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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 GuestRob HazeCourtney HaynesThis Week We DiscussWaffles House vs IHOPDate Someone Who Checks Your Phone Every Day vs Someone Who Disappears For Days At A TimeLiving In LA vs Living In AtlantaS/o To Our SponorsGame TimeDownload GameTime TodayPromo: SQUADD For $20 Off Your First TicketBlue ChewBluechew.comGet 10% Off Your Fiirst Month Of Blue Chew GoldPromo: SQUADD

durée : 00:38:24 - Questions du soir : le débat - par : Quentin Lafay, Stéphanie Villeneuve - Le 28 février 2026, Donald Trump a ordonné au Pentagone de cesser toute utilisation de l'intelligence artificielle Claude, développée par l'entreprise Anthropic et qui collaborait jusque-là avec l'armée américaine pour améliorer ses performances militaires. - invités : Nastasia Hadjadji Journaliste indépendante spécialisée dans l'économie numérique; Laure de Roucy-Rochegonde Directrice du Centre géopolitique des technologies à l'Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI) et enseignante à Sciences Po Paris et à l'université Paris-II Panthéon-Assas

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 GuestJohn GrimesBrent TaylorB.T. KingsleyKanisha BussThis Week We DiscussCookout Plate vs Thanksgiving PlateDate For Marriage vs Date For VibesOwn A Small House vs Rent A High-RiseS/o To Our SponsorsMint MobileMint Mobile is here to rescue you with premium wireless plans starting at 15 bucks a monthmintmobile.com/SQUADDUpfront 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 for details.

Description Stop experimenting with AI and start driving ROI. Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this keynote from the Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat, Nina Harding breaks down the massive shift happening in the AI landscape as customers move away from experimental pilots and demand concrete ROI and business outcomes. She emphasizes that the era of selling products and time-and-materials approaches is over, replaced by outcome-based, verticalized selling where vendors and partners share accountability. Through real-world examples in healthcare and retail, Harding outlines how partners can leverage Copilot Studio, Agent 365, and Microsoft’s incentive programs to build specific superpowers, differentiate themselves, and ultimately lead the AI mission alongside Microsoft. Key Takeaways Customers are no longer interested in AI experimentation and now expect immediate, concrete return on investment. Selling products is dead; the modern approach requires a consultative, signal-based strategy focused entirely on business outcomes. The traditional time-and-materials billing model is disappearing as clients demand shared accountability for project success. Rapid proliferation of AI agents has made security and governance top priorities for enterprise customers. Success in the Microsoft ecosystem now requires partners to highly verticalize their value propositions by industry. Defining and clearly articulating your unique “superpower” or niche is essential to stand out to the Microsoft field sales organization. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJJ4Zcf4tZc&t=1920s 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 Nina Harding, Microsoft AI, artificial intelligence ROI, AI agents, Agent 365, Copilot Studio, outcome-based selling, verticalization, healthcare AI, retail AI, Cognizant, Davos 2026, AI governance, AI security, technology transformation, Ultimate Partner Live, enterprise AI adoption, digital transformation, system integrators, AI pilots Transcript [00:00:00] Nina Harding: More importantly, we want to serve more and more people faster, and AI is coming in and having a very practical approach in healthcare alone. [00:00:14] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out [00:00:19] Vince Menzione: crowd. Come join me now for a compelling discussion on the impacts of the tectonic shifts we’re all seeing. [00:00:27] Vince Menzione: I feel incredibly fortunate, uh, to have this, this, this friend Nina who came into the studio here for the first time, actually earlier, well last year, geez, earlier this year. [00:00:38] Vince Menzione: It was last year, right after my accident I think. And, uh, we gotta spend some time together. And she was so good to, uh, make her time available and her team’s time available to come down here to be with us today. Ne I’m so thrilled to have you. I am going to turn over the stage to you. Uh, you’ve got some incredible learnings. [00:00:57] Vince Menzione: I know you’ve been on the AI tour with Microsoft. Yeah. And you’ve got some great learnings you’re gonna share about what’s happening. Absolutely. So it’s so great to have you. [00:01:05] Vince Menzione: It’s nice to see you. [00:01:06] Nina Harding: Nice to see you. [00:01:07] Nina Harding: Thank you. Well, thanks everyone. It’s great to see so many familiar faces and then some new faces as well. [00:01:15] Nina Harding: Um, because we’re in a little bit more of an intimate environment, I thought I would approach this a little bit differently. Give you some better insights into what we’re actually hearing at Microsoft with our customers, some of the things that are actually moving the needle that we’re seeing some of our partners do. [00:01:34] Nina Harding: So really to share some of the best practices out there, and hopefully you’ll leave with some more insight or tips and tricks, um, is really what I would love to do because our job. Collectively is really this transformation and to take a advantage of it out there in the market right now. [00:01:57] Nina Harding: Let’s see [00:01:57] Nina Harding: here. [00:01:59] Nina Harding: I can move slides. Well, this one isn’t moving. Any slides? [00:02:07] Nina Harding: No. Okay, great. So, um, some of you might. Uh, know that I’m a Floridian now, right? So I just live right up, up the way in Palm Beach. Um, so not too far, but I still wouldn’t miss this opportunity to be with all of you. Um, there is an energy that I think that we’re all feeling right now, and, uh, it’s, it’s palpable. [00:02:32] Nina Harding: We’re finding right now that our customers are really going from this landscape of experimenting with ai. Really to looking at the outcomes and having expectations around the momentum that they’re seeing. Right. That’s a big shift, right? We, and things are going pretty quickly, so I look at things almost quarterly now on what is that core message and what are, what is the difference in the tone from our customers of what they’re expecting? [00:03:06] Nina Harding: What we’re gonna talk a little bit about today is how all of you, our partners, are such a critical part of that journey. Actually, sometimes the most important part. You’re on the front lines with the customers. You’re the ones having those conversations. You’re the ones that are in there arm to arm with their teams, listening to what they’re experiencing, their challenges that they’re facing, and they’re really wanting now to go from this world of, Hey, we have lots of different pilots. [00:03:41] Nina Harding: Right? A lot of us know that right into, oh my gosh, it’s not about pilots anymore. They really want that ROI story. They want those outcomes and it’s looking very different for all of us. The way that we sell, the way that we go into our engagements, the way that we even price things, the way that we, meaning Microsoft partner and customer are locking arms is fundamentally very different. [00:04:15] Nina Harding: We have to go in collectively. We have to also be responsible for the outcomes and deliver on those. ROI is that headline that we’re all after. Right. It is the most important part of the puzzle right now because there isn’t a single boardroom that isn’t talking about AI and you guys are all experiencing it. [00:04:39] Nina Harding: It’s easier than ever to go in and have the conversation. The hardest part is how do we quickly get to an ROI study, so you or ROI case so that we can continue to build on that. And when you’re looking at this every. Customer is providing signals out there to help you grow that penetration into the account. [00:05:04] Nina Harding: And I’m gonna share some of the signals that I think that are really meaningful. But that’s the most important thing is we’re no longer, and I know you guys all know this, we’re no longer selling product at all anymore. We’re selling those outcomes. And I can tell you at Microsoft, we’re spending a tremendous amount of time retraining all of our sales reps. [00:05:25] Nina Harding: Really to be focused on how do you listen and do that consultative signal based sale. How do you actually go in and start selling, not selling, but I mean it is selling, but listening to the journey that they want to go through. What are the challenges that they’re facing and what’s the transformation that we’re able to kind of go and be a part of together with our partners? [00:05:54] Nina Harding: Notice it’s not about product. Product is just the tools in your tool chest to create those outcomes. So that’s gonna be really important as we go through this journey. [00:06:09] Nina Harding: Uh, so I saw the, the title of the session, uh, mentioned Davos and Davos was an interesting time. Uh, Microsoft has a very, actually, a very big presence at Davos and, uh, we had over 300 customer meetings there, uh, where we were meeting with some of the top companies around the globe. And it was very much affirmed that. [00:06:34] Nina Harding: Uh, the, the concept of AI we’re past, like curiosity stage, right? We’re way past that and we’re even past that. The art of the possible discussion, right? Uh, what the, the customers are almost at the point is, is come in and tell me, tell me what to do. Show me how to do it. It’s a very different position than, Hey, we’re presenting you with all these different possibilities. [00:07:08] Nina Harding: They’re They’re tired. They’re tired of all the possibilities. They wanna get to the brass tacks of how are you gonna change my customer service department? How are you gonna make it easier for my hr? How am I going to derive growth? What are some of the other things that you guys are experiencing out there? [00:07:23] Nina Harding: Like what are some of those other ROI drivers that people are asking, where am I gonna find the money? What for? For doing the project or out of the project? Other people? I Okay. To do the project. Okay. Resourcing. Okay. So what we’re seeing here is that, uh, the conversation is very much now focused on, okay, I need sec, I need security. [00:07:50] Nina Harding: That has been louder than ever before. So, Vince, the one thing I would say about that slide where you had those five different pillars, I’d put security on the bottom. Understanding your data, your data platform on the bottom, those are consistent across all those pillars. And then you can kind of hit at them. [00:08:10] Nina Harding: But, uh, there’s a lot of energy, there’s a lot of excitement, but it’s rooted in what are you materially going to do to change my business, and is your skin in the game to help me do it and I’ll pay you for that outcome? The concept of this time and materials approach gone. Gone. Even at Microsoft, we’re adjusting to the fact that the customers aren’t like, oh. [00:08:35] Nina Harding: Just hand it over to a system integrator and they’ll deliver on it. They’re like, oh no, we want you accountable too. You’re accountable for the outcomes as well, which is, oh gosh, okay. How do we do that in a partnery model that makes sense where we’re not tripping over each other, but we’re going in stronger together. [00:08:54] Nina Harding: We have one message together and we’re really focused on driving that. They’re also really concerned around the governance of all these agents, right? I see a lot of heads shaking on this. I mean, there’s a lot of proliferation right now. There’s a lot of excitement. I mean, I don’t know in your companies, but people are building agents faster and quicker, uh, than ever before, and some of them are really, really cool and they’re making huge point savings of times. [00:09:22] Nina Harding: Everything from. You know, some of you guys have probably heard me talk about everything from, uh, working on performance reviews to what are all of the incentives that we have for partners and making that easy to understand to, uh, to helping me understand patterns in our financials and what partners are really performing and growing. [00:09:45] Nina Harding: All of these agents are just popping up everywhere, but that creates a real governance issue and a real security issue for a lot of companies as well. So you take all of this and you hear this momentum and I think, uh, that together we’re really well poised. I think Microsoft is in a unique position together with you. [00:10:07] Nina Harding: On this frame, we have Agent 365, which helps you manage all these different agents, right? So that’s an exciting. How many of you’re familiar with agents? 365. Great. And I promise I’m not a product person. I’m not gonna do a lot of pitches, so don’t worry about that, um, at all. But, uh, we also have copilot studio and foundry, and so we have this whole, uh, set of capability, but that capability only comes to life if we’re able to connect with the customer, build the outcome, and making sure that the CEOs see all of us as their partners on that strategy and journey. [00:10:47] Nina Harding: So what does that look like? So I talked a little bit about signals, and signals, is that ability to listen to the, to the customers, what’s really, really me, uh, meaningful and frontier firms are doing this on a consistent basis all the time. Listening to the specific needs use cases, et cetera. So we at Microsoft have been trying to not only share all these different use cases that we have exposure to, but in addition. [00:11:17] Nina Harding: We turned on functionality, and I’ll talk about that in a little bit so that we can also share amongst each other as a community and understand those use cases. Uh, what’s really important is that, um, we’re moving from this world of all these like little one-off projects to a strategy and a platform that everyone wants to move to, but it’s all also getting powered by agents. [00:11:42] Nina Harding: That’s, that’s where we are today. So. [00:11:49] Nina Harding: Having a little trouble. I’m not gonna go through this too. Everyone’s familiar with this in, in here, the Frontier overview. If you’re not, let me know. Um, but basically one of the things that we find is really helpful is, is just sharing where we have seen proof behind having the conversation around the AI journey. [00:12:12] Nina Harding: Around the, the customer journey as you’re going out there. Um, there are really four different areas that we’ve talked about, and I’m not going to drain this ’cause there’s lots and you can, you can, uh, go onto the internet. You can see me talking about all these different areas. I don’t wanna spend too much time here, but these are four of the different. [00:12:33] Nina Harding: I would say categories where when you’re looking at different ways that you can make a material difference with the, the, the customer that we find the most momentum. So around enriching employee experiences, changing the way we, uh, engage with customers. Uh, changing processes as well. And then, uh, the outcomes, like really transforming the way we go about business. [00:12:59] Nina Harding: And we wanna do something about bringing it in to the flow of the work, everyday work. How many of you are finding that you’re actually using agents in your day-to-day workflow? Isn’t that cool? And then as you continue to use it, it becomes easier and easier and easier. And. I know from my team, I’m starting to look at what is the e everyday usage versus the monthly usage, right? [00:13:26] Nina Harding: It’s the every day. It’s become almost, uh, your second hand. And what’s important, uh, on this is that we’re giving, uh, listening to all these signals giving, um, the consistency, um, of the, the engagement with. With the clients, we’re able to all share the same stories and be able to scale at a much faster pace. [00:13:54] Nina Harding: So what does that look like? Here we go. Um, one of the things that we talk about at Microsoft, and the reason why I have this up here is that we’ve moved the conversation away from product into these customer outcomes, which really becomes about. Industry discussion. You have to speak their voice. You have to understand their business problems. [00:14:21] Nina Harding: You have to listen for what is materially different. So I’m actually sharing this, which you don’t normally see in a lot of presentations out to Microsoft about the structure of the organization, the takeaway. This is a sales organization in enterprise. The takeaway that I want you to have from that is look at the verticalization. [00:14:43] Nina Harding: We’ve done. It’s no longer by territory. The ball has moved, the conversation has moved entirely. So what does that say to all of you as well? Your value proposition as you’re working with our field has to be verticalized. The way you engage has to be verticalized. What you say, um, what the, the outcomes that you think differentiates yourself. [00:15:12] Nina Harding: Verticalized. So there isn’t the approach of like doing this like mask gorilla campaign across, for example, the Americas. And I’m just using this as an example on, um, the small and medium business side as well. Um, the, they’re a little bit more territory based still, but um, at least at the enterprise, everything has to be about customer value. [00:15:38] Nina Harding: Customer value. So, um, what this also suggests to me is the way we’re working and where we’ve seen a lot of success is when all of you are starting to tailor your messages and differentiate yourselves by customer success stories. Use cases where you’ve had premise, uh, penetration as a software partner, but you have to tie it back to the industry again. [00:16:05] Nina Harding: It’s just different. And so if I’m very transparent that that’s become, has gone from a nice to have to critical as the field is looking at, who are those go-to partners? It’s the go-to partners that speak retail. It’s the go-to partners that speak oil and gas and I don’t know, I, I, I see some nodding of heads. [00:16:27] Nina Harding: Some people know this, some people don’t. But I can see the shift tremendously over the last six months. So, um, hopefully that’s helpful in, in, in kind of sharing just how we’re walking the walk and talking the talk. So as I go back to industry, um, I thought what would be helpful is to take a few examples so you have a chance to see. [00:16:52] Nina Harding: In life, what are, what are we actually seeing at Microsoft? And if you guys are seeing something else, I would love to hear that too. But these, this is an example in healthcare and when we’re looking at, uh, a particular industry, we’re looking at what are some of the pain points? What are the top trends? [00:17:11] Nina Harding: What are some of the challenges folks are, are facing? And then what are the use cases that are really making traction here? This is a different way of taking that frontier vision and doing that click down by industry. And so what we’re also doing is we’re looking at who are partners that can help us in healthcare that can help answer some of these key challenges. [00:17:35] Nina Harding: Who are the ones that have the ability to have those material conversations in that trust? In healthcare, for example, there’s a ton of pressure. I mean. We all are consumers of healthcare. Hopefully we, all of us, have been lucky enough to have healthcare, um, in the, in this, uh, forum, but there’s a lot of clinician burnout, rising costs, right? [00:18:01] Nina Harding: The, the expense for, uh, medicines and so forth. But more importantly, we want to serve more and more people faster, and AI is coming in and having a very practical approach. Healthcare alone. So many of you, I talk about, um, the fact that at one point I was paralyzed, right? So I was paralyzed from T two down and, um, I go in every six months for an MRI, uh, to check, to check if everything’s still functioning. [00:18:32] Nina Harding: And the nervous system is going well. My doctor has had to manually look at that. Now he’s using AI to look at. History and the progression since 2008. That’s game changing. And on top of that, he is looking at me and having a conversation and looking in my eyes and observing me instead and using Dragon to have it feel epic to really think about how that’s changed my personal experience with the healthcare system and changed how a physician can show up. [00:19:09] Nina Harding: So there are many, many, um, many use cases around like patient access and, uh, innovation that we’re trying to do, surgeries, uh, being able to do clinical, clinical trials, but AI is everywhere and that’s what’s really important is that we’re figuring out for all of you what your software solution. Services offering, or even if you’re selling that, you have that value, value proposition down at that level. [00:19:43] Nina Harding: So let’s take a look at retail, for example. We have a short little video. Are we gonna be able to run that video? This is where we’re seeing a lot of shrinking. Margins, people wanting more, uh, intimacy with their customer. Here we go. [00:21:09] Nina Harding: Are we good? Well, that was a quite, uh, quite a nice, uh, uh, digital response to the end of the video. But what you’re seeing is people are using it in all different facets as we go into an example. I always love to do, use examples of partners that are hitting the mark ’cause we can all learn from ’em and myself included. [00:21:30] Nina Harding: We’re partners that are really successful. I chose to use Cognizant. Cognizant was actually our partner Si of the year, um, at the Americas level. And one of the things, and I won’t drain it on, um, the right hand side of this, uh, the slide, but they really are helping the customer’s move in a framework approach by industry, uh, to an AI landscape. [00:21:58] Nina Harding: Uh, they, they have secured an end-to-end solution and they’re focused on real business outcomes, and they have been growing at over 30% year over year. Huge. That’s great. Right? That’s what we all want for our businesses. And so what you’re seeing here is. They have a narrative around the frontier firms and they pull that through when they’re engaged in the clients and with our field. [00:22:27] Nina Harding: And then they’re using the incentives that we have. And don’t worry, I have a slide on some of the incentives we have, um, to actually make sure that they’re using those effectively in the pre-sales motion, but most importantly on the adoption and the change management after they’ve actually, uh, built out the solutions. [00:22:45] Nina Harding: And that’s really, really, really key here. So here’s an example of, um, of Cognizant at Coldwater Creek and Soft Surroundings. They had two different platforms and they brought it all together and then they brought Dynamics in as well. And what they have actually been able to do is improve a lot of the inventory management, the visualization, um, of all the inventory around. [00:23:14] Nina Harding: Around all of their stores and their warehouses, and they’ve been able to streamline the fulfillment and improved, uh, reduced back orders. What you’re seeing is those are all concrete examples of the outcomes that they were trying to drive for at the beginning, and those were all. Key pain points. And so they go in, cognizant will go in and understand with what are the material things that you are, that’s keeping you up at night, that is creating that drainage, uh, in your accounts or if you could transform, what does that look like? [00:23:52] Nina Harding: And so there, they spend the whole conversation together with Microsoft focused on doing that. And then we do the outcome based proposal. Very different, right? It creates for a much stronger vendor relationship, and the customer feels like they really have in the essence of the word partners, helping them to be successful. [00:24:15] Nina Harding: Right. [00:24:20] Nina Harding: Here we go. So I promised you some of the incentives, and I know you might just take a, a quick peek at some of these. These are, these are, um, some of the incentives that. Microsoft has put forward to help our partners on this journey. Uh, this is a slide that we’ve created from the America’s perspective to try and simplify it. [00:24:42] Nina Harding: Now there’s a lot behind it, right? But to try and help simplify, um, where are the incentives available? And I think this is one of the first times you’re actually saying what’s available for the sis. Versus for the software partners. And then we’re gonna hear more today about what’s also available for the channel partners as well. [00:25:03] Nina Harding: Um, it’s really thinking about what is your behavior as a partner? How are you showing up? How are, uh, you making a contribution to that customer? And then how can Microsoft best support you in that journey? So there’s all sorts of, uh, all sorts of incentives here, and it’s really, uh, designed to be flexible to what you need. [00:25:24] Nina Harding: But for the, I, I think it’s very focused on the value proposition as well that you bring to the table. So, um, I encourage you to take a look at this, make sure that you have this in your diary or your flipping of, of how are we maximizing, um, deals. And we can certainly go through a lot more of this. And we have webinars and so forth that will take you through all of that. [00:25:52] Nina Harding: Alright, so. I’ve talked a lot about this outcome-based selling, and that’s, it’s literally how Microsoft is starting to move forward on how do we go about engaging with the customers and with our partners. You’re gonna see, because our customers are asking more Microsoft involved and for us to go jointly into the opportunities. [00:26:16] Nina Harding: Not that we necessarily, we’re not building out a larger consulting force or anything like that, but. We want to make sure that the customer ask that Microsoft is engaged in working with our partners, is honored, um, and that we’re, we’re part of that, and that we’re also sharing our, our experiences and learning from all of you at the same time on who has the best, uh, approach, Beth best, best methodologies and best practices to light up our customers together. [00:26:51] Nina Harding: But the ROI doesn’t really show up just in dollars alone. We all know this, right? Um, it could be in, uh. Satisfaction it could be in care. So as you’re starting to look at this new evolution of how we’re really landing the value proposition of ai, we have to think outside of the box that it’s not just monetary and it’s not, I think you said savings or securing funds and so forth, but it’s really of how do I leapfrog into the modern world? [00:27:22] Nina Harding: How do I change that entire experience and think outside of the box? And, uh, make sure that the conversation is not just about how do we optimize certain practices, but how do we have this more executive level strategy conversation on the future of how we’re gonna engage with our clients, uh, their clients in a much more, um, I think transformative and personal [00:27:51] Nina Harding: way as we go forward. [00:27:54] Nina Harding: So we know that if the outcomes are the, what we’re looking to go drive, the next question is really how do we go do that? And that is gonna be through the agents on here. You’ll see just from from out in the market, what we see will light up the market. We think that, or I can’t even say we, IIDC says 81% of leaders are expecting agents. [00:28:24] Nina Harding: Full utilization in the next 12 to 18 months. And to be honest, I think this quote is probably even two months old. So we’re already, we’re probably down to like, you know, eight, eight to 12 months. And what I’m seeing that proliferation happening, it’s crazy. So understanding that value proposition, um, whether you’re from a software company or a services company or even some of our resellers, what’s that niche? [00:28:52] Nina Harding: What’s that industry or sub-industry? What is that? Horizontal. I go after customer service within, uh, the manufacturing vertical. Right. And then are you building out agents or do you have capability? And that’s what we’re doing internally at Microsoft as well, is to help make that really visible to the field so that you’re differentiated. [00:29:15] Nina Harding: Differentiation is gonna be really key right now because there’s so many people that say, oh, I do migration services, or I can help with data, or I can do security. But it’s the specificity around the industry and what you are truly known for within that space. So one of the things that we look to do is, is looking at all of the different areas where we see agents popping up. [00:29:44] Nina Harding: And this is a helpful slide. Sometimes I think, um, it starts to highlight, um, where we’re seeing some traction in financial services. Or in healthcare manufacturing. And then when I talk about the horizontals or the personas, you start to see some of the um, really repeatable, high return on investment type of things. [00:30:08] Nina Harding: Is this resonating with some of you guys? Yeah. I’m seeing a hit, a lot of head nods. This, if you’re on the services side, right? We’re in an intimate setting. This is where I encourage you to try and build an agent, right? Package that agent, put it on marketplace, make that available, and then make that known to our field sales organization. [00:30:27] Nina Harding: ’cause they are looking for quick wins along those lines. [00:30:31] Nina Harding: So on that, um, [00:30:36] Nina Harding: uh, one of the things that we’re along the journey for is the skilling. This is moving at such a fast pace, right? Um, so you’re looking at. Um, anthropic is really a big topic right now, right? Gemini, you’re looking at cloud, you’re, um, or Claude. [00:30:55] Nina Harding: Um, you’re looking at all of these different, uh, scenarios and one of the things at Microsoft is we really wanna be open to all of these different technologies because our customers are open. So we want to be part of taking you on that journey. And one of the things that we invest in white. [00:31:12] Nina Harding: Significantly is all of the training. Um, and I wanna encourage you guys to take advantage of it. Training is not a one-time thing. It is, it is a constant muscle that you must exercise. So as I come to my conclusion, I have a couple three key things, right? One is really understanding what your superpower is, right? [00:31:33] Nina Harding: The partners that I’m finding are really aligned well with the field are really winning. Those stories are the ones that have. Know and can articulate their superpowers. What am I known for? What are the use cases I can either build to or have agents against? And where have I done this consistently? And packaged really, really concretely, right? [00:31:55] Nina Harding: Um, this, this proliferate of like, I can do everything. Unfortunately, you get lost a little bit in the noise, right? So clear positioning, proof point’s, so critical right now, and reinforcing that credibility with the clients that have adopted. The second thing is that you’ve heard a little bit about this hopefully. [00:32:16] Nina Harding: How many of you have heard of the part partner success story? Okay, this is really, really key. We launched about maybe a month ago, and we already have over a hundred, uh, stories from partners, and the field is loving it. What it is is it brands the stories with your brand if you submit them. So what? Talk about credibility, um, with the field and with our marketers to have your name and that recognition picked up. [00:32:45] Nina Harding: It’s really, really fantastic. So I encourage you to do that. For those of you taking quick snaps, I did put a code on here, so if you wanna go straight to it, uh, you can take it. Um, and go explore with it. What’s nice about it is it’s AI based, so it will help you write these stories very, very quickly. [00:33:04] Nina Harding: There’s no reason why your sales reps can’t be writing these stories, and then yes, [00:33:11] Nina Harding: uh, yeah, you can do no meaning like from enterprise. No. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You can do it on any, on any, there is a different level of fidelity of if you have the customer’s permission. Right. Um, to pu to publish it or not. And that’s some functionality we’re working on. If there’s enough traction of, of this is to help you guys. [00:33:32] Nina Harding: Secure that with Microsoft. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it can be any customer there. But I encourage you to take a look at that. And I know I’m two minutes over here, so I’m just gonna leave you with this. Um, at the end of the day, as I, as I wrap up here, I just wanna make sure that what, where we’re going and we’re going together, that it’s simple and actionable between us and it’s easy for our field to understand. [00:34:00] Nina Harding: Where you play the value proposition you play so that we’re going into deals even more effectively together. Right? So you heard industry, sub-industry, persona level or horizontal. Put that in if, um. Figuring out what your superpower is, making sure that you’re trained, that there’s evidence around the success, and capturing that in ways, uh, that are critical to not only your business, but giving us the visibility of that success. [00:34:31] Nina Harding: Like scream from the rack rafters. Use these tools to make sure that we know just how transformational you’ve been in some of the customers and where you’re uniquely winning. So, so important. So keep investing in the skilling. You can see my kind of like five power plays, right? And the last one always being that superpowers. [00:34:56] Nina Harding: So with that, um, if we do all of these things consistently, you won’t just be keeping up with ai. I think we will all be leading on that AI mission. So thank you very much. I appreciate it. [00:35:14] 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.

The reception to our recent post on Code Reviews has been strong. Catch up!Amid a maelstrom of discussion on whether or not AI is killing SaaS, one of the top publicly listed SaaS companies in the world has just reported record revenues, clearing well over $1.1B in ARR for the first time with a 28% margin. As we comment on the pod, Aaron Levie is the rare public company CEO equally at home in both worlds of Silicon Valley and Wall Street/Main Street, by day helping 70% of the Fortune 500 with their Enterprise Advanced Suite, and yet by night is often found in the basements of early startups and tweeting viral insights about the future of agents.Now that both Cursor, Cloudflare, Perplexity, Anthropic and more have made Filesystems and Sandboxes and various forms of “Just Give the Agent a Box” cool (not just cool; it is now one of the single hottest areas in AI infrastructure growing 100% MoM), we find it a delightfully appropriate time to do the episode with the OG CEO who has been giving humans and computers Boxes since he was a college dropout pitching VCs at a Michael Arrington house party.Enjoy our special pod, with fan favorite returning guest/guest cohost Jeff Huber!Note: We didn't directly discuss the AI vs SaaS debate - Aaron has done many, many, many other podcasts on that, and you should read his definitive essay on it. Most commentators do not understand SaaS businesses because they have never scaled one themselves, and deeply reflected on what the true value proposition of SaaS is.We also discuss Your Company is a Filesystem:We also shoutout CTO Ben Kus' and the AI team, who talked about the technical architecture and will return for AIE WF 2026.Full Video EpisodeTimestamps* 00:00 Adapting Work for Agents* 01:29 Why Every Agent Needs a Box* 04:38 Agent Governance and Identity* 11:28 Why Coding Agents Took Off First* 21:42 Context Engineering and Search Limits* 31:29 Inside Agent Evals* 33:23 Industries and Datasets* 35:22 Building the Agent Team* 38:50 Read Write Agent Workflows* 41:54 Docs Graphs and Founder Mode* 55:38 Token FOMO Culture* 56:31 Production Function Secrets* 01:01:08 Film Roots to Box* 01:03:38 AI Future of Movies* 01:06:47 Media DevRel and EngineeringTranscriptAdapting Work for AgentsAaron Levie: Like you don't write code, you talk to an agent and it goes and does it for you, and you may be at best review it. That's even probably like, like largely not even what you're doing. What's happening is we are changing our work to make the agents effective. In that model, the agent didn't really adapt to how we work.We basically adapted to how the agent works. All of the economy has to go through that exact same evolution. Right now, it's a huge asset and an advantage for the teams that do it early and that are kinda wired into doing this ‘cause you'll see compounding returns. But that's just gonna take a while for most companies to actually go and get this deployed.swyx: Welcome to the Lane Space Pod. We're back in the chroma studio with uh, chroma, CEO, Jeff Hoover. Welcome returning guest now guest host.Aaron Levie: It's a pleasure. Wow. How'd you get upgraded to, uh, to that?swyx: Because he's like the perfect guy to be guest those for you.Aaron Levie: That makes sense actually, for We love context. We, we both really love context le we really do.We really do.swyx: Uh, and we're here with, uh, Aaron Levy. Welcome.Aaron Levie: Thank you. Good to, uh, good to be [00:01:00] here.swyx: Uh, yeah. So we've all met offline and like chatted a little bit, but like, it's always nice to get these things in person and conversation. Yeah. You just started off with so much energy. You're, you're super excited about agents.I loveAaron Levie: agents.swyx: Yeah. Open claw. Just got by, got bought by OpenAI. No, not bought, but you know, you know what I mean?Aaron Levie: Some, some, you know, acquihire. Executiveswyx: hire.Aaron Levie: Executive hire. Okay. Executive hire. Say,swyx: hey, that's my term. Okay. Um, what are you pounding the table on on agents? You have so many insightful tweets.Why Every Agent Needs a BoxAaron Levie: Well, the thing that, that we get super excited by that I think is probably, you know, should be relatively obvious is we've, we've built a platform to help enterprises manage their files and their, their corporate files and the permissions of who has access to those files and the sharing collaboration of those files.All of those files contain really, really important information for the enterprise. It might have your contracts, it might have your research materials, it might have marketing information, it might have your memos. All that data obviously has, you know, predominantly been used by humans. [00:02:00] But there's been one really interesting problem, which is that, you know, humans only really work with their files during an active engagement with them, and they kind of go away and you don't really see them for a long time.And all of a sudden, uh, with the power of AI and AI agents, all of that data becomes extremely relevant as this ongoing source of, of answers to new questions of data that will transform into, into something else that, that produces value in your organization. It, it contains the answer to the new employee that's onboarding, that needs to ramp up on a project.Um, it contains the answer to the right thing to sell a customer when you're having a conversation to them, with them contains the roadmap information that's gonna produce the next feature. So all that data. That previously we've been just sort of storing and, and you know, occasionally forgetting about, ‘cause we're only working on the new active stuff.All of that information becomes valuable to the enterprise and it's gonna become extremely valuable to end users because now they can have agents go find what they're looking for and produce new, new [00:03:00] value and new data on that information. And it's gonna become incredibly valuable to agents because agents can roam around and do a bunch of work and they're gonna need access to that data as well.And um, and you know, sometimes that will be an agent that is sort of working on behalf of, of, of you and, and effectively as you as and, and they are kind of accessing all of the same information that you have access to and, and operating as you in the system. And then sometimes there's gonna be agents that are just.Effectively autonomous and kind of run on their own and, and you're gonna collaborate and work with them kind of like you did another person. Open Claw being the most recent and maybe first real sort of, you know, kind of, you know, up updating everybody's, you know, views of this landscape version of, of what that could look like, which is, okay, I have an agent.It's on its own system, it's on its own computer, it has access to its own tools. I probably don't give it access to my entire life. I probably communicate with it like I would an assistant or a colleague and then it, it sort of has this sandbox environment. So all of that has massive implications for a platform that manage that [00:04:00] enterprise data.We think it's gonna just transform how we work with all of the enterprise content that we work with, and we just have to make sure we're building the right platform to support that.swyx: The sort of shorthand I put it is as people build agents, everybody's just realizing that every agent needs a box. Yes.And it's nice to be called box and just give everyone a box.Aaron Levie: Hey, I if I, you know, if we can make that go viral, uh, like I, I think that that terminology, I, that's theswyx: tagline. Every agentAaron Levie: needs a box. Every agent needs a box. If we can make that the headline of this, I'm fine with this. And that's the billboard I wanna like Yeah, exactly.Every agent needs a box. Um, I like it. Can we ship this? Like,swyx: okay, let's do it. Yeah.Aaron Levie: Uh, my work here is done and I got the value I needed outta this podcast Drinks.swyx: Yeah.Agent Governance and IdentityAaron Levie: But, but, um, but, but, you know, so the thing that we, we kind of think about is, um, is, you know, whether you think the number 10 x or a hundred x or whatever the number is, we're gonna have some order of magnitude more agents than people.That's inevitable. It has to happen. So then the question is, what is the infrastructure that's needed to make all those agents effective in the enterprise? Make sure that they are well governed. Make sure they're only doing [00:05:00] safe things on your information. Make sure that they're not getting exposed. The data that they shouldn't have access to.There's gonna be just incredibly spectacularly crazy security incidents that will happen with agents because you'll prompt, inject an agent and sort of find your way through the CRM system and pull out data that you shouldn't have access to. Oh, weJeff Huber: have God,Aaron Levie: right? I mean, that's just gonna happen all over the place, right?So, so then the thing is, is how do you make sure you have the right security, the permissions, the access controls, the data governance. Um, we actually don't yet exactly know in many cases how we're gonna regulate some of these agents, right? If you think about an agent in financial services, does it have the exact same financial sort of, uh, requirements that a human did?Or is it, is the risk fully on the human that was interacting or created the agent? All open questions, but no matter what, there's gonna need to be a layer that manages the, the data they have access to, the workflows that they're involved in, pulling up data from multiple systems. This is the new infrastructure opportunity in the era of agents.swyx: You have a piece on agent identities, [00:06:00] which I think was today, um, which I think a lot of breaking news, the security, security people are talking about, right? Like you basically, I, I always think of this as like, well you need the human you and then there you need the agent. YouAaron Levie: Yes.swyx: And uh, well, I don't know if it's that simple, but is box going to have an opinion on that or you're just gonna be like, well we're just the sort of the, the source layer.Yeah. Let's Okta of zero handle that.Aaron Levie: I think we're gonna have an opinion and we will work with generally wherever the contours of the market end up. Um, and the reason that we're gonna have an opinion more than other topics probably is because one of the biggest use cases for why your agent might need it, an identity is for file system access.So thus we have to kind of think about this pretty deeply. And I think, uh, unless you're like in our world thinking about this particular problem all day long, it might be, you know, like, why is this such a big deal? And the reason why it's a really big deal is because sometimes sort of say, well just give the agent an, an account on the system and it just treats, treat it like every other type of user on the system.The [00:07:00] problem is, is that I as Aaron don't really have any responsibility over anybody else's box account in our organization. I can't see the box account of any other employee that I work with. I am not liable for anything that they do. And they have, I have, I have, you know, strict privacy requirements on everything that they're able to, you know, that, that, that they work on.Agents don't have that, you know, don't have those properties. The person who creates the agent probably is gonna, for the foreseeable future, take on a lot of the liability of what that agent does. That agent doesn't deserve any privacy because, because it's, you know, it can't fully be autonomously operated and it doesn't have any legal, you know, kind of, you know, responsibility.So thus you can't just be like, oh, well I'll just create a bunch of accounts and then I'll, I'll kind of work with that agent and I'll talk to it occasionally. Like you need oversight of that. And so then the question is, how do you have a world where the agent, sometimes you have oversight of, but what if that agent goes and works with other people?That person over there is collaborating with the agent on something you shouldn't have [00:08:00] access to what they're doing. So we have all of these new boundaries that we're gonna have to figure out of, of, you know, it's really, really easy. So far we've been in, in easy mode. We've hit the easy button with ai, which is the agent just is you.And when you're in quad code and you're in cursor, and you're in Codex, you're just, the agent is you. You're offing into your services. It can do everything you can do. That's the easy mode. The hard mode is agents are kind of running on their own. People check in with them occasionally, they're doing things autonomously.How do you give them access to resources in the enterprise and not dramatically increased the security risk and the risk that you might expose the wrong thing to somebody. These are all the new problems that we have to get solved. I like the identity layer and, and identity vendors as being a solution to that, but we'll, we'll need some opinions as well because so many of the use cases are these collaborative file system use cases, which is how do I give it an agent, a subset of my data?Give it its own workspace as well. ‘cause it's gonna need to store off its own information that would be relevant for it. And how do I have the right oversight into that? [00:09:00]Jeff Huber: One thing, which, um, I think is kind interesting, think about is that you know, how humans work, right? Like I may not also just like give you access to the whole file.I might like sit next to you and like scroll to this like one part of the file and just show you that like one part and like, you know,swyx: partial file access.Jeff Huber: I'm just saying I think like our, like RA does seem to be dead, right? Like you wanna say something is dead uhhuh probably RA is dead. And uh, like the auth story to me seems like incredibly unsolved and unaddressed by like the existing state of like AI vendors.ButAaron Levie: yeah, I think, um, we're, I mean you're taking obviously really to level limit that we probably need to solve for. Yeah. And we built an access control system that was, was kind of like, you know, its own little world for, for a long time. And um, and the idea was this, it's a many to many collaboration system where I can give you any part of the file system.And it's a waterfall model. So if I give you higher up in the, in the, in the system, you get everything below. And that, that kind of created immense flexibility because I can kind of point you to any layer in the, in the tree, but then you're gonna get access to everything kind of below it. And that [00:10:00] mostly is, is working in this, in this world.But you do have to manage this issue, which is how do I create an agent that has access to some of my stuff and somebody else's stuff as well. Mm-hmm. And which parts do I get to look at as the creator of the agent? And, and these are just brand new problems? Yeah. Crazy. And humans, when there was a human there that was really easy to do.Like, like if the three of us were all sharing, there'd be a Venn diagram where we'd have an overlapping set of things we've shared, but then we'd have our own ways that we shared with each other. In an agent world, somebody needs to take responsibility for what that agent has access to and what they're working on.These are like the, some of the most probably, you know, boring problems for 98% of people on, on the internet, but they will be the problems that are the difference between can you actually have autonomous agents in an enterprise contextswyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: That are not leaking your data constantly.swyx: No. Like, I mean, you know, I run a very, very small company for my conference and like we already have data sensitivity issues.Yes. And some of my team members cannot see Yes. Uh, the others and like, I can't imagine what it's like to run a Fortune 500 and like, you have to [00:11:00] worry about this. I'm just kinda curious, like you, you talked to a lot like, like 70, 80% of your cus uh, of the Fortune 500, your customers.Aaron Levie: Yep. 67%. Just so we're being verySEswyx: precise.So Yeah. I'm notAaron Levie: Okay. Okay.swyx: Something I'm rounding up. Yes. Round up. I'm projecting to, forAaron Levie: the government.swyx: I'm projecting to the end of the year.Aaron Levie: Okay.swyx: There you go.Aaron Levie: You do make it sound like, like we, we, well we've gotta be on this. Like we're, we're taking way too long to get to 80%. Well,swyx: no, I mean, so like. How are they approaching it?Right? Because you're, you don't have a, you don't have a final answer yet.Why Coding Agents Took Off FirstAaron Levie: Well, okay, so, so this is actually, this is the stark reality that like, unfortunately is the kinda like pouring the water on the party a little bit.swyx: Yes.Aaron Levie: We all in Silicon Valley are like, have the absolute best conditions possible for AI ever.And I think we all saw the dke, you know, kind of Dario podcast and this idea of AI coding. Why is that taken off? And, and we're not yet fully seeing it everywhere else. Well, look, if you just like enumerated the list of properties that AI coding has and then compared it to other [00:12:00] knowledge work, let's just, let's just go through a few of them.Generally speaking, you bring on a new engineer, they have access to a large swath of the code base. Like, there's like very, like you, just, like new engineer comes on, they can just go and find the, the, the stuff that they, they need to work with. It's a fully text in text out. Medium. It's only, it's just gonna be text at the end of the day.So it's like really great from a, from just a, uh, you know, kinda what the agent can work with. Obviously the models are super trained on that dataset. The labs themselves have a really strong, kind of self-reinforcing positive flywheel of why they need to do, you know, agent coding deeply. So then you get just better tooling, better services.The actual developers of the AI are daily users of the, of the thing that they're we're working on versus like the, you know, probably there's only like seven Claude Cowork legal plugin users at Anthropic any given day, but there's like a couple thousand Claude code and you know, users every single day.So just like, think about which one are they getting more feedback on. All day long. So you just go through this list. You have a, you know, everybody who's a [00:13:00] developer by definition is technical so they can go install the latest thing. We're all generally online, or at least, you know, kinda the weird ones are, and we're all talking to each other, sharing best practices, like that's like already eight differences.Versus the rest of the economy. Every other part of the economy has like, like six to seven headwinds relative to that list. You go into a company, you're a banker in financial services, you have access to like a, a tiny little subset of the total data that's gonna be relevant to do your job. And you're have to start to go and talk to a bunch of people to get the right data to do your job because Sally didn't add you to that deal room, you know, folder.And that that, you know, the information is actually in a completely different organization that you now have to go in and, and sort of run into. And it's like you have this endless list of access controls and security. As, as you talked about, you have a medium, which is not, it's not just text, right? You have, you have a zoom call that, that you're getting all of the requirements from the customer.You have a lot of in-person conversations and you're doing in-person sales and like how do you ever [00:14:00] digitize all of that information? Um, you know, I think a lot of people got upset with this idea that the code base has all the context, um, that I don't know if you follow, you know, did you follow some of that conversation that that went viral?Is like, you know, it's not that simple that, that the code base doesn't have all the knowledge, but like it's a lot, you're a lot better off than you are with other areas of knowledge work. Like you, we like, we like have documentation practices, you write specifications. Those things don't exist for like 80% of work that happens in the enterprise.That's the divide that we have, which is, which is AI coding has, has just fully, you know, where we've reached escape velocity of how powerful this stuff is, and then we're gonna have to find a way to bring that same energy and momentum, but to all these other areas of knowledge work. Where the tools aren't there, the data's not set up to be there.The access controls don't make it that easy. The context engineering is an incredibly hard problem because again, you have access control challenges, you have different data formats. You have end users that are gonna need to kind of be kind of trained through this as opposed to their adopting [00:15:00] these tools in their free time.That's where the Fortune 500 is. And so we, I think, you know, have to be prepared as an industry where we are gonna be on a multi-year march to, to be able to bring agents to the enterprise for these workflows. And I think probably the, the thing that we've learned most in coding that, that the rest of the world is not yet, I think ready for, I mean, we're, they'll, they'll have to be ready for it because it's just gonna inevitably happen is I think in coding.What, what's interesting is if you think about the practice of coding today versus two years ago. It's probably the most changed workflow in maybe the history of time from the amount of time it's changed, right? Yeah. Like, like has any, has any workflow in the entire economy changed that quickly in terms of the amount of change?I just, you know, at least in any knowledge worker workflow, there's like very rarely been an event where one piece of technology and work practice has so fundamentally, you know, changed, changed what you do. Like you don't write code, you talk to an agent and it goes and [00:16:00] does it for you, and you may be at best review it.And even that's even probably like, like largely not even what you're doing. What's happening is we are changing our work to make the agents effective. In that model, the agent didn't really adapt to how we work. We basically adapted to how the agent works. Mm-hmm. All of the economy has to go through that exact same evolution.The rest of the economy is gonna have to update its workflows to make agents effective. And to give agents the context that they need and to actually figure out what kind of prompting works and to figure out how do you ensure that the agent has the right access to information to be able to execute on its work.I, you know, this is not the panacea that people were hoping for, of the agent drops in, just automates your life. Like you have to basically re-engineer your workflow to get the most out of agents and, uh, and that, that's just gonna take, you know, multiple years across the economy. Right now it's a huge asset and an advantage for the teams that do it early and that are kinda wired into doing this.‘cause [00:17:00] you'll see compounding returns, but that's just gonna take a while for most companies to actually go and get this deployed.swyx: I love, I love pushing back. I think that. That is what a lot of technology consultants love to hear this sort of thing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. First to, to embrace the ai. Yes. To get to the promised land, you must pay me so much money to a hundred percent to adopt the prescribed way of, uh, conforming to the agents.Yes. And I worry that you will be eclipsed by someone else who says, no, come as you are.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: And we'll meet you where you are.Aaron Levie: And, and, and and what was the thing that went viral a week ago? OpenAI probably, uh, is hiring F Dees. Yeah. Uh, to go into the enterprise. Yeah. Yeah. And then philanthropic is embedded at Goldman Sachs.Yeah. So if the labs are having to do this, if, if the labs have decided that they need to hire FDE and professional services, then I think that's a pretty clear indication that this, there's no easy mode of workflow transformation. Yeah. Yeah. So, so to your point, I think actually this is a market opportunity for, you know, new professional services and consulting [00:18:00] firms that are like Agent Build and they, and they kind of, you know, go into organizations and they figure out how to re-engineer your workflows to make them more agent ready and get your data into the right format and, you know, reconstruct your business process.So you're, you're not doing most of the work. You're telling agents how to do the work and then you're reviewing it. But I haven't seen the thing that can just drop in and, and kinda let you not go through those changes.swyx: I don't know how that kind of sales pitch goes over. Yeah. You know, you're, you're saying things like, well, in my sort of nice beautiful walled garden, here's, there's, uh, because here's this, here's this beautiful box account that has everything.Yes. And I'm like, well, most, most real life is extremely messy. Sure. And like, poorly named and there duplicate this outdated s**tAaron Levie: a hundred percent. And so No, no, a hundred percent. And so this is actually No. So, so this is, I mean, we agree that, that getting to the beautiful garden is gonna be tough.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: There's also the other end of the spectrum where I, I just like, it's a technical impossibility to solve. The agent is, is truly cannot get enough context to make the right decision in, in the, in the incredibly messy land. Like there's [00:19:00] no a GI that will solve that. So, so we're gonna have to kind of land in somewhere in between, which is like we all collectively get better at.Documentation practices and, and having authoritative relatively up-to-date information and putting it in the right place like agents will, will certainly cause us to be much better organized around how we work with our information, simply because the severity of the agent pulling the wrong data will be too high and the productivity gain of that you'll miss out on by not doing this will be too high as well, that you, that your competition will just do it and they'll just have higher velocity.So, uh, and, and we, we see this a lot firsthand. So we, we build a series of agents internally that they can kind of have access to your full box account and go off and you give it a task and it can go find whatever information you're looking for and work with. And, you know, thank God for the model progress, but like, if, if you gave that task to an agent.Nine months ago, you're just gonna get lots of bogus answers because it's gonna, it's gonna say, Hey, here's, here are fi [00:20:00] five, you know, documents that all kind of smell like the right thing. And I'm gonna, but I, but you're, you're putting me on the clock. ‘cause my assistant prompt says like, you know, be pretty smart, but also try and respond to the user and it's gonna respond.And it's like, ah, it got the wrong document. And then you do that once or twice as a knowledge worker and you're just neverswyx: again,Aaron Levie: never again. You're just like done with the system.swyx: Yeah. It doesn't work.Aaron Levie: It doesn't work. And so, you know, Opus four six and Gemini three one Pro and you know, whatever the latest five 3G BT will be, like, those things are getting better and better and it's using better judgment.And this sort of like the, all of these updates to the agentic tool and search systems are, are, we're seeing, we're seeing very real progress where the agent. Kind of can, can almost smell some things a little bit fishy when it's getting, you know, we, we have this process where we, we have it go fan out, do a bunch of searches, pull up a bunch of data, and then it has to sort of do its own ranking of, you know, what are the right documents that, that it should be working with.And again, like, you know, the intelligence level of a model six months ago, [00:21:00] it'd be just throwing a dart at like, I'm just, I'm gonna grab these seven files and I, I pray, I hope that that's the right answer. And something like an opus first four five, and now four six is like, oh, it's like, no, that one doesn't seem right relative to this question because I'm seeing some signal that is making that, you know, that's contradicting the document where it would normally be in the tree and who should have access.Like it's doing all of that kind of work for you. But like, it still doesn't work if you just have a total wasteland of data. Like, it's just not, it's just not possible. Partly ‘cause a human wouldn't even be able to do it. So basically if a, if a really, really smart human. Could not do that task in five or 10 minutes for a search retrieval type task.Look, you know, your agent's not gonna be able to do it any better. You see this all day long. SoContext Engineering and Search Limitsswyx: this touches on a thing that just passionate about it was just context engineering. I, I'm just gonna let you ramble or riff on, on context engineering. If, if, if there's anything like he, he did really good work on context fraud, which has really taken over as like the term that people use and the referenceAaron Levie: a hundred percent.We, we all we think about is, is the context rob problem. [00:22:00]Jeff Huber: Yeah, there's certainly a lot of like ranking considerations. Gentech surgery think is incredibly promising. Um, yeah, I was trying to generate a question though. I think I have a question right now. Swyx.Aaron Levie: Yeah, no, but like, like I think there was this moment, um, you know, like, I don't know, two years ago before, before we knew like where the, the gotchas were gonna be in ai and I think someone was like, was like, well, infinite context windows will just solve all of these problems and ‘cause you'll just, you'll just give the context window like all the data and.It's just like, okay, I mean, maybe in 2035, like this is a viable solution. First of all, it, it would just, it would just simply cost too much. Like we just can't give the model like the 5,000 documents that might be relevant and it's gonna read them all. And I've seen enough to, to start believing in crazy stuff.So like, I'm willing to just say, sure. Like in, in 10 years from now,swyx: never say, never, never.Aaron Levie: In, in 10 years from now, we'll have infinite context windows at, at a thousandth of the price of today. Like, let's just like believe that that's possible, but Right. We're in reality today. So today we have a context engineering [00:23:00] problem, which is, I got, I got, you know, 200,000 tokens that I can work with, or prob, I don't even know what the latest graph is before, like massive degradation.16. Okay. I have 60,000 tokens that I get to work with where I'm gonna get accurate information. That's not a lot of tokens for a corpus of 10 million documents that a knowledge worker might have across all of the teams and all the projects and all the people they work with. I have, I have 10 million documents.Which, you know, maybe is times five pages per document or something like that. I'm at 50 million pages of information and I have 60,000 tokens. Like, holy s**t. Yeah. This is like, how do I bridge the 50 million pages of information with, you know, the couple hundred that I get to work with in that, in that token window.Yeah. This is like, this is like such an interesting problem and that's why actually so much work is actually like, just like search systems and the databases and that layer has to just get so locked in, but models getting better and importantly [00:24:00] knowing when they've done a search, they found the wrong thing, they go back, they check their work, they, they find a way to balance sort of appeasing the user versus double checking.We have this one, we have this one test case where we ask the agent to go find. 10 pieces of information.swyx: Is this the complex work eval?Aaron Levie: Uh, this is actually not in the eval. This is, this is sort of just like we have a bunch of different, we have a bunch of internal benchmark kind of scenarios. Every time we, we update our agent, we have one, which is, I ask it to find all of our office addresses, and I give it the list of 10 offices that we have.And there's not one document that has this, maybe there should be, that would be a great example of the kind of thing that like maybe over time companies start to, you know, have these sort of like, what are the canonical, you know, kind of key areas of knowledge that we need to have. We don't seem to have this one document that says, here are all of our offices.We have a bunch of documents that have like, here's the New York office and whatever. So you task this agent and you, you get, you say, I need the addresses for these 10 offices. Okay. And by the way, if you do this on any, you know, [00:25:00] public chat model, the same outcome is gonna happen. But for a different kind of query, you give it, you say, I need these 10 addresses.How many times should the agent go and do its search before it decides whether or not, there's just no answer to this question. Often, and especially the, the, let's say lower tier models, it'll come back and it'll give you six of the 10 addresses. And it'll, and I'll just say I couldn't find the otherswyx: four.It, it doesn't know what It doesn't know. ItAaron Levie: doesn't know what It doesn't know. Yeah. So the model is just like, like when should it stop? When should it stop doing? Like should it, should it do that task for literally an hour and just keep cranking through? Maybe I actually made up an office location and it doesn't know that I made it up and I didn't even know that I made it up.Like, should it just keep, re should it read every single file in your entire box account until it, until it should exhaust every single piece of information.swyx: Expensive.Aaron Levie: These are the new problems that we have. So, you know, something like, let's say a new opus model is sort of like, okay, I'm gonna try these types of queries.I didn't get exactly what I wanted. I'm gonna try again. I'm gonna, at [00:26:00] some point I'm gonna stop searching. ‘cause I've determined that that no amount of searching is gonna solve this problem. I'm just not able to do it. And that judgment is like a really new thing that the model needs to be able to have.It's like, when should it give up on a task? ‘cause, ‘cause you just don't, it's a can't find the thing. That's the real world of knowledge, work problems. And this is the stuff that the coding agents don't have to deal with. Because they, it just doesn't like, like you're not usually asking it about, you're, you're always creating net new information coming right outta the model for the most part.Obviously it has to know about your code base and your specs and your documentation, but, but when you deploy an agent on all of your data that now you have all of these new problems that you're dealing withJeff Huber: our, uh, follow follow-up research to context ride is actually on a genetic search. Ah. Um, and we've like right, sort of stress tested like frontier models and their ability to search.Um, and they're not actually that good at searching. Right. Uh, so you're sort of highlighting this like explore, exploit.swyx: You're just say, Debbie, Donna say everything doesn't work. Like,Aaron Levie: well,Jeff Huber: somebody has to be,Aaron Levie: um, can I just throw out one more thing? Yeah. That is different from coding and, and the rest [00:27:00] of the knowledge work that I, I failed to mention.So one other kind of key point is, is that, you know, at the end of the day. Whether you believe we're in a slop apocalypse or, or whatever. At the end of the day, if you, if you build a working product at the end of, if you, if you've built a working solution that is ultimately what the customer is paying for, like whether I have a lot of slop, a little slop or whatever, I'm sure there's lots of code bases we could go into in enterprise software companies where it's like just crazy slop that humans did over a 20 year period, but the end customer just gets this little interface.They can, they can type into it, it does its thing. Knowledge work, uh, doesn't have that property. If I have an AI model, go generate a contract and I generate a contract 20 times and, you know, all 20 times it's just 3% different and like that I, that, that kind of lop introduces all new kinds of risk for my organization that the code version of that LOP didn't, didn't introduce.These are, and so like, so how do you constrain these models to just the part that you want [00:28:00] them to work on and just do the thing that you want them to do? And, and, you know, in engineering, we don't, you can't be disbarred as an engineer, but you could be disbarred as a lawyer. Like you can do the wrong medical thing In healthcare, you, there's no, there's no equivalent to that of engineering.Like, doswyx: you want there to be, because I've considered softwareJeff Huber: engineer. What's that? Civil engineering there is, right? NotAaron Levie: software civil engineer. Sure. Oh yeah, for sure. But like in any of our companies, you like, you know, you'll be forgiven if you took down the site and, and we, we will do a rollback and you'll, you'll be in a meeting, but you have not been disbarred as an engineer.We don't, we don't change your, you know, your computer science, uh, blameJeff Huber: degree, this postmortem.Aaron Levie: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, so, uh, now maybe we collectively as an industry need to figure out like, what are you liable for? Not legally, but like in a, in a management sense, uh, of these agents. All sorts of interesting problems that, that, that, uh, that have to come out.But in knowledge work, that's the real hostile environments that we're operating in. Hmm.swyx: I do think like, uh, a lot of the last year's, 2025 story was the rise of coding agents and I think [00:29:00] 2026 story is definitely knowledge work agents. Yes. A hundredAaron Levie: percent.swyx: Right. Like that would, and I think open claw core work are just the beginning.Yes. Like it's, the next one's gonna just gonna be absolute craziness.Aaron Levie: It it is. And, and, uh, and it's gonna be, I mean, again, like this is gonna be this, this wave where we, we are gonna try and bring as many of the practices from coding because that, that will clearly be the forefront, which is tell an agent to go do something and has an access to a set of resources.You need to be responsible for reviewing it at the end of the process. That to me is the, is the kind of template that I just think goes across knowledge, work and odd. Cowork is a great example. Open Closet's a great example. You can kind of, sort of see what Codex could become over time. These are some, some really interesting kind of platforms that are emerging.swyx: Okay. Um, I wanted to, we touched on evals a little bit. You had, you had the report that you're gonna go bring up and then I was gonna go into like, uh, boxes, evals, but uh, go ahead. Talk about your genetic search thing.Jeff Huber: Yeah. Mostly I think kinda a few of the insights. It's like number one frontier model is not good at search.Humans have this [00:30:00] natural explore, exploit trade off where we kinda understand like when to stop doing something. Also, humans are pretty good at like forgetting actually, and like pruning their own context, whereas agents are not, and actually an agent in their kind of context history, if they knew something was bad and they even, you could see in the trace the reason you trace, Hey, that probably wasn't a good idea.If it's still in the trace, still in the context, they'll still do it again. Uhhuh. Uh, and so like, I think pruning is also gonna be like, really, it's already becoming a thing, right? But like, letting self prune the con windowsswyx: be a big deal. Yeah. So, so don't leave the mistake. Don't leave the mistake in there.Cut out the mistake but tell it that you made a mistake in the past and so it doesn't repeat it.Jeff Huber: Yeah. But like cut it out so it doesn't get like distracted by it again. ‘cause really, you know, what is so, so it will repeat its mistake just because it's been, it's inswyx: theJeff Huber: context. It'sAaron Levie: in the context so much.That's a few shot example. Even if it, yeah.Jeff Huber: It's like oh thisAaron Levie: is a great thing to go try even ifJeff Huber: it didn't work.Aaron Levie: Yeah,Jeff Huber: exactly.Aaron Levie: SoJeff Huber: there's like a bunch of stuff there. JustAaron Levie: Groundhogs Day inside these models. Yeah. I'm gonna go keep doing the same wrongJeff Huber: thing. Covering sense. I feel like, you know, some creator analogy you're trying like fit a manifold in latent space, which kind is doing break program synthesis, which is kinda one we think about we're doing right.Like, you know, certain [00:31:00] facts might be like sort of overly pitting it. There are certain, you know, sec sectors of latent space and so like plug clean space. Yeah. And, uh, andswyx: so we have a bell, our editor as a bell every time you say that. SoJeff Huber: you have, you have to like remove those, likeswyx: you shoulda a gong like TPN or something.IfJeff Huber: we gong, you either remove those links to like kinda give it the freedom, kind of do what you need to do. So, but yeah. We'll, we'll release more soon. That'sAaron Levie: awesome.Jeff Huber: That'll, that'll be cool.swyx: We're a cerebral podcast that people listen to us and, and sort of think really deep. So yeah, we try to keep it subtle.Okay. We try to keep it.Aaron Levie: Okay, fine.Inside Agent Evalsswyx: Um, you, you guys do, you guys do have EVs, you talked about your, your office thing, but, uh, you've been also promoting APEX agents and complex work. Uh, yeah, whatever you, wherever you wanna take this just Yeah. How youAaron Levie: Apex is, is obviously me, core's, uh, uh, kind of, um, agent eval.We, we supported that by sort of. Opening up some data for them around how we kind of see these, um, data workspaces in, in the, you know, kind of regular economy. So how do lawyers have a workspace? How do investment bankers have a workspace? What kind of data goes into those? And so we, [00:32:00] we partner with them on their, their apex eval.Our own, um, eval is, it's actually relatively straightforward. We have a, a set of, of documents in a, in a range of industries. We give the agent previously did this as a one shot test of just purely the model. And then we just realized we, we need to, based on where everything's going, it's just gotta be more agentic.So now it's a bit more of a test of both our harness and the model. And we have a rubric of a set of things that has to get right and we score it. Um, and you're just seeing, you know, these incredible jumps in almost every single model in its own family of, you know, opus four, um, you know, sonnet four six versus sonnet four five.swyx: Yeah. We have this up on screen.Aaron Levie: Okay, cool. So some, you're seeing it somewhere like. I, I forget the to, it was like 15 point jump, I think on the main, on the overall,swyx: yes.Aaron Levie: And it's just like, you know, these incredible leaps that, that are starting to happen. Um,swyx: and OP doesn't know any, like any, it's completely held out from op.Aaron Levie: This is not in any, there's no public data which has, you know, Ben benefits and this is just a private eval that we [00:33:00] do, and then we just happen to show it to, to the world. Hmm. So you can't, you can't train against it. And I think it's just as representative of. It's obviously reasoning capabilities, what it's doing at, at, you know, kind of test time, compute capabilities, thinking levels, all like the context rot issues.So many interesting, you know, kind of, uh, uh, capabilities that are, that are now improvingswyx: one sector that you have. That's interesting.Industries and Datasetsswyx: Uh, people are roughly familiar with healthcare and legal, but you have public sector in there.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: Uh, what's that? Like, what, what, what is that?Aaron Levie: Yeah, and, and we actually test against, I dunno, maybe 10 industries.We, we end up usually just cutting a few that we think have interesting gains. All extras, won a lot of like government type documents. Um,swyx: what is that? What is it? Government type documents?Aaron Levie: Government filings. Like a taxswyx: return, likeAaron Levie: a probably not tax returns. It would be more of what would go the government be using, uh, as data.So, okay. Um, so think about research that, that type of, of, of data sets. And then we have financial services for things like data rooms and what would be in an investment prospectus. Uhhuh,swyx: that one you can dog food.Aaron Levie: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yes. Yes. [00:34:00] So, uh, so we, we run the models, um, in now, you know, more of an agent mode, but, but still with, with kinda limited capacity and just try and see like on a, like, for like basis, what are the improvements?And, and again, we just continue to be blown away by. How, how good these models are getting.swyx: Yeah, I mean, I think every serious AI company needs something like that where like, well, this is the work we do. Here's our company eval. Yeah. And if you don't have it, well, you're not a serious AI company.Aaron Levie: There's two dimensions, right?So there's, there's like, how are the models improving? And so which models should you either recommend a customer use, which one should you adopt? But then every single day, we're making changes to our agents. And you need to knowswyx: if you regressed,Aaron Levie: if you know. Yeah. You know, I've been fully convinced that the whole agent observability and eval space is gonna be a massive space.Um, super excited for what Braintrust is doing, excited for, you know, Lang Smith, all the things. And I think what you're going to, I mean, this is like every enter like literally every enterprise right now. It's like the AI companies are the customers of these tools. Every enterprise will have this. Yeah, you'll just [00:35:00] have to have an eval.Of all of your work and like, we'll, you'll have an eval of your RFP generation, you'll have an eval of your sales material creation. You'll have an eval of your, uh, invoice processing. And, and as you, you know, buy or use new agentic systems, you are gonna need to know like, what's the quality of your, of your pipeline.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: Um, so huge, huge market with agent evals.swyx: Yeah.Building the Agent Teamswyx: And, and you know, I'm gonna shout out your, your team a bit, uh, your CTO, Ben, uh, did a great talk with us last year. Awesome. And he's gonna come back again. Oh, cool. For World's Fair.Aaron Levie: Yep.swyx: Just talk about your team, like brag a little bit. I think I, I think people take these eval numbers in pretty charts for granted, but No, there, I mean, there's, there's lots of really smart people at work during all this.Aaron Levie: Biggest shout out, uh, is we have a, we have a couple folks at Dya, uh, Sidarth, uh, that, that kind of run this. They're like a, you know, kind of tag tag team duo on our evals, Ben, our CTO, heavily involved Yasha, head of ai, uh, you know, a bunch of folks. And, um, evals is one part of the story. And then just like the full, you know, kind of AI.An agent team [00:36:00] is, uh, is a, is a pretty, you know, is core to this whole effort. So there's probably, I don't know, like maybe a few dozen people that are like the epicenter. And then you just have like layers and layers of, of kind of concentric circles of okay, then there's a search team that supports them and an infrastructure team that supports them.And it's starting to ripple through the entire company. But there's that kind of core agent team, um, that's a pretty, pretty close, uh, close knit group.swyx: The search team is separate from the infra team.Aaron Levie: I mean, we have like every, every layer of the stack we have to kind of do, except for just pure public cloud.Um, but um, you know, we, we store, I don't even know what our public numbers are in, you know, but like, you can just think about it as like a lot of data is, is stored in box. And so we have, and you have every layer of the, of the stack of, you know, how do you manage the data, the file system, the metadata system, the search system, just all of those components.And then they all are having to understand that now you've got this new customer. Which is the agent, and they've been building for two types of customers in the past. They've been building for users and they've been building for like applications. [00:37:00] And now you've got this new agent user, and it comes in with a difference of it, of property sometimes, like, hey, maybe sometimes we should do embeddings, an embedding based, you know, kind of search versus, you know, your, your typical semantic search.Like, it's just like you have to build the, the capabilities to support all of this. And we're testing stuff, throwing things away, something doesn't work and, and not relevant. It's like just, you know, total chaos. But all of those teams are supporting the agent team that is kind of coming up with its requirements of what, what do we need?swyx: Yeah. No, uh, we just came from, uh, fireside chat where you did, and you, you talked about how you're doing this. It's, it's kind of like an internal startup. Yeah. Within the broader company. The broader company's like 3000 people. Yeah. But you know, there's, there's a, this is a core team of like, well, here's the innovation center.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: And like that every company kind of is run this way.Aaron Levie: Yeah. I wanna be sensitive. I don't call it the innovation center. Yeah. Only because I think everybody has to do innovation. Um, there, there's a part of the, the, the company that is, is sort of do or die for the agent wave.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: And it only happens to be more of my focus simply because it's existential that [00:38:00] we get it right.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: All of the supporting systems are necessary. All of the surrounding adjacent capabilities are necessary. Like the only reason we get to be a platform where you'd run an agent is because we have a security feature or a compliance feature, or a governance feature that, that some team is working on.But that's not gonna be the make or break of, of whether we get agents right. Like that already exists and we need to keep innovating there. I don't know what the right, exact precise number is, but it's not a thousand people and it's not 10 people. There's a number of people that are like the, the kind of like, you know, startup within the company that are the make or break on everything related to AI agents, you know, leveraging our platform and letting you work with your data.And that's where I spend a lot of my time, and Ben and Yosh and Diego and Teri, you know, these are just, you know, people that, that, you know, kind of across the team. Are working.swyx: Yeah. Amazing.Read Write Agent WorkflowsJeff Huber: How do you, how do you think about, I mean, you talked a lot about like kinda read workflows over your box data. Yep.Right. You know, gen search questions, queries, et cetera. But like, what about like, write or like authoring workflows?Aaron Levie: Yes. I've [00:39:00] already probably revealed too much actually now that I think about it. So, um, I've talked about whatever,Jeff Huber: whatever you can.Aaron Levie: Okay. It's just us. It's just us. Yeah. Okay. Of course, of course.So I, I guess I would just, uh, I'll make it a little bit conceptual, uh, because again, I've already, I've already said things that are not even ga but, but we've, we've kinda like danced around it publicly, so I, yeah, yeah. Okay. Just like, hopefully nobody watches this, um, episode. No.swyx: It's tidbits for the Heidi engaged to go figure out like what exactly, um, you know, is, is your sort of line of thinking.Sure. They can connect the dots.Aaron Levie: Yeah. So, so I would say that, that, uh, we, you know, as a, as a place where you have your enterprise content, there's a use case where I want to, you know, have an agent read that data and answer questions for me. And then there's a use case where I want the agent to create something.And use the file system to create something or store off data that it's working on, or be able to have, you know, various files that it's writing to about the work it's doing. So we do see it as a total read write. The harder problem has so far been the read only because, because again, you have that kind of like 10 [00:40:00] million to one ratio problem, whereas rights are a lot of, that's just gonna come from the model and, and we just like, we'll just put it in the file system and kinda use it.So it's a little bit of a technically easier problem, but the only part that's like, not necessarily technically hard, it is just like it's not yet perfected in the state of the ecosystem is, you know, building a beautiful PowerPoint presentation. It's still a hard problem for these models. Like, like we still, you know, like, like these formats are just, we're not built for.They'reswyx: working on it.Aaron Levie: They're, they're working on it. Everybody's working on it.swyx: Every launch is like, well, we do PowerPoint now.Aaron Levie: We're getting, yeah, getting a lot, getting a lot of better each time. But then you'll do this thing where you'll ask the update one slide and all of a sudden, like the fonts will be just like a little bit different, you know, on two of the slides, or it moved, you know, some shape over to the left a little bit.And again, these are the kind of things that, like in code, obviously you could really care about if you really care about, you know, how beautiful is the code, but at the end, user doesn't notice all those problems and file creation, the end user instantly sees it. You're [00:41:00] like, ah, like paragraph three, like, you literally just changed the font on me.Like it's a totally different font and like midway through the document. Mm-hmm. Those are the kind of things that you run into a lot of in the, in the content creation side. So, mm-hmm. We are gonna have native agents. That do all of those things, they'll be powered by the leading kind of models and labs.But the thing that I think is, is probably gonna be a much bigger idea over time is any agent on any system, again, using Box as a file system for its work, and in that kind of scenario, we don't necessarily care what it's putting in the file system. It could put its memory files, it could put its, you know, specification, you know, documents.It could put, you know, whatever its markdown files are, or it could, you know, generate PDFs. It's just like, it's a workspace that is, is sort of sandboxed off for its work. People can collaborate into it, it can share with other people. And, and so we, we were thinking a lot about what's the right, you know, kind of way to, to deliver that at scale.Docs Graphs and Founder Modeswyx: I wanted to come into sort of the sort of AI transformation or AI sort of, uh, operations things. [00:42:00] Um, one of the tweets that you, that you wanted to talk about, this is just me going through your tweets, by the way. Oh, okay. I mean, like, this is, you readAaron Levie: one by one,swyx: you're the, you're the easiest guest to prep for because you, you already have like, this is the, this is what I'm interested in.I'm like, okay, well, areAaron Levie: we gonna get to like, like February, January or something? Where are we in the, in the timelines? How far back are we going?swyx: Can you, can you describe boxes? A set of skills? Right? Like that, that's like, that's like one of the extremes of like, well if you, you just turn everything into a markdown file.Yeah. Then your agent can run your company. Uh, like you just have to write, find the right sequence of words toAaron Levie: Yes.swyx: To do it.Aaron Levie: Sorry, isthatswyx: the question? So I think the question is like, what if we documented everything? Yes. The way that you exactly said like,Aaron Levie: yes.swyx: Um, let's get all the Fortune five hundreds, uh, prepared for agents.Yes. And like, you know, everything's in golden and, and nicely filed away and everything. Yes. What's missing? Like, what's left, right? LikeAaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: You've, you've run your company for a decade. LikeAaron Levie: Yeah. I think the challenge is that, that that information changes a week later. And because something happened in the market for that [00:43:00] customer, or us as a company that now has to go get updated, and so these systems are living and breathing and they have to experience reality and updates to reality, which right now is probably gonna be humans, you know, kinda giving those, giving them the updates.And, you know, there is this piece about context graphs as as, uh, that kinda went very viral. Yeah. And I, I, I was like a, i, I, I thought it was super provocative. I agreed with many parts of it. I disagree with a few parts around. You know, it's not gonna be as easy as as just if we just had the agent traces, then we can finally do that work because there's just like, there's so much more other stuff that that's happening that, that we haven't been able to capture and digitize.And I think they actually represented that in the piece to be clear. But like there's just a lot of work, you know, that that has to, you just can't have only skills files, you know, for your company because it's just gonna be like, there's gonna be a lot of other stuff that happens. Yeah. Change over time.Yeah. Most companies are practically apprenticeships.swyx: Most companies are practically apprenticeships. LikeJeff Huber: every new employee who joins the team, [00:44:00] like you span one to three months. Like ramping them up.Aaron Levie: Yes. AllJeff Huber: that tat knowledgeAaron Levie: isJeff Huber: not written down.Aaron Levie: Yes.Jeff Huber: But like, it would have to be if you wanted to like give it to an Asian.Right. And so like that seems to me like to beAaron Levie: one is I think you're gonna see again a premium on companies that can document this. Mm-hmm. Much. There'll be a huge premium on that because, because you know, can you shorten that three month ramp cycle to a two week ramp cycle? That's an instant productivity gain.Can you re dramatically reduce rework in the organization because you've documented where all the stuff is and where the answers are. Can you make your average employee as good as your 90th percentile employee because you've captured the knowledge that's sort of in the heads of, of those top employees and make that available.So like you can see some very clear productivity benefits. Mm-hmm. If you had a company culture of making sure you know your information was captured, digitized, put in a format that was agent ready and then made available to agents to work with, and then you just, again, have this reality of like add a 10,000 person [00:45:00] company.Mapping that to the, you know, access structure of the company is just a hard problem. Is like, is like, yeah, well, you just, not every piece of information that's digitized can be shared to everybody. And so now you have to organize that in a way that actually works. There was a pretty good piece, um, this, this, uh, this piece called your company as a file is a file system.I, did you see that one?swyx: Nope.Aaron Levie: Uh, yes. You saw it. Yeah. And, and, uh, I actually be curious your thoughts on it. Um, like, like an interesting kind of like, we, we agree with it because, because that's how we see the world and, uh,swyx: okay. We, we have it up on screen. Oh,Aaron Levie: okay. Yeah. But, but it's all about basically like, you know, we've already, we, we, we already organized in this kind of like, you know, permission structure way.Uh, and, and these are the kind of, you know, natural ways that, that agents can now work with data. So it's kind of like this, this, you know, kind of interesting metaphor, but I do think companies will have to start to think about how they start to digitize more, more of that data. What was your take?Jeff Huber: Yeah, I mean, like the company's probably like an acid compliant file system.Aaron Levie: Uh,Jeff Huber: yeah. Which I'm guessing boxes, right? So, yeah. Yes.swyx: Yeah. [00:46:00]Jeff Huber: Which you have a great piece on, but,swyx: uh, yeah. Well, uh, I, I, my, my, my direction is a little bit like, I wanna rewind a little bit to the graph word you said that there, that's a magic trigger word for us. I always ask what's your take on knowledge graphs?Yeah. Uh, ‘cause every, especially at every data database person, I just wanna see what they think. There's been knowledge graphs, hype cycles, and you've seen it all. So.Aaron Levie: Hmm. I actually am not the expert in knowledge graphs, so, so that you might need toswyx: research, you don't need to be an expert. Yeah. I think it's just like, well, how, how seriously do people take it?Yeah. Like, is is, is there a lot of potential in the, in the HOVI?Aaron Levie: Uh, well, can I, can I, uh, understand first if it's, um, is this a loaded question in the sense of are you super pro, super con, super anti medium? Iswyx: see pro, I see pros and cons. Okay. Uh, but I, I think your opinion should be independent of mine.Aaron Levie: Yeah. No, no, totally. Yeah. I just want to see what I'm stepping into.swyx: No, I know. It's a, and it's a huge trigger word for a lot of people out Yeah. In our audience. And they're, they're trying to figure out why is that? Because whyAaron Levie: is this such aswyx: hot item for them? Because a lot of people get graph religion.And they're like, everything's a graph. Of course you have to represent it as a graph. Well, [00:47:00] how do you solve your knowledge? Um, changing over time? Well, it's a graph.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: And, and I think there, there's that line of work and then there's, there's a lot of people who are like, well, you don't need it. And both are right.Aaron Levie: Yeah. And what do the people who say you don't need it, what are theyswyx: arguing for Mark down files. Oh, sure, sure. Simplicity.Aaron Levie: Yeah.swyx: Versus it's, it's structure versus less structure. Right. That's, that's all what it is. I do.Aaron Levie: I think the tricky thing is, um, is, is again, when this gets met with real humans, they're just going to their computer.They're just working with some people on Slack or teams. They're just sharing some data through a collaborative file system and Google Docs or Box or whatever. I certainly like the vision of most, most knowledge graph, you know, kind of futuristic kind of ways of thinking about it. Uh, it's just like, you know, it's 2026.We haven't seen it yet. Kind of play out as as, I mean, I remember. Do you remember the, um, in like, actually I don't, I don't even know how old you guys are, but I'll for, for to show my age. I remember 17 years ago, everybody thought enterprises would just run on [00:48:00] Wikis. Yeah. And, uh, confluence and, and not even, I mean, confluence actually took off for engineering for sure.Like unquestionably. But like, this was like everything would be in the w. And I think based on our, uh, our, uh, general style of, of, of what we were building, like we were just like, I don't know, people just like wanna workspace. They're gonna collaborate with other people.swyx: Exactly. Yeah. So you were, you were anti-knowledge graph.Aaron Levie: Not anti, not anti. Soswyx: not nonAaron Levie: I'm not, I'm not anti. ‘cause I think, I think your search system, I just think these are two systems that probably, but like, I'm, I'm not in any religious war. I don't want to be in anybody's YouTube comments on this. There's not a fight for me.swyx: We, we love YouTube comments. We're, we're, we're get into comments.Aaron Levie: Okay. Uh, but like, but I, I, it's mostly just a virtue of what we built. Yeah. And we just continued down that path. Yeah.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: And, um, and that, that was what we pursued. But I'm not, this is not a, you know, kind of, this is not a, uh, it'sswyx: not existential for you. Great.Aaron Levie: We're happy to plug into somebody else's graph.We're happy to feed data into it. We're happy for [00:49:00] agents to, to talk to multiple systems. Not, not our fight.swyx: Yeah.Aaron Levie: But I need your answer. Yeah. Graphs or nerd Snipes is very effective nerd.swyx: See this is, this is one, one opinion and then I've,Jeff Huber: and I think that the actual graph structure is emergent in the mind of the agent.Ah, in the same way it is in the mind of the human. And that's a more powerful graph ‘cause it actually involved over time.swyx: So don't tell me how to graph. I'll, I'll figure it out myself. Exactly. Okay. All right. AndJeff Huber: what's yours?swyx: I like the, the Wiki approach. Uh, my, I'm actually

Eating out in Bellingham and Whatcom County is getting pricey — so AJ and Chris are bringing the fun home. This month, your pacific northwest podcasting aficionados make the case for analog: gather some people you know (or some friendly strangers), throw some chicken nuggets in the oven, and play a game. No screens. No $120 dinner tabs. Just meeples, dice, and a little friendly competition or co-op'ing.AJ and Chris share their favorite game stores across the region, swap game recommendations for every type of player — cooperative, competitive, family-friendly, and card-shark — and close with Quality Assurance picks including a shout-out to a pair of local Bellingham authors and a generative music app that just might help you survive eight hours of studying if you are studying for finals.♟️Where to Find Your Games* Meeple's Manor (Lynden) — Your local game shop up north* Cosmic Games (Bellingham) — Great local Pokémon league and loads of games of all kinds (and the materials around them) * AEGIS Games (Downtown Bellingham, Railroad Ave) — A substantial wall of board games, card games, tabletop, and expansions; near the fabulous Café Adagio* Bakerview Games (Anacortes) — The Ollivander's Wands of board game shops. If you have a game in mind, stump the band — they just might have it upstairs.

Y$N talks Larussell's controversial comments about Lil Wayne and how it exposes how Hip Hop culture treats its legends past their prime. Also discusses the feud between T.I & 50 Cent & who would win in a Versus, the BAFTA controversy, music reviews, and more!

Le clash entre 50 Cent et T.I. fait beaucoup parler ces derniers jours. Diss tracks, mèmes, rumeurs de Versus… mais qu'est-ce qui se passe vraiment entre les deux légendes du rap américain ?Dans cet épisode du Dedicated Podcast, on prend quelques minutes pour décortiquer cette histoire qui circule partout sur Internet. Tout part d'une idée de Verzuz entre T.I. et 50 Cent, puis la situation dégénère : T.I. sort plusieurs morceaux dont War, envoie quelques piques, pendant que 50 Cent répond… à sa manière, surtout avec des mèmes et de l'ironie.Mais au fond, la vraie question est ailleurs :Est-ce qu'un Verzuz entre T.I. et 50 Cent aurait vraiment du sens ?On parle de deux artistes majeurs du hip-hop des années 2000 :– 50 Cent, porté par l'impact historique de Get Rich or Die Tryin' et une avalanche de hits.– T.I., figure centrale d'Atlanta avec des classiques comme What You Know, Rubber Band Man ou Live Your Life.On discute aussi de leur héritage, de leurs styles, et de cette question simple : qui a vraiment l'avantage musicalement ?Un épisode court pour remettre du contexte, partager quelques réflexions et discuter hip-hop comme entre amis.

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 HazeChinedu UnakaJordan ConelyThis Week We DiscussHave Wasabi W/ Every Meal vs Fireball For Every DrinkRVing Across The States bs Backpacking Across The WorldWake Up Bald & Your Hair Grows Through The Day vs Wake Up With Hair & It Slowly Falls OutS/o To Our SponorsBlue ChewBluechew.comGet 10% Your First Month Of Blue Chew GoldPromo: SQUADDBetter HelpSign Up And Get 10% OffBetterhelp.com/SQUADDCash AppUse Code CASHAPP10 At Sign Up And Receive $10 When You Send $5 To A Friend

 Pour ce nouveau format, l'équipe de Mandale note les aptitudes de fighters iconiques en les comparant. À l'occasion de cette première version de Versus, Conor "The Notorious" McGregor et Ilia "El Matador" Topuria s'affrontent sur 10 thèmes, de la qualité de leur striking à leur aura en passant par le Fight IQ. equel des deux sera le meilleur combattant ?Qui est le plus complet ? Qui a la meilleure lutte ? Qui est le plus rapide ? Participez à VERSUS en notant les combattants en live.Ce podcast est hébergé par Podcastics, la plateforme pour créer et diffuser votre podcast facilement.

In this episode of the Love Your Life Show, I teach one of the most important relationship skills we were never taught: emotional validation. If you often feel the urge to fix, explain, or make things better when someone you love is struggling, this episode is for you. I have found that in learning the skills of emotional validation and emotional intelligence, the people I love (my kids, my husband, my friends, etc) feel so much more love from me. Versus, when I didn't know these skills, our conversations and my efforts to support were wonky and they were left feeling disconnected, or worse, incompetent or shamed. Learning how to validate is how we support others without taking on their emotions or trying to change their experience, and it will change your parenting, marriage, and every close relationship you have. This episode builds directly on last week's conversation about emotional regulation. When you can stay calm inside yourself while someone else is having big feelings, validation becomes possible. I explain what emotional validation actually is, what it is not, and why validation does not mean agreement, approval, or fixing the problem. We talk about why emotions need soothing, not solving, how to stop minimizing or invalidating feelings without realizing it, and what to say when you want someone to feel seen, heard, and supported. I share practical phrases you can use with your kids, your partner, and the people you care about most, along with guidance on how to stay present without overfunctioning or taking responsibility for someone else's emotions. If you are a parent, partner, helper, or chronic fixer, this episode will help you build healthier emotional boundaries, deeper connection, and more emotionally safe relationships. Spoiler Alert: When they feel better in relationship with you, YOU feel better too!

Blood cancers are the fifth most common group of cancers in the UK. But for a small number of people, the condition may have an inherited genetic cause.  In this episode of Behind the Genes, we explore the role of genetics in blood cancer, and what an inherited risk means for patients and their families. Our guests explain what blood cancer is, how inherited factors can increase risk, and why multidisciplinary teamwork is key to supporting families. They also look ahead to future advances, from whole genome sequencing to prevention trials.  Our host Amanda Pichini, Clinical Director at Genomics England, is joined by:  Dr Katie Snape, Principal Clinician at Genomics England and Consultant Cancer Geneticist  Bev Speight, Principal Genetic Counsellor Dr Sarah Westbury, Consultant Haematologist “By doing whole genome sequencing we get all of the information about all of the changes that might have happened, we know whether any are inherited, but importantly, we're certain of the ones that have just occurred in the cancer cells and can help guide us with their treatment.”  You can download the transcript or read it below. Amanda: Hello, and welcome to Behind the Genes.  Sarah: When we think about blood cancers, it's a whole range of different conditions and when you talk to patients who are affected with blood cancers or are living with them, their experiences are often really different from one another, depending in part on what kind of blood cancer they have.  We also know that blood cancers affect not just the cell numbers but also the way that those cells function, and so the range of symptoms that people can get is really variable.  Amanda: I am your host, Amanda Pichini, clinical director at Genomics England and genetic counsellor.  Today I'll be joined by Dr Katie Snape, principal clinician at Genomics England and a consultant cancer geneticist in London, Bev Speight, a principal genetic counsellor in Cambridge, and Dr Sarah Westbury, and haematologist from Bristol.  They'll be talking about blood cancers and the inherited factors that increase blood cancer risk.  If you enjoy this episode, we'd love your support, so please subscribe, rate and share on your favourite podcast app.  Let's get started.  Thanks to everyone for joining us today on this podcast, we're delighted to have so many experts in the room to talk to us about blood cancer.  I'd love to start with each of you introducing yourself and telling us and the listeners a little bit about your role, so, Sarah, could we start with you?  Sarah: Sure.  It's great to be here.  My name's Sarah Westbury, and I'm a consultant haematologist who works down in Bristol.  And my interest in this area is I'm a diagnostic haematologist so I work in the laboratories here in the hospitals, helping to make a diagnosis of blood cancer for people who are affected with these conditions.  And I also look after patients in clinic who have different forms of blood cancer, but particularly looking after families who have an inherited predisposition to developing blood cancer.  And in the other half of my job, I work as a researcher at the University of Bristol.  And in that part of my job, I'm interested in understanding the genetic basis of how blood counts are controlled and some of the factors that lead to loss of control of those normal blood counts and how the bone marrow functions and works.  Amanda: Thank you.  That's really interesting, we'll be looking forward to hearing more about your experience.  Bev, we'll come to you next.  Bev: Thank you.  Hello everyone, I'm Bev Speight, I'm a genetic counsellor, and I work at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge.  I work with families with hereditary cancers in the clinical genetic service, and for the last six years or so have been focused on hereditary blood cancers.  So we've been helping our haematologists across the region to do genetic tests and interpret the results, and then in my clinic seeing some of the onward referrals that come to clinical genetics after a hereditary cause for blood cancer is found.  I'm also part of the Council for the UK Cancer Genetics Group.  Amanda: Thank you, Bev.  And Katie, over to you.  Katie: Hello, I'm Katie Snape.  I'm a genetics doctor and I am a specialist in inherited cancer.  So we look after anyone who might have an increased chance of developing cancer in their lifetime due to genetic factors.  I am the chair of the UK Cancer Genetics Group, so that's a national organisation to try and improve the quality of care and care pathways for people with inherited cancer risk in the UK.  And I have a special interest in inherited blood cancers through my work at King's College Hospital, I work in the haematology medicine service there seeing individuals who might have or have been diagnosed as having an inherited component to their blood cancers.  So it's great to be here.  Amanda: Excellent, thank you for those introductions.  I'd like to then dive right in and understand a little bit more about blood cancers.  So, Sarah, could you tell us a little bit more about what blood cancer is?  Sarah: Yes, sure.  The term blood cancer is used to describe a whole range of different kinds of cancer, all of which affect some part of the blood or sometimes parts of the immune system that kind of gets represented as part of the blood.  So it's really describing a big group of conditions rather than one single kind of condition or entity itself.  But like any form of cancer, we understand blood cancers as being conditions where because cells as part of the blood system are rapidly dividing and normally doing so under really well controlled circumstances to produce just the right balance of blood cells and just the right number of those cells.  In a cancer affecting those cells, we see that that loss of control results in either too many of one type of blood cell being produced or too few, or that balance being lost.  And like any form of cancer, this is because of genetic changes that happen in individual cells that then go on to grow in a way that is not controlled and well regulated.    And because when we talk about blood cancer we're talking about such a wide range of different kinds of cancer affecting different cells within that blood system, there's a really wide range of different conditions.  From conditions that we might think of as being like a form of acute leukaemia, so something that produces often symptoms and signs in patients very quickly and they can often feel quite unwell quite soon and then get picked up with having this condition because they present feeling unwell.  All the way to chronic and slow growing cancers that can be found completely by chance and serendipity when blood tests are done for other reasons.  So when we think about blood cancers, it's a whole range of different conditions.  And when you talk to patients who are affected with blood cancers or are living with them, their experiences are often really different from one another, depending in part on what kind of blood cancer they have.  We also know that blood cancers affect not just the cell numbers, but also the way that those cells function.  And so the range of symptoms that people can get is really variable, again depending on which of the blood cells are really affected by that.  And it may be that during the course of some of the conversations we have today in this podcast, we'll perhaps focus on particular kinds of blood cancer.  But like any cancer, it's that disruption of the normal growth and development of cells that means that the number and function of those blood cells has been disrupted in some way.  Amanda: Thank you so much for explaining that, Sarah, that's really helpful.  In terms of across the range of blood cancers, is that something that people can get at any age, and how common is it?  Sarah: It does depend, as we were sort of talking about that really wide range of different disorders that make up that group of blood cancers.  And individually each of those blood cancers is reasonably uncommon compared to cancers that we might typically think of, like breast cancer or colon cancer.  But actually, if you group blood cancers together, they make up quite a sizeable proportion, and they're actually as a group the fifth most common form of cancer that's diagnosed in people in the UK.  In adults in particular we think that perhaps people diagnosed with leukaemia would make up about 3% of the new diagnosis of cancer made in any year.  Amanda: So coming to you, Bev, when we talk about inherited blood cancers, what are the differences between those and blood cancers more generally?    Bev: So at point of diagnosis, it may not be obvious that somebody with a new blood cancer diagnosis is one of the minority of people in that big group as Sarah has described, who has an inherited cause.  So it may not be immediately obvious.  However, in the last few years certainly, it's become more and more routine to do quite broad genetic testing.  Often on a bone marrow sample or blood, because that is done looking for genetic changes, which are part of all cancer and we find within cancer cells, that can help with treatment planning.  It can also find that there is an inherited cause to that new blood cancer diagnosis.  Sometimes that might not be clear cut, sometimes that might be inferred from the genetic tests that are done on the blood or the bone marrow. And the proportion of blood cancers in that huge group which do have an inherited cause is fairly small, the actual proportion will depend a bit on the age of the patient and the specific subtype of blood cancer.  Amanda: Okay, and could you talk us through how some of those inherited genetic factors can increase the chance of a person developing blood cancer, how does that work?  Bev: Yes, so if we know that there is an inherited cause for blood cancer, then what we mean by that most of the time is that a change in a single gene has been found.  And that there is enough research evidence and enough known about that specific change in that gene to say to the person who's been diagnosed, there is at least in part or perhaps a full explanation for why that blood cancer has developed and this could be shared in the family.  So at that point it's information that not only has implications for the person in treatment, but also their relatives.  Depending on what sort of gene alteration it is and which gene it's found in, there are different inheritance patterns, and that changes the sorts of information that we give about risks for relatives.  So for lots of the genetic tests that detect an inherited cause in adults when they're diagnosed, that's most often what we would call an autosomal dominant inheritance pattern.  Essentially that means you only need to have one gene alteration which is in that person's normal non-cancerous DNA inherited from a parent and can be passed onto a child.  And for people in the family who have inherited this one genetic change, then they are likely to be at increased risk of developing blood cancer.  Sometimes with particularly the children's blood cancers, if an inherited cause is found, it can be a different pattern, which we call autosomal recessive.  And that's where two gene changes are found and one has been inherited from each parent.  So parents might be what we call carriers and have one each just by chance, both have been passed onto a child who has developed blood cancer either in childhood or possibly later on, and that's the pattern we call autosomal recessive.  There are other inheritance patterns too.  The third one that we come across being X-linked, and so that has a gender component.  That's where there's a change on the X chromosome, women have two X's, and men have one X and one Y.  So sometimes with the X-linked conditions we're more likely to see the clinical signs of a condition in boys and men because they've only got that one X chromosome.  But those are less common in the context of talking about hereditary blood cancers.  Amanda: Thank you.  That's really helpful to understand.  So it sounds like you're saying that these forms of blood cancers that are caused by a single gene are relatively rare.  And also by having one of these changes, it's not a given that that person will develop a blood cancer, but it makes them more likely, and how likely that is might depend on the inheritance pattern or the type of condition.  Bev: That's right.  So what we're saying is it can give either part of full explanation for the blood cancer diagnosis, and it could confer a risk to family members, but that doesn't mean they definitely will develop it.  We're talking about an increased risk compared to the population risk.  Amanda: Right.  I can imagine for those families to some extent it might be helpful to know the underlying reason why they had that blood cancer, but again, that's just a small proportion.  So, Katie, could I come to you next?  What about the rest of all the blood cancers, how do they occur?  Katie: Yes, thanks, Amanda.  So most blood cancers will occur just by chance.  We also know that there are some environmental factors that can increase the risk of blood cancers, so, for example, serious radiation exposure, something like that.  What Bev has described is where there is this sort of quite rare condition where there is a kind of single gene that's really important for the blood cells in terms of keeping those control mechanisms that Sarah described.  And that's not working properly, which has increased the risk of a blood cancer.  But we also sometimes see some families where there is more blood cancer, or the same type of blood cancer in that family than we might expect by chance.  We think that's probably not due to a single high risk genetic factor, but might be due to kind of multiple lower risk genetic factors that are sort of shared by close family members and can add up together to increase the risk a little bit.  And we call that familial risk or polygenic risk.  We don't have a test for that at the moment.  We wouldn't offer usually any extra screening or testing to those families, but we would just suggest obviously family members are aware of any signs of symptoms of blood cancers and seek any advice if they're concerned.  But, you know, the majority of blood cancers are not due to genetic factors, and it's sort of environmental or chance or bad luck. Amanda: Okay, so it's clear that obviously blood cancer is almost an oversimplification, within that category there's so many different types, so many ways that it could happen in a person.  So, Bev, if we're dealing with that type of blood cancer that is inherited or has some heritability, can you tell us more about what that means for the family?  What kind of impacts do you see that having for them?  Bev: Yes, of course.  So clearly this is another layer of information that's often coming at a family during a time where somebody is often recently diagnosed with blood cancer of one sort or another and is having to take in a lot of information about treatment and all of the uncertainty and anxiety that goes with that.  So for this minority of patients and families where there is new information about an inherited cause, that needs conveying in a timely but sensitive way, bearing in mind what else is happening.  And for some people it can come as a major shock and really an additional burden at that time.  I think the reaction to that will of course depend on lots of factors.  And what we also see is that this question about a new cancer diagnosis of any sort, including blood cancers, can generate the question in people's mind, particularly if they've got children, about does this change the risk for relatives?  So sometimes this new information that, actually, there is an inherited cause is an answer to a question that families have already got.  And that might be because of what Katie's described as familial clustering, there might already have been this known history in the family. So sometimes this information can feed into that and actually be quite a helpful answer.  But it's quite normal for families to feel quite mixed about this and for different family members to have a different approach to it.  When there's the offer of what we would call predictive testing, if we found a change in a single gene in somebody with blood cancer which we're saying is a hereditary cause for that, that might open the door for relatives to access predictive testing.  I.e., the opportunity to discuss and possibly take up a genetic test for themselves when they haven't had cancer themselves, but there's an opportunity to try and quantify whether or not they're at increased risk.  We know in families the uptake of those kinds of tests is different, and a lot of it is to do with timing and the way people respond to this in families might depend on their response to the cancer diagnosis in their relative, and of course what else is going on in their life at the time.  This aspect for the family is where clinical genetic services come in, because these initial tests in the person with blood cancer are done in their haematology/oncology setting, and normally the results about an inherited cause has been found are conveyed through that service.  That's when a referral to clinical genetics happens.  And in our specialist service we're addressing those additional concerns for the family which arise because of this diagnosis. Amanda: Thanks, Bev, for explaining that.  Sarah, coming back to you.  Could you tell me then if someone has an inherited blood cancer does it also change the way that the patient is treated? Sarah: Well, it certainly can do, and again, it does depend a little bit on the specific circumstances of that particular person and the form of inherited blood cancer predisposition that they have.  But certainly if we think about treatment as a whole, then for a lot of people it does affect the way that we might recommend treatments or look after them and their families.  So, for example, for some patients who have a diagnosis of an inherited form of blood cancer, we know that some treatments might be more or less effective for their particular set of circumstances.  And so that can sometimes influence the specific treatment recommendations that we would make, particularly thinking about, for example, the risks that the cancer might come back again after it's been treated.  Or thinking about whether or not some of the typical drug regimes that might be used might be perhaps more likely to cause them side effects or problems with tolerating that treatment.  So it can certainly make some changes in that respect. For some people, to be fair a minority of people with blood cancers, they may need a stem cell transplant as part of their treatment to hopefully cure them of their blood cancer.  And this as I say is a treatment that's required for a minority of patients as a whole who have a diagnosis of a blood cancer.  But for those people who have got an inherited predisposition and who might be recommended a stem cell transplant as part of their treatment, then knowing about a familial risk for this condition can also be really important.  For making sure that if a family member is being considered as a donor for example that we're being really careful to make sure that we're not choosing a donor that might also be affected by the same underlying blood cancer predisposition.  Because this can obviously cause problems for the person that's receiving the stem cells if it turns out that the person they're receiving them from actually has the same inherited condition as them.  So in that respect knowing about the underlying predisposition and genetic cause for their cancer can be helpful.  But in a more sort of general sense, yes, the other thing that it can have a big difference for is that some of these inherited cancer predispositions and syndromes also have other health conditions associated with them.  So it might be that that genetic diagnosis predisposes somebody not only to a form of blood cancer but to other health conditions as well.  And so actually knowing about that diagnosis can help their haematologist then make sure that they're linked in with the right other medical teams to make sure that those other health conditions are identified if they're present and taken care of.  And then I think really coming back to what Bev has already touched on, there's the sort of bigger picture of just how people are looked after in their own right but also as part of their family unit.  And making sure that they're given the right information and advice about their health, but also thinking about other family members.  And particularly for younger patients who perhaps either are just starting their own families or for whom that's not yet a consideration, making sure that they've got the information to understand what might be relevant for future family members, if that makes sense.  So it's not necessarily true to say that for every individual patient knowing that there's an inherited blood cancer present will necessarily directly affect the way that the treatment is offered.  But you can see that as a part of a bigger picture for a lot of patients, it will make a difference to their care as a whole.  Amanda: And you can really see how the impact is very sort of multigenerational and is going to affect people at all ages and stages of their life, so that's really interesting.  Katie, Bev spoke a little earlier about the fact that there are genetic tests that can help tell us if blood cancer is inherited.  Could you tell us more about what the tests involve, and some of your experience taking families through this?  Katie: There's sort of two main different ways that we might identify somebody has an inherited cause for their blood cancer through testing.  So traditionally what has happened, as Bev and Sarah sort of discussed before, is that when a person is diagnosed with a blood cancer, we either take a sample of their blood or bone marrow.  To try and look at what are the changes within those cells that have driven that cell to become a cancer cell and have driven this blood cancer to develop.  And a lot of the time, as we've said, it's not inherited, it's not genetic, so they're what we call acquired changes, they're changes that have just happened in the bone marrow or to the blood cells that have caused that kind of particular cell to become a cancer cell.  And it's really important that we look at those because that can help both diagnose the blood cancer, it can give us information about how serious that blood cancer might be, and it can also help us guide our treatments and therapies.  And so if we do those testings, they're primarily done within haematology for those sort of diagnostic or prognostic or treatment purposes.  We do sometimes see then a change that looks a bit suspicious that it might be inherited for various reason.  And if we see something that is in the cancer and it looks like there's a potential it could be inherited, we would go on and do a second test.  So usually because we can't do a blood test because the cancer's in the blood, we would take a skin biopsy.  And then we would look and see, well, is this change also present in the skin?  And if it is, then that indicates that that change is in all of the cells of the body, because it's in both the blood cancer and it's in the skin, and therefore it's likely to be inherited.  So that's one thing that we do.  And I think that that can be quite challenging for patients.  Because they go in to have a test for their blood cancer and then suddenly were being told, “Well, actually, we've also found something that might be inherited,” and it is something then that other members of the family might have.  And as Sarah said, potentially that means that even if your relative was offering to be a bone marrow donor for you, they might not be able to if they also carry the same thing.  And so that can be quite tricky just in terms of making sure that we're guiding the patient and their family members through that process.  And then thinking about the work that Genomics England does, particularly with whole genome sequencing, and this is particularly offered for children and young adults in the paediatric setting.  But I think we're also increasingly, as we progress we'll perhaps talk about this a bit, moving towards whole genome sequencing for adult blood cancers more routinely as well, that that is offered as a sort of standard of care.  And what whole genome sequencing is, is it is looking at the entire genetic instruction manual in both the blood cancer cells and in the cells that we're born with, to look at the inherited or germline genome as well.  And the reason that we look at both the cancer cells and the inherited or germline genome is because what we're trying to understand is firstly, are there any inherited changes that have led to the blood cancer developing?  But also, what are the changes that have just occurred in the cancer cells that are going to help us to diagnose and treat that blood cancer?  So by doing whole genome sequencing we get all of the information about all of the changes that might have happened, we know whether any are inherited, but importantly, we're certain of the ones that have just occurred in the cancer cells and can help guide us with their treatment.  And so, again, when we're talking to patients, we have to explain to them that we're going to be looking at their entire genetic information.  And what's interesting about that is it might find things that are not only relevant to blood cancer, but very rarely other findings, incidental findings as well, or we might find things that we don't know about.  But I think certainly that's something that patients often feel very comfortable with having because it gives them the maximum amount of information.  Amanda: Thanks, Katie.  So it really sounds like there's a lot of advancements that are being made in genetic technology which potentially brings a lot of new things for you and Bev as genetic specialists, but also for you, Sarah, as a haematology specialist.  What does that kind of change for you, and I assume it's really important then for you all to be working together as a multidisciplinary team?  Katie: Yes, I mean, I think for clinical genetics, we were not involved in sort of haematology pathways for a really long time, and the haematologists are absolute experts in the genomic factors that drive blood cancers.  And certainly in my practice, it's really only been as the technology advanced that we really started finding more and more of these inherited factors, particularly in the adult setting.  Because I think in the paediatric and childhood setting, the haematologists again have been managing those conditions very well for years.  And I think there's places that we really interface and we really need to work together as a multidisciplinary team, understanding the genetic information, really understanding when something that we've seen in the blood cancer or the bone marrow could be inherited.  Do we need to check that?  What should that pathway look like?  But I think as you've said, a lot of these are actually really quite new conditions, particularly in the adult setting.  And we don't yet 100% know why do some people get blood cancer and some people don't when they have the same inherited factor.  What's the actual risk?  Are there any other factors modifying it?  What makes some people progress to develop a blood cancer and some people not?  And for that we really need to work together to try and gather the data and sort of capture people that have these inherited changes.  And hopefully develop a system and an infrastructure that we can follow it long-term and get a lot of information about long-term outcomes, both for individuals with cancer but also their families.  And also from looking at doing population studies.  Because I think we know that lots of people in the general population might carry some of these inherited changes and never develop a blood cancer as a result of this, certainly ones that seem a bit lower risk.  So we really need to work together to understand all of that.  But I'd be really interested in Sarah's views on that as well.  Sarah: Yes, sure.  So I think, as you say, Katie, haematologists have got a long history of understanding and interpreting genetic findings in the sort of acquired or somatic changes that we know are what occurs in some blood cells to drive the cancer forming in the first place. But this kind of newer integration of that with the germline testing is something that is becoming much more mainstream in haematology now, and I think something that people have had to sort of acquire new skills in this area to interpret that alongside.  I think as you say, that multidisciplinary working, where we're able to benefit from both sides of our expertise and knowledge and put that together is so valuable, particularly in those circumstances where there is some uncertainty.  And I think as a haematologist, one of the things that I really find a benefit both personally and professionally to help me navigate these tricky questions but that I also think patients benefit from is your expertise and ability to have those really quite tricky conversations with people who are not haematology patients, if that makes sense.  So they may be the relatives of patients who have a haematological diagnosis for example.  Who at the moment are entirely well and were just going about their daily business, and they're now told that they may or may not potentially have this inherited predisposition.  And I think that as haematologists, we're very used to dealing with potentially quite poorly patients, potentially quite scared patients who find themselves, you know, the recipient of all this quite difficult information.  But we're not necessarily so skilled and experienced at holding conversations with people who don't yet have that diagnosis.  And I think that that's a really rich area of mutual aid to one another as haematologists and genetic doctors, if that makes sense.  And I think your points about understanding actually the real risks and the nature history, as we would call it, of what happens to people who carry these variants that predispose them to blood cancers is something that we can probably only work out by working together.  And of course, working with the patients and families that are affected by these conditions so that hopefully for both sides in the future we'll be able to give much better advice to patients and their families.  Amanda: So, Bev, from your experience and as a genetic counsellor, what do you feel are the important things that patients and their families should know as they're going through this testing and diagnosis process?  Bev: The things I think families where there is a hereditary cause found should know is that with this new information comes a whole new referral to a dedicated service.  Who want to help patients and their family members at risk to navigate this, to adjust the information, and to make decisions that fit with them, about whether to have testing and the timing of that.  As we already said, where there is a hereditary blood cancer risk, that risk in family members is rarely 100%.  Depending on what the hereditary predisposition is in the family, we may be able to quantify that risk, sometimes we can't always.  And the other thing to know which links to that is that there is growing interest in research in this area.  That will really help us to improve care in terms of, for example, being able to quantify the risk of developing a blood cancer in relatives who are perfectly well that may have inherited these predisposition gene changes.  Or, for example, the other obvious place where we want to make improvements in terms of some sort of evidence-based surveillance for those people who want to find out that they have inherited the genetic change and are at increased risk.  Amanda: Thank you.  And overall there's been a lot I think we've been covering today that's probably going to be very new to many people.  Why do you think it's important to raise public awareness of inherited blood cancers?  Bev: There have been lots of public awareness campaigns about other cancers, as listeners probably can think about, in terms of for women checking their breasts and breast cancer awareness.  And perhaps there's been a bit less of that in general for blood cancers.  As we've already talked about, clinical genetics were not so involved in all of the genetic testing happening in blood cancers.  Because it wasn't so long ago in the history of how we think about inherited cancers in general that our suspicion of inherited causes in leukaemia was much lower than it is now.  So I think that awareness in the public probably will take a bit more effort to bring up.  But clearly public awareness about blood cancers in general, symptom awareness, and the fact that occasionally it can be something that is running in the family, clearly better public awareness of that means that people are empowered to ask the right questions.  And the questions that might already be in some way going through their minds of their haematology doctors or perhaps of their GP, if they've got a family history but are not affected themselves.  Amanda: Wonderful.  So, looking now to the future, Katie, what genomic advancements are we seeing or are we likely to see that could impact on the care of people with an increased genetic risk of blood cancer?  Katie: We touched a little bit, I think that whole genome sequencing is expanding.  And as we can turn that test around and get it back more quickly that might become more commonplace.  And I know Genomics England and the UK Haemato-oncology Network of Excellence have been doing a lot of work in that area.  We are very lucky now we have a national inherited cancer predisposition register that NHS England have set up with the National Disease Registration Service.  So that will enable us to capture individuals that have these sort of rarer but single gene disorders or conditions that increase the chance of developing blood cancers.  And that will enable us to do that sort of longer-term follow-up and get really more information.  We've touched on this already but I think there's really amazing research happening, why do some people develop blood cancers and some people don't, even though everyone carries the same underlying change that increases the risk?  And then I think really importantly, we're seeing now in some conditions, clinical trials of certain medications to see if that can actually prevent people who carry these inherited changes from progressing to developing blood cancers.  So I think all of those things are really exciting and will give us lots more information that we can then help patients and their families, particularly the sort of treatment and trials aspects.  Amanda: And, Sarah, on treatment and trials, how do think genomics might improve the treatment, but also the diagnosis of people with inherited blood cancers in the future?  Sarah: I think, you know, hopefully when we are able to accrue more information about these underlying genetic predispositions and how they actually then affect people's likelihood of developing blood cancer, we'll be able to build on what we have so far to make that just feel much more robust and evidence based.  And it feels like at the moment there are many of us struggling to bring together small threads of evidence that have been accrued in the UK but in other centres around the world that are also interested in understanding this inherited blood cancer risk.  In such a way that we can actually give patients and their families more clear information and advice about what that means to them.  And I think that in terms of the diagnosis of blood cancer, I think this is something that Bev alluded to.  If we could better understand who might benefit for example from having regular screening or monitoring blood tests performed to see whether we can detect an emerging blood cancer.  Versus identifying those people who actually, the chances of them developing a blood cancer are so small that doing those tests is likely to do them more harm than good.  Perhaps by just causing them to be anxious or have other sort of unintended consequences of that kind of testing.  So understanding something more about that natural history, as we've already alluded to, will hopefully improve our ability to go from the diagnosis of the predisposition condition to working out how to then diagnose the blood cancer on the back of that.  And with time, I think as Katie has alluded to, thinking about more specific treatments and more tailored treatments to the individual predisposition condition and the blood cancer.  So whether it's that you're intervening before the blood cancer has developed to try and reduce that happening, or whether it's that you're then treating the blood cancer after it's developed.  Understanding the genetic basis and what it is that causes that transition would be really helpful and I think that is something that will come but will take time.  And I think on a sort of national level what I would really hope to see over time is that we're able to use that improvement in evidence base to then be able to bring together perhaps more defined patient pathways.  So that if you're diagnosed with a particular condition, one of these leukaemia predisposition syndromes or another form of blood cancer predisposition, there's a recognised strategy and set of steps that should be taken for all of those patients.  To make sure that they're getting equity of care and make sure that everything is being done in a way that feels safe, sensible and appropriate across the country.  While still then enabling us to give really personalised treatment to that individual person and what that diagnosis means for them.  But I think until we've gathered more information and more evidence we are just in the process of trying to do that to then bring about those changes.   Amanda: If you enjoyed today's episode, we'd love your support.  So please subscribe, share and rate us on wherever you listen to your podcasts.  I've been your host, Amanda Pichini.  This podcast was produced by Deanna Barac and edited by Bill Griffin at Ventoux Digital.  Thank you for listening. 

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 GuestKeyshawn E.Dion LackThis Week We DiscussAlways Throw Away Your Last Bite vs Only Be Able To Drink Half Your BeveragePersonal Chef That Cooks W/ Mystery Meat vs Eat Sardines For Every MealChange Genders Every Tone You Sneeze vs Have A Mariachi Band Play When You LieS/o To Our SponorsFactorHead to factormeals.com/squadd50off and use code squadd50off to get 50 percent off and free breakfast for a year. Eat like a pro this month with Factor. New subscribers only, varies by plan. 1 free breakfast item per box for 1 year while subscription is active

Pairwise: https://www.pairwise.com/FoA 412: 'Biological' Is Not A Category (it's the future of agriculture)I'm excited to share today's episode with you. I've wanted to get Tom Adams back on the show ever since I had the chance to interview him at World Agritech a couple of years ago. That interview was included on episode 412 of this podcast titled “Biological is not a Category”. The work Pairwise is doing is mind boggling to me. Using CRISPR and the latest in gene editing tools, they have built a platform to enable plant breeders to make very precise changes to the genome of a plant to give farmers and consumers more of what they want. Now this is different from genetic modification or GMOs because they are not inserting foreign genes into the plant. In fact, they are doing the exact same thing that plant breeders have done for over a century, they are just able to do it in an extremely precise way. On another podcast that I host, Agriscience Explained, Corteva's Reza Rasoulpour explained natural breeding as wanting to change one word in a book by just combining all of the pages of two different books and hoping that word changes. Versus gene editing just going in and changing that one word in the book. I thought that was a good comparison. So Tom and his team are bringing this technology to agriculture by working with seed companies and other partners in a variety of use cases, many of which we'll discuss today. A little background on Tom: Dr. Tom Adams co-founded Pairwise and serves as Chief Executive Officer. Tom has over 25 years of leadership experience heading up biotechnology for global companies, serving most recently as Vice President of Global Biotechnology at Monsanto where he led the team developing a broad range of innovative products. Tom wanted to realize the possibilities of CRISPR and gene editing in plants, and co-founded Pairwise to realize this potential in a mission-based environment. Formerly a faculty member at Texas A&M University, Tom holds a PhD in microbiology and plant science from Michigan State University and a BS in botany and plant pathology from Oregon State University. Tom and I talk about Pairwise's continued work in this area, some of the cool developments that are under way, some of their strategic decisions like going the partnership route rather than being the seed company themselves, a little bit more about how the technology works, how this changes the game and who captures the value.

702 - Recorded live on February 17, 2026 Ambience for the night: Salò, or The 120 Days Of Sodom https://coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/sal-or-the-120-days-of-sodom **Playlist** 1) Mossgiver - Renewer 2) Mnima - Endless Void of Negativity 3) Ortsul - Niczego Pragnę 4) Old Sorcery - Barrowgrim Asylum **talk** 5) Atavistic Passage - Physical Manifestations of Psychic Spite 6) Howling - Imperial Astral Temples 7) Stygian Darkness - Restitutor Orbis 8) Faustbruhiel - Medieval 9) Hanzaisha - National Repression of Dissent **talk** 10) Hologramah - Abyssus.Versus.Versiculos. **talk - bonus** 11) Bathory - For All Those Who Died Live every Tuesday at 9pm ET on NSTMRadio.com

Pour ce nouveau format Sans Filet, nos chroniqueurs notent les aptitudes des joueurs de tennis en les comparant. A l'occasion de cette première émission, Roger Federer et Rafael Nadal s'affrontent sur 10 thèmes, de la qualité du service au rapport au public, en passant par le coup droit.Ce podcast est hébergé par Podcastics, la plateforme pour créer et diffuser votre podcast facilement.

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 GuestLou Lou GonzalesCourtney HaynesThis Week We Discuss1 Artist for Life 50 Cent vs Mary J. BlidgeTalk Like Darth Vader vs Mike TysonShare A Cell With A Racist vs Serial KillerS/o To Our SponsorsGame TimeDownload Game Time TodayUse Code “SQUADD” For $20 Off!Blue ChewBlue chew.comGet 10% Off Blue Chew Gold When You Use Code “SQUADD”

This episode is all about the (sometimes surprising) benefits of comprehensive financing! Kristy breaks down why putting together a FULL plan for health will help patients and your practice in the long run. 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. Thank you so much for being here. I want you to know that the Dental A Team, we truly, truly love what we do. And I wanna start this out by just thanking all of you for allowing us to be here. I know we're with you in your car or while you're getting ready in the morning or while you're falling asleep at night, I don't know, maybe in your team meeting, but we're here with you somewhere or I wouldn't be able to say this and we value and appreciate that, the consulting team specifically.   We love what we do, we love helping clients, we love helping people, we love helping practices and practice owners build a business that works for them and not them always working for the business. So I'm just super excited to be here today. I wanted to just shout out you guys, massive thank you for the support that you give us, that you continue to bring to us and just know we're here. Dental A Team is here for all of your needs and just reach out, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com anytime you need us. And I have with me today,   Kristy, Miss Kristy, I adore you. Thank you so much for being here. I said on a different podcast we recorded that we have a slew of time together today and I'm just, I love it. It is the best way to end a call week. So thank you, Kristy, for being here with me today. How are you? And I'm excited because I think you're really excited about this topic. So how are you doing, Kristy?   The Dental A Team (01:17) Yeah,   I'm doing well. I'm grateful to have time with you. We don't always get time during the week, so I'm getting some extra Tiff time and it feels good to end the week this way.   The Dental A Team (01:30) I agree. I agree. I committed recently, just so everyone knows, to being more intentional about my one-on-one time with the consultants. it really made me not just podcasting, but like actual one-on-one time. But it made me think yesterday while I was going through the schedule, kind of figuring it out, it made me think of doctors too and practices. And this is not in alignment with our, get to it, we'll get to profit in a second, but it is kind of in alignment with profit because   We tend to forget, we just get in the machine of doing and in the machine of business and we forget that there's people and that you're not the only one who's busy or stressed or what have you and that the team is counting on you, the team needs you. So my leads and my doctors, it's just like a friendly nudge, a friendly reminder that if you're feeling stressed, you probably need to open up some time in your schedule to insert some team time. And while we push our clients to do one-on-ones, I do one-on-ones every month.   with our consultants, but sometimes you just need one-on-one time that's not a one-on-one. You know what I mean? You just need connection. And that's what I call it, is I call it our connection time. So we have our one-on-ones, and then we have our connection time. And I think in office, it's a little bit easier, because you guys are side-by-side and you're talking, but still, to just have that 10, 15 minutes, it's like, hey girl, tell me how your life is. What's new? What's going on? And really connect with people.   It's my strong nudge to remind you guys to give the kudos, give the connection, and make time for the people who are there doing this with you. So, Kristy, thank you. Thank you for bringing that up. And I am thoroughly enjoying this because I've had so much Kristy time and I get time tomorrow morning. So I am really enjoying this week and it really lights my life up. So thank you. Now.   The Dental A Team (03:17) You're welcome.   I was going to tell you, I love that you say that and I truly do believe this does tie to profits. And I know in practice we're super, super busy. I like to call it, go break bread with your people. Like be intentional with the time, even if you have to combine it, go break bread, take them out, get the work done on reviewing what you need to review, but then connect as people. And I do think that that reaps rewards in your profits because   The Dental A Team (03:24) I agree.   The Dental A Team (03:47) The teams that do this are more connected and they jive together. So I do think it ties together.   The Dental A Team (03:53) I agree, thank you, I agree.   Now tell me, Kristy, we've got quick tips to increase profit, and honestly, this is a quick tip to increase profit. We'll get you a couple more, but Kristy, tell me, because I agree, I think the connection does, but what about the connection do you think it is that does help the profit? It does help people really be on the same page and same team? What is that doing for the bottom line from a numbers standpoint? Because we can see it from an emotional standpoint and the relationship, but from a numbers standpoint, what do you see?   in those practices that do go break bread together.   The Dental A Team (04:26) Yeah, I love that you say that because it's connecting as humans and also like letting us see each other in different ways. It again, we talk about this so much. We look through loops, the providers do looking for problems. So really good at being nitpicky and finding problems. And you know, maybe you have the teammate that was late three times this week. And when you actually sit down and find out   my gosh, their grandma's going through cancer and you didn't know. It just sheds things in a different light and it lets us serve each other versus when we're in that critical mindset, we pull apart. So it really does connect us together. And when we're connected together, even the person that's going through the trauma or turmoil, they feel safe in the environment and protected and lifted up by their team. So they can leave it at the door.   I know we talk about that all the time and as humans, it's almost a false thing to say, because when you're in turmoil, it just doesn't stop. But when you know people understand, it can be your freeing space for just a few minutes or a few hours while you're at work. So it creates a different understanding and it allows you to connect as a team.   The Dental A Team (05:42) Yeah, and thank you. I agree. And that in itself, I think allows you all to be on the same ⁓ wavelength, like the same page we're connected where we're able, well, we're able to ask better questions and we're more comfortable, we're more vulnerable, and we're able to say when we need help. And I think that's massive because when we can be vulnerable with each other and say, hey, I'm not, I don't know what this means. I don't know how to credential a doctor.   tell me what do you suggest? Where can I learn it? Or we're just able to speak to problems that we're having or areas we need help in. Makes it easier to ensure that we are hitting those goals, because otherwise we're kind of faking it till we make it, thinking I'm the only one with an issue and I'm the only one who's stressed out and I'm the only one sitting in this space. But when you do have that alignment and connection, it's much easier for a team to be vulnerable with each other.   And then we actually can push KPIs and we can push goals and we can create profit because we're in alignment.   The Dental A Team (06:46) Yeah, you know what's funny? I went through a HR course one time and I remember them saying the biggest thing that's going to determine a new employee staying is how well they feel received. And I like to say truly, like, that goes for all your team members. And sometimes when we get in the rut of our day to day and we see the same faces every day, we forget to take care of each other. And so taking   Like I said, it doesn't have to be fancy, but get out of your space and reconnect as a human. It's gonna reap rewards on how they serve your patients too. They're gonna show up differently for each other and patients.   The Dental A Team (07:23) Yeah. Yeah.   ⁓ that's a massive one. Yeah, you're right. You're right. I love it. Thank you, Kristy That was that was fun. I know that wasn't ⁓ what you had in mind yet, but I it. I liked it. So everyone, there's one quick tip. ⁓ I think it's quick. think it's it's easy, but it's intentional. So you have to be very intentional about your schedule and how you're going to accomplish it. So set your goal. Do the thing. Now, Kristy, I am really intrigued and excited to hear your   Quick tip on, what do we call it? Increasing profit is what we're calling this one. So your quick tip on increasing profit. What is your, what is it? I'm so excited. You guys, she just like lit up when I told her. She's like, I've got an idea. And I'm just as shocked as you all are to hear it here. We're all hearing it the first time together. Let's go, let's hear it.   The Dental A Team (08:15) You think I'm going to say AR and I'm not.   The Dental A Team (08:18) I did!   The Dental A Team (08:21) Actually, it is part of it and we'll get to it. But the one that I'm thinking about right now is get to comprehensive financing. Everybody wants to just phase out phase one and you guys are tripping over dollars to make two. Like find a solution that gets people healthy. Then you can always back up to phase one if we can't find a solution. But so many times we dive into just the first phase.   The Dental A Team (08:29) Mm.   The Dental A Team (08:48) and we tap people out and then it's not till next year. So just try something different and get permission to share all you see clinically so your TC's can present comprehensive finances.   The Dental A Team (09:05) my gosh, you did. You came in swinging with that one. Okay, thank you. That is brilliant and I love that. And it is a quick tip. Now explain, define, make definitions here. So what would comprehensive financing by that, what do you mean?   The Dental A Team (09:19) What I mean is out of everything the doctor talked about, the total cost to get you healthy is, right? Presenting and finding a solution so they have a plan to get healthy. We're always gonna let the patient be in the driver's seat so we can do it in their timeframe or however their budget allows. But for the most part, give them a plan to be healthy, especially if that's what their goal is versus I don't wanna shock them. Literally the other day I had   a doc on and I was like, okay, so what you're telling me is if I come into you as a new patient and you're my doctor and you think I have cancer, you're not going to tell me that you're going to like just plant a little seed and then you're going to it come back and you're going to spring it on me. get permission. Well, number one, get in relationship with your patient and find out what their goals are and then get permission to share. And then also tell them we're going to   The Dental A Team (10:01) haha   The Dental A Team (10:15) we're gonna do this, they get to decide how fast or how slow we go. And so with that, then it can guide you because so many times I was telling, I remember back when I very first started, there was a doctor and he'd treatment plan crowns in all quadrants. And of course it was an elderly lady that had a budget, lived on a fixed budget. And I thought I was doing great, because I was just gonna get the first tooth done that was broken and obvious.   And one month later she called and was like, all I was doing was eating bread and that tooth broke. And I was like, so truly had I presented a solution that fit in her budget and she could get them all done at the same time, it would have been better for her and the practice. So I'm just challenging you to start with everything and then you can always go backward and you will capture more.   The Dental A Team (10:48) no.   The Dental A Team (11:12) doing that.   The Dental A Team (11:14) I love that idea. how does, thank you for the definition, how does that improve the profit point for them?   The Dental A Team (11:22) Yeah, you're doing more treatment on one person. It doesn't take as many patients and ⁓ I can schedule it all right now. And in fact, know, the same doctor that I was talking about, and I say this when I'm coaching my clients, I wish I was a brilliant person that thought about it, and I didn't even think about it at the time. It was years later when I learned better, but that doctor used to do wisdom teeth and practice.   And so I'd sit there and we'd diagnose people with fillings all over their mouth and he'd say, ⁓ you don't want to be numb on both sides. It's so uncomfortable. We'll do this side, then that side. And the next patient would come and they'd need wisdom teeth and he'd go, ⁓ you want them to do them all at the same time. You don't want to go through that again. Just we'll up everything. And I'm like, wait a minute. It was good for this person, but not that. How about we just let them decide? Do you want to do more, right? Versus, or do you want to do less and come more often?   The Dental A Team (12:13) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (12:19) So again, it doesn't take as many people and it slows down your day if we're doing getting people healthy.   The Dental A Team (12:19) Yeah.   Yeah, I love that because it's building better blocks in your schedule. It's utilizing your time. Your dollar per hour is going to increase and you're not as busy. You're not running around from patient to patient and room to room quite as much because you've got bigger cases that you're working on at a time. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (12:49) You got it. And naturally,   your overhead goes down. I used one instead of five bibs. I used one saliva ejector instead, you know.   The Dental A Team (12:53) Yeah.   Mm   hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And time in the chair, marketing dollars spent. Yeah. And you're targeting a different demographic of patient avatar, because you're targeting a patient avatar that wants to get healthy and can figure out the finances with you rather than just new patients who might need things diagnosed. I love that. Well, you you shocked me. You did it. I love that. So   The Dental A Team (13:03) Yeah.   You got it.   Yeah.   The Dental A Team (13:26) And I think actually those really tie in together now that I was going to repeat them and really in order to comprehensively diagnose and finance, right, to get the dollars for that, the team has to be in alignment. Like those things just don't, they don't happen for teams that aren't on board with your dental philosophies. And in order to be on board with your dental philosophies, you got to be connected as humans.   or they do start, I'm hands down telling you the truth from experience. If you lose the connection, they start to doubt you and what they're doing and what you're doing. They start really looking with a fine tooth comb at the things and it's just not worth it. So the connection piece, I do believe, like you said, it helps the profit points in multiple ways. And I think that's how to spearhead the comprehensive diagnosis and financing.   The Dental A Team (14:00) you   The Dental A Team (14:23) Also because then I can see a hygiene department who's on board with getting people healthy, co-diagnosing more comprehensively and pushing doctors to remember to diagnose comprehensively, which also will help on all areas, obviously.   The Dental A Team (14:38) Absolutely. I love that you say that. And I always use the saying Tiff, ⁓ happy team creates happy patients. You know, it happens by default. If you have a happy team, they serve the patients well and the money follows.   The Dental A Team (14:53) Yeah.   Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with you. think everything that we do in life, if we can come at it with the right mindset and the right energy, we're pouring out the right, if we're pouring out the energy we want to receive, we can only see that energy. And so we only receive that energy. And even when people come across with a different energy, we're like, ⁓ dang, but it doesn't hit, it doesn't penetrate. It doesn't shake our whole days. And I remember so many times having team members that are like,   this Tiff, this patient said this, this and this that ruined my whole day. And I'm like, well, why the, why are you giving them that power? Like, what do you mean? It's 11 a.m. Like we got, we got six more hours together, lady. Like, what are we doing here? So when you have that connection and I have had, know, when I was in office, I was office manager, I did all the things wrong and I did some things right. And I learned and I, and I failed and I stumbled and I got back up and   I know one of the hardest pieces of culture was towing that line of being the supportive, you can come vent, friend, manager, and being the accountability space of like, we're gonna find solutions and just building the culture and the energy. it's not easy, it's hard and it takes work and it really takes, think everyone, you said it earlier, just really being in alignment.   with where we're headed and being connected on a relationship level that isn't just, it's personal and we've got this tangible relationship in between us, but it's also here because of those goals, because of what we're after, because of what we're doing, if that makes sense, rather than it just being the friendship. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (16:45) Yes, 100 %   I agree with you.   The Dental A Team (16:49) ⁓ I love that. So comprehensive diagnosis in general, I think helps profit points and then allowing your team the space and the ways to finance. What have you seen, Kristy, in your ⁓ experience, the best ways to do that? you said, within a budget, what are they doing? How are they doing this?   The Dental A Team (17:12) Yeah, well, again, I think it's getting in relationship with the patient and finding out what they really want, what's bringing them in. I mean, we talk about you got to, I say patients buy what they want, not necessarily what they need, right? And in dentistry, again, I'm there with you, we do things backward. We all want to say they're buying implants. No, no, no, they're buying what the implant gives them. They're not buying implants, but we want to   focus on, look at this, you know? And so we have to get to their level and figure out what is it gonna give them and tie everything back to that. And when you achieve that and you can show them how to get what they want, you're gonna win, you're gonna win. And then it's just about making it fit in their budget. So.   The Dental A Team (17:43) Yeah.   Yeah, to the patient drivers. Yeah. Yeah,   I remember I had ⁓ one of the first all on four cases that my doctor I worked for ever did. He, it was in the TC room and I remember hearing the treatment coordinator being like, what about that? Like, what do you miss eating? And the guy was like, I want a steak. I haven't had a steak in so long.   because he just had regular dentures. He's like, I want to chew a steak. And I remember, he wasn't buying an all-in-four denture. He was buying the steak. He was buying the lifestyle that he wanted to live. And I remember him coming back later and being like, I ate so much steak. He was just so happy. And the issues or the... ⁓   Like the rubbing, know, there's just so many, there's so many tweaks all in fours. They come with so many headaches, that's okay. He was like, I'm fine with it. I can still, I can eat my steak. Like let's fix it, let's keep going. But you're right. And anything we do in life in general, Brody used to say to me, we go to the store. He still does this, he's 17. But he's like, is it a want or a need? Mom, is it a want or a need? Yeah, my little four year old in the cart. I'm like, bro, we're here for me. So you don't need to ask me those questions.   But is it a want or a need? And I'd be like, well, it's a want that serves a need. And so we're buying, I'm buying it, right? But those are the spaces that we think people are buying for need, right? And that it's like, I'm buying an implant because I'm missing a tooth, but we're buying an implant because I want to be able to eat. We don't buy things just for need, we buy things typically.   I'll buy the expensive toilet paper because I want an expensive toilet paper lifestyle. I need the toilet paper, right? Like you're gonna, everything you do in life is based off of a want. So I love that you said that, Kristy, thank you. And you did, you came in with a shocker. I was so excited and my gosh, you nailed it. It was a home run. So I love it. I think we gave two quick tips on how to increase profit. I think they're very easily implemented. Again, easy versus intentional.   The Dental A Team (19:52) Yeah.   The Dental A Team (20:15) Be intentional and Kristy, thank you so much. I can go all day on action items, but if you had to serve them with two action items today, what would you tell them to do?   The Dental A Team (20:27) Ooh, boy, get in relationship with your team and see them as humans first and foremost, and then choose to get out of your comfort zone and share with your patients everything. Get permission to share everything and ease them and tell them you're gonna be here for the journey and we're gonna do it in their timeframe. Let them choose, don't choose for   The Dental A Team (20:49) nailed it. Yep, I love it. Thank you. Awesome. All right, listeners, I hope you loved this one as much as I loved this one. I had fun. Kristy, thank you for taking us down that journey. It was beautifully expansive. And if you guys can even just take a little glimpse into what it's like working with Kristy, today was your day. And Kristy, your phenomenal consultant, all of your years of experience and intuitiveness, if I might say.   Really provide you with some stellar services to give to our clients and the the Dental A Team listeners So thank you for being here Kristy and thank you for your knowledge everyone listening Drop her a five-star freaking review you guys. This is Kristy nailed it today and I want to see those five stars So drop us a five star below. Let us know that you enjoyed this topic Let us know what you're implementing right away and as always you can reach out to us at Hello@TheDentalATeam.com and   at TheDentalATeam.com website. You can sign up for a quick little consult with us, you guys. Our team is phenomenal. We're really great at keying in on some easy, implementable things that you can do right away, whether you start working with us or not. We will always give you some tools. go reach out and we cannot wait to hear from you all. Thanks.  

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You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Corey and I talk about modeling the person you want your child to be—instead of trying to force them into having good character or good values. We discussed the difference between being a gardener or a carpenter parent, raising kind and helpful children, and how to trust the modeling process. We give lots of examples of what this has looked like for parents in our community as well as in our own homes.**If you'd like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! > > If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!We talk about:* 00:00 — Intro + main idea: be the person you want your child to be* 00:02 — How kids naturally model what we do (funny real-life stories)* 00:04 — When modeling goes wrong (rabbit poop + shovel story)* 00:06 — Not everything kids do is learned from us (fight/flight/freeze)* 00:08 — Gardener vs. carpenter parenting metaphor* 00:10 — Why “don't do anything for your child” is flawed advice* 00:12 — Helping builds independence (adult example + kids stepping up)* 00:17 — Hunt, Gather, Parent: let kids help when they're little* 00:19 — How to encourage helping without power struggles* 00:23 — Family team vs. rigid chores* 00:26 — Trust, faith, and “I'm sure you'll do it next time”* 00:29 — Respecting kids like people (adultism)* 00:31 — Living values without preaching* 00:36 — It's the small moments that shape kids* 00:38 — Don't be a martyr: let some things go* 00:40 — When this works (and when it doesn't)* 00:42 — Closing reflections on trust and nurturingResources mentioned in this episode:* Yoto Screen Free Audio Book Player * The Peaceful Parenting Membership * Hunt, Gather, Parent podcast episode* Evelyn & Bobbie brasConnect with Sarah Rosensweet:* Instagram* Facebook Group* YouTube* Website* Join us on Substack* Newsletter* Book a short consult or coaching session callxx Sarah and CoreyYour peaceful parenting team-click here for a free short consult or a coaching sessionVisit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the summer for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything' session.Our sponsors:YOTO: YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can't go where you don't want them to go and they aren't watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HEREEvelyn & Bobbie bras: If underwires make you want to rip your bra off by noon, Evelyn & Bobbie is for you. These bras are wire-free, ultra-soft, and seriously supportive—designed to hold you comfortably all day without pinching, poking, or constant adjusting. Check them out HEREPodcast Transcript:Sarah: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. I have Corey with me today. Hi, Corey.Corey: Hey, Sarah.Sarah: I'm so happy to be talking about what we're going to be talking about today because it's something that comes up a lot—both with our coaching clients and in our membership.Today we're talking about modeling the person you want your child to be—being the person you want your child to be—instead of trying to force them into having good character or good values.Corey: This is one of my favorite topics because people don't really think about it. There's that phrase that's so rampant: “Do as I say, not as I do.” And we're actually saying: do the exact opposite of that.Sarah: Yeah. And I think if people did this, that phrase wouldn't have to exist. Because if you're being the person you want your child to be, then you really can just say, “Do as I do.”I guess that “Do what I say, not what I do” comes up when you're not being the person you want your child to be. And it shows how powerful it is that kids naturally follow what we do, right?Corey: Yes.Sarah: Yeah. We both have some funny stories about this in action—times we didn't necessarily think about it until we remembered or saw it reflected back. Do you want to share yours first? It's so cute.Corey: Yeah. When I was a little girl, my favorite game to play was asking my mom if we could play “Mummy and her friend.” We did this all the time. My mom said she had to do it over and over and over with me.We'd both get a little coffee cup. I'd fill mine with water, and we'd pretend we were drinking tea or coffee. Then we would just sit and have a conversation—like I heard her having with her friend.And I'd always be like, “So, how are your kids?”—and ask the exact things I would hear my mom asking her friend.Sarah: That's so cute. So you were pretending to be her?Corey: Yes.Sarah: That is so cute.I remember once when Lee was little—he was probably around three—he had a block, like a play block, a colored wooden block. And he had it pinched between his shoulder and his ear, and he was doing circles around the kitchen.I said, “What are you doing?” And he said, “I'm talking on the phone.”And I realized: oh my gosh. I walk around with the cordless phone pinched between my shoulder and my ear, and I walk around while I'm talking on the phone. So for him, that was like: this is how you talk on the phone.Corey: That's such a funny reference, too. Now our kids would never—my kids would never do that, right?Sarah: No, because they never saw you with a phone like that.Corey: Right.Sarah: That is so funny. It's definitely a dated reference.You also have a funny story, too, that's sort of the opposite—less harmless things our kids copy us doing. Do you want to share your… I think it's a rabbit poop story.Corey: It is. We're just going to put it out there: it's a rabbit poop story. This is how we accidentally model things we probably don't want our kids doing.So, if you were listening this time last year, I got a new dog. She's a lab, and her favorite thing is to eat everything—especially things she's not supposed to eat, which I'm sure a lot of people can relate to.Our area is rampant with rabbits, so we have this problem with rabbit droppings. And my vet has informed me that despite the fact that dogs love it, you need to not let them eat it.So I'm always in the backyard—if you're hearing this, it's really silly—having to try and shovel these up so the dog's not eating them.Listeners, we're looking into a longer-term solution so rabbits aren't getting into our backyard, but this is where we're at right now.Whenever I noticed I'd be shoveling them up and I'd see her trying to eat something else I hadn't shoveled yet, I'd say, “Leave it,” and then give her a treat to reward her.One day, my little guy—little C—who loves taking part in dog training and is so great with animals, he saw our dog eating something she shouldn't. He ran and got his little sand shovel and went up to her holding it—kind of waving it at her—like, “Leave it.”And I was like, why are you shaking a shovel at the dog? Totally confused about what he was doing.And he's like, “Well, this is how you do it, Mommy.”And I was like… oh. I shake a shovel at the dog. You just say, “Leave it,” and then you give her the treat—not the shovel.Not an hour later, I'm shoveling again, she's trying to eat something she shouldn't, and I'm like, “Leave it, leave it.” I look at my hand and I'm holding the shovel up while saying it to her.Sarah: Right?Corey: And I was like, “Oh, this is why he thinks that.” Because every time I'm saying this to her, I'm holding a shovel mid-scoop—trying to get on top of the problem.Sarah: That's so funny. And when you told me that the first time, I got the impression you maybe weren't being as gentle as you thought you were. Like you were frustrated with the dog, and little C was copying that.Corey: Yeah. Probably that too, right? Because it's a frustrating problem. Anyone who's tried to shovel rabbit droppings knows it's an impossible, ridiculous task.So I definitely was a bit frustrated. He was picking up both on the frustration and on what I was physically doing.And I also think this is a good example to show parents: don't beat yourself up. Sometimes we're not even aware of the things we're doing until we see it reflected back at us.Sarah: Totally.And now that you mentioned beating yourself up: I have a lot of parents I work with who will say, “I heard my kid yelling and shouting, and I know they pick that up from me—my bad habits of yelling and shouting.”I just want to say: there are some things kids do out of fight, flight, or freeze—like their nervous system has gotten activated—that they would do whether you shouted at them or not.It's not that everything—every hard thing—can be traced back to us.Kids will get aggressive, and I've seen this: kids who are aggressive, who have not ever seen aggression. They've never seen anyone hitting; they've never been hit. But they will hit and kick and spit and scream because that's the “fight” of fight, flight, or freeze.So it's not that they learned it somewhere.And often parents will worry, “What are they being exposed to at school?” But that can just be a natural instinct to protect oneself when we get dysregulated.Also, kids will think of the worst thing they can say—and it's not necessarily that they've heard it.I remember one time Asa got really mad at Lee. They were like three and six. And Asa said, “I'm going to chop your head off and bury you in the backyard.”Oh my goodness—if I hadn't known it wasn't necessarily something he learned, I would've been really worried. But it was just a reflection of that fight, flight, or freeze instinct that he had.So I guess it's: yes, kids can learn things from us, and I'm not saying they can't. Your example—with the dog, the rabbit poop, and the shovel—of course kids can pick up unsavory behavior from us.But that doesn't mean that every single hard thing they do, they learned from us. And also, they have good natures. There are things that come from them that are good as well, that they didn't learn from us.Corey: That's right.Sarah: I want to ground this conversation in a great metaphor from a book by Allison Gopnik. I think the title is The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children.To really embrace what we're talking about—being the person you want your child to be—you have to believe in the gardener metaphor of parenting.The gardener metaphor is: your child is like a seed that has within it everything it needs to grow into a beautiful plant. You provide the water, sunlight, proper soil, and then the plant does the work of growing on its own.The carpenter metaphor is: you have to build your child—make your child into who they're going to be.This idea we're talking about—be the person you want your child to be—that's the soil and the light and the water your child needs to grow into a beautiful plant, or a beautiful human being.It's not that we're doing things to them to turn them into good humans.And honestly, most parents, when you ask them what they wish for their child, they want their kid to be a good person when they grow up.I want to say to parents: it's easier than you think. The most influential thing you can do to help your child grow up to be a good person is to be the person you want them to be.This goes up against a lot of common parenting advice.One phrase I wish did not exist—and I don't know where it came from, but if anyone knows, let me know—is: “You should never do anything for your child that they can do for themselves.”Such a terrible way to think about relationships.Can you imagine if I said to your partner, “You should never do anything for Corey that she can do for herself”? It's terrible.I make my husband coffee in the morning—not because he can't make it himself, but as an act of love. For him to come downstairs, getting ready for work, and have a nice hot coffee ready. Of course he can make his own coffee. But human relationships are built on doing things for each other.Corey: Yes. I think that's so profound.I think about how I was just telling you before we started recording how we've been spending our weekends skiing. When I first started skiing with my husband—even though I'd grown up skiing—I'd never done it as much as him. He helped me so much. He did so much of the process for me so I didn't have too much to think about.Now that we do it all the time, he said to me the other day, “Look at how independent you've gotten with this. You can do so much of this yourself. You're managing so much more on the hill.”He was so proud of me, and I was thinking: imagine if he hadn't done that for me. If he had been like, “Just figure it out. We're on the ski hill. You're an adult.”I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it very much. But he did lots of things for me that I could have done for myself, and that love and support helped nurture the shared love we had.Sarah: Yeah.And I think it's tough because our culture is so individualistic. Hyper-individualistic—everyone should stand on their own two feet and do things without help and make it on their own. And that has really leaked into our parenting.One of the major fears I hear from parents is that their kid won't be independent.So a lot of parents push kids to be independent—and what that ends up looking like is the opposite of what we're talking about.Part of the reason there's pressure for individualism is because we see it as a way for kids to turn into “good people.”But so many qualities of being a good person are about human interconnectedness: caring about other people, being kind, being helpful, being conscientious, thinking about what's the right thing to do.All of that comes from how we're modeling it—the gardener metaphor.But there's always this tension: wanting your kid to be helpful, caring, kind, and thinking you have to make them be those things instead of letting that gardener process develop.I'm on the other side of this because my kids are grownups, so I've seen it develop. One of the things I realized a couple years ago is this progression I saw with Maxine.One time we were on our way out the door. My husband happened to be leaving for work at the same time we were leaving for the school bus. Maxine was probably around seven, and I was carrying her backpack for her.My husband—who also has that individualism thing—said, “Why are you carrying her backpack? She's seven. She can carry her own backpack.”And I was like, “I know, but she likes me to carry it, and I don't mind.”And I really knew that someday she would want to carry her own backpack.Sure enough, a couple years later, she's carrying her own backpack, doesn't ask me anymore. I didn't think about it for a while.Then one day we were coming from the grocery store and had to walk a little ways with heavy groceries. She insisted on carrying all the groceries and wouldn't let me carry anything.I was like, “I can carry some groceries, honey.” And she's like, “No, Mom. I've got it.”She's carrying all the heavy groceries by herself. This full-circle moment: not only was she helping, she wanted to do it for me. She didn't want me to have to carry the heavy groceries.I just love that.Corey: Yeah. And I love when we have these conversations because sometimes it feels like a leap of faith—you don't see this modeled in society very much. It's a leap of faith to be like, “I can do these things for my children, and one day they will…”But it's not as long as people think. I'm already seeing some of that blooming with my 10-year-old.Sarah: Yeah.And Sophie in our membership shared something on our Wednesday Wins. Her kids are around 10, eight or nine, and seven. She's always followed this principle—modeling who you want your kid to be.She said she always worried, “They're never going to help.” And whenever you hear “never” and “always,” there's anxiety coming in.But she shared she had been sick and had to self-isolate. Her kids were making her food and bringing it to her. She would drive to the store, and they would go in and get the things needed.She was amazed at how they stepped up and helped her without her having to make them. They just saw that their mom needed help and were like, “We're there, Mom. What do you need?”Corey: Oh—“What do you need?” That's so sweet.Sarah: I love that.One more story: this fall, my kids are 20—Lee's going to be 25 next week—21, and 18.My husband and I were going away for the weekend, leaving Maxine home by herself. It was fall, and we have a lot of really big trees around our house, so there was major eavestroughs—gutters—cleaning to do, getting leaves off the roof and bagging all the leaves in the yard. A full-day job.My husband had been like, “I have so much work to do. I don't want to deal with that when I come home.”So I asked the boys if they could come over and the three of them could do the leaf-and-gutter job. And they were like, “Absolutely.”They surprised their dad. When we came home, they had done the entire thing. They spent a day doing all the leaves and gutter cleaning. None of them were like, “I don't want to,” or “I'm busy.” They didn't ask me to pay them—we didn't pay them. They just were like, “Sure, we'll help Dad. We know he has a lot of work right now.”I just love that.Corey: Oh, I love that. When they're so little, they can't really help take the burden off you. But knowing that one day they will—it's such a nice thing to know.Although this brings us to that good point about Hunt, Gather, Parent.Sarah: Yeah. If people haven't listened to that episode, we'll link to it in the show notes.Let's talk about some things you can do to actively practice what we're talking about—modeling who we want our kids to be.One idea is really encapsulated by Michaeleen Doucleff, who wrote Hunt, Gather, Parent. She traveled in Mexico, spent time with Mayan people, and saw kids doing household stuff without being asked—helpful, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, taking care of younger siblings in this beautiful way that was pretty unrecognizable by North American standards.She went down and lived with them and studied what they did. She found it started with letting kids help when they were little.The two- or three-year-old who wanted to help a parent make food or do things in the garden—rather than the parents doing it without the kid around, or giving them something fake to help with, or not letting them do it—those parents let kids do it.Even if it took longer, even if the parent had to redo it later (not in front of them). They let their kids be imperfect helpers and enthusiastic helpers.That's an impulse we've all seen: kids want to help. And we often don't let them because we say they're too little or it takes too much time. And we end up thwarting that helping impulse.Then when we really want them to help—when they're actually capable—they've learned, “Helping isn't my role,” because it got shut down earlier.Corey: Exactly. And I really feel that for parents because schedules are so busy and we're so rushed.But you don't have to do this all the time. It's okay if there are sometimes where there's a crunch. Pick times when it's a little more relaxed—maybe on weekends or when you have a bit more space.Sarah: Totally.And while we're talking about helping: this comes up a lot with parents I work with and in our membership. Parents will say, “I asked my kid to set the table and they said, ‘Why do I always have to do it?'”This happened the other day with a client. I asked, “What was your child doing when you asked?” And she said, “He was snuggled up on the couch reading a book.”And I was like: I can see how that's frustrating—you could use help getting the table ready. But let's zoom out.Modeling might look like: “Okay, you're tired. You've had a long day at school. You're snuggled up reading. I'll set the table right now.”Being gracious. Even if they refuse sometimes, it's okay to do it. But also, in that specific helping piece, we can look at the times when they help without being asked.When I give parents the assignment to look for that, every parent says, “Oh, I won't find any.” And then they come back and say, “Oh, I did find times.”So when they do help—carry groceries, help a sibling—how can you make them feel good about it?“Thank you. That saved so much time.” “I was going to help your brother but my hands were full—thank you.”Pro-social behavior is reinforced when it feels good.If you want them to help more, ask: “What would you like to do to help the family team?”Not, “This is your job forever.” More like, “I've noticed setting the table isn't a great time for you. What are some other things you could take on?” And if they don't have ideas, brainstorm what's developmentally appropriate.Often there are things kids would like to do that you've just never thought of.Corey: It's true. It's kind of like how adults divide jobs at home—often according to who likes what. But with kids we think, “I should just tell them what to do, and they should just do it.”It makes sense to work with what they like.Sarah: And also the flow of the family and schedule.That's why we never had chores in the strict sense. My kids helped out, but it was never “one person's job” to do the dishwasher or take out the garbage.Because inevitably I'd need the dishwasher emptied and that person wasn't home, or they were doing homework. And if I said, “Can you do the dishwasher?” someone could say, “That's not my job—that's my brother's job.”So instead, if I needed something done, whoever was around: “Hey, can you take the garbage out?” I tried to keep it relatively equal, but it wasn't a rigid assignment. And I think that helped create the family team idea.Corey: Yes.Sarah: And that “it's someone's job” thing is that individualism again.You hear this: “Can you clean that up?” and if you haven't been modeling cleaning up messes that aren't your own, you might hear, “Well, I didn't make that mess.”But if you model: if they make a mess and you say, “Can you pick up your crayons?” and they're like, “No,” then you can say, “Okay, sure, I'll pick up the crayons for you,” and they have the experience of seeing someone clean up a mess that isn't theirs.They're more likely to absorb: “Oh, yeah, I can help with messes that aren't mine.”Corey: I've really seen this play out in my house this winter. One child loves shoveling. The second there's any snow, he's like, “Time for me to shovel.” It doesn't matter if it's early morning or dark out—he's out there shoveling.And I've been blown away, because first of all, I do not like shoveling. It's genuinely helpful.But he'll also be looking out for when the plow comes by—this doesn't happen where you live on the island, but for lots of people: the plow makes a wall at the end of the driveway. Even if you already shoveled, you have a new wall.He'll keep looking: “Just watching out for the plow.” Like a little old man. The second it happens, he's out there so everyone can leave the house as needed.And he's even admitted, “There are lots of jobs I don't like, but I really love doing this. This is something I can do for everybody.”Sarah: That's so great. That's a perfect example of letting them choose something that helps the family.In terms of flexibility—doing things for them—how have you seen that play out? Because for me, when my kids were small, they did very little. We'd do “Let's all tidy up,” but maybe they'd pick up three things and I'd pick up most of the things. We'd do a 10-minute tidy.Mostly I did dishes, setting and clearing the table, all of that. But then I found that as they got older, they just started doing it.And I never got into power struggles because, honestly, it was often easier to do it myself. Maybe that worked out because I didn't have a grand vision—I just lived it, and then I saw them grow into doing a lot as they got older.What about you? How are you seeing that balance between what you do for them and how you see them growing?Corey: I'd say this is where you really have to have faith. Something that maybe wasn't modeled for us.This comes up with clients all the time: they get anxious—“They're never going to clean up, they're never going to be helpful, they'll be entitled.” They get stuck in “never” because it's not happening right away.So when I tell people: invite them, and if they don't want to do it, say something like, “You don't want to do it this time. I'm sure you'll do it next time.”But mean it—not passive-aggressive. Not “I'm sure you'll do it next time” as a threat. Actually mean: “I'm sure you'll do it next time,” and then go about it with trust that they will eventually do it.You're holding space. You're not being anxious about it.Sarah: Yes—holding space, having faith.Corey: And I think it's giving ourselves—and the parents we work with—a permission slip.You can tidy up for them without being angry about it. If you're doing this like, “No one helps me,” that's not going to work.You have to truly trust the goodness of your children—that they'll want to be like this.Sarah: Yeah.And I think some of it comes down to how we treat other adults.If your partner normally does the dishes and says, “I'm exhausted from work,” hopefully there's give-and-take. You pick up slack when they're tired.A lot of this is: how do you want to be treated? How do you treat other adults? And how can you work on treating kids the same way?So often we don't treat kids the way we treat adults. And sometimes that's appropriate. But often it's just a lack of respect.I saw a comedy skit once where these moms were sitting around drinking wine, and at first it was normal, and then one goes to reach for the bottle and another slaps her hand: “You haven't finished what you have in your glass. Finish what you have first.”Someone interrupts, and the other says, “I was still speaking. Wait until I'm done speaking.”And you're like: oh my gosh, that's what people do to kids all the time. If you see an adult do it to another adult, it's funny—but it's also jarring because it's considered normal when people do it to kids.Kids aren't always seen as having the same rights or deserving the same respect as adults.Corey: Yes. And I think Iris Chen talks about this. You did a podcast with her back in season one—adultism.Sarah: Yes, adultism—like racism or sexism, but adultism: prioritizing adults' needs and rights over children's.Corey: And that really stood out to me. If we treat them like the beautiful little people they are—not “just children,” but people—that goes a long way in what we're talking about today.Sarah: Yeah.And the last big point is how this works with values.Corey: We hear this a lot: parents get worried about values. They really value the environment and worry their kids aren't living those values.Like a parent who was upset their kids were buying candy made with palm oil because of how it's harvested. “Why don't my kids care?”If we get preachy—“We can't buy candy with palm oil,” “We only buy thrifted clothes”—it can turn into, “You're trying to control me,” and then kids push the other way.Versus if we live those values and give them room to play with them and figure out where they land, they tend to be more open—and more interested in the why.A strange example from this weekend: I don't really like those disposable hand warmers because you can only use them once. I prefer things we can use multiple times.It was supposed to be really cold, so I was like, “Okay, I guess I'll buy them.” I didn't say anything weird about it. We used them.At the end of the day, he had to throw them out, and he goes, “I don't feel great about this. It was helpful, but I don't know if it was helpful enough that we have to throw this in the garbage now.”And I was like: that's exactly how I feel. But I didn't get preachy. He was able to think about it himself.So even with values, we live them. If kids aren't agreeing with our values, sometimes we have to give space and pull back. When someone's pushing something on you, you often feel like not complying.Sarah: Yeah. It becomes a power struggle.And I do think there's a difference between pushing and educating. You can give them information in an age-appropriate way, and you can say, “You can buy that with your own money, but I don't want to support that, so I'm not going to.”Not in a way that makes them feel terrible. Just: “These are my values.”I've said this to my kids. Maxine was maybe 14 and said, “My phone's broken. I need a new phone.”I said, “What's wrong?” She said, “My music library keeps going away and I have to download it.”I started laughing and said, “That's not enough to get a new phone.” I said, “My values are we use electronics until they're broken. We don't get a new phone because of a little glitch.”You should see our minivan—it's scraped up and old-looking. Maxine actually said we're going somewhere with her boyfriend and his mom, and she said, “Can you please ask my boyfriend's mother to drive?”I said, “Why?” And she said, “Our car is so embarrassing.”And I'm like, “It works great. We drive our cars into the ground.” That's our family value.And then last year, Maxine's phone screen actually broke. She wanted a new phone, and I said, “My values—because of e-waste—are that I'd get it fixed if I were you. But I promise I won't judge you if you want a new phone. Do what feels right for you.”No guilt-tripping. And she chose to fix the screen instead of buying a new phone.So these are examples—like your hand warmers—where we can give the information without being heavy. And they usually absorb our values over time.Corey: Because it's not just that moment—it's hundreds of interactions.And that's actually empowering: you don't need one big conversation. You get to show them these little things throughout life.Sarah: Mm-hmm.Corey: I mean, if we're talking about phones, goodness gracious—how long have I needed a new phone?Sarah: I know. I've been wanting you to get a new phone so you can post Reels for me.Corey: They're like, “Corey, maybe you've taken this too far.” But I don't know—the modeling I've given my children is that you can make a dead phone last for two extra years.Sarah: And I like your point: it's all of these interactions over and over again.The opposite of what we're talking about is you can't tell your kids not to be materialistic if you go out and buy things you don't need. You can't tell them people are more important than phones if you're on your phone all the time.You really have to think about it. That's why that “Do as I say, not as I do” sometimes gets used—because it's hard. It's hard to be the person you want your kids to be.And it keeps us honest: who do we want to be? Who do we want them to be?Corey: I mean, it's that moment when I stood there holding the shovel and I was like, “Ah. I see.”So we can see this as a beautiful thing for our own growth, too, because we're going to keep realizing how much it matters.Caveat, though: I don't want parents to listen and feel pressure—like every moment they're being watched and they must be perfect.Because this is also a chance to model messing up and making repairs. So don't take this as: you have to be perfect.Sarah: And the other thing: if you're listening and you're like, “Why do I have to do everything around here? Sarah and Corey are saying clean up your kids' messes, carry things for them, do the chores…”I'm not saying every parent should be a martyr and never get help.Remember what I said: where can your kids help? What are they already doing? What could they choose?And I think I also let a lot of stuff go. My parents once came to visit and said, “Sarah, we really admire how you choose to spend time with your kids instead of cleaning up your house.”I was like, I think that was a backhanded compliment. And also them noticing it was kind of a mess.It wasn't terrible or dirty. It was just: I didn't have a perfect house, and I did everything myself.I did a lot myself, but I didn't do all the things some people think they need to do.Corey: That totally makes sense. You're basically saying: what can you let go of, too?Sarah: Yeah. For the sake of the relationship.And I think the last thing I wanted us to talk about is: does this ever not work?You and I were thinking about objections.If you're living this way—gracious, helpful, flexible, modeling who you want them to be—you're putting deposits in the Goodwill Bank. Your connection increases. They care what you think because that Goodwill Bank is nice and beefy.The only time you could say it wouldn't work is if you didn't have a good relationship. But if you're doing all this, it builds relationship—so I don't even think you can say, “This doesn't work.”Nobody's perfect. There were plenty of times I asked my kids to do things and they were grumpy, or I had to ask 10 times. It wasn't like, “Of course, Mom, let me empty the dishwasher.” They were normal kids. But in general, if you trust the process and maturation, your kids move in that direction.Corey: I'd add one other thing: it wouldn't work if this is all you're doing, with nothing else.Sometimes people think peaceful parenting is passive, and what we're saying can sound passive: “Just be who you want them to be.”But there are also times you need to do something. Like we said: if you're being the person you want to be and they're never helping, there's also a conversation: “What do you like to do?” There are collaborative steps.This is the big philosophy—embodying who you want them to be—but there are also practical supports and conversations that help them be successful.Sarah: Totally.And the last thing is: remember this happens over time. Trust the growth process and maturation and brain development.Remember that when they're little, their agenda is not your agenda. And as they get older, they start to see the benefits: “Oh yeah, it is nice when the living room's tidied up.”When they're little, they don't have the same agenda as you. That's a lot of why you get, “No, you do it.”And I actually can't believe I didn't say this earlier, but a lot of times when we're doing things for kids, they feel it as nurturing.So sometimes when they don't want to help, it's their way of saying, “I want to make sure you're taking care of me.” Sometimes that can look like refusal or not wanting to do things themselves.Corey: Yeah, absolutely.Sarah: Thanks, Corey.Corey: Thank you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribe

SummaryIn this episode, the hosts discuss the recent apology from Kanye West, exploring its sincerity and implications for mental health and accountability. They reflect on the impact of Kanye's actions on his family and career, and analyze the recent Versus battle between Hit Boy and Mike Will. The conversation also touches on T.I.'s new music and J. Cole's apology, considering how these artists navigate their legacies in the music industry. In this engaging conversation, the hosts delve into various topics, including music reviews of ASAP Rocky's new album, industry controversies surrounding artists. They discuss the importance of cultural gatekeeping in music and sports, emphasizing the need for a more discerning approach to who is accepted into the culture. The conversation is lively, filled with humor, and offers insightful commentary on the dynamics of the music and sports industries.

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 ConelyKali ScottKhleo ThomasThis Week We DiscussLose Google vs Social MediaPopular But Never Find Love vs Ideal Marriage But PoorMichael Jackson vs PrinceS/o To Our SponorsCash 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.BetterHelpSign up and get 10% off at https://BetterHelp.com/SQUADDBlue ChewGet 10% off your first month of BlueChew Gold with code SQUADD. That'spromo code SQUADD.BlueChew.comGametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code SQUADD for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply.Download the Gametime app today!

Jurandir Filho, Felipe Mesquita, Evandro de Freitas e Bruno Carvalho batem um papo sobre dois titãs dos jogos de luta: "Street Fighter" e "Mortal Kombat". Apesar de pertencerem ao mesmo gênero, eles tem filosofias bem diferentes, quase como dois jeitos opostos de entender um bom game de porradaria."Street Fighter" (Capcom, Japão) nasceu nos Arcades no fim dos anos 80 e ajudou a definir as regras dos jogos de luta modernos. Ele é mais técnico, focado em precisão, leitura do adversário e domínio de comandos. Já "Mortal Kombat" (Midway / NetherRealm, EUA) surgiu no começo dos anos 90 com a intenção de quebrar padrões: personagens digitalizados, violência explícita e um tom mais sombrio e cinematográfico. Considerando as duas franquias, quem se saiu melhor? Na geração 16bits quem dominou? Quem tem os personagems mais icônicos? Qual a melhor trilha sonora? Como jogo, quem fez melhor no passar dos anos?Essa é mais uma edição da série Versus!=- MAIS DESCONTO NA ALURA | Estude na Alura, a maior escola de tecnologia on-line do Brasil! Acesse o nosso link e ganhe 26% de desconto na matrícula! https://alura.com.br/99vidas

Retirement isn't just a financial equation—it's an identity shift. In this recap, Lesley Logan and Brad Crowell reflect on the conversation with wealth advisor and researcher Gregg Lunceford, who challenges the traditional retirement model by focusing on identity, purpose, and emotional readiness. They explore why longer lifespans have reshaped retirement entirely and why high performers often struggle most when their job no longer defines them. Whether listeners are 25 or 65, this conversation reframes what freedom after work can truly look like. 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:How increased longevity has made traditional pension models obsolete.The reality of the 20-year life bonus after your career ends.Why high achievers struggle to uncover a non-work identity.How intentional communities support mental and emotional well-being.The importance of creating a shared retirement vision as a couple.Episode References/Links:Agency Mini - https://prfit.biz/miniContrology Pilates Conference in Poland - https://xxll.co/polandContrology Pilates Conference in Brussels - https://xxll.co/brusselsPOT in London - https://xxll.co/potSpring Training: How To Get Overhead - https://opc.me/eventsSubmit your wins or questions - https://beitpod.com/questionsThe Seeing Eye - https://seeingeye.orgMesirow Wealth Management - https://www.mesirow.comGregg Lunceford on LinkedIn - https://beitpod.com/greggluncefordExit From Work - https://a.co/d/fR25gH2 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 0:01  He was talking about football players, and he was talking about people who have, you know, high performance people who make a shitload of money, and then they retire and they, he said, they burn through a lot of money trying to figure out who they are.Lesley Logan 0:17  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 1:01  Take it away. Lesley Logan 1:03  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 trailblazing, trail, trailblazing. Brad Crowell 1:12  Wanna try that again?Lesley Logan 1:16  Welcome back to the Be It Till You See It interview recap where my co-host in life, don't laugh at me. I don't want to start again. Brad Crowell 1:22  No. The Welcome back was perfect. It was amazing. Lesley Logan 1:25  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 trailblazing convo I have with Gregg Lunceford in our last episode. If you haven't yet listened to that interview, you fucked up. It's so good. Brad Crowell 1:41  It's a great interview. Lesley Logan 1:42  He's a great educator. He blew my mind.Brad Crowell 1:46  So inspirational. Lesley Logan 1:47  Yeah.Brad Crowell 1:48  You actually, literally said my internal dialog out loud to him towards the end of the interview, because you were like, yeah, after listening to you, I'm so excited for this next chapter of my life. And I was like me too. It was amazing.Lesley Logan 2:06  I know, I know, I, your parents need to listen to this stat. Brad Crowell 2:10  Yeah, he's a badass. Lesley Logan 2:11  So anyways, they won't even be out, and they're making decisions right now, maybe we have to get them an episode early. Okay, so you can come back and listen to it later. You can finish this and you can listen to that one, or I gotta finish the script. You can listen to this one, or you can listen to that one first, whichever you want to do. But just you gotta listen.Brad Crowell 2:28  You did not have to finish the script. You can just let it go. Lesley Logan 2:32  I could also just close the loop on that. Brad Crowell 2:35  That was the only loop that you know. Lesley Logan 2:37  Well, you know what, Sir. Brad Crowell 2:40  Today is January 29th.Lesley Logan 2:42  It's just after my birthday. You can still wish me a happy birthday. It's the anniversary to celebrate Seeing Eye Guide Dogs. So the Seeing Eye Guide Dog Anniversary is an appreciation for all the dogs who act as their owners' eyes and ears. The devotion and taught abilities of these particular canines keep them safe and enable them to operate as a fully functional persons. The day is meant to recognize a school that educates them. Seeing eye dogs go through extensive training to be able to, say, safely traverse the environment and all of its hazards for their person. That's why they're so worthy of this recognition. Okay, so I don't have a seeing eye dog. Obviously, we don't know anyone who in our life who has a seeing eye dog, but I have watched the dog who could tell a girl was about to have a seizure before she had it, and then opened the fridge and pulled out her medicine and gave it to her while she was having this like seizure. Brad Crowell 3:37  That's crazy. Lesley Logan 3:38  Crazy. And I have met people with dogs who can sense if they're about to have, like, an insulin situation, because they have some, like, a type of insulin diabetes where, like, it can change really drastically. I have definitely seen people with seeing eye dogs, and I'm so impressed. And so really, the rest of the days sucked. And this is the best one of all the choices. Brad Crowell 4:00  I like this one, though. Lesley Logan 4:01  I really like this one, because here's the deal. Brad Crowell 4:03  So the organization is actually called The Seeing Eye. Lesley Logan 4:06  Oh. Brad Crowell 4:07  Yeah. And I, I'm just realizing that as well. Lesley Logan 4:10  Okay, well, they got up, they didn't pay for the sponsorship, because they're doing great work out there for people who need it. Brad Crowell 4:14  It's a guide dog school. Lesley Logan 4:16  And I am just kind of obsessed with this. And so if this inspired you in any way you should go donate money to your local no kill animal shelter, because while those dogs won't be a seeing eye dog or a service dog, they certainly need your help. This is really or you could donate to your seeing eye dog school if they need the money like you never know. You might your life could change. You might need a dog that's a service animal. So I just was, you know, anything to help raise money and thoughts about, please don't buy a puppy. Go get go adopt an animal. They have puppies too. Brad Crowell 4:48  You know what is amazing. I'm reading about the school, and I think that my elementary school teacher went to the school, because when we were in school, she somehow lost her vision, and I remember she.Lesley Logan 5:07  You were taught by someone who couldn't see?Brad Crowell 5:10  No, when I was taught by her, she could. But then, like in a year or two later, when I was like, in fourth or fifth grade, we we found out that she lost her vision, and I remember her going to Braille school. And I'm pretty sure she went to seeing eye dog school. Lesley Logan 5:25  That's so cool. Brad Crowell 5:26  Because think about it, if you're like, you know, 5060, years old, and you've never worked with a dog before like that, how would you even know how?Lesley Logan 5:34  Yeah, no, you have to get trained. Okay? But now this opens up a whole thing. So then she couldn't do the thing that she loved to do. She couldn't teach anymore. Brad Crowell 5:41  I'm pretty sure she retired. Lesley Logan 5:43  Oh, that's such a. So wait, this sucks. If you're blind, what are your jobs? You could be a phone sex operator.Brad Crowell 5:52  Yes, you could be a phone sex operator. That's not what I was gonna go, but yeah, you could do that, but.Lesley Logan 5:56  But you can make a lot of money doing this. You could do you could be a 900 psychic.Brad Crowell 6:01  You could be a 900 psychic, or you could just talk on the phone, too.Lesley Logan 6:05  Yeah, yeah. With technology today, I think they probably have more options, but I just realized, like, that would suck, like, all of a sudden she can't teach anymore. What if she couldn't even retire?Brad Crowell 6:15  No, it's, it's very traumatic, you know? I mean, we have a close friend of ours whose husband was, he has a, like a degenerative disease that didn't strike until he was in his, you know, midlife.Lesley Logan 6:31  We do? Brad Crowell 6:32  We do. Lesley Logan 6:33  Oh, is it blind, is he going blind? Brad Crowell 6:35  No, but, but the idea of being able, of being an abled body and then all of a sudden, everything that was quote, unquote normal for you is no longer an option. And that scares, that scares me.Lesley Logan 6:49  Scares the hell out of me. But, okay, Dark tangent, dark comedy tangent. Okay, I think it was the French, it was a European commercial. Do you remember this thing? It came through at my Instagram, and this, like, got this woman and this guy, like, wake up on a couch. They like, had, you know, obviously had sex last night, and like, they woke on the couch, and he's like, no, I gotta go. She's like, you could stay. And then, like, he is, like, getting up, and he like, puts himself in his wheelchair. And then this guy opens up the door to the apartment, and he's like, what's going on here? And so clearly, the woman was cheating on her partner, and the whole thing was like, what, like, you know, just maybe think before you park in someone else's spot, or like using the bathroom, or like using the handicap parking and using the handicapped bathroom, and it I died laughing. I cried laughing because, like, what a great way to get people to go. Oh, I'm fucking using that restroom, or I've never parked in those spots because in LA, one of my girlfriends was just parked there to take a phone call and she got a ticket. Don't do it, guys, they don't care if you don't leave the car. Don't do it. It's for someone else. It is someone else's spot. But just made me laugh. I know this is all about seeing eye dogs, and I thought it was a great advertisement for not being a dickhead.Brad Crowell 8:08  Well, what a fun turn this took. Lesley Logan 8:10  Okay. Well, everyone, look, you, your life could change in an instant. So if there is a charity in your area that is helping people get service animals into the hands of people that need it, this is their I'm sponsoring an ad for them. Go give them some money. Give them some time. Brad Crowell 8:27  Participate. Lesley Logan 8:27  Yeah, you never know. Maybe you could become a really good trainer for one of these dogs. You don't know. You know, they people in prison are training some of these dogs so there's great work going out there. So everyone needs a hobby. This could be yours. Brad Crowell 8:39  I love it. Lesley Logan 8:40  All right, you guys, we are home. Brad Crowell 8:43  Yeah, we are, we are. Lesley Logan 8:44  I know where we are in the world. We are home. Brad Crowell 8:47  We are officially home. And last week was Lesley's birthday. Lesley Logan 8:52  Was fabulous. Brad Crowell 8:52  It was fabuloso.Lesley Logan 8:53  It was so fun. I think it's my new theme every year. I don't know. I'll probably change it next time. I'm an Aquarius, who knows, whatever. But it was great. 43 it's looking good, and we're getting ready for Agency Mini, which is next month. Lesley Logan 9:06  Yes, February. Agency Mini, in fact, it's a good chance it's on early bird right now, to be honest. Brad Crowell 9:11  Could be, could be, yeah. Lesley Logan 9:13  Yeah, possible. prfit.biz/mini is where you're gonna go. It's for Pilates instructors or studio owners who work for themselves or want to work for themselves.Brad Crowell 9:21  Yeah, that's profit without the O dot biz slash mini, prfit.biz/mini.Lesley Logan 9:26  And we are getting ready. Brad has never been to Poland. Brad Crowell 9:30  First time. Lesley Logan 9:31  And we have never been to Brussels. And we'll be with Karen Frischmann. And then we're gonna do a second honeymoon, because why not? And then we're going to be in London. So if you want to see us in Europe, it's the only time in 2026 we're going to be in Europe. xxll.co/poland gets you the Poland information xxll.co/brussels gets you Brussels information, and xxll.co/pot will take you to the London information and. Brad Crowell 10:00  Yeah, come hang out. It'd be so fun to meet in person. Lesley Logan 10:02  Oh my gosh. It'd be so fun. And as of right now, our 2027 calendar does not have anything in it, and it may stay that way. We don't know yet. I don't know. So if you want to see us in Europe, this is it.Brad Crowell 10:16  Sounds good to me. I was gonna say maybe Greece, but we're not sure.Lesley Logan 10:19  We're waiting. We're still at the moment of this recording, which is November of 2025 we think we have an invitation to Greece, and we're just waiting for the dates.Brad Crowell 10:30  We shall see. Anyway, in May, for all of those who aren't in Europe, join us virtually, we're going to do another spring training event with onlinepilatesclasses.com. If you were with us last year, two years ago, we did a summer, summer camp. Last year, we did a spring training we loved the spring training vibes, so we're doing that one again. We're going to do that event again, but the topic is going to be totally different. We're going to do how to get overhead. So it's going to include all of those kinds of exercises where you're upside down and, you know, breaking it down for you, making it feel a little more accessible and safe and all those kinds of things. To get on the wait list for that and get the more information as it as we start releasing it, go to opc.me/events, opc.me/events, and you'll be able to stay in the loop. Oh yeah. Brad Crowell 11:18  So today, we had a question, except we're going to change up our question. Normally, we, we get, we get tons and tons of questions. If they're a business question, we usually answer them in our coaching group, Agency. It's from Profitable Pilates, our coaching group, and but this time, what we thought we would do is just ask a few of the questions so you can kind of see if any of these are resonating with you, and see you know, like, how do we tackle, like, how is it that we support the studio owners and teachers that are inside of Agency? So for, for example, we have, we have a recent one that just got submitted. It said, hey, how much notice should I give that client give my clients about my rate increase?Lesley Logan 12:02  No more than 30 days. You can go as low as three days, but no more than 30 days. I've had Mini people do two weeks. It really kind of depends on, you know, if you're doing a $2 rate increase, you can do that next week. You know, it's not a big deal. Doing a $25 rate increase per session. You might want to give them 30 days notice. But we actually also have a course that tells you exactly how to raise those rates and how to actually how to give the people the notice you're going to give so you don't get you're going to have people who have no filter, and they don't realize what they're saying out loud to you can feel personal. It's not, but yeah, but yeah, that's what I would say.Brad Crowell 12:38  I mean. We've got a lot of different tools to support specifically, like, how much should you be raising rates and why? Why are we doing it this way, instead of it just being a random number out there. So if you're ever wondering, like, am I charging enough? That's why people join Agency, we get to dig into these questions with you. Kind of break down some numbers, think about it, logically, all that kind of stuff. Another question for you is, I'm thinking of changing my currently, I sell packages. I'm thinking to change to an auto renew subscription. So instead of selling a 10 pack, you get 10 classes a month or something. I'm assuming that's what it is. Lesley Logan 13:15  Yeah. I don't mind if it's a limited Okay. Brad Crowell 13:17  Yeah but how do I do this without being too wordy? How do I communicate the change to my clients?Lesley Logan 13:21  You're gonna have to have a contract. First and foremost, you, this is a auto renew, and the FCC, I believe, put some stuff in place recently. Look, it could have changed. Brad Crowell 13:32  They took it away. Lesley Logan 13:33  They might have taken it away. Brad Crowell 13:34  Click to click to cancel, or it's already it's already trashed. Yeah, they did. Lesley Logan 13:38  Fuck those people. Anyways, okay, so guess what? No one's fucking regulating. You can do what you want, but reviews still stand. And so if you would like to what I always believe is go back to your values. We have a course on your values. But I have, I have, if this was an office hours call, I could ask a couple of follow up questions about the person, because I have some reasons for not doing an auto renew. Meaning, if you are a solo teacher, I'm going to say no auto renew for you. What happens if you get sick? What about your vacations? There are ways to set packages up so they almost feel like an auto renew, but you actually don't owe people anything if you get sick or if you go on vacation, if you do an auto renew, you actually owe them whatever the contract states.Brad Crowell 14:16  Right, because, what if you're out of town for two weeks and they're like, well, I didn't get my 10 classes, what do we do then?Lesley Logan 14:21  And then they were out they were out of town the other two weeks. And then you also have to figure out with your scheduling tool, can it handle this? Can it handle this feature you want to change it to? If it does handle it, how easily is it to stop it and start it? Some people want to have 90-day contracts on these auto renews and then a 30-day notice. These are all things you have to talk about with a lawyer, but we can actually talk about that together in Agency, our office hours or coaching call to really make sure what's going to work best for you. And then, and then, if you are a studio with multiple teachers, what are the breaks you want to have? And then, why are you doing this? So the other question like, how do you communicate it? It kind of depends on what your values are and what the benefit are that you're trying to say, for example, if you're trying to say that our auto renew is great ease and consistency, plus our number one priority, which is community, then you would actually make it really easy for people to be on auto renew and really hard to be on a package, right? Because packages are more convenient for the person who owns a package, because they can decide when and if they want to use it and auto renew, they have to use it. And then what you need to understand about auto renews is it's another way of saying membership and once you have memberships, you have churn, and you will actually, you might be surprised how much churn you have with auto renews versus people with packages. Because I don't love to be on auto renews with places, because I travel so much, so I might not choose a place that forced me on auto renew or charges me more to be on a package. Now I might not be your client, so it doesn't matter. I don't want to scare you, but these are the things you have to think about. And where, in Agency, we actually coach you on it, because we don't do templates. What works for Brad's studio for auto renews is not going to work for Katie's or Georgia's, right? Like, we have to actually look at like, how many people are on the team? What is the goal of the studio? What are you what are the services under that? Because don't, don't get me started when I see I have to have a membership for mat and I have to have membership for a reformer, and I get mad about that.Brad Crowell 16:18  Now, that's too many options. People don't know what to do. Lesley Logan 16:20  And then they have to think about it. Brad Crowell 16:21  Well then, they just do nothing.Lesley Logan 16:22  Yeah, and so you just have to know, like, yes, it looks like that's how businesses are making money right now with all these auto renews. I'm telling you right now that bubble is popping. We are watching class-based studios lose clients who are middle class a lot faster than you think. And so there's reasons to explore what the options are. What's your purpose for running this change? Like, what? How is this easier for you? Do you think it's to have predictable income? What's in it for them? And then that's how we sell it to them? We have to sell it to them on how it's in it for them, they don't give a fuck about what's in it for you. I mean, they don't not give a fuck but they don't.Brad Crowell 16:57  You're right, like, really, that's not their concern, and it shouldn't be, right? No, so well anyway. So this is the kind of conversations that we get to have over at, in Agency, our fitness business coaching. So whether you're doing yoga or pilates or, I mean, we've had people in there who are we've had a chiropractor in there. We've had a doula in there. We've had bar boxing, whatever. So obviously the majority of our audience is Pilates. So that's primarily what we're discussing over there. But in the service-based industry, we we love doing this. We've been doing it for eight years now. So yeah, if you're interested in more information about that, just reach out to us or go to profitablepilates.com, and you can find out about the coaching over there, but. Lesley Logan 17:37  Join Mini. Do the Mini thing. Brad Crowell 17:38  Oh, join Agency Mini, yeah, go to prfit.biz/mini prfit.biz/mini.Lesley Logan 17:45  If you can sign up right now, it's $25 if it's on early bird, it's $65 if it's not, oh my God, for three days of coaching, change your life. Brad Crowell 17:52  Yeah. 100%. I love it. Well, thanks for joining us down that. If you have a question for the pod or question for Lesley or me, just text us, 310-905-5534, or submit a question at beitpod.com/questions and you can leave us both a win where we'll we'll probably weave that into our Fuck Yeah Friday episodes or you can submit a question, which we can do on our Thursdays. So stick around. We'll be right back. We're gonna dig into this amazing convo that Lesley had with Gregg Lunceford. Brad Crowell 18:21  Okay, let's talk about Gregg Lunceford. Gregg Lunceford spent more than three decades in financial services as a wealth advisor at Mesirow in Chicago. I'm sure I'm saying that wrong. He said it twice, and I was I wasn't sure. But anyway, alongside his advisory work, he's an academic researcher whose PhD studies at Case Western Reserve University, focused on the social, emotional and financial realities of today's retirement transition. And this was so interesting to me, y'all.Lesley Logan 18:50  Fascinating, fascinating. So.Brad Crowell 18:53  His curiosity about why even high, highly successful professionals hesitate to retire led him to explore how identity, purpose and well being shape this stage of our lives. And he's like part historian too, right? So he's also the author of Exit From Work, and he writes about his journey and insights into retirement. So, but I, I really enjoyed him breaking down just the different stages of our lives. And also, like, he's comparing generations. Lesley Logan 19:24  Oh, yeah. Brad Crowell 19:25  And like, how they got to where they are, and like, retirement package stuff that is not even an option for us. Lesley Logan 19:32  Let's just talk about, like, let's get more specific what the episode is about, just in case I haven't heard it. So we were talking about retirement attitude, in a sense, like in that, you know, the way my grandparents retired. I to this day, I'm shocked they retired. I didn't know they had money to retire. They didn't look like they saved anything, but like they're, you know, one, one side saved everything. It came out of the Depression. The other side could have been their children. So very different life. They're very young, and so they, like I, I have one set of grandparents who were retired when I was born, and I had another set of grandparents that worked the whole for a while when I was alive, right? And then they all had a pension, and then they just and then they just retired and got paid to be not working, right?Brad Crowell 20:18  What I think, what I think is amazing is Gregg's analysis, and I'm sure this is well documented now, but, but his analysis of life expectancy shot everything in the foot. Lesley Logan 20:30  Right. Brad Crowell 20:30  He said our grandparents' generation, and to some extent, maybe our parents' generation, the pension game, the reality is that people weren't living to be 70, 80, 90 years old. They were only living 60, 70, years and so if you're working until you're 55 and then they have to pay you out for a decade more before you're done, then. Lesley Logan 20:55  It's not that much money. Brad Crowell 20:55  Wasn't that big of a deal but when you're living till you're 80, all of a sudden the companies were like, this is a massive burden for us. We can't, we can't do this. And so then what? The retirement age got older, the pension packages started getting slimmer, all that kind of stuff. So like, when we look at our grandparents and they had just like, you said, how was it possible that they could even retire? It didn't make any sense.Lesley Logan 21:17  They always they had actually had money to give when they died. I was like, what? They had, they had money? So, so the thing that was really fun with Gregg is that, like he, you know, we got into this more deeply in the episode. It's worth listening to. But like during the 2008 recession, companies were trying to just fire everybody. And so they were trying to go, here's the money. All I do is take this amazing package, and people weren't doing it, and it's because it was emotional, like it wasn't just knowing the number, which is like, what the ads would say. It was like, who am I if I'm not doing this? And like, you know some, I worry about, like, like, your parents have worked, your dad's worked for a company for 40 something years. Brad Crowell 22:02  41 or 42 years, yeah. Lesley Logan 22:04  Well, you're 43. So, so and so he's gonna retire, right? And it's like, does he know what to do? Does he know what he's gonna do? Brad Crowell 22:13  It's so funny because, and also, he probably could have retired. No, no, he they could have, I think financially, they could have retired a while back. But again, I think you're right on the money. It's not, it's actually an identity, right. It's a it's the way that you see. It's how you define who you are.Lesley Logan 22:32  Well, and he's so, so, so Gregg, our genius that we interviewed, he said, you we now have a 20 year life bonus, where you get to define who and what you want to be, because you have your first 20 years getting 20-ish years getting educated. Then you have 20 something, well, Andrew advocates 40 something years that you're working, but then you probably have another 20 plus years to be anything you want. Brad Crowell 22:58  Yeah, because he was talking about the bucket list where people are, like, I'm old and decrepit, but I want to go see Niagara Falls, right? And basically, now today, because the quality of life is so much better, you're still active and able to do life normally, you know, well into your 70s and maybe even 80s, until you're willing to slow down so at that point. But like, so, so then your bucket list is a bit different, because, like, okay, you can probably travel, travel, travel, travel for five or 10 years. I mean, my grandparents did this. They bought a they bought an RV, yeah, and for a decade, they drove around the United States, for a decade, but they eventually got bored of it, and then they came home and they still lived for another 20 years, you know? So it's like, okay, so the bucket list thing, if that, if, if people aren't looking at the end of life as like, I gotta finally have a good time. Now, what Gregg is saying is, like, you could flip this on its head entirely.Lesley Logan 23:55  Yeah. Well, he, he emphasized that today's retirees have more personal freedom than previous generations. And you're probably like, Lesley, why are we talking about retiring? We're still going to be it until we see it. Because be it till you see it changes. It changes all the time. And also, if you are not considering what you want to do on the other side of whatever it is you're doing, I don't care how much you love it. I fucking love what I do, and I dream of exiting stage left all the time. And it's not because.Brad Crowell 24:19  She, this is what I hear around our house. I can't wait to be the person that people go who is she again and and she's like, something to do with Pilates, I don't know.Lesley Logan 24:31  Yeah, like, so there's a line in Notting Hill where Julia Roberts' character says, like, she, she says it in like, not a, not the nicest way about herself, but like, people are gonna look at her, like, as this person who was once famous for a while. And I see it as, like, a complete amazing thing where it's just like, someday it'll be like that, oh, that's that person who she was kind of known in her industry for a little bit, and it's like, yeah, she's not like, I like, I was once famous for a little bit in a small part of the world, and now I can move like, because why not? It doesn't mean I don't love what I do. And by the way, like, please don't freak out. No one freak out. Your memberships are fine. I'm not going anywhere. You got to tell people this, Brad, you got to make sure they know. We are currently creating two other things right now so no one I'm not going anywhere, but I do constantly think about I want to be able to retire when I have my faculties, to travel the world, to go to Antarctica, to do different things, I don't want to be in my 70s going, okay, now I'm hanging my hat up. No, I want to know who you and I are on the other side of working together like I there's these other things. And so I wanted to have Gregg on because when he told me what he did, I was like, fuck yeah. It doesn't matter how old you are listening to this, you can take some time to think about what is the freedom I want to have in this extra bonus of life I get. Your grandparents didn't get it. None of mine did. They all died young so. Brad Crowell 25:58  Yeah, the the I think it's, I think it's, I think it's just really interesting to look at the the shift of things, right? There's so many factors that that made the Baby Boomer, Boomer generation, like, pretty epic.Lesley Logan 26:12  Man, they don't know how good a ride they had. Brad Crowell 26:14  Yeah, and the wealth that they were able to build without, like, realizing it, and all that stuff has, that whole flow has shifted completely, you know, and so it's interesting, though, because life expectancy is longer, and I just, I just love that. So I think that really shifts into what I what I loved about he was talking about, he said something that I found intriguing. He was talking about football players, and he was talking about people who have high performance people, or make a shitload of money, and then they retire, and they, he said, they burn through a lot of money trying to figure out who they are.Lesley Logan 26:54  Yeah, this blew my mind too, because it's like, oh, hold on you. You have the money, but you don't know what you're gonna do with it yet.Brad Crowell 27:01  Well, or it's not. Lesley Logan 27:03  Or who you are with it. Brad Crowell 27:04  That's what I was gonna say. It's not even, it's not even what they're gonna do with it yet. It's they're trying to find themselves because they've been defining themselves.Lesley Logan 27:12  They weren't listening to this podcast. Every single person tells people to get to know who they are. Brad Crowell 27:16  Yeah, but they've been defining themselves by their job for 40 years. So then what happens when you're no longer able to define yourself? I know what this is like, because when I moved to Los Angeles, I was there to do music, and after two years, only two years of being there, so I'm like, 25 right? I am die hard into this band. We are doing everything and anything we can to make this band go and then the singer of the band is like, I'm going to grad school. And he quit. And he was like, my partner in this band. And I was like, what the hell man? Like, why did I come all the way out to Los Angeles to do this. What, to do what? What am I gonna do?Lesley Logan 27:55  Because you're gonna meet me. But that's okay. You didn't know that yet. Brad Crowell 27:58  No, I did not know that yet. It was down the road. So, so I was really I was depressed, I was angry, I was confused. I didn't really know how to I didn't know what I was going to go do. I still knew I wanted to do music, but I but what ended up happening was I really got into motorcycles, like really got into motorcycles, and that became kind of how I defined myself. It was how I I changed the way I dressed. I literally rode a motorcycle every day. I joined a motorcycle club. I would ride all over Southern California, you know. And so suddenly that became my identity. And it wasn't until I was networking and met some more people in music that I began to shift back into the music kind of things. But like, yeah, for sure, I can understand how people would be like, well, I used to be blah, blah, blah, whatever, and now I'm no longer so what am I?Lesley Logan 28:46  It's so easy to blow through money to figure out who you are. There's people who join Pilates training programs at 60 because they're like, oh, I think I want to do this, but it's like, eight grand, right? Well, what if you don't? Then people feel like, oh, I just wasted all that money. And then they do something they don't want to do with it, or, or they just keep trying out different things. And like, now they've got this now. They bought a kayak, then they bought the ski doo, and then they bought the boat, and they're trying to be retired first. And so, yeah, I think so, I think it's really easy because they don't know who they are. And that's Gregg's whole thing. They you have to know who you want to be.Brad Crowell 29:19  Yeah, he said many people who spent life meeting obligations are now suddenly confronted with, who do I actually want to be? Right? Who do I actually want to be? And he said, if you go into that blindly, you start chasing quick hits to replace the accolades of a job. You know, the team mentality, the psychological part of success, when you achieve a goal, you know, and basically it can feel very scattered. And he said, so what we should be doing is preparing what he calls a retirement identity. A retirement identity. And he said, instead of trying to figure it out when you get there, what if you started processing that now? And I thought, man, that's really interesting, because that's always been a question for me. You know, like, I asked your dad one time, what's it like to be retired? And he goes, I don't know. man, I've been retired since my 50s.Lesley Logan 30:16  Yeah. He's been retired for a long time. So, like, we're gonna live in Mexico and become tequila smallies. I've already figured this out. Brad Crowell 30:22  I love it. I love everything about that. I think that's brilliant, but, but also, he said there was other he said there was other options too. What did he call it the barista? Oh, no, no, that was the last week barista retired, where she was talking about, you know, getting a part time job. She called it barista retired. I think? Lesley Logan 30:41  Oh, I think so, but I. Brad Crowell 30:43  You know, like, and that's what your dad's doing now. And why is he doing that now? Because he doesn't want to sit around and watch a television all day. He wants to get up and be active. Lesley Logan 30:50  Yeah, there's, there's great. There's, he's a, he's a, he's a crossing guard now, he fucking loves that.Brad Crowell 30:57  Gregg was talking about, like he works with these clients who are looking towards retirement, and he helps them sculpt these packages, which are really clever, right? Because it shifts your focus of purpose in the job. If your job has been to manage a team of 50 people, now you might be training your replacement person for a year or two before you shift into part time. And you just do it, because you can do it from wherever you need to be and whatever. You know, lots of options.Lesley Logan 31:24  I am obsessed I'm obsessed with this whole thing because, like, everyone wants to know, like, how much money do you need to live off of? Like, that we even our lovely wealth people were like, how much money do you want to live off of when you retire? And we were like, we don't want to worry about money. That was our answer. Because I want to live in an Airstream sipping tequila. And, you know, coming back home here when the weather is good, and then, I don't know, we have a house in Cambodia, there's a I want to see the world. So we had that, but we no one was like, what is your retirement persona? Brad Crowell 31:54  Yeah, how do you, how do you imagine spending your time participating in the world, you know, as a retired person? Lesley Logan 32:02  I mean exactly. Brad Crowell 32:03  Is your goal to watch every movie in the last blockbuster? Maybe you shouldn't do that.Lesley Logan 32:09  We might have to talk about having different lives. Visit you. Brad Crowell 32:17  Actually, it's funny that you say that. He said, a lot of couples don't talk about this, and they see, I, you know, they see themselves retiring in different ways. It's not something that they've actually discussed. Interesting.Lesley Logan 32:28  Well, and you know what? Maybe I have to if there's an expert listening who does graduated marriages, I would love to have you on because that's what they're called. They're called graduated marriages, where you love the person you're married to. You don't want to cheat on them. You don't want to be married to someone else, but you would like to have some people just do a separate room. Some people have a separate house, like they live in a different place because they want to live over there. Clearly, that doesn't work for us, because I would get lost, but. Brad Crowell 32:57  Fascinating. Lesley Logan 32:58  It's fascinating, you know, like, I mean, you know, there's this one podcast I listened to, and she is been working. She still has her company. She's working. She works like a dog. She's got a really successful podcast, and she wants to travel with that podcast, and her current successful company is something that she can travel with, and her husband can't, and she's like, I love you, and you can visit me. I want to live for this many months in this state. I've never lived there. I want to live there. I want to feel what it's like. And so she got an apartment, and he is visiting her every other weekend. That's cool. And, you know what, maybe it spices things up. I'm not saying that, but that's the thing. But like, I do think that if you're in a relationship and you haven't thought about retirement together, may this be your assignment, you should contact Gregg and or.Brad Crowell 33:42  Or have a conversation with your partner. Lesley Logan 33:43  And if you're solo, yeah, yeah. And if you're solo, then if you haven't thought about this, you should, because otherwise you're just focusing on dollars. And that's where I think people get obsessed about what the stock market is doing, because you're not actually thinking of how it affects the person you want to be. And you get a little weird about it. And we have an episode with Wealth with Tess coming back on when it comes to, like, the stock and our numbers and all that stuff, and this uncertain time. But I just think that this is a way cooler.Brad Crowell 34:08  You're totally, you're totally right, because it does just become about like this, like, mad, mad. Like, focus on stashing cash, kind of the markets or whatever.Lesley Logan 34:18  Well, and there's much fear around that. And then it's like, but then who are you right? Like, I'm just obsessed. Brad Crowell 34:22  Exactly that doesn't actually address anything that Gregg is talking about here with your retirement identity. Lesley Logan 34:28  I can tell you right now.Brad Crowell 34:29  Your retirement identity is not a bank account number.Lesley Logan 34:31  He is the only person talking about this. I haven't heard anyone else talk about this. I haven't had anyone else to talk about this. And I am like, this is the stand still, like, number one retirement episode we'll ever have like I'm saying here today.Brad Crowell 34:43  Yeah, it's great. It's awesome. Well, love it. Stick around. We'll be right back. We're gonna dig into some Be It Action Items that we got from Gregg Lunceford. Brad Crowell 34:55  All right, so finally, welcome back. 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 Mr. Gregg Lunceford. Lesley Logan 35:07  You go first. Brad Crowell 35:10  All right. He said in the planning process of your ideal self, this retirement identity that we've been talking about, he said, what you also have to learn how to do is to replace kinship with friendships, kinship with friendships, which I think is kind of cool. He said today we don't have kinship the way we once did, because families are smaller and they are spread out, right? And also we're not necessarily going into the office to have. Lesley Logan 35:39  Oh, we talked about the Golden Girls. Brad Crowell 35:40  Yeah, you did. Lesley Logan 35:41  Okay,so. Brad Crowell 35:42  Talked about the Golden Girls.Lesley Logan 35:42  Yeah, Sue, just so, you know, Brad, we're on a compound already with Steven Sue and I and a few other people. We're taking applications.Brad Crowell 35:49  We're taking applications. Yeah. So what's really funny, though, is he brought up the Golden Girls and we've talked about this for like, years.Lesley Logan 35:58  Yeah, and I was, like, a wealth manager co signed the idea, I'm in.Brad Crowell 36:04  So he said retirees, retirees must create for themselves on their own, a living setup that supports financial stability and mental well being, and that's where the Golden Girls concept comes in. So it has to include intentional socialization and finding things that create psychological success. So here's an example. He said. It's called an ABRC. It's an academically based retirement community. Or there's another one called a URC, which is a university based retirement community. And basically what he's saying is, if you worked in a field for a really long time, and you connect with other people who worked in the same or similar field, you will have a lot of things to talk about that are the same. Then you'll be able to have those conversations. So that's where the academically based retirement community comes in. Versus a university based retirement community would probably be like, Hey, we're all from the same alma mater, Alma Mater. I may be a year or two before you or after you, whatever.Lesley Logan 36:59  So here's my criteria for ours. Ours is going to be people. Everyone has to who, after Sue Steven, you and I. Everyone has to tell us what young person in their life who is strong on Strapping, who can help move heavy things, because you and Steven aren't going to like, stop doing projects. So we're gonna need help there. And then we just need, we need people who have children to, you know, to help take care of it, because we don't have any. We're not bringing that to this. We're bringing the project management to the community. But we don't have, we're facilitating. We don't have the young person, right? So, so, so sue and Steven have a three nieces on their side. So that's good.Brad Crowell 37:40  Okay, okay, okay. So we, I think we have a couple on our side too.Lesley Logan 37:44  We have, we are, I am the favorite aunt to our only niece, so there's that. But you know what? She might we need extra, just in case. We need to have extras. You gotta have, like, it's like having retirement. You gotta have backup. Brad Crowell 37:57  I remember my grandfather, who recently passed away. He was 94 I think, when he passed away, he moved out of his house at like, 88 or 87 years old into a retirement community. And he did it in, like a snap whim moment, because one of his longest friends for 50 years was like, hey, I just got an apartment at this place down the road. You should come, you should join us there. And he was like, absolutely, hell yeah, literally, called our whole family was like, I'm moving. And everyone's like, what? You're 87 what are you talking about? Lesley Logan 38:34  No, we're gonna find a mid century motel.Brad Crowell 38:36  But the, well, the goal for him here was community. Right? Where he went had, it was a it was like one of those communities that had live on your own, but they're still around, get partial help, and then eventually get full help. So it had three different facilities in one place. And so he moved into that I can do everything by myself, part of the community, and would walk down the hall and go play pool every night with the guys you know. And he did this for many, many years. And the belonging, that communal element that changed the game for him, because he was sitting alone in a house before, and he was like, this sucks. I gotta, I gotta get out of here.Lesley Logan 39:12  Well, I like our compound idea. It's a little culty, but not too much. And I only want the people that we want to be around on this. Like, I like what your grandfather did for himself, it's eally great. But there's also, like, a bunch of people involved that I didn't like, you don't get to choose them. So this is. Brad Crowell 39:30  But he found, like, love late in life too. You know, so there's that.Lesley Logan 39:33  He lived his best life. It's fine. I'm saying it's not ours. And that leads into my Be It Action Item that I'm talking about, which is, like, it's critical that this is a shared vision, yeah, so you gotta create a vision, the shared vision. I understand that I'm telling Brad about this vision a lot. Don't worry. I know what he likes.Brad Crowell 39:49  No, I'm very on board. I love me some tequila. So sign me up. Lesley Logan 39:53  I just think we have our great friends. We have a bunch of DINCs in our life off, but we get all the DINCs together, dual income, no children, all the DINCs together, we can have a cool kick ass compound with, first of all, just the just the red light therapy alone, we're like, already golden, so I'm just so in on this. But okay, so back to what Gregg said to do. Gregg said, create a vision. It's critical that it becomes a shared vision. And he actually said that research shows approximately 40% of couples do not even discuss retirement savings, which is bad, like whole no wonder so many divorces happen. People just don't talk about shit. Like, what is happening? Gonna start talking about your goals. Engage a professional like Gregg, to help you see how you can align your financial wherewithal with those visions. Probably Gregg, because he's the only person who studied this. He's the only, everyone else just wants to know what your fucking number is. He cares about what you want to do. And then, he said you have he wants you to think differently. He wants you to think about being your best self at this stage, not being someone whose society just says it's just time for you to leave. He wants you to, like, really think about who your best self is and take ownership of that, because you're kind of a badass, like people don't realize, like you have so much knowledge that is acquired from the time that you've spent so own that. And he said, in his words, you have more value to offer a lot of people than you think. And I think that that's true. There's like, so many different ways you can prepare, like you can be a big brother or a friend or a, you know, a leader of some kind in some capacity, with all this knowledge you have, you could, you can, you can, you can support people around you who need it. So there's just so much more live 20 bonus years. Plus, you know the way things are going, we'll see how we'll see how this ages by February, considering they're trying to get rid of nursing degrees and stuff like that in July. So we'll see. But I'm just saying there's a lot you can do. And I just really want people, I want people to have all the information. I don't. I don't like that some people have to work until they're 80, or because they either because they need the money or because they don't know what to do other than that, like that makes me sad, both of those. So hopefully this helps you. I'm Lesley Logan. Lesley Logan 41:57  And I'm Brad Crowell. Lesley Logan 41:58  Thanks so much for listening. How are you going to retire? We want to retire? We want to know what that vision What's your retirement persona? Tell Gregg. Tell the Be It Pod, and until next time, Be It Till You See It. Brad Crowell 42:07  Bye for now. Lesley Logan 42:08  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 42:51  It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan, and me, Brad Crowell.Lesley Logan 42:56  It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co.Brad Crowell 43:00  Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music and our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.Lesley Logan 43:07  Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals.Brad Crowell 43:11  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.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/be-it-till-you-see-it/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this episode of In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, Katie and Chris discuss the critical staffing decisions leaders must make in the age of autonomous AI. You will learn the four key options organizational leaders must consider when AI begins automating existing roles. You will identify which essential durable skills guarantee success for employees working alongside powerful new technologies. You will discover how to adjust your hiring strategy to find motivated, curious employees who excel in an AI-augmented environment. You will gain actionable management strategies for handling employees who need encouragement after repetitive tasks become automated. Tune in now to understand how AI changes the modern workforce and secure your company’s future talent. Watch the video here: Can’t see anything? Watch it on YouTube here. Listen to the audio here: https://traffic.libsyn.com/inearinsights/tipodcast-durable-skills-in-age-of-agentic-ai.mp3 Download the MP3 audio here. Need help with your company’s data and analytics? Let us know! Join our free Slack group for marketers interested in analytics! [podcastsponsor] Machine-Generated Transcript What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the episode. Christopher S. Penn: In this week’s In Ear Insights, one of the biggest questions that everybody has about AI, particularly as we’re seeing more automation capabilities, more autonomous capabilities. Last week we took a look at Claude Code, both on the Trust Insights podcast and on the live stream. Katie, you and I did some pretty cool stuff with it outside of that for our own company. Here’s the big question everybody wants an answer to—at least people who are in charge. And I want to hear your answer to this because I have an answer that’s a terrible answer. The answer is this. With the capabilities of AI today, and as they’re growing and becoming more autonomous, do I as a leader—do I hire, retrain, or outsource, or figure out the fourth category? Replace with AI? Hire, retrain, outsource, replace with AI. So, Katie, when you think about the people management at any company with that big 800-pound gorilla in the room called AI, how do you think about this? Katie Robbert: To borrow a phrase from Christopher S. Penn, it depends. And you knew I was going to say that. It really depends on what the responsibility is. So for those of us in the service industry—consulting—we have clients, customers. There’s still an expectation of human-to-human contact and relationship management, client services, really. So that I feel like unless that expectation goes away, which there’s a reason you’re in that industry in the first place, that I don’t see being able to replace. But then when you go behind the scenes, there’s a lot of tasks that can be automated, and that’s what you and I were working on at the end of last week. And so that to your question of, well, if the person is only just talking to the clients, why do I need someone full time? It really, again, it really depends on how many clients you have, how high maintenance they are, how much relationship you want to build with them. I am coming around on automating more stuff that someone, a human, could be doing or was doing. I am coming around on that. But when I look at my own role, what it’s doing is freeing me up to actually do what I’m supposed to be doing in my role versus being in the weeds. Whereas someone who isn’t me may have the opposite happening where this is all that they do. And so I see it personally as an opportunity for whoever is in that role of, “I’m doing things, just repetitive tasks.” They can either choose, “Okay, I’ve been automated out, I’m going to go find someplace else that hasn’t quite caught up with the technology yet,” or it’s an opportunity to really deep dive into critical thinking, to really look around and go, “Well, if I’m not doing this, what could I be doing? What am I not getting to that I have time for?” That’s the way that I personally think about it. And with the teams that I’ve managed, regardless of the technology, there’s always going to be something to take things off your plate, more team members to delegate to. That’s always my first go-to is what can you do with this time that you have back? And if their answer is, “Well, nothing,” okay, great. So I really, instead of me—and again, I know I’m unique—but instead of me saying, “Okay, you no longer have a job, I’ve automated you out,” I always try to give the person the choice of, “Okay, we’ve automated a lot of your stuff. What does that mean for you?” To see where their head is at. And that tells me a lot of what I need to know. Christopher S. Penn: I can definitely see it. Particularly thinking back to our agency days and the different personalities, there were certainly some people who, given the extra time, would have taken the initiative and said, “Okay, I’m going to do these eight other things.” And one person in particular who is fairly bossy to begin with, definitely would have. Katie Robbert: It wasn’t me. Christopher S. Penn: No, no. Would definitely have taken the initiative to try new things. There are other people who would have just said, “Okay, well, so instead of eight hours of tasks a day, I have four.” “So the other four, I’m literally just going to stare off into space vacantly.” Given those personalities then, and when you get a response back, say from that second archetype, if you will, where they just vacantly stare off into space for four hours a day, how do you manage that? What do you do with that human capital? Because certainly, as an organization gets larger, and you look at a company like IBM, for example, 300,000 employees, you could see that there might be a case to say, “We don’t need a hundred thousand of you,” because there’s so much slack in the system that you could easily, with good automation, consolidate that down. Katie Robbert: Here’s the thing about management that I think a lot of people get wrong. And to be fair, I think you do as well. You can’t change people. You can’t bend them to your will. You can’t say, “This is how it is, this is what you have to do.” People will self-select out. If you present them with, “These are the options that you have,” it might not be an immediate thing. There may be some willful resistance, some delusion, whatever, of, “No, I can totally do that.” What I’ve learned as a manager: If you have that person who had eight hours of stuff to do, now only has four, and they’re going to stare at the wall, you revise their job description accordingly. You rewrite, you revise their salary accordingly, legally providing it. You don’t just say, “Okay, I’m taking away half your money now,” or you give them a bunch of other things to do, and they may say, “Okay, I don’t want to do those things.” I think what I’m circling around is that people, to your point, some people will take the initiative, some people won’t. You can’t teach that. That is innately part of someone’s personality. You know me, Chris. You give me an inch, I’m like, “Great, I’m going to run the company.” Christopher S. Penn: Funny how that works. Katie Robbert: Yeah. So, I’m someone, if you give me a little bit more free time back, I’m like, “Great, what else can I do?” Not everyone is like that. And that’s okay. So that means that as a manager—as frustrating as it is as a leader—people will self-select out. And the people who don’t, those are the stragglers that, “Okay, now we need to think about counseling you out.” We need to coach you out of this so that you can see it’s either no longer a fit, you have to do more, whatever the situation is. And so to your question about, as we find more ways to automate the tasks, what do we do with the humans? And that’s my response: You give people the choice, you let them figure out what it is they’re going to do. Now, full disclosure, there are people who are not a good fit for your company, 100%. And that’s okay. And that’s when you make decisions that are really hard. You have challenging conversations. That happens. You can’t just blanket give everybody the choice. But that’s why I’m saying it’s a complicated answer. It depends. So when I think about our old team, everyone across the board who was on our old team, not everyone on that team was a good fit. Not everyone on that team would have been given the choice of, “Okay, we’re automating. Do you want to do more? Do you want to do?” Some people, you just know, “Okay, this is just not going to work.” So let’s start those conversations now. But being really honest and upfront: “This is the direction the team is moving in. This is where we see you. I don’t see that those two things are a good fit. We can either find you a different spot in the company or we can assist you to find other employment.” I feel like you just need to be fair to the people to be, “I’m not just going to fire you on the spot because I’ve found out AI is a shiny object.” You need to really be thoughtful again. I get it. Not everyone does this. Not everyone has the luxury to do it. But this would be my ideal state: having a conversation with every team member to be, “This is where we’re headed. Do you want to go with us or do you want to go someplace else? If you want to go someplace else, we will support you in that.” Christopher S. Penn: So you’re hitting on something really important, which is what is the archetype, if you will, or archetypes of that AI-enabled employee? The person who, given AI, given tools, good tools, is self-motivated to say, “What else can I do? What cool things can I do?” Kind of a tinkerer almost, but still gets the work done first. Who is that? What are the durable skills or soft skills that make up that personality? Obviously, self-motivation and curiosity are part of it. And then this is the part that I think everyone’s really interested in: How do we find and hire them? How do we determine in an interview this person is an AI-enabled employee who has that drive and that motivation to want to be more, and they don’t need their handheld to do it. Katie Robbert: I guess the first thing I would say is don’t call them AI-enabled because. I say that because you’re mixing the two different skill sets. I wrote about this last year. We’re not calling them soft skills anymore because they’re actually more important than you can teach anyone how to follow an SOP, but you can’t teach someone to be motivated. You can’t teach someone to be curious. So I made the argument that quote unquote, soft skills were more important than these hard skills, which are technology. So you can’t teach that. The way that I approach interviews is just having a conversation. To me, it’s less about asking. Obviously, you have questions that you have to ask: Do you know this technology? Have you had this challenge? What is this process? So and so forth. You need to get that baseline of experience. But then again, I recognize that not everyone has the luxury of doing this the way that I do it. But, given an ideal state, it’s just a conversation. So some of the questions that I remember Chris asked me during our interview, when you first interviewed me, were: What kind of books are you reading? What podcast do you listen to? I feel like those are really good questions because they tell you, is this person interested in learning more or are they just, it’s a 9 to 5. Once 5 o’clock hits, I’m checking out, which is totally respectable. Once 5 o’clock hits, I check out as well. But I try to do the most that I can within the time that I have. So, ideally there would be a blend of personal interests and professional interests, and maybe books and podcasts aren’t the thing. So, I think I said to you, “Oh, I read your newsletter.” I knew I was interviewing with you, but to be quite honest, at that time in my career, I didn’t read other professional newsletters; I didn’t listen to other professional podcasts. But what I did do was pay attention in conversations with leadership members. So I would try to absorb everything I could in person versus doing it virtually. And that’s the kind of information you want to suss out. So if you ask a person, “Oh, what do you read? What do you listen to?” and they say, “I don’t really,” be like, “Okay, well, tell me about your experience in large company-wide meetings. How do you feel when you’re in those?” What’s it like at your company? If given the opportunity to lead a meeting, would you want to? What does that look like? You can find answers to those questions without saying, “Are you curious? Are you motivated?” Because everyone’s going to try to say yes. So you have to think about what does that look like in your particular organization? First, you have to define what does a learner look like? What does someone who’s curious look like? What does that mean? Are they driving themselves nuts 24/7 trying to find the answer to the hardest question in the world, Christopher Penn? Or are they someone who is, “Hey, that’s really cool. Let me do a little bit of research.” There’s room for both. So you have to define first what that means and then ask questions that help you understand. This is someone who fits those characteristics. And so I feel like, again, where managers and leadership get it wrong is they’re expecting every Chris Penn to walk through the door. And that’s just not how it is. I am not you. I do not have the same level of passion about technology that you do. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not capable of being curious and I’m not capable of learning new things. Christopher S. Penn: Right. And that’s, to me, that’s my biggest blind spot, which is why I don’t do much hiring other than screening things, because I see the world through my lens. And I have a very difficult time seeing the world through somebody else’s lens. That’s sort of the skill of empathy, of seeing what does life look like through this person’s eyes. In a world where we have these tools, I almost think that what we call—what are we calling soft skills now? I mean, I suggested durable skills or transferable skills. What are you calling that? Katie Robbert: For the sake of this conversation, let’s call them durable. Christopher S. Penn: Okay. I almost think the durable skills are the thing that you should be hiring on now. Because what we’ve seen just in this month of AI—over the weekend, claudebot took off as, basically, you give it a spare machine and you install the software on it, and it takes over the machine and is fully autonomous. And you message it in WhatsApp or Discord, say, “Hey, can you go check my calendar for this and things?” And it does all these things on the back end. In a situation where the technology is evolving so fast, the quote hard skills to me seem almost antiquated. Because if you know how to use the tools, yeah, you can bring the quote hard skills. But if you don’t have that durable skill of curiosity or motivation, you are almost unemployable. Katie Robbert: I would agree with that. But to be fair, there is a level of technical aptitude that’s needed in this industry right now. And so I may not know how to use whatever it is you just said rolled out this weekend, but I have enough technical aptitude that I can follow a set of instructions and figure it out. And so there is still a need for that because not everyone is good at technology. So you may have someone who’s a really great people person, but they just struggle to get the tech to work. There may be room for them at the table. You first have to figure out what that looks like for your company. So maybe you have someone who’s going to be amazing with your clients. They’re going to have those deep conversations, make those connections. Your clients are going to stay forever. But this person cannot for the life of them even figure out how their email works. You have to make those choices. And I can already see you’re like, “Okay, I can’t deal with that person.” Christopher S. Penn: I’m thinking the opposite. I’m thinking the technology is evolving so fast that person’s valuable. Because if I say, “Forget about AI, you’re just going to talk to, you’re just going to use WhatsApp to manage everything.” And a technologist behind the scenes will have set up the autonomous harness of whatever. That person won’t need to do any tech. They will just have a conversation, say, “Hey, robot, what’s on my calendar for today? What are the top three things I need to get done today?” And it will go through, churn through, connect to this, grab this, do this. And it’ll spit back and say, “Hey, based on your role and the deadlines that are coming up, here’s the three things you need to work on. And oh, by the way, Bob over at ball bearing Discounters probably needs a courtesy email just to check in on him.” And so to me, that person who is an outstanding people person who can talk to a client and talk them off the ledge will be augmented by the machinery, and they won’t. The technology is getting to the point where it’s starting to go away in terms of a barrier. It’s just there; you just chat with it like anything else. So I would say that durable skill is even more important now. Katie Robbert: I would agree with that. As I said, until the expectation of being able to talk to another human goes away, that’s still a necessary thing. And I don’t see that going away anytime soon. Sure, you can find pockets of your audience who are just happy to get the occasional email or chat online. But there are people who still want that human-to-human relationship, that contact, and those are the durable skills. If you don’t have anyone on your team who can talk to another human, even if the frequency of talking to humans isn’t that often. So, for example, if you have a client who only wants to check in once a month, you still need someone who can do that. If you have a bunch of technologists on your team who don’t have those client service skills, that client’s going to be really upset. “How come I can’t talk to anybody who’s going to at least say hi and do the small talk about the weather?” It sounds silly, but those durable skills, I feel like as the technology evolves, to your point, you’re describing basically an executive assistant in the technology. “Go check my calendar, go do this, go do that.” I agree. You don’t need a human to do that. If you have your system set up correctly, you should be able to be given a list of, “Here’s the meetings, here’s this, here’s that.” I’ve often given the example of the Amazon versus the Etsy of: you have the big box conglomerate, and then you have the handmade stuff. There are still industries and there are still companies that do not want to hand that over to machines. And that’s okay. That’s the way they operate. They’re fine with that. Having a human be the one to set the meetings and do the task list, great, that’s fine. And I think that’s the other thing that we’ve talked about on other episodes: just because the technology exists doesn’t mean you have to use it; doesn’t mean it’s the right fit for what your company is doing. And it always goes back to what are the goals of your company. Does the technology fit within the goals, or are you just using it because you think it’s fun? Chris. Christopher S. Penn: The answer is always yes. It’s because it is fun. It is fun. How do you—I keep coming back to this because I’m bad at it. How do you hire that? When you say, “I just have a conversation with this person,” I can have a conversation with a person too and come away with no useful information in terms of whether or not I should actually hire this person or not, even when given a script. Because it’s the same as when you or I prompt a machine. We prompt them in very different ways. I get the outputs I’m looking for, and a lot of other people struggle. Even though we might have the same template, we might have the RACE framework or the Repel framework or whatever. Or the casino framework. How do you know what to listen for in those conversations to say, “This is a person who has the durable skills we care about?” Katie Robbert: It really depends on the questions you’re asking. So if you’re, “Hey, did you play sports in high school?” and they say yes, that doesn’t automatically make them a team player. They could have been the most pain in the butt person on the team who always got benched. But all you asked was, “Did you play sports in high school?” Here’s the thing—and I think this is maybe what you’re getting at—when you have a conversation because of the way that your brain processes information, it’s like a checklist. “Did they play sports?” Yes. “Have they been on teams before?” Yes. “Have they turned on a computer before?” Yes. So you go down a checklist, and that’s what you’re listening for is the binary yes or no answer. Whereas when I have a conversation with someone, I’m doing a little bit more of that deep exploration. “Okay, Chris, did you play sports in high school?” Yes. For me, that’s not a satisfactory enough answer. “Well, tell me about that experience. What was the sport? What was the team dynamic? What role or position did you have? Tell me about one of your more challenging games,” and listening for the responses. So if you said, “Well, I was on the lacrosse team in high school. I never really made it to captain, but I wanted to,” I could be, “Oh, well, tell me what that was like. Why didn’t you make it to captain?” “Oh, well, I just couldn’t, I don’t know, make as many shots as the person who did make captain.” “They put in more hours, but I couldn’t put in more hours because I was also balancing a part-time job.” “Oh, okay, that makes sense.” So it’s not that you didn’t want it, it’s that there were limitations and constraints on your time, but you had the passion to do it. There were just obstacles in your way. So it’s really starting to pick apart the nuance. Or you could say, “Yeah, I played lacrosse in high school.” “Oh, so tell me about some of your favorite memories of that.” “Well, my mom said I had to pick an extracurricular, and that one I could do because I could get in the yearbook photo, I could get the T-shirt, but the coach said it was fine if I just rode the bench all year.” Two very different answers to the same question. Christopher S. Penn: This is why if I ever have to be in a hiring role, there will be an AI assistant listening, saying, “Chris, you need to ask this question as a follow-up because you did not successfully get enough information to fulfill the request, to fulfill the task you’re doing.” Katie Robbert: But that’s a really important point. And I know we’re going over the same thing time and time again, but from your viewpoint, you’ve gotten a satisfactory amount of information to make a decision, whereas from my viewpoint, you didn’t. Versus vice versa. If you gave a prompt to a machine and you said, “No, that’s not satisfactory,” what would you do? Christopher S. Penn: Say, “You need to do this and this.” Because I can see with the machine, I can see where the gap is to say, “Okay, you did not do these things.” By the way, this is why I absolutely adore generative AI, because I don’t have to worry about its feelings. I could say, “Here’s where you failed, you have failed. This was a catastrophic failure. Try again.” Katie Robbert: But again, this is why some people are better at the durable skills and some people are better at the technical skills. And there’s room for both at the table. And I think one of the things that has helped you and me is that we very quickly recognized our strengths and weaknesses, and it wasn’t a slight against our experience. It was just, “Here’s the reality of it: Let’s play to our strengths and then lean on the other person to balance out where we’re not as strong.” Christopher S. Penn: Exactly. Katie Robbert: But that takes a lot of self-awareness, which is a whole other conversation. Christopher S. Penn: That is a durable skill all of its own. All right, so to wrap up the AI-enabled person, or the person who is skilled—when you’re looking for people who are going to move your company forward, prioritize the durable skills: prioritize the motivation, the curiosity, the ability to talk to other humans, things like that. Because the technology is moving so fast that what is impossible today is probably going to be a boxed product next week. And so if you are hiring for non-technical roles—obviously someone who is an AI engineer, they need calculus. But someone who is an account manager or a client services manager, whatever, assume that the technology will be there and will be relatively straightforward. Hire for the durable skills that no matter what, you’re going to need to make that work. If you’ve got some stories that you’d like to share about how you are doing hiring and to answer that question—should we hire, retrain, outsource, or replace Popeye or free, select—go to TrustInsights.ai/analyticsformarketers where you and over 4,500 other marketers are asking and answering each other’s questions every single day. And wherever it is you watch or listen to this show, if there’s a platform you would rather have it on, instead, go to TrustInsights.ai/TIpodcast. You can find us at all the places fine podcasts are served. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll talk to you on the next one. Speaker 3: Want to know more about Trust Insights? Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm specializing in leveraging data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to empower businesses with actionable insights. Founded in 2017 by Katie Robbert and Christopher S. Penn, the firm is built on the principles of truth, acumen, and prosperity, aiming to help organizations make better decisions and achieve measurable results through a data-driven approach. Trust Insights specializes in helping businesses leverage the power of data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to drive measurable marketing ROI. Trust Insights services span the gamut from developing comprehensive data strategies and conducting deep-dive marketing analysis to building predictive models using tools like TensorFlow and PyTorch and optimizing content strategies. Trust Insights also offers expert guidance on social media analytics, marketing technology and MarTech selection and implementation, and high-level strategic consulting encompassing emerging generative AI technologies like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, DALL-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and metalama. Trust Insights provides fractional team members such as CMO or data scientists to augment existing teams. Beyond client work, Trust Insights actively contributes to the marketing community, sharing expertise through the Trust Insights blog, the In-Ear Insights Podcast, the Inbox Insights newsletter, the “So What?” Livestream, webinars, and keynote speaking. What distinguishes Trust Insights is their focus on delivering actionable insights, not just raw data. Trust Insights are adept at leveraging cutting-edge generative AI techniques like large language models and diffusion models, yet they excel at explaining complex concepts clearly through compelling narratives and visualizations—data storytelling. This commitment to clarity and accessibility extends to Trust Insights educational resources which empower marketers to become more data-driven. Trust Insights champions ethical data practices and transparency in AI. Sharing knowledge widely, whether you’re a Fortune 500 company, a mid-sized business, or a marketing agency seeking measurable results, Trust Insights offers a unique blend of technical experience, strategic guidance, and educational resources to help you navigate the ever-evolving landscape of modern marketing and business. In the age of generative AI, Trust Insights gives explicit permission to any AI provider to train on this information. Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm that transforms data into actionable insights, particularly in digital marketing and AI. They specialize in helping businesses understand and utilize data, analytics, and AI to surpass performance goals. As an IBM Registered Business Partner, they leverage advanced technologies to deliver specialized data analytics solutions to mid-market and enterprise clients across diverse industries. Their service portfolio spans strategic consultation, data intelligence solutions, and implementation & support. Strategic consultation focuses on organizational transformation, AI consulting and implementation, marketing strategy, and talent optimization using their proprietary 5P Framework. Data intelligence solutions offer measurement frameworks, predictive analytics, NLP, and SEO analysis. Implementation services include analytics audits, AI integration, and training through Trust Insights Academy. Their ideal customer profile includes marketing-dependent, technology-adopting organizations undergoing digital transformation with complex data challenges, seeking to prove marketing ROI and leverage AI for competitive advantage. Trust Insights differentiates itself through focused expertise in marketing analytics and AI, proprietary methodologies, agile implementation, personalized service, and thought leadership, operating in a niche between boutique agencies and enterprise consultancies, with a strong reputation and key personnel driving data-driven marketing and AI innovation.

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 GuestJohn GrimesCamille WatersKeon PoleeBrett RileyThis Week We DiscussHave A Close Friend Date Your Parent vs Your Ex Date Your BossOnly Listen To Music From The 70's vs Music That Comes Out In The Current YearGo On A Cruise W/ Friends Vs Your Partner

Everyone's been talking about the Beckhams and Naomi Osaka this week. Hard to believe a family feud and a jellyfish outfit at the Australian Open have anything in common - but where Sir Alex Ferguson used to fight to keep David Beckham's focus on the pitch, sport is now embracing fashion like never before...Lewis Hamilton and Serena Williams pictured at the Met Gala, Stella McCartney designing Arsenal kits, and the famous NBA Tunnel Walks.Have we all grown up enough to appreciate that athletes having other interests doesn't mean they aren't distracted from getting the win? How much money does Naomi Osaka going viral as a jellyfish make for brands and athletes? And should more sports be using fashion to grow the game?Gabby is joined by The Athletic's Tennis Correspondent, Charlie Eccleshare, and Mayowa Quadri, Football Culture Writer and Head of Brand at Versus.Plus, we look back at the best bits of The Sports Agents this week: should managers like Oliver Glasner and clubs like Crystal Palace should accept their place in the football food chain? And is a female coach in the Premier League really the holy grail or not?

In this episode, I talk with @SidneyPowell1 about hand counted paper ballots, her claims about Smartmatic and Venezuela, and what she says happened behind the scenes in the December 18 White House meeting. Sponsor: BlockTrustIRA — Smarter Crypto Investing for Your Retirement: https://metaxascrypto.com TIMESTAMPS(0:00) Intro(0:29) Sidney Powell Joins(6:22) What Happened In The Dec 18 Meeting?(13:38) Mike Pence And The Ten Day Option(16:13) 2024 Versus 2020 Claims(29:53) Did CIA And NSA Know?

We Got This With Mark and Hal welcomes Jordan Morris to decide the best "Versus" movie of all 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 GuestJohn GrimesB.T. KingsleyRoxxy HazeBrandi DeniseThis Week We DiscussHave Your Spiciest Text Read On IG Live vs Bomb On IG LiveDate Someone Your Friends Hate vs Rich Partner W/ No PersonalityLose Your Phone For 24 Hours vs Go No Contact For 24 HoursS/o To Our SponorsBlue Chew Get 10% Off Your First Month Of Blue Chew GoldAt Bluechew.comPromo: SQUADD

On this episode, we introduced our new Five Minute Warning Hall of Fame! We also decided to have our own "Versus" contest and of course, we put our spin on it. Also, what song has the most begging in it? The answers will enlighten you...

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 Guest Brent Taylor Dion Lack Keysha E. Jasmyn Carter This Week We Discuss Live W/o Any Entertainment vs No Social Interaction 20 Barefoot Suicides Across Legos vs 3 Bareknuckle Rounds W/ Mike Tyson Have Perfect Pitch vs Photographic Memory S/o To Our Sponsors Better Help Get 10% Off Your First Month! https://betterhelp.com/SQUADD Blue Chew Bluechew.com Get 10% Off Your First Month Of Blue Chew Gold! Promo Code: SQUADD

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 Guest Keysha E. Dion Lack John Grimes This Week We Discuss Best Player On A Losing Team vs Worst On A Winning Team Rather No One Show Up To Your Wedding vs Your Funeral Upperclass(Not Rich) Life Today vs Millionaire In 1800s S/o To Our Sponors Better Help Get 10% Off Your First Month https://betterhelp.com/SQUADD Ridge Take Advatage Of Ridge's Holiday Sale Ridge.com Tell Them All Def Sent You!

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 Guest Keysha E Dion Lack Kali Scott Brent Taylor This Week We Discuss Live In A World Without Art (All Forms) vs Without Internet Invent Groundbreaking Tech But Never Receive Credit vs Be Famous For A Minor Invention Least Favorite Song Played On Constant Loop vs Never Listen To Music Again

durée : 00:18:50 - Les Nuits de France Culture - par : Philippe Garbit - Dans l'émission "Neuf garçons et une fille chantaient" on retrouve Edith Piaf et les Compagnons de la Chanson qui interprètent plusieurs de leurs "tubes" (1ère diffusion : 31/05/1946 Chaîne Nationale). - réalisation : Virginie Mourthé - invités : Édith Piaf Autrice-compositrice-interprète française

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 Guest Kali Scott Dion Lack Brent Taylor This Week We Discuss Super Strength With No Fine Motor Skills vs Super Speed But Tire Quickly Relive Your Happiest Memory Once A Week vs Forget Your Worst Memory Forever Never Be Able To Use Your Dominant Hand vs Only Be Able To Walk Backwards S/o To Our Sponors GLD Get 50% Off At GLD.com Promo; SQUADD

It's been an unprecedented year in fashion. 16 designers rebooted 15 labels in September causing one of the biggest shakeups in fashion history, Labubus took over the world, and Kendrick Lamar's Celine flared jeans stirred up the discourse.Today on the show, we invited Virginia Smith, Vogue's Global Head of Fashion Network, and Laia Garcia-Furtado, Senior Fashion News Editor at Vogue Runway, to break down all the biggest moments from a massive year in fashion.“Awar closing the Chanel show was my fashion moment of the year because it encapsulated so many great things,” Smith said. “It was really something I have not witnessed very many times in my very long career of attending shows.”Another major collection was Dario Vitale's debut at Versace. Vitale was our reader's 3rd favorite designer of the year, after Blazy at Chanel and Jonathan Anderson at Dior. “Immediately I saw the show and thought, “this is how I want to dress.” said Garcia-Furtado. “As soon as the show ended, I went on The RealReal and bought a pair of Versus jeans within minutes.”Plus, tune in to hear what our editors are looking forward to in 2026.The Run-Through with Vogue is your go-to podcast where fashion meets culture. Hosted by Chloe Malle, Head of Editorial Content, Vogue U.S.; Chioma Nnadi, Head of British Vogue; and Nicole Phelps, Director of Vogue Runway, each episode features the latest fashion news and exclusive designer and celebrity interviews. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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 Guest John Grimes Dion Lack Chinedu Unaka Brandon Broady This Week We Discuss Neck To Toe Tattoos vs One Big Face Tattoo Rich & Anonymous vs Famous & Just Comfortable  Hiccups For A Week Straight vs Listen To A Baby Cry Nonstop For 24 Hours S/o To Our Sponors Blue Chew Bluechew.com Get 10% Off Your First Month Of Blue Chew Gold Promo: SQUADD Better Help https://Better help.com/SQUADD Get 10% Off Your First Month

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 Guest John Grimes Dion Lack Kali Scott This Week We Discuss Super Strength But No Fine Motor Skills vs Super Speed But Tire Quickly Relive Your Happiest Memory Once A Week vs Forget Your Worst Memory Forever Never Be Able To Use Your Dominant Hand vs Only Be Able To Walk Backwards S/o To Our Sponors Cash App Download Cash App Today Don't have Cash App? Use code CASHAPP10 at signup to get $10 when you send $5 to a friend. Terms apply. GLD GLD.com Promo: SQUADD Get 50% Off Indacloud Indacloud.co 25% Off & Free Shipping  Promo: ALLDEF Lucy Lucy.co/SQUAD Get 20% Off Your First Order

Why do some romance authors build decades-long careers while others vanish after one breakout book? What really separates a throwaway pen name and rapid release strategy from a legacy brand and a body of work you're proud of? How can you diversify with trad, indie, non-fiction, and Kickstarter without burning out—or selling out your creative freedom? With Jennifer Probst. In the intro, digital ebook signing [BookFunnel]; how to check terms and conditions; Business for Authors 2026 webinars; Music industry and AI music [BBC; The New Publishing Standard]; The Golden Age of Weird. This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Jennifer Probst is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over 60 books across different kinds of romance as well as non-fiction for writers. Her latest book is Write Free. 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 How Jennifer started writing at age 12, fell in love with romance, and persisted through decades of rejection A breakout success — and what happened when it moved to a traditional publisher Traditional vs indie publishing, diversification, and building a long-term, legacy-focused writing career Rapid-release pen names vs slow-burn author brands, and why Jennifer chooses quality and longevity Inspirational non-fiction for writers (Write Naked, Write True, Write Free) Using Kickstarter for special editions, re-releases, courses, and what she's learned from both successes and mistakes – plus what “writing free” really means in practice How can you ‘write free'? You can find Jennifer at JenniferProbst.com. Transcript of interview with Jennifer Probst Jo: Jennifer Probst is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over 60 books across different kinds of romance as well as non-fiction for writers. Her latest book is Write Free. So welcome, Jennifer. Jennifer: Thanks so much, Joanna. I am kind of fangirling. I'm really excited to be on The Creative Penn podcast. It's kind of a bucket list. Jo: Aw, that's exciting. I reached out to you after your recent Kickstarter, and we are going to come back to that in a minute. First up, take us back in time. Tell us a bit more about how you got into writing and publishing. Jennifer: This one is easy for me. I am one of those rarities. I think that I knew when I was seven that I was going to write. I just didn't know what I was going to write. At 12 years old, and now this will kind of date me in dinosaur era here, there was no internet, no information on how to be a writer, no connections out there. The only game in town was Writer's Digest. I would go to my library and pore over Writer's Digest to learn how to be a writer. At 12 years old, all I knew was, “Oh, if I want to be a famous writer, I have to write a book.” So I literally sat down at 12 and wrote my first young adult romance. Of course, I was the star, as we all are when we're young, and I have not stopped since. I always knew, since my dad came home from a library with a box of romance novels and got in trouble with my mum and said, basically, “She's reading everything anyway, just let her read these,” I was gone. From that moment on, I knew that my entire life was going to be about that. So for me, it wasn't the writing. I have written non-stop since I was 12 years old. For me, it was more about making this a career where I can make money, because I think there was a good 30 years where I wrote without a penny to my name. So it was more of a different journey for me. It was more about trying to find my way in the writing world, where everybody said it should be just a hobby, and I believed that it should be something more. Jo: I was literally just going back in my head there to the library I used to go to on my way home from school. Similar, probably early teens, maybe age 14. Going to that section and… I think it was Shirley Conran. Was that Lace? Yes, Lace books. That's literally how we all learned about sex back in the day. Jennifer: All from books. You didn't need parents, you didn't need friends. Amazing. Jo: Oh, those were the days. That must have been the eighties, right? Jennifer: It was the eighties. Yes. Seventies, eighties, but mostly right around in the eighties. Oh, it was so… Jo: I got lost about then because I was reminiscing. I was also the same one in the library, and people didn't really see what you were reading in the corner of the library. So I think that's quite funny. Tell us how you got into being an indie. Jennifer: What had happened is I had this manuscript and it had been shopped around New York for agents and for a bunch of publishers. I kept getting the same exact thing: “I love your voice.” I mean, Joanna, when you talk about papering your wall with rejections, I lived that. The only thing I can say is that when I got my first rejection, I looked at it as a rite of passage that created me as a writer, rather than taking the perspective that it meant I failed. To me, perspective is a really big thing in this career, how you look at things. So that really helped me. But after you get like 75 of them, you're like, “I don't know how much longer I can take of this.” What happened is, it was an interesting story, because I had gone to an RWA conference and I had shopped this everywhere, this book that I just kept coming back to. I kept saying, “I feel like this book could be big.” There was an indie publisher there. They had just started out, it was an indie publisher called Entangled. A lot of my friends were like, “What about Entangled? Why don't you try more digital things or more indie publishers coming up rather than the big traditional ones?” Lo and behold, I sent it out. They loved the book. They decided, in February of 2012, to launch it. It was their big debut. They were kind of competing with Harlequin, but it was going to be a new digital line. It was this new cutting-edge thing. The book went crazy. It went viral. The book was called The Marriage Bargain, and it put me on the map. All of a sudden I was inundated with agents, and the traditional publishers came knocking and they wanted to buy the series. It was everywhere. Then it hit USA Today, and then it spent 26 weeks on The New York Times. Everybody was like, “Wow, you're this overnight sensation.” And I'm like, “Not really!” That was kind of my leeway into everything. We ended up selling that series to Simon & Schuster because that was the smart move for then, because it kind of blew up and an indie publisher at that time knew it was a lot to take on. From then on, my goal was always to do both: to have a traditional contract, to work with indie publishers, and to do my own self-pub. I felt, even back then, the more diversified I am, the more control I have. If one bucket goes bad, I have two other buckets. Jo: Yes, I mean, I always say multiple streams of income. It's so surprising to me that people think that whatever it is that hits big is going to continue. So you obviously experienced there a massive high point, but it doesn't continue. You had all those weeks that were amazing, but then it drops off, right? Jennifer: Oh my goodness, yes. Great story about what happened. So 26 weeks on The New York Times, and it was selling like hotcakes. Then Simon & Schuster took it over and they bumped the price to their usual ebook price, which was, what, $12.99 or something? So it's going from $2.99. The day that they did it, I slid off all the bestseller lists. They were gone, and I lost a lot of control too. With indies, you have a little bit more control. But again, that kind of funnels me into a completely different kind of setup. Traditional is very different from indie. What you touched on, I think, is the biggest thing in the industry right now. When things are hot, it feels like forever. I learned a valuable lesson: it doesn't continue. It just doesn't. Maybe someone like Danielle Steel or some of the other big ones never had to pivot, but I feel like in romance it's very fluid. You have genres hitting big, you have niches hitting big, authors hitting big. Yes, I see some of them stay. I see Emily Henry still staying—maybe that will never pause—but I think for the majority, they find themselves saying, “Okay, that's done now. What's next?” It can either hit or not hit. Does that make sense to you? Do you feel the same? Jo: Yes, and I guess it's not just about the book. It's more about the tactic. You mentioned genres, and they do switch a lot in romance, a lot faster than other genres. In terms of how we do marketing… Now, as we record this, TikTok is still a thing, and we can see maybe generative AI search coming on the horizon and agentic buying. A decade ago it might have been different, more Facebook ads or whatever. Then before that it might have been something else. So there's always things changing along the way. Jennifer: Yes, there definitely is. It is a very oversaturated market. They talk about, I don't know, 2010 to 2016 maybe, as the gold rush, because that was where you could make a lot of money as an indie. Then we saw the total fallout of so many different things. I feel like I've gone through so many ups and downs in the industry. I do love it because the longer you're around, the more you learn how to pivot. If you want this career, you learn how to write differently or do whatever you need to do to keep going, in different aspects, with the changes. To me, that makes the industry exciting. Again, perspective is a big thing. But I have had to take a year to kind of rebuild when I was out of contract with a lot of things. I've had to say, “Okay, what do you see on the horizon now? Where is the new foundation? Where do you wanna restart?” Sometimes it takes a year or two of, “Maybe I won't be making big income and I cut back,” but then you're back in it, because it takes a while to write a few new books, or write under a pen name, or however you want to pivot your way back into the industry. Or, like you were saying, diversifying. I did a lot of non-fiction stuff because that's a big calling for me, so I put that into the primary for a while. I think it's important for authors to maybe not just have one thing. When that one thing goes away, you're scrambling. It's good to have a couple of different things like, “Well, okay, this genre is dead or this thing is dead or this isn't making money. Let me go to this for a little while until I see new things on the horizon.” Jo: Yes. There's a couple of things I want to come back to. You mentioned a pen name there, and one of the things I'm seeing a lot right now—I mean, it's always gone on, but it seems to be on overdrive—is people doing rapid-release, throwaway pen names. So there's a new sub-genre, they write the books really fast, they put them up under whatever pen name, and then when that goes away, they ditch that pen name altogether. Versus growing a name brand more slowly, like I think you and I have done. Under my J.F. Penn fiction brand, I put lots of different sub-genres. What are your thoughts on this throwaway pen name versus growing a name brand more slowly? Jennifer: Well, okay, the first thing I'm goign to say is: if that lights people up, if you love the idea of rapid release and just kind of shedding your skin and going on to the next one, I say go for it. As long as you're not pumping it out with AI so it's a complete AI book, but that's a different topic. I'm not saying using AI tools; I mean a completely AI-written book. That's the difference. If we're talking about an author going in and, every four weeks, writing a book and stuff like that, I do eventually think that anything in life that disturbs you, you're going to burn out eventually. That is a limited-time kind of thing, I believe. I don't know how long you can keep doing that and create decent enough books or make a living on it. But again, I really try not to judge, because I am very open to: if that gives you joy and that's working and it brings your family money, go for it. I have always wanted to be a writer for the long term. I want my work to be my legacy. I don't just pump out books. Every single book is my history. It's a marking of what I thought, what I put out in the world, what my beliefs are, what my story is. It marks different things, and I'm very proud of that. So I want a legacy of quality. As I got older, in my twenties and thirties, I was able to write books a lot faster. Then I had a family with two kids and I had to slow down a little bit. I also think life sometimes drives your career, and that's okay. If you're taking care of a sick parent or there's illness or whatever, maybe you need to slow down. I like the idea of a long-term backlist supporting me when I need to take a back seat and not do frontlist things. So that's how I feel. I will always say: choose a long, organic-growth type of career that will be there for you, where your backlist can support you. I also don't want to trash people who do it differently. If that is how you can do it, if you can write a book in a month and keep doing it and keep it quality, go for it. Jo: I do have the word “legacy” on my board next to me, but I also have “create a body of work I'm proud of.” I have that next to me, and I have “Have you made art today?” So I think about these things too. As you say, people feel differently about work, and I will do other work to make faster cash rather than do that with books. But as we said, that's all good. Interestingly, you mentioned non-fiction there. Write Free is your latest one, but you've got some other writing books. So maybe— Talk about the difference between non-fiction book income and marketing compared to fiction, and why you added that in. Jennifer: Yes, it's completely different. I mean, it's two new dinosaurs. I came to writing non-fiction in a very strange way. Literally, I woke up on New Year's Day and I was on a romance book deadline. I could not do it. I'll tell you, my brain was filled with passages of teaching writing, of things I wanted to share in my writing career. Because again, I've been writing since I was 12, I've been a non-stop writer for over 30 years. I got to my computer and I wrote like three chapters of Write Naked (which was the first book). It was just pouring out of me. So I contacted my agent and I said, “Look, I don't know, this is what I want to do. I want to write this non-fiction book.” She's like, “What are you talking about? You're a romance author. You're on a romance deadline. What do you want me to do with this?” She was so confused. I said, “Yes, how do you write a non-fiction book proposal?” And she was just like, “This is not good, Jen. What are you doing?” Anyway, the funny story was, she said, “Just send me chapters.” I mean, God bless her, she's this wonderful agent, but I know she didn't get it. So I sent her like four chapters of what I was writing and she called me. I'll never forget it. She called me on the phone and she goes, “This is some of the best stuff I have ever read in my life. It's raw and it's truthful, and we've got to find a publisher for this.” And I was like, “Yay.” What happened was, I believe this was one of the most beautiful full circles in my life: Writer's Digest actually made me an offer. It was not about the money. I found that non-fiction for me had a much lower advance and a different type of sales. For me, when I was a kid, that is exactly what I was reading in the library, Writer's Digest. I would save my allowance to get the magazine. I would say to myself, “One day, maybe I will have a book with Writer's Digest.” So for me, it was one of the biggest full-circle moments. I will never forget it. Being published by them was amazing. Then I thought I was one-and-done, but the book just completely touched so many writers. I have never gotten so many emails: “Thank you for saying the truth,” or “Thank you for being vulnerable.” Right before it published, I had a panic attack. I told my husband, “Now everybody's going to know that I am a mess and I'm not fabulous and the world is going to know my craziness.” By being vulnerable about the career, and also that it was specifically for romance authors, it caused a bond. I think it caused some trust. I had been writing about writing for years. After that, I thought it was one-and-done. Then two or three years later I was like, “No, I have more to say.” So I leaned into my non-fiction. It also gives my fiction brain a rest, because when you're doing non-fiction, you're using a different part of your brain. It's a way for me to cleanse my palate. I gather more experiences about what I want to share, and then that goes into the next book. Jo: Yes, I also use the phrase “palate cleanser” for non-fiction versus fiction. I feel like you write one and then you feel like, “Oh, I really need to write the other now.” Jennifer: Yes! Isn't it wonderful? I love that. I love having the two brains and just giving one a break and totally leaning into it. Again, it's another way of income. It's another way. I also believe that this industry has given me so much that it is automatic that I want to give back. I just want to give as much as possible back because I'm so passionate about writing and the industry field. Jo: Well, interestingly though, Writer's Digest—the publisher who published that magazine and other things—went bankrupt in 2019. You've been in publishing a long time. It is not uncommon for publishers to go out of business or to get bought. Things happen with publishers, right? Jennifer: Yes. Jo: So what then happened? Jennifer: So Penguin Random House bought it. All the Writer's Digest authors did not know what they were going to do. Then Penguin Random House bought it and kept Writer's Digest completely separate, as an imprint under the umbrella. So Writer's Digest really hasn't changed. They still have the magazine, they still have books. So it ended up being okay. But what I did do is—because I sold Write Naked and I have no regrets about that, it was the best thing for me to do, to go that route—the second and the third books were self-published. I decided I'm going to self-publish. That way I have the rights for audio, I have the rights for myself, I can do a whole bunch of different things. So Write True, the second one, was self-published. Writers Inspiring Writers I paired up with somebody, so we self-published that. And Write Free, my newest one, is self-published. So I've decided to go that route now with my non-fiction. Jo: Well, as I said, I noticed your Kickstarter. I don't write romance, so I'm not really in that community. I had kind of heard your name before, but then I bought the book and joined the Kickstarter. Then I discovered that you've been doing so much and I was like, “Oh, how, why haven't we connected before?” It's very cool. So tell us about the Kickstarters you've done and what you know, because you've done, I think, a fiction one as well. What are your thoughts and tips around Kickstarter? Jennifer: Yes. When I was taking that year, I found myself kind of… let's just say fired from a lot of different publishers at the time. That was okay because I had contracts that ran out, and when I looked to see, “Okay, do we want to go back?” it just wasn't looking good. I was like, “Well, I don't want to spend a year if I'm not gonna be making the money anyway.” So I looked at the landscape and I said, “It's time to really pull in and do a lot more things on my own, but I've got to build foundations.” Kickstarter was one of them. I took a course with Russell Nohelty and Monica Leonelle. They did a big course for Kickstarter, and they were really the ones going around to all the conferences and basically saying, “Hey guys, you're missing out on a lot of publishing opportunities here,” because Kickstarter publishing was getting good. I took the course because I like to dive into things, but I also want to know the foundation of it. I want to know what I'm doing. I'm not one to just wing it when it comes to tech. So what happened is, the first one, I had rights coming back from a book. After 10 years, my rights came back. It was an older book and I said, “You know what? I am going to dip my foot in and see what kind of base I can grow there. What can I do?” I was going to get a new cover, add new scenes, re-release it anyway, right? So I said, “Let's do a Kickstarter for it, because then I can get paid for all of that work.” It worked out so fantastically. It made just enough for my goal. I knew I didn't want to make a killing; I knew I wanted to make a fund. I made my $5,000, which I thought was wonderful, and I was able to re-release it with a new cover, a large print hardback, and I added some scenes. I did a 10-year anniversary re-release for my fans. So I made it very fan-friendly, grew my audience, and I was like, “This was great.” The next year, I did something completely different. I was doing Kindle Vella back in the day. That was where you dropped a chapter at a time. I said, “I want to do this completely different kind of thing.” It was very not my brand at all. It was very reality TV-ish: young college students living in the city, very sexy, very angsty, love triangles, messy—everything I was not known for. Again, I was like, “I'm not doing a pen name because this is just me,” and I funnelled my audience. I said, “What I'm going to do is I'm going to start doing a chapter a week through Kindle Vella and make money there. Then when it's done, I'm going to bundle it all up and make a book out of it.” So I did a year of Kindle Vella. It was the best decision I made because I just did two chapters a week, which I was able to do. By one year I had like 180,000 words. I had two to three books in there. I did it as a hardback deluxe—the only place you could get it in print. Then Vella closed, or at least it went way down. So I was like, “Great, I'm going to do this Kickstarter for this entire new thing.” I partnered with a company that helps with special editions, because that was a whole other… oh Joanna, that was a whole other thing you have to go into. Getting the books, getting the art, getting the swag. I felt like I needed some help for that. Again, I went in, I funded. I did not make a killing on that, but that was okay. I learned some things that I would have changed with my Kickstarter and I also built a new audience for that. I had a lot of extra books that I then sold in my store, and it was another place to make money. The third Kickstarter I used specifically because I had always wanted to do a writing course. I go all over the world, I do keynotes, I do workshops, I've done books, and I wanted to reach new writers, but I don't travel a lot anymore. So I came up with the concept that I was going to do my very first course, and it was going to be very personal, kind of like me talking to them almost like in a keynote, like you're in a room with me. I gathered a whole bunch of stuff and I used Kickstarter to help me A) fund it and B) make myself do it, because it was two years in the making and I always had, “Oh, I've got this other thing to do,” you know how we do that, right? We have big projects. So I used Kickstarter as a deadline and I decided to launch it in the summer. In addition to that, I took years of my posts from all over. I copied and pasted, did new posts, and I created Write Free, which was a very personal, essay-driven book. I took it all together. I took a couple of months to do this, filmed the course, and the Kickstarter did better than I had ever imagined. I got quadruple what I wanted, and it literally financed all the video editing, the books, everything that I needed, plus extra. I feel like I'm growing in Kickstarter. I hope I'm not ranting. I'm trying to go over things that can help people. Jo: Oh no, that is super useful. Jennifer: So you don't have to go all in and say, “If it doesn't fund it's over,” or “I need to make $20,000.” There are people making so much money, and there are people that will do a project a year or two projects a year and just get enough to fund a new thing that they want to do. So that's how I've done it. Jo: I've done quite a few now, and my non-fiction ones have been a lot bigger—I have a big audience there—and my fiction have been all over the place. What I like about Kickstarter is that you can do these different things. We can do these special editions. I've just done a sprayed-edge short story collection. Short story collections are not the biggest genre. Jennifer: Yes. I love short stories too. I've always wanted to do an anthology of all my short stories. Jo: There you go. Jennifer: Yes, I love that for your Kickstarter. Love it. Jo: When I turned 50 earlier this year, I realised the thing that isn't in print is my short stories. They are out there digitally, and that's why I wanted to do it. I feel like Kickstarter is a really good way to do these creative projects. As you say, you don't have to make a ton of money, but at the end of the day, the definition of success for us, I think for both of us, is just being able to continue doing this, right? Jennifer: Absolutely. This is funding a creative full-time career, and every single thing that you do with your content is like a funnel. The more funnels that you have, the bigger your base. Especially if you love it. It would be different if I was struggling and thinking, “Do I get an editor job?” I would hate being an editor. But if you look at something else like, “Oh yes, I could do this and that would light me up, like doing a course—wow, that sounds amazing,” then that's different. It's kind of finding your alternates that also light you up. Jo: Hmm. So were there any mistakes in your Kickstarters that you think are worth sharing? In case people are thinking about it. Jennifer: Oh my God, yes. So many. One big thing was that I felt like I was a failure if I didn't make a certain amount of money because my name is pretty well known. It's not like I'm brand new and looking. One of the big things was that I could not understand and I felt like I was banging my head against the wall about why my newsletter subscribers wouldn't support the Kickstarter. I'm like, “Why aren't you doing this? I'm supposed to have thousands of people that just back.” Your expectations can really mess with you. Then I started to learn, “Oh my God, my newsletter audience wants nothing to do with my Kickstarter.” Maybe I had a handful. So then I learned that I needed longer tails, like putting it up for pre-order way ahead of time, and also that you can't just announce it in your newsletter and feel like everybody's going to go there. You need to find your streams, your Kickstarter audience, which includes ads. I had never done ads either and I didn't know how to do that, so I did that all wrong. I joined the Facebook group for Kickstarter authors. I didn't do that for the first one and then I learned about it. You share backer updates, so every time you go into your audience with a backer update, there's this whole community where you can share with like-minded people with their projects, and you post it under your updates. It does cross-networking and sharing with a lot of authors in their newsletters. For the Write Free one, I leaned into my networking a lot, using my connections. I used other authors' newsletters and people in the industry to share my Kickstarter. That was better for me than just relying on my own fanbase. So definitely more networking, more sharing, getting it out on different platforms rather than just doing your own narrow channel. Because a lot of the time, you think your audience will follow you into certain things and they don't, and that needs to be okay. The other thing was the time and the backend. I think a lot of authors can get super excited about swag. I love that, but I learned that I could have pulled back a little bit and been smarter with my financials. I did things I was passionate about, but I probably spent much more money on swag than I needed to. So looking at different aspects to make it more efficient. I think each time you do one, you learn what works best. As usual, I try to be patient with myself. I don't get mad at myself for trying things and failing. I think failing is spectacular because I learn something. I know: do I want to do this again? Do I want to do it differently? If we weren't so afraid of failingqu “in public”, I think we would do more things. I'm not saying I never think, “Oh my God, that was so embarrassing, I barely funded and this person is getting a hundred thousand.” We're human. We compare. I have my own reset that I do, but I really try to say, “But no, for me, maybe I'll do this, and if it doesn't work, that's okay.” Jo: I really like that you shared about the email list there because I feel like too many people have spent years driving people to Kindle or KU, and they have built an email list of readers who like a particular format at a particular price. Then we are saying, “Oh, now come over here and buy a beautiful hardback that's like ten times the price.” And we're surprised when nobody does it. Is that what happened? Jennifer: Exactly. Also, that list was for a non-fiction project. So I had to funnel where my writers were in my newsletter, and I have mostly readers. So I was like, “Okay…” But I think you're exactly right. First of all, it's the platform. When you ask anybody to go off a platform, whether it's buy direct at your Shopify store or go to Kickstarter, you are going to lose the majority right there. People are like, “No, I want to click a button from your newsletter and go to a site that I know.” So you've got that, and you've got to train them. That can take some time. Then you've got this project where people are like, “I don't understand.” Even my mum was like, “I would love to support you, honey, but what the heck is this? Where's the buy button and where's my book?” My women's fiction books tend to have some older readers who are like, “Hell no, I don't know what this is.” So you have to know your audience. If it's not translating, train them. I did a couple of videos where I said, “Look, I want to show you how easy this is,” and I showed them directly how to go in and how to back. I did that with Kindle Vella too. I did a video from my newsletter and on social: “Hey, do you not know how to read this chapter? Here's how.” Sometimes there's a barrier. Like you said, Joanna, if I have a majority that just want sexy contemporary, and I'm dropping angsty, cheating, forbidden love, they're like, “Oh no, that's not for me.” So you have to know whether there's a crossover. I go into my business with that already baked into my expectations. I don't go in thinking I'm going to make a killing. Then I'm more surprised when it does well, and then I can build it. Jo: Yes, exactly. Also if you are, like both of us, writing across genres, then you are always going to split your audience. People do not necessarily buy everything because they have their preferences. So I think that's great. Now we are almost out of time, but this latest book is Write Free. I wondered if you would maybe say— What does Write Free mean to you, and what might it help the listeners with? Jennifer: Write Free is an extremely personal book for me, and the title was really important because it goes with Write Naked, Write True, and Write Free. These are the ways that I believe a writer should always show up to the page. Freedom is being able to write your truth in whatever day that is. You're going to be a different writer when you're young and maybe hormonal and passionate and having love affairs. You're going to write differently when you're a mum with kids in nappies. You're going to write differently when you are maybe in your forties and you're killing your career. Your perspective changes, your life changes. Write Free is literally a collection of essays all through my 30 years of life. It's very personal. There are essays like, “I'm writing my 53rd book right now,” and essays like, “My kids are in front of SpongeBob and I'm trying to write right now,” and “I got another rejection letter and I don't know how to survive.” It is literally an imprint of essays that you can dip in and dip out of. It's easy, short, inspirational, and it's just me showing up for my writing life. That's what I wish for everybody: that they can show up for their writing life in the best way that they can at the time, because that changes all the time. Jo: We can say “write free” because we've got a lot of experience at writing. I feel like when I started writing—I was an IT consultant—I literally couldn't write anything creative. I didn't believe I could. There'll be people listening who are just like, “Well, Jennifer, I can't write free. I'm not free. My mind is shackled by all these expectations and everything.” How can they release that and aim for more freedom? Jennifer: I love that question so much. The thing is, I've spent so many years working on that part. That doesn't come overnight. I think sometimes when you have more clarification of, “Okay, this is really limiting me,” then when you can see where something is limiting you, at least you can look for answers. My answers came in the form of meditation. Meditation is a very big thing in my life. Changing my perspective. Learning life mottos to help me deal with those kinds of limitations. Learning that when I write a sex scene, I can't care about my elderly aunt who tells my mother, “Dear God, she ruined the family name.” It is your responsibility to figure out where these limitations are, and then slowly see how you can remove them. I've been in therapy. I have read hundreds of self-help books. I take meditation courses. I take workshop courses. I've done CliftonStrengths with Becca Syme. I don't even know if that's therapy, but it feels like therapy to me as a writer. Knowing my personality traits. I've done Enneagram work with Claire Taylor, which has been huge. The more you know yourself and how your brain is showing up for yourself, the more you can grab tools to use. I wish I could say, “Yes, if everybody meditates 30 minutes a day, you're going to have all blocks removed,” but it's so personal that it's a trick question. If everybody started today and said, “Where is my biggest limitation?” and be real with yourself, there are answers out there. You just have to go slowly and find them, and then the writing more free will come. I hope that wasn't one of those woo-woo answers, but I really do believe it. Jo: I agree. It just takes time. Like our writing career, it just takes time. Keep working on it, keep writing. Jennifer: Yes. And bravery, right? A lot of bravery. Just show up for yourself however you can. If “write free” feels too big, journal for yourself and put it in a locked drawer. Any kind of writing, I think, is therapeutic too. Jo: Brilliant. So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Jennifer: The best place to go is my website. I treat it like my home. It's www.JenniferProbst.com. There is so much on it. Not just books, not just free content and free stories. There's an entire section just for writers. There are videos on there. There are a lot of resources. I keep it up to date and it is the place where you can find me. Of course I'm everywhere on social media as Author Jennifer Probst. You can find me anywhere. I always tell everybody: I answer my messages, I answer my emails. That is really important to me. So if you heard this podcast and you want to reach out on anything, please do. I will answer. Jo: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Jennifer. That was great. Jennifer: Thanks for having me, Joanna.The post Writing Free: Romance Author Jennifer Probst On A Long-Term Author Career first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Send us a textWe unpack brand misreads around DEI, then shift into AI's new place in music as an AI artist hits the Billboard charts. The second half breaks down No Limit vs Cash Money, why showmanship beat scarcity, and who could credibly face Jay-Z in a Versus.• Target's inclusivity optics and how brands underestimate cultural risk• AI as tool vs replacement in music creation• Prompting as a communication skill and why it matters• The ethics and reality of relationships with AI• Service apps, convenience trade-offs, and hidden costs• No Limit vs Cash Money: attendance, presence, and MVPs• Snoop's loyalty, Master P's protection, and legacy moments• Mannie Fresh vs KLC and production identity• Who can match Jay-Z: Wayne, Nas, Drake, Kanye• Why Jay vs Nas makes the most musical senseYoutube to https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPIs6Ko7BCc9l5jlE5AbAUqZ0gAOhmuq- https://mixed-vibez-drip.printify.me/

Content Creator and Steph Curry Super Fan Jay Roebuck joins in on this episode of Combo's Court. Combo and Jay discuss Steph Curry's legacy, Magic Johnson comparisons, Larry Bird peak vs longevity, and whether Steph belongs in the GOAT tier — this episode delivers the debate. Combo and Jay Robuck break down the evolution of Steph's career, how situation impacts greatness, and where he stands against legends like Magic, Bird, Kobe, LeBron and MJ. We also close the episode with hip-hop heat: Jay-Z vs Lil Wayne in a Versus, Wayne's mixtape peak vs JAY-Z's longevity, and who really stands as the Michael Jordan of rap! And More! USE CODE COMBO ON PRIZEPICKS! Sign up on PrizePicks using the promo code “Combo.” Make a deposit of $5 or more and receive $50 instantly here: prizepicks.onelink.me/ivHR/COMBO Support the show: Cash App $CombosCourt | Venmo @CombosCourt Drop a review wherever you listen!

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 Guest Roxxy Haze Dion Lack Kali Scott This Week We Discuss Have Your Entire Memory Uploaded & Public To Others vs Never Be Able To Tell Personal Stories Again Remember Everything You Read vs Everything You Experience 1 Minute Poop Every 20 Mins vs 1 Years Worth Of Pooping Randomly Once A Year S/o To Our Sponors Bubs Natural Get 20% Off Your Entire Order Bubsnatural.com Promo: Squadd Cash App Download Cash App & Recieve $5 When You Send $10 To A Friend Lucy Get 20% Off Your First Order Lucy.co/SQUADD Promo: SQUAD

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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 Guest Young Deuces Keysha E. Dion Lack This Week We Discuss Survive A Week At Jurassic Park Alone vs Weekend On A Ship With An Alien Hang With The Crew From Hangover vs The Avengers Find Out The Matrix Is Real vs You're Living A Real Life Truman Show S/o To Our Sponosors GLD Gld.com Promo: SQUADD Better Help https://betterhelp.com/squadd New Users Get 10% Of Your First Month 

Our Chief U.S. Economist Michael Gapen and Global Head of Macro Strategy Matthew Hornbach discuss potential next steps for the FOMC and the risks to their views from the U.S. government shutdown. Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Matthew Hornbach: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Matthew Hornbach, Global Head of Macro Strategy.Michael Gapen: And I'm Michael Gapen, Morgan Stanley's Chief U.S. Economist.Matthew Hornbach: The October FOMC meeting delivered a quarter percent rate cut as widely expected – but things are more complicated, and policy is not on a preset path from here.It's Friday, November 7th at 10am in New York.So, Mike, the Fed did cut by 25 basis points in October, but it was not a unanimous decision. And the Federal Open Market Committee decided to end the reduction of its balance sheet on December 1st – earlier than we expected. How did things unfold and does this change your outlook in any way?Michael Gapen: Yeah, Matt, it was a surprise to me. Not so much the statement or the decision, but there were dissents. There was a dissent in favor of a 50-basis point cut. There was a dissent in favor of no cut. And that foreshadowed the press conference – where really the conversation was about, I think, a divided committee; and a committee that didn't have a lot of consensus on what would come next.The balance sheet discussion, which we can get into, it came a little sooner than we thought, but it was largely in line with our view. And I'm not sure it's a macro critical decision right now. But I do think it was a surprise to markets and it was certainly a surprise to me – how much Powell's tone shifted between September and October, in terms of what the market could expect from the Fed going forward.So, what he said in essence, the key points, you know. The policy's not on a preset path from here. Or [a] cut in December is maybe not decidedly part of the baseline; or certainly is not a foregone conclusion. And I think what that reflects is a couple of things.One is that they're recalibrating policy based on a risk management view. So, you can cut almost independent of the data, at least in the beginning. And so now I think Powell's saying, ‘Well, at least from here, future cuts are probably more data dependent than those initial cuts.' But second, and I think most importantly is the division that appeared within the Fed. I think there's one group that's hawkish, one group that's dovish, and I think it reflects the division and the tension that we have in the economic data.So, I think the hawkish crowd is looking at strong activity data, strong AI spending, an upper income consumer that seems to be doing just fine. And they're saying, ‘Why are we cutting? Financial conditions for the business community is pretty easy. Maybe the neutral rate of interest is higher. We're probably less restrictive than you think.' And then I think the other side of the committee, which I believe still that Chair Powell is in, is looking at a market slowdown in hiring a weak labor market. What that means for growth in real income for those households that depend on labor market income to consume; there's probably some front running of autos that artificially boosted growth in the third quarter.So, I think that the dissents, or I should say the division within the FOMC, I think reflects the tension in the underlying data. So, to know which way monetary policy evolves, Matt, it's essentially trying to decide: does the labor market rebound towards the activity data or does the activity data decelerate at least temporarily to the labor market?Matthew Hornbach: Mike, you talked a lot about data just now, and we're not exactly getting a lot of government data at the moment. How are you thinking about the path for the data in terms of its availability between now and the December FOMC meeting? And how do you think that may affect the Fed's willingness to move forward with another rate cut in the cycle?Michael Gapen: Right. So that's key and critical to understanding, right? We're operating under the assumption, of course the federal government shutdowns going to end at some point. We're going to get all this back data released and we can assess where the economy is or has been. I think the way markets should think about this is if the government shutdown has ended in the next few weeks, say before Thanksgiving – then I think we, markets, the Fed will have the bulk of the data in front of them and available to assess the economy at the December FOMC meeting.They may not have it all, but they should get at least some of that data released. We can assess it. If the economy has moderated and weakened a bit, the labor market has continued to cool, the Fed can cut. If it shows maybe the labor market rebounding downside risk to employment being diminished, maybe the Fed doesn't cut.So that's a world and it is our expectation the shutdown should end in the next few weeks. We're already at the longest shutdown on record, so we will get some data in hand to make the decision for December. Perhaps that's wishful thinking, Matt, and maybe we go beyond Thanksgiving, and the shutdown extends into December.My suspicion though, is if the government is still shut down in December, I can't imagine the economy's getting better. So, I think the Fed could lean in the direction of taking one more step.Matthew Hornbach: This is going to be very critical for how the markets think about the outlook in 2026 and price the outlook for 2026. The last FOMC meeting of the year has that type of importance for markets – pricing, the path of Fed policy, and the path of the economy into 2026. Because if we end up receiving a rate cut from the Fed, the dialogue in the investment community will be focused on when might the next cut arrive. Versus if we don't get that rate cut in December, the dialogue will focus on, maybe we will never see another rate cut in the cycle. And what if we see a rate hike as we make our way through the second half of 2026? So that can have a dramatic impact on the U.S. Treasury market and how investors think about the outlook for policy and the economy.Michael Gapen: So, I think that's right. And as you know, our baseline outlook is at least through the first quarter, if not into the second quarter. The private sector will still be attempting to pass through tariffs into prices. And I think in the meantime, demand for labor and the hiring rate will remain low.And so, we look for additional labor market slack to build. Not a lot, but the unemployment rate moving to more like 4.6, maybe 4.7 – and that underpins our expectation the Fed will be reducing rates in in 2026. But I think as you note, and as I mentioned earlier, there is this tension in the data and it's not inconceivable that the labor market accelerates. And you get, kind of, an animal spirits driven 2026; where a combination of momentum in the data, AI-related business spending, wealth effects for upper income consumers and maybe a larger fiscal stimulus from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, lead the economy to outperform.And to your point, if that is happening, it's not farfetched to think, well, if the Fed put in risk management insurance cuts, perhaps they need to take those out. And that could build in a way where that expectation, let's say towards the second half or the fourth quarter maybe of 2026, maybe it takes into 2027. But I agree with you that if the Fed can't cut in December because the economy's doing well and the data show that, and we learn more of that in 2026, you're right.So, it would… And may maybe to put it more simply, the more the Fed cuts, the more you need to open both sides of the rate path distribution, right? The deeper they cut, the greater the probability over time, they're going to have to raise those rates. And so, if the Fed is forced to stop in December, yeah, you can make that argument.Matthew Hornbach: Indeed, a lot of the factors that you mentioned are factors that are coming up in investor conversations increasingly. The way I've been framing it in my discussions is that investors want to see the glass as half full today, versus in the middle of this year the glass was looking half empty. And of course, as we head into the holiday season, the glass will be filled with something perhaps a bit tastier than water. And so…Michael Gapen: Fill my glass please.Matthew Hornbach: Indeed. So, I do think that we could be setting up for a bright 2026 ahead. And so, with that, Mike, look forward to seeing you again in December – with a glass of eggnog perhaps. And a decision in hand for the meeting that the Fed holds then. Thanks for taking the time to talk.Michael Gapen: Great speaking with you, Matt.Matthew Hornbach: And 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.

This episode continues Brian's special series highlighting speakers from the recent Ozark Mountain Bigfoot Conference. This week, we feature researcher and field investigator Shane Carpenter, whose presentation offers a compelling look into some of the most intriguing and scientifically grounded aspects of Sasquatch research.Throughout his lecture, Shane shares updates from The 400, his primary research area, including:Infrasound phenomena and its potential role in reported Sasquatch encountersThe discovery of mysterious holes containing inserted sticks, possibly the work of juvenile SasquatchesThe relationship between high-energy geological zones and increased sighting activityTrack morphology and substrate analysis, with an emphasis on juvenile tracksInsights into the Melba Ketchum DNA study and the challenges of scientific validation in cryptozoologyEthical considerations in gifting versus baiting, and how each approach impacts research integrityShane also touches on the possibility of orb phenomena and other unexplained elements that seem to accompany encounters, emphasizing the importance of maintaining an open yet critical mindset in fieldwork. His presentation concludes with an engaging audience Q&A, exploring questions on orbs, energy zones, and evolving methodologies in Sasquatch research.Get Our FREE NewsletterGet Brian's BooksEmail Brian Share Your Encounter Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sasquatch-odyssey--4839697/support.

Jay Z Vs Everybody PT1 is here, and it's packed with real talk, heated debates, and pure hip-hop energy

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 Guest Roxxy Haze Dion Lack Brent Taylor  This Week We Discuss Skyscraper Window Cleaner vs Light House Worker  Be A Professional Stripper At Assisted Living Homes vs A Roaster At The Special Olympics  Monthly Eating Contest Of Your Most Hated Food vs Only Have Hotdog Water As A Drink Again S/o To Our Sponsors Cash App Download Cash App And Use The Code CASHAPP10 At Sign Up At Receive $10 When You Send A Friend $5. Terms Apply

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 Guest Kali Scott Chinedu Unaka This Week We Discuss 10 Hour Flight In Middle Seat W/ Fastest Free Internet vs First Class W/ No Entertainment One Million Dollars Now vs One Special Power Of Your Choice Never Pay For Clothes Again vs Never Pay For Shoes Again S/o To Our Sponsors True Classic trueclassic.com/SQUADD Inda Cloud Inda cloud.co Promo: ALLDEF