Podcast appearances and mentions of jim collins

What do we do when life gets foggy?In part two of this conversation with Jim Collins, we pick up right where we left off and explore the bug book, simplex stepping, luck versus return on luck, and why not all time in life is equal.We also talk about retirement as a cliff, the power of Who Luck, and what Jim would add to Good to Great after writing What to Make of a Life.If you haven't listened to part one, I recommend starting there, but you are also welcome to jump in right here.As Jim says, What to Make of a Life is “not a self-help book. It's a self-knowledge book.”Thrive Global Article: Jim Collins on What to Make of a LifeAbout Our Guest:Jim Collins has published multiple international bestsellers that have sold in total more than eleven million copies worldwide, including the perennial favorite Good to Great. His writings and teachings are based on extensive research projects designed to uncover timeless principles of human endeavor and have had a lasting impact across all sectors of society. All of Jim's books share a common thread: the study of people and how they navigate the big questions of leadership and life. You can learn more at www.jimcollins.com. About Lainie:Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, emotional intelligence, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie's client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linktr.ee/lainierowell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.Website - ⁠LainieRowell.com⁠Instagram - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@LainieRowell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn - @LainieRowellX/Twitter - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@LainieRowell ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Evolving with Gratitude, the book is available ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ And now, Bold Gratitude: The Journal Designed for You and by You is available too!Both Evolving with Gratitude & Bold Gratitude have generous bulk pricing for purchasing 10+ copies delivered to the same location.

In this episode, Andy is joined by bestselling author and researcher Jim Collins to discuss one of life’s biggest questions: What do you make of your life? It is a question we all wrestle with more than once: How do we find our way in the world? How do we make it past the cliffs, significant events that can radically change our lives? How do we keep the inner fire burning bright, long and late? Jim Collins devoted a decade to studying these questions and more. Listen in as he and Andy unpack his findings. Download the application guide: https://re.yourmove.is/43k1MlT Get your copy of What to Make of a Life: https://re.yourmove.is/4uaxInK Here's what they cover in this episode: The three major moments in life where we all reevaluate our direction (6:05) What encodings are, how they shape fulfillment, and how to discover yours (9:51) The difference between feeling like a “lightning bug” and a “lightning bolt” (14:56) The role leaders play in discovering encodings (17:17) The role parents play in discovering encodings (20:03) The potential cliffs you could face in life (20:36) The fog: why feeling lost is a normal part of being human (23:56) How to move forward and come out of the fog (29:01) Special thanks to our sponsor BELAY for offering a free download of their latest ebook The Freedom Framework. This resource is designed to help leaders step out of the operational center of gravity and get back to the work that only they can do. Just text the word ANDY to 55123 to claim your free ebook now. Recognized as one of Forbes' 6 Leadership Podcasts To Listen To In 2024 and one of the Best Leadership Podcasts To Stay in the Know for CEOs, according to Industry Leaders Magazine. If this podcast has made you a better leader, you can help it by leaving a quick Spotify or Apple Podcasts review. You can visit Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and then go to the “Reviews” section. Thank you for sharing! ____________ Where to find Andy: Instagram: @andy_stanley Facebook: Andy Stanley Official X: @andystanley YouTube: @AndyStanleyOfficial See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most people are chasing new income streams while completely ignoring the one skill that impacts all of them- communication. In this episode, I sit down with Len Ward of Commexus to break down why the way you communicate is either opening doors or quietly closing them. We get into what actually makes someone persuasive, how small tweaks in your messaging can drastically change your results, and why so many smart, capable people struggle financially simply because they can't clearly express value. Len shares practical insights you can use immediately, whether you're selling, negotiating, creating content, or just trying to stand out in a noisy world.   What you'll learn: Why communication is the highest ROI skill you're probably neglecting  How to make people actually listen when you speak  The biggest mistakes killing your influence (and income)  Simple ways to become more clear, persuasive, and memorable  If you're serious about building income streams, this episode will challenge you to stop chasing more and start saying what you already have better.   Find Len Ward at- Website: www.Commexis.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lenward/  Twitter: https://x.com/lenwardnj    Things mentioned in the show: ChatGPT Pulse- From OpenAI… Pulse is a new experience where ChatGPT proactively does research to deliver personalized updates based on your chats, feedback, and connected apps like your calendar. You can curate what ChatGPT researches by letting it know what's useful and what isn't. The research appears in Pulse as topical visual cards you can scan quickly or open for more detail, so each day starts with a new, focused set of updates. This is the first step toward a more useful ChatGPT that proactively brings you what you need, helping you make more progress so you can get back to your life. We'll learn and improve from early use before rolling it out to Plus, with the goal of making it available to everyone. E-Myth by Michael Gerber. (This book has a permanent place on my biz bookshelf.) https://amzn.to/4cCsVV0  Simple Numbers by Greg Crabtree https://amzn.to/4sFE5OR  Good to Great by Jim Collins https://amzn.to/4mEpQsg    --- Click here to change your life- http://eepurl.com/gy5T3T   Hit me up for a one-on-one brainstorming session- https://militaryimagesproject.com/products/brainstorming-session-1-hour    Check out my Linktree for different ways to rock your world! https://linktr.ee/ruggeddad    Check out the sweet Hyper X mic I'm using. https://amzn.to/41AF4px    Check out my best-selling books: Rapid Skill Development 101- https://amzn.to/3J0oDJ0 Streams of Income with Ryan Reger- https://amzn.to/3SDhDHg Strangest Secret Challenge- https://amzn.to/3xiJmVO This page contains affiliate links. This means that if you click a link and buy one of the products on this page, I may receive a commission (at no extra cost to you!) This doesn't affect our opinions or our reviews. Everything we do is to benefit you as the reader, so all of our reviews are as honest and unbiased as possible. #passiveincome #sidehustle #cryptocurrency #richlife

https://youtu.be/sUyjA0muVgM Tom Kirkham, Founder and CEO of Kirkham IronTech, believes business should create value for everyone involved — employees, clients, vendors, and the broader community. After overcoming major personal challenges and rebuilding his perspective on leadership, Tom embraced stakeholder capitalism and built a company culture focused on long-term partnerships, trust, and continuous learning. In this conversation, Tom shares the IronTech Framework — a practical approach to modern IT management built around three core pillars: Generate ROI and Productivity, Make Cybersecurity Core, and Surround it with a Governance Layer. He explains why businesses should stop treating IT as an expense and instead view it as a strategic investment that improves productivity, protects the company from cyber threats, and aligns technology with leadership goals. Tom also dives into the massive scale of the cybercrime industry, why governance is often the missing piece in cybersecurity, and how proactive IT strategy can dramatically improve business performance. — Turn Your IT into Your Growth Engine with Tom Kirkham Good day. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and today’s guest is Tom Kirkham, the Founder and CEO of Kirkham IronTech, where he helps businesses build strong, secure IT foundations, whether fully managed, co-managed, or cybersecurity only. Tom is a keynote speaker on cybersecurity, and he’s the author of two books, Hack the Rich and The Cyber Pandemic. Tom, welcome to the show.  Oh, it’s great to be here, Steve.  Well, great to have you here. And I am curious to dive in, and would like to ask you my favorite question. What is your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in Kirkham IronTech?  That’s a great question. So the company’s about twenty-six years old. I went through a lot of personal health problems, and then my wife was real sick, and she ended up passing away—it's been about eleven years ago now. And I was fortunate enough to put a friend of mine in the company, and he was able to take over while I was dealing with this for a couple of years. And when most of it was done, I took some time off and did a lot of traveling and a lot of thinking and a lot of reading. And I’m a lifelong reader, a lifelong learner, and I went back through my history of investing techniques, understanding what makes a good company great. If you’ve read Jim Collins, you know what I’m talking about. And so during those times, I was reflecting, studying philosophy, studying biographies of other CEOs like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Andy Grove—gosh, the list goes on and on. Whether you like them or hate them, it doesn’t matter, right? There’s always something you can learn. And I came upon and read a lot about stakeholder capitalism. Like Peter Drucker says, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” And I understood what that meant, and it was kind of weird. So when I re-engaged with the company, I identified one of the weaknesses, and I said, “Well, if we need to do marketing in this business—which we have to do in any business—I really need to master marketing.” So I spent a lot of time with marketing gurus, most of them are what I would consider household names these days, and re-engaged with the company to do marketing to establish a great culture around stakeholder capitalism. In other words, we exist as a for-profit business not just for the shareholders but for everyone—the community, vendors, employees. And I really wanted to be around people I enjoyed being around. I wanted them to enjoy coming into work.Share on X And so we’ve been trying to perfect that system in the culture for the past ten years. Of course, no one's perfect, but if you pursue perfection, you can achieve excellence. And I think we've done a really good job. We have very low turnover. Everyone seems genuinely happy to be there, and it's really fulfilling. It's more of a personal feeling because I've been a successful investor practically my whole adult life. I started investing in stocks when I was nineteen, and I'm sixty-four now. So I didn't really need the company. I could have just closed it up or sold it or whatever. But I really wanted to have my own reasons. Those are the things that drive me, and I hope they drive everyone else too.  What resonated with you with this idea of stakeholder capitalism? It just made sense. The obvious part is with employees—all of that is true. That's obvious to any good leader or manager, right? As you well know, there's a difference between leadership and management, and understanding that distinction, and the difference between sales and marketing, and understanding those things. A good example is dealing with vendors. There are all sorts of vendors that supply products and services to us, so we carefully vet these tools and vendors to see if their values align with ours, just like we do with prospects. But especially with vendors, if it's something new—a new tool that we're going to invest a lot of time, money, and energy into to make their product or service successful for us and successful for them—we make a commitment to that vendor.  So it's not about the money or how cheap I can get it. What I want is a good partnership with every stakeholder. And I want to make sure that when I'm dealing with a vendor, if it fails for us, it's not our fault—it's their fault, right? Either they oversold the product or they didn't deliver on the service component. I didn't want it to be because we failed to do the right training, or didn't communicate properly, or missed all the other things that are just part of doing business the right way. And that applies to our employees, our local community, and every stakeholder in the company.  Yeah. I like it. So you're looking for partnership-based relationships where it's win-win. And yeah, if you want people to stick around, it has to make sense for them too. You can't exploit your partners forever without consequences. So that makes a lot of sense. So Tom, let me ask you this other question. This podcast is called The Management Blueprint because I'm always looking for frameworks—something practical that helps businesses achieve results. Usually it's some kind of three-to-five-step process that helps you grow the business, get customers, improve operations, or understand something at a deeper level. So when I ask about your favorite business framework, what comes to mind?  Well, we have a thing we call the IronTech Framework.  Okay.  And it was something that we came up with many years ago and started practicing seven or eight years ago, and it's a framework. It's like the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. I looked at NIST and there's five components to it, and it's about cybersecurity. And I looked at this and I go, “None of this works without the right policies and procedures in place.” The security training—it's not enough just to throw it out there and tell all your people to take it. You've got to follow up, you've got to manage, and coach, and everything like that. And so I started adding this governance component to the way we sold it, presented it, and practiced what we do for our clients day in and day out. Help them develop the policies and procedures for all of the different things, the protocols.  If somebody accidentally fires off a ransomware attack, they need to know they're not going to be penalized for it. We need to know as soon as possible to stop it. And just little things like that, there's a lot that really improve the effectiveness of all of these tools and services that we provide to their clients. And unbeknownst to me, NIST, who has the cybersecurity framework, they added governance about three years ago to the other five things. And so that was kind of nice to know that we were exhibiting some thought leadership. And so when we go in, it's all well and good if you want to put these protections in and these particular products, but we're a best-of-breed company. Like one of our critical tools that's required for our clients to put in place, to buy it and use it every single day on every single computer, is what's known as an EDR. And it's basically an AI-based super turbo antivirus.  To even call it an antivirus is not doing it justice. So there's three legs to the IronTech Framework. We want to make sure that you're getting a return on your investment in IT, because that's why you buy it. If you treat IT as an expense, you need to kind of change the way you're thinking. You want to improve productivity and efficiency.Share on X The second leg is cybersecurity, because a bad cyberattack can put you out of business. I think the last stats I saw were something like 40 to 60% of businesses go out of business within two years of a significant cyberattack. And then finally, the third is governance. That's the three legs of our IronTech Framework. So part of governance is engaging with our clients' management and leadership—the CEO, finance, of course the CIO, the CISO or security officer, and maybe even the board sometimes. Really getting to know: what are your objectives, and how can we utilize our services to best help your company realize those objectives? Because for most companies, there's no other vendor they engage with as much as us.  We're talking to Susie every day. We're talking to Bill every day. We know that Mary's out sick and Steve's on vacation. I mean, when you're running help desk, stopping attacks, providing training, and all the support we provide along those lines, we get to know their company better than practically any other vendor by far. So it really helps if our clients treat us as a partner to help them realize their goals and objectives. And when all of that clicks into place, then it makes recommending things easier.Share on X “Okay, you need to replace these 30 laptops that are four years old. You're not getting an ROI on them.” “This server's five years old. Let's start thinking about replacing it.” “We have this new tool that's really excellent. We're recommending everybody get it.” And because we've developed that trust, those conversations become pretty easy. For the most part, everybody just says yes. But of course, we don't sell just to sell, especially when it comes to things like hardware. That's not really what we're here for. We're here for the day-in, day-out work: keeping things running, stopping breaches, and putting the policies and procedures in place to run your company as smoothly as possible.  Yeah. I love that. So when I had an IT back in the 2000s, I had an IT person who was a contractor, but he was very active in my business, and I always wanted to talk to him and pick his brain. What are the new things out there? How can we make our business more efficient, more effective, more attractive to employees? Cooler. I wanted to be cool. So I wanted everyone to have a PDA in the early 2000s with email on it—a PalmPilot. And we had multiple screens, and I was looking at, okay, how can we manage data in the cloud and on our server so we don't have to deal with it in the office? That kind of stuff. And I really thought about it as a great investment because it was much cheaper than hiring people. And if you give people good tools, they're going to be more motivated and more effective. So I thought it was a no-brainer.  Yes, but there's still a subset of people that treat IT as an expense. Then there are some companies that tend to put IT under the finance guy because the finance guy usually has a lot of IT experience, but never actually did it as a career or a job, right? And those situations are hard because I need CEO-level or owner-level approval, and I need a direct route to that person.  Yeah, that makes sense. So Tom, tell me, what drives growth in your business?  Yeah. From a growth perspective, for us, number one is maintaining our clients and reducing churn. Number two is—I don't know if you're asking about tactics or strategy—but of course we want to get new clients for the right reasons. So we prefer inbound strategies. We don't cold call people unless we've already contacted them in another way, if that's what you're asking.  Yeah. I'm asking what the real driver of growth is. I understand that you do marketing and inbound marketing, but what makes people want to have an IT service partner like you? Well, they understand those three pillars of the IronTech Framework. They may not believe in stakeholder capitalism, but they don't treat IT as an expense. And they understand—especially after talking to me—the true risk of being hacked. A lot of people don't understand the size and scale of that industry. It's a $10 to $12 trillion industry now.  Wow.  If it were a country, it would have the third-largest GDP. The US would be first, China second, and then the hacking industry. It is an industry that hacks at scale. So when these companies—maybe a small 10-person accounting firm in North Dakota in the middle of nowhere—get these ransomware emails and someone tries to hack them, and we alert on it and trap it, and nothing goes wrong, everything's fine… If they don't already understand it, they go, “Well, why are they trying to hack me?” And I say, “You don't understand. That email was one of 100,000 emails that got blasted out. They don't know who you are, nor do they care who you are.” They're playing a numbers game. And it's kind of like marketing. They're looking at conversion numbers. Yeah.  Let's say it's 100,000 emails. They got a list of all the certified public accountants in 10 different states. They set up the email, they send it all out, and let's say 1% become victims. And let's say they collect an average of $10,000 per victim. Well, that's a multi-million dollar payday for about a week or two of work. And then they rinse and repeat. It's done at scale, and it's a much bigger industry than that. That's just a taste of it. Some of our clients are targeted. In other words, hackers are investing time, money, and energy specifically into that company. We're one of them. Any law firm that does intellectual property law—especially around patents, manufacturing, and things like that—you've got China and other nation states not only trying to get into your client, but you're also a threat vector. You're a way to get into that client's patents and secrets.  So we've got to treat that differently. It's not just about the money. There are different types of threat actors, and we have to educate clients, bring them up to speed, and say, “Well, because of this case, you need this other service and tool that we're offering to prevent China from breaking in.” Or, “You need to follow this practice.” Maybe you don't publicly talk about one of your clients being Ford Motor Company or NVIDIA. You just keep that quiet. You don’t want that to be public knowledge. That's one of the things we do. You spent time on our website, and you didn't see a single client name on there. And that's just one of the small things we do to protect our clients' security and privacy, because privacy and security go hand in hand. Yeah. That is fascinating. So what is it that you’re trying to figure out in your business right now? What’s the big thing for you?  I think because of all the chaos in the United States, making a decision to do anything—everybody's kind of frozen. There are a lot of hiring freezes. I know we've got a freeze on right now because we're looking to see, well, do we really need to add somebody, or can we do this with AI? The hackers do the same thing. That's one of the challenges, is getting people over the hump. No matter what you do, if you've got an IT company doing your stuff and you only call them when things are broken, there's a much more profitable way to do that. You're spending more money.  So there are benchmarks in industries, right? Basically, the research—and these aren't numbers we made up, this is legitimate research from many independent sources—says the average professional service provider, like law firms, accounting firms, healthcare providers, and on and on, should be spending 6 to 12% of their revenue on IT and cybersecurity. And that's everything. I'm talking servers, wiring, cloud, security, defense—all of those things should be 6 to 12%. We know that. That's the way it works. So when we engage with a prospect and find out they're only spending 3 or 4%, then I already know they have gaps. I don't even have to do an assessment to see what they're not doing.  They're either not getting a return on investment, or they're not secure. That's it. If all the accounting firms are spending 6%, and you're only spending 4%, don't just pat yourself on the back. That's one of those moments where you should ask, “What am I missing?” Because I do that often. Someone on the management team will come up with an idea, and we all agree. Well, that's a red flag for me. I want to know: what are we missing? If we all agree on this, is there some gotcha or something we haven't uncovered? And those are some of the things we try to educate our clients on. They don't have to tell us their revenue. I can give them the numbers. I can do the math. I can show them the numbers for something like laptop replacement. Maybe it's $1,000 to $3,000 depending on the industry. If the employee using that laptop is making $100,000 a year, why are you trying to squeeze another year out of a $2,000 investment when it's hurting productivity by 10% or more? Yeah. That’s a no-brainer.  Yeah. It should be.  Yeah. It's not just in IT. I had a client years ago in civil engineering, and they had a rule that they would never keep equipment longer than four years. And they were selling equipment that still looked brand new. And I asked them, “Why are you doing this? It seems like this equipment still has a lot of life left in it. Why are you selling it or giving it back to the lease company?” And he said, “We did the math, and we figured out that this is the optimal time to replace it.” If they got rid of the equipment at that point, they wouldn't have to deal with fixing it. There would be less disruption. They would stay state-of-the-art all the time. And their clients would be impressed. And it actually worked for them. It was a high-margin civil engineering firm.  Precisely. I mean, we're so tuned into that that we're a Mac house. We all use Macs. We all have laptops, and we all have setups with screens at home and in the office. We spare no expense on that. If somebody wants an extra screen for their house—alright, here it is. We'll order it and get it there for you. We're so tuned into that, that we went all Mac back when they were still Intel Macs. And I don't know how much you know about Macs, but they were…  I have a couple. Okay. Yeah, we're Mac people too. Yeah, so they were running Intel processors. Well, Apple decided to build their own processor and moved to the M-chip. And so I bought an M1, and it was like, holy cow, everybody in the company has got to have one of these. And I don't think there was a single one more than two years old at that time. So we replaced them all. Now, the M-series generations themselves—M1, M2, M3, and on—those changes aren't as dramatic as going from Intel to the first M-series chip. But it's still unusual. I said two years, but there are probably people right now with a three-year-old laptop. But we definitely trade them in. That's where the sweet spot is on trade-in value. We rotate them every two to three years and they're out. I think mine is maybe a year old, but I'll probably keep this one for a couple more years.  By the way, you're the first IT company and MSP I've met that doesn't use PCs—you use Macs. Yeah. And I long had this theory that all the IT companies I worked with were always anti-Mac, and I never understood why. And when I got my first Mac, I realized I actually didn't need them anymore since I had the Mac.  Yeah, that's kind of funny because it really started with me during Covid. It may not have been seven years now, but whatever it was, it kind of started with Covid. And for years I was a PC guy. I tried Macs briefly back in the old MacBook days—you know, the white plastic ones? Whatever that was, 15 or more years ago.  Yeah. Classic. Very classic.  Yeah. But what I kept trying to do with a Windows laptop—and I like Dell, I had Dell XPSs, good Dell computers, and we're a Dell partner— What I could never get a Windows computer to do was seamlessly come off a docking station and then plug into another monitor at my house. It would always blue screen or something. So when I went back to a Mac, I was like, “Holy cow, it doesn't break. It doesn't mind being unplugged from a docking station. It just works.” Yeah.  And then all the other things—that they're generally built better, they have a longer lifespan, and they hold their resale value longer, and all of that. Even as old as I was, I forced myself to really get proficient at using a Mac. And when we sent everybody home during Covid, I said, “Well, everybody's going Mac.” And, oh, there was a revolt. And I said, “Just give it a few months.”  Yeah.  About half the office resisted it. And I said, “You gotta try it because I think you'll like it, and if you don't, then we'll deal with it then.” We had Linux people, PC people. So then I said, “Well, maybe we should open it up and let people pick what they want.” Yeah, I love it. Yeah. So our time is coming to an end, but if someone is running on Mac and they're finally talking to an IT service company that's not anti-Mac, and they want to connect with you immediately, where should they go and where can they learn more about Kirkham IronTech and maybe connect with you personally? The website is the best place to go. It's www.kirkhamirontech.com. Just give us a call, fill out a form, let us know what you're thinking, because we want to know what you're thinking and see if there's a fit with the way we do things. Macs started becoming important with executives. That's where we first started seeing it. So even though they may still have to run Windows, the owners and executives wanted to carry Macs for the very reasons I mentioned. So we're perfectly happy with that.  Yeah. Okay. Very good. So if you're listening to this and you enjoyed hearing about how to make your IT work—how to increase ROI, make sure you're doing cybersecurity right, and implement governance so you can use IT as a strategic tool to run your business better—then definitely reach out to Tom Kirkham. Or stay tuned to this show, because you're going to hear from other entrepreneurs who are very smart about business. And preferably do both. Tom, thank you for coming and sharing your wisdom, and thank you for listening.  Oh, it’s been my pleasure, Steve. Important Links: Tom's LinkedIn Tom's website

