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Independent investigative journalism, broadcasting, trouble-making and muckraking with Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com
With Jaylen Brown outside factors, could he be seen as a liability to other teams when trading for him?
Send us Fan MailWhat happens when a customer's heater fails... and the replacement part simply doesn't exist anywhere in the country?This week, Steve and Wayne dive into the realities of modern pool service, where solving problems often has less to do with technical skill and more to do with navigating manufacturers, distributors, supply chains, and customer expectations. From chasing down an elusive electric heater control board to discussing how relationships with manufacturer representatives can make—or break—a difficult service call, the conversation offers an honest look at the behind-the-scenes challenges pool professionals face every day.Later in the episode, Steve is joined by Pat Grignon of the California Pool Association for another Insurance Interlude. Together they tackle an important question that many commercial service companies eventually encounter:Can another company legally operate under your commercial pool license?The discussion explores liability, insurance implications, contractor licensing, and why helping another business could expose your own company to significant legal risk if done improperly.The episode wraps with a candid conversation about distributor relationships, manufacturer voucher programs, pricing pressures, and why customer service—not loyalty programs—ultimately determines where professionals choose to spend their money.Topics Discussed Why sourcing replacement parts has become increasingly difficult A real-world case involving a commercial 54 kW electric pool heater Supply chain challenges affecting manufacturers and distributors Why maintaining relationships with manufacturer representatives matters When repairing equipment no longer makes financial sense Commercial pool licensing requirements in California Can another company legally use your license? Insurance and liability considerations when lending credentials Additional insured requirements and subcontractor risk Distributor pricing, voucher programs, and customer loyalty How manufacturer-distributor conflicts affect service companies Why great customer service is still the industry's greatest competitive advantage Key Takeaways Not every equipment failure is a technical problem—sometimes it's a supply chain problem. Strong relationships with manufacturers and distributors often determine how quickly difficult problems get resolved. Allowing another company to operate under your license can create significant legal and insurance exposure. Before entering any licensing or subcontracting arrangement, consult both your insurance professional and legal advisor. Customers ultimately buy service, responsiveness, and trust—not brand names. Connect With Talking PoolsHave a question or topic you'd like discussed on the show?Email: talkingpools@gmail.comYour question could be featured on an upcoming episode, and if your topic is used, you might even receive a Talking Pools thank-you gift.Talking Pools Podcast Where pool professionals talk to pool professionals—bringing together education, chemistry, business, technology, and the real-world challenges facing today's aquatic industry Support the showThank you so much for listening! You can find us on social media:FacebookInstagramTik TokEmail us: talkingpools@gmail.com
Smart Agency Masterclass with Jason Swenk: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies
Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Are you still inside every client relationship because no one on your team has been given the room to own one? Have you hired people who look great on paper only to later discover the skills do not actually transfer? Today's featured guest built her agency deliberately, one client at a time, carrying systems from her years at L'Oréal before anyone told her those systems would matter. She talks about how she structured accountability on her team from the beginning, how she filters out candidates who cannot think without AI holding their hand, and why she stopped caring about working with the sexiest beauty brands and started caring about working with the right ones. Mimi Banks is the founder and CEO of MB Social, a New York-based social media agency specializing in beauty. She spent years at L'Oréal, where she was among the first people to build social media infrastructure at the company, then moved to a Paris-based startup before eventually launching MB Social. Her team of 25 now handles social strategy, community management, and content for beauty brands across the market. In this episode, we'll discuss: Starting off with a vision on accountable vs responsible Can your team do 80% of what you do? Then you're set Why she stopped chasing the wrong clients Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Building From the Beginning with Systems, Not Just Instinct Mimi came into agency ownership with something most founders spend years trying to build after the fact: a working model for how things should get done. Her time creating social media infrastructure at L'Oréal gave her a process orientation before she had a team to apply it to. When she started bringing people on at MB Social, the systems came with her. The ways of working, the documentation, the clarity around who was responsible versus who was accountable: those were in place because she had already built them once somewhere else. For instance, she started off with clarity on the distinction between responsible and accountable. She positioned herself as accountable from day one while making sure there was always a specific person responsible for each piece of work. That structure kept her from becoming the default executor on everything, which is the trap most founders walk into when they hire without clarifying ownership. The 80 Percent Standard That Actually Frees You Mimi is far enough along in her evolution that she no longer reviews most of what her team produces. She trusts the people leading each department to make judgment calls without routing them upward. Getting there required learning to live with the gap between what she would do and what her team does, and deciding that gap was acceptable. This is a framing every mastermind member knows: if your team does 80 percent of what you would do, that is good enough. Because you cannot do a hundred percent of everything, and the cost of trying is that you stay in the operator role indefinitely. The coaching method Mimi asks her leadership team to apply is asking questions. Similar to the Mastermind's 1-3-1 method, it's basically about asking questions that will help your team come up with options they have already considered, which leads to them coming up with the solution on their own. Do that enough times and the team stops treating the founder as the answer key. Hiring for Beauty When Everyone Says They Know Social The challenge Mimi keeps running into in hiring is the gap between what candidates say they can do and what the work actually requires. Social media for enterprise beauty brands is not the same skill as posting on a personal Instagram. The strategy is more complex, the client demands are higher, and the responsiveness required is relentless. Candidates do not always know that going in, and some of them figure it out in ways that are expensive to the team. The hiring process she built with Hireflex added a video interview layer with no retry option that filters for candidates willing to do the uncomfortable thing even when it is not required. From there she takes the transcripts, runs them through AI against a scoring rubric tied to the job description, and uses that data alongside her own read to make decisions. What she is testing for is the ability to think, not just to produce a clean output with AI assistance. The perfect presentation that does not match the resume tells her nothing useful. The candidate who works through a problem imperfectly, in their own words, tells her a great deal. Designing the Agency Around the Clients You Actually Want Mimi stopped chasing the sexiest beauty brands. Not because she cannot get them, but because sexy and right are not the same thing. Payment terms that stretch to 120 days, clients who treat the team poorly, brands that want work done yesterday and deliver assets a month late: those are not problems that prestige solves. She now runs the agency with a no bullshit attitude and is quick to address when a client's behavior affects her team. That boundary is what makes it possible to keep the team she has built. The version of client selectivity that actually holds is based on being clear enough on what you are building that you can recognize a client who does not fit before the contract is signed. After all, client relationships are like dating: you have to see if you get along before you commit, because the worst version of a client relationship looks a lot like a bad marriage, and the damage it does to a team is not undone when the contract ends. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.
Legacy or Liability? // Jonathan & Seth Owens // CDA Campus by The Heart
This week's WeatherBrains episode is a home-grown show all about storm chasing: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly. Our email officer Jen is continuing to handle the incoming messages from our listeners. Reach us here: email@weatherbrains.com. Waning interest in storm chasing (04:00) Holding it while dealing with long-form severe weather coverage (10:00) Current state of storm chasing in 2026 (16:00) Importance of enforcing traffic laws when dealing with a saturated chaser community (27:30) Oklahoma traffic laws concerning emergency lights (31:30) Liability insurance requirements for those who continue to storm chase? (36:00) NOAA's OPG (Operations Proving Ground) (49:30) What is the purpose of a service assessment? (59:30) State of Connecticut doesn't need 3 WFOs! (01:02:00) Importance of interacting directly with the people we serve in the field of weather to mitigate loss of life (01:10:00) Discriminating between weaknesses and strengths in the warning process (01:21:30) Effectively utilizing user generated content during long-form severe weather coverage (01:23:30) Private Slack chat session with trusted weather professionals to weed out AI/fake images (01:28:00) The Astronomy Outlook with Tony Rice (No segment this week - stay tuned!) This Week in Tornado History With Jen (01:29:30) E-Mail Segment (01:30:30) Sneak peak at future WeatherBrains episodes! (01:41:00) and more! Web Sites from Episode 1066: Alabama Weather Network Picks of the Week: James Aydelott - Illinois: More tornadoes than Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Texas combined, year to date. (225 vs 191) Jen Narramore - Tennessee Valley Weather on X: "Tennessee Valley Weather Adds Weather Balloon Launch Capability to Strengthen Severe Weather Forecasting" Rick Smith - Facts About Derechos Troy Kimmel - IEM Generated Regional Temperature and Precipitation Report Kim Klockow-McClain - Foghorn John Gordon - Dave Throup on X: Shelf Cloud pic at Glastonbury Tor Bill Murray - Out James Spann - SkyeCalm Storm Anxiety App The WeatherBrains crew includes your host, James Spann, plus other notable geeks like Troy Kimmel, Bill Murray, Rick Smith, James Aydelott, Jen Narramore, John Gordon, and Dr. Kim Klockow-McClain. They bring together a wealth of weather knowledge and experience for another fascinating podcast about weather.
