POPULARITY
Categories
Does your front office feel overwhelmed? Kiera shares what the problem is 99% of the time, as well as how to clear up the confusion, and three tactics that bring about clarity and control very quickly. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Trasnscript: Kiera Dent- Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today, I just wanted to talk about front office overwhelm. Like, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. That's a real thing, it's a real deal. This happens all the time. And I just want you guys to be able to fix that quickly and easily. So today, we're here to wrap. We're here to have a good time. We're here to talk about the front desk overwhelm and how you can fix that and do it with a ton of ease. So. If your front office feels overwhelmed, if you feel like they're overwhelmed, if you're ever scared to walk up there because you're like, my gosh, they're always stressed out. This is the episode for you and your front office team, because honestly, it's usually not that they have too much to do. It's that they're just, I call it front office soup. Then they're just all like, it's a bowl of spaghetti and we're all slurring and slopping and it's just a mess up there. But because we just have to figure out what matters and who does what. And it usually, in front office team members, I hope you hear me loud and clear, I'm not being a jerk, I'm Kiera Dent from the block and I've sat in your shoes and I understand it and I've been in your shoes and I know this overwhelmed feeling. It's not usually a workload problem. Usually what it is, is it's a role clarity problem. 99.9 % of the time, if we clean that up and we like untangle the ball of spaghetti, everybody's super happy, everybody's clear and things start rocking and rolling. So. Again, this is where we're at today. I wanted to just give a quick tactical podcast for you for that front desk overwhelm. And I want you to just know that like at Dental A Team , every single consultant on our team has been in your shoes. ⁓ I don't just say these words on the intro to the episode. We don't just understand you. We genuinely are you. We've been in your shoes. We've sat in your shoes. We've sat at the front office. We've taken the phone calls. We've had the schedule fall apart last minute. I've had the treatment plans not close. I've had doctor on my case saying, Kiera. get the schedule full and I'm like, I don't really know what to do, okay? I've had that phone running a million miles a minute. We get it. It's chaotic up there, but it doesn't need to be chaos. And so when we have all that, how can we take the urgency away and help you focus on the important thing? And so this is gonna help us kind of figure out like, why do people get overwhelmed? How do get the confusion cleared up? And then what are three things that bring clarity and control very quickly? That's not gonna take months and months to get that stabilized, but to actually do it really quickly. If you don't know us, hi, we're the Dental A Team. I'm Kiera Dent. Dent really is my last name. It took me three fiancees. You can ask me about that later. It's a real joke, but it's a real life. I love dentistry. I love helping people have their best lives. And I love the dentistry as the platform that brings us all together. I've been a dental assistant, a treatment coordinator, a scheduler, biller, an office manager, regional manager. have all my own practices. I took my first office from 500,000 to 2.4 million in nine months and opened a second location. To say I've been around the block is not a lie. I have bought practices, I've sold practices, I've been parts of DSOs, I've been part of boutique practices, I've merged offices, you name it. I don't think that there's a single thing that I haven't done yet in dentistry, so try me. I'd love to meet somebody that I'm like, yep, never heard of that before. ⁓ And our job is to make dentistry fun again. Our job is to make you love your life again. Our job is to bring simple clarity. But as a business owner myself, I hated where I'd go to conferences and people would just talk. to me and I have to go back and rally my team and I realized I'm gonna create a business that's gonna make your life easier. So we actually work with doctors and teams. We help doctors set the vision, where are we all going? And then we figure out your finances. Let's make sure you're profitable. And if you have tax aversion, like you're so scared of it. Not that you don't pay it, don't get me crazy on that, but that you're so scared because you feel like you're making money but you're always broke. We help offices actually like find the money, keep the money, make the money. Like let's have you be profitable. And then the other part is how do we do system and team development together? I call that the yes model. You first vision, making sure you're taking care of E stands for earnings and profitability. S is systems and team development. Doing that yes, success model. So you can say yes to more in your life. Truly, truly. And teams freaking love us because guess what? We get this. We understand it. Doctors love us because we're magic magicians that can fix it with your team, but also help you be profitable. It's like. Let's put a bow on all the beauty together. So let's talk about your front office because everything freaking feels like a priority. my gosh, I gotta answer the phone and check patients out. I gotta try and schedule all the doctors asking me questions. I gotta keep my doctor busy. I've got constant interruptions nonstop. As soon as feel like I get patients checked in, that hygiene team's bringing them right back out. It is nuts. And it's because we just don't have priorities hierarchied. And also we're not using time when we need to. So when front office is jumping between five tasks and finishing none of them well, that's chaos. And so how can we actually make it to where things aren't as chaotic? Because yes, you're always gonna have interruptions. And I think for us to never feel like, I can never have interruptions, like that's not my perfect date. That's not real life. We signed up for an amazing job that's very busy up front. And I feel like my job in front office, I say like, I'm here for air traffic control. Like that's my job. And I'm gonna make sure every plane lands easily, AKA every patient has an appointment. I get them scheduled. We're gonna have calm. Like I want to feel like JFK's airport. Like we're there. I just think about that airport and that air traffic control. I'm like, they have people flying in and out like mayhem or you can go to Atlanta or you can go to like any big city. Like think about that air traffic controller. And that's who like, I want to be at the front office. So front office team members, hopefully that's a good vision for you of, Hey, yes, we've got a million things going on, but we are laser focused on what's the most important thing. And so I love to give like, okay, number one, our scheduling person, what's their number one job? Their number one job is to make sure our schedule is filled to goal every single day. That's your job. So hygiene and doctor like bada bing, bada boom, that's your role. You keep them on there and you do not leave the day until your schedule is full. Like I'm not having you go home like, well, I did my best. ⁓ Outcomes over activities. I am big on this. We own our role. We don't just do a job. We own that. So if I'm a scheduling guru, you better believe I'm going to have my hygiene schedule full, full. That doesn't mean perfect. It means full and productive. And I'm going to have my doctor schedule the goal. treatment coordinators, your number one job is to have your doctor's hitting goal or exceeding goal every single day. Not a full schedule. I don't want all the white space filled in. But if my doctor needs to be hitting 5,500, you make it rain sister or gentlemen, you go figure out how to do it. You go look at your unscheduled treatment plans. I'm not gonna say you sit here and call 20 unscheduled treatment plans unless you're an office that's 7.5 million, then yes, maybe we'll put that as a job. But 99 % of the time, your job is to call as many as needed to get your schedule full, period. So scheduling coordinators, it's to make sure we're running on time, hygiene's full. Sometimes I have doctor over there. Treatment coordinators, you're always responsible for getting doctors scheduled to go. Billers, 98 % collections, non-negotiable. We gotta have money in the bank, otherwise we're broke and we can't feed our team. And we've done the work, we need to collect the money. So from there, and then office managers, your job is to make sure profitability is there, KPIs are being hit, and the whole team is flourishing. So that's just like a very simple like. Yeah, but Kiera who's first on phones first on phones is scheduler first person they're always on it unless you guys like no we want them to be concierge style we have a concierge then they're not first on phones but we have somebody who's first who's second who's third on phones so as that phone rings we've got it can you set up a phone tree so where if they've got billing questions it just goes to the billing line and the biller can help with that if you're like Kiera I only have two people in my front office fan freaking tastic we need to have dedicated power hour time so front office and scheduler usually does insurance verification too typically that's who's gonna do it but sometimes my treatment coordinators, like they want to make sure that they get all their insurance verification done and they have maybe a bit more time than our schedulers do. So again, it's who's got the most amount of time and who's the best with bandwidth on that. That's how I'm gonna set it up. If you have a bill or a dedicated bill or they're gonna do insurance verification for you, insurance verification should take you two to four hours max. And I'm talking to max a day. If we're taking longer than that, we gotta figure out how to be a bit more efficient and I got great ways to do it, like lump them together. I got a ton of podcasts onto it. but we've got to just make sure that each person, and I love end of day checklist where, and it's not we wait till the end of the day, it's we get this stuff done during the day, but by the end of the day, all this needs to be stamped, signed, delivered. So scheduler, you're responsible for hygiene, making sure it's full and up to par, possibly insurance verification, possibly doctor, depending upon your office. Treatment coordinator, non-negotiable doctor scheduled to go every single day. I'm talking if I'm working four days, three of my four have to be to go, period. And the first patient of the day, Please, please, please, please, please do not leave me one that's unconfirmed. And you're like, well, it's full. If they're unconfirmed, they're not showing. Like I might get lucky, but don't do that. Make sure it's a guaranteed confirm. Move those patients off. I've got a ton of verbiage for getting patients off the schedule. So we're not sitting there with like, to me, those are like gap fillers. Like it makes us feel good, but it's not gonna actually, like that's not me owning. I know that patient's not gonna show up. I call and call and call until I get people. So I start doing my confirmations at usually eight or nine in the morning. So I've got time and I do a 48 hour confirmation guarantee. So if they're not there, and then we started implementing with a lot of offices that if they don't call and confirm you, we are moving you off the schedule to open that space up because we do need confirmation you will be here. I have moved patients off the schedule. Yeah, I'm gonna have about five people mad at me, but guess what? It's gonna fix 95 % of my problems. I can handle those five upset patients with me. I can handle that. If someone comes in duplicative, I can handle that. Ladies and gents in the front office, air traffic controllers, you're also word ninjas. And you gotta learn to word ninja your way through a lot of things. Words are free. You can handle those hard conversations, but what we can't handle is not having productive schedules to where doctors aren't making money, we're not making money, and we're gonna go under. We can't handle that, but I can handle one or two upset patients. But I can also set up expectations so they're not upset with me, because I don't want to get berated. That's no fun for anybody. So clear ownership, who does what, what are the simple KPIs for each of them? Put that in place, have us track it. That just right there, hopefully cleaned up 90 % of your issues. Now everyone was like, yeah, but we all do it together. High five. I love that you have teamwork. Like genuinely love it. Teamwork though is that game where it's who's on first, what's on second, I don't know, is on third. it's like who, like what thought everybody was going to do it? Everybody thought nobody was going to do it. So then somebody picked it up, but then nobody respond like, It's a mess. So I love that y'all help each other. We just have to know at the end of the day, who's the one who puts the button on it? Who's the one who puts the final bow on it? Yes, we can all help each other, but I need a clear owner of each specific thing. I need a clear owner of hygiene and getting them scheduled. I need a clear owner of insurance verification. I need a clear owner of doctor's production. I need a clear owner of collections. Like I need those clear buttoned, tidied, and I need a clear owner of who answers the phone first. There are several others. I know that there's more and you're like, but what about this? What about this? Again, it's just playing this game and you guys can get sticky notes, write them all up, put them there. I have end of day checklist. I'm happy to share with people, but we've got to have roles are shared, but they've got to be owned. So like it's a clear owner. You can have help. I'm fine with that, but you have to own it and you've got to own those results. Again, it's outcomes over activity. I am so grateful you called 50 people, but if we don't have people on the books, you gotta call 51 or 52 or 53 or 54. And when you own that and you know that, guess what? How do I become a killer treatment coordinator? Because I knew I had to put people on the schedule and I wasn't gonna call them all night long. I was like, I got a family, I wanna go home. But I knew that that was my responsibility and I owned that result. So when we have shared responsibility, it actually creates drop in responsibility. So clean it up, if everyone owns it, no one owns it. So we have clear owners. And then what we have from there is we just have set systems. So what is our system for doing scheduling? What's our power hour? I put schedulers back there, I put insurance for everybody. Put them behind the door for two hours where they're not being disrupted. Unscheduled treatment plans. Give that treatment coordinator one hour of blocked time. Go make it rain, honey. Like call the patients, text the patients. We are focusing on highest level priority things. Look over your treatment tracker. Practice your verbiage. What are the things that aren't closing for you? Why? But we actually spend it. And so put the systems into place. What is it? Some people have like... To me, these are slightly aggressive checklists, but if it works for you, it's not aggressive. It's like by 10 a.m., all confirmations need to be done. By 12, all insurance verification needs to be done. By two o'clock, all of the schedule is filled to capacity. And then we're scheduled two days out or whatever it is. You can have it where it's benchmarks like that so we don't get stuck and then it's like four o'clock. I'm like, where did our day go? Sometimes those mile markers really can help, but we have to have set systems, set processes that everybody's following and we all know it. And that's going to help because this helps when we bring on new people. How do we schedule? How do we treatment plan? How do we follow up? Getting those protocols written so it's not just living in our head. If it's in our head, we're dead. We got to get it out. We got to have those systems and protocols written. so systems don't live in people. ⁓ Systems like we're not relying on people. We're relying on systems. So when I look at that, systems are on paper or in video form, not in memory. That then helps. Like if there's just one person that's like, well, Sue's out. We had a Sue in one of my offices. I'm like, I don't know how to do the billing. I don't know how to collect the money. I don't know how to schedule patients. Sue did it all. But if Sue goes on vacation, the practice is donezo. Like you cannot be reliant on a Sue in your practice. We need to have systems. We need to have processes. Yes, I want clear owners. But if that owner's on vacation, which they should be like our marketer Eve, she just went, she's like, it was awesome. I disconnected for an entire week. Didn't check Slack. I knew everything would be taken care of and I came back and she had like three Slack messages of things that were missed. That is truly a systematized organization. Yes, I'm having a little kudos moment. It just happened yesterday. So yes, it's a brag moment on our side. But I think about that. Like could your Sue, Alison, Kiera, Tiffanie, Jenny take off for two weeks and would you guys be okay? And if the answer is no, we gotta get those systems written and then we need to send them on vacation and test it and see how we survive. because we've got to be able to have it. So the three things that will fix this very quickly is number one, we've got to get clear ownership and that's ownership, not just job descriptions. Ownership, who owns scheduling, who owns phones, who owns our collections, who owns our treatment plans, who owns our doctor schedule. Get those things and eliminate overlap. Everybody in the front office is going to feel 20 times better and then have it on KPIs where we're tracking it every single week so we can see the progress and make sure it's true ownership, not just checking boxes. Number two is we have a priority framework for an office. So what is it? Because like I can have my checklist and I can know this. Number one is my KPI. But before my KPI, patient in front of me, always. Always, always the patient who's in front of me. Then it's my KPI, that's my number two. And then it's gonna be team needs. And then from there, always phone for me. Phone is pretty high up there. Like I say, it's patient in front of me, phone. And then it's gonna be my KPI. So you can be like, well, that phone's ringing. Okay, great. So then I can throw it and be like patient in front of me, KPI phones. Phones are so valuable. And if we don't answer and take care of it, but let's get a phone tree because we don't need to answer every phone call. The phone calls I really need to answer are my new patients. That's what I need. Also stop letting cancellations happen on your voicemails. Save yourself some time. The dermatologist that I'm going to, no voicemail. Like literally it's not even there. I can't leave a voicemail. And I have to call during business hours, period. Like that's just how it works. And if I want to get into them and you might be like, but I'm so nervous. I'm going to have patients that won't call. That's fine. But I leave a voicemail and I have it. And I say, don't accept any appointment changes via voicemail. Please call during business hours. I also do not accept them via text message. I make my patients, if they're going to break up with me or having a phone, a voice to voice conversation, you're not just able to text me. Like we don't break up via text here. You get to call me, have a conversation. And that's how I'm going to help save my time on that as well. Have a phone tree. Make sure that it's really set. So you know it's patient, my KPI, phones, whatever your guys' thing is, but make that priority framework for you so everybody's following it, we all know. So that way we're not sitting here with this like built up resentment of like, duh, you should be fixing the schedule. When it's like, they're with a patient. Now, team members, I have that priority framework, but that doesn't mean I don't get to own my KPI. My number is my responsibility. And yes, I can sit here and chat all day long with my patient, because they're number one, but that doesn't mean that I don't get to own my number. I'm responsible for owning, like own that thing, air traffic controllers. You can't just be like, well, my job is to like make sure the plans land, ⁓ treatment and schedules. And then be like, but like I got busy and we were chatting with the pilot. They're gonna crash. No, you can chat, but you need to still own your role, okay? And then number three is build simple, repeatable systems. So that way like Sue, Jenny, Sarah, Kiera, Tiff, anybody can go on vacation. and we're not gonna drown and think, yes, we'll be tired and we'll be glad they're back. Like I missed Eve, I'm super happy she's back, but our company didn't go under without her. And that's how your team should be as well. So, front office overwhelm is usually not about the team, it's just about clarity and consistency. It's about roles and systems being clear and defined, so that way confidence can go up and stress can go down. And I know you might be like, this was such a like 20 minute podcast to clean up my whole front office. And I wanna say like, it really can be that easy. I think that teams get in this, I think ego gets a little bit in the way of like, I've always been doing this. I think it's a little scary to shake up a role cause you're good at it. ⁓ But I think, not I think I know, if I have done this in 500 plus practices with our entire team, I know we can do it for you and your team too. And it's not a set, deadly team is not a set like, you have to do this. Like that's a cookie cutter. That was me like pressing my Christmas tree into the cookie. ⁓ You don't have to just be a Christmas tree or. an ornament or a square or a triangle. It is what is best for your practice. We will share best practices, but ultimately this is your teen year practice. They live there, I don't live there. So let's make it a place that they're happy to live. Let's make it a place that you're clear. And then doctors is great for you. So if you need a scheduling issue, you go to Kiera. If you have a treatment plan issue and your day's not scheduled, the goal, you go to Sarah. If you have an issue with billing, you go to Monica. Like you just go to your correct people. So that will help you. So look at that, see it really does like. clear front office creates a calm place. And ⁓ I just want to say that it's very doable. We do this all the time. think I'd say probably like 70 % of our consulting is on front office and just helping because it is a slush pond up there and it does get messy and we're all trying to help each other and we all have the same goals and desires, but it's on the execution of those goals and desires and how it's being done to create the simplicity or the chaos. So reach out. I'd love to help you out. Let's see if you're a great fit. Let's see if we can help you. take the pieces, implement today, whether you reach out to Dental A Team to get help for your front office because they just don't know it. If your front office listens to this and you guys have a meeting and you divide it up and make your end of day checklist, whatever it is, but do something to go from that chaos to that calm. It is very doable. We do this all the time. I would say we are freaking experts at it. So reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.