This week on the Discover Strength Podcast, Luke Carlson reflects on 20 of the most important business lessons he has learned over two decades of building Discover Strength. To celebrate the company's 20th anniversary, Luke steps away from exercise science and instead shares the principles that have shaped Discover Strength's culture, leadership philosophy, and long-term growth strategy.Throughout the episode, Luke breaks down practical lessons on hiring exceptional people, building a values-driven culture, creating clarity around mission and standards, focusing relentlessly on customer experience, and maintaining long-term thinking in business. Drawing inspiration from influential thinkers like Jim Collins, Luke explains how concepts such as “First Who, Then What” became foundational to the success of Discover Strength.Rather than offering trendy business hacks or fitness-industry-specific tactics, the conversation focuses on timeless principles applicable to leaders and organizations in any field. The episode is both a reflection on the journey of Discover Strength and a practical leadership guide for entrepreneurs, managers, and anyone interested in building a high-performing organization with purpose and staying power.Discover Strength offers free Introductory Workouts at any location across the United States. You can schedule your free Introductory Workout HERE !

Ta historia nie jest wyłącznie o sukcesie - jest o powrocie do siebie. Dopiero teraz, po latach doświadczeń w roli założyciela i CEO, nasz gość czuje, że robi coś większego od niego. Sprawia, że czyjeś życie staje się lepsze.Krzysztof Sobczak budował przez lata firmę, która z powodzeniem weszła na giełdę i dysponowała imponującym portfolio klientów. Wydawało się, że jest “skazany na sukces”. A jednak po 11 latach opuścił stanowisko prezesa zarządu i został psychoterapeutą. Nie dlatego, że firma sobie nie radziła. Dlatego, że zdał sobie sprawę, że przez lata prowadził gospodarkę rabunkową na własnym organizmie, a takich jak on jest dookoła wielu.Czego jeszcze dowiesz się z tego odcinka?✅ Co powinieneś/powinnaś zrobić, zanim ciało zdecyduje za Ciebie i pozbawi Cię możliwości pracy? ✅ Czym jest syndrom miłego faceta i w jaki sposób niszczy relacje oraz biznes?✅ Co oznacza "iluzja szczytu" i jak pułapka "jeszcze jednego kamienia milowego" prowadzi nas do kryzysu?✅ Jak rozpoznać, że Twoja firma rośnie Twoim kosztem?✅ Po co mężczyznom kręgi i jak zmieniają ich doświadczenia? 7 na 10 polskich przedsiębiorców przeżyło kryzys psychiczny. ⅓ miała objawy depresji. 13 na 15 samobójstw popełnianych dziennie dokonują mężczyźni. Myślisz, że to nie jest Twój problem i nigdy Cię nie spotka? Śmiemy twierdzić, że możesz się mylić, dlatego obejrzyj ten odcinek - także jeśli jesteś przedsiębiorczą kobietą. ▶️

What if you could decode what truly makes you tick?In part one of this two-part conversation, I'm honored to talk with Jim Collins, author of multiple international bestsellers, including Good to Great and What to Make of a Life. Jim rarely does interviews, which makes this conversation especially meaningful.We explore encodings, the deepest intrinsic capacities that shape who we are, what it means to get in frame, and why even doing what we love comes with a cost.As Jim says, What to Make of a Life is “not a self-help book. It's a self-knowledge book.”Thrive Global Article: Jim Collins on What to Make of a LifeAbout Our Guest:Jim Collins has published multiple international bestsellers that have sold in total more than eleven million copies worldwide, including the perennial favorite Good to Great. His writings and teachings are based on extensive research projects designed to uncover timeless principles of human endeavor and have had a lasting impact across all sectors of society. All of Jim's books share a common thread: the study of people and how they navigate the big questions of leadership and life. You can learn more at www.jimcollins.com. About Lainie:Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, emotional intelligence, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie's client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linktr.ee/lainierowell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.Website - ⁠LainieRowell.com⁠Instagram - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@LainieRowell⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn - @LainieRowellX/Twitter - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@LainieRowell ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Evolving with Gratitude, the book is available ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ And now, Bold Gratitude: The Journal Designed for You and by You is available too!Both Evolving with Gratitude & Bold Gratitude have generous bulk pricing for purchasing 10+ copies delivered to the same location.