This week on Trending in Ed, host Mike Palmer is joined by Trending in Ed all-star Beth Rudden, CEO of Bast AI. From her roots digging in the dirt as an archaeologist to managing a $34 billion division as the Chief Data Officer of IBM Managed Services, Beth brings a deeply grounded, technical perspective to the artificial intelligence conversation. In this wide-ranging and insightful conversation, Mike and Beth skip the typical AI hype to explore what it actually takes to build explainable, trustworthy technology. Beth shares how Bast AI acts as an LLM-agnostic explainability layer—using a unique drinking chocolate analogy to demonstrate how they verify AI data rather than letting models hallucinate plausible narratives. They explore the practical application of using small language models (SLMs) for data enrichment, highlighted by Bast AI's meaningful work with Craig Hospital to translate complex neuro-spine outpatient procedures into accessible languages and analogies. KEY INSIGHTS: • Inverting the Chatbot Approach: Why defining what an AI can talk about is far more effective than building restrictive guardrails. • The Myth of "Human in the Loop": How shifting accountability to overworked humans can become a form of liability laundering. • Microservices vs. Agentic Harnesses: Looking at the risks of natural language agentic systems like Claude Code versus discrete, self-healing tasks. • Cognitive Offloading & Math Education: Why future technical skills should prioritize differential equations and the diversity prediction theorem over simple calculation. • Pattern Recognition vs. Choice: Defining true intelligence through the ability to choose wisely, rather than just matching mathematical patterns. They also cross paths with the Cynefin framework, explain how the human brain conserves energy by only holding two paradoxes at once, and unpack the cultural shifts reshaping modern engineering ethics. Stay ahead of the curve in education and technology! Please like and share this episode with your network, and follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite player so you never miss an episode like this one. LINKS: Learn more about Bast AI: https://www.bast.ai Subscribe to Beth's Substack: https://bethrudden.substack.com TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 - Introduction and welcoming Beth Rudden back to the show 01:00 - The drinking chocolate analogy for Explainable AI 03:00 - Beth's lightning-round background: Archaeology to Chief Data Officer at IBM 05:00 - Getting "catfished by AI" and verifying facts with databases 07:00 - Mike on Gemini, RAG applications, and checking AI confabulation 09:00 - Enriched data and Small Language Models (SLMs) at Craig Hospital 12:00 - Epistemic security and inverting conversational technology 14:30 - Liability laundering and the illusion of "human in the loop" 15:30 - Agentic harnesses vs. self-healing microservices 20:00 - Understanding as labor and Conrad Wolfram's three-step math process 22:30 - Future human skills: Differential equations and jelly bean statistics 26:30 - Pattern recognition vs. true intelligence as the ability to choose 29:30 - Neurosymbolic systems and subjectivity in data science 34:30 - Shunting energy: The Cynefin framework and holding paradoxes 38:30 - Healthcare AI scribes and doctor burnout 44:30 - Trust architectures and building tech for the Maintenance Era 47:30 - Cultural devastation and the teleological suspension of ethics 49:00 - Final thoughts and wrapping up with Beth Rudden
“My hope is to put forward a positive vision of what God created our bodies for. Why did God give us bodies?” - Joel BarricklowPlease note that the ideas expressed in this lecture do not necessarily represent the views of L'Abri Fellowship.For more resources, visit the L'Abri Ideas Library at labriideaslibrary.org. The library contains over two thousand lectures and discussions that explore questions about the reality and relevance of Christianity. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit englishlabri.substack.com
Listen in as missionary leaders Samantha G and Julie P share from their 10+ years of field experience on how singles can serve, lead, and thrive on the field, and how married teammates and leaders can foster that.
Smart Agency Masterclass with Jason Swenk: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies
Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Are you trying to sell a service so specialized that closing new clients feels like it can only come from you? What do you think about how AI is reshaping your industry and where that leaves the human at the center of it? Today's featured guest came up through luxury automotive, spent years learning how cultural nuance can derail a campaign that looks perfect on paper, and built a niche precise enough that she can spot from two miles away when someone writing about influencer marketing has never actually run a campaign. In this episode, she'll discuss what makes international influencer work fundamentally different from domestic campaigns and what AI-generated influencers mean for an industry built on human authenticity. Jeanette Okwu is the founder and CEO of Beyond Influence, an influencer marketing agency based in Berlin. Her background spans social media strategy, brand research, and influencer marketing across luxury automotive brands including Jaguar Land Rover and Mercedes-Benz. That global scope became the foundation for her agency's core differentiation: running influencer campaigns that actually account for cultural nuance in each market rather than pushing a headquarters strategy downward and hoping it lands. In this episode, we'll discuss: Building international campaigns understanding regional nuances How to overcome the expert-owner bottleneck problem Can AI influencers replace real ones? Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. Why International Campaigns Break When You Treat Every Market the Same Early in her career, Jeanette managed 24 markets at Jaguar Land Rover, which helped her understand that what works in one country does not translate by default. A TV spot that runs cleanly in Europe cannot air in the Middle East if it shows upper arms or alcohol. A campaign strategy built at headquarters and handed down to regional teams will get implemented, but it will not perform, because every market has cultural specifics that only someone operating inside that market will catch. The agency she built is the direct expression of that knowledge. Beyond Influence does not run German campaigns and call it international work. It builds campaigns from the ground up with an understanding of how audiences in each target market actually consume content and what they expect from the creators they follow. That distinction is hard to replicate without the years of field experience behind it, and it is exactly the kind of institutional knowledge that becomes a real moat when the rest of the market is running generic global strategies. The Sales Bottleneck That Comes With Deep Expertise Jeanette is candid about where she is stuck: sales still runs through her. This is something she has tried to change, but influencer marketing is still a new enough discipline that clients want to hear from someone who demonstrably knows what they are talking about. She frames it as expertise selling and she is probably right that some of it is structural to the space. But she also hears herself in the answer, acknowledging a degree of control that she knows is not fully serving the agency's ability to grow. The necessary shift in cases like this doesn't point toward finding a salesperson who already knows influencer marketing. The real solution will come from finding someone with the right consultative instincts and then giving them the success stories and methodology that let them carry the conversation. Such is the case of Darby, our agency scale specialist, who did not know what an agency was before joining the team. What he had was the ability to listen, qualify, and translate client pain into a path forward. That skill can be trained on the specifics. The instinct behind it cannot. What AI Influencers Actually Mean for the Industry Jeanette knows the question that is currently on every client's mind: will AI-generated influencers replace the real ones? Her answer is more nuanced than the headlines. AI avatars already perform comparably to human creators on certain content types. Brands are building owned avatars that show up on time, never gain weight, never create a scandal, and can post from six locations simultaneously without a travel budget. That part of the market is real and growing. What AI cannot replicate is the reason people follow a creator in the first place. The parasocial relationship that makes influencer marketing work is built on the sense that the person on screen is real and reachable. When a follower knows they will never be able to meet the creator, the connection breaks. That is the line Jeanette draws: AI content can perform well for product exposure, but for the kind of community trust that turns followers into buyers over time, the human at the center still matters. The agencies that understand where that line sits will be the ones helping brands draw it correctly rather than chasing the cost savings of going fully artificial before the audience has stopped caring about the difference. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thatwastheweek.com/subscribe
On today's program, the Assemblies of God is disputing liability in abuse cases — claiming local church autonomy shields it from the Daniel Savala sex abuse lawsuits. And, a movement to void nondisclosure agreements in cases of child sexual abuse is gaining ground — on both the local and national levels. The laws limiting NDAs are called Trey's Laws. We'll take a look. Plus, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, has, after years of turmoil, officially regained its accreditation status. But first, Sean Feucht Ministries is fighting back against a lawsuit — and it’s using the First Amendment to do it. It argues a $250,000 lawsuit filed against it should be dismissed because of what’s called the “church autonomy doctrine.” It protects religious institutions from lawsuits that would require courts to wade into matters of faith and doctrine. The producer for today's program is Jeff McIntosh. We get database and other technical support from Stephen DuBarry, Rod Pitzer, and Casey Sudduth. Writers who contributed to today's program include Kim Roberts, Stacey Horton, Marci Seither, Makella Knowles, and Jessica Eturralde. Until next time, may God bless you.
Send us Fan MailWe talk through mid-year Blue Card updates, why command training is worth paying for, and how regional leaders keep a shared system alive even when departments change chiefs. We also dig into big box fire realities and then break down working-fire radio audio that shows what clear size-up, assignments, and command transfer sound like.• Blue Card as a decision-making and incident organization system rather than a tactics class• Common myths about Blue Card and how bad information spreads• The real cost of training and why “free” is not a plan• Liability exposure tied to weak command training and predictable failure points• Sustaining a command program through leadership commitment and ongoing verification• ARFF program growth, upcoming train-the-trainer dates, and open seats• A regional collaboration model from the Seacoast Chiefs and why standard language matters• Big box and mega warehouse fires, sprinkler limits, FDC considerations, and defensive discipline• Working-fire audio breakdown: initial radio report, 360, patient handling, CAN reports, and command transfer• Timeless tactical truth on forecasting and doing now what saves time laterThe Ladder 11 Shirt is here: https://bshifter.myshopify.com/products/ladder-11-shirtCheck out the Big Box Bulletin here: https://conta.cc/3QpvT8uOrder the 3rd Edition of Fire Command here:https://bshifter.myshopify.com/products/new-fire-command-3rd-editionFor Waldorf University Blue Card credit and discounts:https://www.waldorf.edu/blue-card/For free command and leadership support, visit:https://bshifter.comSign up for the B Shifter Buckslip, our free weekly newsletter:https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/fmgs92N/BuckslipShop B Shifter:https://bshifter.myshopify.comThanks for listening!
today we examine the transformative impact of generative artificial intelligence on professional labor, specifically within the legal and medical sectors. Reports from the legal industry highlight a tectonic shift where firms are aggressively investing in technology to meet unprecedented demand, leading to record-breaking profits and evolving operating models. In contrast, academic research introduces a dual-factor model to argue that true automation is strictly bounded by business and safety risks rather than mere technical capability. This suggests a "Cognitive Risk Asymmetry" where symbolic digital tasks face high exposure, while high-stakes roles—such as specialized surgery or infrastructure maintenance—remain resilient due to legal and physical liabilities. Finally, a perspective from the field of radiology cautions against "mechanistic drift," a process where human professionals may unintentionally narrow their own expertise to align with the operational logic of machine systems. Together, these texts suggest that while AI offers immense productivity gains, the requirement for human accountability and moral judgment remains an essential barrier against total occupational replacement.
Smart Agency Masterclass with Jason Swenk: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies
Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Have you ever sensed that you and your business partner want different things, but neither of you has been willing to say it out loud yet? Today's featured guest bought out his co-founder in 2020. During a pandemic and two months after his first child was born. In this episode, he walks through what that transition actually required, how a black widow client almost derailed the whole thing, why niching into healthcare unlocked a sales clarity he had never had before, and more. Tim Bouchard is the owner and CEO of Luminus, a healthcare marketing agency based in Buffalo, New York, that delivers optimized marketing campaigns that capture the imagination of their audience and successfully convert them to prospects. Tim started the agency in 2010 alongside a co-founder, having come up through web design and digital development. After 10 years in partnership, a difference in vision and personal direction led to a buyout in late 2020, which Tim financed through an SBA loan while managing a new baby, a pandemic, and a client that represented 38% of agency revenue. He is now five and a half years post-buyout, has a core team that has been with him through the transition, and has fully committed Luminus to the healthcare niche. In this episode, we'll discuss: The first order of business post-buyout The black widow client problem Niching down into healthcare Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. What Nobody Tells You About the First Six Months After a Buyout Tim's instinct after the papers were signed was that the agency would feel like his within a few months. The vision was clear. What he did not anticipate was that none of the work he actually wanted to do could happen yet. The first order of business was not building toward a new direction. It was stabilizing what already existed. Client relationships had to be managed carefully, particularly with the black widow account that accounted for 38% of monthly billings. The team had to be reassured that the transition was amicable and not a signal that the agency was in trouble. Production gaps left by the departing partner had to be filled through promotion and new hires, all in the middle of COVID hiring conditions, with an SBA loan payment already running. As a result, the feeling that he had actually built the foundation he wanted did not arrive until roughly two and a half years after the buyout closed. The expectation that structural change happens quickly is one of the most expensive assumptions a founder can carry into a transition. The Black Widow Problem and What It Revealed About a year and a half after the buyout, the client representing 38% of Luminus' revenue left. What that exit revealed was that the entire team structure had been built around servicing that client. Two account people for a sub-million-dollar agency made sense when a single client demanded that level of coverage. It made no sense for what the agency actually needed to become. The loss forced a cleaner look at which people, processes, and positions belonged in the agency Tim wanted to build versus the one he had inherited through the transition. Four core team members who had been with him for eight or more years remained. Positions that had been built around the black widow were eliminated. That kind of correction is painful, and it is also necessary. An agency that has never stress-tested its structure tends to discover what does not belong only when something large enough forces the question. What Niching Into Healthcare Actually Unlocked Tim resisted narrowing down for the same reason most agency owners do: it felt like reducing the addressable market and therefore reducing the chance of success. The shift into healthcare happened only after the post-buyout chaos had settled and he could see clearly what the agency was actually good at. The downstream effects were not subtle. Sales conversations became easier because the problem was always the same. Content development became possible because the topics did not change from client to client. The sales message stopped being a generic positioning statement about branding and became something specific enough to open a door: a healthcare practice owner can hear "I might be able to help you with compliance" and immediately understand what is being offered. That kind of entry point does not exist for a generalist agency, because a generalist has no right to claim expertise in any single area. The niche gave Tim something specific to stand on, and that specificity is what allowed Luminus to sell nationally instead of depending on local referrals from Buffalo. Building a Team That Owns Its Own Processes Tim advocates for being transparent with your team as a way to create real ownership of the work. Quarterly financials are shared. Profit sharing is tied to net profit, and the team is updated on that number throughout the year. Client relationship status is visible. When people can see the whole picture, they make better decisions within their own roles without needing to ask. The same principle applies to how SOPs and technology choices get built at Luminus. Tim does not hand down a finished process and tell the team to follow it. He invites the relevant people into the build, acts as a guide and quality check, and then hands ownership back to the team. The process they build is theirs. They understand it because they made it. A process handed down from the founder gets followed when the founder is watching. A process built by the team becomes part of how they work. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.
Bobby and Steve emphasized the importance of the Saints' special teams unit to the team's success in 2026. Bobby praised New Orleans for setting up three joint practice sessions in the preseason. Bobby and Steve listened to Cam Jordan's media availability after the legendary DE signed a one-year extension to return to the Saints for his 16th, and final, NFL season. Bobby projected Cam Jordan's place on the all-time NFL sack list. The guys spoke to a WWL listener about the Pelicans and Chalmette native Mitchell Robinson's championship with the Knicks.
NFP's Randy Ramkissoon says one GPS tracker isn't enough anymore – thieves know where to look, and the claims are getting more severe
Who's really the employer? The U.S. Department of Labor's proposed Joint Employer Liability rule could significantly impact how businesses work with staffing agencies, subcontractors, franchisees, and other third-party partners. In this episode, employment law attorney Burt Garland breaks down the proposed four-factor test, explains the difference between vertical and horizontal joint employment, and outlines what employers should be doing now to prepare. For business leaders, HR professionals, and owners, this discussion provides practical guidance on reducing risk, reviewing key business relationships, and staying ahead of regulatory changes that could affect compliance, liability, and workforce strategy. If your organization relies on any type of contingent labor or partnership model, this is a conversation you can't afford to miss.
Today on Bud's #WeeklyGeekOut . . . a German court has found Google directly liable for its AI summaries, and can't fall back on "users can check for themselves" to absolve itself of hallucinations. =) webmeister Bud Listen and get more details at TheZone.fm/geekout
You're probably one of the most caring leaders your team has ever worked for. And that might be the exact thing that's slowly costing you the most.The leaders who struggle most with accountability aren't the cold ones — they're the ones who care the most. And their empathy, the very thing that makes them exceptional to work for, is the exact thing that quietly gets in the way.In this episode, I walk you through exactly how that happens, why it costs everyone (including the person you're trying to help), and what to do instead.What's Covered in This Episode:[1:25] What Empathy Looks Like When It's Working[2:09] When Empathy Becomes a Liability[7:06] My Story: The Enabling Trap[11:42] The Turning Point — Asking Better Questions[16:19] What Clarity Actually Looks Like[17:27] Honest Question for YouAs always, take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life.
In this episode of Fraudology, Karisse Hendrick provides a comprehensive debrief following the Merchant Risk Council (MRC) Vegas conference. Karisse shares her highlights and lowlights from one of the industry's biggest events, cutting through the conference hype to provide practical insights for fraud and payments professionals.The conversation explores the evolving mechanics of Agentic AI in commerce, detailing how tools like Sardine are now identifying AI agents by monitoring "invisible" behaviors, such as fields being filled without mouse movement. Karisse provides an inside look at why OpenAI recently shelved its "instant checkout" feature, moving away from being a merchant of record to avoid the liability of chargebacks and complex transaction enablement.We also explore the "hot topics" dominating the fraud landscape today:The VAMP Threshold "Cliff": How Visa is drastically reducing high-risk merchant ratios from 220 basis points to 150 basis points this April, potentially catching many enterprise merchants off guard.The Complexity of Agentic Chargebacks: Real-world examples of "authorized" AI purchases where merchants are losing disputes because card brands like Visa do not yet have established "compelling evidence" protocols for AI agents.The Human Element vs. AI: Why senior fraud leadership cannot be replaced by LLMs, as the critical "domain expertise" required to manage sophisticated fraud is not found in open-source data.Additionally, Karisse dives into the latest FTC fraud statistics, revealing a staggering 430% increase in fraud since 2020. We break down the $375 million jury verdict against Meta in New Mexico, a historic win for child safety that challenges the long-standing "Section 230" liability shield. Finally, we examine a Reuters study uncovering how Meta's ability to block scam ads depends almost entirely on the financial liability they face in specific countries.
In this episode of The Fearless Mindset Podcast, Host Mark Ledlow interviews Eddie Sorrells, newly named president of ASIS and CEO of a security company,Eddie shares insights on how the security industry has evolved since COVID, highlighting the growing role of technology as a force multiplier and the increasing importance of cyber resilience in today's risk environment.The discussion explores the convergence of physical and cyber security, the emerging threats posed by artificial intelligence, phishing attacks, and digital deception. Eddie also draws on his experience as an attorney to explain legal liability in the security industry, emphasizing the critical importance of training, insurance, documentation, and risk management.Mark and Eddie discuss how boutique security firms can compete against larger organizations by focusing on responsiveness, customer service, and operational excellence. They also preview the upcoming Global Security Exchange (GSX) conference in Atlanta and discuss the value of networking, professional development, and servant leadership within the security community.Learn about all this and more in this episode of The Fearless Mindset Podcast.KEY TAKEAWAYSCyber resilience is the new security mindset — Organizations must prepare not only to prevent cyber incidents but also to recover quickly when they occur.Technology is a force multiplier, not a replacement for people — COVID accelerated adoption of security technologies that enhance operational effectiveness.AI is transforming the threat landscape — Voice cloning, deepfakes, and sophisticated phishing attacks make traditional warning signs harder to detect.Training is your best legal defense — Proper training, documentation, and compliance can significantly reduce organizational liability.Security companies must understand risk beyond physical protection — Legal exposure, insurance requirements, and contractor oversight are critical business considerations.Responsiveness wins business — Clients value organizations that answer calls, solve problems quickly, and make them feel supported.Service outperforms marketing — A strong reputation built on consistent execution generates more referrals than any advertising campaign.Small firms can outperform larger competitors — Boutique organizations often have greater agility, stronger relationships, and faster decision-making.Professional relationships create long-term opportunities — Networking and maintaining authentic connections continue to drive industry growth.Servant leadership creates lasting impact — Great leaders focus on leaving organizations better than they found them.QUOTES "They don't use the phrase cyber security. They only talk about cyber resilience because it's going to happen." "What's suspicious anymore?" "The classic attorney answer is, 'It depends.'" "Make sure you train your staff, you're investing in that, and they're aware of those threats and how to handle themselves.""At the end of the day, a good service and a good product is going to shine through.""It's not about being perfect, it's about being responsive.""People are hungry for that level of service.""We just want to feel special when we call you.""The fastest way you're going to grow is through your team's professionalism and reputation in the field.""I want to make sure that I leave this position better than I found it."Get to know more about Eddie Sorrells through the link/s below.https://www.linkedin.com/in/eddie-sorrells-cpp-psp-pci-b376155/To hear more episodes of The Fearless Mindset podcast, you can go to https://the-fearless-mindset.simplecast.com/ or listen on major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, etc. You can also subscribe to the Fearless Mindset YouTube Channel to watch episodes on video.
Joseph S. Harrington, CPU, an independent business researcher and writer specializing in property/casualty insurance, joins Deepak Puri, Founder of The Democracy Labs, to discuss the real costs of gun violence and who is most likely to use a gun for violence. Joseph explains that most gun deaths are suicides, and most shootings are intentional, which makes gun owners uninsurable. This leaves the victims of gun violence to shoulder the burden of a shooting. A focus on the gun sellers is a possible path to protect gun rights, better manage safety programs, and provide compensation to victims. Deepak and Joseph talk about Why traditional liability insurance is not a workable solution for gun violence How gun manufacturers and dealers are shielded from liability Costs of violence include medical care, rehabilitation, and societal costs Creating financial incentives for the gun industry to engage in gun safety and monitoring #TheDemLabs #StateTreasurers #PoliticalActivism #Democracy #Accountability #GunRights #GunControl #GunViolence #GunPolicy #CampaignStrategy #PublicSafety #RIFLAct #Liability TheDemocracyLabs.org
This Day in Legal History: The End of Roosevelt's Hundred DaysOn this day in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt signed three pieces of legislation that closed out what the country has been calling the Hundred Days ever since: the Banking Act of 1933, the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the Farm Credit Act, with the Home Owners' Loan Act having been signed three days earlier. The Banking Act of 1933 is the one most lawyers know, because the popular name attached to it — Glass-Steagall — has been doing rhetorical work in financial-regulation debates for ninety-three years.Carter Glass of Virginia and Henry Steagall of Alabama, the Senate Banking chair and the House Banking chair respectively, built the statute around two structural propositions: that commercial banks should be separated from investment banking and the speculative securities business that had helped pull the country into the Great Depression, and that depositors at member banks should be protected by a federal deposit insurance scheme so that a panic at one bank did not become a panic everywhere.The deposit insurance piece became the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The separation piece was the part that got partially repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 and then revisited in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. The National Industrial Recovery Act, signed the same day, set up the National Recovery Administration and the Public Works Administration and was meant to coordinate industry-wide codes of fair competition; the Supreme Court struck the centerpiece codes provision down two years later in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States in 1935 on nondelegation and Commerce Clause grounds, an opinion that nearly killed the early New Deal and prompted Roosevelt's court-packing plan two years after that. The Farm Credit Act consolidated and refinanced the agricultural lending system that the Great Depression had taken to the brink.The legal point worth remembering is that this last day of the Hundred Days was, in retrospect, the moment the federal regulatory state of the twentieth century stopped being a collection of post-Civil-War commissions and started being the integrated structure of agencies, deposit-insurance funds, securities oversight, labor regulation, and welfare administration that the country has lived inside ever since. The fact that the Schechter Court was waiting in the wings to strike down the most ambitious piece of that day's work is part of the lesson. The constitutional question of how much economic ordering a Congress and a President can do at once was not answered on June 16, 1933 — it was framed.The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up E.D. v. Noblesville School District, a free-speech challenge brought by the parents of an Indiana high-school student whose school district had refused to let her post flyers for her student-run anti-abortion club on classroom and hallway walls. The student, identified in court papers by initials because she was a minor when the case was filed, had been the founder of Noblesville High School's Students for Life chapter. The flyers she wanted posted featured images of demonstrators holding “Defund Planned Parenthood” signs. Noblesville Schools removed the flyers under a district policy giving administrators content-based authority over student materials displayed on school property, and the parents sued under the First Amendment.The Southern District of Indiana sided with the district in 2024, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed in 2025, both applying Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, the 1988 case that lets public schools regulate the content of school-sponsored expressive activities if the regulation is reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns. The cert denial leaves Hazelwood intact in the Seventh Circuit and everywhere else.The piece worth flagging is Justice Alito's dissent from denial, joined by Justice Thomas, which urged the Court to grant review and use the case to revisit Hazelwood's framework. The dissent argues that Hazelwood was wrongly decided to the extent that it lets schools draw viewpoint-based lines under the cover of pedagogical-concern review, and that the doctrinal distinction Hazelwood draws between school-sponsored speech and Tinker-style independent student speech has become unworkable in the age of student clubs, distributed school messaging, and post-Mahanoy off-campus speech. Two votes are not five votes. But two votes naming a case as the vehicle they wanted are how the next decade of student-speech cases gets queued up. The Court has now told litigants what kind of vehicle it might be looking for. Expect a steady drumbeat of cert petitions teeing up the Hazelwood revisit over the next several terms.US Supreme Court turns away free speech claim by anti-abortion student | Reuters via Maryland Daily RecordThe Supreme Court also turned away on Monday the National Shooting Sports Foundation's challenge to New York's General Business Law § 898, the public-nuisance statute the New York legislature passed in 2021 to let the state and certain private plaintiffs sue firearms manufacturers, distributors, and dealers for endangering the public through the marketing and distribution of their products.The challenge was supported by Smith & Wesson, Sturm, Ruger, Beretta, Glock, and Sig Sauer, and went up on appeal from a 2024 Second Circuit decision that held the New York statute is not preempted by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, the 2005 federal statute that broadly immunizes the gun industry from civil liability arising from the criminal misuse of firearms.The Second Circuit reasoned that the PLCAA's “predicate exception” — which preserves state-law claims when the firearms industry has violated a state or federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of firearms — covers a state public-nuisance statute that, by its terms, regulates the sale and marketing of firearms. The cert denial leaves the Second Circuit's reading in place, leaves New York's statute on the books and enforceable, and leaves the industry with a litigation exposure it had hoped to neutralize.The strategic part of the case is going to be the copycat statutes. California, New Jersey, Washington, Delaware, Illinois, and Hawaii have all enacted versions of the New York approach since 2021, and other states have similar bills in committee. Each of those statutes is going to invite its own PLCAA-preemption fight in its own circuit, and the cumulative jurisprudence is going to get built case by case until either Congress amends PLCAA or the Court decides one of these cases is the right vehicle to step in. Today's denial was not that vehicle.SCOTUS Upholds NY Law Allowing Lawsuits Against Gunmakers | The Daily SignalThe third notable cert denial on Monday was the end of the road for Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. in its long-running trade-secret fight with DXC Technology — the successor in interest to Computer Sciences Corporation. TCS had asked the Court to review a Fifth Circuit decision that affirmed a $168 million judgment against it for misappropriating CSC's life-insurance-administration software trade secrets and using them to build TCS's own BaNCS platform, which TCS then used to win a $2.6 billion contract with the insurer Transamerica.The Northern District of Texas verdict, returned in 2022, had been $56 million in compensatory damages and $112 million in punitives, and the Fifth Circuit upheld the punitives ratio in 2025 over TCS's BMW v. Gore and State Farm v. Campbell challenge to the proportionality of the punitive award and over its Defend Trade Secrets Act extraterritoriality arguments. The cert petition pressed both points and pressed a circuit split on the standard for proving misappropriation by an independent contractor that had been given access to source code under a nondisclosure agreement, but the Court declined.The practical immediate effect is that TCS will recognize a roughly $70 million one-time exceptional charge in Q1 of its 2027 fiscal year and the total exposure on the matter — combining the affirmed judgment with previously taken provisions — settles in around $220 million. The broader effect is doctrinal stability. The Fifth Circuit's analysis on cross-border trade-secret damages and on the extraterritoriality limits of the DTSA stand. Both questions are going to recur, and the next vehicle that brings them up may catch the Court in a different mood, but for now the law is what the Fifth Circuit said it was.US Supreme Court rejects TCS challenge in $168 million trade secrets case | Business Standard This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe
Support the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USOne on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingWhat the actual fuck is “being human” when AI is about to eat your entire career, your identity, and the old world's bullshit rules?In this raw, unfiltered episode of True Life Podcast, I go deep with Eric Postow, attorney, psychedelic legal warrior, and the guy actually navigating the chaos at the intersection of entheogens, agentic AI, and the transhuman cliff we're all sprinting toward.We're not bullshitting around safe topics:→ Machines replacing 70-80% of lawyer brainwork (and every other white-collar gig)→ Psychedelics as the primal antidote to silicon gods and corporate slavery→ The inevitable merger of plant consciousness + a.i. tech→ Why your spreadsheets are dead, your soul is on the line, and most people are still sleepwalking into the singularity→ Rebuilding identity, community, and rebellion in a post-work, post-scarcity mindfuckNo polished corporate cope. No weak futurism. Just two people calling out the collapse of the old paradigm and daring you to architect what comes next.This isn't a podcast. It's a transmission for lawyers, rebels, outcasts, and readers who want to understand the future. The future isn't coming. It's already here and it's weird.Who's ready to wake up and break shit constructively?#Psychedelics #AI #Transhumanism #LegalRevolution #Consciousness #FutureIsWeird #RebelMindshttps://holonlaw.com/ One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US
Would Brendan Sorsby be a liability for an NFL team? full 773 Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:43:22 +0000 1cJXnIsPWldtpEyL1EE70QisXc1wzTjC nfl,college football,sports gambling,texas tech red raiders,ncaa football,brendan sorsby,sports The Big Bad Morning Show nfl,college football,sports gambling,texas tech red raiders,ncaa football,brendan sorsby,sports Would Brendan Sorsby be a liability for an NFL team? 5:30a-10a weekdays on 105.7 The FAN 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. Sports https://player.amperwavepodcasting.com?fee
