Podcasts about Operator

Erik Brooks is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Ethos Capital, a middle-market private equity firm built to bring seasoned C-Suite operators into every aspect of the investment process. Erik's experience prior to founding Ethos in 2019 spanned privatizations in Eastern Europe, value investing at Baupost, and twenty years at Abry Partners. Our conversation covers Erik's path to private equity, lessons learned about risk, the importance of betting on people, and the evolution in his thinking that led to forming Ethos. We then cover Ethos' focus on durable business models, one-deal-a-year cadence, operating system to evaluate and improve companies, and an investment example that brings it all to life. Learn More Follow Ted on Twitter at @tseides or LinkedIn Subscribe to the mailing list Access Transcript with Premium Membership   Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

John Catsimatidis, Red Apple Media Owner & Operator, joins Sid live in-studio for his weekly Monday morning appearance to recap yesterday's Israel Day Parade in NYC, before he speaks on the current state of the economy and addresses protesters and New Jersey State Police clashing again last night near Delaney Hall despite a 9 p.m. curfew imposed by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For MindTrip Podcast 116, label head Pfirter introduces Franco Rossi, an Argentine producer originally from Córdoba and currently based in Barcelona, Spain. Rossi's signature sound sits at the exact intersection of deep, hypnotic techno and careful sound design, a style shaped over years of hard work across the South American and European underground circuits. Following the success of his debut Cenit EP on MindTrip last year, he returns to the imprint this summer for his second release. This exclusive podcast mix highlights that signature progression, bookended by his own unreleased cuts while seamlessly weaving in heavy-hitting tracks from cutting-edge labels like Semantica, Mord, Nachtstrom Schallplatten, and MindTrip itself. This is MindTrip! 01.Franco Rossi - intro id 02.Andre Luki - Flying Simulator [ANTISTAGE Records] 03.BRALLE - slings & arrows [Adversarial Machines] 04.Bernardo hangar - Munin [Analog Solutions] 05.DSNGDMANN - simple shape (Mist gasp remix) [Airsound Records] 06.Dave wincent - obsess [Nachtstrom Schallplatten] 07.Drop-E - Remanent Magnetism [Semantica] 08.Franco Rossi - Keiko [MindTrip] 09.Franco Rossi - Varuna [MindTrip] 10.Arjun Vagale & Oxygeno - Zero Gravity [Semantica] 11.KOLPOS - Bipolar / mindtrip 12.Marc Faenger - Circuit [Nachtstrom Schallplatten] 13.Marc Faenger - Corridor [Incense] 14.Nemesis - self reproach [MindTrip] 15.Obscur & Variable - with in context [Sigma5] 16.olmo - famine (stndrd remix) [Ucker records] 17.Operator (uk) - running from the man [Mord] 18.Franco Rossi - ID outro Follow MindTrip: www.mindtripmusic.com www.facebook.com/MindTripRec www.instagram.com/mindtrip_music Follow Franco Rossi: https://soundcloud.com/francorossimusic https://www.instagram.com/francorossi____/?hl=es-la https://www.facebook.com/francorossimusic https://xelimarecords.bandcamp.com/

In this solo episode of Million Dollar Flip Flops, Rodric breaks down one of the most painful realities in business growth:

Is 2026 the year you finally run paid ads? Something shifted at DC Mexico this year — more founders than ever are seriously considering paid ads as their next acquisition channel. Between AI making creative cheaper to produce and competitive research easier to do, the barriers are lower than they've been. Max Sinclair has run a paid ads agency for eight years. In this episode he breaks down what actually works for founders spending under $30K a year — how to start, what to expect, and whether it's even worth it for your business. Plus: how Max used AI to turn his agency's internal tools into a product, and what that transition looks like in practice. Guest: Max Sinclair — Snowball Creations & SaaS Ads Studio Sponsor: wayfront.com/tmba Thanks to this week's sponsor Wayfront — the AI-ready operating system for productized agencies. One client portal. One team dashboard. All your data, AI-accessible. TMBA listeners get an extra free month on top of the trial at wayfront.com/tmba. Links: Business Resources Upcoming DC Events

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of the B2B Go-To-Market Leaders Podcast, Vijay Damojipurapu sits down with PV Bóccasam, advisor to private equity firms and veteran operator across enterprise software, venture-backed startups, and category-defining companies, to explore a radically different way of thinking about go-to-market.PV argues that go-to-market is not about sales motions, pipeline generation, or even positioning frameworks—it's about one thing: reducing buyer anxiety and lowering the perceived risk of change.Drawing from decades of experience building and scaling enterprise software companies across identity governance, GRC, enterprise risk management, and private equity-backed transformations, PV shares how the best GTM leaders think less about “selling” and more about helping customers justify, adopt, and communicate measurable value internally.They dive into:Why GTM should focus on reducing customer risk, not maximizing seller activity.The difference between customer convictions and customer incentives—and why both matter.Why measurable proof is the only reliable way to break buyer inertia.How enterprise software companies should rethink value delivery in the AI era.Why AI should reduce operational uncertainty—not create more chaos.The evolution from product-led to sales-led to partner-led GTM motions.Why “platform” messaging fails for most enterprise SaaS companies.How modern AI-native SaaS products are becoming systems of orchestration, not systems of record.The importance of helping customers retell your value proposition internally.Why enterprise GTM leaders must become the clearest thinkers during periods of uncertainty.How private equity firms should approach AI adoption through organizational redesign, not just cost-cutting.And why long-term impact matters more than short-term velocity in building a career and a company.PV's central insight is simple but powerful:Customers don't buy software—they buy reduced uncertainty, measurable outcomes, and confidence in the future state.This episode is a deep philosophical and operational masterclass on enterprise go-to-market strategy, AI adoption, organizational design, and what it truly means to build trust at scale.Connect with Vijay Damojipurapu on LinkedInConnect with PV Boccasam on LinkedInBrought to you by: stratyve.com

Send us Fan MailI left the previous interview on a cliff hanger. I wanted you all to not only come back to hear the circumstances surrounding Jay's shooting, but I believe the bumps in the road of his career can speak to so many of us who choose to be a first responder. It's easy to glamorize and gloss over the highlights, but I'm overwhelmed and honored that so many guests have walked through the door and been completely authentic and real. I believe my Squad of listeners would detect anything less than real truth. It's a standard we should all aspire to and I'm so grateful for everyone brave enough to come on the show and share without holding back.It takes courage to do the job, and it takes courage to know when to call it and move on. I can respect and appreciate everyone I know who has served honorably...but know when enough is enough.Please tune in, turn it up and enjoy the show. Jay is a great guest, I'm excited to share the rest of his career here...Come see me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/choir.practice.94 or on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/cp_sfaf/

Seth Gerber is the co-owner of MIDA Restaurant Group in Boston and a hospitality professor at Boston University. As a restaurateur, operator, and educator, he's built a career focused on neighborhood restaurants, mentorship, and challenging the way the hospitality industry views itself. Watch now to learn how Seth Gerber saved a struggling restaurant, scaled MIDA, and is reframing hospitality careers. Sponsored by: • TOAST - All-In-1 Restaurant POS: https://bit.ly/3vpeVsc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most small businesses can't be sold, even when they're profitable. The reason is that they were built around the owner instead of built for value. In this episode of CEO Numbers Network, I share a real client story about a business owner who came to me ready to sell and found out her business had no resale value. She had been minimizing profit for years to lower her taxes and running personal expenses through the company, and the strategies that felt smart while she was building it were the exact things blocking her exit. I walk through the 7-step framework I use with my CFO clients to shift from operating a business to owning an asset that can run without you. You will learn what makes a business valuable to a buyer, why tax-minimization strategies can backfire when it's time to sell, how to standardize your offers, how to build recurring revenue, and how clean financials drive the kind of value that gives you options 3 to 5 years from now. If you have ever wondered why your profitable business still feels like a trap, or how to position your company so you have the option to sell, scale, or step back, this episode will show you exactly where to start.

How is AI transforming accessibility for indie authors — and why should you care even if you consider yourself able-bodied? What happens when the tools designed to help people with disabilities end up making everyone's creative business better? Jeff Adams, accessibility expert and romance author, explores how AI is opening doors that were previously closed. In the intro, Spotify Audiobook Innovations; The Economics of Convention Life [The Indy Author]; Friction in your Author Business [Self-Publishing with ALLi]. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Jeff Adams is the author of YA thrillers and gay romance, and the co-author of Content for Everyone, a practical guide for creative entrepreneurs to produce accessible and usable web content. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How ending a long-running podcast made space for more writing — and how to know when it's time to let go of a good thing What accessibility really means for indie authors and why your digital content might be excluding part of your audience How AI agents like Claude Cowork are removing physical and cognitive barriers for authors with disabilities, chronic pain, or limited energy The culture of shame around AI use in the writing community and why blanket anti-AI statements can be ableist Practical tools including NotebookLM, ElevenReader, and ChatGPT for marketing copy, metadata management, and multimodal research Exciting futures in personalised reading, real-time translation, and AI browser agents that could change how everyone interacts online You can find Jeff at JeffAdamsWrites.com. Jeff also now has a SubStack at contentforeveryone.substack.com Transcript of the interview with Jeff Adams Jo: Jeff Adams is the author of YA thrillers and gay romance, and the co-author of Content for Everyone, a practical guide for creative entrepreneurs to produce accessible and usable web content. Welcome back to the show, Jeff. Jeff: Thanks so much, Jo. It's good to be back. Jo: It is. You were last on the show in March 2023, so over three years ago now. Give us a bit of an update on your writing and publishing business and what it looks like at the moment. Jeff: Sure. I think the biggest thing that happened is that my husband Will, who is also a writer, we ended the Big Gay Fiction Podcast at the end of 2024, after 470-something episodes. It was basically time to do that. So we both focused on writing from that point. In 2025 we had some of our biggest successes in getting writing out into the world. I refound my groove—my difficulty in writing went away finally. We talked a little bit about that back in 2023 too. Will started a new pen name and started producing again, and it was really good to be able to move in that direction. Jo: Was this the hockey romance that really hit at the right time? Jeff: You know, I wish I could have capitalised more on Heated Rivalry when it came out, but I did get hockey books out, and I think I did get to ride that wave a little bit there too. Jo: Yes, and if people don't know about that, that was a super popular streaming series. Was that based on a book? Jeff: It was, yes. Rachel Reid was the author of that book and that series that then Jacob Tierney optioned and made into what fairly turned into a global phenomenon at the end of 2025. Jo: Yes, absolutely. Although I particularly liked Red, White and Royal Blue. That was the one I liked. Not so much into hockey. But anyway, I just wanted to ask you about the Big Gay Fiction Podcast. As you say, you did hundreds of episodes over many years. You and I met over podcasting. You've had lots of connections with people. You ended it, and I know you struggled with ending it, but it sounds like it went really well for you. So maybe you could talk a bit about— How do you know when it's time to end something—a good thing rather than something bad? Does that make more space for writing, essentially? Jeff: It absolutely did make more space for writing for both of us, in particular for me because I have a day job. I balance everything on the creative side with the day job. Will and I had been talking about it for over a year. It just was like, it's really time. After nine years, getting to that 470 mark, we thought about trying to get to 10 years and we thought about, if not 10, then getting to 500 and ending on a milestone. As we looked at everything in our creative business, it was like, this is fun, we enjoy it, but we're not getting as much out of it as we might be if we were actually also writing books, which we also really want to do. It became a time thing and what was the best use of the time. We absolutely miss it occasionally. The whole Heated Rivalry thing, I would've loved to have had episodes to talk about that on, but in the long run, it was worth it. Jo: I mean, one of the things with a podcast, particularly around fiction, was that it was a marketing angle for your fiction. This show is a marketing angle mainly for my nonfiction. So what did you replace the podcast with, in terms of book marketing? Jeff: It was really stepped-up email marketing. I'd always had a list. Will started a list, of course, as he started his new pen name. So it was really turning on that, focusing on that, getting some email marketing with a Bargain Booksy and a Fussy Librarian and a BookBub occasionally to do that work. To be honest, even though we covered things in our genre that if you like what we're talking about, you should like our books, there was never as much of a connection there as you'd want there to be. Even from that book marketing angle, these other things that we can do, it's also a better spend of the money to get those types of promos than it was to continue running the show. Jo: Yes, that is interesting. I mean, obviously I think about podcasting a lot since I have this one, and I put Books and Travel on a hiatus and that was meant to help my fiction and definitely didn't help my fiction sales. But I want to bring it back again because I love doing it. Do you have this hankering sometimes? Do you think you'd ever do the podcast again? Because you are also quite into all the technical stuff and all that. Jeff: It's possible. I've toyed with the idea of doing a short accessibility podcast geared towards creatives, tilting to the same audience that Content for Everyone does. Then I come back and look at the time—is my time better served writing new fiction or perhaps starting a Substack, which I also toy with the idea of, for accessibility stuff? So it bounces around in my head to do another show, but I haven't really decided to jump on that yet. Jo: Yes, and I think that waiting is really good. As you say, you quit a big thing and you don't have to rush to fill it again. I love that you guys are writing more books. So I wanted us to talk about that up front because I know people who listen to this show—I encourage people to start podcasts if you want to, but equally it can take a lot of time. So that's fantastic. Now, you mentioned accessibility, and I feel like the word can be quite difficult for people. So let's just start with a definition. What is accessibility? Why do you care and why should we care? Jeff: So accessibility is really about making sure that whatever the thing is, whether it's something out in the physical world or in the online world, that everybody has access to it. Access to the information, access to getting into a building or being able to cross the street appropriately, whatever that is—that the accessibility of the thing is high. So that regardless of who is approaching it, they can interact with whatever the thing is. If we put that into the digital world, it's about making sure that text on a screen can be perceived by anybody, whether they're trying to read it visually or if they're trying to read it through a screen reader or through a braille monitor. Whatever that is, they need to be able to interact with it, get the information they need, do all the functions of whatever it is on the screen. Check out on Amazon, check out at their favourite e-commerce place, be able to get the products in their cart, check out, et cetera. For creatives, it's about the things that we do: the websites that we build for ourselves, the e-commerce platforms that we use, our email marketing, our social media posts. Making all of that as accessible as we can so that we're not perhaps missing a part of our audience or our prospective audience from being able to engage with our work and in turn, hopefully, buy our books and enjoy our books and become a fan. This became important to me because of my day job. I hadn't really considered this—like, I think most people don't—until I started working at UsableNet. It's going to be 15 years I've been at that company come this autumn, and I really started to see the impacts because UsableNet is all about accessibility on the digital front. I really started to learn, being a project manager for them, what all of that meant and how it impacted people who couldn't buy something online, couldn't book a hotel room, couldn't book an airline ticket. It just really became something I got passionate about. I ended up writing the book because I realised that nobody talks to creatives about this. Nobody tells the independent author what they should do to help make their digital stuff accessible so that they don't miss people. I never expected my day job to interact with my creative side so much, but this certainly has over the last few years. Jo: I mean, has it got better? Like we said, you were on here three years ago. We did talk about some of the things around EPUB formats and taking off DRM and what we need to do on our websites—labelling images, for example, and that kind of thing. Do you think accessibility has gotten better? Jeff: I think the awareness of it has improved, both within the creative community and in the broader web ecosphere, that the awareness is better. There's so much knowledge that needs to go into creating something that is accessible. Sometimes there's so much that you have to think about with colours and alt tags on images and all the little bits and pieces, if it doesn't really come to muscle memory, it's easy for it to fall off. There's a survey that's done by WebAIM every year about the top one million homepages out in the universe, and they surveyed those for just the things that an automated scan can detect, which is a small portion of overall accessibility, and the number of errors across that top million actually ticked up this year. Even though there's all these laws around the world—people get sued all the time in the US—the number of errors ticked up for the first time in a few years. So I think the awareness is up, but I think being able to take action on it and make the time to take action on it isn't where it needs to be. Jo: So last time you gave us all those tips. I'll refer people back to that and also to your book Content for Everyone, which has got loads of great stuff in. I wanted to talk to you for this show because I was sitting watching Claude Cowork—now I use Claude Code a lot more—but updating 140 titles on IngramSpark, where me clicking things and there's like 15 clicks per record on IngramSpark updates for pricing, is an absolute nightmare. I was watching the AI do the work and I realised this isn't just saving me time, it's actually saving my wrist and my arm from repetitive strain injury. That's when I thought about this accessibility thing. As you mentioned, for example being physically accessible into a building, say someone's in a wheelchair, they can't necessarily get into a building if there's no ramp. I was thinking that for many years, being an indie author, being a writer online, there's also been these physical barriers because there's a lot of plumbing and clicking for us. So I wondered, starting with an attitude around a shift in who this is opening up to— How is AI starting to help people with these accessibility issues? Jeff: Yes, there's so much opportunity around this. We should note, just to timestamp this, that we're talking on 14th April 2026, because who knows what will change, even in an hour from now. I think Cowork was one of the first things that we saw, and that's only been out since the very top of this year. Being able to do actual agentic tasks. Other things have sort of gotten there, but Cowork really opened it up. You mentioned the repetitive stress that you would've had clicking all of those forms on IngramSpark across 140 books. But there's that type of stress, chronic pain, cognitive drain for somebody who may have some cognitive disability and trying to work through that form. The cognitive energy just might drain out and maybe knock them out for several days after trying to get through that, or the tasks take them multiple days to do. Someone who has lower vision, someone who's trying to work through that form with a screen reader—all of that draws energy, draws focus. Now we've got something where, with plain language, we could say something like: here's all my pricing information, I've logged into IngramSpark, go update these books. Obviously the prompt's going to be a little more than that, but in broad terms, that's what we're going to tell it. Jo: Hmm. Jeff: And being able to have it go through and do the thing. If it gets stuck, have it come back and say, “Hey, I've got trouble with this. Please help me.” That can just free up so much of the drains that people can have—the things that can take them out of doing the part of the work that they need to do for an author business. They can go write the book through whatever process you're going to use to do that, rather than getting caught up in something like having to update all those books on IngramSpark. Jo: You mentioned writing the book there. I have this real sense of being an able-bodied indie author in terms of my computer use and my ability to write a whole book, a 70,000-word thriller that I write regularly. We're all special in some way, but I do have a reasonably normal brain where I can do this work without too much strain. It's hard work, but I can do it. I meet people who are now using AI to help them write, to help them organise their work—maybe someone has dyslexia or ADHD or cognitive issues or pain—there's just so many things that I take for granted that don't affect me. I hear from people who, at this point in time in the community, are almost shamed for using AI to write. So I wanted to bring this up to discuss it under the terms of accessibility. Do you have any thoughts on that? Jeff: I have real difficulty with people who will say anything in the broad range of, “I don't need to use this thing, and therefore you should not either.” Which is adjacent to indie anti-AI speak that there is out there. Certainly we're living right now at probably the highest point that it's ever been, where more and more there's a sentiment towards not using AI for whatever the reason is. I totally respect that people can have concerns about the environment and about energy use and water use, et cetera. Not to mention all the other things that are on the more difficult side of AI. To shame someone who may not be able to put their story out there without the use of that AI, whichever one they're using, or to shame them because they're using AI to run part of their business—updating IngramSpark, doing other things like that—I think it can come down to there being some ableism there. Ther is some privilege behind that too, where they're just like, “I don't need this, and you shouldn't have it either.” I want to give people just a sliver of an idea of what this can mean for someone who is disabled and what AI can unlock for them. There is a person on LinkedIn that I follow whose name is Hannah Desmond. She's an ADHD coach and a former software developer, and very recently she posted this on LinkedIn. This is a paraphrase of what she said, but: having something that can meet you where you are and help you bridge that gap is what I think I have found so helpful about using AI. Here's what I keep coming back to. Without that support, I wasn't more motivated or more capable. I was just stuck. That's the bit that gets lost. We've been taught that struggling is how you know you're doing it properly. So when something reduces the struggle, it can feel wrong—even when it's the thing that actually makes the work possible. Because there's a difference between avoiding thinking and being able to think at all. I think that rounds it up. She's talking about her time as a software developer, but you can apply that to any realm of AI when we're thinking about trying to shame someone for why they may be using it. We may not know that they have a disability because we don't always share that part of ourselves. So I really feel strongly about that and how we are in this culture of shame. Jo: Yes. It drives me up the wall, actually. But I will also say: you don't have to have a disability or accessibility issues in order to use AI in whatever way you personally decide is okay—talking to the listeners now. I think Orna Ross from the Alliance of Independent Authors says it well, which is you should have your own AI policy. So you personally decide where your lines are, how it helps you, what you want to keep for you, and what you want help with. I was also thinking in terms of accessibility around money. Again, for many of us, professional cover design, professional editing, professional human-level translation, these are things that are pretty pricey for many people. So again, this makes it more accessible. One of the reasons we got into the indie way and being indie authors was to try and remove the barriers to entry to people who have been excluded from the environment of publishing. So, yes, it is really hard to talk about this, and yet that's why I wanted to talk about it, because— There's so many variables for each individual and there's no situation that's the same, really, is there? Jeff: No, not at all. The things that I may need to do my work in the most efficient way possible is different from the way that you're going to work, is different than the way my husband's going to work, is different than every other person and the way that they're going to work. Which is why any kind of blanket statement about “I don't need something and therefore you shouldn't need it either” can just be so problematic, because we have no idea what someone else is going through. Either it's a permanent part of their lives or maybe it's something that is happening temporarily with them where they might need to leverage other tools. Jo: Yes. Talking about that temporary, I think I really got the first sense of this when I had COVID the first time, which was really bad. I remember I was so sick, the only thing I could do was listen to an audiobook. I couldn't think, I couldn't read. It was really probably months of not having my brain back. Then the other thing that's happened as I age, as women age, is menopause kicks in and the brain fog is a real thing. I've heard from other people too who've said having Claude or whoever, an AI tool, to help with the brain fog is so important because otherwise I just wouldn't be able to gather my thoughts. Again, as you said— Even if we don't need these things now, it's quite likely we're going to need them at some point, given ageing, given the potential for injury and disease. I mean, we don't escape this alive, do we? Jeff: Yes, that's a great point because unless we're extremely lucky as individuals, we're all likely to have some sort of a disability in our lives at some point. I know for me, as I age and my eyes get more and more tired after being in front of a screen all day for work, and then whatever creative stuff I do in the afternoon on a book—when it comes near bedtime and I do want to read, I probably want to do that with an audiobook, much more audio, especially for any long reading project. That can also be like, if I have a long document or a long article to read, I am likely to give it to ElevenReader, let it load itself up, and then listen to it, because I take the information in better than trying to follow words across a screen. Jo: Yes. Jonathan, my husband, now also listens to a lot of academic papers on ElevenReader. Most of us will know it as where we publish some audiobooks from ElevenLabs, or you can also publish other things there. So it is super useful to think about what we can do with ElevenReader. Another thing that I found really useful recently is NotebookLM. On NotebookLM, there is a free tier. You can put various things in there and then create a custom audio. So this is something I've been doing as part of research. You can put in, say, 10 YouTube videos or some PDFs or your book or whatever, and then you can create a custom audio. Then I'll go for a walk and I'll listen to the custom audio, and then I'll go back and look at the detail of what it was. It gives me the framework of whatever I'm thinking about on a broader level, and then I can come back to the details. So again, it's this multimodal approach that can help us manage our energy, I guess. Jeff: And it's all about the managing of the energy, I think, too. That is a great way to think about the accessibility of it all. You mentioned a great use there for NotebookLM. That could also be putting your book in there and having it help you build a world bible or something like that. Or building marketing materials off of that. There's a lot of things now that NotebookLM can do in terms of helping you create FAQs maybe for a newsletter or for your website, and building video stuff off of the material that it has. So there's a lot of options there, and ever-growing options that can be useful for someone to manage any number of the things that they may need in their creative business. Jo: Yes. In fact, talking about Claude, there are a lot of Claude plugins now, skills and integrations. Shopify just released a Claude plugin and many of us now have Shopify stores. I have a lot of products with a lot of different variations and the metadata. There's so much metadata. And again, I'm just so pleased now that I can work with Cowork and get it to actually update directly into Shopify. In fact, coming back, you mentioned updating alt tags earlier. That's something again that AI could help you update—the back list of your alt tags on a website. I've now got my Cowork doing EPUBs so I could finally update all my EPUBs with back matter and all of this kind of thing. So I feel like perhaps we could go beyond accessibility to talk about amplification. All the things that we didn't do because it was too tiring and we just couldn't be bothered, or it would just be way too much work, that now it's opened up as a possibility because of these tools. Jeff: Absolutely. I mean, you look at a backlist as large as yours and the things that you're now able to do. I didn't know that Claude had a Shopify plugin. So the abilities that we have now to maybe do things in the business that we hadn't before. One of the things I've been working with Claude on is rewriting my website and creating a more proper website for Will. I'm really making sure that it is not only SEO prepared but also GEO prepared, with all the metadata and all the backend code schema that it needs so that LLMs can find me, can understand what I do, can understand the books, branch out to the other areas that it needs to. Doing that through WordPress would've been so much more difficult, even with Claude, that to be able to rewrite the site in a way that is going to let me manage it better so that I will do it on a more consistent basis. Whatever that thing is, we're now able to do these things. That could be updating keywords in Amazon or making sure we're aligned across all of the sales platforms that we might be on and things like that, that Claude can do and do well. Jo: Yes, I think marketing is just the killer app really for people, isn't it? I think most authors do not enjoy marketing. I find Claude better for creative work, for strategic work, for doing work through Cowork or Code, but— ChatGPT with marketing copy is very, very good. So I've actually been using that as we record this. I've got a Kickstarter launching next week, so I've been getting it to do ad copy and social media copy and all that kind of thing. This is stuff when you have to produce—give me 20 taglines, give me 20 hooks, give me another 20 and another 20. I mean, we just cannot do it as humans, right? Jeff: Yes, I have found GPT wildly helpful. I mentioned trying to get Bargain Booksy and Fussy Librarian promos. Jo: Mm. Jeff: And you have to give it the marketing hook, and it can't just be the blurb that's on Amazon—it's got to be something fresh, and they each have slightly different requirements. Having GPT—here's the blurb, give me a dozen different options—and then I may take pieces of all of them and create one of my own. But it reworks that much faster than my brain was ever going to try to find the right thing I want to give to Bargain Booksy. Jo: Yes, you are right. Or it says write this in 300 characters or less. Jeff: Yes. Jo: I do exactly the same. That kind of transformative work can be really good. In fact, there was somebody I know who has been rampantly anti-AI for years and then said, “Would this help me? I have to do a synopsis for an agent, so I've got this 100,000-word book and it needs to be a 10-page synopsis. How would I do that with AI?” So I was encouraging her to take each chapter and ask it to summarise the chapter, and of course read through it and everything. But I mean, doing a synopsis once you've actually written a book—that can be super useful. So I think what we're saying is— There are levels of need in terms of both the author and the audience. Then there are levels of your personal use from one end of the spectrum to the other in terms of how far you want to go in every area of the business. And in that way, it's just different for everyone. Jeff: Yes, and I think getting to that mindset shift that we were talking about a little bit—it can be so easy to dip your toes in. That one author came to you and said, “Do you think it could do this?” And I think that's the beginning exploratory area for perhaps anyone. People are going to hear us talk about this and it might inspire them to go try something that we've talked about. But these things, whether it's Claude or GPT or Gemini or whichever one it is, you can come to it and say, “I'm an author, I have X, Y, Z going on in my life”—whether that's a disability, whether that's a time constraint because you have a day job and maybe you have kids and a family that need your attention—”I have these time constraints, I want to do X, Y, and Z in my business. How can you help me with that?” It's going to tell you what it can do to help you with that. I would even say, if you have the ability to have multiples of these, you could ask the same question to GPT and Claude, and they're going to give you similar answers in some instances, but they may also have different ones because of the abilities that the different platforms have around these things as well. That can help you make that mindset shift of, “Well, now I see that it can do that. Could it also do this?” And then ask it if it could do that. Because I know for me, Jo, I've taken so much from you and your journey with Cowork that it's like, “Oh, she did that. I wonder if I could do this.” And all of that piles on top of itself. Then eventually I think your brain starts to think on its own, “Oh, I have to do this task. Can Claude maybe do this for me? Let's go find out.” Jo: Yes, and if it couldn't do it for you yesterday, you never know, it might be able to do it tomorrow. Jeff: Right? Because I haven't tested yet its new ability to actually use your computer. Jo: Mm. Jeff: And I'm curious what that might open up. Because one of the things that I've seen that I wish it would do is be able to take the EPUB that's on my drive and actually put it into a platform I'm trying to upload to. Cowork on its own hasn't been able to cross that barrier, but I wonder if with computer use added to that, if it could. Like, “here's the EPUB, upload that over there,” be able to pick it from the file picker, essentially. Jo: Yes. I think, well, a little tip for everyone: I wouldn't give access to your entire file system to the AI. Jeff: That's a good point too. Jo: Yes. I have a Claude folder in my drive and it only has access there. So if you put files in that drive, it might be able to do that. But I know what you mean. I have been using it to help me publish things in German on KDP. Now I can use the browser, so you can actually do that. In terms of uploading the actual file, I know what you mean. These things will change. As we record this, again middle of April, we are almost about to get the next models being Mythos, which might be Claude 4.7 Opus, or also ChatGPT has a new model coming, and these models are getting very powerful. With every shift they can do more things. So as you say, the very first thing to do is ask it, “I want to do this—what are my options?” And some of them, for example, doing an AI-narrated audiobook, ChatGPT and Claude don't do that. You want ElevenLabs or one of the other services for that, but they can tell you what your options are. So that's one thing, but I wondered if you have any thoughts on the gaps that you are seeing. You mentioned one there around file uploads, but— What do you hope might come and some of the things that might be exciting if they arrive? Because you never know, they might be here already. Jeff: There's certainly some movement in some areas. One of the things I'll share is, in March I was at the 2026 CSUN Assistive Technology Conference—CSUN is California State University, Northridge—and they've run this conference for some 40 years now. One of the sessions I went to was from Tara Maisel—I hope I'm pronouncing her last name right. She's a senior project manager in books accessibility at Amazon, and she was doing a session specifically on readability. She had all kinds of statistics and information about what goes into making something readable. One of the things she talked about with AI was the future of personalised reading. If you think about the Kindle app, for example, there's a lot of settings you can make there—font size, colours, brightness, text spacing. There's a lot of tools in there. She was pointing out that potentially readers don't even know what they actually need for the optimised visual reading experience. She sees a world where AI can perhaps do an analysis of your reading behaviour and then help you find the optimal settings. Maybe even multiple optimal settings for, say, if you were reading in a room that had daylight versus at bedtime, and the ways you might shift it. I was almost thinking of this like when you're at the optometrist and they're like, “Which lens is better—this one or that one?” Jo: Oh, sometimes that is very hard. Jeff: Yes. It's that AI could step you through that a little bit to help you find that optimal reading experience in that moment. And then it might even notice, potentially, if you're changing something in the way that you're moving through a page, that it might flag to say, “Hey, do we need to adjust something?” Some other areas that I think are really exciting, for everyone and perhaps particularly for people who are disabled and needing the support of some assistive technology, is what we're seeing in the browsers. OpenAI's Operator has been out for quite a while now, since sometime I think autumn of last year. Perplexity Comet has been around even longer. Then we've got browser extensions from Gemini and Claude that are available, that can let you just type natural language. You know, “Please go find for me jeans in this size that are on sale on this website. Find me the best price for blue jeans on this site and this size,” and it'll just go do it. Which can certainly speed things up for people in the disabled community to find things quickly, to spend time navigating less, and maybe ending up with the AI coming back and saying, “I found these five things. Which one would you like me to buy for you?” Or, “I found this one thing that you do need and it's waiting for you in your shopping cart.” The ability for that on the horizon is an amazing jump from an accessibility point of view. But really it's one of those things that accessibility will then help everyone because we can all just shop that way, if we choose to. These are early days for these browsers and these extensions. The other side of it comes back to basic web accessibility too, because I've seen these types of activities not work so well on a site that may not actually be accessible on its own. A great example is something I ran into with Claude Cowork about a month ago. I was testing to see if it could help me navigate and get things uploaded together for a site where I wanted to upload books, knowing again that it's not going to upload the actual file, but it could fill in the metadata from my master database of metadata stuff. There were areas on the site that it actually couldn't hit the button, because the site itself was also not functional to a screen reader. So there are gaps there. It's early days, but I really see that as an interesting future that'll really help people with disabilities—but again, help everybody too, just manage time better. Jo: I know exactly what you mean there. I've done some collaborative work with Claude Code when it's like, “I can't click the button,” and I'm like, well, I'll click the button—you fill in everything else. Jeff: Exactly. Jo: It's actually quite a funny situation. But goodness, coming back to IngramSpark again—these things need APIs. We need better functions. It's funny because I think a lot of traditional publishers have these APIs or backend upload things that you can do. I'm like, well, we need to get to that with these systems. But I think things will change. Another thing that I think has also shifted is the use of voice. Voice for dictation—it used to be with dictation that you would have to say “comma,” “open quote,” “new line,” and all of that. And you'd also have to make sense. Whereas now I feel like you can just dictate a whole load of things to these AIs and then say, “Tidy that up,” and they will do a lot more than the old situation. So I think voice will also help. Also automatic translation. I don't know if you know this about X, and if you're on X anymore, but just this week they've made it multi-language. So I can read tweets by people who've posted in another language in English. I can read something from Korean or read something that someone French has posted and it gets translated. It has made a huge difference to the content I'm seeing, which is fascinating because I don't think we've ever had this kind of automatic “everything is translated into your language” situation. It's really got me thinking about how [automatic translation] might work for eBooks or other things if the rights are there. I don't know. Have you seen stuff like that? Jeff: There's so much available now with voice and the ability to not have to speak all the other stuff that went with it—comma, full stop, next line. It was a little mind-bending sometimes, trying to think about quote marks and all that stuff. And now it's so good. Different platforms do it to different degrees of ability. Even being able to speak your prompts into the very platforms themselves without having to type all of it. Chronic pain comes to mind, any kind of mobility thing—all the typing would be a drain or maybe even impossible. So the voice ability is so powerful there and unlocks more things. At the same time, those translation abilities—I believe AirPods now have the ability, if you've got the right stuff on your phone, that you could be talking to somebody, they may speak back to you in a language you don't speak, but your AirPods will give it to you in your language. Jo: Hmm. Jeff: Google has, I believe, a live captioning app that you can use. I think there's even a split screen—I don't know if that's available now or something in their future—where you could put the phone on the table and tell it who's looking at what side of the screen, and it'll put the language that I need on my side and the language the other person needs on the other. So there continues to be such a shift in how we're being able to translate stuff that really opens up communication and can open up our books to so many more people. I'm very interested to see—I haven't pulled the trigger on this yet—but how Amazon's auto-translation rolls out and how that's received in terms of the accessibility around our books and being able to put it in someone's hands who doesn't speak—I think it's only English to other languages right now—but who doesn't speak the language it was written in but wants to read that book. We could never, as indies, or really even big five publishers, wouldn't have the money to create custom translations everywhere. But if the AI can help do that and spread those books around so that everybody could have the story they want to read, I think that's such a win for the reading audience. Jo: Yes, I think it's so exciting to think what might be coming, and that's what I want to stay on the side of on the AI discussion. There's enough negativity out there and you can get that information somewhere else, but for me I want us to stay on the positive side of how this helps both the author and the reader. And hopefully the community, to create more and read more and enjoy being human more. Right? Because I find that I do get out more and listen to stuff, or I'm out walking instead of at my desk, and I mean, that's what it's about. I'm pretty excited about the future. How about you? Jeff: I am. I think there are, quite honestly, some scary things that could be out there in the future. I mean, there's been a lot of talk about what Mythos is capable of. But on the other side of it, there are all these advances. I also look back at Google and AlphaFold and what DeepMind was able to do there for science. There's more of that stuff out there, and individually for each of us, spending a little bit of time—and I do have to say, I think you need to spend time on a paid plan because the free stuff doesn't give you the idea of what these platforms are actually capable of. So if you only drop in, even briefly, to experiment on one of the $20-a-month plans and give it your situation, ask it what it can do for you, I think you'll see where, on a personal level, AI will help you unlock some things. It can help you move some things to the next level in your business that for whatever reason you haven't been able to do. You don't have to use it for everything. You may decide that it's still not for you for whatever reason, and that's fine. But I think there's so much to explore here and to let your curiosity run for a little bit to see what's possible and what you might unlock with it. Jo: Brilliant. So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Jeff: So pretty much everything lives at JeffAdamsWrites.com. Jo: Well, thanks so much for your time, Jeff. That was great. Jeff: I loved it, Jo. Thanks for having me..The post Accessibility And AI: How New Tools Are Opening Doors For Indie Authors With Jeff Adams first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Dan and Ian are joined by Jeff Picaro of meetwingman.com to recap lessons from the DC Mexico event and share five trends for 2026 in bootstrapped, location-independent businesses. In this episode: • Why organic traffic is rebounding and how legacy publishers can compound results via Google, LLMs, and AI repurposing • Why companies with strong SOPs and systems are translating fastest to AI-enabled workflows and higher margins (especially agencies) • How org charts may shift from pyramids to circular, data-centered “hive mind” models with new technical and client-facing roles • Why many founders who started with AI-driven layoffs are rehiring as capacity and demand expand • Why bootstrappers should consider going upmarket, raising contract value, and pursuing bigger customers and deals. Thanks to this week's sponsor Wayfront — the AI-ready operating system for productized agencies. One client portal. One team dashboard. All your data, AI-accessible. TMBA listeners get an extra free month on top of the trial at wayfront.com/tmba. Resources mentioned: Jeff Picaro E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber Work the System by Sam Carpenter The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss Jack Dorsey's blog post on the circular org chart (published during Block layoffs) Supabase GitHub More Business Resources Upcoming DC Events Tropical MBA is a podcast for entrepreneurs building location-independent businesses. Subscribe for weekly episodes on business, money, and the entrepreneurial lifestyle. Hang out exclusively with 7+ figure founders in DC BLACK https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black CHAPTERS: (00:00:00) Welcome and Guest Intro (00:00:59) Why Events Spark Growth (00:02:45) Trend 1 Organic Returns (00:07:25) Trend 2 Systems Win (00:13:02) Trend 3 Org Charts Shift (00:17:22) Sponsor Wayfront Break (00:18:48) Trend 4 Layoffs to Hiring (00:25:54) Trend 5 Go Upmarket (00:32:23) Wrap Up and Takeaways (00:34:46) Outro and Resources CONNECT: Dan Andrews is the co-founder of Dynamite Circle, author of Before the Exit, host of the Tropical MBA podcast, and an entrepreneur who has successfully launched and scaled multiple 7-figure businesses. Email Dan@tropicalmba.com PLAYLIST: The $10K Projects You Never Do (AI Just Changed That) How to Build a 6-Figure Digital Business with Claude Code We Got Claude-Pilled

In this insightful interview, Mark Vincent Fansler shares his extensive experience in commercial mixed-use real estate, the importance of integrated business operations, and strategies for managing complex environments. Discover how he leverages his network, handles challenges, and maintains a unified team to succeed in real estate and beyond.   Professional Real Estate Investors - How we can help you: Investor Fuel Mastermind:  Learn more about the Investor Fuel Mastermind, including 100% deal financing, massive discounts from vendors and sponsors you're already using, our world class community of over 150 members, and SO much more here: http://www.investorfuel.com/apply   Investor Machine Marketing Partnership:  Are you looking for consistent, high quality lead generation? Investor Machine is America's #1 lead generation service professional investors. Investor Machine provides true 'white glove' support to help you build the perfect marketing plan, then we'll execute it for you…talking and working together on an ongoing basis to help you hit YOUR goals! Learn more here: http://www.investormachine.com   Coaching with Mike Hambright:  Interested in 1 on 1 coaching with Mike Hambright? Mike coaches entrepreneurs looking to level up, build coaching or service based businesses (Mike runs multiple 7 and 8 figure a year businesses), building a coaching program and more. Learn more here: https://investorfuel.com/coachingwithmike   Attend a Vacation/Mastermind Retreat with Mike Hambright: Interested in joining a "mini-mastermind" with Mike and his private clients on an upcoming "Retreat", either at locations like Cabo San Lucas, Napa, Park City ski trip, Yellowstone, or even at Mike's East Texas "Big H Ranch"? Learn more here: http://www.investorfuel.com/retreat   Property Insurance: Join the largest and most investor friendly property insurance provider in 2 minutes. Free to join, and insure all your flips and rentals within minutes! There is NO easier insurance provider on the planet (turn insurance on or off in 1 minute without talking to anyone!), and there's no 15-30% agent mark up through this platform!  Register here: https://myinvestorinsurance.com/   New Real Estate Investors - How we can work together: Investor Fuel Club (Coaching and Deal Partner Community): Looking to kickstart your real estate investing career? Join our one of a kind Coaching Community, Investor Fuel Club, where you'll get trained by some of the best real estate investors in America, and partner with them on deals! You don't need $ for deals…we'll partner with you and hold your hand along the way! Learn More here: http://www.investorfuel.com/club   —--------------------

