Podcasts about LMS

Send us a textKathleen Lord shares a rare blend of personal grit and professional insight in this dynamic episode recorded live at Pax8 Beyond 2025. From her early passion for equestrian sports to her executive leadership at Zensai, we explore how personal connection, smart systems, and human-centric tech drive real change.Kathleen dives into the realities of horse training, animal instincts, and performance ethics before pivoting into Zensai's mission: helping MSPs deliver post-sale value with ease. Her team's LMS, deeply integrated with Microsoft Teams, offers an elegant solution to a messy problem — keeping end-users engaged and trained without draining MSP resources.We also unpack how AI is reshaping sales funnels and why human connection still matters most — whether in the saddle or the boardroom. 

I always enjoy having the opportunity to speak with business professionals and leaders. Fidel Guzman not only is such a professional, but he also works in the corporate training arena teaching his company's employees and leaders about leadership and continuous improvement. Fidel comes by his talents honestly. He grew up in an environment where he needed to learn and grow. He secured a Bachelor's degree and an MBA both from Northeastern Illinois University where he graduated Summa Cum Laude. Fidel started out wanting to be a kindergarten teacher, but he ended up taking a different road. He went to work for a company where he helped people progress within various industries. The company he worked for was bought by ION Group in Chicago, IL. Fidel flourished and became the Manager of Internal Training for the company. Mr. Guzman is quite adaptable and can train people within the organization even though they may well have their own expertise in different industries. Fidel and I talk about everything from leadership, the future of corporate training and we even take time to explore how AI is and will become more a part of his work and the work we all do. When not working Fidel has various outside activities. His most loved efforts go, of course, into being part of a family. He also serves as Vice President of Education for Toastmasters International. He loves to be involved in Mixed Martial Arts. He keeps quite busy at a variety of activities and clearly loves the challenges he gets to address along the way. About the Guest: Fidel Guzman is a dynamic and enthusiastic Learning & Develoment professional with a proven track record in instructional design, project management, and training development. With a Master of Business Administration from Northeastern Illinois University, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude, Fidel has consistently demonstrated his commitment to excellence and continuous improvement. His extensive experience spans various industries, including finance, telecommunications, and fitness, showcasing his versatility and adaptability. Currently serving as the Manager of Internal Training at ION Group in Chicago, IL. Fidel and his small but mighty team facilitate onboarding programs and training initiatives for over 13,000 employees globally. He has experience developing comprehensive new hire onboarding curricula and career progression pathways for multiple departments, ensuring effective and innovative learning solutions. Fidel's leadership extends beyond his professional role, as he actively participates in numerous company committees focused on community volunteer events, work-life balance education, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Fidel's passion for personal and professional development is evident in his certifications, including “Creating a Coaching Culture” from SHRM and “Coaching Skills for Leaders and Managers” from PMI. Fluent in both Spanish and English, he leverages his bilingual skills to connect with a diverse audience. Outside of his professional endeavors, Fidel enjoys podcasting, judo, triathlons, hiking, and poetry, reflecting his well-rounded and adventurous spirit. In addition to his professional achievements, Fidel has a strong commitment to volunteerism and community involvement. He is serving as the Vice President of Education for Toastmasters International and has been an MMA class instructor and coordinator at St. Bruno Elementary. His dedication to helping others is further demonstrated through his role as an academic tutor at Berwyn Public Library. Ways to connect with Fidel: (1) Fidel Guzman, MBA | LinkedIn New Podcast- The Hero in the Mirror on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/44xD76FcF5YFMNyuigFmBm?si=2so3OWJdQby6F91ZaY1AUg The Hero in the Mirror also on Youtube: (3) HerointheMirror - YouTube About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Greetings, everyone. I am Michael Hingson, and you are listening to unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet, and today we get to do the unexpected. And of course, what the unexpected is is anything that doesn't have anything to do with inclusion or diversity. So that's most things you know, in a lot of ways. Anyway, our guest today is Fidel, and am I pronouncing it right? Guzman, yes, you got it. Oh, my goodness. Comes from listening to Guzman's who play baseball. Okay, I'll take that. That's a way. So Fidel reached out to me some time ago. We're going to be doing some speaking to his company ion. But in the meanwhile, I also convinced him that he had to come on unstoppable mindset and talk with us, tell us about himself, tell us a lot about what he does and why he does it, and help to contribute to our general theme, which is that we're all more unstoppable than we think we are, and we usually underrate ourselves. So we we try to improve by discovering that more people are unstoppable than we think they are, and that we thought they were. So that works out. Well, Fidel has a degree in business. He has a Masters of Business Administration. You graduated sigma cum laude, which is pretty cool. And I did cum laude, but I didn't get to do sigma or Magna, but that's okay, but that's okay anyway. Fidel, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here.   Fidel Guzman ** 02:56 Michael, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.   Michael Hingson ** 03:00 Well, my pleasure, and I'm looking forward to to chatting and talking about some businessy things and anything else that you want to talk about. So let's start this way. It's always fun to do this. Why don't we start by you telling us kind of, maybe, about the early Fidel growing up and some of that stuff, and what got you started down the road of life as it were.   Fidel Guzman ** 03:20 Yeah, yeah, that's all right, yeah, let's let's go back. Let's go back to where it all started,   Michael Hingson ** 03:25 long time ago,   Fidel Guzman ** 03:30 definitely. So I'm born and raised in Los Angeles, Compton, Huntington Park area. I come from Mexican parents. They they they came here to the United States to give their their family a better future. Some first generation Mexican American, very proud. So actually, we do have a little diversity in here on this call. Oh, good. There we go. Yeah. So first generation Mexican American, my family traveled a lot when I was young. My dad's a truck driver, so wherever there was work, he would take us along. So we grew up and raised Los Angeles. I was seven or eight, then we ended up going to Mexico for a couple years, in Dallas, then St Louis, and then we ended up here in Chicago, here in the Midwest. Wow. Winter, the winters here were a bit surprising and tough. When I was in elementary school, I remember the first snow that I saw. It was, it was beautiful. After two weeks, I was like, All right, when is it? When is it gonna go away? And I was in for the the rude awakening that it's gonna it's gonna stick around for, for a few months or so, yeah, but I've had, you know, since then here, here in Chicago, we started to grow our roots. And I have five brothers and a sister. So I have a big family, a big Hispanic family, and I went to high school. My freshman year, I went to Lane Tech. Tech for all my folks who are familiar with the Chicagoland area. And then I ended up going to transferring over to Morton West in Berwyn. After I graduated high school, I went to Northeastern Illinois University, my alma mater, I got my undergrad in business management and marketing, and also got my Masters in Business Administration. So I am a proud double alumni from Northeastern Illinois University, and I really owe this, this community of Northeastern Illinois University, a lot with respect to the great teachers that they have there, the community that they try to build, and the friends and that I made along the way, as well as the education, of course, that helped, really helped me expand my career opportunities. After I graduated from Northeastern Illinois University with my undergrad, I started my first real corporate role inside of backstop solutions. And backstop solutions was a still, you know, it was a great company to be a part of lots of mentors. If I can, actually, I would like to give a quick shout out to a few mentors that I had along the way, such as Deanne Falk, Richard fu our CEO, our legacy CEO, Clint Coghill, Sarah Schroeder, and the current head of learning and development under ion. Alexander Lloyd and I really want to thank them for all their mentorship and leadership, because it's really helped me get and grow to the person that I am today. So with that, yeah, I am the manager of internal training at ion. We came I came in via an acquisition, when backstop was acquired, and throughout that period, like I was, I had some some free time, so to say, and ended up getting my Masters in Business Administration.   Michael Hingson ** 06:48 And so along the way, did you get yourself married and all that? Oh, my   Fidel Guzman ** 06:52 wife is going to kill me. Yes. Along the way, sorry about that. No, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah. Can't forget, can't forget about those significant others. But yes, I am married. My wife has a master's in occupational therapy, so she's in the medical field, and I'm in, like, the business learning and development side of things, so our conversations are pretty interesting, as well as our perspectives on things. I also have a daughter. She's 16, going on 17 people are usually very surprised when I tell them the age of my daughter, but had her early when I was in my early 20s, so young dad and she was a blessing. I wouldn't, wouldn't have it any other way.   Michael Hingson ** 07:33 That's that is great. Why did you decide to go into business and study business in college.   Fidel Guzman ** 07:42 So interestingly enough, when I got into college, I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. I wanted to be cool Mr. Guzman, because I also really I love kids. I love working with kids. I was also a mixed martial arts program coordinator and instructor at an elementary school on the south side of Chicago for three years, and that was during my undergrad. And I taught all grades kindergarten through eighth grade, some of the basics in boxing, wrestling, jiu jitsu and kickboxing, so a bit of both. But as I was going through through my clinicals, as I was going through the the Yeah, the education aspect of it, I ended up wanting to switch majors. So I was like, I was like, hey, there's probably a lot more opportunity, a lot more opportunity for growth inside of the business segment. So I ended up switching my majors to business management, marketing, and somehow learning just found its way back into my life. So a lot of the stuff that I learned from some of those, those preliminary courses in in education. I mean, still, still resonate to this day, right? Understand your audience. Understand which students are visual learners, which ones are experiential learners. Which one need more repetitive exercise to to drill something in? So, yeah, the universe did not, did not lead me too far away from, from from teaching and being an instructor, and here I am. I know   Michael Hingson ** 09:08 that feeling well. So a couple things. First of all, I was born in Chicago, but we moved to California when I was five, but in Chicago, you start kindergarten at the age of four. So I went for a year to a special kindergarten class that my parents and others advocated for, for premature, blind kids, because there were a whole bunch in the Chicago area during the whole baby boomer area, a number of children were born prematurely and given a pure oxygen environment, which caused them to lose their eyesight. And so the bottom line is that happened to me among others. And so I went to the Perry school. I don't even know if it's around anymore. Somebody told me it wasn't around anymore, but that's where I went to school. And went there for a year of kindergarten, learned braille and other things. And then we moved to California. So I always wanted to be a teacher as well, and I came at teaching from a different standpoint, as you did. That is to say, Well, I wanted to be a teacher. My first job out of college wasn't directly teaching, except I ended up having to write training materials and do other things like that, and then I ended up going into sales, and what I learned is that the best sales people are really teachers. They're counselors. They guide and they help people, especially when you're dealing with major account sales, they help people look at products. They teach about what their product does and the really good sales people are brave enough to admit when their product might not be the best fit for someone, because it's also all about building trust. And good teachers are concerned about building trust as well. Of course.   Fidel Guzman ** 10:57 Yeah, one of my teachers when I was close to graduating, you know, one of the things that you know this teacher, Dr funk, if I remember correctly, he instilled in us, if you're able to synthesize what you learned and explain it to a five year old, you've done a good job. Like you, you you yourself understand that particular concept or that particular topic. And I really took that to heart. So now, you know, and a lot of these roles, if, from the the main instructor, I want and need to be able to explain it, you know, to my kid, to explain it in in simple terms. And, of course, you know, expand on it if needed. But, but   Michael Hingson ** 11:40 it ultimately comes down to you can provide all the information you want, but they have to teach themselves, really, and they're not going to do that, and they're not going to listen to you if they don't trust you. So trust is a vital part of what we do,   Fidel Guzman ** 11:56 exactly spot on,   Michael Hingson ** 11:58 and I have found that that developing that trust is so extremely important. I learned a lot about trust from working with guide dogs, right from the very first guide dog that I obtained back in 1964 when I was 14. It was all about building a team and I and although I didn't know how to really externally, say it necessarily, until many years later, internally, I understood that my job was to build a relationship and that I was going to be the team leader, and needed to be able to gain trust, as well as trust my teammate in in what we did. So worked out pretty well, though. So, you know, I was that was pretty cool. So what does ion do? What is ion?   Fidel Guzman ** 12:49 Yeah, I yeah for sure. So ion is a essentially, you can, you can think of it as a software company for the investment community. We provide a number of different platforms for them to streamline their processes and track information, or be end users of that of data.   Michael Hingson ** 13:07 So people buy your software and do what   Fidel Guzman ** 13:11 they can either leverage the data that's being provided to them, or they can include data within specific platforms.   Michael Hingson ** 13:20 Are you starting to see that this whole concept of so called AI is valuable in what you do, or, as I am working with that yet,   Fidel Guzman ** 13:30 yes, definitely, we are big on streamlining processes and making sure that we're maximizing the best use of everyone's time, and AI really has a really important component in that. So for for learning and development, one of the ways that we're using AI is for content creation, so whether it's just creating a simple outline for a course or starting to use that to create slides, but there, we're also taking a look at the way AI can be used on a regular basis to provide feedback for reps like let's say someone finishes a demo. If they want to do some self reflection, they can leverage AI to get some feedback on what worked well what didn't. Was there enough engagement? How was my use of technology, so on and so forth. So not only is AI being used from, you know, creating content, but also as, like a ad hoc instructor and and way to generate feedback,   Michael Hingson ** 14:31 well, and it offers so much versatility, you can really have it go many different ways. So it is very possible it can be an instructor, as you say, an ad hoc instructor, but it really can present its information in a good teaching way too. So you can have conversations with it. You can do the same sorts of things that you would do with a teacher. I think that AI clearly, is here to stay, but I think. Think over time, AI is going to evolve a lot. I am not of the opinion that AI will replace people for a variety of reasons, but I think that it's here and it's up to us to be smart as to how we use it.   Fidel Guzman ** 15:14 Definitely. I think one of the the tips that we always give people is AI does a really great job of a number of different things, but it's always going to need that human touch at the end of at the end of the day. So don't just take don't just take some content that AI has created and take it to heart. Make sure to review it. Make sure to put that personal touch on there and have it speak your language. Have it really resonate with the audience as well, especially that, oh, go ahead. Or also just on Super mechanical, super scripted,   Michael Hingson ** 15:49 well, and I think as AI grows, it's going to try to emulate, or we're going to use it to try to emulate people more and more, but it still isn't going to get to the point where it truly is me or you, and we do have to put our mark on it. I've used it to help create several articles, and what I've done when I do that is I'll tell it what I want it to write about, and let it do it, and it comes up with some pretty good ideas that I incorporate into the article, that I create, between what it provides and what I add to the mix. And it really should be that way. Exactly what I've really found interesting is the number of people like in classrooms, who say teachers, who say, you know, it's really harder and harder and harder to tell when a student uses AI to write a paper or if the student is doing it themselves. And the first time I heard that, immediately, my idea of what to do was something like this, let the student use AI if they want to, let the have ai do the whole paper. What you ought to do is to have one day after all the students turn their papers in, where you bring each student up to the front of the class and say, defend your paper. Now you have one minute if they don't really know, yeah. I mean, if they don't know what's going on, then they're not going to be able to do very well, and they fail.   Fidel Guzman ** 17:19 Yes, I am a big proponent of comprehensive exercises and also public speaking. How well? How well can you articulate the thought that you gave in that paper? Right? Some of those different talking points, right? Can you convey the same message in front of the classroom?   Michael Hingson ** 17:38 Yeah, and, and, you can tell if a person is just not necessarily a great public speaker, they're nervous, as opposed to whether they know the subject. And those, in a sense, are two different things. But you can use the fact that students are at the front of the classroom to help make them better speakers, too, which is a good thing.   Fidel Guzman ** 17:59 Yeah, no, yeah. I agree with you. If they are using AI, just, you know, turn around a paper, have them present in front of the classroom. Yeah, let's, let's talk a bit more about your paper, yeah, and, and really have it be an interactive exercise. I think that's really where the end goal is going to be, now that AI has really taken over the way the classroom dynamic has changed. So having more of those interactive exercises, really taking a look at comprehension, whether somebody really understands that topic, and giving giving students and an audience an opportunity to discuss, how do we how do we create a hive mind mentality around this particular topic, especially in a classroom, right whether, whether that's in a school setting, in academia, or whether that's in a corporate setting, inside of an office.   Michael Hingson ** 18:54 Several months ago, we had a guest on unstoppable mindset, who's an executive leadership coach in Northern California who was a major proponent of AI. And when he worked with companies, and especially with presidents and leaders who were stuck on how we evolve and how we grow, he would bring AI into all those meetings, and one day he was dealing with one such situation where he told the president, you got to use you ought to use AI to get some great ideas. The President took that to heart, called his senior leadership staff in and said, take the rest of this day and create ideas about how you think we ought to do things better, and so on, and use AI to do it. And when everyone came in the next day, they had a lot of innovative and creative ideas, and all loved the fact that he encouraged them to use AI. And that led to. Us having a discussion about, is AI going to really take over the jobs that people do? And both of us agreed, no, AI won't. Ai can't replace anyone. We can fire somebody and then put AI in their place, which doesn't really work well. But what is a better thing is let ai do what it does well. So example that he gave was say, you have autonomous vehicles. As autonomous vehicles become more and more prevalent, like trucks that are delivering supplies, like shipping vehicles and so on, let the autonomous vehicle drive, but the driver needs to still be in the cabin and needs to be behind the wheel, even though they're not doing anything, because they are going to let the autonomous vehicle do what it can do. But you can give those people other assignments to do for the company that will keep them busy and do things that otherwise might not be done quite as efficiently. So the bottom line is, you keep people busy, you use the autonomous vehicle, and it's a win win situation all the way around.   Fidel Guzman ** 21:08 Yeah, great. I I've heard something very similar to that, and maybe if I can, if I can synthesize this, it's going to be that we want to remove manual task out of people's times, and we want them to focus on more higher value add activities. Do   Michael Hingson ** 21:29 you think that's fair? I think that's true. Isaac Asimov, years ago, the science fiction writer, wrote a really wonderful science fiction story about a young man who lived in a society where everyone had a particular job to do, and you were matched with your talents. And so there you you're you take a test when you're, like, eight years old and or or even younger, and that starts you down the road of what it is you're supposed to do for the whole country. And then you take another test several years later, and that locks you into what you're trained to do. So you always do the same task, but you do it well, because that's what you're trained to do. Well, this kid was in the whole process taking his tests, and he just wasn't comfortable with what was going on. And eventually he ran away. And what, you know, he he took the last test, apparently they looked at him kind of funny when they looked at the results and he didn't like what was going on. And he just left. He said, I'm not going to do this. I don't, I don't. I don't want to be an engineer. I don't want to do whatever it is that they want. And they eventually caught up with him, and they caught him, and they said, Why'd you run away? And he told them, and then said, No, you don't understand what just happened. Some people in society are the people who create the tests, create the processes, and don't get trained to do a specific thing, because they're the innovators and the inventors that keep society going, and you're one of those kids, and this was like, what, 50 years ago that he wrote that? So it's, it is, it is really interesting, but, but very true and, and the reality is, we can be as creative as we choose to be, and some people are more creative than others, but there are always tasks that we can find for anyone to do, and that will make them very happy,   23:40 absolutely, definitely.   Michael Hingson ** 23:42 So it works out. You know, it does work out really well. Well, a question for you. You have a leadership philosophy, needless to say, and you lead a lot in instructional design, what, what are the core principles, or what are the things that kind of make up how you teach leadership, and what it is that you teach people to do, and how do you go about team development?   Fidel Guzman ** 24:13 Yeah, I think some of the core principles that I that I really focus on with learning and development and instructional design. Number one, it has to be collaboration. It really does take a community to put some some really good training sessions and training opportunities in place, and it's really leveraging all the expertise from different subject matter experts. Give them a chance to share their perspectives and their insights on certain things, but also, really, just to enhance, you know, the the use of these training programs, because people are more keen to listen to like, oh yeah, this guy's a subject matter he's an expert in this particular. Their space and for them to to hop on. So I think that collaboration aspect is, you know, getting the Lean In from managers like, hey, this training is important. Your employees are going to benefit from this training, whether it's just for to develop their their education, to develop their career, whatever that may look like. But I want to say one of the, the first guiding principles is going to have to be collaboration. The second one is going to have to be most likely continuous improvement. As we start to roll out a lot of these different training sessions, whether it's public speaking, whether it's product training, whether it's industry training, if we roll it out, we keep our ear to the ground and make sure that we're receptive to the feedback. We take a look at what works well, what doesn't work well, what needs to be tailored. How can we, how can we also manage this across different time zones? So ion is super global company, I want to say, over 13,000 employees in over 13 plus countries. So also managing what those training programs look like for everyone, for everyone, across the board. So besides the collaboration, besides the continuous improvements or the I like to also say that the Kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen, right, making those small improvements, the last one I want to say is going to be innovation. How can we incorporate, right? We were talking about AI. How can we incorporate some of these ladies, latest tech trends into what our training delivery looks like, whether it's something as simple as, how do we include more polls throughout a lecture to keep people engaged and participate? How do we include knowledge checks at the end of every session to make sure that people are walking away with some of the key takeaways. So, yeah, collaboration, continuous improvement and innovation. Yeah, how do we stay innovative and stay creative? I think having having some fun, staying creative along the way Definitely, definitely resonates with your audience as you're trying to do different things and trying to keep things as engaging and and fun as possible.   Michael Hingson ** 27:06 What do you say to someone who says, Look, I've really learned all I need to learn. I'm not really interested in learning anything new. That is, I know, isn't that? Yeah, but you hear it a lot, I'm sure, or too much. I   Fidel Guzman ** 27:22 think some people get comfortable right, like, Hey, I'm comfortable with what I know. And learning does require a certain level of mental energy, and it also requires a certain level of you being willing to take on a new challenge, to take on and learn something new. So to them, I would genuinely ask, what's your interest? How can we supplement what this interest looks like? You know, what are your interests in other avenues? And I think that will plant a seed to let them know that learning and development should be something learning, right? Just learning in general, it should be something that you should do throughout your life. I recently started a podcast called the hero in the mirror, and I wanted to take a moment and actually, thank you, Michael. I don't know if you remember our initial conversation. But we were talking, we were talking about, you had asked me, What ideas do you have? What are you working on? Are you working on, any books, any podcasts? And I had mentioned, I was like, Hey, I actually have an idea for a podcast. And you pause for a moment, and you were like, what's stopping it? Yeah, and it was, it was kind of like, it kind of took me back. I'm like, What? What is stopping me? Right? And sometimes, and in coaching, we call it interference, like you're you probably have a fear of failure. You have a fear that something's not going to go right, or this task seems enormous, that you don't know where to start. Yeah, so making small, small mental changes, making small steps, I think, definitely add up. Since then, Michael, I've had I've had three episodes. I've had some great guests hop on and share their story of resilience and triumph. And as I'm starting to do more episodes, I'm I'm hearing stories of people willing to have that, that mindset of, I want to continue to learn, I want to continue to expand on the person that I am and make myself well rounded in these different, different areas. So So, long story short, if somebody says I don't, I don't need to learn anything, there's always room for growth. There's always room for interest, what, what interests you, and how? And how can we follow that interest and and supplement it with some some training content.   Michael Hingson ** 29:49 I know, for me, I'm extremely comfortable with what I know, and I'm extremely comfortable with what I've learned, but I'm also very uncomfortable in knowing there's a lot of stuff I don't know and that i. Still need to learn. So I love to learn right from the very beginning, when I first discovered the internet, I regarded it and still do, no matter what there is with the dark web and everything else, I think the internet is a treasure trove of information, and it's so fun to discover new things online. And there's so many ways to go. We've got so many places where we can go get books that we never had access to before all of us. There's so many places where we can go to learn about organizations, about people. They're just so many wonderful things, and it's only one way, because I also think there is a lot to be said for real personal interactions, but I think the internet is a wonderful treasure trove that gives us the opportunity to learn a whole lot that we don't necessarily know about, subjects that we don't know anything about.   Fidel Guzman ** 30:55 The Internet is a double sided sword. It is. You can find information that will support right? Maybe you know an opinion that you have on the other side of that, you can find lots of information that does not support independent opinion that you have. And also it's a rabbit hole. Soon as you start going out that rabbit hole. But the one thing I do appreciate from the internet is the channels of communication that it's built. Yeah, and I'm appreciative of being able to have connected with you on LinkedIn, and that's turned out to us having this podcast here today.   Michael Hingson ** 31:34 I think that for me, I'm not as interested on going online and in finding something to change an opinion as much as I am finding something that will tell me about something that I didn't know as much about. Now I might change my opinion from what I thought it might be, but I I really love to try to really get as much as possible into dealing with facts or substance to teach me things, and then I'll form my own opinion from that. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. Of course,   Fidel Guzman ** 32:11 gets a good grounding of all the all the materials, synthesize it yourself.   Michael Hingson ** 32:19 Yeah, I think we should do that. I think we have to be the one to synthesize whatever it is we're dealing with. That's That's our responsibility, and that should always be the way it is, which is, and I don't want to get political or anything, but which is one of the reasons that I say any politician who says, Trust me will be the first person I won't trust until I verify. I am a firm believer in trust, but verify. I don't care who it is. I think it's so important that we really take the time every single person needs to take the time to study what's going on, and and, and really look at all sides of something. I think that's important. I listen to newscasts regularly, and I like to listen to newscasts from all sides. Some I find why I don't want to listen to them very much, because of what they do or don't do, but I still think that it's important to really understand all sides of a subject.   Fidel Guzman ** 33:29 Absolutely, I totally agree with you.   Michael Hingson ** 33:32 So you know, I think it is kind of neat to to have that opportunity, and I think we learn so much when we take the time to really study. I'm amazed. I was at a restaurant once, and my wife and I were there. We were talking about newspapers and what we get from newspapers or online, and our waitress came up and Karen said, so do you read the newspaper? And this woman's 30 years old, and she says, No, I don't. I don't have time, you know. And how little she learns, because she doesn't really seek information, which is too bad.   Fidel Guzman ** 34:07 Yep, you people have to be receptive. People have to be receptive to to gaining new bits of information. And sometimes people are just happy knowing like you, like you mentioned earlier, just happy knowing what they're what they know, just comfortable in in their own space, until some more power to that, more more power to them, more power to them,   Michael Hingson ** 34:31 until something happens to disrupt the happiness and surprises them, because they really didn't learn enough to know that that was a possibility. Yep, I never thought I would be doing a podcast, but when the pandemic occurred, I started to learn about it, and learned all the value of it. Now, I had been at our campus radio station at UC Irvine for six years, and I was program director one year, so I understood radio, and when I started learning about podcasts. They went, this is really pretty cool, and I had never thought about it, and had never been interviewed on a podcast, but I realized I know what I can can do with this, and I know that I can sound intelligent on the air. And so I started to learn about it, and here we are now, just today, actually, we published online and in YouTube episode 324 of unstoppable mindset since August of 2021 Congratulations, Michael. Well, thank you. It's a lot of fun. We actually went to two episodes a week in August of 2022 Oh, wow, because we had such a huge backlog. Yeah, and I don't mind having a huge backlog, but it was growing way too much. So we went to two episodes a week, and and it's a lot of fun to to do it. And as and as I love to tell people, for me, the most important thing is I get to learn from every single person who comes on the podcast. It's so neat to be able to do that, of course. So it works out really well. Well for you, what kind of challenges have you faced? What have you done to overcome challenges, and what are some of the biggest challenges you faced, and how you did you deal with them?   Fidel Guzman ** 36:17 Okay, yeah, that's great. That's some of the questions I use on on my podcast, here in the mirror. So I'm on the I'm on the other side of that chair today. Yes, no, it's good. It's good. It's a good question. So I want to say, you know, there are, there are three main, three main challenges that really stand out for me. One I'm very vocal about, and that is my speech impediment, my stuttering problem. It was really bad when I was little kid. I had a speech pathologist. Even now, talking to you on this podcast, I have to be very conscious with what I'm saying. Some of the listeners might might have caught it in the beginning when I get too excited about a particular topic, or if I haven't formulated my thought yet, but the speech impediments is something that has really made public speaking a passion for me. It was hard for me to have a voice when I was a little kid, I used to try to raise my hand and answer a question when I was in elementary school, and the teacher would be like, All right, next one like you had, you had your turn. And so I, you know, I've struggled, you know, to have a voice. I struggled with just completing sentences, and the way that I overcame that is through a speech pathologist that really gave me the confidence to believe in myself. I remember one exercise she gave me one day is she grabbed me from my classroom. She would pick me up from my classroom every Tuesday and Thursday, and she picked me up one day, and I was kind of down in the dumps. I didn't really like going to the class. We weren't really advancing much. And she's like, Hey, we're going to try something different tonight. Different today. She's like, today I'm going to have the order of pizza. And I was still a little little fat kid, like fourth or fifth grade, so I was like, oh, yeah, I'm all for it. What's going on here? And she was like, but the catch is, you need to order this pizza without stuttering. And you know, right away, kind of my heart dropped. And she's like, okay, like, don't, don't worry, we're gonna practice exactly what you want to order. And she's like, What do you want? And I'm like, Well, I want a large pepperoni pizza with an RC, a two liter RC Cola delivered to McPherson Elementary. And she's like, okay. She's like, write it down. I'm like, Alright, great to like, write it down again. I must have written it like, 10 times. She's like, No, now practice it. So about 15 minutes of doing that, she was like, All right, I think you're ready. She hands me the phone and, you know, I pick it up. My heart's in my throat, and I'm just like, like, I'm like, hi, you know, I want to order a large pepperoni pizza with a two liter RC Cola delivered to McPherson elementary for Fidel Guzman, and I was just astonished. I hung up the phone. I was happy for two reasons. Number one, I was going to get some pizza. Number two, I was able to say it a complete, full sentence without stuttering. And she she really believed in me and instilled in me that confidence that I could overcome this. But it wasn't an overnight success. It still required me go going to the speech pathologist, you know, throughout my elementary school, throughout all those years, and even as an adult, continuing to practice and hone that in in high school, doing presentations, in college, doing presentations. So right now, I am the VP of education for our America's Toastmasters Club, and this is one story i i always tell people, and they're like, No, you don't stutter. I'm like, if I get too excited, I'll lower my words. But that was that was one challenge, that was one challenge, and it's. Is it's still something I have to be very conscious of. And I've caught myself a couple times earlier in this podcast where I kind of mumble a little bit or get caught up in a particular word. But besides that one, I want to say that the second one was more of my in college. In college, I struggled paying for school. I mentioned I'm first generation Mexican American, and I was one, one of the first, first of my brothers to attend college full time. And I did all I could to make ends meet, two, three jobs, just paying for tuition. Financial aid was great, you know, it really helped me with a portion of that, but a lot of it really ended up, you know, being due onto me. And then I had my daughter, and it was just a struggle. I was like, How can I be a dad? How can I be a student? How can I work on my career? And I had gone to a financial aid workshop, and the one thing that stood out in this workshop was when they were talking about scholarships granted in high school when you're about to graduate, they talk to you about it, but it doesn't. It doesn't really materialize until you're until you receive that bill. Yeah, you're just like, hey, here's, here's a $2,000 bill for this college class. And you're like, oh, man, this is, this is not, this is not cheap. It's pretty expensive. And the one thing you know that stood out was, you know, let the scholarships, and they started talking about scholarship applications, and I found that there were a couple common denominators with the scholarships. Number one, they wanted two letters of two letters of recommendation. Number two, they want an essay. What are you going to do with your degree? How are you going to make a positive impact in the community? And number three, sometimes, typically an interview. And so I ran with it. I was like, they want two letter, letters of recommendation. They want one essay. They want an interview. No problem. And I made that my part time job. On the weekends, I would just apply, apply, apply. And I started getting some small wins. I started getting a $250 scholarship here, a $500 scholarship there, $1,000 scholarship, you know, here, and all of it started to add up, and it started to gain momentum. And I was lucky enough to get, get, get accepted for a number of different scholarships and complete my my college education, and even, you know, be strong willed enough to go back and do it again and try to try to get my masters. So those were two, two big ones, but I'll pause here and see if you have any questions around those two challenges for me. Michael, no,   Michael Hingson ** 42:41 but I I really admire what you did. You You made a choice and you followed it through. And I think that's of course, the whole issue is that we have to make choices and we need to follow through. And if we find that, we need to refine our decisions. We do that. I know when I was a student and a program director at the university radio station, I wanted everyone to listen to themselves. I thought it was a great idea to have everyone listen to themselves on the air. And the way you do it is you record it and you give it to them. And I didn't anticipate how hard that was going to be, because for me, I was used to doing it for myself, yeah, but I I didn't realize how much resistance I was going to get from literally everyone at the radio station, they were not interested in and I'm thrilled about doing it at all. What I and the engineer at the station did eventually was to put a cassette recorder in a locked cupboard, and whenever the microphone was activated, the recorder would go on. So, you know, you didn't have to hear the music. You just wanted to hear yourself talk. And we, we really took a major step and said, You have to listen to these recordings. We gave each person a cassette. We expect you to listen to these recordings and improve accordingly. What I didn't say much was, I know what it's like. I'm my own worst critic, and I have to listen to it, so you guys do now. I've changed that, and I'll get to it in a second, but we pushed everyone to do it, and it wasn't long, not only before we started seeing improvement, but before the people themselves started recognizing that they were really getting comfortable listening to themselves and that they were taking this to heart, and by the end of the year, we had people who were loving it and wanting their cassette every day or every week, and also a. Some of them went into broadcasting. For me, what I learned, and it took many years before I learned it is I'm not my own worst critic. I shouldn't be negative, as I said earlier, I'm the only one who can really teach me. I'm my own best teacher. And I think when you make that mind shift from being your own worst critic to your own best teacher, it really puts things in a much more positive light. And I've said that before on the podcast, and I will continue to say it, because I think it's a very important   Fidel Guzman ** 45:29 concept. We actually have a similar exercise for our America's Toastmasters Club, where we'll we'll record some speeches, and we'll have people listen back to their recorded speech. And a lot of people say like, man, it's cringe to hear yourself on the on the other side, on the other side of those iPhones, but it is a very useful exercise. You get a better understanding of your your filler words, your eyes, your arms, your vocal variety, your body language. And if you're looking to be a great, I don't want to say public speaker, but if you're just looking just to speak better in general, even when it's an on a presentation, on a call, or if you have to give up a toast at a wedding or a quinceanera, for you to be able to, yeah, critique yourself and gather feedback from your from your own recording   Michael Hingson ** 46:23 well. And the reality is, the more of it you do, and the more you listen to it, having been up there in front giving the speech, you also see how people react. And if you continue to observe and listen to the recordings as you go forward, you will improve, yeah, for sure, which is which is really important. And one of the things that I try to do regularly now is to record talks. When I go and give a speech somewhere, I will record it so that I can listen to it and I enjoy it, because I discover Did I really say that I shouldn't have said it quite that way, but I'll do better next time. But listening to it helps such a tremendous amount,   Fidel Guzman ** 47:13 especially with those filler words. So when you really listen to the recording, you'll be like, Man, I use a lot of likes or SOS or ands or buts, and if you want to speak eloquently, it is, I mean, like anything, you just gotta practice it. You gotta practice it, and you have to be receptive to that, the feedback. And you have to also celebrate the small wins. One thing I am a big proponent on is celebrate the small wins. Yeah. So if you are able to do your your first speech at a Toastmasters clubs like we, we give you tons of accolades, because it is not an easy fit, an easy feat. If you're able to do the second one, even better. You're, you're progressing, and you're, you know, you're increasing your understanding of some of the fundamentals of public speaking. Yeah, so you're preaching to the choir here.   Michael Hingson ** 48:05 Yeah, no, I understand. Oh yeah, it's good, but it is really important to do, and it's fun to do. If you decide to make it fun, and if you decide that you want to become a better communicator there. There are lots of us and all that sort of stuff that people do. I've heard some people say that's really not such a bad thing. Well, I've got to say that I've never really been used to having a lot of us. And you know, there's a guy out here who I don't think he's alive anymore. He used to be a sports announcer out here. His name was Jim Healy, and you may have heard him when, well, out here in Los Angeles, anyway, he was on K lac, and he had somebody, well, he had a recording of somebody, one of the sports jocks, and he announced that he was going to play this recording, and what you're going to hear is this guy in 60 seconds say, you know, 48 times, that's and he did what's amazing, that   Fidel Guzman ** 49:17 when you when you get to Some of those, it's like, what do they say? Nails on a chalkboard? You're like, Oh, yeah. Like, what are you trying to say? Just, just say it. To say, to say the damn thing.   Michael Hingson ** 49:30 Yeah, talk a little bit slower and just say it.   Fidel Guzman ** 49:33 One thing that I'm trying to be conscious, more conscious of is pauses, like those deliberate pauses, those deliberate pauses to collect your thoughts, like I often need, just to collect myself, but also to build suspense the message and the message that you're trying to give, especially when you're in front of a group of people, in front of an audience, and you're pausing there, they're just like, oh, what? So what is he? What is he gonna say next? What's up? What's going on with this pause? So it's also you have this arsenal of tools when it comes to to public speaking and to engage with an audience and to keep them, to keep them interested in what your next thought is going to be. What What am I going to say next? How am I going to, you know, align this topic to something else that I want to discuss.   Michael Hingson ** 50:24 I love, yeah, I've discovered the value of pauses. You can make a pause last too long, and one of the things you learn is how long to make a pause. But I love pauses. They really do add a lot of value. There they get. Well, you talk a lot about continuous improvement, and clearly you you really love the whole concept. What's an example of a project where you instituted continuous improvement, and how do you make that happen? Thanks, Michael.   Fidel Guzman ** 50:56 Let's pause again. Yeah, right. I know. Yeah. All right. Michaels, Michaels, throw me. Well, not much of a curveball, but yeah, no, that's good. So I know continuous improvement. And one project that I worked on, I want to say one that comes to mind is last year I hosted a series of product boot camps. And what these product boot camps really were, were product training and networking opportunities within ion. I had just gone through the acquisition of backstop into the into the ion family, and I saw a need. I saw a need there for some product training. And what I did is I started to coordinate with subject matter experts, hence the collaboration and community principles that I have with learning and development. And started to piece together a boot camp. So a series of training sessions, and we discussed location, we discussed different components that we can include on there. We discussed remote hybrid in person, what some of those options were, and we had about, I want to say, five or six of these boot camps in 2024 and what I noticed is that for each of the boot camps we would tailor it a little bit, because each of these different products that were under specific umbrellas were for certain audiences, you know, for certain segments of the business. So we had to, I had a template, but we had to tweak that template a little bit. Who do we want to come in here? Who do we want to come in for this particular topic? When do we take breaks? If it's in person, you know? Do we take longer breaks if it's in person? How do we include some interactive components to it? How do we test people's knowledge, whether it's through live polls, whether it's using an LMS platform to do knowledge checks? How do we create a certificate based program around this? And for each of those, it was a learning experience. It was a learning experience because we, every subject matter expert, is different, right? You're building different relationships with different people, and even their style of talking or their style of teaching on a particular topic is going to be different. So those continuous improvements throughout each of those boot camps really started to to resonate and just to showcase themselves. And for each of those, we had a similar template for all of them, but we made minor tweaks to make sure that it was as engaging and and thoughtful as possible.   Michael Hingson ** 53:36 Wow. Well, that's pretty cool. Um, and I think that the very fact that you would make the tweaks and you recognize the need to do that was pretty insightful, of course, because for me, I know when I speak, some people early on told me you should write a talk and you should, you should just give that talk. I tried that once. I didn't like what I sounded like when I read a talk, and I haven't done it since. And I also realized that I do better, and sometimes it isn't necessarily a lot, but when I customize every talk so I love to go early and try to hear speakers who speak before me, or get a chance to meet people at an event, because I will learn things invariably that I will put into the talk. And sometimes I'm tweaking talks up to and including the start of the talk, and sometimes I will tweak a talk when I'm speaking and I'm getting the impression just from all the fidgeting, that maybe I'm not getting through to these people, or I'm not really doing this in the best way possible. And I will change until I get what I expect to be the audience. Reaction, because I know what an audience is like when they're fully engaged, and I also know that not every audience is the same, so I hear what you're saying. I think it's important to do that.   Fidel Guzman ** 55:13 Yeah, for you to be able to do that on the fly, kudos, kudos to that. But yeah, we you got to be able to understand that audience, understand that audience, understand what's what's going on, the dynamic of that, of that situation. So you're, you're a veteran at at this, so no surprise there.   Michael Hingson ** 55:31 Well, that's a lot of fun. Well, what do you do when you're not working you, I know you're involved in various activities and so on. So what do you do when you're, yeah, not an eye on writing, doing, training, stuff and all that.   Fidel Guzman ** 55:45 A number of different hobbies. My wife calls me the Energizer Bunny, because I'm always running around doing something, but some of my main things is right now judo. I did wrestling in high school, and I did mixed martial arts when I was getting my undergrad. And I love martial arts. I think iron sharpens iron. It's good to be around a good group of, good group of people, people who are who are like minded, people who are looking to continue to develop themselves. And yeah, if you're in a room full of tough guys, you have no other choice than to start to be a tough guy yourself. So I love martial arts. I did a couple Judo tournaments, judo and jujitsu tournaments last year, where I placed. And let's see, besides that, triathlons, I love to run, I love to bike, I love to swim. I did my first triathlon last year. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was a phenomenal experience. I mean, it's two three hours of non stop movement, but it was, it was great just to be part of that, of a huge event like that, besides the martial arts and the constant running and swimming and biking, the last thing I want to say is writing and poetry. I have started to compile all all my poems. Hopefully, in the next year or so, I'll, I'll launch a small book of poems. And, yeah, I'll keep you, I'll keep you posted on that. But I do, I do like to write on the sign, you know, hopefully a book of poems. And, you know, since since having my daughter, I've always liked children's books. I would, I would love it if I could launch my my own series of children books, and I'm working on a couple templates with that. So, yeah, stay staying busy, staying busy, physically active, but also mentally   Michael Hingson ** 57:40 active. So you haven't written any books yet. I have a   Fidel Guzman ** 57:44 couple ideas, a couple ideas of what, what kids books want to do, but you don't have any books published yet? No, none yet. None yet. Well, we're anxious to see that happen. You got, you got it, you're gonna, you're gonna light that fire. You're gonna light that fire as well. No, and again, right? I do appreciate you for for really, really motivating me to start my own podcast, because you had really said, like, what's stopping you? Like, like me, I'm stopping myself, you know. But even yet, yeah, even like, you know, being an author, I know that you're an author, you know, I would love to have a conversation offline with you. You know what that publishing experience was like, because I think that's my biggest interference right now with that, is like, I don't know where to start with the publishing. I know I can self publish. I know I can go through publishers and like, the internet, like we said, a double sided sword, yeah, you have information that tells you you should just self publish, and then you have other bits of information. Was like, You should go through a publishing company and just like, where do I Where do I choose? But I think that's why having mentors, you know, and getting to network with people who are experienced, such as yourself, and these different avenues of public speaking and being a keynote speaker and having a podcast, being a podcast host and being an author. I think, I think it's great, and you are definitely an inspiration to me. Michael, well, thank you.   Michael Hingson ** 59:11 You're familiar with Jackson Hewitt, the accounting and tax company. You got it? Okay? So I can't remember whether it was night, whether it was 2016 or 2017 but I got invited to go speak at one of their events, and I did. And while I was there, I met a woman, and I didn't know what she did, and she she, she worked at a Jackson Hewitt, and I just happened to say, what do you own of a firm? Because most of the people there were supposed to be company owners. And she said, No, maybe someday. And I said, why not? You ought to own a company. You ought to you ought to become a company owner. You'll go further Anyway, last year, she sent me an email, and she said, I've never forgotten that, and I think it was like a year later, or two years later, she's. After I and she met, she said, I got my first company, and I now own 10 branches. Wow. Back, I said, that's pretty cool. Oh,   Fidel Guzman ** 1:00:09 Michael, Michael, you are just making ripples in the universe. Just ripples doing something. Yeah, that's good. I don't want to get too religious, but you're doing God's work, man, well,   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:18 I hope so. You know, expect Hill. Hill. Guy, guide, or she'll guide, yeah, but so what do you think is the future of work, of workplace training and learning?   Fidel Guzman ** 1:00:30 Yeah, I think we, we touched a little bit upon this. But you know, AI, you know, definitely, how can we leverage AI for content creation, creating outlines and also using it as feedback. But I also want to to bring back the the in person training. I know we've all gotten very comfortable with, you know, doing stuff remote, but similar to the example that we talked about earlier, where that teacher was like, oh, all these, all these kids are using AI for these papers, and how do I really test their comprehension? That's, that's something you know, that in person activity, yeah, I think definitely has a tremendous amount of value, not just for the instructor, but for the end learner. Yeah. So I think, I think a mixture of like, okay, great, you know, how can we use AI to create content? How can we use it to provide, you know, feedback for people to continue to improve on certain areas. But how can we bring back that in person component?   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:38 Well, see, oh, go ahead,   Fidel Guzman ** 1:01:39 yeah, to, to to unify. It was probably that pause, that to to unify, to unify a vision, you know, a vision of of continuous improvement. You know that to unify, that vision of what a team might be aiming for, yeah. So, yeah. So, I think, I think, you know, long story short, it's going to be, you know, leveraging a bit of AI and still bringing back that, that in person aspect. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:05 you know, I I've done virtual presentations as well as, of course, lots of in person presentations. I much prefer in person to virtual but my main reason for that is that I can tell what the audience is feeling. I get a lot more information if I'm doing an in person talk than I would get if I'm just doing a virtual talk. Now I've done it long enough that I mostly can do pretty well at a virtual talk, but it's still not the same, yeah, and I still don't get exactly the same information, but I can do virtual talks, and I do and it, and it's fun and and I can play games with it, because I can always turn my video off and really drive people crazy. But you know what? What advice would you give to an aspiring leader who wants to to evolve and make make changes to their organization or to themselves and so on.   Fidel Guzman ** 1:03:06 So advice I would give for aspiring leaders. I think the the main one that I really focus on is opportunities and challenges. Be ready to embrace any opportunities that come your way, but just know that each of those opportunities, it's going to come with its own set of challenges, and be prepared for both, and be okay with dealing both at the same time. And you know last, but you know not least, is that there are there are lots of stories of triumph, and to really curate yours. What does your story of triumph look like? What is your passion and how does, how does all of that connect?   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:53 And it may be evolving, and it may be different in five years than it is today, but both memories are important, yeah, which is cool. Well, Fidel, we've been doing Can you believe we've been doing   Fidel Guzman ** 1:04:08 this for over an hour? Time flies and you're having fun,   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:12 absolutely. And I really appreciate you being here and being a part of this, and I really appreciate all of you who have been listening to us and watching us. We're really excited that you're here. I hope that this has been valuable for you as well, and that you've learned something. Fidel, if people want to reach out to you, how can they do that? I   Fidel Guzman ** 1:04:31 want to say LinkedIn, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. What's your LinkedIn identifier? You can find me as Fidel Guzman, comma, MBA, and I'll also give you a link so you can, you can accompany it alongside this episode, yeah, but feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. That's going to be the easiest way to get in touch with me. And I'll also have some links if you want to check out my podcast. And hopefully I'll have, I'll have that book of poems out, yeah, soon.   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:59 Well, that will be. Good. Well, thank you again and again. Thank you, all of you. If you'd like to reach out to Fidel, I'm sure he would appreciate it. I would, and you're welcome to reach out to me.

In October 2022, Castleisland native Beatrice Pembroke Walsh lost her life at just 53 years of age to Leiomyosarcoma (LMS), now her family are making her dying wish come true The Beatrice Pembroke Walsh Foundation is a new charity established to fund research into LMS and to create awareness of this rare cancer - which affects just 6 in 1 Million people, mainly women. Beatrice’s husband, Kerry native, David spoke to David on the show about Beatrice and the foundation. More information on the Beatrice Pembroke Walsh Foundation can be found here - https://www.idonate.ie/cause/20206678

Today Ashley Rudolph is an executive coach working with high-achieving and executives who are at a “crossroad” as they look GREAT on paper, but tend to exhibit fears and have other problems that effect their confidence and performance. Ashley was not always a coach and, in fact, did not view herself as a coach during most of her career. She grew up in the Bronx in New York City. She attributes her high confidence level to the high bar her parents set for her as well as to the environment where she grew up.   After high school Ashley enrolled in Babson College where she quickly had to learn much about business and working as a team. She will tell us that story. After graduation she secured a job, but was layed off and then went back to Babson to secure her Master's degree.   Ashley began working and quickly rose through the corporate ranks of tech companies. She tells us how, while not really tech savy at first, she pushed herself to learn what she needed to know to work as part of a team and then eventually to lead high tech teams.   In 2023 her high tech employment world took a change which she will describe. Bottom line is that she was laid off from her vice presidential position and after pondering what to do she realized that she had actually been coaching her employees for some time and so she began hirering herself out as an executive coach. We will get the benefit of receiving a number of her insights on leadership, confidence building and how to become better mentally with anything life throughs at us. What Ashley says during our episode time makes a great deal of sense and I believe you will gain a lot from what she has to say. You can reach out to Ashley through the contact information in the show notes for this Unstoppable Mindset episode.     About the Guest:   Ashley Rudolph is an executive coach for high-achieving leaders and executives at a crossroads—those who have built success on paper but are ready to step into something greater. Her work is grounded in a bold belief: true transformation isn't about doing more—it's about leading differently.   A former tech executive, she scaled from IC to VP in just five years, leading $75M+ deals and teams of 250+ at high-growth companies. She knows what it takes to succeed in high-stakes environments—not just in execution, but in the deeper, often invisible work of leadership: making bold decisions, navigating uncertainty, and owning your impact.   Her signature methodology, The Three Dimensions of Transformation, helps leaders unlock their full potential by focusing on: mindset, strategy, and elite execution.   Whether guiding clients through reinvention, leadership evolution, or high-stakes career moves, Ashley helps them break free from outdated success metrics and create momentum that lasts. Her insights have been featured in Inc., U.S. News & World Report, The New York Post, Success Magazine, Apartment Therapy, and more. She also writes The Operator's Edge, a newsletter on the unseen shifts that drive real momentum in leadership and career growth. Because true leadership isn't about following a path. It's about defining your own. Ways to connect with Ashley:   My website which has details about me, my programs, and insights about high achievers in the workplace: www.workwithashleyr.com    My newsletter which gets published every single Monday morning with my expert advice for high achievers on how to succeed in the workplace. newsletter.workwithashleyr.com    My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyrudolph/   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hello, everyone, wherever you happen to be today, I am Michael Hingson, and you are listening to or watching or both, unstoppable mindset today, our guest is Ashley Rudolph, who is a coach, and I like something Ashley put in her bio that I thought was really interesting, and that is that Ashley's work is grounded in the belief that true transportation is not really about doing more, but rather it's doing things differently. And I want, I'm going to want to learn about that. I think that's fascinating, and I also think it is correct, but we will, we will definitely get to that and talk about that. Ashley approached me a little while ago and said, I'd like to explore coming on your content, your podcast. And I said, Well, sure, except I told her the same thing that I tell everyone who comes on the podcast, there is one hard and fast rule you got to follow, and that is, you got to have fun, or you can't come on the podcast, so you got to have fun. Ashley, just   Ashley Rudolph ** 02:26 reminding you, I'm ready. I am ready. I'm coming into the podcast today with all of my best jokes, all of my best tricks. Oh, good.   Speaker 1 ** 02:35 Well, we want to hear them all. Well, thank you for being here, and it's a pleasure to have you on unstoppable mindset.   Ashley Rudolph ** 02:42 Yes, thank you so much for having me. I was just really taken by your entire background story, and I took a risk and sent you a message. So thank you so much for having me on the podcast.   Speaker 1 ** 02:55 Well, I have always been of the opinion that everyone has stories to tell, and a lot of people just don't believe they do, but that's because they don't think about it. And so what I tell people who say that to me when we talk about them coming on the podcast, my job is to help bring out the stories. Now, you didn't say that, and I'm not surprised, but still, a lot of people say that. And the reality is, I believe everyone is more unstoppable than they think they are, and that they undersell themselves, they underrate what they are and what they can do,   Ashley Rudolph ** 03:28 yeah, and honestly, I 100% agree with you, and that's why, and maybe I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but you triggered a thought. That's why I spend every single one of my first coaching meetings with a client, having them talk me through either their professional history or their wins from the past year. And in those conversations, my feedback is also is always Hey, you're not giving yourself enough credit for the things that you're doing. Like, these are amazing stories, or like, repeating things back to them a little bit differently than they would have phrased it, but that's 100% accurate. We don't sell ourselves enough,   Speaker 1 ** 04:08 even to ourselves. We don't sell ourselves enough, especially to ourselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, tell me a little about kind of the early Ashley growing up and all that, and you know where you came from, and all that sort of stuff,   Ashley Rudolph ** 04:23 yeah. So I grew up in New York. I'm from the Bronx. Oh and yeah, yeah. So, so is my   Michael Hingson ** 04:30 mom   Ashley Rudolph ** 04:31 Aqua? Oh my gosh, I had no idea. So I grew up in the Bronx and grew up with my mom. My dad was around too, and, oh, it's interesting, and I'm sure this will make sense, but I grew up going to Catholic schools from first grade to senior year of high school, and something about me, it was like I was always a very self assured. Determined person, and that carried through all the way through my adulthood. And maybe that comes from me being a New Yorker. Maybe that comes from my mom being a an immigrant. She's from the Caribbean. She's from the Bahamas, and she had a very high bar for what success looked like I don't know where it comes from, but yeah, yeah. So that's a little bit about me growing up and kind of who I was   Speaker 1 ** 05:28 as a kid. So now, where are you living? Now?   Ashley Rudolph ** 05:32 I am in New York again, so I moved back to New York in 2020,   Speaker 1 ** 05:38 okay, wow, just in time for the pandemic. Lucky you?   Ashley Rudolph ** 05:43 Yeah, I actually moved back to New York on election day in 2020 so I missed the early pandemic. But yeah, yeah, yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 05:53 I was in New York speaking on March 5, and that night, I got back to the hotel, and my flight was supposed to go out at like, 415 in the afternoon, yeah. And I said, when I started hearing that they were talking about closing down the city, I think I better leave earlier. So I was on a 730 flight out the next day. Oh my gosh,   Ashley Rudolph ** 06:18 wow. So you just made it out and that yeah, and at the time, I was living in Boston, and I actually was went on a vacation with a friend, and we flew back the day before they shut down the airports in Boston. So   Speaker 1 ** 06:36 that was lucky. Yeah, did you live in Boston itself or a suburb?   Ashley Rudolph ** 06:42 Yeah, I lived in Boston for two years, I think, yeah, I lived in the city, yeah. I   Speaker 1 ** 06:50 lived in Winthrop for three years, and commuted across Boston to Cambridge every day,   Ashley Rudolph ** 06:55 yeah, oh, my god, yeah. So I worked in Cambridge and I lived in the West End, right above TD Garden.   Speaker 1 ** 07:03 Oh, okay, yeah, I hear that Durgan Park closed in, in near Faneuil Hall.   Ashley Rudolph ** 07:13 Oh, yeah, well, I have to admit, I didn't go there that much. Was living in Boston.   Speaker 1 ** 07:19 It was a fun place. It was a family style thing, and they had tables for four around the outer edges inside the restaurant. But you couldn't sit at one of those unless you had four people. And the serving staff was trained to be a little bit on the snotty side. And I went in fun. Oh, wait. Oh, absolutely. They made it fun. But I went in and the hostess, there were three of us, and my guide dog at the time, Holland, who was a wonderful, cute golden retriever, and she said, Oh, we're going to put you at one of the tables for four. And I said, Well, okay, we appreciate that. And Holland was under the table. This waitress comes up and she says, you're not supposed to be sitting here. This is a table for four, and there are only three of you. And I said, but they told us we could. No Nobody told you you could sit here. You got to go back over to the big tables. And I said, Look, we have a guide dog under the table, and he's really happy. And they told us we could be here because of the dog. And she's, I don't believe that at all. I'm, I'm gonna go check. I don't believe you. She goes away and she comes back a little bit later. No, you're not supposed to sit here. And I said, Look, lift up the tablecloth and look under the table. I'm not going to fall for that. Just do it. She finally did. And there's Holland staring out with these big brown eyes. And she just melted. She goes away and comes back. And one of the things about Durgan Park is they have big plates of prime rib. And she brought this plate of prime ribs somebody hadn't eaten at all, and she said, can I give this to the dog? And so, you know, normally, I would say no, but we were trying to make peace in our time, so I said, Oh, sure. And she and Holland had a great time. So it was fun.   Ashley Rudolph ** 08:59 Oh, and Holland got prime rib. Holland   Speaker 1 ** 09:03 got prime rib. What a treat. And so did and so did the rest of us, but, but we had to pay for ours. But I missed Durgin Park. It was a fun place to go, but I understand that it is closed, and I don't know whether it's oh, well, oh, that's unfortunate, but Quincy market's a wonderful place to go. It's not a lot of interesting things. So you, so you went through high school. So you went through high school in New York, went in in the Bronx tough neighborhood, and then what did you do? So   Ashley Rudolph ** 09:34 I then went to college. So I went to Babson College, which is, well, it's in Massachusetts, it's in Wellesley, and it's actually right next door to Wellesley College. Yeah, yeah. So I went there and I studied business, and that was basically where I learned how to be successful in the workplace, which is kind. Funny, because I found that over the years, a lot of people will say, you know, I went to college, but by the end of it, maybe I didn't know what my transferable skills were, or I studied something that isn't related to what I was doing or what I did as a professional, and I always felt the opposite, like in freshman year at Babson, they gave us $3,000 to, like, start a company as a as a students. So all of us just had to start this company. We had our business ideas. There was a CEO, a CMO, a CFO. We had like rules assigned. And that was my first experience of what a workplace could be like, although it was with 18 year olds, so maybe not totally reflective, but we had performance reviews, we had a head of HR, we had like, company meetings, so we were doing things within a framework, and they all kind of translated into the workplace, different players. So Babson basically kind of turned me into the business person that I am   Speaker 1 ** 11:09 today. Now, did each person get $3,000 and they started their own company?   Ashley Rudolph ** 11:14 Oh, no. So there were, there were maybe 30 of us, and we started a company with that with $3,000 Okay? Exactly with that investment, it was managed quite tightly. There's not a lot that you can do with $3,000 right? So you can probably guess that a lot of the businesses turned out to be the same. So there was always a T Shirt Company or a company the when the LIVESTRONG wristbands were popular, then we were like, oh, let's customize these wristbands. So yeah, yeah. The the company ideas basically ended up being the same, because there's not that much that you could do with that, yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 11:56 yeah, yeah. So much you can do unless you start making a bunch of money,   Ashley Rudolph ** 12:00 yeah, yeah, yeah. And in today's landscape, I guess there's more that you can do with digital products and stuff like that. But yeah, yeah, we, we had to do physical so we were pretty limited, yeah, well, that's   Speaker 1 ** 12:13 okay, but still, if the company is successful, and was it successful? Yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 12:19 we, did turn a profit, and then for all of the businesses that did turn a profit, you had to donate the profits to a local charity. So we did. We donated ours to a local organization. We threw an event in partnership with the organization. It was just, it was nice. So, yeah, oh,   Speaker 1 ** 12:43 cool. So, how, how long did the company last? Essentially, was it all four years?   Ashley Rudolph ** 12:50 It was the first   Speaker 2 ** 12:52 year, just the first year, okay, yeah, okay, yeah, that's still, that's pretty cool.   Ashley Rudolph ** 12:58 Yeah, it is. I have to say that I learned a lot,   Speaker 1 ** 13:02 yeah, well, you're you're kind of forced to or you don't succeed. So I was going to ask you why you felt that you learned how to be successful. But now it's pretty clear, yeah, yeah, yeah.   Ashley Rudolph ** 13:13 So we started there in freshman year, and then sophomore, junior and senior year was kind of more of a deep dive on specific skills. So that you take our accounting classes, finance marketing, if you were into retail, there was like a retail management class at the core classes. So we had, you know, liberal arts courses, so art history, yeah, philosophy, things like that. But yeah, everything was mostly centered around business and cool, yeah, yeah. Well, that's   Speaker 1 ** 13:47 pretty exciting. Did you did you go do any graduate work anywhere?   Ashley Rudolph ** 13:52 It's funny, yes, I did. So I graduated from Babson, and my first job was in a creative agency, and I was doing media buying, and at the time it was 2008 and we were buying ads in school newspapers, which was dying like it was pretty much On on its last leg, and I just had this thought when I was doing it, and that I wasn't inspired by the work, because it wasn't growing, it was going away. And it was clear, yeah, and that. And actually my first job, I got laid off because it was a dying industry, and the team needed to be smaller, and at that point, it's my first job. So it was very devastating to me. I had never gone through anything like that before. So then I decided to go back to school. So I did my masters. I actually. Went back to Babson, but in an international program. So I spent my first semester in France, my second semester in China, and then my final semester at Babson. Ah,   Speaker 1 ** 15:13 so why was the newspaper industry going away? Just because everything was going online?   Ashley Rudolph ** 15:18 Exactly, yeah, things were shifting more digital. Yeah, it's exactly   Speaker 1 ** 15:23 that, so they didn't need as many people selling and doing other things as they did before. Yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 15:28 yeah, exactly. Or companies were figuring out different ways to reach college students that wasn't dependent on getting in the school newspaper.   15:39 Yeah? Yeah, yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 15:42 yeah. So you got your master's degree from Babson, and then what did you   Ashley Rudolph ** 15:47 do? I got my master's degree from Babson, and I'll fast forward a little bit, because what's funny is that after I graduated, I still didn't quite know what I wanted to do, but I figured it out. I ended up going back into marketing. But if you remember, what I described was, in that first job, I wasn't connected to the mission. I wasn't inspired by where the industry was going. So I ended up pivoting into nonprofits. And my first job after graduating from my masters was running digital media, so not physical media, so I shifted into social media and online marketing. Had a nonprofit, right? So I was connected to the mission. I felt like the work that I was doing was for a good cause, and it was an industry that was new and that was growing, and that was ever changing and exciting. So I did that for about three years, so first at a nonprofit, and then at an a charter school network that was in New York and New Jersey at the time, but has since expanded far beyond that. So, yeah, I went into mission driven work, and I went into digital marketing and digital media. And I think what I took away from that chapter of my career was that I want to be in an industry that is ever evolving. So, yeah, so after my experience in the nonprofit and education space, that's when I jumped into tech. So I jumped into tech after that, and spent a decade in the tech industry. And obviously, tech is ever changing. I had access to so many different opportunities. I grew really fast. I started at the first company, the first tech company that I worked for. I was a program manager, and five years later I was a vice president, right? So, like, I was able to seize opportunities and work really hard and get to the level that I wanted to get to I was very ambitious, so I think tech just kind of gave me everything I wanted. Career wise, how   Speaker 1 ** 18:09 did you progress so fast to go from being a program manager to the level of Vice President in what generally would be defined as a pretty short time? Yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 18:20 yeah, yeah. So some of it was hard work, and I think the other factor was luck, and the other factor was going after whatever it was that was in front of me. So taking risks. So I would say, with the hard work part, I worked a lot. See when I first, when I started that job, I was actually a Program Manager for Back End Web Development, which was Ruby on Rails, coding a coding language. And then I was also a program manager for data science. I had no experience in either I was not technical. I did not have the technical skills or technical aptitude to do this, but I did have the desire to learn. So my first month at that job, I worked seven days a week. I went to workshops on the weekend. I did coding workshops, I read through all of the documentation. I sat in all of the programs that I was managing. I just dug deep. And I think that first year of immersing myself in everything kind of set the foundation for me.   Speaker 1 ** 19:38 So you made yourself pretty technical by the time it was all said and done,   Ashley Rudolph ** 19:42 yeah, yes, yes, and not on the level of any of my instructors or the students that actually took the programs. But I cared about learning, and I cared about having a certain level of fluency in order to I had to hire instructors for the program so I couldn't fumble my. Words, right? So, yeah, yeah. So I taught myself, yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 20:05 you learned. You learned enough. You You weren't trying to be the most technical person, but you learned enough to be able to interact with people and hold your own. Yeah, which, which is the important thing, I think. And for me, I know at one point, I had a job that was phased out when Xerox bought the company and I couldn't find another job. And it wasn't because of a lack of trying, and it wasn't because I didn't have the skills, but rather, as societal norms typically go, the belief is blind people can't work, as opposed to what we really can and can't do. So I eventually started my own company selling computer aided design systems, and for me, as a blind person, of course, I'm not going to sit in front of a CAD computer or even a PC based CAD system, which is what we sold. So I had to learn, however, all about how to operate the system. Learn about PCs. So I learned how to how to build PCs. I learned about CAD so I could actually walk someone through the process of drawing without actually having to do it, so I understand what, exactly what you're saying. Yeah, and it was important to do that. Yeah. Yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 21:21 it was important, and no one told me to do that, right? And I'm sure that no one told you to do that too, but there was just something in me that knew that I was excited about this work, or I wanted opportunities, and this was the best way that I knew how to go after it. Yeah, yeah.   Speaker 1 ** 21:43 Well, and, and it is the way you still have you do have to learn enough to be able to hold your own, but I Yeah, but I think it's also important in learning that that you're also not trying to threaten anyone else. You're just trying to be able to communicate with them   Ashley Rudolph ** 22:00 exactly, exactly, yes,   Speaker 1 ** 22:05 yeah. All too often, people view others as threats when they really shouldn't. But you know,   Speaker 2 ** 22:12 that's Yeah, another story gonna do Yeah, right, right.   Speaker 1 ** 22:16 Well, so for within five years, you became a vice president. What was the tech that y'all were really developing?   Ashley Rudolph ** 22:22 Yeah, great question. So what's interesting about this is that it wasn't so the first company I worked for wasn't a tech company, and that they were building tech it's actually a coding boot camp. So they were teaching people either how to code or how to become a UX designer, or how to become a product manager. So that was the product after a while. And I think long after I left the company, they did develop their own tech. So they developed an online an LMS learning management system, and there was digital content. But when I started, it was really about the boot camp era and teaching people how to code, because there were all these engineering jobs and web development jobs that were available and not enough, not enough talent, not   Speaker 2 ** 23:13 enough talent to go around. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.   Ashley Rudolph ** 23:17 Which is when you think about today's market and where we're, where we are, that was only 10 years ago, and it's a completely different story. Now, the market is flooded with too many web developers. Yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 23:29 it is, but I would say, from my standpoint of seeing what they produce in terms of making web content accessible, not nearly enough of them know how to do that, which is another story,   Ashley Rudolph ** 23:41 yeah, yeah, yeah, which is so interesting. And yeah, unacceptable, unfortunate, because there were always teams that were in charge of accessibility at the companies that I worked for, but then having someone be in charge of it, and then properly resourcing the accessibility team is a whole other story. And I think so many companies view it as just oh yeah, I checked the box. My website is accessible. But did you really build with your end users in mind, and the answer is probably no,   Speaker 1 ** 24:23 probably not, yeah, and all too often that ended up being the case. Well, so what did you do after you became vice president?   Ashley Rudolph ** 24:32 Yeah, so that was tough. You said it, and you said, I climbed really fast. And that's true, I did, and because I climbed fast, there were a lot of lessons to learn. So after I became vice president, I really had to own that leadership seat, or that executive leadership seat, and recognize that what had got me there. Here is was not what was going to keep me there. So the thing that I did after I became a vice president was really understanding how to be an effective executive. So that means really understanding the business side, which I already knew I had been doing that I've been thinking about that since college, so that wasn't something that I was concerned about, but the biggest thing was forming executive level relationships and really understanding how to form allies, and understanding that at that level, it's less of I have the right answer, and listen to me, because I'm a vice president and more of a okay. How am I influencing the people around me to listen to my idea, accept my idea, champion and support my idea. And it's not enough to just have something that's right on paper.   Speaker 1 ** 26:06 The others the other side of that, of course, could be that maybe you have an idea that may or may not be the right idea, which also means you need to learn to listen,   Ashley Rudolph ** 26:13 yes, exactly, exactly, and that was absolutely the other side of it. So me coming into things and being like, I understand what needs to happen, and not having all the context either way, right? So, yeah, yeah, yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 26:31 but you must have done pretty well at doing all that.   Ashley Rudolph ** 26:34 I figured it out eventually. Yes, I did figure it out eventually, and it wasn't easy, but I was able to grow a team and scale a team, and I was able to move from maybe the business side of running operations to the product and technology side of it, so being able to see two different sides of the coin. And yeah, it did. It did work. Well, I was able to create my own department, which was a product project management office that oversaw all of the work of the entire product and design and technology teams, 250 people. I I'm not sure that I would have thought I was capable of doing something like that, and building something from the ground up, and hiring a team of, I think, 15 people, and leading that department. And, yeah, yeah, and it was great. I did learn a lot. And then 2023 happened. And that was the major turning point in Tech where I think the dominant story shifted from, or at least in education technology, which I think you know something a lot about, but the dominant story shifted from this is great. This is growing. Distance Learning is fueling growth. There's so much opportunity here to it's too big. We need to, you know, do layoffs. We need to find a way to right size the business. There's actually not a lot of growth happening. So 2023 happened, and I ended up getting laid off with my entire department that I built. And that was such a huge lesson, a huge leadership lesson for me, for sure. So I'll pause so that I'm not not talking at you, but hanger, yeah, yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 28:46 well, so you got laid off. I've been there. I've had that happen. And, yeah, it isn't fun, but it's like anything else. You may not have been able to control it happening, but no, you are the one who has to deal with it. So you may not have control over it happening, but you always have control over how you deal with what happened.   Ashley Rudolph ** 29:09 Yes, yes,   29:11 yes. And what did you do?   Ashley Rudolph ** 29:14 And that's exactly what was so different about this time. So I will say I had two months notice. I had an amazing leader, such a technology officer. When the decision was made, he said, Okay, we can make this decision, but I have to tell Ashley immediately. So he told me, and it wasn't surprising, right? Because I saw how the business what direction the business was going in. So I can't say I was shocked, but the big question that I had was, Oh, my God, what am I going to do about my team? And I felt such immense responsibility because I had hired many of them I came to. Care about them and their careers and their livelihoods, and, yeah, I just felt responsible for it. So you said it, you said it beautifully, and that it was about what I decided to do. So from that moment, I shifted my focus, maybe, maybe to my own detriment, but whatever, I came out on the upside, but I shifted my focus to my team, and I thought the best thing that I could do in that moment was preparing them for their next chapters without going directly to the team and damaging the trust of the Chief Technology Officer and saying, in two months, we're all going to get laid off. That's also not reflective of the type of leader I wanted to be. So I figured out that, because we were a project management office and because there wasn't a lot of new work at the company, we had downtime. So I implemented a meeting on the calendar, which was a project review, and every single week, someone on my team had the opportunity to present their projects and talk about what they learned, what was challenging for them, and what their successes were, right, some combination of those things, and they all did it, and that was my way of helping to start prepare them for the interview process, because now you know your work, you know what your impact was, and you've gotten my feedback as someone who's a leader, who knows what hiring managers are looking for, you got my feedback on the best ways to present yourself, and they were able to ask questions. There were some people who approached me or the director on my team privately and asked us to review their resumes, because they kind of saw the writings on the wall without me ever having to say it, and I did. And what ended up happening is, at that two month mark, or whenever, when the layoffs did happen, no one on my team was shocked, and there were people who actually within a month after the layoff happened, they had found new jobs because they had that time to prepare and felt confident in their job search and the stories that they were telling about themselves. So I all that to say that I did exactly that. I chose the type of leader that I wanted to be, and the thing that felt important to me was preparing my team for their next chapter,   Michael Hingson ** 32:32 which I would say is the right thing to do,   Ashley Rudolph ** 32:34 yeah, yes, exactly, because it   Speaker 1 ** 32:37 isn't, no matter what a lot of people might think, it isn't about you, it's about the team. It's about you and the rest of the team, because you're all a team,   Ashley Rudolph ** 32:45 yeah? Except Yes, yes. And I very much viewed my team as an extension of myself, an extension of them. I you know, it wasn't just about them doing a job for me, quote, unquote, like that's not the type of leader that I am. We are a team,   Speaker 1 ** 33:04 right? So meanwhile, while you were doing that and helping the team, what were you also doing for you? And   Ashley Rudolph ** 33:12 that's why I said to my detriment, I didn't do a lot of thought. I put no thought into what I wanted to do. Okay? At all. I just And you know what? It's not to my detriment. I think what I needed at that time was a distraction, and this was a really good distraction for me, from sorting through what I wanted to do next, but also in navigating that with my team and supporting them through that, I think the answer became very clear once I was ready to ask my question, I just coached my team. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.   Speaker 1 ** 33:51 And so you sort of, as you would say, pivoted to being a coach,   Ashley Rudolph ** 33:57 yes, yes. And I want to be clear that this wasn't a decision that was like, you know, that I just fell into coaching, you know, I I made the decision to so I took some time to think about what were the pieces of my work that I really loved when I was a VP at multi, you know, at multiple companies, and the answer was clear, and that I really loved coaching and helping people become better at their work, and I really loved mentorship. And those were the parts of the work that if I could just do that all day, that's what I would want to do. And I was like, Well, I have the I can make a decision to do that all day, every day now, because I'm not doing anything, I just got laid off. So I can choose to do this work. So that's exactly how I ended up being a coach.   Speaker 1 ** 34:58 Well, so you. Ever originally planned on being a coach. So was it that work with your team that really was the sort of pivotal decision for you, that although you never thought you were going to be a coach, that led you to coaching, or was there something else that really helped move you there? There was something else. Okay, yeah, more to the story.   Ashley Rudolph ** 35:21 There is always you're peeling all the layers so, so initially, what I thought I would do, because I was an operations person, I was like, I'll just be an operations consultant. I'll go out on my own, and people will hire me to be their ops person. So let me, you know, run with that as an idea. And I started having conversations with former colleagues. And what was funny in that so many of their conversations were kind of like, oh yeah, I want to support you. And that sounds nice. I understand why you would want to be an operations consultant. But there's something more interesting about you being a coach. Or I want to hire you to be a coach for my team. Or, Hey, you did really amazing things in your career. You should help other people do those things. And that was the theme that people kept telling me, so I finally decided, decided to listen. That's how I landed on coaching. And instead of it being like, oh my god, I'm trying to sell the value of myself as an operations consultant, once I just owned the coach title, people just started saying, okay, yep, Sign me up. Or I'll refer you to someone who needs a coach right now. Or, hey, you coach just one person on my team, and they're great. Here's more. So it just became easy, and it became less of a I'm trying to sell people, and I'm trying to, like, convince them that they need me in this role, it was just easy.   Speaker 1 ** 37:04 So do you think you talked about being ambitious when you were in college and starting that business at Babson and so on? Do you think you've always continued to try to be, if you will, ambitious, or did you sort of shift in terms of mindsets over time?   Ashley Rudolph ** 37:22 Yeah, that's a really good question. I do think I have always been ambitious, and when I visited my mom last year or the year before last for Thanksgiving, I found a fake report card that I wrote myself, that I wrote for myself in fourth grade. And there was a prompt that said, what would you want your teacher to write on your report card at the end of this year? And I wrote, Ashley is excelling at excellence. Well, there you go, fourth grade. So I think it's always been there.   Speaker 1 ** 38:02 So is it, but is it ambition? Is it ambition, or is it being industrious and being being confident? You know?   Ashley Rudolph ** 38:10 Yeah, yeah. Oh, that is such a good question, right? So there was a version of me when I was in the corporate world where I would have just said, yeah, it's ambition, right? Because I'm always motivated to, you know, go after the next level, and that's what's driving me. And now, now that you put that question out there, it is, it is that confidence, because I'm not chasing a thing or the next level right now, in this phase, I'm chasing quote, unquote impact like the thing that drives me is helping people, helping people probably achieve things for themselves that They also didn't think that they could in their careers, and I'm just helping them get there, yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 39:06 and that's why I asked the question, because ambition, the way you normally would think of it, yeah, can be construed as being negative, but clearly what you're doing is is different than that. Yeah, you know, at this at the same time for you, now that you're coaching and so on, and you shifted to doing something different, yeah, did you have to let something go to allow you to be open to deciding to be a coach? Yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 39:38 and the thing that I had to let go was exactly what you just pointed out. So you are very intuitive. The thing I had to let go was that the traditional construct of what success looks like. So it looks like, okay, I'm a VP, so I next need to be an SVP. And then after that I need to be at the sea level. And no, and I guess there could have always been questions about, was that what I really wanted, or was it just the next level that I was after? Yeah, yeah. And there was that, I think it was just the next level for quite some time, but now, like I said, the thing that I let go of was that and wanting to grasp for what the next level is. And now for me, it looks like, okay, well, I only have so many hours in the day, so I can't coach unlimited people, but I still want to impact many people. So what does that mean? Okay, well, I'm writing a newsletter, and I put out a newsletter every week with my thoughts, and that can reach many more people than I can one to one or podcast. I'm talking to you on this podcast, and maybe me sharing more of my story will inspire someone else, or I'll learn from you and your community, Michael, but yeah, I think the thing, the thing that determines what success looks like for me is my ability to impact   Speaker 1 ** 41:14 and and the result of that is what happens with the people that you're working with, and so you, you do get feedback because of that,   Ashley Rudolph ** 41:25 yes, yes, I do get, I get lots of feedback, and it is, it's transformational feedback. And I think one of the things that I love, and I do this for every client that I work with, is on day one, we established a baseline, which I don't necessarily have to always say that to them like we're establishing the baseline, it's understood. And then in our last session, I put a presentation together, and I talked to them about where they were when we started, and what they wanted for themselves, and over the course of us coaching together, what they were able to accomplish, so what their wins were, and then where they land, and just me taking them on that journey every single or when they work with me, is eye opening, because they don't even see the change as it's happening. And I'm like, Hey, you did this. You're not that person that you walked into this room as on day one, and maybe by the end, you have a new job, or you got promoted, or you feel more confident and assured in your role. But whatever it is, you've changed, and you should be proud of yourself for that.   Speaker 1 ** 42:43 Yeah, yeah. And it's, I am sure, pretty cool when you get to point that out to people and they realize it, they realize how far they've come.   Ashley Rudolph ** 42:55 Yeah, yeah, it is. It's, it's really awesome to be able to share that with people and to also be on the journey with them, and when they think that maybe they're not ready to do something just gently reminding them that they are. And sometimes I think about what, you know, what managers have done for me, because I've, I had the privilege of working with really great managers some in my career, and yeah, they did that to me, and that that's how I was able to accomplish the things that I did. So yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 43:34 well, it's great that you're able to carry those lessons forward and help other people. That's pretty cool.   Ashley Rudolph ** 43:38 Yeah, yeah. And honestly, I hope that my clients can do the same. So if there are things that they learn in coaching, any frameworks or things like that, if they're able to help people, then that's great. And the cycle continues, you know? So, yeah, yeah.   Speaker 1 ** 43:57 You know, a question that comes to mind is that when we talk about leadership, there are certainly times that leaders face uncertainty, especially when there are transitions going on and you've experienced a lot of transitions. What would you say is the unconventional truth about leadership in times of change and transition?   Ashley Rudolph ** 44:20 Yeah, yeah. So I think the thing that I see the most is that in times of transition, especially if it's a transition that maybe you have no control over, right? You're not choosing to leave your job, for example, the the inclination is to over control, right, and try to assert control over the situation in any way that you can, and in more cases than not, that backfires to some degree. So the thing that I try to focus on with my clients is getting to a point where you accept the fact that what is happening is happening. I'm kind of like my layoff, right? I didn't fight the decision or try to change the decision. I just had to accept it for what it was. And then the thing that we focus on is now that we know the thing is happening, whatever the transition or change is, it doesn't have to be as extreme as a layoff, but now that we know that it's happening, what can you control and what can you focus on? And that's what we need to spend our time on. And it can be anything, you know, sometimes people are put on performance improvement plan, and you kind of just if, if this is a situation where you're like, Oh yeah, I could see where this came from, and I wish that I was not in this situation. Okay, well, you kind of have to accept that you are, and what can you do about it now, it's really, yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 45:58 what's the hardest lesson you've learned about leadership and being a leader, not just being an executive, but coaching people.   Ashley Rudolph ** 46:10 Yeah, and I get this all the time as a coach too. It's it's in me, but the lesson that I've learned is I don't have to know everything. That's   Michael Hingson ** 46:21 a hard lesson. To learn, isn't   Ashley Rudolph ** 46:25 it? It is, especially when you feel like as a leader, like people are relying on you, or you think they are, they're relying on you to know the answers or to know what to do next, or as a coach, they're relying on you to ask the right questions or to guide them in the right direction, right? And sometimes you just don't know, and that's okay, and it's also okay to say that. And I was just going to say that, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. It took me a long time to get comfortable with that, but now, now I am more comfortable with it, for sure. Do you feel like you struggled with that too? Or Yeah?   Speaker 1 ** 47:06 Well, I have, but I was blessed early on, when I was a student teacher in getting my secondary teaching credential, I was a student teacher in an algebra one class in high school, and one of the students came in one day, and he asked a question in the course of the day, and it should have been a question I knew the answer to, but I didn't. But when I when I realized I didn't, I also, and I guess this is my makeup, thought to myself, but I can't blow smoke about it, so I just said, you know, I don't know the answer, but I'm going to look it up and I will bring you the answer tomorrow. Is that okay? And he said, Yeah. And my master teacher after class cornered me, and he said, That was absolutely the best thing you could do, because if you try to psych out these kids and fake them out, they're going to see through you, and you're never going to get their trust. Yeah, and of course, he was absolutely right. So I did the right thing, but I also learned the value of doing the right thing. And Mr. Redman, my master teacher, certainly put it in perspective. And I think that's so important. We don't have to necessarily have all the right answers. And even if we do have the right answer, the question is, Is it our job to just say the right answer or try to guide people to get to the right answer?   Ashley Rudolph ** 48:41 Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's another leadership lesson, right? It's and it's so much more powerful when people do get to the answers themselves, yeah. And I think that kind of helps with them being less dependent on coming to you for the answers moving forward, right? If they're able to go on that path of discovery   Speaker 1 ** 49:04 well, and if they are able to do that and you encouraged it, they're going to sense it, and when they get the right answer, they're going to be as high as a kite, and they're going to come and tell you that they did it. So, yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 49:15 exactly. Yeah, yeah. What a good feeling.   Speaker 1 ** 49:19 Yeah, it is, what do you do? Or what are your thoughts about somebody who just comes to you and says, I'm stuck?   Ashley Rudolph ** 49:27 Ooh, that happens all the time. Michael, it happens all the time. And I'll tell you, there's two things. So if someone says I'm stuck, they either don't have the confidence to pursue the thing that they know they want to do, but they're just saying they're stuck, which is it is being stuck, right? If you can't take action, then you're stuck. But sometimes they frame that as I don't know where what I want to do or where I want to go, and then I ask. Couple of questions, and it's like, oh, well, you actually do know what you want to do and where you want to go. You just don't have the confidence yet to pursue that path. So part of the time, it's a confidence issue, or the other time, the thing that they're grappling with, or the other cases, what they're grappling with is, I haven't connected with like my values or the things that motivate me or my strengths even right? So maybe they're the ambitious person who was compelled to just chase the next level and the next level and the next level, but now they're asking, Is this really important to me, or do I really want this? As I spoke to another coach, and she ended up leaving what she thought was a dream job at Google, because every day she was kind of like, I still want to be here, and it wasn't her dream job, and she left to become a coach. So it's either one of those two things, most times, for the clients that I work with, and I ask a lot of questions, so I get to the answers, or I help them get to the answers by asking them the right questions. Yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 51:14 and that's the issue. And sometimes you may not know the right question right off the bat, but by the same token, you can search for it by asking other questions.   Ashley Rudolph ** 51:23 Exactly, exactly, exactly, yeah, yeah, that's it.   Speaker 1 ** 51:27 So what is, what is a transformation of a client that you experienced and kind of what really shifted, that changed everything to them, something that just really gave you chills, and was an AHA kind of thing. Yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 51:44 there are. There's so many one, okay, so one that I want to share is and basically the client went from, this isn't the job for me. I don't like the role I'm in. I don't think I can be successful, and I don't think my work is valued here. And I would say, over the course of eight months, she went from that to getting one of few perfect performance reviews in the company like it's a company that doesn't give a perfect performance review, right? So, right, going from that and being like, I need to find a new job. I've got to get out to I am excelling at this job, and it wasn't just anyone that gave her the perfect performance review. It was one of the co founders of the company. So like, top person is saying, Yeah, this is great. You're doing amazing work. There is value, and I think you're incredible. So in that transformation, the thing that she had to connect to, or reconnect to, was her values and understanding what are the things that she enjoys about her work and what are the things that she really didn't enjoy, and understanding the why behind that, and then the other two things for her, or developing her confidence, which sounds very fluffy, because it's like, How do you help someone do that? And I help people do that by helping them feel really good about their work product. So with her, with her, what we ended up doing was focusing on helping her prepare for some presentations. Me giving her feedback on her decks, or her talking to me about how she wanted to prepare for a meeting and the points that she wanted to make, and me helping her, you know, craft really compelling talking points, and having that feedback loop with me of being like, Okay, here's how the meeting went, and this was the feedback I got, and also being like, Oh, wow, the meeting went really well. And like feeling her confidence build over time by helping her get better at her work, and gradually over time, it just built to that amazing end point for her. But that's that's a transformation for me that will always stick out, because I just remember that first meeting and me just being like, okay, you know this, this might end up being a journey where we help her find a role that is better suited for her. And, you know, just kind of thinking about that, and it just didn't end up being that at all.   Speaker 1 ** 54:35 Well, the other thing that, in one way or another, probably plays into some of that is the people her bosses, the people who she worked for, probably sensed that something was going on, yeah, and she had to be honest enough to to deal with that. But as she progressed, they had to sense the improvement, and that. Had to help a lot.   Ashley Rudolph ** 55:01 Yes, for sure. And I think maybe there is confusion from her boss and in him thinking that she was ready to take on the work that he knew that she could take on, but she didn't quite feel ready yet. Yeah, so there was something she had to sort through, and she finally, not finally, that wasn't a lot of time at all, but she got there, and yeah, yeah.   Speaker 1 ** 55:26 And I'll bet they were better. I'll bet they were better communicators with each other by the time it was all said and done, too   Ashley Rudolph ** 55:31 Exactly, yes, yeah, yeah. They developed a shorthand, you know? And, yeah, yep.   Speaker 1 ** 55:39 So there are a lot of leaders who look great on paper, but when it really comes down to it, they just aren't really doing all that they ought to be doing. They feel restless or whatever. What's the real reason that they need to deal with to find momentum and move forward?   Ashley Rudolph ** 55:58 Yeah, so I'm going to take a I'm going to take a different approach to answering this question. And because of the people that I work with, again, they're high achievers. Yeah, right. And sometimes I see that what happens is maybe people have described them as restless, or people have said, Why aren't you happy? You have this amazing career, you should be happy. And I think, like that projection, they end up taking that on and feeling guilty about the fact that they want more. But at the core of it, when I talk to them or get to the level of, you know, Hey, what is happening here? What's causing this sense of restlessness? Surprisingly, the answer is, yeah, I have this great job or this great title, but I feel like I could be doing so much more. So it's an impact. It's an impact thing that is driving the people that I work with. So what we end up doing is trying to figure out, to some degree, like I have no control over what happens at work, so I don't want to pretend that I do, but if it is an impact question, then what we get to the core of is, okay, well, how do you increase your impact? And that's what I work with them on?   Speaker 1 ** 57:24 Well, here's a question. So I have been in sales for a long time, and of course, as far as I'm concerned, I still am being a public speaker. I sell more life and philosophy than anything else. But one thing a lot of people face is rejection. A lot that was redundant, but a lot of people face rejection. How do you get people to understand that rejection isn't a bad thing, and that it actually is a sign of success more often than not? And I agree with it. And you had given me this question, I think it's a great question and relevant to answer.   Ashley Rudolph ** 57:58 Yeah, so I just try to flip the thinking. So I make it less about the person rejecting you, or you receiving a rejection. And to me, if you get rejected, it's a signal that you try, and that's what we focus on, right? So if you're not getting rejected and you're in the same place that you were, it's probably an indication that you're not trying, or you're not taking big enough swings, or you're not pushing yourself. So, yeah, I just try to help my clients. You know, think about the fact that, hey, you got rejected because you tried and you put yourself out there, and that's great. And then the other thing I like to think about with rejection is really just like rejection is someone placing a bet, and if you know about bets, you know that they're not 100% right, and sometimes the person just decided they weren't going to place their bet on you. And it's not that you're not capable, or it's not that it wasn't a great idea, maybe it wasn't the right time, maybe whatever, you don't know what the why is, but it's just a bet, and someone could take a different bet, and it can be on you, or you can bet on yourself even, right? So once you start to think about rejection as just the choice that someone made on a day, and that person isn't all people, and they're certainly not representative of, you know, the person who could decide to take a chance on you and your idea or your initiative, then I think the rejection stings a lot less.   Speaker 1 ** 59:31 Yeah, one of the expressions I've heard regularly is the selling really begins. And I and I think whether it's selling a product or whatever you're doing, but the selling really begins when the objections begin or the rejection. Yeah, and I think there's, there's so much truth to that one of the things, one of the things that I used to do when I was selling products, is I would play a game with myself. Is this person. Going to give me a new objection or a new reason for rejection that I haven't heard before, and I always loved it when somebody came up with something that truly I hadn't heard before, and that was absolutely relevant to bring up, because then it's my job to go off and deal with that, but it was fun to put my own mindset in that sort of framework, because it's all about it's it's not me, unless I really am screwing up, it's other things. And no matter whether it's me screwing up or not, it's my job to figure out how to deal with whatever the other person has on their mind. Yeah, and when the new things come up, those are so much fun to deal with. And I even praised people, you know, I've never heard that one before. That's really good. Let's talk about it.   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:00:50 So great, yeah, yeah. They were probably like, oh, okay, wow. Well, yeah, let's talk about it, yeah.   Speaker 1 ** 1:01:00 But I didn't show fear, and didn't need to, because I I went into a learning mode. I want to learn what's on their mind and what's going on,   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:01:09 yeah, and that's what it's about. It's about understanding what's important to the other person, or understanding their concerns. And I think if you come at it like you did, from a place of really wanting to understand them and find common ground, then sometimes you can even shift the rejection right often.   Speaker 1 ** 1:01:27 If you do it right often you can. Yeah, you can. You can reverse it, because most rejections and objections are really based on perception and not necessarily reality   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:01:41 at all? Yes, exactly yes, yes, which is   Speaker 1 ** 1:01:45 important? Well, if you could go back and talk to a younger version of yourself, what moment would you choose and who? What would you say that they should learn? Oh,   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:01:54 this is so this is such a   Speaker 1 ** 1:01:57 great fun question. Yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:02:03 if I could go back, I would probably tell myself that you you don't necessarily have to run away to find the things that you're looking for in your career, right? And I think in life too. Sometimes you think, Oh, I just have to move to a different city, or I just have to buy a new outfit, or I just have to, I have to, I have to, I have to change this thing. And sometimes you just don't have to. Sometimes you can have a conversation about thing that you want or the thing that you're not getting. So if this is a boss right, talking about the thing that you want or that you're not getting, and coming up with a solution together, and I think for quite some time, I was too afraid to do that, and if I wasn't getting what I needed or what I wanted, I just thought the best thing to do was to find it elsewhere, and I would just go back and tell myself to ask for what I wanted first, and then get the information and then leave if I had to. But leaving doesn't have to be the default.   Speaker 1 ** 1:03:21 Yeah. Cool. Well, Ashley, this has been a lot of fun. We've been doing this an hour. Can you believe   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:03:29 it? We have, we have the time flew by. Fun. Yeah, I could have kept going.   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:36 Well, then we'll just have to do another one. Yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:03:39 we do. It, I will always come back. You are amazing. Michael,   Speaker 1 ** 1:03:43 well, this has been fun, and maybe one of the things that you could do to help spread the word about what you do and so on is do your own podcast.   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:03:50 Yes, something else to think about, yeah, yeah, that's a great idea. And then if I do then I will invite you on there. I'd   Speaker 1 ** 1:04:00 love it, I'll come absolutely well. I want to thank you again, and I want to thank all of you for listening and watching today. This has been very enjoyable and a lot of fun, and I appreciate you taking the time to be with us. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to email me at Michael H i@accessibe.com so accessibi is spelled A, C, C, E, S, S i, B, E, so Michael M, I C H, A, E, L, H i@accessibe.com or go to our podcast page, www, dot Michael hingson.com/podcast and Michael hingson is m, I C H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s o n.com/podcast, love to hear from you, and certainly I hope that whenever you're listening or watching, give us a five star rating. We value your reviews, and we really want to know that we're doing good by you, so please give us good reviews, and if you have thoughts or things that you want us to know about, don't hesitate to reach out. It. And for all of you, and Ashley, including you, if you know of other people who ought to be guests on our podcast, it's so much fun to meet more people from those who have been on before. But for anyone, if you know someone who ought to be a guest, please let me know. Reach out, and we will honor your interest and we will bring them on, because I think everyone has, as I told Ashley earlier, stories to tell. So hope that you will do that and that we'll get to see you on our next episode. And again, Ashley, I just want to thank you for being here. This has been so much fun. All   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:05:37 right, thank you, Michael.   **Michael Hingson ** 1:05:42 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Josh Blyskal, AEO Engineer at Profound, joins Ross Hudgens to dive deep into the emerging world of AI-native search optimization—and how brands can win visibility across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews. They unpack Profound's Conversation Explorer, fresh data on generative search intent, and the real-world tactics that drive clicks in the new AI-dominated SERP. From schema tips to 2025 URL hacks and LMS.txt files, this is the tactical roadmap for modern marketers navigating the future of search. Show Notes 0:08 – Why AI-native visibility is heating up 1:00 – Profound's Series A and platform momentum 2:15 – The moment for AI search is here 4:40 – How Profound built the largest dataset of answer engine queries 7:12 – New ad tech categories marketers aren't tracking 9:40 – What “generative” search intent actually looks like 11:25 – Tools vs. blogs: what answer engines really cite 13:00 – Why traffic quality from AI sources is insanely high 15:05 – The rise of sponsored AI queries (and what to do about it) 16:50 – How to future-proof your site for ChatGPT + Perplexity 20:00 – Listicles dominate AI search—here's why 22:30 – What Bing has to do with ChatGPT visibility 24:00 – URL strategies for boosting citations 28:40 – Semantic chunking and structured answers for pickup 31:00 – 2025 SEO hacks: title tags, slugs, and metadata tips 33:45 – Schema markup that actually works (hint: authorship) 36:00 – How freshness impacts AI citation cycles 39:20 – LMS.txt and LMS-fulltext: the new crawl frontier 41:10 – Why answer engines could free up web creativity 43:30 – Commercial landing pages are the future of evergreen visibility 46:00 – Profound's upcoming launch: actions and content briefs 48:30 – Pricing, access, and how to get started with Profound Show Links Josh Blyskal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-blyskal/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-blyskal/ What content do AI engines like: https://www.xfunnel.ai/blog/what-content-type-ai-engines-like Profound: https://www.tryprofound.com/ Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: ross@siegemedia.com #seo | #contentmarketing

As AI continues to reshape education, institutions face a growing challenge in ensuring students succeed without compromising engagement or integrity. Today's college students are often juggling jobs, family, and coursework, leading to limited study time and increased dropout risk. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 40% of full-time undergraduates and 74% of part-time students were employed while enrolled in 2020, highlighting a growing challenge for student success. Most students now work while supporting themselves through school, which often reduces academic performance and increases the risk of leaving school altogether, amplifying the need for tools that promote efficient and connected learning.Can AI help students study smarter, without replacing the need to think deeply or learn independently?This episode of DisruptED, hosted by Darin Francis, features Dr. Perry Samson, Co-founder and CEO of LearningClues. He explains how this AI-powered platform helps students engage more confidently, study more efficiently, and stay connected to their learning over time. The conversation traces Dr. Samson's journey from atmospheric science professor to edtech entrepreneur and examines how LearningClues is advancing equity, personalization, and long-term student success across diverse learning environments.Highlights from the episode:Reducing Study Barriers Through AI – LearningClues helps students find specific course material fast, offering citations linked to LMS content, lecture videos, and even past courses.Supporting Belonging and Persistence – Designed with first-gen and non-traditional students in mind, the platform personalizes study feedback and tracks proficiency to improve course completion.Preventing AI Shortcuts and Cheating – A unique “coach mode” prompts reflection instead of direct answers, guiding students through problem-solving to support deeper learning.Dr. Perry Samson is an award-winning educator, entrepreneur, and technologist known for pioneering work in educational technology and atmospheric sciences. He co-founded Weather Underground, a major weather data platform, and later developed LearningClues, an AI-powered tool that enhances student engagement and personalized learning. As a longtime professor at the University of Michigan and a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, he has led groundbreaking research and innovation at the intersection of science, data, and learning.

Le management est un muscle

In today's Part 2 episode, Dr. Mark Costes continues his compelling conversation with Dr. Lincoln Harris, CEO of RIPE Global, diving deep into the innovation behind their game-changing dental training platform. In this second half, Dr. Harris reveals how their software and hardware ecosystem is built for scalability, with a focus on improving clinical outcomes and associate productivity—fast. From cutting-edge cloud simulators and proprietary mannequins to custom LMS channels and data-driven ROI models for DSOs, it's all about getting measurable results and breaking down barriers to skill adoption.  Plus, the two discuss strategies for associate engagement using “carrot and stick” methods, and how RIPE is positioning itself as the productivity partner for DSOs worldwide. Mark also shares his vision for sustainable global mission clinics through Smile Outreach International, and Lincoln generously offers RIPE's support to train local clinicians in underserved areas. EPISODE RESOURCES https://www.ripeglobal.com https://www.truedentalsuccess.com Dental Success Network Subscribe to The Dentalpreneur Podcast

In today's Part 1 episode, Dr. Mark Costes sits down with the always insightful Dr. Lincoln Harris, founder of Harris Dental Boutique and CEO of RIPE Global. Fresh off recording 26 podcasts at Thrive Live, Mark kicks things off with high energy and hands over the mic to Dr. Harris, who shares his incredible journey from Queensland, Australia to Colorado, USA.  The conversation dives into the evolution of RIPE Global from an in-person CE provider to a global force in dental education, now offering cloud-based procedural training, proprietary LMS software, and cutting-edge hardware. Dr. Harris unpacks how their unique platform helps new grads and DSOs alike boost productivity and clinical skill, all while tracking real implementation and ROI. You'll hear how they tailor training programs to individual needs and how the system can even be white-labeled for other educators. EPISODE RESOURCES https://www.ripeglobal.com https://www.truedentalsuccess.com Dental Success Network Subscribe to The Dentalpreneur Podcast

Microsoft's Mike Tholfsen unveils game-changing AI breakthroughs for educators at ISTE 2025, including Copilot Chat for teens 13+, the revolutionary Teach module that creates standards-aligned lessons in minutes, and AI-powered study guides that transform how students learn. Discover how Learning Zone on Copilot+ PCs brings AI directly to your classroom without internet, plus exciting updates to Learning Accelerators and seamless LMS integration that puts powerful AI tools right where teachers need them. Key takeaways: FREE Copilot Chat now available for students 13+ with enterprise data protection New Teach module creates lesson plans, rubrics, and assessments aligned to standards from 35 countries Study guides in Copilot Notebooks generate personalized quizzes and flashcards Learning Zone app enables offline AI lesson creation on Copilot+ PCs Unified LTI integration brings Microsoft's AI tools directly into Canvas, Schoology, and other LMS platforms Perfect for K-12 teachers ready to save time and enhance learning with responsible AI. Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast for weekly classroom-tested tech tips! Full show notes: coolcatteacher.com/e906 @mtholfsen @coolcatteacher | #10MinuteTeacher #MicrosoftEDU #ISTELive #ASCDAnnual #AIinEducation

The title fits, but not necessarily for the reasons you imagine. Barbara Leigh grew up in Wisconsin where she attended college and had a successful career. She tells us about her life and discusses getting married, having two children and over time watching her life choices basically and totally destroy her self esteem.   Barbara tells us how she, while growing up, was constantly described as a “smart girl”. She helped many figure out answers and learned along the way how to observe and research to learn whatever she needed to know. In 1995 when the internet was just coming into our sphere of experience, Barbara learned about it and created web pages and websites for the nonprofit for which she worked. Even with all the technical knowledge she amassed it took many years before she realized that even with all her smarts she was becoming a person who was being reshaped by a partner with his own low esteem and who constantly blamed her for everything that went wrong.   Eventually Barbara realized that something was wrong and began to look in ernest at her life and behavior. She realized that she had to make choices and regain her own self confidence and constructive view of herself. She changed her life and outlook and began growing again emotionally. Barbara tells us about her journey and even includes lessons she learned and wants to pass on to others.   In 2024 Barbara wrote and published her book, “Why Smart Girls Get Into Bad Relationships and How Not To Do It Again”. She is quick to point out that the book is not just for women. It is for anyone who may be facing a “bad relationship”. Barbara shares nine conclusions and thoughts from the book that illustrate why her writings can be so important for so many.   This episode is full of many great life lessons and observations. I do hope you not only enjoy it, but that you also gain some positive life choice ideas from it.     About the Guest:   Barbara Leigh grew up on a small dairy farm in Wisconsin and was considered in school to be a smart girl. She was not the type to get in trouble or make bad decisions. She was involved in lots of activities and did well in school.   She went off to Ripon College where she majored in Speech Communication and worked in the library. After graduation, she got a job in a library at a nonprofit. While working toward a Masters in Library and Information Science at UW-Milwaukee in 1995, she was taking an online searching class and was recruited to build a web site for her employer, being one of only a few employees that had even heard of the World Wide Web.   From there, Barbara built a career as a web developer and eventually moved to online learning and LMS integrations. In each career step she moved toward content, but eventually was directed back to the technical.   In the midst of all that, Barbara got married and had two children. She entered and contributed to bad relationships in her marriage, career and family until one day she decided to just stop. She has spent the last twenty years figuring out what it means to stop, how to continue living, and how to do it better. In 2024, she published a book, Why Smart Girls Get Into Bad Relationships and How Not To Do It Again, and in 2025, she took early retirement to get fully into content and do more writing. She currently writes the Helpfulmess blog which posts weekly. Ways to connect with Barbara:   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barbaraleighauthor/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barbaraleighauthor Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/barbaraleighauthor.bsky.social Website: https://www.barbaraleighauthor.com     About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hello, everyone, wherever you happen to be today, around the world or in space, whatever the case happens to be, we're all in space anyway, so I guess that counts for something. But I'm really glad that you are here, and we're really going to have, I think, an interesting conversation today, because we, we have a person who has written an interesting book, at least. I think it's an interesting book. The title of the book is, why do smart girls get into bad relationships, and how to and how not to do it again. I think that's an interesting title. Smart Girls, I gotta say, though, Barbara, who is our guest, Barbara Leigh, I don't know. I think they're more than smart girls that get into bad relationships or just do dumb things. I don't know. Why is it that most people do dumb things, but that's a different story, and probably not what we're really going to cover today. But anyway, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset, and we're glad you're   Barbara Leigh ** 02:19 here. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Appreciate   Michael Hingson ** 02:23 it. Yeah, well, it is probably true. Why do, why do so many people get into challenges? Ah, but we cope with what we have to right? Yes, we do. Well. Well, I'm glad you're here. Thanks for for being here and being on unstoppable mindset. Really looking forward to having a chance to really chat. Why don't we start? If we can by you telling us a little bit about kind of the early Barbara growing up and all that. Alright, well, I grew up. How's that for a great way to start.   Barbara Leigh ** 02:52 That's a great, great way to start. I grew up on a small dairy farm in Wisconsin. I had two brothers and a sister, mom and dad and, you know, cats and a dog and cows. I lived in a small community. Everybody knew each other. Nothing really exciting about my childhood. I was in 4h and I was in lots of activities in school. I did great in school, and I was wildly shy as a small child, but I managed to get comfortable enough with that by being a 4h officer and being in in leadership positions in the activities that I was in. I went to off to college in Ripon, and I been busy working on being me ever since,   Michael Hingson ** 03:56 well, so you, you, you don't sound like you're very shy today,   Barbara Leigh ** 04:06 like I said, I tried to get past that. I'm still wildly introverted, but I'm at least, you know, able to speak in public. That's a   Michael Hingson ** 04:15 start. Well, that's a good you know, I'm I've always been amazed, and I hear it so often that the top fear today is public speaking. And I've never really, I know it's me, but I've never understood why it is, because I've always been somewhat used to doing it, but I think that people approach public speaking oftentimes with kind of the wrong idea, because I find that if people fear it, what they're really saying is they're afraid of the audience and what the audience might do. But I find that audiences generally don't tend to really want to view a speaker as being bad. They want speaker. To succeed. So it's always been a puzzlement to be as to why people are afraid of public speaking.   Barbara Leigh ** 05:07 Yeah, that is true. I was a Speech Communication major in college, and had to take public speaking as a course, and we had a guy in there that was just shook. His whole body. Shook it when he started out, and he by the end of the course, he was the best speaker there. I think he just needed to practice doing it and find out it's not so bad.   Michael Hingson ** 05:34 Well, what did he do? What do you have any notion of what what really eliminated his fear?   Barbara Leigh ** 05:41 I think he just got better each time. I think it really was just just getting up in front of people and finding out, yeah, they aren't gonna do anything. They're trying to do the same thing as me. They're trying to learn public speaking, and they're fine.   Michael Hingson ** 05:56 That's cool. Well, I know when I was a program director at our campus radio station at UC Irvine, I wanted everyone to listen to their their own shows. So we we wanted them to record the shows which they wouldn't do. So the engineer and I arranged for that to get done, and we made people listen to their shows, take the cassettes home and listen to them. And as I think about it, I think that probably more often than not, some of these people were in radio because they didn't have to stand up in front of an audience, and they didn't think about being in front of an audience and speaking so much. And so they did what they did, but when they were compelled, if you will, to listen to themselves, they got better. And they got better because they then heard what everybody else is hearing, and they taught themselves that they could really do better than than they thought they were doing, and that they thought that they could do. And I think that really makes a lot of difference. And some of those people actually ended up going into broadcasting as a as a career,   Barbara Leigh ** 07:01 that's great. Yeah, it really is. It's just a matter of getting used to your own voice. I mean, some people just really got annoyed, I guess is the word at their own voice, and they were like, I don't sound like that. Well, you don't sound like yourself inside your head. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 07:27 yeah. I know that when I hear myself talk, I do know that I sound different than I think I sound. And so again, that's part of what I work on. When I listen to recorded speeches, and I listen to what I say and how I say it, because I know what audiences like when they hear a speaker, so it gives me something to work toward. And that's a good thing. Yeah. So it is kind of fun. So you went off to school, you were in high school and all that and and did what? What people do in high school, I assume,   Barbara Leigh ** 08:07 yep, lots of groups. I was in library club and let's see Spanish club and music, musical and choir and various things. Yeah, normal stuff, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 08:23 yeah. I did some of that. I was in the science club, and there was a math club. Wasn't in too many clubs, but I was in those two and and had a lot of fun with that. So it's, it's a good thing. And then, of course, as many of us do, then you went on to college. Where did you go to college? Ripping College. I've never heard of that college,   Barbara Leigh ** 08:49 very small liberal arts college,   Michael Hingson ** 08:52 which is all the better I am. I'm a fan of smaller colleges. I read in the book David and Goliath, the guy who invented the tipping point, wrote this book, and he talks about the fact that if more people would go to small colleges, they would discover that they could actually be kind of a larger fish in a small pond, rather than being a fish that isn't necessarily as large a fish in a very large pond. So the value of people going to to places that are smaller adds a lot of value, and you do get a lot more attention. And that's why, one of the reasons I think I went to UC Irvine, we had 2200 excuse me, 2700 students when I went there. Now there are 32,000 freshmen. My gosh, I can't believe how large it is. No, it's University California, Irvine UCI, which they always say lovingly, really, truly means under construction indefinitely. They're always building new things on the college. So.   Barbara Leigh ** 10:01 Yeah, ripen is, is under 1000 students total. And   Michael Hingson ** 10:07 what did you major in? I knew all my professors. It   10:09 was great. And   Michael Hingson ** 10:10 that's, that's cool. And I did as well. I and I got to know some of them very well. Actually, a couple, one of them even came to my wedding when my wife and I got married. Some, seven or eight, well, eight years after I graduated, or, well, six years after I graduated, but he, we invited him, and he came to the wedding. So that was kind of cool. What did you major in   Barbara Leigh ** 10:33 speech communication with a religion minor? All right.   Michael Hingson ** 10:37 Wow, that's an interesting combination. Why? Why a religion minor with with that religion   Barbara Leigh ** 10:43 has always intrigued me. I guess it's I am interested in people, and religion has such a strong effect on people, and so I really just wanted to learn more about various religions and and how they work.   Michael Hingson ** 11:01 So what do you what do you think about religion and our world today, and how much of an effect it it has?   Barbara Leigh ** 11:11 It's probably very big question. Yes, yes, I have that's like, one of the ideas for one of my next books is to dig into that I'm I have several ideas of things I want to cover, and that's one of them. But, yeah, it just it floors me that there can be so much variation in people who seem to believe the same things.   Michael Hingson ** 11:44 Yeah, yeah. It is. It is fascinating. I I've said ever since escaping from the World Trade Center on September 11, that what happened, no matter what those terrorists say, was not a reflection on the whole world of Islam and the Muslim faith, those were thugs who decided that they wanted to try to make the world bend to their will, if you will, and and they they did a pretty good job for a little while, but it wasn't a religious war, because I think most Muslims are not that way. That's true, and we shouldn't demonize that religion as such, especially since we could always go back and talk about the crusades in, you know what, 1066, and so on. And if we want to talk about Christianity and what it did, yeah, the reality is, everybody tries to do things in the name of religion, and it just doesn't make sense at all. It doesn't. But people try to justify anyway, which is, which is truly unfortunate. Well, so what did you do after you got a degree?   Barbara Leigh ** 12:47 Oh, let's see. I went off to Well, I got married. There you go, after graduation, and moved to the town where my my husband was living, and we I started working at K Mart, and from there, I went to outlet mall. I was the retail store manager, and then I got my job at a nonprofit, and I've been at that nonprofit for 34 years, until I retired, just not too long ago.   Michael Hingson ** 13:24 Wow. What's the nonprofit? Or can you say   Barbara Leigh ** 13:28 it's the international foundation of employee benefit plans? Okay,   Michael Hingson ** 13:33 well, that sounds pretty useful. You were there a long time, huh? I was wow.   Barbara Leigh ** 13:39 I moved around to multiple departments, but I was able to keep growing later, so I stayed   Michael Hingson ** 13:46 so you you were there 34 years. Wow, that is a long time. What? What did you What did you learn about life being there for so long? Wow, I was out for a general question, yeah.   Barbara Leigh ** 14:06 Well, I learned, boy, so many things I have. The foundation is an Educational Association. So I learned the actual benefits. Part of it, I have a Certified Employee Benefit Specialist designation, but also I learned a lot about people and work environments and and getting along with people, and I learned a lot about technology when I started at the foundation the the World Wide Web was not public yet, and while I was there, I was going to graduate school at UW Milwaukee. I. For library and information science. And while I was doing that, I was taking a an online searching course. And my boss, well, I worked in the library, so my boss asked me if I would create a website for the foundation, because nobody else in the building really had even heard of the World Wide Web yet. Yeah. So I learned all about web development and programming and all of that, just because I happened to be the only one that   Michael Hingson ** 15:40 knew, and using tools like Netscape, remember Netscape? Oh, yes, absolutely,   Barbara Leigh ** 15:50 yeah, wow. So yeah, I learned a lot of that, and then from from the library, I went to it, and was in a web developer for many years, and then from it, I went to educational programs where I was working with our learning management system and the integration with with our association management system. So I was, I was doing integrations, basically and but the things that I learned in technology careers that have helped me thus far have been I was doing a lot of troubleshooting. So I would, you know, a lot of times, you know, if you're in technology, no garbage in, garbage out. So when I get to a problem, I say, you know, there's this, there's garbage coming out, or there's nothing coming out at all. And I work back word through the process to get to the source data. And learning that you finding the source data and making sure that the source data is correct is really important. So I learned about a lot about working my way through systems to find that and also making sure that the systems work. So that has helped me a lot in in my life, because when I got into the situation where I needed to write this book about I managed to work my way back to the source of of the problem. And so the the source of the problem was my beliefs about me, about relationships, about other people. And so it was really helpful for me to have that process already in place in my brain, that I could just work my way back to that and Okay, now I can start from better data.   Michael Hingson ** 18:13 Yeah, do you think that working a lot in technology and perhaps some of the other areas where you worked. Do you think that that taught you more about how to observe and look at things and better be able to analyze them and and remembering them? I just find that so often people don't observe things. And I think learning to observe is extremely important to do   Barbara Leigh ** 18:45 absolutely yes, yes, when that's that's like all of my career was observing and and like you said, analyzing, being able to put what I've observed into what I want to happen, or what I would I need to communicate with other people. I think a lot of my career was, was connecting the right people to the right either technology or the or the other people, or just get making those connections.   Michael Hingson ** 19:30 But you had to learn how to observe people and draw conclusions and get that information to make that happen.   Barbara Leigh ** 19:38 Oh yes. And, you know, it's a process, just in growing up and watching people in general. Like I said, you know, religion was, was my thing, because people fascinate me. So I I've always been a people watcher, not like, go sit at the mall and watch people, but, I mean, yeah. I just really try to understand where people are coming from. And I think once I was in a technology career, it was even more important, because a lot of times in those careers people don't expect the technology person to be able to do that, and for me, that was the most important part with understanding the people, understanding what they wanted, what they were actually saying was not exactly what they wanted, and to try to get it get to what they wanted, and then to work with the system to be able to get what they wanted to come out correctly.   Michael Hingson ** 20:53 How did you discover that? How did you discover that people weren't necessarily saying what they really wanted, or that somehow it wasn't being articulated on it. And I understand that's a really tricky sort of thing. I know in asking myself that I just kind of respond by saying, it's just something you gain from a lot of experience, but you have to think about it. But you know, what do you think   Barbara Leigh ** 21:21 exactly? It's trial and error. You keep having people ask you for one thing and then expecting something else, until you figure out that you know what that's really not what they want, and to get them to verbalize, okay, what is it you want coming out of this? Is it? It's tricky.   Michael Hingson ** 21:47 Yeah, yeah, it is and, and it is something where you got to be pretty careful about how you do it and, and to whom you you focus your attentions to make that happen. Or if you've got some people who are difficult to deal with, and again, I guess that that helps you stretch and grow and you learn how to even deal with those people a little bit better, so that they're comfortable in interacting with you.   Barbara Leigh ** 22:14 Yeah, absolutely. But a big part of my job is making people feel comfortable enough to talk to me and, you know, and a lot of times when I would get a project, I would go to the person that that's using, whatever it is, and ask them, okay, you know, where are you getting this data? What do you want it to look like? And, you know, and ask them deeper questions. And, and these are often the people who are, you know, low man on the totem pole, and don't ever get asked, but those are the people that I needed to get to to find out what you know, where things were coming from, to actually give them what was going to work for them.   Michael Hingson ** 23:10 And that's interesting. You're saying, like, the low person on the totem pole doesn't get asked, and they're the ones that would love to be asked to be able to offer their opinions, so that that opens up whole new opportunities when you convey that you're you're willing to listen, and of course, that also then deals with the whole issue of trust. Because if they tell you something and say, Well, I want this incompetence, and you have to keep it that way. Yes, absolutely, trust is, is such a fleeting thing today, even though it's all around us, everywhere we go And everywhere we look. I mean, we trust that the roofs on our houses aren't going to collapse while we're doing this interview, this well, this conversation, and we trust that the internet is going to continue to work. It might, we'll see. But, but we trust in so many ways, but yet, unfortunately, we also confront, or are confronted by situations that try to teach us not to trust and to be close to trust, which is too bad. Yeah, one of the things that, that, that I talk about, actually, in my latest book, live like a guide dog, is trust. I talk about the fact that, in general, the difference between a dog and a person is while dogs love unconditionally, and I think that's true, although they can be taught not to, obviously, but while dogs love unconditionally, they don't trust unconditionally. But the difference between a dog and a person is that dogs are much more open to trust because we have just learned, or we've drawn the conclusion that we can't trust people, and so we lose that skill of being open to trust and trust. Truly learning how to determine whether we can trust any individual or not, rather than just saying we're not going to trust   Barbara Leigh ** 25:07 Right, absolutely, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 25:10 which is, you know, which is so unfortunate? Well, I'm sure you've, you've encountered that a lot.   Barbara Leigh ** 25:17 I have, indeed, and you know that's that was part of my process, was learning how to trust again. And that's a slow, slow, hard process.   Michael Hingson ** 25:31 What, what caused you to start to learn not to trust? What? What happened in your life?   Barbara Leigh ** 25:38 Okay? Well, I want to talk about it, but, well, I won't go into too deep a detail, but yeah, I I was in a relationship where, you know, I was with a very a person has low self esteem, and because of that, I would get told that things were my fault, or things were if I hadn't done this, or if anything That happened really was was somehow brought back to me and as a person with higher self esteem, I took that as my personal responsibility, rather than looking at it as no, that's really Your choice, not, not something that I could cause, and that just kept eroding away at my confidence, and it ended up with me having no self esteem whatsoever. Wow. And then we, you know, I hit a point where an event happened, and I, you know, my brain went, nope, I don't deserve that. And that's where the light switch flipped, and I was to, you know, then I started looking around and going, you know what? I didn't deserve that, either or that, and that was not about me. And so then I started to measure against that, and go, Okay, I can set up boundaries now, because this is behavior that I won't accept anymore. And I was able to start making boundaries, and I was able to start standing up for myself. And, you know, as as that process went on, I was able to, I guess, it was motivate myself just by connecting, reconnecting with that higher self esteem person that I had been earlier. And so I would, you know, it honestly took a very long time, because I was at nothing, and at that point, I made a conscious effort to be gentle with myself and to be patient with myself and to accept myself and so with those being kind to myself thoughts, that's how I was able to move forward. And like I said, moving forward started motivating me, and I was able to bring myself back up to a higher self confidence.   Michael Hingson ** 29:02 Did you get? Oh, go ahead. Oh,   Barbara Leigh ** 29:04 but yeah. The the trust being gone was a trust for not just the person I was in a relationship with, but for so many things around me because I didn't trust myself. I didn't trust what I was believing about myself.   Michael Hingson ** 29:28 Did you hate yourself?   Barbara Leigh ** 29:31 I would not say that. I would say I just didn't understand myself. I would like I said, when I got to the bottom, I was able to say, I don't deserve that, so I wouldn't say hated myself. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 29:48 that's why I asked the question, because that was my impression of what from what you were saying. It wasn't a hate or a dislike, it was a recognition of what should be and what. And then how to deal with it?   Barbara Leigh ** 30:02 Yep, I was, you know, because I got there and, you know, the light switch went on, and I was like, how did I get here? How did this even happen? You know, it just, I couldn't understand.   Michael Hingson ** 30:18 But as you, as you progressed and as you learned about yourself, and that, of course, was part of it, is that you were learning about yourself and bringing yourself back the person you had a relationship with you weren't able to to, I gather, make positive steps to get them to to be a lot better than they were.   Barbara Leigh ** 30:43 That was not my focus. My focus was no boundaries, so that they couldn't hurt me anymore,   Michael Hingson ** 30:52 right, right? It wasn't a matter of you're trying to heal them, but setting boundaries and it would have it would have been nice if they had recognized what was going on. But that was the difference, is that you recognized and they did not right.   Barbara Leigh ** 31:06 And honestly, once I got to a place where I was back to being who I felt like me, he was able to look at that and take some motivation from that, and he actually went and got help through therapy as well. So it actually turned out way better than than expected, but   Michael Hingson ** 31:41 yeah, so are you guys still married? Yes, we are. Well, there you go. Okay, and that was what I was curious about. So he he did. It wasn't you can't, you can't fix everything because people have to fix themselves. But he was able to recognize that which was, which is so cool,   Barbara Leigh ** 32:02 yeah, honestly, I moved out twice. So, I mean, like I said, I set boundaries, yeah, but we made it work. I mean, like, like I said, when I first made the change I did. I was not strong enough to move to be on my own. I just wasn't. And so, you know, I just tried to be as patient with myself as possible, and and I just kept, kept those boundaries and okay, you can't talk to me like that. That's just not going to work. And as I moved forward, he kind of came along with me   Michael Hingson ** 32:47 well, and it sounds like you're both the better for it today.   Barbara Leigh ** 32:54 Oh, absolutely, yes, we've come a long way. I wouldn't say we're perfect for sure, but   Michael Hingson ** 33:01 it's a it's a process. Yes, it is. So what does he do for work or for a living?   Barbara Leigh ** 33:08 He is a sales person for a home improvement company.   Michael Hingson ** 33:11 Ah, ah, Home Improvement. Tim, the tool man, Taylor, but that's another story. Oh, gosh. Well, that's pretty cool. And does he do well at selling?   Barbara Leigh ** 33:25 Yes, he does that. He had his own business for for many years, and so it just comes pretty naturally to him.   Michael Hingson ** 33:34 Well, at the same time, if you're going to be good at sales, you have to learn to observe and and not take things too personally sometimes as well. I learned a lot about sales when I was confronted by needing to go into sales or finding another job, and then I took a Dale Carnegie sales course, and one of my favorite observations about sales is that the best salespeople are really counselors. They're teachers. They guide you in and help you make the right decision, rather than just trying to force something on you, which doesn't mean that they're not trying to make $1 and sell products, but you can also find that your product might not be what somebody wants, and if you push them into buying it, that's going to cost to cost you in the end anyway,   Barbara Leigh ** 34:24 right? And that's why he makes a good salesman, because he was he, he did the work for for 15 years, and at at his own company, and then he went, moved to sales, and just because his body was wearing out, and for because he knows how the product works, how it goes on the house or whatever, he can explain that to the customer, and that makes it so much easier for them to understand, you know, why they need what they need, and how it works.   Michael Hingson ** 34:59 Yeah. Yeah, and I have found that the better sales people really do understand how the product works, and they take the time to keep up with things, because that's going to make them better at what they do. Yes. So now you have children. How many children?   Barbara Leigh ** 35:16 Two, girl and a boy, and how old are they? 29 and 25   Michael Hingson ** 35:23 oh, they're just kids.   35:24 They're just kids   Michael Hingson ** 35:28 and and I know if they've gone into sales just checking no okay,   Barbara Leigh ** 35:36 and have no interest in doing that, what do they do? My daughter works in customer service, and my son is Air National Guard   Michael Hingson ** 35:47 member. Oh, okay, so it's hopefully it sounds like both of them have some really decent self esteem. Yes, they they learned that along the way from the two of you, which is good, which is a positive thing, which is, which is pretty cool, yeah. So you have retired from being with a nonprofit. You said you were there for 34 years, and what caused you to retire   Barbara Leigh ** 36:17 writing this book, I was, I'm looking at writing more and, you know, doing marketing and doing all the things book has been a lot to do and work full time, yeah, so I decided to give, give it my all.   Michael Hingson ** 36:35 Did you self publish or does the publisher publish it? Okay, yeah, which makes even more of a marketing responsibility for you. Although I think publishers are pushing more for most authors to do more to market their own books, rather than the publishers helping as much as perhaps they could. But nevertheless, well, tell us about the book. Then tell us, if you would tell us about that.   Barbara Leigh ** 37:01 Oh, it's why smart girls get into bad relationships, and how not to do it again. I started out with, well, basically the book is for people who want better relationships, not just women, but I. I started out with a smart girl title, because that is something I identify with. I think of it as an identity, because a lot of books on relationships are books written from the perspective of therapists or the perspective of people who have been abused or some kind of trauma or have addictions or something like that, and that's not, that's not who I am. And so I was trying to give a voice to, you know, average people have these problems too. So the smart girl identity is more about, really, like in high school, people would you know, who didn't know me? Well, what time I yearbook? You're so smart. Or people at work, thank you for fixing that. You're so smart, right? And I believed that. And what I believed was that reasonable humans make reasonable choices, and that's not always true, and so when I wrote the book here, or actually when I when I hit the bottom and I started looking back, I was like, I don't know how I got here. So how did I get here? I went through the process. I figured out that my beliefs weren't quite right, and they sounded good, but when I actually put them to action. They really didn't work. So the book is my process of of getting from bottom of the barrel self esteem back up to high self esteem, and looking at those beliefs and rewriting them.   Michael Hingson ** 39:23 So, um, how so like some of your beliefs that that didn't work. For example,   Barbara Leigh ** 39:28 I will read you a few of them if you don't mind. Okay, so, so you get the idea of where, where this goes. So Belief number there's nine of them. Belief number one, I can trust myself became, I can trust myself when I am being honest with myself, because I was lying to myself quite a bit of the time. It turns out, number two, I am a good helpful person became, I am a good helpful person, but that is not where I find my. Value, and that kind of blew me out of the water when I figured that one out. Number three, I'm smart, but I can't appear smarter than my partner. And that's where the focus on women comes in. It's kind of looks at the social oppression of women and how that affects your beliefs. You know, if you believe that stuff so, number three, became, I am smart and I don't have to hide it. Number four, I must guard my relationship, not only from outside, but from inside to became, I must guard my own boundaries to maintain my mental health and stay true to me. Number five, it is important to keep things steady and stable became keeping things steady and stable doesn't allow me to grow. Fear blocks my growth. Embracing the uncomfortable for a time helps me become better. That one was a hard one to learn how bad number six, self care is indulgent and not a priority. Became, self care is a high priority if I don't care take care of me, I can't be good at caring for anyone else. Numbers seven, I have emotional muscle, and I can muscle through anything became I have emotional muscle and I can use it to pull out of negative thoughts. I don't need to deny my emotions or wallow in them. Just recognize them, feel them, and continue to move all the way through them, and this one kind of hits home for my daughter. My daughter was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 20 months, and she used her emotional muscle to muscle through her pain, because she didn't want to see the reaction of people feeling sorry for her, and so she had a lot of of using that emotional muscle to just not show people her pain and and that has been something that we've had to work on for a long time.   Michael Hingson ** 42:33 What did she discover? What did she finally do?   Barbara Leigh ** 42:37 Well, it's been a process, but she's finally actually showing her pain. She because, like she's had a cyst that burst in it. It wrapped around some things, and she couldn't tell the doctor in charge that that she was having that much pain. She she didn't make it a 10 on the pain scale. So the doctor didn't think that she was that, that these complications had happened, because most people couldn't even walk with this pain, but she could, because she's super high pain tolerance. Yeah, and, you know, she learned that she doesn't need to hide her pain, which was, which was pretty life shaking for her, and she's learned that, you know, she can actually tell her doctors, yes, I'm, I'm actually having some pain, and I I really need to have you work on this or or give me medication for this, or whatever. But, yeah, she's she's really come a long way as far as being honest with herself and with other people. Yeah, let's see. Number eight, I can rely on my smartness to figure it out became I can rely on my smartness and problem solving ability. But life isn't always logical. Sometimes I'm starting starting from a faulty belief I don't have to be perfect. It's okay to ask for help when I don't understand and get stuck. And that one it, it seems very obvious, but that one was really ingrained and kept coming up in different ways. Number nine, partial is enough, I can and should fill in. The rest became I am a whole person with my own thoughts, emotions, talents, hopes, dreams and goals. So if I want to be in a relationship, my significant other should see me as a whole person and should be a whole person themselves.   Michael Hingson ** 45:10 Wow, some pretty deep concepts, needless to say, Yeah, but by the same but by the same token, you were willing to step back and observe and think about yourself, so you were able to to create these conclusions and make these changes, which is what it's really all about?   Barbara Leigh ** 45:36 Yeah, I think that's what's different about my book, is that it's not written by a therapist or somebody who's at the other side. It's somebody who's actually in it, um, digging through it and and feeling it and it makes the, you know, it. I pulled apart the process and was, you know, you have to hit all of the things that the you know, the mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, social, all, all of the things to hold those beliefs out of all of the different places in your life where they stuck.   Michael Hingson ** 46:23 You think that people really have to, how do I say this? Go to the bottom or hit rock bottom before they can really start to learn?   Barbara Leigh ** 46:33 I hope not.   Michael Hingson ** 46:38 You did and I but I hear it a lot you really don't know until you hit rock bottom. And I'm not sure I totally buy that. It really depends on what you're able to learn and what you're able what conclusions you're able to draw. But a lot of times hitting rock bottom, if you will, maybe emotionally at least, brings people to where they need to be. But I am with you. I hope that it isn't always that way, and it doesn't need to always be that way,   Barbara Leigh ** 47:06 right? I think there's, there's different rock bottoms, you know? It's I got to the point where I needed to learn, and I learned, and that may not be what you and I would view as rock bottom to someone else, you know, but it's, you know, I finally, I finally flip the switch. And that's, you know, somebody else may have a switch at a different level than   Michael Hingson ** 47:40 or they may not see that there's a switch to flip which is, which is all about choice, yep. So what got you started down the road of writing the book?   Barbara Leigh ** 47:54 To be honest, I never thought I would write a book that was never, you know, a big goal in life for me, and I think it's totally a God thing, because I was, you know, my my daughter's been telling me, you need to write a book. You need to write a book for, you know, years. And I was like, yeah, yeah, sure, no product. And then all of a sudden it was time to write the book. And I was like, I don't know why it's time to write the book, but it's time to write the book. And honestly, it it flowed. I mean, I had all these great ideas for a book, and they went poof out the window when I wanted to start writing. I I just kind of sketched out an outline that was terrible, and showed it to a few people, and they're like, sure, you go. And I threw it away and just started writing. And once I started writing, it, it flowed. It actually just came out. And once I was in it a little, you know, a few chapters in, then I was able to organize it and figure out what I wanted to say and make an outline. But I couldn't do any of that until I just started writing. So I don't know, it was odd. And then I gave it to my son. I gave, like, the first two, two chapters, probably, to my son, and he read it, and he pushed it back over the table at me, and said big words. And I was like, okay, so I took it and I took out all the big words, and I made it more conversational. And now everybody who who has read it and and talk to me is like, you know, it just feels like a conversation with a good friend over a cup of   Michael Hingson ** 49:57 coffee. There you go for   Barbara Leigh ** 49:59 a glass of. Wine. So that's where it   Michael Hingson ** 50:03 got, yeah, it's, it's about not preaching, but presenting and teaching in a in a non confrontive way, which is what it's really about, which is what sales is about, Yeah, but that was very observant on his part to say that, yeah,   Barbara Leigh ** 50:24 you made it so much better.   Michael Hingson ** 50:28 When I wrote thunder dog, my first book I was I wrote it with someone. We collaborated. I had worked on it for a long time, or at least worked on ideas. And then Susie Flory called one day and she wanted, she was writing her own book, and she said, Tell me your story. And after I did, she said, You should write your own book, and I'll help you do it. And she did, one of the things that we had was that the book is about being in the World Trade Center, but it's also a lot about my life. And when we got it to the editor, because her agent, who became my agent, Chip McGregor, was able to sell it to Thomas Nelson publishing, which is now part of HarperCollins. But the editor said, My problem with this book is the transitions. And kind of said, well, what do you mean? He said, Well, you talk at the beginning of each chapter about an event on September 11, and then you you go back in your life, but you don't transition between the two. And then when you come back, you don't transition. And I get lost. And when he described that, it just immediately clicked what he was saying. And I actually then spent a weekend putting transitions in every chapter at the right places. And when he read that, he said, this is perfect. This is exactly what I was talking about. And when one of the major reviewers of the book, Kirkus, which reviews books for publishers and libraries and so on, when they reviewed it, they said one of the most powerful parts about it were the transitions. And so I appreciate what your son said, because sometimes the unexpected thing that someone says is what sends you down a road to make it a much better thought process and a much better book or a much better whatever than it would have been otherwise.   Barbara Leigh ** 52:22 Yeah, absolutely. I had a friend from college read it from an author perspective. So she's, she's written five books, and she gave me just, you know, really, she wrote fiction books so they weren't the same, but she gave me just really good authoring advice. As far as you know, you were used this word too many times, you know, things like that. And that was really, really helpful too to just, oh, okay, I get it. That would make it much more smooth. And you know, that was really helpful for me too, and it's just just to get feedback in any capacity is so helpful, I think,   Michael Hingson ** 53:12 well, and all of those comments that people give you help teach you how to write better. Yeah, absolutely. How has writing the book changed your perspective?   Barbara Leigh ** 53:24 Wow. Well, first thing, I had no idea about writing books or publishing or marketing or any of that, so that's been a whole big learning curve. But as far as you know, even even writing through the book helped teach me some things about the process as well. Just as far as relationships go, and talking through it with I had about a dozen people reading it at chapter by chapter as I got them done and and having getting that feedback from them, as far as you know, how it how it affected them, and it was really just so, I guess, helpful for me to learn what other people were were thinking when they're reading it. Because, you know, some of the things had never occurred to me, some of the things were for from friends who had been through some kind of childhood trauma. And I was kind of looking at, okay, I get what you're saying, and I think this that what you're telling me is you. This part is coming from your childhood trauma, but this other part is definitely something that I could add to my book, and I didn't want to make my book about trauma, because it really in my mind, was for the person that was just an average person, living an average life, having average relationship. However, my friends who have had childhood trauma have actually been the most affected by my book, which I find fascinating.   Michael Hingson ** 55:42 That's that's interesting, but it does make sense, because clearly you're trying to help people be more open about themselves, to themselves. And the people that that do that are the people that have been in situations where maybe they haven't, and they maybe intellectually realize that they need to grow and change, but they hadn't totally emotionally adopted that stance, and so you help them with that, which is cool.   Barbara Leigh ** 56:11 Yep, that's something I was expecting for sure.   Michael Hingson ** 56:15 No, understand. Now you have a blog also right, called helpfulness. Why is why is it called helpfulness? And what is it about?   Barbara Leigh ** 56:24 It is called helpful mess because when I was writing this book, I was writing about helpfulness and how that kind of steered me in the wrong direction, because that's where I was finding my value, and I had a typo that made it helpful. Mess, mess. Yeah, I said related to that mess. Yeah, it's like, that messy part. That's me. I So related to that that I ground onto that word. I was like, Okay, this word is mine,   Michael Hingson ** 56:56 well, and it really goes right along with the book and everything we've talked about today. Needless to say, Have you thought about doing things like starting a coaching program? Or do you do any of that?   Barbara Leigh ** 57:12 I do not. My daughter is, she is a life coach, and she has started a holistic nutrition program. So she's kind of doing that, that thing and, and I've never really been interested in doing that kind of thing. So I like you go. I will help you.   Michael Hingson ** 57:33 Okay, well, that's fair. I think we, we all do what we we feel we're best at, and it may come to the time where you'll suddenly discover that you're really better at it than you think, and that you could, you could coach people, or maybe not, but that's really something to look at.   Barbara Leigh ** 57:55 Yeah, I do want to focus on my writing for a while, but you know, when she's done with her program, maybe we'll get something   Michael Hingson ** 58:01 together. Well, there you go, and she lives close to you. Yeah,   Barbara Leigh ** 58:08 she's a half hour early, all right, so   Michael Hingson ** 58:10 Wisconsin home to everywhere, which is pretty cool. Well, so what would you advise? What kind of advice would you give to someone who's going through a lot of the things that you've gone through and so on? What would be the first thing that you would say to them to hopefully get them started down a different path of of life, rather than thinking so little of themselves and not really wanting to move forward,   Barbara Leigh ** 58:39 I would tell them they have options. You can leave your your value is not in how helpful you are, and be gentle and be kind to yourself and accept that you may not be coming from a belief that is true. And look, you know, try to see when you feel something that right, kind of off. Kind of look at your beliefs and you know, where is this coming from? Because a lot of times you can find it if you look hard enough, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 59:31 it's about teaching people to truly develop the skill of self analysis, if you will. Yeah, which is something that we, we all ought to do more of we, we tend not to really look at ourselves. And it goes back to the same thing as the whole concept of the fear of public speaking, if we, if we step out of ourselves and look at what happened, we beat up on ourselves rather than recognize. Amazing. This is a teaching moment, and we can learn from it, rather than allowing it to just be something that beats us   Barbara Leigh ** 1:00:07 up. Yes, absolutely,   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:10 which makes a lot of sense. Well, I want to thank you for doing this. We've been we've been at this about an hour. Can you believe it? But I really enjoyed having you talk about it. Do you have any kind of last minute thoughts that you want to convey to people?   Barbara Leigh ** 1:00:30 Well, let's see. I guess if you think reasonable humans make reasonable choices, maybe rethink that. If you want to find my book, you can find it at my website. Let's see   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:48 and what's your website?   Barbara Leigh ** 1:00:51 Barbara Lee, author.com and Lee is l, e, i, G, H,   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:56 so it's Barbara Lee, author.com, yeah, cool. Well, I hope people will find it, and we'll, we'll read it. Is it's available? Is it a hard copy or ebook, or both, or both? Okay,   Barbara Leigh ** 1:01:16 and available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble Ingram, Apple, Google, not all the places   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:24 they're they're an audible version or an audio version,   Barbara Leigh ** 1:01:27 not yet something to work on asking, yeah, absolutely. I know I have two people that have been asking, and I well, I have to start making money before I can spend money on that.   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:43 Yeah, I hear you well, unless you read it yourself, which cuts the cost way down.   Barbara Leigh ** 1:01:49 Yeah, try that. I have no idea how to do that either, so that, you know, has added to my my pile of things I need to learn.   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:56 There you go. It's an adventure.   Barbara Leigh ** 1:01:57 Yes, absolutely, it's on the list. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:00 Barbara, thank you for being here. I really appreciate it, and I want to thank all of you for listening. I hope that this has been not only enjoyable, but educational and worth your time. Love to hear your thoughts. Love to get your your thoughts about this. So any of you who would we'd love to hear from you, please email me at Michael H, i@accessibe.com that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, wherever you're listening, please give us a five star review. We really appreciate those reviews, and especially we love five star reviews. We want positive reviews, but you give us your honest thoughts. We love that. We appreciate it, and we value your comments very highly. If you know anyone who you think ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, please let us know. And if, by the way, you aren't sure how to review or whatever, or you want to find another place to hear more podcasts in addition to wherever you're listening to it, today, you can go to Michael hingson.com/podcast that's m, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, o n.com/podcast, and all of our episodes are there, but we really value your time. We value that you like what we're doing. We'll always love to hear from people, so please let us know and keep the emails coming and again. Barbara, I just want to thank you. We really appreciate your time and are so glad that you came and spent this time with us.   Barbara Leigh ** 1:03:32 Thank you, Michael, it's been great. I appreciate   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:40 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

