Podcasts about mba

In this special edition of our podcast as part of our ongoing Admissions Director Q&A series, Senior Assistant Dean for Admissions at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, Willie Green, digs into the MBA program and admissions.

Dan Pontefract is a renowned leadership strategist, author, and keynote speaker with over two decades of experience in senior executive roles at companies such as SAP, TELUS, and Business Objects. Since then, he has worked with organizations worldwide, including Salesforce, Amgen, Nestlé, Virgin Media O2, Autodesk, BMO, the Government of Canada, Manulife, Nutrien, and BDO, among others.As an award-winning and best-selling author, Dan has written six books: THE FUTURE OF WORK IS GREY, WORK-LIFE BLOOM, LEAD. CARE. WIN., OPEN TO THINK, THE PURPOSE EFFECT, and FLAT ARMY. His 2024, Work-Life Bloom, is the 2024 Thinkers50 Best New Management Book and the Gold Medal Winner of the Axiom Business Book Awards. He also writes for Forbes and Harvard Business Review.Dan is a renowned keynote speaker who has presented at four TED events and has delivered over 600 keynotes. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria's Gustavson School of Business and has received over 25 industry, individual, and book awards.Dan's career is interwoven with corporate and academic experience, coupled with an MBA, B.Ed, and multiple industry certifications and awards. Notably, Dan is listed on the Thinkers50 Radar, HR Weekly's 100 Most Influential People in HR, PeopleHum's Top 200 Thought Leaders to Follow, and Inc. Magazine's Top 100 Leadership Speakers.Link to claim CME credit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3DXCFW3CME credit is available for up to 3 years after the stated release dateContact CEOD@bmhcc.org if you have any questions about claiming credit.

Watch the show on television by downloading the SuperCrowd.tv Channel app to your Roku or Amazon Fire TV or e360tv channel app to your Roku, LG or Amazon Fire TV. You can also see it on YouTube.Devin: What is your superpower?Jason: I like to think that we are people with big brains and small egos. If we are high-impact, low-ego folks and we keep our eye on the ball, that's a recipe for success no matter what industry you're in.NextGen Scientific is turning an ancient Middle Eastern medicinal plant into a modern platform for cancer drug development and wellness products.In this episode, I spoke with Jason West, co-founder of NextGen Scientific, a PurposeBuilt100™ company recognized for combining growth with measurable impact. Jason explained that the company operates along two related tracks: Hyatt Life Sciences, its dietary supplement business and Genzada Pharmaceuticals, its drug discovery and development company.The common thread is chemistry.Jason described the company's work with Arum palestinum, a plant that grows wild in the Middle East and has long been used there as a tea. That history is what pulled the scientific team in.“What caught our attention was that there are references to the use of this plant as a medicinal plant going all the way back to the 9th century AD,” Jason said. “For 1,100 years, it's been in continuous use.”That kind of longevity raised a serious scientific question for the team: why would people keep using it for more than a millennium if there were no benefit? Jason said NextGen began studying naturally occurring molecules in the plant, ultimately identifying compounds that became the basis for its oncology research.The company now has two lead oncology or oncology-related drug candidates. One is an oral capsule in clinical trials at Virginia Commonwealth University for late-stage prostate cancer, with trials expected in the Netherlands and Sweden. The other is a topical cream aimed at actinic keratosis, a precancerous skin condition with tens of millions of cases annually in the United States.Jason emphasized that the goal is not to replace oncologists but to help them. “We feel like we can be just one more tool in the toolbox of the oncologist, and that's what our ultimate goal is,” he said.Congratulations to NextGen Scientific LLC on ranking #46 on the 2026 PurposeBuilt100™ list! We're proud to recognize the company among America's fastest-growing mission-driven businesses, celebrating the connection between purpose, innovation, and growth. Meet the Class of 2026 — see the full list of winners →What I found especially compelling is the company's dual-path strategy. Drug development can be slow, expensive and risky. By building a supplement business alongside the pharmaceutical pipeline, NextGen has created revenue while continuing the long FDA-focused journey.That strategy emerged organically. In rural Kansas, word spread that the family was working with a tea tied to cancer wellness. People began asking for it. “By the end of the day, I think we were sending about 40 gallons of this tea out a week just to friends and family,” Jason said.NextGen Scientific is currently raising capital through a Regulation D offering for accredited investors, targeting just over $10 million. Jason said proceeds will help accelerate clinical trials, open new trial fronts and support marketing for the supplement business.It is exactly the kind of purpose-built growth story I love to celebrate.tl;dr:Jason West's team is translating an ancient Middle Eastern plant into cancer drugs and supplements.NextGen Scientific pairs Genzada Pharmaceuticals' clinical pipeline with Hyatt Life Sciences' wellness products.Small-town curiosity created unexpected demand, eventually reaching roughly 40 gallons of tea weekly.A Regulation D raise seeks just over $10 million from accredited investors to accelerate trials.Low-ego brilliance helps Jason keep hard conversations focused on data, kindness and learning.How to Develop Low-Ego Brilliance As a SuperpowerJason's superpower is Low-Ego Brilliance. He describes it as being among people with “big brains and small egos.” For Jason, the combination matters because “if we are high-impact, low-ego folks and we keep our eye on the ball, that's a recipe for success no matter what industry you're in.” He connects the idea to persistence, humility and disciplined focus: “You just have to keep on putting one foot in front of the other.” His advice is simple but powerful: “Take the phone call. Always take the phone call.”Jason shared a story about meeting with an exceptionally smart but highly skeptical person who seemed to have little patience for NextGen's science. Rather than taking offense or trying to win a personality contest, Jason and his team stayed calm and redirected the conversation to the data. A meeting scheduled for 15 or 20 minutes stretched to about two hours. By the end, the skeptic had become a friend. Jason summed up the lesson this way: “If you have the data on your side, you don't need to be too big for your britches.”Build teams with big brains and small egos; value impact over status.Keep your eye on the ball, especially when the work is long and difficult.Put one foot in front of the other rather than demanding instant success.When challenged, redirect the conversation to evidence instead of emotion.Be kind to skeptics; you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.Take the phone call when you can because there is almost always something to learn.Stay curious, not judgmental, especially when you assume a conversation will not matter.By following Jason's example and advice, you can make low-ego brilliance a skill. With practice and effort, you could make it a superpower that enables you to do more good in the world.Remember, however, that research into success suggests that building on your own superpowers is more important than creating new ones or overcoming weaknesses. You do you!Guest ProfileJason West (he/him):Executive Vice President, NextGen ScientificAbout NextGen Scientific: NextGen Scientific is a biotechnology and life sciences company dedicated to advancing innovative oncology research and developing evidence-based therapeutic solutions. Focused on cancer research, tumor biology, precision therapeutics, and plant-based pharmaceutical and bioactive compounds, the company works to bridge the gap between scientific discovery and real-world healthcare impact. Through translational medicine, preclinical research, intellectual property development, and a disciplined, research-driven approach, NextGen Scientific is building novel, scalable solutions designed to advance the future of cancer care and therapeutic innovation.Operating at the intersection of biotechnology, healthcare innovation, and commercial strategy, NextGen Scientific has developed a dual-entity model that combines biotechnology development with a revenue-generating wellness platform. Alongside its oncology pipeline, the company brings science-backed nutraceutical and metabolic wellness products to market, creating a sustainable engine to support continued research and growth. As NextGen Scientific expands its oncology pipeline, patent portfolio, and commercialization strategy, it remains focused on translating promising science into safe, effective, and impactful health solutions.Website: investinnextgen.comLinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/nextgen-scientificBiographical Information: Jason West is a seasoned executive and entrepreneur with extensive leadership experience across biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, life sciences, chemicals, and business development. He currently serves as Executive Vice President of Genzada Pharmaceuticals and NextGen Scientific, while also serving as Chairman of Geo-Chemicals, LLC and Chief Executive Officer of Hyatt Life Sciences. His career reflects a strong combination of scientific knowledge, legal expertise, and executive leadership, with a focus on building and guiding organizations at the intersection of science, innovation, and commercial growth.Earlier in his career, Jason spent 15 years with Jacam Chemical Company, including more than seven years as President and seven years as Vice President and General Counsel. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Sterling College, a Juris Doctor from Vermont Law School, and an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. With experience spanning scientific research, law, corporate leadership, and strategic management, Jason brings a multidisciplinary perspective to advancing innovative businesses and life sciences initiatives.LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jason-west-b33b7a163Watch the Impact Stories on BIG Screen!Support Our SponsorsOur generous sponsors make our work possible, serving impact investors, social entrepreneurs, community builders and diverse founders. Today's advertisers include PurposeBuilt100™ Winners and supercrowd.tv. Learn more about advertising with us here.Max-Impact Members(We're grateful for every one of these community champions who make this work possible.)Brian Christie, Brainsy | Cameron Neil, Lend For Good | Carol Fineagan, Independent Consultant | Eric Coury, Arthia AI | Joey Hayes, thru | John Berlet, CORE Tax Deeds, LLC. | Justin Starbird, The Aebli Group | Ken Steele, Rotarian | Lory Moore, Lory Moore Law | Marcia Brinton, High Desert Gear | Mark Grimes, Networked Enterprise Development | Mike Babbit | Coledger Solutions | Mike Green, Envirosult | Nick Degnan, Unlimit Ventures | Paul Lovejoy, Stakeholder Enterprise | Pearl Wright, Global Changemaker | Scott Thorpe, Philanthropist | Sharon Samjitsingh, Health Care Originals | Add Your Name HereUpcoming SuperCrowd Event CalendarIf a location is not noted, the events below are virtual.Join the SuperCrowd Impact League! You can be recognized for making impact investments via Reg CF. See how your activity compares to your peers. It's free. Win valuable prizes. Start now!SuperCrowd Impact Member Networking Session: Impact (and, of course, Max-Impact) Members of the SuperCrowd are invited to a private networking session on September 8th at 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT. Mark your calendar. We'll send private emails to Impact Members with registration details. Upgrade to Impact Membership today!Apply for the Superpowers for Good Live Pitch: Are you raising capital through Regulation Crowdfunding? Apply by September 2 for the September 30 Superpowers for Good Live Pitch. Selected founders pitch free to investors and gain exposure through SuperCrowd.tv, e360tv, social media, and our 10,000-subscriber newsletter. We especially encourage social entrepreneurs, women and underrepresented entrepreneurs to apply.Visit Our Complete Community Event CalendarIf you would like to submit an event for us to share with the 10,000+ changemakers, investors and entrepreneurs who are members of the SuperCrowd, click here.Manage the volume of emails you receive from us by clicking here.We share educational information—not investment advice. Some links may generate compensation. See our full disclosure.We use AI to help us write compelling recaps of each episode. Get full access to Superpowers for Good at www.superpowers4good.com/subscribe

The future of business is not more hustle. It is alignment, intuition and collaboration.In this guest episode, Nimesh is joined by Camille L. Miller, founder of the Soul Professional® Movement, for a powerful conversation about spiritual awakening, purpose-led work and the new energy of leadership.Camille shares how her journey through counselling psychology, nonprofit leadership, organic farming, business teaching and deep inner knowing led her to create a global movement for spiritually minded professionals.Together, Nimesh and Camille explore the shift from old masculine structures into a more soulful, collaborative and heart-led way of building, leading and serving.They also talk about claircognizance, downloads, Gus, trusting what comes through, the return of in-person connection, and why so many seekers are now being called to stop hiding their gifts.This episode is for anyone who knows they are here to do meaningful work, but no longer wants to build it from pressure, performance or old ways of being.In This Episode✨ The rise of soul-led business and leadership✨ Camille's journey into the Soul Professional® Movement✨ Intuition, downloads and building before the world is ready✨ Divine feminine energy, collaboration and community✨ Nature, stillness and trusting your inner guidanceWhat You'll Take Away✨ Your soul has a place in your work✨ The old way of building is no longer working for many people✨ Collaboration is replacing competition✨ Your gifts may arrive before the world understands them✨ Doing less can help you receive more clearlyGuest BioCamille L. Miller, MBA, PhD ABD, is the founder and visionary behind the Soul Professional® Movement, a global community redefining success for purpose-driven professionals.A three-time Amazon bestselling author, speaker and community builder, Camille brings together leaders, seekers and visionaries who are ready to align their work with who they truly are and bring their gifts to the world.Connect with Camille L. MillerWebsite: https://www.soulprofessional.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camillelmiller/Continue Your Journey With Nimesh✨ Spiritual Journey MembershipJoin a safe and supportive spiritual community with monthly teachings, guided meditations, energy updates and space to grow alongside others on the path.https://nimesh-radia.com/spiritual-membership/✨ Book a Free Discovery Call with NimeshIf this episode speaks to where you are right now, you can book a free discovery call to explore spiritual mentorship, Akashic Records or deeper support.https://calendly.com/spiritualjourney/30min✨ Akashic Record ReadingIf you feel called to understand your soul contracts, patterns, purpose or guidance more deeply, an Akashic Record Reading can support that journey.https://calendly.com/spiritualjourney/akashic-record-readingConnect with NimeshEmail: nims@nimesh-radia.comWebsite: https://nimesh-radia.comPodcast: https://nimesh-radia.com/podcast/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nimesh_radia/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nimesh.radiaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nimesh-radiaReflectionWhere are you still separating your spiritual gifts from the work you are here to do?This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp

In this episode, we hear from Dean Bradley R. Staats, who took over leadership at McCombs in July of this year. A third-generation Longhorn, he holds a bachelor's degree from UT and an MBA from Harvard Business School.  He has spent the last 17 years at the University of North Carolina both as a professor and as Dean of the Kenan-Flagler Business School.  

2026 Women in IR Champion Sue E. Hanks, MD, FSIR, reflects on her career in interventional radiology, sharing insights on leadership, trauma care, mentorship and the value of building collaborative, data-driven teams. Joined by colleagues M. Victoria Marx, MD, FSIR, Shellie C. Josephs, MD, FSIR, and Alda L. Tam, MD, MBA, FSIR, she discusses the importance of hands-on training, cross-specialty collaboration, networking and creating supportive spaces where physicians can learn from both successes and challenges.Support the show

Round 1 of the 2026-27 MBA application cycle is soon drawing to a close, and along with those deadlines comes a surge in self-sabotaging applicant behavior. This episode covers 3 things you should do before submitting, as well as 3 mistakes you should avoid making after your materials are in.

In this episode, Shannon Cameron, MBA, MHIIM, CPC, Chief Operating Officer, Anesthesia Financial Solutions, LLC, discusses how AI, automation and advanced analytics are reshaping revenue cycle operations, from denials and prior authorization to reimbursement and payment accuracy. She also shares lessons on governance, workforce evolution and leading effectively across complex healthcare organizations.

This summer, join host David Mandell as he revisits and highlights episodes from Season 5 of The Wealth Planning for the Modern Physician podcast, in our 2026 Summer Rewind Series. "I genuinely believe there is a lot of information to gain from all of our episodes deliver, but for the summer, I've handpicked a few that offer intriguing ideas and a unique perspective for physicians in 2025," says David. "I hope you enjoy this Season encore series. Have a great summer!" Episode 5.18 | Originally Released: May 14, 2025 In this episode of the Wealth Planning for the Modern Physician podcast, host David Mandell sits down with two highly respected medical leaders—Dr. Mark Figgie, Chief Emeritus of the Surgical Arthritis Service at the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS), and Dr. Joel Press, Physiatrist-in-Chief at HSS—to explore their personal and professional journeys in medicine. Dr. Press shares how his diverse early experiences led him to physiatry, while Dr. Figgie recounts his balance between science, business, and a lifelong pursuit of education, including earning an MBA during his fellowship. The conversation shifts into a discussion of mentorship at the Hospital for Special Surgery, where both physicians have played key roles in developing a cross-disciplinary mentorship model to support younger doctors. Their focus extends beyond clinical guidance to include career development, personal financial planning, and wellness—areas often overlooked in traditional medical training. This approach fosters institutional collaboration and a stronger culture at HSS. Finally, the episode dives into physicians' relationships with industry. Dr. Figgie offers candid advice on contracts, intellectual property rights, and ethical considerations when working with device manufacturers. He emphasizes the importance of legal review and staying true to what benefits patients. Dr. Press adds insight into personal financial trust, suggesting that doctors build a "board of directors" for trusted guidance. The episode closes with a preview of future initiatives aimed at supporting physicians earlier in their careers through financial education and mentorship. Learn more by visiting the original episode page. Learn more, including additional show notes, links, and detailed key takeaways, by visiting visiting the original episode page. Check out other episodes from our 6 seasons by visiting, physicianswealthpodcast.com. Click here to get your FREE copy of our latest book, Wealth Strategies for Today's Physician!

In this episode, Miguel Gonzalez discusses how emergency savings, interest rates, debt, long-term goals, and changing financial priorities can help determine where your extra money should go. He also explains why the answer doesn't always have to be all-or-nothing.Miguel Gonzalez is a Certified Retirement Counselor (CRC) with over 25 years of experience helping individuals and families design retirement income strategies and long-term financial plans. He is the Managing Partner of Cortburg Retirement Advisors, a boutique firm focused on retirement planning, investment management, and financial clarity.#SaveOrInvest #PayOffDebt #FinancialPlanning #PersonalFinance #SavingMoney #Investing #DebtManagement #EmergencySavings #MoneyManagement #FinancialWellness #CortburgSpeaksRetirement #MiguelXGonzalez #RetirementPlanning #FinancialGoals #MoneyHabits #FinancialEducation #DebtFree #InvestingForBeginners #FinancialConfidence #SmartMoneyMovesWelcome to Cortburg Speaks Retirement Podcast with Miguel Gonzalez, MBA, AIF®, CPFA®, CRC® CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO MIGUEL'S LATEST PODCAST FOLLOW US ON: YouTube->https://m.youtube.com/c/CORTBURGRETIREMENTADVISORSFacebook-> https://m.facebook.com/CortburgIncTwitter-> https://twitter.com/CortburgIncLinkedIn->https://www.linkedin.com/in/miguelxgonzalez/Website: www.CortburgRetirement.comEmail:     Miguel@CortburgRetirement.com

If you told a young Javier Simons that he would one day own his own talent agency and hold an MBA from Rice Business, he would have been in disbelief.Growing up in Panama, Javier's path into the music industry was anything but conventional, he says. After years of waiting tables, Javier taught himself the business of entertainment from backstage, and fell in love with the in's and out's of talent booking and artist management. It was this passion that drove him to creating KOQ Agency, a global touring and talent agency representing independent artists. With the help of an MBA from Rice Business, Javier has scaled KOQ internationally, even booking Danish band Aqua's first U.S. tour.Javier joins co-host Brian Jackson '21 to talk about his path from club promoting to entrepreneur, what it really takes to build an artist's career from the ground up, how the MBA gave him the financial and leadership toolkit he was missing, what leading the Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Conference meant to him, and why staying “delusional” is the key to chasing and achieving your dreams.Episode Guide:00:00 Javier Simons Introduction01:03 Early Spark for Live Entertainment03:59 Hard Knocks Education06:53 Founding KOQ Agency09:42 Earning Artist Trust12:30 Booking Aqua U.S. Tour18:16 Riders and Show Crises21:06 Leadership at Denver Pride23:37 Why Rice MBA26:01 Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Conference Legacy29:01 Advice for Breaking Into The Music IndustryThe Owl Have You Know Podcast is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.Episode Quotes:On taking the risks to discover your potential15:20: One of the things that entrepreneurs need to have is take the risk, because I didn't know my full potential until I did that. Once I did Aqua, that's when I realized that there was no challenge big or small enough that I couldn't achieve. It was really an eye-opening moment, especially when I was going through launch week and starting my first semester of the MBA program. And I remember texting my, my core team at 5:00 AM. I said, "If you see me with bags under my eyes and you don't hear from me until 5:30 before class, this is why." And I sent them the poster of the tour before it had released, and they were so supportive. They were, they were very excited. I think in general, I was the only person working in music, so it was kind of fascinating to them to see somebody that was kind of working a field that I don't think anybody in my, in my cohort was, was working. I took them on a journey with me.What we call delusion as an adult is what a kid calls a dream28:19: What we call delusion as an adult is what a kid calls a dream, you know? And we always need to keep dreaming. I think as adults, we tend to not dream anymore. We tend to just go by facts and figures and, and analytics and, and understanding what the results and predictability and we really lose that charm, that innocence that really drove us when we were young to do things that we would never thought we could do. And I know that this is the beginning of something great, because I feel a big change coming.What's the biggest misconception artists have about building a sustainable career?36:07: I think the biggest misconception artists have is that there is only one pathway to monetize their art, and that is not true. A musician can monetize their music five different ways. Through publishing, through licensing, through live events, and ancillary revenue can be merchandised through the image of the artist and brand partnerships, of course. And there's also the element of music writing and being a producer, right? So learn how your art can be monetized. Don't record a song and throw it on, on SoundCloud and hope that it sticks.Show Links: Championing Diversity from Concerts to Classrooms: Meet Javier Simons, Professional MBA Student | Rice Business, Student StoriesTranscriptGuest Profile:Javier Simons | Rice BusinessJavier Simons | LinkedIn

Discover how behavioral science expert Kurt Nelson helps entrepreneurs master mindset, team leadership, and motivation in this insightful episode.What sets thriving entrepreneurs apart? We look into the multifaceted world of entrepreneurial success with Kurt Nelson, PhD, founder of the Lantern Group, podcast co-host, and behavioral science expert.From humble Midwestern beginnings and ice cream shop lessons to advising Fortune 500 companies and solo entrepreneurs alike, Kurt shares eye-opening perspectives on how the right mindset and emotional intelligence drive lasting impact.In this episode, you'll get:Key lessons from Kurt's journey. Why understanding human behavior is essential for business successReal-life stories tackling burnout, uncertainty, and how to reset your entrepreneurial driveThe science of motivation: why non-cash incentives can outperform cash, and how leaders can build high-performing, resilient teamsPractical strategies for developing self-awareness, overcoming limiting behaviors, and building supportive company culturesThe rising importance of emotional intelligence (EQ) in the age of AI and remote workPacked with practical insights for entrepreneurs at every stage, this conversation will help you simplify challenges, improve decision-making, and become a better leader, no matter your business size.This episode is brought to you by PureTax, LLC. Tax preparation services without the pressure. When all you need is to get your tax return done, take the stress out of tax season by working with a firm that has simplified the process and the pricing. Find out more about how we started.Three key takeaways for entrepreneurs and leaders:Human behavior is the heart of business. Whether working with a Fortune 500 or a five-person startup, success depends on understanding how people think, feel, and make decisions. Behavioral science isn't just theory, it's your competitive advantage.Self-awareness unlocks growth. The best leaders don't just manage others, they reflect deeply on their own actions, biases, and communication patterns. Bringing a mirror to your habits may be the most challenging step, but it's the foundation for meaningful change and leadership impact.EQ will set you apart in an AI-powered world. As technology levels the playing field on technical intelligence, emotional intelligence (EQ) becomes the new differentiator. Building trust, connection, and empathy is more critical than ever. Your team and clients can feel the difference.Running a business doesn't have to run your life.Without a business partner who holds you accountable, it's easy to be so busy ‘doing' business that you don't have the right strategy to grow your business.Stop letting your business run you. At Harper & Co CPA Plus, we know that you want to be empowered to build the lifestyle you envision. In order to do that you need a clear path to follow for successOur clients enjoy a proactive partnership with us. Schedule a consultation with us today.Download our free guide - Entrepreneurial Success Formula: How to Avoid Managing Your Business From Your Bank Account.Glenn Harper, CPA, is the Owner and Managing Partner of Harper & Company CPAs Plus, a top 10 Managing Partner in the country (Accounting Today's 2022 MP Elite). His firm won the 2021 Luca Award for Firm of the Year. An entrepreneur and speaker, Glenn transformed his firm into an advisory-focused practice, doubling revenue and profit in two years. He teaches entrepreneurs to build financial and operational excellence, speaks nationwide to CPA firm owners about running their businesses like entrepreneurs, and consults with firms across the country. Glenn enjoys golfing, fishing, hiking, cooking, and spending time with his family.Julie Smith, MBA, is a serial entrepreneur in the public accounting space. She is the Founder of EmpowerCPA™, Founder of PureTax, LLC, COO for Harper & Company CPAs Plus, and Co-host of the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast. Named CPA.com's 2021 Innovative Practitioner of Year, Julie led Harper & Company's transition to an advisory-focused firm, doubling revenue and profit in two years. She now empowers other CPA firm owners nationwide through consulting and speaking, teaching them how to run their businesses like entrepreneurs. Julie lives in Columbus, OH with her family and enjoys travel, coaching basketball, sporting events, and the occasional shopping spree.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/Copyright 2026 Glenn HarperMentioned in this episode:Brought to you by Harper & Company CPAs PlusRunning a business takes vision, grit… and the right financial partner. At Harper & Company CPAs Plus, we don't just crunch numbers—we empower entrepreneurs. From proactive tax strategy and accounting to business advisory services, our team helps you keep more of what you earn and scale with confidence. Whether you're launching, growing, or preparing for exit, Harper & Company is in your corner with expert guidance built for business owners like you. Visit www.harpercpaplus.com to book a complimentary discovery call today - or call us at 614-456-7222. Brought to you by Harper & Company CPAs Plus

In this episode, Shannon Cameron, MBA, MHIIM, CPC, Chief Operating Officer, Anesthesia Financial Solutions, LLC, discusses how AI, automation and advanced analytics are reshaping revenue cycle operations, from denials and prior authorization to reimbursement and payment accuracy. She also shares lessons on governance, workforce evolution and leading effectively across complex healthcare organizations.

Neha Ruch built her career in brand strategy—an MBA from Stanford, a fast climb on the corporate ladder, and a title she loved. Then she paused her career after her second child and spent the years since rebranding what a career pause actually looks like for ambitious women.  In her book, The Power Pause, Neha makes the case that stepping back from paid work isn't the opposite of ambition. It's a chapter of it. She also reframes the “stay-at-home mom” label, citing survey results showing outdated stereotypes (like apron-clad June Cleaver from Leave It to Beaver), and argues modern parenthood is more fluid with technology, networks, and involved partners.  Whether you're actively wondering, "Do I quit my job? Do I take a pause? What should I do?", or if family planning is somewhere on your radar for the next few years, or if kids aren't even part of the picture yet—this conversation is worth having early. Neha and Amanda get into how to come out the other side of a power pause with a stronger sense of self, a real community, and clarity on what's next, well before you're right in the thick of it. Key Takeaways A "power pause" is deliberately shifting time and energy toward family for a chapter, while still holding onto a sense of self and community. The most common image people associate with "stay-at-home mom" (June Cleaver) versus "working mom" (Michelle Obama, Sheryl Sandberg, Beyoncé) shows just how outdated and polarized our cultural narrative around motherhood still is. A good partner is someone who can have difficult conversations and makes you feel safe having conflict, not someone who avoids hard topics altogether. Career pauses don't have to mean fully leaving the workforce; they can look like part-time work, consulting, freelancing, or simply deprioritizing taking on demanding projects for a season. Tracking small wins during a pause can become a real, resume-worthy experience when you're ready to return to work. How to know when it's time to return to work and how to market your power pause on LinkedIn. Working moms, stay-at-home moms, and everyone on a power pause are part of the same ecosystem, not opposing sides, and supporting each other is what actually moves the conversation forward. Timestamps 00:00 Intro  02:07 Neha's career downshift  04:03 Dealing with judgment after pausing  06:03 The power pause framework  10:59 Why stay-at-home still feels loaded  13:09 Having money talks with your partner  17:11 Dating for shared values  21:12 Trade-offs and other options than just working or not working 24:50 Returning to work after the pause  29:57 We're part of an ecosystem, not a divide  32:58 Rapid fire questions GUEST LINKS Follow Neha: https://www.instagram.com/neha_ruch/  Website: https://www.thepowerpause.com/ Read her book: https://bookshop.org/a/116169/9780593716182  FOLLOW THE PODCAST IG: https://www.instagram.com/girlboss/  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@girlboss  Amanda Goetz: https://www.instagram.com/theamandagoetz/  https://girlboss.com/pages/ambition-2-0-podcast  SIGN UP  Subscribe to the Girlboss Daily newsletter: https://newsletter.girlboss.com/   For all other Girlboss links: https://linkin.bio/girlboss/  ABOUT AMBITION 2.0  Powered by Girlboss, Ambition 2.0 is a podcast where we'll be exploring what it really means to "have it all" in work, family, identity, and self… and if it's actually worth it. Each week, you'll hear from hardworking women who've walked the tightrope of ambition. They'll share their costly mistakes, lessons learned, and practical tips for how to have it all and actually love what you have. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

EVEN MORE about this episode!What really happens in the final days and hours before we die? And why do so many dying people report seeing deceased loved ones and pets as death approaches?Julie Ryan sits down with certified End of Life Doula and death literacy educator Claire O'Berry for a revealing conversation about what families can expect as someone approaches the end of life—and why understanding the dying process may replace some of our deepest fears with greater peace.Claire walks Julie through her practical two-weeks-out, two-days-out, and two-hours-out framework, explaining the physical and emotional changes that can occur as the body begins its natural dying process. They explore what happens during the final hours, why dying may look very different from what families expect, and how knowing the signs can help loved ones feel less frightened and more prepared.They also dive into some of the most mysterious experiences surrounding death: terminal lucidity, the “death rally,” end-of-life visions, near-death experiences, and reports of dying people seeing deceased family members and beloved pets. Julie and Claire discuss research into these experiences and what they may suggest about consciousness, fear of death, and the possibility that we're not alone as we make the transition.Claire also explains what families often misunderstand about hospice and palliative care, when to begin preparing for the end of life, and why talking about death doesn't have to be frightening or morbid—it can help us live more intentionally while we're still here.Whether someone you love is approaching the end of life, you've witnessed something unexplained at a deathbed, or you've simply wondered what you might experience during your own final moments, this conversation offers a fascinating and reassuring look at one of life's greatest mysteries.Guest Biography:Claire O'Berry is a certified End of Life Doula, death literacy educator, international speaker, and host of the Dying Your Way podcast. Her journey into end-of-life care began in 2005, when she became the primary caregiver for both of her parents during the final six years of their lives, ultimately helping each of them experience a peaceful death at home surrounded by family and friends. Inspired to help others navigate this profound stage of life with greater knowledge and confidence, Claire pursued formal end-of-life training with pioneers Deanna Cochran, Suzanne O'Brien, and Patty Burgess. Today, she teaches individuals and families how to prepare for the end-of-life journey and hosts conversations with experts and individuals sharing personal experiences with death and dying. Claire holds an MBA from Pepperdine University and a B.S.Ed. from the University of North Texas, and is an Advance Care Planning Educator (ACPE), Certified End of Life Doula (CEOLD), and member of the National End of Life Doula Alliance (NEDA).Episode Chapters:(0:00:00) Meet End-of-Life Doula Claire O'Berry(0:02:19) What Really Happens in the Final Moments of Life?(0:04:51) Why Understanding Death Can Remove the Fear(0:14:47) Claire's Near-Death Experiences(0:21:46) Why Are We So Afraid to Die?(0:25:15) Do You Need to Believe in Spirit to See the Other Side?(0:31:52) Why Families Wait Too Long for Hospice(0:38:34) The Physical Signs That Death Is Near(0:56:42) What to Say to Someone Who Is Dying(1:03:00) The Death Rally: Why People Suddenly Get Better(1:05:15) What the Dying See Before Death(1:07:41) How Claire Became an End-of-Life Doula(1:13:13) If Death Is a Transition, Why Are We Here?➡️ Subscribe to Ask Julie Ryan YouTube➡️ Julie's Intuitive Trainings✏️ Ask Julie a Question!

Ladies, if you have ever been told your labs look normal while your body says otherwise, this one is for you. Dr. Amy Loden is a physician who nearly died from preeclampsia and now builds her practice around what medicine misses in women. She breaks down why pregnancy complications are a warning sign, what perimenopause is really doing to you, and why heart disease deserves your attention more than you think. You will walk away knowing what to ask for and why it matters.If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at beit@lesleylogan.co mailto:beit@lesleylogan.co. And as always, if you're enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/#follow-subscribe-free.In this episode you will learn about:How pregnancy complications reveal health risks that were already there.Why perimenopause symptoms get dismissed as normal aging.The heart disease signs that look nothing like the classic ones.Why good quality sleep matters more than hours in bed.How to eat and move to protect your metabolic health.Episode References/Links:Vitality Medical and Wellness - https://www.vitalitymwc.orgDr. Amy's TEDx talk on pregnancy - https://beitpod.com/amytedxDr. Amy Tiffany on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/dramytiffanyDr. Amy Loden on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-lodenThe Postpartum Pivot by Dr. Amy Loden - https://vitalitymwc.org/read-the-bookSubmit your wins or questions - https://beitpod.com/questionsGuest Bio:Dr. Amy Loden Tiffany is a St. Louis-based physician entrepreneur, author, and TEDx speaker dedicated to women's metabolic, hormonal, and cardiovascular health. After surviving severe preeclampsia and experiencing burnout in traditional, high-volume medicine, she pivoted her career toward a personalized, root-cause approach to patient care. As the founder of Vitality, she guides women through major life transitions—from postpartum to perimenopause—to help them recognize subtle warning signs and prevent long-term illness. Through her clinical work and her book, The Postpartum Pivot, Dr. Loden empowers high-achieving women to listen to their bodies, optimize performance, and take control of their long-term health.  If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox. https://lovethepodcast.com/BITYSIDEALS! DEALS! DEALS! DEALS! https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentCheck out all our Preferred Vendors & Special Deals from Clair Sparrow, Sensate, Lyfefuel BeeKeeper's Naturals, Sauna Space, HigherDose, AG1 and ToeSox https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentBe in the know with all the workshops at OPC https://workshops.onlinepilatesclasses.com/lp-workshop-waitlistBe It Till You See It Podcast Survey https://pod.lesleylogan.co/be-it-podcasts-surveyBe a part of Lesley's Pilates Mentorship https://lesleylogan.co/elevate/FREE Ditching Busy Webinar https://ditchingbusy.com/Resources:Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gLesley Logan website https://lesleylogan.co/Be It Till You See It Podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjogqXLnfyhS5VlU4rdzlnQProfitable Pilates https://profitablepilates.com/about/Follow Us on Social Media:Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lesley.logan/The Be It Till You See It Podcast YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gFacebook https://www.facebook.com/llogan.pilatesLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-logan/The OPC YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@OnlinePilatesClasses Episode Transcript:Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 0:00  If we're going to call pregnancy a stress test, which is becoming an increasingly common term, is pregnancy a stress test of a woman's metabolism and her cardiovascular system? Then we have to ask, what are we stressing it for? And the way I'm looking at this is a little bit different than how I was trained, which again was if you got the problem, the solution is in the pregnancy. So what if we started looking at pregnancy from the perspective of this is an unveiling, an unveiling of what was already there, and that nothing's actually gone wrong. Lesley Logan 0:29  Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started. Lesley Logan 1:11  Oh my God, Be It babe. Get ready. Get your notepad out. Get ready. If you're driving, listen. You're gonna re-listen. You're gonna share this episode with everybody. I am so freaking stoked about the guest that we have. I fell in love with her with every single answer, and we need women like this in the medical world. So Dr. Amy Loden is our guest today. We're going to talk everything from postpartum to perimenopause and heart health, because ladies, you can't be it till you see it if you get sick, cannot. And I know it's confusing. There's so much information out there in the world, and it's like, who do we trust? What do we do? And I'm just so grateful I found her, and you're gonna love it. So make sure you get ready to hit share on this episode for women in your life and the men who need to know about what women are going through. My mind is blown on the episode. Here's Dr. Amy Loden.Lesley Logan 1:54  All right, Be It babe, I'm excited. I'm super stoked. We're gonna talk about all things women, health-related, with an amazing professional person who actually studies this stuff, not what I've read, and then I'm asserting to you because I don't want to be that influencer. I think those people need to take a little step back and let the professionals do it. We have Dr. Amy Loden here on the show, who's going to tell us everything we need to know. But Dr. Amy, we tell everyone who you are and what you rock at, kind of how you got here.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 2:20  Sure, thanks for inviting me. I'm happy to be here, Dr. Amy Loden. I am in St. Louis, Missouri. I help primarily women over 40, but certainly anyone who's like, "How are my hormones working for my life or not? How is my weight in the mirror matching the weight in my head or not?" And all the things that come with life transitions from postpartum to perimenopause, beyond, my goal is that women who've interacted with our team will have a better care experience because it's the care experience we want each of us to have had ourselves, and because each of us are not only professionals within the medical nursing communities, we're patients too, or daughters and sisters and mothers and neighbors and all the things. We know how much it sucks to be patient, right? And so we've tried to redesign what is the best thing for our ladies. Now, in full transparency, we do have a few dudes, but most of them have had their arms twisted by our rock-star ladies, and they are the ones that are coming because they're forced to. And eventually, they decide they like us, but we're pretty cool too. So that's who we serve, and that's what we do. And happy to go into any detail or rabbit hole you want to chase?Lesley Logan 3:21  Oh my God, Amy! I love that. When people ask about the people who listen to this podcast, we have mostly women and a few good men because there are some men out there, including my husband. They want to be interested. They want to. They want their partners, the women, their lives. They want to get what's going on. They don't want them to feel like an alien or like they're alone in this journey. So I think that's really, really cool. I also just want to highlight. I love that you brought up your patients too, because as someone who I feel very lucky to go through my perimenopause journey in today's time when people actually are talking about it, versus even 10 years ago, generations were not talking about this stuff, and I just feel it's really nice because then there's information I would never have known about HRT unless my girlfriend had told me about it. Oh, that could be going on, and then I could talk to someone. Can we go back though? Yeah, I feel like to be a doctor like yourself, who has empathy and understands, like you must have gone through a journey as well. You don't just want to do this Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 4:13  Because you wanted to do this. That's true. Lesley Logan 4:16  Maybe there are a few. There might be a few, but typically, like there there has there's a story there that got you to be like I want to care about this. So can you tell us a little bit more about that?Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 4:24  Absolutely, yeah. So definitely with the traditional college to medical school road, really didn't understand that there's a and I say this with all the love in my heart, but there is a bit of brainwashing to be a good doctor, right? And what is a good doctor was who you've been told it is. It's not necessarily an external criteria. It's who does academic medical center say, and that was very different. I learned through transferring all of my non-medical student fears into the actual application of those fears, and then being a patient and living those fears. That I realized there's a whole lot we're not talking about. There's a whole lot that we're not being told, both as doctors and as women, as patients, and it's hard to realize you don't know what you don't know if you've been told you're the expert and you know everything, right? And most doctors don't go around saying they know everything, but there's enough patients who feel like that's what's communicated, that that's the language I'm using.Lesley Logan 5:18  Yeah.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 5:19  And that's really frustrating as a patient, so I didn't realize how frustrating though it was until I was a patient, and I'm a mom of five kids, my third and fourth are twins, and really I am so grateful to live in the United States in a time in history where complicated pregnancies does not mean that mom dies, because I developed severe preeclampsia with heart failure, and my twins came 31 weeks instead of at least 37, and I nearly died the night they were born. They nearly died the night they were born, and I just am grateful that God let me be in this situation that I had the help I needed. Historically, these are not good situations. We see this on TV and in movies frequently. And something like 70,000 women a year across the globe die of the same disease I had, preeclampsia. So it's not nothing, even in our day and age, in certain countries, and even in countries where you have advanced medical care and they do everything right. It can still happen. So, that for me was the pinnacle of this isn't working. What we're telling people to do isn't working because I had done all the things.Lesley Logan 6:30  Right, you were a doctor. You did all the things. I did all the things. You enjoyed all the appointments. You were probably doing, and this is your third and fourth. So you knew what it should feel like. You knew what you should be eating. You knew all the vitamins to take.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 6:41  Correct, and it didn't work, right? It didn't work, and so I think that is the fundamental kind of if you place a pivot on why did I change how I think about healthcare as a doctor, it was because of my experience as a patient for myself. My husband had cancer twice, so being the advocate for him in those types of things, guiding my children and now my parents through healthcare, you start to carry a lot of stories, and you start to see, wow, they're not doing what I think is just the bare minimum. And if they're not doing that for me or for my family, I know they're not doing it for everybody else.Lesley Logan 7:11  Yeah.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 7:12  And then at the same time, holding a ton of grace in my heart because that's—they're doing what they were taught.Lesley Logan 7:17  Right?Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 7:17  Right. And they can't do differently if they don't know differently. You can't be better if you don't know to be better.Lesley Logan 7:23  Yeah.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 7:23  So that is a really tight tension. But I thought I would just keep plodding through and just be a better doctor in that context of me being a patient until a little—I guess it was two years later. My daughter at that time, my oldest, was seven, and I had about 3000 patients. I was working somewhere between 65 and 80 hours a week, and had four kids at that time. And my daughter came up to me one night, and I'm opening the computer. I'm doing work like I do every night, and she says, "You're gonna make my birthday gifts. Like, can I help?" Right, totally innocent seven-year-old looking forward to her birthday knows that her mom shops online, right? And so she's like, "I want to pick my birthday presents," and I kind of stared at her. I was like, "No, no, I'm going to work. We'll do that later," and go watch whatever show. It's probably Paw Patrol for all I know, right? That's in the background. Go watch it. It's gonna be bedtime soon. And she just stands there, and I haven't even looked at her at this point. My eyes are on my computer. I'm just telling her this as I'm going. I'm totally not in the moment, right?Lesley Logan 8:19  Of course, because like you have so many, you have 3000 patients and four kids.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 8:23   I can't keep up. I can't keep up. Right? I'm barely getting enough sleep. I'm not exercising, and I'm just trying to survive. And she doesn't move. And so I remember not totally slow motion, but I remember turning to her and feeling like I was going to be like, "What?" Right? What do you need? And she's just got out of the shower, so her hair's wet. She's got her pink pajamas on, bright big blue eyes, and they're full of tears. And there are just silent tears tracking down her face, and I'm horrified. Oh my gosh, what's wrong? Right now, I'm in fix-it mode.Lesley Logan 8:55  Yeah.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 8:55  And she still doesn't really budge, and she just says in a very sad voice, "Mommy. Why do you love your job more than me?"Lesley Logan 9:05  Oh.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 9:07  Yes. So the twins tried to kill me. She did kill me, right? Like, that was a knife in my heart because nothing ever had I wanted to be better than a so-called good doctor than to be a good mom.Lesley Logan 9:17  Yeah.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 9:18  And that was for me the moment that I realized I'm not doing either of these well, and I'm not showing up how I want to be personally or professionally. I'm certainly not taking care of my health. I'm not doing the things I'm telling my patients to do. Like, it was a moment where I really felt the failures. I felt all the feelings, and I told my husband that night, "This is not working anymore." And he actually thought I thought was talking about our marriage, and so he was like, "Oh my gosh, what's wrong with our marriage?" Right? No, but I need to, like, redo. We have to redo this. I either have to retire, or I have to do something different.Lesley Logan 9:51  Yeah.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 9:51  And he was like, "You're not retiring. You will drive me crazy. Go find something different to do, and I will make sure our family is okay." And so I did. And this June will be five years of having Vitality here in St. Louis and serving women and trying to lean into all the pain and the things and the feelings they're dealing with from all the things and the feelings I dealt with having walked that path.Lesley Logan 10:13  Yeah. Oh, Dr. Amy, I love that you shared that whole story because I think there's so many women who are listening here and, like, they don't have, they may have one kid or they have no kids, but, like, I think we can all relate to, like, having just too much on the plate because.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 10:27  Right.Lesley Logan 10:28  Hello, my high-achieving woman. I see you, everyone here listening. We call recovering perfectionists and overachievers. There's nothing wrong with being a high achiever, but what happens is we tend to just keep saying yes to things, and we're like, yeah, we can fit that one more thing in, that one more thing. All of a sudden, it just comes to, like, a volcano breaking point. Yes, and because we don't, we don't see the signs early that we are at the breaking point. We don't, you know, we, it's almost, it's actually proven to be not true. But everyone uses the frog in the boiling water, right? Like, we just kind of, like, you don't realize how hot it's getting until it's until your daughter is crying in front of you. Oh, exactly.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 11:05  Yes, it was awful. I never want to relive that moment.Lesley Logan 11:08  Yeah, but also, like, thank goodness for her because that she felt brave enough to say that. Like, what a badass she is. I mean, she's just going to be, like, she's just going to be a girl who speaks her mind. She does.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 11:18  She's 13 now, and she heard me tell that story once, and now she's like, "Well, you have to credit me for opening your business because I hadn't said what I did." I was like, "Won't you just tone it down a notch, please?"Lesley Logan 11:27  It's called balance, babe. It's called balance. Yes. Okay. So, can we, like, let's get to some of the health stuff that I think our listeners want to—I want to definitely get into perimenopause, but I do want to, because we started with a pregnancy, and I have had family members who, you know, have had preeclampsia in their, and it's scary. So, how are pregnancy complications connected to long-term heart risk? I don't think anyone's thought about that. I just thought, like, if it's because I don't have kids, like it's going to screw up your pelvic floor, and you might have to rebuild your abs and these other things. But I didn't know it can affect your heart long term.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 12:01  I had no idea. I'm so glad you brought that up. So I actually did a TEDx talk on this very topic, where the idea is pregnancy is so much more than just the birth of a kid. That's how we think about pregnancy in our culture. That's even how we think of it medically, right? Like if you have preeclampsia, you have gestational diabetes, you have high blood pressure, whatever in pregnancy, the answer is end the pregnancy, deliver the kid if they're old enough, right? Like, get, move it along and it's gone. But that I strongly believe is not true. We can't test this in a lab, so you have to do a little bit of extrapolation here. But if we're going to call pregnancy a stress test, which is becoming an increasingly common term, is pregnancy a stress test of a woman's metabolism and her cardiovascular system? Then we have to ask, what are we stressing it for? And the way I'm looking at this is a little bit different than how I was trained, which again was, if you got the problem, the solution is in the pregnancy. So, what if we started looking at pregnancy from the perspective of this is an unveiling, an unveiling of what was already there, and that nothing's actually gone wrong. It's scary. It's horrifying. And yes, absolutely, people die. So how can I say nothing's gone wrong? What I mean is nothing has gone wrong in the context of the situation we put your body in. It's exactly responding the way it should for the context it's in. So if I have underlying insulin resistance, and then I put a pregnancy on top of that or perimenopause, and I'm starting to have more insulin resistance. Well, of course I'm going to develop gestational diabetes. If I'm having a lot more fluid retention and I'm putting up a low weight, of course my blood pressure is going to go up, right? If I've got underlying inflammation, of course preeclampsia is going to develop. So I think we need to stop and think about it as it's not done; it is unmasked.Lesley Logan 13:42  Got it. Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 13:42  And then once you know it's unmasked, you treat it.Lesley Logan 13:45  I see. I see. Because again, we think of pregnancy as just the baby, so you have the baby, but it's well, but there's a problem, an underlying problem that the pregnancy revealed is what you're saying. And so great if having the baby is the safest thing for both people, we do that. But also, you still have this underlying issue.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 14:01  Yes, it's still there. Correct.Lesley Logan 14:03  Yes, and I don't think anyone does that. I think they're just, "Okay. Now you don't have gestational diabetes anymore." But I have had clients who had it, and then afterwards, so what do we got? Oh, I'm fine. Are you correct? I don't think so. I'm not a doctor, but they're not fine. Don't just be diabetes. Yeah, for a moment. Yes.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 14:19  So I actually experienced this as a patient too. I went in after my first pregnancy with gestational diabetes. At the time, I was living in New York City. I walked everywhere. I was a normal weight. I ate pretty clean, and despite being in residency, I'd got decent sleep. I didn't have any other kids. It's my first kid, so I got decent sleep. Right, but I had the baby after having had gestational diabetes. I go see my OB, and she's, "Oh, just follow up with your primary doctor." I go see my primary doctor, and he's, "Your weight's normal, your labs are normal. We're done," and that is how I was trained too. So again, lots of love in my heart. They're not; they're just not told. But for more than 10 years, we've known that women who have these high-risk pregnancies are at high risk not just for diabetes, but heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, dementia. Listen, I can't treat dementia well in the clinic, right? So why wouldn't I want all hands on deck trying to prevent it?Lesley Logan 15:07  Yeah.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 15:07  But that's not how our medical professionals are trained—nurses, advanced practice providers, any of them. And so we're asking people and expecting people to fill in a gap they don't know exists, and so all these reproductive-age women are falling into it. And then where it gets really interesting is some of the same things you have immediately postpartum in all your different types of hormone fluctuations are matched intermittently for 10 to 15 years before menopause when you're in the perimenopausal years.Lesley Logan 15:32  What?Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 15:33  Correct, but that's why these women are feeling, "I'm going to my doctor, I'm putting on weight, I'm doing all the things, it's not working," and they're being gaslit, partly because their doctors don't know what they don't know, and partly because we're not acknowledging this is the same physiologic status of hormones that are different than baseline. So we're not in a country, and we don't have the testing that would promote or facilitate checking what is your normal hormone level at 18, so that we know what 18 should look like, and then by 45, you know, we're not. So we're trying to patchwork together a whole bunch of tests, and different labs have different testing, and different people say different things about testing. It's very confusing.Lesley Logan 16:10  Yeah.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 16:11  And you end up with women suffering. And at the end of the day, that's the problem I'm trying to solve: is how do we stop these women from suffering? Because they are called to live big lives, to be ambitious for a purpose, for a calling. They have a lot to do, and their health is one of their biggest assets. It should not be a liability.Lesley Logan 16:27  Yeah.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 16:27  And that's what's happening, especially for women who are trying to not work just in the home but outside the home. Right? There's a lot they're carrying. Yeah. So that's, I don't remember. Sorry, I'm having a total perimenopause moment. I don't remember where we started with that question here. I'll stop there. Lesley Logan 16:42  Don't worry, babe. I got my focus meds on the ADHD today, so I'm tracking. So we're good. But we were talking about the postpartum, and then we got into those hormones that switch as, and they can repeat into perimenopause. And I think this is fascinating. I love that you brought up. It doesn't matter if you're in the home or out of the home. We have big lives. Correct. We can't have our health be a liability, and I think for a lot of us, it feels like, like my girlfriend's a weight-loss coach for women over 40 who feel like their body gave a middle finger. That's what her coaching is, and it's all about not going to yo-yo diet. That's not going to work. We have to figure out what is the underlying issues, and it can only go so far because you said we don't test our hormones at 18. We don't do that, so we don't know what is normal for us, and I remember I was having a lot of health issues, digestive issues in my 30s, and no doctor could help me. In fact, one doctor sending me to, I was in this weird part where they study HIV and Ebola in the hospital, and she's like, "Do you know why you're here?" I don't know why I'm here. I don't. This scares the hell out of me. This feels like a department I should not be in. I'm not in any pain. I feel like I'm taking someone's spot, and so because he could, he just couldn't figure out what's going on my stomach. So I found someone who did an actual test of everything. He's so range normal. We don't know what normal is for you. We just know what the average person of this population of people that who knows who they were that were tested. So what is normal for you might not be the average. And I was, "Oh well, that's the first time anyone said anything that makes sense. That's the first time." So you can be in range, but for your hormones, but it wasn't in range for you because maybe you were used to higher testosterone, you're used to higher things. And so I love that people like you exist. I'm sorry for the frustration of your own journey, but also without people like you, women like me wouldn't have someone going, "Hey, actually, maybe you should be on testosterone right now," even though the, this is what it is. Mine was actually zero, but people, you know, we can actually get you help because I feel so much better because someone finally was listening to me and thought, "Yes, we're not going to compare you to a random person. We got to compare you to how you're used to feeling."Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 18:42  Correct. And for most people, that can't happen in the traditional system.Lesley Logan 18:47  Yeah.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 18:47  You can't do that in a 10-minute visit.Lesley Logan 18:49  Right.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 18:50  You can't do it when your doctor has 3000 patients, 10-minute visits, and they really don't actually know who you are.Lesley Logan 18:55  Yeah.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 18:56  You just can't. So we've got a little bit of unrealistic expectations as a society, and then you know any women's magazine or journal article you read says, "Talk to your doctor about this." So then you go in, I'm all prepared. I have my list. I've done it too, folks. Right? This is not a criticism, but they, they can't. They don't have the ability to process it, and the way they're paid is based on the questions they ask you for insurance. So every incentive is misaligned, and at the end of the day, women, people are being screwed.Lesley Logan 19:22  Yeah, yeah. No, it's so true. So I'm glad we talked about the postpartum. I want to get into now. We're in the perimenopause, and yep, this is hard because you mentioned the hormone shift of people after postpartum is its own crazy world. I keep checking on my sister-in-law every day. How are you feeling? Are you feeling okay? Right. You feel okay? She's, "I'm fine." Are you fine? Let me just, I just want you to know. It's okay if you feel different, right? I think I'm crazy, but I know that that people don't realize how they're feeling, and it's hard to get to the doctor until it's too late. So I'm just, I'm on her. But for people like me, we didn't have children, so we have never experienced a crazy shift. We just start to experience, "I don't feel like my, anymore," and all the symptoms are so different for every single person. I'm not having hot flashes, but I'm, I got to keep my hair still here. But my inflammation was insane. I was putting on weight and working out and eating the same. And I don't understand what's going on. You know, so can we talk a little bit about what, I don't know where you want to start with that. So you tell me where you want to start with my post, my perimenopausal people who are not necessarily attributing these changes to that.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 20:27  So I think the biggest confusion I see in the exam room conversations is that there's just question of, am I in perimenopause or not? And it's more of a less of a yes-no and more of, are you on the spectrum, and where on the spectrum are you? And so if you think of it as a sliding scale, because some months those ovaries are working really great, and you feel all the feels, and you're 18 again, but a lot of months maybe you're more like 20 or 25, right? And then maybe out of the blue, I feel like I got run over by shock. Nothing's working for two or three months, and then we're back to 25, right? And so it's ups and downs. You're like, what is happening? It is a roller coaster, and it runs anywhere from 10 to 15 years before you actually go through menopause. So I think of it as reverse adolescence, and I think it's completely ironic that God lets us have teenage girls when moms are going through perimenopause because that is just double-adolescence whammy, right?Lesley Logan 21:19  And no wonder, no wonder marriages don't survive certain things. Right, you have a daughter going through puberty and a wife with a pair of menopause. Good luck to the husband. Correct, becauseAmy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 21:28  I want to have sex. I don't want to have sex. I have pimples all over my face. I don't want to go to the house. I do. My belly's bloated. It's not like my mood's up. All the things, and it's all in reverse. So it's a it's a period of a woman's life that I think needs to be acknowledged, and then within the healthcare system, there's more noise about it over the last five years. You're seeing more and more people talk about this, but there's not a lot of standardization, and so you're getting chiropractic, functional medicine, traditional medicine. You're getting all sorts of different recommendations. So my hope is that over the next decade, we start to see some standardization, and we start to say this is what is normal for this population. You still have to apply it to the person. You cannot take population data and apply it to individuals and say that you're going to have good luck, bye. We'll see you in a year. That doesn't work. What I do think is that women need to know what's normal for that time, and then they need to decide, do they want to do something about it beyond what their body is experiencing? And here's some really interesting data that I hope your listeners suddenly stop and listen. If they don't hear anything I've said yet, this will be really important for women who have hot flashes and night sweats. Either one, they're actually the same thing. We call them vasomotor symptoms. When you have those at a certain degree, so that they're happening most days of the week, more than 10 times a day would be an easy target to kind of pay attention to. You have that, and you choose not to take hormones. You actually have an increased risk for cardiovascular disease and stroke. That does not mean every woman in that category can or should take it. There may be reasons they can't, but the hormones we use today are different than what in the Women's Health Initiative that came out in the early 2000s. So you're getting a lot of confusion because women are reading about data from that, not realizing that it has changed, and that study is not going to be redone. It was a huge study. We're not going to see data like that, so we have to make really informed decisions. But cardiovascular disease, hear me, ladies. Cardiovascular disease, which includes stroke and heart failure, kills more women every year than all your cancers combined. Yeah, I get the women and they come in religiously for their mammograms or their Pap tests, right? But they don't know that the bigger risk is that they're going to die of heart disease, cardiovascular stroke, and we know that one in eight women, roughly, have breast cancer risk, and those women get it. One in two women are getting heart disease. So there's one inLesley Logan 23:50  Two.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 23:51  One in two. So that means there's two of us on this call, right? We already know I'm going to get it because I had preeclampsia. So I'm the one. Lesley Logan 23:56  I was going to say. I hope it's not maybe. I hope it's not you. But, like, thank God you know that because I think it's one and two, especially if you don't know. Because if you know that you're at risk, you do. Then you can you do something. I am. I'm double the risk for breast cancer, so I have to do an MRI and a mammogram every six months, and I have some decisions I might have to make in my life. But because I know.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 24:18  Right, I can take.Lesley Logan 24:20  I can take action. Yeah, correct.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 24:22  And you know, using that same kind of history, if someone comes in my office and says that I don't want to take hormones because I was a breast cancer, I'm like, that's fine. But let's look at all the facts. Let's lay it out like your financial advisor does, and then you can make an informed decision. Because just acting out of fear or reacting is not wise either.Lesley Logan 24:38  I actually really appreciate you mentioning that because it's true. If I'm, I'm very lucky in that I still get to do the HRT that I'm on, even with my risk. But also they're checking me every six months, and I'm checking me. So if anything's going to happen, we're going to catch it so much more quicker. Whereas the hard stuff, there's only so much you can do with that. And so if you're, especially if you're not aware. Say there's all conversations, but I liked the way you laid it out with the wealth manager. I just met with mine. He laid out here's where we're being aggressive. Here's where we're doing this. Here's what's going on here. We're going to move this over here because we're going to risk-manage these risks. And I think that's that's a better way to look at it because we're not going to, every single one of us is unfortunately going to experience something because it's a body. We're not a machine. Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 25:21  It wears out.Lesley Logan 25:22  I did not know it was one in two, girl.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 25:26  Yeah, and what's even more disturbing, you may have heard a lot of women have by now that women's heart disease presents differently than men.Lesley Logan 25:32  Yeah, can you tell us just in case my people haven't heard because I didn't know it was one in two? So let's go over the signs.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 25:38  A lot of times people think of what's the so-called traditional? It's the jaw pain, the radiation of pain from your chest up to your jaw, to your back, down your left arm. Very classic symptoms. Classic because it was studied in men, and then we have these so-called atypical for women because they're not typical compared to men, but they're classic for women. And so, got a little bit of lingo here that it doesn't make total sense. But for women, sometimes it's they just feel a lot more anxious than they've been for unclear reasons. They have this sense that something bad is on the horizon. They can't really place why their sleep is different. Maybe they're having some shortness of breath they didn't used to have. Maybe they go up the stairs in their house, with a laundry basket, and they're huffing and puffing when six months ago they weren't. So it can be very subtle differences. It could be a new fatigue. Check labs are normal, but the fatigue's still there. That worries me when I hear women say this. Unfortunately, the number one sign that you have heart disease is sudden death.Lesley Logan 26:33  Oh.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 26:34  So let that sink in for a second. So we can't always wait on what the signs are.Lesley Logan 26:39  Yeah, we can't fix that. Right. Correct. Okay, so that's hard because our signs are also. I feel like high-achieving women would so easily brush away that anxiety.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 26:51  All the stuff. Correct. Because I have a lot of tabs open.Lesley Logan 26:54  Yeah, I got this going on, or I haven't been working out, so of course I'm out of breath going up the stairs. They would just so easily.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 26:58  It's May, it's graduation season. It's wedding season, right? This is just aging, and that's not the story at all. The problem is 10-minute visit with your doctor who has 3000 patients. They don't know who you are. They're not going to notice that this is different for you.Lesley Logan 27:13  Yeah.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 27:13  Decreased exercise tolerance is a big one. And so, if you could walk three miles every day in your neighborhood, now you're like, "Wow, I'm really struggling to get through one." I'm worried about that. I want to know what's going on and why.Lesley Logan 27:25  Yeah. So I guess since one getting a 10-minute visit is hard. I, where I live in, I live in Las Vegas. Last I heard, we are short general practitioners by 1400. I don't have one. I go to a women's clinic, and I'm really grateful. It's a, it's also a student-teacher thing. So I actually, they've caught things because the students are asking the questions because they'reAmy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 27:44  Yes, yes.Lesley Logan 27:46  I love them. I'm so grateful for them, but are there things that women can do to check their heart, or is it just being, is it just noticing the one mile versus a three mile? What can we, what are the signs we need to be checking on?Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 27:57  Certainly be aware of what your body is telling you. Again, if you have to remember nothing else, this is another one: is that your body is smart; it will talk to you, but you have to listen.Lesley Logan 28:05  Yeah.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 28:06  So that's really essential. If something's different, say something. You're right. There's a big collapse, if you will, of how much support we have in healthcare, whether it's nurse practitioners or chiropractor or whatever. And the issue is not all of them are trained the same way. So when I worked in the OB/GYN clinic, it became apparent to both of us, on both sides of it, that OBs know stuff about women's health. I don't know, but I know stuff about metabolic and heart health that the OBs aren't taught, and most women use their OBs as their primary care, at least to a certain age.Lesley Logan 28:32  Right.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 28:33  And again, you don't know what you don't know, so you don't realize what you're not looking for that you should be. And our system's not set up for good collaboration. So if I could tell women, here's a checklist of things I want to make sure you get, your doctor is going to give you some resistance, most likely because they don't realize that lipoprotein with a little a, it's like in parentheses at the end of it, not the big A. Lipoprotein little a. If you have that mutation, and 10 to 20% of our population does, you have a different rate of plaque development, at least risk for that than the average risk will miss. If you have high insulin levels, you have a higher risk that you're going to be on a pathway toward diabetes. Those are not things that are standard checks. So knowing that there's other tests you can ask for, and even if your insurance doesn't cover it, they're not expensive tests. Just get it once, right? Have an idea of what's going on in your body once gives you a ton of information. I offer a lot of our patients to wear different glucose monitors, even if they're not on diabetes. And all my physicians who are listening to this are probably like, "You do what?" But the reason is, if you can figure out that your glucose and insulin are high before you develop diabetes or pre-diabetes, if you figured out that insulin-resistant stage, that's a lot easier to fix, and our doctors aren't even taught about what is insulin resistance, what is the criteria for it, and how do we reverse it?Lesley Logan 29:47  Right, because there's some prevention we can do if we have information.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 29:50  There's a ton, and it's things women can do in their homes or their businesses. It's not stuff I'm doing in the exam room.Lesley Logan 29:56  Yeah, and that's also, you know, you're listening to this podcast, you're kind of a go. Anyway, so you're gonna, you'll take the action. Our health insurance is very bizarre. I thought it was crap because, but it has a lot of preventative stuff that goes on with it. Hey, we want to put this thing in your house and check your heart and some other levels every, I don't know, two or three times a week. They keep calling them. I have two adults. We have two ADHD adults in this household. The box is here. One of us will open it when it becomes the pressure. I just have to hang tight. We'll get there. But I'm really impressed by that because we don't have access to a regular doctor. So what information can we gather so we could be watching it and monitoring it? So we can advocate for ourselves if something comes up. So having that prevention is really amazing. Okay, so we talked a little bit about the perimenopause and the different things. What are some simple shifts that women can make now to protect their future? I mean, obviously we have a wide range of women, so the now is different. But what are some things that they could be doing? Because I do think that they are getting information from the magazines and the Instagrams, and we should get it from the person who's experienced it and has seen it. You know, so you.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 31:00  Some easy things, and I say easy relative because they're easy to do, which means they're easy not to do. So acknowledging that, right? It's real. Number one, understanding that just because you get eight hours of sleep, if they're not high-quality hours, you've got a metabolic risk from your sleep not being normal. That's important to understand because you spend a third of your life asleep, right?Lesley Logan 31:19  What's a metabolic risk? Just in case my people. So.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 31:22  If you don't get good-quality sleep, your cortisol goes up. It's one of your stress hormones, and when cortisol goes up, glucose goes up. When glucose goes up, insulin goes up. Insulin's your fat-storing hormone. So even without your sex hormones being involved, or the ghrelin and leptin you're hearing about with weight and GLPs and all that, just those, you're not getting good sleep. It's going to be a problem. Insulin resistance is going to go up. Insulin resistance means your cells are not listening to the insulin your body is giving it, so your body works harder to get more insulin, and the cells work harder to ignore it, and it just keeps going in a vicious cycle. So if we consider that that's the root cause of a lot of these problems we've been talking about, we fix that. Number one is get good sleep, get good-quality sleep, and it's not, not just enough time in bed.Lesley Logan 32:02  Yeah, so.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 32:03  That's important. Number two is most people don't realize that they're doing it backwards. They're, if they're, if they're even able to get exercise in their life right now, right? So we're going to make the assumption that you figured out some exercise regimen you like. We're, we're at that level, but they're doing it at the wrong time, and they're doing it in a way that they're sabotaging their end result. So rather than going to the gym and then going and eating dinner, or going to the gym first thing in the morning and skipping breakfast and all these things, you need to eat protein and fat, and then you need to move your thighs. I don't care if that's jumping jacks, going for a walk, running up the stairs, something where your thighs are moving regularly for 10 minutes. So make it whatever you like doing. This can be the mom at home who's doing all sorts of fun class activity with her kid, right? Like moving the baby around or the teenager can be equally fun to move around for what it's worth. And then it could be the CEO who's getting ready for a meeting and has 10 minutes after eating whatever lunch she had in the five-minute break she did, right? So looking at what makes sense in your life, but 10 minutes of physical activity, ideally after every meal, that's not realistic, but that's ideal. And then you start with the one meal a day you can do, and you do it most days of the week to start with, because most of us have to figure out how to make it a habit.Lesley Logan 33:15  Yeah.Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 33:15  But movement for 10 minutes after eating, it's, it's crucial. I cannot stress that enough.Lesley Logan 33:20  I didn't realize it was. It makes total sense moving your body after eating because I like to go for a walk after I have lunch. Otherwise, I'm tired. Correct. I can't go back to work now. Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 33:30  The reason you're tired though is because your glucose goes up and your insulin went up to match it. When you walk right after you eat, glucose still goes up, but it's less, and so you have less insulin spike. Insulin is the bright driver here, and so you've got to do the movement after. And if it helps to understand why, think back to what our ancestors did 1000 years ago. Right? We weren't checking hormones. We weren't checking insulin. We weren't talking about hacks. We were trying to survive most of the time. Yeah. But the things they did is they, if they, what, after they ate, they moved around. Right? Like they were building their shelters. They were taking care of the kids. They were moving in the community, helping build, create, relocate, whatever. They were always moving, and they did not get the whole three square meals a day. That's bogus. You don't need three meals a day, okay? And most of my ladies don't realize that they're eating their nutrients potentially in the wrong order for their body. That they're eating them in the wrong time for the cycle of the month they're in, they're not getting enough protein, not getting enough fat for their hormones and their brain, and it doesn't happen quickly, right? It's months, years, maybe even a couple decades before they're, I don't know what happened, but my body in the mirror is not the body in my head. This is not who I am. There's a disconnect, and they finally are at that place where they have to do something, where the body is forcing them to stop because they've pushed it as hot as you know.Lesley Logan 34:44  Oh my God, that's a whole episode. We're having you back. I'm just telling you right now because I want to have a whole episode on the whole. Because what I do know is if you eat certain things, if you work out too late, if you get your cortisol up, sleep that. I have been trying to figure out sleep for over a decade, and I, I get good-quality sleep most of the time. But I'm obsessed with it because I'm like, I don't want Alzheimer's. I do not want heart problems. It doesn't really matter what I'm doing at the gym if I'm not sleeping. None of that matters. Doesn't matter what you're, If you don't get good sleep, all the rest is gonna just fall apart anyways. So it's interesting. It makes sense about the food because I remember when I was having problems with my cycle and I had my one of my doctor friends, she said you should try seed cycling because I just, the worst cramps and, like, the worst everything was just the worst in the world, and so I tried seed cycling and my goodness, you know, I'm not a woo-woo girl, but the seed cycling makes, I got, I had no more zits, my boobs didn't hurt as bad, everything leveled out, and I didn't need any extra hormones for it. I was, whoa, so now there must be more. We need to know about it. So we'll have to have you back for that. I can talk to you forever. So we'll just, this is part one of many. I'm just going to take a brief break and then find out if people can find you, follow you, and work with you. All right, Dr. Amy Loden, where do you hang out? You mentioned St. Louis. Can people work with you if they're not in St. Louis? How does this work?Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 36:03  Yes, absolutely. Best way to get into contact with our office is just going to our website, www.vitalitymwc.org. They can sign up for a consultation, and we can go through what their options are. There is also lots of opportunity if you don't want to work with us directly, but you want to continue the conversation and hear what we're seeing. I do all the social media I can so that people can hear what's being said in their exam rooms and have it in their real lives too. So you can do that on follow me at Dr. Amy Tiffany, whether it's on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook. You find it where they're also on LinkedIn at Dr. Amy Loden. So lots of places depends on what their needs are. One special offer I do have for your audience: we talked about pregnancy and perimenopausal bit through this conversation, they can contact my office for a free physical copy of my book, The Postpartum Pivot. And before you stop listening, ladies, and you think, "Well, I'm not postpartum." If you've had a baby, you're postpartum even it's 20 years ago. Your body's different than it was before that baby, and so you can understand what does this look like for perimenopause and other types of areas that we go through as we grow less young, but grow more wise.Lesley Logan 37:03  Oh my God! Every one of my female females, that's where your Christmas present is. Sorry, just gonna get a doctor because they don't. It's, if their doctor doesn't tell them, they don't know, right? And then they are just going through it. And I feel so bad because every woman in my life is such a badass, and then they get their body doesn't keep up with what they're wanting to do in life, and then it just becomes not just like a liability, but like this hangup. So you are amazing. Okay, you've given us some great stuff already. I mean, we're gonna have to rewind, and I'll listen to this. I've got, you know, getting my notepad out, but our bold, executable, intrinsic, or targeted steps people can take to be it till they see it. What do you have for us?Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 37:37  I want each one. When you be it as you see it, I want you to be true to what your body's telling you, and recognize nothing's gone wrong. Listen when things are happening and they seem like it's a crisis. Nothing's gone wrong. Your body's talking to you. Listen, and when you listen, you become more wise. You become a better version of yourself.Lesley Logan 37:55  Okay, I really love that. We talked about that earlier, but it's true. Some of us think our body is against us, and it's doing something to us. But really, it's like, hello. The alarm bells. Amy Loden Tiffany, MD, MBA 38:05  It's doing exactly what it should do for the situation we've put it in. That doesn't mean we like it. You get diabetes. No one's like, oh yeah, my body did exactly what it's supposed to do. But if we understand that, then it becomes a neutral thought. It's not bad or wrong. It's I didn't listen, so now I'm going to stop, and the best place to reverse is as soon as you realize you're going in the direction. Right? It's not to keep going in the wrong direction. So nothing has gone wrong. We just need to listen. We need to turn around, create a better story.Lesley Logan 38:33  Love it. Love it. This is and then so enlightening. This is so fun. Thank you so much for being you and your and and the journey that you've been on is something we can all benefit from. So thank you for that, you guys. We all need to share this episode with all the women in our lives, and I would love for you to make sure that Dr. Amy knows your favorite takeaways. Send them to the Be It Pod as well. And since I'm going to have her back, not that I even like asked her beforehand, but I'm just going to tell her she's doing that. You can send your questions, and we'll make sure we get that. So, beitpod.com/questions. Until next time, my loves, Be It Till You See It. Lesley Logan 39:03  That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. If you want to leave us a message or a question that we might read on another episode, you can text us at +1-310-905-5534 or send a DM on Instagram @BeItPod.Brad Crowell 39:45  It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan, and me, Brad Crowell.Lesley Logan 39:50  It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co.Brad Crowell 39:54  Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music and our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.Lesley Logan 40:02  Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals.Brad Crowell 40:05  Also to Angelina Herico for adding all of our content to our website. And finally to Meridith Root for keeping us all on point and on time.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

What does it take to go from working as a candy store cashier to becoming a global CEO? In this episode, Christina Lecuyer sits down with Steve Felder, a seasoned business leader who has lived in seven countries and led organizations across 23 markets in industries including shipping, logistics, and cybersecurity. Steve shares the unexpected twists that shaped his career and the lessons he's learned about the power of relationships, staying adaptable, and remaining open to opportunities. Now redefining success through entrepreneurship, travel, and personal well-being, Steve opens up about building a life on his own terms—including his popular “One Week, One City” LinkedIn travel series. This is a conversation about taking chances, staying curious, and creating a definition of success that evolves with you. About Steve Felder Steve Felder is a global executive, board advisor, investor, and former multinational CEO with 25+ years of leadership experience across North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Having lived and worked in seven countries and led businesses across 23 markets, Steve specializes in growth, transformation, international expansion, and building high-performing organizations. Most recently, he served as President of ZIM Canada, following 17 years with Maersk in senior leadership roles across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Today, Steve advises companies, boards, and investors across industries including cybersecurity, AI, aviation, sustainability, logistics technology, and M&A. He holds an MBA from the University of South Africa and completed executive education at INSEAD. Connect with Steve on LinkedIn If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a comment on iTunes CONNECT WITH CHRISTINA! Instagram LinkedIn Christinalecuyer.com Book a Free Clarity Call Book Christina For Your Next Workshop

In this episode, Christine Staten, DVM, MBA, joined us again to talk about the importance of delegating. Owners of small practices often wear many hats, and their workload can be overwhelming. However, many veterinarians resist delegating. Staten explained that because many veterinarians feel the need to be in control, they have trouble letting go.“We can't do everything,” she said. “We become the bottleneck in our practice, and we burn out.”To learn more, you can contact Staten through her website: veterinary-mba.comThe Business of Practice podcast is brought to you by CareCredit.This information is shared solely for your convenience. You are urged to consult with your individual advisors with respect to any information presented.Business of Practice Podcast Hosts, Guests, and Links Episode 147:Hosts: Dr. Amy Grice and Carly Sisson (Digital Content Manager) of EquiManagement | Email Carly (csisson@equinenetwork.com) | Connect with Carly on LinkedInGuests: Dr. Christine Staten, DVM, MBAPodcast Website: The Business of Practice

Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly joined Sam in-studio for a great conversation! From politics to leadership and from business to life --- they covered a lot of ground! About Tim Kelly Tim Kelly is the 66th mayor of Chattanooga. He grew up in Chattanooga and attended undergraduate school at Columbia University. Upon returning to Chattanooga, Kelly expanded his family's automotive dealership and launched several successful ventures, including co-founding Chattanooga's professional soccer club. He later earned his MBA from Emory University. Kelly has always been active in the community, serving on boards for multiple nonprofits and even teaching as an adjunct professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Since being elected mayor in April 2021, he has made great strides in his vision to create One Chattanooga – a city where every resident has the opportunity to thrive and prosper. You're listening to Unstructured, where a new generation of entrepreneurs connects with experienced and emerging business leaders to unpack the lessons behind the journey. From setbacks to success stories, we explore what it truly means to build, grow, and lead. Welcome to the conversation. PART OF THE NOOGA PODCAST NETWORK - 20 PODCASTS WITH ONE CLICK: www.noogapodcasts.com ===== THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: (Welcome to our NEW sponsor) Signal Investigations: https://www.signalpi.com/ Nutrition World: https://nutritionw.com/ Vascular Institute of Chattanooga: https://www.vascularinstituteofchattanooga.com/ The Barn Nursery: https://www.barnnursery.com/ Optimize U Chattanooga: https://optimizeunow.com/chattanooga/ Guardian Investment Advisors: https://giaplantoday.com/ Alchemy Medspa and Wellness Center: http://www.alchemychattanooga.com/ Our House Studio: https://ourhousestudiosinc.com/ Team Montieth Real Estate - Lori Montieth: https://www.findchattanoogarealestate.com/ Ballinger and Associates - Risk Management: https://ballingerandassociates.com/ AirSpace Acoustics: https://www.airspaceacoustics.com/ BWELL4EVER: Labs and IV Therapies: https://www.bwell4ever.org/ ALL THINGS JEFF STYLES: www.thejeffstyles.com PART OF THE NOOGA PODCAST NETWORK: www.noogapodcasts.com Please consider leaving us a review on Apple and giving us a share to your friends! This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm

In Episode 54 of The League, Benoy Thanjan and David Magid examine how clean energy is becoming increasingly connected to national security, grid resilience and government policy. They discuss Michigan's new statewide permitting process, which could overcome local zoning barriers and accelerate utility-scale solar development. They also explore Westinghouse's proposed nuclear microreactor at Fort Drum and its potential to strengthen military energy resilience. The conversation then turns to the national-security risks associated with foreign-made solar and storage equipment, including inverters, batteries and control software. Finally, Benoy and David examine California's record renewable-energy curtailment and why additional storage, transmission and grid modernization are essential to avoid wasting clean electricity.   Host Bio: Benoy Thanjan Benoy Thanjan is the Founder and CEO of Reneu Energy, solar developer and consulting firm, and a strategic advisor to multiple cleantech startups. Over his career, Benoy has developed over 100 MWs of solar projects across the U.S., helped launch the first residential solar tax equity funds at Tesla, and brokered $45 million in Renewable Energy Credits (“REC”) transactions. Prior to founding Reneu Energy, Benoy was the Environmental Commodities Trader in Tesla's Project Finance Group, where he managed one of the largest environmental commodities portfolios. He originated REC trades and co-developed a monetization and hedging strategy with senior leadership to enter the East Coast market.  As Vice President at Vanguard Energy Partners, Benoy crafted project finance solutions for commercial-scale solar portfolios. His role at Ridgewood Renewable Power, a private equity fund with 125 MWs of U.S. renewable assets, involved evaluating investment opportunities and maximizing returns. He also played a key role in the sale of the firm's renewable portfolio. Earlier in his career, Benoy worked in Energy Structured Finance at Deloitte & Touche and Financial Advisory Services at Ernst & Young, following an internship on the trading floor at D.E. Shaw & Co., a multi billion dollar hedge fund. Benoy holds an MBA in Finance from Rutgers University and a BS in Finance and Economics from NYU Stern, where he was an Alumni Scholar. Connect with Benoy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benoythanjan/ Learn more:  https://reneuenergy.com https://www.solarmaverickpodcast.com   Host Bio: David Magid David Magid is a seasoned renewable energy executive with deep expertise in solar development, financing, and operations. He has worked across the clean energy value chain, leading teams that deliver distributed generation and community solar projects. David is widely recognized for his strategic insights on interconnection, market economics, and policy trends shaping the U.S. solar industry. Connect with David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmagid/ If you have any questions or comments, you can email us at info@reneuenergy.com.   Please provide 5 star reviews      If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and share the Solar Maverick Podcast so more people can learn how to accelerate the clean energy transition.    Reneu Energy Reneu Energy provides expert consulting across solar and storage project development, financing, energy strategy, and environmental commodities. Our team helps clients originate, structure, and execute opportunities in community solar, C&I, utility-scale, and renewable energy credit markets. Email us at info@reneuenergy.com to learn more.    

Your stories don't define you. How you tell them will. I'm Sarah Elkins, your host and chief storymaker at Elkins Consulting. If you've been listening to my show for a while, you've probably noticed a big change in the format in recent weeks. Summertime is hard on podcasters! We lose a lot of our listeners this time of year and it can be difficult to be motivated to keep putting out quality content when we know people aren't as likely to listen. This summer I've been focused on brief, less than 20-minute episodes that keep a person's attention while still offering insights and entertainment. What you've been hearing, and will continue to hear in each episode, is a brief story of pivotal moment, and then a thread pulled to generate insights about it. I have two goals for you: One – to uncover your related story for you to add to your collection to practice and have ready when the opportunity presents itself. And two – to demonstrate storytelling in a practical, approachable way so you hear how I compose my words, phrases, and use tone-of-voice to add dynamics and meaning. You've probably heard me say: "Your stories don't have to be epic. They have to be meaningful." But there is a time and a place for an epic story. They can be life-defining, entertaining, and a great way to gather people together. And it's the days, months, and years of related stories generated from the experience that offer far deeper insights and lessons than the experience itself. In today's episode you'll hear one of my epic stories, when, 20+ years ago, my husband broke his leg about 2 miles from a trailhead in a remote wilderness area. I had to find a way to get my husband off the side of a mountain, along with our 4 and 6-year-old boys and a puppy. Over the next few weeks, I'll share some of the meaningful moments that were generated by the epic event. These are the gold of the story - the lessons learned, the deep friendships, and the self-realizations - that happen when you're truly put to the test. This is where we learn grit, resilience, and the importance of being able to receive. After you've heard my story, listeners, it'll be your turn: Were you reminded of an epic event in your life? Can you recall the related stories from that event, the meaningful moments generated by it? What lessons can you take away? Can you share those stories without sharing details of the epic event itself? As always, thanks for listening to Your Stories Don't Define You, How You Tell Them Will. Are you curious to learn about working with me? Visit my website to schedule time to chat and sign up for periodic updates about my work, and connect with me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook for content about strengthsfinder, storytelling, and public speaking. About Sarah: Sarah is a Montana based workplace communication trainer, TEDx speaker, DisruptHR speaker, public speaking coach, professional storyteller, musician, and podcast host. Her workshops and coaching packages with teams and their leaders are known to address and reduce miscommunication – the most common cause of tension and stress in the workplace. Using the team's results from the StrengthsFinder assessment, she guides teams in learning to speak each other's "language", learning to value each other's strengths and connecting with each other through enhanced self-reflection and effective listening.  Sarah's nearly 20 years working in government agencies inspired her to complete her MBA and to achieve her StrengthsFinder certification to improve work environments for others, guiding teams toward increased satisfaction, productivity, and happiness. Visit her website to purchase her book, Your Stories Don't Define You in paperback or audiobook.

Artificial intelligence is no longer just a buzzword, it's a practical tool transforming how healthcare organizations prepare for the future. From evaluating and pricing risk with greater accuracy to identifying rising-risk members and strengthening long-term financial strategies, AI is reshaping the very foundations of forecasting in healthcare. In this episode, leaders from Florida Blue, Premera Blue Cross, Blue Shield of California, and Prealize Health share how they're applying AI across actuarial, clinical, and data science domains to optimize decisions, improve outcomes, and drive organizational sustainability. In this episode, you'll learn: How health plans are evaluating and scaling AI models to improve accuracy in forecasting and underwriting Real-world examples of AI identifying rising-risk populations and transforming engagement strategies Why "next best action" models are becoming central to member engagement and population health How generative AI and workflow optimization are streamlining operations and reducing costs What it takes to embed AI into financial planning, provider contracting, and long-term ROI strategies Panelists: Romilla Batra, MD, MBA, SVP & Chief Medical Officer, Premera Blue Cross Ratnik Gandhi, Senior Director, AI, Florida Blue Emily Allred, Senior Director & Actuary, Large Group Pricing, Blue Shield of California Dean Noble-Tolla, PhD, Chief Product & Analytics Officer, Prealize Health Download the Episode Guide: Get key takeaways and expert highlights to help you apply lessons from the episode. Download here.

GLP-1 medications are everywhere, and dental teams are already seeing the effects at the chair. Pharmacist Anne Misher joins host Matt Crespin for a conversation rooted in the oral-systemic link, and why these drugs are far more than a weight-loss story. She explains how GLP-1s work across diabetes, weight management, heart disease, fatty liver, and sleep apnea, and how their anti-inflammatory effects may even support gum health. Misher breaks down the side effects worth watching, from dry mouth and enamel erosion to the facial changes that follow rapid weight loss. She also shares a practical way to capture an accurate health history when patients hesitate to disclose. The evidence is still emerging, and this episode gives hygienists a real head start. When patients will not say it, the mouth often will.Guest: Anne Misher, PharmD, MBA, CPPHost: Matt Crespin, MPH, RDH, FADHA

Show notes: (0:00) Intro (1:08) Morley Robbins' background and path into mineral research (3:58) Why copper matters for oxygen use and cellular energy (10:15) The relationship between copper and iron (14:11) How the body recycles iron (19:55) Hemoglobin, ferritin, and serum iron explained (25:42) Morley's views on iron supplementation and fortified foods (29:33) Supplements he recommends avoiding or reconsidering (32:06) Synthetic vs. whole-food vitamin C (33:54) Vitamin D, cod liver oil, and mineral balance (35:58) Why Morley cautions against zinc supplements (37:50) Copper supplementation and the Recuperate formula (41:18) Testing copper, iron, magnesium, and related markers (46:20) Diet, stress, hepcidin, and iron recycling (48:52) Final takeaways for supporting mineral health (50:12) Where to learn more about Morley and his resources (51:29) Outro Who is Morley Robbins?   Morley M. Robbins, MBA, CHC, is a health educator, author, and creator of the Root Cause Protocol, a nutrition-focused framework centered on the relationship between copper, iron, magnesium, and other nutrients. He earned a BA in Biology from Denison University and an MBA in Healthcare Administration from George Washington University. Before focusing on nutrition and mineral research, Robbins spent more than three decades working as a hospital executive and healthcare consultant. He later trained in wellness coaching, nutritional counseling, and functional diagnostic nutrition and became a certified health coach.   Robbins is also the founder of the Magnesium Advocacy Group and author of [Cu]re Your Fatigue. His work explores mineral metabolism, cellular energy, stress, and the relationships among copper, iron, magnesium, and calcium. His second edition of [Cu]re Your Fatigue was published by BenBella Books in November 2025. His podcast interview also describes his transition from hospital administration and consulting into years of independent research on minerals and health. Connect with Morley: Website: https://therootcauseprotocol.com/ Email: morleyrobbins@gmail.com Phone: 847-922-8061 Links and Resources: Peak Performance Life  Peak Performance on Facebook Peak Performance on Instagram  

Can working professionals do the full-time MBA without dropping their jobs? Columbia is the most recent business school to bet yes.

EPISODE SUMMARY: Joe D’Angelo, Xperi’s Senior Vice President of Commercial Strategy and Partnerships, shares his journey from media and technology to leading innovations in radio, including HD Radio and DTS Auto Stage, transforming the connected car experience and shaping the future of broadcast radio. On this episode of Chachi Loves Everybody, Chachi interviews Joe D’Angelo about: Growing up in Long Island and early influences, including newspapers and other media Earning his MBA and jumping around the entertainment, telecom, and advertising industries The origin of HD Radio, how it works, and the role of Lucent Digital Radio How his combination of tech, business, and media experience helped him succeed The formation of Ibiquity Digital and digital radio standards Explaining DTS Auto Stage, its role in connected cars, and how it benefits program directors and broadcasters His outlook on the future of radio advertising and digital integration The importance of community and local content in radio His advice for industry professionals during challenging times And More! ABOUT THIS EPISODE'S GUEST: Joe D'Angelo is Senior Vice President of Commercial Strategy & Partnerships at Xperi, where he leads strategic growth initiatives, commercialization efforts, and key industry partnerships across connected car, broadcast radio, audience measurement, and digital audio businesses. He works with broadcasters, automotive manufacturers, technology companies, and media organizations worldwide to advance next-generation in-vehicle entertainment, analytics, and monetization solutions. A founding executive of iBiquity Digital, the company behind HD Radio technology, Joe has spent more than two decades helping shape the evolution of broadcast and digital audio. Following iBiquity's acquisition by Xperi, he continued to lead initiatives spanning HD Radio, hybrid radio, streaming audio services, connected-car platforms, and audience measurement solutions. His work has focused on helping broadcasters and automotive OEMs successfully navigate the transition to a connected media ecosystem. Before joining iBiquity, Joe was a Principal at PricewaterhouseCoopers, advising telecommunications and media clients on strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, restructuring, and international expansion. Earlier, he spent five years with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), leading technology and business transformation initiatives. A recognized industry thought leader, Joe has been named one of Radio Ink's 40 Most Powerful People in Radio for three consecutive years (2024-2026) and serves as a BMI Ambassador supporting innovation across the radio and music industries. Joe earned a Bachelor of Arts in History from the College of the Holy Cross and an MBA from Columbia University, where he graduated with honors. ABOUT THE PODCAST: Chachi Loves Everybody is brought to you by Benztown and hosted by the President of Benztown, Dave “Chachi” Denes. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the myths and legends of the radio and broadcast industry and beyond as they share their unique career paths. Hear how a variety of innovative leaders grow businesses, develop iconic brands, and entertain audiences in this in-depth interview podcast. ABOUT BENZTOWN: Benztown is a leading international audio imaging, production library, voiceover, programming, podcasting, and jingle production company with over 3,000 affiliations on six different continents. Benztown provides audio brands and radio stations of all formats with end-to-end imaging and production, making high-quality sound and world- class audio branding a reality for radio stations of all market sizes and budgets. Benztown was named to the prestigious Inc. 5000 by Inc. magazine for five consecutive years as one of America’s Fastest-Growing Privately Held Companies. With studios in Los Angeles and Stuttgart, Benztown offers the highest quality audio imaging work parts for 21 libraries across 15 music and spoken word formats including AC, Hot AC, CHR, Country, Hip Hop and R&B, Rhythmic, Classic Hits, Rock, News/Talk, Sports, and JACK. Benztown’s Audio Architecture is one of the only commercial libraries that is built exclusively for radio spots to provide the right music for radio commercials. Benztown provides custom VO and imaging across all formats, including commercial VO and copywriting in partnership with Compass Creative. Benztown Radio Networks produces, markets, and distributes high-quality programming and services to radio stations around the world, including: The Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 Countdown, The Todd-N-Tyler Radio Empire, Hot Mix, Sunday Night Slow Jams with R Dub!, Flashback, Hey, Morton, StudioTexter, and SPECai. Benztown + McVay Media Podcast Networks produces and markets premium podcasts including: IEX: Boxes and Lines and American Afterlife. Web: benztown.com Facebook: facebook.com/benztownradio Twitter: @benztownradio LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/benztown Instagram: instagram.com/benztownradioSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What if we could reverse the damage caused by age-related disease instead of simply managing its symptoms? In this episode of Entrepreneur Rx, host John Shufeldt sits down with Daniel Oliver, CEO and Co-founder of Rejuvenate Bio, a Jetstream Venture Fund portfolio company, to explore the science behind age-related disease, the potential of gene therapy, and what it takes to turn groundbreaking research into treatments for both animal and human health. This success has lead to one of the leading crowdfunding equity campaigns.Rejuvenate Bio grew out of George Church's lab at Harvard Medical School, where research into the biology of aging opened the door to a bigger question: instead of treating age-related diseases one at a time, could we target the underlying changes that drive them? Daniel explains the company's work across heart failure, kidney failure, metabolic dysfunction, and epigenetic reprogramming. Daniel and John also dig into Rejuvenate Bio's strategy of developing therapies for both companion animals and humans. Its most advanced program is targeting mitral valve disease in dogs, while its human program moves toward clinical development. Daniel explains why dogs can be a powerful model for age-related disease and how animal health may provide a faster path for translating aging science into real-world therapies. Beyond the science, Daniel shares his unconventional journey from mechanical engineering and aerospace to Harvard Business School, entrepreneurship, and biotech. He and John discuss why breakthrough ideas often emerge at the intersection of different disciplines, and they get candid about the pressure of startup life and why the “never sleep, always hustle” mentality can make founders worse leaders. About Daniel Oliver: Daniel Oliver is Co-founder and CEO of Rejuvenate Bio, a spinout of George Church's Lab at Harvard Medical School focused on targeting the drivers of age-related disease through novel gene therapies. Prior to Rejuvenate Bio, Daniel was awarded a Blavatnik Fellowship, during which he co-founded Voxel8. Voxel8 was named one of the top innovations at CES and one of the 50 most innovative companies by MIT Technology Review. Daniel received his MBA from Harvard Business School and holds degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Business from the California Institute of Technology. About Rejuvenate Bio: Rejuvenate Bio is a George Church spinout with backing from Merck and leading VCs developing one-time gene therapies that target the root causes of age-related disease, beginning in companion animals and expanding to humans. The company was the first to demonstrate lifespan extension using epigenetic reprogramming and is advancing a breakthrough cardiovascular platform built around a single-dose therapy that restores youthful levels of a critical age-declining soluble protein. Preclinical data show reversal of heart damage and durable metabolic reset, positioning the program as a potential long-term alternative to chronic therapies such as GLP-1s. About Xcellerant Ventures: Xcellerant is a venture capital firm investing in innovative companies across healthcare, technology, defense, and other emerging industries.About Jetstream Venture Fund: Jetstream is an interval fund that provides investors access to venture opportunities across multiple stages, with a $5,000 minimum and no carried interest. Disclosure for Jetstream: Investors should carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fund before investing. The prospectus contains this and other information about the Fund and can be obtained by emailing jetstream@sweaterfunds.com or by visiting www.jvf.vc. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing. About Pitch Deck Analysis: Pitch Deck Analysis reviews your deck like an investor would, with scoring, feedback, and recommendations on what to improve before you pitch. Use code EntrepreneurRx for a free Founder Pack with five free runs.

Vanessa Errecarte is an award-winning lecturer at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management and creator of one of the nation's only for-credit MBA courses in personal branding. Vanessa works directly with students navigating this new reality, and she argues that AI is transforming personal branding from a marketing tactic into a core leadership competency that universities must intentionally teach. She is also the author of the book, Valuable & Visible: Redefining Personal Branding by Leading With Impact Over Image. Host: Marie-Line Germain, Ph.D. Mixing: Kelly Minnis

Your payroll runs smoothly but that's exactly where payroll compliance risk hides. In this episodeIn this episode of @thepayrollpodcast, Nick Day, CEO of JGA Recruitment Group, sits down with Jay Crider, CPP, MBA, founder and principal of ValuGuard Payroll Advisory, talked about the hidden payroll errors, implementation gaps, and data vulnerabilities lurking beneath green status reports. Discover what audits, acquisitions, and system migrations reveal about payroll maturity, and learn how to identify and remediate silent failures before they cost you.This is not just a conversation about whether payroll gets processed. It is a conversation about whether payroll is governed. Jay and Nick break down the five pillars of payroll risk, why key person dependency quietly puts entire operations at risk, and how payroll leaders can finally translate what they see into language the C-suite actually listens to.They also cover Jay's Payroll Stability Index, or PSI, a free scoring framework built to quantify payroll risk the way a FICO score quantifies credit risk, real statistics on fraud, compliance penalties, and outage costs, and why payroll may be the largest uncontrolled financial process in most companies today.It is not just about getting the paycheck right.It is about proving the process behind it can be trusted under pressure.And if you have never measured that before, this episode will change that.Whether you are a payroll professional trying to earn a seat at the table, a finance leader trying to understand where your real exposure sits, or a business owner who assumes payroll is fine because no one has complained, this episode will give you a new way of seeing one of the most important functions in your organization.This episode is sponsored by DeelManaging a global team is complex, Deel makes it simpler with payroll, HR, IT, and compliance all in one place. That's why over 35,000 businesses trust Deel to hire, pay, and manage their teams worldwide.See how Deel works at www.deel.com/nickdayGuest and Host:Connect with Jay Crider: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jay-crider/Learn more about ValuGuard Payroll Advisory and run your free PSI snapshot: https://www.valueguardpayroll.comConnect with Nick Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickday/Find your ideal payroll candidate with our job vacancy system: https://jgarecruitment.ck.page/919cf6b9eaSign up to the Payroll Podcast Newsletter: https://jgarecruitment.ck.page/23e7b153e7Stay tuned for the next episode of The Payroll Podcast, brought to you by Nick Day, CEO at JGA Recruitment, landing soon!Enjoyed this? Check out our sister podcast @thehrldpodcast for more great content!Timestamps:(00:00) Introduction: Why a Green Payroll Status Report Can Still Be Hiding Risk(03:01) What Payroll Really Means: Trust Made Operational(04:06) The Iceberg Analogy: What's Hiding Beneath a Stable-Looking Payroll(06:35) Why "Paid Accurately and On Time" Is an Incomplete Definition of Success(11:17) Controlled Process vs. Correct Outcome: The Real Test of Governance(13:29) Key-Person Dependency and the True Cost of Payroll Heroics(20:04) Introducing the Five Pillars of the Payroll Stability Index(24:27) Operational Continuity, Governance Controls, and the Cost of Fraud(32:17) Why a Risk Score Changes the Conversation With the C-Suite(39:55) Who Should Own Payroll Governance: HR, Finance, or a Future CPO?(45:56) Diagnosing Risk Before a Crisis Forces Your Hand(52:21) Payroll Vault: Rapid-Fire Questions and Jay's Boldest Prediction

All About Disorders of Gut-Brain InteractionMaster disorders of gut–brain interaction. Learn how Rome V changes the diagnosis of IBS and other DGBIs, how to approach chronic diarrhea and the microbiome, and how to choose targeted treatments for bloating, pain, and vomiting. We're joined by Dr. Xiao Jing (Iris) Wang, a gastroenterologist and expert in disorders of gut–brain interaction.Claim CME for this episode at curbsiders.vcuhealth.org!Patreon | Episodes | Subscribe | Spotify | YouTube | Newsletter | Contact | Swag! | CMEShow Segments Intro Updates to Rome V Criteria Microbiome Information Evaluation and Management of Chronic Diarrhea Abelchia Abdominophrenic Dyssynergia Key Takeaways Outro Credits Written and Produced by: Zoya Surani Show Notes, Infographic, Cover Art by: Zoya Surani Hosts: Matthew Watto MD, FACP; Paul Williams MD, FACP    Reviewer: Sai Achi MD, MBA, FACP Showrunners: Matthew Watto MD, FACP; Paul Williams MD, FACP Technical Production: PodPaste Guest: Dr. Xiao Jing (Iris) Wang DisclosuresDr. Wang reports no relevant financial disclosures. The Curbsiders report no relevant financial disclosures. Sponsor: PanaceaVisit panacea.legal/curb to schedule your free consultation.Sponsor: UpToDateFor a limited time, listeners can get 10% off UpToDate packages with code CURB at store.uptodate.comSponsor: FIGS Curbsiders listeners can get 15% off. Just go to WearFIGS.com and use code FIGSRX.  Sponsor: MasterClassGet at least 15% off any annual membership at MASTERCLASS.com/CURB

Retiring abroad sounds cheaper on paper. The real question is whether it creates the life you actually want.In this episode, Ari responds to a listener considering retiring in Thailand within the next few years. The appeal is obvious. Lower healthcare costs, lower living expenses, and the possibility of stretching retirement dollars much further than they would in the United States.But the conversation quickly shifts beyond the math. Ari walks through the tradeoffs people often underestimate when considering retirement abroad. Community, family, healthcare quality, lifestyle expectations, and whether saving money alone is enough reason to move somewhere permanently.The financial side matters too. Rental income, healthcare costs, withdrawal strategy, and cost of living all play a role in determining whether the plan is realistic. But even a perfect spreadsheet cannot answer the deeper question of where you actually want to build your life.Because retirement planning is not just about lowering expenses. It is about creating a life you are excited to wake up to every day.--Advisory services are offered through Root Financial Partners, LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. This content is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered personalized investment, tax, or legal advice. Viewing this content does not create an advisory relationship. We do not provide tax preparation or legal services. Always consult an investment, tax or legal professional regarding your specific situation.The strategies, case studies, and examples discussed may not be suitable for everyone. They are hypothetical and for illustrative and educational purposes only. They do not reflect actual client results and are not guarantees of future performance. All investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principal.Comments reflect the views of individual users and do not necessarily represent the views of Root Financial. They are not verified, may not be accurate, and should not be considered testimonials or endorsementsParticipation in the Retirement Planning Academy or Early Retirement Academy does not create an advisory relationship with Root Financial. These programs are educational in nature and are not a substitute for personalized financial advice. Advisory services are offered only under a written agreement with Root Financial.Create Your Custom Early Retirement Strategy HereGet access to the same software I use for my clients and join the Early Retirement Academy hereAri Taublieb, CFP ®, MBA  is the Chief Growth Officer of Root Financial Partners and a Fiduciary Financial Planner specializing in helping clients retire early with confidence.

Today's guest will join the Restaurant Unstoppable Network for a live Q+A on September 7th, 2026 at 11AM EST. To join us and engage with all our guests and events, go to restaurantunstoppable.com/live -OR- to just catch today's guest, head over to restaurantunstoppable.com/cwe and we will get you a link to join that specific event for FREE! Jesse Stein is the founder and CEO of Hermetic AI, which develops AI-powered tools to help restaurants, hotels, and entertainment venues convert more private-event inquiries into bookings. A serial entrepreneur with multiple successful exits, Jesse has built companies spanning technology, e-commerce, digital marketing, and nutrition. He holds an MBA from The Wharton School and is now focused on using AI to make hospitality sales more responsive, efficient, and personal. If you want to learn more about Hermetic AI and you want to support this podcast, please email Eric (eric@restaurantunstoppable.com) and he will personally introduce you to their team. Restaurant Unstoppable will receive a finder's fee if you simply book a demo. It really helps the show! Join RULibrary: www.restaurantunstoppable.com/RULibrary Join RULive: www.restaurantunstoppable.com/live Set Up your RUEvolve 1:1: www.restaurantunstoppable.com/evolve Subscribe on YouTube: https://youtube.com/restaurantunstoppable Subscribe to our email newsletter: https://www.restaurantunstoppable.com/ Today's sponsors: - Hermetic.ai  - Private event leads die in inboxes every day. Mia fixes that. She's an AI agent that responds within seconds, handles the back-and-forth, and fills your event calendar — automatically. Fully integrated in under 10 minutes. Head to hermetic.ai and put her to work. https://www.hermetic.ai/ - Hotshift - Hotshift is the all-in-one tool built by a restaurant owner, for restaurant owners. Scheduling, hiring, training, reviews — one roof, one login. Plusreal-time labor cost forecasting before the shift ever starts. Head to hotshift.pro/unstoppable. - Restaurant Technologies — the leader in automated cooking oil management. Their Total Oil Management solution is an end-to-end closed loop automated system that delivers, monitors, filters, collects, and recycles your cooking oil eliminating one of the dirtiest jobs in the kitchen.. Automate your oil and elevate your kitchen by visiting rti-inc.com or call 888-779-5314 to get started! - US Foods®. Running a restaurant takes MORE than great food—it takes reliable deliveries, quality products, and smart tools. US Foods® helps you make it. Ready to level up? Visit: usfoods.com/expectmore. - Today's guest recommends:  Hermetic AI Guest contact info:  Website: https://www.hermetic.ai/ If you want to learn more about Hermetic AI and you want to support this podcast, please email Eric (eric@restaurantunstoppable.com) and he will personally introduce you to their team. Restaurant unstoppable will receive a "finder's fee" if you book a demo. It really helps the show! Thanks for listening! Rate the podcast, subscribe, and share! 

Albert Butler, CPA, MBA, is an author, nationally recognized strategic advisor, and creator of the Legacy Alignment System, a framework designed to help leaders, entrepreneurs, and families align purpose, structure, money, and legacy.With more than 25 years of experience in public accounting, business advisory, and executive financial leadership, Albert has built his career around one core belief: accounting is the heartbeat of business. To him, accounting is not just about tax returns, audits, or compliance — it is the truth system that reveals where a person, family, or organization has been, where they stand today, and whether they are prepared for the future.Albert Butler is a nationally recognized CPA, strategic advisor, and creator of the Legacy Alignment System, a framework designed to help leaders, entrepreneurs, and families align purpose, structure, money, and legacy.In today's episode of Smashing the Plateau, you will learn how accounting goes far beyond taxes and compliance — and how understanding your numbers can help you build a business and a legacy that lasts.Albert and I discuss:How Albert's background shaped his approach to money and legacy [00:03:33]Why money isn't real — and what you should be focused on instead [00:04:57]How a corporate paycheck can quietly suppress your dreams [00:08:56]The five muscles of enterprise every entrepreneur must develop [00:10:34]Why you must scale yourself and your family before you scale your business [00:11:45]How accounting serves as a fortune teller for your business past, present, and future [00:18:08]Why talking about money in a trusted community helps you make more of it [00:20:17]Learn more about Albert at @albertbutltercpa on Instagram and TikTok.______________________________________________________________About Smashing the PlateauSmashing the Plateau is a podcast for experienced independent leaders who have left corporate roles to build sustainable, expertise-based businesses.Each episode features a thoughtful, experience-driven conversation about what changes when you no longer have the infrastructure of an organization behind you.We explore judgment, decision-making under uncertainty, growth plateaus, identity shifts, and the role of trusted thinking partners in sustaining long-term success.______________________________________________________________Take the Next Step• Experience the power of peer perspective.Join a live guest session and connect with experienced professionals navigating similar challenges:https://smashingtheplateau.com/guest• Stay connected to the conversation.Get new episodes, reflections, and invitations delivered to your inbox:https://smashingtheplateau.com/news

Peace and Joy: Special Patreon Release with Kay Wyma   “So, as God's own chosen people, who are holy [set apart, sanctified for His purpose] and well-beloved [by God Himself], put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience [which has the power to endure whatever injustice or unpleasantness comes, with good temper];” ‭‭Colossians‬ ‭3:12‬ ‭AMP‬‬   *Transcription Below*   Questions We Discuss: Will you elaborate on this concept of a Soul30? What were your favorite stories from this adventure? How has this peace project changed the way you will live life from this point forward?   Kay Wyma is a mom, blogger, podcaster, and author of four books in which she has tackled, with candor and humor, some of the troubling societal issues that impact us all. Kay's writings have led her to appearances on TODAY, CNN, Hallmark's Home & Family, and more. Before staying at home with her kids, she held positions at the White House and Bank of America. She lives in Dallas, Texas, with her husband and five kids. Connect with Kay at kaywyma.com or on Instagram @kaywyma.   At The Savvy Sauce, we will only recommend resources we believe in! We also want you to be aware: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.   The Peace Project   Thank You to Our Sponsors: Chick-fil-A East Peoria and The Savvy Sauce Charities (and donate online here)   Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website   Gospel Scripture: (all NIV) Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”   Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”   Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”   Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”   Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”   Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”   John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”   Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”   Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”   Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”   Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession- to the praise of his glory.”   Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”   Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“   Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“   Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”   *Transcription*   Music: (0:00 – 0:09)   Laura Dugger: (0:09 - 2:47) Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host, Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.   I want to say a huge thank you to today's sponsors for this episode, Chick-fil-A East Peoria, and Savvy Sauce Charities.   If this is your first time here, welcome! You may be wondering what it means to have a special Patreon release, so here's the scoop. Patreon was a platform we used to generate financial support for The Savvy Sauce, and we expressed our thanks to those paying patrons by giving them a bonus episode every month.   But in 2024, we transitioned away from Patreon when we became a non-profit called the Savvy Sauce Charities. The podcast is part of this non-profit, which exists to resource loved ones to inspire growth and intimacy with God and others. So, people used to pay to support us through Patreon, but now they can just donate directly to our non-profit.   We spend thousands of dollars each year to record and produce these episodes, and we do pray that they're beneficial and that God sees fit to use them to be transformational in your life. If that is the case, if you have ever benefited from an episode of The Savvy Sauce, would you consider showing your gratitude through your financial generosity? Any amount is greatly appreciated.   In fact, if every listener gave only $1 per month, it would completely offset our costs. We have all the details on our website, thesavvysauce.com, but feel free to also reach out to our team anytime if you want to partner together. Our email address is info@thesavvysauce.com.   And now I'm pleased to share this episode with you that used to only be available to paying patrons. Kay Wyma is my returning guest today. She is vibrant, and her curiosity sometimes leads to experiments in her life. Her most recent experiment turned into a book, and now she's going to let us in on three areas of focus that added peace and joy to her life. This process is based on Scripture and validated in science. Here's our chat.   Welcome back to The Savvy Sauce, Kay.   Kay Wyma: (2:48 - 2:52) Thank you so much for having me. You're really sweet to put up with me again.   Laura Dugger: (2:53 - 3:07) Well, it was a delight last time, and I'm excited for today as well. And I'm so fascinated by your history of different careers and roles you've had. So, will you tell us a little bit more about all that you've experienced professionally?   Kay Wyma: (3:08 - 5:44) Oh my gosh, it's so funny, Laura, because people will read the bio as they could for any of us that are in our mid-50s, and I'm sitting there going, I'm exhausted listening to that. But the deal is that they didn't happen all at the same time, but I just had a really great opportunity to do some interesting stuff. And one of them, especially in my 20s, I got to work in the George Herbert Walker Bush, so 41 White House, and I was a lead advance for the vice president.   And so, I pretty much got to travel all over the country and a lot of very interesting places in the world during that period. And it was a blast. I got to set up the trips as they would go traveling to these places with the Secret Service and White House Communications. And it just was an amazing way, an opportunity to get to see the world. And then I went on to graduate school and got an MBA and ended up somehow in an international investment banking role, which is laughable because I cannot even help my children with fifth grade math. So, I don't know who that person was that did that.   But I used to be able to do things that way. I can't anymore. And then I had kids, which was such a blessing. I'd met my husband at graduate school when we got married after I'd finished my stint in the White House and had kids right off the bat. And during that time, I really did try to piggyback. That was back in the day when women were allowed to job share, and I just couldn't do it. The more kids that came, the harder it was. And so I stayed at home with my kids, started a couple of businesses here and there, and then found myself in the world of writing. And I didn't plan on it. I kind of say I was an accidental writer, but I don't think anything is really an accident. It's not something that I was educated to do. However, I loved it.   And I look back now and look at the great education that I had gotten and honestly how much I loved writing even as a child. I just didn't know that was something that you could do because back in that day there were, and I'm not that old, but there really were careers that were careers that you sort of went to that made sense from a sensible banking father. It's like, here are your choices for a degree plan. And so, I love how just even gravitating towards what you're gifting a purpose is, which we talked about before, it's just those things are in you, and it's fun to see how they will come out and how fun that it can even come out in a way where it's your vocation. And so here I sit as a writer, crazy.   Laura Dugger: (5:44 - 6:00) Which is so great to hear the journey because you would think the math and the different skills required for international banking and then to become a successful author, that's so interesting. And this is so random and I could be wrong. Were your parents ever on Focus on the Family?   Kay Wyma: (6:01 - 6:54) Well, they could have been. I have the greatest parents. I really do. They're so kind and they're just really terrific people. And so, they became friends, like they're friends with Dr. Dobson. And so, I don't know if they were. That's another really gift they gave us. You just do it in front of you and you don't really make a big deal about anything. And I love that. Everybody puts their pants on the same way, which is one thing I loved even about working at the White House because some of the stuff can look so glamorous and go. But the truth is, we're all just people. And the Lord has put in certain people's paths, things to do that could look really amazing and spectacular. But the amazing and spectacular is around you every single day, even if it might not have something. And for my kids would be like that have a million followers or that has gone viral. But they are there. I'm very blessed, Laura, with very nice parents.   Laura Dugger: (6:55 - 7:03) Well, you've mentioned before that you battled an eating disorder growing up. Do you feel comfortable sharing a little bit more about that journey?   Kay Wyma: (7:04 - 8:39) Absolutely. So, I definitely battled that. And again, I have a wonderful family that I grew up in, a home that I grew up in. But I also grew up in an environment where performance was a big deal, which it is today, too. So many kids are struggling with that. Oh, my gosh, so terribly. And whatever you're struggling with, because it could be for me, it was performance. And the way that I learned, the way that I coped with it was through eating and not eating. And a lot of just getting rid of the food that I had eaten.   And there just came a day when I was in college that thankfully the Lord, the Lord just showed me one night that this is not a good thing. So, I actually left that semester of college to get help. And it changed my life. I was telling one of the girls yesterday, my girls, how grateful I am for that because I had never really understood or even contemplated the concept of grace. I just didn't know that was something I'd heard it, but I didn't know what it was. And I didn't know a whole lot about my worth having been declared by God and my identity having been determined by him. And I will say at 55, I know a lot more about it than I did even then at 19 or 20, but it was going through that journey, asking for help, stopping what was hurting me and reaching for truth that put me on a road to actually learn a lot of just what it means when he says it is for freedom that I have set you free.   Laura Dugger: (8:40 - 9:00) And the reason that I bring up the eating disorder is from a previous podcast. I can't remember which one, but elsewhere I'd heard you say that you stay away from the whole 30 diet, but you were intrigued one day to instead try a soul 30. So, will you share that story with us too?   Kay Wyma: (9:01 - 14:47) I will. And I do, I have to tell you, I, since, since I was 20, I've steered clear of scales and I really do steer clear of diets for me because they don't do good things in my head. And so, one thing that I learned through all of that was that you, you can't change an environment. Often you can't change the environment that you're in, but you can change the way you operate within the environment. Biggest lesson that I learned through all of that, like, please hear that. It was so life altering as I stood going, I can't change this environment, but I can change how I interact with it.   Okay. And so, the whole 30, I do find intriguing, you know, because people, if you're going to do something physically, like to make your diet better, a lot of people do that. And so, for 30 days, they, they exit a ton out of their diet. I don't know everything about it because I am a big chicken. And I think they, if, if I was going to do it, the thing that would be the killer for me is not being able to have cream in your coffee. You know, it's like, that's a deal breaker for me right there.   But the soul 30 it all started one morning. Again, I think I told you on the last one that like, even the experiment with the putting the stuff, like helping the kids with independence started with my rotten attitude. Well, this started with the rotten attitude too. And we aren't always doing experiments in our house, but I just had this bad attitude one morning as I'd come home from carpool. I had women coming over to my house. I leave a Bible study that meets on Tuesdays. And I was just going to the refrigerator to get milk out to be able to serve coffee. And there were two jugs of milk in our fridge. I pull the first one out and it's empty. And I'm like, what? And the second one, I pull it out. It's empty too. Like maybe a drop in it. And quite frankly, I could have put it back going, well, there's a drop of milk in it, but I don't know why people do that. Like in our house, it could be the same with a cereal box. Like you pull the box out, there's nothing in it. And I'm like, just throw it away. Like, please.   And so I was frustrated. I get out into my car to go to the grocery store. And as I drive back out into the street, this big black pickup truck, literally like road routes its way into my face. And I was sort of like, really? And, and I didn't have a choice, but to back down because he was not going to let me go. And so as I started to back up, I looked up and I got to see this beautiful sun like peeking through this cloudy sky. And, and it was so beautiful. I was like, what am I doing? Like why am I in a crabby mood or frustrated by this? I'm in an air-conditioned car on my way to a grocery store where there are refrigerated items and there are people, somebody actually might say hello. Okay. Cause I go in there all the time and I was sort of like; everything is not bad.   And I started to breathe. And I didn't realize in that moment that I was, I was being thankful. Like I just, it just happened. And, and in that I really was breathing. And I like felt better inside of me. I back up and let the guy go legitimately, which again, I did not realize it in the moment, but it was an act of kindness. And I felt even better. And when he drove by, I looked in his window and I was sitting there going, I have, it was a human being first of all. And I recognize that. And just for a moment, I was like, I have no idea what's going on in his day. He could be raced into the hospital. He could be late for work. He could just, you know, be a jerky person and, and life as long as a jerky person. And, and I just was, I wasn't over spiritualizing or anything, but I prayed for him. I was like, please let whatever's going on in his day be okay. Because if he's that intense, something is not great.   And I drove to the grocery store, and I physically felt so good. It was like, like I had been given a joke Cola or something like I, Or some vitamin that was just a blast of energy. And it lasted. By the time ladies got over, I was like, you're gonna believe what happened this morning. It was so weird. And I told them about it the next week they came back and one of the ladies said, can you tell me again? What that story? And I was like, what story? And the lady next to her goes, Oh, I've been doing it. And I was like, doing what? And she goes, your thing. I was like, what is my thing? And she said, Oh, the thankfulness, kindness, and compassion. And as we talked about it again, I was sitting there going, is that something because it had deeply impacted this person that was trying it even for a week.   And I really sat there going, okay, we would do a whole 30 for a physical diet. Something in these practices is impacting the soul. And I was like, what if we tried a soul 30 and for 30 days, proactively practiced thankfulness, kindness, and mercy, because that's what compassion is a part of mercy. What would happen? And so it was sort of like, let's do it. And these very sweet friends were willing to try as were my kids. And so instead of like pulling something away, which is what a fast is that goes with a whole 30, we sort of switched it to this unbelievable soul feast that came with doing these things. It was unbelievable. The joy that came into everyone's life when they started doing this stuff. I mean, it was amazing. And so as I tracked it, I really did track it because I like to know why it was sort of like, why is this happening? What's going on? What is in these things that actually can impact your life at such a deep, deep level to where joy is invited in and peace.   Laura Dugger: (14:49 - 15:00) And so, like you said, you focus on thankfulness, kindness, and mercy in this most recent book, The Peace Project, but will you define and give examples of each of those?   Kay Wyma: (15:01 - 19:08) Yes. And I think that is such a great way to start because it's like, okay, what, what is it even on the soul 30? I was like, here's what you do. Okay. Here is what thankfulness says, because I went to look like, if I'm going to ask, please do these things, here's what they are. So, thankfulness is calling out things for which to be grateful. And for our family, for my kids, I was like, please let it not be the same thing every day. Although now a year and a half out, what difference does it make? It could be the same thing every day. But for them, I was like, don't let it be the same thing. And it can be more than one thing, because the thing with thankfulness, when you start it, it's like, it may take a little effort to go, what do I have to be thankful for? Especially in a situation that's unsettling, which is kind of like when that car drove up on me, that was an unsettling moment.   I was being forced down. And there's so much going on in that conversation that isn't spoken, which I think is important to call out in these things. So even as he's barreling up on me, it makes me feel unseen. It makes me feel like there's no, even though it's not spoken, that action brings with it. What thankfulness does is it instantly, it's like a wake up, like it's a focus shift. And so, and it tends to be looking up in some way, and it gets your eyes off of whatever the situation is. And it allows for truth to come in, which is where thankfulness goes, especially in the unsettling. Cause you can say, as I didn't mean to, but I did even in that moment, I am in an air-conditioned car. It is Texas in the summer, for goodness sake, that is a gift. And it's worth calling out. And there's always something for which to be grateful. So that's what thankfulness is.   Kindness is seeing and loving others. And let me tell you something, loving yourself too, because I've learned through this. We are harder on ourselves than we are on anybody else. So seeing and loving others and yourself in deed or action, this component is so significant because you're taking it. Thankfulness is in your thoughts. So you're walking through in your thoughts and you're doing these things. And kindness is where you're going that extra step. And you're actually putting action on it so that even in your mind, because I learned a lot about neural pathways and how our minds can be transformed by this, which is sort of where we started. If your physical health can be impacted by a diet, can my thought health be impacted by doing things that are good for it? And so kindness takes it from the thought to the action. And so even in that, you know, letting that car go, that is so small. And so kindness doesn't have to be moving a mountain. It can be tiny little things.   I've watched my neighbor one morning picking up newspapers and putting them on everybody's porch. And no one was seeing her do that. I accidentally did. And she even told me that day, you know, it's the small things because it is because when that person opens the door, the neighbor opens their door, they know that someone thought of them that day. Like it gives them, whether it's spoken or not, they get a sense of worth by going, I must matter. Somebody cared enough to put my newspaper on my front porch. Tiny, tiny things, as well as big things can be an act of kindness.   And then mercy, that's the showstopper. And it is a challenge and it is beautiful. And the definition of mercy is compassion or forgiveness shown towards someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm. And again, including ourselves. And so as I started to peel back the layers on mercy, there's more and there's more and there's more. And another one of my favorite definitions of it was from a Jesuit priest whose name is James Keenan. And he called mercy the willingness to enter into someone else's chaos, which I actually found to be the most powerful because willingness plays a central role in this whole process because it actually is centered on our significance having been settled by the Lord.   Laura Dugger: (19:09 - 19:17) What surprising discoveries did you make as you deliberately practiced each of these attitudes? And like you said, you partnered them with action steps.   Kay Wyma: (19:18 - 21:54) Yeah, so I think for everybody, we just did a book club just finished last week, even here. And one of the gals said that she has been struggling terribly with anxiety and worry that stemmed a lot. They moved to Florida before the pandemic. And so, she was living in a new place, basically holed up in her house for a year and a half. And those things of worry and anxiety and fear had crept in and had become, you know, on repeat in her mind. And so just because she had signed up for the book club, came with a friend and she didn't really buy any of it because it doesn't matter whether you buy it or not because these things are not for me. Like that's the number one thing. They aren't mine. These really are woven within the greatest commandment. You know, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind is thankfulness. Your eyes are not on yourself. And love others as you love yourself. And he's not talking about a narcissistic love. He's like genuine caring for others and yourself. There's so much power in that, which includes kindness and mercy.   And so, she simply started doing the thankfulness. She was like, I don't know what the others are, but I know I can track being thankful. I can find a way to be thankful. And she came back after the first week and couldn't believe what it had done to her. Just in practicing thankfulness, which we know through science that there are benefits that occur in your brain just by doing that simple act. And it's clearly proven. You can just Google even the amount of thankfulness journals because it's so good for us. And if you write it down and look at it and see, you're using all these senses. And when you add the kindness and the mercy to it, it's so deeply impactful.   And so, I think the thing that probably surprised me the most is how consistent the piece is and how your neural pathways actually can change. You can actually have your superhighway and your thought process, because we have those ruts in our brain that are highly traveled paths that our thoughts go to. And they tend actually to be along the lines of anxiety or fear or worry, because that's been a part of your life since you were a little kid. And to be able to somehow transition those highest traveled pathways to something that involves kindness and mercy and thankfulness is so significant because your instant reaction is going to a place of peace instead of a place of anxiety. It's like where science meets scripture.   Laura Dugger: (21:54 - 27:25) It's so beautiful. And now a brief message from our sponsor.   Did you know you can go to college tuition-free just by being a team member at Chick-fil-A East Peoria? Yes, you heard that right. Free college education. All Chick-fil-A East Peoria team members in good standing are immediately eligible for a free college education through Point University. Point University is a fully accredited private Christian college located in West Point, Georgia. This online self-paced program includes 13 associates degrees, 17 bachelor's degrees, and two master's programs, including an MBA. College courses are fully transferable both in and out of this program.   This could even be a great option to complete your general education courses and then transfer to the college of your choice and save money in the process. So, if you're looking for an affordable college option while simultaneously gaining valuable work experience and earning an income, Chick-fil-A East Peoria is the place for you. You don't have to go into debt to get a great education.   And now about the financial side of Savvy Sauce Charities. As you know, we recently became a non-profit, which means all your financial support is now tax deductible. There are multiple ways to give, and we would be so honored if you would share your financial support with us so that we can continue producing free content that is accessible to the general public.   Your money will go to support creatively getting the gospel message of Jesus Christ to the nations as we continue to share the good news on every episode. And I say this is reaching the nations because The Savvy Sauce podcast is downloaded in all 50 United States as well as over 100 countries around the world. Your financial support also supports practical needs such as aiding our team to continue producing helpful content that is practical and uplifting and always pointing to Jesus.   Your financial support, furthermore, will help us continue to expand our reach and secure future projects we have planned for this ministry. If your ears are hearing this message right now, I am specifically asking you to give. We are so grateful for any amount, and our team will continue to seek to be good stewards of the gifts offered to us.   So, if you want to write a check or set up an ongoing payment with your bank that delivers a check to us each month, this is the most beneficial way to give because no percentages are taken out for processing fees. You can make your check out to: Savvy Sauce Charities, P.O. Box 101, Roanoke, Illinois 61561. Additionally, with our new website, we now have a donate  button. There are processing fees that we cover for these donations, but we wanted to offer listeners a seamless way to share their finances with us when we share our content with them. So just visit thesavvysauce.com and find the donate page under the tab support. Another way to find it is simply type in donate to the search bar on our website and just click the first picture shown.   We are all about sharing around here, sharing resources, sharing joy, and sharing the good news about Jesus Christ. We ask that you also will share by sharing financially, sharing The Savvy Sauce podcast episodes, and sharing a five-star rating and review. You can also share any of our social media posts on Instagram or Facebook. We are grateful for all of it, and we just love partnering together with you. Now, back to the show.   You've already shared one piece of scripture that was impactful. Were there any other passages that especially seemed to come to life during this project?   Kay Wyma: (27:26 - 29:11) Oh, yes, and they continue to, Laura, as is always the case with scripture. You know, it really is like, wow. But I love the take your thoughts captive and make them obedient to me, which can sound like it's something that I do, you know, that I'm going to have to make my thoughts obedient to him, but it's really the Lord's power that does that. And it's like these things, you know, I think we talked before about, he isn't doing something to us by saying do these things, it's for us. And it's because when you do these things, naturally it is going to set you free. And so, I love that.   I love in Isaiah where it says, “He will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast in him.” And so when you feel that unsettledness, in that unsettledness, we can go to the places of worry or fear or anxiety, but what if in the unsettledness you can go to the one who says, I see you, who says you are known, who says you are a masterpiece, who says you belong because I chose you, who says, “I see you, you are mine.” And then go to those beautiful verses, even in Isaiah where he says, “you'll go through the water and they will not rise up over you and you will go through the fire, yet you will not be burned.” That's the truth because the one who says it is the one who protects us through all those things. And in the willingness aspect of this, it goes to this place where you're trusting what you can't see. And that is the one who has said these things over us to the point where I'm acting on it in places that can feel very scary. And leaning into his safety actually proves his safety over and over and over and over. And I think that's why the piece comes in.   Laura Dugger: (29:12 - 29:17) Kay, you're such a great storyteller. So, do you have any favorite stories from this adventure?   Kay Wyma: (29:18 - 33:55) There's a couple. So, it's like these practices rehumanize what so much around us has been dehumanizing because people aren't objects. People really matter. We like to compartmentalize everybody based on so many things, our race, our religion, the color of our hair, our vocation. I mean, you name it. And so, it kind of dehumanizes in that. And now we have this cancel culture, which is so weird. Like you could cancel a human being. And so, the rehumanizing comes in all of these practices. And it's so powerful.   So, we were even on our way to the grocery store. There was a person that needed to get over a couple of lanes. And so, I'm with one of my daughters and I was like, let's let that person over. And so, as we did, she crossed over in front of us and made it all the way over three more lanes to go right. I mean, she really was in the wrong place. And my daughter looks at me and said, I'm so glad we did that. And I was like, why? And she said, because if someone had done that for me, it would have made me feel like I was seen and that I had worth. And so, I've never, like that sticks in my head constantly. To be seen and to have worth is what we all need. And the tiniest little things can do that for us.   And so at that grocery store where we were going, a lady honked at me in the parking lot. Like I was walking and she just like blared on her horn, scared the living daylights out of me. And I was like, oh my gosh. But again, in that moment, I was like, wait a second. I can either have that, I'm either gonna fire up and be mad or I'm gonna be like, oh, I really am not seen. Either way, I'm going in a bad path or I can choose willingly to go, no. She's probably stressed out because she's not used to driving or maybe I scared her. She didn't see me. I don't know. And just reacts that way. And so, in that moment, I'm like letting it go, seeing her as a human being going in the grocery store.   And so, I go in, do my shopping. It's super packed in there. I go to the deli line, get my number, stand and wait and stand and wait. And as I'm waiting, who shows up next to me but the lady that honked at me, which if I hadn't let it go in the parking lot, I would have been like, oh, there's that lady in my head. But I wasn't. I was like, oh my gosh, there she is. And the guy calls my number and I feel her next to me and hear her sigh like, oh my gosh. And I look at her and she had forgotten to get her number. And the line was so long. And I was sitting there going, you know what? I've got margin in my day. And I took my number and handed it to her so happily. And she did what we all do. She refused it because kindness is risky. You may be rejected, okay? But again, if you're going into it willingly in the willingness that's based on your settled significance, that kind of rejection doesn't hurt because you're not rejected by the one who has called you by name. Not to over-spiritualize it.   But in that moment, I'm like, okay, no worries. But the deli guy is watching the whole thing. And so, I go to hand him the number and he looks at me and he serves her. And it was, I just can't even tell you how beautiful it was because she accepted it from him. I left because I was like, I don't want her feeling weird. I'm out of here and came back later. And it was so tiny and so beautiful. And it was like the greatest things of humanity were right there at the deli line in the grocery store. And I could tell you others, like even at the checkout, not on this occasion, but another one. Like what the checkers did to give grace to a woman who was so mean to them. And for them, like these two people to look at each other and go, man, she must be having a hard day and err on that. I mean, people are amazing. And it's like, dare we walk alongside each other? Dare we reach for the good? Dare we like just sink into the beauty of all that comes with things like your significance being eternally determined so that we can actually live in the freedom that surrounds you. All these opportunities that are around you every single day to be able to see the people and to treat the people next to you like human beings. It's really freeing and it's so beautiful. And it's a path paved with shalom peace. And it's amazing.   Laura Dugger: (33:56 - 34:22) Okay, that story is so touching. And I think it's because it's so apparent that that was the Holy Spirit and Jesus in you being Jesus to someone else. Because in scripture, we do see that it's God's kindness that leads us to repentance. And I just wonder what the other side of the story is. Your act of willing obedience and kindness. I wonder how that impacted her in a positive way.   Kay Wyma: (34:23 - 35:31) I don't know, but Laura, the coolest part is that I don't need to know. Like this is, again, through these things, that whole part exits. Like it doesn't matter at all. It's like that so much of the unseen is none of, I'll sit there and go, I can't believe he gave me something in that. Because the thing about any of these, when you give them out, it doesn't work like the world's economy where giving is actually a depletion. In God's economy, when you give, you're actually being filled. And so, it's like with a full tank, you walk away going, why did you allow me to be a part of that? Like, why would you have let me do that? Because I can't believe what you gave me through all of that. It's so amazing. Gosh, it just increases your capacity to trust exponentially. And so you have these little things like thankfulness that primes the pump. It's like, well, I'm going to get it going. And then the kindness. And then to be able to go to these places of mercy that involve very, very deep concepts like compassion, like forgiveness, like grace, like letting go of bitterness. These are aspects of God. They are not from us. It's like an invitation to experience God.   Laura Dugger: (35:31 - 35:38) What are some other ways that this peace project has changed the way that you live your life from this point forward?   Kay Wyma: (35:39 - 37:30) You know, almost with a spirit of expectancy and wonder and being able to see so many things that you haven't seen before. It's like it goes from black and white to technicolor. When I was in college, I actually had the opportunity to travel into West Berlin. This was a long time ago before the wall came down because there was the wall between East Berlin and West Berlin. But in order to get to West Berlin, you had to travel through East Germany. And it was so strange because literally on the train and everyone says this that did that back in those days, it was like you would go from colors to black and white. Like it was gray. They're literally the landscaped was gray. And then you would go from that gray into West Berlin that was like all colors and crazy and vibrant.   And that's what I feel like this does. It takes the gray and it makes it, the colors just come out spectacularly. And I think it is because you're choosing to not just believe, but you're acting on the belief which changes something which because you can't do that on your own strength. And so you're getting to experience this very mysterious aspect of God where he says, come to me, I will give you peace. I will give you joy. And I'm going to add that during this period, we probably lived through some of the hardest stuff that we have ever lived through in our life, just with very old past hurt that came and revisited in an extreme way. And it's amazing to me how full our days were on some of the hardest days we've ever experienced simply because these practices allowed us to look beyond and to live in peace and joy that paved even the hardest path.   Laura Dugger: (37:31 - 37:52) Well, I think that points to our good God, even in his timing that he invited you into this and you were willing to step in. And like you've said, it wasn't just something he did to you, but he offered this for you. And even through a hard time, that was such a gift.   Kay Wyma: (37:53 - 39:32) Yeah, which I could never have known that we would even be living that hard time when we started doing this. And it was definitely something that was given to us because I wasn't looking for it. Again, like I said, I had a rotten attitude when all this started and yet he met me there. Somebody said to me, how brilliant that you did this. Like, you know, you did thankfulness, then kindness, then mercy. And I was like, I did not do this. Like, I didn't make this up. This is what literally happened that morning. And for whatever reason, our curiosity was piqued and it was piqued enough to go, hey, you want to try? And what would happen?   And this, the book is the story of us trying and it really is a 30-day experiment where I go through the 30 days of like us doing it as a group and even include the group with these alongside call outs to where even the ladies that were doing it with us. And it was ladies just because it's a ladies Bible study. It doesn't mean that it's a woman thing or a guy, you know, not a guy thing. The consistency of, I can't believe how this has set me free. I didn't know I was entering into these places like this. I can't believe how healthy my mind is. You know, and again, people, if you have any issues with depression or that are deep that you need to get help, get help, please. You know, there is help out there. There are people that are gifted to be able to walk alongside us through very, very challenging situations which we were getting help along the way too. These practices will invite peace into your day on any day. I mean, just try it. Of course, I would love for people to get the book, but more than anything, just try it. I mean, these things are for you as much as they are for me.   Laura Dugger: (39:33 - 39:39) And if someone is willing to give it a try, what suggestions do you have for them?   Kay Wyma: (39:39 - 41:53) Yeah, it's so funny because I think when we hear like, oh, I have to do something for 30 days. I don't know about you, but I'm like, I can't add one more thing to my plate. And then I'm like 30 days. So, the first thing is just do it. Like just try it. And this is not something that you are going to have to give up anything or that it's going to be some burden or that you're gonna be trudging through just a hard journey. It will instantly be a gift to you. That's it. I still struggle with my rotten attitude going, no, it's really stubbornness that I'll go, oh, I'm not doing it. And then I'll think, what is wrong with you? You really know how great this is.   When the Lord was asked, what would you say is the greatest commandment? He instantly said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind and love others as yourself for these sum up all the law and the prophets. That's a pretty big deal. And so why? Because it's so good for you because it gets our eyes off ourselves because it puts into action our effort to believe that what he says is true. The belief, I love you. I see you. I know you. You're safe. I'm provided for you. It's so powerful. I know that to be true.   One of the gals that was in our book club has an eight-year-old daughter that hilariously picked this book up because her mother was reading it. And she called it Kay's Peace Project. She does not know me. She was going into a soccer camp, you know, and it's hot. A little girl that's her friend was being mean to her every day. And so by the last day she was getting out of the car. And that week, you know, she didn't want to get out because she didn't want to deal with this friend of hers that was being mean to her. As she was getting out on Friday, she turned to her mom as she got out of the car and she said, you know, I picked up Kay's Peace Project last night. She had landed on a day about mercy. And she said, I read about mysterious mercy. And she said, it made me realize that something may be going on in her friend's life that she doesn't know. And so, she said, I've decided that that's probably why she's being mean to me. And so, I really want to be nice to her today because I don't know what it is that's going on in her life. Eight years old.   Laura Dugger: (41:54 - 42:07) Wow. And that is so powerful. How it has the power to work in all of us. And so, if somebody wants to grab their own copy of The Peace Project or if they want to find you online, Kay, where would you direct them?   Kay Wyma: (42:08 - 42:49) Well, to KayWyma.com or I do love Instagram, but I'm just telling you, it's set your expectations low, people. Because it is, anything I've got is for whoever would like to participate in it or alongside because I do love living life together. And I would love for anybody to join along in that on those platforms or even through the books. And it's just such a privilege. And I just can't thank you enough for having me on and for your listeners even giving me a few moments to even hear whatever is the Lord has put on my heart today. And please share what's on your hearts with the people that are next to you, too. It's worth it.   Laura Dugger: (42:50 - 43:04) Well, it's been a joy to host you. And you probably remember from last time, we are called The Savvy Sauce because savvy is synonymous with practical knowledge. And so, as my final question for you today, Kay, what is your savvy sauce?   Kay Wyma: (43:05 - 43:57) Okay. So, for this project is settled significance. And it is the idea to live in your settled significance. You don't have to get significance from anything around you even though the world would tell you that we need to like in whatever capacity is is like ask the question, where am I thinking I have to do this in order to be okay? Because that's this if then equation of the world. If you do this, then blah, blah, blah, blah. Settled significant operates off God's economy that says, because then, because I have declared you righteous, you are seen, you are known, you are whole, you are loved, you are enough, you belong. And to be able to live in those things, we fight for that right now. We really do. And we try to call out those things that are telling us otherwise.   Laura Dugger: (43:58 - 44:15) Well, Kay, thank you for fighting the good fight of faith and for sharing these practical ways to live out these biblical themes that really have eternal value of thankfulness and kindness and mercy. It has been a joy to host you as my guest.   Kay Wyma: (44:15 - 44:23) Oh, my gosh. You're so nice to host me. Thank you so much. And thank you for what you do. You're a huge encouragement to people every day. So, thank you.   Laura Dugger: (44:23 - 47:39) Thanks, Kay. One more thing before you go, have you heard the term gospel before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you, but it starts with the bad news.   Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves. This means there's absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death, and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved.   We need a savior, but God loved us so much. He made a way for his only son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute. This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with him.   That is good news. Jesus lived the perfect life. We could never live and died in our place for our sin.   This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus. We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished. If we choose to receive what he has done for us, Romans 10:9 says, “that if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”   So, you pray with me now. Heavenly father, thank you for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to you.   Will you clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare you as Lord of their life? We trust you to work and change lives now for eternity. In Jesus name we pray.   Amen. If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring him for me. So, me for him, you get the opportunity to live your life for him.   And at this podcast, we're called The Savvy Sauce for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So, you're ready to get started.   First, tell someone, say it out loud, get a Bible. The first day I made this decision, my parents took me to Barnes and Noble and let me choose my own Bible. I selected the Quest NIV Bible and I love it.   You can start by reading the book of John. Also get connected locally, which just means tell someone who's a part of a church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you.   We want to celebrate with you too. So, feel free to leave a comment for us here. If you did make a decision to follow Christ, we also have show notes included where you can read scripture that describes this process.   And finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, “in the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.   And if you've already received this good news, I pray you have someone to share it with. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.

David Booth is the founder and chairman of Dimensional Fund Advisors, one of the most influential investment firms in the world, managing more than $1 trillion in assets. Earlier in his career, David helped develop one of the world's first index funds and spent decades applying academic financial research—including ideas developed by his mentor, Nobel laureate Eugene Fama—to real-world investing. David is also a proud University of Kansas alum, earning degrees in economics and business from KU before earning his MBA from the University of Chicago. And his philanthropy has been extraordinary: the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business bears his name, as does David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium. In 2010, David and his wife Suzanne purchased James Naismith's original rules of basketball for $4.3 million and brought them home to KU—the story featured in my favorite documentary of all time ESPN's 30 for 30: There's No Place Like Home. In 2025, David made an additional $300 million gift to Kansas Athletics, continuing his remarkable support of KU. And most recently David wrote a book titled, Stay Calm: Learn to Embrace Uncertainty in Investing and Life. In this episode we discuss the following: When David found $15,000 in cash in his late parents' safe-deposit box, he wondered what it might have become had they invested it in the public markets instead. He calculated that if his father had invested the money after returning from World War II and simply earned the market return, it would have grown to more than $1 million over the next 40 years. That's the magic of compounding, and I love David's bigger point that our lives compound as well, from the things we learn, to the decisions we make, and the relationships we build. I love David's explanation for why he's optimistic about markets: people want to make their lives better. When something goes wrong, people adapt. They solve problems. They invent things. Companies find new ways to serve customers. And over time, that human ingenuity gets reflected in the market. As a stressed-out PhD student at the University of Chicago, David visited his grandparents, who lived in a tiny home that didn't even have indoor plumbing. Yet he looked around at his family laughing and enjoying themselves and thought: Maybe they've figured out something about life that I haven't. That realization helped him choose the career path that fit what he actually valued. Invest early, stay invested, and make sure you're invested in the right things. 

In this week's MBA Admissions podcast we began by discussing the beginning of the new application season. Cambridge / Judge is the first top MBA program with their Round 1 deadline, which was last week. This upcoming week, London Business School, Oxford / Said and Duke / Fuqua all have admissions deadlines. Graham highlighted Clear Admit's upcoming events. We plan to do a livestream event this Tuesday, to kick off the new admissions season. This event is for participants to ask any questions they have for their Round 1 strategy. Graham and Alex will be hosting, as usual. You can subscribe to Clear Admit's YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@ClearAdmitMBA Later in September, Clear Admit will also host several more webinar events featuring admissions professionals from all the top MBA programs. Signups for those events are here: https://www.clearadmit.com/events Graham highlighted a recently published deep-dive piece on Adcom's considerations regarding the use of AI in MBA admissions. Graham also noted admissions tips related to GMAT & GRE test waivers and video essays. Clear Admit also published a handy chart that highlights which top MBA programs allow for test waivers. Clear Admit continues its Adcom Q&A series. This week Graham notes a Q&A with Texas / McCombs. Graham also highlighted several podcast Q&As that continue to be released, including Q&As with Harvard, Fuqua, Booth and Stern. For this week, for the candidate profile review portion of the show, Alex selected two ApplyWire entries: This week's first MBA admissions candidate is planning to apply in 2028. They are a structural engineer and want to use the MBA to pivot to investment banking. This week's second MBA applicant is from India and has a master's in chemistry. They have a 645 GMAT score and we wonder if they should retake the test. This episode was recorded in Paris, France and Cornwall, England. It was produced and engineered by the fabulous Dennis Crowley in Philadelphia, USA. Thanks to all of you who've been joining us and please remember to rate and review this show wherever you listen!

Front Row Classics is pleased to welcome Juliet Prowse, niece to the legendary entertainer Juliet Prowse. Juliet has penned a wonderful tribute to her aunt called "Juliet Prowse: Born to Dance: The Extraordinary Life Story of My Aunt". Brandon and Juliet chat about her aunt's upbringing in South Africa and what led her to the US. The two also discuss her love of the dancer's life as well as her relationships with Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.   Juliet Prowse never intended on becoming an author, but when she spotted a little red suitcase in her parents' attic, full of articles about her famous aunt, the dancer/entertainer Juliet Prowse, she just wanted to tell this story. As a communications professional with a BSc and MBA, Juliet was used to writing, but to ensure the authenticity of her aunt's biography, Juliet researched extensively, reading 1000 letters/articles and interviewing many who worked with Juliet. Known as big Juliet and little Juliet in the Prowse household, little Juliet inherited her aunt's athleticism and became a South African runner. She lives in Cape Town where she is an avid theatregoer and sports lover. Juliet Prowse: Born to Dance was an Exclusive Books Recommends book in May 2025 and covered in South Africa: On radio: Cape Talk, Hot FM, Fine Music Radio - both Book Choice and Invitation to Dance, Radio Sonder Grense In print/online: Mail and Guardian, Financial Mail, Sarie, The Herald, Die Burger, IOL In the US, Juliet has featured on the podcasts: Forgotten Hollywood; Lights, Camera, Author!, The Author's Show with others forthcoming Juliet Prowse: Born to Dance is a love letter to her aunt.    

Catch up to your money. It’s often ready for retirement before you are. _________________________ What helps wellbeing endure as our lives change? Matt Bloom has spent much of his career studying human flourishing. In this conversation, he brings his insights into retirement and combines it with lessons from his own transition from professor to writer, volunteer and what he calls a “wise elder.” We discuss why wellbeing is built through small daily practices, how adopting a new identity can change your behavior, why many need to become more intentional about friendship after leaving work, and how volunteering and shared-interest communities can create both connection and meaning. Matt also explains how older adults can become “guardians and shepherds” of relationships and shares Map Your Days, a simple practice that takes five minutes a night and that, in 27 years of teaching MBAs and executives, he says has never failed to teach someone something they didn’t know about their own life. Matt Bloom joins us from Colorado. ________________________ Bio Matt Bloom is the author of Lasting Wellbeing: Science-Based Practices for Tranquility, Authenticity, Meaning, and Joy. He is a writer, speaker, entrepreneur, and emeritus professor of management at the University of Notre Dame. Bloom holds advanced degrees in psychology from Cornell University (PhD) and the University of Kansas (MA), and is an award-winning teacher who earned top honors for courses he taught to undergraduates, MBA students, and corporate executives. At Notre Dame, Matt taught classes on innovation and design thinking, organizational change and leadership. As a professor in the Mendoza College of Business, Matt studied well-being for nearly three decades where he led the WorkWell research project. Initially, he and his team of ten researchers  focused on the well-being of people in the helping and healing professions: international aid workers, global health professionals, educators, clergy and ministry workers, physicians, and other healthcare professionals, among others. He later broadened his focus to include both well-being at work and in life more generally.  The team also launched a first-of-its-kind mobile application to capture daily experiences from several hundred research subjects. Prior to becoming a professor, Matt was a financial advisor at Shearson Lehman Hutton, a consultant at Arthur Young, a psychiatric orderly at The Kansas Institute, and a paramedic for the Douglas County (KS) Emergency Medical Service. Some of Matt’s favorite wise well-being practices: Extended backcountry hiking (5+ days). And, yes, there are no showers or bathrooms Baking hearth bread using natural leavens, mild sourdough starters Scuba diving on coral reefs and wrecks in the Caribbean Catch-and-release fly fishing on small mountain streams Poetry reading using a process he adapted from lectio divina Reading novels. Among his favorite authors are Marilynne Robinson, Richard Ford, Richard Rosso and Abraham Verghese _________________________ For More on Matt Bloom Lasting Wellbeing: Science-Based Practices for Tranquility, Authenticity, Meaning, and Joy Website Ritual app: Download for iOS or Android, or start at ritual.io. _________________________ More Retirement Podcast Conversations You’ll Love How to Flourish…in Retirement – Daniel Coyle Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You – Teresa Amabile The Good Life – Marc Schulz, PhD _________________________ Wise Quotes On the Value of Small Steps “Our wellbeing rises and falls mostly as a result of little things that we do day by day…We live our values mostly in the little things that we do.” On Relationships “Quality matters more than quantity.” On Elderhood “We can really be the guardians and shepherds of family relationships.” _______________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You'll get smarter about the investment decisions you'll make about the most important asset you'll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren't quite done yet, discover what's next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn't just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how the Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one — on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host Joe Casey is an executive coach who helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Joe has earned Master's degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University. In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 2 million downloads. Business Insider recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He's the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. _________________________

Medically assisted suicide is now legally available in New York state. New York's Medical Aid in Dying Act — which allows terminally ill patients with fewer than six months to live to end their lives — took effect Aug. 5. An upcoming forum explores the nuances, complexities, and "deeply human experiences" involved in the choice. We discuss those subjects with our guests: Alida Merrill, BSN, MPH, MSMFT, hospice nurse and adjunct professor at the School of Nursing at St. John Fisher University Jennifer Sanfilippo, MBA, end-of-life doula Mandi Zucker, executive director of End of Life Choices New York ---Connections is supported by listeners like you. Head to our donation page to become a WXXI member today, support the show, and help us close the gap created by the rescission of federal funding.---Connections airs every weekday from noon-2 p.m. Join the conversation with questions or comments by phone at 1-844-295-TALK (8255) or 585-263-9994, email, Facebook or Twitter. Connections is also livestreamed on the WXXI News YouTube channel each day. You can watch live or access previous episodes here.---Do you have a story that needs to be shared? Pitch your story to Connections.

Denis O'Shea, Founder of Mobile Mentor, helps organizations pursue a clear goal to simplify your tech environment while strengthening security and empowering employees to remain productive. Driven by the joy of learning and intellectual adventure, Denis left a 15-year career at Nokia to build a company that learns about emerging technologies, translates them into business outcomes, and mentors customers through change. In this conversation, Denis introduces The Tech Stack Streamlining Framework: Understand Current Tech Stack, Assess Capacity for Change, Benchmark to Peers, Build the Roadmap, and Deliver Simplified Tech Stack. He explains how immersing his team in a customer's environment, asking thoughtful questions, and benchmarking the organization against its peers can reveal a clear path toward a simpler technology stack. Denis also discusses Mobile Mentor's fast-growing mentoring service, how its Microsoft partnership transformed the business, the challenge of finding technology professionals who are natural mentors, and why people must remain responsible for the quality and accuracy of everything they produce with AI. — Simplify Your Tech Environment with Denis O’Shea  Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, Management Blueprint Podcast. And today my guest is Denis O’Shea, the Founder of Mobile Mentor, a technology service provider helping thousands of clients find and maintain the right balance, securing devices, protecting data, and empowering people to be productive. Mobile Mentor is also a five-time Microsoft award winner. So Denis, welcome back to the show.  Thank you, Steve. Thank you for having me back. And I have to say, you look fantastic. You’re aging gracefully, and I hope I’m doing the same.  Well, unfortunately, my barber is on vacation, so I couldn’t visit him last week. But it’s great to have you back on the show, and we couldn’t agree whether it was two or four years ago that you were here. Anyhow, it’s great to have you back, and I’ve got some questions for you that I’m curious about. And first and foremost, the question is, what is your personal Why, and how are you manifesting it in your Mobile Mentor business?  My personal Why is probably learning. And I think the reason I went into business in the first place was to learn and grow as an individual. It certainly wasn’t money. I expect money as an outcome from the process, but I didn’t go into it for money. It was really to learn, and the trigger for me was I did an executive education program in Switzerland. I was living there for a few years, and that blew my mind. That just exploded my mind when I started learning all about mergers, acquisitions, turnarounds, management buyouts, all these different ways of growing a business that were nonlinear.  And that motivated me to go on and do an MBA, and that then motivated me to leave my employer, who was a great company. I was working for Nokia for 15 years. They were amazing, but I decided to leave them and go out and embrace all this nonlinear stuff and found a company from scratch. And one day I thought maybe I’ll do a spin-out, or maybe I’ll do an acquisition, and I’ll do all these different things. And it was purely for the joy of learning and the intellectual adventure. So I think that’s my Why. It’s learning.  Yeah. Well, learning is great, and it’s a big driver of businesses when they are able to learn, especially in today’s age. So tell me a little bit about how Mobile Mentor is reflecting this way of learning. Is it a learning organization, and in what way is it?  Oh, that’s an interesting question, Steve. I would hope we are a learning organization. Something I’ve been saying to my kids and my staff for years is, “We’re a learning species. We can learn anything we put our minds to.” And so I would hope we are a learning organization. And the word “mentor” plays a huge part in not just our brand, but how we work. So we’re a technology service company. We’re always unpacking the latest technology and helping customers figure out what to do with it and how to extract value from it.  So I would hope that we’re good at learning what the technology can do and then translating that into outcomes for customers and helping people unlock the full potential of the technology they’ve just purchased. And when we started 22 years ago, we were focused on mobile devices. That’s why the company’s called Mobile Mentor. Nowadays, it’s mainly AI and security and all that. And by the way, we’re going through a rebrand. The company’s just going to be called Mentor going forward. Just Mentor. So that we can work with all technology, so we remove any association with that small device where we started 22 years ago. So I think we are very good at learning, internalizing the new technology, and then translating that into business outcomes for our customers.  Yeah.  That’s what I feel like our core skill is.  Yeah. And I love this concept of mentoring because essentially it’s not about teaching people, it’s about helping people discover how to be great. And if you can do that, that’s amazing. So that brings me to the next question, which is about frameworks. So this, as you know, this podcast is about frameworks, and what I’m curious about is, what’s a framework that has helped you grow this company, build this company, or help your clients or mentor your clients? Maybe it’s a mentoring framework. Maybe it’s a technology framework. So something that comes to mind that can be explained in three to five steps to our listeners.  Sure. We have a really strong framework at the front end of our sales process. It’s an assessment and roadmap we do for customers. And it’s something that’s on our website. It has a price point, so it’s got a value, but we choose to give it away for free when we get a strong, well-qualified opportunity, or when we have a channel partner bring us a strong lead. We will use this assessment and roadmap process to build a vision for the customer. And the way we do it, we’ve got a good framework for this.  We go through an assessment. So we tell the customer, “We’re going to have a look at your environment holistically and get a really good understanding of the technology stack you have today, all the different technologies you’re using, and also get a good understanding of your organization’s capability and capacity for change, and how you embrace change, how you make change happen. “And we’re going to show you how you compare to a whole bunch of other organizations.” I think we’ve done 174, 175 of these in the last maybe three years. And so we show the customer how they compare to others in their industry and also against others roughly their same size. And then, most importantly, we build out a roadmap, and we show them, “Here’s how you can potentially go from where you are today with today’s technology stack,” which is usually very busy, it’s usually a long list of technologies, “to a much simpler technology stack in the future if they’re willing to consolidate on one or two platforms and do all the possible integrations, automations, and simplifications so that they’re extracting much more value from one or two platforms, like Microsoft, than having a whole colorful mix of different technology vendors.”  So we’ll say, “Here’s a journey you could go on,” and then we describe it in vivid detail, showing all the different parts and how they would go passwordless, how they would automate setting up new employees and all the technology they need, how they would automate all their patching and security, how they would embrace AI into their operations, how they would use AI for productivity improvements, and kind of show this technology journey. That process, or that framework, of doing an assessment, and it covers 120 different topics. So we do the assessment, the comparison, the roadmap.  We find that to be extremely powerful because customers will look at that, and they’ll look at the destination and say, “Right. We want to be there. We want to get that outcome,” and then they’re buying off us. We’re not selling to them. They’re basically saying, “Okay. We want to get there. How do we do it? Help us. How can you come in and help us do it?” So the narrative flips from us being a sales organization to then being a mentor and helping the customer figure out how to get there.  And of course, we want to sell services, and we want to sell long-term contracts to say, “Yes, we can take you from here to there, and it’s a three-year engagement to do all those changes.” So that’s what we want. But the customer is buying it off us because they’ve bought into the destination.  Yeah. And that’s the modern buyer’s journey, right? They research you. Before even they come to you, they want to listen to you because you might have something for them. So I love this framework. So what I noted down was step number one, understand the technology stack that they have. Step number two, assess their ability to manage change or to handle change.  Yeah.  Then you benchmark them to others in their industry or in their peer group. Then you build the roadmap, and then you show them the simplified end state, the simplified tech stack.  Correct. Correct. And then we give them options around how we can help them to get there. Usually, there’s three options. And we say, “Well, what style of engagement works best for you? How would you like us to work with you?” And then it becomes a very comfortable, easy sales process from there, and it becomes easy because we’ve done all the listening.  So when we do the assessment and we cover 120 topics, we do 60 questions in 60 minutes. So it’s two one-hour sessions. And we call it our “friendly interrogation.” But what happens during that time is what I call a selfless immersion in the customer’s world. So we don’t talk about us. We never talk about us. Everything is about them, their technology stack, their environment, their processes, their technical dependencies, all the things about their organization.  So we get this really rich understanding of their environment. And at the end, guess what they say, Steve? Or guess what they say at the end of that interrogation or that assessment session?  I don’t know. Give it to us. What do they say?  They say thank you, which is extraordinary, and it surprised me when it started happening. But people love to be heard. We’re not selling. We’re not pitching anything. We are just seeking to understand their environment and asking a whole bunch of really good questions. So we don’t need to tell them who we are and what we’ve done, that we’ve won Microsoft Partner of the Year and blah, blah, blah. We don’t need to do any of that.  They know that we know our stuff because of the questions we’re asking, because those questions have been refined and refined and refined. So we’re able to get right into the heart of their issues, and they tell us all about their environment and their issues and concerns and frustrations. And at the end of the assessment, they say, “Thank you.” And I remind them, I say, “We haven’t delivered anything yet. All we’ve done is asked you a whole bunch of questions.” But they feel like it was almost a cathartic process of unloading and sharing all of it. And then we do the second session, and the rapport gets even better, and they bring in some different people.  So by the time we get to the end of the assessment, we’ve had a really good conversation about 120 different things. There’s now a high degree of trust. And so when we come back in the third session, we say, “Okay, we heard you. Here’s where you are. Here’s how you compare to others. Here’s where you could be, and here’s what the journey would look like to get you there, taking all the complexities into account, all the dependencies, all the legacy, all the technical debt you might have. “Here’s what it would take to get you to where you want to be.” They’re now listening and they’re trusting us because we’ve listened to them.  Yeah. I love that. That is very powerful. And asking good questions is actually not always easy. In the age of AI, answers are omnipresent, but good questions, good prompts, that’s a skill, right? To ask the right question.  It is. And it’s interesting you mention AI because we’re not using any AI in the way we do this. We could choose to send out a form to the customer and say, “Please fill out this form.” Actually, we tried that. We tried that 10 or 12 years ago in our New Zealand operation, and it was a complete disaster. Nobody wants to fill out a long form and answer all those questions. But if you have a conversation face-to-face, on Teams or Zoom, whatever, you can have the conversation. You’ll get all the information.  But now we’re establishing rapport between us while we do that, and that also gives them a flavor of what it’s like to work with us. How we interact and how we follow up the question, how we drill down, how we clarify and confirm, “Did I understand that correctly?” in a way that you don’t get from just filling out a web form. And we also don’t use AI to analyze the transcript and try and fill it out. We actually do it based on us understanding it, because we find we get way more detail and nuance than relying on a transcript.  That’s very interesting. Definitely, when there’s a human on the other end who is interested in what you’re saying and is listening deeply, it’s a highly motivating and even inspiring thing. That’s why it’s hard to make a talk without the audience, because you need the energy of the audience. So you provide the energy for them to come up with the goods and explain where they are, right?  Yeah, yeah. So let me switch gears and ask you this. What drives growth in your business?  What drives growth? Two things. One, that process sets us up to be able to sell something. The fastest-growing thing that we sell is a service called mentoring, which is very closely aligned to our brand and the way we work, and it’s something that’s very unique to us. So what we figured out is that there are some customers who just want to bring in a partner to build something for them let’s say to deploy some new technology, and then they want the vendor to go away and leave them with it. There are other organizations who don’t want to touch the technology. They want somebody to provide a managed service, so you get all the outcomes.  And those two technology service categories have been around forever, right? Microsoft has 400,000 partners doing this kind of work, doing project work, or providing managed services. We found a huge white space in the middle between those two. We found there’s a big white space in the mid-market, in particular mid-market organizations, where they have their own IT team. They don’t want to give the keys away to a managed service provider and let go. They want to learn all about the new technology.  They want to internalize the knowledge, and they want somebody to come in and help them deploy it with them, and be hands-on-keyboard, and do it together with them, and do lots of knowledge transfer, and help them build the documentation and the knowledge base, and get the experience and the skills so that their skills grow, their confidence grows. And we call that service mentoring, where we’re doing that for them. So we’re not just building it and walking away, we’re building it together with them. And it can be a one-year, two-year, five-year engagement where we’re building out this complex technology capability, but we’re doing it together, and they become the experts over time. That is our fastest-growing, top-selling service.  That’s fascinating. So it’s essentially coaching, mentoring, and still you turn it into an ongoing engagement because it’s not simple, right? There are a lot of layers to it. And what’s the timeline of such a relationship?  Typically three years. Typically. It can be as short as one, it can be as long as five. But for most of the technology transformation projects we’re doing, I would say they’re two, three, four years for the organization to change and embed all the changes and turn off all the legacy technology and fully embrace the new way of working. So our typical contract is three years. And then we set up all the cadences so that we’re working together every week through specific things, and there’s a weekly cadence, our engineers doing all that stuff, and then monthly coming up for air to see how we’re doing against the roadmap. Do we need to make any changes? What’s the focus for next month? And that’s a rolling process that keeps going on and on. And so the two teams end up working extremely closely.  Our engineering team, and we’re bringing in different architects, engineers, and there’s obviously a consistent project manager across it. And on the customer side, they’re bringing different engineers or architects depending on the piece of work we’re doing. But it’s generally all modernizing the way they work with Microsoft technology primarily, and changing from legacy stuff to very modern, invisible security, embedded AI, really trying to accelerate their maturity as an organization.  Yeah. Love it.  Does that make sense?  So it makes sense. I’m wondering, I mean, most businesses these days, they want to have recurring revenue, and even though you have a three-year engagement, it’s still not an evergreen engagement. So what do you do to turn these engagements into more of an enduring one, or you’re not trying to do it because it’s not the purpose?  That’s the $64 million question for our business, Steve, is how do we turn a two-year or three-year engagement into something longer? And it actually comes back to where you started with the learning thing. So what we need to be doing, and this is a constant battle for us, is learning about the latest and the newest technologies and staying ahead of the customer. Always staying ahead in terms of our knowledge so that we can keep adding new things to the backlog of work that needs to be done.  So that we might deploy technology A and get that done and do the migration and modernization, but then we need to move on to B and C and D and E. And there’s always new stuff, and actually the rate of change is accelerating now with AI. Everything is changing so fast, it’s unbelievable. But our job is to stay ahead so that we can always have something new and edgy that we can bring to the relationship. That we’re always able to give new knowledge, information, value.  So is it a managed technology business or is it more of a consulting business?  Ah, we are three different things. We do a lot of project work where people will come in and say, “Migrate us from platform A to platform B.” So we do that. We do this mentoring service where we’re doing the change and modernization together with the customer. We’re also a managed service provider. We have a lot of small and medium businesses that say, “We don’t have an IT team. We don’t want to have an IT team. Manage this stuff, make it invisible to us. Just give us great service and give us great reports and be transparent with us.” And that’s part of our business too.  So I would say we’re roughly one-third professional services, project work, one-third mentoring, and one-third managed services. So more than half the business is recurring revenue in any given year.  So what makes this kind of business hard to scale, or what makes it easy to scale?  What makes it hard to scale is finding great people who can learn and share that learning with customers, so people who are natural mentors. So what we do not want is to hire geeks who want to just put on noise-canceling headsets and sit in front of a screen coding all day. They would not work for us. We want people who are head up, good people skills, want to learn it, but want to share it. Naturally very good at sharing. So getting the right people, that’s one constraint to growth. The thing that makes growth easy for us is our relationship with Microsoft. That’s unbelievable.  We didn’t have a relationship with Microsoft 11 years ago, and they came to us and asked us to become a partner, and we did. And they asked us to work with them on a specific technology that was very immature at the time. And I set a goal for our team. I said, “What would it take us to become the best in the world at that one specific technology? To become the best in the world on that technology as it matures and grows?” And we set that as our North Star and really went after that and focused everything on that.  And that enabled us then to win Microsoft Global Partner of the Year based on our focus on that. And by winning that award, that got us noticed because they got 400,000 partners. So at the time, I was based in New Zealand, so basically the second-last rock before the end of the earth. And so we were nobody in a nowhere place and not noticed, and we’re just one of 400,000, completely lost in the noise. We got noticed when we won Global Partner of the Year and when we got recognized for being the best in the world at that one technology, and that changed everything, and I moved to America.  Then Microsoft introduced us to a whole bunch of customers, including the largest healthcare organization in the world, the largest education provider in the world, and largest government departments. And so now our business is totally different to what it looked like 11 years ago before Microsoft. And this goes on and on. So almost every day, they contact us to say, “Hey, we got this customer over here, and they got this problem, and we thought of you.” And then they introduce us, and we do our assessment, show them how they compare, build a roadmap, and say, “What would you like to do from here?”  Yeah. I’m just very curious about what is that technology, and what is the ideal customer for you for that technology? That technology is a platform called Intune. It’s a device management platform, so it’s for managing desktops, laptops, MacBooks, smartphones, tablets, and all that. And everything we do, of course, starts with a device. And so it’s the technology that secures and manages and configures our devices. Microsoft Intune is the name of the product, and that’s where we’ve got very, very deep expertise. But that leads us to all the other parts of the Microsoft 365 environment, and most organizations are using Microsoft 365 to some extent.  So in most cases, they’re coming to us and saying, “Hey, this customer has bought our licenses. They’ve got Microsoft 365 E5 or E3, whatever. They’re not using it all. They’ve got all these overlapping competitive products. They want to consolidate, reduce costs, or they want to improve security, or they want to simplify their environment. Can you help?” And we’re like, “Hell yeah, we can help. That’s right in our wheelhouse.” And so we have a discovery call with the customer. They tell us what they want to achieve, and if they’re a good fit for our assessment and roadmap, then we’ll propose that. So we’re not trying to sell anything at that stage, and we’ll do that.  It’s many, many hours of work. We’ll do that roadmap and assessment at our cost. Sorry, that’s our investment. That’s our investment in the relationship, so that we’re showing that we’re giving value back to the customer and to Microsoft because they brought us that lead, and we’re creating value from day one. And sometimes the customer will go, “Thank you. We understand the journey. We’re going to do it ourselves,” or, “We’ve got an existing partner,” or, “We don’t have budget,” whatever. And so we don’t land them all, but we’ve got a very high conversion rate. We land a lot of them.  And even if we don’t, I know that we deliver a huge amount of value through the process, and the customer goes, “Wow, that was great. That was a great process. We learned a lot. We can see where we need to go. We might be back in touch in the future when we do have budget or when the stars align.”  Or they refer someone else.  Yeah.  So if you had a magic wand and you could fix one thing in your business in the next 12 months, what would that be?  I would say it would be doing more with AI internally. Some days I feel like an imposter because we are selling a lot of AI services, and we do a lot of AI work for our customers. But I, as the leader, I don’t do enough. I’m not doing enough with AI. I’m not building enough capability. I’m leading the charge, but I’m not savvy enough myself. And I feel like our leadership team could be doing more. So I feel like doing more, embedding more AI into how we work, is something I want to change or fix in the next year. Not just doing it for customers.  Yeah. I mean, you can never do enough with AI, right? There’s so much out there and so much changing, and to stay ahead of it, one’s head is spinning all the time. It’s very inspiring, but can be also overwhelming.  That’s true. And one of the things I’m dealing with is managing what we call AI slop, where we see people internally and externally producing things that are not good-quality outcomes because it hasn’t been double-checked. So just because it could be produced quickly and easily by AI doesn’t mean it’s great or specific enough or detailed enough or accurate enough for the result, whether that’s an internal report or an external thing.  So the coaching I’m giving people is you’re still responsible for the thing, the quality of the thing. You have to read it, make sure it’s on point, it’s detailed enough, the customer’s going to be happy with it or your manager’s going to be happy with it. We are still responsible for the thing we produce. Let’s not get lazy.  Yeah. And the more content you generate and the more solutions you generate with AI, the more the mental load on the decision-makers to actually filter out what’s not real and what’s real.  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  Yeah. I can see that happening. So if someone is listening to this and says, “Wow, I love this idea that you benchmark me, you figure out what our tech is, learn our tech, benchmark us, come up with a roadmap, and evaluate the organization, how fast we can manage change, and then come up with a roadmap and mentor us to get there and simplify our tech stack,” and would like to learn more and perhaps connect with you, where should they go? Where can they find out more information?  I’m on LinkedIn only. I’m not on other social platforms. I’m a bit of a Neanderthal in that regard. But Denis, with one N and O’Shea, O-S-H-E-A, on LinkedIn, and my company is Mobile Mentor. It will be Mentor soon, but we’ll keep the Mobile Mentor alive for quite a while. And so go to the company, mobile-mentor.com. And yeah, love to talk to any of your listeners and audience if this is a technology journey they want to go on or want a partner to work with them. That’s the role we play, being a mentor and helping people get the outcomes, but internalizing it and becoming experts while doing so.  Yeah. So if you want to filter out the AI slop and the AI noise, and you want real people who will look at your specific situations and help you and mentor you and help your staff get up to speed and simplify, then reach out to Denis. And if you enjoyed this conversation, stay tuned because every week I bring a couple of entrepreneurs who are sharing their frameworks of how they’re improving and growing their businesses, and you can implement some of these things yourself.  So thanks, Denis. Denis O’Shea, the founder and CEO of Mobile Mentor, soon to be called Mentor. Thanks for coming on the show, and thank you for listening. Thank you, Steve. Always a pleasure. Important Links: Denis's LinkedIn Denis's website

Aman Advani is Founder and CEO of Ministry of Supply, a clothing brand using science to make the world's most comfortable clothing. The company was founded in 2012 with the mission to incorporate fundamental engineering and performance principles into clothing staples, ultimately building a wardrobe that both looks good, and feels comfortable.Prior to co-founding Ministry of Supply, Advani spent 4 years in management and non-profit consulting with Deloitte and TechnoServe. He holds a BSIE from Georgia Tech, and half an MBA from MIT, was a member of Forbes 30 under 30 list and BBJ's 40 Under 40 list, and has been featured as the cover of both ASB and Boston Magazine. Most recently, Aman was named to the NRF's 2023 "List of People Shaping Retail."In This Conversation We Discuss:[00:00] Introduction[01:58] First reactions to AI tools and Lovable[05:04] Co-founder's non-technical background[07:39] Sponsor: Klaviyo[09:45] Using Claude for CRO and analytics[13:07] Sponsor: IntelliGems[15:16] Build vs buy for AI customer service[19:12] How much human oversight remains[20:17] Sponsor: eFulfillment Service[22:04] More efficiencies from AI tools[24:22] Building an internal production system[27:05] Why AI makes agencies more valuable[29:42] Callouts[29:52] Getting teams comfortable taking the demo[32:08] Testing fast without overthinkingResources:Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on YoutubeMachine Washable Everything ministryofsupply.com/pages/home-2  Follow Aman Advani linkedin.com/in/amanadvani Book a demo today a intelligems.io/ Get your free demo klaviyo.com/honest Lower scale costs today eFulfillmentService.com/honest If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

This episode is sponsored by Boehringer Ingelheim. In this episode, Natalie Marks, DVM, CVJ, CCFP, Elite FFCP-V, joins host Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, to talk through what clients are really worried about when it comes to vaccinations, what the safety evidence supports, and more. Plus, she also makes the case for rethinking how practices frame vaccine visits altogether—and shares the one tool she would put in every exam room.

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, Amy Lafko, the leader in people management, returns to the Private Practice Survival Guide podcast to tackle the often-challenging topic of difficult conversations. She provides invaluable insights into addressing performance issues while strengthening workplace relationships. Amy shares her unique framework for transforming conflict into an opportunity for connection, emphasizing the power of mindset, genuine curiosity, and active listening. Discover how to move beyond transactional interactions to foster an environment of growth and mutual understanding. This discussion is a must-listen for leaders and managers looking to navigate tough talks with confidence and build more resilient teams. Learn strategies for effective feedback, understanding employee transitions, and the importance of transparent communication in performance management.What You'll Learn:How to reframe conflict as an opportunity to build relationships.The importance of genuine curiosity and asking powerful open-ended questions.Utilizing the 'E+R=O' framework for clear communication and desired outcomes.Strategies to challenge automatic negative thoughts and assumptions.The distinction between coaching and termination, and how to approach each.Why transparent communication and clear expectations are crucial for performance management.Common mistakes leaders make when giving feedback and how to avoid them.The 'people-first' approach to performance discussions, focusing on shared goals and solutions.Join us as Amy Lafko shares her expertise on fostering productive and respectful workplace dialogues.#DifficultConversations #LeadershipSkills #PerformanceManagement #WorkplaceCommunication #AmyLafkoAmy Lafko is a leadership and organizational design expert, mainstage speaker, author, and facilitator. Known for her “People First” method, she brings a step-by-step process to put employee engagement and empowerment into practice. Having spent 20+ years in healthcare leadership roles, her work is inspired by her personal transformation as a leader. That inspiration and her energy is multiplied every time she assists someone with their own shift in mindset and intentions.Her book, People First: A Proven Method for an Exceptional Healthcare Practice was an Amazon bestselling new release. In addition to founding Cairn Consulting Solutions, LLC and being certified in TTI Success Insights DISC, Driving Forces and Emotional Intelligence, Amy has earned her MSPT from Ithaca College, her MBA from Loyola University of MD.https://cairncs.com/https://www.facebook.com/amy.lafko1https://www.instagram.com/amy.lafko/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd9wuEYF1vSuoD57cq-I57wWelcome to Private Practice Survival Guide Podcast hosted by Brandon Seigel! Brandon Seigel, President of Wellness Works Management Partners, is an internationally known private practice consultant with over fifteen years of executive leadership experience. Seigel's book "The Private Practice Survival Guide" takes private practice entrepreneurs on a journey to unlocking key strategies for surviving―and thriving―in today's business environment. Now Brandon Seigel goes beyond the book and brings the same great tips, tricks, and anecdotes to improve your private practice in this companion podcast. Get In Touch With MePodcast Website: https://www.privatepracticesurvivalguide.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonseigel/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandonseigel/https://wellnessworksmedicalbilling.com/Private Practice Survival Guide BookThis show is proudly produced at PS Studios — learn more https://www.psstudios.co

Parish renewal can look very different when you're no longer talking about it from a diocesan office—but actually living it as a pastor and parish leader. In Episode 231, Ron Huntley sits down with Fr. Peter Wojcik and Marco Oropeza talk about what they have learned through years of pastoral renewal at St. Clement Parish in Chicago—and why those lessons eventually led them to launch Magnified Ministries. If you're a pastor or parish leader wondering how to move from ideas about renewal into the lived reality of parish transformation, this conversation is for you. And if you're ready to take an honest look at your own parish, take the Parish Missional Health Assessment at huntleyleadership.com. In this episode, you'll learn: – Why renewal leaders need to experience transformation themselves, not simply teach a strategy to others. – Why parish transformation moves much more slowly than a strategic plan might suggest, and why that slowness can be valuable. – How listening to a parish community can become the starting point for vision, strategy, and engagement. – How pastors and parish councils can work together without confusing their different responsibilities and authority. – How to create meaningful connection and belonging as a parish grows larger, including the use of smaller communities and trained leaders who listen rather than simply promote programs. – Why parish renewal requires identifying, forming, and releasing lay leaders rather than relying on the pastor to carry every ministry. – Why pastors shouldn't assume they have to build renewal alone. About Fr. Peter Wojcik Fr. Peter Wojcik is pastor of Saint Clement Parish and Pastoral Strategy Leader for the Archdiocese of Chicago. He teaches negotiation and change management at the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University and serves on the board of Alpha USA and the Vatican's Centesimus Annus pro Pontifice Foundation. Born in Lublin, Poland, Fr. Peter came to Chicago in 2003 for graduate studies at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake. He was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago in 2008 and later served with the Renew My Church initiative, helping lead parish spiritual renewal efforts. His academic background includes human behaviour and philosophy, an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, an MA in Theology, and post-master certifications in medical ethics, spirituality, and preaching. About Marco Oropeza Marco is a Partner with Aberdeen Advisors where he works closely with CEOs and senior leadership teams on large scale technology enabled transformations. Before joining Aberdeen, Marco was the Chief Program Management Officer for the Archdiocese of Chicago and a Project Leader with The Boston Consulting Group. Marco holds an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and a BBA from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. He and his wife Christina have 3 children and reside in Chicago. He is a co-founder of Magnified Ministries.​ Links St. Clement Parish: https://www.clement.org Fr. Peter on Instagram & Facebook: @chicagopriest St. Clement Parish YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3DpoPMWpWT98bkaGmIoAyg Mentioned Resource Magnified Ministries — a ministry founded by Fr. Peter and Marco to share practical lessons, stories, and approaches for engaging the next generation and helping church leaders learn from what has worked—and what hasn't—in parish life. Visit https://www.magnified-ministries.org/ Take the Parish Missional Health Assessment:  https://huntleyleadership.com ___ Be the first to get updates on our new course by signing up for our newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/huntleyleadership/newsletter-sign-up ___ You can also listen to the podcast weekly on Spotify and Apple Podcasts! Listen on Spotify ⇥ https://spoti.fi/3PYXGa6  Listen on Apple ⇥ https://apple.co/3vjltcS Subscribe on YouTube ⇥  @huntleyleadership    ___ Connect with Huntley Leadership! Connect on LinkedIn ⇥   / huntleyleadership   Follow on Twitter ⇥   / ron_huntley   Follow on Instagram ⇥   / huntleyleadership   Follow on Facebook ⇥   / huntleyleadership   Subscribe to this YouTube channel ⇥  @huntleyleadership   ___

In our latest episode, we break down the biggest findings from Reveleer's  "The State of Technology in Value-Based Care 2026," a report based on a survey of 200 senior payer and provider executives. During this 26-minute discussion, Reveleer President and CEO Jay Ackerman weighs in on the growing gap between fast AI adoption and slow accountability. He shares what payers and providers can do now to improve governance, data confidence, and audit readiness before pressure peaks. About Jay AckermanJay Ackerman is chief executive officer and president of Reveleer, where he directs the company's vision, strategy, and growth across risk adjustment, quality improvement, and clinical intelligence. He has spent more than 30  years in health care technology leadership, including prior roles as chief revenue officer at Guidance Software and senior positions at ServiceSource and WNS. He holds an MBA from NYU's Stern School of Business and a bachelor's degree in economics from Connecticut College.About ReveleerReveleer, a health care software and services company, uses machine learning and intelligent automation technology to empower health plans control over their quality improvement, risk adjustment, and member management programs. With one transformative solution, Reveleer allows plans to independently execute and manage provider outreach and data retrieval, coding, abstraction, member management, and reporting. Reveleer leverages proprietary technology, robust data sets, and subject matter expertise, so health plans can execute programs that deliver value and improved outcomes.About the reportThe 2026 State of Technology in Value-Based Care report is based on a national online survey of 200 U.S.-based senior decision-makers at value-based care organizations.Reveleer collaborated with Mathematica, a policy data and analytics company, to analyze the findings. The report identifies a widening accountability gap across value-based care operations. Organizations are deploying more technology than ever before, but many still rely on manual workflows, lack confidence in their data, and lack the processes needed to validate AI-driven outputs. The findings reveal how far adoption has outpaced the governance and operational discipline required to support it. Click here to download the report. For additional insights, listen to the Reveleer-RISE webinar, AI Governance, Audit Readiness, and the Defensibility Standard in Value-Based Care.

In this episode of BioTalk with Rich Bendis, Tammi Thomas, President of TEDCO, joins the conversation to discuss how Maryland is helping entrepreneurs move ideas from research and concept to market. Tammi shares how TEDCO has evolved from an early-stage funding organization into a broader partner for Maryland startups, supporting companies through capital, federal funding navigation, technical assistance, ecosystem connections, and venture development. The conversation touches on what makes Maryland's innovation ecosystem different, from federal labs and research universities to technical talent, founder grit, and quality of life. Tammi and Rich also discuss why helping companies stay and scale in Maryland requires more than writing a check. Tammi highlights several TEDCO programs and initiatives, including SBIR/STTR support, the Entrepreneur Expo, the Equitech Growth Fund, the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund, and the Maryland Makerspace Initiative. The episode closes with a look at Maryland's next opportunity: connecting these individual assets into a more seamless path for founders, so companies can move from feasibility to prototype, federal funding, venture capital, and commercialization without leaving the state. Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant. Tammi Thomas is President of TEDCO, Maryland's $200M+ AUM, with another $50M being managed under a strategic partnership, $2.7B impact, economic engine for technology and life sciences companies. In this role, she serves as the primary internal leader of TEDCO, working closely with the CEO to execute priorities and translate the CEO's vision across departments while ensuring alignment, accountability, overall performance, and company-wide commitment to transparent reporting. She is responsible for the overall strategic direction, leadership, execution and management of TEDCO's fundraising strategies designed to broaden awareness of and expand philanthropic, corporate and investor resources for TEDCO and its various programs. Tammi leads TEDCO's efforts to secure additional fiscal resources from the State of Maryland, federal and philanthropic grants, and venture capital investments. Since 2020, TEDCO has increased its revenues from the State by more than 50%, has been the recipient of over $75M in federal grants, increased its AUM by over 33%, secured over $55M in foreign direct investments and created over a $500K philanthropic pipeline. Additionally, Tammi leads TEDCO's investor and stakeholder engagement strategy through relationship building, compelling brand storytelling, and convening high-impact events, including TEDCO's  annual Entrepreneur Expo, which draws over 1,000 entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, legislators, and ecosystem leaders under one roof. Her leadership and knowledge are instrumental in forging relationships that will enable TEDCO to expand its reach and services, diversify funding streams, and grow the innovation ecosystem, as well as establish TEDCO as the most recognized organization in Maryland for identifying, investing in, and growing technology and life sciences-based businesses. Tammi is also a key decision maker in the organization's investment decisions through her role on the fund allocation team, allocating over $25-30M per year. Her experience includes executive leadership roles such as serving as the former Chief Development & Marketing Officer and now President of TEDCO, Vice President of Strategic Management at Data Solutions & Technology Inc., and Director of Business Development and Marketing at University of Maryland, Baltimore County Research Park & Business Incubator. In addition to her corporate and economic development leadership experience, Tammi's professional expertise was sought after, to teach the next generation of communicators as an adjunct professor at Bowie State University and the University of Baltimore. She is also a frequent speaker and published thought leader on leadership, entrepreneurship, and business development. Tammi has been recognized by her industry peers for excellence in communication, marketing and development. She has received the Maryland Economic Development Association's Marketing award for TEDCO's Entrepreneur Expo (2020), the Cybersecurity Association of Maryland's 2017 Cybersecurity Industry Resource Award, the AMA Baltimore's MX Award for Best Print Advertisement Campaign of the Year (2022 and 2023), named one of The Daily Record's Top 100 Women in Maryland (2023 ), received a Distinguished Women Award from the Girl Scouts of Central Maryland (2024), named one of I-95 Business Magazine's 2025 Influential Women, was chosen as a Waves of Change Impact Award honoree (2025) and most recently was selected as one of Maryland's Top 100 Women for a second time (2026). She graduated from Leadership Maryland's Class of 2018, completing the eight-month hands-on learning program focused on the State's most vital social, economic and environmental issues. She serves on the World Trade Center Institute's CEO Council, Maryland Energy Innovation Institute Investment Committee, the Maryland Momentum Fund Advisory Board and MEDA Board of Directors, where she is currently serving as President. Tammi earned a bachelor's degree in marketing from Alabama State University and an MBA from the University of Baltimore.

Is eye appeal taking over the sports card hobby? Mack Cheli of Big Mack's Card Box joins me to talk about his collecting journey, why he learned to prioritize the card over the grade, and how the growing eye appeal movement is changing the way collectors buy vintage cards. We also dig into the expanding world of fourth-party grading and eye appeal designations, including the changing meaning of MBA's gold sticker, what these different designations actually tell collectors, and whether they're creating clarity or more confusion. Plus, Mack takes us through some incredible cards from his personal collection, including vintage legends, signed Hall of Fame rookies, an exceptionally well-centered 1984 Star Michael Jordan and more. Subscribe to Sports Cards Live on YouTube and follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. Check out The Hobby Spectrum at thehobbyspectrum.com. Discover cards across the hobby with AuctionWire at auctionwire.ai. Use promo code SCL for 60 days free. Research card values and market history with Card Ladder. Use promo code SCL. And check out my book, Pops and Comps: Truths, Insights, and Psychology Behind the Numbers that Drive the Sports Card Market, available on Amazon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Silos are the silent killer of customer experience — but for years we've only argued that from one side of the coin: the customer's. This episode flips it over. Colin and Ryan are joined by Dan O'Connell, CEO of Front, to look at silos from the side that actually moves a boardroom — the cost. Front's new research, the Coordination Tax, surveyed B2B customer service, operations, and account management leaders and uncovered a startling baseline: the typical company spends nearly three hours coordinating work for every one hour it spends actually solving a customer's problem. Worse, 42% of companies don't track coordination time at all. It's the single largest cost in most customer operations, and almost nobody is measuring it. Dan, Colin, and Ryan dig into why sophisticated software and AI have so far made the problem worse rather than better, why bolting AI onto broken processes just delivers "a bad job done faster," what the top 14% of companies do differently, and the practical steps any leader can take to start quantifying — and shrinking — their own coordination tax. What You'll Learn Why silos cost you twice: once in customer experience, and once in raw internal inefficiency you're probably not measuring The three-to-one coordination-to-solving ratio, and why "normal" is far more expensive than leaders assume Why more advanced platforms and AI have inherited the coordination gap and scaled it The human cost: how coordination burnout quietly drives your best people out the door What separates the top 14% of companies from everyone else Practical first moves — measuring coordination, aligning cross-functional incentives, documenting the real process, and starting small with AI Memorable Quote "Teams are working around broken systems. AI won't fix that. Until companies address the coordination gap, the problem won't go away." — Dan O'Connell, CEO, Front Resources Mentioned The Coordination Tax report is free to download at Front - Coordination Tax About the Guest Dan O'Connell is the CEO of Front, the customer operations platform built for B2B complexity. Before Front, Dan was the Chief Strategy & AI Officer at Dialpad, where he delivered the first set of generative AI features powered by Dialpad's proprietary large language model. Since joining as CEO in March 2024, Dan has repositioned Front from a shared inbox tool to a category-leading platform for complex customer operations, leading the company past $100M in ARR in September 2025. More than 9,300 businesses rely on Front, which has raised $204M in venture funding from Sequoia Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Battery Ventures, Threshold Ventures, and Uncork Capital, as well as executives from Atlassian, Okta, PagerDuty, Qualtrics, and Zoom. Prior to that, Dan was the CEO of TalkIQ, a real-time speech recognition and natural language processing start-up acquired by Dialpad. Dan has also held various sales leadership positions at AdRoll and Google. He holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business.Follow Dan on LinkedIn About the Hosts Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 286,000 followers and 89,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 750,000 downloads—and author of seven best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn. Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of the book ' The Intuitive Customer '. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and covered by major media outlets like The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan's new book was launched in June 2025 called "The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things" Harvard Business Press Follow Ryan on LinkedIn. Subscribe & Follow Never miss an episode. Apple Podcasts Spotify  

With trillions spent on digital ads to capture consumer attention, is the most powerful and effective channel for product discovery the one your brand is overlooking?Agility requires brands to move beyond a digital-only mindset and recognize that the modern customer journey fluidly moves between online and offline moments. It means building the capabilities to engage and measure impact in the physical world with the same precision we've come to expect from digital.Today, we're going to talk about the next evolution of retail media and why the physical store, far from being obsolete, is becoming the next great frontier for data-rich, high-impact customer engagement. We'll explore how brands can bridge the gap between their digital strategies and in-store realities to not only drive discovery but create measurable, full-funnel marketing moments.To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome, Matt Eichorn, CEO and Co-Founder and Dilini Fernando, CMO at Freeosk.About Matt EichornVisionary entrepreneur Matt Eichorn has been at the forefront of evolving brand and shopper marketing experiences for the better part of 20 years. As the current CEO, President, and Co-Founder of Freeosk, Eichorn has built a one-of-a-kind technology platform to deliver multi-sensory experiences at scale. His foresight to digitize millions of real-world intent signals in-store, as they happen, is unlocking new insights and shaping the landscape of retail media 3.0 for brands, category managers, and retailers alike.Dilini Fernando is the Vice President, Marketing at Chicago-based Freeosk – the only omnichannel discovery platform with in-store automated sampling. Dilini joined Freeosk in October of 2020 to lead integrated marketing programs, including brand, product and partner initiatives. Prior to Freeosk, Dilini spent ten years at MolsonCoors in brand marketing, digital innovation, new product development, and portfolio strategy. Dilini received her BA from Brown University and her MBA from the University of Chicago. She is a previous recipient of Brand Innovators “40 Under 40”.LinkedIn: Matt EichornAbout Dilini FernandoDilini Fernando is the Vice President, Marketing at Chicago-based Freeosk – the only omnichannel discovery platform with in-store automated sampling. Dilini joined Freeosk in October of 2020 to lead integrated marketing programs, including brand, product and partner initiatives. Prior to Freeosk, Dilini spent ten years at MolsonCoors in brand marketing, digital innovation, new product development, and portfolio strategy. Dilini received her BA from Brown University and her MBA from the University of Chicago. She is a previous recipient of Brand Innovators “40 Under 40”.LinkedIn: Dilini Fernando---------- Resources ----------FreeoskThe Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems.We're proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save!Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit!Chaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other GenAI tools. Learn more at trychaser.com and use code AGILEBRAND for a 3-month free trial (normal trial is 14 days).The most influential minds in software, AI, and engineering leadership will be at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, September 23-25 in San Jose.Start building your own apps with Replit and get $20 off.Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show.Connect with Greg on LinkedInDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more.Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia—the wiki for marketing technology.Produced by Missing Link. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Subscribe to Throwing Fits on Patreon. We're not heroes. This week, Jimmy and Larry are back home in the stu where they belong to chat about our wonderful screening and equally wonderful gereatric interactions, James wasted a bunch of time filming a Nike commercial that will never come out and did not redeem himself when it came to making small talk with Roger Federer, we make a bunch of cultural predictions with the U.S. Open around the corner and you're not going to believe how much money is on the line, Barstool Sports is once again at the center of the culture war after turning a fight with an Uber Eats delivery guy into content, James Blunt falls on the sword of having a tiny penis in order to save his reputation, Meta settles for tens of billions and has some creators rethinking the bag, would you pay to send your child to a MBA style after school program where they learn how to be hustlepreneurs, computer lab memories, Lawrence breaks down the odds of who will be the next James Bond and we have some of our own recommendations, GTA VI is nearly here, and much more.