Podcasts about Versus

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found.Special GuestMandalKanisha BussThis Week We DiscussLate Nite Munchies; Jack In The Box vs Waffle HouseCold Shower vs Used Bath Water6 Months In Jail Consecutively vs One Day A Month for 2 Years

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found.Special GuestBrent TaylorKeon PoleeThis Week We DiscussDate Someone W/ Bad Manners vs Bad BreathFlying Broomstick vs Magic CarpetHand Out Divorce Lawyer cards At A Wedding vs Life Insurance Cards At A FuneralS/o To Our SponsorsCash AppUse Code SECURE10 At Sign Up To Receive $10nWhen You Send $5 To A Friend!SQUARESquare.com/GO/SQUADDGet up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com/go/squadd! #squarepod

The countdown to 600 is on, and Sean and Todd go back to basics — just the two of them, the old formula, and a deep dive that turns into one of the most thoughtful conversations the show has had in a while.It starts with real life — sod cutters, Red River gumbo, sewer maintenance gone slightly wrong, and severe weather that hit Manitoba hard. Then Sean reveals something genuinely impressive: he pulled the entire back catalogue of the show into a spreadsheet, tagged every episode by segment type, and even built a working spin wheel inside Excel for the Wheel of Topics segment.From there the episode turns into a proper Eddie Van Halen tribute deep dive — comparing how various artists have honored Eddie since his passing, debating whether emulating a legend's style is more respectful than finding your own voice, and landing on a clear ranking by the end.This episode covers:Home improvement chaos — sod cutters, Red River gumbo, and building a shed in tight quartersSewer maintenance gone slightly sideways and an inventive defense system involving Saran Wrap and kitty litterSevere Manitoba weather — tornado warnings, hail, and flooding memories from years pastThe big data project — Sean catalogued nearly a decade of episodes into a spreadsheet, tagged every segment type, and built a custom spin wheel for the Wheel of Topics in ExcelA full tribute song breakdown comparing how different artists have honored Eddie Van Halen since his passing, including tracks inspired by his playing style and a tribute by his former Van Halen bandmate David Lee RothA real debate about authenticity in music — whether trying to emulate a legend's exact style serves them better than simply being inspired by them and creating something originalA side-by-side comparison of two very different tribute approaches, one channeling the spirit of the music and one trying to replicate technique directlyReflections on the Rush farewell concert footage, Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee, drummer Anika Nilles stepping into Neil Peart's role, and the emotional weight of watching a band's legacy carry forwardA recommendation of a deeply researched music biography that reframes how the band's early influences shaped their soundA preview of new original music coming for episode 600, including a tribute piece dedicated to longtime patron and podcaster Kevin BrownPass or Go and Versus segments return — Incorrect Headlines saved for the 600th episodePatron shoutouts and the full breakdown of all four Patreon tiers, including the new $75 tier from The Trailer Behind the Metal ShoppeFind us everywhere: @seangeekpodcastWebsite: seanmcginty.caSupport the show: patreon.com/seangeekpodcast

As AI investment keeps growing, our strategists Carolyn Campbell and Vishwas Patkar discuss the many ways tech infrastructure gets financed and the opportunities for investors.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Carolyn Campbell: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Carolyn Campbell, Morgan Stanley's Asset-Backed Securities Strategist. Vishwas Patkar: And I'm Vishwas Patkar, Morgan Stanley's Head of U.S. Corporate Credit Strategy. Carolyn Campbell: Today, how fixed income markets are helping fund the AI build-out. It's Thursday, June 18th, at 10am in New York. Let's get right into it, Vishwas. We've both come on this podcast before to talk about how credit markets are financing the AI build-out. And over the last ten months, I think it's fair to say that things are faster, broader, deeper than we perhaps expected initially. This investment now spans investment-grade corporate bonds, high yield loans, and a range of securitized products. From your seat in corporate credit, why does AI infrastructure matter so much, to investors right now? Vishwas Patkar: This is a big talking point in our client discussions. it's also telling that less than a year ago, we wrote about this topic for the first time, identifying a $1.5 trillion financing gap that credit markets could help bridge. At that time, data center debt was not something that investors were really focused on. Yet less than 12 months forward, this, I think, is the number one theme dominating both your and my market. And why it's important, I would say, is across, three key vectors. First, just the scale. So, if you look at overall AI-related debt issuance so far this year, we're close to $250 billion. For the balance of the year, we expect that number to double, so about $500 billion of total AI debt financing for 2026. Increasingly the second vector, I think, is around the complexity of deals. So initially, while AI financing was dominated by vanilla investment-grade corporate bond deals, we are now seeing that broaden out into project finance style deals in the high-yield market. We have seen an uptick in chip financing across the different credit silos. And that's important for investors, as identifying value across these different options does require deep credit expertise. And third, as this investment cycle rolls along, it's also important to be cognizant of risks that are building. Not just from a very broad top-down sense around the demand for compute. But also, what are some of the nuances in these different structures – whether it is in data center construction or is in chip financing that investors will need to monitor. So, it's across these three themes that we think data center debt financing is gaining importance. Carolyn Campbell: Now, the underlying demand for AI infrastructure is very strong. That doesn't necessarily mean that every bond tied to this theme is automatically going to be attractive. And as you mentioned, [$]500 billion of supply for the year; a large amount of complexity between those structures.How should credit investors think about the various risks within these different structures? Vishwas Patkar: So, in investment grade, the story is a bit simpler. So, we have had unsecured hyperscaler bond issuance. We have had issuance from semiconductor names. And then we've had some, what we call, private style data center deals. But the vast majority still comes from hyperscaler investment grade rated bonds. For this market, our focus is less on fundamentals because fundamentals are very strong. And then hyperscaler are some of the more most creditworthy companies that we've seen in the history of the market. Our emphasis more is on just the quantum of supply. So, year to date, we have had north of [$]100 billion of hyperscaler debt in the dollar market. We've had north of [$]50 billion being issued in other currencies. If you look at the overall investment grade market, supply is up almost 25 percent versus last year. That's consistent with our call for a year of record issuance this year. And increasingly, if you look forward and then map these issuance numbers to our CapEx estimates, where we could very much be on track for another record to be hit next year. So, the issue of the investment grade market is not around the fundamentals of the companies or these deals. It's more about the quantum of supply, which we think eventually will test the demand capacity of this market. And our base case for the investment grade space is similar to 1997-1998, where credit was starting to finance the business cycle, spreads widened modestly, and IG could underperform other risk assets. But over a longer time horizon, spreads still look historically very low. Carolyn Campbell: Now, what about further down the credit spectrum into the non-investment grade portion? What about that part of the issuance spectrum for AI? Vishwas Patkar: Yeah. So, what we're seeing in the sub-investment grade space, especially in high yield, is very different. There, the growth in data center financing has happened around project finance deals for data center construction. In many cases, these have come from crypto miner companies that effectively provide what we call speed to power solutions. We've also had some unsecured issuance from neo clouds, although that's relatively small. But this sector has expanded from effectively zero billion around the fall of last year to about [$]40 billion this year. We expect to see another [$]20 billion of issuance by the end of 2026. And the way they fit into this whole ecosystem is – these project finance deals we think are interesting diversifiers for regular credit investors. They do come with construction risks, especially initially for the first two to three years till the data center is up and running. But on the flip side, you do get a lot of structural enhancements and creditor protections, which is something you don't see in the vast majority of the high yield market. So, I think a key shift in the framework that investors have to do for these deals is focus on asset-level risk, which is again, I think a big divergence from how the vast majority of the credit market trades, which is largely unsecured corporate-level risk that investors have been used to. Carolyn Campbell: All right. You just brought up construction risks. Do you think that's the biggest risk facing the high-yield investors today? Vishwas Patkar: Yes. I think for the high-yield deals in particular, construction risk is the dominant vector that investors are focused on. Because it's important to remember a lot of the debt issuers are first-time borrowers. And they have a limited track record of construction in the past. So, you could see potential delays and things like cost overruns that can affect sentiment on the sector. Or at least on specific bond deals. And this will be especially important to monitor going into the second half of the year, as we have some of the first delivery dates coming up for the deals in the sector that were announced last year. That being said, you know, even though some of the tenants have termination rights, if delays go beyond 180 days, our view is that given the structural power constraints, these termination rights are unlikely to be exercised. So, while construction milestones can affect sentiment and short-term valuations, we would look at any blips as buying opportunities in the space. Alright. So Carolyn, let me throw this back to you. So, construction risk clearly very important for the corporate credit market, especially for high yield investors. Is that something ABS investors or commercial mortgage-backed investors care about? And in what other ways are these asset classes different from corporate credit? Carolyn Campbell: Okay. So first and foremost, the biggest difference is that in securitized products, the assets are stabilized, they're cash flowing, they're online. We don't have that first vector of construction risk in our space. The second biggest difference is while in high yield and IG we've mostly seen – or we've entirely seen single campus, single tenant data centers; in securitization issuance, it's mostly multi-tenant, multi-asset, multi-regional, deals that have come to market. And so, it's a very different risk profile. And as a consequence, investors are focused not just on who is behind this one single lease and what are the termination rates, but what does the landscape look like in general for compute? How does that affect vacancy and churn rates? And then lastly, the issuers themselves are different. You talked about the crypto companies. You get a little bit more of the data center, data center construction. Whereas in securitized products, these are companies that have been around for 5, 10, 20 years. They're accustomed to managing a fleet of assets, dozens if not hundreds of tenants. They've got a little bit more of a track record for the most part, than the types of issuers we're seeing in the credit market. Vishwas Patkar: Your market post-construction, more leverage to the thematic of demand for compute – and how the AI investment cycle is playing out. Versus the corporate credit market, which is largely exposed to construction risks as the data centers get built out. So that's a very important difference.That being said, one theme that ties both our markets are just healthy fundamentals, but at the same time heavy supply. So, I talked about how we see that affecting our view on investment grade. How is that same tension showing up in securitized products? Carolyn Campbell: So exactly as you said, the fundamental story is very strong. We don't see deterioration in performance of the assets either that has happened yet or that we expect to come in the near term. So, it really is a technically driven story. Supply in this space, we're forecasting at around [$]30 billion for year, so smaller in magnitude, but relatively large for the market. That has very elevated supply expectations, and so as a consequence, we've seen spreads back up across the space. We do think that some of the cross-asset comparisons will help keep spreads contained from here. And so, we do see value in securitized credit across the stack for the rest of the year. Vishwas Patkar: All right. So, you brought up the cross-asset comparison. And so, we've discussed the fundamental differences in our market, how much issuance we expect. But, you know, just to end on a commercial note – if we are advising investors on where is the best relative value and what's the framework for comparing opportunities, how do you think about that? Where do we see value across the ecosystem? Carolyn Campbell: I mean, I think this is probably the biggest question that investors that are looking at this space are facing today. And there's... If we're thinking just about the data center backed assets, I think there are two main things. One is the asset itself, where we're focused on things like the geography, the tenant, the interconnectivity, the flexibility of this asset for multiple uses. And then the second is on the structure of the deal itself. How much leverage is being raised against the asset? How cash flowing is it? And then of course, the duration as well. But it's a great question. And because of the complexity of this space, it can be really hard to compare one to the other. Vishwas Patkar: Yeah. And, at the risk of providing a non-answer, I very much think investors are in the process of coming up with a framework because these deals have come very quickly. This is a new sector for most credit investors to analyze. But I think what we can say with a high degree of certainty is this is blurring the lines between corporate credit and securitized credit. So, you know, this opens up more avenues for us to collaborate on this topic going forward. Carolyn Campbell: All right. That's a great place for us to leave it today with that nice cross-collaboration. Vishwas, thank you so much for taking the time to talk. Vishwas Patkar: Great speaking with you, Caroline. Carolyn Campbell: Thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review wherever you listen and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

In part two of the Stuck Series, Lesley Logan unpacks why feeling stuck rarely has anything to do with a lack of motivation and what's really keeping you frozen. She breaks down how mismatched systems, unrealistic expectations, and unspoken fear quietly drain your energy, and offers a practical framework for moving forward. Find out how messy action, not motivation, is what finally gets you unstuck. If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at beit@lesleylogan.co mailto:beit@lesleylogan.co. And as always, if you're enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/#follow-subscribe-free.In this episode you will learn about:The role outsourcing and systems play in getting unstuck.How motivation is fickle and why you can't rely on it.Why mismatched expectations vs. reality requires a rebuildNaming the fear underneath the freeze, plus building a backup plan.Tactile tools: two-minute rule, friction reducers, and messy action.Episode References/Links:The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin - https://a.co/d/0fgVJtiKTiny Habits by BJ Fogg - https://tinyhabits.comEp. 613 Habit Series 1 - https://beitpod.com/ep613Ep. 614 Habit Series 2 - https://beitpod.com/ep614Ep. 616 Habit Series 3 - https://beitpod.com/ep616Ep. 617 Habit Series 4 - https://beitpod.com/ep617Ep. 619 Habit Series 5 - https://beitpod.com/ep619Ep. 620 Habit Series 6 - https://beitpod.com/620Ep. 622 Habit Series 7 - https://beitpod.com/ep622Ep. 623 Habit Series 8 - https://beitpod.com/623Ep. 256 with Rory Vaden - https://beitpod.com/ep256Ep. 688 Outgrowing Series 1 - https://beitpod.com/ep688Ep. 689 Outgrowing Series 2 - https://beitpod.com/ep689Ep. 93 with Jillian Flodstrom - https://beitpod.com/ep93Ep. 589 with Brad Bizjack - https://beitpod.com/ep589Cambodia Retreat Waitlist - https://crowsnestretreats.comSubmit your wins or questions - https://beitpod.com/questionsIf you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox. https://lovethepodcast.com/BITYSIDEALS! DEALS! DEALS! DEALS! https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentCheck out all our Preferred Vendors & Special Deals from Clair Sparrow, Sensate, Lyfefuel BeeKeeper's Naturals, Sauna Space, HigherDose, AG1 and ToeSox https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentBe in the know with all the workshops at OPC https://workshops.onlinepilatesclasses.com/lp-workshop-waitlistBe It Till You See It Podcast Survey https://pod.lesleylogan.co/be-it-podcasts-surveyBe a part of Lesley's Pilates Mentorship https://lesleylogan.co/elevate/FREE Ditching Busy Webinar https://ditchingbusy.com/Resources:Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gLesley Logan website https://lesleylogan.co/Be It Till You See It Podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjogqXLnfyhS5VlU4rdzlnQProfitable Pilates https://profitablepilates.com/about/Follow Us on Social Media:Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lesley.logan/The Be It Till You See It Podcast YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gFacebook https://www.facebook.com/llogan.pilatesLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-logan/The OPC YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@OnlinePilatesClasses Episode Transcript:Lesley Logan 0:00  Taking the action, taking an action that helps get you unstuck, is the antidote to fear, and it brings clarity. Action brings clarity. That's the hardest thing about all of this, is we're all waiting for motivation, or for us to just like wake up one day unstuck, but truthfully, we have to take a step, take some messy action to actually get unstuck. Lesley Logan 0:21  Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started. Lesley Logan 1:04  Hi, Be It babe, welcome back. We're back on our stuck series, so we're getting unstuck today. So last episode we actually talked about what does feeling stuck actually feel like, and is it actually that we're stuck? And we kind of realized that we're not stuck, right? We might just be overwhelmed or lacking support or tools to get to where we want to go. We might have overwhelmed ourselves, or we might be putting pressure on ourselves, and that might be why we're feeling this way. It might be like being a perfectionist again. Sometimes it sneaks back up on us, right? So, the one thing that I hear people say that they need when they're feeling stuck is motivation, and we have to talk about motivation, because motivation is not the thing. Lesley Logan 1:37  I used to think that I'm just a super motivated person. When I was younger, I was like, "Oh my god, if I said I was gonna do something, I do it," right? And what you realize when you read The Four Tendencies book by Gretchen Rubin, you discover like, "Oh no, that's just a tendency I have." If I say I'm gonna do something, I do it, whereas other people need an accountability partner, or some people need to be able to make decisions. I'm gonna do what I said to do. So, as I got a little bit older and a bit in the stage of my life where I was running my businesses and there were things going on and I was struggling to do them, I thought, "Oh my god, I just need motivation to work on that." And because of the ADHD brain, I was probably just seeking dopamine hits, and that's how I was getting things done. As I worked on myself and got to know myself and stopped overwhelming and overloading myself with things to do, I actually just became a person who was, I don't know, whelmed. It wasn't motivation that I needed, but systems to help me continue to do the things that I said I wanted to do, and also with systems, making sure that I wasn't saying yes to things just because they were cool. Lesley Logan 2:41  So because I know me better, I have better boundaries, and because I understand how motivation works, I don't actually wait for the motivation to do the things. I understand how to set myself up so I can take one step at a time, celebrate what I did do, and then go again the next day. I'm no longer a person who's like, "I have to get my to-do list done every day," because that pressure actually slows me down, and it makes me not feel like I'm me doing the thing, right? I'm not a patient person. So, in case you're like, "Oh, I wish I was you," I'm not a patient person. So, if I can do it, if I can take action on the things that I want to do, if I can help myself move the needle one millimeter forward in a day, you can do it too, right?Lesley Logan 3:27  Because we don't need motivation. And if you didn't hear our episodes in December of 2025 about habits, where I talked about motivation as a very fickle girlfriend, and you can learn more about this in BJ Fogg's book, Tiny Habits, but essentially motivation is needed when something is very difficult to get started. Like when you turn on a car, you have a starter, right? I think that's what it is, and it helps get the car started. You also use more gas to get the car started, right? Planes are the same thing. And so you need motivation to get rolling, but then once you're rolling, you don't use as much gasoline, as much energy, or you don't need those things, right? So, motivation is best to be used when something is a bigger deal, or is going to require more of us than we are used to, but then once we have gotten started, ideally we're not waiting on motivation to just keep the ball rolling. That's where systems come into place, right? Lesley Logan 4:21  Motivation also is not something you can just go up, tap in, hit the motivation button, "I'm ready to go." Motivation is actually a fickle friend. It's kind of like my ADHD focus mode without Adderall. Yes, sometimes it hits, and I'm like, "Oh my god, I just got so much done," but mostly it doesn't ever hit at the time that I want it to hit. It's not going to hit because something's due tomorrow; it hits because of my ADHD, but it won't hit like, "I want to do it now and not under pressure." It doesn't hit then, right? So I can't wait for it. I talked about this in our habit series, motivation, you have to think of as like a really great friend that you go to parties with, but that you don't actually rely on to pick you up at an airport to take you to an important meeting. You would never do that. Lesley Logan 5:03  So, if the tasks that you are asking yourself to do don't match your energy, you are likely doing things that do not bring you joy, and if they did before, they don't now. Oftentimes we're doing things that we think we should be able to do, or we think we have to do, or we don't have the money to delegate it out, but just because you have done that before doesn't mean you have to keep doing it. What I will just say is part of getting out of a rut is looking at the responsibilities you feel you are supposed to be the person to take those on and actually ask yourself, "Is this something that I need to be doing? Does this have to be done right now? Does it have to be done today?" Because it may be time to outsource some of the things that you need to happen in your life, so that you can have the time and energy to do what you said you wanted to do. Lesley Logan 5:56  If you come on my retreats, oftentimes I'm like, "Hey, we can outsource. You can have groceries delivered. You can just save all your time driving to the grocery store, going up and down the aisles. You could just have them delivered. You can have a housekeeper clean your house, right, especially for the deep cleans." But honestly, we have that every week. Why? Because one, I like a clean house, because I want to work in that environment, but I don't like to clean the house. Because I don't like to clean the house, it makes me exhausted when I do it, and then it's done, I have this clean house now. Guess what? I don't want to work in it because I'm exhausted. So the tasks that you have on your plate don't match the energy, and then they're draining you, and that makes you feel stuck. So you can come on a retreat with me in Cambodia to learn how to figure out what you should get off of your list, but if you don't want to wait till that, I just want you to take a look.Lesley Logan 6:43  What are all the things that you think you should be doing? Are there tools now that would make those things easier? Pick the one that you least want to do, you avoid doing, and that lives rent-free in space in your head, right? How can we get rid of it, or get someone else to support us on that? Your systems that you're relying on often aren't matching the brain that you operate with. I have ADHD, and in order to get my work done, I have support from a psychiatrist. So, I do take an Adderall, and when I take it, I actually can focus, and then I can actually use the tools that I have put in place to help me get my work done. I definitely can tell days when I have it versus when I don't. I don't take it on my days off, but I can tell that trying to do the things that I need to get done on a workday without it, I end the workday more exhausted and wondering, "Why do I do what I do? Am I doing the right thing? Am I aligned? Do I even love this job anymore?" because it took so much out of me to get it done than when I have the support that my brain requires, right?Lesley Logan 7:46  But whether or not you have ADHD, the more you can understand how you think, how you operate, and have systems that match that, you know? If you are making to-do lists and never using them, then that's not helping you. You need to figure out a different tool. If you are making the projects that you have to do on your to-do list so big "build a website" of course, you're gonna feel stuck. That's a humongous task that will not get crossed off for four to six weeks at least. So we have to figure out, what are the ways that you operate? How do you meet expectations? I mentioned it before, but Gretchen Rubin's book, The Four Tendencies, is an excellent read. It helps you understand how do you meet the expectations you have, or that others have, and then when you know that, you can put systems in place. Lesley Logan 8:24  For example, Brad is a rebel, and Brad will say, "Oh, I'm going to get up early tomorrow and do yoga." Okay, but if I wake him up and go, "Hey, you wanted to get up early this morning and do yoga," he will say, "No, I don't want to do it," because he wants to have choice. He must have choice, right? Because he's a rebel, that's how you meet the expectations. So, if I say, "Hey, babe, yesterday you had mentioned that you wanted to get up and do some yoga, so did you still want to do that, or did you want to sleep for a little longer?" When I present it to him like that, he always is like, "Oh, no, I'm going to do the yoga," because he does want to do it, but he wants to have choice, right? If you're an obliger, you are someone who needs accountability to get things done, so you need to find ways in your systems to have accountability to get things done, so you get them done. I'm an upholder, so if I said it I'm going to do it, which is also why if I say no to you, it's not because I don't love you, it's because I know I won't be able to get it done. I will never backtrack on an agreement, right? So if your systems don't match how you operate, then you are going to get stuck and overwhelmed. Lesley Logan 8:25  Okay, another way to get out of the rut is matching your expectations with reality, so you're not unmotivated, you're mismatched. Like if you have an expectation like, "Okay, tomorrow I'm gonna get up early. I know I'm not a morning person, but I'm gonna get up early, and I'm gonna go run two miles." But one, you're not a morning person, and you haven't run in a year. You're not doing those things, and that's going to feel like, "Oh my god, I just wasn't motivated." No, you are not that person. You are not someone who wakes up early. You are not someone who runs.Lesley Logan 9:57  So we actually have to make sure that the expectations that we have placed on ourselves actually match the reality of what systems we have in place today, right? So, if you're like, "I want to make 10,000 a month with my business," but you're not even making 1,000 a month, those expectations don't match reality. You actually have to first make 1,100, and 1,200, 2,000, and then 5,000. You can have the goal that "I want to make 10,000 a month," but you can't do it next month if you have never done it before, right? They don't match reality, so you basically have put pressure on yourself and overwhelmed yourself, and put yourself in a stuck position. Versus if you took time to go, "Okay, what are some realistic expectations that I can place on myself that I can do this week, and then I could do tomorrow and I can do today?" working backwards, then you actually don't need motivation; you'll have broken things down in a way that allows you to get them done. Lesley Logan 10:51  So, I will say, like the ADHD, we talked about this a moment ago, but yes, it has that super focus mode, but like the motivation, we can't wait for it. So what I highly recommend to my ADHD people is you really can't lean on motivation. You can't wait for those focus modes. You have to learn your brain, and you have to learn the systems that help you. And there are some great experts out there. You know, Brad piles the mail all in this one place, so every day we pick up the mail, that's a win for an ADHD couple, and we put it in a pile. We don't put it anywhere, we put it in a pile, and then on Mondays he actually goes through it, right? That's the system that works. I mean, you'd be surprised, I know you think you don't operate well with systems, but when you get the systems that work for you, they work for you, and so it really helps you remain unstuck and not leaning on motivation or focus mode to help you like clean everything. Because what we know you're gonna do is organize a cupboard and then not have cleaned anything, and now we have a messier kitchen. I know. Hello, I know me. Lesley Logan 11:49  Fear is another real reason to feel stuck. So, if you're listening to this because the outgoing episode really got your attention, you've outgrown an old version of yourself, but you're feeling stuck right now because of fear, fear of loss, fear of responsibility, fear of failure. Right, that's real. It's real, and it's important that we don't diminish the fear that we have. If that is what the problem is, because anyone telling you there's nothing to be afraid of, it's not helpful, right? It's like someone telling me like, "Calm down." You're like, "Do you want to see me calm down?" So, what I know about fear in the studies that I've done on it, the really important things that you can do is, one, call it out. What are you afraid of? What are you afraid is going to happen? If you don't want to say it out loud, write it down. If you don't know what it is, but you know there's a fear there, then just keep writing until it comes out, right? What is this thing that I'm afraid is going to happen? "I'm afraid no one's, everyone's gonna... no one's gonna like me." No one is gonna like you. And then you're like, "Why am I afraid about that? Why do I think that's gonna happen?" right? Like, take some time to really understand why you have this fear, because if you can actually identify it, then we can create an exit strategy, right? A backup plan. Because the truth is that nothing ever is as bad as or as good as we want or fear. "Oh my god, if I do this thing, I'm gonna die." Well, that's not happening, because you just listened to this. "Oh my god, if this goes so well, I'm gonna have a million dollars." Well, maybe you do, but most of the time we land somewhere on a spectrum, and so take some time to like really truly go, "What am I actually afraid of?" Lesley Logan 13:22  So you can have a backup plan, so then you can move forward, right? Because these practical shifts, they actually help, because an all-or-nothing mindset is what's keeping you stuck, right? Like, this practical... like, "Okay, I'm afraid that if I do this thing, I'm gonna lose everything." You're gonna lose everything, okay? All of it. Like, if this thing goes wrong, you're not gonna have any of this to back up on? Then you start to realize, "Well, no, actually, I'll just lose $1,000. I'll lose $3,000." Okay, that's a legit fear. I don't want to lose $3,000 ever. I don't want to lose $3. So, what things can help me realize if I'm on the wrong path? What are some signs or KPIs that could help me before it goes the wrong way, so I could stop it and turn the ship around? Or if that does happen, then what will I do? Because when you have that, all of a sudden you have clarity. Because get this: action is the antidote to fear. Taking the action, taking an action that helps get you unstuck is the antidote to fear, and it brings clarity. Action brings clarity. That's the hardest thing about all of this: we're all waiting for motivation, or for us to just wake up one day unstuck, but truthfully, we have to take a step, take some messy action to actually get unstuck. Lesley Logan 14:35  So, I did want to give you guys a couple of tactile things, like some "be it" things. So, one is like a two-minute rule. Sometimes a two-minute rule can be, "I can feel this way for two minutes and I'm gonna get started," or "I can do this thing over here in two minutes at a time, or I'll get started." That's helpful. Also, you can break down all the tasks you want to do into two minutes. We had Jillian Flodstrom on as a guest, and I think she said it in the podcast, but she might have done it in a webinar for us. Anyway, you should listen to her episode. She said like, "I break all tasks into something I can do in two minutes, because that makes it really easy. I'm waiting two minutes, I can do one thing. Okay, I can do this next thing," right? Lesley Logan 15:08  Reducing friction, so this is going to be just like taking a moment to see how many things that you have going on that are actually causing friction in your life. Are you trying to get too much stuff done in a day, or in a morning? Are you trying to be a morning person? How can we reduce that friction, so that it's just a little easier to get things done, right? Maybe it's the deadlines that you placed on yourself. How can you do that? Or perhaps it's like, "Okay, I cook for everybody all week long, but I just can't." Okay, how do we ask for help? So, just reduce the friction. And this is crazy, I know some people at the Be It Till You See It podcast are gonna say this, yeah, lower your expectations. Lower expectations of yourself, especially because sometimes we set the bar at 150%. Honey, you can be at 100% and you're still gonna slay more than most people. Most people don't take action. Most people have the same thoughts every single day. So, if you could just actually operate on an actual scale of 100%, not 150%, you would be unstuck tomorrow, yesterday, right? Because you don't need to do the whole thing, you don't need to be able to do all the things that will help get you unstuck.Lesley Logan 16:19  You just need to begin to do one thing, take one step. And I said this already a couple of times, take this messy action, because if motivation isn't the thing that's going to get us moving, because it's not, I mean, it might get us started on something really difficult, but it's not going to be the day-to-day, then what we actually need is messy action. And you hear that in every intro of all of our podcasts: "take messy action." And the reason is because you get some good feedback. So we will have some messy action episodes coming up for you soon in a future series, but until then, I'd love for you to take a moment, maybe revisit the first episode, and really identify like, "Am I actually stuck or am I in overwhelm, or do I have outdated systems, or do I just need a little bit of clarity to get started on this next thing? Or am I afraid?" Once you have identified how you're stuck and what's going on, you can take the first next steps to anything, and that means being it until you see it. Lesley Logan 17:17  All right, my loves, send this to a friend who needs to hear it. Thank you so much for being you. Send in any questions or aha moments at beitpod.com/questions, and until next time, Be It Till You See It. Lesley Logan 17:27  That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. If you want to leave us a message or a question that we might read on another episode, you can text us at +1-310-905-5534 or send a DM on Instagram @BeItPod.Brad Crowell 18:10  It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan, and me, Brad Crowell.Lesley Logan 18:14  It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co.Brad Crowell 18:19  Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music and our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.Lesley Logan 18:26  Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals.Brad Crowell 18:29  Also to Angelina Herico for adding all of our content to our website. And finally to Meridith Root for keeping us all on point and on time.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we're joined by Tim Foot, CEO of Slingshot Group. With nearly three decades of ministry and leadership experience having worked with thousands of churches, Tim brings deep insight into one of the most critical drivers of church health: your team. In this conversation, we explore what separates stagnant teams from those that create real momentum and how leaders can shift from survival to remarkable impact. Why teams stall out. // After working with thousands of churches, Tim consistently sees the same patterns: unclear expectations, misaligned priorities, lack of structure, and unspoken tension. Many teams are overly task-driven but underdeveloped relationally. Others don't fully understand how their strengths and weaknesses fit together. The danger of “hero-driven leadership.” // When a church relies too heavily on one standout leader to carry the mission it results in what Tim calls “hero-driven leadership.” While it can produce short-term results, it ultimately leads to burnout, unrealistic expectations, and fragile systems. Leaders often fall into this trap because it feels productive, and even rewarding, to be the one with all the answers. But over time, it limits team development and creates dependency instead of shared ownership. From hero to team. // The future of healthy ministry is team-based leadership. Instead of building ministries around individuals, churches must build systems and cultures where teams thrive together. This requires leaders humbly admitting they don't have all the answers and a willingness to slow down in order to build alignment. When leaders shift from being the “hero” to developing others, they unlock far greater long-term impact. The seven “key signatures” of remarkable teams. // Tim introduces a framework of seven core areas that every healthy team must develop: conviction, message, culture, roles, systems, friction, and risk. These “key signatures” work together like elements in music, providing structure that leads to a strong, unified outcome. Conviction anchors the mission (“why we exist”), while message communicates that mission clearly. Culture shapes how people experience the team, and roles define how individuals contribute. Systems enable growth, friction drives improvement, and risk fuels breakthrough. Why friction is actually healthy. // One of the most counterintuitive ideas Tim shares is that healthy teams need friction. Many leaders try to eliminate tension, assuming harmony equals health. But in reality, the absence of friction often means important issues are being avoided. Healthy friction leads to better ideas, stronger alignment, and greater innovation. The key is ensuring it doesn't become personal. When friction turns relationally destructive, it's unhealthy. But when it stays focused on ideas and outcomes, it becomes a powerful driver of growth. A practical tool for leaders. // To help teams take action, Tim points leaders to a free “team awareness assessment.” This tool helps churches evaluate how they're doing across the seven key signatures, identifying areas of strength and opportunities for growth. It's designed to spark meaningful conversations that lead to real change. A final challenge for leaders. // Tim leaves leaders with a simple but powerful reminder: if your mission matters, your team matters more. Churches often focus heavily on the people they're trying to reach, but neglect the health of the people they're leading alongside. Sustainable, mission-moving ministry requires both. To learn more about Tim's book Reaching for Remarkable: The 7 Key Signatures Behind Every Remarkable Team and take the free team assessment, visit reachingforremarkable.com or explore additional resources at slingshotgroup.org. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: TouchPoint As your church reaches more people, one of the biggest challenges is making sure no one slips through the cracks along the way.TouchPoint Church Management Software is an all-in-one ecosystem built for churches that want to elevate discipleship by providing clear data, strong engagement tools, and dependable workflows that scale as you grow. TouchPoint is trusted by some of the fastest-growing and largest churches in the country because it helps teams stay aligned, understand who they're reaching, and make confident ministry decisions week after week. If you've been wondering whether your current system can carry your next season of growth, it may be time to explore what TouchPoint can do for you. You can evaluate TouchPoint during a free, no-pressure one-hour demo at TouchPointSoftware.com/demo. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Listen, listen, listen, pull in close because today’s conversation, I don’t even know your church, but I know that a large portion of your budget is being spent on the thing we talk about. In fact, lots of churches, it’s like half of their budget. And it’s an even larger portion of the outcome of your ministry. It’s incredibly important what we’re talking about today. And so you do not want to miss this. Rich Birch — And we’ve got an expert that has worked with not tens of, not hundreds of, but literally thousands of of churches like yours and wants to help you take steps forward. Excited to have Tim Foot with us. He has nearly 30 years of experience, which I’m not sure how that’s possible, such a young man, as a leader, pastor, coach, speaker, musician in both Australia and North America, bringing a diverse background to his role as the CEO and president of Slingshot Group. If you’re not aware of who Slingshot Group is, they take the guesswork out of nonprofit and church staffing. He’s recently written a book that I’m excited for you to learn more about. But Tim, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.Tim Foot — Rich, it is so glad, it’s so great to be on with you today. I’m excited about this conversation.Rich Birch — So good. I'm I’m excited for it too. Why don’t you kind of give us a bit of the Tim Foot background? Tell us a little bit about about you and kind of give us the how do we end up here in this conversation today?Tim Foot — Yeah, it’s interesting. I often say to people, I had no idea that I’d be on the other side of the world to where I started doing what I’m doing. But this is what happens, Rich, when you say, keep saying yes to God.Tim Foot — Born and raised Tasmanian, worked as a musician and in ministry in Sydney for 10 years after moving from Tasmania, then relocated to Boulder County, Colorado in 2002, been here for 25 years now in ministry at a great church called Lifebridge Christian Church. Built ministry there for 10 years and went bivocationally started working with the Slingshot Group when there was a handful of us doing a handful of staffing and coaching work and then things exploded.Tim Foot — And I really, really hit my sweet spot and saw how God had been preparing me for so many years to work with teams, love teams, love the strategy of teams, love working with people, love the fact that placing the right leader on the right team exponentially moves the mission forward and affects culture in all kinds of ways.Rich Birch — So true.Tim Foot — And so I’ve had all kinds of roles in Slingshot over the years, now get to lead our team of amazing consultants around the US serving so many, and beyond, serving so many ministries and teams move mission forward.Rich Birch — Love it. I’m so glad that, yeah, this is going to a good conversation. You know, one of the things I want to take advantage of is the fact you’re really an expert. You know, you’ve worked with, you and Slingshot have worked with thousands of churches and organizations, and you you really get a chance to see churches at an interesting inflection point.Rich Birch — You know, often when we’re hiring a team member, bringing someone in or trying to develop our teams, you know, we’re thinking about the future and we’re, we’re taking a step back. And like you say, I do think it’s a transformative inflection point that you’re involved in. Rich Birch — So you’re sitting across the table from a lot leaders, and maybe even some leaders who their mission is stalling. Like things aren’t maybe going as well as we would hope. Are yeah there any patterns in that you’re seeing, are there things that you see time and time again in churches that might be holding us back?Tim Foot — Yeah, I immediately thought of a common question we’ll ask teams when we’re brought in when it comes to needing a new person on the team or helping coach leaders. We’re often brought in in crisis moments, moments of transition, but they’re also moments of incredible opportunity.Tim Foot — And we’ll often ask the question, hey, do you want a painkiller or do you want a vitamin? And so often the the team is thinking they want the painkiller, they want the pain to go away. They want to solve the problem, they want to fill the seat, or they want to break through whatever it is they’re struggling with. But honestly, deep down, they need to start a regimen of vitamins to help them get to a healthy place to move the mission forward.Tim Foot — We often will see an unawareness that the wrong people are around the table. Or an unawareness that they need other leaders around the table to help them move forward, whether it be vocational paid leaders or volunteers.Tim Foot — We’ll often see misalignment and a lack of focus on the right things. Communication misfires around why the mission actually matters. We’ll often teams see teams that are task-driven at the expense of relationships.Tim Foot — And then an unawareness of strengths and weaknesses and how they complement each other, how they help move you forward or how they hold you back. Other patterns are a lack of structure to support the work. Elephants in the room, taboo topics, fear around failure that leads to lack of innovation. So many different patterns we’ll see and be able to diagnose and say, hey, we need to have conversation around that because I think uncorking that will help you accelerate the mission.Rich Birch — That’s cool. One of the things I love by reputation that I love about Slingshot is I love that you’re asking those bigger questions that it’s not just like, okay, how do we get to let’s just, let’s get the next hire done and move on.Rich Birch — It’s like, you know, you’re, you’re trying to ask those bigger questions and which I, that which I think, you know compliment to you and your organization that you’re trying to. Because we know when we need the painkillers, but really we need to take some good vitamins over an extended period of time to make our things more healthy for sure. Hmm.Tim Foot — You know, Rich, when we jumped into staffing work almost 20 years ago now, we had to educate the church on the need to have outside advice around staffing. But it was a lot of art and not as much science.Tim Foot — And now we’ve developed so much science around the art with with things like our candidate match tool. When you’re looking for a leader, you have to align around what you actually want in that new leader. So many teams will say, hey, we need this, this, this, this, this, this. And in the end, they’re looking for a purple unicorn. And that’s not going to help.Rich Birch — Right.Tim Foot — And we’ll talk about that as we get deeper in the conversation.Rich Birch — Right. Yes.Tim Foot — But Rich, last time I looked, unicorns are still mythical creatures. Rich Birch — True. Tim Foot — And so working working out what you actually need… Rich Birch — Right. Tim Foot — …and getting an awareness around alignment with who’s around the table may actually change your idea of what you’re looking for. Alignment is so important in getting an awareness of what our strengths and weaknesses are. Are we focused on the right thing? And are we actually moving the mission forward right now or is it stalled out?Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s good. One of your consultants, that remember once I was in a conversation about that very issue and and you know we had really lofty goals for what we were trying to hire. And and they they walked us through that conversation where it was like, okay, well, let’s let’s think about how many of these people are actually out there.Rich Birch — So and you list off hat half a dozen things that we were looking for and you cut back and you think, well, how many people actually work in the church? How many people have worked as long as we want to work and have had experience that we did and have done the stuff that we want to do?Rich Birch — And you literally get down to like, Well, there might be three people, you know, like, you know, and so anyways, that’s, that’s, that’s so true.Tim Foot — And actually… Rich Birch — You… Yeah, go ahead.Tim Foot — …that’s what we’ll often say. There are maybe three to five people when you have all of these filters in place, they can actually fill this role.Rich Birch — That’s true.Tim Foot — And that’s why you need to focus on ministry and you need to let us focus on finding those people.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, that’s good. That’s great. And yeah, and if there’s three to five and one of them is Jesus, the other is the Holy Spirit. So it’s like, you know, you’re down to just a very few. You… Tim Foot — And Rich, let’s not talk about why many, many teams wouldn’t hire Jesus these days.Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. That’s a whole other topic. that’s That’s great. Now, you’ve said something once that caught my attention, and it’s in my head has been branded to you. And it’s that most of us were trained on a model, a leadership model that nobody named out loud, that everyone, that we’ve all absorbed.Rich Birch — What is that model? You know, what it look like? And I know when you named this, I started seeing this everywhere I looked. I was like, oh, wow, I can see this in multiple different places in myself and in our organization. What what is this model?Tim Foot — Yeah, I mean, the the model we see is hero-driven leadership. It’s when we rely too much on individuals to actually carry the mission. And I think the cracks have happened.Tim Foot — I mean, we’ve seen it, Rich, you and I are similar ages. I think the cracks are happening generationally. The builders and boomers were wired differently for a different time and culture. And us Gen Xers, we can code switch. I mean, we we see we see that happening all the time. And as we stepped into leadership, the cracks started to appear.Tim Foot — I mean, we see it every week. Another leader burning out, doing stupid things because of too much pressure. Then millennials and Gen Z are now leading in a new way that we need to embrace.Tim Foot — And so I think we’re seeing those cracks around that hero dependence, and we’re starting to see the need more than ever to have a team awareness, a holistic approach, or we’re just going to have leaders continue to burn out.Tim Foot — And we sit we see it around unrealistic hiring expectations, a lack of support for great leaders when they’re hired, a lack of development.Tim Foot — Hero dependence is a terrible staffing and growth strategy and becomes a massive trap when it comes to a number of the key focus areas or patterns we’ve seen that healthy teams focus on and move mission forward.Rich Birch — Yeah. See, this is the thing when you, I heard you say that once and it, it literally, I sat up and I was like, oh man, I’ve seen that in my own, you know, my own hiring. I’ve seen that in the way I’ve talked with, you know, I see the leaders around me. You see these people who they’ve kind of built the entire ministry around themselves and they’ve built, it’s like, it doesn’t work if they don’t, it’s like, they’re such a unique individual. They have to lift it all. Rich Birch — But what makes that model so sticky? Like, why do we keep coming back to that? Why? Even if we know like intellectually in our heads, yeah, that’s not a good idea. It feels like we just keep coming back to this same thing time. In fact, we actually reward it. We’ll be like, wow, isn’t that great? This person’s amazing. And we just kind of keep moving on. Why is that?Tim Foot — It’s the shiny object trap. I mean, that that the the shiny object, aka the the talented leader that we think is going to catapult the ministry. Often we see it in in hiring conversations when a particular organization wants to go after somebody that’s been in at a much bigger organization than them. And often that person, if if they can attract them, will come in with a playbook that isn’t uniquely suited to the organization they’re stepping into. Or there aren’t systems to support that new leader and the growth that’s going to happen. And burnout happens at every level. But but we both know, Rich, busy work makes us feel productive. But is it the right work?Rich Birch — That’s so true.Tim Foot — And and we know that we can be ourselves the shiny object. We we want to it feels good to be the hero. It feels good to be the one that’s solving problems. Rich Birch — Sure.Tim Foot — It feels good to be the one that has all the answers. Rich Birch — Right.Tim Foot — And I think that’s one of the biggest threats in healthy leadership today is feeling like you have to have all the answers. Because I think one of the most powerful statements from healthy leaders and healthy teams is, hey, we don’t know what to do next. Because it actually opens up the room for new thought. It opens up the room for collaboration. And it opens up the room for teamwork. Tim Foot — But it’s easier to move quick. It’s easier to move quick and be surrounded by people who agree and play it safe.Rich Birch — So true.Tim Foot — And then down the road, we realized that we weren’t growing in every sense of that word. And the mission was stalled out. We know we often have to slow down, re-strategize, look at who’s around the table, work out how we work together to move faster in the long term. We have to be vulnerable to make a team work. And sometimes it requires us to actually help others win than focus on heroes. Tim Foot — I mean, you think about a winning sports team. It’s not about just one person out there doing all the work. We’ve got to work together as a team. You know, it’s it’s it’s how do we work together and have had have less dependence on that shiny object, those standout leaders or those heroes?Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I love that. I remember years ago, we had a coach come in and as a lead team, and this basically spent a week with us and then, you know, try to help us get better in our leading of our people. And I remember at the end of the week, the leader who we brought in said you answer way too many questions. And I was like what do you mean by that? They’re like, you need to ask more questions and you answer. You’re you’re putting yourself way too much in the middle of all of this and you’re not letting…And I was like, oh that’s a good insight. You know, we’re not raising up other people we’re trying to uh you know make it all about us rather than about our teams. Well, I’d love to talk about your book.Rich Birch — So the title is Reaching for Remarkable: The Seven key signatures behind every Remarkable Team. Let’s start with the word Remarkable. You literally have it twice in your title and subtitle. Why Remarkable? And how does that relate to hero? Because I was like, isn’t that the same thing? Like, isn’t it couldn’t this be reaching for the heroic? So unpack that.Tim Foot — I love that word remarkable. And it’s always been our mission at Slingshot. We build remarkable teams through staffing and coaching because your mission needs a remarkable team to move it forward. Tim Foot — Jesus left us with the most remarkable mission. And but it wasn’t enough. He needed a team to move it forward. And if Jesus needed a team to move it forward, we need to move it forward as a team.Rich Birch — Right.Tim Foot — And so we’ve all got these unique expressions of that remarkable mission. But if that mission matters, your team matters more. Rich Birch — That’s good.Tim Foot — And so when it comes to Remarkable, it’s about the mission. It all comes back to the mission. And we never fully arrive, Rich. We’re always reaching.Rich Birch — That’s good.Tim Foot — We’ve always got to be focusing on the right things, doing the deep work of of of reimagining, reinventing, and re-moving forward to reach for remarkable momentum when it comes to our mission. But we’ve got to focus on the team and the right the right areas to move that mission forward.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So you actually talk about these, there’s these seven key signatures. Can you take a little bit of time and just unpack those? We won’t be able to get into all of them, but kind of talk us through how does it hang together as kind of a big idea?Tim Foot — Well, give you a little bit of context behind why they’re key signatures. You mentioned it in the intro, in a former life, I was a working musician and I would do solo gigs. It was my tentmaking job to do ministry back in Australia. Rich Birch — Right.Tim Foot — I would work three to five nights a week as a musician. And I always had way more fun working with other musicians in a team setting, because ah a band is essentially a team. And my best experiences, Rich, was when I was on stage with other musicians who were often better than me, but I was leading the band. We all lifted each other. And to achieve remarkable results, there was structure to it.Tim Foot — I mean, you know, there’s structure to music. There’s harmony and there’s rhythm and there’s key signatures. There’s tracks to run on that allow us to have a remarkable output. Rich Birch — That’s good.Tim Foot — And so as I move from that world into team strategy world, team specialist world, building teams world, I realized, hey, there are also tracks to run on as a team to reach for health and reach for remarkable, a remarkable output and remarkable momentum. And so that’s where we came up with these seven key focus areas that we call the seven key signatures behind every remarkable team.Tim Foot — And they’re a pathway, they work together. And I’ll run through them quickly. And then we can unpack what you what you want to unpack with the time that we have left, Rich.Tim Foot — But though, and they’re simple. I mean, these are patterns that I’ve observed over the last 16 years staffing teams, but the last 30 years growing in teams, learning from teams, leading teams. I mean, you and I both grew up in in church, Rich, and I learned a lot of of leadership lessons from being a volunteer on teams in in in my late teens and and early 20s, so much.Rich Birch — Yes, 100%.Tim Foot — But these patterns, this pattern or these key signatures start with number one, conviction. Conviction, which is a shared sense of why you exist and what you’re called to do. It’s the why behind the what. It’s the Simon Sinek. People buy why you do, not what you do. So that’s number one is conviction. Tim Foot — Number two is a message, a compelling and consistent way of communicating what matters most because, Rich, everything communicates. What’s the story our leadership is communicating? What we say, what we don’t say, our actions, our systems and processes. What story is it communicating? That’s number two. Tim Foot — Number three is culture, the values and behaviors that shape the soul of our team. How are people experiencing your ministry organization or your team?Tim Foot — Number four is roles, unique contributions for remarkable impact. Roles that clarify how we work together. Tim Foot — Number five is systems, which is scalable design for remarkable growth. Systems scale our mission. Tim Foot — Number six is friction because healthy friction moves the mission forward. How do we embrace healthy friction for growth? Tim Foot — And then the last one, number seven, and these all build on each other, is risk, which is bold moves that drive remarkable outcomes, initiatives that lead to breakthrough, strategic risk, not blind gamble. So those are the seven.Rich Birch — Love it. And you know friends, i I do think I would highly recommend that you pick up copies of this book. To me, when I when I saw this, to me, this feels like the kind of book that we should read together as a leadership team. Like, hey, let’s pull this together. You know maybe you’re looking for a fall thing to do with your leadership team. This would be a great book for you to pick up and go together. Rich Birch — There’s a couple I would love to tease out a little bit. I’d love you to pull out for us. Help us understand. You differentiate between conviction and message, two different things. I think lots of times we might collapse those into one. Why are they two separate? Help us understand the difference between those two.Tim Foot — Absolutely. Conviction, again, is why we do what we do. Without shared conviction, you won’t move the mission forward. There won’t be a reason behind initiatives. They’ll fall flat. Rich Birch — Right.Tim Foot — There won’t be a reason behind the message you’re communicating. That’s why they’re different. So conviction is what keeps us in on the days we want to quit.Tim Foot — I mean, think about the early church in Acts 4. It’s a great, best example of conviction. Peter declaring in Acts 4:20, we cannot help but speak about what we’ve seen and heard. They didn’t just believe. They acted. It drove every decision.Tim Foot — If the disciples were just compliant, when Jesus ascended, they would have scattered. But because they were convicted, they ah nearly all of them gave their very lives for the mission. Conviction is our North Star. It’s It’s like calling. it’s It’s what keeps you the days, keeps you in it, the days you want to quit. And Rich, we know there’s going to be plenty of days you to quit. Tim Foot — Message, however, is is the story we’re communicating. It’s how we hire, fire, onboard, develop. It’s how we communicate our conviction and our overall mission. And in the book, we list a bunch of traps for each of these seven key signatures. And we can chat about some of the most common traps. But a common trap for for message is assumption. Rich Birch — It’s good.Tim Foot — We assume people understand and care like we understand and care. Rich Birch — Right.Tim Foot — And we don’t ask enough questions. I mean, it’s why Jesus’ ministry was full of questions, Rich. Rich Birch — Right. Right.Tim Foot — Because he was he was cementing conviction. I mean, Jesus asked the best questions and rarely gave the answers. He lived the answers and he teased the answers out because that’s what led to conviction. That’s why they build upon each other. Tim Foot — You can’t have a story without conviction. You can’t have a message without conviction. And you can’t have a healthy message unless you are asking the right questions to make sure people are hearing and understanding it. Tim Foot — Did you like like did you understand what I just communicated? What did you just hear that I that I said?Rich Birch — Right.Tim Foot — Why why are why are you so convicted to by our mission?Rich Birch — Yeah.Tim Foot — Why are you committed to it? So many great questions.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good.Tim Foot — The book is full of questions too. I’m a I’m a serial question asker. They used to call me “Quiz” when I was a teenager because I asked so many questions.Rich Birch — Yeah.Tim Foot — And it wasn’t until later that a mentor and co-founder of Slingshot, Stan Endicott—I think you know him, Rich—that he he convinced me that my proclivity for asking so many questions was actually a spiritual gift and not a special need.Rich Birch — Yeah. Tim Foot — Because questions, questions move conversations forward.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yep. Yeah, it’s true. It’s so good. And yeah, as I’ve shifted into full-time coaching, I have found, yeah, like that the the skill of asking a good question, it’s like, you know, I think the best moments I have with the people I’m working with are when we’re, I’m asking questions and they’re discovering, they’re tripping on to their own answers that maybe are a little different even than I would have. But just asking good questions, super important.Rich Birch — Okay. Another one that stood out to me of the, and again, friends, you’re going read all this. Obviously we can’t cover this in just, you know, half an hour conversation. But talk to me about friction, healthy friction. Tim Foot — Yeah. Rich Birch — So I literally have said as an executive pastor, my job was to remove friction from the organization. And so when you say, oh, you lots of us are trying to remove it. I was like, ouch, that’s me.Rich Birch — Because I think that’s, ah you know, I would I want to find places where we’re stuck and say, how do we get those unstuck and push this thing forward? So talk to me about why I’m wrong about friction.Tim Foot — I was there too, Rich. I was absolutely there. But when I get to number six, when we’re speaking on this or teaching on this, I will often say, hey number six is a wait, what? Tim Foot — I thought this was the sign of an unhealthy team. I used to think that. I used to think that the harmonious teams were the healthy ones, that when I walked into a context where there was all harmony with the team, that it was there was healthy, the absence of friction was healthy. But it’s not. It’s a sign of unhealth. Tim Foot — And I’m talking, there’s two kinds of friction, healthy and unhealthy. I’m talking about healthy friction. I mean, you think about a car and how the rubber meets the road, causes friction, moves the car forward. If you don’t have friction in your team, your mission isn’t going on anywhere.Tim Foot — It’s interesting, Zippia workplace survey found out that 76% of employees in the workplace avoid conflict, which is a real problem because healthy friction sharpens and aims teams, while avoiding conflict leads to complacency and stagnation.Tim Foot — Teams where members are passionately embracing friction will not only push through and forward to great results, they’ll attract and retain, which is really important, they’re going attract and retain top leaders. It’s where the mission truly comes alive and evolves to all it can be. Good leaders, rich, know to allow it. They know not to control it, but closely monitor it.Tim Foot — We get to decide if the tension or friction we allow is healthy or unhealthy. We call this the loaded gun of the seven key signatures, because when this gun goes off, it either breaks through a door or a wall that you needed to break through, or somebody gets hurt. And good leaders know how to monitor that and help it break through and not damage other leaders.Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s double click on that. Help me understand. So yeah, I’m going with you. I can see what you’re saying. You know, healthy friction, you know, unhealthy friction, good friction, bad friction. So give me an example. Rich Birch — You walk into it, you’re working with a ah church and there’s some telltale signs of, friction that’s that’s negative, that’s actually pulling the organization back, that’s that could be potentially hurting, or maybe has gone too far, or what’s, I’m not sure the best way to say that. Versus, hey, no, here’s some here’s some good friction that’s actually some good heat here that’s pushing the tires forward. Help us, what does that look like?Tim Foot — When when it becomes personal, Rich, that’s always the way you know it’s trending towards unhealthy. We’ll get to it in a minute, but we’ve got a team assessment on our website now around these seven key signatures, and we talk about unhealthy, inconsistent, functional, remarkable.Tim Foot — Most most teams live in that functional space. If you’re below unhealthy, it’s trending toxic, and that’s when you need ah that’s when you need the 4Sight group and Jenni Catron to come I mean, do some some deep, deep culture work. Rich Birch — Right.Tim Foot — I’m all about our ecosystem. I know you are too, Rich. It’s like when you need the deeper work, then you need the specialist. Rich Birch — Sure, sure.Tim Foot — But right now you’ve got the general practitioner. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.Tim Foot — But but when it gets when it gets personal, you know that that’s unhealthy friction. Rich Birch — That’s good. Right.Tim Foot — And let’s go back to um the the harmony piece. Because that’s one of the traps when it comes to friction. it’s It’s the harmony trap. And it’s like it’s you wanting there to be you know violins and and and and birds singing and for everybody to be loving each other. That’s also a sign that there is unhealthy friction. Rich Birch — Right. Tim Foot — Because there’s things lurking that have been pushed down below the surface that are going to come out sideways that if you had just dealt with it straight away, it actually could have become momentum for your mission. It’s the unspoken influences trap. it’s the It’s the elephants in the room.Rich Birch — Right.Tim Foot — It’s what everybody’s thinking about, but nobody’s talking about. That’s going to that that’s gonna be insidious and it’s going to chip away at the health of your team. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Tim Foot — And it’s gonna become unhealthy friction. And so that’s a great question to ask. And that’s in the book too. What’s every thinking about, nobody’s talking about? Because that’s what we need to engage.Tim Foot — Now, if we think that’s going to lead to unhealthy friction, let’s have the the conversations outside of the meeting. So that when we get to the conversations inside of the meeting, we can engage this as healthy friction that will actually address the topic and will move us forward rather than becoming personal and eroding relationships.Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah, that question, what’s everybody thinking about that nobody’s talking about? That’s powerful. And I can see, yeah, that even even the organizations I’ve led, you can see where there’s seasons where we try to push away that friction. nd that can be just super negative. And it’s like this, we’re all just in la-la land. We’re all just, you know, can see that for sure. Tim Foot —Yeah.Rich Birch — So you wrote this book, you put this resource together. help me understand how you’re hoping it will help our, our churches. You know, I’m picture, I’m a church of a thousand people. Maybe I’m the executive pastor. I’ve got a team of 12 to 15 people on my team. And how how could, how could this be a helpful resource for us?Tim Foot — Well, this I believe this is the most important work we need to be doing, Rich, because if your mission matters, your team matters more. So often we get so focused on the people we’re serving that we forget the people we’re serving with.Tim Foot — And if we’re stalling out mission, mission-wise, then we’re not moving forward. And that’s not and we’re not being obedient to God’s call. And so what I’m hoping is, I mean, personally, our kingdom first principle at Slingshot is to leave teams better than than the way we found them. And the last thing we want to do is place great leaders on unhealthy teams.Tim Foot — So what we’re hoping is that teams are going to focus around these seven alignment areas and start to move mission forward, attract great leaders, retain great leaders. When we place, I mean, I you and I have both had healthy long-term ministries at churches, and it is a massive blessing when you, if God wills it, and you stay somewhere long term. I want other people to experience that. And that happens when the right leaders are placed on the right team.Tim Foot — So what I’m hoping churches do is they take our team awareness assessment on on our website, reachingforremarkable.com, which is attached to slingshotgroup.org. And they get a sense of, okay, where what where might we need attention in these seven key areas? Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good.Tim Foot — Because it heat maps, it gives you percentages, you can take it as a team. And then to start the real important conversations.Tim Foot — I mean, I’ve been in rooms with this work, Rich, where you start to see teams have conversation around alignment and and teams that were that were stale or leaders that were burnt out start to get a glimmer of hope. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s good.Tim Foot — That, oh, if we start to have these conversations around these areas, if we walk this pathway, if we focus in these areas where we’re struggling right now, we’re going to start to see results.Tim Foot — I mean, I even think about the key signature of systems. You know, it’s systems that scale remarkable growth. If we’re not building systems to to accommodate the growth that we keep praying for, God’s not going to bring the increase. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true. Tim Foot — Because God isn’t going to bring growth if it’s going to hurt us. We have to be building the right kind of systems to support our teams and leaders so that the growth can come. It’s a stewardship issue. Rich Birch — Yes, yep.Tim Foot — So what I’m hoping happens in churches all over the place is that they start to focus on these key signatures and see mission momentum results that moves them forward as an organization.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Why don’t you tell us, you’ve mentioned it, but tell us a little bit more about the team awareness assessment. Give us like a bit of a, you know, you’ve kind of given us an overview there. Give us a little bit more why we should take that test and give us that URL again that we can send people to.Tim Foot — It’s reachingforremarkable.com and it’s it’s literally 10 minutes or less. Rich Birch — Right.Tim Foot — And it’s free as a leader. You can jump in and take it or you can sign up and and take it as a team. And it gives you obviously the team percentage on each of these key signatures. but also your own results. And when we’ve worked with real high-performing teams, it’s fascinating to watch these great leaders compare their individual percentage on each of these key signatures with their entire team and just to see alignment start to happen and the right conversations to happen.Tim Foot — Because we want to be able to focus in on where alignment is needed most. It may be real simple, Rich. Most teams live in that functional space. Rich Birch — Sure. Tim Foot — Functional’s fine.Rich Birch — Yeah.Tim Foot — But it’s not going to get remarkable results. Rich Birch — Yeah.Tim Foot — And our mission is too important. We have to focus on team alignment to move it forward.Rich Birch — Yeah. It’s so good. Yeah. I was talking to a a leader recently of a very large church and they were saying, you know, I just feel like, I feel like we got a go Pro. And what he was saying is exactly what you’re saying is like, Hey, we we’re we’re fine. We’re functioning.Tim Foot — Right. Right.Rich Birch — But man, we want to go remarkable. We want to go from just just because we can do this thing week in, week out in their case, have thousands of people show up, tens of thousands of people show up. But it’s like, that’s not enough. We got it. But the mission’s too important. We’re trying to reach people. How do we go remarkable? Which to me, I think picking up a copies of these books as a team would be a great first step. Rich Birch — Where do people, where can people pick this up? Where can they get your book if they’re looking for that? I’m assuming Amazon, but is there anywhere else we want to send them?Tim Foot — No, Amazon’s a place to go. Rich Birch — Yeah, that is the bookseller apparently.Tim Foot — I mean, it’s we know these days where wherever where everybody’s going, Amazon’s the way. And I would just add to Rich that as a leader, you want to know. This is information you want to have.Rich Birch — Yes.Tim Foot — We’ve talked so much about self-awareness. And if we’re in leadership, we need to show up to our team self-awareness. So many profiles. Rich Birch — Yep.Tim Foot — We don’t talk enough about team awareness. You need to know as a leader if you’re moving your mission forward or where you might be stalling out because it’s too important. And these seven things, as I said earlier, Rich, they’re not they’re not rocket science. Tim Foot — I mean, I like to I like to couch it this way: Conviction shapes the heart. Message shapes the voice. Culture shapes the atmosphere. Role shape contribution. Systems shape sustainability. Friction shapes growth. Risk shapes the future. And that’s why I hope you’ll dig into this with us. Rich Birch — Love it. Tim Foot — Because we want to see the kingdom move forward and we want to see churches full of healthy teams that not only great leaders want to come and be part of, great volunteers want to be a part of and help move this forward.Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well, I think that’s a great place to end it. I was like, man, that’s, I’m like, I want to preach. Amen, brother. That’s fantastic. If people were, so we’ll send them to Amazon. We’ll put a link in the show notes for that. If people want to track with you or with Slingshot, where do we want to send them online to connect as well?Tim Foot — Slingshotgroup.org is our company website. And there’s a bunch of great stories there. There’s places that you can engage. We would love you to be in our ecosystem. And yeah, you can jump over there to reachingforremarkable.com. And we would love to come alongside you and help you continue to move forward in the unique ways that God has called you to.Rich Birch — Well, Tim, it’s great to see you. Tim Foot — You too.Rich Birch — We were just remarking before, we had dinner together there a couple months ago. That was fun, but it was fun to put the recording on today and connect a little bit. Appreciate you, brother. Thanks so much for being here today.Tim Foot — Thanks for having me, Rich.

Jason Y. Lee is the Founder and CEO of Jubilee Media, a digital media company with a mission to provoke real human conversation. Under his leadership, Jubilee has grown into one of the most recognizable digital-first media brands for Gen Z, reaching more than 380 million monthly views across platforms through flagship series including Middle Ground, Surrounded, Odd One Out, and Versus 1. Jubilee's format-driven content brings people with differing perspectives into direct dialogue on the issues shaping culture today. Jason also launched Nectar, Jubilee's sister channel and mobile app focused on love and dating, and executive produced the documentary Accepted, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy Award in 2023. Prior to founding Jubilee, Jason was a consultant at Bain & Company and graduated with honors from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found.Special GuestPaige Bryan B.T. Kingsley This Week We DiscussMayonnaise With Every Meal vs Hot SauceReceive A Nude Picture vs VideoSuper Organized Partner W No Sense Of Humor vs Messy But HilariousS/o To Our SponorsKa'ChavaTake your daily ritual with you. Go to kachava.com and use code SQUADD for 15% off your first order. BlueChewwhen you buy two months of BlueChew Gold you get the thirdFREE with promo code SQUADD. That's promo code SQUADD. You will also receive an additional 10% OFF + Free overnight shipping on your first order. Visit BlueChew.com for more details and important safety information. We thankBlueChew for sponsoring the pod and the bedroom.

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Have you ever lost the joy in your creative work — that sense of fun you had when you were starting out, before the admin and the algorithms drained it away? How do mid-career creatives get it back, and what can a four-year-old teach us about play? Austin Kleon talks about productive procrastination, silly rituals, the case for paper reference books in an AI world, and how his newsletter went from a marketing cost to the day job that keeps the lights on. In the intro, Does social media still sell books? [Self-Publishing with ALLi]; Trial by algorithm [The Bookseller]; Publishing's AI Hypocrisy Problem [The New Publishing Standard]; ALLi AI survey for authors; Brave New Bookshelf Podcast, and Pics from signing at BookVault. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Austin Kleon is the New York Times and international bestselling author of nonfiction books, including Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work!, and Keep Going, as well as an artist, professional speaker, and poet. His latest book is Don't Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why Austin wrote Don't Call It Art now, and what his kids taught him about creative joy Productive procrastination, silly rituals, and treating writing like Lego Comedy as a philosophical position, and giving yourself permission to be bad in private Sharing process in the algorithm era, and why your whole life is the process Bibliomancy, paper reference books, and what AI can't give you that a dictionary can Style, the Taco Bell distinctiveness rule, and how Austin's newsletter became his day job You can find Austin at AustinKleon.com. Transcript of the interview with Austin Kleon Jo: Austin Kleon is the New York Times and international bestselling author of nonfiction books, including Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work!, and Keep Going, as well as an artist, professional speaker, and poet. His latest book is Don't Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again. So welcome back to the show, Austin. Austin: Thank you for having me back. It's nice to talk to you again. Jo: You were on the show in March 2020, and at the time, your book was Keep Going, which was prescient considering the pandemic and politics. So I wondered, why this book, Don't Call It Art, now? Was this something you see in the creative community or your own life that made you want to write this book? Austin: Keep Going is a book about what happens when the world goes crazy around you and you're still trying to do your creative work. This is a book about what happens when inside has bottomed out. Keep Going is a book about the world bottoming out, and you're worried that your own creative work is going to bottom out too. How do you keep pushing through and keep making stuff? This book, to me, is about what happens when you bottom out inside—when you've lost that love and feeling for the thing that you wanted to do, and you're just not connecting with it in the way that you used to or the way that you want to. How do you get back? How do you return to that sense of joy and wonder and fun that we have when we're starting out? And for me, it was being around my little kids that taught me how to tap into that. My kids were natural—they didn't have any creative hangups. I would spend all day talking to people who had creative hangups, and then I'd get back in the house, and I'd just be around these beings who didn't have any of them. It was really instructive. I felt like, if I could bottle the energy of my kids when they were about four years old and try to put it in a book, I think it could really help a lot of the people that I run into, and the people with the kinds of problems I hear from. Jo: You mentioned bottoming out. How do people know when they've hit that point? Austin: You just don't want to do it anymore. You're kind of like, “This just isn't giving me back what it used to.” When we start with our creative work, that's the thing that juices us. We come away from it feeling full up. I think you hit a certain point where you start to feel drained after it. Or maybe you don't feel drained by the thing itself that you're doing—maybe it's all the stuff around it, which is more often the case. For example, if you're a mid-career writer like me, who's been publishing books for 16 years now, I still really like writing. I still really like drawing. I still really like cutting and pasting and putting things together. It's the admin around the work—the emails, the meetings, the running-a-business part of it—that's super draining for me, and that stuff can start to bleed over into the creative work. So it's really important for me to make sure that I'm having some playtime, some R&D, some research and development time, to make sure it's not just all business. When you take the thing that you love and you turn it into the thing that you make a living from, you can really run into a lot of problems. Jo: I'm at 20 years, so I know exactly what you're saying, and a lot of listeners are the same. We love writing books, but it's all the stuff that goes around it. So for those of us who do this for money as well as passion, what are some practical ways to have more fun with our creativity? Austin: Something I learned from my kids is that you really are your most creative when you're supposed to be doing something else. So one of the things I use a lot in the studio is productive procrastination. Whatever I'm supposed to be working on, I start another little project, and that's my little naughty fun time. When I first come into the studio, I try to do something that I'm not supposed to be doing—something that I won't have much to show for. That could be making one of my blackout poems. That could be making a collage in my notebook. It could also be sitting here. I have a bass in the studio now, so I can practise my bass guitar. Sometimes I'll do that for the first 15 minutes just to get in that headspace of, “Hey, what's it like to do something just for yourself? Just because you want to do it?” The juice that you get from that little naughty “I'm going to do what I'm not supposed to be doing right now” thing, that carries into the rest of the day. It's like a nice start to things. Jo: Do you think that play could be something different to what we make our money with? For me, writing novels and stories is great fun in one way, but it's also what I then publish and make money on. So writing stories is more serious, I guess, than playing with Lego or something. Austin: Right. So the trick is, how can you make writing your stories like playing with Lego? That's kind of been my whole career. I hate staring at Microsoft Word and that blinking cursor, taunting you like, “Come on, what have you got?” A lot of my creative life has been about trying to make it more playful, trying to make it feel more like a game. That's how I came up with my blackout poems. I take an article from The New York Times and I black it out until it only has a few words left behind. It sort of looks like if the CIA did haiku, for some people listening. That was one little exercise. Then weirdly, that side thing that I thought was just play, just fun—that turned into my first book. So then it's, okay, what else can I mess around with and play with? I do a lot of collage work in the studio, and I rarely actually use that for any of the books. Sometimes I use it for my newsletter to illustrate the newsletter. But it's always about trying to figure out, how can I make writing a game? How can I make it more playful? There are different things that I do to make it feel more playful. One of them's really stupid. I really believe in silly rituals because I think silliness is really powerful. People talk about their daily rituals—Mason Currey has that great book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. When I was reading that book, I realised it was really the silly stuff that I really liked. There was, I think it was Balzac counting out coffee beans or something before he got to write. Or Steinbeck sharpening 12 pencils or something goofy like that. So one of the things I like to do before I write is that I have these cigarette pencils. They're pencils that look like cigarettes in the studio. I put one in my mouth before I start writing, and I pretend to be some old '40s writer on a typewriter. I like doing goofy stuff in the studio because I think when you do goofy stuff—stuff that you'd be embarrassed if anyone else saw it—it gets you in that playful state. Jo: It's interesting. In your book, you have a section that says, “Don't take things too seriously.” For many of us, we write memoir for example, and that is very close to us. It's like the deepest expression of what we want to say in the world. It feels very serious. So how can we hold things more lightly and not take things so seriously? Austin: For me, comedy is actually a philosophical position. What I mean by that is, I think a lot of people set out with a tragic model of creative work. They think, “Oh, I have this special gift,” or, “I have this thing that I really need to do, and I need to put it out into the world, and I need to make the world look more like I want it to look.” They have this idea that, “Through blood and sweat and tears, I'm going to see this thing through, and I'm going to push it into the world, and I'm going to have my way.” I think there's another way of working where it's more like, “I'm just a normal person trying to play with my environment, and take my experiences and put them into something interesting. So I'm going to play and use my wits, and we're going to see what we come up with.” Those really are two modes of life. The pandemic taught me that it was really when we were keeping our sense of humour, when we were having a laugh and keeping our egos in check around the house and just acknowledging how goofy we all were and how ridiculous the situation was, that seemed to be when we were really thriving. Versus, “Well, we're in this tough situation. We've got to make it into what we want it to be.” That felt really bad. But when we cruised along and we were just improvisational, when we went at things with a kind of lightness, that worked. There's a great Italo Calvino essay about lightness in Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Lightness is really underrated. Even when we're going about heavy work, having a sense of lightness and play with it just makes the work better. That's a philosophical position of mine. I aspire to comedy. I aspire to a comic outlook on life. I'm just a creature with a body who's going to die, and I'm fundamentally ridiculous. Life is pretty absurd. You just make the best of it. Jo: There's certainly some truth there. Staying on a similar theme, you have a chapter in the book on permission to be bad. Many of the listeners also have your book Show Your Work, and it shaped many of us into sharing our work in progress. It feels quite dangerous now, in a world where judgment is much louder than it maybe was when you wrote Show Your Work. So tell us a bit about permission to be bad versus should we keep some of this private? Austin: Permission to be bad is about the making part of things. It's the private part. It's permission to be bad when you're in private, when you're actually doing the work. Show Your Work is a book about what you do after you've done the work, or while you're doing the work. It was never about putting up a webcam and running a 24/7 feed. It was more like, hey, what are the ways that I can connect with the kind of audience I can build while I'm making the work itself? So the way I see permission to be bad is, you really have to give yourself permission when you're not sharing, when you're off screen, to really be as bad as you want to be. It doesn't necessarily mean quality-wise. I think it also means letting yourself write stuff that you would never say on social media. Letting yourself read stuff that you wouldn't admit you were reading on social media. Letting yourself listen to stuff. Letting yourself really be that unfiltered, unhinged, private person that you want to be. Then when it comes to sharing, you put some time in between that input time, that making time, and the sharing time, and then you share what you think is going to be useful or helpful or interesting to other people. Jo: I think you wrote that book before TikTok, and how fast people are moving. Do you think people need to slow down a bit in what they share, maybe? Austin: I don't know. I obviously had a lot more faith in social media back then. I use all the principles from Show Your Work in my newsletter. Newsletters are very much the new kind of great thing. They're doing a lot of the work that social media used to do, in that you're still able to have this direct connection with the people that you're trying to reach. The big problem with social media now is that it's all algorithmically tuned, where the people that are following you don't see the stuff that you're doing most of the time. What you have to do now, if you want the people who are following you to see your stuff on social media, is you have to make stuff that the algorithm likes. That's a whole different thing. As far as the Show Your Work principle—which is share your process as much as your product—that carries over to any platform. In my newsletter every Friday, I share a list of 10 things that were going on behind the scenes here. It might have been what I was watching on TV, what I listened to, a new pen I was trying out, or something like that. The Friday newsletter is almost always process stuff. When I talk about process, my definition is actually very broad. For a lot of people, it's drafting, editing, whatever. For me, the process is the whole life. The process is almost everything except the finished thing. A writer's life is 24/7. My friends who have real jobs really are like, “What do you do all day?” And I'm like, “Well, what do you mean?” They're like, “Well, I see you out on your bike ride.” I'm like, “Yes, when you see me out on a bike ride, I'm thinking through something half the time.” If I'm watching TV, I'm thinking, “Hey, would this be good in the newsletter?” I'm never off. My whole life—everything is copy, as Nora Ephron said. That's part of the job. It's very hard to turn off. So I see the whole life as process, and the question becomes, what little bits and pieces of that life and that process can you share with people while you're making the things that you hope to sell them later? Right now, I'm in a cycle where I'm selling this book, but all these people have showed up because I've shared my process every week for the past seven years since I put out a book. Jo: It's funny you say that. I was at the dentist yesterday, and— My dentist literally asked me, “So where do you get all your ideas?” This is a common question for all of us, right? And it just becomes so hard to explain that to people who don't walk around in the world just constantly getting ideas. Austin: I can't believe I'm going to tell this story. I was getting my vasectomy after my second kid, and I was talking to this doctor just before the operation. He said, “So what do you do for a living?” I said, “I'm a writer.” He said, “Oh, that must be cool. You get to use your brain.” And I said, “That's everything that you want your doctor to say.” I was going to say, “Please use your brain,” before he's about to cut into you. He said, “Oh, no, no. What I mean is, I know what I'm going to do every day for the next 10 years.” He knew exactly what his day was going to look like. He said, “You have to use your brain. You've got to figure out new stuff.” I was like, “Oh, that's really interesting.” That's the trade-off, right? He's got the job security. He knows what he's going to do. Every writer has a moment where they have to talk to a normal person about what you do. Jo: I was going to say, I'm married to one. Austin: Now, my wife, on the other hand, grew up the daughter of a writer, so she knows exactly what it's like. Nothing ever phases her. She's totally used to it. She's used to me staring off into space, completely checking out of a conversation. She's used to me using lines on her that I'm going to put in a piece later. She's used to the whole rigmarole. It's very handy. I've been very lucky in that sense. Jo: Coming back to the book, you talk about your use of bibliomancy for inspiration. Since we're talking about that, tell us about it. I think all the book people listening will be happy. Austin: I'm a person who still keeps a dictionary nearby—a paper dictionary. I keep a big old American Heritage. It's just a big, thick book. When I really don't have any ideas, I will turn at random to the dictionary, close my eyes, stick my finger down the page, open my eyes, and just see what I come up with. Sometimes just that act will give me an idea. I also do that with books. I'll go around the studio, pick up a book, flip to a random page, and just see what it says there, or read an old piece of marginalia that I've left in a book. I believe deeply in the power of bibliomancy, and I think it's a case for paper books. I'm one of those people that still really believes in reference books. I've started collecting more and more of them. I have an old, big dictionary that's always open on my desk, and I look up words. I learned from John McPhee, the writer, that you should look up words that you think you know. That was the first time I'd ever heard anyone say that. So I look up words that I think I know. Instead of reaching for a thesaurus when I need a different word, I actually just look up the definition of the word that I already have. That's another McPhee tip. The other thing that happened that I thought was really interesting is, I got a Roget's for the first time—a thesaurus. I don't think most people know what an actual thesaurus is. Most people think of a thesaurus as a synonym finder, and that's not actually what a thesaurus is at all. A thesaurus is more like an encyclopaedia, weirdly. You look up things based on big concepts, and then it gives you a bunch of words to look up later. It's a very strange thing. It's not what most people think it is. I have a couple of editions of Roget's in here. I like the really old Roget's from the 1900s because they actually have opposing ideas facing each other on the page. Do you have an old-school Roget's? Have you ever looked through one? Jo: I don't have one now, but I certainly grew up with them. I was literally just thinking, I wonder if there are ones for Americans and ones for British people, because so often we say different things and mean different things. I always hear Americans say, “Oh, that's a doozy,” or something, and it means the complete opposite thing here. Austin: Like if you say “fanny pack” over there. That means something very different than it means here, right? Chips or fries, that kind of stuff. So I wonder if there are different ones for different cultural references. Jo: I don't know. Austin: As people, with ChatGPT and all these LLMs and stuff, people are like, “Why would you ever pick up a paper reference book?” And I'm like, “I actually like the friction.” I like having to move in space and go over to my dictionary. I like flipping the pages. I like having to scan a page for the word I'm looking for, because— This marvellous thing happens when you're looking for the word, where you bump into all these other words. If you're a word nerd, you get to start thinking about the root of the word—oh, why is this word next to this word? Well, it's because they share the same root. Then you're going down all these fun rabbit holes. The thing that I'm trying to do as a writer and a creative person is, I'm trying to get to the thing that I didn't know I was looking for. The thing that people misunderstand about AI, I think personally, is that it's a great tool if you know what you're looking for. If you're like, “Find me this thing. I want exactly this. I want to see a picture of a dog wearing a king's costume,” or some crap like that, then it can spit that picture out for you. Or, “I want to know what happened on this day,” and whatever. It can do that. But that's not actually what I'm doing most of the time when I'm writing or making something. I start with an idea, but what really happens—the magic of writing and the magic of making stuff in general—is when you discover something that you didn't even know you were headed for. That's the real magic for me. Sometimes I have an idea and I want to articulate it for people, but more often than not, there's something that bothers me or something that I want to talk about, and I sit down and write, and I figure out what it is that I actually have to say and what I actually think. Every writer really knows this, and that's why the dictionary, stuff like that, those are ways of training you to get in that discovery mode. “Well, let me—oh, I bumped into this. I went looking for this one thing and then I ran into this other thing.” That's why I love the library. I don't know what system you use over there, but you look for one book in the Dewey Decimal System over here, and then, okay, here's all these other weird books next to it. Then you end up with three other books other than the one that you were looking for. That's the magic. To me, that's the magic of creative work, discovering what you didn't know you were looking for. That was particularly important for me when I was writing this book because we discovered that my wife has a condition called aphantasia. It's very rare in the population, about 2 to 3% of people. There's probably some people listening to this right now who are like, “What is this? Tell me.” Jo: Aphantasia actually more common in the creative industries. Austin: Yes. What it is, is that you don't see—when I say close your eyes and picture an apple, you don't actually see the apple in your head. You can think about an apple and the qualities of an apple, but you don't actually see it. Some people, and it's a matter of degree—some people like me, I can close my eyes, I can tell you what the apple looks like, I can tell you what colour it is, I can tell you where the shading is. Someone like my wife doesn't see the apple. She can tell you what an apple is. It's really interesting because she has a degree in architecture, which is known as a very visual field. But the thing you discover about aphantasia is, it doesn't keep people from becoming artists. In fact, it's the opposite. Someone like Ed Catmull, who co-founded Pixar, writes about it in his book, and so many of the great animators at Pixar are actually aphantasics. The reason is that they learned that they had to draw in order to see things. When you don't have a picture in your head of what you want something to look like, things appear in the drawing, and you find things that you couldn't even picture. A lot of writers actually are aphantasics. John Green discovered recently that he has aphantasia. It turns out that it's a superpower for writers, because if you don't have a picture in your head, then you don't have to translate that picture into words. A lot of writers talk about thinking in radio, like they have a constant narrator. My wife—she's probably going to kill me for talking about her this much—when she describes it to me, she's like, “Oh, it's like a radio in my head. I'm constantly hearing a voice, and it's a narrator.” I was like, “Holy shit, that would be really helpful to me.” I don't have anything like that in my head. I read Mrs Dalloway for the first time, and I gave it to her and I said, “You've got to read this book. I think this must be what it's like in your head.” And she said, “Oh my God, it is.” Part of the thing that I took away from that experience—this is a long-winded way of getting here—is that I take a lot of inspiration from people with this condition. Most of the people I know in the arts or the creative fields, they set out with this grand vision, and then they start working on the thing and it's nothing like what they had in their head, and they get really depressed: “This isn't what I had in mind.” Whereas if you set out without a picture in your head, and you just start manipulating things and you see what appears, that's more of the comic mode I was talking about earlier. What would happen if we just sat down with our materials and we started playing and we saw what appeared on the page? What if we started typing and saw what appeared, and then we played with that? That's the kind of joy. That's more like how kids operate. Kids are better at that. They're better at reacting to what's actually in front of them, instead of having these grandiose visions about what they're trying to achieve. Jo: Just coming back on the longevity of a creative career. Your books are very distinctive. You have a very distinctive visual style, your handwriting and the way the books are done. I wondered if another part of the ennui, perhaps, or the draining of the later career is that we get trapped into doing something that feels like it looks the same. Or we have a voice, and we're happy in that voice, but sometimes we want to do something completely different. For authors, we have different names. I write under two different names, and that helps. But equally— How do you define author voice, and do you ever feel like doing something completely different to your normal style? Austin: Style, in a lot of ways, is self-plagiarism. Style is the repeated things that we notice in people's work. Hitchcock talked about this in films. Wes Anderson is someone like that—Wes Anderson has a style. I'm sure that he gets really sick of it too sometimes, but you also can't help it in some ways. I thought a lot about this because people worry about style so much. A lot of the time, what we call style is what Adrian Tomine one time said: “Style is just the distance between what's in my head and what comes out of my hand.” I really like that definition. With this book, I was trying to think, “Okay, if I do another book in this series, how can I push things a little bit?” And then I was reading this article about Taco Bell. You guys have Taco Bell over there, don't you? Do you have Taco Bell? Jo: No. Austin: So Taco Bell, for people who don't know, is this American Mexican chain, and they have tacos and burritos and stuff like that. They're well known for making these really insane… it's so American, this company. They make a taco with a Doritos as a shell. Doritos are crisps, I guess. Jo: Yes, we have Doritos. Austin: Okay. I spent time in England, I just don't remember if I ate Doritos when I was in England. Anyway, I was reading this article about Taco Bell. It was really funny. They have an innovation kitchen at Taco Bell, and they have a rule about new products. The rule is called the distinctiveness rule, and the rule is: you can change the flavour or you can change the taste, or you can change the form, but you can't change both at the same time. I got really obsessed with this concept because I thought, “Well, this could be kind of interesting.” If you're someone who's had success and you're known for something, this presents an interesting thing. You could do a complete break and do something completely new, or you could try the distinctiveness rule. Okay, well, what if I play with this idea of taste versus form? What if I change the taste and keep the form? So the idea for Don't Call It Art was, what if I do another one of these books, but the taste is more like if my kids made it? It had the texture of kids' art, it had lots of scribbles in it, it was loose and messy. That was kind of the idea. The actual book ended up being more like the other books. It ended up looking like an Austin Kleon book, because I just can't help that. The thing you said about having multiple names that you write under, that's kind of what I do with the newsletter. I think of the newsletter as very different from the books. The newsletter is this twice-weekly thing where I can be a little bit more of myself. In the books, I'm this very helpful, happy version of myself. It's me, but it's me on my best day. I'm really helpful and interesting for you. The newsletter is still a highlight reel in a sense, but it's a little bit more of my weird everything-I'm-into. It's more of the unclipped version of me. The newsletter becomes a place where I can do a lot of the weird stuff that's much different from the books. I have these little projects going all the time. Sometimes I'll make a bunch of prints and put them online. Sometimes I'll make a bunch of zines on a topic I haven't covered in the book. Sometimes I'll do a mixtape. As someone who's interested in a lot of different forms and genres and just different modes of output, having something like a newsletter has been really creatively fruitful for me. It's kept me from getting too bottomed out with the books because the books do a certain thing for the reader, and as much as I'd love to do a book that was radically different, I also think I've been given a real gift with the form of my books, in that I kind of own the way that they feel and look. There aren't a lot of books that look like those books and feel like those books, and so I like playing with that form. It would be hard to get rid of it now. The pseudonym for me is kind of like the newsletter in a sense. The newsletter is a little bit more of where I get to be wild and wacky. Then the books are a little bit more of a chiselled thing. Jo: The books are perfect examples of the form, as you say, but it's interesting about the newsletter. You mentioned at the beginning that we can be drained by the admin around the work. For many people listening, a newsletter becomes admin. So how does the newsletter fit into your business? The books are traditionally published, they're very professional. How do you have your independent side, and how does all of that work together in your business? Austin: Thank you for asking that question. I run the whole show at the newsletter. The newsletter is just me, and then my wife edits it, and no one else is involved. I don't have an assistant. I don't have a team. It is just me, and that's why I love it. I control everything. I pick who gets in there. I pick everything. I love that. I grew up watching David Letterman over here, and Letterman had a nightly show, and I always thought that was killer. I thought, “Man, what a fun job. You have a show every night where you have a new guest, and you have all these wacky things going on.” It was like a variety show. I always thought that would be really fun, so the newsletter is my version of that. I started the newsletter in 2013, and it was just a Friday newsletter. It quickly became a list of 10 things I thought were worth sharing. I had a friend, Hugh MacLeod, who was like, “Hey, I have a newsletter. It's bigger than any conference you've ever gone to.” He was talking about South by Southwest here in Austin. He's like, “I have a newsletter now, and it's bigger than South by Southwest.” Jo: Oh, I remember him. Austin: He would say, “Every time I have a new print, I put it out, and there's a button, and then they buy it.” He was like, “You've got to get it. This newsletter thing is killer.” This was in 2011 or something. Jo: Yes, I still have his books. Blogging in Your Underwear or something. Austin: Totally. So Hugh's a whole different story, but I was just like, “Oh, I should really get a newsletter.” Letterman always had a top 10 list on his show. I just always thought a 10 list was really fun. And of course the books are lists of 10 too. So it just worked to have a weekly list of 10. It felt good, and it felt like an infinitely repeatable format. What I'm looking for as a creative person is an infinitely repeatable format that can go on and on and on and be new every time. So the list of 10 is something that people know the form of. It goes back to the Taco Bell thing. They know the form, but they're not sure what's going to go inside. They know it's going to be a burrito, but they don't know what's going to be in the burrito, and that's the exciting part. The newsletter, business-wise, was always a marketing cost for about the first eight years of its existence. I paid MailChimp to send it out. Then in about 2021, when I hadn't done a book for a while, my agent said, “You know, you should really think about doing a paid tier of your newsletter.” And this is to his credit, because he doesn't make anything off the newsletter. He said, “There's this thing called Substack now that makes that really easy.” So we moved to Substack in 2021 in October, and I started doing a Tuesday edition of the newsletter that was just for paid people. That grew enough that it's gone from a marketing cost to something that's almost—it's not quite as much as I make on my books, but it's close. And to be candid, my books sell pretty well. So suddenly the newsletter has become this really healthy income stream. The newsletter to me is actually the day job now. The newsletter is what really keeps the lights on. It's also the perfect mix. It's the day job, it's the thing that keeps income coming in on a regular basis, but it's also the thing I like to do the most. I'm not like a traditional writer who likes to just get lost in their book and take years and years and go away. I'm someone who loves to be doing a lot of different things. The newsletter is a perfect format for me. I'm talking myself into not quitting, actually. It's funny. It's gone from this thing that was a marketing cost to now it's a significant part of our income. That journey—such a bad word, journey—that trip has been very interesting. It's been really cool. But I'm also just lucky. I've been really lucky, and I think part of my thing is, I'm always just trying not to squander my luck. Jo: Well, the book is fantastic, and I know people are going to love it. And the newsletter, of course. So tell us— Where can people find you and your books and newsletter online? Austin: The easiest thing to do is to just go to AustinKleon.com, and that has links to everything—the books, the newsletter. I do actually keep an old-school blog still. I'm one of the few people that still maintains their blog and keeps it up to date. I'm hedging my bets because I think in the end everything will come back to a self-hosted website. I think in the end everyone's going to just go back to their little websites, or at least I hope so. Jo: Well, that was great, Austin. Thanks so much. Austin: Oh, thank you. The post Don't Call It Art: Rediscovering Creative Joy With Austin Kleon first appeared on The Creative Penn.

I'm excited to work with Microsoft once again as the presenting sponsors of the AI Engineer World's Fair! We'll streaming live from MS Build today for a special crossover pod with our friends at No Priors and the one and only Satya Nadella. However we did not hold back with this interview - we asked all the burning questions about uptime and Copilot that we know you have in your minds. Lets go!For almost two decades, GitHub has been the home of software, where both open source and closed flow, through commits, pull requests, reviews, actions, etc.This ecosystem flourished as open-source maintainers and contributors would continue shipping code for the benefit of the community. However as coding agents began to ship mass quantities of code - growing 1400% in 2026, it marked a new era that was both extremely exciting and challenging for GitHub.While these agents help more people ship more projects, they also significantly increase the floor of how much code is shipped, how often it is shipped, how many people commit code, and basically orders of magnitude multiples in every dimension of GitHub infrastructure:Now GitHub inevitably experiences more pressure on their infrastructure which was originally designed around human developers moving at human speed. This has resulted in a very publicly notable uptime story:So it begs the question of whether current systems around code can absorb what AI produces. Can CI/CD keep up when every idea becomes a build? Can open source maintainers survive floods of AI-generated slop contributions? Can GitHub preserve the human social contract of software while becoming the operating layer for agents?Which brings us to the perfect person to answer these questions: GitHub COO Kyle Daigle. In this episode, he joins swyx to unpack what happens when AI doesn't just autocomplete code, but starts changing how companies operate, how open source works, how pull requests get reviewed, and how GitHub itself has to scale. We go deep on GitHub's internal AI workflows: micro-skills, WorkIQ, MCP, Slack, Teams, email, Copilot workflows, the new Copilot desktop app, CLI, cloud agents, and how Kyle uses agents to look backwards across company context before deciding what to do next. Kyle also reflects on GitHub's history building webhooks, APIs, Actions, npm, Dependabot, and Semmle, why the AI era is breaking GitHub in new ways, how Actions became a general-purpose compute layer, and what Copilot becomes after code completion.Full Video PodWe discuss:* Kyle's expanded role across GitHub* How AI got Kyle coding again after years in leadership* Why GitHub rolls out AI through existing workflows instead of forcing new tools* WorkIQ, MCP, Slack, Teams, email, and GitHub as company context* Why massive “mega-skills” are giving way to small, atomic micro-skills* How AI changes summarization, communications, marketing, and analyst work* Why former developers in leadership may have a unique advantage in the AI era* Kyle's “15 agents on Saturday” workflow* How Kyle built an AI-generated executive presentation for CRO/CFO teams* Why AI changes the chief of staff role without removing the human work* GitHub Actions, webhooks, arbitrary code execution, and secure agent compute* The npm acquisition, supply-chain security, 2FA, and token invalidation* Slop forks, vendoring, and whether AI agents change dependency management* What pull requests become when most PRs come from agents* Prompt requests, vouching, AI review, and trust in open source* What counts as a “developer” when AI lowers the barrier to building* GitHub Spark, low-code, and why GitHub refuses to hide the code* 14x commit growth, Actions load, databases, monorepos, and availability* Copilot's evolution from completion to CLI, desktop app, cloud agents, and SDK* Context, memory, rules, and making GitHub “act like Kyle wants it to act”* Ambient AI, OpenClaw, enterprise security, and the new operating system for agents* What swyx should ask Satya Nadella about Microsoft's AI futureKyle Daigle* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyledaigle* X: https://x.com/kdaigleTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction00:03:36 Why AI Got Kyle Coding Again00:07:04 Running GitHub with AI: WorkIQ, MCP, Slack, Teams, and Skills00:15:39 The Golden Age for Former Developers in Leadership00:17:31 15 Agents on Saturday and AI-Generated Executive Work00:20:20 How AI Changes the Chief of Staff Role00:21:45 GitHub's History: Actions, npm, Webhooks, and Open Source00:28:45 Slop Forks, Vendoring, and AI Dependency Management00:33:57 Pull Requests, Prompt Requests, and Trust in Agent-Generated Code00:41:21 GitHub Stars, 200M+ Developers, and the New AI Builder Wave00:45:15 GitHub Spark, Low-Code, and Why GitHub Still Shows the Code00:47:38 GitHub's Hardest Era: 14x Growth, Reliability, and Scale00:59:21 Actions as the Compute Layer for CI/CD and Automation01:02:04 The State and Future of GitHub Copilot01:08:24 Ambient AI, Background Agents, and the Future of the SDLC01:13:09 OpenClaw, Enterprise Security, and the New OS for Agents01:18:03 Build Announcements, WorkIQ, FoundryIQ, and Microsoft Context01:21:41 What Should swyx Ask Satya?TranscriptIntroduction: Kyle Daigle's Expanded Role at GitHub and MicrosoftSwyx [00:00:00]: We're here with Kyle Daigle, COO of GitHub. Welcome.Kyle [00:00:07]: Hey, thanks for having me.Swyx [00:00:08]: You're not just CEO of GitHub. People know you as that. You have a new role.Kyle [00:00:11]: So I have an expanded role now. I've been working at GitHub for thirteen years and doing all things developer. Joined as a developer myself. And now, I'm also responsible as the CMO of Developer for Microsoft. And so all the kind of learnings and passion for developers and how we work with them and how we communicate and how we bring our products to market, we're also bringing that expertise to the broader Microsoft ecosystem and helping every developer that uses a Microsoft product or would like to have a sort of similar experience that they've had with GitHub over the years. So it's a different role in some ways, but it's also just building on the experience that I've had at GitHub of just sort of tell the truth, be authentic, show people how to use it and then let the products speak for themselves. Now just doing that with, all of Microsoft.Swyx [00:01:09]: We'll be releasing this in conjunction with Build. You got lots of stuff planned, and we can sort of touch on that whenever it's appropriate. I think one of the interesting things is I rarely meet a COO who's also a CMO. I think you're a very outward facing and you're very confident publicly. That's rare. Do you actually view yourself as COO? What's What is your thing?From GitHub Developer to COO/CMO: Building the Platform and Operating GitHubKyle [00:01:33]: I think for me, it's been funny. The titles have always been, a— have always felt a little strange to me. I joined GitHub as a developer? I wrote so much of theSwyx [00:01:46]: Let's bring that up. You wrote the back ends?Kyle [00:01:48]: I was going through, I was going through, some old photos, when folks were talking about how things were being built or how there was a build GitHub. I built, webhooks and worked with teams building the API, built the platform layer. Anything that integrated with GitHub, up until really twenty eighteen, I built or ran the engineering teams. And that's kind of where my the beginning of my passion always was helping people build things, deliver them to, their customers. And so being a developer, building for developers was always super unique. In a— I think as my role expanded, it became my ability to talk to not just developers, but also enterprise customers or business leaders and have this translation layer. And then through all those years, GitHub has always operated pretty uniquely. Post-pandemic, working remotely was not as novel as it was when GitHub started in two thousand and eight. But all that expertise of running remote teams, doing it well, became this sort of bigger role, ultimately turning into the COO role of how do we operate GitHub in the way that GitHub's always operated after the Microsoft acquisition. And kind of so on from there. So like for me, I think the— I've, I still code. I love coding but the problem has always been, people. It's a much harder problem to both support our own employees, a harder problem to communicate to developers and enterprise buyers what we're building why it matters, ‘cause those are two very different messages. And so getting to work in the mix of COO, CMO, also just being a dev, I think is what's kept me at GitHub for so long.AI Workflows for Leadership: Commits, Retrospectives, and ContextSwyx [00:03:40]: Apparently, you have— your commits have gone up. What's this? What's going on?Kyle [00:03:45]: Rui's called me out pretty aggressively. So I think— as you can imagine, right, you can see my normal era of being a dev In the twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen era, and then moving into management, and then ultimately the COO role. I think what you see there is me, really getting back to coding thanks to AI. I— similar to, attaching problems between how to market and how to operate a business and how to code, I find, building agents and workflows that are connecting very disparate problems to be what's driving this. So that's, some of it's writing software. A lot of it is, connecting a ton of a different data sources to, help me out. But that is completely me really diving in on the AI side in trying out our tools, trying out everyone's tools, But building for me, building for the non-technical leader, though I'm technical and how we're, able to use these tools more than just the simple, call and response that I think a lot of the non-technical, your employers, you have to get— you have to use AI, and so everyone uses, ChatGPT or Copilot or Claude or whatever. To really get into, how is this going to help me out, it— I find that it's not the I need to write a blog post, I need to those simple examples. Helping people find the workflows of, “Okay, I need you to go through all the PRs today. I need you to go through everything that we've posted online. I need you to go through what we did the last three months. Go through all of my Obsidian notes for any mentions of this then go through my transcripts at work.” We use, Teams, so, using WorkIQ, go call that MCP server, grab all the transcripts, go through all the Slack, and then build me out the plan of, what this week's messaging actually was. That's something that was, impossible because for me, I find AI in a what most of this launch here is actually, less building forward. It's actually, a recursive loop backwards. I'm always looking at what had happened first. Go back through the week and tell me what we did, what worked, what didn't work? And then tell me in the next three or four days-What would you tweak based on this sort of like looking backwards and then looking ahead a little bit? I find that to be so much more valuable, especially for like non-technical, because that retrospection is actually LLMs are very good at that. Like finding all the patterns, pulling them out, and then applying that retrospection to just a couple of days or just like a short period of time. Is all a bunch of apps that I've built and launched a bunch of, internal tools. I use the new, GitHub Copilot app, the desktop app with workflows. Every time I crack open my laptop, it's running workflows for me. It's just a ton of different stuff and of course, it all ends up on, it all ends up on GitHub.Swyx [00:06:47]: Of course. That's where, that's where, stuff is hosted. Man, there's so much to ask you. I was going to leave the how do you run a company with AI thing at the end. I have to ask one— double click one thing. You said, you are looking back at the week. You're, you're understanding what happens. When you say we That's three thousand people. How?Rolling Out AI Internally: Skills, CLIs, and Company ContextKyle [00:07:09]: I think when we started rolling out AI internally beyond engineering, right? One of the things that I was really, passionate about is like we have to do this in a way where no one has to change how they work. I don't want to have to teach you a tool. I don't want to have to teach you something new. And so for us, we tried out a few tools. Most of them don't work because I got to get you on board? I got to teach you how to use it. What we've actually ended up doing is we've built like a set of skills internally. We have we each have our set of skills, and we've just been distributing even to the non-technical folks, the CLI. And then effectively, we're just giving it access to like read about everything that we're writing. So that's for us, that's usually GitHub, Teams, Email, and Slack. So Teams for, video chat, generally speaking.Swyx [00:08:03]: Teams and Slack?Kyle [00:08:04]: so we use Teams for video communication, but we don't use it for chat. W-we— GitHub for a long history, right? We're alwaysSwyx [00:08:13]: Also SlackKyle [00:08:14]: Talking about ChatOps and like everything is built into Slack. Like every command, every flow.Swyx [00:08:18]: So even though you have been acquired for I don't know, eight years nowKyle [00:08:22]: we stillSwyx [00:08:23]: You still use Slack?Kyle [00:08:23]: it's a purpose-built tool for us, and I think the reality is that moving off of it would be so bluntly expensive? Simply because all the tooling is, baked in with that paradigm. And they both have their pros and cons but they don't work the same way at all. We still use a bunch of different tools Because it's the purpose-built tools that We need. And thenSwyx [00:08:47]: Well, the same doesn't go for the rest of Microsoft, presumably.Kyle [00:08:50]: like the like various teams like operateSwyx [00:08:53]: They make their own decisionsKyle [00:08:54]: Various ways. I think it just matters what you're trying to what you're trying to do. But we do we do work across kind of every tool that we use, and then by giving everyone access to all of that context and the new WorkIQ MCP server, which is quite cool if you do live in the M365 like world. I can ask it all these backwards-facing questions, and it's incredibly important for our teams that are working remotely. There's a lot of stuff you miss when you're not in an office, and we are spread out all over the world. So most of that is looking back. And then we post, we post either auto-automatically into GitHub issues or discussions, these sorts of like findings or like our industry reports. Like what's happening this morning, today, yesterday. A little automation gets run. We'll use the app. We might use GitHub Actions like with, our agentic workflows just to go do that run, and then we push it into GitHub, and w-we keep having a conversation. So usually for us, it's about that sort of like looking back, looking forward on the non-technical side. And then of course for a lot of those folks, it's also building an app, pushing it to GitHub pages or pushing it somewhere to host it et cetera. But it's just like enabling everyone with that power of it's going to take me a week to figure this out. Instead, we're going “Okay I built a skill. Let's put it into a repo. We'll all share that skill together, and then we'll use the CLI or now the app-” “just to run it.”Micro Skills vs. Mega Skills: How GitHub Uses AI at WorkSwyx [00:10:26]: All right. I think, I think we're going straight into like the team management and productivity thing. I think a lot of people are getting various levels of LLM psychosis. How do you manage the bloat of skills? Like everyone Has their thing, and they're Like trying to promote it to the rest of their peers in their org, right? And obviously, whoever becomes a skill influencer internally becomes like an AI leader, right? Of sorts. I assume you have those.Kyle [00:10:50]: like I think we haveSwyx [00:10:52]: And I assume it's a mess a Yeah.Kyle [00:10:54]: there's like I— like I think the reality is there's two pieces. Like first is I think that we're ending the era of these like massive, beautiful, perfect skills that are just like not any of those things. ‘cause for a while, right every tweet every day is like go download the skills, the perfectly managed thing to do this entire workflow. And I think that like what we've found and what— I was just with my team, this week, and we were talking about the skill side, and we're really talking about these like incredibly micro skills that are just doing one thing for us very well Versus a skill that's going to do I said, that full report. That doesn't really exist on our side anymore. It's usually how do— like a single skill that's going to identify the most important marketing information given any MCP server. Like this is the most important thing. Less about stitch a bunch of tools together and have it produce this mega output because then weeks go by, months go by, things change, and you want to tweakSwyx [00:11:58]: It's brittleKyle [00:11:58]: Your mega skill and you're screwed? You can't do that. And so now we're really just talking about the Legos we're using and just letting the instruction book be something we're all putting together. Whereas I think a lot of AI skills for a while have been that mega instruction book style.Swyx [00:12:15]: I've, thought a lot about Postel's law. I don't know if that's a term that is, means things to folks. It's the idea that you should be liberal in what you accept and strict in what you output, right? And I think that's like a good framing principle for skills. This is my skills, obviously on GitHub. I feel like everyone should have like how like some repos In GitHub are special repos? I feel like we should sort of reify the slash skills and everyone like give it some kind of special presentation. Anyway, so, yeah, this is one of those like download Download anything, transcribe anything, and then you can string together the atomic skills that do one thing well Into like some kind of orchestration skill that calls other skills. I assume, does that match?Kyle [00:12:56]: I like I think so. I think that theSwyx [00:13:00]: Summarize anything.Kyle [00:13:01]: Like I think the- For me, summarizing something for I do communications and PR and analyst relations and marketing and customer activities, and so my summarize everything is very different for each one of those like Contexts. What ‘Cause if I'm summarizing something for an analyst, that's a very different thing than, probably how I'm going to summarize something for like a customer meeting or an engagement. So that's I think like the difference when we're talking about the like the tools I might use on Saturday or the skills I might use on a Saturday when it's just for Kyle. Yeah, those are kind of like they have an atomic actual tool underneath or maybe skill, and then Kyle cares about X. But I think when we're talking about work and enabling the the marketers, communicators there, it's the atomic, this is what good summarization is, and then this is what I care about as for marketing for communications For whatever. And that I think is like the interesting matrix problem when we go from like a developer set of concerns to all kinds of different professions, is that what that word means to me is different than it means to you is different than it means to the analyst or the salesperson, and that's where I think the matrix mess is that we're starting to like still starting to find. It's about these mega skills but they're all just slight permutations, but those permutations are really important. It's the difference between someone reading this and going “Did AI make this?” what Or “This makes total sense, and I would expect this when I'm giving a briefing to Gartner,” or like whatever else.Swyx [00:14:37]: I think the beauty of it maybe is that you don't have to be that careful about what goes in there. It doesn't have to exactly fit as long as it like roughly is contained in there. I used to complain about plugin hell, basically. Like when you have a framework and then you have a hundred things that you need to integrate, everyone does like the GitHub used to be bloated full of these things. And now we don't need them anymore ‘cause now you just use skills.Former Developers in Leadership: AI as a Creation MultiplierKyle [00:15:00]: And like I think the most magical thing is the just that like I can just also crack it open. Like Like yes, I could go like change the how the plugin is coded, or like I could go do that now with AI, but I think there's just something more magical about getting a response back and being “That's not right,” and then you just crack the skill open, you just type English words and it's different. That building block is just, I think very unique. Once I get everyone to kind of understand how to best how to best make those changes to get the most power out of them.Swyx [00:15:36]: Is there a— you have a your peer group that Of people like you. Is there a common framing for Something I'm feeling is, which is true, is that is this a golden age for former developers who are now in leadership? Because you can wield the tools, you would know the right words, you're maybe not too close to the details. Doesn't matter. But like you're more effective than someone who doesn't come from that background.Kyle [00:15:59]: I think that like the secret has always been your ability to identify patterns and solve problems, and I think that for folks that like myself that don't code day to day anymore, that has made me successful as a developer, made me successful as a COO and now CMO. And so now that I have access to get and write code, I'm now applying that sort of like pattern finding and problem solving, and I know enough still about how to then go and say, “Oh, I want to make an app, but I don't want to break into jail or create something that's not going to be able to work or to be deployed scale or whatever.” that ability to apply all that additional business knowledge and still code I think is what makes that so interesting to me. Slightly different than I think some of the other like technical leaders that became business leaders and now are going back to their apps and updating them. Good for them? But I think the more, much more interesting thing is, well, now I have this whole new set of expertise over ten plus years. Why not take that and use that as a developer with these AI tools? So I definitely think that makes me more powerful, but I think that's true for like every dev as well. Most of the dev friends I still have also have some other underlying skill and passion. There's really talented, very kind of linear computer science software devs, absolutely. I just find that the folks that came from a different career, went to school for something else, went off and did this random thing, and then became a software dev, or were a dev, did a random thing, came back. Learning that extra set of information, learning those extra skills, and now having the power of an AI where I can crank up fifteen agents on Saturday while my kids are doing lacrosse, That's like really powerful. And I think it gets me back to that feeling of like creation, and it's very hard to replicate that in most other senses? That first time you build an app and you click it and you show someone that's magical. And so being able to do that not just in code, but across all kinds of different assets that's, that's huge. We were doing we're doing our every year we do our revenue planning. We talk about okay, what is it going to look like for next year? And of course as you imagine, there's, slideshows everywhere talking about what are we going to talk about, what's the narrative, et cetera. And so as you said I'm “Okay, well, I could probably just like build something to build this and then that way I don't have to go build the whole spreadsheet or I have to pass it to my team.” So we went through this process, and I got all the information and used the skills I mentioned. I built like a little app just to make it so I could look at some of the information in a SQLite database, more easily. And I ultimately built this entire presentation without touching any of it and I was “Okay, I'm just going to present this to our CRO, the CFO, their teams,” without mentioning I'd built it with AI. I like built a skill to make it look very much not AI driven. Just not pretty.AI-Generated Presentations, Human Taste, and the Changing Chief of Staff RoleSwyx [00:19:03]: Like a design. Yeah.Kyle [00:19:03]: Not pretty. But just like very clearly not AI. Kind of like don't do anything interesting.Swyx [00:19:08]: That's, yeah, that is valuable.Kyle [00:19:08]: Just go Exactly. We did the whole thing through. It used my notes from Obsidian, it used all the context I mentioned before, the plans, and Never came up once that it was AI generated.Swyx [00:19:20]: It didn't matter.Kyle [00:19:20]: Never once. D It didn't matter. And so now I takeSwyx [00:19:23]: This is a toolKyle [00:19:23]: I can take that tool and go, “Look, I don't want you to go build slideshows.” They're just helping us share information with each other. If this thing can do it With a little bit of crafting from you and then we can look at it together, awesome. There's no value in all that extra work. I think that the ability to, make it look humanly bad and and build a little app to, manipulate the data I think is part of, that upside for devs that are now in leadership roles. Because, the thing that I feel like I said before, this that's all a people, that's all a people problem. I know if you've used a coworker or not to build a slide deck, unless you spent a bunch of time to not do it.Swyx [00:20:07]: I know, but like it was so, I think there's a certain charm to just being blatantly AI. ‘Cause I think that you're well, you're just honest about There may be mistakes here that I cannot vouch for. So how much value is there? But anyway I think, actually the real question I want to ask is, there's a— You were a chief of staff To Thomas. And in the pre-AI world, the that job would've been a chief of staff job of like Can you prep me these slides and all that? And now you do it yourself.Kyle [00:20:35]: I still, I still have a chief of staff. Because, the difference is it's sort of the discussion every time we have some sort of technology evolution is it's not that the jobs the roles don't all go away, they just change? And so yeah, I don't have someone spending all their time building out slides for me and presentations ‘cause I don't need that anymore. But now I need that person that is able to go and find all the different connections between humans in those discussions to help me find out, okay, I should be meeting with this group and this team, and they have an opportunity, and I'm going to be in San Francisco today, I'm going to be in Seattle tomorrow. Those sorts of human connection aspects are still incredibly valuable and has always been a big part of that chief of staff role. But now just like chiefs of staff are not opening up, letters to process, they're doing emails. What It's the same thing. And now they're, they're not building out as many of these presentations because they have the the ability to have a AI take it on for, and share that with me and great. Let's keep moving ‘cause it's allowing us to go faster and make better decisions more quickly.Swyx [00:21:45]: Awesome. Well, so we can dive into more sort of, Productivity insights as you go. I did want to do a little bit of a brief history of colleague and hub. Because, we started here. And then you also involved the NPM acquisition. I did, I do want to touch upon that. And then more recently, I just want to bring up to present day where we're having uptime issues Which transparently we've already Addressed publicly, but we'll, we'll discuss in the pod. Did I miss anything? Like what, any other major highlights? Obviously, it's, it's a lot of years to cover.A Brief History of GitHub: Webhooks, Actions, Acquisitions, and Platform EvolutionKyle [00:22:15]: No the I think one of one highlight was right before the acquisition closed in twenty eighteen, I got to launch the first version of ActionsSwyx [00:22:27]: OhKyle [00:22:27]: At GitHub Universe. So it was OSwyx [00:22:29]: They're that young?Kyle [00:22:30]: It was October of twenty eighteen, I think. Yeah. Yeah.Swyx [00:22:33]: Gee, Jesus.Kyle [00:22:34]: I got to I was the engineering leader on that project and got to launch that. And then, yeah, we did acquisitions of NPM you said, Semmle, Dependabot Pul Panda a whole bunch of things. That was a bigSwyx [00:22:47]: Pul Panda.Kyle [00:22:48]: Abi is doing well.Swyx [00:22:51]: DX. Holy crap.Kyle [00:22:52]: Did well on DX. I and like that was a that was the big shift, after the acquisition. I had to join the sort of business side.Swyx [00:23:00]: So I need to hit you on some of these things ‘cause you were there. Right? And how often do I get to talk to someone who was there? But yeah, Actions. Is that the number one source of security issues on GitHub?Kyle [00:23:11]: Oh, sh I think that the number one source of, security issues is probably like all, the literal code in everyone's like underlying repositories. I would say back further than that is, if you remember I had to show in this graph was this is, I'm, didn't say this before, this is ultimately webhooks.Swyx [00:23:30]: You yeah.Kyle [00:23:31]: Like circa whatever it was.Swyx [00:23:32]: It says Hookshot in there.Kyle [00:23:32]: I forget. Yeah. Yeah, Hookshot's in there. And so like back then, it says GitHub Services. Do you see, it says Hookshot FE for front end, and then it says GitHub Services. GitHub Services back in the old days, right? You we had a repository that was Ruby code, and you could write any Ruby code in there, and then we would execute that On your behalf As a service, and then that way if an if you were trying to integrate with something, it didn't we would run it for you.Swyx [00:23:57]: And of course no containers ‘causeKyle [00:23:58]: No, ‘cause it wasSwyx [00:23:59]: Well, no containersKyle [00:24:00]: Twenty fourteen. And so there was some isolation obviously, but it was mostly the separations on the server level. That's like an example as long as the very old version of Pages, which ran on its own containerization infrastructure, not on Actions.Swyx [00:24:15]: Which like all-time great product.Kyle [00:24:16]: Pages powers the internet at this point to some degree. Those were places where like clearly there were no like issues like to my knowledge. But it was those things where I'm looking at and going “Okay, well we can't be running arbitrary Ruby code,” like on everyone's behalf. Then containerizing all of that up intoUh into actions now where yeah the containerization, is r-really good. The pinning most folks aren't pinning it the like to a particularSwyx [00:24:48]: ImagesKyle [00:24:48]: Sha, et cetera like their workflows, and so that's a big that's a big place Of pain for folks if they're just doing similar to any dependency management, just V1 or newest or latest, I think. But, that journey from that day to “Okay, we're just going to run all this arbitrary code, and, it'll basically be okay,” to now, no, we have, really good containerization. We have a new, underlying, ag-agent, containerization, service. It's like we're using it under the hood. It's through Azure. They recently announced it. The Azure, Dev Compute, but it's, very fast, very fast compute to be able to, spin up your own cloud agents, or whatnot. We're using it under the hood for some parts of the new,Swyx [00:25:36]: Microsoft Dev Box?Kyle [00:25:37]: No. Dev Compute, yeah.Swyx [00:25:41]: Hmm. Not finding it just yet.Kyle [00:25:44]: Oh, it's, it's in there somewhere.Swyx [00:25:46]: All right. Well, we'll cut that out.Kyle [00:25:47]: Sorry. But with, Dev Compute, you can, run, really fast, spin up really, small VMs really quickly, so you're doing a tool callSwyx [00:25:58]: Same conceptKyle [00:25:58]: Just do it containerize exact-exactly. So we're using that so definitely moving that direction to protect us from every every piece of code that we're ultimately running.Swyx [00:26:07]: look, that grows into the full SDLC? Code hosting was just the start and and then it's grown beyond that. Let's talk about NPM may-maybe ‘cause I think that's also, a very major point in the industry. I do think, it was looking for a home. It was, kind of struggling as a business, right? I don't know, I don't know how you would characterize that whole acquisition and how itNPM, Package Security, and Keeping the Internet RunningKyle [00:26:33]: like when we were talking to the team, I think the big thing for the both of us was to find a way to keep NPM, which was basically powering the internet then and way more so now to some degree running. Keep it going keep continuing to scale. It was having scaling problems, if I recall, back at that time. They were doing some rewrites. ItSwyx [00:27:00]: that's cute compared to now.Kyle [00:27:01]: Well, that's the thing is like when I'm talking to folks now, there's there's so many more underlying uses of NPM than there were back when we had them join in with GitHub. But that was ultimately the goal. It was really okay, we used to have pages. We have, the world's code. Let's make sure that we can keep NPM running well for the world. And we put a bunch of time and investment into fixing some of the underlying backend, changes, some of which we talked about some of the manifest work, et cetera. And then now, really trying to bring the the security posture of NPM up to speed. But, it is a unique challenge in that every move that we make to make it more secure will break a lot of people. And security is paramount. And also, we take it very seriously. We're, the any time that we have a problem with GitHub or we make a change that makes us more secure but hurts, there's, a snow day for developers or a really bad fire that they have to go put out. And so we've, have changed the 2FA policies. We've changed the way the tokens work. When we find tokens that have been exposed or potentially, exposed, we invalidate them, andSwyx [00:28:22]: I love that feature in GitHub. Yeah, it's greatKyle [00:28:23]: That creates issues, but, the but that's the thing is we're trying to push the community, forward without necessarily, doing something that is going to break the contract that's been for 15 years or close to it or some amount of years on NPM.Slop Forks, Vendoring, and the Future of Open Source Supply ChainsSwyx [00:28:43]: I think the— So now we're talking about, open source and publishing. And I think there's something here with what people are calling slop forks, which, I think Malta from Vercel is doing. And, part of me thinks, well, the way to get past any vulnerabilities, we just, let's just get rid of the concept of NPM. And we only publish source code. And anytime you want to import it you have your coding agent look at it and then adapt whatever subset you're going to use into your vendor it. But, the AI vendor it. Is that realistic? I don't know. Is it— Will that solve all our security issues? I don't know.Kyle [00:29:24]: I don't think it'll solve I so Mitchell was just talking Mitchell Hashimoto Was just talking about this today, and I think that I-in some ways, it's all all things, old or new again? Yeah, absolutely vendoring everything. Like I do I do remember twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen.Swyx [00:29:42]: This is Yeah. Let's, we must return toKyle [00:29:43]: That's what is We were vendoring everything. We were having actual discussions around, or at least I remember we were “Should we take this full thing?” “Why is this so big? We only need this one file.” And so I do think there's something true there where having either taking only what you need or the dependencies just getting incredibly small over time, I think will help to some degree, but it's not going to solve the fundamental problem, I don't think, because the vulnerabilities in an agent looking at them, there's time and time again, there's a million different ways in which we can convince an agent that this thing is, secure or not and pull it in. Or we can do static code analysis or runtime testing to say whether the code works or not. That is, I think, the step that needs to continue to be, invested in. The question is just on, how much scope. Should it be this enormous project that I'm pulling down, or should it be this piece? Either most companies are running some amount of security checking on the on the packages that they're bringing in or vendoring. That I think won't change. That's like what advanced security does to some degree, Socket does some degree. Like everyone is doing a piece of that. How we each do that like especially when we're talking to enterprise customers, is just like very different. No there's no one wants one single way to do it. And I think that's always been GitHub's, unique position in the world. I talk a lot to maintainers, I talk a lot to folks about this. It's we're— we rarely start like a process and a practice and like push it onto the community. We usually wait for the sort of like RFC process socially or literally, everyone agreeing, and then we'll cement something in. Because otherwise we'reMaintainers, RFCs, Vouching, and the Social Layer of TrustSwyx [00:31:35]: That fits your role in the ecosystem, yeahKyle [00:31:36]: We're GitHub. Yeah, we don't want to shape the whole thing. We want it to be figured out. But like how do you balance that like sort of Role in the industry to keep everything as secure as is possible and make sure that you're you're not going to be compromised as a human, ‘cause that's usually how it all happens. And Not not create a process or lock us into a flow that you're not going to or like Mitchell's not going to or other open source projects aren't going to like. That's always been a tricky balance for us, and I think that's something that we haven't talked about enough is we're not going to be able to fix everything for everyone in a way that everyone is going to like. So tell, help us, tell us what is working. When Mitchell was talking about, the Upvote, the upSwyx [00:32:22]: I was going to bring up his thing. Yeah.Kyle [00:32:23]: I forget what it Yeah. When he's talking to us, I was chatting with him and talking to him about this and I put it on Twitter and we talked to, also over DM, was “We're going to keep working.” but I think the important thing is I do actually want to hear what isn't working for you. And as, be as specific and clear for your project as is possible. And to every piece of credit over the many years that we've known each other through the industry, he's always done that and I appreciate that ‘cause there are places that we need to fix up, and we hear from him, and we'll fix up just like we do all other kinds of maintainers. But that that process between making those types of improvements and being more secure and like creating, I forget what he calls it's not the proof process, not the claims process. Do what I'm talking about? He has that he his projects have a way for you to kind of like,Swyx [00:33:13]: VouchKyle [00:33:13]: Vouch. Thank you. Yeah. He has like the vouch system for saying, “Hey, you should accept my PRs.” That's beenSwyx [00:33:20]: I just built this into GitHub. I don't know.Kyle [00:33:22]: Well, see, but that's the thing is that you say that and like he and his community really likes this and then I'll go talk to other maintainers and other maintainers, globally, and they're “No, this doesn't work for me.” And that is the tension, but also the kind of beauty of GitHub, depending on which way you look at it is we want to help maintainers, so we create all these tools to let you have more control over how much you take in from AI and PRs. But you can also use this. What You can go use this project, and if it takes off and becomes the kind of mostly standard, then yeah, we probably wouldn't enforce it but we would add it in because that's the flow that we tend to do?Swyx [00:34:02]: I hear a lot of people don't know the history of the pull request. And like like that's how, that's something that GitHub standardized basically.Kyle [00:34:08]: Yeah. It was a very messy process Like beforehand, and now the we have the benefit of it being the process? And now we have to go and Figure out the next best process or what adaptations change, or what does a pull request look like when eighty percent of your PRs are just coming from your agents and not From other devs?Swyx [00:34:31]: Do you like the prompt request idea from Peter?Kyle [00:34:34]: like I think that for each like each idea I think has its merits. I'm not, I'm not avoiding saying anything good or bad, but I feel like I've seen a version of we have that we have entire Thomas' store. Take all the assets of what you've built and put that in. I think that's got great ideas. There's all these various permutations of the PR flow, but I think the reason why there's not a single answer is ultimately we're trying to codify trust. We're trying to say “Okay, if Sean reviews this I'm going to trust it because you're Sean or you're the senior dev or you're the whatever.” And right now, when we are working in a flow where an agent writes code and another agent reviews code and then Kyle goes and looks at it the trust is kind of diffuse. And most of the tools that we're talking about are talking more about verification flows. We have more assets to look at, so I can probably say whether this is a good PR or not. But that still doesn't solve, I think, the human problem of I'm looking at a PR and I want to know if I can trust it. And we're still, we still tend to use human signals for that? Mitchell approving it or Kyle approving it or whatever. And so I think that's, I think that's why most of these options haven't really solved it is because, it's a social problem ultimately. It's a it's a human problem to review it and agree. Or you fully trust the tool and you're imbuing that tool with full trust Which I think in some cases that absolutely exists.AI-Generated PRs, Trust, and the Waymo AnalogySwyx [00:36:08]: And so like in the same way that there will be a tipping point in society when we don't allow humans to drive anymore Because machines are measurably better than Than humans. I'm looking for that tipping point, right? Like Mythos is ridiculously expensive. Someday we'll have Mythos on a desktop. I don't know. Will, does that change the equation?Kyle [00:36:30]: I think it's more I took a Waymo here, and I was on my phone and not looking around at all. There are other, self-driving, vehicles that I would not trust while, staring at the road. And I think that trust is something that isSwyx [00:36:48]: Is this a Zoox thing? What is itKyle [00:36:50]: I think that is both. I think that is both. LikeSwyx [00:36:53]: There's Zoox in this robo taxi. That's it. It'sKyle [00:36:56]: Well, depending on what level Of self-driving. But, my point is sort of that I think part of that is I strongly believe that's, a mixture of verifiable proof. Like how many accidents, how much data, and so on, and the human aspect of how I feel when I'm in this car, what it tells me, et cetera. And so that's why I think some of the like Some of these some of our AI tools tend to, imbue me with more of that feeling of trust, even if the data says this is 100% accurate. I feel like it takes more time for us to go, “Should I trust this or not?” And that's in the soft sense of, startups with high agency, weekend projects, and open source. And then there's enterprises and regulated industries and everything else, and that is an even harder problem to go solve because even when it is fully verified, not only do you have to have trust from the humans on the team, you probably have to have trust from multinational,Swyx [00:37:55]: Oh my GodKyle [00:37:55]: Multi governments around the world and regulating agencies. And so that's where I feel like until we tip over to your point on the sort of like human EQ side of it. I feel okay this feels okay I've been proven enough. Then the ball will start to roll a lot faster, where we'll end up getting to the “Okay, we can trust this,” and feel good about it in the Most difficult of cases.Reputation, Sponsors, Stars, and Bot Activity on GitHubSwyx [00:38:18]: If human trust is the thing that matters, I feel like GitHub as the developer social network could maybe do more there. Like vouchers are one system But, we have star counts, and then we have Contributor rights, and that's it. And I feel like there should be more in that space. I don't know if there's any other design decisions there.Kyle [00:38:37]: I think that one of the places that we don't really expose right now in this sort of way is, some degree of like hard trust and support, which would like for me is like sponsors is a good example of that.Swyx [00:38:49]: Ah.Kyle [00:38:49]: It like costs you something. To prove that I believe in your project and I trust you To some degree or I want to support you at the very least.Swyx [00:38:56]: Solve payments for open source. Why not?Kyle [00:38:58]: I think that I think that like as we keep moving forward, right, there's more and more projects where I'm, adding more and more dollars into sponsors personally because I want to like support them, but I also like know of I've probably never met them in person, but, I know of enough of their work that I want to support them. I think the thing that I don't love about stars or commit counts or anything else is ultimately, even with all of the various, abuse and de-spamming and deduplication work that we do or anti-abuse work that we do, these are all, not active social signals. They're passive ones that are ultimately gamifiable. And you may trust me, but another open source maintainer may not. And on what heuristic should you be, trusting me? That I think, is kind of where some of our thinking is right now. What signal from me is most important to you? You— If you can define that potentially, honestly in an agentic workflow that's what we see some of these open source projects do, where you have GitHub actions, and then you have like an agentic workflow that's calling AI, and you're setting these rules. Like if Kyle has submitted and gotten accepted PRs across any given project and has a social handle tied to his account in GitHub, and that social account's older than a certain amount. Really complex measures that matter to you ‘cause most open source projects have that heuristic built into their heads, if not written down in the contributing guidelines. You could take that and then go apply that and then just say, “Oh, we're not going to accept this PR.” Building something that is, I think, malleable to everyone's needs, is a little bit better, rather than going “Hmm, this account's too young.” Because what happens? The attackers just go and go and create a multitude of accounts, and they wait Until it ages up. Needs to have a certain amount of stars. That's how star inflation happens. Need to have a certain amount of reposSwyx [00:40:46]: Oh my God. YeahKyle [00:40:47]: With PRs. They all just create repos and submit PRs to each other, and then they come in and do something nefarious. And so, it's hard. It's hard to find the measure. So I think we're, we're looking more at how can we provide you tools so you can kind of choose what's best for you. And of course, we'll give you some standards. But the trust vector, gets down to I don't know, some version of like human digital ID like everyone's been talking about. Like how do I prove that it's meSwyx [00:41:13]: Give me your eyeballsKyle [00:41:14]: On the internet. Give me your eyeballs. Exactly.Swyx [00:41:18]: The I got to keep moving on Topics, but obviously I can go all day on this stuff because, I've been involved in GitHub and open source My entire professional career. Stars. Very superficial. Everyone knows it. But I think time to one hundred thousand stars is the fastest I've ever seen. Like people just reached that in I don't know, months. And then like at the same time I don't trust it right? Like how many of these are real or bot or like whatever. I don't know how to ask this but like what can we do about it? LikeKyle [00:41:49]: JustSwyx [00:41:49]: Is stars broken? Is stars fine?Kyle [00:41:51]: I think that there's kind of two, there's like two pieces. Obviously we're constantly like trying to find ways in which like your users are producing spam, which would, I would include like be like only doing star gamification. When we find them, we pluck ‘em out and we,Swyx [00:42:08]: But it's like a Whac-A-MoleKyle [00:42:10]: It's a hundred percent like a Whac-A-MoleSwyx [00:42:11]: There's no wayKyle [00:42:11]: Now, powered by AI to be helpful. But I think more so what I'm seeing is, a lot of the like fastest time to X tends to be because we're now inviting so many more people into like software development on GitHub That like the zeitgeist is just swarming? And it'sSwyx [00:42:32]: It's not just developers anymoreKyle [00:42:33]: And it's not you and I. Like like however you want to say like what a developer is it's not just folks who have been coding for a very long time. It's folks that have maybe started coding or only joined in since the AI era. And nowSwyx [00:42:44]: what's the latest Octoverse number? I know eighty million was my lastRem- member that a number of developers on GitHubKyle [00:42:50]: Oh, we're over 200 million now.Swyx [00:42:53]: Okay. Well, so you see?Kyle [00:42:55]: Like over 200 million developers now.Swyx [00:42:56]: But it's not developers, right? It's, it's people with a GitHub account.What Counts as a Developer in the AI Era?Kyle [00:43:00]: So, so this is, this is the biggest debate that I would say, everyone loves to have at GitHub at this point. From my perspective, right, I think that there's, there's clearly a difference between, professional enterprise developer and then developers. But I think that I think that the idea that we should be I don't know, splitting hairs or segmenting developers in the early era of software development is, not worth our not worth the time. SoSwyx [00:43:29]: When you get into gatekeepingKyle [00:43:31]: 100%Swyx [00:43:31]: What is a developer?Kyle [00:43:31]: 100%. ‘Cause I wasn't a developer when I started writing code? I was going toSwyx [00:43:36]: Oh, no. I made— I cloned a thing, seven years before I learned to code. And then I and then I wrote about my learning to code journey, and people Just called me a fraud ‘cause I had a GitHub account. And I'm “Well, no, I just use GitHub, but I don't know-” “I didn't know what I was doing.”Kyle [00:43:49]: I I remember that. I remember those sets of posts, and like that's, that's b******t. So I fight very clearly on the line of, if you create code, if you have an idea and you create it into some way of, I'm, I'm going to run it and use the app right now, you may still use AI in that moment, but that's okay. At some point you're going to do the next thing. You're going to create a big— You're going to have to learn about this database. You're going to fix a bug, whatever. We're all on some same journey, and those people are also hearing about the great new agent skill package or a new CLI tool or a new whatever. And those projects are going up because you want to be a part of this moment, just like I wanted to be a part of the Ruby community when Ruby was popping off when I started becoming a developer, and now I can just click the star button. And so I think that yes, there's clearly some amount of like spamming and game gamification that we're working against, but I really think we're just seeing this whole new cohort of folks that are moving from technology to technology because they're not working on a 20-year-old software application. They're working on a side app that they built on the weekend for their friends or for their new idea or whatever. And that's how you see these enormous charts going up and to the right with With stars.Swyx [00:44:59]: I think something that's remarkable is the persistence or, that GitHub extends to those folks. Usually when I see platforms go into a new audience, they usually have to, have like a second platform with a different name that wraps the main platform. But somehow GitHub has been able to sort of persist and extend, and it's friendly and whatever? So it's, it's nice.Spark, Low-Code, and Always Showing the CodeKyle [00:45:19]: I that's partially why I think as we've tried to move into I don't know, more like low-code-y things. We so we started working on Spark as like a way to, build an app and run it. I think that the reality is that we anytime we try to, kind of put even a veneer on top of it without when we put a veneer on top of something, we still always show you the code. That's kind of like a tenant. We're never going to, hide the code from you ever, because whatSwyx [00:45:52]: Why would you?Kyle [00:45:52]: That's, yeah, that's the whole point? However, I think that what we learned with things like Spark is that really the value of Spark for most devs is, easy runtime. And you may have a runtime or a host that you're going to use for that or you just build something and run it but, the package of making that even more simple isn't really needed for folks that are trying to build software and not just trying to build, an app, which is, slightly different, a slightly different goal. So I want to get you in, I want to get you comfortable. I think the best thing for me as, someone that did not traditionally come into software dev way back, I want anyone to be able to breach that chasm and not be in the I don't know, I feel like we're, we're still in an era of, STEM. I've got a 12-year-old and an eight-year-old, and it's “We got to get ‘em into STEM,”? Over and over. And I like I do, I do the things that good parents do. I was “Oh, you want to do coding?” “Yes, I want to do coding.” Do coding classes. But now they're just not afraid of doing software. And that's, I think, the thing that's honestly kept me at GitHub for so long. Anyone should be able to go and build a thing, just like I can go change a light switch in my house. I'm not going to go into the breaker box ‘cause I'll probably kill myself? But, I can go change that light switch. Everyone should be able to go and say, “This fricking app doesn't do what I want. I want it to work like this.” And that I think, is what's kind of kept us all connected with GitHub through the years and some and during the easiest of times or in the hard times because of that opportunity of, we're the home for all developers, and we want everyone to be able to have that feeling that we've had of, had an idea, I created it and holy s**t here it is.Swyx [00:47:37]: Here it is. All right, I'm going to try to do more spicy questions.GitHub's Hardest Scaling Moment: Growth, Agents, and UptimeKyle [00:47:42]: Great.Swyx [00:47:42]: Is it an easy time now or a hard time?Kyle [00:47:45]: Oh at GitHub? It's a hard time. Like, it's a hard time and also, I was just with my team and I said, “This is also, the best and most exciting time that I think I can remember at GitHub.” BecauseSwyx [00:47:57]: Best of times, worst of times. It's never oneKyle [00:47:59]: ‘cause we've we were talking about Octoverse reports and, usually we do an Octoverse report once a year, and we look at the numbers, and we say, “Oh my goodness.” I was at Universe in October saying, “This was the fastest year of growth that we've ever had,” right? And now we're doing more in a month than we did in a year last year.Swyx [00:48:20]: You're talking about PRs.Kyle [00:48:21]: Commits.Swyx [00:48:21]: Commits, yeah.Kyle [00:48:22]: PRs. Kind of like you name it by roughly every measure that we're looking at, there's some amount of sort of growth that is much bigger, and that is breaking our system in new ways, not old ways. Like webhooks were always notoriously, unreliable over the years?Swyx [00:48:38]: Whose fault is that?Kyle [00:48:39]: not anymore mine, but for a period of time, I'm sure you could pull up a tweet that was “It was me. I'm sorry.” but, now, that got rewritten at a scale level that is still working and is not having problems today. Now what we're finding isn't just the isn't the-The simple stuff that folks are on the sometimes on Twitter or on the internet are “Hey, why is this like this?” Sure. There's absolutely silly problems that we shouldn't exist. But now we're talking about, unique, novel permission problems that happen only at a scale across all different objects or whatever, that now we have to go rewrite this underlying system. And so it's, there are problems that yeah, caught us off guard, which I think I said. Like the growth is astronomical, but also we're making such material progress in that I'm excited once we're once we've kind of like reimagined the underlying foundation layer, or pieces of it at least, what's going to be possible when it's not just all of us and all the new people that are being developers and all of their agents and all the tools like working together. Because that'll still happen in that in that GitHub tool, that GitHub community. But it's a it's a hard day anytime we can't give you what you're looking for. We have the same problem internally. We operate through github. Com. Of course, we have backups when things go down and whatnot for our own operations but we feel it too. If it's not working it's not working for us, and that's kind of like the promise of dogfooding for GitHub. It's always been true. We're using the same tool you're using. We're not using a super secret version. We and so we also need it to be great for us for our customers of course for open source. And now an exponential growth of agents, Doing it too.Swyx [00:50:32]: I wanted to load for audio listeners who maybe haven't seen your tweets, whatever. So one billion commits in twenty-five. Now it's two hundred and seventy-five million per week on pace for fourteen billion this year, if growth remains linear. Is that still the pace? I don't know. It's been aKyle [00:50:48]: it's, it's speedingSwyx [00:50:50]: Roughly.Kyle [00:50:50]: It's still speeding up.Swyx [00:50:51]: It's, it's April, so yeah.Kyle [00:50:51]: Exactly. This was in April.Swyx [00:50:53]: All right. So basically you have fourteen x growth, right? Year on year on year. And I think that's a scaling issue. I think, I'm going to like try to really steel man this thing. People have experienced fourteen x growth. They haven't had your downtime. And that's like— C-can we go dig into that? Why? Like what's the— what broke? What are we doing to fix it? Like just anything for the community to reassure them.Why GitHub Reliability Is Breaking in New WaysKyle [00:51:18]: so there's a Like I was saying, there's a couple different places that we've seen the growth issues. Some of the growth issues, which is why we're t— I was talking about pushing hard on more CPUs is in actions in particular. More tools, more agents, more PRs mean more builds, more builds mean more CPUs. And so we are expanding through not just our data center, but obviously we were talking about moving to Azure and moving to, adding an additional cloud compute because we simply need more CPUs. Not as much GPUs. We definitely need GPUs too, but now CPUs are becoming a factor.Swyx [00:51:53]: It's very CPU heavy.Kyle [00:51:54]: Underneath the hood when it comes to some of the underlying services, we've been breaking up over the years our database infrastructure, so that way we have, more cognitive separation between our the various services. The place that we continue to have pain is in, permissioning. And so right now m-many of our permissioning layers sit into a database that we like internally call MySQL One, and old Hubbers will know what I'm talking about. And so we've been pulling things out of MySQL One for many years, because like and we use we use Vitess and we use other technologies to shard and we do it as one bigSwyx [00:52:31]: Famous thing, PlanetScale was born from this andKyle [00:52:32]: A hundred percent. Sam Old Hubber and friend. And so finding these opportunities to like break this out and then do that globally. The other thing that I think is interesting and both a unique opportunity and tricky is we also run everything I just talked about in a black box container with GitHub Enterprise Server for people that work on-prem. So we take everything I just said, and we also do it on-prem, and we also do all of that and we do it in a data residence setup for customers that need to have their data in a single location. Each of these has the unique characteristic around how we're sort of storing that data in MySQL or in a permissioning setup. That's where some of these outages have oc-occurred, where you're seeing it more like across the board rather than just like the one pieceSwyx [00:53:17]: Filling the databaseKyle [00:53:17]: Isn't quite working. Exactly. And so part of it is that. I think there's been some other places where agents are much more or more projects appear to be moving towards monorepo versus we were going the other direction for many years in the industry. Repos were smaller, but there were more of them, and now we're seeing the opposite. Repos are bigger, and there's, not fewer of them per se ‘cause there's new growth, but, we're just seeing many more big repos. Big repos, big monorepos have always had, a unique performance problem. Because each one, is slightly different if, particularly if the underlying blobs are incredibly big Inside the repos. And so we've done a ton of work that you pro— like most people haven't probably experienced, unless you're in this case of the monorepo. But that Git, infrastructure layer improvement does help the overall, system because, many of the improvements that make monorepos work better make all repo infrastructure work better. And so, I could kind of keep going down the line where it's another thing where we're moving out of, We're changing how we do j I'll just say job queuing for lack of a better, explanation changing the underlying technologies there.Swyx [00:54:32]: I spent two years being a job queuing guy, so.Kyle [00:54:34]: And so it's kind of a little bit of a little bit of piece by piece, and it's mostly because as we were— as it was built, we built everything in a way that assumed, I guess in some ways that the size of the pipe of work was going to remain the same. There's just going to be more people coming through each of those pipes. But instead now in places whereA git push was, generally a certain size for example, is now, no longer true.Swyx [00:55:03]: Oh, yeah.Kyle [00:55:03]: OrSwyx [00:55:05]: I push a thousandKyle [00:55:06]: On the average. 100%Swyx [00:55:06]: A thousand line commits like dailyKyle [00:55:07]: Same thing with PRs. Like PRs same thing. And like we've talked about optimizing that and making changes where, and there were technology choices that did not work there? And it got slow, and it didn't It was not fast. It did not do what the users wanted. And so we've been reeling that all out and going “Okay, that's just not right. Let's stop putting good money after bad and do it the do it the right way or the right way now.” So there's It's a it's a lot of things, not quite when I've experienced scale at GitHub historically, it's almost always two options that we've used. We go vertical scaling, particularly with databases, right? And we go horizontal scaling. Oh, we just have more people using this service. Great. We're going to add more servers, and we rack them in our data center, or we use it in a cloud. And now we're sort of in a like diagonal, where like vertical doesn't really work anymore. Horizontal isn't work either because we're all We all have some CPU or GPU constraints in the world now, and now we have to go in and like crack open services that have been running for 10 or 15 years and go, “Okay, the rules of this service have legitimately changed, and now we have to rewrite them.” None of this is an excuse. This is like we're We have to do the work. We have to make it better.Swyx [00:56:22]: actually as an infra guy, I'm “This is like one of the most fascinating scaling challenges I've ever seen.”Kyle [00:56:26]: That's that's, that's the thing that's the thing that it's hard for Like when we weren't talking about it publicly, and I was like I came out, and I was “Hey, I just want to explain what's going on.” Part of it comes from a very old GitHub ethos, which is it's our it's our uptime. It's down. W What I know you're a developer, so you're, you're inclined to want to understand more what's going on. But at the same time us going “Hey, this service didn't, perform the way we expected, and now we have to go change it,” we weren't We're not trying to hide anything from you i

En este episodio a cargo de Alexnation y Gatonejo tenemos como tópico VERSUS de Personajes Icónicos. Además, como de costumbre discutimos las noticias más relevantes, mencionamos los juegos a publicarse, y compartimos con ustedes lo que hemos estado haciendo, jugando, viendo, y/o leyendo. 

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found.Special GuestDonny ComedianJohn GrimesThis Week We DiscussBlack Tacos vs Mexican TacosTaco Bell vs Dell TacoCool Ranch vs Nacho CheeseS/o To Our SponorsHIMSHIMS.com/squaddReady to reach your goals? Visit hims.com/SQUADD to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you.Better HelpYou don't have to say yes to everything this summer. Find support in therapy.Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com/SQUADDBlue ChewRight now, when you buy two months of BlueChew Gold, you get the third for FREE with promo code SQUADD. That's promo code SQUADD. Visit BlueChew.com for more details and important safety information, and we thank BlueChew for sponsoring the podcast.Cash AppNew Cash App customers can earn $10 if they use code CASHAPP10 in their profile at signup and send $5 to afriend within 14 days. Terms apply.

The new AIEWF website is live! CFPs close in 2 days and we will run our first New Engineer Orientation this weekend, get your tickets booked ASAP as they -will- sell out. Take the AI Engineering Survey and get >$2k in credits and free AIE WF tickets!One of the central tensions in the agents industry is that even while there are major decacorn agent labs like Sierra, Decagon, Notion and Cursor being built up, it is also true that it has never been easier to DIY agents, with a plethora of agent frameworks like LangGraph and Pydantic and Flue, and managed agents from Anthropic and Gemini and Amazon. There has been a wave of companies building their own background agents from Shopify to Stripe to Paradigm to Razorpay, and even Cognition's friends Ramp have built their own coding agent with other friend Modal.You'd think Cognition might feel a bit threatened, but they're not - even after all this, they were way oversubscribed for the $1B Series D they just announced:Walden Yan, coiner of context engineering and Chief Product Officer/Cofounder of Cognition, invited OpenInspect's Cole Murray to talk about why the Devin is in the Details.Full conversation live on the pod today: In retrospect, async agents were the most AGI pilled bet you could make in 2024 - the models weren't good enough yet to vibecode, and people didn't trust AI enough to let it rip, nobody (including early Cognition) was sure about the form factors. Now it is obvious:* The first wave of AI coding tools made the developer faster but remain heavily in the loop. Copilor and Cursor's tab autocomplete are prime examples However, the workflow was still heavily centered around and bottlenecked by the developer's local workflow: a developer in an IDE, watching the model, accepting or rejecting changes, and pushing code one interaction at a time.* The second wave was local agents: Claude Code, Windsurf, Cursor's agents pane: first one and increasingly many terminals all running concurrently.* The current Age of Async Agents points to a different future focused more on agent orchestration which drives end-to-end development.According to previous guest Steve Yegge, there are finer-grained 8 levels to agent adoption, but we have collapsed it into three.As Cursor's Michael Truell put it in The third era of AI software development:Cursor is no longer primarily about writing code. It is about helping developers build the factory that creates their software. This factory is made up of fleets of agents that they interact with as teammates: providing initial direction, equipping them with the tools to work independently, and reviewing their work.The agent should not sit solely inside the developer's flow. It should be setup to work in the background so that you can give it a task, a repo, a machine, a shell, a browser, tests, memory, and review loops to go do the work somewhere else.In less than a year, the sentiment has shifted from avoiding multi-agent systems:to suggesting approaches that actually work:From coining “context engineering” to building the infrastructure behind Devin's 7x PR growth and jump from 16% to 80% of commits across Cognition repos, Walden Yan has had a front-row seat to the background-agent shift. In this episode, Cognition co-founder and CPO Walden Yan joins swyx alongside Cole Murray, creator of OpenInspect, to unpack why everyone is building their own Devin, what changed after the December 2025 model inflection, and why “spec to pull request” is now becoming a real production workflow.We go deep on the architecture of background agents: harness-in-the-box vs out-of-the-box, why Devin separates the “brain” from the machine, why repo setup is still one of the hardest problems, why Docker is not always enough, and how full VMs, snapshots, scoped secrets, GitHub bots, Slack integrations, and video-based testing all fit together. Walden and Cole also dig into memory, MCP limitations, multi-agent orchestration, AI code review, SRE auto-triage, PMs shipping code from Slack, Windsurf 2.0, hybrid frontier/sub-frontier systems, and the real failure mode of uncontrolled vibe coding: your codebase regressing to your worst engineer.And as agents eat software… and software eats the world… you can draw the conclusion on what is next:We discuss:* Why the engineering world is waking up to background agents and cloud agents* The December 2025 model inflection that made spec-to-PR workflows practical* Devin's 7x merged PR growth and rise from 16% to 80% of commits* Why Cole built OpenInspect as an open-source background-agent system* The economics of $20/seat agent products and why monetization is tricky* What Cognition actually sells beyond Devin: infra, onboarding, integrations, and adoption* Harness in the box vs out of the box, and why architecture matters* Why Devin separates the brain from the machine for security and permissions* Repo setup, scoped secrets, Docker Compose, and agent-ready dev environments* Why full VMs matter when agents need to run real applications and test them* Android, macOS, Windows, nested virtualization, and machine-specific agent work* Why testing is much harder than “computer use”* Screenshots, video verification, and the “I know it works” merge moment* GitHub UX, Devin Review, AI reviewers, and agents responding to PR comments* Why MCP alone is not enough for first-class Slack and enterprise integrations* Memory, Knowledge, skills, Claude.md, and why retrieval is still unsolved* Devin's auto-generated memories and the challenge of memory pruning* Always-on agents as permanent PMs for issues, tickets, and product areas* Sub-agents, meta-Devin management, and what multi-agent systems actually add* Why pure auto-merge vibe coding breaks down after about two weeks* AI code smells, lint rules, reward hacking, and Semgrep for agent-written code* GitAI, inline context, and preserving the “why” behind code changes* Local testing, mock servers, older codebases, and preparing companies for agents* Windsurf 2.0 and the handoff between local foreground agents and cloud background agents* SRE auto-triage, support workflows, and agents as first responders* PMs, marketing, and non-engineers creating pull requests from Slack* AI agent budgets, $1k-$5k per engineer spend, and hybrid frontier/sub-frontier systems* The rise of autonomous coding factories and who Cognition is hiringWalden Yan* X: https://x.com/walden_yan* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/waldenyan/Cole Murray* X: https://x.com/_colemurray* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colemurray/* OpenInspect / Background Agents: https://github.com/ColeMurray/background-agentsTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction00:00:43 Why Everyone Is Building Their Own Devin00:01:57 Devin's 2025 Ramp: 7x PR Growth and 80% of Commits00:03:49 OpenInspect and the Rise of Open-Source Background Agents00:07:59 What Cognition Actually Sells Beyond Devin00:09:56 Background Agent Architecture: Harness In vs Out of the Box00:12:08 Separating the Brain from the Machine00:14:07 Repo Setup, Secrets, Docker, and Full VMs00:19:13 Why Testing Is Harder Than Computer Use00:22:40 Video Verification and the “I Know It Works” Merge Moment00:23:19 GitHub UX, Devin Review, and AI Code Review00:25:42 MCP, Slack, and Enterprise Agent Integrations00:28:59 Memory, Knowledge, and Always-On Agents00:36:16 Sub-Agents, Multi-Agent Orchestration, and Meta-Devin00:43:55 Vibe Coding, Auto-Merge, and Codebase Decay00:48:38 Agent Infra, VPCs, Cloud Providers, and Fast VM Restore00:52:25 AI Code Smells, Reward Hacking, and Code Review Systems00:56:10 Making Codebases Agent-Ready00:58:30 Windsurf 2.0 and the Local-to-Cloud Agent Handoff01:01:15 SRE Auto-Triage, PMs Shipping Code, and Agent Use Cases01:04:32 Agent Budgets, Hybrid Models, and Autonomous Coding Factories01:06:51 Hiring at Cognition and OpenInspect Consulting01:07:45 OutroTranscriptIntroduction: Walden Yan, Cole Murray, and Context EngineeringSwyx [00:00:00]: All right, we're in the studio with Walden Yan, co-founder of Cognition, CPO.Walden [00:00:08]: Happy to be here.Swyx [00:00:09]: Which is a cool title. And coiner of context engineering.Walden [00:00:15]: Although I think there are many people who'd used the terms in various ways beforehand, but I did find that people, both internally and externally, enjoyed the upgrade from prompt engineering or model wrapping into maybe a more thoughtful way to build agents.Swyx [00:00:33]: For those who haven't caught up on that, I have on screen the Don't Build Multi-Agents post, which you should go read on and we might refer to, and Cole Murray, who created OpenInspect.Cole [00:00:43]: Great to be here.Swyx [00:00:43]: So let's talk about it. Everyone is building their own Devins. What's going on?The December Shift: From Handholding Models to Autonomous PRsCole [00:00:51]: So I think the engineering world is waking up to this idea of background agents, cloud agents, whatever you'd like to call it. And I think we saw a shift around the December timeframe of 2025, where the models Opus 4.5 and GPT 5.2, they reached a capability where we moved away from handholding the model and being able to actually more or less autonomously drive the model. And what I mean by that is that we could pretty much go from a specification to a completed pull request, assuming the spec was good enough, with very little friction. And that paradigm alone, I think, changed a lot of how we interact with agents, and opened this world where background agents became more practical.Swyx [00:01:41]: I think for Cole, everyone experienced this in December, but I feel like there was just this increasing ramp, right? There was this moment which was, I think, Sonnet 3.7, where, You guys rewrote Devin in one night or something. So describe 2025 or how it felt from your side.Walden [00:02:01]: In retrospect, we always thought it was ramping up, but then even now, over the last three, four months from today, it's been ramping up even faster. So it's almost funny to be talking about how, big of a leap Sonnet 3.7 was, and honestly, a lot of it was stripping out parts of Devin that were no longer needed with that jump in of intelligence. But I also just think that a lot of the recent leaps, especially, you look at, models like Opus and the latest GPT models, they are reaching levels of autonomy where people are actually finding that they actually can just be hands-off. And people who were once debating, “Oh, do I need to be in the weeds with my model in the IDE? Can I just completely move it off into the cloud?” That's a more serious conversation, and we've seen that in all of our growth charts. Internally there's this funny graph where our usage has, of PRs, our merged PRs, has grown 7X since I forget what it was called.Swyx [00:02:57]: I think Dev, maybe tweeted that. Yes.Walden [00:03:01]: it grew like 7X over, the last, I think it was, two months, three months, something like that. And then you see our engineering headcount growth. It's, gone up by, 10% or something.Swyx [00:03:11]: We were, we were afraid To release this. So this is Devin commit percentages on all Devin repos, was 16% in January and now 80% in March.Walden [00:03:25]: It's a big shift right now. And so it makes sense that a lot of people are now thinking about, buying Devin, but also maybe, trying to build their own and there's Lots of I have a lot of fun building Devin, so I can see why other people would want to build their own cloud agents as well. Matt, well, maybe it's good to hear, what initially inspired you to try to build OpenInspect?OpenInspect: Ramp, Cloud Agents, and Open SourceCole [00:03:49]: OpenInspect came about, through primarily my clients observing how they were using tools like Claude, OpenAI's Codex at the time, and seeing some of the friction that they were having with it. Primarily the Claude was being used through Slack, and a big issue they ran into was that the sessions that were launched were specific to whoever called it via Slack. And so if a PM was the one who invoked the session and they would then go to pass context to engineering can't see the session. And that in itself was a deal breaker because the PM, “Hey, engineering, can you jump in?” But there's nothing to jump in on unless they're copy-pasting out or the single response that came back. And so seeing some of these problems, I had built a similar architecture internally, just to experiment with, test out different ideas as this trend of moving off of localhost was starting to become, And as Ramp released their blog post, I had a lot of the pieces for this already in place, and just thought it would be funny to, see what Claude could do just purely from the blog post. And on my X account, there's actually a thread of where I live tweeted, going through thisCole [00:05:14]: comparing GPT and Claude as both of them are going through it.Swyx [00:05:17]: On the announcement thing or something else?Cole [00:05:19]: right after it got released. We can put it in the show notes. Yeah, it was helpful that I had already knew how to verify the system. I knew what I was looking for. I think Ramp did a great job of really illustrating, the technical aspects of how to build something. It was much more than just like, “Hey, we built a great system.” It was, “And here's how you can build it too.” And so, I resonated a lot with that, just with the problems that I was already seeing, and I thought that, looking around, I didn't really see anything in the open source community that, met this type of system. I think there's a lot that run, in localhost like Superset, Conductor, and many others.But nothing that was actually running in the cloud. And so, I built it, and I thought it was interesting to just open source it and allow anyone to then have a foundation that they can mix and match on top of.The Business of Background Agents: Open Source vs. DevinSwyx [00:06:16]: So literally after Devin was launched was, there was OpenDevin Which became All Hands. I don't know if you tried that orWalden [00:06:22]: I was going to say, one of the things that interested me a lot with OpenInspect was, you didn't try to go make it then something you monetize. There are a lot of, I think, these open source projects would then go and really try to, raise VSwyx [00:06:36]: That's why no OpenDevin. Yeah.Walden [00:06:38]: yeah, and how did you think about that? I thought that was very interesting.Cole [00:06:44]: I thought, and just what I had seen across my clients, was that having a background agent system is going to become a critical infrastructure within their company. And so because of that, I think that I wanted to open source it so that they could fork it and put in whatever customization they wanted. To that question though, I get asked all, “Oh, are you going to raise? Are you going to turn this into a service?”Walden [00:07:08]: I'm sure you've gotten offers.Cole [00:07:09]: but primarily I don't want to do that for a few reasons. One, I think that I don't want to compete for, $20 a seat. I think that is just a really difficult business. I think it's very easy to copy the main pieces of it. Again, I built this fairly quickly. And I think because you are not owning, I guess, the entire stack, it's hard to monetize. You have money being made at the sandbox layer with Daytona, E2b, many other players. You have money being made at the model layer. And you sit in this weird in-between gray area where what are you actually selling? You're selling, I guess, the infrastructure. You're selling, the integrations maybe.Swyx [00:07:55]: let's ask the guy. What are you What are you selling?Walden [00:07:59]: Well, yeah, there's multiple layers to this in practice, and actually it's funny you mentioned the infrastructure, ‘cause when we got started building Devin as well, we had to go figure out how to make the infrastructure as well because,Swyx [00:08:10]: You had to build this two years before everyone else,?Swyx [00:08:15]: Including, the model sideWalden [00:08:17]: It was not, it was not very polished at the start, when we just built it off of raw VMs from cloud providers like EC2, the boot up time was so slow, I think, And especially then, turning off the machines, saving them, and then to be able to bring them back up again when the, when you want Devin to wake up again later. It would just be out cold for like 10 minutes because that's just how long these systems took. They were not built for this repeated down and up usage. And so we actually had to go do all of that. And as a result now, one thing we offer when we go and sell Devin to people is, you don't have to worry about all the compute side of things. We'll make it work. We'll make it work in your cloud if you want it to. But aside from the product, and I want to go into the agents and the tuning of the intelligence part later, but I think a big part of what we do at Cognition as well is to just make sure that your company learns and uses and adopts these coding agents. ‘Cause I think for especially the largest enterprises in the world, you find that there is a lot of people who want to move over to using AI for their day-to-day workloads. But because of the way projects are planned, because, not everyone is literate in using AI in these ways, having a team of engineers who can actually go in and onboard you, set up all the integrations you need, the automations you need to really get to that level of, leverage with AI, is super helpful. And so We do that. We show thought partners to the customers that we work with as well.Swyx [00:09:56]: So let's talk about, architectural stuff. I think that's always, that is something that was the topic of conversation between the two of you. Is this, the mental model that you want to start with or something else? I'll just leave the floor open to you guys.Agent Architecture: Harness in the Box vs. Out of the BoxCole [00:10:11]: I think, maybe we can start here as just a general what are the pieces of a background agent system. And then maybe we can go into some of the nuances of, Decisions that you can make.Swyx [00:10:22]: But I guess I also Like, what, maybe what Walden is saying is the agent is like in this open code box, I guess. Right? This is infra, and then there's, that's the agent. And you had this discussion about whether you put the agent in here or in Out externally. Can you tease that out?Cole [00:10:39]: In a background agent systems, you have a decision to make of where the agent is actually going to run. This is typically described as the harness in the box or out of the box. With running the agent in the box, you're making some trade-offs by doing that. The negative trade-off you're making is primarily security. Because the agent is running in that box, unless you otherwise design it, all of your secrets need to go into that box as well. And given the nature of AI, it can be unpredictable, and you could very easily end up accidentally exfilling your secrets, or other unintended behavior. Now, the out of the box is the idea that we are going to have the actual agent running not directly in the sandbox, and we will have, quote-unquote, the brain of the agent running in some type of worker, control plane. That sandbox then is going to serve as the hands where the brain is basically operating and making tool calls into that environment to manipulate it. I guess other trade-off that you're making between the two systems is that, in my opinion, running it out of the box is much more complex because, you have state that has to be managed, whereas if you're running it in the box, all of the state of that agent is actually in the box, and yes, it's you could persist it elsewhere, but it's all localized and you have less concerns to worry about.Walden [00:12:08]: I think a lot of that, what you mentioned, is why we actually from the start built Devin to what we called separate the brain from the machine. The other thing that this allows you to do is reuse any existing infrastructure you have for dev boxes Perhaps. And so you don't have to worry as much about making a new type of dev box that has all the dependencies the brain needs, as you mentioned, the secrets the brain needs as well. One thing that we've seen some customers run into is, you have a GitHub app and you want Devin, your agent, whatever, be able to interact with GitHub through this application, but then you have different users with different actual permissions. If they are all interacting through the same GitHub app and there's no actual, separation between the system that decides, what it does and the actual secrets on the machine, then you run into an issue where, okay, it's hard to do the separation. But in practice, with Devin, it's much easier because we just say whatever you put on the machine, that is, the scope of basically what the user is free to do, what the agent is free to do. So only put the most scoped secrets on that machine, and then the brain is fully not accessible from the machine. So you don't have to worry about messing with the, any of the most secure parts of the brain if the user is free to do whatever they want with the machine.Swyx [00:13:31]: I was going to just bring, I have this, chart from OpenAI, where I don't know if this is, in the box, out of the box. That is something that they do use to describe it. And then also recently Anthropic did, managed agentsSwyx [00:13:44]: Which is, this is their thing. I don't know. It's all, it's all variations of the same pattern, right?Cole [00:13:49]: So this would be out of the box.Swyx [00:13:51]: Which, is preferable for them because it's less work?Cole [00:13:56]: I would say it's more work.Swyx [00:13:58]: It's more work?Cole [00:13:58]: But it, in my opinion, it is the better architecture of the two. It's just, you're taking on a bit of complexity by doing that.Repo Setup, Docker, and VM-Based Development EnvironmentsWalden [00:14:07]: One thing I've not seen a lot of other players do well is how do you manage what's actually on the box? And this can be complex for many reasons. Let's say you have a big repository that's changing and updating a lot with changing dependencies. How do you make sure that the working environment of the agent actually stays up to date, has all the credentials it needs to, let's say, run the app and test it, and all the things you want your autonomousSwyx [00:14:34]: So a repo setup.Walden [00:14:35]: Exactly. So in, internally At Cognition, we call this repo setup.Cole [00:14:39]: The hardest part ofWalden [00:14:40]: It's been a perennial problem since the start of the company, of how do we help people get this set up? Because not everyone just has, working cloud environments working out of the box. And do you find this to be a common problem withSwyx [00:14:53]: How do you solve it?Walden [00:14:53]: Your clients?Cole [00:14:54]: This is a very common problem, and through my consulting, this is a lot of what I help teams do. A lot of teams don't really have great developer environment setups, if any. A lot of the times it's, “Go talk to Bob and get the secrets,” and that obviously doesn't work when the agent needs to actually set this up. And so a lot of that, most teams are using Docker Compose or some type of microservices. And so for theSwyx [00:15:19]: Even in prod?Cole [00:15:20]: Not in prod. With the OpenInspect, you are using this primarily to interact, and make code changes. There is other use cases, but you can hook, whether through CLI, MCPs, other tools, you can then hook that into your production systems primarily for, SRE type use cases. But you are not, necessarily, trying to test your prod internal microservice through the system.Walden [00:15:48]: And you mentioned Docker Compose. I think one direction we saw some of our friends take early on was, using Docker containers as the level of abstraction for their models. There's lots of reasons, I think, why Docker containers are not great. One thing is, Docker container's not really a true security boundary, for one. But the other is, if you are running real applications, a lot of times those applications use Docker, and then you have to think about Docker in Docker, which is, really weird. And so I think part of, the really hard challenge of getting VMs to work, why did we do that? Well, it was because we realized that you actually needed, full VMs to be able to do these types of things. And especially nowadays where there's actually value in running the application and clicking around and sending you screen recordings of these things. The value just, keeps adding on top of that. But it is a decision I see people run into when they try to build their own systems, is, “Oh, do we, in addition to this, do we put the agent in the machine or out of the machine? Do we use Docker? Do we use something else?” What do you recommend people nowadays?Cole [00:16:57]: I think Docker is a good solution for maybe not running the agent, but running your infrastructure, because that is more or less the same setup your engineers are probably already using. If they're not, then I don't know what they're using. But they're probably already using Docker Compose.Swyx [00:17:14]: I've always had a small candle for web containers. I don't know if you guys have tried them before.Swyx [00:17:19]: To me, they were, supposed to be like Docker Light.Cole [00:17:22]: Is it?Swyx [00:17:22]: I don't know.Cole [00:17:22]: No, I haven't tried it. But yeah, I think any environment that you've set up that is a good experience for your developer naturally lends itself to being easy to set up for the agent. And once you figure out that local developer story, you've more or less solved the agent in a sandbox, environment setup. OpenInspect does have hooks as well, where you can, run a setup SH script that will pre-install everything. You can then pre-snapshot that build so it starts instantly, and then there is a second hook to actually then, restore the state of the sandbox when it comes back. And so you can already have all of those microservices running and basically get the same experience that you would on your machine within the sandbox.Testing Agents: Computer Use, Screenshots, and Real App WorkflowsWalden [00:18:08]: Another thing that we've been thinking a lot about is like Different VM service offerings. Have you had customers where they needed like macOS specific VMs or like Windows specificWalden [00:18:20]: VMs?Walden [00:18:22]: There are like many technologies in the world that only work on specific types of machines, right? If you're building a.NET application that has to run on Windows or like, maybe more commonly if you want to build iOS or macOS Does that workSwyx [00:18:32]: Does Commission supportSwyx [00:18:33]: Choices like that?Walden [00:18:35]: The fundamental architecture we do, because we do the separation, it does support, but the actual work in progress is happening right now on these. Another thing that we've actually recently added support now for, it's in beta, is doing Android development. To do that, we needed to support, I think, nested virtualization within our machines because the VM itself is like a, is a virtualized Firecracker instance, and then you had to then run another Android emulator inside. And there's like weird performance issues that like, it, which is why it's like still in beta. We have to think through these problems, but it unlocks a lot for anyone who wants to do Android development.Swyx [00:19:13]: I was trying to find like a reference video for the testing thing. I couldn't find it, but I think you worked on the testing, capability. Why call it testing and not like computer use or I don't know, it's, what's the general Category of problem?Walden [00:19:26]: I think that when people think about the ability of an AI to run your app and test it, I think they actually over-index on the computer use part of it because computer use in my mind is the literal, okay, you want what button you want to click. Can you emit the right coordinates to go click that button? I think testing is actually a really interesting likeWalden [00:19:48]: Problem-solving, challenge for these AIs because if you wanted to do arbitrary testing, imagine you make a change that spans the frontend and the backend, maybe, even some other like even more deeply nested service. To actually test that change, we have to reason through what-- how do you first run these applications to orchestrate with each other with the right version of the code? Then, okay, how do I trigger the feature or how do I make the thing actually happen? And this can get arbitrarily hard, maybe you have to be an admin. Maybe a certain thing has to be feature flagged on. Maybe, you have to like run two sessions and then send us a very specific word into one of them to trigger a specific behavior. And figuring out how do you do that requires a lot of code base context, requires, a lot of orchestration that we've specifically done. And in some cases, we found that you actually, no one frontier model can actually do this full end-to-end task itself.Walden [00:20:42]: We've seen cases where we actually had to orchestrate different frontier models together to solve this problem together. That is where we spend most of our time when we think about this testing problem, not so much the computer use part. Computer use for what it's worth has gotten a lot better with recent models and it's made that part of the job certainly easier.Swyx [00:20:58]: Especially with like even 4.7, that they released yesterday, apparently like way better in terms of the vision stuff, which is going to be encompassing computer use.Walden [00:21:08]: Having evals for all these as well is something that like takes a while to build up. And having the evals be right is tricky as well. Do you ever see like, clients who are building their own agents have to start standing up evals to make sure things don't regress?Swyx [00:21:25]: Not so much evals in the traditional sense, but specific to the testing part that has just gone in. I just added support for screenshots And in theory you can also do video. I need to put in a plugin to do that. But they do show up natively, and it was a very heavily requested feature, especially after Cursor's recording came out. I think that was very enlightening for everyone of like, “Oh, this is a very good feature to actually have.”, I think with Devin you guys have had this for a while.Swyx [00:21:57]: Oh, yeah. See how screenshots work. Yeah, I don't know if there's anything, super and not obvious. It's like once what feature to build, you can just prompt it and it Will mostly work.Walden [00:22:09]: I think to Walden's point, though, the computer use is a subset of the larger testing problem, and I think that's very specific to the code base that you're working and it's not something that, out of the box that you could just solve it. The-- you do need the code base context to actually know how to test it. And I think in the case of a background agent system, you fortunately do have that code base locally that what is changing and could then inspect it and use that to drive the model.Swyx [00:22:40]: For those who haven't seen it before, this is an example of how it works. You, after the PR is done, you click testing approved, and then it sends you back a video. What I really like is that it labels, It's very small here, but it actually labels what it's testing. And then it-- and then you actually see the cursor and everything. So I don't know, yeah, the engineering in this, just Whatever you want to show. ‘cause this is like, this is one of those like, oh, few of the AGI moments, right? ‘cause Once I look at this, I actually don't I wish I can just merge inside Of Slack instead of going to GitHub ‘cause I don't need to see the code. I know it works.Walden [00:23:19]: Maybe a new feature in Cursor. Yeah, the annotations at the bottom was also a big difference for me when I, when I added those.Swyx [00:23:27]: It's just like, what am I looking at? What are you trying to demonstrate?Walden [00:23:30]: Exactly. There's a surprisingly long tail of small details that ends up making a big difference for this end metric of like how fast do you actually merge the code in. One experience that we spent a lot of time tuning early on was what is the right experience on GitHub for these tools. Because I think, most tools out there when you build the agent, you'll think about, oh, it'll create the PR for you. We try to take that a step further and say, “Oh, what if we actually made sure you could interact Devin, with direct Devin directly on GitHub?” And so we made sure that you can comment on GitHub, and Devin would actually receive those comments and address them back. But there's actually quite a bit of tuning you have to do here because you can imagine that actually like-We recently have Devin Review, for example. Devin Review will post comments on his own PR And then Devin has to then goGitHub Workflows: Devin Review, Comments, and PR AutomationSwyx [00:24:23]: He answers his own comments, which is Really loopy. So like, yeah, I like that it just updates here that it's, that I have commented But usually it's just me saying like, “Hey, merged, fix any merge conflicts.”Walden [00:24:37]: The, so when Devin fixes his own comments, you might be scared that, oh, maybe I'll infinite loop. But we've put a lot of work into making sure it doesn't, both by making sure that the comments are high signal, but also that the agent is thoughtful about what comments it immediately goes and tries to fix, and what comments it's like, “Wait a second, I think you're wrong.” Actually, that's one of my favorite moments is when Devin tells me that I'm wrong, when I try to get it to do something different. But tuning that behavior, actually makes a big difference in terms of how useful the actual GitHub experience is.Cole [00:25:06]: I think to touch on that as well, I think having the AI reviewer integrated into the system is a critical part of this background system. OpenInspect does have that. It has a GitHub code reviewer that you can control the prompt. It does do comments as well. It doesn't do them automatically yet. The capability is there, but it's not fully used.Swyx [00:25:27]: So you have to ask for it?Cole [00:25:28]: you do, yeah. You can tag it on GitHub, and then whatever you named your, GitHub bot, it will then follow up on it. It will then, if you have merge conflicts or whatever you have asked it to resolve, it will then resolve it, but it doesn't do it automatically yet.Integrations: Slack, MCP, and First-Party Agent InterfacesWalden [00:25:42]: Well, I'm curious, what is, the most common thing that people end up requesting, that they still need on top of OpenInspect when you help them go implement it?Cole [00:25:52]: I think a lot of it comes down to actually integrating it into the company. It's one thing to have the background agent system set up, but if it isn't actually integrated into your larger ecosystem, it isn't that useful. It is useful to be able to kick off sessions, but what we really want to be able to do is hook it into all of our other systems, whether that is the production database with read-only credentials, the logs, a Confluence or internal knowledge-based system. I think that is where I see the huge leap for companies, and that can be a challenge for companies as well who are maybe not familiar with exactly how to approach it, especially if they're in environments that have more compliance type things where, access control can be pretty big and how do you deliberately think about these problems, I find to be, one of the problems that comes with a system like this.Walden [00:26:46]: The thing we found is So, MCPs, obviously it has been like this, really big explosion of, oh, you can go, integrate it with all these different things. But to actually get the integration right and the and get the right experience, oftentimes we found that we had to go build our own ad hoc things. I think Slack is a great example of this. You could give your agent a Slack MCP and okay, it can post messages back to you on Slack. But we actually use Devin like a coworker in Slack, and that's how it's been built from the ground up. But to do that, you actually need to, support webhooks that come back, right? And then Devin has to respond in a natural way and then hopefully don't spam your threads too much and annoy the people in your company. So you got to tune that experience just right. Especially when there's a lot of back and forths, we find that we actually have to go beyond the simple MCP integrations in these places.Swyx [00:27:39]: I just pulled up the MCP marketplace. I know this is a Fair amount of work. Is the answer to eventually take first party control of all the top MCPs? Is that theWalden [00:27:48]: I would love a world where you could have something that's more expressive than MCP. That, goes both ways, not just a set of tools, but a proper system that interacts back and lets it Have the right experience with all these interfaces.Swyx [00:28:03]: So there actually is sampling in the MCP spec, but nobody Uses it, right?Walden [00:28:07]: And so I think that's the other part is, actually we found that when the MCP spec starts to get too complicated, it starts to lose its original promise of Being like a simple one-step connect. Now then we have to go figure out how to support all these different variations of things and It starts to look a lot like just building the first party integrations in a lot of these cases now.Cole [00:28:29]: I think it matters, too, how critical it is to your company, right? If this is something that nearly every session is going through, it probably makes sense to own it so that you can make optimizations on top of it Versus just whatever is off the shelf.Swyx [00:28:43]: Awesome. Other than MCPs, what else, sorry, well, I don't know if that's Narrowing in too much on, integrations. But what else? What other elements of building OpenInspect or Devin that you guys really sink on?Memory and Knowledge: What Agents Should RememberCole [00:28:59]: I think, a problem that comes up very frequently is this idea of memories or knowledge base.Swyx [00:29:05]: Oh, boy. How do you solve it?Cole [00:29:08]: so not solved yet, is the short answer.Cole [00:29:11]: it's something, there's a open issue for it, someone asking about it.Swyx [00:29:16]: There's, I, D Wiki hasn't indexed anything about memory yet.Cole [00:29:20]: how I'm seeing it solved across my clients is primarily through skills. I find that skills can be a good gap within that or updating Claude MD, but I think memory as a whole is a pretty unsolved problem, and it is why I've been hesitant to add it. I think there is parts of memory and that can be addressed, but I think as a whole it's a very difficult retrieval problem.Swyx [00:29:44]: Oh my God. RAMP didn't write anything about memory? I see zero search results.Walden [00:29:50]: No. Memory can be quite tricky to get right because it's the retrieval, but also the generation of the memories that can be really tricky. You don't want it to just like Remember very specific details.Swyx [00:29:59]: Walk us through the Devin memory journey because I know there's been a journey.Walden [00:30:03]: the first version of memory that like stuck around for a while was A system we have called Knowledge. And the idea was we wanted it to pick up things over time and not need the user to be proactive about teaching Devin things. So, okay, any time you remind Devin, “Wait, no, that's not quite the way you're supposed to use Git”Like, we actually want Devin to say, “Hey, do you want me to actually just remember this for the future?” And for you to just basically quickly approve or reject and for it to build up over time. ‘Cause I find that, 95%, I think, or some crazy stat like that of the memories that Devin has are all through these auto-generated things. Very few people actually just want to sit down and write big docs on Here's how you're supposed to work with the technology, et cetera. The generation and the retrieval has been something that we've been trying to tune a lot over the years. Generation, you don't want it to remember something like, if you asked one time to like, “Oh, please open as a draft PR,” you don't want to be like, “Oh, everyone forever now should get their PRs as draft PRs.” But you do want some, conveyor. Maybe you want to say like, “Oh, Cole generally likes, things to be created as draft PRs.” Same with retrieval, if you have thousands of these memories, how do you actually make sure they're retrieved at the right time? And that can be quite tricky to do right without exploding the context with a bunch of useful yeah, useless information. Surprising amount of just, eval work to just make sure that, memory is, remains a reliable system as new models come and go.Cole [00:31:31]: Do you have anything that you could share on, memory pruning? And like the temporal aspect of memory?Swyx [00:31:36]: Deleting and forgetting?Walden [00:31:39]: The, today, the, So the things they could do is it could edit memories. And so if your memory used to say like, “Oh, Cole likes to open everything as like a draft PR,” then you can imagine, “No, don't do that.” And then it'll say, “Oh, do you want me to update the memory to be Cole now want everything as, open PRs?” I think that at the same time we don't know if this is going to be the final version of the system. Whatever we have here will probably, translate into the new system that we'll be coming up with. But I think one big difference between two years ago and today is these agents are really good at using anything that resembles a file system natively. And so part of us are, is thinking, “Oh, should we rebuild memories to feel more like a file system that we let the agent navigate on its own?” That's been an interesting exploration. Also similar ideas in the scale space.Swyx [00:32:35]: I am pulling up OpenClaude's memory thing right now. So memory, OpenClaude has like this like daily memory journal thing, right? And you can I mean, that is a file system you can grep through and is a source of truth. I don't know if it's the best. It's probably super noisy, but at least, if you lose something you can discover it or you can apply some, forgetting algorithm to, more ancient memories that don't get recalled again or something. I don't know.Walden [00:33:01]: One thing we've been trying to do to push the boundaries of how you use agents at your company is letting an agent basically have a very similar file, a memory.md or something, and just like be your permanent PM for a specific set of issues maybe. So we have like some Slack channels internally, maybe a Slack channel dedicated to, a specific product like DeepWiki maybe. And you can imagine that, or you want a Devin that never stops, it's just always awake, but it has this like memory dock that it can just maintain for itself about, okay, what are like the number one priorities of what we have to fix and prioritize? Who is responsible for some upcoming work? Maybe they'll even Devin will even tag you on some recurring basis. And so it's been an interesting move to see, okay, how can we actually use Devin for more than just engineering? Can we actually upstream above the engineering process and maybe it's just Devin creating tickets, which then maybe some humans do, but then maybe other Devins do.Swyx [00:34:00]: One of my more fun automations is go research competitors and just suggest stuff to me on a weekly basis. That's the automation. I can't find it right now, but basically it just like, “Look at competitors and suggest things.” “And here are three things that you've suggested that I don't want any more of,” and you just stick that in the prompts. But like I wish actually So for like when I, for example, when I reject a PR, I wish that it updated memory so that I can then just not have to go up, go back and update the scheduled, sync, but anyway, feature request.Walden [00:34:31]: what? We might change it soon. I guess OpenInspect, in the time you've been around, has there been anything you tried to implement but then you had to like undo and like do a different way?OpenInspect Architecture: Webhooks, Control Planes, and Agent StateCole [00:34:41]: Nothing yet, but something that is on my mind. The initial way that I built it was that each of the integrations lives as its own package. And so you have The Slack bot, which is what's handling the webhooks, and then is basically interacting with the control plane. As I'm seeing the system starting to be more integrated, specifically with the GitHub bot integration, I'm considering bringing that all into the central control plane because especially now I want to start, And a request that I'm getting is the ability to monitor, the actual, pull requests being merged, as well as just tracking ofSwyx [00:35:19]: What do I have open?Cole [00:35:21]: What do I have open? How many of these are getting merged? How many comments are showing up? To just understand the health of the system. And so in the case of a GitHub app, you only have one webhook. And so then it's a question of do I put that webhook in that GitHub bot package? That's weird. It doesn't really make sense to live there because that package is more for like the code reviewer. Or do I like centralize it? So that's something that's on my mind of, making that decision. I think the other one we touched on earlier is the harness in the box versus out of the box. I think long term the architecture will eventually come back out of the box. Some of the newer tools that I've added are calling back into the control plane so that you don't have the secrets in the sandbox. And so I think long term I probably will pull the actual, agent out of the box, but I think for now it's fine.Subagents and Multi-Agent Systems: When Parallelism Helps or HurtsSwyx [00:36:16]: Just, a quick question on pulling the agent out of the box. I'm One thing I'm very bullish on this year is agents calling other agents or spawning sub-agents or Whatever you want to call it. Does that make it harder or easier? I can't tell. Because if the harness is in the box, you can just spin up more boxes. If the harness is outside the box, then you're, it's less easy because you are, you have a unicorn pet of a, of a harness that's, living outside the box.Cole [00:36:45]: In theory it would be the same way, right? Whether, one agent has launched many, sub-sessions within it, OpenInspect, for example, can launch sub-sessions and actually create other environments and then monitor them. In the case where it is out of the box, that would basically just be an additional session that's running. And so that session is also running outside of the box. It's running in your worker plane, wherever you're running this. And then you really just have to think about how does your top level agent then interact with it. I do think it can be more complex, just ‘cause again, you have now a more difficult architecture. But I think if you figured it out once, it's probably fine.Swyx [00:37:26]: Well, then I'm just, throwing it open to you in terms of, I call this like meta Devin management. Which is like the, Devin's calling Devins or Devin scheduling Devins or querying trajectories or anything like that. What have you built or unshipped, anything?Cole [00:37:46]: I think one of the surprising things we've seen is that a lot of the ways that, these, separate agents work with each other, and you want them to, parallelize their work, has still mostly followed the same manager sub-agents regime. And a lot of people I think are excited about this world where you have swarms of agents that, talk with each other all over the place. We've actually given Devin an MCP so they can just go arbitrarily message other Devins And create new Devins, et cetera. But I guess, it somehow creates, a really chaotic world in that sense. And so we've still found that most practical use on a day-to-day basis has been one single Devin.Cole [00:38:33]: Figuring out how to segregate the work and get, have other Devins work on it in, a relatively isolated sense, each with their own boxes Not sharing machines, so there's, a very little room for conflict is the regime that you have to create today.Swyx [00:38:50]: I'll call out, the experiments from Cursor, right? This is Wilson Lin's work on Single agent to multi-agent, and you're obviously famously on the side of don't build multi-agent. But they went through the whole thing, only to arrive at, this Which is exactly what Devin has, I think.Cole [00:39:08]: I think there will be a revision to that post at some point AboutSwyx [00:39:12]: Tell us about itCole [00:39:12]: I think multi-agents were very much not at all possible a year ago. You do see more multi-agent experiments today, but you can argue, are they really multi-agents, or are they just just, tool calls,? There are people who, will create sub-agents to go look for XYZ file, XYZ implementation. Has really nice context management benefits because all of the tool calls and tokens that it spends then get collapsed back to just the answer for the main agent. There's a lot of benefits to doing this. We basically have Devin do this with Deep Bookie, make a call out to Deep Bookie, give you back the results, but that feels like a tool call,? It's not like these, two collaborators actually talking back with each, back and forth with each other. But I think the thing that gives me the most bullishness that multi-agents might actually be possible is actually what I said earlier about Devin will actually sometimes tell me I'm wrong and push back, and I think that demonstrates a level of maturity and communication today that makes a multi-agent world possible. One, can two agents who have seen different information come back to each other and actually figure out who is right, what is the correct implementation? They're not just, yes men. Claude, I guess is like, used to just say, what is it? “You're right,” or,Swyx [00:40:25]: “You're absolutely right.”Cole [00:40:26]: “You're absolutely right.” Yeah.Swyx [00:40:28]: The Have you seen, did you seeCole [00:40:29]: The age is overSwyx [00:40:30]: The Codex app troll in Topic? This is the Codex app. Inside of Settings, there's a little, there's a little Easter egg, right? So if you go to, the Themes or Appearance, right? There's all these, color codes, and the top is absolutely, and it's the Topic's colors. Which is such a troll. Anyway.Model Behavior: Pushback, Adversarial Prompts, and Agent SkepticismCole [00:40:53]: I love that Easter egg. Did you discover that yourself?Swyx [00:40:54]: No, it was, someone was, tweeting about it And I was like, I was like, “Is this true?” Because, sometimes people just tweet stuff to, get a rise out of you. But yeah, there you go, in Topic colors.Cole [00:41:06]: Yeah. So yeah, we're out of this regime where, it just says you're absolutely right, and they can have real conversations and real back and forths.Swyx [00:41:13]: You can prompt it as well to be more adversarial or whatever. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that, I mean, to me, that is more intelligence, right? That is not just something that's, a dumb tool, it's actually pushing back on you I think. Yeah.Cole [00:41:24]: when you mentioned, of course, the blog posts. There was one blog they had where they fed a swarm of agents together and built a browser.Swyx [00:41:34]: That was I think that was the one.Cole [00:41:36]: You can have, likeSwyx [00:41:37]: I think it's the same oneCole [00:41:37]: Creation of it. We found a surprising success of, don't do a swarm or anything, just have one Devin, it does its own context management. Just let it keep running for a while and give it some crazy tasks. I think we asked it to, rebuild, a Windows OS system. And it managed to do it just like, going on for long enough. It'sSwyx [00:41:55]: Was this Andrew's thing?Cole [00:41:58]: there were lots of demos that we ended up not posting, ‘cause at some point we'd just be posting way too much a bunch of, Demos. But I love that because it shows that I think the multi-agent thing still has, a bit of exciting sexiness to it, which is maybe still beyond still, the actual delta it adds to the capabilities of these systems. But it's absolutely the future. I think we're heading in that direction and we can see the progress being made there already.Swyx [00:42:25]: If I were to, make one super minor pushback because I don't feel that confident about it yetCole [00:42:33]: Go for itSwyx [00:42:33]: But I've had Ryan Lopopolo from OpenAI on the pod And he's a super slop cannon, right? Oh my God, that's my coding agent being done. I downloaded this, Peon Ping. I don't know if you guys have heard this. It takes like-, sound packs from popular games like, Command and Conquer and Warcraft, and then it plays it whenever it's done. And so it's like, “Work,” or whatever, “At your command,” or something. Anyway, what I got from the Cursor code base and from Ryan's thing was that there's a slop cannon approach where you try to loosen the single agent's, bottleneck, and I feel like that is, probably an, a very important thing to try to figure out. I don't think anyone's, really solved it. Because then you just have more reviewer slop on top of the agent slop To try to wrangle it all. Ryan will probably very strongly object that I say that he hasn't solved it, but he thinks he's He thinks he's completely solved it. But I think it's still I think it's, very important, ‘cause, that is a bottleneck, right? I feel Devin is slow sometimes Because I'm like, well, yeah, this is very readable and very sensible, but also it is slower than it could be if I just, I want a button to just say, “Just ramp this up 1,000 next parallel, in parallel and just, see what happens,”? And I don't know if that's, feasible at some point in the future.Code Review, Entropy, and AI SlopWalden [00:43:55]: I And we've also run experiments internally where we've basically tried to build entire products, true products that we knew we would eventually ship, but for now, let's try to see if we can do it just by purely, vibe coding on top of each other, auto merge, no code review at all. And then there's this benchmark of how many weeks can you go onto this for Before you say, “We have the trashiest code base.”Walden [00:44:18]: “Let's actually rewrite it from scratch.”Swyx [00:44:19]: Start a new factory, yeah. What'd you find?Walden [00:44:21]: I think we found that the state-of-the-art in December was you can probably, run this for about two weeks. By the end of those two weeks, you'd find that, hey, you want to, change the color of a button. Well, it turns out this button is implemented in, 10 different places, and they, have All these different variations, and oh, you forgot one of them, and actually it's a slightly different color in one spot. And you're like, “Okay, this is too much to work with. Let's actually try to do code review at the same time.” And make sure that we're on top of our software, actually cleaning it up a bit And making sure it's done in a scalable way.Cole [00:44:54]: I think building on that, the idea of, you don't have to look at code, I think is generally a bad idea. And the meme that I have for thatWalden [00:45:03]: What timeline, all right, is Do you think that statement will be true on?Cole [00:45:06]: I think probably for a while it'll be true that you should continue to look at your code. A problem that I see a lot of teams run into that I work with who are embracing AI native, AI first coding, is The meme that I have is that your code base regresses to your worst engineer, because that engineer who is, very gung-ho about AI and is not auditing their code, their pattern starts cementing into the code, and now the AI is referencing their patterns. And so now their if/else block that, is 20 if/elses back and forth, the AI is seeing that as the pattern of how things are done and starts to then exponentially grow this slop. And I find to your point, a pretty good approach to that is having scheduled cleanup, whether by humans or through systems, that are looking for duplication. They then address that. You'll end up with like 12 helpers for how to format a date. And you need to address that, because otherwise it will continue to sprawl.Swyx [00:46:09]: Within balance, I think it's fine to have some duplication, and then sometimes To have garbage collection, right? Yeah. The What I've been, talking about with a lot of engineering leaders is that you want to be very strict about the boundaries between modules, and it's your job as an architect, as a CTO, whatever, to say like, “Okay, here's the hard contract between you guys and you guys. Whatever you do inside this black box is your business. You do whatever. But between these guys, let's be, really damn clear, and any movement must be signed off by a human or me,” or. Then, and like that's that. I don't know if you have any other modifications or advice.Walden [00:46:44]: Well, I guess generally on the topic of, where humans can be useful, I found that ‘cause, some of these, really deep infra problems, sometimes just having a human that just has, really deep expertise can make a big difference. I've actually seen this come into play when actually building agents. So we've had a few friends now, try building their own coding agents, and I think one same problem that I recurringly heard a lot of them run into was this problem of like, “Oh, Grep is really slow on our agents' machines.” And so a lot of them, I assume because they're using AI and they themselves don't have, super deep infra background knowledge, say, “Okay, we're going to go build our own custom Grep index. It's going to be really fast,” and use that as a way around this problem. When we ran into this problem About like, maybe like a year and a half ago when we were, in the early days of building Devin, we obviously didn't have AI then. We just asked our, how to, how to do this. You can just swap out a new Grep index, so.Infrastructure Details: Grep, File Systems, and SandboxesSwyx [00:47:45]: What do you mean you hand-coded Devin? What?Walden [00:47:48]: It's like, can you believe we hand-wrote this code? And we had, our infra people who are really amazing, they were looking into it and they're like, “Oh, what? We realized that actually the root cause of this problem is actually super simple, but like fine-grain detail,” which is that a lot of these virtual machines actually underlying them don't use real file systems. They use these, network file systems where things are actually cached over the network actually in S3. So when you're Grepping, you're actually making network calls Every time you're doing these things, and that's why Grep is extremely slow on these machines. And so again, goes back to, what is all of the crazy infra work that we had to do to actually get these machines working. If you try to do this yourself, there are tons of small details like this, and so we had to eventually go swap out that network file system. ButSwyx [00:48:35]: I think there's a write-up about it, right? Silas did one about the virtual file system.Walden [00:48:38]: Oh, that was a whole other thing. TheSwyx [00:48:39]: Oh, that's a different thingWalden [00:48:40]: The BlockDev file storage formatSwyx [00:48:42]: I'll bring it upWalden [00:48:42]: Which is, a file system format that we built so that the VMs could be spun up and down very quickly. Basically, the intuition behind this is-Imagine you have, a terabyte of disk, and your agent only, wrote, a hundred lines of code on top of that disk. How long does it, say, take to, save and re-bring up that disk? And most systems, because you're not optimizing for this case, it's just, on the order of a terabyte of work because you have to Save all of that and bring it back up. In our system, we try to build a file system that incrementally builds on top of each other. So every time you save and bring the machine back up, you're only doing work that is proportional to effectively the diff in the file system. And so this, shaves off a lot of time in the boot-up process of Devin. I think we This is actually now outdated. We have a newer system inside of Devin. But yeah, there's a lot of tiny details you have to get right here to actually get the day-to-day experience of Devin to be good.Swyx [00:49:39]: It's, not technically agents, but it is agent infra, and when you sell an agent as a company, you sell agent plus agent infra.Walden [00:49:46]: At least the way we do it be And the other The nice thing about having the agent infra being done together is, you We get to deploy Devin in whatever environment we want now. We don't need to wait for some underlying infra provider to also go and support VPC or on-prem or FedGovCloud, for instance. So we can actually go and figure out, okay, since we own the infrastructure, how can we get that set up for you?Cloud Providers: Modal, Daytona, and Enterprise SandboxesSwyx [00:50:12]: Whereas you're Cloudflare dependent.Cole [00:50:15]: so Cloudflare runs the control plane. The sandboxes, Modal is supported. A contributor just added Daytona. E2B is on the roadmap, and I think there's an abstraction in place that if any contributor wants to add a new provider, they can add that in.Walden [00:50:32]: Well, what are, How are the customers you work with Do they generally try to then go set up a contract with another one of these third-party providers? Do they try to do the VMs in-house?Cole [00:50:44]: most of them I see using Modal. I think Modal has a greatWalden [00:50:48]: Shout out Modal.Swyx [00:50:48]: Shout out Modal.Cole [00:50:50]: I think Modal has a great offering. It captures all of the sandbox pieces you need, snapshots being a pretty big piece of that, and given that they also offer GPUs, I think it's a pretty nice offering as a whole.Swyx [00:51:04]: no debate there.Walden [00:51:07]: Modal is great, especially, I think their container offering is, the most natural, and so especially if you are willing to, forego, the full VM requirements Modal is, a really vast place you can spin something up on.Swyx [00:51:20]: Is there a point So Modal's very Python, and I feel like most workload, has really shifted to JavaScript. I don't know if you guys Get the same feeling. So, okay, when I started Landspace and IE and all these things, I was like 50/50 Python and JS, right? That's roughly. I think that's wrong now. I think JS has won. I don't know if you guys Like, I Maybe I'm overstating it, and maybe for cognition, there's, C# and Java and what have you. But for, new greenfield apps, do you feel that Do you get that sense? Does it matter?Cole [00:51:52]: I think that most of the libraries that I see in this space are Python native first, especially in theCole [00:51:58]: Observability space. That said, I think that there is a pretty big appeal of having your entire system in one language. Especially when you have both your frontend and backend communicating, you can have one central type Which is very nice.Swyx [00:52:11]: That's my case against Modal, which is Then you have to run JS. You can run JS inside Modal. It's just, one extra step That, isn't native to the runtime. I don't know ifWalden [00:52:22]: I don't knowSwyx [00:52:23]: Reviews. Do you have numbers? I don't know.Walden [00:52:25]: the one thing I don't like about Python is whenever AI, whenever it writes Python, it always does, the weirdest patterns, andSwyx [00:52:32]: Oh, because it's, mixing two and three or what?Walden [00:52:34]: I think it's something mixing two and three, yeah. The I don't know if you see this. It always tries to do, has attribute on objects as likeCole [00:52:41]: Oh, my God.Walden [00:52:41]: But it's like But that you shouldn't be doing that. It should error if there wasSwyx [00:52:45]: Because it's training on library code?Cole [00:52:47]: I think it's more of, likeCole [00:52:48]: From what I've seen, it's more of, a reward hacking mechanism where it doesn't want to basicallyWalden [00:52:54]: It'll never error.Cole [00:52:54]: It doesn't want the code to fail. And so it Even when it knows it has the attribute, it'll call getattr on a, and for a lot of my clients who have moved towards more autonomous coding, we've put that in as a lint rule That if you do getattr, your pull request is going to fail.Slop Signatures: Comments, Backwards Compatibility, and TypesSwyx [00:53:12]: Ooh, this is a fun topic. Can you tell me more about this? What else is a sign of AI coding that you have to put guards in?Walden [00:53:21]: So we were talking just before this about Opus 4.7. One of the things this new model likes to do is it writes lots of comments. Not like, it'll, comment every line, but it'll write, paragraph, PRDs, on top of every function. But I will say, to its credit, these aren't slop, descriptions like they were before. “Oh, here's what this function does.” It's like, “Oh, here's actually the r

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found.Special GuestJordan Conley Dion LackThis Week We DiscussGive Up Kissing vs All Sauces 5 Million Now vs Everything Under $1000 Is FreePermanent Clown Make Up vs Clown Outfit

We are resharing this episode in memory of Michael Harrison, who passed away on April 17, 2026. He was 67. In this episode, we discuss the life and work of musician and Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan with composer/pianist and Inayat Khan scholar Michael Harrison. Hazrat Inayat Khan ( July 1882 – 5 February 1927) was an Indian professor of musicology, singer, exponent of the saraswati vina, poet, philosopher, and pioneer of the transmission of Sufism to the West. At the urging of his students, and on the basis of his ancestral Sufi tradition and four-fold training and authorization at the hands of Sayyid Abu Hashim Madani (d. 1907) of Hyderabad, he established an order of Sufism (the Sufi Order) in London in 1914. By the time of his death in 1927, centers had been established throughout Europe and North America, and multiple volumes of his teachings had been published. Michael Harrison (October 24, 1958 - April 17, 2026) forged a new approach to composition through just intonation (the system of tuning based on pure harmonic proportions). His works blend classical music traditions of Europe and North India. He is a Guggenheim Fellowship and NYFA Artist Fellowship recipient. Michael created dedicated tuning systems for many of his works. He pioneered a structural approach to composition in which the proportions of harmonic relationships organically determine other musical elements such as pitch, duration, and dynamics. He also invented the “harmonic piano,” a grand piano that plays 24 notes per octave, documented in the Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Harrison seeks expressions of universality via the physics of sound – music that brings one into a state of concentrated listening as a meditative and even mind-altering experience. At the time of his death he was working on “The Raga Cycle”, a series of albums charting the hours of the day through Hindustani raga. The first installment, Evening Light, was released in March 2026 on Cantaloupe Records. More albums in the series were recorded before he became too ill to continue. They will be released in the years ahead. Donations in his memory can be made to the Michael Harrison Foundation for Just Music at JustMusic.org. Topics 00:00 Podcast Welcome 00:22 Encore Tribute 02:28 Mysticism Book Intro 02:49 Spiritual Music Path 04:32 Conservatory And Tonality 06:37 Daily Raga Practice 12:55 Voice Breath And Wazifa 16:48 Creation As Vibration 20:14 Harmony East And West 24:07 Math Of Consonance 25:32 Temperament Versus Just 28:24 Tuning The Soul Quote 32:03 Piano Retuning Journey 35:54 432 Versus 440 39:56 Music As Universal Religion 46:02 Cage Oliveros Deep Listening 51:16 Commentary And Curriculum 53:08 Teaching Programs 55:26 Closing Thanks And Outro Links Michael Harrison — His Own Work Evening Light: Raga Cycle I — Cantaloupe Music (2026) Seven Sacred Names — Bandcamp (2021) Revelation: Music in Pure Intonation — Cantaloupe Music (2007) From Ancient Worlds — michaelharrison.com Time Loops with Maya Beiser — Cantaloupe Music (2012) Michael Harrison website Episode Music Michael Harrison — "Mureed" from Seven Sacred Names (2021, Cantaloupe Music) Michael Harrison — "Alim: Polyphonic Raga Malkauns" from Seven Sacred Names (2021, Cantaloupe Music) Michael Harrison — "Qadr: Etude in Raga Bhimpalasi" from Seven Sacred Names (2021, Cantaloupe Music) Hazrat Inayat Khan — "Purvi Khal: Kamli Wale Tope Sabkuchhvare" (2022, Primitiv) Michael Harrison – “Sami: The Acoustic Constellation” from Seven Sacred Names (2021, Cantaloupe Music) Hazrat Inayat Khan The Mysticism of Sound and Music — Goodreads Inayat Khan 1909 78rpm Recordings — YouTube Hazrat Inayat Khan — Wikipedia The Inayat Order — Pir Zia Inayat Khan Turning Toward the Heart — SAND Podcast with Pir Zia Inayat Khan Teachers & Lineage Pandit Pran Nath — Wikipedia La Monte Young — Wikipedia Terry Riley — Wikipedia Pir Vilayat Khan — Wikipedia Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan — Wikipedia Other Composers & Artists Referenced Pauline Oliveros — Center for Deep Listening® — Michael Reiley's teacher; creator of Deep Listening practice Pauline Oliveros — paulineoliveros.us John Cage — Wikipedia — composer, Zen Buddhist, creator of 4'33" Arvo Pärt — Wikipedia Hildegard of Bingen — Wikipedia Ravi Shankar — Wikipedia George Harrison Concert for Bangladesh — YouTube Roomful of Teeth — website John Eliot Gardiner — Wikipedia Josquin des Prez — Wikipedia Claudio Monteverdi — Wikipedia J.S. Bach — Wikipedia Programs & Institutions Arts, Letters and Numbers — Creative Music Intensive Michael Harrison Foundation for Just Music — donations in his memory Manhattan School of Music — where the harmonic piano is now archived Contact SAND podcast@scienceandnonduality.com Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming a SAND Member

Tom Rath is a researcher and #1 NYT bestselling author of 12 books. His latest works are How Full Is Your Bucket? And What's the Point? Turning Purpose Into Your Daily Superpower. Greg and Tom discuss the broader arc of Tom's work, translating research on wellbeing, engagement, and strengths into practical tools. Tom describes shifting from self-improvement to “other-improvement,” using Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s question “What are you doing for others?” as a daily compass, and reframing purpose as an hour-by-hour “portfolio” rather than a single grand mission.  He contrasts purpose with passion, criticizes status and social-comparison traps, and argues that the responsibility for one's wellbeing largely rests with individuals because many employers and leaders model unhealthy, always-on habits themselves. Tom explains his concept of job/task/relationship/cognitive crafting, the primacy of relationships, and how AI increases the need to prioritize proactive, creative, human work over reactive tasks that are likely to be automated. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.* Episode Quotes: What's the point of any given hour in your day? 13:57: What's the point of any given hour in your day, and is it doing something that serves other people, makes a contribution to the world? Or is it something that kind of winds you up and gets you charged so you can be at your best for other people? Kind of just asking, the point of that is even more important now than it was 12 months ago because, as I've studied this and gotten more into all of the tools that are available at our disposal with AI right now, the things that can be automated and just require responding instead of thinking about something and initiating or creating, those are the things that are going to be eliminated most rapidly. So my mindset on this has changed a little bit in the last six months, even to say I think everybody needs to be a little more critical and ask some of those questions because if you're doing something that just involves pulling together some numbers or responding to some emails, that's not sustainable anymore. Your strengths don't make a difference in isolation 50:31: The point of uncovering your natural talents or pathways is not so that you can go out there and beat your strengths into the world and tell everybody about your strengths. The point of it is so you can be more systematic about engineering how you apply those strengths to serve your clients and your customers and your community and the people around you because your strengths don't make a darn bit of difference in isolation. They kind of come to life in the context of a relationship and of a purpose. Can you make purpose more practical? 11:52: Telling people that they need to go find some big grand purpose at any stage in their life may do more harm than good because it produces a level of anxiety where you're thinking it's something larger than it really is that you need to find, or it's one big thing. Versus, as you get into the work, I've found that if you treat purpose like something you do on an hour-by-hour basis, and it's multiple touch points throughout a day, and it's a way to restructure what you do and reprioritize your daily routine, that you can make purpose into something practical. And when you're able to do that, your day is a little more rewarding. Show Links: Recommended Resources: Eudaimonia Donald O. Clifton Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Guest Profile: TomRath.org LinkedIn Profile Wikipedia Profile Facebook Profile Social Profile on X Guest Work: Amazon Author Page How Full Is Your Bucket? What's the Point? Turning Purpose Into Your Daily Superpower Strengths Finder 2.0 Strengths Based Leadership Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World It's Not About You: A Brief Guide to a Meaningful Life Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

01. Max Styler, Vintage Culture, Ali Love - Freaky 1 02. Dubvision - Run 03. Fred Pellichero, Loors - EMMA 04. Welker - Tussy 05. Sophia Guerrero - It's A Baby 06. Andrey Exx - Wanna Give You 07. Wh0, Low Steppa - Raise Them 08. Versus, Albert Breaker, King Ro - Bottle Flip 09. John Dahlback - Hits Like This 10. Felguk, Watzgood - It Just Won't Do 11. Tony Romera - Waste My Time 12. Dubdogz, Deep West - Hole In The Head (Fool Girl) 13. Kiro Prime, Kenty Clide - Bounce It 14. Goom Gum - Imagine 15. Hugel, Kurd Maverick - PYHU (Put Your Hands Up) 16. Argy, John Cala - BOOM 17. Fedde Le Grand - This Is A Groove 18. Kryder - Time 19. Goodboys, Departamento - Discoteca 20. Wax Motif, Maeta - You Forget 21. DJ Quba, Sandra K, Ishnlv - Love Don't Let Me Go 22. Meduza, Varun Jain - Dola re Dola 23. Francis Mercier, Mp3, Shammalee - Inshallah 24. Betical - Do It Again 25. Wenzday - Keep On Dancin' 26. G-pol, Zss, Arta - Slick Like MJ 27. Don Diablo - Sound Of Da Police 28. Dannic - Tombo 2026 29. Steve Aoki, Jessica Audiffred, Jon Z - Fotopaparazzi 30. Adam Sellouk, Doriann - Carnage 31. Benny Benassi, Rafael Cerato - Can I Feel 32. Dimitri Vegas, Like Mike, Ne-yo, Danna Paola - Mexico 33. Agua Sin Gas, Antoine Clamaran - What You Do 34. Switch Disco, Korolova - Empty Skies 35. Ummet Ozcan - Iunu 36. Ferreck Dawn - Say What You Mean 37. Plastik Funk, Chester Young, Hackatone - Digital Safari 38. Sevek - Bad Girl

01. Max Styler, Vintage Culture, Ali Love - Freaky 1 02. Dubvision - Run 03. Fred Pellichero, Loors - EMMA 04. Welker - Tussy 05. Sophia Guerrero - It's A Baby 06. Andrey Exx - Wanna Give You 07. Wh0, Low Steppa - Raise Them 08. Versus, Albert Breaker, King Ro - Bottle Flip 09. John Dahlback - Hits Like This 10. Felguk, Watzgood - It Just Won't Do 11. Tony Romera - Waste My Time 12. Dubdogz, Deep West - Hole In The Head (Fool Girl) 13. Kiro Prime, Kenty Clide - Bounce It 14. Goom Gum - Imagine 15. Hugel, Kurd Maverick - PYHU (Put Your Hands Up) 16. Argy, John Cala - BOOM 17. Fedde Le Grand - This Is A Groove 18. Kryder - Time 19. Goodboys, Departamento - Discoteca 20. Wax Motif, Maeta - You Forget 21. DJ Quba, Sandra K, Ishnlv - Love Don't Let Me Go 22. Meduza, Varun Jain - Dola re Dola 23. Francis Mercier, Mp3, Shammalee - Inshallah 24. Betical - Do It Again 25. Wenzday - Keep On Dancin' 26. G-pol, Zss, Arta - Slick Like MJ 27. Don Diablo - Sound Of Da Police 28. Dannic - Tombo 2026 29. Steve Aoki, Jessica Audiffred, Jon Z - Fotopaparazzi 30. Adam Sellouk, Doriann - Carnage 31. Benny Benassi, Rafael Cerato - Can I Feel 32. Dimitri Vegas, Like Mike, Ne-yo, Danna Paola - Mexico 33. Agua Sin Gas, Antoine Clamaran - What You Do 34. Switch Disco, Korolova - Empty Skies 35. Ummet Ozcan - Iunu 36. Ferreck Dawn - Say What You Mean 37. Plastik Funk, Chester Young, Hackatone - Digital Safari 38. Sevek - Bad Girl

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found.Special GuestKanisha BussCamille WatersJazmyn W.This Week We DiscussSee How Long Everyone Has Left To Live vs See Lines Connecting Everyone Who's Hooked Up?Beef W/ US Government vs Illuminati Paper Straws vs 1 Ply Toilet TissueS/o To Our SponorsBlue ChewRight now, when you buy two months of BlueChew Gold, you get the third for FREE with promo code SQUADD. That's promo code SQUADD. Visit BlueChew.com for more details and important safety information, and we thank BlueChew for sponsoring the podcast.

Die neueste Episode unseres Premium-Formats The Round-Up präsentieren wir ausnahmsweise frei und gratis für alle Devils & Demons Zuhörenden. So könnt ihr mal in unser facettenreiches Supporter-Programm reinschnüffeln, ohne Risiko. In unserem 10. Round-Up besprechen wir (Chris, André, Teresa) die Filme Psycho Killer, Invisible Maniac, Undertone, Bone Lake, Versus, The Furious, Marco, Faces of Death und Cannibal Mukbang in gewohnt charmanter und freier Art. Wenn euch das Format gefällt und ihr auf den Geschmack gekommen seid, unterstützt uns gerne auf Steady, natürlich nur, wenn euch der finanzielle Rahmen dafür gegeben ist.

Ever feel like money is disappearing from your practice? Tiff and Dana share where practices tend to find that missing money, as well as how to trim down those expenses. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. I always want to say on that opening, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com and I have to really think about it. Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are back here. Dana and I have been on a podcasting frenzy we love these days and then we're like out of breath and I also love that because it feels like productive and anaerobic. So I'll take it. I've got Dana here with us today. Dana, thank you so much for riffing with me today, for being here, for blocking out your morning, for podcasting and just   All awesome, awesome. Thank you for being an awesome part of this team. We were literally just talking about how my brain just is like ping pong, ping pong, and then I won't finish a statement. That was it. That was me proving to you that that really happens real life. So, and don't cut that podcast team, whatever. Dana, how are you today?   DAT-Dana (00:38) you   doing really good. am honestly and truly, I feel like today we've rift a lot and we've come up with some really great, I think, content ideas for doctors and teams. And so, so far, I'm super proud of us today.   The Dental A Team (01:01) I agree. I agree. think the marketing one, if you guys haven't listened to the marketing matters, I believe that's what they're calling it. But there's a marketing one that Dana and I just did. I actually, I think that was one of our best podcasts. That was so good. So good. And KPIs again, I know we talk about KPIs a lot, but we really went on a very good tangent of inspiration versus motivation for those KPIs. So I agree. I think it's been fun. And I love talking profit now.   Dana, I think you and I have grown to love profit. Not that we didn't love profit before, but I think we've grown to really, really see some high value in the profit side and just love finding it and talking about it more than we ever did before. So I want to talk about profit today. And we talked about it a lot. It's a huge piece of Dental A Team's Magic Sauce is really, really working systems and   logistics and business and leadership to turn into profit because at the end of the day, that's the only way the business is going to survive. And Dana, when we talk about profit, think teams tend to be like, okay. And I think doctors think teams hate it, that they don't want to hear about it, that they don't want to know that it's like, yeah, that's going in your pocket. But the reality is most teams want to know that their business is profitable because most teams   want a place to work, if nothing else. They want a profitable company because it guarantees that they get to stay where they're at. And if you guys have, you know, we talked about that inspiring why earlier, and if you've got a really inspiring place, you've got a place that people want to work, they want you to be profitable so that they can keep working there.   DAT-Dana (02:44) I agree with you. And doctors, if you feel like your team doesn't care about profit, then it's because they don't understand what profit means to them. And so I think that instead of so often, doctors just shy away from it. And I think instead of shying away from it, make sure that they know what that profit means to them. Because Tiff and I can say, hey, we know and hands down, you're right, Tiff, like people are going to pick job security, right? They're going to want to be in an office that has job security. Do they know that that's profit? Probably not.   The Dental A Team (03:09) Yeah.   DAT-Dana (03:13) Right? And so somebody says something about that or like that. Do they want to grow in their position? Yep, they probably do. Do they know that that comes from profit? Maybe not. And so I think sometimes it's just like, hey, my team. Well, if your team doesn't want to talk about profit or you think they don't care, it's probably just because they don't understand that profit drastically impacts their lives too.   The Dental A Team (03:35) Totally agree. That was massive, massive. And that's the space of really understanding the intentionality behind what you're doing. So if you intend for the team to understand profit, then they will. You'll say the words and they'll understand it. profit turns into not only job security, but it also turns into being able to invest in more tech, more, I don't know, chairs. Oh my gosh, do know how many times as a front office team member I was like, can I just get a new chair? My back hurts so bad.   And they were like, well, let's look at the budget. I'm like, cool, what do I have to do to get a new chair? But those things all come from that profit because we can't spend what we don't have. And so teams really understanding what that turns into and also like how can we impact the community? We've got kids sports teams coming in saying, can you ⁓ sponsor our team? Can you do night guards? Can you do this? Like we wanna be able to say yes to all of those things and that comes from the profit.   Now you know our stance on profit, but Dina, what about disappearing profit? I've had actually, I've had this come up a couple of times. I've had a couple of emails from doctors that they're like, I can't find the money from 2025. I don't know where it went. I should have had X amount of dollars, 400, $600,000 and it's gone. I'm like, okay, well let's look for it. And Dina...   Love those and I hate them because I'm like, well, what do we do for a year? Where what were we doing here? Okay, so I have you know, I have my ideas on where it goes and and we dig and we find it we usually find it but Dana Where do you see the biggest question marks on when doctors say where's the profit? Like where the biggest question marks? Where do you start digging and where are you usually finding it?   DAT-Dana (05:01) Yeah, it usually leads to a rabbit hole, but...   Yeah, typically I am digging first and foremost into just like expenses, right? Like where did expenses fluctuate? Did we spend more than we needed to or did we spend in arbitrary areas just because we weren't keeping track of it? So honestly and truly, do you know what your BAM is and can you assess very easily or quickly like months where it is?   well below well above right so that you can kind of watch those flexes. just worked with an office on this not that long ago and I'm like hey from January to March expenses swung by $100,000 right like what happened let's dig in here because those giant fluctuations to me are a red flag of like hey we're not watching something or something got overcharged double charged things like that so I think the first place to tackle is just like knowing those things like knowing what   the profit should be, knowing what the expenses should be and are you, do you have a cadence where you are looking, reviewing? Because I think what happens is we hire a CPA, we get into QuickBooks, everything auto syncs into QuickBooks and we just kind of like set it and forget it.   And I think that like we don't know that sometimes hey things can swing that Gigantically if we're not looking at those things and we're not looking at those prior to making decisions, right? We're not looking those before we're like, hey, yeah, you can have a raise or hey Yeah, I want that cvct writer. Yep. Let's it's time to mill same-day crowns and we didn't look at that now We're in a big swing of expenses   The Dental A Team (06:51) Yeah.   DAT-Dana (06:52) So I do feel like making sure that all of that is to say, making sure that you know what your numbers are when it comes to expenses every month where they should sit roughly and honestly and truly what you're spending all your money on.   The Dental A Team (07:06) Yeah, I have practices Dana that have Amazon Prime. I think everybody has Amazon Prime. My sister and I canceled Amazon Prime actually, and we just have Amazon, which is wild. And every time you try to purchase something, they try to sign you up for Amazon Prime. But it's kind of like, it honestly reminds me of all of the financial stuff you've done with all of the companies we don't have to name. But ⁓ it reminds me of those because you really second guess the purchase.   And then you're like, okay, well, let me let it sit in the cart for a minute. And then you go back in, you're like, why did I even have this here? Or I'll throw stuff in the safe for later because I'm like, well, it's not on sale right now. And I'm not gonna get it today. So do I really need it? So I'll put it in the safe for later. But I have practices that are so Amazon Prime ready that they're like, we need paper. I'll just order it real quick.   we need pens. you like those pens better? You like the Sharpie pens? I'll order those on Amazon real quick and we'll have them here tomorrow. Right? So they're just constantly processing these Amazon orders. And then what happens, I have a practice that was like Amazon galore. I'm like, where is all of this money? Like what is happening here? And then what happens is you've got some demo supplies, some front office supplies. It's impossible to like see the difference because of how you're placing the orders. It's just this constant running battle or Walmart. I'll have   practices that are like, we have a list. So I just sent Joanna to Walmart and I'm like, okay, but why aren't these on orders? And we say, we watch the dental supply budget and ordering really closely. And we'll say order two times a month. Once is phenomenal, two times a month max order your dental supplies.   but then we forget those front office supplies and they're sneaky or the paper towels or the toilet paper or just those like paper supplies, they're sneaky. And I have seen that happen where the practice literally had to be like, okay, we're revoking Amazon and you're gonna send in a list just like you do for dental office supplies. And we will both order the same as we do for dental office supplies.   DAT-Dana (09:08) Yeah, you're so funny that I have an office where it was like, okay, well, you hit your you hit your dental supplies, you hit your office supply budgets. But like, what is this? ⁓ that's Amazon. And I'm like, Okay, but what did we order from Amazon? Like, how much of that was dental supplies, office supplies, like stuff for the team? Like, where do we need to that? then I know that's just Amazon. I'm like, No, but that's money spent. And it's spent in one of these categories. And it should be part of your budget for those guys. Like   If you need an Amazon budget, right? If that has to be a thing, fine, we can set one up, but understand that that's coming out of all these other buckets.   The Dental A Team (09:40) Crap.   Correct,   yes. Or if your Amazon is your personal Amazon too, and it's getting run through the same and whatever. Yes, I agree. I agree. I have a couple of practices too that I have like a small equipment budget because they'll add that into their supplies. And it's like their supplies are 18 % one month. And I'm like, what the heck? I'm like, you can't just, if you need hand pieces.   We need a budget for handpieces. You can't just order Cabotron tips because we need Cabotron tips. We've got to look at it and we've got to budget that in and make sure that we have the cash for it. So I totally agree. Another one, think, are subscriptions. So the Amazon Prime is a subscription, so make sure that that's in there as well. But we get hit with a lot of subscriptions. I remember this is like an update.   me mostly, but I remember magazine subscriptions, right? And it was like, what the heck? We would pay monthly for magazine subscriptions and then you found out like they're gonna send them to you anyway, so cancel the subscriptions and they're gonna send you the magazines no matter what and I don't think anybody's reading magazines. So those kind of subscriptions, gosh, a lot of people will have like a Uber Eats subscription for the practice or a DoorDash subscription for the practice. Are those necessary subscriptions?   And what are we paying out of convenience that's getting used sometimes that doesn't need to be there? So I think subscriptions and then allocating supply orders correctly.   DAT-Dana (11:05) Yeah, and I even think office tech subscriptions too, like how, you know, patient communication and then like review requests and then, and sometimes like we can bundle those and get a better dealer. Sometimes it's like, hey, well, this does this, but this also does part of that. And like, we're just overlapping a lot of those things. And so can we condense them into one thing? So I think even just looking at like your office tech, because oftentimes like those are a big chunk of budgets and I'm like, Hey, but are you utilizing that? Like, yes, you've got this, you've got this   The Dental A Team (11:09) Yeah.   DAT-Dana (11:33) review subscription, is great. But like if we're asking in person and we don't feel like, I just think sometimes we have these things just because they sound fantastic, but we're only using a very, like a small fraction of it. And there's oftentimes a workaround on that small fraction that like, again, we can just reduce because we don't necessarily, we aren't using it consistently or it overlaps with something else that we have.   The Dental A Team (11:46) I agree with that.   Totally agree. That makes me think of like some of the analytics companies, you know, high cost that also have patient communications, right? So, but then we've got a patient communication platform, like maybe Weave or something. We're like, well, but like Weave doesn't connect with this piece well, or it doesn't pull this report, right? So we have this one that's pulling the reports, Weave that I can do text messages and emails from. So I don't use it over here, but I don't use that over here. And we're paying thousands of dollars between two.   two models, well, is there a third model that maybe encompasses both or can we, what can we shift around? So I totally agree. That happens a lot actually. Or people will have the dental intel or the Adit. love Adit. So they'll have Adit and they're like, okay, well I get my reports and I can pull all my data. Should I sign up with whatever company for text messaging? And I'm like, well, what Adit does that.   DAT-Dana (12:34) Mm-hmm. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (12:56) Right, like most of the analytic companies these days, it wasn't that way. When I was in practice, it wasn't that way. So it's been pretty recent within the last, I would say three to five years that the analytics companies started piecing all of those things together or vice versa. The communication systems are now doing analytics too. So I think they don't know, but it's a huge space of savings, especially because those analytics, they're expensive.   DAT-Dana (13:19) Yeah, I agree with you. And, and all those platforms are great. It's just which one works best for you. And which one will you get the most bang out of for what you're paying in that monthly subscription? Because yes, they all do the same thing, but yet also a variety of other things. And so like which package best fits your office. And I think just even annually assessing that and annually looking at your tech bundles and like, are we utilizing it? Is it a better platform? Because they're all fantastic platforms. It's just what you're going to use within your practice.   The Dental A Team (13:25) cracks.   Totally agree. It's like the cable subscriptions, right? We used to get hit with those with the wifi and the cable and the phone and these bundles. And the next thing you know, you're $30 more and you didn't even realize that it had changed. I totally agree with you. Yeah. So subscriptions, supply costs, something that I find. And I think a lot of people tackle this one first. They'll look at like employee costs. So what's my staff cost? And totally yes. Watch for overtime. I also like to caveat.   Overtime typically means that there's a systems failure because we should be able to get the work that we need done and the amount of time that we have. And so, Dana, I often see overtime as understaffed or incorrectly staffed. maybe our job descriptions aren't clear. Maybe there's someone that's doing everything. Everybody else is leaving at 4 p.m.   when the patients are gone and then that person's there till six cleaning things up. So over time, definitely, I definitely watch that and I look at staff costs, but it honestly is one of the last places that I look because we need the people there to produce what we're producing. And then, ⁓ Dana, taxes, taxes. You guys, I have a practice that I love so much. I have got a two or three practices this year that is like, my gosh, where'd the money go? And I'm like, well, you...   had $600,000 of taxes last year that you paid for 2024, and then you also paid your 2025 taxes. So you made up for what you were lacking the year before. But remember that auto email that I've got going out, or remember how many times we talked about, did you put the savings aside for your taxes? If you put the savings aside for your taxes and you paid out of that savings, it is still going to show up on your P &L. That does not mean that that money is gone. It just means that it was used over here.   and you should still be saving for your taxes. But Dana, I think that is one of the biggest spaces that doctors or business owners in general, because I've seen even, we've worked with non dental offices that they quote unquote lose their money because they had to pay taxes.   DAT-Dana (15:55) Yeah, and I will say too, an even something that I think I noticed in a trend in that is like taxes on their personal distribution, right? Because it's like, ⁓ I pay payroll taxes and and like they know they have to pay business taxes, right? But depending on how they structure paying themselves, we kind of forget that we   The Dental A Team (16:05) ⁓ yes, yes.   DAT-Dana (16:15) to pay taxes on our own personal distributions or how we pay ourselves because, for team and all those, they're just like auto deductions and auto things that come out on our P &L and we see our pay, right? We see our pay come out, but what we don't see come out and we sometimes forget is that we are taxed on the money that we pay ourselves. So doctors, that's just like also I see that.   The Dental A Team (16:16) Yes. Yep.   Yep.   DAT-Dana (16:38) having a lot, but it's like, oh, well, I was prepared for taxes, but we forgot. Like, yes, we were prepared for the business taxes, but we weren't really prepared for the taxes on our personal income that came from the practice.   The Dental A Team (16:50) Yes, or vice versa. Karen and I were literally just talking about this on Friday, we went for a walk after summit and she was like, gosh, like CPAs, like just need CPAs to like get it all. And I'm like, well, I think CPAs are either like thinking of the business or they're thinking of your personal taxes. And it kind of, does suck, but you can't rely on one person or one entity to do it all for you. You know, you've got, we've got multiple people looking at it and you've got to be responsible to your money. So a lot of CPAs are like,   you know, yes, you've got your personal taken care of. And then you get hit with $400,000 of business taxes. Or they're like, awesome, we've got your business taxes taken care of. And here's your $200,000 of your personal taxes. And that's like, no matter what, something's going to come up short. So just know, this is what I need to save for. I'm going to save 40 % on the side. And if I don't have to pay 40%, cool. I've got savings for next year, or go spend it. I don't care what you do with it, but you've   you've prepped and you've saved for those taxes because that is the biggest space. Legitimately, I have an office that was missing X amount of dollars. And when we looked at the tax payments, it was X amount of dollars. It literally equaled out. It's like there was your profit because you weren't prepped for those 2025 taxes. Now it's 2026. You know, we're we're backlogging. So, yep.   DAT-Dana (18:06) Yeah. And I think we   hire like we bring on CPAs, we bring on financial advisors, we bring on all these things, but the end of the day, like they don't know you as a human. And so it's your responsibility to to like share like what kind of human you are with them. And so like if they're setting up that you take individual distributions, and you know that like, if money gets tight, you're not going to sit that aside, and you're not going to put it in a savings account for taxes, like, say that I think that sometimes like   The Dental A Team (18:31) Yeah.   DAT-Dana (18:32) Yes, they're going to give you advice based on like what our best practices or what they feel like will set you up for the most tax savings or the most tax success. But you know you as a person too. And if you know that you're not a great saver, maybe a personal distribution really and honestly and truly isn't the best thing for you, even if that's what they advise. So I think also to like know yourself, be able to communicate those things and make sure that the advice that they're giving you or the directions that they're giving you is something that you will truly do too.   The Dental A Team (18:50) Totally.   Yeah, I totally agree with you. Totally. we can't see. Maybe they can. But that's not their job to check and see did you move that money. I know a financial advisor that gets asked a lot that they're like, well, shouldn't my savings be those? He's like, I don't know. I don't know what you're doing with your savings. I advise you on what you should do. I'm not the one that's moving the money. I'm not your money manager.   And so we do the same thing. We advise you on what you should be doing, but I'm not in your accounts nor do I want to be in your accounts seeing what you're actually doing. I'm trusting that you're taking the advice and you're moving forward. And when I ask, did you do the thing and you say yes, I'm trusting that you did it. So huge caveat, I love that. And then honestly, last but not least, and this is why I do not tackle employee cost first is collections.   Oh my gosh, I have so many practices that are like, Tiff, where's my cashflow? And we look at it and I'm like, well, where are your KPIs? Because your collections right now is less than 90%. Like where, where's that? And your month's fluctuating is going to, can create cashflow like month by month stretches, like a little skimping here or overflow here. But on average, you should be at 90 % or higher collections. And Dana?   I think collections is a very overlooked space when it comes to the P &L because we're thinking they don't think about the collections. They just think about, okay, this is my P &L and it's like it's a separate entity. At that point, they get the P &L and it's totally separate from the practice. Like that doesn't, the practice doesn't matter anymore. This is the P &L, but they have to be smashed together.   DAT-Dana (20:20) Yeah.   Yeah, they do. I think too, like collections, feel like doctors always tend to just like look at production because it's the one thing they can control, right? It's it's the thing that they can really control, tackle, push for. And so I feel like that's a number that they look at heavily. And then I think collections, right? Yes, which doctors understand that collections is the money in the bank, right? I think we understand that concept, but we don't necessarily look at the health.   The Dental A Team (20:44) Yeah. Yep.   DAT-Dana (21:02) of the collections within the practice. And you're absolutely right that like, can we cut all over time? Can we look at team and say, look, no more over time, right? But if the overtime is what they were using to get the collections to 98%, right? Versus 87 % without it, right? Then maybe that's not the thing that we've got to tackle. We've got to look at that collections network.   The Dental A Team (21:18) Mm-hmm.   Yeah.   DAT-Dana (21:26) Or we can say, like, yeah, we can cut our supply budget and you can take a supply budget from 6 % to 5%. But is that gonna move the needle as much as taking your collections from 85 to 98?   The Dental A Team (21:33) Pressure.   Correct. I love that. with that, go look at your collections. That was massive, Dana. Thank you. I love when I can get you on a soapbox and you're like, just go do the thing. And that was beautiful. Thank you. So disappearing profit, is a thing. Not having cash flow, it is a thing. Is it normal? Normal? Like, yeah, we see it. Is it what you should have? No, no. You should know your numbers forwards and backwards. If you're at summit.   You know that if you were not at Summit, you should be at our virtual events. They're freaking awesome. Our in-person events are amazing. We literally go through line item, PNLs at most of our in-person events for this reason, because there's always just something hidden. There's just like when you comb through your personal bank account and you're like, my gosh, or when you use Apple credit card to pay for everything. And then you're like, my gosh, now I got to pay my credit card off. And how did I spend $2,000 this month? Because it was easy.   It's easy to say yes to Amazon Prime and just order it right now instead of waiting and saving. So go through, comb through. You should do this quarterly. Make sure that at least yearly, I would do it quarterly. Make sure that things make sense. There's nothing that's been hidden in there. There's nothing that's orders are duplicated. There's not subscriptions that you shouldn't have and that your collections, you should be looking at that constantly. And you should be looking at that with your KPI.   reports, your scorecards with your consultant. If you're a client of ours and you don't know what I'm talking about, get on your consultant because you should. Especially Dana and I's clients. If you're out there, we love you and you just let us know. I think.   Action items, pull your P &L. It's where out of Q1, you've got a whole quarter to look at, you've got a quarter and then some at this point to look at, and we're coming up on the end of Q2, so it comes up really quickly. Go look at it, look to see, are there things that you can bundle? Or do you have a bunch of subscriptions that, you know, you've got multiple different companies overlapping that you can use one or two rather than five? Are you using the scanner that you're paying the monthly subscription for? Are you using all the things that you're paying for?   Is there anything that you can reduce and what is your collections at? If you can say yes, you've done both of those things and your collections is where it should be. Now we're going to take a look at, is your schedule full? There's so many layers. Like we're going to take a look now at production, team, like really how big is your team and do you have enough production to support the team that you have? So Dana, anything you'd like to add?   DAT-Dana (24:10) this, I think just like you said, know those numbers inside and out, look at these things regularly, evaluate expenses on a quarterly basis, ⁓ and take a look at those subscriptions because they can hit us hard as well as those taxes.   The Dental A Team (24:26) They're sneaky. Both of those are sneaky. Awesome. Thank you, Dana. All right, everyone, go leave us a five star review. You know, we love to see those. We love to know that this content was awesome for you. Let us know any tricks or tips that you have as well or things that are working well for you. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. When you're ready, if you are not yet a client and you're ready to find that disappearing profit, reach out. You guys, we are like hounds when it comes to this stuff and really freaking good at our jobs. So the systems behind the numbers and the systems behind the money,   We will help you figure out what's working, what's not working and get you in the best shape of your life. Dana, thank you so much for today and everyone, we will catch you next time.

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found.Special GuestBrent TaylorLou Lou Gonzalez This Week We DiscussFlight Attendant On Los's Only Airline vs Bus Driver On A Hood RouteHood Chinese Spot vs Fancy Sushi Restaurant One Fore Life; 90's R&B vs 2000-2010 Hip HopS/o To Our SponorsBask & LatherExplore viral bestsellers and products of healthier hair of ALL types from Bask and Lather. Go to Baskandlatherco.com and use code SQUADD for 20% off.SquareIf you're starting a business, or running one that deserves better tools, Square helps you sell, manage, and grow without slowing down. Right now, you can get up to $200 off Square hardware at square.com/go/squadd . Run your business smarter with Square. Get started today.

The squad breaks down Ne-Yo's frustration over being judged for his three-girlfriend lifestyle and the "cancel culture" hitting his contracts.

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found.Special GuestMark Gregory Dion LackB.T. KingsleyThis Week We DiscussChurches vs Popeyes 10 vs 1; Cane Corsos or KangaroosClothes Shopping At Good Will vs Grocery Shopping At Gas StationsS/o To Our SponorsHIMSHIMS.com/SQUADDReady to reach your goals? Visit hims.com/SQUADD to get a personalized, affordable plan that getsyou.Blue ChewBluechew.comRight now, when you buy two months of BlueChew Gold, you get the third for FREE with promo code SQUADD. That's promo code SQUADD. Visit BlueChew.com for more details and important safety information, and we thank BlueChew for sponsoring the podcast.Better Helphttps://betterhelp.com/SQUADDYou don't have to be on this journey alone. Find support and have someone withyou in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com/SQUADDCash AppFor a limited time, new Cash App customers can earn $10 if they use the code CASHAPP10 in their profile at signup and send $5 to a friend within 14 days. Download Cash App today or visit cash.app/new to learn more about this and other great features launching now.Terms apply. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Green, overdraft coverage, borrow, cash back offers and promotions provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures.

The people wanted MORE on course content, so that is exactly what we have delivered... HOWEVER, this time, not in Scotland but in SPAIN. The Toms fly over to La Hacienda and San Roque to try and BREAK par and rekindle the VERSUS series for one last hoo'rah! NOT ONLY THAT... but thanks to Golf Breaks we have got a VERY exciting announcement as they jump onboard for EMAIL CORNER! ALERT ALERT ALERT - in this podcast the boys had been awake for hours, in the sun, playing lots of golf... VAST SWATHES of this pod will make little to NO sense. Fancy booking your own AMAZING GolfBreaks trip, click HERE - New episode of GIRML... Monday, Thursday and Friday (fortnightly) ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - thetoms@golfisruiningmylife.co.uk ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Discord ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tik Tok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Merch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tour⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠IGOLF Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 466, including tracks from Pogostix, Subversive Intent, Suicide Eyes, Mad Tab, The Surge, Dead End Lane, Project Sell Out, Brixton Cats, At The Gates, and Versus. The episode is loaded with a bunch of new music shared with us, a couple great albums/EPs, and wrap up the show with a Melodic Death Metal track and an Alternative track.

En este episodio a cargo de Sparrowolf y Gatonejo finalizamos el VERSUS de Tekken. Además, como de costumbre discutimos las noticias más relevantes, mencionamos los juegos a publicarse, y compartimos con ustedes lo que hemos estado haciendo, jugando, viendo, y/o leyendo. 

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found.Special GuestJordan ConleyJames DavisCourtney HaynesThis Week We DiscussSoul Food vs Mexican FoodGroup Dinners vs Solo DiningMove To English Speaking Country W/ Your Money/Valuables vs Foreign Language Country W/ A Million DollarsS/o To Our SponorsBetter HelpWhen life feels overwhelming, therapy can help.Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com/SQUADDThat's BETTERHELP.com/SQUADD

From building Applied Intuition from YC-era autonomy tooling into a $15B physical AI company, Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig have spent the last decade living through the full arc of autonomy: from simulation and data infrastructure for robotaxi companies, to operating systems for safety-critical machines, to deploying AI onto cars, trucks, mining equipment, construction vehicles, agriculture, defense systems, and driverless L4 trucks running in Japan today. They join us to explain why “physical AI” is not just LLMs on wheels, why the real bottleneck is no longer model intelligence but deployment onto constrained hardware, and why the future of autonomy may look less like one-off demos and more like Android for every moving machine.We discuss:* Applied Intuition's mission: building physical AI for a safer, more prosperous world, powering cars, trucks, construction and mining equipment, agriculture, defense, and other moving machines* Why physical AI is different from screen-based AI: learned systems can make mistakes in chat or coding, but safety-critical machines like driverless trucks, autonomous vehicles, and robots need much higher reliability* The evolution from autonomy tooling to a broad physical AI platform: starting with simulation and data infrastructure for robotaxi companies, then expanding into 30+ products across simulation, operating systems, autonomy, and AI models* Why tooling companies came back into fashion: Qasar on why developer tooling looked unfashionable in 2016, why Applied Intuition still bet on it, and how the AI boom made workflows and tools central again* The three core buckets of Applied Intuition's technology: simulation and RL infrastructure, true operating systems for vehicles and machines, and fundamental AI models for autonomy and world understanding* Why vehicles need a real AI operating system: real-time control, sensor streaming, latency, memory management, fail-safes, reliable updates, and why “bricking a car” is much worse than bricking an iPad* Physical machines as “phones before Android and iOS”: Peter explains why today's vehicle and machine software stack is fragmented across many operating systems, and why Applied Intuition wants to consolidate the platform layer* Coding agents inside Applied Intuition: Cursor, Claude Code, internal adoption leaderboards, and how AI tools are changing engineering workflows even in embedded systems and safety-critical software* Verification and validation for physical AI: why evals get harder as models improve, how end-to-end autonomy changes simulation requirements, and why neural simulation has to be fast and cheap enough to make RL practical* From deterministic tests to statistical safety: why autonomy validation is shifting from binary pass/fail requirements toward “how many nines” of reliability and mean time between failures* Cruise, Waymo, and public trust: Qasar and Peter discuss why autonomy failures are not just technical issues, how companies interact with regulators, and why Waymo is setting a high bar for the industry* Simulation vs. reality: why no simulator perfectly represents the real world, how sim-to-real validation works, and why real-world testing will never disappear* World models for physical AI: hydroplaning, construction equipment, visual cues, cause-and-effect learning, and where world models help versus where they are not enough* Onboard vs. offboard AI: why data-center models can be huge and slow, but onboard vehicle models need millisecond-level latency, low power, small size, and distillation-like efficiency* Why physical AI is not constrained by model intelligence alone: the hard part is deploying models onto real hardware, under safety, latency, power, cost, and reliability constraints* Legacy autonomy vs. intelligent autonomy: RTK GPS in mining and agriculture, why hand-coded path-following worked for decades, and why modern systems need perception and dynamic intelligence* Planning for physical systems: how “plan mode” applies to robotaxis, mining, defense, and multi-step physical tasks where actions change the state of the world* Why robotics demos are not production: the brittle last 1%, humanoid reliability, DARPA Grand Challenge-style prize policy, and the advanced engineering gap between research and deployment* Applied Intuition's hard-earned lessons: after nearly a decade, Peter says they can look at a robotics demo and predict the next 20 problems the company will hit* Qasar's advice to founders: constrain the commercial problem, avoid copying mature-company strategies too early, and remember that compounding technology only matters if you survive long enough to see it compound* Why 2014 YC advice may not apply in 2026: capital markets, AI company dynamics, and the difference between building in stealth with a deep network versus building as a new founder today* What Applied is hiring for: operating systems, autonomy, dev tooling, model performance, evals, safety-critical systems, hardware/software boundaries, and engineers with deep curiosity about how things workApplied Intuition:* YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AppliedIntuitionInc* X: https://x.com/AppliedInt* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/applied-intuition-incQasar Younis:* X: https://x.com/qasar* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/qasar/Peter Ludwig:* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterwludwig/Timestamps00:00:00 Introduction: Applied Intuition, Physical AI, and 10 Years of Building00:01:37 Physical AI vs. Screen AI: Why Safety-Critical Changes Everything00:02:51 The Origin Story: Tooling, YC, and the Scale AI Comparison00:05:41 The Three Buckets: Simulation, Operating Systems, and Autonomy Models00:11:10 Hardware, Sensors, and the LiDAR Question00:14:26 The Operating System Layer: Why Vehicles Are Like Pre-Android Phones00:19:13 Customers, Licensing, and the Better-Together Stack00:21:19 AI Coding Adoption: Cursor, Claude Code, and the Bimodal Engineer00:26:41 Verifiable Rewards, Evals, and Neural Simulation00:31:04 Statistical Validation, Regulators, and the Cruise Lesson00:40:25 World Models, Hydroplaning, and Cause-Effect Learning00:43:34 Onboard vs. Offboard: Latency, Embedded ML, and Distillation00:50:57 Plan Mode for Physical Systems and Next-Token Prediction Universally00:53:04 Productionization: The 20 Problems Every Robotics Demo Will Hit00:58:00 Founder Advice: Constraints, Compounding Tech, and Mature-Company Mimicry01:05:41 Hiring Philosophy: Hardware/Software Boundary and Engineering Mindset01:08:50 General Motors Institute, Education, and the Curiosity MindsetTranscriptIntroduction: Applied Intuition, Physical AI, and 10 Years of BuildingAlessio [00:00:00]: Hey everyone, welcome to the Latent Space Podcast. This is Alessio, founder of Kernel Labs, and I'm joined by Swyx, editor of Latent Space.Swyx [00:00:10]: And today we're very honored to have the founders of Applied Intuition, Qasar and Peter. Welcome.Qasar [00:00:17]: You guys really know how to turn it on to podcast mode. That was, you guys are real pros at this.Qasar [00:00:23]: They were just joking around right before this, and then they flipped it pretty quick.Alessio [00:00:29]: Oh, yeah, it's good to have you guys. Maybe you just wanna introduce yourself so people know the voice on the mic and they'll know what they're hearing.Peter [00:00:33]: Oh, sure. Yeah, I'm Peter Ludwig. I'm the co-founder and CTO of Applied Intuition.Qasar [00:00:38]: And my name is Qasar Younis. I am the CEO and co-founder with Peter.Alessio [00:00:42]: Nice. Can you guys give the high-level overview of what Applied Intuition is? And I was reading through some of the Congress files, when you went out there, Peter, and eighteen of the top twenty global non-Chinese automakers, you two guys, you have customers in agriculture, defense, construction. I think most people have heard of Applied Intuition tied to YC when it was first started, and then you were kinda in stealth for a long time, so maybe just give people the high-level overview of what it is today, and then we'll dive into the different pieces.Peter [00:01:10]: Yeah. So at Applied Intuition, our mission is to build physical AI for a safer, more prosperous world. And so we work on physical AI for all different types of moving systems, everything from cars to trucks to construction and mining equipment, to defense technologies. And we're a true technology company, so we build and sell the technology, and we sell it to the companies that make the machines. We sell it to the government, really anyone that wants to buy a technology to make machines smart.Physical AI vs. Screen AI: Why Safety-Critical Changes EverythingQasar [00:01:38]: Yeah. And I think in the broader AI landscape, a lot of the focus, rightfully so in the last, three years has been on large language models, and so everything fits in a screen. Like, whether it's code complete products or things like that. And what's different about us is we're deploying intelligence onto a lot of things that don't have screens. they're physical machines. There are sometimes screens within the cabin or for example of a car or a truck or something like that, but most of the value we provide is putting intelligence that is in safety critical environments. So that those two words are really important because learn systems can make mistakes if you're asking for, like, some, so something like, “Tell me about these podcast hostsQasar [00:02:28]: that I'm about to go meet.” But you can't do that obviously when you run, like, as an example, we run driverless trucks in Japan right now, as we speak. We can't have errors. Those are L4 trucks. Yeah.Alessio [00:02:40]: Yeah. Was that always the mission? I remember initially, I think people put you and Scale AI very similarly for some things about being kinda like on the data infrastructure side of things. What was the evolution of the company?The Origin Story: Tooling, YC, and the Scale AI ComparisonPeter [00:02:51]: Well, from the very beginning, we always wanted to, really be a technology company that helped generally push forward the industrial sector. And so we started off working in autonomy. Our very first customers were robotaxi companies. And we started off doing a lot of work in simulation and data infrastructure. And then over the years, we've expanded our portfolios. Now we have, over thirty products, and it's a pretty broad technology play within the landscape of physical AI.Qasar [00:03:19]: Yeah, I think the Scale reason is because we're all YC Universe companies. But it was a very different company. Scale, was, is more of a services company, data labeling company fundamentally. We started and still are, do a lot of tooling. So like, you think developer tooling is now in vogue again, thanks to the AI boom. But honestly, ten years ago, it was out of vogue. It w Like, doing a tooling company in 2016, 2017 was not, like, the thing to do because, I don't know if you remember, the VCs generally, their views was that toolings are They're just workflows, and workflows ultimately are not really interesting. And we've gone and come, full circle with that. But when we started the company, our kind of it's kinda like in the periphery of what the company wants to be. It was like, from our earliest days, like, we wanna deploy software on physical machines, like on cars and on trucks and things like that. And obviously, we didn't know that the transformer boom was gonna happen. We didn't know that autonomy systems would become end-to-end. Those things we didn't know. And why that's important when autonomy systems become end-to-end, it is just now those models can be generalized to, multiple form factors. And so back nine, ten years ago, tooling was a great way, and still is a great way to, build the technology and sell technology to our end customers, a lot of them who wanna build this stuff themselves. And so we just offer like a spectrum of solutions from you can just use like one part of a development suite of tools all the way to buying the full thing. The way to think about the company, or at least the way we think about the company is, as Peter said, a technology provider. It's kinda like, what NVIDIA does or what an AMD, but we just don't do chips.Qasar [00:05:06]: We don't do silicon. But we're a technology provider fundamentally. And I think even, we used to joke when we started the company, like, we're not the guys to build, like, Instagram. Like that was just towards That's not our That's just not us in a most fundamental way. IAlessio [00:05:20]: You have thoughts.Qasar [00:05:21]: Yes.Qasar [00:05:22]: Well, it's, it's I mean, I think it's just like what And I mean, we worked on Maps and stuff, Google Maps. Consumer products are extremely difficult for a lot of different reasons. It just, I think doesn't scratch the itch. I think we're like Michigan guys who are kind of more of that traditional engineering kind of a realm, or lineage. we used to jokeThe Three Buckets: Simulation, Operating Systems, and Autonomy ModelsPeter [00:05:41]: I gotta say, though, what was clear ten years ago was that there was so much more that was possible with software and AI in vehiclesPeter [00:05:47]: and that was generally the space that we started in ten years ago.Peter [00:05:51]: And the precise path that we've taken over the years, I think we've been strategic, and we've adjusted to make sure that we're actually building stuff that's valuable to the market. And like, the technology has changed so much. Like our own technology stack has completely changed, I would say, roughly every two years. And so now we've probably done, let's say, four complete evolutions of our own technology stack. And I sort of see that cadence roughly keeping up.Peter [00:06:13]: And so the way even we think about engineering is almost on this two-year horizon, we're preparing ourselves that, hey, like, we wanna invest the appropriate amount, but then also be very dynamic as the research gets published and as our research team figures out new advancements and adapting to that.Qasar [00:06:27]: Yeah. One thing that has been consistent is the type of people we've, we've recruited. It's engineers who are fall into the sometimes very traditional, like, GoogleQasar [00:06:38]: -gen suite, but way different from, other companies. We are hiring folks who really know the intersection of hardware and software, who know really low-level systems. Obviously, traditional ML researchers and folks who've, actually, put ML systems into production. That's been pretty consistent. I think that, like, you look at the mix of our engineering, eighty-three percent of the company is engineering, so it's, like, a giant list.Qasar [00:07:05]: A lot of engineers.Alessio [00:07:06]: Which, by the way, a thousand engineersQasar [00:07:07]: Yeah. A thousand engineers.Alessio [00:07:08]: that's on your website, so I imagine it's up to date.Qasar [00:07:11]: It is, it is up to date, yes. Yes.Alessio [00:07:12]: okay. And then forty-plus founders.Qasar [00:07:15]: Yeah. We would tend to also, This was more luck than strategy. But we've recruited a lot of ex-founders. It's been a great place for founders, YC and non, ‘cause obviously I know a lot of the YC folks. It's kind of like we recruit a lot of Google people.Qasar [00:07:33]: For them to exercise both their technical and non-technical skills because, we're, we're, we're on the applied side. We have a research team that we do fundamental research, we publish, and we've, we've had great traction there. But fundamentally, the business wants to take this intelligence and deploy it into production and there's, like, a certain type of person that's more interested in that.Alessio [00:07:54]: Yeah. You mentioned the tech stack, Peter, so I just wanted to give you some rein to just go into it. I'm interested in where Wayve Nutrition, starts and ends in some sense, what won't you do? What, do you do that's common among all the verticals that you cover?Peter [00:08:10]: There's a few buckets of work that we do, and we've been at this for almost ten years now, so the technology's pretty broad. But we got startedQasar [00:08:17]: Yeah, with a thousand engineers, like, you could work on lots of things.Peter [00:08:19]: There's lots of stuff, yeah, espe-especially with AI tools to help.Peter [00:08:22]: So we got our start in simulation and simulation tooling and infrastructure. And so generally, if you're trying to build a very complex software system that involves moving machines, you need to test that, and the best way to test it is it's a combination of virtual developments, a simulation, and then also obviously real world testing.Peter [00:08:39]: And then there's a very careful process of that correlation between the simulation results and the real world results and ensuring that the simulator is in fact accurate to that. Simulation's a very deep topic.Peter [00:08:49]: We have a whole suite of products in that, and we could talk for many hours about that specifically. But that is one part of what we do as a company. Reinforcement learning as a subpart of that is also super critical. I think a lot of the a lot of the best advancements happening in a lot of these AI systems right now in some way relate to reinforcement learning, and with now we have lots of compute, and you can do tons of interesting things for reinforcement learning. The second bucket of work that we do is on operating systems technology. true operating systems. Like, think about, schedulers and memory management and middleware and message passing and highly reliable networking and data links. Like, the reality is, if you want to deploy AI onto vehicles, you need a really good operating system. And when we were getting deeper into that space, there wasn't really anything that we were happy with.Peter [00:09:39]: Like, things existed, absolutely, and we were using what was available in the market, and as an engineering organization, we roughly realized these things aren't great. We think we can do this better, and so let's, let's build something. And that was then the that was the moment of inspiration that started our operating systems business, which is now a very real business for us. And in order to write and run great AI, you need a great operating system, and so that-that's what got us into that. And then the third bucket that we work on, it's, it's true fundamental AI technology. Models, we do a lot of work in, as mentioned, the foundational research, but then the also the world models and the actual autonomy models that are running on these physical machines, and that's across cars, trucks, mining, construction, agriculture, and defense, and so that's both land, air, and sea.Qasar [00:10:31]: And also, a smaller subsector of that third bucket is the interaction of humans with those machines.Qasar [00:10:38]: So that's a multimodal, experience. Historically, if you're moving a dirt mover or any of these machines, there are, like, buttons you press, whether they're actual physical tactile buttons or something like a touch screen. That's just That fundamentally is changing to where you're just talking to the machine and the machine and you're teaming with the machine.Alessio [00:10:58]: Voice?Qasar [00:10:59]: Yeah, voice, absolutely, yeah.Alessio [00:11:00]: Oh.Qasar [00:11:00]: And also the machine just being aware of who is in the cabin, what their state is. you can think from a safety systems perspective, the most simple version of this is, like, the driver is tired, right? They're, they're if you get those alerts when you're driving your car and saysHardware, Sensors, and the LiDAR QuestionQasar [00:11:15]: -maybe take a coffee break, that take that times, a couple of order of magnitudes up. But this concept of teaming man and machine is important. When you think about running agents or just running, different instances of, Claude and doing work for you in the background, you can take that analogy out, almost copy and paste and put it into, like, a farm, where you have a farmer who's running a number of machines. So where they interact with the machine is where there's maybe a critical decision or a disengagement or something like that, but generally speaking, the agent on the physical machine is running and making decisions on the behalf of the farmer until there's something maybe critical. And that's also what we work on. So that's not pure autonomy. It's a little bit of a mix, but it falls under, autonomy. In the automotive sense, that's typically defined in SAE levels as an L2++ systemQasar [00:12:05]: -with a human in the loop. But just take that idea, to other verticals.Alessio [00:12:09]: Yeah. You've not mentioned hardware at all, like sensors or obviously we you mentioned you don't do chips. I think even in AV there's, like, a big, cameras versus lidars. Like, what are, like, in your space maybe some of those design decisions that you made, and are they driven by the OEM's ability to put things on the machinery? And like, how much influence do you guys have on co-designing those?Peter [00:12:32]: Yeah. So we don't make sensors. Like, we're, we're not a manufacturer. Obviously, we use a lot of sensors in our autonomy products. in terms of what actually goes on the vehicles, we have a preferred set of sensors that we, let's say fully support, and then our customers, they can sort of choose from those. And obviously if there's a very strong opinion on supporting something else, we'll add that to the platform as well. And the lidar question is at this point sort of the age-old,Peter [00:12:59]: topic in autonomy, and the state of the industry right now is lidar is hands down a useful sensor, specifically for data collection and the R&D phase of autonomy development. if you see, for example, a Tesla R&D vehicle, it actually has lidar on itPeter [00:13:17]: to this day, right? In the Bay Area we see these. you'll see, like, Model Ys or Cybercab that have lidars on them just driving around. So it's, it's useful because it gives you per pixel depth information. So if you can pair a lidar with a camerand you can say that, well, this camera's looking this direction, this lidar's looking this direction, and now for each pixel of the camera I can see how far away is that pixel. you can actually then use that as a part of your model training, and then the that depth information then becomes a learned, a learned state of the camera data. And then when you're doing the production system, you can now remove the lidarPeter [00:13:52]: and now you can actually get depth with just the camera. And so that difference between, like, a highly sensored R&D vehicle and then the down-costed production vehicle, we use that across our whole portfolio of products. And of course the end goal is you want super low cost and super reliable.Peter [00:14:08]: And then in certain use cases you have some more, bespoke things. Like in defense as an example, you do things at night oftentimes, and so you care about sensors like infrared, more so than And you don't, you don't wanna be putting energy out, so you don't wanna use lidar or radar.Peter [00:14:23]: but you still need to be able to see at nighttime. So yeah, we work the whole gamut.The Operating System Layer: Why Vehicles Are Like Pre-Android PhonesAlessio [00:14:27]: Cool. So that's kinda like on the hardware level. Then on the OS level, how does that look like? What is, like, unique? my drive- I drive a Tesla. Whenever I drive some other car that has a screen, it always sucks.Alessio [00:14:38]: It's on, like, cheap Android tablet. It's like, it's laggy and all of that. What does the OS of, like, the autonomy future look like?Peter [00:14:46]: When most people, it's really what you just described. When you think about operating system in a vehicle, you're thinking about the HMI, right? The human machine interface, and absolutely that's a an important part of it, but that's actually only one thin layer on top. So when we talk about operating systems for, like, AI in vehicles, there's many layers that go deep into the CPU critical realm and embedded systems, and you're talking about the real time control ofPeter [00:15:13]: let's say the electric motors or the engine and the actuators, and you have different redundancies for different, let's say, the steering actuation in the vehicle. And all of these things, need very core support in the in the operating system. And then of course for autonomy you have real time sensor data that's streaming in, and the latencies there are really important, right? If you try to Imagine you try to run Microsoft WindowsPeter [00:15:35]: like streaming your sensor data in or controlling the vehicle. Like, the latencies are gonna be absurd. Like, you can never do that. And so what's special about what we do is we really have this system level thinking, right? So we're looking at, we care about every performance characteristics of the entire system, and then we also, because we're doing a lot of the software or all of that software, we can fine-tune and control all of those things. So we can very carefully tune in the latencies for every aspect of the system. We can carefully tune in the memory management. We can have the right, fail-safes and fallbacks, for different things. ‘Cause you have to account for what if, what if there is a critical failure? What if there's a cosmic ray that flipsPeter [00:16:14]: a bit in the middle of the processor that causes some, malfunction? And you have to have a fail-safe to all of that, and so the core operating system is a part of that. And then the one last thing, which is a lot less exciting but is, actually a very big topic, is reliability of updates.Peter [00:16:30]: so the I have a Tesla and you get updates fairly frequently, right?Peter [00:16:36]: Once a month. Most companies that are making vehiclesPeter [00:16:40]: are basically never doing updates, and they're And even if they are doing updates, they're usually only updating maybe one module. Maybe they're updating the HMI module. But they're not able to update, let's say, the CPU critical parts of the system.Peter [00:16:51]: You have to go into the dealer for that. And so with our operating system now we can actually enable highly reliable updates of any system in the vehicle, and that's way easier said than done. Like, there's lots of technical, technically deep stuff, in the tech stack to do that in a way that you're not going to accidentally brick a vehicle.Peter [00:17:08]: And right? If, imagine yourAlessio [00:17:10]: That would be bad.Alessio [00:17:11]: Bad.Peter [00:17:11]: Bricking a car is a very expensivePeter [00:17:13]: and honestly, like across the industry maybe one of the most just pure impactful things that we've done is we've just, we're, we're now enabling the industry to actually do software updates.Alessio [00:17:22]: Just to clarify as well, who is the customer for this? Like, I assume a lot of hardware manufacturers have their own firmware, and I'm sure some of them would just have you write it for them because you're experts. And others would have their own. Like, who pays for this? Who invites you into the house? Is it, is it the end user, or is it, is it the manufacturer?Peter [00:17:41]: Yeah. So let me make an analogy firstly on the on the fragmentation of software. So physical machines today are more akin to the state of the phone market before Android and iOS existed, right? So I worked on Android at Google by the way many years ago, and part of the reason that Larry at Google decided to get into Android was they wanted to run Google products on a bunch of phones, and they bought all of these phones from the industry, and it turned out they had like 50 different operating systems on these phones. And it was virtually impossiblePeter [00:18:17]: for Google to make their app run on all 50 devices equally well. And so the solution was, well, actually what if, what if they created-A really great operating system and made it attractive to all of these phone makers, and that was sort of the genesis for what Android was and why Android existed. It was a way for Google to get their products onto really wide diversity of devices. The state of the physical, industry right now, it's a little bit like that. Like, there's yes, these companies have firmware, but they have so many different operating systems, it's so fragmented, and to actually get a modern AI application to run on these vehicles, you actually, you first have to consolidate the operating system, and so that's, that's why we've done that. And then, your specific question was who are our customers? It's, it's, generally it's the companies that are making these machines.Peter [00:19:06]: And we're, we're, we're selling our technology to them to really simplify the architecture and then enable these AI applications to run on them.Customers, Licensing, and the Better-Together StackSwyx [00:19:13]: How much is reusable across? Like, do you have, like, one OS that is just configured for everything, or is there some more customization that is needed?Peter [00:19:22]: Yeah, highly reusable. So the fundamental technology is quite universal, right? So things that we do have to think about though are, like, chipset support. And so if you're, if you're coding, let's say, an LLM and you have start with an assumption that, “Hey, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna use CUDA, and I'm gonna run this, on an NVIDIA chip,” then you don't really have to think about the hardware in that sense. Like, you're just, “Okay, I'm just I'm in the CUDA/NVIDIA ecosystem, and I'm, I'm going to use that.” But the hardware, especially in safety critical systems, it's a lot more diverse. There's not one or one or two players. There's a bunch of different chipsets that we have to support. And so our operating system doesn't just run on, like, the equivalent of X86. It has to, it has to run on a number of different architectures from chips from a bunch of different companies. But again, we've been working on this for a long time now, so we have, we have support for all of those chipsets. And then when you want to then run the AI applications, we can then do that reliably across now a variety of providers.Qasar [00:20:19]: And I think that is, like, heavily inspired by Android, right? Android has a huge suite of testing and it's a reliable operating system that runs on thousands of devices. And we think we can, we can do the same in all these physical moving machines, with the difference that we're really in a safety critical realm. Android isn't.Alessio [00:20:40]: So on Android, I don't need to use Gmail, I can use Superhuman. Like, what about your machinery? Like, can people bring somebody else's automation to it, or is it kinda like all-in-one?Qasar [00:20:50]: You have to use us. No. Yeah. we're If, Yeah. Yeah, it's totally open. Yeah.Peter [00:20:56]: Yeah. our philosophy is that we are a technology company, and so we license our technology to customers to use how they want. And so if a customer wants to If they wanna license our autonomy tech and our operating system, then great, we'll license those. If they just wanna license the operating system and then use different autonomy tech, that's fine also, and we have great documentation andSwyx [00:21:17]: Or if they wanna use developer tooling.Peter [00:21:18]: Yeah, exactly.AI Coding Adoption: Cursor, Claude Code, and the Bimodal EngineerSwyx [00:21:19]: It's, like, a better together if, obviously, if you, if they work together. Is it all C++ I assume is with different compile targets?Peter [00:21:27]: We use a lot of C++.Peter [00:21:28]: Rust is sort of a hot, the new hot kid on the blockPeter [00:21:32]: for a bunch of things as well. But yeah, the lower level you get, especially when you get to real-time constraints, you hit C++ at some point, and at some point maybe you work your way into assembly when needed.Swyx [00:21:44]: Oh, damn.Alessio [00:21:46]: I'm curious about the coding agent adoption, just, like, since you're mentioning more esoteric languages. Like, what's the adoption internally? What have you learned?Peter [00:21:55]: Yeah. We use everything. So Cursor was, I think the hottest tool in the company for a good while. Now Claude Code, I think has taken the reign on that. We have a internal leader, leaderboard that we use just to sort of encourage adoptionPeter [00:22:09]: with-within the company. And yeah, it's, they're phenomenally useful. it's, Honestly, we take inspiration from some of those tools also in how we're adapting some of that mindset of thinking to the physical realm. Like if it's so easy to build an app for this or that thing that lives just on a screen, we can We're taking now a lot of the same ideas and applying that to, “Okay, well, if you wanted a physical machine to do something, how easy can we make that, using our own tooling and platform as well?”Alessio [00:22:40]: Are you changing any of, like, the OS architecture, kinda like the way you expose services to, like, be more AI friendly or?Peter [00:22:48]: Yeah, absolutely. The in the early days of our tools infrastructure work, it was a lot about, You had engineers that were experts in certain topics, but the things that you're dealing with, they're oftentimes more mathematical or more abstract, where actually GUI tools are very useful for certain things. Like as an example, we have a product we call Sensor Studio, which is, it helps you design the sensor suite for your autonomous vehicle, whether, again, it could be a car, it could be a drone, could be a mining equipment, could be a robot. And you place sensors in different places. You There's different, There's a library. You can understand what are the trade-offs that you're making in the design of that system, and that was, like, a very, a very GUI intensive, thing ‘cause it's a little more like a CAD tool in that senseSwyx [00:23:37]: YepPeter [00:23:37]: if you've seen CAD tools. Nowadays, though, right, we expose all of the underlying APIs for that and now using, AI agents, you can actually configure a sensor suite with just text and likely reach a better result than you could've through the GUI in the past, and we're taking that thinking now through the whole product portfolio.Swyx [00:23:57]: Another thing I was thinking about is just in terms of, like, AI, adoption, does it change your hiring at least a little bit, or how do you, how do you sort of manage engineers, differently?Peter [00:24:08]: Yeah. absolutely, it does. we, I think like every company in the Valley right now, are evolving our hiring practicesPeter [00:24:16]: because the skills required to be effective are changing so fast, right? you used to really select for just rote implementation ability and now it is more the AI engineer skill set, right? Where it's like, yeah, how to implement, but actually-Just banging out code is no longer the core job, right? It's, it's actually knowing what questions to ask, knowing how to tie, how to tie together these different AI tools. And so the interviews that we give now I think are way harder than they've ever been.Peter [00:24:46]: But we also allow, right, selective use of AI tools to solve the problems. And I think in that you start to see more of a bimodal distribution of engineers, right? You start to see like wow, there's, there's this subset of people that they really get it. Like they're, they're all in and they've, they've clearly invested the hours needed to learn these tools and how to be effective.Peter [00:25:09]: And then there's sort of the group of people that haven't done that, and that the productivity gap is just enormous. And so we're, we're trying to obviously select for the people that are really into this.Qasar [00:25:20]: I first wrote the my AI engineer piece three years ago, and when I first wrote about it, I was like, “Actually, not everyone should be an AI engineer,” ‘cause I think there's a there's an extremist stance where well, every software is an engineer is an AI engineer. And my actual example of people who should not be adopting AI was embedded systems and operating systems, and database people. Are they adopting AI?Peter [00:25:41]: I think it's the classic bitter lesson, topic, which is the Six months ago I would've said the same thing, but it's, it's becoming super useful for every domain.Qasar [00:25:53]: I'm sure.Peter [00:25:54]: Right? Like,Peter [00:25:56]: there was, I think six months ago, or maybe a year ago, if you tried to use, let's say the latest Claude model for writing shaders, GPU shaders, the results were probably underwhelming. And if you use the latest model now to do that kind of task, you're a little bit blown away, like, “Wow, that actually worked. That's amazing.” And we see the same thing in the embedded realm. No question though, especially when you get into safety critical systems, the human validation isPeter [00:26:25]: is 100% key. Like I You're not gonna trust your life to a an AI written software that's, that's not been very carefully, checked by humans. And so I think now the really the challenge is about that appropriate level of human validation for these safety critical systems.Verifiable Rewards, Evals, and Neural SimulationAlessio [00:26:41]: How do you think about, yeah, touching on the simulation side, I think verifiable reward and reinforcement learning is, like, the hottest thing. What have you done internally to build around that? And like, what gives you What makes you sleep at night? Like, if somebody's like, just web coding something or likeAlessio [00:26:57]: wants to try something new, you have like a good enough system. Because I think the opposite is also true, is like if it's super easy to write anythingAlessio [00:27:04]: then it puts a lot of work on like the verifiableAlessio [00:27:07]: side of it. Like, what does that look like for people?Peter [00:27:10]: Yeah. So verifiability, a broader bucket of like evaluations, right? Like how do you evaluate the results that you're, you're getting? I think this is probably the hardest problem right now, because the As the models get better, it can be harder and harder to find the faults on the system.Peter [00:27:29]: And so like the problem of doing proper eval to find those faults, like that problem also keeps getting harder as the models get better. But it's no less important than it's ever been, right? You still there are still going to be edge cases that are not met and whatnot. And so it's, it's a big area of investment for us. On the reinforcement learning topic, the key thing is there's all these new requirements that come to be in the latest generation of these technologies. So for example, end-to-end is the big thing right now in autonomy and physical AI, which is you can now train these models that can effectively take sensor data in and then put control signals out, and get really good results out of that. But the way that you train and improve those models is really different from the previous generations. And so to do reinforcement learning on an end-to-end model, you now need to actually simulate all the sensor data, right? So then this becomes a we call our, work in this neural simulation, but it'sPeter [00:28:26]: think of it like a hybrid of Gaussian, splatting and diffusion methods, and where you really care about performance. Like performance is everything. If you can't do enough simulation fast enough and cheap enough, you actually can't get results that are worthwhile, in the end. It also gets to a lot of our work in embedded systems, which is like performance critical work, and that performance optimization, performance criticality, it carries over to a lot of the model training work. because, like, the only way to make it affordable is it has to be really fast.Qasar [00:28:58]: I think it's worth a few minutes talking about our own, evolving thoughts on verification and validation withinQasar [00:29:05]: kind of, traditional simulators, which are, you can think of like vehicle dynamics or something like that, which you're just taking textbooks and taking those formulasQasar [00:29:13]: and putting them into software, to like now this neural sim/world model universe. I think that's an interesting topic.Peter [00:29:20]: Yeah. So in more traditional development, right, you oftentimes would have, more black-and-white answers to questions.Peter [00:29:28]: And so the in Europe as an example, there's, a regulatory, system, it's called Euro NCAP. It's the European New Car Assessment Program, and as part of that, the vehicles have to pass a bunch of tests, and those tests actually, include, safety systems. So automatic emergency braking for a child that runs in front of a carPeter [00:29:51]: or let's say an occluded child that runs out and you hit it. And so you have You end up with sort of these binary answers of like, well, did the car under test pass this specific test? And there's a very well-known set of test casesPeter [00:30:05]: that the vehicle has to pass. And that was how the industry worked, let's say, until 10-ish years ago. But what's changed now is with these models, everything is statistics, right? Like you no longer have a black-and-white answer, but it's like, well, how many orders of magnitude or how many nines of reliability can I get in the system, and how can I, how can I prove that to be true? And the big unlock honestly for physical AI as an industry is that these models are just becoming much more reliable. Right? Things like things actually work a lot better. It's like the number of nines you can get out of these systems are now good enough that it actually becomes cost effective to really deploy these things. And so the big shift in, so verification and validation has been from a little bit more of a Again the past it was strictly requirements, and are you meeting or not? And now it's more of a statistical, verification and validation case where it's all about how many nines of reliability and meantime between failures, that sort of thing.Statistical Validation, Regulators, and the Cruise LessonSwyx [00:31:04]: And is the target audience regulators or even the customers are yeah, if you I imagine the customers are bought in, and it's mostly regulators that need to be satisfied.Peter [00:31:15]: We do work with the US government, we do work of course with the European governments and the government of Japan, and the government is not like an AI lab by any means.Peter [00:31:25]: So Swyx [00:31:26]: They just care about the outcome.Peter [00:31:27]: They care about the outcome.Peter [00:31:28]: And so we do education, in that regard, and like so sort of teaching about, “Hey, this is how we think validation should be done, and this is an approach that we think is reasonable,” and how to think about like when is a driverless system actually safe enough to go on the roads and that sort of thing. But I wouldn't say that the government is asking for it. It's like we're more teaching the government in that, in that sense. It's honestly, it's more so for our own, our own comfort, right? Like, we want to build very safe systems, and then of course our customers care deeply about that as well. But in that context we're also typically educating our customers.Qasar [00:32:01]: Yeah. Our first, our first core value is on round safety. So I think we can't underline enough that, us also verifying and validating that the systems that we're deploying are safe to us is probably as important as, like, some regulator or a customer saying,Swyx [00:32:19]: Of course. Okay. Yeah.Swyx [00:32:20]: You have to satisfy yourselves.Peter [00:32:22]: As I say, as a whole across the world, regulation oftentimes it's like a almost lowest common denominator. But like, you really have to substantially exceed what the regulators are expecting to make good products.Swyx [00:32:33]: Yeah. One thing I often talk about, I think and I try to make this relatable to the audience also, is Cruise, where they had an accident that basically ended the company. I wonder if people overreact to single incidents, because incidents are going to happen regardless, right? ‘Cause it's a statistical thing, but as long I don't know if regulators understand that, you cannot extrapolate from a single incident, but we do because that's all we have to go on. And your sample sizes are necessarily gonna be lower than, I don't knowSwyx [00:33:00]: consumer driving.Qasar [00:33:01]: Yeah. I think the Cruise example wasn't a technology failure. there was The real, compounding issue there was just how did the company talk to the regulators and what was their kind of behavior, and I think that became more of the issue. If you look,Peter [00:33:19]: It isn't It definitely was a technology failure, but it was made much worse by theSwyx [00:33:23]: Put the car back on the woman.Qasar [00:33:25]: Yeah. And let me put it another way. There is a version where Cruise still exists.Swyx [00:33:29]: right. Right.Qasar [00:33:30]: Right. It'sSwyx [00:33:30]: It was like the last strawQasar [00:33:31]: ItSwyx [00:33:31]: in like a long chain ofSwyx [00:33:33]: like issues.Qasar [00:33:33]: So do you feel like ATG had that horrific accident or someone actually dying, because, that was a homeless person crossing the street? So yeah, I think we can't understate enough that ultimately, like, statistical validation of something, that's one part of it, but it's not the only part of it. Like, consumer and let's say, mainstream adoption of these technologies is also gonna be part of that conversation. I think companies like Waymo are doing a lot of service positively to the industry in the sense of they're, they're setting a high benchmark and they're showing, kind of in a very responsible way how to, how to deal with these. There have been Waymo incidences as well. They've just not been as significant as the Cruise one that you mentioned. But yeah, so I think you'll just continue to see that. I think probably the long term question is really gonna be, again, around Like it is very clear humans are way worse drivers statistically.Qasar [00:34:29]: Like, there's no, there's no debate. And so at what point But we're emotional animals.Swyx [00:34:34]: Yeah. So my thing is, like, we have to get to a point as a society where we accept horrific accidents that would never happen by a human because statistically we understand that it is safer overall. In the same way that planes, they're safer, than I think they're the safest mode of transport that we have.Qasar [00:34:50]: Yeah. it's more dangerous to drive to the airport than it is to get on a flight.Qasar [00:34:53]: So if you're everQasar [00:34:54]: if you're ever getting nervous about getting on a plane, just think “I just gotta get to the airport.”Swyx [00:34:58]: Yes, we're flying.Qasar [00:34:59]: If I get to the airportQasar [00:35:00]: I'll be good.Swyx [00:35:00]: But then it's, planes also concentrate the tail risk if planesQasar [00:35:03]: Yeah. AndPeter [00:35:04]: And I was, I don't think we honestly have to worry about there ever being, accidents from these systems that are like much worse than what humans would cause, ‘cause humans do terrible things.Peter [00:35:14]: Like, people fall asleep at the wheel all the time.Swyx [00:35:16]: I have.Swyx [00:35:17]: Like, I'll call, I've been a drowsy driver.Peter [00:35:19]: Kinda drunk drivers, and that'sPeter [00:35:20]: that's the extreme end of the example. But these AI systems, you have redundancies, you have fallbacks. Like, there's many things have to go wrong for there to actually be a something catastrophic because there's, there's so many, fallbacks that these systems have.Alessio [00:35:36]: your simulation is like so vast because there's so many use cases. What are, like, maybe things that worked in a simulation and then you put it out and it's like, “F**k, this isAlessio [00:35:45]: this just did not work at all?”Peter [00:35:47]: Yes.Alessio [00:35:47]: IsPeter [00:35:47]: That's maybe a bit of a misconception, about simulation there. So let me go a little bit, more technical on this. So at first go, no simulation is going to represent the real world. There's always a process of this, sim to real matchingPeter [00:36:02]: where you actually, you need the real world feedback to basically feed into the parameters that are being used in the simulator, and you have to do that, it's like this validation flow, a number of times until you can get some confidence that, like I think the simulator is now accurately representingPeter [00:36:19]: what's gonna happen in the real world. Now, if you have a situation where you've done that full validation and you thought that it was accurate and then there's something different, those are much trickier cases, and that's, that absolutely can happen, but really I think the validation process is a really important part. You can never skip the simulation validation process, like where you're actually ensuring that, hey, the actual, my sim to real gap here is small enough that I can trust these simulation results. And there's, there's so many fun things that you can do when you get into it. Like, I'll, I'll give one fun example that came up recently is like in these humanoid robotics, systemsOverheating actuators is a real problem, right? So obviously phenomenal demos. IPeter [00:37:01]: The most amazingAlessio [00:37:02]: For 10 minutes.Peter [00:37:03]: The most amazing I can get. I love, I love watching robots do acrobatics like everybody but the these systems actually overheat, right? If, like, And one of the ways you can use simulation though is you can actually have that, the temperature of those actuators be one of the parameters that's representedPeter [00:37:18]: in the simulation. And if you're doing reinforcement learning over a certain task, then the robot can actually adjust its motions in the simulation to account for the fact that, oh, it knows that as it's moving, it's actually beginning to overheat this motor. But if you didn't have that parameter of, let's say, the heat of that motor represented in the simulation initially, then your RL policy might It will disregard that. And now you run that on the robot and the robot will overheat and fail.Alessio [00:37:43]: I guess the question is, like, how do you have all of these parameters taken care of while also understanding the deployment environment? Like, temperature is like a great example, right? WellAlessio [00:37:53]: why did you make my robot worse when it runs in like a freezer?Alessio [00:37:57]: So it actually shouldn't worry about that. it's like, yeah, how do you design these simulations?Peter [00:38:02]: This is honestly the This is what makes simulation so hard, right? it's because you Simulation is fundamentally about you're trying to optimize the development of a system, right? Like, how can I build this system faster and better and cheaper and what are all the levers that I have to actually accomplish that? And because simulation's just a software program, you can, you can change it a lot more easily than you can hardware systems. And then what's particularly awesome about the let's say, world models and using that as a part of simulation is now the simulation doesn't just scale with, let's say, adding new math equations inPeter [00:38:36]: but we can actually scale the simulation environment now with additional real world data and that also unlocks a whole new field of robotics.Qasar [00:38:46]: There is a meniscus line where you cross where still doing real world testing is better. there's, in this, sim-to-real gap, you can reproduce reality at exceedingly expensive costs and this So nothing is free. So really you have to you're finding that line where you're getting great performance, you're getting great feedback, whether it's on the training side or on the eval side, but it's way cheaper than doing it in the real world. At some point it, that doesn't make sense. And so even, from our earliest days in autonomy, our view was you're still gonna do real world testing. You There's, there's not, there's not this, magical land where you're not gonna do that. And maybe even like a more nuanced version of this in like traditional software development is, most of your testing for software in a vehicle, 95% of that can be like traditional CI/CD kind of, flows that you would have in traditional web development. But once you have Now you, let's say you have a truck. Well, you can do like 4% of those in like a rig which has all the components, the electrical and electronics of a truck, but doesn't have, it doesn't have the tires and it doesn't have the And then you have the 1%, which is actually the vehicle. There's something There's a similar analogy in terms of using simulation for intelligent systems. You can do a lot in a simulator, but in using world models, but ultimately it's, it's physical AI. So you're gonna deploy it on physical machines andQasar [00:40:17]: the freezer example comes to, comes to light.Alessio [00:40:20]: The world model thing has been to me the hardest thing toAlessio [00:40:22]: wrap my head around. Like we have Faith Eliyon on the podcast.World Models, Hydroplaning, and Cause-Effect LearningQasar [00:40:25]: We've been doing a small series with like another Intuition company, General Intuition as well.Qasar [00:40:31]: yeah, and I mean, lots of, lots of coverage on NeRFs and yes.Alessio [00:40:34]: Yeah. It feels like we talk with about, the heliocentric system, right? It's like in a world model, if you just feed visual data, the model might learn that the sun spins around the Earth. It makes sense, right? And it's like, well, not really. And I think what are like some of these other things that like hydroplaning is one thing I think about, is like can a world model understand hydroplaning and like what amount of water like causes it to happen? And it's like, yeah, to me it's like I don't understand how you guys do it. I guess it's like the real thing is like when you're doing both cars and the highway in Japan versus the excavator in a mine in,Qasar [00:41:13]: ArizonaAlessio [00:41:13]: wherever you're Arizona, wherever you're deploying them.Alessio [00:41:15]: How much of it are you relying on the world models to like generate the simulations for you and then try and close the gap after versus like giving the world models as a tool to your engineers to like curate the simulations if that makes sense?Peter [00:41:28]: Yeah, totally. So yeah, I can say at a pure engineering level, I think if you're hoping to do real world deploys and you're purely relying on a world model approach, you probably won't get to something that works, before you go bankrupt. So there is just a very practical mindset of like, world models are amazing and they're extremely useful for a lot of use cases, but there are a lot of other things that you need to do to actually get something started and something deployed and working. most fundamentally, world models are all about It's understanding the world, but also understanding what's going to happen. It's like the cause-effect relationship.Peter [00:42:01]: Right? And so like it, right, if you have a take some sort of construction tool, and that construction tool is gonna be doing some work on the Earth in some way, it's gonna be moving earth, the world model needs to understand that cause-effect relationship. Like, okay, when I, when I take this material from here and put it over there and now I have things that are over here and not over there anymore and that cause-effect, relationship. data obviously is a is a big problem. The hydroplaningPeter [00:42:26]: one is actually a really great example because it's actually quite non-obvious sometimes. Right? It's like, well, it's, it's raining and well this road, has, let's say the appropriate curvature to it so the water is running off the road and cars are driving faster here and then you approach a road that's very flat and water is now puddling on that road and all of a sudden cars are driving slower because when they were driving faster they were starting to lose control. And there are a lot of visual nuance, very nuanced visual cues in the scene and so I do think in the world model concept there's a good chance that the model actually would learn that you should just drive slower when these visual cues exist, and that's obviously the beautiful-The beauty of, these kinds of models where they just, they learn these non-obvious things.Swyx [00:43:14]: It doesn't need to know about hydroplaning to know that it needs to drive slower.Peter [00:43:17]: Yes.Swyx [00:43:17]: I guess it's Yeah. I wanna ask questions about, also deploying models. I presume, like, you use a lot of these world models for training data and simulation, but what about deploying it onto the systems in production? Presumably you have you have, like, GPUs on deviceOnboard vs. Offboard: Latency, Embedded ML, and DistillationSwyx [00:43:36]: but they're I keep saying on device. What's the what's the right term for that?Peter [00:43:40]: On machine.Swyx [00:43:41]: On machine.Peter [00:43:41]: Or embedded, yeah.Swyx [00:43:42]: Yeah. What is the embedded world like? because for people who are not used to that world, this is very alien.Peter [00:43:49]: Yeah. So it's actually We call it onboard and off board.Peter [00:43:52]: So like, onboard software and off board software.Peter [00:43:54]: And the great thing about off board software is you don't have to care about time, and you can run really large models, right? So you can, you can say, “Well, this model, I don't care if it takes one second for it to give me a result or 10 seconds for it to give me a result, because we have time.” And the models can be really big, and they can run, in a data center or on a on a huge GPU and you can obviously have distribute to compute, et cetera. But onboard you don't have any of those benefits. You're like, “Well, I need I have this many milliseconds where I need an answer from this model.” And so a lot more of the energy then is about, think of it more like distillation and it's like truly efficiency and like, literally every fraction of a millisecond counts. And you can't have a situation where the model takes too long because then the vehicle can't actually function.Peter [00:44:42]: And so you can, you can still use a lot of the same techniques, and the models themselves you can think of as like a derivative of larger models that you can run offline, and then you're, you're trying to just get a model that is still performs really well but it's, it's a it's smaller, small enough version that you can then run on this embedded system where you care about latency and power.Qasar [00:45:03]: Yeah. And I think like, the broader point I think which, maybe is not obvious but it's worth saying is in physical AI world, we're not really constrained right now by, like, the intelligence of the models. It's actually what Peter's talking about, it's actually deploying them inSwyx [00:45:19]: The hardware they give you.Qasar [00:45:21]: Yeah. On the hardware you give you.Qasar [00:45:22]: And so And there's just a reality is of safety critical systems. So those end up being the your limiting factorsQasar [00:45:29]: rather than, let's say, a limiting factor for, a foundation model companyQasar [00:45:34]: is gonna be just capital maybe or researchers.Qasar [00:45:38]: So we're, we're in that way dealing with, for us as people who kind of come in that realm with like a very interesting Those constraints force creativity.Swyx [00:45:47]: And I imagine, nobody was deploying or giving you the hardware for transformers back in 2018, whatever, but now they are. What's the evolution like? just peel back the curtains a little bit.Peter [00:45:59]: Yeah. Transformers first off, I think the paper was originally published in 2017.Swyx [00:46:02]: 2017.Swyx [00:46:02]: So there's no time.Peter [00:46:04]: And ISwyx [00:46:05]: But I'm just saying I guess I'm saying, like, embedded ML systems usually, like, a lot less parameters, a lot less compute, and now, like, orders of magnitude more.Peter [00:46:14]: Yeah. absolutely. what I was gonna say though was I think in the in the original paper in 2017, maybe it's in the last paragraph, somewhere in the paper they talk about, like, “Oh, by the way, this technique might be useful for, like, images and videos as well.”Peter [00:46:30]: These last subjects.Peter [00:46:31]: And it took a few years for that impact to really hit. But like, now, we're seeing transformers are everywhere.Swyx [00:46:39]: Yeah. Vision transformers.Peter [00:46:40]: And then then the compute just keeps getting better and better. But you do have this fundamental trade-off, right? It's like you have power, you have cost, and performance and like, getting the right, getting the right mix of those things in an embedded package that can also be, like, shaken and baked in all thePeter [00:47:00]: conditions that these things have to have to operate in. But yeah, I think that they're only going to keep getting better and so we also try to plan our strategy understanding that, we know the rate of improvements of these systems.Swyx [00:47:11]: Yeah. So like, Google just released the Gemma 2B modelSwyx [00:47:15]: that effective 2B model. Is that useful to you guys or is that too big?Peter [00:47:18]: You can run that model on an embedded system, definitely.Peter [00:47:21]: the So yes, it's, it's useful in that regard. The bigger question is, like, what do you use it for in an embedded system? Like, you actually need to customize it quite a bit to make it useful for something. But yeah, you could run a two billion parameter model, definitely.Swyx [00:47:35]: It also interesting, like, what percent is a custom ML model that only does that thing versus a generalist LLMSwyx [00:47:41]: which probably is not that useful actually for your context.Peter [00:47:46]: Like, you, like, you can imagine different use cases, right?Peter [00:47:48]: So theSwyx [00:47:49]: The voice stuff, yes.Peter [00:47:49]: Yeah, the voice test. Totally, yes.Peter [00:47:51]: So for the actual, autonomy elements, that's 100% in-house. We do every bit of that, the data simulation, the model, everything. But when you get into the more generic use cases like voice or voice assistant kind of thing, that's where these more generalist models like Gemma actually can be quite, can be quite useful.Swyx [00:48:09]: Yeah. And then there's also obviously a trade-off between, like, what percent must you do on machine, versus just call home.Peter [00:48:16]: Yeah. It's all about latency.Swyx [00:48:17]: Latency.Peter [00:48:17]: It's all about latency. Yeah.Swyx [00:48:18]: Yeah. Well, like, I think actually in a lot of contexts, especially in the US, you can just have a connection to the web.Qasar [00:48:26]: Yeah. I think though most of our universe is everything has to be fairly, embedded and local because just the nature of Even in the US there's a lot of likeSwyx [00:48:39]: PatchinessQasar [00:48:40]: don't haveQasar [00:48:41]: have coverage, right? And if you look at, like, the old world of autonomy within mining, which is, like, long before transformers and kind of, neural networks, in the like CNN and kind of a universe, they were really just hand-coded, systems. They were just like, this machine is gonna run to that place with thisPeter [00:49:03]: That was our GPS, like very accurate GPS.Qasar [00:49:05]: Yeah. And so that worked, and that worked for 20 years, so why would we actually need to use transformers or kind of more modern end-to-end systems? Mainly because you can only really run a path and run backwards. That provided a lot of value, but m-Not as much as you get when the machine is actually intelligent. It's, it's seeing, it's perceiving, it's acting in a dynamic world.Alessio [00:49:28]: I looked up RTK, real-time kinematic, one to two-centimeter accuracy.Qasar [00:49:32]: Yeah. Fantastic. But the and fantastic in faraway lands where there's not gonna be cell phone coverage.Peter [00:49:39]: Yeah, so it's widely used on the legacy mining and agricultural autonomy systems today. So like, for example, a combine that can be precise within one or two centimeters as it's driving down the field, they use RTK.Qasar [00:49:53]: Yes.Peter [00:49:53]: But it's, it's expensive.Qasar [00:49:54]: Yeah. And it's, it's, it's autonomy, but it's not intelligent in the way that I think all of usQasar [00:49:58]: if in twenty-six we'd be talking about intelligence.Alessio [00:50:00]: In one of your blog posts, you mentioned research on large scale transformers that are similar to those doing modern generative AI. What are, like, the big differences other than, “You're absolutely right. I should steer the car, so you probably wanna remove that?”Peter [00:50:14]: We have a diversified bet strategy internally, and the reason we've done that is because we operate in now a bunch of industries, a bunch of geographies, and each of the approaches has, obviously a different risk to them.Peter [00:50:27]: And so like, we're not going to put all of our eggs in a single basket for a single approach because that approach may no

So going back more than 30 years, I was involved in work on childhood obesity. It was a prevalent problem at the time, but little attention was being devoted to children and weight issues. And it was fair to say that the field, as it were, was an academic backwater. Little was known about short and long-term effects of childhood obesity. The social and emotional lives experienced by the children hadn't really been documented or studied much. There was very little known about treatment or strategies for parents, but thankfully, things are different now. Thanks in part to the work of a number of really innovative people in the field, and one of the most innovative is our guest today, Dr. Joseph Skelton. He's a professor of pediatrics and founder and director of Brenner Fit. FIT stands for Families in Training, which is the family-based pediatric obesity program at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He's also editor of the Journal of Childhood Obesity is involved in clinical care, research, education, and community outreach. Dr. Skelton has just published what I think is a really important book through the American Academy of Pediatrics, entitled Your Child Is Not Their Weight: Parenting in a Size Obsessed World. I was asked to review the book and was delighted to see it before it was published and just was so happy to see that such a book existed at all, but such a good quality book at entering the picture. Really a very important advance in our field. Interview Transcript There have been some books about pediatric weight issues in the past. Who is this book for and how is it different than what's been out there? I feel overall the big audience for this book is any parent, especially of my generation, that were raised during some really toxic diet culture in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. And so, I think the main folks that that's for is that parent: I want my kids to eat healthy, to be active, to lead healthy lives. But I don't want them to become concerned about their weight to feed into our culture's focus on the ideal body image. I don't want to feed into that. But you know I do want to pay attention to the health habits. How can I do this in a healthy way? How can I focus on health habits with my kid that's not a focus on weight and do it in a way that's backed up by science. You know, that's what parents always want to know. Am I doing this right? Am I causing harm? And it is actually who the book is dedicated to, you know, all those parents that were raised in a toxic diet culture and want to do things differently with their children. So, in modern day America, what is life like for a child whose weight exceeds the standards that we know might be healthy, and for the parents who are raising those children? From personal experience and 20 years of running a program, as well as what the research shows, it can be kind of rough. Despite a lot of the advances that we've made around weight bias we're still in a place that kids are trying to live up to this idealized body image. And then they have all these toxic messages when it comes to nutrition and body image. I think it's rough. We know that kids in bigger bodies tend to have a lower quality life. They tend to have more symptoms of depression, anxiety; and it's because of this world that we live in. You mentioned messages that they might be getting from places like the media, but what are interactions like with peers and teachers and doctors and others in their lives that are affecting how they feel? Yes. So, the adults in their life were raised in that toxic culture. They're my generation and the generation behind me that was raised in that. You know, there's the myth that a smaller body is healthier than a bigger body. And I think we can't break away from that. And I think that still sort of comes through. We still see this as a lifestyle issue, and everyone has an opinion. Everyone has a thought of, you know, well, I did this... and I lowered my cholesterol... I did this and I lost weight, you need to do it too. And I think in the medical profession, because of a lack of understanding, a lack of training - I think that still occurs. I don't do a ton of medical education. I'm getting more and more into it, especially when it comes to areas around nutrition. But that's what I'm trying to avoid in the next generation of healthcare providers and even actually a lot of our community collaborators, teachers, and stuff like that. To get away from that. This is not a simple issue, so don't share advice because sometimes that advice can be damaging or could be wrong. You know, good lord how much I hear about carbs on a weekly basis. And not the carbs I like to talk about, which is around dessert and Carolina Gold rice and all these other food stuff. But it tends to be around sort of demonizing certain foods and just really bad messages that still are floating around out there. Let's dive in a little deeper about what you refer to as toxic diet culture that was especially pronounced in previous generations. What does that mean? Does it affect standards for what the ideal body looks like? What about messages about how much control you have over that yourself, and how responsible you are for your weight? How your self-image should be influenced by how you look? But tell us more about what you mean by that. We wanted this to be a book that didn't necessarily dwell on weight so much, but actually one of the first chapters is to say let's cover how complex weight really is. We know that 50% or more of someone's weight is heavily, heavily influenced by their genetics. Where they live, you know. The amount that our lifestyle affects that is much, much smaller. It's the minority of what goes into our body size. And even that, our habits are so influenced by the world around us. But it's, you know, trying to get people to understand that, hey, body sizes are just different. I love this picture from the Olympics and it was a medalist in gymnastics- it was Simone Biles; you know, the huge media personality of Ilona Maher who is a bronze medalist in rugby; and then one of the women's basketball players. You're talking 4'9", 5'10" and pure muscle and six foot seven, all people at the top of their game. And not only different heights, different body types. And, you know, body type is a hard thing to talk about because there's not standard body types. We're all just built differently. And starting that message at a young age that people are just oftentimes built differently. There's very little control that we have over our weight. And even though there are things that we can do about weight, what you can do is you can focus on your habits for health. And that has just gotten lost. We talk about in the book the, we call it veiled weight talk, and it's basically where you're just substituting the word health for the word weight. And kids pick up on that. They know when their parents and others are talking about weight. And so, a really big thing we want to accomplish is like, Hey, you know, eating for health is important. Being active for health is important. In my world, and I did one part of my early research in this, and we always try to have that message as there's so much more to health than weight. In our medical world right now, our primary outcome on these lifestyle changes that people are making is weight. You mentioned genetics as a contributing factor to who is affected by the problem. Tell me how you look at the food environment out there that people are exposed to now, and things like food marketing and the processing of foods. The availability of all these foods that are contributing to obesity and things. And the reason I ask is, you know, there was a time in our country when the prevalence of childhood obesity was probably close to zero. And there are plenty of countries around the world where that's still the case. But now in many countries there's large amounts of childhood obesity. And it's not as if the genetics have changed. When people move from other countries to the United States, their weight tends to go up. Their genes obviously don't change. There's something pretty toxic about the food environment that's driving this. So, thinking about things that way, does that help parents by shifting some of the blame from them and their children to an environment that they might be able to manage in some way? Absolutely. Because parents…they blame themselves oftentimes. You know, how did I let this happen? What did I do to sort of cause it happen and it's not. So, we do try to shift that of looking at ourselves as the reason blame. But you can kind of look at the - and I'm just going to focus on nutrition as the focus - the broader food environment and how that impacts. We tend to get a lot of buy-in or understanding when you talk about how they are trying to market to kids. And so, for any parent, all you have to do is bring up the checkout line at a grocery store, you know? And all the things that are at the kids' level that is just made to make your life as a parent hard when you're trying to feed your kids well-balanced regular meals but you're just kind of constantly walking through this landmine. It's the same thing with electronics and social media. There are so many things that they have a lot more money than you do to market to you than you do to protect yourself against it. And it absolutely influences it. And the way I talk about this is really when it comes down to snack foods, and using the parenting language that snacks get you between long periods of time between meals, but that got co-opted by companies marketing snack foods. And when you see food, smell food or hear about food, you kind of want that food. And that's what parents have every day to now the point is. Snacks always have to be crunchy, salty, and sweet, and we're supposed to give kids snacks when they ask for it, because that's what these companies tell us about hunger. You know, hunger hits us every time and you have got to have this bar to sort of get through that. Parenting is hard enough and then trying to parent through this when they're directly marketing kids... you know, in most European countries, they're not allowed to market to kids. In some countries it's age eight. Some countries it's age 12 because they don't quite recognize this is marketing, they're want you to buy this. It makes it a lot harder for parents. You know, when I was on the faculty at Yale, I got to know a political scientist. A very impressive person named Jacob Hacker. And he'd written a book called The Great Risk Shift. What he talked about was how government and American businesses have systematically shifted the responsibility for overcoming harm from products from themselves onto the consumer. And that's really true in a way here, isn't it? Because the problem is created by corporations who are marketing unhealthy foods in such high levels. It's not the only cause, but it's certainly an important one. But the responsibility for solving the problem then falls to the parents and the children who have it. And one party has way more resources than the other. As you said, it's really not a fair fight and parents have a very tough battle dealing with these things. Yes. There was a marketing study called The Nag Factor, and I'm an old Simpsons fan, you know. You imagine the people behind the one-way mirror watching things and trying to manipulate. And that's what the nag factor was. How can we get kids to nag their parents more effectively? And what they found is parents that were immune to nagging tended to be the more educated, higher-income parents. And so, they literally had this plan of we need to change how we're getting these kids to nag. We need to give them reasons to nag. And that's when you started seeing vitamin C, high in protein. So, you think the checkout at the grocery store is bad, but then the signage in the commercials each and every day are giving kids reasons they can go to their parents to tell them get me this. Because nagging is not going to be enough for the high-income parents. They have to have some purpose behind it. You know, when I was growing up, the only way I saw advertisements for food was on Saturday morning cartoon television. And there were three channels showing it. Well, it shows how old I am, but now it's just an avalanche of messages on social media, built into gaming, and it's just everywhere. And it's probably pretty hard for parents to control that. Wouldn't you say? Well, now that you've said that, that's what my phone's going to start doing. The next time I open up my Facebook, there's going to be an ad for some sort of food camp because it's listening to us. Absolutely. Oh yeah. There's just no comparison. And I think that's also something very hard for parents, regardless of the topic, is what worked for me that my parents used is different than for my kids. And even between your kids. You know, my 24-year-old and my 20-year-old are completely different kids. You wouldn't even know they're related and different personalities. And so, what worked for one, you can't necessarily apply to the other. And whereas we love the idea of multi-generation households and, you know, being involved and being there to give advice. And you should take the advice of your parents, but it doesn't always apply. It's just a different world. I feel like I need to give credit to my East Tennessee farming roots. There are two stories I always remember my dad talking about when they would go to a car hop. Maybe some of your listeners know what a car hop is maybe they don't. It's like a Sonic, you know, it's the old school drive up. Or for you Atlanta folks, like the varsity drive up. My grandparents would make my dad put on his Sunday clothes. You know, that was how rare they went out is they would actually get dressed up driving into town to go try these hamburgers and these French fries. Versus now you can you DoorDash that 24/7. I mean just what a different world and concept. And I still have to share this other story for my grandfather, who my oldest son is named after, he was a tobacco and sustenance his farmer in East Tennessee. And every time I have a med student that's a vegetarian in my cooking class, I always tell the story of he came home one day, and he was talking to my aunt. He says, you know what? The county agent said one day people are going to be eating soybeans. That's so funny. Soybeans were fed to cattle back then. It's really just how drastically we change and now it's changing even faster. I mean, my grandchildren will be light years different than what my children are. Let's dive back into your book. Tell me about the collaboration with the American Academy of Pediatrics and how did the book come about? They have had two books in the past that were sort of geared towards parents, you know, how to address weight in your kids if your child has a problem with their weight, what can you do about it? Well-written books. They had done well. But they were looking to try to do something different. It was kind of time to sort of update that. And the last book was great by Natalie Muth. It was a fantastic book. So, a lot of my friends were on the 2023 clinical practice guidelines. And when that came out, there was a huge blowback from the eating disorder community. And, again, it's sort of the polarization of our country right now. And, they had asked me to speak at a conference saying, hey, can you try to do something in the middle? They knew that we included elements of the body positivity movement in what we do. We're big adherents and teachers of authoritative parenting. And they said could you try to give a talk that kind of goes in between what we're trying to do with the treatment of obesity that's affecting children's health as well as the body positivity movement. It's kind of, again, speaking of the Saturday morning cartoons, it was kind of those things that everyone stepped back, and Bugs Bunny was still in the front and got volunteered. It was sort of one of those situations. And so, I gave this presentation and they said, hey, well, what do you think about turning this into a book? Would you be interested in writing a book? And I said, absolutely not. I don't have time. And never in a million years would I do it. But this needed to be out there. So, first of all, the AAP asks, as a pediatrician, you do it. And second of all, I feel like this book needs to be out there. Both for who I talked about earlier, those parents that don't want to hurt the kids' feelings, make them hate their bodies, feel like something's wrong with them, which is what a lot of kids say. But it's also for those parents that are wanting to do something. These are the parents that, you know, they want to put their kid on a diet or make a comment to them of you sure you need to have seconds on that? You know, which we know can do damage. And of course, parents, you know, they don't want to hurt their kids and get in the way. And so, it was kind of geared toward those parents that were starting down an avenue that may not have been safe. You know, they don't have access to a good evidence-based program. And so, it's also for those parents that says, hey, your kids aren't little adults. Don't take these weight loss approaches to kids. It's just a different beast. We'll come back in a minute and talk about specific parenting strategy, but you alluded to this blowback from the eating disorders fields and the clinical guidelines. Tell us a little bit more about that, because it's one of the key features that would drive the need for a book like yours. I'm not an eating disorder specialist, but there was a big concern that one of the big recommendations that was new was that you can't have watchful waiting anymore. It used to be, you know, if younger children were starting to gain weight, before you intervene or start into treatment or start to change a lot that maybe just wait to see if, you know kind of the old-fashioned thing, are they going to outgrow it? Are they going to go through a growth spurt? So that was a part of the recommendations. The evidence says that watchful waiting in today's world, you're unlikely to see a kid outgrow it anymore, including bariatric surgery, use of medications and things like that. And so, they felt like this increased focus that this was going to cause pediatricians and parents to focus even more on weight and therefore lead to eating disorders. And then that was coinciding over the previous five years, a lot of studies were coming out and then it got put into a couple of systematic reviews of meta-analyses that showed that kids in bigger bodies, kids with overweight and obesity, had a two to three times higher prevalence of eating disorders. Because typically eating disorders are always thought to occur in underweight or thinner children. But it actually is much higher risk of these in children in bigger bodies. And so, we use that term threading the needle, how do you help families who want to do something about their child's weight for health reasons but not worsening disorders. And so that blowback was really saying, hey, by increasing focus on this, you're going to make things worse with that. And it was kind of surprising. A lot of my good friends were on that practice guidelines and they're kind of taken aback because these are experts in the field. Well-meaning people that for 10, 15, 20 years had dedicated their careers to helping these kids looking for help. And I think any care provider to be accused of causing harm is always, always jarring. Tell us how you navigate that and what sort of advice do you give parents in this book? Yeah, so one is that I call weight literacy. It's sort of understanding this is a complex issue. It's not something you did. This is something that happens. We can't always explain it. There are still things, this is where you read too much of this science, it gets you really paranoid about microplastics and things like that. There are some legitimate arguments to me be made there in endocrine disrupting chemicals and stuff like that. We can't always explain why kids are growing bigger than other kids or at a heavier weight. So, the weight literacy, sort of, understanding this is a complex issue, this is not a lifestyle issue. And the second thing is it's worthwhile to focus on healthy eating and physical activity for health. Sometimes that will see improvements in weight, sometimes it won't. But it's still important to do. That's the idea of getting away from that weight being the primary outcome. We feel like this is a great adjunct for someone who might be pursuing bariatric surgery or medications, because it does give us the opportunity to not keep pushing kids harder on nutrition and physical activity, which could lead to that disorder eating. And I think the final thing is sometimes parents and kids are aligned. You know, give me a 15-year-old girl that wants to lose weight. A 15-year-old girl that wants to lose weight, that is unfortunately a child that's very high risk of developing disordered eating. And maybe the parents really wanted to help. But what oftentimes we see a lot is tension brewing between the parent and child. The parent making efforts to help the child with their health and their weight, and the child interpreting those efforts as you think I'm fat, you think I'm ugly, you think something's wrong with me. And it's causing that tension: you know, you can't eat too much of that. Taking Food away. That movie Spanglish with Adam Sandler, several scenes in that sort of reflect that of just small comments that parents can make. You know, actually wanting to help and how that can hurt children. And what we would hope for a lot of parents is to say how can you do this in a way that can be helpful. And one of our chapters is called how to not talk to your children about their weight. You know, the idea that parents don't need to feel that pressure to bring that up. Now, if their child wants to talk about it, absolutely they need to be there, and we give a lot of tips for that. But, you know, your job as the parent, you don't really have control of your child's weight, but there's lots that you can control and lots that you can do to promote the healthy development of your child. You know there's a heavy dose of compassion in your book. That was one thing that appealed to me about it and impressed me. Because if one thinks about a book for parents on dealing with their overweight children, you sort of default to, oh, this book is probably a diet or an exercise program, or things like that about how the child can change their weight. And you're talking much more here about understanding the psychological world of the child. Being sensitive to possible risks of talking to them in ways that are unhelpful or lead to eating disorders and things like that. It's wonderful that you pay so much attention to those issues. And it's very affirming because you're saying that there are some things parents can do about this in ways that affirm their children, accept them as individuals. It's built into the title of your book that your child is not their weight. And that just means so much, I think. Oh, thank you. That is what we had hoped. I mean, you know, parents love their children and in endless, endless ways. And the parents are the key to their children and their children's health. And I feel like sometimes we push too hard. Now we're doing it for good reasons. We want this child to be healthy. We want to help make some improvements. And we put a lot on the parents' back. And I think sometimes then that pressure then is extended to the children. And a lot of this is trying to get parents some insights of, we know you love your children. Here's how to make sure that your child is being loved. You know, the old parenting typology, and I kind of go through some of that history in there, really kind of gets at that. But sometimes we do or say things that doesn't make their children feel loved by accident of course. And it sort of highlights that, not to make parents feel bad, just so they're aware. I've been guilty of it. None of us are perfect parents. And you know, making sure that our kids are feeling, loved by us. Family-based treatment is obviously the key. And I always think of one of your, one of your hypertension studies, I think from 1983. I still quote it to this day. You know, the idea that even though we talk about family-based treatment, we're usually dealing with a parent and a child. The dyad. Now they're representative of the family and I've always felt like something was, sort of, missing there. And two things really influenced me. One of that is one of my co-authors, Dara Gardner-Edwards, who is a licensed clinical social worker. And they are all about the family. They know how to do family assessments. And so, recognizing there's more than just those parents and the child in the clinic with you. In addition to that, working the whole field, I didn't know about human development and family studies. Didn't know that was a field and actually came from the University of Minnesota. I was one of the early. Strong program. So, UNC-Greensboro, our neighbor over there. I started working with a professor over there, Cheryl Buehler, and we would go meet over sushi and she essentially taught me a four-hour freshman-focused family studies course. And just this whole other world, social science world of family dynamics and recognizing when you're working with that child and parent. You may or may not be affecting the family dynamics in the household, of that family system. And so being able to extend differently and having some more appreciation of the complexity of families and the relationships with families. Hopefully we're helping people understand making changes in health habits, relationships matter. We have a project going right now, led by one of my medical students. She was always impressed, in shadowing with us, of how many siblings were picky eaters. And I brought this up to my team, like, oh yeah, this is a huge stress. You know, this parent is obviously wants to change the habits of the entire family but is obviously focused on this child we have in clinic. But the struggle of having this other kid that's a picky eater really throws off those dynamics. And being able to account for that and that stress that that puts on families, and what can we do around that? Oh, that's so interesting. You know, the more aggressive, dramatic treatments that are being used for adults like bariatric surgery and the GLP one drugs, how do they fit into this picture? Yeah, so we feel like it's a perfect adjunct if someone is pursuing with this with their child, because it still is talking about that parenting approach. And it's not really going to change anything with how you're parenting around these things. You know, bariatric surgery for many years has been done safely and effectively in children. Not that it's always perfect, but again, because of the cost, the idea that it's not reversible and typically you want that done in a center that's very experienced with working with kids. So, access issues tend to be really big with that. It can be very effective for some kids but is not available to everyone. We're in the same situation with the medicines with GLP1s. There's one that has been approved for use down to age 12, and overall, they tend to work very well with kids. But we're in the real world now. We're learning a lot about that. It can be miraculous for some children because it gives them success with their weight. It takes pressure off themselves. We're always trying to prevent that restriction, both in hearing that from another adult or the child doing it themselves, trying to tell themselves to eat less. It's always going to backfire. It's going to increase your hunger and things like that. And having that GLP1 is going to help with that. It's actually going to lower that pressure. And oftentimes they can get in that healthy routine much quicker. In others, it's causing some problems. We are seeing some kids that it is absolutely wiping out their appetite. And we're figuring out now the kids are sort of at risk for that. And you can't do that. The kids gotta eat. But for some kids, they just lose all appetite whatsoever. And they can't not eat. And so, we're still figuring out through the real world. But I think, what we're also finding is the job that we do in these multidisciplinary teams, it's just as important if not more important when you're using medications than when you're not. Let me ask you a big picture question and let me see how optimistic you might feel about how, where things are going. So, think of a physician who is treating people with lung cancer. So, the lung cancer is caused by this terrible environmental influence: cigarettes. And the physician then is in the position of having to treat the people who have that really unfortunate problem. And thank God there are physicians who do that, and there's research showing how to treat it effectively. But of course, it would be better if the environmental insult that's causing the problem in the first place didn't exist. That would make everybody happier, except for the companies that sell the product. So, do you think you and colleagues who are doing similar work are faced with a similar kind of a problem? There are all these environmental things that are helping push this problem in the first place. Thankfully, there's kindness, compassion and effective care available and your book helps push that forward even further. But are you hopeful at all that the environmental situation, you know, all the bad foods and stuff out there is changing in a positive way so that there might be less of the problem, or it might be easier on the children now who deal with the problem? Some people think it's getting worse. Others think we might see some progress. But what do you think about that? My brother is an HR guy and he kind of talks about these different typologies with that. And, I forget, I'm called something like the mad scientist, which is you're very pessimistic in complaining, but you have enthusiasm. I don't really know how to take that. But I think, you know, I'm enthusiastic obviously about this topic and what we can do to help parents. But I'm a little pessimistic when it comes to the broader world. I think there's enough, and not saying that every for-profit company's bad, but I think a lot of history is on my side with that. I don't get paid more the more kids I see and the better success I have. I don't get paid more. My job is to be here to help. But, you know, companies, every time I see a for-profit company that comes out and says safety is our number one priority. Or, you know, your satisfaction is number priority, I'm like, no, it's not. Your number priority are your shareholders. And I think that's a very, you know, jaded way to say, I don't quite trust companies right now because of that. Are there some positives that you see, and do you see some changes being made in some menus? Do you see some different products out there that are really trying to get it healthy? But it's hard. I think I have some trust issues and I think that's well founded. Maybe that's my Appalachian background. I tend to be very distrustful of the large mining companies coming in. That, speaking of your lung analogy, that I think I have some healthy distrust that is well founded. So, I think trying to help, and that's obviously a big movement that we have, of trying to help people be more discerning parents, more discerning consumers. But it's hard because they, like you said earlier, they have a whole lot more marketing dollars to convince you to buy their product than we have trying to convince them to make smarter choices about it. BIO Joseph A. "Joey" Skelton, MD, MS, FAAP, FTOS, DABOM is a Professor of Pediatrics, and of Epidemiology and Prevention, at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He is the Founder and Director of Brenner FIT® (Families In Training), an interdisciplinary pediatric obesity treatment, prevention, research, and educational program. He serves as the Director of the Center for Prevention Science in Child and Family Health, Vice Chair of Research for the Department of Pediatrics, Associate Leader of Community and Stakeholder Engagement at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Childhood Obesity. He is board certified in Pediatrics and Obesity Medicine. His research and clinical work has focused on the treatment of children with obesity. He has secured nearly $10 million in funding over the past 15 years, has given over 50 national and international presentations, and has over 130 peer-reviewed publications. He enjoys teaching cooking classes that are both fun and informative to anyone who will listen.

In a world of noise and distraction, there is a trend in “Bringing Simplicity Back To Investing.” RICK FERRI and I talk about why it’s important for investments and why it’s important for individuals. You’re going to leave here understanding a new framework for looking at your investment portfolio and hopefully bring some peace of mind as you go forward. https://youtu.be/8EFnt_UTjEA Rick Ferri has been a good friend to the podcast. He shares his insights on simple investing, emphasizing the importance of clarity, discipline, and understanding the core principles of investing. He discusses the pitfalls of complexity, the value of index funds, and how to maintain a disciplined approach amidst market noise. https://open.spotify.com/episode/743dxOLLgZjUzKszZo4Owy?si=57mqK1ZmQ0a7LPdcwVoQ-g Keywords investing, index funds, simplicity, portfolio management, financial planning, discipline, asset allocation, tax efficiency, global growth, investment philosophy Key topics The philosophy of simple investingThe stages of investor learning: darkness, enlightenment, and simplicityThe importance of cash flow and intrinsic value in investmentsAsset allocation based on liabilities and time horizonTax-efficient investing strategies for taxable and retirement accountsRisks of alternative investments and private equity in retirement plansDiscipline and automation in maintaining investment strategies Chapters of “Bringing Simplicity Back to Investing” 00:00 The Philosophy of Simple Investing07:03 Stages of Investment Understanding11:19 Financial Planning and Purpose17:57 Implementing a Simple Portfolio23:01 Discipline in Investing30:46 Navigating Complexity in Wealth Management Resources Rick Ferri’s Website – https://rickferri.comBogleheads.org – https://bogleheads.orgIndex Fund Book by Rick Ferri – https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Rick+Ferri&ref=nb_sb_noss_2 Website – https://rickferri.comTwitter – https://twitter.com/RickFerri Skeptic’s Guide to Investing Outline: “Bringing Simplicity Back To Investing” Introduction: Three parts to simple investing: Philosophy, Strategy, Discipline Part 1: Philosophy: Overview: Embrace Simplicity – the Education of an Index Investor – 4 stages 1: Born in Darkness (who you ask, chasing returns, naive research) 2: Finding Enlightenment (measure, compare, enlightened) 3: Complexity Traps (slice'n dice, factors, the fallacy of perfection) 4: Embrace Simplicity (global equity, specific fixed-income as needed) Part 2: Portfolio Strategy Overview: Making the Philosophy Work for You 5: Setting Goals (family – culture, career – taxes, risk tolerance) 6: Managing Risk (three ways to allocate assets: required return, risk avoidance, cash-flow) 7: Tax Management (three account types, asset class tax, tax avoidance) 8: Investment Selection (ETF vs fund, balanced funds & TDFs) Part 3: Discipline: Overview: Implement, automate, stay the course 9: Implement fully (consolidate, tax issues, lump sum vs DCA) 10: Maintain regulatory (automate new, rollovers, TLH) 11: Adjust as goals change (accumulation vs distribution, tax situations, legacy) 12: Stay the Course (recommit occasionally, continue ed., conferences) Transcript of “Bringing Simplicity Back to Investing” Frazer Rice (00:00.962)Welcome aboard, Rick. Rick Ferri (00:02.3)Well, thank you for having me. Frazer Rice (00:04.258)Well, thank you. First of all, want to thank you for a kindness you showed me way back in time and having me on the Boggleheads podcast. It was probably worth at least 25 % of my book sales and it was a lot of fun to do and never forgot it. So it took a while, but here we are back on my podcast. And what I want to do is go through a little bit about really the three parts to simple investing, which I think is something, especially now with the proliferation of alternatives, a lot of noise with crypto. That sometimes we kind of lose sort of the forest for the trees as far as what’s the right things to be thinking about in terms of an overall investing philosophy sort of embrace. And so maybe let’s start with that. How do you think about the parts to a good investing thesis and what is your overall worldview on that? Rick Ferri (00:55.804)So I’ve been in the investment advisory industry now for 40 years. And what I have learned is that the simpler you can make investing and the simpler you can make the portfolio, the better for you, the better for your family, the better for those who will inherit your portfolio. Don’t make it complicated. Complexity is just job security for those people who are selling you things and trying to manage your money. And in the end, you don’t benefit from that. They do in the form of fees. And if you just had a simple portfolio of a few good index funds and maybe some individual securities, you’ll be much better off and your family will be better off in the long term. And that’s the philosophy of simple investing. Frazer Rice (01:50.947)Mm-hmm. Rick Ferri (01:53.208)The second part is a strategy. How do you go about doing this, particularly if you’ve had a complex portfolio? And the third thing is discipline, which is how do you stick with simplicity as an investment philosophy? Frazer Rice (02:06.318)Sure. and without the second two, it’s great to have high-minded thoughts and so on, but if you can’t do it, it’s all for naught, and then if you can’t stick with it, then the best laid plans just kind of go asunder here. So let’s go back to the philosophy for a second here, and as you think about, it’s almost like the life cycle of discovery and learning about how these things work. How do you think about that from an ARC perspective? Rick Ferri (02:12.561)Ha ha. Rick Ferri (02:36.05)So generally when you’re new to investing, you’re going to ask other people for advice. I where you get that from, might be a friend or family member, maybe a professional advisor, might be coworkers, maybe you’ll just get on the internet and start searching. I don’t know, but 99.9 % of the time you’re gonna run into advice that is not very good. And the advice will be, you should put your money here, you should put your money there. Use these 10 different funds. It’s just a lot of confusion, quite frankly. I call this stage darkness because you don’t, you you’re just investing in the dark. You don’t know. And a lot of the advice is going to be very short based upon short-term performance. So recency biased people are going to be recommending, but you know, growth stocks because the Magnificent Seven has done well in the past. Or buy crypto because crypto went up a lot in the past and so therefore you should buy it now. And so most of the advice you’ll get in darkness is going to be recent based upon recent performance and rather than looking at it over say how should you be investing over 10, 20, 30 years and that will end up being quite different. So darkness is where we all begin. And most people stay in darkness. They never get out of darkness because they don’t put the brain cells to work to look at how am I doing? I mean, how has that done for me? What seems to be happening in my portfolio? Really? Do I really know what’s going on? And then the ones who are very fortunate start asking questions about, what if I just Frazer Rice (04:06.125)You Rick Ferri (04:31.334)bought the market and bought an index fund and just got the return of say the US stock market or the international stock market and that’s all I ever did. Would I be better off? And the answer to that 98 % of the time is yes, you would be better off if that’s all that you did. And if you come to this realization, I call it the second stage, which is enlightenment, where you now realize that, okay, all the stuff I’ve been doing may have been okay. I’ve been moving in and out of things, but now I need to start looking at just buying the market and holding it for the longterm. And that’s enlightenment. But for some people, it doesn’t stop there. And they start to dig into this idea of indexing. When you start doing that, it’s good that you’re learning, but you’ll start running into a whole lot of noise. That is alternative indexes, enhanced indexes uh… explore strategies all of these things that you’re going to take this nice simple concept called indexing and make it complicated again. So you start adding all these things to your portfolio because it has the word index in it or maybe the word passive in it and uh… advisors are notorious for doing this it’s called complexity for job security Frazer Rice (05:39.148)Right. Rick Ferri (05:54.066)Basically, are, you know, you take the idea of indexing and you just add a lot of things all around the edges of it and you make a simple portfolio complicated. So the third stage of this process of simplicity is complexity. In other words, you’ve made something simple complex. Okay, so the last stage is Frazer Rice (05:54.221)You Rick Ferri (06:18.544)Simplicity. That is that you realize this is going on. You realize that all the stuff that you’re adding to your portfolio is just making it all complicated again. And that the people who are benefiting from this are not you, but the people that are selling you all this stuff. And you say, that’s it, I’m done. I’m going back to my second epiphany, if you will, which is simplicity. I’m just going to go back to a simple portfolio of a few broad index funds, US stock market index fund. An international stock market index fund that covers the whole market and a couple of bond funds, municipal bond fund and maybe corporate bond funds or treasury bond funds. And you could use index funds for those as well. And it’s a really low cost, very tax efficient and very simple. Frazer Rice (07:05.953)A couple of quick asides here. The first one is for people who are coming into this in and they’re in the darkness, but they are informed maybe from the TikTok world or Robin Hood or Kal-She or these or these betting orientations and distinguishing between betting and investing. How do you think about that and kick people over to the positive side of the force so that their emergence from the darkness into the enlightenment and simplicity doesn’t take them in a place where they really touch the stove in a bad way and have a bad experience that’s simple but bad. Rick Ferri (07:32.988)Right, okay. Rick Ferri (07:51.484)So there’s a concept called intrinsic value. You may have heard Warren Buffett speak about this. Well, you want to buy things that have cashflow. Bonds, for example, have cashflow. They pay interest. Stocks have cashflow. You have companies that are going concerns. They earn earnings and pay dividends. They buy back stock and they reinvest money. So you can value these things based upon these cashflows. Real estate has cash flow, it pays rent, or maybe you own timberland that you can cut the wood or you own a farm where you can harvest or lease it out. mean, these are cash flows. So the first thing that I have for cut in investing is cash flow. How do my investments generate cash or will generate cash later on down the road? That’s different than say buying gold or Bitcoin or currencies or commodities. Those things don’t have a way of generating a cashflow. One bar of gold put in a safe is one bar of gold a thousand years from now. It doesn’t become two bars of gold. doesn’t get little bars of gold. It doesn’t pay interest and so forth. mean, so unless you’re good at Frazer Rice (09:12.994)Right. Rick Ferri (09:16.966)Buying low and selling high, you can’t really expect to make anything other than maybe the inflation rate. And with commodities, you actually earn less than the inflation rate. Gold has earned a little bit more than the inflation rate. Where Bitcoin is going to end up, I have no idea. But the speculative assets are the ones that usually don’t have any intrinsic value. People are just betting on price because that’s all you have. I f price is going up, let’s buy it. Because the price went up. I don’t know where it’s going, but the price went up, so let’s buy it. And maybe someone dumber than us will buy it at a higher price from us, and then we can make money. But I mean, you have to trade these things. And what information do you have? None, really. It’s very difficult to come up with information that the market doesn’t already have. And you’re not a professional trader. So you might get lucky. I mean, people do get lucky. You you can flip a coin. And pick heads 10 times and if it comes up head 10 times it doesn’t mean you’re a good coin flipper you’re just lucky and so you can get lucky and you can make money doing this but it’s not a long-term investment strategy to do that it’s best to buy things that have cash flows or will have cash flows in the future. Frazer Rice (10:30.175)As I like to tell people, you not only have to be right, you have to be right twice, and then you have to be systematically right twice in order to make a living out of it. even professional traders struggle at that. And to think that you’re going to be better equipped than a lot of those folks is folly. And so I try to talk people out of that whenever I can, because I think… Rick Ferri (10:35.42)Correct. Frazer Rice (10:58.101)It’s just very difficult to play in that space and have that turn out to be a success. Okay, so we kind of have some ideas here around the philosophy and sort of the idea of, you know, sort of garnering luck versus skill and those types of components in that portfolio strategy, that second phase, maybe take us through that a little bit and how you take a good philosophy of simplicity and make it work for you. Rick Ferri (11:22.18)Right. So this gets into a little financial planning at the beginning of it because you can’t invest without a purpose. I you have to have a reason why you’re investing. It might be to pay future liabilities such as college for your children or retirement, or maybe you want to leave a legacy or maybe just trying to build wealth for the family, whatever it is. I mean, you have to have a purpose. And so what is the purpose? What are you trying to do? And you have to look at your life and you have to say, are my liabilities? What are my short-term liabilities? Do I want to buy a house? Or do I want to send my kids to Ivy League school? Do I want to retire early? And what are my liabilities? And sometimes it involves other family members. Maybe you have parents who need your help or siblings who need your help. So that’s a liability. The first thing you have to do is look at what are my liabilities? And included in that is how much you want to leave to your children. I often ask people, okay, you’ve got $10 million. How much do you want to leave to each of your three children? And they don’t have any idea. I said, do you want to leave more than 10 million or you want to leave less than 10 million? And a lot of people would say, well, they’ll get what’s left. Well, that changes the whole concept of investing if they’ll get what’s left. Frazer Rice (12:43.318)Sure. Rick Ferri (12:43.634)Versus, yes, I want to leave each of my child five million dollars when I die and I’m starting with ten. Okay, well that changes how you invest your money. So these are the liabilities. So that’s where you start with. And then you start looking at well, what are the short-term liabilities and what are the long-term liabilities? And long-term liabilities can be funded with equity. Meaning things that are ten years or longer out. I usually I tell people anything you’re to be spending your money on between say, Now and 10 years from now probably shouldn’t be in equity. You’ll be getting dividends and interest from your portfolio, which is fine. You could just spend that money. But in addition to that, I big chunks of money that you might be spending to buy a vacation home or whatever it is really should probably not be in equity. But the money that’s going to be not used for 10 years or longer, 20 years or maybe ever in your life, that can be in equity. don’t differentiate that first. A lot of times asset allocation, that’s what we’re talking about, starts with, well, what do you want between stocks and bonds? What do you want your portfolio to look like? What percentage in stocks and what percentage in bonds? I don’t think you really get to that number until you know when you’re going to be needing the money. If you’re going to be needing the money 10 years out, fine, that money can be in stock. So that would allocate a portion of that long-term money to stock and that might be a percentage. Okay, so that’s what we start with. A real basic look at who you are and what do you need and when are you going to need it and what are you trying to do for your heirs. And then that leads to an asset allocation between stocks and fixed income. The stocks again, I’m not investing in any stock money in liabilities that I have in the next say 10 years. So it’s long term. Okay. Now we have to look at the stock side. That’s the easy stocks. Stock investing is easy. I quite quite frankly, I’m working on a book right now about this, but stock investing is very simple. It’s much easier than fixed income and bond investing. Stock investing is simply we buy the global equity market. We’re just trying to buy the growth of global economic growth, global GDP growth. We’re trying to capture that, which has been going on. Rick Ferri (15:08.594)Fairly steady for about the last 250 years and continues to be that way as more and more countries shift more towards capitalism and away from fascism and communism and so forth and realizing that capitalism is the way if you want to take care of your people and you want to increase standards of living all around the world, it’s done through capitalism. much a fact of life. Capitalism works. Well, I’m well. Frazer Rice (15:31.185)I think many can agree with that, although it might not be popular here in New York. Rick Ferri (15:37.425)The reason New York existed was because it was a port for capitalism at first. So I mean, is the financial capital of the US still is New York. So you could disagree with it because you live in New York, but you’d be in a minority and you’d be outside of reality and history as well. But the idea is that it’s all I’m trying to capture this global growth of… Frazer Rice (15:41.686)That’s right. Frazer Rice (15:55.648)Exactly. Rick Ferri (16:03.026)Global economic growth, which is about 2 % per year in real terms. So if I get from equity, if I get the inflation rate and I get 2 % real growth and then I get about a 3 % dividend yield and that comes from both cash dividends and then buybacks, we’re looking at about a 7.5 % expected return from global equity. And that’s good enough. I mean, that’s all I need on my equity side. I’ll be outperforming inflation by about 5%. I’ll have to pay some taxes, but I’ll still have an actual real after-tax return of about 3%, which is good. Okay. The rest of it then goes into fixed income. And what type of fixed income? Well, that depends on what type of account that you have and what your taxes are. So if it’s in a taxable account, it could be municipal bond income, because it’s probably your best bet if you’re in anything other than a 22 % tax bracket. Or if it’s in your retirement account, could be corporate bonds. And depending what state you live in, it could be treasury bonds. But you don’t expect the treasuries or the corporate bonds or the municipal bonds really to give you much of a return over taxes and inflation. If you could pick up 1 % over taxes and inflation over 20 years or so by being in fixed income, I mean, you’re actually doing well. So that is more of a stabilizer, meaning you don’t want to be all in stock because you can’t handle the volatility of the stock market. It goes up and down too much, even though the asset allocation would say, well, you should have an awful lot of your money in stock because you have a lot of money that you’re not going to be needing in the next 10 years. But a lot of people can’t handle having a lot of money in stock. So you have fixed income that at least keeps up with taxes and inflation over the long term. And that becomes part of your asset allocation as well. So it’s kind of how you This is what you do first before you go out and pick any index funds. You have to go through this process. Frazer Rice (18:00.116)And then as part of that, I spend a lot of time basically all day, every day thinking about the tax management side of things and helping people understand their appetite for volatility and how that impacts their long-term goals and things like that. The creation of these buckets to understand where you are in your tax situation and where you’re going to be, that can have a pretty significant impact on how things do. And from your perspective, I that’s really just, that’s a function of projecting out the purposes that you described before with your current situation and then the vehicles with which to invest in. Rick Ferri (18:38.226)Right. And you’re not trying to hit the ball over the fence here. I mean, you’re just trying to get your fair share of the returns that are available to everybody. And through index funds, and this is where index funds come in, you can get exactly that. I mean, you could buy a global equity index fund, a global equity, covers the entire globe for a few basis points, 0.05 % per year fee. It’s very tax efficient. And that wasn’t the case. 30 years ago, 40 years ago, but it is now. that’s the way you should do this. You don’t want to leave out all these ideas that you’re going to go out and hire people who are going to outperform that because they don’t. A vast majority of them don’t. Frazer Rice (19:21.963)And so the machinery to implement these portfolios, ETFs are sort of standard tax-efficient ways to do things. Mutual funds distribute gains at the end, which is sometimes a nasty surprise for people who are learning about this. Maybe take us through your analysis on how to implement this index investing in a way that stays simple and tax-efficient and at the same time helps you take advantage of what’s out there. Rick Ferri (19:52.883)So we have to divide up the world between your taxable money. Again, you already have a portfolio. So you have all these legacy assets in a portfolio, in your taxable portfolio. Then you have your retirement portfolio, 401k, 403b, 457 IRA, rollover, Roth IRAs, tax-free portfolio. So you have to look at taxes first. To implement a…simple portfolio say in a 401k if you have access to a target date index retirement fund like a Vanguard or an iShare or a State Street very low cost Fidelity has one too but very low cost index target date retirement fund this does it all for you you don’t have to do anything you just have to buy one fund based upon what the asset allocation is underneath the hood of that particular fund. How much in stock, how much in bond. That’s all you need to do in a 401k. You could roll your own in a 401k by buying individual index funds like a US stock market index fund, an international index fund, and say a bond index fund. So you could do your own allocation if you wish. But a target date fund works really well there. In a Roth account, you probably just want to have equity because there’s no tax in a Roth account. So you want to get maximum growth out of that account. So I would you look at the Roth account and I’d say, well, I’ll just buy the global equity index fund and my Roth account. And that’s it. All I have. So you’ve got your retirement accounts, which are target date fund. Very simple. You’ve got your Roth accounts, which are just a global equity index fund. And the only thing you need to worry about is your taxable account. Taxable accounts always have issues because people will come in and they will have this list of stuff that they already own and guess what there’s a lot of embedded long-term capital gains in there and if you just sell it and go to a index portfolio you may not be doing the clients a good service because they’ll pay a tremendous amount of taxes and if they’re over 65 they’ll have to pay more for medicare ermor they’re going to lose their over 65 deduct i mean lots of bad things happen when you just sell out of a taxable account Rick Ferri (22:04.722)So there you’re going to be a little bit more tactical. know, you’re going to wait. The market will give us some opportunities to trade out of some stocks or some investments that may have losses. So you can then take those losses. You could sell other things to that have some gains to offset the losses. And I mean, you may never get out of everything that you’ve got in a taxable account. But the idea is to have this portfolio out there of say, a US total stock market index fund and a municipal bond fund. That you want to move towards. So as you’re selling these things off, you’re just putting the money in a US total stock market fund. And the reason I say US total stock market in a taxable account is because they’re so tax efficient. The dividend yield is down about 1.2%. They don’t distribute capital gains in an ETF. And that’s a great fund for a taxable portfolio. But you just can’t sell everything and buy it. You’ve got to crawl your way out of what you currently have. Frazer Rice (23:05.715)No, you have to do it thoughtfully or else you create hits that are unnecessary. So as we segue to the discipline portion here, one thing that’s popping up is the, I think the discipline to stay simple. The world out there, the US in particular, is making retirement accounts safe for alternative investments like private credit and private equity. Rick Ferri (23:10.256)Right. Frazer Rice (23:31.211)I just bristle and shudder because I think there’s a level of complexity and illiquidity that is misunderstood and it is going to be difficult, nay impossible, to properly educate people on where those things sit in the asset spectrum to the point where they justify their fees or anything like that. Maybe take us through what you think on that as we get to the discipline portion of how you sort of stay the course with this mindset. Rick Ferri (24:00.924)Well 401ks are allowing these private equity investments and private debt investments in, but I personally have not seen any of my clients and I have a lot of clients and I charge an hourly fee. So I’m not trying to sell anything or manage anybody’s money, but nobody’s asking for these things. where, where are they getting the idea that they should own them? Well, they’re getting from the people that were selling them, right? The people who are making fees from them. I haven’t seen any useful data that says that these things actually enhance your return. Alpha goes to the manager. I say that over and over again. If these things actually produced a higher rate of return than say just a corporate bond index fund, you’re not going to get it. It’s going to go to the advisor, it’s going to go to the manager, and all you’re going to do is take the risk. You’re going to take the risk and they’re going to get the excess return in the long term through fees. They don’t make any sense. You don’t do it. It’s just the rehash of active management and mutual funds, which has already been dismissed as not producing anything for you, the investor. It only generates fees for the people in the investment industry. This is just another iteration of that and we’ve already seen some cracks. Isn’t that what Jamie Dimon said? What are they cockroaches? I think is the word that he used in the private equity market. And yeah, I mean, this is not new. This is just a repackaging of ideas just that now they’ve been allowed to go into the 401k market. But you have to ask yourself why haven’t they been allowed to go into the 401k market for the last 40 years if they’ve been so great? It’s because the SEC Frazer Rice (25:31.978)Right. Rick Ferri (25:58.703)The Department of Labor said, no, we’re not going to allow these things in there. you give people enough rope to hang themselves. They’re not going to hang themselves, by the way. Somebody else is going to put the noose around their neck. And that’s the advisors who are doing that. Frazer Rice (25:59.499)Department of Labor and right. Frazer Rice (26:19.066)And I mean, a different podcast probably, but it’s something where the liability really is going to shift to the planned sponsors. I don’t care what happens and you know, they’re going to present these things and something’s going to blow up. And it’s like, know, you may you gave me the option and they’ve already those lawsuits already already proliferate. OK, so back to discipline a little bit here. What should people be doing in order to make sure they can carry carry out the. Rick Ferri (26:39.367)Yeah. Frazer Rice (26:47.147)What they’re doing in a systematic way and keep themselves safe from being distracted by all this noise. Rick Ferri (26:52.86)So again, that’s why we start out with the philosophy. You have to believe in the philosophy of simplicity and simple indexing. You can’t just jump to it because some TikTok video said buy index funds, okay? If you’re just jumping to it that way, then you’re not gonna have the discipline to stick with it because it’s just another phase or fad or whatever in your mind. You don’t really truly understand. Frazer Rice (27:14.346)Mm-hmm. Rick Ferri (27:22.32)Why you’re doing it this way. So it gets back to the philosophy. Really got to understand the philosophy and why this works better than 98 % of everything else out there over your lifetime. And then you create the strategy for yourself and now you’re working towards completing that. Again, in the retirement account it’s done quickly, but in your taxable account it could take a while. The discipline is while you’re getting your portfolio in line, the first thing you need to do from a discipline standpoint is actually do it. Actually go to your 401k and change what you’re investing in. Because so many people will do the strategy, but it never gets actually implemented. Or maybe it gets 50 % implemented. It never gets old. It doesn’t, I don’t want to say never, because I have a lot of clients who do fully implement it, but I also have clients that I’ve given them the plan and three years later or five years later they come back and they haven’t done anything. Okay. And so I say, you need to implement the plan. Nothing has changed. So you got to, the plan first off has to be implemented fully. And then once it gets implemented fully, it’s a lot easier to maintain it. But if it never gets implemented fully, then of course you can’t maintain it. So implementation of the plan fully is the first discipline, the first part of discipline. And then once that’s done, maintaining it. In other words, not being drawn off course. Yeah, it’s fine to say, the price of oil is gonna shoot through the roof because what’s going on in the Middle East, so I’m gonna buy an energy index fund. That sounds like something I should do. No, it’s something you could think about. Something might be interesting, but it’s not something you should do. So discipline transcends the urge to do things. In other words, like John Bogle said, don’t just do something, stand there. And that takes more going back and remembering why you have this philosophy, going back and looking at the data. Rick Ferri (29:46.151)going to the right place to find information. And I’ll mention the bogeyheads.org website to go back and remind yourself why you’re doing this. If you’re gonna stick with it and these things help you stick with it. The more you automate things too, the better it is. Like we’re in a 401k just automatically invest in the target date fund and don’t do anything else. So automation helps you as well. Frazer Rice (30:05.736)Hey, hey. Frazer Rice (30:14.109)No question, if you can take these things out of your own hands in many ways and delegate it out and it happens automatically, just a chance of success on that front. And then if life intervenes and things need to be adjusted, you deal with it at that point and not have CNBC or the world news whipsaw your viewpoint on these different things. So as we wind down here, just talk a little bit about the service that you provide, sort of these larger family office clients, because I think in a lot of times they gravitate toward complexity, they gravitate toward FOMO investing and how you help to center that back to this worldview so that they get where they’re going at scale at sort of that ultra high net worth world and remind them of you how they got there and how to not be how to not leave by by getting cast aside into these different whirlpools that are out there Rick Ferri (31:13.778)That’s a great question. So you got to pick your advisors well. So some of my clients have a net worth over a billion dollars. I have several clients that have several hundreds of millions of dollars and believe me, They have simple portfolios, total stock market, total international municipal bonds. It’s all they have. And it may seem strange, but they don’t have these limited partnerships that you can’t get out of or syndicated deals that may sound good. I say to them, you don’t have enough money to own those, meaning that if you’ve only got $100 million, you’re just chump change to the Goldman Sachs of the world or the Morgan Stanley’s. When it comes to who’s going to get the good deal on a the next private equity deal or venture capital fund. You’re the person they sell the leftovers to. I know it’s hard to people to accept this. They think they have a lot of money if they have a hundred million. But the fact is they don’t. I mean, if you’re not sitting on five, ten billion dollars, you’re not going to get preferential treatment. You’re going to get you might get lucky. Just like everything else, the coin flip idea, but most of the time you’re not going to end up coming out ahead. That’s not the way they make you feel when they sell you these things. They make you, even if you had a million dollars and your Wells Fargo broker is trying to sell you some limited partnership, they’re going to make it feel like you’re very special and that this is a very special deal that is just for you. Frazer Rice (32:46.505)You Rick Ferri (32:50.322)And that’s how it’s going to be sold to you. But in the end, when you look at your performance and you say, I want to get out of this thing and you can’t, you realize at that point that maybe you shouldn’t have done it to begin with. And I’ve had experience going back 30 years working with some of the very largest families in the country, some magnificent seven IPO families, and they all want to get back to simplicity. They want to get rid of all of the stuff that they had gotten. And it’s true. And it’s better for estate planning as well because you need to transfer these things eventually to somebody else’s name. Frazer Rice (33:35.785)you’ve triggered me. I’m dealing with this on multiple levels, on multiple different things, and I’ve had to be trustee on some of the complexity and sort of sit Indian style and try to own your way through it. It’s brutal. So. Rick Ferri (33:53.81)Wouldn’t it be so much nicer just to have, let’s say, a single total stock market ETF to have to deal with rather than all that other stuff? Frazer Rice (34:01.807)No question. OK, so as we wind down here, how do listeners and watchers find you? Rick Ferri (34:09.478)Well, they can find me at Rickferri.com. I’m not currently and I won’t be taking on any new clients. I’m sorry for that, but I have a set clientele and that’s all that I am working with and I won’t be expanding my clientele. But there are other people that do this that believe in what I do. And you can go to Rickferry.com and you could find their names there. But me personally, you can find me on Rickferry.com. I’ve written several books about this. I’m writing another one. And but I apologize that I’m not off the market as far as hiring me personally. Frazer Rice (34:45.645)I love it. But at the same time, your books and your other ways that get out there, they are on RickFerri.com. So we’ll have that in the show notes. In the meantime, Rick, thanks for being on. Rick Ferri (34:52.07)Yes, exactly. Thank you. https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Actually-Intelligent-Decision-Making-1-ebook/dp/B07FPQJJQT/

“Music of the Triduum”, a concert performed by the Thomas Aquinas College, New England Choir & Orchestra on April 16, 2026, as part of the 2025-26 St. Vincent de Paul Lecture & Concert Series. Choir and orchestra organized and conducted by Matthew Santos (NE'26). - 00:11 — “Adagio for Strings in G Minor” | Albinoni - 07:03 — “Stabat Mater” | Pergolesli - 11:11 — “Ave Verum Corpus” | Mozart - 14:19 — St. John's Passion, BWV 245, No. 39, Chorus: “Ruht Wohl” | Bach - 24:21 — Membra Jesu Nostri, No. 3: “Ad Manus” | Buxtehude | Soloists: Rose Reilly (NE'27), Helena Krestyn - 34:32 — Membra Jesu Nostri, No. 7: “Ad Faciem” | Buxtehude - 43:02 — Easter Oratorio, BWV 249, Chorus: “Kommt Eilet und Laufet” | Bach | Soloists: Samuel Livingston (NE'26), William Rosa (NE'27) - 48:14 — Christ Lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4, Versus 2: “Den Tod Niemand Zwingen Kunnt” | Bach | Soloists: Maureen Shields (CA'30), Eleanor Stoutz (NE'26) - 52:13 — “The Messiah”, Part 2, No. 44: “Hallelujah” | Handel - 56:24 — “The Messiah”, Part 3, No. 53A: “Worthy Is the Lamb” | Handel

Do you ever feel like you have a laundry list of reasons why you can't ever take a break from your practice? Kiera is here to say, if that's how you're feeling, it's time to step away. In this episode, listeners get to take a breather. Kiera talks about the two parts of success (the "suck" part and the success part), and what you can do to hit a mental restart. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera and I hope today is such a great day for you. I hope that you're loving your life. I hope that you are enjoying it. And if you're not, today's podcast might be for you. Today is about when leadership gets heavy, how CEOs navigate the seasons you can't step away from. And this actually was a little bit of a self-medication for myself because when I ⁓ was actually getting ready to podcast the last time, I had a little bit of a breakdown.   And I just realized I was going at a pace that I wasn't able to sustain. And I felt very trapped. I felt like what happens as a CEO when you literally feel like you can't step away? Like you're in it. You bought the practice, you're in debt. I was actually just reading a book. It was a total fantasy book. And it was ⁓ about this little veterinarian who opened his practice to kind of prove a point to his parents, but also because he loved his craft and loved his work. And then he starts dating this girl and   she's on the other coast and long story short, they're like flying back and forth coast to coast. And he doesn't have money because he's got the practice. He's got the debt. He's got a team ⁓ and he wants to see his girlfriend. And so he's picking up ER shifts and moonlighting and so much so that he literally like drags his body into oblivion and gets so sick. And what was really crazy in the book is I feel like as I was reading it, I told Jason, I was like, this is my doctor's, this is me.   So many of us feel this way, right? You've got the debt, you've got this, you have a laundry list of reasons why you feel like you can't step away. And I will say like, if that's you, then it's time for you to step away. And I think in ownership, there are seasons where it's hard. And so today I kind of wanted to address like, what do you do and what are some tactical things when you're in this boat? And if you're in that boat today, hi, I'm Kiera. I'd love to be friends. Reach out, just even as a friend, if it's a pen pal, if you want to talk, if you want me give you tactical advice on your practice, reach out, I will happily help you.   If you're not in that boat, hi, I'm Kiera and I'm either preparing you or speaking to your future you because all of us will go through that. And I don't think it's a one and done. It's an ever flowing. It's an ebbing and flowing. And so there are seasons and ownership where it's freaking hard and it doesn't mean you're failing. It doesn't mean your practice is broken. It just means that we're growing and it's stretching our leadership. I remember thinking, I've talked about this on the podcast before. It's like throwback OG status or talk about like penguins, molting or snakes like sloughing off their skin.   And what happens is we actually grow bigger than what we're capable of. We grow bigger than what our skin is. grow, like our practice outgrows the leadership style that we are. There's a book called like, what got you here won't get you to where you want to go. And it's the same principle of like, we have to grow. And if you go back to being a child, growing pains don't feel good. I don't know if you guys remember like your legs hurt and your body hurts and like.   you, my little nephews and nieces, they wake up in the middle of the night with like leg aches because they're growing. Like it's painful. And I think we forget. And then as adults, we don't realize that like you get to go through it again. When you go through growth of leadership or your practice grows and you got to evolve into the next version of yourself to sustain that. And that's not comfortable either. you guys know, some of you been listening for a while. You know, I went to Antarctica, slight flex. ⁓ and it was amazing. It was honestly one of the most life-changing trips I've ever been on.   it was a place where I felt like I was navigating the most beautiful, serene scenery where no one's there and knowing that I could die. Like people die there. Like the Antarctic has nothing. It's freezing cold there. ⁓ I thought it would be covered in snow and it wasn't felt kind of like Utah-esque in the winter. ⁓ but like it was, I mean, that water is cold and you can see penguins like swimming through the water. It's so clean. It's so crisp. Nothing has touched that part of the world. It's very, very incredible. but I remember when I was there,   I was watching penguins and they were actually in molting season and they told us all like, don't get close to the penguins, just let them be. And they were like, they're in so much pain. And what these penguins were having to do is they sat there and like, you literally could see the like anger, sadness, pain in these little penguins. And they were sitting there. Cause what they have to do is they have to molt off all their feathers because their feathers are not the ones that they have on. They're not waterproof. And so they would actually drown when going into the water. So they have to molt all of those off.   get their like slippery ones and then they can go into the water and they just sit there and you see feathers flying everywhere. But I think like that image of a penguin is how I think a lot of CEOs feel and how a lot of office managers feel when we're going through this and we're being stretched and it's just annoying and you feel like, ⁓ I wanted this practice. I wanted this business, but I didn't want this. Well, I just want to remind you that success has two parts to it. There's suck and there's the success part. You can't have both sides of the coin without it. The word literally says it. And I think we sometimes forget, I think   For myself, I sometimes feel like I've already been through this. I should have to go through it again. But there's a call to a higher level. There's a call for us to be stronger leaders. And so what do you freaking do when it's hard and you feel like you can't escape? So I think that people believe that as you grow and evolve and get bigger and bigger, it gets easier. And I don't believe it actually does. Traction had a very strong quote at the end of it. And I'm not going to quote it exactly. I'll paraphrase it. But the book Traction by Gina Wickman, you guys know I'm obsessed with that model. I'm obsessed with running on EOS. I love helping practices.   be Dental A Team's version of it. We don't do true EOS. We do Dental A Team's version because I like to mix two things that I think actually work better for dental practices. But what I found is he said at the end, like a lot of people think getting bigger practices and bigger businesses actually equate to more profit and less headache and it doesn't. I remember him talking about like a $10 million practice versus $100 million practice. They both made the same amount of money, but there were way more headaches in the $100 million versus the $10 million. And   That has resonated with me for years. Now, if you're trying to sell to a DSO where you're trying to get multiples, of course you need to get it to a larger number. But if you're trying to do it for the long haul, sometimes having it smaller is actually easier. But again, this is your vision, your dream. For me, could I say small make my life easier? Theoretically, but my goal is to impact every single dental practice in this world to possibly reach you, influence you, work with you if it feels right. But my goal is to have the largest impact in dentistry I possibly can.   That's not going to be me playing small and I recognize that, but that also means that I can't sit here and complain because that's the choice I made. I can be frustrated and I can be annoyed and I can feel those feels, but I'm not allowed to sit here and have that. At least that's my opinion. So because I believe that it gets bigger and I'm called to swim in deeper water. And I also believe that I get stronger by carrying it. And you start to realize like, this is just part of business. And I'm sure it's how parents feel when you got one baby and it's so scary and then you get two and then you get three and then you get four. And it's like, yep, this is just how babies are. It's the same thing with business ownership. So   I think that when we feel pressure, it's often a sign of expansion, not failure. And so just a couple of things of tips and ideas of what to do. Number one, I will say, just go on a vacation if you can. I know sometimes it doesn't feel like it's the right thing to do. It feels very counterproductive. Myself, I was very much in the throes of it. Like I said, Dental A Team is going through such a fun ⁓ evolution. Like it is fun for me to sit as a visionary and to see where our team and our company are going and just to be freaking lit up.   with the clients we're serving and the team that we're building and like all of this is moving in motion. And then when I come into the weeds, I'm like, wow, this is really fun. This is a lot. And I think that it can get very heavy sometimes. And I was sitting in therapy and I was like, I just don't know what to do. And she's like, Kirit, it's just a season where it's hard and we accept it we just get through every day of whatever we can. We know this isn't forever. You've got a good perspective on that. And she's like, and if you can take a vacation. So I took a week off to Iceland.   And ⁓ it was great. was freezing cold. The Northern Lights were truly one of the most incredible things I've ever seen in my entire life. Like truly top five. And I have traveled to a lot of really cool places in my life. I've seen a lot of really amazing things. Seeing the Northern Lights dance across the sky when it's freezing cold and you are able to visibly see with your naked eye green and pink. I didn't have a strong to see some of the other colors, but I was able to see a very light pink and also bright vibrant green.   To see that whimsically like dance across the sky is amazing. So going on vacation can be such a relief, but you have to actually truly check out. So when I go on vacations and this has been Kiera's style, so take it if it's beneficial for you or not. And I think every team member should also do the same thing. ⁓ I delete Slack, I delete email, and I actually don't buy service international. Now you might have family, you might have friends that you got to, let them know.   But if there's a way I completely check out I become a very much princess passenger My husband has all the maps on his phone. He does all the things The only thing I have on my phone is I have Kindle and I have quite a few books that I tend to read Depending upon how stressed I've been I often try to curate a trip for me a lot of just like I need to bring it down So we actually stayed at a retreat in a lodge. It was very cold. So it was very cozy I watched a lot of trash TV like love is blind Lincoln lawyer, you name it like I had a decent amount of that   And it is truly just to bring my cortisol levels down, to bring that adrenaline down and to re-regulate my nervous system and to just chill. We went to a Blue Lagoon Retreat Spa. It was so lovely. I take as many naps as I want. Like it is a genuine disconnect. No team members, no clients, nothing. And I don't turn my phone back on. I have my team. They have a whole thing prepared for me. So when I get back, it's like, here are all the updates, here are all the things.   but they know unless it's like literally an emergency, which we've already gone through. Like if there's something, here's all the contact people for X, Y, Z. Like there truly shouldn't be anything that you need to contact me for. And if there is great, we're gonna fix it when I get back. I'm gone for a week. But I think you just being able to disconnect to check out, it's one of the greatest gifts. I had a client that I recommended they do this and they did, and they said, Kiera, we'll never like be the same. It was the best thing we ever did for ourselves because you genuinely go from high pressure,   down to like calm. And I've had it where I've gone other times and I like just say like, I'll just like check in on a few things. Well, when you're checking in, you're still like, there's this umbilical cord almost where you're still tethered to your practice and you can't ever fully like calm. So I will say like that is just one like off the wall tip for you if you can do it. And for me, I try to schedule a week trip at least once a quarter where I'm completely just disconnected. I don't always get that at least two per year.   ⁓ But I think it's also very important for me to do it. I also try to take like Fridays as just CEO mental days where I am disconnected, not there. Sometimes I need to do CEO laundry where I just got to catch up on a bunch of things. But if I can disconnect, not be in Slack, I show up as a better leader. And I think that these are subtle ways to get through the hard. ⁓ I also think when we look at hard, we often think of it as wrong. And so it's like, what's broken, what's wrong, how do I do this? And like growth is pressure. So more patience, more complexity, more team.   more leadership, more revenue, more decisions, like more, a bigger practice, more responsibility. Like it's just what it is, more opportunities, more legalities. Like it just is. And so pressure means that their practice is stretching into the next version. And so I just want you to know, I have coached and our team has coached hundreds of offices that have been going through this. Like this is what we go through. when you see it,   The practice isn't no, I tell people a lot of times I'm on the other side of the river. I've actually gone from where you are to where you want to be. And we know how to navigate as a guide across that river and do it in the least painful way, but it's still like, it's going to be painful. I've got a doctor and they're a startup and they're like, this sucks and it's hard. And like nothing feels right. And I'm on the verge of bankruptcy. And I'm like, guess what? You are a business owner. This is real life, but they're profitable. And even $500 a profit or a thousand dollars of profit doesn't feel great. Most off most businesses are not profitable for like three to four years when they first start out. And yet.   you are being profitable. So I also think like, don't see it as hard, see it as growth and also celebrate the freaking wins as you get them. I believe what we focus on we get and we attract more of. If I'm constantly saying like, they say race car drivers, like they're not looking at the next turn because they're gonna wreck. It's like they've got to look down the line and if you don't, you will literally wreck and hit it. And so I think for us, like if I'm constantly saying, I'm gonna go bankrupt or this is so hard or my team is terrible, you create more of it. literally.   turn your brain on to say, need more of this and I'm gonna look for it, I'm going to find it. Versus the other one of like, my team is doing great, we've got these good things, like there's momentum, I've got great patients, our cases are closing. And you're not lying to yourself, but we're celebrating those little wins and we're stringing more of those together. You're going to create more of that. And I think it can be so easy. As a consultant, I am literally wired to look for everything wrong. And I have to find it and figure out like, what's wrong is always available and so is what's right.   Both are gonna give me different outcomes and both are gonna give me different experiences. Which one do you choose to do more of? So I think like when you look at it, when I'm looking at this, is this a breakdown or is it a gross signal? What's going so well versus what's going so wrong? Maybe incorporating a gratitude journal, maybe having some like quiet times. It's not just like problem after problem after problem, maybe setting up meetings so like our problems get pinned to only once a week so you can handle it easier. That would be that.   Another tip when things like feel like you can't step away is like laser in on what you can actually focus on. I, it's funny, I'm looking around and if you're watching the video, you can see I have currently six, I used to have seven of those giant sticky pads sitting in my office on the other side of this camera. I have one of like our leadership structure. I've got one of an entire plan. I've got one of a future vision. I've got one of a CEO mantra. I've got one of Dental A Team's visions, my goals. And then I've got my like,   legit priorities and I've got four of them and I have them listed in order. And I think when things feel so chaotic, sometimes like bringing that leadership focus and scope in is like everything feels urgent and you try to fix it all. And honestly, if you've read the book, Essentialism, it has all the arrows and like you literally are spinning freaking top versus like what is number one priority? And I need to do that because if I try to do everything, this is how CEOs burnout. ⁓ And instead, like we need to train ourselves that there's bubbling pots constantly.   What's the biggest bubbling pot that's gonna move me forward the fastest and that's where I focus. And so it's like, what are the one or two things that protect operational like our practice stability right now and everything else is temporarily perfect. Temporarily perfect. Temporarily imperfect is perfect. And I want you to just have it like for me, there's so many things. If you want me to laundry list it all the way out, great. But I know that like, what are the one or two things right now that I need to go take care of and handle and everything else gets to be temporarily imperfect, which is perfect.   So when I have offices that do this, an example is they're trying to go and it's like, we need to hire an associate. We need to fix our hygiene department. We need to work on our scheduling. We need to fix our guarantees. We need to fix our case acceptance. We need to fix this. It can get exciting and overwhelming. And this is what I love of helping people get like an annual vision and a quarterly vision because it cuts the noise out. So when we focus in and we're like, okay, of all those things, what things need to happen now to get us to where we ultimately want to go? And if you know where your vision is of where you ultimately want to go,   It becomes so much easier for you to then filter through. And to me, that's a great filtering process. And I hope you actually like have this in place. And if not great, we're amazing at it. Reach out. I'd love to help you get there. You've got to have a vision. You got to figure out what's most important this quarter to get us there. You want to hire the associate, want to fix hygiene. You want to do all these things. But guess what? Us trying to do all those things is what causes the chaos, the burnout, the feeling like we're shackled to our companies and we can't leave versus recognizing. And this is like an ego dip, but it's freeing is not all that's going to get fixed today.   And these are the one or two things. My CEO mantra, would you guys like to hear it? Like, let me just help you guys out with this. Because I think it's really, really, really beneficial. My CEO mantra says saying no equals happiness. I started saying no a lot more and I realized like, wow, I am exponentially happier. The second one I have is I have more power than I think own it. I think a lot of times we feel like everybody else has the power and you are just kind of beholden to them. And this is not an ego power trip. It's more like, no.   I can make these decisions. can have some hard conversations. There is more power that I own rather than my team owning it or people are going to quit on me. Those are all what I've said, it might happen, but you have a lot more power than you think you do. ⁓ I said, don't be afraid of losing people. I've had some team changes and I remember I was so afraid, literally terrified. I'm squeezing my hands thinking back. was a ⁓ fractional team player and I was just super, super, super anxious about it.   And I sat on it and it was two days of pure health and then it was over. And I think a lot of times hard decisions of team members or decisions, usually it's like maybe two days of pain with a lot more freedom. So don't forget that. I said, focus on one thing a day, the rest works itself out. So every day I just pick one thing, this is my one thing I'm gonna work on and the rest truly does work itself out. ⁓ I said, I need to have two people in every position that knows it so that way I'm never feeling like trapped.   or beholden and I need to have systems written down. have like, pick your number and focus and cut fat regularly. So assess it, figure out like, where am I off to make sure that I'm keeping myself level headed and then take 10 minutes, like the calm or meditate whenever things are hard. So just a reminder, like I'm allowed to take a 10 minute timeout at any time. I know you feel like you got patience there, but if things feel like they're just bubbling and over you, that's kind of my CEO mantra. Like, hey, Kiera, when things are hard and it's literally like,   It's up here. I just read it to you. can see my eyes up there. I have them. And as other things come up, like I said, like take vacations regularly, showing up as my best self is the best thing I can do for my team. Those are a few other CEO mantras that maybe can help you out. And then I think the last one is like, when we look at it, we kind of like get rid of this emotional, like highs and lows for consistency. like, it's really easy as a CEO to want to like, whoo.   like whiplash and I've done this to my team a lot and when I'm in it, it's like you're trying to figure it out. You're trying to get there and you're trying to just like force the movement. So we got new rules, new priorities, new frustrations and instability is when it like is what teams feel. They don't feel the pressure. And so your job as a CEO and as an OM, as leaders of the practices to make sure that you're driving the stability. Like they know that there's problems. Like you don't need to be fearless. We just need to have predictability and sometimes slowing the innovations or the changes or the evolution.   I called my team out and I was like, Hey guys, we are been in a shaking snow globe. Every role is different. We've got people going out maternally. We've got new people coming in. We're growing. The company is really like a three month old company, even though we're in business for almost 10 years. And that's such a shift. And when I had that aha moment and we're like, cool, no new initiatives roll out. Let's just get everybody really, really, really solid in their new job descriptions. Cause like we had it where poor Shelbi was like being an EA and a marketer and a sales and like   every single position and we've had to untangle that ball of yarn and Britt was doing the same thing and Tip was doing the same thing and I was doing the same thing. So you got to like hire new people and have new people in there. Well, sometimes just recognizing that. So it's like, stop rolling new initiatives. We were trying to change our operating system and change this and change that. And finally we're like, whoa, this is the chaos. Our team needs to feel stable. They need to feel like they can move forward with stability and consistency rather than feeling like.   Holy cow, I don't know how to use anything here. And so I think when we help offices, so I'm thinking of an office right now and we were going through a pretty radical leadership shift change. We didn't do anything else. I've had a coach tell me you make one major like personnel change per quarter, whether it's in or out. If you get more than that, it feels chaotic. And so when you can actually like go through that chaotic quarter and instead of having it, it's like we keep as much as we can the same. So meetings stay the same so people can count on that.   our expectations are the same. So we've got our KPIs, everybody, if you just hit your one number, we're good. And then like communication style. So you as a CEO, I realize that I'm here to show up, like gotta start setting like, these are foundational pieces, these are core pieces, these are things that are true to our company that our team can count on. And then there will be more seasons of growth. But I think like staying focused, production stronger because we cut out the noise. I think essentialism is a really, really, really great book. Or the one thing, another great book.   I think during those times where you feel like leadership is hard and I'm trapped is because you got so much going on, which is not wrong. It's there. Like we're going through a pressure cooker. We're trying to get to the other side. But I think when you can minimize, less is more. Like I said, pick one thing every day and realize the rest works out. This is when stability comes and what teams can trust when pressure's rising. It's also what you can count on as a CEO and an OM. We got to have that stability. And I actually think that's what I love about being a consultant is we're able to provide that stability.   while you're going through the changes and having someone constant. Like I have leaned on my coaches more through these growth periods than I have, gosh, probably in the last like five years and to have them just stabilize me, steady me so that way I can show up as a steady leader. And that's why I love what we do for our coaching is we coach doctors and team members because doctors, need a different type of coaching than teams do. You need to, we get you as a business owner, like being a freaking CEO versus a manager, two different worlds. How do we help you? This is why we have in-person mastermind. So you realize you're not alone.   One of my favorite comments at our last mastermind, we have in-person masterminds that we do and they're amazing. I literally had a client have ruptured eardrums and like begged her auntie to give her a sign up so she could come. I'm like that much love for these is far beyond what I imagined them to be. ⁓ But I remember at one of the masterminds, someone raised their hand and they said, Kiera, it's so great to realize all these other offices here are dealing with the same thing I am. I realized, I thought I was alone. And I think that this is the pressure cooker.   We think we're the only one there. We feel like we can't reach out to anybody. This is you need a community around you too, to reach out to friends. I have a dear friend and I call him and I was like, this frigging sucks and it's hard. And like, I just feel like I can't get through it. As you heard, I talked to my therapist. I have friends that I go to. I have really, really, really trusted mentors who have gone through what I've gone through that can guide me through. I don't just do this alone when it's hard. I have my husband and I also have myself. And I think sometimes the noise I need to center in too much is too crazy.   Therapy is literally there for me to help regulate my emotions and make sure like I stay as a human being very centered. What do need to do for meditations? How do I keep my mind sharp? That's what my therapist job is. So to talk about the business, it's not to give me any business advice. Like that's not her world. Her job is literally to give me mental stamina and sanity to come through. My gym trainer literally make my body freaking strong and like make sure I stay like healthy and eating well as I go through this. My business coach. I have one business coach and she helps with a lot of like the number. Like that's her only lane and that's what I use her for.   I have a traction coach who actually helps us quarterly and he's helping me with our leadership team transitions and evolution because he's been there and he does this in multi-million dollar businesses much larger than ours and can see the foresight. That's it. That's all the noise. It's the only people that get to talk to me during these times. And then I have a financial advisor if I'm needing to make any of those decisions financially. Each person has their lane and like I lean on my business coach probably the hardest of all because I'm like, all right, work through this with me, work this one out with me, help me with my team on this, work with my team on that.   That one's the one I use the absolute most. Like that is the tool that's used the most, but I use the other ones for different pieces. And I think when you look at this, like it can be hard, but I think it's hard when we do it alone versus when we do it. And we realize like, it doesn't have to be this forever. as a couple things, number one, go on a vacation if you can. ⁓ Number two, change it. It's not broken. It's just like, we're growing and it's evolving. Number three, stabilize your practice as much as you can. Four,   make sure that we are reducing the noise and reducing our focus. So that way we're really focused on this one or two. then number five, think is what number I'm on. I think is where I'm at. Number five is the CEO mantra and having it pick one thing, realize that like saying no to more and stabilizing is going to create a lot of happiness. These things like these hard seasons don't define great CEOs. And what I found is CEOs and OMS that are going through it. I'm like, you asked for this, you were bored and now you're annoyed because you're having to mull and you're having to grow and it's annoying.   But like you ultimately wanted this and your soul was craving this. So like, let's also celebrate that. ⁓ I also think like how you lead through this sets the tone for your team. And I think for you as a leader and a CEO, for you to take care of yourself, there's some days it's okay to call a timeout. It's okay to take a 10 minute calm timeout. I've really found love with Taoism. It's not religion. It's more of just mindsets and flow. A lot of people love the calm app, whatever it is for you, but have a space for you to just call timeout, allow your brain to calm down.   For me, I shut off at five o'clock and I go home. I don't care if there's other stuff that goes on. Guess what? It's going to work itself out and it forces me to work during the day rather than at home. I go for a walk as soon as I'm done. I change up my energy. I change up my rhythm. You might be driving home. So that changes it up for you. Have like a start and stop. Do things that inspire you. Make sure I'm working out three times a week and eating really healthy because I know that's going to sustain my energy. think for this is I know we're not looking for easy, but we're trying to have it where we're building for being sustainable. And I think for you like   Realizing that if it's harder now, you're not off track. Maybe there are some ways, and I do think having a coach, guide that can give you quote unquote the shortcuts or help you even like clear the fog and navigate forward is what we're obsessed with doing. ⁓ Most practices will go through these stretches and they go through them multiple times. ⁓ And I think it's like, you don't need less growth. You need stronger structure to support it. And I'm watching offices that have been killing it. And now they're going to the next layer and it's like, that's hard again. So it's going to be.   but I also believe as souls, like happiness equals progress. That's why we crave it. That's why we want to do it. When we're on the other side of what we forget, just like moms keep having babies cause they forget how hard labor was and they're like, yeah, like let's have another one. Same thing with businesses. Yeah, let's grow it again. Let's involve it. because we have this goal and this drive, I believe to serve more, to love more, to experience more, to have more fulfillment. That doesn't mean your practice has to be larger. It can, if that's your dream. It can also be more intentional, but I believe that like,   This is what you were called to do. And if this is something we can help you with, if you still feel stuck, like I said, I've got my core people. And if we can be one of those core people that can be cutting out the noise, driving you, driving your team, helping you get the stability as you go through it, don't do this alone. You don't have to. And you don't, it's like not necessary. And so reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. Like I said, we will be able to help you have levels of confidence. And we've done this through every single phase of growth. Like I said, from startups, clear to multi-million, multi-locations. ⁓ And there's different.   different systems, different leadership, different pieces needed for every stage of growth, just like with children. And I think for you to just remember you're doing better than you think you are, give yourself the time out. It's okay to call it sick one day. It's not okay to call it sick every day or to not see patients cause you're overwhelmed. We've got to re-regulate. You do still need to show up as a boss, as a dentist, as a CEO. And you need to be the leader of your practice. And I'd love to help you guys. So reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com or go on to our website, TheDentalATeam.com book a call, no pressure, just clarity, giving you a map, giving you guidance, giving you   I think just resources when it can feel noisy. And I want you to know that leadership is not proven on our easy days. It's truly revealed on the hard days. Who you show up as when it's hard is like really your leadership at a core and it's an evolution. So I want you to give yourself a freaking high five. I want you to look yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you love yourself, that you're doing really, really well, that you're really proud of yourself. And then you're going to go make it a great day. And we do one thing as we move through these hard seasons and reach out if we can help you.   ⁓ The future of your practice is being built right now, whether you like it or not. And I want you to remember that and who you are and how you show up is going to make all the difference. And so if we can help you reach out, and as always, I'm so grateful for you. I'm grateful for every one of you listening. And I hope that you know that and I hope that you feel that. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

Vineyard Wind sues GE Renewables to block a walkout over $300M in withheld payments and defective blades. Plus Ørsted posts a $262M quarterly loss and shakes up its board. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Uptime316 Matthew Stead: [00:00:00] The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com And now your hosts. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host Allen Hall, and I’m here with Matthew Stead and Rosemary Barnes who are in Australia. Before we get too far into this episode, I would like to mention that the UK US relationship has been very tense recently, as you have seen in the, in the news articles and on television. But there was one good news piece that just happened, which is the band Oasis just got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So that is trying to mend those relationships, bring the UK and US back together. In at least a musical sense. So I know Rosemary was watching that closely as the votes were counted. But, [00:01:00] uh, everybody in the UK is super thrilled about it as they should be. And all us Oasis fans can’t wait for the induction ceremony. In fact, we’re planning to go to Cleveland. They’ll go watch it if we can. We shall see now onto more important information this week. Vineyard, wind and GE are not getting along. And if you have been paying attention for the last two years, you would’ve noticed that there’s been a couple of tense moments. Well, uh, that wind project is a little bit up in the air because vineyard wind has filed suit against GE renewables to stop the turbine maker from walking away after GE sent a termination notice. Over a $300 million ish, uh, disagreement in unpaid bills. At the center of this dispute are defective blades, of course, that, uh, broke off in 2024 and caused a number of problems, uh, for GE and vineyard Wind is particularly a delay in the [00:02:00] project and ge having to fix pull blades off of turbines that were already installed and I think they ended up sending those back to France. Reading the lawsuit, it seems like GE did not repair those blades. They replaced those blades because, uh, they may not have been able to repair them or maybe is the amount of time it’s gonna take to repair them. You can repair almost anything made out of. Composite. Uh, but this is a big problem because, uh, if GE does walk away and they’re talking about walking away from this project at the end of April, vineyard, wind believes that the turbines are not ready to be operated, and they don’t have a way to operate those turbines. They don’t have the knowledge or the people because the people belong to GE that need to make some of these turbines operate. Even there’s even some question about if all the turbines are operating at the required [00:03:00]handover requirements. This is unique because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wind turbine manufacturer leave before a wind site is finished. It must have happened before, but. It does put both sides in quite a pinch. Right.  Rosemary Barnes: Can I just jump, jump back to, to something that you said, um, that you can repair almost anything when it comes to composites? I would say that that doesn’t necessarily apply if your design was insufficient in the first place. And I mean the design for manufacturing in this case, I think that the, like computer model design worked fine, but obviously it was not as easy to manufacture or as possible to manufacture. With the correct quality as what they expected. It can’t have been so simple to just, just repair. That’s, um, that’s what I want to say. Like it, it’s obvious to me that if it was possible to repair, that would’ve been much easier than what they’ve ended up with, which I think is pretty foreseeable. Or most [00:04:00] engineers would probably have foreseen that if you, you know, put blades out there that, um, don’t meet your. Standard, um, quality control acceptance criteria that, you know, the consequence of that would be that it would be more likely to fail. So yeah, I think you can repair nearly anything on a standard blade that is possible to make correctly. But if you’ve got big quality problems, then it’s not, it’s, it’s not easy and it’s possibly not possible to, you know, just get, um, just get onto that in repair.  Matthew Stead: I, I think you’re both right. Because it all comes down to economics. So I think Alan’s statement, you know, things can be repaired. It just comes back to economics, doesn’t it?  Rosemary Barnes: U usually, yes. And like for your average, like if you’ve got a wind farm and you’ve got a blade with a big, a big repair, or you know, like a big defect right on the main laminate, that’s gonna require, you know, like a huge repair, taking the blade down and keeping it down for, you know, like three months while you rebuild like 20 meters [00:05:00] of laminate. Yes, that would be technically possible, but you wouldn’t because it would be so expensive. So us usually, like in 99% of cases, that would be it. That it’s not actually impossible to repair. It’s just very hard. But, you know, in these really huge blades and, you know, um, bearing in mind that I don’t, I don’t know the specific quality problems that they face, but, you know, just from my knowledge of composites, you can say what the challenging areas would be, but you know, a really big blade is gonna have a really thick laminate and, um, composites don’t like to have really thick laminates. When they cure, it’s usually an, an exothermic reaction, puts off heat, you know, like the temperature is changing and um, it works fine for thin laminates, but when it’s really thick you can get hot spots and cold spots and maybe it’s hard to get the resin to go all the way through evenly. But you know, imagine if you’ve got a really thick laminate and there’s a chunk of it that just didn’t get any resin in it. How are you gonna repair that? Like, I wouldn’t say impossible. I’m sure if the fate of the human race depended on it, then you would, you would make it work. But it’s [00:06:00] certainly very close to impossible.  Matthew Stead: Economically, it does not make sense.  Rosemary Barnes: You would probably have to make a few inventions. Along the way to be able to make it work as well. I think,  Allen Hall: I think I should read part of, and I don’t like reading these lawsuits, but this is informative in a sense that it provides some relative background as to what Vineyard Wind is thinking in some of the contract details that are involved here. So in June 4th, 2021, this is directly from the lawsuit, uh, vineyard Wind entered into A TSA with GE renewables in which. GE Renewables agreed to design, manufacture supply, install commission, and test the wind turbine generators for the vineyard wind project at a contract price of more than $1.3 billion. There you go. On the same day as an integral part of the commercial agreement, the parties entered into an SMA, uh, by which GE renewables agreed to maintain and service that wind turbine [00:07:00]generators for the first five years. Of operations of the project and guarantee that all wind turbine generators will operate at a 97% of production availability. Uh, this guarantee is central, is a central component of the commercial viability of the Vineyard Wind Project. So I would say so, right. Uh, at present, all of the wind turbine generators on the project have been installed. However, the wind turbine generators are not yet fully operational and are. Able to reduce power at only levels well below those intended under the contracts fundamental to the project’s commitment to Massachusetts to achieve full commercial operation. The project requires repair, commissioning, and maintenance of GE renewables, 62 proprietary wind turbine generators, and their component parts work that only GE renewables knows how to perform. So it sounds like Vineyard Wind has a five-year contract that GE ISS gonna operate these [00:08:00] turbines, and if they leave in a couple of weeks, vineyard wind really doesn’t have a backup plan. They may have. Were planning on a plan five years down the road where they could operate ’em, but to operate those turbines immediately when they haven’t, at least as. Indicated here may not be fully commissioned to providing the right amount of availability. That’s a huge problem for Vineyard. Huge.  Rosemary Barnes: It’s interesting to me that they’ve decided to withhold some money that I think everyone agrees that they owe that money to ge. But then there’s a dispute because Vineyard when says that GE owes them money for some other stuff That sounds like GE disputes. Um, it’s like if you have a problem. With your landlord, they always tell you, don’t, don’t withhold rent, because then they can, you know, that’s, that’s their out of the contract. Right? So it seems weird, like it’s a relatively small amount compared to what vineyard wind is risking. So. It seems to me like, are they, is this a mistake from them? Are they giving ge an out from this contract that’s gonna be [00:09:00] really hard for them to meet? It might be that GE knows what it would cost to entirely fix the wind farm and have it producing the way that it should. But, you know, let’s say in a worst case scenario, that means remaking every single blade in the um, in the wind farm. At the, at the French factory, you know, like that could be your, your worst case scenario. GE knows that that’s gonna cost more than what they’re ever gonna pay over the five years of, um, you know, the, uh, of missing the availability guarantee. So then it is worth, for them, the cost effective thing to do is to just walk away and they’re kind of, the amount that they’ll have to pay is limited. If I’m thinking fairness, it’s so unfair that vineyard wind would be stuck with this wind farm that they can’t really get to do anything. But if I think about how I see these disputes work out in the smaller versions of them that I’ve seen, it seems like vineyard wind actually probably is the one more likely to come out with a bad outcome from the way that they’re [00:10:00] choosing to play this right. Uh, because they, they risk not being able to operate at all. And they have potentially, like, I’m not a lawyer, I don’t, I don’t know about, you know, how likely it is that the 300 million, that their withholding will be enough for GE to walk away with without having to pay anything for, um, you know, not operating, uh, correctly over the next five years. But, um, you know, it just seems like it’s not so much money compared to the billions that are at stake. To risk that they will be left unable to operate the wind farm at all. You know, it’s just, uh, I don’t know. It seems risky.  Allen Hall: Let’s start with the kickoff of what happened and what vineyard wind is alleging happened from these, their perspective on it. It does provide some insight into all the things we talked about on the podcast for the last two years. We, we saw bits and pieces of it. According to vineyard wind, uh, GE Renewable [00:11:00] claims that it is owed quote amounts due unquote for milestone payments is, is contrary in in language to the TSA, so the turbine supply agreement put simply vineyard wind owes nothing to GE renewables because the TSA turbine supply agreement allows vineyard wind to withhold amounts. The project engineer determines that GE Renewable owes vineyard wind from milestone payments otherwise due under the contract. So what they’re saying is GE owes is a bunch of money. Yes, we do owe GE renewables money, but it’s in Vineyard Wind’s favor. So why would they send GE money? Um, those set off amounts are substantial because GE renewables caused catastrophic injury to vineyard wind by installing 68 defective blades on 24. Wind turbine generators resulting in two years of delay and over a billion dollars of damages. In July, 2024, one of the GE renewable offshore blades collapsed and fell into the waters off Nantucket resuscitating a massive environmental cleanup and requiring a six month [00:12:00] construction hiatus during which GE Renewable performed a root cause analysis, concluding that 68 of the 72 GE renewable. Blades installed at the project, nearly all manufactured by GE Renewable in Gaspay Canada, and they say nearly all, not all, nearly all were also defected because they were inadequately bonded together, the original blades were so poorly made that they were beyond repair. Indeed, the federal government required GE renewable to remove all the blades and to replace all gas bay blades with others manufactured at a different facility in Sherbrook, France. So that’s really the kickoff to all of this disagreement was the quality issues from Gas Bay. Uh, vineyard Wind goes on to say that GE Renewables and, and their CEO, Scott Straza, basically admitted to, uh, a, a serious, um. Overlook or quality issue? Quality escape, something of the [00:13:00] sort, uh, in some of the statements, which I, I remember him talking about  Rosemary Barnes: allegedly, in your opinion. Allen Hall: Well, and Scott Streek did say it. In fact, here’s, here’s what Scott Streek did say. Streek, uh, acknowledged that the blade failure and said, quote, we have identified a material deviation or a manufacturing deviation. In one of our factories that through the inspection or quality assurance process we should have identified. Because of that, we’re going to use our existing data and reinspect all of the blades that we have made for offshore wind and for context in this factory in Gus Bay, Canada, where the material deviation existed. That’s a quote. What happens now,  Rosemary Barnes: obviously I’ve never worked on anything that’s, this is the biggest example of, um, a, you know, a blade quality problem, a serial issue probably that’s ever happened in the wind industry. I’ve never worked on something this big, but I have worked on probably half a dozen small, small versions that are quite similar. Um. To this, but just on a, you know, a much, much smaller scale. And I will say that it never [00:14:00] feels fair what the owner of the wind farm, like, what the outcome is, never feels fair to the owner of the wind farm. Like when you’ve got a serial defect in, um, in play it like, and everyone suffers. It costs, it’s gonna cost the, um, you know, the manufacturer a lot of money. But I think that proportionally it is. Affects the owners more in nearly every case. It’s just there are some contractual things that you don’t end up with outcomes that feel, feel fair to anybody that, um, you know, would take a casual look at it. So I don’t think that an outcome that feels fair is probably likely for, for vineyard wind. Um, and I guess it all just comes down to whether or not GE agree that they owe that 800 million or whatever the figure is. Um, or if a court finds that they owe it. Because surely the contract doesn’t say that Vineyard wins engineer at any time can just, or project manager can at any time decide [00:15:00] that, um, GE owes the money and so they don’t have to pay. That obviously wouldn’t be a very, um, nice contract for GE to sign. So there’s gotta be some more nuance to it other than. That our project manager says, you owe us money so we’re not paying. And then, you know, you have to continue. Like, I, it’s probably impossible for us to, without, um, you know, having access to all of, all of the documents and the legal degree to understand it. Probably, probably hard for us to Yeah. Come up with a, a reasonable conclusion.  Allen Hall: It does make you think, usually the progression is dispute. Whatever contractually is obligated in the beginning happens. And so if there’s someone who decides what pot of money goes where, that, that’s usually the first step. Second step is usually arbitration in the us. I’d be surprised if they haven’t gone through at least an attempt at arbitration. And then once arbitration breaks down, then you go into the courts, which is clearly where they’re at now you’re, you’re at the highest level that you can be in terms of legal proceedings to try to sort this matter out. And I’m sure both sides. Do not want to be in front of a [00:16:00] courtroom if they can avoid it. So there’s a much more to come about this. I, I think the other operators, uh, GEs this is, is this GEs only? Yeah. This is GEs only wind farm offshore in the us So this is it. But I would imagine that the other, uh, operators in offshore wind in the US or. Being very careful word through contracts and how this is proceeding.  Rosemary Barnes: That’s something else I think about this case is that it’s going to be like the GE are the ones who have more at stake in terms of reputational harm. I would’ve thought then. Um, so. Yeah, that’s obviously a consideration that they’ve, they’ve gotta have, it isn’t, regardless of where the facts are, it’s not a good look. Right. Um, to be seen, to be walking away from a wind farm. And it probably would make other people considering big expensive GE wind farms to be like, oh, you know, are we actually gonna get across the line with this? Or is there a risk that they just, you know, throw a tantrum towards the end and threaten to walk away and we have to renegotiate [00:17:00] everything. So, um, I guess that there’s a, yeah, there’s always just the perception. Is as important in a lot of ways to what the actual facts are.  Matthew Stead: The thing I find is, um, I mean this is largely a legal thing, isn’t it? You know, we, we’ve agreed that it’s, with the lawyers, it’s a largely a legal thing. The, the sort of topic that I’m interested in is, um, like the example of you buy a car, you know, you buy a Toyota, um, you expect to be able to maintain it. You expect to be able to run it and get a serviced by a Toyota, you don’t expect in the first year to take your Toyota to Ford and get them to fix it in the first year. The bigger issue is the turbine supplier agreement does not actually allow the turbine to be operated without the OEM, so no one knows. No one knows how to run it. So for me, it’s a massive industry challenge, access of data, access of how to run a turbine. If the OEM is no longer there, so I think hopefully [00:18:00] this can have rama bigger ramifications for the industry that operators and owners can actually run the assets they own.  Rosemary Barnes: Well, there are companies that will come in and pull out your control system of your, you know, your turbine. If it, you know, if you, um, if you don’t wanna work with them anymore or if the company went bankrupt, then there are companies that will rip it out and put a new one in. It’s not, not saying that that’s like an easy, cost effective thing to do and probably not gonna get the same, um, performance as, as you originally did. But that’s what happens if you are, um, you know, your turbine manufacturer goes bankrupt and they just don’t exist to support anymore. Sometimes people have to resort to literally pulling out the whole control system and starting again. Not easy. When it’s something as big and new as this one obviously  Matthew Stead: isn’t the better answer that when you buy something, you actually buy the information to actually run it. Rosemary Barnes: I don’t fully agree [00:19:00] though, because. It’s like, um, o often what you say, oh, you know, like this would be good. Like the one common thing is people say, oh, you know, like it’s planned obsolescence. People, engineers plan design things to fail so that you’ll need to replace them. And I think that that does, that does happen again in like consumer, consumer products. Like, um, yeah, like your, your battery isn’t really designed to last for 10 years in your, your phone the same way that it is in an electric car. Um, more than 10 years in the case of an electric car. Um. But it’s not. It’s not what happens in industrial scale equipment. You are mostly worried about getting the price point right. And if you want something to last longer, if you want something that anybody can come in and fix it easily, it costs more to engineer like that and usually like a a lot more. So it’s not just people like evil engineers or evil. Um. Evil management at these, at these companies.  Allen Hall: I already get to evil engineers. Rosemary Barnes: No, people think it is. People think it’s evil. Engineers like purposely designing bad products to [00:20:00] um, make money, which I actually do think that they do with consumer products. Some of the time. Um, but when it comes to like industrial equipment, I, I don’t think that that’s the main, the main thing that planned obsolescence is not, is not a major factor here. It’s about trying to get the price point competitive to make sales. And if you want to get better engineering, you, you will, you will pay for it.  Matthew Stead: I got a call with someone today that, which is on this topic. So, you know, we, we are a sensor company and, um, we pro we provide results, okay? So if we actually provided the raw data that we measure, it actually allows people, other people to reverse engineer our products. So we don’t generally provide the raw data, so we provide the end outcome. Because it means that people can’t copy what we do. It means we can actually charge a lower price. So actually there’s a lot of logic to, you know, having, you know, [00:21:00] all these ways of engineering a product to, you know, give a better outcome to the end customer. Allen Hall: I know Rosie doesn’t like Elon Musk, but this one of the things that Elon Musk did with Tesla at least, I don’t know about the other companies that he runs, but with Tesla, they went off and. Made patents, right? So they applied for a bunch of patents and received them and then just made them open use. And the reason they did that was so somebody couldn’t jump the patent line, create a patent about some car related electric thing, and prohibit Tesla from doing. And so Tesla has always had the need to create patents that cost them, I’m sure, a, a pretty penny, just so they can avoid. Patent conflicts and lawsuits going forward. And it’s sort of the same thing, right? That the evil engineer bit, that’s the evil engineer bit I, that I don’t like is that when you get these crazy patent things happening out there that are just there to collect money and not do any of the work,  Rosemary Barnes: and some of the patents are. Absolutely crazy. Like when you do a patent search and it’s like you’re [00:22:00] reading the language and like it sounds like they’ve just patented the concept of a wheel, you know? And then you’ve gotta try and figure out like what’s actually going on. Yeah. In  Matthew Stead: our world, someone has a patent around the Doppler shift. Allen Hall: How can you have a patent on Doppler shift? That’s crazy.  Matthew Stead: It’s fundamental physical. You know, there’s a shift in frequency of a sound, um,  Allen Hall: based on speed  Matthew Stead: and yes, sound comes from a blade and there’s a doppler shift.  Allen Hall: That’s real. I, I, I guess, uh, see, that’s, that’s, that’s the craziness of that. See, you should have thought about. The idiots that were gonna do that and then write a patent about Doppler shift.  Rosemary Barnes: It’s really annoying because it’s like, you know that it’s not gonna be, I mean, a lot of them you are like 99% sure it’s not gonna be possible for them to defend that if it gets challenged. But it’s like, to what extent do we trust that, you know? Um, so you still usually end up steering around it anyway, but it, it really gets in the way of elegant engineering solutions. All these. Bizaro patents that are out there like clogging up [00:23:00] the design landscape.  Allen Hall: That happened recently. Right? Rosa? You had and I were talking about a particular patent. I thought had it existed and it did at one point exist and I. Rosie said, I don’t, I don’t see it anymore. So I did some search on it. Yeah, it got pulled off. Uh, the list of valid patents. It was a lightning related thing.  Rosemary Barnes: And you were complaining that it was so obvious that they should never have been able to patent it, but yeah, and somebody obviously said, said something at some. I don’t think patents are not the best way to protect an idea anyway. Right? Like nobody, if you, if you’ve got a new technology idea and you’re relying on a patent to protect other people from copying it, it’s not the best idea. I do work with a lot of small inventors who are like, oh, I’ve got a patent application, and they think it means something, that it doesn’t. They think, oh, you know, patent was approved. That means it works. It means it’s a good idea. It doesn’t mean any of those things for like small, outside of big companies. I, I think it’s super rare that you would get more. You would get a positive return [00:24:00] on. On filing and maintaining a patent in all the countries that, um, are relevant  Allen Hall: as wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PES wind.com today. Sted posted a net loss of 1.7 billion Danish groner, roughly $262 million for the third quarter, as the cost of battling us anti win policies continues to mount the CEO. Rasmus abo, uh, says the company is about. One year into a turnaround plan, uh, that’s set to [00:25:00] run through beginning of 2028, and that the medicine is starting to work. Uh, one major strategic change. Ted will enter partnerships on new projects far earlier, and so it will never again, uh, be forced into damaging late stage divestments The company maintained its full year EBITDA and, uh, guidance of, of, of. 24 to 27 billion Danish kroner. That’s a good bit of money. And the sale of a 50% stake in the horn, C3 to Apollo Global Management for a billion dollars is already under. Well, at least in progress, but there’s a lot more behind the scenes here. Sted had an basically an investor meeting and a shareholder meeting, and, uh, they have three new board members. They let go of, if I remember correctly, three board members that were [00:26:00] employees that they just, uh, had reductions in forces that happen to affect board members, which is very odd. Very, very odd in my. Humble opinion, having watched number of boards for a long time, usually don’t remove board members in that fashion, but there does seem to be a, a, a more emphasis on the board to help, uh, the CEO of stead get through some of these tumultuous times and maybe a little bit of concern about the, the, the way the board was constructed to get or sit back into profitability sooner rather than later. This is a big deal up in Denmark. Of course, stead is the power company for Denmark. This has implications worldwide, though, uh, what stead does everybody else follows. And the one thing that, uh, that was sort of in dispute before the shareholder meeting was EOR at one point, was. At least contemplating a board seat. And then right [00:27:00] before the meeting they backed off and said, no, it’s fine. We don’t want a board seat. Maybe they had some sense of what the changes were gonna be made to the board, so they felt better about it. But orsa is not out of the rough seas at the moment. There’s a couple more years of, of growing pains and learning some lessons that they wish they didn’t have to learn. I guess that’s the way I would look at it. What implications does this have on the greater offshore wind community? Is stead taking basically a step back and, and trying to focus. Herding offshore wind, or is it just other, another companies are gonna step into that, that space that Sted may have previously occupied? Matthew Stead: I think what you’re talking about, um, Alan, is, is all logical. I mean, you know, you can’t have everything. So, um, as in you can’t, you know, getting late to a project and expect it to go well, um, spreading risk is a good thing, you know, so the whole, you know, [00:28:00] doing it fast. Doing it cheap and doing it well. Um, you, you, you can’t have all of those things at once. So actually what they’re talking about, I think is entirely logical. Um, so yeah, I think if they can lead the way that way and, and you know, I’ve come from, um, some other industries like construction and they, they spread the risk across multiple. Organizations that know what they’re doing. So the idea of joint ventures where you get the best of both worlds makes complete sense to me. Allen Hall: Do they start making different decisions on projects based upon their financial stake at the moment? A And more importantly, when they start looking for offshore wind projects, are they likely to hook up with Vestas? Because I, I think that’s where this is all going.  Matthew Stead: Pick a horse.  Allen Hall: Yeah, they’re gonna pick a horse. I, I mean, that’s the best, best way to think about it. They’re gonna pick a horse and gonna stick with them. Instead of having, uh, a lot of options and playing one against the other, I could see alignment happening, uh, versus being the [00:29:00] one offshore, of course. And or instead being a big player. There is, is that the combo that’s gonna push the industry forward? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, maybe. I mean, I think it’s more similar to what Chinese manufacturers are doing, a lot more vertical integration. You can, um, yeah, save, save a lot of money by doing that. It is. Uh, you know, not always ideal from other points of view. And it might be nice to have a, you know, a thriving technology ecosystem of, you know, different manufacturers competing with each other and, you know, making better products. So, um, yeah, I don’t know, uh, have sit on the fence on this one for what’s good. I do feel really bad for osted though, like in terms of the, the. Shocks that they’ve had over the last couple of years. I, I don’t think most people would’ve foreseen that it would be so risky to try and expand into the US like everybody. A few years ago, everybody thought that that was the next big profitable frontier in offshore wind. And [00:30:00] I don’t think that many people would’ve foreseen things going the way that they did.  Allen Hall: Is it the result of large industrial projects take time and that in that timeframe, five, 10 years, that the world changes so much? You can’t. Accurately predict what the outcome will be and or it just got caught up in it.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I think that’s actually one of the themes you guys have read, um, how big things get Done Right by Ben. Um, that’s one of the things that he mentions that the quicker that you can do the execution phase of your project, like spend plenty of time planning it, but when you’re actually committed, work super fast because the longer that you’re working, the more your chance of a, a black swan. Um, a Black Swan event be, you know, a government that turns out to, you know, want to, you know, tear up contracts and you know, do all these other unprecedented stuff. You know, if you’ve got projects that take 10 or more years to build, then there’s just like a lot more risk of something like that happening. And I think that, um, you know, like in some ways that’s just one of the inherent weaknesses of [00:31:00] wind energy in general, but offshore wind especially is that it does actually take a long time to get through all of the things that you need to do to. Um, to complete a project. And so it’s just, yeah, a lot more chance for, you know, the government will change two or three times probably in, um, you know, during a project. How many wars can start, how many, you know, pandemics. Can there be you? Like, the longer that you’re going, you might think none of those things could be predicted and that can’t, but you can predict that those sorts of big things happen. And the longer that you, um, are exposed and the more of them that you’re probably gonna face. And I think that, yeah, like something like a solar farm is much quicker to roll out. Um, battery projects are much quicker to roll out. So it’s just like that, those are benefits of those technologies compared to wind. You just have to kind of accept that that’s one of the weaknesses of this, this industry that we’re in. Allen Hall: Is it a benefit to have solar because it can deploy very quickly, or, or is it just [00:32:00] smarter to have. More wind turbines of smaller megawatt outputs because you can manufacture ’em at scale quicker, and so the economies of scale don’t really matter so much. This is an argument we’ve been making for months now, that when you start selecting a single turbine, which doesn’t have any history, and it’s a big one, and it takes a long time to produce, you are really setting up yourself to fall into that window where something can go wrong. Versus just stamping out two or three megawatt turbines and going like crazy. It just seems so much less risky.  Rosemary Barnes: I think that I definitely agree with you for onshore and then for offshore. Probably also, like I don’t think it’s necessarily go for a smaller turbine. It’s just don’t go for the brand new one. Like that’s why I don’t understand how many people are like so obsessed with this, you know, small, small amount of improvement that they get from the very biggest. Turbine, but I don’t think that they realize the amount of technical risk. And I think that it gets, it’s getting [00:33:00] more and more like the, um, technology increment is getting more and more the bigger that we go. It’s not that like, oh, we’re learning how to do this, this, well, it’s, it’s the opposite that, you know, like every, um, increment up in size as an exponentially more like larger number of problems, technical problems that have to be solved. And, um, I think that, yeah, that’s. That’s something people don’t factor in. Allen Hall: Is it the gold rush problem where the miners were trying to hit that pocket of gold and spending all their time trying to find this gold, find this gold. In the meantime, a lot of them obviously broke, and the people that made money in the gold rush or the stores that sold the pickaxes, if you, you making a pickaxes, you have a customer page, you can just sell those things in. Levi’s, be the other one, right? So they’re selling genes of pickaxes to the miners. Guess who won in that battle, right? Levi’s.  Rosemary Barnes: But what’s the analogy with win two of the pickax manufacturers,  Allen Hall: the people that make the two megawatt machines? In my opinion, that’s gonna be who the pickaxes are because you don’t have to think about it. If [00:34:00] you can talk to operators of the United States today and you say, what turbine would you like to buy over again? And they will almost all tell you, GE one point fives. Almost all of them. And you go, yeah. Oh, okay. I understand it because it’s a machine. It’s pretty simple. But it does work. And it is, it is a true warhorse turbine. And some of the vested ones are the same. Simpson Siemens turbines are very similar, right? Uh, but in today’s world, when we’re talking about 15, 20 megawatt turbines, I just think, man, you gotta be careful doing that just because of the time it takes to develop it and produce it, and. Work at all the kinks? Uh, Rosemary, I think you’re right about that.  Rosemary Barnes: I think the issue is that, um, when you’re deciding whether to develop a project or not, it really depends a lot on what the spreadsheet tells you your return is going to be. And, um, you know, a bigger turbine with, uh, you know, like larger output over its lifetime, longer lifetime. Those are all gonna give you really good. Spreadsheet numbers, but what’s not in the spreadsheet [00:35:00] is, oh, you know, you’ve actually increased your risk of having to wait two years while they replace every single blade in this, um, in this wind farm. Oh, by the way, yeah, you’re gonna be dealing with, um, you know, twice as many repairs and your, um, downtime is not gonna be 2%, it’s gonna be 3.5% or, or something. You know, those, those sorts of things, I don’t think, uh, adequately captured in the, the spreadsheets whe say when you, whether you should or shouldn’t develop a new project.  Matthew Stead: So, so the evil engineering should be making decisions, not the evil lawyers.  Allen Hall: The financial people always make the decisions, right? The insurance companies make the decisions.  Rosemary Barnes: Don’t think there’s a lot of engineering into, um, input in the, the very first stages. But I also think that if you put in the reality, like most engineers, I think are a little bit pessimistic because our job is to see what problems exist at, you know, and then solve them ideally. Um, but at least part of it, like our brains are wired to look for problems, right? That’s, um, that’s a necessary part of the job, in my opinion. But if you were, you know, like pessimistic in your assumptions in the [00:36:00] spreadsheet, you would probably the majority of the time say, don’t make this project. The return is not very good. Allen Hall: Well, that would be a smart move, right? Yeah.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. So I don’t actually think you probably should have too many engineers in in involved.  Matthew Stead: Yeah. But what is the CEO incentivized by is the, yeah, so it, it comes back to, you know, what, what, what drives the project And it’s not just engineering.  Allen Hall: That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn and don’t forget to subscribe. So if you never miss an episode and if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It really helps. For Rosie and Matthew, I am Allen Hall and we’ll see you next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:37:00] Podcast.

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found.Special GuestRoxxy HazeJordan Conley Kali ScottThis Week We DiscussPartner W/ Crazy Ex vs Partner W/ Bad ChildWatching with Subtitles vs. No Subtitles EverFlirtatious Partner vs Partner W/ No FriendsS/o To Our SponsorsFACTORHead to Factormeals.com/squadd50off and use code squadd50off to get 50 percent off and free daily greens per box, with new subscription only, while supplies last until 09/27/2026. (See website for more details).Blue ChewBlueChew.comRight now, when you buy two months of BlueChew Gold, you get the third for FREE with promo code SQUADD. That's promo code SQUADD. Visit BlueChew.com for more details and important safety information.

The LA Food Podcast is now on YouTube, and we're celebrating with a brand new segment: VERSUS. This week, Luca and Father Sal go head-to-head debating two of LA's most exciting modern Mexican restaurants—Echo Park favorite A Ti vs. the return of Ray Garcia at Broken Spanish Comedor—arguing which one is truly worth your next reservation. Plus, Chef's Kiss Big Miss is back with takes on the latest James Beard Awards controversy, a bizarre California Pizza Kitchen cease and desist, Food & Wine's controversial best food cities rankings, and the rise of the “restaurant relationship gap.” In Part 2, we sit down with Natalie Dial and Harry Posner of Tomat, the Westchester hotspot near LAX, to hear their incredible journey from meeting in The Gambia to leaving London behind to build one of LA's most unique all-day restaurants. If you haven't been yet, this conversation might change that.--Presented by mva.wine.

Lesley Logan and Brad Crowell dive into the highlights of Lesley's conversation with Billy Lahr, a Certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher with a background in education and behavior change. They explore his perspective on comfort zones, breaking down the difference between being comfortable and becoming complacent, and why growth doesn't have to come from constant discomfort. From the importance of healthcare directives to the permission gap that keeps women selfless to a fault, this episode challenges you to take a more intentional approach to how you live and show up.If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at beit@lesleylogan.co mailto:beit@lesleylogan.co. And as always, if you're enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/#follow-subscribe-free.In this episode you will learn about:Making healthcare decisions in advance using a free online resource.How to stretch one's comfort zone to avoid the complacency zone.The power of closing the permission gap to stop burnout.Why self-prioritization is the key to a grounded, centered life.How to leverage curiosity and consistency to build genuine passion.Episode References/Links:FreeWill - freewill.comOPC Spring Training (Virtual Event) - opc.me/events   2027 eLevate Mentorship Program - lesleylogan.co/elevatePilates Summer Tour - opc.me/tourFolding Pilates Mat - opc.me/foldingmatMindful Midlife Crisis - https://www.mindfulmidlifecrisis.comBilly Lahr Official Website - https://billylahr.comJump Start Conversation - https://mindfulmidlifecrisis.systeme.io/jumpstartconvoSubmit Your Questions - beitpod.com/questions If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox. https://lovethepodcast.com/BITYSIDEALS! DEALS! DEALS! DEALS! https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentCheck out all our Preferred Vendors & Special Deals from Clair Sparrow, Sensate, Lyfefuel BeeKeeper's Naturals, Sauna Space, HigherDose, AG1 and ToeSox https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentBe in the know with all the workshops at OPC https://workshops.onlinepilatesclasses.com/lp-workshop-waitlistBe It Till You See It Podcast Survey https://pod.lesleylogan.co/be-it-podcasts-surveyBe a part of Lesley's Pilates Mentorship https://lesleylogan.co/elevate/FREE Ditching Busy Webinar https://ditchingbusy.com/Resources:Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gLesley Logan website https://lesleylogan.co/Be It Till You See It Podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjogqXLnfyhS5VlU4rdzlnQProfitable Pilates https://profitablepilates.com/about/Follow Us on Social Media:Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lesley.logan/The Be It Till You See It Podcast YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gFacebook https://www.facebook.com/llogan.pilatesLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-logan/The OPC YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@OnlinePilatesClasses Episode Transcript:Brad Crowell 0:00  He's saying we think that when we're selfless, we're quote, unquote correct or right, and then when we are selfish, we're wrong. And what he was saying is, like, those are both actual extremes. Yeah, you know, what if we were grounded or self-centered? Or what if we focus about centered self, not like, in a negative way, but like, how do we—Lesley Logan 0:23  I know so—Brad Crowell 0:24  How can we be both of those things instead of like, one or the other? Lesley Logan 0:28  Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started. Brad Crowell 1:10  Take it away there, Lesley.Lesley Logan 1:13  Welcome back to the Be It Till You See It interview recap where my co-host in life, Brad, and I are going to dig into the thought-provoking convo I had with Billy Lhar in our last episode. Brad Crowell 1:21  Yeah, we are. Lesley Logan 1:22  If you haven't listened to that interview, you should, you could pause this now and hear what I sound like, not with a sinus infection. And then, if you're new, you'll be like, this girl's voice sucks. I can't stand it. And then you'll stick it out. Brad Crowell 1:33  Yeah. Lesley Logan 1:34  You'll stick it out. Brad Crowell 1:34  Stick it out. You will— Lesley Logan 1:35  I promise you—Brad Crowell 1:36  You'll do that we believe in you. Lesley Logan 1:38  I promise you, this is not this, too shall pass. What if someone's like, oh, my God, I loved her voice when she had the science affection, and now, when it's gone, like, ugh. Lesley Logan 1:50  Well, today is April 16, 2026 and it's National Healthcare Decisions Day. Huh? Interesting. Let's see where this goes.Brad Crowell 1:58  (Laughs)Lesley Logan 1:59  This day is observed every year on April 16, the day after tax day interesting as well. Are you aware that there are times you might need to make some decisions about your health care, but be incapacitated to make them? Oh, this is an interesting okay, I thought I felt like the health insurance companies, but this is about us—Brad Crowell 2:13  No. Lesley Logan 2:14  This is—Brad Crowell 2:14  This is about in personal health care decisions that we can make. Lesley Logan 2:17  This day is set aside to help you take care of those potential situations ahead of time is a day for patients or healthcare receivers to make known to health professionals the kind of adequate care they wish to receive and have those wishes respected and met. Well, whether they'll be respected and met, are different stories in the United States healthcare situation, but I do agree we Brad and I are supposed to have sat down his parents are going to annoy us until we do and actually, like, talk about our Do Not Resuscitate stuff and all that. Brad Crowell 2:44  Yeah. It's like, called advanced direction, or something—Lesley Logan 2:47  Directive?Brad Crowell 2:48  Direct, yeah, Advanced Directive. Maybe that's it. Yeah. So we've been on a healthcare tour, and we've been— Lesley Logan 2:53  We are using the insurance we pay for. Brad Crowell 2:57  We absolutely are—Lesley Logan 2:58  We are annoying the hell out of them. We are going to use every benefit they say we pay for. Brad Crowell 3:03  Well, it's also not like a fast, quick decision. We started doing this, like, I don't know, 18 months ago? Lesley Logan 3:09  Oh yeah, it says it's taken you 18 months to get the results you got today. Brad Crowell 3:13  I'm not even kidding, it's insane to me. Lesley Logan 3:15  (Laughs) There's nothing wrong with you. Brad Crowell 3:15  Yeah, they were like, hey, everything's good up there. Your brain. I'm like, well, that makes me feel good, but what the heck it took that long anyway? Yeah, it's been a it's been a whirlwind, and we've been learning a lot of things. Just like you have a last will and testament, you also need to have something called an, I'm looking up now to get the exact phrasing of it. But like, what the last will test—Lesley Logan 3:40  You have to do it when you, like, do surgeries and stuff like that. So you have to, you should talk with your partners and your families about your wishes. Brad Crowell 3:46  Yeah, it's called a living will, or an Advanced Directive. It's a legal document for healthcare that outlines your treatment preferences if you become incapacitated— Lesley Logan 3:56  Oh, I, let me just tell you, you guys want to go on a journey. Because I remember, I remember, oh, my God, what was her name? It's not in my head, because I'm on Dayquil, but when I grew up, I remember she was on the cover of every tabloid magazine, and her husband was made out to be this big villain because he wanted to pull the plug. Brad Crowell 4:14  Oh, in Florida, yeah. Lesley Logan 4:17  Oh, you guys want to, okay, you're listening to a podcast. Go to the You're Wrong About Series. Go all the way back to the beginning. They have what is that woman's Sherry? Sherry. It's coming. Tyvo. Sherry Tyvo. Sherry Livo? Sherry—Brad Crowell 4:33  Tyvan? Lesley Logan 4:33  No, Sherry Tyvo Brad Crowell 4:37  Coma case.Lesley Logan 4:38  In Florida in the 90s.Brad Crowell 4:43  Terry. T Y—Lesley Logan 4:44  Terri Schiavo! Brad Crowell 4:45  Schiavo. Lesley Logan 4:46  Not I had, oh my God!Brad Crowell 4:47  You did. You had it backwards. Lesley Logan 4:48  Woah! I had Sherry Tyvo. Brad Crowell 4:50  (Inaudible)Lesley Logan 4:50  And it's Terri Schiavo. You guys, the more Adderall I am, the more dislikes like I think I am. I think it's just showing that I am okay. So, Terri Schiavo, her, go listen to You're Wrong About. That husband was not the villain that the tabloids made him out to be, and her family made it out to be, and then the Bush Administration got involved, became this whole Supreme Court thing. And let me just tell you, they, people in this country will keep you on life support against your will. It happened to the black woman Atlanta who was forced to stay, this happened in the last year. Her family was forced to keep her on life support because she was six months pregnant. Then they made her stay on life support until the baby was viable, to live without her at the time we're recording this, that baby is still in the NICU cannot survive on its own. So we need laws that protect people, and then we need advanced directives, because what we don't want is the government getting involved. That's what you don't want. I mean that this is not a very uplifting conversation. So go (Laughs)Brad Crowell 5:52  Let's, let's, let's shift back to how we can take care of this for yourself, like today's about making a decision for yourself. So there's a couple different things that you can do. You can, you know, if you have been meaning to make that doctor's appointment, just do it today's the day do it. Set aside a little bit of time today to, like, actually get the ball rolling. Because the problem, like, I know what the problem is. The problem is that it never is fast. You call, it's freaking voicemail. Like, like, nothing seems to flow. And so you have to call back 10 times. I literally had to drive across the street to this doctor's office two times to schedule my fucking appointment. It's insane. So I understand how frustrating that can be, but if you don't start now, it will never happen. Lesley Logan 6:33  Well, you won't have you won't have the team in place when you need them. And I will say, like in our journey of making sure that we have a team of healthcare professionals that are local, I have been able to find doctors that actually give a fuck, like my my gynecologist, who does my my hormone treatment in Vegas. She gives such a fuck that I have a breast doctor. That breast doctor has me on an MRI next week, and then in six months, I'm mammogram, and that's where I'm at until and then she'll and then she's gonna get me to the plastic surgeon to talk about my options. Like they will help advocate for you if you really do advocate for yourself. Like I found, like, it's kind of amazing when you get into it. Now, do I have what I complained when I said, I hate this imaging place. She's like, just drive there and make the appointment. It's faster. And I was like, are you kidding me? But it is. She's like, it's just fast, it's just the way it has to go. I know in the year of our Lord 2026, but it is what it is. And here's another trick for your doctor's office. Call billing, billing. Billing always answers. Brad Crowell 7:32  Billing always answers. Lesley Logan 7:33  So my gynecologist, before I leave. I always say, when you want to see me again, because I'm just gonna book it on my way out, because that's the best thing. And she's like, it is the best thing. I said, oh, you want to what the other hack is, it's just like, is? And she's like, what I said, my assistant calls billing, they always answer. And she goes, oh my God. She's like, you are crazy, but she loves me. So what I highly recommend take the steps it becomes, it's like, part of your adulting life. Pick an hour every week to do adulting, and you'll be glad you did, because things will happen and you're not going to want to be up the creek without a paddle. Brad Crowell 8:02  Yeah, you're not going to be up the Advanced Health Care Directive without a paddle. I was just poking around, and there is a very interesting free service provider that will do Last Will and Testament, Revocable Living Trust, Advanced Health Care Directive, Power of Attorney, and it's called freewill.com. Lesley Logan 8:24  That's crazy. Brad Crowell 8:25  They do not sponsor us, but I think it's pretty amazing. And they actually have, I was just poking around, they actually have, like, a guided for last will and testament. They have a guided will maker that covers all 50 states. Lesley Logan 8:37  You know who I need to interview. I interview a will maker. How do we be it till we see it in this Advanced Directive? Like— Brad Crowell 8:43  That'll be cool. Lesley Logan 8:43  What is that like? What are all the things I need to know? What should be in my will? Who should not be in my will? You know all that stuff.Brad Crowell 8:50  And well. And then FreeWill also has for the advanced directive of healthcare stuff. They have a free one that's also guided through all the all the states. So they, they seem to have their shit together. They're actually funded by— Lesley Logan 9:00  If you're in a different country I have no idea how to help you there, but—Brad Crowell 9:02  They're funded by a nonprofit or a charity, so they're totally free, pretty crazy. Lesley Logan 9:06  Wow. Brad Crowell 9:06  Yeah. Lesley Logan 9:07  Okay. The skeptic in me is like, who is funding this? Brad Crowell 9:10  (Laughs) Lesley Logan 9:10  The Peter Thiel—Brad Crowell 9:11  Yeah, right? Lesley Logan 9:12  (Laughs)Brad Crowell 9:13  About FreeWill, who we are— Lesley Logan 9:15  This is really what they're interested in. They're like, dying to know. Brad Crowell 9:18  Yeah, right? Lesley Logan 9:18  But you have to look up these things, because there is a nonprofit organization that's about, like, like, it sounds like it's about keeping kids from being online too early, but really, it's actually owned by meta, and their whole thing is to get your kids information early, and so they can, I know, so you gotta, you gotta look at these things you don't know. Now, I sound like a tin hat person, but you gotta look. Brad Crowell 9:41  Yeah, so they have nonprofit partners. It doesn't. It's not really that clear, but—Lesley Logan 9:45  Use it your own risk. Brad Crowell 9:46  We'll figure that out. You know.Lesley Logan 9:47  You, you know, be thoughtful. All right. Well, that's that at least gives you an actual step to be it till you see it in your advanced directive. And I know it comes after tax day. And look, no one likes taxes. But the reality is, is, if you vote in your primaries for the people that you think will to put your tax dollars to work the way you want. You have a better chance of getting that in the major part in November. So go vote. Primaries are happening all over the place right now as we speak, and so please go take care of that. Okay. Brad Crowell 10:17  1,000% Lesley Logan 10:18  Yes! Lesley Logan 10:19  So important.Lesley Logan 10:19   I know. Brad Crowell 10:20  All right, let's shift gears here. So coming up next, we got spring training happening in May, May 12 through 17th. So if you want to do Pilates at home, we're going to be going upside down in a bunch of different ways, with some really fun classes led by all the OPC team. And if you want information about that, it's probably already available for you to jump into— Lesley Logan 10:39  Oh yeah, you can sign up right now.Brad Crowell 10:40  But go to opc.me/events, opc.me/events. Also eLevate 2027 we have only a few spots left. I think it's possible that they're already sold out. But if you were really interested in a deep dive of classical Pilates with Lesley, it's a nine month mentorship program for certified Pilates teachers. We're going to be kicking it off in January next year. Learn more about that at lesleylogan.co/elevate. Lesleylogan.co/elevate. And you and I can hop on a call. We'd love to explain more about it with you. And then finally, we have summer tour coming up. Lesley Logan 11:14  I know that's so crazy. It's going it's a fast. Brad Crowell 11:16  it's a bit ahead of schedule here. That's in August. Lesley Logan 11:19  If it's in August, we open the doors in May. Brad Crowell 11:21  So that's exciting. We can't wait. It's gonna be awesome this year. We have a different route. I was just reviewing it with the team. We're going to be going, like, directly across the country, straight across all the way to Tennessee and back. So we're doing, like, a big, long oval in the middle of the country, hitting—Lesley Logan 11:35  We're not going to go up into the Michigan?Brad Crowell 11:37  We're not I was, I was—Lesley Logan 11:39  We lied to everybody. Brad Crowell 11:40  We lied to everyone last week and the week and the week before. Yeah, 100% we are hitting Dallas, though we're gonna catch that on the way back. Lesley Logan 11:46  Okay, I feel like a little sad for our Chicago Michiganders, you know. Brad Crowell 11:52  Yeah, I definitely—Brad Crowell 11:53  All those people. Brad Crowell 11:54  Well, we were just there in September in Chicago.Lesley Logan 11:56  I know, but it's not. We weren't in Minneapolis. Brad Crowell 11:59  We will work it out. We'll work it out. But this tour is going across the country, and, yeah, but, but come join us if you're able to, you know, find out all the information at opc.me/tour. Lesley Logan 12:08  I'm really excited! I realize I didn't sound as excited as I am. I'm just, I like, I had it in my head that we were, like, doing the middle, and we're doing a different middle. Lesley Logan 12:18  We are doing the middle.Lesley Logan 12:19   It wasn't clear. I wasn't clear— Brad Crowell 12:20  Yeah it's a different middle—Lesley Logan 12:21  I manifested the wrong oval. Brad Crowell 12:23  (Laughs)Lesley Logan 12:23  Okay, noted for next time. Well, before we get into the episode, what is the question of the week? Lesley Logan 12:30  Yeah, so, okay, this is from advocate_pilates on Instagram. She asked, Hey, Lesley, what mat do you use? Does it have good grip, and do you use it for Mat Pilates? Yeah, yeah. So I don't I have a mat that's just for Pilates, and I have a mat that's for yoga, and that's intentional. They are two different practices. They require two different needs. So I use a contrology mat for Pilates. It has a firm density, which doesn't mean it's hard as a rock. It's actually quite great for when you roll on it, you don't have to worry about, like, touching the floor or anything like that, but it's firm enough to do plank so your wrists don't have any issues, and shoulders have any issues. And we have an incredible affiliate link that you can use to get a discount on that mat as handles. Brad Crowell 13:11  It's opc.me/foldingmat, foldingmat. Lesley Logan 13:16  And as far as, like, good grip, I'm imagining you mean on the floor. And so what I would say is, like, I you probably would put a pad down if you had hardwood floors, because there is, like, some metal on the bottom that you don't want to scratch your hardwood floors, and that would keep it from sliding around. Pretty much any mat. You should all be mindful of stepping on mats on hardwood floors, because a lot of mats will slip around. So even if they have good grip with your skin. They always have good grip on the hardwood floors. We have tile and we have a rug. So it doesn't slide around on our tile. It doesn't slide around our rugs. It is a heavy duty. Brad Crowell 13:49  I mean, it's, it weighs like, you know, 20 pounds. Brad Crowell 13:52  Oh, yeah. Brad Crowell 13:53  It's not light, yeah. It's not like a, it's not a, this is not a yoga mat.Lesley Logan 13:56  No, no, no. So Dan, so I it is an investment. But to me, your mat practice is something you're going to do forever, and it's something, well, this mat, you'll buy one, and you'll have it forever, and there's that. So that's what's really great. Versus my yoga mat.Brad Crowell 14:09  Buy one get that one forever,Lesley Logan 14:11  Get one forever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Versus my yoga mats that I inevitably have to replace even every 10 years because they start to just fall apart, Yep, yeah.Brad Crowell 14:21  Well, if you have a question, ping us. Let us know. Send us a text. 310-905-5534, or, you know, and easier is go to be it pod.com/questions we can leave us either a win or a question. We are looking forward to getting those from you so we can celebrate your wins on Fuck Yeah Friday, fuck yeah. Stick around. We'll be right back. We're gonna start chatting about Billy Lhar.Brad Crowell 14:46  All right, let's talk about Billy Lahr. Billy is the creator and host of the Mindful Midlife Crisis podcast and a Certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher with a background in education and behavior change. He spent over two decades working in education, including Leadership roles before stepping away in 2021 since then, Billy's focused on coaching and consulting while living and working internationally. Definitely describes himself as a nomad. He also facilitates the Jump Start, Jump Start Conversation Series, a free weekly conversation space that's relaxed and collaborative, where coaches often join to connect with peers and share perspectives without the pressure of performing. We're gonna put the link for that in the signup notes below. So if you're interested in that, if that's something that you know you want, like a support group kind of vibe or just a hangout community, sesh, you know, go check that out.Lesley Logan 15:31  Yeah, I think this is really fun. I love that. He said he's not a fan of getting out of your comfort zone to grow. I think that's great. It's like— Brad Crowell 15:40  He said, fuck that. I've been working hard to get into my comfort zone.Lesley Logan 15:42  Yeah, I resonate with that. Because, like, so many of us are, like, trying to figure out who we are. And so, like, it's kind of hard to, like, figure who you are and then get out of your comfort zone if you don't who you are. And but he said to be cautious when we get into the complacency zone. Brad Crowell 15:56  Yeah, I thought that was a cool term—Lesley Logan 15:57  I think that's, I think that that's really, we see that happen all the time with people who teach Pilates, like, sometimes they just get like, they're just like, going through the motions. And, you know, they it's not that they lost their zest for it, but something kind of happened along the way. Maybe they were restricted in too many ways, and they're just like, okay, I'm just gonna do this. But there's no it's okay to be in your comfort zone. Just notice, if you're in your complacency zone, what a great thing. He also suggested, like expanding your life from within, rather than forcing yourself into discomfort from the outside. And I mean, I think, look, here's the deal. We do understand that, like diamonds are made from pressure, and stressing your bones is how you make healthy bones, and stressing your muscles is how you make healthy muscles, like all that stuff is very, very true, but I do think that some people are constant, like, like, they're constantly putting themselves into experiences that maybe is too much, that they're going like, you're doing too much working out, or you're doing too much stress on the bones, and so you're never actually reaping the rewards and the benefits of those things. And so he actually likened it to you you stretch your comfort zone, like pizza dough from the inside. Brad Crowell 17:04  Yeah, I thought that was really interesting. I like the vision, he said. He said, Only heathens pull your pizza dough. You have to press it from the middle. You got to press it from the inside to expand your pizza dough.Lesley Logan 17:14  Yeah, that's why. But I think that just goes—Brad Crowell 17:16  Before we got talking with pizza zone. I want to just define complacency zone, because, you know, comfort zone versus complacency zone, Comfort, he's his argument is that it's okay to be in your comfort zone, but you can get complacent once you get there. And I look, I was just thinking about it, it's like a stagnant place. It's where you're stuck, you know, and you're you're also, it's not just that you're stuck, but you're also, like, unwilling to change. You are resisting change, right? And you're relying on familiar, outdated routines. So, you know, I think that there's definitely a difference between being in the comfort zone and being in a complacency zone. But I do like this the analogy of, like, stretching like a pizza dough, you know?Lesley Logan 17:54  Yeah, I do too. Pilate is all about moving from your center outward. And I also think, like, sometimes people are easy to just go, Well, I'm just gonna change the outside. I'm gonna change from the outside in versus the inside out. Brad Crowell 18:05  Yeah. Yeah.Lesley Logan 18:06  Because a lot of the things you get marketed to are, like, outside, exterior, like, you know, what do you call it? Like external things or physical things? It's not necessarily like getting to know who you are. And so I think that there's something about, you know, it's not, I don't think he's advocating that you just like, sit around in your comfy couch and just like, chill out. But I do think it goes back to like, how we coach studios, like, we want your business to be a little boring, not that you're complacent, but that it's predictable, right? That that it's okay to be in a comfortable place with your business, that it's predictable in its seasons, you'll still have to keep learning. There'll still be new tools to know. There's still going to be things out there that are going to stress you in a different way, but you don't have to find new ways to challenge yourself and get outside your comfort zone all the time. You can. You can actually have some predictability there, as long as you're not complacent. I like it.Brad Crowell 18:53  Yeah. So, you know, when he was talking about pushing back against negative, this idea of being selfish, I was laughing so hard, because we've been talking about this for a long time, that self-care isn't selfish, and I really loved that we're not the only one talking about it. He said, there's not necessarily something wrong with being selfish if you've been overly selfless, right? Like, because I think we get into this, you two are really digging in, you know? And he's saying, you know, we, we think that when we're selfless, we're quote, unquote correct or right, and then when we are selfish, we're wrong, right. And what he was saying is, like, those are both actual extremes. Yeah, you know, what if we were grounded or self centered? Or, what if we focus about centered self, not like, in a negative way, but like, how do we— Lesley Logan 19:49  I know, so—Brad Crowell 19:50  How can we be both of those things instead of like, one or the other?Lesley Logan 19:53  I know, I think, like, because self centered has such a negative connotation, but like, a centered self is, like, whelmed, right? Like—Lesley Logan 19:59  Yeah. Lesley Logan 20:00  So if, like, selfless and self-ish are overwhelmed and underwhelmed, right, then centered self would be whelmed, right?Brad Crowell 20:07  It'd be right in the middle and and that allows you to protect yourself, you know, to put yourself first in some situations and then in others still, of course, you know, serve others, and that's good. But—Lesley Logan 20:20  We have, we have a series coming out about like, giving yourself permission to become whatever it is that you want to be. And there's actually, like, this term called the permission gap that I get into in the episode series that I created. And it's actually all because the way society is is it raises women to feel that they are selfish if they prioritize themselves first, yeah, and so they must care for everyone else's needs ahead of their own, and then they can care for themselves. But there's no time after doing all that—Brad Crowell 20:49  That's, that's just illogical. It's not sustainable. Lesley Logan 20:52  Right. Brad Crowell 20:53  What, what ends up happening is, you're burnt out? Lesley Logan 20:55  Yeah. Brad Crowell 20:55  Yeah. Brad Crowell 20:55  There's a reason why. Like, speaking of Healthcare Advocacy Day, there is a reason why you can actually pay for some way that your health insurance pays someone to take care of you, because it is impossible for someone, or most people, in your life, to take off of work to care for you. There's a reason why we have home health aides, right? Because we—Brad Crowell 21:15  Yeah.Lesley Logan 21:15  We do live in a world where like you can't just like care for other people all the time at the expense of your own self?Brad Crowell 21:22  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the that's the key. That's true. Well, you know, anyway, I just thought they were great topics. So stick around. We'll be right back. We got some really fun BE IT action items from Billy Lhar as well. So we'll be right back.Brad Crowell 21:36  Alright, so finally, let's talk about those BE IT action items, what bold, executable, intrinsic or targeted action items can we take away from your conversation with Billy Lhar. He said he rejects the standard social question of, like, what do you do? And I found this really intriguing, because I love that what do you do is an open ended question, and I'm always interested, I asked that's exactly the question that I ask, what do you do? Because what people how they respond to that question tells me a lot, because when they turn around and say, what do I do? I say, I sleep a lot, or I play video games or, you know, but what they're implying with the question is, what do you do for work? So that's kind of interesting to me, but I loved that he like, he's like, no, screw that. Because people always answer with what do they do for work, which is, is boring. And I thought that was—Lesley Logan 22:22  Not what I do for work, but, you know, but other people are boring. (Laughs)Brad Crowell 22:26  No, but he. here's the thing, effectively, he doesn't want to talk about what he does for work, because he said, he said, I was an English teacher. That's boring, you know. So, you know, what he started doing instead was asking people different questions, and he said they often were like, like shocking or eye opening, or like, whoa, you're we don't even know each other, and you're asking me this kind of question. And he said he the question he likes to leave with is, what are 10 roles that you play in your life, 10 roles that you play in your life, right?Lesley Logan 22:56  Yeah, yeah. I think I would make it three. I feel like I don't want to sit there long enough (inaudible)—Brad Crowell 23:01  First five are always the same. What are your 10 roles? I'm a daughter, I'm a sister, I'm a mom, I'm a wife, I'm a husband. Whatever. He said, It's always that crap. But then once they get through that crap, then they have to tell you something interesting about themselves. What like because they run out of they run out of the obvious things. So then they think about it, and then they have to tell you something. So that's, I think that might be part of why it's 10. He argues that a person's value and interest lie in the various roles that they play outside of those standard things. Like, I'm a paddle boarder. I'm this, I'm a, you know, like, I'm a, I'm a long haul driver for when we go on tour. I'm a I sit behind a booth. I'm a boother. (Laughs)Lesley Logan 23:44  (Laughs)Brad Crowell 23:47  Just making shit up here. He said, he said, also, you know, it helps, because you're not just one thing in your life, and so it like battles complacency when you're when, when you're engaging people on these other things that they're excited about. So—Lesley Logan 24:02  Yeah, I think that's cool, I guess, I guess you're right. You have to go to 10. That's just a big question. If I don't know if I want to talk to that person for that long. Brad Crowell 24:10  Yeah, I feel like that makes sense.Lesley Logan 24:11  He's clearly interested in people, and I'm like, I you know, we can go. Brad Crowell 24:15  What about you? Lesley Logan 24:16  I, okay, so he said, follow your passion is complete and utter nonsense. Brad Crowell 24:21  (Laughs)Lesley Logan 24:21  I think this is so funny. Brad Crowell 24:23  I liked his logic here. I thought this was pretty awesome actually. Lesley Logan 24:26  He said, and I think this is helpful, because, like, people are always like, what am I passionate about? Like, what's my hobby? Like this—Brad Crowell 24:31  Yeah, what should I do? Lesley Logan 24:32  What should I do for like, passion is not a starting point. Passion is a byproduct of this formula. Step one, figure out what you are good at and your strengths. So we have had many a strength finder type coach on here. Oh yeah, so you can go talk to any of them. They are so many. From day one of this podcast, there's been so many. And then he said, jumps he has— Brad Crowell 24:54  He's got a workbook. Lesley Logan 24:54  He's a workhouse, workbook called Jump Start Your Midlife Workbook, and you could take that. So that's part of step one. Got to figure out what you're good at, what are your strengths? Step two, what are you curious about, and how can you leverage those skills and those strengths to learn more? So there's a Venn diagram I'm imagining. This is how I picture it, your skills, your strengths, and what you're curious about. And then dude in the middle, there's like you. And then you take that to find a community. So find people you can connect with, and they'll help you. That will help you identify your purpose. Because even if you don't like them, you'll go, I don't like that. That's not my purpose. And then in then, if you want to turn that purpose into a passion, you just multiply that by consistency, discipline, patience and self-compassion. So then you you put, you know, fuel to that fire.Brad Crowell 25:38  Yeah, and I think that he emphasized the last two and that the patience and self-compassion— Lesley Logan 25:45  Oh yeah. Brad Crowell 25:45  So like when you want to turn something that you're good at into your passion, he said, you need to multiply it by consistency, discipline, patience and self-compassion. And he said, most people, we've all heard you know consistency, persistent and consistent, be persistent and consistent, you know, which, which obviously also means discipline. But he said, we always skip the patience and self-compassion part of it. Lesley Logan 26:10  Yeah.Brad Crowell 26:11  Because you're gonna fail and it's also not gonna happen overnight, whatever it might be. Lesley Logan 26:15  Yep.Brad Crowell 26:15  You know.Lesley Logan 26:16  Yep. I agree. I think radical self-compassion is important.Brad Crowell 26:21  Radical self-compassion.Lesley Logan 26:22  Yes. Brad Crowell 26:23  I dig it.Lesley Logan 26:23  Yes. Just like radical responsibility. That's my right, my favorite phrase right now, I want more people to take it. Um, you guys, I'm Lesley Logan and I'm Brad Crowell. This sinus infection will pass and, but not on next week's episode. So just a heads up. We got one more and, but we're working on it. You know we are, and I appreciate your patience and the self-compassion I'm having for myself and the compassion you're having for me. Send his episode, or this one to a friend who needs to hear it. Send your be it pod wins and and your questions into beitpod.com What does it beitpod.com/questions Yeah. Send them there. And until next time, be it till you see it. Brad Crowell 26:56  Bye for now. Lesley Logan 26:58  That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. If you want to leave us a message or a question that we might read on another episode, you can text us at +1-310-905-5534 or send a DM on Instagram @BeItPod. Brad Crowell 27:40  It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan, and me, Brad Crowell. Lesley Logan 27:45  It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co. Brad Crowell 27:49  Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music and our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi. Lesley Logan 27:57  Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals. Brad Crowell 28:00  Also to Angelina Herico for adding all of our content to our website. And finally to Meridith Root for keeping us all on point and on time.  Brad Crowell 28:13  All right, let's talk about Billy Lhar. Billy is the creator and host of the Mindfulness, Mindful Midknife (inaudible).Lesley Logan 28:18  (Laughs)Brad Crowell 28:18  (Inaudible). Starting over.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For all those who missed out on London, see you in Miami next week!Notion, the knowledge work decacorn, has been building AI tooling since before ChatGPT, with many hits from Q&A in 2023 and unified AI in 2024 and Meeting Notes in 2025. At the end of their last Make user conference, Ryan Nystrom teased Notion 3.0's Custom Agents - and they are finally embracing the Agent Lab playbook!Sarah Sachs and Simon Last of Notion join us for a deep dive into how Notion built Custom Agents, why it took years and multiple rebuilds to get right, and what it means to turn a productivity tool into an agent-native system of record for enterprise work.We go inside the product, engineering, evals, pricing, and org design decisions behind one of the most ambitious AI product efforts in software today — from early failed tool-calling experiments in 2022 to agent harnesses, progressive tool disclosure, meeting notes as data capture, and the long-term vision for software factories and agentic work.We discuss:* Sarah and Simon's path to launching Notion Custom Agents, and why the feature was rebuilt four or five times before it was ready for production* Why early agent attempts failed: no tool-calling standard, short context windows, unreliable models, and too much complexity exposed to the model* The “Agent Lab” thesis: not just wrapping a model, but understanding how people collaborate and building the right product system around frontier capabilities* How Notion thinks about roadmap timing: not swimming upstream against model limitations, but also building early enough that the product is ready when the models are* Why coding agents feel like the kernel of AGI, and how Notion is thinking about “software factories” made up of agents that spec, code, test, debug, review, and maintain codebases together* How Sarah runs AI engineering at Notion (“notes from Token Town”): objective-setting over idea ownership, low-ego teams comfortable deleting their own work, and a culture designed to swarm around fast-changing opportunities* The “Simon Vortex,” company hackathons, and why security gets pulled in early rather than late* How Notion organizes AI: core AI capabilities and infrastructure, product packaging teams, and a broader company mandate that every product surface must increasingly work for both humans and agents* Why prototypes have become much easier to build internally, and how “demos over memos” changes product development inside a tool the whole company already uses every day* Notion's eval philosophy: regression tests, launch-quality evals, and “frontier/headroom” evals that intentionally only pass ~30% of the time so the company can see where model capabilities are going* What a “Model Behavior Engineer” is, and why Notion treats eval writing, failure analysis, and model understanding as a distinct function rather than just software engineering* The changing role of software engineers in the age of coding agents, and why the new job looks less like typing code and more like supervising a rigorous outer system of agents, PRs, and verification loops* How the “software factory” should work: specs, self-verification, bug flows, subagents, and minimizing human intervention while preserving the invariants that matter* A live walkthrough of a Notion Custom Agent handling coworking space tenant applications by triaging email, enriching applicants with web search, and writing structured data into a Notion database* How agents compose inside Notion: shared databases as primitives, agents invoking other agents, “manager agents” supervising dozens of specialized agents, and memory implemented simply as pages and databases* Notion's take on MCP vs CLI: why Simon is bullish on CLI's self-debugging nature, where MCP still makes sense, and how Sarah thinks about capability, determinism, permissioning, and pricing alignment* The evolution of Notion's internal agent harness: from early JavaScript coding agents, to custom XML, to Markdown and SQL-like abstractions, to tool definitions, progressive disclosure, and a much shorter system prompt* Why Notion cares about teaching “the top of the class,” building for sophisticated operators rather than abstracting away too much capability for everyone* How agent setup works today: agents that can configure themselves, inspect their own failures, and edit their own instructions — with guardrails around permissions* How Notion prices Custom Agents: credits as an abstraction over tokens, model type, serving tier, web search, and future sandbox costs; why usage-based pricing was necessary; and how “auto” tries to match the right model to the right task* Why Notion is not eager to train a foundation model, where they do fine-tune and optimize today, and why retrieval/ranking is one of the most important investment areas as more searches come from agents rather than humans* Why Meeting Notes became one of Notion's strongest growth loops: not just as transcription, but as high-signal data capture that powers search, custom agents, follow-up workflows, and the broader system of record for company collaboration* Why Notion is more interested in being the place where collaboration data lives than in building hardware themselves — and how wearables or other capture devices may eventually feed into that systemSarah SachsLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahmsachsX: https://x.com/sarahmsachsSimon LastLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-last-41404140X: https://x.com/simonlastFull Video EpisodeTimestamps* 00:00:00 Introduction and launching Notion Custom Agents* 00:01:17 Why Notion rebuilt agents four or five times* 00:03:35 Building for where models are going, not just where they are* 00:05:32 The Agent Lab thesis, wrappers, and product intuition* 00:08:07 User journeys, leadership, and low-ego AI teams* 00:13:16 The Simon Vortex, hackathons, and bringing security in early* 00:16:39 Team structure, demos over memos, and building for agents* 00:20:25 Evals, Notion's Last Exam, and the Model Behavior Engineer role* 00:27:37 Evals as an agent harness and the changing role of software engineers* 00:30:42 The software factory: specs, verification, and agent workflows* 00:32:18 Live demo: a custom agent for coworking space applications* 00:35:08 Composing agents, manager agents, and memory as pages* 00:38:15 Notion Mail, Gmail, native integrations, and tools* 00:39:43 MCP vs CLI and the cost of capability* 00:44:13 When Notion uses MCP vs building its own integrations* 00:47:43 The history of Notion's agent harness rebuilds* 00:55:35 Power users, public tools, and the setup agent* 00:58:01 Self-fixing agents, permissions, and “flippy”* 01:01:13 Pricing, credits, and choosing the right model automatically* 01:09:01 Why Notion isn't training its own frontier model* 01:14:07 Retrieval, ranking, and search built for agents* 01:17:27 Meeting Notes as data capture and workflow automation* 01:21:18 Wearables, hardware, and Notion as the system of record* 01:23:45 OutroTranscript[00:00:00] Alessio: Hey everyone. Welcome to the Latent Space podcast. This is Alessio founder of Kernel Labs and I'm joined by swyx, editor of the Latent Space.[00:00:11] swyx: Hello. Hello. We're back in the beautiful studio that, uh, Alessio has set up for us with Simon and Sarah from Notion. Welcome.[00:00:18] Sarah Sachs: Thanks for having us.[00:00:19] Alessio: Thanks for having us. Yeah.[00:00:20] swyx: Congrats on the launch recently the custom agents, finally it's here. How's it feel?[00:00:26] Sarah Sachs: We ship things slowly. So it had been in Alpha for a little bit and at the point at which is it's an alpha, um, there's a group of people that are making sure it's ready for prod, and then there's a group of people working on the next thing.So sometimes some of these launches are a bit delayed satisfaction, so it's quite nice to remind yourself all the work you did because we do have a habit of like. Being two or three milestones ahead. Uh, just ‘cause you have to be, you know, you can't get complacent. Um, but it's been great that people understood how this is helpful.And I think that's just easier in general building AI tools today than it was two, three years ago. People kind of get it and so that user education, um, there's just, it was our most successful launch in terms of free trials and converting people and things like that. It was really successful, so yeah.But there's a lot to build.[00:01:12] swyx: Making it free for three months helps.[00:01:16] Sarah Sachs: Yep.[00:01:17] Simon Last: It was definitely super exciting for me because it's probably the fourth or fifth time that we rebuilt that.[00:01:22] swyx: Yes.[00:01:23] Simon Last: And I mean,[00:01:24] swyx: you've been building this since like 20, 22.[00:01:26] Simon Last: Yeah, I mean, like, it was even right when we got access to like GPT four in late 20 22, 1 of the first ideas we had is like, oh, okay, let's make an agent that I, we used the word assistant at the time, there wasn't really the word, the word agent yet, but, oh, we'll give an access to all the tools the notion can do, and then it, we run in the background like, like do work for us.And then we just tried that many times and it just. Was too early. Um,[00:01:48] swyx: I need to force you to like double click on that. What is too early? What didn't work?[00:01:52] Sarah Sachs: We were fine to, like, before function calling came out. We were trying to fine tune with the Frontier Labs and with fireworks, like a function calling model on notion functions.This is right when I joined. I joined because, um, we needed a manager as Simon was needed to be able to go on vacation. So, uh, that's, that's around when I joined, so you can speak much more to it.[00:02:11] Simon Last: Yeah, we did partnerships with both philanthropic and open AI at different times, uh, to try to, at the time the, I mean, when we first tried, there wasn't even a constant of like tools yet.We, we sort of designed our own like, like tool calling framework and then we tried to fine tune the models to, uh, to use it over multiple turns. Um, and because it, it didn't work well out the box, I think. Yeah. The models are just too dumb and the context thing was also way too short.[00:02:37] Alsesio: Yeah.[00:02:37] Simon Last: Um, and yeah, we just kind of banged our head against it for a long time.Uh, unfortunately it was always like, there was always like sort of. Glimmers that it was working, but um, it never felt quite robust enough to be like a useful, delightful thing. Um, until I would say, uh, the big unlock was probably like Sonic 3.6 or seven, uh, early last year. And that's when we started working on our agent, which we shipped last year.Um, and then, and then uh, uh, custom agents, kinda a similar capability and that, that one just took longer because we, we just wanted to get the reliability up a lot higher. ‘cause it's actually running in the background.[00:03:14] Sarah Sachs: And the product interface of like permissions and understanding, you know, this custom agent is shared in a Slack channel with X group of people and has access to documents that are surfaced to Y group of people.And the intersect experts, Y might not be whole. And so how do you build the product around making sure administrators understand that permissioning took multiple swings.[00:03:35] Alsesio: Everything is hard back at the end of the day. Yeah. I'm curious, like when the models are not working, how do you inform the product roadmap of like, okay, we should probably build, expecting the models to be better at some reasonable pace, but at the same time we need to, you know, you had a lot of customers in 2022.It's not like you were a new company or like no user base.[00:03:54] Simon Last: Yeah, I mean I think there's always the balance of, you know, like you want to be a GI pilled and thinking ahead and building for where things are going. Uh, but also you wanna be like shipping useful things. And so we always try to like, like keep a balance there.You know, we. We try to take clear, like a portfolio approach. You know, we're always working on multiple projects and, and we're always trying to work on, you know, maintaining things where that have already shipped, like, like shipping new things that are like eminently working well and make them really good.And, and then we wanna always have a few projects that are a little bit crazy. Um,[00:04:23] Alsesio: and what are the a GI peel projects that you have today? I'm curious about, uh, you don't have to share exactly what you're working on, but I'm curious what are things today that maybe in 18 months people will be like, oh, obviously this was gonna work[00:04:35] Sarah Sachs: 18 months.[00:04:37] Alsesio: Yeah, 18 months is, you know,[00:04:37] Sarah Sachs: it's a long time and Yeah. Yeah.[00:04:39] Simon Last: I mean, there's a number of things happening. I think one thing that's becoming more clear is I think like, like, uh, coding agents are the kernel of EGI, sort of, everything is a coding agent. Mm-hmm. I think that's, that's sort of one, one direction.Um, and then, yeah, the exciting thing about that is sort of your agent can sort of bootstrap its own software and capabilities and actually debug and maintain them. And so yeah, we're, we're, we're thinking a lot about that. And then, yeah, like, like another category of things that I'm, I'm really excited about is like, uh, we call the software factory also.People are using this, uh, this, this sort of word. Um, basically it just means can you create sort of like a, as automated as possible, a workflow for developing debugging. Mm-hmm. Merging, reviewing, and maintaining a code base and a service where there's a bunch of agents working together inside, and like, like how does that work?[00:05:28] Sarah Sachs: If you think back to your initial question, like, why did this take so long? I think something,[00:05:32] swyx: I didn't say that, but Yes. Okay. Go ahead.[00:05:34] Sarah Sachs: Why, what, what changed over the three and half years of trying[00:05:37] swyx: it? Exactly. Right. Because most people always say like, it didn't work yet. Then reasoning models came, then it worked.I was like, okay, let's go a little[00:05:43] Sarah Sachs: bit. That's, I mean, that's part of it, but I think the other part of it that I actually think is really what will set notion apart for every new capability is we have like. Two skills that are crucial when it comes to frontier capabilities. One is not letting yourself swim upstream.So like quickly realizing if you're just pressing against model capabilities versus not exposing the model to the right information, not having the right infrastructure set up. That and of itself is the skill of intuition. And the second is to see, okay, you're not swimming upstream. Which direction is the river flowing and what is like, how do we think ahead about the product and start building it even if it's not great yet, so that when it is there, we're ready for it.Right? And like those can sometimes feel like counterintuitive things. Like we can be trying to fine tune a tool calling model when they don't exist yet. And that the trick is to not do that for too long, but realize that there was something there. And we've had a lot of things which like, um, we're just like not swimming in the right direction with the streams.I think we had multiple versions of transcription before we got meeting notes, right? Oh, I gotta talk[00:06:39] swyx: about that. Yeah.[00:06:40] Sarah Sachs: Yeah. Um, and so. I, I, I think that like we, we really closely partner with the Frontier Labs on capabilities and we also have to have strong conviction on, as those capabilities move.Notion is about being the best place for you to collaborate and do your work. And how does that narrative change if the way that we work changes?Yeah.[00:06:58] swyx: Yeah. You told me you were a fan of the Agent Lab thesis, and this is, this is kind of it, right?[00:07:02] Sarah Sachs: Right. I show that thesis to so many candidates. Like I have it as like micro chrome autofill.Um, at this point, like it's one of my most visitations[00:07:10] swyx: because like, is this the, here's why you should work in notion and not open, open eye. I, it's like,[00:07:14] Sarah Sachs: here's, here's what's different about it.[00:07:16] swyx: Yeah.[00:07:16] Sarah Sachs: And here's why. It's not just a rapper. I actually think more and more people understand it's not just a wrapper.[00:07:21] swyx: Yeah.[00:07:22] Sarah Sachs: Um, and by the way, like in the beginning, parts of what we build are wrappers on functionality. That works well, of course, but that's not really the most, um. I would say that's not the product that, that drives revenue. And that's not necessarily always what users need.[00:07:35] swyx: I mean, you know, notion is the AWS wrapper, but like the, the wrapper is very beautiful and like very, very well polished.So[00:07:40] Sarah Sachs: like the analogy,[00:07:41] swyx: like[00:07:42] Sarah Sachs: the analogy that I've been coming back to his Datadog in AWS[00:07:45] swyx: Yeah.[00:07:46] Sarah Sachs: So, uh, Datadog could not exist with, without cloud storage. Right. That it's kind of fundamental that that works. Um, and AWS has like a CloudWatch product, but Datadog is an expert on understanding how people want observability on the products they launch.And we're experts in understanding how people wanna collaborate, and that's really where our expertise lies.[00:08:04] swyx: Totally.[00:08:04] Sarah Sachs: Um, regardless of the tools that we use,[00:08:07] Alsesio: I'm kind of curious how you think about implicit versus explicit expertise. I feel like Datadog is half and half implicit and explicit. It's like they understand across markets and industries what engineering teams usually look for.With notion, it's almost like more of the expertise is at the edge because you as a platform, you're like so horizontal that the end user is not really the same. Mm-hmm. Like with Datadog, the end user is always like, yeah, an engineering lead, a kinda like SRE related person with notion. It can be anything.So I'm curious how you put that expertise into a product versus, you know, obviously it, WS cannot build notion. It's, that doesn't quite work in this case, but[00:08:44] Simon Last: it's, it's a little bit differently shaped. I think, you know, a classic vertical SaaS, like the data is kind of like that. They understand their individual customer very deeply.It's kinda a narrow slice, um, notion has always been super horizontal. And our, our task has always been to sort of balance these two somewhat opposing forces of like, we're listening to our customers and what they want us to build. It's a broad slice. And then also we're thinking about like, okay, how do we decompose what they want into, uh, nice primitives that are, that are really nice to use and we'll, we'll get us like as much bang for the buck as possible.And then, you know. Maintain the whole system, make it all like, like super clean and nice to use.[00:09:22] Sarah Sachs: We still have user journeys. I mean, we still focus on like core. I actually think the failure of our team is when we focus too much on what are cools that are, what are tools that are[00:09:31] Simon Last: mm-hmm.[00:09:31] Sarah Sachs: Cool tools. I actually think that's when we make have the least velocity because you still need some sort of focus on a user journey.So like for instance, we'll all sit down every Friday and look at the P 99 of like the most token exhaustive custom agent transcript and just look at why it didn't do well and cut a bunch of tasks. Like we still focus on like, this has, like this should work. Email triaging should work. Mm-hmm. Right. And similarly, like when we're talking about before building, um, chatting, um, before we started filming about, okay, how can I do PDF export?Well that's functionality that then merits. Maybe we should build a tool that has access to a computer sandbox in a file system and the ability to write code. Right? Right. Um, but it's because we're thinking about the fact that our users to do their, to do their daily work, need to export PDFs, not because we're like, Hmm, I think a computer tool could be cool.Like, let's just see what happens. Mm-hmm. Like we, we have to focus on some user journeys, otherwise we just don't have like, enough strategy to, to prioritize.[00:10:29] swyx: I think there's a lot of like really strong opinions that you've had. Do you have like sort of like a towel of Sarah Sachs? Like, you know, like what, how do you run your team?Like I feel like you just have accumulated all these strong opinions. Obviously part, part of this is your, your token town thing.[00:10:43] Sarah Sachs: I think the TAs working with Service X is, um, you'd have to, it depends who you ask. Um, I think it depends if you're on my team or a partner Right. Or a vendor.[00:10:54] swyx: Yeah. There other people want to run their teams the way that you're Yeah.You're like bringing these things. And then also similarly, uh, Simon, when you did the custom agents demo, you had like, well, we've been using custom agents and here's the super long list of everything that we do. No humans ever read it. Right? That's what you said. I was like,[00:11:07] Sarah Sachs: yeah. So I think for, for me, um, something that I learned very quickly and became very comfortable with was that my job was not to be the ideas per person or the technical expert.My job was to make it so that everybody understood the objective, had a resource to help prioritize what they should work on, and had an avenue to prioritize what they thought was important. And I think that's true with all, all leadership, but I think especially on the AI team. Almost all of our best ideas come from prototypes, from people that have a cool idea because they saw a user problem, and it's a huge disservice if all of those ideas have to pass, like the sniff test of what me and a product partner or Simon and Ivan decided were the direction, right?Because a lot of what we're doing is leaning into capabilities, so. I think that's the first thing is like, I don't really view like the role of engineering leadership as like, uh, hierarchical, nor has it ever been, but especially now, like very willing to change direction based on, um, like proof is in the pudding.Yeah. And like, and I think we have rebuilt our harness three or four times. And when you do that, then the second rule of engineering leadership is like you need to build a team that's comfortable deleting their own code and is very low ego and is driven by what's best for the company. And, um, doesn't write design docs because they think it's their promotion packet.Right. And that's a culture that notion had long before I joined, but like our willingness to just swarm on different problems and um, redo things that we've built before because something has changed. Like, there's a lot of friction that can happen at companies when you do that. And it doesn't happen at Notion.And because it doesn't happen when new people join. Like they don't wanna be the ones that are saying, we shouldn't do this. I wrote that code. So then it's, you know, you, you create a culture that everyone thoughts and that culture comes directly, I think from Simon and Ivan though, um, because they're very open-minded.[00:12:50] swyx: Anything that you,[00:12:50] Simon Last: you'd add? I'm not a manager, like, like, like Sarah is. Um, a lot of my role is really to try to think a little bit ahead, make sure that we're, we're building on the right capabilities and then like the prototyping stuff. And yeah, it's really, really critical to always just be starting again.It's like, okay, this is new thing. What does this mean? What if we just rethought everything or wrote everything? And so I, I'm, I'm basically just doing that in a loop every six months.[00:13:16] swyx: Yeah. Do you believe in internal hackathons for this stuff?[00:13:19] Sarah Sachs: I think there's like two different versions. So one is like, we just have a, a, a solid bench of senior engineers that come and go on what we call the Simon Vortex and Productionizing what we built, right?Because when you're in the Simon Vortex, the velocity is super high. The direction changes daily, and it's meant to be like the equivalent of a SC Works lab. We don't need to do hackathons for that. We need to have senior engineers that we trust to come in and out of those projects. For instance, like management boundaries are really loose.Like you report to him, but you work for her right now. Yeah. That's something that when we hire managers, it's important they don't care about because we tend to form more structures. Yeah. Don't be too[00:13:54] swyx: territorial.[00:13:55] Sarah Sachs: We form more. It's after we ship things, not not before, just historically. Um, the second thing is we do have companywide hackathons.Actually we just had our demos day for the hackathon we had last week this morning. That's more for people that aren't directly working on the project, feeling like they have the time to pause and learn how to make themselves more productive or how they would use notion custom agents to build something.Or part of the hackathon was actually encouraging everyone across the company to build their own agentic tool loop, calling from scratch. Follow like an every blog post on how to do what I think because we want[00:14:26] swyx: just with the compound engineering one. Yeah.[00:14:28] Sarah Sachs: We want everyone to use cloud code in the company or whatever the coding agent they please and understand that fundamental.So we set aside a day and a half. We're all leadership, encourage everyone on their teams across the company to do it. So we have hackathons like that. I would say like kind of facetiously, like everything we build is a little bit like a hackathon until it graduates and puts on big boy pants and as a product ops rollout leader and has a assigned data scientists and stuff like that,[00:14:54] swyx: security review enterprise stuff,[00:14:56] Sarah Sachs: actually security reviews one of the things that we bring in first because it just slows us down way more and, um, causes a lot of tension and they build better product if they're involved early.So, um, that is probably the first person to get involved in something that's the[00:15:09] swyx: right PR approved answer.[00:15:10] Sarah Sachs: No, but it's not just PR approved. It like, um, um, it's[00:15:13] swyx: actually real. It's actually real. It's like, um, I'm just saying scar[00:15:15] Sarah Sachs: tissue.[00:15:15] swyx: Yeah,[00:15:16] Sarah Sachs: because like, you know, my background's also, I worked at Robinhood for a number of years.Yes. So like, uh, compliance and things like that, um, are a little bit more, you learn the hard way when it doesn't come naturally.[00:15:26] Simon Last: Yeah. I think the. The hackathon is really important for uplifting the general population, but like, if that's the only way you can build new things, you're kind of toast. I mean, it, it has to be like the daily processes, like, you know, building these new things.Um, and it has to be about, I think like, I think in the AI era a lot more leverage accumulates to the most curious and excited people. And so it's like we're all about just like activating that energy. You know, like if someone's protesting something on the weekend that they're excited about and it's important, that should be the main thing that we're doing.Yeah. Um, it's not a hackathon that we schedule once a quarter, it's just like, yeah. Daily process. Part of the culture.[00:16:02] Sarah Sachs: I mean, that's how we shift image generation and notion now. It was always this thing that would be kind of nice to have, but it wasn't really clear where that was necessarily aligned in product priorities.It'd be a lot of work. And we had someone on the database collections team, Jimmy, who was like. I really wanna do image generation for cover photos and inside notion. And we're like, if you wanna build it, like it's, do it please. Like we encourage you. We gave ‘em all the resources of working directly with Gemini and being able to like track the token usage and it working through endpoints.We gave them eval, support, everything, and then became a, a full project.[00:16:34] Alsesio: Yeah.[00:16:35] Sarah Sachs: That's why you can't have like ego as a, a leader. Like that's, that's how we work.[00:16:39] Alsesio: What's the size of the team today, both engineering and overall?[00:16:43] Sarah Sachs: I manage, uh, the team. That's what we'll call it. Core AI capabilities and infrastructure.That's about 50 people. But then we have per i partner teams that do packaging. So how it shows up in the corner chat versus custom agents versus meeting notes, that's another 30, 40 people. And, and then every team that has a product service at Notion that a user can interface with owns the tool that the agent interfaces with the editor team.The team that did CRDT for offline mode is the same team that handles how two agents, um, edit competing blocks. Mm-hmm. Right? It's the same problem. The team that built the underlying SQL engine is the same team that owns how the agent asks it to run a SQL query, and it does it performantly. And so from that regard, anyone working on product engineering is tasked with making them work for customers that are humans and agents because over time the majority of our traffic will be coming from agencies using in our interface, not humans.And so. Our objective is to make it so that the whole product org is building for agents.[00:17:40] Alsesio: Yeah. How has it changed internally? The activation bar is kind of lowered a lot. Like anybody can kind of create a prototype very, somewhat easily, especially if you're like an existing code base. Have you raised the bar on like what type of prototype people need to bring forward to gonna be taken?Not like seriously, but like, you know what I[00:17:58] Simon Last: mean? Yeah. I think the bar is lowered in many ways. Be like, one thing our, uh, our team built that is really cool is our, uh, our, our design team made a whole separate GitHub repo, uh, called the, the design Playground. And it's basically just to create a bunch of like, like helper components and you, uh, for, for quickly a throwing together UIs.And it's become like actually quite sophisticated. Like it has like an agent in there and like, uh, that's pretty fun. So like, we pretty much, like, they don't do mocks, they just make like, like full, full prototypes.[00:18:27] swyx: Here it is. It works.[00:18:28] Simon Last: They give you like a u rl. They're like, okay, all right. So we have to make the, like the real production version of that.Um, and then for engineers. A prototype looks like just making it a feature flag that actually works. Like that's sort of the bar.[00:18:39] Sarah Sachs: Something to understand that's really unique about notion. One of the reasons I joined we're super lucky is no one uses Notion in their job as much as people that work at Notion.[00:18:46] Simon Last: Of course.[00:18:47] Sarah Sachs: So I think there's very few companies, maybe if you worked on Chrome I guess, but like everything that we ship, we ship internally first and get a lot of really quick feedback. And also sometimes our dev instance is totally borked and you have to change a bunch of flags to get things done. And that's kind of like, but everyone, so people that do it ticketing, people that do supply chain procurement, recruiting, everyone is using the same instance of notion with like a lot of flags on for these prototypes people build.Um, and so we have this, Brian Levin, one of the designers on our team, I think evangelize this concept of demos over memos.[00:19:18] swyx: Ooh, too[00:19:20] Sarah Sachs: good. Um, which has been, uh, very good for building demos, and I think it's put a big pressure point on us to have really strong product conviction, because if anything can be demoed, you really need a strong filter of making sure that if you know, you're doing X amount of work, you're making the, you're, you're focusing on one tower, you're not just building a really flat hill.Right. That's actually where I think there has to be more conviction from our PMs, um, and our designers and, and well, the company really to have conviction of what journey we're going on.[00:19:52] Simon Last: But overall, I feel like it works pretty well. Like people, almost all the engineers have good enough taste to realize that like, this prototype doesn't actually make sense in the product, or, or it does.So it's not that common that I would see a prototype. It's like, oh, this makes no sense. Mm-hmm. It's like, you know, people are doing reasonable things and, and, and then it's just a matter of. Which things we build first and then often just, just figuring out how to turn it on and off. There's our, in the, in our like experimental chat ui, there's this, there's probably like, like a hundred check boxes in there.[00:20:22] Sarah Sachs: Kills me[00:20:23] Simon Last: the things you could turn on and off.[00:20:25] Sarah Sachs: Uh, but I think that, okay, so that is kind of true, Simon, but like being the person that manages the evals team, like there is a level of intensity that it adds to the platform team. So, you know, if we're gonna do image generation and notion, all of a sudden the way that we do attachments and the way that we, um, our LLM completion like cortex talks and expects tokens back and now it's getting images back.Like there's a lot of platform work that we do need to, like solidify a little bit. So sometimes it'll be in dev for a couple weeks before it makes it to prod just because we still have to like, make it robust, make it HIPAA compliant, ZDR compliant, figure out the right contracting with the vendor, whatever it is.And we need to eval it because we want the team. To still maintain what they build. That's the one thing is like if we have a bunch of prototypes, it can't just be like a small group of people that then maintain whatever end prototypes. So we have invested a lot of people in an eval and model behavior understanding teams that, we call it agent dev velocity.So your dev velocity building agents can be faster if we invest in that platform. And so we have a whole org dedicated to Asian, um, platform velocity so that you can build your own eval and then maintain it once you ship it. So if a new model release comes out and we, every[00:21:38] swyx: team maintains their own eval,[00:21:40] Sarah Sachs: we maintain the eval framework.Every team owns their own evals and a lot of them we've integrated to Optin, to ci, or we run them nightly and we have a team, uh, a custom agent that triggers to a team to look at the major failures. That's really critical because if we have like all these different surfaces now, a lot of it's on the same agent harness, so it's easier to maintain.It's just packaging of different agent harnesses, but new functionality of the agent. Let's say that like we wanna update like. Uh, you know, they deprecated, sonnet, um, four or whatever it is and we need to auto update. Are[00:22:11] swyx: they already? That's so, okay. Yeah. Actually wasn't that long ago.[00:22:14] Alsesio: Theywere[00:22:14] Alsesio: just 3.5.[00:22:15] Sarah Sachs: 3.537. Just got deprecated.[00:22:18] swyx: 3 7, 5 0.2 or, yeah. No,[00:22:20] Sarah Sachs: it's not. 5.2 is five point. Five point no. Yeah, five four is 40% more expensive than five two. So if they deprecated five two, you would hear they can, you would hear from me about that one. Um, but, uh, another conversation to have.[00:22:35] swyx: I have a cheeky evals question for you.Have you noticed any secret degradation from any of the major model providers?[00:22:40] Sarah Sachs: Secret degradation,[00:22:42] swyx: like. During the War Bay, when it's high traffic, it suddenly gets dumber.[00:22:47] Sarah Sachs: Yeah. I mean, not just between the, I mean, we definitely notice flakiness, we've definitely noticed, particularly for some providers, that things are slower during working hours and[00:22:57] swyx: there's a latency argument.Yes. Not a quality argument.[00:22:59] Sarah Sachs: No. I think the quality difference that's interesting is, um, even though companies that say they're selling the same, a, it's really into like quanti quantization, but like companies that say they're selling the same model through different vendors, whether it be through first party or Bedrock, Azure, et cetera.We do see different qualities sometimes, and that's not necessarily what's advertised.[00:23:21] swyx: Yeah. Kidney went to the point of like, if we, they shipped like this, like eval across all the providers and it was like very obvious we were secret equalizing and it was very,[00:23:28] Sarah Sachs: yeah. But[00:23:29] swyx: that's very embarrassing.[00:23:30] Sarah Sachs: You know, um, we hire Subprocess to figure that out for us.So we just wanna understand where it's regressing or where it's optimized. And sometimes we're okay with regressions that optimize latency if they're the appropriate regressions. Our job is to make sure we have the evals to understand the changes that are important to us. And even like when we're partnering with labs on pre-releasees of models, they'll send us multiple snapshots.And this is less about quantization, but more just regressions. Like they have shipped models that were not the snapshots that we wanted, and they have changed the snapshots that they shipped based on the feedback that we give. Because our feedback tends to be more enterprise work focused and not coding agent focused.And definitely those can be bummers, like, you know, uh, we know that this wasn't the version you wanted, but we'll help you make it work. I mean, we always make it work, but that definitely happens.[00:24:16] Alsesio: Yeah. Do you have, um, failing evals that you're just hoping, oh, that will have success eventually when a good model comes out?[00:24:23] Sarah Sachs: Uh, I mean, yeah. So I think. I mean, I could talk about this for 60 minutes, so I will limit myself. I think it's a real issue when people say evals and it's just like, that's quality, that's like unit, I mean, it's like saying testing. It's not just unit tests, right? So. We have the equivalent of unit test.Regression test. Those live in ci, those have to pass a certain percent, you know, within some stochastic error rate. Then we have, as you're building a product, evals of these aren't passing right now, and this is launch quality. So we have a report card and we need to, on these categories, you know, be it 80 or 90% of all of these user journeys to launch, and then what we have what we call frontier or headroom evals, where we actively wanna be at 30% pass rate.And that's actually been a effort that we took in partnership with philanthropic and OpenAI in the past maybe two or three months, because we actually hit a point where our evals were saturated and we weren't able to really give insightful feedback other than it wasn't worse. And not only is that not helpful for our partners, it's not helpful for us to understand where the stream is going.You know, going back to that analogy. And so we spent a lot of time thinking about. What notions last exam looks like, right? Mm-hmm. Not just humanities, last exam. Ooh, notions last exam. Mm-hmm. And, um, there's a lot of, you know, dreams about what that would look like. I know we've talked a lot about benchmarking, um, swix, but, uh, yeah.Notions last exam is a big thing inside the company and we have people, full-time staff to it exclusively. Mm. We have a data scientist, a model behavior engineer, and an full-time, um, evals engineer just dedicated to the evals that we pass 30% of the time.[00:25:56] swyx: What you're hiring for[00:25:57] Sarah Sachs: MBEs? I am hiring[00:25:58] swyx: What is an MBEA[00:25:59] Sarah Sachs: model?Behavior Engineer Model. Behavior engineers started with a title data specialist before I joined when they were working with Simon on like, uh, Google Sheets and like Simon just needed someone to look through Google Sheets and say, yes, no, this looks bad. This looks good. Right? And so we hired people with kind of diverse linguistics background.We had like a linguistics PhD dropout. Mm-hmm. And a Stanford ate new grad. And they're amazing. And they formed a new function basically. And over time we've built a whole team, um, with a manager who's now kind of reinventing what that role is with coding agents. So they used to be kind of manually inspecting code.Now they're primarily building agents that can write evals for themselves or LLM judges. There's a really funny day I can send you the picture where Simon, about a year and a half ago, was teaching them how to use GitHub. Um, and they're on the whiteboard and it was like, okay, I think it would be so much faster if our data specialists learned how to use GitHub and like learned how to commit these things in Dakota.And, and that was then and now I think, you know, coding has been a lot more accessible. Um, but moving forward it's this mix of like data scientist PM and prompt engineer because there's craft in understanding like even like what models can and can't do things. How do we define like that headroom? How do we define like what a good journey is?Um, is this model better or not? Why is this failing? There's some qualitative work, but then there's also like a lot of instinct and taste to it, and that's not necessarily software engineering. And so we have like very firm conviction and we have had for a number of years now that that is its own career path and we have always welcomed the misfits, so to speak.So we really firmly believe that you don't need an engineering background to be the best at this job. And that's what's quite unique about this particular role.[00:27:37] Simon Last: Yeah, this is something that I've been pretty excited about recently is we made an effort basically to treat the eval system as like an agent harness.So if you think about it, like, you know, you should be able to have an agent end-to-end, download a dataset, run an eval, iterate on a failure, debug, and, and then implement a fix. And ultimately you should be able to, you know, drive the full time process with a human sort of observing the, you know, the outer uh, system.So yeah, we went, went pretty hard on that. And that's, that's worked extremely well so far. It's like basically just to turn it into a coding agent, uh, uh, problem.[00:28:11] swyx: Your coding agent or just whatever[00:28:13] Simon Last: harness No coding agent. Yeah, code, cloud code. It should be totally general. Yeah. I think if it would be a mistake to like, like fix it on any, any particular coding agent.At the end of the day, it's just like CLI tools.[00:28:21] Sarah Sachs: It's like the same way that you would've a coding agent write the unit test. You should have a coding agent write the eval.[00:28:26] swyx: Yeah.[00:28:26] Sarah Sachs: But there's a lot of supervision in that still. We just don't believe that supervision has to come from software engineers because a lot of it is like, um, kind of you XREE and whatever, and these are the people that also triage failures and tell us where we should be investing next.[00:28:40] swyx: Yeah. I'm gonna go ahead and ask a spicy question. Is there a data, there are no software engineers at Notion.[00:28:46] Simon Last: Um,[00:28:46] Sarah Sachs: what does it mean to be a software engineer?[00:28:47] swyx: Exactly.[00:28:48] Simon Last: I mean, I think the way things are going is like we're on some continuum where. If, if you look back three years ago, humans were typing all the code and then we had auto complete, you're typing list of the code.Then we had sort of like filling agents, filling lines, and now we're getting into like agents doing longer range tasks where you can debug and implement a fix and then verify it works and you know, get your, get your PR even like, like Merion deployed. I think we're sort of just moving up the abstraction ladder and then the human role becomes more about observing and maintaining the outer system.There's a string of agents flowing through, like me prs what's going off the rails. Like what do I need to approve? Is there like a learning or memory mechanism that that works? So it's kind of a hard engineering problem. There's a, you know, there's, there's a lot to do there. I think we're just sort of moving up stack[00:29:34] Sarah Sachs: the same transition machine learning engineers have made, right?Like I haven't looked at a PR curve in a while.[00:29:39] swyx: Yeah. You used to do this stuff and now, um, auto research can do it,[00:29:42] Sarah Sachs: right? Like I think it depends on what you define as a software engineer.[00:29:46] swyx: Yes. It's, that's changing for sure.[00:29:49] Sarah Sachs: I think every software engineer in notion this summer went through like this, um, sheer, um, one of our engineering leads of the company called it, like every software engineer is going through the, the, uh, identity crisis that every manager goes through, where all of a sudden they realize their ability to write code is less important than their ability to delegate in context switch.And I think that is a transition out of being a software engineer. But[00:30:12] Simon Last: yeah. Yeah, there's a critical difference to being a manager, which is that like, it is actually very deeply technical. The problem, you know, humans are very like, like, like fuzzy and you can't like treat a team of humans like a, like a rigorous system where like, you know, prs like, like flow through and can be in like a block status and then what happens when they're blocked, right.With a set of agents, you actually can do that. And, and, and I think it's actually, there's a lot of interesting technical rigor that that goes into that it's like it's a technical design problem. Ultimately.[00:30:42] Alsesio: What is the design of the software factory that you're building?[00:30:46] Simon Last: Yeah, I mean, I think we're. Trying a lot of different things.I mean, ultimately you want to design a system that requires as little human intervention as possible, but like still maintaining the in variance that, that you care about. So yeah, we're exploring a lot different ideas there. I mean, I think I could talk about a few things I think are important there.Like, one thing I think is really important is, um, having some kind of like specification layer you can just commit marked on files. Mm-hmm. That works pretty well, but[00:31:15] swyx: it's nice to be notion man. I'm just saying like the spec, like Yeah. The natural home for specs is notion.[00:31:21] Simon Last: Yeah. Right. It can be a database of pages.Yeah. I mean, it needs to be something that is, you know, human readable and I viewable and I think that's pretty key. Another really key component is like the, the self verification loop. Yes. You need really, really good testing layers, basically. And that's a really deep, uh, uh, problem. But by getting that right, you know, and then, and then it's kinda like the workflow of like.What happens when there's a bug? How does it flow into the system? Like, is it like a subagent working on it? How does it make a PR and how does that get reviewed? And me, and then, you know, so there's like the, the flow or process.[00:31:56] swyx: Yeah. Cool. Uh, you know, one thing we did work out before you guys came in was this demo or this[00:32:01] Simon Last: agents[00:32:02] swyx: agent demo.Uh,[00:32:03] Simon Last: so every,[00:32:04] Alsesio: every time we do an episode, we try the product. Right. I don't think there's ever been an episode that I haven't tried. Yeah. Um,[00:32:11] swyx: and we, we try, try is a, a big word. Like since day one lane space has been on Notion, but this is the, this is the net new thing. Yes.[00:32:18] Alsesio: So this is for Nel Labs, which is the space we're in.So next week we're opening applications for tenants. So there's a web form, let me, we got this form done here. Uh, so, uh, before. Uh, the workflow would be I get an email, then I look at the person. It was like, should I spend time talking to this person? Then I respond, they respond back. So I build this. So the name it came up for on its own.Can you maybe h how do, how does it come up with its own name?[00:32:43] Simon Last: Yeah, that's a pretty app name. It's, it, it is just a random, it's a random, a name generator.[00:32:47] Alsesio: Oh, that's funny. It just came,[00:32:49] Simon Last: the fact that it picked that is, is kind of hilarious. I'm pretty sure it's just determined,[00:32:54] Sarah Sachs: resilient collector. I, I think I've never looked at the code for that.I've never second guessed it. I think it's kind of like a madlib situation.[00:33:00] Simon Last: Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. It's, it's totally a, a deterministic. Oh, I thought it was great. Yes. Although, although when the, if you use the AI to set itself up, it can update its own name, so. Okay. Um,[00:33:11] Sarah Sachs: how did you create it? It, did you just do[00:33:12] Alsesio: classroom?I,[00:33:13] Sarah Sachs: okay.[00:33:13] Alsesio: I did, yeah. I'll say just check my inbox for applications for a coworking space. Keep a people, so it created the database for me. Which I have here. And I guess database is like an notion table because everything is notion. Um, and then whenever um, an email comes in, like here, it just creates a new role for the person.Mm-hmm. And then it uses web search to enrich the mm-hmm. The profile. So it kind of like searches the web and it's like, this is who this person is, this is when they say they wanna move in and kind of updates everything else. This is, I mean, it's not a GI, but to me, I don't wanna do this work. So it feels like, I mean, it took me maybe like 15 minutes to set up the whole thing.Um, and I really like that most of the information should live here. You know, it is not like some other tool asking me[00:34:01] Sarah Sachs: Yeah.[00:34:01] Alsesio: To like, bring my stuff there. It's like I would've probably already created an ocean thing.[00:34:06] Sarah Sachs: Mm-hmm.[00:34:06] Alsesio: So[00:34:07] Sarah Sachs: most of our biggest use cases and gains are from. That extra layer of human involvement in the process to make it so right.And so like one of our biggest use cases is bug triaging. So if someone posts something in Slack, can you just have a custom agent that lives there that has its own routing constitution of what team this belongs to, creates a task in your task database and then posts in that Slack channel, right? Like that's like one of the first things that we built internally, I think.And it's completely changed the way that notion functions as a company. Nothing falls through, well, most things don't fall through the crack. We don't know what we don't know. But it's not replacing people, it's replacing processes.[00:34:44] Alsesio: Yeah.[00:34:44] Sarah Sachs: Right.[00:34:45] Alsesio: And I'm curious how you think about composability of these things.So the other one I was working on is like a. These filler. So whenever somebody signs up as a tenant, kind of he'll sell the lease for them. There should probably some agent that is like office manager agent mm-hmm. That can handle the request, make the lease, and then, uh, give them a ADA access to the office and all of that.How do you think about that feature?[00:35:08] Simon Last: Yeah, so I mean, there's, there's two ways you can compose. One way is by using like the data primitives. So you can, you know, you, you could give, you have one agent, uh, be writing to the database and there's another agent that's walked in the database. So that's, that's one way that they, they can coordinate that's like a little bit more decoupled and mm-hmm.Works really well. Or you, you can couple them. So I, I think it's actually not released yet. Releasing it like next week is, uh, in the settings for an agent, you can give access to invoke any other agent.[00:35:34] swyx: Hmm.[00:35:34] Simon Last: So you can have them just. Just, uh, uh, talk directly. So[00:35:37] swyx: you, was there a limit on like, number of recursions or just,[00:35:40] Simon Last: um, probably,[00:35:42] swyx: you know what I mean?Like, you can just get an infinite loop that way there's[00:35:45] Simon Last: some kind of Yeah,[00:35:46] Sarah Sachs: I think it's, there is actually a number somewhere.[00:35:49] swyx: I believe I'm just, you know, like, you're, you're, someone's gonna screw up. You[00:35:51] Simon Last: should you try to see[00:35:53] swyx: Yeah. I mean, everything's gonna be paperclips.[00:35:55] Simon Last: Oh, yeah. Yeah. But, uh, but, but that's really useful.Yeah. So we, you know, like I just, I, I helped, uh, someone internally the other day, they had, they had built like over 30 custom agents for, uh, for our go to market team doing all kinds of different things. You know, for example, like researching, you know, like, like filling information about, about a customer or like, like triaging customer feedback or like, uh, something like that.Literally over 30 of them. And, and then he, and then he even made like a database of all the agents and then he is like, okay, and, and now I'm getting 70, over 70 notifications per day with just the agents are blocked on various things. Uh, and then I was like, oh, okay, cool. You know, the obvious thing to do there is to make a manager agent,[00:36:32] Sarah Sachs: right?[00:36:33] Simon Last: That's gonna sort of blocks be another abstraction layer in between your, your, uh, uh, 30 agents. Uh, so yeah, we, we send out with like a manager agent and then has access to invoke all the other agents and it's sort of like, like watching and observing them and then it sort of, it just creates a layer of abstraction.So instead of 70 notifications per day, it's like, like five. And then, and then the manager agent can help like, uh, debug and fix any problems with the,[00:36:54] swyx: does this is a concept of like an inbox or something like piece, you're basically saying that they can message each other?[00:37:00] Simon Last: Yeah.[00:37:01] Sarah Sachs: Well[00:37:01] swyx: they use the system of record, which, which is[00:37:02] Sarah Sachs: notion, so we[00:37:03] Simon Last: actually, yeah, we didn't make any special concepts at all.[00:37:06] swyx: They're interested to the motion notifications that I would've got,[00:37:09] Sarah Sachs: they can just like write a task to a database that the other agent's task to listening to, or they can actually call a web book to the agent, like they can just add the agent. Okay.[00:37:17] Simon Last: Yeah, I mean, this is something that, that we're still working on.I, I think we, you know, like, like generally, generally the way we do these things is, you know, you first make it possible, maybe like a sort of janky way. So I, I, I think the way I set ‘em up is like, you know, we created like a new database that was sort of like issues mm-hmm. That the custom agents were, were experiencing, and then gave them all access to file an issue and then the manager has access to, to read the issues.Um, and that works pretty well, essentially like, like give it its own like internal issue tracker just for the agents. And then, you know, if that becomes a, a concept that seems useful, generally maybe we will think of how to package it in. But I mean, generally we try to just keep it to composing the primitive if we can.You know, another example of this is we have no built-in memory concept. Memory is, is just pages and databases. And so if you wanna give a memory, just give it a page and give it. Edit access to that page and the[00:38:03] swyx: human can edit it. Agent can edit[00:38:04] Simon Last: it. Yeah. And so that works, that pattern works extremely well on it.And you know, depending this case, you can have it be just a page or it could be an entire database with, you know, or, you know, I can have sub pages is is pretty on what you can do with that.[00:38:15] Alsesio: So when I was setting this up, uh, I connected my inbox and it was like, do you wanna use Gmail or Notion Mail? And I'm like, I don't wanna use Eater, I just want you to do it.I'm curious how you think about, you know, notion, mail, notion, calendar, all of these kind of ui ux interfaces, full stack[00:38:29] Simon Last: notion.[00:38:30] Alsesio: Yeah. When like at the same time you have the agents abstracting them away from you in a way, you know, how do you spend like the product calories so to speak?[00:38:37] Simon Last: Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty important that you don't have to use, not your mail to connect to the mail capability.So we can just connect to Gmail or, or whatever you want, uh, to use. And we're thinking of the mail service as being really great to the extent that it's really agent built, right? So maybe the mail app is just sort of a prepackaged agent that helps you automate your, your inbox.[00:39:00] Alsesio: Yeah, the auto labeling is great.Think[00:39:03] Sarah Sachs: the, when we, um, integrate with Gmail for instance, we have a series of tools available that are available via MCP or API to Gmail. When we integrate with Notion Mail, we have the Notion Mail engineering team to build us the, um, exact right tools that optimize latency, optimize performance and quality.They own that quality. Um, there's product leads there. They're directly thinking about the user problems that happen in mail. So it tends to be when we build integrations and connections, we build natively first. Um, and then think about, um, extending them generally just because it's also easier. Mm-hmm. Um, um, to build natively first.Um, so that tends to be how we phase things out.[00:39:43] swyx: Talking about integrations, you prompted me, so I gotta ask. M-C-P-C-L-I. What's going on? What's the[00:39:48] Simon Last: Yeah. Opinion. I think, I mean, I'm, I'm definitely bullish and excited about cli. I think there's a few really cool things about cli. So one really cool thing is like, um, is that it's in the terminal environment, so it gets a bunch of extra power.So it, you know, for example, it can like, like paginating and cursor through like long outputs. Um, and it has a progressive disclosure inherently. Uh, so, you know, you don't see all the tools at once. It's just, you see the CLI wrapper and you can like use the, the help commands and, and, and read files. And then I think the most important thing that's, that's super cool is that there, it's also inherently a, a bootstrapped.So if there's an issue, uh, the agent can debug and fix itself within the same environment that it uses the tool.[00:40:30] swyx: Mm.[00:40:30] Simon Last: Right. Like, you know, I think I saw a tweet this morning. Someone said, you know, my agent didn't have a browser, so I asked it to make all a browser tool and within a hundred lines of code, it gave itself a little browser, like, like wrapping the, the, the chromium API, um.That's pretty incredible. And then if there was a bug, it would just immediately try to fix it. Mm-hmm. Right. On the other hand, if you use an, you know, if you use like of, of the Chrome dev tools, MCP, I've had this issue where like, like sometimes the transport gets like messed up. If it gets messed up, the agent has no way to fix itself.It, it no longer has a browser, it's, it's not broken. Right. I think that's, that's pretty fundamental, but I would say like a lot of the, the bad things about it can be fixed. Uh, so I think like, as a progressive disclosure, that can be fixed with, with right harness. Like, it, it obviously doesn't make sense to show it all the tools all the time.That's not really inherent to the MCP protocol. It's just like how you wrap it and use it.[00:41:16] swyx: There's many poorly built MCPs because we didn't know.[00:41:19] Simon Last: Yeah, yeah. I mean it was just early, like, like the obvious thing is, uh, you know, to start with is, is to just show it all the tools and it's like, okay, now we have a hundred tools.Yeah. And like the tool calling actually works. So let's of[00:41:28] swyx: your success[00:41:29] Simon Last: give it a way to like, like filter to source the tools. So yeah, I would say like broadly speaking, I'm really bullish on cli. I'm still bullish on CPS and in a certain environment. I think in, in particular, CP is really great for when you want sort of like a narrow, lightweight agent.I think there's, there's definitely a lot of use cases where, where you don't want like a full coding agent with a compute run time. And also you want it to be like more tightly permissioned. MCP inherently has a really strong permission model, like all you can do is call the tools. A CLI is a little bit murkier.It's like, can I access the, if PI token are you, like, properly sort of like re-encrypt the token so it can't like exfiltrate it, it introduce a lot of like, like new issues, which are. Real and hard to solve. And MCP is just like the dumb simple thing that works and it that it's pretty good.[00:42:12] Sarah Sachs: I'll add two more perspectives, not from it working well for Notion, but how notion like commits to both platforms.Notion is dedicated to being the best system of record for where people do their enterprise work. So we will always support our MCP and so far as other people are using cps, right? So regardless of our perspective, we've put a lot of effort into our MCP and we have a fantastic team that we're building, um, to do more there.And the second thing I'll say, I think, um, we all think a lot, but lately I've been thinking a lot about making sure there's a value alignment and pricing, um, with capability.[00:42:43] swyx: Literally our next question[00:42:44] Sarah Sachs: and. Needing language to execute deterministic tasks feels wasteful and requiring on a language model to interface with third party providers seems wasteful for tasks that don't require it.And particularly because our custom agents are using usage-based pricing. We think of pricing as like the barrier of entry for use of our product, and we're quite committed to making sure that it's not wasteful. Um, not just because it's a bad deal for our customers, but it's also bad business. We wanna have as many buyers, like there's a, there's an elasticity of demand and so if we can have our agents properly execute code that calls on CLI deterministically, it's a one-time cost, right?Versus constantly having a language model integrate with an MCP over and over and over and paying those like repeated token fees and it's happening outside the cash window, then you're paying for it over and over and over and it's just kind of unnecessary and less deterministic when it doesn't have to be.[00:43:36] Alessio: Yeah, the open-endedness I think is like, the main thing is like, well, if I go write code to just call an API, I would never use an MCP. But then you need an NCP sometimes when you know what to call, but you don't want it to restart versus like, I think the it built a browser from scratch is like, it's great when you're doing it on your own, but like if your customers were having your AI write a browser from scratch every time and you had to pay the token cost of that, yeah.You'd be like, no, no. The Chrome dev tools CP is actually pretty great. Just use that. I'm curious, how do you make that decision? Like should it be. Just straight API call very narrow. Should it be an MCP? Should it be super open-ended?[00:44:10] Sarah Sachs: Do you mean for when we ship notion capabilities or when we add capabilities to[00:44:13] Alessio: notion[00:44:14] Sarah Sachs: AI or,[00:44:14] Alessio: I mean, you might have a capability that the only way to do is an open-ended agent, like an agent with a coding sandbox.[00:44:21] Sarah Sachs: Yeah. In Notion ai they're not explicit, not We also ship an MCP.[00:44:24] Alsesio: Yeah. Yeah. In B,[00:44:25] Sarah Sachs: yeah.[00:44:26] Alsesio: Internally. Okay. Like is there ever a discussion of like, we're not gonna ship it because we're not able to tie it down? Or are you happy to just like,[00:44:33] Sarah Sachs: um, no. I mean, there are a lot of things where we choose not to use MCP because we wanna add more high touch to quality.I think search an agent to find is like the largest instance of that, where we have. Um, slack and linear and Jira search and notion that is not using necessarily the search MCP functionality that is provided by those companies. And that's because it's quite critical we think, to how our agent trajectories work is for us to have a little bit more control on the functionality of the search journey.And so it usually comes from quality and there's a long tail of things and that's why we built an MCP client or an MCP server, excuse me, so that people can connect whatever they want. There's that long tail, right. But we, for search particularly, I would say that's like the primary entry point, but there are other connections as well that it's a little bit of secret sauce a

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Kiera is a guest on The Zero Balance Podcast with John Stamper! She and John discuss the advancement of software over the past few years, and why the current culmination — artificial intelligence — isn't something to be skittish around in your practice.  Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today we are sharing a guest interview I did on another podcast. And it was too valuable not to bring you guys here.   this episode, you're gonna hear this host lead the conversation and then I'll wrap us up at the end. I cannot wait. It was truly one of my most   incredible episodes and I truly hope you enjoy.   John (00:19) What's going on everybody. Welcome to another episode here on The ZeroBalance podcast brought to you by the team at Quanta Suite. Very excited to keep this thing going. Uh, our last conversations and episodes crazy to think it's 2026 already were at the Dykma conference. And I had the privilege of spending time, not only with the Quanta Suite team, but also a lot of great individuals that came on the podcast and talked about what they were seeing in that case, it was in the DSO space. Uh, I'm very excited today to   be with Kiera Dent from the Dental A team. I've known Kiera for many years. We were actually just talking before we came on here live. ⁓ she is doing a lot along with her team to help dental practices, take things to the next level. she's been in dental for many, many years. And so we're going to have a conversation today, ⁓ kind of around all things AI and automation and love to have her, you know, kind of share with all of you what she's seeing, you know, her and her team are working with dental practices on a daily basis. And obviously, you know, the Qantas suite team is, is creating.   their software in an effort to be able to support practices in the RCM world. But Kiera, it's such great to have you here. How you doing?   Kiera (01:26) Oh my gosh, John, it's great to see you again. And I love chatting about all things dentistry. I love having the last name dent. I love dental. love AI. love, um, it's crazy. Dental A Team hits 10 years old this year, which is like absolutely wild. Uh, 2026, I was getting ready to, know, writing my goals out and I was like, Oh my gosh, I turned 40. My husband turns 40. We've been married for 15 years and Dental A Team hits 10 years this year. So   ⁓ and I bring that up only because like, it's like a trifecta of a cool year for me. ⁓ but I think as you were discussing, like being in dental consulting for 10 years, having worked in front office teams, having worked at a dental college, having owned dental practices, having bought and sold, having consulted like 300 plus offices physically, ⁓ watching the DSO emerge, watching AI come in. I just think it's really like such a fun time for us to be in dentistry and so many great advancements and, yeah.   In Dental A Team, we are obsessed with doctors and teams, like getting them aligned, getting them streamlined, helping dentists be like CEOs and owners of their practices. We love ⁓ Josh, we love what he's building in DCS and now in Qantas. We think that they're doing some really fun, incredible things. And Dental A Team, we're just really big on, I think, streamlining dental practices, helping them say yes to more things. So getting them in their vision, getting financially free and profitable.   and then getting systems and team development to support that. And AI is definitely being a big player. And I think dentistry is, it's so fun because it's been such a, like, I think slow roll on evolution in certain ways. Sometimes I think we are very archaic. My husband's in healthcare and medicine and he's like, wait, that's your guys' software. I'm like, don't judge. I know it's a little dated. He's like, they didn't even have that when I started my career 15 years ago. ⁓ But I think,   to watch dentistry evolve into AI and automations and different things. I think we are in such a special time. So yeah, we work with solo practices. We work with multi practices. We work with emerging DSOs. We work with DSOs. We've got consulting for kind of a broad spectrum and kind of our sweet side, like two to five to $10 million practice. ⁓ We definitely have built a lot of things that can help multi offices, but yeah, we really love those offices that are obsessed about team, about culture and about.   just positively impacting the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. So John, super excited to talk about it. I feel like we just have like so much knowledge to bring to the table and just rift and discuss and give your listeners hopefully a fresh, fun, positive perspective on the world of AI dentistry and of course bringing team and doctor perspectives to the table for you today.   John (04:03) Well, thanks for sharing that. you can see, everybody, Kiera comes with a ton of energy, but it is rooted, as she mentioned, in years of experience in this industry. And here's where I wanted to start, Kiera. So I want to go back maybe like five or six years in dentistry when there was a lot of new software platforms that were coming to dentistry, patient engagement, right? It was like this big giant party and a lot of practices were excited. You may remember though, as someone that works directly with the dental practices with as much   excitement as there was there also was a little bit of overwhelm right because it's like where do we start like how do we build these in and it's funny that you talk about your husband because yes in dentistry these are all somewhat kind of new to the industry and so practices are figuring how to use them and I do feel like okay maybe a couple years ago with like firms like yourself that have really helped these practices figure out how to utilize them they got that under their belt and then   here comes AI, right? And here comes this whole new way for these practices to be able to communicate, you know, task orient and all that stuff. So that's kind of the first place I'd like to start is that when you look at the work that you do now with the dental practices and I say the word AI, where is everybody's heads?   Kiera (05:13) Yeah. and agreed. I think, I think that this is just evolution of business. Like if I were to like even simplify it down, I think dentistry has been so much like we drill teeth, we fill teeth, but I'm like, guys, we have evolved. We don't do wooden teeth anymore. we've evolved and now there's laser and there's PRF and there's more advancements to dentistry that we do. Like I have a practice, I call them my PRF powerhouse and they've added PRF to their practices and we've added multi-millions to their office.   But like, yes, financially, that's been amazing, but their patient care has gone up so much, like the amount of results we're seeing. so when people are like, software's AIs, I'm like, hold on. You have evolved in your dentistry and you've seen how much it's evolved and how much better it is. I mean, the way we used to do crowns compared to how we do crowns, we can do same day crowns. We look at how we do ortho. We look at the different like skill sets that we've been able to add in. I feel like AI is the same thing. And I think when we get a little skittish, that's actually where I feel like we're   at more danger of a society. as I don't want to use the word old John, but I'm like, Hey, if you're not going to innovate and like you're going to die. there's innovate or die. We've got to grow and evolve or we're going to be left behind. And I mean, I think we see that with certain practices who elected no, no, John, I'm not going to have online and online. No, they're going to see my sign. They're going to drive by. This is how I'm going to be. Well, if you don't have an online presence today,   you're pretty much not visible anywhere in the world. No, no, no, John, I'm not going to do Google reviews. I don't need to do Google reviews. Well, Google reviews are how people find you. And now it's becoming AEO where AI is actually now searching for offices. I mean, we just did a trip to Iceland and where did I go? Chat GPT. And where's my next place I go? I go to Instagram, TikTok. What are the best places to go? No, John, I don't need to be on social media. We don't need to have that presence. We have our marketing. We send postcards.   Well, if you're not on Instagram, people are going there now. They go check your Google reviews and then go check your online profile. So I think for dentists to maybe recognize that high five, like you actually have evolved over the last several years. You've evolved. You are morphing and as businesses, it is an innovation or it is a die. And so when we talk about AI, AI is going to be awesome. You guys, AI was created. Like I think so much of the reason it took off is because we had 2020, we shut down.   Then we went through 2021 of the great resignation. We could not find people. You want to talk about hygiene shortages? Well, great. Now we're able to bring in people and you're like, but AI is not going to replace hygiene. Correct. But AI is actually helping with perio charting and different pieces that we're able to utilize. It's cutting down our costs that we're able to have on some of the billing and the revenue cycle management that we actually have alleviated funds to be able to pay the higher costs of hygiene that's offsetting. So our businesses can still be profitable. So when I look at it from a business,   I think guys, welcome to 2026, welcome to AI and get excited about it. And rather than being afraid of it, let's start to embrace and you don't have to be the earliest adopter, but I will say similar to like, I'm not going to join the internet. I'm not going to have Google reviews. I'm not going to do Instagram. We have watched that those who wait too long, I'm not going to do online payments. John, that's my favorite. Like we still expect checks. I don't even know how to write a check guys. Like truly I'm like, who accepts checks? ⁓   But things like that are so dated and so cumbersome compared to how the world's evolving that you are niching yourself more and more, more to less and less and less of a patient base. And if that's your exit strategy, rock on, it's a great one. But if you're not on the exit strategy, you definitely need to get on board with AI. And I think like we have a practice in Maryland, she's a pediatric practice and she's like, we call it AI Amy. And well, yes, our team gets annoyed with ⁓ AI Amy. They've trained an AI bot to be able to schedule for these   DC parents that want to make appointments at all hours of the day and they want to talk to someone. AI Amy schedules and guess what? AI Amy schedules about 75 % correctly and the team's annoyed and the doctor's like, you never get to be mad at AI Amy because that was 75 % of patients that we didn't even have to schedule. 25 % were a miss. Perfect. But that was 25 % out of 75, like a hundred percent. We, that's a quarter. We've literally cut down our space. And so I think when it's looking at   scheduling tools, revenue cycle management, ⁓ looking at how we use it for hygiene. Doctors like using Pearl or ⁓ Overjet to help with diagnosis. Case acceptance is going up. And while it's not perfect today, I think getting in the language, getting in the familiarity so you don't accidentally get too dated, AI is going to take off faster than anything else. If you're not on chat GPT, if you're not utilizing it for things, it cuts down man hours and people are like, but I don't want people to lose jobs. And I'm like,   You're not, we're elevating, we're lifting up our practice and we're morphing into where the world and society is going and your practice and your patients will thrive because of it. So that's my take. And I know I kind of went on a soapbox for you, John, but I think doctors need to realize it's not as scary as I think maybe some of them are looking. ⁓ It's something we've always done. It just looks different today.   John (10:22) Well, I'm glad you shared all that because I've been talking with people a lot lately and I feel like in unknown times or times where many of us don't know kind of where things are going to be, it really calls for leadership. And I think that's what's important. I think that's what you shared. think that practices are looking for people like yourself and others that are living this. They've dove into it. They're embracing it. They're learning how to get the maximum out of it. And so I glad you shared that. All right. So that's the first piece, right? That's kind of like the overwhelming the tech.   you mentioned a little bit about revenue cycle management and I wanted to get your thoughts as well on this other thing that dental practices are facing which is patients now come in and are having the same type of expectation of the experience on the business side of the practice, their billing and their payments and all of that, that we have with other businesses that we work with.   And so now a dental practice is getting questions as you know so well, like, okay, like am I gonna be able to pay easy? Are we gonna be able to track all this easy? Because that's how we do it with other businesses. And now all of sudden the dental practices have had to wake up and they have to make sure that that part of their practice is also, you know, automated and where it needs to be. So love to have your thoughts on that part as well.   Kiera (11:37) Yeah, and John, just to piggyback of where you were talking about dentists getting on board, I will just plug, and this is why we built an in-person mastermind, is because I recognize dentists feel like they're on isolated islands. And when you can get around really smart, you are the equivalent, proximity is power. And so getting around dentists that are not afraid of this, being in groups, listening to podcasts like this, if we can serve on that, rock on, I'm happy to do that. I would just encourage you to...   surround yourself with smart people that are getting involved in this and people that push you out of your comfort zone. People that have voices that are maybe not the same of what you normally listen to. Like if you're always listening to Fox News, maybe listen to CNN or if you're listening to CNN, then go to Fox. Like you need to hear opposing opinions on this. And I would just really encourage people to be a part of innovation rather than being destroyed by innovation would be my recommendation. And then going into this patient payment.   John, it makes me laugh because dentistry and I did a podcast, I should go find it. was several years ago and I'm like, why is dentistry on payments? Like we're in the 1800s, like put it on my tab. I'm like, what is going on in dentistry? Like nowhere else do you go and you're like, got my groceries, but could you put that on my tab, John? Yeah. Yeah. But yet in dentistry, we're like, yeah, we'll bill insurance and then we'll charge you for that. What are we doing? And I just think like,   Our revenue cycle management in dentistry is so dated and archaic that I'm like, ladies and gents, it's an amazing way for you to make a lot more money with a lot less effort if you just update a little bit on your revenue cycle management. Like we are so archaic ⁓ and dental insurances are using AI. Like why do you think Pearl and Overjet exist? Well, you better believe that the insurance companies are ripping that too. They're using AI to see their claims.   ⁓ so with payments and patients, do think like patients are expecting us to have online scheduling. They're expecting us to have easy ways to pay. mean, I've even seen some dental offices that take payments in Bitcoin and I'm not here to say you need to go clear to Bitcoin or like some extremes, but I do think that there's this evolution of, I don't want to wait a long time. I don't want to have weird payment things. want to people like John, I think it used to be the society where we worked eight to five.   We left our work at home. didn't have computer or at work. We didn't have computers. Our phone was a landline. It would shut off and we were home. That does not exist anymore. So most of the time I feel like our eight to five is our quiet time at work. And then after hours we're like, ⁓ I need to pay for this and I need to take care of this appointment and I need to schedule the kids for this. And we do that while we're sitting in bed scrolling through Instagram and like, shoot, I need to make that payment.   I feel dental practices, they have such an amazing opportunity if they will update and use more modern, I would say, like it's not even AI guys. We're just talking about getting onto the playing field. If you would do that, I have watched practices that implement these processes, their AR, their collections, their profitability are exponentially more, I would say consistent and constant as much as...   as opposed to being like inconsistent and fluctuating like they were in the past, because patients can pay all the time. Patients can send things forward. And I do think like, yes, dentistry people want that good old home, like girl and dentists that like takes care of them. But I think a lot of times the way you've evolved with technology also helps people see how have you evolved in your dentistry as well. I do not want to go to somebody who's still paper charts. I get concerned about   Are we up to speed on our current things? That's so foreign to me. No one else does that anymore that I think we to be careful that we don't accidentally date our dentistry by not being up to speed on our payments as well.   John (15:27) So you just built the bridge to the next thing I was going to ask you, right? So we talked a little bit about technology and embracing it, the patient experience and what they expect. And then this final thing is the perception of the patient in looking at the practice and the technology that the practice invests in. And again, 10, 15 years ago, when maybe dentistry was not as proactive and patients were just going to the practice. Now practices are, it's more competitive. There's more practices in every city, many across the country.   And so with that becomes this image that you portray to the patient and your business that you are making those investments to stay up to speed to be able to provide those types of services. And so talk about that a little bit. And I think that   for many dental practices, like for many of us that are entrepreneurs, like we've lived in this ROI world, right? If you ever were someone that had to raise cash or capital, you get those questions. And from a dental practice perspective, right? It's like, okay, we're going to make this investment in technology and rightfully so. What's the ROI on this? And I do think, and I loved your thoughts on this, that companies are doing such a better job of being able to paint that picture of, okay, you're going to make this investment. You're going to put this technology in the practice. It's going to make your patient experience better. But here is going to be   the return on investment, you are going to unlock a lot of your AR that's out there, make things easier for your patients. So talk about that a little bit.   Kiera (16:50) Yeah. I'll just get like paint a story of a practice. So there's a practice in Texas and this practice is amazing. Like they truly have a castle of an office. am blown away at how stunning this practice is. They are up to par on all the latest technology. They do a lot of these items in their practice, but what they were doing was the patient came in. So the waiting room was beautiful and they would just walk the patient straight back to the back.   Now this is a practice who's been around multi-generations of dentistry. They do service in other places. They have a state of the art lab they do in-house. Like it is a practice that should be showcased and they were struggling and their revenue was down and we went in person with this office and we consulted their team and we taught them like, we're going to have you guys take them on a patient tour. like, this is a pretty large team. think there's about 35, 40 people and we like made them role play walking through this practice and showcasing.   this ROI items that they've put into it. I you guys are using this, but do your patients actually know that you're doing it? So we do this, we implement it, we track a few things with them. Fast forward two, three months post visit, their reviews exponentially went up, their new patient counts went up, their revenue, they had their highest revenue number they had ever had and their culture of their team was happier. And I was like, I don't think I can sit here and say it's a coincidence. So like the patients love the tour.   Like they love seeing this practice. They love seeing what's going on. And what is as is it just gives confidence. And I say, John, if you and I were to go to ⁓ a surgeon, right? I'm going to want to know that that surgeon is the best freaking surgeon and that I'm going to put my confidence in them because I only have one arm, one hand, one leg, one neck. We'll have one set of teeth too. And so helping patients get the perception of who you are as a dentist and showcasing, I have seen like I've worked in hundreds of practices.   And some of my best offices do not showcase like they're the best and perception is a lot. Now there's some practices who actually are not great dentists and they showcase like they're amazing. And so you've got to make sure that who you are is what you're doing. But the ROI, and I wanted to showcase that practice, they have invested in a lot of this technology. They have invested in advancing their practice and it shows and they're able to show their patients. And we had direct correlation of higher reviews, higher new patients and higher production. And so I think.   Just that example, and this was done just a couple of months ago. We were out there in September and in December they had their highest month. So it wasn't a long-term ROI churn. It was very quick. so I think in general, medicine has evolved. think across the board, we're talking healthcare as a whole has leveled up. They uptick higher. Patients are expecting more. I mean, we go anywhere and technology is higher. You go to the movie theater, you go to the restaurants.   everything has upleveled. And if you and your practice are not up leveling, and I don't think it's hard for dentistry, I'm like, you guys already have a 3d printer or you already have a scanner or you already are taking digital x-rays. Just tell your patients, you do this showcase it around because I think the, the fallacy that you might fall into is like, but patients are just loyal to me. I think I to be careful because there's so much online noise that while a patient might love you,   they're seeing other offices that might accidentally take away your patients and they're doing it. Like it annoys me, John. I have a patient sitting in my chair and like, yeah, I just went to Dr. Thompson down the street from my ortho. I'm like, so we do ortho here, but they didn't know we did it. And so don't accidentally not showcase your work and showcase how great you are and how up to par you are that you're accidentally losing patients that are silent levers of your practice. ⁓ because you didn't showcase how great you were and let your patients know what you actually do.   I think that's the trap and the opportunity if you take it to be able to keep your patients with you and keep them happier with you when there's still noise and chatter because they know they're at the best practice that's investing and elevating and giving them the best patient care they possibly can have.   John (20:52) Yeah, I've been thinking about that a lot lately, just this kind of invisible credibility that comes with what you just talked about, which is when a business, in this case, a dental practice is making the investment in these newer technologies. A lot of times as patients, we don't say it, but we know, like you said, you walk into a practice and you see there's in your own life, you know what it took to remodel your house or to get a new car or whatever the case may be of the things that are important to you. And so I think more and more patients know   and understand what a dental practice or a business has to go through when they up their game. I believe that you get a lot of credibility out of that, right? Versus maybe the one that doesn't do that. Maybe the thought becomes whether it's real or not. Hey, why aren't they doing that? Like are things not good here? Like, do I have something to be concerned about? And in many cases, perception is reality. And again,   It's going to run through to patient care. We all know that. think the last thing I wanted to get your thoughts on, and you talked a little bit about earlier was AI in the sense of case acceptance because you know, you and I both have been in this industry for many years and have watched all the courses that dentists and hygienists and dental assistants have had to take on how to present good treatment and get case acceptance.   and we've watched them struggle for many years, Kiera, and then all of a sudden we have these newer technologies where you can show the patient where the work needs to be done in their mouth. And it's crazy, right? All of a sudden, I'm like, wow, that's me? That's where I have to get work done? the dentist is like, I've been telling you this for like, why didn't you just believe me? And in front of our eyes, this technology is now instilling confidence in the patients. And ultimately, it's a win for everybody.   Kiera (22:36) Yeah, think it's such a beautiful time for dentistry right now because we've been living in shades of gray for so many years. We advanced from like little tiny thumbnail ⁓ x-rays to on the screen x-rays that are still in gray to now having AI that can show patients exactly what's going on. And it's colored and it's showing them and it's giving measurements. And I think like what an amazing opportunity for you.   to use tools at your fingertips where you're not having to try to convince a patient of like, can you kind of see this like little gray box within this like other gray box that they truly cannot see? To now, this is what we're seeing. This is how it is. And to still give the doctors the liberty to be diagnosing. I know some have said that like AI is so aggressive on it. And I'm like, you don't have to diagnose that, but you now have a tool that's going to at least highlight. And I think dentists, you're so busy. You're running from exam to exam to exam. You have something.   that can look for all these things, prep it. You can train your eye. You can tee up all your associates that come in. Your hygiene team can learn collectively and your patient now has visible proof. It's like the, and I know dentists hate being compared to mechanics and I'm very sorry. I think it's just such a good like analogy. I go, you know, right? Like I go to the mechanic and like, here, you need new breaks. And I'm like, but do I really? Cause I've been scammed so many times patients like, do I really need a crown? John? Like, are you sure?   John (23:50) analogy I say because   Kiera (24:02) And we have taken that guesswork of, you sure? To being able to show them with black and white proof to where they're bought into it. They know they're not being scammed by you. They can see it with their own eyes and they're much more likely to accept treatment. I say, like confidence is what people are buying when they're saying yes to dentistry. Confidence is what increases your case acceptance. And this is a layer of confidence for you as the dentist, for your patients to see, for your team to all speak the same language.   care if AI is over diagnosing, don't over diagnose. You are still the doctor. Like this is just a tool in your tool belt. But I think it's something that hands down, I am so pro using it. I'm like, doctors also be so vigilant because insurances are denying claims based on the same software. Like they're using AI as well. So you might as well be in the game with them to see what they're seeing, to learn, to educate AI. So you're a part of it.   They use AI in medicine all the time. They use AI overlays on their x-rays that I'm like, yes, I get that it's not perfect. Yes, I get that it's clunky, but gosh, it's a freaking good tool that I would strongly advise you trying out, getting to know, using and learning. Even if it just helps you. I think about it. If I'm able to get 1 % more on case acceptance, go look at everything you're diagnosing. Usually that's a pretty good uptick, but not even just on your bottom line, but on the amount of patients you're able to help and serve. ⁓ why not?   Like what, what are you holding back on? I would just say, don't be afraid. Like just get in the game because you'll learn it's a lot better for you than it is scary. And there's a lot more good than there is harm.   John (25:39) Yeah, no question. Well, here's how I want to bring us home. You work with a lot of dental companies and I believe that this gap that I've seen for years between like the companies that are bringing the technologies to the dental practices and the practices themselves, it's exciting to kind of watch that gap close, right? Like I'm seeing more and more companies kind of listen and say, hey, what problems are you having? How can we utilize our resources to help you solve these problems? And you know,   We talked a little bit about at the onset, you know, the relationship that you have with Josh and DCS or whatever. And what's exciting is that you have companies that are starting, ⁓ and doing and solving one problem and then taking a lot of that feedback and then creating, you know, in this case, another technology platform and an effort to kind of elevate that problem. I mean, to be able to solve that problem with their solutions. What's that been like, right? Like talk a little bit about when you watch these companies evolve and continue to listen to the dental practice and bring these technologies to help these practices.   practices up their games.   Kiera (26:41) Oh, I think it's amazing. Actually. I am such a pro. Like I'm on a couple of different boards as well. And I think it's something where when I look at it, I'm like, why are these people doing it? And it's because we love dentistry. Like I look at Dental A Team team and what I used to consult versus what we consult now, like there's DSO, there's different needs than what a solo practitioner has. And so Dental A Team evolved and we became something of what are we going to do to serve the DSO thing and still be able to give back.   What is Josh with DCS? Like we heard this, we saw the need and we built something to help on that other avenue. To me, I think like, how awesome is it that you have people that are in the weeds, in the trenches have been here? I mean, I've got a decade of consulting, not to mention my like five years prior to that of assisting and all the other things prior to before that, like five more years. Like there's so much, like you have people that are so embedded in dentistry and they've seen the evolutions.   that they're willing to come forward. They're willing to execute. They're willing to stamp. They're willing to work hard to evolve these products and softwares to give back to you. And I think like people who are deeply rooted in dentistry, building these products, they're the best ones. Like I watched Modento, which I'll just give them. Like they were built by a hygienist and a dentist, and they were able to be one of the best softwares when they first started that I've ever seen. I'm like, I could tell this was built by people that got it. And so watching DCS like,   They get it. They're in the trenches. They've been watching this. They know what they're doing and they're moving it forward. We've been watching offices. We've been working with DSOs. We see what the nuances are and we build and create stuff to serve the dentist. Gosh, I just think it's magic and I think it's beautiful. And I think like, how lucky are we to be in these spaces to have people that have had enough time in the industry to know what the next layer is that you need before you even know. It feels like Henry Ford to me in a little bit like,   They said, if I give the people what they want, they'll want a faster horse. But if I give them what they need, it will be a car. And they don't even know that they need that yet. And I think that that's where we're evolving is being able to anticipate the needs of what offices need prior to them even realizing it's a need. And that to me is like just epic and incredible of a society and a community that really wants to give back and serve and make dentistry the best it can be.   John (28:55) Well, and who would have ever thought that a dental company would take the time to create a podcast like this, the zero bounce podcast, right? As a way to continue to add value and of course, invite amazing guests like yourself. I can tell everybody. I remember, I don't know how many podcast episodes Kiera has done, you know, in the past over many years. I remember the actual weekend that she was building and putting up those black panels behind her. ⁓ and so it's like, you know, you're, you're, you're definitely   listen to someone, you know, when you talk about someone that has rolled up their sleeves and dug in an effort to move dentistry forward, Kiera, you certainly have done that. And, ⁓ I know the DCS and Quanta Team really, really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to show your passion. And I think more importantly, help dental practices bridging a lot of these technologies and how to implement them. So any final thoughts as we wrap.   Kiera (29:47) Yeah, well, huge appreciation, John. And thank you for helping me with the background, because I definitely asked for you and your help and your insights. So appreciate that. I love it. Thank you. But I think, again, it's an evolution. And I would just say AI is going to be awesome. And there's going to be glitches, and there's going to be problems with anything. But I think the more we can embrace and we can innovate, we're either going to innovate or we're going to die. And we're going to be either on the path forward or we're going to be left behind.   John (29:55) So good.   Kiera (30:14) I think, Denissure, we have such a beautiful gift to give people confidence and clarity and smiles and health that no other profession is able to do. So I think it's just a moral charge for each of you to look to see where is maybe one area of AI or advancement that I'm willing to step into this year. So I commit to not getting dated. ⁓ And I think DCS and the Qantas team are a great place to start. think on our side, if there's anything we can do with team, with consulting, with...   like shoot, hate doing this. I don't want to go rally my team. Great. We love to do that. We do the part that no one likes to do just like DCS. They do the part of billing that no one likes to do. ⁓ I think we like do the dirty work of dentistry, but we love it we have a passion for it. So if we can help them serve in any way, TheDentalATeam.com Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. ⁓ huge partners of DCS and have referred many people to them over the years and just excited for what they're doing. So be excited guys. We live in the best times. We live in the most innovative times. And I think it's just.   a really amazing miracle that we get to be a part of dentistry and the changes. And I think everybody needs to realize what you do or don't do is going to have an impact on our future of dentistry. And I think that that's a moral charge each of us should take to be able to preserve the sanctity of our dentistry. That doesn't mean we stop it. That just means that we're able to positively impact. We're able to keep the integrity of our profession. And each of us, think, have a moral charge to do that. And so get on board, be a part of it, be a part of the noise, be a part of having your voice heard.   and I'm truly just excited and honored and happy to help in any way we can.   John (31:45) great way to wrap. And if you're watching this on YouTube, love to have you subscribe to The ZeroBalance podcast. If you are an audio podcast listener and you're listening to on Spotify or Apple as well, subscribe. And each time the Quanta team adds a new episode like this great one with Kiera, it'll come through on your listening device of choice. So Kiera, thanks so much. Best of luck as you continue to do great things. It's a big year for you, like you mentioned, 2026. So I'm excited to stay connected and watch all the great things that you and the Dental A Team are doing. So until next time, we'll see you everybody.   The Dental A Team (32:13) All right, Dental A Team listeners, that was the guest interview that I absolutely loved. And I hope that if there was one idea that stood out to you, don't just agree with it, but actually go implement it this week. And if you need help setting this up in your practice or you need help just navigating or need a friend, head on over to TheDentalATeam.com and I'll be able to help you guys out. Click on the book of call or any way that we can support and serve you. That's what we're here for. That's what we're obsessed with. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.

Master the $500B Cloud Marketplace Engine Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this compelling discussion, Vince Menzione sits down with Dexter Hardy, founder of Ntegral and the visionary behind Spark, to deconstruct the massive transformation happening within the cloud ecosystem. Dexter shares his journey of evolving from a traditional systems integrator to a marketplace powerhouse with over 300 solutions and customers in 100 countries, revealing the “Marketplace Operating System” that drives global sales without a massive headcount. They dive deep into the Spark GTM methodology, discussing how companies can bridge the gap between building a solution and actually driving “Get It Now” transactions while navigating the $500 billion committed cloud-spend landscape. From the nuances of multi-party private offers to the critical role of AI in becoming a “frontier firm,” this episode provides a high-level masterclass for any partner looking to turn the marketplace into their most effective revenue stream. https://youtu.be/VLkkuHPpYuk?si=x03Odt2UsCjhtVf4 Key Takeaways The cloud marketplace represents a potential $500 billion in committed spend that partners cannot access without MAC-eligible, transactable solutions. Marketplace as a Service (MaaS) helps traditional SIs pivot to becoming SDCs or ISVs by providing a strategic roadmap for IP conversion. Successful marketplace strategy requires a “Marketplace Operating System” that aligns digital sales with your internal operations and business goals. The “Get It Now” economy allows for 24-hour global sales and lead generation without the need for traditional manual email or phone chains. Becoming a “Frontier Firm” means combining human experience with AI to do things faster, better, and more efficiently than the competition. Co-selling is evolving beyond just the hyperscalers to include rich, multi-party private offers involving resellers and distributors. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Integral, Spark, Marketplace as a Service, MaaS, Marketplace Operating System, Marketplace Strategy, Transactable Offers, Get It Now button, SI to ISV pivot, SDC, Microsoft Marketplace, AWS Marketplace, Google Cloud Marketplace, IP Co-sell, MAC eligible, Multi-party private offers, REO, Reseller enabled offers, Cloud Committed Spend, Frontier Firm, AI agents, Spark GTM methodology, Marketplace Optimization, Digital Sales Flywheel. Transcript: Dexter Hardy Audio Episode [00:00:00] Dexter Hardy: AI in the hands of someone who has no idea what they’re doing is just a, it’s a faster way to failure, right? Yeah. ’cause they have, they [00:00:06] Vince Menzione: still don’t understand the concepts. [00:00:11] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Today I’m joined by Dexter Hardy, the founder of Integral for a compelling discussion. Dexter, welcome back to the podcast. Great to be here, Vince. It’s [00:00:29] Dexter Hardy: always a pleasure. [00:00:30] Vince Menzione: It is so good to have you back in Boca. [00:00:33] Vince Menzione: Uh, we just wrapped up our ultimate partner executive winter retreat. We call it the Winter Retreat now. [00:00:39] Dexter Hardy: Yep. [00:00:39] Vince Menzione: It’s still February when this airs. It’ll probably be March or April. [00:00:43] Dexter Hardy: Okay. [00:00:43] Vince Menzione: But, um, yeah, the weather in the north has been, they’ve had a tough winter. [00:00:49] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. It’s been brutal [00:00:50] Vince Menzione: for, it’s been brutal. Even, even Atlanta where you are. [00:00:53] Vince Menzione: Had a little bit of winter this year as well. [00:00:54] Dexter Hardy: I was happy to get on the flight. Yeah. It was like 29 degrees the day out, so, [00:00:59] Vince Menzione: so, um, this is your second time Yeah. On Ultimate Partner. And we’ve been friends for, we’re just talking about this. You’ve been to every single one of our Ultimate Partner events. [00:01:10] Vince Menzione: Nine events, [00:01:12] Dexter Hardy: yep. [00:01:12] Vince Menzione: Three times here in Boca and then in other cities like Dallas and Las Colinas. Seattle, Seattle and Reston. Oh my goodness. And we’re back in Seattle again in May. So, uh, we’ve been, we’ve been busy. We’ve been busy. Both of us have [00:01:27] Dexter Hardy: Scott Myer [00:01:28] Vince Menzione: up and we’ve been, and we were introduced. We’ve been friends and worked together. [00:01:31] Vince Menzione: And so I would love to get caught up on you and Integral. [00:01:35] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:01:36] Vince Menzione: Um, the first time we sat down, we talked about Integral as a marketplace. Uh, customer base or, or, or vendor supporting the marketplace. [00:01:45] Dexter Hardy: Yep. [00:01:46] Vince Menzione: And you were, you’ve been, uh, showcased at Microsoft with the Marketplace organization. You’ve done some astounding things in terms of driving business without like a big sales force, you know, and driving marketplace sales, uh, to very high levels. [00:02:02] Dexter Hardy: Yep. [00:02:03] Vince Menzione: And, uh, and now you, I’ll call it a little bit of a twist and turn, but now. You’ve taken all the great learnings, and I’m probably sharing some of your thunder here, but you’ve taken all the great learnings that you’ve had in marketplace and your business [00:02:16] Dexter Hardy: mm-hmm. [00:02:16] Vince Menzione: And now you’re like looking at all these other companies, they’re probably trying to do the same thing and finding ways to help them. [00:02:21] Vince Menzione: So let’s, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about where you’re going. [00:02:25] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. So, so thanks for that. And it’s always a pleasure to be, you know, in the room with you, especially on the podcast, uh, seeing it grow over the years. And, um, to kind of double click on. How did we get to where we are with, uh, spark Bi Integral? [00:02:40] Dexter Hardy: Um, it’s our marketplace as a service offering. Um, we [00:02:46] Vince Menzione: marketplace as a service. You get that? I just wanna make sure people are listening and watching. Get that. That’s a, that’s a new acronym for me. [00:02:53] Dexter Hardy: That’s a new one. But, but what we, how do we get there? So to your point, yes, we. We’re a, um, marketplace first organization looking at the digital sales leaned in heavily on marketplace. [00:03:08] Dexter Hardy: Um, and what we were doing internally was we created our marketplace operating system. Like literally, how do we run our business? How do we digitize, how do we get those, uh, how do we turn the marketplace into our 24 hour sales guy? Yeah. Taking all those lessons learned how you deal with the hyperscale or how do you understand, you know, the, the signals that’s happening in the market. [00:03:33] Dexter Hardy: Uh, coupling that with, because we’ve been a member of this wonderful organization and getting into the partner community ecosystem, we get asked a million times, I bet. What do you do? How do you do it? That’s help us understand marketplace and so what we. What we saw there was an opportunity to both lean into the challenges that other partners are facing. [00:04:00] Dexter Hardy: If you’re an SI that’s trying to pivot [00:04:02] Vince Menzione: yep, [00:04:03] Dexter Hardy: and be in the marketplace, you’re already established company, how do you create Transactable offers? How do we take the the marketplace opportunity and leverage AI and put our agents in the marketplace? Our aha moment was this is, this is an en enablement opportunity that we can get into and basically be the first ones in because we leaned into it, we understand it. [00:04:35] Dexter Hardy: What makes us different from the other companies is we actually use that methodology every day. [00:04:43] Vince Menzione: For those who maybe didn’t listen to the last podcast we did together, I know this story, but I want others to know the context of it. Tell us about your transformation to a marketplace firm. [00:04:54] Dexter Hardy: Okay, for sure. [00:04:56] Vince Menzione: Maybe the shorter version. [00:04:57] Dexter Hardy: The shorter version, [00:04:57] Vince Menzione: but I, I do know that there was some, you were in business for a long time before this became the business strategy. [00:05:03] Dexter Hardy: Yeah, so the shortened version business founded 2002, Microsoft partner for many years. Yep. 2020. Si. Si as an si. 2020 COVID. [00:05:16] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:05:16] Dexter Hardy: Consulting 2.0. [00:05:17] Dexter Hardy: How do you do what you do at scale for others? Taking your ip, converting it. We did that at 2020. Embraced the marketplace. We created our solutions, deploy them to the marketplace. The rest is history. We leaned in how [00:05:32] Vince Menzione: many solutions in the [00:05:33] Dexter Hardy: marketplace, over 300 solutions. I wanna [00:05:35] Vince Menzione: make sure people [00:05:35] Dexter Hardy: got that. [00:05:35] Dexter Hardy: Over a hundred, 300 [00:05:36] Vince Menzione: solutions. [00:05:37] Dexter Hardy: Over 300 solutions. Yeah. Uh, we have. Customers in over a hundred countries. I mean, and [00:05:42] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:05:43] Dexter Hardy: You know, continuing to build and expand our customer base on a daily basis. And so, [00:05:48] Vince Menzione: and they’re, and they’re buying when you, while you sleep. I mean, we, we’ve known each other pretty well for a number of years. [00:05:54] Vince Menzione: And [00:05:54] Dexter Hardy: yeah, [00:05:54] Vince Menzione: you have customers like, um, I’ll throw out a number, like 25,000 customers, probably, maybe beyond that. And these customers are buying your solutions. All hours of the day and night, [00:06:06] Dexter Hardy: right? Yeah. I I love the get it now button in the marketplace. Literally all they have to do to work with us or transact with us is click on, get It Now, and that’s the transactable offer that everyone, there’s this mystique around. [00:06:19] Dexter Hardy: People are like, well, we don’t have any leads. We can, you know, our, we have an offer in the marketplace and nobody’s clicking on it. And I’m like, Hmm, [00:06:27] Vince Menzione: yeah, [00:06:27] Dexter Hardy: we can help you with that. Right? And so, um, you know, that’s how we. Our, our story with that, our background with that was it’s our 24 hour sales guy. We drive our campaigns, we align with the solution plays. [00:06:41] Dexter Hardy: We’re getting those clicks with, to your point, without this huge army of people. Yeah. And so now we’re saying from a marketplace strategic advisory, a lot of people were saying it earlier, like, you know, marketplace isn’t this adjacent thing to business. How do you strategically think about it as. Um, part of your business all up. [00:07:03] Dexter Hardy: How do you add that as a revenue stream, uh, for your organization? And yeah, there may be some changes that you need to make, you know, how do you incorporate the channel? How do you add in all of the things that you’re currently doing, but create that as a flywheel for this. Get it now economy. [00:07:22] Vince Menzione: So all the, I’m, I’m thinking out loud, like there’s probably a lot of people watching you up on stage at these events talking about how you evolved your company and grew it. [00:07:31] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:07:32] Vince Menzione: Going, that’s me. [00:07:33] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:07:33] Vince Menzione: That’s me. The old, the old version of you absolutely is them. [00:07:37] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:07:38] Vince Menzione: And they all, they all want help. [00:07:39] Dexter Hardy: They all, [00:07:40] Vince Menzione: everybody wants help in marketplace. [00:07:41] Dexter Hardy: Right. And [00:07:43] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:07:43] Dexter Hardy: And, and to that end. Because I was them. I understand how their mind, it’s a mindset shift, right? You’re saying, okay, we have these traditional sales, we’re a systems integrator, we have all this ip, these, there are all these things that we can do. [00:07:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:07:58] Dexter Hardy: I don’t, how do we convert this to transact ability? How do we get our sales teams enabled to sell it? And I was, and my, my feedback and my response to that is, well, one, we have a service for that. It’s our marketplace advisor services. I’m sorry for the plug, but not sorry. [00:08:16] Vince Menzione: No, we’re, no, we’re gonna plug today as well. [00:08:18] Vince Menzione: Much as you want. [00:08:19] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:08:20] Vince Menzione: And then I think about this too, because a lot of these sis are developing, we’re just, uh, talking with Agua about MSPs, developing agents for their customers and then making ’em repeatable. [00:08:30] Dexter Hardy: Yep. [00:08:31] Vince Menzione: And so you have other sis that are creating AI tools and agents. Microsoft is created and the, and so has AWS and Google, they’ve created space in their marketplaces for agent AI tools. [00:08:44] Dexter Hardy: Yep. [00:08:45] Vince Menzione: And so now you’ve got all these companies that were traditional sis that are now becoming what we would call ISVs or, or SDCs. And they need help in getting these solutions to the marketplace. [00:08:57] Dexter Hardy: Absolutely. [00:08:58] Vince Menzione: So, so talk about what you’re doing with Spark. [00:09:00] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. So our concept with Spark is. When you look at enablement, so you’ll have platforms that are enablers and a lot of people will say, well, what makes Spark different? [00:09:12] Dexter Hardy: Why? Why you versus Tackle Or Sugar? [00:09:15] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:09:15] Dexter Hardy: Any of the other work span. Work span or any, they’re all friendlys to us because we’re meeting you where you are. Right. In order for you to use their platform, you gotta already have the solution together. [00:09:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:09:30] Dexter Hardy: Right. They can help you deploy. There’s Deploy. They are a deployment firm or [00:09:35] Vince Menzione: Right. [00:09:36] Dexter Hardy: Um, platforms We’re saying [00:09:38] Vince Menzione: they’re middleware in many respects. Correct. Between the, they’re, [00:09:41] Dexter Hardy: they’re integrated into the marketplace. They’re highly embedded into the systems behind it, and we’re saying what happens before that? I have no idea what solution to build. I have no idea how we’re gonna take advantage of Marketplace. [00:09:58] Dexter Hardy: How is Marketplace gonna change? Again, we had these conversations at dinner. Um, [00:10:04] Vince Menzione: yeah, [00:10:04] Dexter Hardy: all of the big players are saying, we have channel, we have our sales teams, we have all these things already. How does marketplace play into that for us? And so that Marketplace strategic advisory goes into it and says, here’s how. [00:10:19] Dexter Hardy: Right. We have a. Our Spark GTM methodology goes into how do those things play together? What are your KPIs or what are your business goals as an organization all up? And then we marry this, basically a Venn diagram of how we marry marketplace with your current objectives. Okay. To not just be this, uh, ubiquitous thing that’s kind of sitting over on the side, like, let’s just put it in marketplace because we need to, and nobody knows it’s there and nobody knows it’s there. [00:10:49] Dexter Hardy: It’s part of. Everything all up. Your messaging, your sales organization, your, um, documentation that you have for your organization. So now everyone understands, not just you as the, let’s say you’re an SI that you were, but you, the si with your agents and how that plays into your bigger value proposition. [00:11:10] Dexter Hardy: So take [00:11:10] Vince Menzione: us through the, go to the methodology you described the Spark methodology. [00:11:15] Dexter Hardy: Yep. So, um, a lot of people, when they think about. The methodology, you’ll say we’re a, we’re an si. I’m just going to use an example. You’re an si. How, how do I get somebody to click on my, my opportunity? How do I get somebody to understand what we have as a value proposition? [00:11:39] Dexter Hardy: And I’d say to people, well, there’s this, it’s part of the methodology. There’s product viability. Can you build something? Versus should you build something. Right. [00:11:50] Vince Menzione: Interesting. [00:11:51] Dexter Hardy: If you are, if you are out there today and you’re saying, I mean, everybody’s seeing Claude, the agents, you can, you can ask AI to build you pretty much anything. [00:12:00] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:12:00] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:12:01] Dexter Hardy: Now the question scary and that, that’s a, that, that introduces a new problem. But it’s, can you do it or should you do it? [00:12:08] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:12:09] Dexter Hardy: And and what I’ll tell people is part of our advisory, so the steps are. What is your North Star right now and what is the software that would enable you to get on that AI rocket ship to propel you even further with where you are? [00:12:27] Dexter Hardy: Those are the solutions that we would try to [00:12:29] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:12:30] Dexter Hardy: That out, pull out of, uh, as part of that marketplace. Um, advisory Second, what partner or partner organizations are you a member of? Is it Microsoft? Is it the AWS? Is it, you know, Google Cloud? Google Cloud, what have you, and let’s say Microsoft. What are solution plays? [00:12:51] Dexter Hardy: What is Microsoft focused on? How does what you’re doing as an organization align with that go to market? Mm-hmm. Because now you have that jet power of what they’re, um, promoting along with your organization. [00:13:06] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:13:07] Dexter Hardy: And then the final piece is, well, now that you’ve done that, how do I get it into market? [00:13:12] Dexter Hardy: How do I, uh, get people to click on it? And that’s where some of the secret sauce that I won’t divulge on this, [00:13:19] Vince Menzione: uh, [00:13:20] Dexter Hardy: but there is some secret sauce to getting the ICPs to lean in, getting the [00:13:25] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:13:25] Dexter Hardy: You know, you’re listing to light up inside of that. And so that’s. You know, that’s at a high level. That’s kind of how the marketplace, [00:13:32] Vince Menzione: I think what you’re alluding to, and I, I don’t wanna put words in your mouth, but I do think you’ve done a very good job on what I would call maybe digital marketing, maybe. [00:13:41] Vince Menzione: Would that be the right terminology? Yeah. To make your solutions discoverable, to make people understand that they’re out there and to lean in and be able to purchase them. [00:13:51] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:13:52] Vince Menzione: Which I think I would say that’s probably part of the secret sauce, probably of Spark. That is what you’re saying because a lot of organizations struggle here. [00:13:59] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:14:00] Vince Menzione: They put something in the marketplace and nothing ever happens with it. Even even big companies do that. They don’t know how to do it. [00:14:06] Dexter Hardy: So, so yeah. Without divulging the secret sauce, I had a gentleman ask me yesterday, um, during the conference, so how is this different from SEO? I said, good question. [00:14:20] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. Is is SEOS? Is, is SEO involved? Sure, but that’s not the final answer. Because you could do SEO, that doesn’t mean anybody. That just gets you, doesn’t mean anything. Doesn’t mean anything. And so. That’s why I keep going back to this methodology of really aligning it with, uh, what it is you’re trying to accomplish, who it is you’re trying to get to lean in, and then what is the value proposition? [00:14:42] Dexter Hardy: Because at the end of the day, Vince, I think even with any service, like I said, we did our first offerings with our R zero offerings and now we’re doing this. It’s what is the value, right? Um, it’s a hard. Thing to do to really wrap your brain around how your, how your business is going to change from, if you’re doing direct sales and you got your bag and you’re out there selling to now, you mean I don’t have to pick up the phone and call you? [00:15:15] Dexter Hardy: There’s not an email chain that goes out. It’s literally people are just clicking on Get it now to get it [00:15:21] Vince Menzione: and getting it. [00:15:22] Dexter Hardy: That’s a, that’s a mind shift change and that’s. To your point, there is some market, there is some marketing expertise that is required. [00:15:29] Vince Menzione: And we’ve also talked about, I know you and I went down a journey on the co-sell business [00:15:34] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:15:34] Vince Menzione: And how difficult it can be to get a, a seller from a Microsoft or a Google and Amazon involved, unless it’s, you know, a $10 million transaction, they don’t want to get involved. [00:15:45] Dexter Hardy: Right. [00:15:46] Vince Menzione: Uh, you really wanna reach the customer. Because you know, the hyperscalers is great. If you’re driving a ServiceNow or an ADO a big solution, it’s gonna be tens of millions of dollars. [00:15:56] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:15:57] Vince Menzione: But if you are an SI and you’re selling this as part of maybe a services offering, or you’re selling it as, you know, you’re just selling as a standalone. [00:16:04] Dexter Hardy: Right? [00:16:05] Vince Menzione: Um, you want as much eyeballs and transactions as possible and you’re not gonna get that just going co-selling. [00:16:12] Dexter Hardy: Right. And, and the other part of that I will say about co-sell. [00:16:17] Dexter Hardy: I think co-sell has gotten like a dirty rap or bad rap around it. Co-sell is with the hyperscaler, but it’s with other partners too. [00:16:28] Vince Menzione: Sure, [00:16:28] Dexter Hardy: right? Oh yeah, absolutely. So, um, being in the marketplace gives you the option of co-selling would, not just the hyperscaler, but co-selling with other orgs. And so now anytime that you’ve give, you’ve given yourself that X factor on top of your existing ability to deliver. [00:16:44] Dexter Hardy: That’s where you’re seeing the true power of marketplace. [00:16:47] Vince Menzione: And yesterday you were on stage with Jason Rook. [00:16:50] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:16:51] Vince Menzione: And this was part of the conversation. It was you, Jason Rook and Amit Sinha at, at uh, work Span. [00:16:58] Dexter Hardy: Mm-hmm. [00:16:58] Vince Menzione: And part of the conversation was around the, uh, reseller enabled offers. And I think what that’s somewhat of what you’re alluding to is that you have other wait routes to market channels to market. [00:17:10] Dexter Hardy: Right [00:17:11] Vince Menzione: through building other partnerships for co-selling. Yeah. That what you, you were alluding to. Yeah. [00:17:15] Dexter Hardy: So, so yeah, there, there are a million ways to, once you’re in, once you have a transactable offer, that’s when you get the magic unlocks. Right. You, the barrier to entry is being in marketplace with a transactable offer. [00:17:31] Dexter Hardy: And if you’re outside of that loop, again, the REO. You’re not available. Guess who? Guess who can’t do that? [00:17:39] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:17:40] Dexter Hardy: If you’re not in the marketplace, you can’t do that. [00:17:41] Vince Menzione: Can’t do that. [00:17:43] Dexter Hardy: Multi-party private offers can’t do that. ’cause you’re not in the marketplace. [00:17:47] Vince Menzione: No. [00:17:48] Dexter Hardy: Right. And so what we’re saying is think about all up, how you’re missing out on. [00:17:56] Dexter Hardy: All of these wonderful opportunities to, I think, I think the number got thrown out a couple of times. Jason ran away from it when you said it’s like a $300 billion number on, he [00:18:07] Vince Menzione: didn’t want, he didn’t, he didn’t want me sharing or he wasn’t, he, he didn’t want to, uh, what, what did he say? Validate that that was the right number, but $300 billion in potential cloud budgets. [00:18:21] Vince Menzione: That you could have access to. We know the number across the three hyperscalers is north of 500 billion. [00:18:27] Dexter Hardy: Yep. [00:18:27] Vince Menzione: It’s just that Microsoft doesn’t break out their numbers and make them public, and so we, you know, [00:18:32] Dexter Hardy: and, and [00:18:33] Vince Menzione: estimates. [00:18:33] Dexter Hardy: What I would tell everyone that’s listening, I would invite you to consider [00:18:37] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:18:38] Dexter Hardy: the following. [00:18:39] Dexter Hardy: If you’re not in the marketplace with a IP, co-sale or MAC eligible solution, you’re not eligible for that. [00:18:49] Vince Menzione: That’s right. [00:18:50] Dexter Hardy: Spend. And so is that worth it for you as an organization to say, yes, we need to figure out this and get involved with that? [00:19:01] Vince Menzione: So I’m an SI and I raise my hand. I’m like, Dexter, help me. [00:19:06] Vince Menzione: What happens next? [00:19:08] Dexter Hardy: I would say. Let me introduce you to my team. [00:19:12] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it. [00:19:13] Dexter Hardy: Um, [00:19:14] Vince Menzione: and you’ve been building your team since, uh, we go back now four years, but like yeah. You, you’ve been growing your business, hired some incredible people in your [00:19:22] Dexter Hardy: team. Yeah, we have some rock stars on our team. I’m really, really happy with my team. [00:19:25] Dexter Hardy: Uh, you know, we’re still growing and it’s, it’s a wonderful thing to be in this economy and still growing. Yes. Um, and like I said, yes, we, I would introduce you to my team and my team would then help you, uh, through. The marketplace advisory. We can help you with the health check. We can do the strategic advisory, the alignment around, here’s what we’re doing. [00:19:47] Dexter Hardy: Another thing that I’ll go ahead and put in here, if you already have listings in the marketplace and people aren’t clicking on them, we have marketplace optimization as well. [00:19:58] Vince Menzione: I love that [00:19:59] Dexter Hardy: because we, again, that conversation comes up all the time. Yeah. We put, we, we invested in Marketplace and we have our listing out there. [00:20:08] Dexter Hardy: Nobody’s clicking on it. Well, we can help you with that too. [00:20:11] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:20:12] Dexter Hardy: Right, because to your point, it’s not just building an ar, arbitrarily writing something about it, putting it in marketplace. Right. That’s, that’s an arbitrary approach. We’re saying how do you turn those into a lead gen, revenue gen, um, operation arm of your business. [00:20:29] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:20:29] Dexter Hardy: Which is what we call market marketplace operating system. [00:20:33] Vince Menzione: Marketplace operating. Okay. So we got another, I got another word I need to learn. Another acronym I need to learn. [00:20:38] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. You know, I [00:20:39] Vince Menzione: less, [00:20:40] Dexter Hardy: I’ve been around Microsoft too long, I guess. [00:20:42] Vince Menzione: Yes. I [00:20:42] Dexter Hardy: created all these, [00:20:45] Vince Menzione: so, um, just perspective could, because you’ve been in the marketplace since we talked about COVID. [00:20:50] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:20:51] Vince Menzione: Really. So that’s five years. Five [00:20:52] Dexter Hardy: years. Yeah. [00:20:54] Vince Menzione: Um, talk about how it’s changed from your perspective. I mean, I, we talk about it all. We talk, we have leaders like Jason and Cyril comes here and. Does, uh, speaks about some changes going on, but tell us your perspective on how it’s evolved. [00:21:08] Dexter Hardy: Um, so the marketplace is always evolving really. [00:21:12] Dexter Hardy: Um, from, from when we got in early in the marketplace. Uh, REO didn’t exist. Multi, multi-party. Private offers didn’t exist. The amount of committed spend on hyperscalers little was, wasn’t there. Um, the seller, the field sellers within the hyperscalers. Marketplace wasn’t part of their thing. So, um, you know, when that, when that frontier, not just that, not to confuse terms when that frontier opened up Yeah. [00:21:43] Dexter Hardy: Like there were, you know, it, it really wasn’t a clear path on how do you channel, how do you do sales, how do you integrate with the team? Um, and now there’s a lot more options, uh, for organizations that want to keep some of those motions together. Disti are now able to get involved with the conversation. [00:22:05] Dexter Hardy: They were kinda locked out for a while, but now with the s and the multi-party private offers and disti are in the conversation, [00:22:12] Vince Menzione: it’s lit up the disti like crazy. Yeah. In fact, we were, we just spent time with a few and some friends there and [00:22:19] Dexter Hardy: yeah. [00:22:19] Vince Menzione: Yeah, it’s been wild to watch this. [00:22:21] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:22:21] Vince Menzione: We haven’t talked about AI very much. [00:22:24] Vince Menzione: I mean, we talked about it from a solution and something you put in the, the market as an agent. But we haven’t talked about the change in a big way. Um, what’s your perspective for the partners out there and how they need to think about AI and embracing it and where they are in the journey? [00:22:41] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. Um, I really, AUL said something, uh, in his, in the panel discussion that he had the other day and it, it just really resonated with me. [00:22:53] Dexter Hardy: Uh, will AI take your job? Probably not. The person who’s using AI [00:23:00] Vince Menzione: will take [00:23:00] Dexter Hardy: the job. Will take you [00:23:01] Vince Menzione: job. Yes. [00:23:02] Dexter Hardy: Same thing. That’s really [00:23:04] Vince Menzione: so true. [00:23:05] Dexter Hardy: Same thing for, same thing for companies. Yeah. If you don’t have, and I, I’ll, I’m, I, I’m really gonna ask, I should have asked Jason this question. Why isn’t there a badge for frontier firms for SDCs? [00:23:21] Dexter Hardy: That’s a solution. Partner badge, not a frontier firm. [00:23:24] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:23:24] Dexter Hardy: but I’ll say if your company isn’t investing in combining people and ai, you’re missing the boat. [00:23:36] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So be a frontier firm. [00:23:37] Dexter Hardy: Be a frontier firm where it doesn’t matter if you’re an si, SDC, if you are not leveraging that superpower of how do we do things faster, better, quicker. [00:23:50] Dexter Hardy: Make that part of your go to market and your operating total operations, you’re going to get left behind. [00:23:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah. We’re hearing it loud and clear. I mean, all the sessions we had yesterday. [00:24:02] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:24:02] Vince Menzione: All the people like yourself that have been here are all frontier firms. They’re all companies that have leaned in, in a big way. [00:24:07] Dexter Hardy: Right. [00:24:08] Vince Menzione: Um, and in some respect, I mean, we we’re, I’m, I’m saying proceed with caution because I, I know by 2030 our world is gonna look very radically different than it looks today. [00:24:17] Dexter Hardy: Yep. [00:24:18] Vince Menzione: Uh, we just, I need to make sure we have the security and the governance and the data structure the right way so that we just don’t, things don’t just go crazy in some respects. [00:24:27] Vince Menzione: Right? [00:24:27] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. And I, I do think that, um, to your point, you have to, we still have to keep the human factor in everything that we’re doing. Um, there is, again, it’s AI plus your experience that makes you better. [00:24:46] Vince Menzione: Yeah, agreed. [00:24:47] Dexter Hardy: AI in the hands of someone who has no idea what they’re doing is just a, it’s a faster way to failure, right? [00:24:53] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. Because they have, they still don’t understand the concepts. And so I really want to make sure that, you know, when you think about ai, think about it from the context of experience, right? Yeah. [00:25:06] Vince Menzione: And yeah, we can go, we can go down a, a whole discussion point here about ethics and what I’ll call AI for good. [00:25:14] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Like I said, having the right approach, having an ethical approach. We talked about Microsoft on stage yesterday with people like Brad Smith, who, uh, there’s people that have this, this right philosophy and approach to ai. Right. That [00:25:29] Dexter Hardy: right. [00:25:29] Vince Menzione: It will do good for the world and not bad for the world. [00:25:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:25:33] Dexter Hardy: And I think that has to be, well, I’ll just speak for myself. Can you do something and should you do something [00:25:42] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:25:43] Dexter Hardy: You have to, that should be a question that you’re asking yourself. You should be evaluating and you have to have whatever your moral compass is that has to align with your moral compass. [00:25:53] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. Because they’re, you know, because with AI the can you do something becomes a lot bigger. Yeah. [00:26:02] Vince Menzione: Good point. Good point. [00:26:03] Dexter Hardy: Should you do it well, you know, greater good. I think as a, as a collective, one of the things that’s. If it hasn’t rained true. Uh, we all live on this planet. We all are part of the, we’re all in part of a connected ecosystem. [00:26:21] Dexter Hardy: Um, and so can we do it? Should we do it? Those are questions that we need to, you know, really think about as we continue to leverage AI and do the things that we’re doing. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of opportunities. [00:26:36] Vince Menzione: Good points, good points. So for partners watching, listening today, um, two, couple things. [00:26:43] Vince Menzione: First of all, it’s changing fast. We need like, what would be, we’re at the beginning of 2026. We’re the first quarter, 2026, maybe the end of the first quarter at this point. [00:26:53] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:26:54] Vince Menzione: What is the one or two or three things that partners need to go do differently or better? And then, um, what would you say to them about marketplace and embracing marketplace? [00:27:09] Dexter Hardy: So I’m gonna answer the second question first. [00:27:12] Vince Menzione: Okay. Sounds good. [00:27:14] Dexter Hardy: Get in the marketplace. [00:27:15] Vince Menzione: Get in the marketplace, [00:27:17] Dexter Hardy: period. [00:27:17] Vince Menzione: Like why wouldn’t you be in the marketplace? [00:27:20] Dexter Hardy: Every hyperscaler has doubled down, tripled down. Yeah. On their marketplace. Microsoft had multiple marketplaces, now it’s just one. [00:27:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:27:29] Dexter Hardy: Writing should be all over the wall. Not that [00:27:31] Vince Menzione: one. There is, there is no market without marketplace. I mean, literally today, the old way, days of selling, the old days of co-selling are gone. [00:27:39] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:27:39] Vince Menzione: Like the days when we, we got pos and we, we sent a, an Excel spreadsheet to Microsoft to tell ’em about the deals that were co-sell. [00:27:47] Vince Menzione: Ready? Those days are gone. So you’re saying we’ve gotta be in the marketplace now and then, what would you say maybe the one thing that’s, let’s limit it to one for all of our amazing viewers, listeners, and ultimate partner guests, when when you, when I see you in Bellevue again, ’cause you’re gonna be in Bellevue, May 11th to the 13th again. [00:28:08] Vince Menzione: Absolutely. With us helping lead the marketplace conversation. What do they need to be doing now? Right now? Besides getting the marketplace? [00:28:18] Dexter Hardy: Besides getting the marketplace, I, I would, I would do a hard look at operations. [00:28:24] Vince Menzione: Operations. [00:28:25] Dexter Hardy: Like a lot of companies, they’re growing and they, what is it? How are we looking internally in our organizations to figure out again, can we do it? [00:28:34] Dexter Hardy: Should we do it? Companies need to focus on their superpower, even, even the big ones, right? Um, being. Not having the focus, not look, looking at or listening to your why as an organization can, can put you in a, in a really weird space. And so, uh, with everyone being able to grow and do what we’re doing, I would say lean into your why, [00:29:01] Vince Menzione: like into your why. [00:29:02] Dexter Hardy: Lean into your why. [00:29:03] Vince Menzione: I think too, I think what you, what you’re saying here, and I’m, my, my reaction to it too is that, uh, we’re, we’re so caught up in the moment right now. And things are changing, so it feels like they’re changing so fast, like coming back to philanthropic and [00:29:20] Dexter Hardy: yeah. [00:29:20] Vince Menzione: What’s evolved just in the last month or so that people are taking their eye off the why or the wall, so to speak and reacting? [00:29:29] Vince Menzione: Is that, is that your point? [00:29:31] Dexter Hardy: Yeah, that’s my point and, and I’ll give you an example. So AI is different from the following technology, but. And I both were around for the blockchain, blockchain, blockchain conversation. [00:29:45] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:29:45] Dexter Hardy: And if you weren’t doing blockchain, you weren’t part of the conversation. I invite you to consider how many conversations have you heard about blockchain do? [00:29:56] Dexter Hardy: Again, AI is a little bit different because it’s, it’s an enabler. It’s, it’s, it’s, it, it does a lot more than that. But I, I will say. AI is gonna become table stakes. And that’s why I say you have to, you have to embrace it as an organization. Yeah. And if you’re not, you’re gonna get left behind. [00:30:13] Vince Menzione: Okay. It’s a drop. [00:30:14] Vince Menzione: Drop the mic moment there. So drop the mic. I’m gonna ask you one more question, personal question. Yeah. I’d love to ask this of every single one of my guests. [00:30:22] Dexter Hardy: Yep. [00:30:23] Vince Menzione: I probably have asked this to you before, but I’m gonna ask it to you again. [00:30:26] Dexter Hardy: Yes. [00:30:28] Vince Menzione: You are hosting a dinner party. You can have this dinner party anywhere in the world. [00:30:32] Vince Menzione: We could talk about locations as well, and you can invite any three guests from the present or the past to this amazing dinner party. [00:30:41] Dexter Hardy: Mm-hmm. [00:30:42] Vince Menzione: Whom would you invite today and why? [00:30:48] Dexter Hardy: Wow. So the last time I answered that question, for those who didn’t hear the first podcast, it was Barack Obama. [00:30:56] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Nelson [00:30:57] Dexter Hardy: Mandela. [00:30:58] Dexter Hardy: And my great-grandparents. [00:30:59] Vince Menzione: Your great-grandparents. I remember your great-grandparents [00:31:02] Dexter Hardy: In this conversation, it’s gonna be more than three people. I’m sorry. [00:31:07] Vince Menzione: All right. But [00:31:07] Dexter Hardy: it make [00:31:08] Vince Menzione: some exceptions here. We’ll make them. [00:31:10] Dexter Hardy: It would be my great-grandparents. Still [00:31:13] Vince Menzione: nice. [00:31:14] Dexter Hardy: My parents and my children. [00:31:18] Vince Menzione: Very cool. [00:31:19] Dexter Hardy: Because I want to look back and let them see the same reason that I had them there before. [00:31:25] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:31:26] Dexter Hardy: Look at what you started. [00:31:27] Vince Menzione: Nice. I love that. [00:31:29] Dexter Hardy: Look at the continuation of your legacy in my parents. [00:31:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:31:32] Dexter Hardy: Look at what I have been able to build because of the investments and the things that you’ve poured into the love, the energy, the effort, the sacrifice, and then the sacrifices that I’m making to pass into that legacy. [00:31:46] Dexter Hardy: The next legacy. So this would be a. This is why I would say leaning to your why, like understand the importance of family. [00:31:54] Vince Menzione: Tell us about your great, your great grandparents. You told me about this on the last podcast for those who didn’t, didn’t listen in. [00:32:01] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:32:02] Vince Menzione: And don’t have the inclination to go back. [00:32:05] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:32:05] Vince Menzione: But I think it’s a great story. [00:32:06] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. So, you know, growing up in the south [00:32:10] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:32:10] Dexter Hardy: Alabama specifically, uh, my great grandparents were part of, you know, slavery era. [00:32:16] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:32:16] Dexter Hardy: Jim Crow. Jim Crow. Crow. Yeah. The whole. [00:32:21] Dexter Hardy: The history of the United States and what, how it was built, you know, [00:32:26] Vince Menzione: an important part of the history of the United States, by the way, that we all should never forget. [00:32:29] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. So again, some of those, some of the ceilings that are out there now, there wasn’t even an option for. [00:32:36] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:32:36] Dexter Hardy: And so that’s why I really wanted them to, I would really want them to be here to see something that they probably could never even conceive as an option of, of it being. [00:32:47] Dexter Hardy: Uh, to be able to see where things are and then to, you know, why my kids, if this is where we are right now, I want you to dream big. The same amount of energy it takes to think small is the same amount [00:33:04] Vince Menzione: of energy it takes to think big. Dream big. Dream big. Dream. [00:33:09] Dexter Hardy: Dream big. [00:33:10] Vince Menzione: I think we’re gonna leave on that message. [00:33:12] Dexter Hardy: Yeah, [00:33:12] Vince Menzione: that’s a great message. [00:33:13] Dexter Hardy: Awesome. [00:33:14] Vince Menzione: So great to see you, my friend. It’s [00:33:16] Dexter Hardy: always a pleasure [00:33:16] Vince Menzione: to be with you, so always a real pleasure for me as well. [00:33:19] Dexter Hardy: Yeah, [00:33:19] Vince Menzione: and I want to thank you for watching and listening and being part of Ultimate Partner and the Ultimate Partner YouTube channel and our great guest and friend, Dexter Hardy. [00:33:30] Vince Menzione: Great to see you again. [00:33:31] Dexter Hardy: Always a pleasure us. Thank you, [00:33:33] Vince Menzione: sir. [00:33:33] Dexter Hardy: All right. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks. [00:33:35] Vince Menzione: Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.

Introducing the All Def SquADD Cast show “Versus". It's a podcast with the OG SquADD! Each week, the SquADD will debate topics and vote at the end to see what wins. Versus airs every Monday and you can download and listen wherever podcasts are found.Special GuestBrandon Broady Jasmine EllisThis Week We DiscussJordans vs AF 1'sGroup Chat/Text vs Talking On The PhoneGet A Section At The Club vs Go To A KickbackS/o To Our SponsorsBetter HelpGet 10% Off At Sign Uphttps://Betterhelp.com/SQUADDMint MobileIf you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at MINTMOBILE.com/squadd. DISCLAIMER: Upfront payment of $45 for 3-month 5 gigabyte planrequired (equivalent to $15/mo.). New customer offer for first 3 monthsonly, then full-price plan options available. Taxes & fees extra. See MINTMOBILE.com for details.

Most hiring processes obsess over the wrong things. Do they know our project management software? Are they proficient in this specific tool? Meanwhile, the one capability that actually determines whether someone will make your life easier or harder—their ability to solve problems independently—gets a cursory “are you a good problem solver?” question that everyone answers with “yes.” In this episode, Chip and Gini break down why problem-solving ability should be the primary hiring criterion, especially as AI makes technical skills easier to acquire and offload. The conversation explores why this matters more now than ever: as AI handles tactical execution, the ability to define problems clearly, break them into components, and figure out solutions becomes the differentiator between humans who add value and humans who get replaced. Chip and Gini discuss how problem-solving cuts across every role, even ones you don’t typically think of as problem-solving positions. Designers facing impossible deadlines, account people navigating last-minute client demands, anyone dealing with the reality that things rarely go according to plan. They all need to be able to figure out how to move forward rather than escalating every obstacle upward. The episode tackles the mechanics of actually interviewing for this capability. You can’t just ask “are you a good problem solver?”—you need scenario-based questions that reveal how candidates think through challenges. But not hypothetical scenarios you make up; real situations that have happened in your agency. Ask them to walk through how they’ve handled compressed timelines, missing information, conflicting priorities, or last-minute changes in past roles. Gini shares how her daughter’s school explicitly focuses on humanities and emotional intelligence rather than technical skills, anticipating that AI will reshape what jobs exist. She connects this to Anthropic’s hiring practice of seeking people with humanities degrees who can absorb information, think critically, and demonstrate emotional intelligence rather than just technical proficiency. The episode concludes with an important reminder: if you hire problem solvers but then micromanage how they solve problems, you’ve wasted the hire. You need to let them solve things their way, even if it’s different from how you’d do it, or you’ll end up with everything back on your plate anyway. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “The very best hires are folks who are able to figure out how to look at a problem and come up with ideas on how to solve it in ways that are reasonable that they can execute upon to get it solved.” Gini Dietrich: “When you think about problem solving, that is one thing that it will be challenging for AI to do, but really important for a human to be able to do. If you can demonstrate that you can solve problems and you know how to hire for people who can solve problems, then all of a sudden you’ve got AI over here doing the tactical work, but you’re doing the high level thinking work.” Chip Griffin: “This isn’t about the specifics of the answer, it’s more making sure that they can think through the method and approach. That’s what signals to you that they’re able to break down the challenge into its component parts to make progress.” Gini Dietrich: “I don’t wanna hear problems, I wanna hear solutions. That’s training the problem solving mentality. I need you to come to me with the solutions. I’m not gonna be the one who comes up with the solutions. It’s not scalable, it’s exhausting.” Turn Ideas Into Action Rewrite your interview questions to focus on real scenarios. Pull up your current interview script and replace skill-testing questions with situation-based ones drawn from actual challenges your team has faced in the past six months. Instead of “Do you know Asana?” ask “Tell me about a time you got an urgent request at 4pm Friday with a Monday deadline. Walk me through your approach.” Spend 30 minutes creating 3-5 scenario questions specific to each role you hire for. Test whether you’re letting your problem solvers actually solve. Pick the last three times a team member brought you a problem this week. For each one, honestly assess: did you immediately jump in with the solution, or did you ask “how do you think we should handle this?” If you solved more than half yourself, you’re training your team to be dependent rather than autonomous. Next time someone brings you a problem, pause and ask them for proposed solutions before weighing in. Audit your hiring criteria for trainable vs. essential skills. List the requirements in your most recent job posting and mark each as either “can be trained in 2 weeks” or “fundamental to the role.” Tools, software, specific methodologies—all trainable. Problem-solving, critical thinking, ability to work under ambiguity—essential. If more than 30% of your listed requirements are trainable skills, you’re screening out good problem solvers who could learn your tools in a week. Related Hire for problem-solving ability first 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, I have a problem. Gini Dietrich: You do? You have just one problem? Chip Griffin: Okay. I have many, many, but this isn’t Festivus, so we’re not gonna have an airing of grievances from you. Gini Dietrich: Would you like me to solve your problem for you? Chip Griffin: I, I, if, if you could solve some problems for me, that would be fantastic because then, I might even be inclined to hire you. Not that you would ever wanna work for me. That would just be disastrous. Gini Dietrich: That would not be good though. Yeah. Chip Griffin: We’re gonna talk about problem solving today, though not, not all of my problems. We’re not gonna solve any of them on this episode, I don’t think. Probably create some new ones. Problem solving. I wrote an article recently about the importance of focusing on problem solving as either the primary or one of the primary considerations when you are hiring new employees as an agency. And I, I feel quite strongly over the years that the very best hires or folks who are able to figure out how to, to look at a problem and come up with ideas on how to solve it and ways that are reasonable that they can execute upon to get it solved so that they’re not being dependent upon you or others to do that for them. And in my view, this is something that’s really hard to train for. Mm-hmm. And so therefore, something more important to focus on during the hiring process than things that you can send someone to a course or a training session or give them a book on, and problem solving just is not that for most people. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, and I think, you know, as we’re thinking about what the future holds, especially with artificial intelligence. The things that we can do as human beings that AI cannot do are gonna be more important, right? So when you think about problem solving, that is one thing that it will be challenging for AI to do, but really important for a human to be able to do so. If you can demonstrate that you can solve problems and you know how to hire for people who can solve problems, and clients are hiring you to solve, help solve their problems, then all of a sudden you’ve got AI over here doing, you know, the tactical work, but you’re doing the high level like thinking work that I think is going to help set you apart. Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and AI certainly makes it a lot easier to problem solve Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Chip Griffin: Than it has been in the past. Right? Because it can help you with the basics, like research. But the other thing that you have to think about is in order to get the AI to help you, you have to do a good job of defining what the problem even is. Yep. And, and that is a key part of being a problem solver, is being able to look at a situation and say, okay, here’s what the real problem is. Yep. You’re not, you’re not focused on some symptom, but you figured out, you know, this is really where we need to zero in on, and AI can probably help you with that a little bit, but the more clear you can be about saying, Hey, here’s my problem. Here’s where I want to get, you still need to have that mindset for problem solving to get the AI to give you the best results possible without doing a lot of wandering in the wilderness. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. You know, one of the reasons I like, sort of, we’ve talked about this before, but the question process of the new business of the prospecting, you know, process is you ask a bunch of questions. And you do that so that you can educate yourself on the prospect’s organization and their goals and all those things. Of course. But when you dig deep into question after question after question, you start to uncover things that they didn’t tell you at first. Like you’re not gonna say, so what problem or pain do you want me to solve? Because they’re gonna go, I, I need an agency to do this and this. That’s not their problem. That’s not the pain that you’re solving for them. You can, you ask questions so that you dig deeper and eventually you’re going to get to that, but it’s the same thing, you know, with AI, you can’t just say like, I need a social media agency to be able to post five times a week. That’s not the problem. What is the problem? So AI can’t help you solve that. It can give you posts for five days a week, but it’s not gonna help you achieve the goals that you want. So really think about when you’re doing quarterly planning, when you’re talking to clients, when you’re talking to prospects, continuing to ask those questions so that you can figure out what problems or what pains you are trying to solve for them so that you can elevate yourself above what AI is gonna be able to do and even help you do. Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, as you say, you know, clients are coming to us as agencies looking for us to solve their problems, which means that, that we need to have that mindset. And you, as the agency owner, you wanna be able to delegate more off of your plate. And the only way that you can do that is if you surround yourself with problem solvers. Yep. If you surround yourself with the people who know the questions to ask and who can look at it and say, ah, I’ve got an idea for how we can get from here to there. And it keeps you from having to be deeply involved in every single scenario. And that might be as simple as, you know, Hey, this, this report didn’t get done on time. You know, we need to do something quickly. Great, fine. You, you know what the challenge is. If you’re a problem solver, you’ll come up with that. If you don’t, you’re gonna go to the boss and say, oh my God, we didn’t get this report to the client on time. What do we do? You don’t want deal with that? No, no. It’s painful for everybody. Everyone. Yes. So you’ve gotta surround yourself with the people who have that problem solving mindset and, and the instincts to be able to, even when they’re confronted with something that they don’t know, right. ’cause a good problem solver doesn’t need to have all of the expertise in the world. Because they just need to be able to figure out, okay, how do we go about doing this? How do we break this down into its component parts and begin to address it and begin to make progress, and that’s really what the essence of problem solving is. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, it’s sort of like, you know, I’ll say to my team often, I don’t wanna hear problems, I wanna hear solutions. And it’s training them to come with that. Like, and I’m sure you work that way. I’m sure that people listening work that way. And if they’ve had bosses that have said, if you bring me a problem, I want solutions as well. That’s training the problem solving mentality, right? So it’s very much like, okay, I understand that things are not always going to go smoothly. I understand that we’re gonna have some failure, and I’m willing to take those risks, but I need you to come to me with the solutions. I’m not gonna be the one who, who comes up with the solutions. First of all, it’s not scalable, it’s exhausting. Clients will not ever stop trusting, being able to trust. They will never be able to trust anybody else on your team because you’re always the problem solver. So it’s really how do you bring your team along? And I think that’s one of the good things and it’s, you have to stay firm to it. Like, okay, it’s, and because in many cases your instinct is to solve the problem, but instead you have to take a step back and say, how do you think we should solve this? What are some solutions you propose? And really build that capability inside your team’s minds to be able to do that without you having to say, what are the solutions? Chip Griffin: Right. And I think that, that this matters more than almost anything else you can focus on during the hiring process. I mean, obviously you’ve gotta to make sure you got the right, you know, the right feel, the right chemistry and that sort of thing. Sure. Because it is, we’re ultimately humans and we all have to be able to engage well with the people that we’re working with. But, you know, I see so many of these interview processes that fixate on proficiency in various things. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Like writing tests. And Yeah. Chip Griffin: You know, writing tests. Yep. You know, back when I used to hire a lot of web developers and that sort of thing, you know, there was always a desire to test them on particular programming language just to see if they were proficient in it. You know, people are like, oh my God, you know, do you use Asana or a Clickup, or whatever we use in the, oh, you don’t, you don’t know how to use that? Oh. Oh. I don’t know if we can, ah, I don’t really want to have to teach how to use a different system. I, I’m, I’m gonna discount that. Like, that’s, none of that stuff matters. Right. Those things can all be trained. Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: And frankly, a lot of those things are being replaced by a lot of the other things we’re doing. Problem solving cuts across almost every single, and probably actually every single role that we have in an agency. And frankly, even far beyond an agency, even ones where you don’t necessarily think of it as a problem solving role. I mean, if you think about designers, for example. You sit there and say, well, you know, that’s, that’s really not pro That’s a creative thing. We need to know how creative they are and Sure. I mean, they’ve gotta have some, you know, basic design skills that, that meet the aesthetic that you’re trying to produce for your clients. But ultimately they are actually problem solvers. I’ve never met a designer who felt they were being given enough time for any project. I mean, you could give them a month and they would still be like, ah, you know, I really could use like six weeks to really Gini Dietrich: Yes, Uhhuh Chip Griffin: fine tune my vision. Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: So, so there are already almost always starting from that problem solving standpoint of how do you get this done in the timeframe that I’m being allowed? And the reality is you’re never giving them a month. You’re giving them maybe half a day if they’re lucky. Right. You know, because they’re the last ones. Of the designers, I, I feel bad for all my design friends because they are the last people brought in in most agencies. And they’re brought in, we’ve got all the content ready, we’re getting ready to release this tomorrow. Can you make it look pretty? It’s like it’s three o’clock, you’re putting this out at 9:00 AM tomorrow. Gini Dietrich: Oh, sure. Chip Griffin: Right. I mean, that’s problem solving. You’ve gotta try to figure out how do you, how do you still get a good result? Mm-hmm. Even given all of those constraints. And so you need to think about every role that you’re hiring, problem solving. And so how do you go about doing that? Right? It’s not, you don’t just say, are you a good problem solver? Right. ’cause guess what, nobody’s gonna say no. And if they do great, it’s easy to just get rid of ’em at that point, because they don’t even know how to interview, let alone Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Right. Chip Griffin: How to solve a proper problem. So, you know, it’s sort of like a reference. I think it’s silly to check references because you know what? Nobody gives you a bad reference. Right. I mean, in all the years I’ve been checking references, I’ve gotten maybe one mediocre reference. It wasn’t even a negative, but you know, you kind of read between the lines and you’re like, eh. Yeah. But almost every one of them is positive. That’s the names you get. Nobody’s gonna tell you they’re bad problem solvers. How do you find out if they are or not? You’ve gotta try to either give them scenarios. And I’m a little, I don’t, I don’t love scenarios because we all have a tendency to come up with fairly unrealistic scenarios. Gini Dietrich: Fair. Chip Griffin: But I, I think you can say to somebody, look, you know, tell me about a time where you had a particular challenge and think about it in terms of the role. For that designer, ask. So, you know, you, you get presented to it at, the rough draft at 3:00 PM and you’re, you have to turn it into a pretty presentation by 9:00 AM the next morning. How do you begin to go about that process? Walk me through what you’ve done before when you had that same scenario confronting you. Because you can, you can learn a lot just from listening to them, and the actual answers don’t matter all that much. Don’t fixate on, well, I would’ve done this instead of that. It’s more making sure that they can think through the method and approach. Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: That’s what signals to you that they’re able to break down the challenge into its component parts to make progress. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I really like the, I’m with you on the scenario based interviewing, but I really like the, all right, like these are things that have happened inside our organization because of like something that just happened the other day. Tell me about a time that you got something at four o’clock on Friday afternoon, you had tickets to the Cubs game, and you knew it was due on Monday morning. Like, what do you do? Chip Griffin: Well, they had tickets to a rare night game. Huh? Gini Dietrich: Actually, we have the Cubs play a lot of night games actually. Chip Griffin: Yeah, I know. I’m, I’m just so old, I, I remember when they didn’t play them at all, so. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Yeah. But like, what do you do about that? How do you solve that problem. And some people will say, I work all weekend, which I don’t love, but some people will say, I will give up the Cubs tickets Also, don’t love that. But are there other ways, other creative ways that you might get that work done so that you’re not working all weekend and you don’t have to give up your Cubs tickets? So those are the kinds of things that I like to listen for. You know, they, and they’ll give you answers they think you want to hear, which are, I won’t go to the game or I’ll work all weekend. Those are not the answers I wanna hear. I wanna hear like, creative, interesting. Maybe I can’t get it done before I go to the game, but I’m gonna, you know, buckle down and I’m gonna ask for help or, you know, those kinds of things are the things that I’m looking for. Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, even if they do say, well, look, I’m gonna, you know, skip this or that because, you know, work would be my priority or whatever. I mean, that it, it’s still okay, that’s fine. But this isn’t, this is this. If your idea of solving a problem is just throwing more hours at it, that doesn’t work for me. Gini Dietrich: Right. That doesn’t work. Right. Chip Griffin: So, even if you do end up spending that time, tell me about, you know, what are the actual steps that you’re taking? Because you may be willing to pull an all-nighter, but what about the rest of the team? Right. And, you know, how do you go about getting the information that you need and getting it approved in the right way? And, you know, how do you think about, you know, frankly, which, which corners are okay to cut and which ones aren’t? You know, when you have to deal with a compressed timeframe, you have to be rational and say, okay. It’s not gonna be as perfect as I would like it to be. And, to continue on with the design example, are you okay with that? Gini Dietrich: Yeah, Chip Griffin: and I’ve, I’ve worked with some designers who just, you know, they’re like, I just will not give you something that doesn’t meet my standard. I appreciate that you have a high standard, I also have a deadline. Yep. So work with me on this and figure out what we can get done on this time. Yep. And that’s the, that’s the kind of answer that I’m looking for from them. If it’s, you know, someone who’s, you know, pitching a new outlet or industry that they’re not familiar with, what are the steps that you go through? How do you begin to think about it? And I, again, it’s not so much about the specifics of it, but just making sure that you’re seeing the logic at play. Yep. In a way that you’re like, yeah, okay, I can, I can see why you made that choice. But definitely don’t fixate Well, I don’t know why you would look at that. I would look at this instead. I mean, because you haven’t had a chance to imbue any of your own thinking to them to bring your own agency training. But if they can think about how they make those individual steps possible, that’s really what you need to know. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. You know, one of the things that, I’m sure I’ve told this story before, but when we were looking at schools for, at the time, our 4-year-old to go to, to kindergarten, and then on through school and we were interviewing schools and we were trying, Chicago’s a weird way of doing schools, but, so we were looking at, we were interviewing schools. And every single one of them, so this is eight years ago, said, we focus our curriculum on the humanities and social and emotional intelligence and learning because we don’t know what jobs are going to be available for these kids because of AI and because of how fast technology is changing. So we know that if we put kids out into the world, out into the community, that can solve problems that have high emotional intelligence, that can think logically, that have common sense, that they will be good stewards and can do the jobs that are available. Versus building kids that can do programming or math or science or STEM or whatever happens to be, right. We’re going to put good stewards of the community out there, and I think about that a lot. And I just read an article this morning that talks about how Anthropic is hiring people with humanities degrees because they have high emotional intelligence. They can think through things, they can read something and absorb it versus just skimming it. All of the things that, those that, that kind of degree teaches you are the things that companies are gonna be looking for. And it’s the same thing I think for agency owners is that’s exactly it is how do you find the people that can problem solve, that can take in information and use that to make decisions that, you know, are used to high emotional intelligence kinds of things. Versus I know how to logically solve a math problem. or I know how to program or I know how to write a news release. Because AI can do all of those things. So that’s what we really should be looking for and interviewing for is those problem solving skills. Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and you’ll find if, if you get good problem solvers, they’ll be confronted with things that, that you never even dreamed up. So you wouldn’t think to ask in an interview. Right. To figure out if they could do it. But they’re good problem solvers. Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: They can figure out how to get there. Absolutely. If they’re not good problem solvers, they’re just gonna sit there and stare at it, or they’re gonna make the radically wrong decision just because it’s the easy way out. I think of a plumber that I had in my house 20 years ago, and we were having an issue with water pressure. And so he came in and he’s looking and we, you know, we’re on a well system here ’cause I’m living rural and they’re trying to figure out, you know, all the tanks and this and that. And he’s like, well, the solution is you need to put in a larger tank. I’m like, really? That’s, that’s gonna solve my water pressure problem. He said, yeah, that’s, that’s definitely gonna solve it. I’m like, and so I just, I, it didn’t feel right to me. So I sat with him. I said, okay, well walk me through, you know. Yeah. What we’re doing here and, and so I, I had ’em tell me what all the pipes were and what they were doing, and we get to one and it turns out there’s one that was a filter. And I said, I said, well, what if we just tried changing out that filter and just make sure that it’s not clogged up? Yeah. We could try that. I guess. I mean, okay. Turned out it was a $10 filter that we needed to replace instead of, instead of like a $1500 water tank instead. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I was gonna say multi-thousand water. Chip Griffin: But he, you know, he was not of the mindset, you know, go through and diagnose it step by step and follow the path of the water and see where it might be being obstructed so that it’s not getting, because I mean the, the current water tank was showing that it had the right pressure. So it didn’t really make sense to me that if the tank was showing it had the right pressure, that a larger tank was gonna suddenly change, that it would still be at the same pressure setting, Gini Dietrich: right? Chip Griffin: So somewhere between the tank and where it came out of the faucet, it was where it was falling apart. And so you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta try to hire people that can think that way because it’ll keep things off of your plate. And we always talk here about the importance of not bogging yourself down. And so the other thing you need to keep in mind is if you’re gonna be hiring for problem solving ability, you actually need to let your team do the problem solving. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: You have to. You have to accept that they may not solve it in exactly the same way that you do, but because you’ve hired a team of problem solvers, they will get it done. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: If that happens, you don’t have a lot sitting on your plate, which is better for you. And frankly, it’s better for the employee because they don’t feel like you’re breathing down their shoulder and micromanaging them. So yes, problem solvers solve other problems other than the ones that they’re setting out to solve. Gini Dietrich: Yes, they do. Yes, they do. I think the article that you wrote was really good. It walks through some of these, some of these ideas. It also gives some other ideas on how to interview for problem solving, so I’m sure Jen will link to it. But it was a very good thought provoking article, so thank you. Chip Griffin: I am always grateful to be able to produce thought provoking pieces, and it’s a particular challenge. I’m always looking to try to figure out how I can make you think too, so. Because you’ve got probably all the same answers that I do on most things. So Gini Dietrich: sometimes we disagree on things, but yeah, Chip Griffin: occasionally. Occasionally we haven’t done it that much. But, but maybe, maybe on the next episode, Gini Dietrich: maybe. Chip Griffin: Who knows? We might Gini Dietrich: never know. Chip Griffin: Just teasing that next episode. ’cause the next one’s a milestone. Gini Dietrich: It is a milestone Chip Griffin: at least. At least if, if Jen’s math is correct. The next episode is episode 300, so, Gini Dietrich: woo hoo. Chip Griffin: Stay tuned for that one. Gini Dietrich: It’ll be a special one. Special one. Chip Griffin: As they like to say in YouTube land. Make sure you click the subscribe button. Gini Dietrich: So you don’t miss an episode. Chip Griffin: Nope. You would never wanna miss an episode of this. Gini Dietrich: Never. Mm-hmm. Chip Griffin: It’s the most fascinating podcast on the interwebs. Gini Dietrich: It is. Chip Griffin: So with that, that will draw that to an end this episode of the most amazing podcast ever. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And it depends except about the quality of this podcast. Gini Dietrich: Right.

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