There comes a point in business where you stop asking, “How do I build more?” and start asking, “How do I build better?”In this episode, I'm diving into one of the biggest shifts happening in entrepreneurship and real estate right now: the old model of success is breaking. For years, we were taught that scaling meant bigger teams, more hustle, more chaos, and more pressure. But what if the future actually belongs to leaner, smarter, more profitable businesses?I'm sharing my honest reflections from over two decades in business  from building large organizations and scaling teams to realizing that success without freedom isn't success at all.We're talking about the rise of the modern operator era, how AI is changing the game, why implementation matters more than information, and what it really takes to build a business that supports your life instead of consuming it.If you've been feeling overwhelmed, stretched too thin, or questioning what “success” should actually look like in this season of your life, this episode is for you.Things I Cover In This Episode:Why the traditional “bigger is better” business model is evolvingThe difference between building a business that looks successful vs. feels alignedHow AI is changing entrepreneurship, visibility, and scalabilityWhy implementation is the new competitive advantageThe rise of lean businesses, solo agents, and micro teamsThe importance of systems, automation, and operational efficiencyHow to create leverage without burning yourself outWhy profitability matters more than vanity metricsQuestions every entrepreneur should ask about the life they're buildingThis episode is your reminder that you do not need more chaos to create more success. You need clarity, structure, leverage, and a business designed intentionally around the life you actually want to live.Let's keep building smarter, scaling intentionally, and Playing Bigger.---

Some coworking operators close one space and swear they'll never do it again. Matt Ervin closed his first coworking space during COVID...packed up his family, drove from California to Chicago in the middle of the pandemic...and opened another one anyway. Matt and I go way back to our CrossFit days in the Bay Area. We used to do Murph together, and I still remember him air squatting faster than everyone else while we talked about his idea to open a coworking space in Menlo Park. At the time, he and his wife Meg were trying to solve a very real problem: how do you create beautiful, welcoming workspace for therapists and small businesses without the cold, corporate feel? That idea became Cocial in Menlo Park. Then came COVID. This episode is packed with gems for operators: How Matt turned a massive curved-window flex space into an events business with 100+ events a year Why community matters more than ever in suburban coworking markets What operators miss when they focus only on desks and offices instead of creating a culture people want to belong to How he bootstrapped both spaces, negotiated free rent and TI, and built the first location himself with "burritos and beers" labor One of my favorite parts of this conversation is how much heart Matt brings to the business. You can feel how deeply he cares about creating spaces where people feel comfortable, connected, and supported. If you're thinking about suburban coworking, events, hospitality, or simply what it takes to start over and build again, this one is worth your time. Resources Mentioned in this Podcast: Matt Irvin on LinkedIn Cocial website Everything Coworking Featured Resources: Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space Coworking Startup School Community Manager University Follow Us on YouTube

In this episode, Logan and guest co-host Peggy Katz sit down with presentation designer and graphics operator Cassy Albert to pull back the curtain on one of the key roles in live event production - the slides! Cassy breaks down what a graphics operator actually does during a show, the most common mistakes planners and speakers make when preparing decks, and the best way to receive and organize slides across multiple sessions. If you've ever had a slide moment go wrong onsite, this episode will change how you approach graphics management for good.SHOW NOTES:Purchase our on-demand How to Start an Event Planning Business Workshop: https://bettereventspod.com/workshopConnect with guest co-host Peggy on ⁠LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peggy-katz-2864bb/Connect with Cassy Albert:LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/cassyalbertInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/sistersagencyinc/Learn more about the pod, Better Events Conference and more: https://bettereventspod.com/the-latestWant our updated free run of show template? Download it here: https://bettereventspod.com/templates/p/run-of-show-template-freeTHANKS FOR THE LOVE! Love this podcast? Please share with your event friends, tag us, and leave a review!——FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM:@bettereventspod@loganstrategygroup_events (Logan)@epeventsllc (Mary)

On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk break down a question every operator is quietly asking right now: how do you build a real edge when there is no moat? They open with the NYC labor deal that just reset the national benchmark, with housekeeper pay crossing $100K a year by 2034, and Hotel and Gaming Trades Council now setting the bar for union negotiations in every major market. From there they dig into Peregrine Hospitality's bet that operational discipline is the only real competitive advantage in hotels, Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority's push to double its room supply by 2030, Brand USA's new fact-checking platform trying to win back international travelers ahead of the World Cup, and how one small hotel group is still financing solar after federal clean energy tax credits got wiped out. This episode is presented by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Plusgrade⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bilt⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠plusgrade.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more. And for hotels with restaurants and restaurant owners, Bilt Hospitality is finally here. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠joinbilt.com/gmh⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more.

The battlefield is saturated with explosives—from factory‑made munitions and improvised bombs to drones delivering lethal payloads. At the same time, unexploded ordnance from past wars may still lie hidden beneath the ground. Neutralizing these threats is essential to keeping troops moving and civilians safe. This is where Explosive Ordnance Disposal Operators like Master Warrant Officer Marty Gratrix come in. He offers an inside look at a career spent defusing danger with no room for error.Feel free to contact Captain Adam Orton with any comments or questions:armyconnect-connectionarmee@forces.gc.caConnect with the Canadian Army on social media:Facebook  | X (Twitter) | Instagram | YouTubeVisit Forces.ca if you are considering a career in the Army.Copyright Information© His Majesty the King in Right of Canada, as represented by the Minister of National Defence, 2026

Jesse Jackson is the co-founder and operator of Mango Automotive, a multi-location auto repair group running eight shops across Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. After a career in software, Jesse pivoted into the trades alongside her partner Brian, building Mango into a regional operator focused on acquiring auto repair shops from retiring owners whose businesses are already profitable but under-marketed.Jesse is the creator of a free acquisition-evaluation tool at autorepairqueen.com/shop It's the same model Mango Automotive uses internally to underwrite its own deals. Her perspective sits at the intersection of operator, acquirer, and brand-builder, which is why shop owners modeling their first or fifth acquisition keep coming back to her playbook.EPISODE SPONSORThis episode of the Gain Traction Podcast is sponsored by Cosmo Tires. Cosmo Tires offers a wide range of tire solutions designed for durability, reliability, and performance across multiple vehicle segments. Learn more at https://www.cosmotires.comIn this episode…The Boomer generation built most of the independent auto repair shops in this country, and a huge share of them are heading toward retirement with thirty years of word-of-mouth equity and zero modern demand generation on top. That's the deal flow most multi-location operators are sleeping on. Acquiring auto repair shops at this stage means buying already-profitable businesses and unlocking the growth the previous owner stopped chasing a decade ago.The 50%+ year-one number comes from three layers: Google Maps SEO, Local Service Ads, and AI search visibility on the marketing side; a transition protocol that retains every technician on the people side; and the right district manager, finance, and HR hires at the three-shop and five-shop inflection points. Jesse Jackson of Mango Automotive has run this playbook across eight locations and three states, and this conversation breaks down exactly how it gets executed.Here's a glimpse of what you'll learn:[01:14] Guest introduction: Jesse Jackson, Operator of Mango Automotive[01:41] The career pivot from software into the automotive trades[04:49] Building Mango Automotive into a multi-state operator through acquisition[06:41] Navigating the three-store and five-store inflection points in multi-location growth[12:00] The transition protocol for retaining staff through a change in ownership[14:14] Customer acquisition strategy and cost-per-acquisition in secondary markets[18:29] Local brand-building and the role of community partnerships in market penetration[24:16] Operator mindset and the discipline of career reinvention[25:31] Leadership lessons from It's Not About the Mangoes[31:57] The free acquisition-evaluation tool Mango uses to underwrite dealsResources mentioned in this episode:Jesse Jackson on LinkedInMango Automotive WebsiteFree Acquisition Evaluation Tool (Mango Automotive)Tread PartnersGain Traction Podcast on YouTubeGain Traction Podcast WebsiteMike Edge on LinkedInQuotable Moments:"The shops we buy are already successful, the previous owner just stopped pushing for growth.""We wait in the parking lot while the owner tells the team, then walk in so nobody has time to get paranoid.""Customer acquisition in our secondary markets runs about $150, and that's with the referral base already working for us.""I'm rebuilding our website because I don't like what ChatGPT or Gemini says when I ask for the best repair shop in town.""The three-shop and five-shop inflection points are where most operators break; district managers, finance, and HR are what get you through.""We've never lost an employee through a transition, and that's not luck, it's benefits and how you walk in the door."Action Steps:Underwrite every deal on year-one marketing upside, not trailing revenue. Assume a 50%+ lift when acquiring auto repair shops from retiring owners who never invested in modern demand generation.Run the parking-lot transition play on day one. Let the seller announce the sale to the team alone, then walk in within minutes with the full benefits package in writing.Audit AI search visibility this week; ask ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude for the best repair shops in each market and treat every gap as a website rebuild priority.Hire the district manager, finance lead, and HR seat before hitting five locations: those three roles carry multi-location auto repair operators through the inflection point.Pull Jesse's free acquisition-evaluation tool and run it on the next deal in the pipeline, it's the same model Mango uses to pressure-test year-one assumptions before signing an LOI.

Episode SummaryNeal sits down with Will Alaynick, managing partner at Phase Two Ventures, for a fireside chat on what it actually looks like to go from building a company to running a venture fund. Will walks through his journey from operating a life science instrumentation startup - backed by a strategic investor who gave him governance, talent, and manufacturing access - to raising a fund focused on the tools and infrastructure layer of biotech. They dig into how fund managers evaluate deals differently than angels, why SBIR funding can be a double-edged sword, and what it takes to say no for a living.Key Topics* How a strategic investor provided governance, talent, and manufacturing - not just capital* Building Phase Two Ventures from operator pattern recognition* Evaluating life science deals through the lens of an ex-founder* SBIR funding as a signal - and when it becomes a distraction* The difference between angel deal evaluation and fund-level portfolio construction* Why most of the venture job is saying no - and how to do it humanely* AI's emerging role in life science - and why wet labs still matter* What angels should know before making the leap to managing a fundLinks & Resources* Phase Two Ventures* San Diego Angel Conference* Rising Tide PartnersConnect on LinkedIn* Will Alaynick* Neal Bloom This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit risingtidepartners.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of the Shepherds of the Wild Podcast, Tom goes in-depth with Roland Norton of Makasa Safaris.  As documented in Tom's film "Killing the Shepherd", over a decade ago, at the behest of the area's chieftainess, Roland and Makasa Safaris moved into the lower Luano Valley in Zambia to help restore wildlife numbers.  After a decade spent fighting poaching, and engaged in community projects, the people of the lower Luano, and the wildlife are starting to rebound in a big way.  But a few vital, endemic species have not returned.  So the next step is Project Return of the Wild.  Tom and Roland discuss the problems, the solutions, and the best way to get involved.

Episode Description Most founders are running their organization from operator mode and calling it leadership. The doing feels productive. The decisions feel necessary. And the strategic work, the part that actually points the organization in the right direction, keeps getting pushed to "when things calm down."  … And things never calm down. Sarah goes solo in this episode to walk through the difference between CEO mode and operator mode, why staying stuck in the doing creates a bottleneck that stalls growth, and how to start protecting visionary time even when you are wearing every hat. In This Episode, You'll Learn Why visionary work is a critical function on par with payroll, HR, and programs, not a "fun extra" The pattern she calls visionary whiplash, and how unprotected visioning disorients your team Why the CEO who stays the operator becomes the decision bottleneck that stalls growth The tiki raft analogy: when capacity is the problem, direction is not the question yet The first concrete move most small organizations make before hiring more leaders Who This Episode Is For Nonprofit Executive Directors and CEOs wearing every hat and quietly suspicious that visionary work doesn't count as real work Working boards running an organization with no staff, trying to figure out where strategy ends and execution begins Leaders whose teams have started saying "I don't know what we're focused on this month" Anyone watching their organization stall because every decision still routes through one person Practical takeaways Tag your time. Notice which hours go to right-direction work and which go to operator work, and track the percentage. Put new ideas on a list to review at your next strategic cycle instead of acting on them the day they arrive. Run a strategic planning cycle every two months, even if it is a solo session with a clear agenda. Before hiring more leaders, consider whether a strong executive assistant would unlock the capacity you actually need. About Your Host, Sarah Olivieri Bold, strategic, and refreshingly human… Sarah Olivieri is the go-to expert for conversations on aligned leadership, outcome delegation, and sustainable growth.She brings wit, warmth, and real-world wisdom to mission-driven founders, visionary CEOs, and change-makers who want more clarity, more joy, and more results. Most leaders hit a wall when success depends on them holding it all together. Sarah helps them change that by redefining leadership around outcomes instead of activity, empowering teams to own results that scale and freeing leaders to focus on the vision that drives them. A former director of three nonprofits and founder of five businesses, she has a rare ability to spot opportunity where others see chaos, shift stuck patterns, and build organizations that support both legacy and life. Sarah leads with the same mindset that made her an award-winning sailor: iterate on what works, stay focused in the storm, and never forget the joy of the journey. Links Website: saraholivieri.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sarah-olivieri Be sure to subscribe to Inspired Nonprofit Leadership so that you don't miss a single episode, and while you're at it, won't you take a moment to write a short review and rate our show? It would be greatly appreciated! Let us know the topics or questions you would like to hear about in a future episode. You can do that and follow us on LinkedIn.

In this engaging interview, Amit Gaglani shares his journey from healthcare to real estate investing, highlighting lessons learned, systems developed, and the importance of relationship-building and self-awareness in business success.   Professional Real Estate Investors - How we can help you: Investor Fuel Mastermind:  Learn more about the Investor Fuel Mastermind, including 100% deal financing, massive discounts from vendors and sponsors you're already using, our world class community of over 150 members, and SO much more here: http://www.investorfuel.com/apply   Investor Machine Marketing Partnership:  Are you looking for consistent, high quality lead generation? Investor Machine is America's #1 lead generation service professional investors. Investor Machine provides true 'white glove' support to help you build the perfect marketing plan, then we'll execute it for you…talking and working together on an ongoing basis to help you hit YOUR goals! Learn more here: http://www.investormachine.com   Coaching with Mike Hambright:  Interested in 1 on 1 coaching with Mike Hambright? Mike coaches entrepreneurs looking to level up, build coaching or service based businesses (Mike runs multiple 7 and 8 figure a year businesses), building a coaching program and more. Learn more here: https://investorfuel.com/coachingwithmike   Attend a Vacation/Mastermind Retreat with Mike Hambright: Interested in joining a "mini-mastermind" with Mike and his private clients on an upcoming "Retreat", either at locations like Cabo San Lucas, Napa, Park City ski trip, Yellowstone, or even at Mike's East Texas "Big H Ranch"? Learn more here: http://www.investorfuel.com/retreat   Property Insurance: Join the largest and most investor friendly property insurance provider in 2 minutes. Free to join, and insure all your flips and rentals within minutes! There is NO easier insurance provider on the planet (turn insurance on or off in 1 minute without talking to anyone!), and there's no 15-30% agent mark up through this platform!  Register here: https://myinvestorinsurance.com/   New Real Estate Investors - How we can work together: Investor Fuel Club (Coaching and Deal Partner Community): Looking to kickstart your real estate investing career? Join our one of a kind Coaching Community, Investor Fuel Club, where you'll get trained by some of the best real estate investors in America, and partner with them on deals! You don't need $ for deals…we'll partner with you and hold your hand along the way! Learn More here: http://www.investorfuel.com/club   —--------------------

Are you building a business or building yourself a job?Cliff Nonnenmacher is the founder of Franocity, a franchise consulting firm that has spent 25 years helping investors and displaced executives identify scalable franchise brands with real liquidity and exit potential. His core message is simple: the owner who still works in the business after year one almost never builds an empire.In this episode, Cliff breaks down exactly what separates the 1.4-unit franchise owner from the one who owns 10, why spreading across multiple territories before you dominate one is a wealth trap, and how to build the team, systems, and leadership culture that allow you to step out of the van for good.What you'll walk away with: Why going a mile deep and an inch wide is the most powerful territory strategy in franchising. The 5 KPIs every owner needs to track to work on the business, not in it. Jack Welch's four E's and a P framework for hiring leaders who actually scale. The real reason "if you want it done right, do it yourself" is the most financially suppressive advice you can follow. How Franocity's free consulting model works and how to connect with Cliff.Access Cliff's free franchise discovery consultation at franocity.comConnect with Cliff Nonnenmacher on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/cliffnonnenmacherHosted by John St. Pierre and Rich Hoffmann, Entrepreneurs United is built for founders and leaders who want straight talk on building businesses that actually work. New episodes every week.https://entrepreneursunited.us/links/

NEW: Send us Your Comments!This Week's Topics:* VIDEO: No Iran Peace - Fighting to Resume  2:30* Iran Proxies Cut off! 6:00* China will Not Provide Arms to Iran 7:30* OPEC Oil Production down 30% 8:30* VIDEO: Trump is Committed on Iran 9:30* US Releases more Strategic Oil Reserves 11:30* VIDEO: US may Suspend Federal Gas Tax 13:30* Ohio Governor Refuses to Cut State Gas Tax 15:00* China Trip a Stalemate 22:00* VIDEO: Trump Supports Chinese Students!!??? 26:00* CA Mayor Guilty of being a Chinese Spy 32:00* Operator of Chinese Police Station in NY Guilty 33:30* CIA Director Visits Cuba to Make Deal 35:30* VIDEO: Fraud in LA is in the Billions 37:30* Final Walz Report is Damning! Charge Him! 42:00* Ohio Hospice Fraud is a Billion a Year! 44:00* VIDEO: Ohio Governor Responsible for Fraud 47:30* Republicans have More Money than Dems 1:04:00* Dems have Lost their Minds! See the Proof! 1:06:30* Republicans have won Redistricting Fight! 1:11:00* TN House Strips Dems of Positions 1:14:30* Gavin Newsom Former Chief Guilty 1:16:30* We must Restore Truth to American History 1:19:30* Crackdown on the Left's Illegal Non-Profits 1:23:00* VIDEO: Damning Testimony about Fauci 1:28:00* Senate Confirms Warsh as New Fed Chair 1:31:00* Border Patrol Chief Retires 1:33:00* New ATF Director Approved 1:35:00* VIDEO: Price Fixing in Beef Industry 1:36:00* Consumer Price Index rises 1:38:30* VIDEO: Corruption in Military Spending 1:40:00* SCOTUS to Decide Nine Huge Cases by June 1:44:00* VIDEO: John Solomon makes big predictions 1:51:00* Glenn Beck Speaks to Rally in UK Today 1:54:30* Tina Peters Paroled on June 1st 1:57:00* Trump to Create Fund for Victims of Lawfare 1:59:30Support the showView our Podcast and our other videos and news stories at:https://wethepeopleconvention.org/Podcast-Player-PageSend Comments and Suggestions to:info@WethePeopleConvention.org

Dan and Ian just got back from DC Mexico — 4 days in Mexico City with 200 founders, a third of whom run $1M+ businesses. Three ideas worth sitting with: Reading about something is useful. Watching someone implement it is better. Doing it yourself, beside someone else doing it too, is where things get real. Networking gets a bad reputation — and maybe it deserves it. But sharing a real experience with someone who's solving the same problems you are? That's where trust gets built. And trust, right now, might be the most valuable thing a founder can have. In this episode: • Why reading and podcasts only get you so far • What made the DC Mexico AI Build Lab different from any workshop they've attended • The difference between networking and shared experience (and why it matters) • How the attention economy is shifting — and what's replacing it • How to get the most out of any room you're in Thanks to this week's sponsor Wayfront — the AI-ready operating system for productized agencies. One client portal. One team dashboard. All your data, AI-accessible. TMBA listeners get an extra free month on top of the trial at wayfront.com/tmba. Links: More Business Resources Upcoming DC Events Tropical MBA is a podcast for entrepreneurs building location-independent businesses. Subscribe for weekly episodes on business, money, and the entrepreneurial lifestyle. Hang out exclusively with 7+ figure founders in DC BLACK https://dynamitecircle.com/dc-black CHAPTERS: (00:00:13) We are back (00:02:40) Mexico City Impressions (00:05:33) DC Mexico Event Breakdown (00:07:14) Community Stats And Culture (00:11:33) Reflection One Get Results (00:17:07) Reflection Two Trust Economy (00:23:05) Our sponsor “Wayfront” (00:24:24) Reflection Three Shared Experience (00:29:09) Quick Hits AI And Acquisitions (00:30:43) Optimism And Next Events (00:32:33) Wrap Up And Sign Off CONNECT: Dan Andrews is the co-founder of Dynamite Circle, author of Before the Exit, host of the Tropical MBA podcast, and an entrepreneur who has successfully launched and scaled multiple 7-figure businesses. Email Dan@tropicalmba.com PLAYLIST: The $10K Projects You Never Do (AI Just Changed That) How to Build a 6-Figure Digital Business with Claude Code We Got Claude-Pilled

In this episode of The Ross Simmonds Show, Ross makes a bold prediction: the next great CMO will be a media operator with a marketing budget. As AI and LLMs reshape how buyers discover and decide, traditional attribution, funnels, and SEO playbooks are breaking down. If you want to win in an AI-first world, it's time to shift from campaign thinking to category ownership. Key Takeaways and Insights: 1. The Future CMO = Media Operator - The next generation of CMOs won't just build campaigns—they'll own media ecosystems. - Success shifts from “creating great ads” to controlling the narrative across a category. - Media ownership (owned + partnered) becomes a strategic advantage. 2. AI Is Rewriting Buyer Behavior - LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are influencing buying decisions directly. - Consumers are getting answers without visiting your website. - The opportunity isn't to interrupt attention—it's to shape what AI recommends. 3. The Power of LLM Memory - AI personalizes answers based on stored user context (company size, budget, role). - Each platform (Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude) has different memory advantages. - Tracking only head terms is a mistake—long-tail, bottom-of-funnel queries matter more. 4. From Presence to Scale - Old model: “How much content did we publish?” - New model: “How often are we referenced across the web?” - Visibility in conversations—onsite and offsite—is the new KPI. 5. Category Ownership Through Media Acquisition - Buy and build media assets within your niche. - Create high-value, proprietary, non-commodity content. - Distribute aggressively to influence what LLMs cite and recommend. —

This interview features Rachel Miller and Letty Bejarano, two women excelling in trades like welding, sheet metal work, and crane operation. They share their journeys, challenges, and advice for women interested in entering these fields, highlighting the importance of union apprenticeships, implementing boundaries, and overcoming workplace barriers.Letty is a a sheet metal worker, welder, and silversmith. She's an HVAC installer and welder who works out in the field on places like hospitals, casinos, and data centers.Rachel is a crane operator apprentice and a welder. Her current apprenticeship role as of recording is as an oiler, where she works with crane operators. She assists the crane operator by checking fluids each morning and does maintenance.**NOTE: This was a live podcast recording, so I appreciate your extra patience with the background noises, particularly during the beginning when there are some loud kiddos. Thank you, and I promise it is worth the listen!Contact Info:Letty Bejarano - GuestLetty Bejarano (Instagram)Rachel Miller - GuestRachel Miller (Instagram)Weldher Workshop (Instagram)Julie Berman - Hostwww.womenwithcooljobs.com@womencooljobs (Instagram)Julie Berman (LinkedIn)Send Julie a text!!------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I absolutely LOVE being the host and producer of "Women with Cool Jobs", where I interview women who have unique, trailblazing, and innovative careers. It has been such a blessing to share stories of incredible, inspiring women since I started in 2020.If you have benefitted from this work, or simply appreciate that I do it, please consider buying me a  $5 coffee. ☕️ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/julieberman Thank you so much for supporting me -- whether by sharing an episode with a friend, attending a LIVE WWCJ event in Phoenix, connecting with me on Instagram @womencooljobs or LinkedIn, sending me a note on my website (www.womenwithcooljobs.com), or by buying me a coffee! It all means so much.

Most agency owners think building a successful business means becoming the CEO, but many never escape the operator role. John talks with Jason Swenk about the five stages agency founders go through as they scale from overworked operators to true owners. They discuss founder dependency, leadership identity shifts, hiring the right people, building systems that remove bottlenecks, and why so many agencies struggle to let go of sales and daily operations. If you want to build an agency that can grow without relying on you for everything, this episode breaks down the mindset and structural changes that make it possible. 00:00 Introduction 02:12 The 5 Stages From Operator to Owner 05:26 Reinventing Agency CEOs 10:43 Scaling Beyond the Founder 15:41 Letting Go to Become a True Owner 18:48 The First Step to Escaping Operator Mode Rate, Review, & Follow If you liked this episode, please rate and review the show. Let us know what you loved most about the episode. Struggling with strategy? Unlock your free AI-powered prompts now and start building a winning strategy today!

Angel Academy Session 3 brings together a panel of San Diego operators who crossed over to the investor side - including Katherine Chapin, Dane Chapin, Ken Potashner, and Bardia Moayedi with backgrounds spanning investment banking, corporate law, and consumer products. The conversation gets honest fast: what it means to bet on a founder who introduces herself as "just a mom," why losing money on a deal teaches you more than any pitch deck, and how San Diego's open, collaborative angel community creates a fundamentally different deal flow than Silicon Valley's closed-door networks.Key Topics* Operating experience as an angel investor's real edge* The "just a mom" story: why passion beats pedigree every time* Dane Chapin's board game company postmortem and what losing taught him* San Diego's open angel ecosystem vs. Silicon Valley's closed networks* Underestimating risk: the Coin investment and what it revealed* Co-investing with spouses and building shared conviction* Why brand obsession signals a founder worth backing* Pitch contests vs. relationship-driven deal flowLinks & Resources* San Diego Angel Conference (SDAC): https://sdangel.com* SDSU ZIP Launchpad: https://ziplaunchpad.sdsu.edu* Rising Tide Partners: https://risingtidepartners.coConnect on LinkedIn* Dane Chapin* Katherine Chapin* Ken Potashner* Bardia Moayedi* Neal Bloom This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit risingtidepartners.substack.com/subscribe

Nathan de Ruiter, Partner and Managing Director at Novaspace, joins the show to unpack the shifting supply and demand dynamics shaping satellite capacity across Asia. De Ruiter discusses how pricing pressures, national space programs, government connectivity initiatives and network modernization efforts are influencing operator decisions across the region. He also outlines how these trends are redefining competition and informing long term fleet planning and partnerships. Listen as he breaks down the key forces reshaping Asia's satellite market.

We're joined by an all-star cast from all over the US to talk AI, practical use-cases and growth in tooling that is going to move the needle. JJ King, Jack Zoppa and Jacob Mueller join us to each give one example of how they're using AI in their business spanning hiring, reviews, brand rep and a LOT more. Enjoy!⭐️ Links & Show NotesAdam NorkoConrad O'Connell Jamie LaneAirDNA

The bigger companies will tell you that you need employees because if you get hurt your business will fall apart. A a solo operator for over 12 years now I can say this is not the truth. You do NOT need employees to keep your business running if you get hurt.  **Backed by EARTHAPRO** Visit www.earthapro.com Use CODE mowinginthedark25 at checkout to get 25% off your first year! Helcim Credit Card Processing: https://link.helcim.com/tNJop5Ll WaveApps: https://www.waveapps.com/   **Please give the podcast a 5 star rating and review in Apple Podcasts.** If you would like to be interviewed on the pod please send me an email and let me know. I would love to have you on. sutterbrotherslawn@gmail.com Support the Pod: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/mowinginthedark     Check out my business websites:  www.gravelblasters.com , www.sutterbrotherslawncare.com

Red Apple Media Owner & Operator John Catsimatidis joins Sid live in-studio to offer his reaction to Sid's interview with President Donald J. Trump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Spencer Vickers began his career at Invesco Real Estate, working across industrial, retail, and multifamily assets on their U.S. platform. He then moved into healthcare real estate acquisitions and development for a group in Dallas before serving as senior analyst at D.R. Horton's multifamily platform in Central Florida. In June 2024, Spencer founded The Fractional Analyst to give independent syndicators and fund managers access to institutional-grade back office support, deal analysis, and investor reporting systems without the overhead of a full-time hire. His team serves clients ranging from individual operators to groups with up to $2 billion in assets under management.     Make sure to download our free guide, 7 Questions Every Passive Investor Should Ask, here.     Key Takeaways Build back office systems before you need them Use financial modeling to tell a clear deal story, not just present numbers Analyze new supply and absorption trends alongside any target acquisition Source market data from county permits, active brokers, and AI tools Avoid assuming that what got you to your current level will carry you to the next     Topics The Institutional Gap in Real Estate Large operators have dedicated analyst, transaction, and debt teams that most independent operators cannot afford The Fractional Analyst fills that gap by building back office systems, financial models, and investor relations infrastructure for smaller operators What Back Office Support Actually Covers Back office work includes lender reporting, investor distributions, subscription documents, and K-1 management Platforms like Cash Flow Portal and Juniper Square automate much of this, but still require setup, data validation, and ongoing upkeep Financial Modeling and Deal Presentation Many models lack formatting, clarity, and readability, making them difficult to audit or present Spencer's team cleans up models and builds pitch decks that make the deal story easy to communicate to lenders and investors Underwriting With Market Context New supply and absorption trends must be analyzed alongside any target acquisition to properly frame risk A 97% occupied deal can still carry significant risk if thousands of competing units are coming online in the same submarket Finding Market Data County permit records reveal planned new construction in any given area Active local brokers typically already have this data and are motivated to share it AI tools are increasingly useful for pulling and presenting market data, but all outputs require verification before use Who Is a Good Fit for The Fractional Analyst Ideal clients have $50M to $250M in assets under management and are actively looking to scale Operators who are not yet acquiring deals or are unwilling to do the required work are not a strong match Scaling From Syndications to Funds Spencer's team reviewed fund formation documents for a client with over 300 individual syndications preparing to launch his first fund They flagged legal risk items so the client could address them directly with his attorney    

Labor Department says inflation in April was 3.8 percent year over year, highest in three years, with the Iran war driving up energy and food prices; Senate leaders weigh in on President Trump's proposal to suspend the federal gas tax as the average for a gallon hits $4.50; Pentagon Comptroller Jay Hurst testifies to House & Senate Appropriations subcommittees that the war with Iran has cost so far $29 billion.  Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth & Gen. Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also testify about the Trump Administration's war strategy; President Trump heads to China for a visit with President Xi Jinping on the war with Iran, trade, AI and Taiwan, among other issues; $1 billion added for security upgrades to President Trump's White House ballroom reportedly gets a chilly reception from Senate Republicans; FBI Director Kash Patel is questioned at a Senate subcommittee hearing about news reports alleging  a pattern of unexplained absences and excessive drinking; Criminal indictments are announced against the companies that operated the ship that crashed into and collapsed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore in 2024, killing six workers; FDA Commissioner Dr. Martin Makary says he is resigning; Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) does an impersonation of the late President John F. Kennedy setting the goal of going to the moon, complete with a Boston accent, to celebrate the recent Artemis II mission. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, NUEQ shares how he writes high-energy dance music in Ableton Live, breaking down his Operator-heavy sound design, groove-first drum mindset, and how he builds “call and response” ideas that stay cohesive through a track. He also digs into resampling, distortion chains, sidechaining, and favorite stock tools like Vocoder for adding character.NUEQ is a bass music producer known for detailed, rhythm-forward productions and building sounds from scratch. He's played festivals like Tipper & Friends, Infrasound, Submersion, Fire Lights, Desert Bass (IL), and Balter Festival (UK), and has supported artists including Tipper, Culprate, K.L.O, Tsuruda, kLL sMTH, Duffrey, and Thought Process. He's collaborated with Mr Bill, Culprate, Yehezkel Raz, Azaleh, and Omnist (with ongoing work w/ Vorso + Culprate), released on Inspected, VALE, Billegal Beats, Colony Productions, and Wormhole Music, and has sync placements with Tesla, Nothing Phone, and Ninja.Follow NUEQ:https://linktr.ee/NUEQGrab limited-edition Producer Merch & save 10% with the code "podcast":https://www.abletonpodcast.com/merchJoin the newsletter to get free downloads, early episode access, and upcoming events.https://www.abletonpodcast.com/newsletter

AP's Lisa Dwyer reports on charges for those involved in a fatal bridge collapse in Maryland.

Red Apple Media Owner & Operator John Catsimatidis joins Sid to discuss the latest coming out of the war with Iran and President Trump's subsequent trip to China for a summit with Xi Jinping later this week. John then recaps his Sunday celebrating Mother's Day! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us Fan MailIn this compelling episode, join Brandon as he sits down with the dynamic Jamey Schrier, discussing the core principles of the 'Practice Freedom Mindset.' Dive deep into Jamey's transformative journey from an overwhelmed private practice owner to a strategic leader, uncovering the pivotal moments that reshaped his approach to business and life. This conversation is a must-listen for any healthcare entrepreneur feeling stuck, unfulfilled, or battling the challenges of scaling their practice. Discover how shifting your mindset can unlock unparalleled growth and lead to a more balanced and rewarding entrepreneurial experience. Get ready to challenge your preconceptions about success and leadership. What You'll Learn:How to transition from an overwhelmed operator to a strategic leader.The difference between burnout and unfulfillment in private practice.The role of emotional intelligence and self-awareness in business success.Overcoming the fear of failure and perfectionism as an entrepreneur.Strategies for letting go of control and empowering your team.How to reframe your perspective to foster business growth and personal fulfillment.Transform your practice and your life by embracing the Practice Freedom Mindset. #PracticeFreedom #MindsetShift #PrivatePracticeSuccess #JameySchrier #EntrepreneurialJourneyJamey Schrier, PT is a leading practice growth expert who helps physical therapists, occupational therapists, and mental health professionals build more profitable, freedom-driven practices. Known for turning complex business challenges into clear, actionable solutions, Jamey has helped hundreds of practice owners increase revenue, improve patient flow, reduce dependence on insurance pressures, and create greater financial stability—without being tied down to the clinic. Through his practical strategies, he empowers owners to reclaim their time, strengthen their businesses, and rediscover their passion for the work they do.https://practicefreedomu.com/https://www.youtube.com/@jameyschrierhttps://www.facebook.com/PracticeFreedomUhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/practice-freedom-u/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

Want a quick estimate of how much your business is worth? With our free valuation calculator, answer a few questions about your business, and you'll get an immediate estimate of the value of your business. You might be surprised by how much you can get for it: https://flippa.com/exit -- Are you running a business or building an asset? Many entrepreneurs are so buried in the day-to-day operations that they fail to prepare for the ultimate goal: a successful exit. In this episode, Steve McGarry sits down with Saul Cohen, Partner at The Expert Eye and acquisitions advisor, to demystify the accounting and strategic shifts required to transition from a business operator to a savvy investor. Saul shares his "SCORE" framework for assessing business health, explains why your traditional tax accountant might be hurting your valuation, and reveals the #1 red flag that kills deals during due diligence. Whether you are three years away from selling or just starting your journey, this episode provides a tactical roadmap to unlocking long-term wealth. In This Episode, You'll Learn: The Valuation Gap: Why optimizing for low taxes can inadvertently lower your business's sale price. The SCORE Framework: A 5-part system to evaluate Systems, Clients, Organisation, Revenue Structures, and Exposure. The "Cow" Analogy: How to view your business as a milk-producing unit rather than a carcass. Timing the Market: When to hold on and when to "take the money" during industry-wide consolidation. The Trust Factor: Why transparency is more important than perfect numbers during due diligence. The Second Ascent: Why second-time founders scale businesses to the same size in a fraction of the time. -- Saul Cohen is an accountant and acquisitions advisor who helps entrepreneurs transition from operators to investors. With a background in tax planning, business exits, and deal-making, he works closely with founders to unlock growth, optimize value, and build long-term wealth. Saul is passionate about helping business owners think strategically about acquisitions, scale sustainably, and create lasting impact beyond their businesses. LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cohensaul/ Website - https://theexperteye.co.uk/ -- The Exit—Presented By Flippa: A 30-minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and done it. The Exit talks to operators who have bought and sold a business. You'll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits, a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many. To listen to the podcast or get daily listing updates, click on flippa.com/the-exit-podcast/

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training Are you running multiple things at once and wondering why none of them are moving as fast as they should? Are you still the one every project, every client, and every decision routes through, no matter how many people you have on your team? Over nearly three decades, today's featured guest didn't just run an agency. He turned it into an incubator, spinning up multiple SaaS companies, a mobile app, and an accessibility tool, all funded and validated through a model most founders have never tried. In this episode, he'll get into how he built products without outside investors, why the bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle, and what it actually took to step out of the operator seat after 28 years in it. David Carnes is the co-founder of Arcstone, a digital agency based in Minneapolis that has been operating since 1997. Over the course of his career, he has launched multiple companies from inside the agency, including a SaaS platform for associations built as early as 2000, a document management system called Wonderfile that was acquired by Blue Tie in New York, and NC, an accessibility scanning tool built initially for Arcstone's own quality assurance needs. His wife now runs Arcstone as CEO. David currently sits in the CFO seat, operating across all three businesses as an advisor and strategic layer rather than a day-to-day operator. In this episode, we'll discuss: Creating the structure to run several businesses and not be in the middle of everything Why the founder bottleneck is a trap you can learn to avoid Understanding the importance of creating dedicated AI roles Sponsors and Resources This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio: If you're leveling up your team and your client experience, your site builder should keep up too. That's why successful agencies use Wix Studio — built to adapt the way your agency does: AI-powered site mapping, responsive design, flexible workflows, and scalable CMS tools so you spend less on plugins and more on growth. Ready to design faster and smarter? Go to wix.com/studio to get started. Herringbone Digital: If you're thinking about exiting now, planning a few years ahead, or just want to understand your options, you should know about Herringbone Digital. They're not a typical financial buyer. They're operators who actually understand what it takes to build and scale an agency because they've done it themselves. Their approach is simple: invest in great founders, protect what's already working, and help agencies scale faster. Go to https://www.herringbonedigital.com/swenk and start the conversation. Funding Products Without Giving Up Equity One of the most practical lessons owners can take from David is how he funded multiple software products without investors. The model is straightforward: go to existing clients or a relevant group, identify a shared problem, and ask them to collectively fund the build in exchange for lifetime access. For AMO, six or seven associations each kicked in eight thousand dollars. For a later mobile event app, fifteen associations each contributed five thousand. In both cases, David had enough capital to build, immediate users providing real feedback, and zero equity given away. The reason this works is the same reason the Foot in the Door methodology works inside agency sales. A small, committed financial investment creates accountability on both sides. The customers who fund it show up with feedback because they have skin in the game. The builder ships something real instead of overbuilding in isolation. David was explicit that his own tendency to overcomplicate a product shrinks significantly when real users are in the room from day one. Too Many Plates, Not Enough Structure Building multiple companies inside one agency creates a specific kind of chaos. David called it too many plants in one pot. The companies start competing for the same resources, the same attention, and the same management bandwidth. His early answer to this was to stay in the middle of everything, which meant every decision still ran through him. The shift did not come from a framework or a book. It came from maturity and, eventually, necessity. When his wife stepped into the CEO role at Arcstone and dedicated management teams formed at AMO and NC, David moved into the CFO seat and took on what he called a monster back role, someone who can move across the whole field without being anchored to any single function. That is not a role most founders reach quickly, and he is honest about the fact that he still gets pulled back in when a longtime client or friend asks for something. The trap is familiar: you step in, you mean well, and in doing so, you signal to your team that you do not trust them to handle it. Founder Bottleneck Is a Pattern, Not a Personality Flaw David does not pretend he solved the founder bottleneck problem cleanly. In reality, patterns of it showed up repeatedly. You build structure, you step back, something pulls you in, and you disrupt the system you built. David described it as spiral growth rather than linear progress. You see the same lesson again. You handle it a little better. You move on. What makes the pattern more manageable is having a framework that names it. When you can recognize "this is the trap I have fallen into before," you can course-correct faster. That is exactly the work the Founder Evolution Framework is built to do. Operator, Manager, Architect, CEO, Owner: each stage is a distinct role, not just a job title. Revenue does not move you up the ladder. Removing yourself from the critical path does. David is living proof that even experienced operators with 28 years in the seat have to be intentional about each stage of that progression. AI: Surf the Wave or Get Pummeled By It David does not treat AI as a theoretical topic. He attended a ten-thousand-dollar immersive course shortly after Claude introduced persistent context, specifically because he wanted to understand what was actually possible, not just what people were saying about it. His takeaway was concrete enough that he created two dedicated roles inside Arcstone: an AI Architect and an AI Operator. The distinction is worth understanding. The Architect builds the agents and workflows. The Operator runs them, keeps the human in the loop, and catches the errors. Because AI still makes mistakes, and the founder who knows that firsthand is the one who can train a team to work with it well, not just use it. The agencies that will benefit most are not the ones that hand AI to someone and walk away. They are the ones who build internal capability, document their models and prompts as assets, and treat the technology as a force multiplier on a team that already knows what it is doing. Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset? Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.

Join Simtheory: https://simtheory.aiSo Chris, this week we finally give our GPT-5.5 impressions (it's actually great), introduce our new AI co-host Moshi (who immediately embarrasses himself), argue about whether the OpenAI/Jony Ive phone is genius or doomed, witness Grok 4.3's unhinged infinite emoji meltdown, declare Opus 4.7 the first-ever Anthropic regression, get excited about GPT Real-Time Voice 2.0 as the future of agentic workflows, debate whether token prices will ever come down, and play the worst diss track in show history. Watch my spud.CHAPTERS:0:00 - Intro & Introducing Our New AI Co-Host Moshi1:39 - Trying to Break Moshi: The Illegal Cigarette Trade Test2:30 - OpenAI's Jony Ive Phone: Do We Need a Device?5:07 - Telegram Agents & GPT Real-Time Voice 2.0 Dream7:38 - The Supervisory Agent: Managing Your Agentic Workflow9:05 - Wait... Are We Accidentally Validating the OpenAI Phone?11:37 - GPT-5.5 First Impressions: Actually Really Good14:36 - 5.5 vs Opus 4.6: Different Strengths17:00 - Opus 4.7: The First-Ever Anthropic Regression20:25 - Grok 4.3: Infinite Emojis & Absolute Chaos21:22 -

Most men are operating with a flat, one-dimensional personality that breaks under pressure. In this breakdown of "Becoming the Operator," we analyze the five James Bond archetypes — The Predator, Diplomat, Soldier, Executive, and Recruit — to show you how to integrate their strengths while avoiding their fatal flaws.Stop being a reactor and start building the internal infrastructure of a man who can navigate any environment with unshakeable composure. Whether you need Connery's "contained capability" or Brosnan's "presentation mastery," it's time to stop seeking applause and start measuring yourself by internal alignment.➡️ Get Raith's book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GTJ89K3YVIDEOS TO WATCH NEXT:Watch this playlist to figure out how to fix your failing marriage: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEXcvFDdRqPuu_G8-sTLS7eXT7myvidMFWatch this playlist to help you get over your ex for good: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEXcvFDdRqPsZ9JCTSAIkin-oMnavqNJZWatch this playlist to develop an unshakable frame and take control of your life: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEXcvFDdRqPvgN8idHfGfOp3gA8Y0tMxT&si=NccZ6koKYz3hSuUz--------------------------------------------FREE EBOOKS➡️ She's Made You Weak: https://ebook.fixdeadbedrooms.com➡️ Fine... Here's How You Get Her Back: https://ebook.getoveryourex.us--------------------------------------------BOOKS AND WORKBOOKS➡️ Find all of my books here: https://mybook.to/comeonmanpod➡️ Find all of my workbooks here: https://mybook.to/RPWorkbooks--------------------------------------------FOLLOW MEFollow on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@comeonmanpodFollow on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/comeonmanpodcast/Follow on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/comeonmanpodcastFollow on X - https://x.com/bestmenspodFollow on Gettr - https://gettr.com/user/comeonmanpodFollow on Truth - https://truthsocial.com/@comeonmanpod--------------------------------------------COMMUNITIES➡️ Join The W.O.L.F. Pack: https://wolf.comeonmanpod.com/➡️ Become a Spotify Channel Subscriber: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comeonman/subscribe--------------------------------------------

Eyvonne and William sit down with Joseph Nicholson, a Network Operations Engineer with NTT DATA, to share how public speaking transformed his career and technical experience. Joseph went from a terrifying ten minute lightning talk at AutoCon 2 to presenting 45-minute sessions at conferences like NANOG. Together they discuss how conversations in conference halls influenced... Read more »

Welcome to this episode of The New Warehouse Podcast. Kevin chats with Bill Pedriana, President of Noblelift North America, live from MODEX 2026. Noblelift, a global manufacturer of lithium-powered lift trucks, is introducing a new wave of innovation. The conversation centers on the launch of the Omega and Hero platforms, with a strong focus on AI integration and operator enablement. Pedriana shares how Noblelift is rethinking the forklift, not just as equipment, but as an AI forklift platform designed to improve productivity, safety, and workforce performance in modern warehouse environments.Learn more about our sponsor Dexory's Storage Health here. Follow us on LinkedIn and YouTube.Support the show

Red Apple Media Owner & Operator John Catsimatidis joins Sid to touch upon former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani being hospitalized overnight and in critical condition, before he reacts to the breaking news of the passing of legendary New York Yankees radio play-by-play voice John Sterling. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The dominant narrative says AI is wiping out jobs, but that's not the full story. The real issue isn't AI replacing people it's leaders misreading what's actually happening. In this episode Darren Hardy breaks down the critical distinction between perception and reality: Why companies are blaming AI for layoffs (and what's really driving them) The surprising data showing no direct link between AI adoption and job loss The rise of "AI washing" as a convenient corporate narrative The real risk: not AI itself, but the growing Operator's Gap This is not just a technology shift, it's a leadership shift. The opportunity isn't in knowing about AI. It's in operationalizing it. Attend the upcoming Business Master Class May 4th-6th. Doors close today, May1st. Get your seat at HardyBMC.com/DarrenDaily.  Get more personal mentoring from Darren each day. Go to DarrenDaily at http://darrendaily.com/join to learn more.

There's a hard truth at the center of elite performance: organizations don't outgrow their leaders. They stall at the level their leaders are willing to evolve. This episode challenges you to confront a reality most avoid; you are either the constraint or the catalyst. And the moment you accept that, everything changes. In a world reshaped by AI, where information, analysis, and content have become commodities, the true differentiators are no longer what you know but how you think, decide, and lead. Key insights include: -Why leadership—not opportunity—is the ultimate limiter of growth -The "operator's gap" and how it silently compounds against you -The hidden dangers of AI-polished outputs masking shallow thinking -How decision paralysis is replacing decisive leadership -Why outdated systems are costing you more than you realize -The three premium skills in today's economy: judgment, speed, and leadership through change In this new era, leaders who evolve quickly expand exponentially… while those who wait fall behind. Don't fall behind. Get the tools you need to step out in front in this new era. Attend the upcoming Business Master Class May 4th-6th. Get your seat at HardyBMC.com/DarrenDaily.  Get more personal mentoring from Darren each day. Go to DarrenDaily at http://darrendaily.com/join to learn more.

Jason Magnavice is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL with over 26 years in Naval Special Warfare. He spent eight years at SEAL Team 2 before being selected to serve within Joint Special Operations Command, operating in some of the most elite elements of the community for over a decade. He deployed four times to Operation Enduring Freedom and four times to Operation Iraqi Freedom, serving as a sniper, tactical communicator, lead jumper, and team leader during the height of the war on terror. During his time in special operations, he transitioned into a specialized aviation role, earning his Airline Transport Pilot certificate and later serving as a senior enlisted leader within that element. He finished his career coordinating recruiting for Naval Special Warfare. Today, he flies a Gulfstream privately and holds a 767 type rating with a major freight carrier. He's a father, a grandfather, and has chosen to live a quiet life with no social media, no book, and no brand. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Find your forever cookware and get 10% off at https://hexclad.com/SRS! #hexcladpartner Post jobs for free at https://ziprecruiter.com/srs Try ShipStation free for 60 days with full access and no credit card needed at https://shipstation.com using code srs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices