Podcasts about operational

A growing gap between artificial intelligence (AI) adoption and effective data governance is reshaping the operational landscape for managed service providers (MSPs) and IT service providers. Industry data cited by GTIA's Data and AI Interest Group indicates that while 97% of providers have adopted AI, only 20% have implemented governance frameworks sufficient to extract value or mitigate risk. This structural mismatch is driving increased scrutiny from regulatory authorities and forcing MSPs to revisit internal decision-making, especially regarding data integrity and platform selection. Supporting this trend, a Federation of Small Businesses report found 86% of organizations in the UK are struggling with AI and data governance adoption, often uncertain about where to begin. Hollie Whittles, co-founder of Purple Frog Data, described practical barriers: many businesses believe their data is clean and structured but are routinely confronted with evidence of significant inconsistencies and errors during implementation. The cost of remediation and governance, including board-level buy-in, can climb to tens of thousands of pounds, highlighting the substantial upfront investment required before AI can deliver reliable business value. Operational vulnerability is further magnified by ease-of-use pitfalls and vendor relationships. MSPs lacking in-house data engineering or readiness tools frequently misjudge the scale and complexity of cleaning and securing client data estates. Whittles warned of scenarios where consultants, through careless or uninformed data modelling (such as over-exposing HR data in reporting tools), inadvertently increase both cyber and confidentiality risks. Some firms approach the problem by retaining all data and tooling within clients' own cloud tenants, shifting data residency and associated risks directly to clients, but raising new questions of contractual clarity and due diligence. For MSPs and IT leaders, these developments reinforce the need for explicit governance structures, clear contractual provisions regarding data handling, and internal upskilling rather than relying solely on third-party expertise. Short-term revenue can be lost to competitors willing to bypass governance, but there's an increased long-term risk of error, replacement, or regulatory sanction. Effective governance not only requires financial investment, but also consistent participation from leadership to avoid operational blind spots and to ensure client obligations—and liabilities—are clearly defined and managed. Supported by: ProofpointGoTo (LogMeIn)

Armin Winkler (renowned detection dog trainer, international expert) and Cameron Ford break down why current K9 certification standards don't actually validate operational readiness. They discuss why training records matter more than certifications in court, why everyone trains for the test instead of the job, and what real operational readiness actually looks like.What We Cover:Certification is department CYA, not a measure of reliabilityDetection dogs should have OPERATIONAL standards, not minimum standardsTraining records with proper documentation beat certifications in court every timeWhy observers/supervisors signing off on training matters more than a piece of paperRunning multiple dogs in same area: nasal secretions and saliva contaminate everythingThe "cheat code" dogs use when training mimics certificationHow evaluators inadvertently give away test locations through nonverbal communicationWhy environmental soundness testing is critical (traffic, noise, distractions)The difference between ORT (odor recognition test) and operational readinessLottery-based scenario testing instead of rote certification patternsHandler decision-making: the most untested aspect of any certificationWhy SEAL Teams didn't certify but had real resultsTraining for certification vs. training for the street (these are NOT the same)Real-world deployment: rain, night, roadside traffic stopsHide placement strategy: hide like a criminal, not in filing cabinetsThe handler's job: watch the DOG, not the room ("the nose nose")The avalanche dog that found both victims but failed certificationWhy handlers don't see their dogs during searches (looking for hide locations instead)Apprehension dog certification problems (false sits, stress on one-day tests)Free air sniff legality: roadside delays = searches, not free sniffsInternational perspectives: Norway military working dogs, customs operationsThe problem with "master trainer" guru cultureSupervision and training records as alternative to certificationScenario-based training in real conditions (using cooperating officers)Why some agencies (LAPD) use OJT/FTO model instead of certification gatesThe risk of certification standards creating liability instead of protectionArmin draws on decades of experience working detection dogs internationally, including military operations, customs, search and rescue, and avalanche response. He challenges the industry's comfort with certification-based standards and advocates for documentation, supervision, and scenario-based operational testing.Critical Takeaway: "If you're afraid of rewarding the wrong thing during testing, you're not ready to test. You have a bigger problem than that moment."________________________________________

In this episode of the HVAC Know It All Business Edition Podcast, co-hosts Gary McCreadie and Furman Haynes from WorkHero speak with Daniel Quinonez, Chief Operating Officer of Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors -National Association. They discuss contractor communities, member education, apprenticeship programs, and the operational challenges facing small HVAC businesses. Dan explains how contractors can access peer support, business resources, and training opportunities through membership. He also shares his perspective on hiring green apprentices versus experienced technicians and the fragmented approach to trade training across the United States.   Expect To Learn: How contractor communities can provide peer support and business resources. Why business operations can be challenging for technicians who become owners. Ways AI can support administrative work without replacing technicians. The tradeoffs between hiring experienced technicians and training apprentices. How contractor-sponsored apprenticeship programs combine coursework and hands-on experience. Why training requirements and licensing vary across U.S. states. The case for a more coordinated national strategy for trade education. Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction 01:27 - PHCC's history, membership, and education programs 05:05 - Benefits of joining a contractor chapter 06:44 - Common needs of small contractors 09:25 - Operational and time-management challenges 11:53 - Hiring apprentices versus experienced technicians 13:24 - Online apprenticeship training and contractor sponsorship 17:30 - Training capacity at large and small companies 18:32 - The lack of a national training strategy 20:04 - China's unified trade-training standards   Follow our Guest Daniel Quinonez: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-quinonez-690ba68/  Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/phccnational/  Company Website: https://www.phccweb.org/    Follow Gary McCreadie: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-mccreadie-38217a77/  Website: https://www.hvacknowitall.com  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/HVAC-Know-It-All-2/61569643061429/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hvacknowitall1/    Follow Furman Haynes:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/furmanhaynes/  WorkHero: https://www.linkedin.com/company/workherohvac/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workhero__/  

The core structural shift addressed in this episode centers on the unbundling and modularization of vendor platforms in the MSP technology market. This shift is exemplified by ThreatCaptain's launch of its Gen 4 product, which transitions from an all-encompassing platform to discrete modules aligned to specific MSP business challenges—lead generation, sales enablement, and ROI/risk analytics. The move is designed to align product structure and pricing more closely to the diverse operational maturity levels of MSPs, as described by Brad Powell, co-founder of ThreatCaptain. ThreatCaptain's Gen 4 is available in three modules priced at $199, $399, and $599, most notably a move away from the earlier $1,499 per month pricing reported in March. According to Brad Powell, this change was driven by limited adoption among smaller MSPs, with the prior model better suited to larger firms already equipped with mature sales teams. He cites customer Novus Insights as an example, attributing $80,000 in professional services revenue over three months and more than $1 million in expected ARR, but acknowledges this reflected a highly mature CISO-led operation. The vendor currently reports approximately 65 active paying MSP partners, intending to scale significantly. Supporting developments include the influence of insurance risk modeling and industry threat intelligence frameworks on new MSP toolsets. ThreatCaptain originally built its risk engine leveraging data from the IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report and the Verizon DBIR, adapting these for SMB scenarios. The episode also highlights the role of information sharing organizations (ISAOs), with Brad Powell noting the challenges of translating technical threat data into actionable intelligence for SMB-focused MSPs and illustrating ongoing coordination and separation of threat feeds between vendor sales processes and industry sharing mechanisms. Operational implications for MSPs include increased need for prudent selection among modular product offerings, clarity around the scope and accountability of vendor-delivered analysis, and awareness of potential misalignments between vendor risk models and actual business outcomes. The trend underscores cost versus capability tradeoffs, especially for smaller providers balancing limited resources against the operational benefits of specialized tools. For MSPs participating in threat intelligence programs, there is also an ongoing requirement to maintain clear boundaries around shared data to prevent unintentional exposure or misapplication in commercial contexts. Supported By: ScalePad Pax8

"You know, Robert, I have no expectation to ever be happy at work. I just hope to be a little less miserable."  That's the line from a restaurant server that Robert Martichenko, board chair of TrailPath Workplace Solutions and founder of the lean consultancy LeanCore, can't shake.  Operational supply chain roles aren't easy, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible for people to find dignity in their work. Hoping to be less miserable one day at a time does little for individual frontline workers, and it does even less for the company that employs them and the customers they serve. In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Robert and Kelly Barner dig into what dignity means in the workplace, and why it is not the same thing as respect: - Why "respect for people" is the wrong frame, and what dignity actually requires - The four states TrailPath's research finds people in at work — and why nearly half of most workforces are declining or surviving, not growing or thriving - What the second law of thermodynamics has to do with your supply chain, and why chasing unit cost quietly cost procurement its relationships   Links: Robert Martichenko on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertmartichenko/  Kelly Barner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-barner-6884443/  Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/art-of-supply-6895142546301960193  Art of Supply on AOP: http://www.artofsupply.com  Subscribe to the Art of Procurement Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe   

Candice Frazer is the revenue efficiency strategist and founder of AlphaRev, a firm that helps established businesses systematically increase revenue across retention, expansion, referrals, win-backs, and lost deals. Frazer works with CEOs, CFOs, and operators in professional services and industrial organizations to help them capture more value from their existing customers, partners, and pipeline. With more than 20 years of experience across revenue strategy, operations, and growth systems, Candice is known for bringing clarity to messy growth problems. Rather than pushing top of funnel tactics exclusively, she and her team at AlphaRev help teams focus on revenue efficiency building practical systems that turn overlooked opportunities into consistent, operational cash flow. AlphaRev's work is especially valued by leaders who want growth that compounds without burning out their people. During the show we discuss: Why more leads don't always mean more revenue. How to find revenue that's already hiding inside your customer base. How to reduce customer churn. How to turn past customers into new revenue. How to recover lost deals. How to generate referrals without making the process feel transactional. How to build systems that don't depend on the founder. How to know when your business needs a CRM. How to simplify operations so they can scale. How operational efficiency can improve fundability and business valuation. Resources: https://getalpharev.com/

Espresso in hand at Black Hat USA 2026, Monzy Merza, Co-Founder and CEO of Crogl, gave Marco Ciappelli the read from a week that started Monday. The free download the company announced the week before had drawn a strong community reaction, and a hackathon was running alongside the conversation with people downloading Crogl, hacking on it, and competing in challenges. Merza credits the openness of the approach as much as the product. What do security teams want from AI right now? Sovereignty. Merza describes a movement in which organizations have concluded that any work with AI has to cover privacy and security of the product and of the AI workload itself. Crogl was built as an on-prem product from the very beginning to serve mission critical organizations and critical infrastructure operators with hard requirements, and a larger community is now arriving at the same principles and asking what should be governed. The second shift is operational. The question moved from whether to look at AI to how work stays consistent and repeatable when one model is swapped for another, prompted by outages across model providers and in-house AI services going up and down. Merza describes the arc as a pendulum, from avoiding AI, to human in the loop, to a stretch where autonomy dominated. Crogl customers now run it both interactively and fully autonomously, with the line drawn at the tasks where a human has little reason to sit in the loop. This is a Brand Briefing. A Brand Briefing is an on-location conversation recorded on site at Black Hat USA 2026, putting a spotlight on the guest and their company and pairing it with the editorial reach of ITSPmagazine. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/performance/#briefing GUEST Monzy Merza, Co-Founder and CEO at Crogl On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monzymerza/ RESOURCES Black Hat USA 2026 event coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/black-hat-usa-2026-cybersecurity-event-coverage-in-las-vegas Learn more about Crogl: https://www.crogl.com Download Crogl: https://www.crogl.com/download Crogl newsroom: https://www.crogl.com/newsroom Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight ▶︎ Get your own Brand Briefing at an upcoming event: https://www.studioc60.com/buy-brand-briefings KEYWORDS monzy merza, crogl, marco ciappelli, brand briefing, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, black hat usa 2026, sovereign ai, on prem ai, ai governance, security operations, model choice, ai workload security, critical infrastructure, autonomous investigation, human in the loop, free download, hackathon, security community

In Episode 111 of the Cybersecurity Readiness Podcast Series, Dr. Dave Chatterjee is joined by Bruno Lecoq, CEO of BEMO, to examine the gap between executive intention and operational security reality in small and medium-sized organizations, and what it costs when resource trade-offs, unclear ownership, and optimism bias quietly undermine programs that look sound on paper.Drawing on his nearly sixteen years at BEMO and twenty years at Microsoft before that, working with companies of 10 to 1,000 users across multiple verticals, Bruno argues that the recurring failure point is rarely the tools; it is the absence of clear ownership, aligned resources, and sustained discipline. The conversation moves through why IT alone cannot own security, how the function's reporting line shapes whether it is treated as a cost center or a strategic capability, and a detailed walk-through of a SOC 2 "fire drill" scenario that Dr. Chatterjee analyzes through his Commitment–Preparedness–Discipline (CPD) Framework.The discussion also covers how BEMO uses AI-driven log review and unannounced tabletop exercises to keep clients honest about their true readiness, why Bruno turns away prospects who treat compliance as a paperwork exercise rather than a genuine security commitment, and why he believes cybersecurity and compliance, approached the right way, are a competitive advantage rather than a cost of doing business.To access and download the entire podcast summary with discussion highlights - https://www.dchatte.com/episode-111-closing-the-gap-between-leadership-intention-and-operational-security-reality-a-cpd-lens-on-smb-cybersecurity-governance/Connect with Host Dr. Dave ChatterjeeLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dchatte/ Website: https://dchatte.com/Books PublishedThe DeepFake ConspiracyCybersecurity Readiness: A Holistic and High-Performance ApproachArticles & Cases PublishedChatterjee, D. (2026). The Cryptographic Reckoning: Why Quantum Readiness Begins with Agility, Not Algorithms, The INFORMS Analytics Magazine, June 26, 2026Chatterjee, D. (2026). The New Digital Fragility: How AI-Enhanced Cyber Threats Are Reshaping Operational Resilience, The INFORMS Analytics Magazine, March 4, 2026Chatterjee, D. (2026). Root: Automating the Remediation Gap, Ivey Publishing, Jan 7, 2026.Ramasastry, C. and Chatterjee, D. (2025). Trusona: Recruiting For The Hacker Mindset, Ivey Publishing, Oct 3, 2025.Chatterjee, D. and Leslie, A. (2024). “Ignorance is not bliss: A human-centered whole-of-enterprise approach to cybersecurity preparedness,” Business Horizons, Accepted on Oct 29, 2024.Isik, O., Chatterjee, D., and Lourenco, D.A. (2024). “Getting Cybersecurity Right,” California Management Review — Insights, Accepted for Publication, July 8, 2024. Chatterjee, D. (2023). “Mission critical – How American Cancer Society successfully and securely migrated to the cloud amid the pandemic,” I by IMD, March 13, 2023.Chatterjee, D. (2022). “Preventing security breaches must start at the top,” I by IMD, September 28, 2022, Institute for Management Development, Lausanne, SwitzerlandChatterjee, D. (2022). “Making Cybersecurity Readiness Mainstream,” Executive Blog Post, NETSPI, March 1, 2022Benz, M. and Chatterjee, D. (2020). “Calculated Risk? A Cybersecurity Evaluation Tool for SMEs,” Business Horizons, available online from May 4, 2020Chatterjee, D. (2019). “Should Executives Go To Jail Over Cyber Attacks,” Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Vol 29, Issue 1, pp. 1-3.Abraham, C., Chatterjee, D., and Sims, R. (2019). “Muddling through cybersecurity: Insights from the U.S. healthcare industry,” Business Horizons, July 2019.

HR1 - Falcons must correct operational errors during joint practices with Colts In hour one Mike, Ali, and Beau recap and react to the Atlanta Braves losing to the Minnesota Twins last night 4-2 in Minnesota in game one of their three game series, explain why they think the Braves need more consistent hitting with runners in scoring position to be legit World Series contenders, explain why they think the Falcons preseason opener was all about learning players strengths and weaknesses, react to the Associated Press putting out their preseason Top 25 college football rankings, react to the Ohio State Buckeyes and Oregon Ducks being ranked one and two respectively in the preseason AP Top 25 college football poll, react to the Georgia Bulldogs being ranked as the third best team in the country in the preseason AP college football poll, explain why they think Georgia quarterback Gunner Stockton taking next step will make Georgia an unstoppable force, and then close out hour one by diving into the life of Ali Mac in Ali's Mac Drop!

Peer Robotics CEO and co-founder Rishabh Agarwal is today's guest on The New Warehouse Podcast. Peer Robotics develops collaborative mobile robots designed to automate material movement across manufacturing and warehouse environments. Its Peer 3000 platform moves pallets and supports applications including trailer loading and unloading.In the conversation, Agarwal looks beyond what the robot can physically do. He explains why ease of use may determine automation adoption, why ROI must appear quickly, and how human-in-the-loop systems can make robotics more adaptable. He also sees robots becoming a source of operational data, not just physical labor.Learn more about Pallite here.Get to Intralogistex! Follow us on LinkedIn and YouTube.Support the show

Send me a messageHeavy equipment electrification has a hidden problem: the machinery itself can waste most of the energy you put into it. That means bigger batteries, higher capital costs and a weaker business case before the machine has even started work.My guest is Hiten Sonpal, CEO of Rise Robotics, who is working on replacing conventional hydraulics with belt-driven actuation. We get into why hydraulic systems can be roughly 25% efficient, how that inefficiency drives battery and charging requirements, and why downtime and maintenance failures may matter even more than the emissions case.We examine why better batteries are not always the answer, what changes when heavy machinery becomes drive-by-wire, and why industrial AI and autonomy depend on something far less glamorous: machines that can actually generate useful operational data. We also look at prognostics, digital twins, teleoperation and the prospect of one operator supervising several machines rather than controlling just one.Listen now to understand what is really constraining heavy-equipment electrification — and where better engineering can cut cost, downtime and operational friction.Could your supply chain take the hit? Download my free 15-minute resilience scorecard to uncover hidden vulnerabilities, calculate your score and turn the results into a practical 30-day action plan: tomraftery.com/scorecard  If disruption hit tomorrow, would you know where your supply chain was most exposed? In 15 minutes my free scorecard helps you assess 27 resilience statements, calculate your score, and turn the result into three priorities and a 30 day action plan. You can download the scorecard free at tomraftery.com/scorecard.Support the showPodcast supportersI'd like to sincerely thank this podcast's generous Subscribers:Alicia FaragKieran OgnevGary LynchAnd remember you too can become a Resilient Supply Chain+ subscriber  - it is really easy and hugely important as it will enable me to continue to create more excellent episodes like this one and give you access to bonus episodes of topical, timely supply chain resilience analysis.

Episode Summary I want to talk about something that quietly costs law firm owners more than they realise: their inbox. Most owners treat this as a time management issue. They think if they just got faster at replying, or better at squeezing in an hour to clear it out, the problem would sort itself. It won't. Because the real issue isn't how much time your inbox takes up. It's how many times a day it pulls you away from what you're actually doing. In this episode, I break down why constant email interruption is one of the most underestimated drains on your mental capacity, and why growing your revenue doesn't fix it if the structure underneath hasn't changed. I also share the change I made in my own business that had the biggest impact, along with a few practical strategies you can put in place this week, including how connecting your inbox to Claude changes who has to be the first human touchpoint on every message that lands. A calmer inbox is a small change. A calmer business is what it's actually building toward. What We'll Cover Why it's the switching, not the volume, that drains your focus What actually happens in your brain every time you glance at an email mid-task Why more revenue doesn't solve an inbox problem, and what does The one change I made to my phone that I've stuck with ever since Why closing your inbox during focused work matters more than you'd think The difference between grazing your inbox and batching it, and why it matters How connecting your inbox to Claude takes noise off your plate without adding another tool to learn What actually changes in a business once the owner isn't the first responder to every email What You'll Learn Why an always-on inbox is an operational problem, not a discipline one How to spot the hidden cost of constant email switching, even when it doesn't feel like a big deal in the moment A few immediately usable strategies for reducing inbox noise, starting with the simplest one Why an open loop in your inbox is still taking up mental space even when you haven't acted on it yet How using Claude on your inbox can reduce decisions landing on you, rather than becoming one more thing to manage Why small structural changes like this one are what operational maturity actually looks like in practice Free Resources If you're starting to spot other areas of your firm where you're still too involved, I've got resources to help you take a closer look. My free resources cover practical areas of law firm operations, from identifying profit leaks and understanding your numbers to creating stronger systems and reducing your dependence on the owner. Book a Free Law Firm Growth Strategy Call Scalable Law Accelerator Program Identifying Profit Leaks How to Make AI Recommend Your Law Firm (Free Guide) Ready for a Quieter Inbox and a Clearer Head? If constant email interruption is where a chunk of your mental capacity is leaking right now, you don't need a bigger system overhaul to start. Pick one change this week. Turn off the after-hours notifications, close the inbox while you work, or connect it to Claude and let it carry some of the load. If this is where your firm is right now and you want help building the systems underneath your growth, that's exactly what we work through inside the Accelerator. Book a Law Firm Growth Call Let's look at what you could take off your plate next. Share the Shift Know a law firm owner who's constantly checking their inbox, jumping between emails and struggling to switch off? Send this episode their way. It might be the nudge they need to stop treating email as a time management problem and start looking at the systems behind it. And if something in this episode made you rethink the way you work, I'd love to hear about it. Share your biggest takeaway on social media and tag me. I love seeing what you're changing inside your firm and the small shifts that create a bigger difference over time. Apple Podcasts: Listen on Apple Spotify: Listen on Spotify YouTube: Watch on YouTube

Email: contact@bolog.ioIn this episode, host Bidemi Ologunde speaks with Robert M. Reed, COO of the International Bank of Chicago and founder of Reed Advancements, about the intersection of AI, banking compliance, operational resilience, and trust.Why do compliance programs still fail even as technology improves? Where should banks automate, and where should human judgment remain essential? What makes an AI-driven compliance system truly audit-ready? Robert draws on decades of experience across financial services, crisis response, AML, operations, and regulatory compliance to explain why many compliance failures begin as operational failures, how institutions can use AI without creating new risks, and what leaders should do now to strengthen controls before weaknesses become regulatory or reputational problems.Listeners can also download the companion AI, Compliance & Operational Resilience Worksheet from the episode resources/show notes to assess their own processes, controls, AI readiness, and next steps.

https://youtu.be/_OpJcRFbACk Abhi Jadhav, Founder and CEO of Bay Leaf Digital and Founder of Brazenly, helps B2B SaaS leaders create operational rigor while embracing AI, innovation, and disciplined execution. Driven by the freedom to experiment, anticipate change, and take the road less traveled, Abhi builds businesses that combine human expertise with AI-powered systems to help teams remain competitive and shape their own futures. In this conversation, Abhi introduces The Operational Rigor Framework—Aggregate To-Dos, Import Them into a System, Prioritize Weekly, and Execute. He explains how turning commitments into organized, prioritized tasks prevents work from falling through the cracks and improves execution across client projects, internal initiatives, and personal responsibilities. Abhi also discusses keeping humans in the loop when deploying AI agents, responding to rapid changes in the SaaS market, and driving growth through visibility, exceptional people, and innovation. — Create Operational Rigueur with Abhi Jadhav Good day. Steve Preda here, and today I’m joined by Abhi Jadhav, founder and CEO of Bay Leaf Digital, a B2B SaaS marketing agency he’s run since 2013. And he’s also the founder of Brazenly, an AI agent orchestration platform he’s building for marketing teams. Abhi, welcome to the show.  Thank you for having me, Steve. Appreciate it.  Well, great to have you here. And I’m super interested in how you are evolving your business and your focus on SaaS companies, which is very interesting. But I’d like to start with the question, your personal why. So how are you contributing to human flourishing? What is your personal why, and how do you manifest it in your business, in Bay Leaf Digital?  Yeah. So I gave this some thought. It’s been several years since I’ve been running the agency, so it took me back a few years to figure out, well, why did I even start this? So I’m going to date myself, and this is way back when I was in business school. One of my dear friends and classmates at the time, she pointed to me when she was asked, “Who’s most likely to strike it out on their own and run their own business?” And I thought that was really funny at that time because I had no desire to be my own entrepreneur or guy running your own business, et cetera. I was through and through a corporate guy.  And a few years later, I realized that I don’t really get energized by playing corporate games to climb the ladder. I prefer freedom to do things and to experiment. And I love taking the road less traveled, and it’s not just speak, it’s actually doing. Yeah. There’s a sign here. It’s a Jeep sign that says, “Road ends and fun begins.” And that kind of encapsulates who I am, really. Yeah. So when I saw this sign, I’m like, “This is me. It needs to go on my wall.” Okay. So that’s my personal why, how I ended up doing what I’m doing.  So how does it manifest in Bay Leaf or even Brazenly? What is that road that has not been traveled yet that you are embarking on?  So it is more about being able to anticipate what is coming and being able to be ready for it. I think that is primarily the difference, or to me, that is being my own business owner, it allows me to do that. So moving from an agency and seeing what is coming, AI is going to touch all of us. It already has in so many different ways.  So understanding where we are going and being able to do something about it rather than wait for someone else to come along and tell us, “You guys are now obsolete, and we are now moving on to something else.” So it allows me to chart my own path and be able to control, to a certain extent, I can’t say 100%, to a certain extent, what our business destiny is going to be.  So where are we going? What is your vision of the direction?  AI has tremendous power, right? And we are still very early, in the early stages of where it’s going to take us. But I’m a firm believer that the human in the loop is extremely important, and that we need to shape AI systems, our posture, in a manner that we maximize the use of AI while making sure that it is being run for the benefit of humans. So the way we approach it is, yes, we will adopt AI, but at the same time, we will never compromise on human in the loop in that process.  So our approach is, let’s take things that are easily automated. Let’s take things that we would otherwise not have been able to do. I have a framework on how we deploy AI, and the lowest part of that framework is obvious processes need to be automated. Top part of that framework is things that you could not ever do because it was impossible, impractical to do, automate that.  But in all of that, there is a certain amount of co-piloting or piloting that is needed in order to get valuable outcomes. Where I see us going is we will become pilots or co-pilots with extremely efficient and informed agents that will do the work, but they will not do the work exactly as is needed unless there’s a human in the loop that’s guiding it, right?  Yeah.  And I foresee this for the next several years. At some point, and this evolves all the time, but that’s kind of our posture at the moment.  Very interesting. So basically, AI agents do the work, or much of the repetitive work, a big part of the work, and the humans are directing the agents. Is that your vision?  Humans are directing the agents as well as checking on agent outputs, basically being the guide on making sure that things get done the way they should be done. So more and more, we are leaning on domain expertise, people who know what needs to be done, have that knowledge to be able to man these agents today.  Yeah. That is fascinating. So you mentioned that you have a framework. So what is your framework?  I have multiple frameworks. Let me talk about probably the most fundamental, foundational framework that can be used by anyone and everyone. Again, going back to my days before the agency, when I was in the corporate world, we would do 360 feedbacks. And at one point, one of the feedback I got, obviously it was constructive feedback, but it was that, “Abhi’s got a great team and he’s a great leader, but sometimes the team does not follow through on things that we’re committed to.”  I looked at that feedback and I said, “This is not something that my team needs to fix. This is something that I need to fix. It’s not a team problem.” So we took that weakness and we turned that into a core strength. That is one of my foundational approaches to the way we work, the way we run the business. I’ll break it down for you. Here’s what we really do.  Yeah, please.  So you and I are having a conversation. Something comes out of that conversation and I tell you, “Hey, I’ll follow up. I’ll get back to you.” And great, I’ll make a note of it. We have 100 different conversations like this throughout the day. I talk to my clients, I talk to my team. Everyone has something that they need or they’re going to offer. So there’s a pile of things that need to be done.  And without having operational discipline around it, things fall through the cracks, right? So a very simple manifestation of that is, hey, make a list. Make a list of things. But there’s a lot more to that. Yeah, you can make a list. You can write it in pencil on a pad, and then it gathers dust, and then you look at it after a few months, you’re like, “Oh, I never really got back to this person, didn’t really do it.” So what we’ve done is we’ve evolved that into an operational rigor where nothing, almost nothing, ever falls through the cracks.  We talk, we’ll organize our thoughts. We’ll put it—it doesn’t matter. It’s a framework, right? It’s not a set of rules. So people might take down notes. They might use Zoom meeting transcripts, whatever it might be. But at the end of the day, we are constantly putting together a list of to-dos. And that’s never enough because at the end of the week, you need to make sure that you’re working on the most important things. So we’ll go through a prioritization process.  I go through it, my team goes through it, and then that defines what we do in the following week. It’s very agile-like, but it’s not quite agile. It’s a set of tasks that eventually kind of come together for a greater purpose. So we’re looking and we are prioritizing and going, “Which is important, which is not?” So the conversations that we have with our clients, I have internally with the team, the conversations are never about, “Hey, whatever happened to that thing?” It never happens. The conversations are more about, “We talked about this last week. Here’s where we are.  Here’s why we are going to either change course, not do it anymore, or we have found a different way of doing it.” In terms of just an extremely important skill, whether you’re a business owner, in the corporate world, to me, operational rigor that leads to disciplined execution is absolutely key.  So what are the steps to this operational rigor framework? How do you actually do it? What are three to five steps or elements that will allow us to communicate to our listeners and maybe for them to try it out?  Yeah. Let’s just list them out. So the first thing is just pulling together the to-dos, right? So whether it’s from OneNote or a pad or transcripts, at the end of the day, set aside 30 minutes, an hour max, typically towards the end of the week, to allow you to go through that list of things that you want to do, okay? Put them into a system that allows you to keep track of the status.  We use our systems. We use a tool called ClickUp. We’ve used many, many different tools, but today we use that tool. We are able to change priorities, we are able to increase or reduce the size of those tasks, and we are able to collaborate with people on those tasks. So we’ll organize that, spend an hour or so, put it in ClickUp in the agile framework, if you will, and then we execute throughout the week. Monday morning, I look at—there’s never a question about, “Hey, what am I going to do today?” Right?  There’s never a question of, “Oh my God, there’s such a long list of things to do. How am I ever going to get through?” By the time Monday morning hits, I know exactly what I’m doing. By the time Tuesday morning hits, I know how much I accomplished on Monday and what I’m accomplishing on Tuesday. So it becomes very well-oiled, and it’s execution through and through without letting anything fall through the cracks.  Okay.  And this is not just me. The entire team behaves this way, and that is what is different, right? This was my feedback I got so many years ago, is follow-through is not there. Okay, we turned that around, made it a strength.  Love it. So aggregate the to-dos, import them into the system, prioritize, and execute.  And execute. And throughout the week, if you need to reprioritize, reprioritize. It’s okay.  And this pertains to your client work, or that also pertains to your internal projects that are improving your business, your own business?  It pertains to everything. It’s fundamental to everything we do, right? When we are improving our own business, we break it down to a series of steps, and then we prioritize the steps. For example, Steve, I could have come to your podcast seeing that, oh, I have a meeting at 8:00 AM on Friday. Let me just make sure that I have a shirt on and come to it.  But the way I approached it is the same operational rigor, which is, okay, sometime during this week, I’m going to make sure that this wall behind me is clean. I’m going to make sure that I have my talking points, and I’m going to go through a dress rehearsal myself before I come to you. So this operational rigor offers a much higher quality of output.  So it’s not just client-facing, it’s not internal. It’s in everything we do, and that includes my personal life too. To a fault, I use lists to organize my life, but it’s the same concept. It’s not as rigorous, but it is, I have this big to-do, let me break it down into a smaller to-do, knock it out, move to the next one.  Love it. That’s great. It’s a good framework. We can call it the Operational Rigor Framework, perhaps.  Operational rigor? Yeah, absolutely.  Yeah. Okay. So let’s switch gears here, and I’m really curious what drives growth in your businesses, in Bay Leaf Digital and your new business as well?  Okay, so we’re a marketing agency, but more specifically, we are a SaaS marketing agency. So we are niched down into SaaS, and then we niched down further. We are a B2B SaaS marketing agency, right? So it’s a very specific niche that we operate in. But some of the forces that affect us are the same as other agencies, other marketing agencies. So we live on this edge of constant change. And let me explain what these changes are. Number one, marketing channel change.  You’ve got Google, Meta, LinkedIn, you name it. They’re all making changes to their platforms all the time, right? Some of my marketers tell me they go in one day into the Meta advertising platform, and the next day they see something completely different. A feature has changed, and what they thought was working yesterday no longer works. So we are living on this edge of constant change as far as the marketing channels are concerned. Then it’s very surprising how much the economy actually affects us.  Because we serve a startup audience, B2B SaaS startup audience, whether there is money flowing in the economy or not actually affects us quite a bit. Post-Covid, when suddenly there was contraction, we felt it. So there’s that external force. And then our competitors are not sitting down napping. They’re also on top of these things. So we have these three external forces affecting us all the time. So for us to live and thrive on this edge, we have to be forward-looking, and we have to be extremely methodical. It goes back to that operational rigor.  Imagine you’ve got 20 different things coming at you. You have to figure out, “Hey, what is the most important thing here, and how do I respond to that? How do I respond to the change?” Being able to anticipate, being able to be forward-looking, and responding has allowed us to weather storms. It was post-Covid, obviously Covid too, but post-Covid was more important from a business perspective. And then you may have heard about this in maybe other conversations, when Claude released their latest version of Claude Code, they unleashed what is called the SaaS apocalypse, meaning SaaS companies, right?  SaaS companies are outdated. They no longer are needed because you can create your own app and you don’t need a SaaS company. So companies that help SaaS companies such as ourselves, B2B SaaS marketing agencies, were in that first line of companies to get affected. But we saw that coming. We saw that coming a year before, right? And we were working, we were preparing for it. So six, eight months in, it doesn’t hurt us as much as maybe it has hurt other companies. These are the things that help us grow. Yeah. Go ahead.  No, no. I’m just wondering, I understand that you are very agile. I mean, you use an agile system, but you’re also agile in the way you are responding to the market changes. You adjusted well with the SaaS apocalypse, or whatever it’s called. But just because you are avoiding a major landmine doesn’t mean it’s going to grow your business. So I wonder what drives the growth beyond being agile. So as the market changes, does it automatically help you create more revenue?  That’s a good question. Yes. Yes. So I’m probably talking very big picture. So let me convert that into how this actually drives growth for us. So a change happens, we respond to that change. Sure, it helps us survive. But think about a change in the LLM, the large language models such as Gemini or ChatGPT or Claude, the way they process information and the way they present that information to you.  Because we see that, we respond to it, we are able to make sure that when, Steve, maybe you go into Claude and you ask for, “Hey, I want to work with a SaaS marketing agency,” we make sure that we are on top over there because we are responding to changes that are happening in the back end, right? So it’s not just thriving, it’s making sure that you know what is happening so that you can always be at the forefront. Wherever people go to find you, you need to be there. But I’m simplifying this significantly. So that is just responding, still responding. The thing that really drives growth for us internally is we find and work with really, really good people, great team members. We put in a lot of effort to find these great people, and when we find them, we hold onto them. This did not happen overnight. Finding great people is extremely hard, especially for a small business. So we came up with a methodology to actually finding those people. I looked at various methods, but the one method that appealed to me was this method called Who by Geoff Smart and Randy Street, these two authors.  I started there, but then I evolved that framework significantly over time to where it is now a core strength. So whenever we hire people, we know exactly what are the areas of strength they have, what are the areas that we’ll need to help them improve in. And so we know who is coming in and how we can best leverage them. So once we know that, we’re able to move forward fairly easily. So that’s one of our core things that helps us.  So what drives growth is, if I hear it correctly, what drives growth is staying visible with all the algorithm changes and the platform changes. You’re going towards more AI visibility as opposed to SEO visibility. And then also being able to recruit those people who will be able to do the work that is going to respond to the market demand.  Exactly. And the third part, the third lever to all of this is innovation. I mean, you would think that an agency would not innovate, but there’s innovation happening all the time in various things. Whether it’s marketing approaches, whether it’s putting together a marketing operational platform or whatever else, you have to innovate to stay ahead. So I would say these are the three things that help us grow.  Yeah. Love it. That’s great. So visibility, people attraction, and innovation. That’s the three legs of the stool. Yeah. So what is one thing that you’re actively trying to figure out in your business right now?  One thing we’re trying to actively figure out? That’s such an interesting question. There’s so many things happening all the time, right? So let me pick one that comes right to mind. We’re trying to figure out whether we should raise capital or not. Because we look at some of the greatest recent successes in AI platforms and companies, and they’ve come from one-person to five-person teams. So the question now becomes, when there is no technology moat, there is no reason to hire 100 people to thrive, what is the role of capital?  So that is something that I’m debating internally about what should we do here. Do we need it? Do we not need it? And there are so many other things that we work on all the time. But I would say this is, at the moment, today, June or July 2026, what’s top of mind for me.  Yeah. It’s a great question. If you don’t need more people and it’s a professional service that you’re providing, you’re innovating with your own resources and AI, then what is the capital need of the business?  Right.  So to what extent can a business grow today without adding people? Is it possible to scale a business without adding people?  The popular word on the street is grow a business without people. I don’t think that’s possible, to grow a business without people. If you have domain experts and you have people with the right traits, you can grow with a very small company. And those traits are things like: you need to be a critical thinker. You need to be able to question and analyze things a bit differently. You need to have domain expertise.  Most important for me, you need to have operational rigor. And when you have these kinds of people, yeah, I think you can grow with a very small team, but not a one-person company. Maybe in a few years, maybe in a few decades, that might be possible. But today, you can significantly speed up what you can do using AI, but you definitely need people who can manage those systems, who can squeeze the most out of those systems. You need those people manning those systems.  I also wonder if there is a threshold below which you don’t actually have a business. If you don’t have enough people to reduce your dependency on any single individual, including yourself, then do you actually have a business, or is it more like a professional practice?  Right. Right. Yeah. So it’s like you design a system and you just deploy it and it just runs on its own. So is that the business? I don’t know. It’s not really a business at that point. It’s just a tool that you put out there in the universe and it’s doing its thing. It’s a very philosophical question about where we end up as a result.  Yeah. And then things are changing all the time, so can you just rely on the system rejuvenating itself, or do you still need human energy to keep improving and keeping that business competitive in a fast-changing environment?  Right. It’s a question of the autonomous agents, right? How autonomous can autonomous agents really be today, and where does that lead us eventually? Does it lead us into AGI? We’ll see. But today, no. I would say strongly that autonomous agents are good within certain guardrails.  You can provide a lot more freedom for them to do it as long as they don’t break certain rules, and that’s where humans come in to make sure that those guardrails are maintained and the guiding happens. In today’s world, I don’t think that business exists without any employees. In tomorrow’s world, it might. Yeah. And that changes the economy, that changes everything.  Yeah. That’s an even bigger question.  Yeah.  Well, if you had a magic wand and you could fix one thing in your business in the next 12 months, what would that be?  Learning curves. I would love to skip past learning curves. And by that I mean, even when we find the best people with all the best traits, frequently what we see is we end up having to train people on what we know and what we know works, and that takes several months. It takes several months to get there. So it’d be amazing if I had a magic wand and day one they’re ready to go.  Yeah. So you’re deploying these agents for SaaS companies. Who is the ideal client that you would like to contact you when they hear this podcast?  We serve B2B SaaS companies, right? And so we work typically with companies who have what is called product-market fit, meaning their value has been articulated and they’re looking to grow. Those are the companies that we normally work with. And as we deploy Brazenly, our marketing operations orchestration tool, we’re looking to help marketing teams. And those teams could be a three-person team.  It could be a 20-person team. It doesn’t matter. It is built to scale. But that part of the business is definitely focused more on team productivity or automation of marketing teams as opposed to an individual. That is what ChatGPT and others are focused on, individual productivity. We focus on the team productivity aspect of it.  So you need companies that have figured out their product and they already have multiple people in marketing that need the support?  We normally work with companies that have figured out their value proposition and are looking to grow, so they don’t have, this is on the marketing agency side, right? So they don’t have all the people in place in order for them to grow, and that’s where we come in. We come in as a marketing department, and we will help take over all those marketing functions. That is on the agency side.  On the AI platform side, it’s a slightly different focus, which is we are helping ourselves. We are helping ourselves become more efficient as we help our clients. That’s one. But for someone else to use a marketing platform, they need to have a marketing team that can actually leverage the marketing operations platform. So there’s the agency focus, and then there’s the Brazenly marketing platform focus.  So you have the done-for-you version, which is the professional service as an agency, and then you have the DIY version, which is them using your platform to do it themselves, basically.  You’re exactly right. So there’s the done-for-you, there’s the done-with-you, and then there’s the DIY, right? Okay. Done-for-you is the agency. The done-with-you is, as much as there’s promise with AI platforms, you still need to build the agents. You still need to deploy them. That is the done-with-you, which is we’ll consult with marketing teams to help them deploy these agents. And the DIY is, here’s the AI operations platform. Go and use it yourself. That is the DIY. Okay. So you’re exactly right.  Yeah. Love it. Love it. That’s a great slate of services. So if people would like to learn more, I get it, they should not go to LinkedIn, but where should they go? Where can they find you?  Yeah. So you can always contact me on various platforms, Twitter, email, Instagram, and such. But if you want to get in touch, I would say the best way is to just drop me an email. My email is aj@bayleafdigital.com.  So Abhi Jadhav, the CEO and Founder of Bayleaf Digital and Brazenly. So if you’d like to accelerate your marketing, if you’re a B2B SaaS company and you want to accelerate your marketing, whether it’s complete done-for-you, done-with-you, or DIY, Bayleaf Digital and Brazenly can take care of you. So reach out to Abhi Jadhav on Twitter, email, or through the website, bayleafdigital.com.  And if you enjoyed this episode, then make sure you subscribe and you follow us because we come out with a couple of interviews every week with exciting entrepreneurs who are building great businesses. So thanks for coming, Abhi, and sharing your wisdom, and thanks for listening.  Thank you very much for having me, Steve. It was a pleasure.  Important Links: Abhi's LinkedIn Abhi's website Abhi's email: aj@bayleafdigital.com

What does it take to design and build a superyacht that truly works in operation?In this episode of On The Bridge, host Alicia Store, COO of dsnm Ltd, speaks with Lee Stevenson and Giles Frankal, co-founders of Occam Marine and former superyacht captains.Drawing on their experience at sea and within yacht construction, Lee and Giles explain why operational expertise should be introduced during the earliest stages of a superyacht build—before layouts, specifications and critical design decisions become fixed.The conversation explores how practical input from experienced captains can improve bridge design, crew and guest flow, tender operations and the overall functionality of a yacht. They also discuss the move from life at sea into business, the growth of Occam Marine and the importance of challenging decisions that may look good on paper but create problems in operation.Topics include: Why operational experience matters during a superyacht build Involving captains before major design decisions are finalised Practical bridge design and onboard workflows Improving movement for guests and crew Tender operations and real-world usability Moving from yacht command into project management Building and growing Occam Marine Guests: Lee Stevenson and Giles Frankal, Co-Founders of Occam MarineHost: Alicia Store, COO of dsnm LtdOccam Marine: https://www.occam.uk.com/dsnm Ltd: https://www.dsnmltd.com/Prefer to read? Head to Yachting News:https://www.yachtinginternationalradio.com/yachting-newsOn The Bridge | dsnm Ltd | Yachting International Radio

Recorded live at SOMA 26Dr. Emily Johnston (Cascadia Mountain Institute) and SFC Ezequiel Mendoza (Arctic Dustoff, Fairbanks) deliver a hard-hitting, field-validated look at how standard tactical medical gear and medications actually perform—and fail—in true Arctic and extreme cold conditions. Drawing from cold-soak testing, simulated combat exercises, and real operational experience, they break down battery and fluid-warmer failures, rapid freezing of IV tubing and blood sets, medication storage realities, tourniquet performance, and the critical need for early frostbite interventions like ibuprofen and iloprost far forward. Practical fieldcraft solutions, insulation strategies, and clear calls for better-designed cold-weather medical systems are front and center.Key TakeawaysNo electronic or mechanical medical device (IV pumps, Buddy Lite warmers, etc.) can be trusted to operate unprotected in Arctic conditions—insulate everything, including fluids and tubing.Fluids and tubing freeze extremely quickly and become brittle; passive warming solutions using insulated containers + chemical heat packs can keep fluids viable for many hours even at –20°F to –30°F.Body heat (base-layer transport systems worn against the skin) is the only reliably consistent way to prevent medication freezing during multi-day cold operations; outer pockets, med boxes, and sling packs routinely fail.Current blood administration sets create major clotting and failure points in the cold; shorter, fully insulated, or redesigned kits are needed.Most common tourniquets performed adequately after freeze-thaw cycles; metal windlasses held up better than plastic ones under extreme cold.Reperfusion injury is the dominant mechanism of tissue loss in frostbite. Early NSAID (ibuprofen) loading and rapid iloprost administration dramatically improve outcomes, yet cold-chain and far-forward delivery of iloprost remain unsolved problems.Manufacturer claims about extreme-cold performance often do not match real-world Arctic testing. Independent field validation is essential before relying on any device or medication in these environments.Chapters00:00 – Introduction & Arctic strategic context04:45 – Operational realities: long evacuation times and limited cold-weather experience06:00 – Battery and device cold-soak testing (IV pump & Buddy Lite)09:20 – Functional testing: frozen pumps, ruptured warmer cartridges, and fluid output11:40 – Practical insulation and pre-warming techniques for fluids13:40 – Medication transport failures vs. base-layer body-heat solutions18:50 – Blood product challenges and call for redesigned cold-weather kits20:20 – Tourniquet performance after freeze-thaw cycles21:15 – Frostbite pathophysiology and the critical role of early ibuprofen + iloprost27:20 – Path forward: needed research, device redesign, and medication stability after freezing29:40 – Closing remarks and Q&A discussionFor more content, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.prolongedfieldcare.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Consider supporting us: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/ProlongedFieldCareCollective⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.lobocoffeeco.com/product-page/prolonged-field-care⁠⁠⁠⁠

Watch Us On YouTube! Announcing a new, ongoing benefit for annual subscribers of our Slack community. Annual subscribers receive a free Points Path Alerts subscription OR a 30% discount on Points Path Pro. Airline lounge access keeps getting more expensive—and Ed and Richard are wondering who is actually paying these prices. This week on Miles To Go, they break down American Airlines' latest Admirals Club changes, including higher membership prices and a revamped Executive Card. With individual lounge membership now costing hundreds of dollars and family access climbing even higher, the guys debate whether the airline credit card is now the only logical way to buy into the ecosystem. That leads to a broader discussion about whether airport lounges deserve as much weight as they get when travelers evaluate premium credit cards. Crowding, long lines, limited space, and inconsistent food all make Ed question how much real value lounge access adds. Richard also shares a surprise about JetBlue Mint: even on an expensive transcontinental Mint ticket, lounge access still isn't included unless you're flying transatlantic. Then the conversation shifts to a brand-new luxury resort cancellation controversy, where a well-known YouTuber arrived only to find his reservation had been canceled at the last minute. Finally, Richard gives an update on his Frontier GoWild Pass—and admits that, despite owning it, he still hasn't actually managed to use it. Get hydrated like Ed in Vegas with Nuun If you enjoy the podcast, I hope you'll take a moment to leave us a rating. That helps us grow our audience! If you're looking for a way to support the show, we'd love to have you join us in our Travel Slack Community.  Join me and other travel experts for informative conversations about the travel world, the best ways to use your miles and points, Zoom happy hours and exciting giveaways. Monthly access Annual access Personal consultation plus annual access We have witty, funny, sarcastic discussions about travel, for members only. My fellow travel experts are available to answer your questions and we host video chats multiple times per month. Follow Us! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/milestogopodcast/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@milestogopodcast Ed Pizza: https://www.instagram.com/pizzainmotion/ Richard Kerr: https://www.instagram.com/kerrpoints/ ✈️ What We Cover in This Episode ✈️ American Airlines raises lounge prices Admirals Club membership gets more expensive Family access can cost up to four figures Why the Executive Card may be the better path ✈️ AA Executive Card changes Higher annual fee Vacation credits Lyft credit increase AAdvantage Hotels earning More Loyalty Point opportunities ✈️ Are airport lounges overrated? Crowding at Centurion and Chase lounges Limited usefulness at your home airport Why lounge access may not justify a premium annual fee ✈️ JetBlue Mint's missing lounge perk Transcontinental Mint still doesn't include lounge access Discounted paid entry instead Why Ed and Richard find the policy surprising ✈️ A luxury hotel opening controversy A reservation canceled the night before arrival Whether a hotel should cancel a reviewer's stay Why opening-week hotel reviews can be misleading ✈️ Should you stay at a hotel right after it opens? Operational growing pains Incomplete facilities Why both Ed and Richard prefer to wait ✈️ Frontier GoWild Pass update Richard still hasn't used it Limited availability Why it may work better for retirees, students, or flexible travelers ⏱️ Episode 449 Timestamps 0:48 – Vegas heat, travel week setup, and getting started 2:39 – American Airlines raises Admirals Club pricing 6:38 – AA Executive Card changes and whether it's worth $695 10:38 – Are airport lounges really worth premium-card annual fees? 12:20 – JetBlue Mint still doesn't include lounge access on transcon flights 14:06 – M2G passes 9,000 YouTube subscribers 16:53 – Luxury resort cancels a YouTuber's reservation at the last minute 19:42 – Is reviewing a hotel during opening week actually useful? 21:53 – Frontier launches another GoWild Pass offer 22:34 – Richard's GoWild Pass update: has he used it yet?

Parham Parastaran is the founder of Left Lane Auto, an automotive service company operating 40 brands across 90 locations in 20 states. His career began in his family's Car-X shop while he attended the University of Illinois. He later expanded the business into a 17-location portfolio that included independent tire stores.After selling the company he had built over 24 years, Parastaran watched nearly every employee leave within a year. That experience shaped his approach to employee retention after acquisition: preserve the local identity, protect established working arrangements, and earn the team's support before introducing change.In this episode…Multi-location operators buy shops for their revenue, reputation, and experienced teams. The first push toward standardization often puts those assets at risk. Pay changes alter household income. Schedule changes disrupt family routines. A fast rebrand removes a familiar name that employees and customers already trust.Each additional location increases the pressure to impose a single operating model. That is the central challenge behind employee retention after acquisition. Left Lane Auto protects continuity while its leaders learn how each shop works. Operational changes begin after the local team understands the reason and supports the direction.Parastaran also explains how this philosophy shapes conversations with sellers. Owners receive flexibility in how they exit, remain involved, or retain a financial interest. The business follows strong shops and structures the transition around what keeps each operation stable.Here's a glimpse of what you'll learn: [01:03] Parham Parastaran and Left Lane Auto[01:37] Building an automotive career from one family shop[07:40] Preserving local businesses after an acquisition[13:16] Lessons from losing a long-standing team[21:19] Balancing tire sales with mechanical service[23:27] Evaluating shops and speaking with sellers[26:10] Structuring flexible transitions for former owners[27:38] Expanding deal options through Bertram CapitalResources mentioned in this episode:Parham Parastaran on LinkedInLeft Lane Auto LLC WebsiteTread PartnersGain Traction Podcast on YouTubeGain Traction Podcast WebsiteMike Edge on LinkedInQuotable Moments:“It's the blessing of having nothing, so you have no choice.”“You know, you're going to go backwards when you lose people.”“The things that I learned from the failures was that I don't ever want to put ourselves in a cash position where we're going back.”“We'll follow good stores.”“We'll find a way to say yes.”Action Steps:Build an employee retention checklist after an acquisition that records each person's pay plan, regular schedule, tenure, and responsibilities before the handoff.Pause proposed compensation and scheduling changes until their effects on employees' lives and store performance are documented.Meet with the store manager and longest-tenured employees to identify the routines, relationships, and local practices customers depend on.Keep the acquired shop's local name while reviewing its customer recognition and community value with the existing team.Write the former owner's post-sale role, decision authority, and exit timeline into the transition plan before announcing the acquisition.

Why do some companies become more valuable after laying off thousands of employees?In this episode of Corporate Finance Explained, we explore the financial logic behind corporate restructuring and why the market often rewards companies that make difficult decisions before a crisis forces them to. Using real-world examples from Meta, Intel, Sears, and JCPenney, we explain how operational restructuring can strengthen a business, improve capital allocation, and create long-term shareholder value.You'll learn why successful restructurings go far beyond layoffs. We break down the three pillars of operational restructuring: cost resets, operating model redesign, and portfolio pruning, and show how companies use these strategies to improve efficiency while protecting future growth. We also explain why timing matters and how proactive restructuring differs from reactive cost-cutting.

Interview 1: Robin Macfarlane from RRMac Associats The Mattress Money Principle: What a 50-Year Veteran Knows About System Fragility In this interview, Robin and Adrian discuss how technology has evolved over the past 50 years. Despite massive technological changes over the decades: the PC revolution, the Internet, smartphones, the Cloud, and now Generative AI - the majority of financial institutions still use mainframes and midrange machines. Why? We explore the reasons why older technology persists alongside the new and the lessons retiring technologists can pass on to new generations inheriting an increasingly diverse tech landscape. Interview 2 with Kyle Sandy from Logically Operational Clarity as the New Customer Experience Kyle Sandy joins Adrian to discuss how prioritizing resilience affects how organizations should plan for incident response. In the past, security teams were focused on prevention and limiting breach damage. Today, boards want to know how long it will take to recover operations. The interview wraps up with a discussion of the right and wrong way to handle a breach and the three most important things every company must get right in order to handle an incident well. Interview 3 with Todd Thiemann from Omdia AI Agents and Identity Security: How Enterprises Are Rewriting the Rules Todd joins ESW with some eye-opening survey insights on the topic of IAM for AI agents. While cybersecurity conversations about internal AI use often revolve around the SOC and security operations, Omdia surveyed identity professionals for a more holistic enterprise perspective. Unsurprisingly, AI agent use is as diverse as enterprise business units. The surprises are around where the budget comes from for these AI projects, and how authentication is handled. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-471

The dominant mechanism addressed is the development of a self-regulatory framework for IT service providers, specifically as Texas A&M University's Global Cyber Research Institute (GTIA) launches the Consortium for Responsible IT Services (CRITS). This signals a move toward organized self-governance and standard-setting within the MSP sector, in contrast to direct government-imposed regulation. The initiative is designed to shift the industry from fragmented standard adoption toward collective risk and professional accountability, using academic infrastructure and industry funding as its operational backbone. According to statements from Cole Knuth, GTIA's facilitation of CRITS involves university-hosted development and company funding, with the intention to produce a publication outlining operational and cybersecurity standards for IT service providers. The university has committed both its name and financial resources, making CRITS a formal legal construct enabled by Texas A&M's research arm. The initial executive sponsors are large industry players—New Charter, Pax8, and The 20—but there is not yet independent MSP participation under 25 employees. The first member meeting is scheduled to occur alongside the GCRI Summit in October. The episode contrasts CRITS with prior efforts to establish industry standards, noting previous initiatives by the MSP Alliance, NSITSP, and GTIA's own Cybersecurity Trustmark, none of which achieved broad acceptance or regulatory recognition. Cole Knuth attributes this lack of traction to fragmented grassroots approaches or top-down lobbying, asserting that CRITS aims for a “middle out” model by aggregating MSP voices to build legitimacy and influence before external regulation is enacted. The consortium's design includes the possibility of recognizing existing certifications rather than displacing them, and emphasizes eventual inclusion of smaller and independent MSPs in governance. For MSPs and IT leaders, the practical implications include increased pressure to participate in the development and adoption of industry standards to mitigate liability risk and avoid externally imposed rules. Operational challenges are likely to include the need for resource allocation to compliance initiatives, cost uncertainties regarding participation and auditing, and navigating evolving governance requirements as standards are defined. Smaller MSPs face the risk of exclusion unless explicit mechanisms are created for their input and representation, and the structure of CRITS may lead to new layers of compliance complexity and scrutiny, particularly as the consortium transitions from initial large-member funding to broader industry engagement. Supported by:  ScalePad

Interview 1: Robin Macfarlane from RRMac Associats The Mattress Money Principle: What a 50-Year Veteran Knows About System Fragility In this interview, Robin and Adrian discuss how technology has evolved over the past 50 years. Despite massive technological changes over the decades: the PC revolution, the Internet, smartphones, the Cloud, and now Generative AI - the majority of financial institutions still use mainframes and midrange machines. Why? We explore the reasons why older technology persists alongside the new and the lessons retiring technologists can pass on to new generations inheriting an increasingly diverse tech landscape. Interview 2 with Kyle Sandy from Logically Operational Clarity as the New Customer Experience Kyle Sandy joins Adrian to discuss how prioritizing resilience affects how organizations should plan for incident response. In the past, security teams were focused on prevention and limiting breach damage. Today, boards want to know how long it will take to recover operations. The interview wraps up with a discussion of the right and wrong way to handle a breach and the three most important things every company must get right in order to handle an incident well. Interview 3 with Todd Thiemann from Omdia AI Agents and Identity Security: How Enterprises Are Rewriting the Rules Todd joins ESW with some eye-opening survey insights on the topic of IAM for AI agents. While cybersecurity conversations about internal AI use often revolve around the SOC and security operations, Omdia surveyed identity professionals for a more holistic enterprise perspective. Unsurprisingly, AI agent use is as diverse as enterprise business units. The surprises are around where the budget comes from for these AI projects, and how authentication is handled. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-471

Interview 1: Robin Macfarlane from RRMac Associats The Mattress Money Principle: What a 50-Year Veteran Knows About System Fragility In this interview, Robin and Adrian discuss how technology has evolved over the past 50 years. Despite massive technological changes over the decades: the PC revolution, the Internet, smartphones, the Cloud, and now Generative AI - the majority of financial institutions still use mainframes and midrange machines. Why? We explore the reasons why older technology persists alongside the new and the lessons retiring technologists can pass on to new generations inheriting an increasingly diverse tech landscape. Interview 2 with Kyle Sandy from Logically Operational Clarity as the New Customer Experience Kyle Sandy joins Adrian to discuss how prioritizing resilience affects how organizations should plan for incident response. In the past, security teams were focused on prevention and limiting breach damage. Today, boards want to know how long it will take to recover operations. The interview wraps up with a discussion of the right and wrong way to handle a breach and the three most important things every company must get right in order to handle an incident well. Interview 3 with Todd Thiemann from Omdia AI Agents and Identity Security: How Enterprises Are Rewriting the Rules Todd joins ESW with some eye-opening survey insights on the topic of IAM for AI agents. While cybersecurity conversations about internal AI use often revolve around the SOC and security operations, Omdia surveyed identity professionals for a more holistic enterprise perspective. Unsurprisingly, AI agent use is as diverse as enterprise business units. The surprises are around where the budget comes from for these AI projects, and how authentication is handled. Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-471

Interview 1: Robin Macfarlane from RRMac Associats The Mattress Money Principle: What a 50-Year Veteran Knows About System Fragility In this interview, Robin and Adrian discuss how technology has evolved over the past 50 years. Despite massive technological changes over the decades: the PC revolution, the Internet, smartphones, the Cloud, and now Generative AI - the majority of financial institutions still use mainframes and midrange machines. Why? We explore the reasons why older technology persists alongside the new and the lessons retiring technologists can pass on to new generations inheriting an increasingly diverse tech landscape. Interview 2 with Kyle Sandy from Logically Operational Clarity as the New Customer Experience Kyle Sandy joins Adrian to discuss how prioritizing resilience affects how organizations should plan for incident response. In the past, security teams were focused on prevention and limiting breach damage. Today, boards want to know how long it will take to recover operations. The interview wraps up with a discussion of the right and wrong way to handle a breach and the three most important things every company must get right in order to handle an incident well. Interview 3 with Todd Thiemann from Omdia AI Agents and Identity Security: How Enterprises Are Rewriting the Rules Todd joins ESW with some eye-opening survey insights on the topic of IAM for AI agents. While cybersecurity conversations about internal AI use often revolve around the SOC and security operations, Omdia surveyed identity professionals for a more holistic enterprise perspective. Unsurprisingly, AI agent use is as diverse as enterprise business units. The surprises are around where the budget comes from for these AI projects, and how authentication is handled. Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-471

AI is changing the security landscape, but are we automating the wrong things?On this episode of Crying Out Cloud, Eden Koby Naftali & Amitai Cohen sit down with Daniel Miessler to unpack why most companies are completely unprepared for the AI revolution. Daniel drops some heavy truths about what happens when we automate the "boring" parts of security, and why attackers are currently winning the AI arms race.What's Inside:- The "Gym Robot" analogy for operational toil and analyst training- Why attackers are moving 10X faster with AI than defenders- The TELOS framework and defining your security goals in text

https://teachhoops.com/ If you audit a standard, average basketball practice on a cold Tuesday afternoon in January, you will see a gym overflowing with unintentional friction. You will witness coaches who blow the whistle to deliver ten-minute lectures while twelve players stand completely still, watching their core body temperatures plummet. You will see long, single-file lines where athletes wait passively for two minutes just to take a single, un-contested layup. And you will see head coaches screaming directives on every single possession, acting as a human joystick while their players move like robotic actors. They don't do this maliciously; they do it because "clean" practices feel like real coaching. But when you step into the "Truth Room," you realize that allowing these subtle habits to exist introduces a massive operational leak into your culture. In this episode of Coach Unplugged, recorded live at 5th Quarter Studios in Madison, Wisconsin, Coach Collins flips the clipboard around to outline the non-negotiable Things We Should Avoid at Practice. We break down the absolute poison of low activity density, single-file lines, zero-decision choreography, and coach-fed joystick directives. Discover how purging these six destructive habits from your 120-minute practice script will instantly elevate your team's independent Decision IQ, maximize your game-night Effective Field Goal Percentage ($eFG%$), and slide your roster into an unshakeable, player-led standard. To protect your program's unyielding Standard of Tolerance and maximize your team's long-term Resilience Equity, your staff must actively purge these six operational traps from every single practice block: The Leak: Stopping practice to deliver exhaustive, lecture-heavy monologues while players stand frozen on the baseline. The Fix: Banish long huddles during active blocks. Deploy rapid, 60-second "drive-by" socratic corrections on the move. Let The Organizer on your staff police the clock while you deliver sharp, high-signal cues that keep the gears turning. The Leak: Setting up drills where one athlete executes a rep while eleven peers stand behind a cone watching passively. The Fix: Enforce a strict Multi-Ball architecture across all court baskets. Ensure that at least $70%$ of your roster is catching, cutting, or passing concurrently to eliminate hidden boredom leaks and maximize your gym's Activity Density. The Leak: Running scripted, zero-defense drills where the pass, cut, and finish are predetermined before the ball is even inbounded. The Fix: Corrupt every drill with live variables. Add a defender, add a decision, or add a competitive consequence. Force your players to scan live bodies, read collapsing defender hips, and solve dynamic spatial puzzles. The Leak: Screaming instructions on every bounce ("Pass left! Cut now! Shoot it!"), stripping your athletes of their independent decision-making capabilities. The Fix: Put your whistle in your pocket during Small-Sided Games ($SSGs$). Allow your players to fail, adapt, and communicate coverages through the exhaust. Shift your culture from coach-fed compliance to a Player-Led powerhouse. The Leak: Allowing players to shoot comfortable, zero-friction catch-and-shoot jumpers off gentle feeds from a standing passer. The Fix: Require active footwork, spatial cutting geometry, and live high-hands closeouts on every perimeter shot. Game-night shooting efficiency is built through high-stress, contextual repetitions. The Leak: Blowing the whistle to run baseline sprints as a blind punishment for a tactical error, completely severing the mental connection between effort and execution. The Fix: Embed physical strain directly into your competitive drills. If a team turns the ball over or fails to close out with High Hands, put them on defense in a live disadvantage scenario. Teach them how to execute under fatigue rather than just running mindlessly. We don't purge these practice leaks simply to look structured on paper. We eliminate them because dead time, low rep density, and robotic choreography directly destroy your team's mathematical output on Friday night. Every live closeout read, multi-ball pass, and rapid socratic correction directly impacts your team's Effective Field Goal Percentage ($eFG%$): When you replace choreography with functional friction during Tuesday's practice, you ensure that your team possesses the structural armor needed to convert high-efficiency looks under heavy postseason pressure. Coach's Note: "Your job as a program builder isn't to run a clean, tidy practice where everybody looks great doing choreographed routines; your job is to build players who can actually play basketball when you aren't saying a word. Stop standing at the whiteboard for ten minutes, stop letting kids stand in single-file lines, and stop playing the game for them from the baseline. Corrupt your drills, clean up your clock, demand high-hands discipline, and force your players to own the room." Title Ideas: 6 Things You MUST Avoid at Basketball Practice! (The Efficiency Audit) Stop Wasting Practice Time! How to Fix Lines, Lectures, and Bad Drills Why "Clean" Basketball Drills Are Silently Ruining Your Game-Night eFG% How to Eliminate Dead Time and Build a High-Density Basketball Practice Primary Keywords: Things to avoid at basketball practice, basketball practice efficiency leaks, TeachHoops, Coach Collins, Coach Unplugged, basketball practice rep density, small-sided games basketball training. Secondary Keywords: Effective Field Goal Percentage analytics, next play speed resilience, own the room coaching language, high-hands closeout discipline, multi-ball drill architecture, socratic coaching constraints, Types of Coaches (3).pdf, player-led team autonomy. Description Snippet: "Are your basketball practices plagued by long whiteboard lectures, single-file line bottlenecks, and robotic drills that don't transfer to game night? In this episode of Coach Unplugged, broadcast live from 5th Quarter Studios in Madison, Wisconsin, Coach Collins outlines the 6 critical things you must avoid at practice. Discover how to eliminate dead time, corrupt your favorite drills with live decisions, and build an autonomous, player-led team." Suggested Tags: #BasketballCoaching #TeachHoops #CoachCollins #CoachUnplugged #PracticeDesign #PracticePlanning #BasketballDrills #HighSchoolBasketball #TeamCulture Show NotesThe 6 Toxic Leaks to Eliminate From Your Gym [PRACTICE AUDIT FILTER] ┌───────────────────────┼───────────────────────┐ ▼ ▼ ▼ 1. The 10-Min Huddle 2. Single-File Lines 3. Zero-Decision Choreography 4. Joystick Screaming 5. Static Shooting 6. Punitive Conditioning 1. The 10-Minute Whiteboard Lecture2. Single-File Line Bottlenecks3. Zero-Decision Choreography (e.g., The Standard 3-Man Weave)4. Baseline Joystick Micro-Management5. Static, Uncontested "Safe" Shooting6. Disconnected Punitive ConditioningThe Operational Audit: The Leaky Gym vs. The Championship LabPractice MetricThe Leaky Gym (Level 2 Compliance)The Masterclass Lab (Level 4 Autonomy)Coaching DeliveryLong huddle lectures; high downtime60-second "drive-by" socratic adjustmentsDrill DesignSingle-file lines; static block repsMulti-Ball rep density; concurrent court actionCognitive LoadPredetermined actions; zero reads requiredSocratic SSG constraints; live reads against defendersAdversity ResponseHead slumps; waiting for coach directivesImmediate Next Play Speed reset; players owning the roomThe Analytical Target: Protecting Your Game-Night $eFG%$$$eFG% = frac{text{FGM} + (0.5 times text{3PM})}{text{FGA}}$$YouTube SEO Strategy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Recorded live at the CLOC Global Institute (CGI) 2026, this episode of CLOC Talk features Mark Ross of Deloitte in conversation with Ari Kaplan, Founder of Ari Kaplan Advisors, for a timely discussion on the forces reshaping legal operations. Together, they unpack the latest trends in legal operations spending for 2026, explore how in-house legal teams and law firms are adapting to the rapid rise of generative AI and evolving pricing pressures, and share practical insights for navigating today's changing legal landscape. Ari also reveals the skills that will define the next generation of legal operations leaders—from relentless curiosity and strong business acumen to the ability to clearly demonstrate measurable ROI—making this a must-listen episode for anyone looking to stay ahead of what's next.

Your processes can be documented, and your operations can still be fragile. In this episode of the Foundations of Transition series, Jason Miller and Makenzie Ragland explore the eighth foundation: Process Maturity and Operational Strength. They discuss why strong operations involve more than just having documented procedures and focus on building an organization that is curious enough to improve continuously. By examining how work actually flows through a business rather than relying on organizational charts or written processes, owners can uncover hidden bottlenecks, operational risks, and opportunities to create a more resilient organization. Additionally, they also explore the role of curiosity in developing a transferable business, explaining how "hero" employees, undocumented workarounds, and routine habits can quietly create dependencies that limit growth. They provide practical questions that owners can ask to gain a clearer understanding of how work is actually accomplished and explain why creating a culture of continuous improvement not only strengthens daily operations but also prepares a business for a successful ownership transition.

Russ Branzell, President and CEO of CHIME, sits down with Vivek Swaminathan, CEO of Cardamom Health, for a thoughtful conversation on what it takes to succeed in healthcare's next era of transformation. As health systems navigate accelerating AI adoption, mounting operational pressures, and evolving patient expectations, leaders are being challenged to move beyond innovation for innovation's sake and focus on measurable outcomes. From building the foundational capabilities needed to scale AI responsibly to transforming data into actionable insights, they discuss how healthcare organizations can turn emerging technologies into meaningful operational impact.Key Takeaways:How organizations can establish the right foundation for successful AI adoption and long-term scalability.What separates organizations that are building for healthcare's next era from those still applying new technologies to legacy operating models.How healthcare leaders can convert growing volumes of data into operational intelligence that drives measurable outcomes.The role of leadership, culture, and trust in sustaining innovation and organizational growth.Lessons from healthcare executives navigating continuous disruption while remaining focused on mission and patient impact.

This is an AI-generated episode of The Storage Marketplace Podcast, created from the live discussion at Storage Meetup #88, recorded on July 24, 2026. Every Friday, self-storage owners, operators, managers, vendors, investors, and industry professionals gather live to discuss what's working, what's changing, and what's next for the industry. This AI-generated episode captures the biggest ideas, conversations, and practical takeaways from that week's meetup. In this episode, we explore discussions around: • The latest trends impacting self-storage operations and management • AI, automation, and emerging technology shaping the industry • Marketing strategies and customer acquisition ideas from experienced operators • Operational best practices shared by facilities across the country • Industry challenges, opportunities, and lessons learned from real-world experience • Practical ideas you can apply to your own facility or business The biggest takeaway from this week's meetup:

Clinical teams, supply chain leaders, and vendor partners all play a critical role in surgical success, but getting everyone aligned isn't always easy. In Episode 1 of our brand-new podcast series, "Operate in Harmony," Geoff Gates from Cleveland Clinic and Matt Rechin from ReadySet join us to explore how stronger partnerships create the foundation for lasting best practices. From strengthening clinical engagement and streamlining vendor communication to leveraging technology and data to reduce manual steps, they'll break down how stronger alignment can drive safer, smarter, and more consistent processes. If your teams are working side by side but not always in sync, this episode will help you bring every part of the surgical supply chain into harmony. Tune in today! Over the next four weeks, this series explores what it takes to align people, process, and technology across the surgical supply chain. From strengthening clinical partnerships and vendor collaboration to optimizing workflows and embracing innovation, we'll explore the ideas and insights that help healthcare teams build best practices that last. A special thanks to our sponsor, ReadySet, for making this series possible. #PowerSupply #ReadySet #OperateInHarmony #HealthcareSupplyChain #Vendor #Clinical #Operational #Partnership #BestPractices #Technology

Jessica Calabrese of FIS Global joins us to unpack what's changing in retirement plan technology and why participant expectations are evolving so quickly. In this session, we explore the biggest drivers shaping modern retirement experiences—especially the shift toward fast, intuitive, mobile-friendly access to information, plus smarter education and guidance that feels more like the consumer apps people use every day.

Tank containers sit at the very heart of some of the most safety critical activities across the global supply chain. From the carriage of hazardous cargoes to operating under demanding conditions and tight schedules, the integrity of these assets underpins not only commercial performance but also the protection of people, cargo and the environment. 

Welcome to an especially impactful episode of Build a Better Agency! This week, host Drew McLellan takes you on a deep dive into the true nature of leadership inside agencies beyond the usual skills and techniques. Drawing from months of research and two decades of real-world experience, Drew outlines the essential leadership domains every agency owner and team member needs to master for a thriving, resilient business. Drew breaks down a practical framework of six key leadership domains, plus a vital seventh that ties them all together. These concepts shine a light on the often invisible factors holding leaders and organizations back. He reveals how mindset, team relationships, operational systems, and authentic self-awareness drive culture, retention, and profit far more than any single technical skill. Through candid examples and clear behaviors, he explains why promoting high performers into leadership roles without a game plan is a common and costly mistake for agencies of all sizes. Listeners will walk away with actionable advice for assessing their own gaps, building stronger leadership teams, and fostering accountability at every level. Drew offers concrete steps to cultivate self-awareness, hold tough but necessary conversations, and balance psychological safety with high standards—arming you with the tools to create a growth-driven, high-performing agency culture. If you're ready to confront your agency's leadership dynamics head-on, this episode is a must-listen. Drew challenges owners and leaders alike to lead with love, invest in their teams, and model vulnerability—all with the goal of building agencies that are not just profitable, but truly great places to work. By the end, you'll have a clear roadmap for elevating your leadership and enabling those around you to do the same. A big thank you to our podcast's presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They're an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here. What You Will Learn in This Episode: The six critical domains of agency leadership development Why self-awareness and growth mindset unlock every other skill Building psychological safety and accountability for real team retention Bridging the gap on commercial thinking and agency economics Operational rigor—why systems and processes are non-negotiable The role of proactive, candid communication—internally and with clients Embracing adaptability, experimentation, and learning agility in an era of change

Flo Esho is the founder of The Easy Flow Life, a U.S.-based executive support agency that helps founders and executives step out of the day-to-day and back into true leadership.In this episode of The Leader Assistant Podcast, Flo talks about supporting executives in their personal and professional lives, tips for hiring an assistant, encouragement for those considering becoming a virtual assistant, travel planning tips, and more.Show notes → leaderassistant.com/387--It's the last day of the offsite and it was exactly what the team needed. The CEO pulls you aside to say, “Thank you. This was next level.”Your secret? You used Offsite. They handled the venues, negotiations, and logistics – so you could focus on shaping the experience.Sound too good to be true? It's actually within reach. (And it can even save you money.)See how at leaderassistant.com/offsite. --Are you ready to level up? Enroll in The Leader Assistant Academy at leaderassistant.com/academy to embrace the Leader Assistant frameworks used by thousands of assistants.More from The Leader Assistant...Book, Audiobook, and Workbook -> leaderassistantbook.comThe Leader Assistant Academy -> leaderassistantbook.com/academy Premium Membership -> leaderassistant.com/membershipEvents -> leaderassistantlive.comFree Community -> leaderassistant.com/community

Don’t get left behind on AWS! Don’t get left behind on AWS! Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this episode, we go deep inside the AWS Marketplace with Louise Strandoo, who spent nearly a decade building AWS’s marketplace business from the ground up and now leads partner development for AWS’s data, analytics, and storage practice. Louise unpacks COST, the six-pillar framework her team built by studying what actually separates hypergrowth startups and billion-dollar sellers from partners who treat marketplace as a side project. We break down why operational excellence has to be in place before you ever enable your sales team, why executive sponsorship from the top of the organization is what keeps a marketplace strategy from collapsing into a single point of failure, and why product-led growth is no longer optional now that buyers, and increasingly AI agents, expect to try, buy, and deploy software without waiting on a human to close the loop, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwyAP7yVy3I Key Takeaways Success on AWS Marketplace requires a comprehensive framework like COST, not just a simple checklist of tasks. Your product must be something customers actually want to buy, not a subpar offering used merely to test the waters. Operational excellence is required to ensure your marketplace motion has the sustainability to scale globally. Product-Led Growth (PLG) is essential for enabling frictionless procurement, especially as buyers shift toward agent-driven AI solutions. Executive sponsorship is critical; building a strategy without leadership buy-in will prevent it from gaining real traction. Sales alignment ensures reps are appropriately compensated and friction is removed, preventing them from avoiding marketplace transactions. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags AWS Marketplace framework, COST methodology, product-led growth, agentic procurement, hyperscaler ecosystem, operational excellence, revenue friction, private offers, co-sell acceleration, strategic collaboration agreements, resilient architecture, cloud commitments, organizational transformation Key Tags Louise Strandoo Audio Episode [00:00:00] Louise Strandoo: Salespeople, rightly so. They don’t wanna introduce something that’s going to add a complexity to the deal. They’re like, why would AWS wanna be involved? [00:00:11] Vince Menzione: You can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us, the way Hyperscalers are partnering, how AI’s remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:22] Louise Strandoo: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Menzi. Own [00:00:26] Vince Menzione: your host. And each week I sit down with leaders at the intersection of technology, partnerships and outcomes. The voices shaping how ecosystems actually work. We talk about what’s real, what’s changing, and what it takes to lead in this era where the partner channel isn’t just part of the strategy. [00:00:45] Vince Menzione: It is the strategy because being in the room changes everything. Let’s start. [00:00:53] Louise Strandoo: And Louise Strand, come on out. Come on up. Uh, our first, our first [00:00:59] Vince Menzione: Amazon executive at, at this session. Not our first ever, but our first at this session. [00:01:06] Louise Strandoo: Happy to be [00:01:07] Vince Menzione: thrilled to have you. I, why don’t we sit down on an, um, I’ll have you sit here and, you know, you get, take one of the ultimate partner pillows with you since you’re a first assignment attend. [00:01:15] Louise Strandoo: Wonderful. [00:01:16] Vince Menzione: Uh, [00:01:16] Louise Strandoo: good [00:01:17] Vince Menzione: to hear. So great to have you. I thought maybe we’d start, maybe, uh, with you, uh, explaining your role. Then we can start talking about costs, which is the subject is like near and dear, and we’ll talk about that, about what that is. But I want to keep people on their pins of their seats right now. [00:01:33] Vince Menzione: So tell us, tell us more about you and your role and your journey at AWS. [00:01:37] Louise Strandoo: Yeah, well thanks for having me. Good to see everybody in the room. Um, so my name’s Louise. I have spent the better part of the last nine and a half years at AWS and I spent almost that whole time, probably around eight years. In AWS Marketplaces business Development organization, um, I joined to help startups figure out how to scale their business on the marketplace. [00:02:00] Louise Strandoo: And from there, I grew into a number of different roles, helped ISVs figure out how to scale their marketplace business of all sizes. Um, I worked with some of our top sellers on the marketplace, figure out how to really scale their revenue through the marketplace. Today I am actually the lead of the data analytics and storage partner development team. [00:02:20] Louise Strandoo: Nice. Within the US Tech partnerships organization. So it’s been a really cool transition to go from like all marketplace focused. And throughout that time, marketplace kind of became the center of partnerships. Yep. Within our partner program. Um, so now I manage PDMs and partners and we still talk a lot about marketplace. [00:02:40] Louise Strandoo: Also everything else that we do as a partner. So it’s, um, it’s been a fun journey. [00:02:45] Vince Menzione: And we were talking about this earlier, like you started with Marketplace and then moved out where all the other organizations started from partnership and moved into marketplace. Mm-hmm. Almost the other up. And you have built a framework costs [00:02:59] Louise Strandoo: mm-hmm. [00:03:00] Vince Menzione: Characteristics of successful sellers. And I have a set of operating principles about successful partnering. So I’m really intrigued about this conversation. I was hoping you could walk us through it, like what are these characteristics and where do most partners fall short in terms of characteristics? [00:03:18] Louise Strandoo: Yeah, so, um, like all really good things, cost was an effort that I built alongside a bunch of other really smart people. And we started to have this conversation about what does, uh, you know, what does success look like? We we’re focused in the beginning, in my marketplace journey on getting. Partners to sell on the marketplace, getting them to list and adopt the features. [00:03:41] Louise Strandoo: And of course they’re like, why would we do this? And we’re like, that’s a great question. Let’s figure out like really what the why of this whole thing is. And as we started to get partners who were startups and some of our really large partners activated, we started to see all kinds of value and how marketplace was helping co-sell and all this good stuff. [00:03:59] Louise Strandoo: And we needed to figure out like how do we identify what is like the lightning in the bottle? So we looked across some of the most, uh, hypergrowth companies on the marketplace. Mm-hmm. Some of those startups that had really propelled into major success stories. And then some of those like really scaled enterprise sellers, the one [00:04:17] Vince Menzione: that got to a billion dollars. [00:04:18] Louise Strandoo: Exactly. The market, our billion dollar market market. Billion dollar sellers. Right? Yep. And we looked at what are the common characteristics that all of those partners embody. Yes. And how do we kind of. Define a framework that is not a checklist because a lot of us were doing that at the time. Here’s all the things that you should do to make it work well. [00:04:34] Louise Strandoo: It doesn’t really work from partner to partner. Everyone has a unique go-to market strategy. Yeah, so we developed costs to kind of be this overarching tool that partners can use to say, do we have the right kind of fundamental approach to how we’re going to market with AWS and how we’re thinking about the marketplace. [00:04:51] Louise Strandoo: Do we have the right tools to like bring our overall go-to-market strategy to A AWS and to the marketplace so we’re not doing two separate things. That was sort of the genesis of the idea. Makes [00:05:02] Vince Menzione: a lot of sense. [00:05:04] Louise Strandoo: So, um, the characteristics, there’s six of ’em. I won’t go into detail about every single one. [00:05:11] Louise Strandoo: Oh, [00:05:11] come [00:05:11] Vince Menzione: on. We’ll do that one. Yeah. We have some people in the room that are gonna be intrigued by this. Go ahead. [00:05:16] Louise Strandoo: So, um, the first pillar is. Partnership with AWS, you can’t do marketplace without figuring out what, what’s your overall partner strategy, right? So how are you using the partner programs to drive differentiation in your business? [00:05:30] Louise Strandoo: Yep. How are you using our funding programs to elevate the parts of your business that you really wanna accelerate? Um, and how are you thinking about your partner strategy with AWS overall? [00:05:40] Vince Menzione: Interesting. [00:05:41] Louise Strandoo: The second one is, uh, selection on AWS marketplace. [00:05:44] Vince Menzione: Product selection. [00:05:45] Louise Strandoo: That’s right. [00:05:45] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:05:46] Louise Strandoo: You gotta have a product on the marketplace that your customers wanna buy. [00:05:49] Louise Strandoo: I think the biggest thing that partners have done wrong over the years is they think, let’s do crawl, walk, run. We’re gonna put something up there that we’re not, you know, really excited about, but we’ll see how it does and then we’ll try to invest from there. [00:06:03] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. [00:06:04] Louise Strandoo: If you put something out there that nobody knows how to sell, then that you’re not excited about, your customers aren’t probably excited about it either. [00:06:09] Louise Strandoo: There’s no reason it’s gonna do well in the marketplace. [00:06:10] Vince Menzione: Yeah. It makes no sense to me. [00:06:12] Louise Strandoo: Yep. So you gotta have something good. You gotta have your marquee product, and then you wanna use features that are gonna help buyers actually access that product in a way that’s frictionless. Yeah. The third one is operational excellence. [00:06:25] Louise Strandoo: So that’s looking at how are you structuring your organization and investing in all the right processes that you need to scale the business. Reporting at a global scale, understanding how to recognize revenue and thinking about all of the in-between moments of. Being on the marketplace, creating an offer, how does your sales team gonna get in touch with you when you need to send that offer out? [00:06:47] Louise Strandoo: And how are you making sure that an alliance person isn’t trying to find an outlet in a random corner of an airport to send a private offer to a customer? All of that structural stuff to make the, the motion scale. [00:07:00] Vince Menzione: So we’re talking product led growth versus. One off or [00:07:04] Louise Strandoo: all of it? All of it. Okay. No matter what kind of partner you are, you have to have operational excellence. [00:07:08] Louise Strandoo: Yeah. To make sure that your marketplace and your partnership motion has sustainability and scale. The next two, I’ll kind of go through fast. There is, yeah. Um, partner commitment to marketplace revenue. So what do you really want Drive from a revenue perspective, right. How do you get your leaders bought in on that, and how do you set a goal that dictates what you’re doing? [00:07:28] Louise Strandoo: And then how do you define sales alignment? From a structural perspective to say we’re gonna remove friction that could get in the way of the field selling this thing. We’re gonna remove things that are, um, negating reps from wanting to go through marketplace because it’s impacting their comp. Yeah. Or it’s really hard. [00:07:46] Louise Strandoo: All of that kind of structural stuff goes into the sales alliance. [00:07:49] Vince Menzione: So there’s, yeah. I wanted to take this apart a little bit too, if you don’t mind. No [00:07:52] Louise Strandoo: problem. [00:07:53] Vince Menzione: Because I think about this a lot. So when you start talking about an organization, you’re talking about what this, we’ll call it an ISV Sure. Or an si, but. [00:08:00] Vince Menzione: You know, ISPs primarily is where it all started. They need to get their internal operational excellence. Right, exactly. Which means their, their ops piece. Yep. And their sales execution. They’re gonna to market all those things. The sales alignment side. Is that their sales teams [00:08:18] Louise Strandoo: correct. [00:08:19] Vince Menzione: Are compensated properly so that they don’t go around the systems. [00:08:22] Vince Menzione: Exactly right. They’re aligned. They’re aligned to go drive the right results. [00:08:25] Louise Strandoo: Exactly. [00:08:26] Vince Menzione: Because they’ve made commitments as well. [00:08:28] Louise Strandoo: Yeah. [00:08:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:08:29] Louise Strandoo: And I always talk about marketplace, like it is transformation. It’s different. It’s not what you’re doing today. [00:08:35] Vince Menzione: That’s right. [00:08:35] Louise Strandoo: Salespeople, rightly so. They don’t wanna introduce something that’s gonna add a complexity to the deal. [00:08:43] Louise Strandoo: They’re like, why would AWS wanna be involved? Stay away. So if that is already there and then on top of that Mm, they don’t get paid as much when they go direct. [00:08:53] Vince Menzione: Right? Right. [00:08:54] Louise Strandoo: They’re not gonna go through the market nice. [00:08:55] Vince Menzione: No, they’re not. [00:08:55] Louise Strandoo: They’re not gonna bring anything to you and the partnership team saying like, Hey, we really wanna figure out how to make this engine work with AWS So we have to do as much as we can to remove that friction from the experience. [00:09:06] Vince Menzione: So, you know, you mentioned private offers, which made me think about like product-led growth versus private offers. ’cause it’s, it feels like marketplace from the beginning. It’s changed. It [00:09:15] Louise Strandoo: has, [00:09:16] Vince Menzione: you’ve been doing this for a number of years. You were first to market with a marketplace. There was, I’ll call a lot of friction because there was channels and other, other routes to market direct selling. [00:09:27] Vince Menzione: Tell us, take us through some of those experiences. Yeah, yeah. Like what was that like? And then obviously you built cos because you had a lot of field engagement with these organizations trying to get them to go do it the right way. [00:09:38] Louise Strandoo: Right? [00:09:39] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:09:39] Louise Strandoo: So it’s interesting actually, when we built the marketplace. [00:09:42] Louise Strandoo: It was completely like a product-led growth motion, as in let’s just figure out a way to let AWS customers find amis in the marketplace. Developers are gonna go get it, and they’re just gonna buy it without any additional push from the field or like co-sell. That doesn’t need to happen. Then we heard from customers, Hey, this is great. [00:10:02] Louise Strandoo: But what we really want is also to be able to buy bigger contracts. We wanna customize our contracts, we wanna negotiate price when we’re buying this on behalf of, you know, large organizations. We’re not just buying what’s on the shelf. We need something more custom. So we introduced this concept of private offers to make sure that we could bring all of that customization into the process. [00:10:23] Louise Strandoo: And then we heard from customers saying, uh, we want to purchase from our preferred channel partners. We really wanna make sure that we’re, you know, not losing that source of, um, engagement with our really critical partners. So we had to figure out, hey, how can we make it so that we’re not competing with the channel? [00:10:41] Louise Strandoo: ’cause we’re not really a channel at all. Right. So we had to go and build our platform that allowed for channel partners to sell through the marketplace and augment that private offer piece to say, Hey, if you want, you can have a channel partner resell your product through the marketplace. So today we kind of see all of those as just different routes to market and different ISVs are gonna embrace different routes to market. [00:11:04] Louise Strandoo: First, the really important thing about costs is that it’s. Pushing partners to think about bringing their go to market strategy that works outside of the partnership to the marketplace. Mm-hmm. So if you’re an ISV that doesn’t sell with channel today, don’t start with channel partners on the marketplace. [00:11:21] Louise Strandoo: Right. If you don’t do product-led growth today, probably figure that out before you start doing it on the marketplace. Yeah. But if you’re doing those things, if you’re not doing those things, you should look at why not, and could we be doing those things and then we have the ways to bring it into your strategy with AWS marketplace. [00:11:38] Vince Menzione: So what separates the partners who kind of build this flywheel of success that you describe from those who treat it maybe as a side project? And do you, do you see less and less of that today too? I wanna, I wanna ask you. [00:11:50] Louise Strandoo: No, I think, um, the more mature the marketplace gets [00:11:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:11:58] Louise Strandoo: The more obvious some of the, uh, characteristics of success become and the more important. [00:12:06] Louise Strandoo: Embodying that framework becomes for partners as they grow to become the next billion dollar seller, right? And become the next a hundred million dollar seller. Um, I think a couple things come to mind for me. The first thing is that like at AWS overall, we talk a lot about like resilient architecture. We talk a lot about what does it look like to drive successful transformation. [00:12:29] Louise Strandoo: All of that has to happen in the partnership. Partners that have really strong marketplace motions with AWS, they do not have single points of failure. They are not expecting an alliance lead to manage everything and then have the business collapse if they leave. [00:12:46] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:12:46] Louise Strandoo: They figure out how to delegate and get buy-in from leadership so that they have multiple folks invested in the strategy for multiple angles so that there’s scalability and sustainability. [00:12:58] Louise Strandoo: Without that. You could do all the things right with costs and if there’s res, if there’s no resiliency, if there’s, if there’s a single point of failure, it doesn’t scale and it doesn’t last. [00:13:09] Vince Menzione: It’s so funny ’cause you haven’t seen my seven principles of, of successful partnering, but we talk about growth mindset, we talk about executive commitment and then clarity on your vision and what you’re hoping to achieve. [00:13:21] Louise Strandoo: Yeah. [00:13:22] Vince Menzione: Like that’s your internal victory. You’ve gotta get those things right. That’s exactly what you just said. A hundred [00:13:26] percent. [00:13:26] Louise Strandoo: And you can’t, you, you know, like if you don’t have that executive sponsorship, [00:13:30] Vince Menzione: yeah, [00:13:32] Louise Strandoo: great. You’ve done the cost framework, but where are you gonna go with it? [00:13:35] Vince Menzione: And it’s not just the sponsorship, it’s. [00:13:38] Vince Menzione: Up in, from the top of the organization all the way down to the selling floor. Completely. Right? [00:13:42] Louise Strandoo: Completely. [00:13:42] Vince Menzione: Everybody has to be aligned. Resources, investments all need to be aligned to this. Mm-hmm. [00:13:47] Louise Strandoo: Mm-hmm. [00:13:47] Vince Menzione: We’re speaking the same language earlier. A hundred percent. I love it. I love it. I love it. Um, so what does, we talked about product-led growth, but I want to maybe jump in here a little bit more. [00:13:58] Vince Menzione: Because I think it’s, it’s becoming more prevalent today, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s like, you know, we talked about private offer. It was really private offers, at least my perspective was a few years ago, I wanna buy something from you. Oh, you have a cloud commitment. I can access the cloud commitment. [00:14:13] Louise Strandoo: Yeah. [00:14:14] Vince Menzione: And so it was always the private offer thing that was going on behind the scenes, which required a lot of internal resources to go drive. [00:14:19] Louise Strandoo: Yep. [00:14:20] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about product led growth. ’cause that becomes a fly more of a flywheel that’s automated Yeah. And allows you to sell while you’re sleeping kind of thing, you know? [00:14:28] Louise Strandoo: Totally. [00:14:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:14:30] Louise Strandoo: So I think, um, we have heard a lot from customers saying, okay, when we really need to negotiate and we need something custom, we wanna be able to do that. [00:14:40] Louise Strandoo: But we also wanna be able to purchase things quickly. We don’t wanna have to go out to dinner every time we need to upgrade, uh, like our licenses and get a new contract. We wanna be able to experiment and pick the things that resonate best with the line of business users that are, you know, increasingly taking some of that buying power. [00:14:59] Louise Strandoo: And I think especially now that we’re entering into, you know, the unprecedented, unprecedented times, it’s everything is AI like. There is more, um, pressure than ever to have users quickly figure out, does something add value to me and my business right now? And if it does, then I’m gonna keep using it, and if it doesn’t, I’m gonna go to the next thing. [00:15:22] Guest: Right. [00:15:22] Louise Strandoo: Product led growth is really about eliminating some of that I would say. Paperwork at the start of the process and putting the power in the hands of the user to say, can this product solve your challenge? And as more and more buyers are looking at Agen solutions, they wanna be able to try something, see if it works, and then quickly buy it without having to go through a whole bunch of steps because they have work that needs to be done right now. [00:15:54] Louise Strandoo: So the marketplace, that was our roots, like we started with this PLG motion. So we have all of that foundation to do it, and we’ve spent a lot of time over the last two, three years, like really investing in that from our engineering and roadmap perspective to build a whole bunch of features and capabilities that support product-led growth. [00:16:11] Louise Strandoo: We have things like free trials request, demo request, a private offer if you want to. Um, we introduced something, you know, last year that was an express private offer experience. Hey, you know, you want custom pricing. Request it and we’re gonna give it to you right away because the vendor has populated rate cards. [00:16:26] Louise Strandoo: Right? So all of those things I think are really important right now to say, yeah, when your customers like, wanna get going, now let’s stop. Putting barriers in the way and let your product actually show its value immediately. [00:16:38] Vince Menzione: And you were actually putting buttons or making buttons available Yeah. For people’s websites. [00:16:42] Vince Menzione: Exactly. So they could just say, click here and [00:16:43] Louise Strandoo: buy. Absolutely. We buy with a Ws. You can click from your own website, your own marketing pages to route them to the marketplace. If that’s the preferred way to transact, [00:16:50] Vince Menzione: yeah, why not? [00:16:51] Louise Strandoo: Yeah. [00:16:52] Vince Menzione: So you mentioned ai. We talked a little bit, I call it the tectonic shifts. [00:16:56] Vince Menzione: We, we’ve seen this incredible transformation happening so fast. And now we’re talking about agents. Right. And, uh, John Yo was over here from, uh, earlier from Sugar talking about like, what happens if the buyer is an agent? [00:17:08] Louise Strandoo: Totally. [00:17:09] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about that. [00:17:10] Louise Strandoo: Yeah. I mean, I think that PLG and like is the right thing to enable a agentic procurement. [00:17:18] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:17:19] Louise Strandoo: If, um, you know, like in the, uh. 2019 when private offers were like, that was the big boom. We were like getting people to sign up on the marketplace. All we were focused on was private offers. So many sellers would have products on the marketplace where you’d click and purchase it and it would just say, thanks for buying, and it’d be like, we’ll get in touch with you and like a 24 hours and then we’ll figure it out. [00:17:42] Louise Strandoo: No worries. Thanks for buying. If that doesn’t work. If you’re an agent, it doesn’t work. An agent would be like, okay, this is like a dead end, right? Yeah. Agents are gonna look for products that they can purchase and begin using instantaneously. So yeah, product-led growth is like a really good, um, strategy that ISVs can use to future proof their business and make sure that they’re not just catering to an evolved. [00:18:06] Louise Strandoo: You know, procurement persona who maybe is looking for that faster transaction, but also preparing for that agent persona. Yeah. That is gonna be helping make software procurement scale. [00:18:17] Vince Menzione: So what do the partners in the room need to do to rethink how they think about this? [00:18:22] Louise Strandoo: I think there’s a couple things. I think you know, number one, you can look at the cost framework and start to use it as a jumping off point to evaluate your business. [00:18:31] Louise Strandoo: You can look through a bunch of resources that we’ve put out around costs, and one of the first blogs that I wrote has a Buzzfeed style quiz. You can go through and be like, where are we at? And if you realize after you run through that exercise that you’re farther away from where you wanna be in terms of partnering with AWS, it’s a really good dump like starting point to be like, great, here’s the challenges. [00:18:56] Louise Strandoo: But the biggest message I would relay to the partners is. Do not wait to try to go build this and then bring it to your executives and say, look what I built. It’s not gonna go anywhere. You need to go and use that as the cry to your leadership team. Like escalate. Now here’s the opportunity that we have with AWS. [00:19:17] Louise Strandoo: Let’s look at all of the awesome studies that we and our partners have put out over the years. Look at your competitors that are in the marketplace, your competitors that are partnering with AWS, and start there by saying, we’re. Behind or we’re missing in these areas. We could be doing, you know this, to make our product more a ag agentic ready. [00:19:37] Louise Strandoo: We could be doing more in marketplace to ensure that we’re capitalizing on the private offer business, and we need to figure out how we’re gonna drive commitment now so we can go and build this if you try to build it. Then show the value later. It’s gonna be really hard to then be pushing that boulder up the hill. [00:19:55] Louise Strandoo: So the more that you can lean into getting the sponsorship early on, you’re gonna have a much easier time then navigating, you know, all the hard work that comes with partnership co-sell, um, and, and everything kind of fun that we get to do once we get to go to market with our partners. [00:20:10] Vince Menzione: Do you have one piece of advice for each one of the. [00:20:13] Vince Menzione: Conditions or characteristics for, for, for this group to follow or [00:20:17] Louise Strandoo: think about? I think that, um, the, we didn’t talk about the last one, which is a good one to end on, which is enablement. [00:20:22] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:20:23] Louise Strandoo: Enablement starts with like most of the time, ISVs in particular, and this, it goes for channel partners as well. [00:20:30] Louise Strandoo: They’re like, we gotta enable the field go and enable all the salespeople why they should do all this stuff. You have to do these things like in some sequence though. So if you go and enable the field, everybody do marketplace and they’re like, how? Where do we go, right? Do we send you the leads? Are we slacking you? [00:20:47] Louise Strandoo: Like are we emailing? Like what do we do? You have to then go back and be like, actually, our operational excellence isn’t sorted out. We need to do that first. And who needs to be enabled from that side of the house? Like don’t forget to enable your rev ops teams, your deal desk teams, all of the teams that are kind of essential to making your partnership with AWS Hum need to be enabled in the way that is relevant for their business. [00:21:10] Louise Strandoo: So when you, you know, think about like what do you need to do across all the pillars? It’s gonna be different depending on what your go-to-market focus is. If you’re a hundred percent focused on selling through SIS today and through channel, maybe product-led growth is not the top priority, but then you need to go and figure out, okay, so how have we. [00:21:28] Louise Strandoo: Figured out which partners we wanna work with on AWS and how have we enabled them and have we communicated that enablement to our salespeople? Are we removing unnecessary barriers to them transacting? That’s what you really gotta figure out. So it’s really about looking at how you execute outside of marketplace, outside AWS, figuring out what that, what are the strongest pieces that you do in your business today, across those pillars, and then asking to replicate that with your partnership with AWS. [00:21:56] Vince Menzione: Nice. So to the room here is, um, if someone in this room doesn’t, does one thing differently on the marketplace, what should it be? [00:22:08] Louise Strandoo: There’s so many things I can think about. I think like first [00:22:12] Vince Menzione: you’re coaching ’em [00:22:13] Louise Strandoo: individually, [00:22:13] Vince Menzione: by the way. Just think about it that way. [00:22:15] Louise Strandoo: One of the first things like, it depends on where you’re like, where you’re at in your journey. [00:22:18] Louise Strandoo: So like, quick show of hands, who is, um, a partner that is like using the marketplace today? [00:22:26] Vince Menzione: There’s quite a few actually. [00:22:27] Louise Strandoo: Okay. Awesome. Thank you for helping drive the marketplace. So for those of you that raised your hands, like my sentiment to you all would be figure out how you are incorporating marketplace as the center of your strategy with AWS. [00:22:44] Louise Strandoo: We are increasingly using marketplace as the point of scale for all things about partnership. All things funding are like increasingly requiring some hook into marketplace. So we can actually provide more funding and scale increase like more. So think about like how do you use marketplaces that like center of your partnership, um, for those of you that are not on the marketplace today and are thinking like, is this something that is valuable to me? [00:23:15] Louise Strandoo: Is this something that I should think about and do? You should absolutely. Go look at who are your competitors? Who are the folks that are already out there on the marketplace and, and why aren’t you there? And then you should start to look at what are the characteristics of successful sellers to map out What could we do and what’s the kind of order of operations that we should take to figure out like, how do we get there? [00:23:40] Louise Strandoo: How do we have a plan from the beginning to get buy-in for our partnership with AWS so that we’re not going about it, expecting that it’s gonna just like drive a bunch of leads to the business. It’s not what it does well, but it is gonna help accelerate the way that you co-sell with AWS, which can be a tremendous value add when done appropriately. [00:23:58] Louise Strandoo: So I think, yeah, like figure out the right way that it’s gonna unlock business value depending on what’s most important to your priority. Um. Today [00:24:08] Vince Menzione: we have about three and a half minutes, and I, I’m eager to see if there’s any questions. I, I, um, I, John’s right here with the mic and I love that. I love the, want to get the interaction here in the room. [00:24:19] Louise Strandoo: Yeah, [00:24:20] Vince Menzione: it’s a great group. [00:24:25] Guest: Oh, [00:24:29] Vince Menzione: can they light up that mic? Maybe [00:24:33] Louise Strandoo: Good. [00:24:37] Vince Menzione: There you go. That’s fine. There you go. It’s working. Alright. [00:24:41] Guest: Thank you so much. This is a really great presentation, first of all. I love it. Um, I’m actually part of the, uh, the GSI, so I work cognizant. My name is Ana Hill, um, and I’m manage alliances with ServiceNow. Um, our goal is in the really near future to really engage with all the hyperscalers in sell. [00:25:00] Guest: So that’s one thing. But my interesting, my question is how do you, how, how does AWS measure success? Of the partners who are on your platform, what are the metrics? How do you determine which partners are actually successful and what other partners can use to learn from that? [00:25:19] Louise Strandoo: Yeah, that’s such a great question. [00:25:21] Louise Strandoo: So, um, something that I think is like super helpful that you bring up is cost is not a, um, a scorecard that says everybody that does all these things is a good partner. It’s basically inputs that we have come up with that are supposed to help with the partnership outcomes. Um, so partners, we measure a whole bunch of different things. [00:25:47] Louise Strandoo: I think PDMs and my team carry goals across like seven different categories. There’s a couple of big things that we look at. We look at the revenue that you drive through the marketplace, so whether that’s through private offers or through your self-service business or through. Selling through a reseller, or if you are the reseller, like what is that resell business or driving? [00:26:05] Louise Strandoo: Um, we look at what are the opportunities that you’re bringing and sharing with AWS and that you’re launching. So through our lead sharing mechanism. Not only what are you launching, but what are you sharing with us that is qualified that you’re bringing the field into? Um, we look at things like migrations and migration, realized revenue. [00:26:25] Louise Strandoo: How are you helping drive customers to the cloud? And how are you helping customers not just get everything set up, but you start actually using it. Um, so we really are gonna look across like a multitude of those metrics and when we look at like which partners are kind of leading the way. We’re gonna start to look at the revenue in those buckets, right? [00:26:44] Louise Strandoo: Like who’s sharing and bringing and growing with us? Who’s bringing more opportunities to engage before it happens on the marketplace? Who’s actually completing that transaction? And then who are helping who, who are the partners? Kind of like leading those big types of transformations, migrations, and, and realize revenue. [00:27:00] Louise Strandoo: This is really great. Yeah. Yeah. [00:27:04] Vince Menzione: Thank you. Any other questions? Come on. We’ve got 30 seconds left. We have time for that one last question. Run over there. John. Come on. [00:27:17] Guest: Thank you again, a great, uh, presentation. One question I had is, uh, this morning, right Jay from, uh, oia, right? He identified a whole bunch of, uh, companies that are doing. [00:27:28] Guest: More than a billion dollars in revenue with AWS. [00:27:30] Louise Strandoo: Mm-hmm. [00:27:31] Guest: What would you say are one or two top qualities among these companies that help some drive? I can give [00:27:36] Louise Strandoo: six. And they’re all of these. Yes. [00:27:39] Vince Menzione: The cost, [00:27:40] Louise Strandoo: but like, I think, um, so I love it. Yeah. My, my team we’re working on some content to better capture, like Yeah. [00:27:48] Louise Strandoo: You, you’ve gotten there, you’ve done the six basic things. Now what happens when you’re a billion dollar business? What does it look like there? It’s a lot of the same stuff, right? Like billion dollar billers on the marketplace. They embody that resilience, for example, in their operational mechanisms. [00:28:03] Louise Strandoo: They’re moving beyond the point of there being like one person that creates private offers and they’re like just part of the partnership team. They activate their, um, their deal desk to really manage private offers and marketplace business at scale. They’re integrating their pipeline to share deals proactively through their CRM system and they have really targeted enablement that is. [00:28:24] Louise Strandoo: Really pushing to the field to make sure that every person in their team understands the value of cloud value of AWS and how marketplace accelerates the pipeline. So the more mature that you become as a marketplace seller, like the more that cost is relevant to help keep you on track and be that kind of north star to say like, you could do a cool bunch of stuff with us, but here’s really where you wanna check and see, like what can you do to evolve the business to the next stage? [00:28:49] Vince Menzione: What you’ve said is so like impactful and we have some experts in the room that do this. They help these organizations better understand it’s really getting into your field organization to help them understand how to. How to show up for meetings with AWS re, like how to, how to, uh, co-sell together, how to think about going after these opportunities. [00:29:09] Vince Menzione: What, when you’re, when you’re talking to customers, potential customers about their cloud commitments, like what are the right questions to ask in the pro? There’s so many things, like I’m sure the costs six has like 150 each [00:29:21] Louise Strandoo: Easily [00:29:21] Vince Menzione: steps. Yeah. You know, to it. [00:29:24] Louise Strandoo: Yeah. And I think like, just to follow on that. [00:29:26] Louise Strandoo: Um, we have partners who have gone and they’ve been like, okay, we’re getting a strategic collaboration agreement with AWS. We’re getting funding, and if they don’t have this, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. It fails. So this is really like, yeah, it’s about building that resilient architecture to say, if we go big, do we have the execution plan to succeed? [00:29:47] Louise Strandoo: You can’t start with a plan to say, give us a bunch of funding and we’ll go do it. Your salespeople will say. Know what that is. Don’t care. Yeah. So you have to put all of that, you know, all of those building blocks in first to make sure that we can actually execute. [00:30:01] Vince Menzione: You need alignment from the executive suite down to the selling floor. [00:30:05] Louise Strandoo: A hundred percent. [00:30:06] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:30:06] Louise Strandoo: Yep. [00:30:06] Vince Menzione: That’s really what it’s all about. [00:30:07] Louise Strandoo: Yep. [00:30:08] Vince Menzione: Louise, thank you so much. It’s been incredible. So great to have you join us. Thank you [00:30:15] so [00:30:15] Louise Strandoo: much. Yes, thank [00:30:16] Vince Menzione: you. [00:30:16] Louise Strandoo: Thank you, [00:30:16] Vince Menzione: thank you. Thanks for listening to The Ultimate Partner Podcast. If today’s conversation resonated. Share it with a partner leader in your network. [00:30:26] Vince Menzione: Subscribe where you listen, and head over to the Ultimate partner.com for show notes related content and the resources for this episode. And if you haven’t already, now’s the time to register for the Ultimate Partner Live event in Reston, Virginia, October 26th through October 28th. Until next time, keep showing up in the rooms that matter because being in the room changes everything.

Ever wondered if your greenhouse control system is actually helping—or if it's leaving you in the dark about your energy bills? I've been there, and that's exactly what we dig into in this episode.Joining me are Neda, CEO and co-founder of Microclimates, and Gretchen, Executive Director at the Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering Consortium at Cornell, whose combined expertise covers everything from cutting-edge environmental controls to energy efficiency in controlled environment agriculture. Neda has an extensive background in developing technologies that empower growers with actionable data, while Gretchen brings years of research experience with leading universities and utility-backed initiatives in optimizing greenhouse lighting and automation.This episode unpacks the real-world findings from the CalNEX Project—a first-of-its-kind scientific study focused on the impact of smart environmental monitoring and controls in California greenhouses. We compare “smart” and “smarter” systems, revealing surprising industry gaps in environmental data collection, misunderstood overhead costs, and how simple steps can lead to significant energy savings and business sustainability.Beyond the results, we chat about practical steps for adopting automation without ripping out your current systems, new open-platform sensor trends, the reality (and future) of AI in controlled ag, and why a phased, data-driven approach will be key for small and large growers alike. If you're daunted by all the talk of sensors, integration, or AI, consider this the guide to understanding what actually matters—and what you can do today.Curious if you're missing an easy win in your farm's energy management, or want a reality check on all the AI hype? Tune in now and turn your environmental data into your biggest asset!Thanks to Our SponsorsCEA Summit East - https://indoor.ag/cea-summit-east-2025/Indoor AgCon - https://indoor.ag/Key Takeaways00:00 Discussing the CalNEX Project findings03:17 Smart Controls Project achievements07:52 Improving greenhouse energy efficiency10:34 Energy consumption misconceptions12:57 Diverse systems in cannabis farming19:10 Automating greenhouse light management22:22 Operational impacts in construction projects25:40 Consulting on greenhouse tech needs27:50 Discussing phased approach for innovations29:57 Phased approach to AI implementation35:51 Parental influence on IT security37:02 Adopting AI and Automation Tools41:17 Starting with basic crop monitoring43:32 Indoor farming control techniques46:39 Year of retrofits and opportunities49:46 Appreciating industry partnershipsTweetable Quotes"Our job is to complement what's already there. The projects Gretchen mentioned, every site had something different… Our job wasn't to go in and just say, rip everything out for this control study and start over because we want to collect the data. It was really to take a look at what do you currently have, how can we complement that with adding more environmental insight, environmental visibility to that operation, and is there a way that we can integrate what you currently have?" "I'd say the biggest surprise and biggest lesson was that they didn't have enough environmental visibility. A lot of these operations had maybe one temperature humidity sensor hanging in the middle of the room representing the entire greenhouse or a section of the greenhouse. Your control system is only as good as the information it's taking in, like the input, right?""If you don't have the thousands of data points, if you can't summarize the trends, if you can't make any recommendations and alerts, and you can't generate those reports based on the thousand data points, how is this AI going to actually get to know you?... First of all, we have to step back and say, are operators actually collecting data? We already said early on in this conversation they are, but they don't have enough environmental visibility, which means they actually are not collecting enough data."Resources MentionedWebsite - www.microclimates.comYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@Microclimates-IncInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/microclimatesFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/microclimates.incLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/microclimatesLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/gschimelpfenig/Resource Innovation Institute - https://resourceinnovation.org/ Microclimates - https://microclimates.com/ Priva Control Systems - https://www.priva.com/Ritter Greenhouse Automation - https://rittergreenhouse.com/Connect With UsVFP LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/verticalfarmingpodcastVFP Twitter - https://twitter.com/VerticalFarmPodVFP Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/direct/inbox/VFP Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/VerticalFarmPodSubscribe to our newsletters!AgTech Digest - https://agtechdigest.comThe Indoor Farmer - https://www.indoorverticalfarm.com/Horti-Gen Insights - https://www.hortigeninsights.com/

In this episode of FYI, Tasha Keeney and Daniel Maguire sit down with Bobby Healy, founder and CEO of Manna, to examine the rapidly expanding drone delivery market. Bobby explains how Manna's autonomous aircraft can deliver food and other goods within minutes, why its hot-swap architecture supports high-volume operations, and how regulation is opening the US market. They also discuss the operational challenges behind drone delivery, Manna's use of ground robots and AI, opportunities across food, medical, grocery, and parcel delivery, and Bobby's expectation that drone delivery will reach cities across the United States within five years. Key Points From This Episode:[00:00:00] Introduction to Manna and the drone delivery market[00:06:46] Why Bobby Healy founded Manna[00:07:41] The current drone delivery landscape[00:10:01] How an autonomous Manna delivery works[00:15:20] Operational challenges and aircraft maintenance[00:17:59] Regulation and Manna's US expansion plans[00:21:54] Why Manna prioritizes food delivery[00:24:37] Medical, parcel, and grocery delivery opportunities[00:30:09] Partnerships with delivery aggregators and brands[00:39:09] How Manna uses AI and automation[00:44:21] The potential size of the drone delivery market[00:48:55] Goal of reducing delivery costs from nearly $10 to $0.50Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)

In "Built to Last: Inside Holman Logistics", Joe Lynch speaks with President and COO of Holman Logistics, Mike Gardner, about how the company's 162-year heritage, safety-first culture, and long-term customer partnerships drive sustainable growth in today's supply chain landscape. About Mike Gardner Mike Gardner is the President & COO of Holman Logistics, a national third-party logistics company headquartered in Seattle, Washington. With a 40-plus-year career in supply chain management, Mike has held executive roles at GATX Logistics, APL Logistics, and DHL Supply Chain, previously serving as CEO of Kane Logistics before advising in 3PL, real estate, and venture capital. At Holman, he oversees 1,400 team members, over eight million square feet of distribution space, and a nationwide transportation network. Mike holds an MBA from Southern Illinois University and a Bachelor of Science from Miami University, where he serves on the Center for Supply Chain Excellence board. Passionate about empowering family businesses, he is also a founding board member of ALAN. Beyond logistics, this former high school chef, Cincinnati native, father of three, and marathoner has raised $7.4 million for cancer research over 16 years through Pelotonia. About Holman Logistics Holman Logistics is a national third-party logistics (3PL) provider offering multi-client warehousing, manufacturing support, and nationwide transportation solutions. Founded in 1864 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, the privately held company manages over eight million square feet of distribution space and operates a network spanning 20 locations across nine states. Operating with over 1,400 team members, Holman specializes in high-exacting verticals, including consumer packaged goods (CPG), food and beverage, ingredients, pet food, and major appliances. Its core capabilities range from contract warehousing, plant sub-assembly, and Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) services to private fleet shipping, dedicated shuttles, freight brokerage, and direct-to-consumer ecommerce fulfillment. Grounded in a culture prioritizing operational safety and long-term customer partnerships, Holman balances its multi-generational heritage with modern operational capabilities—incorporating advanced automation, continuous improvement programs, and AI-enabled site tools to deliver consistent, high-performance execution. Key Takeaways: Built to Last: Inside Holman Logistics In "Built to Last: Inside Holman Logistics", Joe Lynch speaks with President and COO of Holman Logistics, Mike Gardner, about how the company's 162-year heritage, safety-first culture, and long-term customer partnerships drive sustainable growth in today's supply chain landscape. Safety as an Operational Strategy ("Journey to Zero"): Holman Logistics treats safety not as a metric compared to industry averages, but as a non-negotiable core value targeting zero incidents. Operational safety sets the foundation for service quality, and every associate is empowered to "own the stop button" to pause unsafe operations. 162+ Years of Adaptability: Founded during the Lincoln administration and family-owned for over a century, Holman's longevity is proof of continuous adaptation—navigating world wars, recessions, deregulation, and eccommerce growth by staying close to customer needs. Culture Drives Retention and Service Consistency: In an industry plagued by high turnover, Holman relies on a people-first, performance-driven culture—reinforced by leadership orientations and awards like the Bob Downie Legacy Award—to retain experienced associates who know the customer's business inside out. True Strategic Partnership Over Transactional Service: Holman builds long-term, embedded relationships (some lasting since the 1960s) using open communication, system integration, and gain-sharing models that align financial incentives around mutual cost savings and continuous improvement. Nimble Innovation Without Tech Hype: Holman balances legacy heritage with modern capabilities. As a privately held "thinking company," it rapidly adopts practical technology—such as AI vision tools on forklifts for training—while quickly discarding tech that doesn't add operational value. Private Ownership as a Strategic Advantage: Unlike 3PLs beholden to private equity exit timelines or quarterly public earnings, Holman's multi-generational family leadership offers stability, long-term capital planning, and agility when customizing solutions for mid-market shippers. Focusing on Core Complex Markets: Holman deliberately specializes in high-exacting verticals—including CPG, ingredients, pet food, and major appliances—providing tailored services ranging from plant sub-assembly and store-door delivery to Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) support and final-mile execution. Learn More About Built to Last: Inside Holman Logistics Mike Gardner | Linkedin Holman Logistics | Linkedin Holman Logistics Costco | Acquired The Logistics of Logistics Podcast If you enjoy the podcast, please leave a positive review, subscribe, and share it with your friends and colleagues. The Logistics of Logistics Podcast: Google, Apple, Castbox, Spotify, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Tunein, Podbean, Owltail, Libsyn, Overcast Check out The Logistics of Logistics on Youtube

Operational leadership isn't built in the boardroom. It's built through years of solving problems, understanding people, refining processes, and making decisions that strengthen every part of an organization. The most effective leaders rarely begin at the top. They build their perspective one role at a time, gaining firsthand knowledge of how operations, customer experience, technology, supply chains, and leadership intersect. That breadth of experience often becomes their greatest competitive advantage, especially during periods of uncertainty. Today's business environment demands exactly that kind of leadership. Organizations are navigating economic shifts, changing consumer expectations, workforce challenges, emerging technologies, and increasing competition. Navigating those complexities requires more than expertise in a single discipline. It requires leaders who understand how every function of the business contributes to long-term success. Operational leadership begins with that understanding. One of the biggest misconceptions about leadership is that executives eventually outgrow operations. In reality, the strongest leaders remain closely connected to the daily realities of their organizations. They understand the challenges facing employees, the needs of customers, and the pressures experienced by business owners and operators because they've often lived those experiences themselves. That perspective creates better decisions. Rather than making assumptions from behind a desk, operational leaders recognize how changes in one area affect every other part of the business. Marketing influences operations. Operations shape customer experience. Customer experience drives loyalty. Technology impacts efficiency. Every decision creates a ripple effect throughout the organization. As Jeff Hetsel puts it, "Great leaders don't just understand one department. They understand how every part of the business works together." That philosophy has become increasingly important as organizations continue adapting to rapid change. Few industries illustrate this better than the restaurant business. The COVID-19 pandemic challenged nearly every assumption about how restaurants operated. Dining rooms closed, customer expectations changed overnight, supply chains became unpredictable, and operators were forced to rethink nearly every aspect of their businesses. While every organization faced difficult decisions, the companies that emerged strongest shared several common characteristics. They communicated frequently, adapted quickly, stayed close to their customers, and maintained strong relationships with the people responsible for executing the business every day. Communication proved especially valuable. When uncertainty increases, information becomes leadership. Organizations that communicated consistently with franchisees, employees, suppliers, and customers were often able to make better decisions because everyone understood the challenges, priorities, and direction of the business. Transparency created trust, and trust created alignment. That principle extends far beyond franchising. Whether leading a small business or a global organization, communication remains one of the most effective operational tools available. People perform better when they understand not only what is changing, but why those changes matter. Operational leadership also requires the discipline to continually evaluate how technology supports the customer experience. Artificial intelligence, automation, digital ordering, customer relationship management systems, and advanced analytics are reshaping nearly every industry. Businesses that ignore these innovations risk falling behind. At the same time, technology should never become a substitute for genuine human connection. Instead, the most successful organizations use technology to remove friction. Automating repetitive tasks allows employees to focus on serving customers, solving problems, and building relationships. Rather than replacing people, technology should create more opportunities for meaningful interactions. This balance will likely define the next generation of business leadership. Consumers increasingly expect convenience, speed, and personalization. They also continue to value authenticity, trust, and personal service. Organizations capable of delivering both will create stronger customer loyalty and long-term competitive advantages. Continuous learning is another defining characteristic of operational leadership. Business landscapes evolve too quickly for leaders to rely solely on past experience. Markets shift. Competitors innovate. Customer preferences change. The leaders who continue growing are those who remain curious enough to keep learning. Books remain one of the simplest ways to develop that perspective. While digital content provides quick answers, books offer something different: depth, context, and thoughtful analysis. Many accomplished executives continue to make reading a priority because it exposes them to new ideas, leadership philosophies, and strategies that can be applied long before competitors recognize the opportunity. That mindset reflects another simple but powerful philosophy. "You have to earn your job every day." Leadership is never permanent. Every day presents new opportunities to improve processes, strengthen teams, create value, and serve customers more effectively. The strongest leaders understand that success yesterday guarantees nothing tomorrow. They remain students of their industry, constantly asking better questions and looking for smarter ways to operate. Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of operational leadership is service. Leadership is often associated with authority, decision-making, and accountability. Those responsibilities certainly matter. Yet the organizations that consistently outperform their competitors often embrace a different philosophy. They view leadership as service. Serving employees. Serving franchisees. Serving customers. Serving communities. That perspective influences every decision throughout the organization. As Hetsel explains, "Being great is anything you do in the service of others." It's a simple statement, yet it captures an essential truth about sustainable business growth. Organizations succeed when the people inside them succeed first. Strong leaders remove obstacles instead of creating them. They build systems that support consistency. They communicate with transparency. They embrace innovation without abandoning the human experience that customers value most. Operational leadership is not about knowing every answer. It's about understanding the business well enough to ask better questions. It's about remaining curious after decades of experience. It's about recognizing that growth depends on people just as much as processes. Most importantly, it's about never becoming disconnected from the customers, employees, and partners who make long-term success possible. Business will continue to evolve. Technology will continue advancing. Customer expectations will continue changing. The organizations best positioned for the future will be led by individuals who understand operations from the ground up, lead through service, embrace continuous learning, and never lose sight of the people behind every business decision. About Jeff Hetsel Jeff Hetsel is President of Cicis Pizza and JMC Restaurant Distribution, bringing nearly 40 years of restaurant and franchise leadership experience. A Certified Franchise Executive, Jeff began his career with Cicis in 1992 as a restaurant manager and has since served in leadership roles spanning operations, franchise development, real estate, construction, distribution, and executive management. His hands-on experience across virtually every aspect of the business has helped guide the brand through significant industry change while supporting franchisees, strengthening operations, and positioning Cicis for continued growth. About Ford Saeks Ford Saeks is a Business Growth Accelerator who has generated more than a billion dollars in sales worldwide by helping businesses attract loyal customers, increase visibility, and accelerate growth. As President and CEO of Prime Concepts Group, Inc., Ford has founded more than ten companies, authored eleven books, earned three U.S. patents, and advised organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. A recognized expert in business growth, customer acquisition, leadership, franchising, marketing, and AI-driven business strategies, Ford helps business owners and leaders identify opportunities, improve performance, and achieve sustainable results. Learn more at ProfitRichResults.com and watch Fordify LIVE at Fordify.tv

Gregory Copley reports Xi Jinping faces significant internal opposition from Communist Party elders at the Beidaiheretreat. Despite his titles, Xi's operational power is waning as the Chinese economy evaporates and social unrest grows. A recent ballistic missile launch served as a show of strength before a state visit to the US. Copley notes that youth unemployment is high, and the PLA may eventually act independently. (11)

Matt Faircloth talks to Justin White, Managing Director of Centennial Advisers. They specialize in guiding investors through overlooked opportunities like niche opportunity zone developments, strategic lease negotiations, and unconventional acquisitions that outperform typical assets. This episode unveils how savvy investors leverage off-market deals, pre-construction projects, and tenant upgrades to create massive gains often without lifting a shovel or managing tenants directly. Justin White Managing Director of Centennial Advisers Based in: Long Beach, California Where to find them: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-white-79a1175 https://centennialadvisers.com/ Phone: (714) 231-2537 Book your free demo today at bill.com/bestever and get a $100 Amazon gift card. Visit https://malabarhillcapital.com/ for more info. Podcast production done by⁠ ⁠Outlier Audio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, I was lucky enough to interview Brad Gardner, Founder and CTO of Seven Hills Technology. Growing up in the Cincinnati area, Brad developed an early appreciation for practicality, hard work, and solving problems with the resources available to him—an outlook that helped shape his entrepreneurial mindset later in life. Brad shares how a practical decision to turn two former clients into paying customers led to the launch of Seven Hills Technology, and how the company evolved from a one-person consulting operation into a growing firm focused on helping businesses streamline operations through custom software and strategic technology solutions.Brad delves into the future of software development, the impact of AI on consulting and pricing models, and why he remains committed to being a generalist in a world obsessed with specialization. He also reflects on lessons learned over a decade of growth, including the importance of investing in sales and relationship-building, and shares a deeply personal motivation behind his entrepreneurial drive: creating opportunities and long-term stability for his children. Learn why Brad Gardner believes solving real business problems will always matter more than chasing the latest trend in this episode of The First Customer!Guest Info:Seven Hills Technologyhttps://sevenhillstechnology.comBrad Gardner's LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/brad-gardner-sh/Connect with Jay on LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jayaigner/The First Customer Youtube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/@thefirstcustomerpodcastThe First Customer podcast websitehttps://www.firstcustomerpodcast.comFollow The First Customer on LinkedInhttp://www.linkedin.com/company/the-first-customer-podcast/

Accepting Bitcoin, HODL Bombing James Martin on TV and Agentic Payments. $ BTC 64,3321 Block Height 960,086 Today's guests are David Parkinson, Ben De Waal, and TV personality Merlin Griffiths who join me to discuss how UK based payments company, Muqet, is utilising AI and Bitcoin to help small businesses reduce costs and modernise operations. Key Topics: Merchant adoption of Bitcoin point-of-sale systems How AI agents are transforming commerce and payments Challenges facing small business owners in the UK The role of Bitcoin as a hedge against fiat currency volatility Operational efficiency through automated EPOS technology Real-world application of agentic commerce and UCP protocols A huge thank you to Musqet and Merlin! Follow Merlin: x - @MerlinFDC4 Insta - @MerlinFDC4 Merlin - https://www.merlingriffiths.com/ The Dog And Gun Pub - https://dogandgunwalton.com/#about_us Ben De Waal Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamindewaal/ X - @Ben_deWaal David Parkinson Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-parkinson-6764441a/ X - @Musqet_David Check out my book ‘Choose Life' - https://bit.ly/4gGYqRE Pleb Service Announcements: Join 20 thousand Bitcoiners on @cluborange https://signup.cluborange.org/co/princey CONFERENCES: BTC HEL - 25th - 26th September 2026. - Helsinki https://btchel.com/ Use code BITTEN for - 10% My First Bitcoin. https://myfirstbitcoin.org/ Shills and Mench's: BITBOX - SELF CUSTODY YOUR BITCOIN - www.bitbox.swiss/bitten Use Code BITTEN THE MEETUP BREAKDWON - BITCOIN EVENTS UK - https://www.themeetupbreakdown.com/ SWAN BITCOIN - www.swan.com/bitten HODL EYEWEAR - Avoid Blue light! https://hodleyewear.com/partner/3/ PLEBEIAN MARKET - BUY AND SELL STUFF FOR SATS; https://plebeian.market/ @PlebeianMarket SATSBACK - Shop online and earn back sats! https://satsback.com/register/5AxjyPRZV8PNJGlM ALL FURTHER LINKS HERE - FOR DISCOUNTS AND OFFERS - https://vida.page/princey - https://linktr.ee/princey21m

By Doug Green “Legacy out-of-band gets you in. Modern out-of-band should help you recover.” In this Technology Reseller News podcast, I speak with Todd Rychecky, President of Gearlinx, about how out-of-band management is evolving from a narrowly focused remote-access tool into a broader platform for network recovery, operational resilience and business continuity. Modern infrastructure is increasingly distributed across data centers, colocation facilities, branch offices, campus environments, edge locations and remote sites. When the primary network becomes unavailable, simply opening a console port may no longer be enough. Organizations need to know what equipment has been deployed, where it is located, whether it is reachable and what actions can be taken remotely to restore service. “The issue is not simply whether an engineer can reach a console,” Rychecky says. “It's more about whether they can reach the console and still manage their business.” Gearlinx combines secure out-of-band management, cellular connectivity, automation, centralized cloud visibility and lifecycle management into a unified network resilience platform. The goal is to help customers diagnose problems faster, reduce downtime and avoid costly truck rolls. The company's portfolio includes the NR4400 Network Resilience Platform for data center and high-density environments, along with Duckfone, a compact cellular connectivity device designed for edge and distributed locations. Both are brought together through ZERO, the Gearlinx centralized cloud-management platform. ZERO provides visibility into devices, locations, serial numbers, warranties, subscriptions and licensing information. That centralized approach addresses a common problem for enterprises and service providers: critical infrastructure information is often spread across spreadsheets, disconnected applications and separate vendor portals. Gearlinx is also approaching lifecycle management differently. Customers can select one-, three-, five- or seven-year licensing terms, allowing them to align technology investments with their own asset-depreciation and replacement schedules. Warranty coverage and subscriptions begin when equipment is activated through the cloud rather than when it is initially purchased. That can be particularly valuable for organizations that purchase equipment in volume and then deploy it gradually over several months. The platform also supports simplified co-terming, allowing customers and partners to bring licenses, warranties, support and software updates under a common renewal date. Rychecky says these capabilities represent the difference between basic network resilience and broader operational resilience. Operational resilience means giving IT teams the information and management tools they need before, during and after an outage—not simply providing an emergency connection to a console port. The solution is designed for organizations across manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, education, retail, AI infrastructure and other environments where downtime or dispatching a technician can be expensive. For resellers, VARs and MSPs, Gearlinx also creates an opportunity to move beyond a one-time hardware transaction. “Gearlinx enables partners to sell more than a console server,” Rychecky says. “It's an annualized recurring revenue business model for the reseller and decreases capital spending for the customer.” Partners can attach cloud-management licenses, cellular connectivity, managed services, lifecycle planning, support and legacy hardware-refresh programs. That creates ongoing customer engagement and recurring revenue instead of ending the relationship after the initial equipment sale. “It helps resellers lead the business continuity and operational resilience conversation—not just a networking hardware conversation,” Rychecky says. “Partners are not limited to selling a box. They can build an ongoing resilience practice around the customer.” One discovery question can help partners begin that conversation: When your production network is unavailable, how does your team access, diagnose and recover that location? Learn more at Gearlinx.com.

In this episode, I'm joined by my wonderful client, Kelly Chakerian, owner of Abide—a boutique home goods store with an integrated interior design division in California. Today is a super special day because Kelly is officially graduating from the Inventory Genius program! We look back at where Kelly's business was just one year ago—feeling discouraged, constantly stressed by financial chaos, and checking bank accounts daily—and contrast it with where she is today. From structuring proper design fees to setting up clean bookkeeping systems and organizing her operational calendar, Kelly shares how gaining control of her numbers gave her back precious time, mental peace, and the ability to run her business with total confidence. Key Takeaways Financial Clarity Eliminates Operational Stress: Chaos in your bank account almost always spills over into operational burnout. Organizing your finances frees up the mental bandwidth you need to lead and grow your business. Valuing Your Time: If you offer design, styling, or consulting services alongside retail products, charging properly for your time is critical for long-term profitability. The "Monday Admin" System: Transitioning from checking bank accounts every single day to dedicating one day a week for financial check-ins completely removes day-to-day money anxiety. Setting Boundaries & Enjoying Life: Knowing your true numbers empowers you to step away. With a solid foundation, Kelly was able to plan and fund a 10-day summer closure to rest and re-energize with her family without fear or stress. You Don't Have to Be a Math Genius: You don't need a finance background to master inventory and business finances—even self-proclaimed "Type B" business owners and busy moms can do this with the right system! Episode Highlights Kelly shares where she was a year ago: seeing outward success in her store, but not seeing it reflected in her bank account. Restructuring service and design fees so you stop working for free and actually enjoy serving your clients. How clean bookkeeping and simple tracking systems take the intimidation out of finances. Stopping the cycle of daily bank account checks and adopting a structured weekly routine. Taking time off: How financial confidence allowed Kelly to safely shut down her shop for 10 days during slow season to spend time with her family. Why small adjustments can save independent brick-and-mortar shops from burnout and closure. Kelly's parting words of encouragement for business owners who feel intimidated by their numbers. Memorable Quotes "Don't worry about what the numbers say, just track them. You can't fix what you aren't tracking." — Ciara Stockeland "The ability you had to open your own business—you have that same courage to learn about the ins and outs of your finances. If I can figure it out and learn, anybody can." — Kelly Chakerian Connect & Next Steps Share the Love: Know another boutique owner or entrepreneur who needs encouragement with their numbers? Forward this episode to a business friend! Ready to Master Your Inventory & Profits? If you're ready to transform financial confusion into total confidence, visit my website to learn how we can work together. Work with Me - https://www.ciarastockeland.com/work-with-meVisit the Bookstore - https://www.ciarastockeland.com/bookstoreSign Up for Free Weekly Tips and Trainings - https://www.ciarastockeland.com/subscribe

From alert to root cause in one minute - how PagerDuty built autonomous incident response on Amazon Bedrock, and the future of triage and trust. Topics Include:PagerDuty's agents must perform during 2am outages — stakes are highSoftware shipping accelerated dramatically; production environments largely did notA 9:30pm slowdown traced to a race condition solved two years earlierThe fix was documented — but the context wasn't at handPagerDuty Advance ships four agents: SRE, Scribe, Shift, InsightsWhy four, not one? Focus and predictability in non-deterministic systemsSaurabh Shanbhag: Bedrock is far more than a model serviceZero data retention, PrivateLink, TLS — why enterprises pick BedrockFrontier models everywhere burns tokens; classify, route, distill, fine-tuneSRE agent triages alerts before you even join the callOne minute to root cause — context beat raw intelligenceHuman surfaces versus machine surfaces: MCP and CLI move fastest"The model eats the harness" — every upgrade invalidates foundational componentsFeeding agents everything failed; compartmentalised investigation threads work betterNew York Life's three stages of trust, and the seatbelt override that wasn't Participants:Tom Hogarty - Senior Director Product Management, PagerDutySaurabh Shanbhag – Sr Partner Solution Architect, Amazon Web Services See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Send us Fan MailDiscover powerful tax strategies that actually work for your small business and private practice with expert CPA Mark Martukovich. Learn how proactive planning can save you money, leverage your business as an investment, and avoid common pitfalls. This episode dives deep into overlooked deductions, entity structuring, and smart financial moves that can significantly boost your bottom line and ensure you're not paying more than you need to. Get ready to transform your approach to taxes and cultivate lasting financial success for your business.What You'll Learn:Why proactive tax planning is more critical than a reactive approach.How to properly utilize the home office deduction without fear of audits.Advanced strategies for retirement planning and stacking within your business.The truth about business vehicle deductions and how to avoid common mistakes.The benefits of adopting an S corporation entity structure for tax savings.An in-depth explanation of the "Augusta Rule" and how to apply it ethically.The importance of showing profitability for the future sale of your business.Don't miss these actionable insights to optimize your tax situation and unlock your business's full financial potential! #TaxStrategies #SmallBusinessTax #PrivatePractice #TaxPlanning #EntrepreneurshipMark Martukovich is a Certified Public Accountant and Managing Partner of Business Advisory and Accounting Partners (B.A.A.P.), a firm known for turning accounting from an expense into a strategic investment. With over 25 years of business development and consulting experience, and a career that spans public accounting, corporate leadership, and commercial banking, Mark brings a board-level advisory perspective to every client relationship.Mark began his career in 1989 as a staff accountant in Cleveland, Ohio, after graduating from The University of Akron with a degree in accounting. His early work in public accounting was followed by senior leadership roles in business development, where he helped organizations scale, implement technology solutions, and open new markets.In 2004, Mark transitioned into commercial banking, spending a decade advising small and mid-sized companies in the Tampa Bay area. His banking experience gave him a deep understanding of how lenders view business performance, insight he now uses to help clients prepare for financing, expansion, and eventual ownership transition.Since joining BAAP in 2010, Mark has been the driving force behind the firm's business advisory consulting model, which combines:Tax efficiency strategies that are designed around each client's long-term goals.Operational and financial analysis to improve profitability and resilienceSuccession and exit planning that helps owners turn their business into a true retirement asset.Mark is a recognized leader in the accounting profession. He serves as a featured speaker for Thomson Reuters' Partner Summit: Moving Your Practice Forward, where he trains other CPAs on transitioning from compliance-focused work to becoming proactive business advisors. He also served on the Board of Directors of the SPCA Tampa Bay from November 2019 until January 2025, reflecting his commitment to community leadership.http://busadvisory.com https://www.facebook.com/BusinessAdvisoryAndAccountingPartners https://www.youtube.com/@business-advisory Welcome 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

Send us Fan MailSupport the showFor merchandise, podcast and youtube:Join The Patreonhttps://patreon.com/WestankersleyFollow Shaping Success https://shapingsuccesspodcast.buzzsprout.com/Get Ars Victorioushttps://a.co/d/5f4todGhttps://a.co/d/5f4todGEmail Wes@westankersley.com for guest ideas or to be on the show!

Industrial Talk is onsite at Octave Live and talking to Bruce Chaplin, Vice President, Geospatial at Octave about "Operational efficiency through geospatial intelligence. The conversation highlights the importance of the Barcelona Cybersecurity Congress from November 3-5, 2023, and the Industrial Talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Bruce Chaplin, a 26-year veteran at Hexagon, discusses the evolution of geospatial technology, emphasizing its applications in industrial settings. He explains how geospatial intelligence integrates static and dynamic data to enhance operations, safety, and efficiency. Chaplin also touches on the use of lidar, 3D scans, and digital twins for real-time monitoring and decision-making. He encourages companies to start small with targeted geospatial solutions to address specific business problems. Outline Barcelona Cybersecurity Congress Announcement Scott introduces the Barcelona Cybersecurity Congress, emphasizing its importance for cybersecurity.The event is scheduled for November 3-5 in Barcelona, with a strong team from Farah organizing it.Scott highlights the opportunity to network with top cybersecurity professionals from around the world.Industrial Talk will be broadcasting live from the event, and Speaker 1 will be there to discuss cybersecurity with experts. Introduction to Industrial Talk Podcast Scott is described as a passionate industry professional focused on transferring innovations and trends.The podcast aims to celebrate industry professionals who solve problems, innovate, and collaborate.Scott thanks listeners for their support and introduces the first Octave Live event in Austin, Texas. Introduction of Bruce Chaplin and Octave Live Scott introduces Bruce Chaplin, a key figure at Octave, and mentions the importance of the Octave Live event.Bruce shares his positive experience at the conference, emphasizing new connections and the opportunity to tell the Octave story.Bruce provides a brief background on his 26-year tenure with Hexagon and his current role in sales for the geospatial business in North America.Speaker 1 and Bruce discuss the significant changes in technology and the reach of geospatial applications over the years. Geospatial Technology in Industrial Settings Bruce explains how geospatial technology can be applied in industrial settings, from mapping to monitoring construction projects.He highlights the importance of geospatial technology in operating facilities and transportation, including asset tracking and perimeter security.Bruce describes the dynamic nature of geospatial intelligence, which combines static and dynamic data to provide real-time insights.Scott and Bruce discuss the potential for geospatial technology to enhance operational efficiency and safety in industrial facilities. Use Cases and Deployment of Geospatial Solutions Bruce provides examples of how geospatial solutions can be deployed in specific industrial problems, such as managing contractors and optimizing maintenance procedures.He explains the importance of context-dependent solutions, tailored to different industries like defense and transportation.Bruce discusses the role of data analysis in geospatial solutions, including the use of lidar and other sensors to create digital twins and simulate outcomes.Speaker 1 and Bruce explore the potential for geospatial technology to enhance worker safety and efficiency in industrial settings. Future of Geospatial Technology Bruce predicts that geospatial technology will become more integrated into various business solutions, moving beyond specialized applications.He emphasizes the importance of contextualizing data to provide actionable insights and improve decision-making.Speaker 1 and Bruce discuss the potential for geospatial technology to drive innovation and enhance operational efficiency in industry.Bruce shares his contact information and encourages listeners to reach out to him on LinkedIn for further discussions. Conclusion and Call to Action Scott wraps up the conversation, highlighting the importance of connecting with industry professionals and telling their stories.He encourages listeners to visit the Industrial Talk website to connect with Bruce and other industry experts.Scott emphasizes the value of sharing information and building relationships within the industry to drive success.The podcast concludes with a reminder of the importance of innovation, collaboration, and storytelling in the industrial sector. If interested in being on the Industrial Talk show, simply contact us and let's have a quick conversation. Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2026. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy! BRUCE CHAPLIN'S CONTACT INFORMATION: Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruceachaplin/ Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/octaveintelligence/ Company Website: https://www.octave.com/ PODCAST VIDEO: https://youtu.be/uf5PwKNYWeg THE STRATEGIC REASON "WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST": OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES: NEOM: https://www.neom.com/en-us Hexagon: https://hexagon.com/ Arduino: https://www.arduino.cc/ Fictiv: https://www.fictiv.com/ Hitachi Vantara: https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/home.html Industrial Marketing Solutions:  https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-marketing/ Industrial Academy: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-academy/ Industrial Dojo: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial_dojo/ We the 15: https://www.wethe15.org/ YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX: LifterLMS: Get One Month Free for $1 – https://lifterlms.com/ Active Campaign: Active Campaign Link Social Jukebox: https://www.socialjukebox.com/ Industrial Academy (One Month Free Access And One Free License For Future Industrial Leader): Business Beatitude the Book Do you desire a more joy-filled, deeply-enduring sense of accomplishment and success? 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