According to research from G2, 63% of buyers like to be introduced to new products or solutions. So how can you effectively equip reps to sell your new offerings so they can turn that interest into real business impact? Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Win-Win podcast. I’m your host, Shawnna Sumaoang. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic is Danica Bangert, the senior director of revenue enablement at ProducePay. Thank you for joining us, Danica. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Danica Bangert: Thanks Shawnna for having me. It’s great to be here to talk through this subject. I think it’s very relevant in today’s world and especially in this world of AI and new things that are always coming for a lot of our go-to market reps. But like you mentioned, I’m the senior director of revenue Enablement at Produce Pay. I spent the last decade. In, you know, high growth SaaS companies like Zendesk, like Gong, and now kind of in the FinTech world, in the produce industry, where I get to kind of bring a, I would say, more modern enablement strategy to a very traditional industry, which is unique. And I’m really passionate about enablement in general, having come from the individual contributor side, having done sales and now moved to the enablement world. So love scaling, you know, sales teams and sales enablement teams with, for me, a lot of it’s around frameworks. A lot of it’s around consistency, messaging, and you know, programs like you said, that drive real behavioral change and not just kind of check boxes for enablement. SS: We’re excited to have you here, Danica and you actually recently were featured in an article that offered a glimpse into a day in the life of an enablement leader. Can you tell us what this looks like for you at ProducePay, and what are some of the key initiatives you’re focused on driving as an enablement leader? DB: Yeah, well, no two days are the same, especially a startup. So I’m sure many of our listeners can agree to that point, but especially navigating rapid growth and change is something that I deal with. So some days I’m deep in strategic planning and prioritization, figuring out how to scale things like the onboarding program, if we’re in a hiring phase. Or in my case a lot more is on field execution. So how do I balance the ever boarding for the different roles and different teams in the field? And then other days I’m building hands-on, right with the team, whether it’s tightening our messages on current products, building, you know, LMS courses and certifications for, you know, programs that require maybe a little less behavioral change. Launching, you know, competitive plays or just in general refining manager coaching motions. So I think it’s a mix of thinking big to collaborate with my cross-functional partners, but also for me rolling up my sleeves and helping the team. I. SS: And one of your key initiatives I know, is enabling reps to effectively sell the new predictable commerce program. What are some challenges that reps might face when learning to sell a new solution and how have you been helping your team overcome them? DB: Yeah. Like you mentioned, one of our biggest initiatives is driving adoption for our predictable commerce program. In our case, it’s a offering that gives a bundling almost of our services. It is a definite. I would say new product, but it’s really a shift in how we have gone to market in the past. And of course in that case, enablement has been critical in translating that into something that the field can actually execute on. So, you know, trite as it sounds, the analogy of building a plane while we’re flying it is. Is certainly something that we have to balance here at ProducePay. So we’re figuring out what the motion is to sell, to market this offering, this product, but at the same time, to try to go to those, go to market teams and give them what they need to get in front of customers during the right cycle, during the right part of the customer journey. And so for me and my team, we focused on. A lot of the like packaging of what is that narrative? And the challenge there is designing it to be really prescriptive and make sure that there’s action against, like how can we actually put these pieces into place and embedding it into the different motions that we have in our enablement cadence today. Things like onboarding or on our ongoing coaching and things like that. So it’s so for me it’s about consistency. It’s about clarity of the message for things like new product offerings and giving people the confidence they need to go and speak to their customers or their new business prospects about that potential value. SS: I love that. Consistency, clarity, and confidence. I think those are fantastic things to drive for your sales team. From your perspective, what unique value does an enablement platform provide though when it comes to equipping reps to effectively sell a new solution? DB: Yeah, I mean, for us, it’s about change management, right? Because change management is a big one, and I think when you’re asking sellers to pivot the way that they’ve always sold something, or you have to communicate and over communicate, oftentimes the why, giving them the space to either practice. Or create quick wins or come back to being intentional and being aligned. We really need to be able to have the tools in order to do that. Of course, you know, Highspot helps us along our journey with this in order to enable against any sort of initiative. So for us it’s been a game changer. Right? And it’s a critical, I think, central source of truth, but more importantly, it gives the reps. What they need in their flow of work. I’m very big on like operating in the operating rhythms of the go-to market teams and the tool sets that they’re in. So whether it’s. Pitch decks, talk tracks, objection handling. It should all be at their fingertips. And so, you know, we’ve also leaned into those components. We’ve leaned in heavily to Digital Rooms specifically because of our use of those with our customer. So in customer facing, we can use those Digital Rooms to guide reps kind of through that structured buyer journey and kind of ensure consistency across those touch points. SS: I’d love to actually double click into that because as you mentioned, I know you’re leveraging digital rooms to help reps land the new solution. What are some of your best practices for leveraging Digital Rooms and how are you planning to use them to drive success of your new solution launch? DB: Yeah. One area that, like I said, we’ve really leaned into Digital Rooms. Like I said, it’s not just about the content sharing, it’s about creating this guided. Buyer experience that really mirrors how we want the reps to have conversations. With our customers, especially for us post initial sales, right? A lot of times we see our customer success team who is going in there. There’s so much for us in terms of our product and our offering that they have to be able to anticipate and really guide the customer through when they’ve already signed up with us and become a member and start to utilize our products and services. So we really wanna make sure that they feel equipped to have the conversation, the CSMs, and that the customers don’t have any surprises, right? So that anticipation and the use of guiding them through that journey in digital rooms is really important. So for us, each room is really tailored to the stage of the deal. And for us, post-sales, that curated content is really important and which is why it’s a huge piece of the multi-threaded sales, post-sales journey and, and use utilizing that live on the call with our customers. So from the sales leadership perspective, I think it also gives us visibility. When we think about using the digital rooms, and we can see when a buyer ultimately engages, when a customer engages with it, what they’ve clicked in that room, what interests have been spiked and what drops off. Ultimately, that helps us kind of coach the reps that are using those, our CSMs that are using those in real time and kind of adjust the strategy and what we’re seeing in terms of, you know, buyer disengagement. So, you know, we’ve used the Digital Rooms, especially with our new product offering and ultimately with our current offerings, some of our products that have been around for a long time that are really consistent and that we know we need that customer success support for. So that making sure everyone is kind of aligned in the interactions. SS: Amazing. You touched on visibility and when I think about that, I immediately think about kind of the underlying data behind that. How are you leveraging data to continuously optimize and improve your enablement programs? DB: Yeah, I mean, data’s so important. And of course we’ve seen real results in just utilizing those kinds of capabilities. Shorter time to first deal, or in our case, like higher attach rates for key products. Are things that I would wanna look at, um, and that we’ve seen impact for, from a lot of our enablement programs, but especially this, when we think about post-sales on new products or post-sales on existing products, I would say stronger deal progression is something I wanna look at and utilize the tools sets for the field. But you know, we also track field readiness scores. And you know, since rolling out things like our multi-product offerings and this type of program using, you know, Highspot and coaching cadences, we’ve seen a pretty significant lift in rep confidence and kind of tying that into pipeline conversion. So a lot of things that we’re looking at there. SS: Amazing. And since implementing Highspot, what business results have you achieved and do you have any wins you can share? DB: Yeah. I mean, I would say, again, just looking at the engagement piece, you don’t have to go crazy, right? And especially with tools in general, but Highspot especially, there’s so much you can do in the tool itself that I think it’s important to think about, like the basics. And if you wanna start off with just attributing your enablement success to engagement. That’s absolutely okay. Right. You don’t have to go as far as, okay, let’s tie in directly to the deal conversions or to the qualified pipeline, or to the close rates, or to the a RIO or whatever it is that you’re measuring, right? It’s okay to go straight to, you know, engagement. It’s okay to go straight to rep confidence, like some of those are easy, big wins. And for me, with a smaller team in terms of enablement and also a smaller go-to-market team. You know, that’s something that still gets me buy-in and alignment with my team. So with at least these tools getting, you know, an 18% lift in rep engagement, even just looking at some of the numbers today, like those are good for me. SS: I mean, to your point, it’s about the, the people and, and you’ve mentioned this, you mentioned this in the article, that enablement isn’t just about tools or processes. It really does come down to the people at the end of the day. And how do you keep your people and their needs at the center of your enablement strategy? DB: I think keeping people at the center of enablement strategy is easily done by just remembering that we are dealing with people, right? Sometimes we forget in this world of Zoom and post COVID, like we’re always on, you know, our laptops we’re always on, in general, in emails or in slacks, or in messages, et cetera. Zoom, especially, I think it’s easy to forget that there is a person on the other side of the screen. So much so in even podcasts, right? So we’re always looking at that, I think from a numbers perspective, but coming back to building relationships, right? We get into the roles we’re in, or the companies that we work for because of the relationships we have and the communities that we built behind. So I think it just comes back to remembering that there’s humans involved and what do people care about most is building those connections. So not just, you know, they’re not just numbers, they’re not just APIs or metrics that there’s people behind it. SS: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Danica, last question for you. If you could give one piece of advice to enablement leaders preparing to roll out a new solution or a new product offering, what would it be? DB: Hmm. This is a good one. I think for me, it goes back to what I just mentioned in terms of even metrics and maturity level. It’s okay to be a team of one. It’s okay to start small, don’t chase perfection. I would say chase adoption. Right. Your content, your programs, your tools, they only matter if people actually use them, that they’re engaged with them. So keep things simple, keep things repeatable and tied to the major business outcomes of, you know, your industry, your business, and just never forget that the best enablement is built with the field, not for them. SS: I couldn’t agree more. Danica, thank you so much for joining us today. You landed some fantastic advice for our audience. DB: Awesome. Well, thanks for having me. It was great. SS: To our audience, thank you for listening to this episode of the Win-Win podcast. Be sure to tune in next time for more insights on how you can maximize enablement success with Highspot.

Tu es super bon dans ton job, au point qu'on te propose (ou t'a proposé) de devenir manager ? Félicitations ! Mais entre excitation et stress, la transition peut vite devenir un vrai casse-tête.Dans cette vidéo, je t'explique :✅ Pourquoi ce n'est pas juste une promotion, mais un vrai changement de rôle✅ Les 3 pièges classiques des experts qui deviennent managers (et comment les éviter)✅ Comment commencer à déléguer efficacement, même si tu es perfectionnisteRESSOURCES GRATUITES

In this episode, Michael Burcham, Chief of Strategy, Research, and Talent Development, joins Anderson Williams, Principal of Talent Development, along with Ben Gilbert, Associate of Talent Development, and Jackson Sprayberry, Director of Talent Development, to share how Shore University has grown into a platform that supports learning at every level, including executives, managers, and frontline team members. They talk about the systems behind ShoreU, like the LMS (learning management system), scenario-based training, and pathway programs, and how these tools help leaders apply what they learn in real situations.Key Takeaways:Pattern recognition across portfolio companies makes it possible to build leadership programs that scale across industries and business models A mix of live sessions, self-paced tools, and media-driven content makes learning accessible to those with different learning styles and work flowsThe talent pipeline is strengthened by identifying high-potential individuals early and preparing them to take on key roles as companies growAs the platform evolves, the focus is on building both standardized pathways and customized experiences to meet companies where they areChapters:00:00 Introduction05:19 Building the System14:13 Development Programs18:34 Content that Connects21:20 What's Next?Listen to our podcasts at:https://www.shorecp.university/podcastsYou'll also find other Bigger. Stronger. Faster. episodes, alongside our Microcap Moments and Everyday Heroes series—highlighting the people and stories that make the microcap space unique.Other ways to connect:Blog: https://www.shorecp.university/blogShore Capital University: https://www.shorecp.university/Shore Capital Partners: https://www.shorecp.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/shore-universityThis podcast is the property of Shore Capital Partners LLC. None of the content herein is investment advice, an offer of investment advisory services, or a recommendation or offer relating to any security. See the “Terms of Use” page on the Shore Capital website for other important information.

SEO used to be the ultimate growth lever—offering massive “free” traffic to marketers who could outsmart the algorithm. But in 2025, it's a different game.In this episode, I'm joined by Gaetano DiNardi—an SEO strategist with deep experience across B2B SaaS—to unpack how AI is reshaping the search landscape.We discuss: The SEO playbook for 2025 How zero-click search is impacting real-world traffic Why brand is actually a competitive moat for SEO How to appear in AI search previews and LLM recommendations When a startup should consider SEO How to optimize content for the top, middle, and bottom of the funnelWhether you're running SEO for an enterprise brand or figuring out your growth strategy as a founder, this conversation will help you recalibrate your approach to search in the age of AI.About Today's Guest Gaetano DiNardi is an SEO expert and principal consultant at Marketing Advice.He's spent over a decade in B2B marketing, helping 50+ SaaS companies drive growth and demand. He's battled in some of the most competitive trenches out there—categories like identity theft, business VoIP, employee monitoring, insider threat detection, LMS software, and more.You can find him sharing lessons from the field on LinkedIn and Substack.Key Topics[00:00] - Introduction[01:24] - Evolution of search over the past 10 years[04:09] - Impact of brand on rankings[05:36] - Did SEO degrade search quality?[11:30] - Impact of zero-click results[20:28] - How to get recommended in AI preview[34:15] - When should a startup focus on SEO?[41:39] - SEO for TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU Resource LinksMarketing AdviceMarketing Advice SubstackScrunch AI - Brand monitoring for AI searchWhat is Brand Authority and How Is It Calculated? - Moz Learn MoreVisit the RevOps FM Substack for our weekly newsletter: Newsletter

Welcome to the CanadianSME Small Business Podcast, hosted by Kripa Anand. In this episode, we focus on the critical role of empowering frontline employees through innovative learning solutions. Frontline workers are the backbone of many organizations, and their engagement and training are pivotal in ensuring business success.Joining us today is Carol Leaman, Co-Founder and CEO of Axonify, a leader in frontline-focused learning and performance platforms, trusted by major companies like Walmart, Kroger, and Foot Locker. Carol discusses the challenges of traditional learning methods for frontline workers, how Axonify addresses these with innovative approaches like microlearning, gamification, and mobile-first design, and the impact these solutions have on business results.This episode is packed with insights into how businesses can enhance the productivity and engagement of their frontline workers, measure the effectiveness of their training, and scale innovation in workforce enablement. Key Highlights from the Episode:1. Challenges of Traditional Learning for Frontline Workers: Carol highlights the limitations of traditional LMS solutions for frontline workers, focusing on the need for specialized, engaging, and efficient training methods tailored to their unique environment.2. The Inception of Axonify: Carol shares the founding story of Axonify, addressing the gaps in the market and how their solution was designed to resonate with businesses seeking more effective ways to engage and train their frontline workforce.3. Measuring Training Effectiveness: Carol discusses how Axonify helps organizations connect training programs to key business outcomes, demonstrating ROI through improved performance and other key performance indicators.4. Learning in the Flow of Work: Axonify's innovative approach to learning, which integrates training directly into the daily workflow, eliminates disruption and improves the efficiency and application of knowledge for frontline workers.5. Innovation and AI Integration: Carol provides insights into how Axonify continues to evolve its platform using AI and other advanced technologies to enhance the user experience, ensuring that the training platform stays relevant and effective in driving business success.Special Thanks to Our Partners:RBC: https://www.rbcroyalbank.com/dms/business/accounts/beyond-banking/index.htmlUPS: https://solutions.ups.com/ca-beunstoppable.html?WT.mc_id=BUSMEWAGoogle: https://www.google.ca/For more expert insights, visit www.canadiansme.ca and subscribe to the CanadianSME Small Business Magazine. Stay innovative, stay informed, and thrive in the digital age!Disclaimer: The information shared in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered as direct financial or business advice. Always consult with a qualified professional for advice specific to your situation.

Parentalité, performance et culture d'entreprise… tout est lié.La parentalité au travail est encore trop souvent perçu comme un “problème à gérer” plutôt qu'un levier de transformation. Et pourtant ! S'intéresser à ces sujets promet souvent +12 % de productivité par salarié, 25 % d'absentéisme en moins, +84 % d'attractivité employeur et réduit de 50 % de coûts de recrutement. Ça vaut le coup d'y penser sérieusement non ?Alexandra Amda est DRH chez Adveris et créatrice du podcast Nouveau Prisme ! Passionnée de ces différents sujets, elle en parle dans ses épisodes. L'invitée parfaite donc pour explorer ensemble ce vaste thème.Bonne écoute !À très vite,Prenez soin de vous !Plus d'info et de ressources :Pour suivre Alexandra sur LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-amda-drh/Pour recevoir gratuitement notre sélection hebdo de conseils pratiques pour animer votre équipe, rendez-vous ici : https://teambakery.com/nlEt n'oubliez pas de laisser 5 étoiles et un gentil commentaire sur Apple Podcast et Spotify si l'épisode vous a plu.Les Talents Narratifs par Laurent Brouat : https://lestalentsnarratifs.substack.com/Le podcast “On n'a jamais fait comme ça” par Florent LetourneurTIMELINE00:00:00 - Introduction00:01:24 - Présentation d'Alexandra et de son parcours00:03:17 - Comment gère-t-elle ses différentes casquettes simultanément ?00:05:23 - Quels sont les grands défis autour de la parentalité en entreprise ?00:10:05 - Par où commencer pour s'attaquer au sujet ?00:18:56 - Comment gérer ce sujet quand on est manager ?00:24:15 - Quelques exemples de bonnes pratiques00:29:12 - Le distanciel a-t-il un impact ?00:31:37 - Un dernier message à faire passer ?00:33:27 - Son podcast Nouveaux Prismes00:40:05 - Ses routines d'apprentissageVous aimerez cet épisode si vous aimez : Outils du Manager • Happy Work • HBR on Leadership • Le Podcast de la Formation • MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP • Learn & EnjoyDistribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

According to The Times, employees now face an average of nine organizational changes per year, up from two before 2020, leading to increased change fatigue. So, how can you lead a change management strategy to help reps effectively navigate these changes?Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Win-Win podcast. I’m your host, Shawnna Sumaoang. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic is Sobia Younus, the senior manager of sales learning and enablement at ApplyBoard. Thank you for joining us, Sobia. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Sobia Younus: Sure. I really appreciate this opportunity. So I’m leading the sales learning and enablement team at ApplyBoard, a leading ed-tech platform that’s reshaping how international students access global education. So I lead a global sales enablement framework that focuses on performance process and people and my role. Spans everything from onboarding and ever boarding to performance improvement initiatives that firsthand impact the revenue. But to rewind a bit, my journey has never been linear, and I believe that’s been my strength. So while I’ve always been rooted in international education, my niche has always been B2B and B2C sales, and that helped me build a strong understanding of client behavior, market trends, and grow through meaningful engagements. I have been with ApplyBoard for almost six years. I initially joined the CX team, which gave me insight into the student journey and operations side of how applications are being processed. From there, I transitioned into the sales role where I gained the firsthand experience of navigating the field. Finally in 2021, I moved into sales enablement, and that’s where everything came together. It blended my passion for education, my CX foundation, and my love for sales performance into one purpose driven role. I think today I focus more on building scalable strategic enablement programs that build and drive revenue, empower people, and connect the dots between learning, growth and results. Personally, to me, and I really wanna share that, I believe that for me, enablement is where storytelling meets the strategy. That’s what make it so exciting, and what excites me the most about my work today is the blend of strategy and human behavior. Most importantly, understanding how people learn, they stay motivated, and how the right tool and messaging can turn a sales team into a high performing empowered force. That’s why I’m so excited to be here today because platforms like Highspot make a real difference. SS: Amazing. Well, we’re excited to have you here, and given your extensive experience in education management, I’d love to learn from you what are some of the unique challenges that reps in the industry face, and how can enablement help them navigate these challenges? SY: So that’s a very important subject. So one of the most unique aspects of international education industry is how deeply it influenced by external elements like immigration reforms, global mobility trends, and even geopolitical shifts. So unlike other industries where salespeople can rely on relatively stable products or markets, education is often at the mercy of forces beyond control. And as a result, salespeople in this space aren’t just selling a service. They’re actually navigating constant change, managing expectations, and often having to realign their strategy in real time. And a great example is what recently we saw last year, the government introduced caps on your international student permits and tightened eligibility for post-graduation work. Permits. So these changes had an immediate impact on student demand, also program selection and school preferences. So practically overnight, our sales rep has to understand the implications, shift focus away from programs that no longer align with student goals and reposition alternatives that still offered strong appeal to students. This is where enablement became mission critical. And an apply board. We don’t just see enablement as a static function. It is a real time strategic engine that basically supports business agility. So within days of those updates, our team not only delivered the sessions, so we created and rolled out sales plays and updated talk tracks and Highspot. We designed objection handling strategies on Highspot to help our. Salespeople reposition options with clarity and assurance. So in short, we didn’t just inform, we equipped, so that is important. Our goal was to turn uncertainty into clarity so that salespeople could keep on building trust and drive impact through their communication. And I believe that enablement also reinforces a culture of agility. So in industries like ours, change is inevitable. But when enablement is done right. It actually becomes a competitive advantage. SS: Amazing. And I know that at ApplyBoard, you actually switched off a previous enablement platform and moved to Highspot. What motivated you to reevaluate and change your enablement tech stack? SY: So when we initially built our enablement infrastructure at Apply board. Our primary focus was on structured learning. So naturally our, you know, tech stack leaned towards a traditional LMS. It served its objective at that time, like building, onboarding courses and track completion. But as our sales organization matured. So did the scope of our needs. So we realized that enablement couldn’t just live in siloed training modules. It had to be integrated into the daily flow of work. And our sales team needed not just learning, but relevant and up to date resources and real time support to navigate, you know, fast-paced industry changes. So in short, we needed more than an LMS. We needed a true enablement platform that could function as a CMS, a single source of truth, and I would love to call Highspot a strategic one-stop shop. So that’s what motivated our ship to Highspot. We wanted a one-stop solution where onboarding and ever boarding training and sales plays and competitive insights all could live together. A platform that doesn’t just share knowledge, but it gives. To our salespeople when they need it in a way that fits how they work. So it was a mindset shift from how do we train people to how we enable performance? And Highspot gave us the ash to just do that. SS: Change management is absolutely crucial, especially during major product or policy updates. What are some of the common pitfalls that organizations can face during change and how can they avoid them? SY: It’s a very crucial issue, and it is often underestimated and not because organizations don’t recognize its importance, but because they assume communication alone is enough. One of the most typical pitfalls is treating change as an announcement rather than a proper process. So when major product updates or you know, changes happen, especially in the industry like international education where external shifts can be sudden and high stake, simply informing teams isn’t enough. You need to enable them. So, and other pitfall that I wanna mention over here is failing to connect the why behind the change. So, if sales reps or CX teams don’t understand how an update or change a product shift ties back to their goals or the client’s goals. It usually creates resistance. Or worse disengagement. So change without clarity leads to confusion. And I always believe that change without a proper plan leads to chaos. So one more typical misstep that I wanna mention over here is not planning for reinforcement. So even when the rollout goes smoothly, but without a continuous enablement, like quick one pages or talk tracks, or life scenarios and sales place, trust me, all behavior will return. People default to what they know when things get tough, you know? But at ApplyBoard, we’ve learned this through the hard way, that effective change management start with empathy and end spend with enablement. So we ensure teams understand the work, the why, and how of every change, and we don’t stop at emails. We provide field ready tools, align managers as change champions, and use platforms like Highspot to make resources easily accessible and track the engagement, which is very important. So we all know that change is inevitable, but chaos is optional and you can do wonders if you treat enablement as a bridge between strategy and execution. SS: In your opinion, what is the strategic advantage of an enablement platform when navigating change? SY: So, in my opinion, the strategic advantage of an enablement platform during especially the time of change, is simple. It turns information into action at scale and in real time. So change, especially in the fast moving industries like international education. Often creates a gap between what the business knows and what the field needs. So product evolves, policies, they change and market fluctuates. But if your sales teams can’t access the right information at the right moment, trust me, execution suffers. So this is where an enablement platform becomes mission critical. It just centralizes the word, the why and how of change into one cohesive experience. So instead of scattered emails, you know, outdated decks or reactive training sessions, you get a single source of truth, which is updated, which is searchable, relevant, and embedded in the daily workflow. I’m so glad to say that at Highspot has given us the ability to roll out updates with precision and speed, and when major changes hit, you know, like the recent PGWP reforms, we can respond with focus sales plays, updated talk tracks, training modules, and enablement briefs in one place. We are not just informing the salespeople, we are empowering them to act immediately with clarity, with the right message. So that’s the advantage of a strong enablement platform like Highspot, that it turns change into action. It aligns teams to keep a clear narrative, gives clear visibility into what’s working, also helping you execute with assurance and stay ahead. SS: And I know Plays have been a key lever in helping your reps navigate change, such as, you know, with a recent government policy update that impacted your go-to-market strategy, how did you leverage plays to support this initiative and, and ensure global team alignment? SY: So to be very honest, Sales Plays have become one of our most powerful tools for driving clarity during moments of change. A great example, as you said, and I mentioned earlier as well, the IRCC updates last year, that significantly impacted which programs and institutions were feasible for students creating a sudden shift in our go-to market approach as well. So we knew that without quick and organized actions, this could lead to inconsistent messaging, confusion in the field and you know, lost trust with our clients as well. So we leaned heavily on sales plays and Highspot to bring structure to the chaos. So first we worked cross-functionally with the product team CX and the market expert to streamline these changes into actionable insights. So we took it this way, so we help them understand what it meant. What was changing and how it impacted our clients and the students. Then we created some tailored sales place that included updated talk tracks to help salespeople position alternatives with with clarity and empathy and segmented school lists like highlighted eligible and ineligible programs, suggested outreach. Templates and objection handling approach. Also, we did some live enablement sessions to walk them through our strategy and create some space for q and a as well. But most importantly, next steps for the salespeople. And because the sales play lived in Highspot, we could monitor. The engagement, the usage, and the adoption globally. So this gave us clear visibility into where reinforcement was needed and allowed the regional leaders to support their teams more effectively. And honestly, in moments like these sales plays are a vehicle for alignment, clarity, and assurance. They help us go from reactive to proactive insurance. Our teams aren’t just informed, but they’re ready. SS: That’s impressive. And you also implemented a Learning Tuesday initiative to drive engagement, which has helped you achieve a remarkable 91% recurring usage in Highspot. Could you share more about this practice and, and how you’re driving adoption of the platform amongst your reps? SY: So one of the most important lessons that I have learned in my enablement journey is this. If you want to build a culture of learning, don’t push your salespeople, walk in their shoes. So understand their reality, their pressures, and how they spend their day and apply aboard are salespeople are constantly engaging with clients, pitching multiple destinations, helping clients navigate multiple schools and programs. So for them to be effective, clarity is everything. And it comes from knowing your product, your destination, your message by heart. And that insight shaped our approach to drive Highspot adoption as well. So instead of just treating enablement as a checklist, we focus on making learning relevant, timely, and useful. So that’s where Learning Tuesday was born. It’s a recurring initiative, you know, to share short, impactful learning that fits easily into the flow of the week. So each Tuesday we choose a specific focus area of our sales team, whether it’s like a destination or a school or a program or any product update and build a supporting asset and a quick quiz in Highspot to provide timely, practical resource that aligned with what salespeople are actively navigating in the field. So the goal was simple. Like make learning part of their workflow, not an interruption to it, you know? And it’s very important to understand. And because we use Highspot to highlight success stories across the teams. So this approach helped us reach a 91% recurring usage rate and Highspot, because salespeople weren’t being told to learn. They chose to learn and it was because the assets and focus areas were so relevant, timely, and help them, uh, do their jobs. And I believe that and its score that enablement isn’t just about sharing information. It is about supporting people by giving them the right tools and add the right time and helping them see the difference it makes SS: Again, impressive. And as a results driven leader, what are some of the key metrics that you track to effectively drive change initiatives? SY: That’s a great point. And you know, one that really reflects how enablement has evolved as a function, especially in ApplyBoard, so early in our en enablement journey. Like many other teams, we are primarily focused on the surface level metrics, like number of views and number of assets viewed, and or how often an asset was viewed. But we quickly realized those numbers can be misleading. For instance, if two people viewed three assets a hundred times, the view count may look impressive, but it doesn’t tell you anything about who’s engaging, how many people are engaging or whether it is actually driving behavioral change. So we took a step back and asked ourselves that, what does meaningful engagement look like? What actually signals that our enablement efforts are influencing performance. So that led us to create a more focused Highspot performance, you know, engagement framework, one that actually prioritizes impact over bulk. So we started tracking. Metrics that showed the full picture of how salespeople were using and applying enablement in their work. I will share some examples, like number of unique people viewing the assets, not just the total views, monthly and weekly hours spent on Highspot, both overall and segmented by the projects. Also, the completion rates of assessments and the onboarding courses. Especially tied to the onboarding milestones and also initiatives like Learning Tuesdays. Also, engagement with the sales players and the field tools, especially during the moments of change. And when I say engagement, I mean time spent on these assets and how many people viewed the assets, and most importantly, a correlation. Between Highspot engagement and sales OKRs, like win rates or ramp-up time. So this shift actually helped us move from reactive reporting to proactive decision making. So instead of just knowing what’s being clicked or now we understand what’s actually being used. What is actually being retained and you know, what is actually impacting their performance. So it has helped us improve our, you know, Highspot approach by removing the low performing resources and focusing more on what actually helps our salespeople in the field. And I believe that an enablement metrics shouldn’t just measure activity. They should measure momentum. And when you focus on the right ones, they become a powerful lever for driving lasting change. SS: Amazing. Well, Sobia, I’m hoping you can share with me. Since implementing Highspot, what business results have you achieved and do you have any wins you can share? SY: So many. I can gladly say that. So many wins since we started using Highspot. So many wins. So we have seen some clear improvements in key sales. Performance metrics that support our business goals. While many things can influence results like market changes or team growth, but enablement has played a very important role in keeping that progress going. Like I said earlier in international education and ed tech sector, things move fast. We are always dealing with changes, immigration updates, and new information, and at the same time, we are growing quickly and bringing in people from all sorts of industries. So some with sales experience, but little international education experience and knowledge and others with the opposite. So enablement helps bridge that gap early on. This mix actually led to longer ramp up times, like longer than typically 50 to 60 days. As a new hire, they were learning about both the product and the education sector. So you know, it was taking a lot of time for them to learn all of that. But by building a structure. Role specific onboarding program within Highspot. We changed the game, our onboarding program. Now delivers destination training, platform fluency, and process enablement all in one centralized, searchable space, high sport. So as a reserve, we’ve successfully brought ramp up time just under 30 days on average. So the acceleration has had a clear impact on early client engagement and revenue readiness. Highspot just didn’t, you know, help us organize the asset. It helped us succeed. Successfully execute onboarding, scale their learning across borders, and you know, prepare salespeople to thrive in one of the most dynamic industries out there. Also, I can say this with assurance that enablement helped translate change into action, and Highspot was the strategic engine that allowed us to do that with speeds, scale and clarity. SS: Last question. If you could share one crucial lesson learned from your experience supporting teens through change, what would it be? SY: So, one very crucial and important lesson that I’ve learned is that successful change isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about creating alignment, trust, and momentum. So I’ve seen that teams respond best when they understand the why. Feel heard in the how. Can see themselves in the what’s next? So change sticks when it’s not just implemented, but truly internalized. And you know, that’s where sales enablement plays a crucial role by equipping teams with the right messaging, timely training, and actionable resources to navigate change with clarity and assurance and platform like Highspot make that happen successfully at scale. SS: Sobia, again, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate your insights. SY: I really appreciate that you having me here. It’s a pleasure and I truly enjoyed sharing, you know, all of the experience and learning. SS: To our audience, thank you for listening to this episode of the Win-Win podcast. Be sure to tune in next time for more insights on how you can maximize enablement success with Highspot.