The recent Supreme Court decision on broker liability caught many by surprise. Attorney Doug Marcello explains why this unanimous ruling is a game-changer, potentially leading to 'nuclear settlements' and placing freight brokers in the role of "excess insurers" for trucking companies. This means heightened due diligence and compliance are critical now more than ever. Follow the FreightWaves NOW Podcast Other FreightWaves Shows Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Send us Fan MailIn the face of new studies showing increased dangers of exposure to radiation, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is proposing the repeal of a 50 year old safety regulation known as as low as Reasonably Achievable or Alara. This is being done to fast track small modular reactors. A proposed new nuclear technology, SMR reactors, are seen as a possible answer to the energy bottleneck for the expansion of data centers that feed artificial intelligence.SMRs would be smaller but spread out in more communities. They would be less efficient and use a more dangerous nuclear fuel. All of this is being greenwash under the banner of a so-called nuclear renaissance by big tech corporations and some supporters, who claim that it is an answer to climate change. On this episode of Breaking Green, we will speak with Peter Jones.Peter Jones is trained as a physicist and as a lawyer, and he is director of nuclear waste policy at the Samuel Lawrence Foundation.We track how the NRC's push to weaken long-standing radiation safeguards lines up with the rush to license small modular reactors marketed as climate solutions. We connect new research on low dose radiation risk to the unresolved nuclear waste crisis and the growing demand for electricity from AI data centers. • Why a “nuclear renaissance” narrative is gaining traction • How San Onofre illustrates the problem of stranded nuclear waste • The missing federal repository problem and the Yucca Mountain dead end • How NRC staffing pressure and rushed rulemaking change the regulatory landscape • Why data centers and AI are reshaping energy investment and political incentives • What recent studies suggest about low dose ionizing radiation and cancer risk • Why repealing Alara shifts risk onto workers and nearby communities • How SMRs can be less efficient and generate more waste per unit of energy • Liability limits, the Price Anderson Act, and gaps for newer reactor categories • HALEU fuel, higher enrichment, and increased non-proliferation concerns • The danger of reducing security requirements while using hotter fuel • Why nuclear contamination is difficult to contain, clean up, and reverse If you're enjoying this episode of Breaking Green, please subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. Consider leaving a review and sharing it with friends and colleagues. You can find the full catalog of previous episodes and sign up to have future episodes delivered straight to your inbox at breakinggreen.org. To learn more about Global Justice Ecology Project, visit GlobalJusticeEcology.org. Breaking Green is made possible by tax-deductible donations by people like you. Please help us lift up the voices of those working to protect forest, defend human rights, and expose all solutions. Simply text GIVE to 716 257 4187. That's 1 716 257 4187. Support the show
The recent Supreme Court decision on broker liability caught many by surprise. Attorney Doug Marcello explains why this unanimous ruling is a game-changer, potentially leading to 'nuclear settlements' and placing freight brokers in the role of "excess insurers" for trucking companies. This means heightened due diligence and compliance are critical now more than ever. Follow the FreightWaves NOW Podcast Other FreightWaves Shows Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Andrew Mayne, Justin Robert Young, and Brian Brushwood explore how new AI video tools are changing filmmaking by making real footage more editable and steerable, letting creators keep human performances while using AI for sets, lighting, costumes, and polish. They compare that shift to earlier changes in digital editing and game engines, then turn to viral robot mishap clips to separate remote-controlled demos from true autonomy and to ask the bigger question of who carries legal and moral responsibility when future robots inevitably cause harm. From there they jump to a possible primordial black hole candidate as evidence related to dark matter, a promising one-time gene therapy approach for cholesterol, and the broader effects of GLP-1 drugs on appetite, addiction, gambling, alcohol use, and the business models built around those habits. They wrap by sharing how tools like Codex are already helping them build websites, automate repetitive tasks, migrate infrastructure, and dramatically cut costs, arguing that AI is most useful right now as a way to remove drudgery and free up more time for actual creative work. Picks: Brian Brushwood: Spider-Noir Justin Robert Young: The Hulk Hogan documentary on Netflix Justin Robert Young: Rocky Balboa
Smart Agency Masterclass with Jason Swenk: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies
Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Have you ever lost a pitch you were sure you had won on merit? Or if you did win the account, have you ended up with clients that only want to talk to you? Today's featured guest came up through seven years as head of marketing at a lean e-commerce company, where wearing every hat was not optional. In this episode, she talks about how a story about sorting fish as a child became the deciding factor in a competitive pitch, why genuine connection is not a soft skill but a structural advantage, and what happens to your agency when you never learned to let clients connect with your team instead of just with you. Bianca Beatty is the founder of Raven+Co, a full-stack boutique agency based in San Francisco offering everything from events to go-to-market strategy, social media, and brand communications. Before launching the agency in 2018, she spent nearly seven years as head of marketing at the largest online marketplace for antiques and vintage, where she built her foundation in SEO, paid ads, email, product placement, and revenue-driven decision making inside a lean team. She is also a licensed realtor, a fly fisher, and a former child caviar industry worker. In this episode, we'll discuss: The story that won Bianca an account over portfolio The double-edged sword of being the person clients want to talk to You do NOT have to work with everyone Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. A Story Can Win the Room Before the Work Does Bianca walked into a pitch for a caviar client with strong work and solid positioning. She almost did not mention that as a child, she spent a summer on her father's commercial fish house on the water in Florida, separating fish by sex for roe sold to China. She mentioned it. She won the pitch. The client told her afterward that the story, not the portfolio, was the deciding factor. The reason that moment is worth examining is not that personal stories win pitches. It is what the story actually communicated. It showed the client that Bianca understood the product from a level most marketers never will, that she had genuine curiosity about the industry, and that she was someone the client wanted to spend time around. A competitor with equally strong work and no story was indistinguishable. Bianca was not. Proof of capability opens the door. The story is what makes the client hold it open. When Your Personality Becomes the Bottleneck Bianca is honest about the double edge of being the kind of person clients want to talk to for two hours. The connection that wins the pitch is the same connection that makes clients want to route everything through you. Calls that run long, decisions that wait for your availability, relationships that belong to you and not to your agency: these are not signs that you are doing something right. They are early symptoms of a founder dependency problem that compounds as the agency grows. When the founder is most connected person in their agency, they're also the most trapped. Every client relationship that runs through him is a ceiling on how much the business could grow without him. The structural fix is not to become less personable. It is to build a team that is also personable, to hire for the same quality of human warmth and genuine curiosity that wins clients in the first place, and to let those people develop their own relationships. The goal is a team that holds the relationships well enough that the clients stop thinking about whether you are in the room. Picking Clients Before Clients Pick You Bianca is clear on something that most agency founders only learn after absorbing a nightmare client or two: you do not have to work with everyone. Early on, the answer is yes to almost everything because the pipeline is thin and the pressure to cover costs is real. As the agency develops a track record and a clearer sense of its own values, the ability to be selective is not a luxury. It is a structural protection for the team. The version of this that holds up over time is not just about avoiding difficult clients but about actively going after the clients you want, pitching yourself to companies that interest you even when they are not publicly looking, and staying honest about fit before contracts are signed rather than after scope has been blown. When clients align with what the team genuinely cares about, the work is better, the relationships last longer, and the agency does not spend the Monday morning meeting talking about which client made last week miserable. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.
Andrew Mayne, Justin Robert Young, and Brian Brushwood explore how new AI video tools are changing filmmaking by making real footage more editable and steerable, letting creators keep human performances while using AI for sets, lighting, costumes, and polish. They compare that shift to earlier changes in digital editing and game engines, then turn to viral robot mishap clips to separate remote-controlled demos from true autonomy and to ask the bigger question of who carries legal and moral responsibility when future robots inevitably cause harm. From there they jump to a possible primordial black hole candidate as evidence related to dark matter, a promising one-time gene therapy approach for cholesterol, and the broader effects of GLP-1 drugs on appetite, addiction, gambling, alcohol use, and the business models built around those habits. They wrap by sharing how tools like Codex are already helping them build websites, automate repetitive tasks, migrate infrastructure, and dramatically cut costs, arguing that AI is most useful right now as a way to remove drudgery and free up more time for actual creative work. Picks: Brian Brushwood: Spider-Noir Justin Robert Young: The Hulk Hogan documentary on Netflix Justin Robert Young: Rocky Balboa
Welcome back to a Friday edition of What The Truck?!Malcolm Harris and Michael Vincent kick off the show with their signature banter before diving into some of the biggest stories shaping freight, transportation, and supply chain today.In this episode:* Amazon's latest move into the LTL market and what it could mean for established carriers* Craig Fuller's analysis of Amazon's freight strategy and whether acquisitions like Forward Air make sense* The Transportation Intermediaries Association's (TIA) push for FMCSA guidance following the Montgomery case* How rising liability concerns and insurance costs could impact brokers, carriers, and the future of the industry* The growing role of technology, compliance, and risk management in modern truckingPlus, Chief Business Development Officer Adam Kahn of Netradyne joins the show to discuss:* How safety technology is transforming fleet operations* Netradyne's partnership with one of the nation's largest Domino's franchise operators* The impressive 66% reduction in at-fault crashes following implementation* Driver coaching, AI-powered safety insights, and building a stronger safety cultureThe crew also talks freight fraud, cargo theft, supply chain AI, LNG export developments, entrepreneurship, and plenty of Friday fun along the way. Watch on YouTube Visit our sponsor - KOONER FLEET MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS Subscribe to the WTT newsletter Apple Podcasts Spotify More FreightWaves Podcasts #WHATTHETRUCK #FreightNews #supplychain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Brad Karp, the longtime chairman of the elite Wall Street law firm Paul, Weiss, was forced to step down in early 2026 after newly released Justice Department files exposed a series of previously undisclosed interactions with Jeffrey Epstein. The documents showed that Karp had a personal relationship with Epstein that went beyond incidental contact, including attending private dinners at Epstein's residence and exchanging emails that reflected a notably friendly tone. In one instance, Karp thanked Epstein for an evening he described as “once in a lifetime,” and in another, he asked Epstein to help his son secure a role in a Woody Allen film. While Karp and his firm maintained that neither he nor Paul, Weiss ever represented Epstein professionally, the optics of those interactions—particularly given Epstein's 2008 conviction—triggered intense scrutiny.The fallout was swift and reputationally severe. Karp resigned not only from his role as chairman of Paul, Weiss after nearly two decades but also from external positions, including a college board seat, as the controversy widened. Additional disclosures suggested that his interactions with Epstein intersected with his professional orbit, particularly through his representation of Apollo Global Management and its co-founder Leon Black, a key Epstein associate. Emails also indicated that Karp at times engaged with Epstein on legal and strategic matters involving high-profile individuals, further blurring the line between personal and professional contact. Even though Karp expressed regret and framed the relationship as limited, the broader reaction reflected a growing intolerance for any post-conviction association with Epstein, especially among powerful institutional figures whose judgment is expected to be beyond reproach.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.ft.com/content/064e81a5-5e1b-4364-a581-9062868a3735?syn-25a6b1a6=1Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-epstein-chronicles--5003294/support.
Welcome back to a Friday edition of What The Truck?!Malcolm Harris and Michael Vincent kick off the show with their signature banter before diving into some of the biggest stories shaping freight, transportation, and supply chain today.In this episode:* Amazon's latest move into the LTL market and what it could mean for established carriers* Craig Fuller's analysis of Amazon's freight strategy and whether acquisitions like Forward Air make sense* The Transportation Intermediaries Association's (TIA) push for FMCSA guidance following the Montgomery case* How rising liability concerns and insurance costs could impact brokers, carriers, and the future of the industry* The growing role of technology, compliance, and risk management in modern truckingPlus, Chief Business Development Officer Adam Kahn of Netradyne joins the show to discuss:* How safety technology is transforming fleet operations* Netradyne's partnership with one of the nation's largest Domino's franchise operators* The impressive 66% reduction in at-fault crashes following implementation* Driver coaching, AI-powered safety insights, and building a stronger safety cultureThe crew also talks freight fraud, cargo theft, supply chain AI, LNG export developments, entrepreneurship, and plenty of Friday fun along the way. Watch on YouTube Visit our sponsor - KOONER FLEET MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS Subscribe to the WTT newsletter Apple Podcasts Spotify More FreightWaves Podcasts #WHATTHETRUCK #FreightNews #supplychain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Last Trade: Matt Dines, CIO of Build Asset Management, joins to lay out the seismic monetary reshuffling underway in 2026, the unwind of the post-Bretton-Woods offshore-dollar system that ran the global economy from 1971 to 2022, why LIBOR's deprecation and the SOFR transition quietly moved the dollar's command center from London to New York, Scott Bessent's strategy to monetize the asset side of the Treasury balance sheet through the GENIUS Act stablecoin and a Bitcoin reserve targeting 1 million BTC, Tether's December 2023 alignment with the American Sovereignist movement, and the contrarian read on MicroStrategy as a "dollar strategy" rather than a Bitcoin strategy.---
Europe is accelerating its push for digital sovereignty with the launch of EuroOffice, a cloud-based alternative to Microsoft 365 backed by German hosting giant IONOS and other European technology companies. But the launch has sparked controversy, with LibreOffice accusing the project of reinforcing Microsoft's document standards while critics question its roots in a fork of OnlyOffice. Meanwhile, new data suggests Google's AI Overviews are dramatically accelerating the rise of "zero-click" searches. Nearly 69 percent of Google searches now end without users visiting another website, raising concerns for publishers, online merchants and the growing industry of search engine optimization firms now pivoting toward Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO. Meta faces renewed criticism after former Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams was effectively silenced from promoting her memoir Careless People. The dispute raises questions about whistleblower protections, corporate power and the role of a company that controls a significant share of how people communicate and consume news. And finally, a German court may have delivered one of the most important AI rulings to date. Rejecting Google's defence that users understand AI can make mistakes, the judges ruled that people trust AI-generated answers precisely because they expect them to be useful. The decision could have major implications for whether AI companies can be held legally responsible when their systems generate false information. In This Episode 00:00 Europe launches EuroOffice as a Microsoft alternative 02:10 Google AI Overviews drive zero-click searches to record highs 04:15 Meta's campaign against former executive Sarah Wynn-Williams 06:20 German court delivers potentially landmark AI liability ruling Hashtag Trending is hosted by Jim Love and covers the latest developments in AI, cybersecurity, technology policy, enterprise IT and digital business. Subscribe for daily technology news and analysis.
Smart Agency Masterclass with Jason Swenk: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies
Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Have you ever pitched a client and led with everything your agency does well, only to watch their eyes glaze over halfway through? What you're missing is positioning copy that actually moves people. Today's featured guest has spent 40 years in the advertising and branding world, the last 20 of them devoted entirely to one question: why do some messages land and others disappear? In this episode, he'll walk through the storytelling frameworks he pulled from Hollywood screenwriting, evolutionary biology, and 12 years of podcasting, and then apply one of them live to Agency Mastery in real time. Park Howell is the founder of Park&Co, an agency he opened in Phoenix in 1995 and grew from a one-man operation to a team of 20 and beyond. He is now a full-time consultant, speaker, and coach on the business of story, and the host of The Business of Story podcast, which he has been running for 12 years. Park has been on the podcast previously talking about storytelling, how agencies fail to use it, and how, used, correctly it can help you connect with clients. In this episode, we'll discuss: Is your agency telling the wrong story? The And-But-Therefore Framework How learning about Hollywood screenwriting can help you improve your proposals Three Forces of Trust Your Story Needs to Build Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. Why Agencies Are Telling the Wrong Story The default agency pitch goes something like this: we have the best people, the best process, and a portfolio you will love. We are customer-centric, we care more, and we will be a true partner. And simply put, if every agency in the room is saying the same thing, none of it creates separation, none of it creates trust, and none of it gives a prospect a reason to remember you when the meeting ends. The root problem is that agencies tell their story from the inside out. They start with what they offer and work backward toward why a client should care. The structure that actually works is the opposite: start with the audience, name what they want, name what is standing between them and that outcome, and only then introduce how you help close that gap. The story is not about the agency. The agency is the guide. The client is the hero. The moment that inversion happens in how an agency frames its pitch, its content, and its proposals, the entire communication dynamic shifts. The And-But-Therefore Framework, Applied Live Park gave a live example of the and-but-therefore framework using Agency Mastery as the subject. The structure is deceptively simple: agreement, contradiction, consequence. You establish something the audience knows to be true about themselves. You introduce the contradiction, the reason they do not yet have what they want. Then the therefore: what becomes possible when that contradiction is resolved and how you help resolve it. The exercise surfaces something worth paying attention to. When Park asked for the one-word theme of Agency Mastery's story, he pushed back on it being focus. Why? It's a verb, a mechanism. The emotional outcome is actually freedom. You want freedom, but you do not have freedom, therefore here is how to get it. The distinction is not semantic. Copy that leads with a mechanism asks the reader to do intellectual work. Copy that leads with an emotional outcome pulls them forward before logic enters the picture. The and-but-therefore framework makes that difference visible and correctable in under five minutes. What Hollywood Screenwriting Has to Do With Your Next Proposal Park's Story Cycle System draws directly from the hero's journey and Blake Snyder's 15 beats, the frameworks professional screenwriters use to structure everything from Star Wars to The Wizard of Oz. The parallel between those two films is genuinely worth sitting with: same structure, same emotional beats, same character archetypes, separated by four decades and completely different settings. The reason the pattern keeps appearing is not coincidence. It is the way human beings have organized meaning since the first stories were carved into clay tablets. A practical application for agency pitches. Before the next proposal goes out, write an and-but-therefore for the prospect. A single focused statement that demonstrates you understand what they want, why they do not have it yet, and what changes when they work with you. Bring that into the room instead of a feature list. The agencies that win consistently do not win on credentials. They win because they showed up having already done the work of understanding the client, and the and-but-therefore is how that understanding gets made visible from the first sentence. The Three Forces of Trust Your Story Needs to Build When the and-but-therefore is executed well, it does not just clarify a message. It builds trust across three dimensions simultaneously. The audience feels understood: you know what they are trying to achieve. They feel appreciated: you recognize why that outcome matters to them. And they feel that their current struggle is real and acknowledged: you are not glossing over the gap between where they are and where they want to be. Most agency communication fails on the third dimension. It jumps too quickly to the solution without spending enough time in the problem. When a prospect does not feel that their frustration has been fully seen, the solution that follows lands as a pitch rather than as a read. The difference between a founder who says "I just want more freedom" and a message that reflects back "you started this business for freedom and the business owns you instead" is in how heard the person on the other side of that message feels. That is what separates the story everyone remembers from the one nobody does. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.
On this episode of What the Truck?!, Malcolm Harris and Michael Vincent break down Amazon's latest logistics moves—from expanding warehouse robotics across Europe to officially entering the less-than-truckload (LTL) market. What does increased automation mean for workers, shippers, and the future of supply chains? The duo also dives into a growing crackdown on customs fraud, exploring how whistleblowers, tariff enforcement, and the False Claims Act are reshaping international trade. Plus, they unpack rising ocean freight rates, resilient container volumes despite geopolitical disruptions, and what the latest trade data may be signaling for freight markets. Later, Gary Cornelius, VP of Business Development at TCW, joins the show to discuss the industry implications of the Montgomery decision, broker liability, carrier vetting, and what could come next as litigation and regulation continue to evolve. Then, Quarterhill CEO Chuck Myers stops by to talk about the technology powering the transportation infrastructure that keeps freight moving every day. Watch on YouTube Visit our sponsor - KOONER FLEET MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS Subscribe to the WTT newsletter Apple Podcasts Spotify More FreightWaves Podcasts #WHATTHETRUCK #FreightNews #supplychain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On this episode of What the Truck?!, Malcolm Harris and Michael Vincent break down Amazon's latest logistics moves—from expanding warehouse robotics across Europe to officially entering the less-than-truckload (LTL) market. What does increased automation mean for workers, shippers, and the future of supply chains? The duo also dives into a growing crackdown on customs fraud, exploring how whistleblowers, tariff enforcement, and the False Claims Act are reshaping international trade. Plus, they unpack rising ocean freight rates, resilient container volumes despite geopolitical disruptions, and what the latest trade data may be signaling for freight markets. Later, Gary Cornelius, VP of Business Development at TCW, joins the show to discuss the industry implications of the Montgomery decision, broker liability, carrier vetting, and what could come next as litigation and regulation continue to evolve. Then, Quarterhill CEO Chuck Myers stops by to talk about the technology powering the transportation infrastructure that keeps freight moving every day. Watch on YouTube Visit our sponsor - KOONER FLEET MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS Subscribe to the WTT newsletter Apple Podcasts Spotify More FreightWaves Podcasts #WHATTHETRUCK #FreightNews #supplychain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
International Bankruptcy, Restructuring, True Crime and Appeals - Court Audio Recording Podcast
Stay informed on current events, visit www.NaturalNews.com - PJM Grid Crisis and Data Center Impact (0:10) - PJM's Reserve Shortfall and Price Controls (3:26) - Impact of Data Centers on PJM Grid (6:04) - Preparation for Power Outages (12:44) - Battery Technology and Future Investments (27:26) - IPOs and Market Bubbles (30:56) - Introduction of First Green Electric Skid Steers (54:09) - Advantages of Electric Skid Steers (1:05:56) - Challenges and Future of Electric Equipment (1:12:49) - Remote Control and Job Efficiency (1:22:42) - Skepticism and Operator Experience (1:27:35) - Product Models and Market Positioning (1:28:39) - Pricing and Maintenance (1:30:33) - Future of Electric Heavy Equipment (1:34:40) - Safety and Operator Training (1:44:13) - Customer Experience and Dealer Network (1:49:04) - Regulatory and Market Dynamics (1:52:02) - Future of Battery Technology (1:52:43) - Decentralized Living and Off-Grid Solutions (1:53:58) - Anniversary and Guest Announcements (2:25:52) - UNA Consultations and Market Demand (2:31:45) - Legal Recognition and Benefits of UNAs (2:35:07) - Risk Management and Liability (2:37:58) - Technology and Innovation (2:40:48) - Show Production and Guest Invitations (2:52:22) - Supporting Providers and Product Recommendations (2:52:38) - Closing Remarks and Future Plans (2:52:56) Watch more independent videos at http://www.brighteon.com/channel/hrreport ▶️ Support our mission by shopping at the Health Ranger Store - https://www.healthrangerstore.com ▶️ Check out exclusive deals and special offers at https://rangerdeals.com ▶️ Sign up for our newsletter to stay informed: https://www.naturalnews.com/Readerregistration.html Watch more exclusive videos here:
In this week's episode of the Rich Habits Podcast, Robert Croak and Austin Hankwitz chat with Ryan Saleh, co-founder of Waldo.---
Smart Agency Masterclass with Jason Swenk: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies
Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Have you ever hired your way into a problem? Have you promoted your best people into management roles and watched them struggle, not because they lacked talent, but because nobody asked whether that was actually the job they wanted? Today's featured guest grew her agency team to nearly 200 people before making the deliberate decision to scale back to around 75. She did it not because the business was failing, but because she had learned the hard way that headcount is not leverage. In this episode, she walks through what each stage of that growth actually cost, how she thinks about the difference between a manager and an executive, and why going all in on one service in 2017 was the scariest and most important decision she made for her agency. Hope Horner is the co-founder and CEO of Lemonlight, a video content agency based in California that produces commercials and primarily works with enterprise clients. She started the company in 2014 in her bedroom with two co-founders, betting that affordable, accessible video content would become essential for brands who had been priced out of the market. She was right. Lemonlight grew to nearly 200 employees before a deliberate rightsizing brought the team to around 75. In this episode, we'll discuss: The difference that going all in on one niche made The mistake fast-growing agencies make Distinction between manager and executive Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. Why Going All In on One Thing Was the Decision That Changed Everything In 2017, Lemonlight was doing what a lot of agencies do: offering paid advertising, web design, social media, and video production, because saying yes to everything felt safer than narrowing down. Hope and her co-founders made the call to turn all of that off almost overnight and go all in on video. This decision cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue at the time. It also removed every piece of ambiguity about what the agency was, what it was building toward, and who it should be talking to. The downstream effects of that decision compounded over years. As the agency focused exclusively on video, the quality of the work got sharper. The quality of the work attracted better clients. Better clients required more sophisticated production. More sophisticated production required higher-end talent and systems. By the time COVID hit and enterprise clients started investing heavily in video, Lemonlight had the positioning, the craft, and the infrastructure to capture that demand at a level a generalist agency never could have. The decision that felt like contraction was the one that made real scale possible. What 200 Employees Actually Taught Her About Headcount The path to nearly 200 people was not a strategic choice. It was a response to demand. When clients flooded in during 2021 and 2022, they did what fast-growing agencies do: they threw bodies at the problem. The result was a team where tasks were fragmented across too many people, ownership was unclear, and productivity per person was low precisely because the work was so divided. It looked like growth, but operationally, it was expensive redundancy. The rightsizing that followed was a correction with a clear-eyed read on what actually produces leverage. Technology replaced a significant portion of the work that had been distributed across dozens of roles. Many employees who had been promoted into management discovered they preferred the individual contributor track and, given the option to step back, they performed better in it. Some of what felt like a painful downturn was actually the agency becoming the shape it should have been earlier. As Hope says: not better, just different. The problems at 75 people are real. They are just different problems than the ones at 200. The Manager Versus Executive Distinction Most Founders Miss Until Too Late Hope has a framework for telling a manager apart from an executive. A manager is built for evolution: improving existing processes incrementally, guiding people through what already works, making the current system run better. An executive is built for revolution: seeing where a fundamentally different process or product line needs to exist and building the case for it before anyone else has named the problem. Most founders who hire senior people for the first time discover, sometimes expensively, that a great manager at a large company is not the same as an executive who can function in a resource-constrained environment. The person who ran a function at a hundred-million-dollar company and wants a team of fifteen behind them to make them look good is not the same as the resourceful operator a growing agency actually needs. Recognizing the difference before the hire, not six months after, is the thing that separates founders who build strong leadership teams from founders who cycle through senior hires and wonder why nothing sticks. The Support Group Nobody Told You That You Needed Every agency owner knows that the loneliness of building an agency is real, it is underreported, and most founders make it worse by surrounding themselves with other founders who are performing confidence rather than telling the truth. The bravado of how many employees, how much revenue, how many awards is not just useless. It actively misleads founders into thinking their own internal chaos is unique to them when it is almost universally shared. What actually helps is a room where the performance stops. Where a founder who is eight figures and structurally broken can say that out loud and find that everyone in the room recognizes the pattern. That kind of peer truth-telling is not therapy. It is the fastest way to close the gap between where a founder is and where they need to be, because the person across the table has already lived through the version of the problem that is still invisible to the person describing it. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.
Employee benefits continue to be a critical component of attracting and retaining talent. According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 81% of employers consider both retirement savings and planning benefits and leave benefits to be either "very important" or "extremely important" offerings for their workforce. As organizations compete for talent, retirement plans remain one of the most valued benefits employers provide. In this episode of Let's Have This Conversation, I sit down with Alex Langan, ERISA attorney, Chief Investment Officer, author of the #1 bestselling book 401(k) Exposed, and founder of Langan Financial Group. Alex has built a reputation for challenging conventional wisdom surrounding employer-sponsored retirement plans. After serving as a Pennsylvania Supreme Court clerk and practicing ERISA law, he discovered what he believes is one of the most overlooked issues in corporate America: many employers unknowingly expose themselves to legal and fiduciary risks through the administration of their 401(k) plans. During our conversation, Alex explains why retirement plan providers may not always have incentives aligned with employers and employees, the fiduciary responsibilities many business owners and HR professionals inherit without formal training, and the steps organizations can take to better protect both themselves and their workforce. We also discuss: • Why retirement plans remain one of the most important employee benefits organizations offer • Common misconceptions employers have about fiduciary responsibility • The hidden costs and risks embedded in many 401(k) plans • How employees can become more informed retirement savers • What business owners, CFOs, and HR leaders should be asking their retirement plan providers • Why transparency and education are critical to improving retirement outcomes Alex also shares the philosophy behind Langan Financial Group, an independent financial planning firm focused on personalized guidance rather than product sales or quotas. Their approach centers on understanding each client's goals, challenges, and long-term financial objectives while delivering customized financial planning solutions supported by a dedicated team. Whether you're an HR professional, business owner, executive, or employee participating in a workplace retirement plan, this conversation offers valuable insights into a system that affects millions of Americans every day. For more information: https://langanfinancialgroup.com/ Email: alex@langanfinancial.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What does it actually mean to be a "safe" carrier in today's freight market? In this episode, Craig Fuller sits down with transportation attorney Matt Leffler to discuss the growing legal risks facing brokers, carriers, and shippers as negligent selection lawsuits continue to reshape the industry. They break down the real-world impact of nuclear verdicts, the legal standards brokers are being held to, and why recent court decisions are forcing transportation companies to rethink carrier vetting, compliance, and risk management. Whether you're a broker, carrier, shipper, transportation executive, or industry professional, this conversation offers a clear look at the legal realities shaping freight today. Subscribe for more conversations on freight, logistics, transportation, supply chain, and the business of moving America. Follow the Freight Expectations Podcast Other FreightWaves Shows Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Send us Fan MailThis week on Thursdays with Wayne & Steve, the guys dive into one of the least glamorous—but most important—aspects of operating commercial swimming pools: documentation, compliance, and dealing with health inspectors. What starts as Steve covering pools while his service manager attends a college graduation quickly turns into a discussion about inaccurate logbooks, misunderstood regulations, and the real-world consequences of bad record keeping. Steve shares a surprising encounter involving a health inspector allegedly advising a technician to record “ideal” water chemistry values instead of actual test results. The conversation explores why accurate reporting is essential, why documenting corrective actions matters just as much as recording test results, and how falsified records can create serious liability issues for operators and service companies alike. Wayne and Steve discuss the reality that not all health inspectors interpret regulations the same way. Drawing from decades of experience, they explain why building strong relationships with local health departments is critical and why operators should remain present during inspections whenever possible. The hosts also examine situations where inspectors have provided conflicting information and discuss the importance of understanding the actual code rather than relying solely on verbal guidance. The conversation expands into the growing controversy surrounding Swimply and other pool-sharing platforms. As more homeowners rent their pools to the public, some states are beginning to classify those facilities as commercial pools. Wayne and Steve break down what that means from a regulatory standpoint and discuss the additional requirements, safety equipment, signage, inspections, and liability concerns that could accompany such a classification. Woof Woof: The Insurance InterludeIn this week's insurance segment, Steve is joined by Pat Grignol of the California Pool Association to tackle an unusual situation involving dog daycare facilities operating swimming pools for canine recreation and swim programs. The discussion explores insurance implications, bonding and grounding concerns, installation versus service liability, and the many questions pool professionals should ask before agreeing to maintain unconventional aquatic facilities. Pat offers practical guidance on how service companies can protect themselves, including recommendations regarding pool installation responsibilities, contractual protections, and the importance of ensuring proper insurance coverage when servicing specialty facilities. The conversation highlights just how quickly liability can escalate when commercial activities involve animals, customers, and water. Also Discussed in This Episode Why cyanuric acid deserves more frequent testing than many operators realize Commercial pool logbooks and legal documentation requirements The difference between recording readings and recording corrections Common inspection issues involving depth markers, handrails, and safety equipment Why health inspectors often interpret regulations differently Appealing questionable inspection findings The shortage of health inspectors in many jurisdictions Commercial pool requirements triggered by pool rental services Insurance concerns for specialty pools and animal recreation facilities Why communication with manufacturers can sometimes be as valuable as consulting regulators The importance of education and continuing training for inspectors and operators alike Sponsored By LaMotte Company Council for the Model Aquatic Health Code (CMAHC) BlueRay XL Aqua Comfort Water Group Revved Up Apparel Key TakeawayA pool logbook isn't just paperwork. It's a legal document, an operational record, and often your first line of defense when questions arise. Whether you're dealing with health inspections, commercial pool regulations, Swimply rentals, or even doggy daycare pools, accurate reporting and a solid understanding of the rules can make the difference between smooth operations and major headaches.
The episode examines a structural shift in the MSP business model driven by the introduction of AI-linked consumption-based pricing layered on top of traditional per-seat fees. This emerging mechanism, typified by Microsoft's E7 license, adds variable AI consumption charges to otherwise predictable monthly service costs. Vendors are restructuring partner payment models, with Microsoft's move closely watched by others, signaling a wider potential for volatility in the recurring revenue foundations of MSPs, according to analysis from Jay McBain and recent channel data. The most consequential development is Microsoft's E7 pricing, which explicitly adds an AI consumption cost to the standard per-seat license. This move introduces variability at “machine speed,” in contrast to previous examples such as cloud storage, where consumption remains predominantly human-driven and thus more predictable. Analysts note that similar micro-consumption models—charging per conversation, process, or API call—are being adopted by hundreds of companies. Market data from Omnia and referenced industry research places the global IT spend at $6 trillion in 2026, with two-thirds delivered by channel partners and a rapid shift from fixed, subscription models toward micro-consumption billed at a granular, usage-based level. Supporting evidence includes the lack of sufficient vendor-provided controls for variable consumption, leaving MSPs exposed to unplanned cost spikes. While large enterprises are introducing robust FinOps practices and loading up cloud credits, smaller MSPs serving SMB customers are not prepared with similar governance structures. There is also vendor-led encouragement for AI adoption—such as persistent in-app assistants—that drive up consumption before adequate controls or cost-passing mechanisms are established. The sustainability of current pricing models is further questioned by the fact that providers like OpenAI and Anthropic are themselves subsidizing significant portions of token usage, distorting true costs throughout the value chain. For MSPs and IT service leaders, these developments mean greater exposure to unpredictable costs, potential margin pressures, and increased contractual risk tied to AI consumption. Operators cannot rely on vendors to provide spend caps or consumption governance today; failure to build internal controls or pass-through mechanisms may result in absorbing unpaid liabilities. Accountability for AI-driven actions, remediation, and configuration changes will rest with the MSP, elevating both operational complexity and liability exposure. The current environment requires building governance, audit trails, and spend management capabilities now, ahead of broader market adoption of AI consumption models. Supported by: CometBackup
Smart Agency Masterclass with Jason Swenk: Podcast for Digital Marketing Agencies
Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Are you treating your podcast as one more thing on an already impossible schedule? Are you running a sales process that creates friction at every step when the alternative has been sitting right in front of you? Today's featured guest has been podcasting for over 11 years and nearly 1,800 episodes. In this conversation, he'll make the case that a podcast, run correctly, removes the sales cycle almost entirely. He also has a lot to say about what it took to step back from working 100-hour weeks in an entertainment agency and into a business that earns a healthy six-figure income on 15 hours a week. Doug Sandler is the founder of Turnkey Podcast Productions, a podcast production agency, and the host of The Nice Guys on Business, a show he has been running for over 11 years and nearly 1,800 episodes with more than 6 million downloads. Before podcasting, Doug spent 30 years as a Bar Mitzvah MC and entertainment agency owner, running an operation that handled between 700 and 900 events per year. He also wrote the book Nice Guys Finish First, which became the original vehicle for the podcast. Nowadays, he works roughly 15 hours a week and spends the rest of his time restoring classic cars and trucks. In this episode, we'll discuss: A podcast as a hub of the business The decision to stop being the founder who works 80-hour weeks Removing the friction from the sale Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio Sponsors and Resources E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service. The Podcast as a Sales Tool, Not a Content Schedule Agency owners who consider starting a podcast tend to frame it as a content commitment: another thing to produce, another distribution channel to manage, another task to fall behind on. Doug's framing is different. He calls the podcast the hub of the business, not a spoke. Marketing, lead generation, business development, sales, and relationship building are all running through the same conversation. Instead of adding to those functions, the podcast replaces most of the friction those functions create. The mechanics of how he uses it to sell without selling are worth understanding in detail. Doug does not cold pitch podcast production services. He reaches out to a prospect, says he hosts a show and likes their message, and asks if they would come on. The answer is nearly always yes. The interview becomes a 30 to 45 minute relationship-building session. By the end of it, he knows whether they are a fit, they know who he is and what he does, and the question "have you ever considered podcasting as a marketing tool?" lands entirely differently than it would in a cold email. The wall that normally exists between a prospect and a vendor does not go up because the conversation never started as a sales call. What 15 Hours a Week Actually Requires Doug works 15 hours a week and earns a healthy six-figure income. That sentence tends to provoke two reactions: skepticism and envy. The skepticism usually comes from founders who have not yet identified what their zone of genius actually is, or who have identified it but have not yet hired out everything around it. Doug is direct about what made the shift possible: he stopped doing anything that did not require his specific capability and hired for everything else, including before he could comfortably afford it. The operations manager hire at Turnkey came when it was just Doug and one other person. They were paying her $40,000 a year before either founder was drawing a paycheck. That decision was possible because Doug had kept his entertainment agency running in parallel and was not dependent on the production company income yet. The broader principle holds regardless of the specific situation: the sooner a founder identifies what they should stop doing and puts someone qualified in that seat, the faster the business grows and the less the founder has to be inside it to make that happen. The Decision to Stop Being the Founder Who Misses the Kids' Doug spent 30 years working weekends as an entertainment agency owner. His children grew up with a father who was almost always working during the exact hours when they were doing the things that mattered. This was a wake-up call. The shift he made when he launched Turnkey was not about working less for its own sake. It was about not repeating the same trade-off. Revenue is not the thing you look back on. Some founders who tell themselves they are working hard now so they can be present later. We know how that story usually ends. The agency gets bigger, the demands grow with it, and the window closes before anyone decides to actually make the change. The structural path out of that loop is a hiring decision, a zone-of-genius identification, and a willingness to pay for someone to take the work you should not be doing before you feel financially ready to do it. Live on Air: What Real Sales Confidence Looks Like Mid-interview, Doug openly asked about the possibility to explore what a partnership with his podcast production company could look like. He narrates the logic as he does it: not asking means leaving a potential opportunity on the table simply because it feels awkward. Asking directly, transparently, and without pressure is not pitching. It is just an honest question between two people who have been talking for 30 minutes and have clearly established that they like and respect each other. The lesson Doug draws from it is about what podcasting actually trains you to do. Every interview is a pre-qualified sales conversation with someone who already said yes to spending time with you. By the time the recording ends, the trust is built and the friction is gone. Asking whether there is an opportunity is the natural last step, not a hard close. That is a fundamentally different sales experience than any cold outreach can create, and it compounds across every episode, every guest, and every listener who has been tuning in long enough to already want to work with you before they ever reach out. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.
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