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What if one of the biggest drivers of your productivity wasn't your calendar, your habits, or your willpower but the light around you?  In this episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Dr. Martin Moore-Ede, a world-leading expert in circadian biology and founder of the Circadian Light Research Center. Dr. Moore-Ede, known as "The Light Doctor," reveals a hidden productivity lever most of us overlook entirely: the light around us. We live in a world of artificial light, but not all light is created equal. Dr. Moore-Ede explains how modern LED and fluorescent lighting disrupt our internal biological clocks, leading to poor sleep, foggy thinking, weakened immune systems, and even long-term health risks. What begins as a conversation about light evolves into a fundamental discussion on human biology, explaining how the blue spectrum in everyday bulbs tells our brain it is daytime, halting vital repair processes, suppressing cancer-fighting melatonin, and throwing our entire system out of sync. Gerald and Dr. Moore-Ede explore practical, science-backed strategies to harness light for peak performance. Learn the four key pillars of a "healthy light diet," why morning outdoor time is non-negotiable, and how to choose evening lighting that will not sabotage your sleep. Discover how companies worldwide are using these principles to boost workforce productivity by over 30 percent, reduce errors, and improve safety. This episode shows how to work with your biology rather than against it. If you want to sharpen your focus, enhance your energy, sleep deeply, and unlock a new level of sustainable productivity, it starts with the light you see.   What We Discuss [00:00] Podcast introduction [01:17] Kiva non-profit spotlight [02:01] Guest introduction: Dr. Martin Moore-Ede [03:14] Personal interests: music preferences [04:37] Immediate productivity gains from healthy lighting [05:51] Dr. Moore-Ede's background and circadian research [07:05] Discovery of the brain's circadian clock [08:06] Modern lighting and health disruption [09:39] How circadian rhythms work [11:31] Health risks of nighttime light exposure [12:49] Choosing healthy lighting at home [14:00] How eyes detect light: rods, cones, and non-visual receptors [15:41] Daytime light exposure and longevity [17:08] Light's impact on productivity and sleep [18:36] Aging, well-being, and productivity [20:16] Types of light and their effects [22:58] Four key principles for healthy circadian practice [24:21] Practical home lighting adjustments [25:01] Lighting for focus and brainstorming [26:00] Lighting, stress, and 24/7 work culture [28:18] Workplace design innovations [31:03] Where to learn more: Dr. Moore-Ede's resources [32:30] Podcast wrap-up and closing remarks   Notable Quotes [04:49] These days people are inside, they're on their devices, and we are under lights that are actually rather unhealthy." – Dr. Martin Moore-Ede [05:07] "Light is not just for vision. It's actually very much to do with health." – Dr. Martin Moore-Ede [04:46] "If people start to adopt a healthy light diet, they get much sharper in their thinking, sleep deeper, feel better, and their immune system is strengthened." – Dr. Martin Moore-Ede [06:25] "I found myself working 36-hour long shifts under bright fluorescent lights around the clock, dealing with fatigue and health challenges under those conditions." – Dr. Martin Moore-Ede [11:23] "We are so much healthier and sleep better when we are aligned with the natural cycle of day and night." – Dr. Martin Moore-Ede [12:28] "We get into is the modern LED lights that have replaced all our lighting. All our lighting is pumping out tons of blue that is really disrupting our clocks and causing all sorts of ill health." – Dr. Martin Moore-Ede [16:50] "We just take light for granted and don't know what we're buying at the store or what we're switching on when we turn that switch on the wall." – Dr. Martin Moore-Ede [19:23] "Someone who is fatigued and sleep disrupted, whose clock is messed up by light, is just not going to be very productive." – Dr. Martin Moore-Ede [29:08] "We can really boost performance and productivity, and reduce errors by putting the right lighting in those workplaces." – Dr. Martin Moore-Ede   Resource and Links Dr. Martin Moore-Ede Website (Consulting Firm): https://circadian.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-Moore-Ede-a25914 Book: The Light Doctor (Amazon Bestseller) Newsletter: The Light Doctor Newsletter (Substack) Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

Your sales team spends 70% of their time on admin work - not selling. Do the math: if your top AE makes $120K and only spends 30% of their time on revenue activities, you're paying $84,000 for data entry and CRM updates. That's the Admin Drag tax killing your pipeline velocity in 2026. But here's the real problem: you bought AI six months ago (Gemini, ChatGPT, Einstein), rolled it out with a 45-minute webinar, and… crickets. Adoption is at 14%. Your VP is asking what you're paying for. This isn't a technology problem. It's a leadership problem. You installed software when you needed to redesign the workflow. In this episode, Mike Allton (Director of Partner-Led Growth at Agorapulse) deconstructs the 95% AI pilot failure rate and shows you exactly what Revenue Architecture looks like in practice. You'll discover: • The real cost of manual meeting prep (90 minutes vs. 8 minutes with Gemini's Scheduler)• How to build a "Digital Crew" that automates research, briefing docs, and objection prep• Why Gemini's 2 million token context window changes everything for sales intelligence• The 3-day audit that reveals where your team is hemorrhaging time• How to move from "Human-in-the-Loop" to "Human-on-the-Loop" automation Stop installing tools your team won't use. Start architecting workflows that reclaim 25-30 hours per rep, per week. Resources: TheAIHat.com/speaking CHAPTERS 00:00:00 - Introduction: The $600K Call She's Unprepared For 00:02:20 - The $84,000 Admin Drag Tax (Do the Math) 00:03:41 - Why 95% of AI Pilots Fail (It's Not the Technology) 00:04:05 - The Da Vinci Workshop: Building a Digital Crew 00:05:17 - Pilot Purgatory: The 6-Month Failure Timeline 00:07:06 - The Old Way: 90 Minutes of Manual Meeting Prep 00:08:48 - The Digital Crew Way: Gemini Scheduler in Action 00:11:48 - Why Gemini Is Structurally Different 00:12:16 - Native Workspace Integration (Friction Removal) 00:12:36 - The 2 Million Token Context Window 00:13:20 - Multimodal Native (Not Franken-Botted) 00:14:23 - Grounding with Google Search (The Accuracy Engine) 00:14:43 - The Scheduler: The Agentic Unlock 00:15:36 - Your Homework: The 3-Day Time Tracking Audit 00:17:01 - How to Architect Your Digital Crew (Workshop Info) 00:17:45 - Closing: Stop Installing Software, Start Architecting Systems Show Notes & Transcript: https://theaihat.com/geminis-scheduler-just-fixed-sales-meeting-prep-and-killed-the-90-minute-research-grind/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Imagine at 45, Melissa Jean Rod discovered that the man she had always believed was her father wasn't. What followed was a journey full of family secrets, DNA twists, and moments that felt almost like a detective story, all while learning to forgive when it seemed impossible. In this episode of Productivity Smarts, Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Texas-born author and speaker Melissa Jean Rod to unpack her decades-long journey of uncovering the truth about her father. Her story, chronicled in The Daddy Files: How I Survived the Secrets and Found the Truth that Heals, takes listeners through the raw reality of questioning paternity, facing hidden truths, and learning to forgive, all while discovering God as the unwavering Father. What begins as a search for biological answers evolves into a deeper spiritual and emotional transformation. Gerald and Melissa explore how unresolved pain can silently impact productivity, relationships, and personal growth, and why facing trauma courageously through writing, prayer, and honest reflection is essential for freedom. They share practical ways to navigate emotional bandwidth, from therapy, walks, music, and sunsets to leaning on supportive relationships, all while staying committed to life's daily demands. Melissa reflects on how her identity shifted from being defined by others to being rooted in God and herself, showing that grit, persistence, and truth-seeking mirror the stamina needed for meaningful goals. This conversation is a beacon for anyone wrestling with family secrets, identity questions, or emotional blocks, offering hope that inner healing unlocks creativity, resilience, and lasting productivity.   What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction [02:01] Introduction to  Melissa Jean Rod and The Daddy Files [04:14] How Melissa started writing [05:41] Emotional challenges in writing [06:07] Productivity and emotional healing [07:48] Personal story: relationships & healing [09:11] Processing trauma and growth [10:39] Staying resilient while writing [12:50] Balancing daily demands [16:15] The power of routine and habits [18:32] Identity shifts and inner work [19:03] Forgiveness and letting go [21:15] Support systems and emotional breakdowns [23:00] Managing emotional bandwidth [24:44] Tools for emotional healing [25:59] Creativity, storytelling, and authenticity [27:54] Persistence and stamina in goal setting [29:02] Closing & where to find Melissa [30:01] Podcast outro & call for reviews   Notable Quotes [08:46] "Things that go on in your past, if you don't deal with them, they do affect what you're going through now, and it does affect how you process things and how productive you can be." – Melissa Jean Rod [11:09] "I needed that break for my heart and my mind. Otherwise it would have been too much." – Melissa Jean Rod [23:33] "For me, I do a lot of talking with God and I dump it on him." – Melissa Jean Rod [19:07] "For me, it was a case of realizing that my identity did not revolve around who my biological father was or who my mother was. It was me. My identity was in me and in God." – Melissa Jean Rod [20:04] "I had to make a decision to get better, not bitter, and to grow through this and not just go through this." – Gerald J. Leonard [24:33] "I have gone to therapy many times. And it's a wonderful tool. If you have the right therapist, they are amazing." – Melissa Jean Rod Resource and Links Melissa Jean Rod Website: https://melissajeanrod.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-jean-rod-046b713a4 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MelissaJeanRod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissajeanrod/# Book – The Daddy Files Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

