Podcasts about kpi

Are you a high achiever who feels a constant push and pull between the part of you that wants to build, grow and do all the things — and the part of you that just needs to slow down? In today's episode, Jackie introduces you to your two inner siblings and why learning to honour both of them is the secret to building something that actually lasts. In This Episode Jackie introduces the concept of your inner power team — two parts of self that live inside every high achiever. Think of them like siblings. Same house, totally different wiring. One is your visionary builder. The other speaks in the language of your body. Together, they are your greatest asset. In conflict, they will quietly run your business into the ground. Jackie also shares highlights from a very special guest inside the Wildly Wealthy Woman experience this week — Megan Hale, former psychotherapist, business strategist, and founder of DreamMoney — who walked the community through the three financial seasons every business owner moves through, and why knowing which season you're in changes everything. Key Takeaways Your two inner parts The first part is your visionary — creative, driven, ready to build and launch and grow. She's probably the reason you're listening to this podcast right now. The second part is quieter. She speaks through your body — in fatigue, tension, that dragging feeling, the anxiety in your chest before a big launch, the inexplicable cold that appears at the worst possible time. She is not your enemy. She is not self-sabotage in disguise. She is a part of you that needs to be heard. What the push-pull really means Scrolling instead of working? Frozen before putting out an offer? Exhausted the week before your launch? That's your inner siblings needing a conversation, not a crisis to manage. The question isn't how do I get rid of this part — it's what is she trying to tell me right now? Why you can't outrun your body Pushing through works — until it doesn't. The body always finds a way to slow you down if you refuse to slow down yourself. Honouring the slower part of you is not the same as stopping. Sometimes it's five minutes of stillness. Sometimes it's one less thing on your plate. Sometimes it's a boundary your builder resists but your body absolutely needs. When the quieter sibling gets what she needs, the driven one becomes a superpower. The three financial seasons (with Megan Hale) Scaling season — heavy investment in education, tools, team. Normal and expected in your first three years, but dangerous if it's the only season you ever choose. If you never repair your margins, more money will never feel like more. Fortifying season — pull back on reinvestment, focus on personal pay, profit and paying down debt. Strategic, not sacrificial. KPI-based, not calendar-based — you move when you hit the milestone, not when the year ends. Maintaining season — the rarest season. Not focused on growing revenue at all, but on doing last year better and easier to create capacity for the next scale. Most business owners don't reach this until around year eight. The question to ask yourself today What season are you in right now — and are you choosing it, or have you defaulted to scaling because that's all you've ever known? Resources Mentioned DreamMoney — Megan Hale's financial visibility platform for solo CEOs myrootabl.com/r/uBIfg6Lr?rootabl=jackie The Wildly Wealthy Woman Experience — Jackie's signature membership community: https://jackie-mcdonald.mykajabi.com/offers/JY4fkzcd/checkout 21 Days of Tapping — the live series this episode is part of https://jackie-mcdonald.mykajabi.com/offers/amDQFocw Loved This Episode? If this landed for you, send it to a fellow high-achieving business bestie. Share it to your stories. You never know who needs to hear this today. And if you want to go deeper on working with your inner parts through tapping, come join us inside the Wildly Wealthy Woman Experience — this is exactly the work we do together. FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM FOLLOW ME ON TIKTOK FOLLOW ME ON YOUTUBE

VOV1 - “Bộ Công Thương sẽ giao chỉ tiêu KPI về thị trường cho từng thương vụ, thúc đẩy hỗ trợ doanh nghiệp mở rộng thị trường, phấn đấu xuất khẩu 15-16% trong năm nay"- Đây là quyết tâm của ngành công thương tại Hội nghị giao ban xúc tiến thương mại với hệ thống thương vụ Việt Nam ở nước ngoài.

ความแตกต่างระหว่าง KPI และ KRI?จากบทความ the difference between kpis and kris and why it matters โดย kpikarta

Most practice owners think culture problems start with people. But what if culture actually starts with numbers? In this episode of the Private Practice Owners Club podcast, Nathan Shields and Adam Robin have a candid conversation about what really happens when production slips, urgency fades, and leadership loses clarity around business metrics. Adam shares transparently how taking his eye off the numbers last year led to cultural drift, reduced urgency, and low-level anxiety across his clinics. But once he rebuilt his proforma, clarified expectations, and defined hard production targets, everything changed. This episode is about ownership, accountability, and the invisible connection between financial metrics and morale. They dig into:The four types of practice owners when it comes to knowing their numbersWhy “production is the basis of morale”How lack of clarity creates cultural erosionThe power of defining a weekly visit target per providerWhy metrics must be red or green — never grayHow to create urgency without being emotionalWhy every KPI needs a clear owner and battle planHow daily scorecards create behavior changeThe difference between knowing your numbers and knowing what to do about themWhy EOD deadlines force prioritization and eliminate distraction If you've ever felt low-level anxiety about your finances…If your schedules aren't as full as they should be…If you've struggled to get buy-in from your team… This conversation will give you clarity and a tactical reset. Because when you get clear on the numbers, you lead with conviction. And when you lead with conviction, your culture follows.

5 ปัญหาตั้ง KPI ของฝ่ายขายจากบทความ 5 Problems with KPIs for Sales and Marketing โดย kpikarta

 summary This episode features a deep dive into contact center KPIs, exploring their flaws and how to measure customer experience effectively. Hosts Amas Tenumah and Bob Furness challenge industry norms and share practical insights for improving contact center performance.  key  topics Flaws in common KPIs like FCR, Service Level, NPS The importance of standardized measurement How to interpret and act on KPI data Practical tips for contact center improvement  resources Contact Center Metrics Best Practices - https://example.com/contact-center-metrics Net Promoter Score (NPS) Explained - https://example.com/nps-explained Standardizing Contact Center KPIs - https://example.com/kpi-standardization  

Báo động trước tình trạng ngược đãi những người lao động bị cưỡng bức, trong đó có không ít nạn nhân là người Việt Nam, tại các trung tâm lừa đảo trực tuyến ở các nước Đông Nam Á, Văn phòng Cao ủy Nhân quyền Liên Hiệp Quốc ngày 20/02/2026 đã kêu gọi cộng đồng quốc tế hành động chống lại tệ nạn này. Riêng Việt Nam đang phối hợp với Cam Bốt và những đối tác khác ở Đông Nam Á để triệt hạ các đường dây lừa đảo xuyên quốc gia. Trong một báo cáo được công bố vào năm 2023, Liên Hiệp Quốc ước tính hàng trăm ngàn người đã bị cưỡng bức tuyển dụng để thực hiện các vụ lừa đảo trực tuyến. Báo cáo mới, dựa trên lời khai của các nạn nhân và các cuộc phỏng vấn với các cảnh sát và đại diện của xã hội dân sự, mô tả các vi phạm nhân quyền nghiêm trọng mà những người bị buộc phải làm việc trong các trung tâm này phải gánh chịu.  Báo cáo ghi nhận các trường hợp tra tấn, ngược đãi, bóc lột, lạm dụng tình dục, cưỡng bức phá thai, bỏ đói và biệt giam. Một nạn nhân từ Sri Lanka khai rằng những người không đạt chỉ tiêu hàng tháng về lừa đảo đã bị dìm xuống nước hàng giờ trong các bể nước (gọi là 'nhà tù nước'). Các nạn nhân cũng kể lại việc bị ép buộc chứng kiến, thậm chí tham gia vào những hành vi vi phạm nhân quyền nghiêm trọng này. Một nạn nhân người Bangladesh cho biết anh ta được lệnh đánh đập những người lao động cưỡng bức khác, và một nạn nhân người Ghana mô tả việc bị ép buộc phải chứng kiến ​​bạn mình bị đánh đập. Một nạn nhân người Việt Nam kể lại việc em gái mình bị đánh đập, bị chích điện, bị nhốt trong phòng và bị bỏ đói trong bảy ngày vì đã toan đào thoát. Liên Hiệp Quốc lên án tình trạng những nạn nhân này bị xác định sai là tội phạm và bị truy tố hình sự, hoặc bị trừng phạt thay vì được bảo vệ. Từ nhiều năm qua, Cam Bốt đã trở thành “thiên đường” cho các tổ chức tội phạm điều hành ngành công nghiệp lừa đảo trị giá hàng tỷ đô la. Một báo cáo năm 2024 của Viện Hòa bình Hoa Kỳ ước tính doanh thu từ các vụ lừa đảo mạng ở Cam Bốt vượt quá 12,5 tỷ đô la mỗi năm, tương đương một nửa tổng sản phẩm nội địa (GDP) của nước này. Viện tư vấn Stimson Center, trụ sở chính tại thủ đô Washington của Mỹ, có một dự án về chống lừa đảo trên mạng, tập hợp các nhà khoa học cũng như các nhà hoạch định chính sách và cả đại diện các tập đoàn công nghệ như Google hoặc Meta. Sau ba năm thực hiện, vừa rồi họ đã tổ chức hội thảo tại Bangkok để tổng kết và đánh giá về những chiến dịch triệt hạ các trung tâm lừa đảo ở Cam Bốt. Tham gia dự án này có tiến sĩ Lương Thanh Hải, một nhà tội phạm học, hiện là giảng viên Trường Tư pháp hình sự và tội phạm học Griffith, Úc. Trả lời phỏng vấn RFI Việt ngữ ngày 05/03/2026, ông Lương Thanh Hải cho biết:  "Hơn nửa năm trở lại đây, từ giữa năm 2025 cho đến đầu năm 2026, dưới áp lực mạnh mẽ từ cộng đồng quốc tế, từ Mỹ, Trung Quốc, Hàn Quốc và một số nước Đông Nam Á, chính quyền Cam Bốt đã mở một chiến dịch quy mô rất lớn nhằm triệt phá các khu phức hợp lừa đảo trực tuyến ( scams compound ). Tất nhiên để đánh giá một kết quả tổng thể đòi hỏi những số liệu cụ thể và hiện nay thì chúng tôi vẫn đang cập nhật để có số liệu cụ thể chính xác. Nhưng sơ bộ thì trong vòng nửa năm trở lại đây, chính quyền Cam Bốt đã đánh sập được gần 200 trung tâm lừa đảo. Có thể nói là đây là một con số khá ấn tượng. Trong cuộc tọa đàm vừa rồi, chúng tôi cũng đã tổng kết sơ bộ ít nhất có hơn 173 nhân vật cầm đầu đã bị bắt và khoảng trên dưới 11.000 người tham gia đã bị trục xuất khỏi Cam Bốt. Hàng ngàn người là nạn nhân bị ép lừa đảo đã thoát khỏi các trung tâm đó. Đầu tháng 2 vừa rồi, chúng tôi cũng ghi nhận, đặc biệt là sau khi quân đội Thái Lan tiến hành công kích và triệt phá các khu phức hợp, các sòng bài lớn ở Cam Bốt, người ta đã phát hiện các đối tượng sử dụng trang phục cảnh sát của ít nhất là 7 nước như Úc, Brazil, Việt Nam, Indonesia, Singapore v.v... Đây có thể nói là những bằng chứng rõ nhất cho thấy các ổ lừa đảo này hoạt động hết sức  tinh vi, sử dụng các trang phục của lực lượng thực thi pháp luật nhằm tạo ra những kịch bản y như một cuộc thẩm vấn của cảnh sát liên bang Úc, hay của cảnh sát Việt Nam, cảnh sát Singapore..., để lừa đảo, thậm chí là đưa ra các kịch bản bắt bớ, khởi tố..., khiến các nạn nhân dễ bị đánh gục. Chính quyền Cam Bốt đầu năm vừa rồi đã đưa ra được một con số khá ấn tượng là đã giảm được khoảng 50% hoạt động lừa đảo trực tuyến sau các chiến dịch mạnh như vậy. Tất nhiên con số đó cũng cần phải được thẩm định.  Ngoài ra một số trùm mạng lưới, đặc biệt là Trần Chí ( Chen Zhi ), một đối tượng cầm đầu đã bị chính quyền Hoa Kỳ phong tỏa các tài sản và dưới áp lực của Mỹ, Cam Bốt cuối cùng cũng đã triển khai các chiến dịch và bắt được trùm lừa đảo này. Đầu năm vừa rồi, Trần Chí bị dẫn độ theo yêu cầu của chính quyền Trung Quốc đưa về Trung Quốc xét xử. Giới nghiên cứu chúng tôi tiếp tục cập nhật và hy vọng chính phủ Trung Quốc sẽ công bố những thông tin minh bạch, cũng như các bản án cụ thể, để chúng tôi từ góc độ tội phạm học có thể phân tích sâu hơn tại sao và như thế nào mà một trùm lừa đảo như Trần Chí lại có thể đi sâu và điều hành cả một tập đoàn lớn như vậy ở Cam Bốt trong rất nhiều năm. Sau khi phá được nhiều chuyên án lớn như vậy, nhiều tổ chức quốc tế cho rằng các đường dây này chỉ tạm thời giải tán thôi và rồi sẽ lại di chuyển sang địa phận khác. Các hoạt động tuyển dụng lao động của những trung tâm lừa đảo vẫn tiếp tục trên mạng xã hội. Bởi vì xét đến cùng, công nghiệp lừa đảo này ở Cam Bốt vẫn có quy mô cực lớn, có thể kiếm siêu lợi nhuận hàng chục tỷ đồng mỗi năm. Nói cách khác, chiến dịch này đã gây xáo trộn lớn, nhưng chưa thực sự triệt tiêu được hệ sinh thái đối với loại tội phạm lừa đảo qua mạng này." Hơn nữa, không chỉ có người Trung Quốc hay người Cam Bốt, mà có cả người Việt Nam điều hành đường dây lừa đảo ở xứ Chùa Tháp. Theo báo chí Việt Nam, ngày 13/02, Công an Đồng Nai phối hợp Cục An ninh mạng và phòng, chống tội phạm sử dụng công nghệ cao (Bộ Công an) đã tạm giữ Nguyễn Thị Vân, 30 tuổi, cùng 13 người khác để điều tra hành vi Lừa đảo chiếm đoạt tài sản. Nguyễn Thị Vân được xác đinh là cầm đầu đường dây lừa đảo 2.500 tỷ đồng của hàng ngàn nạn nhân, hoạt động tại Cam Bốt. Các nhà điều tra cho biết đây là một trong những vụ án đầu tiên bắt giữ được chủ mưu là người Việt Nam, tự đầu tư cơ sở hạ tầng quy mô lớn và vận hành hệ thống lừa đảo tại nhiều địa điểm ở Cam Bốt. Ngày 25/02, đến lượt Cơ quan Cảnh sát Điều tra Công an tỉnh Tây Ninh ra thông báo tìm những ai là nạn nhân của Huỳnh Nguyễn Ngọc Huy trong vụ án lừa đảo qua mạng xã hội để mua bán người. Cụ thể, Huy dùng tài khoản Facebook "Huy Trần" đăng tin tuyển dụng giả giới thiệu các “việc nhẹ lương cao” để lừa gạt nạn nhân đưa sang Cam Bốt. Tại đây, các nạn nhân bị ép buộc làm việc, nếu muốn về nước phải trả tiền chuộc rất cao, hoặc bị bán tiếp sang các công ty lừa đảo khác. Nhà tội phạm học Lương Thanh Hải giải thích:  "Qua nghiên cứu từ thực tiễn, cũng như về lý thuyết, chúng tôi gọi đó là sự trùng lặp, sự lặp lại giữa nạn nhân và thủ phạm. Chúng tôi hay dùng thuật ngữ offender - victim overlap. Họ là những nạn nhân đã bị dụ dỗ để sang làm, bị ép buộc, được đào tạo từng bước một, từng kịch bản một và thậm chí đóng các kịch bản lực lượng thực thi pháp luật của nước A, nước B, nước C để lừa ngược lại. Thậm chí khi bị nhốt vào các trung tâm lừa đảo này, họ bị ép buộc phải đạt được chỉ số KPI ( chỉ số đo lường và đánh giá hiệu quả hoạt động ), hàng ngày hàng giờ phải thực hiện bao nhiêu cuộc lừa đảo. Thành thử họ không còn lựa chọn nào khác, buộc phải làm ngày làm đêm, thậm chí phải lừa cả người thân trong gia đình, bạn bè của họ ở Việt Nam, lôi kéo sang để lại trở thành nạn nhân của các vụ lừa đảo qua mạng tiếp theo. Trong khoảng hai năm trở lại đây, công an Việt Nam cũng đã phối hợp khá chặt chẽ với các lực lượng thực thi pháp luật của khu vực Đông Nam Á, thông qua các kênh chính thống, ví dụ như ASEANAPOL, tức là Hiệp hội cảnh sát trưởng của các nước ASEAN, hoặc là thông qua các đối tác song phương giữa cảnh sát và bộ Nội Vụ của Vương Quốc Cam Bốt hoặc Thái Lan. Đã có nhiều cuộc giải cứu thành công, ví dụ mới đây công an tỉnh Tuyên Quang đã giải cứu và đưa được khoảng 74 nghi phạm từ Cam Bốt và Việt Nam trong một vụ lừa đảo lên đến hàng nghìn tỷ đồng. Hiện nay, Việt Nam được đánh giá là một những nước đầu tiên của khu vực Đông Nam Á đang hướng tới áp dụng nguyên tắc "không hình phạt" đối với nạn nhân, nếu như chứng minh được họ là nạn nhân của các vụ ép buộc lừa đảo trực tuyến. Điều này cũng đã được cụ thể hóa trong luật về phòng chống buôn bán người của Việt Nam được sửa đổi năm 2024 và có hiệu lực từ tháng 7/2025. Về góc độ chính sách và pháp luật, chúng tôi cho đấy là một trong những bước tiến rất đáng ghi nhận từ chính quyền Việt Nam." Một cơ sơ pháp lý khác để Việt Nam có thể tăng cường hợp tác với các nước để diệt trừ các trung tâm lừa đảo, theo ông Lương Thanh Hải, chính là Công ước Hà Nội:  "Công ước Hà Nội, tức là Công ước của Liên Hiệp Quốc về phòng chống tội phạm mạng, đã được ký từ tháng 10/2025. Bản thân Việt Nam và Cam Bốt, cùng một số nước khác trong Đông Nam Á, có tham gia. Theo thống kê của chúng tôi, tổng số nước ký kết đã lên đến 73 hoặc là 75 nước. Đây là một bước tiến lớn về cơ sở pháp lý để tăng cường hợp tác quốc tế trong phòng chống các tội phạm mạng, bao gồm cả lừa đảo trực tuyến như các trung tâm ở Cam Bốt. Tuy nhiên, phần lớn những người Việt được phát hiện tham gia, thậm chí trực tiếp đi sang và cầm đầu các nhóm đối tượng ở Cam Bốt trong các trung tâm lừa đảo trực tuyến không phải là những "big boss", không phải là trùm của những ông trùm. Phần lớn những ông trùm đó vẫn là "behind the scene", vẫn đang tiếp tục lẫn trốn. Như trường hợp của Trần Chí chẳng hạn, phải mất rất nhiều thời gian mới bị phá vỡ và bị bắt. Thành thử  những người Việt này thì chúng tôi đánh giá chủ yếu là đứng đằng sau điều hành các trung tâm lừa đảo Cam Bốt. Công an Việt Nam cũng đang tiếp tục khởi tố theo các nhóm tội lừa đảo, chiếm đoạt tài sản, hoặc tổ chức đưa người ra nước ngoài trái phép, tham gia trực tiếp vào các trung tâm lừa đảo đó. Các số liệu cũng như các bằng chứng cho thấy các đường dây này thường là dụ người Việt Nam bằng cái chiêu là "việc nhẹ lương cao", sau đó bán sang trung tâm lừa đảo. Các cơ quan công an Việt Nam trực tiếp cũng như phối hợp với lượng thực thi pháp luật các nước, trong đó Cam Bốt và Thái Lan, đã triệt phá các nhóm môi giới này trên các nền tảng xã hội, như Zalo hoặc Facebook và có nhiều trường hợp đã xử lý về tội mua bán người, hoặc tổ chức xuất cảnh trái phép. Chúng tôi cũng kỳ vọng Công ước Hà Nội, cũng như các cơ sở pháp lý khác trong khu vực ASEAN, đặc biệt là giữa các nước Việt Nam, Lào, Cam Bốt và thậm chí cả Thái Lan nữa, sẽ tăng cường hợp tác về thực thi pháp luật, trao đổi dữ liệu về tội phạm mạng, tiếp tục phối hợp giải cứu các nạn nhân và cũng có thể tiến hành dẫn độ, hoặc trao đổi các loại tài liệu liên quan đến điều tra, truy tố và xét xử trong quá trình triệt phá các băng nhóm từ nay cho đến cuối năm và trong thời gian tới."

Báo động trước tình trạng ngược đãi những người lao động bị cưỡng bức, trong đó có không ít nạn nhân là người Việt Nam, tại các trung tâm lừa đảo trực tuyến ở các nước Đông Nam Á, Văn phòng Cao ủy Nhân quyền Liên Hiệp Quốc ngày 20/02/2026 đã kêu gọi cộng đồng quốc tế hành động chống lại tệ nạn này. Riêng Việt Nam đang phối hợp với Cam Bốt và những đối tác khác ở Đông Nam Á để triệt hạ các đường dây lừa đảo xuyên quốc gia. Trong một báo cáo được công bố vào năm 2023, Liên Hiệp Quốc ước tính hàng trăm ngàn người đã bị cưỡng bức tuyển dụng để thực hiện các vụ lừa đảo trực tuyến. Báo cáo mới, dựa trên lời khai của các nạn nhân và các cuộc phỏng vấn với các cảnh sát và đại diện của xã hội dân sự, mô tả các vi phạm nhân quyền nghiêm trọng mà những người bị buộc phải làm việc trong các trung tâm này phải gánh chịu.  Báo cáo ghi nhận các trường hợp tra tấn, ngược đãi, bóc lột, lạm dụng tình dục, cưỡng bức phá thai, bỏ đói và biệt giam. Một nạn nhân từ Sri Lanka khai rằng những người không đạt chỉ tiêu hàng tháng về lừa đảo đã bị dìm xuống nước hàng giờ trong các bể nước (gọi là 'nhà tù nước'). Các nạn nhân cũng kể lại việc bị ép buộc chứng kiến, thậm chí tham gia vào những hành vi vi phạm nhân quyền nghiêm trọng này. Một nạn nhân người Bangladesh cho biết anh ta được lệnh đánh đập những người lao động cưỡng bức khác, và một nạn nhân người Ghana mô tả việc bị ép buộc phải chứng kiến ​​bạn mình bị đánh đập. Một nạn nhân người Việt Nam kể lại việc em gái mình bị đánh đập, bị chích điện, bị nhốt trong phòng và bị bỏ đói trong bảy ngày vì đã toan đào thoát. Liên Hiệp Quốc lên án tình trạng những nạn nhân này bị xác định sai là tội phạm và bị truy tố hình sự, hoặc bị trừng phạt thay vì được bảo vệ. Từ nhiều năm qua, Cam Bốt đã trở thành “thiên đường” cho các tổ chức tội phạm điều hành ngành công nghiệp lừa đảo trị giá hàng tỷ đô la. Một báo cáo năm 2024 của Viện Hòa bình Hoa Kỳ ước tính doanh thu từ các vụ lừa đảo mạng ở Cam Bốt vượt quá 12,5 tỷ đô la mỗi năm, tương đương một nửa tổng sản phẩm nội địa (GDP) của nước này. Viện tư vấn Stimson Center, trụ sở chính tại thủ đô Washington của Mỹ, có một dự án về chống lừa đảo trên mạng, tập hợp các nhà khoa học cũng như các nhà hoạch định chính sách và cả đại diện các tập đoàn công nghệ như Google hoặc Meta. Sau ba năm thực hiện, vừa rồi họ đã tổ chức hội thảo tại Bangkok để tổng kết và đánh giá về những chiến dịch triệt hạ các trung tâm lừa đảo ở Cam Bốt. Tham gia dự án này có tiến sĩ Lương Thanh Hải, một nhà tội phạm học, hiện là giảng viên Trường Tư pháp hình sự và tội phạm học Griffith, Úc. Trả lời phỏng vấn RFI Việt ngữ ngày 05/03/2026, ông Lương Thanh Hải cho biết:  "Hơn nửa năm trở lại đây, từ giữa năm 2025 cho đến đầu năm 2026, dưới áp lực mạnh mẽ từ cộng đồng quốc tế, từ Mỹ, Trung Quốc, Hàn Quốc và một số nước Đông Nam Á, chính quyền Cam Bốt đã mở một chiến dịch quy mô rất lớn nhằm triệt phá các khu phức hợp lừa đảo trực tuyến ( scams compound ). Tất nhiên để đánh giá một kết quả tổng thể đòi hỏi những số liệu cụ thể và hiện nay thì chúng tôi vẫn đang cập nhật để có số liệu cụ thể chính xác. Nhưng sơ bộ thì trong vòng nửa năm trở lại đây, chính quyền Cam Bốt đã đánh sập được gần 200 trung tâm lừa đảo. Có thể nói là đây là một con số khá ấn tượng. Trong cuộc tọa đàm vừa rồi, chúng tôi cũng đã tổng kết sơ bộ ít nhất có hơn 173 nhân vật cầm đầu đã bị bắt và khoảng trên dưới 11.000 người tham gia đã bị trục xuất khỏi Cam Bốt. Hàng ngàn người là nạn nhân bị ép lừa đảo đã thoát khỏi các trung tâm đó. Đầu tháng 2 vừa rồi, chúng tôi cũng ghi nhận, đặc biệt là sau khi quân đội Thái Lan tiến hành công kích và triệt phá các khu phức hợp, các sòng bài lớn ở Cam Bốt, người ta đã phát hiện các đối tượng sử dụng trang phục cảnh sát của ít nhất là 7 nước như Úc, Brazil, Việt Nam, Indonesia, Singapore v.v... Đây có thể nói là những bằng chứng rõ nhất cho thấy các ổ lừa đảo này hoạt động hết sức  tinh vi, sử dụng các trang phục của lực lượng thực thi pháp luật nhằm tạo ra những kịch bản y như một cuộc thẩm vấn của cảnh sát liên bang Úc, hay của cảnh sát Việt Nam, cảnh sát Singapore..., để lừa đảo, thậm chí là đưa ra các kịch bản bắt bớ, khởi tố..., khiến các nạn nhân dễ bị đánh gục. Chính quyền Cam Bốt đầu năm vừa rồi đã đưa ra được một con số khá ấn tượng là đã giảm được khoảng 50% hoạt động lừa đảo trực tuyến sau các chiến dịch mạnh như vậy. Tất nhiên con số đó cũng cần phải được thẩm định.  Ngoài ra một số trùm mạng lưới, đặc biệt là Trần Chí ( Chen Zhi ), một đối tượng cầm đầu đã bị chính quyền Hoa Kỳ phong tỏa các tài sản và dưới áp lực của Mỹ, Cam Bốt cuối cùng cũng đã triển khai các chiến dịch và bắt được trùm lừa đảo này. Đầu năm vừa rồi, Trần Chí bị dẫn độ theo yêu cầu của chính quyền Trung Quốc đưa về Trung Quốc xét xử. Giới nghiên cứu chúng tôi tiếp tục cập nhật và hy vọng chính phủ Trung Quốc sẽ công bố những thông tin minh bạch, cũng như các bản án cụ thể, để chúng tôi từ góc độ tội phạm học có thể phân tích sâu hơn tại sao và như thế nào mà một trùm lừa đảo như Trần Chí lại có thể đi sâu và điều hành cả một tập đoàn lớn như vậy ở Cam Bốt trong rất nhiều năm. Sau khi phá được nhiều chuyên án lớn như vậy, nhiều tổ chức quốc tế cho rằng các đường dây này chỉ tạm thời giải tán thôi và rồi sẽ lại di chuyển sang địa phận khác. Các hoạt động tuyển dụng lao động của những trung tâm lừa đảo vẫn tiếp tục trên mạng xã hội. Bởi vì xét đến cùng, công nghiệp lừa đảo này ở Cam Bốt vẫn có quy mô cực lớn, có thể kiếm siêu lợi nhuận hàng chục tỷ đồng mỗi năm. Nói cách khác, chiến dịch này đã gây xáo trộn lớn, nhưng chưa thực sự triệt tiêu được hệ sinh thái đối với loại tội phạm lừa đảo qua mạng này." Hơn nữa, không chỉ có người Trung Quốc hay người Cam Bốt, mà có cả người Việt Nam điều hành đường dây lừa đảo ở xứ Chùa Tháp. Theo báo chí Việt Nam, ngày 13/02, Công an Đồng Nai phối hợp Cục An ninh mạng và phòng, chống tội phạm sử dụng công nghệ cao (Bộ Công an) đã tạm giữ Nguyễn Thị Vân, 30 tuổi, cùng 13 người khác để điều tra hành vi Lừa đảo chiếm đoạt tài sản. Nguyễn Thị Vân được xác đinh là cầm đầu đường dây lừa đảo 2.500 tỷ đồng của hàng ngàn nạn nhân, hoạt động tại Cam Bốt. Các nhà điều tra cho biết đây là một trong những vụ án đầu tiên bắt giữ được chủ mưu là người Việt Nam, tự đầu tư cơ sở hạ tầng quy mô lớn và vận hành hệ thống lừa đảo tại nhiều địa điểm ở Cam Bốt. Ngày 25/02, đến lượt Cơ quan Cảnh sát Điều tra Công an tỉnh Tây Ninh ra thông báo tìm những ai là nạn nhân của Huỳnh Nguyễn Ngọc Huy trong vụ án lừa đảo qua mạng xã hội để mua bán người. Cụ thể, Huy dùng tài khoản Facebook "Huy Trần" đăng tin tuyển dụng giả giới thiệu các “việc nhẹ lương cao” để lừa gạt nạn nhân đưa sang Cam Bốt. Tại đây, các nạn nhân bị ép buộc làm việc, nếu muốn về nước phải trả tiền chuộc rất cao, hoặc bị bán tiếp sang các công ty lừa đảo khác. Nhà tội phạm học Lương Thanh Hải giải thích:  "Qua nghiên cứu từ thực tiễn, cũng như về lý thuyết, chúng tôi gọi đó là sự trùng lặp, sự lặp lại giữa nạn nhân và thủ phạm. Chúng tôi hay dùng thuật ngữ offender - victim overlap. Họ là những nạn nhân đã bị dụ dỗ để sang làm, bị ép buộc, được đào tạo từng bước một, từng kịch bản một và thậm chí đóng các kịch bản lực lượng thực thi pháp luật của nước A, nước B, nước C để lừa ngược lại. Thậm chí khi bị nhốt vào các trung tâm lừa đảo này, họ bị ép buộc phải đạt được chỉ số KPI ( chỉ số đo lường và đánh giá hiệu quả hoạt động ), hàng ngày hàng giờ phải thực hiện bao nhiêu cuộc lừa đảo. Thành thử họ không còn lựa chọn nào khác, buộc phải làm ngày làm đêm, thậm chí phải lừa cả người thân trong gia đình, bạn bè của họ ở Việt Nam, lôi kéo sang để lại trở thành nạn nhân của các vụ lừa đảo qua mạng tiếp theo. Trong khoảng hai năm trở lại đây, công an Việt Nam cũng đã phối hợp khá chặt chẽ với các lực lượng thực thi pháp luật của khu vực Đông Nam Á, thông qua các kênh chính thống, ví dụ như ASEANAPOL, tức là Hiệp hội cảnh sát trưởng của các nước ASEAN, hoặc là thông qua các đối tác song phương giữa cảnh sát và bộ Nội Vụ của Vương Quốc Cam Bốt hoặc Thái Lan. Đã có nhiều cuộc giải cứu thành công, ví dụ mới đây công an tỉnh Tuyên Quang đã giải cứu và đưa được khoảng 74 nghi phạm từ Cam Bốt và Việt Nam trong một vụ lừa đảo lên đến hàng nghìn tỷ đồng. Hiện nay, Việt Nam được đánh giá là một những nước đầu tiên của khu vực Đông Nam Á đang hướng tới áp dụng nguyên tắc "không hình phạt" đối với nạn nhân, nếu như chứng minh được họ là nạn nhân của các vụ ép buộc lừa đảo trực tuyến. Điều này cũng đã được cụ thể hóa trong luật về phòng chống buôn bán người của Việt Nam được sửa đổi năm 2024 và có hiệu lực từ tháng 7/2025. Về góc độ chính sách và pháp luật, chúng tôi cho đấy là một trong những bước tiến rất đáng ghi nhận từ chính quyền Việt Nam." Một cơ sơ pháp lý khác để Việt Nam có thể tăng cường hợp tác với các nước để diệt trừ các trung tâm lừa đảo, theo ông Lương Thanh Hải, chính là Công ước Hà Nội:  "Công ước Hà Nội, tức là Công ước của Liên Hiệp Quốc về phòng chống tội phạm mạng, đã được ký từ tháng 10/2025. Bản thân Việt Nam và Cam Bốt, cùng một số nước khác trong Đông Nam Á, có tham gia. Theo thống kê của chúng tôi, tổng số nước ký kết đã lên đến 73 hoặc là 75 nước. Đây là một bước tiến lớn về cơ sở pháp lý để tăng cường hợp tác quốc tế trong phòng chống các tội phạm mạng, bao gồm cả lừa đảo trực tuyến như các trung tâm ở Cam Bốt. Tuy nhiên, phần lớn những người Việt được phát hiện tham gia, thậm chí trực tiếp đi sang và cầm đầu các nhóm đối tượng ở Cam Bốt trong các trung tâm lừa đảo trực tuyến không phải là những "big boss", không phải là trùm của những ông trùm. Phần lớn những ông trùm đó vẫn là "behind the scene", vẫn đang tiếp tục lẫn trốn. Như trường hợp của Trần Chí chẳng hạn, phải mất rất nhiều thời gian mới bị phá vỡ và bị bắt. Thành thử  những người Việt này thì chúng tôi đánh giá chủ yếu là đứng đằng sau điều hành các trung tâm lừa đảo Cam Bốt. Công an Việt Nam cũng đang tiếp tục khởi tố theo các nhóm tội lừa đảo, chiếm đoạt tài sản, hoặc tổ chức đưa người ra nước ngoài trái phép, tham gia trực tiếp vào các trung tâm lừa đảo đó. Các số liệu cũng như các bằng chứng cho thấy các đường dây này thường là dụ người Việt Nam bằng cái chiêu là "việc nhẹ lương cao", sau đó bán sang trung tâm lừa đảo. Các cơ quan công an Việt Nam trực tiếp cũng như phối hợp với lượng thực thi pháp luật các nước, trong đó Cam Bốt và Thái Lan, đã triệt phá các nhóm môi giới này trên các nền tảng xã hội, như Zalo hoặc Facebook và có nhiều trường hợp đã xử lý về tội mua bán người, hoặc tổ chức xuất cảnh trái phép. Chúng tôi cũng kỳ vọng Công ước Hà Nội, cũng như các cơ sở pháp lý khác trong khu vực ASEAN, đặc biệt là giữa các nước Việt Nam, Lào, Cam Bốt và thậm chí cả Thái Lan nữa, sẽ tăng cường hợp tác về thực thi pháp luật, trao đổi dữ liệu về tội phạm mạng, tiếp tục phối hợp giải cứu các nạn nhân và cũng có thể tiến hành dẫn độ, hoặc trao đổi các loại tài liệu liên quan đến điều tra, truy tố và xét xử trong quá trình triệt phá các băng nhóm từ nay cho đến cuối năm và trong thời gian tới."

What if you're not “bad at time management”… you're just leaking energy in places that don't matter? In Healthy Mind, Healthy Life hosted by Yusuf, executive coach Mark Briggs unpacks why high performers hit a wall—even when the calendar looks “managed.” This episode is for leaders, founders, and ambitious professionals who feel stretched thin but still want to lead with clarity. You'll walk away with small, realistic shifts—like the “top 3 goals” rule, calendar alignment, and a gentler way to use AI as a thought partner—so your impact grows without burning you out. About the Guest: Mark Briggs is an executive coach, author, keynote speaker, and founder of Empyrean Group. He helps leaders find their “next gear,” where effort decreases and impact accelerates. Episode Chapters: 00:01:41 — Energy is the real constraint, not time 00:03:37 — The pandemic shift: more time, less clarity 00:05:19 — The grind myth and the “top 3 goals” rule 00:07:49 — Broken promises to yourself = quiet anxiety 00:09:22 — Calendar color-coding: do priorities actually show up? 00:11:06 — Date night as a KPI for a well-led life 00:16:47 — Using AI to find space, summarize, and create focus Key Takeaways: Pick no more than 3 daily priorities; finish them before adding more. Run a weekly calendar test: do your stated goals appear on it? Treat “promises to self” as integrity—small follow-through reduces anxiety. Build a 15-minute morning routine (hydration, stretch, journal, gratitude, meditate). Use AI to brainstorm schedule gaps, summarize meetings, and surface next steps. How to Connect With the Guest: LinkedIn Website: https://www.markbriggs.org/ (NextGear newsletter)     Want to be a guest on Healthy Mind, Healthy Life? DM on PM - Send me a message on PodMatch DM Me Here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/avik Disclaimer: This video is for educational and informational purposes only. The views expressed are the personal opinions of the guest and do not reflect the views of the host or Healthy Mind By Avik™️. We do not intend to harm, defame, or discredit any person, organization, brand, product, country, or profession mentioned. All third-party media used remain the property of their respective owners and are used under fair use for informational purposes. By watching, you acknowledge and accept this disclaimer. Healthy Mind By Avik™️ is a global platform redefining mental health as a necessity, not a luxury. Born during the pandemic, it's become a sanctuary for healing, growth, and mindful living. Hosted by Avik Chakraborty, storyteller, survivor, and wellness advocate. With over 6000+ episodes and 200K+ global listeners, we unite voices, break stigma, and build a world where every story matters.

10 ข้อ KPI อย่าหาทำจากบทความ Avoiding the KPI Trap: Common Mistakes Professionals Make with Key Performance Indicators (And How to Fix Them) โดย CYNET EAST AFRICA

In this masterclass episode, Giuseppe Grammatico and Henry Lopez move past the "how to start" phase to discuss the "how to step away" phase.

Jacob Shapiro is a geopolitical analyst who provides strategic guidance to families, investors, and corporations. He is a global thought leader in the area of geopolitics and its impact on everything from global markets to supply chains. You can find his Substack at https://substack.com/@jashap, his personal podcast at here (Apple) or here (Spotify), or you can follow Geopolitical Cousins here (Apple) or here (Spotify). Hope y'all enjoy!Sponsorship InformationThank you to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Trata⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for sponsoring the show.If you're listening to this podcast, you'll like Trata. Trata is buyside to buyside conversations on individual stocks. Trata makes finding a bull or bear on any stock as easy as clicking two buttons. Over 125 funds globally contribute that collectively cover 2000+ tickers. Trata raised over $3mm coming out of Y Combinator. Before you would track 13Fs, now you can understand what funds are actually thinking. You can join as a lurker or you can join as a contributor and Trata will pay you hundreds of dollars per call. For a free trial, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠trytrata.com/brew⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ OG Sponsor Shoutout!Thank you to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for sponsoring the show. DISCOUNT INFO: If you use the affiliate link ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fiscal.ai/brew⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, you will automatically get 2 weeks of Fiscal Pro for Free and if you find that you want to upgrade, my link will get you 15% off any paid plans. About ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is the complete modern data terminal for global equities.The ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ platform combines a powerful user experience with all the financial data capabilities that professional investors need. Users get up to 20 years of historical financials for all stocks globally that they can easily chart, compare, or export into their own models. And unlike legacy data terminals where it can take hours or even days, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠'s data is updated within minutes of earnings reports. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ also tracks all the company-specific Segment & KPI data so you don't have to. Like to track Amazon's Cloud Revenue? They've got it.How about Spotify's premium subscribers? Or Google's quarterly paid clicks?They've got all of it.

uniQure is a business that develops gene therapies. uniQure's AMT-130 is currently in the headlines. This podcast episode attempts to present the Huntington's Disease community's arguments for why the FDA should work collaboratively to design a palatable drug trial. Last week the FDA told uniQure that AMT-130 would be subject to a double blind, Phase 3, randomized controlled study. While the scientific basis for that request is sound in most cases, the Huntington's Disease community argues that path is overly burdensome; perhaps impossible. This episode cites:Dr. Sung - https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=VhMQaFAZRvQA5NRj&t=62&v=mwEEJ91LeJY&feature=youtu.beSr. Sarah Tabrizi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKj1JRfJBRE&t=356sDr. Ed Wild - https://www.spreaker.com/episode/uniqure-update-with-dr-ed-wild--67900959FDA papers - External Control Guidance https://www.fda.gov/media/122425/downloadUse of Bayesian Statistics - https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/use-bayesian-methodology-clinical-trials-drug-and-biological-productsSenate Committee on Aging - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLm1SltbRxw&t=2702sSponsorship InformationThank you to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Trata⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for sponsoring the show.If you're listening to this podcast, you'll like Trata. Trata is buyside to buyside conversations on individual stocks. Trata makes finding a bull or bear on any stock as easy as clicking two buttons. Over 125 funds globally contribute that collectively cover 2000+ tickers. Trata raised over $3mm coming out of Y Combinator. Before you would track 13Fs, now you can understand what funds are actually thinking. You can join as a lurker or you can join as a contributor and Trata will pay you hundreds of dollars per call. For a free trial, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠trytrata.com/brew⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ OG Sponsor Shoutout!Thank you to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for sponsoring the show. DISCOUNT INFO: If you use the affiliate link ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fiscal.ai/brew⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, you will automatically get 2 weeks of Fiscal Pro for Free and if you find that you want to upgrade, my link will get you 15% off any paid plans. About ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is the complete modern data terminal for global equities.The ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ platform combines a powerful user experience with all the financial data capabilities that professional investors need. Users get up to 20 years of historical financials for all stocks globally that they can easily chart, compare, or export into their own models. And unlike legacy data terminals where it can take hours or even days, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠'s data is updated within minutes of earnings reports. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ also tracks all the company-specific Segment & KPI data so you don't have to. Like to track Amazon's Cloud Revenue? They've got it.How about Spotify's premium subscribers? Or Google's quarterly paid clicks?They've got all of it.

VOV1 - Sáng nay, 05/03, tại trụ sở Chính phủ, Phó Thủ tướng Chính phủ Hồ Quốc Dũng chủ trì cuộc họp với Bộ Tư pháp và các Bộ ngành về việc xây dựng chỉ số đánh giá, chấm điểm KPI về ban hành văn bản quy định chi tiết luật, pháp lệnh, Nghị quyết.Báo cáo của Bộ Tư pháp cho biết mục tiêu xây dựng đề án ban hành chỉ số đánh giá, chấm điểm KPI về công tác xây dựng pháp luật nhằm thiết lập công cụ quản lý thống nhất, khách quan và định lượng để theo dõi, đánh giá toàn diện kết quả thực hiện nhiệm vụ xây dựng pháp luật của các Bộ, cơ quan ngang Bộ.Theo đề án này, có 3 nhóm văn bản phải đánh giá gồm: các luật, nghị quyết của Quốc hội, pháp lệnh, nghị quyết của Ủy ban thường vụ Quốc hội; các văn bản quy định chi tiết luật, pháp lệnh, Nghị quyết của Quốc hội, Ủy ban thường vụ Quốc hội, lệnh, quyết định của Chủ tịch nước; các văn bản thuộc thẩm quyền ban hành của Chính phủ, Thủ tướng Chính phủ quy định biện pháp để tổ chức hướng dẫn thi hành luật, pháp lệnh, Nghị quyết. Các cơ quan được chấm điểm gồm: Cơ quan chủ trì soạn thảo; cơ quan thẩm định, Bộ Tư pháp; cơ quan trả lời ý kiến thành viên Chính phủ; cơ quan được giao xử lý, xin ý kiến thành viên chính phủ, báo cáo lãnh đạo Chính phủ, Văn phòng Chính phủ. Chỉ số KPI tập trung đánh giá các nội dung trọng tâm gồm: tiến độ, chất lượng soạn thảo, trình ban hành văn bản ; mức độ đầy đủ, kịp thời của văn bản quy định chi tiết; hiệu quả công tác phối hợp giữa các cơ quan trong quá trình xây dựng pháp luật.

《我想聽你說 2 Popcorn Talks 2》歡樂對話卡牌組全新推出

Nigel Baker: Why Scrum Masters Should Be Measured on Outcomes, Impacts, and Team Happiness Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.   "No customer's going to come to you and say, do you know why I bought your product? Your remarkable compliance with your internal development process. What they're interested in is outcomes and impacts." - Nigel Baker   Nigel challenges the traditional ways of measuring Scrum Master success. He points to tools like the Nokia test—which, he jokes, was neither a test nor invented by Nokia—as examples of process fidelity assessments that miss the point entirely. Compliance with a process tells you nothing about whether customers are satisfied or whether the team is delivering value. Instead, Nigel argues for measuring Scrum Masters on outcomes and impacts: customer satisfaction, revenue generation, and efficiencies—the same things a Product Owner gets judged on.  But he adds a crucial dimension that POs often overlook: team happiness. Not as an end goal, but as a leading indicator. Happy teams don't leave. Happy teams do better work. Team contentness is a KPI that signals whether the deeper success factors are in place. When your team is deeply unhappy, no amount of velocity or story completion will save you from attrition and decline.   Self-reflection Question: How are you currently measuring your success as a Scrum Master—on process compliance, or on the outcomes, impacts, and wellbeing your team actually delivers? Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Keep It Fresh—A Different Format Every Sprint Nigel's answer to the "favorite retrospective format" question is deliberately controversial: he doesn't have one. His approach is to use a different format every single sprint. Retrospective formats, he argues, "age like milk"—by Sprint 12, asking "what should we do differently?" with the same structure produces diminishing returns. Novelty creates energy. He sometimes gets teams to invent their own formats, which produces some of the most forensic and intense retrospectives he's seen—teams building "superweapons" and then realizing they have to turn those weapons on themselves. But Nigel's most practical tip is using retrospective techniques inside the Sprint Review. The Review is a product retrospective, and stakeholders shouldn't sit "like Roman emperors in the Colosseum, watching the developers as gladiators." Instead, use facilitation methods to extract "sweet, juicy, honey-flavoured feedback" from stakeholders about what they'd change in the product.   [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

Cut through the hype and finally see ROI you can prove. In this episode, Matt Stanley—founder of GetReviewsAndLeads.com—shares how his proprietary RACK framework (Reach, Attract, Convert, Keep) and transparent reporting help established businesses stop wasting ad spend and start generating consistent, predictable growth. Matt walks through the diagnostic process he built (including a quick scorecard and KPI setup), why most campaigns fail before they start, and how pairing smart systems with genuine relationships slashes churn and boosts lifetime value.

The reception to our recent post on Code Reviews has been strong. Catch up!Amid a maelstrom of discussion on whether or not AI is killing SaaS, one of the top publicly listed SaaS companies in the world has just reported record revenues, clearing well over $1.1B in ARR for the first time with a 28% margin. As we comment on the pod, Aaron Levie is the rare public company CEO equally at home in both worlds of Silicon Valley and Wall Street/Main Street, by day helping 70% of the Fortune 500 with their Enterprise Advanced Suite, and yet by night is often found in the basements of early startups and tweeting viral insights about the future of agents.Now that both Cursor, Cloudflare, Perplexity, Anthropic and more have made Filesystems and Sandboxes and various forms of “Just Give the Agent a Box” cool (not just cool; it is now one of the single hottest areas in AI infrastructure growing 100% MoM), we find it a delightfully appropriate time to do the episode with the OG CEO who has been giving humans and computers Boxes since he was a college dropout pitching VCs at a Michael Arrington house party.Enjoy our special pod, with fan favorite returning guest/guest cohost Jeff Huber!Note: We didn't directly discuss the AI vs SaaS debate - Aaron has done many, many, many other podcasts on that, and you should read his definitive essay on it. Most commentators do not understand SaaS businesses because they have never scaled one themselves, and deeply reflected on what the true value proposition of SaaS is.We also discuss Your Company is a Filesystem:We also shoutout CTO Ben Kus' and the AI team, who talked about the technical architecture and will return for AIE WF 2026.Full Video EpisodeTimestamps* 00:00 Adapting Work for Agents* 01:29 Why Every Agent Needs a Box* 04:38 Agent Governance and Identity* 11:28 Why Coding Agents Took Off First* 21:42 Context Engineering and Search Limits* 31:29 Inside Agent Evals* 33:23 Industries and Datasets* 35:22 Building the Agent Team* 38:50 Read Write Agent Workflows* 41:54 Docs Graphs and Founder Mode* 55:38 Token FOMO Culture* 56:31 Production Function Secrets* 01:01:08 Film Roots to Box* 01:03:38 AI Future of Movies* 01:06:47 Media DevRel and EngineeringTranscriptAdapting Work for AgentsAaron Levie: Like you don't write code, you talk to an agent and it goes and does it for you, and you may be at best review it. That's even probably like, like largely not even what you're doing. What's happening is we are changing our work to make the agents effective. In that model, the agent didn't really adapt to how we work.We basically adapted to how the agent works. All of the economy has to go through that exact same evolution. Right now, it's a huge asset and an advantage for the teams that do it early and that are kinda wired into doing this ‘cause you'll see compounding returns. But that's just gonna take a while for most companies to actually go and get this deployed.swyx: Welcome to the Lane Space Pod. We're back in the chroma studio with uh, chroma, CEO, Jeff Hoover. Welcome returning guest now guest host.Aaron Levie: It's a pleasure. Wow. How'd you get upgraded to, uh, to that?swyx: Because he's like the perfect guy to be guest those for you.Aaron Levie: That makes sense actually, for We love context. We, we both really love context le we really do.We really do.swyx: Uh, and we're here with, uh, Aaron Levy. Welcome.Aaron Levie: Thank you. Good to, uh, good to be [00:01:00] here.swyx: Uh, yeah. So we've all met offline and like chatted a little bit, but like, it's always nice to get these things in person and conversation. Yeah. You just started off with so much energy. You're, you're super excited about agents.I loveAaron Levie: agents.swyx: Yeah. Open claw. Just got by, got bought by OpenAI. No, not bought, but you know, you know what I mean?Aaron Levie: Some, some, you know, acquihire. Executiveswyx: hire.Aaron Levie: Executive hire. Okay. Executive hire. Say,swyx: hey, that's my term. Okay. Um, what are you pounding the table on on agents? You have so many insightful tweets.Why Every Agent Needs a BoxAaron Levie: Well, the thing that, that we get super excited by that I think is probably, you know, should be relatively obvious is we've, we've built a platform to help enterprises manage their files and their, their corporate files and the permissions of who has access to those files and the sharing collaboration of those files.All of those files contain really, really important information for the enterprise. It might have your contracts, it might have your research materials, it might have marketing information, it might have your memos. All that data obviously has, you know, predominantly been used by humans. [00:02:00] But there's been one really interesting problem, which is that, you know, humans only really work with their files during an active engagement with them, and they kind of go away and you don't really see them for a long time.And all of a sudden, uh, with the power of AI and AI agents, all of that data becomes extremely relevant as this ongoing source of, of answers to new questions of data that will transform into, into something else that, that produces value in your organization. It, it contains the answer to the new employee that's onboarding, that needs to ramp up on a project.Um, it contains the answer to the right thing to sell a customer when you're having a conversation to them, with them contains the roadmap information that's gonna produce the next feature. So all that data. That previously we've been just sort of storing and, and you know, occasionally forgetting about, ‘cause we're only working on the new active stuff.All of that information becomes valuable to the enterprise and it's gonna become extremely valuable to end users because now they can have agents go find what they're looking for and produce new, new [00:03:00] value and new data on that information. And it's gonna become incredibly valuable to agents because agents can roam around and do a bunch of work and they're gonna need access to that data as well.And um, and you know, sometimes that will be an agent that is sort of working on behalf of, of, of you and, and effectively as you as and, and they are kind of accessing all of the same information that you have access to and, and operating as you in the system. And then sometimes there's gonna be agents that are just.Effectively autonomous and kind of run on their own and, and you're gonna collaborate and work with them kind of like you did another person. Open Claw being the most recent and maybe first real sort of, you know, kind of, you know, up updating everybody's, you know, views of this landscape version of, of what that could look like, which is, okay, I have an agent.It's on its own system, it's on its own computer, it has access to its own tools. I probably don't give it access to my entire life. I probably communicate with it like I would an assistant or a colleague and then it, it sort of has this sandbox environment. So all of that has massive implications for a platform that manage that [00:04:00] enterprise data.We think it's gonna just transform how we work with all of the enterprise content that we work with, and we just have to make sure we're building the right platform to support that.swyx: The sort of shorthand I put it is as people build agents, everybody's just realizing that every agent needs a box. Yes.And it's nice to be called box and just give everyone a box.Aaron Levie: Hey, I if I, you know, if we can make that go viral, uh, like I, I think that that terminology, I, that's theswyx: tagline. Every agentAaron Levie: needs a box. Every agent needs a box. If we can make that the headline of this, I'm fine with this. And that's the billboard I wanna like Yeah, exactly.Every agent needs a box. Um, I like it. Can we ship this? Like,swyx: okay, let's do it. Yeah.Aaron Levie: Uh, my work here is done and I got the value I needed outta this podcast Drinks.swyx: Yeah.Agent Governance and IdentityAaron Levie: But, but, um, but, but, you know, so the thing that we, we kind of think about is, um, is, you know, whether you think the number 10 x or a hundred x or whatever the number is, we're gonna have some order of magnitude more agents than people.That's inevitable. It has to happen. So then the question is, what is the infrastructure that's needed to make all those agents effective in the enterprise? Make sure that they are well governed. Make sure they're only doing [00:05:00] safe things on your information. Make sure that they're not getting exposed. The data that they shouldn't have access to.There's gonna be just incredibly spectacularly crazy security incidents that will happen with agents because you'll prompt, inject an agent and sort of find your way through the CRM system and pull out data that you shouldn't have access to. Oh, weJeff Huber: have God,Aaron Levie: right? I mean, that's just gonna happen all over the place, right?So, so then the thing is, is how do you make sure you have the right security, the permissions, the access controls, the data governance. Um, we actually don't yet exactly know in many cases how we're gonna regulate some of these agents, right? If you think about an agent in financial services, does it have the exact same financial sort of, uh, requirements that a human did?Or is it, is the risk fully on the human that was interacting or created the agent? All open questions, but no matter what, there's gonna need to be a layer that manages the, the data they have access to, the workflows that they're involved in, pulling up data from multiple systems. This is the new infrastructure opportunity in the era of agents.swyx: You have a piece on agent identities, [00:06:00] which I think was today, um, which I think a lot of breaking news, the security, security people are talking about, right? Like you basically, I, I always think of this as like, well you need the human you and then there you need the agent. YouAaron Levie: Yes.swyx: And uh, well, I don't know if it's that simple, but is box going to have an opinion on that or you're just gonna be like, well we're just the sort of the, the source layer.Yeah. Let's Okta of zero handle that.Aaron Levie: I think we're gonna have an opinion and we will work with generally wherever the contours of the market end up. Um, and the reason that we're gonna have an opinion more than other topics probably is because one of the biggest use cases for why your agent might need it, an identity is for file system access.So thus we have to kind of think about this pretty deeply. And I think, uh, unless you're like in our world thinking about this particular problem all day long, it might be, you know, like, why is this such a big deal? And the reason why it's a really big deal is because sometimes sort of say, well just give the agent an, an account on the system and it just treats, treat it like every other type of user on the system.The [00:07:00] problem is, is that I as Aaron don't really have any responsibility over anybody else's box account in our organization. I can't see the box account of any other employee that I work with. I am not liable for anything that they do. And they have, I have, I have, you know, strict privacy requirements on everything that they're able to, you know, that, that, that they work on.Agents don't have that, you know, don't have those properties. The person who creates the agent probably is gonna, for the foreseeable future, take on a lot of the liability of what that agent does. That agent doesn't deserve any privacy because, because it's, you know, it can't fully be autonomously operated and it doesn't have any legal, you know, kind of, you know, responsibility.So thus you can't just be like, oh, well I'll just create a bunch of accounts and then I'll, I'll kind of work with that agent and I'll talk to it occasionally. Like you need oversight of that. And so then the question is, how do you have a world where the agent, sometimes you have oversight of, but what if that agent goes and works with other people?That person over there is collaborating with the agent on something you shouldn't have [00:08:00] access to what they're doing. So we have all of these new boundaries that we're gonna have to figure out of, of, you know, it's really, really easy. So far we've been in, in easy mode. We've hit the easy button with ai, which is the agent just is you.And when you're in quad code and you're in cursor, and you're in Codex, you're just, the agent is you. You're offing into your services. It can do everything you can do. That's the easy mode. The hard mode is agents are kind of running on their own. People check in with them occasionally, they're doing things autonomously.How do you give them access to resources in the enterprise and not dramatically increased the security risk and the risk that you might expose the wrong thing to somebody. These are all the new problems that we have to get solved. I like the identity layer and, and identity vendors as being a solution to that, but we'll, we'll need some opinions as well because so many of the use cases are these collaborative file system use cases, which is how do I give it an agent, a subset of my data?Give it its own workspace as well. ‘cause it's gonna need to store off its own information that would be relevant for it. And how do I have the right oversight into that? [00:09:00]Jeff Huber: One thing, which, um, I think is kind interesting, think about is that you know, how humans work, right? Like I may not also just like give you access to the whole file.I might like sit next to you and like scroll to this like one part of the file and just show you that like one part and like, you know,swyx: partial file access.Jeff Huber: I'm just saying I think like our, like RA does seem to be dead, right? Like you wanna say something is dead uhhuh probably RA is dead. And uh, like the auth story to me seems like incredibly unsolved and unaddressed by like the existing state of like AI vendors.ButAaron Levie: yeah, I think, um, we're, I mean you're taking obviously really to level limit that we probably need to solve for. Yeah. And we built an access control system that was, was kind of like, you know, its own little world for, for a long time. And um, and the idea was this, it's a many to many collaboration system where I can give you any part of the file system.And it's a waterfall model. So if I give you higher up in the, in the, in the system, you get everything below. And that, that kind of created immense flexibility because I can kind of point you to any layer in the, in the tree, but then you're gonna get access to everything kind of below it. And that [00:10:00] mostly is, is working in this, in this world.But you do have to manage this issue, which is how do I create an agent that has access to some of my stuff and somebody else's stuff as well. Mm-hmm. And which parts do I get to look at as the creator of the agent? And, and these are just brand new problems? Yeah. Crazy. And humans, when there was a human there that was really easy to do.Like, like if the three of us were all sharing, there'd be a Venn diagram where we'd have an overlapping set of things we've shared, but then we'd have our own ways that we shared with each other. In an agent world, somebody needs to take responsibility for what that agent has access to and what they're working on.These are like the, some of the most probably, you know, boring problems for 98% of people on, on the internet, but they will be the problems that are the difference between can you actually have autonomous agents in an enterprise contextswyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: That are not leaking your data constantly.swyx: No. Like, I mean, you know, I run a very, very small company for my conference and like we already have data sensitivity issues.Yes. And some of my team members cannot see Yes. Uh, the others and like, I can't imagine what it's like to run a Fortune 500 and like, you have to [00:11:00] worry about this. I'm just kinda curious, like you, you talked to a lot like, like 70, 80% of your cus uh, of the Fortune 500, your customers.Aaron Levie: Yep. 67%. Just so we're being verySEswyx: precise.So Yeah. I'm notAaron Levie: Okay. Okay.swyx: Something I'm rounding up. Yes. Round up. I'm projecting to, forAaron Levie: the government.swyx: I'm projecting to the end of the year.Aaron Levie: Okay.swyx: There you go.Aaron Levie: You do make it sound like, like we, we, well we've gotta be on this. Like we're, we're taking way too long to get to 80%. Well,swyx: no, I mean, so like. How are they approaching it?Right? Because you're, you don't have a, you don't have a final answer yet.Why Coding Agents Took Off FirstAaron Levie: Well, okay, so, so this is actually, this is the stark reality that like, unfortunately is the kinda like pouring the water on the party a little bit.swyx: Yes.Aaron Levie: We all in Silicon Valley are like, have the absolute best conditions possible for AI ever.And I think we all saw the dke, you know, kind of Dario podcast and this idea of AI coding. Why is that taken off? And, and we're not yet fully seeing it everywhere else. Well, look, if you just like enumerated the list of properties that AI coding has and then compared it to other [00:12:00] knowledge work, let's just, let's just go through a few of them.Generally speaking, you bring on a new engineer, they have access to a large swath of the code base. Like, there's like very, like you, just, like new engineer comes on, they can just go and find the, the, the stuff that they, they need to work with. It's a fully text in text out. Medium. It's only, it's just gonna be text at the end of the day.So it's like really great from a, from just a, uh, you know, kinda what the agent can work with. Obviously the models are super trained on that dataset. The labs themselves have a really strong, kind of self-reinforcing positive flywheel of why they need to do, you know, agent coding deeply. So then you get just better tooling, better services.The actual developers of the AI are daily users of the, of the thing that they're we're working on versus like the, you know, probably there's only like seven Claude Cowork legal plugin users at Anthropic any given day, but there's like a couple thousand Claude code and you know, users every single day.So just like, think about which one are they getting more feedback on. All day long. So you just go through this list. You have a, you know, everybody who's a [00:13:00] developer by definition is technical so they can go install the latest thing. We're all generally online, or at least, you know, kinda the weird ones are, and we're all talking to each other, sharing best practices, like that's like already eight differences.Versus the rest of the economy. Every other part of the economy has like, like six to seven headwinds relative to that list. You go into a company, you're a banker in financial services, you have access to like a, a tiny little subset of the total data that's gonna be relevant to do your job. And you're have to start to go and talk to a bunch of people to get the right data to do your job because Sally didn't add you to that deal room, you know, folder.And that that, you know, the information is actually in a completely different organization that you now have to go in and, and sort of run into. And it's like you have this endless list of access controls and security. As, as you talked about, you have a medium, which is not, it's not just text, right? You have, you have a zoom call that, that you're getting all of the requirements from the customer.You have a lot of in-person conversations and you're doing in-person sales and like how do you ever [00:14:00] digitize all of that information? Um, you know, I think a lot of people got upset with this idea that the code base has all the context, um, that I don't know if you follow, you know, did you follow some of that conversation that that went viral?Is like, you know, it's not that simple that, that the code base doesn't have all the knowledge, but like it's a lot, you're a lot better off than you are with other areas of knowledge work. Like you, we like, we like have documentation practices, you write specifications. Those things don't exist for like 80% of work that happens in the enterprise.That's the divide that we have, which is, which is AI coding has, has just fully, you know, where we've reached escape velocity of how powerful this stuff is, and then we're gonna have to find a way to bring that same energy and momentum, but to all these other areas of knowledge work. Where the tools aren't there, the data's not set up to be there.The access controls don't make it that easy. The context engineering is an incredibly hard problem because again, you have access control challenges, you have different data formats. You have end users that are gonna need to kind of be kind of trained through this as opposed to their adopting [00:15:00] these tools in their free time.That's where the Fortune 500 is. And so we, I think, you know, have to be prepared as an industry where we are gonna be on a multi-year march to, to be able to bring agents to the enterprise for these workflows. And I think probably the, the thing that we've learned most in coding that, that the rest of the world is not yet, I think ready for, I mean, we're, they'll, they'll have to be ready for it because it's just gonna inevitably happen is I think in coding.What, what's interesting is if you think about the practice of coding today versus two years ago. It's probably the most changed workflow in maybe the history of time from the amount of time it's changed, right? Yeah. Like, like has any, has any workflow in the entire economy changed that quickly in terms of the amount of change?I just, you know, at least in any knowledge worker workflow, there's like very rarely been an event where one piece of technology and work practice has so fundamentally, you know, changed, changed what you do. Like you don't write code, you talk to an agent and it goes and [00:16:00] does it for you, and you may be at best review it.And even that's even probably like, like largely not even what you're doing. What's happening is we are changing our work to make the agents effective. In that model, the agent didn't really adapt to how we work. We basically adapted to how the agent works. Mm-hmm. All of the economy has to go through that exact same evolution.The rest of the economy is gonna have to update its workflows to make agents effective. And to give agents the context that they need and to actually figure out what kind of prompting works and to figure out how do you ensure that the agent has the right access to information to be able to execute on its work.I, you know, this is not the panacea that people were hoping for, of the agent drops in, just automates your life. Like you have to basically re-engineer your workflow to get the most out of agents and, uh, and that, that's just gonna take, you know, multiple years across the economy. Right now it's a huge asset and an advantage for the teams that do it early and that are kinda wired into doing this.‘cause [00:17:00] you'll see compounding returns, but that's just gonna take a while for most companies to actually go and get this deployed.swyx: I love, I love pushing back. I think that. That is what a lot of technology consultants love to hear this sort of thing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. First to, to embrace the ai. Yes. To get to the promised land, you must pay me so much money to a hundred percent to adopt the prescribed way of, uh, conforming to the agents.Yes. And I worry that you will be eclipsed by someone else who says, no, come as you are.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: And we'll meet you where you are.Aaron Levie: And, and, and and what was the thing that went viral a week ago? OpenAI probably, uh, is hiring F Dees. Yeah. Uh, to go into the enterprise. Yeah. Yeah. And then philanthropic is embedded at Goldman Sachs.Yeah. So if the labs are having to do this, if, if the labs have decided that they need to hire FDE and professional services, then I think that's a pretty clear indication that this, there's no easy mode of workflow transformation. Yeah. Yeah. So, so to your point, I think actually this is a market opportunity for, you know, new professional services and consulting [00:18:00] firms that are like Agent Build and they, and they kind of, you know, go into organizations and they figure out how to re-engineer your workflows to make them more agent ready and get your data into the right format and, you know, reconstruct your business process.So you're, you're not doing most of the work. You're telling agents how to do the work and then you're reviewing it. But I haven't seen the thing that can just drop in and, and kinda let you not go through those changes.swyx: I don't know how that kind of sales pitch goes over. Yeah. You know, you're, you're saying things like, well, in my sort of nice beautiful walled garden, here's, there's, uh, because here's this, here's this beautiful box account that has everything.Yes. And I'm like, well, most, most real life is extremely messy. Sure. And like, poorly named and there duplicate this outdated s**tAaron Levie: a hundred percent. And so No, no, a hundred percent. And so this is actually No. So, so this is, I mean, we agree that, that getting to the beautiful garden is gonna be tough.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: There's also the other end of the spectrum where I, I just like, it's a technical impossibility to solve. The agent is, is truly cannot get enough context to make the right decision in, in the, in the incredibly messy land. Like there's [00:19:00] no a GI that will solve that. So, so we're gonna have to kind of land in somewhere in between, which is like we all collectively get better at.Documentation practices and, and having authoritative relatively up-to-date information and putting it in the right place like agents will, will certainly cause us to be much better organized around how we work with our information, simply because the severity of the agent pulling the wrong data will be too high and the productivity gain of that you'll miss out on by not doing this will be too high as well, that you, that your competition will just do it and they'll just have higher velocity.So, uh, and, and we, we see this a lot firsthand. So we, we build a series of agents internally that they can kind of have access to your full box account and go off and you give it a task and it can go find whatever information you're looking for and work with. And, you know, thank God for the model progress, but like, if, if you gave that task to an agent.Nine months ago, you're just gonna get lots of bogus answers because it's gonna, it's gonna say, Hey, here's, here are fi [00:20:00] five, you know, documents that all kind of smell like the right thing. And I'm gonna, but I, but you're, you're putting me on the clock. ‘cause my assistant prompt says like, you know, be pretty smart, but also try and respond to the user and it's gonna respond.And it's like, ah, it got the wrong document. And then you do that once or twice as a knowledge worker and you're just neverswyx: again,Aaron Levie: never again. You're just like done with the system.swyx: Yeah. It doesn't work.Aaron Levie: It doesn't work. And so, you know, Opus four six and Gemini three one Pro and you know, whatever the latest five 3G BT will be, like, those things are getting better and better and it's using better judgment.And this sort of like the, all of these updates to the agentic tool and search systems are, are, we're seeing, we're seeing very real progress where the agent. Kind of can, can almost smell some things a little bit fishy when it's getting, you know, we, we have this process where we, we have it go fan out, do a bunch of searches, pull up a bunch of data, and then it has to sort of do its own ranking of, you know, what are the right documents that, that it should be working with.And again, like, you know, the intelligence level of a model six months ago, [00:21:00] it'd be just throwing a dart at like, I'm just, I'm gonna grab these seven files and I, I pray, I hope that that's the right answer. And something like an opus first four five, and now four six is like, oh, it's like, no, that one doesn't seem right relative to this question because I'm seeing some signal that is making that, you know, that's contradicting the document where it would normally be in the tree and who should have access.Like it's doing all of that kind of work for you. But like, it still doesn't work if you just have a total wasteland of data. Like, it's just not, it's just not possible. Partly ‘cause a human wouldn't even be able to do it. So basically if a, if a really, really smart human. Could not do that task in five or 10 minutes for a search retrieval type task.Look, you know, your agent's not gonna be able to do it any better. You see this all day long. SoContext Engineering and Search Limitsswyx: this touches on a thing that just passionate about it was just context engineering. I, I'm just gonna let you ramble or riff on, on context engineering. If, if, if there's anything like he, he did really good work on context fraud, which has really taken over as like the term that people use and the referenceAaron Levie: a hundred percent.We, we all we think about is, is the context rob problem. [00:22:00]Jeff Huber: Yeah, there's certainly a lot of like ranking considerations. Gentech surgery think is incredibly promising. Um, yeah, I was trying to generate a question though. I think I have a question right now. Swyx.Aaron Levie: Yeah, no, but like, like I think there was this moment, um, you know, like, I don't know, two years ago before, before we knew like where the, the gotchas were gonna be in ai and I think someone was like, was like, well, infinite context windows will just solve all of these problems and ‘cause you'll just, you'll just give the context window like all the data and.It's just like, okay, I mean, maybe in 2035, like this is a viable solution. First of all, it, it would just, it would just simply cost too much. Like we just can't give the model like the 5,000 documents that might be relevant and it's gonna read them all. And I've seen enough to, to start believing in crazy stuff.So like, I'm willing to just say, sure. Like in, in 10 years from now,swyx: never say, never, never.Aaron Levie: In, in 10 years from now, we'll have infinite context windows at, at a thousandth of the price of today. Like, let's just like believe that that's possible, but Right. We're in reality today. So today we have a context engineering [00:23:00] problem, which is, I got, I got, you know, 200,000 tokens that I can work with, or prob, I don't even know what the latest graph is before, like massive degradation.16. Okay. I have 60,000 tokens that I get to work with where I'm gonna get accurate information. That's not a lot of tokens for a corpus of 10 million documents that a knowledge worker might have across all of the teams and all the projects and all the people they work with. I have, I have 10 million documents.Which, you know, maybe is times five pages per document or something like that. I'm at 50 million pages of information and I have 60,000 tokens. Like, holy s**t. Yeah. This is like, how do I bridge the 50 million pages of information with, you know, the couple hundred that I get to work with in that, in that token window.Yeah. This is like, this is like such an interesting problem and that's why actually so much work is actually like, just like search systems and the databases and that layer has to just get so locked in, but models getting better and importantly [00:24:00] knowing when they've done a search, they found the wrong thing, they go back, they check their work, they, they find a way to balance sort of appeasing the user versus double checking.We have this one, we have this one test case where we ask the agent to go find. 10 pieces of information.swyx: Is this the complex work eval?Aaron Levie: Uh, this is actually not in the eval. This is, this is sort of just like we have a bunch of different, we have a bunch of internal benchmark kind of scenarios. Every time we, we update our agent, we have one, which is, I ask it to find all of our office addresses, and I give it the list of 10 offices that we have.And there's not one document that has this, maybe there should be, that would be a great example of the kind of thing that like maybe over time companies start to, you know, have these sort of like, what are the canonical, you know, kind of key areas of knowledge that we need to have. We don't seem to have this one document that says, here are all of our offices.We have a bunch of documents that have like, here's the New York office and whatever. So you task this agent and you, you get, you say, I need the addresses for these 10 offices. Okay. And by the way, if you do this on any, you know, [00:25:00] public chat model, the same outcome is gonna happen. But for a different kind of query, you give it, you say, I need these 10 addresses.How many times should the agent go and do its search before it decides whether or not, there's just no answer to this question. Often, and especially the, the, let's say lower tier models, it'll come back and it'll give you six of the 10 addresses. And it'll, and I'll just say I couldn't find the otherswyx: four.It, it doesn't know what It doesn't know. ItAaron Levie: doesn't know what It doesn't know. Yeah. So the model is just like, like when should it stop? When should it stop doing? Like should it, should it do that task for literally an hour and just keep cranking through? Maybe I actually made up an office location and it doesn't know that I made it up and I didn't even know that I made it up.Like, should it just keep, re should it read every single file in your entire box account until it, until it should exhaust every single piece of information.swyx: Expensive.Aaron Levie: These are the new problems that we have. So, you know, something like, let's say a new opus model is sort of like, okay, I'm gonna try these types of queries.I didn't get exactly what I wanted. I'm gonna try again. I'm gonna, at [00:26:00] some point I'm gonna stop searching. ‘cause I've determined that that no amount of searching is gonna solve this problem. I'm just not able to do it. And that judgment is like a really new thing that the model needs to be able to have.It's like, when should it give up on a task? ‘cause, ‘cause you just don't, it's a can't find the thing. That's the real world of knowledge, work problems. And this is the stuff that the coding agents don't have to deal with. Because they, it just doesn't like, like you're not usually asking it about, you're, you're always creating net new information coming right outta the model for the most part.Obviously it has to know about your code base and your specs and your documentation, but, but when you deploy an agent on all of your data that now you have all of these new problems that you're dealing withJeff Huber: our, uh, follow follow-up research to context ride is actually on a genetic search. Ah. Um, and we've like right, sort of stress tested like frontier models and their ability to search.Um, and they're not actually that good at searching. Right. Uh, so you're sort of highlighting this like explore, exploit.swyx: You're just say, Debbie, Donna say everything doesn't work. Like,Aaron Levie: well,Jeff Huber: somebody has to be,Aaron Levie: um, can I just throw out one more thing? Yeah. That is different from coding and, and the rest [00:27:00] of the knowledge work that I, I failed to mention.So one other kind of key point is, is that, you know, at the end of the day. Whether you believe we're in a slop apocalypse or, or whatever. At the end of the day, if you, if you build a working product at the end of, if you, if you've built a working solution that is ultimately what the customer is paying for, like whether I have a lot of slop, a little slop or whatever, I'm sure there's lots of code bases we could go into in enterprise software companies where it's like just crazy slop that humans did over a 20 year period, but the end customer just gets this little interface.They can, they can type into it, it does its thing. Knowledge work, uh, doesn't have that property. If I have an AI model, go generate a contract and I generate a contract 20 times and, you know, all 20 times it's just 3% different and like that I, that, that kind of lop introduces all new kinds of risk for my organization that the code version of that LOP didn't, didn't introduce.These are, and so like, so how do you constrain these models to just the part that you want [00:28:00] them to work on and just do the thing that you want them to do? And, and, you know, in engineering, we don't, you can't be disbarred as an engineer, but you could be disbarred as a lawyer. Like you can do the wrong medical thing In healthcare, you, there's no, there's no equivalent to that of engineering.Like, doswyx: you want there to be, because I've considered softwareJeff Huber: engineer. What's that? Civil engineering there is, right? NotAaron Levie: software civil engineer. Sure. Oh yeah, for sure. But like in any of our companies, you like, you know, you'll be forgiven if you took down the site and, and we, we will do a rollback and you'll, you'll be in a meeting, but you have not been disbarred as an engineer.We don't, we don't change your, you know, your computer science, uh, blameJeff Huber: degree, this postmortem.Aaron Levie: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, so, uh, now maybe we collectively as an industry need to figure out like, what are you liable for? Not legally, but like in a, in a management sense, uh, of these agents. All sorts of interesting problems that, that, that, uh, that have to come out.But in knowledge work, that's the real hostile environments that we're operating in. Hmm.swyx: I do think like, uh, a lot of the last year's, 2025 story was the rise of coding agents and I think [00:29:00] 2026 story is definitely knowledge work agents. Yes. A hundredAaron Levie: percent.swyx: Right. Like that would, and I think open claw core work are just the beginning.Yes. Like it's, the next one's gonna just gonna be absolute craziness.Aaron Levie: It it is. And, and, uh, and it's gonna be, I mean, again, like this is gonna be this, this wave where we, we are gonna try and bring as many of the practices from coding because that, that will clearly be the forefront, which is tell an agent to go do something and has an access to a set of resources.You need to be responsible for reviewing it at the end of the process. That to me is the, is the kind of template that I just think goes across knowledge, work and odd. Cowork is a great example. Open Closet's a great example. You can kind of, sort of see what Codex could become over time. These are some, some really interesting kind of platforms that are emerging.swyx: Okay. Um, I wanted to, we touched on evals a little bit. You had, you had the report that you're gonna go bring up and then I was gonna go into like, uh, boxes, evals, but uh, go ahead. Talk about your genetic search thing.Jeff Huber: Yeah. Mostly I think kinda a few of the insights. It's like number one frontier model is not good at search.Humans have this [00:30:00] natural explore, exploit trade off where we kinda understand like when to stop doing something. Also, humans are pretty good at like forgetting actually, and like pruning their own context, whereas agents are not, and actually an agent in their kind of context history, if they knew something was bad and they even, you could see in the trace the reason you trace, Hey, that probably wasn't a good idea.If it's still in the trace, still in the context, they'll still do it again. Uhhuh. Uh, and so like, I think pruning is also gonna be like, really, it's already becoming a thing, right? But like, letting self prune the con windowsswyx: be a big deal. Yeah. So, so don't leave the mistake. Don't leave the mistake in there.Cut out the mistake but tell it that you made a mistake in the past and so it doesn't repeat it.Jeff Huber: Yeah. But like cut it out so it doesn't get like distracted by it again. ‘cause really, you know, what is so, so it will repeat its mistake just because it's been, it's inswyx: theJeff Huber: context. It'sAaron Levie: in the context so much.That's a few shot example. Even if it, yeah.Jeff Huber: It's like oh thisAaron Levie: is a great thing to go try even ifJeff Huber: it didn't work.Aaron Levie: Yeah,Jeff Huber: exactly.Aaron Levie: SoJeff Huber: there's like a bunch of stuff there. JustAaron Levie: Groundhogs Day inside these models. Yeah. I'm gonna go keep doing the same wrongJeff Huber: thing. Covering sense. I feel like, you know, some creator analogy you're trying like fit a manifold in latent space, which kind is doing break program synthesis, which is kinda one we think about we're doing right.Like, you know, certain [00:31:00] facts might be like sort of overly pitting it. There are certain, you know, sec sectors of latent space and so like plug clean space. Yeah. And, uh, andswyx: so we have a bell, our editor as a bell every time you say that. SoJeff Huber: you have, you have to like remove those, likeswyx: you shoulda a gong like TPN or something.IfJeff Huber: we gong, you either remove those links to like kinda give it the freedom, kind of do what you need to do. So, but yeah. We'll, we'll release more soon. That'sAaron Levie: awesome.Jeff Huber: That'll, that'll be cool.swyx: We're a cerebral podcast that people listen to us and, and sort of think really deep. So yeah, we try to keep it subtle.Okay. We try to keep it.Aaron Levie: Okay, fine.Inside Agent Evalsswyx: Um, you, you guys do, you guys do have EVs, you talked about your, your office thing, but, uh, you've been also promoting APEX agents and complex work. Uh, yeah, whatever you, wherever you wanna take this just Yeah. How youAaron Levie: Apex is, is obviously me, core's, uh, uh, kind of, um, agent eval.We, we supported that by sort of. Opening up some data for them around how we kind of see these, um, data workspaces in, in the, you know, kind of regular economy. So how do lawyers have a workspace? How do investment bankers have a workspace? What kind of data goes into those? And so we, [00:32:00] we partner with them on their, their apex eval.Our own, um, eval is, it's actually relatively straightforward. We have a, a set of, of documents in a, in a range of industries. We give the agent previously did this as a one shot test of just purely the model. And then we just realized we, we need to, based on where everything's going, it's just gotta be more agentic.So now it's a bit more of a test of both our harness and the model. And we have a rubric of a set of things that has to get right and we score it. Um, and you're just seeing, you know, these incredible jumps in almost every single model in its own family of, you know, opus four, um, you know, sonnet four six versus sonnet four five.swyx: Yeah. We have this up on screen.Aaron Levie: Okay, cool. So some, you're seeing it somewhere like. I, I forget the to, it was like 15 point jump, I think on the main, on the overall,swyx: yes.Aaron Levie: And it's just like, you know, these incredible leaps that, that are starting to happen. Um,swyx: and OP doesn't know any, like any, it's completely held out from op.Aaron Levie: This is not in any, there's no public data which has, you know, Ben benefits and this is just a private eval that we [00:33:00] do, and then we just happen to show it to, to the world. Hmm. So you can't, you can't train against it. And I think it's just as representative of. It's obviously reasoning capabilities, what it's doing at, at, you know, kind of test time, compute capabilities, thinking levels, all like the context rot issues.So many interesting, you know, kind of, uh, uh, capabilities that are, that are now improvingswyx: one sector that you have. That's interesting.Industries and Datasetsswyx: Uh, people are roughly familiar with healthcare and legal, but you have public sector in there.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: Uh, what's that? Like, what, what, what is that?Aaron Levie: Yeah, and, and we actually test against, I dunno, maybe 10 industries.We, we end up usually just cutting a few that we think have interesting gains. All extras, won a lot of like government type documents. Um,swyx: what is that? What is it? Government type documents?Aaron Levie: Government filings. Like a taxswyx: return, likeAaron Levie: a probably not tax returns. It would be more of what would go the government be using, uh, as data.So, okay. Um, so think about research that, that type of, of, of data sets. And then we have financial services for things like data rooms and what would be in an investment prospectus. Uhhuh,swyx: that one you can dog food.Aaron Levie: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yes. Yes. [00:34:00] So, uh, so we, we run the models, um, in now, you know, more of an agent mode, but, but still with, with kinda limited capacity and just try and see like on a, like, for like basis, what are the improvements?And, and again, we just continue to be blown away by. How, how good these models are getting.swyx: Yeah, I mean, I think every serious AI company needs something like that where like, well, this is the work we do. Here's our company eval. Yeah. And if you don't have it, well, you're not a serious AI company.Aaron Levie: There's two dimensions, right?So there's, there's like, how are the models improving? And so which models should you either recommend a customer use, which one should you adopt? But then every single day, we're making changes to our agents. And you need to knowswyx: if you regressed,Aaron Levie: if you know. Yeah. You know, I've been fully convinced that the whole agent observability and eval space is gonna be a massive space.Um, super excited for what Braintrust is doing, excited for, you know, Lang Smith, all the things. And I think what you're going to, I mean, this is like every enter like literally every enterprise right now. It's like the AI companies are the customers of these tools. Every enterprise will have this. Yeah, you'll just [00:35:00] have to have an eval.Of all of your work and like, we'll, you'll have an eval of your RFP generation, you'll have an eval of your sales material creation. You'll have an eval of your, uh, invoice processing. And, and as you, you know, buy or use new agentic systems, you are gonna need to know like, what's the quality of your, of your pipeline.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: Um, so huge, huge market with agent evals.swyx: Yeah.Building the Agent Teamswyx: And, and you know, I'm gonna shout out your, your team a bit, uh, your CTO, Ben, uh, did a great talk with us last year. Awesome. And he's gonna come back again. Oh, cool. For World's Fair.Aaron Levie: Yep.swyx: Just talk about your team, like brag a little bit. I think I, I think people take these eval numbers in pretty charts for granted, but No, there, I mean, there's, there's lots of really smart people at work during all this.Aaron Levie: Biggest shout out, uh, is we have a, we have a couple folks at Dya, uh, Sidarth, uh, that, that kind of run this. They're like a, you know, kind of tag tag team duo on our evals, Ben, our CTO, heavily involved Yasha, head of ai, uh, you know, a bunch of folks. And, um, evals is one part of the story. And then just like the full, you know, kind of AI.An agent team [00:36:00] is, uh, is a, is a pretty, you know, is core to this whole effort. So there's probably, I don't know, like maybe a few dozen people that are like the epicenter. And then you just have like layers and layers of, of kind of concentric circles of okay, then there's a search team that supports them and an infrastructure team that supports them.And it's starting to ripple through the entire company. But there's that kind of core agent team, um, that's a pretty, pretty close, uh, close knit group.swyx: The search team is separate from the infra team.Aaron Levie: I mean, we have like every, every layer of the stack we have to kind of do, except for just pure public cloud.Um, but um, you know, we, we store, I don't even know what our public numbers are in, you know, but like, you can just think about it as like a lot of data is, is stored in box. And so we have, and you have every layer of the, of the stack of, you know, how do you manage the data, the file system, the metadata system, the search system, just all of those components.And then they all are having to understand that now you've got this new customer. Which is the agent, and they've been building for two types of customers in the past. They've been building for users and they've been building for like applications. [00:37:00] And now you've got this new agent user, and it comes in with a difference of it, of property sometimes, like, hey, maybe sometimes we should do embeddings, an embedding based, you know, kind of search versus, you know, your, your typical semantic search.Like, it's just like you have to build the, the capabilities to support all of this. And we're testing stuff, throwing things away, something doesn't work and, and not relevant. It's like just, you know, total chaos. But all of those teams are supporting the agent team that is kind of coming up with its requirements of what, what do we need?swyx: Yeah. No, uh, we just came from, uh, fireside chat where you did, and you, you talked about how you're doing this. It's, it's kind of like an internal startup. Yeah. Within the broader company. The broader company's like 3000 people. Yeah. But you know, there's, there's a, this is a core team of like, well, here's the innovation center.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: And like that every company kind of is run this way.Aaron Levie: Yeah. I wanna be sensitive. I don't call it the innovation center. Yeah. Only because I think everybody has to do innovation. Um, there, there's a part of the, the, the company that is, is sort of do or die for the agent wave.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: And it only happens to be more of my focus simply because it's existential that [00:38:00] we get it right.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: All of the supporting systems are necessary. All of the surrounding adjacent capabilities are necessary. Like the only reason we get to be a platform where you'd run an agent is because we have a security feature or a compliance feature, or a governance feature that, that some team is working on.But that's not gonna be the make or break of, of whether we get agents right. Like that already exists and we need to keep innovating there. I don't know what the right, exact precise number is, but it's not a thousand people and it's not 10 people. There's a number of people that are like the, the kind of like, you know, startup within the company that are the make or break on everything related to AI agents, you know, leveraging our platform and letting you work with your data.And that's where I spend a lot of my time, and Ben and Yosh and Diego and Teri, you know, these are just, you know, people that, that, you know, kind of across the team. Are working.swyx: Yeah. Amazing.Read Write Agent WorkflowsJeff Huber: How do you, how do you think about, I mean, you talked a lot about like kinda read workflows over your box data. Yep.Right. You know, gen search questions, queries, et cetera. But like, what about like, write or like authoring workflows?Aaron Levie: Yes. I've [00:39:00] already probably revealed too much actually now that I think about it. So, um, I've talked about whatever,Jeff Huber: whatever you can.Aaron Levie: Okay. It's just us. It's just us. Yeah. Okay. Of course, of course.So I, I guess I would just, uh, I'll make it a little bit conceptual, uh, because again, I've already, I've already said things that are not even ga but, but we've, we've kinda like danced around it publicly, so I, yeah, yeah. Okay. Just like, hopefully nobody watches this, um, episode. No.swyx: It's tidbits for the Heidi engaged to go figure out like what exactly, um, you know, is, is your sort of line of thinking.Sure. They can connect the dots.Aaron Levie: Yeah. So, so I would say that, that, uh, we, you know, as a, as a place where you have your enterprise content, there's a use case where I want to, you know, have an agent read that data and answer questions for me. And then there's a use case where I want the agent to create something.And use the file system to create something or store off data that it's working on, or be able to have, you know, various files that it's writing to about the work it's doing. So we do see it as a total read write. The harder problem has so far been the read only because, because again, you have that kind of like 10 [00:40:00] million to one ratio problem, whereas rights are a lot of, that's just gonna come from the model and, and we just like, we'll just put it in the file system and kinda use it.So it's a little bit of a technically easier problem, but the only part that's like, not necessarily technically hard, it is just like it's not yet perfected in the state of the ecosystem is, you know, building a beautiful PowerPoint presentation. It's still a hard problem for these models. Like, like we still, you know, like, like these formats are just, we're not built for.They'reswyx: working on it.Aaron Levie: They're, they're working on it. Everybody's working on it.swyx: Every launch is like, well, we do PowerPoint now.Aaron Levie: We're getting, yeah, getting a lot, getting a lot of better each time. But then you'll do this thing where you'll ask the update one slide and all of a sudden, like the fonts will be just like a little bit different, you know, on two of the slides, or it moved, you know, some shape over to the left a little bit.And again, these are the kind of things that, like in code, obviously you could really care about if you really care about, you know, how beautiful is the code, but at the end, user doesn't notice all those problems and file creation, the end user instantly sees it. You're [00:41:00] like, ah, like paragraph three, like, you literally just changed the font on me.Like it's a totally different font and like midway through the document. Mm-hmm. Those are the kind of things that you run into a lot of in the, in the content creation side. So, mm-hmm. We are gonna have native agents. That do all of those things, they'll be powered by the leading kind of models and labs.But the thing that I think is, is probably gonna be a much bigger idea over time is any agent on any system, again, using Box as a file system for its work, and in that kind of scenario, we don't necessarily care what it's putting in the file system. It could put its memory files, it could put its, you know, specification, you know, documents.It could put, you know, whatever its markdown files are, or it could, you know, generate PDFs. It's just like, it's a workspace that is, is sort of sandboxed off for its work. People can collaborate into it, it can share with other people. And, and so we, we were thinking a lot about what's the right, you know, kind of way to, to deliver that at scale.Docs Graphs and Founder Modeswyx: I wanted to come into sort of the sort of AI transformation or AI sort of, uh, operations things. [00:42:00] Um, one of the tweets that you, that you wanted to talk about, this is just me going through your tweets, by the way. Oh, okay. I mean, like, this is, you readAaron Levie: one by one,swyx: you're the, you're the easiest guest to prep for because you, you already have like, this is the, this is what I'm interested in.I'm like, okay, well, areAaron Levie: we gonna get to like, like February, January or something? Where are we in the, in the timelines? How far back are we going?swyx: Can you, can you describe boxes? A set of skills? Right? Like that, that's like, that's like one of the extremes of like, well if you, you just turn everything into a markdown file.Yeah. Then your agent can run your company. Uh, like you just have to write, find the right sequence of words toAaron Levie: Yes.swyx: To do it.Aaron Levie: Sorry, isthatswyx: the question? So I think the question is like, what if we documented everything? Yes. The way that you exactly said like,Aaron Levie: yes.swyx: Um, let's get all the Fortune five hundreds, uh, prepared for agents.Yes. And like, you know, everything's in golden and, and nicely filed away and everything. Yes. What's missing? Like, what's left, right? LikeAaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: You've, you've run your company for a decade. LikeAaron Levie: Yeah. I think the challenge is that, that that information changes a week later. And because something happened in the market for that [00:43:00] customer, or us as a company that now has to go get updated, and so these systems are living and breathing and they have to experience reality and updates to reality, which right now is probably gonna be humans, you know, kinda giving those, giving them the updates.And, you know, there is this piece about context graphs as as, uh, that kinda went very viral. Yeah. And I, I, I was like a, i, I, I thought it was super provocative. I agreed with many parts of it. I disagree with a few parts around. You know, it's not gonna be as easy as as just if we just had the agent traces, then we can finally do that work because there's just like, there's so much more other stuff that that's happening that, that we haven't been able to capture and digitize.And I think they actually represented that in the piece to be clear. But like there's just a lot of work, you know, that that has to, you just can't have only skills files, you know, for your company because it's just gonna be like, there's gonna be a lot of other stuff that happens. Yeah. Change over time.Yeah. Most companies are practically apprenticeships.swyx: Most companies are practically apprenticeships. LikeJeff Huber: every new employee who joins the team, [00:44:00] like you span one to three months. Like ramping them up.Aaron Levie: Yes. AllJeff Huber: that tat knowledgeAaron Levie: isJeff Huber: not written down.Aaron Levie: Yes.Jeff Huber: But like, it would have to be if you wanted to like give it to an Asian.Right. And so like that seems to me like to beAaron Levie: one is I think you're gonna see again a premium on companies that can document this. Mm-hmm. Much. There'll be a huge premium on that because, because you know, can you shorten that three month ramp cycle to a two week ramp cycle? That's an instant productivity gain.Can you re dramatically reduce rework in the organization because you've documented where all the stuff is and where the answers are. Can you make your average employee as good as your 90th percentile employee because you've captured the knowledge that's sort of in the heads of, of those top employees and make that available.So like you can see some very clear productivity benefits. Mm-hmm. If you had a company culture of making sure you know your information was captured, digitized, put in a format that was agent ready and then made available to agents to work with, and then you just, again, have this reality of like add a 10,000 person [00:45:00] company.Mapping that to the, you know, access structure of the company is just a hard problem. Is like, is like, yeah, well, you just, not every piece of information that's digitized can be shared to everybody. And so now you have to organize that in a way that actually works. There was a pretty good piece, um, this, this, uh, this piece called your company as a file is a file system.I, did you see that one?swyx: Nope.Aaron Levie: Uh, yes. You saw it. Yeah. And, and, uh, I actually be curious your thoughts on it. Um, like, like an interesting kind of like, we, we agree with it because, because that's how we see the world and, uh,swyx: okay. We, we have it up on screen. Oh,Aaron Levie: okay. Yeah. But, but it's all about basically like, you know, we've already, we, we, we already organized in this kind of like, you know, permission structure way.Uh, and, and these are the kind of, you know, natural ways that, that agents can now work with data. So it's kind of like this, this, you know, kind of interesting metaphor, but I do think companies will have to start to think about how they start to digitize more, more of that data. What was your take?Jeff Huber: Yeah, I mean, like the company's probably like an acid compliant file system.Aaron Levie: Uh,Jeff Huber: yeah. Which I'm guessing boxes, right? So, yeah. Yes.swyx: Yeah. [00:46:00]Jeff Huber: Which you have a great piece on, but,swyx: uh, yeah. Well, uh, I, I, my, my, my direction is a little bit like, I wanna rewind a little bit to the graph word you said that there, that's a magic trigger word for us. I always ask what's your take on knowledge graphs?Yeah. Uh, ‘cause every, especially at every data database person, I just wanna see what they think. There's been knowledge graphs, hype cycles, and you've seen it all. So.Aaron Levie: Hmm. I actually am not the expert in knowledge graphs, so, so that you might need toswyx: research, you don't need to be an expert. Yeah. I think it's just like, well, how, how seriously do people take it?Yeah. Like, is is, is there a lot of potential in the, in the HOVI?Aaron Levie: Uh, well, can I, can I, uh, understand first if it's, um, is this a loaded question in the sense of are you super pro, super con, super anti medium? Iswyx: see pro, I see pros and cons. Okay. Uh, but I, I think your opinion should be independent of mine.Aaron Levie: Yeah. No, no, totally. Yeah. I just want to see what I'm stepping into.swyx: No, I know. It's a, and it's a huge trigger word for a lot of people out Yeah. In our audience. And they're, they're trying to figure out why is that? Because whyAaron Levie: is this such aswyx: hot item for them? Because a lot of people get graph religion.And they're like, everything's a graph. Of course you have to represent it as a graph. Well, [00:47:00] how do you solve your knowledge? Um, changing over time? Well, it's a graph.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: And, and I think there, there's that line of work and then there's, there's a lot of people who are like, well, you don't need it. And both are right.Aaron Levie: Yeah. And what do the people who say you don't need it, what are theyswyx: arguing for Mark down files. Oh, sure, sure. Simplicity.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: Versus it's, it's structure versus less structure. Right. That's, that's all what it is. I do.Aaron Levie: I think the tricky thing is, um, is, is again, when this gets met with real humans, they're just going to their computer.They're just working with some people on Slack or teams. They're just sharing some data through a collaborative file system and Google Docs or Box or whatever. I certainly like the vision of most, most knowledge graph, you know, kind of futuristic kind of ways of thinking about it. Uh, it's just like, you know, it's 2026.We haven't seen it yet. Kind of play out as as, I mean, I remember. Do you remember the, um, in like, actually I don't, I don't even know how old you guys are, but I'll for, for to show my age. I remember 17 years ago, everybody thought enterprises would just run on [00:48:00] Wikis. Yeah. And, uh, confluence and, and not even, I mean, confluence actually took off for engineering for sure.Like unquestionably. But like, this was like everything would be in the w. And I think based on our, uh, our, uh, general style of, of, of what we were building, like we were just like, I don't know, people just like wanna workspace. They're gonna collaborate with other people.swyx: Exactly. Yeah. So you were, you were anti-knowledge graph.Aaron Levie: Not anti, not anti. Soswyx: not nonAaron Levie: I'm not, I'm not anti. ‘cause I think, I think your search system, I just think these are two systems that probably, but like, I'm, I'm not in any religious war. I don't want to be in anybody's YouTube comments on this. There's not a fight for me.swyx: We, we love YouTube comments. We're, we're, we're get into comments.Aaron Levie: Okay. Uh, but like, but I, I, it's mostly just a virtue of what we built. Yeah. And we just continued down that path. Yeah.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: And, um, and that, that was what we pursued. But I'm not, this is not a, you know, kind of, this is not a, uh, it'sswyx: not existential for you. Great.Aaron Levie: We're happy to plug into somebody else's graph.We're happy to feed data into it. We're happy for [00:49:00] agents to, to talk to multiple systems. Not, not our fight.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: But I need your answer. Yeah. Graphs or nerd Snipes is very effective nerd.swyx: See this is, this is one, one opinion and then I've,Jeff Huber: and I think that the actual graph structure is emergent in the mind of the agent.Ah, in the same way it is in the mind of the human. And that's a more powerful graph ‘cause it actually involved over time.swyx: So don't tell me how to graph. I'll, I'll figure it out myself. Exactly. Okay. All right. AndJeff Huber: what's yours?swyx: I like the, the Wiki approach. Uh, my, I'm actually

Chances are, your accounts receivable (AR) is not dialed in. Kiera provides very tactical, specific tips on how to get your AR cleaned up and start bringing in money you've already earned. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today is a very important topic But one the people like my rat rat rat, but guess what my rat rat rat is gonna make you a lot of money So I hope you're excited for it. So we'll take that rat rat rat into kaching Because it's dentistry party done and we're just gonna like help you out. I hope you guys enjoy hanging out with me This is my like nerdy geeky side that definitely loves and obsesses of being able to help you guys and it's been so fun I'm working with some people and teaching them about this and   getting them excited on how they can fix their AR ⁓ is something that just like really, really lights my fire because doctors, you do the freaking dentistry, get paid for it. Can I get an amen out there? Like seriously, you do the dentistry and AR and making sure you're paid is something that I am so obsessed about. So, and this doesn't mean doctors, have to do it yourself. So I want us to get into the AR like the womp, womp, womp, it's annoying, but guess what? These are billing tips that work that are gonna make you a lot of money for work that you've already done.   This is like people like, Kiera, how can I make more money and not do more work? And I'm like, just take the money, the what you've already done. it's crazy. lot of people come in and like, Kiera, you're really going to be able to like, ⁓ give us an ROI on your consulting. And I'm like, time. Why? Because I know your AR is out of control. have yet to meet a practice that has perfect AR. And if you are the practice email me, I'm going to give you a freaking shirt and we don't get out done on a team shirts anymore. So yeah, you should definitely email us. ⁓ there are a couple of practices out there.   But most the time, AR is something that is not dialed in. It does not have a plan. And this is something that is going to be very tactical for you. So first step is AR. What is AR? It's the accounts receivable. Okay. And there's two parts to it. AR has the patient portion and the insurance portion. Okay. So when we do dentistry, we need to make sure we collect money and we bill insurance and then we make sure that we get paid for that. Now, insurance is such a sneaky little game and I get so annoyed by it I love to teach people this.   So we need to have it where there's like a few processes that make AR really good. So we're gonna break it down very simply. Number one, good information in means good clean claims going out. I'm always like, we send clean claims. Clean claims mean, clean claims, clean claims. Clean claims, clean claims. ⁓ Clean claims. I'm gonna giggle saying it. I can hear the little jingle in my voice. Clean claims means that we...   have the correct information. So I've got the patient's name, the date of birth, the insurance information. That's all correct. I've got the group number and please for the love of everything, holy, do not make a million group numbers. Do not do that. Make sure AR are so messy and your insurance box is so messy. We just have it. We also need to have fee schedules that are up to date every single year. Please do that. We need to attach it. We do not want write-offs. So what this means, ⁓ also another like, it's not a pet peeve. It's just like,   Oh, I'm sorry. You need to like listen to the podcast and implement this. Stop reporting to me your fees in gross numbers and do it in net. So many times I get on calls with people and they're like, Kiera, we produced like 2 million, but we collected one. And I'm like, ouch. And they're like, well, like our net was like, you know, 1.2. I'm like, so tell me you produce 1.2. Let's live in real land numbers, not the 2 million. Cause you're always going to be mad at me. They're like, well, I produced 2 million, but I'm only making a million. Well, yeah.   Because guess what? You didn't really produce two million. I know you want to say you did, but guess what? Insurance is what really is paying you. So we've got to do that. And I know you don't want to, but when you will do this and you attach the correct fee schedules to it, you are actually going be able to predict your numbers better and your money and your finances are going to get better on your personal side too. So hear me out. It was the worst day. was worse than Christmas getting a lump of coal. I took our production and it dropped us by 30%. And guess what? My goals are to produce 20 grand in a five out practice per day. You want to know how hard that was? I was like, I'm never going to make it.   But guess what? Because I was reporting in real numbers, me even as a TC and an O.M. we were able to schedule more correctly and get us to the actual 15 grand of true 15, 20 grand per day of true production that we were collecting. How much do think my business grew? ⁓ a lot because we were actually producing incorrect numbers, not inflated numbers. So clean claims. We're back to that clean claims mean we've got correct information. We've got the correct ⁓ all of the information is correct.   We've got our insurance verification done and we've got the fee schedules attached. So then when I'm giving an estimate, I'm estimating to the best of my ability. We do not send pre-Ds. I call them pre-denials. You can have your own opinion, but I really truly do not like pre-denials. They take time, they waste energy. And to me, guess what? I got the best information. I'm a thousand dollars. I'm an insurance coupon. I need to be a dang good treatment coordinator that's able to communicate this. And if the patient owes money, guess what? We've got to be really good at communicating that too. This is our best estimate.   I'm gonna do my absolute best. We called your insurance company. I've got the best insurance verification. This is the absolute best I can get today. We're gonna take care of that. And on the flip side, hey, worst case scenario is you're gonna owe this much out of pocket. Tell them that. Then they're not mad at you when you call them. like, hey, insurance didn't pay as much as we thought. But remember, worst case scenario, this is what it is. And I can work with you to get that collected, okay? So then from there, we make sure we have correct documentation as well. We need to attach the correct narratives.   ⁓ insurance or excuse me, x-rays, intra-orals, whatever we need to get that paid. Insurance companies are obsessed with not paying for you, but it's because they play the game. So just figure out the rules of the game. We have our fee schedules in there. We send the correct documentation and we send it out every day and we check to make sure none of these claims get stuck in our claim sender. Okay, so we wanna make sure it goes through the clearing house. It doesn't get stuck there. I feel like that's like the post office for claims. We send it through and we make sure all of them get pushed through to the insurance company.   and then we follow up. And now this is where I need owners of each of them. So we need somebody to make sure that all of our intake process is correct. We need someone to make sure that our, what we send out in our claims is correct. And we tell the clinical team what we need for every single claim. And then from there, we have one person who owns our billing department. AR needs to have a clear owner. Who is our billing person that works on this every single day? Yes, you heard me. Because the goal is to get our claims paid within 30 days. You can do it. It's doable, but you gotta have a process.   So that person then their job is I recommend we run the AR list at the beginning of every single month. Then we put it into an Excel spreadsheet or however you want to do it. I found that it's easiest in Excel and then we have it color coded. And I like it to be broken down so that way the biller, their goal is to get through every single patient. Yes. And I have seen 2,500 patients, 7,500 patients. Like it is amazing how many like line items we can get. Hopefully you're more like the 500 to 700 patients on that AR list.   Then what we do from there is we've got patient portion and insurance portion. And what we want to do is we want to actually get this really, really dialed in to where we are collecting at time of service, the patient portion. My hope is that your patient portion that's due is very minimal. And the only time we have a patient portion due is because insurance didn't pay as much as we expected them to. So we got to go collect. We've already collected the money before they go out. Please, for the love of everything, holy do not let your patients just be like, I'll pay you with an insurance pays. Absolutely not.   collect the money today. It is much easier to collect today and give a refund than it is to go chase money. I'd rather you get paid today, wait on insurance. That's fine. But be like, hey, we call your insurance. We estimate really, really well. This is how much we're going to collect today. And then, hey, if it's good news, great. We're going to be able to get you a refund. And if it's not, then great. We're not going to have to call you and ask for as much in the future. So this is what we're estimating. This is our best estimate. We've called your insurance company. We've done everything we possibly can to make sure it's the best we can. And I guarantee you, we're going to take great care of you.   Collect the money. Then when it comes in, what I like for the biller to do is to look, what did this insurance company actually pay? And then go update your fee schedule to the true numbers, because fee schedules are just very generic, but for your area and your zip code, we actually like, if insurance billers will go through and look at that and be like, on a crown, Delta Dental actually pays $758. You're like, yeah, right here, it's like 500. Okay, so $558, but we had 500 in there.   Go update that so then we collect more accurately throughout the year. If we are really disciplined in this and our insurance biller will do this, your billing gets so much tighter and we have less money in our AR. Then we go through it, we go through every single claim. Now if your insurance is a lot in the AR, because we haven't worked it, you're gonna wanna work with the top pieces first. The most expensive, the biggest accounts, and I work insurance ones, and then I work patient ones. And I also am looking at the 90 days, and then the 60 days, and then the 30 days.   And then the zero, don't even like zero to 30. don't even touch that 30 to 60. Yes. 60 to 90. Yes. Over 90 for sure. I'm going to hit that. So you can sort your listing Excel of the biggest account balances. And we're going to call the insurance. We're going to call the patients because you feel like you made like a lot of progress. Also, we can look down at the bottom. Another thing too, is sometimes there's like $5, $10. If your insurance list is really big and your AR is really large, sometimes I recommend writing like below $10. Now this is your money. It's not mine. So you do what you want to do with it.   Sometimes I do recommend writing that off, but before we do it, we're to want to send statements to everybody, see if we can collect any of that. Then we have a set date where we're just going to write it off and call it bad debt. We're going to fix our processes moving forward. But if you will do this and you follow it and everybody follows it every single week, every single month, your AR is going to get cleaned up. So people are like, but it's so hard. And we have like one person who owns it. And I say like Tuesdays and Thursdays are insurance and Monday, Wednesday, Fridays are patients. And we call our patients and we do our insurance.   and we clean it up and we get the correct fee schedules and we make sure that we're following up consistently. We're hearing, excuse me, what they say on the ⁓ claims. We're hearing what they are denying. Also, just because it's on a claim and they on an EOB and they say, you need to write this off. We do need to be really smart on insurance and we don't just say, we wrote it off. Absolutely not. We double check, we verify why was it written off? What were the reasons for it? Can we resubmit it? Can we get this paid? Is this a patient portion that needs to be paid?   Do not just write it off because the EOB says it was written off. So we do not do that. Then what I also recommend is we often wait till the end of the month. We talk to our billers and they didn't get through all their AR. Office managers should be meeting every single week with their billing coordinator and the biller needs to be reporting. Here's how much AR I've completed. This is where I'm at. This is my plan for the next week. I'm going to get through every single patient this month. Also, we do not just send statements out. People love to do this. I'm very pro.   We call first, we text and then we send a statement. Why not just call them right then and there and be like, hey, Kiera, great news. We got insurance paid, we owe this amount and I can take card when you're ready and get that all cleared up for you. Send them a text with the payment link. Here you go, this is the balance and they will pay it. Send them a statement that has a QR code to pay online. You guys stop having them write checks and send it to the practice. Make it easy, talk to your payment processor. I love Moola for this. They make it so easy for patients to pay and their fees are so low. So if you need it, tell Moola, The Dental A Team, sent you.   They're incredible and they're a great processor for you. But this is where it has to be. And I'm really big on what we need to have our goals be. So I like to make this simple. Our over 90 should be no more. All of our collective AR should be no more than one month's worth of collection. So if you're producing 100,000, there should be no more than 100,000 sitting in AR. you've got more than that, let's fix   the way I like the goals to be is I like it to be it's no more than 15 % is in our 30 to 60. And the reason why is because that's going to be pretty big. Now zero to 30, I don't worry about, but it's 15 % or less in our 30 to 60. Then it's 10 % or less in our 60 to 90 and less than 5 % over in our over 90. We want to make sure that it follows that. So that way you guys are able to, but great. And those are very generic and you can get those lower. The only thing that usually impacts are over 90 are usually payment plans and also ortho.   So if you have those in there, there are ways that we can discuss with you on how to get those out to clean up your AR, but you've got to have this structured. We've got to have this to where people are following it. And we need to get this in every single week and like truly work with our billers. And if offices will follow this, you guys, this is something that is not hard, but it does take discipline and discipline does equal freedom. And doctors, had a doctor and she was just like, Kiera, I'm not making any money. And I was like,   I don't understand because you have so much money in AR and your production's so great, but we're not collecting the money. So step one is we collect. Now, if your AR is also like ballooned out of control, we can fix it and we collect money when they check in and we make sure we collect on the checkout. So this way we're catching both sides of when patients are in the practice. And some people are weird about that. And I'm like, why are you weird about that? We know they have a balance and we're gonna collect it when they check in. Think about going to the doctor's office. So like perfect, they collect money as soon as you check in every single time.   It's not weird for people to do that in healthcare. So let's collect on the intake and let's collect on the outtake when we're giving the treatment plans. These two areas are gonna fix AR and people are like, that's so hard. And I'm like, I would much rather collect money when they're in the practice rather than needing to call them. Also, another mode of thought is I don't ever give more than 1 % of collections in refund checks every single month. So refunds and credits can get really ballooned people are like freaked out about that. Cause maybe like collected too much, which is like,   High five, good. I'm not saying over collect, like, hey, insurance paid more like that's a win. But before we give those refund checks out, those are the ones I'm gonna call first to see, do they have unscheduled treatment? Like, hey, great news, your insurance paid more than we thought. Let's get you scheduled, let's use that credit for this treatment. So it's a great way to fill your schedule too. But hey, if there's a true credit on the account, let's just start writing 1%. So if we're producing 100,000, what's 1 %? You got it, a thousand bucks, okay?   So 1 % of that, we're gonna then write those refund checks back for that month. This way it doesn't hurt your overhead of time. Now watch because there are certain state laws that do require you to give refunds sooner than that. So check your state laws and make sure like whatever it is. There are some new ones that have just come out. So be sure to check that so you're compliant with your state laws. If there's nothing about it, 1 % is usually a pretty good frame of mind. So that was a quick down and dirty and I hope you enjoyed it. But really taking it from clean claims, you're welcome.   to fee schedules being entered in, to submitting claims and making sure they go through, to following up on our insurance, making sure that we're tracking that so everybody knows where our claims are at, what things are going on with that. And then from there, we're gonna make sure that we have ⁓ every single week check in with our biller. And billers know we want 15 % in our 30 to 60, 60 to 90 is 10%, over 90 is no more than 5%, no more than one month's worth of collections total in our AR, and giving back 1 % refunds.   You guys, this is something I obsessed about. This is something we work with billers on. I have a practice in Oklahoma that we worked with. They had 2,700 line items of this and we just worked with our team and we cleaned and we cleaned it and it took us about two years and we were able to get them back into perfect collections, perfect processes. It took a while, but discipline, dedication and setting these things into place now are going to protect you and prevent this from happening in the future. Also, there are some great AI companies that you can use.   ⁓ Lassie is a great one that I've heard of. There's a few new ones coming up on the market. So if you need help with it, insurance verification, you can outsource. We have a lot of resources. So if you need any email Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And if you're like, I need help, I'm drowning, I'm not making money. Let's talk. Profit production guys. it's the way we get more profit. We either increase our production, decrease our spending or increase our collections. Those are the three levers. So whatever those three we need to work on. And sometimes it's so hard because you're like,   But like I'm doing dentistry all day long, Carrie, I have time. You're right. You're supposed to be the dentist and the CEO. Let us train your team for you. That's what we love to do. Work with you and your team. So reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Commit to being profitable this year. Commit to getting your AR in place. Commit to following these billing tactics. You guys, it is not hard, but it does require discipline. And we're happy to help you set it up. We're happy to follow through. We're happy to show you how to have the conversations. We're happy to show your team how to do this. We're happy to build KPI scorecards so you can watch it and utilizing analytics for it. So it's never daunting and scary.   It's disciplined dedication and dedicated time to make sure this happens. And usually team members get scared and it feels daunting. So it's kind of like the laundry. just like keep letting it pile up, but doctors, this is your hard earned money. And I don't believe it should be like laundry that piles up. It'd be, should be something that we are actively engaged in fixing and working through to make sure that you're getting paid what you need to be paid. So reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.

Welcome to Manufacturing Greatness with Trevor Blondeel, where we work with organizations to manufacture greatness by leveraging resources you already have to achieve greater retention, productivity, and profits. To learn more, visit www.manufacturinggreatness.com and click here to subscribe to Trevor's monthly newsletter. Now, let's jump in! In this episode, Vickie Lanthier — author of High Agency Human: Navigate Adversity and Live Big and former military leader with four deployments — shares practical strategies for building personal agency in high-pressure environments like manufacturing. Drawing from her 14-year military career and entrepreneurial experience, she connects resilience and intentional decision-making directly to the realities of operations management, production management, and modern plant leadership. You'll learn why running at constant surge capacity undermines production efficiency and long-term manufacturing productivity, and how building operational "buffers" strengthens performance management, process optimization, and sustainable KPI management. This conversation is especially relevant for frontline supervisors and shift supervisors navigating daily disruptions while trying to maintain results without burning out their teams. Vickie breaks down how proactive leadership development, intentional management training, and practical coaching skills improve workforce development, talent retention, and employee satisfaction — particularly as the millennial workforce and Gen Z manufacturing professionals step into larger roles. She also highlights the connection between personal wellbeing, safety leadership, and a strong safety culture, reinforcing that operational excellence starts with healthy, prepared leaders. This discussion bridges the gap between human performance and operational excellence, showing manufacturing leaders how to move from reactive firefighting to intentional change management, stronger problem solving, and more resilient plant leadership. 2:00 – In operations management and production management, adversity is daily, making strong plant leadership essential to move from reactive firefighting to intentional execution. 04:30 – High agency thinking equips shift supervisors and frontline supervisors to lead proactive change management instead of blaming systems or circumstances. 06:12 – Building buffers during stable periods strengthens operations management, improves production efficiency, and supports long-term manufacturing productivity. 07:19 – Financial discipline at work reinforces responsible production management, smarter resource allocation, and stronger KPI management across departments. 09:44 – When leaders model financial clarity and career pathways, they support workforce development, talent retention, and engagement across the millennial workforce and Gen Z manufacturing employees. 14:00 – Promoting for readiness rather than desperation strengthens leadership development, improves performance management, and builds a sustainable bench for plant leadership. 16:27 – Prioritizing health, boundaries, and burnout prevention improves employee satisfaction, supports work-life balance, and protects overall manufacturing productivity. 18:33 – Investing in mental health awareness and proactive check-ins strengthens safety leadership, reinforces a positive safety culture, and improves team-level conflict resolution. 22:30 – Pulling the "emergency brake" during overload enables smarter change management, clearer problem solving, and better long-term process optimization. 25:09 – Running at 110% capacity without systems thinking undermines production efficiency, weakens quality management, and signals gaps in sustainable operations management. 27:00 – Clear contingency planning enhances production management, stabilizes KPI management, and improves responsiveness in high-pressure environments. 30:30 – Practicing skills during calm periods strengthens management training, sharpens coaching skills, and drives measurable gains in manufacturing productivity. 33:49 – Distributing responsibility beyond supervisors accelerates leadership development, strengthens communication skills, and supports long-term workforce development. 35:00 – Empowering junior team members to lead drills reinforces safety leadership, improves problem solving, and embeds resilience into everyday plant leadership. 36:30 – Sustainable high performance comes from disciplined operations management, intentional performance management, and continuous process optimization, not relentless pressure. 38:00 – Leaders who model high agency behaviors improve employee satisfaction, strengthen talent retention, and elevate overall production efficiency and manufacturing productivity. Connect with Vickie Lanthier: Find her online at https://www.vickiemlanthier.com/ and https://www.vickiemlanthier.com/high-agency-human Connect on LinkedIn Find her on Instagram: @highagencyhuman

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupOn this episode of the DTC Podcast, Eric sits down with Josh Suggs, founder of StreetTalk, and they break down how “Conversation Creative” is helping consumer brands appeal to today's audience preferences for raw, unscripted authenticity in their social feeds, while combatting headwinds brought on by Meta's Andromeda update. We talk frameworks, question design, editing loops, and why StreetTalk interviews drive KPI improvements across the full-funnel in under 45 seconds.Visit StreetTalk.com to get your brand out of the boardroom and into the streets!In this episode, we get into:How StreetTalk interviews can move someone from awareness → consideration → conversion in ~45 secondsThe difference between “random reactions” and direct response street ads (problem/solution, value props, use case)How StreetTalk briefs, shoots, edits, and tests concepts across major citiesWhere this fits inside an ad account (creative pillars + authenticity as a needed lane)What stops brands from doing it themselves (systems, reps, data, consistency)If you're a brand with product-market fit already, running UGC, and looking to scale with creative diversity on Meta/TikTok/YouTube, this episode is a must-listenTimestamps0:00 Street Talk sells authenticity with street interview ads2:00 Josh's origin story: Tabs Chocolate to first street reviews4:00 Building Street Talk fast with referrals (80 brands in a summer)6:00 Why man-on-the-street ads convert (full funnel in 45 seconds)8:00 Making street interviews direct response (hooks, pain points, value props)10:00 Where this fits in your ad account (creative diversity + authenticity)12:00 Results and wins (PrizePicks, ROAS improvements, scaling spend)14:00 Pricing, who it's for, and why brands can't easily DIY it16:00 The operational machine behind Street Talk (hosts, training, logistics)18:00 Platform playbook: Meta, TikTok, YouTube, TV, and repurposing clipsSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

Rob Anspach interviews Jennifer Steward on cold calling, VA's, KPI's, no is the default, waisting time and money, Bu-cees, highest / best use and lead management. The post Ep 385 – Cold Calling and Lead Management first appeared on Rob Anspach's E-Heroes.

我邀请到了两位在催婚前线“拼命抵抗”的战友。小王简直是相亲界的“劳模”，连到处都关门的期间都能被安排在办公室相亲，家长为了KPI真的拼了。公主也惨，自己已经有男友了，但是爸妈不太中意，被爹妈威逼利诱去相亲，家庭伦理剧的张力瞬间拉满。我爱这个世界。

Today's guest is Raghu Ahobilam, Global Director of Inventory and Assets at NOV. Raghu brings global leadership experience across inventory management, asset strategy, and operational transformation in the energy and industrial manufacturing sector. Raghu joins Daniel Faggella Emerj CEO and Head of Research to examine how enterprise data foundations and emerging AI capabilities are reshaping maintenance, asset utilization, and cross-functional decision-making in complex, legacy environments. Raghu also shares practical approaches to building KPI-driven dashboards, prioritizing predictive use cases, improving asset deployment across regions, and strengthening business cases for ROI across supply chain, manufacturing, and operations. Want to share your AI adoption story with executive peers? Click emerj.com/expert2 for more information and to be a potential future guest on the 'AI in Business' podcast! If you're interested in unlocking our AI best practice guides, frameworks for AI ROI, and specific resources for AI consultants, visit emerj.com/p1

"  I want people to walk away from any engagement they have with me saying that I'm not a bad bloke, that I was keen to listen, and that I wanted to help."   This is a special episode only available to our podcast subscribers, which we call The Mini Chief. These are short, sharp highlights from our fabulous guests, where you get a 5 to 10 minute snapshot from their full episode. This Mini Chief episode features Paul Nicolaou, the Executive Director of Business Sydney. His full episode is titled The 3Ps of building an insanely valuable network, daring to be different, and making people happy. You can find the full audio and show notes here:

Send a textJoin hosts Ben Kornell and guest host Peter Stiepleman, host of The Imperfect Leader, as they explore AI in schools, screen-time policy, math reform, higher ed disruption, and the future of assessment integrity.✨ Episode Highlights:[00:00:00] Peter Stiepleman on leading with “ed, not tech” when implementing AI in schools[00:06:33] Seattle-area student walkout over ChatGPT access sparks debate on AI in classrooms[00:08:11] 26 states advance phone bans and K–5 screen-time legislation[00:10:59] Khan Academy's failed India rollout shows implementation, not tools, drives impact[00:16:26] Whether global systems may leapfrog the U.S. in AI-powered education[00:18:38] AI-supported speech therapy and reading intervention free educators for human connection[00:20:55] Utah's math overhaul ignites debate over data science, calculus acceleration, and rigor[00:27:24] Rural districts innovate through regional collaboration and expanded course access[00:29:14] Higher ed faces declining endowments, enrollment pressure, and early college expansion[00:35:09] Anthropic co-founder argues AI will increase the value of humanities degreesPlus, special guest:[00:39:10] Brandon Smith, CEO of Integrity Advocate, on AI-driven cheating, proctoring reform, and protecting assessment integrity

Forget cold calls that vanish into thin air! This episode is your roadmap to finding real estate rockstars who can supercharge your business. We'll join forces with Dave Walker, the mastermind behind Call Motivated Sellers, to unveil his secret weapon: a system for building the BEST cold calling team.Dave will share battle-tested strategies to find top talent, even if you're starting from scratch. You'll learn how to track KPI's and measure success like a pro. Get ready to fill your pipeline with qualified leads and crush those sales goals! This and more when you join the TTP Training Program.---------Show notes:(1:01) Beginning of today's episode(2:50) How to hire the best talent(7:42) Setting up your KPI's and following the four pillars of qualification(10:35) What does the process look like when you DIY finding cold callers?(13:30) How to track your numbers(19:32) You have to make your team feel like they are a part of your company----------Resources:Call Motivated SellersTo speak with Brent or one of our other expert coaches call (281) 835-4201 or schedule your free discovery call here to learn about our mentorship programs and become part of the TribeGo to Wholesalingincgroup.com to become part of one of the fastest growing Facebook communities in the Wholesaling space. Get all of your burning Wholesaling questions answered, gain access to JV partnerships, and connect with other "success minded" Rhinos in the community.It's 100% free to join. The opportunities in this community are endless, what are you waiting for?

Today's guest is Vern Gambetta. Vern is a world-renowned sports performance coach with over 50 years of experience across Olympic, professional, and collegiate sport. A pioneer in modern athletic development, he's known for blending movement skill, strength, and long-term athlete development into a practical, coach-driven system. The more coaching and training leans into data points, KPI's, rigid standards and an overly specialized model, the more true athleticism, movement and skill development gets choked out. By understanding all aspects of the athletic movement equation, we can give athletes a better total experience in their sport and movement practices. In this episode, Vern leans into his wisdom for a wide-ranging conversation on movement, skill, and the art of coaching. With over 50 years of experience across Olympic and professional sport, Vern shares insights on functional training, sport specificity, plyometrics, rhythm, and why skill expression, not rigid technical models, drives true performance. From jump rope to the dot drill to developing movement “signatures,” this episode is a masterclass in coaching the athlete in front of you. Today's episode is brought to you by Hammer Strength and the Just Fly Sports Online Courses Use code “justfly10” for 10% off the Vert Trainer Use code “justfly20” for 20% off of LILA Exogen Wearable resistance gear at www.lilateam.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. (https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-home/) Timestamps 3:00 – The Birth of Functional Training 10:39 – The Nature of Fascia 15:33 – Training Spectrum 28:16 – General vs. Specific Movements 38:00 – The Art of Movement 49:31 – Rhythm and Movement 55:15 – Plyometric Training Perspectives 59:50 – The Role of Technology 1:13:16 – Sketching Athletic Sequences About Vern Gambetta Vern Gambetta is a pioneering sports performance coach, educator, and author widely recognized as one of the foundational voices in modern athletic development. With more than five decades of coaching experience, Gambetta has worked across track & field, baseball, swimming, cricket, soccer, basketball, and rugby at youth, collegiate, professional, and Olympic levels. A former track and field coach and longtime advocate for holistic athlete development, Gambetta helped popularize the concept of “functional training” in the 1980s, while consistently emphasizing that training must serve the demands of sport, not marketing trends. His work integrates biomechanics, skill acquisition, rhythm and movement literacy, strength training, and long-term athletic development into a unified system. Gambetta has coached at the Olympic level, worked in Major League Baseball, and served as a consultant to professional teams worldwide. He is the author of multiple books, including Athletic Development and Building the Complete Athlete, and is a sought-after international speaker known for blending science, experience, and practical coaching wisdom. Above all, Gambetta advocates coaching the athlete in front of you, prioritizing movement quality, adaptability, and lifelong development over rigid systems or trends.

Why is it so difficult for doctors to delegate, even when it so obviously impacts the team? Kiera and Dana discuss the art of delegation, and where it overlaps with clear expectations and accountability. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript:   The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I love when I get the consultants to podcast with me. And today I got the one and only Dana,   I actually have a better nickname than Danie for you. I've like upgraded. I really do think you're Dynamite Dana. And so welcome to the show. Dynamite Dana. Like you just are dynamite in so many ways, so many areas. People love you. I know people are like donuts with Dana. That one was really catchy and clever, but I think like dynamite Dana is who I'm going to stick with. So how are you today there? Dynamite Dana.   The Dental A Team (00:27) Doing good. I'm glad you found one that felt right.   The Dental A Team (00:29) I mean, I still love Dainty   so much and that will probably always forever remain. ⁓ But Dana, truly you're a dynamite consultant and I've watched you evolve and it's like, ⁓ you were on the podcast with me last time where you took a practice from negative profitability to multi profitability in just a couple of months. And I think the dynamic and dynamite ability you have so like dynamic doesn't feel as cool as dynamite, but it's because you're this dynamic player and you're able to help teams, help doctors, help offices.   The Dental A Team (00:33) You   The Dental A Team (00:58) And really it's, think like role clarity, like really focusing on top priorities. And I think that that's like the clutch piece of consulting. If I like boil down what two consultants do differently is yes, we have this like Mary Poppins bag of tricks, but I think the piece is we know which Mary Poppins tool and prioritization and piece based on the numbers, based on the goals need to happen. And I think you're very, very dynamic and dynamite and being able to do that. So excited to have you on the show today.   The Dental A Team (01:26) Yeah, I'm really excited to be here. I haven't podcast in a while with you, so it's going to be fun.   The Dental A Team (01:31) great time girl.   think our last one was talking about your transformation practice. So today's gonna be fun because I think that this is a topic you and I see often is like   doctors struggle, teams struggle to delegate and they struggle to have like role clarity and I'm even guilty of this. Like I've watched myself like it's crazy when I have these podcast topics and I'm like hi it's me I know I'm the problem I know I'm hanging on to these issues I know I'm causing this chaos and so I kind of wanted to like talk about   why doctors struggle to delegate, why we get into this like bottleneck, and then what it can look like on the other side and how we've been able to help doctors. Like, I know you've got a couple in mind. I've got a couple in mind of what does it look like when we start to trust that process? So Dana, from your perspective, why do you feel like doctors don't delegate and we like bottleneck and we hold on or like owners and founders and office managers? Like, what is that? Like we know we're bottlenecking. Like it's annoying to me. I'm like, I know I'm having a temper tantrum and I don't know how to stop it. Like I know I'm not delegating. I know I'm holding on. know I'm freaking   like failing over here. What, like, why do think this is a rift? What are your thoughts?   The Dental A Team (02:32) I   I will say I feel like Dr. Personality is like a doer, right? They're so used to like to get to become a dentist, right? You have to have succeeded thus far in life. And I do feel like that in order to kind of get where they are, they've had to kind of always do right work really hard, hit the books really hard, hit the clinic really hard. And so I do feel like it's kind of ingrained in them just as humans is that they want to do all of the things. And I also think that there's a misconception of leadership. And being a good leader means doing all   things, making all the decisions, having everyone lean on you for everything.   The Dental A Team (03:07) Yeah, I love that you say that because ⁓ there's a book that, gosh, I should look up the name of it. mean, like, I really will actually, guys. Like, if you're watching, don't worry, I'm ⁓ looking this up right now. ⁓ But it's like the founder mindset. And I think so many of us, it's the founder's mentality, how to overcome the predictable crisis of growth. And I think about this book often because like you said, it's a...   what you have always done won't get you where you need to go. And like those habits and those patterns and the different pieces, it's this, like you said, like you had to work hard in dental school. You guys, watched you. Like I worked at a dental college. ⁓ We watched you be this person. And also there's a perfectionist piece of you literally are working in such small areas. Like the mouth is so small. You have to be perfect. You can't have that. Like, I mean,   shoot, you barely move that burr wrong and you're nicking the tooth next to it and you're like, dang, and now gotta like patch this thing up. Like you really do have such a small, finite controlling area. ⁓ But I think it's ⁓ a space of, we all know, Dana, it's like, logically, I know that if I delegate and I trust my team, my life gets better. So what do you feel like it is? Like, how do people actually let go of the vine? Maybe I'm asking for coaching for myself.   The Dental A Team (04:18) Yeah, and I think some of the hold back   is they might have tried to delegate something in the past and it didn't go very well, right? Because there's an art to actually delegating and delegating that is successful and setting real clear expectations. And so I find like, well, I've tried, right? But the person it fell through the cracks or there wasn't an accountability piece built in. And so I think it's like learning truly how to delegate correctly and delegate so that pieces come back to you and you're not chasing down the thing that you   thing that you gave because if you have to chase it down, if you have to check it, like it's still on your plate then, right? That, that it still hangs over your head if you, if those pieces aren't in place. And so sometimes I think too, it's like they have had a past history of trying to delegate and it's like not failing, but feeling like, I should have just done it anyway.   The Dental A Team (05:09) Totally. And I think as you said that like, I'm into now the how of like, okay, I hear that I agree. And I, it was funny, Jason, I, call it like tub talk, like think tank talk. Like we go out hot tubbing, we don't take our phones. It's like really beautiful and shoot, it just snowed. So I can't wait to get out there and like go hot tubbing in the snow. ⁓ it's a really magical world, but we were talking about it and I realized we're using a recruiter to help hire some team members for us that I'm really excited about that are like far out of my league that I don't even know how to hire. So   ⁓ brought in some executive recruiters for that. And I remember they were asking me, they're like, Kiera, what's going to break your trust the most? And I was like, I know actually, like for me, and so team members hearing this, the number one thing, and Dana, I'm saying this because you are not this person and I'm going to highlight you, I think there's also a space when doctors delegate to make sure the person we're delegating to is right person, right seat. ⁓ For me, I've learned that the way I lose trust the most is when people tell me they're going to follow through and they don't. Like I'm very, because I just feel like,   then don't do it. I get they have best intentions, but I'm more obsessed about outcomes and you delivering rather than you just taking a million things on to make me happy. ⁓ And so I thought about it, like, who are the people that I trust implicitly, like on our team and Jason, I'm not going to like do the role of X day. And I'm that's like unfair. You'll get to hear the like behind the scenes, Jason and Kiera talk. One doctor, he was like, Kiera, if I could just be a fly on the wall to hear the conversations you and Jason have. And I was like, I don't know if you want to know them all. ⁓   But I thought about it I was like, okay, my core crew that I really do trust, like what is it and how do I delegate to these people? Like Dana, I know, and this is why I called you Dynamite Dana and Dynamic Dana is Dana, I know with out of doubt, I can give you clients and you're gonna deliver and you're not gonna let me down and you're gonna follow up, you're gonna have scorecards, you're gonna show up to the coaching calls, you're going, like I never have to come and check in on you to make sure you're delivering to clients. Now, you may need help, that doesn't mean they're not gonna be like never asking, but I know you're gonna hit those deliverables. If I give you a project like, hey, you're gonna present,   Never in my mind have I been like, uh, Hope Dana is going to show up on that. Like I know I can count on Dana to be there. She's going to follow through. If she's got questions, you're going to proactively ask me. It like, I can give you tasks that they don't come back to me. Now there's other team members where I'm like, I feel like I'm playing whack-a-mole. I'm like, uh, did you check on that? Did you check on that? Did you check on that? Like, and I've noticed my anxiety is like lit to the next level. And I think as you were saying that and office managers and team members, I hope you hear this loud and clear.   This is the fastest way to break trust and not have a doctor trust you. And truth be told, like I'm going to just call out team members, not even just doctors. You're also being the bottleneck because your doctor doesn't trust you to give it to them. Now, doctors, there is a way for us to not take it back on. ⁓ But I was just, as you said that Dana, I think that there's a big space of doctors make sure that like, if you consistently have a person who's not following through and not delivering back to you, stop trying to make that person fit. Like just call it out of what it is and say, like, listen, this has to change. And if it doesn't, I recognize you're not right person.   Like Shelbi, ⁓ she's a kick-a personality for being that. She never lets anything slip through her. mean, Dana, she is on us like sticky. It's like, hey guys, where's this at? Where's that? But she's so nice about it. And there's just certain personalities that are that way. And then there's other personalities that are like more creative and you don't need them to be in. I don't need to delegate all that. Like they can have different projects. And so I think when you look at it, make sure that the person, and you can also look at people's personality profiles. There are some that are like detail centric.   They should be your operations. should be your office managers. They should be your billers. And then you're going to have people like myself. That's a little less on details, but I'm a dang good treatment coordinator. I don't need to have as many things. I just need to hit a goal. Like it's less confined versus an office manager. So I think also like picking people that are the right people for that. Dana, I talked a lot on that. What are your thoughts on that?   The Dental A Team (08:48) No, I completely agree. I do think it takes the right person in a seat and then once you have the right person clearly defining their role because sometimes too it's like who does it who has the capacity for me to delegate this to right and I think that sometimes things get lost because we ask the person that we always ask and yes they do but then we stretch them so thin things start to fall through the cracks because we haven't said hey is this something that you really feel like you can take on so it comes down to just like you said that trust that open communication and so I think   Role clarity helps delegation. It also helps like where does it make sense? Right? I'm probably not going to ask my biller to do treatment follow-up calls, right? I might probably ask the person that's working to my schedule or the treatment coordinator herself. So I think that all of these pieces, sometimes it's hard to like link when I'm like, okay, well, let's get clear job roles. Well, how does that help me delegate? Right? I think linking all these things together can really help a doctor see how   The Dental A Team (09:39) Mm-hmm.   The Dental A Team (09:45) easy it can become and not just for doctors like yes this is for the doctor that holds on to everything but for leads that hold on to everything for oms that hold on to everything this is just a really clear path for you to see do i have the right person in that seat is their role really really clear and who has the capacity to take on anything that comes up or something that you want to take off your plate   The Dental A Team (10:08) Totally. And Dana, as you said that something, our Dental A Team is in like such a fun transition or like we are, think Dana's feeling, our whole team's feeling it like we have gone from what Dental A Team was to what Dental A Team is becoming. And I'm super excited. We're going to roll out like a state of the company. Dana doesn't know it yet. Like it's coming. Like I can't wait. I know she's feeling the buzz around it, but I recognize as a leader that sometimes you've got to call out what was and where we're going. And   our team went through a, what I've called like a snow globe freaking shake. Like we decided like, let's just throw all the confetti, shake every person into different spots. And it's like, Britt's in a different role. I'm in a different role. Shelbi's in a different role. Thinking as like consultants, like Dana, you pretty much stayed the same, but like everywhere else around us, we just like ripped change tour and we built an accountability chart and we had to really say like, okay, what are the seats that the organization needs without names on it? What are the tasks that realistically should go under here?   And then like, let's look to see what open roles we have, who fits in what spots. And I remember we had a leadership meeting in September of last year. And who I remember, Britt was sitting at the table, Tip was at the table, I was at the table and Britt looks me across the eyes and she's like, Kiera, I just want to highlight and recognize that what you're about to go through and what I'm about to go through, Shelbi, Tiff, this whole leadership, like it is going to be a shake and it's weird. And we all actually like Dana hasn't seen it yet. You're about to get your PDF version come next week. ⁓   of our accountability chart, because right now it is that like, who does this make sense? Like I have normally gone to Shelbi because it's easy and Shelbi and I were working on like fees and different things. And I realized like, well, yes, I used to do that. Shelbi actually needs to be an EA and needs to fully be in that role. And Britt's over finance now and I need to go to Britt. So it's just like, we are constantly like pull out the legend. call it like, let's look at our big legend over here. Like who should this task be under? But I actually think that helps with delegation. And then the team actually is empowered to say like, Hey,   is this my role and not in a combative way, but like, let's make sure that instead of us just going for easy paths, we're going to the correct people. And then those roles actually have KPIs and then you got job accountability below it. So I think like, if you don't have something like that, and this is where like org chart and accountability chart, they get harped on. I recognize like operations people, they come in, they're like, marketers love to give me a growth plan. Like, cool, I hear it. It's like top to the funnel, down to the funnel. Operations people love to give me an org chart.   And what I've noticed though is if you have that clarity of who does what delegation becomes much easier and accountability holding to becomes easier because we can pull out the paper and I'll be like, Britt, it says right here online, like squint your eyes. It's right there. Or we're like, okay, here's a process. It's not on anyone's plate. Let's look to see under which seat going to your capacity thing, Dana, which seat does this make sense? And can they take the capacity today or what needs to shift so that way they can.   But also I remember Tiffanie, ⁓ she was like, you guys have never told me what my full job is. So for me to say I have capacity during hot, I don't even know what it all encompasses. And so ⁓ as I worked with offices, as I worked through our own company, I will say accountability charts and org charts need like an update like every six to 12 months. And we relook to see are there additional tasks because businesses innovate, they evolve. mean, Dana, what you were starting to do versus what you're doing today, it has evolved. Everyone evolves and   I also think like we noticed when we were going through it, we have a VA who's amazing. Everybody loves Joash on our team. Shout out to Joash. ⁓ And we happened to notice that like we needed somebody over in marketing and marketing. were going to go hire somebody and we're like, Whoa, Joash has like 75 % of his time available right now. We could actually deploy him over in marketing and make that tour. That gap can be filled. And so I think like even in consultant world Dana, like you probably are like, Hey, I actually have space. I could take on more projects if you guys need. And this is how it's a   right seat, right role delegate, but then look at all the other players and like, Dana, you got really great strengths and some areas. What if we deploy you in this? So that way your leaders are not, especially as organizations grow bigger, let's deploy and use our team players to the highest level of clear job and also capacity. I think like then accountability is not as hard because we're not inundating just two or three people, but gosh, like as I say, all this, is an evolution of practice. ⁓ Tiff, Britt, Shelbi, and I were all talking like,   It's been the core four for a long time. Like we've just done everything and we're like, we now have 17 team members having four people try to do like a one. I mean, we're not even using half of our team. And yet the co like the top leaders are drowning. It's just an evolution. And I think that this is where bottlenecks revisions having an outside person come in and see it helping you guys elevate really just paramount. And so I'd say like quick steps are get that org chart. Like Dana was saying in the accountability chart.   figure out where the gaps are and who should it go under, not name, but position, and then put names in and see where gaps are and who could we pull in to help out. Like you said, and then you get the job descriptions that are super clear. And then we start holding accountable to that job description. It's very easy when we all see it, got it, and getting the whole team bought in. I'm not going to lie. It's taken us like four months to get here to where whole team's going to see it. There's been a lot of shifting and shaking and making sure we have it right. And then letting the team know it's going to evolve.   But just giving clarity, but even for me, I now know who do I go to, who do I pass this task to? It becomes so much easier to delegate and get rid of those bottlenecks. Dana, that was so much knowledge. Like welcome to behind the scenes. You get to learn firsthand on the podcast, you're welcome. like thoughts about that as a team, as a consultant, like what do you see in that?   The Dental A Team (15:23) Thank   you   I love that and just like kudos to you here in the leadership team for just always trying to map out those pieces and I do feel like as a team member I think it's important for doctors leaders to understand like team members most team members if you have right people right seat like we talked about in the beginning most team members want to grow they want to do a really great job they don't want to let you down when you give them a task and so this is just a pathway that   Create success for everybody. You can get those things off. You can hold accountability You can do all of those things with success and your team members get to elevate themselves grow within their position grow within their skill set And so it's just like a win-win overall for everyone when it's done this way   The Dental A Team (16:15) Yeah, no. And Dana, thank you for saying that. And thank you for the reminding. I think sometimes ⁓ when you have like one bad apple or one bad experience, I think as a leader, even myself, I don't know, my brother-in-law, was a, he's like this really big wig and build like these most incredible homes and all that. And I remember when I got married to Jason 15 years ago, I was like, gosh, Jay, your brother's always so grumpy. And I'm like, I get it. Businesses can pick at you and almost like take away that naive   innocence of how much people are great and you might see the dark side of humanity in spite of the goodness that you see. And I think for me, Dana, like you saying that it's like, no, that's a good, that's a good remembering and reminder for myself of team members really do want to make your life awesome. Team members really do love you and they want to rally around you and they want to be great and they want to grow and they want to evolve. They just sometimes need to know like, what is it you want? And also empowering team members like, can't wait, Dana, we're going to show this and   I'm excited for team members to look at this and be like, Hey, like raise a hand. Like I got space. I can help in these areas. Like this is where you use collective brains to help out, but team members like falling through. ⁓ but I also think like owners don't lose faith in like the goodness of your team. And, sometimes they'll drops. It could be a wrong person, wrong seat. It also can be. There's a lot on that person and we need to like deploy or clarify to make it easier. So Dana, let's talk real life. I know you have some offices. I got some offices.   The Dental A Team (17:42) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (17:44) Let's talk about   like how, what does it look like when it's doing it well? ⁓ How does it feel for offices? Like, let's just kind of go through that.   The Dental A Team (17:52) Yeah, I think the biggest word that comes to mind when offices do this really, really well is just freeing, right? To have that trust in team, to know that you're going to give them something and that like you also have something in place that's going to show you that they are continuously doing it without having to track them down every day, without having to add it to your calendar. It just creates so much balance in a team and it just creates this freeing   sort of like innate trust amongst each other that like, yeah, we're gonna be able to keep a pulse on it. We're gonna check it for sure, right? We're going to trust and verify, but we've built in all of these pieces and getting to this point, right? It's not without a lot of work, right? And a lot of digging in together as a team and saying like, hey, we want more accountability. We want more responsibility. We want these pieces. We want the office to be successful. And I think once an office has it, it truly, truly is.   balancing, its alignment, and it's like freedom.   The Dental A Team (18:54) Mm-hmm. And I think for me, I feel often like I'll speak to the leader side. I sometimes like I'm the monkey who's got my hand in the trap holding on to the nuts so hard and trying to like get free and I can't and all I need to do is let go. And I think that there's a surrendering, there's a grace there's, ⁓ but I do also believe that teams rise to the level you believe they're capable of. And so if I'm sitting here like, they're going to let me down. We, we find what we focus on. And so.   Why don't I look to see how are they winning and what are the gaps and do we have a clear KPI where everybody knows like this is my number. I can't freaking wait Dana. I worked on it last night. I'm super jazzed. It's going to be a good time. But like even helping our consultants know like we've evolved. So what is it that like we expect our clients to be getting in the first 90 days, 180 days, 365 days like Dana, when you first started with me, I was like, good luck, go out there, do something fun.   But as we've gotten bigger and as we've evolved and we've evolved and we've attracted different clients, that needs to evolve. So what do your dental hygienists need to do? And what do your dental assistants need to do to win? And what does your front office, what does winning look like and making it so simple? So we have our top level of this is our number of accountability. This is what winning looks like. Then below that we have tasks of all the different tasks that are there. And what are the core processes? Do we have those documented and dialed in?   This is an evolution of business, but this really is like how you're able to delegate through role clarity. And like you said, Dana, there's freedom, there's alignment. Going through it, keep saying, at first I said, I feel like I'm an orange being squozed, Jason. I feel like we're trying to make oranges. And I was like, actually, I lied. feel like I'm an olive being pressed right now. We're not getting a whole squeeze out of this. It's like a drop by drop by drop. But I think if you can see the end result.   and you have a coach or a guide or someone who's been through it with you, I think it makes it so much easier. And Dana, I know you've got a client right now that you've been pushing on this. This client, I love so much. But just walk us through like a little bit of a glimpse in like, and of course, change of details so people can't figure out exactly what client it is. We'll peel back, we'll give you a couple, we'll mash them together. But like peel back how this doctor went from where they were to where they are today and what that looks like for this doctor.   The Dental A Team (21:07) Yeah, I think this is a doctor that just went through a practice transition where they took over a practice and you know, I think a lot of times when that happens, it's like you do want to be involved, you want to feel like you know every piece, you've got your hand in every piece, you're making all of the decisions. And then there comes a point in time where I usually say it's like the like six month year mark, where you realize like, crud, I can't continue to do this and not feel burnt out. So it's just been really fun to see them find the right people we   The Dental A Team (21:25) Thank you.   Yeah.   100 %   The Dental A Team (21:37) worked this entire last year on stabilizing team, finding the right people, finding good people, not rushing those decisions. And then when we realized they weren't the best people, right, making those decisions quickly too, because that can be stressful for everyone. And so it has been really fun that now that there are right people in right seats, like   being able to trust people to make decisions, being able to say, no, that's somebody like my office manager can answer that pushing team members to go to leads and something as simple as I use this as an example, they locks had to be changed at the office, right? A lock broke. And so all the locks had to be changed. And this doctor was just going through a lot personally and was out and the OM just made the decision called the locksmith, chose the locks, had them all replaced, like covered, like paid the bill all   The Dental A Team (22:12) Thank   The Dental A Team (22:26) of things. And I cannot even tell you just like how grateful how amazing it felt. ⁓ And just how it like opened the window of you know what? Yeah, when I let people make decisions when I let them do the things that I know I can trust them to do what a weight it takes off even something like that small.   The Dental A Team (22:47) That's.   The Dental A Team (22:48) And ⁓ I just remember on our call about that, it was just like a light bulb went off and it was like, the more and more I can do this, the better things are going to be. And everything worked out. Everything was fine. Was it maybe the exact lock like that he would have chosen? Maybe not. But at the end of the day, the building's secure, everything was handled and he didn't have to do it. He didn't have to come in on his day off, didn't have to do it. And it was just a really cool epiphany to see after the   last year that he's been through.   The Dental A Team (23:19) That's amazing, Dana. And I think like, as you say that it's crazy because I can coach this and then living in it. It's such a funny zone. Like I feel annoyed. Like I said before, it's like, can see that I'm throwing a temper tantrum and I don't know how to stop it, but I see it. And I think being aware of it is number one. And number two, I think it's really, ⁓ for me, at least, and again, my team listening will know I'm not perfect at this. So like, this is an evolution of Cure. And I'm not here to say like, I'm great at this today. It's an evolution. ⁓   And I think again, it's from founder, right? A founder or a new owner, like you got to do it all. You really do. And then it's like, my gosh, this got too big for me. Like I can't do it all. I'm up at two in the morning. I'm going to bed at 10 PM. Like this is not sustainable. And also for teams it's not, but I think it's this crazy piece. Like you said, what things do I really need to have an opinion on and what things can I be like, awesome, you did it. And like empower that team member and be so proud of them. And I think as we evolve, a lot of times we feel like   No, no, no, I need to be in control of everything. Like I really do. Like I need to pick the locks. Like that's out of budget versus I think if we can scale ourselves back and say like, that was actually awesome and kudos to them and train yourself to see how they did the right thing and how they did the best thing. And even if it's not your exact way, when you get a team that's running, they will actually be better than you will be on your own because you are evolving the whole, like the whole piece.   You as a leader need to set the vision. You need to say, here's where we're going. Here's the budgets, here's the parameters, and then truly trust your team. And I say that to myself, I say that to you, I say that to everybody listening, because I think it's a constant reminder until it becomes a habit and a personality. Like we're asking you to be like, okay, ⁓ I really love strawberries. And now I'm trying to get you to really love tomatoes. Like, they're both red. It's a different way of operating. It's a different method.   So we're gonna choose that. She's like, you have two wolves. You can feed the scarcity or the abundance. And which one am I feeding today? I'm gonna feed the one where I delegate, I trust, I empower. We have the pieces. But I also think Dana, like at the beginning, I do think some thought process behind like, let's get an accountability chart. Let's get job descriptions. Let's make sure everybody knows their KPI. And I think that sometimes that prep work is tricky. And then let's make sure we're really hiring the best people to do the job. Like...   I think there comes a space in business where at the beginning you hire and you gotta like grind it out. Like people don't know, we're trying to like make them into like, Hey Dana, welcome to being a consultant. Let's train it up versus like, Hey, we can hire consultants that have been consultants. Like there is an evolution. And I think at the beginning, yeah, rock on, you're going to be a lot more involved, but as you evolve, you're going to start to hire people that are just as good, if not better than you are and trust and let them run, ⁓ while still verifying and checking in.   You either choose to do that or you choose to hold and both are both are available, but it depends on what's your ultimate goal. And I think if you can focus on that, focus on the team you want and expect them to rise to that occasion. I watched it in organizations and I'm watching it in myself. Like truly it's amazing, right? People write C and clarity teams evolve and doctors feel a lot better. So any other thoughts, Dana? I know that was kind of a very fun, how you delegate, how you delegate it properly. And also like   how happy that doctor was like, shoot, I didn't even have to do that. That's incredible. What other things are they capable of as well? And kudos to that office manager for just like, I think like just taking the bull by the horns and be like, I'm going to do this and you're going to see that I'm awesome. And I'm going to win you over. think kudos to that office manager too.   The Dental A Team (26:47) Yeah, it was really fun to see.   The Dental A Team (26:49) Yeah. All right, Dana, as we wrap today, I think it's doctors teams like don't get stuck in the trap of not delegating. And just because it wasn't right before, let's look to see why wasn't it. Was it wrong person? Was it wrong path? Get your accountability charts in place. Get the map, get the rollout, get the KPIs, get the meeting cadences, like checking in with your leads every single week can really help get this cadence moving forward. You're not perfect. We're not looking for perfect, but we are looking for that evolvement. Not as much like sitting around your neck, but really empowering your team.   and rolling it out and continue to evolve that what you had before is not what you need today. And if you need a coach, mean, Dana does this, I do this, our team does this. This is what we live for is to make you and your practice like truly flourishing and thriving. So Dana, Dynamite Dana, thanks for being on the podcast today. I always appreciate it, you.   The Dental A Team (27:34) always a good time. Thanks for having me.   The Dental A Team (27:36) Of course, and for all of you listening, reach out if we can help. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team Podcast.  

Are you tracking the right numbers in your business, or just the ones that make you feel better? In this episode, we break down the critical difference between churn and net growth and why confusing the two can quietly destroy your momentum. If you are a business owner, entrepreneur, franchise operator, contractor, or W2 earner responsible for data and performance, this conversation will challenge how you measure success. We dive into key performance indicators, client retention, recurring revenue, profit, cash flow, and return on net worth, and explain why focusing only on revenue or new leads can hide serious problems inside your business. If you want to scale sustainably, increase monthly recurring revenue, improve client experience, and make smarter decisions with your numbers, this episode will help you audit your KPI scorecard and refocus on what actually drives long term growth and financial freedom. Join the Tactical Empire Network on SKOOL for FREE!

Most dentists try to scale their dental practice by chasing tactics, new marketing, new software, new equipment, more hygiene days, more locations, yet they still feel stuck, stressed, and buried in the business.  In this episode, we break down what real dental practice growth actually looks like: a clear 10,000-foot strategy, a deep-dive business audit, and a customized scaling plan built around leadership, roles, and measurable KPIs. If your dental marketing “isn't working,” your team feels stretched thin, or you're adding revenue without adding profitability, this conversation will hit hard. We talk about why scaling isn't just getting bigger, it's building an organization that runs without you. You'll hear how practices waste money on tools like CBCT and ignore the foundation: scoreboards, accountability, ownership, and a cadence of truth.  This is for practice owners who want sustainable growth, stronger culture, better systems, and more freedom, without building a bigger hamster wheel. If you're serious about practice management, dental leadership, and building a scalable dental organization, this is the playbook. You'll Learn: → How to create a true scaling strategy instead of stacking random tactics.  → How to run a “deep dive” audit like a diagnosis and treatment plan for your business, using profitability, recall, and real KPI scoreboards.  → How leadership and role clarity prevent breakdowns, like the classic “marketing isn't working” problem that's actually a follow-up and process bottleneck.  → How to think in levels of sophistication with consultants, advisors, and systems so your practice evolves and doesn't outgrow its support team. To connect with Dr. Buske follow the links below -  LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Limitless Dentist Academy Join Dental Syndicate HERE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if you never made a single business development cold call and still billed almost a million dollars in your first 18 months solo? That's not a hypothetical. That's exactly what happened when one recruiter bet everything on owning his niche and letting LinkedIn do the selling for him. Most recruiters are taught to smile, dial, and grind through cold BD calls to build a book of business. This episode flips that model completely. You'll hear the exact framework behind a recruiter who walked away from his entire book of business, announced his new firm on LinkedIn, and had 3 new clients reach out within 48 hours — without picking up the phone. If you're building inbound demand, escaping the cold-call hamster wheel, or creating a recruiting brand that sells for you, this is your blueprint. What You'll Learn The 3-pillar "Civil Recruiter Brand Model" for building a self-sustaining recruiting business without traditional BD callsWhy guarding your LinkedIn network like a hawk is the single highest-ROI move most recruiters ignore — and how to do itThe exact content batching system that produces 3–4 posts per week in just 2 hours per monthHow announcing his solo launch on LinkedIn generated 3 inbound clients in 48 hours — and the groundwork that made it possibleWhy he believes his billings would be cut in half or more without his LinkedIn presenceThe mindset shift from KPI hunter to trusted resource — and why it closes more dealsHow he uses a VA to pre-vet 40–50 candidates per role so he only shows up to callThe real emotional cost of leaving a mentor, losing your book of business, and going 100% commission with a family to feed About the Guest Brandon McGill is the founder of The Civil Recruiter, a niche recruiting firm specializing in geotechnical, structural, and civil land development engineering. In 18 months since launching, he's billed $959K, placed over 30 engineers, and built a content engine generating 1.7 million LinkedIn impressions per year, all without a single traditional BD cold call. Timestamps [00:02:31] Benjamin introduces Brandon's numbers: $959K billed, zero BD calls, 18 months solo [00:06:25] How LinkedIn content replaced cold calling as the #1 business development channel [00:07:33] Can anyone replicate this? What's transferable to any niche [00:15:37] 48 hours after his LinkedIn announcement: 3 new clients, zero outbound [00:20:39] "Cut it in half, if not more" — what his billings would be without LinkedIn [00:42:46] His repeatable process: VA sourcing, Loxo workflows, and showing up ready to call [00:49:23] Honest reflection: what he'd do differently to hit $1.25M Sponsors Atlas – AI-first ATS & CRM Automates admin, syncs resumes and emails, and uses AI to build polished profiles and reports. Try it free or book a demo → https://recruitwithatlas.com Join the Community This is Your Year - Recruiter Summit https://this-is-your-year-recruiter-summit.heysummit.com/ Elite Recruiter Community — all summits, replays, billers club + split space https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community Tools & Links Free Trial: PeopleGPT → https://juicebox.ai/?via=b6912d Free Trial: Talin AI → https://app.talin.ai/signup?via=recruiter Free Trial: Pin → https://www.pin.com/ Signup for emails → https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe YouTube: Follow Brandon McGill on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonmcgill/ Benjamin Mena → http://www.selectsourcesolutions.com/ Benjamin on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminmena/ Benjamin on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/benlmena/

In this episode, Jason breaks down a powerful concept inside the TACT Production System: using buffers in pace with the Remaining Buffer Ratio. Buffers are not contingency. They are intentional protection for specific phases of work and when used correctly, they eliminate rushing, pushing, and panic. The key is not whether you use buffers. The key is how responsibly you use them. Jason explains how the Remaining Buffer Ratio helps teams decide when to consume buffer and when to recover time another way  replacing traditional CPM tools like float reports, S-curves, and earned value metrics with something practical, visual, and flow-based. What you'll learn in this episode: The difference between schedule contingency and phase buffers. What the Remaining Buffer Ratio is and how to calculate it. Why buffers must be used in pace not all at once. How this KPI replaces slippage reports and float tracking. How to make buffer usage responsible and transparent. Are you managing buffers with intention… or reacting when it's too late? If you like the Elevate Construction podcast, please subscribe for free and you'll never miss an episode.  And if you really like the Elevate Construction podcast, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (Maybe even two

Is SEO dead? Not even close.In part 3 of this Crystal Squared episode of The Simple & Smart SEO Show, Crystal Waddell sits down with Crystal Ortiz to unpack what's really happening in the world of AI-powered search.AND SPOILER: SEO is actually in a strong position right now.They dive into how to define success beyond traffic metrics, how to use AI without wasting hours going down a rabbit hole, and why business goals [not shiny tools] should drive your SEO strategy. From product page optimization to redefining KPIs in an AI-heavy world, this episode is a practical and refreshing take on what modern SEO really looks like.Key Takeaways1. SEO Is Not Dead — It's ShiftingThe myth that “SEO is dead” needs to go. Search is becoming more AI-heavy, but the need to understand user intent, answer questions, and drive revenue hasn't changed.2. Stop Defining Success by Traffic AloneTraffic is no longer the main KPI. Revenue impact, conversion shifts, and overall business growth are better indicators of SEO success.3. Start With Business Goals, Not AI ToolsBefore using AI, clarify your objective. Are you increasing product page conversions? Growing SEO-attributed revenue by 20%? Your inputs should roll up to that goal.4. Use AI With RestraintAI can save five minutes — or waste three hours. Create a clear plan, stay in your lane, and use AI tactically instead of chasing every suggested output.5. Human Ideas First, AI SecondIf you want AI-assisted content to feel human, start in your own brain. Develop the idea first — tText me your questions or comments!Hey, Shopify store owners! (Especially if you're selling on Etsy, too!)Here's a quick question: Are people actually finding your products on Google?If SEO feels confusing, overwhelming, or like something you'll "get to later", this is for you.I'm hosting a free, seven day Shopify SEO challenge that breaks it down into simple, doable steps.No tech headaches, no fluff. Join us at  Hey, Shopify store owners! (Especially if you're selling on Etsy, too!)Here's a quick question: Are people actually finding your products on Google?If SEO feels confusing, overwhelming, or like something you'll "get to later", this is for you.I'm hosting a free, seven day Shopify SEO challenge that breaks it down into simple, doable steps.No tech headaches, no fluff. Join us atSupport the showBook a Shopify Store Strategy Call With Crystal! Want to follow up on what you've heard? Search the podcast! AFFILIATE LINKS:Start your Shopify Store!Get SurferSEO! Metricool (to be everywhere online, you NEED a social media scheduler!) Grid and Pixel Note: If you make a purchase using some of my links, I make a little money. But I only ever share products, people, & offers I trust & use myself!

In episode #356, Ben shares the results from the FP&A category of his 7th Annual SaaS Tech Stack Survey, highlighting the top financial planning and analysis solutions used in software companies today. With 37 FP&A solutions named in the survey, this remains one of the most competitive and fast-moving segments in the back-office tech stack. While spreadsheets still dominate usage—by a wide margin—dedicated FP&A platforms are gaining traction, especially as companies scale past $10M+ ARR and investor reporting requirements increase. Ben also compares this year's results to prior years and explains how FP&A tool adoption shifts by ARR size. Resources Mentioned 7th Annual SaaS Tech Stack Survey: https://www.thesaascfo.com/surveys/finance-accounting-tech-stack-survey/ What You'll Learn The most widely used FP&A solutions in SaaS and AI companies Why spreadsheets still dominate financial modeling workflows Which platforms are gaining momentum (Drivetrain, Mosaic, Aleph, Pigment, Planful, and others) How FP&A adoption changes as companies scale beyond $10M ARR Why enterprise-grade tools like Workday appear in larger organizations How funding and competition are reshaping the FP&A software landscape Why It Matters FP&A systems power your forecasting, budgeting, and board reporting Spreadsheet-based processes eventually break as complexity increases As ARR grows, investors expect more sophisticated financial modeling and analytics Selecting the right FP&A tool impacts forecasting accuracy, KPI visibility, and strategic planning Understanding market adoption trends helps founders and CFOs benchmark their financial systems

If your team is cooked, your NOI is next.Burnout is not a “people problem.”It's a system failure.Exhausted teams make poor decisions.They communicate less effectively.They disengage quietly.Quiet disengagement is the most expensive kind because you don't see it until service breaks.Ignore burnout long enough, and you pay for it later.Turnover spikes.Resident experience slips.Errors show up in turns, work orders, and rent-ready quality.Reputational harm follows because bad news travels instantly.Burnout is expensive.Not just in payroll churn.In craftsmanship.In follow-through.In how the office treats people when the lobby gets hot.Here's the tip.Know the signs.Missed follow-ups.Low morale.Resident complaints that no one has the energy to solve.Team members who clock in but mentally check out.You can feel it.In the same way, you can smell a house when you walk in.Dirty socks or apple pie.Tension or steadiness.A property has a scent, too.Leaders don't get to pretend they don't smell it.You have to acknowledge it.Then you have to fix the system that created it.Bonus tip.Know the solutions.Clear roles.Workload pacing.Psychological recovery built into the cadence of the calendar.Ask this in your next ops review.Where is recovery tracked?Not “vacation policy.”Recovery as an operational KPI.Because preventive maintenance isn't just for boilers.It's for people.Put burnout on the agenda this week. If you can track delinquency and occupancy, you can track strain, recovery, and workload before your culture starts leaking residents.MultifamilyCollective Blog: https://www.multifamilycollective.comThe Daily Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3YI6BDaHosted by: https://www.multifamilymedianetwork.com

Climate isn't “over.” But building in climate has entered a new chapter, defined by shifting regulation, politicized narratives, buyer confusion, and a market that funded dozens of overlapping platforms.In this episode, Andreas and co-host Carmel Rafaeli, Founding Partner at The Table, sit down with Lubomila Jordanova, Co-founder & CEO of Plan A, just weeks after Plan Ajoined forces with Diginex, the NASDAQ-listed sustainability technology company, at the end of 2025.The conversation is part of Leaders Shaping a Resilient Planet, a series spotlighting exceptional founders in climate tech who happen to be women. The focus is not identity as a theme, but execution as a discipline. These are operators building in some of the most complex and capital-intensive parts of the real economy.This is not an acquisition recap. It is a clear-eyed discussion about what it takes to build and responsibly exit a climate tech company in a market that is maturing quickly.What's covered:00:52 The Table: co-investing community + the Foundation's recoverable grants model02:05 Introducing Lubomila Jordanova and Plan A02:45 The acquisition: why Plan A chose to lead consolidation04:35 Fundraising logic → acquisition logic: what changed06:40 Founder outcome vs VC outcome: how alignment works in an exit11:30 “The truth is where the real economy sits”: what carbon software actually sells13:30 The uncomfortable line: “glorified consulting with a digital angle”15:05 What VC portfolios get wrong in climate: return distribution, capital stack, secondaries16:55 Why “climate” can't be one bucket: hardware vs SaaS vs reporting20:00 Managing investor perception: visibility, bias, and boardroom baggage23:15 The broader financial pyramid: VC vs public markets vs real-economy signals27:35 Post-exit reality: why a public-company KPI lens changes the conversation31:10 Three founder learnings (humility, ecosystem, real-world problems)33:55 A rare founder truth: pregnancy during the exit + building with “more hats than one”

In this episode, Tommy Mello shares with Brian the story of how sheer grit, hard work, and strong relationships helped him build a company valued at $2B, A1 Garage Door Service. Tommy discusses his humble, blue-collar background, where he worked on a series of jobs including busing tables, lifeguarding, bartending, and flipping cars —until a roommate introduced him to the garage door industry. Tommy started there first as a painter, before becoming the “go-to guy” for multiple companies, and eventually launching his own business. He also shares how the relationships he developed with mentors and other important people in his life informed how he treats the employees at his own company. Tommy also discussed the strategies he has learned and used along the way, including the key performance indicators (KPIs) that help him to continue to create business success. YOU WILL LEARN: How to move from hustle to leadership by building systems, processes, and accountability. A simple KPI framework to reverse-engineer your budget and start the year with momentum. The four questions he uses to help create a superior, client-service experience every time, no matter the customer's budget. MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: The E-Myth by Michael Gerber The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies by Chet Holmes The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie NOTEWORTHY QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE: “Profitability is the lifeblood of a company.” — Tommy Mello “If I could help you get to your goals, can you help me in return? But I'll make sure I show up first. And man, that worked wonders.” — Tommy Mello “We never say the word ‘expensive'. We say ‘top of the line.' We never say ‘cheapest'. We say ‘builder grade.” — Tommy Mello "I'm the best I've ever been, but the worst I'll ever be—because tomorrow I'm going to be 1% better.” — Tommy Mello “If I were to talk to my younger self, I would say, ‘Don't worry about what everyone else says. Don't be afraid of someone saying no. Don't be afraid of rejection. Don't worry. The only person you've got to worry about is yourself.'” — Tommy Mello Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Key Performance Indicators (or KPIs)! By establishing KPIs in your practice, you find ways to remove the emotion that doesn't need to be there. Tiff and Kristy explain how KPIs drive a practice — and how to implement them if you haven't started yet. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are back again today and I say we again because I've got Miss Kristy here with me. You guys know how much I love her and podcasting with her is just, I told her today, like I just, you bring a sense of calm and it's great and letting it be on a, like Thursday afternoon, this is kind of cool for me ⁓ and ending my week. I've got, you know, we've got things to do tomorrow, ending calls with this is really, really cool. So Kristy, thank you so much for being here today. How are you?   The Dental A Team (00:29) Good and you?   The Dental A Team (00:31) I'm good,   thank you. ⁓ I'm... I was gonna say that, like what the heck? I'm so glad you're here though because, you know, this time last year you were here in snow and ice and I'm so glad you're here but it is cold and I heard you guys, record these, this is January right now, it'll be released in February but it's like so cold. It's like 43 degrees in the morning here and us Arizona women are just not used to that so.   The Dental A Team (00:34) It's cold for Arizona.   The Dental A Team (01:01) I agree and there's supposed to be ice and snow coming, not for us, we get rain, thank goodness, but I'm like, that's why we live here, so we don't have to deal with ice and snow. yeah, puts a little damper on travel, so we'll see. We'll see how that goes, but I am glad that you're here. This is the time of year that everybody comes and visits. February is a massive, massive time to be in Arizona. In March, we've got spring training games going, we've got...   Waste Management Open, we've got, oh my gosh, every weekend there's a taco festival or something going on. So this is the prime time to be in Arizona. If you wanna come visit, tell us that you're coming and we'll be happy to give you some suggestions. Kristy, we talk about these a lot and I'm excited because I know you actually thrive in this world a ton. You make decisions based on these. are phenomenal at projections.   four practices and the world of KPIs, which you guys, for those of you who don't know, key performance indicators, those are the indicators within your practice that tell you how you're performing. I had years and years and years ago now, like way too long to even count, I had a manager one time and she said, Tiff, I want you to start joining the KPI meetings on Thursdays with the CPA doc and I. And I said, okay. And then I ran over to my computer and I was like, Google, what is KPI? What does KPI mean? I was like, I'll be there.   That sounds great. This is like growth for me. You're putting me in. I was like, yep, I'll be there. And then I was like, what does this mean? So if you don't know what it means, you're not using them, you are not alone. I had to Google that once upon a time. And that was before Chat GPT. I feel like I would have been so much better off if I had that to break it down for me. But alas, here we are. And Kristy, I love KPIs. I love black and white decision making. I love any opportunity we have that we can remove some emotion.   from a decision, especially in the dental industry. We have a lot of emotions in the dental industry and being able to remove those and say that yes or no something is or isn't working. And my favorite piece of that is when we do that, Kristy, I think it gives us the opportunity to tackle the system and not make it personal about the person. Like it might not be that you suck.   it's that the system's not working or we're not using it correctly. And if that's the case, I'm fine. We start using it correctly or we alter it. But I think, Kristy, it makes me feel a lot better about accountability and about KPIs and just about leading teams when it's less about a feeling and a person and more about the system. So I'm excited. Kristy, tell me, why do you love KPIs?   The Dental A Team (03:41) Yeah, for the same reason, Tip, because so many times we see people focused on the wrong thing. And when you really dial into the metrics, they start to tell a story, right? And sometimes even metrics can look a little bit deceiving, but that's why I like to say the numbers start to tell a story. And then we get to dig into it and figure out the story. So, you know, just in saying that, I think if I wasn't doing what I was doing, I would be some kind of detective. And I mean,   The Dental A Team (04:09) I think   you would too.   The Dental A Team (04:10) Maybe that's why it's so exciting for me, but like, and it's truth, right? The numbers don't lie. And so a lot of times we have misperceptions on things and that's the human aspect. So to give grace on us, and I also feel like what we measure expands, it grows, right? And so if we're focused on the wrong thing, what do we get more of? And so,   The Dental A Team (04:33) Mm, true.   The Dental A Team (04:40) I just think it's the fastest way to make improvements. And it's kind of funny Tiff, because in other things we do, if we want to lift weights or we want to lose weight, what do we do? Get on the scale or we're like, we lift 50 pounds. my gosh, I added another weight. We measure it really well, but in dentistry it's like taboo. ⁓ we can't do it. Like it's so bizarre, right? But I just, again, it's the true measure. We talked about this.   The Dental A Team (05:02) I agree.   The Dental A Team (05:07) on a different podcast of winning. It truly lets us know if we're winning or losing, and maybe we'll focus on the wrong thing, right? I know you've heard it a zillion times. Doctors come on, need more new patients. I need more new patients. I need more new patients. And we look at their outstanding treatment list and it's like $3 million. And I'm like, do you really know what you mean? Right? So again, sometimes it lets us win faster because we can breathe direct and focus on   The Dental A Team (05:26) You   for sure.   The Dental A Team (05:37) what's really gonna get us there.   The Dental A Team (05:40) Yeah, I love that you said that. I love the idea of focusing on the wrong thing because I think we do that a lot. focus on the negative, right? We're like, what was our attrition rate instead of what's our new patient and our active patient count? Are those growing? Because if our new patient count and our active patient count are growing, attrition's fine. But if we're looking at attrition rate, we're like, how many are we losing? We're grasping. It's a different kind of energy and that will grow. So if you're looking at it,   you want your attrition to grow, then keep watching it. If you want your active patient count to grow, keep watching it. And if it's not growing, then you tackle the systems and assume attrition is happening. So I love that you said that because it broke it down, I hope for everyone, a little bit differently there. And our podcast today is How KPIs Drive a Practice. And I think in that simple statement and those two minutes you were just talking, you just broke it down, like verbatim on how it drives a practice because   what you focus on will grow no matter what. you're right, it's so everything in our life, we count everything. Like it's just human nature to count and track everything we do. We track our money, we track our expenses, we track our weights, we track our weight, we track everything that we do, we track our gas mileage. know, my sister's always like, ah, I got 16 gallons or whatever. I need to go get the best gas price. And I'm like, girl, I don't.   I don't know what she's like, what is your car get? I'm like, I have no idea. But there's, know, she's tracking that. But like, then we go into a dental office, it's like, don't talk numbers. Don't talk numbers. Don't track it. Because that's going to make somebody feel bad. It's like, no, we're going to track it. We're going to see that we're winning. And we're going to feel really, really good. Like my sister, sometimes she comes home and she's like, ah, I guess mileage was down. Sometimes she comes home and she's like, guess what? Simple. But that's how simple it can be.   doesn't have to be astronomical, but those small wins add up to something astronomical. And I have had so many clients that, I've had clients that have purchased practices, they're like, all right, when are we starting marketing? I'm like, well, what do you mean? You've got, like, what's your patient count? What's your active patient count? And then what's the total patient count of that practice? Because you have, every patient right now is a new patient. Starting marketing,   is a wild use of your money. Let's internal market, let's get your exams better. There's so many different avenues that we think are just the norm, so we jump on board with them. But then when we pull and extract those actual KPIs, we can find the root of what we need and the root of any problems that there might be, any systems that need to be revamped. So I love that, because that's how you're driving success, by watching the KPIs.   Kristy, and you've got, I hope everyone knows, I don't say it every time, but Kristy's done so much in her dental career and held so many titles and she's consulted for far longer than she's even been a presence here at the Dental A Team. We're so grateful for her. Kristy, in all of your experience, what do you feel are the easiest KPIs to start tracking if we're not tracking any? And then what are the most valuable KPIs maybe that people don't think of?   The Dental A Team (08:53) Ooh, that's deep. Obviously, I think we have to look at it as like two different forks in the road, right? Because so many times we hear the practice of a million dollars and then we hear the practice of six million. And I think doctors, you guys get all ramped up and think if I'm the million dollar guy, why am I the six million dollar guy? And I'm thinking, wait, wait, you don't necessarily want to be that guy. You're actually more profitable than, you know.   The Dental A Team (08:55) I I like that one.   Correct.   The Dental A Team (09:22) So it's not just what's happening in the practice, but also how profitable you are, right? And truly us here at the Dental A Team, we're looking to make sure you're hitting that profitability because that's where the true freedom is. But with that being said, the biggest KPIs out of the gate is what do I need to hit every month to be profitable? And then I measure my production, net production.   and collections. And ⁓ I am going to throw new patients in there, but in a different way, because doctors do want new patients and a lot of times they're getting them. But don't just look at how many I'm getting. Look at how many are reappointing. ⁓ you know, it's one thing that you're getting them and you might be doing limited, limited and letting them go out the back door. So again, look at those, but also   put more weight on how many are getting reappointed. And then ⁓ I also like doctors to look at diagnostics, dollars and diagnostic or sorry, acceptance dollars and percentage. ⁓ They go hand in hand. It can't just be percentage of acceptance because maybe I'm not accepting enough to even get to that goal. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (10:31) case acceptance.   Yes,   yes, I love those. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (10:46) And lastly,   probably in that tip would be your reappointment rate. How many are we reappointing? Because keep those patients of yours. Don't have to spend so many external dollars to gain more because if we just keep what we have and too often we look at how many people are sitting in our inactive pile or we don't look at it and you have a whole nother practice sitting there that you could tap into.   The Dental A Team (11:13) Yeah, I love that. I love what you said about the case acceptance dollars, the diagnostics and the case acceptance dollars. I too have doctors, I love having them ⁓ track their diagnosis and then their dollars. Number one, I hated being a treatment coordinator that had no control over how much was being diagnosed and only initially when I was treatment coordinator, were really only looking at case acceptance, which is very popular.   So case acceptance, case acceptance, and then they're like on your neck and that call these three people, why didn't these, like call the people and like I have called all the people. I can't, and we have so many clients, right, that the TC's are like I've called all the people, Tiff, can't, Kristy, I can't call anymore. Cool, it might not be in the case acceptance. Sometimes it's in the diagnosis and then to loop back to your new patient statement, all of those go so hand in hand and this is why, ⁓ heaven help me, this is why.   things like our scorecards, clients of Dental A Team that talk about the scorecard. This is why the scorecard is so important because you can look at a dental analytics screen and it's choppy, all over the place. The scorecard brings it together so that you can see what's affecting something else because to your point of the new patients, I had a practice near and dear to my heart. He hit his massive goal this year and I'm so proud of him. We worked really hard on, it was, you know,   Timelined out for five years and he hit it literally two weeks before his deadline, his date. One of the things that was holding his practice back was the new patients. He needed more new patients, needed more new patients, so his marketing company is like, all right, we're gonna ramp up new patients. And then all of a sudden we've gotten new patients, but it's like, we're not growing. There's nothing on the schedule, what's happening? And so I said, okay, what kind of new patients? And we had so many emergency, limited, transient, going through town, looking for an emergency.   He was doing a lot of same day dentistry, but not getting things booked on the schedule and not really adding to his patient count, because there wasn't reappointments happening. When we dialed that in, we found that and I was like, here's the key, switched his marketing, his new patients went up,   Then we focused in on his case acceptance. And then like you said, with the dollars, we're seeing, are they accepting fillings?   Are they accepting crowns? Are we getting the near cases? Like what is the case acceptance percentage is cool, but what are we actually, what's the procedure that's being the dollar amount and is there a ceiling maybe in our treatment planning, either back office, front office, wherever it is, is there a ceiling that our system needs to be able to help us overcome in diagnosing a certain dollar amount or treatment planning a certain dollar amount?   The Dental A Team (14:03) Yeah, I love that you say that, And as the TC, that's the one that gets me because so many doctors go back up there or come to us and say, they're just not closing it. And I always tell my practices, case acceptance is a team sport. And literally, it starts from before they even call the office. Like everything you're doing is contributing to their trust. And so ⁓ truly, docs,   I know you don't want to hear this, but it's your job to get them to yes with treatment and ⁓ financial coordinators get them to yes financially. So some of them can work heroics and they do, but it is totally a team sport. So going back to the diagnostics too, you asked a tool that I use ⁓ that maybe isn't so looked at. And I would say print your procedure count report yearly and just take a look, you know?   Are you doing four surface fillings? And I'm not saying that you shouldn't, but is it aligning with your philosophy? And are you giving patients the choice for long-term care? Because sometime that probably four surface filling is going to turn into something, you know? And let your patients decide. Let them decide.   The Dental A Team (15:18) Yeah.   Yes, I love that I have worked with many practices that they do give the options, but they assume that their patient base wants something specifically or can only afford something specifically. So they may give the options, but they kind of talk them into starting with something and started just leaving it on the table and saying what, if this were your mouth and roles were reversed, that we often say,   this were your mom, if this were your sister, if this were your brother. But I like to think, what if we were in different seats and the patient or the dentist, you were sitting in that chair, what would you want someone to tell you? Because you might even still err on the side of like, mom, when it happens, we'll fix it, but like, let's just do this patch for now, right? Because I don't, we don't want to get you numb. Like you might still err on that side for a family member, the, know, quote unquote conservative, but if you were sitting in that chair,   what would you want the dentist to say to you? And I think that makes a massive difference. And that is like your detectiveness, right? That's your detectiveness, but it works and it's what practices need sometimes. And I think, Kristy, part of those pieces, and you showed me your AR thing yesterday and how you diagnose that. And sometimes we do have to go to those spaces.   The Dental A Team (16:17) Yeah.   Yeah.   The Dental A Team (16:40) because you can't see it in the other areas. like, gosh, something is here, but that's why you look at those KPIs that are gonna drive success. And then when one of them isn't working, when one of them isn't hitting the metric that you want it to, you dive deeper. You're not just going to say, okay, every month let's pull the procedure code report. You're gonna say, if case acceptance, if we're not hitting production, case acceptance isn't working or diagnosis isn't working, now we're gonna dig a little bit deeper.   I think what tends to happen is we either go surface and we're like, everything's fine and we ignore issues or we go so deep that we're in the weeds and nobody has time to see the patients. We're just pulling reports all the time.   The Dental A Team (17:20) Yeah, it's so funny. So much psychology goes into it, right? Like our doctors get so upset in dentistry. I remember like doctors thinking, well, we're the only ones that do free consults. Medical doctors don't do free consults. Why do we do it in dentistry? You know what I mean? But yet we also complain, my schooling costs so much and they don't want to pay me what I'm worth, you know? And it's like,   Almost everything, it's funny when we get into it and I work with clients, I'm like, we kind of caused it. We taught them. How many times do we answer the phone and we go, do you have insurance before we even know their name? You know? So it's funny. It's like an oxymoron in a way, but I love that you brought that up because many times we do it to ourselves.   The Dental A Team (18:10) Yeah, yeah, we just spin our wheels on something, to find it and trying to get it right in an industry where nobody's taught how to do this stuff. guys, doctors learned how to be dentists and that's it. It's a rare occasion that you come across anybody who is taught how to run a dental practice. And dental is different than medical. So even healthcare professionals, right? People who have a degree in healthcare management, it's different.   This is why we're here. This is what we do. This is this is years and years. mean, across the whole Dental A Team team, like we should count that up. That'd be a lot of years. I don't even know anymore. We've grown to so many consultants. I don't even want to try to count that right now. We'll do that later. We'll ask Josh to do that for us. But regardless, there's so much wealth of knowledge here in.   The Dental A Team (18:57) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (19:04) ensuring that and we've done such a great job at finding the solutions and the systems to at least get templates and things started to customize for practices. I think that's just an immense value that consultants like the Dental A Team bring is that space of uniformity. these are things that we've seen work. Let's start here and then let's layer on top for you and let's adjust it for your practice and your team.   and those KPIs that drive success, pretty universal. And you said, you know, the common ones, production collections, new patients, diagnosis, case acceptance, and I loved your reappointment rate for new patients and just in general, those tell you the stories. And then from there, we dig and dive deeper. So I love it, Kristy. Thank you so much. think if I were to give an action item, it would be to revamp.   your KPIs if you're digging too deep and grab some new ones if you're not going deep enough, if that makes sense. So, Kristy, anything else you'd like to add?   The Dental A Team (20:09) No, I love it. The only thing I would say, Tip, I know you have the saying down better, but use, love the numbers, right? Don't use them as sticks, is that?   The Dental A Team (20:17) Yeah.   Yes,   yes, numbers are here to guide us. They're stars to guide us. They're not sticks to beat ourselves up with. Yeah, years and years of presenting with Kiera. Awesome, well you guys, go check your KPIs, go check your scorecards. If you're a Dental A Team client, you should have a scorecard. If you don't, get after your consultant. Everyone has scorecards this year, so we're good to go. But if you don't know how to use it or if you're confused by it,   The Dental A Team (20:26) There you go. Love it. Yeah. Love it. ⁓   The Dental A Team (20:48) or if you're not a Dental A Team client yet and you want information on it, please by all means reach out. We're here to help you. We wanna make sure that everyone is successful, whether you are a one-on-one client with us, a group client, or just here as a listener, we wanna make sure that you are all successful. So reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com, and you guys, we'll catch you next time. Thanks so much, thanks, Kristy.   The Dental A Team (21:08) Thank you.  

In this episode we dive into Progress ReportsThe ChallengeYou know the moment. That message lands. Your project manager needs a status update on the project and they need it right now. Not in two weeks when it's supposed to happen. Right now.You have an 11,000 activity schedule. A critical path that keeps shifting. A structural steel delay throwing everything off. And zero minutes to spare.Usually this means three hours buried in P6. Copying data to Excel. Building out reports. Attaching baselines, unattaching baselines, running analysis. All just to deliver a simple email.On this episode of Beyond Deadlines, I sat down with Greg Lawton, CEO of Nodes and Links, to test whether a purpose built AI tool could draft that same status email in 60 seconds. Not a general chatbot. A multi agent AI system designed from the ground up to answer scheduling's hardest questions.What we found changed my perspective on what's possible.Check out Nodes & Links here and mention Micah Piippo and this podcast.Continue LearningCheck out our book The Critical Path Career: How to Advance in Construction Planning and SchedulingSubscribe to the Beyond Deadlines Email NewsletterSubscribe to the ⁠⁠⁠⁠Beyond Deadlines⁠⁠⁠⁠ Linkedin Newsletter⁠⁠Check Out Our YouTube Channel⁠⁠.ConnectFollow ⁠⁠⁠Micah⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Greg⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠Beyond Deadlines⁠⁠ on LinkedIn.Beyond DeadlineIt's time to raise your career to new heights with Beyond Deadlines, the ultimate destination for construction planners and schedulers. Our podcast is designed to be your go-to guide whether you're starting out in this dynamic field, transitioning from another sector, or you're a seasoned professional. Through our cutting-edge content, practical advice, and innovative tools, we help you succeed in today's fast-evolving construction planning and scheduling landscape without relying on expensive certifications and traditional educational paths. Join us on Beyond Deadlines, where we empower you to shape the future of construction planning and scheduling, making it more efficient, effective, and accessible than ever before.About MicahMicah, the CEO of Movar US is an Intel and Google alumnus, champions next-gen planning and scheduling at both tech giants. Co-founder of Google's Computer Vision in Construction Team, he's saved projects millions via tech advancements. He writes two construction planning and scheduling newsletters and mentors the next generation of construction planners. He holds a Master of Science in Project Management, Saint Mary's University of Minnesota.About GregGreg, an Astrophysicist turned project guru, managed £100M+ defense programs at BAE Systems (UK) and advised on international strategy. Now CEO at ⁠⁠Nodes and Links⁠⁠, he's revolutionizing projects with pioneering AI Project Controls in Construction. Experience groundbreaking strategies with Greg's expertise.Topics We Coverchange management, communication, construction planning, construction, construction scheduling, creating teams, critical path method, cpm, culture, KPI, microsoft project, milestone tracking, oracle, p6, project planning, planning, planning engineer, pmp, portfolio management, predictability, presenting, primavera p6, project acceleration, project budgeting, project controls, project management, project planning, program management, resource allocation, risk management, schedule acceleration, scheduling, scope management, task sequencing, construction, construction reporting, prefabrication, preconstruction, modular construction, modularization, automation, Power BI, dashboard, metrics, process improvement, reporting, schedule consultancy, planning consultancy, material management

In this episode, Jason breaks down a powerful concept inside the TACT Production System: using buffers in pace with the Remaining Buffer Ratio. Buffers are not contingency. They are intentional protection for specific phases of work and when used correctly, they eliminate rushing, pushing, and panic. The key is not whether you use buffers. The key is how responsibly you use them. Jason explains how the Remaining Buffer Ratio helps teams decide when to consume buffer and when to recover time another way  replacing traditional CPM tools like float reports, S-curves, and earned value metrics with something practical, visual, and flow-based. What you'll learn in this episode: The difference between schedule contingency and phase buffers. What the Remaining Buffer Ratio is and how to calculate it. Why buffers must be used in pace not all at once. How this KPI replaces slippage reports and float tracking. How to make buffer usage responsible and transparent. Are you managing buffers with intention… or reacting when it's too late? If you like the Elevate Construction podcast, please subscribe for free and you'll never miss an episode.  And if you really like the Elevate Construction podcast, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (Maybe even two

When your corporate job feels "secure" until it suddenly isn't, real estate can become the Plan B that turns into your best move…  In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, DoorGrow founder Jason Hull sits down with John Casmon (multifamily syndicator, host of Multifamily Insights, and co-creator of the Midwest Real Estate Networking Summit) to break down how corporate professionals can transition into multifamily investing without becoming a stressed-out landlord. They dive into how John went from corporate bankruptcies to building a multifamily portfolio, what passive investors actually need to know before putting money into a deal, and why trust + clear expectations matter just as much as the numbers.  Jason and John also unpack what this means for property managers: how to align with investor goals, why the best operators project calm control (even in chaos), where syndicators hang out, and how PMs can position themselves to win more multifamily doors.    You'll Learn (00:00) Transforming Property Management: An Introduction  (00:59) John Casmon's Entrepreneurial Journey  (02:56) Transitioning to Multifamily Investing  (04:33) Understanding Investor Types and Property Management  (05:48) The Role of Property Managers  (07:49) Investor Control vs. Trust in Management  (09:33) Challenges in Property Management  (11:17) Aligning Goals with Property Managers  (14:19) The Real Product of Property Management  (17:14) Managing Investor Expectations  (19:50) Syndication: A New Avenue for Property Managers  (23:44) Legal Considerations in Syndication  (26:41) Calmness in Chaos: The Key to Success  (31:40) Partnering with Syndications  (33:54 The Role of Property Management in Syndication  (38:29) Finding Syndicators and Building Relationships  (42:24) Understanding Passive Investment in Syndication  (47:45) Identifying Your Investment Goals  (51:54) Assessing Risk in Real Estate Investments  (55:15) Choosing the Right Market for Investment  (01:00:12) The Three C's of Raising Capital Quotables "The first C is confidence. Confidence comes from preparation." "The investment itself, we got to go out there and execute. But that investor psyche is a completely different game."  "It is not your job to hope. Your job is to analyze the information in front of you and make an informed decision." Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason Hull (00:01) All right, five, four, three, two, one. All right, I'm Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. And for over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses.   We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Now let's get into the show. So my guest today, I'm hanging out here with John Casman, a multifamily syndicator, host of the multifamily insights podcast and the co-creator of the Midwest real estate networking summit. And in today's episode, John's going to break down how corporate professionals can transition.   into multifamily investing, how to find the best markets, how to raise capital effectively, and what separates successful operators from everyone else. John, welcome to the DoorGrowth Show.   John Casmon (01:10) Yeah, Jason, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Love the intro, your intro, not my intro, ⁓ but excited to be here and share as much as we can on our journey to help all of your listeners reach their goals.   Jason Hull (01:22) Cool. So John, ⁓ it's great to have you. I would love for people to hear about your entrepreneurial journey. How did you get to where you are now? And then we can get into your business.   John Casmon (01:34) Well, the short answer is bankruptcy, right? I worked for a couple of different companies that went through bankruptcy and that really made me consider my other options. You know, I was at General Motors back in 2007, 2008, 2009 when we went through bankruptcy and I was there and I watched what that did to a lot of my peers. I one day in particular when we were going to have a lot of layoffs, I went to work as late as I could. But when I got there, I had a red message, a little red dial on your phone.   for anybody who's worked in corporate and remember voicemails. So I had a red dot on my phone, picked it up, pushed the play button and my heart skipped a beat because I thought maybe I was getting to the can, right? And it was actually a colleague of mine who sat kind of kitty corner in front of me and he had been let go. He, you know, was diabetic. He didn't know I was going to pay for his medication. He just was venting in his voicemail. And I just remember feeling empathy for him, but also   a sense of I just never wanted to be in that situation. So it made me really start to think about Plan B. Eventually I moved to Chicago, realized real estate was going to be that path and learned everything I could about investing. So it kind of took me down that pathway to say, you know what, I need a Plan B because no matter what you do, when you work in corporate America, you do not control your future. You know, there's politics, there's policy, there's a lot of different things involved that you do not control.   And sometimes it does just come down to someone not liking you for whatever reason, or they think you're a threat. And I didn't want to spend the rest of my career navigating those issues. So I figured I had to take more into my own hands.   Jason Hull (03:16) got it. And so you start taking things in your own hands and what was the result?   John Casmon (03:20) Yes. So we landed on multifamily investing, started with small multifamily. My first investment was a two unit building. We house hacked it, which is a common popular phrase now. But back then it wasn't quite as common. But we lived upstairs. We rented out the first floor unit and it worked great. You know, it worked so great that we went to refinance and we had created enough equity in that first investment to pull out a six figure line of credit and go out and buy another property. So.   Jason Hull (03:45) Nice.   John Casmon (03:47) That really got the ball rolling. bought a three unit building, we bought an eight unit building, and at this time I'm still working in advertising, still working in corporate America, and I enjoyed what I was doing, and I just had my second child, but the agency I was working for also went through bankruptcy right at this time. We had expanded, we were growing, and we had kind of combined with a few other agencies and kind of became this little conglomerate, and it just eroded just as quickly as it grew.   I remember again, just sitting there and I've got some real estate. I've got a little bit of cashflow, but not enough to pay all my bills. New baby. And I just realized this real estate thing is working, but the exact strategy I'm employing doesn't allow me to insulate myself from these economic changes and shifts. So I had to change my strategy and that led me to syndication. Since then, we've acquired over $150 million worth of apartments.   We've partnered with busy professionals to buy these properties and give them some passive income. And that's what we've been doing ever since.   Jason Hull (04:50) Got it. So your area of genius really is helping these people that were similar to you, they're in the corporate environment transition into being an investor in real estate.   John Casmon (05:01) Yeah, exactly. And I would say too, it doesn't have to be you're going to quit your job and do this full time. And in fact, most people don't, you know, but most people do want a little bit more control over their life. You want a little bit more flexibility. You want to earn and start building up, you know, your net worth. You want to have a little bit more liquidity. You have to look at your investments to say, what should you be doing? I think most people know that their 401k, their, you know, company issued life insurance.   probably not enough to really get you on the fast track to retirement. So what else could you do? Certainly you can invest in the stock market. Lots of folks do that. But real estate is a proven vehicle. The challenge is, I don't know anyone who really wants to be a landlord, right? ⁓ Certainly you want the benefits of real estate investing, but very few of us want to get those 2 a.m. phone calls. So the shortcut there is, ⁓ hire a property manager. Great solution. But now you have to be able to manage   property managers, right, which is this whole other business. And if you don't have enough scale, then it's hard to get that person really focused on your business. So we offer an alternative, right? You get all the benefits of real estate investing, all the ownership perks without any of the headaches of being the landlord yourself. So it really is a great marriage of being in real estate without having to do the heavy lifting yourself.   Jason Hull (06:15) Okay.   Okay, so ⁓ the target audience of this show are property managers. So if they're not gonna use property managers, then what's the alternative? How does this work?   John Casmon (06:29) Well,   first of all, what we do is not always for that individual. So I think that's the key, right? You've got to understand who you are from a psychological standpoint. So when it comes to investors, there's two types of investors. One wants control, right? They're not willing to be passive. And some people think they want to be passive until they're in a passive situation and then they're calling and they want to know why you did this and why you did that and how come you did do that. That's not a passive investor. And that's fun.   Jason Hull (06:45) Yeah.   Yeah, they're anxious. Yeah. Yeah.   John Casmon (06:58) And   if that's you, you should be active, right? And you should work with a property manager, but you also want to work with the property manager who is going to be right for you, right? Because sometimes that is not how they operate. So you want to understand that. And that's a process to understand who you are as an investor, what kind of investment strategy fits you and what's going to be right there. When it comes to property managers, though, I think there are a couple of things. And as a matter of fact, we just left out of meeting with   property management company yesterday. They have 2000 units. We talked about some other services that we offer. And one of things that stood out to me was just understanding some of the challenges that property managers face. And one of them is property managers are really in a position to think like everyone. They're supposed to think like an investor. They're supposed to understand maintenance and kind of the construction arm enough to understand what needs to happen at a property. But they are really little CEOs, right? Because for   Our stuff, the large apartment stuff, those are typically million dollar annual revenue businesses. And this person is in charge of that asset of that business. They are making the day to day decisions. They are the face for the residents, aka the customers of that business. They are the face and their experience with that individual is how they view that business. So it really is an important role. And if you're working with property managers, it's really important to understand how to find the right people.   to connect with them and have them represent your business, your brand, company in the right light.   Jason Hull (08:30) So now you left an open loop that I want to close. So you said there's two types of investors, those that want control and maybe should go find a property manager, you said. And then what's the other type?   John Casmon (08:34) Yeah.   The other type is those who don't want control and they trust someone else to handle that. And for them, there are a couple of different ways of investing. One is investing passively with a group like ours. The other is turnkey investing where again, you hire a property manager, but you really entrust them to manage the property. The only thing I would say for either one of those groups, myself included, is you want to trust but verify. Okay. You've got to do a lot of your due diligence upfront. You want to understand how they operate. You want to talk to   some of their other clients, some of their other investors, because you need to get a really good sense of what to expect. And a lot of people are great at selling themselves upfront, right? I can tell you everything you want to hear upfront. You want to know what is it like once you sign the paperwork? How often are we going to talk? How frequently am I going to get updates? And at what point am I able to weigh in and make decisions? Because if, if you are someone who wants to be more active or be heard, or you've got thoughts and opinions,   Jason Hull (09:18) yeah.   John Casmon (09:35) You want to make sure you have a voice in your investment. Otherwise you may get really disappointed or you may bring on someone who has a different perspective of what that relationship looks like and that never is going to work out.   Jason Hull (09:47) Yeah, there's a big challenge in the industry and that's that most property management companies suck. so most investors that have dealt with property management to some degree are they have some scar tissue, they've been burned a little bit. They've a lot of property managers that started their businesses that come to me for help to grow their business. They started because they were investor and they couldn't find anyone else to manage the property good enough. And that's why they started their business, but it can be a difficult business to run. so none of them start their business saying, I want to suck.   But that's kind of the default unless they get some really good support or figure some things out through a lot of trial and error. And so that's where DoorGrow comes in. We help them with that. But one of the things I coach my clients on a lot is that they need to shift into being daddy over these rental properties. They need to like tell the owner, hey, you need to trust me. And they need to be able to have a really effective business so that they can lean into that trust.   because a lot of people are anxious. They'll come to them with concerns, but generally if a property manager is good, they're much better at this investing stuff than most investors. And they're much better at coordinating maintenance. They're much better at handling leasing. And so when an owner tries to micromanage a property manager, it kind of doesn't make sense to hire somebody to manage your asset just so you can manage them to do the job. And so I think the secret is finding a really good property manager that you can   let go of control because you can trust them. And but yes, you need to verify that they can do the job that you need them to do. And so a good property manager will take ownership of it and they'll take control and they will, they'll display a lot of certainty and confidence in how they communicate and they won't allow you to micromanage them is what I've seen. So.   John Casmon (11:37) Yeah, Jason, and I'll add to it. There's a two way street there. And I think it's easy for people to say, ⁓ most property managers suck or they're not good or whatever. And listen, there's certainly a lot of challenges there. A lot of folks who are not living up to par to the standards. But I will go back to this. We ask property managers to do the work of generally like a CEO. Right. I mean, again, they're managing million dollar businesses in many cases, yet they don't have that training. They don't have that experience. They don't have the ability to navigate.   all of these various things. So part of what owners and investors need to also understand is that you play the role of asset manager. And that means giving clear direction of what success looks like so that that property manager has a framework to make decisions. It's not to micromanage those decisions, but to help them understand how their decisions impact the greater good. And part of that is like, again, just sitting down with annual goals. What are revenue goals? What are our goals on?   Occupancy, what are our goals on in a lot? And this may seem simple, but I promise you a lot of folks don't do this. And if you don't do that, then that property manager is going to default to, for instance, I'll give you a great example. I've got a property manager. She's awesome rock star. But she always gets nervous when occupancy is not at like 96 or 97 percent of this property. So she is, you she starts apologizing profusely and all I did this or done that and like.   Jason Hull (12:58) Yeah.   John Casmon (13:04) Occupancy is one of our KPIs for sure. It's important, but that is not the KPI. I am focused on my net operating income. And if we're going to push rents, the impact of that is you're going to have higher vacancy and she is not comfortable with that. And that's probably because she's used to working with owners who want that thing fully rented and they are comfortable having 100 % occupancy.   Jason Hull (13:13) Yeah.   Hmm.   Yeah.   John Casmon (13:33) if they're leaving 50 bucks, 75 bucks, whatever it is of rent on the table. And that's the part where you've got to really align with your vision versus their vision, because what they have in the back of their mind may not completely align with what you have. Or they have residents in their face who are coming into the office. They want something fixed. They want it done quickly. They want it done right. They want it done yesterday.   Jason Hull (13:49) Right.   .   John Casmon (13:59) So they've got that pressure of this person in their face. So they may go out there and spend the money or authorize the money to get spent. And maybe they're not picking the most cost effective measure. So you have that. And I'll give you one third one. A lot of times when you run into the flip side of that is maybe occupancy is low. They say, hey, we need to increase our marketing spend, right? We got to increase our marketing budget. know, ox is down to 88 or 90%. We got to spend more money. And we're not necessarily.   really zeroing in on what the specific issue or challenge is at that property. So for an owner, your job as an asset manager is to partner with them and to help them see what the options are, help them work through with some of those challenges and solutions are and partner with them to find success. It's not to micromanage them and tell them what to do, but it's really to understand the situation better and give them that perspective.   Jason Hull (14:49) Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. think, you know, one of the things I've seen is that I've noticed a lot of property managers, they make the mistake of thinking that the goal or the product that people want to buy from them is property management. But investors don't wake up in the morning and go, man, I'm so excited to get property management today. The thing that they want. And so the way I describe it to them as they say, property management is like the flight to Hawaii. It's not Hawaii.   and you're trying to sell the flight. That's not the exciting part. You need to figure out what the investor wants, what their goal is. Where do they want to go? What's Hawaii for them, right? What's paradise? And then how do we optimize for that? And how do we help them create a path for that? Because the actual product that a property manager is selling is not what they do. It's not property management. The actual product is them. It's them and their values and their belief system and how they create trust and the team they build and the system and mechanism they build around them.   That's the actual product the property manager is selling. so a lot of property managers make that mistake. They sit there and talk to you about maintenance coordination and leasing and inspections. And meanwhile, you're just wondering as an investor, can I even trust this person? Like do our values align? Yeah. So I don't know what your thoughts are on that, but.   John Casmon (16:11) I think you're spot on, right? Because, I mean, ultimately, as an investor, you are only as good as the team you can build. And that property manager is in charge of the day-to-day aspects of the business. especially when you, you know, I've heard horror stories of folks who have done like turnkey investing, right? Where the property manager, someone owns it, they buy it, they fix it up, and then they rent it back to...   an investor. And I've heard horror stories where that property was not being well managed. And that's the fear. If you're not in that marketing, you can't come and see it. So if you got an out of town investor, you really are trusting that property manager. So that is the most important thing, right? Everything else are tactical, daily situational things that can change. But it comes down to do I have the right people, people that I can trust, people who are going to make the right decision based on the information they have.   because they may not know what I know or maybe something shifted and changed where they would have made a different decision. We can't, you know, ache on that. It really comes down to are they doing their best? Are they making good decisions? If they're not making good decisions, is it because they didn't have the correct information, which again, could fall back on you as the investor to say, hey, are they aware of what your goals are? Are they aware of maybe this situation, these tools, these resources, whatever it is? And that's on you to sit and collaborate.   But trust is absolutely paramount because at end of the day, the thing that I think most of us are concerned with is who we partner with. And there's a great book I'm reading right now. And it gets into decision making and the fear of decision making for most of us and why deals stall. Why didn't you hire somebody? Why didn't you, you know, go with the vendor or go with the contractor or with the company? And the biggest thing is we are scared of making the wrong choice. All of us in decision and no action.   Jason Hull (17:43) Absolutely.   John Casmon (18:04) is better than the wrong action for many people because they once they take action. Well, now they're blaming themselves because you didn't pick the right person. Why did you hire that guy? You should have like now this starts to go on in their head versus doing nothing. Well, at least it's you know, it's not going to get worse, you know, it will in lot of cases get worse. So for a lot of people, that is the scariest thing. So if you can take that fear off the table as far as being the right person or being someone who is trustworthy.   Jason Hull (18:07) Right, yeah.   John Casmon (18:32) everything else gets easier. So if you can do that, that's, you know, the best thing you can do as an investor or as a property manager.   Jason Hull (18:38) Yeah, I agree. think one of things that I talk about a lot is that clarity has to come before action because if you don't have clarity and you start taking a bunch of action, doing stuff, every action you take is a little bit wrong. Sometimes it's a lot wrong. so, yeah, we need to get that clarity first before we start ⁓ making moves. And you talked about, I love the example of your property manager that is trying to   optimize maybe for the wrong thing. They're like, want to optimize to the, making sure their vacancy is super low. But that might not be the goal. That's not the primary goal. The goal is money, you know, and there's a really good book is by Elihu Goldratt. It's a good book for operations people, but it's called The Goal. And spoiler alert, the guy's trying to figure out the goal through this whole book, the story and it's money. That's the secret. The goal is the of the business, should be making making money.   And what happens in this book is that people are over optimizing individual pieces in this flow at this warehouse. And it's actually not helping to make money. It's causing more constraint. And so if we over optimize at one stage, it actually creates waste, bloat, inventory, additional work for the next stage. And so sometimes the best thing certain departments can do is slow down and do less in order to get the outcome to be maximized outcome.   And there's some really great examples in that that I think are really powerful. But I think the if you're optimizing for the wrong thing, then you're not making it effective. So you want to make sure you're optimizing for the right thing. Otherwise. ensues. You get mad at somebody, but nobody understood what the goal was. And so I think, yeah, getting a greed upon set of criteria of what what the outcome is and asking the property manager, can you help me achieve this?   And they know, they know if they know what the problem is, usually they can, they know how to help you get whatever goal that you have. And they know whether your goal is probably realistic or not, because they've helped probably a lot of people do this similarly. And so, but yeah, I think it's very important. Make sure you know, where's Hawaii and maybe property management is the vehicle. Now you had mentioned like, I'm really curious about this idea of, you know, maybe creating syndications.   Some property managers are now starting to think, maybe I should create a syndication. What's your criteria for, what's a good syndication and what are some of the, I'd be really curious to get into if some of the property managers listening were wanting to do kind of a little bit of what you do, how they might be able to get started in that. Like what are the beginning steps to make sure they don't make the mistakes you probably already figured out in the beginning?   John Casmon (21:27) Well, I think the first thing is, you really want to get into it? Right. Because for a lot of people, you got to understand it's a different business. Now you're not talking about real estate investing. You're not talking about property management. You're really talking more about, you know, investment management. You're talking about bringing on private investors who are looking for a return. That is communication skills. That's building up a network and a database of   Jason Hull (21:35) Mm-hmm.   Right, returns.   John Casmon (21:54) prospective investors, it's understanding the return projections that they're looking for. And it's really kind of managing the investor expectations, not necessarily the investment. And to give you a great example here, I had a deal where the investment went great, but it was slightly lower than what we initially projected. And I had an investor who was upset.   Jason Hull (22:07) Yeah.   Yeah.   John Casmon (22:23) about that. And we had communicated all throughout the entire process where things sat and he wasn't too upset, but he still made it a point to let me know, hey, well, this is less than what you initially thought. And that's challenging because the market shifts, right? Anybody who's bought properties in 2022 and beyond knows the market has shifted drastically over the last three or four years. So those projections made in a 2021-22 environment   Have a hard time standing up in a 25 26 environment We still make good money on that deals double-digit returns for investors ⁓ But you know there was that that was that feedback I got from one of the investors conversely We just exited deal a couple months ago, and we completely exceeded our return projections You know we delivered on a almost a 2.7 equity multiple Hit all you know mid 20s on the IRR completely unheard of stuff in this environment   And I have one investor call me and say, hey, John, I just checked my account. Is this right? And I'm like, yeah, it's it's right, man. He's like, my gosh, you guys killed it, man. my. Like, this is amazing. And it's great to hear. But again, that is separate from the investment. Right. Happy to manage the investor expectations and concerns. But that was an up and down investment where we had, you know, a moment where we actually had to put some of our general partner capital into the deal to keep it going.   Jason Hull (23:27) Yeah.   Yeah.   John Casmon (23:48) We have floating rate debt. had to refinance out of that. And we had to kind of rush to do that before rates started to go crazy. We had moments where our construction or renovation costs were much higher than we anticipated. So there are a lot of things that we had to navigate. And I think what happens for a lot of operators, a lot of people who get into syndication, they know the real estate and want to do the real estate, but they do not understand the perspective of the investor. And when you don't communicate to investors on a frequent basis and a clear, transparent nature,   Jason Hull (24:19) Yeah. Yeah.   John Casmon (24:19) They fill in the blanks and   the first concern every investor has and they won't say it. Most of time they don't say it, but I promise you they're thinking it after they make that investment. my gosh, did I make a mistake? Am I going to lose money? Is this person going to run off? Is this going to be some sort of fraudulent thing? Is this deal going to fail? These are all that we're wired like that. This is caveman stuff, right? We're wired to protect ourselves.   Jason Hull (24:36) Hmm.   Right.   John Casmon (24:45) And when you make an investment, and by the way, our investments are typically $50,000 and up, right? So these are not small investments. So when you make that investment, people start to second guess that decision. So my job when it comes to this side of the business is to keep them grounded that, hey, you've done your research, you've made an informed decision, you've picked a good partner, we've done this before. ⁓   Jason Hull (24:50) Yeah. Right.   John Casmon (25:13) And it's really to make sure that they feel comfortable with that decision. It has nothing to do with the investment, right? The investment itself, we got to go out there and execute. But that investor psyche is a completely different game. So first thing I would tell any of your property managers when they get into this business is understand, do you actually like people? Do you want to manage investors? Are you comfortable managing people's money? ⁓ And then beyond that, you have to do it the legal way. There are a lot of regulations around accepting capital from other people.   Jason Hull (25:31) you   John Casmon (25:42) So you can do it as a joint venture. The more common way of doing it, the more accepted way of doing this is by doing a formal syndication, which requires you to file SEC documentations. ⁓ know, there's regulation D and regulation A and there's some couple others, but typically it's going to be reg D 506 B or 506 C filing, which basically is the the structure that allows you to offer ⁓ passive investment opportunity or a security to investors. So again, for some people,   It's overwhelming. they're like, nope, never mind. But for some people, they love it. They want to get into it and they can learn more about that process.   Jason Hull (26:19) Got it. Yeah. I think I love your idea that it's more about managing expectations rather than the investments. And I think, I think that's good advice for all the property managers listing. This is something we spend a lot of time coaching clients on because they think their job is to manage properties. But really, if they're not strong in managing expectations and managing the relationship, it's 10 times to 100 times harder to manage the properties.   their operational costs go through the roof because owners are getting anxious. They're asking more questions. They're getting all these interruptions and calls, tenants, owners constantly. And if they had just managed the relationship and expectations and set strong boundaries at the outset, everybody would feel calmer. And I think really for business owners, I think the thing that really stood out to me that I've been focused on, and this is I've done some personal coaching and this is just nervous system regulation.   If you can, and John, seem like you're pretty chill and pretty calm and I'm sure the investor feel safe with you, which is why you've had success. If you are a person that is anxious and you're running around like a chicken with your head cut off, you're going to have, you're going to struggle in leading anybody, especially in relationships to your spouse and like everybody else. so having a calm, regulated nervous system allows your investors.   to entrain to your nervous system and to feel safer and to calm down. And that's not something you can pretend or you can just fake. You have to be that and they can sense and they can feel that it'll come across in your tone and in your body language and how you communicate. But if you can make sure that you're in that space and that you're able to regulate your own system, you're able to stay calm when other people are coming at you.   and other people are angry and other people are emotionally heightened. And you recognize this isn't really you. It's just that's them. And you can maintain that calm. You will be able to create a lot more safety. And that's really what people want to buy. Most people out there, their primary basic need is safety and security. Most people. That's why they aren't entrepreneurs. That's why they don't go start jobs. That's why they aren't like you and me. And if you're a property management business owner listening to this,   Most people are not like you. They want safety and security. That's why they get a property manager. They want peace of mind. And so, and I'm sure investors in a syndication, they also want some peace of mind because this is a big chunk of change.   John Casmon (28:55) They do. And I will say to most of the property managers I come across thrive in chaos. Right. They're used to stuff getting thrown at them. Right. And when you talk to them and get to know them, you learn very quickly. They like it. They do. They like the fact that they don't know what the day is going to bring. It could be a. Yeah, yeah. Could be a tenant coming with some crazy issue. It could be something from it's never boring and they thrive in it. However.   Jason Hull (29:00) Yeah.   Yeah.   They like the variety and unique challenges that property management brings, for sure.   It's never boring.   John Casmon (29:25) What happens then if you if they're going to look to work with investors and particularly raise capital and kind of do their own syndications, they have to understand that while they may thrive in chaos and uncertainty, most other people want organization. You want everything you said right. You want to have the calmness. You are looking for a captain to steer the ship. And for that part of the personality, they're going to have to tap into a different side of it to demonstrate how they handle chaos.   Jason Hull (29:37) Hmm.   Yeah.   Yeah.   John Casmon (29:54) not that they are chaotic. And I think what happens a lot of times when you're working with property managers is that they don't project that level of control. It just feels like they're reacting. So part of it is that, and they're really, really good ones. The ones who make it to that next level who are the regional managers and get those promotions, well, that's what they do. They manage the chaos and they manage up. They do a great job of telling the owners,   Jason Hull (30:06) Yeah.   Mm.   John Casmon (30:23) the leadership, whoever they need to talk to, they're telling them, hey, here's how here's our process. Here's how we're managing the situation. Here's what's going on. Here's what we're into. Hey, we had a water main burst here. Here's we bought. call three companies. We've got three quotes, but it's calm, right? It can be the worst. I'll give you a real example, right? At a fire, one of my properties and I was going to meet a property manager and I just happened to have a meeting with her that day at the property. She called me.   I was literally about to get in the car. She called me and said, Hey, I just want to let you know we've got a fire going on at the property. I'm not sure if you still want to meet. You're happy to come. We already have, you know, the fire department's here. They're they're putting the fire out right now. We already have another company that's coming in. They're going to walk through the damages once this is kind of settled. And I've already talked to the residents. Residents are good. We've got them hotels for the evening. We've checked with insurance. This is covered in your policy. So they're good to go. So you're happy to come down and talk and all of that if you want to.   Or we can let things settle down and maybe we can meet next week. This is a fire, right? This is like a scary situation. She called me.   Jason Hull (31:26) Right. A literal fire. Yeah. And there's plenty of fires   in managing properties. The literal ones.   John Casmon (31:33) Her calmness, she was so calm. Not only was   she calm, she had handled 90 % of it, right? It was the stuff you could handle in the moment. She handled it. So was like, hey, I don't think it makes sense for me to because I'm probably just going to add more anxiety to the situation at this point, right? It seems like you've got it under control. Why don't we let things settle, literally let the dust settle? And then once it's there, I'll come down. We can assess the damages, figure out what else needs to happen, what other next steps need to take place, right?   Jason Hull (31:41) Yeah? huh.   question. Yeah.   John Casmon (32:03) but had it handled like a rock star. Now, a lot of other folks would have saw the flames, called immediately, my God, there's a fire. ⁓ my God, what are we gonna do? So now you freaking out, everyone's freaking out, no one's controlling the situation, right? So now everyone's mind is just spinning and going. it does really take, kind of go back to where we started the conversation, that mindset of someone who was the boss, who was leading.   Jason Hull (32:05) Yeah, I love that.   Yeah. Freaking out. Yeah.   Hmm. Yeah.   John Casmon (32:32) who is going to take charge, even though it's not their property, they're going to take charge. Here's what needs to happen next. Maybe you have an emergency response plan already put in place, but you have these things already scheduled and ready to go. So when they happen, you're not shocked. You're not surprised. You're not asking questions that maybe you should have figured out upfront. And that's what a great property manager does. And if you convey that to owners, you're going to stand out above and beyond your competition because most people cannot convey that level of control, the level of   planning and the level of expertise that it takes to truly and effectively manage properties from the front, being proactive as opposed to just reacting to whatever the issue of the day is.   Jason Hull (33:13) Got it, okay. So ⁓ I'm reading, I just read, well, I didn't just read. I read in the past a really great book called Extreme Ownership. Really good book. Yeah, phenomenal book. ⁓ I'm going through their newer book, which I think is even better, called The Dichotomy of Leadership. leadership is what we're talking about right now, is that that,   John Casmon (33:23) Yeah, I think I got it like right here. It is right there.   Absolutely.   Jason Hull (33:38) creates a huge impact and there's a lot of misunderstandings of what leadership is, like it's control or it's being aggressive or, but yeah, it's really that calm presence of letting people know I've got it. Like we can take care of this. We've got a plan and staying regulated and calm. So I love that. ⁓ have a, so another question I have is how can the property managers listen to this? How could they maybe target or partner   with, if possible, syndications like you, like people that are doing what you're doing. Is there a chance that they could be a resource or do most syndications just in-house and do, they are a property management business?   John Casmon (34:19) No, no, most ⁓ most that I know work with third party manager companies. So I would say first and foremost, if you and syndications, I mean, it sounds like a big, huge, fancy word. But I mean, honestly, anytime you work with passive investors is technically a syndication. So it really comes down to figuring out who is looking for third party management and whether or not it's technically a syndication or not is really irrelevant. You want someone who is going to be managing or owning the property.   Jason Hull (34:24) Okay.   Yeah.   John Casmon (34:49) They want third party, but you have to understand their plan, going back to understanding the goals, right? Most syndications are looking to sell in a three to seven year timeframe, typically five to seven years. Most buy and hold owners have not decided or have not identified their exit strategy. So that's probably the biggest difference is when you have, let's just call it an individual investor or maybe it's a   Jason Hull (35:01) Okay.   Right.   John Casmon (35:17) a family or whatever that's buying and they want a third party manager, they don't know the exit. They haven't predetermined that they're going to sell in five years. So they are buying and holding it. And that goes back to the the I think the separation of understanding the objective, because for that person, having a full property is great. It means they're maximizing the revenue potential today. When you are syndicating.   most syndicators already assume 5 % vacancy. That's that's in everyone's underwriting. So you being at 100, they won't even give you credit banks don't even give you credit for it. So all of these things are already assumed. So for us to be above that is actually a miss, because it means we're not being as aggressive on the rent. So just understanding the mindset of a syndicator, which is they are looking to sell typically they're looking to double their money over a five or six year period. So how can you create value?   And that's something most property managers don't fully understand. But I would sit and I would talk to that syndicator. And if you want to be a syndicator or partners, not just be a third party vendor, but you actually want a partner, which we have seen a lot of folks look to do. You want to figure out how you can bring value to the table, because now we are aligning your interest with that syndicators interest. And now you've got a great partnership.   because every syndicator is going to need property management and they're going to need construction management to drive value. So if they can bring those people in as partners, that's a great opportunity for you. And if you're a property manager, you may have phenomenal relationships. You may already have contractor or the vendor partners that you trust in that marketplace. And if you could then take that and get a slice of the equity, that makes you very valuable for both sides.   Jason Hull (37:08) Do syndications, do they also need investors in capital or do most of them have that, are they really good at that? Okay.   John Casmon (37:15) Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.   mean, I mean, syndication at its core really just comes down to the need of capital. If someone had the capital themselves, they would probably just buy it directly and not go through the process of syndication. Because the syndication is literally just raising the money from passive investors. And in that scenario, again, being able to manage that, manage the communication, ⁓ that's really what a syndication truly is.   Jason Hull (37:42) So a really good property management partner could bring property management, some of the construction elements and investors and capital to the table. So it could be a nice little.   John Casmon (37:51) That would be amazing.   I'll be honest, man. That's because I don't want your listeners sitting here like, oh, I don't have one of those. I don't know if I've ever met one that had all of those. If you do have all of them, yes, you should consider syndicating yourself because you got all the pieces to the puzzle. Typically, what happens is a property manager has the property managers. I'll give you a great example. I got a 54 unit down in North Carolina. OK, so I came in as a key principal. I've got a.   Jason Hull (38:03) Okay.   Okay.   John Casmon (38:20) to my coaching clients. It's his property that he found. He asked me to come help him with the loan, which I did. One of the members, one of the partners is the property manager. So that's kind of their role to the table is they're managing the property. That's what they kind of came on. They had a couple of relationships, but their main role is the asset and property management side of it. So that's a great way to come to the table. But. Just like anything else in business.   Jason Hull (38:33) Mm-hmm.   John Casmon (38:49) It's very hard to find someone who checks every single box. I mean, that's like finding the marketer who's a CMO, who's also the CFO, who's also the COO, who's also the chief of human resource. very like no one, people don't really have like top notch excellent skills at every single one of those, right? Like you might be great at business, great at sales, great at marketing. You're probably terrible at finance, right? Like you just, you just forget to do your expense report type person, right? So it's hard to find someone who's   checks all those boxes. And I think typically when comes to property management, you want someone who's great with people, can resolve issues, but also has to be somewhat, you know, sufficient when it comes to the numbers, tracking all the data, tracking all the, you know, the rent roll, the leases, the income and expense statements, things like that. So usually they're not going to do every single box. But again, if you can find someone or that's where partnerships make sense.   Jason Hull (39:24) Mm-hmm.   John Casmon (39:43) If you've got that awesome. And again, I'm not saying a company doesn't have that. I'm just saying a single individual doesn't, which is why it's great to partner. If you can find someone who maybe brings a set of skills that you don't have, whether they're joining you in your property management business or they're partnering up where you're bringing your property management skills to the table with their investing or their networking skills, that makes for a good partnership.   Jason Hull (39:43) Mm-hmm.   Yeah, I got it. Well, we've got several clients, you know, all over the U S that are really good at property management. They're really good at handling the maintenance stuff and they obviously have a pool of investors as clients and, and, know, and they know that they can't do everything. So we coach them in making sure that they would do time studies. They figure out which, what their purpose is. We start to align them towards more fulfillment, more freedom, more contribution and more support in their business.   John Casmon (40:32) Yeah.   Jason Hull (40:38) And they start to build the right team. So they're getting operators, they're getting BDMs, they're getting the things they're not like strong in. And so we just make healthier businesses. So for those of maybe my clients listening that have healthy property management companies. And, but they don't want to do syndication. They're just like, man, that's a whole nother business. If I stay in my lane, I can grow that faster. How do they find syndicates? Like, how do they find people like you? Cause you've got a lot of properties connected to you.   and they would probably love to chat with somebody like you. Where do you syndicate people hang out? What's the title? Who runs a syndicate? What are they called? Do they have a specific title?   John Casmon (41:15) You   Yeah.   Yeah, great. Great question. Multifamily syndicator is is kind of the name just syndicator. We're all over. So I've got a podcast called Multifamily Insights. I interview like minded individuals. I've been doing that for a long time. We've done our seven hundred and seventy plus episode. So lots of people, lots of syndicators there. Definitely conferences. So if you look up any multifamily conference in your city.   Jason Hull (41:25) Okay.   Nice.   Okay.   John Casmon (41:46) meetups, lot of meetups in different cities as well. Those are great places to find syndicators. I think the biggest thing though is this.   Figure out who your avatar is. Because while we're talking about syndicators, ultimately, if you want to scale your property management business, I presume you're trying to scale with folks who are looking for third party management and the best option for that. OK, and let me back up. had one of the guests out of a podcast some years back, ⁓ Ashley Wilson. Love Ashley. As you said, something really changed when I thought about the business.   And she said the best way to find any vendor, any vendor is to figure out who relies on that vendor next and ask them for referral. So if you think about it, if you want a great drywall person, ask a painter. A painter is going to know who's great at drywall because they're going to know who makes their job easy and they can come in and just start painting versus a drywall guy who maybe doesn't, you know, you know.   Jason Hull (42:38) I like it.   John Casmon (42:55) mud the drywall properly or doesn't sand it down. So they got to do all this extra work before they start their process. Right. So a painter is going to know a great drywall guy. And in this case, it's really hard on ⁓ the property manager because you guys are the ones who do the work. But if you are looking for syndicators, OK, well syndicators, person who buys the deal. Well, who sells the deal? A broker. Find brokers. Go to a broker, commercial multifamily broker and ask them, hey,   Jason Hull (43:01) I love this.   Yeah.   John Casmon (43:25) Do you know some groups or you have properties that you're going to list? Here are the kind of deals we want to do now on the flip side of that. You got to be good at your job, right? You got to sell yourself and share what you do. So if you've got a great track record, a great resume, showcase that, bring that broker through and let them know, hey, we're looking to scale our property management business here. Here are the kind of assets that we want to manage. If you come across any of these that you're going to list, would you mind keeping our main name out there or referring us or giving us introductions to any of those buyers?   Jason Hull (43:53) Yeah.   John Casmon (43:54) so that we can throw our hat in the running to manage these properties. That's a phenomenal way to do that. And it allows you to shine and expand your relationships in your core networks and in your core markets.   Jason Hull (44:06) Brilliant. think I love the, I love Ashley's idea that you shared, you know, the drywall. Yeah. The painters, like they don't want to be painting over a crappy drywall. They're like, this is a mess. Like this doesn't even look good in my job. Now I'm going to look bad. Yeah. So the brokers know who maybe those best syndicators are. And so they could just go to the brokers and say, Hey, who's, who's doing deals like this? Who who's got things going on? Like who could you connect me with?   And I avoid maybe.   John Casmon (44:36) And on top of that, keep in mind, too, like what   are the times when? Yeah, but think about to like when is a property hiring or bringing on a new property manager? Right. So it's either a current owners firing the existing property manager or the property is being sold. Right. So, I mean, if you can get in during that transition phase, that's going to help you tremendously. And if even if they're firing their existing property manager, you can think through, OK, how do I?   Jason Hull (44:51) Yeah. Yeah.   John Casmon (45:06) work myself and get my name out there. And a lot of times, again, you're going to ask, right? You're going to ask other investors. If I were going through that process, I'm going to call my buddies into space, right? And say, hey, man, having a hard time, my current PM is not working out or we're not hitting our objectives, looking at some other options. Do you have any experience with these guys? What do you know about these guys? Or do you have anybody you could recommend? It's word of mouth, right? So that's what's going to start happening as well. So you kind of have to get out there and network and let folks know who you are, what you do. But you want to be someone who   people can say, yeah, these guys are amazing. You know, they, they only had an eight unit, but they crushed my eight unit for me. I'm sure they kill your 25 unit or your 50 unit. And you've got to start building that rapport and building your reputation in your market.   Jason Hull (45:44) Yeah.   Nice. This is good advice, my friend. So, cool. For those that maybe are investors listening to this show, ⁓ I'd love to hear a little bit about what you do, how you do run your syndication, and how they can ⁓ make things more passive, if that's what they're looking   John Casmon (46:08) Yeah, man. So there are lots of different ways to get in. If you are looking to be more passive, ⁓ high level, here's how it works. OK, so first and foremost, me and my team would go out. We look for the deals. We focus on a really tight radius. So we're in Cincinnati. We like Cincinnati, Columbus, Louisville, Kentucky. Really a two hour radius of the Cincinnati market is where we focus. And right now we actually think there's more opportunities locally. So we're really honed in on Cincinnati right now. But we focus on that once we find a deal.   We reach out to folks in our network. So we have folks in our investor list. ⁓ Once they're on our list, we kind of have a quick vetting process and then we can share opportunities with them. Once they see that opportunity, they get a chance to review it. We like to have a webinar where we answer any questions about the deal. I think for new investors, it's a great way to learn because we have a lot of experienced investors who ask very intelligent, thoughtful questions that   Many first time investors probably would not even think of. And that's a great way to learn, right? And ultimately when it comes to this space, it's really about education. know, it's educating yourself, understanding how you think about risk, how you mitigate risk in your investment choices. And those webinars are a great chance for you to learn about that the first time. Once you've done that, you can go ahead and fill out our official paperwork with our SEC documents.   Jason Hull (47:30) Mm-hmm.   John Casmon (47:30) And then   once you're through there, you can make the investment. But the first thing is just to get on our list, you can have access to the deals. And before you do that, we've actually put together a guide that can help people because I found that when I have these calls, people don't ask great questions. Sometimes they do. But I want to make sure that you are informed and well educated because this is a big investment. You know, this is not a 599 thing. And if it doesn't work out, OK, well, I just wasted six bucks. No.   Jason Hull (47:54) .   John Casmon (47:59) We're asking you to make a pretty large investment, whether it's with us or with others. If that's what you're looking to do, I want to make sure you're well informed. So we put together a guide. It's seven questions you must ask before investing in apartments. You can get that on our website. It's casmancapital.com slash seven questions, but it gets into questions around the market itself, the operating team, what you should be looking for, the deal. What is the story of this property? What's the business plan? And it helps you identify different levels of risk because the reality is   Anything can work, but you want to mitigate risk as much as possible, particularly when you're a passive investor, because you are basically saying, I'm trusting these people to find the right deal and execute. And you want to make sure that you are finding and identifying the right individuals who have a proven track record doing the thing that they are asking to do. When I hear about people losing money in real estate. At least 50, if not 70 % of the time.   Jason Hull (48:35) Hmm.   John Casmon (48:57) It is someone doing something for the first time. It is the first time in the market, first time doing this kind of deal, first time doing this kind of business plan. And. I can't tell you how frustrating it is because it's a big red flag, and it's not to say they can't do it and can't have success. But if it's your first time, I want to see how you're mitigating that right. You want to partner with someone who does have the experience you want. Like there are lot of things that you can do to put the odds in your favor. And when you're a passive investor.   Jason Hull (48:59) Mm, yeah.   John Casmon (49:26) It is not your job to hope. Your job is to analyze the information in front of you and make an informed decision. So this guide can help you do that.   Jason Hull (49:34) Yeah, love it. I'm going to run a quick word from our sponsor real quick. Our sponsor for this episode is Vendero. And many of you tell me that property management maintenance is probably the least enjoyable part of being a property manager and definitely the most time consuming. But what if you could cut that workload by up to 85 percent? That's exactly what Vendero has achieved. So they leverage cutting edge AI technology to handle nearly all your maintenance tasks from initiating work orders.   Troubleshooting, coordinating with vendors and reporting. This AI doesn't just automate, it becomes your ideal employee. Learning your preferences, executing tasks flawlessly and never needing a day off and never quitting. This frees you up to focus on the critical tasks that really move the needle for your business, whether that's refining operations, expanding your portfolio or even just taking a well-deserved break. Don't let maintenance drag you down. Step up your property management game with Vendero. Visit vendero.ai slash door grow today and make this the last maintenance hire you'll ever need.   All right, so John, this is super helpful. love you've got your list. ⁓ You got your webinar, you've got your guide. I would recommend property managers listening to this. If they're curious about the world of syndication, that they start getting into your stuff and seeing how an expert like you is doing this and maybe even get involved in some of the deals with you or something might be a good idea. And they can kind of get a feel for how this works. And then maybe they'll say, I don't want to do what John does.   And I'll just find people that do, but they'll at least understand how they could partner with people like that. then, or they may decide, you know what? John's clever, but I'm clever too. I might be able to figure out how to do this too. And maybe they'll do it too. And, but I think there's a solid opportunity for property managers that want to be in the multifamily space and do multifamily management to find third party people that are doing these syndication deals. They need good property managers and property managers want more doors and they want to grow.   And if you don't, because your business sucks and it's uncomfortable, then reach out to me. I'll help you out. We'll get you dialed in. But ⁓ John, what else would you say to the investors that are maybe they're familiar with this and they've done some real estate investing and they've worked with some syndications ⁓ and they get on your list to do the webinar. What would you say to them next?   John Casmon (51:56) Yeah, I think the biggest thing is understand what you're looking for. You know, I think one of the biggest challenges for investors is when you can't pull the trigger, it's typically because you haven't figured out what you're solving for. Are you looking for passive income? So you're just looking for a cash flow? Are you looking for long term wealth appreciation? Are you looking for tax benefits and to reduce kind of your tax liability? Do just want to diversify? Maybe you got feel like you have too much in a stock market, just like we put something somewhere else. So.   Figure out what you're actually solving for. Understand your risk tolerance, you know, because every deal is different. In our case, we do value add B class deals. That's a fancy way of just saying we like properties that already making money that are solid, solid tenant based. Think of when I say B class, I'm thinking of all stuff that was built maybe 30 years ago, maybe 40, maybe 20 years ago. Stuff that.   your teachers, your firefighters, your police officers, places where they might rent. So desirable locations, not luxury, not super high end, not, you know, super courts, everything. ⁓ But, you know, places that you would want your kid, your kid was in college, places you would be fine with your kid living, right? So you're thinking about that stuff. That's, you know, I don't say affordable stuff. That's not crazy price. So that's kind of what we focus on.   Jason Hull (53:15) So would   that be like, is that how you find the best markets then?   John Casmon (53:21) That's part of it. That's our strategy. There are different strategies that people utilize. I have found for us that is a sweet spot where we can take those kind of assets, modernize them and create value for potential renters. Some people like to focus only on they call it core plus right where they're buying newer stuff, stuff built five years ago or three years ago. And maybe it was, you know, leased up and they're just going to go in and hold it longer. You'll find other ways to add more money through amenities.   Jason Hull (53:35) Okay.   John Casmon (53:50) So some people do that strategy. Some people like older properties where they're buying more distressed or much older properties and are trying to fully renovate them and bring them up. There are strategies out there, something like new construction, stuff that doesn't exist. They want to build from the ground up. So it really comes down to you. Every investing strategy has a different level of risk. This has nothing to with real estate, right? This is investing in general. you're buying, you know, know, value stocks versus growth stocks versus Internet, it's the same stuff, right?   So you just have to figure out your level of risk. We like value at B-class multifamily deals. Once you understand your level of risk and balance that with your return expectations or projections, that's when you can figure out which investments actually make sense. You know, I have some folks who they like to invest in what we call trophy assets. And...   They may not know that right away, but when you send them a couple of deals and they look at the property like, ⁓ it's okay. They want something. They want something they can brag about. They want to drive you by like, see that building over there? That's me. And if that's fine, if that's what you want, understand what comes with that, right? That's going to be a lower term, right? Because these are, there's not much value to create, right? You've got a brand new property. It's A class, rents are $2,500. There's not a whole lot you can do there. And because of that,   Jason Hull (54:49) Yeah, they don't want to show that off. Look what I'm connecting.   OK, right.   Thank   Yeah.   John Casmon (55:13) There's not as much risk. So you're going to get less return because there's less risk. That's fun. Some people want to maximize their return, right? Hey, I don't need this money. I want to let it ride for 20 years. So they might want to do new construction or they might want to do a deep discount, highly distressed vacant property that needs, you know, $50,000 per unit to renovate it and turn around because the upside is there. So it just depends on that investor and your level of risk. Right. And most of us fall somewhere in the middle.   Jason Hull (55:27) Thank   John Casmon (55:43) which is kind of our strategy. figure out your level of risk tolerance, what you're looking for. And sometimes you don't know until you start looking at a Because you might think you're a cashflow person until I show you what cash flows. And you're like, oh, no, I don't want to be in that de

Send a textIn this episode of Marketing Espresso, I'm joined again by the brilliant and completely addictive-to-talk-to Quinn Palmer. This conversation picks up right where we left off, diving deeper into a shift we're both seeing across Australia and beyond: people are craving real human connection again. After years of tech reliance, remote everything and a pandemic that had most of us glued to our phones while drinking wine on a Tuesday, something has changed.Quinn describes it as history repeating itself. After every major rise in technology, we eventually swing back to wanting to be around actual humans. And we're seeing it everywhere — sold out in-person events, social clubs popping up, dating events overflowing, run clubs thriving and communities rebuilding themselves from the ground up. It's a movement, and for marketers, it's a sign.Networking is no longer the old-school corporate handshake or a race to collect business cards. It's becoming friend-making, connection-building and community-led growth. Quinn talks about how much more powerful networking becomes when you stop approaching it with an agenda and start showing up like a human being. Because the truth is, people buy from people. If you want real brand loyalty and trust, there's nothing more effective than genuine conversations.We discuss why the old KPI-driven, transactional networking style doesn't work anymore, and how approaching events with curiosity — not desperation — completely changes your outcomes. Quinn also shares stories about relationships that turned into opportunities years later, reminding us that the impact of networking isn't always instant. Sometimes it's three months later. Sometimes it's three years. And sometimes, it's simply the ripple effect of being someone memorable to talk to.The biggest theme that shows up again and again in this chat is that networking sits at the very foundation of your entire marketing ecosystem. It's not an optional extra. It's not a “nice to have”. It's where brand reputation, partnerships, referrals and long-term trust are built. As Quinn says beautifully, if marketing is about people, then you need to actually start with the people.DOWNLOAD MY CONTENT PLANNER - https://becchappell.com.au/content-planner/Instagram @bec_chappellLinkedIn – Bec Chappell If you're ready to work together, I'm ready to work with you and your team.How to work with me:1. Marketing foundations and strategy consultation 2. Marketing Coaching/ Whispering for you a marketing leader or your team who you want to develop into marketing leaders3. Book me as a speaker or advisor for your organisation4. Get me on your podcastThis podcast has been produced and edited by Snappystreet Creative

In episode #355, Ben breaks down the top invoicing solutions used by SaaS and AI companies based on his 7th Annual Tech Stack Survey. With 57 different invoicing solutions named in the survey, this category shows far more fragmentation than core accounting. The top five solutions account for 55% of reported usage, but there's still a long tail of specialized billing and revenue management platforms. Ben walks through the most widely used tools and explains how invoicing increasingly overlaps with revenue management, subscription billing, and payment processing. Resources Mentioned 7th Annual SaaS Tech Stack Survey: https://www.thesaascfo.com/surveys/finance-accounting-tech-stack-survey/ Metronome, sponsor of the invoicing category: https://metronome.com/ What You'll Learn The top invoicing and billing solutions used in software companies Why QuickBooks and Stripe remain dominant in early and growth-stage SaaS Which newer platforms are gaining traction How fragmented the invoicing and billing landscape has become Why It Matters Invoicing is a critical link between bookings, cash flow, revenue recognition, and ARR reporting Poor billing infrastructure can break your MRR schedules and retention calculations As pricing models evolve (subscription, usage, hybrid), your invoicing system must handle complexity Revenue management tools increasingly sit between CRM, payments, and your general ledger Clean invoicing data is essential for accurate financial modeling, KPI tracking, and due diligence

Aaron Werner, Brianna Rhue, and first-time Book Nerds guest Dr. Ben Thayil unpack Seth Godin's Tribes through the lens of real-world practice leadership. They explore what separates leaders from managers, why tribes thrive on member-to-member communication, and how fear is often less about failure and more about blame. The conversation digs into innovation timing (and the penalty for being late), practical ways to evaluate risk, and how to empower teams through delegation, alignment, and freedom to make mistakes—plus tactical takeaways like daily KPI texts, the “rope theory,” and a simple question to spark ownership: What change do you want to lead, and why? Join BookNerds WhatsApp group: https://chat.whatsapp.com/Kg7fQNNyEQq2HWUEwOX9GP?mode=gi_t

In this conversation, Justin pulls back the curtain on what actually makes a business last. Not hacks. Not virality. Not chasing quick wins. He talks about learning to solve real problems—the kind that keep people up at night—and why most “good ideas” fail because they never go deep enough. He shares how he tracks progress, how he thinks about money and energy, and why optionality matters more than speed.You'll hear why action creates momentum, why saying “yes” changed the trajectory of his career, and how building a runway, relationships, and clarity gave him the freedom to reinvent himself—again and again.This isn't an episode about getting rich fast.It's about building something honest.Something sustainable.Something that still works when the hype fades.And if you've ever felt like you're meant for more—but can't quite name what that is—this conversation might help you take the next step.Chapters:0:00 — Introduction1:31 — The “brewery dream” + why you haven't started (yet)4:29 — Why Justin shifted from tactics to deeper storytelling8:21 — Rapid Fire kickoff8:48 — Rapid Fire #1: Most valuable KPI (visitors to intended place)11:13 — Rapid Fire #2: Fear (irrelevance… and who you are after)14:38 — Rapid Fire #3: Meeting he never misses (weekly money meeting)16:23 — Rapid Fire #4: Mentor (Cyrus + the ZocDoc “yes to everything” story)19:07 — Rapid Fire #5: Fortune cookie message (get in rooms with opportunity)23:07 — How to quit smart: runway, pipeline, relationships (risk reduction)28:22 — Support at home: panic attack, burnout, and getting his life back33:28 — The unlock: life is a video game (reinvention > expertise)36:10 — The 3 pillars of a real business: pain, attention, offer40:01 — Finding the “bleeding neck” problem (how to dig past surface-level pain)45:08 — The long game + first action step: 15-min customer interviews (use AI to extract language)About Justin:Justin is a former startup executive who helped build two startups past valuations of $1B, teams of 150+ people, and raise over $300M in venture capital. After building his own one-person business past $10M, he's helping 100,000+ experts turn their expertise into income with his masterclass, The Creator MBA.Find Justin Online:Website: https://justinwelsh.meMasterclass (Creator MBA): https://justinwelsh.link/the-creator-mbaTwitter: https://twitter.com/thejustinwelshLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinwelsh/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejustinwelsh

Most teams are capable of far more than they are currently giving, but the gap is rarely about effort or attitude. Dr. Stephen and Dr. Pete break down why discretionary energy is the true driver of performance and how leaders unintentionally suppress it by failing to connect people to the business model. When team members understand how their daily work influences revenue, profit, and opportunity, alignment replaces compliance and energy rises naturally. By shifting focus from motivation to measurement, leaders gain a clear framework for evaluating managers, strengthening team capacity, and creating sustainable growth without burnout.In This Episode You Will:Identify where discretionary energy is being lost inside the teamRecognize which people metrics reveal leadership effectivenessSee how manager performance shows up through team resultsEvaluate when team capacity is approaching a breaking pointApply clearer financial alignment to increase focus and engagement Episode Highlights01:33 - Discretionary energy is introduced as the hidden gear inside every team member that leadership either activates through alignment or suppresses through misalignment.02:19 - Financial alignment is framed as the missing link between daily responsibilities, revenue, profit, and why team members should care about business performance.03:17 - The four requirements of a world-class team are clarified as right people, right seats, right work, done the right way.04:46 - Employee stickmo begins, revealing how long A players actually stay and how turnover often exposes management or cultural breakdowns.06:38 - Employee net promoter score is introduced as a leadership diagnostic measuring whether team members would enthusiastically refer others to work in the organization.09:39 - Internal patient referrals from staff are positioned as a real-time indicator of engagement, belief, and cultural buy-in.12:22 - Direct report goals completed is identified as the most powerful KPI for evaluating manager effectiveness and team performance.13:26 - The 80 percent goal completion standard is defined as the benchmark for healthy management and accountability.14:43 - Labor cost begins as a COO-owned metric directly tied to profitability, cost of services delivered, and operational stewardship.17:03 - Revenue per employee is introduced as the key indicator for identifying $250,000 growth breakpoints before capacity strain causes the business to stall or break. Resources MentionedLearn more about the TRP Remarkable Business Immersion March 6 - 7, 2026 in Phoenix, AZ and March 20 - 21, 2026 in Brisbane, AUS - https://theremarkablepractice.com/upcoming-events/  To learn more about the REM CEO Program, please visit:  http://www.theremarkablepractice.com/rem-ceoBook a Strategy Session with Dr. Pete - https://go.oncehub.com/PodcastPCPrefer to watch? Catch the podcast on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRemarkablePractice1To listen to more episodes, visit https://theremarkablepractice.com/podcast or follow on your favorite podcast app.

Most entrepreneurs don't struggle because their offer is bad. They struggle because they're trying to scale without understanding the real leverage points. In this episode, I'm sharing Part One of a live Q&A I did at Scaling Online - where real entrepreneurs brought me their biggest growth bottlenecks, and we broke them down in real time. We talked about certifications, continuity, high-ticket vs. memberships, regulated industries, health offers, and how to generate cash fast without burning money on ads. This isn't theory. These are tactical, practical shifts that can completely change how you look at scaling - especially if you're mission-driven and trying to grow without losing your identity. Key Highlights: ◼️Why getting someone to pay is often the most powerful way to actually serve them - and how commitment changes everything ◼️How to structure high-ticket + continuity together to reduce churn and create compounding revenue ◼️What to sell first when you already have an audience (and why you should grab the pile of cash in front of you before trying to scale) ◼️How to create a powerful “myth” or lead-in offer - even in industries where you don't control the core product ◼️The smartest way to generate $10 - 20K in 30 days without relying on ads ◼️How to separate lead generation from regulated services while still building authority and desire ◼️The real KPI you should track daily if you want predictable long-term growth This episode is about understanding leverage. It's about realizing that scaling isn't always about more complexity - it's about making and keeping commitments, increasing volume strategically, and structuring your offers so your business compounds instead of resets every month. In part two, we'll go deeper into additional Q&A, more advanced scaling questions, and the next layer of strategic decisions that separate businesses that plateau from businesses that truly take off. ◼️If you've got a product, offer, service… or idea… I'll show you how to sell it (the RIGHT way) Register for my next event →⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://sellingonline.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ◼️Still don't have a funnel? ClickFunnels gives you the exact tools (and templates) to launch TODAY → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clickfunnels.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeff and Jason, from the Investing Unscripted podcast, stop by the show for some general investment banter. Decent laughs, hopefully some smart thoughts, and a fun convo. Hope y'all enjoy!Sponsorship InformationThank you to ⁠⁠⁠⁠Trata⁠⁠⁠⁠ for sponsoring the show.If you're listening to this podcast, you'll like Trata. Trata is buyside to buyside conversations on individual stocks. Trata makes finding a bull or bear on any stock as easy as clicking two buttons. Over 125 funds globally contribute that collectively cover 2000+ tickers. Trata raised over $3mm coming out of Y Combinator. Before you would track 13Fs, now you can understand what funds are actually thinking. You can join as a lurker or you can join as a contributor and Trata will pay you hundreds of dollars per call. For a free trial, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠trytrata.com/brew⁠⁠⁠⁠ OG Sponsor Shoutout!Thank you to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for sponsoring the show. DISCOUNT INFO: If you use the affiliate link ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fiscal.ai/brew⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, you will automatically get 2 weeks of Fiscal Pro for Free and if you find that you want to upgrade, my link will get you 15% off any paid plans. About ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is the complete modern data terminal for global equities.The ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ platform combines a powerful user experience with all the financial data capabilities that professional investors need. Users get up to 20 years of historical financials for all stocks globally that they can easily chart, compare, or export into their own models. And unlike legacy data terminals where it can take hours or even days, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠'s data is updated within minutes of earnings reports. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fiscal.ai⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ also tracks all the company-specific Segment & KPI data so you don't have to. Like to track Amazon's Cloud Revenue? They've got it.How about Spotify's premium subscribers? Or Google's quarterly paid clicks?They've got all of it.