Podcasts about underperforming

We walk through the Four Streams of Leadership—reservoir, downstream, upstream, and side stream—and show how leadership is a continuous flow. Reservoir is self-management: values, habits, and the reflection that keeps you steady under pressure. Downstream is team and operations: assembling roles, setting standards, and maintaining momentum. Upstream is partnering with your boss and senior leaders: aligning priorities and preventing strategic drift. Side stream is collaborating with peers: building shared commitments and removing cross-team friction. When each stream runs clean, you move faster with fewer surprises.• reframing the Peter Principle as unpreparedness• replacing stories with explanatory frameworks and exercises• defining the four streams: reservoir, downstream, upstream, side stream• building a culture that holds when we are absent• habits to fill the reservoir: reading, audiobooks, feedback loops• composing teams with visionaries, implementers, and closers• interviewing for role fit through consistent depth• timing process for discovery versus reliability• making disagreement and commitment possible with a clear why• further reading influences: Popper, Feynman, Deutsch• where to learn more and get the bookHiring and team design get specific through three vital roles: visionaries who define the problem and direction, implementers who build the thing, and closers who ship it. Too many visionaries means swirl; too few closers means value never lands. We share interviewing tactics that probe for consistent depth across envisioning, building, and finishing, so you can place people where they thrive. Then we tackle the third rail—process. Early on, heavy process kills discovery; after product-market fit, light process kills reliability. We map the why, when, what, and how of process so your team can innovate without chaos and deliver without drift. Along the way, we unpack “disagree and commit” the right way: explain the why, or you'll get “disagree and resent.”If you're ready to trade fables for frameworks and build a culture that acts the right way when you're not in the room, this conversation is your field guide. Subscribe, share with a manager who just took the leap, and leave a quick review to tell us which framework you'll try first.

How to Fix Your Underperforming B2B SaaS Funnel for Quick Revenue Wins In the fast-paced world of B2B SaaS, the ability to go to market, iterate on feedback, and close deals rapidly is the ultimate competitive advantage. Unfortunately, many sales and marketing teams find themselves stalled by underperforming funnels that drain resources without delivering measurable results. When growth plateaus, the challenge lies in transforming these stagnant pipelines into high-velocity growth engines without requiring massive capital or long timelines. So, how can B2B SaaS teams identify the hidden leaks in their customer journey and unlock quick-win revenue through a strategic, data-driven approach? That's why we're talking to April Syed (CEO of Aperture Codex), who shares her expertise on fixing an underperforming B2B SaaS funnel for quick revenue wins. During our conversation, April discussed the importance of leveraging data to pinpoint “quick wins,” such as streamlining sales processes and eliminating high-friction points in user onboarding. She explained how to fix “conversion killers” like messaging misalignment and highlighted the necessity of aligning marketing and sales efforts to ensure a seamless experience. April also advocated for a culture of continuous testing, using small, incremental experiments to de-risk major strategic shifts. She emphasized the value of regular customer journey mapping to maintain a predictable, sustainable, and highly efficient path to profitable growth. https://youtu.be/VeeFMznhCfw Topics discussed in episode: [07:24] Why your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) must be a “living, breathing” document reviewed quarterly, not a static file sitting in a deck. [11:24] The critical mistake of treating marketing as a cost center rather than a revenue driver, and how it leads to “vanity metrics” over actual sales. [13:53] Why you should focus on small, incremental tests to “de-risk” big spends before committing to expensive strategies like rebrands. [18:05] The 5-Point Conversion Diagnostic: A framework to analyze time-to-value, messaging alignment, behavioral triggers, follow-up timing, and pricing friction. [23:07] A real-world example of how “pricing friction” (forcing an annual upgrade) caused a loyal promoter to churn to a competitor. [27:24] How to audit your funnel for “Quick Win” revenue opportunities in under 30 days by analyzing where deals stall in the CRM. [35:27] Why no marketing asset is ever “final”, and why high-traffic landing pages should be in a state of constant A/B testing. Companies and links mentioned: Apryl Syed on LinkedIn  Aperture Codex  Superhuman Notion  Motion Transcript Christian Klepp, Apryl Syed Apryl Syed  00:00 Brand for instance, doesn’t work itself into any metric, but it makes every metric better across the board. Sometimes we’re chasing these metrics and like the attribution of where a particular deal came from, or how did they find out about us, and we’re not thinking about all of the things that are outside in the flywheel that are, you know, causing that person to, yes, eventually convert. But were there seven or eight other things that kind of they interacted with. Christian Klepp  00:26 In the world of B2B SaaS speed is the name of the game. Get to market, quickly collect feedback, quickly iterate quickly and close deals quickly. But what happens if your sales and marketing teams get stuck with underperforming funnels that don’t generate the results you need? How can teams turn these funnels into growth machines without massive spend or long timelines? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers on a Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp, today, I’ll be talking with Apryl Syed, who will be answering this question. She’s the CEO of ApertureCodex who gives founders the strategy and the psychology needed to jump into fast revenue gains. Let’s dive in. Okay, and away we go. Apryl Syed, welcome to the show. Apryl Syed  01:12 Thank you so much, Christian. I’m so excited to be here. Christian Klepp  01:15 Glad to have you on the show. I think we had such a great pre interview conversation. I kept telling myself I should have hit record, and I talked to you the first time, right? But, you know, two times is a charm or three times. But anyways, this is the second time we’re talking. So I’m really looking forward to this conversation Apryl, because we’re going to touch on a topic today that I think is not just relevant to sales teams. It’s really important to marketing teams as well. So I’m going to keep the audience in suspense just a little while longer while I set up this first question. Right? So you’re on a mission to help B2B SaaS teams turn underperforming funnels into growth machines without massive spend or lengthy timelines, and for people that didn’t hear that the first time, I think everybody wants something like that, right, quick results without spending massively, right? So for this conversation, I’d like to focus on the following topic and just unpack it from there, right? So how can SaaS teams leverage a quick win revenue approach for better and more predictable growth. And I mean, come on Apryl, who the heck doesn’t want that, right? Who doesn’t want predictable growth, right? So I want to kick off this conversation with two questions, and I’m happy to repeat them. So first one is, where do you see many SaaS teams struggle with revenue growth? And the second question is, what are some of the key causes of this? Apryl Syed  02:44 It’s really great, by the way. As a side note, I got turned down for a podcast this week because they said I talked too much about quick wins, and they felt that it conflicted with their policy. I won’t mention the name, they’re an agency out there, but they were all about big spend, and they felt that I conflicted with that. And this exactly ties in. This is probably why the subject that I talk about so. Christian Klepp  03:13 Well, I’m sorry for them. Apryl Syed  03:15 Yeah, that’s okay. That’s okay. We don’t, we don’t match. You know, I’m not for everyone. Well, I think that, like SaaS teams don’t realize that they’ve got data. And within their data really, really lies some of the tweaks, opportunities and things like that that can make them extra revenue that they might not be looking at today. And I think, you know, perhaps it’s in tweaking their sales process. Maybe they don’t have a sales process misalignment between sales and marketing. Marketing is talking about one thing, sales is selling another thing, or could be marketing is marketing to one type of industry and user, and sales is saying that’s not the right user. It’s something completely different, that misalignment in itself causes revenue conflict, revenue opportunities. And you know, sometimes it’s spending on expensive tools before you’ve actually broken down some of those points in the funnel. Or could be tools that you’re getting a lot of data from, or they’re not doing anything with the data on a regular basis. So I think, you know, those are where I see some of those, like, struggle with revenue because of some of those issues and and then I think your second question was kind of like, well, how to, how do they kind of avoid some of those scenarios? Right? Christian Klepp  04:40 It was more about the the key causes, but you but, but you did talk about that already, right?   Apryl Syed  04:44 So, right, right? That definitely is there. Well, I think, you know, it’s also could be, you know, where they’re chasing certain metrics and focused in, and we had this conversation earlier. It’s like brand, for instance, doesn’t work at. Yourself into any metric, but it makes every metric better across the board. So sometimes we’re chasing these metrics and like the attribution of where a particular deal came from, or how did they find out about us, and we’re not thinking about all of the things that are outside in the flywheel that are, you know, causing that person to, yes, eventually convert. But were there seven or eight other things that kind of they interacted with before they got to that point? And we had to get them ready? So, you know, can definitely be about just chasing those metrics too much, which means you avoid doing things that don’t give you that instant metric. And I think that is a big challenge and pitfall that that teams can can certainly fall into. I think also the the challenge of treating marketing as a cost center and not letting them be in charge of all of those metrics down to the sale that happen. And that might sound weird to some folks, but I’ve certainly been in enough teams and enough experiences across you know my background that I’ve seen that sometimes you can make a change in marketing. It produces a lot of leads, but those leads aren’t qualifying and they’re not turning into revenue, and yet, if the metric is producing leads, well then marketing can walk away the end of the day and meet their metrics and jobs, but if the metric is revenue, then they’ve got to go all the way to that end cycle and see that it’s a qualified opportunity. That, of course, goes back to my original point that if sales and marketing aren’t in lock sync with each other, and they don’t have a good relationship and dynamic, then it ends up in finger pointing when things aren’t going wrong, instead of both teams coming together, being on the same page and figuring out what’s going to work. And that’s that’s really the key. Christian Klepp  07:03 Absolutely, absolutely. And I think you might have brought it up, and maybe I didn’t catch it, and if not, I apologize. But like, one of the things that I didn’t notice, too, is, like, this misalignment of who, who the who the ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) is, like the assumptions that both sides have and then somehow they just cannot meet in the middle. Apryl Syed  07:24 Well, I kind of brought it up just slight when I said that marketing might be marketing to one person, and sales is selling to another, but if we just want to double click, you know, on on that, that agreement around the ICP, the reason why it’s so important, and I think it’s hard for some SaaS companies, because there’s, there could be a lot of ICPs. And I kind of have this philosophy that with an ICP, people usually maybe do these personas, as I call them, one time, maybe at a, you know, a planning session or whatever, where they’re kicking off, you know, and kind of like planning who those are, and then they leave them. They sit in a deck somewhere. They’re never looked at again. They’re never revised. I like a more fluid method with personas. I like personas to kind of be active, living and breathing in something that’s reviewed on a quarterly basis, I think is a better cadence. And the reason being is, like, we want to see how many deals we’ve closed in that particular area, how many so we should be looking at the metrics right by persona. We should also look at the messaging by persona to see how that’s working. And we should, you know, look at our team and how that flow has gone through into the sales process by persona. And kind of looking at this lens, we may figure out that one persona is working really, really well, or two or three might be working really well. And maybe there’s two or three that aren’t working really well. We might want to flush those out or put them in, what I would say is like a vault or a holding pattern. They might come back later if something’s happened, and we might want to add different ones. And the reason why quarterly is important is because, if you are selling business to business, for instance, in that business environment, there are different things that might be happening in the world, you know, geographically, politically, that might be impacting a certain persona. And it’s important to also look at that lens on a quarterly basis and say, Okay, what’s the mindset of this particular persona? What are they dealing with? What are some of their issues? What are their pressures? What is their emotional state, and then how do we want to message into that emotional state during this time? How do we want to change and revise our messaging for what’s going on in their world right now, this quarter, right you can’t keep you can’t keep messaging the same and messaging constant needs to be looked at. I would say, on a regular basis, one to check and make sure it’s working. If it’s working, keep it working at some time. At some point, though, it might stop working, and it’s important to catch that as you see those numbers trailing off, as you see that change, and not wait until too long has passed and just double down on the same persona for the sake of really work, working with it, because it was the original plan. Christian Klepp  10:27 Yeah, absolutely, absolutely these, um, these personas are, and I believe that too, they it’s not something that that’s written in stone, and then you, you to use that archaic expression, just keep it on the shelf, and then it collects dust, right? Apryl Syed  10:40 Yeah Christian Klepp  10:41 It’s something that should be monitored, as you said, because certain certain companies are working in industries where, for example, government regulation impacts them. Apryl Syed  10:51 Yes. Christian Klepp  10:52 If government regulation changes, then that perhaps also influences the way they make decisions, or decide to work with external vendors and partners and so forth, right? Apryl Syed  11:05 Absolutely. Christian Klepp  11:07 You brought you brought up a few already in the past couple of minutes. I’m just, I just want to go back to pitfall. So one of them, I think, was chasing this, chasing metrics. Right? This, this habit of constantly chasing metrics. What are some of these other pitfalls that you’d say marketing teams should avoid them. What should they be doing instead? Apryl Syed  11:24 Well, I think, you know, another pitfall that I’ve seen is kind of launching a big rebrand and expecting, you know, or that could also be a plot, a platform overhaul, software overhaul, and expecting that that’s going to move the needle faster when you could test that type of messaging out in really small ways before you go and do that big rebrand. And I’m a big fan of those, like small tests, verify and then go big. Like I’m not I’m not saying don’t ever go big. What I’m saying is like, test and measure before you go into a big cut, a big, fresh rebrand, because it’s expensive, and you want those big, expensive expenditures to be a little bit more of a sure thing than a risky thing. So de risk the big spends, riskier moves. Do small, incremental tests and say, how could we test this out on a small scale. How could we test or rebrand out? How could we test a platform change out before we do that in a small way? So I think that’s another one. I talked about a cost center. Treating marketing as a cost center is another one. So I think those are, like my big, my big three, I would say, in terms of pitfalls. Christian Klepp  12:41 Yeah, fantastic, fantastic. You, you hit on something there with your with your third point. And I want to go to that, because that’s a topic that, um, that as a marketer, personally, it riles me up a little bit, but, like, you know, but, but we have to look at this as professionals too, and say, okay, you know what? In the world of B2B, that type of pushback is almost expected, right? Because I’m not sure what your experience has been. But I also work with a lot of companies that have done either little or no marketing before, so it’s, it’s to a certain extent, it’s like Terra Australis incognita. It’s uncharted territory. They are not sure what to expect. So it’s only, it’s only normal that they, that they view it with some kind of, I wouldn’t go so far as to say, suspicion, but yeah. Like, how do you know it’s gonna work, right? So over to you. Like, what’s your experience been? How do you deal with companies that view marketing with that kind of suspicion or or have these doubts, like, Is this even going to work for us? Right? How do you deal with that? Apryl Syed  13:53 Well, I mean, from my perspective, I think again, I go back to the small tests, small wins in those beginning, like, let’s get our sea legs before we go and launch some big strategy. And I think that’s, you know, a big divide between, you know, maybe myself and yourself and some other you know, marketing agencies and firms out there is, I would rather get small, incremental wins to start. I’m not against big strategies and big spends. I think they’re both needed, but when you’re kind of coming into a team that’s either had little to no success with marketing, because maybe they’ve had some bad experiences with agencies that haven’t delivered, or they’ve tried ads, or they’ve tried this thing and they kind of have that bad taste in their mouth, right? Or they just have not done anything at all, and perhaps they’ve, they’ve grown despite that. So they’re kind of like, Hey, I’ve seen success without doing this. So why? Why do I need this? So I think an educational approach is important, kind of giving the here’s the industry benchmarks, here’s what we should. See, here’s how we are going to test. Here’s a recommended way that we do small, incremental tests. And then I also think a really, really important piece is, if it’s a company that’s been around long enough is to dive into that data I have. I have a customer that I would say sits in this category. They’ve grown tremendously. They’ve had a very successful business, and they’ve never marketed before. And if I were to come in there with some big rebrand strategy, big moves, look at me like you’re crazy. We don’t need that. I mean, in all honesty, what are they looking for? They’re looking for incremental revenue gains. So how am I going to produce incremental revenue gains? I’m going to look at their data and see where there’s holes in gaps today, where, yes, marketing, but marketing is a very, very broad term. Marketing can be brands, marketing could be emails, marketing can be social media. Marketing can be customer advocacy, customer emails churn, you know, upgrading customers into other models. So when I say I look at data, I look at what their customers are doing, and what I get from that is, where is my ideal customer, because it’s going to show me in their base. So who might I want to go after and experiment with? First, those are going to be my biggest areas for opportunity of wins, where, with their existing customer base, can I sell something more or different for them to increase revenue in that way? I think that’s another big and then I look at where there may be failures across the process in their data. If it’s a SaaS company, let’s look at their free the trial, trial, you know, to paid, paid to churn, and look at those numbers and say, are they hitting industry standard for their industry? Can I improve any of these metrics? Let me go look at all of the various different things that are going to change these metrics. Where can I start to experiment to get incremental change? That’s how you give success to a team. And they start feeling like, Okay, we should invest more here. We should do more here, because it’s working. Now, let’s double down. Let’s triple down. Let’s do more, then you can go after those bigger strategies. Christian Klepp  17:26 Yep, yep, no, absolutely, absolutely, no. I’m glad, I’m glad you brought those up, because that’s a great segue into the next question, which I think you’re all too familiar with, right? So I think when we first talked, right in our previous conversation you were talking, you mentioned something called a five point conversion diagnostic, which uncovers, I think you refer to them as conversion killers, right? You can cover these conversion killers without expensive tools or massive product like changes or revamps, right? So if you could please walk us through this five point approach and how teams can leverage that. Apryl Syed  18:05 Now this is particularly for SaaS, that trial to onboarding experience and the time that I the thing that I look for the most in there is time to value. How long does it take for the customer to experience value is going to be indicative of how long their trial has to be with that onboarding experience, and are they legitimately going to get into the point of buying early, even because they can’t wait to utilize this tool or buying, of course, the moment that the trial, the trial the trial ends. That is all about time to value. The second is about messaging alignment. So does the promise that we give, if it’s a landing page, whatever that experience is that someone comes through to then get to that product, does the promise of what we’re giving them match what the experience is going to be in the software, and how long does it take again, from that time to value, for them to get to that matched experience of what we promised that will also be a predictor of so if we were, you know, on a scale from zero to 10, 10 being like matched, it perfectly, zero being not matching at all, we’d want to rate our company on that scale, and kind of see for the time to value and for the misalignment, where are we? Then I would kind of go after like behavioral triggers, and I would try to figure out what actions correlate with conversion. So I would look at everybody that’s converted, and I would say, what parts of the software did they touch right? Are they looking at, are they experiencing, which then would predict, like, if people do these five things and the solution, then we know that they’re going to convert. And you can use either, like a Pender or you know, products like that that give you some of that analysis and data. Or maybe it’s, you know, sitting in your CRM, but that would tell you and inform you about your messaging as well. Like, what should we be messaging about? These are the key things that people want out of this solution, and that’s going to inform your next piece, which is, I would look at the follow up timing, the sequencing. How frequently do we talk? I often, I’m a big superhuman fan, and I talk about superhumans onboarding experience, which I think is awesome. And of course, they get a little bit of a leg up because they are an email solution, so they see when you’re in the tool. But I have found that, like the timely messages and the trickling of features that they give you right when you’re ready to use that feature has been so well thought out. And if you have, if you have not experienced it, and you’re a SaaS product owner, Founder, CEO, I highly encourage you to go through their onboarding experience, because that, to me, is like the pinnacle, or one of the pinnacles of what you should want your users to experience, like these just great aha moments right when they’re ready to receive them as part of that trial period before conversion. That make sure that we’re just touching them at the right moments. And then the last piece that I look at is pricing and packaging friction. And here’s, this is, you know, this is something that’s changing an awful lot right now. SaaS is under pressure to maybe look at not seeds, but maybe it’s volume, but then volume is not great, because people can’t predict it, and certainly can’t budget appropriately for it. So there is all kinds of pricing friction happening right now that needs to be figured out, but understanding where people are dropping off and where in that you know, how many clicks do they need to do before they buy? What is that whole buying process like? What is the upgrading process like? Put it through the pressure test. See how many steps it is. Challenge yourself. If you can reduce the steps, make it easier. I’ll give you an example. I was a big, big user of the motion app for a really long time. I probably sold, let’s say, 10 to 20 of these to other people, because I was such a promoter and such a fan of motion, they changed something in their solution related to how many credits, and what happened is it stopped recording my meetings for me automatically, which meant didn’t go into my notes anymore. Didn’t automatically create my tasks for me. That’s a pretty big feature, and obviously I so I went to upgrade, and the upgrade didn’t allow for me to choose a monthly it only allowed me to upgrade to choose an annual. Christian Klepp  23:06 Why? Apryl Syed  23:07 Yeah, which did what to me as the user. I then went into the shopping mode, essentially, and I said, Now I’m going to go shop and look at, well, what other tools are out there that can do the same functionality. Because now, if I have to commit to an annual plan, so much changing in AI this year, I’m not sure if I can commit to an annual plan. It had nothing to do with the amount of dollar spent. It had everything to do with commitment. And here I was a promoter of their solution. I ended up canceling and I went with notion, because I realized that notion had added a significant number of AI features at a much lower price, which I know a lot of people complain about notion being expensive, and it isn’t as good of a user experience now that I’m using motion and yet notion. Yet, I’m still on notion, and I left motion app, which is probably better, because they put me through this experience. And I say that as an example not to and I don’t know if they fix that, but we make these decisions all the time, sitting from our lens, looking at what we want the outcome to be, and we don’t think through what that user experience is going to be, and we’re killing conversions, in some cases, by these little levers and moves that we make, and sometimes we don’t even realize that. So I really encourage, encourage founders, encourage, you know, everyone at the company go back through and look at these tiny little things that each one of them on the loan alone could be costing you revenue, costing you conversions along the pathway. Christian Klepp  24:53 Absolutely, absolutely. And we’re working with a client that’s that’s an that’s in tech right now, and the thing that we keep. Talking about is you gotta, you know, yes, of course you’re excited if you start developing more features and what have you right? But look at this through the lens of the user, right? I mean, I can totally relate to your to your situation. I mean, even things like for example, and this is probably like oversimplifying it. But the last update that Instagram did is driving me absolutely crazy. Like, why would you update something your interface that has already been working for the users, and now? Why do you update it so and completely change where the buttons are on the layout so people have to waste time looking for worse, the send button. I mean, you know, it’s just beyond me, right? Apryl Syed  25:45 Yeah, and it’s funny, and they actually, Instagram, for a long while, did a lot of user testing before they would roll out features, and did these limited, I didn’t see any of that necessarily. With this last rollout. Christian Klepp  25:58 No. Apryl Syed  25:59 Apple did a very similar, like their latest update introduced many phone changes in terms of prioritization of, you know, messaging and all that sort of stuff. And it’s like a common we’re finding commonality saying, like, Oh man, I hate this latest I don’t know how many people have said I hate this latest update, and it’s because it’s created too much friction in the process. We need enough friction, but not too much friction. And that balance, in itself, unfortunately, is like the most difficult thing to figure out. And if you’re not talking to your customers, if you’re not talking to people, you will never figure it out, because you’ll be making an assumption. Christian Klepp  26:38 Exactly, exactly. Okay, so we talked about this at the beginning of the conversation, but you mentioned something called a quick win revenue framework. And I know from what you were telling me that that was a little bit controversial to somebody else you spoke to. Apryl Syed  26:55 Yeah. Christian Klepp  26:56 But you know what we are, we are all embracing in the show. You know. Apryl Syed  27:00 Thank you. Christian Klepp  27:00 Not not judgmental. But in fact, the focus here is to help B2B Marketers. In your case, B2B SaaS Marketers to become better and to improve. So if we’re going to focus on this quick win revenue framework, where would you identify low hanging revenue opportunities in under 30 days. So talk to us about that. Apryl Syed  27:24 Yes, well, it sits at this crossroads between marketing and sales, right? And that’s why you’ve got to have such a tight friendship relationship with you know, your sales leaders and your customer success leaders. I think it has to be like such a great ecosystem. So first thing I would do is pull CRM data. I would look at where deals are stalling, you know, I would map the current funnel with actual numbers of where you have people. I would overlay that with like the industry and kind of like the marketing messaging that is created those those types of deals. And kind of look at that from the lens of, okay, here’s what we’re creating, and here’s what sales is able to close easily. Here’s what’s really lagging and taking a long time in the funnel. And it’s not to say that, like, longer is better than shorter, because, like, an enterprise deal takes longer to close than a SMB (Small and Medium-sized Business) deal. So the answer isn’t always that the SMB deal is better, but looking at that and saying, Is there anything here that is that is giving me an indicator of something I can improve on? Can improve on. So that would be, you know, number one, go through that audit, take a look at the data, see what you’ve been producing from a marketing standpoint so far, and then say, is there anything that we should be testing to do differently better? You know, what are your hypotheses that you want to go out and you want to prove with some AB testing, two look at conversion killers, right? That’s either messaging, follow up, timing or onboarding friction, some sort of friction in the process. Friction could be a form fill too it could be, you know, too heavy, too long of landing page, I would look at every single detail and way that people are coming in through the funnel and say, are we doing anything to kill conversion and sometimes, and I’ve experienced this with one brand that I’m working with, and we have an agency that’s also in there that’s doing some ad performance, and they’re getting industry well above industry standard rates. And I asked the agency, because I’m sitting in kind of like my fractional executive role, and I said, Tell me out of your entire client, raw. Stair. Where does this client sit? And they said, Oh, at the top, best performing client we have, you know what that signaled to me? They’re comfortable. They’re getting great results. They’re not trying to improve anything. They’re just trying to hold the fort down and just keep getting these great results because they think that’s a place of safety. Christian Klepp  30:23 Stop rocking the boat Apryl. Apryl Syed  30:26 I know, I know, but I look at that and say, You’re not trying hard enough. You’re not examining right and going through the funnel and looking for all the tweaks and looking for. Christian Klepp  30:36 What can it improve? Apryl Syed  30:37 Can it be improved? You’re not trying to do any of that. And in fact, I’m adding that to you. I’m adding those things. I’m asking for those things, just because I come from that space and saying, like, Hey, we should be pushing here. We should be pushing here. We should be they don’t want to push. And they’re slow, slow, slow to react. And what’s going to happen is it’s going to earn them a change out in agency, right? Because they’re not pushing. Now, unfortunately, what I think is, if that was happening, obviously was happening before I was involved this customer, they thought they’re getting, they’re getting, like, six to one on their spend. That’s fantastic. We should be happy, right? And I’m like, no, no, no, I’ve pushed, I have pushed that envelope before. I’ve seen, you know, 14% conversion on landing pages. I’ve seen 49% conversion on landing pages. When you get it really right, you should always be pushing and pushing and pushing that envelope. So really diagnose and look, are there friction killers in those processes, and where can you be improved? And it is not like, I’m getting results good enough, so let me stop. It’s not stop because that might be one of your levers to really, really get quick wins, because you could tweak something and then even tip the scale further. And who doesn’t want a big win like that? The other thing is, like, I think there’s I look at I look at email sequences and messaging. I look at every single message that we’re sending a customer through the process, through their buying journey. You know, for one client, I basically call it a customer journey map, which a lot of people don’t do anymore, but my journey map is from the moment that they hear about you, all the way through buying, how do we touch them? What do we touch? And then from buying through that sales cycle, what is that like? And the reason why I map that out is because when you do and you put the different sections, you can kind of say, well, this is the process today. What would we like that process to be? And you will find in every single one of these customer journey maps that I’ve done, five to 10 areas where you’re like, instantly know, you instantly know the experience you could be providing better. I did this for one client, and we uncovered, like, the review process for their terms and conditions. On average took like, 10 days with an average back and forth between their lawyers and our lawyers, maybe 15 times that is that a desired customer experience? No, that’s a friction creator, which could be a deal killer, could be a deal staller. So what does that desired experience look like? What should we aim to get to? How are we going to do that? What should we test first? That’s just an example of one that might be in there. So look at everything. Then it becomes, you know, build exactly what you think you’re going to test, go and launch and measure those tests. And you don’t need this to be six months, right? Depending on how much data you’re getting through, it might only take you two weeks of data. It might take you a week of data on these experiments and levers that you’re going through so figure out how long you need to run the experiment for. Run that experiment, measure those changes, and then either permanently implement the change or make changes right and refresh and do another test. Christian Klepp  34:24 Wow, that was quite the list. And I’m sure you’ve, you’ve had, like, as you, as you’ve mentioned, you’ve had pushback for, you know, some of this, for this process, because it’s it. It makes teams uncomfortable, right? But I think the point is, you know, everybody says, right, change is uncomfortable. Improvement is uncomfortable. Uncovering ways to make things better should make you feel uncomfortable, right? Apryl Syed  34:53 So true, so true. And I always, I always think like, if you’re uncomfortable and you’re feeling like. A maybe, I don’t know all the answers here. It’s a really good place to be, and that’s where real growth happens. That’s where real change happens. Christian Klepp  35:06 Yeah. So I did have one follow up question for you, Apryl, like, you know, based on this framework that you’ve just proposed, like, How often would you recommend? And I know it depends, but how often would you recommend teams to continuously monitor some of these, some of these attributes and these factors that you’ve that you’ve brought up in the past couple of minutes. Apryl Syed  35:27 Gosh, I think it is very dependent on the data that’s coming through. If you were experiencing problem in an area, deep dive in there and uncover it. Kind of do that audit and analysis and create some tests that you could run to improve it. But as a measure, the customer journey map, for example, for existence, I think that’s a living, breathing document. I think we should look at it quarterly. We should update it with the experiments and the learnings and the new things that we’ve implemented permanently so that we can track how that experience is going and make sure that it’s our desired experience that we’re putting out there. Because I think a lot of times stuff just happens and it’s not our desired experience, but we kind of think like, oh, well, this is the process, the way it has to be, or, you know, so and so said that it has to be three days. So it’s three days, and it’s like giving you a moment to step back and be like, Why could we do it different? Could we do it better? Could we do it in two days? I don’t know. Could we do it in one and, you know, so I think as often as that customer journey, when updates happen, put those updates in their document. It, look at it, say, like, what’s next on the list should always be improving. When you get to the point where you don’t have any more insights in there, and you think it’s oiled up in the best that you could possibly do it, bring some customers in, bring some customers in to look at it and get their opinion. Ask them about it. It’s a great point to now be in survey mode and ask some questions about where you might have conflicts internally, or where you just aren’t sure where to go. So I think that when it comes to like email sequences, and remind you know like those provide provides, messaging, emails, one thing landing pages, like, I think your landing page just should be in a constant AB turnaround. Every time you have five to 10,000 people hitting a landing page, you should be trying to tweak that message to see if you can make it better. Message, layout, colors, all of the kind of industry standards there, you should be constantly trying to tweak that. If you’re not using landing pages and you’re sending stuff to a page, you should try landing pages so it’s just the constant improvement of those email sequences kind of, kind of, I feel, I feel they should be similar. I feel like you’ve got to examine those on a pretty regular basis, maybe it’s monthly, and kind of determine which messages are you going to trade out. I’m doing a pretty big switch out right now for, you know, an SMB app that’s, you know, selling to other businesses. So it’s a B2B, SaaS company, and we are revising all of their messaging, going through every single one, but trying to create, like a very purposeful journey now where there hasn’t been necessarily one before. And what I just said to one of the leaders yesterday is like, this is version one of what will be probably 10 before we’re done with this iteration. Because every single time we see the data and see how people are moving through the flow, we’re going to we’re going to see that those things that we didn’t consider, there’s going to be broken pieces. Like, don’t be in a position of thinking that any of your marketing is final ever. That’s a good position to be in. It’s never final. I think about this for websites as well. Like people like, oh, we go through our big website refresh, we get the website done, and then now we don’t have to touch the website. Oh, you should be, like, touching the website all the time. Experiment with the messaging on the homepage. Like to think that you got the messaging right the first time. I wish, I wish, and I’ve been in this industry for more than 25 years, I wish, and I’m considered, considering, considered a messaging, you know, wizard. Sometimes, it sometimes takes five or six tries before you get that like, nailed one, and that’s because persona, you know, it’s like how the person is feeling. It’s the emotional draw, and it’s the features, the problem of the pain and all of that coming into one like, I wish, I wish there was an AI tool that could get that right. But it’s not, they’re not. Christian Klepp  40:00 I haven’t found one yet. Apryl Syed  40:01 Yeah. You know, it’s only through really, really overworking that message and seeing the data come in that you kind of like, finally get to maybe a place that’s good, and then guess what? Your persona changes or something happens to so. So don’t ever think of it as, oh, to set it and forget it, it. It should be like it. And there’s also, like, Don’t tweak it too fast that you don’t have enough data coming through. Like, that’s also, I can, I can see that being a message, but have enough data, review that data on a regular basis, make some changes, test it. It’s like little incremental tests and learn. So that’s going to be kind of like it’s either in that category, which is like, test and learn, test and learn, test and learn constantly tweaking, or a quarterly or an annual kind of review. Christian Klepp  40:54 Fantastic, fantastic. Apryl. This was such a great conversation. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise and experience with the listeners. Um, please. Quick introduction to yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you. Apryl Syed  41:07 Well, my company is Apeture Codex. Best way to get in touch with me is just Apryl Syed at LinkedIn. That’s where I’m most active, is on LinkedIn, and you can book an appointment with me right off of my LinkedIn. And so that’s like the best, best way to find me out there. Christian Klepp  41:27 Fantastic, fantastic. And we’ll be sure to drop those links in the show notes once the episode goes live. So Apryl, once again, thanks so much for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon. Apryl Syed  41:38 All right. Thank you so much, Christian. Christian Klepp  41:40 Okay, Bye, for now. Apryl Syed  41:41 Bye.

Most advice says work harder and keep trying. We put that to the test and reveal why so many smart teams still miss: they average their confidence across steps instead of multiplying their true odds. With award-winning strategy consultant and author Kyle Austin Young, we break down a simple, rigorous way to change results by changing probability—without needing a PhD or a spreadsheet marathon.We start by exposing the averaging trap and building a clean success diagram: a left-to-right map of every step that must go right to hit your goal. Then we estimate the likelihood of each step, multiply to reveal real odds, and hunt for the failure modes stealing your probability. Kyle calls it “think negative” thinking: not doom and gloom, but a disciplined scan for what could go wrong—glitches, delays, weak offers, misreads—so you can de-risk them in advance. You'll hear how he used this method to land a leadership job at 21 by neutralizing age bias, shifting interviews to future-focused plans, and mirroring team language drawn from their favorite books.Inside this episode, we cover:➡️ The 34% Trap: Why most leaders mathematically overestimate their chance of success and how to fix it.➡️ The "Beard & Book" Strategy: How Kyle probability-hacked his way into a Director role at age 21.➡️ Think Negative: Why identifying "failure modes" is the ultimate creative tool for CEOs.➡️ Tuition Costs: How to view high-stakes mistakes as the price of your leadership education.➡️ The Revenge Tour: Lessons in humility and strategic adjustment from trout fishing.We dig into a nonprofit case where donations fell off a cliff. Agencies tried fresh stories, but a success diagram pointed somewhere less glamorous: a deliverability glitch that blocked a major inbox provider. Fixing the pipe beat rewriting the message. From there, we explore Hail Mary diagrams for stalled goals, when to pause versus quit, and how to stack smaller wins—bylines, relationships, proof—so big moves become high-odds plays. Along the way, Kyle's stories about resilience, iteration, and the math behind confidence will give you tools to raise your odds in hiring, product launches, fundraising, and personal goals like marathon training.If you're ready to stop guessing, map your steps, and steal probability back from failure, this conversation gives you the playbook. Subscribe, share with a friend who bets on big goals, and leave a quick review to help more uncommon leaders find the show.Thanks for listening in to the Uncommon Leader Podcast. Please take just a minute to share this podcast with that someone you know that you thought of when you heard this episode. One of the most valuable things you can do is to rate the podcast and leave a review. You can do that on Apple podcasts, or rate the podcast on Spotify or any other platform you listen. Did you know that many of the things that I discuss on the Uncommon Leader Podcast are subjects that I coach other leaders and organizations ? If you would be interested in having me discuss 1:1 or group coaching with you, or know someone who is looking to move from Underperforming to Uncommon in their business or life, I would love to chat with you. Click this link to set up a FREE CALL to discuss how coaching might benefit you and your team) Until next time, Go and Grow Champions!!Connect with me

Should I Fire An Underperforming Law Firm Employee U.S. law firm owner doing $300k–$2M/year? Get a free Law Firm Profit & Tax Checkup where I review your books and tax setup and highlight a few ways similar firms are keeping more of what they earn. Book your checkup here: https://bigbirdaccounting.com

Most solar asset owners still manage performance data the same way they did 10 years ago. Dan Leary, founder of Denowatts, says that needs to change. In this episode, recorded live at RE+ Northeast in Boston, Tim Montague sits down with Leary and Doug Macmillan of Portside Systems to explore energy accounting, a method for identifying exactly where solar production losses occur and what owners and operators should do about them. Denowatts is collaborating with Sandia National Laboratories to build what Leary calls "GAAP for solar," a common standard for reporting and benchmarking solar asset performance. If you manage solar assets or invest in solar projects, this conversation explains how better data practices lead to more predictable returns.EPISODE HIGHLIGHTSDan Leary explains that most solar operators still manage data the way they did a decade ago, despite significant advances in monitoring and analysis tools. Denowatts built a smarter weather station (the Deno) and a real-time analytics platform to close that gap.Denowatts breaks down solar production losses into four categories: climate-related issues, modeling errors, external factors beyond anyone's control, and problems within the commercial boundary that owners and operators are able to fix. This framework gives asset managers clear direction on where to focus recovery efforts.Doug Macmillan explains Portside's role as the system integrator for the Denowatts platform on distributed generation sites. Portside handles design, equipment fabrication, delivery, and commissioning, working from their UL 508 panel shop.This episode is for solar asset managers, project developers, EPCs, and clean energy investors who want more from their performance data. With Denowatts and Sandia Labs working toward a common reporting standard, the solar industry is moving closer to the kind of financial transparency that attracts long-term capital. If you own or operate solar assets, the time to modernize your data strategy is now.Connect with Dan Leary and Doug MacmillanDan Leary Denowatts Doug Macmillan Portside Systems Support the showConnect with Tim Clean Power Hour Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email: CleanPowerHour@gmail.com Corporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems. Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Rizz might be the word of the year, but what if the real power behind it is as old as leadership itself? We sit down with Mylan Miller, author of The Charisma Craft, to unpack why charisma isn't a mysterious spark you're born with—it's a learnable practice that blends confidence with kindness to create two-way human connection. From the psychology of competence and warmth to the tiny physical cues that change how you're perceived, we map charisma from slang to strategy.Mylan takes us inside the high-octane world of sports and entertainment to show how deals are actually won: not by pressure in the boardroom, but by curiosity over dinners, market walks, and shared stories. You'll hear how reading the room across cultures, asking better questions, and remembering what matters to people can transform a pitch into a partnership. We dig into barriers like self-doubt and fragile self-trust, then counter them with simple, repeatable tools: the ENT method for eye contact and listening, and the WTF reset for grounded posture. These habits don't just look good on camera—they build trust you can renew.We also wrestle with authenticity in the age of AI. What's real connection versus performative oversharing? How do you stay human when templates and prompts are everywhere? Mylan's take is clear: technology can suggest words, but only you can sense the unsaid, calibrate tone, and turn a moment into momentum. Along the way, we explore leadership archetypes, celebrate models like Serena Williams for warrior-level authenticity, and reframe charisma as service, not spotlight.If you're ready to upgrade your presence, close smarter deals, and lead in a way people actually feel, hit play. Then subscribe, share this with a friend who leads, and leave a quick review to tell us which tool you'll practice first.

Some of the worst defending we've ever seen against Chelsea at Molineux - but somehow we came away with a point away to Forest?! The countdown to the Championship is very much in full swing. Our last hope - the FA Cup - comes round with Grimsby Town away. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Stress doesn't have to hijack your leadership. Executive coach Tracy Gazelle joins us to unpack the neuroscience of staying grounded when the stakes are high and the room heats up. We explore how clarity isn't something you chase; it's what emerges when the mental noise settles and you choose not to engage the inner critic that sounds so convincing in tough moments.Tracy breaks down her Calm Clarity Operating System into three practical pillars: sleep physiology, mind literacy, and lived experience. We get tactical about 90‑minute sleep cycles, why waking at 3:30 a.m. often means you're between cycles, and how to fall back asleep by refusing the “thought hooks” that try to wake your brain. You'll hear actionable routines for better evenings—no blue light, consistent wind‑downs, and smarter choices around food and alcohol—and a simple morning cadence that protects creative thinking before the day scatters your focus.• clarity as a natural state when the mind quiets• inner critic as optional noise, not identity• labeling emotions to shift out of fight or flight• body cues as early alerts to pause and breathe• Calm Clarity OS: sleep, mind, lived experience• 90‑minute sleep cycles and consistent wake times• falling back asleep without engaging thoughts• evening routines: light, screens, food, alcohol• morning creativity time for instinctive decisions• practical stories of leaders gaining calm authorityFrom boardroom triggers to body cues, we map exactly how to catch fight or flight before it takes over. Labeling emotions in real time moves processing from survival centers to the prefrontal cortex, restoring reason without draining your passion. Tracy shares a standout client story of a hospital leader who transformed a “bulldog” reputation into calm authority, improved relationships at home, and earned consideration for a CEO role. We also touch on reading habits, Taoist wisdom, and how to build a personal routine that actually fits your life rather than someone else's template.If you want sharper decisions, steadier meetings, and more energy for the people who matter most, this conversation gives you a blueprint. Subscribe, share this episode with a leader who needs calm more than caffeine, and leave a review to help others find the show. What's the first habit you'll test tonight?

Most leaders don't struggle with motivation—they struggle with clarity. In this episode, we break down why teams miss expectations even when goals seem “clear,” and how leaders unintentionally create confusion, overwhelm, and misalignment.This conversation dives deep into the four root causes behind execution failure: unclear goals, vague expectations, unconfirmed commitment, and delayed accountability. You'll learn practical leadership frameworks to replace assumption with alignment—without micromanaging or becoming reactive.What You'll Learn: • Why silence and nodding are not signs of agreement • How to set goals that actually drive results • The four elements every clear expectation must include • How to confirm understanding and commitment—before execution fails • Why accountability should feel fair, predictable, and supportiveKey Takeaway: Great leadership isn't about saying things better—it's about confirming they were understood.FREE Resource Mentioned: • Leadership Clarity Toolkit - DOWNLOADCall to Action: Download the Leadership Clarity Toolkit and start leading with precision, confidence, and consistency. Subscribe, follow, and share this episode with leaders who want fewer surprises and stronger execution.Podcast Links:

"You know, at the core of Working Genius, what it does is it allows us to avoid guilt and judgment—guilt about ourselves and judgment of others." That's Patrick Lencioni, bestselling author and organizational health expert, talking about his breakthrough Working Genius productivity framework on the Sales Gravy podcast. If you're leading a sales team, this explains why high performers thrive in some roles and burn out in others. Right now, you probably have high performers who are miserable, rockstars who've lost their spark, and top reps who suddenly can't hit quota. And you're wondering—did you hire wrong, did someone lose their edge, or do you need to have “the conversation”? What if the problem isn't the person at all?  The Real Reason Your Best People Are Struggling Not all work is created equal, and your sales reps aren't wired to do all of it. Lencioni stumbled on this insight while reflecting on himself. He'd show up to work loving his job and the people he worked with, yet swing from energized to frustrated without understanding why.  His colleague asked, “Why are you like that?” Over a few hours, Lencioni and his team pinpointed six distinct types of work. Depending on which type you're doing, you're either energized or drained. Five years later, over 1.5 million people have taken the Working Genius assessment. Why? Most organizations force talented people into work that drains them, then blame them when they struggle. Most sales leaders hire a closer for their ability to seal deals, then wonder why they can't prospect. They promote a quota-crusher into management, then watch them implode under administrative responsibilities. Or move an account manager into new business development and act shocked when performance tanks. The talent was there all along, but their positioning was wrong. Six Types of Work—and Why Most People Only Excel at Two Patrick Lencioni identified six distinct types of work that exist in every organization: Wonder (W): Spotting opportunities, asking big-picture questions Invention (I): Creating new solutions, processes, or systems Discernment (D): Evaluating ideas, figuring out what will work Galvanizing (G): Rallying the team, getting people moving Enablement (E): Supporting others, clearing obstacles, making things happen Tenacity (T): Following through, finishing tasks, closing deals Here's what matters: most people are strong in two, competent in two, and are drained by the remaining two. And there are no good or bad geniuses. Your closer with natural Tenacity isn't more valuable than your strategic thinker with Wonder and Discernment. Your rep who rallies the team (Galvanizing) isn't better than the one who quietly enables everyone behind the scenes. Different geniuses are valuable in different ways. The goal is to build a team where all six are represented, and people work in their areas of strength. Force someone into work that drains them, and sales team performance tanks. Leave them in their genius zones, and energy and results skyrocket. Stop Judging Your People (And Yourself) You've probably got a rep right now who frustrates you. Maybe they're brilliant in client meetings but terrible at following up. Maybe they generate incredible account strategies, but can't stand the daily grind of outbound prospecting. Maybe they close deals but never update the CRM. Your first instinct is to judge them. "They're not coachable." "They don't care about the details." "They're lazy." Working Genius removes that judgment. It shows you that their struggle isn't about character—it's about wiring. A rep isn't bad at follow-up because they don't care. They're bad at it because Tenacity isn't their genius. A rep isn't a bad team player because they don't remove obstacles for others. Enablement isn't their strength. And here's the part most sales leaders miss: you need to stop judging yourself, too. You feel guilty that you hate certain parts of your job. You think you should be better at forecasting, or administrative work, or whatever drains you. But guilt about your own limitations makes you harder on your team. When you accept that you're not built to excel at everything, you can extend that same grace to others. You stop punishing people for being human and start positioning them for success. Start With Self-Reflection Which activities give you energy? Which leave you drained? I'll be honest about my own wake-up call. I travel over 300 nights a year, giving keynotes and working with clients. Last summer, I got to the point where I thought I was going to have a mental breakdown. Days stacked with short calls, client check-ins, alignment meetings, and podcasts. I was furious when I got to the office, and furious when I left because those days completely destroy my brain. I'm a wonderer and a thinker. I need space to ideate. Without that time, I can't function. So I implemented a new rule: no more than two meetings per day. I understood my working genius and restructured my time. Once you see your own patterns, look at your team. Track what lights people up and what slows them down. Patterns emerge quickly. How to Apply Working Genius to Your Sales Team We had a team member at Sales Gravy who was noticeably unhappy. Not complaining out loud, just clearly not thriving. When we looked at what the job required versus their working genius profile, the answer was obvious. We had them doing work completely opposite of their natural abilities. Once we restructured their role to align with their strengths, everything changed. Here's how you can apply it: Pair complementary geniuses. Big-picture thinkers need execution-focused partners. Strategic planners need implementers. Someone strong in Wonder and Invention but weak in Tenacity needs to work with someone who loves finishing and closing. Restructure roles around natural strengths. Don't force people into weaknesses. Reassign or support tasks that drain them.  Be intentional with promotions. Top performers don't automatically make good managers. Your best individual contributor may hate administrative work. Your best manager may dislike strategic planning. Know what fits before making moves. Have your team take the assessment. Get everyone's working genius profile. Put it at their workstation. Use it in real-time during team meetings when you're trying to figure out why something isn't working. We do this at Sales Gravy, and it's transformed how we work together.  The Bottom Line Your sales team isn't broken, but your understanding of how they work might be. When you force talented people into roles that clash with their natural strengths, you get frustration, underperformance, and attrition. Then you blame the person and start hiring again.  Everyone has areas of frustration. Everyone faces work they aren't naturally good at. Working Genius doesn't let people avoid the draining tasks—but it helps you understand why some work feels impossible, build teams that complement each other, and stop punishing your people for being human. Stop judging that rep who struggles with CRM updates. Stop feeling guilty that you hate certain parts of your job. Start positioning people where their natural abilities can shine. Over 1.5 million people have discovered their working genius. Most of them wish they'd found it sooner. Visit workinggenius.com and take the assessment. Use coupon code GRAVY for 20% off. 

“You know, at the core of Working Genius, what it does is it allows us to avoid guilt and judgment—guilt about ourselves and judgment of others.” That's Patrick Lencioni, bestselling author and organizational health expert, talking about his breakthrough Working Genius productivity framework on the Sales Gravy podcast. If you're leading a sales team, this explains why high performers thrive in some roles and burn out in others. Right now, you probably have high performers who are miserable, rockstars who've lost their spark, and top reps who suddenly can't hit quota. And you're wondering—did you hire wrong, did someone lose their edge, or do you need to have “the conversation”? What if the problem isn't the person at all?  The Real Reason Your Best People Are Struggling Not all work is created equal, and your sales reps aren't wired to do all of it. Lencioni stumbled on this insight while reflecting on himself. He'd show up to work loving his job and the people he worked with, yet swing from energized to frustrated without understanding why.  His colleague asked, “Why are you like that?” Over a few hours, Lencioni and his team pinpointed six distinct types of work. Depending on which type you're doing, you're either energized or drained. Five years later, over 1.5 million people have taken the Working Genius assessment. Why? Most organizations force talented people into work that drains them, then blame them when they struggle. Most sales leaders hire a closer for their ability to seal deals, then wonder why they can't prospect. They promote a quota-crusher into management, then watch them implode under administrative responsibilities. Or move an account manager into new business development and act shocked when performance tanks. The talent was there all along, but their positioning was wrong. Six Types of Work—and Why Most People Only Excel at Two Patrick Lencioni identified six distinct types of work that exist in every organization: Wonder (W): Spotting opportunities, asking big-picture questions Invention (I): Creating new solutions, processes, or systems Discernment (D): Evaluating ideas, figuring out what will work Galvanizing (G): Rallying the team, getting people moving Enablement (E): Supporting others, clearing obstacles, making things happen Tenacity (T): Following through, finishing tasks, closing deals Here’s what matters: most people are strong in two, competent in two, and are drained by the remaining two. And there are no good or bad geniuses. Your closer with natural Tenacity isn’t more valuable than your strategic thinker with Wonder and Discernment. Your rep who rallies the team (Galvanizing) isn’t better than the one who quietly enables everyone behind the scenes. Different geniuses are valuable in different ways. The goal is to build a team where all six are represented, and people work in their areas of strength. Force someone into work that drains them, and sales team performance tanks. Leave them in their genius zones, and energy and results skyrocket. Stop Judging Your People (And Yourself) You’ve probably got a rep right now who frustrates you. Maybe they’re brilliant in client meetings but terrible at following up. Maybe they generate incredible account strategies, but can’t stand the daily grind of outbound prospecting. Maybe they close deals but never update the CRM. Your first instinct is to judge them. “They’re not coachable.” “They don’t care about the details.” “They’re lazy.” Working Genius removes that judgment. It shows you that their struggle isn’t about character—it’s about wiring. A rep isn't bad at follow-up because they don’t care. They’re bad at it because Tenacity isn’t their genius. A rep isn't a bad team player because they don't remove obstacles for others. Enablement isn't their strength. And here’s the part most sales leaders miss: you need to stop judging yourself, too. You feel guilty that you hate certain parts of your job. You think you should be better at forecasting, or administrative work, or whatever drains you. But guilt about your own limitations makes you harder on your team. When you accept that you’re not built to excel at everything, you can extend that same grace to others. You stop punishing people for being human and start positioning them for success. Start With Self-Reflection Which activities give you energy? Which leave you drained? I’ll be honest about my own wake-up call. I travel over 300 nights a year, giving keynotes and working with clients. Last summer, I got to the point where I thought I was going to have a mental breakdown. Days stacked with short calls, client check-ins, alignment meetings, and podcasts. I was furious when I got to the office, and furious when I left because those days completely destroy my brain. I’m a wonderer and a thinker. I need space to ideate. Without that time, I can’t function. So I implemented a new rule: no more than two meetings per day. I understood my working genius and restructured my time. Once you see your own patterns, look at your team. Track what lights people up and what slows them down. Patterns emerge quickly. How to Apply Working Genius to Your Sales Team We had a team member at Sales Gravy who was noticeably unhappy. Not complaining out loud, just clearly not thriving. When we looked at what the job required versus their working genius profile, the answer was obvious. We had them doing work completely opposite of their natural abilities. Once we restructured their role to align with their strengths, everything changed. Here's how you can apply it: Pair complementary geniuses. Big-picture thinkers need execution-focused partners. Strategic planners need implementers. Someone strong in Wonder and Invention but weak in Tenacity needs to work with someone who loves finishing and closing. Restructure roles around natural strengths. Don't force people into weaknesses. Reassign or support tasks that drain them.  Be intentional with promotions. Top performers don’t automatically make good managers. Your best individual contributor may hate administrative work. Your best manager may dislike strategic planning. Know what fits before making moves. Have your team take the assessment. Get everyone’s working genius profile. Put it at their workstation. Use it in real-time during team meetings when you’re trying to figure out why something isn’t working. We do this at Sales Gravy, and it’s transformed how we work together.  The Bottom Line Your sales team isn't broken, but your understanding of how they work might be. When you force talented people into roles that clash with their natural strengths, you get frustration, underperformance, and attrition. Then you blame the person and start hiring again.  Everyone has areas of frustration. Everyone faces work they aren't naturally good at. Working Genius doesn't let people avoid the draining tasks—but it helps you understand why some work feels impossible, build teams that complement each other, and stop punishing your people for being human. Stop judging that rep who struggles with CRM updates. Stop feeling guilty that you hate certain parts of your job. Start positioning people where their natural abilities can shine. Over 1.5 million people have discovered their working genius. Most of them wish they’d found it sooner. Visit workinggenius.com and take the assessment. Use coupon code GRAVY for 20% off. 

Pedigree looks shiny on paper, but does it move the needle? We sit down with executive search leader Travis Hahn to unpack why big-name resumes often disappoint, and how defining outcomes, culture, and decision rights before you recruit leads to hires who actually deliver. From building trustworthy role profiles to reaching passive candidates who aren't scrolling job boards, we dig into the practical steps leaders can take to raise the bar on both recruiting and retention.Travis explains how a third-party perspective challenges title-driven thinking and surfaces the real work a role must do at your company's specific stage. We explore the builder's mindset—consistency, transparency, and a willingness to go beyond the job description—and how to spot it in interviews. Culture emerges as the true currency: when leaders grant ownership and share credit, teams move faster and stick around. You'll hear success stories that took time and trust to compound, plus candid reflections on when “hire slow, fire fast” applies and when patience saves a future star.• defining roles with outcomes, KPIs, and decision rights• avoiding pedigree bias and testing for real impact• recruiting passive leaders through trust and patience• hire slow, fire fast but with context and care• culture as currency for retention and speed• builder's mindset, ownership, and clear communication• lessons from unreasonable hospitality on simple, human moments• AI as an efficiency tool, not a replacement for judgment• success stories that show compounding trust over time• next steps for integrated human capital servicesWe also tackle the AI question head-on. Automation can sharpen operations and sourcing, but human judgment remains essential for confidential, high-stakes leadership searches. With AI amplifying noise in the applicant pool, curated pipelines and authentic conversations matter more than ever. Along the way, Travis pulls leadership lessons from golf and hospitality, showing how simple, human gestures—clarity, inclusion, and respect—create experiences people remember and cultures they choose to stay in.If you're a founder or mid-market leader tired of expensive mis-hires and constant churn, this conversation offers a clear path forward: define the work, avoid pedigree traps, recruit builders, and keep your promises. Subscribe, share with someone wrestling with their next leadership hire, and leave a review telling us your biggest hiring challenge—we'll tackle it in a future episode.

The former BYU men's basketball player on AJ Dybantsa, Serious concerns about his play against ranked opponents, Jaren Jackson Jr traded to the Jazz + more

Dave answers listeners questions that spark great conversation around what to do when your team underperforms, what posting consistent content has done for Dave's image and what leadership red flags to look out for both personally and professionally.

European bourses opened lower but now display a mixed picture; US equity futures are entirely in the red with the NQ leading losses, focus on NVIDIA/Oracle.DXY is flat, Aussie initially underperformed as metals got hit but now CHF lags as the risk-tone improves. JPY digests Takaichi comments and new polling which places LDP in a strong position.Fixed initially bid given the risk tone, but pulling back as sentiment turns mixed in Europe.Precious metals hit in a continuation of Friday's losses; WTI dips below USD 62/bbl as US-Iran tensions ease, with talks in Turkey this week looming.Looking ahead, highlights include US Final Manufacturing PMIs (Jan), ISM Manufacturing PMI (Jan), Speakers including BoE's Breeden & Fed's Bostic, Treasury Refunding Announcement, Earnings from Palantir & NXP Semiconductors.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

Discover an effective school transformation model yielding unprecedented results. Learn how the Elevate program turned around underperforming schools in just one year.Episode Resources:Learn more about Greenville County SchoolsExplore the Jeff McCoy Innovation AwardInformation on the Education Research & Development Institute (ERDI)Simple Civics:Simple Civics: Greenville County is a project of Greater Good GreenvilleGet in touchSupport Simple Civics with a tax-deductible contributionSign up for the Simple Civics newsletter.View our entire catalogueSimple Civics: Greenville County is produced by Podcast Studio X.

Banged up offensive line? Underperforming star skill players? A quarterback who failed to lift his team? The 2025 edition of the Philadelphia Eagles checked all those boxes on offense. Sure, you could make a scapegoat out of the first-time offensive coordinator, but placing the blame squarely at the feet of Kevin Patullo would misrepresent the extent of the Eagles' problems. The Athletic's Michael Silver recently wrote an article about the Eagles' offensive woes, and, in a conversation with The Philadelphia Inquirer's Jeff McLane, framed these issues in the context of the franchise's ongoing search for Patullo's replacement. 00:00 Why is the Eagles' offensive coordinator search taking so long? 13:27 Factors that prompted Mike McDaniel and Brian Daboll to pass on Eagles 19:00 The Jalen Hurts effect 28:45 The national media perspective on Hurts 32:37 Could Jeff Stoutland's responsibilities be changing? unCovering the Birds is a production of The Philadelphia Inquirer and KYW Newsradio Original Podcasts. Look for new episodes throughout the offseason, including breaking news updates and reactions. And here's a link to Mike Silver's article: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6976115/2026/01/16/eagles-offense-jalen-hurts-nick-sirianni-aj-brown/

Tonight on The Huddle, Jordan Williams from the Taxpayers Union and Jack Tame from ZB's Saturday Mornings and Q&A joined in on a discussion about the following issues of the day - and more! Judith Collins today confirmed she was retiring from politics - will we miss her? Will New Zealand politics be different without Ju-Co around? Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has sunk to his lowest popularity in the past year, with a leaked poll showing more voters disapprove of him than approve. What can the Government do differently here? LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of The DeFi Report, Mike and Ryan break down why Bitcoin is underperforming gold, what the BTC/Gold ratio is signaling about the next bottom, and why this setup may be more bullish than it looks. They unpack China's role in driving the gold trade, why Bitcoin still behaves like a risk-on asset, and how investor “envy” distorts cycle perception. Mike lays out realistic downside scenarios, key support levels to watch, and the onchain signals he needs to see before deploying capital.----

What if your calling stayed the same, but your assignment changed? That's the pivot Mac Lake made—moving from pastoring and church planting to building leadership pipelines for churches and, later, for businesses hungry to grow healthy leaders. We sat down to unpack the turning points, the practical frameworks, and the simple habits that turn lofty leadership talk into measurable impact.Mac shares the “intervention” that ignited his growth, why investing in yourself isn't optional, and how a clear leadership pipeline can stop bottlenecks before they burn out your best people. We walk through the five-tier pathway—from leading yourself to leading the organization—so you can spot gaps, set ratios, and prepare your next layer of leaders on purpose. You'll hear how development beats placement every time, and why the triad of knowledge, experience, and coaching is the simplest engine for transformation you can run across any team.• origins of purpose and early leadership wake-up call• moving from church staff to founding Multiply Group• treating business as a platform for discipleship and influence• investing in yourself with intentional growth plans• designing a leadership pipeline with healthy ratios• shifting from leader placement to leader development• triad of knowledge, experience, and coaching• pairing character with competency for trusted impact• daily health practices that fuel longevity and focus• how we develop our own team through monthly huddlesWe also dig into the balance of character and competency, anchored in David's model of a pure heart and skillful hands. Mac explains how pairing virtues with skills—patience with conflict, humility with decision-making, courage with change—“supercharges” leadership people trust. And because energy is a competitive edge, we zoom in on health span: eat, sleep, move, think, hydrate. From ditching processed foods and seed oils to resistance training and hydration, Mac shows how daily habits protect focus, raise resilience, and help you finish strong.If you lead a business, a nonprofit, or a church, you'll leave with a blueprint to restructure your team, a repeatable way to develop leaders, and a personal plan to sustain the energy leadership demands. Subscribe for more conversations with uncommon leaders, share this with someone who needs the nudge, and leave a review to help others find the show.

View slides and Vodcast edition at https://www.hortweek.com/article/1944940In this edition of the HortWeek Podcast, Matt Appleby spoke to Dries Jansen of Garden Center Advice talking about how to optimise garden centre operations for profit through layout, assortment, and realisation.Jansen began his career as an analyst at Intratuin in the Netherlands, working with 56 stores and €250 million turnover. He used trends and data back then to identify predictable patterns.But now, working alongside leading garden centre architect Fred de Rijcke, Jansen has combined data from HortWeek's exclusive annual Top 250 Garden Centres with insight from the garden centre markets in the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Belgium, to create a comprehensive decision-making model for the UK market. The data analysis system maps annual turnovers against store area, various variables and individual store offerings, proximity to population centres and other key metrics. Combining these data sets he finds an 'average' yield per sqm that all garden centres can be measured against. Individual stores can be indexed to understand how they are performing and whether they may benefit from further investigation to find ways to improve that performance. Stores identified with 'potential' to improve are profiled individually to assess their performance in various metrics, eg. ambience, service, price etc. and action points can be generated to help boost turnover.Jansen refers to slides and images during the podcast - to view these or see the video version of this podcast, CLICK HERE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you're worried about giving employee raises when revenue is tight, you're not alone. In this episode, we explore ways to reward your team without putting your business at risk. You'll discover smart ways to structure raises when cash flow is limited, how to communicate compensation changes without hurting morale, and strategies to retain top talent even when money is tight. If you're a business owner trying to balance people and profits, this episode will give you practical steps you can implement now. Join Melissa Kay and Dr. Sabrina Starling to learn smart, sustainable strategies for handling raises without jeopardizing your business. Profit by Design is a Tap the Potential production. Show Highlights:Balancing an uncertain economy with the need to take care of your A-playersThe problem when a business owner isn't cashing their paychecks in order to give employee raisesTake an honest look at your team, identify your A-players, and give raises accordingly. (Underperforming “warm bodies” do not deserve a raise.)Strategies for protecting you, the business owner. These are a priority for a sustainable business.Maintaining profitability is the #1 priority; all other decisions flow from that foundation.More money is NOT the goal for many A-players; time flexibility and freedom often matter more.Learn to structure an A-player's work schedule around the delivery of their key result.A team member's perspective from Melissa: time flexibility and freedom matter most!Considerations for a growing business (Don't grow your payroll across the board!)Have conversations with your A-players to find out what matters most to each of them. An action step to take today: prioritize systemization for each A-player's role (Guard against being hostage to any A-player.)Need more support to confidently grow your business? We can help! Book a call with us today! Resources:Ready to take your life back from your business? Want more time for what matters most and more money in your bank account than ever? Book a call with us today! Master your time and profit! Give us 20 minutes of your time, take the Better Business Better Life Assessment, and receive a free paperback copy of my book, The 4 Week Vacation

If you've ever wondered why good relationships quietly fade, this conversation will change how you lead, sell, and show up. We sit down with speaker and author Barb Betts to unpack a simple truth: relationships don't fail overnight—they drift when we stop being intentional. Starting with the inner game, Barb reframes self-doubt and imposter syndrome as signs you're stretching into growth, not proof that you're a fraud. By 85, you'll spend roughly 44 million minutes with yourself; the way you speak to you becomes the template for every other connection.We move from mindset to method with Barb's VVR factor: visibility, vulnerability, and relatability. Show up consistently, be human without oversharing, and find a real point of common ground. Then apply a Relationship Operating System that ranks your most important people, sets a contact cadence, and uses the five by five method—five genuine, no-ask messages to five people a day—to prevent drift. Barb shares a personal story of nearly losing a 24-year friendship and how simple, consistent touchpoints would have saved months of hurt.• redefining self-doubt and imposter syndrome as growth signals• VVR factor: visibility, vulnerability, relatability• preventing drift with a relationship operating system• five by five daily outreach method with no asks• ranking relationships and setting contact frequency• why everyone is in sales because sales is influence• building trust accounts and making deposits before withdrawals• making people feel known, not just counted• where AI helps and where it can't• practical tools: CRM, sheets, top 100 listSales leaders will appreciate her broader frame: sales is influence, and everyone sells. The goal isn't how many people you know; it's how many feel known by you. That shift boosts referrals, deepens trust, and turns your name on someone's phone into a call they can't wait to answer. We also get practical about tools—CRMs, Google Sheets, even AI for drafting and organizing—while drawing a hard line where tech can't replace a voice note, phone call, or handwritten card.If you're ready to stop relying on “let's get together soon” and start building relationships before you need them, this episode offers a playbook you can use today. If it resonates, follow Barb, send those five messages, and tell us who you're reconnecting with. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs this nudge, and leave a quick review to help others find the show.

What if the missing piece in your leadership isn't a new tactic but a new identity? Coach and author Quinn Harwood joins us to unpack the Power of You, a practical path for zillennial leaders who crave meaning, impact, and confidence that lasts. We dig into his coaching fable, Growth Time, where each stop on a life journey mirrors a growth zone leaders must face, from escaping Uville's ego traps to choosing a weekly mindset that actually moves your mission.Quinn doesn't preach from the podium; he shares from the trenches. He opens up about the highs of pro basketball and the lows of losing a long-time role and walking through a painful divorce. Out of that life quake came structure, purpose, and a mantra he now coaches every week: mindset changes behavior. You'll hear how Monday Movers, his free mindset ritual, helps leaders replace doom scrolling with deliberate focus, turn confidence into a practice, and show up for hard conversations with clarity and conviction.We also explore how faith, service, and legacy shape uncommon leadership. Quinn carries his father's charge—help others help others—into every chapter of his work, translating purpose into daily habits: early training sessions to prime the mind, simple commitments that stick, and consistent shots taken when the game gets tight. If you're a mission-driven professional who wants more than metrics, this conversation offers a clear, doable roadmap to build real confidence, align ambition with values, and lead with impact.Subscribe now, share this with a friend who needs Monday momentum, and leave a quick review so more mission movers can find the show. Then tell us: what mindset will you commit to this week?

If delegating feels risky and holding on feels exhausting, this episode will hit home. On the podcast this week, I'm joined by Coach K and Meredith Berg, an EOS Implementer, to talk about the real reason running your firm feels so damn heavy — and what ACTUALLY fixes it.

What if your biggest breakthrough starts where you've been saying “can't”? We celebrate episode 200 with Scottie Pennington, a COO who scaled operations across eight sites while proving that lean, faith, and relentless discipline can transform people and performance. From foundries and scrapyards to maintenance shops that used to be locked down, Scottie shows how 5S and clear communication can shift culture fast—especially when you win over the quiet influencer everyone trusts.We dig into the shift from doing to developing, and how to avoid becoming the leadership lid as your scope expands. Scottie explains why multiplication beats control, how he built a bench of directors leading plant managers, and why intentionality and gemba rigor still matter when your calendar explodes. His lens is practical and people-first: build leaders who build leaders, and watch results follow. Along the way, he shares the foundations that still guide him—Maxwell's laws, The Goal, 360 Leader—and how those principles anchor daily behavior.• COO journey across multiple business lines and sites• Lean and 5S implemented in foundries and maintenance• Winning buy-in through communication and influencers• Avoiding the leadership lid by growing leaders• Intentionality, discipline, and gemba rigor• Fitness as process: Spartan races, from if to when• Family priorities, protected time, and boundaries• Faith, integrity, trust, and using your gifts• Practical advice: remove the can't box and add yetThen we go personal. Scottie quit alcohol, embraced Spartan races, and replaced motivation with discipline. He describes the “if to when” mindset, dropping 40 pounds, and crossing a Beast finish line wearing Philippians 4:13, a moment powered by faith and family. With six grandkids and a spouse who protects the schedule, he talks about saying no, honoring boundaries, and living integrity when no one is watching. If you've ever wondered how to integrate purpose, performance, and personal health without losing your soul, this conversation gives you a map—and a push.Ready to grow leaders who multiply leaders, implement 5S where it's hardest, and trade “can't” for “yet”? Hit play, subscribe for more uncommon leadership stories, and leave a review to help others find the show. Then tell us: what habit will you turn from if to when today?Connect with Scottie Pennington:➡️ LinkedIn (primary): https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottie-pennington-mba-a4b3b129/overlay/contact-info/Thanks for listening in to the Uncommon Leader Podcast. Please take just a minute to share this podcast with that someone you know that you thought of when you heard this episode. One of the most valuable things you can do is to rate the podcast and leave a review. You can do that on Apple podcasts, or rate the podcast on Spotify or any other platform you listen. Did you know that many of the things that I discuss on the Uncommon Leader Podcast are subjects that I coach other leaders and organizations ? If you would be interested in having me discuss 1:1 or group coaching with you, or know someone who is looking to move from Underperforming to Uncommon in their business or life, I would love to chat with you. Click this link to set up a FREE CALL to discuss how coaching might benefit you and your team) Until next time, Go and Grow Champions!!Connect with me

January 6, 2026 - Zach and Chase discuss the current state of the markets, focusing on volatility, economic indicators, and the performance of tech stocks. They explore international market comparisons, currency dynamics, and the implications of geopolitical events on oil and natural gas markets. The conversation also delves into investment opportunities in emerging markets, the metals market, and technological innovations in robotics.

What if the real problem on your team isn't “people problems,” but the problems your people carry? We sit down with Matt Granados—founder of Life Pulse, author of Motivate the Unmotivated and The Intentional Week—to rethink leadership from the ground up. Matt makes a clear, compelling case for aiming at optimal performance: high output at a sustainable pace compared to yourself. No burnout badge. No hustle theater. Just systems that help humans do their best work without losing themselves.We break down a simple weekly cadence that top teams use to spot issues before they explode. Three questions—What are you focused on? What are you grateful for? What are you working toward?—surface trends, context, and capacity. Matt explains why leaders should listen for patterns over one-off answers, and how kindness (truth with care) beats niceness (comfort without growth). You'll hear the four levels of performance, the pitfalls of managing like a babysitter, and the practical steps to equip rather than enable.• the claim that people don't have people problems, people have problems• what equipping looks like versus enabling• three weekly questions that reveal trends fast• the difference between high and optimal performance• why kindness beats niceness for real growth• using structure and rhythm to prevent burnout• Eagle U's role in early systems thinking• the Take Part Foundation's focus on research, resources, storytelling• daily disciplines to abide and lead with integrityMatt also shares the heart behind the Take Part Foundation, co-founded with his wife Maria after their daughter Natalie was diagnosed with an ultra-rare genetic condition. Their mission—fund research, provide resources like genetic testing, and tell stories—shows what hope looks like in action. It's a masterclass in leading through adversity: build structure, choose obedience over opportunism, and serve people with courage and clarity.If you lead teams, coach leaders, or care about culture, you'll leave with a playbook to boost output without sacrificing well-being. Try the three questions for four weeks and watch the signal emerge. Then act with curiosity, not judgment. If this conversation moved you, share it with a leader who needs it, subscribe for more thoughtful interviews, and leave a review so we can reach more uncommon leaders.Connect with Matt Granados: ➡️ LinkedIn (primary): https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt87granados/➡️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lifepulseinc7163➡️ Website: http://www.lifepulseinc.com/uncommonleaderThanks for listening in to the Uncommon Leader Podcast. Please take just a minute to share this podcast with that someone you know that you thought of when you heard this episode. One of the most valuable things you can do is to rate the podcast and leave a review. You can do that on Apple podcasts, or rate the podcast on Spotify or any other platform you listen. Did you know that many of the things that I discuss on the Uncommon Leader Podcast are subjects that I coach other leaders and organizations ? If you would be interested in having me discuss 1:1 or group coaching with you, or know someone who is looking to move from Underperforming to Uncommon in their business or life, I would love to chat with you. Click this link to set up a FREE CALL to discuss how coaching might benefit you and your team) Until next time, Go and Grow Champions!!Connect with me

Underperforming properties are where the biggest money is made—if you know how to fix them. That's where expert property management comes in. In this episode, Brian speaks with Craig Marquardo, VP of Multifamily at VCS Property Management, who has over 20 years of experience cleaning up operations, boosting tenant retention, and maximizing NOI. Craig pulls back the curtain on how property managers really operate and what every owner needs to know to protect their investment. You'll learn: Tenant Psychology: How residents think about rent increases and what keeps them paying on time. Reducing Delinquencies: Why 80% of late rent is due to management neglect—and how to fix it. Spotting Red Flags: How to audit your management company and avoid hidden fees, sloppy files, and missing leases. Owner Oversight: Why annual administrative reviews are just as important as physical inspections. Development Mistakes: Why property managers should be involved before you break ground to avoid costly design flaws. AI in Property Management: How Craig uses automation to improve tenant communication without losing the personal touch. Craig emphasizes that property managers aren't just caretakers—they're investment managers. And the best results come when owners and managers treat the relationship as a true partnership. Find out more: Craig@vcs-pm.com www.vcs-pm.com Today's episode is brought to you by Green Property Management, managing everything from single family homes to apartment complexes in the West Michigan area. https://www.livegreenlocal.com And RCB & Associates, helping Michigan-based real estate investors and small business owners navigate the complex world of health insurance and medicare benefits. https://www.rcbassociatesllc.com

SHOW 12-22-25 THE SHOW BEGINS WITH DOUBTS ABOUT FUTURE NAVY. 1941 HICKAM FIELD 1. Restoring Naval Autonomy: Arguments for Separating the Navy from DoD. Tom Modly argues the Navy is an "underperforming asset" within the Defense Department's corporate structure, similar to how Fiat Chrysler successfully spun off Ferrari. He suggests the Navy needs independence to address critical shipbuilding deficits and better protect global commerce and vulnerable undersea cables from adversaries. 2. Future Fleets: Decentralizing Firepower to Counter Chinese Growth. Tom Modly warns that China's shipbuilding capacity vastly outpaces the US, requiring a shift toward distributed forces rather than expensive, concentrated platforms. He advocates for a reinvigorated, independent Department of the Navy to foster the creativity needed to address asymmetric threats like Houthi attacks on high-value assets. 3. British Weakness: The Failure to Challenge Beijing Over Jimmy Lai. Mark Simon predicts Prime Minister Starmer will fail to secure Jimmy Lai's release because the UK mistakenly views China as an economic savior. He notes the UK's diminished military and economic leverage leads to a submissive diplomatic stance, despite China'sdeclining ability to offer investment. 4. Enforcing Sanctions: Interdicting the Shadow Fleet to Squeeze China. Victoria Coates details the Trump administration's enforcement of a "Monroe Doctrine" corollary, using naval power to seize tankers carrying Venezuelan oil to China. This strategy exposes China's lack of maritime projection and energy vulnerability, as Beijingcannot legally contest the seizures of illicit shadow fleet vessels. 5. Symbolic Strikes: US and Jordan Target Resurgent ISIS in Syria. Following an attack on US personnel, the US and Jordan conducted airstrikes against ISIS strongholds, likely with Syrian regime consultation. Ahmed Sharawi questions the efficacy of striking desert warehouses when ISIS cells have moved into urban areas, suggesting the strikes were primarily symbolic domestic messaging. 6. Failure to Disarm: Hezbollah's Persistence and UNIFIL's Inefficacy. David Daoud reports that the Lebanesegovernment is failing to disarm Hezbollah south of the Litani River, merely evicting them from abandoned sites. He argues UNIFIL is an ineffective tripwire, as Hezbollah continues to rebuild infrastructure and receive funding right under international observers' noses. 7. Global Jihad: The Distinct Threats of the Brotherhood and ISIS. Edmund Fitton-Brown contrasts the Muslim Brotherhood's long-term infiltration of Western institutions with ISIS's violent, reckless approach. He warns that ISISremains viable, with recent facilitated attacks in Australia indicating a resurgence in capability beyond simple "inspired" violence. 8. The Forever War: Jihadist Patience vs. American Cycles. Bill Roggio argues the US has failed to defeat jihadist ideology or funding, allowing groups like Al-Qaeda to persist in Afghanistan and Africa. He warns that adversaries view American withdrawals as proof of untrustworthiness, exploiting the US tendency to fight short-term wars against enemies planning for decades. 9. The Professional: Von Steuben's Transformation of the Continental Army. Richard Bell introduces Baron von Steuben as a desperate, unemployed Prussian officer who professionalized the ragtag Continental Army at Valley Forge. Washington's hiring of foreign experts like Steuben demonstrated a strategic willingness to utilize global talent to ensure the revolution's survival. 10. Privateers and Prison Ships: The Unsung Cost of Maritime Independence. Richard Bell highlights the crucial role of privateers like William Russell, who raided British shipping when the Continental Navy was weak. Captured privateers faced horrific conditions in British "black hole" facilities like Mill Prison and the deadly prison ship Jersey in New York Harbor, where mortality rates reached 50%. 11. Caught in the Crossfire: Indigenous Struggles in the Revolutionary War. Molly Brant, a Mohawk leader, allied with the British to stop settler encroachment but became a refugee when the British failed to protect Indigenous lands. Post-war, white Americans constructed myths portraying themselves as blameless victims while ignoring their own Indigenous allies and British betrayals regarding land rights. 12. The Irish Dimension: Revolutionary Hopes and Brutal Repression. The Irish viewed the American Revolutionas a signal that the British Empire was vulnerable, sparking the failed 1798 Irish rebellion. While the British suppressed Irish independence brutally under Cornwallis, Irish immigrants and Scots-Irish settlers like Andrew Jackson fervently supported the Continental Army against the Crown. 13. Assessing Battlefield Realities: Russian Deceit and Ukrainian Counterattacks. John Hardie analyzes the "culture of deceit" within the Russian military, exemplified by false claims of capturing Kupyansk while Ukraine actually counterattacked. This systemic lying leads to overconfidence in Putin's strategy, though Ukraine also faces challenges with commanders hesitating to report lost positions to avoid forced counterattacks. 14. Shifts in Latin America: Brazilian Elections and Venezuelan Hope. Ernesto Araujo and Alejandro Peña Esclusapredict a 2026 battle between socialist accommodation and freedom-oriented transformation in Brazil, highlighted by Flavio Bolsonaro's candidacy against Lula. Meanwhile, Peña Esclusa anticipates Venezuela's liberation and a broader regional shift toward the right following leftist defeats in Ecuador, Argentina, and Chile. 15. Trump's Security Strategy: Homeland Defense Lacks Global Clarity. John Yoo praises the strategy's focus on homeland defense and the Western Hemisphere, reviving a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. However, he criticizes the failure to explicitly name China as an adversary or define clear goals for defending allies in Asia and Europe against great power rivals. 16. Alienating Allies: The Strategic Cost of Attacking European Partners. John Yoo argues that imposing tariffs and attacking democratic European allies undermines the coalition needed to counter China and Russia. He asserts that democracies are the most reliable partners for protecting American security and values, making cooperation essential despite resource constraints and political disagreements.

A plant on the brink. Labor unrest, safety issues, shaky quality, and a community that had lost faith. Steve Matteson stepped into that storm with almost no runway and chose an unconventional starting point: listen deeply, walk the floor, and build a system people actually believe in. What followed is a rare, practical blueprint for turning a failing operation into a proud, profitable, and resilient culture.We dive into the first 48 hours—hour-long one-on-ones, a real gemba tour, and the surprising power of choosing leaders for connection rather than technical stardom. Steve Matteson explains how he ended “mandatory meetings,” made safety and quality everyone's job, and installed a weekly cross-functional cadence with clear inputs and outputs. You'll hear how accountability with dignity defused tension, why inviting injured teammates into root-cause problem solving changed behavior, and how a simple, employee-led newsletter amplified trust and momentum across a 1,000-person workforce.• starting a turnaround with gemba and one-on-ones• selecting leaders for connection over individual brilliance• weekly cadence, “no surprises,” and cross-functional glue• accountability with dignity and ending mandatory meetings• teaching safety and quality as everyone's job with PDSA• physical renewal, 5S, TPM, and visible standards• handling naysayers through open forums and union trust• bold process change with single-pass mixing and stabilization• documenting habits so culture endures beyond the leader• faith shaping mindset, humility, and serviceThis is a masterclass in sustainable change. We trace physical renewal and 5S as symbolic turning points, TPM to reduce downtime, and a bold shift to single-pass rubber mixing backed by meticulous stabilization and transparent communication. Steve Matteson shares how he documented a repeatable operating model in 31 concise chapters, built quarterly off-sites for senior leaders, and prepared the culture to thrive long after he moved on. Underneath it all is a candid look at mindset and faith—guarding the mind in crisis, choosing the next right step, and leading with humility and purpose.If you're trying to revive a team, unify a divided workforce, or make improvements stick, this story gives you the practical moves and the human touchpoints to get there. Subscribe, share this with a leader who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway so we can keep equipping uncommon leaders.Thanks for listening in to the Uncommon Leader Podcast. Please take just a minute to share this podcast with that someone you know that you thought of when you heard this episode. One of the most valuable things you can do is to rate the podcast and leave a review. You can do that on Apple podcasts, or rate the podcast on Spotify or any other platform you listen. Did you know that many of the things that I discuss on the Uncommon Leader Podcast are subjects that I coach other leaders and organizations ? If you would be interested in having me discuss 1:1 or group coaching with you, or know someone who is looking to move from Underperforming to Uncommon in their business or life, I would love to chat with you. Click this link to set up a FREE CALL to discuss how coaching might benefit you and your team) Until next time, Go and Grow Champions!!Connect with me

1. Restoring Naval Autonomy: Arguments for Separating the Navy from DoD. Tom Modly argues the Navy is an "underperforming asset" within the Defense Department's corporate structure, similar to how Fiat Chrysler successfully spun off Ferrari. He suggests the Navy needs independence to address critical shipbuilding deficits and better protect global commerce and vulnerable undersea cables from adversaries. 1898 DEWEY'S FLAGSHIP OLYMPIA

Growth rarely stalls because the team isn't smart enough; it stalls because everyone is running a different playbook. We sit down with Eric Pfeiffer to explore a leadership operating system that replaces drama with trust and equips people to think clearly under pressure. Instead of chasing a new tactic for every fire drill, Eric shows how a compact set of tools can align how your team communicates, decides, and learns—so talent compounds and execution speeds up.We start with the hard truth about complacency and the “law of the lid”: organizations cap out where leaders stop growing. From there, we dig into symptom versus system thinking. Missed handoffs, slow decisions, and tense meetings are signals of deeper root causes—unspoken norms, conflicting assumptions, and inconsistent accountability. Eric lays out why a shared operating system acts like SOPs for humans, giving teams a common language for conflict, feedback, and ownership. His sports analogy hits home: elite players still lose without a shared playbook; companies do too.The highlight is a high-stakes story. After a confidential pricing file was sent to every vendor, the exec team veered into blame until someone paused and drew the “Kairos” framework on the board. In minutes, the mood shifted from fear to focus. They owned the mistake, aligned the response, and not one vendor defected. More important than the outcome was the reflex they rewired: under pressure, they chose a shared process over old habits. That's the promise of a real operating system—fewer fire drills, faster learning loops, and a culture where leaders train capacity instead of renting fixes.If you lead a growing team, this conversation is a field guide for the moments that matter. You'll hear how to diagnose root issues, codify a simple playbook, and train weekly so the right habits stick when the game speeds up. 

Is it worth it to step in and try to save a failing business? Is that even possible? Kat Smith, direct-response queen and salon-flipping expert, adamantly says the answer is YES… if you do it right. Join Dan Kennedy and Kat as she walks listeners through her journey of taking a mediocre hair salon and turning it into a money-making machine that outperformed all her competitors. Covering topics like recruiting, staff management, customer loyalty, referrals and drastically improving the marketing, Kat shares in-depth her strategy for turning a doomed brick and mortar business into a massive success. MagneticMarketing.com NoBSLetter.com

Leila Rahimi and Marshall Harris discussed a variety of sports topics in the 5 On It segment.

This week host James Weaver is joined by Bryce Rossler and Alex Vigderman, as they take a look at some teams that are already looking towards the 2026 season, and try to analyze their next steps that each franchise should take towards improvement. They briefly dive into how they would fix the Raiders, Titans, Giants, Browns, Jets, Commanders, Saints, and Cardinals. Then they draft the team the feel has the best chances to make the playoffs over the next 2 seasons.Off The Charts features a blend of statistical insights, tactical analysis, and personal opinions, aimed at providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the week's key matchups and the intricacies of the sport. You can follow our content on Twitter at @Football_SIS, on Bluesky at @sportsinfosis.bsky.social and at sportsinfosolutions.com.

European bourses opened lower but now marginally firmer, US equity futures are in the red, with underperformance in the NQ following Oracle (-11%) earnings.DXY initially attempted to pare post-FOMC pressure, but now flat, CHF little moved to the SNB announcement, but gained on the presser, the Aussie is pressured post-jobs data.USTs continue to strengthen in the aftermath of the FOMC, whilst Bunds pull back from highs.Crude benchmarks are selling off despite a bullish IEA report; XAU pares back FOMC gains; Copper pulls back from ATHs.Looking ahead, highlights include US Initial Jobless Claims (6 Dec, w/e), OPEC MOMR, Supply from the US, Earnings from Broadcom, Costco & lululemon.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

Tap-into with Tate of the “KnoItAllz” for an episode inside the episode of the “That's Rather Cavalier” podcast as he talks about the Cleveland Cavaliers and has his NBA Weekly discussion with the fellas from the FFSN Chicago Bulls & Detroit Pistons podcast. One hour of NBA talk, so tap-into the “NBA Weekly” podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We explore how belonging, curiosity, and care create better people and better teams, drawing on rugby culture and cross-cultural roots. Josh Sutcliffe shares a practical coaching system for awareness, belonging, confidence, and a freedom model that balances structure with initiative.• origin story shaped by moves across Australia and New Zealand• rugby as connection, identity, and shared language• champion defined as caring, inspiring action, and staying curious• coaching method built on awareness, belonging, and confidence• performance model using codified basics, acceleration, and freedom• grit as rituals to perform under pressure• case studies from college sports and leadership transitions• rebuilding the Philippines' national team and heritage networks• new podcast exploring unseen roles that build performance• how to connect with Josh for coaching and supportPlease share this episode with someone you know who needs to hear itPlease go and give us a five-star review and leave a comment on what you heard todayConnect with Josh: ➡️ LinkedIn (primary): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jsutrain/➡️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EngagePerformanceLLC➡️Instagram: @coachwithjosh and https://www.instagram.com/jsut➡️ Website: https://www.joshsutcliffe.com/Thanks for listening in to the Uncommon Leader Podcast. Please take just a minute to share this podcast with that someone you know that you thought of when you heard this episode. One of the most valuable things you can do is to rate the podcast and leave a review. You can do that on Apple podcasts, or rate the podcast on Spotify or any other platform you listen. Did you know that many of the things that I discuss on the Uncommon Leader Podcast are subjects that I coach other leaders and organizations ? If you would be interested in having me discuss 1:1 or group coaching with you, or know someone who is looking to move from Underperforming to Uncommon in their business or life, I would love to chat with you. Click this link to set up a FREE CALL to discuss how coaching might benefit you and your team) Until next time, Go and Grow Champions!!Connect with me

Most women have no idea whether their portfolio is actually working, and the cost of underperformance is massive.In this episode, I'm breaking down the quiet warning signs that your investments aren't growing the way they should, and the key numbers you must know to protect your long-term wealth. Tune in to learn:The #1 number you must know about your investmentsA shocking stat about ‘expert' managementThe sneaky pattern that leads to lagging investmentsWhat your returns SHOULD be

We explore how complacency hides inside success and how to replace drift with drive through clarity, filtering, relationships, and honest evaluation. Chris Robinson shares stories from the stage in Cambodia to the “55 is greater than 800” moment that reset his habits and focus.Key Takeaways:redefining complacency as careless security and satisfactory successawareness as the gateway to overcoming underperformanceclarity that cures myopia and hyperopia with the next easiest stepfiltering inputs and environments to align with the desired identitygetting into the right rooms with bigger windowsposture over imposter syndrome by choosing progress over impressevaluation loops and inviting hard truth from trusted peoplefaith as fuel for living fully alive and rejecting comfortpractical mantra of learn a little, do a littleWhy don't you do them a big favor and buy one for yourself, and then buy another copy for your friend as well, and share it with them, and go through the book with them? If you like this episode, be sure to follow Chris on his website, but also share this episode with a friend who you know needs to hear it. And certainly, we'd love it if you could write a review out there to get this into the hands of as many people as we can.=======================================================

Mike Johnson, Beau Morgan, and Ali Mac let you hear Atlanta Falcons Head Coach Raheem Morris talk about how he had to share some hard truths with some of his players yesterday, react to what Coach Morris had to say, let you hear Raheem talk about if he thinks the team needs to add more talent to their wide receiver room, react to what Coach Morris had to say, and explain why they think the recent emergences of Falcons wide receivers David Sills and Dylan Drummond are due to injuries and other players underperforming.

We explore what it takes to lead with courage and clarity when comfort pulls you off course. Chris Granger shares the story behind his new book, the move to a working farm, a serious injury, and the simple, repeatable practices that help men lead well.• spiritual warfare and the call to fight back• the gap between fellowship and discipleship• seven areas of leadership for Christian men• the Paul and Timothy mentoring model• simplifying Scripture into action steps• using the book as a practical toolkit• trials that build endurance and patience• integrating faith with career and family• Bible app plans and the “I'm Just A Guy” series• a one-sentence leadership mantra on obedienceHit that share button to send this to someone who needs itLeave a five-star review and a comment to help more leaders find the showTune in now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. 

In this episode, Chip and Gini tackle the difficult subject of firing an underperforming and problematic employee. They discuss a real-life scenario where an employee with a bad attitude refuses to do their work, causing frustration among team members. They advise against prolonging the inevitable firing decision, suggesting that acting swiftly can alleviate overall team stress. Both hosts share insights on why Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) are largely ineffective, stressing the need for proper documentation and the guidance of an HR advisor during termination processes. Additionally, they highlight the importance of showing proactive steps to the remaining team to mitigate the workload burden and maintain morale. The episode emphasizes the critical role of leadership in making tough decisions for the greater good of the team and the business. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “When it comes to firing, I am much more a fan of just ripping that bandaid off and being done with it.” Gini Dietrich: “I’ve never seen a PIP work. It’s essentially a 30 day notice.” Chip Griffin: “Usually by the time that you’re even thinking about firing someone, you probably passed the point where you should have done it already.” Gini Dietrich: “Every single agency owner should have a bench of contractors that they have relationships with, that they’ve worked with before, that they can bring on and off the bench when necessary.” Related Building your agency's bench ALP 22: How to fire agency employees Why Performance Improvement Plans don't work View Transcript The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy. Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And Gini… Gini Dietrich: I’m so excited Chip Griffin: you’re fired. Gini Dietrich: I knew you were going to fire me. Chip Griffin: Maybe not, because if I fire you, then I have to just talk all by myself, so that might be too much work for me. So maybe I’ll put you on a PIP instead and we’ll just think about it and then we’ll come back and figure out if it makes sense. No, I don’t know about that either. I just don’t know what to do. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Hmm. Well. I guess you could find a replacement. Do you have a replacement? Chip Griffin: I don’t, Gini Dietrich: well start there. Chip Griffin: I don’t know that anybody else would, would wanna put up with having to do this with me every week, so that could be a problem. Gini Dietrich: Truth be told, it is kind of fun, so people would be missing out, but I don’t wanna be fired. Chip Griffin: Okay. Well. I’m fine. I won’t fire you. You’re unfired. Gini Dietrich:  Okay, great. Woohoo. Chip Griffin: So we are gonna talk about firing, but I, it’s not about firing either one of us, it’s about firing employees. And I guess I’ll let you set this one up, but it, it’s a, a question that showed up in an online forum about an underperforming employee. I think that’s fair to say. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Chip Griffin: And an owner trying to figure out what to do about it. Gini Dietrich: I mean, yeah. The, the gist of it is that there’s an over an underperforming employee, with a terrible attitude who refuses to do work. She gives it back to her manager regularly. She doesn’t share information. She hoards stuff. But my friend was like this is a problem. She needs to be fired, but we don’t have an immediate replacement and it will put her work on others. And I was like, okay. She’s already, other people are already doing her work, especially if she’s giving it back to her manager. Other people are already doing her work. And the, the way I look about the, at these kinds of things is the team is already frustrated by the time it gets to you. The team is super frustrated with this human being. They don’t wanna do their work anymore. They’re tired of, of standing out for them. They’re tired of helping out. And so they’re looking to you to be the leader. They’re looking to you to make the tough decision. And when you waffle like this, they lose respect and trust in you because you’re not able to make that decision. So trust me when I say that, they would much rather you fire them and take the extra work than to keep going in this manner. Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I, I mean, I’m, as we say at the end of every episode, it depends, you know, I, I think there are things you need to, to think about here. And there have certainly been occasions where I’ve held on to employees until I had a replacement because I, I needed the bandwidth, right? Sure. But there’s a difference in what you’re describing here or what your friend describes where I, I think of this as a diseased employee, if you will. Yes. Right. Because they, they have a bad attitude, which in almost all cases affects the rest of the team. Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: And so it’s not that they’re just not as productive as they could be, but still get along well and, you know, kind of try their best. We’ve all had team members, I’m sure over the years that fall into that category where you’d like to replace them, but they’re not, they’re not doing harm. They’re just not, they’re not living up to the potential that you would like to see. Those are cases where I think it can make sense to, to make sure you have a replacement lined up before you take action. Sure. But in a case like this where you have someone who is actively contributing in a negative way to the business. I’m, I am much more a fan of just rip that bandaid off and be done with it. Because to your point, your team is already looking at you and saying, why aren’t you doing something about this? Gini Dietrich: That’s right. Yep. They are. And I think if you, you can’t do this from an HR perspective, but if you polled your team and said, what do you think? They’d all be like we don’t know why she’s still here. Like, come on. Chip Griffin: Yeah. Please do not treat this like Survivor. Do not take a vote of the team. Right. As to whether someone stays or goes. That’s that is Gini Dietrich: it’s a bad idea. Chip Griffin: It is derelict of duty. It may well be illegal or at least problematic. Just, no, don’t do that. Gini Dietrich: But if you did, they would all vote her off the island. Chip Griffin: Yes. More often than not, when you terminate an employee, the other team members that you have will be like, oh, finally. Gini Dietrich: Finally. Yeah. I also think you’re right that when you have somebody who’s negatively affecting the organization, they, you know, it’s the bad apple, but spoils the whole lot, right? So then they start to influence how other people feel. Correct. And maybe someone was feeling a little burned out, or maybe somebody was annoyed about something. Well, now they’re listening to this person go on and on and on all day long. And they start, that little annoyance becomes something bigger and all of a sudden you have a bigger cultural issue on your hands than just one terrible employee that you should just rip the bandaid off and get rid of. Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, it doesn’t make it any more pleasant that, you know, to go through it, but it’s, it’s important and it will help your business overall. One of the other questions that I believe was asked in this particular scenario was, should there be a PIP? Please don’t do PIPs. Unless, unless your HR advisor tells you you need to do a PIP in order to lay the proper groundwork for whatever the particular scenario is, please don’t do them. Don’t, or let, let me put it this way, don’t do a PIP anticipating that it’s going to have any impact. Gini Dietrich: Yes,  it’s essentially, a 30 day notice. Chip Griffin: Because I can think of maybe one scenario over the course of my career work, a PIP actually worked to turn an employee around. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Yeah. It’s essentially a 30 day notice. It’s like we’re giving you 30 days. You’re not going to be employed here anymore, is essentially what it’s, I agree with you. I’ve never seen it work. Chip Griffin: Yeah. And so if, if you’re doing it for HR protection, fine, go for it. You should absolutely. Anytime you’re looking at terminating an employee, you should always talk with an HR advisor, employment attorney, whoever it is that you work with, just to make sure that there’s not something that you’re overlooking, that there’s some possible claim there that you need to address carefully and make sure that you dot your T or dot your I’s cross your T’s, Gini Dietrich: dot your T’s. Cross your i’s Chip Griffin: dot your T’s too. I mean, you know, whatever it takes. So you absolutely wanna make sure that you’re, you’re doing those things correctly and appropriately for the rules and regulations that apply in that particular scenario. But if you are doing it because you think it’s gonna work, a PIP will not work. Gini Dietrich: Yep. 100%. I’ve literally never seen it work. You’re exactly right. So I, and I agree. You know, we have an HR leader on our team, and she, she has us do PIPs, but it, it is too just, she’s super, super risk averse and super conservative. So it’s, you know, very much to protect the business. And I’ll say that she has gotten me in a good practice of documenting everything, which as a business owner I was not very good at before. But she has definitely gotten me. So even if you don’t have, even if you’re not gonna do a PIP, I think it’s really important to document, document, you know, conversations that you’ve had where you’ve provided critical feedback or, you know, things like that. Just document, because those are the kinds of things that’ll save you in the long run, especially from a risk perspective. Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, and look, I mean, ultimately you do want to give people a fair chance and, you know, I, on occasion I have run across owners who are a little bit too quick to pull the trigger on getting rid of an employee. Very rare. Gini Dietrich: I was gonna say really? Chip Griffin: Very, very rare. But, but by too quick I typically mean someone who is in their first few weeks still. Gini Dietrich: Oh yeah. Chip Griffin: Right. That, that is when, take a pause. I mean, to me, if, if you’re, if you’re going to part ways with someone that you’ve just brought on, there has to be a really good reason. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Chip Griffin: Like, it, it can’t be just that they haven’t quite met your expectations. I mean, it has to be that there is something dramatic in their, usually in their behavior. I’ve, I’ve certainly had some where in their first 60 or 90 days, I’ve, I’ve parted company, but it was, I think in every situation it was because of their behavior and attitude, not because of performance. Right? Because performance, honestly, unless someone has completely misrepresented themselves and you’ve done a very, very poor job of vetting them in advance, most of the time, you shouldn’t be seeing that dramatic a difference in those first couple of months that you are truly surprised by it. And there still should be room to improve with them. So. But behaviorally, yes. Fine. Then that’s a, that’s a good termination cause for the early stages of employment. But otherwise, most of the time I see owners wait too long to terminate. Gini Dietrich: Always, always. Chip Griffin: And, and usually by the time that you’re even thinking about it, you probably passed the point where you should have done it already. Gini Dietrich: Yes. I have been guilty of that myself. I have to tell this story because it goes, it fits along with the firing somebody within the first 60 to 90 days, I have a really, really, really close friend who hired somebody, you know, they’re, they’re remote, um, hired them without, you know, meeting in person. They did Zoom calls, but the person would never turn on their camera, and the person starts and goes through onboarding and everything. And the first like three weeks, they’re like this person doesn’t seem to be able to do this job that we’ve hired them to do, and they keep digging and digging. What they learned is that the person that they interviewed was this person’s friend who had the experience, and this guy wanted the job. So he had his friend interview for the job. They offered the job thinking that they were, oh yeah. So this person started, and I mean, I think that’s called catfishing. But that’s what happened to them. So Chip Griffin: That’s called fraud, is what it’s called. Gini Dietrich: It’s called fraud. Uh, yeah. So they like it. They did fire that person in the first three weeks. But to your point, there are situations like that that you would do it. But you’re right. Like most of the time people are in their honeymoon stage for the first six months at least. Chip Griffin: I mean, they’re in their honeymoon stage and/or, you know, if I’ve got issues with performance in the early stage, I need to ask myself, am I, am I giving them the support they need, the training they need, the guidance they need, Gini Dietrich: right? Yes. Chip Griffin: Because, to miss that badly in a hiring process is somewhat unlikely. It’s not impossible, but you know, more often than not, it takes a while before you really get to that point and you’re like, no, this really is not a good fit, but you, you shouldn’t wait too long. And you shouldn’t drag it out. If you can find a replacement beforehand, whether that’s a contractor who can help fill the gap or something like that, I absolutely encourage that because you don’t want the rest of the team to feel burdened by the termination. But if they’re a bad apple, like the one that we described in this scenario where they are, you know, actively harming things and not simply not living up to their potential, you’re better off, even if everybody else has to pick up extra workload for the short term to part company and move on. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Yes. Because I think everybody, like people are, are understanding for the most part. Right. And if they’re already feeling this, then relieving them of that stress is more important than them taking on some extra work. And they’re probably already taking the work on, so it’s not gonna be that much different for them, except that they don’t have this extra stress of this negative person around all the time. Chip Griffin: Yeah. And in some ways, I mean these, these are, these are easier situations to deal with with the team because if someone does have this kind of a pervasive bad attitude, it will not come at all as a surprise to their coworkers when they’re terminated. Yeah. There are times where if it’s simply for underperformance, if someone isn’t closely enough working with that individual to notice the underperformance, that they might be surprised by it, and that can be more alarming to the team. So, you know, those are scenarios where you have to be more direct with your messaging. In this case, it sounds like everybody would completely understand exactly why this individual was let go. Yeah. And so it solves some of that issue. Yes, yes. Now, the important thing, anytime you terminate somebody, particularly if there’s going to be a workload issue, you have to immediately be able to show your team proactive steps that you’re working to address it. Because they, they may be willing to step up in the short term to help fill the void. Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: But they’re not gonna do that forever. And if it looks like you are dragging your feet and just trying to, you know, maybe pad your profit margins by waiting, or even if that’s not your intent, if that’s the appearance that can be problematic. Yep. So usually what I want to do, if I don’t have any kind of a replacement lined up, or a contractor who can help, I want to be clear, here are the steps we’re taking. Here’s how we’re gonna try to fill this as soon as reasonably possible. Being clear that I’m not just gonna hire someone for the sake of hiring somebody, but I’m actively moving forward because I don’t want you to be shouldering more of the burden for longer than you have to. Gini Dietrich: And, and you brought up a good point, which I think is having contractors pinch hit. Because every single agency owner should have a bench of contractors that they can, that they have relationships with, that they’ve worked with before, that they can bring in and off, on and off the bench when necessary. And this is a good reason to bring a contractor off the bench to be able to help you in, in the interim. If it’s 90 days, if it’s six months, however long it takes, because that will show your team exactly to your point that you’ve done something to help mitigate the workload and their risk, while also giving you all time to interview and hire the right person. Chip Griffin: And you also need to be looking at the workload that you’re providing to your team. Are there things you can do to relieve the burden of what you’re asking them to do for a period of time? Maybe that means that there are internal projects that you’ve been working on that you want to hit pause on for a few weeks. Gini Dietrich: Sure. Chip Griffin: So that, so that you’re not contributing to that overwhelm that they potentially feel. So, you know, be mindful of those things and, and think about how can you make it as good as possible for them given the difficult circumstances they may be facing if they’re having to pick up this extra work in the short term. Gini Dietrich: And like I said, always, always, always think about it from the perspective of, am I doing myself, as the leader a, a big injustice because I’m not making this decision? And I think that makes it a little bit easier. Chip Griffin: Yep. I mean, bottom line is if, if you have decided that it’s time to, to move on from a particular employee, figure out how to do it as quickly as possible, there is no good reason to drag it out. Gini Dietrich: 100%. Yes. And every time you do it, you, you take, it’s just like this big weight and you’re like, oh, why didn’t I do this sooner? Yep. Every time. Every time. Chip Griffin: Yep. So with that, I guess we’ll ask why didn’t we end this episode even sooner? Gini Dietrich: Oh boy. Chip Griffin: No. Oh well, so that will draw to an end this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And it depends.

In this episode, Chip and Gini tackle the difficult subject of firing an underperforming and problematic employee.

TSN Hockey Analyst Mike Johnson joined OverDrive to discuss the headlines around the Maple Leafs' losing streak and the main problems with the team, Auston Matthews' concerning start and his skill set, Craig Berube's coaching views, the goaltending issues and more.

Your EXCLUSIVE NORD VPN discounted offer is here → ⁠ https://nordvpn.com/toon There's no risk with NORD's 30-day money back GUARANTEE! One subscription can be used across 10 devices! Stay secure while online. --- Andrew and Sam focus in on Newcastle United wingers - and why so far this season, they've failed to find any form. Eddie Howe, on paper, has four fantastic widemen but as of yet, no a single one of them has found a consistent run of form. We look at the knock on impact of that and what can be done. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dive into the midseason dynasty fantasy football panic meter on the Dynasty Nerds Podcast, where hosts Garret Price and Andrew Mott break down underperforming stars like Nico Collins amid Texans offensive line struggles, Brian Thomas Jr facing trade rumors and Trevor Lawrence issues, David Njoku as a Browns trade candidate with Harold Fannin emerging, JJ McCarthy returning from ankle injury in Vikings easy schedule, Cam Ward's raw rookie woes in Titans bad weapons setup, and Marvin Harrison Jr's inconsistent play calling under Kyler Murray. They assign ratings from 1 (no worry, stop overreacting) to 10 (dump ASAP) while debating buy low, sell high, hold tight, and playoff push moves. Fantasy Roster Rescue: Get your Roster Rescued! FastDraft: Download and deposit $10 using code NERDS on the FastDraft app and join your first draft to be eligible for a free one-year full bundle membership at Dynasty Nerds (new members only). FastDraft will match your deposit up to $50. Draft best ball teams in under 5 minutes! Keywords: fantasy football, dynasty league, redraft league, Tyrone Tracy, Tyjae Spears, RJ Harvey, Cam Skattebo, Alvin Kamara, Caleb Williams, waiver wire, trade targets, PPR league, running back rankings, NFL injuries, Jaxson Dart, Tony Pollard, JK Dobbins, Javonte Williams, dynasty stashes, fantasy football podcast, Week 8 risers, Week 8 fallers, Giants RB1, Titans running back, Broncos backfield, trade value, fantasy football strategy, rookie running backs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join the Dynasty Nerds Dynasty Fantasy Football Podcast crew as we break down essential dynasty strategy, rookie rankings, and everything fantasy football. Hosts Garret, Matt, and Jagger geek out on whether to buy the dip, hold tight, or sell off NFL rookies like Kaleb Johnson the Pittsburgh Steelers running back, Jalen Royals with the Kansas City Chiefs, Tre' Harris suiting up for the Los Angeles Chargers, and Kyle Williams catching passes for the New England Patriots. We grind the tape on these prospects' early season trends, offensive fits under coaches like Pete Carroll and Arthur Smith, and debate if they're legit buys for rebuilding teams or quick flips to recoup draft capital in dynasty trades. Then we shift to hot wide receiver rankings talk, from Puka Nacua exploding toward dynasty WR1 status with the Los Angeles Rams, Emeka Egbuka's rookie breakout dominating for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Stefon Diggs' legit resurgence alongside Drake Maye on the New England Patriots, Brian Thomas Jr. clawing back to elite wide receiver form with the Jacksonville Jaguars, and Jaylen Waddle reclaiming WR1 production without Tyreek Hill for the Miami Dolphins. Loaded with contender advice, mid-season dynasty fantasy football strategy insights, and tips to crush your fantasy football league. Fantasy Roster Rescue: Get your Roster Rescued! FastDraft: Download and deposit $10 using code NERDS on the FastDraft app and join your first draft to be eligible for a free one-year full bundle membership at Dynasty Nerds (new members only). FastDraft will match your deposit up to $50. Draft best ball teams in under 5 minutes! Keywords: dynasty fantasy football, fantasy football podcast, dynasty strategy, rookie rankings, NFL rookies, dynasty trades, wide receiver rankings, dynasty WR1, NFL prospects, Jack Bech, Kaleb Johnson, Jalen Royals, Tre Harris, Kyle Williams, Puka Nacua, Emeka Egbuka, Stefon Diggs, Brian Thomas Jr., Jaylen Waddle, Seattle Seahawks, Pittsburgh Steelers, Kansas City Chiefs, Los Angeles Chargers, New England Patriots, Los Angeles Rams, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Miami Dolphins 00:00:00 Start 00:02:06 What to do With Jack Bech 00:08:27 What to do With Kaleb Johnson 00:16:46 What to do With Jalen Royals 00:21:53 What to do With Tre' Harris 00:27:10 What to do With Kyle Williams 00:32:33 FastDraft 00:34:07 Let's Talk About WRs 00:34:36 Is Puka Nacua THE WR1 in Dynasty? 00:41:16 Emeka Egbuka is Having a HISTORIC Season 00:52:29 Roster Rescue 00:53:01 Is the Stefon Diggs Breakout Real? 00:56:56 Brian Thomas Jr. Bounceback? 01:00:05 The Jaylen Waddle Emergence Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Hollinger and Nate Duncan break down which teams they disagree with the consensus (and each other) on the most this upcoming season.  Dunc'd On Prime is the only place to get every episode with Nate & Danny, plus every pod with John Hollinger & Nate as well! DuncdOn.SupportingCast.FM Subscribe on YouTube to see our hilarious faces and, more importantly, see the key moments from the pod each week.Or, sign up for our FREE mailing list to get Dan Feldman's Daily Duncs with all the major topics around the league twice a week. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.