both magical and measurable. Today, Anders' mission is simple but powerful: to help high achievers create quantum leap breakthroughs so they can live happier, healthier, and wealthier lives.
Jairek Robbins is a performance coach, investor, board member, and best-selling author. As the founder of Performance Coach University, he empowers leaders worldwide to achieve purpose-driven success in business and life. Top 3 Value Bombs 1. Grit is trainable. True mental toughness isn't inherited—it's built through consistent effort and pushing beyond your comfort zone. 2. Use AI to enhance, not replace. Integrating AI smartly into your workflow can elevate your clarity, productivity, and follow-through. 3. Busy isn't the badge—results are. High performance isn't about being constantly occupied—it's about systems, recovery, and strategic effort. Check out Jairek's website for free worksheets and tools - Jairek Robbins Website Sponsors HighLevel - The ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies. Learn more at HighLevelFire.com. Freedom Circle - A powerful community of entrepreneurs led by JLD. Are you ready to go from idea to income in 90-days? Visit Freedom-Circle.com to learn more. Framer - Ready to design, iterate, and publish all in one tool? Start creating for free at Framer.com/design, and use code FIRE for a free month of Framer Pro! Rules and Restrictions May Apply.