From Palantir and Two Sigma to building Goodfire into the poster-child for actionable mechanistic interpretability, Mark Bissell (Member of Technical Staff) and Myra Deng (Head of Product) are trying to turn “peeking inside the model” into a repeatable production workflow by shipping APIs, landing real enterprise deployments, and now scaling the bet with a recent $150M Series B funding round at a $1.25B valuation.In this episode, we go far beyond the usual “SAEs are cool” take. We talk about Goodfire's core bet: that the AI lifecycle is still fundamentally broken because the only reliable control we have is data and we post-train, RLHF, and fine-tune by “slurping supervision through a straw,” hoping the model picks up the right behaviors while quietly absorbing the wrong ones. Goodfire's answer is to build a bi-directional interface between humans and models: read what's happening inside, edit it surgically, and eventually use interpretability during training so customization isn't just brute-force guesswork.Mark and Myra walk through what that looks like when you stop treating interpretability like a lab demo and start treating it like infrastructure: lightweight probes that add near-zero latency, token-level safety filters that can run at inference time, and interpretability workflows that survive messy constraints (multilingual inputs, synthetic→real transfer, regulated domains, no access to sensitive data). We also get a live window into what “frontier-scale interp” means operationally (i.e. steering a trillion-parameter model in real time by targeting internal features) plus why the same tooling generalizes cleanly from language models to genomics, medical imaging, and “pixel-space” world models.We discuss:* Myra + Mark's path: Palantir (health systems, forward-deployed engineering) → Goodfire early team; Two Sigma → Head of Product, translating frontier interpretability research into a platform and real-world deployments* What “interpretability” actually means in practice: not just post-hoc poking, but a broader “science of deep learning” approach across the full AI lifecycle (data curation → post-training → internal representations → model design)* Why post-training is the first big wedge: “surgical edits” for unintended behaviors likereward hacking, sycophancy, noise learned during customization plus the dream of targeted unlearning and bias removal without wrecking capabilities* SAEs vs probes in the real world: why SAE feature spaces sometimes underperform classifiers trained on raw activations for downstream detection tasks (hallucination, harmful intent, PII), and what that implies about “clean concept spaces”* Rakuten in production: deploying interpretability-based token-level PII detection at inference time to prevent routing private data to downstream providers plus the gnarly constraints: no training on real customer PII, synthetic→real transfer, English + Japanese, and tokenization quirks* Why interp can be operationally cheaper than LLM-judge guardrails: probes are lightweight, low-latency, and don't require hosting a second large model in the loop* Real-time steering at frontier scale: a demo of steering Kimi K2 (~1T params) live and finding features via SAE pipelines, auto-labeling via LLMs, and toggling a “Gen-Z slang” feature across multiple layers without breaking tool use* Hallucinations as an internal signal: the case that models have latent uncertainty / “user-pleasing” circuitry you can detect and potentially mitigate more directly than black-box methods* Steering vs prompting: the emerging view that activation steering and in-context learning are more closely connected than people think, including work mapping between the two (even for jailbreak-style behaviors)* Interpretability for science: using the same tooling across domains (genomics, medical imaging, materials) to debug spurious correlations and extract new knowledge up to and including early biomarker discovery work with major partners* World models + “pixel-space” interpretability: why vision/video models make concepts easier to see, how that accelerates the feedback loop, and why robotics/world-model partners are especially interesting design partners* The north star: moving from “data in, weights out” to intentional model design where experts can impart goals and constraints directly, not just via reward signals and brute-force post-training—Goodfire AI* Website: https://goodfire.ai* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/goodfire-ai/* X: https://x.com/GoodfireAIMyra Deng* Website: https://myradeng.com/* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/myra-deng/* X: https://x.com/myra_dengMark Bissell* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-bissell/* X: https://x.com/MarkMBissellFull Video EpisodeTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction00:00:05 Introduction to the Latent Space Podcast and Guests from Goodfire00:00:29 What is Goodfire? Mission and Focus on Interpretability00:01:01 Goodfire's Practical Approach to Interpretability00:01:37 Goodfire's Series B Fundraise Announcement00:02:04 Backgrounds of Mark and Myra from Goodfire00:02:51 Team Structure and Roles at Goodfire00:05:13 What is Interpretability? Definitions and Techniques00:05:30 Understanding Errors00:07:29 Post-training vs. Pre-training Interpretability Applications00:08:51 Using Interpretability to Remove Unwanted Behaviors00:10:09 Grokking, Double Descent, and Generalization in Models00:10:15 404 Not Found Explained00:12:06 Subliminal Learning and Hidden Biases in Models00:14:07 How Goodfire Chooses Research Directions and Projects00:15:00 Troubleshooting Errors00:16:04 Limitations of SAEs and Probes in Interpretability00:18:14 Rakuten Case Study: Production Deployment of Interpretability00:20:45 Conclusion00:21:12 Efficiency Benefits of Interpretability Techniques00:21:26 Live Demo: Real-Time Steering in a Trillion Parameter Model00:25:15 How Steering Features are Identified and Labeled00:26:51 Detecting and Mitigating Hallucinations Using Interpretability00:31:20 Equivalence of Activation Steering and Prompting00:34:06 Comparing Steering with Fine-Tuning and LoRA Techniques00:36:04 Model Design and the Future of Intentional AI Development00:38:09 Getting Started in Mechinterp: Resources, Programs, and Open Problems00:40:51 Industry Applications and the Rise of Mechinterp in Practice00:41:39 Interpretability for Code Models and Real-World Usage00:43:07 Making Steering Useful for More Than Stylistic Edits00:46:17 Applying Interpretability to Healthcare and Scientific Discovery00:49:15 Why Interpretability is Crucial in High-Stakes Domains like Healthcare00:52:03 Call for Design Partners Across Domains00:54:18 Interest in World Models and Visual Interpretability00:57:22 Sci-Fi Inspiration: Ted Chiang and Interpretability01:00:14 Interpretability, Safety, and Alignment Perspectives01:04:27 Weak-to-Strong Generalization and Future Alignment Challenges01:05:38 Final Thoughts and Hiring/Collaboration Opportunities at GoodfireTranscriptShawn Wang [00:00:05]: So welcome to the Latent Space pod. We're back in the studio with our special MechInterp co-host, Vibhu. Welcome. Mochi, Mochi's special co-host. And Mochi, the mechanistic interpretability doggo. We have with us Mark and Myra from Goodfire. Welcome. Thanks for having us on. Maybe we can sort of introduce Goodfire and then introduce you guys. How do you introduce Goodfire today?Myra Deng [00:00:29]: Yeah, it's a great question. So Goodfire, we like to say, is an AI research lab that focuses on using interpretability to understand, learn from, and design AI models. And we really believe that interpretability will unlock the new generation, next frontier of safe and powerful AI models. That's our description right now, and I'm excited to dive more into the work we're doing to make that happen.Shawn Wang [00:00:55]: Yeah. And there's always like the official description. Is there an understatement? Is there an unofficial one that sort of resonates more with a different audience?Mark Bissell [00:01:01]: Well, being an AI research lab that's focused on interpretability, there's obviously a lot of people have a lot that they think about when they think of interpretability. And I think we have a pretty broad definition of what that means and the types of places that can be applied. And in particular, applying it in production scenarios, in high stakes industries, and really taking it sort of from the research world into the real world. Which, you know. It's a new field, so that hasn't been done all that much. And we're excited about actually seeing that sort of put into practice.Shawn Wang [00:01:37]: Yeah, I would say it wasn't too long ago that Anthopic was like still putting out like toy models or superposition and that kind of stuff. And I wouldn't have pegged it to be this far along. When you and I talked at NeurIPS, you were talking a little bit about your production use cases and your customers. And then not to bury the lead, today we're also announcing the fundraise, your Series B. $150 million. $150 million at a 1.25B valuation. Congrats, Unicorn.Mark Bissell [00:02:02]: Thank you. Yeah, no, things move fast.Shawn Wang [00:02:04]: We were talking to you in December and already some big updates since then. Let's dive, I guess, into a bit of your backgrounds as well. Mark, you were at Palantir working on health stuff, which is really interesting because the Goodfire has some interesting like health use cases. I don't know how related they are in practice.Mark Bissell [00:02:22]: Yeah, not super related, but I don't know. It was helpful context to know what it's like. Just to work. Just to work with health systems and generally in that domain. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:02:32]: And Mara, you were at Two Sigma, which actually I was also at Two Sigma back in the day. Wow, nice.Myra Deng [00:02:37]: Did we overlap at all?Shawn Wang [00:02:38]: No, this is when I was briefly a software engineer before I became a sort of developer relations person. And now you're head of product. What are your sort of respective roles, just to introduce people to like what all gets done in Goodfire?Mark Bissell [00:02:51]: Yeah, prior to Goodfire, I was at Palantir for about three years as a forward deployed engineer, now a hot term. Wasn't always that way. And as a technical lead on the health care team and at Goodfire, I'm a member of the technical staff. And honestly, that I think is about as specific as like as as I could describe myself because I've worked on a range of things. And, you know, it's it's a fun time to be at a team that's still reasonably small. I think when I joined one of the first like ten employees, now we're above 40, but still, it looks like there's always a mix of research and engineering and product and all of the above. That needs to get done. And I think everyone across the team is, you know, pretty, pretty switch hitter in the roles they do. So I think you've seen some of the stuff that I worked on related to image models, which was sort of like a research demo. More recently, I've been working on our scientific discovery team with some of our life sciences partners, but then also building out our core platform for more of like flexing some of the kind of MLE and developer skills as well.Shawn Wang [00:03:53]: Very generalist. And you also had like a very like a founding engineer type role.Myra Deng [00:03:58]: Yeah, yeah.Shawn Wang [00:03:59]: So I also started as I still am a member of technical staff, did a wide range of things from the very beginning, including like finding our office space and all of this, which is we both we both visited when you had that open house thing. It was really nice.Myra Deng [00:04:13]: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Plug to come visit our office.Shawn Wang [00:04:15]: It looked like it was like 200 people. It has room for 200 people. But you guys are like 10.Myra Deng [00:04:22]: For a while, it was very empty. But yeah, like like Mark, I spend. A lot of my time as as head of product, I think product is a bit of a weird role these days, but a lot of it is thinking about how do we take our frontier research and really apply it to the most important real world problems and how does that then translate into a platform that's repeatable or a product and working across, you know, the engineering and research teams to make that happen and also communicating to the world? Like, what is interpretability? What is it used for? What is it good for? Why is it so important? All of these things are part of my day-to-day as well.Shawn Wang [00:05:01]: I love like what is things because that's a very crisp like starting point for people like coming to a field. They all do a fun thing. Vibhu, why don't you want to try tackling what is interpretability and then they can correct us.Vibhu Sapra [00:05:13]: Okay, great. So I think like one, just to kick off, it's a very interesting role to be head of product, right? Because you guys, at least as a lab, you're more of an applied interp lab, right? Which is pretty different than just normal interp, like a lot of background research. But yeah. You guys actually ship an API to try these things. You have Ember, you have products around it, which not many do. Okay. What is interp? So basically you're trying to have an understanding of what's going on in model, like in the model, in the internal. So different approaches to do that. You can do probing, SAEs, transcoders, all this stuff. But basically you have an, you have a hypothesis. You have something that you want to learn about what's happening in a model internals. And then you're trying to solve that from there. You can do stuff like you can, you know, you can do activation mapping. You can try to do steering. There's a lot of stuff that you can do, but the key question is, you know, from input to output, we want to have a better understanding of what's happening and, you know, how can we, how can we adjust what's happening on the model internals? How'd I do?Mark Bissell [00:06:12]: That was really good. I think that was great. I think it's also a, it's kind of a minefield of a, if you ask 50 people who quote unquote work in interp, like what is interpretability, you'll probably get 50 different answers. And. Yeah. To some extent also like where, where good fire sits in the space. I think that we're an AI research company above all else. And interpretability is a, is a set of methods that we think are really useful and worth kind of specializing in, in order to accomplish the goals we want to accomplish. But I think we also sort of see some of the goals as even more broader as, as almost like the science of deep learning and just taking a not black box approach to kind of any part of the like AI development life cycle, whether that. That means using interp for like data curation while you're training your model or for understanding what happened during post-training or for the, you know, understanding activations and sort of internal representations, what is in there semantically. And then a lot of sort of exciting updates that were, you know, are sort of also part of the, the fundraise around bringing interpretability to training, which I don't think has been done all that much before. A lot of this stuff is sort of post-talk poking at models as opposed to. To actually using this to intentionally design them.Shawn Wang [00:07:29]: Is this post-training or pre-training or is that not a useful.Myra Deng [00:07:33]: Currently focused on post-training, but there's no reason the techniques wouldn't also work in pre-training.Shawn Wang [00:07:38]: Yeah. It seems like it would be more active, applicable post-training because basically I'm thinking like rollouts or like, you know, having different variations of a model that you can tweak with the, with your steering. Yeah.Myra Deng [00:07:50]: And I think in a lot of the news that you've seen in, in, on like Twitter or whatever, you've seen a lot of unintended. Side effects come out of post-training processes, you know, overly sycophantic models or models that exhibit strange reward hacking behavior. I think these are like extreme examples. There's also, you know, very, uh, mundane, more mundane, like enterprise use cases where, you know, they try to customize or post-train a model to do something and it learns some noise or it doesn't appropriately learn the target task. And a big question that we've always had is like, how do you use your understanding of what the model knows and what it's doing to actually guide the learning process?Shawn Wang [00:08:26]: Yeah, I mean, uh, you know, just to anchor this for people, uh, one of the biggest controversies of last year was 4.0 GlazeGate. I've never heard of GlazeGate. I didn't know that was what it was called. The other one, they called it that on the blog post and I was like, well, how did OpenAI call it? Like officially use that term. And I'm like, that's funny, but like, yeah, I guess it's the pitch that if they had worked a good fire, they wouldn't have avoided it. Like, you know what I'm saying?Myra Deng [00:08:51]: I think so. Yeah. Yeah.Mark Bissell [00:08:53]: I think that's certainly one of the use cases. I think. Yeah. Yeah. I think the reason why post-training is a place where this makes a lot of sense is a lot of what we're talking about is surgical edits. You know, you want to be able to have expert feedback, very surgically change how your model is doing, whether that is, you know, removing a certain behavior that it has. So, you know, one of the things that we've been looking at or is, is another like common area where you would want to make a somewhat surgical edit is some of the models that have say political bias. Like you look at Quen or, um, R1 and they have sort of like this CCP bias.Shawn Wang [00:09:27]: Is there a CCP vector?Mark Bissell [00:09:29]: Well, there's, there are certainly internal, yeah. Parts of the representation space where you can sort of see where that lives. Yeah. Um, and you want to kind of, you know, extract that piece out.Shawn Wang [00:09:40]: Well, I always say, you know, whenever you find a vector, a fun exercise is just like, make it very negative to see what the opposite of CCP is.Mark Bissell [00:09:47]: The super America, bald eagles flying everywhere. But yeah. So in general, like lots of post-training tasks where you'd want to be able to, to do that. Whether it's unlearning a certain behavior or, you know, some of the other kind of cases where this comes up is, are you familiar with like the, the grokking behavior? I mean, I know the machine learning term of grokking.Shawn Wang [00:10:09]: Yeah.Mark Bissell [00:10:09]: Sort of this like double descent idea of, of having a model that is able to learn a generalizing, a generalizing solution, as opposed to even if memorization of some task would suffice, you want it to learn the more general way of doing a thing. And so, you know, another. A way that you can think about having surgical access to a model's internals would be learn from this data, but learn in the right way. If there are many possible, you know, ways to, to do that. Can make interp solve the double descent problem?Shawn Wang [00:10:41]: Depends, I guess, on how you. Okay. So I, I, I viewed that double descent as a problem because then you're like, well, if the loss curves level out, then you're done, but maybe you're not done. Right. Right. But like, if you actually can interpret what is a generalizing or what you're doing. What is, what is still changing, even though the loss is not changing, then maybe you, you can actually not view it as a double descent problem. And actually you're just sort of translating the space in which you view loss and like, and then you have a smooth curve. Yeah.Mark Bissell [00:11:11]: I think that's certainly like the domain of, of problems that we're, that we're looking to get.Shawn Wang [00:11:15]: Yeah. To me, like double descent is like the biggest thing to like ML research where like, if you believe in scaling, then you don't need, you need to know where to scale. And. But if you believe in double descent, then you don't, you don't believe in anything where like anything levels off, like.Vibhu Sapra [00:11:30]: I mean, also tendentially there's like, okay, when you talk about the China vector, right. There's the subliminal learning work. It was from the anthropic fellows program where basically you can have hidden biases in a model. And as you distill down or, you know, as you train on distilled data, those biases always show up, even if like you explicitly try to not train on them. So, you know, it's just like another use case of. Okay. If we can interpret what's happening in post-training, you know, can we clear some of this? Can we even determine what's there? Because yeah, it's just like some worrying research that's out there that shows, you know, we really don't know what's going on.Mark Bissell [00:12:06]: That is. Yeah. I think that's the biggest sentiment that we're sort of hoping to tackle. Nobody knows what's going on. Right. Like subliminal learning is just an insane concept when you think about it. Right. Train a model on not even the logits, literally the output text of a bunch of random numbers. And now your model loves owls. And you see behaviors like that, that are just, they defy, they defy intuition. And, and there are mathematical explanations that you can get into, but. I mean.Shawn Wang [00:12:34]: It feels so early days. Objectively, there are a sequence of numbers that are more owl-like than others. There, there should be.Mark Bissell [00:12:40]: According to, according to certain models. Right. It's interesting. I think it only applies to models that were initialized from the same starting Z. Usually, yes.Shawn Wang [00:12:49]: But I mean, I think that's a, that's a cheat code because there's not enough compute. But like if you believe in like platonic representation, like probably it will transfer across different models as well. Oh, you think so?Mark Bissell [00:13:00]: I think of it more as a statistical artifact of models initialized from the same seed sort of. There's something that is like path dependent from that seed that might cause certain overlaps in the latent space and then sort of doing this distillation. Yeah. Like it pushes it towards having certain other tendencies.Vibhu Sapra [00:13:24]: Got it. I think there's like a bunch of these open-ended questions, right? Like you can't train in new stuff during the RL phase, right? RL only reorganizes weights and you can only do stuff that's somewhat there in your base model. You're not learning new stuff. You're just reordering chains and stuff. But okay. My broader question is when you guys work at an interp lab, how do you decide what to work on and what's kind of the thought process? Right. Because we can ramble for hours. Okay. I want to know this. I want to know that. But like, how do you concretely like, you know, what's the workflow? Okay. There's like approaches towards solving a problem, right? I can try prompting. I can look at chain of thought. I can train probes, SAEs. But how do you determine, you know, like, okay, is this going anywhere? Like, do we have set stuff? Just, you know, if you can help me with all that. Yeah.Myra Deng [00:14:07]: It's a really good question. I feel like we've always at the very beginning of the company thought about like, let's go and try to learn what isn't working in machine learning today. Whether that's talking to customers or talking to researchers at other labs, trying to understand both where the frontier is going and where things are really not falling apart today. And then developing a perspective on how we can push the frontier using interpretability methods. And so, you know, even our chief scientist, Tom, spends a lot of time talking to customers and trying to understand what real world problems are and then taking that back and trying to apply the current state of the art to those problems and then seeing where they fall down basically. And then using those failures or those shortcomings to understand what hills to climb when it comes to interpretability research. So like on the fundamental side, for instance, when we have done some work applying SAEs and probes, we've encountered, you know, some shortcomings in SAEs that we found a little bit surprising. And so have gone back to the drawing board and done work on that. And then, you know, we've done some work on better foundational interpreter models. And a lot of our team's research is focused on what is the next evolution beyond SAEs, for instance. And then when it comes to like control and design of models, you know, we tried steering with our first API and realized that it still fell short of black box techniques like prompting or fine tuning. And so went back to the drawing board and we're like, how do we make that not the case and how do we improve it beyond that? And one of our researchers, Ekdeep, who just joined is actually Ekdeep and Atticus are like steering experts and have spent a lot of time trying to figure out like, what is the research that enables us to actually do this in a much more powerful, robust way? So yeah, the answer is like, look at real world problems, try to translate that into a research agenda and then like hill climb on both of those at the same time.Shawn Wang [00:16:04]: Yeah. Mark has the steering CLI demo queued up, which we're going to go into in a sec. But I always want to double click on when you drop hints, like we found some problems with SAEs. Okay. What are they? You know, and then we can go into the demo. Yeah.Myra Deng [00:16:19]: I mean, I'm curious if you have more thoughts here as well, because you've done it in the healthcare domain. But I think like, for instance, when we do things like trying to detect behaviors within models that are harmful or like behaviors that a user might not want to have in their model. So hallucinations, for instance, harmful intent, PII, all of these things. We first tried using SAE probes for a lot of these tasks. So taking the feature activation space from SAEs and then training classifiers on top of that, and then seeing how well we can detect the properties that we might want to detect in model behavior. And we've seen in many cases that probes just trained on raw activations seem to perform better than SAE probes, which is a bit surprising if you think that SAEs are actually also capturing the concepts that you would want to capture cleanly and more surgically. And so that is an interesting observation. I don't think that is like, I'm not down on SAEs at all. I think there are many, many things they're useful for, but we have definitely run into cases where I think the concept space described by SAEs is not as clean and accurate as we would expect it to be for actual like real world downstream performance metrics.Mark Bissell [00:17:34]: Fair enough. Yeah. It's the blessing and the curse of unsupervised methods where you get to peek into the AI's mind. But sometimes you wish that you saw other things when you walked inside there. Although in the PII instance, I think weren't an SAE based approach actually did prove to be the most generalizable?Myra Deng [00:17:53]: It did work well in the case that we published with Rakuten. And I think a lot of the reasons it worked well was because we had a noisier data set. And so actually the blessing of unsupervised learning is that we actually got to get more meaningful, generalizable signal from SAEs when the data was noisy. But in other cases where we've had like good data sets, it hasn't been the case.Shawn Wang [00:18:14]: And just because you named Rakuten and I don't know if we'll get it another chance, like what is the overall, like what is Rakuten's usage or production usage? Yeah.Myra Deng [00:18:25]: So they are using us to essentially guardrail and inference time monitor their language model usage and their agent usage to detect things like PII so that they don't route private user information.Myra Deng [00:18:41]: And so that's, you know, going through all of their user queries every day. And that's something that we deployed with them a few months ago. And now we are actually exploring very early partnerships, not just with Rakuten, but with other people around how we can help with potentially training and customization use cases as well. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:19:03]: And for those who don't know, like it's Rakuten is like, I think number one or number two e-commerce store in Japan. Yes. Yeah.Mark Bissell [00:19:10]: And I think that use case actually highlights a lot of like what it looks like to deploy things in practice that you don't always think about when you're doing sort of research tasks. So when you think about some of the stuff that came up there that's more complex than your idealized version of a problem, they were encountering things like synthetic to real transfer of methods. So they couldn't train probes, classifiers, things like that on actual customer data of PII. So what they had to do is use synthetic data sets. And then hope that that transfer is out of domain to real data sets. And so we can evaluate performance on the real data sets, but not train on customer PII. So that right off the bat is like a big challenge. You have multilingual requirements. So this needed to work for both English and Japanese text. Japanese text has all sorts of quirks, including tokenization behaviors that caused lots of bugs that caused us to be pulling our hair out. And then also a lot of tasks you'll see. You might make simplifying assumptions if you're sort of treating it as like the easiest version of the problem to just sort of get like general results where maybe you say you're classifying a sentence to say, does this contain PII? But the need that Rakuten had was token level classification so that you could precisely scrub out the PII. So as we learned more about the problem, you're sort of speaking about what that looks like in practice. Yeah. A lot of assumptions end up breaking. And that was just one instance where you. A problem that seems simple right off the bat ends up being more complex as you keep diving into it.Vibhu Sapra [00:20:41]: Excellent. One of the things that's also interesting with Interp is a lot of these methods are very efficient, right? So where you're just looking at a model's internals itself compared to a separate like guardrail, LLM as a judge, a separate model. One, you have to host it. Two, there's like a whole latency. So if you use like a big model, you have a second call. Some of the work around like self detection of hallucination, it's also deployed for efficiency, right? So if you have someone like Rakuten doing it in production live, you know, that's just another thing people should consider.Mark Bissell [00:21:12]: Yeah. And something like a probe is super lightweight. Yeah. It's no extra latency really. Excellent.Shawn Wang [00:21:17]: You have the steering demos lined up. So we were just kind of see what you got. I don't, I don't actually know if this is like the latest, latest or like alpha thing.Mark Bissell [00:21:26]: No, this is a pretty hacky demo from from a presentation that someone else on the team recently gave. So this will give a sense for, for technology. So you can see the steering and action. Honestly, I think the biggest thing that this highlights is that as we've been growing as a company and taking on kind of more and more ambitious versions of interpretability related problems, a lot of that comes to scaling up in various different forms. And so here you're going to see steering on a 1 trillion parameter model. This is Kimi K2. And so it's sort of fun that in addition to the research challenges, there are engineering challenges that we're now tackling. Cause for any of this to be sort of useful in production, you need to be thinking about what it looks like when you're using these methods on frontier models as opposed to sort of like toy kind of model organisms. So yeah, this was thrown together hastily, pretty fragile behind the scenes, but I think it's quite a fun demo. So screen sharing is on. So I've got two terminal sessions pulled up here. On the left is a forked version that we have of the Kimi CLI that we've got running to point at our custom hosted Kimi model. And then on the right is a set up that will allow us to steer on certain concepts. So I should be able to chat with Kimi over here. Tell it hello. This is running locally. So the CLI is running locally, but the Kimi server is running back to the office. Well, hopefully should be, um, that's too much to run on that Mac. Yeah. I think it's, uh, it takes a full, like each 100 node. I think it's like, you can. You can run it on eight GPUs, eight 100. So, so yeah, Kimi's running. We can ask it a prompt. It's got a forked version of our, uh, of the SG line code base that we've been working on. So I'm going to tell it, Hey, this SG line code base is slow. I think there's a bug. Can you try to figure it out? There's a big code base, so it'll, it'll spend some time doing this. And then on the right here, I'm going to initialize in real time. Some steering. Let's see here.Mark Bissell [00:23:33]: searching for any. Bugs. Feature ID 43205.Shawn Wang [00:23:38]: Yeah.Mark Bissell [00:23:38]: 20, 30, 40. So let me, uh, this is basically a feature that we found that inside Kimi seems to cause it to speak in Gen Z slang. And so on the left, it's still sort of thinking normally it might take, I don't know, 15 seconds for this to kick in, but then we're going to start hopefully seeing him do this code base is massive for real. So we're going to start. We're going to start seeing Kimi transition as the steering kicks in from normal Kimi to Gen Z Kimi and both in its chain of thought and its actual outputs.Mark Bissell [00:24:19]: And interestingly, you can see, you know, it's still able to call tools, uh, and stuff. It's um, it's purely sort of it's it's demeanor. And there are other features that we found for interesting things like concision. So that's more of a practical one. You can make it more concise. Um, the types of programs, uh, programming languages that uses, but yeah, as we're seeing it come in. Pretty good. Outputs.Shawn Wang [00:24:43]: Scheduler code is actually wild.Vibhu Sapra [00:24:46]: Yo, this code is actually insane, bro.Vibhu Sapra [00:24:53]: What's the process of training in SAE on this, or, you know, how do you label features? I know you guys put out a pretty cool blog post about, um, finding this like autonomous interp. Um, something. Something about how agents for interp is different than like coding agents. I don't know while this is spewing up, but how, how do we find feature 43, two Oh five. Yeah.Mark Bissell [00:25:15]: So in this case, um, we, our platform that we've been building out for a long time now supports all the sort of classic out of the box interp techniques that you might want to have like SAE training, probing things of that kind, I'd say the techniques for like vanilla SAEs are pretty well established now where. You take your model that you're interpreting, run a whole bunch of data through it, gather activations, and then yeah, pretty straightforward pipeline to train an SAE. There are a lot of different varieties. There's top KSAEs, batch top KSAEs, um, normal ReLU SAEs. And then once you have your sparse features to your point, assigning labels to them to actually understand that this is a gen Z feature, that's actually where a lot of the kind of magic happens. Yeah. And the most basic standard technique is look at all of your d input data set examples that cause this feature to fire most highly. And then you can usually pick out a pattern. So for this feature, If I've run a diverse enough data set through my model feature 43, two Oh five. Probably tends to fire on all the tokens that sounds like gen Z slang. You know, that's the, that's the time of year to be like, Oh, I'm in this, I'm in this Um, and, um, so, you know, you could have a human go through all 43,000 concepts andVibhu Sapra [00:26:34]: And I've got to ask the basic question, you know, can we get examples where it hallucinates, pass it through, see what feature activates for hallucinations? Can I just, you know, turn hallucination down?Myra Deng [00:26:51]: Oh, wow. You really predicted a project we're already working on right now, which is detecting hallucinations using interpretability techniques. And this is interesting because hallucinations is something that's very hard to detect. And it's like a kind of a hairy problem and something that black box methods really struggle with. Whereas like Gen Z, you could always train a simple classifier to detect that hallucinations is harder. But we've seen that models internally have some... Awareness of like uncertainty or some sort of like user pleasing behavior that leads to hallucinatory behavior. And so, yeah, we have a project that's trying to detect that accurately. And then also working on mitigating the hallucinatory behavior in the model itself as well.Shawn Wang [00:27:39]: Yeah, I would say most people are still at the level of like, oh, I would just turn temperature to zero and that turns off hallucination. And I'm like, well, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of how this works. Yeah.Mark Bissell [00:27:51]: Although, so part of what I like about that question is you, there are SAE based approaches that might like help you get at that. But oftentimes the beauty of SAEs and like we said, the curse is that they're unsupervised. So when you have a behavior that you deliberately would like to remove, and that's more of like a supervised task, often it is better to use something like probes and specifically target the thing that you're interested in reducing as opposed to sort of like hoping that when you fragment the latent space, one of the vectors that pops out.Vibhu Sapra [00:28:20]: And as much as we're training an autoencoder to be sparse, we're not like for sure certain that, you know, we will get something that just correlates to hallucination. You'll probably split that up into 20 other things and who knows what they'll be.Mark Bissell [00:28:36]: Of course. Right. Yeah. So there's no sort of problems with like feature splitting and feature absorption. And then there's the off target effects, right? Ideally, you would want to be very precise where if you reduce the hallucination feature, suddenly maybe your model can't write. Creatively anymore. And maybe you don't like that, but you want to still stop it from hallucinating facts and figures.Shawn Wang [00:28:55]: Good. So Vibhu has a paper to recommend there that we'll put in the show notes. But yeah, I mean, I guess just because your demo is done, any any other things that you want to highlight or any other interesting features you want to show?Mark Bissell [00:29:07]: I don't think so. Yeah. Like I said, this is a pretty small snippet. I think the main sort of point here that I think is exciting is that there's not a whole lot of inter being applied to models quite at this scale. You know, Anthropic certainly has some some. Research and yeah, other other teams as well. But it's it's nice to see these techniques, you know, being put into practice. I think not that long ago, the idea of real time steering of a trillion parameter model would have sounded.Shawn Wang [00:29:33]: Yeah. The fact that it's real time, like you started the thing and then you edited the steering vector.Vibhu Sapra [00:29:38]: I think it's it's an interesting one TBD of what the actual like production use case would be on that, like the real time editing. It's like that's the fun part of the demo, right? You can kind of see how this could be served behind an API, right? Like, yes, you're you only have so many knobs and you can just tweak it a bit more. And I don't know how it plays in. Like people haven't done that much with like, how does this work with or without prompting? Right. How does this work with fine tuning? Like, there's a whole hype of continual learning, right? So there's just so much to see. Like, is this another parameter? Like, is it like parameter? We just kind of leave it as a default. We don't use it. So I don't know. Maybe someone here wants to put out a guide on like how to use this with prompting when to do what?Mark Bissell [00:30:18]: Oh, well, I have a paper recommendation. I think you would love from Act Deep on our team, who is an amazing researcher, just can't say enough amazing things about Act Deep. But he actually has a paper that as well as some others from the team and elsewhere that go into the essentially equivalence of activation steering and in context learning and how those are from a he thinks of everything in a cognitive neuroscience Bayesian framework, but basically how you can precisely show how. Prompting in context, learning and steering exhibit similar behaviors and even like get quantitative about the like magnitude of steering you would need to do to induce a certain amount of behavior similar to certain prompting, even for things like jailbreaks and stuff. It's a really cool paper. Are you saying steering is less powerful than prompting? More like you can almost write a formula that tells you how to convert between the two of them.Myra Deng [00:31:20]: And so like formally equivalent actually in the in the limit. Right.Mark Bissell [00:31:24]: So like one case study of this is for jailbreaks there. I don't know. Have you seen the stuff where you can do like many shot jailbreaking? You like flood the context with examples of the behavior. And the topic put out that paper.Shawn Wang [00:31:38]: A lot of people were like, yeah, we've been doing this, guys.Mark Bissell [00:31:40]: Like, yeah, what's in this in context learning and activation steering equivalence paper is you can like predict the number. Number of examples that you will need to put in there in order to jailbreak the model. That's cool. By doing steering experiments and using this sort of like equivalence mapping. That's cool. That's really cool. It's very neat. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:32:02]: I was going to say, like, you know, I can like back rationalize that this makes sense because, you know, what context is, is basically just, you know, it updates the KV cache kind of and like and then every next token inference is still like, you know, the sheer sum of everything all the way. It's plus all the context. It's up to date. And you could, I guess, theoretically steer that with you probably replace that with your steering. The only problem is steering typically is on one layer, maybe three layers like like you did. So it's like not exactly equivalent.Mark Bissell [00:32:33]: Right, right. There's sort of you need to get precise about, yeah, like how you sort of define steering and like what how you're modeling the setup. But yeah, I've got the paper pulled up here. Belief dynamics reveal the dual nature. Yeah. The title is Belief Dynamics Reveal the Dual Nature of Incompetence. And it's an exhibition of the practical context learning and activation steering. So Eric Bigelow, Dan Urgraft on the who are doing fellowships at Goodfire, Ekt Deep's the final author there.Myra Deng [00:32:59]: I think actually to your question of like, what is the production use case of steering? I think maybe if you just think like one level beyond steering as it is today. Like imagine if you could adapt your model to be, you know, an expert legal reasoner. Like in almost real time, like very quickly. efficiently using human feedback or using like your semantic understanding of what the model knows and where it knows that behavior. I think that while it's not clear what the product is at the end of the day, it's clearly very valuable. Thinking about like what's the next interface for model customization and adaptation is a really interesting problem for us. Like we have heard a lot of people actually interested in fine-tuning an RL for open weight models in production. And so people are using things like Tinker or kind of like open source libraries to do that, but it's still very difficult to get models fine-tuned and RL'd for exactly what you want them to do unless you're an expert at model training. And so that's like something we'reShawn Wang [00:34:06]: looking into. Yeah. I never thought so. Tinker from Thinking Machines famously uses rank one LoRa. Is that basically the same as steering? Like, you know, what's the comparison there?Mark Bissell [00:34:19]: Well, so in that case, you are still applying updates to the parameters, right?Shawn Wang [00:34:25]: Yeah. You're not touching a base model. You're touching an adapter. It's kind of, yeah.Mark Bissell [00:34:30]: Right. But I guess it still is like more in parameter space then. I guess it's maybe like, are you modifying the pipes or are you modifying the water flowing through the pipes to get what you're after? Yeah. Just maybe one way.Mark Bissell [00:34:44]: I like that analogy. That's my mental map of it at least, but it gets at this idea of model design and intentional design, which is something that we're, that we're very focused on. And just the fact that like, I hope that we look back at how we're currently training models and post-training models and just think what a primitive way of doing that right now. Like there's no intentionalityShawn Wang [00:35:06]: really in... It's just data, right? The only thing in control is what data we feed in.Mark Bissell [00:35:11]: So, so Dan from Goodfire likes to use this analogy of, you know, he has a couple of young kids and he talks about like, what if I could only teach my kids how to be good people by giving them cookies or like, you know, giving them a slap on the wrist if they do something wrong, like not telling them why it was wrong or like what they should have done differently or something like that. Just figure it out. Right. Exactly. So that's RL. Yeah. Right. And, and, you know, it's sample inefficient. There's, you know, what do they say? It's like slurping feedback. It's like, slurping supervision. Right. And so you'd like to get to the point where you can have experts giving feedback to their models that are, uh, internalized and, and, you know, steering is an inference time way of sort of getting that idea. But ideally you're moving to a world whereVibhu Sapra [00:36:04]: it is much more intentional design in perpetuity for these models. Okay. This is one of the questions we asked Emmanuel from Anthropic on the podcast a few months ago. Basically the question, was you're at a research lab that does model training, foundation models, and you're on an interp team. How does it tie back? Right? Like, does this, do ideas come from the pre-training team? Do they go back? Um, you know, so for those interested, you can, you can watch that. There wasn't too much of a connect there, but it's still something, you know, it's something they want toMark Bissell [00:36:33]: push for down the line. It can be useful for all of the above. Like there are certainly post-hocVibhu Sapra [00:36:39]: use cases where it doesn't need to touch that. I think the other thing a lot of people forget is this stuff isn't too computationally expensive, right? Like I would say, if you're interested in getting into research, MechInterp is one of the most approachable fields, right? A lot of this train an essay, train a probe, this stuff, like the budget for this one, there's already a lot done. There's a lot of open source work. You guys have done some too. Um, you know,Shawn Wang [00:37:04]: There's like notebooks from the Gemini team for Neil Nanda or like, this is how you do it. Just step through the notebook.Vibhu Sapra [00:37:09]: Even if you're like, not even technical with any of this, you can still make like progress. There, you can look at different activations, but, uh, if you do want to get into training, you know, training this stuff, correct me if I'm wrong is like in the thousands of dollars, not even like, it's not that high scale. And then same with like, you know, applying it, doing it for post-training or all this stuff is fairly cheap in scale of, okay. I want to get into like model training. I don't have compute for like, you know, pre-training stuff. So it's, it's a very nice field to get into. And also there's a lot of like open questions, right? Um, some of them have to go with, okay, I want a product. I want to solve this. Like there's also just a lot of open-ended stuff that people could work on. That's interesting. Right. I don't know if you guys have any calls for like, what's open questions, what's open work that you either open collaboration with, or like, you'd just like to see solved or just, you know, for people listening that want to get into McInturk because people always talk about it. What are, what are the things they should check out? Start, of course, you know, join you guys as well. I'm sure you're hiring.Myra Deng [00:38:09]: There's a paper, I think from, was it Lee, uh, Sharky? It's open problems and, uh, it's, it's a bit of interpretability, which I recommend everyone who's interested in the field. Read. I'm just like a really comprehensive overview of what are the things that experts in the field think are the most important problems to be solved. I also think to your point, it's been really, really inspiring to see, I think a lot of young people getting interested in interpretability, actually not just young people also like scientists to have been, you know, experts in physics for many years and in biology or things like this, um, transitioning into interp, because the barrier of, of what's now interp. So it's really cool to see a number to entry is, you know, in some ways low and there's a lot of information out there and ways to get started. There's this anecdote of like professors at universities saying that all of a sudden every incoming PhD student wants to study interpretability, which was not the case a few years ago. So it just goes to show how, I guess, like exciting the field is, how fast it's moving, how quick it is to get started and things like that.Mark Bissell [00:39:10]: And also just a very welcoming community. You know, there's an open source McInturk Slack channel. There are people are always posting questions and just folks in the space are always responsive if you ask things on various forums and stuff. But yeah, the open paper, open problems paper is a really good one.Myra Deng [00:39:28]: For other people who want to get started, I think, you know, MATS is a great program. What's the acronym for? Machine Learning and Alignment Theory Scholars? It's like the...Vibhu Sapra [00:39:40]: Normally summer internship style.Myra Deng [00:39:42]: Yeah, but they've been doing it year round now. And actually a lot of our full-time staff have come through that program or gone through that program. And it's great for anyone who is transitioning into interpretability. There's a couple other fellows programs. We do one as well as Anthropic. And so those are great places to get started if anyone is interested.Mark Bissell [00:40:03]: Also, I think been seen as a research field for a very long time. But I think engineering... I think engineers are sorely wanted for interpretability as well, especially at Goodfire, but elsewhere, as it does scale up.Shawn Wang [00:40:18]: I should mention that Lee actually works with you guys, right? And in the London office and I'm adding our first ever McInturk track at AI Europe because I see this industry applications now emerging. And I'm pretty excited to, you know, help push that along. Yeah, I was looking forward to that. It'll effectively be the first industry McInturk conference. Yeah. I'm so glad you added that. You know, it's still a little bit of a bet. It's not that widespread, but I can definitely see this is the time to really get into it. We want to be early on things.Mark Bissell [00:40:51]: For sure. And I think the field understands this, right? So at ICML, I think the title of the McInturk workshop this year was actionable interpretability. And there was a lot of discussion around bringing it to various domains. Everyone's adding pragmatic, actionable, whatever.Shawn Wang [00:41:10]: It's like, okay, well, we weren't actionable before, I guess. I don't know.Vibhu Sapra [00:41:13]: And I mean, like, just, you know, being in Europe, you see the Interp room. One, like old school conferences, like, I think they had a very tiny room till they got lucky and they got it doubled. But there's definitely a lot of interest, a lot of niche research. So you see a lot of research coming out of universities, students. We covered the paper last week. It's like two unknown authors, not many citations. But, you know, you can make a lot of meaningful work there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:41:39]: Yeah. I think people haven't really mentioned this yet. It's just Interp for code. I think it's like an abnormally important field. We haven't mentioned this yet. The conspiracy theory last two years ago was when the first SAE work came out of Anthropic was they would do like, oh, we just used SAEs to turn the bad code vector down and then turn up the good code. And I think like, isn't that the dream? Like, you know, like, but basically, I guess maybe, why is it funny? Like, it's... If it was realistic, it would not be funny. It would be like, no, actually, we should do this. But it's funny because we know there's like, we feel there's some limitations to what steering can do. And I think a lot of the public image of steering is like the Gen Z stuff. Like, oh, you can make it really love the Golden Gate Bridge, or you can make it speak like Gen Z. To like be a legal reasoner seems like a huge stretch. Yeah. And I don't know if that will get there this way. Yeah.Myra Deng [00:42:36]: I think, um, I will say we are announcing. Something very soon that I will not speak too much about. Um, but I think, yeah, this is like what we've run into again and again is like, we, we don't want to be in the world where steering is only useful for like stylistic things. That's definitely not, not what we're aiming for. But I think the types of interventions that you need to do to get to things like legal reasoning, um, are much more sophisticated and require breakthroughs in, in learning algorithms. And that's, um...Shawn Wang [00:43:07]: And is this an emergent property of scale as well?Myra Deng [00:43:10]: I think so. Yeah. I mean, I think scale definitely helps. I think scale allows you to learn a lot of information and, and reduce noise across, you know, large amounts of data. But I also think we think that there's ways to do things much more effectively, um, even, even at scale. So like actually learning exactly what you want from the data and not learning things that you do that you don't want exhibited in the data. So we're not like anti-scale, but we are also realizing that scale is not going to get us anywhere. It's not going to get us to the type of AI development that we want to be at in, in the future as these models get more powerful and get deployed in all these sorts of like mission critical contexts. Current life cycle of training and deploying and evaluations is, is to us like deeply broken and has opportunities to, to improve. So, um, more to come on that very, very soon.Mark Bissell [00:44:02]: And I think that that's a use basically, or maybe just like a proof point that these concepts do exist. Like if you can manipulate them in the precise best way, you can get the ideal combination of them that you desire. And steering is maybe the most coarse grained sort of peek at what that looks like. But I think it's evocative of what you could do if you had total surgical control over every concept, every parameter. Yeah, exactly.Myra Deng [00:44:30]: There were like bad code features. I've got it pulled up.Vibhu Sapra [00:44:33]: Yeah. Just coincidentally, as you guys are talking.Shawn Wang [00:44:35]: This is like, this is exactly.Vibhu Sapra [00:44:38]: There's like specifically a code error feature that activates and they show, you know, it's not, it's not typo detection. It's like, it's, it's typos in code. It's not typical typos. And, you know, you can, you can see it clearly activates where there's something wrong in code. And they have like malicious code, code error. They have a whole bunch of sub, you know, sub broken down little grain features. Yeah.Shawn Wang [00:45:02]: Yeah. So, so the, the rough intuition for me, the, why I talked about post-training was that, well, you just, you know, have a few different rollouts with all these things turned off and on and whatever. And then, you know, you can, that's, that's synthetic data you can kind of post-train on. Yeah.Vibhu Sapra [00:45:13]: And I think we make it sound easier than it is just saying, you know, they do the real hard work.Myra Deng [00:45:19]: I mean, you guys, you guys have the right idea. Exactly. Yeah. We replicated a lot of these features in, in our Lama models as well. I remember there was like.Vibhu Sapra [00:45:26]: And I think a lot of this stuff is open, right? Like, yeah, you guys opened yours. DeepMind has opened a lot of essays on Gemma. Even Anthropic has opened a lot of this. There's, there's a lot of resources that, you know, we can probably share of people that want to get involved.Shawn Wang [00:45:41]: Yeah. And special shout out to like Neuronpedia as well. Yes. Like, yeah, amazing piece of work to visualize those things.Myra Deng [00:45:49]: Yeah, exactly.Shawn Wang [00:45:50]: I guess I wanted to pivot a little bit on, onto the healthcare side, because I think that's a big use case for you guys. We haven't really talked about it yet. This is a bit of a crossover for me because we are, we are, we do have a separate science pod that we're starting up for AI, for AI for science, just because like, it's such a huge investment category and also I'm like less qualified to do it, but we actually have bio PhDs to cover that, which is great, but I need to just kind of recover, recap your work, maybe on the evil two stuff, but then, and then building forward.Mark Bissell [00:46:17]: Yeah, for sure. And maybe to frame up the conversation, I think another kind of interesting just lens on interpretability in general is a lot of the techniques that were described. are ways to solve the AI human interface problem. And it's sort of like bidirectional communication is the goal there. So what we've been talking about with intentional design of models and, you know, steering, but also more advanced techniques is having humans impart our desires and control into models and over models. And the reverse is also very interesting, especially as you get to superhuman models, whether that's narrow superintelligence, like these scientific models that work on genomics, data, medical imaging, things like that. But down the line, you know, superintelligence of other forms as well. What knowledge can the AIs teach us as sort of that, that the other direction in that? And so some of our life science work to date has been getting at exactly that question, which is, well, some of it does look like debugging these various life sciences models, understanding if they're actually performing well, on tasks, or if they're picking up on spurious correlations, for instance, genomics models, you would like to know whether they are sort of focusing on the biologically relevant things that you care about, or if it's using some simpler correlate, like the ancestry of the person that it's looking at. But then also in the instances where they are superhuman, and maybe they are understanding elements of the human genome that we don't have names for or specific, you know, yeah, discoveries that they've made that that we don't know about, that's, that's a big goal. And so we're already seeing that, right, we are partnered with organizations like Mayo Clinic, leading research health system in the United States, our Institute, as well as a startup called Prima Menta, which focuses on neurodegenerative disease. And in our partnership with them, we've used foundation models, they've been training and applied our interpretability techniques to find novel biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease. So I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. But it's, that's like a flavor of some of the things that we're working on.Shawn Wang [00:48:36]: Yeah, I think that's really fantastic. Obviously, we did the Chad Zuckerberg pod last year as well. And like, there's a plethora of these models coming out, because there's so much potential and research. And it's like, very interesting how it's basically the same as language models, but just with a different underlying data set. But it's like, it's the same exact techniques. Like, there's no change, basically.Mark Bissell [00:48:59]: Yeah. Well, and even in like other domains, right? Like, you know, robotics, I know, like a lot of the companies just use Gemma as like the like backbone, and then they like make it into a VLA that like takes these actions. It's, it's, it's transformers all the way down. So yeah.Vibhu Sapra [00:49:15]: Like we have Med Gemma now, right? Like this week, even there was Med Gemma 1.5. And they're training it on this stuff, like 3d scans, medical domain knowledge, and all that stuff, too. So there's a push from both sides. But I think the thing that, you know, one of the things about McInturpp is like, you're a little bit more cautious in some domains, right? So healthcare, mainly being one, like guardrails, understanding, you know, we're more risk adverse to something going wrong there. So even just from a basic understanding, like, if we're trusting these systems to make claims, we want to know why and what's going on.Myra Deng [00:49:51]: Yeah, I think there's totally a kind of like deployment bottleneck to actually using. foundation models for real patient usage or things like that. Like, say you're using a model for rare disease prediction, you probably want some explanation as to why your model predicted a certain outcome, and an interpretable explanation at that. So that's definitely a use case. But I also think like, being able to extract scientific information that no human knows to accelerate drug discovery and disease treatment and things like that actually is a really, really big unlock for science, like scientific discovery. And you've seen a lot of startups, like say that they're going to accelerate scientific discovery. And I feel like we actually are doing that through our interp techniques. And kind of like, almost by accident, like, I think we got reached out to very, very early on from these healthcare institutions. And none of us had healthcare.Shawn Wang [00:50:49]: How did they even hear of you? A podcast.Myra Deng [00:50:51]: Oh, okay. Yeah, podcast.Vibhu Sapra [00:50:53]: Okay, well, now's that time, you know.Myra Deng [00:50:55]: Everyone can call us.Shawn Wang [00:50:56]: Podcasts are the most important thing. Everyone should listen to podcasts.Myra Deng [00:50:59]: Yeah, they reached out. They were like, you know, we have these really smart models that we've trained, and we want to know what they're doing. And we were like, really early that time, like three months old, and it was a few of us. And we were like, oh, my God, we've never used these models. Let's figure it out. But it's also like, great proof that interp techniques scale pretty well across domains. We didn't really have to learn too much about.Shawn Wang [00:51:21]: Interp is a machine learning technique, machine learning skills everywhere, right? Yeah. And it's obviously, it's just like a general insight. Yeah. Probably to finance too, I think, which would be fun for our history. I don't know if you have anything to say there.Mark Bissell [00:51:34]: Yeah, well, just across the science. Like, we've also done work on material science. Yeah, it really runs the gamut.Vibhu Sapra [00:51:40]: Yeah. Awesome. And, you know, for those that should reach out, like, you're obviously experts in this, but like, is there a call out for people that you're looking to partner with, design partners, people to use your stuff outside of just, you know, the general developer that wants to. Plug and play steering stuff, like on the research side more so, like, are there ideal design partners, customers, stuff like that?Myra Deng [00:52:03]: Yeah, I can talk about maybe non-life sciences, and then I'm curious to hear from you on the life sciences side. But we're looking for design partners across many domains, language, anyone who's customizing language models or trying to push the frontier of code or reasoning models is really interesting to us. And then also interested in the frontier of modeling. There's a lot of models that work in, like, pixel space, as we call it. So if you're doing world models, video models, even robotics, where there's not a very clean natural language interface to interact with, I think we think that Interp can really help and are looking for a few partners in that space.Shawn Wang [00:52:43]: Just because you mentioned the keyword

In this episode, host Gerald J. Leonard pulls back the curtain on his personal journey into the world of Artificial Intelligence and accelerated learning. What began as a physical constraint, losing the ability to walk before a TEDx talk, became a catalyst for discovering the neuroscience of learning and the superpower of accelerated adaptation. Gerald shares how he applied principles of music, meditation, and transformational learning techniques to not only recover but to thrive, eventually tackling four simultaneous Ivy League courses in AI. From this intense period of study and experimentation, the Jet Prompt Optimizer was born, a custom tool designed to solve the universal problem of communicating effectively with Large Language Models (LLMs). This conversation is a deep dive into how curiosity and systematic learning can lead to innovation. Gerald explores the direct link between mastering new skills, building intelligent systems, and reclaiming personal time and freedom. He reveals how the right tools can transform chaos into calm, automate heavy lifting, and allow us to focus on what makes us uniquely human, creativity and connection.   What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction [02:04] Gerald's superpower & personal story [02:27] Discovery of accelerated learning techniques [03:16] Inspiration for Jet Prompt Optimizer [05:12] Development journey of Jet Prompt Optimizer [06:31] Patents and unique approach [07:24] Benefits for clients and personal life [08:42] Course and community plans [09:53] How to connect with the guest [10:47] Podcast closing & call to action   Notable Quotes [02:16] "I lost the ability to walk six weeks before my TEDx talk, and I was able to recover because I'm a musician as well." – Gerald J. Leonard [04:06] "AI is not broken. We just don't know how to communicate with it clearly." – Gerald J. Leonard [06:05] "I built Six Sigma and evaluation frameworks into the prompts so AI gives you what you actually want." – Gerald J. Leonard [08:23] "The systems are doing the heavy lifting and we can be humans and connect on an emotional level." – Gerald J. Leonard   Resources and Links Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

How can a 22 day silent retreat at a Buddhist monastery transform trauma, mindset, and daily productivity? In this episode of Productivity Smarts, Gerald J. Leonard sits down with  Laurie S. Jacobson, certified health coach, motivational speaker, and author of Unexpected Awakening: 22 Days at a Buddhist Monastery Freed Me from Abuse, for a powerful conversation on transformation, resilience, and holistic productivity.  Laurie shares her raw and inspiring journey of leaving an emotionally abusive marriage at age 43 and finding unexpected refuge in a silent meditation retreat at a Buddhist monastery. What began as a one week stay stretched into 22 days due to a snowstorm and ultimately changed the course of her life. Through silence, mindfulness, Buddhist teachings, and compassionate human connection,  Laurie experienced profound shifts in awareness, self trust, and purpose. Together, Gerald and  Laurie explore how silence sharpens listening and emotional intelligence, why productivity breaks down when mental and emotional blocks go unaddressed, and how small baby steps can dissolve feelings of being stuck. They discuss habit stacking, trusting the process like a GPS rerouting, and why integrating mind, body, and spirit leads to sustainable productivity beyond rigid to-do lists and short term motivation. The conversation also dives into how meditation helps surface repressed emotions, how consistency outperforms inspiration, and why a strong why is essential for long term health, creativity, and meaningful change.  Laurie explains how habits naturally piggyback across physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions, creating momentum while preventing burnout and overwhelm. If you are interested in turning adversity into growth, building mindful habits, or redefining productivity through holistic well being, this is a must listen.   What We Discuss [00:00] Podcast introduction [02:01] Introduction to   Laurie S. Jacobson [02:33] Favorite music and personal background [04:07] Journey to becoming a health coach [05:39] Transformation at the Buddhist monastery [06:11] The power of silence and listening [08:40] Overcoming mental and emotional obstacles [10:38] Dealing with feeling stuck [12:55] The GPS analogy for getting unstuck [15:32] Integrating physical, mental, and spiritual growth [18:44] Building consistency and support systems [19:42] Maintaining follow through and creating habits [23:24] The importance of knowing your why [23:53] Host's personal story and motivation [26:36] How to connect with  Laurie S. Jacobson [27:33] Podcast closing and call for reviews   Notable Quotes [06:35] "Silence is so powerful. And I think what it does is it makes you a better listener." – Laurie Jacobson [07:19] "When one of your senses is lost, the other senses get magnified." – Laurie Jacobson [07:46] "When you focus on listening, you are able to pick up on the intent of what people are saying and the emotions." – Laurie Jacobson [11:36] "I'm a big believer in baby steps. Slow and steady wins the race." – Laurie Jacobson [12:27] "The hardest thing is starting." – Laurie Jacobson [14:50] "You have to have faith and trust that once you start moving forward that you'll find the satellite." – Laurie Jacobson [25:41] "Spend a lot of time focusing on the why." – Gerald J. Leonard [25:58] "The bigger your why, the more powerful it's going to pull you." – Laurie S. Jacobson   Resources and Links Laurie Jacobson Website: https://lauriesjacobson.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurie-s-jacobson-b6271b13/ Book – Unexpected Awakening: 22 Days at a Buddhist Monastery Freed Me from Abuse Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Mentioned in the episode: Atomic Habits by James Clear   Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

Did you know quick, courageous decisions can unlock clarity, confidence, and real progress in life and in work, especially when you approach them in creative, improv-inspired ways? In this episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard reconnects with longtime friend and former coach Gina Trimarco Klauder, a leadership strategist, international bestselling author, improv comedian, and founder of Carolina Improv Company. Together, they explore how improv-inspired decision-making helps leaders and professionals break free from analysis paralysis and adapt in times of uncertainty. The conversation centers on Gina's latest book, The New Choice Effect: How to Make the Right Decisions Quickly Without Overthinking, which blends improv principles, neuroscience, behavioral psychology, and real-life vulnerability to show how "improvised intelligence" leads to clearer, more confident decisions. Drawing from decades of experience in leadership development, entrepreneurship, and improvisational theater, Gina explains why waiting for the "perfect" choice often keeps people stuck, and how making any thoughtful choice creates clarity and progress. Gerald and Gina dive into the power of intuition, the impact of environment on creativity and healing, and why creativity is often trained out of us over time. They also unpack practical tools like "Yes, and" thinking and the "New Choice" game for disrupting stuck mental patterns and building adaptive decision habits. This episode is a must-listen for anyone feeling overwhelmed by decisions, navigating AI disruption or economic uncertainty, or leading through change. Productivity is not about perfect plans. It is about choosing, learning, and choosing again with confidence. What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Gina Trimarco Klauder [06:49] Motivation behind the book [08:18] Improv, neuroscience, and emotional intelligence [12:45] Book structure and story hooks [13:40] Using improv to navigate professional uncertainty [14:49] The "follow your feet" principle [15:52] Yes, and validating self and others [16:48] Origin of The New Choice Effect [17:52] Intuition, facts, and the science of improv [18:59] Improv and stroke recovery [19:32] Gerald's health journey and environment [22:00] Team adaptation for inclusivity [23:34] Supportive environments and healing [24:55] Self-advocacy and team learning [26:11] The cyclical nature of growth [26:40] Building adaptive decision habits [27:37] Experimentation in leadership and life [29:47] Improv training exercise: Problem solved [30:16] Science of improv and creativity decline [34:15] Cross-industry creativity examples [35:14] Einstein, music, and creativity [35:30] Practical takeaway: Index card exercise [36:16] Improv, learning, and innovation [37:25] Know a little about a lot [38:25] AI validation and unique thought leadership [40:18] The new choice effect as a skill [41:15] Overcoming analysis paralysis [42:40] GPS analogy and moving forward [43:45] Closing remarks  Notable Quotes [07:32]  "The problem with improv is,  sometimes I feel like people don't take it seriously as  an emotional intelligence skill."– Gina Trimarco Klauder [14:42] "When you spend so much time in the 'what if,' you can't live in the now." – Gina Trimarco Klauder [15:37] "If you move, something will happen." – Gina Trimarco Klauder [17:29]  "You have to keep changing what you say until you don't hear new choice anymore."– Gina Trimarco Klauder [20:52] "Our mental, physical, social, and emotional environment can turn genes on or off." – Gerald J. Leonard [30:28] "You have to disrupt the brain and try something different that you've never tried." – Gina Trimarco Klauder [42:16] "Every decision is a right decision because it leads you to the next one." – Gina DiMarco [43:00] "Sometimes the universe doesn't move for us until we move." – Gina Trimarco Klauder Resources Gina Trimarco Klauder Website: https://ginatrimarco.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginatrimarco/ Book – The New Choice Effect: How to Make the Right Decisions Quickly Without Overthinking Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

How can understanding neuroscience transform your decision-making and productivity? In this episode of Productivity Smarts, Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Cherian Koshy, author of Neuro Giving: The Science of Donor Decision Making, for a thought-provoking conversation that explores how neuroscience, decision science, and generosity shape productivity, leadership, and burnout prevention. Cherian shares how decades of work in nonprofit leadership led him to uncover the hidden neurological drivers behind trust, motivation, and decision-making. Together, Gerald and Cherian unpack why humans are not rational beings but rationalizing ones, and how understanding the brain's shortcuts can immediately improve focus, energy management, and meaningful work. The conversation dives into reframing productivity, aligning work with purpose, avoiding burnout through intentional structure, and designing environments where creativity and collaboration thrive. Cherian explains how urgency and constant stress drain the brain, why rest and downtime are essential for creativity, and how leaders can build trust-based cultures that unlock collective intelligence. This episode is a powerful reminder that productivity isn't about doing more. It's about working in harmony with how the brain actually functions.  If you're interested in learning more about how to influence and persuade or work with people based on how their brains work and not against it, this episode is a must listen. What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Cherian Koshy [04:32] Origins of Neurogiving and its research-driven approach [05:17] Book success as a USA Today bestseller [06:55] Emotions in decision-making and rationalizing afterward [08:42] Applying neurogiving concepts to employee time and commitment [10:17] How decision science improves productivity [10:33] The brain as a low-battery phone: heuristics and energy management [12:14] Heuristics and reframing habits [14:43] Reframing identity and limiting beliefs [15:48] Avoiding burnout through meaning and relief valves [19:26] Prioritizing needle-moving tasks with a "vacation tomorrow" hack [21:44] Neuroscience of creativity: space, rest, and eliminating distractions [26:40] Designing trust-based work environments for focus and collaboration [31:11] Donor identity, trust, and parallels to employee engagement [33:54] Tools for building team trust and ownership [36:41] Value of handwriting and planners for offloading the brain [37:20] One key idea: Mindfulness of subconscious shortcuts [39:00] Closing remarks   Notable Quotes [07:19] "We're not rational beings, we're rationalizing beings." – Cherian Koshy [10:38] "The brain is like a cell phone that's always working under 1% battery life." – Cherian Koshy [13:10] "Reframing the things that we don't want to do as key concepts." – Cherian Koshy (referencing Owen Fitzpatrick) [18:53] "Burnout requires your brain to be able to see the place where it has urgency sees hope or a relief valve." – Cherian Koshy [22:53] "Our brains actually need rest and downtime in order to create." – Cherian Koshy [27:34] "Create an environment where they create curiosity amongst team members." – Cherian Koshy [37:29] "We're less in control of how our brains work than we think we are." – Cherian Koshy Resources Cherian Koshy Website: https://www.cheriankoshy.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheriankoshy/ Book – Neuro Giving: The Science of Donor Decision Making Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Mentioned in the episode: Daniel Kahneman (System 1 & System 2 thinking) Atomic Habits by James Clear Owen Fitzpatrick (Behavioral Scientist) Exactly What to Say by Phil Jones Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

neuroscientist, former CMO, and author of Make Me Great, for an engaging conversation that redefines productivity from the inside out. Thomas shares his unconventional journey from artificial intelligence and neuroscience into marketing, leadership, and ethical persuasion, revealing how his early work in neuromarketing delivered results but ultimately felt incomplete without a human-centered approach. At the heart of the conversation is one powerful insight: when someone is making a decision, their brain is silently asking, "Make me great." Thomas explains how primal, subconscious forces drive our choices long before logic kicks in, and why people rationalize decisions only after they've already been made. He breaks down concepts like silent listening, subconscious frustration, and why talking about features, products, or credentials too early actually pushes people away. You'll also hear memorable real-world examples showing how simply paying attention, asking better questions, and listening without interruption can instantly change outcomes in business and in everyday life. The discussion expands into purpose, personal "why," and how building tribes around shared values accelerates productivity while reducing wasted effort. This episode is a powerful reminder that productivity isn't just about systems and structure. It's about empathy, intention, and making others feel seen, heard, and valued. What We Discuss   [00:00]  Introduction to Dr. Thomas Trautmann   [06:32]  Discovery of neuromarketing and business growth   [10:23]  The power of positioning and system 1 thinking   [14:19]  Silent listening and active engagement   [16:13]  Habits for unforgettable work and the 11-second rule   [17:06]  Understanding the primal brain and decision-making   [21:10]  The importance of "why" in productivity   [23:16]  Personal story: the power of revisiting your why   [24:40]  Client success story using "Make Me Great"   [26:18]  The gift of listening and neurochemistry   [29:07]  Team alignment, purpose, and the tribe concept   [31:43]  Actionable productivity tool: the "you" language   [32:58]  Where to learn more about Dr. Trautmann   [33:45]  Podcast closing and call for reviews    Notable Quotes   [09:14] "I noticed that neuromarketing was lacking humanity. Even though we are targeting the brain, we are lacking humanity." – Thomas Trautmann   [09:52] "When you want a decision from someone, that person's brain is shouting at you, 'Make me great.'" – Thomas Trautmann   [14:44] "Active listening is okay, but silent listening is silence. Listen. Write down. Ask questions to clarify. But get that thing up there in your head to shut up." – Thomas Trautmann   [17:11] "We make primal decisions that we rationalize afterwards." – Thomas Trautmann   [32:22] "If you look at my LinkedIn profile, it's all about you, you, you. Try to use the 'you' language. It's a super powerful tool." – Thomas Trautmann   [27:43] " When I smile, when I do the, you know, the nice smile with the little les here, which is called the Duchenne smile, by the way, I get a shoot of endorphin in my brain." – Thomas Trautmann   [32:17] "When you start something with someone, use the new language. Try to use 'you, you, you.' It's a super powerful tool. It's the first step to get them to say, 'He cares about me"– Thomas Trautmann   Resources   Dr. Thomas Trautmann Website: make-me-great.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/thomastrautmann Book – Make Me Great   Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com   Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

Have you heard the saying before: find what you love, get so good at it that no one can ignore you, and you will never truly work a day in your life? But what if that same passion could also fuel your productivity, your purpose, and your impact on the world? In this episode of the Productivity Smarts Podcast, Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Suzanne Smith, founder and CEO of Social Impact Architects, educator, speaker, and changemaker, for a conversation that blends purpose, productivity, and real-life resilience. Suzanne shares how finding your calling can turn work into something that feels effortless, and why helping others might be one of the most powerful productivity boosts available. They unpack her simple but powerful 4T Framework: Time, Talent, Treasure, and Testimony, showing how generosity doesn't drain your energy, it actually multiplies it. You'll hear how gratitude can literally rewire your brain, why "doom scrolling" is quietly exhausting your focus, and how shifting toward "hope scrolling" can change your emotional and mental state. Suzanne also shares smart strategies for energy management, creating healthy technology boundaries, and building a sustainable rhythm that protects against burnout. From building calm out of chaos to learning how to reset after tough days, this conversation is packed with wisdom you can use right away. If you have ever felt pulled between doing meaningful work and staying personally fulfilled, this episode will remind you that the two can absolutely fuel each other.  What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Suzanne Smith [06:01] Finding your calling and early influences [08:53] Purpose as the engine of performance [09:22] The helper's high and scientific research [10:43] 4T Framework: Time [12:42] 4T Framework: Talent [13:17] 4T Framework: Treasure [14:13] 4T Framework: Testimony [16:23] Gratitude and brain science [18:41] Hope scrolling vs doom scrolling [21:47] Technology diet and energy management [26:05] Diet, health, and productivity [32:41] The value of feedback and mentorship [42:30] The third place and community [45:46] Closing and where to find Suzanne   Notable Quotes [06:04] "I am a big believer in finding your calling, and I was lucky to find mine at a very early age."– Suzanne Smith [07:05] "I jokingly say to my students, I've never worked a day in my life because this is not a job. This is a calling." – Suzanne Smith [11:01] "'Every Friday, I look back on my week and choose five people who were bright spots in my life, and I send them a note of gratitude."– Suzanne Smith [10:12] "As they do the brain scans of individuals, when they're actually helping other people, yes, you're helping the other person, but you're also helping yourself." — Suzanne Smith [18:56] "My 2026 New Year's resolution... is to really reverse this tide of doom scrolling and actually shift it to hope scrolling." — Suzanne Smith [23:48] "I think you're so spot on about getting people more conscious of their technology, but also conscious of all their influences. And it's the people, it's the systems around you, it's your environment." — Suzanne Smith [29:19] "We're not competing with other people. We're actually competing with the person we were yesterday. And our only job was just be a better person than we were yesterday." — Suzanne Smith [36:12] "To me, it's harder stumbling through life and continuing to stub your toe on the exact same thing versus someone just saying, here's your blind spot." — Suzanne Smith [40:47] "Thomas Edison, Einstein, they did not figure out their inventions at the workbench or at the computer. It really is when they went out in nature or they were taking a creative break.." — Suzanne Smith [43:27] "I want everybody to feel empowered to make change in their community and not wait for somebody else to be the leader in this space." — Suzanne Smith Resources Suzanne Smith Website – meetsuzanne.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzannesmithtx/ Newsletter – Social Trend Spotter  TEDx – Everyone is a Change Maker Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

In this episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard interviews David Suk Brown, co-author of 'Identical Opposites: Find Your Voice and Speak.' They discuss practical strategies for boosting workplace productivity, overcoming the fear of speaking up, and leveraging the power of authenticity and alliances. David shares insights from his research and professional experience, emphasizing the importance of consistent communication and understanding behavioral models to enhance team dynamics. They also explore the impacts of AI on the workforce and how to maintain relevance amid rapid technological advancements.    Tune in as they discuss the challenges and opportunities in today's workplace, the significance of the speak framework, and how these concepts can transform not just productivity but also happiness and fulfillment in your life.   What We Discuss [00:00] Introducing David Suk Brown and His New Book [06:16] Finding Your Voice in the Workplace [14:53] The SPEAK Framework for Effective Communication [20:37] The Human Element vs. AI [21:13] Leveraging Networks and Skills [24:09] The Importance of Authenticity and Empathy [25:23] Navigating Vulnerability and Consistency [32:25] Adapting Voice and Culture Strategies [36:27] Connecting with the SPEAK Framework Authors [37:55] Podcast Conclusion and Call to Action Notable Quotes  [7:00] "Sometimes people can get lost in their position or lost in their responsibilities and not find their individual gifts and talents, and it just made sense for us to make that connection." - David Brown, Sr. [7:46] "95% of employees struggle just to be able to speak and share their voice and opinions." - David Brown, Sr. [9:57] "Get people to understand that there are values that could come from every member of the team, but you let them shine. You let them speak first. You let them flush out their ideas and thoughts, and then you act in a position where you're curious and you're asking more questions, 'cause you want them to bring everything out that they're thinking." - David Brown, Sr. [20:38] "AI, even as much as we're seeing technology advance and progress, it cannot replace certain aspects of the human element." - David Brown, Sr. [24:11] " It's not just about how many degrees you have, your depth of experience. It's about bringing who you are, your whole authentic self to that role, to that environment. That's gonna be the defining factor." - David Brown, Sr. Our Guest David Suk Brown is a seasoned strategic communication and presentation coach who empowers executives, thought leaders, and business owners to enhance their impact through public speaking and executive coaching. As President of DSB Leadership Group, author, and university communications instructor, he has delivered over 2,500 inspiring messages that equip audiences with tools for lasting success. A Lead Minister and identical twin, David brings unique insight into communication, leadership, and collaboration as co-host of the Twins Talk it Up and Twins Talk Tech Leadership podcasts. Resources and Links David Suk Brown Website - https://www.dsbleadershipgroup.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidsbrownsr/ Book: Identically Opposite: Find Your Voice and SPEAK - https://www.amazon.com/Identically-Opposite-Find-Voice-SPEAK/dp/B0FSKWKDZQ Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

What if the path to a stable, meaningful, and lucrative career wasn't found in a four year university, but in a hands on craft that's been powering America for more than a century? And what if the biggest productivity hack you're missing is actually mentorship, not better software? In this episode of the Productivity Smarts Podcast, host Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Terry Iverson, founder of ChampionNow, lifelong manufacturing leader, and author of Finding America's Greatest Champions and Inspiring Champions in Advanced Manufacturing. With his family marking 100 years in manufacturing, Terry brings a refreshing and deeply human perspective on the future of skilled work, productivity, and purpose. Terry shares how he almost walked away from his family's legacy, the pivotal push that set him on a 45 year manufacturing career, and why he believes the trades are not just viable but essential in the age of AI and global uncertainty. He and Gerald explore the hidden opportunities in modern manufacturing, the return on education that most young adults overlook, and why mindset, curiosity, and integrity matter more than degrees. From apprenticeship to diversity in the workforce to using ADHD as a superpower, this conversation is packed with practical insights on building a meaningful career, staying productive, and elevating others along the way. It's a timely, inspiring reminder that America still needs makers, mentors, and champions. What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Terry Iverson [04:30] The importance of manufacturing in the U.S. [05:31] Mentoring and coaching in manufacturing [18:56] Benefits of mentoring for both mentor and mentee [21:37] Underrepresented groups in manufacturing [22:45] Terry's personal productivity strategies [28:12] Giving back and community impact [30:14] Life lessons from sports and coaching [31:10] Future productivity habits and organizational practices [33:28] The need for lifelong learning and agility [34:36] Humility and continuous improvement [36:05] How to connect with Terry Iverson and Champion Now Notable Quotes [07:25] "One of the biggest skills my dad taught me was pivoting and seeing the hope in anything that presents itself to you." — Terry Iverson [08:05] "Manufacturing is sitting in the shadows waiting for you to realize there are opportunities there." — Terry Iverson [10:50] "After 12 years, there's a $250,000 difference between the financial outcome of a two-year technical degree and a four-year degree." — Terry Iverson [15:32] "Mentoring and coaching is like being in the HOV lane of life." — Terry Iverson [21:33] "People of color are very underrepresented in our industry, and it's not that either the female gender or people of color are making a choice, they just don't know." — Terry Iverson [24:19] "I flipped my ADHD inside out and realized it was actually a core competency, not a disability." — Terry Iverson [34:49] "I always ask myself every day, what am I missing? We're all missing something no matter how good we are. But every time I've done that, I become  more productive and more efficient." — Terry Iverson Resources Terry Iverson Website – championnow.org Email – terry@championnow.org Books – Finding America's Greatest Champions, Inspiring Champions in Advanced Manufacturing YouTube – ChampionNow  LinkedIn – Terry Iverson Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

Dubsado 3.0 is officially here… and y'all, the internet is having feelings.In this episode, I'm breaking down what's new, what's missing, and what photographers actually need to pay attention to. No fluff. No hype. Just the real talk you need before jumping into the new version.Read the full breakdown here → https://coliejames.com/dubsado-3-0-whats-new/Work with me inside Systems in Session → https://coliejames.com/systemsJoin CRM Blueprint → https://coliejames.com/blueprint00:00 — Why everyone is freaking out about Dubsado 3.0A quick reality check on the rollout, expectations, and why mixed opinions are completely valid.01:17 — The 3.0 switch + how to go back to 2.0 if you need toIf it's your busy season, do NOT force the transition.02:44 — My biggest disappointments (aka: my Dubsado wishlist that still isn't here)Contracts on schedulers, conditional logic, project dates + appointments, multi-client emails, and team accounts.07:28 — What is coming soonA few features currently in progress that will make life better in the next updates.09:36 — The rebuild: why 3.0 matters even if features didn't changeNew backend → faster future updates (finally!).10:28 — Dashboard changesWhat's actually better, what's hidden, and why Threads users are spiraling over revenue numbers.14:06 — New Messages areaA real inbox inside Dubsado — finally.18:06 — The new Flows BuilderSame triggers, new layout, and why this matters for future conditional logic.19:52 — Time tracking improvementsHelpful update for those who bill hourly.20:08 — Scheduler availability upgradesA legitimately great improvement — no more clicking nine to five a million times.22:54 — Project view strugglesWhat feels off, what's improved, and what I hope changes next.23:44 — Final thoughts + what to do nextWhy this update sets the stage for an actually powerful Dubsado… once the features catch up.

In this episode of the Productivity Smarts podcast, host Gerald J. Leonard converses with Chris Livezey, a transformative success story. They delve into the power of the subconscious mind, the importance of setting and achieving goals, and the profound impact of positive thinking and visualization on one's life.   Chris shares his journey from a troubled adolescence to personal and professional triumph, emphasizing the significance of mentoring, continuous self-improvement, and faith. Together, they explore practical strategies for overcoming adversity, achieving lasting happiness, and driving societal impact through philanthropy.    The episode combines motivational insights with actionable advice, aimed at helping listeners unlock their full potential and live magnificent lives.   What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Chris Livezey [04:55] The Power of the Subconscious Mind [11:27] Faith, Spirituality, and the 13 Principles of Success [22:52] Overcoming Constraints with Visualization [23:47] A Life-Changing Confrontation [25:08] The Power of Emotional Impact [27:39] Setting and Achieving Goals [30:28] The Importance of Giving Back [32:38] Navigating Challenging Times [39:27] Visualization and Mind Programming [41:06] Conclusion and Final Thoughts Our Guest Chris Livezey is a living testament to the power of personal transformation. Despite significant challenges in his adolescence, he defied the odds and emerged as a remarkable success story. Driven by a determination to prove his doubters wrong, he dove deep into self-improvement, attended expert seminars, devoured books on personal development, and sought mentorship from leading voices in the field. The journey led him to craft his 13 Principles of Success—a powerful framework that has helped countless individuals dramatically improve their lives. His acclaimed book, The Shortcut to Magnificence, is a no-nonsense guide to unlocking one's true potential and choosing to live a magnificent life. Resources and Links Chris Livezey Website - https://www.chrislivezey.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/chrislivezey/?hl=en Book: The Shortcut to Magnificence: 13 Principles to Living a More Successful Life - https://www.amazon.com/Shortcut-Magnificence-Principles-Living-Successful-ebook/dp/B0C957NJWK?ref_=ast_author_dp&th=1&psc=1 Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

What if getting fit didn't mean spending hours at the gym but just 21 minutes, twice a week? And what if the real secret to lasting health wasn't about your body at all, but about rewiring your brain? In this episode of the Productivity Smarts Podcast, host Gerald J. Leonard chats with PJ Glassey, fitness innovator and author of Cracking Your Calorie Code (Version 2). PJ shares how his breakthrough 21-minute workout combines endurance and strength training to create real, lasting results without the bulk or burnout of traditional routines. His method focuses on Complete Muscle Fatigue, helping you get stronger, leaner, and more energized in a fraction of the time. But as PJ explains, true transformation starts in the mind. He breaks down how our "toddler-like" subconscious runs the show and how we can retrain it using powerful brain tools like visualization, tapping (EFT), and mindful movement. Add in habits like clean eating and intermittent fasting, and you've got a roadmap for better focus, more energy, and deeper well-being. It's a refreshing, practical take on fitness that proves when your brain and body work together, productivity and life itself just feel easier.   What We Discuss [02:01] Meet PJ Glassey [04:07] PJ's fitness journey and methodology origins [08:58] Development of the 21-minute workout [11:38] How the 21-minute method works [13:28] Equipment and functional fitness [18:01] Accessing PJ's training and app [21:22] Mind-body connection and subconscious [24:03] Brain type test and personalization [25:37] Aligning the conscious, subconscious, and non-conscious [27:38] Meditation, visualization, and storytelling [31:00] Food, nutrition, and productivity [35:51] Fasting and brain health [37:35] Top five anti-aging and health habits [39:03] Tapping for emotional eating [42:13] How tapping works and resources [45:08] Closing remarks and where to find PJ   Notable Quotes [12:30] "if you're just doing endurance training, the muscle cells want to get smaller, to bring the capillaries closer to the nucleus. So that's why marathon runners look emaciated and power lifters are jacked." — PJ Glassey [21:47] "The subconscious is in charge of us and we can't ever stop that. That's the way it is. And the subconscious also operates at about the level of a three-year-old. So our toddler is in charge of us." — PJ Glassey [36:03] "For me, intermittent fasting is really more about brain health and mental clarity, and not having to be hungry."— PJ Glassey [37:40] "The top five things for anti-aging are the top five things for health: exercise, good nutrition, quality sleep, brain training, and relationships." — PJ Glassey [39:45] "Tapping is an amazing way to get rid of emotional eating, to stop the overeating habits, to even stop cravings." — PJ Glassey [40:06] "I probably tapped 300 different foods away and then to the point where you just don't want them anymore, which is amazing." — PJ Glassey   Resources PJ Glassey Website – Xgym.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pjglassey Brain Type Test – https://braintype.me/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pjglassey/?hl=en Book – Cracking Your Calorie Code Version 2.0 Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

What if that nagging voice of imposter syndrome isn't really yours, but a belief you picked up in childhood and never questioned? In this episode of the Productivity Smarts podcast, host Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Armida Espinoza, educator, speaker, and author of Brave Lolis's Box of Hope, to explore how early self-doubt evolves into imposter syndrome and how neuroplasticity can help us rewrite that story. Armida opens up about her journey from a shy first grader struggling to learn English to becoming a published children's author who now helps others find their voice. She shares how one classroom moment led to years of limiting beliefs and how awareness, gratitude, and daily mindset shifts helped her reclaim her confidence and purpose. Together, Gerald and Armida unpack practical ways to reprogram negative thinking, build resilience, and teach both children and adults how to challenge their inner critic. It's an inspiring reminder that it's never too late to rewire your brain, rewrite your story, and step fully into your potential. What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Armida Espinoza [06:49] Imposter syndrome and limiting beliefs [13:36] College, mentorship, and becoming a teacher [16:35] Productivity habits and writing process [17:15] Neuroplasticity and mindset shifts [22:21] Resilience and teaching children [24:47] Practical strategies for positive self-talk [26:09] Daily habits for neuroplasticity [27:50] Awareness tools: bracelet and cancel technique [30:13] 30-day plan to shift mindset [32:56] Book availability and achievements [34:38] Closing remarks and podcast outro Notable Quotes [15:45] "Mentoring and coaching is like being on the HOV lane. You never see somebody on the high occupancy lane by themselves. They're always with someone else." — Gerald J. Leonard [23:06] "Children are not born with resilient strategies. We have to teach them those strategies." — Armida Espinoza [29:20] "When you have a negative thought, just stop and say, cancel, cancel. And your brain goes, okay. And it raises it." — Gerald J. Leonard [33:44] "As a self-published person, first publishing book, I've managed to sell over 9000 books in two years." — Armida Espinoza Resources Armida Espinoza Website - https://www.armidaespinoza.com/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ArmidaEspinozaAuthor/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/armiespinoza/ Book: Brave Lolis's Box of Hope/LA VALIENTE LOLIS Y SU CAJA DE ESPERANZA Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

Did you know that 85% of your success comes from believing in yourself? In this episode of the Productivity Smarts Podcast, host Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Lou Pelliccioni, a seasoned coach, businessman, and author of Success Is More Than Winning: 99 Tips to Up Your Game. At 77 years young, Lou shares timeless lessons from six decades in sports, finance, and personal growth, reminding us that true success isn't measured by trophies but by integrity, passion, and perseverance. Lou takes us through his inspiring journey from high school coach to motivational speaker and financial professional, revealing how he transformed an obsession for coaching into a lifelong mission to help others grow. He explains why success is less about avoiding failure and more about embracing it, and how grit and self-belief are the real foundations of achievement. Drawing from legendary coach John Wooden, Lou highlights the power of competing against yourself instead of others, a mindset that builds focus, discipline, and resilience. He also shares his daily habits of goal-setting, visualization, seeking mentors, giving back, and staying consistent. This episode is a thoughtful and uplifting reminder that when you lead with purpose and love what you do, success follows naturally. What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Lou Pelliccioni [05:30] Early career and coaching journey [08:28] Passion, grit, and career transitions [10:37] Giving back and family influence [13:16] Growth over victory and integrity [19:41] The value of mentors and coaching [20:42] Timeless productivity habits [23:52] Research-backed success strategies [27:36] The three enemies: fear, risk, and failure [29:05] Reframing failure and learning from losses [34:15] Three ways to grow: experience, reading, mentorship [36:28] Managing stress and performing under pressure [45:57] Three daily practices for productivity [48:12] Where to find Lou Pelliccioni Notable Quotes [08:32] "I'm going to be 77 in a couple of months, and I'm still working full time. I just gave my 15th talk in high schools — Lou Pelliccioni [09:03] “I followed my passion. I found my spark. The number one reason was grit, which is passion and perseverance.” — Lou Pelliccioni [15:46] "You have to always strive to compete against yourself, not the competition." [27:45] “The three enemies of success are fear, risk, and failure. How you handle those three things are going to dictate your life.” — Lou Pelliccioni [28:26] “You can have passion and perseverance, and if you don't work hard, you're not going to make it right.” — Lou Pelliccioni [29:14] “If you don't fail 50%, they don't think you're trying hard enough.” — Lou Pelliccioni  [38:32] "70% of the problems you have in life are caused by stress. That's how important it is. But we don't teach anybody how to handle it." — Lou Pelliccioni [39:02] “Eighty-five percent of your success comes from your belief in self over your aptitude, your skills.” — Lou Pelliccioni [47:44] “Money never leads. Money follows when you love what you do.” — Lou Pelliccioni Resources Lou Pelliccioni Website: https://yesyoucansucceed.org/ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/louis-pelliccioni-jr-08791888/ Book: Success Is More Than Winning: 99 Tips to Up Your Game.   Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com   Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

In this episode of Productivity Smarts, Gerald J. Leonard is joined by Dr. Glen Robison, a podiatric surgeon and author of 'Healthy Dad Sick Dad.' Dr. Robison shares his journey from conventional medicine to holistic health practices, discussing the importance of balancing productivity with well-being. The conversation delves into the benefits of organic food, the impact of emotions on physical health, and the pairing of body organs with the five elements in holistic medicine. Dr. Robison also emphasizes the significance of mitigating external factors like EMFs and encourages listeners to adopt healthier habits to enhance their overall productivity and quality of life. What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Dr. Glen Robison [06:08] Dr. Robison's Journey to Holistic Health [12:18] Balancing Health and Productivity: The Yin and Yang Principle [21:01] Personal Stories and Medical Insights [24:06] Diet and Emotional Health [25:19] Healing Through Epigenetics and Neuroscience [31:40] Impact of EMFs and Environmental Factors [36:12] Holistic Health Tips and Practices [37:49] Final Thoughts and Book Promotion Notable Quotes [12:40] "I've been in practice 26 years and I keep my overhead low. I make sure my new patients have enough time from the start to the finish with me. I don't have a nurse that goes in there and does all the little things. I do everything from start to finish." - Dr. Glen Robison [18:35] "You can't put a price on your health." - Dr. Glen Robison [22:24] "When I see diabetic patients, they think it's mostly all food, what they eat. That's a fraction of it. What they don't understand is that type two diabetes has a huge component of emotion and so I find within my own practice that those that have been later diagnosed with type two diabetics that had some form of injury to their mental emotional side." - Dr. Glen Robison [23:16] "The kidney is worry and fear, the lung is grief and sorrow. So if you can get somebody that's diabetic to stop the worrying, to start loving themselves, to think of, 'okay, I am important. I can do this,' and really take their energy up. Well, lo and behold, their sugar levels start to maintain." - Dr. Glen Robison [29:14] "I always sign my books, I-N-J-O-Y. 'cause joy's not found on the outside. We only express it on the outside, but it's always in the inside and it's always there, but we take our whole life trying to find it." - Dr. Glen Robison Our Guest Dr. Glen N. Robison, podiatric surgeon turned health visionary and author of Healthy Dad, Sick Dad blends his medical training with holistic practices to help people transform health before chronic disease takes hold. His journey, from surgeon's table to wellness advocate, offers profound lessons in health, purpose, and productivity. Resources and Links Dr. Glen Robison Website - https://www.drglenrobison.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-glen-robison-71333b375 Book: Healthy Dad Sick Dad: What Good Is Your Wealth If You Don't Have Your Health? - https://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Dad-Sick-Wealth-Health/dp/1544520743 Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

What if your greatest health challenge could become your most powerful teacher? In this episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Cindy Wageman, speaker, coach, and bestselling author of Completely Healed: How Understanding the Link Between Trauma, Stress, and Autoimmune Disease Helped Me Get My Life Back. Cindy opens up about her journey of healing from multiple sclerosis, sharing how faith, mindset, and self-discovery transformed her life. She reveals how years of people-pleasing and unprocessed trauma affected her health, and how learning to listen to her intuition, and to God, became the key to true healing. Together, she and Gerald explore the science of epigenetics, explaining how our thoughts, relationships, and environment can literally switch our genes on or off. One of Cindy's most powerful insights came when she realized the importance of being honest with her family about her struggles, a revelation that later inspired her work as a life and relationship coach. This heartfelt episode reminds us that real productivity starts from within, when we nurture our bodies, renew our minds, and live with purpose and balance. Let's dive in! What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Cindy Wageman [06:41] Addressing trauma and self-discovery [10:20] Processing trauma and stress [12:03] Daily habits for healing [14:57] Realization about stress and joy [15:51] Discovery of epigenetics [19:28] Recognizing red flags and self-care [24:53] Relationships and boundaries [27:12] Insight for parents and professionals [32:23] Closing remarks  Notable Quotes [05:56] “I had to learn through all of the experience that I went through, that I needed to find myself. Pleasers lose themselves.” – Cindy Wageman [07:24] “I decided that I was going to not listen to anyone else, but start listening to myself and my intuition  and the voice inside of me, which I feel was God,” – Cindy Wageman [08:13] “Our mind and our bodies are very closely connected. Our brains tell our body, our bodies respond.” – Cindy Wageman [11:11] “I think our bodies can go through the same process when we don't know how to process that trauma and stress.” – Gerald J. Leonard [13:48] “I learned about the eight laws of health... breathing fresh air, getting the rest that you need, exercise, nutrition, trusting in God, sunshine, and balance in life.” – Cindy Wageman [25:16] “There are very toxic people. I wanted to help everyone, I wanted to fix everyone, and I found out that I can't.” — Cindy Wageman [26:11] “There is a term in psychology called Gray Rock — it's really just being a gray rock. Just there, but not being emotionally involved at all.” — Cindy Wageman [27:21] “I think that one of the things that really has affected me through this journey was when I had multiple sclerosis was my children. I had babies, I had little kids. And I didn't tell them what was going on.” – Cindy Wageman [23:07] “I only have control over what I can control — my community, my neighbors, my family. I can give them all the love that I can.” — Cindy Wageman [29:29] “I asked God, why am I crying? And He said, Cindy, this is your story. You need to tell other people about it.” – Cindy Wageman Resources Cindy Wageman Website: cindywageman.com Facebook: facebook.com/cindywageman Instagram: instagram.com/cindywageman Book: Completely Healed: How Understanding the Link Between Trauma, Stress, and Autoimmune Disease Helped Me Get My Life Back Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

This week on Azure Friday, Scott Hanselman meets with Nick Greenfield to learn about the Azure Functions Durable Task Scheduler. The Durable Task Scheduler is a fully managed backend for orchestrating stateful workflows across Azure compute environments. It powers Durable Functions and Durable Task SDKs with built-in reliability, automatic retries, and persistent state management, which is powerful for long-running, distributed, or event-driven applications. Chapters 00:00 - Introduction 00:50 - Durable Functions overview 05:10 - Introduction to the Durable Task Scheduler 06:41 - Start of Demo 10:51 - Wrap up Recommended resources Learn Docs Samples Azure Product page Connect Scott Hanselman | @SHanselman Azure Friday | Twitter/X: @AzureFriday Azure | Twitter/X: @Azure

This week on Azure Friday, Scott Hanselman meets with Nick Greenfield to learn about the Azure Functions Durable Task Scheduler. The Durable Task Scheduler is a fully managed backend for orchestrating stateful workflows across Azure compute environments. It powers Durable Functions and Durable Task SDKs with built-in reliability, automatic retries, and persistent state management, which is powerful for long-running, distributed, or event-driven applications. Chapters 00:00 - Introduction 00:50 - Durable Functions overview 05:10 - Introduction to the Durable Task Scheduler 06:41 - Start of Demo 10:51 - Wrap up Recommended resources Learn Docs Samples Azure Product page Connect Scott Hanselman | @SHanselman Azure Friday | Twitter/X: @AzureFriday Azure | Twitter/X: @Azure

This week on Azure Friday, Scott Hanselman meets with Nick Greenfield to learn about the Azure Functions Durable Task Scheduler. The Durable Task Scheduler is a fully managed backend for orchestrating stateful workflows across Azure compute environments. It powers Durable Functions and Durable Task SDKs with built-in reliability, automatic retries, and persistent state management, which is powerful for long-running, distributed, or event-driven applications. Chapters 00:00 - Introduction 00:50 - Durable Functions overview 05:10 - Introduction to the Durable Task Scheduler 06:41 - Start of Demo 10:51 - Wrap up Recommended resources Learn Docs Samples Azure Product page Connect Scott Hanselman | @SHanselman Azure Friday | Twitter/X: @AzureFriday Azure | Twitter/X: @Azure

This week on Azure Friday, Scott Hanselman meets with Nick Greenfield to learn about the Azure Functions Durable Task Scheduler. The Durable Task Scheduler is a fully managed backend for orchestrating stateful workflows across Azure compute environments. It powers Durable Functions and Durable Task SDKs with built-in reliability, automatic retries, and persistent state management, which is powerful for long-running, distributed, or event-driven applications. Chapters 00:00 - Introduction 00:50 - Durable Functions overview 05:10 - Introduction to the Durable Task Scheduler 06:41 - Start of Demo 10:51 - Wrap up Recommended resources Learn Docs Samples Azure Product page Connect Scott Hanselman | @SHanselman Azure Friday | Twitter/X: @AzureFriday Azure | Twitter/X: @Azure

What if the biggest thing standing between you and your best self isn't stress, deadlines, or lack of time, but your own internal alignment? In this transformative episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard is joined by speaker and advocate Marcel Vögeli to explore how a deeper understanding of self-liberation can lead to true productivity and freedom. Marcel shares his powerful journey, from surviving a severe car crash to battling an autoimmune disease and discovering the life-changing teachings in The Key to Self-Liberation by Christiane Beerlandt. Together, Gerald and Marcel dive into how illnesses, symptoms, and challenges are often life's way of nudging us to get back in alignment with our true selves. You'll also learn why inner work is key to external success, how to embrace your unique path to healing, and how understanding the energetic messages behind stress and symptoms can help you shift toward a more resourceful, abundant life. If you're ready to stop fighting against yourself and start aligning with your inner truth, this episode will inspire you to transform your life from the inside out. What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Marcel Vögeli [11:02] How The Key to Self-Liberation changed Marcel's life [16:10] Symptoms as signals of the deeper meaning behind our physical challenges [22:12] How life tests our decisions and commitment to truth [30:45] Positive Thinking vs. Aligned Action [36:00] Creating Miracles Through Self-Awareness [42:10] Gerald's Healing Journey [51:40] How listening to your body and intuition leads to better productivity and happiness [57:55] Where to Learn More About Marcel and the Book Notable Quotes [06:12] “Music is a vibration. It connects us to something deeper within ourselves.” – Marcel Vögeli [12:47] “Symptoms are not just problems to fix. They're life's messages, guiding us back to our truth.” – Gerald J. Leonard [16:52] “Counterforce isn't your enemy. It's a signpost that says, ‘Are you sure you're on the right path?'” – Marcel Vögeli [28:15] “True productivity starts when you align your actions with what feels true to you.” – Gerald J. Leonard [33:02] “When we shift our perspective, miracles happen, whether it's a flat tire or healing from disease.” – Marcel Vögeli [47:30] “Your body and soul are trying to tell you something. Listen to them, and watch your life change.” – Marcel Vögeli Our Guest Marcel Vögeli is a speaker, advocate, and living testimony to the transformative power of Christiane Beerlandt's The Key to Self-Liberation. After surviving a severe car accident and years of battling an aggressive autoimmune disease, Marcel discovered the book's profound philosophy: that illness and hardship carry meaningful messages from the body and soul. Today, he shares this life-changing work to help others reclaim inner strength, self-love, and freedom. Resources Mentioned Book: The Key to Self-Liberation by Christiane Beerlandt Marcel Vögeli LinkedIn - Marcel Vögeli Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

Did you know the key to unlocking your biggest goals might come down to simply winning the next hour? In this episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard sits down with bestselling author, entrepreneur, and speaker Danny Lehr to reveal why the first step toward any achievement is not a giant leap but simply winning the next hour. Danny's book Win Your Next Hour distills wisdom from Olympians, elite entrepreneurs, and his own real-life adventures into a clear framework that helps anyone create unstoppable momentum. Danny shares how his WIN method of Words, Investment, and Noticing progress has guided him through challenges like training for a 73-mile ride around Lake Tahoe on a $150 bike, writing a book while running a company, and saying yes to opportunities that once felt impossible. He opens up about the power of declaring your goals out loud, investing time and energy even when resources are limited, and celebrating small wins to fuel motivation. During the conversation, he illustrates how storytelling, community, and consistent action can turn overwhelming ambitions into achievable milestones. Whether you are launching a business, chasing a personal dream, or simply trying to get unstuck, this conversation will inspire you to stop overthinking and start taking action one hour at a time. What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Danny Lehr [06:00] The Tahoe bike ride challenge [08:14] Applying the WIN framework [17:40] Setting up the smart trainer [18:37] The power of sharing your goals [19:19] Olympian insights on goal setting [21:27] The importance of storytelling [26:10] Actionable steps to overcome overwhelm [27:24] Developing writing skills [32:26] Promoting the book and public speaking [34:25] Podcast conclusion and call to action   Notable Quotes [05:25] “I don't like to pass up opportunities. I like to live my life and I like to do interesting things.” – Danny Lehr [08:08] “The more you say yes to different adventures and opportunities, I feel like the more they seem to appear.” – Danny Lehr [19:54] “If I can't even get myself to say it out loud, how am I really going to believe it?” – Danny Lehr [20:06] “If you don't believe that what you're trying to accomplish is possible, you're never going to put in the amount of work and time and effort that it really takes to accomplish that goal.” – Danny Lehr [27:02] “You don't have to know how to run a $10 million company, you know, if you've never have, like, of course you don't, right? That's okay. You gotta be okay with what you don't know.” – Danny Lehr [27:14] “What can I do right now? What can I do in the next hour, in the next day, in the next 40, next 48 hours, that'll move me closer to that goal.” – Danny Lehr   Resources Danny Lehr Website: https://dannylehr.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannylehr/ Book: Win Your Next Hour: How to Get Unstuck and Turn Your Dreams into Reality Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

In this powerful episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Hall of Fame speaker, podcast host, and author Bill Cates to uncover how your mindset can either rob you of success or unlock lasting wealth. Bill takes us behind the scenes of his new book, The Hidden Heist, a parable filled with suspense, humor, and unforgettable lessons about money. Together, Gerald and Bill explore why beliefs are the foundation of every decision you make, how to maintain composure and clarity when life gets stressful, and why mastering your inner dialogue is the secret to real productivity. You'll also learn how compounding interest can change your future, why many people sabotage their own financial potential, and how finding the right financial advisor can protect and grow your wealth. If you've ever felt like you're doing everything right but still falling short, this episode will challenge you to rethink your approach, rewrite your limiting stories, and start building a life of abundance and purpose. What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Bill Cates [05:00] Hidden Heist: concept, plot, structure and lessons [12:49] Character spotlight: Elden, handling pressure and decision-making [14:55] Identifying and replacing unproductive money beliefs in daily life and work [22:02] Beliefs as the foundation for problem-solving [23:39] Aligning yourself with a trusted financial professional [25:54] Bill's financial habits and mindset shifts that boosted his productivity [28:09] Where to find The Hidden Heist and connect with Bill Cates Notable Quotes [05:27] “When someone says they sold a business, maybe they made money, maybe they didn't. I experienced both.” – Bill Cates [13:22] “Composure comes from clarity. Composure comes from clarity of purpose. It comes from mastering your inner dialogue, what you're saying to yourself.” – Bill Cates [14:03] “Wisdom is knowledge that is kilned in the fire of experience.” – Bill Cates [15:15] “Every human has stuff around money. I have met wealthy individuals that have fear around money when you don't think they should.” – Bill Cates [17:17] “Most Americans couldn't handle an 800 car repair bill without selling something or borrowing money. What's wrong with that picture?” – Bill Cates [20:06] “Some are, most aren't. So whenever we think about generalizations like rich people are greedy... there's usually these stereotypes and these generalizations.” – Bill Cates [22:40] “If we believe it's not fixable, then it's not fixable. If we're in a marriage and we believe the marriage isn't fixable, then it's not fixable.” – Bill Cates [26:11] “Those who understand it earn it, those who don't pay it.” – Bill Cates[26:51] “Some of my self worth was tied up in money. And so, you know, I bought a Lexus when I could have bought a Toyota.” – Bill Cates Resources Bill Cates Website - https://referralcoach.com/the-hidden-heist/ LinkedIn: Bill Cates Book: The Hidden Heist Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

Most clinics don't fail because they're bad at treatment—they stall because their tools don't talk. EMR here. Scheduler there. Email somewhere else. A texting app. A CRM you meant to set up “one day.” In the gaps between them? Patients and leads fall through. This week's episode gives you a simple, durable way to fix it—without another fancy platform, without months of setup, and without you doing more. What You're Getting Today The hidden trap: Platform sprawl → missed follow-ups → lost revenue The fix: A single Google Sheet + one “quarterback” to run it How to scale it: SOPs your whole team can follow Your next step: Grab the free Sheet + video walkthrough that can completely transform your follow-up process—and the impact you have with your practice. The Lead Management and Patient Follow-up Tracking Sheet and Training is the same tool I use in my own clinic. It makes it easy to track follow-ups, set timely reminders, and stay top-of-mind with the people most likely to say yes down the road—so no one, and no revenue, slip through the cracks. Grab your copy here. USEFUL INFORMATION: Check out our course: How to answer, “Do you take my insurance?”  

In this enlightening episode of the Productivity Smarts Podcast, host Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Dr. Mohammad Farivar, a board-certified gastroenterologist and author of “Is It IBS or Your Diet?”. With more than 55 years of medical experience, Dr. Farivar brings deep insights into the connection between gut health, productivity, and overall well-being.   Many people struggle with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), a condition that can drastically impact daily life, work performance, and even mental clarity. Dr. Farivar reveals how diet, stress, and gut health play pivotal roles in both IBS symptoms and productivity and why traditional treatments often miss the mark.   Through real-life patient stories and science-backed strategies, you'll discover how small dietary shifts, the right testing, and an informed approach to gut health can make a world of difference.   Whether you or someone you know is battling digestive health issues, this conversation will equip you with practical steps to regain control and unlock your full potential.   What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Dr. Mohammad Farivar [05:47] Impact of IBS on patients' lives [09:12] Motivation to write the book [12:19] Proper approach to IBS diagnosis [15:12] IBS and productivity loss [17:21] Stress and its effects on IBS [22:54] Critique of probiotic industry [27:16] FODMAP diet explained [30:44] Complementary and alternative medicine for IBS [32:44] Hydrogen breath test for IBS [37:19] Where to find the book and final advice   Notable Quotes [05:03] “We are all born with a mission. Even as a child, I knew I wanted to be a doctor.” – Dr. Farivar   [06:39] “In my practice, I was able to find the cause of IBS in more than 90% of cases — most of the time, it was diet-related.” – Dr. Farivar   [15:12] “IBS is the second most common cause of lost productivity after colds and infections.” – Dr. Farivar   [22:59] “Forget probiotics. A spoonful of yogurt gives you more than any pill.” – Dr. Farivar   Resources   Dr. Mohammad Farivar Website - IsItIBSOrYourDiet.com LinkedIn: Mohammad Farivar Book: Is It IBS or Your Diet?   Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com   Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

In this episode of Productivity Smarts, Gerald J. Leonard speaks with Sandy Joy Weston, M.Ed., author, podcaster, fitness entrepreneur, and unapologetic powerhouse of positivity. Sandy has dedicated her career to helping people connect their mindset and movement to create lasting joy, resilience, and success. From her early days training stars like Patti LaBelle to working with professional athletes and corporations, Sandy has seen firsthand how simple mindset shifts can unlock both personal and professional breakthroughs. Her book, Train Your Head and Your Body Will Follow, distills decades of wisdom into a practical framework for rewiring habits, resetting focus, and building a joyful foundation for productivity. During this conversation, Sandy shares how growing up in challenging circumstances shaped her mission to spread joy, why rituals and micro-habits matter more than marathon routines, and how anyone can reset their mind and body in as little as one to three minutes a day. If you've ever felt like stress, negativity, or “decision fatigue” were holding you back, this episode will give you the tools and the inspiration to take charge of your mornings and your mindset. What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Sandy Joy Weston [04:30] The story behind training Patti LaBelle and other high-profile clients [06:40] Turning obstacles into opportunities through joy and mindset [11:52] Sandy's “one-word” morning routine to jumpstart productivity [15:49] Why movement and laughter are key to shifting state [19:42] Lessons learned from working with professional athletes [23:00] Rituals, visualization, and positive self-talk as performance tools [25:17] The impact of reading 5,000+ books on health, mindset, and fitness [33:12] The value of mentors and “tour guides” in accelerating growth [34:44] Managing stress and negativity in a chaotic world [40:35] Gratitude, journaling, and power statements as daily anchors [46:03] Resources for adults and children, including Sandy's books and journals [47:35] Closing reflections and takeaways Notable Quotes [04:40] “I always believed my mission was to spread joy. I didn't know how, but I knew that no matter the vehicle, that was the purpose of my life.” – Sandy [07:42] “I wasn't impressed with who people were. Whether it was Patti LaBelle or a neighbor down the street, I treated everyone the same. I just wanted to help.” – Sandy [11:52] “Before I get out of bed, I ask: what word do I want to embody today? If I just do that consistently, everything changes.” – Sandy [23:00] “There was nothing more important for athletes than how they chose to show up—whether it was one minute, three minutes, or two hours. The ritual mattered.” – Sandy [35:03] “I want to feel the emotion and then move it off quickly. I always ask myself, does this thought serve me well?” – Sandy [40:35] “Every day, I write down five things I'm grateful for and five people I send peace, love, and joy to—even if they get on my nerves.” – Sandy Our Guest Sandy Joy Weston, M.Ed. is an international speaker, author, podcaster, and entrepreneur dedicated to spreading joy and helping people create simple, science-backed routines to live healthier, happier lives. She is the author of Train Your Head and Your Body Will Follow, Your 30-Day Reset Journal, and Recess to Reset for kids. Sandy's work bridges fitness, psychology, and mindset training, making positivity practical and accessible for all. Resources Sandy Joy Weston Website: https://www.sandyjoyweston.com/ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sandyjoyweston Books: https://www.sandyjoyweston.com/books Podcast: https://www.sandyjoyweston.com/podcast   Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com   Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

What does it really mean to be human in a world where machines are learning faster than we are? As AI continues to evolve, are we at risk of losing touch with the very things that make us deeply human? In this episode of Productivity Smarts, Gerald J. Leonard sits down to delve into these big questions with Jeff Burningham, an entrepreneur, author, and the mind behind The Last Book Written by a Human. Jeff shares his journey from building startups to running for governor, and how those experiences led him to rethink success. He talks about the shift from being a “human doing” to a “human being,” and why slowing down, being present, and reconnecting with what really matters is more urgent than ever. They explore the power of daily reflection, the grounding effect of nature, and a touching story about Jeff's daughter that highlights the emotional cost of chasing success. Jeff also offers his take on AI, describing it as a kind of cosmic mirror that reflects both our strengths and our blind spots  and how it might be nudging us toward a more meaningful path, guided by love, wisdom, and connection. If you're craving more purpose in the midst of rapid change, this conversation is one to tune into. What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Jeff Burningham [03:31] Vision and the power of seeing around corners [06:17] Thriving in disruption and building in downturns [08:10] From human doing to human being: redefining productivity [10:52] Presence over performance: lessons from fatherhood [12:28] Balancing high performance with presence and awareness [17:45] Turning failure into transformation after a gubernatorial loss [21:56] What your body knows before you do: the cost of overwork [25:31] The 4-part framework of Jeff's book: Disruption,  Reflection, Transformation, Evolution [26:51] How AI is nudging us into a “new game” of authenticity and karma [36:27] Jeff's daily spiritual practices for staying grounded and creative [39:11] How to connect with Jeff and grab his new book Notable Quotes [06:17] "When people are irrational, you know, there's always opportunity for businesses. I'm speaking specifically within disruption. There's always opportunity." – Jeff Burningham [06:43] "In the age of AI, there's a gift, there's a little-known gift. It's called skip thinking. Some of us can kind of skip ahead and almost kind of have a sense." – Jeff Burningham [28:55] "I think AI will push us this way to pivot to what I call a new game. A new game where karma is the currency, where authenticity is the real power and motivation." – Jeff Burningham [33:57] "AI is just the data that we've fed it. It's all of human data that it has. It looks for patterns. And by the way, it's able to see patterns better than maybe we ever could." – Jeff Burningham [36:29] "The most powerful ideas are often the most simple. So therefore the most neglected, the simple basics that I come back to, and I'm not perfect at this, but I try to do these three things every day." – Jeff Burningham [38:18] “Get into nature, spend as much time in nature as you absolutely can. That's another one of our universal teachers.”– Jeff Burningham Our Guest Jeff Burningham is a visionary entrepreneur, early-stage tech investor, and author of The Last Book Written by a Human: Becoming Wise in the Age of AI. Over his diverse career, Jeff has founded and scaled billion-dollar ventures, led institutional real estate funds, and even ran for governor of Utah. His mission now? Helping people and society move from fear to wisdom in the age of intelligent machines. Resources Jeff Burningham LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-burningham-15a01a7b/ Website: https://www.jeffburningham.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeffburningham/?hl=en Book: https://www.jeffburningham.com/book/   Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com   Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

In this episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard dives into an engaging conversation with Don Eggspuehler, author of Letters to Mom: Marine Corps – Boot Camp – Flight School – Vietnam. They explore Don's journey from a Marine Corp fighter pilot to a successful software executive and writer. The discussion highlights the transformative power of journaling, storytelling, and resilience in navigating life's challenges. Don shares the profound impact of military discipline on his productivity and personal balance, and offers invaluable advice for leaders striving to maintain equilibrium between high-stake responsibilities and personal well-being. The episode also shines a light on Don's latest book, offering listeners a unique glimpse into the poignant letters he wrote to his mother during his service, which have become a source of inspiration and healing for many. What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Don Eggspuehler [04:54] The Power of Letter Writing and Storytelling [10:57] Balancing Life and Work [21:26] Reflections and Final Thoughts [29:18] Conclusion and Call to Action Notable Quotes [06:08] " Writing letters is kind of a lost art. Most people don't write letters anymore, and it's so important." – Don Eggspuehler [13:10] " As you're going through life, sometimes a lot of stuff happens that we have no control over, but it's not what happens, it's how we deal with what happens now." – Gerald J. Leonard [15:09] “ Be persistent and don't get too upset over things. Keep things even keel and go with the flow a little bit, 'cause in life you're gonna have a lot of situations that are big surprises, and you really don't have any control over that. It's how you react.” – Don Eggspuehler [22:41] " We have the freedom and the ability to have experiences with our loved ones that we care about." – Gerald J. Leonard [24:57] " Life doesn't always go the way you want it to, no matter what you do. It throws you into some situations that you really weren't seeing coming." – Don Eggspuehler Our Guest Don Eggspuehler is a retired Marine Corps officer, author, and former computer software executive. Originally from Iowa Falls, Iowa, he served in Vietnam as a combat pilot flying A-6A jets. After a 23-year marriage to Linda Combs, who passed away from a brain tumor, Don had a successful 30-year career in software sales and consulting. Now retired and married to Lynda Lou Sherman, Don has authored five books, including Letters to Mom: Marine Corps – Boot Camp – Flight School – Vietnam and Life Lessons Learned in Grade School. Resources Don Eggspuehler LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/don-eggspuehler-54b71227b Website: https://www.lifelessonsbooks.net/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doneggspuehler/ Book: https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Mom-Marine-Flight-Vietnam/dp/B0DKXT5KP3 Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

In this episode of Productivity Smarts, Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Alexis Normand, co-founder of Greenly, a leading carbon accounting platform that's helping companies around the world cut their emissions and boost performance at the same time. Alexis started out in digital health, where he learned how short‑term incentives can drive long‑term results. That insight eventually led him to launch Greenly, which began as a personal carbon tracking app and has since evolved into one of the world's most trusted tools for businesses serious about sustainability. During the conversation, Alexis shares how starting small, moving fast, and learning from customers turned Greenly into a platform that makes carbon accounting simple, actionable, and even profitable. You'll also hear how AI and automation are making it easier than ever for businesses to cut through decision fatigue, meet compliance standards, and focus on the projects that really move the needle. If you've ever thought sustainability was just a nice‑to‑have, this episode will change your mind. Get ready to see why climate action is one of the smartest business moves you can make. What We Discuss [02:01] Introduction to Alexis Normand [07:10] Lessons from early iterations and pivoting to business solutions [11:34] Habits and systems Alexis uses to stay productive [15:00] Tackling decision fatigue in carbon reporting [20:40] How AI and automation streamline sustainability efforts [28:14] Meeting compliance frameworks across regions [31:12] Why sustainability is good business strategy [33:51] First steps for companies beginning their carbon tracking journey [37:15] How global supply chains drive climate accountability [38:27] Closing reflections and takeaways Notable Quotes [03:56] "I guess relative to other players, we're now one of the biggest carbon accounting platforms in the world." – Alexis [04:36] “You could essentially create short term incentives for people to change their behavior today, although the long term benefits are years away.” – Alexis [04:51] "The way we need to approach climate change is very much the same. All of the efforts we do today will have real long-term benefits, probably for our kids or our grandkids." – Alexis [06:10] "We kind of need to create the need and educate people and we're never going to have 10 million people on this app in the short term to build a business." – Alexis [15:19] "Carbon data is complex, right when you look at the process of calculating a carbon based footprint and all of the different acronyms out there, whether it's science based targets, SCRD, CDP, all these things that are related to carbon accounting and sustainability” – Gerald [34:17] "You don't have to oppose climate and growth. There are more and more businesses, in fact, I think a majority of businesses today, who will have a stronger growth trajectory if they align themselves with the net zero trajectory." – Alexis [37:59] "If you are ambitious about your company, then somewhere down the line you're going to have to be ambitious about climate." – Alexis Our Guest Alexis Normand is the co-founder of Greenly, a carbon accounting platform helping companies measure and reduce their emissions with clarity and precision. Drawing on his experience in digital health and innovation, Alexis is passionate about integrating sustainability into everyday business operations and using technology to make climate action accessible for all. Resources Alexis Normand LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexisnormand Greenly website: https://greenly.earth/en-us Greenly App: https://apps.apple.com/sg/app/   Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com   Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

In this episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Dr. Kim Nugent, a transformational leader, author, and mentorship expert who is changing lives behind bars.  With three master's degrees, a PhD, and executive coaching credentials from Marshall Goldsmith, Dr. Nugent shares how her career in hospitality, higher education, and corporate leadership led to her purpose-driven work in prisons across the country. She explains how structured peer mentorship, behavior change, and emotional intelligence can unlock a better future, not only for the incarcerated, but for anyone feeling stuck or overwhelmed. Dr. Nugent also discusses her groundbreaking book From Prison to Possibilities: Paving Your Path, a structured mentoring program designed to reduce recidivism and prepare incarcerated individuals for productive lives post-release. Together, Gerald and Kim explore how prison isn't always physical; it can be a mindset. Through her alphabetized 26-topic program (A-Z), Dr. Nugent empowers returning citizens with tools to discover purpose, build resilience, and contribute meaningfully to their communities. Her curriculum is now inspiring transformation in maximum-security facilities with zero rule violations among participants. What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Dr. Kim Nugent [4:11] Career journey from hospitality to higher education to prison reform [13:03] The birth of the book From Prison to Possibilities [21:05] Structure, behavior change, and the six-month model [28:19] Emotional intelligence and attitude shifts [31:57] Lifers and legacy: Purpose inside prison [36:42] Peer-led mentorship and accountability [41:00] PTSD, fixed mindset, and redefining success [45:28] Promotion Protocol: Career growth beyond incarceration [50:12] The power of saying “yes”—and learning from “no” [55:00] Advice for anyone stuck in a personal “prison” [59:35] Where to find Dr. Kim Nugent Notable Quotes [6:56] “When you know better, you do better.” – Dr. Kim Nugent [12:31] “Even in a no, there's an opportunity.” – Dr. Kim Nugent [13:42] “ Prison doesn't have to mean you're behind bars. You could be in prison mentally.” – Dr. Kim Nugent [25:41] “We've had zero rule violations from participants across all prisons involved in the program.” – Dr. Kim Nugent [38:49] “If you think you can or think you can't, you're right.” – Dr. Kim Nugent Our Guest Dr. Kim Nugent is a leading mentorship expert, executive coach, and author of From Prison to Possibilities and Promotion Protocol: Unlock the Secrets to Promotability and Career Success. Her structured peer-led mentorship model is being adopted in maximum-security prisons across the U.S., where she works to help inmates rediscover purpose and live more productive lives. Her methodology blends education, coaching, neuroscience, and real-world experience into an empowering curriculum based on 26 foundational topics from A to Z. With deep expertise in leadership, mentoring, and curriculum design, Dr. Nugent is on a mission to create lasting transformation, inside and outside prison walls. Resources Dr. Kim Nugent Website: https://www.drnugentspeaks.com Book: From Prison to Possibilities Book: Promotion Protocol: Unlock the Secrets to Promotability and Career Success   Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com   Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Mentioned  Book: Deep Work by Cal Newport   Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

In this episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard chats with Steven Puri, a former Hollywood studio executive turned entrepreneur. Steven has worked on blockbuster films like Independence Day and Transformers, but today he's focused on helping remote workers stay productive, happy, and focused through his company, Sukha.   Steven shares his personal journey and what led him to rethink productivity. Instead of chasing long hours and constant hustle, he now believes in working with intention and finding flow. He talks about how our environment, like having a creative workspace, can really boost performance. Drawing from his Hollywood background, he explains how the same creative principles can apply to remote work.   The conversation also dives into Sukha, an AI-powered tool he created to help people manage overwhelm. It helps users stay focused by organizing tasks, using music to encourage deep work, and creating simple, structured workflows.   Throughout the episode, you'll hear plenty of practical tips, like how to mentally “commute” to your home office, how to work in sync with your body's natural energy patterns (your chronotype), and how to use AI as a support tool rather than a replacement for creativity.   What We Discuss [02:01] Introduction to Steven Puri [05:49] Evolution of productivity: Then vs. now [09:22] Steven's film industry background [11:24] Legacy and meaningful work [12:47] Flow state: Hollywood lessons for remote work [16:48] Environmental triggers and productivity barriers [19:44] Morning routines and focus [21:54] Leadership lessons from film for remote teams [28:30] Chronotypes and personal productivity rhythms [30:20] Maintaining boundaries in remote work [33:35] AI and the future of remote productivity [36:44] How to connect with Steven   Notable Quotes   [07:40] "Now, I really measure my productivity by the effect, not by how many hours I work." – Steven Puri   [08:39] "I was just burning the candle at both ends and being really productive, but after I recovered, I realized I was more productive by being mindful and intentional." – Gerald J. Leonard   [21:47] "You talk a lot about purpose and intention. These are powerful. When you apply them, powerful things happen." – Steven Puri   [24:28] "It's always about the other thing. The part of your mind that does the cool, 'ooh, peanut butter and chocolate' — that can only function when you have something else to focus on." – Steven Puri   [35:33] "It's not AI that's replacing you. It's people who know how to use AI. Because someone who really understands how to use it can do the work of 10 to 20 people." – Steven Puri Our Guest Steven Puri is the Founder and CEO of The Sukha Company with the mission to help millions of‬ people find their focus, achieve more and have a healthy work life.‬ Steven's career started as a newscaster/interviewer for the #1 youth news show in the‬ ‭DC/Baltimore market (on WTTG-TV) and then as a junior software engineer & Thomas J.‬ Watson Scholar at IBM. After attending USC in Los Angeles, he began working in film‬ ‭production and produced computer-generated visual effects for 14 movies including‬ Independence Day which won the Academy Award for Visual Effects.‬ Steven's first tech company was Centropolis Effects that produced those CGI effects, and he‬ eventually sold it to the German media conglomerate Das Werk when he was 28.‬ Steven then produced some indie films and eventually went studio-side to develop and produce‬ live-action features as a VP of Development & Production at 20th Century Fox (running the Die‬ Hard and Wolverine franchises) and an EVP at DreamWorks Pictures for Kurtzman-Orci‬ Productions where he worked on Star Trek, Transformers and more.‬   Resources Steven Puri LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-puri Email: steven@sukha.co The Sukha Company: https://www.thesukha.co/ APP: https://app.thesukha.co/landing (Try free for 7 days)   Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com   Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Mentioned  Book: Deep Work by Cal Newport Book: The Net and the Butterfly Film: Independence Day Film: Transformers Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

In this episode of the Productivity Smarts Podcast, host Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Sebastien Page, bestselling author of The Psychology of Leadership, to explore how sports psychology, mindset, and positive habits can elevate leadership and productivity.  Together, they unpack powerful concepts like the PERMA model from positive psychology, the Yerkes-Dodson curve on optimal stress levels, and the importance of core beliefs in shaping our perception and performance. Sebastien shares how conversations create brain chemistry that either enhances connection or sparks stress, and how communication and flow are critical to effective teamwork. They also examine the surprising science behind social synchronization, strategic patience in decision-making, and how reframing stress can lead to peak performance. Through personal stories and practical insights, Sebastien reveals why leadership is more about managing mindset than chasing perfection, and how athletes and leaders alike thrive not by avoiding pressure, but by harnessing it.  Whether you're an executive, entrepreneur, or team leader, this episode offers science-backed strategies and real-world advice for performing at your best. Don't forget to check out Sebastian's book and subscribe for more productivity wisdom every week! What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Sebastien Page [04:32] The underrated power of communication [05:38] Conversational intelligence and brain chemistry [07:07] Writing the book after hitting a wall with stress [08:45] Sports psychology and redefining success [15:53] Seligman's PERMA model and leadership application [18:13] Driving meaning, engagement, and relationships at work [22:54] Flow state: what it is and how leaders can spark it [29:04] Core beliefs, team alignment, and upgrading your mindset [33:44] The reticular activating system and what we choose to see [35:56] Understanding the Yerkes-Dodson curve and stress optimization [43:15] Control theory, decision-making, and strategic patience [48:19] Where to find Sebastien and get the book [49:27] Closing and call to action Notable Quotes [04:32] "I just came across a study, Gerald, about how much IQ matters to your lifetime earnings... it shows that after controlling for factors like personality and grit, your IQ accounts for 1 to 2% of your lifelong earnings. Just think about that." – Sebastien Page [05:14] "Business is a team sport. No matter how good you are, if you can't pass the ball, you're not going to be welcome on the team and you're not going to contribute." – Sebastien Page [11:17] "Sports psychology is not about winning, it's about losing." – Sebastien Page [12:26] "The myth of effortless excellence is just that, it's a myth." – Sebastien Page [36:30] "Optimal performance does not occur at a stress level of zero, which means that stress activation can increase performance up to a point." – Sebastien Page [45:04] "Strategic patience is an unbelievably underrated leadership skill. The ability to not make a decision and wait it out and see what happens." – Sebastian Page Our Guest Sebastien Page is a bestselling author, leadership thinker, and head of a $500 billion investment business. In his book The Psychology of Leadership, Sebastien blends neuroscience, sports psychology, and behavioral science to help individuals and teams unlock their full potential. He's also recognized as a Top Voice on LinkedIn, where he shares practical, research-backed insights on leadership and self-improvement. Resources Sebastien Page LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastien-page/ Book: The Psychology of Leadership   Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com   Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

In this episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard chats with leadership coach and author Barbara Stone about her book So Much to Drool About, which uses stories of her Great Danes to teach life lessons on productivity, resilience, and living with purpose. Barbara shares how aligning with personal values and embracing a growth mindset can transform both personal and professional life. She highlights the importance of gratitude, morning routines, and perspective-shifting techniques to overcome challenges. The conversation delves into overcoming limiting beliefs, with Barbara emphasizing the power of dreaming and stepping out of "crates" (comfort zones) to achieve growth. She also discusses her leadership model, which focuses on self-awareness, partnership, and coaching. Listeners will gain practical tips, such as reframing mistakes as learning opportunities and building resilience through alignment with workplace values. Barbara's infectious energy and wisdom remind us that life is "to be drooled over"—full of potential for those willing to embrace courage and clarity. Tune in for inspiration to unlock your productivity and live large! What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Barbara Stone [02:44] Book introduction: So Much to Drool About [08:51] Living large and leading with values [10:37] Book inspiration and wisdom statements [11:24] Positive thinking and brain science [15:53] Coaching clients through stuckness [21:15] Overcoming limiting beliefs and growth mindset [25:43] Dreaming, affirmations, and quantum flirts [29:04] Building a morning routine filled with gratitude and inspiration [34:16] Life lessons from the book [37:50] Where to find the author and closing remarks   Notable Quotes [06:22] “I want people to pick up this book to be inspired and to drool over life, because life is amazing.” – Barbara Stone [09:47] "I truly believe that it's our right to live into our values and live into our purpose. The Danes live large. They be who they need to be, and they show up as they need." – Barbara Stone [22:20] "If you could start thinking about, well, what if, and start searching for what might be possible, you start growing." – Barbara Stone [32:40] "We literally have the ability to program how we're going to see the world." – Gerald J. Leonard [35:04] "Amidst tempting choices, choose wisely. The path to satisfaction lies in the decision that nourishes both your body and soul." – Barbara Stone [35:46] "I give myself the grace to make mistakes. They're often fuel for growth and canvas for learning." – Barbara Stone Our Guest Barbara Stone is a leadership development coach, author, speaker, and founder of BarbStone.com. With a passion for emotional intelligence, personal growth, and helping others lead with purpose, Barbara draws from both her professional expertise and personal experiences—including life with her four Great Danes—to inspire transformation in others. Her book, So Much to Drool About: Lessons for Living Large, blends storytelling, self-reflection, and leadership insights through the eyes of her beloved dogs. Barbara is also a TEDx speaker, social-emotional learning advocate, and an enthusiastic supporter of personal alignment and purposeful living. Resources Barbara Stone Website: https://barbstone.me/ LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/barb-stone Book: So Much to Drool About: Lessons for Living Large   Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com   Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

In this thought-provoking episode of the Productivity Smarts Podcast, host Gerald J. Leonard welcomes inclusive leadership strategist, executive coach, and author Mike Sealy to explore one of the biggest productivity blockers — your mindset. Drawing from his book Mindset Unlocked: How Leaders, Learners, and Dreamers Crush Self-Doubt and Unlock Their Potential, Mike shares actionable strategies for overcoming imposter syndrome, reframing failure, and thriving under pressure. Gerald and Mike dive into how fear of failure sabotages productivity, why bouncing forward is more powerful than bouncing back, and how resilience, emotional intelligence, and growth mindset transform both personal and professional success. They also reveal how leaders can cultivate confidence, unlock their team's potential, and adapt to rapid changes—including the AI revolution reshaping business. Listeners will walk away with practical tools to stay calm under pressure, embrace discomfort, and turn daily habits into their competitive advantage. What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Mike Sealy [04:36] Book praise and author's journey [05:11] Success through stretch goals [07:28] Imposter syndrome and growth zones [10:30] Resilience and bouncing forward [12:59] Psychological barriers to growth mindset [15:18] Staying calm under pressure [17:22] Overcoming freeze mindset [20:08] Box breathing and self-talk techniques [21:39] Adapting in a fast-paced world [22:47] Practice and deliberate repetition [23:56] Learning from mistakes and growth culture [25:17] Emotional intelligence in leadership [27:43] Essential daily practice: don't fall in love with tradition [28:34] AI, innovation, and future skills [30:39] Where to find Mike Sealy and his book Notable Quotes [09:17] "One of the biggest problems of imposter syndrome is fear of failure." – Mike Sealy [12:39] "For every obstacle you come up against or every failure that you find is how you manage through that process. And the best way to manage through it is keep moving forward." – Mike Sealy [13:35] "Failure is not the opposite of success. It's a prerequisite to success." – Mike Sealy [15:59] "We need to stay calm under pressure, but the pebbling is the habit that we need to develop and make into a routine." – Gerald J. Leonard [27:50] "Don't fall in love with tradition. The world is changing. So, if you get stuck in the status quo of things, you're already being left behind." – Mike Sealy Our Guest Mike Sealy is an inclusive leadership strategist, executive coach, and co-founder of X-INC GLOBAL. With over 25 years of leadership experience, Mike specializes in helping leaders, learners, and dreamers overcome imposter syndrome, cultivate emotional intelligence, and unlock their full potential. His book Mindset Unlocked distills years of hard-earned wisdom into practical tools for transforming fear into fuel for growth. Resources Mike Sealy LinkedIn - https://uk.linkedin.com/in/sealymike Book: Mindset Unlocked: How Leaders, Learners, and Dreamers Crush Self-Doubt and Unlock Their Potential Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

In this episode of Productivity Smarts, Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Cindy Baker, productivity coach, speaker, and author of Focus to Fortune: Profitable Time Management for Busy Minds. With a background in education and counseling, and a deep understanding of how ADHD impacts daily life, Cindy helps entrepreneurs cut their work time in half by eliminating distractions and leveraging their neurodiverse strengths for better results in less time. Cindy shares how a late-in-life ADHD diagnosis reshaped her approach to focus, structure, and productivity. Drawing from personal experience and years of coaching, she reveals why traditional productivity hacks often fail for ADHD minds and what to do instead. Gerald and Cindy explore how time audits expose hidden inefficiencies, how to implement 90-minute sprints to access deep focus, and how to use the Eisenhower Matrix to prioritize work that drives real impact. They also tackle how to set boundaries, say no without guilt, and build lasting habits through simple techniques like habit stacking. Rather than trying to “fix” ADHD, Cindy encourages listeners to reframe it as a competitive advantage; one that, with the right tools and mindset, can fuel purpose, profitability, and balance. If you're overwhelmed by distractions or want a productivity system that works with your brain and not against it, this episode is your starting line. What We Discuss [00:00:00] Introduction to Cindy Baker [00:03:27] Cindy's ADHD journey & success [00:06:03] The power of gratitude & mindset shifts [00:07:12] Time audit & time blindness [00:10:18] Distraction management & the 90-minute sprint method [00:13:30] Deep work & digital discipline [00:15:05] Matching energy to tasks & circadian rhythms [00:17:54] Prioritization: The Eisenhower Matrix for ADHD minds [00:21:11] Saying no without guilt & qualifying your “yes” [00:24:47] Strategies for building lasting routines that stick [00:28:02] Cindy's free gift & closing thoughts Notable Quotes [05:40] “I've figured out what works with an ADHD brain and what doesn't, and I think that's the key. Instead of focusing on what needs fixing, ask what are the strengths, and how can you leverage those?” – Cindy  [07:13] "Awareness is the first step. And so if you don't understand where your time is going and how you're wasting time, then you can't fix it.” – Cindy [23:35] "Every time you say yes to one thing, you're saying no to something else; often yourself.” – Cindy [25:24] “Habit stacking is really helpful. For instance, I used to lose my keys all the time, so I started to put my keys in a coffee mug that I keep by the coffee maker, and I always have coffee. I don't have to think about that the night before.” – Cindy Our Guest Cindy Baker is a productivity coach, speaker, and advertising strategist who helps entrepreneurs maximize profits and performance — especially those managing ADHD. A former teacher and counselor, Cindy blends research, personal experience, and proven frameworks to guide busy minds toward focused, impactful action. Cindy is the author of Focus to Fortune: Profitable Time Management for Busy Minds and leads programs that help clients reduce overwhelm, boost effectiveness, and build lives aligned with their true strengths. Resources Cindy Baker Website - https://cindybakercoaching.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/adhdcoachcindybaker/ Book: Focus to Fortune: https://www.amazon.com/Focus-Fortune-Profitable-Management-Minds Beat Procrastination Course – https://waitnomore.net/ Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

#airtable #on2air #builtonair 5/27/2025 - BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show - S22-E08 ___________________________ The BuiltOnAir podcast is a live weekly show highlighting everything happening in the Airtable universe. Check us out at BuiltOnAir.com/join. Join our community, join our Slack channel, and see what's happening. ------------------------ SPONSORED BY On2Air - Airtable Apps and Integrations to run your business operations in Airtable Start a free 14-day trial of On2Air Apps - https://on2air.com?via=podcast ------------------------ ___________________________ IN THIS EPISODE

In this compelling episode of the Productivity Smarts Podcast, Gerald J. Leonard welcomes veteran business strategist and author Tom Hagerty to explore a powerful truth: every productivity issue is ultimately a relationship issue. Drawing on insights from his book The Business of Relationships and over 45 years of executive leadership, Tom discusses how trust, connection, and communication form the backbone of productive teams and thriving organizations. From ghosting in the workplace and quiet quitting to leadership transparency and emotional resilience, Gerald and Tom examine the real-world challenges facing today's workforce. They unpack why “change before you have to” is more than just a mantra—it's a survival skill in today's dynamic business environment. Listeners will learn how to strengthen culture, rebuild trust after conflict, and lead with authenticity. Plus, they'll hear how legendary quotes from leaders like Walt Disney, Jack Welch, and Sheryl Sandberg tie directly into the art of building high-performing relationships. Whether you're a team leader, executive, or aspiring professional, this episode is packed with timeless lessons and actionable insights for turning strong relationships into your greatest productivity tool. What We Discuss [00:02:01] Introduction to Tom Hagerty [00:06:51] Entrepreneurial mindset for success [00:08:17] Information overload & critical thinking [00:09:30] The power of relationships in business [00:11:38] Workplace trends & ghosting [00:16:14] Transparency & mutual respect in leadership [00:21:05] Leadership styles: the bird analogy [00:24:10] Relationship problems are core problems [00:26:54] Walt Disney on people & dreams [00:29:15] Imperfect leaders & business success [00:36:46] How to connect with Tom Hagerty Notable Quotes [04:18] "Every day that we spend, every day that we waste, every day that we don't achieve what we set out to do, we are literally marching toward death, and every one of us has an expiration date” – Tom [09:30] "I'm not a self-made man. I don't think anyone is. But I know it is because of relationships and the relationships I forged through networking that have allowed me to grow and build and do the things that I'm doing.” – Tom [28:14] "If you don't have somebody to sit on that expensive leather couch with you and watch the big screen, if you don't have somebody next to you in the golf cart, I don't care what club you belong to. It's going to be a lonely 18 holes. You know, it's not fun." – Tom [35:47] “Change the budding addiction, the passive aggressive nature with your wife and kids that is destructive in the family, your financial irresponsibility, before you have to.” – Tom Our Guest Tom Hagerty is a seasoned business strategist, speaker, and author with over 45 years of executive leadership experience across multiple industries. He is the author of The Business of Relationships, a book that distills decades of wisdom into practical strategies for strengthening trust, communication, and collaboration in today's workplace. Known for his sharp insights, straight talk, and a deep belief in the human side of business, Tom has helped countless organizations improve their performance by focusing on what truly matters: people. From the boardroom to the breakroom, he advocates for leadership that is transparent, participative, and grounded in authentic connection. Resources Tom Hagerty  LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhagerty0126/ Book: The Business of Relationships - Amazon Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

What if chronic illness wasn't the end—but a new beginning? In this episode of Productivity Smarts, Gerald J. Leonard welcomes Rebecca Renck, author of Healing Habits: How to Help Your Body Heal Itself from Chronic Illness. Rebecca shares her transformative journey through Crohn's disease and breast cancer, revealing how intentional lifestyle choices and healing habits empowered her to reclaim her health and purpose. Together, Gerald and Rebecca explore the connection between faith, holistic health, productivity, and identity. From decoding your body's signals to detoxing your environment and managing stress with grounding techniques, this episode is packed with practical insights for living well—even when faced with adversity. Whether you're navigating illness or just looking to live more mindfully, Rebecca's story will inspire you to listen to your body, trust your inner wisdom, and create habits that support healing and happiness. What We Discuss [00:00:00] Introduction to Rebecca Recnk [00:04:01] Rebecca's health journey and early decisions [00:10:25] Recognizing the body's healing ability [00:13:13] Understanding and interpreting body signals [00:17:40] Modern life and digital detox [00:19:02] Role of intuition and de-stressing practices [00:21:55] Developing healing routines and rhythms [00:27:45] Managing cravings and addictions [00:29:57] Importance of routines for self-care [00:33:08] How to connect with Rebecca Renck Notable Quotes [09:01] “You have to make that hard stand. When you do, you start to create an identity around what you want to be.” – Rebecca [10:38] “The body wants to heal. There's no reason to believe it can't heal from disease too.” – Rebecca [25:41] “If I could tell anybody to do anything, it would be to get outside more. You know, sit in the sun without sunscreen on for a couple of minutes and, you know, just use the earth.” — Rebecca  [32:48] “Healing is a lifestyle. You can't ever think that you're done.” – Rebecca Our Guest Rebecca Renck is the author of Healing Habits: How to Help Your Body Heal Itself from Chronic Illness, a book inspired by her journey through Crohn's disease and breast cancer. She empowers readers to develop awareness, create healing routines, and trust their body's natural wisdom. Through writing, coaching, and public speaking, she helps others explore holistic health through faith, self-awareness, and daily practice. Resources Rebecca Renck  Website - https://rebeccarenck.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-renck-2b0814329 Book: Healing Habits - https://rebeccarenck.com/healing-habits Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

Do you ever stop to think about what your clothes are saying before you even speak? We've all heard that first impressions matter—but have you ever wondered if your outfit might be the silent ambassador standing between you and that elusive promotion? In this episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Gayla Bentley, a fashion icon whose work has graced People Magazine, Oprah Magazine, and even Shark Tank. Gayla shares how personal style isn't just about looking good—it's a transformative tool for confidence, clarity, and productivity. From her early struggles as a "chubby tomboy" to becoming a sought-after stylist for Fortune 500 executives, Gayla reveals how mastering your wardrobe can save time, reduce stress, and elevate your professional and personal life.   Gerald and Gayla dive into practical tips for building a functional wardrobe, the psychology of first impressions, and how to thrive in remote work settings. Whether you're a CEO or a college grad on a budget, Gayla's insights will help you unlock the power of style to achieve your goals.  What We Discuss [02:05] Introduction to Gayla Bentley [05:08] Gayla Bentley's journey into fashion and what has made her successful [08:20] Mentoring and coaching as the HOV lane [12:06] Lifestyle chart as mentioned in Gayla's book [13:24] How style influences a person's individual productivity [18:43] Helping people discover their style without feeling overwhelmed by the economy [21:49] Breakthrough stories from clients [24:17] Remote work style: Balancing comfort and professionalism [26:21] Organizing your wardrobe: The key to consistent style [28:14] The importance of professional image consulting [29:13] Final thoughts and resources Notable Quotes [05:39] “I heard God say to me, don't worry, Gayla. I'm going to teach you how to dress yourself. And you're going to be an influence on how other people dress for the rest of your life.” — Gayla [08:23] “Go to the people that have the wisdom and you will be in that HOV lane. You're not going to reinvent the wheel. You have a question, find out who already answered it and get in touch with them.” — Gayla [14:05] “If you look confident at work and polished at work and well groomed at work, you are the first people they're going to look at for promotion.” — Gayla [18:07] “You only have one chance to make a first impression when you show up.” — Gayla [20:07] “Consistency is key. You can't go to work one day looking like GQ and the next day looking like a pool boy.” — Gayla Our Guest Gayla Bentley is a style expert and author who has transformed lives through fashion for over 30 years. From designing clothing lines to working with Fortune 500 executives, her work emphasizes that style is for everyone—regardless of size, status, or budget. Her book, Fashion's Stepsister, offers a roadmap to build confidence, save time, and show up looking your best every day Resources Gayla Bentley  Website - https://www.gaylabentley.org/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaylabentley Book: Fashion's Stepsister, A Journey to Style: A Memoir - https://www.amazon.com/Fashions-Stepsister-Journey-Style-Memoir/dp/B0DNMV3G9S Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

What if slowing down was the secret to speeding up success? In this episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Larry Weingarten—licensed general contractor, hot water systems expert, and author of The Philosopher's Wrench, a book that creatively teaches lessons that extend far beyond plumbing. With decades of experience and a passion for education, Larry shares how embracing patience, presence, and precision leads to better results—whether you're troubleshooting a water heater or navigating leadership challenges. Larry offers real-world stories that illustrate why slowing down is often the fastest way to success. From turning away unsafe jobs to mentoring at-risk youth, his approach is grounded in integrity and a desire to truly serve. Gerald and Larry explore how trust, focus, and long-term thinking can transform how we work and live. Larry's thoughtful philosophy offers timeless guidance to anyone looking to improve their productivity while staying true to their values. What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Larry Weingarten [05:34] The importance of slowing down [10:36] Philosophy of problem-solving [12:53] Case study of an impatient client [14:02] Innovative solutions for clients [16:03] Building trust with clients [19:12] Networking with other contractors [23:00] The importance of service [23:16] Lessons from animals [24:06] Applying the slowdown method [24:25] The power of presence [26:53] Building trust with clients [27:52] Commitment to fixing problems [28:10] Where to find Larry's work [32:48] Why listening deeply can be life-changing—for both sides Notable Quotes [02:45] “I've always liked taking things apart and then learning how to put them back together. I was the kid in the classroom that the teachers would call on to fix stuff.” — Larry  [05:39] “The key to troubleshooting is gathering up lots of information, you know, just absolutely hordes of it.” — Larry  [08:31] “You know, moving at a moderate pace keeps you safe. It keeps all your fingers on your hands.” — Larry  [17:36] “I got to be the plumber that saved them money, not just cost them money.” — Larry  [27:54] “I will not leave a job till it's fixed. I just won't.” — Larry  Our Guest Larry Weingarten is a licensed contractor, author, and educator who has worked on over 5,000 hot water systems. He's a trusted figure in his field, not just for his technical mastery but for his unique blend of common sense, deep listening, and heartfelt service. His book The Philosopher's Wrench: Using Creativity, Common Sense and Heart teaches lessons that apply far beyond plumbing. Resources Larry Weingarten Website -https://www.larryweingarten.com/ Blog – https://www.larryweingarten.com/blog Book – The Philosopher's Wrench   Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com   Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

Ever feel like your problems are too big, too vague, too tangled to tackle? Dr. Mark L. Teague calls it “the blob”—that overwhelming mass of modern challenges we all face. In this powerful episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Dr. Teague, economist, former finance executive, and author of A Working Man's Guide, to reveal a game-changing approach: frame the problem before you fight it. Dr. Teague shares the strategy that helped him go from farmhand to PhD and Wall Street leadership: simplify the chaos, break it into components, and work against a frame, not a feeling. We also take a look at his Impact Index—a sharp diagnostic tool to evaluate whether someone's ambition and capability align—and a deep observation at why building a life of abundant purpose is the ultimate productivity advantage. Learn how principled thinking, rooted in traditional values, leads not just to success—but to purpose. Let's dive in. What We Discuss [00:00] Introducing Dr. Mark L. Teague, PhD [04:01] The 3 core principles that shaped Dr. Teague [05:31] Why accepting life's problems is the first step to real productivity [07:44] The power of the Scientific Method: Turning blobs into frames [11:06] Samuel Morse and the power of reframing problems [13:44] Building resilience in the age of AI, economic shifts, and overwhelm [17:07] The Impact Index: How ambition and competence drive real outcomes [23:22] Abundant purpose: Why fulfillment beats wealth every time [28:02] From managing money to managing meaning: Lessons for entrepreneurs and tradespeople [32:52] How values-driven leadership builds lasting business and family success [36:22] Holding fast to your North Star: The conversation that matters most [39:23] Where to find Dr. Teague and his book Notable Quotes [04:20] “Work hard, be honest, and be respectful. Those three things were expected—and you didn't deviate.” — Dr. Teague [07:44] “Don't work against the blob. Frame the problem, then work the frame.” — Dr. Teague [10:22] “Simplify. That's the secret to all stress management.” — Dr. Teague [17:07] “Capability without ambition makes you dead weight. Ambition without capability makes you dangerous.” — Dr. Teague [25:48] “Build your life around the intangibles—and use those same principles to pursue the tangible.” — Dr. Teague [35:55] “If you put business before family, you're talking to a fool.” — Dr. Teague Our Guest Dr. Mark L. Teague is a former finance executive, PhD economist, entrepreneur, and author of A Working Man's Guide. With deep roots in traditional values and decades of high-stakes leadership, Dr. Teague brings a fresh, practical perspective to productivity rooted in principle. His book delivers actionable tools and thought-provoking insights for anyone striving to lead a purpose-driven life and career. Resources Dr. Mark L. Teague, PhD Website - https://aworkingmansguide.com/ Facebook - https://m.facebook.com/DrMarkLTeague/ Book: A Working Man's Guide - https://www.amazon.com/Working-Mans-Guide-Strong-Values/dp/B0D9HYRPSP Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

In this episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard sits down with seasoned psychotherapist and author Steven Melman, who brings over 40 years of experience in the mental health world. Their conversation dives into what it really takes to stay productive, grounded, and emotionally resilient—especially for those in helping professions like therapy, coaching, and consulting. Steven shares insights from his book, Guidance for New Clinicians in a Chaotic World: How to Practice Your Craft While Preserving Your Traditional Values. Whether you're just starting out or have years under your belt, you'll find plenty of practical advice on setting boundaries, avoiding burnout, and even using humor as a powerful tool in your work. Gerald and Steven get real about the challenges clinicians face today—from the mental health impact of marijuana legalization to the importance of mentally “clocking in and out.” They also talk about the “goal wheel,” a tool for setting and tracking goals across all areas of life, and how self-discipline plays a key role in staying on track. If you're a clinician, coach, or just someone who wants to align your purpose with your productivity, you'll walk away from this episode with fresh perspective, useful tips, and a renewed sense of direction. Tune in and learn how staying true to your values might just be your most powerful productivity hack. What We Discuss [00:02:01] Meet Steven Melman: Clinician, author, mentor [00:03:59] How to stay present with clients—and leave work at work [00:06:24] The discipline of mentally “clocking out” and honoring personal time [00:08:11] Tackling procrastination: Use reward-based to-do lists [00:10:38] Creating a goal wheel for a balanced life [00:13:43] Early career productivity traps and how to avoid them [00:20:08] Listening over leading: A therapist's most powerful tool [00:22:07] The impact of mindful communication in therapy and marriage [00:24:52] Why humor isn't just a bonus—it's a strategy [00:26:58] The future of mental health: Staying productive while staying true [00:32:48] Where to find Steven's book and work Notable Quotes [00:05:54] “When you leave work, you have to mentally clock out. Otherwise, you're cheating your family and yourself.” — Steven Melman [00:10:38] “We're implementing self-discipline, overcoming procrastination, and being productive by reviewing our day and planning for tomorrow.” — Steven Melman [00:22:07] “You don't learn anything when you're the one doing all the talking. Truly listen and summarize what you hear.” — Steven Melman [00:24:52] “I take my work seriously—but I use humor to create connection and release tension.” — Steven Melman Our Guest Steven Melman is a licensed psychotherapist, author, and mentor with four decades of clinical experience. His latest book, Guidance for New Clinicians in a Chaotic World, serves as a practical and principled guide for new therapists looking to succeed without sacrificing their personal or spiritual values. Resources Steven Melman Website - https://stevenmelmanpsychotherapist.com/ Email - stevenmelman@yahoo.com LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-melman Book - Guidance for New Clinicians in a Chaotic World   Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com   Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

In this episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard explores the intersection of ancient wisdom and modern productivity with Gerard Wouters, a Taoist therapist and former financial manager whose unorthodox methods heal trauma in just two sessions. With over 28 years of experience, Gerard reveals how Taoist principles—like deciphering setbacks as messages and leading through harmony, not pressure—can transform overwhelm into flow.     From his shocking body-mind therapy breakthroughs to surviving 150 daily calls as a corporate leader, Gerard's stories prove that real productivity starts with self-awareness, boundaries, and the courage to say "no."     Tune in to discover why managing "people, not numbers" unlocks peak performance—and how to spot the hidden meaning behind life's obstacles.     What We Discuss [00:02:01] Introduction to Gerard Wouters: Taoist therapist and author   [00:04:41] The body-mind connection: Where trauma hides (shoulders = anger, pelvis = abuse)   [00:07:10] Gerard's 2-session therapy vs. years of conventional treatment   [00:10:26] Fear vs. danger: Why "spiders vanish when you unlearn fear"   [00:13:06] Taoist flow: How setbacks guide you (flat tire = don't meet that friend!)   [00:17:22] Leadership hack: The "3-minute rule" for emails/calls   [00:19:12] The power of "no"—why boundaries create respect   [00:23:31] "Stop managing numbers; nurture people": Teams thrive without pressure   [00:26:38] Where to find Gerard's book and work     Notable Quotes [00:03:46] “The treatment that I developed is absolutely unique and it helps people heal from all kinds of mental issues in two-hour sessions or a two-day workshop.” — Gerard Wouters [00:10:41] “Danger is a reality, but fear is a choice, and that's how it is. You choose if you fear something or not.” — Gerard Wouters [00:22:43] “By saying no, you create respect. We are only human, not robots. You need to set priorities and take care of yourself.” — Gerard Wouters [00:26:38] “Stop guiding and directing based on numbers because you don't work with numbers; you work with people. When people are comfortable and happy in their job, they will produce more automatically without pressure.” — Gerard Wouters   Our Guest Gerard Wouters is a Dutch Taoist therapist, speaker, and former financial manager who blends ancient philosophy with pragmatic healing. His groundbreaking therapy resolves deep trauma in two sessions, and his book, How to Make Life Simple, Happy & Successful, redefines productivity through presence and self-trust.    Resources   Gerard Wouters   Website - https://taoistisch.nl LinkedIn - https://nl.linkedin.com/in/gerard-wouters-1062231 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/wouters.gerard?igsh=Nm16c3ozYjhkeTln Book - How to Make Life Simple, Happy, and Successful: The Taoist Way by Gerard Wouters   Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com   Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

Did you know the way you make eye contact could determine your next promotion—or prevent a team meltdown?  In this paradigm-shifting episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard uncovers the hidden mechanics of workplace success with Dr. Dianne Olvera, a clinical psychologist and former diplomat whose espionage experience revealed surprising truths about human connection. With dual doctorates in bilingual education and cultural neuroscience, Dr. Olvera proves that real productivity isn't about doing more, it's about connecting better. From her accidental dental disaster as a TWA stewardess to surviving Argentina's political turmoil, Dr. Olvera's extraordinary journey reveals how connection fuels resilience in business and life. This isn't just another soft skills lecture. It's an operational manual for the most overlooked productivity tool you have: your ability to truly see others.  Tune in to discover how mindful communication and authentic connection can transform your team dynamics, fuel inclusivity, and unlock lasting productivity.   What We Discuss [02:01] Introduction to Dr. Dianne Olvera's extraordinary career   [05:07] A hilarious (and revealing) story about knocking out a passenger's tooth mid-flight   [08:05] How language shapes culture—lessons from Latin America's "open conversations"   [13:29] The science of eye contact: Why being "felt" boosts productivity   [17:36] Spy tactics for workplace dynamics: Using eyes to set boundaries   [19:17] How electrical energy in our eyes rebuilds broken relationships   [23:31] The dark side of jokes: How negative speech patterns poison teams   [26:21] Neurodiversity in the workplace: Creating safety for divergent thinkers   [32:15] The "Ask Don't Tell" philosophy to empower self-leadership and intrinsic motivation  [32:53] Naming behaviours in the book [38:40] Where to connect with Dr. Olvera   Notable Quotes   [05:01] “I knocked a man's tooth out with my hip as we were getting ready to land at the Indianapolis 500. This is when they still had real forks." — Dr. Dianne Olvera   [08:05] "I spent 12 years in graduate school going for my first doctorate in bilingual special education, and then my second one was in cultural differences because I wanted to know what is the impact of language on people." — Dr. Dianne Olvera   [09:59] "In Latin America, people would come up, hug me, and tell me to my face what they thought of me. At first, you want to crawl into a hole, but then you realize they really care about me." — Dr. Dianne Olvera   [13:29] "When you broaden your awareness, you actually notice when somebody looks at you, and you also notice when they don't look at you. And so you don't feel." — Dr. Dianne Olvera   [19:17] "Our eyes are of the electrical system of our body. You can literally turn negative relationships or relationships that have gone cold within a week by just learning how to use your eyes." — Dr. Dianne Olvera   [23:31] "Negative speech patterns usually start out as a joke. But then that little negative gesture permeates the whole group." — Dr. Dianne Olvera   [33:44] “So it's the words you don't use that are the words that get you into trouble.”— Dr. Dianne Olvera   Our Guest Dr. Dianne Olvera is a lively and compassionate educator, former diplomat, and intelligence officer whose groundbreaking work has transformed classrooms and workplaces around the world. Holding doctorates in bilingual special education and cultural neuroscience, she brings a rare blend of academic insight and real-world experience. Her research into how language and nonverbal cues shape the brain has helped teams and individuals communicate more effectively, resolve conflict, and foster genuine connection. In her acclaimed book, The Power of Connection, Dr. Olvera reveals how subtle shifts in speech patterns and body language can unlock empowerment, collaboration, and lasting change.   Resources Dianne Olvera Website - https://www.drdianneolvera.com/ Book - The Power of Connection   Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com   Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Mentioned Book Conversational Intelligence  Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

What If the Secret to Productivity… Is laughter? What do you do when your career disappears overnight? When GPS kills your bestselling book? Or when your team is drowning in stress and silence? For award-winning journalist and humorist Bill Williams, the answer wasn't hustle—it was humor. In this episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Bill Williams—award-winning journalist, former trombonist, and the brilliant mind behind 20 Years of Internet Humor, Volume One. For over two decades, Bill has delivered daily doses of joy through his “Thought of the Day” emails, and now he's sharing how laughter can transform not just your mood—but your productivity. Bill dives into his incredible journey from film and finance to publishing and performance, showing how humor helped him lead teams, overcome major life transitions (including two bankruptcies), and adapt to everything from the death of film photography to the rise of GPS. You'll discover how a funny email boosted his sales team's performance, why “nobody ever bought something from a grouch,” and how one book is helping readers around the world start their day with a smile. If you've ever needed a reminder that joy and success can go hand in hand, this conversation is for you. What We Discuss [00:00:05] Introduction to Bill Williams [00:06:27] Adapting to change in careers [00:09:33] Impact of humor on productivity [00:12:28] Organizing content for the book [00:15:10] The role of humor in sales [00:17:35] Using humor to navigate transitions [00:19:29] Staying focused in a digital age [00:20:21] Discussion on negativity in media [00:22:49] Productivity lessons from career transitions [00:26:19] Adapting to challenges in journalism [00:27:28] Closing remarks Notable Quotes [06:27] "One of the biggest things that I can say I have had and what I advise anybody to do is be adaptable, because things change. And when things change, you need to change with them." — Bill Williams [15:10] "Nobody ever bought something from a grouch. If you're not smiling, if you're not ready to have a joke with somebody and, you know, have them smile, you're not going to be a very good salesman." — Bill Williams [17:35] "I don't want to be a grump, okay? And nobody ever was a good manager when they were always grumpy, you know, and so, hey, if I can use humor, which is something I've always tried to do, things work out better." — Bill Williams [26:26] "You have to change with the situation. We put the disaster information on grocery bags so that they could get the information." — Bill Williams Resources Bill Williams Website: https://www.billwilliamscomedy.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@billwilliamscomedy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-williams-2488b0b Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/billwilliamscomedy Book: 20 Years of Internet Humor   Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com   Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds

What if your brain's "operating system" is running on outdated software? In this transformative episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Agnes Chau—award-winning transformational coach, aerospace engineer, and founder of the nonprofit Empowered Heart—to explore how neuroscience, subconscious reprogramming, and heart-mind alignment can unlock unparalleled productivity and fulfillment. From sound healing with gamma waves (backed by MIT research on Alzheimer's prevention) to muscle testing and Psych-K techniques, Agnes reveals actionable strategies to bridge the gap between conscious goals and subconscious blocks. Discover why 95% of behaviors are subconscious, how to "cancel" limiting beliefs in real time, and why stress relief isn't just self-care—it's a non-negotiable for peak performance. Packed with metaphors (think "Dead Sea vs. Mediterranean" for energy flow) and Gerald's personal vertigo comeback story, this episode is a masterclass in rewiring your mind, elevating resilience, and leading a life of purpose. Let's get into it!   What We Discuss [00:00] Introduction to Agnes [07:26] The importance of understanding subconscious behaviors and beliefs [08:28] The role of the subconscious [11:31] Upgrading the human operating system [18:28] The importance of achieving inner peace for positive life changes [21:04] The size of conscious vs. subconscious [22:22] Team alignment: football analogy [23:24] Heart and brain coherence [26:57] Practical application of alignment  [30:06] The Empowered Heart nonprofit organization [35:04] Stress impacts on physical and mental health [41:20] The Dead Sea vs. Mediterranean Sea analogy [45:08] Closing remarks Notable Quotes [10:42] "The subconscious is like that high speed train, whereas your conscious mind is like riding a bicycle. Well, if that high speed train is pointed in the wrong direction, you may get there faster." — Agnes Chau [11:49] "To upgrade your human operating system, you can tap into the powerhouse which is your brain, and align it with your divine heart, which is your intuition, your higher self, the holy spirit within the superconscious, and also tapping into and harmonizing the heart, the mind, and the body intelligence to create that life that you want." — Agnes Chau [32:26] "I'm not proposing that it's just all positive thinking. I'm proposing balanced thinking. And the challenge is that we have too much negativity and that's why there's this whole push towards more positivity to balance ourselves out. But at the end of the day, what you want is accurate thinking." — Agnes Chau [35:27] "If we're not constantly rinsing and washing out our brain with positivity through meditation and taking care of ourselves, then over time, stress will create a physical issue." — Gerald J. Leonard [39:25] "The importance of learning is about neuroplasticity. And it's always important to learn something new, whether it's physical or mental." — Agnes Chau Resources Agnes Chau Empowered Heart Website: https://www.empowered-heart.org/about-5 Website: https://www.agneschau.com/agnes-background LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agnes-chau-llc Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds  

Leadership isn't built in boardrooms—it's forged in the ER, on combat missions, and in the quiet moments when no one's watching. In this high-impact episode of Productivity Smarts, host Gerald J. Leonard sits down with Dr. Josh McConkey—emergency physician, U.S. Army Colonel, and author of Be the Weight Behind the Spear. Drawing from 23 years of military leadership and frontline medicine, Dr. McConkey reveals how his "weight behind the spear" philosophy can transform passive contributors into high-performance leaders, even in chaotic environments. From harrowing Iraq war stories to the ER's opioid crisis frontline, Dr. McConkey shares riveting lessons on accountability, resilience, and adaptive leadership. Discover why NASA's 26-year-old mission controller succeeded (and what today's leaders can learn from it), how to replace micromanagement with ownership, and why "complacency kills" in business and life. Packed with raw anecdotes and actionable frameworks, this episode is a masterclass in leading with purpose—whether you're steering a team, a family, or your own career.   What We Discuss [00:05] Introduction to Dr. Josh McConkey [07:00] Leadership ethos explained [09:03] Productivity mindset shift [10:41] Youth confidence and leadership [11:45] The space race analogy [13:14] The story of Stephen Bales [18:04] Mental health crisis and impact of drug addiction [20:22] Hidden productivity killers [23:08] Focus on solutions [25:51] Adapting to change [27:32] AI in medicine [29:01] Learning more about Dr. McConkey   Notable Quotes [4:58] "If you're not making a difference, then you're wasting your time." — Dr. Josh McConkey   [7:00] "Be the Weight behind the Spear. That's my personal leadership ethos... That tip of the spear means nothing if you don't have a significant weight in those people behind you." — Dr. Josh McConkey   [16:58] "Standards, not rules. I give my intent, this is what I need to happen for us to be successful... If you're having to micromanage somebody, then you probably make another decision." — Dr. Josh McConkey   [25:51] "Complacency kills. It kills in business. It kills on the battlefield... You have to find a way to adapt and overcome." — Dr. Colonel Joshua McConkey   Resources Dr. Josh McConkey Website: https://www.joshmcconkey.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSQ7OpDAy4hr3doGNtqwtcA LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-mcconkey-md/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JoshMcConkeyForCongress Book: Be The Weight Behind The Spear Productivity Smarts Podcast Website - productivitysmartspodcast.com Gerald J. Leonard Website - geraldjleonard.com Turnberry Premiere website - turnberrypremiere.com Scheduler - vcita.com/v/geraldjleonard   Kiva is a loan, not a donation, allowing you to cycle your money and create a personal impact worldwide. https://www.kiva.org/lender/topmindshelpingtopminds