https://youtu.be/tU0kHdf7oXo Drew Allen, CEO of Grace Technologies, is driven by a mission to lead a life of adventure and impact. At Grace Technologies, that impact is tangible: the company develops electrical safety and predictive maintenance solutions that help industrial teams prevent downtime, improve productivity, and, most importantly, send workers home safely at the end of the day. We explore Drew's Product Engineering Framework — Clarify the Problem You're Solving, Understand the Constraints, Think from First Principles, Build a Prototype, and Iterate within a Time Limit — a practical approach to innovation in technical product development. Drew explains why rapid iteration beats overbuilding, how constraints can unlock better engineering decisions, and why time-boxing product development prevents teams from getting stuck in endless perfectionism. He also shares how Grace Technologies is expanding into the data center market, where rising power density is creating new safety challenges and new opportunities for growth. — 5 Steps to Engineering Breakthroughs with Drew Allen  Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and today’s guest is Drew Allen, the CEO of Grace Technologies—the leading innovator of electrical safety products and predictive maintenance solutions that help companies maximize productivity and foster a safety culture. Drew, welcome to the show.  Hey, thanks for having me, Steve. I’m excited. I’ve really enjoyed your books, and they’ve had a big impact on our business. So it's great to have this conversation today.  Yeah, glad to have you here. So if you enjoyed the book or read Pinnacle and Summit OS perhaps, then you’re going to be familiar with this question. What is your personal “Why,” and how are you manifesting it Grace Technologies?  So my personal “Why” is to lead a life of adventure and impact. And I think that manifests in our company. We try to be as innovative as possible. Typically, around 30% of our annual sales come from products released within the last two to three years. We try to take risks, not in kind of a willy-nilly way, but we try to be smart about our risk-taking, but still make sure that we’re taking risks and we’re on the forefront of the technology edges. In our business, it’s really easy to see the impact that we have. Not many businesses get to say that we literally send people home at the end of the day. We literally save lives, and we don’t take that responsibility very lightly. And so it’s a little way that we can kind of make a dramatic impact in the world. We get a lot of stories of people who have been going to go to work on an electrical system. They were just moving throughout their day, trying to do their work, and all of a sudden they saw that our unit was indicating and they were about to put their hand on that bus bar or that cable, and they stop and realize, “Oh, there's still power there.” And they could have been either severely injured or dead. And so we get those stories quite frequently, and so it's really impactful to hear that, to know that we're doing that kind of good in the world.Share on X  Yeah, I love that. And yes, I mean, it’s dangerous. My son actually worked for an electrical contractor last year, and they told him the story that they were in big industrial facilities and one of their workers was trying to fix a light and he got shocked. And the only way to save him was to kick the ladder out from under him. He ended up breaking his leg. So it was kind of funny story afterward, but also a very dramatic one at the same time. So yeah, you definitely want to avoid situations like that.  100%.  And I think what you do is really great, and focusing on the safety aspect is very important as well. What I'm wondering—because I'm a framework guy and I'm always looking for new frameworks people have developed—and obviously within the Pinnacle system there are a lot of frameworks. But you’ve been doing this for a few years, and I’m sure that you have come up with your own. So what is your favorite framework—something simple enough for listeners to understand in maybe three to five steps—that could help them improve their business?  My favorite framework really comes from Jim Collins' work on the Flywheel. And I think you reference it in your book as well, Steve. I think if people can see their business—or even their life—through the lens of a flywheel, it becomes really useful. So in our business, our flywheel is relatively simple. And I think there are probably only a limited number of flywheel models companies really operate under. Our version of a product flywheel works like this:  We start with amazing new products and services. If we do that well, we naturally excite our channel partners. When our channel gets excited, they can't help but get us specified by customers. Once we're specified by customers, it grows our revenues, unit sales, and customer base.Share on X And as that happens, it expands the power of the brand, which allows us to set high prices and deliver higher gross margins to be able to reinvest into R&D for amazing new products and services. And I think while maybe there’s a couple of pieces in ours channel-specific or whatever, we found that most of my focus as CEO is just constantly figuring out how do I push those pieces of the flywheel, and where is the current bottleneck in the flywheel? Is the bottleneck getting the specifications? Is the bottleneck the wrong product? One of the challenges in our business is that we have a 12-month product development cycle plus an 8-to-12-month sales cycle for products. So if I miss, I'm basically down for two years. And I don't really know it early enough unless I'm paying close attention to the leading indicators—which we've become much smarter about over the last few years. A lot of business people tend to focus only on lagging indicators, and they're not always clear on what the leading indicators are in their business—or how correlated those leading indicators are to the lagging results.  I'll say this: the most recent releases of Claude have made it incredibly easy to input a bunch of variables and figure out how strongly your leading indicators correlate with your lagging success. I probably haven't done that kind of work since college and deep regression analysis or logarithmic modeling. And now Claude makes it so easy. So if you can identify the leading indicators tied to your future success, and you know there's an 80% or 85% correlation, then that leading indicator is almost as valuable as the lagging indicator itself. And if your lagging indicator is revenue, that gives you a pretty strong signal about what you should actually be focusing on.Share on X Yeah. That's a great way to reverse-engineer those leading indicators from the outcomes you're targeting. I love that. So when you say that one of the flywheel cogs is for people to specify your product, what do you mean by that exactly? We come out with a product, and then we get meetings with large end-user customers. Okay? Our products are really sold into two major markets. One is the industrial market—everything from where things come out of the ground, like oil and gas, pulp and paper, and mining—to all the downstream processing industries, including automotive, tire and rubber, consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, all those kinds of industries like shipbuilding, naval yards, and all those kinds of environments. All of these places have complex electrical and control systems. And when a factory or facility is being designed or upgraded, someone is writing a specification document.  That specification literally defines how everything should be built—including the machinery and the electrical systems. So we want to make sure our products, from an electrical safety perspective, are included in those specification documents. We've been really fortunate to get into some of the world's largest companies' control specificationsShare on X companies like Amazon, Procter & Gamble, GM, and Ford. These large organizations really see the value in our products from both a productivity and a safety standpoint. And that's really the key to our success: driving specifications with large end-user customers. Yeah. So it sounds like when you get specified, then essentially you’re baked in to their product, and then you kind of have, at least for the time being, you have a monopoly of supplying them. Is that the case?  Yeah. And some specifications are a little more open. They may specify our type of device, or they may even list competitors as alternatives. And then it becomes a little more of a street brawl when we're competing. But either way, we want to grow the overall market for products like ours—not just our own products—because we're in the safety business. And I think it's really shortsighted to be selfish about that. I think we have much more opportunity if the overall pie grows than if we focus only on increasing our individual slice of the pie. Of course, I'm going to do the best I can to grow our share. But ultimately, electrical safety and electrical reliability in factories are still major problems. And the number of deaths, injuries, and life-changing accidents we hear about—it continues. We hear those stories all the time, and we don't want those things to happen. Yeah. Love it. So your business is innovation-driven, and you are designing these electrical appliances that increase productivity, reduce risk. What is the major success factor in being able to come up with new products along these lines?  Yeah, so I guess I'll tell you my biggest failure. Okay? I'll use the failure to illustrate the point. That's good. I think I was about 25 or 26 years old, and I was working with a customer—a very large publicly traded company. They liked our product, but they needed it in a different form factor, which meant we had to re-engineer the product, retool it, and go through all the certification processes again. And I just took it hook, line, and sinker. I thought we were really onto something. I probably had delusions of grandeur and thought I was some Steve Jobs-like figure who could just wave a magic wand. And by the way, I don't think that's actually what Steve Jobs did, so I want to put that out there for a minute. I think what we see from the outside as consumers is often not the reality inside the company. So I just want to say that.  But anyway, instead of taking small iterative steps and quickly prototyping and getting feedback, I did a full design based only on feedback from that one customer before cutting tooling and paying all the certification costs. It ended up being about a $400,000 project. And I think we still have inventory from that project—and this was probably 12 years ago or something.  Oh my gosh.  So what have I learned now? The best innovation happens through rapid iteration. A lot of your listeners have probably seen the Elon Musk SpaceX Raptor engine images, right? You have this incredibly complex engine that goes up into space, and then the next version looks much simpler, and the third one looks like it came out of a sci-fi movie. It's almost like the Picasso bull sketches.  There are nine different bulls until Picasso eventually gets it down to two lines, and you still understand it's a bull. Okay? And I think that's what iteration looks like. What you see as a final product from Apple is actually the result of thousands of prototypes, iterations, and constant testing behind the curtain. For me, I want to test with customers directly, because you get much better feedback that way. I think the more rapidly you can prototype, the more rapidly you can iterate and get real customer feedback, the more innovative your product is going to be. I really think that when you try to make too big of a leap all once, you usually can't get there. And I think 10% compounded over time is a much better strategy than trying to go 10X in a single shot. Yeah. It's kind of the Kaizen principle of continuous improvement through small steps. But actually, I was listening to an interview with Jensen Huang, and he said he hated Kaizen because he wanted more first-principles thinking—completely rethinking things from the ground up. And I think Elon Musk does that too. Although honestly, I think he does both, which is really interesting. But I love Kaizen. I think it's a wonderful concept to continually improve things. We do work with SpaceX. We don't do much with NVIDIA—a little bit, but not much. And while you can think from first principles, you still have to iterate on the prototypes, right? Yeah. You have to constantly try things. So you may have a first-principles vision of where you want to go, but you're not going to get there by designing the perfect thing 100% upfront. You get there through iteration. Yeah. So you really need both. That’s a really good point. So Drew, what is it that you are trying to figure out in your business right now?  So over the last 12 to 18 months, our largest orders have started coming through the data center sector. Back in 2015 or 2016, I tried to push into data centers, and we just had no product-market fit. None. Everybody kept talking about the data center business, and I was like, “Well, they're just not using our products. We tried…” But what suddenly changed was the increase in power density inside data centers. And what I mean by that is this: You can now have a hundred megawatts in a traditional data center hall. That's basically the equivalent of multiple oil and gas refineries worth of electrical load inside a single data center hall. A hundred megawatts—yeah.  And so the electrical risk profile has really changed. And because of that, now there is product-market fit. So now I'm trying to figure out: How do I set up the right distribution channels? How do I build the right sales network? Because data centers definitely buy differently than our traditional industrial customers. And then, as CEO, you always have to decide where you're going to focus your time. I've been very intentional about not losing the core identity of Grace through our industrial business. So I've had to build a separate group that really focuses on the data center market. That also means bringing in a board member who really understands the data center space. Right now, though, it's a huge growth area for us, so figuring that out has been super important.  The other thing is that over the last few years, we've launched an incredible number of new products. But a lot of those were what I'd call necessary innovations—things we had to execute on quickly. So now we're finally getting to a point with the engineering team where we can start from a clean sheet of paper again. We can think more deeply about where we really want to go—maybe even from first principles. Because honestly, I feel like we've been operating in a reactive mode for the last few years. So it's going to be really exciting to finally have some white space again and be able to innovate more intentionally for the future. Yeah. So you want to have that sci-fi engine for Grace Technologies that SpaceX has for the rockets, right?  Yeah. That's the goal. And our mission is to accelerate the industrial world to zero downtime and zero harm. Until we get there, it's a pretty lofty goal. And I think it's going to require a lot of innovation to achieve it. So what's the process when you're trying to get to that kind of innovation—when you're rethinking something from first principles? Is there a process you can follow or work through? Or is it more about letting your imagination wander? Like when Albert Einstein came up with the theory of relativity—he was daydreaming in the patent office and suddenly had these insights. What's your process for getting there? So first, we want to be really clear on the problem statement. Getting absolute clarity on what problem we're solving is the first step, right? If you don't know what problem you're solving, there's no amount of engineering you can throw at it that's going to make sense. Second is understanding the constraints. For one of our new product development efforts, we decided to move away from a digital platform and go to a fully analog electrical platform because we realized one of the main constraints was size. And size is really determined by the power supply.  When you run a digital circuit, you're operating at something like 100 to 300 milliamps. If you go to an analog circuit, you're operating at the microamp level. So you're literally at around 10% of the power requirement. And if you're at 10%, you can make the power supply about 90% smaller. Now, it's much easier to do things digitally because you just program the microcontroller. You're not dealing with the art of analog circuitry. So I think that's a good example of thinking from first principles. Okay—we're solving this problem. One of the major problems inside that problem is the size of the unit. How do we reduce the size? Well, we have to reduce the power supply. How do we reduce the power supply? Reduce the power draw from the circuit. How do we reduce the power draw? Go analog. And that's how we got there.  But even then, the amount of prototyping and iteration we've done on that over the last 12 months has probably involved 75 major iterations of the circuit, tons of prototypes, tons of testing, and countless tweaks that probably never even hit my radar. I know I'm getting a little nerdy for the podcast, but I think it's a really good example. And if you take it out of engineering for a minute and look at our sales engine, it works similarly. Ultimately, what drives sales? You have to have unique selling conversations with customers. So everything I focus on becomes: How do I maximize those conversations?  Getting people interested in the product and actually getting to the point where we can sit down and fully tell our story—that's kind of my North Star.Share on X I know that if we increase the number of those conversations, sales will increase. And of course, there's optimization on both sides of the meeting—follow-through, follow-up, competitiveness, lead quality, all of that. But the big North Star in our sales function is: How many unique selling conversations are we having with customers? Okay. I love it. So this is a framework that I’m more excited about than the flywheel because we are almost 400 episodes in. Here is what I heard. So be clear on the problem, step number one. Understand the constraints, step number two. Think from first principles, that’s step number three. Build the prototype, step number four, and perform iterations. Step number five, essentially the optimization. And with the sales engine, it’s kind of a similar process that you described, but less technical perhaps.  Yeah. And one other piece too is that all of this has to be time-constrained.  What do you mean by that?  I think people miss that point. If you don't have a time constraint, it will literally take forever. So inside of your framework, you need a time box, and I think that's really critical. I like what Elon says about timelines. He assigns timelines that he believes have about a 50% probability of being achieved. I think that's actually a really smart way to think about it. And that means that about 50% of the time, you're going to miss the target. But that's okay, because you want that level of tension and flexibility in the system. You still have to be aiming at something. If you don't put a time box around iteration, if you don't set launch dates, product development can drag on forever. For example, we have a major trade show every fall, and we always try to have products ready for that event. That creates a really effective natural time box for us. And if your business doesn't already have natural time boxes, then as CEO, you need to create them. Yeah.  Otherwise, iteration, product development, and even sales initiatives can lose momentum. Sales naturally has monthly, quarterly, and annual cycles. But in engineering especially, having that time box is really important. Yeah. And what I read about Jensen Huang is that one of the innovations he introduced was creating two overlapping time boxes. So instead of having just a single one-year cycle, he created two teams working on separate one-year cycles that were staggered by six months. That way, they could effectively iterate on the product twice as fast. I thought that was amazing. And I also had a client—an engineering software company—whose challenge was that they couldn't launch a product for three years because they were such perfectionists. So we talked about putting a stake in the ground and committing to a release every year. Maybe the scope would have to change, maybe they'd have to narrow it or simplify it, but the release date itself would become a forcing function. And once they did that, their product suddenly started gaining much more traction. That's a fantastic point. Yeah. I was advising one of the companies we're invested in. I was actually on a call with them yesterday, and they're starting to run out of time a little bit, right? And that was literally the conversation we had. “Okay, we had this wish list. We had this dream product-development idea. Now what can we realistically get done in three months?” So we started stripping out everything that couldn't be completed in that timeframe, and those items will move into the next iteration cycle. But I think it's super critical. You've got to put a stake in the ground and force things through. Yeah. Constraints create creativity. Yeah. that's fantastic. So, penultimate question—I have one more just to wrap things up. If you had a magic wand, what would be the one thing you'd want to fix inside your company over the next 12 months? I think we have a lot of relatively new and young salespeople. We operate in a very technical field, and trying to get them to really understand the application space from a technical perspective is difficult. And when you're selling to engineers, they can immediately tell if you don't know what you're talking about. So the challenge becomes: How do you compress 20 years of experience into a brand-new sales or business development person in just a few months? Trying to accelerate that learning curve is probably one of our biggest challenges. We're trying to use AI to help visualize the kinds of equipment our products go on.  And frankly, even after doing this for years, I still run into things I don't fully understand. But I have enough experience that I can have a relatively technical conversation, understand the constraints, and work through the problem set. But compressing that knowledge into a faster training process—that's definitely been hard. I'm also opening a sales and engineering office down in Austin, so I'll be moving there in June. The plan is to build out another R&D facility there. That's one of my major time boxes over the next 12 months—getting that operation fully up and running. But from a more holistic perspective, I think really solving that sales knowledge-transfer problem is critical. And on one of our product lines, honestly, I'd love ideas from listeners.  We have an IoT condition-monitoring product, and we've been very successful at selling pilot programs. What we've found, though, is that it's been much harder than expected to convert those pilots into broader expansion deployments. So we're asking ourselves: Are we making the barrier to entry for the pilots too low? Are we attracting the wrong type of customer—people who don't actually have the authority to make a larger purchase decision? Or are we missing something in the sales process that would better position the expansion after the pilot succeeds? Those are a few of the areas we're really trying to figure out right now. Yeah. Love it. That’s fascinating. So if the listeners would like to learn more about Grace Technologies—or maybe you spark something in their mind and they want to reach out and communicate to you, or have access to someone in your company to answer the questions about the products. Maybe they want to have more safety and more productivity with their electrical safety equipment. Where should they go, and where can they find you? Yeah. You can reach me at drewa@gracetechnologies.com or find me on LinkedIn. I think it’s Allen-Drew is my handle, but Drew Allen on LinkedIn. I love hearing from people. I really enjoy advising startups, especially in the industrial electrical space. If you have a product idea or you’ve got a startup, I do a lot of advisory work, and we’ve invested in a number of startups as well. We’re really passionate about having more innovation in the industrial world. I believe that the reindustrialization of America is super important, and I’m a big proponent, and so love to support companies that are doing cool things in our space.  Oh, that’s fantastic. So if you’re listening to this and you have a startup in the engineering space, then definitely this is your opportunity to get mentored by Drew, and maybe to get opportunities that you don’t have yourself. So reach out to him. And if you just enjoyed this conversation with an entrepreneur who’s innovating fast and who is working from first principles and time boxes and and leveraging constraints, then definitely stay tuned on this channel because I have more wonderful guests coming on every week. So thank you Drew for coming, CEO of Grace Technologies, the leading innovator of electrical safety products and predictive maintenance solutions. So thanks for sharing your wisdom and thanks for listening. Important Links: Drew's LinkedIn Drew's website Drew's email: drewa@gracetechnologies.com

The media team are on tour and are back in John S Kelly's sitting room as they review the weeks papers and have a look back at some of the old shows, of which John S was the host of episode 1 in July 2020 . Tom Hanley,  David Fleming, John S Kelly and host Jim Collins discuss what's in the papers and online concerning matters in Co Clare. We encourage you to support your local media, the Clare Champion, Clare Echo, and online the Clare Herald.  To send a message or comment  to the studio - Message or what's app  on 089 2582647 or email sbcrstudio@gmail.com

- presented by Daragh Leamy, It was station manager of SBCR Jim Collins who chatted all about his  life story from early childhood, to his teaching career and his dream to set up a radio station which of course became Scariff Bay Community Radio.   Originally broadcast as part of Saturday Chronicle 25th April 2026 hosted by Daragh Leamy and Anita Ryan. Saturday Chronicle is Sponsored by JAMES M NASH AND DERG KITCHEN DESIGN http://dergkitchendesign.ie Message or what's app the studio on 089 2582647 or email sbcrstudio@gmail.com

Reflections from host Sarah Olivieri ... The Problem Isn't Change. It's the Size of the Decision. Most nonprofit leaders I talk to are not actually afraid of change. They are stuck between two sizes of it. On one side, a monster decision. Restructure the program. Leave the role. Overhaul the funding model. A move so big it feels reckless to say out loud. On the other side, no change at all. Keep going. Ride it out another quarter. Wait for more information. Wait for the board. Wait for a better moment. What nobody offers is the middle option. The small, cheap, fast, reversible move whose only job is to teach you something. That option is almost always the right one, and it is almost always missing from the conversation. Where This Thinking Came From I've been turning this over for a while. I recently had a conversation about exactly this with Ashley Jablow, who works with leaders and teams in transition and has deep training in design thinking. It sharpened how I think about why change gets stuck inside nonprofits and what actually unsticks it. The short version: the problem isn't that leaders lack courage. The problem is that the only option on the table is too expensive to say yes to. Change Is Neutral. The Story You Wrap Around It Isn't. Change is constantly happening. Seasons turn. Budgets shift. Staff come and go. A funder's priorities drift. A board member rolls off. None of that is catastrophic on its own. What makes change feel charged is the story we attach to it. In the nonprofit sector, that story is usually some version of: change is dangerous, so we should avoid it. That story hardens into a posture. The posture becomes the culture. The culture becomes the reason your organization cannot move. In short: Change is constant and mostly neutral. What makes it feel dangerous is the interpretation the organization layers on top. Culture that treats change as risky will struggle to adapt even when adaptation is overdue. If you want an organization that can respond to what the world is actually doing, you have to separate the event from the story. The Hidden Cost of "Staying Put" Here is the belief I keep running into inside nonprofits: doing nothing is the safe option. Especially with money. Especially with programs that "have always worked." Especially when funders are watching. The truth is, staying put is not neutral. It has a cost, and that cost is usually larger than the one people are trying to avoid. If a program is slowly losing relevance and you do not adjust, the cost shows up later as a funding cliff. If a leader is quietly burning out and the system does not adapt, the cost shows up as a crisis hire. If a revenue model depends on one big grant and you do not diversify, the cost shows up when that grant does not renew. In short: Inaction is not the absence of risk. It is a different kind of risk. The cost of standing still usually arrives later and bigger. Every "we'll deal with that next year" is a decision, not a non-decision. When leaders only weigh the risk of moving, they miss half the math. Why Nonprofits Over-Index on the Risk of Moving Two structural things push nonprofits toward inaction. The first is the donor stewardship story. Somewhere along the way, "be a good steward of donor money" got translated into "never take risks with money." That is not what stewardship means. Stewardship means using resources wisely in service of the mission. Sometimes that means holding the line. Sometimes it means making a bet. The second is harder to see, and it matters more. In most nonprofits, the people with the biggest formal role in risky decisions, the board, do not experience the consequences of those decisions. The staff does. The community does. The executive director does. The board votes and goes home. So when a decision comes with risk, the board defaults to "let's not do that." To them, sitting still feels responsible. To the people running the organization every day, sitting still might be the thing burning the building down. In short: Stewardship is not a synonym for risk avoidance. The people voting on risky decisions in nonprofits often do not bear the consequences. The people who bear the consequences are usually best positioned to lead the decision. Decisions belong, as much as possible, with the people who will live inside their outcomes. That is not a revolutionary idea. It is just rarely the way nonprofit governance actually operates. The Move That Makes Change Manageable This is where the size of the decision matters. When every change is framed as a cannon shot, people freeze. The stakes are too high, the ambiguity too wide, the board too uncomfortable. So nothing moves. But there is another option. Jim Collins calls it firing bullets before cannons. Ashley Jablow frames it as a design thinking question. It is the same idea in different clothes. Ask what is the smallest, fastest, cheapest thing I could do right now to learn the most? That is a different size of decision. It does not require a board vote. It does not require a three year strategic plan. It does not require certainty. It only requires that you be willing to run a small experiment and read the results. In short: The question to ask before any big change is: what's the smallest move I could make to learn the most? A bullet is cheap. A cannon is expensive. Fire bullets first. Experiments replace certainty with evidence. One line from that conversation with Ashley has stayed with me: "What is the smallest, fastest, cheapest thing that you could do or try right now in order to learn the most?" What I appreciate about this framing is that it does not ask the leader to be brave. It asks them to be curious. It shrinks the change until it fits inside the capacity the organization actually has, and then it uses the result of that small move to decide the next one. That is how sustainable change actually works. Not through heroic leaps. Through a chain of small moves that each teach you something. Self-Trust Is the Quiet Currency of Change There is a second thing small experiments do that nobody talks about, and it may be more important than the learning itself. They build self-trust. Every small move you make and see through teaches you that you are a person who follows through. Every small experiment that works teaches you that your instincts are worth listening to. Every small experiment that fails teaches you that failure is survivable and useful. You cannot lead a big change if you do not trust yourself to make a small one. And most leaders who feel stuck are not missing strategy. They are missing the lived experience of their own follow-through. In short: Small experiments are also self-trust training. Leaders who have never run a small move do not trust themselves with a big one. Evidence of your own follow-through is what makes confidence durable. This is why the "do one small thing" advice is not soft advice. It is structural. It is how capacity gets built. Another moment from the conversation sat with me here. Ashley named a question she said often hides under any change effort, whether leaders realize it or not: "Can I trust myself to actually accomplish this and follow through?" Most leaders never say that question out loud. So the answer never gets built. Small experiments are how you build the answer. What This Makes Possible When leaders stop sizing every change as either "do nothing" or "blow it up," the whole posture of the organization changes. What shifts: Change stops being a crisis event and becomes a practice. Decisions get made closer to the people who live with the outcomes. Self-trust builds through reps, not through a pep talk. The organization starts learning instead of defending. The work is not lighter. It is just better aimed. Closing This isn't about being braver. It's about picking a smaller move. Nonprofits can adapt without crisis. They can change without drama. They can build self-trust through evidence instead of hoping for it. Not by betting the whole organization on one cannon shot, but by firing a lot of cheap, honest bullets and paying attention to where they land.

In this episode of Better Business, Better Life, Debra Chantry-Taylor explores why having your best year in business can actually become one of the most dangerous moments for a leadership team.  Drawing on both her experience working with entrepreneurs and the research from Jim Collins, Debra explains how success often creates complacency, weakens discipline, and slowly introduces the behaviours that eventually lead businesses into decline.  She walks through the five stages that many businesses experience after a major period of success. From arrogance built on past wins, to chasing growth without focus, explaining away problems, searching for a saviour, and eventually giving up quietly, Debra highlights how decline is rarely sudden. Instead, it happens gradually when leadership teams stop asking hard questions and start avoiding uncomfortable truths.  Throughout the episode, Debra shares why the businesses that continue scaling successfully are the ones that stay humble, disciplined, and curious, even after major wins. She explains how leadership teams often begin to lose traction when meetings become too polite, scorecards are ignored, and difficult conversations stop happening.  Debra also discusses the dangers of relying on “saviour hires” to fix deeper systemic issues, and why true growth comes from maintaining strong leadership discipline, accountability, and honest communication across the business.  This episode is a powerful reminder that success should never reduce focus or discipline. The businesses that continue to grow after their best year are the ones willing to stay honest, challenge themselves, and keep evolving long after the celebrations are over.         CONNECT WITH DEBRA:    ___________________________________________          ►Debra Chantry-Taylor is a Certified EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner ►Connect with Debra: debra@businessaction.com.au  ►See how she can help you: https://businessaction.co.nz/  ►Claim Your Free E-Book: https://www.businessaction.co.nz/free-e-book/        Episode 271 Chapters:     00:00 – Introduction 00:39 – The Danger of Success in Business   02:24 – Stages of Decline After Success   05:16 – Preventing Decline After Success   06:09 – Ad Lib Questions and Answers   10:22 – Spotting Early Signs of Decline   12:12 – Final Advice for CEOs   

NEW BOOK -- The Price of Becoming Buy it -- www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. Jim Collins is the author of some of the most influential business books ever written — Good to Great, Built to Last, and Great by Choice. His concepts have become part of the leadership vocabulary. Level 5 Leadership. The Flywheel. First Who, Then What. The Hedgehog Concept. He spent more than a decade at Stanford as a professor and has advised CEOs, four-star generals, and heads of state. His new book is What to Make of a Life: Cliffs, Fog, Fire, and the Self-Knowledge Imperative. It is the product of ten years of research and is the most personal thing he has ever written. We flew to Boulder, Colorado, to record this one in person with Jim. Key Learnings Jim's grandfather wrote his own death story. Jimmy Collins was a test pilot in the 1930s. He told Jim's grandmother, Dolores, that if he died, she should pull the last chapter from his desk and publish it. He died in a test crash. After the service, she pulled out the chapter. The title was "I'm Dead." The last chapter, written in first person, described the plane coming out of the sky, the screaming wings, the crash. The final words, by his own pen: "I am dead now." For seven decades, his grandmother never cried. When Jim asked her in her nineties to tell the story of his grandfather, she cried and said, "Thank you for that. I've never cried before." She'd been a single mom in the middle of the Depression. Of all the things Jim feels good about in his life, asking her to tell that story before she died at almost 100 years old is one he's most proud of. A cliff is an event that alters the trajectory of your life and forces you to reconstruct everything that comes after. Jim's first big cliff: he lost his father while his father was still alive. Jim's father took the family to San Francisco in the 1960s. They lived a few houses down from Haight Street. When a man was shot dead on their doorstep, Jim's mom moved them to Boulder. They lived in a cold basement with cots and a hot plate. They couldn't afford a Christmas tree, so Jim and his brother rolled a boulder into the basement and called it their Christmas rock. The Greyhound bus moment. In high school, Jim took a Thanksgiving turkey on a Greyhound bus down to New Mexico, where his father was living in an adobe hut with a dirt floor. He had this romantic vision: they'd cook the turkey, share Thanksgiving, bond as father and son. The whole weekend, his father had no interest in him. He spent it trying to convince Jim to convince his grandmother to give him money. On the bus ride home, looking out the window into the fog, Jim realized: there will never, ever be a father there. No male role models. No frameworks. No guidance. "I've got this one life. What do I do with it?" The inflection point in Jim's life is Joanne. They got engaged four days after their first date. He'd admired her from afar for years but never had the courage to ask her out. Once they were together, Jim began a conscious process: I need to become a person worthy of being married to her. He didn't know exactly what that meant or how to get there. But he knew that was the work. Forty-six years later, it's still a never-ending journey. What Joanne does brilliantly: she sees what needs attention. Jim is encoded to hear it. Someone once asked Joanne what she thought Jim's greatest strength was. She said: "Jim takes critical feedback better than any person I've ever met." Joanne sees what needs attention. Jim hears it. Then they adapt and adjust. That's the inner flywheel of their marriage. Circle the wagons together. Guns pointing out, never at each other. When life gets really difficult, whether it's disease or other cliffs. You are always together. Always on the inside of the wagons. Never aimed at each other. Joanne won the 1985 Hawaii Ironman by 92 seconds. With a hamstring injury that limited her running training to 16 miles a week, she came off the bike with a 10-minute lead. Then mile by mile, the lead shrank. Nine minutes. Eight. Seven. With a few miles left, she stopped in the middle of the lava field, massaging her legs, almost pleading with them to run. She looked up at the sky. Then her gaze fixed somewhere down the road. She started to run. You're racing for self-respect. Joanne told Jim afterward: in the end, you're racing to know that you couldn't have run a step faster. Only you'll know. If you know you couldn't have run a step faster, that's actually winning. When Jim writes, he's on the lava fields. When he finishes a book, he wants to know he couldn't have written one sentence better. When you're on the lava fields, this is the moment you want to quit. Don't. Writing is thinking. When the writing isn't working, the thinking isn't clear. Go back to the data. Find the through-line. There are three types of luck: What luck. A cancer diagnosis. A guitar left in an empty house. An event that breaks your way. Who luck. The people who walk into your life. Joanne. Morten Hansen. Jerry Porras. Bill Lazier. Zeit luck. When what you're doing intersects with the surrounding zeitgeist. Jimmy Page was in Surrey when the British rock explosion happened. Luck is an event you didn't cause, with significant consequences, and an element of surprise. The big winners weren't luckier. They had a higher return on luck. What you do with luck events matters more than the luck itself. Bill Lazier: the closest thing to a father Jim ever had. Jim ended up in Bill's class at Stanford because the class he was trying to take was full. The random course-sorting mechanism threw him into the first class Bill ever taught. Pure WHO luck. Jim did not cause that.  Discover your encodings. An encoding is a durable capacity of your intrinsic construction that resides within, awaiting discovery through the experiences of life.  Jim has done over 300 online courses on every imaginable subject. Constitutional law. Napoleon. World War I. The history of China. He started them to learn how to teach. Then his curiosity took over. That's what an encoding looks like in the wild. You have a constellation of encodings. Like stars. When your life captures a bright set of those encodings, you're in frame. When it doesn't, you're out of frame. The same person can look amazing in frame and not very amazing out of frame. The most important finding from this book: don't follow anyone else's advice. Their advice is well-meaning. It may have worked beautifully for them. But it worked for them because it flowed from their encodings. And their encodings are not your encodings. Barbara McClintock and Grace Hopper. Two women who won the Nobel Prize and shaped computer science. McClintock was encoded for solitary work. She didn't even have a phone. She heard about her Nobel Prize on the radio. Hopper was encoded to work through people. She kept a pirate flag in her office and once stole furniture for her team in the middle of the night. Two completely different encodings. What they shared: their lives were in alignment with their encodings. Leadership is the art of getting people to want to do what must be done. It's not a trait. It's a choice. Anyone in any organization can lead, depending on their desire to make a difference. Nobody needs to wait for a title. Ryan's encoding is "the relentless persistence of invitation." Jim observed that Ryan has incredible encodings for what he'd describe as attractive persistence. Not pushy. Not aggressive. But persistent and welcoming. The invitation never goes away. The way you lead should be different from everyone else. Because you are encoded differently. Trust your encodings, not their playbook. Roger Sherman saved the U.S. Constitution. Twice. He created the bicameral legislature compromise. He insisted the Bill of Rights be amendments, not rewrites. Yet most people don't know his name. He almost never spoke. He listened in committees and waited for the precise moment to introduce just the right point to turn American history. Quiet. Behind the scenes. Uncharismatic. Unglamorous. Enormously effective. That was his encoding. You should largely ignore what other successful leaders did. It's marvelous to listen to. It might give you ideas. But everything that worked for them reflected their encodings, not yours. The work isn't to copy their playbook. The work is to discover your encodings and trust them. The color of Jim's fire changed. When he was younger, his fuel was rage, fury, and a sense of terror with no safety net. He used to worry that if he ever lost it, he'd lose his drive. What replaced it was a different kind of fire: the joy of curiosity, of being lost in giant projects, of marvelous conversations, of sharing what he's learned. His drive is higher than ever. It just feels a lot better now. The 3x3 reflective practice. After almost any conversation, teaching moment, or significant interaction, Jim writes down three things that went well and three things he could have done better. He's done it for years. He's now systematizing it. He doesn't pause to celebrate. He pauses to learn quickly and move on. At the top of Jim's notes for this conversation: "The biggest reminder for today, reconnecting with an old friend." That's the celebration. What could be a better celebration than reconnecting with somebody you've had marvelous conversations with? Reflection Questions What is your most significant cliff? What did you reconstruct on the other side, and what are you still rebuilding? What are your encodings? Not what you've been told you should be, but what genuinely flows from your intrinsic construction. When have you felt most in frame? Like Jim with Joanne, is there a person or purpose you are actively trying to become worthy of? What would that work look like this week? More Learning #397: Jim Collins - Creating Your Generosity Flywheel, Make the Trust Wager (Part 1)#398: Jim Collins - Creating Your Generosity Flywheel, Make the Trust Wager (Part 2) #216: Jim Collins - How to Go From Good to Great  

U23B semi final played at 3pm Sunday 10th May 2026 in Freshford Kilkenny. Match commentary Patsy Fahy and Nicholas Rynne on analysis, introduced by Jim Collins -00.00 intro and teams -04.44 first half -36.08 first half analysis -39.55 second half -01.15.30 end of game analysis -1.16.40 Eugene Foudy Clare Manager -1.21.02 Damien Roche Wexford Manager    

This week on ScaleUp Radio Shorts, Kevin Brent and Louise Blunt unpack two fascinating conversations with founders operating in completely different worlds — yet connected by one powerful idea: Business success still comes down to people. On one side is Bob Ferguson — city councilman, long-standing business owner, and leader of what he calls an "all-volunteer army" through his network marketing organisation in Fairfield, Iowa. On the other is Priyanka Rao — immigrant tech founder and creator of MicroInterns, an innovative platform connecting students with startups through short-term, skills-based micro-internships. Together, their stories reveal extraordinary lessons around: AI and the future of hiring Leadership without ego Mental fitness and resilience Building ecosystems that scale Why culture matters more than credentials The importance of asking for help Interdependence in business growth Key Talking Points AI is changing recruitment — but not necessarily for the better Priyanka explains how businesses are increasingly using AI to write job descriptions while candidates use AI to create CVs — leaving "bots talking to bots". Her solution? Creating "tamper-proof micro-skill passports" through real-world startup projects that prove capability beyond keyword matching. Leadership is about making people want to be there Bob Ferguson shares why traditional command-and-control leadership simply doesn't work when leading independent teams and volunteers. He explores: Adam Grant's concept of "other-ish givers" Jim Collins' "Level 5 leadership" The importance of creating workplaces where people feel valued and included Resilience forged through adversity Priyanka shares the deeply personal story behind launching MicroInterns — including the Christmas period where she had just £5.45 left in her bank account while struggling to find work after university. From that experience came her powerful S.A.F.E framework: Start before you're ready Ask for help Fail fast Experiment Why ecosystems matter Both guests highlight the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people, partnerships and communities. Whether it's: Scottish startup support networks University partnerships Civic ecosystems Peer collaboration Arts and entrepreneurial communities …neither founder believes success happens in isolation. Memorable Quotes From The Episode "You can't have bots talking to bots and expect to truly understand people." "Make your workplace somewhere people want to be — not somewhere they have to be." "The only thing that is certain is change." "If you want something, ask for it. The worst they can say is no." Resources & Mentions Give and Take — Adam Grant Level 5 Leadership — Jim Collins Stephen Covey's concept of interdependence Transcendental Meditation (TM) MicroInterns Smart90® G90 Summit About ScaleUp Radio ScaleUp Radio brings together founders, entrepreneurs and scale-up leaders to share practical insights, honest experiences and lessons from building ambitious businesses. Produced with the aid of AI This episode and its supporting content were produced with the aid of Artificial Intelligence tools, alongside human research, editing and creative direction.  

News and events from around East Clare for the weekend  of the 2nd-3rd May 2026   -13.35 Weather forecast  sponsored by Paddy Punch engineering Scariff, read by Jim Collins  News sponsored by Boru Entertainment https://linktr.ee/boruentertainment

Ozark Gospel Podcast - Episode 69 - The Seven Cries of Christ with special guest Jim Collins!

-Pat O'Brien, David Fleming and host Jim Collins discuss what's in the papers and online concerning matters in Co Clare. We encourage you to support your local media, the Clare Champion, Clare Echo, and online the Clare Herald.  To send a message or comment  to the studio - Message or what's app  on 089 2582647 or email sbcrstudio@gmail.com

Introduction How do you define greatness? What makes someone or an organization great? Jim Collins speaks of the Level 5 leader who “channels their ego needs away from themselves and whose ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.” Robert Greenleaf spoke of the servant leader whose “primary role is to serve others — putting the needs, growth, and well-being of their people first”. The right kind of leadership is essential to great and sustained success. The time has come for us to engage in an in-depth study of the most relevant person who has ever lived: Jesus Christ.  And in my view, the best way to do that is to explore one of the four Gospel accounts we have in the New Testament. “Why did Jesus come?” Matthew's gospel account tells us that Jesus came “not to abolish the Law (Torah) or the Prophets but to fulfill them.” (Matt. 5:17-18). Dr. Luke records in his gospel account that Jesus came to “seek and save that which was lost.” (Luke 19:9-10). And the Apostle John quotes Jesus as saying that “I came so that they would have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10). Mark tells us that “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45). Jesus was the original Level 5 leader, the original Servant Leader. He not only taught about what greatness is but also lived it out to the point of the ultimate sacrifice. He came to serve us and for our benefit, but ultimately, He came to serve God the Father in His ultimate plan of redemption. Our new series is a study of Mark's Gospel account titled “Jesus, the Servant of Yahweh.” Let's get started. Watch the Video Version of the Lesson Here Date, Audience, and Theme Timeline About the Author Credits Music: How Deep the Father’s Love for Us by Stuart Townsend Performed by Stacey Figueroa

While we often think of life as linear, my guest's own life, along with a decade of research, has taught him that it's anything but. In his latest book, What to Make of a Life, Jim Collins unpacks the cyclical pattern life actually unfolds in, and how to navigate it. He explains how we all go through periods of “fog” — times of disorientation and uncertainty — at least three times: in youth, after a life-changing “cliff” event, and as we move through midlife into older age. We find our way out of these fogs by what Jim calls coming into “frame” — aligning what you're built to do with what you actually do in a way that feels enlivening and meaningful. And Jim unpacks the three elements that help you find, and re-find, this frame over the course of your life.Along the way, Jim shares case studies of these principles at work, and we explore the role of luck, the inevitability of drudgery (even in work you love), and how to keep your inner fire lit over the long haul.Resources Related to the PodcastGood to Great by Jim CollinsAll Rise: The Remarkable Journey of Alan Page by Bill McGraneSelf-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society by John W. GardnerSunday Firesides: You Never Know How Many Chapters Are Still to ComeSunday Firesides: Do the Right Thing, for Right NowAoM Article: The 5 Best AoM Podcast Episodes on Finding Meaning and PurposeAoM series on finding your life's vocationConnect With Jim CollinsJim's websiteSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When leadership researcher Jim Collins was choosing a career, he used an unusual method: he studied himself like a scientist. In this episode, Adam and Jim dive into the techniques for self-study and how self-comparison can be more effective than comparison to others. Jim shares takeaways from his investigation of people who have found their callings, and highlights how he's learned to stop being disappointed by others. They also rethink the relationship between freedom and responsibility.Featured guestFollow Jim Collins at jimcollins.com/Buy Jim's book, What to Make of a LifeConnect with the teamFollow Adam on Instagram, LinkedIn, and at adamgrant.net/Subscribe to Adam's substackWatch ReThinking videos on YouTube at TEDAudioCollectiveFollow TED on X, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTokReThinking is produced by Cosmic Standard. Our Senior Producer is Jessica Glazer, our Engineer is Aja Simpson, our Technical Director is Jacob Winik, and our Executive Producer is Eliza Smith.For the full text transcript, visit ted.com/podcasts/rethinking-with-adam-grant-transcriptsLearn more about our flagship conference happening this April at attend.ted.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Introduced by Jim Collins -00.23  MATCH REPORT -  Clare V Kerry MUNSTER Senior Football CHAMPIONSHIP report by Nicholas Rynne -03.04  MATCH REPORT -  Whitegate v Inagh Kilnamona Division 2 League  Match report by Jack Treacy -04.04  MATCH REPORT -  Broadford v Newmarket on Fergus Division 1A Clare Cup report by Declan Teefy -04.04  MATCH REPORT -  Clare v Tipperary Munster U20 Championship report by Nicholas Rynne -07.55 TUS Senior Championship Hurling Draw.   Originally broadcast 25th April 2026

Introduced by Jim Collins -00.47  MATCH REPORT - CLARE V WATERFORD MUNSTER SENIOR HURLNG CHAMPIONSHIP report by Nicholas Rynne -06.28  MATCH REPORT -  CLARE V WATERFORD MUNSTER SENIOR Camogie CHAMPIONSHIP report by Pat McNamara -10.45 Interview Clare Camogie Manaager Eugene Foudy. Interview by Patsy Fahy -16.06 Feakle Killanena v Inagh Kilnamona Club Camogie Regort by Pauline McNamara  -17.16 Scariff Ogonnelloe Round 3 and 4 Senior and Junior match reports Report by Paschal Sheedy -20.35 Rugby roundup by Pat O'Brien Originally broadcast 18th April 2026

It is a question just about everyone confronts in their life, and it centers on how we find our way in the world. How do we deal with challenges that can radically change a life? And what comes next? Author Jim Collins returns to Commonwealth Club World Affairs to share his lessons on constructing—and reconstructing—a life through those “cliff moment” challenges and transitions that come up repeatedly in our lives. Collins devoted a decade to studying these questions and to minutely analyzing those moments when life flips from clarity to confusion and casts us into a befuddling fog. He followed people in side-by-side positions who shared “cliffs,” and he analyzes the different decisions people made and the divergent paths taken. Such as two rock musicians facing a future without the group that brought them success. Or two public figures who endured scandal and then had to figure out how to rebuild their lives. Two suffragists achieved their big goal—and then had to decide out what to do next. Then there are two figure skaters scoping out a new life's purpose for their post-Olympic careers.  From Collins' studies, he developed a framework for figuring out how a life can be rebuilt and constantly renewed. Come hear him for yourself and hear his deeply researched prescription for discovering deeply fulfilling roles in life, enduring tough times and even pivotal events, and building personal momentum, decade after decade, throughout life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of the Grow A Small Business Podcast, host Troy Trewin interviews Michael Harvey, founder of MDH Accounting, shares how he grew his business from a spare bedroom startup into a multi-service firm with 25+ team members and nearly $5 million in annual revenue through steady, organic growth and smart hiring. He explains the power of networking, word-of-mouth referrals, and staying close to clients to build long-term trust and consistent growth. The conversation highlights how developing people, supporting flexible work, and focusing on team strengths became key drivers of sustainable success. Michael also reflects on major challenges, including scaling teams, adopting new technology, and adapting to the rise of AI in accounting and advisory services. Ultimately, he emphasizes that true business success comes from continuous learning, strong relationships, and helping other small business owners achieve their wins. Why would you wait any longer to start living the lifestyle you signed up for? Balance your health, wealth, relationships and business growth. And focus your time and energy and make the most of this year. Let's get into it by clicking here. Troy delves into our guest's startup journey, their perception of success, industry reconsideration, and the pivotal stress point during business expansion. They discuss the joys of small business growth, vital entrepreneurial habits, and strategies for team building, encompassing wins, blunders, and invaluable advice. And a snapshot of the final five Grow A Small Business Questions: What do you think is the hardest thing in growing a small business? Michael Harvey believes one of the hardest parts of growing a small business is managing the transition from having just a few employees to building a larger team, where hiring, training, and paying wages can feel stressful and uncertain. He also highlights that opening new branches and handling different team cultures adds unexpected complexity. Another major challenge he faced was keeping strong client relationships while adopting new technology, as efficiency can sometimes reduce the personal touch that customers value most. What's your favorite business book that has helped you the most? Michael Harvey says his favorite business books that helped him the most are Good to Great by Jim Collins, along with The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni. He shared that Good to Great was an early revelation for him, while The Advantage is a book he regularly revisits because of its strong focus on culture and team success in business. Are there any great podcasts or online learning resources you'd recommend to help grow a small business? Michael Harvey recommends tuning into the podcast The Imperfects, even though it isn't strictly business-focused. He says he listens to it regularly because of the inspiring guests and meaningful topics, particularly those connected to The Resilience Project, which motivates him indirectly as a business owner. He also highlights that much of his learning comes from networking with other professionals and learning from real conversations, rather than relying only on formal online tools. What tool or resource would you recommend to grow a small business? Michael Harvey recommends using a simple one-page planning tool, where you summarize your key business goals and priorities onto a single page to stay focused. He believes the real value comes from cutting through unnecessary details and clearly identifying the number one issue your business needs to solve. This approach helps business owners stay clear, decisive, and action-oriented instead of getting lost in too much information. What advice would you give yourself on day one of starting out in business? Michael Harvey says that if he could go back to day one, he would remind himself to enjoy each moment and celebrate milestones along the way instead of always chasing the next goal. He admits he was so driven early on that he often missed the joy of progress. His advice is to enjoy the journey, stay humble, and build a business that you genuinely enjoy rather than feeling trapped in it.  Book a 20-minute Growth Chat with Troy Trewin to see if you qualify for our upcoming course. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your small business to new heights! Enjoyed the podcast? Please leave a review on iTunes or your preferred platform. Your feedback helps more small business owners discover our podcast and embark on their business growth journey.     Quotable quotes from our special Grow A Small Business podcast guest: Growth becomes easier when you focus on solving the one problem that matters most — Michael Harvey Technology can speed up your business, but relationships are what keep it alive — Michael Harvey A simple, clear plan beats a complicated strategy that never gets used — Michael Harvey  

In this episode, host Josh interviews Amazon expert Shannon Roddy about strategies for building, growing, and protecting successful Amazon brands. Shannon emphasizes the importance of product quality, authentic brand storytelling through images and videos, and adapting product lines based on customer feedback. He shares practical tips for scaling from 7 to 8 figures, highlights the need for continuous optimization, and discusses protecting intellectual property. Shannon also recommends resources like Avenue Seven Media's free checklist and influential figures in e-commerce. The episode offers actionable advice and inspiration for Amazon sellers aiming for long-term growth.Chapters:Introduction & Guest Background (00:00:00)Josh introduces Shannon Roddy, his background, and expertise in Amazon brand building.Brand Building Fundamentals (00:00:41)Discussion on the importance of value, understanding the market, and showcasing brand identity on Amazon.Showcasing Brand Identity on Amazon (00:02:11)Advice on using images, infographics, and videos to communicate brand mission and story.Quality Product as Foundation (00:02:32)Emphasizes the necessity of having a great product before focusing on branding and marketing.Adapting Brand Presentation to Audience (00:03:03)Examples of tailoring images, content, and style to fit the brand and resonate with customers.Learning from Customer Feedback (00:04:01)Importance of reviewing customer feedback and adapting listings to highlight what customers value.Continuous Optimization & Discovery (00:04:57)Brand building as an ongoing process of discovery and adaptation based on customer needs.Adapting and Expanding Product Lines (00:05:52)Necessity of updating listings, ads, and product lines to stay competitive and grow.Executing the Fundamentals (00:06:46)Success on Amazon comes from consistently executing business fundamentals, not shortcuts.Case Study: Table Mate (00:07:42)Example of a brand that grew by expanding and adapting its product line.Three Actionable Takeaways (00:08:28)Summary of key actions: define and showcase brand, innovate and expand, and protect your business.Protecting Your Brand (00:10:59)Discussion on intellectual property, defensibility, and creative ways to protect products and campaigns.Most Influential Book (00:11:25)Shannon recommends "Good to Great" by Jim Collins and explains its impact.Favorite Productivity Tool (00:12:28)Shannon highlights Calendly for scheduling and its new features that improve efficiency.Most Admired E-commerce Leader (00:13:37)Shannon names Jason Boyce as a respected leader and advocate for Amazon sellers.Avenue Seven Media & Free Resource (00:15:16)Information on Avenue Seven Media and a free checklist resource for Amazon sellers.Episode Wrap-Up (00:15:55)Closing thanks and final remarks from both Josh and Shannon.Links and Mentions:Tools and Websites  "Avenue Seven Media": "00:15:16"  "Calendly": "00:12:28"Free Resource  "Free Checklist (128 Things)": "00:15:43"Books  "Good to Great by Jim Collins": "00:11:35"People Mentioned  "Shannon Roddy": "00:00:00"  "Jason Boyce": "00:13:37"Transcript:Josh 00:00:00  Today I'm super excited to introduce you to Shannon Roddy. Shannon is an Amazon expert. He's a speaker and a director of business development at Avenue seven media. He founded Marketplace Seller Courses, home of the Amazon Brand Success Academy, and has consulted with over 200 companies and individuals to launch, grow and protect their Amazon brands. Shannon is a passionate innovator who loves to inspire others to achieve greatness and his family. Currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia. So with that, welcome to the show, Shannon. Hey, Josh.Shannon 00:00:34  Thanks so much for having me. I've been really excited. We planned this a several months back, so something I've definitely been looking forward to.Josh 00:00:41  I am of the same agreement to yourself, Shannon, that there is more than enough room for all of us to compete. but to your point, you've got to bring value to the market, right? Long gone are the days, especially on Amazon, of just creating another meta product, and especially if you're in the US, like good luck trying to find something cheaper and more efficient.Josh 00:01:05  Process like that's not your capability, right? But what you can do. And here's where a lot of the overseas competitors, you know, fail to kind of compete with us on. They don't understand our market, period. Yeah. They don't they don't understand the end consumer. All they know how to do is to make things cheaply. Right. Yeah. And so I think that's a that's a big mindset shift. Number one is approach everything even new product opportunities as to okay, here's what's out there in the market. But it's probably not serving everybody the right way. So bring something new to the market. But I want to wrap up this whole brand building thing. I know we've spent a lot of time on it, but I want to wrap it up by by one kind of, you know, action item here with you, Shannon, as you talked about specifically on Amazon being able to showcase who your brand is, what you stand for is your recommendation that you take one of your listing images and you turn it into this kind of infographic or lifestyle image.Josh 00:02:11  and you kind of state your either your company mission or what your brand is about there. And then do you create a video, right. And obviously there's A+ content and premium A+ content. Like where what's your recommendation for like a seller? That's like I have none of that today. What should they actually go do?Shannon 00:02:32  Yeah. I mean, you know, the one last piece to this. Again, you can't build a great brand if you don't have a great product, right? The foundation is you've got to have a quality product. Even if you sell it well, the reviews will come out in the end. Right. So I want to just, you know, go back and lay the foundation. You got to have a great product for any of this to work, you know. And so once you've got a great product, it really is about showcasing it. And and again, I think the answer is it depends. It depends on the brand. I worked with the tattoo company. They were very much about lifestyle.Shannon 00:03:03  They hired tons of influencers out there. They had this very sort of sexy avant garde motif. And so the lifestyle images conveyed that. But they had things like, look, we don't do animal testing. It's cruelty free. It doesn't have these sort of nasty ingredients in it. And so it wasn't like one image that housed everything. It was sort of telling that story through the different product images and reinforcing the A+ content. And I think the video was just lifestyle, right? So that was their sort of style was the way to translate their brand to Amazon. And that's again, that's sort of what we do at Avenue seven because it's not a copy and paste platform. Right. You're really taking the essence of the brand and the product and translate it into Amazon. And there's, you know, their style was very minimalistic. Their bullet points were only one line long. And people go, oh, well, that's terrible for SEO. That's never going to convert. You have to do paragraphs, you gotta keyword stuff.

En este episodio reflexionamos sobre una de las trampas más costosas del mundo moderno: la promesa del progreso instantáneo. Vivimos rodeados de métodos exprés, transformaciones en semanas y resultados inmediatos que, lejos de acelerar el éxito, generan frustración, abandono y el temido efecto rebote. A través del concepto del "volante pesado" de Jim Collins y su aplicación en finanzas personales, deportes, relaciones y salud, exploramos por qué los grandes logros siempre son hijos de la constancia acumulada y no del sprint inicial.

Avec Ben, Mike et l'invité spécial Fabrice Croiseaux (https://fabrice.io/, https://www.linkedin.com/in/fcroiseaux/ ) Ben: Xooglers on key.ai About Key | Empowering Professional Growth Fabrice - What's new in AI ? ? How do you use AI ??Fabrice - What's new in Blockchain ? PARIS BLOCKCHAIN WEEK 2026 NEWSAnthropic Claude Mythos new model Claude Mythos Preview, https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/08ab9158070959f88f296514c21b7facce6f52bc.pdf What Is Claude Mythos—And Why Anthropic Won't Let Anyone Use It https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2026/04/08/what-is-claude-mythos-and-why-anthropic-wont-let-anyone-use-it/ In less than 10 days, Anthropic delivered a rapid series of launches:April 7: Project Glasswing + Claude Mythos Preview (cybersecurity)April 10: Claude for Word (beta)April 11–12: Computer Use rollout on Cowork/Code (Pro/Max)April 14: Claude Code Routines + redesigned Desktop interfaceApril 16: Claude Opus 4.7 general availabilityINSPIRATION#OTHER ::

What if the hardest moments in your life aren't detours but the very things that put you on the right path? In Part 2, bestselling author Jim Collins explains why the moments that derail you are often the ones that redirect you.Jim Collins is a bestselling author and one of the leading voices on leadership and human performance, known for books like Good to Great, which has sold millions of copies worldwide. His research-driven work explores what separates the truly exceptional from the average, with a focus on how people confront the biggest questions of leadership, purpose, and life.Jim Collins' new book

What if the reason you feel lost has nothing to do with direction and everything to do with the question you're asking? Ryan sits down with bestselling author Jim Collins to explore the mindset that defines strong people, why success can mislead you, and what actually makes a life meaningful.Jim Collins is a bestselling author and one of the leading voices on leadership and human performance, known for books like Good to Great, which has sold millions of copies worldwide. His research-driven work explores what separates the truly exceptional from the average, with a focus on how people confront the biggest questions of leadership, purpose, and life.Jim Collins' new book

What would it look like to design your life the way you'd design a great product - starting with the why, testing before you commit, and building towards a shared vision with the people you love? Design thinking strategist Jake Wysocki shares how intentional decision-making, the FIRE movement, and honest conversations with your partner can help you stop living by default and start living by design. Key takeaways: Stop living on autopilot: Most of us follow a paved path - school, job, ladder, retirement - without ever asking why. Jake's Intentioncraft philosophy starts with one question: what are you actually doing this for? The FIRE movement demystified: Financial independence isn't about retiring early - it's about building enough of a financial foundation that you have real choices. Jake explains the 4% rule, coast FIRE, and the concept of memory dividends from Die With Zero. State of the union sessions: Jake and his wife run structured half-day workshops three times a year to check in on life across eight pillars, align on shared goals, and make intentional decisions together - before resentment or drift sets in. Bullets before cannonballs: Inspired by Jim Collins, Jake's approach to business pivots is to test small before committing big - a principle that led him from helping millennial parents live regret-free to building five-star workshops for established experts. Excellence over perfectionism: Perfectionism assumes you'll reach a finish line that doesn't exist. Excellence is the ongoing pursuit of better - and it's what lets you ship, serve clients well, and keep improving without waiting for perfect. Book a free call to explore what building your business with more intention could look like for you - onestepoutside.com/call

Good catch. Let me redo those. iTUNES SHOW NOTES (REVISED) Why I Was Wrong About Goals: Direction, Destination, and the Both/And of Mature Leadership In this episode, Alan Briggs does something he's never done before — he opens by admitting he was wrong. For years as a leadership coach, Alan over-emphasized habits and healthy rhythms while under-selling the power of big, audacious goals. He watched too many leaders get crushed by massive targets they never hit, and he overcorrected. Now he's setting the record straight. The truth is, direction and destination aren't in competition. They need each other. Habits without a destination drift into maintenance. Big goals without daily rhythms become wishful thinking. The mature leader holds the tension between both — and that tension is exactly what this episode is about. Alan shares the personal story behind his upcoming trip to Machu Picchu — a promise made at his grandfather's memorial — and how that destination is anchoring his daily training and health habits right now. He also walks through what thought leaders like James Clear, Jim Collins, Angela Duckworth, and Benjamin Hardy all say on both sides of this conversation, and why they're ultimately pointing toward the same conclusion. What You'll Learn in This Episode: Why Alan swung the pendulum too far toward habits early in his coaching career — and what changed The "both/and" framework: how direction (daily habits) and destination (big stretch goals) work together Alan's Machu Picchu story and why a promise at his grandfather's memorial is driving his health right now What James Clear, Jim Collins, Angela Duckworth, and Benjamin Hardy all agree on Jim Collins' bullets and cannonballs concept and how to apply it to your leadership The "We are going to _____ by _____ because _____" formula for naming your moonshot goal Why measuring lead indicators (not just outcomes) is the key to real progress How the Right Side Up Journal connects big goals to daily habits in one place The boat and oars analogy — and what it costs you when only one oar is in the water Reflection Questions: What big goal have you been avoiding naming because you're not sure you can hit it? Are your current daily habits actually moving you toward a destination — or just maintaining where you are? Where have you been choosing between healthy and high impact, when you could be pursuing both? Resources Mentioned: Atomic Habits — James Clear Grit — Angela Duckworth 10X Is Easier Than 2X — Dr. Benjamin Hardy & Dan Sullivan Good to Great — Jim Collins Right Side Up Journal — available on Amazon Want more? Visit h2leadership.com for coaching, resources, and tools to help you lead well.  

You're using AI every day — but is it actually getting smarter about your business? For most marketers, the answer is no, because they're treating AI like a search engine instead of a workspace. In this episode, I break down the AI Workflow Flywheel that I have developed for my own business — a compound-momentum system that makes every AI conversation build on the last, so your output gets better and faster over time.If you've ever wondered why some marketers seem to get 10x more value from the same AI tools you're using, this is the episode that closes that gap.Tune in to discover:Shift your operating system: Move your daily workflows from your inbox (reactive) into AI conversations (proactive) to change how you approach every projectBuild the four-stage flywheel: Front-load context → AI learns your business → output quality improves → reinvest time savings into higher-value workClose the adoption-integration gap: 91% of marketers use AI, but it touches only 15% of actual marketing activities — learn to go from occasional user to fully integrated operatorAvoid the two biggest AI mistakes: Stop treating AI as a one-off tool (build projects, not prompts) and stop bouncing between platforms without committing to oneMove from prompt engineering to context engineering: Develop project instructions, upload files, evolve conversations over time — and let the AI's accumulated context do the heavy liftingFollow the 5-step action plan: Pick one workflow, open a dedicated project, front-load context, collaborate (don't just request), and come back to the same conversation next timeLinks Mentioned in This Episode:Good to Great by Jim Collins — https://amzn.to/4t5GvXHTurning the Flywheel by Jim Collins - https://amzn.to/4sBy3QjJasper State of AI in Marketing Report 2026 — https://www.jasper.ai/state-of-ai-marketing-2026CMO Survey (Duke Fuqua / Deloitte / AMA) — https://cmosurvey.org/Nvidia State of AI Report 2026 — https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/state-of-ai-report-2026/Typing Mind (multi-model comparison tool) — https://www.typingmind.com/Claude by Anthropic — https://claude.ai/If this episode helped you rethink how you use AI, share it with a colleague who's still treating ChatGPT like a search engine. Subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and leave a review — it helps other marketers find the show. For more frameworks, strategies, and weekly insights, visit nealschaffer.com.Learn More:Buy Digital Threads: https://nealschaffer.com/digitalthreadsamazonBuy Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth: https://nealschaffer.com/maximizinglinkedinamazonJoin My Digital First Mastermind: https://nealschaffer.com/membership/ Learn about My Fractional CMO Consulting Services: https://nealschaffer.com/cmoDownload My Free Ebooks Here: https://nealschaffer.com/books/Subscribe to my YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/nealschafferAll My Podcast Show Notes: https://podcast.nealschaffer.com

In this episode of the Building Better Humans Podcast, Glenn discusses the influential book "Good to Great" by Jim Collins. He explores how the principles of level five leadership, discipline, and focus can be applied to everyday life. Glenn shares insights on how to lead yourself, choose the right people, confront reality, and build a culture of discipline. He also talks about the importance of small, consistent actions and the need to focus on what truly matters. This conversation is a must-listen for anyone looking to take their life and leadership to the next level. The Building Better Humans Project is brought to you by ADVENTURE PROFESSIONALS. Visit www.adventureprofessionals.com.auADVENTURE WITH GLENN ONLINE MINDSET PROGRAMS 1-ON-1 MENTORINGSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of the podcast, we catch up with Jim Collins and Jennifer Windus. Jim and Jennifer are Career Coaches with Darden's Professional Degree Programs Career team, and we talk with them about the Professional Advancement Course, a required, career-focused course that takes place during January term in the first year of the Executive MBA and Part-Time MBA programs. For more insights, tips, and stories about the Darden experience, be sure to check out the Discover Darden Admissions blog and follow us on Instagram @dardenmba.

In this episode of Lead Time, Tim Ahlman and Jack Kalleberg sit down with Texas District President Jon Braunersreuther to discuss:• The growing pastor shortage in the LCMS• The debate surrounding SMP pastoral formation• Why the size of the harvest should change how we think about leadership• How First Article Gifts (reason, leadership, strategy) can be faithfully used in the church• Leadership lessons from Jim Collins' Good to GreatStay up to date by Joining the LCMS Current! (LCMS Current Events Newsletter)https://www.uniteleadership.org/thelcmscurrentWith 30 million people in Texas and an estimated 22 million far from Jesus, the question becomes unavoidable:Is the church preparing enough workers for the harvest?This conversation challenges pastors, church leaders, and lay leaders to think bigger about mission, leadership, and the future of the church.Support the showVisit uniteleadership.org

In this episode of EBRC In Translation, Talia Jacobson and Will Grubbe interview Jim Collins of MIT, a pioneer of synthetic biology. He reflects on his path from human biomechanics and early gene circuit design to AI-driven antibiotic discovery.Collins discusses how deep learning is enabling new antibiotics despite market challenges, what makes research translation succeed, and the growing role of computation in biology. He also recounts developing RNA diagnostics and early CRISPR-based platforms like SHERLOCK, along with efforts to expand accessible infectious disease testing. Stay up to date with PHARE BIO for antibiotic discovery.For more information about EBRC: Visit our website at ebrc.org. If you are interested in getting involved with the EBRC Student and Postdoc Association, fill out a membership application for graduate students and postdocs or for undergraduates and join today! Transcription:Episode transcripts are the unedited output from Whisper and likely contain errors.

Jim Collins has published multiple international bestsellers that have sold in total more than eleven million copies worldwide, including the perennial favorite Good to Great. His new book is What to Make of a Life: Cliffs, Fog, Fire, and the Self-Knowledge Imperative.This episode is brought to you by:AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement: DrinkAG1.com/TimCresset family office services for CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs: CressetCapital.com/TimMomentous Fiber+ 3-in-1 formula with soluble fiber, insoluble fiber, and Solnul® resistant starch: LiveMomentous.com/TimGusto simple and easy payroll, HR, and benefits platform used by 400,000+ businesses: Gusto.com/Tim*For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsorsSign up for Tim's email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim's books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissYouTube: youtube.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferrissSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Everyone claims to be strategic. But what does that word even mean anymore?In this episode, Eric and Jonathan dig into a question that comes up constantly: what actually separates strategy from tactics, and why do so many strategic plans end up collecting dust? Eric makes a bold claim — that strategy, at its core, comes down to one word: conviction. Not frameworks. Not 200-page documents. Conviction about who you are, and more importantly, who you are not.The conversation gets personal when Eric admits he lost that conviction at Cosmic, drifting toward service expansion before recognizing the pattern he'd seen in dozens of client organizations.If you've ever sat through a six-month strategic planning process that ended in a fizzle, this one's for you.Episode Highlights[00:01:49] What the fuck even is strategy?[00:03:58] Eric's answer: conviction[00:04:30] What you're saying no to[00:06:40] Strategy vs. tactics[00:09:32] Eric lost conviction at Cosmic[00:15:15] Photography as extractive art[00:16:06] Near enemy: stubbornness[00:25:47] Longer plan = more useless[00:28:58] Passion is not a strategyNotable Quotes"There is a very strong conviction about who they are, but even more so who they are not." — Eric"The impulse I find for most people is to go tactical. And to call it strategy." — Jonathan"The longer your strategic plan is, the more useless it is." — Eric"If you don't know what to say yes and no to, you don't have a strategy." — EricResourcesGood to Great by Jim Collins: https://www.jimcollins.com/books.htmlMinimum Viable Strategy episode: https://designbycosmic.com/podcast/how-to-stop-planning-and-start-doing/Listeners, now you can text us your comments or questions by clicking this link.*** If you liked this episode, please help spread the word. Share with your friends or co-workers, post it to social media, “follow” or “subscribe” in your podcast app, or write a review on Apple Podcasts. We could not do this without you! We love hearing feedback from our community, so please email us with your questions or comments — including topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes — at podcast@designbycosmic.com Thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.

The concept of the "20-mile march," a principle that prioritizes relentless consistency over the common trap of erratic intensity, comes under McKay's scrutiny this week. He demonstrates how this disciplined approach allows individuals and organizations to outperform their peers by focusing on steady progress regardless of external conditions.Drawing on historic Antarctic expeditions and Jim Collins's research, McKay highlights how a fixed daily quota provides the durability needed to survive the "long middle" where most people quit. He examines the creative habits of Jerry Seinfeld and John Grisham, illustrating how a commitment to "not breaking the chain" transforms volume into the appearance of inevitable talent. By analyzing the restraint of Warren Buffett and Southwest Airlines, he explains why setting an upper bound on growth is just as vital as meeting a minimum target. Ultimately, the 20-mile march reduces emotional load and builds a quiet form of confidence by turning discipline into a core identity.Main Themes:Consistency as the primary driver of 10x successThe "Don't Break the Chain" philosophy for professional masterySurviving the "long middle" through predictable rhythmsWhy restraint and upper bounds ensure long-term durabilityTurning discipline from a chore into a core identityReducing emotional load through the 20-mile marchThe Grisham Method: The power of a single daily pageWhy getting back down is more important than reaching the summitConsistency over intensity in volatile marketsBuilding trust in oneself through reliable actionTop 10 Quotes:"The disciplined team survived; the reactive team did not.""Moving to action despite circumstances makes all the difference.""What looks like talent from the outside often turns out to be volume filtered through discipline.""The 'don't break the chain' approach did not make Seinfeld funny; it made him inevitable.""The march carried him through the long middle, the place where most people quit.""Restraint matters as much as effort.""You stop seeing discipline as effort and start seeing it as who you are.""Getting to the top is optional; getting down is mandatory.""The 20-mile march is not about ambition; it is about durability."Show Links:Open Your Eyes with McKay Christensen

In this episode of The Builder's Bookshelf, we unpack Jim Collins' Good to Great and translate its biggest ideas into the world of construction—Level 5 leadership, getting the right people on the bus, finding your “Hedgehog,” and pushing the flywheel project after project. You'll learn how disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action can transform a “good contractor” into the firm everyone else is quietly chasing.Enjoy Episode 7 and #BeNEXT

(0:00) Intro(2:04) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel(2:50) Start of interview(3:51) Betsy's origin story(9:14) The HealthSouth Board Scandal(16:35) Her preference when picking what boards to serve on(17:30) Insights VC-backed Boards and role and profile of the independent director in this context(21:20) Insights on PE-backed Boards and role and profile of the independent director in this context(25:35) Navigating International Board Dynamics. Her experience on boards of Volvo and Schneider Electric.(30:57) The Rise of Private Markets. Example of Atlas Air (Apollo backed). IPOs in 2026.(35:07) AI's Impact on the Market and other macro trends(38:10) Founder-Led Companies and Governance (including dual-class share structures).(42:25) The Impact of Geopolitics on Governance(45:11) The Impact of Politicization on Governance. Examples of Budweiser, Google, Netflix, and the mission-driven approach by Coinbase.(50:09)  Adapting to Accelerating Change as Directors. The problem with incrementalist "custodian" directors in times of disruption. "It's really about being change-adaptive and comfortable making decisions with incomplete information. You look at someone like Musk, he's making decisions when he has 60% of the information. Most boards want 95% before they'll move. That's the fundamental challenge."(55:58) Books that have greatly influenced her life ("the best business book"):Good to Great, by Jim Collins (2001)(56:16) Her mentors. Craig Billings (CEO Wynn Resorts), Michael Steen (CEO Atlas Air Cargo), Jean-Pascal Tricoire (Chairman, Schneider), her mom ("her biggest mentor").(57:06) On the current state of shareholder activism(57:58) Quotes that she thinks of often or lives her life by "Perfect is the enemy of good enough." (58:19) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that she loves: she's a compulsive note-taker (plus, her recommended policy for directors)(1:00:12) The living person she most admires: Elon MuskBetsy Atkins has served on more than 38 public company boards and through 17 IPOs, in addition to scores of PE and VC-backed company boards. She brings a rare perspective shaped by crisis situations, international board service, and rapid technological change. She currently serves on the boards of Wynn Las Vegas, GoPuff, and the Google Cloud Advisory Board. You can follow Evan on social media at:X: @evanepsteinLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/__To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/__Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

Our book this month is not a new book. In fact I read it more than 20 years ago for the first time. It was first published in 2001. This book is a business classic at this point. Good to Great by Jim Collins is one of those rare works that rewards disciplined thinkers.When I think about business books that genuinely belong on the short list for serious operators, not motivational reading, not trend-chasing commentary, this title consistently earns its place. In fact our leadership team recently refreshed itself on the principles of this book. -----------**Real Estate Espresso Podcast:** Spotify: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](https://open.spotify.com/show/3GvtwRmTq4r3es8cbw8jW0?si=c75ea506a6694ef1)   iTunes: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-real-estate-espresso-podcast/id1340482613)   Website: [www.victorjm.com](http://www.victorjm.com)   LinkedIn: [Victor Menasce](http://www.linkedin.com/in/vmenasce)   YouTube: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](http://www.youtube.com/@victorjmenasce6734)   Facebook: [www.facebook.com/realestateespresso](http://www.facebook.com/realestateespresso)   Email: [podcast@victorjm.com](mailto:podcast@victorjm.com)  **Y Street Capital:** Website: [www.ystreetcapital.com](http://www.ystreetcapital.com)   Facebook: [www.facebook.com/YStreetCapital](https://www.facebook.com/YStreetCapital)   Instagram: [@ystreetcapital](http://www.instagram.com/ystreetcapital)  

Send us a textIn Part 2 of their conversation with Bethany and Corey Adkins, Dale and Brian get real about leadership behind the scenes—how you handle tough conversations, strengthen trust, and lead with clarity.They break down what it looks like to step into hard conversations with confidence, communicate in a way that actually builds trust, and create teams and partnerships that last. Then they zoom out to legacy—what we're building, who we're becoming, and how we want to be remembered.If you're leading people, building something meaningful, or learning how to have the conversations you've been putting off, this one is for you.Episode Highlights: Navigating uncomfortable conversations.Building trust in relationships.The importance of good communication.Leaving a legacy.Find More on A Force to Be Reckoned With:Listen to A Force to Be Reckoned WithFollow Bethany on InstagramLinks Mentioned in Episode/Find More on ForeverLawn:www.foreverlawn.comImpact Without Limits Instagram: @impact_withoutlimitsForeverLawn's Instagram: @foreverlawnincGet Grass Without Limits HereVisit our show notes page HERESubscribe to Our Newsletter HEREDale's Instagram: @dalekarmieBrian's Instagram: @bkarmieFind Our Shorts on the ForeverLawn YouTube ChannelCheck out Jim Collins' Author Page on Amazon HereHow to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale CarnegieThis show has been produced by Adkins Media Co.

Leadership starts internally. Drawing from Jim Collins and Marcus Aurelius, this episode explores why emotional discipline, humility, and self-control determine long-term influence. You don't rise to your title—you fall to your inner standards.

Happy New Year from FUEL HQ aka The Man-Zone Barn:Happy New Year 2026 from the barn aka FUEL HQ. Your host, Scott Mulvaney, reflects on the progress and future plans for his personal and professional life. He discusses his recent projects, including installing a new heating system in his barn, acquiring a high-quality salt spreader, and setting up a gym with new equipment. He also mentions his now 10 years of podcasting, the launch of his Boots Refuel Fund from his charity, Fuel Foundations, and his goal to pay off his house by age 50. Additionally, he plans to record an audio version of his book, "So You Want to Be a Hotshot," and encourages listeners to support his charity by donating to the Boots Refuel Fund.Quote: Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” – Napoleon Hill Today's Top 3 Takeaways:After 10 years of podcasting, continue your own Personal and Professional development!Health and Fitness FUELS everything, especially your own Health, Business, and Lifestyle.Find and embrace your own Freedom Trifecta of Time Freedom, Location Freedom, and Financial Freedom. Today's Links:Visit to donate or learn more athttps://fuelfoundations.org/VisitHotshotBook.comto find the book on Amazon Mentioned Influencers:Michael Michalowicz, Profit First,https://mikemichalowicz.com/profit-first/Jim Collins, BHAG - Big Hairy Audacious Goals,https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/bhag.htmlDave Ramsey, Ramsey Solutions,https://www.ramseysolutions.com/ Watch us on YouTube:https://youtu.be/8ZDfJq4_ye8 Show Highlights:New radiant heating system is now tested and live in the barn.Reflecting on the evolution of the barn from an empty canvas to a bustling workspace. 2026 is 10 years of podcasting.Reflecting on the Wildland Firefighting history that birthed the FUEL Foundations and the Boots Refuel Fund.The importance of Health and Fitness being integrated into everything in life while staying committed for success.New Financial Goals with a BHAG of owing nothing and owning the home by age 50 in less than 2 years.Learning and implementing the Freedom Trifecta which is Time, Location, and Financial freedom.The power of learning Psychology, developing a bulletproof mindset, with ongoing commitents to Personal and Professional development.Committing to finally recording the audiobook of "So You Want To Be A Hotshot" to help increase fundraising.Final Words of the Show:If I commit to a book chapter for each podcast episode, I know I can get the audiobook done finally. So I'm going to be releasing the chapters here in the LIVETHEFUEL world as I get each one done, and then hopefully loyal fans go and buy the audio book and or the physical book and share. So thank you in advance. That's just a little snippet for the future here in 2026 thanks for listening again. Thank you for subscribing. Go check out HotshotBook.com that takes you directly to the book...

Friday, January 2, 2026 - Week 1   #SynGAPCensus = 1,707 https://curesyngap1.org/blog/syngap1-census-2025-update-32-q4-2025-1707/   From the Cantor Report on CAMP4  The Stockdale Paradox. The best way to succinctly describe CAMP4 and the parties driving progress in this field (Cure SYNGAP1, families, researchers) is, for anyone familiar with Jim Collins' book "Good to Great," they have fully embraced the "Stockdale Paradox": To succeed in difficult circumstances you must 1) confront the brutal facts (severity of the disorder, devastating impact on patients and families, lack of treatment) while 2) maintaining unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end. It gives us conviction that there WILL be a therapy approved for SYNGAP sooner than later and CAMP is most likely to deliver it.   Read more on Jim Collins site: https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/Stockdale-Concept.html   This is exactly what SYNGAP1 Argentina achieved at our conference.  Acting with certainty that they can and will prevail.   Check out their exceptional flyer: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O_DldABKTkB9ZLIiUBqXGBMrtlzie-7i/view?usp=share_link    PUBMED is at 59 for the year, that is +4 over our best year, last year.  177 since 2022, almost half of our SYNGAP1 Knowledge (366) has been created in the past 4 years! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=syngap1&filter=years.1998-2026&timeline=expanded&sort=date    #20Posters Speaking of publications, I talked about 16 posters at AES this year and shared on LI, but I was wrong in the responses I realized we are up to 20! https://www.linkedin.com/posts/graglia_syngap1-curesyngap1-activity-7408291479187755008-rMru    Mutation Tattoo Story https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shriya-bhat-0b845b203_at-a-patient-advocacy-meeting-in-nashville-activity-7409304451821277184-TO0t    SOCIAL MATTERS 4,529 LinkedIn.  https://www.linkedin.com/company/curesyngap1/  1,500 YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/@CureSYNGAP1    11.2k Twitter https://twitter.com/cureSYNGAP1  45k Insta https://www.instagram.com/curesyngap1/    $CAMP stock is at $6.00 on 2 Jan. ‘26 https://www.google.com/finance/beta/quote/CAMP:NASDAQ   Like and subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen.  https://curesyngap1.org/podcasts/syngap10/ Episode 193 of #Syngap10 #CureSYNGAP1 #Podcast

Greg McKeown is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less and Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most. 200,000 people receive his weekly 1-Minute Wednesday newsletter, and he recently released The Essentialism Planner: A 90-Day Guide to Accomplishing More by Doing Less. Sponsors:Momentous high-quality creatine for cognitive and muscular support: https://livemomentous.com/Tim (Code TIM for 35% off your first subscription.)Shopify global commerce platform, providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail businessHelix Sleep premium mattresses: https://helixsleep.com/timCoyote the card game​, which I co-created with Exploding Kittens: https://coyotegame.com*Show notes: https://tim.blog/2025/01/09/personal-reboot-greg-mckeown/*For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsorsSign up for Tim's email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim's books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissYouTube: youtube.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, Margaret Atwood, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Dr. Gabor Maté, Anne Lamott, Sarah Silverman, Dr. Andrew Huberman, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Gavin Newsom is the 2028 Democratic front-runner. That's what many of the polls and the Polymarket betting odds say.It's been widely believed that Newsom wants to run for president someday. But belief that he could be a front-runner was less common. A liberal white guy from a state that much of the country considers badly governed just didn't seem like the profile the Democratic Party was looking for.But as a Californian who has watched Newsom for a long time, I was surprised by him this year. After President Trump returned to the White House, Newsom started a podcast, interviewing people like Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon and Michael Savage, which made a lot of Democrats mad. At the same time, Newsom turned himself into the leader of the resistance — trolling Trump on social media and pushing a ballot initiative to end California's independent redistricting to counter the partisan redistricting effort in Texas.Newsom has been willing to try things and take risks. He has shown a feel for this moment — in politics and in the way attention works now.But it's still true that he runs a state that the country considers badly governed. California tops the rankings of unaffordable states, at a time when affordability has become a central electoral issue.In this conversation, I ask Newsom about all of this — what he learned this year from talking to figures on the right, how he thinks the Democratic Party can win back voters it lost, why California is so unaffordable and what he's doing about it.Mentioned:Applebee's America by Ron Fournier, Douglas B. Sosnik and Matthew J. Dowd“And, This Is Charlie Kirk”“And, This Is Gaming Culture & Gen-Z Nihilism With Content Creator Brandon “Atrioc” Ewing”“And, This Is Michael Savage”“And, This Is Steve Bannon”“Newsom Says Trump's Attacks Are ‘Not Normal'”“Barack Obama 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Speech”Book Recommendations:Built to Last by Jim Collins, Jerry I. PorrasMeditations by Marcus Aurelius1929 by Andrew Ross SorkinThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. My Guest: Patrick Lencioni is the founder of The Table Group and a bestselling author of 14 books, including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The 6 Types of Working Genius. Behind his achievements (valedictorian, straight A's, business success) were childhood wounds that drove him to prove himself. Key Learnings "I think I'm really good at anticipating people's objections." I think about what they might be thinking and what I need to put out there. Whether talking interpersonally, giving a speech, writing a book, or on a podcast, I like to think about what the other person might be objecting to. Lean into empathy. I always felt like I needed to prove myself in order to be successful and to feel safe. That's not healthy.  "When people tell you they got straight A's and were the valedictorian, the student body president, and got accepted to all the schools they wanted to get into, there's a wound there." Based on my personality type, I shouldn't have done all those things, but it was out of the need to prove myself. Which wasn't healthy for me. My parents had a hard time being affirming because of their own lives. It wasn't until I was 55 years old that a friend who's a psychologist said, "You, my friend, have childhood wounds you've never dealt with." I got good Christian counseling and realized that the way I grew up, I wasn't supposed to grow up that way. It's common in athletes & CEOs to feel like they haven't done enough. They need to do more. "You're a noun, not a verb. You are enough, and you're not defined by what you do." Great achievements come out of fear, but "true greatness is best when it's only in the things that you're meant to be great at, and that you're doing it out of freedom and passion and love, not out of fear of failure." I remember seeing Tiger Woods on the Tonight Show when he was four years old. He was being groomed to be a golfer when he was four. It's best in life when we discover who God means us to be, then we do the things we're supposed to do and we're okay with not being good at the things we're not supposed to. Are we too affirming now as parents? People who are pretty darn good at everything it's usually because they're doing something out of fear. When I was a kid, my parents came from World War II and the Depression. It was like, hey, you got a roof over your head. There was a lot of suffering, and they weren't really attuned to that. Now we are hyper worried of our own kids suffering. No, suffering is actually good. They need to know they're loved and safe, but they're not gonna be protected from what is necessary for their development. The mistake I made was, oh no, I don't want them to feel like I did. Thankfully at my age, I'm now interacting with my mostly adult children and explaining to them what I did wrong. The Teammate Trifecta - How should we use it?: When I wrote The Five Dysfunctions of a Team right after 9/11, I thought, "That's the book on teamwork." Then we realized you need The Ideal Team Player (humble, hungry, and smart) to hire people that fit on teams. Years later, we came up with Working Genius: Are they in the right seat?  3 steps to building a team: Don't let people on the bus if they're not humble, hungry, and smart. Make sure you have them in the right chair based on their gifts. Then teach them the Five Dysfunctions. Pat's Two Working Geniuses: Invention and Discernment "Invention means I love to come up with ideas out of nothing. Discernment means I love evaluating things, curating things. God wired me to do that kind of thing." When people say, "Pat, we have five minutes, and we need a new idea," I just take a deep breath and smile. One man's trash is another man's treasure.  Every new idea I've come up with has been in the field, working with people. I asked Jim Collins, "Jim, you do all this research with data. I go into a room with leaders and just think, What's going on here?" He said, "Pat, that's just as valid as what I do. That's called field research and face validity."  What is Pat terrible at? Finishing things. People say, "Well you finished 14 books." And that's because I had the help of others to make me finish those.  I got a 4.0 in high school. That wasn't my personality. I went to every class in college, never blew off classes. My personality is the kind that should blow off classes that don't matter. But I was so afraid of failing and disappointing my parents and teachers that I did anything they asked. That was not natural; that was fear-based. Can we use fear as useful fuel? "You can use it in the short term, but if you're doing it in your life, no." "We should celebrate what other people are better than we are at things. We should literally celebrate what we suck at." If we have two kids and one's creative and the other's disciplined, we tell the creative one to be more disciplined and the disciplined one to be more creative. No. We have to say, understanding that you're not creative is good for you. That's not who you're meant to be. The hardest thing about being a parent is constantly asking yourself, "Am I pushing them too hard or not enough?" The hardest question you ask yourself as a parent is, "Am I pushing my kids too hard or not hard enough?" This question also applies to yourself.  In Working Genius, should I work on my working frustrations? The short answer is no.  Working Genius is all about knowing what you love to do. Enablement and Tenacity are my working frustrations, and so many of those things fall into parenting. I'd say to my wife, "Hey, Laura, let's outsource some of these things." Out of fear and guilt, she said no because she felt like she'd be a bad mother. Outsource the work you don't enjoy, and when you have to do it, try your best and don't feel guilty with the result. The electrical company turned off our power for not paying the bill. We need to accept our deficiencies and need to be able to laugh at the things we're not good at.  Ryan's Learning Leader Team: When your whole team has Tenacity as their working genius, your team loves to finish things. You will never be flaky. You might stick to something that needs to be changed way before it needs to be. In my company, we're always up for a change in plans, but not great at following through. If your team doesn't have Wonder and Invention, force yourself to borrow from others outside the organization to get new ideas. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Vulnerability-based trust changes everything in teams. Eric Spoelstra uses Five Dysfunctions with the Miami Heat. He started when they acquired LeBron James. He said, "I don't know what offense we're gonna run this year, but I know we're gonna use the Five Dysfunctions." I love it in basketball, especially because you see them on the court. When people can be so vulnerable that they can say it was my fault, or I need help, or I'm sorry I was kind of a jerk yesterday at practice, it changes everything. But when you have a player who doesn't admit when they made a mistake or who blames everybody else, the ceiling of that team being great is so low. Humble, Hungry, Smart has been a great tool for athletic teams. I define it: no ego, it's about the team (humble). Hungry means I go above and beyond. Smart means I have emotional intelligence. I have the team members say, "Which of those three is your lowest?" It is crazy how people will call out. The goalie said, "I'm not smart. I yell at guys on the field, and I demean them. I gotta get better." Another kid said, "I need to be hungrier. I don't do the workouts at home." Pat phrases it this way when meeting with athletic teams. "Okay, everybody, look around at your teammates and think about the thing they want to get better at. If you want to be a good teammate, when you see your teammate doing the thing he just admitted he wants to get better at, you need to call him out on it." Once people start to have that language, it's amazing how they're coaching each other. And if as a coach yourself, I think you should tell people, "When I was a player, this was mine." They're gonna go, hey, if the coach admits that, I'll do it too. For leaders with Enablement & Tenacity as top geniuses, how do they avoid burnout? You have to be willing to start with "I am prone to burnout if you guys aren't aware of what's going on." The people with enablement and tenacity will say, "I'll just do it," and then they do. We had 12 employees and only one had Tenacity. We said we are going to kill her because every time we have to get something done, we're gonna say, "Jackie will finish." When people have enablement and tenacity, they and everybody else need to say, let's not abuse them. How do we assess a company in a short amount of time without focusing on their financials?  When I go into a company, I find out what their meetings are like. If there's no disagreement and they're not exhausted at the end of a meeting, that's a red flag. If good people are leaving an organization, that's a massive red flag. I like going around and checking interactions. Is there an intensity with people together? Or are they alone and quiet? Also, keep an eye on customer reviews. What are the customers saying? There are two extremes of humility problems: arrogance on one end, and lack of confidence on the other. I first identified humility as a problem when I saw a CEO who didn't care about his company's results, but if he went on TV and answered questions about why they didn't meet their numbers, he would make jokes and make others laugh. If he was happy from that versus getting the results they needed, that's an issue. What specific traits do leaders need to have to get hired? A leader has to simultaneously believe they are no more important than the people they lead. They also have to accept the fact that their behaviors and words ARE more important than others in the company. "The one thing the leader has to do is break the tie." This past Friday, I was in a meeting trying to deal with a strategic issue between two great people. I dropped a curse word and said, "Listen, I'm pulling the CEO card right now. I don't do it all that often, but since I am the CEO, this is where we're going." Because I don't pull it every time, people are glad to have a CEO that will do that. If you're doing it every time, you lose credibility. Advice for young professionals: I wrote a book called The Motive, and what I say to leaders when they're young is: make sure your motive for being a leader is about sacrificing and suffering for others. "I want to help this organization, or I want to be the kind of person that takes on more than others for their good." Leadership is a lonely and selfless thing. It's wonderful, but the personal economics of leadership are not good. If you don't sign up for that, don't be a leader. Too many people say, I want to be a leader. And if you really scratch below the surface, they'll say, I think it would make me feel important, I'd get attention, maybe I'd make money, I'd have power. When that's your motive for being a leader, you're not gonna be a great leader. Reflection Questions Pat says people who were perfect students (straight A's, valedictorian, student body president) often have childhood wounds driving them. What in your past might be driving your current achievements? Are you operating from freedom and passion, or from fear and the need to prove yourself? He teaches his kids' sports teams to identify which of Humble, Hungry, or Smart is their lowest, then hold each other accountable when they see teammates struggling with that area. What would you identify as your lowest, and who in your life could you invite to call you out when you're not living up to it? Pat says the motive for leadership should be "sacrificing and suffering for others," not feeling important or controlling what you work on. If you're honest about why you want to lead (or why you currently lead), what's really driving you? Would people who report to you say you're other-motivated or personally motivated?