Podcasts about renewals

Renewals roll in on time. Clients act like they're supposed to. No one's complaining. You probably think you're crushing it, right? Maybe.It could also mean you've stopped looking closely enough to notice things are changing... and not for the better.Every account manager is taught the same thing: build the relationship, get embedded, and clients stick around for good. But research on long-term client relationships tells a different story: the deeper you embed, the easier it is for trust to quietly become autopilot and loyalty to drift into obligation. This episode is all about why your most "solid" relationships deserve just as much attention as your shakiest ones.Transcript + AI chat: Read the full transcript or talk to an AI co-pilot trained on this episode : https://podcast.thekamclub.com/episodes/72HIGHLIGHTS(00:00) That comfortable groove feels like solid account management.(01:31) The trap: "too good to leave, too bad to stay."(02:00) Research shows mature accounts erode their own foundation over time.(04:05) Five hidden traps: social capital, reciprocity, long-term plans, account-specific investments, joint learning.(06:18) Maintenance mode takes over.(08:53) Why relationship maturity exposes you instead of protecting you(11:20) A personal story: removed from an account after five years, at the client's request.(12:17) Warning sign #1: neither side pushes the other anymore.(13:20) Warning sign #2: you've stopped bringing new ideas, just handle the day-to-day.(15:19) Warning sign #3: the account feels like a chore, not a priority.(16:47) Four steps: run an honest relationship audit, ask tough questions, check for one-sided effort, weigh the value you deliver now.NEXT STEPSPick one account you'd call "happy". Ask yourself:When did you last bring them an idea that changed how they think—not just an update?Are you still pushing each other, or has it gone quiet and agreeable?Who's putting in more effort right now (you or them) and who could walk away easier?If they replaced you tomorrow, what would the new person spot in week one that you've stopped seeing?RESOURCESResearch: Understanding the Dark Side of Buyer-Supplier Relationships — Monteiro (2019) Podcast: Client Expectations Gone Wild: How to Tame the Beast — The KAM Club, Episode 42 WANT MORE?Weekly newsletter, Account Minded: https://newsletter.thekamclub.comThe KAM Club (community + training + templates): https://www.thekamclub.comFamiliarity doesn't breed contempt. It breeds a rut.