Brought to you by our friends at ClientTether – making follow-up, automation, and sales acceleration easier than ever. Thanks for sponsoring today's episode!In this jam-packed episode of The Advisory Board Podcast, host Dave Hansen welcomes the one and only Patti Rother—franchise development powerhouse, operator-at-heart, and founder of Root and Rise Franchise Development. With 18+ years of experience across brands like Panera, Blink Fitness, Scent Hound, and Garbanzo, Patti is redefining how smart brands scale—efficiently and sustainably.

How do you deliver consistent, high-impact training across dozens of franchise locations—when your workforce is young, mobile, and constantly rotating?In this episode, David sits down with Gina Elliott, Sr. Director of Franchise Operations at Altitude Trampoline Parks, to discuss how she led a full digital learning transformation across more than 90 locations. From ditching PDFs to rolling out a mobile-first LMS, Gina shares what it really takes to get franchisees and hourly employees engaged in training—and how to blend compliance with real-world readiness.Whether it's building muscle memory for safety scenarios or hitting the “sweet spot” between digital and on-the-job learning, Gina offers a playbook for designing scalable, practical frontline learning experiences that stick.Join us as we discuss:– Going from paper to platform in a fast-paced franchise environment– The power of scenario-based training to prepare for real-life issues– How to make training efficient without sacrificing depth– Why the shift to mobile-first learning is a game-changer for Gen Z employees

Episódio com o tema "LMS ". Apresentação: Samuel Mattos Criada no final do século 18, sendo a primeira sociedade moderna organizada, a London Missionary Society. Seus missionários trabalharam em diversas partes do mundo com destaque à Índia, China, Austrália e África. Confira!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of This New Way, Aydin talks to Rob, co-founder of Heartee Foods, co-founder of Assent and longtime AI practitioner, about how he's integrating AI into every corner of his mushroom farming business — from training systems and voice-driven data entry to hiring pipelines and grant applications. Rob shares how his team replaced costly software with internal tools powered by LLMs, dramatically accelerating operations and unlocking new insights. If you're curious how AI can power real-world logistics and training — this one's for you.Timestamps:00:00 – Intro: Rob's background in machine learning and startup journey01:15 – Building Heartee Foods and pivoting from software to farming03:00 – Voice-based data collection for daily farm operations04:50 – Replacing forms with AI-powered voice inputs06:00 – Creating an internal LMS using LLMs and video training07:40 – Why traditional audits now take 2 hours instead of 2 weeks10:00 – The power of voice in AI interfaces and workplace design12:00 – Using AI to build and query internal documentation systems13:45 – Why LLM-powered search beats traditional search16:30 – Building internal software faster than ever before20:00 – How Rob uses AI to evaluate job candidates using transcripts24:00 – Demo: Ranking resumes with NotebookLM28:00 – Using LLMs to draft government grant applications34:00 – Automating grant budgeting and narrative writing with AI36:00 – The future of coding: From dev-led to voice-initiated workflows38:00 – Rob's advice to leaders: “Just start using it”Tools & Resources Mentioned:Fellow – For recording and transcribing interviewsAnthropic Claude / GPT-3.5 – Used to build internal toolsNotebookLM (Google) – Used to rank resumes and answer hiring questionsCursor – AI coding tool for faster software developmentSiri (macOS voice dictation) – Used for hands-free data entry and draftingCustom LMS with LLM integration – Built in-house to replace third-party toolsSubscribe at Thisnewway.com to get the step-by-step AI workflows.

Un départ en congé maternité (ou toute autre absence prolongée), c'est souvent un angle mort dans les organisations. Et pourtant, c'est un moment clé qui peut créer du flou, de la surcharge mentale… voire un vrai sentiment d'isolement pour l'équipe.Alors dans cet épisode, je vous partage 3 leviers pour préparer le terrain (communication, répartition des rôles, réunion de lancement…). Et en bonus, j'ai invité Alexandra Amda, DRH et host du super podcast Nouveau Prisme, pour des conseils très opérationnels.Bonne écoute !À très vite,Prenez soin de vous !Plus d'info :Pour suivre Alexandra sur LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-amda-drh/Pour écouter Nouveau Prisme d'Alexandra Abda : https://podcast.ausha.co/nouveaux-prismesPour recevoir gratuitement notre sélection hebdo de conseils pratiques pour animer votre équipe, rendez-vous ici : https://teambakery.com/nlEt n'oubliez pas de laisser 5 étoiles et un gentil commentaire sur Apple Podcast et Spotify si l'épisode vous a plu.

Janna Kellinger on Designing Games in Learning Management SystemsIn this episode of Experience Points, Dr. Janna Kellinger shares her journey from using one-shot games in high school English classes to designing fully game-based courses at UMass Boston. She discusses her book Up Your Teaching Game and how educators can design story-driven curricular games. Janna explains how she transforms Learning Management Systems (LMS) into game engines, embedding narratives and feedback loops to drive engagement. She highlights her Coding for Non-Coders course, where students learn to code to stop tech thieves. Tune in to discover how game mechanics can revolutionize online learning and student motivation.If you liked this episode please consider commenting, sharing, and subscribing.Subscribing is absolutely free and ensures that you'll get the next episode of Experience Points delivered directly to you.I'd also love it if you took some time to rate the show!I live to lift others with learning.  So, if you found this episode useful, consider sharing it with someone who could benefit.Also make sure to visit University XP online at www.universityxp.com University XP is also on Twitter @University_XP and on Facebook and LinkedIn as University XPAlso, feel free to email me anytime at dave@universityxp.comGame on!Get the full transcript and references for this episode here: https://www.universityxp.com/podcast/139Support the show

Jean-Noël Chaintreuil est tombé dans la marmite RH un peu par hasard.Lui, vient plutôt du monde des mathématiques et de la data. Et quand il s'est intéressé aux RH, il y a vu l'opportunité de lier ses deux univers. Aujourd'hui, il dirige des expérimentations concrètes autour de l'IA pour simplifier la vie des RH, enseigne au CELSA et à la Sorbonne, et milite pour que les RH retrouvent leur rôle stratégique dans l'entreprise.Dans ce nouvel épisode de Learning by Doing, il nous parle de son obsession pour l'apprentissage, de comment faire entrer l'IA dans les pratiques RH, et surtout de pourquoi il faudrait remettre les RH… au cœur des entreprises.Bonne écoute !À très vite,Prenez soin de vous !Plus d'info :Pour suivre Jean-Noël sur LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/jnchaintreuil/Pour recevoir gratuitement notre sélection hebdo de conseils pratiques pour animer votre équipe, rendez-vous ici : https://teambakery.com/nlEt n'oubliez pas de laisser 5 étoiles et un gentil commentaire sur Apple Podcast et Spotify si l'épisode vous a plu.TIMELINE00:00:00 - Intro00:01:49 - Présentation de Jean-Noël et de son parcours00:03:05 - Comment a-t-il découvert le monde des RH ?00:05:27 - Comment expliquer la place des RH aujourd'hui en entreprise ?00:07:26 - Pourquoi devraient-ils avoir plus de place dans les organisations ?00:08:48 - Comment cela se matérialise-t-il concrètement ?00:11:22 - Quels indicateurs suivre ?00:12:48 - Utiliser l'IA quand on est RH00:16:30 - Quelques exemples que ce qu'ils ont pu expérimenter00:28:43 - Son rapport à l'apprentissage00:35:01 - Comment développer son esprit critique ?00:39:43 - Ses conseilsVous aimerez cet épisode si vous aimez : Outils du Manager • Happy Work • HBR on Leadership • Le Podcast de la Formation • MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP • Learn & EnjoyDistribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Find out how Mid Penn Bank is reimagining workforce development with Mid Penn University. University Director and VP Scott Bostjancic shares how a visionary leadership team, high-end tech, and a commitment to personalized, skills-based learning are transforming training—and empowering employees at every level to grow their careers. Show Notes:Scott Bostjancic, Vice President and Director of Mid Penn University at Mid Penn Bank shares these takeaways to build a successful skills-based training program.Secure Executive Champions Early: Get buy-in from leadership to elevate learning from a support function to a strategic priority. Mid Penn's success starts with a CEO and executive team who believe in the value of education. Engage your leaders, align on a shared vision, and make learning part of the company's growth strategy.Build a Scalable Learning Model with a Small, Focused Team: Create processes that empower a lean team to deliver high-volume, high-quality training.You don't need a huge staff—Mid Penn's six-person team runs 500+ instructor-led classes annually by partnering with internal experts and standardizing course creation and delivery. Make Culture Part of Your Learning Strategy: Train not just for skills, but for values and behaviors that define your organization.Mid Penn embeds cultural training into its programs to reinforce what sets the bank apart. Develop courses that teach not only the “how” but also the “why” behind your company's way of doing business.Use Technology to Eliminate Geographic Barriers: Invest in virtual tools and smart classrooms that support blended learning.Mid Penn leverages WebEx-enabled spaces, smart boards, and video content to train employees across regions. Design learning environments that feel just as engaging remotely as in person. Leverage AI to Drive Personalized, Skills-Based Development: Implement an LMS with AI capabilities to recommend content and map career growth. Mid Penn's LMS helps employees build skills through personalized recommendations and supports the shift to a skills-based organization. Use AI to streamline performance reviews, development plans, and upskilling.Powered by Learning earned Awards of Distinction in the Podcast/Audio and Business Podcast categories from The Communicator Awards and a Gold and Silver Davey Award. The podcast is also named to Feedspot's Top 40 L&D podcasts and Training Industry's Ultimate L&D Podcast Guide. Learn more about d'Vinci at www.dvinci.com. Follow us on LinkedInLike us on Facebook

We're continuing our series: Your Biggest Course Creation Questions, Answered, and this week we're digging into a question that comes up with every client:   “How do I know which online learning platform is right for me?”   From all-in-one tools like Kajabi to community-first platforms like Skool, I'm walking you through how to choose an online course platform based on how you want to teach, engage, and grow.   Here's what you'll learn: ✔️ The 3 key questions to ask yourself before choosing any platform ✔️ When to prioritize simplicity vs. customization ✔️ My personal take on Kajabi, LearnWorlds, and more! ✔️ Where each one shines—and what to know before you commit  

Šajā "Šauj garām!" 285. epizodē runājam ar Haralds Barviks (LATMA) un Juris Buškevics (LMS), lai pastāstītu, kas notika pēc tikšanās ar zemkopības ministru Armandu Krauzi un kā nevalstiskajām organizācijām izdevās panākt sapratni un reālus rezultātus.Runājam par:– to, kā mednieki nezaudē, bet iegūst – sezonas kartes cena neceļas, buļļu atļaujas paliek par saprātīgu samaksu, un limits staldbriežu teļiem un govīm pagaidām netiek atcelts;– sadarbības memorandu ar LVM, kādi ir izaicinājumi un ko vēlas mednieki;– sadarbību ar Valsts meža dienestu, kas šobrīd ir ļoti laba;– un, protams, kas notiks tālāk, kā mednieku organizācijas turpinās darbu, lai pārstāvniecība būtu ne tikai formāla, bet ar reālu ietekmi.Šoreiz ir stāsts par panākumiem, cieņu un vienotu pozīciju. Klausies – tālāk būs vēl interesantāk!Epizode sadarbībā ar Medību saimniecības attīstības fondu.Pievienojieties šim kanālam, lai iegūtu piekļuvi privilēģijām.https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqB3nyhYHXKobopia9d7xgA/join

Everyone wants to be in a category of one.   But until analysts acknowledge it, customers search for it, and competitors show up, it's not quite a category—more a call you made before the market did. Creating one means walking a line between leading the story and waiting for the market to catch up. In this episode, Drew Neisser is joined by Bernd Leger of Cornerstone OnDemand, Charles Groome of Biz2Credit, and Jakki Geiger to share their insights into building a category from scratch. In this episode: Bernd shares how Cornerstone moved beyond LMS into “workforce agility,” backed by acquisitions, analyst engagement, and full-team alignment.  Charles explains how Biz2Credit is carving out a new lane in FinTech by naming the problem and using familiar language to build demand.  Jakki outlines what separates true category creation from disruption, and why team-wide clarity is the hidden work that drives both.  Plus:  Why a real customer problem should shape your category narrative  How to bring analysts in without losing control of the story  What it takes to bring your team along when the category doesn't exist yet Tune in to learn how category creation starts, builds, and earns its place in the market!  For full show notes and transcripts, visit https://renegademarketing.com/podcasts/ To learn more about CMO Huddles, visit https://cmohuddles.com/

Prendre son premier poste de manager, c'est excitant… et parfois un peu effrayant !Entre la volonté de rester proche de ses anciens collègues, la peur de mal faire et l'envie de tout contrôler, les pièges sont nombreux. Alors l'objectif du jour : te partager les 5 erreurs les plus courantes des jeunes managers, en te donnant mes meilleurs conseils pour les éviter !Au programme : comment trouver la bonne distance avec son équipe, poser un cadre clair, apprendre à déléguer, donner du feedback constructif (même quand tout va bien !) et surtout, accepter de ne pas être parfait.Bonne écoute !À très vite,Prenez soin de vous !Plus d'info :Pour recevoir gratuitement notre sélection hebdo de conseils pratiques pour animer votre équipe, rendez-vous ici : https://teambakery.com/nlEt n'oubliez pas de laisser 5 étoiles et un gentil commentaire sur Apple Podcast et Spotify si l'épisode vous a plu.TIMELINE00:00:00 - Introduction00:00:24 - Erreur 1 : Rester un collègue00:01:24 - Erreur 2 : Ne pas poser de cadre clair00:02:34 - Erreur 3 : Garder toutes les décisions pour soi00:03:44 - Erreur 4 : Faire un feedback uniquement en cas de problème00:04:56 - Erreur 5 : Vouloir être parfait00:05:55 - ConclusionVous aimerez cet épisode si vous aimez : Outils du Manager • Happy Work • HBR on Leadership • Le Podcast de la Formation • MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP • Learn & EnjoyDistribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Join us for an engaging conversation with Christopher, an inspiring entrepreneur whose journey took him from the Marines to the classroom and ultimately to launching his own business. Christopher shares his fascinating transition from teaching in various countries to discovering a passion for learning management systems (LMS). His experience working for an LMS vendor with subpar software ignited his entrepreneurial spirit, driving him to create a superior solution. Christopher candidly recounts the challenges he faced in the early days of his startup, including being unprepared for a demanding first client. Through his story, he emphasizes the significance of persistence, asking the right questions, and adapting to the ever-changing entrepreneurial landscape.

Edtech ThrowdownEpisode 190: Stump the Edtech GuruWelcome to the EdTech Throwdown. This is Episode 190 called Stump the Edtech Guru. In this episode, we'll try and stump each other with some of the toughest edtech challenges we could think of. Each guru will have to come up with a solution on the spot. This is another episode you don't want to miss, check it out.Segment 1: Friendly CompetitionWe compete with everythingSegment 2: Stump the Edtech GuruNick's Scenarios:Scenario 1: The AI Essay Epidemic. Ms. Rivera teaches 10th grade English and has just assigned a personal narrative essay. As she begins grading, she notices several essays that seem... off. They're grammatically perfect, lack any personal voice, and a few students even use similar turns of phrase. The students cited AI use, and even included a link to a specific conversation in a tool called Perplexity. When examining the link however, it only shows the student asking questions about the topic. In other words, there is no evidence of having the AI do the writing, at least not in this particular chat. The student denies any AI use other than what was cited. What should she do?PerplexityGoogle DocsAi Works CitedScenario 2:The Silent Discussion Board. Mr. Chen is running a blended learning environment for his 8th grade social studies class. He's trying to build engagement with online discussion boards through Google Classroom and Flip. He posts thoughtful prompts, but most students either don't respond, copy each other, or leave low-effort replies like ‘I agree.' He knows these kids have opinions—they just don't seem to bring them into the digital space. Mr. Chen is wondering: is it the prompt? The platform? The digital culture? Or is this just a lost cause?Padlet SandboxMEAL PlanCERCANVAScenario 3: Mrs. Daughtry is a veteran science teacher who's always been open to new ideas. But lately, her school has adopted a slew of new edtech platforms: a new LMS, AI feedback tools, quiz generators, and now a parent communication app—all with different logins, layouts, and learning curves. She claims to receive “multiple emails per week” from various admins and coaches touting EVEN MORE options for...

In this insightful episode of Generation AI, hosts Ardis Kadiu and JC Bonilla tackle Model Context Protocol (MCP), a new standardization that's gaining rapid adoption across the AI industry. They explain how MCP functions as a universal adapter between AI models and data sources, solving the "Frankenstein middleware" problem that makes building AI agents so complex today. The hosts break down why this matters for higher education professionals, how it reduces hallucinations by improving data access, and why major players like OpenAI, Google, and HubSpot are already implementing it. This episode offers critical insight into how standardization will make AI tools more useful and less complex for everyone.What is Model Context Protocol (MCP)? (00:01:00)Introduction to MCP as a standardization protocol for AI agentsHosts explain MCP as a way to help AI access context and dataThe "three-legged stool" of AI agents: intelligence, context, and actionMCP provides the standard for how agents communicate with data sourcesMCP as the Universal AI Adapter (00:04:42)JC compares MCP to standardized protocols like TCP/IP and USB-CMCP sits between models like Claude or Gemini and various data sourcesIt eliminates the need for custom connectors between each tool and AI modelThe protocol's simplicity as a minimal viable product (MVP) is key to its successHow MCP Works (00:07:03)MCP is a protocol, not an API, that describes format and flow"Discovery first" approach where AI asks "what can you do?"Uses JSON format for tools and data exchangeWorks both locally and remotely over HTTPThe Technical Benefits of MCP (00:13:14)Solves the "m by n headache" of needing separate connectors for each model-tool pairReduces hallucinations by providing AI with reliable data sourcesGives AI models access to specialized tools for tasks they struggle withEnables "grounding" in real data rather than making things upIndustry Adoption and Momentum (00:17:14)OpenAI, Google, HubSpot, LangChain and others already implementing MCPHubSpot's beta MCP server allows for direct CRM data access in ClaudeGrowing availability for tools like Slack, Teams, and ZapierDiscussion of how MCP layers on top of existing APIsPractical Applications (00:20:36)Higher education examples: connecting LMS, advisor notes, financial aid systemsSales use case: AI agents accessing CRM data through MCP for follow-upsDevOps: AI monitoring logs, creating tickets, and managing communicationAnalytics: Connecting data sources, models, and reporting tools seamlesslyChallenges and Considerations (00:23:17)MCP requires widespread adoption to be truly effectiveProduct teams must be convinced to implement it alongside existing APIsPossibility that another protocol might eventually win outCurrent technical hurdles for implementation that are being addressedCall to Action for Listeners (00:26:03)Experiment with MCP servers that connect to Claude desktopFor AI product builders: write MCP servers for your applications nowAsk AI vendors: "Do you speak MCP?" as a signal of cutting-edge capabilityMCP as the new standard, comparable to asking "Do you have an API?"Conclusion: The Future of AI Integration (00:29:14)MCP's architectural implications for more open, modular AI systemsThe need for agents to speak a common language across platformsInvitation for listeners to share which workflows they'll connect once MCP goes mainstream - - - -Connect With Our Co-Hosts:Ardis Kadiuhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/ardis/https://twitter.com/ardisDr. JC Bonillahttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jcbonilla/https://twitter.com/jbonillxAbout The Enrollify Podcast Network:Generation AI is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you'll like other Enrollify shows too! Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — the next-generation AI student engagement platform helping institutions create meaningful and personalized interactions with students. Learn more at element451.com. Attend the 2025 Engage Summit! The Engage Summit is the premier conference for forward-thinking leaders and practitioners dedicated to exploring the transformative power of AI in education. Explore the strategies and tools to step into the next generation of student engagement, supercharged by AI. You'll leave ready to deliver the most personalized digital engagement experience every step of the way.Register now to secure your spot in Charlotte, NC, on June 24-25, 2025! Early bird registration ends February 1st -- https://engage.element451.com/register

Say thanks and learn more about our podcast sponsor Omnisend. In this episode of the WP Minute+, Matt sits down with Matt Cromwell to discuss the newly launched StellarSites, a major initiative from StellarWP that repositions the brand as a direct-to-customer platform provider. Designed to compete with modern website builders while preserving the flexibility of WordPress, StellarSites bundles the best of StellarWP's tools, including Kadence WP, SolidWP, GiveWP, LearnDash, The Events Calendar, and more. The goal is a streamlined, vertical-focused site builder for fundraising, eCommerce, LMS, and event websites.Matt Cromwell explains how StellarSites uses Kadence AI to guide users through a visual site-building experience before they sign up, smoothing over the typical complexity of WordPress onboarding. The result is a WordPress site tailored to user needs, with key plugins pre-installed, licensed, and managed via Solid Central. While aimed at DIY users, StellarSites is also a compelling option for freelancers and agencies looking to speed up delivery and reduce friction in small-budget projects.Key TakeawaysWhat is StellarSites?A new bundled site-building product from StellarWP with vertical-specific starter sites.Supports fundraising, LMS, event, and eCommerce sites, powered by Kadence and SolidWP.Starts at $19/month and includes full plugin licensing with no hidden fees.AI Onboarding & Experience:Leverages Kadence AI to visually build a site before purchase.Not marketed as an “AI builder” but as a tool to enhance onboarding and UX.Offers users a strong head start while preserving WordPress flexibility.Agency & Freelancer Appeal:Supports multi-site management through Solid Central.Ideal for agencies with lower-budget clients or rapid deployment needs.Encourages hybrid models: AI gets you 80% there, a freelancer helps finish it.Tech & Infrastructure:Built on the Nexcess infrastructure with performance scaling and visual update rollback tools.Fully open-source and portable – users can migrate away if needed.WordPress Ecosystem Reflections:Cromwell welcomes slower core updates and more incremental improvements.Believes AI will empower users and consultants rather than fully automate web development.Important LinksThe WP Minute+ Podcast: thewpminute.com/subscribeLearn more about Stellar Sites: stellarwp.comConnect with Matt Cromwell:Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/learnwithmattc Website: mattcromwell.com Support us for as little as $5 to join our members-only Slack group. ★ Support this podcast ★

Email Praise for LMS and Butcher and BarrelSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this exciting crossover episode, Chris Nesi teams up with Leena Marie Saleh (The EdTech Guru) for a detailed look into Canva's latest educational innovations unveiled during Canva Create 2025. Whether you're a teacher, instructional coach, or tech integrator, this episode is packed with transformative features and real classroom applications. Featured Topic: Canva Create 2025 Key Themes and Highlights: Canva Sheets: The Spreadsheet Reimagined A powerful new addition to the Canva suite—Canva Sheets brings AI-infused, visually pleasing spreadsheets to the classroom. Bulk Background Remover: Easily remove backgrounds from dozens of student photos at once. Bulk Create with Images: Mass-produce certificates, report cards, or newsletters by integrating images directly into your sheet. Magic AI Prompts: Skip the formulas—just describe your needs and let AI do the rest (e.g., calculating budgets, charting grades). Magic Insights: Auto-generate graphs, summaries, or positive student comments—great for data storytelling or end-of-year celebrations. Student Access: Available to students in districts where Canva's Magic tools are enabled. The All-in-One Visual Suite Create multi-modal projects within a single file: combine slides, spreadsheets, videos, documents, and websites. Use Case: Teachers can build unit plans with rubrics, grading sheets, lesson videos, and linked resources—all in one shareable design. Student Application: Portfolios that blend writing, multimedia, assessments, and visual elements in a single file. Canva Code No coding experience needed! Generate interactive HTML-based tools like: Flashcard games Vocabulary matching activities Countdown timers Use Cases: Do-Nows & Exit Tickets Interactive experiences (e.g., virtual art exhibits) Includes real-time code editing via voice or chat and seamless integration into other Canva designs. Voiceover and Text-to-Speech Enhancements Record true voiceovers directly in Canva—no more video workarounds. Use AI-generated voices to read text aloud in different accents and languages (e.g., Spanish voice packs Alejandra and Sofia). Ideal for student presentations, podcasts, and accessibility support. AI-Powered Speaker Notes Auto-generate speaking points from your presentation slides. Great for prepping lessons, webinars, or class presentations on the fly. Assignments Hub Instantly generate quizzes from highlighted text in a lesson or document. New classwork dashboard allows for real-time monitoring of student progress (especially for educators without an LMS like Google Classroom). Scrollables (a.k.a. Scrollytelling) Create animated, interactive timelines or diagrams that engage students through scroll-triggered movement and transitions.

Is your SaaS business truly built to last—or are you growing a leaky bucket?In this episode of SaaS Fuel, we dive deep into retention, innovation, and customer-centric scale with Mohan Rao, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Knownwell. Mohan shares battle-tested strategies for building future-proof SaaS companies by focusing on retention before acquisition, solving churn proactively, and aligning teams around customer success.Key Takeaways00:00 - Why retention is the real goal of product-market fit03:00 - Welcome back to SaaS Fuel: growth ≠ scale07:19 - Mohan Rao joins the show11:10 - What founders get wrong about early product strategy14:27 - Avoiding the “hammer looking for a nail” trap18:05 - Preventing churn: retention as strategy, not support22:17 - How Knownwell is applying AI and LMS to fix it28:02 - Intervention signals: when a customer asks for a contract32:47 - Lessons from holding multiple C-level roles36:55 - Leadership evolution: empowering your next layer43:05 - Why customers must be part of your M&A strategy45:32 - Overlooked tech factors that kill acquisitionsTweetable QuotesProduct-market fit isn't about how many customers you can get—it's about how many stick around."– Mohan Rao Churn isn't a number. It's a warning sign your product isn't delivering value fast enough.” – Jeff MainsYou don't need 20 customers—you need 4 that never leave.” – Mohan RaoFounders obsess over acquisition, but real growth comes from retention.” – Jeff MainsSaaS Leadership LessonsIf users don't stick, you don't have product-market fit. Period.Validate the market need before building the product—market-product fit matters more.Not all feedback should make it into your roadmap—choose based on vision alignment.Retention is proactive—train your team to spot signals before customers churn.The fastest-growing SaaS companies obsess over activation, not just acquisition.Guest ResourcesEmail - mohan.rao@knownwell.comWebsite - http://knownwell.com/Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/raomohan/Episode SponsorSmall Fish, Big Pond – https://smallfishbigpond.com/ Use the promo code ‘SaaSFuel'Champion Leadership Group – https://championleadership.com/SaaS Fuel ResourcesWebsite - https://championleadership.com/Jeff Mains on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffkmains/Twitter - https://twitter.com/jeffkmainsFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/thesaasguy/Instagram - https://instagram.com/jeffkmains

It's Tax Season and Financial Literacy Month! How effectively are you managing your monthly expenses and making smart investment decisions? This week, we're thrilled to welcome back Shelby Patrice, Financial Literacy Educator and Founder of Budget University. Ms. Patrice shares how students choose their favorite stocks and explore concepts like assets and liabilities through popular rap songs. As Gen Zers and young entrepreneurs, learn how to master what Ms. Patrice calls “the cheat code” to financial success - all while maintaining a steady job.⁠ Ms. Patrice completed her Bachelor of Arts in Public Administration at Kentucky State University. She founded Budget University in 2020 and the program was fully accredited by Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) within a year. She was featured on ⁠NBC Dallas News, won a $10,000 sponsorship from the Dallas Mavericks, and became a member of Engage Dallas. Ms. Patrice built her learning management system (LMS) and online App from the ground up and has accrued over 2,000 users. Budget University is now a featured program at Kentucky State University as a Freshman Experience course. As the former Miss Texas US 2016 and adoptee with a platform for Adoption and Foster care, she has taken the financial literacy pillar to the next level. To learn more about Ms. Patrice and her work, connect with her on IG @budgetuniversity and visit her website at BudgetUniversityOnline.com.⁠

Dr. Gina Anderson and Joe Lynch discuss the long haul: battling loneliness and crisis in trucking. Dr. Anderson is the CEO and Co-founder of Luma Brighter Learning, a 2X INC 5000 company that was created to deliver measurably better education outcomes. About Dr. Gina Anderson Dr. Gina Anderson is on a mission to help organizations grow their safety cultures through meaningful learning that inspires and engages employees. For more than 25 years, she has focused her attention on studying how adults best learn, consistently growing her methodology by engaging with transportation and logistics companies. Dr. Anderson is the CEO of Luma Brighter Learning, an award-winning learning company and a 2024 and 2023 recipient of the prestigious Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies award. Dr. Anderson routinely publishes new, measurable, science-based techniques specifically focused on learning in logistics and transportation to help companies improve their safety scores and uphold compliance. Dr. Anderson is the author of Thrive: How Learning Can Ignite a New Way Forward and a contributing author to the best-selling book Perspectives on Invisible Illnesses. Recognized as a thought leader in learning and an Inc. contributing author, she is also the creator and host of the I Love Learning podcast, where leaders from around the world share what motivates them to learn. Dr. Anderson holds a Doctor of Education in instructional systems technology from Indiana University, where she also minored in learning science. She has a passion for helping people learn. About Luma Brighter Learning Luma Brighter Learning delivers an award-winning enterprise learning management system (LMS) tailored to the transportation and logistics industry. With a focus on maximizing safety, ensuring compliance, and boosting employee retention, Luma supports the entire organization with individualized coaching programs, customizable content, digital forms, compliance reporting tools, and unlimited secure file storage.   We live in a time when nuclear verdicts are common. An LMS that offers passive, generic content no longer cuts it. When failure to remember essential details and perform crucial tasks can significantly impact your business, you need to partner with learning experts who can help. Luma Brighter Learning was founded by scientists who know how to tap into learning science and psychology to facilitate changes in behavior. Key Takeways: The Long Haul: Battling Loneliness and Crisis in Trucking Dr. Gina Anderson and Joe Lynch discuss the long haul: battling loneliness and crisis in trucking. They unpack the high regulatory burden and stringent requirements that drivers face, including impeccable records and Hours of Service, sparking job stress. Luma Brighter Learning, led by Dr. Gina Anderson (Ed.D.), offers a tailored LMS with eNugget® microlearning to combat the isolation and mental health issues prevalent in trucking. This addresses the loneliness from long periods away from home. Research-backed methods, like Luma's eNugget® LMS, showing significant safety score improvements, are crucial to tackling the alarming 61-year life expectancy of CDL drivers (Project 61). This emphasizes the need for effective training and support. The trucking profession suffers from a high regulatory burden, demanding strict adherence to rules, which contributes to driver stress and potential burnout. Luma's LMS is designed to mitigate compliance strain. Isolation and mental health concerns are widespread among drivers due to the nature of long-haul trucking, leading to loneliness and depression. Luma's engaging content aims to counteract these negative impacts. Alarming life expectancy figures underscore the severe health impacts of the profession, necessitating urgent industry-wide changes and effective solutions. Luma's focus on safety and well-being directly addresses this. Luma Brighter Learning's tailored LMS focuses on safety, compliance, and retention, offering a strategic approach to improving driver conditions. Their platform is built for the unique challenges of the industry. The company utilizes eNugget® microlearning, delivering concise content for effective learning and behavioral change among adult learners. This method proves effective in improving driver performance and safety. Luma Brighter Learning's numerous accolades, including the Gold Stevie® Award and Inc. 5000 recognition, highlight their innovative and impactful solutions. Their growth reflects their effectiveness. Dr. Gina Anderson's expertise in instructional systems technology ensures that Luma's programs are grounded in learning science and research-backed methods. This commitment drives continuous improvement. Learn More About The Long Haul: Battling Loneliness and Crisis in Trucking Dr. Gina Anderson | Linkedin Luma Brighter Learning | Linkedin Luma Brighter Learning Luma Brighter Learning | YouTube Thrive: How Learning Can Ignite a New Way Forward - Kindle Edition Learning with Gina The Logistics of Logistics Podcast If you enjoy the podcast, please leave a positive review, subscribe, and share it with your friends and colleagues. The Logistics of Logistics Podcast: Google, Apple, Castbox, Spotify, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Tunein, Podbean, Owltail, Libsyn, Overcast Check out The Logistics of Logistics on Youtube

If you're in SF: Join us for the Claude Plays Pokemon hackathon this Sunday!If you're not: Fill out the 2025 State of AI Eng survey for $250 in Amazon cards!We are SO excited to share our conversation with Dharmesh Shah, co-founder of HubSpot and creator of Agent.ai.A particularly compelling concept we discussed is the idea of "hybrid teams" - the next evolution in workplace organization where human workers collaborate with AI agents as team members. Just as we previously saw hybrid teams emerge in terms of full-time vs. contract workers, or in-office vs. remote workers, Dharmesh predicts that the next frontier will be teams composed of both human and AI members. This raises interesting questions about team dynamics, trust, and how to effectively delegate tasks between human and AI team members.The discussion of business models in AI reveals an important distinction between Work as a Service (WaaS) and Results as a Service (RaaS), something Dharmesh has written extensively about. While RaaS has gained popularity, particularly in customer support applications where outcomes are easily measurable, Dharmesh argues that this model may be over-indexed. Not all AI applications have clearly definable outcomes or consistent economic value per transaction, making WaaS more appropriate in many cases. This insight is particularly relevant for businesses considering how to monetize AI capabilities.The technical challenges of implementing effective agent systems are also explored, particularly around memory and authentication. Shah emphasizes the importance of cross-agent memory sharing and the need for more granular control over data access. He envisions a future where users can selectively share parts of their data with different agents, similar to how OAuth works but with much finer control. This points to significant opportunities in developing infrastructure for secure and efficient agent-to-agent communication and data sharing.Other highlights from our conversation* The Evolution of AI-Powered Agents – Exploring how AI agents have evolved from simple chatbots to sophisticated multi-agent systems, and the role of MCPs in enabling that.* Hybrid Digital Teams and the Future of Work – How AI agents are becoming teammates rather than just tools, and what this means for business operations and knowledge work.* Memory in AI Agents – The importance of persistent memory in AI systems and how shared memory across agents could enhance collaboration and efficiency.* Business Models for AI Agents – Exploring the shift from software as a service (SaaS) to work as a service (WaaS) and results as a service (RaaS), and what this means for monetization.* The Role of Standards Like MCP – Why MCP has been widely adopted and how it enables agent collaboration, tool use, and discovery.* The Future of AI Code Generation and Software Engineering – How AI-assisted coding is changing the role of software engineers and what skills will matter most in the future.* Domain Investing and Efficient Markets – Dharmesh's approach to domain investing and how inefficiencies in digital asset markets create business opportunities.* The Philosophy of Saying No – Lessons from "Sorry, You Must Pass" and how prioritization leads to greater productivity and focus.Timestamps* 00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome* 02:29 Dharmesh Shah's Journey into AI* 05:22 Defining AI Agents* 06:45 The Evolution and Future of AI Agents* 13:53 Graph Theory and Knowledge Representation* 20:02 Engineering Practices and Overengineering* 25:57 The Role of Junior Engineers in the AI Era* 28:20 Multi-Agent Systems and MCP Standards* 35:55 LinkedIn's Legal Battles and Data Scraping* 37:32 The Future of AI and Hybrid Teams* 39:19 Building Agent AI: A Professional Network for Agents* 40:43 Challenges and Innovations in Agent AI* 45:02 The Evolution of UI in AI Systems* 01:00:25 Business Models: Work as a Service vs. Results as a Service* 01:09:17 The Future Value of Engineers* 01:09:51 Exploring the Role of Agents* 01:10:28 The Importance of Memory in AI* 01:11:02 Challenges and Opportunities in AI Memory* 01:12:41 Selective Memory and Privacy Concerns* 01:13:27 The Evolution of AI Tools and Platforms* 01:18:23 Domain Names and AI Projects* 01:32:08 Balancing Work and Personal Life* 01:35:52 Final Thoughts and ReflectionsTranscriptAlessio [00:00:04]: Hey everyone, welcome back to the Latent Space podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO at Decibel Partners, and I'm joined by my co-host Swyx, founder of Small AI.swyx [00:00:12]: Hello, and today we're super excited to have Dharmesh Shah to join us. I guess your relevant title here is founder of Agent AI.Dharmesh [00:00:20]: Yeah, that's true for this. Yeah, creator of Agent.ai and co-founder of HubSpot.swyx [00:00:25]: Co-founder of HubSpot, which I followed for many years, I think 18 years now, gonna be 19 soon. And you caught, you know, people can catch up on your HubSpot story elsewhere. I should also thank Sean Puri, who I've chatted with back and forth, who's been, I guess, getting me in touch with your people. But also, I think like, just giving us a lot of context, because obviously, My First Million joined you guys, and they've been chatting with you guys a lot. So for the business side, we can talk about that, but I kind of wanted to engage your CTO, agent, engineer side of things. So how did you get agent religion?Dharmesh [00:01:00]: Let's see. So I've been working, I'll take like a half step back, a decade or so ago, even though actually more than that. So even before HubSpot, the company I was contemplating that I had named for was called Ingenisoft. And the idea behind Ingenisoft was a natural language interface to business software. Now realize this is 20 years ago, so that was a hard thing to do. But the actual use case that I had in mind was, you know, we had data sitting in business systems like a CRM or something like that. And my kind of what I thought clever at the time. Oh, what if we used email as the kind of interface to get to business software? And the motivation for using email is that it automatically works when you're offline. So imagine I'm getting on a plane or I'm on a plane. There was no internet on planes back then. It's like, oh, I'm going through business cards from an event I went to. I can just type things into an email just to have them all in the backlog. When it reconnects, it sends those emails to a processor that basically kind of parses effectively the commands and updates the software, sends you the file, whatever it is. And there was a handful of commands. I was a little bit ahead of the times in terms of what was actually possible. And I reattempted this natural language thing with a product called ChatSpot that I did back 20...swyx [00:02:12]: Yeah, this is your first post-ChatGPT project.Dharmesh [00:02:14]: I saw it come out. Yeah. And so I've always been kind of fascinated by this natural language interface to software. Because, you know, as software developers, myself included, we've always said, oh, we build intuitive, easy-to-use applications. And it's not intuitive at all, right? Because what we're doing is... We're taking the mental model that's in our head of what we're trying to accomplish with said piece of software and translating that into a series of touches and swipes and clicks and things like that. And there's nothing natural or intuitive about it. And so natural language interfaces, for the first time, you know, whatever the thought is you have in your head and expressed in whatever language that you normally use to talk to yourself in your head, you can just sort of emit that and have software do something. And I thought that was kind of a breakthrough, which it has been. And it's gone. So that's where I first started getting into the journey. I started because now it actually works, right? So once we got ChatGPT and you can take, even with a few-shot example, convert something into structured, even back in the ChatGP 3.5 days, it did a decent job in a few-shot example, convert something to structured text if you knew what kinds of intents you were going to have. And so that happened. And that ultimately became a HubSpot project. But then agents intrigued me because I'm like, okay, well, that's the next step here. So chat's great. Love Chat UX. But if we want to do something even more meaningful, it felt like the next kind of advancement is not this kind of, I'm chatting with some software in a kind of a synchronous back and forth model, is that software is going to do things for me in kind of a multi-step way to try and accomplish some goals. So, yeah, that's when I first got started. It's like, okay, what would that look like? Yeah. And I've been obsessed ever since, by the way.Alessio [00:03:55]: Which goes back to your first experience with it, which is like you're offline. Yeah. And you want to do a task. You don't need to do it right now. You just want to queue it up for somebody to do it for you. Yes. As you think about agents, like, let's start at the easy question, which is like, how do you define an agent? Maybe. You mean the hardest question in the universe? Is that what you mean?Dharmesh [00:04:12]: You said you have an irritating take. I do have an irritating take. I think, well, some number of people have been irritated, including within my own team. So I have a very broad definition for agents, which is it's AI-powered software that accomplishes a goal. Period. That's it. And what irritates people about it is like, well, that's so broad as to be completely non-useful. And I understand that. I understand the criticism. But in my mind, if you kind of fast forward months, I guess, in AI years, the implementation of it, and we're already starting to see this, and we'll talk about this, different kinds of agents, right? So I think in addition to having a usable definition, and I like yours, by the way, and we should talk more about that, that you just came out with, the classification of agents actually is also useful, which is, is it autonomous or non-autonomous? Does it have a deterministic workflow? Does it have a non-deterministic workflow? Is it working synchronously? Is it working asynchronously? Then you have the different kind of interaction modes. Is it a chat agent, kind of like a customer support agent would be? You're having this kind of back and forth. Is it a workflow agent that just does a discrete number of steps? So there's all these different flavors of agents. So if I were to draw it in a Venn diagram, I would draw a big circle that says, this is agents, and then I have a bunch of circles, some overlapping, because they're not mutually exclusive. And so I think that's what's interesting, and we're seeing development along a bunch of different paths, right? So if you look at the first implementation of agent frameworks, you look at Baby AGI and AutoGBT, I think it was, not Autogen, that's the Microsoft one. They were way ahead of their time because they assumed this level of reasoning and execution and planning capability that just did not exist, right? So it was an interesting thought experiment, which is what it was. Even the guy that, I'm an investor in Yohei's fund that did Baby AGI. It wasn't ready, but it was a sign of what was to come. And so the question then is, when is it ready? And so lots of people talk about the state of the art when it comes to agents. I'm a pragmatist, so I think of the state of the practical. It's like, okay, well, what can I actually build that has commercial value or solves actually some discrete problem with some baseline of repeatability or verifiability?swyx [00:06:22]: There was a lot, and very, very interesting. I'm not irritated by it at all. Okay. As you know, I take a... There's a lot of anthropological view or linguistics view. And in linguistics, you don't want to be prescriptive. You want to be descriptive. Yeah. So you're a goals guy. That's the key word in your thing. And other people have other definitions that might involve like delegated trust or non-deterministic work, LLM in the loop, all that stuff. The other thing I was thinking about, just the comment on Baby AGI, LGBT. Yeah. In that piece that you just read, I was able to go through our backlog and just kind of track the winter of agents and then the summer now. Yeah. And it's... We can tell the whole story as an oral history, just following that thread. And it's really just like, I think, I tried to explain the why now, right? Like I had, there's better models, of course. There's better tool use with like, they're just more reliable. Yep. Better tools with MCP and all that stuff. And I'm sure you have opinions on that too. Business model shift, which you like a lot. I just heard you talk about RAS with MFM guys. Yep. Cost is dropping a lot. Yep. Inference is getting faster. There's more model diversity. Yep. Yep. I think it's a subtle point. It means that like, you have different models with different perspectives. You don't get stuck in the basin of performance of a single model. Sure. You can just get out of it by just switching models. Yep. Multi-agent research and RL fine tuning. So I just wanted to let you respond to like any of that.Dharmesh [00:07:44]: Yeah. A couple of things. Connecting the dots on the kind of the definition side of it. So we'll get the irritation out of the way completely. I have one more, even more irritating leap on the agent definition thing. So here's the way I think about it. By the way, the kind of word agent, I looked it up, like the English dictionary definition. The old school agent, yeah. Is when you have someone or something that does something on your behalf, like a travel agent or a real estate agent acts on your behalf. It's like proxy, which is a nice kind of general definition. So the other direction I'm sort of headed, and it's going to tie back to tool calling and MCP and things like that, is if you, and I'm not a biologist by any stretch of the imagination, but we have these single-celled organisms, right? Like the simplest possible form of what one would call life. But it's still life. It just happens to be single-celled. And then you can combine cells and then cells become specialized over time. And you have much more sophisticated organisms, you know, kind of further down the spectrum. In my mind, at the most fundamental level, you can almost think of having atomic agents. What is the simplest possible thing that's an agent that can still be called an agent? What is the equivalent of a kind of single-celled organism? And the reason I think that's useful is right now we're headed down the road, which I think is very exciting around tool use, right? That says, okay, the LLMs now can be provided a set of tools that it calls to accomplish whatever it needs to accomplish in the kind of furtherance of whatever goal it's trying to get done. And I'm not overly bothered by it, but if you think about it, if you just squint a little bit and say, well, what if everything was an agent? And what if tools were actually just atomic agents? Because then it's turtles all the way down, right? Then it's like, oh, well, all that's really happening with tool use is that we have a network of agents that know about each other through something like an MMCP and can kind of decompose a particular problem and say, oh, I'm going to delegate this to this set of agents. And why do we need to draw this distinction between tools, which are functions most of the time? And an actual agent. And so I'm going to write this irritating LinkedIn post, you know, proposing this. It's like, okay. And I'm not suggesting we should call even functions, you know, call them agents. But there is a certain amount of elegance that happens when you say, oh, we can just reduce it down to one primitive, which is an agent that you can combine in complicated ways to kind of raise the level of abstraction and accomplish higher order goals. Anyway, that's my answer. I'd say that's a success. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk on agent definitions.Alessio [00:09:54]: How do you define the minimum viable agent? Do you already have a definition for, like, where you draw the line between a cell and an atom? Yeah.Dharmesh [00:10:02]: So in my mind, it has to, at some level, use AI in order for it to—otherwise, it's just software. It's like, you know, we don't need another word for that. And so that's probably where I draw the line. So then the question, you know, the counterargument would be, well, if that's true, then lots of tools themselves are actually not agents because they're just doing a database call or a REST API call or whatever it is they're doing. And that does not necessarily qualify them, which is a fair counterargument. And I accept that. It's like a good argument. I still like to think about—because we'll talk about multi-agent systems, because I think—so we've accepted, which I think is true, lots of people have said it, and you've hopefully combined some of those clips of really smart people saying this is the year of agents, and I completely agree, it is the year of agents. But then shortly after that, it's going to be the year of multi-agent systems or multi-agent networks. I think that's where it's going to be headed next year. Yeah.swyx [00:10:54]: Opening eyes already on that. Yeah. My quick philosophical engagement with you on this. I often think about kind of the other spectrum, the other end of the cell spectrum. So single cell is life, multi-cell is life, and you clump a bunch of cells together in a more complex organism, they become organs, like an eye and a liver or whatever. And then obviously we consider ourselves one life form. There's not like a lot of lives within me. I'm just one life. And now, obviously, I don't think people don't really like to anthropomorphize agents and AI. Yeah. But we are extending our consciousness and our brain and our functionality out into machines. I just saw you were a Bee. Yeah. Which is, you know, it's nice. I have a limitless pendant in my pocket.Dharmesh [00:11:37]: I got one of these boys. Yeah.swyx [00:11:39]: I'm testing it all out. You know, got to be early adopters. But like, we want to extend our personal memory into these things so that we can be good at the things that we're good at. And, you know, machines are good at it. Machines are there. So like, my definition of life is kind of like going outside of my own body now. I don't know if you've ever had like reflections on that. Like how yours. How our self is like actually being distributed outside of you. Yeah.Dharmesh [00:12:01]: I don't fancy myself a philosopher. But you went there. So yeah, I did go there. I'm fascinated by kind of graphs and graph theory and networks and have been for a long, long time. And to me, we're sort of all nodes in this kind of larger thing. It just so happens that we're looking at individual kind of life forms as they exist right now. But so the idea is when you put a podcast out there, there's these little kind of nodes you're putting out there of like, you know, conceptual ideas. Once again, you have varying kind of forms of those little nodes that are up there and are connected in varying and sundry ways. And so I just think of myself as being a node in a massive, massive network. And I'm producing more nodes as I put content or ideas. And, you know, you spend some portion of your life collecting dots, experiences, people, and some portion of your life then connecting dots from the ones that you've collected over time. And I found that really interesting things happen and you really can't know in advance how those dots are necessarily going to connect in the future. And that's, yeah. So that's my philosophical take. That's the, yes, exactly. Coming back.Alessio [00:13:04]: Yep. Do you like graph as an agent? Abstraction? That's been one of the hot topics with LandGraph and Pydantic and all that.Dharmesh [00:13:11]: I do. The thing I'm more interested in terms of use of graphs, and there's lots of work happening on that now, is graph data stores as an alternative in terms of knowledge stores and knowledge graphs. Yeah. Because, you know, so I've been in software now 30 plus years, right? So it's not 10,000 hours. It's like 100,000 hours that I've spent doing this stuff. And so I've grew up with, so back in the day, you know, I started on mainframes. There was a product called IMS from IBM, which is basically an index database, what we'd call like a key value store today. Then we've had relational databases, right? We have tables and columns and foreign key relationships. We all know that. We have document databases like MongoDB, which is sort of a nested structure keyed by a specific index. We have vector stores, vector embedding database. And graphs are interesting for a couple of reasons. One is, so it's not classically structured in a relational way. When you say structured database, to most people, they're thinking tables and columns and in relational database and set theory and all that. Graphs still have structure, but it's not the tables and columns structure. And you could wonder, and people have made this case, that they are a better representation of knowledge for LLMs and for AI generally than other things. So that's kind of thing number one conceptually, and that might be true, I think is possibly true. And the other thing that I really like about that in the context of, you know, I've been in the context of data stores for RAG is, you know, RAG, you say, oh, I have a million documents, I'm going to build the vector embeddings, I'm going to come back with the top X based on the semantic match, and that's fine. All that's very, very useful. But the reality is something gets lost in the chunking process and the, okay, well, those tend, you know, like, you don't really get the whole picture, so to speak, and maybe not even the right set of dimensions on the kind of broader picture. And it makes intuitive sense to me that if we did capture it properly in a graph form, that maybe that feeding into a RAG pipeline will actually yield better results for some use cases, I don't know, but yeah.Alessio [00:15:03]: And do you feel like at the core of it, there's this difference between imperative and declarative programs? Because if you think about HubSpot, it's like, you know, people and graph kind of goes hand in hand, you know, but I think maybe the software before was more like primary foreign key based relationship, versus now the models can traverse through the graph more easily.Dharmesh [00:15:22]: Yes. So I like that representation. There's something. It's just conceptually elegant about graphs and just from the representation of it, they're much more discoverable, you can kind of see it, there's observability to it, versus kind of embeddings, which you can't really do much with as a human. You know, once they're in there, you can't pull stuff back out. But yeah, I like that kind of idea of it. And the other thing that's kind of, because I love graphs, I've been long obsessed with PageRank from back in the early days. And, you know, one of the kind of simplest algorithms in terms of coming up, you know, with a phone, everyone's been exposed to PageRank. And the idea is that, and so I had this other idea for a project, not a company, and I have hundreds of these, called NodeRank, is to be able to take the idea of PageRank and apply it to an arbitrary graph that says, okay, I'm going to define what authority looks like and say, okay, well, that's interesting to me, because then if you say, I'm going to take my knowledge store, and maybe this person that contributed some number of chunks to the graph data store has more authority on this particular use case or prompt that's being submitted than this other one that may, or maybe this one was more. popular, or maybe this one has, whatever it is, there should be a way for us to kind of rank nodes in a graph and sort them in some, some useful way. Yeah.swyx [00:16:34]: So I think that's generally useful for, for anything. I think the, the problem, like, so even though at my conferences, GraphRag is super popular and people are getting knowledge, graph religion, and I will say like, it's getting space, getting traction in two areas, conversation memory, and then also just rag in general, like the, the, the document data. Yeah. It's like a source. Most ML practitioners would say that knowledge graph is kind of like a dirty word. The graph database, people get graph religion, everything's a graph, and then they, they go really hard into it and then they get a, they get a graph that is too complex to navigate. Yes. And so like the, the, the simple way to put it is like you at running HubSpot, you know, the power of graphs, the way that Google has pitched them for many years, but I don't suspect that HubSpot itself uses a knowledge graph. No. Yeah.Dharmesh [00:17:26]: So when is it over engineering? Basically? It's a great question. I don't know. So the question now, like in AI land, right, is the, do we necessarily need to understand? So right now, LLMs for, for the most part are somewhat black boxes, right? We sort of understand how the, you know, the algorithm itself works, but we really don't know what's going on in there and, and how things come out. So if a graph data store is able to produce the outcomes we want, it's like, here's a set of queries I want to be able to submit and then it comes out with useful content. Maybe the underlying data store is as opaque as a vector embeddings or something like that, but maybe it's fine. Maybe we don't necessarily need to understand it to get utility out of it. And so maybe if it's messy, that's okay. Um, that's, it's just another form of lossy compression. Uh, it's just lossy in a way that we just don't completely understand in terms of, because it's going to grow organically. Uh, and it's not structured. It's like, ah, we're just gonna throw a bunch of stuff in there. Let the, the equivalent of the embedding algorithm, whatever they called in graph land. Um, so the one with the best results wins. I think so. Yeah.swyx [00:18:26]: Or is this the practical side of me is like, yeah, it's, if it's useful, we don't necessarilyDharmesh [00:18:30]: need to understand it.swyx [00:18:30]: I have, I mean, I'm happy to push back as long as you want. Uh, it's not practical to evaluate like the 10 different options out there because it takes time. It takes people, it takes, you know, resources, right? Set. That's the first thing. Second thing is your evals are typically on small things and some things only work at scale. Yup. Like graphs. Yup.Dharmesh [00:18:46]: Yup. That's, yeah, no, that's fair. And I think this is one of the challenges in terms of implementation of graph databases is that the most common approach that I've seen developers do, I've done it myself, is that, oh, I've got a Postgres database or a MySQL or whatever. I can represent a graph with a very set of tables with a parent child thing or whatever. And that sort of gives me the ability, uh, why would I need anything more than that? And the answer is, well, if you don't need anything more than that, you don't need anything more than that. But there's a high chance that you're sort of missing out on the actual value that, uh, the graph representation gives you. Which is the ability to traverse the graph, uh, efficiently in ways that kind of going through the, uh, traversal in a relational database form, even though structurally you have the data, practically you're not gonna be able to pull it out in, in useful ways. Uh, so you wouldn't like represent a social graph, uh, in, in using that kind of relational table model. It just wouldn't scale. It wouldn't work.swyx [00:19:36]: Uh, yeah. Uh, I think we want to move on to MCP. Yeah. But I just want to, like, just engineering advice. Yeah. Uh, obviously you've, you've, you've run, uh, you've, you've had to do a lot of projects and run a lot of teams. Do you have a general rule for over-engineering or, you know, engineering ahead of time? You know, like, because people, we know premature engineering is the root of all evil. Yep. But also sometimes you just have to. Yep. When do you do it? Yes.Dharmesh [00:19:59]: It's a great question. This is, uh, a question as old as time almost, which is what's the right and wrong levels of abstraction. That's effectively what, uh, we're answering when we're trying to do engineering. I tend to be a pragmatist, right? So here's the thing. Um, lots of times doing something the right way. Yeah. It's like a marginal increased cost in those cases. Just do it the right way. And this is what makes a, uh, a great engineer or a good engineer better than, uh, a not so great one. It's like, okay, all things being equal. If it's going to take you, you know, roughly close to constant time anyway, might as well do it the right way. Like, so do things well, then the question is, okay, well, am I building a framework as the reusable library? To what degree, uh, what am I anticipating in terms of what's going to need to change in this thing? Uh, you know, along what dimension? And then I think like a business person in some ways, like what's the return on calories, right? So, uh, and you look at, um, energy, the expected value of it's like, okay, here are the five possible things that could happen, uh, try to assign probabilities like, okay, well, if there's a 50% chance that we're going to go down this particular path at some day, like, or one of these five things is going to happen and it costs you 10% more to engineer for that. It's basically, it's something that yields a kind of interest compounding value. Um, as you get closer to the time of, of needing that versus having to take on debt, which is when you under engineer it, you're taking on debt. You're going to have to pay off when you do get to that eventuality where something happens. One thing as a pragmatist, uh, so I would rather under engineer something than over engineer it. If I were going to err on the side of something, and here's the reason is that when you under engineer it, uh, yes, you take on tech debt, uh, but the interest rate is relatively known and payoff is very, very possible, right? Which is, oh, I took a shortcut here as a result of which now this thing that should have taken me a week is now going to take me four weeks. Fine. But if that particular thing that you thought might happen, never actually, you never have that use case transpire or just doesn't, it's like, well, you just save yourself time, right? And that has value because you were able to do other things instead of, uh, kind of slightly over-engineering it away, over-engineering it. But there's no perfect answers in art form in terms of, uh, and yeah, we'll, we'll bring kind of this layers of abstraction back on the code generation conversation, which we'll, uh, I think I have later on, butAlessio [00:22:05]: I was going to ask, we can just jump ahead quickly. Yeah. Like, as you think about vibe coding and all that, how does the. Yeah. Percentage of potential usefulness change when I feel like we over-engineering a lot of times it's like the investment in syntax, it's less about the investment in like arc exacting. Yep. Yeah. How does that change your calculus?Dharmesh [00:22:22]: A couple of things, right? One is, um, so, you know, going back to that kind of ROI or a return on calories, kind of calculus or heuristic you think through, it's like, okay, well, what is it going to cost me to put this layer of abstraction above the code that I'm writing now, uh, in anticipating kind of future needs. If the cost of fixing, uh, or doing under engineering right now. Uh, we'll trend towards zero that says, okay, well, I don't have to get it right right now because even if I get it wrong, I'll run the thing for six hours instead of 60 minutes or whatever. It doesn't really matter, right? Like, because that's going to trend towards zero to be able, the ability to refactor a code. Um, and because we're going to not that long from now, we're going to have, you know, large code bases be able to exist, uh, you know, as, as context, uh, for a code generation or a code refactoring, uh, model. So I think it's going to make it, uh, make the case for under engineering, uh, even stronger. Which is why I take on that cost. You just pay the interest when you get there, it's not, um, just go on with your life vibe coded and, uh, come back when you need to. Yeah.Alessio [00:23:18]: Sometimes I feel like there's no decision-making in some things like, uh, today I built a autosave for like our internal notes platform and I literally just ask them cursor. Can you add autosave? Yeah. I don't know if it's over under engineer. Yep. I just vibe coded it. Yep. And I feel like at some point we're going to get to the point where the models kindDharmesh [00:23:36]: of decide where the right line is, but this is where the, like the, in my mind, the danger is, right? So there's two sides to this. One is the cost of kind of development and coding and things like that stuff that, you know, we talk about. But then like in your example, you know, one of the risks that we have is that because adding a feature, uh, like a save or whatever the feature might be to a product as that price tends towards zero, are we going to be less discriminant about what features we add as a result of making more product products more complicated, which has a negative impact on the user and navigate negative impact on the business. Um, and so that's the thing I worry about if it starts to become too easy, are we going to be. Too promiscuous in our, uh, kind of extension, adding product extensions and things like that. It's like, ah, why not add X, Y, Z or whatever back then it was like, oh, we only have so many engineering hours or story points or however you measure things. Uh, that least kept us in check a little bit. Yeah.Alessio [00:24:22]: And then over engineering, you're like, yeah, it's kind of like you're putting that on yourself. Yeah. Like now it's like the models don't understand that if they add too much complexity, it's going to come back to bite them later. Yep. So they just do whatever they want to do. Yeah. And I'm curious where in the workflow that's going to be, where it's like, Hey, this is like the amount of complexity and over-engineering you can do before you got to ask me if we should actually do it versus like do something else.Dharmesh [00:24:45]: So you know, we've already, let's like, we're leaving this, uh, in the code generation world, this kind of compressed, um, cycle time. Right. It's like, okay, we went from auto-complete, uh, in the GitHub co-pilot to like, oh, finish this particular thing and hit tab to a, oh, I sort of know your file or whatever. I can write out a full function to you to now I can like hold a bunch of the context in my head. Uh, so we can do app generation, which we have now with lovable and bolt and repletage. Yeah. Association and other things. So then the question is, okay, well, where does it naturally go from here? So we're going to generate products. Make sense. We might be able to generate platforms as though I want a platform for ERP that does this, whatever. And that includes the API's includes the product and the UI, and all the things that make for a platform. There's no nothing that says we would stop like, okay, can you generate an entire software company someday? Right. Uh, with the platform and the monetization and the go-to-market and the whatever. And you know, that that's interesting to me in terms of, uh, you know, what, when you take it to almost ludicrous levels. of abstract.swyx [00:25:39]: It's like, okay, turn it to 11. You mentioned vibe coding, so I have to, this is a blog post I haven't written, but I'm kind of exploring it. Is the junior engineer dead?Dharmesh [00:25:49]: I don't think so. I think what will happen is that the junior engineer will be able to, if all they're bringing to the table is the fact that they are a junior engineer, then yes, they're likely dead. But hopefully if they can communicate with carbon-based life forms, they can interact with product, if they're willing to talk to customers, they can take their kind of basic understanding of engineering and how kind of software works. I think that has value. So I have a 14-year-old right now who's taking Python programming class, and some people ask me, it's like, why is he learning coding? And my answer is, is because it's not about the syntax, it's not about the coding. What he's learning is like the fundamental thing of like how things work. And there's value in that. I think there's going to be timeless value in systems thinking and abstractions and what that means. And whether functions manifested as math, which he's going to get exposed to regardless, or there are some core primitives to the universe, I think, that the more you understand them, those are what I would kind of think of as like really large dots in your life that will have a higher gravitational pull and value to them that you'll then be able to. So I want him to collect those dots, and he's not resisting. So it's like, okay, while he's still listening to me, I'm going to have him do things that I think will be useful.swyx [00:26:59]: You know, part of one of the pitches that I evaluated for AI engineer is a term. And the term is that maybe the traditional interview path or career path of software engineer goes away, which is because what's the point of lead code? Yeah. And, you know, it actually matters more that you know how to work with AI and to implement the things that you want. Yep.Dharmesh [00:27:16]: That's one of the like interesting things that's happened with generative AI. You know, you go from machine learning and the models and just that underlying form, which is like true engineering, right? Like the actual, what I call real engineering. I don't think of myself as a real engineer, actually. I'm a developer. But now with generative AI. We call it AI and it's obviously got its roots in machine learning, but it just feels like fundamentally different to me. Like you have the vibe. It's like, okay, well, this is just a whole different approach to software development to so many different things. And so I'm wondering now, it's like an AI engineer is like, if you were like to draw the Venn diagram, it's interesting because the cross between like AI things, generative AI and what the tools are capable of, what the models do, and this whole new kind of body of knowledge that we're still building out, it's still very young, intersected with kind of classic engineering, software engineering. Yeah.swyx [00:28:04]: I just described the overlap as it separates out eventually until it's its own thing, but it's starting out as a software. Yeah.Alessio [00:28:11]: That makes sense. So to close the vibe coding loop, the other big hype now is MCPs. Obviously, I would say Cloud Desktop and Cursor are like the two main drivers of MCP usage. I would say my favorite is the Sentry MCP. I can pull in errors and then you can just put the context in Cursor. How do you think about that abstraction layer? Does it feel... Does it feel almost too magical in a way? Do you think it's like you get enough? Because you don't really see how the server itself is then kind of like repackaging theDharmesh [00:28:41]: information for you? I think MCP as a standard is one of the better things that's happened in the world of AI because a standard needed to exist and absent a standard, there was a set of things that just weren't possible. Now, we can argue whether it's the best possible manifestation of a standard or not. Does it do too much? Does it do too little? I get that, but it's just simple enough to both be useful and unobtrusive. It's understandable and adoptable by mere mortals, right? It's not overly complicated. You know, a reasonable engineer can put a stand up an MCP server relatively easily. The thing that has me excited about it is like, so I'm a big believer in multi-agent systems. And so that's going back to our kind of this idea of an atomic agent. So imagine the MCP server, like obviously it calls tools, but the way I think about it, so I'm working on my current passion project is agent.ai. And we'll talk more about that in a little bit. More about the, I think we should, because I think it's interesting not to promote the project at all, but there's some interesting ideas in there. One of which is around, we're going to need a mechanism for, if agents are going to collaborate and be able to delegate, there's going to need to be some form of discovery and we're going to need some standard way. It's like, okay, well, I just need to know what this thing over here is capable of. We're going to need a registry, which Anthropic's working on. I'm sure others will and have been doing directories of, and there's going to be a standard around that too. How do you build out a directory of MCP servers? I think that's going to unlock so many things just because, and we're already starting to see it. So I think MCP or something like it is going to be the next major unlock because it allows systems that don't know about each other, don't need to, it's that kind of decoupling of like Sentry and whatever tools someone else was building. And it's not just about, you know, Cloud Desktop or things like, even on the client side, I think we're going to see very interesting consumers of MCP, MCP clients versus just the chat body kind of things. Like, you know, Cloud Desktop and Cursor and things like that. But yeah, I'm very excited about MCP in that general direction.swyx [00:30:39]: I think the typical cynical developer take, it's like, we have OpenAPI. Yeah. What's the new thing? I don't know if you have a, do you have a quick MCP versus everything else? Yeah.Dharmesh [00:30:49]: So it's, so I like OpenAPI, right? So just a descriptive thing. It's OpenAPI. OpenAPI. Yes, that's what I meant. So it's basically a self-documenting thing. We can do machine-generated, lots of things from that output. It's a structured definition of an API. I get that, love it. But MCPs sort of are kind of use case specific. They're perfect for exactly what we're trying to use them for around LLMs in terms of discovery. It's like, okay, I don't necessarily need to know kind of all this detail. And so right now we have, we'll talk more about like MCP server implementations, but We will? I think, I don't know. Maybe we won't. At least it's in my head. It's like a back processor. But I do think MCP adds value above OpenAPI. It's, yeah, just because it solves this particular thing. And if we had come to the world, which we have, like, it's like, hey, we already have OpenAPI. It's like, if that were good enough for the universe, the universe would have adopted it already. There's a reason why MCP is taking office because marginally adds something that was missing before and doesn't go too far. And so that's why the kind of rate of adoption, you folks have written about this and talked about it. Yeah, why MCP won. Yeah. And it won because the universe decided that this was useful and maybe it gets supplanted by something else. Yeah. And maybe we discover, oh, maybe OpenAPI was good enough the whole time. I doubt that.swyx [00:32:09]: The meta lesson, this is, I mean, he's an investor in DevTools companies. I work in developer experience at DevRel in DevTools companies. Yep. Everyone wants to own the standard. Yeah. I'm sure you guys have tried to launch your own standards. Actually, it's Houseplant known for a standard, you know, obviously inbound marketing. But is there a standard or protocol that you ever tried to push? No.Dharmesh [00:32:30]: And there's a reason for this. Yeah. Is that? And I don't mean, need to mean, speak for the people of HubSpot, but I personally. You kind of do. I'm not smart enough. That's not the, like, I think I have a. You're smart. Not enough for that. I'm much better off understanding the standards that are out there. And I'm more on the composability side. Let's, like, take the pieces of technology that exist out there, combine them in creative, unique ways. And I like to consume standards. I don't like to, and that's not that I don't like to create them. I just don't think I have the, both the raw wattage or the credibility. It's like, okay, well, who the heck is Dharmesh, and why should we adopt a standard he created?swyx [00:33:07]: Yeah, I mean, there are people who don't monetize standards, like OpenTelemetry is a big standard, and LightStep never capitalized on that.Dharmesh [00:33:15]: So, okay, so if I were to do a standard, there's two things that have been in my head in the past. I was one around, a very, very basic one around, I don't even have the domain, I have a domain for everything, for open marketing. Because the issue we had in HubSpot grew up in the marketing space. There we go. There was no standard around data formats and things like that. It doesn't go anywhere. But the other one, and I did not mean to go here, but I'm going to go here. It's called OpenGraph. I know the term was already taken, but it hasn't been used for like 15 years now for its original purpose. But what I think should exist in the world is right now, our information, all of us, nodes are in the social graph at Meta or the professional graph at LinkedIn. Both of which are actually relatively closed in actually very annoying ways. Like very, very closed, right? Especially LinkedIn. Especially LinkedIn. I personally believe that if it's my data, and if I would get utility out of it being open, I should be able to make my data open or publish it in whatever forms that I choose, as long as I have control over it as opt-in. So the idea is around OpenGraph that says, here's a standard, here's a way to publish it. I should be able to go to OpenGraph.org slash Dharmesh dot JSON and get it back. And it's like, here's your stuff, right? And I can choose along the way and people can write to it and I can prove. And there can be an entire system. And if I were to do that, I would do it as a... Like a public benefit, non-profit-y kind of thing, as this is a contribution to society. I wouldn't try to commercialize that. Have you looked at AdProto? What's that? AdProto.swyx [00:34:43]: It's the protocol behind Blue Sky. Okay. My good friend, Dan Abramov, who was the face of React for many, many years, now works there. And he actually did a talk that I can send you, which basically kind of tries to articulate what you just said. But he does, he loves doing these like really great analogies, which I think you'll like. Like, you know, a lot of our data is behind a handle, behind a domain. Yep. So he's like, all right, what if we flip that? What if it was like our handle and then the domain? Yep. So, and that's really like your data should belong to you. Yep. And I should not have to wait 30 days for my Twitter data to export. Yep.Dharmesh [00:35:19]: you should be able to at least be able to automate it or do like, yes, I should be able to plug it into an agentic thing. Yeah. Yes. I think we're... Because so much of our data is... Locked up. I think the trick here isn't that standard. It is getting the normies to care.swyx [00:35:37]: Yeah. Because normies don't care.Dharmesh [00:35:38]: That's true. But building on that, normies don't care. So, you know, privacy is a really hot topic and an easy word to use, but it's not a binary thing. Like there are use cases where, and we make these choices all the time, that I will trade, not all privacy, but I will trade some privacy for some productivity gain or some benefit to me that says, oh, I don't care about that particular data being online if it gives me this in return, or I don't mind sharing this information with this company.Alessio [00:36:02]: If I'm getting, you know, this in return, but that sort of should be my option. I think now with computer use, you can actually automate some of the exports. Yes. Like something we've been doing internally is like everybody exports their LinkedIn connections. Yep. And then internally, we kind of merge them together to see how we can connect our companies to customers or things like that.Dharmesh [00:36:21]: And not to pick on LinkedIn, but since we're talking about it, but they feel strongly enough on the, you know, do not take LinkedIn data that they will block even browser use kind of things or whatever. They go to great, great lengths, even to see patterns of usage. And it says, oh, there's no way you could have, you know, gotten that particular thing or whatever without, and it's, so it's, there's...swyx [00:36:42]: Wasn't there a Supreme Court case that they lost? Yeah.Dharmesh [00:36:45]: So the one they lost was around someone that was scraping public data that was on the public internet. And that particular company had not signed any terms of service or whatever. It's like, oh, I'm just taking data that's on, there was no, and so that's why they won. But now, you know, the question is around, can LinkedIn... I think they can. Like, when you use, as a user, you use LinkedIn, you are signing up for their terms of service. And if they say, well, this kind of use of your LinkedIn account that violates our terms of service, they can shut your account down, right? They can. And they, yeah, so, you know, we don't need to make this a discussion. By the way, I love the company, don't get me wrong. I'm an avid user of the product. You know, I've got... Yeah, I mean, you've got over a million followers on LinkedIn, I think. Yeah, I do. And I've known people there for a long, long time, right? And I have lots of respect. And I understand even where the mindset originally came from of this kind of members-first approach to, you know, a privacy-first. I sort of get that. But sometimes you sort of have to wonder, it's like, okay, well, that was 15, 20 years ago. There's likely some controlled ways to expose some data on some member's behalf and not just completely be a binary. It's like, no, thou shalt not have the data.swyx [00:37:54]: Well, just pay for sales navigator.Alessio [00:37:57]: Before we move to the next layer of instruction, anything else on MCP you mentioned? Let's move back and then I'll tie it back to MCPs.Dharmesh [00:38:05]: So I think the... Open this with agent. Okay, so I'll start with... Here's my kind of running thesis, is that as AI and agents evolve, which they're doing very, very quickly, we're going to look at them more and more. I don't like to anthropomorphize. We'll talk about why this is not that. Less as just like raw tools and more like teammates. They'll still be software. They should self-disclose as being software. I'm totally cool with that. But I think what's going to happen is that in the same way you might collaborate with a team member on Slack or Teams or whatever you use, you can imagine a series of agents that do specific things just like a team member might do, that you can delegate things to. You can collaborate. You can say, hey, can you take a look at this? Can you proofread that? Can you try this? You can... Whatever it happens to be. So I think it is... I will go so far as to say it's inevitable that we're going to have hybrid teams someday. And what I mean by hybrid teams... So back in the day, hybrid teams were, oh, well, you have some full-time employees and some contractors. Then it was like hybrid teams are some people that are in the office and some that are remote. That's the kind of form of hybrid. The next form of hybrid is like the carbon-based life forms and agents and AI and some form of software. So let's say we temporarily stipulate that I'm right about that over some time horizon that eventually we're going to have these kind of digitally hybrid teams. So if that's true, then the question you sort of ask yourself is that then what needs to exist in order for us to get the full value of that new model? It's like, okay, well... You sort of need to... It's like, okay, well, how do I... If I'm building a digital team, like, how do I... Just in the same way, if I'm interviewing for an engineer or a designer or a PM, whatever, it's like, well, that's why we have professional networks, right? It's like, oh, they have a presence on likely LinkedIn. I can go through that semi-structured, structured form, and I can see the experience of whatever, you know, self-disclosed. But, okay, well, agents are going to need that someday. And so I'm like, okay, well, this seems like a thread that's worth pulling on. That says, okay. So I... So agent.ai is out there. And it's LinkedIn for agents. It's LinkedIn for agents. It's a professional network for agents. And the more I pull on that thread, it's like, okay, well, if that's true, like, what happens, right? It's like, oh, well, they have a profile just like anyone else, just like a human would. It's going to be a graph underneath, just like a professional network would be. It's just that... And you can have its, you know, connections and follows, and agents should be able to post. That's maybe how they do release notes. Like, oh, I have this new version. Whatever they decide to post, it should just be able to... Behave as a node on the network of a professional network. As it turns out, the more I think about that and pull on that thread, the more and more things, like, start to make sense to me. So it may be more than just a pure professional network. So my original thought was, okay, well, it's a professional network and agents as they exist out there, which I think there's going to be more and more of, will kind of exist on this network and have the profile. But then, and this is always dangerous, I'm like, okay, I want to see a world where thousands of agents are out there in order for the... Because those digital employees, the digital workers don't exist yet in any meaningful way. And so then I'm like, oh, can I make that easier for, like... And so I have, as one does, it's like, oh, I'll build a low-code platform for building agents. How hard could that be, right? Like, very hard, as it turns out. But it's been fun. So now, agent.ai has 1.3 million users. 3,000 people have actually, you know, built some variation of an agent, sometimes just for their own personal productivity. About 1,000 of which have been published. And the reason this comes back to MCP for me, so imagine that and other networks, since I know agent.ai. So right now, we have an MCP server for agent.ai that exposes all the internally built agents that we have that do, like, super useful things. Like, you know, I have access to a Twitter API that I can subsidize the cost. And I can say, you know, if you're looking to build something for social media, these kinds of things, with a single API key, and it's all completely free right now, I'm funding it. That's a useful way for it to work. And then we have a developer to say, oh, I have this idea. I don't have to worry about open AI. I don't have to worry about, now, you know, this particular model is better. It has access to all the models with one key. And we proxy it kind of behind the scenes. And then expose it. So then we get this kind of community effect, right? That says, oh, well, someone else may have built an agent to do X. Like, I have an agent right now that I built for myself to do domain valuation for website domains because I'm obsessed with domains, right? And, like, there's no efficient market for domains. There's no Zillow for domains right now that tells you, oh, here are what houses in your neighborhood sold for. It's like, well, why doesn't that exist? We should be able to solve that problem. And, yes, you're still guessing. Fine. There should be some simple heuristic. So I built that. It's like, okay, well, let me go look for past transactions. You say, okay, I'm going to type in agent.ai, agent.com, whatever domain. What's it actually worth? I'm looking at buying it. It can go and say, oh, which is what it does. It's like, I'm going to go look at are there any published domain transactions recently that are similar, either use the same word, same top-level domain, whatever it is. And it comes back with an approximate value, and it comes back with its kind of rationale for why it picked the value and comparable transactions. Oh, by the way, this domain sold for published. Okay. So that agent now, let's say, existed on the web, on agent.ai. Then imagine someone else says, oh, you know, I want to build a brand-building agent for startups and entrepreneurs to come up with names for their startup. Like a common problem, every startup is like, ah, I don't know what to call it. And so they type in five random words that kind of define whatever their startup is. And you can do all manner of things, one of which is like, oh, well, I need to find the domain for it. What are possible choices? Now it's like, okay, well, it would be nice to know if there's an aftermarket price for it, if it's listed for sale. Awesome. Then imagine calling this valuation agent. It's like, okay, well, I want to find where the arbitrage is, where the agent valuation tool says this thing is worth $25,000. It's listed on GoDaddy for $5,000. It's close enough. Let's go do that. Right? And that's a kind of composition use case that in my future state. Thousands of agents on the network, all discoverable through something like MCP. And then you as a developer of agents have access to all these kind of Lego building blocks based on what you're trying to solve. Then you blend in orchestration, which is getting better and better with the reasoning models now. Just describe the problem that you have. Now, the next layer that we're all contending with is that how many tools can you actually give an LLM before the LLM breaks? That number used to be like 15 or 20 before you kind of started to vary dramatically. And so that's the thing I'm thinking about now. It's like, okay, if I want to... If I want to expose 1,000 of these agents to a given LLM, obviously I can't give it all 1,000. Is there some intermediate layer that says, based on your prompt, I'm going to make a best guess at which agents might be able to be helpful for this particular thing? Yeah.Alessio [00:44:37]: Yeah, like RAG for tools. Yep. I did build the Latent Space Researcher on agent.ai. Okay. Nice. Yeah, that seems like, you know, then there's going to be a Latent Space Scheduler. And then once I schedule a research, you know, and you build all of these things. By the way, my apologies for the user experience. You realize I'm an engineer. It's pretty good.swyx [00:44:56]: I think it's a normie-friendly thing. Yeah. That's your magic. HubSpot does the same thing.Alessio [00:45:01]: Yeah, just to like quickly run through it. You can basically create all these different steps. And these steps are like, you know, static versus like variable-driven things. How did you decide between this kind of like low-code-ish versus doing, you know, low-code with code backend versus like not exposing that at all? Any fun design decisions? Yeah. And this is, I think...Dharmesh [00:45:22]: I think lots of people are likely sitting in exactly my position right now, coming through the choosing between deterministic. Like if you're like in a business or building, you know, some sort of agentic thing, do you decide to do a deterministic thing? Or do you go non-deterministic and just let the alum handle it, right, with the reasoning models? The original idea and the reason I took the low-code stepwise, a very deterministic approach. A, the reasoning models did not exist at that time. That's thing number one. Thing number two is if you can get... If you know in your head... If you know in your head what the actual steps are to accomplish whatever goal, why would you leave that to chance? There's no upside. There's literally no upside. Just tell me, like, what steps do you need executed? So right now what I'm playing with... So one thing we haven't talked about yet, and people don't talk about UI and agents. Right now, the primary interaction model... Or they don't talk enough about it. I know some people have. But it's like, okay, so we're used to the chatbot back and forth. Fine. I get that. But I think we're going to move to a blend of... Some of those things are going to be synchronous as they are now. But some are going to be... Some are going to be async. It's just going to put it in a queue, just like... And this goes back to my... Man, I talk fast. But I have this... I only have one other speed. It's even faster. So imagine it's like if you're working... So back to my, oh, we're going to have these hybrid digital teams. Like, you would not go to a co-worker and say, I'm going to ask you to do this thing, and then sit there and wait for them to go do it. Like, that's not how the world works. So it's nice to be able to just, like, hand something off to someone. It's like, okay, well, maybe I expect a response in an hour or a day or something like that.Dharmesh [00:46:52]: In terms of when things need to happen. So the UI around agents. So if you look at the output of agent.ai agents right now, they are the simplest possible manifestation of a UI, right? That says, oh, we have inputs of, like, four different types. Like, we've got a dropdown, we've got multi-select, all the things. It's like back in HTML, the original HTML 1.0 days, right? Like, you're the smallest possible set of primitives for a UI. And it just says, okay, because we need to collect some information from the user, and then we go do steps and do things. And generate some output in HTML or markup are the two primary examples. So the thing I've been asking myself, if I keep going down that path. So people ask me, I get requests all the time. It's like, oh, can you make the UI sort of boring? I need to be able to do this, right? And if I keep pulling on that, it's like, okay, well, now I've built an entire UI builder thing. Where does this end? And so I think the right answer, and this is what I'm going to be backcoding once I get done here, is around injecting a code generation UI generation into, the agent.ai flow, right? As a builder, you're like, okay, I'm going to describe the thing that I want, much like you would do in a vibe coding world. But instead of generating the entire app, it's going to generate the UI that exists at some point in either that deterministic flow or something like that. It says, oh, here's the thing I'm trying to do. Go generate the UI for me. And I can go through some iterations. And what I think of it as a, so it's like, I'm going to generate the code, generate the code, tweak it, go through this kind of prompt style, like we do with vibe coding now. And at some point, I'm going to be happy with it. And I'm going to hit save. And that's going to become the action in that particular step. It's like a caching of the generated code that I can then, like incur any inference time costs. It's just the actual code at that point.Alessio [00:48:29]: Yeah, I invested in a company called E2B, which does code sandbox. And they powered the LM arena web arena. So it's basically the, just like you do LMS, like text to text, they do the same for like UI generation. So if you're asking a model, how do you do it? But yeah, I think that's kind of where.Dharmesh [00:48:45]: That's the thing I'm really fascinated by. So the early LLM, you know, we're understandably, but laughably bad at simple arithmetic, right? That's the thing like my wife, Normies would ask us, like, you call this AI, like it can't, my son would be like, it's just stupid. It can't even do like simple arithmetic. And then like we've discovered over time that, and there's a reason for this, right? It's like, it's a large, there's, you know, the word language is in there for a reason in terms of what it's been trained on. It's not meant to do math, but now it's like, okay, well, the fact that it has access to a Python interpreter that I can actually call at runtime, that solves an entire body of problems that it wasn't trained to do. And it's basically a form of delegation. And so the thought that's kind of rattling around in my head is that that's great. So it's, it's like took the arithmetic problem and took it first. Now, like anything that's solvable through a relatively concrete Python program, it's able to do a bunch of things that I couldn't do before. Can we get to the same place with UI? I don't know what the future of UI looks like in a agentic AI world, but maybe let the LLM handle it, but not in the classic sense. Maybe it generates it on the fly, or maybe we go through some iterations and hit cache or something like that. So it's a little bit more predictable. Uh, I don't know, but yeah.Alessio [00:49:48]: And especially when is the human supposed to intervene? So, especially if you're composing them, most of them should not have a UI because then they're just web hooking to somewhere else. I just want to touch back. I don't know if you have more comments on this.swyx [00:50:01]: I was just going to ask when you, you said you got, you're going to go back to code. What

Lee Travis, Vice President of Health, Safety, and Environment at Equix, discusses how organizations can move beyond compliance and embed safety into their culture. He shares how leadership visibility, effective communication, and personal connection make safety training more meaningful—and how every role in an organization plays a part in keeping people safe. Show Notes:Lee Travis has more than 30 years of experience in the health, safety and environment training area and shares best practices for empowering team members to make safety a priority every day. Here are some of his key takeaways.  Safety Culture Starts with Leadership: Creating a strong safety culture takes effort—and then more effort. Leaders must be visibly engaged, empower employees, and reinforce safe behaviors to embed safety into the DNA of the organization. Make Safety Personal: The most impactful safety training connects to people's lives. Lee encourages people by asking, “Why do you work safely?” to tap into personal motivations, making training more meaningful and behavior-changing. Bridge the Gap Between Office and Field: Everyone plays a role in safety, even if they're not in high-risk environments. Real stories—from control room operators to credit card admins—show how cross-functional awareness builds a unified safety mindset. Micro-Training and Tailgate Talks Work: Traditional training has its place, but short, focused sessions in the field (like morning tailgates) are also effective. These bite-sized interactions keep safety top-of-mind and relevant to daily tasks. Use Tools That Empower Learners: Centralized training records and self-service access to learning platforms help close compliance gaps. When employees own their training progress, completion rates rise and accountability increases. Learn more about d'Vinci's custom eLearning and LMS work in the safety and damage prevention industry on our website.Powered by Learning earned Awards of Distinction in the Podcast/Audio and Business Podcast categories from The Communicator Awards and a Gold and Silver Davey Award. The podcast is also named to Feedspot's Top 40 L&D podcasts and Training Industry's Ultimate L&D Podcast Guide. Learn more about d'Vinci at www.dvinci.com. Follow us on LinkedInLike us on Facebook

Kelli and Nolan are joined by Roxanne Petraeus, CEO of Ethena, to talk about her journey from the US army to founding an HR tech company. She shares her views on leadership, the distinction between training and learning, and building a culture of intellectual meritocracy in a remote-first environment. The conversation explores how compliance training evolved from her military experiences, covers the role of Chief People Officers, and reveals how military discipline shaped her approach to building high-performance tech cultures without superficial perks.*Email us your questions or topics for Kelli & Nolan: hrheretics@turpentine.coFor coaching and advising inquire at https://kellidragovich.com/HR Heretics is a podcast from Turpentine.—

Dr. Will Deyamport III: Edupreneur | Speaker | ConsultantDr. Will Deyamport III is a force in digital learning, edupreneurship, and instructional technology. As the visionary behind The Dr. Will Show Podcast, the author of The Edupreneur, and a sought-after consultant, he empowers educators to leverage their expertise beyond the classroom and build sustainable businesses.With a deep background in technology leadership, systems thinking, and change management, Dr. Will has played a pivotal role in one-to-one device rollouts, preparing teachers for virtual learning, and optimizing LMS strategies for seamless instruction. His work isn't about tech for tech's sake—it's about transformation.Through his coaching, speaking engagements, and content, Dr. Will teaches educators how to monetize their knowledge, elevate their impact, and take control of their financial futures. If you're ready to turn your skills into a thriving business, he's the guide you need.__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Edupreneur: Your Blueprint To Jumpstart And Scale Your Education Business You've spent years in the classroom, leading PD, designing curriculum, and transforming how students learn. Now, it's time to leverage that experience and build something for yourself. The Edupreneur isn't just another book—it's the playbook for educators who want to take their knowledge beyond the school walls and into a thriving business.I wrote this book because I've been where you are. I know what it's like to have the skills, the passion, and the drive but not know where to start. I break it all down—the mindset shifts, the business models, the pricing strategies, and the branding moves that will help you position yourself as a leader in this space.Inside, you'll learn how to:✅ Turn your expertise into income streams—without feeling like a sellout✅ Build a personal brand that commands respect (and top dollar)✅ Market your work in a way that feels natural and impactful✅ Navigate the business side of edupreneurship, from pricing to partnershipsWhether you want to consult, create courses, write books, or launch a podcast, this book will help you get there. Stop waiting for permission. Start building your own table.

Tired of overcomplicating your content creation? In this episode of Launch Your Private Podcast, Kaitlyn Kessler—energetics and business coach for visionary leaders reveals how she transformed her business by replacing traditional LMS systems with private podcasting. Learn how audio became her #1 tool for aligning her content delivery with her mission of simplicity, ease, and sustainable growth.Timestamps:[0:00] Introduction to the episode and Kaitlyn Kessler's journey in creating her first audio-based course[7:30] Transitioning away from traditional course platforms: Canceling LMS subscriptions for audio-only delivery.[12:20] Organic vs. paid marketing for private podcasts: Crushing signup goals with a free audio lead magnet.[14:10] The psychology behind going fully audio-first: Why simplicity aligns with client lifestyles.[16:00] Addressing practical concerns in the transition to going fully audio[24:30] The biggest mindset shift: Letting go of “more is more” and focusing on what's actually used.[27:15] The biggest mindset shift: Letting go of traditional formats[34:30] The emotional impact of audio-based learning: Building trust through voice and embodied content.Links mentioned:instagram.com/kaitlynskesslerhttps://kaitlynkessler.com/bwekaitlynkessler.com

Trying to use a generic employee LMS for channel partner training can be very frustrating. How do specialized AI-powered solutions help? Find out on this episode of the Talented Learning Show!

Send us a textSummary: In this episode of the Customer Success Playbook, hosts Roman Trebon and Kevin Metzger sit down with Martin Vogel, an executive leader in global customer support and complex hardware-plus-SaaS solutions. They dive deep into the challenges of establishing a scalable, efficient global support framework and ensuring immediate and long-term value for customers. Martin shares practical strategies, including understanding regional differences, creating simple yet robust processes, and prioritizing clear communication. Tune in for actionable insights on balancing SaaS and hardware support, diagnosing technical issues effectively, and implementing a continuous learning framework for your support teams.Detailed Analysis: What does it take to build a world-class global support framework? According to Martin Vogel, it all starts with knowing where you are. Mapping out existing structures, understanding regional differences, and tailoring processes accordingly are critical first steps. With experience spanning multiple continents, Martin emphasizes the need for a structured yet flexible approach to global support.The conversation highlights key components of a strong support framework:Understanding regional nuances: Markets differ in their support structures and expectations. Europe's established systems contrast with the U.S.'s ground-up approach, necessitating a flexible global strategy.Defining simple, scalable processes: Complex frameworks don't work if they aren't easy to implement. Martin stresses the need for clarity in process creation.Effective communication across teams: Building a bridge between different support teams ensures alignment and consistency in customer experience.Balancing SaaS and hardware support: With hardware-origin companies increasingly incorporating SaaS, Martin discusses best practices for integrating both seamlessly.Training and knowledge management: He introduces an LMS-based approach to training, emphasizing problem diagnosis, knowledge base documentation, and incident reviews.The result? A structured, iterative approach that minimizes misdiagnoses, accelerates troubleshooting, and enhances customer satisfaction. Join us in this episode as we unpack these strategies and more.Now you can interact with us directly by leaving a voice message at https://www.speakpipe.com/CustomerSuccessPlaybookPlease Like, Comment, Share and Subscribe. You can also find the CS Playbook Podcast:YouTube - @CustomerSuccessPlaybookPodcastTwitter - @CS_PlaybookYou can find Kevin at:Metzgerbusiness.com - Kevin's person web siteKevin Metzger on Linked In.You can find Roman at:Roman Trebon on Linked In.

In this LMScast, Chris and Jason talk about how LMS technology has advanced and how LifterLMS revolutionized online learning by fusing course administration and content production in a seamless manner. In the past, educators had to produce structured material using independent e-learning authoring tools, which they then had to export and import into an LMS. […] The post Part 4: Becoming the Technologist, Education Entrepreneur Mentor Series appeared first on LMScast.

Oh my friends, do I have a treat for you today! My dear friend Dr. Edie Wadsworth is in the house today for a VERY special conversation.It's a conversation that runs the gamut, but one every woman NEEDS to hear, and I can't wait for you to listen in.We're going to be chatting with Dr. Edie, who also happens to be our physician advisor here at Thinlicious®. She's also a mom of nine, a bestselling author, and a certified life coach, as well as the founder of the Life Mentoring School, also known as LMS, not to mention one of my very best friends in the whole world.Today we're talking about alllllll the things, so without further ado, let's dive in.----------Dr. Edie Wadsworth is a physician and life and health coach who has revolutionized her own life and health using the tools she teaches in her signature program LIFE MENTORING SCHOOL. She also founded a christian life coach certification program and is the physician consultant for TAS. She and her husband Steve share 9 kids and 2 grandbabies and love their newest hobby of wake surfing! She's also the author of the bestselling memoir, All the Pretty Things!You can join Edie's LMS program HERE. And listen to her podcast—House of Joy—HERE.----------Get our FREE guide to finally fix your metabolism!Losing weight & getting healthy is never easy, but lately you might feel like it's suddenly become impossible.Our Flip the Switch guide will help you clearly understand what's been going on, as well as exactly what you can do to get your metabolism working again so that you can look and feel your best—it's easier and more simple than you think! Get it HERE.

As a part of an ongoing series called The Training Experts, this episode features ICA Chief Learning Officer, Claire Moore and Jonathan Delicate, Director of Training at Mr. Clean Car Wash. Jonathan shares his insights on how to effectively implement training programs across multiple locations using innovative tools and strategies. Key Takeaways: Jonathan's journey into training at Mr. Clean Car Wash began with his hiring as a General Manager. A crucial part of Jonathan's success has been using an LMS platform to deliver training across the company's multiple sites in Georgia and Florida. He emphasizes the importance of tracking progress and ensuring employees complete the necessary training modules. Faced with a previous eight-month training void when he took over, Jonathan began by focusing on entry-level employees and moved up to management-level training.  To engage employees, Jonathan introduced a fun, sports-themed approach with The Mr. Clean Huddle, featuring short training videos that cover essential procedures. This has made learning more interactive and accessible for all team members. One of Jonathan's standout innovations is placing QR codes on every piece of equipment in the car wash tunnel. Employees can scan these codes to instantly access training videos related to specific equipment, offering on-demand learning. When asked what advice he'd give to those starting out in training, Jonathan's response was clear: Be patient.