Typography is often treated as a detail — the thing you finalize after the real design decisions are made. But for our next guest, it's closer to the foundation everything else rests on. He's spent two decades in editorial design at some of the most iconic American magazines — Men's Health, Esquire, Popular Science, Entertainment Weekly — and he's now the Creative Director of Fast Company, where he recently led a redesign that does something pretty unusual: the magazine gets a completely new typeface every single issue. His name is Mike Schnaidt. This is a preview of a premium episode. Visit our Substack to listen to the entire interview: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/mike-schnaidt Mike's also a professor, a runner, and the author of Creative Endurance — a book that maps the principles of physical and mental endurance onto the creative life. It's built around 56 rules for sustaining a career in design, drawn from interviews with ultra-marathoners, astronauts, and designers who've pushed way past the limits most people set for themselves. And as you'll hear, he's already working on book two. We chat about the nuts and bolts of typography (utilitarian vs. expressive, food metaphors, Fast Company's per-issue typeface system) to the philosophy underneath it all (design as service, authorship, hospitality). We dig into his book Creative Endurance — 56 rules for sustaining a creative career drawn from athletes, astronauts, and designers — and his counterintuitive take on burnout: the cure isn't rest, it's picking up something creatively different. Bio Mike Schnaidt is the creative director of Fast Company. He's also the host of the Webby-awarded video series It's All in the Typeface, a professor of illustration at the School of Visual Arts, and the former president of the Society of Publication Designers. One of the coolest moments in his life was when Paula Scher said his first book, Creative Endurance, was “beautifully designed.” His second book arrives in 2028. *** Premium Episodes on Design Better This is a premium episode on Design Better. We release two premium episodes per month, along with two free episodes for everyone. New premium subscriber benefit: we've launched a private Slack workspace…join now to connect with designers, product leaders & creative practitioners in our community. And get a behind-the-scenes pass to every episode with The Roundup, where each week we bring you insights and actionable tactics from recent episodes. Premium subscribers get access to the documentary Design Disruptors and our growing library of books. You'll also get access to our monthly AMAs with former guests, ad-free episodes, discounts and early access to workshops, and our monthly newsletter The Brief that compiles salient insights, quotes, readings, and creative processes uncovered in the show. And subscribers at the annual level now get access to the Design Better Toolkit, which gets you major discounts and free access to tools and courses that will help you unlock new skills, make your workflow more efficient, and take your creativity further. Upgrade to paid Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Miles to Go - Travel Tips, News & Reviews You Can't Afford to Miss!
Watch Us On YouTube! Announcing a new, ongoing benefit for annual subscribers of our Slack community. Annual subscribers receive a free Points Path Alerts subscription OR a 30% discount on Points Path Pro. Is the golden age of points and miles ending—or is it simply evolving? This week, Ed is joined by Summer Hull and Julian Kheel to break down Chase's controversial decision to reduce Hyatt transfer ratios for Sapphire Preferred cardholders while maintaining the existing ratio for Sapphire Reserve members. The discussion goes beyond the headline change and explores what it means for the future of transferable points, premium credit cards, and loyalty programs. Is this a one-off adjustment, or the start of a broader trend where transfer ratios vary depending on which card you carry? The team also revisits Bilt 2.0 several months after launch, discussing which features have worked better in practice than they initially expected and how members are adapting to the new ecosystem. Finally, they tackle a question that has been debated for more than a decade: Are we witnessing the end of the golden era of points and miles, or just another chapter in its evolution? Get hydrated like Ed in Vegas with Nuun Use my Bilt Rewards link to sign-up and support the show! If you enjoy the podcast, I hope you'll take a moment to leave us a rating. That helps us grow our audience! If you're looking for a way to support the show, we'd love to have you join us in our Travel Slack Community. Join me and other travel experts for informative conversations about the travel world, the best ways to use your miles and points, Zoom happy hours and exciting giveaways. Monthly access Annual access Personal consultation plus annual access We have witty, funny, sarcastic discussions about travel, for members only. My fellow travel experts are available to answer your questions and we host video chats multiple times per month. Follow Us! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/milestogopodcast/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@milestogopodcast Ed Pizza: https://www.instagram.com/pizzainmotion/ Richard Kerr: https://www.instagram.com/kerrpoints/ ✈️ What We Cover in This Episode ✈️ Chase changes Hyatt transfer ratios • Sapphire Preferred vs Sapphire Reserve differences • Why the change matters beyond Hyatt • Who is most affected by the new structure ✈️ Is Chase or Hyatt driving the change? • Theories behind the new transfer ratio • What Bilt may tell us in the future • Why everyone is watching closely ✈️ The future of transferable points • Could other partners see different transfer ratios? • Premium card differentiation • Why simplicity may be disappearing ✈️ Is the Sapphire Preferred still worth it? • Who benefits most from the changes • Annual fee considerations • Comparing Preferred and Reserve value ✈️ Bilt 2.0 several months later • Features that proved easier than expected • Mortgage and rent payment experiences • Real-world use of Bilt Cash ✈️ Managing Bilt Cash balances • Rollover limitations • End-of-year planning strategies • Potential redemption opportunities ✈️ Points Path updates • New flexible alerts coming soon • Award repricing opportunities • Benefits available to Slack members ✈️ Is the golden age of points and miles over? • Why this debate never goes away • How loyalty programs continue evolving • Where travelers can still find value ⏱️ Episode 441 Timestamps ⏱️ Episode 441 Timestamps 4:02 – Chase changes Hyatt transfer ratios 7:15 – Who wins and loses from the Sapphire Preferred changes? 10:09 – Is Chase or Hyatt responsible for the new transfer ratio? 16:08 – Are hotel transfers still worth it? 20:50 – Will more transfer partners be affected next? 25:00 – Bilt 2.0: what works better than expected? 29:52 – Planning around Bilt Cash expiration rules 31:27 – Points Path updates and new flexible alerts 33:37 – Is the golden age of points and miles ending? 35:48 – Why premium credit cards keep getting more expensive
What does it take to build a company culture people actually feel when every single person works from home?
Get 50% off Cardpointers+ - Track cards, automatically load Chase & Amex Offers + a lot more. Lock-in lifetime membership at half off. (affiliate) https://milestomemories.com/go/cardpointers/ Mark is back from Colombia, and this one's a full Cartagena trip report. He breaks down two nights at the Hyatt Regency Cartagena (a Category 3 gem on points) and three nights at the Dreams Karibana all-inclusive — including the food wins, the brutal heat, the black-sand "beachfront," island day clubs, a killer rooftop bar with a live saxophonist, and the $650 check-in mistake that has one Globalist swearing off Hyatt for good. Plus Shawn answers the Grand Hyatt Athens critics, American Airlines finally drops aircraft trading cards, and Choice Privileges quietly guts its Japan award chart (Tokyo and Osaka properties jumping from 8K to 20K+ points). Is Cartagena worth it? Watch and let us know in the comments. Episode Guide: 0:00 - Welcome to MTM Travel 0:25 - Grand Hyatt Athens: The Fallout 3:47 - American Airlines Trading Cards 5:30 - Choice Privileges Guts Japan 8:14 - CardPointers: 50% Off (Sponsor) 9:26 - Hyatt Regency Cartagena: Check-In & Rooms 11:06 - The Beach Reality & Island Day Trips 12:42 - Exploring the Walled City 13:44 - Umbrella Alleys & a Rooftop Bar with Live Sax 15:41 - Pools, Cheap Eats & Is Cartagena Worth It? 17:16 - Dreams Karibana All-Inclusive: The Food 18:31 - Friendly Staff & Entertainment 20:05 - A $650 Check-In Surprise 22:28 - Hyatt's Antiquated System & Did They Make It Right? 26:21 - Pro Tip: The Cancellation-Window Trick 27:57 - The VIP Lounge: Premium Booze & AC Escape 29:49 - Sharing Lounge Access + Italian Dress Code Drama 33:01 - Resort Condition: A Faded Old Conrad 35:31 - Final Verdict & Wrap-Up ✈️ Track your travel credit cards for free
Hi! My guest today is Tyler Simmons. We talk about Bucket Golf. What a cool product. Today we discuss: Creating a product from scratch Building innovation into the DNA of your business The importance of community to the growth of the business Managing a supply chain And, more. Visit my website at www.DaveWakeman.com Get the 'Talking Tickets' newsletter at https://talkingtickets.substack.com Join our community over on Slack.
This week, we're joined by Jesse Walker! Jesse is the head coach and co-founder of Rough Hands BJJ in Louisville, Kentucky, and a frequent BJJ Mental Models collaborator. In this episode, Jesse makes the case for loading a joint with tension before you ever start the breaking mechanics, so the finish takes a fraction of the effort. Topics include: adding traction before the break, the order of operations of a joint lock, backing up to retighten a loose position, fixing the much-maligned Americana, and leglock safety through control.Train with Jesse at Rough Hands BJJ:https://roughhandsbjj.comFollow Rough Hands on Instagram:https://instagram.com/roughhandsbjjMental models discussed in this episode:Breaking Mechanicshttps://bjjmentalmodels.com/breaking-mechanics3 Joint Rulehttps://bjjmentalmodels.com/3-joint-ruleDouble Troublehttps://bjjmentalmodels.com/double-troubleCore Mechanicshttps://bjjmentalmodels.com/core-mechanics⬆️ LEVEL UP with BJJ Mental Models Premium!The world's LARGEST library of jiu-jitsu audio lessons, our complete podcast network, online coaching, and much more! Your first week is free:https://bjjmentalmodels.comNeed more BJJ Mental Models?Get the legendary BJJMM newsletter:https://bjjmentalmodels.com/newsletterLearn more mental models in our online database:https://bjjmentalmodels.com/databaseFollow us on social:https://instagram.com/bjjmentalmodelshttps://threads.com/@bjjmentalmodelshttps://bjjmentalmodels.bsky.socialhttps://youtube.com/@bjjmentalmodelsMusic by Enterprize:https://enterprize.bandcamp.com
It's Monday. You know what that means. Sort of. As a very special taster, we're offering up the first part of our new Patreon series, Destination Cancellation, for free this week so non-patrons can sample it and have it serve as a bridge to next week's return of the regular free show. (This first episode of Destination Cancellation dropped for Patrons this past Friday.) After an intro previewing the Patreon show and next week's regular show, you get the entire first part of what will be a seven week series covering the disaster that was TNA Wrestling from the July 2014 Spike TV cancellation through the end of the Destination America run in December 2015. If you like this episode and want to hear the other six parts that are dropping in the coming weeks, subscribe to our Patreon at the $5.00/month tier or higher, with annual subscriptions running $50.40 and thus saving you 16% off the monthly price. Enjoy!---It's Friday. You know what that means: The first of SEVEN installments covering TNA's 2014 cancellation by Spike TV through the end of their run on Destination America in 2015. Part 1 covers the weeks of July 14 to August 25, 2014, and topics of discussion include:Why everyone was convinced that Vince Russo was secretly working for TNA.Russo accidentally revealing it by sending Mike Johnson an email he meant to send to Mike Tenay.Russo's ridiculous, ever-changing reactions to the situation.Dixie Carter's inexplicable unflinching loyalty to Russo.Spike TV and Japanese partner promotion Wrestle-1 both making it clear to TNA that they did not want Russo around.TMZ breaking the story that Spike TV had cancelled TNA Impact.The big new TV announcement is coming soon! They promise! Just wait for the next TV taping!Production staff among others being owed lots of back pay.Kevin Kay visiting an Impact taping AFTER cancelling the show.How Kay's handling of the cancellation was fueled by his regret over how he handled the end of the Spike/WWE deal nine years earlier.Rafael Morffi and other key office staff abandoning ship for better, non-wrestling jobs.TNA is negotiating with...Velocity, Discovery's car and airplane channel?....and much more. Enjoy!To support the show and get access to exclusive rewards like special members-only monthly themed shows, go to our Patreon page at Patreon.com/BetweenTheSheets and become an ongoing Patron. Becoming a Between the Sheets Patron will also get you exclusive access to not only the monthly themed episode of Between the Sheets, but also access to our new mailbag segment, a Patron-only chat room on Slack, and anything else we do outside of the main shows!If you're looking for the best deal on a VPN service—short for Virtual Private Network, it helps you get around regional restrictions as well as browse the internet more securely—then Private Internet Access is what you've been looking for. Not only will using our link help support Between The Sheets, but you'll get a special discount, with prices as low as $1.98/month if you go with a 40 month subscription. With numerous great features and even a TV-specific Android app to make streaming easier, there is no better choice if you're looking to subscribe to My AEW and other region-locked services.For the best in both current and classic indie wrestling streaming, make sure to check out IndependentWrestling.tv and use coupon code BTSPOD for a free 5 day trial! (You can also go directly to TinyURL.com/IWTVsheets to sign up that way.) If you convert to a paid subscriber, we get a kickback for referring you, allowing you to support both the show and the indie scene.To subscribe, you can find us on iTunes, Google Play, and just about every other podcast app's directory, or you can also paste Feeds.FeedBurner.com/BTSheets into your favorite podcast app using whatever “add feed manually” option it has.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Wall Street built entire neighborhoods just to rent them. August Biniaz breaks down how and why it works.August Biniaz, Chief Investment Officer at CPI Capital, returns to break down build-to-rent (BTR): how the asset class started after the 2008 crash, why institutions like Blackstone pivoted from buying scattered homes to building purpose-built rental communities, and what that means for individual investors today.August also pulls back the curtain on how CPI Capital operates at scale, including the AI tool that cut their deal-screening time by 90 percent, and shares his read on where interest rates and the broader economy are headed going into the rest of 2026.Key topics covered:How Blackstone's Invitation Homes buying spree of 75,000 homes gave birth to BTRWhat life inside a BTR community actually looks like (HOA, amenities, maintenance)Why BTR attracts "tenants by choice" and produces lower turnover than traditional apartmentsHow CPI Capital uses Slack, Asana, HubSpot, and AI to run a private equity real estate firmThe 10-year treasury, the war in Iran, and what August thinks happens to rates nextAugust Biniaz is the Chief Investment Officer of CPI Capital, a private equity real estate firm focused on US multifamily and build-to-rent assets with investors in both Canada and the United States.Learn more at https://cpicapital.comWork With RealDealCrewIf you're already closing deals but your intake, follow-up, or visibility feels inconsistent, here are two ways to go deeper:Take the Deal Intake AssessmentSee how resilient your current operation actually is.→ https://assessment.realdealcrew.comBook a Fit CallIf you want to explore what a fully system-driven deal flow looks like, let's talk.→ https://realdealcrew.com/bookLIKE • SHARE • JOIN • REVIEWWebsiteApple PodcastsYouTubeYouTube MusicSpotifyAmazon MusicFacebookTwitterInstagram
Dan founded and scaled a $50M ARR, SoftBank-backed startup—and could've stayed to make tens of millions. Instead, he handed it to his chief of staff and started from scratch. He wanted something bigger. He took an entry-level paralegal job to learn everything about law hands on. Then he built Manifest, which just raised a $60M Series A.In this episode, Dan breaks down why he did intake calls for 1,000 legal clients before building anything, how free Slack communities turned Fortune 500 HR managers into buyers without a dollar of ads, and why he refused to sell software to law firms even when investors told him he was crazy.Why You Should ListenHow 2 months working as a paralegal beat years of customer discovery.How free Slack communities turned Fortune 500 HR managers into clients.Why earned media compounds like an asset while paid ads burn like an expense.Why impact is the best driver for starting startups.Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, legal tech, legal AI, AI-native law firm, immigration law, services as software, community-led growth, earned media, customer discovery, Dan Mishin, ManifestChapters00:00:00 Intro00:06:34 Walking Away from $50M ARR00:13:12 Why Immigration Law Has AI Leverage00:18:01 The AI-Native Law Firm Model00:21:49 1,000 Intake Calls Before Building Anything00:30:21 Turning Free Communities Into Buyers00:37:20 Earned Media That CompoundsSend me a message to let me know what you think!
It's Monday. You know what that means. Sort of. As a very special taster, we're offering up the first part of our new Patreon series, Destination Cancellation, for free this week so non-patrons can sample it and have it serve as a bridge to next week's return of the regular free show. (This first episode of Destination Cancellation dropped for Patrons this past Friday.) After an intro previewing the Patreon show and next week's regular show, you get the entire first part of what will be a seven week series covering the disaster that was TNA Wrestling from the July 2014 Spike TV cancellation through the end of the Destination America run in December 2015. If you like this episode and want to hear the other six parts that are dropping in the coming weeks, subscribe to our Patreon at the $5.00/month tier or higher, with annual subscriptions running $50.40 and thus saving you 16% off the monthly price. Enjoy!---It's Friday. You know what that means: The first of SEVEN installments covering TNA's 2014 cancellation by Spike TV through the end of their run on Destination America in 2015. Part 1 covers the weeks of July 14 to August 25, 2014, and topics of discussion include:Why everyone was convinced that Vince Russo was secretly working for TNA.Russo accidentally revealing it by sending Mike Johnson an email he meant to send to Mike Tenay.Russo's ridiculous, ever-changing reactions to the situation.Dixie Carter's inexplicable unflinching loyalty to Russo.Spike TV and Japanese partner promotion Wrestle-1 both making it clear to TNA that they did not want Russo around.TMZ breaking the story that Spike TV had cancelled TNA Impact.The big new TV announcement is coming soon! They promise! Just wait for the next TV taping!Production staff among others being owed lots of back pay.Kevin Kay visiting an Impact taping AFTER cancelling the show.How Kay's handling of the cancellation was fueled by his regret over how he handled the end of the Spike/WWE deal nine years earlier.Rafael Morffi and other key office staff abandoning ship for better, non-wrestling jobs.TNA is negotiating with...Velocity, Discovery's car and airplane channel?....and much more. Enjoy!To support the show and get access to exclusive rewards like special members-only monthly themed shows, go to our Patreon page at Patreon.com/BetweenTheSheets and become an ongoing Patron. Becoming a Between the Sheets Patron will also get you exclusive access to not only the monthly themed episode of Between the Sheets, but also access to our new mailbag segment, a Patron-only chat room on Slack, and anything else we do outside of the main shows!If you're looking for the best deal on a VPN service—short for Virtual Private Network, it helps you get around regional restrictions as well as browse the internet more securely—then Private Internet Access is what you've been looking for. Not only will using our link help support Between The Sheets, but you'll get a special discount, with prices as low as $1.98/month if you go with a 40 month subscription. With numerous great features and even a TV-specific Android app to make streaming easier, there is no better choice if you're looking to subscribe to My AEW and other region-locked services.For the best in both current and classic indie wrestling streaming, make sure to check out IndependentWrestling.tv and use coupon code BTSPOD for a free 5 day trial! (You can also go directly to TinyURL.com/IWTVsheets to sign up that way.) If you convert to a paid subscriber, we get a kickback for referring you, allowing you to support both the show and the indie scene.To subscribe, you can find us on iTunes, Google Play, and just about every other podcast app's directory, or you can also paste Feeds.FeedBurner.com/BTSheets into your favorite podcast app using whatever “add feed manually” option it has.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
One company now has more AI agents deployed in its organization than it has human employees. Slack's CMO Ryan Gavin dropped that stat into a conversation with Craig Smith, and then immediately identified the secondary problem it creates: when your digital workforce outnumbers your human one, how do employees know which agent to call for which task? That orchestration problem, and the conversational interface that solves it, is what this episode is really about. Gavin describes Slack bot's transformation from a notification tool into what he calls the ChatGPT moment for the enterprise, an AI that doesn't just understand the internet, but understands your business, your team, your customers, and your company's entire conversational history, all the way back to day one. The conversation covers the full arc of what this shift means in practice: a Salesforce executive walking into an unfamiliar meeting and being praised for their questions, because Slack bot had prepared them in minutes using the team's full history; a marketer who built his own data scientist agent over a weekend and is now completely unshackled from the bottleneck that was slowing him down; and Gavin's most honest admission, that he's been saying for years that AI won't replace jobs, but this is the first time he actually believes it, because the soul-crushing "work of work" is finally shrinking, and what's left is the kind of creative, high-energy output that people actually want to do. The inbox, he says, is a deathtrap in the AI era. The companies that figure out how to move beyond it will outperform their competitors by multiples. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.
Tune in as the team discusses: Why land investing can be less expensive and less risky than traditional real estate How investors can start with as little as $100–$1,000 using land arbitrage What land arbitrage means and how investors make the spread on monthly payments Why $2,000–$7,000 can support mailers, wholesale deals, and early passive income How a $10,000–$20,000 budget allows investors to buy multiple smaller properties instead of one big deal Why larger budgets should still start with a measured approach before scaling The importance of building proof of concept before hiring VAs or overbuilding systems How GeekPay, LG Pass, Google Voice, Slack, and Zamplo can help manage a land business Why pricing, better images, and creative marketing can help move properties in slow areas How lower returns like 2x or 3x can still create strong momentum for new investors TIP OF THE WEEK Scott: Use land arbitrage to test a county before committing serious money. One good LandArb property can help you prove demand, practice marketing, and create quick momentum.Mike: If you have more capital, do not deploy it all at once. Pull out a small amount, get mailers going, close a few deals, and then pour fuel on the fire once the process is working.Jon: Make your property listings pop. Better images, sharper descriptions, and creative positioning can help a slow-moving property attract more buyers. WANT MORE? Enjoyed this episode? Dive into more episodes of AOPI to discover how to build real passive income through land investing. UNLOCK MORE FREE RESOURCES: Get instant access to my free training, a free copy of my Bestseller Dirt Rich Book, and exclusive bonuses to accelerate your land investing journey—CLICK HERE "Isn't it time to create passive income so you can work where you want when you want, and with whomever you want?"
I'm a big believer in the value of consistency over time. And having a solid routine that works for you/your life can be a huge piece of staying consistent. But every once in awhile, you may find going rogue is the best thing you can do... Join the new Diz Runs community on Slack: http://dizruns.slack.com Love the show? Check out the support page for ways you can help keep the Diz Runs Radio going strong! dizruns.com/support Become a Patron of the Show! Visit Patreon.com/DizRuns to find out how. Subscribe to the Diz Runs Radio Find Me on an Apple Device dizruns.com/itunes Find Me on an Android dizruns.com/stitcher Find Me on SoundCloud dizruns.com/soundcloud Please Take the Diz Runs Radio Listener Survey dizruns.com/survey Win a Free 16-Week Training Plan Enter at dizruns.com/giveaway Join The Tribe If you'd like to stay up to date with everything going on in the Diz Runs world, become a member of the tribe! The tribe gets a weekly email where I share running tips and stories about running and/or things going on in my life. To get the emails, just sign up at dizruns.com/join-the-tribe
Brandon talks with OpenObserve's Prabhat Sharma and Shani Shoham: why observability is still broken, how they fixed it, and where AI takes it next. Watch the YouTube Live Recording of Episode 576 Show Links OpenObserve OpenObserve on GitHub Series A and Observability 3.0 announcement blog post Launching OpenObserve OpenObserve 2-Minute Demo Download OpenObserve Contact Prabhat Sharma LinkedIn: hiprabhat Twitter/X: @hiprabhat Contact Shani Shoham LinkedIn: shanishoham Twitter: @shohams SDT News & Hype Join us in Slack. Get a SDT Sticker! Send your postal address to stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com and we will send you free laptop stickers! Follow us: Twitch, Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn, TikTok, Threads and YouTube. Use the code SDT to get $20 off Coté's book, Digital WTF, so $5 total. Become a sponsor of Software Defined Talk! Special Guests: Prabhat Sharma and Shani Shoham.
Tom Austen is the founder of Pelotan, the world's first sun performance brand, and co-founder of Chance, a trail running apparel brand he's building with pro athlete and serial entrepreneur Christian Meier. Both brands are based in Girona, Spain — a two-square-kilometer pocket of world-class endurance athletes, cafes, and startups that's become the Boulder of Europe. In this conversation, Tom walks through how Pelotan went from a sunburn problem on training rides to winning two Tour de Frances with Team Sky in its first year, and how the brand is now pioneering something entirely new: treating the sun as a performance variable rather than just a health risk. He also gets into the Chance origin story, why cross-pollination across categories is the key to building something original, and what it's like to run two high-growth startups at the same time from a city of 100,000 people. Show Notes: Popfly for Athletes/Creators: https://popf.ly/secondnaturecreators Popfly for Brands: https://popf.ly/secondnaturebrands Tom Austen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomausten1/ Pelotan: https://pelotan.cc/ Chance Running: https://chancerunning.com/ Second Nature - Sea Otter Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLk1LGIthPc Christian Meier: https://www.instagram.com/christianmmeier/ The Gartner Hype Cycle: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwerner/2024/07/18/the-trough-of-disillusionment-and-four-outliers-on-the-gartner-hype-cycle/ Pelotan Apres Aftersun: https://pelotan.cc/products/pelotan-apres-200ml Pelotan App for Second Nature listeners: https://pelotan.cc/secondnature Broken Arrow Skyrace: https://www.brokenarrowskyrace.com/ Lael Wilcox: https://www.instagram.com/laelwilcox/ BPC - Brand, Product, Content: Nomio: https://drinknomio.com/ Adidas World Cup ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJJY53qhJe0 Nike - Airport soccer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGalnbiGDW4 Insta360 GO Ultra: https://store.insta360.com/product/go-ultra Join us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/second-nature-media Meet us on Slack: https://www.launchpass.com/second-nature Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secondnature.media Subscribe to our newsletter: https://www.secondnature.media Subscribe to the YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@secondnaturemedia
In this episode of The Ross Simmonds Show, Ross breaks down why founders often over-focus on perfecting the product while underinvesting in the most important part of business: getting customers to buy. He shares 20 practical customer acquisition tactics covering owned channels, outreach, community building, audience engagement, strategic partnerships, personal branding, and frictionless buying experiences. Key Takeaways and Insights: 1. Shift Your Mindset Around Sales - Stop treating every “no” as personal rejection and start seeing it as progress toward a “yes.” - Customer acquisition requires courage, repetition, and strategic thinking—not a massive budget. - Founders need to understand customer nuance, buying behavior, and how to create urgency around their offer. 2. Own Your Audience with Email - Build and maintain an email list so you can communicate directly with prospects and customers. - Make every email valuable enough to inspire, educate, entertain, or give subscribers a competitive edge. - Avoid using email only for product updates or blog announcements; turn it into a trusted resource. 3. Build a High-Value Resource Hub - Create a website section filled with useful tools, guides, quizzes, calculators, and interactive content. - Use gated resources and community features to capture leads and build deeper audience engagement. - Watch for social referral traffic as a signal that your content is valuable enough to share. 4. Create Communities Around Your Market - Build private Slack, Discord, Facebook, or Reddit communities where your ideal customers can gather. - Use these spaces to collect feedback, test ideas, host sessions, and create word-of-mouth momentum. - Stay close to your most engaged community members—they may become your strongest customers. 5. Master Personalized Outreach - Cold email still works when it is researched, relevant, and written for one specific person. - Use LinkedIn, company updates, investor reports, and business context to make outreach feel human. - Ask for feedback or a short conversation instead of immediately pushing for a demo or sale. 6. Leverage Your Existing Network - Reach out to past colleagues, classmates, and professional connections who may now be in relevant roles. - Ask for specific warm introductions and make it easy by writing the intro message for them. - Schedule no-pitch coffee chats to build awareness, gather market research, and create future evangelists. 7. Show Up Where Your Audience Already Spends Time - Participate in Reddit, Medium, Hacker News, Quora, Facebook groups, Slack communities, and X with value-first engagement. - Study the culture of each platform before posting so your contributions fit naturally. - Use podcasts, influencers, guest posts, webinars, and co-marketing to access already-established audiences. 8. Use Strategic Partnerships to Generate Leads - Build referral partnerships with complementary businesses that already serve your ideal customers. - Offer commissions, kickbacks, or revenue share to incentivize partners to send qualified leads. - Create co-branded content or guest content to borrow trust and reach from established audiences. —
Episode 113 is live! With Jeff still out in the field, Grant and Tres take over the controls for a classic freewheeling episode packed with staff brief shenanigans, college football talk, Bitcoin updates, Texas Tech headlines, lifting questions, creatine myths, training mistakes, upcoming Strength Co. projects, Wisconsin adventures, and plenty of the organized chaos that makes The Okay Podcast what it is. If you've ever wondered whether supplements matter, what gym mistakes are actually holding people back, this episode is for you.Podcast Hosts:Grant Broggi: Marine Veteran, Owner of The Strength Co. and Starting Strength Coach.Jeff Buege: Marine Veteran, Outdoorsman, Football Fan and LifterTres Gottlich: Marine Veteran, Texan, Fisherman, Crazy College Football Fan and LifterJoin the Slack and Use code OKAY:https://buy.stripe.com/dR6dT4aDcfuBdyw5ksCheck out BW Tax: https://www.bwtaxllc.comBUY A FOOTBALL HELMET:https://www.thestrength.co/mrhelmet/?utm_source=The+Okay+Podcast&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_campaign=Okay_PodTimestamps: 00:00 - Intro08:52 - Staff Brief18:19 - Outlying Stations24:18 - Most Overrated Lift31:19 - Creatine41:08 - Dad Splits44:12 - Wisconsin49:20 - PCS01:00:47 - College World Series01:08:15 - Texas Tech Debate01:16:38 - Sick Kids & Being A Dad01:23:34 - New Trees01:33:13 - Chili Cook Off Recap01:39:04 - Ghost Tours
This month I continued to scale Pokémon at Walmart, but it feels like it may be nearing a breaking point due to the massive quantities of accounts that have been created in the last few months. We also went on a trip to southern Japan, Guam, and Manila, including several FHR properties, which ended up being a lot of fun!For more information on the Patreon and private Slack group, head over to churninglife.com.
Thanks so much for listening! For the complete show notes, links, and comments, please visit The Grey NATO Show Notes for this episode:https://thegreynato.substack.com/p/379-slack-crew-a-2026-1The Grey NATO is a listener-supported podcast. If you'd like to support the show, which includes a variety of possible benefits, including additional episodes, access to the TGN Crew Slack, and even a TGN edition grey NATO, please visit the link below.Support the show
With just days left until the USMNT kicks off its World Cup campaign in Los Angeles against Paraguay, Jason went live to take stock of the team. TBSS Chief Correspondent Jonathan Taylor Tannenwald (support Jon's work by subscribing to the Philadelphia Inquirer) joins the show from Irvine, where he's covering the USMNT camp ahead of World Cup kickoff. Jonathan gives some insight into key US defender Chris Richards' status for the World Cup opener before he and Jason open a discussion about a few of Mauricio Pochettino's pending choices for his World Cup lineup. Then the Rodius arrives to give some national team thoughts and his DEFCON for the tournament outlook. Jared didn't just come for USMNT analysis, though: he brought a game. The Gamemaster puts Jason and Jonathan through two rounds of a "closest total" game you'll have to hear to understand. Support the show by joining The Best Soccer Show Patreon. You get access to an incredible Slack community and bonus content from Jason (and occasionally Jared). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Get your free travel insurance quote with Faye! https://milestomemories.com/go/faye-travel-insurance/ Chase just refreshed the Sapphire Preferred and buried a bombshell in the fine print. On this episode of MTM Travel Shawn and Mark break down everything Chase changed: the $95 fee stays, you get new 3X categories on gas, EV charging and vacation rentals, plus a doubled $100 hotel credit. The catch? The Sapphire Preferred and Ink Business Preferred lose 1:1 Hyatt transfers and drop to 4:3 on October 1. We cover whether the refresh is still worth it, why the $795 Reserve is now the only way to keep 1:1 Hyatt, why Bilt just won, and what you should actually do before the changes hit Monday. Mark's full breakdown is linked below. Let us know where Chase ranks in your points lineup now. Episode Guide: 0:00 – Chase drops a Hyatt bombshell 0:22 – Shawn in Casablanca + airport travel tips 3:33 – Inside the new Sapphire Preferred (and the 4:3 Hyatt cut) 6:35 – Bonus categories & why Chase is devaluing points 8:40 – The $795 Reserve push, Mark's article & the Oct 1 timeline 12:27 – Will this finally hurt Hyatt? 16:18 – Chase's fault or Hyatt's? Plus why Bilt won 19:44 – Shawn's points strategy going forward 22:48 – Mourning the old Hyatt & should you apply before Monday? ✈️ Track your travel credit cards for free
Welcome to the second episode of Inside the Badger Den!This series is your backstage pass to Ad Badger, where we bridge the gap between powerful Amazon PPC software and high-level advertising strategy.In this episode, we don't just show you the tools; we show you the "why" behind them. We dive deep into our brand-new Custom Algorithm Feature to help you mix your own "algorithm cocktails" using smart If/Then/When rules. Plus, we're breaking down advanced negative filters for search terms, and how to utilize our new CPO (Clicks Per Order) metric to see how many clicks it typically takes to land an order across your campaigns and keywords. Also featured in our opening segment: BuyBox Checker! We are introducing their new multi-channel alerts (email, Slack, WhatsApp, SMS, Zapier, n8n, webhook). Plus, Ad Badger members get an exclusive 40% discount - check it out here.We'll see you Inside the Badger Den!
This episode isn't about communication theory. It's not a framework you have to go home and figure out how to apply. This is us, mid-work, showing you the exact words we use when something goes sideways — when creative feedback is vague, when a deadline is at risk, when someone's overwhelmed and needs the team to jump in. It started with a message from someone in our community after the last episode. She said what we do is book-worthy — and asked us to get even more specific with the language. So Amber, Joanna, and Lilly sat down with actual scenarios and real-life examples, including a few moments that happened in the 48 hours before we hit record. You'll hear the Delegation Solution framework in action, why the positive sandwich is still on the table, and the behind-the-scenes story of Joanna saying "our list" in a Slack message — and what Amber made of it. This one is for the business owner who already knows communication is important, but wants to hear what it actually sounds like when a team does it well. The specifics are here. Come take what works.
Hausmeisterei Video zur Episode Text-/Audio-/Videokommentar einreichen HS-Hörer:innen im Slack treffen Aus der Preshow We have the Drehstrom, 2-Phasen, Usernamenkollision, Postleitzahlen, Bochum, Drucker, Schneidemaschinen #hsfeedback Von Kuchenmampfer Chris Inseldefinition ist sehr Pellwörmig Definition von Festland Danke für den Tipp zum Dirty Little Zine Korrektur: Die Panasonic L10 hat ein fest verbautes Objektiv Von Martin: Vuescan als … „#944 – Alter Falter“ weiterlesen
When Tina Roth Eisenberg moved to New York in 1999 as a new designer, she kept asking herself the same question: where are my people? Eighteen years ago, she answered it by starting Creative Mornings—a free breakfast lecture series that has since grown into what she describes as the world's largest face-to-face creative community: 252 cities, 70 countries, and more than a thousand volunteers gathering with around 25,000 people every month. Or, as she puts it, “church for creativity.” Visit our Susbtack for bonus content and more: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/tina-roth-eisenberg-creative-mornings But Creative Mornings is just one thread in Tina's story. She's the voice behind Swiss Miss, the beloved design blog she's kept up for 21 years; the founder of FRIENDS, a creative coworking community in Brooklyn; and the creator of Tattly, the designer temporary tattoo company that started as a joke and turned into a business. In our conversation, Tina shares what she's learned about building communities that scale on trust rather than control, why she measures success in “return on friendship,” and how playful side projects increase “the surface area for luck to find you.” We also talk about commitment as a creative practice, raising creative kids, and why she believes the future isn't lonely—it's hyperlocal. Bio Tina Roth Eisenberg is a Swiss-born, Brooklyn-based designer and serial founder—though many know her simply as "swissmiss," after the design blog she started in 2005 as a personal visual archive, which grew into a popular design journal drawing an average of a million unique visitors a month. Raised in Speicher, Switzerland, and shaped by Swiss design (and, as she puts it, a lot of fresh mountain air), she completed her design studies in Geneva and Munich before moving to New York in 1999. She is the founder of CreativeMornings, the world's largest face-to-face creative community, with monthly talks in 252 cities across 70 countries; the founder of Tattly, the designy temporary tattoo company; co-creator of the to-do app TeuxDeux; and founder of FRIENDS, a creative coworking space in Brooklyn. She lives in beautiful Fort Greene, Brooklyn, with her two children, Ella and Tilo, who teach her about current memes and TikTok. Books & Links mentioned: CreativeMornings.com Creative Quests, Sam Furness Dark Forest,Yancey Strickler Nanowrimo Swissmiss Yancey Strickler: Creative Mornings talk from May 2025 Vacation With An Artist Creative Mornings Field Trips Creative Morning Clubs The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World *** Premium Episodes on Design Better This ad-supported episode is available to everyone. If you'd like to hear it ad-free, upgrade to our premium subscription, where you'll get an additional 2 ad-free episodes per month (4 total). Premium subscribers also get access to the documentary Design Disruptors and our growing library of books. New premium subscriber benefit: we've launched a private Slack workspace…join now to connect with designers, product leaders & creative practitioners in our community. And get a behind-the-scenes pass to every episode with The Roundup, where each week we bring you insights and actionable tactics from recent episodes. You'll also get access to our monthly AMAs with former guests, ad-free episodes, discounts and early access to workshops, and our monthly newsletter The Brief that compiles salient insights, quotes, readings, and creative processes uncovered in the show. And subscribers at the annual level now get access to the Design Better Toolkit, which gets you major discounts and free access to tools and courses that will help you unlock new skills, make your workflow more efficient, and take your creativity further. Upgrade to paid Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Miles to Go - Travel Tips, News & Reviews You Can't Afford to Miss!
Watch Us On YouTube! Announcing a new, ongoing benefit for annual subscribers of our Slack community. Annual subscribers receive a free Points Path Alerts subscription OR a 30% discount on Points Path Pro. Airline passenger rights are back in the spotlight, and Europe may be making one of the strongest consumer protection programs even stronger. This week, Ed is joined by Julian Kheel from Points Path to discuss proposed updates to EU261 passenger compensation rules, including new requirements that could force airlines to proactively tell travelers when they're entitled to compensation. They also explore JSX's new premium route between New York and Florida, whether semi-private flying is becoming more mainstream, and why loyalty programs continue to evolve in unexpected ways. Plus, Alaska Airlines signals interest in expanding its loyalty ecosystem, OneWorld adds a new hotel partnership, American Airlines appears to be making award pricing changes with Air Tahiti Nui, and Delta rolls out a new checked bag benefit that may not be quite as generous as it first appeared. Get hydrated like Ed in Vegas with Nuun Use my Bilt Rewards link to sign-up and support the show! If you enjoy the podcast, I hope you'll take a moment to leave us a rating. That helps us grow our audience! If you're looking for a way to support the show, we'd love to have you join us in our Travel Slack Community. Join me and other travel experts for informative conversations about the travel world, the best ways to use your miles and points, Zoom happy hours and exciting giveaways. Monthly access Annual access Personal consultation plus annual access We have witty, funny, sarcastic discussions about travel, for members only. My fellow travel experts are available to answer your questions and we host video chats multiple times per month. Follow Us! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/milestogopodcast/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@milestogopodcast Ed Pizza: https://www.instagram.com/pizzainmotion/ Richard Kerr: https://www.instagram.com/kerrpoints/ ✈️ What We Cover in This Episode ✈️ EU261 passenger compensation updates • Proposed changes to Europe's passenger rights rules • Why communication may become a bigger focus • Could the U.S. ever adopt something similar? ✈️ The challenge of airline accountability • What happens when flights are delayed or canceled • Enforcement versus policy • Making passengers whole versus getting them moving ✈️ JSX launches a new New York–Florida route • Teterboro to Naples service begins this fall • The appeal of semi-private flying • Why JSX continues to challenge traditional airlines ✈️ Loyalty programs keep expanding • OneWorld partners with Taj InnerCircle • Extending elite benefits beyond airlines • Why travel ecosystems matter ✈️ American Airlines and Air Tahiti Nui awards • Reports of new dynamic pricing • What travelers are seeing so far • Potential impact on AAdvantage value ✈️ United's credit card award discounts • Large mileage discounts for cardholders • A powerful acquisition strategy • How it compares to Delta's approach ✈️ Alaska Airlines wants more flexibility • Discussion around transferable points • Bank of America's potential role • The upside and downside for Mileage Plan members ✈️ Delta expands checked bag benefits • A second free checked bag for some cardholders • Why the change is more limited than expected • Who stands to benefit most ⏱️ Episode 440 Timestamps 3:35 – EU261 passenger compensation changes explained 7:51 – Should the U.S. adopt similar passenger protections? 12:05 – JSX launches Teterboro–Naples service 18:50 – OneWorld partners with Taj InnerCircle 22:40 – American and Air Tahiti Nui award pricing changes 25:44 – Why partner award pricing may be evolving 27:34 – United's surprisingly large award discounts for cardholders 29:20 – Slack community and Points Path updates 32:07 – Alaska Airlines discusses transferable points 36:31 – Delta's new checked bag benefit arrives
Enjoy the What's Bruin Show Network!Multiple shows to entertain you on one feed:Support WBS at Patreon.com/WhatsBruinShow for just $2/month and get exclusive content and access to our SLACK channel.Twitter/X: @whatsbruinshow Instagram: @whatsbruinshowCall the What's Bruin Network Hotline at 805-399-4WBS (Suck it Reign of Troy)We are also on YouTube HEREGet Your WBSN MERCH - Go to our MyLocker Site by Clicking HEREWhat's Bruin Show- A conversation about all things Bruin over drinks with Bruin Report Online's @mikeregaladoLA, @wbjake68 and friends!Subscribe to the What's Bruin Show at whatsbruin.substack.comEmail us at: whatsbruinshow@gmail.comTweet us at: @whatsbruinshowWest Coast Bias - LA Sports (mostly Lakers, Dodgers and NFL) with Jamaal and JakeSubscribe to West Coast Bias at wbwestcoastbias.substack.comEmail us at: WB.westcoastbias@gmail.comTweet us at: @WBwestcoastbiasThe BEAR Minimum - Jake and his Daughter Megan talk about student life and Cal Sports during her first year attending UC Berkeley.Subscribe to The BEAR Minimum at thebearminimum.substack.comEmail us at: wb.bearminimum@gmail.comTweet us at: @WB_BearMinimumPlease rate and review us on whatever platform you listen on.
WHAT IFWhat if you've done everything right — the climb, the grind, the sacrifices — and the exhaustion you feel isn't a personal failing, but proof that the system was never designed for you to win? Meghan French Dunbar spent over a decade interviewing more than 1,000 leaders to find the ones who figured out how to succeed without destroying themselves — and what she found will change how you define the whole game.SUMMARY & GUEST INTROMeghan French Dunbar is the co-founder of Conscious Company Magazine, creator of the World Changing Women Summit, TEDx speaker, Forbes and Fast Company contributor, host of the podcast Unbehaved, and author of This Isn't Working — a book born from her own collapse on the floor mid-panic attack and the two years of soul-searching that followed. After interviewing nearly 100 additional leaders for the book, Meghan identified a clear, research-backed playbook used by grounded, thriving women at the top — and it looks nothing like what we've been sold. Her work sits at the exact intersection of Erica's mission: naming what's broken, refusing to accept it as normal, and giving women a real path forward.INSIDE THE EPISODEThe panic attack that started it all. Meghan hits the floor of her guest room in 2017 — CEO, six months of runway left, 85-pound dog on her heels — and what she did the next morning says everything about the trap high-achieving women are in.The intrinsic vs. extrinsic success split. The one mindset shift every grounded, thriving leader Meghan interviewed had made — and the University of Rochester research that proves it's not just philosophy, it's survival.What "enough" actually looks like in practice. Meghan and her husband built a concrete definition of enough for their family — and how they use it as a hard line when a case or contract threatens to cross it. This is not abstract. This is a system.The ideal life statement exercise. Before you can change anything, you have to write down what you actually want. Meghan walks through why most people have never done this — and what happens when their current life and their ideal life don't match at all.For the woman who can't just quit. The long-game strategy Meghan got from the women she interviewed, including the internal play one leader ran inside a global consulting firm that gave her an exit ramp years later — without blowing up her life.Your boundaries are modeling behavior. "You cannot expect people to respect your boundaries if you don't respect them yourself." Meghan no longer has work email or Slack on her phone. Full stop. And she explains exactly why that matters for every person on your team.The stat that stops the room. 70% of people say their manager or boss has as much or more impact on their mental health than their spouse. If you lead people, this one is not optional listening.RESOURCES & LINKSBook: This Isn't Working by Meghan French DunbarWebsite: meganfrenchdunbar.comPodcast: Unbehaved with Meghan French DunbarLinkedIn: Meghan French DunbarHer Collective: Send Erica a DM. She'll invite you to sit in on a live Her Collective session as her personal guest. No pressure, no strings attached. BUY THE BOOK - Glass Ceilings and Sticky FloorsConnect with me on LinkedInBe a Book Launch Insider!!!My FREE 5x5 Starter Kit for LinkedInFREE WEEKLY SUCCESS PLANNERJoin our Facebook Group! Find me on InstagramCheck out our PINS on PinterestAnd YES - I'm on TikTok!
Jeremy Hirshberg on Leadership, Burnout, Meaning, and Why Your Boss Shouldn't Sound Like ChatGPTJeremy Hirshberg — organizational psychologist, leadership consultant and executive coach for Organizational Solutions, founder of Kaleidoscope Collaborative, and host of Resiliency Rounds and The Good Life, Reconsidered — joins the podcast for a wide-ranging conversation on AI, leadership, resilience, and what happens when technology starts moving faster than the human nervous system. Drawing on his work at the Center for Creative Leadership and Booz Allen Hamilton, Jeremy explores how organizations can integrate AI without losing empathy, creativity, psychological safety, or their collective soul.We discuss burnout, “AI theater,” executive anxiety, emotional intelligence, adaptability, meaning-making, and why the future belongs not simply to companies with the best technology — but to those combining high AI capability with being fully human. This taps into an interdependent cultural framework. Along the way we ask uncomfortable questions: What work should humans still own? What decisions should never be delegated to AI? Can mindfulness survive Slack notifications? And is your company innovating… or just panic-Googling the future with better branding?Credits:River is High, Ticketless TravelerCarl Reisman, guitar, singer, and songwriterJenny Goodwine, vocalsJames Singleton, bassJohnny Vidocovich, drumsDave Easley, steel guitarProduced by Morgan Orion Reismanfor more information, carlreisman@gmail.comCopyright 2025WCMI networking group A networking group for mindfulness-focused clinicians dedicated to learning together & collaborating for more information click here
#354: How do you build a consent system for someone who is dead? How do you clone a voice so it cannot be turned into a deep fake? Miles Spencer built a company around those exact questions. Reflekta.ai lets you talk to a reflection of someone who has passed. His own father reads a bedtime story to his granddaughter every night and talks it through until she falls asleep, eight years after he died. Is this just deep fake with better branding? What happens when the AI goes off the rails and asks grandpa for the three numbers on the back of a credit card? Miles has an answer for each one, and most of them land on the same line: you built it, you paid for it, it never leaves your four walls. Nothing gets scraped. There are only two public reflections on the entire platform. The voice of his dad came from a ten-second voicemail found on a relative's phone five years after he was gone, and last month that voice had 9,000 conversations. More than half the stories on Reflekta are from people who are still alive. ALS and Alzheimer's patients getting it all down while they still can. Founders who want their values to outlast them. And that last group is where it gets interesting for anyone who runs a company. New hires talk to the founder during onboarding. Ask a question about the business and the founder answers. SOPs, handbooks, the whole thing, in the voice of the person who built it. Miles calls the framework SoulTech, starting from the emotional weight of the product instead of bolting ethics on at the end. Agree with the premise or not, the stack underneath is less exotic than it sounds: multi-cloud, RAG, three voice vendors swapped by time of day, 110 days from idea to launch. Darin's verdict by the end is honest. The dead-relative part is still not his jam. But the founder who never leaves the building, the one who onboards every new hire forever? That one he gets. Miles' contact information: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/milesspencer/ YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/devopsparadox Review the podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://www.devopsparadox.com/review-podcast/ Slack: https://www.devopsparadox.com/slack/ Connect with us at: https://www.devopsparadox.com/contact/
Chris Erler bootstrapped ComX from €10,000 and unemployment benefits to €20 million in revenue in four years, becoming a first mover in B2B digital sales in Europe. He sold to private equity at multiples he never imagined. Then the company went through insolvency, and he walked away with nothing the second time around.In this episode, Chris and I get into what it feels like when your first company works on the first try, and what that kind of velocity does to you as a person. We talk about how his ego shifted as the money came in, what it was like to go from founder to employee inside a PE structure, and how his body literally broke down from stress he didn't even register. His spine was deteriorating for a year and he was answering Slack messages in a hospital at 11pm before he even acknowledged something was wrong.We also talk about what the insolvency felt like, how failure carries a completely different stigma in Europe than it does in the US, and why he's now building Erler Ventures to help founders scale without burning out along the way.This is a conversation about the full ride: the highs, the exit, the unraveling, and what success actually means after you've been through all of it. If you've ever built something that started taking more from you than it gave, this one is for you._______(01:05) What "doing things differently" meant growing up in Austria(02:30) What drove him to start his first company(05:00) The goal was financial freedom, not a big idea(07:30) It worked on the first try: €20M in four years(10:15) What that velocity felt like emotionally(12:15) "I tried to spend money. I didn't like it."(14:15) The dopamine kick and the ego trap(15:45) The body breaks: hospital at 11pm, answering Slack(18:15) The PE deal changed everything(19:30) "My why was not there, and that crushed me"(22:30) What the exit money actually felt like(24:30) The shift from founder to employee(25:45) Watching ComX go from acquisition to insolvency(28:30) Why failure carries shame in Europe but not the US(32:00) Building Erler Ventures: helping founders not burn out(35:00) "If your body doesn't work, nothing is fun"Show notes:Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. Connect with our host:Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to 'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar:Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.
Our Favorite Things: Romans 12:21- Ken WetmoreAs part of the Our Favorite Things series, featuring favorite Bible verses chosen by church members, this message explored Romans 12:21 and the call to overcome evil with good. Through the example of Jesus, it reminds us that love, forgiveness, and grace are more powerful than revenge and retaliation.Let us know your thoughts by reaching out and joining the conversation with your questions and comments using the information below:
WHAT IFWhat if you've done everything right — the climb, the grind, the sacrifices — and the exhaustion you feel isn't a personal failing, but proof that the system was never designed for you to win? Meghan French Dunbar spent over a decade interviewing more than 1,000 leaders to find the ones who figured out how to succeed without destroying themselves — and what she found will change how you define the whole game.SUMMARY & GUEST INTROMeghan French Dunbar is the co-founder of Conscious Company Magazine, creator of the World Changing Women Summit, TEDx speaker, Forbes and Fast Company contributor, host of the podcast Unbehaved, and author of This Isn't Working — a book born from her own collapse on the floor mid-panic attack and the two years of soul-searching that followed. After interviewing nearly 100 additional leaders for the book, Meghan identified a clear, research-backed playbook used by grounded, thriving women at the top — and it looks nothing like what we've been sold. Her work sits at the exact intersection of Erica's mission: naming what's broken, refusing to accept it as normal, and giving women a real path forward.INSIDE THE EPISODEThe panic attack that started it all. Meghan hits the floor of her guest room in 2017 — CEO, six months of runway left, 85-pound dog on her heels — and what she did the next morning says everything about the trap high-achieving women are in.The intrinsic vs. extrinsic success split. The one mindset shift every grounded, thriving leader Meghan interviewed had made — and the University of Rochester research that proves it's not just philosophy, it's survival.What "enough" actually looks like in practice. Meghan and her husband built a concrete definition of enough for their family — and how they use it as a hard line when a case or contract threatens to cross it. This is not abstract. This is a system.The ideal life statement exercise. Before you can change anything, you have to write down what you actually want. Meghan walks through why most people have never done this — and what happens when their current life and their ideal life don't match at all.For the woman who can't just quit. The long-game strategy Meghan got from the women she interviewed, including the internal play one leader ran inside a global consulting firm that gave her an exit ramp years later — without blowing up her life.Your boundaries are modeling behavior. "You cannot expect people to respect your boundaries if you don't respect them yourself." Meghan no longer has work email or Slack on her phone. Full stop. And she explains exactly why that matters for every person on your team.The stat that stops the room. 70% of people say their manager or boss has as much or more impact on their mental health than their spouse. If you lead people, this one is not optional listening.RESOURCES & LINKSBook: This Isn't Working by Meghan French DunbarWebsite: meganfrenchdunbar.comPodcast: Unbehaved with Meghan French DunbarLinkedIn: Meghan French DunbarHer Collective: Send Erica a DM. She'll invite you to sit in on a live Her Collective session as her personal guest. No pressure, no strings attached. BUY THE BOOK - Glass Ceilings and Sticky FloorsConnect with me on LinkedInBe a Book Launch Insider!!!My FREE 5x5 Starter Kit for LinkedInFREE WEEKLY SUCCESS PLANNERJoin our Facebook Group! Find me on InstagramCheck out our PINS on PinterestAnd YES - I'm on TikTok!
Send us Fan MailThe Salesforce job market is finally showing a pulse, but it is not a comeback story. We sit down with Sasha Semyonova, a leading tech journalist at Salesforce Ben, to unpack what the latest hiring signals really mean for Salesforce careers, from admins and developers to architects and ISVs. If you have been watching job boards fill up with “unicorn” roles and deflating salaries, you are not imagining it, and we explain why it keeps happening.We talk candidly about the realities candidates face right now: market saturation, ghost jobs, layoffs, and the growing influence of AI on staffing decisions. Sasha shares what she is seeing across the Salesforce ecosystem, including the shift toward specialized specialists who can blend platform knowledge with business analysis, architecture thinking, and practical AI skills. We also dig into why blasting out AI-generated resumes is a losing strategy for most people and how being undeniably human can still cut through the noise when everyone else looks the same on paper.Then we look ahead. Headless Salesforce, a Slack-first workflow, Agentforce, and rapid UI changes are reshaping how users interact with the platform and what employers will expect next. For ISVs and partners, we cover the pressure to build agent-oriented solutions and the simple question that matters most: what do customers actually want from AI?Subscribe for more honest market breakdowns, share this with someone job hunting in Salesforce, and leave a review with your biggest question about where the ecosystem is headed next.
Get your free travel insurance quote with Faye! https://milestomemories.com/go/faye-travel-insurance/ American Airlines is quietly blocking last-minute partner award space, Alaska is raising its partner and phone booking fees on July 1, and Shawn just had a really bad "five-star" stay at the Grand Hyatt Athens. On this episode of MTM Travel, Shawn and Mark break down the AA award change and who it actually hurts, the Alaska fee increases and how the Summit card can offset them, and a brutal play-by-play of a Hyatt stay gone wrong — slow undersized elevators, road-noise "motel" rooms, burned eggs, no elite recognition, and a manager who hid in the back — all against a flawless stay at the Hyatt Regency Barcelona. Plus why lounges are cracking down on taking food and drinks, the role of private-equity cost-cutting, and how Hyatt only displays its good TripAdvisor reviews. Let us know your own Hyatt experiences down below, and we'll be back Thursday with more travel news. Episode Guide: 0:00 Welcome to MTM Travel 0:19 – Welcome back: Barcelona vs. Colombia (and the "Barthelona" debate) 1:33 – American Airlines blocks last-minute partner award space 5:30 – Alaska raises partner & phone booking fees (July 1) 8:40 – The decline of Hyatt 9:17 – Grand Hyatt Athens: a "five-star" disaster 15:21 – Hyatt Regency Barcelona done right 18:46 – Hyatt's rapid expansion & all-inclusive slide 21:00 – Every problem is a chance to win (or lose) a customer 25:35 – Why can't you take food and drinks from the lounge anymore? 28:18 – Hyatt only shows its good TripAdvisor reviews 30:09 – Final thoughts & what's coming Thursday ✈️ Track your travel credit cards for free
In this episode of The Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about the pressure high achievers put on themselves and the fears that often drive that pressure beneath the surface. My guest this week is Brendan Cournane, attorney, endurance athlete and author of Seeking Serenity.Brendan shares stories from his decades in law, including the decision to close a major deal on the same day his daughter was born because he feared being seen as unavailable or less committed. He reflects on how stress, expectations and the need to prove ourselves can shape the choices we make at work and in life.In our conversation, we explore the connection between fear and overachievement, why asking for help feels so difficult for many professionals and how self-awareness helps us respond more intentionally under pressure. Brendan also shares why he believes harmony is a more useful goal than balance. Finally, we discuss the role expectations play in impostor syndrome and why understanding our motives, fears and core values is essential to finding greater clarity, steadiness and fulfillment.About My GuestBrendan Cournane is a Certified Professional Coach (CPC) and world-class endurance coach with over 35 years of expertise. After finding his path to recovery in 1989 and discovering the transformative power of running through qualifying for the 100th Boston Marathon in 1995, Brendan learned that mindfulness practice and being true to oneself are integral to achieving happiness and success. He believes and practices the philosophy that “Happiness is a present attitude, not a future condition.”As Chairperson of the Chicago Bar Association Committee on Lawyer Well-Being and Mindfulness and Co-President of the Mindfulness in the Law Society, Illinois Chapter, Brendan specializes in helping professionals facing stress, transition, and burnout. He has been a training coach for charity marathon teams participating in races around the world, including Chicago, Marine Corps, Disney, Dublin, Rome, Paris, London, Stockholm, Berlin, Tokyo, and Antarctica.Through his professional development coaching practice, speaking engagements, and training programs, Brendan offers his lived experience, strength, and hope as a catalyst for others seeking to live healthy, fulfilling lives while maintaining balance in even the most challenging times.~Connect with Brendan:Website: https://www.coachbrendan.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brendan-cournane-professional-development-coaching~Connect with Kim and The Impostor Syndrome Files:Join the free Impostor Syndrome Challenge:https://www.kimmeninger.com/challengeLearn more about the Leading Humans discussion group:https://www.kimmeninger.com/leadinghumansgroupJoin the Slack channel to learn from, connect with and support other professionals: https://forms.gle/Ts4Vg4Nx4HDnTVUC6Join the Facebook group:https://www.facebook.com/groups/leadinghumansSchedule time to speak with Kim Meninger directly about your questions/challenges: https://bookme.name/ExecCareer/strategy-sessionConnect on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimmeninger/Website:https://www.kimmeninger.com
Keith talks with data-driven investor Neal Bawa, the "mad scientist of multifamily," about why apartment values have dropped 20%–30% while single-family prices have stayed resilient. They break down how interest rate shocks, the homeowner lock-in effect, and a wave of new multifamily supply are reshaping returns for today's investors. Keith and Neal also dissect the build-to-rent model—who it really serves, how apartment oversupply is pressuring its rents, and why pending legislation could upend the space. Neal closes with a specific, data-backed timeline for when multifamily rents and values may finally turn the corner, giving listeners a concrete roadmap instead of vague market guesses. Resources: Grocapitus Website - https://www.grocapitus.com Multifamily U's Free eBook: Location Magic - https://multifamilyu.com/lp/location-magic-ebook/ Multifamily U's Investor Club – https://multifamilyu.com/club Episode Page: GetRichEducation.com/609 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments. For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit FreedomFamilyInvestments.com/GRE or text FAMILY to 66866 Unlock truly passive real estate income—visit flockhomes.com/GRE today to see if your properties qualify for a 721 exchange with Flock Homes. To get in the best physical, mental, and professional shape of your life, go to DanielThomasHind.com and apply for Daniel's intensive 1-on-1 coaching for burnt-out entrepreneurs and executives. Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review" For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— GREletter.com Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript: Keith Weinhold 0:00 Keith, welcome to GRE. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. The single-family real estate market is steady, but with apartment building values down 20 to 30% since 2022 when will the multifamily Armageddon end? We ask our qualified guest, and how will slowing birth rates in immigration affect real estate? And more today on Get Rich Education. You know, Mid South Home Buyers, that top Memphis turnkey provider. I learned that a secret weapon behind their explosive growth is more than just you buying their properties, it's an executive coach for nine years now, their CEO, Terry Kerr, and his COO, Pat Nix, have worked privately with a coach who I've now learned from too, and he doesn't market himself online anywhere. After 12 years behind the scenes, that coach is now making himself available exclusively for GRE listeners. His name is Daniel Thomas Hind. If you're a hard-charging business owner or investor who wants to get in the best shape of your life, physically, mentally, and professionally, you can fill out an application for a free consult. This is private one on one coaching for those willing to go to uncommon lengths to achieve uncommon results. Thanks to Daniel, we've all become better leaders, better operators, and better men. It started by showing up for ourselves. Now it's your turn. Go to Daniel Thomas hind.com H I N D, that's Daniel Thomas hind.com and sign up before Spotsville Flock homes helps multifamily owners exit the operator grind, whether it's your six plex or a 50 unit apartment, through a 721 exchange. This defers your capital gains tax. It's a strategy long used by institutions. Now you can swap tenants and toilets for passive income and zero management. Request your initial valuations. See if your property qualifies at flockhomes.com/gre That's F L O C K homes dot com slash G R E. Neal Bawa 2:13 You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is Get Rich Education. Keith Weinhold 2:29 Welcome to GRE from Valencia, Spain to Valencia, California, and across 188 nations worldwide. America's favorite shaved mammal on a microphone is back with you for another wealth building week. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you're listening to Get Rich Education. The world's biggest problems are the world's biggest businesses. That's not a coincidence, and that's why we discuss housing here. And there's been a chronic shortage of affordable housing last month at a commencement speech, Harrison Ford, yes, the guy that played both Han Solo and Indiana Jones, talked about how a fulfilling life has both passion and purpose. Passion is what gets you out of bed in the morning, purpose is what helps you sleep at night, you and I. We can bring this mindset to our lifestyle, to the business we do, and to our investing. Treating tenants well is what helps real estate investors sleep well at night. While we're doing well, we can be doing good too. Multifamily syndicators keep failing, going out of business, and losing all of their investors' money due to mortgage rate resets. It just keeps happening. What this really means, that these groups that pooled together investor money to buy apartment buildings, largely that were set up in 2022 and earlier keep blowing up almost fully due to the fact that interest rates reset higher. Some of them had a fixed rate for five years. Well, rates spiked four years ago, and that's why a lot of them have yet to blow up, and these apartments have lost so much value that no one will refinance them, you know. Even if that apartment operator increased the net operating income over the years, even if rents went up, it doesn't matter. So, you still haven't heard the last of it. Do you remember a couple years ago, when a lot of people in the apartment space, they were saying just stay alive till 25 and that nonsense, like if you keep your head above water until 2025 oh well, then rates are certainly going to fall, and everyone's going to be okay. Well, 2025 is long gone. Keith Weinhold 5:01 Mortgage rates haven't fallen in any significant way, so that survive until 25 thing or whatever mantra derivative people used that was a farce, like I've said on the show here for years. You cannot predict interest rates, so I didn't make the call that they were going to go up or down at all, because you can't predict them, but so many people said, oh, rates will fall substantially by now, no way, you just can't make that assumption, you've got to take history over hunches, and all of that, a lot of those multifamily deals 100% depended. depended on refinancing at favorable rates, and that's exactly why they failed. A surefire way to look foolish is to predict interest rates. We'll talk more about the multifamily Armageddon with today's guest. I also want to get into what's called the 21st century road to housing act, because that became one of the most hotly debated housing policy provisions this year. And what this is, is a Senate bill, and it would require certain large institutional investors that develop these bills to rent single family communities. It would force them to sell those homes to individual buyers within seven years. So, in other words, what a big firm could do is build a neighborhood of rental homes, lease them for up to seven years, but they couldn't hold on to them any longer than that. They couldn't hold them indefinitely as rentals, this bill is not aimed at you, the individual investor. It is aimed at big institutions, and what I mean by that is that's generally defined as owning 350 or more homes. That's what we're talking about here. Small landlords and mom and pop investors are not the target, it targets corporate portfolios, and this means groups whose names you've probably heard of, like Blackstone, First Key Homes, Progress Residential, and Invitation Homes. They are some of the heavyweights that the government is looking to clamp down on, so whenever you hear someone talk about big Wall Street landlords, that is who they're talking about. Now, some groups are pretty worried about the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, like the NHB, that's the National Association of Home Builders, and a lot of multifamily groups are concerned, and why is that? Well, the effect is it could dramatically reduce new housing production. Keith Weinhold 7:44 See, a big institution like First Key Homes or Blackstone, they wouldn't want to even get into this business anymore. They wouldn't want to build big build to rent communities anymore if they have to sell them all within seven years. See, they want to buy and hold for the long term, kind of like what you and I are doing, because you and I know that owning a group of selective buy and hold single family rentals is a really profitable place to be, but so if they don't want to build, then that creates a reduction in supply, which could make prices go up, and then obviously hurt those trying to afford their own home. Well, that would defeat the purpose of this whole thing. I mean, my gosh, this always seems to happen when government gets involved. So, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act could limit supply, which is the exact opposite of its intent to get first-time home buyers into their first home, and if this passes, it does have bipartisan support. This lower supply, then yes, indeed puts upward pressure on prices. Just amazing. So then it could actually go on to help the everyday mom and pop investor, like you and I, that already owns property, the individual at last check, though they're looking to pass a version that still restricts some of these giant institutions from getting into build to rents, but yet it does not have that seven year sale requirement. What's really important to remember here is that Washington, they're looking to stifle big Wall Street players from the rental market, which could reduce supply. They're not targeting individual investors. The context that's important is that these groups, they own 10s of 1000s of homes, they don't own hundreds of 1000s, and they don't own a million, so it's a really small percentage of the housing market, whatever direction policy breaks, then the headlines that it creates are just greater in magnitude than the effect on the market is. It's an important frame of reference here. Let's meet this week's guest. This week we're welcoming back a guest that we haven't heard from in a year or two in real estate circles. He is popularly known as the mad scientist of multifamily. He's quite an in-demand speaker. He has a $500 million multifamily portfolio that he essentially shares with over 1300 investors. He's sharp, a good educator, and a straight shooter. That's why he's here. It's a warm welcome back to Neal Bawa. Neal Bawa 10:32 Thanks for having me on the show again. It's delightful to be here, and so many interesting things to talk about in the world these days. Keith Weinhold 10:38 There really are.. I don't know if we can get it all in, Bawa is spelled B A W A. Neal, I want to get to your future housing market outlook later. How you think the future looks, including when multi families quasi Armageddon might end. But first, you're known as a data driven real estate guy. Tell us about that, and how being data driven makes you profitable. Neal Bawa 11:03 I see concern, and I'll tell you why. The single family and multifamily market have been atrociously incredibly divergent since the first quarter of 2022 They have not tracked yet each other at all, even though if you look at the last 50 years, they tend to track each other. So you know, 2008 was a Armageddon for single family, Armageddon for multifamily, and they both sort of came up in 2012 2013 and then they had a really good time until Covid. Keith Weinhold 11:30 Yeah, Neal Bawa 11:31 but the second quarter of 2022 is when Fed started raising rates, and since then we've sort of slid - multifamily has gone down in terms of pricing between 20 and 30% depending upon the metro, you know, and depending upon whether it's new construction, new construction assets have gone down more than 30% and existing assets that are filled up have gone down by 20 to 30% depending upon the metro. So, metros that have a large amount of supply, closer to 30% decline in value, the metros that have less supply probably closer to 20% decline in value, right. Keith Weinhold 12:03 Demand demand has been pretty resilient. It's more of a supply story. Neal Bawa 12:06 It's a huge supply story, right. So, if you look at, you know, occupancy, essentially what's happened is there was so much supply that came in that really people started on those projects in 2022 maybe they didn't start a construction until 2023 they didn't finish construction until 2025 so they started leasing up in 2025 They had to give offer concessions two months, sometimes three months free, and so that pushed down the rents in 2025. And they're not done, because you typically can't rent an apartment in six months. If it's brand new, it's going to take you about 18 months to rent it, and sometimes 24 months, and so it's affected our rents in 2025 it's affecting our rents in 2026. Now it's unlikely to affect it in 2027 but we'll go there, you know, at a later stage. But at the moment, we, what we've seen is negative rent growth in the United States for multifamily for the last 12 to 15 months, and what I think is going to be negative rent growth in Q of this year and Q2 of this year, so Q1 was negative, Q2, which we are in now, is likely to be negative or flat now. Single family, on the other hand, has gone in a different direction, which has been very difficult to understand, and I believe it's taken me a while to really understand this, but I think I've finally figured it out. Single family prices are not down since 2022 which makes no sense at all, because the average mortgage in the United States today is almost double, almost double, not quite double, but almost double of what it was in at the beginning of 2022 when interest rates were about 3.3 3.4% Right now we're sitting around, you know, six and a half percent interest rates, so not quite doubled interest rates, but they've obviously gone up a fair bit, and as a result, your average, you know, mortgage has almost doubled, but home prices haven't dropped, which makes no sense if you really think about it, because home prices are a factor of demand, and they're also a factor of people's ability to pay, so if all of a sudden within four years you're paying, the mortgage is doubled, then less people are going to be able to buy, but it stayed up, the market has stayed up, and the biggest reason it stayed up is because of what is known as the lock-in effect. So, the US market typically has a million new homes every year, and there's more than a million existing homes that are transacted, right? So, it's an open market, it's a perfect competition market, but it hasn't been perfect competition for the last four years, because so many people locked in ridiculously low interest rates. Neal Bawa 14:28 Perfect example, in 2021 and 2022 I have a 15 year mortgage at 1.75% If I sell my house back to myself, my mortgage quadruples, quadruples, right, because it goes from 1.75% to six and a half percent, so I can't even imagine even think about leaving my home, right, because it's just such a perfect loan. Most people don't have anywhere near 1.75% but there's lots of people with more mortgages in the 3% three and a half percent, and 4% range that basically can't go anywhere, and because those homes are not coming into the market. The last three years the market has had this unusual not enough supply factor, and that's been keeping prices up. That is ending. That is ending, because what we've been tracking is the percentage of homes in the United States that have low mortgages. Low is simply defined as anything under four and a half percent, and that percentage is going down each quarter, because you know divorces happen, deaths happen, you know people move for jobs, and so every time that happens, that locked in rate goes away, because you sell your home and move on, and so for a while that lock in effect was predominant, it was controlling everything, but as time has gone on, interest rates were higher in 2324 2526 For also almost four years have passed since the rate started going up. So each quarter the percentage of homes in the US that have these low interest rates has slowly moved down, and we're almost back to a normal timeframe. Neal Bawa 15:53 And this is causing the single family market to not have a conniption, but we're starting to see a balancing of the market, where it's not just a buyer's market anymore, in some places it's actually seller's market, some places it's a buyer's market. So we're now starting to see home prices drop in number of markets in the United States. I can't say that they've dropped in super majors, but we're seeing a flattening out effect of home prices in most metros in the US, and there should be a flattening effect. Just to be blunt, I mean, obviously I own a bunch of single-family homes, so I just wanted them to keep going up for selfish reasons. But if you think about it, we had huge home price growth in like 30 plus percent in number of years, 2021 22 and even 23 and during those years, salaries only went up by two to 3% a year. In one year, they went up by 4% and rents also went up like crazy. There was a 2021 was 15% rent growth year. So, at some point, there had to be an adjustment, and we are in that period of adjustment where single family prices are basically flat on a national basis. Yes, going up in the San Francisco Bay Area because of AI, and going up in a couple other technology-heavy metros because of AI, but otherwise fairly flat, and I don't expect that to change for the next year. So, my forecast is next 12 to 18 months, home prices in the US are going to be flat on a nominal basis, they're going to be down on an inflation-adjusted basis, but you know, because of the Iran, more inflation's three and a half percent, so home prices should go up three and a half percent. So, if they stay where they are, well, they're really dropping three and a half percent. Keith Weinhold 17:29 Yeah, before this year began, I released our forecast, it was for 2% nominal home price appreciation in the one to four unit space for the US this year, and I still like how that looks. There's so much to unpack with what you just talked about. In my view, there's nothing unusual at all that when mortgage rates rose sharply a few years ago, that home prices rose as well. Why? Because actually, that's what usually happens, which is counterintuitive to most people. In all of our lifetimes, residential real estate prices have only fallen significantly one time, that was around 2008 due to a number of unusual circumstances. The only thing that's a bit different this time is, of course, how fast rates increased in 2022 and 2023 and people wondering if residential real estate prices could still keep up, and they certainly have, but yeah, you brought up this dichotomy, this bifurcation about how the apartment market and the one to four unit space kind of separated from each other in 2022 or 2023 That's what's so interesting. Neal Bawa 18:36 I do want to point out a couple things, though, and I don't want to be a Pollyanna here and talk about negative stuff, but I think that there's big difference between 2008 and that timeframe and where we are today, and that difference is, and it has multiple parts. Not all of your audience is aware of this. Until about 2012 the United States had very reasonable birth rates. You know, we were one of those countries that had avoided the debacle that Japan, Korea, China, and a number of other countries are seeing South Korea being the absolute worst, where basically they were producing one baby per generation, where you need about 2.2 babies just to kind of keep your population where it is, right, and the US was unusually high in that, and that we were still above that threshold, which meant that our population would continue to grow and not fall. Now, there was two reasons our population was growing: One, we had more than 2.2 babies per household, and second, we had a very significant amount of legal and a very significant amount of illegal or undocumented immigration. Right, so we had both of those pipelines today. All three of those have flipped, so the United States now basically looks like Korea or China or Japan in that every household is producing about one and a half babies, which means that our population growth, which hasn't stopped yet, because it takes a while for these things to catch. Up is likely to stop, like it's, and at some point decline again. Luckily, we're not there yet. The US is a fairly young population, unlike Japan, which is one of the oldest populations in the world. So, it'll, we'll still continue to see population growth, but there is no doubt. And you can ask Chat GPT, right? How has population growth in the United States slowed over the last 20 years. Neal Bawa 19:22 Make me a graph, and it will make you a very nice graph, and you'll very clearly see there's a slowdown in population growth. The second part is both documented and undocumented immigration. It's my estimate that since this administration took over, somewhere between half 1,000,001 million people have left the United States. Now it's very difficult to get an actual number, as you can imagine. A number of these people were undocumented, so we didn't really know how many there were to begin with. And a number of them, when they left, they also left by an undocumented rate, that you know, path. So we've lost a bunch of those people, and also the people that have stayed in the country, we've lost a number of them in the workforce. Here's a perfect anecdote, Keith. About 33% of the construction workforce in the United States was undocumented, one in three. In Texas, as much as 40% Keith Weinhold 19:45 Yeah, that's huge. Neal Bawa 19:45 It's very significant. Number of those people don't show up for work anymore. I don't think they've left the US, at least I don't think so. But they don't show up for work anymore, because that's how they get caught, right. So, what we've seen is that the construction workforce in the United States has become been decimated over the last 12 months, and the impact is much greater in the second half of 2025 than the first half. Why? Because even though they wanted to do ICE enforcement, they just simply didn't have enough agents, enough facilities, enough judges. When the second half of last year, they sort of started catching up on that, hiring more agents, getting more facilities, getting more judges, and so we started to see a real challenge there. I have properties in 10 markets in the US, and what I can say is about seven of those markets, mostly Southern markets, I am beginning to see dropping occupancy related to this phenomenon. I'm seeing a reduction, and so markets like Georgia and Texas, Florida are more hit than my northern markets like Idaho. I haven't seen any impact at all, but these southern markets, multiple properties, multiple metros, I'm seeing this - people, mostly of Spanish, Mexican origin, not renewing leases. I don't know what they're doing. I don't know if they're sleeping in their cars. I don't know if they're basically just, you know, staying with mom or staying with, you know, some other family. But I'm seeing a very, very big pullback in my leases tied to this, and occupancy is dropping in those markets that are heavily Hispanic. And so I'm seeing the impact of that on landlords, but I also know that there's an impact on the US at all, and overall demand on rentals, whether it's single family or multifamily. This is a significant impact, because I don't think that the Republicans are going to make a U-turn on this. I don't want to get political, but you know, stating the obvious. Keith Weinhold 19:45 Yes, United States had its biggest birth year in 2007 when there were more than 4 million babies born. The average age of the first time homebuyer today is 40 years old. If that holds true, that peak would take place in 2047 And then, yes, to your point about changes in immigration, yes, it sounds like a potentially a reduction in demand with what you're talking about, with some vacancies, and also maybe a reduction in supply when you have fewer construction workers to build these places as well, we're talking about building properties. Neal, I want to talk to you about the build to rent space. Somewhat is build to rent better than traditional real estate? I think that's what we really want to know. And for those that don't know, build to rent means when you construct a property where from day one that construction project is built for a tenant, not an owner occupant. I see a lot of pros and cons there. Can you talk to us about the trade-offs between build to rent and traditional real estate? Neal Bawa 19:52 Yeah, if you think about it, it's a really terrible word, built to rent, because if you think about the word built to rent should be apartments, right, but actually doesn't mean apartments, right? So, built to rent actually means single family or town homes that were built to rent out, right? And then you're like, why don't they just said built to rent apartments and town homes? Well, you know, was too long an acronym, and we suck at acronyms anyway. But BTR, or built to rent, is essentially building single family or town homes, but specifically building them to rent, and it doesn't include any apartments at all, right? And the reason why the BTR market was growing in the last five or six years is that roughly 18 million American families can no longer afford to buy starter single family homes, you know, and by starter I mean, small old single-family homes. That's how Americans usually started, you know, in their 20s and 30s. They would buy these homes, some of them, but they would fix up, and then they over time, in their 30s, late 30s and 40s and 50s, they would upgrade, and then at starting the 50s, it would flatten out, and then the 60s, they would start to downgrade, right? That's been a typical thing that's happened in America for 56 5070, years. Well, that is, cannot happen anymore. And it broke in 2022 until 2022 It was a normal cycle beyond 2022 because interest rates almost doubled, and the mortgages almost doubled, but the incomes only increased by 10 to 20% There became this orphaned generation of Americans, roughly 18 million families, that simply cannot afford to buy that starter home, and they are now forever renters. They don't know it. They think that they're going to catch up at some point, but five minutes with an Excel spreadsheet, I could prove it to them that they're not going to catch up. Neal Bawa 25:35 Maybe one in 100 families would see a very large increase in income, and that would result in them catching up, but for the most part, as a group, these 18 million families, they're forever enters as a group that didn't exist before 2021 right. It's entirely because of this outrageous increase in mortgages, while not seeing a drop in home prices, that led to this, and so those orphan families, they actually earn pretty well, so these are families that make 70, 80, $90,000 in mid markets. They make over $100,000 if they're living on the coasts or in expensive markets, and they still can't buy that, you know, starter home. And so they don't want to live in apartments. I have lots of apartments, old ones, new ones, and I want these people to live there, but they don't want to live there, and so they've been looking for an option, and that option has been developers like me building communities of 200 300 townhomes or single family homes with a small little yard, and then basically from day one, instead of selling them, renting them out, and then once you're done renting out the whole community with 200 tenants, then you sell that to an apartment company. You know, there's lots of apartment companies in the US that have 100,000 units. Well, they want to buy these because the turnover is lower. So, what happens is most of these town homes and single-family homes for rent. Families come in, and they typically rent for three to five years before they move, whereas in on my apartments I lose 40% of my tenants each year. So, if I have 200 tenants, I lose 80 of them every year, and I have to basically go back, clean up those units, deal with the vacancy. But when I have townhome communities like my Idaho Falls townhome community. I lose a tenant at roughly every four years, and so, as you can imagine, profitability goes up when turnover goes down, right? Neal Bawa 27:31 Because you don't have that cost of turnover and vacancy, and so eventually those large landlords that are holding 100,000 units figured out, I like this, what Neal Bawa is doing, he's building these 200 townhomes, I want to buy these from him when they're rented. I don't want to build them, I don't want to lease them up, I just want to buy them when they're stabilized. And so BTR became that name for that marketplace where developers would build townhomes and single families, rent them out, and then sell them to institutional, and it was some— Keith Weinhold 27:56 People think of fabulous institutionalization of the starter home. Neal Bawa 28:00 And in many ways it is, because what happened is, for a while, these institutional players, like Blackstone and BlackRock, they were like, we are just going to go out and buy 50,000 single-family homes, and that's going to be the institutionalized. Well, that worked really well if you bought in 2008 2009 2010 2011 because you got them bought them at a discount, but when they started buying them in 2015, 16, 17, 18 at ever higher prices, they didn't make any money. So the vast majority of these public funds that were created to buy large amounts of single family have failed if they've purchased anything in the last seven or eight years. If they bought before that, they made huge amounts of money. Family homes are so expensive that basically buying them for rental did not make sense, so these companies have now pivoted to saying we'll only buy communities that have 100 or 200 or 300 of these homes, because then we get the benefits of having centralized leasing, centralized property management, centralized maintenance, and I don't have homes spread all over the metro, they're all in one place, and I can make more profit from that. In theory, that's been good, and you might think that I'm bullish on BTR, but I'm actually today bearish on BTR for one single reason. About seven months ago, Republicans started talking about a bill - I don't know what the name of the bill is, but what this bill does is it forces builds to rent developers like me within seven years of building the property to sell all of the homes in that property to single family tenants, not to Blackstone, not to Blackrock, but to single family tenants. Hasn't passed yet, but it passed the Senate with an 8910 vote, which means that both Democrats and Republicans wanted to vote for this. If it passes the House, and because Donald Trump himself is very heavily opposed to it, he's made it very clear he doesn't like this. He's a developer, obviously. It hasn't passed the House yet, but if it passes the house, that will destroy the build to rent market. No one will ever build build to rent, because the worst possible thing is I build this, and within seven years I have to actually sell it to individual buyers. If I do that, my banks are going to hate me and not give me loans to build BTR anymore. Obviously, there's going to be some grandfathering to the communities that I'm building now, or maybe even build the ones that I'm building in 2027 maybe grandfathered. It usually is, because you know, Congress never does anything retroactively, and they give you a year or two, but if it passes, it's doomsday for BTR. I hope it doesn't happen, but that's the way it's looking, because it's bipartisan. Bipartisan bills are more likely to pass Keith Weinhold 30:40 Now for the mom and pop investor, the individual investor build to rents have obvious appeal due to your point about the lower turnover, lower maintenance costs on a new build, lower insurance costs often on a new build, and then there's the tenant appeal to a new build as well, but of course there is that investor downside. I think a lot of investors are aware of their thin initial cash flow that they're going to have on build to rent, but you know, Neal, another downside with build to rent, I think a lot of investors don't look at is, hey, just how many of these things are they building? Are they building 500 of them? Do I have some overbuild risk if I buy into this community that could suppress occupancy and rents for a while. Neal Bawa 31:21 What we've seen is that when Built to Rent started out in 2017-2018 it was its own asset class. It wasn't competing with apartments, it wasn't competing with single family rentals, it was just its own thing. However, in the last two or three years, as more and more apartments flooded the marketplace, we had a glut. It moved away from that. It basically started getting affected, and the rent started falling, just like any other portion of the market. You know, think of it as three portions of market. There's the built to rent, which I described, you know, brand new single family homes, town homes per rent. There's the apartments, both brand new and existing, and there's the single family rentals, right, which there are millions of. What we are seeing now is it's become one market, right? All of them are affecting each other, and the apartments, which have a huge amount of glut, there's a massive amount of new apartments that have come in in the last two years, are really pushing the rents down for single family, they're pushing that rents down for BTR. So, at this point, what I would say to people that have this concern, Keith, is simply look at incoming apartment supply, because if you're in a marketplace, and I'll give you examples of really good markets that are crushed right now. If you're in a market that has a lot of incoming supply, whether you buy a single family rental, a quadplex, a 50 plex that's an apartment, or 100 unit BTR, you're going to suffer for rent growth if you have a lot of incoming supply in 2026 and that is across the board in every market in the US. Huntsville, Alabama is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting markets in the US for 5 year, 10 year growth, right? Neal Bawa 32:54 If I had to say you don't need a loan, it's just your own cash, no investors, where would you put money in? It would be at the top of my list, not at the very top. Idaho Falls is definitely the number one market in the US in my list, but Huntsville is up there. But right now, do you know what rent growth in Huntsville is? Minus 2% negative 2% Why? Because there's 6000 units coming into a market that's, you know, 1/5 or 1/10 the size of Phoenix, right. It's 1/10 the size of Dallas, but it has half the units of Dallas or Phoenix coming in, and so rent growth is negative there. So, what I would say is today absolutely everyone that is an investor should understand that we live in the magic world of AI, and you should be talking with Chat GPT about incoming supply for any market that you're interested in, and using that to make your decisions, because all of these markets merged, BTR, new apartments, old apartments, single family, everything has emerged in the last 24 months, where they're all affecting each other, and if there's too much supply of any one kind, it's affecting all of the other markets, and that's the message that I have. And none of this is like you have to go buy a $25,000 software like Costar today. Chat GPT is your costar. Keith Weinhold 34:11 You're listening to Get Rich Education. We're talking with the mad scientist of multifamily, Neal Bawa, where we come back, including what he thinks about recovery for the beleaguered multifamily market. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. What if you got your mortgage loans the same place I get mine? You sure can at Ridge Lending Group, NMLS 42056 They provided GRE listeners with more loans than anyone, because Ridge specializes in investment property. They'll help you build a long-term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequal, and even chat directly with President Caeli Ridge. While it's on your mind, start at ridgelendinggroup.com that's ridgelendinggroup.com Keith Weinhold 34:56 Let me ask you something: if you've worked hard to build wealth, is your money positioned to actually support your goals? A lot of accredited investors leave capital sitting in cash because it feels safe, but inflation and missed income opportunities can quietly erode its value. Freedom Family Investments offers freedom notes for investors seeking structured income backed by real estate. It's a straightforward approach built on real assets, not speculation. In full disclosure, I'm an investor myself. What I like is that their team walks you through how it all works, so you can decide if it aligns with your portfolio and income goals. Every investment carries risk, and nothing is guaranteed, but with a track record of consistent on-time investor payouts, they built real credibility. Go to freedomfamilyinvestments.com to book a clarity call, or text family 268 66 That's Family 266 866 Speaker 1 36:00 This is the star of the A E Show, The Real Estate Commission. Todd Rollette. Listen to Get Rich Education with my friend Keith Weinhold, and don't quit your daydream. Keith Weinhold 36:20 Welcome back to Get Rised Education. We're talking with Neal Bawa, a really sharp multifamily syndicator who's also highly data driven. And Neal, tell us more about the beleaguered multifamily market that had those aforementioned problems really cropping up in 2022 and we had a lot of supply and spiking rates. What does it look like for the path to recovery for the US multifamily market? Neal Bawa 36:45 Luckily, demand is strong, and even though occupancies have dropped, typically the multifamily market, the large multifamily market in the US, tends to be between 95 and 96% occupied. Okay, and right now we're on 93% so that all that incoming supply means that about 7% of our apartments in the US are empty at the moment, we're trying to fill them, and we are seeing that occupancy drop, not across just new apartments that are leasing up, but also drop in class B and class C. We've also seen a huge increase in concessions, so I studied this quite obsessively, and I can tell you that 2026 in some markets is the recovery year, but not across the board in the United States, and the reason for that is sentiment. Once renters get used to huge amounts of concessions, it's like a drug, it takes a little while before you wean those renters off of those drugs, and so there's that hit right now. Every renter program, Keith Weinhold 37:44 Everyone wants their freebie for good. Neal Bawa 37:46 Yeah, exactly. It's like, hey, what, you're not giving me two months free? Hey, what, you're not even offering me one month free? It takes a while for that expectation to happen, because there's such a huge amount of concessions in the US. So, to me, there are a few markets, usually the smaller markets or very fast growing markets, where there's a recovery in 2026 but otherwise 2027 The first half of 2027 is recovery. The second half of 2027 is fast rent growth in a lot of markets. Why? Because remember, interest rates have been high since 2023 A lot of projects were started in 2022 went into construction in 23 came to market in 25 and 26 Lease ups are happening in 25 and 26 By early mid 27 these are all leased up, right? The second half of 2027 there isn't a lot of delivery in any of these big markets, because to deliver in the second half of 27 you would have started construction in that second half of 2025 and I counted those permits market by market. There's just not a lot, because by that time everyone knew that projects were not getting funded, everyone knew that interest rates were high, so there wasn't a lot of supply of new starts in the apartment market in the second half of 25 so there's not going to be a lot of delivery in the second half of 27 and all of the existing stuff would have been leased by then. So 2026 is one of those years where we could still see more concessions in the second half of 2026 I still see rent growth for apartments to be flat. You mentioned single family might be a little bit higher. It tends to be a little bit higher than apartments in terms of rent growth, but I think flat rent growth for 2026 is what I'm projecting. I'm projecting small rent growth in the first half of 2027 for most markets, and then I'm projecting robust rent growth, call it 3% or greater on an annualized basis, in the second half of 2027 and I'm projecting that most markets in the US that are not seeing a population drop, so count out places like Detroit are going to see a very aggressive rent growth, four or 5% rent growth, that's aggressive in our world, in 2028 28 and 29 are shaping up to be. Supply deficit years, years where supply is well under demand. Keith Weinhold 40:05 It's pretty easy to project completions when you just go ahead and look at starts, and really, what you're counting is the story of absorption. Neal Bawa 40:14 Yep, and what's nice about apartments is you can actually build a single family home in about nine months, right, but you can't build apartments in less than 24 months. There's just so much permitting issues, there's so many delivery issues, fire code issues, and so we have a crystal ball on the multifamily side that we are now getting better at using. I don't think the industry was very good at this in 2022 but now we're really all obsessed with how many permits does my metro have, and how many permits does my state, and how many permits does the US have? And everyone that I know in the industry that's data driven knows that there's a massive glut now, maybe a little bit of a glutton that remaining portion of 2026 equilibrium in 27 and a huge, huge supply deficit in 28 and 29 So everything that I'm doing is based on this, and this crystal ball actually works because of that two year gap between shovels in the ground and delivery, Keith Weinhold 41:10 and it sounds like you've recommended Chat GPT as a go-to source for investors to look into these things, that happens to be my favorite one as well, and you are well, maybe it's a bit too much to say, but it almost feels like to me pioneering with the way that you use AI. In fact, I know before our show today you were running some other things in the background that made me wonder, hey, am I talking to the real Neil or the clone Neil? I know I've got the real Neil here, but why don't you tell us about how you're using AI to make data-driven decisions in real estate? Neal Bawa 41:40 Sure, so the first thing is that we've completed our journey with the low hanging fruit of AI. Every single person in our company is fully trained on how to use Chat GPT. Most of our research-related processes are automated. For example, 100% of our investor updates are now written by Chat GPT. What we do is we go into our property manager meetings on Mondays or Tuesdays sit down with them, beat them up, and the transcript is then taken by our team in the Philippines. They take that transcript and put it into a pre-trained Chat GPT string, it's called a custom GPT, and the string took a while to train, but now that it's trained, all it needs is a transcript. We just copy paste it in, we don't give it any instructions, and it outputs a really wonderful investor update, right. And so our updates for our investors are 99% written by AI. Of course, we'll go in and add our comments at the end of the process. So we've automated investor updates, rent comps, so you know if we are underwriting a new property today, what we do is we simply go into a Google file and copy paste the address and hit enter roughly once a minute. A software, which is written by AI - we're not coders, but the software knows how to write code - it checks the file, if it sees a new address, it goes in there, grabs the address, and then it basically goes to apartments.com rent.com realtor.com and all of these places, and checks the rents for this particular property in two mile radius. It eliminates all the ones that don't match, like you don't want to match the rents of a 1970 or 80s built property with a brand new 25 built property. Those are not comps, it's not comparable. So it basically is very careful, it keeps a radius range of two miles, and also basically is a property of the same kind, you know, like it never matches up a three story property with a 10 story property. Those don't match, one of them obviously is more of a central business district or downtown sort of thing, and so it basically grabs all of those rent comps and then puts them into a file and posts in a Slack channel. Usually it takes it about 1213 minutes to do that, and so whoever put that address in about 12 minutes later goes into the Slack channel and says, "Hmm, these are all my rent comps, right? And boom, now you're basically, you have all these ready rent comps. So, what we've done is, we've automated a significant portion of what we are doing with both our property managers and inside the company with acquisitions and things like that, we're also scraping massive amounts of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, which we just couldn't deal with that data before, and building very beautiful, very interactive dashboards. We don't use Chat GPT for that. We find for dashboarding a tool called Claude, which is by a company called Anthropic, is much better, so we have currently over 150 interactive dashboards that Claude has created that update in real time and give us access to data. If anything, I find that we are in this incredible time where decision making has become much easier, as long as you spend time with these tools. So, in our company we have an absolute mandate that no one has broken for the last year. One year per day, people must program, and by programming we mean issuing common language instructions to tools and build dashboards and build software that automates our work. Have we laid off anyone because of this? I mean that. Be the next obvious question. The answer is no, because it's made it easier for us to serve a much larger audience, so it's easier to grow your company. We just are not hiring anyone, and we haven't hired anybody for the last 18 months, so we have a hiring freeze, but at the same time all of our people are employed because they're they're now much more valuable. So everyone in our company is now a programmer, and even though that sounds weird, it's completely true. Neal Bawa 45:24 Every single person in our company writes code, and they write code by talking with Cloud Code or talking with Chat GPT, and then Chat GPT, of course, does the actual code writing, but people have become very, very good at answering questions and saying, "I want a dashboard like this, turn these radio buttons into drop boxes, and give me the last month, and last three months, and last 12 months, and do this, and do that, and connect this, and I also want to host this on a server, but I want to make sure that only I can see it. I need a password added. Imagine 1000 of these conversations happening in our company every day. Yeah, that's interesting. And what you just described Keith Weinhold 46:00 there at Gro Capitas is somewhat of a microcosm for what's happening in the broader economy, where we've been in this low high or low fire environment for quite a while. Well, Neal, as we're winding down here, we recently had a new Fed chair come in. It seems incomprehensible to me that there could possibly be any rate cuts. I don't know how we could responsibly make a rate cut with all these inflationary layers. We had the pandemic, and then terrorists, and then the Iran war, and the energy shocks, and all these bottled up supply chains. What are your thoughts with regard to the Fed? Neal Bawa 46:29 I still think that we'll get one rate cut, and that rate cut will be based on political pressure. So, for the first time ever, I have seen the Fed break into factions, so if you look at the latest Fed meeting, which happened, you know, there was dissent, there were two clear factions, so the Fed is becoming less data driven and more faction driven, and I think that one of the factions, which obviously wants rate cuts to go down, is going to triumph at some point later in the year, but until we get past the incredible increase in inflation because of the Iran war, I don't think that faction is going to win. Right, there's three or four people in that faction, that's not enough votes to get past the others. So I'm predicting no rate cuts until Q4 of this year. If the Fed was entirely logical, there should still not be a rate card in Q4, but I think it'll happen because there's political pressure. Keith Weinhold 47:25 The preservation of independence is key. Neil Bhawa, this has been great, and a lot of people learn from you. You're a brilliant educator, as well as what you're doing in the multifamily space, and a lot of other places. So, if someone wants to connect with you, learn more about what you do. What's the best way for them to do that? Neal Bawa 47:43 So we built a website called Multi Family University. It's completely free. There is no subscription. There's no upsell. We do not have an educational product, but what we do is each year we have 8-12 webinars that we create with their extraordinarily good looking thanks to the use of AI. Yay, and we share them with an audience, and usually between 5000 and 1000 people attend our webinars each year, of which roughly 1% become investors with us. The rest, the remaining 99% just continue to get free access to data, and we cover every imaginable real estate topic: Single family, multifamily, industrial hotels, self storage, Airbnb, and even controversial topics outside of real estate, like climate change or impact of climate change and impact of AI. So you know, multifamily university is the best place you can go to, multifamily you.com/club It's a free club, and it's free forever. Keith Weinhold 48:42 Neal, it's been valuable to our audience. Thanks so much for coming back out of the show. Neal Bawa 48:46 Thanks for having me. Keith Weinhold 48:53 Oh, a terrific, wide-ranging chat with Neal. There, yes, this interesting 2022 divergence between single family and multifamily, the slowing birth rate, and how that won't really catch up with real estate in a big way for perhaps 20 plus more years. How single family rentals beat multifamily on the basis of tenant retention, and a lot more that we covered there, and he's got a good data driven timeline for apartments being back in favor by 2027 and 2028 After the interview, Neil and I chatted some more off Mike, and he would like to come back on the show next year. We're probably going to have him, because we have a lot more to talk about at that time. We can see if the multifamily market is really healing. Also, did you pick up on this? I wonder why, for his own home he would get a 15 year mortgage at 1.75% interest, so I'll have to ask him about that. That's surely a fantastic interest rate, but a 15 year loan rather than a 30 year that maybe he could have gotten at two and a half percent at the time. Well, 15 year probably. Is not the best use of capital, because it increases your equity position rapidly. When instead, those dollars could have been out in the market earning an actual return somewhere else. But he's a smart guy, he must have an answer. We can talk about that at that time. We've got a lot of terrific shows coming up here on the GRE podcast, specific learning episodes, where it's just me teaching you, as well as new guests and returning guests too. Until next week, I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your daydream. Speaker 2 50:35 Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial, or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of Get Rich Education LLC exclusively. Speaker 2 51:03 The preceding program was brought to you by Your Home for Wealth Building, getricheducation.com.
New new free shows will be back very soon, but remember that we've been back doing weekly content on our Patreon page for a while during the free show hiatus, covering the Jerry Lawler/Stacy Carter 2001 WWE departure and eventual divorce, the WWE Network launch, and the "Clique Curtain Call." We're also starting an in-depth series on TNA getting cancelled by Spike TV and Destination America this week, which promises to be epic. In the meantime, though, here's the unreleased episode from three months ago. Will episode #544 ever be fully re-edited and re-released? We don't know. But enjoy episode #545, which is new to everyone!Kris and David (from three months ago) are back (three months ago) as we discuss the week that was February 28-March 6, 1989. Topics of discussion include:The possibility of state athletic commissions getting more involved with regulation of pro wrestling thanks to Vince McMahon testifying that they were "sports entertainment" in New Jersey.Ric Flair re-upping his contract with the NWA for three more years as the promotion is undergoing a major overhaul in every way, but not necessarily in the most positive ways.Talk of the NWA's TV product needing major changes, especially in production and overall quality.Giant Baba's questionable booking of Ricky Steamboat when he comes over as the NWA World Heavyweight Champion, as well as the original plans for the NWA Champion on this tour.A great look at Stampede Wrestling from this time period, with Ed Whalen and Bulldog Bob Brown on commentary, Brown getting involved way too much, the "retirement" of Dynamite Kid, and the greatness of Lethal Larry Cameron.Invader #1 returning to action in WWC after being acquitted on all charges in the Bruiser Brody murder case.Terry Funk's insane promo from FCW TV.Bill Dundee taking over the book in Continental and Steve Beverly shares his thoughts on what needs to be done better in that territory.Lance Russell's final TV show on WMC before leaving for the NWA…sort of, because it doesn't actually feature Lance, and we explain why that happened.The same show also featuring the debut of Ronnie P. Gossett, who causes lots of chaos before he meets Jerry Lawler.Eric Embry finding a way to get back in a World Class ring at the expense of referee Harold T. Harris.Larry Zbyszko talking about being the real world champion on AWA TV.Ted DiBiase revealing the Million Dollar Belt on WWF TV.All of this and so much more on a solid episode of BTS!!!Timestamps:0:00:00 Regulation0:27:34 NWA/WCW0:53:28 Int'l: AJPW, NJPW, AJW, Stampede, All-Star/Tomko, EMLL, Torreon, & WWC1:29:49 Classic Commercial Break1:33:22 Halftime (from three months ago)2:16:48 Other USA: ICW (Savoldi), FCW, Fuller/Polk ECHL team, Continental, CWA/Memphis, WCCW, AWA, POWW, WWA/Geigel, & Portland3:31:53 WWFTo support the show and get access to exclusive rewards like special members-only monthly themed shows, go to our Patreon page at Patreon.com/BetweenTheSheets and become an ongoing Patron. Becoming a Between the Sheets Patron will also get you exclusive access to not only the monthly themed episode of Between the Sheets, but also access to our new mailbag segment, a Patron-only chat room on Slack, and anything else we do outside of the main shows!If you're looking for the best deal on a VPN service—short for Virtual Private Network, it helps you get around regional restrictions as well as browse the internet more securely—then Private Internet Access is what you've been looking for. Not only will using our link help support Between The Sheets, but you'll get a special discount, with prices as low as $1.98/month if you go with a 40 month subscription. With numerous great features and even a TV-specific Android app to make streaming easier, there is no better choice if you're looking to subscribe to My AEW and other region-locked services.For the best in both current and classic indie wrestling streaming, make sure to check out IndependentWrestling.tv and use coupon code BTSPOD for a free 5 day trial! (You can also go directly to TinyURL.com/IWTVsheets to sign up that way.) If you convert to a paid subscriber, we get a kickback for referring you, allowing you to support both the show and the indie scene.To subscribe, you can find us on iTunes, Google Play, and just about every other podcast app's directory, or you can also paste Feeds.FeedBurner.com/BTSheets into your favorite podcast app using whatever “add feed manually” option it has.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
CJ Gustafson sits down with Marten Abrahamsen, CFO of Vercel, at the NYSE to talk about running finance inside a hypergrowth AI company. They cover AI use cases in finance, rev rec, forecasting, KPI dashboards, PLG, consumption pricing, and Marten's “speeding tickets vs. parking tickets” framework for moving fast without losing control.—SPONSORS:Brex is an intelligent finance platform with AI-powered agents that capture expenses automatically, enforce policy before the spend happens, and close your books in minutes instead of weeks. 35,000+ companies like OpenAI, Coinbase, Anthropic, and DoorDash already run on Brex. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at https://www.brex.com/metricsAleph is a modern FP&A platform built for teams that want more than another planning tool. By connecting your ERP, CRM, and other systems into one trusted data layer with AI workflows, Aleph helps you move faster with real-time insights. Get a personalized demo at https://www.getaleph.com/runRightRev is an automated revenue recognition platform that lets your product team ship new pricing without asking finance for permission, and your sales team close deals without creating downstream chaos. Check out their free tool at calculator.rightrev.com It scores your rev rec process, shows what's exposing you to risk, and tells you exactly where to focus before it bites you in the rear end. Check it out at https://calculator.rightrev.comRillet is an AI-native ERP built for modern finance teams that want to replace NetSuite and close faster. With revenue recognition, close management, multi-entity support, and native Stripe and Salesforce integrations, Rillet helps scaling companies run their finance stack in one place. Hundreds of teams, including Windsurf and Mercor, use Rillet to make the zero-day close real. Book a demo at https://www.rillet.com/cjEY has been part of Silicon Valley since it was just a valley, helping the most successful names in tech go from startup to exit to megacap. With teams across strategy, tax, audit, and transactions, EY helps you get your financials right early, long before your investors start asking for it. You build the next big thing, and EY will help you build it right. Learn more at https://www.ey.com/techstartupsSpendHound cuts your SaaS and AI spend by up to 30% using real pricing benchmarks across 10,000 vendors, so you always know what fair pricing looks like before your next renewal. Rated #1 on G2 in SaaS spend management, it's free forever for teams up to 1,000 employees. Sign up by June 12th and get $500 just for getting started. Go to https://www.spendhound.com/cj—LINKS: Mostly Talent: https://mostlymetrics.typeform.com/to/cLTxtAsNGuest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martenabrahamsen/Company: http://vercel.com/CJ: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com—TIMESTAMPS:0:00 Speeding tickets vs. parking tickets3:21 Visa IPO in the financial crisis5:09 Going public has changed6:45 Private market: 22–24 trillion9:03 More or fewer public companies?9:48 Sponsors — Brex | Aleph | RightRev13:04 KPI dashboard on your phone14:12 Revenue flux via Slack and Notion15:37 RevRec tool: green, yellow, red17:56 V0 is a job requirement19:43 Speeding tickets vs. parking tickets20:33 Sponsors — Rillet | EY | SpendHound23:49 Very few one-way doors25:02 Finance in hypergrowth25:39 Three-scenario planning27:00 Honest with the board31:00 PLG + consumption at Vercel33:32 What Marten checks every morning34:03 Why RPO doesn't work here35:36 Holiday usage is up37:10 ICP shifted to solo developer39:22 Capital allocation in a fast market41:32 Growth compounds; margin can't43:22 SaaS gross margins: spicy take44:24 Cash-burning AI: 2026 vs. 202147:29 Are some hypergrowth cos destroying value?50:00 Lightning round50:11 Bank of Ireland mix-up51:10 Don't punt problems forward52:04 Finance software stack52:38 Expensed an oven53:12 Credits
Ali quit his job a few months after ChatGPT launched, convinced AI would eat labor marketplaces like Upwork. With no co-founder and no code, he collected $12K from real customers—using a faked demo and a cloned voice. Then he pitched 100 VCs in 10 days and got 47 straight 'no's.In this episode, Ali breaks down how he banked $12K in revenue before writing a single line of code, how a $20/month Slack community drove Amigo's first $1M in ARR, and why he churned every existing customer to go all-in on $100K+ healthcare enterprise deals.Why You Should ListenWhy validation only counts when dollars exchange hands.How a $20/month paid community turned into $1M in ARR.Why he refunded every customer and churned 100% of his revenue.Why founders must sell the first $2M themselves before hiring an AE.Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, AI agents, healthcare AI, enterprise sales, pre-seed fundraising, community-led growth, customer validation, pivot, Amigo AIChapters00:00:00 Intro00:08:37 From Upwork to Starting Amigo00:13:30 $12K in Revenue Before Writing Code00:23:24 Pitching 100 VCs in 10 Days00:30:20 47 No's—Then FOMO Took Over00:37:12 The $20/Month Community Behind the First $1M00:45:47 Churning 100% of Revenue on Purpose00:01:49 The Moment of True Product Market FitSend me a message to let me know what you think!
New new free shows will be back very soon, but remember that we've been back doing weekly content on our Patreon page for a while during the free show hiatus, covering the Jerry Lawler/Stacy Carter 2001 WWE departure and eventual divorce, the WWE Network launch, and the "Clique Curtain Call." We're also starting an in-depth series on TNA getting cancelled by Spike TV and Destination America this week, which promises to be epic. In the meantime, though, here's the unreleased episode from three months ago. Will episode #544 ever be fully re-edited and re-released? We don't know. But enjoy episode #545, which is new to everyone!Kris and David (from three months ago) are back (three months ago) as we discuss the week that was February 28-March 6, 1989. Topics of discussion include:The possibility of state athletic commissions getting more involved with regulation of pro wrestling thanks to Vince McMahon testifying that they were "sports entertainment" in New Jersey.Ric Flair re-upping his contract with the NWA for three more years as the promotion is undergoing a major overhaul in every way, but not necessarily in the most positive ways.Talk of the NWA's TV product needing major changes, especially in production and overall quality.Giant Baba's questionable booking of Ricky Steamboat when he comes over as the NWA World Heavyweight Champion, as well as the original plans for the NWA Champion on this tour.A great look at Stampede Wrestling from this time period, with Ed Whalen and Bulldog Bob Brown on commentary, Brown getting involved way too much, the "retirement" of Dynamite Kid, and the greatness of Lethal Larry Cameron.Invader #1 returning to action in WWC after being acquitted on all charges in the Bruiser Brody murder case.Terry Funk's insane promo from FCW TV.Bill Dundee taking over the book in Continental and Steve Beverly shares his thoughts on what needs to be done better in that territory.Lance Russell's final TV show on WMC before leaving for the NWA…sort of, because it doesn't actually feature Lance, and we explain why that happened.The same show also featuring the debut of Ronnie P. Gossett, who causes lots of chaos before he meets Jerry Lawler.Eric Embry finding a way to get back in a World Class ring at the expense of referee Harold T. Harris.Larry Zbyszko talking about being the real world champion on AWA TV.Ted DiBiase revealing the Million Dollar Belt on WWF TV.All of this and so much more on a solid episode of BTS!!!Timestamps:0:00:00 Regulation0:27:34 NWA/WCW0:53:28 Int'l: AJPW, NJPW, AJW, Stampede, All-Star/Tomko, EMLL, Torreon, & WWC1:29:49 Classic Commercial Break1:33:22 Halftime (from three months ago)2:16:48 Other USA: ICW (Savoldi), FCW, Fuller/Polk ECHL team, Continental, CWA/Memphis, WCCW, AWA, POWW, WWA/Geigel, & Portland3:31:53 WWFTo support the show and get access to exclusive rewards like special members-only monthly themed shows, go to our Patreon page at Patreon.com/BetweenTheSheets and become an ongoing Patron. Becoming a Between the Sheets Patron will also get you exclusive access to not only the monthly themed episode of Between the Sheets, but also access to our new mailbag segment, a Patron-only chat room on Slack, and anything else we do outside of the main shows!If you're looking for the best deal on a VPN service—short for Virtual Private Network, it helps you get around regional restrictions as well as browse the internet more securely—then Private Internet Access is what you've been looking for. Not only will using our link help support Between The Sheets, but you'll get a special discount, with prices as low as $1.98/month if you go with a 40 month subscription. With numerous great features and even a TV-specific Android app to make streaming easier, there is no better choice if you're looking to subscribe to My AEW and other region-locked services.For the best in both current and classic indie wrestling streaming, make sure to check out IndependentWrestling.tv and use coupon code BTSPOD for a free 5 day trial! (You can also go directly to TinyURL.com/IWTVsheets to sign up that way.) If you convert to a paid subscriber, we get a kickback for referring you, allowing you to support both the show and the indie scene.To subscribe, you can find us on iTunes, Google Play, and just about every other podcast app's directory, or you can also paste Feeds.FeedBurner.com/BTSheets into your favorite podcast app using whatever “add feed manually” option it has.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Meaghan Latella got laid off twice before 30 — first from ESPN, then from a startup mid-pandemic — and landed her next job in 10 days the second time around. Not because the market got easier. Because her mindset did. Meaghan is a career coach, founder of Tide Shift Coaching, and one of Krysta's college friends turned first-ever Spread client. This episode covers layoffs, the consultant's mentality that changes everything in interviews, and what it looks like to build a coaching business from the ground up — with the receipts to prove it. In this episode we dive into:• Why doing nothing is the smartest first move after a layoff• The LinkedIn post Meaghan almost didn't write that led to a job offer in 10 days• How scarcity vs. abundance mindset determines who finds you — in a job search and in business• What founder-led marketing looks like when it actually works (hint: this episode is a live example)The Layoff Playbook Nobody Teaches You• Getting laid off from ESPN at 22 with no frame of reference for what a layoff even means — and the panic spiral that follows• Why fear-based job searching (applying to everything, interviewing for roles you don't want) is why the first search took four months• The mindset shift that separates a 4-month search from a 10-day one: knowing the layoff isn't about you before you open the laptop• The 72-hour rule — process before you reach out, because desperation has an energy and it shows up in everythingThe Consultant's Mentality• Why Meaghan skipped applications entirely in 2020 and wrote a LinkedIn post instead — and what happened in the first three hours• The interview reframe: you're not there to convince them you deserve the job, you're there to show them how you'd solve their problem• The dating parallel — auditioning for the role repels the very thing you're after• Standards, opinions, and the "freedom number": the traits that signal to the right people that you're worth betting onWhen the Business Finally Clicks• What it looks like when three years of content, clarity work, and offer iteration compound into a best month ever — without feeling like you tried that hard• How Krysta and Meaghan overhauled Tide Shift's offer from short retainers to a 10-week intensive with a Slack community — and why the clarity session is now the non-negotiable gateway• Three new clients in one week from a Facebook comment, a LinkedIn post, and a referral chain — what that proves about consistency over conversion tactics• The permission slip: your ideal client is allowed to evolve, your offer is allowed to change, and your revenue goal doesn't have to match someone else's definition of successThis conversation is proof that the relationships you build in college, the layoffs you survive, and the posts you almost don't publish are all quietly working for you — even when you can't see it yet. Whether you're staring down a layoff, stuck in a job that isn't it, or building a business that hasn't fully clicked, this episode will reframe the setback and show you what the next move looks like.For more on entrepreneurship mindset and career clarity, check out Krysta's most recent solo episode, "The One Thing You Keep Leaving Off Your Schedule."Follow Krysta:@thekrystahuber@thefitnessfyx@thespreadmktg Connect with Meaghan:LinkedIn: Meaghan Latella — her most active platformInstagram: @tideshift_coaching for career pivot content and coaching info
This final instalment of Sass lays a strong foundation for our return to developing statically generated websites with Jekyll. We learn how to deeply customise and integrate Bootstrap into our own styles. As is often the case, Bart starts by describing the different techniques that can be used to customise Bootstrap with Sass, and then ties it all together with a worked example. We now have the tools to use Bootstrap, even if our website uses a content management system like WordPress. You can find Bart's fabulous tutorial shownotes and the audio podcast at pbs.bartificer.net. Read an unedited, auto-generated transcript with chapter marks: PBS_2026_06_06 Join our Slack at podfeet.com/slack and look for the #pbs channel, and check out our pbs-student GitHub Organization. It's by invitation only but all you have to do is ask Allison! Join the Conversation: allison@podfeet.com podfeet.com/slack Support the Show: Patreon Donation Apple Pay or Credit Card one-time donation PayPal one-time donation Podfeet Podcasts Mugs at Zazzle NosillaCast 20th Anniversary Shirts Referral Links: Setapp - 1 month free for you and me 15% off Carbon Copy Cloner Wispr Flow - 1 month free for you PETLIBRO - 30% off for you and me Parallels Toolbox - 3 months free for you and me Learn through MacSparky Field Guides - 15% off for you and me Backblaze - One free month for me and you Eufy - $40 for me if you spend $200. Sadly nothing in it for you. PIA VPN - One month added to Paid Accounts for both of us CleanShot X - Earns me $25%, sorry nothing in it for you but my gratitude
AI agents can now connect to every tool your employees use. The problem is that connecting them and trusting them are two completely different things, and most enterprises have figured out the first without solving the second. Oren Michaels, co-founder and CEO of Barndoor AI, joins Craig Smith to explain why that gap is the defining challenge of the agentic enterprise era. His framework is simple and sharp: agents are like enthusiastic interns. They will absolutely do something when you ask them to. Whether it's what you intended is another matter, and when an agent can act across Salesforce, Slack, email, and calendar simultaneously, the blast radius of a misunderstood instruction is far larger than anything a human intern could cause. The conversation covers the 100,000 agent problem - the reality that each agent handling a discrete task needs its own set of rules about what it's allowed to do, and that number scales to a size no human team can govern manually - and why traditional identity management systems were never built for the failure modes AI agents create. The new threat isn't bad actors getting in; it's authorized people using allowed tools with agents that still do the wrong thing. Barn Door's governance layer sits between the agent and the tools it can access, specifying exactly what each agent is permitted to do in each context, and Venn brings that same capability to individuals who want to understand what's possible before their organizations catch up. This is one of the most practically useful conversations available about what enterprise AI governance actually looks like. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.
Send us Fan MailYou can stare in the mirror every day and still miss the one thing that is holding you back: how you come across to other people. That gap is where leadership blind spots live, and it is why an outside perspective is one of the highest-leverage tools for entrepreneurs, business owners, and sales leaders who have to make fast decisions under pressure.We talk about what it means to build a “holistic perspective” and why most of us default to our own angle instead of considering how a team member, customer, or partner experiences the same situation. When you are the one carrying the weight, it is easy to confuse confidence with clarity. A strong mentor or coach helps you widen the frame, spot patterns you cannot see alone, and make decisions that actually match the future you say you want.We also dig into decision fatigue and the constant noise of modern work: messages, Slack, notifications, and nonstop inputs that keep you stuck in mental conversations that go nowhere. The simple shift is having the right people around you who can reflect, take notes, and tell you the truth. That outside feedback can change your direction faster than another productivity hack.If you want help finding the right support system and turning goals into a real plan, listen now. Subscribe for more Five Minute Friday ideas, share this with a friend who needs honest feedback, and leave a review so more leaders can find the show. To Reach Jordan:Email: Jordan@Edwards.Consulting Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9ejFXH1_BjdnxG4J8u93ZwFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/jordan.edwards.7503Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jordanfedwards/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanedwards5/Hope you find value in this. If so please provide a 5-star and drop a review.Complimentary Edwards Consulting Session: https://calendly.com/jordan-edwardsconsulting/30min
Gary is joined by his former England teammate Terry Butcher to discuss his powerful new documentary, Butcher: Invisible Wounds. Terry opens up about the devastating loss of his son, Chris, and explains how sharing his story in the documentary has helped him cope with his grief and continue the healing process. The pair also look back on Terry's remarkable football career, from the glory years at Ipswich Town and Rangers to his unforgettable experiences with England. They revisit some of the most iconic moments in English football history, including the infamous "Hand of God" match against Argentina, the Italia '90 World Cup campaign that saw England come closer than any side since 1966 to lifting the trophy and Terry's legendary blood-soaked performance against Sweden that became one of the game's most enduring images. Butcher: Invisible Wounds airs on ITV4 on Tuesday 9 June at 10pm. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is in cinemas July 17. Book tickets from June 15. Join The Players Lounge: The official fantasy football club of The Rest Is Football. It's time to take on Gary, Alan and Micah for the chance to win monthly prizes and shoutouts on the pod. It's FREE to join and as a member, you'll get access to exclusive tips from Fantasy Football Hub including AI-powered team ratings, transfer tips, and expert team reveals to help you climb the table - plus access to our private Slack community. Sign up today at therestisfootball.com. https://therestisfootball.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=episode_description&utm_content=link_cta For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices