Podcasts about powerpoint

AI is everywhere right now. In IPO markets, in SaaS business models and in your day to day workflow. On this week's episode of The Liquidity Event, Shane and AJ break down why mega IPOs like OpenAI and SpaceX are creating a gravity well in the public markets, what that means for smaller companies waiting to go public and whether the IPO pipeline is actually reopening in 2026. They also dig into the growing tension inside software companies as AI agents begin to threaten seat based pricing models and what recent disclosures are quietly admitting about the competitive risks. Finally, they unpack new research showing that AI may not be lightening workloads at all. Instead, it may be increasing email volume, decision fatigue and what researchers are calling AI brain fry. Is AI making us more productive or just more overwhelmed? Key Timestamps 01:45 – Vibe coding, Claude inside PowerPoint and AI workflow shifts 06:10 – Is the IPO winter actually over? 08:25 – The gravity well effect of mega IPOs like OpenAI and SpaceX 11:40 – Why smaller IPOs are stuck in the pipeline 14:05 – SaaS companies quietly disclosing AI as a material risk 17:20 – Will AI agents break the seat based pricing model? 21:10 – AI is not reducing workload, it is increasing intensity 24:35 – Email volume, messaging overload and deep work decline 27:50 – AI brain fry and the rising intent to quit 31:15 – Mastery, autonomy and purpose in an AI driven workplace

"How can this possibly be the way?!" is a question Leigh Claire La Berge asks constantly in Fake Work: How I Began to Suspect Capitalism Is a Joke. The book is Leigh Claire's reflection on her time prepping a Fortune 500 company for Y2K by essentially making a bunch of copies, double-checking spreadsheets, and traveling internationally to give frivolous PowerPoint presentations. It's very funny! And unfortunately hella resonant! Leigh Claire jumped right into the deep end with me on this episode, and the result is one of my favorites in a while.We talk about: anxiety, Fake Work, fake work, marxism, really trying to understand how other people came to their beliefs, psychoanalysis, getting a PhD, making room for pleasure and humor in our politics.Support the show and get the TIYA After Dark feed on Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/thisisyourafterlifeFollow Leigh Claire:https://www.instagram.com/marxforcats/https://twitter.com/marxforcatsAnd read her books! Fake Work: How I Began to Suspect Capitalism Is a Joke — https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2534-fake-workMarx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary — https://bookshop.org/p/books/marx-for-cats-a-radical-bestiary-leigh-claire-la-berge/5c87bc279b7a45a4Wages Against Artwork: Decommodified Labor and the Claims of Socially Engaged Art — https://bookshop.org/p/books/wages-against-artwork-decommodified-labor-and-the-claims-of-socially-engaged-art-leigh-claire-la-berge/ad4130cecb721c22Follow/contact This Is Your Afterlife:https://thisisyourafterlife.com/https://www.instagram.com/thisisyourafterlife/thisisyourafterlifepodcast@gmail.comMusic by TIYA house band Lake Mary:https://lakemary.bandcamp.com/https://www.instagram.com/chaz.prymek/Artwork by Matt Sage:https://www.instagram.com/matthewjsage/

What's the best tool for making PDFs accessible? It's the question we get constantly, and the honest answer might surprise you. There isn't one. In this episode of Chax Chat, Chad and Dax break down how the "best" accessibility tool depends entirely on your starting point. Are you working in Word, InDesign, PowerPoint, Google Docs, or Canva? Do you have a tagged PDF, an untagged PDF, or a scanned document? Each scenario changes the strategy. We discuss why "born accessible" is always better than heavy remediation, when Adobe's auto-tagging can actually help, why tools like MadeToTag and Access Word continue to be game changers, and how platforms like CommonLook, PDFix, PREP, and Grackle fit into the workflow. We also talk about handling scanned PDFs, the realities of screen reader testing, and why bookmarks aren't the navigation solution many people think they are. If you've ever felt overwhelmed trying to choose the right accessibility tool, this episode will help you stop chasing a magic solution and start making smarter decisions based on context. Every other week, we unravel accessibility so you can build more inclusive, compliant, and practical documents.     Screen Readers NVDA https://www.nvaccess.org JAWS https://www.freedomscientific.com/products/software/jaws Apple Voice Over https://www.apple.com/accessibility/vision   Color Checkers TPGi Color Contrast Analyzer https://www.tpgi.com/color-contrast-checker WebAIM Color Contrast Checker https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker 8-Shapes Contrast Grid https://contrast-grid.eightshapes.com Microsoft Color Simulations https://www.microsoft.com/design/color Sim Daltonism https://michelf.ca/projects/sim-daltonism Daltonizer https://play.google.com/store/apps/ Adobe Illustrator https://www.adobe.com Adobe Photoshop https://www.adobe.com Color.Adobe https://color.adobe.com/   Acrobat Plugins CommonLook PDF https://commonlook.com Callas PDFgoHTML https://www.callassoftware.com   MS Word Plugins CommonLook Office https://commonlook.com axesWord https://www.axes4.com   Google Extension Grackle Docs https://www.grackledocs.com   InDesign Plugins MadeToTag https://www.axaio.com/madetotag   PDF Remidiators Adobe Acrobat Pro DC https://www.adobe.com/acrobat Adobe Bridge https://www.adobe.com axesPDF https://www.axes4.com Abby Fine Reader https://www.abbyy.com/ PDFix https://pdfix.net Responsive Table Generator Tool https://ianrmedia.unl.edu/website-resources/responsive-table-generator-tool/ Grackle PDF https://www.grackledocs.com/grackle-pdf Vengage https://venngage.com PREP (Continual Engine) https://www.continualengine.com/prep   PDF Checker PAC Checker 2026 https://pac.pdf-accessibility.org CommonLook Validator https://netcentric.allyant.com/accessibility-software/pdf-validator/   InDesign Scripts Keith Gilbert InDesign Scripts https://gilbertconsulting.com   Virtualization for Mac Parallels Desktop https://www.parallels.com Windows OS https://www.microsoft.com/windows Karabiner-Elements https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org    

Join Phil Kitromilides & Sid Lowe in Spain for this week's TSFP, discussing Matchday 28 in LALIGA including Barcelona 5-2 Sevilla, Real Madrid 4-1 Elche and Real Oviedo 1-0 Valencia. Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://nordvpn.com/tsfp⁠⁠⁠⁠. There's a 30-day money back guarantee, and you get four extra months, FOR FREE. For lots more, join us at ⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/tsfp⁠⁠⁠! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on Southern Hospitality, Maddi squashes the beef, Mia announces she's single, the cast heads down to Folly Beach and more!Follow me on social media, find links to merch, Patreon and more here! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a short introduction of the second PowerPoint made by our friend, Archit. This is a companion to the previous PowerPoint on Virology. The links to Archit's PowerPoints can be found here:https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1szgwRT_T93VuGRowZAFyQaBQeE0M4H77?fbclid=IwY2xjawHiu_FleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHVfkRwMBFVeSwpxq-Gjy16Xo7EyajfftDYtnU6JceJVDo9K8dOLWtF6uAg_aem_Vnwo900zuge_0Y3JATkLbASupport the showWebsites:https://drtomcowan.com/https://www.drcowansgarden.com/https://newbiologyclinic.com/https://newbiologycurriculum.com/Instagram: @TalkinTurkeywithTomFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrTomCowan/Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/CivTSuEjw6Qp/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzxdc2o0Q_XZIPwo07XCrNg

In this episode of the Freedom Scientific Training Podcast, Liz and Rachel demonstrate how Microsoft Copilot works within Microsoft 365 when used with JAWS. They walk through practical examples in Word, Outlook, Excel, and PowerPoint, showing how AI can help draft emails, summarize documents and email threads, analyze spreadsheet data, and generate presentation notes. 03_06 Archive, The Power of Pro… Along the way, they explain the differences between Copilot versions included with Microsoft 365 subscriptions, how Copilot integrates with desktop apps, and tips for navigating the Copilot pane with JAWS. If you're looking for ways to use AI to work more efficiently in Microsoft Office, this episode offers a helpful introduction and real-world demonstrations. 03_06 Archive, The Power of Pro…

Southern Hospitality finds Maddie so angry that she's resorted to learning Powerpoint to get her feelings across. Brad doesn't have that app, so he just uses old fashioned talking to make her realize that Emmy might have been distorting the truth a bit. This won't affect Emmy though, cuz she's super zen this season. By that I mean she's hyperventilating by the time credits roll. To watch this recap on video, listen to our bonus episodes, and get ad free listening,, go to Patreon.com/watchwhatcrappens. Find bonus episodes at patreon.com/watchwhatcrappens and follow us on Instagram @watchwhatcrappens @ronniekaram @benmandelker Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today on PowerPoint, Pastor Jack Graham brings a study on one of the greatest chapters in the Bible – Isaiah 53. What we see in this chapter, Pastor Graham teaches, is known as a messianic prophecy, and it is of invaluable importance to us because it points to Jesus as the Messiah – who He is and what He came to do! To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/395/29?v=20251111

Grant Lee, cofounder and CEO of Gamma, joins South Park Commons General Partner Jonathan Brebner to discuss how his AI storytelling platform is taking on PowerPoint and Google Slides. Grant shares how Gamma survived the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, how they stayed lean while scaling to a $2B valuation, and why he believes “different beats better” when competing against entrenched incumbents. He also gets into the role of storytelling in product, hiring, and growth—and why publishing content (and pushing through "cringe valley") might be the most underrated thing a founder can do.Grant Lee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grantslee/ Jonathan Brebner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-brebner/South Park Commons: https://www.linkedin.com/company/southparkcommons/Apply to SPC: https://www.southparkcommons.com/applyChapters:(00:00:00) - Intro(00:02:41) - The Frustration With Slides That Sparked Gamma(00:04:02) - Reuniting With Co-Founders From Optimizely(00:08:46) - The Real Competition: Behavior Change(00:10:37) - The ‘Bet the Company' Moment and the SVB Crisis(00:14:43) - Why Gamma Built a Lean Team and Hires Slowly(00:17:49) - Why Storytelling Is a Core Founder Skill(00:20:51) - How Gamma Balances AI Automation With Human Creativity(00:23:40) - Why Founders Must Survive “Cringe Valley”(00:31:17) - Building Gamma for Prosumer and Enterprise Growth

As more Gen Z and Millennial daters turn away from dating apps and report ‘swipe fatigue,' people are looking to find love in the wild again. The problem is, we're a little rusty. So on this episode, Now or Never takes you into some real-life dating stories as people take the first tentative steps to find love IRL. What better way to boost your dating profile than having your friends hype you up to a crowd of fellow singles? That's the idea behind Pitch-a-Friend nights, where people pitch what makes their single besties so awesome in a five-minute PowerPoint presentation. We crash a Pitch-a-Friend night in Edmonton to find out if any real-life connections are made.When Lisa Cordileone's marriage ended 11 years ago, she headed online looking for connection, but apps proved a bust. Trying to date in her small-town in northern Manitoba also made things tough. So last year, she moved to Winnipeg hoping to expand her dating pool. Now, for the first time, she's putting herself out there at a singles event at a Winnipeg pool hall, and we get to tag along.Stella Isaac is embracing solo dating. She's open to partnership, but the online and in-person experiences she's had as a dark skinned Black woman in Toronto have made that difficult. Stella invites us along for one of her solo date nights to talk about why these dates have served as the best form of self-care.Single dad Richard Kemick is looking to dip his toe into the dating world again. There's just one problem. His living situation is a little…complicated. And tough to sum up in the six minutes he has to make a good first impression at a speed-dating event in Vancouver this weekend. So Ify does a few practice runs with Richard on his opening lines, and finds out why it's so important for him to disclose everything on a first date.After struggling on the dating apps, 29-year-old investment advisor Kyle Long is breaking out of his shell and trying to find love on the dance floor at salsa class – despite being a self-described introvert with two left feet. And an update with Krista Nugent, the real estate agent in Victoria who made headlines last year for a dating application she posted on her Instagram that said, like any realtor, she was open to referrals. Did she end up finding the one?

Ever had one of those moments where you step back from everything you have built and ask yourself a simple but uncomfortable question. What is all this actually for? Many entrepreneurs chase success with relentless energy. Bigger revenue. Bigger teams. Bigger assets. Bigger everything. But eventually a deeper question surfaces. If you already have enough, what keeps you going? In this episode of The Happy Hustle Podcast, I sit down with entrepreneur and outdoorsman Peter Goodwin for a raw and honest conversation about success, identity, and building a life that actually means something. Peter shares his journey from a rugged bush guide with no college degree to building a thriving business and raising a family he deeply loves. Along the way, he opens up about insecurity, purpose, and the surprising lessons that come when you realize money alone is not the destination. Peter is an entrepreneur, lodge owner, and passionate outdoorsman who built his career through grit, problem-solving, and relentless determination. Without a traditional path or backup plan, he learned how to navigate uncertainty and create opportunity from nothing. His story is a powerful reminder that resourcefulness, resilience, and purpose often matter far more than credentials. Through his work, Peter has built businesses, supported communities, and most importantly, created a life centered around family and meaningful impact. This episode matters because it speaks directly to the quiet struggles many entrepreneurs face. The self-doubt. The pressure to prove yourself. The temptation to measure success purely by money or status. Peter's story shows that real success comes when your work supports your life rather than consuming it. Peter shares that some of his darkest moments came while building his lodge. At the time, he had no formal training in business, so he literally Googled his way through creating a business plan and learning how to use PowerPoint. He pitched to anyone who would listen and faced constant rejection. During that time, the inner voice of doubt was loud. Am I enough? Do I have what it takes? Should I have gone to college? Those thoughts can hit especially hard when you are surrounded by people who seem more accomplished on paper. Yet those moments of doubt also forced him to grow into the man he needed to become. Another powerful lesson Peter shares is the idea that having no backup plan can actually be a gift. When you grow up solving problems with limited resources, you become incredibly resourceful. Living in remote environments taught him that when something breaks, you cannot just run somewhere else to fix it. You have to figure it out. That mindset carried over into business and became one of his greatest advantages. Peter also offers a refreshing perspective on identity. He believes that a huge portion of life is simply figuring out who you are not. Many people spend years trying to imitate mentors, parents, or people they see online. But constantly trying to be someone else creates pressure and frustration. Real freedom comes when you stop chasing those comparisons and become comfortable with who you truly are. Perhaps the most striking moment in the conversation comes when Peter talks about reaching financial success. At one point, he had more assets than he ever imagined. Boats, planes, land, tractors, and everything that many people dream of owning. But instead of feeling fulfilled, he realized he could not even keep up with maintaining it all. That moment forced him to ask a deeper question. Why am I working this hard if my family is already provided for? That realization sparked a shift. Success stopped being about accumulation and started being about purpose. Peter realized he needed something bigger than money driving him forward. Something meaningful. Something aligned with the life he wanted to live. This conversation with Peter Goodwin is a powerful reminder that entrepreneurship is not just about building a business. It is about building a life. One where your work supports your values, your purpose, and the people who matter most. If you are navigating your own entrepreneurial journey and searching for clarity around success, identity, and purpose, this episode will resonate deeply. Listen to the full conversation now at caryjack.com/podcastin and keep Happy Hustlin'. What does Happy Hustlin mean to you? Peter says Happy hustlin' is putting my family first, and then also winning at any, whatever game you're in, like winning and that balance it, you know, the family keeps you, that's what keeps me grounded. Cause I can kind of work and just completely bury myself in the game. Love the game, but when you go back home, and you're like, this is what it's all about. So enjoy the game. But don't burn out on the game. The game is just, it's just part of life. It's not life for sure. Connect with Peterhttps://www.instagram.com/groovelife/https://www.facebook.com/groovelife.cohttps://www.linkedin.com/in/petergoodwinak/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJmCr41eOvPY4LjG3MQeGUA Find Peter on his website: https://www.groovelife.com/ Connect with Cary!https://www.instagram.com/caryjack/https://www.facebook.com/SirCaryJackhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/cary-jack-kendzior/https://twitter.com/thehappyhustlehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFDNsD59tLxv2JfEuSsNMOQ/featured Get a copy of his new book, https://www.thehappyhustle.com/book Sign up for The Journey: 10 Days To Become a Happy Hustler Online Course @ https://thehappyhustle.com/thejourney/ Apply to the Montana Mastermind Epic Camping Adventure @ https://thehappyhustle.com/mastermind/ “It's time to Happy Hustle, a blissfully balanced life you love, full of passion, purpose, and positive impact!” Episode Sponsors: If you're feeling stressed, not sleeping great, or your energy's been kinda meh lately—let me put you on to something that's been a total game-changer for me: Magnesium Breakthrough by BiOptimizers. This ain't your average magnesium—it's got all 7 essential forms that your body needs to chill out, sleep deeper, and feel more balanced. I take it every night and legit notice the difference the next day. No more waking up groggy or tossing and turning all night If you're ready to sleep like a baby, calm your nervous system, and optimize your recovery, go grab yours now at bioptimizers.com/happy and use code HAPPY10 for 10% OFF.

#810 What if your lesson plans could pay the bills? In this episode hosted by Kirsten Tyrrel, we're joined by Lindsay Bowden, a former high school math teacher turned top 1% seller on Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT). Lindsay shares how she replaced her teaching salary by selling classroom resources online — without fancy designs or tons of tech. She walks us through how TPT works, what sells best, how to find gaps in the market, and how teachers can start monetizing what they're already creating. Whether you're a full-time educator or a former teacher with a folder full of forgotten worksheets, this is a practical and inspiring roadmap to turning your skills into income! (Original Air Date - 7/9/25) What we discuss with Lindsay: + Replacing a teacher salary on TPT + What sells best on Teachers Pay Teachers + How to find low-competition keywords + Creating product bundles and full curriculums + Using Canva and PowerPoint to build resources + SEO tips and listing optimization + Why free products help drive traffic + Selling to schools and using purchase orders + Building an email list from TPT buyers + Other monetization paths for teachers Thank you, Lindsay! Check out Lindsay Bowden at ⁠LindsayBowden.com⁠. Get Lindsay's free ⁠Sell Teacher Resources Training⁠. Follow Lindsay on ⁠Instagram⁠. Watch the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠video podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ of this episode! To get access to our FREE Business Training course go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠MillionaireUniversity.com/training⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. To get exclusive offers mentioned in this episode and to support the show, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠millionaireuniversity.com/sponsors⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some moms just get it… and Angel Laketa Moore (aka That Chick Angel aka the One Margarita Lady) is one of them. In this episode, the comedian, actress, podcaster, and mama of four boys pulls up to the Den and gives us the real on raising kind young men, balancing a full career with motherhood, and why parenting with intention matters. From the story of how she literally trained her son for his first homecoming date (PowerPoint included) to the sweet way she sings to him before school every morning, Angel shows that raising confident, respectful kids doesn't happen by accident — it's love, consistency, and a little strategy. We also talk about: Raising boys with manners and emotional intelligence When older siblings become the “third parent” Building a career that actually works with motherhood Protecting your kids while still sharing your life online Why Angel says she was a terrible girlfriend but a great wife And of course… we laugh a LOT along the way. If you've ever wondered how some moms raise kids who are kind, thoughtful, and grounded — this conversation is for you. Keep up with Angel on IG: @ThatChickAngel The Mamas are building our community and ways to keep in touch with you. Share your email address here: https://tinyurl.com/MamasDen Make sure you connect with our Mamas on IG: @themamasdenpodcast Ashley - @watermeloneggrolls Codie - @codieco  Melanie - @melaniefiona Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How do you run an offsite that actually changes performance — not just conversations? In this episode, Travis Timmons and Kelly Allan share with Andrew Stotz what happened during the Fitness Matters off-site. They discuss how a Deming-inspired approach helped their team tackle a critical business aim, align around system improvement, and turn employee engagement into measurable competitive advantage. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.5 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm continuing my discussion with Travis Timmons, who is the founder and owner of Fitness Matters, an Ohio based practice specializing in the integration of physical therapy and personalized wellness. For 13 years, he's built his business on Dr. Deming's teaching. His hope is simple. The more companies that bring joy to work through Deming's principles, the more likely his kids will one day work at one of those companies. And we also have a special guest, Kelly Allan, who is a long term practitioner of the teachings of Dr. Deming. And he's also been instrumental in bringing the teachings of Dr. Deming to Travis and Fitness Matters, and particularly to this offsite. So the topic for today is how a Deming style offsite can strengthen your company's competitive advantage. Travis, take it away.   0:01:01.4 Travis Timmons: Hey Andrew, thanks again for having us and super excited to share with Kelly and your audience how our offsite went a couple of weeks ago. The short answer, kind of the upfront, is it was amazing. We had fun, number one, which is always important, but engagement from the team was through the roof. For four and a half hours straight. We worked on the work together and had Kelly there to make sure we were appropriately following Dr. Deming's teachings. Had Kelly there to facilitate and a couple of fun things we did. One was the red bead experiment, which I'm sure we'll talk about as we go through the conversation here. The short answer is I know in the last podcast we talked about the preparation that Kelly worked with myself and our leadership team on in preparing for a Deming focused and led offsite. We did that and it was just amazing. What were your thoughts, Kelly?   0:02:06.4 Andrew Stotz: I'm curious, Kelly, as an outsider helping them, observing, what are your observations of how it went?   0:02:14.2 Kelly Allan: I think there was just incredible energy and interest in figuring out some of the challenges ahead for the company. People came in well prepared and it showed. The interactions in the breakout groups, interactions in the full groups. Often when you're in a full group of 60, 70 people, folks are often, especially new folks, and the company's been growing and adding new people, new folks are often somewhat hesitant to speak up. But the culture of the people in that room, the culture of the organization is bring it on, let's have a conversation, let's hear what people have to say. Let's share theories, let's get down and debate and wrestle with some of these things that are not easy. There's no low hanging fruit here. It's complex stuff in a complex and highly competitive industry.   0:03:28.9 Travis Timmons: Some of the feedback we received, I think I shared last time, Andrew. As Kelly said, we've hired several new team members and they've all shared with me just a breath of fresh air from where they came from before. The power of this offsite with it being focused on some of the core teachings of Dr. Deming allowed them to see how is this different? They know they like it, they know the culture is different. They know they can provide care the way they want to. They know they can have a voice, have an impact on the system. But they didn't really know why they just liked it. Having a Deming focused offsite to explain a little bit, you can't fully explain Dr. Deming in four and a half hours, but we covered quite a bit. Make the system visible, operational definitions. What are a couple other ones with the red bead, Kelly? We did some tampering.   0:04:28.8 Kelly Allan: Making sure that we're not being confused by visible numbers alone. That what's important is how we work on the system so that we're not doing special efforts all the time to get great results. It's built into how we do things.   0:04:43.8 Travis Timmons: To Kelly's point, part of why our team, for four and a half hours we had over 50 people all in, sharing thoughts without hesitation because one of the things we talk about in the very beginning of the meeting, one of Dr. Deming's core philosophies, if that's the right way to put it, Kelly, correct me if I'm off base here, but 96% of issues within an organization are system issues, not people issues. When you put that out there, we're here to talk about the system and improve it and make it visible. We're talking about problems with systems and processes, not people. Then the gloves are off and let's dive in and we're gonna say whatever's on our mind and there's no drama, there's no feeling of any backstabbing or throwing under the bus. We just get to work on making the system work better for everybody. That's where it's fun and fast.   0:05:41.9 Andrew Stotz: What I'm hearing is that Dr. Deming, my favorite quote is "people are entitled to joy in work." And part of the key to joy in work is contributing. People want to contribute in life. I love that word because I think everybody wants to feel like they're contributing to a mission, to an aim, to a goal, to a team. And one of the biggest problems we have these days is siloing off people and getting them focused on this little area and missing the whole bigger picture. And so to some extent, you've proven through what you've done that people really do want to contribute. Throughout this discussion, what we're gonna be talking about is this concept of Deming style offsite. And I'm gonna push back at times to try to make sure that we're clear on what's a Deming style offsite. Because it's not to say that Dr. Deming said this is how you do an offsite. But what we're talking about is your interpretations of how do we apply this thinking to this particular meeting style and offsite and ensure that we're true to that.   0:06:56.6 Andrew Stotz: One of the first questions I would discuss is just the idea that maybe you just had a really open, caring environment. And so is that Deming or was that just that? Or maybe you did a lot of prep. You guys have done a tremendous amount of prep. That's what I was impressed about in our prior discussions. Maybe you prepped, maybe you focused on the one thing. Those types of things is what could go through people's minds. Why is it that you're calling this a Deming styled offsite?   0:07:34.9 Kelly Allan: Well, I think in part it starts with Deming's teachings and continued Deming's teachings. I think it might be useful to start with the aim, to have Travis talk about the time that he spent researching and thinking and what's going on in the industry. And even though we can talk later about their industry leading statistics and data and recognition etc, it's off the charts. It starts with the aim. And Dr. Deming said let's be focused on the aim. And so there are a couple, Travis, you wanna just talk about the content aim and then we can talk about even a more cultural Deming cultural aim.   0:08:21.1 Travis Timmons: That was one of my early learnings years ago, Andrew, was the difference of an aim versus a goal. And so from the perspective of this offsite through the Dr. Deming lens, our aim as an organization is to maintain one to one care because we believe that results in optimal outcomes. And it's very rare in our industry to have one to one care. Part of how we do that is we have to be industry leading in everything we do. And the thing that we are industry leading in, but I feel it was the one thing that we could improve upon was our arrival rate. Patients get better if they show up, team members are happy, they don't want holes on their schedules. Referring physicians are happy. Everybody wins. So that aim of a higher arrival rate was our aim of this offsite and conversation.   0:09:17.6 Andrew Stotz: Can you back up just for a second and define arrival rate for those that didn't listen to prior discussions on it?   0:09:23.9 Travis Timmons: Sure. Arrival rate is a visit we have on the calendar. Do they show up or do they cancel? And part of what we worked on and a little bit of an aside here is operational definition of what's a cancellation on our schedule to make sure we're measuring what we want to measure. A funny aside, competitors, we hired several new team members came from other organizations and they tout an arrival rate that is high, like 92% arrival rate. Right.   0:09:55.9 Travis Timmons: And I asked them in the meeting and Kelly will remember this, I said, I know your institutions claim a 90 plus percent arrival rate. Did you have a 92% arrival rate? And they said, absolutely not. But they had people on their team, for example, the front desk might have been bonused based on arrival rate. So how they would take visits off of the calendar would not negatively impact arrival rate. So we talked a lot about operational definition and our aim is to study what we want to study, not to tamper or. Kelly, you share your favorite saying. There's only three ways to get better numbers, and those are   0:10:39.6 Kelly Allan: Manipulate the numbers which you were referring to from another company. Manipulate the system that gives you the numbers. So that also kind of fits with, well, we're not gonna call that a late arrival or a late cancel or a non arrival. We're gonna call that something else so we can manipulate the numbers. And then the third way, which was Deming's way, which is how do we figure out how to improve the system so that late arrivals go down. So that they're a natural part of what we do when people show up, the patients show up when they need to.   0:11:14.6 Travis Timmons: Yeah. And I think that's one of the things to your point earlier, Andrew, is was it just a happy go lucky meeting because Travis and Kelly have great personalities. Well, we know that's not true.   0:11:26.9 Kelly Allan: Speak for yourself.   0:11:29.3 Travis Timmons: But no, I think anymore people know when they're working on something meaningful that's gonna have an impact on their lives or where you're just there to drink coffee and have snacks. People don't suffer fools, right? They want to be there. To have a team of 50 plus people leaning in for almost five hours doesn't happen just because it's a fun environment. To your point, it's the right question to ask. I appreciate you asking that. It comes down to they understand that we're a Deming organization. They understand that what we're talking about is gonna be implemented in a Deming way. We'll talk about that more as we go on, but that, to Kelly's point, was starting with the aim. Our aim is improving arrival rate. How do we do that? That's where the Deming offsite comes into play. Kelly and I and our leadership team worked on, okay, how do we best convey this problem and this aim to our entire team rather than just five or six leadership people working with Kelly and just coming up with our own ideas and then spitting it out to the team at a monthly meeting?   0:12:47.8 Travis Timmons: The power of them owning and seeing the problem and then working on system improvement is the power of that is unmeasurable, as Dr. Deming would say.   0:13:03.1 Kelly Allan: Yeah. I think we talked about the aim to be able to continue to do the one-on-one care with patients because most companies are doing two patients, one physical therapist, three patients. Locally here in Columbus, Ohio, where Travis and I are at, we sometimes hear about classes of five patients with one physical therapist. Physicians and insurance companies, these people are not getting better. Right? These people are... Or if they get discharged, 'cause that's a way to get a better number. "Oh, we got them out." But they come back because they're not really healed. They don't really know how to take care of themselves the way they do when they come out of Fitness Matters. One of those overarching aims has to do with building the culture even further so everybody understands the why behind the what. We could say the what is how do we increase those arrival rates, and then the meeting was about the how we're gonna figure that out, how to do that. But the overarching piece had to do with the why. Why does this matter?   0:14:16.9 Kelly Allan: How do we see...If we see the organization as a system and we use a fishbone chart as a way to visualize some of that, everybody can see handoffs. Everybody can see how different parts of the system, of that patient journey, that patient story, intersect and how what happens upstream affects downstream and how the feedback loop from the discharge point of a physical therapist discharging the patient, how that can wrap back into the understanding of the customer care coordinators and how they can work with that at the very beginning of that relationship with the patient. It's all a part of a system, all a part of continuous flow. We wanted to make sure that everybody, especially the new people, really had a visual, a view of the organization as a system and how they interact. Part of those weeks of planning, it wasn't every day all day long. You start with some ideas, you refine them, you get some research, you refine them, you refine further. Travis spent a lot of time on that. Part of that value is time for reflection, time to have the others on the leadership team weigh in, give their points of view so that we're really seeing this from a fishbone perspective as well.   0:15:44.5 Kelly Allan: So now we can go into that meeting with everybody, and their homework was in part the fishbone with some instructions on how to do that and some examples of how to do that. And that was pre-work. So people came into the meeting already successful. They had already figured some things out. This just gave launch, just gave liftoff to the energy. They'd done this work, to your point, Andrew, they're making a difference, and it just fed on itself. The output was stunning.   0:16:21.0 Andrew Stotz: Travis, I'm gonna write your company aim as I heard it from you, and that is, or from both of you, is maintain one-to-one care. It's best, it's rare, it works. And the off-site aim was different from the company aim. It was the number one thing that we can do to improve that company aim is improve our arrival rates. Correct?   0:16:51.4 Travis Timmons: 100% correct. And you talk, I think you used the term silos earlier, Andrew. Part of the aha moments and making the system visible and working on this and building culture and teamwork, when everybody sees the complexity within your organization and understands that, there's a lot more willingness to support, like, "Hey, we need to change this process at the front desk," even though it may not be optimal for the physical therapist, as long as it achieves our overarching aim and improves joy in work for the front or less friction for a client coming in. Now the team starts to see and understand, all right, that's a system win rather than silos or turf wars. The amount of energy that is spent on that in organizations is... I couldn't do it.   0:17:52.9 Andrew Stotz: Another thing I think that would be difficult for many people with an off-site is you just had one aim. If we were doing prep in the companies that I know and I own and others, we're gonna list out 17 things we want to talk about in that four-and-a-half-hour off-site. From your perspective, why is it so important to get this one focus, one aim? And then I want you also to tell us more about how it went. We've set it up now, so just one last thing on the setup is this idea of focusing on one thing when you've got 17 different problems in our company and we got everybody together and you're telling me just one thing.   0:18:40.5 Travis Timmons: Well, and Kelly can chime in here because he was instrumental in getting us from pre-work to meeting day. But part of it, that's why it's two-and-a-half, three months of work leading up to this. We had the aim of arrival rate. All right, what are we gonna do? A lot of different ways we could have tackled that. We landed on fishbone and making the entire system visible. And that turned out to be the right move. I think Kelly can correct me if I'm wrong.   0:19:15.0 Kelly Allan: I would agree.   0:19:16.0 Travis Timmons: So we started with the aim and it's like, okay, how do we get 50 people to work on this together? Dr. Deming says make the system visible. And so we chose to do that via a couple different breakouts of a fishbone. And to your point, Andrew, when we did that, now there's understanding of complexity and then where are the biggest opportunities? Because we have seven things we're working on to achieve that aim. There's gonna be three or four large PDSAs. We're doing a software upgrade, which in and of itself... And a funny aside, so our organization's been doing the Deming approach for 13 years. Right, Kelly? We announced that we're changing softwares at this meeting. Right.   0:20:13.7 Travis Timmons: Everybody was like, "Okay, let's do it."   0:20:17.4 Kelly Allan: Unheard of. I see a lot of companies, that's usually panic time.   0:20:23.5 Travis Timmons: And it was announced at the beginning of the meeting. Any questions? "Nope, sounds like the right move for our aim."   0:20:32.3 Kelly Allan: Well, Travis, you provided the why behind the what. The what was that we have to change the software. You provided the rationale from all points of view, including from internal people who deal with the software to making it even less friction for customers and for physicians and for insurance companies, etc. People understood the why behind that what, and now they're ready to work on the how.   0:21:06.4 Travis Timmons: And I would even argue, because I agree with that, and because we've done Dr. Deming and have had success and accomplished so many things that people don't believe we've been able to accomplish as an independent organization, having lenses to look through and "by what method?" That's one of my favorite Kelly Allan-isms. By what method?   0:21:33.5 Kelly Allan: That's a quote from Dr. Deming.   0:21:36.0 Travis Timmons: Oh, okay. We're good.   0:21:38.9 Andrew Stotz: We stand on the shoulders of giants.   0:21:41.6 Travis Timmons: Yeah. There's a high level of trust in our organization that we can implement change. I think that...   0:21:51.3 Kelly Allan: I agree.   0:21:51.8 Travis Timmons: I don't want to undersell that in terms of how powerful that is that I announce we're changing our entire operating software in a few months and the entire team was... And we told them why, to Kelly's point. But to make that announcement and then just have everybody say, "Okay. Cool." I think that's crazy to me. I believe it because of everything else I've seen happen over 13 years. But to have a way, by what method, using Dr. Deming's principles, PDSAs, operational definitions, system view, we're gonna diagram it. Everybody left there confident that, "All right, we can do this and we're gonna do it." Anyway, what would you add to that, Kelly?   0:22:40.9 Kelly Allan: Yeah. I would say that fulfilling the promises that have been made at previous offsites just builds the credibility that this leadership team gets it, understands it, and is interested in engaging people and making things happen and getting things done in a way that doesn't disenfranchise people, it doesn't beat up on people, it doesn't cause harm, but people work together because they wanna figure it out. It's fun to figure it out. Yeah.   0:23:17.5 Kelly Allan: It can be at times a little too much fun, a little too exhausting to figure it out. But we're born wanting to make a difference and people can come to work there and know that they have a voice, they're heard.   0:23:33.1 Travis Timmons: And I think that's our superpower that I've learned from Dr. Deming is if I'm the only one figuring stuff out, we're in trouble. We're in trouble. So the team knows that we're gonna bring stuff, we're gonna talk about it, and we're gonna solve problems collectively through the Dr. Deming philosophy. That's something that just popped in my brain, Andrew, because it was such a non-event. But in most instances, that would have been the entire meeting would have been about that, the side conversations, people coming up to me...   0:24:15.0 Kelly Allan: And Travis, there would have been a lot of discussions at a non-Deming company about, "How do we get buy-in?"   0:24:22.4 Travis Timmons: Right.   0:24:22.8 Kelly Allan: "How do we manipulate people into saying this is okay?" We didn't have any...We didn't spend a minute on that.   0:24:30.5 Travis Timmons: Not one person asked me about the software the entire evening at dinner. It was just like, "We're gonna do it." It just struck me because it was a non-event in the meeting, but I think that would have been rare had we not had our history of Dr. Deming's approach and how we presented it in the meeting.   0:24:52.9 Andrew Stotz: Kelly, you said something that made me think of a book that I read in the past by Richard Feynman called The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. Great scientist. You talked about contribution and the desire for contribution and you talked about how people were figuring things out. And that's fun, that's exciting. That's what people want to get out of their management team and out of their employees. In some ways, I feel like you're talking about recess, a playground. Put all that stuff aside, let's go out and let's build this thing. All the joy that we did have when we were young. Think about, "Let's make a sandcastle! Yeah, you do that, I'll do this." That excitement...   0:25:45.0 Kelly Allan: That's what it was in the room that day. Different breakout groups working on different parts of the fishbone and then bringing them together and debriefing around it. It was very exciting. The energy was high. Andrew, you mentioned something, I think in part you were channeling Dr. Deming there because he also pointed out about how we're born wanting to make a difference, to make a contribution. Then we go to school and that gets beaten out of us with grades and command-and-control teaching, et cetera, et cetera. But to your earlier question about what makes this unique, special in regard to Deming, Travis mentioned the complexity. And so we go right back to the core of Deming: understanding variation and special cause, common cause, the important few things versus the trivial many, and how do you sort through those? That makes it very Deming. It makes it very Deming. The other thing that you won't see, and I've been in a lot of them through the years, in most offsites is those conversations about the why. It's usually, "Competitor's doing this," or, "We gotta make more money," or whatever.   0:27:01.0 Kelly Allan: No, the why for Fitness Matters is to achieve those aims. Right.   0:27:07.1 Andrew Stotz: Some of the things that you mentioned: have an aim, what makes this a Deming style, have an aim, think system, not individual focus, understand variation and how that can help you think system, not individual focus. You talked about pre-work, taking it seriously, and I would say that kind of responsibility for your employees and the environment. I was blown away with the amount of pre-work that we talked about previously. You talked about some tools like fishbone as an example. You've talked about the why. Travis, why don't you give us a very high level... We arrived at this time, this was then, we did this first, then we did that, then that. So we can just understand the structure of this meeting a little bit.   0:27:59.5 Travis Timmons: Sure. We've been big on operational definitions. So the operational definition of start time is Travis will start talking at 12:30 to start the meeting. Learned that one over the years. And I...   0:28:18.2 Travis Timmons: It was at a new location, so we had a couple people go to the wrong place. We put the map inside of the homework, swim upstream, try to make this as easy as possible. But to answer your question, we had an operational definition of the meeting starts at 12:30, and that means the meeting begins at 12:30. Operational definition, we had name tags. From an efficiency standpoint, we had six tables when we were going to do breakouts. People picked up their name tags, it had number one through six on it, so they know what table they would be going to at breakouts. We did a quick intro of every team member and what location they work at because we have had a lot of growth. Put names with faces, introduced Kelly so that everybody knew who he was. There's probably 11 people that didn't know who he was in person introduction and how that was going to be diving more into Dr. Deming. I made it very clear up front that this meeting, we're going to celebrate wins from 2025, but I made it very clear we're going to go through those quickly, not because they weren't huge wins, but because we had a lot of work to do to make sure we stay on that growth and excellence trajectory.   0:29:38.2 Travis Timmons: So we went through all of our wins for 2025. We reviewed our BHAGs, and then we got into the aim. In 30 minutes, we introduced everybody, we went over our wins for 2025, we reviewed our BHAGs, one of which is to be the best, leverage technology better than any physical therapy practice in the country was one of our BHAGs. Then I dovetailed that into, and we're switching softwares in a few months. Any questions? No. We go right into, here's what we're going to be working on today, referenced they're going to be using their homework, so they brought their homework booklets with them. We had PowerPoint slides so they knew what the directions were for the first breakout group. Kelly and I got there early and some of the leadership team got there early. We had the table set. We had the, I call it newsprint, up on tripods ready to go. You want to be prepared. They hit their tables because of the name tag. We had leaders assigned for each table.   0:30:50.1 Kelly Allan: And they were trained in advance. Yeah. Facilitators. Yeah.   0:30:53.5 Travis Timmons: We had leadership.   0:30:54.7 Andrew Stotz: So there was an intro period and then you said, "This is our aim and now go to your tables," or how did that... What were you telling them to do at the tables?   0:31:06.0 Travis Timmons: We told them the aim, reviewed the aim. To your point earlier, Andrew, overarching aim is maintaining our one-to-one care model.   0:31:14.0 Andrew Stotz: Yep.   0:31:14.7 Travis Timmons: Our aim of the meeting is how do we improve our arrival rate as an organization to greater than 85%? One of the ways we're going to accomplish that is making the entire system visible. We're going to go to our tables and we're going to work on... We had the fishbones drawn at each table, but we wanted them to fill in the fishbone as groups from their homework because everybody brought different ideas to the table. We wanted some conversation around that.   0:31:44.2 Andrew Stotz: That was a general fishbone. I think I remember later you talked about then breaking it down into separate fishbones, but that was just a general one to review what they'd done.   0:31:54.8 Travis Timmons: General one, work on the work together. To Kelly's point earlier, just the energy around working on ideas or, "Hey, I hadn't thought about that," or, "I didn't even know we did that in our system." Right.   0:32:07.0 Travis Timmons: Just understanding the complexity and really just getting the juices flowing on, here's what we're going to be working on because the next layer is going to be diving deeper into each one of those.   0:32:18.5 Andrew Stotz: How long was that period of going through the first fishbone and looking at their homework, discussing it together? How long did that last?   0:32:27.7 Travis Timmons: That one was a half hour because they'd already done the pre-work, so we assumed most of it was already going to be done. It was just kind of...   0:32:38.4 Andrew Stotz: Did you have them present any of that or that's just, "Go through that and that'll prep you for the next thing"?   0:32:46.0 Travis Timmons: We had them spend 25 minutes on that and then we saved room for five minutes for them to have kind of sharings or learnings or ahas. What did this experience teach you? Do you have anything to share?   0:33:01.9 Andrew Stotz: They're doing that within their group or they're doing that...   0:33:05.1 Travis Timmons: We went table by table and had them share with the entire team. Table by table, we had the team lead or anybody at the table, "Hey, what'd you think? What'd you learn?"   0:33:14.3 Andrew Stotz: Someone may say, "I didn't even realize that this impacts that and I just realized that now after seeing it." Okay.   0:33:24.0 Travis Timmons: Yeah. What are some of the things you heard, Kelly? I heard, "Oh, this is complex."   0:33:29.8 Kelly Allan: I also heard things like, "Well, I know how to handle this, but I need to define a process so that if I'm out, someone else can do it." Right? It's those kinds of little aha moments. Others were just, "Oh, is there a way for us to systematize that even further?" Again, it was that thinking about the system coming out in their comments. I think another part of the appreciation was really recognizing that a lot of people have to win. Deming talked about win-win being very stable and win-lose is not. They wanted to make sure the patients and the clients win, the physicians win, that the insurance companies are getting what they need, that the PTs and the Pilates people and the MAT people, etc., and the customer care coordinators are also having joy in their work. Because when you have a joyful staff, customers, clients really appreciate that. They just know there's something different. There's something different.   0:34:42.0 Andrew Stotz: And one question is, did you have any drift at that point where people started talking about other things that were unrelated but were key problems they're facing, or was setting your aim and doing the pre-work really kept them on track?   0:34:56.8 Kelly Allan: Great question. Yeah.   0:34:58.5 Travis Timmons: They were focused. They were focused the entire meeting. One of the things I learned it from Kelly or Ray, or maybe you taught Ray, I don't know, but we have a piece of paper we put up at every off-site, Andrew, we call it the parking lot. So that if somebody does have an idea that's outside of what we're there to tackle, we just have them go up and write it down so that they're heard, and it could be important, for sure, but we're not working on that today. We gotta stay laser-focused on what we're here for. So we have a parking lot, which has been super powerful, but nobody went to the parking lot the first half of the day at all.   0:35:39.2 Andrew Stotz: That's good. That's better than the woodshed. Excellent.   0:35:43.5 Travis Timmons: Speaking of the woodshed, this is one of my... I think this is one of the critical learnings, one of the many critical learnings I've had with Dr. Deming and the approach to leadership's responsibility. For me as the owner, at the end of the day, the buck stops with me, is to create joy in work, to create engaged teams where they can do fulfilling work. So you talked about the woodshed. It reminds me another one of my favorite quotes. A lot of owners or leaders talk about, "We have a lot of dead wood around here. Have a lot of dead wood on our team." The first Deming off-site I went to, Kelly said, "Well, there's only two ways that could have happened. Either one, you hired dead wood, and if you did, that's on you with your hiring process. Or number two, you hired live wood and you killed it. Either way, it's on the owner and leadership."   0:36:52.4 Kelly Allan: And I stole that from Peter Scholtes.   0:36:55.5 Andrew Stotz: Okay, got it.   0:36:57.0 Travis Timmons: But that struck me in terms of, okay, responsibility's on Travis to ensure we don't have that. Can't point fingers anywhere else. It's not people coming in with bad attitudes. So anyway.   0:37:15.8 Andrew Stotz: Okay, excellent. So now you've had the general fishbone discussion, you've had people present what were their key learnings from it. What happened next?   0:37:26.6 Travis Timmons: Just some quick aha's, anything from the homework, stuff like that. And then from there we did a couple-minute break and then we went right into the...   0:37:37.9 Andrew Stotz: It sounds like a HIIT, like a high-intensity interval training here. We did a couple-minute break.   0:37:44.6 Travis Timmons: We had work to do, man. People were there to get work done and get on to dinner. We had snacks and water in there they could grab real quick. Restrooms were close. And then agenda, we've gotta stay... And the team understands we have to do what we're doing, we have to be excellent in all categories. So the next thing we did, we came back together as a team, the entire team, and Kelly did the red bead experiment in preparation for the next breakout. Super powerful. For those that have seen the red bead experiment and how Dr. Deming used that to show how the willing worker shows up wanting to get all white beads, right? And the white bead, it's the white bead company, but there's red beads intermixed. No matter how hard they try, or Kelly offered a hundred-dollar bonus to somebody if they would just only bring out white beads the next time they put their paddle in, and it just had that visceral, in-the-moment realization that people show up wanting to do a good job. And issues, so the red beads were what we called cancellations impacting our arrival rate. Therapists want their patients to show up. Front desk wants, the client care coordinators want their patients to show up. Physicians want their patients to show up. So what do we need to do? It can't be bonus them if they show up or just try harder. What's not working? So that was a great...   0:39:23.4 Andrew Stotz: Why don't we go to that for a second. We're gonna have Kelly, maybe you can tell us a little bit about what you observed from that, and then we'll continue on with the rest of the structure.   0:39:36.2 Kelly Allan: Well, the way we set up the red bead experiment was very much focused on the real challenges and real issues that everybody at Fitness Matters faces in terms of this topic of increasing the arrival rate and how complex that is. I think the red bead experiment demonstrates for not only the people who are the willing workers and the people who are the inspectors and the person who is the scribe who keeps the spreadsheet, they realize that the numbers alone are not telling us what's going on. They realize that unless there's a system improvement, process improvement, and people working together to make those happen, you can bribe people, you can incent people, you can threaten people, you can send them home, you can give them a performance appraisal, you can do every kind of command-and-control management, but you haven't improved the system in which people work. There's still red beads. There's still red beads. We have to reduce the friction, we have to change the paddle. We have to figure out how it is we can help make it possible and easier for clients to want to show up so that they can get healthy and so that they can really appreciate what happens when they don't show up, how they are a part of the system. Once they become a patient, they're a part of the system of Fitness Matters.   0:41:18.3 Andrew Stotz: I'm just curious if there was also anything different. You've done the red bead experiment a lot of times with a lot of different types of companies. Were there any observations you had of the way they interpreted that that was either the same or different? What were some of your observations there?   0:41:37.7 Kelly Allan: Well, we planned it so that Travis and his leadership team could really do more of the debriefing so that they would have the context for the people in the audience as well as for the people on the stage, versus just a more generic, which is still powerful, to talk about how the system's in control and is this a common cause system or a special cause, what's really going on. Travis and his folks were able to then bring that context to the red beads, which I think made it especially powerful for this audience, for this group.   0:42:16.2 Andrew Stotz: Excellent. Travis, why don't you continue?   0:42:22.0 Travis Timmons: As Kelly shared, the leadership team debriefed after the red beads of the learnings and how that might be. The red beads were the cancellations that we currently have. Then we introduced, "Okay, now what we're gonna do is go do a deeper dive into the fishbones." There's five primary parts of our system, five bones. Each bone we're now gonna break out and work on the granular details. We did a fishbone for each of the larger bones.   0:43:01.8 Kelly Allan: Why don't you give a couple examples of the bones if you have it handy?   0:43:07.3 Travis Timmons: First bone is what we call initial contact. The first time a client has an interaction with Fitness Matters. Could be website, could be a physician referral, could be a neighbor talking to them, could be driving by. Initial contact, that's bone number one. How does that entire process work at Fitness Matters? Where's the friction point? Are there people that we don't even get into our door efficiently? They're not coming in set up for success, for example. Next bone would be setting them up for the evaluation. Third bone is evaluation day. Fourth bone is every subsequent visit up until discharge. And the fifth and final bone is discharge to ongoing wellness and how do we continue to stay connected? Those are the five bones as you flow through as a client at Fitness Matters, and the five major gates, if you will, is how we looked at it.   0:44:07.8 Kelly Allan: Every one of those is filled with complexity. There are a lot of little details to reduce the friction for the clients and for the system, for the patients in the system. I think that was an aha moment for people as well because a lot of them are in the quadrant four of unconscious competence. They've been doing this job well for a long time and they tend to forget the complexity. We have to identify the complexity so we can work on it and make it less complex, more streamlined, and so new people coming in can appreciate why Fitness Matters makes informed, thoughtful decisions about how they do things. It didn't just happen. These have been thoughtful things that have been worked on for years, but they can still be improved further and we can document them and make them more visible. When people saw all those little bones coming off the main bones, it's like, "Wow, there's a lot of little things that happen and we can impact almost all of those."   0:45:18.1 Travis Timmons: In some of the work we've already done on the bones to already have industry-leading arrival rate, but I think we can do better. We're one of the few, maybe one of the few medical appointments people have in their lives, not just physical therapy, but in general, that you go to do a medical appointment, do you know what it's gonna cost you out of pocket before you show up? Generally, you don't. We've swam upstream to make that visible to clients, so they already are coming in knowing what the cost is gonna be and are we providing that value? Just an example of, okay, can we swim further upstream with that and make it easier to pay and make it visible on their insurance deductible and all of that?   0:46:05.9 Kelly Allan: Well, and also, Travis, I think... I was just gonna say in terms of how many times have people been to a doctor's office, they've had to fill out a whole bunch of forms either online or in the office and then nobody ever looks at it. Something that Fitness Matters has been a leader on for a long time, which is how many of these questions are really required? How are we really gonna use that information? Let's not have seven pages. Can we get it down to four? Can we get it down to three? And increase... Because remember Deming's teachings are quality goes up as costs go down. Quality goes up as we have to commit less time. Quality goes up as joy in work goes up. Right? So that's that Deming structure of, no, quality does not have to cost more. In fact, Deming said if you're doing it this way, quality will cost less. And that's in part how Fitness Matters can compete against these big, big companies and win. I think, Travis, you've gotta share some of the statistics about what makes Fitness Matters an industry leader. What kinds of things are measured that you and others look at in the industry?   0:47:17.8 Travis Timmons: One of the big things in the physical therapy industry, Andrew, is what they call outcomes. They're measurable questionnaire by body part that you have a patient fill out at evaluation day and at discharge day, and it gives you a percentage of... In our industry, they call it functional ability. Are you 100% able with your shoulder or do you have a 60% disability with your shoulder? For example, across all body parts, we're 30 to 40% above national average on our outcomes. Not even close. Because of the efficiency, our patients show up. Again, the one-to-one care model is why it's our true north, and everything we do has to support that because of those industry-leading outcomes. Our no-show rate is one of the other things we define. Again, something we're working to improve upon, but we're already nation-leading. Our definition of a no-show is 24 hours notice up into a no-show. Most companies in our industry only call it a no-show if the patient just doesn't show up. With our definition of 24 hours notice or less, we're at 4% to 5%. National average of true no-shows, just not showing up, is 15%.   0:48:45.8 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, I can imagine even probably higher than that, but 15, yeah.   0:48:49.7 Travis Timmons: 15 to 20% depending on the research. Just two examples there. The Deming approach to system thinking, team engagement, getting rid of silos, operational definitions. To Kelly's point, we worked years ago on that initial client intake. I used an example several years ago around the time we were working on that project. My one son, got him an Apple iPad for Christmas. Other son got an Xbox 360. One product we got out of the box and turned it on, it was fully charged and ready to go in about 37 seconds. The other product took all kinds of unpacking, had to plug it in, and as soon as it came up, it said software upgrade required, and it proceeded to spend the entire day of Christmas downloading the update. We just use that as an example of how hard is this? We want that same experience for our clients. How do we make it an unbelievable healthcare experience for our clients?   0:50:10.1 Kelly Allan: Well, and Travis is being way too modest here, so I have to jump in. I don't know if I have the numbers exactly right, but Travis will correct me. Let's say you have an injury or you're recovering from surgery or whatever it happens to be, and the industry average is it's going to take 17 visits with a physical therapist for you to be at some level of functionality. At Fitness Matters, it might be 13 visits. Travis, is that too high?   0:50:42.3 Travis Timmons: 10.   0:50:43.1 Kelly Allan: 10 visits. 10 visits. So cut it in half. They're getting better in half the time. That's Deming.   0:50:52.9 Travis Timmons: Yeah.   0:50:53.3 Kelly Allan: Quality goes up, costs go down. Which is why Travis then can... Insurance companies also love them, right? It's like, wow, these people are getting better and they don't circle back just because they were... Operational definition is they're well. Discharged by somebody else, oh yeah, they had their 17, 18 visits, 19 visits, they're well. No, they're not. They come back or they go somewhere else and they're claiming insurance again. Fitness Matters, they learn how to stay well.   0:51:22.4 Travis Timmons: And that brings in another important thing that we've learned over the years, Andrew, with the Deming approach. Our data is industry leading, and we've worked hard at that. And we've got a great team that works within the construct that we've created through Deming. To get back to the unknown or unknowable quote that Dr. Deming would use, our marketing costs are low because patients go back to their physicians and say, "Hey, this is the best PT experience I've ever had." And after they hear that four or five times with us and they get complaints when they send them elsewhere, all of a sudden we start getting referrals from these doctors we've not even heard of before.   0:52:07.6 Kelly Allan: Yeah. Yep.   0:52:08.9 Travis Timmons: How do you measure that? What amount of marketing dollars would have to be spent to get in front of... Like, we doubled the number of physicians that referred to us in the last year.   0:52:23.6 Kelly Allan: Yes. That's a double, Andrew. Unheard of.   0:52:27.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   0:52:28.1 Kelly Allan: Unheard of.   0:52:28.5 Andrew Stotz: Incredible. So you got amazing outcomes. Let's now wrap up about where did you get to at the end of this? What did you personally and the management team end up with?   0:52:45.9 Travis Timmons: So we had some do-outs. Our closing PowerPoint slide was within two weeks we would report back with one to two updated operational definitions and probably three PDSAs that we were going to tackle. That was kind of our promise back to the team, that we would look at all the work. We have paper everywhere. People got to vote. We had a one-page paper on potential PDSAs, and we gave them little stickers to vote on where they think we should put our time and energy and resources. Our takeaway, our product, if you will, three PDSAs. One that has two under it is the new software. We're gonna start doing online scheduling, automated waitlists. I won't get into all the details, but PDSA one has software change. PDSA two, there was a lot of feedback on, "Hey, it would be great if we had kind of a scripted conversation point for the client care coordinators for these four scenarios: first phone call, first in-visit, how we take payment and make their benefits visible to them, how do we take a phone call and handle a cancellation when they do happen to ensure that it's a positive experience."   0:54:12.4 Travis Timmons: And then how do we handle kind of a no-show? Another PDSA is we're gonna have those client care coordinators create their first version of what they think the best script would be, 'cause they're the ones that do it all day. Why would I try to come up with that? And then have them send it to us and do some feedback there. Then we updated our operational definition of canceled visits so that there was clarity across the system to make sure we're measuring what we want to measure, which is how many people show up to their visits each day. We reported that back to the team last Friday, actually, to make sure we hit the deadline we promised to them. And then we let them know we're also gonna be working on kind of a third or fourth PDSA—I kind of lost track there of how we're counting it under the software—but training the entire team on what does it mean to have client engagement and what is our operational definition of client connection and client engagement. So they know we're gonna be doing that on a location-by-location basis at the March monthly meeting.   0:55:26.4 Travis Timmons: That was our takeaway. A lot of product to come away with, and they're gonna have all of the context from the team off-site to understand what we're getting ready to tackle, especially with the software change.   0:55:40.1 Andrew Stotz: My first reaction to that is, oh, those seem like kind of things that you could have figured out some other way, or there's not that many things, or there wasn't some stunning breakthrough. Explain why you're happy with what you got versus you prepared, you did a lot of work, you got those things. Some of it may be that, hey, we need to go through a process. I may have known some of those conclusions, but if we don't have a process of going through that, first we have the risk of maybe I'm wrong in what I think. And the second thing we have is that we have the risk that it's just a business run by dictate rather than getting real buy-in. I'm just curious if you could explain a little bit about that.   0:56:30.7 Kelly Allan: You said the bad word. You said the B-word.   0:56:34.5 Andrew Stotz: Buy-in.   0:56:35.4 Travis Timmons: Understanding, Andrew. Not buy-in.   0:56:38.4 Andrew Stotz: We're looking for buy-in. No. Okay.   0:56:40.8 Kelly Allan: We change it. How do we get... The conversation changes when you say, "How do we get understanding?" Now it's about the why behind the what that leads to the how, versus buy-in, which means, "How are we gonna sell this to somebody?" Sorry, Travis, I couldn't resist.   0:57:02.8 Travis Timmons: No, it's 100% true. And to answer your question, Andrew, my first answer and probably the most powerful answer we already talked about earlier, but it's very important to reiterate and maybe close with, is because of our approach and the time and investment we spent preparing for the meeting, doing the meeting, the fact that there was zero concern or stress around us switching our software system. The amount of engagement that there's gonna be, 'cause there's gonna be work to be done by all team members in preparation for that software change. I am confident I'm not gonna have to do any motivational speeches leading up to that. I'm not gonna have to bribe people. They want this to work because they understand why we're doing it, they understand the value it's gonna provide, and they understand, now that they have deep understanding of our system, they understand why we need to do this to continue to excel.   0:58:13.9 Travis Timmons: I don't know what that's worth. That's unmeasurable. But I know had I just announced this and not had any process, not a Deming approach, just, "Hey, guys, Travis thinks we need to do a new software and we're gonna change how you document, how you schedule," I feel fairly confident how well that would've gone. That would be my answer, Andrew, is the power of being able to present that to a team. They're already asking me questions about, "Have you thought about this in our system?" We have a shared Word document across the team. What questions are coming up in your system thinking? "How are we gonna message this to all of our clients so that they know they're gonna get new emails for their home program?" Great question. I had not thought of that. That is unmeasurable, but I know we're gonna be successful when we switch softwares because of our approach via Deming. What would you add to that, Kelly?   0:59:14.7 Kelly Allan: I think that's the essential nature of what happens. When you set out with a clear, healthy, thoughtful aim, you have conversations around that with your leadership team and what they can do then to filter that and start to talk about that with their teams at their locations, and then you have time to reflect and continually improve that, you're really creating a racehorse. Most off-sites, and Andrew, you've been to these, I know, they start... It's the 17 things. I thought of this when you mentioned it earlier. We start out, we have a racetrack and we want to have a racehorse. But by the time most companies get to their off-site, they've put so much stuff on that horse that it's now a pack mule. It will eventually make it around the track, but if you're competing with Travis, his racehorse, that team's racehorse has been around that track past you many, many times. You may get there, but they're already onto another track by the time you get to the finish line. You're finished.   1:00:36.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. You may even be releasing kittens and he's got a horse.   1:00:42.0 Travis Timmons: Kelly brings up another great point there. The other thing that gives our team confidence, because of our system view, 96% of issues are due to systems and processes, not people, the Fitness Matters team is confident that there's gonna be hiccups with a software change. They're confident they're gonna be able to talk about it in a system view quickly, and they're confident we're gonna implement change to rectify that. That goes into one of the reasons why I got zero shocked looks or zero sidebar conversations the entire day. The only feedback I've gotten is, "Hey, we're excited about it. We think we need to do this. And have you considered this as part of our system change?" I don't know what else as a business you could want.   1:01:40.4 Andrew Stotz: Kelly, I was thinking about a good wrap-up from you is to help the listener and the viewer think about how can they apply this into their business. Let's step back a little bit from Travis and think about the work you do and give us some hope, give us some guidance about, can we do this? How?   1:02:04.6 Kelly Allan: Yeah. Several things come to mind. One is that when you first start to learn about the Deming lens, the System of Profound Knowledge, his approach, it seems, it's different. It is different and it can seem to be, oh my gosh, that's so different. We'll never be able to do that. But the point is, the Deming Institute offers a two-day seminar workshop and they can learn not to be incredibly proficient or masterful in two days of how to go back and do Deming, but they know how to get started and they do get started. And then it just becomes part of, again, the Deming magic is as you start to work on these things, your costs go down, your quality goes up, and sometimes you can raise your prices because of the quality and sometimes you just are more competitive at the existing price, but you're taking work and rework and waste out of the system through the Deming approach, which allows you the time. That's the big constraint in most companies. I don't have time to work on improvement. I gotta fix this.   1:03:29.9 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. Right.   1:03:30.9 Kelly Allan: So that's a fix that's gonna fail. That's a fix that's gonna fail. So I think the message is you just want to read The New Economics. If you get the third edition, start with the new chapter. It's like 40 pages and it sums up a whole lot of what we've been talking about. Then there's DemingNext videos through the Deming Institute. You can get your feet wet there. You can then, if you want, attend a seminar or read more things or reach out and have conversations with people. But you just have to try it so that you can see that the payback is there, that the joy in work is there. And in a war for talent, they wanna work for Deming. People wanna work for Deming-based companies because they're not about manipulating people. They're about joy in work. They're about reducing the friction. So you just gotta get started and don't be just because it's so different doesn't mean you can't learn it quickly. You can.   1:04:36.7 Andrew Stotz: Yep. And Travis is a great example of that. In our prior episodes, he talked about the journey, about the pain and all that. I think that's exciting. I'm gonna wrap it up. I just have to laugh because I've been out of the corporate world for a while, just doing my own thing. But I was thinking, you mentioned about buy-in and then you said it means you're selling something. And I thought that's funny. I remember my father used to say, he used to get so annoyed because he'd say, "Yeah, let's talk around this," which was a common thing back in those days. But then I was also thinking another thing that we were saying was onboard. Let's get people onboard with this. What if you're onboard? It pretty much means you're drowning. And I just thought about those types of things that when we talk about fear and work or fear in what we're trying to remove fear and stuff, part of it is the way we speak and the way we communicate.   1:05:41.1 Andrew Stotz: Travis, I feel like I want to leave you with the last word. So why don't you bring us home?   1:05:48.0 Travis Timmons: Yeah, I think I would follow on what Kelly said is I would just the amount of joy, the amount of stress this took off of me as a business owner and as a parent thinking about things differently. And the first time you start learning about Deming's teachings and the System of Profound Knowledge, it seems a little off. Seems a little like this just doesn't seem possible. I've had several people I've talked to about that. It just doesn't work that way. To Kelly's point, I would encourage just try a couple things, whether it be do you have clear operational definitions? Have you done a PDSA? Do you know how to do a PDSA? But the two-day seminars is where you kind of do the deep dive into like, oh, okay, I need to think about things differently. So anyone struggling with a business trying the latest and greatest book that's been out or the latest and greatest compensation model to create ownership thinking within your organization or whatever the buzzwords are, this is a long-term path to clarity and to just an understanding of how you can make your organization a place that has a positive impact on the lives of your employees and your clients.   1:07:17.7 Travis Timmons: And man, if you get that right, everything else follows. Sales, profit, all the stuff that a lot of metrics look at. If you get the point of your job is to have a positive place for your team to work and how do you do that? Deming is the way to do that. Everything else follows after that, in my opinion.   1:07:38.6 Andrew Stotz: And on that note, Travis and Kelly, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. For listeners, remember, as Kelly and Travis have both said, go to deming.org, go to DemingNEXT. There's resources there so you can continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. I constantly repeat it because I love it, and that is: "People are entitled to joy in work."

What a great way to celebrate 25 years of SharePoint - a makeover. The new look menus and SharePoint home encourage discovery of content, publishing new pages and posts, and building sites, lists and more. Happy Birthday SharePoint. Also on this week's show 0:00 Welcome 1:35 Introducing the new SharePoint experience - MC1240699 11:07 Copilot entry point changes in Word and handoff to Agent in chat - MC1240704 13:22 Microsoft 365 Copilot: Updates to PowerPoint on‑canvas features with Agent mode - MC1243550 18:32 Workspace IP Firewall rules (Public Preview) - MC1238430 23:23 Microsoft 365 Copilot: Turn Copilot Pages into SharePoint News posts - MC1239186 26:20 Targeted file and folder restores in Microsoft 365 Backup - MC1245216 29:15 Upcoming change: disabling Teams meeting recording notification emails - MC1245635

What if you didn't have to walk down Main Street, U.S.A. to feel Disney magic?In this solo deep-dive, Scott follows a late-night Reddit thought experiment into a full Imagineering-style exploration: why Disney's immersive experiences almost never exist outside of its destinations—and what it would take to change that.From the rise and fall of Mickey's Kitchen and DisneyQuest to bold blue-sky concepts like cruise-inspired dining nights, adaptive themed environments, and reservation-only hospitality built for repeat local visits, this episode lives at the intersection of fandom, business reality, and creative dreaming. Along the way, Scott is joined by a new “voice” in the conversation: Green Light—the corporate boardroom perspective that evaluates each idea for brand risk, scalability, and margin pressure.This isn't a news episode. It's a thought experiment about what Disney does best, why it works, and whether the version many adult fans dream about—more intimate, more local, more experience-driven—can ever make financial sense.In this episode:The real reasons past off-property Disney concepts struggledWhy fast food with a Disney logo was never going to workThe difference between attractions and hospitality as a business modelA Disney dining concept built for adults first—not familiesRotating themed nights: parks, cruises, characters, and moreHow programmable environments could drive repeat local visitsThe franchise vs. full-ownership quality dilemmaThe ideas that even Scott admits would get an instant corporate “no”Why the Disney we sometimes want most is the hardest to justify financiallyAt its heart, this is about connection—finding new ways to engage with a brand we love when we can't be in the parks, and embracing the creativity that comes from asking “what if?”So grab a drink, get comfortable, and come hang out at the Hangar Bar while we do what Disney fans do best: dream big, overthink the details, and build the PowerPoint anyway.Join the conversation:Would you go to a local Disney hospitality experience like this? What would your themed night be? Connect with us on Discord and social to share your ideas—and maybe help pitch it to the Mouse.There's a great big beautiful tomorrow… and we'll see you real soon.

Harmony Week is such a special time in Australian classrooms… but let's be honest, it can sneak up on us!In this episode,we chat all things Harmony Week and how to plan meaningful, inclusive lessons without adding to your already full plate. If you've ever wondered how to move beyond “wearing orange” and truly embed the message of inclusivity and kindness in your classroom, this episode is for you.We're sharing simple strategies, ready-to-use ideas, book recommendations, and interactive activities that will help your students understand what Harmony Week is really about — and how they can live it every single day.What We Cover in This Episode:A series of lessons you could teach about Harmony Day and the themesPicture book recommendations2 reflective craft ideas that will look great hanging in your classroomA freebie to help spread the message of Harmony Day / Harmony WeekAAnd remember, these conversations don't stop after one week. Harmony Week is the starting point, not the finish line.Rainbows ahead,Alisha and AshleighResources mentioned in this episode:Harmony Day / Week Teaching slides (PowerPoint)7 Picture Books to Celebrate HarmonyHarmony Hands craft3D Harmony HeartFreebie: Harmony BadgesAPPLE PODCAST | SPOTIFY  | AMAZONLet's hear from you! Text us!

Today on PowerPoint, Pastor Jack Graham encourages us to take a look at the Church as Jesus designed it and desires it to be. While many may judge its relevancy based on the inevitable shortcomings of the human beings inside, we look to Jesus who, as Pastor Graham reminds us, never worried about what the world had to say about Him or His Church. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/395/29?v=20251111

The reception to our recent post on Code Reviews has been strong. Catch up!Amid a maelstrom of discussion on whether or not AI is killing SaaS, one of the top publicly listed SaaS companies in the world has just reported record revenues, clearing well over $1.1B in ARR for the first time with a 28% margin. As we comment on the pod, Aaron Levie is the rare public company CEO equally at home in both worlds of Silicon Valley and Wall Street/Main Street, by day helping 70% of the Fortune 500 with their Enterprise Advanced Suite, and yet by night is often found in the basements of early startups and tweeting viral insights about the future of agents.Now that both Cursor, Cloudflare, Perplexity, Anthropic and more have made Filesystems and Sandboxes and various forms of “Just Give the Agent a Box” cool (not just cool; it is now one of the single hottest areas in AI infrastructure growing 100% MoM), we find it a delightfully appropriate time to do the episode with the OG CEO who has been giving humans and computers Boxes since he was a college dropout pitching VCs at a Michael Arrington house party.Enjoy our special pod, with fan favorite returning guest/guest cohost Jeff Huber!Note: We didn't directly discuss the AI vs SaaS debate - Aaron has done many, many, many other podcasts on that, and you should read his definitive essay on it. Most commentators do not understand SaaS businesses because they have never scaled one themselves, and deeply reflected on what the true value proposition of SaaS is.We also discuss Your Company is a Filesystem:We also shoutout CTO Ben Kus' and the AI team, who talked about the technical architecture and will return for AIE WF 2026.Full Video EpisodeTimestamps* 00:00 Adapting Work for Agents* 01:29 Why Every Agent Needs a Box* 04:38 Agent Governance and Identity* 11:28 Why Coding Agents Took Off First* 21:42 Context Engineering and Search Limits* 31:29 Inside Agent Evals* 33:23 Industries and Datasets* 35:22 Building the Agent Team* 38:50 Read Write Agent Workflows* 41:54 Docs Graphs and Founder Mode* 55:38 Token FOMO Culture* 56:31 Production Function Secrets* 01:01:08 Film Roots to Box* 01:03:38 AI Future of Movies* 01:06:47 Media DevRel and EngineeringTranscriptAdapting Work for AgentsAaron Levie: Like you don't write code, you talk to an agent and it goes and does it for you, and you may be at best review it. That's even probably like, like largely not even what you're doing. What's happening is we are changing our work to make the agents effective. In that model, the agent didn't really adapt to how we work.We basically adapted to how the agent works. All of the economy has to go through that exact same evolution. Right now, it's a huge asset and an advantage for the teams that do it early and that are kinda wired into doing this ‘cause you'll see compounding returns. But that's just gonna take a while for most companies to actually go and get this deployed.swyx: Welcome to the Lane Space Pod. We're back in the chroma studio with uh, chroma, CEO, Jeff Hoover. Welcome returning guest now guest host.Aaron Levie: It's a pleasure. Wow. How'd you get upgraded to, uh, to that?swyx: Because he's like the perfect guy to be guest those for you.Aaron Levie: That makes sense actually, for We love context. We, we both really love context le we really do.We really do.swyx: Uh, and we're here with, uh, Aaron Levy. Welcome.Aaron Levie: Thank you. Good to, uh, good to be [00:01:00] here.swyx: Uh, yeah. So we've all met offline and like chatted a little bit, but like, it's always nice to get these things in person and conversation. Yeah. You just started off with so much energy. You're, you're super excited about agents.I loveAaron Levie: agents.swyx: Yeah. Open claw. Just got by, got bought by OpenAI. No, not bought, but you know, you know what I mean?Aaron Levie: Some, some, you know, acquihire. Executiveswyx: hire.Aaron Levie: Executive hire. Okay. Executive hire. Say,swyx: hey, that's my term. Okay. Um, what are you pounding the table on on agents? You have so many insightful tweets.Why Every Agent Needs a BoxAaron Levie: Well, the thing that, that we get super excited by that I think is probably, you know, should be relatively obvious is we've, we've built a platform to help enterprises manage their files and their, their corporate files and the permissions of who has access to those files and the sharing collaboration of those files.All of those files contain really, really important information for the enterprise. It might have your contracts, it might have your research materials, it might have marketing information, it might have your memos. All that data obviously has, you know, predominantly been used by humans. [00:02:00] But there's been one really interesting problem, which is that, you know, humans only really work with their files during an active engagement with them, and they kind of go away and you don't really see them for a long time.And all of a sudden, uh, with the power of AI and AI agents, all of that data becomes extremely relevant as this ongoing source of, of answers to new questions of data that will transform into, into something else that, that produces value in your organization. It, it contains the answer to the new employee that's onboarding, that needs to ramp up on a project.Um, it contains the answer to the right thing to sell a customer when you're having a conversation to them, with them contains the roadmap information that's gonna produce the next feature. So all that data. That previously we've been just sort of storing and, and you know, occasionally forgetting about, ‘cause we're only working on the new active stuff.All of that information becomes valuable to the enterprise and it's gonna become extremely valuable to end users because now they can have agents go find what they're looking for and produce new, new [00:03:00] value and new data on that information. And it's gonna become incredibly valuable to agents because agents can roam around and do a bunch of work and they're gonna need access to that data as well.And um, and you know, sometimes that will be an agent that is sort of working on behalf of, of, of you and, and effectively as you as and, and they are kind of accessing all of the same information that you have access to and, and operating as you in the system. And then sometimes there's gonna be agents that are just.Effectively autonomous and kind of run on their own and, and you're gonna collaborate and work with them kind of like you did another person. Open Claw being the most recent and maybe first real sort of, you know, kind of, you know, up updating everybody's, you know, views of this landscape version of, of what that could look like, which is, okay, I have an agent.It's on its own system, it's on its own computer, it has access to its own tools. I probably don't give it access to my entire life. I probably communicate with it like I would an assistant or a colleague and then it, it sort of has this sandbox environment. So all of that has massive implications for a platform that manage that [00:04:00] enterprise data.We think it's gonna just transform how we work with all of the enterprise content that we work with, and we just have to make sure we're building the right platform to support that.swyx: The sort of shorthand I put it is as people build agents, everybody's just realizing that every agent needs a box. Yes.And it's nice to be called box and just give everyone a box.Aaron Levie: Hey, I if I, you know, if we can make that go viral, uh, like I, I think that that terminology, I, that's theswyx: tagline. Every agentAaron Levie: needs a box. Every agent needs a box. If we can make that the headline of this, I'm fine with this. And that's the billboard I wanna like Yeah, exactly.Every agent needs a box. Um, I like it. Can we ship this? Like,swyx: okay, let's do it. Yeah.Aaron Levie: Uh, my work here is done and I got the value I needed outta this podcast Drinks.swyx: Yeah.Agent Governance and IdentityAaron Levie: But, but, um, but, but, you know, so the thing that we, we kind of think about is, um, is, you know, whether you think the number 10 x or a hundred x or whatever the number is, we're gonna have some order of magnitude more agents than people.That's inevitable. It has to happen. So then the question is, what is the infrastructure that's needed to make all those agents effective in the enterprise? Make sure that they are well governed. Make sure they're only doing [00:05:00] safe things on your information. Make sure that they're not getting exposed. The data that they shouldn't have access to.There's gonna be just incredibly spectacularly crazy security incidents that will happen with agents because you'll prompt, inject an agent and sort of find your way through the CRM system and pull out data that you shouldn't have access to. Oh, weJeff Huber: have God,Aaron Levie: right? I mean, that's just gonna happen all over the place, right?So, so then the thing is, is how do you make sure you have the right security, the permissions, the access controls, the data governance. Um, we actually don't yet exactly know in many cases how we're gonna regulate some of these agents, right? If you think about an agent in financial services, does it have the exact same financial sort of, uh, requirements that a human did?Or is it, is the risk fully on the human that was interacting or created the agent? All open questions, but no matter what, there's gonna need to be a layer that manages the, the data they have access to, the workflows that they're involved in, pulling up data from multiple systems. This is the new infrastructure opportunity in the era of agents.swyx: You have a piece on agent identities, [00:06:00] which I think was today, um, which I think a lot of breaking news, the security, security people are talking about, right? Like you basically, I, I always think of this as like, well you need the human you and then there you need the agent. YouAaron Levie: Yes.swyx: And uh, well, I don't know if it's that simple, but is box going to have an opinion on that or you're just gonna be like, well we're just the sort of the, the source layer.Yeah. Let's Okta of zero handle that.Aaron Levie: I think we're gonna have an opinion and we will work with generally wherever the contours of the market end up. Um, and the reason that we're gonna have an opinion more than other topics probably is because one of the biggest use cases for why your agent might need it, an identity is for file system access.So thus we have to kind of think about this pretty deeply. And I think, uh, unless you're like in our world thinking about this particular problem all day long, it might be, you know, like, why is this such a big deal? And the reason why it's a really big deal is because sometimes sort of say, well just give the agent an, an account on the system and it just treats, treat it like every other type of user on the system.The [00:07:00] problem is, is that I as Aaron don't really have any responsibility over anybody else's box account in our organization. I can't see the box account of any other employee that I work with. I am not liable for anything that they do. And they have, I have, I have, you know, strict privacy requirements on everything that they're able to, you know, that, that, that they work on.Agents don't have that, you know, don't have those properties. The person who creates the agent probably is gonna, for the foreseeable future, take on a lot of the liability of what that agent does. That agent doesn't deserve any privacy because, because it's, you know, it can't fully be autonomously operated and it doesn't have any legal, you know, kind of, you know, responsibility.So thus you can't just be like, oh, well I'll just create a bunch of accounts and then I'll, I'll kind of work with that agent and I'll talk to it occasionally. Like you need oversight of that. And so then the question is, how do you have a world where the agent, sometimes you have oversight of, but what if that agent goes and works with other people?That person over there is collaborating with the agent on something you shouldn't have [00:08:00] access to what they're doing. So we have all of these new boundaries that we're gonna have to figure out of, of, you know, it's really, really easy. So far we've been in, in easy mode. We've hit the easy button with ai, which is the agent just is you.And when you're in quad code and you're in cursor, and you're in Codex, you're just, the agent is you. You're offing into your services. It can do everything you can do. That's the easy mode. The hard mode is agents are kind of running on their own. People check in with them occasionally, they're doing things autonomously.How do you give them access to resources in the enterprise and not dramatically increased the security risk and the risk that you might expose the wrong thing to somebody. These are all the new problems that we have to get solved. I like the identity layer and, and identity vendors as being a solution to that, but we'll, we'll need some opinions as well because so many of the use cases are these collaborative file system use cases, which is how do I give it an agent, a subset of my data?Give it its own workspace as well. ‘cause it's gonna need to store off its own information that would be relevant for it. And how do I have the right oversight into that? [00:09:00]Jeff Huber: One thing, which, um, I think is kind interesting, think about is that you know, how humans work, right? Like I may not also just like give you access to the whole file.I might like sit next to you and like scroll to this like one part of the file and just show you that like one part and like, you know,swyx: partial file access.Jeff Huber: I'm just saying I think like our, like RA does seem to be dead, right? Like you wanna say something is dead uhhuh probably RA is dead. And uh, like the auth story to me seems like incredibly unsolved and unaddressed by like the existing state of like AI vendors.ButAaron Levie: yeah, I think, um, we're, I mean you're taking obviously really to level limit that we probably need to solve for. Yeah. And we built an access control system that was, was kind of like, you know, its own little world for, for a long time. And um, and the idea was this, it's a many to many collaboration system where I can give you any part of the file system.And it's a waterfall model. So if I give you higher up in the, in the, in the system, you get everything below. And that, that kind of created immense flexibility because I can kind of point you to any layer in the, in the tree, but then you're gonna get access to everything kind of below it. And that [00:10:00] mostly is, is working in this, in this world.But you do have to manage this issue, which is how do I create an agent that has access to some of my stuff and somebody else's stuff as well. Mm-hmm. And which parts do I get to look at as the creator of the agent? And, and these are just brand new problems? Yeah. Crazy. And humans, when there was a human there that was really easy to do.Like, like if the three of us were all sharing, there'd be a Venn diagram where we'd have an overlapping set of things we've shared, but then we'd have our own ways that we shared with each other. In an agent world, somebody needs to take responsibility for what that agent has access to and what they're working on.These are like the, some of the most probably, you know, boring problems for 98% of people on, on the internet, but they will be the problems that are the difference between can you actually have autonomous agents in an enterprise contextswyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: That are not leaking your data constantly.swyx: No. Like, I mean, you know, I run a very, very small company for my conference and like we already have data sensitivity issues.Yes. And some of my team members cannot see Yes. Uh, the others and like, I can't imagine what it's like to run a Fortune 500 and like, you have to [00:11:00] worry about this. I'm just kinda curious, like you, you talked to a lot like, like 70, 80% of your cus uh, of the Fortune 500, your customers.Aaron Levie: Yep. 67%. Just so we're being verySEswyx: precise.So Yeah. I'm notAaron Levie: Okay. Okay.swyx: Something I'm rounding up. Yes. Round up. I'm projecting to, forAaron Levie: the government.swyx: I'm projecting to the end of the year.Aaron Levie: Okay.swyx: There you go.Aaron Levie: You do make it sound like, like we, we, well we've gotta be on this. Like we're, we're taking way too long to get to 80%. Well,swyx: no, I mean, so like. How are they approaching it?Right? Because you're, you don't have a, you don't have a final answer yet.Why Coding Agents Took Off FirstAaron Levie: Well, okay, so, so this is actually, this is the stark reality that like, unfortunately is the kinda like pouring the water on the party a little bit.swyx: Yes.Aaron Levie: We all in Silicon Valley are like, have the absolute best conditions possible for AI ever.And I think we all saw the dke, you know, kind of Dario podcast and this idea of AI coding. Why is that taken off? And, and we're not yet fully seeing it everywhere else. Well, look, if you just like enumerated the list of properties that AI coding has and then compared it to other [00:12:00] knowledge work, let's just, let's just go through a few of them.Generally speaking, you bring on a new engineer, they have access to a large swath of the code base. Like, there's like very, like you, just, like new engineer comes on, they can just go and find the, the, the stuff that they, they need to work with. It's a fully text in text out. Medium. It's only, it's just gonna be text at the end of the day.So it's like really great from a, from just a, uh, you know, kinda what the agent can work with. Obviously the models are super trained on that dataset. The labs themselves have a really strong, kind of self-reinforcing positive flywheel of why they need to do, you know, agent coding deeply. So then you get just better tooling, better services.The actual developers of the AI are daily users of the, of the thing that they're we're working on versus like the, you know, probably there's only like seven Claude Cowork legal plugin users at Anthropic any given day, but there's like a couple thousand Claude code and you know, users every single day.So just like, think about which one are they getting more feedback on. All day long. So you just go through this list. You have a, you know, everybody who's a [00:13:00] developer by definition is technical so they can go install the latest thing. We're all generally online, or at least, you know, kinda the weird ones are, and we're all talking to each other, sharing best practices, like that's like already eight differences.Versus the rest of the economy. Every other part of the economy has like, like six to seven headwinds relative to that list. You go into a company, you're a banker in financial services, you have access to like a, a tiny little subset of the total data that's gonna be relevant to do your job. And you're have to start to go and talk to a bunch of people to get the right data to do your job because Sally didn't add you to that deal room, you know, folder.And that that, you know, the information is actually in a completely different organization that you now have to go in and, and sort of run into. And it's like you have this endless list of access controls and security. As, as you talked about, you have a medium, which is not, it's not just text, right? You have, you have a zoom call that, that you're getting all of the requirements from the customer.You have a lot of in-person conversations and you're doing in-person sales and like how do you ever [00:14:00] digitize all of that information? Um, you know, I think a lot of people got upset with this idea that the code base has all the context, um, that I don't know if you follow, you know, did you follow some of that conversation that that went viral?Is like, you know, it's not that simple that, that the code base doesn't have all the knowledge, but like it's a lot, you're a lot better off than you are with other areas of knowledge work. Like you, we like, we like have documentation practices, you write specifications. Those things don't exist for like 80% of work that happens in the enterprise.That's the divide that we have, which is, which is AI coding has, has just fully, you know, where we've reached escape velocity of how powerful this stuff is, and then we're gonna have to find a way to bring that same energy and momentum, but to all these other areas of knowledge work. Where the tools aren't there, the data's not set up to be there.The access controls don't make it that easy. The context engineering is an incredibly hard problem because again, you have access control challenges, you have different data formats. You have end users that are gonna need to kind of be kind of trained through this as opposed to their adopting [00:15:00] these tools in their free time.That's where the Fortune 500 is. And so we, I think, you know, have to be prepared as an industry where we are gonna be on a multi-year march to, to be able to bring agents to the enterprise for these workflows. And I think probably the, the thing that we've learned most in coding that, that the rest of the world is not yet, I think ready for, I mean, we're, they'll, they'll have to be ready for it because it's just gonna inevitably happen is I think in coding.What, what's interesting is if you think about the practice of coding today versus two years ago. It's probably the most changed workflow in maybe the history of time from the amount of time it's changed, right? Yeah. Like, like has any, has any workflow in the entire economy changed that quickly in terms of the amount of change?I just, you know, at least in any knowledge worker workflow, there's like very rarely been an event where one piece of technology and work practice has so fundamentally, you know, changed, changed what you do. Like you don't write code, you talk to an agent and it goes and [00:16:00] does it for you, and you may be at best review it.And even that's even probably like, like largely not even what you're doing. What's happening is we are changing our work to make the agents effective. In that model, the agent didn't really adapt to how we work. We basically adapted to how the agent works. Mm-hmm. All of the economy has to go through that exact same evolution.The rest of the economy is gonna have to update its workflows to make agents effective. And to give agents the context that they need and to actually figure out what kind of prompting works and to figure out how do you ensure that the agent has the right access to information to be able to execute on its work.I, you know, this is not the panacea that people were hoping for, of the agent drops in, just automates your life. Like you have to basically re-engineer your workflow to get the most out of agents and, uh, and that, that's just gonna take, you know, multiple years across the economy. Right now it's a huge asset and an advantage for the teams that do it early and that are kinda wired into doing this.‘cause [00:17:00] you'll see compounding returns, but that's just gonna take a while for most companies to actually go and get this deployed.swyx: I love, I love pushing back. I think that. That is what a lot of technology consultants love to hear this sort of thing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. First to, to embrace the ai. Yes. To get to the promised land, you must pay me so much money to a hundred percent to adopt the prescribed way of, uh, conforming to the agents.Yes. And I worry that you will be eclipsed by someone else who says, no, come as you are.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: And we'll meet you where you are.Aaron Levie: And, and, and and what was the thing that went viral a week ago? OpenAI probably, uh, is hiring F Dees. Yeah. Uh, to go into the enterprise. Yeah. Yeah. And then philanthropic is embedded at Goldman Sachs.Yeah. So if the labs are having to do this, if, if the labs have decided that they need to hire FDE and professional services, then I think that's a pretty clear indication that this, there's no easy mode of workflow transformation. Yeah. Yeah. So, so to your point, I think actually this is a market opportunity for, you know, new professional services and consulting [00:18:00] firms that are like Agent Build and they, and they kind of, you know, go into organizations and they figure out how to re-engineer your workflows to make them more agent ready and get your data into the right format and, you know, reconstruct your business process.So you're, you're not doing most of the work. You're telling agents how to do the work and then you're reviewing it. But I haven't seen the thing that can just drop in and, and kinda let you not go through those changes.swyx: I don't know how that kind of sales pitch goes over. Yeah. You know, you're, you're saying things like, well, in my sort of nice beautiful walled garden, here's, there's, uh, because here's this, here's this beautiful box account that has everything.Yes. And I'm like, well, most, most real life is extremely messy. Sure. And like, poorly named and there duplicate this outdated s**tAaron Levie: a hundred percent. And so No, no, a hundred percent. And so this is actually No. So, so this is, I mean, we agree that, that getting to the beautiful garden is gonna be tough.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: There's also the other end of the spectrum where I, I just like, it's a technical impossibility to solve. The agent is, is truly cannot get enough context to make the right decision in, in the, in the incredibly messy land. Like there's [00:19:00] no a GI that will solve that. So, so we're gonna have to kind of land in somewhere in between, which is like we all collectively get better at.Documentation practices and, and having authoritative relatively up-to-date information and putting it in the right place like agents will, will certainly cause us to be much better organized around how we work with our information, simply because the severity of the agent pulling the wrong data will be too high and the productivity gain of that you'll miss out on by not doing this will be too high as well, that you, that your competition will just do it and they'll just have higher velocity.So, uh, and, and we, we see this a lot firsthand. So we, we build a series of agents internally that they can kind of have access to your full box account and go off and you give it a task and it can go find whatever information you're looking for and work with. And, you know, thank God for the model progress, but like, if, if you gave that task to an agent.Nine months ago, you're just gonna get lots of bogus answers because it's gonna, it's gonna say, Hey, here's, here are fi [00:20:00] five, you know, documents that all kind of smell like the right thing. And I'm gonna, but I, but you're, you're putting me on the clock. ‘cause my assistant prompt says like, you know, be pretty smart, but also try and respond to the user and it's gonna respond.And it's like, ah, it got the wrong document. And then you do that once or twice as a knowledge worker and you're just neverswyx: again,Aaron Levie: never again. You're just like done with the system.swyx: Yeah. It doesn't work.Aaron Levie: It doesn't work. And so, you know, Opus four six and Gemini three one Pro and you know, whatever the latest five 3G BT will be, like, those things are getting better and better and it's using better judgment.And this sort of like the, all of these updates to the agentic tool and search systems are, are, we're seeing, we're seeing very real progress where the agent. Kind of can, can almost smell some things a little bit fishy when it's getting, you know, we, we have this process where we, we have it go fan out, do a bunch of searches, pull up a bunch of data, and then it has to sort of do its own ranking of, you know, what are the right documents that, that it should be working with.And again, like, you know, the intelligence level of a model six months ago, [00:21:00] it'd be just throwing a dart at like, I'm just, I'm gonna grab these seven files and I, I pray, I hope that that's the right answer. And something like an opus first four five, and now four six is like, oh, it's like, no, that one doesn't seem right relative to this question because I'm seeing some signal that is making that, you know, that's contradicting the document where it would normally be in the tree and who should have access.Like it's doing all of that kind of work for you. But like, it still doesn't work if you just have a total wasteland of data. Like, it's just not, it's just not possible. Partly ‘cause a human wouldn't even be able to do it. So basically if a, if a really, really smart human. Could not do that task in five or 10 minutes for a search retrieval type task.Look, you know, your agent's not gonna be able to do it any better. You see this all day long. SoContext Engineering and Search Limitsswyx: this touches on a thing that just passionate about it was just context engineering. I, I'm just gonna let you ramble or riff on, on context engineering. If, if, if there's anything like he, he did really good work on context fraud, which has really taken over as like the term that people use and the referenceAaron Levie: a hundred percent.We, we all we think about is, is the context rob problem. [00:22:00]Jeff Huber: Yeah, there's certainly a lot of like ranking considerations. Gentech surgery think is incredibly promising. Um, yeah, I was trying to generate a question though. I think I have a question right now. Swyx.Aaron Levie: Yeah, no, but like, like I think there was this moment, um, you know, like, I don't know, two years ago before, before we knew like where the, the gotchas were gonna be in ai and I think someone was like, was like, well, infinite context windows will just solve all of these problems and ‘cause you'll just, you'll just give the context window like all the data and.It's just like, okay, I mean, maybe in 2035, like this is a viable solution. First of all, it, it would just, it would just simply cost too much. Like we just can't give the model like the 5,000 documents that might be relevant and it's gonna read them all. And I've seen enough to, to start believing in crazy stuff.So like, I'm willing to just say, sure. Like in, in 10 years from now,swyx: never say, never, never.Aaron Levie: In, in 10 years from now, we'll have infinite context windows at, at a thousandth of the price of today. Like, let's just like believe that that's possible, but Right. We're in reality today. So today we have a context engineering [00:23:00] problem, which is, I got, I got, you know, 200,000 tokens that I can work with, or prob, I don't even know what the latest graph is before, like massive degradation.16. Okay. I have 60,000 tokens that I get to work with where I'm gonna get accurate information. That's not a lot of tokens for a corpus of 10 million documents that a knowledge worker might have across all of the teams and all the projects and all the people they work with. I have, I have 10 million documents.Which, you know, maybe is times five pages per document or something like that. I'm at 50 million pages of information and I have 60,000 tokens. Like, holy s**t. Yeah. This is like, how do I bridge the 50 million pages of information with, you know, the couple hundred that I get to work with in that, in that token window.Yeah. This is like, this is like such an interesting problem and that's why actually so much work is actually like, just like search systems and the databases and that layer has to just get so locked in, but models getting better and importantly [00:24:00] knowing when they've done a search, they found the wrong thing, they go back, they check their work, they, they find a way to balance sort of appeasing the user versus double checking.We have this one, we have this one test case where we ask the agent to go find. 10 pieces of information.swyx: Is this the complex work eval?Aaron Levie: Uh, this is actually not in the eval. This is, this is sort of just like we have a bunch of different, we have a bunch of internal benchmark kind of scenarios. Every time we, we update our agent, we have one, which is, I ask it to find all of our office addresses, and I give it the list of 10 offices that we have.And there's not one document that has this, maybe there should be, that would be a great example of the kind of thing that like maybe over time companies start to, you know, have these sort of like, what are the canonical, you know, kind of key areas of knowledge that we need to have. We don't seem to have this one document that says, here are all of our offices.We have a bunch of documents that have like, here's the New York office and whatever. So you task this agent and you, you get, you say, I need the addresses for these 10 offices. Okay. And by the way, if you do this on any, you know, [00:25:00] public chat model, the same outcome is gonna happen. But for a different kind of query, you give it, you say, I need these 10 addresses.How many times should the agent go and do its search before it decides whether or not, there's just no answer to this question. Often, and especially the, the, let's say lower tier models, it'll come back and it'll give you six of the 10 addresses. And it'll, and I'll just say I couldn't find the otherswyx: four.It, it doesn't know what It doesn't know. ItAaron Levie: doesn't know what It doesn't know. Yeah. So the model is just like, like when should it stop? When should it stop doing? Like should it, should it do that task for literally an hour and just keep cranking through? Maybe I actually made up an office location and it doesn't know that I made it up and I didn't even know that I made it up.Like, should it just keep, re should it read every single file in your entire box account until it, until it should exhaust every single piece of information.swyx: Expensive.Aaron Levie: These are the new problems that we have. So, you know, something like, let's say a new opus model is sort of like, okay, I'm gonna try these types of queries.I didn't get exactly what I wanted. I'm gonna try again. I'm gonna, at [00:26:00] some point I'm gonna stop searching. ‘cause I've determined that that no amount of searching is gonna solve this problem. I'm just not able to do it. And that judgment is like a really new thing that the model needs to be able to have.It's like, when should it give up on a task? ‘cause, ‘cause you just don't, it's a can't find the thing. That's the real world of knowledge, work problems. And this is the stuff that the coding agents don't have to deal with. Because they, it just doesn't like, like you're not usually asking it about, you're, you're always creating net new information coming right outta the model for the most part.Obviously it has to know about your code base and your specs and your documentation, but, but when you deploy an agent on all of your data that now you have all of these new problems that you're dealing withJeff Huber: our, uh, follow follow-up research to context ride is actually on a genetic search. Ah. Um, and we've like right, sort of stress tested like frontier models and their ability to search.Um, and they're not actually that good at searching. Right. Uh, so you're sort of highlighting this like explore, exploit.swyx: You're just say, Debbie, Donna say everything doesn't work. Like,Aaron Levie: well,Jeff Huber: somebody has to be,Aaron Levie: um, can I just throw out one more thing? Yeah. That is different from coding and, and the rest [00:27:00] of the knowledge work that I, I failed to mention.So one other kind of key point is, is that, you know, at the end of the day. Whether you believe we're in a slop apocalypse or, or whatever. At the end of the day, if you, if you build a working product at the end of, if you, if you've built a working solution that is ultimately what the customer is paying for, like whether I have a lot of slop, a little slop or whatever, I'm sure there's lots of code bases we could go into in enterprise software companies where it's like just crazy slop that humans did over a 20 year period, but the end customer just gets this little interface.They can, they can type into it, it does its thing. Knowledge work, uh, doesn't have that property. If I have an AI model, go generate a contract and I generate a contract 20 times and, you know, all 20 times it's just 3% different and like that I, that, that kind of lop introduces all new kinds of risk for my organization that the code version of that LOP didn't, didn't introduce.These are, and so like, so how do you constrain these models to just the part that you want [00:28:00] them to work on and just do the thing that you want them to do? And, and, you know, in engineering, we don't, you can't be disbarred as an engineer, but you could be disbarred as a lawyer. Like you can do the wrong medical thing In healthcare, you, there's no, there's no equivalent to that of engineering.Like, doswyx: you want there to be, because I've considered softwareJeff Huber: engineer. What's that? Civil engineering there is, right? NotAaron Levie: software civil engineer. Sure. Oh yeah, for sure. But like in any of our companies, you like, you know, you'll be forgiven if you took down the site and, and we, we will do a rollback and you'll, you'll be in a meeting, but you have not been disbarred as an engineer.We don't, we don't change your, you know, your computer science, uh, blameJeff Huber: degree, this postmortem.Aaron Levie: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, so, uh, now maybe we collectively as an industry need to figure out like, what are you liable for? Not legally, but like in a, in a management sense, uh, of these agents. All sorts of interesting problems that, that, that, uh, that have to come out.But in knowledge work, that's the real hostile environments that we're operating in. Hmm.swyx: I do think like, uh, a lot of the last year's, 2025 story was the rise of coding agents and I think [00:29:00] 2026 story is definitely knowledge work agents. Yes. A hundredAaron Levie: percent.swyx: Right. Like that would, and I think open claw core work are just the beginning.Yes. Like it's, the next one's gonna just gonna be absolute craziness.Aaron Levie: It it is. And, and, uh, and it's gonna be, I mean, again, like this is gonna be this, this wave where we, we are gonna try and bring as many of the practices from coding because that, that will clearly be the forefront, which is tell an agent to go do something and has an access to a set of resources.You need to be responsible for reviewing it at the end of the process. That to me is the, is the kind of template that I just think goes across knowledge, work and odd. Cowork is a great example. Open Closet's a great example. You can kind of, sort of see what Codex could become over time. These are some, some really interesting kind of platforms that are emerging.swyx: Okay. Um, I wanted to, we touched on evals a little bit. You had, you had the report that you're gonna go bring up and then I was gonna go into like, uh, boxes, evals, but uh, go ahead. Talk about your genetic search thing.Jeff Huber: Yeah. Mostly I think kinda a few of the insights. It's like number one frontier model is not good at search.Humans have this [00:30:00] natural explore, exploit trade off where we kinda understand like when to stop doing something. Also, humans are pretty good at like forgetting actually, and like pruning their own context, whereas agents are not, and actually an agent in their kind of context history, if they knew something was bad and they even, you could see in the trace the reason you trace, Hey, that probably wasn't a good idea.If it's still in the trace, still in the context, they'll still do it again. Uhhuh. Uh, and so like, I think pruning is also gonna be like, really, it's already becoming a thing, right? But like, letting self prune the con windowsswyx: be a big deal. Yeah. So, so don't leave the mistake. Don't leave the mistake in there.Cut out the mistake but tell it that you made a mistake in the past and so it doesn't repeat it.Jeff Huber: Yeah. But like cut it out so it doesn't get like distracted by it again. ‘cause really, you know, what is so, so it will repeat its mistake just because it's been, it's inswyx: theJeff Huber: context. It'sAaron Levie: in the context so much.That's a few shot example. Even if it, yeah.Jeff Huber: It's like oh thisAaron Levie: is a great thing to go try even ifJeff Huber: it didn't work.Aaron Levie: Yeah,Jeff Huber: exactly.Aaron Levie: SoJeff Huber: there's like a bunch of stuff there. JustAaron Levie: Groundhogs Day inside these models. Yeah. I'm gonna go keep doing the same wrongJeff Huber: thing. Covering sense. I feel like, you know, some creator analogy you're trying like fit a manifold in latent space, which kind is doing break program synthesis, which is kinda one we think about we're doing right.Like, you know, certain [00:31:00] facts might be like sort of overly pitting it. There are certain, you know, sec sectors of latent space and so like plug clean space. Yeah. And, uh, andswyx: so we have a bell, our editor as a bell every time you say that. SoJeff Huber: you have, you have to like remove those, likeswyx: you shoulda a gong like TPN or something.IfJeff Huber: we gong, you either remove those links to like kinda give it the freedom, kind of do what you need to do. So, but yeah. We'll, we'll release more soon. That'sAaron Levie: awesome.Jeff Huber: That'll, that'll be cool.swyx: We're a cerebral podcast that people listen to us and, and sort of think really deep. So yeah, we try to keep it subtle.Okay. We try to keep it.Aaron Levie: Okay, fine.Inside Agent Evalsswyx: Um, you, you guys do, you guys do have EVs, you talked about your, your office thing, but, uh, you've been also promoting APEX agents and complex work. Uh, yeah, whatever you, wherever you wanna take this just Yeah. How youAaron Levie: Apex is, is obviously me, core's, uh, uh, kind of, um, agent eval.We, we supported that by sort of. Opening up some data for them around how we kind of see these, um, data workspaces in, in the, you know, kind of regular economy. So how do lawyers have a workspace? How do investment bankers have a workspace? What kind of data goes into those? And so we, [00:32:00] we partner with them on their, their apex eval.Our own, um, eval is, it's actually relatively straightforward. We have a, a set of, of documents in a, in a range of industries. We give the agent previously did this as a one shot test of just purely the model. And then we just realized we, we need to, based on where everything's going, it's just gotta be more agentic.So now it's a bit more of a test of both our harness and the model. And we have a rubric of a set of things that has to get right and we score it. Um, and you're just seeing, you know, these incredible jumps in almost every single model in its own family of, you know, opus four, um, you know, sonnet four six versus sonnet four five.swyx: Yeah. We have this up on screen.Aaron Levie: Okay, cool. So some, you're seeing it somewhere like. I, I forget the to, it was like 15 point jump, I think on the main, on the overall,swyx: yes.Aaron Levie: And it's just like, you know, these incredible leaps that, that are starting to happen. Um,swyx: and OP doesn't know any, like any, it's completely held out from op.Aaron Levie: This is not in any, there's no public data which has, you know, Ben benefits and this is just a private eval that we [00:33:00] do, and then we just happen to show it to, to the world. Hmm. So you can't, you can't train against it. And I think it's just as representative of. It's obviously reasoning capabilities, what it's doing at, at, you know, kind of test time, compute capabilities, thinking levels, all like the context rot issues.So many interesting, you know, kind of, uh, uh, capabilities that are, that are now improvingswyx: one sector that you have. That's interesting.Industries and Datasetsswyx: Uh, people are roughly familiar with healthcare and legal, but you have public sector in there.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: Uh, what's that? Like, what, what, what is that?Aaron Levie: Yeah, and, and we actually test against, I dunno, maybe 10 industries.We, we end up usually just cutting a few that we think have interesting gains. All extras, won a lot of like government type documents. Um,swyx: what is that? What is it? Government type documents?Aaron Levie: Government filings. Like a taxswyx: return, likeAaron Levie: a probably not tax returns. It would be more of what would go the government be using, uh, as data.So, okay. Um, so think about research that, that type of, of, of data sets. And then we have financial services for things like data rooms and what would be in an investment prospectus. Uhhuh,swyx: that one you can dog food.Aaron Levie: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yes. Yes. [00:34:00] So, uh, so we, we run the models, um, in now, you know, more of an agent mode, but, but still with, with kinda limited capacity and just try and see like on a, like, for like basis, what are the improvements?And, and again, we just continue to be blown away by. How, how good these models are getting.swyx: Yeah, I mean, I think every serious AI company needs something like that where like, well, this is the work we do. Here's our company eval. Yeah. And if you don't have it, well, you're not a serious AI company.Aaron Levie: There's two dimensions, right?So there's, there's like, how are the models improving? And so which models should you either recommend a customer use, which one should you adopt? But then every single day, we're making changes to our agents. And you need to knowswyx: if you regressed,Aaron Levie: if you know. Yeah. You know, I've been fully convinced that the whole agent observability and eval space is gonna be a massive space.Um, super excited for what Braintrust is doing, excited for, you know, Lang Smith, all the things. And I think what you're going to, I mean, this is like every enter like literally every enterprise right now. It's like the AI companies are the customers of these tools. Every enterprise will have this. Yeah, you'll just [00:35:00] have to have an eval.Of all of your work and like, we'll, you'll have an eval of your RFP generation, you'll have an eval of your sales material creation. You'll have an eval of your, uh, invoice processing. And, and as you, you know, buy or use new agentic systems, you are gonna need to know like, what's the quality of your, of your pipeline.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: Um, so huge, huge market with agent evals.swyx: Yeah.Building the Agent Teamswyx: And, and you know, I'm gonna shout out your, your team a bit, uh, your CTO, Ben, uh, did a great talk with us last year. Awesome. And he's gonna come back again. Oh, cool. For World's Fair.Aaron Levie: Yep.swyx: Just talk about your team, like brag a little bit. I think I, I think people take these eval numbers in pretty charts for granted, but No, there, I mean, there's, there's lots of really smart people at work during all this.Aaron Levie: Biggest shout out, uh, is we have a, we have a couple folks at Dya, uh, Sidarth, uh, that, that kind of run this. They're like a, you know, kind of tag tag team duo on our evals, Ben, our CTO, heavily involved Yasha, head of ai, uh, you know, a bunch of folks. And, um, evals is one part of the story. And then just like the full, you know, kind of AI.An agent team [00:36:00] is, uh, is a, is a pretty, you know, is core to this whole effort. So there's probably, I don't know, like maybe a few dozen people that are like the epicenter. And then you just have like layers and layers of, of kind of concentric circles of okay, then there's a search team that supports them and an infrastructure team that supports them.And it's starting to ripple through the entire company. But there's that kind of core agent team, um, that's a pretty, pretty close, uh, close knit group.swyx: The search team is separate from the infra team.Aaron Levie: I mean, we have like every, every layer of the stack we have to kind of do, except for just pure public cloud.Um, but um, you know, we, we store, I don't even know what our public numbers are in, you know, but like, you can just think about it as like a lot of data is, is stored in box. And so we have, and you have every layer of the, of the stack of, you know, how do you manage the data, the file system, the metadata system, the search system, just all of those components.And then they all are having to understand that now you've got this new customer. Which is the agent, and they've been building for two types of customers in the past. They've been building for users and they've been building for like applications. [00:37:00] And now you've got this new agent user, and it comes in with a difference of it, of property sometimes, like, hey, maybe sometimes we should do embeddings, an embedding based, you know, kind of search versus, you know, your, your typical semantic search.Like, it's just like you have to build the, the capabilities to support all of this. And we're testing stuff, throwing things away, something doesn't work and, and not relevant. It's like just, you know, total chaos. But all of those teams are supporting the agent team that is kind of coming up with its requirements of what, what do we need?swyx: Yeah. No, uh, we just came from, uh, fireside chat where you did, and you, you talked about how you're doing this. It's, it's kind of like an internal startup. Yeah. Within the broader company. The broader company's like 3000 people. Yeah. But you know, there's, there's a, this is a core team of like, well, here's the innovation center.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: And like that every company kind of is run this way.Aaron Levie: Yeah. I wanna be sensitive. I don't call it the innovation center. Yeah. Only because I think everybody has to do innovation. Um, there, there's a part of the, the, the company that is, is sort of do or die for the agent wave.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: And it only happens to be more of my focus simply because it's existential that [00:38:00] we get it right.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: All of the supporting systems are necessary. All of the surrounding adjacent capabilities are necessary. Like the only reason we get to be a platform where you'd run an agent is because we have a security feature or a compliance feature, or a governance feature that, that some team is working on.But that's not gonna be the make or break of, of whether we get agents right. Like that already exists and we need to keep innovating there. I don't know what the right, exact precise number is, but it's not a thousand people and it's not 10 people. There's a number of people that are like the, the kind of like, you know, startup within the company that are the make or break on everything related to AI agents, you know, leveraging our platform and letting you work with your data.And that's where I spend a lot of my time, and Ben and Yosh and Diego and Teri, you know, these are just, you know, people that, that, you know, kind of across the team. Are working.swyx: Yeah. Amazing.Read Write Agent WorkflowsJeff Huber: How do you, how do you think about, I mean, you talked a lot about like kinda read workflows over your box data. Yep.Right. You know, gen search questions, queries, et cetera. But like, what about like, write or like authoring workflows?Aaron Levie: Yes. I've [00:39:00] already probably revealed too much actually now that I think about it. So, um, I've talked about whatever,Jeff Huber: whatever you can.Aaron Levie: Okay. It's just us. It's just us. Yeah. Okay. Of course, of course.So I, I guess I would just, uh, I'll make it a little bit conceptual, uh, because again, I've already, I've already said things that are not even ga but, but we've, we've kinda like danced around it publicly, so I, yeah, yeah. Okay. Just like, hopefully nobody watches this, um, episode. No.swyx: It's tidbits for the Heidi engaged to go figure out like what exactly, um, you know, is, is your sort of line of thinking.Sure. They can connect the dots.Aaron Levie: Yeah. So, so I would say that, that, uh, we, you know, as a, as a place where you have your enterprise content, there's a use case where I want to, you know, have an agent read that data and answer questions for me. And then there's a use case where I want the agent to create something.And use the file system to create something or store off data that it's working on, or be able to have, you know, various files that it's writing to about the work it's doing. So we do see it as a total read write. The harder problem has so far been the read only because, because again, you have that kind of like 10 [00:40:00] million to one ratio problem, whereas rights are a lot of, that's just gonna come from the model and, and we just like, we'll just put it in the file system and kinda use it.So it's a little bit of a technically easier problem, but the only part that's like, not necessarily technically hard, it is just like it's not yet perfected in the state of the ecosystem is, you know, building a beautiful PowerPoint presentation. It's still a hard problem for these models. Like, like we still, you know, like, like these formats are just, we're not built for.They'reswyx: working on it.Aaron Levie: They're, they're working on it. Everybody's working on it.swyx: Every launch is like, well, we do PowerPoint now.Aaron Levie: We're getting, yeah, getting a lot, getting a lot of better each time. But then you'll do this thing where you'll ask the update one slide and all of a sudden, like the fonts will be just like a little bit different, you know, on two of the slides, or it moved, you know, some shape over to the left a little bit.And again, these are the kind of things that, like in code, obviously you could really care about if you really care about, you know, how beautiful is the code, but at the end, user doesn't notice all those problems and file creation, the end user instantly sees it. You're [00:41:00] like, ah, like paragraph three, like, you literally just changed the font on me.Like it's a totally different font and like midway through the document. Mm-hmm. Those are the kind of things that you run into a lot of in the, in the content creation side. So, mm-hmm. We are gonna have native agents. That do all of those things, they'll be powered by the leading kind of models and labs.But the thing that I think is, is probably gonna be a much bigger idea over time is any agent on any system, again, using Box as a file system for its work, and in that kind of scenario, we don't necessarily care what it's putting in the file system. It could put its memory files, it could put its, you know, specification, you know, documents.It could put, you know, whatever its markdown files are, or it could, you know, generate PDFs. It's just like, it's a workspace that is, is sort of sandboxed off for its work. People can collaborate into it, it can share with other people. And, and so we, we were thinking a lot about what's the right, you know, kind of way to, to deliver that at scale.Docs Graphs and Founder Modeswyx: I wanted to come into sort of the sort of AI transformation or AI sort of, uh, operations things. [00:42:00] Um, one of the tweets that you, that you wanted to talk about, this is just me going through your tweets, by the way. Oh, okay. I mean, like, this is, you readAaron Levie: one by one,swyx: you're the, you're the easiest guest to prep for because you, you already have like, this is the, this is what I'm interested in.I'm like, okay, well, areAaron Levie: we gonna get to like, like February, January or something? Where are we in the, in the timelines? How far back are we going?swyx: Can you, can you describe boxes? A set of skills? Right? Like that, that's like, that's like one of the extremes of like, well if you, you just turn everything into a markdown file.Yeah. Then your agent can run your company. Uh, like you just have to write, find the right sequence of words toAaron Levie: Yes.swyx: To do it.Aaron Levie: Sorry, isthatswyx: the question? So I think the question is like, what if we documented everything? Yes. The way that you exactly said like,Aaron Levie: yes.swyx: Um, let's get all the Fortune five hundreds, uh, prepared for agents.Yes. And like, you know, everything's in golden and, and nicely filed away and everything. Yes. What's missing? Like, what's left, right? LikeAaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: You've, you've run your company for a decade. LikeAaron Levie: Yeah. I think the challenge is that, that that information changes a week later. And because something happened in the market for that [00:43:00] customer, or us as a company that now has to go get updated, and so these systems are living and breathing and they have to experience reality and updates to reality, which right now is probably gonna be humans, you know, kinda giving those, giving them the updates.And, you know, there is this piece about context graphs as as, uh, that kinda went very viral. Yeah. And I, I, I was like a, i, I, I thought it was super provocative. I agreed with many parts of it. I disagree with a few parts around. You know, it's not gonna be as easy as as just if we just had the agent traces, then we can finally do that work because there's just like, there's so much more other stuff that that's happening that, that we haven't been able to capture and digitize.And I think they actually represented that in the piece to be clear. But like there's just a lot of work, you know, that that has to, you just can't have only skills files, you know, for your company because it's just gonna be like, there's gonna be a lot of other stuff that happens. Yeah. Change over time.Yeah. Most companies are practically apprenticeships.swyx: Most companies are practically apprenticeships. LikeJeff Huber: every new employee who joins the team, [00:44:00] like you span one to three months. Like ramping them up.Aaron Levie: Yes. AllJeff Huber: that tat knowledgeAaron Levie: isJeff Huber: not written down.Aaron Levie: Yes.Jeff Huber: But like, it would have to be if you wanted to like give it to an Asian.Right. And so like that seems to me like to beAaron Levie: one is I think you're gonna see again a premium on companies that can document this. Mm-hmm. Much. There'll be a huge premium on that because, because you know, can you shorten that three month ramp cycle to a two week ramp cycle? That's an instant productivity gain.Can you re dramatically reduce rework in the organization because you've documented where all the stuff is and where the answers are. Can you make your average employee as good as your 90th percentile employee because you've captured the knowledge that's sort of in the heads of, of those top employees and make that available.So like you can see some very clear productivity benefits. Mm-hmm. If you had a company culture of making sure you know your information was captured, digitized, put in a format that was agent ready and then made available to agents to work with, and then you just, again, have this reality of like add a 10,000 person [00:45:00] company.Mapping that to the, you know, access structure of the company is just a hard problem. Is like, is like, yeah, well, you just, not every piece of information that's digitized can be shared to everybody. And so now you have to organize that in a way that actually works. There was a pretty good piece, um, this, this, uh, this piece called your company as a file is a file system.I, did you see that one?swyx: Nope.Aaron Levie: Uh, yes. You saw it. Yeah. And, and, uh, I actually be curious your thoughts on it. Um, like, like an interesting kind of like, we, we agree with it because, because that's how we see the world and, uh,swyx: okay. We, we have it up on screen. Oh,Aaron Levie: okay. Yeah. But, but it's all about basically like, you know, we've already, we, we, we already organized in this kind of like, you know, permission structure way.Uh, and, and these are the kind of, you know, natural ways that, that agents can now work with data. So it's kind of like this, this, you know, kind of interesting metaphor, but I do think companies will have to start to think about how they start to digitize more, more of that data. What was your take?Jeff Huber: Yeah, I mean, like the company's probably like an acid compliant file system.Aaron Levie: Uh,Jeff Huber: yeah. Which I'm guessing boxes, right? So, yeah. Yes.swyx: Yeah. [00:46:00]Jeff Huber: Which you have a great piece on, but,swyx: uh, yeah. Well, uh, I, I, my, my, my direction is a little bit like, I wanna rewind a little bit to the graph word you said that there, that's a magic trigger word for us. I always ask what's your take on knowledge graphs?Yeah. Uh, ‘cause every, especially at every data database person, I just wanna see what they think. There's been knowledge graphs, hype cycles, and you've seen it all. So.Aaron Levie: Hmm. I actually am not the expert in knowledge graphs, so, so that you might need toswyx: research, you don't need to be an expert. Yeah. I think it's just like, well, how, how seriously do people take it?Yeah. Like, is is, is there a lot of potential in the, in the HOVI?Aaron Levie: Uh, well, can I, can I, uh, understand first if it's, um, is this a loaded question in the sense of are you super pro, super con, super anti medium? Iswyx: see pro, I see pros and cons. Okay. Uh, but I, I think your opinion should be independent of mine.Aaron Levie: Yeah. No, no, totally. Yeah. I just want to see what I'm stepping into.swyx: No, I know. It's a, and it's a huge trigger word for a lot of people out Yeah. In our audience. And they're, they're trying to figure out why is that? Because whyAaron Levie: is this such aswyx: hot item for them? Because a lot of people get graph religion.And they're like, everything's a graph. Of course you have to represent it as a graph. Well, [00:47:00] how do you solve your knowledge? Um, changing over time? Well, it's a graph.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: And, and I think there, there's that line of work and then there's, there's a lot of people who are like, well, you don't need it. And both are right.Aaron Levie: Yeah. And what do the people who say you don't need it, what are theyswyx: arguing for Mark down files. Oh, sure, sure. Simplicity.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: Versus it's, it's structure versus less structure. Right. That's, that's all what it is. I do.Aaron Levie: I think the tricky thing is, um, is, is again, when this gets met with real humans, they're just going to their computer.They're just working with some people on Slack or teams. They're just sharing some data through a collaborative file system and Google Docs or Box or whatever. I certainly like the vision of most, most knowledge graph, you know, kind of futuristic kind of ways of thinking about it. Uh, it's just like, you know, it's 2026.We haven't seen it yet. Kind of play out as as, I mean, I remember. Do you remember the, um, in like, actually I don't, I don't even know how old you guys are, but I'll for, for to show my age. I remember 17 years ago, everybody thought enterprises would just run on [00:48:00] Wikis. Yeah. And, uh, confluence and, and not even, I mean, confluence actually took off for engineering for sure.Like unquestionably. But like, this was like everything would be in the w. And I think based on our, uh, our, uh, general style of, of, of what we were building, like we were just like, I don't know, people just like wanna workspace. They're gonna collaborate with other people.swyx: Exactly. Yeah. So you were, you were anti-knowledge graph.Aaron Levie: Not anti, not anti. Soswyx: not nonAaron Levie: I'm not, I'm not anti. ‘cause I think, I think your search system, I just think these are two systems that probably, but like, I'm, I'm not in any religious war. I don't want to be in anybody's YouTube comments on this. There's not a fight for me.swyx: We, we love YouTube comments. We're, we're, we're get into comments.Aaron Levie: Okay. Uh, but like, but I, I, it's mostly just a virtue of what we built. Yeah. And we just continued down that path. Yeah.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: And, um, and that, that was what we pursued. But I'm not, this is not a, you know, kind of, this is not a, uh, it'sswyx: not existential for you. Great.Aaron Levie: We're happy to plug into somebody else's graph.We're happy to feed data into it. We're happy for [00:49:00] agents to, to talk to multiple systems. Not, not our fight.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: But I need your answer. Yeah. Graphs or nerd Snipes is very effective nerd.swyx: See this is, this is one, one opinion and then I've,Jeff Huber: and I think that the actual graph structure is emergent in the mind of the agent.Ah, in the same way it is in the mind of the human. And that's a more powerful graph ‘cause it actually involved over time.swyx: So don't tell me how to graph. I'll, I'll figure it out myself. Exactly. Okay. All right. AndJeff Huber: what's yours?swyx: I like the, the Wiki approach. Uh, my, I'm actually

On today's PowerPoint, Pastor Jack Graham brings a strong message on the value of commitment. What does it really mean to commit to the purpose of God's design and how do we find the strength to do it? Join us for today's message, “Going the Distance.” To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/395/29?v=20251111

In this episode of ChaxChat, Dax Castro and Chad Chelius unpack two very different approaches to accessibility innovation. First, they dive into Microsoft's implementation of MathML in Word and PowerPoint and why it represents a genuine win for accessible math. By carrying MathML through to the PDF export with proper tagging and screen reader support, Microsoft demonstrates what it looks like when accessibility is built into the workflow rather than patched on later. They then turn to Adobe InDesign's new AI-generated alt text feature and explore where it helps, where it falls short, and why turning it on by default raises important concerns. The conversation highlights the difference between proven accessibility solutions and experimental AI features, emphasizing the need for human oversight, informed decision-making, and realistic expectations as tools continue to evolve.

Happy National Get Over It Day! (Actually it's not get over it day and we totally messed this up). We kick off the episode by testing out our new "professional" green screen setup, avoiding "shrimp-backing" in our chairs. Erin recaps a rare date night at a microbrewery where Dan became best friends with random strangers.In fitness news, Erin gives an update on her Craig Conover 10K training—surviving a brutal, side-stitch-inducing 3-mile run—and her ongoing quest to do one pull up. She also shares her strategy of making a literal PowerPoint presentation to teach her reality TV hating friends about Southern Charm, and expresses her anxiety over an upcoming Adidas brand trip (fingers crossed for a "donut and hiking" group).Then, we dive into a massive Olympics and sports recap. We demand a scoring bonus for figure skater Amber Glenn after she won gold while on her period, debate ESPN's list of the most difficult sports (putting basketball over gymnastics is a crime). We also call out NBC for allegedly paying Snoop Dogg $500,000 a day, review the wildest Olympic drama (from the Mark Kennedy curling scandal to a biathlete confessing to infidelity on live TV), and praise Eileen Gu for flawlessly shutting down a dumb reporter's question. Plus, we discuss a corporate brand that blatantly copied Erin's unhinged purple tank top and yellow sweatband look for a TV commercial.Finally, we cover a wild story about a British Airways flight crew who had to be grounded after accidentally hallucinating on passenger-gifted THC gummy bears, and we call out Logan Paul's shady $16.5 million Pokémon card sale after shutting down the fractional NFT app that funded it. We wrap things up with a wholesome "No Bad, No Sad" story about a girl who corralled dozens of strangers—including pilots and flight attendants—at an airport baggage claim to give her friend Morgan the ultimate welcome home.

Just as parents train up their children, the church has a responsibility to train up the next generation of believers. Join us for today's PowerPoint, as Pastor Jack Graham brings a message encouraging us to be mindful of the many ways in which we are “Passing the Torch” of our faith. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/395/29?v=20251111

What if the biggest challenge in mining leadership isn't strategy, production, or policy — but the brain? In this episode of Mining Minds, David Watson, founder of NeuroLead, joins us in the studio for a powerful conversation about what it truly means to lead — starting with yourself. From humble beginnings in Australia to the iron ore boom, David shares his journey from carpenter to supervisor to breaking point — and how a deep dive into the neuroscience of leadership transformed not only his career but his life. This episode unpacks cognitive bias, burnout, trauma, identity, and the toxic validation cycle that many high performers quietly live in. David explains how the brain is wired to maximize rewards, minimize threats, and conserve energy — and how those shortcuts can either elevate or sabotage leaders. We dive into why traditional leadership training often misses the mark, why credibility matters more than PowerPoint slides, and why self-awareness is the foundation of influence. David also shares how hitting "static mode," creating flow, and deliberately repairing mental health are not luxuries — they are leadership responsibilities. Please welcome David Watson to The Face! www.NeuroLead.net.au   Episode Sponsors: Safety First Training and Consulting JSR Fleet Performance Motor Mission Machine and Radiator   Episode Chapters: 05:30 Growing Up In Australia 10:42 First Leadership Breakthrough 16:23 Tall Poppy Syndrome Explained 21:19 From Carpentry To Mining Boom 28:33 Mining Town Reality Check 38:51 First Mine Job Trade Assistant 56:09 Leading Without Being Expert 01:11:06 Managing Up With Company Values 01:25:22 Find Your Static Mode 01:48:55 Neuroscience Study Shift 02:12:17 Launching Neuro Lead 02:23:59 Lead Yourself First 02:39:40 Life Changing Feedback

Guten Tag! Eine frische Folge weht durch das Fenster hinein. Sie ist wieder gefüllt mit Information, Spaß und visuellen Eindrücken. Denn besprochen werden die Buchcover von Buch 4! Zahlreiche unterschiedliche Ideen wurden umgesetzt. Z.B. die erste Aufgabe des Trimagischen Turniers, aber auch ab und zu wie Harry das goldene Ei holen muss, und zum Glück auch mal das mit dem Drachen! Neben diesen tollen spannenden Covern gibt es aber auch noch mehr. Doch lauscht selbst! Ma und Mi sind wieder am Start und reden sich den Mund fusselig. Viel Spaß!PS: Auf https://www.patreon.com/hagridshuette/posts kannst du dir die PowerPoint (oder PDF) die in der Folge angeschaut wird komplett frei for free ohne Account herunterladen :)PPS: Diese Folge wurde auch Live-gestreamt! Das kannst du dir auf twitch.tv/huettitv auch nochmal anguckenWerbung: koro.com Code HÜTTE für 5% Rabatt!

When we see the world around us, it might seem that evil is moving like an unrestrainable force, but as Pastor Jack Graham reminds us in today's PowerPoint message, we are not powerless in the midst of it. As the Church we have been given something far more powerful than the world around us; we've been given His unstoppable Spirit. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/395/29?v=20251111

According to research from the State of Sales Enablement Report 2025, businesses with well-integrated enablement tech stacks are 42% more likely to increase sales productivity. So, how do you go about building an effective, well integrated tech stack? Riley Rogers: Hi, and welcome to the Win/Win Podcast. I’m your host, Riley Rogers. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic are Nicole Cost, director of enablement and operations, and Becky Garcia, enablement operations manager, at Lantern. Thank you both so much for joining us; it’s so exciting to have you here. I think there’s probably a really wonderful conversation to be had, and I’m excited to jump into it. I’d love to start by learning a little bit about yourself, your background, and your role. Nicole, would you mind kicking us off? Nicole Cost: My name is Nicole Cost. I’m the Director of Commercial Enablement and Operations at Lantern. At Lantern, our department’s primarily responsible for supporting our commercial new hires with their onboarding experience, process strategy, collaboration, and communications, and then in-person meeting operations and logistics. I’m based in New York. I’ve been in this space for about four years, but prior to working at Lantern, I was at Carrot Fertility and I worked in a totally different industry in sport and entertainment; I was a teacher and worked on the business side in a very different world. RR: Becky, would you care to tell us a little bit about yourself? Becky Garcia: Yeah, definitely. So, I’ve been in the industry now, I’d say I'm going on my seventh year in the health services and health tech space. I’ve been kind of all over in terms of my background, but in the last seven years I’ve really been in an operations role. Part of what I love doing here at Lantern is helping companies grow and scale. That's really what I love to do. RR: It sounds like you guys have been here before. This isn’t your first rodeo. You’ve spent the time not only in the industry, but also specifically in healthcare spaces, both at Lantern and in previous roles. I’d be kind of curious to dive into those previous roles and how they kind of affect today before we jump into your work at Lantern. So, Nicole, what challenges have you noticed pop up that people in other industries might not expect? NC: What I loved about this question to kick us off was because I was actually, like I mentioned, one of those people in another industry for about 10 years before pivoting to healthcare, and I will never forget my first manager asking me: “How much do you know about healthcare?” And I responded—I remember it vividly—I responded with: “I know I have great benefits.” I quickly learned that great benefits were not a normal thing, and that is why so many companies either are being created or evolving to provide healthcare benefits that most people in the United States do not have access to. And usually these gaps are incredibly expensive. They’re very emotional, and they’re non-linear in their journeys if everything is just very complex. So one could say that selling in healthcare is more difficult than many other industries. But when we ask our new hires—we ask: “Why did you choose Lantern?” And I would say almost 100% of them say they wanted to be part of a mission-driven company because the work is meaningful. It might be more complex, longer cycles, everything’s a little bit more difficult and nuanced, but it is mission-driven and really meaningful. All of this to is say that our enablement approach at Lantern focuses on collaborating with our friends in learning and development and our cross-functional partners to arm our internal team with tools that they need to succeed. RR: I like what you said there about nuance. I feel like a lot of the time when we talk about difficult selling environments like healthcare, challenging, obstacles, difficulty—this is all kind of what pops up. Those are the words that we use, but I love that reframe of like, “It just is what it is. This is normal and we’re doing our best to help people.” It’s nuanced, it’s not challenging. I love that reframe. As we talk this through, from your perspective, Becky, I know you’re coming in with a background in operations, which likely gives you a bit of a different perspective. Can you walk us through what it means to drive operational excellence in the healthcare space and, again, maybe how that differs from other roles you've held? BG: Definitely. From an operations perspective, I think driving excellence in healthcare really means building reliability into a very complex system. So as Nicole mentioned, healthcare isn’t linear and there are many moving parts. There’s handoffs, regulations, nuance, and a lot of emotion for people that are going through it. So excellence really isn’t just about efficiency, it’s about making sure that the right thing happens consistently, even as you are scaling. Operational excellence is also what ensures that we can deliver on process, discipline, documentation, reporting. And if that’s not strong enough, that’s really where scale breaks down. That’s where enablement comes in. And tools like Highspot really help us turn our best practices into the standard of work, and they help us give our teams confidence that what they’re saying in the market really matches what the organization is expecting. At the end of the day, operational excellence is really how you make impact repeatable, and that’s gonna be for patients, it’s gonna be for customers, and it’s also going to be for our teams who are doing the work. RR: That’s a great answer and I like how you look across excellence to understand how you build the systems to support it. And for whatever environment you’re in, that’s the goal. How you get there maybe differs a little bit— and it probably differs a lot when you’re dealing with, like you said, highly emotional, highly impactful scenarios—but at the end of the day, you’re still driving toward the same things. I'm excited to hear how you’re driving towards those, especially knowing that just a little bit ago, Lantern hit a period of extremely rapid growth. What kind of challenges did that create for the team? NC: Growth is exciting. It’s a privilege. We’re excited to be part of that. And what was great is we already had the building blocks in place for our new hire onboarding experience. They were in place, and we were welcoming new hires on a weekly basis with custom 30, 60, 90 day plans. But we learned quickly that that just was not sustainable for our small team to maintain a level of excellence that we pride ourselves in Just. Wasn’t gonna work because our new hire numbers continued to grow and our team is still the same: It’s Becky and I. So the biggest challenges that we faced, I would break into probably three categories: process lag, quality control, and then updated content and assets. So, we continue to bring in the best talent and the industry, but it was incredibly important to us that we recognize these challenges as opportunities to redesign how the work gets done. So this is when we started to evaluate tools like Highspot. And even as recently, like our colleagues in marketing sing Highspot praises because it helps make their content more discoverable. RR: Becky, can you talk to us from an operations perspective, you know, hearing some of these challenges, how did they influence the decision to invest in a platform and, and why was Highspot kind of the right answer for you guys? BG: From my perspective, I think the biggest impact of rapid growth was really fragmentation. We were scaling headcount, products and processes all at once. Information started to live in too many places. There were decks here, documentation there, and there was really a lot of knowledge in people’s heads. The lack of consistency really created friction fast. It resulted in people not being confident about what the latest and greatest was. At the same time, like taking a step back, we were also going through a rebrand of the company, which actually made it a perfect inflection point. So we had an opportunity to really step back, refresh our message, and our resources all at the same time. And we really got to be intentional about how we showed up both internally and externally. So rather than just updating assets that were in place, we wanted to start with a fresh source of truth. And that’s ultimately what helped us drive the decision to invest in Highspot as we discussed. Like we’re growing so significantly, we’ve doubled in size from our commercial team, and so we needed to onboard a lot of people with very unique roles and then also operationalize best practices as we grew. RR: I knew a little bit about those early days. You’d mentioned hypergrowth and things like that, but knowing that you had doubled headcount, you were going through a rebrand, and you were implementing a new platform and evaluating a new platform at the same time, and it’s the two of you doing all of that. I think there’s probably a lot of people that will listen in and be like: “How?” Because that sounds like quite a lot. We’ve heard about all of the work that was being done, all of those initiatives that were kind of coming together to prioritize the need for a platform, the need to get reps up to speed quickly. So, what did onboarding look like before and why was it kind of time to make a change? NC: So as I mentioned from just the beginning, but our commercial onboarding experience has always had a formalized program, and we’ve always had our building blocks that work really well to create a consistent welcome for all of our new hires, no matter the job title or department. And our focus is who we are, what we do, and how we do it. And this gives all of our new hires an overview of our solution, external assets and collateral, and insights into many internal processes. But in the early days of our organization, when we were onboarding about maybe 10 to 15 people a quarter by 2025, this number doubled, and our old-fashioned Excel spreadsheet trackers and custom PowerPoint presentations that each individual got just was not cutting it. We’ve had two iterations in Highspot. The first pass we simply transferred all of the great content that we had from this PowerPoint deck into an onboarding spot and a spot overview. So we had that. That was like a main piece that we’d walk through with our new hires and we’d make sure we’d give them all this content. But we also had 30, 60, 90 day lesson plans, depending on the new hire’s role and department. We coupled this experience with a live welcome call that we still do. Our president works with our new hires, and we still do all of that and it covers a lot of basics around our company and the commercial culture, and would involve us sharing our screen of Highspot and like, here’s how you use it. It’s a really nice, like way to introduce everyone to the platform and where they’re gonna be living. But after about six months of these custom lessons, we needed something that we could copy and paste, essentially so we could scale. And I even spent time with Brooke Holland from your enablement team and she was lovely and she helped us bounce ideas off each other and just learn what worked really well for Highspot actually internally. And how she could look at our content was like: “This is great, let's translate that.” I think that was really helpful to now take us to our most recent iteration, which we’re in currently, and it took all of this quality content from our foundational onboarding spot. Into a course. So now we have a full course that’s all of this great content. We call it Bright Starts because we love a good light pun at Lantern. And all of our new hires are enrolled in this course and have three lessons. So it’s their first 30 days, the next 30 days, and then that final days to today, 61 through 90 for their first 90 days on our commercial team. I’m really excited because—as of this week—we have 100% new hire adherence to this course, and the average final score is more than 91%. It’s been such a hit, and Becky can attest to this. It’s just been a labor of love and it’s so cool to see it come to fruition and like. RR: Yeah. I liked hearing about the journey it's been. It makes me so happy to hear that. It sounds like you’ve built something really impactful. I mean, 100% adherence—those are impressive numbers and I hope that it feels like you’ve reached the point that you wanted to. NC: Yes. I think it has. I’m so happy. I think—I don’t wanna put words into Becky’s mouth—but I think she is proud of it too. And I also just think what’s nice is we can now like, let it settle and it’s taken about a year for us to, I feel like, really get to that point. So here we are. BG: Yeah, I think one point I just did wanna add on that is Nicole, earlier you mentioned how important our internal team satisfaction is and just like seeing the scores of the satisfaction that come out of this has allowed us to really tweak and where we need to and pivot and make changes. And so, I think when you look at our scores, not only are people adhering to the course, their final scores are really high, but also their satisfaction is extremely high. Highspot really allowed us to easily tailor and improve the process and our team’s feeling it. RR: Amazing. That’s the full picture you want, right? So, we chatted about onboarding being kind of one of the primary drivers of why you started doing this in the first place. And we have also heard that you’ve kind of blown past that early goal. You’ve set up something that you can consistently run with. Now, like you mentioned, it’s not just you in the platform. The content team is trying to do things, the marketing team is singing its praises. Can you talk to us about how other capabilities, things like AutoDocs help you improve the rep experience? And then maybe a little bit about what impact that’s had? BG: We use AutoDocs with our client success team to help automate the marketing pieces that they send out to all of their clients. And so really what our team is doing is they’re self-serving requests that were previously going through our creative and marketing teams. And so with AutoDocs, our client success teams can quickly generate client-ready, compliant assets using the approved templates that we’ve uploaded into the platform. And they can automatically pull in correct logos, they can update client language and also make it contract and plan design specific. And so this really has enabled them to self-serve, but also just really produce some high quality marketing materials to our clients. Today we have 41 marketing assets that live in AutoDocs as templates. Each asset on average generates about 20 documents. So what that means is that we have a variety of assets. Our team can come in here and pick and choose for their clients, which resources they want to customize, and then on average, they’re making 20 of those copies for the various clients that they support. So, that really is about 820 client-ready resources that no longer need to flow through our creative or our marketing teams. This has really helped us one, by giving autonomy to our client success teams, so now they can move faster and respond to clients in near-real time, especially during high volume periods. This is critical for keeping our clients happy, but also the team members who are doing the work, they don’t have to feel like they’re waiting around for marketing. When they can make these changes themselves. Also, this helps ensure that we have just continued to iterate on our brand. So we’ve got brand compliance consistently across the board, no more awkward logos or off-centered logos. That would generally be like the outcome if our team had to go in there and make these manual changes. Another big benefit I think is how we collect and act on feedback as a team. Generally, if we needed to handle like one-off conversations of like, we need to tweak this language on this one because of this specific scenario, that was done in a silo. It went directly to creative and marketing, and then they would have to make these changes. But now everything really lives in a collaborative space, and so this has created transparency and a single feedback loop between our field and our marketing teams so our reps can see what’s already been flagged because the changes are made directly in the template, what’s been updated and what’s already been addressed. So, there’s no need to have that conversation multiple times. Overall, our teams can self-serve confidently. Our creative team is really freed up to focus on the work that truly requires their expertise. I think all of our team is really happy with the product and when we’re looking at those numbers. It just speaks volumes to our ability to scale. RR: Yeah, I think when you’re saying hundreds—800—assets that you can customize, scale and get out the door quickly, I think that does speak volumes. That is fantastic to hear. And I can imagine that was probably a lot of friction that you were able to reduce for your customer success team and your creative team who didn’t have to be like: “Oh, another request in Slack for an improved logo or a changed color.” I’m sure everybody appreciates that. So we talked about onboarding and what you’ve done there. We’ve heard about the way you’re scaling at AutoDocs. Looking across the work that you guys have done, what are you most proud of when you look at the data? What improvements, achievements stand out the most to you? NC: So for me, there are two things that stand out and I’m incredibly proud of our patience as a small team to roll out and iterate our overall strategy using tools like Highspot to be nimble so you can have all the plans in the world. And then—boom—like change that you didn’t expect, or new solution or “we’re not gonna do this any longer.” It just happens in this healthcare world, and it’s not for the faint of heart, especially for those of us—I think you heard our titles—in operations. We thrive on routine and process and formality, like rule followers, right? So it’s really difficult to have the ability to stick to strategy without patience and the ability to pivot. So I’m really proud that we’ve been able to do this a lot. Since our functions started at Lantern almost two years ago, and we’ll continue to operate this way, but I’m also really proud of our colleagues’ willingness to keep learning. I think, Riley, you mentioned it just like so much change happened at once and then poof! Now you gotta learn a new tool and a new way to do things. It’s not easy to adopt new tools and processes, but also managing that ever-changing landscape of our industry. I’m really proud of the fact that not only as our team, like they have been so kind, honestly, and patient with us, but they’ve also just been great teammates. Our number one goal is always going to be to value add, not add more work. I believe a major reason that we have a high satisfaction rating as a team, as an internal team working with us is because of our colleagues’ partnership. BG: What I’m most proud of is that we’ve built some real trust with our teams. Highspot has genuinely become a place where people go first. We hear constantly, or at least I hear from managers and leaders say things like: “Did you check Highspot?” when their teams ask for help or for resources. Or even when team members have looked in Highspot, they’ll come to me and say: “Hey, I already looked here.” It’s moments like this that truly bring me joy because it reinforces that we’ve created something valuable, something that’s reliable, and that’s really embedded in how people work day to day. Also, I think what stands out to me from an operations perspective, I’m always gonna come back here with what data we’re using to guide our decisions. Whenever we receive feedback, we’re not guessing or reacting in isolation anymore. We can look at usage, we can look at engagement and patterns to really understand what’s working and what’s not. And then this also helps us drive, like where we can invest our time. So that really has allowed us to iterate thoughtfully, prioritize accordingly, and then also continuously improve. To look at a couple figures, I think we’ve had tens of thousands of views across our entire platform of the resources that are in there. And so from looking at Q1 2025, we had about 55% of our audiences who had viewed the content. And fast forward, now we’re about halfway through this quarter, but comparing we are now at 93%. RR: That’s amazing. And I’m sure just hearing the way that that was said, you guys are proud of that increase. You know, 55 to 93% recurring adoption proves that like you said, Nicole, your teams are patient with you, and to your point, Becky, you built the trust and you built the brand, so now you have that foundation that everybody reliably uses and can run with to do all of the things that you need to succeed. Hearing all this, it definitely tells me that you’re qualified—more than qualified—to answer this last question I had for you, which is for other teams looking to build high impact programs kind of from the ground up, what’s like one piece of advice you’d share about getting started and building efficiently? NC: Well, did I mention patience? My mom would be really proud of me that I’m mentioning patience and that I have been patient, since that’s just like a theme of my life—I don’t think I’ve ever been patient until I became a professional. My advice actually comes from an author that spoke to us at—we have a Lantern book club—and Max Yoder is the author who wrote the book Do Better Work. It’s an awesome read. Totally recommend. One of his pieces of advice was to share before ready. So honestly, it’s been such a great mindset because of all of the change and when implementing change. We, of course, have always ensured clarity around the problems we’re solving. So I don’t want you to think that we don’t like, that doesn’t mean ‘share because we don’t know what we’re solving for.' It’s more so we know what we need to do, but we’re taking the time to roll out programs and really being thoughtful about the tools that we’re selecting or what we’re adding on, or what we’re encouraging people to use. And when we’re rolling them out, we want it to be automatically useful and simple. We just want it to be like, here it is. Now you have it, bookmark it and use it. And this has allowed us to become efficient in practice over time, and I think that’s what helped us earn our peers trust. BG: I think my biggest piece of advice is to not start by trying to build everything at once. I think the best starting point is to become a trusted source for your teams, so that means solving real problems really well and making it easy for people to know where to go when they need help. When team members trust that the information that they have access to is current is accurate and is. Actually useful. I think adoption follows naturally. From there, I think you can use data and feedback to iterate intentionally instead of guessing or reacting to the loudest request. I think building efficiently isn’t necessarily about moving fast for the sake of speed. It’s about creating clarity early, listening closely, and then letting trust and insights guide what you’re building next. RR: In everything that you have shared today, I think you can see the threads of this advice. You’ve mentioned feedback and trying to understand the experience from your user’s perspective and partnering cross-functionally to understand what people need. So we’re seeing that, you know, share early and then we’re seeing that don’t boil the ocean when you’re facing doubling headcount and a rebrand at the same time as you're launching an entire platform. You guys have this approach that is so measured and calm, so bravo for all of the work there and thank you so much for sharing it with us. It’s been so wonderful to hear more about the world that you’re living in and the wonderful work that you’re doing in it. NC: Thanks for having us, Riley. This was great.RR: To our audience, thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Win/Win Podcast. Be sure to tune in next time for more insights on how you can maximize enablement success with Highspot.

Welcome to the geopolitical cesspool. Today, we are taking a hard look at the crumbling, jury-rigged mafia state operating just across the border, and the exiled "Good Russians" who think they are magically going to inherit it.First, we dive into the blood-soaked mud of the zero-line with the leaked audio of Major General Roman Dimurchiev. From troops hunting for a prosecutor's missing underpants amidst artillery fire to commanders earning state medals for sapper-shovel executions, we examine the true operating system of the Russian military. Frankly, comparing these guys to the armies of Mordor is a massive, unforgivable insult to the logistical competence of the Uruk-hai.Then, we cross the border into Europe to check on the High Elves of Rivendell—the exiled Russian liberal opposition. While actual people are dying in the mud, the architects of the "Beautiful Russia of the Future" are busy playing Dungeons & Dragons in rented seminar rooms, running multi-million-dollar offshore laundromats, and hiring Baltic street thugs to kneecap their political rivals with meat hammers.From the Z-patriots desperately rebranding themselves as the Mongol Horde, to the sheer, Bond-villain absurdity of the FSB utilizing South American dart frog neurotoxins, this episode is a deep dive into an empire built entirely out of stolen myths, hallucinations, and pure rot.Support the War Effort: The Ukrainian military doesn't need PowerPoint presentations; they need armor. Please support Car4Ukraine as they weld heavy armor onto civilian pickup trucks and send them straight to the front line:

Today on PowerPoint, Pastor Jack Graham looks to Galatians for the message “Crucified with Christ.” Pastor Graham teaches that if we want to be passionate, devoted followers of Jesus, we must live the crucified life in Christ by maximizing the Cross in our lives. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/395/29?v=20251111

Ian's out, Carina's in (for a week) — and somehow 404 is both nicer and more organized? In this week's episode, Kat is joined by her best friend in marketing, Carina Barreto for a very real and relatable deep dive into life in field marketing. From partner strategy and demand gen to why events are way more than just catering and a PowerPoint, the two unpack what actually makes a customer say “yes” — and why experiential marketing is the way. They also get into the unspoken truth of the role: sales is your best friend (like, 80% of your calendar kind of best friend), the art of saying yes before you earn the right to say no, and how building internal advocates can make or break your success. Along the way, expect tangents on MBA survival, women-focused executive events, and the eternal question of what sounds better than just staying home? No Ian this week, but don't worry — Kat and Carina still manage to get their jokes in just like he's there. If you like the show, give us a click to keep the funding coming: id.cisco.com/app/ciscoid_aemcloudprodsaml_1/exk14lk1xf6SKDANc5d7/sso/saml

Did you sleep on these 3 NotebookLM updates?

February 24, 2026: Five major stories broke in the last 24 hours at the intersection of AI and the future of work — and they're all in conversation with each other. Anthropic launched Claude directly inside Excel, PowerPoint, and Slack, making its biggest move yet into everyday knowledge work. A Federal Reserve governor said on the record that if AI drives unemployment, interest rate cuts — the government's go-to economic tool — may not be able to fix it. Goldman Sachs revealed that despite hundreds of billions in AI investment, it may have contributed almost nothing to U.S. economic growth last year. Yale's Budget Lab pushed back on the AI productivity revolution narrative, saying the data simply doesn't support it yet. And a financial research firm's fictional scenario set in 2028 went so viral it triggered a major market selloff.  

In lecture halls once defined by PowerPoint slides and exam prep, a different kind of competition is unfolding. At several Chinese universities, the most sought-after electives are no longer traditional academic offerings, but hands-on courses in cooking, woodworking, beadwork, and car maintenance. / Is cucumber water the newest restaurant flex (16:14)? On the show: Niu Honglin, Steve & Yushun.

Tell me the problem in three words. Well, hey there. Welcome back. The “Favorite Three” Listening Game Today I want to talk to you about something that was a communication tool and kind of a game. And it all centers around the number three. When my kids were younger, I used to play a game with them in the car. And the game was Favorite Three. And it was such a natural hit that we would use it at parties.. And it really is kind of a not only a cool icebreaker, but it’s sort of a demonstrator of how well people listen. It’s a game you can play with your staff and in meetings, too. If you have a staff meeting and you’re waiting, you can play Favorite Three. It kind of sharpens your mind a little bit in the process, too. So, here’s how this works. Favorite three basically means you pick your three favorite things. Someone asks you your favorite three things. I mean you can say what’s your favorite dog breed? What’s your favorite Italian food? And what is your favorite state? You go around the room and people answer. They don’t say well my favorite state is… No. In the order that they were asked they need to answer. Usually, there’s a long pause while people’s gears are turning. Seriously, try this. So, the person asking the question names the person who needs to answer and they start and go around in a circle. Many times people actually forget and they’ll say, “Well, wait, what was the second one?” It’s literally three things that you have to remember, but for some reason, for some people, it’s actually quite hard to keep track. So in the example that I just said, the next person would say hopefully husky pizza Colorado and then it would go to the next person and so forth. And those people are devoid of context. They just know the answers of the person in front of them. all the amazing things that we do in life, all the things that we can work through, reading entire novels and keeping track of screenplays and and all the complexities of your job, you may actually have difficulty with that. So, play it at your next event and tell me how it goes. Using Three Words for Conflict Resolution So, here’s the other thing centering around the number three. This helps in conflict resolution. And again, this is something that I used with my kids when there’s a conflict or when they had a conflict and there was a lot of back and forth. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of two people talking over each other and screaming and emotions and things like that. I would pick one to start and I would say, “Tell me the problem in three words.” That was it. And then the other person would go and tell me the problem in three words. And it’s really easy to figure out which person is stuck in their emotions and which person is just trying to convey a point. And it’s all because of the three words that they choose. And this is something you can do in your relationship. I mean, if you’ve been married 20 years, you can still do this and say, you know, tell me in three words. Now, people don’t like to have their communication filtered, adjusted, or controlled. So, it may be difficult for some personality types, especially in the heat of the moment, if you tell them, “No, you’re not allowed to communicate to me in sentences. You need to tell me that in three words.” So, use carefully and wisely. But even in your job, if you need to do conflict resolution, this may be really eye opening and you think, “Mark, they’re just going to take three verbs.” No, they’re really not. You’ll be shocked at which words they choose, especially the first time. And when they sort of get the gist of it, they’ll choose better words. They’ll say, “Ah, okay, I need to clarify.” M. And it’s that focus on the cerebral act of clarifying which allows for the emotions to leak out to go away because the focus is on communicating now instead of you know sarcasm or taking a shot at the other person and so forth. You don’t have the room for it. You literally have three words to use and don’t waste them. People aren’t going to use he is idiot. they’re going to choose other things. Okay? A Real-World HR Example: Manager vs. Creative And again, you may be thinking, “Well, this is kind of rudimentary, Mark.” No, it really is a different way to get your brains to communicate. Let me give you an example. Imagine you have a manager and someone who’s uh creative underneath them, someone who’s producing something and there’s there’s a conflict and there’s always a conflict between them and you don’t understand because they both for the most part are are fairly stellar in in their work and the work ethic, but you have them in your office because you’re the HR person and you get the creative to tell you what the problem is and the creative starts to go on and on and on about stuff and personalities and you go, “No, no, no, give me the three words.” And the creative thinks for a second and says work, frustration, recognition. Doesn’t that tell you a lot? Doesn’t that tell you a lot in just three words? The person is frustrated because their work isn’t recognized. They They’re not asking for a raise necessarily. They’re not even saying anything negative about their manager, but they’re frustrated because they work really hard. And so let’s say in this hypothetical situation, the manager goes, “Wow.” Because the manager probably didn’t even realize that, but he now has to answer himself and he thinks for a moment and he says, “And uh hours um uh documentation deadline.” And so when he may be asked to expand on that, it’s that the person under him isn’t really documenting their work. So it’s kind of hard to recognize what’s gone in on the back end. And perhaps that person also isn’t great about tracking their hours, which again makes it frustrating for the manager to say, “Well, I I don’t know how much time or effort you spent on this. I I don’t I don’t know.” Now, as an aside, this is usually a disconnection between the departments, departments like, you know, like sales and the people who actually accomplish the things the salespeople are selling or managers and creatives and all that stuff. Sometimes there’s a disconnection that really shouldn’t be there because they should have a better grounded understanding of what’s involved to create the product, whether it’s a a service or whether it’s a a tangible item. So that’s an aside. But do you see how forcing a minimum of words can make a huge difference in a conversation? How Word Scarcity Forces Clarity And I am sure that in the annals of HR and and and employee relations, there are tons of things like this. But I’m just telling you from a personal standpoint, I have used this and it’s been really amazing. In fact, I’ve used it on myself as I do with many things that I have tried to get myself to be concise about using just three words and three is really a cool number. It’s more than two and you know what? It’s less than four. So, right then out of the gate, it’s it’s a good number. So, my challenge for you would be to first of all see if you can facilitate conversation like this in a conflict. And again, if you if there are any bruises involved, I I I’m giving you a warning that if someone has really high emotions, this may not be the best thing to use at first. But it also may be good as a tool for you in a case where you are just sort of feeling kind of strung out and and frustrated and you don’t know where your head is on certain things. Now, you could use my UPS method and see the episode on UPS, but with this in mind, you can actually just use the three words to force yourself to just say, “Okay, I need to express this in three words.” And it’s pretty cool because typically one of the words is going to reflect a feeling, one is going to be an action, one might be a state of being, but you’re not going to get three words that basically mean the same because they’re so precious. And you’re going to choose you or they are going to choose words that really convey a lot of meaning or power because again scarcity creates this sort of thing. And you know when it comes to words and language and talking there’s not a lot of scarcity there. I myself force scarcity in this podcast. And that’s why we only have a minute left because I won’t let myself go over 10 for the most part. So, play the two games of three and let me know what the outcome is. I’d love to know the situation. Was it personal? Was it with your kids? Was it HR related? Was it business related? Did it actually help you to express yourself even in marketing materials in which you have a marketing material and you’re like, you know, there’s paragraphs here. This is too much. And I I want to inject this. There’s a very specific rule about presentations, PowerPoint, and so forth that people regularly break, and that is keep the text to a minimum, but people typically have paragraphs and and whole books up on the screen where just three words would make a big difference. Outro So, please try this out and let me know. And as always, I appreciate you listening. Take care.

In this episode, Clint has a conversation with Joel Schwartzberg, communication coach, public speaking expert, and author of “Get to the Point!” During the discussion, Joel shares why most leaders struggle to communicate clearly, how the inability to define a true point undermines impact, and what it takes to craft messages that inspire understanding and action.Drawing on his experience as a national champion public speaker and executive communications leader, Joel explains the difference between sharing information and making a point, why audiences remember only one key idea at a time, and how leaders can sharpen their messaging to drive results. The conversation explores practical frameworks like the “I believe that…” test and the X-Y structure to ensure communication connects with what audiences care about most.Joel also provides actionable guidance on improving emails, presentations, and everyday workplace communication, from writing better subject lines to using PowerPoint more effectively. Packed with relatable examples and practical tools, this episode offers a clear roadmap for communicating with purpose, clarity, and influence.This is the first part of a two-part conversation.Topics Covered:Joel's journey from national champion public speaker to executive communication coachWhy most people don't actually have a clear pointThe difference between sharing information and making an argumentThe “I believe that…” test for sharpening your messageHow the X-Y framework connects ideas to meaningful impactWhy poor communication costs businesses billionsHow to tailor your message to your audience's needsThe biggest mistakes leaders make in presentations and meetingsWhen to use email vs. chat vs. meetings for effective communicationHow PowerPoint slide titles can strengthen message clarityWhy repeating your point improves retention and influenceHow to eliminate weak language and make communication more specificLinks & Resources:Joel's website - https://www.joelschwartzberg.net/Joel's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelschwartzberg/Joel's book, “Get to the Point!” - https://amzn.to/3OsQqruClint's website - www.clintpadgett.comClint's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/clintpadgett/Clint's book, “How Teams Triumph” - https://amzn.to/3JWD2KaClint's company, Project Success Inc - https://projectsuccess.com/

Adrián Trucios (Airbag) cuenta cómo pasó de 350 rechazos a levantar capital y por qué el fundador de Starbucks se convirtió en su mentor.En este episodio aprenderás:- El sistema de fundraising para pasar de 350 fondos a 8 inversiones.- Cómo conseguir mentorías de alto nivel (el caso del fundador de Starbucks).- El pivote radical: De bloquear celulares a salvar vidas con data en flotas.- Cómo gestionar relaciones a largo plazo con inversionistas sin parecer desesperado.- La importancia de los "warm intros" y cómo conseguirlos en eventos.Frase clave:"Tú, desde que tienes un PowerPoint, tienes que saber que vas a cambiar el mundo." - Adrián TruciosCapítulos:00:00 - De pizzas en cono a fundar Airbag06:12 - La transición al mundo tecnológico y escalable10:48 - El pivote radical: De bloquear celulares a salvar vidas con data15:56 - Cómo el fundador de Starbucks se volvió mi mentor23:34 - De 350 fondos a 8 inversiones: El sistema de fundraising35:32 - Relaciones a largo plazo: No busques dinero, busca aliados47:31 - Cómo contactar inversionistas en eventos de networking57:38 - Cómo gestionar sesiones de mentoría de alto impactoInvitado:Adrián Trucios - Fundador y CEO de AirbagLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-trucios/Sígueme para más sobre innovación y startups:LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jaimersb/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaimersbWeb: https://www.jaimesotomayor.comEpisodio en YouTube: https://youtu.be/3NKMRiJSZ4k#AdrianTrucios #Airbag #StarbucksMentor #FundraisingLatAm #Startups #InnovacionSinBarreras #B2B

In this episode of Confessions of Supply Chain Executives, host Chris Walton sits down with Amir Khoshniyati, Vice President at Wiliot, to break down the five supply chain trends that will actually matter in 2026. Every January, supply chain executives make bold predictions. AI will transform everything. Automation will solve labor shortages. Real-time visibility will finally arrive. And by December, most of those predictions turn out to be wildly optimistic or completely off-target. But 2026 may be different. Retail is approaching a true convergence point where Physical AI, real-time item location, generative and agentic AI, grocery e-commerce acceleration, and mounting regulatory pressure are all colliding at the same time. The result is a potential restructuring of how supply chains operate. Drawing from his work with some of the world's largest retailers, including Walmart, Amir shares what is actually being deployed versus what is still sitting in PowerPoint decks, and why the real driver of change is not hype. It is quantified pain. This episode examines whether we are at a true inflection point and what executives must prioritize right now to avoid falling behind. Key Topics Covered: • Why 2026 could be a true supply chain inflection point • What “Physical AI” really means and how it differs from traditional IoT • Where adoption stands today, pilot purgatory or scaled deployment • The BLE vs. RFID debate and why it may not be either or • Why real-time item location is moving from nice to have to mission critical • How generative and agentic AI intersect with physical supply chain data • When AI agents may begin making autonomous inventory and fulfillment decisions • Why grocery e-commerce is a forcing function for real-time visibility • How perishability, waste, and margin pressure are reshaping tracking needs • The impact of FSMA and growing traceability mandates • Whether compliance will become a competitive advantage • The uncomfortable truth retailers may not want to hear about these trends If you are a supply chain executive with limited budget and bandwidth, this episode delivers a clear message. Start with your pain, quantify it, and build your visibility foundation first.

Last week, on the last episode of the series on the Presentation Skills Checklist, we covered how many slides to put into a PowerPoint Presentation. This week, our topic is "3 Simple Ways to Create Better PowerPoint Presentations."By the way, if you are using the techniques I outline on other episodes of the podcast, creating a PowerPoint presentation should be really easy. Basically, in a presentation, less is more.But on this episode, I give you my top three tips that will help you kill your next presentation. First, we cover how to design your presentation first, then create your slideshow. Next, I show you how to use examples from real-life to add credibility to the text on your slides. Ad then, finally, I show you how to create collateral content -- things like handouts -- that can help your audience understand and retain the content of your presentations better.Show Notes: 3 Simple Ways to Create Better PowerPoint Presentations(https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/three-simple-ways-to-create-better-powerpoint-presentations/)

This week, Melissa, Jill and Kelly are in full wedding prep mode — except there's just one tiny problem: Kelly still doesn't have a dress and Brooke's wedding is NEXT WEEK. Panic levels? High. Alteration options? Questionable.As the glam plans roll in (nails, hair, makeup schedules — the works), they reveal that Brooke may be the most prepared bride of all time… complete with a full PowerPoint presentation for the bridal party. Yes, really. From timelines to seating charts, she's running this wedding like a board meeting and we're honestly impressed.Meanwhile, the moms are counting down the days until they can escape the freezing weather, binge-watching the Olympic Games, and obsessively tracking Team USA's medal count. Jill, in particular, has entered her professional commentator era thanks to her full-blown pair skating obsession. And of course, we get into the Dance Moms tea. A listener asks the big question:Were Maddie — or any of the kids — actually brats in Season 1 of Dance Moms… or was it all editing?Plus, Melissa addresses the viral clip where she says she “doesn't know what it feels like to lose.” Was that real brat energy… or producer manipulation? Have a question for the moms? Leave a voice message at https://www.speakpipe.com/deardancemom and you might be part of a future show!Join us on Patreon for video, exclusive content, live chats and more! https://www.patreon.com/deardancemom Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does a rock legend who's been performing for 50+ years have to teach us about leadership? More than you'd think. Andy Freed has been to 95 Bruce Springsteen concerts. And somewhere along the way, he realized there's a reason they call him "the Boss"—and it's not just because he can put on a three-hour show at age 75. It's because Bruce Springsteen understands something most leaders miss: communication is leadership. And the way you communicate—your preparation, your energy, your intentionality—determines whether people follow you or just show up for the paycheck. Andy is the founder and CEO of Virtual, a company that works with some of the biggest organizations in the world (Google, Meta, Microsoft, Visa, MasterCard) to help them solve multi-company collaboration challenges. And what he's discovered is that even the biggest companies struggle with the same thing: bad meetings, ineffective communication, and leaders who don't realize that every moment is a performance. In this conversation, Andy breaks down his Think, Feel, Do framework for effective communication, explains why most meetings are "business karaoke," and shares what leaders can learn from the way Bruce Springsteen prepares for a show, energizes an audience, and makes every band member feel like the most important musician on earth. What You'll Learn: Why communication is leadership—and why you can't be an effective leader without the ability to communicate well The Think, Feel, Do framework: how to prepare for any communication by asking what you want your audience to think, feel, and do by the end Why most leaders communicate thinking about themselves, not their audience—and how to flip that script The efficiency vs. effectiveness trap in meetings: why leaders focus on doing all things fast instead of doing the right things well Why bad meetings happen (hint: it starts with bad preparation)—and how to make meetings actually useful The "business karaoke" problem: why PowerPoint has become the karaoke track of corporate America and how to use it more effectively What Bruce Springsteen does at the end of every show that creates loyalty and longevity in his band (and why leaders need to do the same) William James's insight: the deepest human need is the need to be appreciated—deeper than hunger, sex, or money How to inspire loyalty and retention: making people feel seen and appreciated in small, consistent ways Why technology makes communication easier but worse—and how to be more intentional despite the ease of Zoom, Teams, and PowerPoint The AI revolution: why it's bigger than the internet was, and how leaders need to engage with it (hint: just play with it for an hour or two every day) Why getting people back to the office matters for building trust and relationships—and what's lost when the only interaction is ineffective Zoom meetings The "crowd at chow time" principle: how people learn the unwritten rules of business by being in proximity to others Why every moment is a performance for leaders: if you're looking at your phone in a meeting, you haven't said anything—and yet you've said everything The difference between good leaders and exceptional ones: exceptional leaders think about the audience first and focus on creating more leaders, not protecting their fiefdom Why energy is vital in leadership: if you want your team at 95%, you better show up at 100%—because they'll never exceed your energy level The "Born to Run" lesson: Bruce has played it 1,878 times and gives it his all every time—because you need to hear a message seven times to remember it, but most leaders lose interest after two or three How intentional leadership compounds: when you're deliberate about where you invest your energy, every moment counts Key Insight: Nobody cares about the information you're presenting more than you do. If you come in at 70% energy and expect your team to respond at 95%, you're setting yourself up for failure. Great leaders understand that communication isn't just about what you say—it's about how you prepare, how you show up, and whether you're thinking about what your audience needs to hear (not just what you want to say). And here's the truth: the concepts in this conversation aren't complicated. The ways to go from good to great on communication are within your grasp. You just have to want it, value it, and be intentional about it. It won't happen by accident. Reflection Questions: When you communicate, are you thinking about yourself or your audience? What do you want people to think, feel, and do at the end of your next meeting or presentation? Are you showing up with the energy you expect from your team? Are you creating more leaders, or protecting your leadership fiefdom? What would you prioritize if you had to be more intentional with your leadership energy? Resources Mentioned: Lead Like the Boss: Leadership Lessons from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band  Virtual (Andy's company): helping organizations build multi-company consortia and solve collaboration challenges Connect with Andy Instagram: afreed29 YouTube: @5minuteswithandy Email: Info@andyfreed.com About Andy Freed: Andy Freed is a leadership expert, CEO, and communication strategist who has spent decades helping leaders and organizations improve how they connect, collaborate, and get things done. As the founder and CEO of Virtual, Andy works with some of the world's largest companies—including Google, Meta, Microsoft, Visa, and MasterCard—to build multi-company consortia that solve complex challenges in areas like interoperability and security. Before founding Virtual, Andy worked in politics, helping candidates run for president, governor, and senator, where he learned firsthand the power of effective communication under pressure. When he transitioned to the private sector, he brought those insights with him, discovering that even the biggest companies struggle with the same fundamental problems: bad meetings, poor communication, and leaders who don't realize that every moment is a performance. Andy is also a devoted Bruce Springsteen fan who has attended 95 concerts and counting. In his book Lead Like the Boss: Leadership Lessons from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Andy distills decades of leadership experience and insights from watching the Boss into practical, actionable frameworks that any leader can use to improve their communication, energize their teams, and create more leaders.  

In this wild round of Real News or Fake News on The Jubal Show, the headlines sound too crazy to be true… but are they? Did a “free burrito” billboard really cause massive traffic jams in Chicago? Is YouTube’s very first video now displayed inside the Victoria and Albert Museum? And did a Japanese Olympic figure skater lose her gold medal after an outrageous PowerPoint presentation?

Send me a messageAI's energy demand isn't a future problem. It's straining grids today. And most companies aren't ready.In this episode, I'm joined by Beatrice Clark, Vice President of Sustainability and Social Impact at Turtle and Hughes, a North American electrical distributor and systems integrator working at the sharp edge of the energy transition. We unpack what surging AI and data centre growth means for infrastructure, resilience, and real-world decarbonisation - not in theory, but on the ground.You'll hear why energy demand from AI is now “on the tip of everybody's tongue”, and how utilities and independent producers are scrambling to keep up. We dig into the tension between diesel reliability and microgrid ambition, and why hybrid redundancy may be the uncomfortable truth of the transition. You might be surprised to learn how fleet electrification looks when you're moving heavy loads across unpredictable routes. It's not ideology. It's maths, logistics, and physics.We also explore double materiality, Scope 3 collaboration, and why sustainability only works when it strengthens operational performance. Net zero isn't achieved in PowerPoint. It's delivered through infrastructure, policy, and accountability across the value chain.If you care about climate tech, grid transformation, emissions reduction, and what decarbonisation actually looks like inside energy-intensive businesses, this conversation cuts through the noise.Listen now to hear how Beatrice Clark and Turtle and Hughes are navigating the hard realities of the energy transition.Podcast subscribersI'd like to sincerely thank this podcast's amazing subscribers: Anita Krajnc Cecilia Skarupa Ben Gross Jerry Sweeney Andreas Werner Stephen Carroll Roger Arnold And remember you too can Subscribe to the Podcast - it is really easy and hugely important as it will enable me to continue to create more excellent Climate Confident episodes like this one, as well as give you access to the entire back catalog of Climate Confident episodes.ContactIf you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - get in touch via direct message on Twitter/LinkedIn. If you liked this show, please don't forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover the show. CreditsMusic credits - Intro by Joseph McDade, and Outro music for this podcast was composed, played, and produced by my daughter Luna Juniper

On this episode, we define gout and describe its clinical presentations, etiologies, and underlying pathophysiology. We discuss current guidelines and evidence-based treatment strategies for managing gout. We also compare and contrast the efficacy, safety profiles, and appropriate use of acute and chronic gout therapies, lifestyle modifications, and patient monitoring strategies. Cole and I are happy to share that our listeners can claim ACPE-accredited continuing education for listening to this podcast episode! We have continued to partner with freeCE.com to provide listeners with the opportunity to claim 1-hour of continuing education credit for select episodes. For existing Unlimited (Gold) freeCE members, this CE option is included in your membership benefits at no additional cost! A password, which will be given at some point during this episode, is required to access the post-activity test. To earn credit for this episode, visit the following link below to go to freeCE's website: https://www.freece.com/ If you're not currently a freeCE member, we definitely suggest you explore all the benefits of their Unlimited Membership on their website and earn CE for listening to this podcast. Thanks for listening! If you want to support the podcast, check out our Patreon account. Subscribers will have access to all previous and new pharmacotherapy lectures as well as downloadable PowerPoint slides for each lecture. If you purchase an annual membership, you'll also get a free digital copy of High-Powered Medicine 3rd edition by Dr. Alex Poppen, PharmD. HPM is a book/website database of summaries for over 150 landmark clinical trials.You can visit our Patreon page at the website below:  www.patreon.com/corconsultrx We want to give a big thanks to Dr. Alex Poppen, PharmD and High-Powered Medicine for sponsoring the podcast..  You can get a copy of HPM at the links below:  Purchase a subscription or PDF copy - https://highpoweredmedicine.com/ Purchase the paperback and hardcover - Barnes and Noble website We want to say thank you to our sponsor, Pyrls. Try out their drug information app today. Visit the website below for a free trial: www.pyrls.com/corconsultrx We also want to thank our sponsor Freed AI. Freed is an AI scribe that listens, prepares your SOAP notes, and writes patient instructions. Charting is done before your patient walks out of the room. You can try 10 notes for free and after that it only costs $99/month. Visit the website below for more information: https://www.getfreed.ai/  If you have any questions for Cole or me, reach out to us via e-mail: Mike - mcorvino@corconsultrx.com Cole - cswanson@corconsultrx.com

Today on PowerPoint, Pastor Jack Graham begins the series “Full-Throttle Faith,” examining the supernatural movement that swept through the early church as recorded in the book of Acts. Pastor Graham teaches that what we see in Acts is the pathway to the power and provision of passion by the work of the Holy Spirit. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/395/29?v=20251111

On today's PowerPoint, Pastor Jack Graham shares the powerful story of Samson. In his message “Beyond Failure,” he warns us of the risk we take when we willingly step outside of God's will. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/395/29?v=20251111

Re-releasing a DAT listener favorite! Dr. Dave Moghadam joins Kiera to discuss getting your hygiene team on the same page and at the same point of understanding. He shares his approach, and goes deeper into the following: Gather all information and establish a flow of procedure Hold a longer meeting for your hygiene team to review and add their own ideas Allow a period of follow-up for questions Transition into monthly or quarterly meetings to continually update Dr. Moghadam utilized the Dental A-Team's hygiene course to help him come up with this approach to calibrate his hygienist team. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: speaker-0 (00:05) Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A Team podcast. I'm your host, Kiera Dent, and I have this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective, because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants where we have traveled to over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yep, we don't just understand you, we are you.   Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental. And I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress, and create A-Teams. Welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast.   Hello Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And you guys, I am so excited to bring back on one of my favorite guests, one of your favorite guests, somebody who is in the real life with you guys. He is a practicing dentist, rocks our office. I've known him for quite a while. And he's a man that creates systems, implements and executes. And today I'm jazzed to bring him back on. Dr. Dave Moghadam, how are you today?   speaker-1 (01:13) Wonderful, Kiera. Thanks for having me back. appreciate it. It's gonna be a blast as always.   speaker-0 (01:17) It's   gonna be great if you guys have not heard his other ones we've talked about we've gone from acquiring practices Bringing on associate doctors. We've talked about team quarterly calibrations and now we're gonna dive into something that you started I actually think you started it maybe COVID maybe you're doing it pre-covid ⁓ But but it's going to be diving into hygiene calibration, which I think is so relevant. I mean right now hi, Janice are like more Harder to find than unicorns in my opinion. They're like real real tricky   But we just know that they're real. I think it's a great time actually to bring this in. So Dave, kind of walk us through, like I said, you're practicing, Dennis, this is your real life. This is what you're doing really in your practice, which is why I love having on the podcast. So kind of take us away on this hygiene calibration, how you even got the idea for it, what spurred that. I'd love to hear.   speaker-1 (02:08) Yeah, so I think as far as like, how did this come about? What was the situation? Everything like that. Some of the key things that were happening were I had focused a lot on a lot of the rest of the practice, like a lot on systemize this, do this, let's grow and everything else was just really just taking off. But the one thing year after year after year that was kind of like fairly consistent, not really like, my God, really, you know, growing was the hygiene department.   So I started to look into things of, how can we just improve? And I always feel like if we improve some of the other basic stuff, the numbers fall. So I think a lot of the things that I was ⁓ looking to do was just getting some consistency, make sure everybody's on the same page. At that point, had gotten, yeah, this was about two years ago. So we had just gotten a new hygienist to join our team who's been with us ⁓ since then.   We had another hygienist who was only there a day a week at that time. So it was kind of a little difficult to try and get everything all buttoned up. the way I went about it was one, I first took the big chunk of what we had in our operations manual, such as protocols, expectations, standards, record keeping, all that stuff. And then the other thing is I   contacted you and I said, Hey, what do you have for this? Because we're all going to be on our butts for a while when the world closed down for a little bit. we went through the hygiene course. I took some, some pearls from there. tried to organize things a little bit more. Uh, we did a little bit of coaching with, Tiffany as well, uh, virtually then. So we basically, the, outline for this, you know, it was basically protocols standards, you know, what   ⁓ record keeping, know, what if you encounter some hiccups with patients, you know, as far as, know, those types of situations, ⁓ you know, what's the appointment flow like, what's the communication, like what are the key points that we want to hit on, ⁓ teeing up the doctor, pre-teeing up the doctor, which I'll get into in a little bit. ⁓ And then, you know, a lot of this is kind of reviewing our, basically chunking out our routes.   is very detailed and that kind of like highlights a lot of this stuff. And then we get into you know some basis of treatment planning, incorporating some bundles which is a concept that you guys helped us you know incorporate and bring in, and then just talking about some of the other basic stuff like how do we talk about fluoride, you know why is it important to ask for referrals, and then you know financial discussions which basically means just don't have the financial.   speaker-0 (04:56) Right. Yes, I love it. Well, and I love it. Something I wanted to point out is I feel like there's actually a ton of opportunities all around us. It's just, we willing to see them and then actually execute on them? So you saw COVID as a time we're all hanging out. We've got nothing to do. This is the area that I haven't spent any time on. So like, let's make this rock solid. And I think there's so many opportunities like that. Hopefully not another pandemic shutdown, but there.   all around us all the time. So Dave, let's actually deep dive if you don't mind on a lot of these topics. I know that's kind what we came today for just so people get an idea of how you calibrated your hygiene team on this. Like you gave the resources. Yes guys, if you want to get our hygiene course, we're constantly updating it. It's getting ready to move to all videos. Once you purchase the course, you have it for life. definitely   speaker-1 (05:43) You're kidding, right? I wonder who gave that suggestion.   speaker-0 (05:46) That was Dave, which is great because I came in with steal of a deal and said like give me honest feedback and then I felt bad your team was going through as we were rampantly   speaker-1 (05:56) That's really going to button it up. ⁓   speaker-0 (05:59) Good   good. So we're working on videos working on audio, but we're constantly updating and innovating it and asking for your guys's feedback So if that's helpful for you fantastic, like Dave said we did do virtual calls with his hygiene team very spot specific but kind of like walk us down through this Of like what exactly does this calibration look like you listed those items kind of deep dive with us on it. Yeah   speaker-1 (06:19) Yeah,   that was just a lot of verbal diarrhea there. I just kind of threw it out there. So we'll break it down. We'll go section by section. Yeah. is what happens. So basically, as far as protocols and standards and things like that, I mean, that's just kind of the basics of what are we expected to do. It's kind of like if you think of onboarding, it's repetitive. It's a review. But kind of like, what do you expect to do in the morning, during the appointment, at the end of the day, kind of going through, making sure everybody knows what the   all that looks like, making sure that they're very clear on like what's expected for the end of day sheets that, you know, that they take pictures of and turn in every day, all that stuff. You know, record keeping, you know, how often are we doing, you know, probing, how often are we taking x-rays, you know, what kind of photos do we expect? And then as far as like pickups that relate to that, I mean, we, I think of it in a positive way, half our patient base is 60 and a   I love it. It's a really a wonderful type of practice, but in over the past five years of, ⁓ know, initially early on transitioning and taking over a practice like that, and then taking in other practices like that, we get a lot of stuff where people think that the X-ray head is gonna melt their faces. And, you know, because of that, it's kind of like, well, let's figure out a way, what's gonna be our kind of standardized way of how we're gonna address these concerns.   What are we going to go ahead and do? So we like a little pamphlet basically that shows some examples of things, why we take x-rays, what could be missed, all that stuff. Very simple, very straightforward. Has a little chart that we just kind of found somewhere on Google about radiation, the mouse, like that. And they kind of have their set kind of like, hey, we go through all that stuff. And if it kind of becomes a push versus shove moment, they have to come grab me, which I don't really love, but it is what it is.   And then we kind of go from there. So that's not to get sidetracked, but that's kind of, you know, one of those things. Like when we have situations where things may not necessarily go smoothly, it doesn't matter what the actual answer is. Everybody just has to know it.   speaker-0 (08:23) Right, right. No, I love that. And I was going to say, Dave, based on our last podcast we did, you know, they've to come get you maybe throw that into your calibration role play. What do we say to these patients? ⁓ But I really do.   speaker-1 (08:36) I don't necessarily want to encourage.   I like to do dental treatment and sit at my desk and drink water.   speaker-0 (08:43) I definitely agree and that's what I feel like most dentists feel. So I like that. So with that, I like that you do that. So how does this kind of hygiene calibration look? Do you do it consistently? Is it like once a year that you do it? Did the hygienist help create it with you? They brought up the issues that they were coming with. I kind of break it down. Like if I'm a brand new office, I don't really know. I want to do this. I'm hearing you do this. What are kind of the steps to be able to actually get this into my practice and start running it?   speaker-1 (09:10) Yeah, so I think the big thing is I think you gotta just like deep dive into it, like do it once over whether it's like one really long appointment or like maybe a couple of weeks of a couple of hours. I think it's a lot to try and like just be like, yeah, you're gonna like remember all of this stuff. Like even if we do every three months, stuff like that. ⁓ And right after we did it, we were doing weekly hygiene meetings.   So we kind of will like chunk out, you know, little pieces of this to kind of get a little bit more granular or kind of talk about how we improve doing weekly meetings is a lot, it just was really, and we were just being very, very inconsistent with it. So I was kind of like, ⁓ like it's Tuesday and yesterday was Monday and Monday was really hard. And now I'm really tired and you know, Dr. Seth's not here today and I'm around all morning. So you know what? I just feel like,   not doing this at once. That's what would happen. So now we basically have at least one scheduled each month and a second one that's kind of like floating. Where so that one we're going to no matter what kind of go through some of this. And then if there's another topic that we kind of want to dial, you know, dive into a little bit more, that's at the second one. It makes it a lot more manageable to go ahead and do things that way. I think when you chunk it out like that, these are not like 20, 30 minutes. You know I'm saying? Like, you know, after everybody's kind of   had some time to relax before we're to start to see our patients again. But I think the first thing is really making a big, you know, let's get all the information organized together. Let's go through it all. Let's make sure somebody's on the same page. ⁓ I would assume, you know, as we're going to hopefully be onboarding, we'll find an onboarding another hygienist, you know, over the next several months, it would be something that would be a big chunk of the onboarding process. But I think, you know,   we'll get to it. I mean, there's a lot, a lot more to go through, but I think having done this for a while and I realized sometimes when you kind of have this, even if somebody, if they've helped make it and you're kind of just driving those points home sometimes, you know, like we talked about in our podcast, things will get stale or there's a way to do it better. And I really have felt that, you know, uh, over time, if I've in the times that I've tried to really, you know, ask for feedback and listen in an environment that doesn't seem so   confrontational, know, hygienists and all my team members really sometimes bring these just like amazing, wonderful ideas that I never really would have thought of about. And that's really how I think it really kind of starts to really grow and evolve. And that's hard because, you know, a lot of times everybody, every team member is different. And we have some that are a little...   touchy about things. And a lot of times I try and explain that, you know, everything that we were talking about here is not like, Hey, you did like a crap job at this. It's kind of like, Hey, like, I want to try and see how we can make this a better situation for our patients, for you, for me, is there a way that we can maybe try this to see if this is better? Like what suggestions do you have? want to make sure you know, overall,   That's the thing, because I always am that type of person that's like, let's make this better, better, better. Sometimes people think it's like, hey, you're doing a not good job. like, no, you're doing a great job. I just don't sit still. And that's kind of a problem. I'm sorry it comes across that. So I've gotten my office manager a little bit more involved as far as like, you know, she's in the meetings as well and asking some more of these questions that I think it's led to a little bit less of a like.   confrontation, a lot of this confrontation, but less, you know, heated kind of environment. That's a great idea has come out of things here.   speaker-0 (12:53) Well, I think it's because you're also getting into that. Yeah, you're also calibrating with them. And so it becomes more of a learning versus a dictation. And that's where I think the freedom is the freedom to come up with ideas, the freedom to give that feedback when it's when it's coming together to calibrate and to connect versus judging critique. And so I feel like you did a good job of spinning it getting everyone there. So if I'm breaking this down for an office, it sounds like one.   gather all the information of like kind of the flow of the procedure. Like what is it, what's involved in that? Thinking of, mean, Dave gave you a really great checklist real quick of those items. And then from there, it sounds like set up a time, maybe over lunch, maybe do a longer one to two hour meeting where you kind of have the outline of it, go through it all. I did this with an office that I was consulting with and I literally gave them about an hour and a half. They went through the whole process, looked at everything, added pieces in. And then the next day we followed up, it was very short.   Just to make sure like what questions that they have Then they can roll into like monthly meetings on this or or every quarter just kind of calibrating reviewing checking to see But I thought you also brought up a good point of making sure that once it is solidified Which again duns better than perfect because guys it will never be perfect. It will constantly updated So don't spend your next three and sixty five days trying to perfect this darn thing like get it done So it's at least something for when you onboard people and then continually update it as well. So   Dave, you had said there's more that you want to dive into. So take it away. I'm not going to stop you. Give some examples.   speaker-1 (14:20) No,   for sure. mean, there's a lot. we've gotten talked about, you know, protocols, standards, record keeping stuff, you know, kind of any hiccups like in that, you know, so making sure everybody knows what the expectations are, you know, what to do if there's there's pushback there. The next thing we kind of will dive into is the flow of the appointment. You know, every office is different in how they want to go ahead and do things. You know, I always feel and I'm not the best at this, even though I preach it all the time.   that if you wait until like the last five, 10 minutes of the appointment and you sell somebody like, hey, you have all this stuff that's wrong inside your head, like you just run out the door. So I always feel that in the first 20 minutes, should be, records should be, ⁓ all gathered together, hygienists should start reviewing everything that they potentially see as a problem, kind of warming things up in a sense with the patients there.   and the doctor in that sometime in that next 20 minute window, ideally, somewhere between 20 after 30 after can get in there, talk about what the situation is. And then this time the patient has more time where they can ask questions, go over things. The front office has the heads up if it's something that's involved. Although a lot of times, honestly, if it's more than, it kind of moved more towards this.   If it's more than a couple of things and somebody is going to be in a sense spending more than 5,000 bucks, may want to set up even a small appointment just to re-review things, you know, with the doctor or somebody upfront or something like that. Cause it's all, it's a lot that they can. And honestly, a lot of times, you know, five, 10 minutes doesn't really do the justice that some people will need to really understand what the problem situation is and really own that.   speaker-0 (16:10) Right.   speaker-1 (16:11) comes   across as kind of like, my God, they want like, you know, 10 grand from me. I don't even know what the hell's going on.   speaker-0 (16:17) Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. No, you're exactly right. And I think something I love that you just talked about on that is you actually helped your team make better decisions without you always having to answer it by saying, hey, I want a consult if it's over 5,000, this is where we should be setting up a consult. I literally just had an office ask me, hey, Kiera, when do you recommend setting up a consult? And I'm like, it's doctor dependent. Because some doctors are presenting 30, 40, 50,000 and they're like, those are fine. It's just laissez faire.   Other dentists are saying, like, no, over, you know, five grand, 10 grand, let's bring them back for a consult. But by having this, like, just expectations and helping your team know the parameters, they can then make a lot smarter decisions moving forward. Independent and confident.   speaker-1 (17:03) There may be other people out there who are very slick and can get somebody to give them $30,000 in three minutes. That's just, that's.   speaker-0 (17:10) Right, right, exactly. Exactly.   speaker-1 (17:12) But   at the end of the day, wouldn't want it to be like that. The way we kind of do everything is like, let's really kind of make sure somebody understands something, makes feels comfortable with the decisions that they're making. Because I would much rather not do anything if somebody doesn't feel comfortable with it than do it and have an issue.   speaker-0 (17:29) For sure, absolutely.   speaker-1 (17:31) So I mean, think that's a newer thing that we're kind of moving towards. I think we kind of ballpark it in a sense. Sometimes it's not even a financial thing. Let's say somebody has been going to the same dentist for a long time, they show up and then it's like, my God, there's like, know, 16 surfaces of decay. And like, it's just like, okay, well, yeah, this is not gonna be a two minute conversation. This is like, hey, I see a lot of things going on. Let me highlight them for you, but let's have you come back and let's really talk about, you know,   what the options are and if something really involved I encourage them to bring a friend or a family member or a second set of years somebody that they can rely on as well because it's a lot of information you it can be overwhelming.   speaker-0 (18:12) Wow.   Right. Exactly. But I think like overarching big picture on this is you got your hygiene team calibrated with you. You got them because at the end of the day, I feel like hygienists tee up so much for the doctors. They're the ones who spend so much time with these patients. Doctors run in, run out, like you said. I also love that for you. And again, this is doctor preference. Some doctors don't like to do exams when they're not polished and clean, but I like your actually really love your thought process on it. You're right. If you come to an exam,   Lastly, right before that patient leaves, there is no time for them to ask questions to anybody but the front desk. And oftentimes if they have a lot of questions, they're out the door if they plan to be there for an hour. Whereas if they had exam can be in the middle of the appointment, they can ask questions to that hygienist. That hygienist can re-emphasize treatment as well, helping them see like, this is why, can you fill this catch with my instrument here? Like this is what Dr. Mogadam was talking about. So I really love that philosophy and I love that   Again, I think what I'm pulling from this that I hope a lot of other offices are hearing is that you are giving them confidence to make decisions independent of you that are in a line with the direction you want the practice to go. And when people have confidence, they know how to win the day, they've helped co-create it with you, they know how to give the patient the best experience, that gives team members freedom. That gives team members so much, like, just...   just help and greatness that they can do. So I really, really love that you brought that up and how you calibrated your hygiene team. Any other thoughts you have on it, Dave?   speaker-1 (19:43) other thing that I would mention that it's kind of beneficial if I actually get off my butt and show up at the time that I'm supposed to is let's say somebody has something that's not like, my God, over the top, like, you know, taking out a tooth, graphing it, placing an implant, restoring it, lot of in that. And we have like explosion codes in open dental, but somebody still has to kind of organize it. And then I always want that double checking kind of, you know.   What are we anticipating that their insurance may help them with all that stuff, kind of doing the breakdown. So, oh, know, a lot of times if it's something a little bit more involved, we don't need to bring somebody back though. I'll just walk up front and just say, hey, you know, we're doing this, this and this for Mrs. Jones. Just make sure you have that ready. So it's a much quicker, easier checkout process and just immediately get them scheduled. know, anything beyond like a couple of things, I usually make an effort to walk up there, give them a heads up and, you know, sit at my computer for a minute or two.   a fish, not a   speaker-0 (20:38) For sure. I love it. And again, I think it's important like guys, Dr. Dave here is telling you like this is what he prefers. This is his style. This is his flow. This is the vibe he likes to have and he's been able to create it in his practice. I will tell you from a team member's perspective and I'll be all I want my doctor super happy. That's literally what makes me so happy. So if I know that Dr. Dave wants to go drink his coffee and wants me to take care of everything else and he's given me the parameters of what to do. Awesome. I'm going to take it on.   If I know Dr. Dave's a dentist who doesn't want to let go, I'm probably going to push him a little bit and remind him he should let go because I got this for him. But at the end of the day, I'm going to do what I can to make him super happy because I know when my doctor's happy, that's one, what I'm there to do as an assistant, as a front office. I'm there to help my doctor's lives be so simple and easy and also to give our patients the best experience. So I just love like you, you looped it all together. You gave the parameters, you co-created with them.   and then you, now you get to have the life that you want to have. Go drink your coffee before seeing your patients, whatever it's needed, because then you also probably have a much smoother day that you look forward to. You probably enjoy dentistry a lot more, which means you're probably going to be a better diagnoser. You're probably going to be better to our patients, probably do better clinical because you are happier. You've got it set. We're able to all flow and gel, which is how the whole practice can move smoother.   speaker-1 (22:00) definitely. And not to sidetrack us, I'm going to forget if I mention it now. could set something up another time to kind of talk about scheduling protocols as far as how to remember to put borders together for bigger procedures that are multi-step and even also actually creating a schedule where everybody's going to be happy. Because there's the concept of block scheduling, but there's also the concept of what we started doing. I mentioned this to you a little while ago where we schedule based on the types of   procedures that we want to do, not necessarily financial values and stuff like that. And just like with most things that I do, that's not something that I learned myself or created out of thin air. You know, it was something that I heard in other podcasts that I love. They call it in their terms, they call it priority. You know, creating priorities for the types of dentistry that you want to do, which in my mind is way better. You know, I always gear towards things of like,   How do we want to go ahead and make things a better experience for our patients? How do we want to do more of the types of dentistry that we want to do rather than like we're chasing this magic number at the end of the day? Because as for myself, for my team, I know that doesn't really push the needle. But when we kind of talk about all the steps of what's going to get us there, all the stuff that the numbers go up and down, it's good. And then we keep the lights on and we continue to grow and we help more people and employ more.   speaker-0 (23:19) I love it. I love it. And I'm so glad that you said that and I agree. I think that'd be a really fun podcast to dive into. Because again, scheduling, and I love hearing it from a doctor's perspective, because I will harp on this all day long and say a schedule that you want is actually the best schedule for your patients. Because you're happier, you deliver better dentistry. And when you guys have those boundaries in there, it's so much happier for everybody. So I definitely want to dive into that. I also want to dive into our IT podcast as well, which will be a real fun one.   But to wrap up on hygiene calibration, how often, Dave, do you recalibrate with your hygiene team?   speaker-1 (23:58) So it's not something that we've done. It's just mostly because we do our meetings. So we kind of loop around on areas that are kind of falling through the cracks a little bit and then expanding on other teams. And a lot of times, you know, we'll get, ⁓ because of what we've talked about where we have like these discussions, ⁓ we'll incorporate some other great things. like we were kind of at certain times where things were getting a little bit lost in the shuffle as far as like, consistently doing probing at the times that we want to or basically having the ⁓   the appropriate codes in for when we're checking the patients out and you something gets lost in the shuffle of the handoff and this and that. So one of the hygienists thought of a great idea of, why don't we create just a dummy code for probing as well? And then, know, when then we talk about how like, you know, when you're creating your next appointment, put everything in that's going to be there, you know, put in put in the probing, put in whatever x-rays are necessary, put it all there. And then when you're doing you're basically you're setting up for the morning huddle.   in six months, it's very easy. All that stuff is basically there. And then we can start focusing on some of the stuff that I want to focus more on as far as like this stuff that actually relates to the patients, what's going on with them, their lives, because everybody can read the schedule, you know? So if that part is not important. Yeah. Yeah. Side note, I don't really love our morning puzzles. That's something we're going to work   speaker-0 (25:18) That's the next calibration one there Dave. So don't worry. got lots of tips on morning huddle I've revamped those many times and many practices, but I like it. ahead   speaker-1 (25:30) Yeah, I think getting back to some of the other things that we kind of talk about aside from, you know, appointment flow and everything like that. A lot of what we want the, you know, to all talk about, we have a nice route. So if it kind of goes over, like these are all the things we're checking. So, you know, that makes kind of teeing up the doctor pretty, pretty easy there for the most part. What I wanted to mention about pre-teeing up the doctor is let's say you get another doctor in the practice and it's   it's the first time, it's the second time, it's the third time, whatever time it is, people are going to be like, who is this human being that is walking in the door? So, you know, I think really, you know, taking a second and making sure that, you know, the hygienist know, you know, when they know it's going to be that doctor doing the exam, they know what to say. So what we kind of scripted out here is, you know, we've been fortunate enough to continue to grow as a practice to make sure that we spend enough quality time with each patient.   You know, Dr. So-and-so has joined our team. We're happy that we found another great doctor who shares our philosophies to join us and help take care of our patients. I'm so excited for you to meet them. I love it. know, something like that ahead of time is disarming. It sets everything up. It shows that we have, you know, confidence in this other person who's joined our team, that it's not a second rate situation and they're being pushed to the side. I love And then, yeah.   speaker-0 (26:55) Well, and something else that I want to point out is Dave, you have this all on a PowerPoint. You actually shared it with me, which I appreciate a ton. and something I love about is you've got pictures in there, you've got verbiage in there, you've got links in there and you update it, but that's a very quick, easy onboarding packet as well to give a new hygienist joining your team. It's also very quick for you to update it. And then there's no question of what is that? And so, and I also love that you guys use the route slip. I think that's a pro tip. If you guys aren't doing that open dental.   This is only for our open dental offices. There might be some others, Dentrix and Eaglesoft. Sorry, Charlie, you're out. But you can actually edit your route slips and you can put these questions in there. So a lot of the things like I'm big on not depending on human memories. I think the human brain is brilliant. I also think a lot of times in practices we try to implement new behaviors, but it takes quite a while for that new behavior to actually take off. So constantly thinking of if you want this to be hygiene checklist.   how could you make a quick checklist? If you can't put it on your route slip, you can create a laminated checklist that they check off for you for every patient. Some offices who work in Dentrix and Eagle Soft, they literally have their hygiene checklist printed on one piece of paper and then on the backside of it, that's where they print their route slips. So lots of ways to get creative with this. But what it sounds like you've done, Dave, is you went through the philosophies with your hygienist, you had them help co-create it, you've given them the parameters so you have a great schedule.   And then we also put into play a way for them not to forget. And that's, think, a key piece to success. And then you're continually talking about this in your quarterly meeting. So I would say for offices wanting to do this one, just start, like start right down every piece, get information, learn, get your hygienist together and get it all put together. Again, Dave, I love that you put it in a PowerPoint. Two, make sure that everybody's aligned. Three, add to it, have a set cadence of when you'll do it. Are you going to do it on a quarterly calibration?   Are you going to do it once a year where you review it, make sure it's up to date. But that's where oftentimes these great systems, these great protocols come into play, but fall off the bandwagon because we don't have a set cadence to do it. So Dave, I love it. I love you guys like breaking it down. And I'd say for all those offices wanting to do it, go for it. Reach out to Dr. Dave. He's awesome. start though, he gave you a really great list. Read, listen to this podcast, write it down. He gave you a lot of step-by-steps. know that's hours and hours of work that he put into this.   Lots of resources, lots of time that you guys already have a jumpstart. So take what he's given you, execute on it, and have a really calibrated hygiene team. So Dave, any last thoughts? I love what you've done. Thank you for sharing. It's always fun. You have so many great ideas that you love to share.   speaker-1 (29:34) I mean, I think there's a lot more that we could dive into. I think some of the other key takeaways is, I mean, working with somebody like yourself or other people, they can kind of give you some more of these ideas. Like we wouldn't have thought about kind of bundling procedures, things like that, trying to make things a little bit more clear overall. ⁓ Other key things as far as,   new patient blocks, lot of these key principles, all these other things, incorporating them and making sure that everybody's on the same page. Because we started to do that, didn't really have a discussion with the hygiene team. They started just not, you know, regarding or understanding that and putting things in. Then it's a whole big to do in a sense to try and reorganize the schedule there too. So one, if you're going to continue to learn and grow and incorporate new things, one, I encourage it and you should, but you should probably talk to everybody and not forget to do that.   speaker-0 (30:28) Amen, I do it all the time guilty Guilty people like care you forgot. I'm like, yeah There's like seven other people attached to this decision and I forgot to share with all of you and Dave Thank you for that agreed if we can help you guys I know Dave you reached out to us for resources. We also did virtual training with your team. We come to your practice So if there are ways this is something that you guys want help getting kicked off the ground by all means Please reach out to us. You can email us. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com   this is literally what we are made to do. This is what we love to do is where we are passion lies. and just kind of being that outside, think outside the box, giving ideas to, to make your life easier and more efficient. So Dave, as always, I appreciate you. Thanks for being on our podcast today. Thanks for sharing your ideas. You're just a wealth of knowledge. So thank you. All right guys, that wraps it up. Go execute. Don't just take this knowledge. Think it's a great idea, but actually execute, stick it in your planner, in your schedule, on your calendar, wherever you need to.   so you actually make it happen because you are always just one decision away from a completely different life. All right,   always, thank you for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.   That wraps it up for another episode of the Dental A Team Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.  

On this episode, we discuss osteoarthritis and describe its clinical presentations, etiologies, and underlying pathophysiology.  We review current guidelines and evidence-based treatment strategies for managing osteoarthritis, including pharmacological and nonpharmacological interventions. We also compare and contrast the efficacy, safety profiles, and appropriate use of pharmacologic therapies, physical modalities, and lifestyle interventions in the treatment of osteoarthritis.  Cole and I are happy to share that our listeners can claim ACPE-accredited continuing education for listening to this podcast episode! We have continued to partner with freeCE.com to provide listeners with the opportunity to claim 1-hour of continuing education credit for select episodes. For existing Unlimited (Gold) freeCE members, this CE option is included in your membership benefits at no additional cost! A password, which will be given at some point during this episode, is required to access the post-activity test. To earn credit for this episode, visit the following link below to go to freeCE's website: https://www.freece.com/ If you're not currently a freeCE member, we definitely suggest you explore all the benefits of their Unlimited Membership on their website and earn CE for listening to this podcast. Thanks for listening! If you want to support the podcast, check out our Patreon account. Subscribers will have access to all previous and new pharmacotherapy lectures as well as downloadable PowerPoint slides for each lecture. If you purchase an annual membership, you'll also get a free digital copy of High-Powered Medicine 3rd edition by Dr. Alex Poppen, PharmD. HPM is a book/website database of summaries for over 150 landmark clinical trials.You can visit our Patreon page at the website below:  www.patreon.com/corconsultrx We want to give a big thanks to Dr. Alex Poppen, PharmD and High-Powered Medicine for sponsoring the podcast..  You can get a copy of HPM at the links below:  Purchase a subscription or PDF copy - https://highpoweredmedicine.com/ Purchase the paperback and hardcover - Barnes and Noble website We want to say thank you to our sponsor, Pyrls. Try out their drug information app today. Visit the website below for a free trial: www.pyrls.com/corconsultrx We also want to thank our sponsor Freed AI. Freed is an AI scribe that listens, prepares your SOAP notes, and writes patient instructions. Charting is done before your patient walks out of the room. You can try 10 notes for free and after that it only costs $99/month. Visit the website below for more information: https://www.getfreed.ai/  If you have any questions for Cole or me, reach out to us via e-mail: Mike - mcorvino@corconsultrx.com Cole - cswanson@corconsultrx.com

Things got kinda catty between OpenAI and Anthropic

Tommy and Ben explain why Trump backed off his threat to take Greenland by force and debate whether European leaders have finally found a playbook for how to push back, the backlash to Trump's disgraceful denigration of NATO troops and their service in Afghanistan, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's bold attempt to break from the United States and forge a new international order. Then they cover the purge of top military leaders in China and widespread rumors of a coup attempt against Chinese President Xi Jinping, Jared Kushner's much-derided PowerPoint presentation on the future of Gaza, new details about how the Iranian regime crushed the recent protests and why there may now be an even greater likelihood that the US bombs Iran (again), a humiliating and terrifying profile of Kash Patel's first year at the FBI, and why a real estate forum in Saudi Arabia made us want to cry. Then Tommy speaks with Kenneth Rosen, author of Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic, about why the Arctic is becoming a geopolitical flashpoint. Subscribe to Ben's Substack here.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.