Andy Schwartz CEO, OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners  |  Kevin Spahn Founder, Spahn Financial (now OnePoint BFG) Two former Northwestern Mutual advisors, two very different paths. Andy Schwartz and Kevin Spahn share what it takes to build, grow, merge, and create lasting enterprise value. In Summary What separates a successful advisory practice from an enterprise with the ability to grow well beyond its founders? Andy Schwartz and Kevin Spahn offer two different perspectives on that question. Both spent decades at Northwestern Mutual, but their paths eventually diverged. Andy left to help build what is now OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners, an $18B+ firm expected to surpass $20B by year-end. Kevin built one of Northwestern Mutual's top practices before deciding to merge his business into OnePoint and become an equity partner. Louis talks with Andy and Kevin about the decisions behind both journeys: creating a true firm rather than an aggregation of practices, transitioning advisors from 1099 to W-2, using outside capital without relinquishing control, rethinking succession, and determining when equity in a larger enterprise can offer greater opportunity than continuing to build alone. Underlying it all is a factor that's much harder to quantify: trust. The Storyline Andy Schwartz and Kevin Spahn have known each other for roughly 30 years. They met while both were building careers at Northwestern Mutual, where Andy became an important mentor to Kevin as Kevin transitioned from practicing law and estate planning into wealth management. After roughly 30 years at Northwestern Mutual, Andy and his partners left in 2015 with approximately $3B in assets to launch independently. What began as Bleakley Financial eventually became OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners, an $18B+ enterprise that Andy expects will surpass $20B by the end of 2026. That kind of growth required more than attracting assets. Andy describes the evolution from a predominantly 1099 structure into a firm where more than 85% of advisors and AUM are now W-2. The shift created a more cohesive enterprise, gave advisors access to equity, and ultimately positioned OnePoint to bring in minority capital from Joe Duran's Rise Growth Partners. Andy makes an important distinction about that relationship: OnePoint is “private equity invested,” not “private equity owned.” The structure gave the firm capital and expertise while allowing its partners to retain control. Kevin faced a different decision. After more than 30 years at Northwestern Mutual, his practice had grown to 18 people and approximately $2B in assets. He was happy at the firm, but his clients had evolved, his business had become increasingly complex, and the internal succession plan he once envisioned carried risks he could no longer ignore. He could have built an independent firm himself. Instead, he chose to merge with OnePoint. The decision wasn't driven by the largest possible check. Kevin saw the opportunity to become an equity partner in a larger enterprise, give his team and clients a more durable future, and leverage infrastructure he didn't want to recreate himself. For both men, the story ultimately comes back to the same principle: The right economics matter, but sustainable partnerships require trust, shared philosophy, and the belief that everyone involved can create more value together than separately. Topics Covered Building an enterprise versus building a practice Northwestern Mutual and the path to independence OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners' growth from ~$3B to $18B+ Organic growth versus M&A Creating a growth-oriented advisor culture Moving from a 1099 model to a predominantly W-2 structure Equity ownership and advisor alignment Minority private equity investment Rise Growth Partners and Joe Duran Internal succession versus an external merger Selling versus merging an advisory business Merging versus teaming versus going it alone Evaluating equity versus cash in a transaction The economics of leaving a captive firm Centralization versus advisor autonomy Trust as a factor in partnerships and transactions > Download a transcript of this episode… Listen and Learn Highlights for Advisors How did Andy and Kevin's 30-year relationship ultimately lead to a transaction? (04:11)Kevin explains how Andy helped him transition from attorney and estate planner into wealth management, beginning a professional relationship that would eventually make their partnership possible decades later. Why did Andy leave Northwestern Mutual after roughly 30 years? (08:45)Andy describes wanting greater flexibility, a multi-custodial platform, and more optionality for clients and the business—a decision that ultimately led to the creation of OnePoint BFG. Why did Kevin decide his longtime Northwestern Mutual practice needed something different? (15:49)Kevin explains how his clients, service needs, and business evolved over time, while concerns about his original internal succession plan led him to consider a different path. What has driven OnePoint's growth from approximately $3B to $18B+? (21:41)Andy outlines the firm's emphasis on client experience, advisor experience, organic growth, and carefully selected inorganic growth—and why helping advisors grow is fundamental to the model. Why does Andy say OnePoint is a firm rather than an aggregator? (23:54)The distinction comes down to alignment, shared responsibility, centralized resources, equity, and a partnership structure in which advisors are accountable to one another. How did OnePoint convert a predominantly 1099 advisor base into a W-2 enterprise? (29:26)Andy explains why capital and equity became necessary to build the next stage of the business and why trust was essential to bringing advisors into a more integrated structure. Why did OnePoint choose minority private equity investment? (33:13)Andy shares why Rise Growth Partners offered something previous potential buyers had not: a structure designed to benefit the broader advisor partnership while preserving control. Why did Kevin merge with OnePoint rather than shop his practice broadly? (36:43)For Kevin, maximizing price wasn't the objective. His decision centered on trust in Andy, confidence in OnePoint's infrastructure, and creating a strong future for clients and employees. Why did Kevin choose equity in the larger firm instead of simply cashing out? (40:57)Kevin explains why he believes participating in the future growth of a larger enterprise offers a compelling alternative to relying solely on the future growth of his own practice. How should advisors evaluate the “golden handcuffs” that can make leaving difficult? (46:42)Andy argues that the analysis needs to compare what an advisor gives up with the potential growth, economics, equity, and leverage available on the other side. How much conformity does a true enterprise require? (49:06)Andy explains why OnePoint sits somewhere between complete advisor autonomy and complete centralization, seeking enough consistency to create enterprise value without eliminating entrepreneurial flexibility. What would Andy and Kevin tell their younger selves? (52:06)Kevin emphasizes surrounding yourself with the best people possible, while Andy reflects on having the courage to make a difficult change after a successful 30-year run. Key Takeaways Building enterprise value requires more than asset growth. OnePoint's evolution included changing its ownership structure, integrating advisor practices, creating equity opportunities, and investing in centralized capabilities. Organic growth remains central even in an M&A-driven market. OnePoint targets approximately 10% organic growth and evaluates prospective partners partly on whether they are growth-oriented and whether the firm can meaningfully help them grow. A collection of successful advisors does not automatically make a firm. Andy sees shared ownership, alignment, accountability, infrastructure, and centralized services as critical distinctions between an enterprise and an aggregator. Outside capital does not have to mean giving up control. OnePoint chose a minority investment from Rise Growth Partners that provided capital and strategic support while leaving control with its operating partners. Succession can expose risks that growth may obscure. Kevin began reconsidering his internal succession strategy when he recognized its dependence on his continued production, key employees, and the future economics of an aging client base. The highest purchase price isn't always the most valuable transaction. Kevin prioritized equity participation, infrastructure, continuity for his employees and clients, and confidence in his future partners over broadly shopping his business for the highest bid. Trust can determine whether structural change is possible. From OnePoint's 1099-to-W-2 conversion to Kevin's decision to merge, both guests repeatedly point to established trust as the foundation that allowed significant business decisions to happen. https://youtu.be/jkIoynpZj6Y Quotable Moments “The biggest mistake advisors make is they buy their own bullshit.”— Andy Schwartz “We're not an aggregator, we're a firm.”— Andy Schwartz “The biggest issue is trust. Either they trust you or they don't.”— Andy Schwartz “I wasn't looking to sell my business. I was looking to merge it.”— Kevin Spahn “You have to trust them. You have to see that they provide value. And you need to be on the same page philosophically.”— Kevin Spahn “Associate yourselves with the best people you can… It accelerates your trajectory in ways that you can't do on your own.”— Kevin Spahn FAQs Why did Andy Schwartz leave Northwestern Mutual? After approximately 30 years at Northwestern Mutual, Andy and his partners wanted greater flexibility, the ability to operate on a multi-custodial basis, and more optionality for clients and the business. They left in 2015 with approximately $3B in assets and launched the independent firm that ultimately became OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners. How large is OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners? At the time of the interview, Andy says OnePoint manages more than $18B and expects to exceed $20B by the end of 2026, even without additional organic growth. What has driven OnePoint's growth? Andy points to three priorities: client experience, advisor experience, and growth. The firm targets approximately 10% organic growth while also expanding through acquisitions and partnerships with advisors it believes fit the OnePoint model. Why did OnePoint move advisors from 1099 to W-2? The firm wanted to evolve from a platform supporting individual practices into a more integrated enterprise. That required creating firm-level economics and equity that could be used to attract, retain, and align advisors. Today, Andy says more than 85% of OnePoint's advisors and AUM are W-2. What does “private equity invested, not private equity owned” mean? Rise Growth Partners holds a minority, non-controlling interest in OnePoint. The investment provides capital, expertise, and strategic support while the operating partners retain majority ownership and control of the business. Why did Kevin Spahn leave Northwestern Mutual? Kevin says he remained happy at Northwestern Mutual, but his practice and clients had evolved. His work had shifted increasingly toward investments and complex high-net-worth planning, while he also began identifying risks in his intended internal succession plan. Why did Kevin merge with OnePoint rather than launch his own independent RIA? OnePoint already had the infrastructure, people, and capabilities Kevin would have needed to build himself. The merger allowed him to focus on clients while becoming an equity partner in a larger enterprise he believed could grow faster than his standalone practice. Why didn't Kevin shop his practice to multiple buyers? Kevin says his decision was driven primarily by trust. He had known Andy and other OnePoint partners for decades and believed the firm offered the right future for his clients and employees. His choice ultimately came down to staying at Northwestern Mutual or joining OnePoint. How do Andy and Kevin suggest advisors evaluate a potential partner? Their discussion points to three fundamental considerations: trust, demonstrable value, and philosophical alignment. Economics matter, but both argue that a sustainable partnership depends on confidence in the people and business on the other side of the transaction. After approximately 30 years at Northwestern Mutual, Andy and his partners wanted greater flexibility, the ability to operate on a multi-custodial basis, and more optionality for clients and the business. They left in 2015 with approximately $3B in assets and launched the independent firm that ultimately became OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners. At the time of the interview, Andy says OnePoint manages more than $18B and expects to exceed $20B by the end of 2026, even without additional organic growth. Andy points to three priorities: client experience, advisor experience, and growth. The firm targets approximately 10% organic growth while also expanding through acquisitions and partnerships with advisors it believes fit the OnePoint model. The firm wanted to evolve from a platform supporting individual practices into a more integrated enterprise. That required creating firm-level economics and equity that could be used to attract, retain, and align advisors. Today, Andy says more than 85% of OnePoint's advisors and AUM are W-2. Rise Growth Partners holds a minority, non-controlling interest in OnePoint. The investment provides capital, expertise, and strategic support while the operating partners retain majority ownership and control of the business. Kevin says he remained happy at Northwestern Mutual, but his practice and clients had evolved. His work had shifted increasingly toward investments and complex high-net-worth planning, while he also began identifying risks in his intended internal succession plan. OnePoint already had the infrastructure, people, and capabilities Kevin would have needed to build himself. The merger allowed him to focus on clients while becoming an equity partner in a larger enterprise he believed could grow faster than his standalone practice. Kevin says his decision was driven primarily by trust. He had known Andy and other OnePoint partners for decades and believed the firm offered the right future for his clients and employees. His choice ultimately came down to staying at Northwestern Mutual or joining OnePoint. Their discussion points to three fundamental considerations: trust, demonstrable value, and philosophical alignment. Economics matter, but both argue that a sustainable partnership depends on confidence in the people and business on the other side of the transaction. Related Resources Rise and Reinvent: Joe Duran on Building and Rebuilding World-Class Firms From Insurance Sales to $8B RIA: A Northwestern Mutual Breakaway Story The 4th Annual Advisor Transition Report Andy SchwartzCo-Founder, Managing Partner, and Chief Executive Officer Andy Schwartz is the Co-Founder, Managing Partner, and Chief Executive Officer of OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners, where he also serves as a Wealth Management Advisor. A CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® with more than 40 years of experience, Andy has built his career around helping clients make confident, well-informed financial decisions at every stage of life. He works extensively with physicians and business owners on wealth building, retirement planning, and tax-efficient asset transfer across generations. A 2026 finalist for Wealth Management Awards CEO of the Year (under $25B AUM), Andy brings the same discipline to leading the firm that he brings to client relationships: comprehensive planning, long-term thinking, and an unwavering commitment to independence and integrity. Beyond his client work, Andy is deeply invested in the advisory profession itself. He co-hosts The Advisor’s Compass podcast, offering candid, practical guidance on the business and responsibilities of being an advisor. His mentorship philosophy is straightforward: pass the ladder back down. His industry recognition spans more than a decade, including Top 1,200 Advisor by Barron’s (2018–2024), Top 250 Wealth Advisor and Best-In-State Wealth Advisor by Forbes (2018–2024), Top 400 Financial Advisor by the Financial Times (2018–2020), and Top 100 Independent Advisor (2020–2023). He was named Executive of the Year by NJBIZ in 2019 and was a finalist for the Invest in Others Lifetime Achievement Award for more than 20 years of service with NJ SEEDS. Andy holds a B.S. in Finance and Marketing from Rowan University and is actively involved with Nourish NJ, the Navy SEAL Foundation, the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest NJ, and JSDD. Outside the office, he enjoys golf, reading, and time with his family at the beach.   Kevin SpahnPartner and Wealth Advisor Kevin Spahn is a Partner and Wealth Advisor at OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners, bringing more than three decades of experience in comprehensive financial planning to his clients and the firm. Kevin’s path to wealth management is rooted in the law. After earning degrees from the University of Notre Dame and the University of Wisconsin, he began his career as a practicing attorney before making a deliberate pivot toward financial planning in 1993. He joined Northwestern Mutual, then founded Spahn Financial, building a practice centered on thoughtful, holistic planning for families and business owners. That practice joined OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners in 2025. His approach has remained consistent throughout: help clients build and protect wealth not just for themselves, but for the generations that follow. Kevin works with clients on comprehensive financial plans that account for the full picture, understanding that the impact of good planning extends well beyond an individual portfolio to families, businesses, employees, and the broader community. Kevin is based in the greater Chicago area.   NOTE: The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Diamond Consultants. Neither Diamond Consultants nor the guests on this podcast are compensated in any way for their participation. View the transcript of this episode… Build, Grow & Transact: Making the Leap from Northwestern Mutual to a $20B Enterprise A conversation between Louis Diamond, Andy Schwartz, CEO of OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners and Kevin Spahn, Founder of Spahn Financial (now OnePoint BFG). Louis Diamond: Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast series for financial advisors. Today’s episode is Build, Grow & Transact: Making the Leap from Northwestern Mutual to a $20B Enterprise. It’s a conversation with Andy Schwartz, CEO of OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners, and Kevin Spahn, founder of Spahn Financial, now OnePoint BFG. I’m Louis Diamond, and this is The Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors. Mindy Diamond: At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that’s at a wirehouse, boutique, or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we’ve guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned. Each year, one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more who change firms are our clients. Our process is education-driven and based on building relationships, starting as your strategic partner well before you’re even thinking of a move. To schedule a confidential conversation, call us at 908-879-1002. Wondering why advisors change firms and where they’re headed? Are transition deals going up or down? Those very questions, and more, inspired us to create our annual Advisor Transition Report. It’s the award-winning data-driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm’s appetite for top talent. Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. Download your copy at diamond-consultants.com/transitionreport. Louis Diamond: There’s a big difference between building a successful practice and building an enterprise. I think Andy Schwartz and Kevin Spahn offer a unique perspective on that distinction from two very different sides. Both spent decades in the Northwestern Mutual system. Andy ultimately left to build what became OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners, taking the firm from roughly three billion to nearly 20 billion and transforming just about every aspect of the business along the way. Kevin built one of Northwestern Mutual’s top practices before reaching a different inflection point, deciding what he wanted the next phase of his career and business to look like. Rather than go independent on his own or simply monetize what he had built, he chose to become part of Andy’s growing enterprise. That makes their story particularly relevant for our Build, Grow, and Transact series. Andy can speak to what it takes to build a firm capable of becoming an acquirer, from converting advisors from 1099s to W-2s, to creating equity opportunities, to bringing in outside capital while remaining very deliberate about being private equity-invested rather than private equity-owned. And Kevin brings the seller’s perspective, how you evaluate the economics, the trade-offs, and ultimately the people you’re trusting with the business you spent more than 30 years building. Because whether you’re building, buying, or considering a transaction of any kind, the numbers are only part of the equation. As you hear from both Andy and Kevin, trust may be the most important currency of all. So let’s get to it. Andy and Kevin, thank you so much for both joining us today. Andy Schwartz: Great to see you again, Lewis. Thank you for having us. Louis Diamond: I’ve been excited about this interview for a bunch of reasons. One, our Build, Grow, Transact series has become a real staple of our show and we got lots to talk about there. But also, the friendship, the relationship that you two have had for over 30 years really stood out to me. So before we get into the nuts and bolts, talk about your relationship. How’d you guys meet, and how did your career stay so intertwined together when you’re in different geographies and at different firms, and have each been very successful in your own rights? Andy Schwartz: Sure. Kevin, do you want to start with that? Kevin Spahn: Sure. I started in this career in 1994 and met Andy sometime after that. He was a more advanced financial planner. I was an attorney, and then I transitioned into this business. So when I first joined Northwestern Mutual, which is my first broker dealer, I didn’t really have a background in investments. At the time, a lot of Northwestern Mutual reps were learning the investment business because they maybe originally started with Northwestern Mutual focusing more on insurance planning. My background was more estate planning. At the time, if you think early ’90s, if you did estate planning, insurance often went hand in hand with that. The estate exemption in early 1990s was about $600,000. So if you pass more than $600,000 to your children, there was a 55% tax. One way around it was to put insurance in an irrevocable trust, help cover the tax that way. So it really was a popular common strategy back then, and it’s really what got me into the business. But I quickly realized that I didn’t want my future to be insurance and estate planning. And there was a conflict if you acted as someone’s attorney and sold insurance. So I had to pick one way or the other. I decided long-term it would be better for me to move into the wealth management space. But with that little background in that, I had a lot of work to do. So took a lot of tests, became a certified financial planner. But the person that helped me the most along the way was Andy. We became friends, we sat on committees together. That’s really how we met, I would say. So we worked side by side interacting with our home office and representing the field, bringing issues to the home office that we thought were beneficial to the field. As we did that together, I got to know Andy. And then separately, I learned from him how he built his business and how they would review clients’ portfolios and come up with solutions. So I really credit Andy with helping me more than anyone else to transition from attorney, financial planner doing more estate planning insurance to wealth management. Louis Diamond: Very cool. Hey, I would say, maybe I’m a little biased, that, Kevin, you picked the right path in hanging up the law shingle and coming into wealth management. Kevin Spahn: I tell a lot of people I’m a reformed attorney. Andy Schwartz: Great. Louis Diamond: Exactly. My dad would say the exact same thing. Very common at dinner tables in the Diamond households. Andy Schwartz: I was always grateful that I wasn’t smart enough to be an attorney. Louis Diamond: There we go. Andy Schwartz: That’s where my gratitude lies. Yeah. Louis Diamond: There we go. Andy Schwartz: Some would say he’s too smart. Louis Diamond: There we go. Andy, question for you. I mean, anyone who is at or was at Northwestern Mutual, I mean, you’re like Elvis to them. It’s absolutely crazy the amount of fanfare and brand recognition that you and your brother Scott have. But for those who maybe missed your first podcast appearance with us a number of years ago, or aren’t or weren’t within the Northwestern Mutual system, or haven’t been familiar with Bleakley and now OnePoint BFG, just give us the cliff notes, the origin story, how you got into the business, and how’d you get from here to there? Andy Schwartz: Yeah. So the origin is probably pretty common, probably by accident. Going into my senior year in college, I was working in a restaurant, had a falling out with my boss. I happened to be dating a woman who was living with a general agent with Fidelity Union Life. No one will have ever heard of Fidelity Union Life, but their secret sauce was they sold life insurance to college seniors on a note. So if you can get a $10 money order, because where I went to school, nobody had a checking account, then you could basically get a note signed and they would buy insurance. And then when they graduate, hopefully they’d pay for it. I started selling life insurance my senior year in college. And then my twin brother Scott, who is my partner, and has been for over 40 years, he took an interview with what was the nucleus of our present firm actually. I just went up to Northern New Jersey in May of 1984 because I was an expert. I had been selling life insurance to college kids for six months, so I knew everything you had to know. We met with these guys, and we both ended up joining them. So that was a Northwestern Mutual district agency, and that was 1984. We got licensed right away. I got my CFP in ’86. We always knew that it was going to be about planning. So I think we had the right idea. We were a little ahead of the curve because there weren’t a lot of CFPs in ’86. We got securities license immediately. So before Northwestern had securities license, we got securities license with US Life actually. And then it was really a volume business, a client-building business. We always tried to act as a firm and share resources. We were small, but like a lot of people, we started out selling A shares and B shares and C shares, doing financial planning, selling insurance, and then we made a lot of really good hires along the way. And then after 30 years at Northwestern Mutual, which was a great experience for me, and I have nothing but respect for the institution and certainly the advisors that are there, Kevin certainly was one of them, and I know he feels the same way, but we just wanted to have a little more flexibility. We went independent about 11, almost 12 years ago. We wanted to be able to be multi-custodial. We wanted to have a little bit more optionality for our clients and for ourselves. We left Northwestern at three billion or so in assets, and that was in 2015. It’s in March of 2024, I get introduced to this guy with a crazy accent named Joe Duran. Funny, probably the only person in the industry that had no idea who Joe Duran was me. I’d never heard of Joe Duran. I don’t pay attention. I worry about our firm. I don’t worry about what’s going on outside. So I get introduced to Joe by a mutual friend, and we had an interesting conversation, and it took us probably about four or five months to figure out what we wanted to do. And then in August of ’24, myself and my three partners, we rolled in. And then in ’85, the rest of the firm rolled in. And we can talk a little bit more about that. Today we’re 18-plus billion, growing quite a bit. We’ve been very lucky that we’ve made some very good decisions along the way. We’ve made some bad ones too. But most of the decisions had to do with the people that we hired, the people that we brought on to help us, because I think it’s really important. I always say that the biggest mistake advisors make is they buy their own bullshit, and I try not to, and I realize that I’m smart enough, but I’m certainly not the smartest guy. I’m rarely the smartest guy in the room. So what we try to do is hire lots and lots of really smart people. And we’ve done that. They’ve been loyal to us, we’ve been loyal to them. Yeah, so we’re blessed to have a really great team and lots of good partners. Yeah. Louis Diamond: Yeah, we’ll definitely get into more of the nuts and bolts of the decision to take on capital, partner with Joe Duran’s Rise, but that’s an amazing background. Andy, I have to give you credit because your style, and I think I’m sure there’s business benefits, but it comes from a good place, I’m sure. But the coaching and consulting and just assistance that I’ve heard you provide to so many past and current Northwestern Mutual advisors through sports camps is absolutely incredible. It’s very near and dear to my heart because we always try to lead with education and helping people. So I just wanted to call that out, that your reputation for just providing amazing guidance and coaching to advisors is unparalleled. Andy Schwartz: And it’s been the best part of our journey. We’ve been able to help so many people. We get way too much credit by the way. So everybody gives us way too much credit. But the way I look at it is, I’ve been able to leverage my life because I’ve been able to build a great life for myself and my family, but we’ve been able to leverage that, and that’s where the real gift is. So yeah, it’s been a joyful journey for us. Louis Diamond: Amazing. Kevin, question for you. You walked through your little bit unorthodox background to get into Northwestern. Can you talk about where your personal practice is today? And then I want to ask you about the decision to leave Northwestern and sell and team up with Andy and team. Kevin Spahn: Well, I have to go back to the beginning. What was attractive to me about this business is I went from a career which was confrontational adversarial. I was a trial attorney for six years, and every day I would fight with people over things I didn’t necessarily have a personal interest in and I didn’t really believe in always. But the adversarial confrontational nature wasn’t really my personality, and I would take it too personally. So sometimes I’d go home in a bad mood because I was fighting with somebody taking a deposition. At night, after so many years as a trial attorney, I started going to people’s houses and doing wills and trusts. And that’s where the dynamic of working with a client or a potential client, feeling that you helped them and walking out of the meeting where they would appreciate what you did for them, and you build a relationship and actually all of a sudden have a friend, that dynamic was attractive to me. That’s really what got me to transition into the business. So I think it was really helpful to me at the beginning of this career. As Andy said, we all grew our businesses one client at a time. There’s a lot of doors closed, phones hung up on. There’s many people that don’t want to talk to you. There’s many people that don’t call you back. There’s many people that you think you’re getting somewhere with and you don’t. And that’s difficult for people because people often, young reps take that as personal rejection. I had the benefit of comparing what I was dealing with as a young financial planner to what I had dealt with as an attorney in litigation. I think it just was perspective that I knew I didn’t want to do that anymore. So the negatives to this business didn’t seem that bad to me. I loved the independence. I loved all the relationships that I was building. And that part of it is to this day my favorite part of the business. When you ask about the present, what basically happens is you start out taking anybody and everybody as a potential client or as someone that you would be willing to work with. And then over time you work with more successful people. So where I’m at today is working with pretty successful people, but they’re all the same, meaning we like working with nice people. If people are nice, we work with them. I feel we can help anybody. Over the years, one client at a time. The thing that I probably, if I could go back, would change is I think Andy and I are both good at meeting people and building trust and providing value, so that’s why they work with us. So I think that’s just something we’ve both been able to do. He’s much better than I am at building an organization. So I built an organization basically hiring people, that whenever we got too busy, I hired another person. Drawback in terms of that is, anybody that I interview I think is great, and I think they’d be great to join the organization. I like them all. In spite of that, I’ve also brought in many good people that I love. At this point, my firm has 18 people. We’re a little subset of Andy’s larger firm. I think one of the most attractive things to me about joining Andy’s firm is what Andy mentioned before: the people. As opposed to me having to build this all out myself, going independent, Andy already did that. And he has the infrastructure that would allow me to just merge right into that and not have to go through the pain of figuring all that out, which I don’t even think I’m capable of, to be honest with you. Louis Diamond: You’re probably selling yourself short because the way I understood it, you had one of the top practices within the entire Northwestern Mutual systems, and it’s a firm filled with very successful advisors. For you, Kevin, what was the driving force to leaving NM after all these years? What was bothering you or frustrating you that indicated to you that it was time to do something different? Kevin Spahn: To be honest with you, I was pretty happy at Northwestern Mutual. I love the company and the people. I still have many good friends there that I truly miss. The big thing for me, I don’t know if it was any one thing, to be honest with you, is Andy said there’s optionality, especially on the investment side. I think one of the things that happened to me is, when I first started, I was 31 years old, and most of the potential clients that I would meet and work with, they weren’t what I would call today great investment clients. They didn’t have a lot of money. They had great futures. They might’ve been earning significant income or on the way to earning significant income. So what did they need at that point in their life? They needed planning. They needed protection. They didn’t really need investment management because most of their investments were going into their 401(k). But a lot of those clients that we would take on, and I think that’s the big advantage of Northwestern Mutual, you take on clients that a lot of the investor firms don’t want because they don’t have large investment portfolios. But at some point down the road, all of a sudden you wake up and they do have large investment portfolios. So you bring them in as clients that might buy life insurance from you or disability insurance or something like that. And then you help them, and you give them advice, and you build a relationship with them. Down the road, they make more and more money. They leave jobs, they roll 401(k)s, they have the ability to invest money, stock options, things like that. Next thing you’re doing more comprehensive planning that incorporates investments. As that progresses even further, you work with larger and larger clients, much more significant net worth, more complexity, bigger tax issues. Some of the strategies and opportunities that we now have at this independent RIA are very attractive for these high-net-worth clients. Along the same lines, less of what I do at this point in my career is insurance, mostly because a lot of the people that I meet are older, they already bought insurance, they’re looking more for investment advice as opposed to insurance. So one of the things that most attracted me to Northwest Mutual was their strong insurance products, which helped me for many years. As time went on, I was doing less of that. Louis Diamond: Makes complete sense. So it was a changing of what clients wanted and just the circumstances of your clients where you said, “What got me here when I was 31 was insurance planning, and that’s what my clients needed. But as my practice has evolved, I’ve aged, my clients are older, have more money, the focus shifted from insurance to investments.” And then the distinction was, am I at the best place to run investments in addition to insurance planning, et cetera? It’s a very interesting dynamic. Just the shift in basically your legacy clients was what drove you to consider change. Kevin Spahn: That was a big factor. I think the second big factor was I had my own firm with 18 people. My succession plan was that at some point I would shift ownership of the firm to people that worked with me. So as they owned more of the firm, they would have revenue that was currently at the time being paid to me. In my mind, as it shifted to them, they would buy me out using revenue from the clients that we already had. And I realized that there were some issues with that. In our business, as you get older, in your client’s age, they start taking money out of their portfolios. So everyone understands that in our business, the younger average age client you have makes your book more valuable. I was the biggest driver of new business at my firm, and I started to see that there were some problems with my succession plan. They included, if something happened to me during this succession, that would be a real problem for the people that were buying my business from me if I went that way. If something happened to some of my key people, that would’ve been a problem as well. So it was really attractive to me to… I wasn’t looking to sell my business, I was looking to merge it. So I merged it with Andy’s business. I believe that Andy and what he’s put together and the actual idea of having partners. So I never really had partners, but now I do. Having partners that we’re all on the same page, we all have similar backgrounds, we all bring something different to the table, and we can learn and benefit from working with each other. But also, owning a little piece of a much larger firm was, number one, it put me in a better position in terms of the potential risk of something happening to me or one of my key people. But secondly, I just think it’s more likely to grow at a greater pace than my firm would’ve as I aged from my 60s to my 70s. Louis Diamond: Very interesting. It’s a great realization. I think it’s one that probably every firm owner grapples with at some point, is the romanticism or the ease, some would say, of an internal succession plan. Rewarding those who have helped you build the firm is something I think everyone is interested in. But once that’s put into practice, whether it’s because of capital or sky-high valuations or right people on the bus or risk, et cetera, nowadays oftentimes leads to a firm owner looking at a transaction, whether it’s a merger, a sale, a private equity, capital infusion as a means to solve for succession. So it’s a very interesting way you framed it. Andy, I want to turn it over to you for a little bit. So you mentioned when you launched Bleakley Financial, which was the old name of your firm, out of Northwestern, you’re about three billion. I think I read that you’re about 10 billion or so when Joe Duran and Rise invested you in 2024. You just said you’re at 18 billion now in the middle of 2026. That is absolutely incredible and amazing. Andy Schwartz: We’ll be well over 20 by the end of the year without any additional organic growth. Louis Diamond: That’s absolutely incredible. Andy Schwartz: We’ve got a lot going on right now. Louis Diamond: What’s actually driven that? What’s been the playbook? Andy Schwartz: The three areas that are most important for us, and we had our town hall this morning, and we always talk about the things we focus on as a group, the first and most important is the client experience. I always say to people, if you are their advisor, then that means someone else isn’t. These people, they all deserve to be really well taken care of. They deserve the best service, they deserve the best advice. So that’s something we take really personally. So client experience first. Then we also understand that we don’t just work for clients, we work for our advisors. So I have two jobs. I have, I don’t know, 500 clients I service with my team, and I work for Kevin and 36 other partners and all of our employees. Because again, I recognize that the decision Kevin made… We’re in the middle of a transition out with another advisor, and we pretty much talk to her every day, and I know how hard this is. A transition is so difficult. When you come from a good place, because any of the Northwestern advisor who joins, they’re coming from a good place, it’s not like they have to go anywhere, it’s difficult. So we have the massive responsibility that three or four or five or 10 years from now, that there better be hugs around that this was the best decision ever made or otherwise. That’s the kind of thing that keeps me up at night. So we’ve got to take care of our client experience, we’ve got to take care of our advisor experience. And then obviously, we’ve got to grow the firm so the firm grows organically. So part of this whole idea of serving our advisors is we have to help our advisors grow. I talk to a lot of people on the acquisition side, and if I’m talking to an advisor, it doesn’t matter how big they are, we kind of think of it as a OnePoint way. There’s flexibility in the OnePoint way. But if I can’t help them grow, I don’t want them, because I say it all the time, I’m not the mafia. I’m not here to get a taste. Louis, if you weren’t interested in joining us, if I thought that we could help you grow by doing that, then I want you bad. If I don’t think I can help you grow because we’re so different, or because you’re not going to adapt what we do, or there’s no leverage in it, or you’re already better than we are, I don’t want it. So for us, organic growth, number one, and I think you know the industries well enough, that’s got to be the key. We shoot for 10% organic growth. We’re at a little over 5% so far halfway through the year. So assuming we have the similar second half of the year, we’ll hit our 10. Last year we’re at 7.5%. The second is the inorganic growth. If you truly build a platform, if you truly build a firm that advisors know that they’ll be supported, that they’ll be loved, and you’ll help them grow their businesses, it does make it easier for us. We’re not the highest bidder typically. We can’t. We respect our client’s capital, we respect their equity, so therefore we’re not going to go out there. We’re not an aggregator, we’re a firm. But I think that if we can get that message across, and I think we have, then advisors join us. So that’s been a big part of the growth. And then the market’s helped. Obviously, over the last two years, the market’s been helpful. So that’s how we’ve gone from 10 to 18 and on our way to 22 by year-end. Louis Diamond: This is absolutely incredible. Any advisor or firm owner would say organic growth is important, but just saying it’s important doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. So what are the ways in which you help your advisors or your own practice grow organically? What is it that OnePoint is doing for your advisors? Andy Schwartz: Starting with bringing on growth-oriented advisors. I mean, look, Kevin Spahn and I come from the same place. We learned how to sell. The great thing about coming out of whether they’re broker dealers or out of the different insurance BDs is, these are people that know how to sell. These are people that don’t think that selling is a bad word. A lot of times you go to the wirehouses and they’re not necessarily sales guys. They’re really smart. They think that they’re investment mavens and investment geniuses. I’m not interested in investment geniuses. I’m interested in people that want to take care of their clients, provide everything they can, clients first, do the proper planning, be good advisors, but they’re growth-oriented. So as long as we’re talking with the right advisors. Again, if I’m talking to advisor and they might have a big practice, if they’re not growers, we’re not interested. There’s a sense of responsibility for all the partners because we are a true partnership. It’s not an aggregation. This is a firm. I’m responsible for Kevin. Kevin’s responsible to me. All of our partners are responsible to each other, because if we’re going to do a 10% organic growth target, and if some partner is negative 3%, we don’t put them through the spanking machine, but everybody is very aware of where everybody is and nobody wants to let their partners down. I think either you’re a growth-oriented advisor or you’re a zoo-fed bear. There’s another expression that I got from another Rise Growth Partner or Rise Growth firm. We all kind of communicate and talk to each other. And I was talking about zoo-fed bears, and he said, we call them house cats that think they fight. So they’re house cats, but they have no claws. But I think if you’re careful about who you bring on as partners, and if they are workers, growers, they understand that their job in life is to serve the people. We talk about referrals, we do lots of training to help on referrals. We work on organic growth strategies from the firm, but a lot of it comes from the advisors themselves. Louis Diamond: Makes sense. So it sounds like, to boil it down, it’s being really selective and having a really clear sense of who’s the right fit for your firm. Not that there’s not amazing advisors out there, but just because you’re an amazing advisor, doesn’t mean you’re the right fit to join OnePoint. Andy Schwartz: I think the one big distinction and difference is other than the fact that we are minority-owned with private equity. So we own our business. I mean, I’m the CEO of the firm. I also have the biggest book in the firm. At least for right now, I mean, Kevin was transitioning, so I’m sure next year he’ll be the leading advisor. But I lead the firm, because as far as I’m concerned, you have to lead by example. We are completely aligned. I know exactly what Kevin does every day because I do the same thing. I’m not some attorney or accountant or private equity boss that’s saying, “Oh, I’ve got an idea for growth. We’ll just raise our fees by 5%.” Brilliant. Yeah, we are completely aligned, all of us. I think that makes us a little bit unique, and it really helps us, I think, in our growth trajectory. Louis Diamond: I would agree. The challenge that a lot of advisors-turned-firm-owners or turned-enterprise-builders have is the tug of war between the client work, which either is their ultimate passion and driving force, or it’s something they’re really good at minimum, versus being the owner, the operator, et cetera. I resonate very much, Andy, with the way you handle it. I do the same thing running a company, but also working with advisors. To me, I need to do both in order to do my job well. But that tug of war is tough. So I’m curious, your firm is very large now, you’re a steward of external capital, and you have a $3 billion book yourself. How do you do it? How do you balance the two? Andy Schwartz: Well, fortunately, my kids are grown, so I’m not coaching sports anymore. So I do have a little more time than most. Look, we have a great team. So the idea that I run the firm… I mean, I lead the firm, I don’t run the firm. We have great partners. We have great… Our manager team is fantastic. So I mean, they really run the firm. But this is where my passion is for now. So I don’t mind. Days are typically pretty long. I don’t play golf during the week. Mara and I don’t travel probably as much as we should. Vacations are always a little bit mixed. There’s always room for calls and meetings and whatever. But to me, I mean, I’m grateful to be in this situation. I’m enjoying it. This is such a privilege to be the person that people recognize as the leader of this bunch, of this group. I mean, it is the honor of my life. So I don’t think of it so much as work. It’s my advocation. It does get busy. There are some times where I have to remind myself, “Just enjoy the ride.” I get a little overwhelmed, but I get lots of help and that makes it possible. Louis Diamond: Yep. If you’re not doing the job of the folks that you’re encouraging and leading to do, how do you have fodder to train them, to teach them, to empathize with that? Andy Schwartz: Exactly, you don’t have the credibility. I can ask them to do almost anything because they know I do it myself, and I think that helps. Louis Diamond: Yep. So moving more into the decision to bring on private equity capital, what I thought was probably the most interesting component of your announcement that you took on PE investment was that you completely restructured or reoriented your firm prior to Joe Duran coming in 2024. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Bleakley Financial Group was almost all 1099 contractors. So everyone owned their own books of business, paid Bleakley a fee or an override for certain services. But now, today, over 85% of your advisors and your AUM are W-2 employees, meaning you converted them from 1099 to acquiring them or merging with them. To me, that’s the dream. It’s had to have been very, very, very hard and challenging because there’s so many aggregator firms or platforms that support independent advisors, but the value that they’ve created is fairly minimal relative to one cohesive firm. So can you just talk about that decision, a very big and brave decision to go down the path of acquiring or merging with the practices rather than letting them continue to operate independently? Andy Schwartz: Well, look, we had to… It’s funny because we had been having conversations for years with consultants, and they kept telling us what we had to do. Again, we’re not that smart, so we just kept thinking, “No, we don’t have to do that.” But we were told 10 years earlier that the only way that this thing has any value to the world is you’ve got to have EBITDA for the firm. We talked to all the smart people, we ignored all of them. But what happened was we needed capital and we needed equity in order to bring people on, because people aren’t just joining us just because we can help them grow a bigger business. So the reason we went in the direction we went initially was we just needed capital. We wanted to grow the firm, and the only way we were going to get to is… What’s the old saying? What got us here is not going to get us there. So we needed capital. But we also realized that I had to have something I could sell in the marketplace. And people want equity. So they want cash, but they also want equity, because we’re talking to entrepreneurs. Kevin owned his own firm. He has $2 billion of assets. He wasn’t interested in being someone’s employee, but he was interested in being able to get leverage and be a partner and share equity in a larger firm that had the chance to grow even more. So what the gift that Joe Duran, the Rise folks gave us was that gift of structure and understanding. So that was really helpful, and that’s been a big part of our success. Louis Diamond: Yeah, it’s an amazing journey. Again, I think you could probably write a book or a case study on how that happened. I’m sure there were some downfalls, some people that weren’t all that excited about it, but the results speak for itself. Andy Schwartz: I think people ask all the time because I do get phone calls. People are trying to do this, and they’re struggling. It took us 90 days to basically do it. People say, “I’ve been at this for two years.” And the biggest issue is trust. Either they trust you or they don’t. At the end of the day, I always went to the advisor here, we were a firm for 30-plus years prior, and these guys knew that we always did what we said we were going to do, and we always did. If your people trust you, then you can do it. If your people don’t trust you, it isn’t going to work. Louis Diamond: In other words, your firm added immense value to the advisors as well. Aside from trust, if you weren’t providing a service or services that they found a value that they couldn’t access on their own, it would’ve been 85/15 going the other way for sure. Andy Schwartz: Yeah, 100%. I know it’s not easy, but it wasn’t that hard for us. Louis Diamond: Good. It’s well-earned. So I believe you were Rise Growth Partners’ first investment. Andy Schwartz: We were. Louis Diamond: That’s cool. It’s exciting. You get to be someone’s first, but did it make you uncomfortable that you were the first investment or did you see that as a positive? Andy Schwartz: I actually saw it as a positive. Well, one, because I recognized immediately that Joe Duran and his team were way smarter than we were certainly, and certainly with what we were trying to do. And I figured that it’s almost like the first child. They were so excited to have somebody, and there was so much time and energy, so they just really doted on us. They were really able to help us. Now they’ve got four or five groups that they work with, and obviously we’ve been launched. So the younger babies are getting more time and attention, although we get everything that we need from them. But yeah, that never concerned me. I always thought that would be our advantage. It actually turned out that way. Louis Diamond: Interesting. In thinking through a sale or a minority sale, did you entertain other types of capital, whether it was a family office or a multitude of other private equity sponsors or selling the firm outright? Andy Schwartz: Yeah, we probably had four or five very, very serious conversations. Actually, some got pretty close to the end where we basically just made the decision not to do it. One was a much larger firm, good people. But the problem always was… I was always going to get rich out of the deal because it was going to be 100% sale, but there was really no lift or leverage from the advisors. So the principals, they were willing to pay me a big multiple and my partners a big multiple, and pay these guys basically an average multiple. So we had always told our guys, “Let’s stay together, and someday, this thing, whatever it’s going to turn into be, will benefit everyone.” So with the Duran situation and the deal with Rise did, it gave everybody a chance to benefit from what we were doing. But what was good about all of those false starts was, it taught me a lot because I had… I know you’re involved in this, so you know better than I do, but we’d start conversations, somebody would reach out to me, I would be very specific about what I needed. They would say, “Yep, we can do that.” And then you get to the finish line, and it’s almost like, I started out, I wanted a tomahawk steak and a baked potato, and I ended up getting a two-day-old hamburger with some cold French fries. It’s like, I know I’m not that smart and I know you’re the PE guys, but for God’s sakes, we’re not stupid. So it was funny because in January of ’24, I told my partners, “I don’t want to have any more of these conversations. It was a waste of time and energy. I’m sick of talking to these people. Let’s just put our heads down, and then let’s grow the firm a little bit more, and then we’ll see what the world looks like.” And then I get introduced to Duran. Louis Diamond: Perfect. Makes sense. Yeah, so you were well-educated on the market, the types of buyers, and I always say it’s almost more important to understand what you don’t want more than what you do want. The only way oftentimes to understand what you don’t want is to experience it and touch and feel it and really get into the weeds on it. I like too, Andy, I saw in an article, you said that “we’re private equity invested, we’re not private equity owned,” which is a very cool dynamic. I could imagine why that was important to you to retain majority control. Kevin, I want to bring you back into the conversation. Thank you for being patient here. But I mean, I would imagine you had some real choices. I mean, you could have stayed at Northwestern and been very successful, gone through with your internal succession plan. You could have gone to an independent BD, monetized, figured out succession later. You could have sold the business to a strategic acquirer. You were big enough to take on an investor in some capacity on your own. So options wasn’t your problem. Maybe just walk us through. Did you consider any other pathways? And what were the pros and cons in your mind that led you to doing a transaction with Andy? Kevin Spahn: I’m a little different, I think, than most people in this industry. Even as you grow your business at a certain percentage, none of that stuff has ever really meant anything to me. All I know is I like what I do. So when I came into the business, because I like it, I enjoy it, I spend time doing it, I’ve tried to get better at it. But it comes naturally because it’s something that I don’t look at Monday mornings as, “Oh, no, it’s Monday morning.” I’m excited to go to work. My entire career, once I left law, my business has just grown over the years naturally. But you said something before, Louis, and I think this applies to me. I love to work with the clients. I don’t like what I have to do in terms of running the firm. I never have. It’s never been my cup of tea, but you have to do it if you run a firm. So number one, the thought of all the due diligence that I would have to do to research all the firms out there, I wasn’t really all that interested in doing that. At the end of the day, it comes down to this word trust. I trust Andy. I trust the other partners here too, because I’ve known not just Andy, but I’ve known Scott and many of the other partners for years. So I knew what I was getting myself into. At the end of the day, I knew what they built. I was very comfortable with it, and I was either going to stay at Northwestern Mutual or I was going to come here, but I wasn’t going to go anywhere else. I will say, since I’ve gone, it’s been exactly like I thought. I thought I trusted Andy. And if something happened along the way with the transition, everything that he said has been true, thing that he promised is real. As you deal with more complexities with a bigger book and more and more employees, I knew that I was almost at the breaking point in terms of my own organization and to merge into this organization that, as I said before, he’s already built out. I don’t have to do it. And to benefit from these great people that he has as part of his organization, that’s all been a real blessing for me and my team. So I didn’t shop the marketplace really, but I knew what I was getting into, and it’s worked out clear as I thought it would. Louis Diamond: That’s amazing. I think that’s what most people would covet. But it is a decision in and of itself to not shop the marketplace. I mean, from representing buyers or prospective buyers, I know the pricing leverage or the negotiation leverage and the valuation lift that comes from having an open market, having multiple bids, et cetera. It sounds like that wasn’t the… Obviously you wanted to get fair value for your firm, but for you, it was more, it’s trust, “I’m either going to just stay at Northwestern, which is the devil I know or it’s what I’ve known where I’ve been successful, or I’m going to go to the individual that I trust and forget about all the other noise.” Kevin Spahn: Well, Andy says things, but I know they’re true because I’ve seen him at work. I’ve seen how he’s acted. I’ve seen how he interacts with people. But here’s an example. He cares about the people that are at his firm. He says that, but I know it’s true because I see it. I’m the same. I really care about the people in my firm. So as I think about, well, what about the future of two groups, my clients, but also the people that work in my firm? They’re going to be around long after I am. Well, I don’t want myself to retire someday, get a big check, because there’s all sorts of options to get a check. If I get a check and then my client’s scatter to the wind, and my employees don’t really have a future and they just have to go and find their own way, that wasn’t attractive at all to me. So one of the things that I really appreciate about this opportunity is that there is a plan for both my clients and my employees or the younger team members at formerly Spahn Financial, where I feel very good about the fact that they have a solid, secure future in an industry that they’ve all grown to love without them having to go out and make their own way. Louis Diamond: Makes sense to me. We noted a couple of times in this interview, you talked about equity, partnership, both of you have. So Kevin, for you, what did it mean differently for you to become a partner and get equity in a larger firm rather than, we’ll say, the less risky move of just taking everything in cash? Why was that an important distinction for you? Kevin Spahn: For many years, when I left law and came into this business, I didn’t have any money at the time. I was just starting to make money as a lawyer. It takes a while. I started low. I got trial experience working for the government, so they didn’t pay much. That was three years. Then I was at a firm, and I was just starting to make more money. Then I made this big shift into a career tha

SaaStr 875: Who Owns Your Data Now? Agents vs. System of Record, ServiceTitan vs. Podium, Headless Salesforce, and Agentic Renewals on The Agents #013 The agents are writing data faster than any human ever could - and systems of record aren't ready for it. This week on The Agents, Jason and Amelia dig into the biggest meta-theme of 2026: what happens when your AI agents become the primary user of your CRM, your MAP, and every other system you've built your business on? Together, they unpack the ServiceTitan vs. Podium blowup, where an agentic lead gen tool slowly became a competing system of record until ServiceTitan shut them off with 30 days' notice, and why this is just the first of many fights like it coming across SaaS. Then Amelia pulls back the curtain on how SaaStr actually runs Salesforce headless through 10K, what it means that their agents have written 40 gigabytes of data into Salesforce without either of them logging in, and why the storage math is going to force a reckoning for every vendor jacking up API prices right now. Plus: the renewal agent Amelia built that generates a fully custom, hyper-personalized pitch deck for every single customer, using headless Salesforce, Gamma, social data, podcast mentions, and Gmail. And why Clay plus ZoomInfo plus Cowork turned out to be the best enrichment stack their agents have found yet. If you're building on top of systems of record, selling to companies that are, or just trying to figure out how agents change the economics of SaaS data, this one is essential listening. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 02:00 - ServiceTitan cuts off Podium: what happened and why it matters 10:00 - 40 gigs in Salesforce and neither of us logged in 16:00 - The API pricing reckoning coming for systems of record 22:00 - How SaaStr runs Salesforce headless with 10K 30:00 - The renewal agent: no account left behind 42:00 - Narrative-first pitching: getting the agent to sell 50:00 - Clay + ZoomInfo + Cowork: the enrichment stack that actually worked 58:00 - What comes next: agentic inbound proposals SaaStr hosts the world's largest community for B2B software founders and executives.

It’s a hilarious, fast-paced edition of News It or Lose It on Afternoons with Zweli as Zweli breaks down the wildest pop culture headlines! The spotlight shines on the massive TV renewal news for HBO's IT: Welcome to Derry, the hit 1960s prequel series exploring a town plagued by dark secrets, which officially secured its second season. Zweli also dives into the lighter side of the internet, unpacking the latest social media sensation making waves with her creative, viral videos, alongside the ridiculous public feud over a microphone cap that has fans in stitches. Wrap it all up with the hottest new music collaboration buzzing across the charts, delivered with Zweli's signature wit and commentary. Spend weekday afternoons with Zweli. He keeps you in the loop with everything from music and movies to sport and pop culture. Hear what the Word on the Street is, test your skills with the high-pressure 6 Out of 6, and get ready to be entertained. Thank you for listening to an Afternoons with Zweli podcast Listen live on Primedia+ weekdays from 12:00 to 15:00 (SA Time) to Afternoons with Zweli broadcast on 947 https://www.primediaplus.com/station/947 For more from the show go to https://buff.ly/FeeL6wY or find all the catch-up podcasts here https://buff.ly/pRBikjo Subscribe to the 947 Weekly Newsletter here https://buff.ly/hf9IuR9 Follow us on social media 947 on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/947Joburg/ 947 on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@947joburg 947 on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/947joburg 947 on X https://x.com/947 947 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@947Joburg See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

By Doug Green “A renewal should not just be a look in the rear-view mirror.” In Part Two of the Technology Reseller News SmarTrak series, I talk with Jay Pierce of SmarTrak.ai about how Cisco partners can turn renewal and lifecycle data into longer-term customer strategies. Pierce describes the approach as a “windshield view” — looking ahead at what a customer may need over the next three to five years instead of simply reviewing what they bought last time. That means considering hardware, software, services, Cisco buying programs and the customer's broader business plans as part of the renewal conversation. The discussion also looks at how AI can help partners identify transformation opportunities, while recognizing that raw data alone is not enough. Pierce points to data protection, Cisco program knowledge and context as important factors in turning information into useful partner intelligence. For Cisco partners, the opportunity is to move beyond a transaction-based renewal process and use lifecycle information to build a more complete account strategy — one that expands the customer conversation and helps partners plan for what comes next. This is Part Two of the SmarTrak series: Turning Cisco Renewals into Five-Year Plans. Next in the series: Clean Data Before Artificial Intelligence.

GP lease renewals can be a daunting prospect as they can feel full of legal jargon, financial considerations, and uncertainty about what comes next. In this podcast Michelle Lombardi, Director of Primary Care, discusses with Adam Thompson from Primary Care Surveyors the lease renewal process, explaining what practices need to know, and sharing practical advice to help you make informed decisions about your premises and your future. 

Don’t miss this massive channel shift! Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this episode of the Ultimate Partner Podcast, host Vince Menzione sits down with Alexandra Zagury, Corporate Vice President of Channels at Microsoft, to explore ecosystem shifts, partner-led growth, and AI transformation. https://youtu.be/9jrSGX5bM90 Key Takeaways Microsoft’s telemetry and propensity data offer unprecedented insights that many partners are currently failing to unlock. Partners must evolve past basic licensing models and build comprehensive managed service stacks across the entire customer lifecycle. Establishing an AI Center of Excellence on the Microsoft platform is critical for capturing future market share and technical intensity. The modern tech ecosystem demands a shift from product-led growth to true partner-led growth driven by multi-partner collaboration. Renewal engines targeting 110% to 125% retention require an always-on motion starting well in advance of contract expiration. Investing in sales readiness and precision velocity training ensures that end sellers can effectively articulate the value of the Microsoft platform. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags Microsoft, telemetry, Hyperscalers, channel, small medium enterprise, telcos, hosters, SSPs, Cisco, CSP, agentic GTM, propensity data, SPX, PUPP, cloud descent, MSPs, managed XDR, Agent 365, skilling, co-sell, renewals, flywheel, AI Center of Excellence, enterprise Transcript Alexandra Zagury Audio Podcast [00:00:00] Alexandra Zagury: One of the things that I think is the best kept secret at Microsoft is the telemetry that we offer our partners. [00:00:08] Vince Menzione: You can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us, the way Hyperscalers are partnering, how AI is remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. [00:00:22] Vince Menzione: I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and each week I sit down with leaders at the intersection of technology. Partnerships and outcomes. The voices shaping how ecosystems actually work. We talk about what’s real, what’s changing, and what it takes to lead in this era where the partner channel isn’t just part of the strategy. [00:00:41] Vince Menzione: It is the strategy because being in the room changes everything. Let’s [00:00:46] Guest: start. [00:00:50] Vince Menzione: I am thrilled because I get to have a leader that is somewhat new in role and is the corporate vice president of channels for Microsoft. And so Alex is here to, is joining us for the first time at Ultimate Partner. I’m thrilled to have you. Thank, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Welcome, welcome. [00:01:14] Vince Menzione: Thank you. Thank you. You and I are gonna be in the center seat in the middle. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We wanna. So I am thrilled. Um, you’re relatively new in your role at Microsoft. [00:01:24] Alexandra Zagury: Seven months. [00:01:25] Vince Menzione: Seven months, [00:01:26] Alexandra Zagury: yes. [00:01:26] Vince Menzione: Wow. That’s a, that’s a crazy. So take us through, ’cause for those who don’t know you, but a little bit of an introduction, your title, your role, CVP, and uh, your remit. [00:01:37] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about that and what your organization is focused in, in your mission. Yeah. [00:01:41] Alexandra Zagury: So hi everybody. Really exciting to be here. Thanks for the invitation, Vince. I always love to be with partners and with the channel. So my, I came to Microsoft to lead a new role, which we call Global Channel Sales, and it was part of the strategy of Microsoft to really bet on the growth in small, medium enterprise. [00:02:04] Alexandra Zagury: With the channel partner led growth. So my remit is really to lead our managed partners, but also to lead the strategy when it comes to the channel. Very specifically looking at the telcos, the distributors, the hosters. The sis and, uh, the SSPs of course. And, and so my role can be summarized in one word growth, and that’s what we do every single day is map our ambition to your ambition and figure out how we actually conquer this age of ai. [00:02:40] Vince Menzione: It’s a pretty big role. It’s a pretty, you know, I forgot about hosts ’cause we don’t, we don’t talk about them as much these days in the cloud. [00:02:48] Alexandra Zagury: Still a lot [00:02:48] Vince Menzione: of opportunity. You’ve got, and you’ve got all the telcos as well, which are pretty significant organizations, right? Lumen Field, just around the corner. [00:02:56] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Right up the. Right up, I said across the river, but it’s across the pond in Seattle. And, uh, what does that look like from an organization perspective in terms of dollars? Are you allowed to disclose numbers? [00:03:08] Alexandra Zagury: No, we [00:03:08] Vince Menzione: don’t talk numbers. Okay. And, but you have a long career in this type of environment, in this role. [00:03:15] Vince Menzione: 10 years at Cisco, right? [00:03:17] Alexandra Zagury: Mm-hmm. [00:03:17] Vince Menzione: Tell us a little bit more about your background, [00:03:18] Alexandra Zagury: please. Yeah, sure. Um, well I started out as a, a sales leader. Uh, actually I started out in banking, if you wanna go all the way back. Um, but I fell in love with the channel actually, when I was at Yahoo, believe it or not. Wow. [00:03:32] Alexandra Zagury: Because it was the first interact sales model that I had the privilege to operate in, and I really understood. Stood the power of going through a channel. And then I was at Blackberry where I, I, I also, um, well had various sales leadership roles, but our model was all through, was all through the channel. [00:03:51] Alexandra Zagury: Yes. Um, some startups and then help [00:03:54] Vince Menzione: in those days too, right? [00:03:55] Alexandra Zagury: Yeah. It was all sps and I learned from Jim Balze the channel fundamentals. So, um, and then ended up, of course, at Cisco the last. Nearly 11 years, which I think is also one of the greatest channel companies. Yes. And really has thrived in a partner, partner led growth, and in a partner led model. [00:04:12] Alexandra Zagury: And so when, when Microsoft called, I mean, this was just the opportunity of a lifetime. To lead the channel during an era where we’re all getting disrupted, we’re all having to blueprint new systems, new ways of working, where go to market is getting identified, and we’re all having to figure out how to become customer zero ourselves, but then also how to go to market. [00:04:36] Alexandra Zagury: With, with agents. And so this was the, the most exciting time that I could think of to join the Microsoft ecosystem and really take us to the next level. [00:04:44] Vince Menzione: Well, your background is perfect for this. I, I, Rodney Clark is a friend, has been a guest on the podcast and in, in the studio, and I think of Cisco is the quintessential channel company. [00:04:56] Vince Menzione: Like when I think about how channel got created and how it worked well, it was always Cisco that did it. So give us like your perspective now, like seven plus months and like how does this feel like you’ve You’ve got a big remit and, uh, various, uh, routes to market. We’ll call them, uh, channels to market. [00:05:14] Vince Menzione: So take us through a little bit of that, like Yeah, sure. [00:05:16] Alexandra Zagury: Describe [00:05:16] Vince Menzione: the transition, what it’s been like [00:05:18] Alexandra Zagury: for you. So one of the things we’re focused on is supporting the channel through the transformation, and we look at it in a couple of lenses. The first lens is really helping the channel become customer zero. [00:05:29] Alexandra Zagury: We really believe that the partners that invest in. Actually identifying their own processes and their own go go to market are the channels, are are the partners that it can actually win because if you are using it, you’re gonna be able to sell it. The second layer is all about technical intensity, and I’m very passionate about this because I see it from two lenses. [00:05:51] Alexandra Zagury: One is. I would like each and every of our partners to lead in building an AI Center of Excellence based on the Microsoft platform. It is a unique opportunity. I can give you lots of numbers, right? We’ve all heard about the trillions of agents that are gonna be here by 2030. We’ve all heard about the tam. [00:06:12] Alexandra Zagury: I mean, our TAM is going from 777. Million to over a billion, uh, to over a trillion. I, it’s, the numbers are just enormous, insane, right? Over half a billion of customers in our base that are using, that are, that are based already on the Microsoft platform. So all the goodness of our IU IQ platform can be unlocked with all the services that the partners can build. [00:06:36] Alexandra Zagury: So investing in that technical skilling and building those practices are gonna be, is gonna be essential. The third part. The third pillar is all about ag agentic, GTM. So once you’re actually using, uh, the Microsoft platform, you’re gonna have to reimagine all your business’s pro processes, your sales processes, and the more that you are integrated into how we do, how we do things. [00:07:00] Alexandra Zagury: One of the things that I think is the best kept secret at Microsoft is the telemetry that we offer our partners. Yeah. I mean, it’s unbelievable. I’ve never seen the quality of propensity data. And now I’m gonna give you the ABCs, which is please, A SPX, which is where we get all our copilot data, PUPP, which is our proposal upsell, uh, planner, right, cloud descent, where you can actually get your next action directly to your sellers. [00:07:27] Alexandra Zagury: There is just so much goodness that we give, which is part of our, our investment in partners. Which takes me to the fourth pillar, and that is all about value alignment and one of the things that I’m very focused and I bring with me from, from Cisco and the work that I did with MSPs is really thinking through what is that value exchange between us and the partner. [00:07:49] Alexandra Zagury: I believe that I’m in the business of earning your trust. Earning your preference. And, and, and we do that by really mapping that value alignment. So not just, one of the things that the whole industry has copied from Microsoft is really looking at our incentives across the customer lifecycle. Yes. So really mapping the value alignment across the customer lifecycle, not just at the point of the deal. [00:08:13] Alexandra Zagury: ’cause that was the whole purpose of CSP. That’s right. The investments we make in tele telemetry, the investments we make in our go-to-market assets and having those bi-directional feedback loops so that we can be continuously improving. So those are sort of the things that I’m thinking about every day. [00:08:29] Alexandra Zagury: There’s a couple of others as we lead and support you in this transformation. ’cause I think of my job as to supporting and driving growth with you so that we have that joint ambition. But also supporting the transformation that both of us are on this journey. [00:08:44] Vince Menzione: And Microsoft was the first with Jay McBain was with us yesterday, and we talked, we’ve talked about this before, but you were the first company to take and look, get rid of the old metal systems, right? [00:08:55] Vince Menzione: The bronze, silver, gold, mm-hmm. And move to basically a point system for partners so that they can come at it from a kind of a global perspective on how they drive success. What was, um, what did you learn about this partner community, your first months that you didn’t expect? [00:09:12] Alexandra Zagury: Can I say something controversial? [00:09:14] Vince Menzione: Absolutely. Okay. [00:09:14] Alexandra Zagury: I love, [00:09:14] Vince Menzione: we love controversial, [00:09:15] Alexandra Zagury: so I think one of the things that I was surprised was that I didn’t see all the partners really unlocking the value of CSP. Yeah. What do I mean by that? When Microsoft moved to the Point System, and I was on the other side, really, I was so jealous of CSP when I was running managed services. [00:09:34] Alexandra Zagury: Here’s an offer that is for partners, for Partner that gives you that initial. Guarantee in terms of the margin that helps you throughout the customer life cycle with all the incentives and, and programs that we have. And I didn’t see, I mean there are some partners, but I was surprised not seeing more partners really building their value stack and their services across the lifecycle. [00:09:59] Alexandra Zagury: And I think there’s such a great opportunity now to do that. That was one of the most surprising things I thought. Oh my gosh, there must be so many, so many services stack, so many people really unlocking, unlocking that, that value. That was a, that was a little bit surprising. [00:10:14] Vince Menzione: Why? Why do you suppose, why do you suppose that was happening? [00:10:17] Alexandra Zagury: I think some of the things that we were listening here, there’s some, sometimes complexity. There are things that we still have to. Get better on, and I’m one of the first ones to say that like our partner experience, we have, um, you know, a lot of focus right now on partner center and ensuring that we’re identifying it. [00:10:36] Alexandra Zagury: I don’t know if I can say it, but, you know, one of the things that we’re looking at is replicating internally. We have Agent J. That supports our sellers through the sales process. Nice. We’re looking at having something similar for our partners. Very cool. Getting some claps there. So, yeah, so, uh, I think, you know, that I, some, there are some lockers that we, we have to acknowledge a lot of them are operational and comes with being a 50-year-old company. [00:11:02] Vince Menzione: I, I’ll give you my perspective too. I wanna get your thoughts on this. ’cause I got to, I’ve gotten to know this MSP community, which is a, you mentioned managed services and that, um, I think that some of them, well, I think Microsoft is leaning in, in a much bigger way. Um, we had Jose on stage yesterday and just the, the energy around the room, there he is, he’s back here. [00:11:23] Vince Menzione: The energy in the room around the MSP community is palpable and it maybe it wasn’t there a few years ago. Maybe some people got off the bus, so to speak, like they weren’t really paying attention mm-hmm. To all the change and all the investments. That you men, you’re mentioning or being made to support this, would you, what would you say about that? [00:11:42] Alexandra Zagury: Yeah, I’d say that that that is correct, but I’d also say that what I learned, you know, leading MSP at Cisco was that. All the stars have to be aligned, right? And if one thing is not right, if you don’t have product market fit, if you, if you, if you don’t have a good way to, uh, consolidate your offer, if you don’t have that investment in practice development, like there’s a series of things that we need to get right. [00:12:07] Alexandra Zagury: And I think Jose and I spent a lot of time thinking through those things and we’re, we’re ready to, to welcome the community and specifically around security. I mean, that was the second thing that I was really surprised because I lost so many deals on the other side to Microsoft, and I was like, and then I come on this side and I’m like, there’s all this opportunity everywhere. [00:12:28] Alexandra Zagury: I look underneath this chair, this opportunity, and I’m like, why are people not going after it? There is the opportunity to build managed XDR solutions, the opportunity to reinvent the song. There’s, there’s just so much opportunity and I think people get so stuck in the. Just thinking of it from a licensing model and not thinking it from the, the full on end-to-end value that you can then unlock through the best licensing model on the planet. [00:12:55] Alexandra Zagury: And so, look, we’re here, we’re, we’re ready to talk to all of you and, and really figure this out ’cause we are gonna place really bet big bets next year on ensuring that we’re growing with the MSP community. [00:13:08] Vince Menzione: So what are you personally focused on in changing Microsoft to drive this. [00:13:13] Alexandra Zagury: Well, uh, I don’t know. [00:13:14] Alexandra Zagury: Changing is a, is a, is a big word. Well, I like evolution, change, [00:13:17] Vince Menzione: evolution, evolving. [00:13:18] Alexandra Zagury: You know, I [00:13:19] Vince Menzione: transition. [00:13:21] Alexandra Zagury: I think there is, there is a couple of things that I’ll say that one of the things that I, I’m really focused on right now, the first one is skilling. We’re at a time of such transformation. That investing in skilling, and if you look at our skilling model, it has four pillars. [00:13:37] Alexandra Zagury: The first pillar we’re best in class, in which is certification specializations, and making sure that our ecosystem is certified to go to market. The second one, which we call project ready. It’s sort of how we help you, uh, technically skill the folks that sit in your practices. And there’s more work to do there, and there’s more that you can learn about how we can actually help you. [00:13:59] Alexandra Zagury: And then the middle part I’m obsessed with right now, which is sales ready and tech sales ready. So it is ensuring, because AI is new for everybody. Yes. It’s a muscle, it is a proposition that you have to sell it’s value that you’re selling. I, I love what the gentleman from Lenovo was talking about. It’s, it’s that CSB always on motion. [00:14:21] Alexandra Zagury: Yes. And so really getting very crisp to the end seller at the, at the reseller. For example, at the end, seller at the partner about why Microsoft. Why now, how do I sell and how do I win? And giving them the assets, the competitive battle cards, the, the, the ability to end objection handling all these. Great, we have them. [00:14:45] Alexandra Zagury: I mean, the amount of content we have, but it’s about doing it at what I call precision velocity. [00:14:51] Vince Menzione: Precision [00:14:51] Alexandra Zagury: velocity, right? Which is this concept of how do we get very precise at a persona level. So that we get the velocity of impact. And so I’m, I’m very obsessed with that right now. And there’s two other things I’m very obsessed with, right? [00:15:04] Alexandra Zagury: The other one is this practice building, ensuring that we are together building these AI centers of excellence, um, especially for all our managed partners. This is something that I’ve put on, uh, every single PDM in our org is gonna, is gonna be talking about that. And then the third one is one that I find super interesting, which I think all of us. [00:15:25] Alexandra Zagury: Have a lot of work to do, which is partner to partner. [00:15:29] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:15:29] Alexandra Zagury: If we look at a customer outcome, thank you. A customer outcome is built of many partners, right? There’s so many different touch points. I think some folks talk about seven partners in, in a customer outcome, and so how do we actually. Use agents, use agent solutions to suddenly unlock this opportunity because most of the time you’ll see an SSP with an si, maybe an ISV in the middle of a transaction to deliver on that customer outcome. [00:16:04] Alexandra Zagury: Yes. So what can we Microsoft do? And I’d love ideas, right? I haven’t cracked this. I don’t think the industry has completely cracked this. It’s more of a, a science than, than, well, more of an art than it is a science today. So that’s the third thing that I, I, I’d love to really improve and, and get better at. [00:16:20] Vince Menzione: I wish you got to see my slide earlier. ’cause I had the seven seats. I had this, I had the seven partners surrounding the customer. Customer is able to make their decisions now because with their cloud commitments [00:16:31] Alexandra Zagury: mm-hmm. [00:16:32] Vince Menzione: They’re in the, they’re in the seat where it used to be. I would rely on the partner to tell me what to do. [00:16:38] Vince Menzione: I, I’m cobbling together the best solution for my organization. Based on the trusted partners, to your point, those seven seats, and that’s partner to partner action. And Jay McBain was here yesterday and he took us through a great example. It’s AstraZeneca, that Microsoft won AWS, thought they were gonna win the deal, and then there were Microsoft partners in involved. [00:17:00] Vince Menzione: And the, the decision was made in December, but the deal didn’t happen until July. And that whole process was because all these different partners showed up. And influence the decision and the solution areas for that customer. [00:17:12] Alexandra Zagury: Yeah, that’s the best example of PLG partner led growth in action, which I think, again, that is the other thing that I’m super excited about is that actually p proving in the AI era that it’s about PLG as partner led growth, not the other PLGI. [00:17:31] Vince Menzione: I love that. I love that. Instead of product led growth, it’s partner led growth. So I understand there’s three layers that you’re very interested in that you want, you were gonna take us through today. Okay. Do you know about this, [00:17:44] Alexandra Zagury: the layers [00:17:45] Vince Menzione: of we have, uh, copilot chat. Oh, yes. 365 and, and agents. [00:17:49] Alexandra Zagury: Yeah. [00:17:50] Vince Menzione: From a product perspective, I thought maybe, [00:17:51] Alexandra Zagury: yeah, sure. [00:17:52] Alexandra Zagury: This is, I mean. This is the, uh, advantage of choosing the market Microsoft platform. Yeah, so as you look, look at it, there’s, there’s definitely different options, but when you look at Microsoft, what’s really, really interesting is that we have all the, all the layers. There’s no AI without data, and we’ve got that data foundation. [00:18:15] Alexandra Zagury: We also have the intelligence data foundation, right? Then we’ve got the, the layer of actually building those AI agents, and then the last layer that we have is actually the experience or the application layer. So when you look at our platform is a completely integrated platform with the different choices. [00:18:35] Alexandra Zagury: We are not behold, beholden to one LLM or another LLM. You’re actually able to bring your data and, and bring the LLM that you want to deliver on the, on the outcomes that you need. And I think that is very, very unique about our proposition. Yeah, I [00:18:50] Vince Menzione: agree. [00:18:50] Alexandra Zagury: But the other thing that is unique, it’s the most exciting product out there. [00:18:55] Alexandra Zagury: Agent 3, 6 5, our own oh oh seven. It really is a differentiated proposition that every single partner can build services around. Starting with your advisory services, tell me customer, what is it that you are thinking of? Then you actually move on to thinking about security because again, just like there’s no AI without data, you have to start with that data foundation. [00:19:24] Alexandra Zagury: There’s no AI without security and no security without ai. And so really thinking through how, uh, agent 3, 6, 5, I love it. I get these claps once a, I love, love really thinking about how Agent 3, 6 5 really unlocks, not only. A security budget, but an observability budget because you can do both. You are talking to both, uh, folks at the customer, right? [00:19:47] Alexandra Zagury: You can actually start talking about how you’re gonna actually govern all of these agents, manage all of these agents, but also there’s the observability layer, which is gonna tell you what actually can you do? How can you actually deliver on the outcomes that we all want from ai, which is productivity. [00:20:05] Alexandra Zagury: Experience and efficiency and all the other things. So I think this is the biggest opportunity this channel has ever seen, and every single partner is gonna have to make a choice on what platform they’re gonna lead with, and we believe it should be ours because it is completely integrated across these three layers with our very own oh oh seven. [00:20:30] Vince Menzione: I wanna get your perspective, but it feels like many of these partners in the MSP community are stuck at that CSP level. We were having this conversation about getting through that, coaching ’em through it. What would your be your perspective on that? [00:20:44] Alexandra Zagury: Um, I’d say, uh, use this moment to unlock that opportunity. [00:20:50] Alexandra Zagury: First off, invest in your skills. Get your, get your team skilled and, uh, on Microsoft, build your center of excellence. Map out your strategy where actually you’re gonna monetize and use all the different assets that we have. And if you are being really, um, I mean, most of them are serviced through a distributor. [00:21:12] Alexandra Zagury: Make your distributor accountable for supporting you in packaging the offers and giving you the, uh, information that you need in terms of skilling. And then in terms of co-selling, again, distributor has a lot of tools that can help you understand how to unlock the co unlock, the co-selling opportunity with Microsoft. [00:21:35] Alexandra Zagury: I think that’s another really big competitive advantage that Microsoft has. When, uh, Microsoft changed what it started by, by, by changing its strategy. I think clarity is kindness. We were very, very clear that where we want, we wanted partners, of course, to play an enterprise with a services stack, but we were very clear that we were betting on a partner led growth in small, medium enterprise, right? [00:22:03] Alexandra Zagury: And so we’ve built our whole operating system. Around that. And so I think it’s really about finding the information that you know you want, planning your strategy, getting skilled and go to market with us. Our co-sell Advantage is very, very unique. It is one of the only companies that has the sales teams completely aligned because CSP is our hero motion. [00:22:29] Vince Menzione: So being with a customer through the journey on CSP, but also renewals are a big component of growth. Talk to us about that. [00:22:36] Alexandra Zagury: Yeah. Renewals are, uh, a machine and an engine that is just absolutely beautiful. It’s your [00:22:42] Vince Menzione: flywheel. [00:22:43] Alexandra Zagury: It is your flywheel. Um, and it is the gift that keeps on giving. We, of course, have a very focused, um, and in fact, one of the things that I’ve done since. [00:22:52] Alexandra Zagury: Uh, since we’ve started, it started a very focused motion in terms of looking at our renewals. We have very specific targets. We, we like to see a renewal at 110% at the moment of renewal. And then we like to see a motion, t plus three, T plus six. That gets us to that a hundred and and 25%. But what we’ve also found out is that this needs to be an always on motion. [00:23:18] Alexandra Zagury: So one of the things that we’re doing is using this concept of precision velocity becoming very rigorous. ’cause we have all the data. Yeah. In terms of what is that next action, and really looking at starting that renewal process, we see that the partners that are able to reach the targets are the ones that start at T minus. [00:23:36] Alexandra Zagury: Six, maybe T minus three, you’re cutting it, but T minus six. And really building that constant motion, getting out in front Yeah. With the customer is really important. And then of course, we now even have these amazing go back motions, uh, with, with our partners where we actually, after the renewal, we go and. [00:23:56] Alexandra Zagury: The renewal was not at the target. We just constantly keep on going. Uh, going back with the, with the partners and we’ve unlocked a, a bevy of data. We, our operating model, we call it the pods, where the PDM sits at the center and orchestrates it with all the different roles that we have. And so we now have a very systematized moment, uh, motion of how to do the renewals. [00:24:18] Vince Menzione: So for the partners in the room, what’s one investment that they should make and what should every partner in the room do differently? Going into, uh, July 1st. [00:24:27] Alexandra Zagury: Well, I think the first thing, remember, CSP is our hero motion, so really for, uh, real, really focused on that. But the one investment, can I say two? [00:24:38] Vince Menzione: Please, please. [00:24:38] Alexandra Zagury: Your time. The, the first one is skilling, right? This is the time. [00:24:43] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:24:43] Alexandra Zagury: Technical intensity is super, super important, and really making those investments in skilling not only from a practice perspective, your your, your technical practice, uh, teams, but also from a sales readiness perspective. [00:24:59] Alexandra Zagury: This is a new muscle. It’s we’re all learning how to truly sell outcomes, and so getting your sales teams ready. Is is really important. And then the second one very tied to that is building your AI Center of Excellence based on the Microsoft platform. Because as we go into FY 27, you will see that the partners that prefer and grow with us are the ones that will see the investment come to them. [00:25:28] Vince Menzione: So I want to use the term front. I I, I’ve been avoiding the term frontier firm, but I think it is super critical. Everything I’ve heard today, like you need to be customer zero. You need to get in train, advance on it and go build against it. [00:25:41] Alexandra Zagury: Absolutely. Well, if you had, let me a third, I would’ve said customer zero. [00:25:46] Vince Menzione: You have it? Alright. We have less than a minute. Would you be okay if we ask for like maybe one question? Yeah, absolutely. We’ll do like one, maybe two. So good to have you by the way. Thank you, Vince. So nice to have you here. [00:26:04] Vince Menzione: I think we did such a good job. Oh, here we go. Here’s, here’s fun. A mic is coming your way. [00:26:20] Vince Menzione: Thank you. Here we go. Okay. [00:26:22] Guest: So we’ve been very keen on, um, skilling our people, and I still find it very hard to get all of the information out of Partner Center to get a complete global view. Are you and your team thinking about maybe having an MCP server access and having a real portal working with that data? [00:26:41] Alexandra Zagury: You just touched on one of our areas of improvement. Absolutely. In fact, um, thank you for, stay tuned for holding us accountable to that. That is definitely one of the things that we’re working on is how to integrate skilling hub into partner center. Right. As most of you will know, there are it Qs, and so that’s one of the things that we are definitely prioritizing, but thank you for holding me accountable to that one. [00:27:09] Vince Menzione: Awesome. [00:27:13] Vince Menzione: We have one more back here, David. I see. We wanna see how fast they can move that microphone across the room. Relay system here. The relay team. There we go. [00:27:25] Guest: That was excellent, Alexander. Thank you. And welcome. [00:27:28] Alexandra Zagury: Thank you. [00:27:29] Guest: Can you point to a specific example? ’cause I think it’s so critical what you highlighted just the skill piece and the customer outcomes piece. [00:27:35] Guest: Right. Can you point to a specific example of a story that you really love that highlights, uh, customers lighting it up with ROI. [00:27:44] Alexandra Zagury: Yeah, I think, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re a platform, so I just saw a win wire. Like at Microsoft, we get these win wires all the time about how an SSB actually won a, a deal against one of these big AI only companies. [00:28:00] Alexandra Zagury: And it was really about selling the full platform, right? Yeah. Because if, if you, if you put a full platform against an LLM proposition, I mean, the full platform really stacks up because it’s completely integrated. It’s not behemoth to one, you’re not making a bet on one company. And it really highlighted our mantra around trust and intelligence. [00:28:24] Alexandra Zagury: The customer was able to see, they, they were an M 365 customer, so all their iq, all their intelligence was already there. They knew that they, there were guardrails against it. They had a problem with shadow ai and by actually standardizing on copilot and going on that journey from copilot paid to agents, they sue the, they saw the full, uh, value proposition. [00:28:49] Alexandra Zagury: And so we won that deal and it was one of the. First E seven deals that we won, so it was great. [00:28:55] Vince Menzione: Fantastic. Great. Congratulations. [00:28:57] Alexandra Zagury: Thank you [00:28:58] Vince Menzione: Alex. I am so honored and thrilled that you got, you chose us to be your I I would say the first big Yeah, absolutely. Presentation in front of the partner community. [00:29:07] Vince Menzione: I’m so excited to have you. [00:29:08] Alexandra Zagury: Thank you [00:29:09] Vince Menzione: guys, and hopefully many more times ahead with us. [00:29:10] Alexandra Zagury: Absolutely. Invite me at anytime. [00:29:12] Vince Menzione: Okay. Well, thank you [00:29:13] Alexandra Zagury: so much. [00:29:14] Vince Menzione: Thank you. So great [00:29:15] Alexandra Zagury: to have you. Thank [00:29:16] Vince Menzione: you so much. Thanks for listening to The Ultimate Partner Podcast. If today’s conversation resonated, share it with a partner leader in your network. [00:29:26] Vince Menzione: Subscribe where you listen, and head over to the ultimate partner.com. For show notes related content and the resources for this episode. And if you haven’t already, now’s the time to register for the Ultimate Partner Live Event in Reston, Virginia, October 26th through October 28th. Until next time, keep showing up in the rooms that matter because being in the room changes everything.

First episode in a new multipart podcast series explores how lifecycle intelligence can protect recurring revenue and uncover new opportunities for Cisco partners. The sale is only the beginning. For Cisco partners, the real work of protecting recurring revenue starts after the purchase order is signed, the technology is deployed and the customer begins using what they bought. In the first episode of a new multipart podcast series, SmarTrak.ai explains how Cisco partners can gain greater control over the subscription renewal process by bringing fragmented customer, contract, install-base and adoption data into a clearer, more actionable view. Partners often lose visibility after deployment. Information becomes scattered across systems and spreadsheets, customer adoption can be difficult to measure and warning signs may remain hidden until a subscription is close to expiring. By that point, the partner may have limited time to address the problem or demonstrate the value the customer has received. SmarTrak.ai is designed to help partners identify those risks earlier. The platform helps organize Cisco install-base, contract, subscription and lifecycle information so partners can see what customers own, what is approaching renewal and where engagement may be slowing. That visibility can help partners begin renewal conversations well before an expiration date. It can also support better planning around SmartNet, Enterprise Agreements, true-ups, technology refreshes and customer budgets. The opportunity goes beyond retention. Better lifecycle intelligence can help Cisco partners identify expansion opportunities, attach additional services, grow wallet share and uncover competitive takeover opportunities across the customer account. This opening conversation examines why lifecycle management has become essential, what typically breaks down after the sale and how partners can turn post-sale intelligence into stronger customer relationships and more predictable recurring revenue. The multipart series will continue with deeper discussions on adoption measurement, renewal readiness, customer data, Cisco 360 and the role of AI in helping partners recognize risks and revenue opportunities earlier. Podcast: The Sale Is Not the Finish Line Series: How SmarTrak.ai Helps Cisco Partners Master Subscription Renewals and Unlock New Revenue Opportunities Visit: https://smartrak.ai/

Being a great landlord is not just about being nice. It can directly affect your vacancy, tenant turnover, repair costs, rental income, and ultimately the profitability of your real estate portfolio. In today's episode of the Canadian Real Estate Investing Morning Show, Wayne and Gabby break down what it actually means to be a great landlord and why landlord quality has a much bigger impact on returns than many investors realize. The core idea is simple: If tenants feel respected, appreciated, and taken care of, they are more likely to stay longer, communicate better, treat the property properly, and renew their lease. That means fewer turnovers, less vacancy, lower costs, and better long-term returns.

Being a great landlord is not just about being nice. It can directly affect your vacancy, tenant turnover, repair costs, rental income, and ultimately the profitability of your real estate portfolio. In today's episode of the Canadian Real Estate Investing Morning Show, Wayne and Gabby break down what it actually means to be a great landlord and why landlord quality has a much bigger impact on returns than many investors realize. The core idea is simple: If tenants feel respected, appreciated, and taken care of, they are more likely to stay longer, communicate better, treat the property properly, and renew their lease. That means fewer turnovers, less vacancy, lower costs, and better long-term returns.

Don’t miss the AI partnership revolution Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this episode, Vince Menzione sits down with Amit Sinha from WorkSpan and Marc Monday from ServiceNow to dissect the rapid evolution of AI-native partnerships and the shifting dynamics of the channel ecosystem. They explore how the hyperscaler co-sell model has transformed into a complex strategy of asymmetrical collaboration that demands unprecedented speed, simplicity, and scale from publishers. By integrating AI agents to orchestrate workflows, manage high-risk renewals, and automate low-dollar deals, companies can activate their sellers and drive explosive, exponential growth in their partner programs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP4cFBcCI9Q Key Takeaways The partner channel is no longer just a piece of the strategy; it is the entire strategy for winning in 2026. Modern co-selling is an asymmetrical collaboration where publishers must often do more than fifty percent of the heavy lifting. Implementing AI agents within partnerships can lead to massive revenue impacts, such as a 24% higher lift on renewals for companies like Boomi. True scaling requires moving beyond traditional time-and-materials consulting toward outcome-based frameworks for customers. Activating sellers through continuous AI-driven account orchestration is the ultimate key to unlocking exponential ecosystem growth. The market is moving faster than ever, necessitating that partner enablement and roadmaps shift to agile, sprint-based cycles rather than long-term rigid plans. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags AI native, ecosystem shifting, hyperscalers, Work Span, ServiceNow, lifecycle incentives, cloud native, consumption led, DocuSign, Gong, Boomi, workflow orchestration, asymmetrical collaboration, CRM integration, marketplace private offers, high propensity, seller activation, agentic solution, outcome based consulting, LLM control tower. Transcript Amit Sinha and Marc Monday Audio Episode [00:00:00] Marc Monday: We have to be soup drop dead simple and we’re gonna talk about that nice. In this world. It has to be simple. Even though under the covers it’s very complicated, [00:00:10] Vince Menzione: you can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us. The way Hyperscalers are partnering, how AI is remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:21] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host. And each week I sit down with leaders at the intersection of technology, partnerships and outcomes. The voices shaping how ecosystems actually work. We talk about what’s real, what’s changing, and what it takes to lead in this era where the partner channel isn’t just part of the strategy. [00:00:43] Vince Menzione: It is the strategy because being in the room [00:00:46] Marc Monday: changes everything. Let’s start. [00:00:52] Vince Menzione: And, uh, two incredible friends up on, uh, up on stage. But I think I’m just gonna have my, one of my first friends come up. Amit Sinha from Work Span, a great, great friend and supporter. We’ve been together since the beginning, since the very first ultimate partner in Dallas when we commandeered Microsoft facility. [00:01:12] Amit Sinha: Yeah, [00:01:12] Vince Menzione: you have a little bit that you’re gonna share first and then we’re all gonna come join you. [00:01:16] Amit Sinha: Absolutely. And [00:01:17] Vince Menzione: then we’re gonna have my other great friend, mark Monday on us on stage with us as well. So yeah, [00:01:21] Amit Sinha: what a privilege. Uh, what a privilege. Vince, you do an amazing job as a community and, uh, incredible. [00:01:27] Amit Sinha: Shout out to Alexandra. Uh, we work together at Cisco talking about lifecycle incentives across the whole lifecycle. So amazing work done there as well. So. Very quickly, I’m gonna talk to you about AI native partnerships. A quick motivation. That’s me. Of course, we are using Nano banana to cover that. [00:01:45] Amit Sinha: That’s me looking up a Yellow Pages. I will date myself. That’s, uh, McDonald’s coming to India and me looking up, uh, the nearest McDonald’s, right? And this is me now booking Uber Eats Ma and I had this real experience yesterday night. I flew in from Sapphire in Orlando and I was hungry. Ma said, let’s, let’s get Uber Eats. [00:02:06] Amit Sinha: And we had a great. De this is digital native, right? We had no idea the world would transform this way, but completely new ways of working. Okay. Um, and, uh, another great experience that Mike, my co-founder and CEO seated the back half, I spent a decade at SAP, uh, doing hana, which was a database product, but it was on premise. [00:02:28] Amit Sinha: We had these racks and our whole gig was actually take an amazing HANA database with this server mounted, deployed. Wow. The CIO and the CFO, that this is the most amazing thing. And they would not say, Hey, you can’t take that box away, because it’s such a good insight that I get for my, uh, analytics product, right. [00:02:47] Amit Sinha: So that’s the old way. And look at us. We are all cloud native, right? Cloud has gotten to a place where it’s not just about infrastructure, running things and meters and stuff like that in a scalable way. It is a also source of innovation. New capability, new business model, consumption led business model. [00:03:07] Amit Sinha: Whole new way of working, right? So this comes to the new world now, what does AI need to look like? We heard all the amazing speakers talk about, uh, you know, the promise of ai, right? But you have a choice. Uh, you have a choice to do it yourself or, uh, especially as partnership professionals, right? When you do it yourself, you have this chat bots and stuff that you get from all the major. [00:03:33] Amit Sinha: You can always get more productive, but that’s about half an hour saved. The bar is too low there. So this is an amazing piece of, uh, research put together by all the experts. Vince, thank you for doing that. Uh, we had Jay McBain lend his voice as well. We had Rob Moyer with all his, uh, decades of, you know, insight and wisdom as to what would the future with AI look like, uh, encapsulate in that. [00:03:57] Amit Sinha: So go ahead, take a picture. Uh, this is not gated. Um, beautiful piece of content has also new insights from leading firms. AI native, I would dare say frontier firms who are like DocuSign or Gong who are really pioneering AI native partnerships, Boomi, and how they’re powering their renewal business case across AWS Google and Microsoft Marketplaces. [00:04:21] Amit Sinha: Uh, this really talks about that. And here, uh, this is the thought leadership that we bring to the table. And again, this is not a vendor pitch. This is, you know, as you elevate from the low bar about making yourself productive where you’re cut and paste, uh, into a chatbot, your context so that you can get a better co-sell email out there. [00:04:40] Amit Sinha: You DIY, this thing. But if you think of working with works span, these are three things that you should think about. First is imagine instead of cut and paste, you have your entire partnership context right there. And because the context is there, the right better together story, the right case study, the right partnership documents, the right opportunity and accounts that intelligence not only informs you, but also your team in a, in an extended way, and even your partnership in an extended way that’s fully automated. [00:05:13] Amit Sinha: Second is it’s not just informing you or sensing you, it is also acting. And I think this is where there are, you know, death by a thousand cuts if happening in the world where all this time gets taken up, right? But if you have an agent that scales in ly, whether you are big mature partnership, you got lots and lots of accounts and opportunities to cover, the agent can do that. [00:05:36] Amit Sinha: Or if you’re a new partnership, how do you get to market quickly? With the right assets, the right get to market content. This can work both ways. And lastly, how do you secure this partnership is done in trust. So you should have an agent for every partnership, uniquely your partnership with Microsoft, your partnership with ServiceNow, your partnership with uh, AWS and Google. [00:05:59] Amit Sinha: They all get a different agent. And the point here is these agents can work in a circle of trust and the boundary that gets established. So via work span, come talk to us outside. And with that, Vince, let’s uh, bring Mark along. Come on, mark. [00:06:17] Vince Menzione: Alright. I am gonna have you and then Mark, uh, yeah. Want mark in the middle? [00:06:22] Marc Monday: Oh, uh oh. [00:06:24] Vince Menzione: So, uh, let me move over so I get back to the picture slide. Look at those two handsome gentlemen up there. Uh, thrilled to have you Mark as well. Uh, for those of you who don’t, because you’ve been, you were just in Boca with us this Yeah. This winter. [00:06:39] Marc Monday: That’s right. [00:06:40] Vince Menzione: And, uh, tell us about your new role at ServiceNow. [00:06:43] Marc Monday: Well, I have the absolute privilege of leading the partner channel at ServiceNow. Yeah. Um, it’s comprised of our partner programs, our program gives and gets, and importantly our five routes to market, our consulting and implementation partners, our resell partners, our service provider partners, our hyperscaler partners, and importantly our build partners. [00:07:03] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it. So let’s talk about the partner programs and why they’re so critical to ServiceNow right now. [00:07:08] Marc Monday: I think in this world scale is everything, and so this profession has always been a bit mercurial and a little bit of a black box for organizations. What does the partner team do? What does that look like? [00:07:21] Marc Monday: But what we have to continue to do is explain, this is your force multiplier. Working together in collaboration helps you scale beyond your individual numbers. And that’s really the thing that we’re focused on is how do we drive that? And I have three big things that we have to focus on is we have to be sup, drop dead simple, and we’re gonna talk about that [00:07:40] Vince Menzione: nice. [00:07:41] Marc Monday: In this world, it has to be simple. Even though under the covers it’s very complicated. We have to be incredibly fast. Agility is the key in this very moment. And then as I said, with that becomes the scaling element and the force multiplier. [00:07:56] Vince Menzione: And you have spent many, you, well, we both worked at Microsoft together. [00:07:59] Vince Menzione: It’s [00:07:59] Marc Monday: true. [00:07:59] Amit Sinha: Way back way. [00:08:00] Marc Monday: I feel like you’re punking me having me right before lunch. Like I remember back at Microsoft, you did something to me, so I’m gonna have you right before lunch. [00:08:07] Vince Menzione: It’s, no, it’s really terrific to have you. But, uh, so yeah, you, you mentioned about like the change and the specificity and the clarity around it. [00:08:16] Vince Menzione: Amme you have, uh, broken the model, so to speak, working with ServiceNow, right? Yeah. You went from being a traditional. I’ll call it co-sell Engine Marketplace Company. Uh, tell us, tell us, tell us about the innovation that’s going on in the room. We’re working with ServiceNow. [00:08:31] Amit Sinha: Absolutely. Uh, when you think of co-sell, the first mine goes to just co-sell with the hyperscalers, right? [00:08:36] Amit Sinha: Because they kind of pioneered and started this in a unique way. We, of course, got started with Microsoft eight years ago, doing not just co-sell and P two P, but since then AW S and Google right. You would be surprised to know that we do about 10% of AWS sales through work, expand co-sale. Right. Just [00:08:53] Vince Menzione: wow. [00:08:53] Amit Sinha: But that’s where we started. Where we ended up is really looking at all partner types and all motion types and. Mark and I disagreed and he, he really pushed me hard on this. Yeah, and the point here is if you look at your build partner motion, it’s also a co-sell. You build, then you co-sell and go to market, [00:09:11] Vince Menzione: right? [00:09:12] Amit Sinha: If you think about your services partners, right? You have a product. They have amazing last mile services and digital transformation. Uh, capabilities, and again, there’s a coastal motion there. So where we world works span eventually was not just coastal with hyperscalers, but across all partner types. And Mark, thank you for pushing us on that. [00:09:31] Amit Sinha: Yeah. And being a pioneering partner on works span with us. I really appreciate [00:09:34] Marc Monday: this. It was a fun rumble we got there. [00:09:37] Vince Menzione: So why does it matter now for ServiceNow specific? [00:09:40] Marc Monday: Yeah. I mean the reality is, um, I’m gonna say something provocative. We’re, we’re all friends. Yeah. Um, Cosell iss probably a misnomer. It’s not a 50 50 coequal relationship. [00:09:53] Vince Menzione: Yeah. You don’t walk in together holding it back. [00:09:55] Marc Monday: It’s asymmetrical collaboration. I love that. And I want to put the stake in the ground. The co-sell motions that have been created by the hyperscalers are wonderful. The pipe has been opened, but the reality is the publisher. Has to do a lot of the work and the systems are there, but the key is not just connecting into partner center as an example. [00:10:16] Marc Monday: Yeah. But building your own infrastructure and processes. That’s where the magic comes together, and that’s where we really drive scale. And so if we approach co-selling is asymmetrical collaboration and recognizing that you probably need to do more than 50%. When a, when a a team collaborates on co-authoring a book, it’s not like someone’s writing every other word, and it’s exactly 50%. [00:10:40] Marc Monday: Or if a pilot, a co-pilot is with a pilot on a plane, they’re not doing exactly 50% of the work’s, [00:10:46] Vince Menzione: right? No. [00:10:47] Marc Monday: This asymmetric approach requires that we do a lot of the work on our side. Yeah. And that’s where AM and team have really helped us a ton. [00:10:55] Vince Menzione: And ServiceNow was known as a ticketing solution back in the day. [00:10:58] Vince Menzione: Right. And you’ve kind of, I mean, it it, it started that way. [00:11:01] Marc Monday: We have a wonderful heritage 20 plus years Yeah. Of workflow orchestration. Yeah. And in a diggen world, what are we really doing? We’re orchestrating workflows, and importantly, we need to govern those workflows and we need to sequence them in a meaningful way. [00:11:17] Marc Monday: And so our vision of a control tower across any hyperscaler, any LLM, any workflow, any system of record, any time, that’s the key to everything. [00:11:27] Vince Menzione: And so now you’ve taken the work span approach and driven it across what I see, like taking, taking this. This stack, we’ll call it. Yeah, the tower. Yeah. And then applying all of the methodologies and best practices on what we’ve called co-selling and ecosystem orchestration, essentially is what it really is. [00:11:46] Amit Sinha: Absolutely. [00:11:46] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:11:47] Amit Sinha: Yeah. And we are thrilled to partner with ServiceNow on this. So ServiceNow, as you guys know, uh, release their CRM product. So we got in at the ground floor on that opportunity and with the now assist agents as well. What we’ve really built is an integration between work span as a platform. [00:12:03] Amit Sinha: And ServiceNow, CRM as well. So if anybody is using that all the way from ServiceNow opportunities to Marketplace private offers, you can a genetically do that. Of course you can do it on Salesforce Hub, spot and Dynamics, but now ServiceNow is an additional option on that. I wanna really double click though, mark, on your point around asymmetry around this, when we say six to seven partners are gonna surround the end customer, right? [00:12:27] Amit Sinha: Yes. They will come at different points in time. Yes. Right? And they will also have different roles to play. So just as you think of a team, right? A soccer team for that matter, or a football team, pick your analogy right. Not everybody’s equal. Right? There’s always a qb. There’s always somebody who holds the prime on the deal. [00:12:45] Amit Sinha: There’s always a role to play. [00:12:46] Marc Monday: Yeah, [00:12:47] Amit Sinha: and I think what’s beautiful about our partnership here is when you look at it applied to services partners, it’s about building billion dollar businesses around ServiceNow, using their competency, but knowing the kind of joint accounts you need to go pursue in order to. [00:13:03] Amit Sinha: You know, burn down their inventory or, or co-sell alongside. If it’s the build partner, it’s about attacking an industry vertical or a joint account there. Right? So knowing very intelligently who to partner with and when to bring them on is the AI orchestration that is key in this partnership [00:13:19] Vince Menzione: here. Yeah. [00:13:19] Vince Menzione: So important. ’cause you, it isn’t single threaded this, this asymmetrical approach. [00:13:24] Amit Sinha: Right. So [00:13:25] Vince Menzione: incredible. You just ha you just finished your big event. I was hoping I did spare Share with us a little bit of your perspective on what’s been changing and how your ecosystem is evolving. Uh, I had Jen Odes in the studio. [00:13:38] Vince Menzione: That’s right. As you know, back in the fall. Fall, go back and watch it again. Yeah, it’s available. Great. Great podcast interview. Yeah. And you’ve been on stage at our events before and we’ve had that as a podcast, but take us how things are changing from the partner type perspective. We have MSPs in the room. [00:13:53] Vince Menzione: I know MSPs are, I know again, hands on the steering wheel. So important, right? Yeah. This technology is so complex. How are you thinking about ecosystem in your role? [00:14:03] Marc Monday: Yeah, I said earlier it’s about simplicity, speed, and scale. Yeah. Last week we had our big customer event knowledge, and on the first day we had our partner event. [00:14:13] Marc Monday: I think the biggest thing that’s happening right now is the pace of change is a bit overwhelming at times. And keeping pace with that is super critical. So what we’ve tried to do and what we announced last week was a lot of investment in giving our channel partners the exact same tools that we use in our business, right? [00:14:32] Marc Monday: So we were really focused on. Um, delivering business value. And so we took our, the solution that we use or the tools that we use for, um, delivering, uh, business value through our partners. It’s an assessment tool. Um, we’ve syndicated that to our partners. We’ve made that available. We also put a little bit of a stake in the ground around what do customers expect right now? [00:14:56] Marc Monday: Um, the time and materials business is gonna be under a tremendous amount of pressure. Some studies are predicting that it could be. Compressed by as much as 30% customers are looking for outcome based. Yeah. Um, they may stop on that journey and, and have something that’s fixed fee. But the reality is everyone is expecting value from the, the technology that they buy, and particularly from an agent perspective. [00:15:21] Marc Monday: We really leaned in on that and published what I think is a pretty good framework mm-hmm. For, um, outcome-based consulting. And we had a couple partners co-author that with us, which was really wonderful. Nice. Um, and it was a nice piece of co-creation and I think I’m seeing more and more of that where we’re co-creating with our partners in ways that we’ve never done before. [00:15:41] Marc Monday: And then I think importantly, security and reliability, um, and managing risk increasingly will be important. In an agentic world, we call it a control tower. We made two fairly big acquisitions in the last several months in terms of both the front door and the back door in terms of securing with the calls that are going into that agent or from that agent. [00:16:04] Marc Monday: To your various data sources. And so for us trying to bring that all together with our strong history of workload flow, orchestration, and then importantly, governance, security, and risk, uh, in the environment today, when you have the potential for hundreds of thousands or even millions of agents touching your core systems of record, [00:16:24] Vince Menzione: how are you thinking about both tiering your partners and also enabling your partners? [00:16:30] Marc Monday: Yeah, I think this is also an, an an area where I’d love to benchmark with y’all, um, because, you know, historically most of us built a fairly robust learning plan for our partners. You’d have a certification and then you would have a competency, and then you, maybe you’d have a wrapper around that competency. [00:16:48] Marc Monday: And it would take a long time, maybe 12 or 18 months to get to that highest level of certification. And it was incredibly robust and that’s wonderful. But when the roadmap is moving so fast that we’re releasing weekly, monthly, and every 90 days, does that type of training still hold water? So I’m proposing that we have both a volume view of how many trained individuals can we get as quickly as possible, and then value. [00:17:16] Marc Monday: And so we don’t want to lose this rich history, what I would describe as the rear view mirror, how we got here, but we also need to approach the windscreen, the windshield, where are we going and what is that opportunity? Yeah, so we have to go a little bit faster when it comes to enablement, [00:17:32] Vince Menzione: so. You, you were in a partnership, you, you call it a built on partnership. [00:17:37] Vince Menzione: Is that, is that the approach that [00:17:38] Amit Sinha: Yeah. ServiceNow has an ISV program called The Built On Partnership. Built On [00:17:41] Vince Menzione: Partnership, yeah. [00:17:42] Amit Sinha: Uh, so we sign onto that program, great accelerators to build lot of coaching and help to build on the ServiceNow platform. It’s not just the CRM integration, where it’s the opportunities and orders. [00:17:54] Amit Sinha: And by the way, this is the best platform or order management out there. So if you think of, uh, of your, if you are a MSP or consulting partner, building orders for your customers, now you want them to land on the marketplace, right? You wanna build that highway. Think of work span, right? So that’s where we came in and we said that if we look at the large number of channel partners, MSPs, who need to do that and are using ServiceNow as a platform to do it, can they genetically do it right from the now CRM? [00:18:24] Amit Sinha: Yeah, so that’s why we came in. The three big use cases we saw, number one was renewals. You talked about Alexandra doing it. Renewals is so [00:18:31] Vince Menzione: important. Yeah. [00:18:32] Amit Sinha: Oh my goodness. If you think about the renewals playbook [00:18:34] Vince Menzione: was so huge, [00:18:35] Amit Sinha: six months, nine, you know, uh, 90 days out, you wanna build that playbook. Mm-hmm. In an agent way when you reach out. [00:18:43] Amit Sinha: And by the way, you heard, uh, die Talk about 462 billion of uncontested Cloud commits out there. Yep. You want your high risk renewals to go against the high propensity to buy accounts. Right. So imagine that matchmaking, if you were to do it humanly, it’ll take you days. If you had an agent to do it like the now assist agent, it can just be done like that. [00:19:06] Amit Sinha: So that was the first use case we went after. Nice. The second one was the low dollar automation. We all have businesses that we land, right? Sub 50 K deals, so we have inside sales teams calling on those customers all day long. So now imagine a Gentech solution where you take all those low dollar deals and again, tie to the marketplace. [00:19:26] Amit Sinha: How can you have express private offers, right, from your opportunities? So those were the two use cases that we went after first and boy, uh, we got some amazing results, [00:19:36] Vince Menzione: I bet [00:19:36] Amit Sinha: for one of these companies, Boomi, we showed that 24% higher lift on renewals. That’s like hundreds of millions in impact just in one year alone. [00:19:46] Vince Menzione: And using AI internally as obviously you’re an AI company. Yeah. How are you thinking about how’s the impact of AI helping the partner function within ServiceNow? [00:19:54] Marc Monday: I, I think there’s this really wonderful opportunity right now where in the short term, we’re taking busy work out of the partner management profession. [00:20:05] Marc Monday: Um, partner managers historically have spent a lot of time chasing data and chasing information and really acting as an ombudsman for the partner within the organization. That work is very quickly. Getting identified. That’s phase one. The thing I’m actually a little more excited about is when it can expand the horizon to have different types of conversations, expanding the partnerships, expanding the multi-partner oppor opportunities. [00:20:29] Marc Monday: That, for me is the next phase, but we, I believe we are the most progressive when it comes to using AI on ourselves and really trying to take the profession to the next level. [00:20:40] Vince Menzione: Nice. Well, I was gonna, I was gonna, I want to go back to the platform again. ’cause you, you’re, you’re starting, you, you mentioned renewals, you’re mentioning some of the success. [00:20:50] Vince Menzione: What else can you point to on the success side, [00:20:52] Amit Sinha: there’s some, uh, amazing research that Sam here has done, uh, with all the data that Wepan has. So we looked at close to a million opportunities and, uh, looked at all the companies doing well. And we actually tabulated how many sellers are engaged on co-sell, not the partnering team, but how many end sellers. [00:21:11] Amit Sinha: This shows the extent of the transformation that the company has gone through, and what we found was amazing. If more than 50% of your sellers have engaged on 10 or more deals, your ecosystem is exponential. It doesn’t need the kind of the doctoring or the prod or the push to kind of say, Hey, use partners. [00:21:31] Amit Sinha: The sellers get it themselves, right? So we, we did this analysis and found like, wow, how can we then get sellers to activate? And the bottleneck that we found was. That there are not enough partner managers to assist every seller in the world. I think that seller activation is the unlock that AI can do. [00:21:50] Amit Sinha: Imagine if you have a partner agent sitting on every account and every opportunity 24 by seven, right? As the world changes, as the world evolves, as the solutions come in. As you know, market events happen. These agents are listening, positioning the right. One of those six partners, or all six partners for that matter, in front of people. [00:22:10] Amit Sinha: So I feel like that that big unlock is seller activation. Yeah. So if all partner managers do with ai, next is one. Of course, get yourself skilled up and yourself productive. But next, direct it to your own internal sales teams and get them activated on your partnerships because that’s where you will move the revenue lever the fastest, in my opinion. [00:22:30] Vince Menzione: Fantastic. What advice do you have for whether they be ISV partners or other partners in the room? ’cause we have partners of all types here. Yeah. What would you have, what would you say to them that need to do differently or better? [00:22:43] Marc Monday: Yeah. [00:22:44] Vince Menzione: Starting today, [00:22:46] Marc Monday: I, I don’t wanna be a broken record, but I would just say go faster. [00:22:48] Marc Monday: However fast you think you’re going, it’s not enough. Yeah. Um, the reality is I think Bill McDermott says like, the market’s never been this fast before and it will never be this slow again. Oh. The reality is this is the pace we run at, and the only way we can run at this pace is if we have the agents doing much of the work for us. [00:23:09] Marc Monday: So I would say go faster. The second thing I would say is automating a bad process is a bad process. So really go and interrogate the workflow that you’re actually thinking about identifying. I’ve seen too many instances from partners and partnerships where you’re taking a bad process and you’re trying to build automation. [00:23:29] Marc Monday: Go back and deconstruct it or start fresh blank piece of paper. Um, again, to my metaphor of the rear view mirror and the wind screen, like it’s, we should honor the past. We’ve done a wonderful job in the last 30 years of building all of this stuff. It’s just not built for this speed. So we need to really stay focused on what’s in front of us. [00:23:49] Vince Menzione: We talked a little bit earlier in one of the other sessions about the playbook and the three year plan, and then maybe moving to sprints. That’s right. How are you, how are you thinking? Are you thinking along the same lines? A [00:23:59] Marc Monday: hundred percent. Uh, we need to move at the pace. Sorry, I’m, we need to move at the pace that the roadmap is moving. [00:24:05] Marc Monday: So if we’re doing weekly, monthly, and quarter releases, we don’t wanna whipsaw the channel. We have to be careful of that. But the reality is, if we’re pivoting our product strategies or release strategies on a quarterly basis. We have to have that same level of agility. That’s where the people who’ve grown up in this profession taking really complicated stuff and making it simple is so critical. [00:24:26] Vince Menzione: Ami, you touched on AI’s role in the partner function. But let’s expand on that. What, what’s it gonna look like in two years? If AI becomes, will it replace the partner function? What, what do you see happening? [00:24:38] Amit Sinha: Absolutely not. I think, uh, we are seeing this evolution and, and you can see the parallels in the engineering organization. [00:24:44] Amit Sinha: When Claude Cursor came along, you saw engineering completely transformed as to how products are now built. How they are, how product managers write PRDs, how engineers actually code this, you know, code the scaffolding all the way to the user experience, how it’s tested. Everything has fundamentally changed. [00:25:01] Amit Sinha: So if you went and asked the engineering leader, how will your role change? Right? Imagine answering that question today, right? It’s fundamentally different. I feel like it’s coming to every function. Whether you want it or not, it’s coming to every function. And the partnership leader will look like the partnership operator that Rob talks about. [00:25:19] Amit Sinha: Yes. It’ll be about orchestrating real time relationships at the account level, at the opportunity level, and being a hands-on person. Uh, i, I would say even at the leadership level or down to partner managers, how can you cover the breadth of accounts and opportunities that’s out there to, for you to prosecute? [00:25:36] Amit Sinha: It’ll not look like I’m managing a partnership. It’ll not look like, Hey, I have to offer an MDF. It’ll not look like, Hey, let’s do A QBR, you know, and get all the teams engaged because that’ll be too late essentially. So this operator perspective is what’s gonna change just as it changed in engineering, it’s gonna happen in partnerships [00:25:56] Vince Menzione: perspective as well. [00:25:57] Marc Monday: Big plus one on what Rob’s talking about. I, I, I’m a big fan of that and I love this idea of using what’s happening in the developer world as an analog for where we’re going. Yeah. Um, I met a product manager last week and she was saying that she was producing 30 or 40 product requirement docs every week. [00:26:14] Marc Monday: Um, that’s remarkable output and she can only do that because of the way she’s leveraging ai. The same will be true for a partner manager, a 10 x, a 20 x, a 30 x on each individual once we get to that stage, and it will happen very quickly. [00:26:29] Amit Sinha: Yeah. Imagine putting a hundred joint account plans together in a day. [00:26:33] Amit Sinha: Yep. [00:26:33] Vince Menzione: Right. Incredible. [00:26:34] Amit Sinha: Imagine putting like five connections on an opportunity just surrounding your deal right now. Right. Doing that. [00:26:41] Vince Menzione: I couldn’t even, I, I couldn’t even imagine. I know you couldn’t even imagine when we were back in the days we were running PAMs and Yeah, totally. Those resources, what they had to do and what’s all totally automated today. [00:26:52] Marc Monday: It. It’s true, it’s true. I was, um, I was bemoaning this, I’ve been on the road a lot lately and I was like telling my wife, like, I long for the days where you have one meeting and you go, you know, you go to New York and you do a two hour QBR and you go to a nice dinner and then maybe you walk around Central Park. [00:27:06] Marc Monday: The reality is you’re doing a hundred of those every single day. It’s a different era. That’s where we need to get the tools to work for people. [00:27:15] Amit Sinha: Mark, I love your analogy around the rear view mirror versus the windshield. Mm-hmm. You have to see through the windshield. [00:27:20] Marc Monday: We do. We do. It’s amazing. Don’t be afraid. [00:27:23] Marc Monday: I, I mean, I would just say do not be afraid. Be excited. We in this room, get to lead the path. Yeah. It is an absolute privilege. [00:27:32] Vince Menzione: So insightful, gentlemen, you’ve been incredible to be on stage with today. Uh, I we have a le a little less than a minute. I was hoping maybe if there was like one question we could take. [00:27:42] Vince Menzione: I got John with a mic and then it’s lunchtime after this, so [00:27:48] Marc Monday: ask on because he can be more pithy. [00:27:50] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:27:55] Vince Menzione: Well, you’re both are gonna be around here. I hope [00:27:57] Marc Monday: we will be here. [00:27:58] Vince Menzione: Mark didn’t have you got to sleep in your own bed last night? [00:28:00] Marc Monday: Uh, yeah. It was a long day, but yes. I thank you for, it was very late. Thank you so much. Let’s put this on the record. Marks down. We’re having the event in Bellevue. That was great. [00:28:09] Marc Monday: We’re gonna [00:28:09] Amit Sinha: bring it back. We’re gonna bring it back to Bellevue. [00:28:12] Marc Monday: Seven mile commute is the best trip that I’ve had in many, many weeks. [00:28:17] Amit Sinha: Thank you. Well, thank you, gentlemen. It [00:28:19] was [00:28:19] Marc Monday: incredible. [00:28:20] Vince Menzione: Thanks for listening to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. If today’s conversation resonated, share it with a partner leader in your network. [00:28:28] Vince Menzione: Subscribe where you listen, and head over to the Ultimate partner.com for show notes related content and the resources for this episode. And if you haven’t already, now’s the time to register for the Ultimate Partner Live event in Reston, Virginia, [00:28:44] Marc Monday: October [00:28:45] Vince Menzione: 26th through October 28th. Until next time. Keep showing up in the rooms that matter because being in the room changes everything.

In this episode, I discuss getting several documents renewed and screen bans in schools. Also, I'm starting to look to buy a home.

It is too easy to fudge a rental property deal sheet, sell the property to an investor, and blame the property manager when the property doesn't perform as expected.But the person that loses most in that scenario is the investor!  That's why we'll be breaking down real deal sheets in this week's Not Your Average Investor Show!JWB Co-Founder Gregg Cohen and host Pablo Gonzalez are breaking down a Memphis rental property deal and comparing it with how JWB looks at rental opportunities in Jacksonville.They'll walk through the numbers, point out what may or may not be included, and show you why monthly cash flow is only one part of the picture.You'll learn:✅ How to compare rental property deals across two different markets✅ Why two deal sheets may show expenses differently✅ Which numbers and assumptions deserve a closer look✅ How financing and property management can affect the deal✅ Why the biggest cash flow number does not always tell the whole story A good deal is not just about the city or the biggest number on the page.Listen NOW!Chapters:00:00 Deal Sheet Showdown02:04 Resident Testimonial Story03:51 Why Great PM Matters07:24 Show Origin and Disclaimers08:17 Seven Pro Forma Red Flags13:38 Memphis Deal Sheet Overview15:00 New Construction Appreciation Trick18:23 Rent Growth and PM Fee Incentives24:12 Cash Flow Table and Lease Assumptions28:14 Renewals vs Turnover Maintenance Reality31:22 Maintenance Reality Check32:30 2.5% Assumption Exposed34:30 Vacancy and Management Fees36:01 Occupancy and Renewals Matter37:06 Tax Savings Math Errors39:11 Property Tax Fact Checking40:48 Loan Payoff Confusion43:05 Appreciation and Selling Costs48:39 Right Sizing the Pro Forma50:35 Memphis vs Jacksonville Returns53:22 Equity Harvesting Strategy56:11 JWB Pro Forma Q&A01:02:58 Jacksonville Downtown Catalyst01:05:54 Community Wrap UpStay connected to us! Join our real estate investor community LIVE: https://jwbrealestatecapital.com/nyai/Schedule a Turnkey strategy call: https://jwbrealestatecapital.com/turnkey/ *Get social with us:*Subscribe to our channel  @notyouraverageinvestor  Subscribe to  @JWBRealEstateCompanies  

Want to scale your property management or co-hosting business past 10, 20, 50 listings? Book a call here: https://strsecrets.com/applyConnect with Mike Reilly : https://www.instagram.com/mikereillync/Most operators think busy season is the worst time to look for new properties. Mike Reilly just signed 7 new contracts that prove them wrong.Last quarter his team at NC Stays reached out to 1,000 homeowners. They opened 68 real conversations. They signed 7 new properties, and 19 more deals are still on the table. And all of it started in the middle of peak season.Why? Because of one thing most operators never check: the 90 day notice window. Most management contracts renew in the fall. If a homeowner wants to leave their property manager, they have to say so 90 days before the contract renews. So if you wait until September to start talking to owners, they're already stuck for another year.In this 18 minute training, Mike walks through his COHOST funnel step by step:C: Create awareness. A simple website, social posts, and a list of homes you want.O: Open the conversation. Send a free 5 minute video showing the owner what they're missing. Don't ask for a meeting.H: Hold the discovery call. This is where deals are really won, and where you filter out bad-fit owners.O: Offer your solution.S: Sign the contract. Including the $2,500 upgrade rule Mike puts in every contract.T: Take over and onboard. This pairs with last week's onboarding episode.Plus the story of a beach house owner losing $30,000 to $40,000 a year because his best photo was buried at spot #68 in his listing. And why it takes about 4.5 calls before an owner signs.If you have no new leads right now, this episode shows you why. Save it.Want the owner contact lists, the CRM, and a community of operators growing past 50 listings? Check out the STR Secrets Mastermind: [LINK]New episodes every Monday.

Want to scale your property management or co-hosting business past 10, 20, 50 listings? Book a call here: https://strsecrets.com/applyConnect with Mike Reilly : https://www.instagram.com/mikereillync/Most operators think busy season is the worst time to look for new properties. Mike Reilly just signed 7 new contracts that prove them wrong.Last quarter his team at NC Stays reached out to 1,000 homeowners. They opened 68 real conversations. They signed 7 new properties, and 19 more deals are still on the table. And all of it started in the middle of peak season.Why? Because of one thing most operators never check: the 90 day notice window. Most management contracts renew in the fall. If a homeowner wants to leave their property manager, they have to say so 90 days before the contract renews. So if you wait until September to start talking to owners, they're already stuck for another year.In this 18 minute training, Mike walks through his COHOST funnel step by step:C: Create awareness. A simple website, social posts, and a list of homes you want.O: Open the conversation. Send a free 5 minute video showing the owner what they're missing. Don't ask for a meeting.H: Hold the discovery call. This is where deals are really won, and where you filter out bad-fit owners.O: Offer your solution.S: Sign the contract. Including the $2,500 upgrade rule Mike puts in every contract.T: Take over and onboard. This pairs with last week's onboarding episode.Plus the story of a beach house owner losing $30,000 to $40,000 a year because his best photo was buried at spot #68 in his listing. And why it takes about 4.5 calls before an owner signs.If you have no new leads right now, this episode shows you why. Save it.Want the owner contact lists, the CRM, and a community of operators growing past 50 listings? Check out the STR Secrets Mastermind: [LINK]New episodes every Monday.

Six months in, Amanda Moran, is rebuilding customer success from scratch.She spent eight years at LinkedIn mastering the old playbook: rules, workflows, perfectly timed emails. Now she's VP of Digital Customer Success at Darktrace, a cybersecurity company betting its future on securing AI itself.But she's stuck on the question keeping every CS leader up at night. Autonomous agents aren't here. You can feel them coming. So what do you build right now, without wasting months on work the agents will replace?Josh Schachter pushes into the hard parts: the data nobody connects, and why the next cybersecurity battle is the AI you're about to deploy.This one's for anyone building toward a future that hasn't arrived.---Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com.---What you'll learn- Why rules-based outreach is on its way out, and what comes next- How to build CS today without locking in throwaway automation- The pooled support model behind 5 people serving 10,000 customers- Why agentic AI is cybersecurity's next frontier- The hidden signals in community and learning data- What CS leaders are all quietly trying to figure out--- Timestamps0:00 - Preview & Introduction1:42 - Meet Amanda Moran & Overview of Darktrace3:00 - Transitioning from LinkedIn to cybersecurity4:03 - Building AI-driven email engagement6:50 - The Digital CS org at Darktrace 9:20 - The pooled model11:39 - Renewals at Darktrace12:45 - Securing AI itself: the July launch14:17 - Internal AI enablement15:17 - Building CS before the agents take over17:50 - The data problem20:10 - The in-between phase nobody has cracked---Josh is writing a book on building customer relationships. Follow his journey and insights at www.joshschachter.com---Where to Find the GuestAmanda Moran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandammoran/---Where to Find Josh:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jschachter/Unchurned Substack: https://unchurned.substack.com/

Kristen McGarr has spent over 20 years helping businesses implement CRM systems that actually work. Her core belief is that the future of CRM isn't about more technology, it's about more humanity. For CPA firm owners who have tried a CRM, abandoned it, or never started one at all, that perspective changes the conversation entirely.Kristen is the founder of Adroit Insights and CRM Growth, a growth strategist, fractional chief revenue officer, and CRM implementation specialist. She works across platforms like Zoho, HubSpot, and ActiveCampaign, and she is known for making complex systems genuinely approachable. In this conversation, she gets specific about the problems she sees most often in accounting firms: systems that are over-configured, features that never get used, and adoption that stalls because the CRM feels like administrative work rather than a growth tool.The most actionable part of this episode is Kristen's framework for building a pipeline when you have never tracked one before. She calls it the three R's: renewals, referrals, and recent conversations. For renewals, look at one-off projects that could become recurring revenue and clients you haven't heard from yet this year. For referrals, send a simple email during busy season asking for introductions and reviews. For recent conversations, think about who mentioned a challenge you rolled right past without addressing. The irony, as Kristen points out, is that tax season is exactly when firms have the most contact with clients and the most opportunity for all three, even though it feels like the worst possible time.Kristen's approach strips away the complexity that keeps most firms from ever getting real value out of a CRM. Her advice is consistent throughout: start simple, solve for the 90% of problems you actually have, and build a system that can grow with you rather than one you have to replace in a year.This episode is for firm owners curious about what a CRM can actually do for their practice when implemented well, leaders wondering how to maintain business development momentum through busy season, practitioners ready to build a pipeline but unsure where to start, and anyone who has tried a CRM before and walked away frustrated.Timestamps:00:00 - Brannon Poe intro and podcast welcome 00:14 - Introducing Kristen McGarr, founder of Adroit Insights and CRM Growth 00:57 - Kristen's core belief: the future of CRM is humanity, not more technology 01:17 - Why most CRM implementations fail: adoption and overcomplicated configuration 02:07 - The demo trap: why what you see is rarely the off-the-shelf product 02:47 - Most firms use only 10 to 20% of their CRM's actual functionality 03:03 - Where AI fits into CRM today and why it shouldn't be trusted 100% 03:56 - Signs a CPA firm is ready to scale versus needing to fix its foundation first 04:17 - Why consistency and predictability matter more than fast growth 05:02 - How predictable, even revenue throughout the year affects accounting firm valuation 05:48 - The tax season surge and dip problem and how to create more consistency around it 06:05 - Why business development gets dropped during busy season and how to fix that 06:37 - The growth-ready system: templated outreach that still sounds like you 07:49 - How to automate personalized outreach without doing it manually every time 08:21 - Why spacing out outreach matters more than frequency 08:41 - Turning client education into shareable case study content for prospects 09:17 - The three R's: renewals, referrals, recent conversations 09:36 - Renewals: how to spot recurring revenue opportunities in your existing client base 09:53 - Referrals: why sending referral emails during busy season is low effort, high return 10:26 - Recent conversations: catching the tax planning and advisory needs you rolled past 11:09 - The irony of tax season: it's your busiest time and your biggest pipeline opportunity 11:31 - Why a transactional accounting firm cannot function well without a CRM 11:53 - Kristen's three-part CRM checklist: integrations, reporting, and flexibility 13:06 - Funny story: the vendor lesson that led to building an internal team 14:22 - Why trusting your gut early on a bad vendor fit saves time and money later 14:55 - How building an internal team improved client satisfaction across the firm 15:29 - Why picking technology vendors is especially hard for relationship-focused accountants 15:55 - The value of trusted resources and networks when evaluating new tools 16:11 - Book recommendation: "Never Split the Difference" by Chris Voss 17:09 - Where to find Kristen: LinkedIn and CRMgrowth.comBook Recommendation: Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss

This is Part 12 in a series celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Harvard University Press' 1985 publication of Richard A. Epstein's "Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain." We continue our celebration of this anniversary with a fair use and transformative reading, taking a close look at ch. 7 continuing in the same section which Richard calls ""Takings Prima Facia," which takes a look at selling Eagle feathers when mere possession is a crime, as well as rights to disposition in leasehold renewals. He titles chapter 7, "Rights of Disposition and Contract" because he's taking a look at what the judiciary often misses in the panoply of takings reached by the Eminent Domain Clause and the American constitutional order, how these things interact and hang together, ensconced as it is in the purpose of the Constitution. That moral purpose is the protection of individual liberty against claims by a simple majority in a democracy, or judicial or executive fiat, or by the government in any other way in a taking of private property. It's also a good reflection on nature of property per se, whether public or private. For governments are owners as well as takers of property. Today we discuss his chapter 7 from pp. 74 to the top of p. 80. At the end, this episode concludes with a Chaplain's corner, with a reading of Psalm 142 in the KJV and January 31st in Streams in the Desert (Cowman Publications, Lost Feliz Station Lost Angeles, Calif. 1925 original non-woke edition). Excellent stuff here. Excellent. Every college student should read this book. It's a superb introduction to the political philosophy of the American regime. Praise the Lord. We'd like to thank Harvard University Press for making this material available and Richard Epstein for writing it. Make sure you buy the book and follow along. It's very important for you to have your own copy on your own bookshelf, and to begin to master this material. Support your local book dealer. See if they have a copy of it, or if they'd mind keeping an eye out for you. I always encourage buying physical books, objects you can have, hold, cherish, learn from, display on your bookshelf as a topic of conversation, things you can pass on to the next generation with your notes in them, things that do not depend upon electricity. Toward that end: Go to Harvard University Press for more selections available for purchase. Please support the publisher and your local booksellers. The Republican Professor is a pro-correctly-contemplating-property-rights podcast. The Republican Professor is produced and hosted by Dr. Lucas J. Mather, Ph.D. Warmly, Lucas J. Mather, Ph.D. The Republican Professor Podcast The Republican Professor Newsletter on Substack https://therepublicanprofessor.substack.com/ https://www.therepublicanprofessor.com/podcast/ https://www.therepublicanprofessor.com/articles/ YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRepublicanProfessor Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheRepublicanProfessor Twitter: @RepublicanProf Instagram: @the_republican_professor

This summer, a wave of Canadians will open their mail to find a GIC renewal notice, and the new rate won't look anything like the 5% they locked in back in 2023. In this episode of Think Smart with TMFG, we go back to square one on Guaranteed Investment Certificates: what they actually are, why so many people own them without realizing it, and why the timing of this year's renewal wave matters so much. We also dig into one of the biggest drawbacks of GICs: their tax treatment. Interest income is taxed at your top marginal rate, and accumulation GICs can leave you paying tax on money you haven't even received yet. For retirees focused on keeping their tax bill low, we discuss why those forgotten GICs often show up as an unexpectedly high interest line on a tax return. From there, we break down the hybrid and index-linked GICs and liquidity risk, why locked-in money can be a problem inside a corporation or in a pinch, and the liquid alternatives like high-interest savings and money market funds that can serve a similar purpose. Finally, we share practical strategies if GICs are right for you: laddering for liquidity, why you should always negotiate rather than accept the artificially low posted renewal rate, and the importance of watching CDIC coverage limits, especially outside the big five banks.

If you've been coaching for a while, chances are you've already got a client onboarding process and a welcome packet that works. But "works" and "is doing everything it could be doing" aren't always the same thing. In this episode, I'm getting specific about one piece of your business that most practitioners treat as administrative busywork: your client onboarding process. We talk about why a strong welcome packet does so much more than relay logistics — it builds trust before your first session, reduces a new client's anxiety, and can even begin the transformation process before you've met. I also share why client retention, renewals, and referrals so often come down to the quality of this exact container, not your marketing. I'm sharing 6 often-overlooked components I recommend every coach include in their welcome packet or client onboarding documents — the kind of details that even experienced practitioners tend to miss. You'll learn what to include around scheduling, communication expectations, and a few reflection-based questions that help your clients start doing the work before session one even begins. If you've ever wondered why some clients renew and refer enthusiastically while others disappear after a few sessions, this episode will give you a new lens on where to look first. In this episode, you'll learn: Why your client onboarding process directly impacts trust, safety, and the success of your coaching relationship The real reason strong onboarding leads to better client retention, renewals, and referrals 6 details most welcome packets are missing — even from seasoned practitioners How a well-crafted questionnaire can begin client transformation before your first session A new way to look at the "administrative" parts of your business Follow us! If you haven't already, follow the podcast so you get notified about new episodes. Suggest a podcast topic: email us with the subject line "podcast topic!" — info@applieddepthinstitute.com Join our mailing list and get a copy of 55 Effective Breakthrough Coaching Questions: https://applieddepthinstitute.com/podcast-55-questions Hang out with me! Instagram: https://applieddepthinstitute.com/podcast-instagram The Coaching Revolution on Facebook: https://applieddepthinstitute.com/podcast-facebook-group  

Discovering the Demme Learning Support Center is like finding a dedicated partner in your educational journey. In this episode, we talk about support options, online resources, and subscriptions.

Do you want to save money on your mortgage renewal? Dave does! And so do all borrowers! Mortgage renewals, although a normal part of owning a home, can be confusing. While banks often make promises of lower interest rates, determining what is actually the best rate for you requires you to pay attention. On episode #484 of “Let's Talk Money with Dave and Reb”, the co-hosts go through commonly asked questions around mortgage renewals and encourage listeners to give themselves lots of time to look at their options and make the best, and most informed choice available to them. Tune in and listen to today's episode sponsored by Ardron Landscapes. If you are thinking of transforming your outdoor space Ardron Landscapes is your trusted local expert serving Kemptville, Winchester, Merrickville, and the surrounding areas. They specialize in beautiful, long-lasting outdoor features — from natural stone interlock and retaining walls to elegant water features, landscape lighting, and fiberglass pools. Go to ardron.ca to learn more. To order Reb's book Cultivating Trust Expanded Edition: Finding God's Hope and Freedom for Your Finances, go to https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1998412164/ref=sr_1_3?crid=XUVAMAN0TFEY&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8x0mkzEbAurMet_Q02DjC1uI9_HBqWQlnPySUgf62Ik9smNv5IQUJVSYBOXp4dhvsmfU3vzJivqJWwrvkTfyLe4uDWay18JChGQ1QWENY4FXHjdhLEkWMLQT8BHP9Lz18vRbIHFrvkyO6ocnHFx7rS2jtZ7WVzmIhw0U7cFRtGtRdvaw7gj3W2qigq_7EBTDZBOEfMVxxeuk405kn921-o-irE3XdWX2KrJ8e0G9W1usTiTi2j-EANx4MC_ygttzlzwj_1qmQC8MCk5LxF6jXTDr1ETe1v3O1q5o0rO4H2g.pybaC103ktXcDYR0puZtPXOBpswpMjPmU0vYc-KTAnc&dib_tag=se&keywords=cultivating+trust&qid=1732127878&sprefix=cultivating+trust%2Caps%2C117&sr=8-3. #morethanenough #finances #money #financialfitness #save #mortgage

On this week's podcast we chatted to Olivier de Matos who is the director general of CropLife Europe, an organisation that lobbies for improved crop protection in Europe for genetic techniques to pesticides and digital technologies. We have a fieldwork update and the grain trends and weather reports. The Tillage Podcast is supported by Bayer Crop Science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"Comics Unleashed" ratings have room for improvement, CBS's "Late Show" memo has us feelings a way, Netflix cancellations and renewals, our feelings about the penultimate episode of "Hacks," and Jason checked out "The Bouroughs" See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Going Long Podcast Episode 633: The Leader's Heart - Augusto Abbarchi   "We now know with certainty the power of the cardiac brain in terms of intuition, courage, and connection. What does this mean for a leader?" - an excerpt from book 'The Leader's Heart' by Augusto Abbarchi, of which the author is today's special guest! Billy welcomes Augusto to the show, who with 30 years experience has held senior positions in leading multinational companies in the Information Technology sector throughout his career. His experience includes prestigious roles at SAP as CEO Italy, Chief Operating Officer EMEA, and Global Head of Maintenance. at Software AG as SVP Global Support Services and Global Head of Renewals. Augusto now helps leaders in line with his philosophy found in his book, 'The Leader's Heart'.    ( To see the Video Version of today's conversation just CLICK HERE. ) In today's episode of The Going Long Podcast, you'll learn the following:   [00:24 - 02:20] Billy welcomes and introduces today's special guest, Augusto Abbarchi [02:20 - 05:29] Billy asks Augusto to explain why he is now helping others while living and working under his own terms rather than as part of a corporate construct. [05:29 - 08:44] Augusto shares insights into how leadership is a factor in the disengagement crisis affecting the corporate world currently. [08:44 - 14:54] Billy asks Augusto to explain the connection to sport of the story that led to the development of his key working philosophy involving heart.  [14:54 - 17:34] Augusto explains how to balance the world of numbers and their importance in business and being the best version of yourself.  [17:34 - 20:40] Billy asks Augusto what drove her to focus on a space that nobody else currently was. [20:40 - 24:30] Augusto explains how she identifies and predicts problems that start ups will find and how she works out solutions for them. [24:30 - 26:28] Augusto shares advice for those who want to lean into trying something new when certain kinds of leverage aren't immediately available. [26:28 - 34:03] Billy asks Augusto to describe how people can learn to trust their heart-brain. [34:03 - 39:09] Augusto talks more about the importance of fundamental connections and how it all works. [39:09 - 42:02] Billy asks Augusto to share more about his book and how he is helping people today. [42:02 - 44:16] Augusto shares the message that she would like to hear from himself three years from now. [44:16 - 46:44] Billy sums up all we've learned from Augusto today and asks him to share the best ways we can get in contact and find him online. [46:44 - 48:24] Billy wraps up the show.   How best to get in touch with and find out more about Augusto Abbarchi: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/augusto-abbarchi-a7a91/    Website: https://augustoabbarchi.com/    "The Leader's Heart" -  book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leaders-Heart-Leadership-beyond-rationality/dp/B0GWYZW4XY    If you're a corporate executive who wants to make your role optional, then grab your FREE ebook with Billy's proven 3 step process at:  www.makeitoptional.com What you can expect to get out of this ebook: Learn how to achieve corporate optionality Gain true control over your career Turn corporate skills into personal assets With 26 years of experience in corporate sales leadership, achieved optionality through multiple income streams, Billy has helped dozens of executives build their paths to take control of their time. This free ebook gives you everything you need to identify, plan, and take control of your career while building financial optionality, leveraging your skills, and start living your IDEAL day - today! Go to: www.makeitoptional.com Click the above link or just copy and paste the following directly into your browser to sign up and get your free ebook: https://www.makeitoptional.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p2olm  To see the Video Version of today's conversation just CLICK HERE.   How to leave a review for The Going Long Podcast: https://youtu.be/qfRqLVcf8UI     Be sure to connect with Billy!  He's made it easy for you to do…Just go to any of these sites:   Website: www.billykeels.com Youtube: billykeels Facebook: Billy Keels Fan Page Instagram: @billykeels Twitter: @billykeels LinkedIn: Billy Keels

What if the biggest opportunities in your accounts are being left on the table because you are treating champions like power users instead of strategic partners?In this episode, I'm breaking down the five specific ways top performing CSMs use champions to drive adoption, expansion, and renewals without carrying the entire account on their back.I'm sharing the exact plays I used throughout my CS career, why most CSMs are thinking about champions the wrong way, and how to turn your internal advocates into the people opening doors, influencing teams, and helping you protect revenue.You'll walk away knowing how to sound more strategic, create more momentum in your accounts, and stop feeling like you have to do everything yourself. If you're ready to become the kind of CSM that companies cannot afford to lose, hit play, and let's dive in.1:10 – Why most CSMs aren't set up to leverage champions (and it's not your fault)3:22 – The three must-haves that make someone a true champion, not just a coach6:47 – Turning your champion into a community builder with a simple Slack channel10:55 – Upleveling adoption by helping champions create a resource hub or wiki14:38 – Making your product stickier by baking it into new hire onboarding16:30 – Driving expansion with champion-led value stories that actually land21:44 – Teaching champions to talk ROI to crush renewal conversationsFREEBIES & RESOURCES:

After seven episodes covering the lifecycle of a commercial property — from lettings and rent reviews through to arrears, lease renewals and dilapidations — this final episode answers listener questions based on real-world situations.This episode focuses on the commercial realities behind investment decisions, lease negotiations, tenant covenant strength, and the operational side of owning commercial property.Commercial property can create exceptional long-term wealth and income — but it is not passive.It is a constant process of:negotiationstrategyproblem solvingand decision-makingAnd often, the most important work happens quietly in the background.Thank you to everyone who submitted questions for this series.If there's a topic you'd like covered in future podcast episodes, feel free to get in touch.

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Most of the organizations I work with are obsessed with the top of the funnel. Ads, SEO, social media, the next campaign, the next traffic spike. The marketing team has dashboards full of acquisition metrics, and the design team usually gets drafted in to support that effort. New landing pages, better hero sections, smoother sign-up flows. That's all fine as far as it goes. I've written an entire email course on campaign landing pages because I genuinely believe most of them are leaking conversions like a colander. But it does mean something important keeps getting ignored. Most organizations have no cohesive strategy at all for retention and upselling. They pour effort into getting the customer through the door, then more or less forget about them once they're inside. The numbers nobody is acting on This is strange when you stop and think about it. The economics of retention have been well known for years. Acquiring a new customer typically costs around five times more than keeping an existing one. Cross-selling or upselling to an existing customer costs roughly 24% of what it takes to win the same revenue from a new one. You don't need to convince someone who's already bought from you. You just have to not screw it up. Retention falls between the cracks So why does retention keep slipping through? In my experience, it's because nobody really owns it. Every other part of the customer journey has a clear home. Acquisition belongs to marketing. Onboarding sometimes sits with product. Support lives in customer success. Renewals end up with sales. Retention falls into the gaps between all of them, which is a polite way of saying it falls on the floor. A real opportunity for UX This is where I think UX has a genuine opportunity. Not just to help with retention, but to own it. To plant our flag and say this is our patch. I know that sounds like more work for a profession that's already stretched thin. But hear me out. UX has a chronic problem with how it's perceived inside organizations. We're seen as the people who make screens look nice. Helpful, but not strategic. The reason for that perception is partly our own fault. We've spent years talking about users when senior leaders are thinking about revenue. We've reported back on usability scores when the board is looking at MRR and churn. Nobody at the top of an organization wakes up worrying about whether the user's mental model matches the interface. They worry about lifetime customer value. They worry about monthly recurring revenue. They worry, sometimes very loudly, about churn going in the wrong direction. And yet plenty of businesses worry about those numbers without ever actively tracking them. Nobody is responsible for measuring them, so they sit in the background as a vague anxiety rather than a managed metric. If the UX team picked up that responsibility, and started tying our work to those numbers, our standing inside the business would change dramatically. We'd stop being the screen-prettifying team and start being the team that protects revenue. That's a very different conversation to have with a CFO. Why retention is a UX problem in disguise The other reason retention is such a good fit for UX is that the levers are largely ours already. Customers usually leave because something in the experience disappointed them. They couldn't find what they needed. The product didn't deliver what they expected. Support was a maze. The onboarding fizzled out before the value clicked. Every one of those is a UX problem dressed up as a business problem. The same goes for upselling. Customers buy more from companies that have nurtured them properly, where the experience has built trust over time. You can't bolt that on with a clever email campaign three months in. It has to be designed.

Monday-morning Bravo news is in! Sierra Miller landing Love Island USA: After Sun (and joking she's DWTS-bound), the Jen Fessler/West rumor fallout punctuated by mysterious cartwheel emojis, and a flood of renewals/premiere dates that has them feeling schedule-whiplash. They spiral (comedically) over Madison LeCroy and Heather Gay's daughter Georgia popping up in “Micro Dramas,” side-eye a new Vanderpump Las Vegas series with Villa-burned skepticism, and pitch “Secret Lives: Texas Wives” as Dallas leftovers meets trad-wife Yellowstone energy. Then they jump into Rhode Island eps 6–7 with strong takes: Kelsey's breakup feels strategic-but-smart, Jo Ellen's childhood story is gutting, the Newport “cast trip” is hilariously local, the masquerade masks and lash flattening are a mess, Ashley's constant crying reads like anxiety/hormones, and Rula's “mystery virus + rescue” edit screams convenient cover-up—especially once the alleged barista tea and affair receipts hit.BORN SHOES Go to https://www.bornshoes.com/  today for a 15% discount plus free ground shipping on all full-price shoes when you use my promo code DRAMA for 15% off and free shipping available exclusively to our listeners for just a limited timeLUMI GUMMIES Lumi Gummies are available nationwide! For 30% off your order go to: https://lumigummies.com/ Code: DRAMAONE SKIN Get 15% off OneSkin, go to: https://www.oneskin.co/ Code: DRAMA HONEYLOVE Get 20% OFF Honeylove by going to https://www.honeylove.com/DRAMA Promo Code: DRAMAFor more Drama, Darling, and exclusive content, subscribe to: http://Patreon.com/dramadarling Follow Amy Phillips on Instagram: Instagram.com/meetamyphillips Follow Drama, Darling on Instagram: Instagram.com/dramadarlingshow Amy on TikTok tiktok.com/@realamyphillips Email Drama, Darling with YOUR comments, questions and drama:  DramaDarlingz@gmail.com Drama Darling Shop https://drama-darling-shop.printify.me/

In today's episode, we're gossiping about Taylor Frankie Paul & Mikayla Matthew's massive Instagram fight, the West Wilson & Jenn Fessler hooking up rumors, Ciara hosting After Sun, our excitement for Love Island in 2 weeks & Beyond the Villa thoughts, and wrapping up with Bravo's new shows & renewals. Sit back, relax, and take a Gossip Break with us!

Taylor Crumpton and I were supposed to just recap RHOA... but alas... there's too much going on!This is PART ONE of my interview / catchup with Taylor. We dive into all the news out of the up fronts, and everything with West and JEN FESSLER???FOLLOW DUMPSTER DIVE ON SOCIALS/POD PLATFORM

Lease renewals are one of the most critical — and most misunderstood — stages in the lifecycle of a commercial property.They don't start when the lease ends.They start 12–18 months in advance — and what you do in that window can significantly impact both income and asset value.In this episode, I walk through how lease renewals actually work in practice — from legal structure, to negotiation strategy, to the real costs involved.What You'll LearnWhy lease renewals should start 18 months before expiryThe difference between Inside vs Outside the Landlord & Tenant ActWhy serving a Section 25 notice is critical (and what happens if you don't)How landlords balance rent, lease length, and capital valueWhat tenants are really trying to achieve during negotiationsWhere lease renewals commonly go wrongThe true cost of a lease renewal (and how costs can escalate)Lease renewals are not just about agreeing a new rent.They are about structuring a deal that balances:Income todaySecurity of income over timeLease renewals are a key moment in the lifecycle of a property.Handled well, they stabilise income and protect value.Handled poorly, they can lead to lost income, increased costs, and unnecessary risk.Got a Question?I'm recording a Q&A episode for this series.If there's anything you're unsure about, stuck on, or want me to cover —you can submit your question anonymously here: https://forms.gle/znWTFqF74xguaB21A

On this week's show we do our annual Broadcast Network TV Renewals and Cancellations and also read your emails and look at the week's news. News: Fubo Lost Over 500,000 Subscribers in North America In The 2nd Quarter of 2026 AMC Theatres Partners With Arena One For Live Music Concert Streaming Other: Amazon.com: Panasonic Z8 Series (2025) 77-inch OLED 4K Ultra HD Smart Fire TV, Dolby Vision IQ, HDR10+ Adaptive, 144Hz Refresh Rate, Hands-Free Alexa 77Z8BAP Broadcast Network Renewals and Cancellations for the Next TV Season It's that time of year where we look at the fate of broadcast network TV Shows. The following list is based on the latest available info.  Note that The CW has largely shifted away from original scripted programming. ABC Strong stability for its drama and comedy slate. Renewed: 9-1-1 (S10), 9-1-1: Nashville (S2), Abbott Elementary (S6), Grey's Anatomy (S23), High Potential (S3), The Rookie (S9), Scrubs (revival, S2/overall S11), Shifting Gears (S3), Will Trent (S5). On the bubble: R.J. Decker (could go either way). Canceled/ending: Limited recent cancellations reported; some unscripted like The Bachelorette faced issues. CBS Very proactive with early renewals for its procedural-heavy lineup. Several new or recent shows got quick pickups. Renewed: Boston Blue (S2), CIA (S2), Elsbeth, FBI, Fire Country, Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage, Ghosts, Marshals (S2), Matlock, NCIS (S24), NCIS: Origins (S3), NCIS: Sydney, Sheriff Country (S2), Tracker  (S4), The Amazing Race, Survivor. Canceled/ending: DMV (after S1), Watson (after S2), TThe Neighborhood (final season, ending after S8). FOX Focus on animated comedies and a few live-action holds; some cancellations in the animated space. Renewed: American Dad! (through 2028-29), Animal Control (S5), Best Medicine  (S2), Bob's Burgers (through 2028-29), Doc (S3), Family Guy (through 2028-29), Krapopolis (through 2027-28), Memory of a Killer (S2), The Simpsons (through 2028-29), Universal Basic Guys, Grimsburg  (S3). Canceled/ending: The Great North, Going Dutch. On the bubble: Murder in a Small Town (safe bet). NBC The Chicago franchise remains rock-solid; some newer shows didn't make it. Renewed: Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, Chicago P.D., Happy's Place (S3), St. Denis Medical (S3),  Law & Order: SVU (S28), The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins (S2). Canceled/ending: Brilliant Minds, Stumble. On the bubble: Law & Order (safe bet), The Hunting Party (long-shot). The CW Mostly wrapping up remaining originals. Ending: All American (S8 is final season). Canceled: Good Cop/Bad Cop (after S1). The network has minimized homegrown scripted shows in recent years.

#celticfc #celticsoul #podcastGlasgow Journalist Michael Pringle joins More than 90 Minutes Editor Andrew Milne for their weekly catch up on all things Celtic ahead of Celtic's trip to Edinburgh to face Hibs in another crucial game in the title race.Martin O'Neill picked up the Manager of the Month for April after winning four out of four games including leading Celtic to another Scottish Cup Final. The bhoys chat about last weekend's games and look ahead to this weekend's games. They ask the question how good is Motherwell manager Jens Berthel Askou and is he the perfect to come in and replace O'Neill? With season book renewals out, that is the topic for discussion after Interim Chairman Brian Wilson's latest interview with Celtic TV about Fan engagement, forums and the appointment of a Fan engagement officer. He speaks about Unity but that will only last till the summer and he should also step down along with the current CEO Michael Nicholson in what has to be a big summer for Celtic on and off the field. The Bhoys also look back at Danny McGrain and Frank McGarveys time in a Celtic jersey and share a few stories about both players. Andrew will be in conversation with Tommy Johnson, Jackie McNamara, Simon Donnelly, Alan Thompson, Peter Grant and Joe Miller at the Celtic Supporters Festival in Rosie Maguires in Spain. The festival takes place from Thursday June 04 till Sunday June 07. Click Link to Order Ticketshttps://CelticFestivalSpain2026.eventbrite.comPlease Subscribe to our independent Celtic Fan YouTube Channel Celtic Fanzine TV / celticfanzinetv– Hit the Alarm so you never miss an episode, Leave a Comment and Please share.The Podcast is available on Audio across all platforms including Spotify & Apple. Thanks for listening.For all news, blogs & upcoming eventsvisit https://celticfanzine.com/ or download the Celtic Fanzine App on the App Store or Google PlayOrder the latest issue of More than 90 Minuteshttps://celticfanzine.com/product-category/new-issue/Subscribe to More than 90 Minutes Celtic Fanzinehttps://celticfanzine.com/product-category/monthly-print-subscription/Online Shophttps://celticfanzine.com/shop/Upcoming Eventshttps://celticfanzine.com/category/events/Follow us on Social MediaFB /Mt90M/X celticfanzineInsta / celticfanzineTikTok @celticfanzine1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gordon Duncan, Simon Donnelly and Gordon Dalziel take your calls two days before another big weekend in Scottish football. They discuss the striking options for Celtic, Rangers and Hearts. Plus, some breaking news about Scotland captain Andy Robertson. Also, don't miss caller Rab's reason for missing the final game of the season.Plus Beat the Pundit and the Full Time Teaser.

Check out our team workshops: ⁠⁠https://www.thecustomersuccesspro.com/team-event⁠This episode explores how customer success teams can proactively manage renewals by focusing on value realization, strategic alignment, and continuous impact storytelling. Learn practical frameworks to improve retention, expand revenue, and build confidence in renewal conversations.Chapters:00:00 Introduction04:29 The misconception of renewal timing and value realization09:35 The role of success plans in renewal success11:01 Practicing value-led conversations and strategic discovery16:15 Tracking revenue metrics and business goals17:58 Leading indicators of renewal risk and budget cycle awareness18:57 Making every customer interaction a value conversation22:38 Weekly challenges for customer success teamsConnect with Anika Zubair:Website: ⁠https://thecustomersuccesspro.com/⁠LinkedIn:  ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/anikazubair/⁠RevUP Academy: ⁠https://thecustomersuccesspro.com/revup⁠Grab our FREE resources here: ⁠https://thecustomersuccesspro.com/resources⁠Want to be our next podcast guest? Apply here: ⁠https://www.thecustomersuccesspro.com/podcast-guest⁠Book Anika as a speaker at your next team event: ⁠https://www.thecustomersuccesspro.com/team-event

Send us Fan MailToday, we're bringing something special to Walt's Apartment as we welcome Maria from Vintage Renewals — a creative force in the Disney community blending nostalgia, sustainability, and straight-up  fashion.Join us as we dive into Maria's Disney story — how her love for the parks, vintage vibes, and iconic characters helped inspire her journey into building a unique upcycled clothing brand.We'll talk: How Vintage Renewals got started The inspiration behind her Disney-inspired designs The art of upcycling and sustainable fashion Her connection to the Disney parks and community What it's like being a Disney frequenter and creator Upcoming drops, events, and what's next for the brandPlus, we'll get into some fun Disney talk, stories from the parks, and what fuels her creativity day-to-day.Whether you're into Disney, fashion, or just love hearing inspiring creator stories — this is one you don't want to miss.We hope you can join us, and as always…we hope you enjoy the view from Walt's Apartment.Join us in our completely free Discord https://discord.gg/4nAvKTgcRnCheck out all of our amazing sponsors!Getaway Todayhttps://www.getawaytoday.com/?referrerid=8636If you want to book a Disney Vacation, please use our friends at Getaway Today. Also, if you call 855-GET-AWAY and mention Walt's Apartment, you will get a special dose of magic Where In The Park The Podcast-“Discover the history behind the details of Disney parks and more on the Where In The Park podcast”https://whereinthepark.comCheck Out Sunken City Designs - from the mind of Louis Medinahttps://sunkencitydesigns.bigcartel.com

In this episode of Insurance Shop Talk, host Eric Stein sits down with Francisco Lopes of Sonant to talk about how AI voice technology is transforming the way insurance agencies handle inbound and outbound calls. From quote requests and policy servicing to claims intake, billing questions, renewals, and cancellation follow-up, Francisco shares how agencies are using AI voice assistants to reduce call overload, improve team efficiency, and create better client experiences. They also discuss where human review still matters, how AI integrates with major agency management systems, security considerations, adoption challenges, and what's coming next in insurance automation. If you've been curious about how AI can actually work inside a real insurance agency, this conversation gives a practical look at the opportunities, limitations, and future of voice AI in the industry. #InsuranceShopTalk #InsurancePodcast #AIinInsurance #Insurtech #InsuranceAgency #CommercialInsurance #InsuranceTechnology #AgencyAutomation

Southwest Michigan's Morning News podcast is prepared and delivered by the WSJM Newsroom. For these stories and more, visit https://www.wsjm.com and follow us for updates on Facebook. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Axel welcomes back Peter Lohmann of RL Property Management for his third appearance on the podcast for another tactical episode. Peter actively operates a 750-unit property management company out of Columbus, Ohio, and brings a systems-thinker's perspective (rooted in his background as an electrical engineer) to everything from lease renewals to AI adoption.Peter and Axel's discussion dive into maximizing renewal rates, why the move-in experience is the single greatest predictor of whether a tenant renews, and how to think about offering flexible lease terms to optimize your leasing cycle. From there, the conversation shifts to artificial intelligence — not the hype, but the practical framework for deciding where AI actually belongs in your business. Peter shares a live example of using AI agents to generate property management leads by monitoring competitor listings in real time.Peter also shares three PM industry trends he's watching closely for the rest of 2026, including how AI search is replacing Google for property manager discovery — and why that should be on every PM business owner's radar now.This episode is essential listening for property managers, asset managers, and multifamily investors who want actionable frameworks for renewals, AI adoption, and staying ahead of where the industry is heading.Join us as we dive into:Peter's background as an electrical engineer turned property management company founder and how RL Property Management grew to 750 unitsThe Theory of Constraints framework — and why identifying your one bottleneck is more valuable than chasing every shiny AI toolRL Property Management's shift from a departmental org structure to a pod-hybrid model — and the early results from giving owners a single point of contactWhy renewal decisions are largely made within the first 72 hours of move-in, and how the "No Meld 90" philosophy drives renewal ratesThe role of hotel-clean standards, functional units, and seamless move-in experiences in long-term tenant retentionHow offering staggered and multi-year lease terms can optimize your leasing calendar and reduce winter vacancy exposureHow Peter is using AI agents (OpenClaw) to monitor competitor listings, identify stale rentals, and auto-build a prospecting list with owner contact infoThree 2026 PM trends: AI search replacing Google for PM discovery, the rise of community-based learning (like Crane), and what the 2026 PM Trends Report is revealing about how rental owners are finding property managersConnect with Peter Lohmann:Subscribe to his newsletter at peterlohmann.com Join or get on the waitlist for Crane at joincrane.co and check out RL Property Management which is based in Columbus, OhioAre you looking to invest in real estate, but don't want to deal with the hassle of finding great deals, signing on debt, and managing tenants? Aligned Real Estate Partners provides investment opportunities to passive investors looking for the returns, stability, and tax benefits multifamily real estate offers, but without the work - join our investor club to be notified of future investment opportunities.Connect with Axel:Follow him on InstagramConnect with him on LinkedinSubscribe to our YouTube channelLearn more about Aligned Real Estate Partners

Renewal Pricing Is Where Profit Can Be Maximized Some numbers in a staging project feel more defined than others. The initial staging fee is usually built with care. It reflects scope, inventory, labor, and experience. It has structure behind it. Renewal pricing tends to sit in a different category. The number is there, but the reasoning behind it is not always as clearly outlined. It can be influenced by instinct, habit, or what feels reasonable in the moment. In this episode, we continue the vacant staging pricing series by focusing on how to approach that number with more precision. This is a closer look at how renewal pricing can be grounded in the ongoing value of your inventory and its role inside your business. Because even when nothing new is being installed, your assets are still actively allocated. They continue to influence capacity, availability, and what your business can generate next. The opportunity is in understanding how to translate that into a number that is intentional, consistent, and financially sound. We walk through: The difference between "what makes this profitable" vs. "what makes this powerful" Why standard renewal math often lands at the bare minimum How to shift your thinking from monthly pricing to total asset value The 8–12% renewal model that creates stronger margins, flexibility, and cash flow How renewals can quietly become one of the most impactful drivers of your bottom line This episode also addresses the internal tension many owners feel when raising prices. Because pricing is never just numbers. It's belief, identity, and decision-making. When you anchor your pricing in clean math, you create stability and confidence that ripple through your entire business. Renewals are not an afterthought. They are a strategic lever. And when used well, they fund your growth, your team, and your ability to actually enjoy the business you've built. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE: Why most renewal pricing models leave money on the table The difference between baseline profitability vs. strategic pricing How to use the 8–12% inventory-based renewal model The real role renewals play in cash flow and business stability How to think like a CEO when pricing—beyond fear, competition, or guesswork  

"I've got a patient in Washington state. He's traveling 100 miles every other week to receive an infusion. We moved this patient into the home and saved the plan $700,000 on this one patient...on gout treatment."Why are infusion drugs quietly destroying your health plan's budget?This week, my guest is Rob LaHayne, Co-Founder of Leap Health. We pull back the curtain on one of the most overlooked and expensive categories in healthcare: Specialty Infusion Care. Because these drugs are administered by a medical professional, they are billed through the medical plan under "J&Q Codes" - subjecting them to massive hospital markups and "buy-and-bill" margin games.In this episode, Rob explains how Leap Health is solving this by taking over the supply chain, procuring the drugs transparently without margin, and redirecting patients to their own homes or convenient infusion centers. We discuss how these J&Q codes are often the hidden culprit behind breached stop-loss deductibles and skyrocketing renewals, and why shifting the site of care is a win for both the employer's budget and the patient's quality of life.If you're a benefits consultant trying to figure out why your client's medical spend is out of control, or an employer tired of paying massive hospital markups for necessary medications, you need to understand J&Q codes.Thank you to our 2026 sponsors!ParetoHealth: ParetoHealth empowers midsize employers with a long-term solution to reduce volatility and lower overall health benefits costs. Visit ParetoHealth.com/Spencer to learn more.Samaritan Fund: A program that connects those who need help to the support they need. We are proud to offer the Samaritan Fund Program. Visit SamaritanFundProgram.com to learn more.Vālenz Health: We're Vālenz Health, your partner in improving health literacy, reducing plan spend, and delivering high-value healthcare. Visit ValenzHealth.com to learn more.Imagine360: Imagine360 helps self-funded employers save on healthcare with smarter health plans. Cut expenses by 20-30% with custom solutions. Contact us today at Imagine360.com.Chapters:(00:00:00) Intro: The Hidden Problem of J&Q Codes (00:04:13) Rob's Background & The Genesis of Leap Health (00:08:24) Why Hospital "Buy-and-Bill" Margins Drive Up Costs (00:13:22) How Leap Health Provides Transparent, Zero-Margin Pricing (00:16:31) Shifting Site of Care: The Power of Home Infusions (00:23:44) Overcoming Headwinds: Patient Engagement & Plan Design (00:27:01) Taking Over the Supply Chain to Bypass the "BUCA" PBMs (00:32:51) Stop-Loss Renewals: Why Identifying J&Q Codes is Critical (00:37:04) Saving $700,000 on a Single Gout Patient (00:41:39) The Future: Unbundling the Health Plan & "Point Solution Fatigue" (00:45:41) Closing Thoughts: Why Consultants Must Request J&Q Code DataKey Links for Social:@SelfFunded on YouTube for video versions of the podcast and much more - https://www.youtube.com/@SelfFundedListen/watch on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1TjmrMrkIj0qSmlwAIevKA?si=068a389925474f02Listen on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/self-funded-with-spencer/id1566182286Follow Spencer on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/spencer-smith-self-funded/Follow Spencer on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/selffundedwithspencer/

Here is a question that should keep every sales leader up at night: What do you do when your team has gotten so comfortable managing their existing accounts that they have stopped prospecting for new ones? That is the challenge Jeff Velez brought to a recent episode of Ask Jeb. Jeff works in the real estate services industry, where referrals from agents, brokers, and affiliates drive most of the business. Retention matters. Relationships matter. But because there is always natural attrition, his team has drifted into full farmer mode. If you are shaking your head right now, you are not alone. This is one of the most common and most dangerous patterns I see in sales organizations today. The Farmer Mentality Is Killing Your Pipeline Your book of business is shrinking a little bit every single day. Accounts churn. Contacts leave. Referral partners move on. If your team is not consistently bringing in new logos, you are not standing still. You are moving backward. The reason salespeople drift into pure farming mode is just pure human nature. The bigger a rep’s book gets, the more comfortable they become. They are making money. Things are fine. Why grind through cold calls and new outreach when warm conversations with happy clients feel so much easier? And here is the other thing: calling invisible strangers is hard. The people in your existing accounts are happy to hear from you. The people you are prospecting to are not. That gap in friction is exactly why reps gravitate toward the path of least resistance every single time. The solution is not to yell at your salespeople. This is a leadership problem, not a salesperson problem. If you want your team to prospect, you have to build a system and a culture that makes prospecting non-negotiable. That starts with you. Leaders Are Repeaters If you want your team to prospect, you have to talk about it constantly. Every team meeting. Every one-on-one. Every morning huddle. Leaders are repeaters. You set the tone by what you say, what you measure, what you celebrate, and how you show up. That means when someone brings in a new logo, you ring the bell louder for that than you do for an account renewal. Renewals matter. High margin, great for the business. But if you want prospecting behavior, you have to reward and celebrate prospecting outcomes. Make sure you are not accidentally incentivizing people to farm existing account growth rather than hunt new business. That is a trap I have walked into with more organizations than I can count. You also need to take the guesswork out of who your team should be calling. Sales leaders who expect their reps to build their own prospecting lists and figure out their own targeting are setting their people up to fail. Build the list. Point them in the right direction. Get them in position to win. Then run prospecting blocks together. And I mean together. Do not send your team to the phones and retreat to your office. Lead from the front. Split the Job When You Can One of the hardest things about managing a referral-driven or relationship-heavy business is that you need people who can both hunt and farm. And the honest truth is that most people are not equally gifted at both. Hunters tend to get new business but sometimes burn relationships. Farmers build and maintain accounts beautifully but stop hunting the moment their book is comfortable. If your business can afford it, split the role. Have dedicated hunters focused on new logo creation. Have dedicated farmers or account managers focused on retention and expansion. Most small and mid-size organizations cannot do this fully, which means your leaders have to work twice as hard to build systems that force both behaviors. When you cannot split the job, you have to build structure into the day. Block time every morning specifically for new logo prospecting. It does not have to be a huge window. An hour. Two hours. But it has to be protected, consistent, and non-negotiable. And the leaders have to be visibly engaged in it, not hiding behind their screens while their people make calls. That single behavior sends more of a message than any speech ever will. This Is a Long Game Here is what I told Jeff, and what I will tell you: do not expect this to change overnight. Cultural shifts in sales organizations are slow and painful. You will have reps who resist. You will have leaders who get uncomfortable holding people accountable because they do not want the friction. Push through it anyway. Stake it in the ground. If you stay consistent in your messaging, your structure, and your expectations, you will start to see movement in twelve to eighteen months. New business will start coming in. Your team will start to feel the momentum. And that momentum builds on itself. I am dealing with this in my own organization right now. We got comfortable with our existing customers and pulled back on new outreach. The book feels fine until the day it does not, and by then you have already lost ground you cannot easily recover. A shrinking book is not sustainable. Full stop. Your Action Plan If you are a sales leader: Reset the expectation now. Make it clear that prospecting for new logos is part of the job description, not optional. Put it in writing. Talk about it constantly. Fix your compensation structure. If you are paying higher on renewals than on new business, fix that. You are paying for the behavior you are getting. Run prospecting blocks with your team. Not near your team. With your team. Lead from the front. Give them the list. Stop expecting reps to research, target, and build their own outreach pipeline. That is a leadership function. Celebrate new logos loudly. Ring the bell. Make it a bigger deal than anything else you celebrate. If you are a sales rep: Do not wait for your leader to force you. The reps who prospect consistently, even when their book is comfortable, are the ones who build the most durable careers. Treat your book like a leaky bucket. Something is always draining out. Your job is to fill it back up, every single day. Pick up the phone. Calling strangers is uncomfortable. Do it anyway. That discomfort is exactly what separates average reps from elite ones. The message is simple. A book of business that is not growing is a book of business that is dying. This is who we are. This is what we do. We prospect, every day, without exception. Want to take this to the next level in person? Join Sales Gravy at one of our live events, where we work with sales professionals and leaders to build the skills, mindset, and habits that drive elite performance. See all upcoming events at salesgravy.com/live.

On the podcast: about the cost of not tracking your experiments and decisions, how refunds and chargebacks quietly erase your paywall wins, and why stacking A/B test wins should compound your growth, but almost never does.This conversation is shorter than usual and will be featured in RevenueCat's State of Subscription Apps report. Each episode in this series will explore one crucial topic and share actionable insights from top subscription app operators.Top Takeaways:

This week on Screaming in the Cloud, Corey sits down with Chris Hill, CEO of Humble Pod, to talk about the messy, nuanced reality of AI in media. From secretly cloning Corey's voice for an ad using ElevenLabs (and almost getting away with it) to the growing tension between polished production and authentic content, they unpack what AI can actually do versus what it claims to do.They explore the shifting economics of podcasting, the rise of video-first formats, Netflix's entrance into the space, and why “good enough” production often beats expensive studio perfection. It's a candid conversation about trust, automation, creative integrity, and why sometimes the most dangerous AI use case is the one no one notices.Show Highlights:(00:00) The AI Voice Clone Ad Nobody Noticed(00:44) 700 Episodes In: Catching Up with Humble Pod's Chris Hill(01:16) New Studio, New Vibes: Building a Podcast Space in Tennessee(01:51) AI in Podcasting Workflows: Riverside, Editing Promises & Human Judgment(07:50) Authenticity vs Production Value + Duckbill Hiring & Product Shift(14:05) Renewals, churn, and why point solutions fail(14:15) The Doc Tools saga: building the wrong thing (and Disney lawyers)(15:15) Bahamas studio build: consulting where quality really matters(16:34) Gear talk & pro tips: teleprompters, cameras, and looking at the lens(18:50) Podcasting goes video-first: clips, discovery, TikTok, and the wrap-upAbout Chris Hill: Chris Hill is a Knoxville, TN native and founder of Humble Pod, where he helps brands, startups, and thought leaders develop, launch, and grow podcasts across the U.S. and beyond. He works with clients ranging from local Knoxville businesses to entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and around the world.Chris is the co-host and producer of Our Humble Beer Podcast and lectures on podcasting and marketing at the University of Tennessee. He earned his undergraduate degree in Marketing & Entrepreneurship from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and later received his MBA from King University.He currently serves as President of the American Marketing Association Knoxville chapter and enjoys supporting the local craft beer community, traveling internationally, and exploring the outdoors.Links: Humblepod: https://www.humblepod.com/Sponsored by: duckbillhq.com

Teams focus on closing deals but neglect the systems that make customers stay. In this episode, Brandon breaks down why renewal risk begins in the first month, the common onboarding failures that lead to churn, and the value-proof timeline that drives retention.You'll learn how to create early measurable wins, align outcomes from day one, and build a customer narrative so strong that renewal becomes automatic. If you want higher retention, expansion, and long-term revenue, this episode shows where it really starts.

Wisconsin athletic director Chris McIntosh spoke with reporters Monday. Zach and Jesse discuss his comments on the job Luke Fickell has done in the offseason, why he still has faith in his coach, the attitude of season ticket holders and more. They also talk about Fickell asking not to be considered for a contract extension, whether Mason Posa is the face of the program and the battle for the backup QB job.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chris and Andy talk about the ongoing bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery and the news that Netflix's offer would include theatrical releases (5:31), before reacting to the various renewal announcements from HBO including ‘Task' and both ‘Game of Thrones' spinoffs (12:23). Then they discuss the Netflix miniseries ‘The Beast in Me,' starring Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys (30:51). Later, they check in on ‘The Chair Company' (51:45) and ‘I Love LA' (53:53). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Video Supervision: Sarah Reddy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices