Management Blueprint | Steve Preda

Itay Ben Horin, CEO of Ben Horin & Alexandrovitz, one of Israel’s leading strategic media consultancies, is on a mission to help people and organizations achieve their goals through strategic communication. As the author of Crisis Management, Itay draws on decades of experience helping businesses, public figures, and institutions navigate high-stakes situations where leadership and communication determine the outcome. In this conversation, Itay introduces The Crisis Management Framework: Stay Prepared, Pull Your Team Together, Work Fast and Slow, Pick Your Entry Point, Decide Strategy, and Select Who Speaks, Where, and When. He explains why preparation is the greatest advantage in any crisis, why leaders must balance urgency with thoughtful decision-making, and how identifying the right audience and communication strategy can turn a defining moment into an opportunity. He also shares how AI is reshaping strategic communications, the growing threat of deepfakes, and why books and long-form conversations remain indispensable in an age of AI-generated content. — 5 Steps to Address a Crisis with Itay Ben Horin  Good day. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint podcast, and my guest today is Itay Ben Horin, the CEO of Ben Horin & Alexandrovitz, a leading strategic media consultancy in Israel, and also the author of Crisis Management, which just came out in the U.S. Itay, welcome to the show.  Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.  Yeah, it’s exciting to talk to you. I mean, you’re in Israel. You’re growing your business there, and I look forward to your differentiated perspective on things on this show. But before we launch in, my favorite question: What is your personal “Why,” and how are you manifesting it through Ben Horin & Alexandrovitz? Okay. So our vision in the company is to help people fulfill their goals through the media. We're trying to empower people and organizations to achieve their objectives.Share on X And we do it through the media, through communication, and through social networks. This is our expertise: communication, strategic consulting, public relations, and spokesperson services. My specialty is crisis management, but our company provides all kinds of media consulting. And our “Why” is to help people fulfill their dreams. Our way of helping them is through the media. But there are other goals as well.  Yeah. That is interesting. So how does media help people fulfill their dreams? When a person or an organization is talking to one person or two people in a store, or in any other aspect of communication, it has limited power. But when they communicate through the media to thousands or even millions of people—through television, radio, podcasts, or whatever channel exists in modern life—they have the ability to influence more people. So the media helps them. In a good way, and also in crisis management. When something goes wrong, you can use the media to move from a bad situation to a better place.  When I talk to people, I tell them that even in biblical times, people had communication and written communication. And it’s the same stories: Love. Hate. Power. Politics. Everything is the same. The only thing that has changed is the technology we use to communicate with people. Once, people shouted from rooftops and used other traditional methods. Today, they can talk from their homes to millions of people. Yeah. And then social media is a big amplifier of messaging. It’s changing politics as well. So, for sure. Now, you’re running a large strategic communications firm, but you wrote this book about crisis management. So what’s different about communication during a crisis compared to business as usual, when you just want to get your message out? I’m a basketball fan, and today is like the NBA playoffs. So I’m saying—  The Spurs won.  Yeah, the Spurs won. And it’s very interesting to watch a seven-game series. So what I’m saying is that regular communication is like the regular season. You win. You lose. It’s important, but it’s not that important. A crisis is like the playoffs. You can win or lose. If you manage the crisis well, you can be a winner.Share on X You can win the season even if it began with a crisis. But if you lose, you’re out. So a crisis is a moment that can change your destiny—for better or for worse—depending on how you manage it. And I think that’s the difference between crisis management and regular communication. As I said, regular communication is like a very long regular season.  Yeah, I love that analogy. So it’s the yin and yang, right? It’s the crisis and the opportunity. How do you turn a crisis into an opportunity? There’s a saying: “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” right? Something like that.  Yes. I’m not advising people to get into a crisis. That’s not my advice. But if you have a crisis—and in my book, Crisis Management, I write about many case studies, both good and bad examples of crisis management—in some cases, the way people like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama managed their crises helped make them winners because they handled them well. I also write about companies like McDonald’s and Starbucks, as well as crisis management cases in Israel.  If you manage a crisis badly, you can lose your position or even your business. So I’m not advising anyone to seek out a crisis. But when I walk into a room where there is a crisis—and I do that a lot, it’s my day job—I meet a CEO or a manager who is dealing with a crisis, and I tell them: “Please try to look at this moment from another perspective.” “Because these are the moments that define your leadership.” “And if we do well, and if we do our best, you may be remembered as the leader who successfully navigated this challenge.” It’s hard to see that in the moment. But afterward, people often come back to me and say: “I remember what you told me during those moments.”  Yeah. That’s when character really shows up, right? In moments of crisis. It’s when everything gets amplified. Yes. So this podcast is called Management Blueprint. We talk about frameworks all the time. So give me a good crisis management framework. Three to five elements. I’m sure you cover them in your book. If someone is in a crisis, what do they need to think about? What steps should they take? Do you have a framework like that?  Yeah. So the book is like 20 chapters. Sixteen of them are crisis-management cases from around the world and Israel, including some that I managed. And there are also four chapters about this framework and how to manage a crisis. So the first thing that I will tell you is that the best way to manage a crisis is to be prepared for a crisis. I know it sounds like a cliché, but it's really important. Every minute that you prepare—I call it a golden minute.Share on X Every minute that you prepare for a crisis will count as 10 minutes during the crisis when it begins.  Because if you are prepared, if you know who is talking, who is on your team, what the messages are, who your crisis-management advisor is, who your lawyer is, who your accountant is, and who will be in the room, as a manager that’s very important. So that’s the preparation. And even if you don’t prepare, the first thing is to get your team together. I don’t believe that crisis management can be managed from far away. You must be in the same room with all the people and talk together with your team. The second thing is that in a crisis, you need to work very fast and very slowly.  Very fast because you need to think fast and react fast because it’s a crisis. You have a lot of phone calls, a lot of WhatsApp messages, and a lot of activity on social networks. A lot of people are talking to you. But you also need to be very sharp, and you need time to think. The most important thing you need to think about is: What is your entry point for the win? Who is your target audience? Is your target audience the general public? The business ecosystem? A regulator? A minister? In most crises, you have a few target audiences.  But you must understand which target audience can take you to a win. If you’re a political leader, it’s the public. If you’re a business, it can be the market or the stock exchange. If you’re a producer or a manufacturer and you have a crisis, it can be the regulator. So you must think about who your target audience is and then decide on the strategy. Because there are crises that you cannot win. Going back to basketball, maybe you cannot win the series. But it’s better to lose four games to two than four to zero. And that’s okay because you’re building for the next stage. So you have the team. You have the target audience.  You have the strategy. Then you need to decide who is talking to the public and how they are talking. Through Facebook or other social networks? Are you talking to the press? Are you having one-on-one meetings? When are you going to talk? Where are you going to talk? And who is going to talk? The manager? The professional manager? Your legal staff? Your communications staff? These are all the things you need to decide when the crisis begins. And from there, every crisis is different. But that’s where you move forward. Yeah. That’s fascinating. So basically, get your team together. That’s step one. Obviously, you have to be prepared so that you have a team. You have to react fast, but also make room for deep thought. Who’s your target audience? How do you enter this crisis, or where do you need to show up? Decide the strategy. And then who’s going to speak, where, and when. So that’s fascinating.  When and where. What is the technology? Are you doing a press conference? Are you doing a press release? Do you go to your LinkedIn page, your Facebook page, or your Instagram page? Every crisis has its own recipe. I’m saying that there are people in my profession who use the same strategy all the time. To talk or not to talk. To be aggressive or not to be aggressive. I think every crisis has its own recipe. There are times when you need to talk. There are times when you need to remain silent. There are times when you need to attack your rivals or your opponents. And there are times when you need to apologize for things that you have done. So every crisis has its own recipe.  Yeah, that makes sense. I love it. So I’d like to switch gears a little bit and learn more about your business. What drives growth in your business, in your strategic communications consulting business?  So I think there are two main engines. The first engine is more clients. We have clients in all aspects of life.Share on X We have Samsung and Qualcomm from the technology sector. We have a large bank and a large investment house. We work with cities and municipalities. We work with academia. So that’s one engine. And the second engine is adding more services. We started with communications. Then we added social media management. Then we added video. Now we work with influencers and content creators as well. So one way to grow is through more clients. The second way is by expanding the scope of our profession. It’s all around communication, but communication is evolving. Yeah. So when you say more aspects, do you mean more channels?  Yes. More channels, more services.  How do you see these channels evolving? What’s the big trend? In the past, people shouted from rooftops. Then there were town hall meetings. Then there were newspapers. Then came the internet and social media. And now people are posting and tweeting. So how has this evolved? What’s the bigger picture? What is communication evolving toward?  So it’s a good question. I think that the first main understanding is that it’s all together. It’s all synchronized. You talk on television, in the newspaper, and on the radio. Nothing has diminished. Everything is together. But you have more channels, as you said. The most evolving channels are influencers and creators. Now, a lot of my clients are not talking to journalists.  They are talking to creators or to social media influencers. And they are the most important when you have a B2C business talking to the customer and the consumer. For businesses that are more B2B, I think the economic press and television are still very important. So it depends on the client-side organization. Who is the organization, and what is the best channel to talk through?  Yeah. That’s interesting. What is something that you’re actively trying to figure out in your business right now? I think, like everyone, we’re thinking now about how AI will affect our job and our profession. The first steps of AI are already here. Everybody is using ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. We also use ChatGPT and Claude in every program that we have. But I’m sure that there will be more changes. We can see it through the video aspects and the graphic aspects. It didn’t change communication, but it will change it like every profession. So we are trying to think about what is the best way to use it. And also how we can be faster than our colleagues in the profession in using it correctly.  And what are some of the challenges with AI? What makes it tricky to implement an AI strategy, if anything?  First of all, I think the biggest challenge is that I have 25 years of experience, and my partner also has 25 years of experience. So together, we have 50 years of experience in communications consulting. And we had a big gap between us and all the other competitors. But now, with AI, you can be very young in the profession and still get access to all the knowledge, all the books about the field, and all the crisis case studies. So I think the first challenge is understanding that AI is shortening the gap between those who have experience and those who don’t. I think that’s true in every profession.  Yes.  So I think that’s challenge number one. Challenge number two is that there is a lot of fake news. I’m working with a very prominent businessman in Israel, and now there is a fake AI version of him using his image and talking to the public. It looks like the real person is speaking. And that’s a problem that you need to solve. We are talking to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, asking them not to show the ad because it’s fake. But it’s hard. And it’s something new. It wasn’t there in the past.  That’s scary. That’s very scary when this happens. Yes. Everything is getting more complex. I also see it as an opportunity because we have a lot of experience, so we know how to manage these situations. But these are new situations.  Yeah. I wonder how the world is going to deal with that. One thing we noticed when we created an AI video was that it got a lot fewer likes. Even though it was early on, when there were very few AI videos, and we thought it was a very clever thing, people didn’t really resonate with it. Do you find that this is the case? Or are AI videos now so well done that people don’t realize they’re fake?  I think it’s a challenge for the regulators. And I see that they are already doing some work in this area. For example, an AI video will have something written on it saying, “This is an AI video.” You must do that. So I think that if regulators strengthen these requirements across all the platforms—Google, Facebook, ChatGPT, and everything else—then we’ll reach a point where people can watch any video they want, but they will know whether it’s an AI-generated video or a real one. Yeah. That makes sense. So where do you see the growth opportunities for communications businesses like yours going forward?  I think, as I said, AI will take us to a place where we can work with more clients in a faster way. I'm one of the founders of a startup called Focus AI that is creating synthetic groups and communities.Share on X We can talk to synthetic figures and better understand the best way to approach messaging and make decisions after interacting with these communities. So this is one path for growth in the profession and also in our business. And it’s something that we are already doing.  So that’s one way to move faster. Another thing I’m doing is investing in business books. Because I think people will look for things that are very fast, like AI. But they will also look for things with a lot of depth, like books. And I can see right behind you all the books that you are reading. I believe there are many people who still want a way to go deeply into topics. Because of that, I also wrote my book. And now I’m investing in a business that will bring more and more business books into Israel. That is very interesting. There’s a theory that media consumption is becoming polarized. Very short-form media is becoming more popular, and very long-form media is also becoming more popular. And perhaps books are the long-form media that you’re talking about.  And I think podcasts as well. Podcasts are becoming very successful around the world, and also in Israel. Because people want the opportunity to have a one-hour conversation and really understand things. Not just clips from radio interviews or short interviews. So, as you said, more fast and more slow. More sharp and more depth.  Yeah. That ties in with your framework. In a crisis, you have to be fast, and you have to be slow at the same time. Who do you recommend should buy your book? Who can benefit from Crisis Management?  So I think there are three main target audiences. The first is managers, CEOs, and people who make decisions. They will face crises in their professional lives. I think everyone has a crisis in their life and in their professional life. It’s like back pain. Everybody has it, has had it, or will have it. Nobody lives their life without back pain, and nobody lives their life without a crisis. So the first audience is managers. The second audience is people in my profession: Communications consultants and lawyers who deal with crises. They can benefit from these case studies. And the third target audience is students of communications, business, and law. People who want to gain more knowledge about this subject and this field.  Is this just about communicating during a crisis, or is it also about solving the crisis? Or are those the same thing?  No. It’s about all aspects of a crisis. Every crisis has a communication aspect. But Crisis Management, the book, and crisis management itself are not just about communication. As I said, when I come into an organization that is in crisis, I’m managing the communications side of the crisis. But there is also a lawyer. There is a lobbyist. There is an accountant. And there are the internal managers of the organization. Everybody has their own target audience. So the book is about the entire crisis. My way is through the media.  Yeah. Love it. That’s great. Okay. So if you’re listening to this and you’re running a business, or you’re in a professional-services business, or you’re a politician, or anyone working in a high-stakes environment, I highly recommend Itay Ben Horin’s book, Crisis Management. It just came out. Is it available on Amazon?  Yeah. Amazon, Barnes & Noble. It’s everywhere.  Yeah. So it’s on Amazon and in the major bookstores everywhere. If you want to learn more, check it out. Where can people reach you if they want to talk to you or someone at your firm? What would be the best entry point? Yeah. My email is open. My LinkedIn is open. I’m very available. My profession is to be available 24/7.  So check Itay Ben Horin out on LinkedIn. He’s easy to find there. Yes. And he’s the CEO of Ben Horin & Alexandrovitz, a leading strategic media consultancy in Israel. Do you work outside of Israel as well, or do you focus primarily on the Middle East? Yes. We work outside of Israel. We work with Israeli brands that have communications or business activities around the world. We also work with American and European brands that operate in Israel. So our main focus is Israel, but we work with many clients around the world. We have about 50 international clients.  That’s fantastic. So check Itay out. Read his book. And if you enjoyed this conversation, stay tuned because every week we have another entrepreneur with a unique framework coming on the show. Itay, thanks for coming. And thank you for listening.  Thank you very much. Important Links: Itay’s LinkedIn Crisis Management Book Itay’s Website

https://youtu.be/b_G8krkwKv8 Ganesh Krishnan, CEO of AiHello, is helping Amazon sellers automate advertising, improve profitability, and scale their businesses using AI. Driven by a mission to give entrepreneurs more freedom and enable them to build businesses around products they love, Ganesh shares how AI can eliminate repetitive work while allowing business owners to focus on strategy, innovation, and growth. In this conversation, Ganesh introduces The AiHello Ads Framework: Tap into the Wisdom of Crowds, Find the Right Keywords, Bid at the Right Level, Dynamically Adjust Bids, and Rinse and Repeat. He explains how AI can leverage historical marketplace data to identify profitable keywords, optimize bids automatically, and continuously improve campaign performance. Ganesh also discusses the dangers of AI hallucinations, why Amazon’s incentives differ from sellers’ incentives, how AI has transformed his own company’s operations, and his vision for building zero-hallucination AI systems capable of advancing toward artificial superintelligence. — Build AI Superintelligence with Ganesh Krishnan  Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, and welcome Ganesh Krishnan, the CEO of AiHello, an Amazon Ads automation company helping you grow your revenues, reduce work hours spent on ads management, and decrease your ad costs. Welcome to the show, Ganesh.  Thank you, Steve. Nice to meet you  Well, it’s great to have you here, and let’s jump right in. And my first question is, what is your personal ‘Why,’ and how are you manifesting it in AiHello?  So it started off with my thesis that we all need to do good towards the planet. A long time ago, I started having my own natural things, selling chemical-free, ecological, sustainable, good-for-the-planet, good-for-your-wallet, good-for-your-health items, and I would sell organic items. And eventually, what I realized was that it was taking a lot of my time marketing, managing it, changing the bids, doing everything. I started working more and more on AI because I’ve worked in AI commercially. I worked in AI in my industry. That was my job. So I said, “Why not use, apply that to my own startup, to my own industry for selling organic things?” And once I started selling it, some of my friends reached out and said, “Can we use your AI for our own businesses?” And I said, “Sure, why not?”  And then I started opening it up. And then one person came through and said, “Okay, let’s release it to the general public, see how it goes.” And then as we started earning money, I realized that I don’t need to do a job. I can have this startup, and I can help different people have their own lifestyle. You could have your own lifestyle. You could sell your own stuff that you like, e-commerce, usually on Amazon, and then we help you have your lifestyle. So this is my personal ‘Why’, is we need more equality. We need more people doing stuff they love rather than doing stuff they hate to do, and they hate to wake up and go to work. So do what you love. We are here to empower you.  Wow, that’s amazing. So you are empowering people to start their own e-commerce businesses on Amazon, and you help them with AI tools to get up to speed and compete with the big boys.  That is correct.  Yeah. I love it. So on your LinkedIn profile, you mentioned that you are, I don’t know what the word was that you used, but something to do with superintelligence, AI superintelligence. So what is it that you are doing, and what is your vision of how AI superintelligence can be tapped into?  It’s a very long topic. But to start off with, we used the old form of AI, which is a lot of regression, a lot of statistics, a lot of big data learning, and a lot of neural networks, if you felt fancy. And then LLMs became a huge thing. And we launched AiHello probably six or seven years ago. LLMs became a big thing two or three years ago. And it was pretty fancy. It was very good. It made life easy for us. But we cannot use it within AiHello to give it to clients, primarily because LLMs start hallucinating once you go past a certain context. The problem with hallucination is that it exponentially becomes larger and larger. Because if the previous thesis is wrong, if your previous hypothesis is wrong, then it builds on top of it, and it builds the wrong things.  Hallucination exponentially becomes worse. And when it comes to finance, when it comes to ads, and when you’re working with sensitive data, this can be catastrophic. So you cannot use these large language models for finance, for situations where you need precise data, and especially when you have lots of context. It’s going to lose the context of the first part. Just because you mentioned something at the start of the conversation doesn’t mean it’s not important. It is critical. As humans, we understand what is the most critical part of a conversation, and then we keep that in mind. But LLMs, because of context limitations, just keep on going and start hallucinating.  So a few months ago, we came up with the idea that we could use something like a large language model, but not based on the transformer model. And we could base it on data so that there is almost zero hallucination. So instead of building weights, we build it based on data. And we launched this. We don’t use it on AiHello, but we decided to use it on an email service because we have a lot of emails. We process a lot of emails for clients. We process a lot of emails for specialists. So we could use the zero-hallucination approach within emails, and if it is successful, then we can put it into AiHello.  And we can, of course, release it as an API as well. So this is going to set the basis of artificial superintelligence because what is stopping us right now from reaching or breaching that wall of artificial superintelligence is this hallucination. And of course, there is also logic. LLMs are pretty stup*d. They don’t understand. You can teach them, they learn, but they do not question what you teach them. They always take it on blind faith.  Yeah. Wow. That is genius. I love it. You are going to un-hallucinate AI. And if it stops hallucinating, essentially it becomes a lot more powerful and scalable. AI becomes scalable, or this whole process becomes scalable. That’s fascinating. So your ‘Why’, your mission, is to empower all these people to run their businesses. Do you have a framework for this that you could describe in three to five steps? How do you get someone up and running with their own business on an e-commerce platform? Or do you have any other framework that you could share with the audience? Something simple that they may be able to benefit from? One of the caveats of using AI is that it needs a lot of data. So if you’re just starting out with your e-commerce business, you need to put more of your human intelligence, more of your gut instinct, more of your thoughts, and more of your emotions into building it out. And once you have built up enough data, then you can put it into AiHello and start automating it. So what I would say, if you’re starting an e-commerce business, is hire a specialist who can help you launch off the ground.  Do a bit of the hypothesis work, do a bit of the analysis, and then come to AiHello and start automating it. You can only start automating once you have a good idea of how things work for you. And finding how things work for you is something you need to do on your own. It’s like you can’t start running, or you can’t start driving a car, until you learn how to crawl and until you learn how to walk.  Okay. So basically, it’s the age-old innovation thing that you have to innovate something on your own, and then you can scale it with AI. That is correct.  Yeah. So let’s say I came up with some kind of formula, concept, or product that is currently not being promoted, and I believe it would work. Or maybe I’ve already tested it and I want to scale it. I want to get on Amazon and sell it there. What can you do for me? What are the steps for me to be successful with AiHello’s help? So the first thing when you select a product, is: what are the keywords for it? What keywords do you use for that product? The second would be: what are the bids for that product? For each keyword, what is the right bid to put up? And then you have other things like budgeting. Do you change the bid depending on the time of day? Do you change the bid in total? Those are the things that you need to keep adjusting continuously.  With AiHello, we automatically harvest the right keywords for your product. We change the bid. We optimize the bid. We also do dayparting, where you can change the bid depending on the time of day. So there are different things that you can use AI for. You could certainly do all of it manually, but it’ll probably take you days or weeks to do what AI can do in a couple of minutes.  So a couple of minutes. But doesn’t the AI also need traffic data to be able to define things?  Yeah. So one of the other things about AiHello is that, because we have the wisdom of crowds, if you come up with a keyword, we know exactly how that keyword is going to perform. As you say, you have the wisdom of crowds. Can you extrapolate what you’ve experienced with other products and other customers onto a new product that doesn’t yet have a lot of traffic? Is this what you mean by the wisdom of crowds? Or what do you mean by the wisdom of crowds?  Let me give you an example. Let’s assume you want to sell coffee, and you go to our platform and say, “This is my product. It’s coffee. Help me sell it.” So what we do is, we know this is coffee. What are the keywords around it that are going to help sell it? Because we’ve sold other coffee products, we know that organic coffee sells well. We know coffee in the morning sells well. Black coffee sells well. Caffeine sells well.  And we also know, based on the previous performance of other keywords, what a good bid is for each keyword. If you don’t know the keywords, then of course you have to spend time researching them. And if you don’t know the bids, then you have to spend time researching what bid to put in. But we do all the research for you, and you put it in. And the second part, the bigger part, is that if the bid doesn’t work out, if you’re not selling, then we increase the bid automatically. If you are losing money, then we decrease the bid automatically. So that bid optimization is a critical part of AiHello.  Yeah. We use Amazon ads to promote my books. And yes, it takes a lot of skill to find the keywords, eliminate the negative keywords, adjust the bids, have the right bids, and avoid overspending or underspending. But Amazon also does much of the machine learning. So what is it that Amazon does, and what is it that you have to do? And why doesn’t Amazon do what you have to do?  The most critical piece of information to keep in mind is that your aims and objectives are the opposite of Amazon’s aims and objectives. Amazon’s aim is to make money, and your job is to make money. You don’t care if Amazon makes money or not, and Amazon doesn’t care if you make money or not. So when you put up a bid, when you run ads, Amazon will maximize that ad spend, whatever it is. In some ways, it’s like a casino.  You go to a casino, and the job of the casino is to win money from you, and your job is to win money from the casino. Ads have become a lot like gambling nowadays. You throw money into it. You expect to make money. Ninety percent of people lose money, and they give up. And Amazon always finds fresh sellers to move on. You cannot depend on Amazon because Amazon is not on your side.  Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, I always thought that on some platforms it was really difficult to make money with ads. Facebook, I think, is so competitive that it’s probably very difficult to make money. I know a lot of people who have spent a lot of money on Facebook, but I don’t know very many who have figured out a formula that continues to work. Okay. So you’ve helped someone find their keywords, the right bids, and how to adjust those bids. But what we’ve found is that at some point, ads die, and then we have to switch things up. It actually happens quite frequently that you have to create new campaigns and new ads. So what’s the dynamic there? How do you optimize so that you’re not still supporting ads that don’t work anymore, and you switch at the right point?  So when we say ads, it’s not technically the campaigns. A campaign is just a container for all of your ads. You have products inside it, and you have keywords inside it. So a campaign is made up of products and keywords. And the question is, when you say ads die, did the keywords die? Then you need to add new keywords, right? You always have to keep adding new keywords and testing new keywords. It’s a continuous job of trying to find the right keywords for your book or your product, and then optimizing the bids constantly to make sure that you’re profitable.  You have to make sure that your ads don’t die because of a lack of fresh keywords. And of course, there’s always a limit to the number of keywords you can add because each product has a limited number of keywords that people are searching for. Maybe there’s a long-tail keyword that’s going to make money, but there’s not enough search volume. Or maybe there’s a high-volume search keyword, but it’s not profitable for you. So you have to figure out what the right strategy is for you. Eventually, if your product is good, you’ll make money. If your product is not good, you won’t make money. That’s the bottom line. With ads, you quickly find out if your product…  So essentially, it’s a cyclical thing. So you find the keywords, you figure out the right bids, you adjust the bids, and then you have to find new keywords and keep doing this.  Yeah.  So why do keywords go stale? Do people not search for certain things anymore?  There could be multiple reasons for it. One reason is that a competitor has come in and taken your search volume. And you have to know: are you losing search volume? Are you gaining search volume? Has your search volume dropped off? The second reason is that people are not searching for that keyword anymore. Is it out of fashion? The third is: are you underbidding? Is the bid too low? Again, you would know by the number of impressions. Have the impressions dropped off?  If the impressions have dropped off, is it because of a competitor? If it’s not because of a competitor, are people searching less? Are your bids too low? If the search volume is the same, are people clicking less? Why are they clicking less? Is it your images? Is it your product? Is your product no longer in fashion? I mean, I don’t know. Maybe a few months ago, fidget spinners were really in fashion, and nowadays no one uses them. So those things go out of fashion.  Yeah. The spinners, I remember. They’ve been out of fashion for a while.  Yeah.  Yeah, that’s fascinating. So it’s a never-ending cycle of innovation and figuring out what works and what doesn’t work. So let me ask you this: What drives growth in your business?  Most of the growth is… There are different ways to put it. Four years ago, we used to create a lot of blogs. We used to create lots of content. We used to create lots of YouTube videos. And then ChatGPT came along. If you ask kids now, “Do you Google that?” They don’t know what Google is. They really don’t know what Google is. And that’s not a cliché. It’s surprising. They’ll be like, “What Google?” Everything goes through ChatGPT.  So for us, growth went from Google to ChatGPT. And we didn’t spend enough time optimizing for LLMs on our site. So what drove growth before was blogs and YouTube. And what drives growth now is large language models like ChatGPT and Claude. People just ask ChatGPT, “What do I do about this on Amazon?” It recommends solutions, and then we go through them.  So how do you leverage large language models or AI applications?  This was one of the biggest boosts to our company. We managed to set the processes right. We managed to create the templates. We managed to bring structure to our company. Development work has become ten times faster. The turnaround is ten times faster. We’re able to release features quickly. We’re able to find bugs in our existing code quickly. There are a lot of things going on. If I were to say that our company is no longer the same company it was even a year ago, that would not be an exaggeration. It would be the truth. What we were a year ago is not at all what we are right now.  So in what way did you change? Is it coding that accelerated and changed everything? I mean, in what other ways did you change as a company?  So the code is all done with AI first. Our developers use AI. They put in the prompt, they check the results. There is a second developer who checks whether everything is okay and whether everything is done. And then finally there’s QA, and then we push it to staging. We used to do roughly one-month or forty-five-day sprints. Now we do weekly sprints. So it has gone four times faster. The biggest hurdle for us was managing clients and how we manage them. We never had any structure.  So we talked a lot with ChatGPT. We talked a lot about what the right way was to bring structure and accountability into the system. We managed to set up all the software required for accountability. It helped us fix those issues. It created structure. It created accountability for all the people, and then we implemented that. Finally, the last one, which was the most debatable, is that we require a lot of content. We require a lot of graphics. We require a lot of videos for clients on Amazon. I actually went to buy something on Amazon a few days back, and what was puzzling was that when I zoomed in on the images, you could see they were AI-generated because they all had these silly AI mistakes—spelling mistakes, random words.  So almost everything on Amazon right now, all the images, are kind of AI-generated. It’s hard to blame them. We ourselves use AI for a lot of the images. We make sure we don’t have the silly mistakes, but we do use AI as well. So the turnaround time for graphics is faster because of AI as well. Though some clients do complain that they don’t like AI-generated assets. And if a person looks a bit too AI-generated, they just reject it outright. So that is the most debatable part of it. But overall, our company is called AiHello. It’s AiHello. And if we don’t say hello to AI, then we’re not AiHello.  Yeah. Love it. I love the head and the one arm.  Yes.  The hello, and that’s it.  Yeah.  So what is one thing that you’re actively trying to figure out in your business right now? We are a remote-first company, and I’m struggling to bring about accountability among all the team members. We do have a good number of employees. Ninety percent of our employees are good. Ten percent still have accountability issues. And for me, that is a bit of a hurdle. It is a bit of a challenge to push those people who are dragging their feet about AI. Yeah. Because they are not comfortable with AI. They want to do what they are good at and don’t want to do something new.  There is also a bit of hesitation that they might lose their jobs because of AI, although we’re not planning to let go of anyone. Rather, we are hiring more people because we’re able to grow faster. There is an old saying that companies won’t go extinct because of AI, but companies that don’t use AI will go extinct because of AI. Because we are using AI a lot, there is a chance for us to scale, for us to expand significantly. And I want to tap into this advantage and grow. I want to hire more people, and I want to grow. I don’t want to let people go.  So this is a very good opportunity. You hear about Coinbase letting people go. You hear about Facebook letting people go because of AI. And I think those are all nonsensical excuses. Those companies are not growing very well, and they are blaming AI for letting people go, which I think is absolutely nonsensical. There is a very good opportunity for people to grow and for companies to grow using AI and increase their hiring. If you’re letting people go because of AI, it’s just a nonsensical excuse.  So what do you think is the mental hang-up for people? What prevents better AI adoption or faster AI adoption? A long time ago, when computers were being introduced into many industries, I remember there were huge protests because people thought computers would take away jobs. And it did happen. People did lose jobs because of computers. There were many people pushing papers who lost their jobs. And a lot of people refused to learn about computers because they said, “This is nonsensical. I can do it better by hand.” Can you imagine telling people right now that it’s better to do things by hand than to use a computer?  I mean, if you want to do calculations, please don’t use Excel or Google Sheets. Use a pen and paper and tell me you can do it better. It would be absurd to think that way. But at that time, people really did have the mentality that it was better to do things by hand than with Excel. Now, the AI revolution is probably a thousand or a million times bigger than that. And you can drag your feet. There will always be people who drag their feet and say, “I can do it better. AI is just nonsensical.” And sure, some of that is true. But the overwhelming majority of tasks are going to be done extremely well with AI.  And it’s not just large language models. It’s everything. Regression analysis, data analytics, big data analytics, forecasting, calculations. I’m not even talking about transformer models. I’m talking about everything related to AI. So much can be automated and done by AI that if you’re not involved with it, you’ll get left behind, just like the people who didn’t use computers. Do you feel like people have to be highly educated to be able to use AI? Or can people with less formal education benefit from it as well?  I don’t think it has anything to do with education. I think the learning curve for AI is smaller than the learning curve for computers. If you’re already using computers, you can just install a command-line interface and have things running. Actually, you can go to ChatGPT and ask some questions, and you can build something. But if you want to build serious applications, you can use a command-line interface and build them out. I think the learning curve is probably just a couple of hours to become proficient with these tools. I’m thinking more about this: As AI tools develop and take many of the routine, repeatable tasks off our shoulders, doesn’t that mean we will spend more of our time on high-level thinking and orchestration? And won’t that require some kind of mental ability to do that? It requires you to understand context, understand the implications of things, and be able to connect the dots. So that’s what I mean. The people who can really use AI tools have this higher level of awareness and thinking. They can combine ideas and create new things. But are there AI tools that people with less advanced analytical skills can also use? Absolutely. And you’re 100% right. You’re 101% right. This is what I’ve been advocating for a very long time. Don’t spend your time doing mundane, repetitive daily activities that can be automated. Let AI handle them. You should focus on the things AI cannot do right now, which is human-level intelligence: Strategizing. Planning. Working on the bigger-picture tasks. So you’re 100% right, and that’s the direction we should be moving in. And this brings me back to the point I made earlier: You should do what you love. The things you don’t love, the repetitive tasks, should be done by AI.  Yeah. Love it. So what is your vision, ultimately, for AiHello?  So my vision for AiHello goes beyond AiHello. We have something called HalZero, which is the engine we want to put behind AiHello. It’s a zero-hallucination LLM. And we are working toward making it happen. We plan to release an API for it soon. If it does happen, then we would probably have a model that can take in data and answer general-knowledge questions with zero hallucination. And we’re building it based on how the human brain works. The human brain is not one-dimensional. ChatGPT is one-dimensional. Transformer models are one-dimensional.  You give them data, they run it through the transformer model—the encoder and decoder—and then they give you an answer. But the human brain is built in layers. What we call the lizard brain sits at the base, and as you go higher, things become more and more complex. So the brain is information and action, and everything is filtered through it. Then we act on the filtered result. Machine learning models right now do not have these kinds of filters. They have something similar, which is called chain of thought, but that’s really thinking out loud. This kind of reasoning should exist within the latent space of the machine learning model. It should be built into the model itself.  I’ll give you an example. If you had been taught all your life that the sun is green, and tomorrow you woke up in Virginia, went outside, and saw that the sun was yellow, you’d say: “Oh my God, I’ve been lied to all my life. The sun isn’t green.” You would question what you had been taught based on a single observation. But if a machine had been trained for years that the sun is green, and then it saw that the sun was yellow, it might conclude: “The sun is wrong today because I’ve been taught that the sun is green.” The real test of intelligence is this: Can it question its training data? And the answer is no. It won’t, because it has been trained on that data. It has been trained on those tokens.  Yeah. So that’s AI superintelligence? The ability to question the training data?  That is correct. Yeah. So we build it based on connections. How strong is this connection? How many people have stated this fact? What is my own observation? Which observation is stronger? There is always conflict. In the human brain, there is always a conflict between what people say and what we think. Then our logical brain chooses what is usually the best answer. That is how we have a collective consciousness. We also have a personal consciousness. We always have to decide which one is best.  Love it. Well, that’s great. So if you’re running a business and you need to sell a product, and you want to figure out how to be successful on Amazon, how to leverage your ads, and how not to overspend, where should you go? How can people get in touch with you, Ganesh, and your team? And what’s the first step for listeners?  You can send me an email at [email protected]. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m always available, and I’m happy to have a chat with you.  All right. So if you’re listening out there and you’re in e-commerce, or you want to get into e-commerce, and you don’t know how to leverage all the tools that are out there, don’t forget: Amazon is in the business of making money, not necessarily making your business profitable. So you can use AiHello to help you. Reach out to Ganesh on LinkedIn and get your team involved. And if you enjoyed listening to this episode, make sure you check back every week because I have successful entrepreneurs sharing their ideas—or at least some of the good ones—with you. So thanks, Ganesh, for coming.  Thank you, Steve.  And thank you for listening. Important Links: Ganesh’s LinkedIn Ganesh’s website Ganesh’s email: [email protected]

https://youtu.be/xkCGHOYkdC0 Grant McKinstrie, CEO of Digital Position, is passionate about helping eCommerce brands grow by combining customer insights, data-driven marketing, and emerging technology. With more than two decades of experience in digital marketing, Grant has built a team that helps brands increase revenue through SEO, paid media, conversion optimization, and customer-focused growth strategies. We explore Grant’s DP Growth System: Ask AI where consumers congregate, Immerse yourself in their communities, Create content they crave, Engage them on Reddit and Quora, Have influencers create videos, and Turn craved content into ads. Grant explains why understanding customer conversations is more valuable than relying on assumptions, how online communities reveal unmet needs and buying signals, and how businesses can transform those insights into content, influencer partnerships, and advertising campaigns that drive measurable growth. He also shares how AI is changing marketing, the challenges of scaling an agency, and why innovation remains one of the most important drivers of long-term business success. — Build Yourself a Growth System with Grant McKinstrie  Good day. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and today my guest is Grant McKinstrie, the CEO of Digital Position, a full-stack agency that builds a growth system for e-commerce brands. Grant, welcome to the show.  Thank you so much for having me. Good to be here.  Well, it’s great to have you here. And I’d like to start by asking you: What is your personal ‘Why’, and what are you doing to manifest it at Digital Position?  Well, specifically when we think about the eCommerce space, there’s so much crap being sold out there. And also, in terms of what AI has done to the industry, it has allowed a lot of people to start a lot of different businesses, sell a lot of stuff, do a lot of dropshipping, and all these different things. It’s about trying to find the gems. It’s about finding the good people to work with and the businesses that are worth growing at the end of the day. There’s so much good stuff out there that gets pushed down because either they haven’t worked with a good agency or they just don’t know how to market themselves well enough.  And I think the drive behind trying to find those people who are genuinely nice to work with and brands that are absolutely worth promoting and bringing out into the world is awesome and very rewarding. Being able to do that is incredibly fulfilling. That’s not to say that we’re perfect in every way, shape, or form. And it’s not like every single business we work with is perfect either. We do what we can. But all in all, I want to be able to help market products, people, and businesses that are absolutely worth getting out into the world and getting more people to know about.  Yeah. That’s so interesting that you say that because I had a client in this space where you are, and they were a little conflicted because some of the brands they represented, they were not really proud of. And I think it really impacted their culture in turn. They felt that they were not operating with integrity with all of their clients, and that created internal friction. And it kind of held them back to some degree. So that’s fascinating that you talk about this. And I also noted on your website that your average client tenure is over four years, which I think bears testament to this. Yeah. In a large majority of cases, I mean, we’ve had certain clients for six years and, in some cases, even eight years. So when you have tenures like that, they certainly last a long time. And sometimes it just doesn’t work, and we’re also very willing to openly admit that. I don’t want anyone to think, “Oh, if we sign up with you, it’s four years, and then we’re just constantly paying you for, I don’t know, whatever reason it might be.” But genuinely, we’re here to see how we can legitimately grow the business and actually bring you profit dollars that you weren’t seeing otherwise.  Because so many businesses that we come across are just not able to allocate their marketing spend efficiently. And they’re just… I don’t know. Not to get too much into the nitty-gritty of things, but in a general sense, 95% of the businesses we talk to are essentially burning money. And in most cases, they’re being worked through an agency churn-and-burn system. And it hurts to see. Literally, I had a pitch two hours ago before this call where every single platform they were on was just burning money. They were trying to remarket to people who already knew about the brand and spending money on people who already knew about them and were already going to purchase from them.  And the agency was trying to tell them, “Hey, all of our metrics are great.” But the business is suffering because of it. It happens all the time. It generally results in tough conversations for us because agencies have such a bad reputation. And we’re always trying to pick up the pieces and revitalize that relationship. Which has its highs and lows in many ways. But we’re out here doing the best we can. Okay, so that’s a great segue because this podcast is all about frameworks—how to do something that maybe other entrepreneurs are trying to do, don’t know how to do, but you figured out. So do you have some kind of framework? Maybe it’s about getting an eCommerce company up and running on advertising and advertising profitably. Maybe it’s some other area in your business that is easy to explain in three to five steps. Does anything come to mind?  The biggest thing that we have realized lately is what we have deemed community engagement. One, because of AI, you can scrape information so easily across the internet, and you can get fed so much crap that AI is just going to automatically generate for you. But what really matters at the end of the day is: who is your audience, where the heck do they hang out, and what are they talking about?  So we are constantly looking to inject ourselves into Reddit threads, Facebook threads, YouTube comments, Quora—wherever those people possibly are. Get into the subreddits. Get into those Facebook communities. Get into the comments of influencers or whoever is relevant within that space, and talk to them. See what they’re talking about within those threads. Engage with them. Have a conversation so that you can understand what actually makes this person tick. What do they truly care about? What do they call things? What are they talking about on a daily basis?  So that when you start creating content that resonates with those people, you know exactly how to connect with them. Because, as I mentioned earlier, so many people are creating commoditized products and content because of AI, because it’s making it that much easier to do. Nobody is truly trying to connect with the consumer at the end of the day. And therefore, you’re going to have so many people who become numb to anything being thrown in their face unless they actually feel like they’re being spoken to.  So the biggest thing is to get to know the person on the other side of the screen. Go to where they hang out. Go to where they’re engaging. And listen to them. I think a lot of people forget that and want to go straight into data, metrics, spreadsheets, and all this stuff. When there is a human-to-human interaction happening within marketing every single day. And that is what you need to continue to focus on. Okay, so maybe that’s the beginning of the framework. So get to know the person—or the customer—or both.  Yeah. And it sounds really simple. It’s funny, when you put it that way, it’s just: listen to the person you’re trying to sell to. But it’s incredible how infrequently that actually happens. Because a lot of people will talk about, “My product is the best. My product is so good because it does this cool little thing that nobody else does.” But who really cares unless it’s actually solving a problem that somebody has? And unless they’re able to understand exactly how it’s going to make them feel in that moment when that problem is solved or how it connects to their core persona or whatever it might be. It’s a very simple framework. But it is the most important thing that a lot of people tend to neglect.  No, I love it. I love it. So what does the actual framework look like? I understand you go to Reddit, you go to Quora, and you listen. But what is the process? How do you even know which part of Reddit you should go to, what you should listen to, and who the customers are? Give me the rundown. What do you do when a new customer walks through the door and you want to figure out how to make them successful?  Yeah, of course. So I think Reddit is just the easiest example. I think it’s what a lot of people are familiar with, but it also provides value because it’s related to all the LLMs and what they like to cite as sources as well. Funny enough, one of the best ways to start is if you have a brand, a service, or something that you’re looking to build. Feed that into AI—Claude, ChatGPT, whatever works for you—and have it help you understand: “Hey, what subreddits should I be participating in?” If I want to sell vegetable seeds, for example—and that’s an example from a client we’ve worked with—or if I want to get more into gardening, where should I go?  It will point you to gardening, DIY gardening, seasonal gardening, and all these different places that have communities of people who are very specific when it comes to anything you want to know about gardening. Then you jump in there and see people talking about: “When should I start planting my tomatoes?” Or: “When should I do any transplanting?” Or: “How do I need to handle my watering schedule?” And then you have layers and layers of threads, topics, and information that you can gather from. People are giving it to you for free and telling you exactly how they handle those things.  And that turns into content. That turns into ways for you to engage with those people. It turns into ads because if you’re able to understand what their pain point is, then you can make an ad out of that. At the same time, you can pull a lot of that information using AI. But the biggest impact still comes from truly engaging with those people. So you said that when you figure out what those communities are talking about in their Quora or Reddit communities, then you can engage with them. You can create content, you can create ads, and you can engage. And I’m just wondering, are there other forms of engaging with customers other than through content and ads? Good question. So yeah, that’s the main part. You can directly comment within those Reddit threads, or you can start creating your own content within those Reddit communities. If you start to see a trend of multiple people asking, “How do I start planting my tomato seeds?” Or, “Where do I even start with this?” Then you can create an entire guide on your website. Build a blog post around it. Or you can get together with an influencer who’s able to make a video around it and show the entire process through a visual element as well. So you’re not just doing written content, but video too. And then you can even run ads around that.  Because one of the biggest things, for example, with this brand that I’m kind of alluding to, is that every single ad and every single piece of content they were putting out beforehand was very disconnected from the true gardener at the end of the day, or the true DIY gardener. Because everything they showed was a picture of this beautiful, perfect pepper or tomato that nobody ever experiences unless you’re operating a commercialized system with all of the technology they have access to. But somebody in their backyard is not going to have a perfectly round tomato or a perfectly formed pepper. And therefore, no one knows how to get there. So you have to show them the step-by-step process.  What soil do you need to buy? What seeds should you buy? And then you become part of that system because: “Oh, I need to buy seeds. Okay, I’m going to go to this company and buy seeds from them.” And they also helped me throughout this entire process by becoming the subject matter expert on what to do with tomato seeds. It becomes this kind of system that you naturally inject yourself into as you create content that connects with that person. Because the biggest thing was recognizing that all of the content they were putting out beforehand made people think: “Well, my food is never going to look like that if I plant it in my backyard.” Yeah. “But how can I get there so that I feel a lot less stressed about even starting?” And you’re providing this entire guide for me to follow so that I can become a better DIY gardener.  Yeah. I love it. It’s a great approach to basically figure out where to go, talk to the people, and then communicate with them and create helpful guides for them. And the influencer video—that’s also very clever. So that’s how you help drive growth for your clients. But how do you drive growth in your own business?  Yeah, good question. Funny enough, man, it is so much harder to do it for yourself when you are so focused on other people. Reflecting inward is always tough. But what we have recognized lately is that you have to have a good freaking offer. Because so many agencies in this space say the same stuff. I sat on Instagram for two hours one day and rifled through every single ad from marketing agencies in the space.  And everybody says the same thing: “You’re doing your ads wrong.” Or: “You have no idea what’s happening with your attribution.” Or: “Google Ads is making you lose money.” Or: “Meta Ads sucks.” And all these different things. And everyone is saying: “You should let us do a free audit for you.” Or: “Come talk to us and we’ll help show you what’s wrong.” It’s like, okay, there’s a pretty big gap there. I have to spend all this time talking to you just to figure out whether you’re a legitimate business and whether you’re actually going to solve my problem. And you’re not really offering anything other than: “Hey, let’s sit down and talk about it.” When everybody else is doing the exact same thing. So the offer across the industry is generally weak.  There are a few agencies that have well-built offers. What we personally figured out through A/B testing is that we don’t even try to lead with the marketing conversation. Because in some cases, businesses find it difficult to admit: “Hey, our marketing sucks.” Or: “Marketing is our problem.” But a lot of people can identify whether their website sucks. They can look at it and say it’s old or that it’s not converting well. It’s generally easier for people to make that connection than the marketing connection.  So we’ve built an offer around A/B testing. For just about any eCommerce business doing over $1 million in annual revenue, we’d love to do a free A/B test for them. We will build a landing page of their choosing. It could be their homepage. It could be a product page. It could be whatever. We will create a mock-up ourselves and come to the call with it. We’ll show them our version alongside theirs. They can decide whether it seems better or not. And if they want to move forward, we’ll implement it on their site for free. Then we’ll run an A/B test until we reach statistical significance and can determine whether our page or their page performs better.  Either way, there’s no cost to them. We just want to show that we’re capable of providing value. We want to demonstrate that we can create something better than what they currently have. If it works out, awesome. Let’s continue the conversation. If not, no harm, no foul. We weren’t able to improve it for them, and it doesn’t make sense to continue the conversation.  Yeah. That is impressive. So you’re actually building a competing site, and you show them that you could do a better job than they are, essentially. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it’s… I don’t know. There’s somebody that I interact with who always says, “There are no sacred cows. There’s no ego in all of this.” It’s just, “We genuinely want to show that we can provide value in any way, shape, or form here.” It has garnered a lot of interest because it’s low friction. It’s, “Hey, at the very least, when we come to the call, we are going to show you something, and hopefully you like it.” And 100% of the time we’ve done this, everybody has loved it.  So it’s been a great source of driving more leads, more conversations, and more at-bats for the business. Simply by having an offer that people want to see value from, as opposed to: “Hey, we’re going to do an audit. There’s going to be a long turnaround time. Then we have to figure out the next steps. Then there’s going to be this big price tag,” or whatever it is. Whereas we’re just going to do something for you for free. If it works, great. If not, you didn’t lose any sleep over it.  Yeah. Love it. That’s pretty cool. And I think what’s really cool about it is that you do it without disrupting their existing business. Exactly. So they don’t feel like, “Okay, maybe it’s at no cost to me. Maybe it’s a marketing thing.” But at the same time, if you’re interfering with my customers, that’s actually a negative. Because it can create damage. That’s my reservation about people who offer to drive business for me. Yeah. But then they want to use my LinkedIn profile, and they can spoil my reputation online. And I’m never going to allow it. Because it interferes with my business. So I love that you found a way around that. That’s pretty cool.  Absolutely. Yeah, and we’re hoping that it just continues to grow. Fortunately, AI has allowed us to move a lot faster with this because I think that historically would have been a major holdup. Mocking up a page is not a very easy task. But because we’re able to understand the business and generate something relatively quickly through our experience and understanding of how a page should be structured, it works out really well. Yeah. Love it. So switching gears here, let me ask you this: What is something that you’re actively trying to figure out in your business?  Ooh, boy. Scale. I think the ability to scale something like this is where I’m trying to figure out what is going to break next. Historically, we’ve struggled to figure out things like: “Oh, we need a really good offer to drive cold outbound leads.” We have historically been a referral-only business. And while that’s worked, it certainly isn’t as sustainable long term as building a proper, predictable cold outbound system.  Now that we have something that is starting to work, and we’re seeing more leads come in, the question becomes: How do we scale this without the business breaking if we suddenly see a significant increase in leads? Because realistically, in the past, it’s been rare that we’ve had so many leads in the pipeline that we didn’t know how to handle them. But we’ve also recognized that the type of service we provide is elevated. We consider ourselves a boutique service. We know we’re not the cheapest in the market. But what we do know is that we can absolutely drive additional profit dollars to your business. Because we’re looking at the full marketing picture.  We’re not just focusing on PPC. We’re not just focusing on SEO. We’re not just focusing on organic social. We’re looking at how all of those things work together. And then we’re looking at the business as a whole and trying to drive an actual P&L impact. Not just say: “Oh, ROAS in Google Ads is good, so everything must be great.” No. That’s not always the case. As I mentioned earlier, that can happen while you’re still burning money because you’re simply retargeting people who already know about your business.  So the goal is understanding that we provide an elevated service and finding the right talent to help deliver it. So that as we continue to scale, we’re able to maintain the level of service that we know we’re capable of providing. And making sure that the people leading those client conversations are able to deliver on that promise every single time as well. Hopefully that answers the question, for the most part.  So if you have the deals coming through, the cold outreach is working, and your offer is working, is it just a question of finding the talent, or are there other things that could break?  Yeah. I think it’s hiring and talent for sure. And then the other piece is continuing to maintain the operational speed behind it as well. Because expectations in the industry are changing dramatically. We went from bi-monthly reporting to weekly reporting, and now people want to know how things are moving every single day. AI has sped things up to the point where people’s expectations are changing at a rate that we need to keep up with. And that is certainly one of the more difficult things to navigate.  Especially when there are 30 to 1,000 new AI tools coming out every single day. Then you need to figure out: “What’s the best one that I’m going to be able to utilize long term, instead of just dumping it and moving to a new one next week?” So yeah, the operational piece has been very interesting over the past couple of years. It went from everybody using ChatGPT, to all of these different AI transcription tools. We moved into Notion. Now we’re using Vector, which is popping off right now. Claude has obviously made a lot of strides as well. And it’s about figuring out how we continue to pivot across all of these different tools. And I’m barely scratching the surface with those examples.  We also have to make sure that the entire team is able to adapt to these changes over time. Because for so long, you could stick with a single tech stack and a handful of tools for years, and not much would change. But now, because of AI, things are adapting, changing, and improving incredibly quickly. And the expectations of the client are moving just as fast. So you need to be able to keep up with that. I’ve always wondered about this thing that Steve Jobs said: The two primary functions of a business are marketing and innovation. And you are doing one of the two primary parts of the business. You could even argue that marketing is innovation as well. So the two things converge. How is it possible for an agency to innovate for multiple clients on a continual basis?  Yeah. That just comes down to trusting the team and having the right people in the right place. And that’s why I think hiring is one of the biggest things that we need to focus on. Because AI has raised the floor for so many people. But it has also really shined a light on the people who are able to work alongside it efficiently, speed up their processes, and use their experience to make decisions really fast. It is more powerful than ever to have a creative mindset and the experience of seeing how things impact multiple different clients. And to understand how you can shift strategy at any point in time. It also requires having that childlike curiosity mindset.  Being willing not to accept everything as fact. Being willing to pivot at any point in time. It’s truly about making sure that the people around you are willing to adapt and accept that they are not going to be right all the time. But they’re willing to keep trying, keep learning, and keep figuring out what the next step is. And not fall into complacency. Because if you do, AI has probably already rocked your world at this point. So the biggest thing is having people around you, a support system, procedures, and training that allow that to happen naturally. And trusting that they will be able to follow that and see the vision—or at least try.  That’s fascinating. If there’s a company trying to figure out what to do, how to make sense of all these different platforms, SEO moving to GEO, AI, Reddit, Quora, rising advertising costs, TikTok, and all these other platforms coming online—and their head is spinning—what do you recommend they do? How do they select an agency? Of course, they should go to you. But how should they select an agency? What criteria should they use to select someone, whether that’s you or somebody else?  Yeah. I mean, really, it just comes down to being growth-minded. And maybe I’m not fully understanding the question, but if you have any passion or drive to grow what you’re doing, you need to surround yourself with people who are constantly looking to push the envelope. Whether that be an agency or an in-house team. And in some cases, it might not make sense for you to have an agency. That really depends on your brand guidelines and how closely you hold them to your chest. Because sometimes bringing in an outside agency can be very difficult.  It takes time to get them up to speed. If you’re looking to develop your own internal style of content because you have a lot of protection around the brand, then building that internally is going to make a heck of a lot more sense. Because they’re constantly going to be able to talk in your language. As opposed to an agency that wants to be an arm of your business, but at the end of the day, it’s difficult for that to always be the case. We try to live and breathe that as much as we can, but we also understand there are limitations. So I would say if you are a brand with extremely tight brand guidelines, then you need to train internally and make sure that is built into the culture and into the marketing team.  Otherwise, everything you put out from that point forward is going to be disjointed from what the brand actually means or is trying to stand for. Therefore, you need to have that in-house and you need more control over it. Otherwise, if you understand that other people have great ideas, and you want to leverage that, and you appreciate that they’re looking at hundreds, if not thousands, of brands and seeing how they succeed in the market, then an agency can be a beautiful way to go. And it’s generally more cost-effective in most cases. You’re going to have an agency with maybe three to five people—sometimes even more—overseeing your account.  And in many cases, that’s for the same cost as a single internal employee. So being able to leverage the minds of five different people with five different viewpoints of the world, and five different pairs of eyes looking at your website, versus just one… In my opinion, you’re going to win every time. Assuming you have the right team behind you. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So essentially, you’re outsourcing your marketing function to an expert team. This is all they do. And they’re held to a high standard because they work with a lot of companies in a fast-moving environment. It’s similar to having an internal attorney versus using a law firm with high-flying attorneys who operate at the cutting edge. You can never really replicate that cutting-edge environment, which helps nurture those people on the other side. Yeah. Love it. So if you’re listening to this and you want to take your marketing to the next level, and you want an expert team at your service to figure out how to grow your brand across multiple channels—content, advertising, customer engagement, and all that stuff—then reach out to Grant. But where can they find you, Grant?  You can reach out to us through digitalposition.com. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m happy to chat with anybody. I’m more than happy to share anything I’ve learned along the way, whether you’re another agency, a brand, or whatever it might be. I firmly hold the belief that there is a massive sea of people out there to reach. And I’m happy to share any learnings that I’ve had. Because, boy, there’s so much to digest in this world, and I’m happy to share whatever I know. But yeah, digitalposition.com for anyone who would possibly want to work with us or chat. Otherwise, I’m on LinkedIn and happy to connect there as well.  Well, Grant McKinstrie, CEO of Digital Position, a full-stack agency that builds growth systems for eCommerce brands. Thanks for coming and sharing your experience and your view of the world. And if you enjoyed listening, make sure you follow us on YouTube and Apple Podcasts because every week I come with an exciting entrepreneur who is sharing the best of what they know. So thanks for coming, Grant, and thanks for listening.  Thank you so much for having me. Important Links: Grant’s LinkedIn Grant’s website

https://youtu.be/P0M24kc23U0 Rick Chess, attorney, real estate strategist, capital-raising expert, and trusted advisor, is passionate about helping entrepreneurs, investors, and business owners navigate complex decisions that can dramatically impact enterprise value and long-term success. Throughout a career spanning more than five decades, Rick has raised over $100 million for multiple organizations, guided companies through acquisitions, governance challenges, and strategic growth, and helped owners prepare for successful exits. We explore The Capital Raising Framework — Focus on Individuals, Not “the Market”; Be Ready to Sell; Start With Who You Know; Connect on Emotion; and Find a Problem to Solve. Rick explains why raising capital is ultimately about understanding people, not pitching ideas, why investors care more about their needs than your opportunity, and how trust-based relationships create opportunities that compound over time. He also shares lessons from raising capital, building influential networks, serving on boards, and helping entrepreneurs avoid costly mistakes when pursuing funding, growth, and exit strategies. — How to be a Trusted Advisor with Rick Chess  Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Rick Chess, who is a real estate and exit strategist. He helps business and real estate owners, and the trusted advisors who guide them, turn complex decisions into strategic moves that grow enterprise value and maximize sale outcomes. Rick, welcome to the show.  Thank you. Appreciate it, Steve.  Well, it’s great to have you. And I’m going to ask you my favorite question, which I always ask: What is your personal ‘Why’, and what are you doing to manifest it in your practice?  When you go back in my career, 50-some years, where I’ve been most happy is either growing an organization. That can be a community, that can be a business, it can be an association. And then, at some point, individuals in that association want to move on, whether that’s to retire, to go someplace else, or whatever. And I find that in that world, there are certain things where they might have a Steve Preda who helps them with how to manage day to day. But they get to certain big issues that they’ve never done before, and maybe they’ll never do again. That’s where I like to come in because I know I’m critically important to them. So you’re a trusted advisor. You like to grapple with the big challenges people have in their lives, whether it’s a big real estate transaction, getting ready for an exit, an acquisition, or something like that.  Yeah.  Yeah.  So, I mean, the things that would be—for instance, most folks, if they’re talking about real estate, they have some idea how to fix a toilet. They have some idea how to buy a property. But when they get to a certain point, it’s like, “We need to raise $10,000. We need to raise $100 million,” whatever the amount is, because there’s either a great opportunity or they want to keep moving upward. And they have, again, a Steve Preda who can help them through the process. How they get that capital often is what trips people up. So that’s where I kind of first got into this.  I was an acquisition guy. I knew how to spend other people’s money, but I didn’t know at that time how to raise the money. And I’ve done it several times. I’ve raised $100 million for three different companies. And like everything in life, like with Summit, there is a process that you go through. And I love doing it. I just love doing that kind of stuff.  Okay. So when you are doing capital raising, fundraising, M&A deals, or real estate transactions, is there a framework that has helped you, that you figured out along the way? And think about something that is three to five steps. Maybe it’s a mental model of how you look at things, or maybe it’s a process. How would you describe that framework that you have, or that has helped you, so that the listeners would also benefit from it?  The listeners are best served if they step back from their preconceived notions of, A, how they think capital is attracted, because they usually are wrong. And they step back from how wonderful they are. And those two things are difficult. Because the reality is, no one is waiting to give you money. That’s foolish. You’ve got to sell the concept like you have to sell everything else. And what you sell is not what you think is wonderful. It’s what the market is going to think is wonderful. It’s like with any other product you’re making. “Hey, I made this great widget.” And the population looks at it and says, “I don’t need it. I don’t want it. I don’t know what it does.”  And depending on whether you’re trying to raise $100,000 from friends and family or $100 million on Wall Street, you look at who it is that you know. Because people that you know might at least return your phone call. So if you don’t know Bill Gates, thinking that you’re going to go to Bill Gates and get a billion dollars is, well, stup*d. But if you’re just trying to raise money from friends and family, and you have an aunt who lives three states away that you don’t see very often, and she has some money, okay, then you start with who you know. So, for instance, thinking about one of the many ways that you can raise money, there’s something called intrastate. And it is something that’s allowed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. If all of your money is raised within your own state, there are certain allowances for that.  But if you do one transaction outside the state, it all collapses. So like everything else on the business side, where there are certain rules that you can’t violate without getting into trouble, it’s the same thing when raising money. And I get so many people saying, “I’m going to list this on Wall Street, and I’m going to make…” It’s like, “No, you don’t. You better be prepared. If you’re going to list something on Wall Street, you’d better have $25 million that you can risk just to get it out there. And nine times out of ten you’re going to fail.” Not because there’s anything wrong with you.  It’s just that if you’re going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro with a pair of Keds, a T-shirt, and some shorts, you’re not prepared to climb that mountain. It’s no different when raising capital. And also think about when you were a kid. At a certain age, your parents let you cross the street to see your buddy. Then ten years later, they’ll let you get in the car and drive, but you’ve got to get home by midnight. It’s the same thing with raising money. And there aren’t a lot of folks who have done what I’ve done. So talking to your local lawyer or accountant—who may be wonderful people—but if they’ve never raised money, they’re not the people to talk to.  One of the ways people get taken advantage of on a regular basis is they’ll go to a securities attorney. The securities attorney will charge them $100,000 and write this great offering document, and no one ever gives them a penny. Because lawyers generally have no clue what’s happening in the marketplace. I own my own securities broker-dealer. I’ve also raised money for three different companies. It’s not easy. But like having read your book, Steve, if you follow certain paths, there’s at least a chance for success. Same thing here. Fascinating. So what I’m taking away in terms of a framework: Be aware that people are not out there waiting to give you money. You have to sell them. So that’s the first step. The second one is: start with who you know. Don’t start on Wall Street. Start with the people you know, where you have some trust, the people you understand, and where you have a chance to get there. And then look at some special circumstance that’s going to give you a leg up. For example—  Absolutely. Again, this is coming right out of your book on the business side. You create a widget. So what? But you create a widget that solves a problem. Ah. Then you have something. So it’s the same thing. When you get over onto the money-raising side, it’s: who do you know? Where do they live? How much money do they have? How do I approach them? But then, in the end, it’s not what’s in it for you, it’s what’s in it for them. And for them, if it’s friends and family, your mama may give you some money because she thinks you’re cute.  Your aunt might give you some money because she’s related to your mama. But at some point, you’re going to people who really have a checkbook. They have money in the checkbook. They’re not going to give this up just because you’re cute or you have a great idea. You’re either going to get them because you have something they’ve never heard of, or you have something that really feels like it could solve one of their needs. And their needs are not always what you think. Some people think, “Well, what they need is high cash flow.” What if they don’t need cash flow, but they’re really interested in a cure for cancer?  What if you think, “Well, it’s really going to go up in value”? Well, they have all the money they need. They’re not looking for that. But is this something that is going to allow their nephew to come work for you? Yeah. When you start thinking that you know what other people are thinking, that’s when you’re going to fail. When you can step back and just ask them, “Well, what’s important to you?” If you can’t have a conversation, one, you’re never going to date anybody, and you’re never going to raise any money.  And don’t be slick. You can be slick for three sentences, and at that point they’re going to reject everything you say thereafter. So don’t talk about how much money you’re going to make and all the rest of it. No. Talk about them. Talk about them. Talk about them. Your document should talk about them. Your questions should talk about them. Now, does that mean there are certain people who won’t put money into your deal? Yes, because it doesn’t fit. If you sell high-heeled shoes and a runner comes in, they’re generally not going to buy your high-heeled shoes. They’re not going to invest money in high-heeled shoes.  But if that high-heeled shoe actually is a running shoe, and you can break off the heel and then… I mean, I don’t know. You could come up with something there. And the folks that say no are sometimes your biggest advocates. What? The folks that… Yes. Because you’ve been able to get into their head, and they’ve shaken it around, and they’ve looked at it and said, “No, that’s probably not right for me. I’m not into high-heeled shoes, but I have a friend.” If you’ve done a sincere job, a thoughtful job, you’ve really asked them questions, and you’ve connected on an emotional level, they’ll open the next door. And that’s what it’s about. It’s often a lot of the same things that you teach people about how to sell their company. It’s how they sell—  Rick, this is fascinating. So how do you connect with people on an emotional level? What’s the trick there?  First thing is: why are they going to take a meeting with you? Why they take a meeting with you answers almost everything that we’ve just asked. If they’re taking a meeting with you because you’re related, okay, that’s the emotional connection. If they take a meeting with you because some friend of yours called them and said, “This is a great way to make money,” that’s another reason. If you found them in an article in the paper—yes, there are things called newspapers. They print them. There are words in them. And there’s somebody in there who has shown an interest in something you do.  Then you’re talking to them about that interest. You want to try to avoid cold calls. Really, it’s a waste of your time and a waste of their time. It’s a random thing. It’s like asking every girl who walks by in college, “Do you want to go out on a date?” Sometimes it works. You get slapped a lot, get arrested, and what have you. There’s this thing called the internet, Steve. And what shocks me is how few people—not just my age, but young pups—say, “Well, that’s for watching YouTube videos.” No.  Through the internet, you have so much information. So maybe I can’t find anything about Johnny Jones, but his kids are on there and what sports they play. Huh. Okay, so I used to do judo. I did three years of judo in high school. If somebody’s doing karate or whatever, I have an opening. I have something to talk about. Now, it’s great if what you have to talk about then connects to something else that they want. It’s a linking process of connecting various things together. It’s what I did… I told you I was a member of the General Assembly in Pennsylvania way back in the ’70s.  And I learned there that if I could get people talking about themselves, or their next-door neighbor, or some relative… What’s funny is people are much more likely to tell you about somebody else. So when I go into a company—this is just a side note—when I’m doing due diligence and I really want to know their financial condition, I’m not going to get it from the CFO. I’m going to get it from somebody over in property management. Why? Because the property management person knows not to tell me anything secret about property management, but they’ll talk about finances all the time. And it’s the same thing. If I’m in a family and I want to know about Daddy, I talk to the daughter.  If I want to know about a neighbor, I talk to a neighbor. I can go to the post office. Everything you ever need to position yourself to sell is out there waiting for you. But you’ve got to get out of your head what you think the market is about and start thinking about individuals within the market. And accept that when I’ve raised money, 70% to 80% of the people I call on don’t do a deal with me. But of that 70%, half of them lead me to somebody else. And I keep up with them. They become my support group. They become my unofficial advisors. Because I’m a decent guy, they want me to succeed. And once they know I’m not bugging them anymore, I say, “Hey, you told me I should go talk to such-and-such.  Here’s what I heard.” And then the network just expands. And occasionally, that person who said no has somebody new come into their life and says, “You need to go talk to Rick Chess.” And sometimes the next time I’m raising money, their situation is different. So the person who told me no originally has seen me work the market and close the deal. It’s amazing how attractive an opportunity is once you can’t put any more money into it. And so you let them know, “I know it wasn’t the right time for you to come into my deal, but we did buy this company. We’ve doubled their…” Whatever it is. You continue to work with them. If somebody is willing to give you time on the phone, on Zoom, at a coffee shop, or wherever, they’re your friend for life. They don’t know that yet, but you’re going to make them your friend for life. It’s the old six degrees of separation—the Kevin Bacon game.  Everybody’s related to somebody somewhere. And it’s what makes this fun for me. You were talking before about growing an exit. I love the process of putting together the network and feeding the network. There are people I’ve known for 50 years that I still talk with.  You’re very good at connecting people and making them look good with other people that you connect them to. It’s very gratifying. So this is a long game, right? Absolutely.  It’s a long game because you’re being decent. You listen to people. You find something that helps them. You learn what they need, what is the itch that needs to be scratched, and then you connect people who can help them scratch that itch. And then they will reciprocate, and it becomes a self-perpetuating process.  Well, I mean, an example is the work that I do in North Carolina with a family that owns 44 hotels. A woman who was my CPA left the CPA firm and became the family officer for a large family here in Richmond. A friend of hers who does advisory work with family offices was giving up on a client. So she told my friend, who used to be a CPA. She introduced me to them and said, “Would you be willing to serve on the board of a private company?” I said, “Well, do they pay?” I used to be on the board of a public company, and after a certain age, you’re not attractive anymore.  After a certain age, they want you off the board because the institutions say, “We want a mix on the board. So I got introduced to these people, and I’ve had a great time. Members of the family have hired me for other work, and it just goes on and on. But I’ve learned that you’ve got to pay it forward. So I have students of mine from VCU who I’ve helped place in jobs. I keep up with them. I give them ideas. And they’re often shocked to find that I’m still in touch with them. I’m not asking them for anything. I’m just saying, “Look, I paid it forward to you. Now it’s your turn to pay it forward to somebody else.” And some of them are doing it. Some of them haven’t caught on yet.  But it is the circle of life, and it’s all tied together. And there are skills you have that I don’t have. There are skills I have that you don’t have. We both have folks that work with business brokers because they have a different drive. But it’s also self-selecting. There are a lot of people you’ve met that you don’t do business with. There are a lot of people I’ve met that I don’t do business with. If you’re going to get into raising money, doing governance, or doing exit planning, whatever it may be, one of the most important things is saying no. Or, “No, I don’t want to work with this person.” You can always be friendly with them. Yeah. But I try to fire a client every month. Somebody that just doesn’t fit for me ethically. Yeah. Or I don’t think there’s anything more I can do for them.  I pass off legal work to other attorneys in Virginia. I’m the chair of the Real Property Section of the state bar. There are 1,550 attorneys. I have plenty of attorneys that I can pass things on to, and they’re happy to get the business, and I’m happy. I’ve got somebody that I’ve referred that’s happy that I’ve referred them. My biggest challenge, my wife would say, my son would say, is that I’m a squirrel chaser. Something new and interesting comes along, and I want to get involved with it. And I’ve wasted so much time. So I’m working with this hotel group down in North Carolina. The last time I had worked with a hotel company was 30 years earlier. Two owners couldn’t agree on a direction.  I worked with them for six months. We made a decision. It was great work. I learned a lot about hotels. But I then went 30 years without applying the same skills. And that’s one thing that, with age, I’ve realized. I am better off saying: “I’ll help you with capital, I’ll help you with governance, and when you’re ready, I’ll help you exit.” That’s it.  Yeah.  If it’s not one of those three, I’ll talk about it.  Yeah.  I’ll listen to you. You don’t want to engage me.  Yeah. I mean, people want deep expertise. They don’t want generalists. They want someone who knows what they’re talking about and who can link them to other resources who also know what they’re talking about. And in today’s age, I think this is becoming more important again. Because of the internet, there was a disintermediation going on, but now there is a reintermediation, I believe. Because there’s so much noise out there, you don’t know what is true and what is fake. AI is creating a lot of fake stuff.  The only people you can really trust are the people who are in front of you, or someone recommends them whom you trust. It’s a transparency thing. So I think what you’re doing is very valuable. It’s going to become even more valuable. And knowledge is ubiquitous. You can ask ChatGPT, and it will give you an answer. But how do you get the trust? How do you get the emotion? How do you get the relationships? That’s all human stuff. And if you still have that, then you’ve got what is valuable.  Well, I have a friend of mine who wrote a book, and he wrote it as a fable. What I love about it is that I know the true story behind the fable. And what comes across in every single chapter is that, with that trust, people who were afraid took a step. And often that is the hardest thing. So I go to the gym six days a week, and the gym is hard. Getting in the car to drive there is the hard part. Once I’m there, I’m around friends, I work hard, I sweat, I get better. Getting in that car and driving down the drive…  So in your fable, in your book, and in most of where I’ve had success, I would love to say it was because I was brilliant. Eh, sometimes I will say I was brilliant. But let me give you an example. United Dominion Realty Trust, now based in Denver and originally based here in Richmond, has been around for 35 years. It was one of the original five REITs in the country—real estate investment trusts. I came in as acquisitions director. They hadn’t closed a deal in a year. I closed three in the first three months. I grew the firm tenfold in 10 years, and I had great people. Buddy Scott as an analyst. Catherine Surface as an attorney.  But what I did was look at it and say, “Does anybody know what we’re trying to buy?” Because they had no acquisition criteria. So I wrote a one-page acquisition criteria document and put it out to everybody who had ever submitted a deal. Oh, and we weren’t responding to the submissions. So a submission would come in, they would look at it and say, “Okay, that doesn’t work.” But they never told anybody no. So one of my rules was that anything that came in would get a response within 48 hours.  And it should be specific. “We don’t like this because of the city.” “We don’t like this because of the roof.” Something specific, because I knew they’d pay attention. And by responding within 48 hours, we went from struggling to get submissions to doubling our submissions within a year. Because people were like, “Oh, we know what they want. We know they will respond.” And then—and this probably sounds outrageous—we celebrated. We put out a newsletter every month. This is back when you mailed things, so we’re going way back into the dinosaur era. But anytime a broker brought us something that we bought, we would do a full-page spread on the broker. We were marketing him or her.  People loved us. And they would tell others about us. So owners would know that if they came to us, we’d make a fair offer and we’d move on. So I would love to say that’s because I was a great attorney. I would love to say that’s because I was insightful. It was just like, “Well, damn, this is obvious.” And reading some of your stuff, I’ve seen you point that out to people time and time again.  You give me too much credit. But yeah, I mean, if you’re there, they say that if you work hard for 25 years, you can become an overnight success. So yeah, it does get obvious when you’ve been studying it long and hard. Well, listen, Rick, that’s been wonderful. So what is your final thought for an entrepreneur, a young entrepreneur or founder who’s coming up? Maybe he’s in real estate. Maybe he’s trying to be successful. What’s the most important mindset for an entrepreneur to become successful?  Well, I mean, you’ve got to know something. I mean, you either need to really know construction, or you’ve got to really know how to lease a space. If you’re going into it like they do on HDTV, like, “Oh, we’re going to find this property and it’s going to be…” You’re going to fail. So get good at something. Accept the fact that you’re not going to be good at everything. Find people who fill in the spots where you aren’t good. In the old days, you might have had to hire them. In today’s world, there are fractional CFOs.  And then when you get down to picking your experts—your attorneys, your accountants, the people that cost you real money—ask them a simple question: When was the last time they did whatever it is that you’re trying to do? Not when was the last time they prepared a securities document. When was the last time they prepared a securities document that succeeded? And that’ll knock out two-thirds of them right there.  Love it. That’s fantastic. Well, if you’re listening to this and you want to be successful in business, or you have a business and maybe you’re getting close to retirement and want to figure out how to transition it, how to exit right, and how to structure it… Or maybe you have a family company and you’re trying to put together a board, and you need someone who really understands governance. Or if you’re trying to do a transaction, a merger, or an acquisition, and you need a trusted advisor who will connect you to the right people and help you make it happen, then call Rick Chess. Rick Chess is here in Richmond. He is on LinkedIn. And you have a website as well, Rick, right?  Yep, yep.  What’s your domain?  It’s chesslawfirm.com.  Chesslawfirm.com. So you can go there, and Rick is going to respond because he always does within 24 hours, or 48 hours max, and he’ll help you. So Rick, thank you very much for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom with us. And if you’re listening to this and you like this show, please follow us on YouTube and Apple Podcasts. Give us a review, and make sure you listen to every episode because we have very exciting entrepreneurs and subject matter experts sharing their knowledge. So thank you for coming, and thank you for listening. Important Links: Rick’s LinkedIn Rick’s website

https://youtu.be/a3c1oxvhgMc Allen Nejah, CEO and System Solution Architect of SunMan Engineering, is driven by a lifelong passion for aerospace, invention, and solving complex engineering problems. From dreaming of becoming an astronaut as a child to working with major aerospace, defense, automotive, medical, robotics, IoT, and semiconductor organizations, Allen has built a career around turning ambitious technical ideas into real-world systems. We explore The Allen Nejah Engineering Framework — Live with Integrity, Be Intensely Curious, Get Organized, Plan Every Baby Step, and Learn from Mistakes — a practical mindset for building breakthrough technologies with discipline and resilience. Allen explains why integrity must exist not only in business relationships but also in the engineering itself, how complex projects must be broken into testable steps, and why curiosity, visualization, planning, and iteration are essential to solving problems across industries. He also shares the story behind InfiniGear, his AI-powered adaptive transmission system, and the healthcare technology inspired by his mother’s experience in assisted care. — Building the Connected Car Before the iPhone with Allen Nejah  Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Allen Nejah, the CEO and System Solution Architect of SunMan Engineering, dedicated to providing customers with high-quality, on-time engineering and on-budget solutions for their product development and prototyping needs. Allen, welcome to the show.  Yes, that is correct.  Great to have you on the show. And I’d like to ask you my favorite first question: What is your personal ‘Why,’ and how are you manifesting it in your business?  So Steve, first I want to thank you for having me on your podcast. I really appreciate your time and interest. Of course.  As a kid, for whatever reason, I always wanted to have an airplane manufacturing company, an aircraft manufacturing company—something I always wanted to have. And I always wanted to be an astronaut. As a matter of fact, I studied aerospace and mechanical engineering with the dream of being an astronaut, going to fly and all that. So that’s kind of something that’s still in my pocket and that I still want to do. From there, it kind of pushed me in this direction. And yeah, now I work with a number of different companies in the aerospace industry. I work with the Air Force. I’ve worked with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and a number of others. And I work on both space and aviation projects that really kind of bring my dream to life. So I still haven’t gone to outer space yet, but I still have a little more time.  Yeah. Elon Musk is promising a million people, and his bonus is linked to putting a million people on Mars as the first colony. So there may still be room there.  They need a lot of us to go there, trust me. Well, actually, we’re going to do a lot of activities on the Moon first, and then from there, I’m sure they’re going to be looking for older people, older men, to do some tasks over there. And I’d volunteer to go.  You may be familiar with the Mars trilogy—Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars. It talks about people moving to Mars and how they terraform it. And then they figure out how to extend life to 150, 200 years. So if that works out, then maybe there’s another lifetime to be lived on Mars.  Yeah. I definitely believe that we will end up living on other planets, for sure. I see that very clearly. It could be 50 years or more before we actually become a space-based civilization. But the Moon has already started, right? We’re going to be there in the next 5 to 10 years, trust me. So anyway, I’m very excited about that. Yes.  Yeah, it is very exciting. What I’m looking for on this podcast—what makes it kind of unique—is that I am a junkie for frameworks and mental models. We are almost 400 episodes in, and every episode has a different mental model that our guest comes up with or shares. So think about something that helped you build your business, or maybe helped you develop your products, or how you work with your engineers, or how you work with clients. So think about something that has three to five steps or three to five aspects that create a result.  That’s very clear to me. Those are the key things for any successful person. First of all, honestly, you have to be interested. You have to be in “go” mode. You cannot push somebody to start building something, like a building or actual construction, if their mind is not into it. The very first thing is, it’s got to be you. That’s number one, right? And you know it. Definitely organization is a very key factor for me. Being organized, being detail-oriented—that’s something that is super, super important. Planning and organization make a huge difference in whatever you do, right? And most importantly, integrity. I mean, that’s number one. That’s number one, number two, number three, number four—all of it.  So integrity is all of it. No matter what you do, if there’s no integrity, people will walk away from you. At the beginning, every business makes mistakes, and they learn and so on. So don’t beat yourself up. It’s okay. You make a mistake, you learn from it, and then you don’t do it again, right? Learn from it. So yeah, I would say those are at least three. If anything else comes to mind, I definitely will share it with you. But the most important things are integrity, organization, and clear planning based on knowledge. Not just planning for the hell of it, but planning based on understanding what you’re doing. That’s important. Integrity comes into your personality. It comes into the quality of the work you do.  It comes into the engineering you do. It comes into all of that, right? Even in engineering, it’s not only on the personal level that integrity has to be there. On the engineering level, integrity has to be there too. Whatever you do, you’ve got to make sure it’s working. One of the things we learned the hard way after 35 or 36 years is that it’s very important to have the knowledge base and to do things in a very organized way. And that’s kind of part of my personality. If I’m not confident about the end result, I don’t even commit to it. I’ve got to see it in my mind. Whatever problem comes up, if I don’t see the solution in my mind, I won’t even commit to it. It comes back to quality, integrity, and all of that. And I guess what I was going to say earlier is that everything that we do—as part of, again, the quality and integrity I mentioned—is that we have a lot of baby steps built into the process.  That’s what I wanted to say earlier. So for every step, the whole plan is split into, I don’t know, tens, hundreds, or thousands of different steps and branches. Because technology is not one thing. It’s usually a combination of different sciences. So mechanical engineering, electronics, material science, firmware, AI—those are all different types of expertise. And you’ve got to bring them all together. And for all of those baby steps, you’ve got to have some sort of test at the end of each step before you move on to the next one. Iteration.  Yeah. So, okay, what I’m hearing is integrity is number one. And then curiosity, perhaps. So curiosity is this driving force. Visualization is important. I’m thinking about Einstein, who said that imagination is more important than knowledge because imagination is infinite, while knowledge encircles the world. I think it was something like that. So visualization is important. Get organized. Do thorough planning. And learn from mistakes.  Yes. Absolutely. Okay.  That’s great. So what do you call this? Is this the Allen Nejah Framework, or what’s it called?  One more thing. One more thing. Again, that’s kind of under the umbrella of integrity. So I have two families. It’s one family. I have a family at home, and I have a family at work. And believe it or not—and you already know this—we all spend more time with our family at work than with our family at home. That’s true. It’s true for me. It’s true for a lot of people. You go to work, I don’t know, from 8:00, 9:00, or 10:00 in the morning until 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, or 9:00 at night. That’s almost 12 hours. And by the time you go home at 5:00, 6:00, or 7:00, what? You spend two hours with your family, maybe three hours at most, and then it’s back to work. So the team is part of my family, and truly it is part of my family. Those are the first group of people, the first group of associates, that you have to take care of.  You have to be a brother to them, be a friend to them, be a father to them, be a mother to them. Seriously, it’s all about human interaction. It’s all about, “I like you, I don’t like you,” and it goes from there. “I feel good about you. I don’t feel good about you.” And so it’s very important to have those relationships in your business, or whatever it is you do. For me, all our people, all our employees—even from 35 years ago—are still in touch with us. I have kids who came through as junior-high interns, then high-school interns, then university students, even master’s degree students. Now they’re 40 years old. And we’re still in touch. So I’m in touch with hundreds of engineers and people that I’ve worked with over the past 35 years. And that’s a lot of value. That’s the biggest asset.  Yeah. Basically, they call it a school. You create a school, right? Your own professional school. That’s wonderful. So tell me about this special gear called InfiniGear. How is it special? How did you come up with it, and how is it being used? It’s an interesting question. First of all, let me explain to you very quickly what I-Gear is. So I-Gear is an AI robotic adaptive gearbox, or transmission, and that’s a mechanical transmission. It’s not an electronic transmission. It’s an actual mechanical gearbox that goes into any machinery or equipment. I mean, obviously, the one that everybody can relate to immediately is cars. Every car—not EV cars, but every car—has a transmission. A transmission usually is bigger than the engine. It’s heavier than the engine. It’s the guy that goes through all the center of the car, takes all that center, okay?  That’s it—a transmission. It’s big, it’s heavy. By the way, it’s amazing how it works. It’s absolutely amazing how it works if anybody gets into a transmission and sees all of it. There are about 300 to 400 gear sets in there. There are about six or seven clutches. There’s about 3,000 to 4,000 parts in a standard transmission. So that’s why it’s so big and so heavy. The efficiency is so low because all these gears have to be interacting with each other. As a matter of fact, believe it or not, the transmission efficiency is only 50%. So it’s actually as low as you can get. But you have to have a transmission in the car. If you have no transmission in the car—I’m talking about ICE cars with an engine—they’re not even able to drive because the engine has no initial power and no initial RPM.  The AI transmission, the robotic transmission that I have invented, and that we have developed over five to seven years— Since 2017 or ’18 we’ve been working on it. It’s a gearbox that has only two gears versus 200 to 300 gears, and it’s one-fourth or one-fifth of the size. And also, while your standard transmission has five or six or seven or eight gears in your car, this has unlimited gears, okay? And it’s AI, so it can see what’s going on with the road, what the weather is, and all combinations of conditions. If you’re going onto a hillside, it’s already going to shift for you, so it saves energy. So that’s what we have developed. It’s a robotic transmission.  Right now, we’re actually talking to the U.S. Army, and they have some interest. We are at a very initial stage with them. And it’s kind of difficult to bring it into the market because it’s a safety factor, and there are a lot of requirements and tests that have to go into it before we can actually get it into trucks and cars. To summarize the benefit, if you put that transmission into an EV, we can increase the range by 40%, which is huge. A company that can improve a battery by 1% gets millions of dollars thrown at it. Once we can prove that this is working and pass some tests and so on, it’s going to be very huge. Wow. When do you expect this to happen?  I’m hoping within the next two years. Hopefully, by the end of those two years, we make it home and get it into cars and trucks and commercialize it.  Then you will turn into a unicorn—a big unicorn, right?  Yeah. Again, EVs are only one application. There are wind turbines, tanks, boats, some aircraft, and helicopters. A helicopter’s transmission is half the size of the helicopter itself, so the weight and everything else become very significant. So if we can eliminate that weight and size, we can gain a lot. Especially in vehicles, it makes a huge difference and all that.  Wow. That’s probably something that drones would benefit from too. Yeah. It’s mind-boggling. So what drives growth in your business other than your inventions?  So at SunMan Engineering, we have two arms. One arm is that we provide engineering services, product architecture, and product development to other companies—small companies, mid-size companies, and bigger companies like IBM, Sony, Samsung, and Apple. We have about 300 or 400 of those clients. And we also work with government agencies and contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Kaiser Electronics, just to name a few. We have also had contracts directly with the Army and the Navy in the past. And that’s what we’re trying to do now—to gain some of those projects again. And InfiniGear, the I-Gear, could be a project that, fingers crossed, we’d be working on with the U.S. Army. So that’s one arm of what we do. The other arm is that we develop new technologies. We develop them, work on them, and then license them, or let our clients utilize them in some of their projects through partnerships and so on.  So you’re a service company as well as a product company?  Yes. We are a systems and product company. We’re considered a systems and product company, yes.  Now, do you call this systems integration? In the IT world, they used to call it systems integration when you had different systems and—  We are more than systems integrators. Systems integrators buy different technologies and put them together. It’s still engineering, don’t get me wrong. Yeah. You still have to engineer everything and put it together. But what we do is actually customize things from the ground up. Sometimes we do integration because it’s faster, easier, and sometimes cheaper. Some of the components and some of the functionality can be integrated. But generally, we customize every project from the ground up. And generally, for your information, we cater to aerospace, robotics, and IoT. IoT is communication—all sorts of wireless and different types of communication: Wi-Fi, 5G, Bluetooth, all sorts of stuff, right? And also medical. So medical, robotics, aerospace, IoT, and also semiconductors, which also serve these different industries.  So how is it possible? I mean, you have a relatively small team, right? Fifteen people or so?  Twenty-seven, twenty-eight people.  Twenty-seven. Okay, sorry.  Yeah. With a small team.That’s exactly the very first question you asked me. That’s exactly how it affects and how it comes into the picture. Being organized—I mean, we’ve done this so many times. It’s like we make things so efficient because we already have a plan. Every project we do, in concept, is the same thing. The process is the same. The application is different, but the process is the same. So going through that process and having a very reliable process in place that we follow very religiously makes us super, super efficient. And also, being small, we don’t have to go through a number of different layers. Everything comes to one or two people, gets approved, and we get it going. Everything happens the same day. Nothing waits until the next day here.  Are you involved in every project?  Fortunately and unfortunately, I’m involved in every project. And one of my goals is to eventually focus on fewer projects so I’d be more effective and efficient. So that’s one of my goals for the next few years. I-Gear is one of them, and we’re also working on another project. It’s for healthcare, it’s for the elderly and infants. Eventually it’s going to be a robot, but right now we’re making the device that is the brain of the robot. So it gets to know the person, it gets to know their habits, it gets to know everything about the person, about their family, about their health, about how they behave. We can remind them of different things. We can assist them with different things. We can watch them. We can emotionally work with them. There are so many different applications that we’re working on now. We can even do preventive diagnostics.  What “preventive diagnostics” means is that before the patient or the person gets sick or develops some sort of disease, we can actually identify it before that happens. That’s great. And that’s the most important part of this device. It has so many different applications and different ways it can help and assist an elderly person. And within the next two or three years, my goal is to integrate this into a robot. So we’re going to have a robot that physically helps you as well. My mother ended up in one of those care centers, and I saw how much she was declining on a daily basis—not weekly, not monthly, but daily.  And there was nothing, unfortunately, that I or any member of our family could do. I mean, we were there every day, don’t get me wrong, but that’s all we could do for her. We’re all busy. We all have lives. I mean, we were there almost every day, but really, she did not get the care that she needed. And that’s what kind of put me in that frame of mind—how can I help someone like my mom? And that’s how it started about two years ago. And as a matter of fact, now it’s one of the biggest markets. Yeah. It’s one of the biggest. So that’s fascinating. So how can you have so mental bandwidth that you can cover different industries, go deep into different industries, and innovate and invent stuff? How does that even happen?  Honestly, I personally work pretty much 12 hours a day. Even on my vacations, I work. Don’t get me wrong, I have a very good life. I work hard and I play hard. I am a very active person. I played as a semi-professional soccer player until I was 58 years old, believe it or not. Actually, next week I’m going to be 65. I still can play. I still can go and compete with 25- and 30-year-old kids, and I still do good, I think. So I keep myself in very good shape. I do mountain biking. I do about 10 to 15 hours of heavy-duty exercise on a weekly basis, and that kind of balances what I’m doing. To answer your question, yes, it’s too much, but yeah, we have to spend more time. There is no magic to it. Sometimes it gets to be too much, but I like what I’m doing, so I enjoy it.  Yeah, it shows. Elon Musk is also an example of being able to run six big companies in different areas and be a groundbreaker. But you’re doing something very similar. You are breaking ground in different industries.  Yeah. Actually, as I mentioned, I have established different startups and sold them. I have worked on a number of different companies and technologies. As a matter of fact, back in 2005, I brought a whole bunch of different technologies to cars. Any type of car you drive—I don’t care what it is—almost everything in the dash belongs to technologies that we developed from 2005 to 2008. There are some videos and some information on my LinkedIn. I invite people, including yourself, to look into it. The stuff we did back then was in 2005. The iPhone only came out in 2007. We came out with these technologies between 2005 and 2008. Back then, we had Genie. Today they have Alexa and I don’t know what everybody else calls theirs.  Yeah. We had Genie. Genie would talk to you. I mean, I’m not just saying it. Please go watch the videos. We have them. So you would just talk to the car, and the car would do everything for you. We came up with a device that initially you could install as an aftermarket stereo in the car. Basically, it would connect all the sensors in the car to the outside world. This was the very first time. As a matter of fact, internet connectivity in the car is my technology. Every single car in the world since 2014 has been connected to the internet, and that’s my technology, my patent, and my license. Of course, I’m not getting much money from it. Unfortunately, I’ve kind of been robbed on that. But at least I can brag about it—that’s our technology. So yeah, we brought a whole bunch of technologies to market. My vision back then was to make the car robust enough to drive without a driver.  That’s happening now.  It’s happening now. As a matter of fact, we had a car that we put our system into, and we were demonstrating it. And again, there are hundreds of videos about that technology that you can find on the internet. As a matter of fact, we were on PBS for nine months in 27 countries talking about future cars, and that video is also out there. So that was in 2010. They had a half-hour program with my company and with me about future cars. And everything we said, we had the basis for it, and it happened.  So, Allen, if you had a magic wand and you could wish for anything to happen in your business, what would that be? So as I said earlier, I like to be more focused now. I’m very spread out with the business—not only with the technical side of things, but also with the business side of things. I really want to get away from the business side and just focus on the technology. That’s what I enjoy more. I do the business side because I have no choice. That’s part of the work, right? But I would like to get to the point where I can focus only on technology, and other people can worry about the other things. So that’s my goal.  Okay. So if someone is listening to this and they would like to be like you, what would you advise them? Let’s say they are 20 years old and they want to grow up and be an inventor, come up with solutions, work in different industries, and solve big problems. What’s the path? What would you tell them?  So first of all, don’t be like me, that’s for sure. Honestly, you’ve got to enjoy life more than I do. And I do enjoy life. Again, I have different hobbies. I do different sports. I ski, I bike, and those are my hobbies, right? Most importantly, again, we talked about this at the beginning. You’ve got to like what you do. And doing business is not easy. Don’t expect to get into it and have everything work out. Usually, by default, everything goes wrong. So that’s normal. It used to bother me. It used to make me upset, nervous, and all that. But over the last seven to ten years, I learned that things happen, and you just have to resolve them and go through them. Bad things can happen. Good things can happen. It’s all part of the mix. You’ve got to have a very strong personality. Generally, a good percentage of people go paycheck to paycheck, and it’s mental—it’s in their mind. They make a lot of money. They make $100,000 every paycheck. But if you get a paycheck, your mind is like, “Okay, my next paycheck is coming two weeks from now, then another one two weeks after that,” right? And if those two weeks come and you don’t get your paycheck, they go nuts. They go crazy. So if you’re like that, you cannot go into business. In business, it’s all about failure and success. If you’re lucky, that’s a different story. I can go buy a lottery ticket, and only one person out of millions wins. That’s luck. That’s different.  But then they lose it all. Lottery winners tend to lose it. Within a year, they’re broke.  Yeah, that’s a different story, of course. What I’m saying is that, yeah, some people get lucky. That’s the exception. Don’t compare yourself to that. Don’t go after that.  Don’t count on it.  Doing business is usually a challenge, no matter what. So you’ve got to have a very strong personality.  So yeah, resilience is everything. Well, that’s wonderful. So if someone would like to learn more about SunMan Engineering, or they want to connect with you, what should they do and where should they go? Yeah, the best thing is to please visit the website, which is sunmantechnology.com. There is a contact form there, and you can contact us. We’d be happy to get in touch with you and see how we can help.  Okay, fantastic. Well, Allen Nejah, the CEO and chief engineer of SunMan Engineering, and the inventor of many products in different industries, including InfiniGear, which is going to revolutionize transmissions. Thank you for coming on the show and sharing your insights and wisdom. And those of you who are listening, if you enjoyed this, make sure you subscribe and follow us because every week I bring on an amazing entrepreneur to talk with you. Thanks for coming, Allen, and thanks for listening. Important Links: Allen’s LinkedIn Allen’s website

https://youtu.be/Eojj9hN2UKg Preetha Pulusani, CEO of DeepTarget, is passionate about helping people realize their potential and leveraging technology to create meaningful business growth. After spending 25 years in corporate America and learning hard lessons from an early entrepreneurial failure, Preetha built DeepTarget into a bootstrapped fintech growth company that helps banks and credit unions acquire, engage, cross-sell, and retain account holders through advanced data analytics and intelligent marketing. In this conversation, Preetha shares the DeepTarget Bootstrap Framework, a leadership and innovation model built around five principles: Combine Pros with Fresh Graduates, Think Big but Start Small, Be Agile with a Flat Structure, Fail Quickly, and Keep a Tight Customer Feedback Loop. She explains how blending experienced professionals with emerging talent creates powerful teams, why rapid experimentation outperforms large-scale product launches, and how customer feedback should guide innovation. Preetha also discusses using data to drive growth, selling outcomes instead of technology, and building a successful SaaS company without outside funding. — Pull 5 Levers to Bootstrap Your Firm with Preetha Pulusani  Good day. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint, and my guest today is Preetha Pulusani, the CEO of DeepTarget, a company that helps hundreds of financial institutions increase loan demand, promote product adoption, and support intelligent marketing through advanced data mining and analytics. Preetha, welcome to the show.  Thank you, Steve. Thank you for having me. Thank you for inviting me. I’m looking forward to it.  Yeah. You have a very interesting business and very interesting profile, so I can’t wait to jump in. But let me ask you my favorite question. What is your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in your business?  I guess you could say that my personal ‘Why’ has evolved over several years. I spent 25 years in corporate America, and that was the best business education I could have ever received. My first failure as an entrepreneur, though, added to that significantly, and that was right before I started DeepTarget. Luckily, it was a quick failure, but that doesn’t mean it was not a difficult one. And in every way, the lessons learned have come in handy today. So I believe that I’m in my final chapter of my career, so I can speak from years of experience. And my personal ‘Why’ is—it’s always been about people for me. I’ve never believed in the lone genius.  I believe that every person has some spark of genius in a different way. And I have always been inspired by pulling out that spark and weaving a tapestry of people.Share on X And that happened even in my job in corporate America, but it happens even more with my team today as an entrepreneur at DeepTarget. So it’s about empowering people to use that spark rather than focusing on something that they may not be as good at. It’s pulling out that strength and making it the collective strength of a solution, of how we serve customers, and of the business itself. Does that make sense?  Oh, yeah. This is great. I love that. My experience is that nearly none of the companies I talk to—or basically none of them, literally none of them—capitalize on the maximum talent of their team. Because it’s impossible to maximize it completely, but you can work on it, and that is wonderful.  Yeah.  So do you have a process for how you do that? Is there a mental process? Is it just an awareness? Is it a curiosity? Is it a natural thing that you do, or do you actually have a way of doing this?  So I have found that I think I read people. I think I’m intuitive in that way. And so I see myself as being the orchestrator of whatever it is, whether I’m working on today’s problem or whether I’m working on the big vision. I don’t know that it’s a process so much, but I have used it over and over again. It’s become a very natural thing for me.  So you talk about the big vision. What is that big vision?  So as a company, my focus is on making our clients successful. What that means is helping them grow their financial institutions.Share on X We work with credit unions and banks, and it’s all about growth. And we use innovation to leverage that growth for them. How do you acquire new account holders? How do you cross-sell to them? How do you communicate with them? How do you retain them? I’m a techie at heart, so it’s been about how do I leverage data? How do I leverage—today, of course—AI, kind of a combination of data and AI, to make sure that they are able to see the growth they need for their financial institutions? And that’s kind of become the mission that we have adopted for the company.  Yeah. I noticed that on your website you have this map of, I think, seven or eight different ways that you’re driving adoption and contact with people and—  It’s highly data-driven. It’s not wishy-washy. We’ve evolved from being a marketing company to a growth company. And when you take anything that’s data-driven into marketing, yeah, it’s something that people like to do. But what we like to do is use the technology to get to the human—to get to the individual. So we are helping our credit unions and banks reach individuals, understand each account holder, and understand what their financial needs are. And the only way you can do that at scale is by using technology and data. So we’ve built a platform that enables them to do that. That’s why the front end is all data, right? We can accept as much data as they want to give us so that we can do the right things to help them grow and engage their account holders.  Yeah. I like that you’re very techy, as you say—techy and data-driven. So I wonder, what is your mental model when you think about the end customers of your financial institution clients? What’s your mental model for how you innovate this process? So what are the major elements? If you had to synthesize it down to maybe three to five elements—your levers that you can pull—what are those?  Great question. So I’m going to start with the people because, for me, everything revolves around people. What I’ve been able to do is combine very seasoned pros with fresh graduates from local universities, and that has been a potent combination. Okay? That’s number one. Whether I’m talking about development, customer success, or sales, that’s been the combination that has worked for me. And as a bootstrapper, that has also helped me financially. You have a very seasoned pro that I’ve worked with for years, and you know exactly what their strengths are.  And then you put some fresh graduates under them. I’m telling you, there’s nothing better. That combination is second to none. The second thing is, I believe in thinking big, but starting small and scaling quickly. I learned that over time. There was a time when we used to have the big-bang theory of creating products.Share on X We have moved so far away from that. So think big, start small, and be agile. And as a small company, that’s a big advantage for me. We have a very flat structure. And so we’re able to have the agility we need to move markets, frankly. If you’re going to fail, fail quickly.  Have a tight customer feedback loop. And if something isn’t going to work for your customer, just abandon it. Abandon it quickly. I can’t say, in all honesty, that I’ve done that every time, but it’s always on my mind: “Should we really even pursue this?” I know we’ve had projects that we thought would be very successful, but they weren’t. But when you’ve only made a small investment, it’s easier to set it aside. “Okay, it’s not working. This is not what we need to do. Let’s move on.”  Yeah, I love that. Can you give an example where you invested in a process and really believed in it, and it turned out not to work, and then you had to pivot from it?  So the way we help banks and credit unions engage and cross-sell to their account holders is primarily through digital banking. We put up very personalized offers using data in the digital banking environment and use that real estate very effectively. It works like a charm. That’s what we do today. We did get a little sidetracked by expanding that into email, and we didn’t see the kind of growth we expected. So we tried to understand that. We did kind of an autopsy. And the difference is that when you log into digital banking, you’re being served something. The difference with email is that you’re pushing something out. It has its uses, for sure, but the particular aspect of what we had done in the product didn’t take off like we expected. So we just said, “Okay, let’s do more of what we can do within the digital banking environment.”  But that works for farming existing customers of the banks, right? Do you also help banks acquire new customers?  Yes. And that’s where email works, by the way. And so does direct mail, and so do digital ads. When you’re cross-selling to existing account holders, you have a lot of information about them. For example, if they rent a home, you would never give them a HELOC offer, right? But on the other hand, what we’re doing for new account acquisition is still using data. We’re looking at who the most profitable customers are that your credit union or bank has, and using that as the model to find more likely customers within a particular radius of their branches. So we are still using data, but in a different way and using different channels to reach them versus digital banking.  That’s fascinating. So what drives growth in your business?  Well, if you had asked me that question 10 years ago, I would have said innovation drives growth. But what we have found and learned over time is that innovation is an engine.Share on X Innovation, in a way, actually causes friction because when you innovate, you’re creating something new. So you first have to go out and educate the market. You have to make them understand that there’s a new way of doing things, and not everybody is open to change.  So if I go talk to a marketing professional and say, “Hey, here’s a new way of doing things. We’re using data.” I put myself in the place of that marketing person who is already constrained by bandwidth, who is already doing so many things, saying, “You’re bringing another new tool for me to learn and use? For what purpose?” While innovation is the engine, what we have learned is not to focus on the innovation, but to focus on the impact. And we do that by really working hard to get into the C-suite. So we are talking to the CEO, the COO, the Chief Digital Officer, or the Chief Technology Officer of these banks and credit unions, helping them understand the outcomes. What is it we do? We acquire new customers. We cross-sell to existing customers. We help you retain them. I receive these direct-mail solicitations from mega banks like Chase and Wells Fargo.  They’re paying me $900, $1,500 to open a checking account. It’s expensive to acquire new accounts. That’s just an example, right? So we are helping you grow through new account acquisition, but we also have a whole playbook for how you retain those new accounts that you acquire. So when you talk at the C-suite level, all of a sudden they’re not seeing a tool. What they’re seeing is an outcome. “How soon can we see results?” is the question we get asked. So we grow through a different way of selling what we do to these institutions.  So people don’t care how you achieve the result. They just want you to talk about the result?  Exactly. Especially the CEO. I mean, they don’t really care. They do care about things like data privacy, and we’ve addressed all of that. We’ve been doing this business for so long that data security is table stakes. But they care less about how you do it and more about why. So we have to talk to the individuals who care about the why rather than the how, although the how plays such a big part in building a business, right? But that’s what we focus on.  That’s behind the wall. That’s your problem, basically.  That’s right. That’s the secret sauce. We used to take great pains to explain the secret sauce at one point in time, but not anymore.  That’s interesting. So why do they listen to you? I mean, why do they believe that you can get these results? Do you show them testimonials, or how do you prove it?  We have over 200 customers now—customer contracts. It’s actually closer to 300. So we have a lot of testimonials and references that we can show them. We also let them know that there are barriers to using software like ours, such as, “Do I need to have somebody operate the software?” No, because part of what we offer is a managed service. We will operate the software for you using your branding and everything else that you have. So we’ve kind of removed all of the barriers. The biggest barrier today is creating awareness in the broader market, because this is a huge market.  And on my bootstrapping budget, I have to make sure people know that such a solution exists. What we find is that once we reach the decision-maker, it’s a fairly straightforward sale. I would say that if I’m constrained by anything when it comes to growth, it’s because I’m a bootstrapper. I watch every penny carefully, and I have built the company funded entirely by revenue. And one of these days that’s not going to be enough. But so far, so good. Yeah. Okay. So basically you create broader awareness of your products. You have all these testimonials and references. When you get in front of these decision-makers, you talk about the outcome and show them the results you can get.  And we have direct sales, right? I mean, we do call on, we have a couple of people. All they do is work the phones, emails, and LinkedIn to get us meetings in front of the right people. You know, also, Steve, in this day and age of everything digital, what we have found with banks and credit unions is that first important meeting with the CEO—we’re finding that doing it in person makes a huge difference. So that’s another thing that we do.  That’s interesting. So does that limit you geographically?  We’re having so much success with that model that it only helps us. More revenue means I can invest more in sales. So we are limited to the United States. We have customers on both coasts, a pretty good map of customers on both coasts, and in the Midwest. And there are some blank spaces, and we’re trying to address those blank spaces.  So you actually have people fly all over the country to meet with CEOs?  Yes. And it’s making a big difference. This is a change that we made not too far back. I would say maybe about 18 months ago or so, and it’s made a big difference for growth.  That is so interesting because after the pandemic, a lot of companies kept doing video sales calls.  As did we. As did we.  As probably you did as well. But the assumption was that there’s no point in traveling. It’s an extra expense and doesn’t make a huge difference. But you’re saying it’s the opposite—that it does.  Yes, it makes a huge difference. You’re talking to the CEO of a bank. Banks still have a more traditional generation of leaders. Even I didn’t believe it when I was first sold on this whole concept, but I’ve become a believer now. That meeting—the CEO not only is in the room with you, but brings in his or her key executives to talk to you. When you’ve made the trip all the way to Sacramento, they’re going to do that, right? So it’s made a difference.  So there’s a reciprocity involved. They see that you’re making the trip. Okay, then we might as well put more into it. And it’s kind of a self-fulfilling process.  And by the way, when you have more people in the room, you get more objections, but you’re able to address those in person. Yeah. Even if you have a video call with the CEO, if the CEO goes and talks to the CTO and brings up the objection, “You really need to worry about these guys and their data security,” we never hear about that. We just hear silence. We don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. So you get that opportunity to address all of that kind of in person. And I think it actually works out more cost-effectively, surprisingly. Yeah, as long as those are resulting in deals.  Yes. So maybe that’s an inside thing, but I’m just wondering, what is the upside of something like that? If you convert one of the CEOs and they start using the system—maybe that’s a business secret—but what is the value of that conversion? Let’s say the 12-month value of that conversion that makes you want to do that trip.  So let me give you an example. We sell annual subscriptions with five-year terms. That’s a big deal, right? And when we sell five-year terms, it can become very significant. So we price based on the asset size of the financial institution because that kind of determines how large they are, how many branches they have, and how many account holders they have. So let’s take an institution that’s, say, a billion dollars. I’m just going to give you some rough numbers, right? For a five-year contract, you’re talking about $300,000 or so.  Okay. That makes sense. It’s definitely worth the trip.  Yes, it’s worth the trip.  Yeah.  The other way to have that personal interaction, which we have found to be very effective, is conferences—focused conferences. Many of these banks and credit unions have state leagues, regional leagues, or certain technology-focused groups that meet. And those are kind of the best venues to do our prospecting.  And then do you sponsor these conferences?  Well, we do. We’re very selective, but we have booths, and in addition to that, we may do some other sponsorships. Yeah.  Yeah. That’s great. So switching gears here, I’m really curious. What is something that you’re actively trying to figure out in your business? So if you had a magic wand and you could wave it, what would you want to fix in the next 12 months?  I’ve kind of told you that I’ve been a bootstrapper, and I’ve been a bootstrapper very intentionally. Because one of the things that I said I would do is that I wouldn’t be so stubborn as to never take any outside capital. But the thing that I wanted to figure out before taking external capital was what would give me a multiplier effect. So if I took a dollar in, how would I be able to multiply that? And I’m getting very close to figuring that out on the sales and marketing side. So if I had more dollars, and if I have a sales formula that I know works—that I’m confident works—then I should be able to take that formula, add those dollars, and simply add salespeople, right, to grow.  Scale it up, yeah.  So that’s kind of been the biggest issue I’ve had for the past, say, five years. But I would say that over the past 12 to 18 months, a lot of that has become clearer to me. And so I think I’m getting close to having that solved—to having that formula where I can say, “Okay, if I put in more dollars, I’m going to get X return.”  Yeah. Some people call this the coin-operated marketing and sales system. You keep dropping the coin and—  Yeah. Yeah. It’s taken me years to figure it out. I spent a lot of my early years at the company building a very robust technology platform because without that, everything else becomes secondary. And then I had this focus on, how do I get sales and marketing? And I’ve tried many things, and they haven’t necessarily worked, right? I’ve built up a customer base by slogging over time, but then you want that formula if you want to throw money at it.  Yeah. And that’s where I think I’m getting closer to getting there.  Yeah. And then marketing media is changing all the time. Different platforms come and go. Then you have different advertising formulas, and they burn out. So it’s actually difficult to stabilize it and make something that’s permanently coin-operated, so to speak. Yeah. And when we say everything is data-driven, it’s not just on the front end that everything is data-driven. We are able to tell the credit union or bank how many products we actually sold. What loans did you sell? How many auto loans? How many mortgages? How many HELOCs? How many credit cards? How many deposit accounts did you open each month that were influenced by our campaigns? We’re able to go back and tell them that. And what are the new balances you generated as a result of that? So it’s not about impressions and clicks. On the back end, we actually give them very deep data analytics so they can see, “This is the revenue I generated last month, and these are the new balances I generated last month.” And so that makes a difference, too.  Yeah. I saw on your website that many customers get a 500% ROI on their investment.  Yeah. Which only says that I’m charging them too little.  Yeah. Yeah.  No, but I mean, if you look at the balances and how they measure, we’re almost afraid to put the actual numbers out there. But we show them a growth grid that shows, month by month, here’s what you made using these campaigns. We can even show them what happens when they turn off the campaigns and what the impact is.  So in terms of bootstrapping, is that a strategy? Let’s say you figure out your scalable sales formula. Would you then go raise money, or would you still want to bootstrap?  If the revenue that I’m generating can be used toward growth, I won’t have to go raise money. But I won’t be so stubborn and silly that I wouldn’t take outside capital. I get calls all the time from investment bankers and capital firms. In fact, I was talking to one just yesterday, and I said, “I’m probably getting a bit closer to being open to capital. Give me another six months. By the end of the year, I should know.” So yes,  I would raise money if I had that sales formula, if I knew for sure. And I think part of this, Steve, is because I talked about my first failure as an entrepreneur. It was a very quick failure, but it was a hard one because I had taken money from friends and family, and it was used up, and they didn’t get much in return. When I had to shut down that company, I actually gave them shares in this company. I guess I got a bit burned, so I’m more resistant to taking outside capital until I’ve figured out what the solution is. But I think I’m getting very close. You get to a point where it’s silly not to take capital.  Yeah, because someone might copy it. You figure out a formula, and someone might copy it. Then they put more money behind it, they dominate the market, and you lose. Yeah. So that’s the only concern.  Yeah.  Yeah. If there are listeners who hear this and say, “Wow, I’d like to learn more because I’m involved with a financial institution, and we need to improve our sales, get more customers, and upsell more customers,” where can they find out more, and how can they reach you?  So our website has, I think, a wealth of information. So certainly they can go to our website just to learn more about the solution. They can contact us at [email protected]. That’s probably the easiest way to get a deeper dive into what we do and have that one-on-one meeting. And I think that’s the best way to learn more. Whether you’re interested in going forward or not, that’s the best way to learn.  Yeah. Okay. Well, definitely. I checked out the website, and it’s pretty informative. You get good visuals of what Preetha’s team is doing and it’s pretty complex, I would say. There’s a lot of nuance to it, so I found it fascinating. So definitely check out deeptarget.com if you’d like to learn more. Preetha is also on LinkedIn, and you can email them at [email protected]. Any famous last words for the audience? Something that would help an entrepreneur who wants to bootstrap their business? What would you recommend they do?  I think starting a business is no easy feat, and I don’t believe in overnight success. It’s a journey. It’s been one of the most inspiring and interesting journeys, and probably the greatest learning journey, that I’ve been through. So I think you shouldn’t focus just on the end result or overnight success. Instead, come for the journey.  Yeah. You have to love the journey in order to reach the destination, right?  It’s tough, right? Yeah. It can be tough at times, but then you reach a point where it’s just the best thing.  Yeah. Well, that’s great inspiration for the founders listening to this. And if you enjoyed the podcast, then definitely follow us on LinkedIn, subscribe on YouTube, and give us a review on Apple Podcasts. And Preetha, thanks for coming. That was an eye-opening discussion. I don’t recall having many bootstrapper tech companies on the show, so this is definitely a new element for us and a really good perspective. So thanks for coming, and thank you for listening. Important Links: Preetha’s LinkedIn Preetha’s website Preetha’s email: [email protected]

https://youtu.be/sUyjA0muVgM Tom Kirkham, Founder and CEO of Kirkham IronTech, believes business should create value for everyone involved — employees, clients, vendors, and the broader community. After overcoming major personal challenges and rebuilding his perspective on leadership, Tom embraced stakeholder capitalism and built a company culture focused on long-term partnerships, trust, and continuous learning. In this conversation, Tom shares the IronTech Framework — a practical approach to modern IT management built around three core pillars: Generate ROI and Productivity, Make Cybersecurity Core, and Surround it with a Governance Layer. He explains why businesses should stop treating IT as an expense and instead view it as a strategic investment that improves productivity, protects the company from cyber threats, and aligns technology with leadership goals. Tom also dives into the massive scale of the cybercrime industry, why governance is often the missing piece in cybersecurity, and how proactive IT strategy can dramatically improve business performance. — Turn Your IT into Your Growth Engine with Tom Kirkham Good day. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and today’s guest is Tom Kirkham, the Founder and CEO of Kirkham IronTech, where he helps businesses build strong, secure IT foundations, whether fully managed, co-managed, or cybersecurity only. Tom is a keynote speaker on cybersecurity, and he’s the author of two books, Hack the Rich and The Cyber Pandemic. Tom, welcome to the show.  Oh, it’s great to be here, Steve.  Well, great to have you here. And I am curious to dive in, and would like to ask you my favorite question. What is your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in Kirkham IronTech?  That’s a great question. So the company’s about twenty-six years old. I went through a lot of personal health problems, and then my wife was real sick, and she ended up passing away—it’s been about eleven years ago now. And I was fortunate enough to put a friend of mine in the company, and he was able to take over while I was dealing with this for a couple of years. And when most of it was done, I took some time off and did a lot of traveling and a lot of thinking and a lot of reading. And I’m a lifelong reader, a lifelong learner, and I went back through my history of investing techniques, understanding what makes a good company great. If you’ve read Jim Collins, you know what I’m talking about. And so during those times, I was reflecting, studying philosophy, studying biographies of other CEOs like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Andy Grove—gosh, the list goes on and on. Whether you like them or hate them, it doesn’t matter, right? There’s always something you can learn. And I came upon and read a lot about stakeholder capitalism. Like Peter Drucker says, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” And I understood what that meant, and it was kind of weird. So when I re-engaged with the company, I identified one of the weaknesses, and I said, “Well, if we need to do marketing in this business—which we have to do in any business—I really need to master marketing.” So I spent a lot of time with marketing gurus, most of them are what I would consider household names these days, and re-engaged with the company to do marketing to establish a great culture around stakeholder capitalism. In other words, we exist as a for-profit business not just for the shareholders but for everyone—the community, vendors, employees. And I really wanted to be around people I enjoyed being around. I wanted them to enjoy coming into work.Share on X And so we’ve been trying to perfect that system in the culture for the past ten years. Of course, no one’s perfect, but if you pursue perfection, you can achieve excellence. And I think we’ve done a really good job. We have very low turnover. Everyone seems genuinely happy to be there, and it’s really fulfilling. It’s more of a personal feeling because I’ve been a successful investor practically my whole adult life. I started investing in stocks when I was nineteen, and I’m sixty-four now. So I didn’t really need the company. I could have just closed it up or sold it or whatever. But I really wanted to have my own reasons. Those are the things that drive me, and I hope they drive everyone else too.  What resonated with you with this idea of stakeholder capitalism? It just made sense. The obvious part is with employees—all of that is true. That’s obvious to any good leader or manager, right? As you well know, there’s a difference between leadership and management, and understanding that distinction, and the difference between sales and marketing, and understanding those things. A good example is dealing with vendors. There are all sorts of vendors that supply products and services to us, so we carefully vet these tools and vendors to see if their values align with ours, just like we do with prospects. But especially with vendors, if it’s something new—a new tool that we’re going to invest a lot of time, money, and energy into to make their product or service successful for us and successful for them—we make a commitment to that vendor.  So it’s not about the money or how cheap I can get it. What I want is a good partnership with every stakeholder. And I want to make sure that when I’m dealing with a vendor, if it fails for us, it’s not our fault—it’s their fault, right? Either they oversold the product or they didn’t deliver on the service component. I didn’t want it to be because we failed to do the right training, or didn’t communicate properly, or missed all the other things that are just part of doing business the right way. And that applies to our employees, our local community, and every stakeholder in the company.  Yeah. I like it. So you’re looking for partnership-based relationships where it’s win-win. And yeah, if you want people to stick around, it has to make sense for them too. You can’t exploit your partners forever without consequences. So that makes a lot of sense. So Tom, let me ask you this other question. This podcast is called The Management Blueprint because I’m always looking for frameworks—something practical that helps businesses achieve results. Usually it’s some kind of three-to-five-step process that helps you grow the business, get customers, improve operations, or understand something at a deeper level. So when I ask about your favorite business framework, what comes to mind?  Well, we have a thing we call the IronTech Framework.  Okay.  And it was something that we came up with many years ago and started practicing seven or eight years ago, and it’s a framework. It’s like the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. I looked at NIST and there’s five components to it, and it’s about cybersecurity. And I looked at this and I go, “None of this works without the right policies and procedures in place.” The security training—it’s not enough just to throw it out there and tell all your people to take it. You’ve got to follow up, you’ve got to manage, and coach, and everything like that. And so I started adding this governance component to the way we sold it, presented it, and practiced what we do for our clients day in and day out. Help them develop the policies and procedures for all of the different things, the protocols.  If somebody accidentally fires off a ransomware attack, they need to know they’re not going to be penalized for it. We need to know as soon as possible to stop it. And just little things like that, there’s a lot that really improve the effectiveness of all of these tools and services that we provide to their clients. And unbeknownst to me, NIST, who has the cybersecurity framework, they added governance about three years ago to the other five things. And so that was kind of nice to know that we were exhibiting some thought leadership. And so when we go in, it’s all well and good if you want to put these protections in and these particular products, but we’re a best-of-breed company. Like one of our critical tools that’s required for our clients to put in place, to buy it and use it every single day on every single computer, is what’s known as an EDR. And it’s basically an AI-based super turbo antivirus.  To even call it an antivirus is not doing it justice. So there’s three legs to the IronTech Framework. We want to make sure that you’re getting a return on your investment in IT, because that’s why you buy it. If you treat IT as an expense, you need to kind of change the way you’re thinking. You want to improve productivity and efficiency.Share on X The second leg is cybersecurity, because a bad cyberattack can put you out of business. I think the last stats I saw were something like 40 to 60% of businesses go out of business within two years of a significant cyberattack. And then finally, the third is governance. That’s the three legs of our IronTech Framework. So part of governance is engaging with our clients’ management and leadership—the CEO, finance, of course the CIO, the CISO or security officer, and maybe even the board sometimes. Really getting to know: what are your objectives, and how can we utilize our services to best help your company realize those objectives? Because for most companies, there’s no other vendor they engage with as much as us.  We’re talking to Susie every day. We’re talking to Bill every day. We know that Mary’s out sick and Steve’s on vacation. I mean, when you’re running help desk, stopping attacks, providing training, and all the support we provide along those lines, we get to know their company better than practically any other vendor by far. So it really helps if our clients treat us as a partner to help them realize their goals and objectives. And when all of that clicks into place, then it makes recommending things easier.Share on X “Okay, you need to replace these 30 laptops that are four years old. You’re not getting an ROI on them.” “This server’s five years old. Let’s start thinking about replacing it.” “We have this new tool that’s really excellent. We’re recommending everybody get it.” And because we’ve developed that trust, those conversations become pretty easy. For the most part, everybody just says yes. But of course, we don’t sell just to sell, especially when it comes to things like hardware. That’s not really what we’re here for. We’re here for the day-in, day-out work: keeping things running, stopping breaches, and putting the policies and procedures in place to run your company as smoothly as possible.  Yeah. I love that. So when I had an IT back in the 2000s, I had an IT person who was a contractor, but he was very active in my business, and I always wanted to talk to him and pick his brain. What are the new things out there? How can we make our business more efficient, more effective, more attractive to employees? Cooler. I wanted to be cool. So I wanted everyone to have a PDA in the early 2000s with email on it—a PalmPilot. And we had multiple screens, and I was looking at, okay, how can we manage data in the cloud and on our server so we don’t have to deal with it in the office? That kind of stuff. And I really thought about it as a great investment because it was much cheaper than hiring people. And if you give people good tools, they’re going to be more motivated and more effective. So I thought it was a no-brainer.  Yes, but there’s still a subset of people that treat IT as an expense. Then there are some companies that tend to put IT under the finance guy because the finance guy usually has a lot of IT experience, but never actually did it as a career or a job, right? And those situations are hard because I need CEO-level or owner-level approval, and I need a direct route to that person.  Yeah, that makes sense. So Tom, tell me, what drives growth in your business?  Yeah. From a growth perspective, for us, number one is maintaining our clients and reducing churn. Number two is—I don’t know if you’re asking about tactics or strategy—but of course we want to get new clients for the right reasons. So we prefer inbound strategies. We don’t cold call people unless we’ve already contacted them in another way, if that’s what you’re asking.  Yeah. I’m asking what the real driver of growth is. I understand that you do marketing and inbound marketing, but what makes people want to have an IT service partner like you? Well, they understand those three pillars of the IronTech Framework. They may not believe in stakeholder capitalism, but they don’t treat IT as an expense. And they understand—especially after talking to me—the true risk of being hacked. A lot of people don’t understand the size and scale of that industry. It’s a $10 to $12 trillion industry now.  Wow.  If it were a country, it would have the third-largest GDP. The US would be first, China second, and then the hacking industry. It is an industry that hacks at scale. So when these companies—maybe a small 10-person accounting firm in North Dakota in the middle of nowhere—get these ransomware emails and someone tries to hack them, and we alert on it and trap it, and nothing goes wrong, everything’s fine… If they don’t already understand it, they go, “Well, why are they trying to hack me?” And I say, “You don’t understand. That email was one of 100,000 emails that got blasted out. They don’t know who you are, nor do they care who you are.” They’re playing a numbers game. And it’s kind of like marketing. They’re looking at conversion numbers. Yeah.  Let’s say it’s 100,000 emails. They got a list of all the certified public accountants in 10 different states. They set up the email, they send it all out, and let’s say 1% become victims. And let’s say they collect an average of $10,000 per victim. Well, that’s a multi-million dollar payday for about a week or two of work. And then they rinse and repeat. It’s done at scale, and it’s a much bigger industry than that. That’s just a taste of it. Some of our clients are targeted. In other words, hackers are investing time, money, and energy specifically into that company. We’re one of them. Any law firm that does intellectual property law—especially around patents, manufacturing, and things like that—you’ve got China and other nation states not only trying to get into your client, but you’re also a threat vector. You’re a way to get into that client’s patents and secrets.  So we’ve got to treat that differently. It’s not just about the money. There are different types of threat actors, and we have to educate clients, bring them up to speed, and say, “Well, because of this case, you need this other service and tool that we’re offering to prevent China from breaking in.” Or, “You need to follow this practice.” Maybe you don’t publicly talk about one of your clients being Ford Motor Company or NVIDIA. You just keep that quiet. You don’t want that to be public knowledge. That’s one of the things we do. You spent time on our website, and you didn’t see a single client name on there. And that’s just one of the small things we do to protect our clients’ security and privacy, because privacy and security go hand in hand. Yeah. That is fascinating. So what is it that you’re trying to figure out in your business right now? What’s the big thing for you?  I think because of all the chaos in the United States, making a decision to do anything—everybody’s kind of frozen. There are a lot of hiring freezes. I know we’ve got a freeze on right now because we’re looking to see, well, do we really need to add somebody, or can we do this with AI? The hackers do the same thing. That’s one of the challenges, is getting people over the hump. No matter what you do, if you’ve got an IT company doing your stuff and you only call them when things are broken, there’s a much more profitable way to do that. You’re spending more money.  So there are benchmarks in industries, right? Basically, the research—and these aren’t numbers we made up, this is legitimate research from many independent sources—says the average professional service provider, like law firms, accounting firms, healthcare providers, and on and on, should be spending 6 to 12% of their revenue on IT and cybersecurity. And that’s everything. I’m talking servers, wiring, cloud, security, defense—all of those things should be 6 to 12%. We know that. That’s the way it works. So when we engage with a prospect and find out they’re only spending 3 or 4%, then I already know they have gaps. I don’t even have to do an assessment to see what they’re not doing.  They’re either not getting a return on investment, or they’re not secure. That’s it. If all the accounting firms are spending 6%, and you’re only spending 4%, don’t just pat yourself on the back. That’s one of those moments where you should ask, “What am I missing?” Because I do that often. Someone on the management team will come up with an idea, and we all agree. Well, that’s a red flag for me. I want to know: what are we missing? If we all agree on this, is there some gotcha or something we haven’t uncovered? And those are some of the things we try to educate our clients on. They don’t have to tell us their revenue. I can give them the numbers. I can do the math. I can show them the numbers for something like laptop replacement. Maybe it’s $1,000 to $3,000 depending on the industry. If the employee using that laptop is making $100,000 a year, why are you trying to squeeze another year out of a $2,000 investment when it’s hurting productivity by 10% or more? Yeah. That’s a no-brainer.  Yeah. It should be.  Yeah. It’s not just in IT. I had a client years ago in civil engineering, and they had a rule that they would never keep equipment longer than four years. And they were selling equipment that still looked brand new. And I asked them, “Why are you doing this? It seems like this equipment still has a lot of life left in it. Why are you selling it or giving it back to the lease company?” And he said, “We did the math, and we figured out that this is the optimal time to replace it.” If they got rid of the equipment at that point, they wouldn’t have to deal with fixing it. There would be less disruption. They would stay state-of-the-art all the time. And their clients would be impressed. And it actually worked for them. It was a high-margin civil engineering firm.  Precisely. I mean, we’re so tuned into that that we’re a Mac house. We all use Macs. We all have laptops, and we all have setups with screens at home and in the office. We spare no expense on that. If somebody wants an extra screen for their house—alright, here it is. We’ll order it and get it there for you. We’re so tuned into that, that we went all Mac back when they were still Intel Macs. And I don’t know how much you know about Macs, but they were…  I have a couple. Okay. Yeah, we’re Mac people too. Yeah, so they were running Intel processors. Well, Apple decided to build their own processor and moved to the M-chip. And so I bought an M1, and it was like, holy cow, everybody in the company has got to have one of these. And I don’t think there was a single one more than two years old at that time. So we replaced them all. Now, the M-series generations themselves—M1, M2, M3, and on—those changes aren’t as dramatic as going from Intel to the first M-series chip. But it’s still unusual. I said two years, but there are probably people right now with a three-year-old laptop. But we definitely trade them in. That’s where the sweet spot is on trade-in value. We rotate them every two to three years and they’re out. I think mine is maybe a year old, but I’ll probably keep this one for a couple more years.  By the way, you’re the first IT company and MSP I’ve met that doesn’t use PCs—you use Macs. Yeah. And I long had this theory that all the IT companies I worked with were always anti-Mac, and I never understood why. And when I got my first Mac, I realized I actually didn’t need them anymore since I had the Mac.  Yeah, that’s kind of funny because it really started with me during Covid. It may not have been seven years now, but whatever it was, it kind of started with Covid. And for years I was a PC guy. I tried Macs briefly back in the old MacBook days—you know, the white plastic ones? Whatever that was, 15 or more years ago.  Yeah. Classic. Very classic.  Yeah. But what I kept trying to do with a Windows laptop—and I like Dell, I had Dell XPSs, good Dell computers, and we’re a Dell partner— What I could never get a Windows computer to do was seamlessly come off a docking station and then plug into another monitor at my house. It would always blue screen or something. So when I went back to a Mac, I was like, “Holy cow, it doesn’t break. It doesn’t mind being unplugged from a docking station. It just works.” Yeah.  And then all the other things—that they’re generally built better, they have a longer lifespan, and they hold their resale value longer, and all of that. Even as old as I was, I forced myself to really get proficient at using a Mac. And when we sent everybody home during Covid, I said, “Well, everybody’s going Mac.” And, oh, there was a revolt. And I said, “Just give it a few months.”  Yeah.  About half the office resisted it. And I said, “You gotta try it because I think you’ll like it, and if you don’t, then we’ll deal with it then.” We had Linux people, PC people. So then I said, “Well, maybe we should open it up and let people pick what they want.” Yeah, I love it. Yeah. So our time is coming to an end, but if someone is running on Mac and they’re finally talking to an IT service company that’s not anti-Mac, and they want to connect with you immediately, where should they go and where can they learn more about Kirkham IronTech and maybe connect with you personally? The website is the best place to go. It’s www.kirkhamirontech.com. Just give us a call, fill out a form, let us know what you’re thinking, because we want to know what you’re thinking and see if there’s a fit with the way we do things. Macs started becoming important with executives. That’s where we first started seeing it. So even though they may still have to run Windows, the owners and executives wanted to carry Macs for the very reasons I mentioned. So we’re perfectly happy with that.  Yeah. Okay. Very good. So if you’re listening to this and you enjoyed hearing about how to make your IT work—how to increase ROI, make sure you’re doing cybersecurity right, and implement governance so you can use IT as a strategic tool to run your business better—then definitely reach out to Tom Kirkham. Or stay tuned to this show, because you’re going to hear from other entrepreneurs who are very smart about business. And preferably do both. Tom, thank you for coming and sharing your wisdom, and thank you for listening.  Oh, it’s been my pleasure, Steve. Important Links: Tom’s LinkedIn Tom’s website

https://youtu.be/tU0kHdf7oXo Drew Allen, CEO of Grace Technologies, is driven by a mission to lead a life of adventure and impact. At Grace Technologies, that impact is tangible: the company develops electrical safety and predictive maintenance solutions that help industrial teams prevent downtime, improve productivity, and, most importantly, send workers home safely at the end of the day. We explore Drew’s Product Engineering Framework — Clarify the Problem You’re Solving, Understand the Constraints, Think from First Principles, Build a Prototype, and Iterate within a Time Limit — a practical approach to innovation in technical product development. Drew explains why rapid iteration beats overbuilding, how constraints can unlock better engineering decisions, and why time-boxing product development prevents teams from getting stuck in endless perfectionism. He also shares how Grace Technologies is expanding into the data center market, where rising power density is creating new safety challenges and new opportunities for growth. — 5 Steps to Engineering Breakthroughs with Drew Allen  Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and today’s guest is Drew Allen, the CEO of Grace Technologies—the leading innovator of electrical safety products and predictive maintenance solutions that help companies maximize productivity and foster a safety culture. Drew, welcome to the show.  Hey, thanks for having me, Steve. I’m excited. I’ve really enjoyed your books, and they’ve had a big impact on our business. So it’s great to have this conversation today.  Yeah, glad to have you here. So if you enjoyed the book or read Pinnacle and Summit OS perhaps, then you’re going to be familiar with this question. What is your personal “Why,” and how are you manifesting it Grace Technologies?  So my personal “Why” is to lead a life of adventure and impact. And I think that manifests in our company. We try to be as innovative as possible. Typically, around 30% of our annual sales come from products released within the last two to three years. We try to take risks, not in kind of a willy-nilly way, but we try to be smart about our risk-taking, but still make sure that we’re taking risks and we’re on the forefront of the technology edges. In our business, it’s really easy to see the impact that we have. Not many businesses get to say that we literally send people home at the end of the day. We literally save lives, and we don’t take that responsibility very lightly. And so it’s a little way that we can kind of make a dramatic impact in the world. We get a lot of stories of people who have been going to go to work on an electrical system. They were just moving throughout their day, trying to do their work, and all of a sudden they saw that our unit was indicating and they were about to put their hand on that bus bar or that cable, and they stop and realize, “Oh, there’s still power there.” And they could have been either severely injured or dead. And so we get those stories quite frequently, and so it's really impactful to hear that, to know that we're doing that kind of good in the world.Share on X  Yeah, I love that. And yes, I mean, it’s dangerous. My son actually worked for an electrical contractor last year, and they told him the story that they were in big industrial facilities and one of their workers was trying to fix a light and he got shocked. And the only way to save him was to kick the ladder out from under him. He ended up breaking his leg. So it was kind of funny story afterward, but also a very dramatic one at the same time. So yeah, you definitely want to avoid situations like that.  100%.  And I think what you do is really great, and focusing on the safety aspect is very important as well. What I’m wondering—because I’m a framework guy and I’m always looking for new frameworks people have developed—and obviously within the Pinnacle system there are a lot of frameworks. But you’ve been doing this for a few years, and I’m sure that you have come up with your own. So what is your favorite framework—something simple enough for listeners to understand in maybe three to five steps—that could help them improve their business?  My favorite framework really comes from Jim Collins’ work on the Flywheel. And I think you reference it in your book as well, Steve. I think if people can see their business—or even their life—through the lens of a flywheel, it becomes really useful. So in our business, our flywheel is relatively simple. And I think there are probably only a limited number of flywheel models companies really operate under. Our version of a product flywheel works like this:  We start with amazing new products and services. If we do that well, we naturally excite our channel partners. When our channel gets excited, they can’t help but get us specified by customers. Once we’re specified by customers, it grows our revenues, unit sales, and customer base.Share on X And as that happens, it expands the power of the brand, which allows us to set high prices and deliver higher gross margins to be able to reinvest into R&D for amazing new products and services. And I think while maybe there’s a couple of pieces in ours channel-specific or whatever, we found that most of my focus as CEO is just constantly figuring out how do I push those pieces of the flywheel, and where is the current bottleneck in the flywheel? Is the bottleneck getting the specifications? Is the bottleneck the wrong product? One of the challenges in our business is that we have a 12-month product development cycle plus an 8-to-12-month sales cycle for products. So if I miss, I’m basically down for two years. And I don’t really know it early enough unless I’m paying close attention to the leading indicators—which we’ve become much smarter about over the last few years. A lot of business people tend to focus only on lagging indicators, and they’re not always clear on what the leading indicators are in their business—or how correlated those leading indicators are to the lagging results.  I’ll say this: the most recent releases of Claude have made it incredibly easy to input a bunch of variables and figure out how strongly your leading indicators correlate with your lagging success. I probably haven’t done that kind of work since college and deep regression analysis or logarithmic modeling. And now Claude makes it so easy. So if you can identify the leading indicators tied to your future success, and you know there’s an 80% or 85% correlation, then that leading indicator is almost as valuable as the lagging indicator itself. And if your lagging indicator is revenue, that gives you a pretty strong signal about what you should actually be focusing on.Share on X Yeah. That’s a great way to reverse-engineer those leading indicators from the outcomes you’re targeting. I love that. So when you say that one of the flywheel cogs is for people to specify your product, what do you mean by that exactly? We come out with a product, and then we get meetings with large end-user customers. Okay? Our products are really sold into two major markets. One is the industrial market—everything from where things come out of the ground, like oil and gas, pulp and paper, and mining—to all the downstream processing industries, including automotive, tire and rubber, consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, all those kinds of industries like shipbuilding, naval yards, and all those kinds of environments. All of these places have complex electrical and control systems. And when a factory or facility is being designed or upgraded, someone is writing a specification document.  That specification literally defines how everything should be built—including the machinery and the electrical systems. So we want to make sure our products, from an electrical safety perspective, are included in those specification documents. We’ve been really fortunate to get into some of the world’s largest companies’ control specificationsShare on X companies like Amazon, Procter & Gamble, GM, and Ford. These large organizations really see the value in our products from both a productivity and a safety standpoint. And that’s really the key to our success: driving specifications with large end-user customers. Yeah. So it sounds like when you get specified, then essentially you’re baked in to their product, and then you kind of have, at least for the time being, you have a monopoly of supplying them. Is that the case?  Yeah. And some specifications are a little more open. They may specify our type of device, or they may even list competitors as alternatives. And then it becomes a little more of a street brawl when we’re competing. But either way, we want to grow the overall market for products like ours—not just our own products—because we’re in the safety business. And I think it’s really shortsighted to be selfish about that. I think we have much more opportunity if the overall pie grows than if we focus only on increasing our individual slice of the pie. Of course, I’m going to do the best I can to grow our share. But ultimately, electrical safety and electrical reliability in factories are still major problems. And the number of deaths, injuries, and life-changing accidents we hear about—it continues. We hear those stories all the time, and we don’t want those things to happen. Yeah. Love it. So your business is innovation-driven, and you are designing these electrical appliances that increase productivity, reduce risk. What is the major success factor in being able to come up with new products along these lines?  Yeah, so I guess I’ll tell you my biggest failure. Okay? I’ll use the failure to illustrate the point. That’s good. I think I was about 25 or 26 years old, and I was working with a customer—a very large publicly traded company. They liked our product, but they needed it in a different form factor, which meant we had to re-engineer the product, retool it, and go through all the certification processes again. And I just took it hook, line, and sinker. I thought we were really onto something. I probably had delusions of grandeur and thought I was some Steve Jobs-like figure who could just wave a magic wand. And by the way, I don’t think that’s actually what Steve Jobs did, so I want to put that out there for a minute. I think what we see from the outside as consumers is often not the reality inside the company. So I just want to say that.  But anyway, instead of taking small iterative steps and quickly prototyping and getting feedback, I did a full design based only on feedback from that one customer before cutting tooling and paying all the certification costs. It ended up being about a $400,000 project. And I think we still have inventory from that project—and this was probably 12 years ago or something.  Oh my gosh.  So what have I learned now? The best innovation happens through rapid iteration. A lot of your listeners have probably seen the Elon Musk SpaceX Raptor engine images, right? You have this incredibly complex engine that goes up into space, and then the next version looks much simpler, and the third one looks like it came out of a sci-fi movie. It’s almost like the Picasso bull sketches.  There are nine different bulls until Picasso eventually gets it down to two lines, and you still understand it’s a bull. Okay? And I think that’s what iteration looks like. What you see as a final product from Apple is actually the result of thousands of prototypes, iterations, and constant testing behind the curtain. For me, I want to test with customers directly, because you get much better feedback that way. I think the more rapidly you can prototype, the more rapidly you can iterate and get real customer feedback, the more innovative your product is going to be. I really think that when you try to make too big of a leap all once, you usually can’t get there. And I think 10% compounded over time is a much better strategy than trying to go 10X in a single shot. Yeah. It’s kind of the Kaizen principle of continuous improvement through small steps. But actually, I was listening to an interview with Jensen Huang, and he said he hated Kaizen because he wanted more first-principles thinking—completely rethinking things from the ground up. And I think Elon Musk does that too. Although honestly, I think he does both, which is really interesting. But I love Kaizen. I think it’s a wonderful concept to continually improve things. We do work with SpaceX. We don’t do much with NVIDIA—a little bit, but not much. And while you can think from first principles, you still have to iterate on the prototypes, right? Yeah. You have to constantly try things. So you may have a first-principles vision of where you want to go, but you’re not going to get there by designing the perfect thing 100% upfront. You get there through iteration. Yeah. So you really need both. That’s a really good point. So Drew, what is it that you are trying to figure out in your business right now?  So over the last 12 to 18 months, our largest orders have started coming through the data center sector. Back in 2015 or 2016, I tried to push into data centers, and we just had no product-market fit. None. Everybody kept talking about the data center business, and I was like, “Well, they’re just not using our products. We tried…” But what suddenly changed was the increase in power density inside data centers. And what I mean by that is this: You can now have a hundred megawatts in a traditional data center hall. That’s basically the equivalent of multiple oil and gas refineries worth of electrical load inside a single data center hall. A hundred megawatts—yeah.  And so the electrical risk profile has really changed. And because of that, now there is product-market fit. So now I’m trying to figure out: How do I set up the right distribution channels? How do I build the right sales network? Because data centers definitely buy differently than our traditional industrial customers. And then, as CEO, you always have to decide where you’re going to focus your time. I’ve been very intentional about not losing the core identity of Grace through our industrial business. So I’ve had to build a separate group that really focuses on the data center market. That also means bringing in a board member who really understands the data center space. Right now, though, it’s a huge growth area for us, so figuring that out has been super important.  The other thing is that over the last few years, we’ve launched an incredible number of new products. But a lot of those were what I’d call necessary innovations—things we had to execute on quickly. So now we’re finally getting to a point with the engineering team where we can start from a clean sheet of paper again. We can think more deeply about where we really want to go—maybe even from first principles. Because honestly, I feel like we’ve been operating in a reactive mode for the last few years. So it’s going to be really exciting to finally have some white space again and be able to innovate more intentionally for the future. Yeah. So you want to have that sci-fi engine for Grace Technologies that SpaceX has for the rockets, right?  Yeah. That’s the goal. And our mission is to accelerate the industrial world to zero downtime and zero harm. Until we get there, it’s a pretty lofty goal. And I think it’s going to require a lot of innovation to achieve it. So what’s the process when you’re trying to get to that kind of innovation—when you’re rethinking something from first principles? Is there a process you can follow or work through? Or is it more about letting your imagination wander? Like when Albert Einstein came up with the theory of relativity—he was daydreaming in the patent office and suddenly had these insights. What’s your process for getting there? So first, we want to be really clear on the problem statement. Getting absolute clarity on what problem we’re solving is the first step, right? If you don’t know what problem you’re solving, there’s no amount of engineering you can throw at it that’s going to make sense. Second is understanding the constraints. For one of our new product development efforts, we decided to move away from a digital platform and go to a fully analog electrical platform because we realized one of the main constraints was size. And size is really determined by the power supply.  When you run a digital circuit, you’re operating at something like 100 to 300 milliamps. If you go to an analog circuit, you’re operating at the microamp level. So you’re literally at around 10% of the power requirement. And if you’re at 10%, you can make the power supply about 90% smaller. Now, it’s much easier to do things digitally because you just program the microcontroller. You’re not dealing with the art of analog circuitry. So I think that’s a good example of thinking from first principles. Okay—we’re solving this problem. One of the major problems inside that problem is the size of the unit. How do we reduce the size? Well, we have to reduce the power supply. How do we reduce the power supply? Reduce the power draw from the circuit. How do we reduce the power draw? Go analog. And that’s how we got there.  But even then, the amount of prototyping and iteration we’ve done on that over the last 12 months has probably involved 75 major iterations of the circuit, tons of prototypes, tons of testing, and countless tweaks that probably never even hit my radar. I know I’m getting a little nerdy for the podcast, but I think it’s a really good example. And if you take it out of engineering for a minute and look at our sales engine, it works similarly. Ultimately, what drives sales? You have to have unique selling conversations with customers. So everything I focus on becomes: How do I maximize those conversations?  Getting people interested in the product and actually getting to the point where we can sit down and fully tell our story—that’s kind of my North Star.Share on X I know that if we increase the number of those conversations, sales will increase. And of course, there’s optimization on both sides of the meeting—follow-through, follow-up, competitiveness, lead quality, all of that. But the big North Star in our sales function is: How many unique selling conversations are we having with customers? Okay. I love it. So this is a framework that I’m more excited about than the flywheel because we are almost 400 episodes in. Here is what I heard. So be clear on the problem, step number one. Understand the constraints, step number two. Think from first principles, that’s step number three. Build the prototype, step number four, and perform iterations. Step number five, essentially the optimization. And with the sales engine, it’s kind of a similar process that you described, but less technical perhaps.  Yeah. And one other piece too is that all of this has to be time-constrained.  What do you mean by that?  I think people miss that point. If you don’t have a time constraint, it will literally take forever. So inside of your framework, you need a time box, and I think that’s really critical. I like what Elon says about timelines. He assigns timelines that he believes have about a 50% probability of being achieved. I think that’s actually a really smart way to think about it. And that means that about 50% of the time, you’re going to miss the target. But that’s okay, because you want that level of tension and flexibility in the system. You still have to be aiming at something. If you don’t put a time box around iteration, if you don’t set launch dates, product development can drag on forever. For example, we have a major trade show every fall, and we always try to have products ready for that event. That creates a really effective natural time box for us. And if your business doesn’t already have natural time boxes, then as CEO, you need to create them. Yeah.  Otherwise, iteration, product development, and even sales initiatives can lose momentum. Sales naturally has monthly, quarterly, and annual cycles. But in engineering especially, having that time box is really important. Yeah. And what I read about Jensen Huang is that one of the innovations he introduced was creating two overlapping time boxes. So instead of having just a single one-year cycle, he created two teams working on separate one-year cycles that were staggered by six months. That way, they could effectively iterate on the product twice as fast. I thought that was amazing. And I also had a client—an engineering software company—whose challenge was that they couldn’t launch a product for three years because they were such perfectionists. So we talked about putting a stake in the ground and committing to a release every year. Maybe the scope would have to change, maybe they’d have to narrow it or simplify it, but the release date itself would become a forcing function. And once they did that, their product suddenly started gaining much more traction. That’s a fantastic point. Yeah. I was advising one of the companies we’re invested in. I was actually on a call with them yesterday, and they’re starting to run out of time a little bit, right? And that was literally the conversation we had. “Okay, we had this wish list. We had this dream product-development idea. Now what can we realistically get done in three months?” So we started stripping out everything that couldn’t be completed in that timeframe, and those items will move into the next iteration cycle. But I think it’s super critical. You’ve got to put a stake in the ground and force things through. Yeah. Constraints create creativity. Yeah. that’s fantastic. So, penultimate question—I have one more just to wrap things up. If you had a magic wand, what would be the one thing you’d want to fix inside your company over the next 12 months? I think we have a lot of relatively new and young salespeople. We operate in a very technical field, and trying to get them to really understand the application space from a technical perspective is difficult. And when you’re selling to engineers, they can immediately tell if you don’t know what you’re talking about. So the challenge becomes: How do you compress 20 years of experience into a brand-new sales or business development person in just a few months? Trying to accelerate that learning curve is probably one of our biggest challenges. We’re trying to use AI to help visualize the kinds of equipment our products go on.  And frankly, even after doing this for years, I still run into things I don’t fully understand. But I have enough experience that I can have a relatively technical conversation, understand the constraints, and work through the problem set. But compressing that knowledge into a faster training process—that’s definitely been hard. I’m also opening a sales and engineering office down in Austin, so I’ll be moving there in June. The plan is to build out another R&D facility there. That’s one of my major time boxes over the next 12 months—getting that operation fully up and running. But from a more holistic perspective, I think really solving that sales knowledge-transfer problem is critical. And on one of our product lines, honestly, I’d love ideas from listeners.  We have an IoT condition-monitoring product, and we’ve been very successful at selling pilot programs. What we’ve found, though, is that it’s been much harder than expected to convert those pilots into broader expansion deployments. So we’re asking ourselves: Are we making the barrier to entry for the pilots too low? Are we attracting the wrong type of customer—people who don’t actually have the authority to make a larger purchase decision? Or are we missing something in the sales process that would better position the expansion after the pilot succeeds? Those are a few of the areas we’re really trying to figure out right now. Yeah. Love it. That’s fascinating. So if the listeners would like to learn more about Grace Technologies—or maybe you spark something in their mind and they want to reach out and communicate to you, or have access to someone in your company to answer the questions about the products. Maybe they want to have more safety and more productivity with their electrical safety equipment. Where should they go, and where can they find you? Yeah. You can reach me at [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn. I think it’s Allen-Drew is my handle, but Drew Allen on LinkedIn. I love hearing from people. I really enjoy advising startups, especially in the industrial electrical space. If you have a product idea or you’ve got a startup, I do a lot of advisory work, and we’ve invested in a number of startups as well. We’re really passionate about having more innovation in the industrial world. I believe that the reindustrialization of America is super important, and I’m a big proponent, and so love to support companies that are doing cool things in our space.  Oh, that’s fantastic. So if you’re listening to this and you have a startup in the engineering space, then definitely this is your opportunity to get mentored by Drew, and maybe to get opportunities that you don’t have yourself. So reach out to him. And if you just enjoyed this conversation with an entrepreneur who’s innovating fast and who is working from first principles and time boxes and and leveraging constraints, then definitely stay tuned on this channel because I have more wonderful guests coming on every week. So thank you Drew for coming, CEO of Grace Technologies, the leading innovator of electrical safety products and predictive maintenance solutions. So thanks for sharing your wisdom and thanks for listening. Important Links: Drew’s LinkedIn Drew’s website Drew’s email: [email protected]

https://youtu.be/aQyHwoGfy50 Max Kryzhanovskiy, President and CEO of MOS Creative, is driven by a desire to set an example for his children and show what’s possible through technology, persistence, and innovation. As the leader of a tech-forward agency that builds websites, apps, and AI-enabled platforms, Max helps businesses move from idea to execution by creating digital products that solve real problems and scale over time. We explore Max’s MVP Framework — Define the problem, Determine target market, Prototype the product, Build the MVP, Test and obtain feedback, Iterate — a practical approach for transforming ideas into scalable digital products. Max explains why founders should avoid overbuilding too early, how AI is accelerating prototyping and development, and why businesses must balance automation with authentic human connection. — Drive Growth Using AI Agents with Max Kryzhanovskiy  Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Max Kryzhanovskiy, the President and CEO of MOS Creative, a company that builds websites and apps that drive growth. They were also the first company in Baltimore to launch a mobile site. Welcome to the show, Max.  Thank you for having me.  Let me ask you this—what is a mobile site? Is it a mobile phone site, or is it something different?  I mean, now it probably doesn’t matter as much anymore, because everybody obviously has a website that works on a smartphone screen—or a responsive websites. But before mobile websites came out—or I should say, when smartphones first came out—we had to adjust for smaller screens. We were all used to bigger screens on a computer, and then once we started having different screen sizes come out before responsive, we were the first company to have a mobile website in Baltimore. And we actually built a web application specifically to create them ourselves, and then also went to market to offer it to other clients as well. So a mobile website is just like it sounds, a website that’s specifically designed for mobile.  That’s cool. So it sounds like you are very much a tech-forward company, and you are at the edge of technology. And as we were logging on, you said that you would be recording this on your phone because you actually have AI agents running on your computer. Does that mean you have AI agents as part of your team? What kind of agents do you have? Is it still an experiment, or is it already in execution mode?  It’s in execution mode, but we’re always experimenting. We like to think we’re ahead of the curve, but with AI, we’re all experimenting to a certain extent, right? Something new comes out, we try it out, see if it works, and see how it can be applied to your business—what kind of outcomes it can give you. So I’m all about AI. It’s amazing. It’s an amazing tool. But I think AI is becoming a lot more than we thought it was going to be—and also a lot less at the same time. Meaning, when AI launched—for example, when ChatGPT came out to the broader market—I mean, obviously AI had been around for a while—but when ChatGPT launched its chatbot platform publicly, we were amazed by how much work it could done. So it went from zero to a hundred. “Oh my God, it can do all of this,” right? But now, for example, with the more recent models—4.5, 5.0—the improvements are much smaller.  It’s not a hundred percent or a thousand percent better anymore. Now it’s maybe five or ten percent better, but the cost keeps increasing. I just read somewhere that even Claude said Claude Code won’t be included much longer as part of the regular plan. So now it’s only in the $200 higher-tier plan, plus you have to buy additional tokens. So it’s really becoming more like, “Hey, yeah, we can do this for you—but you’re going to end up paying something similar to what you’d pay a team.” At first, it was more like, “Let’s get into the market. Let’s get a lot of people interested.” But now, obviously, they have a lot of money behind them—investors, VCs, public market pressure—and they need to bring in revenue. So I think things are going to change very soon. AI is going to become a lot more expensive because the infrastructure and resources it requires are expensive. So eventually, those costs are going to be passed on to users. Yeah. And I noticed that ChatGPT started to do some ads as well. They’re probably going to go that direction, and who knows what that’s going to bring. But that’s not our topic today. Today, it’s about something else—frameworks. But before I go to the framework question, I’d like to ask you: what is your personal “why,” and how are you manifesting it at MOS Creative? Well, I’m a family man, so my “why” is to see my kids grow up to be amazing human beings—and hopefully to show them a great example of what can be accomplished in sports and in business. So my “why” is also to be a good person. Success can mean different things to different people, but for me, I love the hunt to get to a certain level of success. And then it’s kind of like—us as humans, or at least a lot of people—we reach a certain level of success and we don’t really celebrate it. It’s more like, “Okay, let’s get to the next level.” So my “why” is to show my kids that anything is possible if they really want it. Why I got into this space—it was exciting. You could see how quickly technology was moving, the kind of innovation that was possible, and it excited me. So that was one of the main reasons I got into technology. But the other reason was because I was in a different business, and we created technology that helped us grow. And I thought, “Oh wow, this is a completely different way to scale a business.” So technology became the direction we took. Yeah, I love it. I think inspiring our kids is a huge driver for many people, and it totally makes sense. Technology is exciting. I’d like to switch gears here and ask my other common question on this podcast, because this podcast is all about frameworks—business frameworks—how we can help listeners understand things, simplify things, and see different perspectives. So my question to you is: what is your favorite shortcut to success—or framework? And I don’t mean “shortcut” in a negative sense, but rather a framework that allows you to understand things differently, make decisions, serve clients, and create valuable outcomes. Whatever it is—something that has worked for you, and is simple enough that you can explain it to listeners in three to five steps. Well, I believe in always being open to learning. It’s not specifically a framework—it’s more of a mindset: understanding that we don’t know everything, especially now, with how quickly things are changing. I mean, a lot of people say that AI is going to make humanity a little dumber than we are. But actually, I learn a lot from it as well. If I’m doing something and I think, “Oh, this is a great way to speed up the process,” then I use it. So let’s say, for example, a client asks me a question. There are different ways to approach it. If I already know the answer because I have specific experience with it, I can answer it, right? That doesn’t always mean the answer is going to be correct.  I can research it, or I can get an answer from AI and then verify it through research and experience to make sure the outcome is actually what it says it’s going to be. The learning part is making sure you’re always open to figuring out whether the steps you’ve taken before are the right steps—or whether they can be optimized. I’m a big believer that everything can be optimized, especially now. There’s almost no question that can’t be answered quickly. Maybe there are some deep philosophical questions—but for the most part, especially in business, work, or even life, you can get answers very quickly. For example, I had a kind of vertigo-type feeling, and I was wondering what exactly it was. I entered specific prompts into ChatGPT, and it actually broke things down really well for me. Then I went to a doctor. First, I checked with a friend of mine who’s a nurse, and she said, “This is probably what you have.” And she started asking me questions. I thought, “This is funny—these are exactly the same questions ChatGPT asked me.” And her husband said, “You know what? That proves that medicine is basically a set of questions. As you answer one question, it leads to the next.” So it’s like a dynamic questionnaire. And by the time I got to the doctor, I already had a good idea of what it potentially was, and I knew what questions to ask so I could understand the next steps to fix it.  Yeah.  So what I’m saying is there’s always a way to improve. I’m a big believer in that. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, because in this age, everything moves very fast—regardless of the business you’re in. That’s true. It’s interesting that you say ChatGPT can answer any question. It’s true—sometimes it hallucinates, but it still gives you an answer. Yesterday, I went to a presentation, and the president of Great Game of Business talked about this. He said, “Today, the answer is everywhere. So it’s not a lack of answers—it’s a lack of good questions.” So what we really have to come up with are good questions to ask. That’s the bigger challenge now—not finding the answer. And I thought that was a really interesting insight. I agree. It’s the same thing, right? It relates to prompts as well. If you have a good prompt, you’re going to get a better answer. If you ask a good question, you’re going to get a better answer. So yeah, I agree with you. Listen, AI isn’t a complete solution, but it’s a huge help—especially if you’re just starting out. Yeah. So what drives your business? Is it technology? Is it trends? Is it something else? What drives it?  It’s kind of a mix between technology and growth marketing. What that means is we work with clients all the way from ideation to scaling. We’ve also had several clients successfully exit. So clients come to us and say, “I have an idea. How do I take it to the next step?” Obviously now, there are AI builders and AI platforms that can help take a high-level idea and turn it into some kind of prototype—or at least a basic flow. But ideally, we work with clients from the idea stage all the way through design, development, launch, and driving traffic to the product. So the perfect client fits into that category. They might have an idea for a web application, mobile application, or software product.  They come to us and they’re not really sure what the next steps are—or they’ve done some research For example, I spoke to a prospective client the other day. She worked with a developer who tried to build the product using an AI builder. For some reason, something didn’t work out, and now she’s back at square one. So now we have to review what she actually wants to build, determine the best approach, and figure out what phase one, phase two, and phase three should look like. So that’s kind of how we work. For our clients, it’s not just, “Let us develop it for you.” It’s also about the creative side, the messaging, and the user experience. It’s about making sure that when someone downloads the app—or visits the website or web application—it serves its purpose. It’s a problem-solving product. It needs to solve a problem so users keep coming back again and again. And then we help grow it to new audiences. That’s when it starts to scale and become exponential. Does that make sense? Yeah. So I’m wondering, you work from the idea forward, or you work from the outcome backwards? What’s the approach?  That’s a great question. Not everyone knows the outcome right away. When someone has both an idea and a clear outcome, it works better, right? Because then you can help them get to that outcome. But overall, the outcomes are usually very high-level. You know: “I want to build this web application or software because I’m targeting this audience.” Okay—but what does that really mean? What problem are you solving? To be honest with you, ninety percent of people don’t really know what problems they should be solving at the initial stage. So, talking about frameworks, we work with them to define which problems they should solve first. Because most startups—or even profitable companies trying to add new technology into their workflow or business—often don’t know what one or two problems they should solve for the MVP before going all in. Yeah. Okay, so step one is to define the problem. What’s step two?  Make sure you have the right audience for that problem. That’s a big issue. A lot of times, people try to serve everyone. You don’t want to go too broad, and you don’t want to go too narrow. If you go too narrow, you’re going to hit a ceiling before you even go to market.  So you determine the audience for the problem you’re trying to solve, right?  Correct.  And then what’s the next step?  Once you determine the audience and define the problem, the next best step is to create some kind of prototype and actually take it to that audience to test for product-market fit. Meaning: get feedback. Again, it doesn’t have to be a fully working product. But go to that audience and get feedback like: “Yes, this solves my problem,” and “Yes, I would pay for it.” Or even better—for them to actually exchange some money to join a waitlist or gain access to an early version of the product, so they can test it and provide feedback. That’s the best-case scenario. Because once you have that input, it becomes much easier to make adjustments. It doesn’t matter whether those adjustments are in the design or in the actual working product—you’re refining it for that niche audience. Yeah, that makes sense. So you design the prototype or minimum viable product, then you test it and get feedback. Then what do you do?  Well, I want to clarify something. Designing a prototype and having a minimum viable product can be two separate things.  Okay.  You can design a prototype. Again, it can be designed in Figma, using an AI builder, or even just as a workflow or user flow. Obviously now, things are a little different because you can build prototypes much faster. That doesn’t mean they’re going to be production-ready. But a minimum viable product is usually focused on solving one or two specific problems for that market. It’s a problem-solving product that actually works—meaning it’s much closer to being production-ready. Yeah.  So those are two separate things. There’s a very big difference between them.  Yeah, because now you have vibe coding, and with tools like Lovable—or whatever platform you’re using—you can create a prototype quickly. But it’s not necessarily going to work, and then you still have to build the actual working product. Correct. Yes, I agree. Then you test it, expose it to the target market, and gather feedback. And then what do you do? Do you iterate? What’s the next step? You iterate, yeah. So at that point, ideally, you have product-market fit, you’ve received great feedback from users, and—best-case scenario—they’ve even paid you some money. Then you either expand on what has already been built, or you go all in: invest more money into it and start building a production-ready product. And once you have that, you may realize that you also need to improve the user interface. That happens a lot—especially if you vibe-coded it. The output usually isn’t the best when it comes to user interface design or user experience. So you may need to redesign the interface, properly develop it, and then take a production-ready application to market. And then it goes back into the cycle of iteration. Meaning, you keep gathering feedback. This is why I often recommend not adding too many features in the beginning. Focus on one or two core features—one or two main user flows within those features. That’s it. Forget about everything else. Yeah. And then you can add features later.  You can always add features later. Most of the time, if you add too many features in the beginning, you’ll probably end up cutting at least 40% of them because people just won’t use them. And I’m not talking about core features like sign-up, sign-in, forgot password, onboarding, authentication—that kind of stuff. Obviously, you need those. But you still have to figure out who your audience is. Do you need SMS login? Do you need email login? Do you need both? Do you need social logins? You have to make sure you clearly understand your audience—but you don’t need everything all at once. You may eventually need all of it, but not in the beginning. Yeah, that’s true. So you’ve worked with other businesses, which means you’re primarily a business-to-business agency, right?  Business-to-business, business-to-government—we’ve also built business-to-consumer apps as well. But usually, our client is a business-to-business.  Yeah. So here’s my question: In B2B, how do you gain people’s trust so they’ll even engage with your product? I understand there’s a funnel—but how do you get businesses into the top of that funnel? How do you create that initial trust so they engage? What does it take? Many things. Content helps, obviously. Creating content like this, creating videos—I create videos on a regular basis talking about what’s out there, what’s possible, what’s good, what’s bad. Kind of the everyday life of an agency, and the type of work we do. We also post projects on different directories and platforms. A lot of previous clients come back to us, and we get many client referrals. We rank pretty well for SEO and AEO, so a lot of people find us through ChatGPT. Especially because that’s one of the services we offer. People find us when searching for things like “best app developers” or “best website designers” in our specific area. We’re not targeting nationwide rankings—that’s much harder and a much longer-term strategy. But in our area—Maryland, Howard County, Columbia—we rank very high.  And what does it take to rank high in AEO—in AI search?  It’s the same approach we take to rank in Google. Google obviously owns Gemini, and now there’s Google AI Overview. It’s really a real-estate play. If you have a website that’s properly structured for Google—with some adjustments for semantic search, like adding question-and-answer content to every page, especially product and service pages—you improve your chances significantly. You also need a properly configured robots.txt file with clear descriptions, so when search crawlers reach your site, they can immediately understand the structure and know where to go. When you see sources cited in AI search, that’s exactly what those systems are reading from your site.  You also need the right technical setup: Your website has to be fast. You need proper H1, H2, and H3 structure across the site. So overall, it’s about having a properly structured website. If you follow strong SEO fundamentals, with additional improvements specifically for AEO and GEO—because now it’s not just SEO anymore, it’s SEO, AEO, and GEO—you’ll usually appear in ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI search tools. And your Google Business Profile and Google Maps listing are properly optimized—which has changed a lot recently on Google’s side as well—you’ll also show up more often in local AI search results. So isn’t it true that AI search looks for different kinds of signals than traditional SEO? I’ve heard, for example, that backlinks are less important in AI search than they used to be. They’re not as important for AI search, but backlinks still carry a lot of weight. Again, you have to think about this as two separate systems, right? There’s Google Search—with Google AI Overview and featured snippets—and then there’s Google Maps. You don’t need a website just to appear on Google Maps. You mainly need a properly optimized Google Business Profile. And you can still show up in AI search that way. Having a website does help, because it sends another signal to Google, but it’s not as critical. The most important thing—and I’ll answer your question for both cases—is consistency and structure. For Google Maps, if you have a properly maintained Google Business Profile with constant updates—blog posts, videos, photos, and business updates—that teaches Google AI what your business does. So you want updated product pages, images, descriptions, and location details if you’re location-based.  All of that educates Google, which helps you rank higher on Google Maps. And like I said, Google Maps ranks very well in AI search. Now, if you also have a website, that’s even better. And on your website, it helps to embed your Google Map as well, because that reinforces another signal from Google Maps. For example, some of our clients have multiple locations, so we include Google Maps with all their locations on the site—and that helps. Then you also create location pages, just like you create product pages or service pages. Google—and AI systems in general—don’t really rank entire websites. They rank individual pages. That’s why top-of-funnel content is usually blog posts or educational content answering someone’s problem. Then that written or video content leads users to a service page or product page. That’s basically how it works. Does that make sense? Yeah, that’s very interesting. So if I want to increase my AI ranking… one of my clients told me that if your clients post about you on Reddit, that can be really powerful and help drive AI search visibility. Is that true? Reddit and Quora are very powerful. Very powerful. They rank very high. Listen, I’ll give you a simple example that anybody can use. If you go to Quora or Reddit and look at the questions people are asking—for example, let’s say you search for “app development”—you can filter by questions and literally see what people are asking. If you answer those questions in a natural way, related to your service or product, and include a backlink—not in a salesy way, but naturally—that’s a very strong backlink. And speaking of backlinks: they’re still relevant. Maybe they don’t carry as much weight as they used to, but they’re still very valuable.  Because when Google or AI systems evaluate content—and when you search in ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini and see sources—those sources are essentially citations and backlinks. So if your website has strong citations and is properly structured, it absolutely helps you get discovered. You just need to make sure everything is set up correctly so Google—or any other search system—understands what your content means. But yes, to answer your question directly: Reddit and Quora are excellent for visibility because they’re high-authority websites with massive traffic and very strong domain ratings. Yeah. That’s great. So Google Maps, Reddit, Quora, they are big drivers. That’s great.  Huge drivers. I mean, listen, there are many others—but social media has become huge over the past two years. Before, if you made a Reel on Instagram, you wouldn’t be able to find it through Google search. But in the past couple of years, they opened that up. Why do you think they did that? Because they understand the value of content. Just like YouTube—where you can find videos through specific keywords—they want Instagram videos to be discoverable through Google Search and AI search. And then those searches lead people back to their platform. If someone who isn’t already an Instagram user discovers content they like—a creator they like—they may sign up for Instagram because of it. So yeah, all of this ties back to backlinks and discoverability. It’s really about how you use those backlinks. I mean, YouTube has been a huge driver for people looking for answers or trying to learn almost anything. So yeah, that’s kind of how it works. It’s one big spiderweb. Yes. It’s interesting. So basically, the more content I have and the more content other people post about me in credible sites, whether it’s Reddit, Quora, YouTube, social media, and they all point to my website or web pages, then the more it’s going to be discoverable by AI. That’s kinda makes sense.  You’re definitely going to become more discoverable. But again, if it’s just “Steve Preda,” that alone may not be valuable unless someone is specifically searching for your name. Now, if people are responding to or discussing how to apply a specific framework—and someone is searching for that framework that relates to your content—then it becomes relevant. Does that make sense?  Yeah. Yeah, understand. Yeah. Absolutely. Let me ask you this. If you could have a magic wand and fix one thing inside your company in the next 12 months, what would that be?  That’s an interesting question. I don’t know. I think I’d be very interested in applying more AI agents so they can help drive the business and support more growth. Overall, I just want healthy growth—making sure we’re happy with the work we’re doing, and that our clients are happy with the work we deliver. Because that leads to better outcomes, longer-term relationships, and healthier growth for the company. I mean, my ultimate goal at some point is probably to grow the company and eventually sell it. If we’re happy with what we’re doing, and our clients are happy with the work we’re delivering, I think that growth will happen organically. Yeah. And what do you need to make the company sellable in your perspective?  Having strong, scalable systems—and AI is going to help with a lot of that.  So do you believe that a company with only AI employees—at the extreme—could still become a very valuable company? No, I’m not saying we should rely only on AI, and I’m definitely not planning to let go of any employees. What I’m saying is that AI can help with certain smaller tasks that sometimes get missed or forgotten. That’s a perfect fit for AI. For example, even during conversations—if a project manager is handling several clients at once—we usually need updates on what was discussed. Yes, AI can record the conversation, but more importantly: what are the actionable next steps? And from those action items, what has already been completed, and what still needs to be done? Those are the kinds of things AI agents can help with—tasks that don’t necessarily require a human. That way, time isn’t wasted and can instead be used more effectively to make sure things are getting done and that we’re reaching the outcome you mentioned earlier. What is your opinion about controlling AI agents? What is the level of risk? Not just about someone maybe doing a prompt injection and kind of hijacking your agents, but losing control of the agents in terms of complexity. So do you see a risk there that someone could kind of unleash these agents and somehow not be able to control them, or the quality of their work? Could they not control that? Or something changes and the agents get impacted—maybe a software update or something like that? Is this a thing, or is that not a concern? I think there should definitely always be guardrails. For example, right now we’re building a platform with AI to gather RFPs, review them, score them, and actually create outputs—like the structure of the RFP. But before they get submitted, an actual person reviews them. I think there should always be final approval by a human—unless it becomes such a perfect system. I mean, it’s software, right? At a certain point, can something go wrong? Yes. Especially with updates—unless you own the full process from beginning to end. Yeah, I think there’s always a risk, but there’s always a risk with software.  There should definitely be some guardrails, no doubt about it. I don’t think it should be the last step before a human approves it and actually—for this RFP example—submits the response to whatever platform. I think a human should always review and approve it to make sure everything is working properly. But I think you can save a lot of time. For example, instead of us doing two or three RFPs a month, we can do ten or fifteen. I mean, the quality isn’t really changing. It’s structure. It’s answering what they’re asking for. So if it fits the criteria we’re looking for, we still spend time reviewing it. I mean, we got an RFP the other day that was 150 pages. It would probably take two days just to read it. And at a certain point, you’re like, “You know what? This isn’t a good fit.” So it saves time. It just creates more efficiency. But there should definitely be guardrails and structure for sure, and a human should be involved in the loop. That I agree with you on. Okay. It’s a big topic. One of the thoughts is that at some point AI is talking to AI. Like in hiring—you see these big recruiting companies using AI to filter resumes, and then applicants use AI to write resumes that fit what the filters are looking for. And at some point, the authenticity or credibility of those resumes begins to fade because it’s all prearranged. So then the whole purpose of filtering employees starts to diminish. Do you think this kind of thing might happen with RFPs too? Maybe. Very possible. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not happening already. Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely very possible. There are already several platforms that find RFPs. They work a little differently. We’re building specifically for our own purpose. I do want to document the process to kind of show, “Hey, here’s what can be done.” But yeah, it’s very possible, for sure. Listen, if you’re relying on a regular process to get a job, then you’re probably not going to get the job. There are a lot more people looking for work right now. I don’t know if you heard about Microsoft—and I think Tesla too—but companies are letting people go left and right. Microsoft is offering long-term employees buyouts. And by long-term employees, I mean people who are probably older and maybe not as knowledgeable or experienced with AI.  It’s like, “Hey, let us buy you out so you can retire a little earlier.” So this is happening. If you’re going through the same regular hiring process as everyone else, you’re competing against 500 or 1,000 other people for the same job. Obviously, it’s an employer’s market right now, not an employee’s market. If you’re trying to get a job, it shouldn’t just be through the regular process. It should be through people you know. Networking is going to have even more value. Personal connections matter, and people knowing, “Hey, this person actually spoke to me the right way.” You should also know how to use AI, because that’s going to give you an edge in getting a job. But actually speaking to someone should happen through networking and connections. Yeah, that’s my feeling too—that human interaction is actually going to increase dramatically in value. Because authenticity… that’s really the only way to verify authenticity: being face-to-face with someone, a real physical person. That’s fascinating. Yeah. But I’ll tell you—like I said, I post videos on a regular basis. My mom asked me the other day, “Max, are you using AI, or is it really you?” I said, “No, it’s really me. It’s not AI.” So it’s funny because AI is getting so good that you’re not always sure what’s real anymore. And even with RFPs—it’s not just about submitting proposals or resumes. Personal and human connection is going to become more valuable than ever. If I personally knew every buyer putting out an RFP, I’d rather talk to them directly, one hundred percent. Because it becomes a completely different process.  Yeah, that’s spot on. Love it. So, great information. I love the framework: define the problem, determine the audience, create a prototype, build the MVP, test it, and then iterate. That’s how you build a digital product—whether it’s a website or an app. So if you’re out there looking for a solution, Max Kryzhanovskiy and MOS Creative may have the solution for you. So if people would like to connect with Max Kryzhanovskiy and MOS Creative, where can they reach you? People can reach us through our website: www.moscreative.com. They can also find me on LinkedIn under Max Kryzhanovskiy or MOS Creative. They can fill out a form on our website or email us at [email protected]. Fantastic. So if you want an AI-driven platform, definitely reach out to Max. So Max, thank you for coming and sharing your ideas. And I love that you have such a strong vision for AI and that you’re actively experimenting within your company, which means your clients will benefit from that as well. And if you enjoyed this conversation, then stay tuned, because every week a successful entrepreneur comes on the show and shares their ideas and frameworks. So thanks for coming, Max—and thank you for listening. Thank you. Important Links: Max’s LinkedIn Max’s website Max’s email: [email protected]

https://youtu.be/oPA1dSUab9Y James Green, CEO of Cognome and former Pixar executive under Steve Jobs, is driven by a deep curiosity and a pull toward ideas that can create massive impact. From early internet ventures to mobile innovation and now AI in healthcare, James has consistently aligned himself with transformative trends. In this episode, he shares hard-earned lessons from scaling multiple companies and introduces a simple but powerful framework that explains why many startups struggle to grow beyond their early stages. We explore James’ 3-Stage StartUp Growth Framework: Whiteboard Phase, PowerPoint Phase, PDF Phase—a model that captures how organizations must evolve as they scale. He explains why early-stage chaos is necessary, how structure begins to take shape in the middle phase, and why standardization becomes critical at scale. James also dives into the toughest leadership challenges—especially making difficult people decisions—and shares why aligning with strong market tailwinds and creating “pull” from customers is essential for sustainable growth. — Grow Your Business in 3 Phases with James Green  Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint, and my guest today is James Green, the CEO of Cognome, a health tech company that is solving the problem of how to manage different AI models that are being deployed in healthcare today. Earlier, he worked as a vice president at Disney. He worked directly under Steve Jobs at Pixar, and he has had at least six other CEO roles in ed tech, media, and healthcare. Welcome to the show, James.  Thank you very much. Delighted to be here.  Yeah, super excited. And Steve Jobs—you don’t often have people that have known Steve Jobs now even Tim Cook has resigned. Yeah. Yeah.  And it’s 13 years, I guess. Steve Jobs is being gone. So what was it like working with the man? Was he a difficult boss?  First of all, most of the things you hear about him are accurate. So it’s not one of these things where you hear a lot about Steve Jobs and actually the man was totally different. So most of what you’ve heard is true. And I’ll give you one short anecdote sort of before we go on, which is something that I always found incredibly impressive about him. When you work for him, if you disagreed and said, “Hey, you want it to be white, I want it to be black,” without hesitation he would say something like, “Here are seven reasons why you’re wrong.” First of all, before we go into those seven reasons, what’s impressive about that is he had a number and he stuck with it.  And it happened in seconds and he didn’t know before. So if you think about that, it’s hard to keep all of that in your head. So the guy was just super, super clever. And then he would list them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and you’d be out. Like it’s done. It’s like, “Oh, damn.” So yeah, he was unbelievable human, and it was an honor and a privilege to have worked with him.  Yeah, well, that’s awesome—to talk to you, having worked with him and having some direct experience. Definitely not an easy boss when he has seven guns to shoot you down. Yeah.  But there’s a lot to learn. I mean, you learn the most from these kinds of bosses.  Yeah.  So let’s get into the question—which is normally the first one, but this is the exception: What is your personal “why,” and how are you manifesting it in Cognome, James, and in your previous jobs?  Yeah, I’ve thought about this a lot. I’ve tried to come up with what my “why” really is. And what I’ve come up with is I can’t help myself. And I’m going to go through examples of it and what I mean by that. I pay a lot of attention to the world. I pay a lot of attention to what’s going on. I get very seduced by new ideas and new things and things that I think will have big impact. And once I start thinking about it and thinking about what that impact is, I cannot help but start getting involved in it. That sounds very abstract, so I want to try to make that super concrete. So when I was working at Pixar, for example—the internet was being born. This is the late ’90s.  I couldn’t help myself. I started an ad-serving company called Sabela Media. That company got sold to 24/7, then to DoubleClick, which later got acquired by Google. So the internet was there. I had to do it. I had to have something in it. Then after that, I was thinking about what to do next—and mobile phones, if you remember, were still flip phones, mostly used for texting. The second company that I did was putting content onto those phones. It just seemed obvious to me—I couldn’t help myself. I saw the opportunity, and it clearly worked. That company was called GiantBear. It was sold to BlueCora. After that, there was this crazy innovation going on in television of all things with effects. Now, again, we take these things for granted. We’ve got AI creating things all day long, back in the day, we didn’t. So I ran a company called PVI, which is famous for inventing the first-down line you see in football games. So that was kind of the very first virtual object you saw in live things. Again, it may seem like, oh, that’s an everyday event, but back in the day it was totally not. And I think it opened up football to many more people—you no longer needed the chain crew to understand what was going on. And then if we fast-forward—there are a few things in the middle, but I don’t want to bore everyone—to where I am today at Cognome. I even wore my little Cognome shirt so I could advertise it throughout the podcast.  Yeah, that’s smart. I have to do that.  AI is clearly the big thing today. But for me, intellectually, it’s not enough to just say, “I’ll do an AI model,” like everyone else. For me, healthcare is one of the areas that AI will have the biggest impact with. Healthcare for a lot of reasons has been a laggard technologically for specific things about how they store data, so it hasn’t been adopted things like multi-tenant SaaS, because the data has to stay local and things like this. So AI will revolutionize it. And AI will make decisions about whether people live or die, right? So it’s really consequential. And for me, the question is—how are you going to manage that? That’s a super interesting intellectual opportunity. And so Cognome ExplainerAI. So my “why” is: what’s going on, what’s interesting, and what’s changing the world? And the beautiful thing about that is you get a “rising tide lifts all boats” situation. You’re not fighting against a trend—you’re moving with it. The whole world is rising, and you can be part of that. That’s sort of my “why”.  Yeah, so basically—in other words—it’s about coming up with revolutionary ideas and implementing them?  Yeah. I mean, I want to make an impact in the world. I want to make a difference. I’m not a very religious person—in fact, not at all. So I believe our time here is limited. I want to make a difference. I want to be part of what’s going on. So yeah, that’s my “why.”  Yeah—tapping into trends. Well, that’s great. I mean, don’t know if it’s a “why,” but making the most of the opportunity to be here and maximizing impact—that’s a huge one. Love it.  Yeah.  STEVE PREDA: So let me segue to the next one. This podcast is all about frameworks. So the objective here is what’s a shortcut that you can teach the listeners that they can implement in their business? So what is your “shortcut” to success? Maybe “shortcut” is the wrong word. What is the framework you use to interpret the world, understand it better, and make decisions?  Yeah, this is another thing I struggled with a little bit. So I listened to your questions, and I tried to make my answers really personal. I’m trying to be authentic—this is what I actually do all the time, as opposed to this is what I’m doing at the moment, or this is what I did for a second. The truth is, frameworks come and go. There are a lot of frameworks out there. I’ve probably used 15 different sales frameworks. I mostly operate in the B2B world, so there are lots of frameworks you can use—for example, in sales. But I tried to think of something more consistent—a framework I’ve used across every company I’ve worked with, all the time. And the one I always come back to is about growth. So what I want to talk about is: how do you manage a company that’s going through growth? Because it’s not obvious—and I do have a framework for it. And unlike some of the other frameworks—like something McKinsey, Bain, or someone’s invented this framework and you are adopting it. This is really pretty personal to me, and I’ve adopted various little things about it. There are these two ideas that live in parallel. One is in the sales process, where I think companies go through this idea of, I call it a Whiteboard sales process, a PowerPoint sales process. And forgive me for being a little dated, but a PDF style process, something you can’t change. And at the same time, they go through these stages where you are a small company, a medium-sized company, and a larger company. Think of it roughly as fewer than 12 people, then 10 to 75, and then 75 to 100 and beyond. And I’ve managed all of these sizes. And what’s interesting about these is that if you don’t have a framework to manage yourself through these stages, you’re going to fail. You as a leader will be replaced. I personally have replaced leaders who cannot go through those kinds of things. One of the things I’ve done in my career is act as a sort of hired gun for VCs. They make an investment, and then they bring me in to replace the founder if they haven’t been able to navigate that growth stage. And so the framework works like this. When you’re starting a company—what I call the “whiteboard” phase—what you’re selling is a little different every time. And the consequence of that inside the company is everyone is doing everything. It’s a little chaotic and it’s okay. Like, less than 10 people, it’s okay. It’s okay that the finance person is doing a little selling and the engineer is doing a little marketing. It’s okay, because you only have 10 people maybe. When you go into a client, you are sort of inventing yourself as you go. There’s always that first client where you’re saying, “I think we should do this. This is how I’m going to help you make money, save money, or do something better.”  You’re figuring things out. Yeah.  And maybe there’s some pivots in there. Maybe there isn’t. Not everyone gets to be Google and get it right the first time, but you’ll see. In the end, you start getting things right. And then you go through what I call the PowerPoint phase. So what this is—you now have more than 10 people. It kind of isn’t okay that the sales guy is doing finance, or the engineer is doing marketing. You actually have people in their swim lanes. I call it the PowerPoint because you’ve built PowerPoints, so you’ve got slides that you can use and it’s replicable. Guess what? You tend to tweak them for each client. You are still—you know what—the way you’re selling to… I don’t want to make a stupid example up—Home Depot is still a little different than selling to Lowe’s. You know that—even though it should be exactly the same—it’s still a little different. You’re tweaking it each time. You’re moving slide three to slide seven. Sometimes you don’t show slide 10. You’re still tweaking it.  Yeah. I relate to that.  And your organization is structured, but not completely rigid. Everyone still knows each other in the company. It’s up to maybe 50—I think it maxes out at about 75 people. But every single person in the company knows each other. They’re all collaborating. You don’t need a lot of structure inside the company because there’s sort of culture in there to hold everyone together, right? And then you get to the third stage, which I call the PDF stage—where you’ve figured it out. You sell the same thing. Maybe you have three PDFs because you’re selling in three verticals. But you go into a client—this is the thing—and it never changes. Slide one is always slide one. Slide two is always slide two. Slide three is always slide three. And you have maybe a hundred people in your company. And by the way, now you have levels. So not everybody knows everybody. And as a CEO, I have my lieutenants. My lieutenants have people working for them. And I sort of feel like everyone can manage—I don’t know—five, six, seven, eight people. More than that is difficult unless the roles are not very sophisticated. So you need this management layer, which separates the CEO from the rest of the organization. So you need a lot more structure. And as you go through these three phases—and they’re really different—a tragic thing happens. It happens all the time. The person who was so helpful in the whiteboard phase, who was your go-to person, they don’t make it in the third phase because they’re a generalist. They liked the chaos. They liked being able to have their foot, and they’ll complain to you. They’ll say, “Why aren’t you listening to me?” It’s an engineer saying, “Why isn’t sales listening to me?” Dude, you’re an engineer—stick to your knitting. Like, no. And this culture goes through every single company I’ve ever run. Most of them have gone through these three phases—small, medium, and large. And one of the things I try to do with employees in these phases—and this is part of the framework—is to give them a huge amount of latitude to see if they can succeed in the phase. So, to give them the freedom—if you’re being blunt—to give them enough rope to hang themselves. And if you’re being kind, to give them the freedom to be who they are, to be the best they can be, and to support them—not control them. And so, if you are aware of this framework as you grow, and you give that latitude, and you hire smart people, then you can see which ones you keep and which ones you don’t. And honestly, the worst and hardest part of managing through growth is that selection and weeding-out process—of the people who worked in the first stage but don’t work in the last stage. So that is the only kind of framework for me that has stood the test of time. It has worked in media, worked in healthcare, and worked in various other places. Does that make sense to you? Does it resonate with you?  Absolutely. And I was just working on a chapter in my new book, and I was actually writing about this very idea—why some companies are never able to grow, because they are not able to make these decisions, these painful decisions, as you described.  Super painful—the worst. It’s the worst part. Firing people is the worst part of being a CEO. If you enjoy that, you’re a bad CEO. You want to have a positive environment, so you want to everyone have a good time. And when there’s growth, usually there’s incredible optimism and great culture. So any CEO who enjoys that process is not a good CEO. Yeah, that’s so true. This is kind of a difficult thing. You have to be ruthless to some degree.  You do. Yeah. That’s why this framework has helped me—and it’s helped me be gracious and kind to people. Let’s just call her Jane, right? A totally fictitious person. But you can go to Jane in stage three and say, “Jane, do you remember how much you loved it in the first phase?” I’m going to give you some time here. You are going to leave, but I’m going to give you some time to work on a special project. But you also need to find your next startup—because you love that environment. And I am going to put this bureaucracy in place, and you’re going to fight it until the day you die. So I can’t have you here—I just can’t. I can give you this little thing to do and you can have some weeks to go do that and give you some time, but the framework helps you be gracious and helps you make those decisions as you grow. That’s an amazing framework. This is really unique. We’ve recorded, I think, close to 400 episodes with different frameworks—and this hasn’t come up. Nothing similar has come up.  Woo-hoo.  Love it. So where are you now in your business? Which phase are you in?  I am in between the whiteboard and the PowerPoint phase. Maybe because I’m an optimist, I’m going to say I’m in the PowerPoint phase. But I know there’s still part of me that’s drawing things on the whiteboard. We have 12 people, so we’re just at the edge of growing out of that phase. I don’t have that layer in the middle. We have half a dozen clients. I suspect that by the end of this year, we’ll be fully in the PowerPoint phase. And it’ll be another 18 months after that until we get to the next stage—and that’s assuming we continue to grow. I mean, my whole raison d’être is to find these really special things, grow them, and make an impact. So let’s hope that happens. Yeah, well, you’ve had some practice in your previous six CEO positions, so I’m sure you’ll figure this out. So what drives growth in your business?  Yeah, this goes a little bit back to phase one. So I’ve picked an area that’s growing by itself. I mean, AI—there are more and more models being deployed in hospitals. Hospitals are growing. The number of models deployed in them is growing at about 2.2 times the rate of the general population. So good for me. There are federal regulations coming that say you need to control what your AI models are doing. That’s also good for me. It’s a lovely day when regulation is good for your business—it usually isn’t. But it’s not unusual in healthcare. If you look at electronic health records, that was driven by government regulation and funding. So this is a little bit like that. Federal, state, and other institutions are driving this trend. And then there are things happening inside healthcare organizations themselves that we can tap into. I always think that when you’re selling, you should have a good story. So I’m going to tell you the kind of story we use.  When we meet with a chief information officer, we tell stories like the ones I’m about to share. And this really helps us tap into that growth. Because part of growth in a B2B environment is having a strong sales team, good engagement, and solid frameworks—like: do they have budget? Are you talking to the right decision-maker? All of those kinds of frameworks, which to me are more tactical—I’ve used a lot of them. But we go in and say things like: “Have you ever experienced a situation in radiology where a new model was released and no one told you about it—and now you have to monitor it?” This is happening. And they’re like, “Oh my God—yes.” And then they tell you a story about it.  And then you say, “What about that note from CMS?”—that’s the organization that runs Medicare and Medicaid, for those not in healthcare. “Did you hear that they’re coming down to audit some of your peers?” And they’re like, “Oh my God—we just got notice that we’re being audited.” And then—how about your board? How’s your board doing? Are they coming down and saying, “What are you doing in AI?” So you try to tell these stories and then you create this tension, where they have to grow and they have to control, and then that’s where we come in. We can help all of these companies manage all of these models. What we do—we have this product called ExplainerAI. We tap into the underlying data from the electronic health record—the EHR, or medical record. We tap into the models—the front end—and the logging files behind them. And then we can tell whether the model is exhibiting drift, and how it’s performing across different areas. That could be geographic areas, or demographic areas. Is it performing the same with young men and older women? Is it performing the same over time? Is it degrading? Is it releasing personal health information when it shouldn’t? Is it hallucinating, if it’s an LLM? That’s what we do. And then we can send alerts out to people, saying, “Hey, listen, this model is making shit up right now, you need to deal with it.” And then they can talk to the vendor and handle it. So we’re in a good space. And so growth is, to some extent, this idea of a rising tide lifting all boats. I’ve picked an area that’s growing, so I can grow with it. And then part of it is being connected and having a good way of engaging with people who are buyers. And so we have these stories that we tell in our decks about how we help in these situations.  Have you had to pivot between the original idea and where you are?  Yeah, we have. And for anyone who’s listening and thinking, “Oh my God, I’m going to have to pivot,” I use Google as my favorite example of someone who just got so lucky. They were like, “We’re going to have this little thing that searches the internet,” and they never really changed—until they got so big they could do more. That is the exception, not the rule. And what’s interesting about the way we started is it’s still a core differentiator for us—we started with the ability to take data from an EHR, from a medical record, translate it, and store it in a common data model. It’s called OMOP. It’s the most common way that researchers structure this kind of data.  And we thought this technology would be widely adopted by researchers. We have contracts with people like Hopkins, Ohio State, NYU—big institutions—but it’s not big enough. It’s not going fast enough. What it does do, though, is for our ExplainerAI, it gives us the technology—it’s a moat—to connect to the source of truth, the electronic health record, so that you can get actual outcomes versus predictions. Many models cannot get the actual data out of the EHR. So they just say, “This is my prediction, this is my prediction, this is my prediction.” And over time—that’s fine, those are predictions—but how do they actually compare to what really happened?  Yeah. What actually happened? And because of where we started, we have a way of efficiently and accurately getting that information. So it is still the bedrock. But it’s definitely a pivot. And then you basically put an AI layer on top, and that’s great. And how did you know when to pivot? How do you reach that tipping point? How do you know this is the moment—you have to pull the plug on this because it’s not working?  First of all, I think on a personal level, I’m always late. So I think I could always have made this decision earlier. If I’m being self-critical at a high level. And I don’t think I have a clean answer—but I’ll tell you how I’ve done it. If you have a better way, I’d love to know. It’s about sales engagement. So you go to a hundred people, you have a hundred meetings, and you sell to two. That’s not good enough. It’s just not good enough. And those two are complaining. What you want to see in a product—and I think this is true of all great products, especially today—I use examples like Facebook and Tesla—is that products are pulled, not pushed. If you still find yourself, after nine months, pushing—and you don’t have the momentum where your product is being pulled—you’re wrong. You need your clients to be making referrals, and you need to be pulled into deals. In today’s advertising and marketing world, it’s too noisy.  Maybe back in the seventies you could do it, but now it’s just too noisy—especially in B2B. There are so many people selling to the same buyers that they need to hear about your product from others, have people around them recommending it, and pulling you in. There’s some time—and I usually take closer to a year, which is long. It would be better for me to do it in six months or even three months. I haven’t found a way to do that where you pivot if you’re just not getting traction, basically.  Yeah, okay. I love it. So what’s one thing in your company that you’re trying to figure out right now? One thing in my company that I’m trying to figure out right now is how to further ramp up sales. I’m cheating a little bit here, because I think we may already have it figured out—but leaving you with an unanswered question isn’t very helpful. So we were having—and still are, to some extent—problems getting ExplainerAI rolled out. People were interested in it, but they wouldn’t buy. So we tried to figure out why. And one of the things we found is this: For those of your listeners who may not know, healthcare is probably the largest portion of GDP in the country. Buyers are very large. We don’t always think about it this way, but if you do—everyone goes to the doctor. It affects 100% of the population. And these large institutions—a hospital is usually a multi-billion-dollar organization—and there are about 6,500 of them in the country. So we’ve got 6,500 multi-billion-dollar companies in this country. It’s crazy, right? They don’t want to buy from small companies—they want to buy from big companies. This is one of the things we found out. So we get to the finish line, they say yes—and then no one tells you the truth, right? No one says, “I’m not buying from you because you’re small.” But we ended up figuring it out through triangulation. So we’ve been building partnerships. We started with Intel. We made some of our models work on Intel CPUs, and I’m actually pretty proud of that work. For the nerds out there—we’re working on Xeon 6 chips, the Granite Rapids chips—running locally deployed LLM ensembles. Think of it as models like Qwen and LLaMA running inside their chips—what I’d call small-to-medium language models, not large language models.  Up to 32 billion parameters, running on a CPU, not a GPU. So that’s a big deal. Intel loves us, and we’ve been able to leverage their ecosystem to have their partners sell our product. So now you’ve got HPE selling ExplainerAI. You’ve got Lenovo selling ExplainerAI. And probably my favorite partner—love you, ePlus, if you’re listening—I think you’re the best. They’re a Fortune 1000 reseller selling ExplainerAI. So now we have large companies selling our product, and that’s starting to come to fruition. Now, it’s not solved—my revenue isn’t going boom yet—because if it were, I’d be firmly in the PowerPoint phase, heading toward the PDF phase. But it’s looking really good, and I’m very excited.  Cognome Inside.  There you go. Cognome Inside—yes. Cognome Inside. Intel Inside—for those of you who remember. Yes.  Love it. Okay, so before we wrap up, I have one more question for you: What is a question that entrepreneurs should always be asking themselves?  I think the hardest thing about being an entrepreneur is dealing with the amplitude of the variance that happens inside it. There are incredibly high days, and there are incredibly low days. There are days when you don’t even want to get out of bed in the morning. You don’t have many clients, and one of them has just told you that you’re a complete moron. Even if you’ve got the best product in the world, if you’re in the whiteboard or PowerPoint phase, you’re going to make mistakes. You just are. No one’s perfect. And there are days when some combination of a client, an employee, or the product—something has failed, someone has left, something isn’t working—and you feel awful. So what I’d say to entrepreneurs is this: if you really are an entrepreneur, it is your personality that you can still get through those and wake up in the morning and say, I believe in this. I know I can do it. I can keep doing it.  And one of the things that I think separates an entrepreneur from someone who isn’t is this: When I go through these moments, I ask myself, “What’s the worst that could happen?” And I usually start with: “Is anyone going to die?” And the answer is almost always no. No one’s going to die. So it’s not that bad. And by the way, I remember giving that advice to a young person once—and I saw their face go white. And I thought, “Oh, that’s not an entrepreneur.” That’s the kind of person who hears that and thinks, “Oh my God, really? You think about the worst thing that could happen so you can deal with it?” And I’m like, yes.  Does that apply to the company itself? Is the company included in that “worst-case” question?  To me, the next step is: is an individual going to die? That’s a higher stake than whether the company is going to die. But yes—is the company going to die? That’s part of the thinking, because you’re going through all the consequences. Am I going to lose all my money? Is the company going to fail? Those are escalations of that thinking. But to me, company death is less tragic than a human death.  Yeah, true.  Not everyone might agree with that, but I think so.  You can try again.  Yeah.  Start another company.  Yeah, exactly. Anyway, your question was: what is a question that an entrepreneur should always be asking themselves? For me, turning that upside down and inside out—it’s: what’s the worst that can happen, and can you get through it? Are you able to get through it? Do you have the drive and the imagination to keep going? That’s the question I’ve continually found myself asking, as opposed to any other kind of existential question. And I think some of the other questions are not always the right way to look at it—like“Is this the best business?” Because there’s a very big difference between an entrepreneur and an investor.  An entrepreneur has to keep going, while an investor might quit. Investors, they’re playing the portfolio game. They can say, “That’s not working—I’m dropping that and keeping this.” As an entrepreneur, you can’t really play that game with your time. I mean, Elon Musk is running four companies—so okay, fine—but most of us aren’t. Most of us are running one or two, and we need more tenacity to make it work—to pivot or to find another path. That’s a really big difference between an entrepreneur and other kinds of people. And it’s why I’ve kept doing it. It comes back to the very first question: why do you do this? I can’t help myself. I just can’t. It’s what I like to do.  Yeah, the contrast is addictive—the contrast between near-death and near-Nirvana, right? Yeah. I love it. I mean, you can’t have euphoria without depression. You wouldn’t know what it was—it would just seem normal.  Yeah, just a personal example of that—I was in Hungary, where I was born, for the election two weeks ago.  By the way, I’m so excited about that election, for many reasons.  The exhilaration that I felt—and that everyone else felt—was even greater than when the Berlin Wall came down, because the system was worse.  Yeah.  And if they hadn’t lived through that for 16 years, they wouldn’t have felt it. Now, we didn’t experience it directly—but still.  But even I was paying attention to a lot of things, and I was following that one very closely. Even I felt that sense of euphoria. I was like, “That’s great.” I was at the dinner table with my wife and kids—and I’m not Hungarian, it’s not affecting me. I mean, Viktor Orbán isn’t really having any effect on my life at all. Maybe he shows up at some conferences in the U.S., but still—not affecting me. But I’m sitting there at dinner like, “Did you hear what happened today? That’s great.” Anyway.  Awesome. I’m glad you’re on that side of the equation. James, if people would like to learn more—if they’d like to learn about Cognome and connect with you—where should they go? Where can they find you?  Yeah, so you can certainly go to cognome.com. You can email [email protected]. But if you’ve listened to this podcast, I’m always happy to hear from people. I answer every single email myself. And if you know my name—James Green—you can just put a dot in the middle and add @cognome.com at the end, and that will get to me. Delighted to hear from any of you—especially if you’re a CIO in a hospital, you should reach out.  Well, all those hospital CIOs—please call James, or at least send him an email. And for those of you listening—this was an amazing framework: from whiteboard to PowerPoint to PDF. Definitely relatable. And remember—if no one’s dying, it’s okay. You can always pivot and live to fight another day. So, James, thanks for coming—and thank you for listening. Important Links: James’ LinkedIn James’ website James’ email: [email protected]

https://youtu.be/N-og1bznPbs Andy Seeley, CEO of Creatively Disruptive and Ashworth Strategy, is on a mission to become the “8:00 AM call” for small business owners—the trusted partner they can turn to after those sleepless 3:00 AM nights filled with uncertainty. Having experienced the stress and isolation of entrepreneurship firsthand, Andy now helps technician-turned-business-owners (plumbers, gym owners, bakers, and more) build scalable, sustainable businesses with the right systems, strategy, and support. We explore Andy’s perspective on success—not as a shortcut, but as a combination of fundamentals: embracing failure, never giving up, and most importantly, building the right team. He shares how most small business owners get stuck because they try to do everything themselves, and why true growth comes from surrounding yourself with smart, hardworking people of strong character. Andy also dives into a critical operational insight: sequencing—doing the right things in the right order—to avoid overwhelming clients (and yourself) while still driving meaningful results. — Help Your Clients Sleep Soundly with Andy Seeley  Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and today my guest is Andy Seeley, the CEO of Creatively Disruptive, an agency supporting local, community-based small businesses, and Ashworth Strategy, an e-commerce, multi-channel marketing agency that is creating sustainable growth for beauty, apparel, pets, and kids industry businesses. Andy, welcome to the show.  Thank you. I’m very happy to be here. Nice to see you, Steve.  Yeah, I’m excited to talk to you. It’s a very interesting combination that you have going here, but I’d like to start with my favorite question: what is your personal “why,” and how are you manifesting it in your businesses? I think the personal “why” kind of straddles all the businesses that we deal with. We typically don’t work with large corporate brands. We don’t typically deal with, not that we wouldn’t want to, but we typically don’t, and we don’t actually even try to focus on them. Because the main  why”, the founding of our business came from when my partner and I were talking—we weren’t very happy with the two different businesses we were operating. We were both working on one project together, but he had his own thing, and I had another thing. We were both there, we’d both gone through some really tough times ourselves and had experiences of feeling very alone, trying to figure things out—sometimes successfully, sometimes very unsuccessfully. And we both talking about our troubles and tribulations, and all of those kind of things. And we were like, wouldn’t it have been nice, wouldn’t it have been good if there was someone there to help us? That “staring at the ceiling at 3:00 AM” in the morning. And the morning is a thing that a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners are very familiar with, right? You wake up at 3:00 AM, staring at the ceiling, thinking, “I’ve got all these things to do.” Or if it’s tough times—how do I make payroll? If there’s a legal issue—what am I going to do about that? Whatever it is, there’s always something. Even in good times, there’s often something. What we thought to ourselves was we are oftentimes, when we were in that situation, we didn’t really have anybody to go to. That 3:00 AM turns into 4:00 AM, then 5:00 AM, and sometimes we were just like, well, I’m just going to get up. And then there are sleepless nights. And we thought if we come from the standpoint, it's a real thing. It's something we’re passionate about is that most small business owners are technicians.Share on X Most small business owners are very good at a thing, like they’re a plumber and they start a plumbing company, or a baker who starts a bakery. The E-Myth.  This is the E-Myth concept.  Right. They’re a gymnastics coach, so they start a gymnastics gym. Most business owners are technicians, which means they’re very good at a very specific thing, not so good at many other things that you have to be. And we wanted to be that 8:00 AM. We wanted to be their 8:00 AM. And what that means is—staring at the ceiling at 3:00 AM, maybe their mind racing for 30 minutes or so—but then they can say, “You know what, we’ll reach out to Andy and Russ at Creatively Disruptive at 8:00 AM. I’ll get some sleep. We’ll get to the bottom of this idea. We’ll get to the bottom of this problem. We’ll get to the bottom of it. And that was really important to us. And it really was a guiding light. That’s why, from a marketing standpoint—you could call us a marketing agency—but I don’t think it really is what we are. Because we do consultancy work. We work through exit strategies. We work through financial goals. We work through a whole bunch of stuff that does not include putting an ad up on Facebook, Instagram, or Google, or building websites. We ask—why are you doing all that stuff? I love your first question, because what’s the point of it all, right? I had a conversation with a frustrated client yesterday, and at the end of the frustration that the client had, they were not frustrated. And I said to them, “Look, we’re talking about a lot of different things, and the reality is what’s going on with you when working with us is there’s some amazing things happening, which you agree with.” But the reality is, you are not talking to us about running a Facebook ad. You didn’t come to us because you desperately want a Facebook ad run, or come to us because you would love your company on Google. That’s not the reason why you came to us. The reason why you came to us is something that those things will change in your life for the better. That’s why you’re talking to us. There’s a reason why you bought this business. So our “why” is really to help those small business owners—who are often technicians, very specialized people—develop a broader skill set and a team that can help them through their challenges.Share on X The beauty of what we do is—we have 120 clients, all dealing with different issues and different situations. Because we engage with them at a consultative level, we hear it all. We hear, many times many subjects, here’s what not to do—and on those same subjects, here’s what to do. And we actually collate that stuff. As you saw on our Zoom, there was a Zoom link we used—you saw my Read.ai. that read.ai As much as it’s for us to make sure that we have our ducks in order when we’re talking to somebody, it’s also an archive for us to make sure that some things that we spoke about, we learned about that now we can put that in our database to help other clients. And it’s not that we show other clients what we’ve spoken about and give state secrets and so forth.  It’s a repository of company knowledge that you have developed.  Absolutely. Me and you having a conversation like this, Steve, is all well and good. The fact that we are recording it is going to allow loads of other people to understand it. For us internally, it allows my team and us to look at stuff and go, okay, well this is a really good thing, let’s actually turn that into a process. Yeah. Love it. So a very long-winded, long thing. The “why” is, we want to be that 8:00 AM call after you’ve had a 3:00 AM wake up. Love it. I mean, that is the definition of trust. If you are the person that they call at 8:00 AM, then they know that they can sleep well because you’re there.  And the big, burning part of that “why” is that we didn’t have it—and it was tough. It was emotionally tough to be so concerned. I had a lot of 3:00 AM wake-up calls during the Great Recession in 2008–2009. It was a very worrying time. There was a market crash. Our house went from being worth $400,000 to being worth $100,000. We owed $300,000 on that house. We had a business that income went from about $500,000 a month. It was a gymnastics gym that my wife ran to making about $200,000 in a two month period, because so many layoffs were happening. My job, which was working for a TV station, we had loads of clients calling in, asking to cancel, trying to figure out how, so there was so much going on. Those 3:00 AMs were very regular thoughts that came up, and I would just sit there not knowing what to do and having no one to talk to. I desperately want to at least be someone that someone can think of, “You know what, we can call Andy. We can call the CD team, and we’ll figure this out.” So anyway, there you go.  Okay, so this is a great segue, because you mentioned Read.ai and how you’re thinking about about processes—and how to use the 120 clients you have and the challenges you solve. How do you turn that into a process so other clients can easily access to it? So this podcast is really about this kind of stuff. It’s called Management Blueprint, and I’m always looking for shortcuts—business shortcuts, frameworks that entrepreneurs have discovered along the way and that they could share with the listeners and could help other people listening to have a better process. It could be anything—three to five steps—looking at something, seeing something in a different light. So what do you have in mind for us?  So a shortcut to success—I’m always a little bit leery of statements like that. “Shortcuts to success”. It always feels a little bit like a 2:00 AM infomercial—blah, blah, blah—and you get steak knives with it. Because the reality is, oftentimes there’s no shortcut. I’m sure you’ve asked this question a million times, and a lot of people say, “Here are the shortcuts.” But my experience is—the real truth is—there are a couple of fundamentals to success. One is being okay with not having it right? That’s a “shortcut,” if you want to call it that. Failure is actually the journey to success. Being okay with failure. There’s a reason why 95% of humanity doesn’t run a business, and it’s because they find failure difficult, and we’ve been trained as humans to not embrace failure.  Failure is the journey to success. It's where you learn. The other part—which is linked to failure—is never giving up.Share on X I don’t know if that’s a shortcut, but you only lose when you give up. Now, some people might say—sunk costs and things like that—at some point, you’ve got to stop putting into something that’s not working. But the reality is, if you believe in what you’re doing, there are going to be troubles, there’s going to be failures, there’s going to be difficulties. And as long as you don’t give up, and you learn from each mistake in each thing that happens, you will have success. You only won’t have success if you decide to give up. I really, truly believe that. I live that.  I resonate with that, and I wouldn’t even say that the 3:00 AM wake-up is a bad thing. It’s really a forcing function. It’s forcing you, as the entrepreneur, not to give up—to put the energy in and figure the problem out so that you can move forward. Because if you sleep until 7:00 AM, then 8:00 AM the day starts, and you still haven’t solved the problem. You’re just snowballing it.  But I would say—and those are more operational, ongoing things—so they don’t really fit your question of a shortcut to success. To me, that’s more the ingredients or material of success, right? But one of the things I would say would be a pattern of success that I’ve seen across hundreds of businesses that I’ve worked with—and that we currently work with—is building a team around you. Almost all of the successful people that I know—and when I say successful, I mean way more successful than I am, with multimillions of income and so forth—and I know a few of these guys… all of them have teams. All of them have people who are experts in certain areas. And almost all of them, to a T, are pretty good at building teams—finding people and putting them together.  And what I would suggest, any business owner, if you are going to think that you are going to become wealthy and do well by doing everything yourself—one, I think you’ll fail. I don’t know anyone with no team who has achieved strong success. And two, your life’s going to suck. I would say, it’s going to be tough, right? So if I had to choose something—even though I don’t like the word “shortcut,” if I’m honest with you, and I know that was a question that was coming up and I did think hard about it, and I kind of feel like I could give you a cheesy one-liner, but that kind of is like nahh. But the reality is, I think our success with our companies is probably my ability to actually find good people. And my philosophy is: hire smart, hardworking people of good character—and then train them.Share on X And if I can find somebody who is smart, hardworking, and of good character, and also has a skill set—that’s a bonus. What I’m really looking for are those first three. A smart, hardworking person of character—you can train them, if they have an interest in what they’re learning.  So how do you do it? So maybe that’s the framework. “Shortcut” is actually—I agree—the wrong word. I meant a business framework.  Okay.  Maybe I shortcutted the expression. So how do you find that smart, hardworking person of character? Do you have specific questions you ask to figure that out?  A lot of what we do is—I’ll ask questions around what they’ve done in past jobs, even past personal lives. I’m not looking for something too narrow—more broad, like: tell me about a situation where you saw something bad happening. What did you do? It’s kind of open-ended, and it’s not telling them the answer. But you know, something bad was happening. Tell me what the bad thing was. And they might say, “Well, it was this kid, and they were drowning in a pool.” Okay—what did you do? Did you run to get someone to help? Did you turn away and walk off? Did you pull out your phone and film it? Or did you jump in and save the kid? What did you do? That gives you an understanding of what kind of person they might be. And then part of it, for me, is I feel I have a decent gauge of whether people are lying to me. Sometimes I don’t get it right, but I feel I have a decent gauge when they’re saying it. In my mind, I’m noting—does this sound like a real story? Does it feel real? Does their face look like they’re revisiting that moment that what they’re doing and what they’re telling me? Or does it feel like a story being made up? And then I put that down. And if it’s like, the person said that they jumped into the pool and saved the kid, and I could see the emotion in them and it feels like they revisited, this feels real to me. Check. There would be multiple questions along those lines. It would tell me about a time when maybe you’re ending the day and some things are missing or some things haven’t happened, or blah, blah, blah. What is your thought and what is your plan to address that? And are they going to go back and spend more time working? That might be a good answer—or not. Are they going to note it and handle it first thing in the morning? Or do they say, “Ah, someone else will take care of it”? Getting those kind of answers of how their mind thinks about real world things that they’ve done in the past. Trying to keep it open so it’s not so specific that they say, oh, I’ve never had that experience before gives you an idea of what their character is, right? It also gives you a sense of how hard they work. And I’d say a hard worker should also be balanced with being an organized worker. How organized they are. Are they on top of things? Because I’m okay with you not being such a hard worker, Steve, if you’re very well organized and you get stuff done. You might not be busting your butt, working long hours and saying, Oh my God, I’m working so hard and lots of long hours, but you’re so organized and you’ve got yourself in such good order that you actually outproduce everybody else, because you’re more efficient. That, to me, would fall under the hard work category, right? Yeah. Yeah. So a good answer to something wasn’t done that needed to be done, and it’s the end of the day.  A good answer might be, I looked at it and I was like, I can wait until about midday next day. I put it on my list of the first thing that I’m going to do in the morning. Then the next morning I came in, I got it done within 25 minutes, and everything was great. I would look at that and go, okay, that’s not a bad answer. I’m okay with that. As an employer, I care about your work-life-balance. I’m not always looking for somebody who’s prepared to work till midnight every night. That, to me, once in a while is okay. But if I have an employee that’s looking to do that all the time, that’s a problem. Because I know there’s a limitation to that. And then again, when we’re talking about we’re looking at good character, hard work, and smart.  So yes, if they are intelligent, it’s clear. And I’m not going to say, “Hey, here’s an algebra test—tell me the answer.” That comes through with the questions, right?  It’s common sense. You’re looking for common sense—which is not very common. I like it, because essentially you are triggering some signs of authenticity in that person. Are they really showing up? Are they authentic, or are they trying to look like something they’re not? And it’s a really good filter.  So a lot of times, I think interview questions are like, “Here’s a situation—what would you do?” do? Any question like that, especially when you’re selecting teammates. And I don’t always have interview with teammates, sometimes the people that I have relationships with and I go and say, I need you to work for my company. I know you well enough. I’ve experienced you enough—I’m going to bring you in. But during that journey of coming to that conclusion, I’m looking for those qualities. And when you’re in an interview and you don’t know someone, and you ask a fabricated question—that’s a fantasy. They can come back with a fabricated answer—that’s also a fantasy.  And most of the time, that’s what happens. I’m a pretty good interviewer because my interview, when I’m looking to interview with somebody, not that I’ve done it for a very long time, but let’s say I’m interviewing with something other than work, I dunno what it might be, but maybe something like a school counselor, school for my kid or whatever. And we are interviewing, I’m analyzing what the person who’s asking me the question, I’m trying to figure out what answers they want. And I think anybody with an element of intelligence does the same thing. And you end up giving answers, not necessarily, which are 100% what the interviewer needs to know. The interviewer gets the answer what the interviewee thinks they want to know. And I think when you ask questions that are kind of open-ended, but experiential about what they’ve done in the past, you get a sense of kind of who they truly are. And then the goal is listening to see, to get those cues on.  I always like asking, “Tell me about a time when something bad happened in your life.” Okay—what did you do? That’s something you can really work through and get a sense of—are they truthful? Are they emotional? It’s a question I think some people are uncomfortable with, and some interviewers might think, “I don’t know about that. What might come up in that interview? I’ve never had a really terrible answer—like, “I was at the scene of a murder, or blah, blah, blah. I’ve never got that answer. But I’ve definitely had things like, “I was coaching a team, and one of the players broke their leg.” Okay—what did you do? And they talk me through it, and I’m like, okay, that makes sense. That’s a good answer from a good standpoint. I’ve had stuff like that. So I’m yet to come across a real traumatic story, but what I found is that I can really tell whether or not somebody is telling the truth. And I can get a sense of kind of how they handle really difficult situations.  Okay, Andy, I’d like to switch gears here. What I’m hearing is that you are good at building teams and empowering them. You have a good ability to hire people that have good character—smart and hardworking. What is one thing that you are actively trying to figure out in your business right now?  We’ve gotten to the point where we have so many moving parts in our business that, sometimes, with our client base, it’s overwhelming. There’s a lot going on. We’ve got an AI system with multiple components—it’s tremendously useful, a very powerful tool—but it can be overwhelming for a technician, like a baker or a gymnastics coach, who’s specialized in something else to suddenly have to take that on. We’ve got ads, we build websites, we provide consultancy—we’ve got consultancy, we’ve got all these things that, when tied together, create a really powerful machine. And what we’re trying to do right now is try to figure out how to set expectations and set out how to roll all of the stuff out.  When we first started doing a lot of this in one lump sum, we would almost dump it all on the client within a week of them signing and start working through all these things. And what we found is that it’s quite overwhelming and almost to the point where the client runs away and they don’t actually want to continue. It’s just too much work all at once. So one of the things that we’re working on right now to try to improve our situation is we’ve got a lot of stuff. We’ve built this machine that really helps businesses inside out. But do we have to build every part of that machine in the first three weeks? Clients want things to happen in the first three weeks. We can have things happen in the first three weeks. Do we need everything to happen in the first three weeks? That’s why I said to you, doing everything all the time forever is tough all at once. Right now, we’re actually literally working through a process, talking with the team, working with the team of what’s the order of priority of all these things that we have from the point of view of what’s easy to implement, but maybe not as important, but we can get it implemented within minutes of a client joining. What’s really important, but it takes a long time and trying to prioritize those things. Because all of the smaller things, individually, aren’t hugely impactful—but collectively, they are. But we can get them all done in a day. And then some of the things that are singular that have a huge impact, they take a little bit longer. How do we scale this out so we can actually get results very quickly for the client without overwhelming them with all of the stuff? And I think there’s a word you’ve probably heard a lot—sequencing is really important. I think a lot of businesses fall apart because they do things out of sequence. They don’t think about the sequence. They go for the fun, cool thing first, and sometimes that’s the worst decision they can make. Right now, we’re working through how to properly sequence our onboarding of new clients—to make sure the experience is really positive without overwhelming them. We’re actually getting into a really good place. And some of that is, I mean, most of this is because there is so many things. We have these—like I say—technician business owners, and they come to us and they’re amazing at plumbing, but they’ve got a phone, and that’s all they have. So whenever anybody needs to call them to schedule a new job, it rings their phone—and they’re under a sink doing work. The phone’s ringing. They’re like, “Oh, hell,” and they’re under the sink. Well, sometimes they don’t answer it, or whatever. They’ve got no system. They’ve got no process to take care of things. And we’ve got to build all that out, right? And it’s so common—and it’s totally fine. They’ve been successful in what their technical part of is, but they want more than a job that they own, right? You’ve probably heard that a lot. And they want to start scaling. They want to take vacations without losing income. They want to do all of these things. We can do all that for them—but we can’t do it like that. Even though they want it like that, if we do it like that, their brain nukes.  Yeah.  I don’t know if that’s a good answer for you, because that is something that we’re actually working on from a business standpoint of is how to sequence and do things in the right order that allows people to get the best bang for their buck without melting their brains down. Indigestion. Yeah. I don’t know who said it—maybe Peter Drucker—but he said most businesses die of indigestion rather than starvation. So that’s true. So what drives your business? What is it that helps your business grow? I mean, you mentioned 120 clients. I saw your video—we were talking about 114, 115 clients—so you’ve been growing since the video.  Yeah.  So what drives your business?  If I’m honest with you, philosophically, what drives us is the failures that we’ve had in the past. My business partner and I—we’ve had some pretty tough times, going back to that 3:00 AM question. We almost lost our house during the Great Recession. We didn’t lose it—we still have it to this day. It’s actually a second house now, in Lake Tahoe. We went through times that were quite stressful, difficult, and troublesome for us. I mean, not necessarily nearly as bad as other people have had, probably much tougher times that they’ve had to go through. But I would say what drives us is the fact that we had those tough times. We understand what it’s like to struggle, and we really want to do what we can for a small business owners—mom-and-pop level businesses—avoid those situations. All of our decisions are about how we can make a difference. Again, going to that conversation with that client yesterday that I just mentioned a moment ago, I actually said to them: if you guys decide to leave because of these frustrations that you’ve had, ’cause they had a couple of frustrations, and it was mainly about what I was talking about the everything was getting dumped on them. They were like overwhelmed. There’s lots of stuff happening and they were thinking that it all needed to be happened in one month, but really it was, no, it’s okay if it takes three months for this stuff to get rolled out. And I said to them: if you leave, I’m going to be very disappointed in myself and my team, because of the massive difference we can make in your lives. And that is the driving force for our business—to make a real difference. And the fact that what we’ve done so far—we’re seeing the germination of those really good things. And they agreed. They said, “Yeah, there are some really good things happening. We really like those. We’re just frustrated with the amount of stuff going on.” And I’m like, “Well, I think we can spread it out, take the heat off, and make sure things roll out nicely.” That reminded me that the reason our business exists is to help these small businesses be all they can be—to reach for the stars. There are so many very good people who could make a lot of money and do a lot of good things—but their specialty is so focused that they’re not rounding out their overall situation.  Especially in gymnastics—we work with a lot of gymnastics coaches. Probably about 60% of our business is kids’ activity centers. A lot of kids activity center owners tend to be, they do everything themselves. They put everything on their shoulders, and they don’t build out their team—which means they can’t scale. So they end up owning a job, not a scalable business. What drives me is: how do we help these small businesses scale, have a better life, reach more people, help more kids, and support their employees? All of that kind of stuff. And people might say, “Oh yeah, sure, Andy—you’re like some Mother Teresa figure.” I’m like, no—because my experience is, if we do a really good job of that, the money takes care of itself. A “shortcut,” going back to your earlier question, is: stop thinking about how much money you can make from each customer. Really focus on taking care of that customer. Charge a reasonable rate, and the money will come. If you become well known—if you become a major figure in an industry—that money will come. I’m lucky enough that, in the gymnastics industry and the kids’ activity center space, I’ve become reasonably well known. People I don’t know—and I think you become a well-known figure when people you don’t know recognize you. You walk into a conference, and people come up and say, “Hi, Andy.” And I’m like, “Oh, okay—I don’t know who you are.” I’ve been watching you on this, or I’ve been doing that, I’ve been seeing you talk or speak or blah, blah, blah. I don’t think of myself as famous at all, but in some of the niches we work in, I’ve become well known. And I think that’s happened because we care—and we let the money take care of itself.  Andy, our time’s coming to an end, but I’d like to ask—if someone is running an activity-based business, maybe a gym, a swim team, a dance studio, or selling classes—and they want to ramp up their business because everything is on their shoulders and they’re a technician—where should they go, and how can they find you? So, like I said, we help plumbers, home service businesses—we’ve worked with banks, rec centers, kids’ activity centers, and all sorts. Where our real specialty is, in a very real way, is pushing the needle for local brick-and-mortar businesses. Obviously, we also have Ashworth Strategy, which we didn’t get into—that’s our e-commerce brand. But my personal passion is that mom-and-pop business that opens up a storefront. The best way to reach us—regardless of whether you’re a plumber or anything else—is to go to creativelydisruptive.com. You might look at it and think, oh, this seems like a whole bunch of kids on here. We do have another brand called highlevelthinkers.com, where we do the same kind of work for home service businesses. So go to creativelydisruptive.com and reach out there. We actually have a little chat square that you can go into and start talking to us and you’ll actually speak to our little AI up here. It knows everything—it’s basically like talking to me. It can help you set up a time to speak with one of our team members. We don’t have salespeople—we call them business development consultants, because that’s really what they do. They’ll talk with you and figure out the best way we can help. But basically, in a nutshell, there’s lots of ways to reach out to us. But in my mind, the best and easiest way, just go to creativelydisruptive.com or highlevelthinkers.com, and reach out to us through there using the chat bot, or using the form and just reach out. And we’ll help you.  Okay. Well, if you’re listening and you’re running a local business—whether it’s an activity-based business, a mom-and-pop business, or a contracting business—and you’d like to level up, put in systems, and sequence them properly, then reach out to creativelydisruptive.com or highlevelthinkers.com. yep.  And then you can connect with Andy—or the chatbot, if he’s sleeping—and it’ll get back to you.  The chatbot’s probably a much more fun conversation.  It could be. You can listen to the podcast and use the chat at the same time, so you get the best of both worlds. So thank you, Andy, for sharing your experiences and being very vulnerable. And if you, as our audience, enjoyed listening to this, then stay tuned—because every week I have an entrepreneur sharing, not necessarily shortcuts, but good frameworks that can help your business. So thanks for coming, Andy, and thank you for listening.  Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. Important Links: David’s LinkedIn David’s website https://highlevelthinkers.com/

https://youtu.be/vmziYo0mPmE David Steele, serial entrepreneur and Founder and CEO of One Wealth Advisors, is driven by a simple but powerful mission: helping people. Whether through wealth management, hospitality ventures, or advising founders and leadership teams, David sees all of his businesses through one lens—service, care, and improving the lives of the people they touch. We explore David’s OKR Goal Setting Framework—a practical system for turning intention into results: identify, articulate, share, measure, and execute. David explains why limiting goals to just a few priorities creates clarity, how articulating and sharing them builds accountability, and why consistent measurement and execution are what ultimately drive outcomes. He also shares how this framework applies differently in life versus business, why simplicity beats complexity in strategic planning, and how a hospitality mindset fuels both growth and long-term client loyalty. — Set Goals in 5 Steps with David Steele  Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is David Steele, a serial entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of One Wealth Advisors. David, welcome to the show.  Oh, thanks for having me.  Well, great to have you. You have a very interesting career and interesting businesses, and you keep a lot of balls in the air. So I’d like to dig in. I was very interested in what I read on your website about your personal mission and why you do things. So would you mind sharing with our listeners what your personal “why” is and how you are manifesting it in your business and businesses?  My personal why—it’s always people. And everything I've done in my life is about figuring out ways that I can help people.Share on X I have done so in what is seemingly different businesses. My primary role is founder and CEO of a wealth management financial planning company called One Wealth Advisors, where we work with a little over 400 families, helping them manage their financial lives. But I’ve also created two restaurant companies that are, I think, involved in the conversation around culture. They’re cool, they’re interesting. They currently have seven restaurants combined, with four more opening over the next six months. And these are seemingly different businesses, but for me, it’s really about people. The financial planning company, I see as a hospitality business—we serve people. I’m very skeptical of the majority of the financial services industry, which tries to sell their value proposition on their technical wizardry or perspective on investing or tricks or whatever. And for us, it’s like—that’s commoditized. Everybody’s doing the same stuff. Our value proposition is that there is nobody who will envelop you with more care, love, service, attentiveness, responsiveness, and proactiveness in the industry than we will.Share on X And we can compete on that. And when I describe my financial planning company that way, and I then talk about restaurants as hospitality businesses—which is not much of a stretch—where we envelop people with deliciousness and great service, the common thread comes through. But maybe the deeper common thread for me is my partners in these different businesses. My role in their lives is to help them—as individuals, as partners in our companies—to live happy, peaceful, productive lives and to feel valued. So for me, I do the same thing every day, all day—but everyone else sees these different weird things. I’m the board of a coffee shop company, another restaurant company, a music band management company, and a music production company. And my view on all of those is that I'm there to provide hospitality and service to the founders and the executive teams of those companies. So for me, it’s all about people.Share on X Very interesting. I mean, the hospitality angle and the quality-of-life angle—I saw it on your website. You really don’t talk about financial performance there at all. You talk about how to improve the life of your clients. That’s kind of the big theme there. And I like the blogs as well—that also comes back to the quality-of-life theme. So anyhow, I don’t want to get too deep into this, because what I’m curious about is frameworks. This is a podcast about frameworks, and I wonder—what is the framework that has worked in your life that is simple to explain, maybe three to five steps, that you could share with the audience? Something they could use to help their own businesses or themselves by implementing or thinking about things in a clearer, simpler way. It’s so basic. The key to life, in my mind, is so basic. Identify goals—two to four. More than five is probably too many. And I don’t care if it’s for your business, your life, a relationship—I don’t care what it is. Actually identify those goals. Articulate those goals—clear, concise, as few words as possible. Try to apply some type of measurement to those goals. And then once those goals are articulated, you can measure them, whether they succeed or fail. It becomes pretty clear what a strategic plan might look like to achieve those goals. And I think that goal setting is human magic.  I’ve written a couple of life plans throughout my life, and I never looked at them again after writing them—until many, many years later. And lo and behold, I achieved everything I’d written on those life plans. I usually don’t look at them for 10 years. And I just think the clear articulation of the goal, sharing the goals with people—because then you become accountable, to yourself and to them—it’s out in the world. You’re going to achieve those things.Share on X Okay, so identify, articulate, share, measure, and execute—is that the framework?  That’s it.  Yeah. Love it. That’s great. Yeah, I mean, goals do have a magic to them, so if you don’t ever look at them, how do you not forget them?  I think that’s the human magic part. I mean, for a business, I do believe goal setting and strategic planning should be a continual process. For life planning, I think it’s probably okay to articulate your goals and maybe not look at them again. And I don’t necessarily think for life planning you need to have a written strategic plan. The human magic part is that if you say you want to do something in life, and you articulate it and you share it with people, the human magic part is it’s now present forever in your subconscious. And so energetically, you’re going to, I think, very naturally orient yourself around those goals just simply in your everyday existence. And I think that’s for maybe for life planning. For businesses, I do think it’s best to have a framework for this, and so my businesses use, and I don’t care what the framework is—we use objectives and key results, OKRs. They’re pretty commonly used now. And I don’t care if you use KPIs, OKRs, or whatever it may be. You and your team should sit down each year, and ideally you already have a long-term vision for the company, which should be pretty concise and focused. And then your annual goal setting in between and what I’ll call tactical plans or mini strategic plans that you can then look at each quarter. With the objectives and key results, we assign a leader to each objective. The leader understands that they are tasked with organizing the necessary team members to achieve the goal.Share on X We have key results that we define in our annual strategic planning meeting, and then we have quarterly check-ins. I’m the CEO of the financial planning company, so I check in with each leader every quarter to see how they’re progressing on their objectives and the key results for those objectives. And then for the restaurant companies, I am the executive chairman of both of them and a co-founder. I meet with the CEO, and then the CEO meets with the team to check in on their progress of their goals. So the human magic part is this idea that you can just say, “I want to do this thing,” write it down, and not look at it again. But for business, I do think it requires a more consistent, structured, written approach.  So help me with these OKRs. I mean, I’m familiar with the OKRs, but what I’ve always wondered is, when you have key results for every objective, then is this not too limiting in terms of having to choose the kind of objective which you can measure with the key results, as opposed to—and maybe this is my blind spot here. Maybe there are objectives that don’t really lend themselves to regular measurement of key results, but because they are maybe binary. Either we acquired this new location or we didn’t, there’s not really much key results other than it has to be a size, profitability, whatever. So I don’t know—maybe I’m rambling here—but what’s your view on this?  Well, I mean, I would push back a little bit on that. Let’s say your objective is to acquire—through vertical or horizontal integration—another business. I think a key result could be, over the course of the year: what is the process by which you’re identifying potential companies to acquire? What is your vetting process? What is the activity around outreach, vetting, and analysis? Maybe sometimes there’s a bit of a square peg, round hole problem with this, but I don’t think there’s a negative to articulating the binary objective, even if it’s imperfect key results that you’re going to be using to measure them. Yeah, I think I need more clarity on this. I always thought of the two sides of the coin is you’ve got the easily measurable things, which typically pertain to the business—growing the business, executing processes, doing sales activities, this kind of stuff, which is working on the present. And then you have those bigger—what do you call them—OKRs or Rocks—those big objectives that is going to build more capacity in your business for the future so that you can expand the business. That might be hiring a key executive to own your marketing function, where key results are maybe trickier to define, but it’s really important for the future. Do you see any distinction between these two?  I mean, maybe—but let’s go back to the original point. What started this conversation was that I think you should have a framework. I don’t really care what the framework is. All I’m arguing for is identifying and articulating goals, and figuring out some kind of strategic planning process to achieve those goals. I actually don’t really care what it is. I’ve consulted with a number of businesses—helping entrepreneurs start businesses, probably close to eight now—and I’m always surprised that something as simple as writing down goals, articulating them, measuring them, and building a plan around them is not natural to most people. I think if people just start with the basics, they’re already ahead of most. And this is about as basic as it gets.  Yeah, that’s true. So what drives growth in your business, in the One Wealth Advisors business?  We’re in a very luxurious position, and I tell people I’m the richest person they’ve ever met. And people are like, “What?” And I say, “Well, I have everything I want, and you can’t be richer than that. There’s no such thing as richer than having everything you want,” at least the way I define it. And where I’m going with this is—I’ve tried to espouse a philosophy across the company that every team member should spend less than they make, no matter what. And not overextend themselves with commitments—like a mortgage—that causes stress and anxiety and so forth and so on. So there’s a fiscal discipline and that’s espoused across each team member, and most importantly, me and my brother—we started the company together, and we’re the major shareholders. If we take that approach, that’s number one. The second thing is—we don’t have any sales, marketing, or business development efforts whatsoever, which is shocking to 99% of business people I talk to. But it’s grounded in a philosophy that the greatest salespeople we’re ever going to have are our clients—talking to their friends and their network. And if we put literally 100% of our effort into serving our clients for free—they’ll spread the word. They’ll be so excited about what we do for them and with them that they will be more than willing that if somebody asks them who they should talk to or work with, the answer is us. We’ve been doing that for almost 20 years now. The practice started 35 years ago, but we’ve been operating this way for almost 20 years.  And our annual growth rate is about 20% a year, without any business development or marketing whatsoever. We could probably be growing more than that, but we keep our spending in check. We don’t overextend ourselves, so it doesn’t force us to stay on that treadmill. The idea of being on a treadmill—having to grow just to keep up—causes me stress and anxiety, and I don’t like that. So that’s One Wealth. Now, restaurants are a less good business. My financial planning company will do seven and a half million in revenue this year with 13 employees. My first restaurant company will do $30 million in revenue with 350 employees. It’s a much more labor-intensive, harder business. And the people I started the restaurant companies with—just to be blunt—for them to build wealth so they can afford to take care of their families the way they deserve to, for their talents and their creativity, et cetera, et cetera, you need to grow. And so the way we define growth in the restaurant company, just frankly, is through building the organizations so they are ready to scale.  That means having leadership that’s trained, has mastery, and understands how to lead each level of layers of management, and then opening new restaurants. Or with one of our companies, it’s a line of consumer packaged goods. The Flour + Water Hospitality Group is my first restaurant company, and we’ve launched frozen pizza in 40 grocery stores, and we have dried pasta in 75 stores now. And we’re going to really try to grow that. And that’s measurable, right? It’s new restaurants, more grocery stores, more revenue. So we’re a bit more intentional about growing those businesses.  That’s really interesting. So when you grow an asset management firm by 20% over 20 years, then maybe half of that comes from the appreciation of the assets, doesn’t it? No—and I know where your head went, which is the S&P 500 has grown at about 10% a year over the last 100 years. But the truth is, about 55% of our clients’ assets are in equities on average, and about 45% are in bonds. If you’re younger, you have more equities; if you’re older, you have less. But the average annual return for a portfolio like that is probably closer to about 6.5%. So about a third of our growth has probably come through market appreciation. We don’t generally lose clients, so your math is clean, right? If we lost clients, we’d have attrition and would need to replace them, which doesn’t really happen for us. So about maybe two-thirds of our growth has come from referrals.  Yeah, that’s pretty cool. I mean, I’ve also learned that if you have a business with high churn, then you have no time to serve your customers.  And if you’re spending a lot of effort on business development, you’re spending less time on serving your customers, and you’re going to have higher churn.  They’re not going to refer you, because they’re not getting great service—and then they churn instead of referring. So it’s very smart.  We do an annual survey of our clients, and we always score above 95% in terms of satisfaction. We also do an annual survey with our team members, and we score really high there as well. The greatest evidence of that is our turnover is damn near 0% since we launched the company. Generally, people who work with us don’t leave us.  That’s awesome. So you’re doing a lot of things right. It seems like you have a clear plan, you’ve got strategic planning, you understand what you want, what you need, what you don’t need. What is one thing that you are actively trying to figure out in the asset management business? Well, we launched—unfortunately—a tax practice this year. I say “unfortunately” because we had no interest in competing with CPAs. Historically, we referred our clients to CPAs. But there’s a problem in the tax business. My assessment is that taxes are becoming more complex, not less. Less people want to become accountants and there’s a supply-demand problem with accountants. And the existing accountants, in my view, have taken on too many clients, and their service has deteriorated. We get more and more complaints about clients dissatisfaction with their accountants than anything else in our practice. So we finally said, “You know what?  We’re going to beta test a tax practice.” We’re doing tax returns this year for 15 clients. I never wanted to do this type of business. It actually makes sense, because financial planning and tax are deeply intertwined. The fact that they were ever separate disciplines, in retrospect, doesn’t make much sense. So I’m glad I’m being forced into it—but it’s a problem. I’m not sure how good we are at it yet. I hope we don’t mess it up too much this year with these 15 clients, and I hope we eventually really good at it. But it’s the problem for me, and I’m not happy about it.  So you said there are 13 people in the wealth management, so you have a couple of people on the tax side?  Yeah, we have, call it, one and a half people dedicated to tax. And then we’ve partnered—well, there’s one more variable in tax, which is interesting. I believe AI will eventually do 90-plus percent of the work that an accountant does. There’s an intersection—or an inflection point—that hasn’t been hit yet, which is: fewer accountants, more complex tax work, and AI hasn’t solved it yet. My hypothesis is that we can start to develop the muscle memory and mastery around doing tax. Eventually, AI will be such a strong support that we’ll be able to do tax returns for all of our clients with a relatively small number of people. That’s our hypothesis. In the interim, we’ve partnered with a company called April, which is a venture-backed startup that provides the analysis and tax return preparation. So we have one and a half people who organize the tax work for our client base, but then the actual heavy lifting of the analysis is done by April. And if April is listening to this, it’s fine when I say we’re perfectly happy to replace April with AI once AI is ready—but it just isn’t ready yet. So we’re just getting started on something that we believe will eventually become relatively easy. But right now, it’s still a bit clunky.  I don’t know if it was Warren Buffett or someone else—maybe his partner—who talked about how important tax planning is in actually making money. If you do the right kind of tax planning, it’s basically one half of the return you can make just by optimizing your taxes. Would you agree with that?  Well, I don’t know that I’d be comfortable making a blanket statement like “one half.” I think the wealthier you are, the higher the probability that with advanced tax planning, the net impact on your wealth over time could be more than half. I mean, think about estate planning. We have a client, for example—a taxable estate is one where your net worth is over, I’m going to simplify, about $13 million per person. So for a married couple, $26 million. Anything over that gets taxed at—again, I’m averaging—around a 50% estate tax when you die. Okay, so what can you do? You can, while you’re alive, give away some of that $13 million instead of waiting until you die. How can you do that? Maybe you make investments in your kids’ names rather than your own, so it’s not part of that $13 million. We had a client, for example, who invested in a company that ended up being worth $60 million. But guess what? That $60 million was not in their name—it was in their kid’s name. So it skipped a generation. So what is that worth? Fifty percent of anything over $26 million in estate tax—what is that worth in terms of average annual return? I don’t know—you can’t really calculate it cleanly. But it’s millions and millions of dollars. Yeah, so it’s very high leverage—that’s the point.  Yeah.  That’s amazing. I mean, you shared some really great ideas here. I like the framework: identify your goals, articulate them, share them with other people. I like the sharing because it basically creates some peer accountability, right? And also people are then aligned with what your context is. So that’s great. Then measure and execute—that’s great. We talk about OKRs, we talk about tax planning, and the philosophy of building businesses—the difference between a business that needs to grow and one that can grow more organically. That’s amazing. Is there anything else you’d like to share with our audience? And then I’m going to ask you, of course, if people would like to learn more about what you do and would like to learn more about One Wealth Advisors, where should they go and where can they learn more? But first, what’s your final message to our listeners? Well, you didn’t rehash the first thing I said, which is—it’s always about people. It’s always about people. Everything one does in life, in my opinion, should be in the service of others somehow. And I think that’s what gives us our greatest sense of satisfaction, self-worth, and place in the world. So I really want to leave people with that message. In terms of reaching me, I have a website I built, because I do a bunch of different things. One Wealth Advisors has its own website, which you can easily search, but I also have davidsteele.xyz, which primarily points to One Wealth, but then points to the other stuff I do, including other businesses I’ve started, and the boards I’m on, and the consulting work that we do. Okay, that’s definitely worth exploring. So check it out. And if you enjoyed this conversation and you’re listening here, don’t forget to subscribe and tune in, because every week I have an exciting entrepreneur coming on the show to share their learnings and insights. Important Links: David’s LinkedIn David’s website One Wealth Advisors website

https://youtu.be/_FEQAirQyWY Piyush Jain, Founder and CEO of Simpalm and co-founder of Ducknowl, is on a mission to solve real-world challenges by combining technology and entrepreneurship. With over 15 years of experience building custom software solutions, Piyush helps businesses turn complex ideas into practical applications by blending technical depth, business acumen, and a strong problem-solving mindset. We explore Piyush’s AI Ideation Framework—Validate idea, Proof of concept, Design, Competitor analysis, and Feature selection—a practical approach to building software in the post-AI era. Piyush explains how AI can help teams better understand user personas, validate product assumptions, and rapidly prototype ideas, while human expertise remains essential in design, architecture, and production-grade development. He also shares how prompt engineering, peer-reviewed prompting, and a right-shoring delivery model can help businesses build smarter, faster, and more cost-effectively. — 3D Print Your Software with Piyush Jain Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint, and my guest today is Piyush Jain, the Founder and CEO of Simpalm, a custom software development company, and the co-founder of Ducknowl, a candidate screening and assessment application business for high-volume recruiting. Piyush, welcome to the show.  Thank you, Steve. Thanks for inviting me.  Well, I’m very curious about the stuff that you have to share with us, and I’d like to ask first about your personal purpose. What is your “why,” and how are you manifesting it in your business?  Yeah, so that’s a very interesting question. And I think for every entrepreneur or tech founder, really, that’s the motivation—why you want to do certain things. So for me, if I look at it, my personal “why” is: why are we not solving challenges? Or why are we not solving them the right way? Why are we not transforming our lives? I grew up in India and then came to the US, so I’ve seen many different parts of the world—from Asia to North America. I see people face different challenges, but then we are not focusing on solving those problems. A lot of it I see is there’s a lot of challenges in the world because I believe there are not enough entrepreneurs. Because entrepreneurs are the ones who really take risks, combine everything, and create solutions. That was like me, right? That’s what I learned growing up, that I think I can do that, right? I can combine the technical knowledge and the business acumen and create solutions that people like, solve their challenges. Growing up, like I'm more on the technical side.Share on X I was inclined more toward science and technology, but then as I got into my undergrad and grad school, I realized that I have that entrepreneurship aspect, but it’s still around science and technology. That’s when I realized that, you know what, I cannot be a pure scientist or maybe a pure entrepreneur, but I can be someone who can combine these two, because my main driving factor is problem-solving. I can combine these two and then live my life, be very happy with what I do. That has been my motivation. I like it. So solving challenges and being an entrepreneur, and kind of combining the two—being the technical expert and the entrepreneur in one. Now, one of the things that we always talk about on this podcast is frameworks. And you have developed a really good one for AI ideation, which I think is something that everyone needs to do these days or use these days, and it helps you create business apps and other business applications. Can you share with me how that framework works, and what are the steps in it?  Sure, yeah, definitely. So just to give you a brief background, we’ve been building software for the last 15 years. Some companies have used different frameworks, whether it’s Agile or Waterfall in SDLC, in building the software, right? There are different methodology that companies have used, and they’ve been good, successful—they’ve played their role. But now, with the advent of AI, things have changed. We had to figure out, in our organization, how to use AI, and that’s how this framework was built. My team helped me building this framework as well.Share on X But we realized that we were losing business—we were losing clients—since we didn’t have an AI framework that would fit our clients. Again, for me, it’s a challenge. So anytime I see a challenge, it create brain juice in me, right? So I said, okay, let’s figure out how we create this framework. How did you do it?  So really, we built this framework—very interesting. A lot of the steps are similar, but then a lot of things are different.Share on X Whenever client comes to us and says, “Hey, we want to solve this challenge,” what we do is we do enough research. And now we use a lot of AI tools to really understand the problem better and understand the user persona. When you build any software application, there is a person who’s going to use that. Sometimes we used to do user research or focus studies to understand that. Now, with the help of AI, we can get a lot of ideas about the user persona. For example, maybe we are building a healthcare application for an anesthesiologist. I don’t know much about that. I know, I mean, because I have been through some medical surgery and all that, but I can’t fully understand their user persona or their requirements with respect to the application we’re building. But now, with AI, I can actually ask different AI models, “Hey, we are building this app for anesthesiologists. What are their pain points? How would they see it?” So all that deeper mindset and psychology we can get using AI.  You are validating the idea by interrogating AI applications.  What users are going to like and all that. So I will always use this term earlier. In software engineering, now we have this pre-AI and post-AI, right? If you read history, we talk about before Christ and after Christ, right? Yeah. So it’s a similar thing now. Yeah, exactly. Or before Covid, after Covid. Before AI, after we did all the user research and everything and created a requirements document, we would usually do design, create like a visual design of the software. But now, with the AI framework, we don't do that. That's not the next step. What we do instead is create a quick prototype using AI platforms.Share on X  So there are a lot of AI platforms—like Lovable, Claude. Now ChatGPT launched Codex for coding, and Replit. Depending on what kind of application you’re building—for example, maybe if you’re building a web-based application—then I recommend using Lovable or Replit. They’re very good at creating that. Whatever software you want to build, whatever user personas that you’re addressing, you can feed into that and it’ll create like a prototype application. Okay.  So what that does is actually, then this prototype, clients can just take it to their customers or internal users and get feedback. A picture is better than a thousand words. Organizations discussing an idea is very different from when they actually see something. Then everybody starts chipping in—“Oh yeah, I see this in the prototype, but I don’t want this,” or “I want to move things around,” or “This is what I want.” Basically, building a prototype on AI platforms is much faster than building wireframes and design prototypes like we used to do earlier. So that has changed. So you’re 3D printing your software, right?  Yes, exactly. There you go. Well, that’s a very good way you put it together. Yeah. So, yeah, exactly. You’re just 3D printing the software, right? So you can see it, visualize it, and then once you go through that, it creates a lot of better ideas about the software in faster time. So once you have that, then you go into UI/UX design. So in that also, there are two steps. One is wireframing. Wireframing is like creating the flow in black and white. It’s like creating a skeleton of your software. It does not have the color, the font, or the branding, but you just create all the different user journeys, the screens, the flow, and the fields that will be there on the screen. So we have integrated AI into that step as well. Earlier, it used to be created by a designer or a business analyst. Now we are using software like Uizard or UX Pilot, where we define what we want—what kind of user journey, flows, and screens—and it creates that. It spins out those wireframes in minutes. So really that has reduced now. The time it used to take to create wire frames is faster now.  So you’re designing the wireframes with AI?  Yes, but it’s just the wireframe part of it, and it’s still guided by our expert VA or designer—someone who knows how to really visualize things and has done a lot of wireframes and sketches. So they know what to tell the AI. Prompting is very important. It’s very important that you know how to prompt—what to ask for—so that you can get variations and differentiation in the wireframes. You don’t want a standard AI-created wireframe. Everybody can recognize AI-generated images now, right? If I show you one, you’d say, “Oh yeah, it’s AI-generated.” I know that, right? Yeah. So again, we keep the human intelligence. We’re not asking AI to create the full software end-to-end. It never works—it’ll never work. It just doesn’t. I know that’s a strong statement, but I’m saying that based on experience and an understanding of human behavior and psychology. So AI agents will not be able to code software, in your opinion?  No, they can do the coding, but they cannot build the whole software end-to-end—a production-deployed software. Because these software are being used by humans. You have to have human intelligence to understand and define what you need and how it works.Share on X You can maybe create some software, but it doesn’t work very well. Even if you use all these platforms, you can cut down your production time and cost by 30%, 40%, 50%, right? That’s the number we are seeing—30 to 50% reduction, depending on the software you’re building and the objectives. So just to recap—you validate the idea by interrogating Claude and ChatGPT, asking about the needs of that customer, the psychology of the customer—that’s step number one. Step number two is 3D printing the software with Lovable or Replit—so proof of concept. And then you design the wireframes. And then what’s next after you design the wireframes? What’s the next step?  So that’s a good thing. That’s it. Now I’m going to talk about the human element—some people listening to this podcast will be surprised. Now it comes to visual design, right? So you’ve created the skeleton, and now you have to add the skin, the tone, the color, the emotion to the design, to the workflow. Now, we have tried AI, but it doesn’t work. It’s very monotonous. So we use an experienced visual designer, a UX designer, for that step—to give it emotion. When you use AI—I wish I could show you some examples—it creates very similar kinds of designs for apps and software. So what we did is we gave it three different apps with very different objectives and everything, and the designs it came up with were very similar—blocks, buttons—very monotonous. So there’s no differentiation. And design is the main thing that becomes the differentiator, right?  Yeah.  So that’s what we learned from our experience. And I say that very categorically in all of my talks—that visual design, final UX, has to be human, not AI.Share on X Because you are communicating emotions, right? And AI is still not there to communicate emotions.  Yeah. It doesn’t have emotions.  Well, some people will argue with you and say, “No, it can understand if you’re sad or unhappy.” But my response to that is—it’s because we’ve programmed it that way. But things change based on situation, context, ethnicity, culture, fear—how people express nervousness, fear, and all that—it’s very different. So there was this AI video interviewing company five or six years ago. They were sued by the Department of Justice because they were trying to detect emotions of people like anxious, nervous, when the interview was happening.  It turned out their model was trained only on one race—they didn’t account for other races or ethnicities. So their model failed, and they were sued by Department of Justice for that. So yeah, emotions is something—maybe they have unlimited dimensions, we don’t know. So it’s hard to program that. So basically: ideation, prototype, wireframe, and then final visual design—that’s the discovery and design framework. Now, when it comes to development framework, this is where AI has been a game changer—the coding part. But again, you have to be very careful about how you use AI in your coding pattern with your coding team. It depends on the application, it depends on the tech stack, right? Every platform has its own strengths and weaknesses. For example, if you want to build a web-based application in the React JS framework, then Lovable is great. That’s very good—very efficient and cost-effective. Then Claude is there. Claude has been really good in software engineering. I would say it has been built and designed mostly for coding, right? Anthropic—their idea, their starting point—was coding, how to make coding and software engineering better.  So they’ve been a front runner in the race. ChatGPT is trying to catch up using Codex, and Copilot is great. Copilot is mostly used by enterprises who are on the Microsoft stack. They use Copilot a lot for coding in .NET and enterprise-level applications. They’re used to co-pilot. It’s because they feel comfortable with Microsoft security policies and all that. That’s fine. But in general, we see Claude to be at the top—from our perspective. We’ve also built a framework for software coding. In software development, there’s a popular process called peer review. So when you create source code, you get it reviewed by your peer—your colleague.Share on X  Is this what happens on GitHub?  Yeah, yes. So basically anywhere—any source code repository—you can do that. So your team members can help you make your code better and more efficient.  Yeah, I understand. But now we have a step called prompt peer review. When you’re using prompts to build software, those prompts get reviewed by team members. Because if your prompts are not very specific or good enough all the way through the SDLC, you can run into a lot of challenges trying to fix the code. Because now you have a situation where you have code that you have not written fully, and when you ask AI to change something in the code, sometimes it ends up changing a lot of things that you don’t want it to change. Yeah.  That’s what we’ve seen, and that’s why we evolved. Before we build any software, we create maybe a 10-, 20-, 30-page prompt document, where we go through each screen and function and write it out. It’s very sophisticated—it has evolved really well. But the thing is, it takes a few days to do that within the team, because we know if we do it right, the next step is faster and more accurate. So really, the prompt document—think of it more like an architecture document. Earlier, we used to create a solution architecture document, defining all the tools, the design, everything.  But now it’s more like an AI-driven solution architecture document with prompts, which get reviewed by team members. So we do that, and then we run that, and we get the code and everything. So I have a CTO club—I run a CTO Club in Maryland—and I was talking to CTOs. They’re all using this, but some of them are so advanced that they actually define the test cases in the beginning. They define, “Okay, this is what I want, this is the function I want, and these are the test cases I want it to pass.” That’s even more advanced. If you can do that, you can have very efficient code.  Yeah, I love it.  So is that the end? You have your test cases, you design the prompt, you peer-review the prompt, and you already had the prototype, so now you’re coding the software—what’s the last step?  Yeah. Then there’s an integration as well. So AI doesn’t do the integration so well. You can do the front-end coding, you can do the back-end coding, you can probably create the APIs. APIs require a lot more human intervention. But once you have that, then you have to connect it, right? You have to connect the front end with the backend. A lot of that is still done by the programmer. It’s hard to rely on AI for doing that. And again, it depends on the application. Maybe if it’s a smaller application, maybe you can have AI do that. But if it’s a bigger application—we mostly build bigger applications—then integration, then final QA and testing, and deployment.  So all that is there. But in each of these steps, you can use some sort of AI tool to speed up the process. But the key is you still have to have your architecture, the process. You have to know the steps more. You have to be a good, experienced developer to use AI efficiently if you want to build a production-ready application. You can build a prototype. Anybody can build a prototype on Replit or Lovable, but it’s not going to be production-ready that you can give to your customer and charge them money. So that’s the differentiator.  Yeah, I understand. So Piyush, I’d like to switch gears here. I understand the AI ideation framework—that’s great. We talked about the technical part of it, the curiosity, the technical challenges. Let’s talk about the entrepreneurship part, which is also part of your profile. So what drives the growth of your business? What would you say drives it?  For us, there are multiple factors that drive the growth of our business. The first is, again, our problem-solving attitude. Any client that comes to us we communicate in that modelShare on X The problem, the challenge, the solution, the business part, the value proposition we bring. And the second factor is our location. We are here in Maryland, and we have another office in Chicago. So being here, we have a global shoring model—that’s a main driving factor of our business from the entrepreneurship perspective. So what the global shoring model is: our client-facing team, the senior team, is here—solution architects, sales engineers, designers, project managers, business analysts—they are here in the US, client-facing. And our dev team and testers are in our offshore locations.  Some people call it hybrid shoring. I call it right shoring. The reason I call it right shoring is because in this model, you have the right people at the right shore, so you get the most value. Here, you have people who understand the culture, the product, the context—because products are used by people in a certain culture. And if you are not in that culture, if you haven’t experienced it, it’s always harder to design the right software solution. I was one of the first people to start that model here in the DMV area for mid-size and smaller companies. This model existed before, but mostly for large enterprise companies. They have used that. But I started to offer that 16 years ago to smaller companies. Either companies were just going offshore, or they were doing onshore, right? I introduced this hybrid—or right-shoring—model, and it has been well received by our customers. So that’s it.  So what is one thing that you’re trying to figure out in your business right now?  Right now, what I’m trying to figure out in my business is scaling. I mean, we have built solutions for many different industries. We have built solutions for different clients in fintech, healthcare, education, nonprofit, startups, IoT, construction. But now what we are trying to figure out is how do we create some off-the-shelf solutions for different industries? Because one challenge we see is that, from the client’s perspective, getting custom software built takes time and money. But in certain use cases, we can have off-the-shelf, industry-specific solutions, and then customize those based on the client’s needs.  So that’s what we are trying to figure out—across different industries, what those solutions can be—so we can scale and also make it easier. And these are more like AI-driven, off-the-shelf solutions that are customizable. So think of it like Salesforce—its core is off-the-shelf, but then you can customize the front end and a lot of other things. Not exactly like Salesforce, but more like industry-specific solutions for different use cases—nonprofit, construction, right? With those, overall, we can build solutions faster.  That’s fascinating. So how has the offshoring—or right shoring, as you call it—model evolved over the past 10 years? Is it different now than it was 10 or 20 years ago?  Yeah, I think that’s a great question. It has evolved and changed. Earlier—maybe 10, 12 years ago—when we were talking about hybrid shoring, we were mostly talking about the US and Asia. But now we have different players. We have the nearshore model, which has become quite popular as well—like South America. We have team members in nearshore locations as well, in South America, because we want to leverage different time zones, resources, and culture. And we’ve seen very positive results. Then you have Eastern Europe. We have competition from countries like Ukraine, Belarus, Romania, Poland. I think it’s the part of the globalized world, right? It’s like energy flowing in different spaces—it’s not limited to one place, which is great. That’s one way it has evolved.  I also know some companies working in Kenya—there are developers there. Some companies are setting up in East Africa, West Africa. So different places are playing roles now. That’s one thing I see. And now, with the help of AI, what’s going to happen is it will play two roles. One— in many situations, with AI, you can do more things onshore. That’s one aspect of it. And second—with AI, someone sitting offshore who knows how to use AI can become very competitive as well. We don’t have enough data yet to fully see how this will evolve, but maybe in a year or so, we’ll see how it plays out.  But I also find that with these simultaneous translation tools—like Apple, I think an iPhone can now translate in all languages. Essentially, another barrier falls that if the language and knowledge of your offshore contractor is not perfect, they can understand things much more clearly because of simultaneous translation. Even on Zoom, you can now flip a switch and they can read what’s being said in their own language during a conversation. So that’s amazing, I think.  Yeah. That’s amazing. That’s amazing. They can understand more about the culture and mindset. So that’s something have to see. Again, I think it depends on the use case, the application, the problem we’re solving. But in some cases, it might be great news for onshore—we can keep more dollars here. But keeping dollars here with AI also means a lot of that spend is going to AI, right? So that’s one thing—we have to be very careful. Yesterday, in our tech breakfast, our presentation was about how to optimize your AI tokens. There are some companies spending $150,000 per year per employee on tokens. Wow.  That’s like the salary of one employee.  Yeah.  A mid-level developer—$150K—they’re spending that much. And then they’re trying to figure out how to optimize it. And on top of that, they have cloud costs, right? AWS, Azure—those costs are still there—and then you add AI. So it’s a lot of money. You really have to be very smart about understanding and optimizing it. That’s why the prompting is so important, right? It’s not just about getting the right software—it’s also about getting the cost down.  Yeah. Again, you need expert people who can prompt well, because it’s about being able to communicate well. Prompting is about communication—it’s about clarity, brevity, security, all that stuff. So, Piyush, we’re coming close to the end of the recording. If someone would like to learn more about the applications you develop, how you’re using AI, and how you can help their business develop technology, where can they find you? What’s the best way to get in touch with you? Sure, there are many ways people can reach out to me. They can go to my website, www.simpalm.com—we have a contact form there. They can submit the form, or they can reach out to me via email directly at [email protected]. They can also connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m on LinkedIn—message me there if somebody needs anything. I always like discussing problems and what the solutions can be. If anybody reaches out to me, I’m always very quick to respond.  That’s awesome. So Piyush Jain, the CEO of Simpalm—and we didn’t even talk about your other business, Ducknowl—thank you for coming, and thank you for sharing your insights and your framework on how to build an ideation framework for AI. So thanks for sharing that. And if you’re listening and you enjoyed this conversation, then stay tuned, because every week we have another entrepreneur sharing their insights and frameworks with you. So make sure you follow us on YouTube, subscribe, and give us a review on Apple Podcasts. So thanks for coming. Thank you, Steve. It was a pleasure talking to you. Important Links: Piyush’s LinkedIn Piyush’s website

https://youtu.be/UcnTlk-Zv3A Anthony Blatner, Founder and CMO of Speedwork Social and host of LinkedIn Ads Radio, is on a mission to help B2B companies turn LinkedIn into a predictable growth engine. With a background in technology and marketing, Anthony helps businesses cut through noise, leverage authentic content, and use LinkedIn ads to consistently attract and convert high-quality prospects. We explore Anthony’s LinkedIn Lead Funnel: Top of Funnel (Tips & Tricks + Case Studies), Middle Funnel (Lead Capture), and Bottom Funnel (Boost Post & Retarget)—a simple yet powerful framework for generating demand, capturing leads, and converting them into customers using a combination of organic content and paid amplification. Anthony shares why traditional tactics like cold connection requests are losing effectiveness, how AI is reshaping content creation, and why human-driven, personality-rich content still wins. He also breaks down how to structure content, budget effectively, and build a sustainable LinkedIn strategy—even with limited time. — 3 Steps to Leads on LinkedIn with Anthony Blatner Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Anthony Blatner, the Founder and CMO of the Speedwork, LinkedIn Ad Agency, helping great companies get great customers with LinkedIn ads. Anthony, welcome to the show.  Hey, Steve, excited to be here and to talk to you today. It’s great to have you here. So before we dive into all things LinkedIn, I’d like to ask my favorite question on this podcast, which is, what is your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in your business?  Yeah, I’ve always been just really into business. I grew up being around a lot of business owners. My dad ran his own business, and he was in the finance world, so he worked with a lot of other business owners. So since I was a kid, I've always been around a lot of business owners, and I've always just really enjoyed business, and then I just naturally gravitated to the marketing world there because I just really enjoyed the side of the business world.Share on X So my ‘Why’ has always been around helping and growing businesses. I come from the technology space doing software development, and now I’m in the marketing space and it’s just something I’ve always loved doing and it’s a very exciting space and it’s always changing very fast. So that’s been my personal ‘Why’, and just manifesting it every day in what we do in our work on LinkedIn. So it’s just always fun to be working with growing businesses.  Yeah, this LinkedIn is a fascinating platform. I’ve been on it, I don’t know, probably over 20 years now. Is this possible?  Yeah.  Something like that. And there were other platforms at the time like Plaxo—I think that was one competitor platform—and I was on multiple platforms. Then I quit Plaxo, and I’m glad that I actually built on the right platform. I’ve also witnessed how people are getting more and more active on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is becoming kind of non-negotiable for B2B businesses. So tell me how you see this evolution and how LinkedIn has changed over the past 10 years.  Yeah, it definitely has changed a lot. Back in the day, when we were first getting started, a lot of people would ask me, “Does anybody even use LinkedIn?” Ten years ago, it wasn’t as widely used, especially on the social side. It’s always been like the digital resume. The big change happened with Covid, when everyone was had to get online more. That’s when the big shift happened. Everyone got used to using it a lot more. And then since then, people are used to using it, and it has definitely evolved into being kind of the number one social platform for professionals. So anything business-wise, business content, people are going to go on LinkedIn to share that and talk about that. So it was kind of cemented in this place there. Then they just continued rolling out additional features and things that are useful for both users on reading, connecting with your colleagues, but then also on the marketing side of things. So the advertising platform has kind of come a long way. There’s a lot of new features, a lot of new capabilities there. So it’s been very interesting to watch how it’s evolved. And I think also at the same time we kind of see how other platforms have evolved differently. I feel like these days, if I ever go on Facebook, it’s just a lot of like AI-generated garbage content. So during the workday or during the work week, I want to be reading business stuff. I want to be learning things and I’m going to apply to my job. That’s why I go on LinkedIn to read that type of content. And I know that’s why a lot of other professionals do it. So it’s kind of just grown into its place there in the ecosystem. So people are used to using it a lot more. And there’s been a lot of new features that have come out to help marketers use it as a marketing channel.  I’m glad you brought up this AI evolution, because I see that more and more people are writing their posts with AI. There can be benefits to that, because some people don’t write as well as an AI copywriter does—most of us, perhaps. On the other hand, the posts start to look a little bit more alike. So I wonder, what is your perception of this? Do you think people are posting more, and if they post more, do people read less? How is this evolving?  Yes, it’s a continually evolving space. I don’t think we know a hundred percent what the outcome is right now, but I think what I see across all the people that we work with—and just using the platform—there’s a lot more content these days with AI. People can use AI to generate content, so there’s a lot more content out there. But volume does not always mean quality. There’s more content, but not necessarily the best content. The best stuff that we see performing well in our ad campaigns—and also organically on LinkedIn—usually has a human angle to it, where maybe you wrote it yourself.  You can use AI to generate content—AI is great for that, and it’s great for writing—but you probably want to take what it gives you and then add your own edits and personality. That’s a big piece. The more personality you have in your content, the more people are going to engage with it. So across the board, we see that human content still wins. AI is great for generating the bulk of the content, but then you want to put in your own voice, add some personality to it, and then that's going to help it perform kind of even better…Share on X  Well, that takes me to the next question, which is about connection requests and people reaching out. So how is this evolving, and how do you see people reacting to connection requests? I remember 20 years ago, it was a big deal if you got a connection request, and we basically reached out to all the people we knew and connected with everyone we could. Now, there are different schools of thought. Some say that you should not connect with anyone you don’t want to do business with because it dilutes the exposure of your content, and you’re not going to go viral. You’re also not going to be able to follow the few people you can actually do business with. Other people say the more, the merrier. So what’s your view on this topic?  I think the marketers went very heavily into connection requests—especially during the Covid period—and maybe burned it out. As users, we’ve all been burned out by the connection requests and the messages we’ve been receiving. So as a platform, and in terms of how people use it, that tactic has definitely simmered down a lot. It’s still a usable, viable tactic—prospecting is never going to go away. Whether it’s email, cold calling, or LinkedIn, delivering the right message to the right person at the right time will always matter. But it is changing and evolving. Users are burned out by the messages, so they’re much more skeptical now. People accept far fewer connection requests because they can usually see the intent coming from a mile away. I still recommend connecting with people you do know—your colleagues and your clients—and also connecting with your prospects. But be aware that everyone else is cautious when they receive a connection request. They often assume you’re going to try to sell to them. So start with the people that you do know that you are working with. Prospecting will probably never go away, but definitely the platform as a whole—and what works on LinkedIn—has definitely shifted. Connection requests don’t work as well as they used to. People have shifted more to the content side of things on LinkedIn, and I think it does provide a better user experience to the end user and also for the marketer too. At the end of the day, it’s about the end user and the experience you’re…Share on X I’m a LinkedIn user, you’re a LinkedIn user, so we want to have a good experience. We don’t want to just receive spam from everybody, or else we’re not going to use it. But the platform evolves, so it’s a lot more about the content you’re posting on LinkedIn. Other people are going to discover that content, and then maybe they choose to follow you at that point. Maybe they choose to send you a connection request. But it doesn’t have to be just that. When LinkedIn sees people starting to engage with your content, they’re going to show more of your content. So it’s kind of becoming a discovery platform, and there is a network effect to it. So there’s definitely a shift toward the content you’re posting. It’s much more about thought leadership. I know the LinkedIn product team is trying to be very intentional about the content they surface to users. They want it to be high-quality, thought leadership content. As a platform, they know they’ve had a spam problem—from connection requests to the comments people leave. A lot of those comments are AI-generated. LinkedIn has taken a stand that they don’t want AI-generated comments, and they’re actively scanning to remove them. LinkedIn’s trying to reduce the AI spam, and they are trying to focus on and surface the high-quality thought leadership type of content. So that’s all on the content side of things. And then the advertising platform has also evolved a lot too. As users and marketers shift more toward the feed and the content being created, the marketing side of LinkedIn follows that shift. Now, marketing on LinkedIn is largely about running ads in the newsfeed. On LinkedIn, you can run ad campaigns just like Facebook ad campaigns. For anybody who’s used Facebook, you’ve seen all the different ads that are on Facebook. LinkedIn has their own same ad offerings, and it’s very similar to those. So you can build your campaigns to put ads in the newsfeed. But the big change in the last year or two is that, in the past, you could only run company page ads. So all of your ads had to be from a company page. Within the last couple years, you can now do what’s called “thought leader ads,” which is just simply boosting posts from a person. So it sounds fancy when you say thought leader ads, but it’s just boosting posts from a person. It’s a better experience all the way around because you want to be getting your content out there, so you want to be boosting your posts and getting your message out there. You want people to be getting to know you, and they also just perform a lot better because people on LinkedIn will always engage with other people more than with companies, because that’s why people are on LinkedIn to learn from other people and hear what they have to say. So those thought leader ads just perform a lot better, the better user experience all the way around. That’s where the platform has really evolved and shifted to. No more connection requests or very few of those. And now it’s all about the content people are creating, posting, and then boosting, creating a full-funnel approach that way.  Okay, that’s fascinating. So your business is LinkedIn ads and helping companies grow on LinkedIn, and this podcast is about frameworks. Yeah. I’m wondering if there’s a framework for how people should think about LinkedIn and how to use it—especially for a small business, maybe they have 10 to 50 employees, and they want to grow their business. They’re in the B2B space, they want to use LinkedIn. They’re aware that LinkedIn advertising can be pretty expensive, so they’ll likely use a combination of approaches. What’s a good frame of mind for that? There’s the company page, there’s the personal profile—so is there a simple framework for thinking about how to use LinkedIn as an advertising tool and how to promote their small to medium-sized business there? Yes, there is. I’m going to give you the very simple yet effective thought leader ad funnel—something anyone can go and use. It’s the simplest and also the most effective thing you can do on LinkedIn. It starts with you, and I’ll explain the different stages, as well as how to get started. So the first step is getting your own posts out there. Not everybody’s posting on LinkedIn. Not everybody feels comfortable posting on LinkedIn, and sometimes it’s a hard process to go through to getting people to post. And whether that’s you or your CEO, or somebody else at your company, another leader, the first step is to get into the routine of posting regularly. Again, it could be a big hurdle for some people, but you just have to get it started. Once you start to find your voice on LinkedIn, then we’re going to start thinking about three different buckets of content that you’re going to be creating. The first bucket of content is what we call awareness content. It gets people interested in what you have to talk about. There’s a lot that can work well here, but across the board, we see that case studies perform very well. By case studies, I mean content like: “Here’s how we achieved X, Y, Z result, here’s what you can learn from it, and here’s how you can do it.” Not the kind of case studies that say, “We’re so awesome, we did this, and we’re great,” but more educational, tips-and-tricks-style case studies. So posting those types of posts on LinkedIn. That’s why everyone else is on LinkedIn—to read those things and learn those things that they can take back to their job and to their company to improve what they’re doing. So if you’re the one creating that type of content that other people want to be reading, that’s the perfect start. And then when you’re talking about a result that you helped this certain industry or a person get somebody else in that industry who wants that result is going to read your post and your content. So that’s why we start with that type of content. That’s what we call the top of the funnel—it’s meant to get people interested in who you are and what you’re talking about. Then the next step of the funnel, what we call the middle of the funnel. We want people to opt in for something. Posting on LinkedIn is great, but it’s really just one step in the process.Share on X Most businesses want to get people to your website, want to get somebody on a list so that they can then communicate with them more afterwards. Many businesses have different resources, downloadables, or things you might offer to those people. It can be a simple newsletter, but even better than that is if it’s a webinar type of thing that somebody might register for, maybe you have a series of webinars. It might be a guide or report, or it could be something even more than that. It could be a free trial or something like that. So the second step in the funnel is: what can you give to your audience, to your market, that provides more value, but also gets them involved and get them on your list as an indication of interest. So that’s the middle of the funnel. You can post about what you’re offering, explain what you’re sharing, and then you can link back to your website or where they can go to get that. And it’s okay to put the link in the post at this point because we’re going to be boosting it. We know that ad that post is going to be getting delivered to your audience. So that’s middle of the funnel. Then finally, you have the bottom of the funnel. And this is where your main offer is. At this point, it might be something like “get a free consultation” or “book a demo”—whatever it is that you’re offering. At this point, you can set up your retargeting. So if somebody read your first post and then they clicked on your second post, then you’re going to retarget them with your third post. By the time they see that third post, they’ve already seen you a couple of times on LinkedIn. They’re more familiar with you, and they’re more likely to take you up on whatever offer you’re presenting. This is where offers like a free demo or free consultation tend to perform well. You can link directly to something like Calendly, or a page on your website where they can request it, and then you’re driving people to take that next step. I’m sure everyone here is familiar with marketing funnels. This is the simplest thought leader ad funnel that you can build, taking advantage of the thought leader ad format—which is boosting your posts, not running just a company page ad, but boosting your posts. Those will perform much better than company page ads. They’re also much cheaper to run because they perform so much better. So if you’re just getting started, this is the most cost-efficient place to start. That’s the framework right there is the thought leader ad funnel. Top of funnel: case study content. Middle of funnel: guide or opt-in. Bottom of funnel: your offer. And then once somebody engages with your first one, you want to set it up so they get retargeted with your second post. And then once they click on the second post, or once they got opt in and get on your list, then retarget them with a third post. And then you build yourself a little funnel and then boom, you could be reaching new people and then driving them through to eventually schedule a call with you. Yeah. That’s fascinating. So this is basically three levels that you can create posts around and to drive traffic. Maybe I’m starting with the third one—the bottom of the funnel. So after you get the opt-in from your prospect, or from people who are interested, you can retarget them with boosted posts. Yep.  And I assume you can also send them emails and retarget them outside of LinkedIn as well?  Right. Once you get their email, then feel free to use email as another channel. People do only check LinkedIn maybe a couple times a week on average. So if they do opt in to your list, definitely use email. But getting people from that second to third stage can take a little while. It often takes a few more impressions—people need to see more of what you have to offer or what you’re talking about before they’re ready to take that next step. So use both channels.  Love it. So what about company page? Is it not worth building anymore or there’s also a place for company channels? Yeah, don’t ignore your company page. You don’t want it to ever seem inactive. People are going to visit your company page. For anyone in business, you probably already have people visiting your website, and there are people actively doing research to learn more about you. Company pages rank very high on Google and elsewhere. So if someone searches for your business, the first result will likely be your main website, and the second result will often be your company page. That means a lot of people will end up visiting it. You don’t want it to look inactive. Even posting once a month is enough—you just want to show that there’s some level of activity there. And then, the bigger you are as a company, the more important your company page becomes. For very small companies or solopreneurs, that’s where the thought leader ads are kind of the main thing you’re going to be doing. The bigger and bigger you go. We work with a lot of mid-market and enterprise companies as well, and for them it is more company page, overall it’s like a mix. We still use thought leader ads for big companies, but it’s a lot more company page ads will do for the big companies. So the best way to structure that funnel is still leading with your people—those boosted posts—because they perform so much better. It’s also a great way for your audience to get to know you.Share on X And then once they know your people, then you can start to retarget them with the company page ads. At that point, they’ve already seen your people and are getting to know your brand. That’s when retargeting them with the actual brand ads, the company page ads, are going to perform much better. The bigger the company, the more the company page ads are going to use, and that’s how you’ll typically combine them. I love it. It’s fascinating. So what’s the right kind of cadence? Because I see some people are on LinkedIn all the time—and I’ve tried it as well—it can take up a lot of time. You still need to do other types of prospecting too. So what do you recommend as a good cadence for someone who’s maybe a small business CEO? They don’t have a lot of time—they have to make calls, write emails—but they also want to be present on LinkedIn. What’s a sustainable pace?  Yeah, from what I see perform best—and also what’s realistic to maintain—is about posting twice a week on LinkedIn. That at least gets a decent amount of content out there without being too much. And then from there, taking those posts and boosting them into the funnel. Once you set up the funnel, it’s very quick to go boost your posts and add them into it. So really it’s about creating those twice-a-week posts and then setting up your funnel so that those posts get added to it. I do recommend using AI to take a lot of the heavy lifting off and make things easier. But of course, look at what it’s outputting, edit it so it’s in your voice, add some personality to it. It just makes it perform a lot better. It makes it more enjoyable for other people to read it. And then if you really don’t have the time, go hire somebody or go find a freelancer, or that’s when people come talk to us, is when you just need help from somebody to go do it. So start with twice a week and go from there. There’s not really a strict upper limit—you don’t start to max out until you’re posting multiple times a day. I don’t know if anyone listening to this is going to get there, but you can post twice, three times a day, and you’re really not hurting yourself. So at least twice a week. Start with that.  Yeah. So when you say inject personality, what does that mean? Is it about sharing personal information? Is it about having your own voice? What does that even mean?  Yeah, it means a lot of things. AI can be very flat and boring, and you can read something and very often tell this is probably generated with AI. Personality is—it’s hard to say exactly what it is—but it’s like spicing it up. It’s like breaking perfect grammar. It’s using your own unique style, like the way you might start your post or the way you might sign off at the end. Because if someone’s just scrolling through the newsfeed and they’re just seeing a bunch of posts that look the same, that’s noise. It all blends in, and it’s not going to work well. But the posts that really stand out are the ones that have a little bit of personality. It depends on your business and your vertical—maybe you add some emojis, maybe you add some questions—but it’s about finding a way to break out in the newsfeed. So there’s lots of stuff you can do. Maybe add one or two emojis, maybe add a simple question, but it’s also about adding more energy to your post. It’s not just writing flat business content—it’s finding ways to add more emotion and energy. It’s hard to define exactly what personality is, but when you scroll your feed and you see it, you’ll know it. Yeah. I did notice that people resonate with stuff that people create. Earlier, about two years ago, we created a video that we thought was very cool, but we used AI, and almost nobody looked at it. But if I put in some emotional energy when creating the post, adding in my own ideas—and even if I write it myself—it works much better. I find the AI stuff, even if it’s structured—maybe I don’t have one-sentence paragraphs and things like that—so it can work better.  And it’s good to have a mixture of different types of content, because yes, text-only is a good format, but maybe you use certain images. Maybe you went to a conference recently, or maybe you’re with your colleagues—you can use images like that. That adds a bit of personality. Videos can also be effective, especially selfie-style videos where you’re talking about your subject or your expertise. Those are good, because AI can’t yet generate the perfect video of you talking—it’s getting much better and getting close—but people can still tell when a video is AI-generated. So leverage those formats as a way to stand out in the feed. Video is a very good format because people get to see you and hear from you. They feel like they get to know you a lot faster when they watch a video. Most of the time in business and sales, you don’t get to meet someone until you’re at an event or on a sales call. So use the LinkedIn feed as a way to accelerate that. Let people get to know you by letting them see you and hear you, and they’ll…Share on X  Yeah, I love it. Okay, so I think it’s a great picture, and thanks for sharing it. So creating awareness is kind of top of funnel—case studies, what works, tips and tricks. Then you share a lead magnet-type thing, build your list, invite them to download something, come to a webinar, do a free trial, and then you have that list. And then you can retarget them with your bottom of the funnel, which could be more of the same, I guess. It could be multiple channels. So that’s really cool. Now, if someone wants to do this, what kind of budget should they be thinking about? Because boosting posts can be expensive, but if it’s a good post and you get people to download stuff, maybe it’s a good ROI. So what kind of budget would make a difference if I were to post twice? Let’s say I’m a CEO of a small-to-medium business. I post twice a week, I develop a couple of lead magnets, I do some retargeting, boosting posts—what kind of budget makes a meaningful difference for me?  Yeah, so the minimum LinkedIn lets you spend on a single campaign per day is 10 bucks a day. so the very minimum is $10 a day to get started, and then you can kind of play around with it from there. To build the system that I mentioned, that would be three different campaigns. So that’d be about $900 to $1,000 a month. So that’s kind of the minimum to get started there. We see companies start to have more predictable and repeatable results once you get to at least $3K a month in total spend. You’re probably going to start with more of that in the top and middle of the funnel, and then those audiences get smaller as you move down toward the bottom. About $3K a month is where you start to see more predictable, reliable results. But you can get started with as little as $10 a day. And then if you’re a bigger mid-market or enterprise company, you might be spending tens or hundreds of thousands a month on ads. You can scale it as far as you want, but to get started, at least $10 a day.  Yeah, that makes sense. If you do $1,000 a month, then get to $3,000, you can actually use it as a proper, predictable channel. So when you say predictable, what kind of results can people expect? Is it a certain number of downloads? I mean, obviously it depends on the content and the quality of the thought leadership—I get it—but what is the typical range that you see?  Yeah. For some averages—if you build that funnel like I mentioned—what we typically see is you might be driving downloads or opt-ins for your newsletter or webinar at anywhere between $50 to $150 per opt-in. It kind of depends on what it is. Newsletters are easier to drive opt-ins for, while webinars are a bit harder because someone knows they need to set aside time in their schedule. That said, there are some businesses we’re working with that are getting about $7 to $8 per opt-in.  And again, you want to use LinkedIn when you’re targeting a professional audience that carries more value for your business. So $7 to $8 is a really good cost per opt-in. For example, in that case, we’re targeting marketing directors, VPs of marketing, CMOs at mid-market companies. Then for call bookings, those can range anywhere between $100 to $500 per booking. In many cases, we’re driving people directly to a Calendly link so they can schedule a call right there. So yeah, you might see somewhere between $100 to $500 per call booking. That all very much depends on your audience and your offer, but those are some typical ranges we see.  So you’re a business owner as well, and you teach people how to do this, and you help people do this. Are you using LinkedIn for growing your business? Is this effective for your type of business—LinkedIn consulting?  Yeah, LinkedIn is our number one channel. That’s where most people find out about us. It makes sense for what we do—we’re doing LinkedIn marketing, so people are going to discover us on LinkedIn. I’d say probably the number two channel is doing podcasts, speaking at events, and webinars. That’s probably the next biggest driver. But LinkedIn is definitely number one.  I guess that’s advertising. So other than advertising and promoting yourself, what drives growth in your business?  What drives growth in our business is using LinkedIn marketing. What makes us different from other people is we’ve built tooling on top of the LinkedIn Ads API, so we can get more data from the API than you can inside of LinkedIn Campaign Manager. That allows us to do advanced optimizations and see more than you can just inside Campaign Manager. We’re able to pull more data from the API and do deeper analysis on things you can’t normally see. So we can get really deep into the demographics—like what sizes of companies are performing best, what industries are performing best, what job titles are performing best.  And that’s where you start to make more advanced optimizations, like, “Oh, I see this job title is working well, or this one’s not,” or “This industry is performing very well, and this other one is not.” Then you make those adjustments to your campaigns based on that data. So those are some things that make us different. And then after that, it’s just our experience. We’ve been doing it for 10 years. I created a course on LinkedIn Learning about LinkedIn advertising, so if you go to learn about LinkedIn ads, you might end up taking my course there. And it’s really just the depth of experience—we’ve seen every type of funnel, worked with every type of company. That’s fascinating. Well, Anthony, if someone would like to learn more—okay, they can go to LinkedIn Learning, as you just shared—but how can they connect with you, and how can they get the most up-to-date stuff from you?  Yes. Well, I’m on LinkedIn. I share a lot of content there, so you can look me up on LinkedIn. Otherwise, our website is SpeedworkSocial.com. If you’d like to get our help, you can go there. We also have our own podcast—it’s called LinkedIn Ads Radio—where we have lots of episodes going through different topics. We do interviews with LinkedIn and other leading marketers, so there’s some really good content there. And then also on YouTube—all of those episodes exist there as well.  Fantastic. Well, if you own a small business, or you run one—a small to medium-sized business or even an enterprise—and you want to grow your B2B audience, then just follow Anthony’s recipe: the three levels. The top of the funnel—creating awareness with case studies—then developing your lead magnets, and then retargeting, email marketing to them, boosting your posts. Anthony, thanks for clarifying this for me. I’ve been on LinkedIn for 20 years, but I didn’t have this picture in my mind. And for those of you listening, if you enjoy this content, stay tuned, because we have similar episodes every week from thought leaders and business owners who share their tips and tricks. I guess this is top of funnel, right?  Yes.  So, Anthony, thanks for coming, and thanks for listening. Important Links: Anthony’s LinkedIn Anthony’s website

https://youtu.be/9jLLr7IPej0 Ethan Giffin, Founder of Groove Commerce and author of Closing the Digital Revenue Gap, is driven by deep curiosity, a passion for technology, and a desire to help businesses solve problems that directly impact revenue. With over two decades of experience in eCommerce, Ethan now focuses on helping manufacturers and distributors build scalable digital revenue channels that complement their sales teams and improve overall business performance. We explore Ethan’s Revenue Framework for Manufacturers and Distributors, a practical system for building and scaling digital revenue channels in complex B2B environments. The framework guides companies through Discover, Build, Pilot, Activate, and Optimize—starting with cross-functional alignment and strategy, followed by building the right system, testing it with key customers, scaling adoption across the customer base, and continuously improving performance. Ethan explains why B2B eCommerce is far more complex than a typical website project, how “quiet friction” can silently drive customers away, and why successful digital transformation requires long-term commitment, internal buy-in, and the right systems in place. — 5 Steps to Closing the B2B Revenue Gap with Ethan Giffin Good day, dear listener. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Ethan Giffin, the Founder of the Groove Commerce, eCommerce Agency, trusted advisors to manufacturers and distributors, and author of Closing the Digital Revenue Gap. Ethan, welcome to the show.  Very excited to be here, Steve. Very excited to be here. Thank you.  Well, we’ve known each other for quite a few years, probably, I don’t know, five or six years.  2018.  So 2018. So that’s eight. Eight years.  Eight years. Yeah.  Oh my God. Okay.  Eight years.  So we’ve known each other a long time. I think you’ve been on one of the early versions of this podcast as well. But things have changed a lot since then. That was five years ago. And your business has transformed, and you have niched your business dramatically since. So I thought that it would be great to have a conversation and talk a little bit about where you come from, what you’re trying to achieve, what matters to you, and also the system that you developed, which I thought was very impactful for manufacturers. So before we dive into that, tell me about your personal ‘Why’ and how you manifesting it in your business?  How many hours do you have, Steve? How many hours do you have? I think my personal “why” is that I have a deep curiosity about life in general. I’ve also always enjoyed technology and driving technology, and I’ve always enjoyed sales. A very odd to put all of that together, but I think that’s really has created my personal “why.” I’m just an amazingly curious person and want to continue to learn. And actually love helping people solve their problems that help make them money. It's pretty simple to me in that regard.Share on X If you asked people in my EO chapter, they would say, “Oh, you always ask great questions.” So I just love being curious and helping people.  Yeah, definitely. The area you’re working in is very fast-moving, with lots of changes—especially with AI happening and so much innovation in technology. A lot to be curious about. I was personally very curious about the system that you developed. You call it the eCommerce Revenue Program Framework. And we are framework junkies here on the Management Blueprint, and I’d love to learn about what that does for manufacturers, distributors. What are the main pillars, and how does that system work? How do you generate revenue for them? That’s a great question. It’s a great question. So I’ve been building websites for well over 30 years and building eCommerce sites for, I think 22 years at this point. 2004 was my first really in-depth professional eCommerce website. Over that time, I’ve worked with a ton of different types of organizations, and a lot of common themes started to present themselves. As Groove has continued to evolve, we began to work a lot more with manufacturers and distributors who wanted to create online buyer portals so their customers could come in and buy from them.  And they call it B2B eCommerce, and it’s very different from B2C eCommerce. Generally, you have to be approved to buy. There’s just a lot of things that goes into kind of replacing working with a salesperson, so to speak, in many of these industries. And I just found a lot of common threads. I also found a group of folks who may not be as digitally mature in the eCommerce space as other folks. And I needed to lay out a system that both the CEO, the CFO, the CTO, and the CMO could all understand and work within, and have some level of accountability within that.  Yeah. Just one thing I’d like to mention here. I had a Vistage member when I started my Vistage groups who was running a distributorship, and they really struggled this idea that they wanted to sell online, but they were afraid of upsetting their distributors. They didn’t want to be seen as competing with them. So it was a very complex and politically difficult situation. You’re probably going to talk about that as well.  Well, it’s a little bit different, right? So the concept of what we’re doing is actually helping someone that has, maybe they’re a manufacturer and they sell to distributors. They’re not selling to the public. They’re selling to an approved group of their customers that are able to come in and buy from them anytime they want 24/7 without human intervention. And so that’s the concept of what we create. So we actually help them create a real digital revenue channel within their organization. And people are like, well, wait, does that mean you don’t need salespeople? No. Most of these organizations have long running sales teams, and actually the sales team can leverage the platforms to help their customers and accounts buy more, so that they can spend more time actually selling than hand-typing in orders and being an order taker.  And so it allows their customers to come in and reorder whenever they want and buy at more frequent intervals and see their pricing, have their payment terms, et cetera. Very different from, say, going to an online T-shirt shop, putting in your credit card, and they ship it to you. Sometimes customers are able to buy on credit, and you’re tracking how much credit they’ve utilized within the ERP system. A very different and much more complex transaction. We think that manufacturers and distributors should have at least 10% of their overall revenue flowing through a digital platform like that. Our average customer is anywhere between $100 million and $400 million in revenue. So that’s $10 to $50 million flowing through that channel. And so some industries with more digitally mature customers can go much higher than 10%. And it’s just a much cheaper way to operate.  So let’s say I’m a manufacturer and I manufacture widgets, and these widgets are being distributed through vendors who install these widgets into machines. Retail customers don’t really understand our widgets, so we’re not selling to retail. We’re fully salesperson-based, and we’d like to go online. We’d like to get 10% or 15% of our sales online. What does it take for us to transform our business to partially online?  Yeah. That’s a great question, Steve. That’s a great question. I’m going to walk you through it very simply. I will say most CEOs or VPs of marketing think about a project like this as just a website. That’s the wrong way to think about it. This needs to be a true revenue channel within the organization—a true top-down initiative that has accountability from all sides—because it’s much bigger than that. If you’re talking about $10, $20, $30, $50, or even $100 million going through a system like this, it’s not just about building a website. And that’s a really common mistake that the prospects and customers that we’ve gotten have often done.  Their IT might say, “Oh, we have a WordPress website. Let’s use WooCommerce for free.” Or, “I saw Shopify on Jim Cramer. Let’s try Shopify.” Most of those direct-to-consumer systems don’t have the right kind of features and functionality, nor is the process to pick the software first. So what we actually tell our customers and prospects is, “Hey, we’ve got to take a step back.” We have a five-step lifecycle that takes about three years for a company to go from zero to kind of fully digitally transformed in terms of their eCommerce. We start with what we call the Discover phase of the lifecycle. And that is where we work, consult, understand, and build alignment between the sales team, the finance team, customer service, operations team, the warehouse, and the IT team to build this kind of alignment where all the groups of the…Share on X  In that process, we’re helping them to pick a software to utilize, to run all of this, and that will connect to their ERP system accordingly. The next phase in the process is the Build phase, and that is more traditional—like any website—where we architect, design, and build the full system. For a modern manufacturer, that generally takes about six to eight months to go through that process. Some are a little faster, some are a little longer, depending on the organization. But is this because there are thousands of SKUs, or why does it take so long?  Because there’s complex integrations with their accounting and ERP systems. The catalog is often not ready for prime time. Maybe it’s in the ERP, but it contains a lot of internal slang and doesn’t have photos for everything. They’re often missing data or specifications. For instance, sometimes Amazon has better product descriptions and more measurements than the manufacturer’s own website. So these are the kind of things that we need to go to. The Discover and Build phases together can take anywhere between eight and 12 months—or longer—depending upon the size of the organization. The next step, the next lifecycle here is called the Pilot phase, and this is something people often forget about. What they don’t do is they don’t pilot these types of systems with a handful of their top customers. Customers that would never fire them, or that are willing to go on a little bit of an R&D journey with them. They don’t pilot these systems and have them start to utilize it in a white-glove way, and they don’t often have the same kind of white-glove service with their internal sales teams to help them get going. So this Pilot phase is very important to start seeing early adoption—both internally and with the customer.Share on X  Sorry to interrupt, but I’m curious—how do you get those customers to actually invest time in piloting a system like that when they already have a salesperson who knows them and their needs?  Well, generally, up to this point, we’ve internally surveyed and built a system that can handle these customers. Most of your top customers want you to succeed. Quite honestly, they may already be experiencing friction in the sales process currently is holding them back and they may be like, “Oh, I can just go in and press one button to reorder my weekly order—thank God!” Most of the time, they volunteer to pilot the system. In fact, these are the ones that you want to pilot the system, the ones that are willing to do that, and you need to take them through that process with a white-glove level of service, even holding weekly office hours if you need to.  But what you want to see in that pilot is see those customers make not only their first order, but maybe their second, third, or fourth order, depending upon what their typical intervals are. And so we want to get that up and running and get some early kind of wins there and get both the internal team and the customers feeling like, Hey, this is really working for us. And then the next phase after that, we call it the Activate phase. Again, these websites are very different than a direct-to-consumer site, where they usually have an improved list of customers and they’re hidden behind a password. The next phase is the activate phase, and that’s where you want to get all of your customers in the system placing their first and second orders and getting it going. And you want to roll that out.  Generally, it might take you a good 10 to 12 months to get everybody rocking and rolling with this part of the system. But once they do, and once they start making their first, second, third order, you’ve built muscle memory over time. So this activation phase is really important. I was recently talking to the VP of marketing at a $400 million distributorship. He was telling me that they had invested seven figures in building this system, and they spent 18 months connecting it into all their financial systems. Again, $400 million. And they had only done about $200,000 in their first nine months having the system live. And what they didn’t do was they didn’t figure out how to activate their customer base. Because I asked them, how many customers do you have? Well, we’ve got about 180,000 customers.  Well, how many are in the system? 15,000. And next thing, and I’m like, well, you haven’t done yourselves any favor here. So you need a very solid plan to activate. That takes about the first two years, right? The first year is kind of architecting and building the system. Year two is really piloting and activating the system, but by year three, you've got more mature scorecard.Share on X You are starting to find ways to optimize, to reduce friction in the buying process. Maybe you’re introducing more products to your catalog. You’re introducing your customers to more product offerings that you may have, or maybe you’re finding even new industries that you can easily plug into the system and generate more revenue. And we call that the Optimize phase. And that continues to just spin in a flywheel once that’s up and running. That’s fascinating. So I wonder—how do you get the sales team to buy in? Is there an advantage for them, or they feel like sometimes that the digital channel is going to compete with them?  Yeah, well, that buy-in can come from a lot of feelings. I’ve had to stand up in front of national sales meeting audiences and talk about these kind of things. And so I would say, out of the gate, salespeople are nervous that you’re trying to take their commission away. When their customers buy through these systems, they need to get the commission off their accounts as they normally would. Maybe you raise expectations, right? In terms of what you’re looking for them to sell, or their annual quota. Perhaps you want them to sell a little more now that they have this electronic tool—but they need to share in the revenue that comes through these systems. The second part is that, according to McKinsey Consulting, 70% of all digital transformation projects in the mid-market fail to meet their original stated goal. So what happens is that people make wrong decisions, or maybe they pick software before they put alignment together. And so the salespeople, maybe they’ve had a poor experience or two with a CRM rollout, or an ERP rollout, or a previous eCommerce rollout that wasn’t thoughtfully planned. And so you’ve got to figure out how to build that confidence and trust back with folks. And then the last piece is you’ve got to give them a voice in the process. A traditional website project may not include the head of sales for the organization, but for our discoveries, we like them to attend at least the first couple days of that.  So this is a huge project—two or three years working with a client. How important it is that you keep an eye on the pulse of the client, keep listening, and make sure buy-in continues to be strong? Yeah, I think it’s very important. One of the best parts about all of this is everything is trackable. We can track which customers have logged in, we can track how frequently they log in. We can track how frequently they buy, and then we can leverage technology to go out and kind of tickle them, remind them—“Hey, it’s been a while since you ordered. Why don’t you come back and check this out?” It is an ongoing relationship, but that relationship changes and evolves over the course of working together. I think once you get over the kind of discover-and-build phases and into the pilot, the relationship begins to evolve and change. Clients get really excited about milestones, like the first $100,000 in orders that come through the system or the first six-figure order that comes through unattended. There’s a lot of things that you want to think about and celebrate along the way when you’re working together.  Do you find that clients are willing to think long-term and commit to three-year plans where they’re willing to invest time and money into building this channel out over a period of time, as opposed to trying to get a silver-bullet solution that will happen overnight? I think it depends on where they are. From our client’s point of view, if they’ve bought into working with us, they believe and understand that this isn’t just a one-project kind of operation to build a 10–15% revenue channel within the organization. There’s no long-term contracts on our side to do it. It’s kind of broken up into kind of multiple phases and pieces. We actually do that so we can make sure that they’re ready to move on to the next step in that. There is some heavy lifting that comes from the first year of actually building a system and getting all the integration parts working through that —which is challenging. I get questions often about this. There’s usually a buying committee that makes decisions on these types of project and expenses, and the CFO is always a part of that conversation. And I think the transparency that we do offer a CFO to say, listen, this is what you should expect over a three-year period.  If both sides do what they’ve agreed to do here, this is what it can get to. And I believe that maybe it might cost them $50 or $60 an order for a human in their call center to actually get the order over the phone and type it in. And kind of follow along with that from an ongoing kind of basis. And it might cost $3, $4, $5 for an order of that scale to come out of an eCommerce system. So there's definitely optimization that happens all the way around. Salespeople are able to do more, and customer service is able to focus on actually helping people, not entering orders.Share on X  Yeah, I was wondering—let’s say my widget manufacturer, we increase, we get 10% into the digital channel in a period of three years, maybe 10-15%. How much of that is accretive to the actual sales in your experience? And how much of it is kind of cannibalizing some of the actual sales?  I think it’s a little bit of both. Customers will generally buy more from you if it’s easier to buy from you. And I think there’s a real optimization in terms of expenses and costs that happens when you bring it all on.  So there’s a little bit of top-line growth and a lot of profitability improvement, margin improvement. Margin improvement.  Yeah. That’s very interesting. So, Ethan, you’re coming out with the book Closing the Digital Revenue Gap. What prompted you to write this book, and what is it about?  I felt like I’ve got over 20 years of stories from being on the road. And I felt like it would be a lot of the same challenges would happen over and over again on these types of projects. So I sat down and wanted to really write about these stories, the challenges, and how we made it through them, and give the reader some things to think about as they’re going through challenges like that. And just understand that they’re not alone, that other people, that other organizations have had similar challenges over the year. So I wanted to get that out on paper and have it in a holdable form. Sorry, I don’t have them. I’m still waiting for the hardcovers to come in, so I don’t have one to show you today. But the reasoning is I felt like I wanted to tell my story and the stories of the journey I’ve been on of building these types of sites and systems over the years. Yeah. I’m sure you have a lot of war stories. Can you share one or two with us—something that was really difficult but then created a breakthrough, or a situation where someone was very skeptical and then came around?  Yeah. I think one of the big stories I like to talk about is quiet friction. Every business has quiet friction in it that may affect their customers, and they don't even know it.Share on X So, here where I’m from in Baltimore, they recently passed a law where it costs five cents for every grocery bag that you use at the grocery store, right? There’s one grocery store in the area that carries a handful of my favorite things to make pizza. They carry these special pepperonis, special cheese, like all the things. And I love making pizza. And I’m always so happy when I’m going to this store to get those things because I know I’m going to make pizza, and I love it. Well, with this law coming and happening, most grocery stores that you go to that have a self-checkout will have an option.  How many bags did you use? 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. And the bags are right there. It’s on the honor system. Well, this grocery store chain at their self-checkout locks the grocery bags up, and you actually have to go get the self-checkout assistant to come over, swipe his badge, type in a whole bunch of like characters on the touchscreen, and then get a bag out of a locked cabinet and give it to you. And it’s created so much friction with me that I actually hate going to that grocery store now. And it’s kind of ruined the experience of me buying three of my favorite things to do my favorite thing. If I ask most manufacturers to say, think about your business. Is it actually hard to buy from you? Sit and ponder that a bit. What kind of quiet friction do you have within your organization? And most of them, you can see the steam come out of their ears once they realize what’s creating those types of challenges for them. What kind of quiet friction do you have in your company that might not make people like leave immediately, but if somebody else gives them the opportunity to buy what you sell from them much easier without making it a pain in the ass, they might like, kind of gradually move, float away from you. And I think that’s where you start to just like miss compatibility with all of it.  Yeah, I love that you approach it from this angle—it’s the friction. If you remove the friction, the flow of business accelerates. It’s like widening a gorge: a lot more flow can go through, and it’s so easy to miss the friction because you don’t see it. It’s something that is holding you back. And if you remove it, the effect is probably cumulative. If you have all these little things that don’t count on their own and they are immaterial on their own, but cumulatively they are absolutely disastrous. Love it. So we live in the AI age, and I can’t avoid asking a question on AI as well: how are your clients, customers taking advantage of AI?  It’s all over the place, right? I would say a lot of our customers are using AI to help with an email here or there. Maybe they have some Industry 4.0-type IoT devices connected in their factory that leverage, or are able to leverage AI for creating dashboards. But it really is generally through the use of software that we’re seeing that kind of happen overall. But one of the areas that we found AI to be fantastically helpful these days is helping to build a public-facing catalog—being able to leverage tools within AI to stock in data from various sources and get that into a structured format that we can leverage and import into a system. So we’re doing those types of projects a lot with folks. They’re still looking for coaching and help in those areas. So AI is still an emerging area, but we’re trying to, like, every day figure out how to leverage AI more and more with what we’re doing.  Is it possible to use AI in optimizing these web properties, these eCommerce systems?  I don’t think so yet. I mean, I think AI can make recommendations about things, but I wouldn’t trust AI to just auto-optimize what I was doing. I would also say that most of the folks, unless you’re really getting 50,000, 60,000, a hundred thousand visits on a single webpage—a million visits on a webpage—you’re not getting enough to statistically create a winner in that. So it’s all about using those types of things responsibly. But we are seeing AI really come to light in terms of the traditional eCommerce search, right? eCommerce search has always been keyword-driven, but we have certain platforms and tools that we plug into sites now that are able to search PDFs and even CAD files and all types of things in terms of being able to answer questions. That’s very interesting. So Ethan, you’ve been running a business for over two decades now, at least. That’s what I’m aware of. We mentioned 2004. I think Groove was started in 2004.  Seven, officially seven. But the precursor days before it was actually Groove.  Okay. Alright. So 2007. Still, it’s coming up on 20 years. So what is, in your experience, the most important question any entrepreneur should be asking themselves?  I would ask themselves if they have niched down enough within their industry. I would say that’s probably one of my biggest mistakes: not niching down fast enough and really focusing on a single area with that. So that would be the thing that I would want to say if I was an entrepreneur, and I have told people that, and to write a book.  Is this partially why you wrote the book?  It is.  Yeah.  Yep. Yeah, I’ve been doing more and more keynote speaking, and I knew I needed a book if I wanted to elevate myself to the next level. So before we wrap up, I can’t hold myself back from bringing this up, but you’re also an accomplished DJ. You started your career DJing, and you still do it sometimes for friends.  Yes.  What did DJing teach you as an eCommerce entrepreneur? How do you see life differently, or the world, or business owners differently because of DJing? Well, that’s a great question, and it’s affected me. I started DJing when I was 15 years old. I’m 51 now. And I do focus now on working with some nonprofits locally here in Baltimore, and I DJ their galas, and we put on a big show. And I would say that, interestingly, DJing has moved into digital. When I started as a DJ, I had 12-inch records that we would put on a turntable, and you’d have to have a dolly and crates of records that you would have to haul around. And now I can have 50,000 songs on my laptop in front of me, and I have these devices that spin like turntables that I can DJ on. And that—quite frankly—that transition for me to go from analog to digital was quite difficult. And I really did my own little mini digital transformation to figure out how to do that, and I was against it for a long time.  It really helped me understand more what our customers are going through as they’re thinking about that and having much more empathy. So it is that transition. I used to work at a nightclub, and we had to bring somebody in from Italy to program the lighting equipment that we had at the time in the 1990s. And now I have a light show that is driven by the waveform in the music, and it manages the lights through AI. I had it set up within an hour of getting the software. And so it’s just been tremendous to understand and see like how that has gone from analog to digital. And it’s been very helpful on the journey to teach our clients how to go from analog to digital as well.  I love it. I mean, that’s such a huge challenge with all this technological evolution going on—to keep up with that, stay fresh, and stay young with the technology, and you’re doing that. So that’s awesome. So if we have in the audience some manufacturers, distributors, or someone who is very passionate about eCommerce and wants to talk to you, learn from you—where can they go, and where can they connect? Where can they get your book? How does it work?  Absolutely. So if this resonated—if this message resonated with any of your listeners—we’re waiting for our first initial batch of books to come in, and I’ve held some back to give away. I would love to offer a complimentary book to any of the listeners of this podcast that it resonated with, as well as offer a free consultation as part of that. And if they go to www.b2becombook.com, they can request a free copy, and we’ll send it out as soon as we get them in. Sounds good. So B2B is B2B, right?  B2B. Yep.  So definitely check this out. And if you enjoyed the show, make sure you subscribe and keep coming back, because every week I get an exciting entrepreneur on the show. And Ethan, thanks for coming and sharing your goodies and wisdom. Thank you so much for having me. I always appreciate seeing you.  That was a great pleasure. Thank you. Important Links: Ethan’s LinkedIn: Ethan’s website:

https://youtu.be/47bH911YFF0 Vance Morris, consultant, coach, and speaker, helps service-based businesses break free from the ordinary and create extraordinary customer experiences that generate loyal customers for life. After spending more than a decade working for the Disney Company and learning its powerful systems and processes for customer service, Vance launched his own businesses and built them around those principles—eventually creating companies that run largely without his daily involvement. We explore Vance’s Customer Experience System, a framework for turning ordinary interactions into memorable moments that create lifelong customers. The system focuses on mapping all customer points of contact, ideating experiences for each boring touchpoint, prioritizing the biggest impact moments, and memorializing those experiences in systems or playbooks so they can be delivered consistently by the team. Vance explains how businesses can create “tellable moments,” recover from service mistakes in memorable ways, and build repeatable marketing systems that generate referrals and long-term customer loyalty. — Get Customers 17 Ways with Vance Morris Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Vance Morris, a consultant, coach, and speaker, who helps advisor-based businesses break free from the ordinary and step into the extraordinary. Vance, welcome to the show.  I appreciate it, Steve. Thank you so much. Your background is very interesting and your whole idea of making customer experience unique, and also you have unique ways of acquiring customers. So let’s get into it. But I’d like to start with my favorite question: What is your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in your business?  My personal ‘Why’ is very strong, and that is I never want to be an employee ever again. I make a lousy employee. I don’t like to be told what to do. And so knowing that has kept me on this entrepreneurial path for the last 19 years.  Okay, well, I can relate to this. I can relate to this. That’s a big thing when you are in charge of your own time. It’s a big blessing. Some people make a lot of money, but if they don’t own their time, it’s not ideal. I agree 100%. Yes, sir.  Yeah. Love it. Let’s talk a little bit about your journey. I mean, how did you end up being a non-employee and being your own boss and advising companies, what the route led you down this path?  Sure. Well, the long and short of it, I spent a little over a decade working for the Disney Company down in Orlando, Florida. Magnificent experience. Great company to work for. Towards the end, I was starting to get that inkling that maybe I should be doing something on my own. So I went out and worked as an employee and a consultant at the same time for a couple of different restaurant concepts. And then I had a couple of high-profile positions. I was catering director for the Smithsonian Museum System, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, things like that. And along the way, I realized that I do indeed make a lousy employee because I got fired a couple of times. So I own up to it. I’m okay with it. But I said to myself, let’s put something together that will be your own and we’ll be able to afford the lifestyle that you’re looking for. So about 20 years ago, I started a couple of home service businesses. I took all of my Disney knowledge and Disney systems and processes—both on customer experience and customer retentionShare on X and importantly pricing—and put those all into those businesses and started to grow them. And people started asking me, well, geez, Vance, you don’t look like you’re working very hard. How are you doing that? So I back in 2013, I started consulting with other companies, primarily professional services, on how to really deliver extraordinary customer experiences that will lead to what I call raving fans for life, or customers for life.  I love it. No better place to learn than at Disney, right? Yeah, I mean, it was great. And one of the first things I learned there was that Disney operates 100% on systems and processes. I mean, I ain’t sure we learned how to pick up trash and smile at people, but the biggest lesson was Disney has a process for everything. You want to carry a tray in a restaurant, they got a process. You want to change a bus tire, they have a process. So I took that everywhere I went, which has actually led me to be fairly autonomous from my home service businesses because I put systems and processes in place, and I only spend about 90 minutes a week on those businesses.  That’s fantastic. So let’s talk about these processes, particularly the customer experience processes that you have installed. And actually you have a process for installing processes, which is kind of a system to enhance the customer experience and then keep customers for a long time. You talk about keeping them for life. So tell me about that system and how do you delight customers on a schedule?  Sure. So the process is called Systematic Magic, and there’s seven magic keys to this system. And it’s designed to really look at all different parts of the business in order to surprise and delight folks. Some of it is not very sexy. I will admit that ahead of time. Some of it you’ll be like, oh my God, I get it. So the first thing that you have to do, though—and this is the unsexy part of it—is you have to map out your customer journey. And you have to do it from the point of view of your customer. So what is the first point of contact a customer has with you? Is it a phone call, a visit to the office, a website? What is that first contact? And then figure out how to create an experience out of that. And then what’s the second contact? Now in between first and second contact, let’s say you’re a financial advisor, and in the first meeting you get all the numbers and all their information. You say, okay, it’s going to be about seven to ten days, I’ll get you a proposal or a plan a week and a half or so. So while the financial advisor is working, they’re actually doing something. What is the customer doing? Absolutely nothing. They’re sitting there waiting. And waiting is painful. While waiting, things start to go through your head. You start to possibly have buyer’s remorse. You’re rethinking this purchase. Is there somebody out there better? Is this guy even paying attention to me? I just met him and I haven’t seen him in a week and a half. So Disney—people wait for a lot of things at Disney. You wait for the rides. You wait for transportation. But they figured out that they need to entertain you while you’re in line to make it not feel so bad. And they call it “linertainment.” So this is something that I’ve brought to other businesses is how do you entertain your customer while they are waiting for you to do something? It could be as simple as a maybe a sequence of a handwritten note that goes out in the mail on the first day. A follow up call from your assistant saying, Hey, Bob’s working on your plan. He hasn’t forgot about you. And then maybe you’ve written a book. And so getting that book in the mail to your client would be another step, really trying to make that wait period not feel so long. And also remind the customer that you’re still thinking about them.  Yeah. Love it. That’s brilliant. So you talk about this process of mapping out the points of contact, and then you talk about the boring touch points. You talk about ideating experience in each boring touch point. So tell me about boring touch points. I understand waiting is definitely boring.  Sure.  It’s such much a touch point. It’s more of a boring time period.  Disney has figured out how to create an experience out of all of the boring and mundane things we have to do to keep our business up and running: answer the phone, greet a guest, show them how to enter a building. So I’ve brought that to the real world. Quick example. So I have a insurance broker. And he’s got Allstate agent, and he has about 17 other Allstate guys in his area, in addition to all of the other regular insurance guys in his area. And he needed a way to stand out because insurance is a highly commoditized business. You don’t really know what’s the difference between one guy and the next. One has a lizard, one has a something else. So I got to his office. I noticed that he was a rock and roll fanatic. I mean, he had autographed guitars on the wall, gold records, posters, and everything. And I said, well, I think you should lean into your personality a little bit and be the rock and roll insurance guy.Share on X And his receptionist was the one that came up with the way to answer the phone. Before, like most companies, they would say, “Thank you for calling Dave’s Insurance. How can I help you?” Boring. Everybody says that. So his receptionist suggested, well, we should probably, let’s sound like a radio DJ and really make it an experience out of answering the phone. So now they say: “Thank you for calling Dave’s Allstate, the agency that rocks.” That’s a little corny the first few times you say it, but if you think about it, your marketing is designed to do two things: repel the people you don’t want and attract the people you do want. So just by answering the phone this way, they sift, sort, and screen out anybody who would be a bad customer.  Yeah. Love it. That’s a good example. How do you know which are the biggest impact points in this series of touch points, and we have to focus your energy?  Well, what you want to do once you’ve completed journey mapping is look at points where you may have the most impact on either the experience or on your profitability. Or is there something glaring that’s like, “Oh my God, we have to fix this”? And so you look for those opportunities within your journey map, and so it’s going to be different for everyone. The one place that I see most businesses falling down is after the sale is complete. So after money exchanges hands. So you get the check and that’s it. The customer never hears from you again because you got the money. It’s like going into the department store and you want to buy a shirt, you walk into the store and you’re immediately accosted by a salesperson who will follow you everywhere. Get you all set up, get your shirt, you pay for the shirt, and then that’s it.  Nobody talks to you. Nobody escorts you to the front door, holds the door open for you. Thanks you for coming in. They got the money, and off they go. You have to look at, okay, I got your check, or I got your credit card. Now we’re in a relationship. We need to continue to nurture that. Most businesses will think, well, you know what? I did a good job, or I’ve got a great product. People should remember me. And that is so far from the truth. It's not the customer's job to remember you. It's your job to remind the customer that you exist. You need to have strategies and tactics in place after the sale in order to keep them engaged.Share on X  Can you give some examples? Sure, certainly. And this really will work for any business, either online or offline. B2C, B2B—it doesn’t matter. One thing I strongly recommend is a newsletter, preferably in print and sent through the mail. Newsletters designed to do a couple of things. One, it’s to entertain them, because you don’t always want to be selling to people. If the only time your customer ever hears from you is when you want to sell them something, well—that’s not really nice. All you’re doing is just asking for money every time. So you want to be able to provide value, provide some entertainment, be a welcome guest in their home when your newsletter arrives.Share on X Now you can then supplement that with postcard or a series of emails and have calls to action, sales, or promotions there. But not everything should be a sales item. It should be there to reinforce the relationship or the emotional connection that you put together.  Yeah, love it. Some companies used to do this really intensively. I was part of Dan Kennedy’s inner circle in the 2000s, and they were sending CDs in the mail, all kinds of different postcards and funny mail, and copy. And they were really intense with it. They had lumpy mail—this kind of stuff—but it kind of went out of fashion. It seems like people don’t send stuff in the mail much anymore, or what you get is 90% of it lands in the trash unopened.  I mean, people have gotten lazy, I think. The internet is there—oh, I can just send an email, click, and it’s done. There’s a certain art to putting together lumpy mail. I certainly still believe in it. I use it almost every day. And Kennedy was a tremendous mentor to me as well. And I think that something he said it has always stuck with me is look at what all of your competitors are doing and do the opposite. Opposite. Yeah.  So if all of your competitors are marketing online, well, how do we go and market and find our customers offline? And really, I mean, if you look at your mailbox, I mean, I got the mail today. I had a newspaper and a credit card solicitation.  Yeah.  That was it.  Yeah. Incidentally, Kennedy was a big Disney fan. He took tours of members to Disney every year, showed them around, and used it as an example.  He loved it.  Yeah. Let’s switch gears here a little bit and let’s talk about your marketing system because you don’t just have a customer experience system, you have a marketing system as well. And it kind of blew my mind when you told me that you have 17 different systems to acquire a customer. And you actually have 52 ways to connect with a customer as well, or maybe I’m confusing the two. So tell me a little bit about the different ways of acquiring customers?  Sure. So you got the numbers right, just in the wrong section, but that’s fine. What you need is a CRM, or customer relationship management system. You need to be able to automate this. There’s no way that I could even think remotely that I was going to be able to manage all of that. So if you look inside—like I mentioned, I own some home service businesses—we currently have probably about 70 marketing campaigns running. Everything from Google pay-per-click to referral campaigns, to reminder campaigns, reminding people they need to be cleaned and things like that.  And you don’t want to rely on just one thing, because as we all know, one is the worst number in business. If you only have one way of getting clients, and that way goes away, you’re in big trouble. So I don’t like to rely on the internet because that goes down, and Google or Facebook change their algorithms every other week. It’s a big guessing game. I would much rather have boots on the ground, so to speak, and go out and get my own customers. So we have a salesperson or a marketing person, and her job is to go around our entire area, creating referral partnerships and then maintaining those referral partnerships. So when people say, “Oh, we get all our business from referrals,” I ask them, I say, well, do you have a system for that, or you just get one or two every now and then? And most people don’t have a system. And a system is what’s going to, one, add tremendous value to your company when you’re ready to sell it. But two, it’s something that is repeatable and replicable. So if you want to step away from your business for a period of time, you have systems in place that your employees just have to run.Share on X In eight years, I spend about 90 minutes a week on my home service companies. I’ve got three businesses, and I spend 90 minutes a week on all three. An hour of that is just a meeting with the general manager that I put in place. The other 30 minutes, I keep control of the bank accounts—I never let go of that. So those systems have given me freedom to be able to come and go as I please from those businesses. And the businesses run without me. So without a marketing system in place, or a marketing checklist, we hear the story: would you ever get on an airplane where the pilot decided, “You know what? I’m not going to do the pre-flight checklist today. I’m just going to wing it”?  Yeah.  You don’t want to get on that airplane. Well, same thing goes for your marketing. I’m forgetful. I got a lot of stuff going on. Here’s the checklist, here’s the system. Follow it and get it done.  Love it. So yes, I think you’re right, I mixed it up. So 52 ways to acquire customer, 17 systems to acquire customers. What type of systems are we talking about? You mentioned the CRM, obviously that’s a system. What other types of systems do you have?  Sure. So certainly, the customer acquisition systems that we have in place—as I mentioned—we have the salesperson, we have Google pay-per-click, we have direct mail, we have shared mailings. And for customer retention, we also have a ton of different systems. Again, of them is, every month we take the top five customers we have and we send them a cake. I mean, when was the last time you had an electrician, a carpet cleaner, or somebody come to your house, do some work, and then send you a cake in the mail? It’s probably not happening. We do a lot of things like that because we want to be tellable. We want people, at the end of any interaction with us, to say, “Oh my God, you’ll never guess what happened when and [insert profession here]. So, “Oh my God, you never guess what happened when the carpet cleaner was here—they mailed me a cake after the cleaning.” So you want to get people thinking, “Oh my God, what can I do to really get people talking about me?” How can we—not so much viral—but genuine postings of things? I mean, we do handwritten thank-you notes for everybody. That’s one of the systems. It’s got to the point where I had to subcontract the handwritten thank-you notes because I don’t have time to write a hundred of them every week. So I went out and “rented” some grandmas. I went over to a local senior center, and there was this group of three ladies just sitting there having coffee. I asked them, “How often do you get together?” “Oh, we get together at least three times a week. We have coffee and we talk.” I said, “Do you ever get bored?” She said, “Yeah, sometimes.” I said, “Great. I’ll be more than happy to buy you coffee and donuts and whatever. Would you mind writing some thank-you notes for us?” And now I’ve got three grandmas who write all of the thank-you notes for one of my businesses.  Fantastic. So these are some the systems. What are the 52 ways? I think you also have some kind of a freebie for listeners.  Yeah.  Could share it for us?  So the 52 Ways to Wow Your Customers. It’s one “wow” for every week of the year, and most of them are low or no cost.Share on X One could be just, “Hey, when was the last time you picked up the phone and actually called and talked to a few of your customers?” I mean, nobody uses the telephone anymore. They send a text or something impersonal like that. Pick up the phone and talk to them. Are you contemplating a new product? Go to your existing customers and say, “Hey, you know what? I’m getting ready to launch this product. I’d love for you to test it. Would you do that for me?” 99.9% of people want to help you. So yes, they’re going to say, “Yeah, I’d love to test your new product or service.” It’s things like that that build up the 52 Ways. You don’t need all of them—certainly pick one, two, or ten—so that you stay in front of your clients and really stand out. One of the things I talk a lot about is service recovery—like when you screw up something. One way to wow your customer is, what do you do if you’re late? So if we are going to an appointment and we’re running behind, our technicians know that they are to stop at a grocery store or a florist and buy some flowers for the house that we’re going to. I mean, you can’t yell at a guy. The client answers the door, and there’s a 20-something-year-old standing with a bouquet of flowers. You really can’t yell at him. And then again, that’s tellable. We know we made a mistake or we were delayed. We want to make it up to you. Here’s some flowers. And then we may do some other kind of discount or something. But yeah, it’s about looking for what would make you happy.  Love it. Yeah. I had a client who was a construction company, and what they did was for every client that they had, that was one of their jobs is to figure out what they would really love having the new home. For example, one of the things that they did was one of the customers had the house in Hoboken, and they kinda loved the New York skyline to see from the yard, and then they moved down to Richmond. This came up in conversation—they mentioned this was something they would miss. And then what they did was they basically did a wall-to-wall poster. They took a picture of the exact skyline position, and they put a wall-to-wall poster on one of the rooms.  Oh, that’s brilliant. Oh, that’s fantastic.  Yeah.  I mean, construction and trades can easily do this. I’ve got a kitchen and bath remodeler as a client. Remodeling can be a disaster in somebody’s house, so he knows that maybe on a day when there’s not going to be a stove in the kitchen, he actually brings a gift card for a local restaurant so the family can go out to eat. Or if it’s lunchtime and there are people in the house and they can’t use the kitchen, he’ll order DoorDash for his clients. Now, of course, all this is built into the pricing. But it’s the matter that you’re thinking about doing these things is what really counts.  Yeah. Wonderful. Wonderful. Alright, so if someone would like to learn more and connect with you—maybe they have a home service business, a retail business, or any other type of business—they could use your suggestions. I think any kind of business, even business-to-business, would work because, at the end of the day, it’s mostly people, if not AI, that you’re connecting with. So where should they go? How can they connect with you, and how can you help them?  Yeah, certainly. So I only do one social media, and that’s LinkedIn. You can find me there. I’m the only Vance Morris Disney guy floating around out there. You mentioned the 52 Ways to Wow Your Customers. If that’s something people are interested in, it’s a free download at www.wow52ways.com .  wow52ways.com. Alright, so I’ll definitely download it. So, Vance, any parting words or wisdom for our listeners before we wrap up?  Well, you probably heard a couple of ideas on this podcast—at least I hope so. Maybe you read something today, maybe you heard something else. You’re not going to move the needle in your business unless you actually do something. You’re not going to profit unless you implement.Share on X You’ve got to take an idea, try it, and put it into play before you can move the needle in any direction. So my big message is find one thing and go and implement it.  Love it. This is so true. I mean, it’s the definition of insanity—doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, right?  Right.  Well, listeners, if you enjoyed this discussion, stay tuned because every week we have a wonderful entrepreneur or thought leader coming and sharing the best ideas with you. And Vance, thank you for sharing your gold nuggets. And do reach out to Vance Morris on LinkedIn, or get his freebies on wow52ways.com, right? Yes.  That’s the website. I’m going to do that. So thank you Vance, for coming, and thank you for listening. Important Links: Vance’s LinkedIn: Vance’s  website:

https://youtu.be/_A__xfP6HBM Laurie Barkman, strategic growth advisor, former $100M CEO, M&A expert, and author of The Business Transition Handbook, helps construction, architecture, and engineering firms build scalable, sustainable businesses that create time, freedom, and long-term value. Having experienced a major acquisition firsthand and led companies through significant growth and change, Laurie now focuses on helping mature business owners navigate the complex journey of building enterprise value and preparing for future transitions. We explore Laurie’s BUILT Method—Blueprint, Unlock, Integrate, Lead, Transition—a strategic framework designed to help founders of established businesses scale beyond owner dependency and prepare for successful leadership or ownership transitions. Laurie explains how aligning the owner’s personal vision with the company’s future strategy creates clarity, why measuring enterprise value can unlock new growth decisions, and how proactive transition planning helps entrepreneurs avoid the identity crisis that often follows a business exit. — Take 5 Steps to Transitioning Your Business with Laurie Barkman Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS Group, and today my guest is Laurie Barkman, a strategic growth advisor, former a hundred-million-dollar CEO and M&A expert who’s helping construction and engineering companies build scalable, sustainable businesses that creates time, freedom, and value. Laurie is also the author of the Business Transition Handbook. Laurie, welcome to the show. Steve, thank you so much. I’m so excited to be with you today. Yeah, it’s great to have you. And you have a really interesting niche with the business transition and helping construction or architecture engineering firms. So what brought you to this point? What is your personal why, and how are you manifesting it in your practice? My personal why has been evolving over the years through my career. I think I was always an entrepreneur at heart. I had orbited entrepreneurial companies, like startups, in a big company. I was always the maverick. I was trying to be an intrapreneur and ultimately found myself in a position of finding a way to help business owners in the back part of their journey. While I love startups, I have found that my niche is in working with mature companies—so companies that are over five to seven years old—and helping entrepreneurs in the tough decisions.Share on X It’s the tough decisions that they really wrestle with, feel alone, and I’ve been in executive shoes, right? I’ve been lived that world. I’m living in the entrepreneurial world right now, but again, in this mature space where we think about life differently, we think about transitions differently, and I’ve just kind of embraced that idea, especially as a Gen Xer, of how to help other Gen Xers in that in-between. So is there like a personal reason why you are attracted to this whole idea of the transition?  I’ve lived a lot of transitions, especially in the corporate world, going through an acquisition about 10 years ago, I was an outside hire at a third-generation company, and they said, “We’re looking to hire you not for the next three years, but for the next 20,” which was really exciting, but it ended up being three. And the reason why is because a little Bluebird, who wasn’t so little, a global company who was very in acquisitive, I was interested in this business, third-generation company. It was over a billion in revenue. My business unit was about 10% of the total. So again, sizable business unit, and myself and the other executives had to work really, really hard to keep our foot on the gas pedal, making sure that the deal, if we were, was going to go through that we helped make it go through—which we did. It was out of the blue. The company was not on the market. But I saw firsthand the innovation, the growth, and the transition over the three generations of the stories of how it went from one to the next was just so fascinating to me. So when I ultimately was part of the integration team, I left the business. The short answer was that I was just there for three years. And so after that I really saw an opportunity to help other entrepreneurs on their journey. So this notion of that we’re going to grow, we’re going to innovate, and then eventually we’re going to transition—maybe it’s a family business, maybe it’s founder-led. Nonetheless, we want to create value, we want to have good handoffs, and I saw things were working well.Share on X As I mentioned, I joined at the point of the third generation. Then it was up to the corporate gods take it from there. And so I thought about ways to add value and work with inspired entrepreneurs who envision a future legacy for themselves, the people they love, the communities they serveShare on X but they’re just stuck. They feel stuck in some way. They’re kind of on their path. They’re not at the end of the path. They’re on it, and they need that support. That’s really what’s been motivating me and driving me for the last seven plus years. Yeah. That’s a wonderful journey, and it’s a very wordy thing because these entrepreneurs, they build a company, and then they don’t know how to allow it to grow up. And you basically are there and help them with the empty nesting and the pre-empty nesting, getting them into good courage. That’s also very important. So one of the ways you, I understand you do this is you call it the BUILT Method, which is kind of neat because you work with construction, engineering, architecture firms. So what is the BUILD Method is about, and how does it help people?  Yeah, the  BUILD Method is definitely an acknowledgement that we are in a physical world, and I appreciate you making that connection.Share on X And it’s not lost on our audience, hopefully. It’s such an important space. We really, in a time of AI and such dramatic change, the built environment of architecture, engineering, design companies that are envisioning their futures. There’s like any industry, there’s a lot of changes. And so this is a blueprint, if you will. That’s the “B,” right? It’s a blueprint for what is your vision and what is the firm model, what should it be in the future? It’s really that roadmap of future growth. The “U” is an unlocked. So many of us feel stuck. Maybe we’re stuck in the day-to-day because we have owner-dependent businesses. Maybe we feel stuck because our revenues are plateaued or declining. And we see ourselves as a bottleneck. Maybe we’re a bottleneck for a variety of reasons, which I’m sure we could talk about. The “I” is all about integration. And so, what do we need to do to document our systems and put things in place so that we don’t have risks in terms of not only owner dependency, but any other employees where there could be gaps should someone leave the organization or have some other untimely departure? The “L” is lead, and lead is not used lightly. Lead is really with clarity and not with chaos. And for owner-dependent businesses, people that have companies that can’t thrive without them, this tends to be a real challenge that they want to lead from the front, but they’re not. And they're so in the weeds in the business, they can't see the forest for the trees. They're not working on the business. So really helping my clients find that clarity is so important.Share on X And then the “T”, last but not least, stands for transition. It’s probably my favorite word at this point. And it’s not just transition or change for any sake. It’s good to have that confidence and to be in control, to be in the driver’s seat, and to be proactive about change. It’s why I wrote the book, The Business Transition Handbook. It’s really encouraging entrepreneurs to not think about an exit as a point in time and a finite point in time. It’s why I do talk about exit and I do talk about exit planning, but my recognition is that this is a finite action, and a transition is a journey. It's a path, and that's why my business is named Business Transition Sherpa, because I am with you on your journey. So the BUILT Method is really all about these different aspects and helping entrepreneurs on their journey.Share on X STEVE PREDA: Yeah. This is very cool. And there is a lifecycle to business, and there’s a lifecycle to an entrepreneur as well. And hopefully the business’s lifecycle is much longer than the entrepreneur’s. So someone is going to take it on, and you want to create a great legacy and a great business. So your way of the blueprint or your version of blueprint is different. Is it like what people call mission, vision, values kind of thing or there’s more to it? I think it does start with that. I mean, those are so fundamental, and my overall approach with strategic transition planning is the acknowledgement that there’s different aspects of the planning that we need to do as business owners, and one of those aspects is a blueprint for the business. And the business fundamentals of where do we want to be in five to seven years or ten years. Another part of that, which is a dovetail, is where does the owner want to be? What’s their personal future vision? And we start to intertwine those things, especially in this age and life stage. I work a lot with, as I mentioned, Gen Xers, and so we are in the mid-fifties of our lives, and statistically speaking, we’re about five to seven years away from a significant life transition. A lot of the Gen Xers, especially business owners I work with, are saying, “I’m looking ahead. I see what the baby boomers have done, and I don’t want to do it their way. I want to do it differently. I’m not going to die at my desk, and I want other things out of my life. My business has provided this and that for me, which has been valuable, but I’m ready for something different. I just don’t know what it is.” So we integrate in this blueprint. Their vision is not just for the business, but it's for themselves as well. And it's a big reason why I work directly one-on-one with the owners, founders.Share on X You and I have talked offline about the role of management team. It’s so important for me. It’s really, really important to give that private time and private space for the owner because these are such important questions that will influence the direction of many lives. And if we’re unwavering, it feels a little uncertain, and we don’t want to necessarily showcase that uncertainty to our teams. So the blueprint part of this is a bit of ideation as well. A big part of what we do is we work on what their future vision is, and it takes into account this age and life stage component of what we’ve been talking about. Yeah. That’s really interesting because maybe you find that as well, that sometimes the vision—the individual vision of the entrepreneur and the company’s vision gets confused. And the entrepreneur may not realizing that their vision may be to transition out of the company, but that’s not going to be the vision for the company because the company for them to be able to transition, has to have a much longer view and people have to believe in it, so that even with the founder, they’re going to be successful. So that is an interesting conundrum that I vision for with an entrepreneur like that. Do you find that to be the case? It is a conundrum. I think it’s just a lonely place in our heads and for owners and founders who have a lot on their shoulders. “Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” right? It’s a saying that means so much. I think that people want to explore options. They don’t want to lock in on something and put all their eggs in that one basket. I have found that owners who create options for eventual transition are better positioned than folks who have placed bets. I could tell you so many stories, Steve. So for example, especially in our engineering, architecture, and design-type of audience, owners sometimes are placing bets on their internal management to buy them out over time. I had one gentleman call me—I’d say he’s a baby boomer. He had a wonderful number two, had been grooming the number two for eventual. What he had envisioned in his mind was of to sell the business to him, and not only did the number two not want that; he resigned. And it felt like such a betrayal. He was so upset. I had talked to him months after this happened, and he was still upset about it. He felt like it was a starting over in a lot of ways for his own exit plan, which it was. And so we try to prevent against that. Yeah, there's a lot of things that we can do to try to figure out if we have the right people in the right seats. And that's important.Share on X I know you spent a lot of time on this as well, working with management to say, “Do we have the right people in the right seats?” And we do assessments, and those are great. Those are skills and strengths, and we should do that. But what I have found is that we don’t do that when it comes to ownership, especially if we think that the owner is inside the company. And we can talk about it—I’ve created an assessment for that because it’s a high-level way to just get your head around. Do people on my team have an ownership mentality or not? We’re not recruiting for that. We’re recruiting for the skills and strengths that we need for that time. And when we’re growing people over a long period of time, you can imagine how that becomes even more of a problem because if we assume they’re an owner, they have a owner mindset, and they don’t—and they’re more cash—oriented versus equity—oriented and other things—that puts us in a trap. Yeah. I think it’s a big trap. I read it somewhere, I know where I read it from. Dan Kennedy, who’s like a small business guru—he was big in the 2000s—and he once said that the worst number in business is one. It’s one salesperson; it’s one successor who will have to come through. I think this is a big mistake of business owners that they try to clone themselves because they think that if they just find one person who is going to be as good as me, and all my problems are solved. Whether you call it an integrator who is going to come in and run the show and I can just be up there and vision and dream about stuff, I think it’s a huge mistake. I much prefer the idea of creating mini-CEOs in your business who can really strategically own their functions. So anyhow, yeah, this is a big problem. But I’d like to move on to the next letter in the acronym, which is “U”. I really love this word: “unlock.” It’s very inspiring. Unlock—how do you unlock? How do you figure out how to open up the floodgates of opportunity or whatever you mean by unlock? I think part of it is a diagnostic around where is the business today and what are some of the things that we’ve set as goals for enterprise value. What is enterprise value? Are we measuring it? Most often we’re not, and the one big unlock is just this recognition that we have set KPIs for our business, which are great, and we’re using them with our teams, and we’re operationalizing those. Love it. Awesome. Keep that going. But what a business owner is not measuring most often is the enterprise value.  And if we are measuring that, we might make different choices in how we’re investing our resources if our objective is to increase that value. So we might say, “Well, what is enterprise value?” Okay. So we need to understand that. And then, what is it in measurement terms—either through a professional like myself who can help us understand and not just talking to your buddies at the golf club or what you think your business might be worth? And if we can really get some data around that. You know, I love my analytical entrepreneurs, which is one of the reasons I love this space. They're analytical people, and they like the numbers, and they want to have some structure around it. So that's what we do, is we start with the baselining.Share on X Where is the business today? And let’s set some targets. We look at, “Well, what’s best in class in that particular industry?” So again, the AEC industry, we have some benchmarks around that. And then we have to understand, “Well, what are some of the value drivers?” One big, big value driver, of course, is going to be financial performance. So what’s beyond that? And what are these hidden things that we don’t know that can be detracting value? And so if we dig into those things, it’s like an unlock. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it. My best example of that in this conversation is enterprise value. Once you know where your enterprise value is today, you can’t unsee that. And you also can’t unsee the desire for many people, which is, “Oh wow, what if I could increase that?” Then we’re talking about millions of dollars of value at some point in the future. So aligning that with our exercise we talked about earlier, which is our age and life-stage exercise around exit timeline. It’s so powerful because now we can set some targets that are meaningful to our communities, our employees, our stakeholders, and ourselves, and aligning the personal, the business, and the financial towards this overall picture. It’s a major unlock. And do you find that—what is the level of transparency you see that these business owners allow for their team to see? So would they actually show them that this is our profitability, these are our margins, gross profit, this is our overhead, this is our net profit, this is how we calculate enterprise value, and here is how you can help me improve it. Is this how it goes or it’s more everyone is just focusing on a couple of KPIs that are within their program?  It’s an evolution. I think a lot of times in the beginning, we keep it a little close because we’re trying to understand it ourselves. And for firms that have developed a cost-of-goods-sold model, a gross profit, they’re already measuring that. Maybe they’re doing that by lines of business. That is really powerful. I have one client in the engineering space that just put that in. And they doubled revenue last year, by the way. So they’re a high-growth company in the engineering space, which is so exciting. They’re doing about $10 million in revenue, and they just put that in for the different lines of business. And how it’s helping them is it’s giving them a year-over-year perspective, which is good. They can see where they’re investing, and they can also see payback opportunities where there’s an intersection with the team. I think is on the business side for growth levers. When we talk about value drivers, and we'll just pick one that's quite common beyond financial numbers, it's our ability to drive recurring revenue, subscription models, and different flavors of…Share on X So for this particular client, we’ve been working on developing a recurring revenue program for them, and we’re at the starting line, but what’s going to be so exciting, I think, not only in terms of their core business growth that they’re seeing, but once we get that recurring revenue program up and running, it’s going to be material. Once the revenues are large enough, of course, it’s going to be material on their enterprise value. And so the dovetail is, well, yeah, he’s not going to launch the subscription revenue business by himself. He needs others to help him do that. But the idea for it and the vision for it and then the unlock right, comes from this type of exploration. Yeah. Wow. That’s great. And it is definitely a challenge that construction companies often struggle with. How do I do a project-based company primarily? How do I drive recurring revenue, subscription models? That would probably deserve its own podcast, this whole topic or maybe a podcast series. Maybe I’ll talk about it another time. I still like us to cover the last letter in the acronym: the transition. Because that’s where I see a lot of people who have sold their business. I was an investment banker in my past life, and I don’t know how many times we saw the business, and the owner was so excited that they basically neutralized the risk, and then they had this big pile of cash, and they bought the boat and they bought the car and the house. And six months later, the boat was collecting water in the marina. You know, they showed the car off to everyone, and it was no longer exciting, but it was very expensive, and they didn’t know where to store it, kind of thing. And then they were getting bored, and they were kind of disappointed because their identity got ahead. How do you deal with it? How do you help people with the identity issue and this whole thinking about transition the right way? You nailed it. That identity is a really big part of why many business owners feel lonely and a bit depressed one year after a sale. There’s many reasons why that could happen. I think the statistics are a little bit over the place, but I do believe that identity is a big part of it. And so if we are working on this together, an example with one of my clients is I gave them a book to read because I got an inkling of what he was interested in, which is themes around justice. And he’s seeking ways to have an impact in his community that are truly outside the business for lots of reasons. But he just innately wants this type of involvement, and we are going through an exploration of what that could look like. He’s in a good place with his business. We're continuing to grow it, and we're working on his growth and enterprise value growth and things like that.Share on X But this sort of sits on this in a parallel path, and it will intersect at some point because we all are human. We have an age and life stage to us, and how he’s envisioning spending his time over the next 10 years. He wants to continue to have a path forward. But we’ve created a space for when we meet, we’re meeting one-on-one, we create that space to really talk about how does he want to spend his time outside the business. And note the timeline here. He’s about 10 years away. And to his credit, he’s saying, “Yeah, I want to start doing something now.” And if that’s how we can think about it, Steve. I think it’s really important. It’s almost like this giant on-ramp. We’re not going to just sell our business and then, all of a sudden we’re going to go have this amazing thing that we’re going to create tomorrow, right? It just takes time. And another way to think about it is like a portfolio—a portfolio of how you look at your identity, how you feel about yourself, and how you spend your time—and has to align. Really, it can align with your core values, it can align with how you want to spend time with people you love. So I have one client, engineering company owner, who is very committed to the church that they support, and he spends a lot of time and a lot of resources. It’s very clear on the company’s website how the company has a policy of donating proceeds from profits to this entity. So it’s well known, and it’s just part of their culture. And in developing his 10-year view, this is part and parcel of it. It’s involving his family members; it’s involving the company. It’s helped fueling a decision around their transition path. They’ve considered lots of different options: Should they sell to a third party? Should they become an ESOP? And the dovetail, I think, for many, is to figure out what is that right fit based on what’s important to you. What’s going to give you that feeling of that completeness and balance that you’re seeking? Wow, that’s amazing. You have people who are thinking about that 10-years out. That is impressive. I’ve never seen that. If a business owner thinks 3-years out about that, it’s already much better than average. So you obviously are inculcating them with the right kind of ideas. So tell me about your business. So let’s switch gears here a little bit. I mean, you ran this a hundred million dollar business for three years, and it got sold; it got integrated. So I’m sure that you had some big challenges there. What is it that you would consider the hardest decision you ever had to make in your business? Yeah, I think in today’s world, I can try to put my coaching hat on for this answer. I’m trying to build a practice that is creating value for others. And so one big thing is to make sure that I’m doing that now with my client relationships and how we measure things. I’m confident that we are doing that, but inherently, if we have one voice, how do we reach many? And I think a lot of companies… it’s like, “Oh, that’s a marketing question.” Yes. And right, it is a marketing question. There’s a lot of things that are dynamically changing in our world. How do we reach the people that we want to reach? How do we share a message? So that is no matter what business you have, I think we can all sort of empathize with that. So I do feel like that is changing a lot. So the challenge is, how do I meet people where they are, right? I think podcasting has been a great vehicle. We’re doing more of that. We’re going to be doing more in-person things as well. I do think that we’re very much in a powerful digital age, and the more digital tools we’re putting in front of us and the more digital time we’re spending. My hypothesis, Steve, is that the value of the interaction—the one-on-one as well as group—is not lost on anybody. That it’s going to be even, probably even more important. And especially as things, and if you’re reading some of these AI articles about potential impact in our economy, there’s going to be a lot of need for us to come together, and lean on each other’s shoulders, and be good, solid resources for one another in times of dramatic change. I fully agree with you. I have that feeling as well that there’s so much alienation that is being caused by the digital stuff, and AI in particular, that people are replacing conversations with chatGPT conversations. I think people will just realize that this is all unreal, or we don’t know whether it’s real or not real. And there’s so much noise because everyone is creating all these posts with AI, and you know what is a real voice here? You won’t know unless you meet the person in person and then you hear their own voice and provided they’re not a robot because that can also happen that you have humanoid robots, but let’s not go that far. So I do agree, and I think that your personal recommendations are going to be even more powerful in the future because you don’t know what is real and what is fake. People also starve. We sit in front of our Zoom screens, and it’s not the same as meeting someone in person. There is a different quality to it, and we are going to starve for it. I was just thinking this morning that I looked at my calendar, and I’m just coming out of my season of spending days with my entrepreneur clients, and it’s over. And next couple months, it’s going to be pretty quiet. I’m going to be in my office, and I’m dreading having to sit here on my own. So I’m thinking about, “Okay, I have to get out there. I have to meet people.” So I’m recording video on this one. Last question. Well, penultimate question to you is, what do you think is the most important question that an entrepreneur should be asking themselves? I’m going to come back to kind of this AI conversation. I think every CEO needs to be using ai. And I think every CEO needs to be considering how their teams can use it and not put your head in sand. I think there’s a lot of impact, positive impact that can be had by just some basic productivity improvements, which is kind of how 95% of AI is being used today. There’s nothing wrong with that. And then from there can lead us to coming up with ways to enhance our business. I have one client that’s using it for proposal development. It’s been a dramatic improvement in quality and time, and that’s just one case study example, but there’s so many others. Following’s. Okay. You don’t have to be a leader. And just being recognizing that AI is going to touch so many aspects of our business and personal lives. And then the other thing is like, don’t stop hiring people because of AI either. There’s a lot of doomsday articles coming out now about the economy and impact of AI. There may be some scary truth to some of those things. And then I’m seeing articles from folks saying, “Look, AI shouldn’t take over your entire business. You’re still going to need smart people. You just want to give them the tools.” As an example, there’s a friend of mine who runs a digital marketing agency, and you might think, “Oh, that’s the kind of business that’s shrinking.” Well, they’re over 200 people, and they’re using AI in very efficient and effective ways. So it’s not a recipe to just dial back your human capital. It’s a recipe to do the unlock and do the think about how you can best use this information to create a scalable practice. Yeah, I think so. Also, this has been seen in history that since the Industrial Revolution, everyone was afraid of losing jobs. And the more technology there is, the more ideas there are for further services, the more demand there is because all the value is being created, and we want to spend that value on more stuff, right? And yeah, I agree that AI is just raising the bar. So every company has to now be AI-empowered and do a lot more. We can’t just deliver what we were delivering a year ago. We have to deliver more, which means that those people who are AI-enabled, they’ll just have to raise their standard. Yeah, I agree with you. So if people would like to learn more about let’s say they have an AEC-type of company—architectural, engineering, construction. Did I get it right?  Yes.  And they are thinking about the future and the transition and build the blueprint for a great company that has more enterprise value, et cetera, or they read your book and they realize that this is exactly what they need. How can they find you and how can they connect to you? Well, my website’s probably a great place to go, which is btsherpa.com. And if people are interested in that succession assessment that I mentioned earlier, just put slash succession—so btsherpa.com/succession—and you’ll get access to the assessment. You can take it multiple times for different people in mind as well. And so my book is on there, my podcast, and I really do hope that people follow up with me. If you have any questions at all about anything we talked about today. Fantastic. So do check out Laurie Barkman via btsherpa.com/succession if you want to read the materials and download stuff. Thank you, Laurie, for sharing all your great ideas and insights. If you enjoyed the conversation, then stay tuned because every week I bring an exciting entrepreneur, thought leader to the show who will share with you about frameworks about growing your business and making it more valuable. So thanks, Laurie, for coming, and thanks for listening. Important Links: Laurie’s LinkedIn Laurie’s website

https://youtu.be/UgAJ4-221HA Josh Block, President of Block Imaging, Founder of Cube Mobile Imaging, and author of People Matter at Work, is on a mission to restore work as a positive force in people’s lives. After unexpectedly stepping into the presidency of his family business at just 29 years old, Josh began asking a bold question: What if we could create a place where people love to work — and become someone they never dreamed of because of it? We explore Josh’s “Me Cycle” to “We Cycle” Framework (3Ts) — Work Together, Make Thoughtful Decisions, and Be Transparent — a leadership model designed to build trust, ownership, and thriving team cultures. Josh explains how slowing down sharpens decisions, why empathy must shape executive choices, and how radical transparency strengthens accountability. He also shares how defining a clear organizational identity — including mission, values, and thriving mindsets — creates a culture that attracts the right people and repels the wrong ones. — 3 Ways to Forge an Identity for Your Business with Josh Block Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS Group, and my guest today is Josh Block, who’s been President of Block Imaging for the last 15 years. He is also the Founder of Cube Mobile Imaging and the author of People Matter at Work. Josh, welcome to the show.  Thank you so much for having me, Steve. It’s good to be with you.  I’m excited to have you because you’ve taken over a company as president and CEO, then changed the culture, and written a book about it. So we’re going to dive into all this. But before we go there, I’m curious: what is your personal “Why,” and how are you manifesting it in Block Imaging, Cube Mobile Imaging, and your new company? Yeah, I grew up in a home that work was a positive thing. I never heard my dad complain about work. And yet as I went to college and then moved into my twenties, I recognized that work had become kind of a four-letter word in our day—more of a “have to” than a “get to.” So at 29, when I became president of our family business, the collision of my own experience and the world’s experience led me to ask the question: What if we could create a place where people love to work? Culture often gets labeled as soft stuff, but not just love to work, but become someone they never dreamed of because they’re challenged, they’re connected to a mission, they respect their leader, and go home as better people? And so, over the last 15 years, we’ve sought to create that kind of place—where kids would grow up in homes and say, “I want to work at a place like Mommy and Daddy work.” And they’d actually experienced what I experienced as a young person.  That’s great that you had such a positive experience, and I agree. I mean, that’s what we want as entrepreneurs. We want to create this experience for our people as well. So how do you actually do that? How do you create this experience? Do you have a framework that will help people? Perhaps you write about it in your book to get that. I think you call it going from the “me cycle” to the “we cycle.” What does that mean, and how do you get there?  Yeah. In most organizations, “me” is the driver. Bosses are extracting from people. They’re focused on themselves, or maybe they’re focused exclusively on performance. But in the “me cycle”, bosses look out for themselves, and then employees return the favor. And really nobody wins because it’s more of a cannibalistic approach. And so 322: 3 Ways to Forge an Identity for Your Business with Josh BlockShare on X Leaders set the tone. They’re the ones who go first, and they create a culture where people are cared for. In the book, I talk about the “three Ts.” I didn’t have them at the beginning — I kind of stumbled upon upon them over the last 15 years. And really, these three Ts allow us to create a culture where people feel safe, seen, and successful. And when they do that, they feel safe, seen, and successful, they give back in incredible ways. They take ownership of the business, and ultimately, trust builds. And when that happens, it shares the burden across the leaders and the team. Everything gets easier. Everyone wins. Performance blossoms. And so that’s really what I highlight along with sharing my story into becoming president is the shift from “me” to “we”. I loved it. So when did you recognize that this was something that needed to happen, and how did you create the vision of what it would look like if you wanted to create it? So when you came into the business, was it more of a “me” culture, and did you change it, or did you pick it up, recognize it, and articulate it even though it was already there? Yeah, I think there were positives and negatives, and maybe I’d classify it as neutral. I wouldn’t say it was a thriving team culture, but I wouldn’t say it was toxic either. My care for people, my love for work, and my belief in the power of business—that really was what we were looking to embody.Share on X And so it started out just trying to be the answer to that “what if” question I shared. Little by little, because of my really quick transition from sales rep to president, the three Ts emerged. The first was together—we have to work together. It was born out of humility to sharpen decisions. Then it serendipitously became the second T: thoughtful decisions, which is careful consideration of the needs of others. And then the last piece was really a T as well that was leading how I would like to be led, which is just with lots of transparency. So many leaders are keeping so much close to the vest, and it reduces trust. Yet, when we share openly and transparently with people, trust builds, and all sorts of really cool things start to happen. Those three Ts, I kind of stumbled across, and they’ve become the framework for embodying—not manipulating—people, but really embodying the care that we already have for people. Share on X Yeah, I love it. So working together, making thoughtful decisions, and being transparent. So let’s peel the onion here. What do you mean working together? How is it different from what most companies do?  Yeah, so in lots of companies, leaders are overwhelmed. They have too much on their plate. They’re moving so fast, and it might be a big decision or a small decision that they make, and they think, “Oh, this isn’t that big a deal. In fact, this is like eight on my list of 20 priorities.” And then they spend a lot of time clarifying, cleaning up, and fixing because they’ve moved too fast and they’ve moved thoughtlessly. And so this working together to sharpen decisions, whether it’s something that’s big or really, again, something that’s small. Sometimes the smaller decisions have an inordinate impact on people. So yeah, when I think about working together, I just think of using people in our organization—and even outside of our organization—to sharpen any decision of consequence.  Yeah. Many leaders don’t recognize that just because they can come up with a decision themselves, if there is no buy-in, people can’t weigh in. And then they don’t realize that people don’t feel ownership of this decision. And they might not get the complete context of it, and they might have some concerns that they feel like it hasn’t been seen and heard, and that can create friction in an organization. And a lot of leaders are thinking to themselves, “Well, I don’t have time to slow down. I have too much to do.” And I would say, you actually have so much to do sometimes because of moving too fast and having to clean up, fix, and address issues. I think “slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” If we actually took a bit more time in the decision, we would save time in the long run. Yeah. What about being thoughtful? If you do that—if you work together and take input from other people—isn’t that going to create thoughtful decisions? Or is there another dimension that needs to be considered?  It certainly is helpful. The more people you bring in, the broader our paradigm is in making a decision.Share on X But you have to stop and think: what is it like to be on the other side of this decision? And one of the story that comes to mind is Office Space. Right now, I’m in a corner office, and I’ve had an office for a long time. It can be easy to forget what it’s like to be in a cubicle, to work closely with 12 other people, or to deal with different lighting or temperature—whatever it is. Stopping and recognizing that there was a time when some things were important to me, but are not important anymore, and yet they’re still important to the people I lead—that’s thoughtful. This careful consideration of the needs of others asks: how does my decision impact them? And that requires knowing people and knowing what’s important to them. I also share in my book, People Matter at Work, that compensation and workspaces are two topics that are really sensitive when it comes to making thoughtful decisions.  Can you give an example where you used this principle and you made a different decision because you wanted to be thoughtful and the outcome was positive? Yeah, it is. It’s a daily endeavor. For me, oftentimes in my role today, it’s working with our leaders and asking them: how would you feel if the decision that we’ve just talked about that you’re getting to ready to roll out? How would you feel if you were 24 years old, or you were new in your role, or you were concerned about your next house payment, or your spouse was having health issues? It’s very interesting to see people stop and say, “Yeah, I think my 25-year-old self would not have been happy with the 40-year-old decision I’m about to make.” That’s really important. There’s a danger in seeing everything through our own lenses and forgetting what was important to us 10 years ago. That’s where I find myself in this coaching season—working with leaders to ask: what would you be thinking if you were on the other side of this decision 10 years ago?  That’s interesting. Alright, let’s go to the next one: being transparent. This is a big topic, and different CEOs have different sensitivities to it. Some are willing to be completely transparent with all their numbers, while others are very conservative. They don’t even want to show gross profit, let alone net profit numbers. Some even hesitate to show revenue because they feel that if people know it, they might get carried away or ask for a raise. So how are you thinking about transparency, and what is your experience with the pros and cons of transparency?  Yeah, a lot of people start from the lens of, “How little can I share with my people?” And really we have tried to go with maximum transparency is what absolutely has to be kept transparent. So there’s performance assessments, owner’s box information, health, and sensitive HR situations. But other than that, what can we share with people? Ultimately, it comes down to: do you trust your people or not? It starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I trust our people with information and believe that information is power, the more I empower them, the more likely they are to make good decisions and take ownership. Personally, in our experience, this comes down to answering three questions over and over again. Every one-on-one and every all-team meeting asks: what’s going on? And that ranges from the parking lot expansion that we’re working on to our relationship with Siemens, who acquired us two and a half years ago. What’s going on? What is the leader thinking about? What am I reading? What am I concerned about? What am I thinking about in the year ahead? And then the last—and perhaps most important—is: what am I thinking about them? There’s a veil that so many leaders are holding back, and our best people want to know more about what we’re thinking about them. And so this last piece is just a feedback loop. We keep short lists of items that haven’t been shared with team members, giving feedback early and often. Yeah. I completely agree. The more you can share with people, the more context they have. They can expand the business, make better decisions, and they don’t have to nag you all the time because they can connect the dots themselves. Feedback—especially positive feedback—is always appreciated. Of course, negative feedback might be the “Breakfast of Champions,” but it’s not necessarily pleasant. Still, it helps. It’s better to get constructive feedback early in the year rather than waiting in your personal appraisal, right?  Absolutely.  That’s too late to do anything about it. One thing that really struck me in our pre-interview is the idea of the identity of the organization. And I have always thought at least the recent years that identity of the CEO is very important for them to be able to live the identity they want, whether inside or outside the company. It’s critical during transitions. But I haven’t thought about identity in relation to the organization, at least not in this context. So please tell me: what does organizational identity mean, and how can you create the right one?  Yeah, so lots of organizations have some sort of mission, vision statement, and values. For us, it looks like what we call the Block Bullseye. At the center is our mission: because we believe that people matter most, we seek to create a thriving team culture that serves healthcare providers in offering a second chance at life for patients.Share on X The middle of the bullseye represents our best self—living out our belief that people matter. And then right outside of our bullseye, we have three different ways of looking at our values and our approaches, which I just shared. The three Ts represent our leadership approach, and the last piece is our thriving mindsets. This is really a way of like inviting people people in: this is who we are when we’re at our best. We’re imperfect. We don’t do any of this perfectly all the time, but that organizational identity becomes a roadmap or a compass of sorts for guiding our attitudes, actions, and behaviors.  What does it mean thriving mindsets, and how do you get people into a thriving mindset?  Yeah, so I was just sitting at my desk, maybe 10 years ago, and was just trying and looking at the hundreds and hundreds of people we had hired over the years. I was trying to reverse engineer success. What are those mindsets that tend to lead to people thriving, growing, and taking on more responsibility at our company? And what are the mindsets of those who haven’t done as well? I mapped them out, and they were on a spectrum. For example: one is scarcity and abundance, another is blame and responsibility. And then another one is stuck in the past and shapes the future. And so while none of us are to the right side all the time. Oftentimes, in companies, success becomes like a popularity contest: “Oh, they just get along,” or “he likes the way she does this,” or “she likes the way he communicates.” While those things are important, instead of leaving it up to chance or every leader having a different perspective, we actually say, “Here’s what we’re after.” From our mission, to our values, to our approaches, to these thriving mindsets, it allows people to self-diagnose: “Hey, I’m thinking through a scarcity lens.” It also gives us a roadmap for performance assessments and one-on-ones—something consistent that doesn’t change. Brene Brown talks about clear is kind, and it’s incredibly kind to say, “This is what we’re after.” And then ultimately, that organizational identity that we just talked about becomes a magnet that it draws certain people who want to be a part of a culture like that. And then consequently, it also repels those who maybe don’t connect with the organizational identity that we’ve set forth.  Yeah. Essentially, you help these personas understand what it looks like to be in abundance vs. scarcity, or shaping the future vs. stuck in the past. Then you coach people: “Hey, we are about shaping the future. We have a balanced mindset.” How do you coach people on this? Yeah. So I mean, it becomes situational in nature, right? For example, we might have a difficult customer challenge, or we’re hiring someone, and we can stop and ask: did the interview answers that the person gave? Did that seem like someone who cares about people? Do they walk with integrity? Do they have a mindset for shaping the future? This allows us, on a situation-by-situation or day-by-day basis, to make better decisions. We had one example this morning: a vendor was disappointed with how we had handled a situation after an audit. I asked our team members, “What would it look like to honor this vendor?” We have a longstanding relationship with them, and so going back to that core value of honor actually allows us to grab onto something that’s tangible, that’s hung on the walls that we talk about often, and it ends up being much stickier than just picking our values on the fly.  So these are part of your values? The shaping the future is a core value, or it’s a different dimension?  I’m happy to share our organizational identity, and you can put it in the show notes. But around that people matter, our center mission, we have three pieces to the pie. One is values, the other is those approaches, those three Ts I talked about, and then the last piece is those thriving mindsets.Share on X So those three together allow us, and some people would say it’s too much, but for us it’s very clear and something you can grab onto when we’re looking to develop, or frankly, even hold ourselves accountable to the right thing to do in the moment, even when it’s uncomfortable or unpleasant. I love it. So tell me about your book, Josh. Are all these concepts in your book, and have you essentially described how Block Imaging works in your book? Or what is the book, how did this come about, and what is your purpose with it?  Yeah, so I became president over a weekend. I was a sales rep on a Friday and became president on a Monday. And so that is part of the story is kind of sharing the transition into leadership, which while many don’t face it as quickly, when they become leaders, they often feel like they weren’t trained the same way they were trained to be a technician or whatever job they were hired for. So this book is really my story of coming into leadership and then learning about the shift from the “me” to the “we” cycle.Share on X The purpose of writing the book was the question: What if we could create a place? This was the question I was asking 15 years ago, and it has evolved into: What if we could share our story, the lessons learned, and the principles we’ve carried along the way to create the culture we have here? What if we could invite other leaders, and not just encourage and equip, but empower them to create cultures that are healthy, where people thrive and performance blossoms?  Awesome. If the listeners would like to learn more, is the book available on Amazon? When is it coming out?  Yeah, so the book is coming out on March 3rd. It will be available everywhere books are sold, including Amazon. If they’d like to know more about Block Imaging, they’re welcome to go to blockimaging.com. And if they’d like to know more or connect with me in any way, they can reach out to peoplematteratwork.com or email [email protected]. Okay, well, if you’re listening to this and you want to improve the culture of your organization, make sure it has a robust identity that attracts the right people, perhaps repels the wrong people, and ensures people have the right thriving mindset. Also, make it a transparent, thoughtful culture where people work together. Then do check out Josh Block’s book, People Matter at Work. If you liked this conversation, keep coming back, because every week I have a thought leader, CEO, or business owner who shares frameworks that worked for them and their companies, which you can pick up and implement in your company to scale much faster. So thanks for coming, Josh, and sharing your goodies, and thanks for listening.  Thank you so much for having me, Steve. Important Links: Josh’s LinkedIn:  Josh’s website:  Josh’s email: [email protected]

https://youtu.be/6yCIm3guPPo Anya Cheng, Founder and CEO of Taelor, is making personal styling accessible to everyday professionals with an AI-powered clothing-on-demand service built for busy men and influencers. After 15 years leading product teams at companies like Meta, eBay, McDonald’s, and Target, Anya turned her own frustration with shopping and laundry into a mission-driven business that helps people look great, feel confident, and save time—while also supporting sustainability by keeping more clothing out of landfills. We explore Anya’s Product Management Framework, the structured approach she uses to build and scale products. Instead of starting with technology, she begins by Identifying the Right Problem, then Looking at the Persona, Validating the Buying Journey, and Identifying Pain Points. From there, she Selects Decision Criteria to prioritize what matters most, Brainstorms Solutions, and finally Identifies the Right Solution based on impact, feasibility, and business value. She explains how this framework guides everything from launching Taelor to deciding which AI features to build next. — 7-Steps to Winning Products with Anya Cheng Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, Founder of the Summit OS Group. And my guest today is Anya Cheng, the Founder and CEO of Taelor, an AI-powered clothing on-demand service for men and social media influencers. Anya, welcome to the show.  Hello, this is Anya from San Francisco. I’m the founder of Taelor. We use AI to pick clothes for busy men. In the old days, only celebrities had their own human stylists. Now everyone can have their own AI stylist, and we send people real clothes to rent. Before starting the company, I spent 15 years in big tech companies. Most recently at Meta, where I helped build Facebook and Instagram Shopping. I was Head of Product at eBay and helped them launch new businesses in the US, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. I was also a Senior Director at McDonald’s, where I helped build their food delivery business globally when Uber Eats just started, and I helped Target build a tech office here in Silicon Valley. I’m excited to share more.  Okay, well we already got a lot out of you, so thank you for giving this quick bio. What I’m very interested in is what drives you. So you worked for Target. I think you worked for Amazon, at least with Amazon. You worked for other big tech.  EBay, McDonald’s, and Facebook.  Yes, so big tech companies like Meta. What makes someone who is a successful leader in big tech break out start as an entrepreneur? What is your personal “Why” that drives you and that you want to manifest in your business?  Yeah, it actually start with my personal problems that I had. When I was working for Meta, I was a few female leaders there leading large technology team. So I felt a little bit of imposter syndrome. I wanted to look great, but I don’t want people to find out that I’m freaking out every day. So I tried some subscription boxes like Stitch Fix, which is similar to the old Trunk Club. It’s good that someone styles you. But once you receive those boxes, you have to decide right away: how many times am I going to wear these clothes? And you have to buy before you can wear them. So can I find something even cheaper somewhere else? How do I pair these items? And once I buy them, I have to do laundry, ironing, and folding. It’s just a lot of work. So I started using rental companies. I rented from companies like Nuuly, which is a $500 million revenue company, or companies like Rent the Runway, which is a public company. They are all great—you can rent, you don’t have to buy. But they require people to pick from hundreds of thousands of garments. You spend two hours picking, picking, picking, browsing, browsing, browsing. And I’m not into fashion. I don’t like fashion. I don’t have time to do shopping. I’m not fashion-forward, so I don’t even know how to pick. That was the “aha” moment for me— I realized most fashion companies are designed for people who are into fashion, not for people like me who just want to get ready for the day and be successful.Share on X So I started doing research. Are there other people like me—who hate shopping and laundry but need to look good, be socially active, go to meetings, close deals, get jobs? It turns out there are a lot of people like me: busy men, single guys, salespeople, consultants, pastors, recruiters, professors. There are 15 million single men, 14 million sales professionals in the U.S., and it turns out we started Taelor to help people like me look great without having to think about fashion.  Well, I don’t know—if you look at my shirt, I probably could also use some Taelor treatment, an AI telling me how to dress better. So what drives you? I understand this is a great idea and definitely necessary, but what makes you excited about it?  I think I’ve personally always been passionate about helping people achieve their goals. I started as a blue-collar kid—my mom is a housewife, my dad is a factory worker, originally from Taiwan, and they’ve been in the U.S. for 20 years. As an immigrant, I came to the U.S. and was very lucky to have a lot of people help me. I got a student long ago, went to Northwestern University, got my MBA from the University of Chicago. I came to the U.S. without knowing anyone here, but many people helped me achieve the American dream. So it has always been in my heart to help more people achieve their dreams. What I realized was that dressing well really helped me—almost like a student who buys a textbook and feels ready for the exam even though they haven’t read it yet.Share on X People using amazing software or tools will buy books or start learning and already feel smarter than before. It’s really a peace of mind that helped me. So I’ve always been passionate about how I can help more people achieve their goals, their dreams, and their full potential. I realized this business helps me do that. I’ve tried to do that in other ways before: I’ve published books, created online courses, and taught at Northwestern University. But this business is an additional way to help people achieve their goals. At the same time, my co-founder, Phoebe, who is originally from Malaysia, she has been in the U.S. for 20 years. Growing up, she wanted to be a fashion designer, but in an Asian family, she became an accountant and finance professional, eventually a CFO. She always had a little spark in her heart to do something related to fashion, and she is very passionate about sustainability. She constantly talks about how today, 30% of clothes go directly from factories to landfills, generating 10% of carbon emissions and polluting 20% of the world’s water. Sustainability is really close to her heart. By the time she had worked for 15 years, she felt ready for a change, and we both shared the same vision. That’s how we started the business together.  Love it. It’s really a mission-driven company. I didn’t realize this when we first talked, but a lot of people are held back by not being well-dressed. Again, I don’t want to be the example here. I also like the idea because my daughter talks a lot about throwing away clothes and how much damage it does to the environment. I really like that you help people wear and buy only the clothes they actually need and send back the ones they don’t. This is awesome. So let’s switch gears here. I’m really curious about how you develop your products because this is a very creative business. You have to develop a new, revolutionary concept and product. Do you have a framework for developing these products?  Yeah, absolutely. We always start with the problem we are solving. I teach product management at Northwestern University, and most people, when they think about building a product, their first thought is, “Hey, what product am I building? How do I build it? What technology should I use?” We use AI to build this—we build AI agents—but in fact, you should take a step back. There are two equally important questions you need to ask: what problem should I solve, and what solution should I pick?  Most people spend 95% of their time thinking about what solution to pick. But first, you need to figure out what problem you should solve. The problem you solve is actually the most important thing, because if you’re solving the wrong problem—one that people don’t care about, or one that won’t help your business, or one that you can’t actually solve—then no matter how great your solution is, it’s going to be a waste of time. For example, what we found is that we are totally different from women’s rental companies. The problem we are solving is for guys who are busy but socially active. They have dreams. As a realtor, I want to sell one more house. As a small business owner, I want to grow my business to open a second restaurant. So they have a dream. Dressing well and looking good is something that helps increase their chances of success—getting a job, closing a deal, showing up confidently.Share on X What we are really selling is a concierge service, an executive assistant, a fairy godmother, a gadget guy behind the superhero—it’s peace of mind. If you look at women’s counterparts, like Nuuly or Rent the Runway, they have hundreds of millions in revenue each, but they are solving a problem for women like me. So we want to look great every single day and want to wear different things. So wearing different thing versus, I don’t want to think about it, is actually totally different problem. So if you think of our business model financially is different. For example, in women’s rental businesses, margins are very low because people rent clothes and don’t buy. On top of typical e-commerce costs like shipping, there are additional costs like laundry, so margins remain low. But in our business, customers use the service as “try before you buy.”. They want to save time and save space. So a lot of our revenue actually also come from people actually buying the secondhand clothes. And those people are people who would never buy secondhand before because they don’t have time. So those are white-collar, busy men renting clothes and also buying them. In addition, they ask me where to buy shoes or accessories, Valentine’s Day gifts, where to get haircuts, even where to go on vacation. They treat us more like an executive assistant service. They give us lots of feedback, and we monetize that feedback back to fashion brands to help them predict what’s going to sell.  Okay. That’s fascinating. So it’s a two-way business because you are also selling the data that you’re collecting from people. Customer feedback, like “the sleeve is too long,” “the fabric is too tight,” “this isn’t flexible,” and also insights like, “This is an amazing brand, but it’s too expensive compared to 90% of our other brands on the platform, so you should lower your price.” We give that feedback to brands so they can improve. Yeah, which is basically data they don’t have—and it’s very valuable. That’s fascinating. So, going back to the framework—because we’re a podcast about frameworks—I want to make sure we have a clear framework. You identify the right problem first, and then you reverse-engineer from there. What are the steps to get from the right problem to the right solution?  Yeah, so going from the right problem to the right solution—that’s step number one. To solve the right problem, you first need to understand your personas. For example, a simple persona for us is a busy man who isn’t into fashion, such as a single guy, a busy dad, a sales professional, a consultant, or a pastor. Then you map out their journey. For example, they might need to go on a business trip, attend a meeting, go to a birthday party, or go on playdates with their kids. Along that journey, they realize their clothes are old or out of style, and they need different outfits. But when they look at what they have from last year, the clothes are already too small or too big. So you identify the journey. So for example, they realize they need new clothes, and there’s a moment they say, “Okay, I can either buy exactly the same thing as last year, or… hey, I heard people are actually renting through women’s counterpart—maybe there’s something like that for me.” It’s like when you’re bored and deciding whether to stick with Comcast or try Hulu, Disney+, or Netflix. So identify the journey. After mapping the journey, the third step is identifying the pain points. A simple feature, for example—Facebook. We all use Facebook, and one feature is the birthday feature. The personas are people who have a birthday and people who want to wish their friends a happy birthday. The pain point for the birthday person is: “I’m not sure if I should tell people, but I also don’t want everyone to forget my birthday.” For friends who are close to the birthday person, their pain point is: “I forgot my friend’s birthday.” So you have a lot of different pain points. Once you have your persona, their journey, and their pain points, the fourth step is to define your selection criteria. For example, you want to pick the biggest problem to solve. What should your selection criteria be? How many people are impacted, how painful it is for those people, and how likely you are to be able to solve the problem effectively. Then you choose one pain point to focus on. For example, for Taelor, we pick that we want to help busy men who are not into fashion to dress well. The pain point we addressed is helping them save time and look great.Share on X We didn’t try to solve other problems. For example, a luxury menswear company might offer Louis Vuitton or Burberry for rent. The pain point they address is helping people who want luxury clothes but can’t afford them, which is very different from our focus. The key is to use your selection criteria to pick the right pain point to solve first.  Now you have the pain point. For example, for me, it is helping people have peace of mind and achieve their goals. Now you start using exactly the same framework for your solution. You pick your selection criteria and identify different solutions. Take Facebook birthday as an example. Oh, the problem I want to solve is that for people who are birthday boys or girl’s friend, they want to host a party. Now you can come out with plenty of solution. For example, the solution one could be AI generating party locations. The solution two is AI generate invitations. The third could be AI suggesting a party game or activity. Then you do the same thing—you identify your criteria. There are so many solutions, so what’s my criteria? The criteria are: which solution solves the pain point better? Which one requires fewer engineering hours? Which one can drive more engagement, traffic, or revenue for the company? Then you use the framework to pick the solution.  Yeah. Love it. Okay. That’s fascinating. So you find the right problem. Then you look at the persona that has that problem. Then you identify the pain points that really bother these people.  You find those persona and journey. That’s how you find a problem.   The journey as well. So the persona. Okay. And these are busy men, so you map their journeys. They need to go to church, they need to go to meetings. Then you use your criteria to select the solution.  That’s right.  And then you basically stress test. Is this the right solution? Does it fit the criteria? Does it handle the pain points? Fascinating.  Yeah. So you’re selecting criteria for your problem. And after you pick the problem, you have the same different selecting criteria to pick your solutions.  Yeah. Got it. So how do you decide what features to develop? You have your product—you’ve got the clothes. People can order them, try them out, and send them back. You take care of the laundry. They don’t have to worry. AI gives advice. How do you know what features to develop to define your product further?  Yeah. So the features to develop use the same framework. We start with the problem. Then we ask, what feature—or solution—solves that problem? For example, our customers say, “I hate shopping.” The solution is our AI shops for them. But they also say, I have a little bit points of views. So then we offer them a chance, they have a style quiz. They can upload a picture, say “I don’t wear pink, blue, or green,” And they can say, “I never wear turtlenecks.” And then they show a few pictures of the style that they like, if they have any, or we show them pictures to like or dislike. This way, we understand their preferences and pain points. And then when they decide a feature, we're thinking about the solutions to address their pain points.Share on X So for this example, and in terms of getting into the Product Management framework: If you are really going into product management, how do you find out the solution using quant and qual? For example, you interview your customers, run focus groups, check Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Shopify data, QuickBooks—your data points. Then you have qualitative and quantitative numbers. From there, you see the opportunity for a feature. You might identify a pain point: everyone comes to our homepage, but they drop off on the second page. Why? The homepage isn’t very clear. There’s no clear call-to-action button; the button was hidden. It was below the fold. Users have to scroll three times before they see the button. So, okay, I have a hypothesis. The hypothesis is that people drop off because they don’t see the call-to-action button. So I’m going to come up with a solution. Solution one: move the button to the top. Solution two: have a floating button that is always visible. Solution three: show a pop-out button. And then using the same framework, like, okay, these are three great solutions. Which one take less engineering hours? Which one will potentially solve the problem better? Which one do we think will be more effective or generate more revenue? And then you decide. That’s how we decide on the features.  Yeah, that’s great. Then the AI keeps learning your criteria, keeps refining, and keeps suggesting better and better-fitting clothes. It gets faster from there, I presume.  Yeah, because the customer provides feedback. Your Netflix shows—when you start, you might watch all the true crime. But after a few weeks, you start watching other things, like romcoms or Korean dramas. They see what you watch, and you start seeing those suggestions too. At the same time, what’s different at Taelor is that we know the problem we’re solving: helping people try something a little out of their comfort zone, because that’s why they want a stylist.Share on X So we also tend to recommend something new. We work with over a hundred different brands, so we might suggest something they haven’t tried before. “Oh, you’ve never tried purple? Why not try these light purple shirts? They look really good, similar to blue.” “Oh, you’ve never tried pink? How about this spring pink t-shirt? It’s really nice.” It’s a rental, so they don’t have to commit, and they’re willing to try something new—just like with Netflix. “I’m not sure if I’ll like the show… watch five minutes, we’ll see.”  And then, is this a global business, Taelor, or is it focused on the U.S.?  It’s focused on the U.S. We serve nationwide—anywhere the post office can reach. After people sign up, shipping takes one to three days. They wear the clothes for a couple of weeks. After that, they return the clothes in a prepaid envelope. They can go to the post office, or use a post office app with one click to schedule a free pickup. You can also drop it in blue collection boxes on the street. If you’re traveling—say, to New York for business—you can just return it at the hotel lobby. It’s prepaid, just like any package. You ask, “Can I mail it back?” It’s prepaid. They always say yes, and then you go home, and new clothes has arrived. You don’t have to do any laundry when you get home.  And you don’t have to check in your luggage.  Exactly. You don’t have to.  And to get on and off the plane quickly. I love it. That’s great. So if people would like to learn more, or they’d like to check this service out, or want to connect with you personally, where should they go? Where can they find you?  Yeah, go on https://taelor.style. Use the code PODCAST25 to get 25% off your first month or use the code PODCASTGIFT to buy a gift card with 10% off. And if you are great suppliers or business owners, you also want to tap on and work with your product, perfect for man who are busy. We love to partner with you. We work with dating sites, fitness centers, career coaches, and executive coaching companies. We also do holiday gifting, employee gifting, and new hire gifting to help your employees look great and save time. For investors, we are now backed by some of the largest consumer investors in the U.S., such as Goodwater Capital, the investors behind Lyft and Socar, Facebook, Twitter, and Spotify. Reach out to me at [email protected].  That’s perfect. So, just so we don’t forget, you’re an AI-driven company. That’s amazing. So, if those of you listening to this enjoyed this conversation and learned something, you learned how to build a product: starting from identifying the right problem, looking at the personas, determining the persona, the journey, the pain points, selecting the criteria, and then picking the right solution. So, if you want to learn more about that and similar frameworks that accelerate your business, make sure you stay tuned, because every week I bring an exciting entrepreneur or thought leader who’s going to help you fast-track your business. Anya, thank you for coming, and thank you for listening. Important Links: Anya’s LinkedIn: Anya’s website: Anya’s email: [email protected]

https://youtu.be/nZ_4d91QlUk Hannah Bauer, CEO of Heartnomics Enterprises and a leadership strategist grounded in Lean Six Sigma, Zig Ziglar, and Baldrige Excellence, is driven by a personal ‘Why’ of transformation—helping people live with love, excellence, and fulfillment.  We explore Hannah’s remarkable origin story: diagnosed with a serious heart condition as a child, enduring years of unpredictable tachycardia and two heart attacks at age 10, and ultimately receiving a pioneering ablation procedure that saved her life. Out of that journey, she built Heartnomics—the “economy of the heart”—and teaches her HEART Leadership Framework: Hope, Empowerment, Accountability, Results, and Trust, a values-based model that fuses emotional resilience with operational discipline to create ethical, high-performing leaders and cultures. — 5 Steps to Heart-Driven Leadership with Hanna Bauer Good day, dear listener. Steve Reda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Hannah Bauer, a leadership strategist who teaches leadership performance, continuous improvement. She’s also the CEO of Heart Enterprises, and she is well-versed in Lean Six Sigma, Zig Ziglar Baldrige Excellence, and many disciplines. So I’m excited to welcome you to the show, Hannah. Thank you Steve. Thanks for having me. Alright, so you have lots of interesting stories and lots of interesting concepts and frameworks, which we are into. I’m also interested in your personal ‘Why,’ and how are you manifesting that in your coaching practice? Well, my personal why is transformation. I believe that as human beings, we have the authority and ability to transform, and I believe the way that we do that is through love and excellence. We've all been created by love and the ability to do good works, excellent works—the ones that are going to leave a positive footprint.Share on X That’s my why. I want to be able to be fulfilled in what I do and help other people be fulfilled in the lives that they live. Wow. So love, access, and fulfillment. That is a very positive vision. I am happy to sign up for that. It’s positive. It’s true. You know, and I think that’s the thing. It’s like we really can attain that in this lifetime. And sometimes we look at it like, “Oh, it’s so far away.” or “One day,” but it’s like—that’s the amazing thing that we have as human beings. We have the ability to live that out regardless of what’s going on. Well, that’s a very significant for you to say that because it’s part of your story that when you were 10 years old—and correct me the details—you were diagnosed with a serious heart condition. So tell me your origin story, and how did you actually beat out of this huge challenge and obstacle that you had, the kind of life that you are teaching others right now? Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for asking that. Yeah, I will say probably the ones harder than me. I would think of many points as my parents, because I was the kid, right? I was the kid. I was diagnosed at four, when at the time was considered a terminal diagnosis with heart; a lot of research had not been done yet at that time—we’re talking about like the late seventies, early eighties. So there was not really much information on heart disease.—for women, much less on kids. Kids just don’t get heart disease, right? I mean, if there’s anything, it’s like a structural thing. In mine, it was where my heart would go suddenly really fast into tachycardia, but it would also be arrhythmic, which would be abnormal rhythms. It was unexpected. It could be just—I’m just talking to you—I sneeze, and then it would just go into tachycardia, or I’m in the middle sleeping and I turn the wrong way, it will start going into that tachycardia. And that would be like—think about a resting, normal resting heart rate is between the sixties to eighties. Well, for me, a normal heart rate would be anywhere from 180 to 240. So basically like on—yeah, on like that zone five—what you all are feeling when you are working out. That’s what my heart would be as a kid. But it wouldn’t just be for like, a few minutes. It could last hours, days into the extreme. It lasted weeks, and drugs didn’t work for it. Interventions didn’t work. I’ve had a DH of 10 actually, which was significant at that time. So I went through two heart attacks. That’s really what— really the both a miracle and what opened the door. I think always our greatest opportunities are always surrounded by the greatest of circumstances and obstacles. And as much as painful as that whole experience was, it also opened the door for my parents to courageously uproot our family, come to the US in search of a cure that didn’t yet exist. And it was a journey for about five years. Nothing really inside as far as the, “Hey, if we do this, this will happen. If we do that, again.” It was a lot of the things that happened were research. It was going on hope, and that's where my lessons came in because I got to see very intelligent, dedicated professionals really rely not only on skills but really on hope.Share on X They really believed a lot in me. They believed a lot in what my heart was capable of doing. I want to say my doctor was relentless. Though I was in a heart transplant list, where it would have given me about 10 years more at that time. I would have made it most 22 years old, assuming that everything went well. He was relentless and believing and that my heart as well—the muscle. It was the electrical system that didn’t work. So in 1992, there was an opportunity for an innovative surgery called the heart ablation. And that’s where they basically did a recircuiting. They did the circuits in my heart, burning away parts that were making those fast heartbeats, being able to identify those and having a clear pathway to then energy was able to flow. And ever since then, I’ve been well. So I’m here. I am well in the heart, in a sense. I think with having five kids, they did a really good job because I’m still here. You know, the kids will cause a lot of stress, and being an entrepreneur itself, but that’s where my story started. A lot of things I couldn’t do. My childhood obviously was very different. You know, things like that were simple—going to school, getting up, getting dressed—there were no options for me. Many times I lived tied to a bed. Four weeks, I lived in the CCU, the cardiac care unit, for many weeks, months at a time. And that’s where I learned actually the beat method. That’s where I learned. That’s why I say regardless of the circumstances, as a kid, you don’t understand. I didn’t understand all it meant. I didn’t even understand what I had the surgery until 20 years later, when they called me to do a documentary on it. And that’s when I realized that I was the first of 3,000 children that were impacted by this innovative surgery that saved their lives. Wow, that’s an amazing story. And what’s even more amazing to me is that out of this experience, you built your business. It’s called ‘Heartnomics’.  Yeah. The economy of the heart. And then you have several frameworks, which are all always revolved around the heart. And one of the frameworks I want to ask you about is the Heart framework itself, which is a values-based leadership framework. So can you tell our audience about what it is, and how did you come up with it? Why did you come up with it? Yeah. And what does it look like? Yeah. Well, like I said, as a kid, there were a lot of things I was just felt like were happening to me, right? Like there was just like all this things. I didn’t really have much of an option on stuff, and I didn’t understand all the innuendo. But I did understand how people did things, and that how later on in life I came to understand that those were values—those were values that people dealt with. And that's where the heart, the values-based leadership. It wasn't just something that I learned with me; it was I learned in observing when words weren't there.Share on X Words weren’t even—I wasn’t even able to understand values—led how they did things, the things that they did do. And as I went on in my own leadership journey, I’ve been able to observe with those leaders that have high values are also leaders that are high performers and leaders that really make that impact and influence. And when I came down to really looking at what those values that really impacted me, that's where Heart comes from. The value of hope, the value of empowerment, accountability, result, and trust.Share on X Because I would see that all those five in how we do and the things that we choose to do and how we perform them. If you don’t have results in mind of what I’m doing that I’m doing, you could just be a very busy person and being an effective person. If you don’t have trust, you’re not going to be an ethical leader. And we need ethics and leadership. Accountability is not just about holding really anybody—like a punitive thing—but accountability really talks about community, because you can’t be accountable outside of being in a community. And we’re talking about the empowerment—really not just bringing solutions to the people, but bringing ownership to the people that we lead so that we can come up with those solutions together, which definitely fits back into hope.Share on X The first part, which is the beginning. I believe it is the catalyst for change but also the fuel that helps you keep on going even in light of things not working quite out. And that’s where the values, that’s where the HEART framework really comes from. So I love it. So the HEART is really the acronym. So H for Hope, E – Empowerment, A – Accountability, R – Resource. You also already explained empowerment, accountability, and trust. I’d like to ask you about the other two: Hope and R esource. So first of all, hope. How do you create hope? How do you tap into hope? Is there a process? Is it something an important thing? Is it something that evolved in us due to our experiences or environment that maybe contributed to your hope? How do people manufacture hope? Well, I believe we all are born with that hope. I mean, I see that as with having had five kids—they always have, like, you know, they’re hopeful in a sense. It comes out as a wish. They think it’s a wish. Sometimes people confuse a wish as a hope or like a positive thinking, but really hope. It’s a powerful force because it hope what it does is that it really makes you find a way where there is no way. I realized that sometimes, you know, as I went through my life and things that I said, well, I just don’t have time for this, or I don’t have time for that. I realized that it wasn't a matter of time management, it was that I had even lost hope in those areas.Share on X So I see that areas where I didn’t have hope are also areas that I was not looking for a solution or a way to improve. I believe that… How do you know? How do you grow in it? Well, one is identifying, right? What are those? Some of those areas, you’ll find that those areas where you’re focusing on, where you’re believing in, you also find that those are areas that you have high hope on, and those areas that maybe you haven’t thought in a while… it’s like, well… maybe, is it because you lost hope in that because you did try it or you got to put it away? Put it to the side. But hope is a catalyst because hope will help you move into action. It’s not passive at all. It’s not this just this great old feeling. It’s honestly a skill for leaders to be able to not only start looking for solutions. I mean, look at that area. I know it’s not what it’s supposed to be like, you know. I couldn’t deny how I was feeling when I was going through my heart. My doctors couldn’t deny that all the drugs and the open-heart surgery and those things just didn’t work. We can still speak hope, and hope came in when we were still looking for a solution in life. No solution. When I still chose to live as much a life that I could, even from my bed, because I was hopeful that there will be a time where things will be better, where I could even make that time better. I mean, I would play with different things and hope that’s what will make you do. It’ll move you into action. It’ll start helping you look at the circumstances differently. It’s the start.  What catalyzes hope because some people are hopeful because they have a strong spiritual belief. Yes. And they hope in God, for example, that, you know, God’s going to help me. That allows them to have hope even in a situation which is maybe hopeless. Or some people have a strong belief in something, like they’re fighting for their country, and that gives them a hope—this bigger goal that their person gives them hope. Some people are very curious, and maybe the curiosity tells them that there is something that they don’t know that they can still find, and it gives them hope. How do you catalyze hope? Is it an inborn thing that some people are more hopeful than others, or is it something that can be cultivate? I do believe it is divinely ingrained in us, and the object of my hope is my divine Maker, God, and He's the author of hope for me.Share on X I also believe that we can grow in it. It is nurtured. We can rise in hope, and we see that—you even going to the Bible scriptures—to convince us to, you know, raise up your own fire. You raise up in hope, you bring out that encouragement. So it definitely is both ingrained in us, and you see it in different… really a universal theme. How hope is not only internal, where you can turn it on, grow in it, but also it is fueled by others. And like what you were saying, even in areas, that you’re looking at, when you start hearing hope, hope will raise—which is what is so important for a leader in organizations is to raise hope.Share on X Now, we’re not talking about false expectations. We’re talking about in light of, like I said, “Hey, I know this is what it looks like right now, but it’s not the end of the story. It’s not how this finishes. There’s a mission, there’s a vision, there’s greatness.” And of course, if the part of faith goes with hope, I mean there’s a lot of why we do what we do. We’re operating in faith. You can say faith—it could be from the way that you have seen things in the past—but really, faith is also, I believe, also a divinely ingrained that can be grown in. I mean, we can grow and nurture faith. We can nurture hope. We can nurture love. The same way love comes in again. I believe 100% from our Maker. But there’s also, I think, and I’m not a scholar, but there’s a line in the Bible, which paraphrase something like, “H elp yourself, and God will also help you.” Let’s say in a business situation, your business is being disrupted. You know, you see that AI is going to eat your business, and you kind of become the respondent, and then you wreck your brain. What can I do? How can I avoid it? How can I pivot my business? Then, you know, a couple of days later, you have an idea, and then you have hope. This idea will give you hope that you can pivot your business and you can take it further. Then you really are helping yourself so that you can get God’s support as well. Oh yeah. I mean, absolutely. There’s a part where he says, “You do all that you can do, and God will do all you cannot do.” So you’ll do what you can. We rely on that: He will do all that we cannot do way beyond, above what we can think or imagine. So absolutely, we do what we can. And that’s to a certain point, right? I mean there’s, for example, there’s a lot of times even with goals, right? Like we set out goals, and as much as we… you may want to like, “Oh yeah, maybe it’s like a financial goal or a health goal, whatever that is.” We really are not in charge of that outcome. We are in charge of the activities that will lead to that outcome. I can control if I send a health goal on what I put in my body, I can control on, like how much rest do I give? I can control those things. Now the overall help—that’s really why I’m trusting that my activity, along with the divine help, is going to be that, right? Same thing with income. There’s only so much I can do—am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing? Am I doing the phone calls? Am I getting myself, keeping up and with my skill? Am I making pitches? Am I making sales calls? You know, those things. Again, I can’t control somebody buying from me, but I can control the activities that will allow people to buy from me. Yeah. So that, and relying in that divine part. That’s a great for way of setting it. Okay. So, got it. I understand hope. What about resource? So resource. Yeah, resource goes to… there has to be an outcome to the activity, right? There has to be a way we’re measuring, a lot of times I hear like, “Well, we want the world to be a better place,” for example. Better—well, better for what? Resource is a way to be able to as a leader, to quantify what maybe we only can.Share on X What maybe a concept or what maybe like, what is it going to be, you know, what’s the end result? There has to be a way that I can measure, from that qualitative data to the quantitative data, right? From things that we say that are mission-critical. What is that? You know, how do I know I am closer to that mission? How do I know I am closer to that purpose? How do I know with that? So results very much also deals with alignment. So as a value, it’s that I’m not just going to do things for the sake of doing them, but I’m going to do things intentionally. I’m going to do things purposefully. And the purpose can be measured; the intentionality can be tracked. Those things like, I don’t just say, “I’m intentional.” Well, there’s a tracker to that. Okay. How am I going to?  Can you give an example how you track intentionality?  Absolutely. So every morning I’m going to do 20 minutes of meditation, right? So I can be having… well, my intentionality actually may not even be 20 minutes. That would be my goal. Intentionality is to have time where I’m setting my day up correctly. Well, that’s my intention. I need to… okay, well, how do I do that? Maybe starting that before I do anything else. So my intentionality is then transferred into something that I do like, something like, “Oh, either what I think, or how am I going to make sure that I’m going to get in the right mindset to start my day?” Well. I’m going to have to get up early. Like I have to do it early in the morning. I might have five kids, for example. They wake up at different times. If I was going to really be intentional and this is where the rubber meets the road for the results—am I willing to get up before everybody else so I can have that time? So intentionality is not just like, “Okay, this is what I’m going to do and hope all this stuff, but the result attached with that, being able to transfer that intentionality to it—it is actually preparing. Like I started looking, “Okay, if I’m not intentional with this, I also am aware of some of the obstacles that come in, but I need to put in something in place to measure that intentionality,” to where maybe I don’t get all seven days, but maybe five days, three days, but I’m taking that from one dimension to the other. And results: when you are committed to results, there is intentionality with that is not just putting in, this is what we're going to doShare on X this is the amount of money we’re going to bring in, or this is how the feeling is going to come out. But in, in resource, you’re also realizing, “Well, what is the intention and what are the activities that I need to do with that?” And it has to be transferred to something maybe three times a day, a week. It’s not enough for me, and I have to measure that at the end of the week. Maybe I do need to up four, or maybe, you know what, with one, I’m good. So I don’t need to be killing myself three days. I just need to do one time, you know? So that is dealing with as my intention as I’m going out and trying it out, but I’m also looking at the results because we have greatest of intentions, right? But the smallest of action is going to trample the greatest of intention. So it’s not just about being intentional and having this feeling. You have to be able to be able to translate that into something else, and that result is going to help dictate.  If you don’t measure the resource, then maybe you are going to your intention may dissipate. You have nothing to reinforce it. Absolutely. And then you’re going to lose it. But what’s really important is really interesting to me is the way you talk about intention and hope. There’s a lot of emotional juice behind this. So it’s not just about rational plans and systems and processes and logic and structure, but it’s also the emotional charge that is required. So hope is emotion. You know, you feel that it’s going to get better. It fuels you. If you really are committed to doing this thing, getting up and making this happen, it’s an emotional charge that you have, and even trust. You know, it is an emotional connection that you have the intention to bear that bond with the other person, to trust them, and then they can trust you in return because it has to be a two-way street. Do I get this somewhat right?  Yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, if you look at it, for example, like, today is January. We’re the beginning of January, but the job reports came out. What is that supposed to do? Yeah, it’s a very quantitative thing, but really what it measures is confidence. It’s all about confidence. Confidence is an emotion. The volatility that’s going to come from that, the confidence that you either have or don’t have in whatever it is—the system that you do have or don’t have. It’s really going to dictate the next actions that you’re going to do. So yes, it’s definitely very emotional trust that you can have. And we do have a very structured way to may portray or communicate something, yet it’s the emotion, right? You talk about trust and in business. Absolutely. Who do we do business with? With whom we like know and trust? Trust. In sales, it’s an exchange of emotion. I’m selling you a benefit like, we look at advertising, we look at things. So yes, there is the emotional very much component attached to that. Even at the confidence levels, the confidence is going to—if we degrade the confidence in what we do, the economy, the faster we’re going to move, the more we may invest. So there’s an action that’s followed with that. But yes, definitely we’re emotional beings. It is a language that we speak. So yes, all of these are going to be attached with emotion along with the organizational part, and that’s really where Heartnomics came in. That mixture of both. It’s hard—the emotional part that what we value, the assets—but then the economy, the economy of the heart, which is the systems, the way that we measure things, the processes, the reports, all of these parts, because it is an economy of the heart. That’s really interesting, this concept of emotion and the machine, essentially the spirit or the human spirit and the system coming together and creating the result. Yeah. I mean, you’ve been in business for a long time. You’re also teaching in business. What was the hardest decision that you’ve ever had to make in your business? I think in businesses, there are seasons to everything. So I think the hardest decision would be—I mean, my hardest decision at the beginning was just to get started. That was sometimes like the hardest decision, right? Like, okay, can I do this on my own? Is somebody going to go forward? So sometimes that seemed, at that time, it seemed like the hardest decision ever. Like, am I going to leave this to go after this? Later on in the business, like staying—okay, everybody else is going this way. Do I need to follow everybody else, or do I keep on doing what I’m doing? Am I being completely blindsided by my passion and what I believe it is? You know, in a sense of stubbornness. So sometimes I would say the hardest decisions have been, and really identifying and clarifying the purpose of what it is that I do in light of consistent change. I came to find that, I think I would say that the one that had the initial biggest ripple effect was when I was in my previous company, when I had the publishing company, and we had to really look at—there was this whole battle of content versus platform when you had the rise of the eBooks versus the print books, right? To where suddenly what was so valued, which was the printed book, the knowledge, suddenly the knowledge part seemed to have lost its value because knowledge was everywhere by everyone. So you saw things happening, for example, with Britannica Encyclopedia to where people—that’s where you would get knowledge from—to suddenly having a Wikipedia, where people wouldn’t pay for, and it was like added by anybody. So the curation part. So it’s like, what do we do? You know, do we develop or go into platform development, or do we go into content development? Do we still stay true? And the hardest decision was really in having to not only in taking the time when it seemed like everybody’s going a hundred miles per hour to really, in a sense, shut everything off and get back in touch with, well, what is our core? What is it that we’re here for? I see that a lot in business owners today with the rise of AI. The rises of all this technology is going super fast, the speed of change, and it’s like, do we need to change the way we do business altogether? Like everything—do we even—is there even value in what we do? Because now technology tools are doing the work that we say we do. So I would say the hardest part is really getting down to slowing down enough and listening—turning up your listening ears enough in a time where it seems like you can’t afford to do so to be able to move forward. Because I know for me it seemed like, oh my goodness, we’re losing ground if we stop right now, this speed up everybody, but actually in the slowing down is what really gave birth to the next phase of what we needed to do. I’ve seen that again and again. Sometimes it can be an unleashing of something because often we get comfortable doing something and we stop learning because we’re successful. You’re not being pushed, and then a disruption comes, and then we have to really have some source switching and go back the roots, to what we’re really about. And that can release the next level of evolution. Basically, it’s the yin and yang. So danger is the opportunity. Always. Yeah. Always. That’s what I said, like you know, the greatest of your greatest opportunity is usually surrounded by the greatest of opposition, challenges, all this stuff. I mean, like I said, even with me, like that’s what I saw with the surgery, right? That innovative surgery, it hadn’t been done before. We had a whole track record of failure. You know, everything around it was failure, and yet you had to look at that there was still an opportunity. And that opportunity honestly unleashed just the way that even heart disease is treated today. There had to be the opportunity, there had to be the pioneers, there had to be the ones that were willing to go and the ones that are willing to also—there is a prize for being first, we see that in the marketplace.Share on X So those that are first, even with AI and even with all those things, there is a prize for being first, but yet that cannot be the sacrifice of everything else you’ve done and forget who you are. I think that’s honestly the biggest challenge in all of this that we’re doing is not losing your identity and the governance of it all, where still the human is the one who’s governing. The human is still the one who’s using the tool and using it as a tool. But the human is a the one—we’re the ones that have the authority. We’re the creators. Yeah. That’s a great way to look at it. So we are the creators, we are the governors of things, and they’re just a tool. It’s an amplifier. It changes the nature of the work. It turns the work from execution-oriented to creation-oriented. Yes. Which can be uplifting but also burdensome. Oh. Yes. And that’s where we are. I believe we’re the guardians of that, right? I mean, that’s where leadership comes in because in leadership you are able to set up clarity. That’s one of the greatest things that what we serve as leaders. We also protect, we also guide, we also do all these things. And ethics is a big part.Share on X That’s something that the machines don’t understand it. They can’t do. We only understand what we put it in there at that point. But the whole point of ethics is a good, you know, we have this inner knowing again, that the divine in us of what is not just works but what is good works. And that is also where we still will have a role to play on the ethical being a leader that leads by ethic integrity—not only integrity in how we do things through the process, but integrity of who we are. The whole part of being, which is not something you can—again, it’s just a tool. The tool helps with that. Like you say, amplify the tool helps with even helping, unleashing and create. I know there’s things that we can definitely do faster, but we can’t lose the opportunity of the opening that tool allows us to be able to create even more, to be able to add value even more in a different way. Yeah. And I think when you say ethics, I’m thinking that it’s, how it manifests is, doesn’t it manifest through being aligned with our values? Yes. And knowing our values so that we can align ourselves. Because I see people who are not aware of the value of the values that are dear to them, and they don’t articulate it, and then they get confused, and they feel frustrated, but I don’t know why. And they can’t align with it because it’s not explicit. So, yeah.  It’s everybody-based leadership. Its heart. Exactly.  That’s basically it. You know, heart-based leadership’s probably value-aligned leadership is a another way of saying it, right? Yes. Also, yeah. Emotionally resonant leadership. Yeah, we’re emotional beings, and in all these tools—again, like the stock market is very much driven by emotion. Like, you see what happens when you’re in fear, when people start selling off, it’s fear. We have the whole, again, the confidence. We have a barometer, like the ‘Elderman Barometer of Trust’ is all it does is to measure trust. We talk about morale, we talk about that trust. That barometer of trust is used to lending practices. I said how people feel about organizations, how people feel about things. So you think about that— we cannot ignore emotion, like the humanness of being human, as we’re moving forward in innovation. And that is a call to the human-centric and valuing something that we say in Maxwell. One of our core beliefs is that we are people of value that value others and add value to them. So in utilizing these tools, in integrating the tools as a leader is how are they adding value to the human? Because it still has to be human-centric. We’re still selling products to the human, and AI is not going to buy. I mean, they’re not AI. AI doesn’t have emotion. I think—I’m not aware of it. Maybe the newest ChatGPT 6.0 will have emotion. I don’t know. But the currently, maybe that’s a big difference—that AI doesn’t have emotion, so it doesn’t have that energy. And maybe that’s the spiritual energy, and who knows where this comes from. And that is a big driver of human decisions and desires and intentionality. And it’s not just about, you know, the tokens and the logic and the ideas and the information. It’s also about this energy, this emotion, and we bring this to the table. And AI cannot do this yet. Yeah. And let me tell you something. When I went to the documentary, when they did a 20-year anniversary for my surgery, and they were interviewed with the doctor, they did actually connected me back to my nurse. They connected me to the person that was there that checked me in. I got to go see the surgery room. And then I got to hear the doctor really for the first time now as an adult, now as a mom. And it is like they asked him, well, what was going on? You know, first of all, he said, “What were the odds of this working?” He said, “Well, imagine yourself you are in a pitch-black room, and you’re trying to find out one little switch is going to turn the light on, but wait a minute, the room is spinning at the same time.” So that was the odds of this happening, of it being successful. And he said it was just like a miracle that just happened in front of them, where they were able to get to the right spot to do that. And that was the first time where I actually saw not only the logical part, as a doctor, as a skill, but he also called it the medical miracle. Definitely their hands were divinely guided. But not only that, he also added this other part that he said, “Well, what were you doing with her this whole time?” I said, “We’re just hoping, we’re just trying to keep her alive long enough for technology to catch up.” And that’s where it hit me as I’m hearing this. It’s like if I was to say what was the birth of Heathnomics, that was it. Because I’m like, well, what kept me alive long enough? It was love. That’s what sustained me. That's what the love of my grandmother as I was going through this agonizing pain, my parents, their courage that it took to do what they did—it was love.Share on X But what was it for technology to catch up? Well, that was the logic. That was the systems. That was the processes. That was looking at failure and learning from those failures. It was a way to be able to catch what they were learning and changing the next time, and catching and failing and catching and failing. That was the technology helped do that. So it was like the both parts, and that’s why even as we look at, there is a logical aspect to what we do as a process and systems, but it’s not all of it because it is a combination of that. And it’s the people that are willing to balance both. Like in my case, I was blessed that I had doctors that were able to say that to advocate also for me because it didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense. Keeping you alive long enough logically it. I shouldn’t have been alive or still be alive. So we can't just go by what logic said, but love was such a more powerful forceShare on X and it sustained me at a time where I couldn’t be sustained, where there was no technology to sustain me. There was no medicine that would sustain me. Yeah. And then you are still projecting this. This is amazing. You have a lot of— you’re like a mini nuclear reactor. You know, you’re protecting this positive energy. I love it. I think it’s going to shine through this episode. Final question. What do you think is the most important question that an entrepreneur should be asking themselves? What question am I not asking myself? So they’re like the mistakes. You know what the biggest mistake, and you probably heard this mistake that we have, is not asking what mistake I am making? So as an entrepreneur, I would say it’s that because it takes a humility. So I would say that would be part what the parts, I know we talk a lot about a grid and getting out there and all this stuff, and I understand that. Trust me, I get it. I also feel, and I see that one of the greatest things with entrepreneurs right now, especially in the light of all the stuff that we have, is that humbleness that has to come. Because without humbleness, we won’t listen to the ideas of our great teams. Without humbleness, we won’t be open to the great possibilities. Without humbleness, we won't be able to look at our mistakes and not be afraid of them but embrace them for what they are. And they are all steps and lessons to the process.Share on X  Yeah, and they can be very painful to look at.  Yeah, very. If you’ve ever done a SWOT analysis, they’re brutal. And you know, when you’re looking at your strengths, your weaknesses as your threats—I remember doing that with my team. Like, oh, this is a great team building. I feel like it was a nuclear world, it’s horrible, but we got through it. So yes, one of the greatest services that we can do as a leader—and it takes humbleness to do it. It takes humbleness to take a look at this. And it’s going to take that love, honestly, to look at things the way that things are and bring out that hope. That is going to help you get through and get to the next innovative part because we need innovation.  And innovation doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be a brand new thing, like never been done before, like a new invention.Share on X For example, my surgery wasn’t a new invention. It was just using the same technique of burning away but using it a different way. And that’s why I’ll call my entrepreneurs, “Don’t think that you have to reinvent the wheel or reinvent something, but what do you have?” It used it in a different way going to be innovative.  New combination over existing things. No, there’s nothing new under the sun. Love it. Well, so if someone would like to learn more about Heartnomics and your work and maybe want to explore working with you or connect with you, where should they go? Where can they find you? Oh, well, thank you. To connect with me, best way is to go through LinkedIn. You can look me up there, Hannah Bauer. Also on my website, I have a special assessment for you for aligning with your individual alignment. It’s going to go, it’s based on heart. And also for the organizations that is based on the core of the organization. So I would love to have you there. Take a complimentary assessment, and then we’ll connect. That’s awesome. So if you like this conversation, you like the Heartnomics ideas and the love that is read, think through it. Then go and check out  Hannah Bauer’s website and LinkedIn page. Check out the self-assessment. Reach out to her. And if you enjoyed this show, then make sure you subscribed on YouTube, you follow us on LinkedIn, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcast. And stay tuned because every week I bring an exciting thought leader, entrepreneur to the show like  Hannah Bauer.  Hannah, thanks for coming and sharing, and thank you for listening. Important Links: Hannah’s LinkedIn Hannah’s website

https://youtu.be/ecq40Pnldrw Tim Martinez, Value Creation, Strategic, and Exit & Succession Planning Advisor—also known as “The Inside Man”—is on a mission to empower entrepreneurs and make the world a better place with his philosophy of “No entrepreneur left behind.”  In this episode, Tim shares how he evolved from starting small businesses as a teenager to advising founders on high-stakes growth and exit decisions. We explore Tim’s 3 Exits Framework, which breaks exit planning into three critical phases: Mental Exit (separating identity from the business), Role Exit (building leadership and succession so the business can run without the owner), and Technical Exit (valuation, deal structure, and the formal sale process). Tim also explains why AI is accelerating business disruption, why minimalism is a competitive advantage, and what keeps so many businesses stuck at the $3M revenue ceiling. — 3 Ways to Exit Your Business with Tim Martinez Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS Group. And I have as my guest today Tim Martinez, who is a Value Creation, Strategic, and Exit & Succession Planning Advisor, also known as “The Inside Man.” Tim also has a successful Substack with lots of followers, which has a similar title, Inside Man. He’s also built his own ChatGPT API, so he’s running with the times. Tim, welcome to the show.  Thanks, Steve. Great to be here.  Finally, we have someone who is ahead of the curve on AI and the technological evolution that’s part of this new industry revolution. So let’s start with my favorite question. What is your personal ‘Why’ and how are you manifesting it in your practice and in your business?  Yeah. My personal ‘Why’ is to make the world a better place and to empower entrepreneurs. “No entrepreneur left behind” has kind of been my motto. Since I was a kid—I started businesses very young, like 15 or 16—people would ask me, “How are you doing this?” And I would help however I could. And it was just always felt really good to help my fellow entrepreneurs, whether I was helping them in a small way or a big way. And there's nothing better than seeing some of the advice you're able to give someone actually get implemented.Share on X Then you see them go, “Wow, oh my gosh, this is great.” And again, sometimes it’s small, sometimes it’s big. But I believe entrepreneurs rule the world, and I do my part every day—whether it’s writing my Substack, jumping on podcasts, or writing books. I’m always here just to share what I’ve learned, because I think that’s what makes the world go round.  Well, you have a boundless energy, because you are writing books, you are writing your blog, you are doing these podcasts. Then you also have to gather the information, right? You have to work with clients—otherwise there’s no raw material. That is very impressive. So what took you to this point? How did you evolve? I mean, you started at 15, but surely you were not coaching or consulting people at 15.  Yeah, so I probably spent about 10 years just starting small businesses. I had the lemonade stand, then a coffee business and a silk-screen business. I had a DJ business, a retail store, a marketing and advertising agency, a small one, but I was able to sell it. And I got lucky and sold a couple of these small businesses. I built websites, built apps—I mean, anything you can do to make a buck. I was just kind of hustling and figuring it out on my own. And at a certain point in time, maybe like 10 years later, someone asked me to help them write their business plan. It was the first time I thought, “Huh, someone wants to pay me to help them write a business plan. That sounds interesting.” Okay. And I had written all of my own business plans for 10 years. I used to go to SCORE—the Senior Corps of Retired Executives, a division of the SBA—and they would consult for free. They still do, by the way. And I always said my long-term goal was to be an old advisor at SCORE, because they helped me so much when I was a kid.Share on X So I charged money for my first business plan. That person was able to raise money from their uncle. Then they said, “Well, hey, we got this money. What do we do now?” So I said, “Well, I think I can charge you. I think this is called consulting. Maybe I’ll just charge you to help execute your business plan.” It was a small business, and I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a book that was like this big—How to Start a Consulting Business. I just sat there and highlighted the whole thing. It had CD-ROM forms in the back. I knew nothing about consulting. And probably for the next handful of years, I just focused on writing business plans and helping people. That’s kind of what got me into consulting and working with bigger businesses. It really started with business plans and small businesses.Share on X  Yeah. I mean, business plans are great because you are envisioning the future of the business, crunching the numbers—what’s going to happen with your top line, bottom line, costs, overhead, margins—and essentially it helps you visualize the skeleton of the business. Then you can put the meat on the bone, kind of thing.  Yeah. And I had worked on hundreds of business plans, and  pitch decks, financial models, and market research. That documentation aspect of a business, I had spent a good, let’s say, 10 years working very heavily with clients as an analyst in consulting firms. And that’s really what got me into the game and got me into bigger and bigger businesses, because I got very good at doing that with no formal training—and we didn’t really have what the internet is today. I remember going to the downtown library in Los Angeles, finding articles, and taking scanned copies of them. That’s how we did our market research. And business plans used to be like a dictionary. The SBA would require business plans to meet all these requirements, so we ended up with huge business plans. Now people want a one-pager, maybe a 10-slide deck, and call it a day. Where I got my chops was from understanding every imaginable nuance of every business in all verticals. I worked around the world with businesses, and I guess I was in the right place at the right time for it.Share on X  Yeah, that’s very humble. So one of the things that you do is you help people prepare for exit, and you came up with this framework called The 3 Exits Framework. I thought it was fascinating to think about exits from different perspectives and to have different mental models for them. How did you come up with this, and can you explain to the audience what it looks like, how it works, and how it helps entrepreneurs? Yeah. And it’s important to note that I started my career starting businesses, helping people get the start. And as I got older, the businesses I worked with were also getting older. And as I got a little more gray hair and a few more wrinkles, people would take me more seriously at the later stages of the business, when they maybe wouldn’t take me so seriously when I was in my early twenties. So my business had evolved from starting to growing and then eventually to exiting, and that’s where most of my clients are now. What I’ve discovered is most people enter the exit planning conversation at the very end, asking, “What is my business worth? Who wants to buy it?” Needing a business valuation is the most common first question: “Whoa, what’s it worth?” But after working with a handful of companies through this whole exit process, you start to realize that there’s far more than just the numbers. The 3 Exits Framework says there are three exits that need to occur before you’re out and on your yacht, sailing into the sunset.Share on X The first exit is the mental exit, which we can talk about at length. It’s your role—your identity in the business. Who am I if I’m not the CEO? What am I going to do with my time if I’m not running this business? Who am I if people can’t come to me with their every burning question? It’s this piece, it’s so important. And a lot of people don’t want to give up control. They don’t even know they’re control freaks, which I’ll call them for lack of a better term. But they don’t even know that they are that. You have to help them through that.  The second exit is really your role exit, because eventually someone needs to run this business in your absence. The whole tenant of selling a business is that you’re not going to be in it. You might have earnouts or some transitional involvement, but eventually, you will not run this business. So you have to replicate yourself. Most people say, “I’ve tried, but it hasn’t worked.” Well, you know what? Now’s the time for this to work. It’s time to build SOPs, standards of excellence, and get someone who could be better than you ever were in that seat. So that role exit is a big part, and that would be true succession. The other part of that is it’s not just the CEO or the owner. A lot of times it’s them and they’re number one, or they’re number two, or number three, because in many cases those people also have equity and ownership in the companies in some cases. So we need to get succession in line for multiple roles.  And then the third exit is your technical exit. It’s the one piece everyone feels like they start with that is your valuation, getting your documentation together, running a formal auction process, making sure that you’re looking at multiple buyers, whether strategic or financial. And just running a very thorough, formal process that’s going to get you the highest valuation possible. And structuring a deal that there’s going to be a little bit of give and take. Most deals die because of misaligned expectations. And they’re usually misaligned expectations on that final exit. So when you put those three things together and someone says, I want to sell my business, or we're thinking about exiting in the next couple years, I just start first with the identity part.Share on X Yeah. And people underestimate the significance of that. It can sound touchy-feely and like an afterthought in most cases. And people think that just by earning a sack of money, their life will be solved and all problems will disappear. But actually, problems exist at all levels. Elon Musk probably has more problems than most listeners here.  Sure.  So, it’s not going to solve your problems, and identity is huge. I talk to people—I was also an M&A advisor for over 10 years, sold many businesses, visited former clients, and went out on their boats on the lake. Often, that was the one time they actually used the boat, because they didn’t really need it. They thought they did, but they didn’t. Next time, the engine wouldn’t start, or the boat was full of water. Or they’d go out on the golf course, meet new people, and ask, “Who are they?” It turned out they were just retired rich people—not interesting entrepreneurs or CEO. That’s a huge change. And with the Great Wealth Transfer and the aging Baby Boomer population, there’s a statistic that says 50% of business owners are forced into an exit—meaning there’s some life event that occurs that says you now need to sell your business and get out. And you and I both know that if you’re forced to an exit, you’re going to be taking a major discount. But those forces can happen when you have a heart attack, or someone in your family has a health issue, or your grandkids and everybody moves multiple states and you want to go with them. All these things happen. So our recommendation is just start having the conversation now.  Yeah. And so I think it’s a little bit like saving for retirement. A lot of people keep putting it off, and eventually there’s no time left to do it, and then they’re in trouble. So how do you even raise awareness with people about this? How do you work with them to prepare this? Can you actually raise awareness and make them feel this is a real issue? How do you raise awareness?  Well, I have my blog, and that’s probably where I do most of my conversations. I wrote about the 3 Exits Framework. Any chance I get to speak, I always use it to raise awareness around the subject. In my consulting practice, I work with a handful of consulting firms and investment banks. Anytime I get pulled into a conversation about exit planning, I usually just pause for a second and just talk about their life goals.Share on X Like, what do you really want this exit to do for you? Because there are so many things you can do and a million ways to do it. So, what do you really want this exit to mean for you? Also, remember, Uncle Sam is going to take his cut—so not everyone gets the biggest check possible. Usually, what we hear is people say, “I’m just so exhausted. I don’t have anything left in me for this thing, and anything I can get for it, I’d be happy to take, as long as it means I don’t have to put out every single fire.” And this usually happens because they didn’t build good systems to remove themselves from the business.  Otherwise, they would’ve been the chairman, and just meeting with their CEO, who’s running the business. That’s usually not the case with these owner-operator businesses. And that doesn’t mean they’re small, by the way. I mean, they could be running a $50 million business and still the choke point where everything has to run through them and they’re just exhausted and burnt out.  Do you think that this AI revolution is going to change things? Is it going to make more people exit-ready because it’s easier to create systems?  Perhaps. Yeah, I think it’s helping the service provider world be more efficient. In my world as a management consultant, I’m 10 times more efficient. I’m sure you’re 10 times more efficient with tools like the one we’re using here, and it just helps us speed things up. I’ve noticed people use it as a thought partner, as a psychiatrist, even as a best friend. I’ve seen people go into deep dialogue like, “Should I sell my business? Give me five factors.” The ones who are aware of this are using it fully. The people who aren’t are a little behind the times. And then from an operational standpoint, yeah, I mean with the bots and all the many things you could put in your business to make you more efficient, but that doesn’t apply to everybody. I would say there’s going to be a 10 to 20% group of people that are already on it, making it work for them, and then there are the laggards who will probably never touch it.  Or is it that—okay, maybe we can be more efficient with AI, but we’ll have the appetite to do more, and there will be more complexity? Some things we’ll simplify, but we’ll create other complexities that replace the previous ones. What do you think about it?  Yes. So businesses typically have cycles. There’s usually a five- to seven-year cycle where a business hits its peak, and then it starts to trend down. And they usually have some level of innovation that has to reoccur for it to hit another up cycle, and then there will be a down cycle and so on and so forth. So it’s always like an up slope after an up slope. When you’ve been in business for 30 or 40 years, you’ve gone through multiple rounds of these cycles—three or four rounds of those cycles. What I’m hearing right now is business owners that are, let’s say, at retirement age, they’re saying, “I don’t know if I have what it takes to go through this AI cycle. Maybe I had what it took to make it through the eighties, nineties, and two thousands, but now we’re in 2026. I’m not sure I’m equipped, or my team who’s also very senior, they don’t feel like they have what it takes to get through that next cycle without hiring young talent. But even then, they don’t really understand what they’re talking about. So there’s this gap. And again, I’m hearing it more and more of people saying, I think now’s the time to get out and let some other company that has gas in the tank, vision, and capacity to come in and do that thing.  Yeah, that’s interesting. Do you think a multiple-AI–enabled company versus a post-AI company is going to be markedly different?  Maybe. Because it all comes down to revenue—it comes down to the revenue story. I’ll give you a perfect example. You have a very profitable company, but they’re using an old CRM. A new company comes in and says, “Hey, you’re already profitable. If we buy you and put in a new CRM, maybe we could be even more profitable.” That’s cool. So we don’t really need you to put in all the tech. We’ll come in and do all that, and then we’ll get the upside on that. Just as long as you’re profitable, as long as you’re profitable, yet you don’t have major client concentration, your business has all the components. A new company with new vision could come in. That would largely be a strategic buyer. The PE buyer, the financial buyer, most likely is going to want to inject capital into your business so you can go and reinvest, and build new tech, or become a platform, whatever you’re going to be. But that would be a different arrangement. So it’s basically a numbers issue. It doesn’t matter your technological evolution. And maybe it’s even worse if you’ve already implemented AI and that only allows you to make five million dollars—there’s less upside for the buyer.  Yeah. The bigger concern is: Is your industry at risk because of AI? Is your particular business at risk? And that’s why I think people need to adopt it—so they can say, “No, we’re not at risk. We’ve adopted it, we’re applying it in whatever fashion we’re doing it, and we’re going to see the results.” We’ve already seen a major downswing in a handful of industries because of AI. I mean, advertising agencies are getting hit really hard. People used to be able to charge for writing press releases, to write blogs, to write social, to do video editing on social media. A lot of that’s gone, so the bottom tier of those agencies is just gone—there’s no need for them anymore.  Do you see people proactively working on making themselves AI-resilient? Everyone knows that they need to do it. Nobody is unaware that today, it’s like websites. There was a time when everyone knew they needed a website. They just didn’t really know how they were going to build it or who was going to build it. They knew it was going to be expensive. It’s kind of where we’re at right now. Everybody knows they need AI. They’re just not exactly sure how they need AI, what it can actually, literally do for them.I think for some people, that big dream that it was going to do everything quickly got taken off the tableShare on X and they say, okay, we could do this much, but even this much is make me very effective.  But it’s just not going to do everything. Like, I still need an accountant. I still need an account manager. I still need someone to do these things, but maybe I don’t need as many people as I once did. So we’re seeing kind of some leveling off there. But I would say largely most people don’t know what AI can do for them, and they’re not really prepared to make those investments. We have a client right now that just made a half million dollar investment into an RFP tool that’s going to help them move faster than their competitors, submit more on RFPs, build everything out in a very complicated way, but they’re making a half million dollar investment. How many companies out there are saying, let’s go, give me the invoice. I’m ready to roll. There’s still a lot of pause there.  What you’re describing feels more like a defensive play—okay, we know AI is coming, so we have to implement some AI tools. But I’m thinking more about the big picture. Is my industry going to be disrupted by AI? And how do I pivot my business before I lose momentum, so I become like Netflix—going from a video rental company to a streaming company? Yep.  Do you see companies rethinking their business model?  I think from what I’ve seen, people are rethinking everything—top to bottom. Because you have to start with labor. That’s usually where people start. “AI can do all these things—do I need less talent on the deck?” And if I do, then what can AI do so I don’t have such heavy overhead? Because overhead is also liability, and it has this employment risk behind it. So if you can go from a thousand staff to 800 or 750, great, let’s do it—why wouldn’t you do it? Most people are saying, “Let’s figure that part out first.” The next thing is the industry disruption, which is what’s our competitors doing to service clients better, manufacture faster, or do things cheaper, so then we’re not left in the dust. So from a production standpoint, we need to figure this out quickly. What I’d say—what I do—is, as an analyst, as a consultant and advisor coming in, that’s why I built my AI. I built my AI to fire myself. I basically said, “What I used to do as a management consultant is now irrelevant, because AI is better than me.” So let me just build the digital me and not worry about that side of my business anymore. So I just don’t worry about that anymore. I don’t even really take on assignments that I used to, because AI can do it better and faster. Now, if you want to hire me and allow me to use my AI tool to handle the technical work, I’m more than happy to do that. But I’ll tell you firsthand—save your money.  So you’re giving it away, or are you selling it?  Yeah, it’s free. It’s free. It’s on ChatGPT. What people can’t do is sit down and have an honest, sincere conversation and ask them the hard questions and challenge them. That’s where AI still lacks the human component. I can take a client and say, “Hey, let’s hang out. Let’s get lunch. Let’s go play golf. Let’s bring in your kids. Let’s talk to your kids. Let’s talk about the family dynamic.” Let’s just have a sincere conversation. Let me hold space and create a forum where I can hear people. And that human component is the only thing that I’m worried, like I’m working on now. I’m out of the technical side, because that part of my job is gone.  So fascinating. So does it mean you have to be more of a social animal?  I think so. If you're not going to be a social animal and you're just going to sit at your desk, you should probably be building software using tools like Replit, n8n, or any of these different software tools and just go all in.Share on X But the way we used to do it—you probably see this on LinkedIn, with all the bots on LinkedIn, it’s not what it used to be. It used to be a place where you had a handful of connections and actually met people. Now it’s just so overrun with the bots. It’s like I don’t even want to accept connections anymore. I’d much rather have a conversation like this. To me, this is the future.  Yeah. But maybe we connected originally through LinkedIn. I don’t know where, how we connected, but we may have have connected through a bot—actually.  It’s possible.  Yeah.  It’s possible. But I’ll tell you, I connect with maybe one or two percent of people now. Previously, because I didn’t get so many inbound inquiries, I would connect with more, because I felt like there was a sincere person on the other end. Now, I really don’t know. I’ve become very skeptical.  Yeah, I’m with you. Let’s switch gears, because our time is running out. And there are a couple of things that in our pre-interview you talked about, and one was minimalism. Yeah.  What is minimalism? How do you do it? And what’s a low-hanging way to start to become a minimalist?  It’s kind of like that first-principles idea of what really matters. It’s essentialism. It’s kind of getting down to the one thing, that was my recent blog, if there was only one thing you could do this year, but it would make all the difference, what would it be? And anything that gets in the way of that one thing is just noise. For me, minimalism is really about reduction, and kind of getting rid, and being aware and cognizant of things that really shouldn't be on your desk, on your to-do list.Share on X And using AI tools and assistance to get rid of everything that’s low-level activity. If you think of a pyramid, at the very top is where the most value that you can add would be. But yet we spend all of our time, if this is a time pyramid, most of our time is spent at the bottom, the wide part that pretty much anyone can do. So we kind of got to invert the pyramid. To get there, you have to reduce and extract. To protect your time, you have to treat it as very precious and focus only on the most important thing at all times. It is a very hard thing for all professionals to do, and it’s always been a hard thing, but I just take it upon myself and say, okay, well, as a minimalist, I mean, if you were to come to my house and see how sparse my furniture is on purpose. How sparse my closet is on purpose. I’m trying to get rid of options. It’s like Steve Jobs and the black turtleneck—if I have one less thing, because I can only make so many choices and decisions in a given day, let me spend my time on the things that are the most important and most impactful.Share on X And that’s not always, because it’s going to put millions of dollars in my bank account. Sometimes it’s just helps me sleep better at night. So I don’t need 50 clients. If I’m going to have 50 headaches. What if I just have five clients? And every one of those was one that I felt very good about, and that would allowed me to charge more. It allowed me to go deeper with them. It’s that concept—then you’re free to see where your scalable opportunities are. It’s the story I told you about a monk who was carving away at this beautiful elephant. Someone walks up and asks, “How did you learn to do this, carving away this elephant in the stone? And he says, Oh, I just chip away everything that’s not the elephant. So for me, I have to have a very clear picture of what the elephant is. I have to see the picture in my brain first—like what my life is, what I’m trying to build, how good of a dad I’m trying to be, how good of a husband I’m trying to be, how good of a business partner or a service provider, an advisor. This is my life’s work as a masterpiece, so let me just get rid of anything that doesn’t belong as part of that picture. So that, to me, is kind of how I would explain it. And my approach toward it is I just get rid of everything. It’s not about accumulation. I don’t really need more information, because AI already has all the information. Anything I’m going to absorb, I have to be very intentional about—why am I reading it? I see all the books on your shelf. I could show you my bookshelf—tons of books, right? I feel like I’ve read them all. Am I going to learn anything new? I could also just go back to the books I’ve already read. I try to highlight them and stuff, but it’s like, what more do I need at this point?  Yeah. So I’m wondering about this idea of a lifestyle business versus a growth business. Because what I see is that people who are building a lifestyle business, it’s easier for them to be a minimalist. Because you just do this most valuable thing. You don’t have to build the business. You don’t have to worry about necessarily all the other people, systems, and processes, or making sure of quality control. You just do your high-value work, and at the end of the day, you can put things down and relax. Whereas a growth business, it’s different.  I would say with the clients that I have—some have thousands of employees, some have hundreds—I still encourage them to reduce and subtract. Even though they’re in high-growth, highly scalable businesses, sometimes the conversation is: How many direct reports do you have, and why do you have that many direct reports? How are you delegating? How are you giving authority? How are you limiting all the inputs? Because a lot of it is noise in your given day. So how do I make your day a little more silent so you can have a little more peace to make better decisions while you run this highly scalable business? Just because you’re scaling doesn’t mean it needs to be pure chaos. That’s what people think—they think, “Oh, if I scale, that means chaos.” I’m anti-chaos.  Okay. But let me ask you this: Two of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time are Elon Musk and Jensen Huang. Elon Musk runs six companies, so he’s got a lot of direct reports and goes deep in each of them. And then Jensen Huang has, I don’t know, 20, 30, or 40 direct reports—he basically has a million direct reports as well. And that actually allows them to be closer to decisions and make sure things don’t go off the rails and their vision gets manifested. So that’s what I’m kind of wondering—whether minimalism means you’re going to, maybe the flip side is you have to accept less growth, or maybe not.  So I’ve met with a lot of entrepreneurs in my life. Not one of them has been Elon Musk. So I would say we’re looking at the median of entrepreneurs, the average entrepreneur. Those are the people I deal with. I’m not dealing with Elon Musk. I would love to, but I don’t have those types. I have the family-owned business who took it over from their dad and they’ve been running it for 50 years, and he has 250 employees, and he’s got pure chaos, and I’m getting the call to go in and try to sort him out. These are not always the highly sophisticated Steve Jobs types of the world. If you really take a look under the hood with Elon—I read his book and listened to the audiobook with my kids, so I’m very familiar with his story, because I’ve heard it twice now—what they don’t really mention is all the heroes underneath Elon. He wouldn’t be who he is without all the many heroes, all the systems, and the Six Sigma and other processes and procedures. That’s not to say he doesn’t take a deep analytical look at everything, but who are those heroes and what are the processes? I’m far more interested in hearing about his VP of Operations than about Elon. Because what has his VP of Operations worked out? What systems have they implemented that allow him to scale and build a Tesla? Or his COO, like, what do they have going on? Elon’s a face. Elon’s a madman. He creates all this momentum and chaos, and then he has teams of people behind him who make sense and order out of that chaos. That’s why you have what you have with Tesla. If he were just Elon Chaos, without that, I don’t believe he would be where he is. But he had people that wanted to get in line. He had a lot of people that wanted to get in line. They believed in his vision. He had huge visions, and it’s very inspiring to get behind those visions. Then they say, “Okay, give me the ball. We’ll create the infrastructure that allows this thing to take off.” So I’m far more interested in the infrastructure that allows for that scale.  I agree. I’m just thinking whether there is this kind of dichotomy. Because I see that many entrepreneurs—when I was an investment banker—until they sold their business, they were not able to have that simple lifestyle they perhaps desired, because they were building, they were reinvesting. And it wasn’t just reinvesting their cash—they were reinvesting their time. So every time they simplified, that was the opportunity cost of not using that time to improve their business. So they plowed it back in, plowed it back in.  Well, it’s kind of like the E-Myth is a bit skewed. It’s almost like the E-Myth is a myth. E-Myth is a dream—a dream that you can work on your business, step out completely, and everything about it runs itself. It doesn’t really work that way. If you’re going to be a successful entrepreneur, you’re going to have late nights, long weekends, and you’re going to feel like every major problem is your own because you’re taking all the legal risks. I’m not telling people not to scale. I’m not telling them not to have chaos. What I’m trying to help them do is get clear on what they consider to be important.  And not get killed in the process, and not get divorced.  Statistically, that can happen—the more successful someone gets.  Yeah, it does. Because our time becomes much more valuable, and at some point, it’s really hard to say no to the million-dollar hour—to spend that hour watching Netflix with your spouse, right? Exactly. Just feels harder to do.  Exactly.  Yeah.  That was good.  Alright, well, I enjoyed this tremendously. So one more question, one more question that I have to ask you. You talk about this $3 million rule—what do you mean by that? That’s a really interesting concept.  Yeah. So most small businesses get stuck around $3 million, statistically. The question is, why? Why do they get stuck there? A large majority gets stuck and it’s because they create a lifestyle for themself around $3 million. They’re taking enough off the table that they would never be able to find a job that would be able to replace that type of income. So they’ve made their small business their sole business, their job, and they say, “This is good enough for me,” because let’s say half a million dollars, more or less, is going into their bank. They’re filling up their 401(k), sending their kids to private school, giving themselves big bonuses. If they’re profitable, they don’t really see the need to take more risks or double down to go past that wall. I’ve seen many businesses kind of stay there. They’ll go fluctuate up and down through the years, but more or less they’ll hit that wall. They could stay there for 20 years and never make any progress. It’s not until they put on new thinking and say, we’re going to grow through acquisitions, we’re going to target a different market, new products, we’re going to innovate in some way. But that takes extra gas in the tank. Sometimes, a lot of entrepreneurs, once they hit that first level of success, say, “This is good enough for me,” because it usually takes them about five to seven years to get to that first major breathing point.  They’re not hungry enough anymore.  Exactly.  Does someone has to be a little crazy to still want to eat more, even though they’re already full?  Yeah. Some people are just wired that way. Some people just more and more, and that’s no slight against them. They’re never satisfied. They always want more—another dollar, another nickel. If they saw a nickel on the floor, they would stop and pick it up. They want every piece of everything. And those people usually are the ones that go and go and go and go. They’re usually the ones that just keep going because it’s an insatiable appetite. I’m not talking about people who get—well, I don’t want to call it lucky—but sometimes things do fall out of the sky. Sometimes a big client falls out of the sky, or an opportunity opens up, and people are smart enough to buy their competitor when the competitor approaches them. Or sometimes they make these little moves, and that gives them a leap. I’m not talking about those people. Those are outliers to me. I’m talking about your average entrepreneur that built a $3 million business on his own with no major clients falling, just hard work, blood, sweat in tears. The average Joe typically gets stuck around that $3 million.  Yeah, that’s interesting. Fascinating. Alright, well, if you don’t want to be stuck around $3 million, or if you want to get to the next level, then reach out to Tim and check out what he’s doing. So where can our listeners find you? Where can our listeners find you if they want to learn with you, learn about you, read your Substack, read your books? Where should they go?  Just go to Google or AI and type in Tim “The Inside Man” Martinez. The Inside Man is an acronym for Tim. You’ll find my LinkedIn—happy to connect with you, just tell me you heard me on Steve’s podcast. You can also check out my blog: it’s Tim “The Inside Man” on Substack, or go to www.theinsideman.biz, my website. I’d love to connect with anyone. Well, do check out Tim’s Substack—it’s awesome. You’re going to get more of what you heard on this podcast. And if you enjoy listening, make sure you follow us. Subscribe on YouTube, LinkedIn, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts, because every week I’m inviting—and luckily more and more people want to come on the show—to have a conversation. So thank you, Tim, for coming, and thank you for listening. Important Links: Tim’s LinkedIn Tim’s website

https://youtu.be/knpxJ7KATsU Joshua McMahon, President of McMahon Custom Homes and a business coach, is driven by a purpose he discovered the hard way: money wasn’t his ‘Why.’ His real ‘Why’ is lifting others—helping people find clarity around their purpose, unlock their potential, and gain traction toward it. We explore Josh’s journey from C-suite construction leadership and integrator roles to building his own company as an “evolved visionary.” Josh shares his Satisfaction Pyramid, explaining how customer experience is created upstream through brand awareness, team support, trade partner support, and training, which together produce the outcome every builder (and business) is chasing: customer satisfaction. Along the way, he breaks down why the construction industry struggles with talent, how coaching becomes a competitive advantage, and why McMahon Custom Homes wins through transparency, collaboration, and guiding clients to align budget with what truly matters. — Take 5 Steps to Satisfy Customers with Josh McMahon Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS group and the host of Management Blueprint. And my guest today is Joshua McMahon, the president of McMahon Custom Homes and a business coach. Although I don’t know how much time you have for that these days, josh. Welcome to the show.  Yeah, thanks for having me, Steve. We go a long way back, so it’s an honor to be a business owner and now be on your show.  Well, yeah, you are a business owner. In your previous, recent life, you was an integrator, a COO of a business. So you’ve been running construction businesses and have been C-level in other construction businesses, where we also collaborated. So we have been tracking each other’s journey, for sure. So, Josh, let’s start with my favorite question. What is your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in your business?  Yeah. I think this is always a great question. And the real truth of this question, Steve, is that I didn’t know what it was for so long. I thought my personal ‘Why’ was just to make more money. And every time I made more money, I was just more miserable. I was never happy. So my ‘Why’ was never money. I really think my ‘Why’ is all about lifting others. And what I mean by that is I have this ability to extract other people's 'Why' and their purpose from them, help them better see that, get clarity around it and then help them get traction to go attack that 'Why'.Share on X And that’s really my ‘Why’, is to help other, lift other people to really achieve their greatness. So I get a lot of energy and joy from boosting others, and watching that untapped potential really take off.  That is fabulous. And I can see that, as a business coach, that’s really very appealing to people when you can do that. How does it manifest in your construction business? You have these Custom Homes construction business, how does that help you there?  And this is where it was really born. So in the C-suite and as I grew in my business, the one part that you have to do is you have to know how to recruit. At least, I had to know how to recruit. And in order to recruit, you have to find the right talent at the right price. And what I was really looking for was that potential. I was looking for the right attitude—the right hunger. I was looking for those right pieces that I could make you a construction individual. I could make you a great construction manager, but I couldn’t fix those other things. And so when I could tap into that and take and help somebody see the vision of what I could do and what our company could help you do in your career, that’s where I was able to really take and 10X my recruiting ability, but also to really tap into that untapped talent that’s out there. Because, Steve, we have a hard time finding talent in the construction industry. Well, the talent’s out there. What’s making it hard is that we don’t recognize that talent, and we’re saying, you’ve got to be this perfect candidate. You’ve got to fit all these marks. You’ve got to check all the boxes.And I’m saying, no. I just need you to check a few boxes. I’m going to help you see how you can really fit into this organization and how we can help you thrive. So that's where my ability to see that in them, help them see that in themselves, and then help them tie it to our vision as a company. That's where it really gets a lot of fun.Share on X Yeah. It’s so interesting that it’s not just about doing the job, but it’s about being emotionally invested in doing the job. And how do you get your people emotionally invested? You have to find the motivation that they have inherently that you can tap into, and then you have to make your business attractive so that it inspires them, so that they feel excited to work with you there. That’s exactly what you’re trying to do. It’s like you’re not trying to fool anybody on anything, but to think people just get excited to come do work, or just do the job, or just collect the paycheck. If that’s your motivation, that’s the type of candidate you’re going to get. Then what type of culture do you have? So if you flip that and you say, “Hey, we want to help you  transform who you are, transform your career for the better, and it’s going to help us get to our vision. Well, Steve, that sounds like a win-win scenario to me. And that’s a really appealing piece. And that’s a thriving culture.  Yeah, culture eats strategy for breakfast, as Peter Drucker said. And especially in the age of AI, it’s probably even more important, isn’t it, that you have a great culture, because AI can copy everything, but it won’t be able to copy your culture.  No, that’s exactly right. I think AI is a great tool. It’s really going to help us magnify and improve our businesses. But if your culture is broken, AI is just going to magnify the brokenness of your culture, and then AI’s going to tell your people how to go find another job. That is probably true. I haven’t thought about that. So you developed this framework, we are a podcast of frameworks. I’m always looking for the framework and and you talked about this Satisfaction Pyramid framework. Yeah. Is this also something that helps create that culture? Tell me a little bit about this pyramid and how did you come up with it and what does it do?  Yeah, it’s an interesting thing, right? So you understand Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. These are the things you need for survival and for happiness. And I’ve said, look, in home building, we’ve always talked about customer experience and customer satisfaction. We want people to be happy. And I’m saying, well, I don’t know what that means. I don’t know—if I hit my schedule, if I hit my budget, if I do everything on time, but they’re still not happy—so what exactly am I missing? What’s the missing link?  And kind of tying the hierarchy of needs to this triangle of customer satisfaction or happiness, I found that there are some really key fundamental pieces that we’ve got to lock into place to really get to the customer satisfaction and customer experience that we’re seeking. For me, I think brand awareness is first. If your brand awareness is out there and it's really strong, people are going to gravitate towards it organically.Share on X That’s going to decrease your SEO spend, you decrease your marketing, decrease your turnover for people, because people want to be part of that. The interesting story on brands — and I don’t know how true it is, I meant to look it up before this — but I saw something on social media about Tommy Hilfiger. And before he launched his clothing brand, he didn’t have anything, but his brand was so far out in front of himself that people thought this was this great designer, and he hadn’t designed anything. And it was all tied to that piece of brand. So if your brand is strong enough, you can do incredible things. So I think brand is super important.  Yeah. Let me just interject here. So probably 20 years ago, I was working with a company, and it was actually in the construction space. It was in the environmental construction space. And this company had an amazing brand. So the founder was a great thought leader, and he was blogging and talking in forums. And I really thought that this company’s got to be a $50 million company. I mean, they’re so powerful. And then they invited me to their board as a board member. I said, “Wow, this is such an honor.” This big company. And it turned out it was just a $5 million company. But the brand was so powerful that they looked much bigger.  Yeah. And that statement, that’s an appealing thing. So if you think of yourself as a high level achiever, an A-player, and you are gravitating to that brand, that’s what it’s going to do. You're going to bring in the right people, and then if you've got the right culture and the right other pieces, you're going to stick around with that company.Share on X So a $5 million company can look like a $50 million company and be really attractive to people that are interested in that type of world. Yeah. Super important. Love that story. The second thing for me is team support. This is where I really saw in my career as I grew. I can tell you, my first construction job at the construction management level, my VP of construction told me, and this is 20 plus years ago, I haven’t forgotten it — he said, “My leadership style is to give you just enough rope to hang yourself.” And to this day, I have no idea what the heck that means. But what he did show me was he wasn’t going to support me. He wasn’t going to encourage me. He wasn’t going to help me grow. He was basically going to let me swim in the deep end. And if I made it, great. And if I didn’t, no problem — there’s another guy behind me. And that’s the mentality of the construction industry. And what I said was, we do a great job of spending money for our sales team. Sales team needs training, we’ll spend the money on training. If the executives need training, we’ll spend the money on training.  But who’s training the middle managers? Who’s training the young men and women coming into the industry? Who’s training the people who don’t have the experience? There’s a big myth in that world. So I think from an internal standpoint — and mind you, coaching is a buzzword right now, just as leadership is — not everybody’s a coach, and not everybody’s a leader, and that’s okay. But if you do have somebody who can coach on your team, and you can coach your team up internally, it’s a very big value add. And so for me, my coaching ability has been a real value add for people that I've recruited, for people I've had on my team, and people I’ve really invested in and helped grow.Share on X And quick story on coaching. I interviewed this young candidate, I mean, really good-looking kid. He had tons of talent, education, everything he needed, but no construction experience. Still, he had all the right soft skills. And it came down between our company and one of the big national builders. And typically, you’d go to the national builders, more money, more upside, more advantages. And he asked me, the last question he asked me, he said, “Why would I come work for you guys versus this other company?” I said, “Because they don’t have me.” I said, I’m not saying this is an arrogant thing to say. I’m saying that I’m going to pour everything from me into you and help take you to where you want to go. You won’t get that anywhere else. Because when we’re done after three years, you can go anywhere you want. And that young man is currently making almost as much as I was making as a C-suite employee, and he’s out in the field running projects. And that’s only like a three or five year period. Like that’s incredible growth, but it’s because of the investment we made in him.  Yeah. There’s this saying — I think it’s Zig Ziglar — that people don’t invest in their people, they don’t coach their people, because they’re afraid that they’re going to go away to the competition. And then Zig Ziglar asks, “Okay, but isn’t there a greater risk that you don’t coach them and and they stay?”  Yes. This is always the thing. And I think a lot of people have a scarcity mindset where they’re so afraid of, if I pour into you, you’re going to go and you’re going to take it somewhere else. What I say is, I’m okay with that. Because when you go somewhere else, you’re going to say, “Josh McMahon built me up. He gave me the foundation for my career. He put me in the position I’m in today. I have what I have because of my start. You should go there and get the training from him. There’s no sham e in that because, again, we go back to point number one: brand. That’s tight. That’s my brand out in front of our company that adds value to our company.  So I started my career at KPMG, and one of the ideas they had was this pyramid structure — up or out. But the idea was to take care of the people that even when they leave, they become ambassadors for you on the client side. And then they’re going to convince the client to hire KPMG to be their auditor. And I really like this.  It’s so special, right? Because what you, I mean, Steve, you think about this, we worked together two or three years ago. We still stayed in touch. Even though there’s no financial gain, we still help each other where we can because I want the best for you, as you want the best for me. And that’s what you’re really looking for.  Yeah, that’s true. And the thing about coaching is you have the double benefit, because the company benefits because it has motivated employees who are performing at the higher level than when they came in, and at a higher level than where you hired them, frankly. Correct.  And then they are building a career. So they are building a career equity for themselves. And actually that’s why you get a better ROI on these people, because they have more career equity, they have more skill level than what you have to pay them because you are growing them.  That’s exactly right. You’re building into those individuals that generational wealth that most of us are seeking, or think is out of reach. It’s there. We just need somebody to believe in us, and that’s really that piece. The third thing for me, especially in construction, it’s the trade partners. And when I think about it, as a general contractor, look—I’m wearing a collared shirt. You’re not going to see me on the job site swinging a hammer. I’m out there with the building plans. I’m verifying things. I’m scheduling. I’m doing more management-level work. That means my trade partners are carrying the lion’s share of the work that actually goes into place. And as a construction company, we don’t make money unless work goes in place.  So I have to do the same thing I'm doing with my internal staff with my trade partners. I have to build them up. I have to elevate them. I have to put them in a position to win.Share on X And this is very basic—schedule accurately. Treat them like people. Treat them with respect. When you go on the job, support them. Listen to their feedback. So if they’re sharing something that’s not working, listen to it with an open mind. And maybe we can do something different, or we can explain why we can’t do something different, so they have a better understanding of the ‘Why’ behind what we’re doing. Yeah.  So the trade partners is my next big pillar.  And it’s harder to manage trade partners. I mean, I’m not in the construction, but it’s going to be harder because they are part-time with you. They have other commitments that they have to observe. They don’t wear your brand. They are being paid by someone else who may have a different corporate culture than your company has. And you have to bring them in part-time and make them as good as your standard.  Yes. The hard thing is you have to share with them your vision first. This is who we are. This is what we stand for. Share with them your core values. And then build them up and show them that they’re truly a partner in this. Most of us don’t treat them like partners. We treat them like subcontractors. We treat them like they’re inferior individuals—less than me. And I think they can work for you part-time and do that. And you’re absolutely right. But if we treat them like people, we build them up, they’ll be there. Because I want to treat them in a way where, hey, you might be a great plumber, but you’re a terrible business person, and I can maybe help you better understand. I say this because I’m working with a young plumber who’s bidding things, and he’s just all over the place. And I’m saying, “Hey, how did you come to this number?” “Well, I just know I need to make X dollars.” And I’m like, “Well, how do you know how much money you need to make? What’s your break-even number? What’s your overhead burden?” Starting to help him better understand how to break down the P&L, how to charge the right margin on the job so that you’re getting work as consistently as you want, but most importantly, so you can grow your business and continue to support my business as it grows too.Share on X Yeah, you want to create stability for them as well. And if you treat subcontractor well, then they’re going to prioritize you, won’t they? So they have other customers that may not treat them as well. You’re going to get the most of the energy from them if you treat them well. And that’s also a huge benefit for your business. There’s nothing lost in that, right? Again, you’ve got brand ambassadors out there talking about, one, this guy builds a great house. He treats everybody great. You made the right choice buying with with McMahon Custom Homes. Because, Steve, if you’ve ever been on a job site, the trades will tell people what they feel, whether it’s good or bad. Yeah. So you are getting it no matter what.  Yeah. You go and you look at the construction site and ask around, and then you will get exactly the kind of general contractor you may be dealing with.  Yes. I mean, absolutely. We love to talk, and so you want people talking about good things and talking up your business and what’s happening in the field, and that’s extremely valuable. Okay, so step number one, brand awareness. We talked about that. Then supporting the team. Yes. So that they feel that they are growing and they are recognized as individuals, that you care about them. Yeah. Then the same goes with the trade partners. You support them even though they’re not your employees.  Yes.  What’s step four?  Yeah. Step four is training. Okay. And training, I think of training in terms of systems that you’re putting in place. Constant, never-ending improvement on those systems. Systems are not static, so training is a nonstop thing that we’ve got to continue investing in and keep helping to grow our team. So constant process improvement. Having KPIs in place, or metrics in place. And the reason for those metrics is simply where do we need to focus our attention? What levers do we need to pull? And then I go back to the training. So then we train up on metrics that maybe aren’t working the way that we want them to, or we’re not getting the result that we want to get out of them. That’s where the training really comes into place. And if we don’t have that training in-house, what stuff outside of the company can we get them into? What type of training do they need to level them up? Because as I think about training, Steve, most of us think you’ve got to fit every box, you’ve got to be the perfect candidate. But you and I both know that I’m good at three out of the five things, and you’re good at two out of the five things. So we make a damn good team together. And that’s okay, and we need to better learn how to cross-train each other, level one another up, and then find those right tools.Share on X  Absolutely. Okay, so what’s the final piece of the flywheel?  Yeah. Well, I feel like if you're doing all these things, brand awareness, team support, trade partner support, and the right training, and you're doing this continuous basis, you're going to have customer satisfaction.Share on X That’s exactly what you want. You’re going to create that customer experience because look, at the end of the day, we’re only here because of the customer. If the customer’s not interested in buying my product, I don’t have a business. And so all of these pieces drive that customer experience. That’s what continues driving who I am. One thing I’m really focused on with customer satisfaction and experience is having good specifications written down. I think yes, we’re a custom home builder, but I have minimum standards that I want to achieve.  So I have the minimum standards. Now, if your budget says, “Hey, we can’t quite reach that level,” well, we can certainly reduce our standard. And when I say reduce our standard, I don’t mean cut a corner. I mean change from, say, a Kohler faucet down to a Delta faucet. It’s still a great faucet. It’s still a great brand. Maybe just not the same brand that I would use at this level of home. Or we can go the complete opposite direction and elevate that standard. But just having that set in place, so that if I say, “Steve, this home’s going to cost you $1.2 million,” and you’re like, “Oh, great. Well, the other builder’s $1.3 million, so you’ve got a better price,” okay, great. But what goes into the price? What are you getting for the price? So if I have those minimum standards baked in, I can tell you, This is what you’re going to get for $1.2 million. Now we can go in and customize it and make it your home. Having clear expectations. How important are clear expectations even in our coaching business, right? And it’s not just clear expectations from me to you, it’s clear expectations from you to me. I need to understand what your expectations are. I need to know that I can achieve your expectations. And I think that if I believe I can’t, I need to be honest and say, look, I’m not the right builder for you. I’m not the right business for you. But here are..  Or maybe your expectations are not realistic. Sometimes, for the budget you have, you need to make some trade-offs. Maybe you can have this man cave, but you’ll have to cut back on the kitchen, and you’ll have to discuss it with your wife. And that’s really key. So the thing that I love about being a custom builder is that my focus is on collaboration.Share on X If you say, “Hey Josh, the budget comes in at $1.2 million, but I really want to be at $1 million,” okay, great Steve. I’m here to collaborate with you and show you ways we can tweak things, pull this down, and future-proof your home. Because I want you to have the home that you want, and in two years you can probably afford that additional $200,000. I don’t want to put you in a place where you can easily plug and play that versus oh, now I got to rip out all these walls. I got to redo this. It’s not $200,000—it could be $300,000. So that’s where we can collaborate and really find the right pieces to put you in the best position.  That’s very interesting. This whole framework, the culture that you build here. Is this something that connects this whole framework, this idea that you have, how you’re projecting the culture out into the customer service? Is this why you started the McMahon Custom Homes?  It truly is. Well, two parts, Steve. One, I’m an entrepreneur at heart and I have fought this my entire life, and I’ve always thought there was something wrong with me. Why can’t I just get on board? Why can’t I just drink the Kool-Aid? Why can’t I just get in line? And two or three years I go into a company, I do great things, I start rebuilding things, and then I start to get that itch. And then I’m like, okay, I need to go somewhere else. And for a long time I thought it was, well, I’m just moving to a new company to make more money, which was true. I was making more money, but then I wasn’t happy. Again, it was never tied to the money, so it was really just that entrepreneur need. But the second piece was, I’ve noticed for ten years—a decade—that our industry is in need of a massive transformation. The antiquated way of doing business and how we do things. I think the builder suites and the stuff that we have at our disposal is really good, but it’s not what everybody’s looking for. But I couldn’t tell you, the owner, Hey, we’ve got to scrap this. We need to do this. Because ultimately, even as the integrator, my job is to bring your vision to life. And if this is part of your vision, then I need to bring this to life. And so I started to realize with my entrepreneur spirit and my own ideas, I needed to start developing my own home building business to start bringing some of that to life, to really satisfy who I am and do the things that I wanted.Share on X Yeah, this is so important because, as entrepreneurs, we have this frustration. We are somewhere and things are not going as well as you would like. And we don’t get to tell the boss how to do things because they have their own ideas and their own set ways, and then they just get irritated by all those ideas and they feel like we are just being disgruntled employees, and this frustration eats away at you. And at some point you say, okay, what the heck? I’m just going to rip the Band‑Aid off and try to figure it out, right? It’s very true. I mean, it’s funny now looking back on it because there were so many times where I just didn’t understand. I was like, “What the heck is the matter with me?” But you’re exactly right — you’re going to bang your head against the wall, and not everybody’s cut out to be an entrepreneur, right? I mean, it sounds really great being self-employed, doing your own thing, making your own hours. It sounds great.  But I tell you something, Josh, not everyone is cut out to be an employee either.  No doubt, Steve. So true.  So it’s the other side of the coin. I think many of us become entrepreneurs because we basically eliminate all the viable alternatives.  Yeah. Burn all the boats, right?  Yeah.  I think there’s so much value in this. The second time we really got introduced and got to work together, you introduced me to the book Second in Command by Cameron Herold. I’m a  Cameron Herold fan in the Second in Command book, and I read that book and I said, “Man, this is me. I can do this.” I love being more in the shadows, helping a visionary grow their business, and doing all that stuff. What happened was, I started to really enjoy being out there, networking, putting myself out, and getting in front of people.  And I was like, well, I’m a visionary. I can see what’s going on in the future. And I think I was more of a visionary than the person who said he was a visionary. So it was really like, then we’re clashing heads on which vision are we chasing. And I’m like, I got to get outta here because I’m steering you away from what you want to do, and that’s not fair to you.  I think there are two major types of visionaries. There are the born visionaries, and then there are the evolved visionaries. So you have the born visionary who is a visionary because they are just not able to execute, but they can come up with all the big ideas. And if they find people who can execute for them, they’re in luck, and they might build a company. And then you have the evolved visionary who starts out doing the work, grinding, figuring things out, teaching themselves discipline and work ethic. And then they start to manage people because they’re doing it better, so they get more responsibility, and then they become an integrator or operator. And at some point, they want to come out of the cocoon and do it themselves. And maybe you’re that version of it, the evolved visionary.  You summed that up perfectly because that’s exactly how this whole thing transpired.  Love it. So tell me about, what makes McMahon Custom Homes unique? Beyond the culture—is it the culture that makes you unique, or is there something else? From the eyes of the customer, what makes you unique?  I don’t know that it’s our culture that makes us unique. I think what really makes us unique is our process—how we do things. We start everything with an initial consultation, just myself meeting with the homebuyers. Typically, it’s a virtual meeting where I want to learn more about your project. I’m interested in what you want to build, what your expectations are, what your non-negotiables are, and I just really explore everything under the sun about your project.  Then I’m going to ask the dreaded question: what’s your ideal budget? Most—or a lot of—people say, “You know what, I don’t want to give the budget. So I’ll say, “Okay, what budget number scares you?” Because as a custom home builder, I’m going to help you design the home that you want for the price that you want. But I’m going to also share with you if it’s not possible. If you have a home design that’s more than what your budget is, I’m going to share that with you in real time, as soon as I can. So I’m very transparent. And I learned this from working in my past, where we wouldn’t share those numbers with clients. We had a client where we were a million dollars over their ideal budget. It was six to eight months of working with them and about $25,000 in actual costs. I don’t need to tell you—the homeowner was not pleased, and the homeowner did not pay that bill.  So that was a major lost opportunity in the build, but also the opportunity cost and how much time we spent on it. I learned from that and said, “Hey, I don’t want to do that. I don't need every buyer to be a yes. If I’m a good fit for you, and I’m a good builder for you, great—let’s go.Share on X I want to build your house. I’m excited about building homes for people. But I don’t need to build everybody’s house, because for some people, it’s just not the right fit. So for me, I’m your guide in this process. And that’s what I really pride myself in. You want to build a home, I’m going to guide you through this process, help you with each step of the way. Help you with the county side, the field side. I’m here to guide you through that whole thing. We really work towards your budget, your ideal budget. We build it out. We’re very transparent. A lot of clarity on what we’re doing, where we can collaborate, where we can maybe say, Hey, instead of $80,000 tile package, we can get a $45,000 tile package. Because we’re really looking for what’s your vision for it.  Yeah.  What do you want to see? How do you want to feel? And we can help you pull that together.  Yeah, I think that’s very interesting, because I can see that there is value being created when you have an empathetic CEO who runs the business. You, in that case, who really gets to feel what the lifestyle of the individual is, what their vision is. You help them paint the picture so that you see it as well, and then you measure each element in proportion to their desires. Because maybe they want something like a really flashy countertop in the kitchen, but they really don’t care about what the deck is going to look like. Maybe it’s a stup*d example. And when someone buys, I don’t know, a standard home, then you are going to pay for stuff that you really don’t care about, and you are not going to get the stuff that uniquely is important to you. And with that approach that you’re doing, you are measuring everything to the right degree, and it’s going to be a perfectly balanced meal for the customer. That’s a great way of looking at it. That’s exactly right. And the deck versus man cave or versus this, that’s exactly the right way to look at it. A deck is a great add-on. It can be done anytime in the build. It can be done anytime. It’s a minimal barrier to entry. Well, something on the inside of the house, the kitchen, the showstopper kitchen, that’s a different story, right? Because now you’re impacting your life. You’re changing things. If we understand that the kitchen is a really prime target, then we want to make sure we commit enough money to that area. We want to make sure we commit enough design hours to that area. And maybe other areas are like, “Hey, minimum standard’s great with us.” Perfect. Done.  Yeah. We only sleep in the bedroom, we don’t do anything else.  Exactly. Great point.  Which is a problem in itself. Anyhow, if someone would like to learn more and maybe learn your ideas—maybe they want to be coached by you, or they want to learn about McMahon Custom Homes, what it takes to align with your vision—and particularly if they’re in Central Virginia where you work, where should they reach out and where can they find you? Yeah, so several different places. McMahonCustomHomesLLC.com is our website, so you can certainly find us there. We have an active Instagram account, McMahon Custom Homes. I have an active Facebook account, again, McMahon Custom Homes. I do have a LinkedIn account, McMahon Custom Homes, LLC. Also for myself, my wife and I host a bi-monthly podcast. We took a year hiatus, and we just started again in 2026. Our podcast is not on McMahon Custom Homes, but it’s really about the construction industry, different things that you experience, and really just giving back and trying to help others learn from maybe stuff that we did or things that we’re experiencing. My wife is a designer. I’m the home builder, so you kind of get a good mixed bag. And that’s Feed Me Your Construction Content, if you’re ever interested in tuning into that.  Yeah. And if you would like to see what a collaboration between Josh and his wife looks like, then check out his website,  McMahon Custom Homes. You can check out his house, or their house, that they built together. And it’s a beautiful house.  Yeah. Thank you.  It’s a good place to start. Josh, loved it. I loved your content. Really interesting how you created the Satisfaction Pyramid in construction. I think that parallel applies to other businesses as well. Obviously, the elements are slightly different, but brand awareness, supporting the team, supporting your partners, training your people, pouring into them, and then creating that customer satisfaction are important in any industry. So thank you. If you enjoyed listening to this show, make sure you follow us on LinkedIn and on YouTube. And stay tuned, because every week I bring an exciting entrepreneur or thought leader on this show. Thank you for coming, Josh, and thanks for listening. Important Links: Josh’s LinkedIn McMahon Custom Homes website McMahon Custom Homes LinkedIn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Bhn1i4PK3o Jason William Johnson, PhD, Founder of SoundStrategies, is driven by two lifelong passions: creating and teaching. Through SoundStrategies, Jason designs AI-powered learning experiences and intelligent coaching systems that blend music, gamification, and experiential learning to drive real skill development and engagement for enterprises and entrepreneur support organizations. We explore Jason’s journey as a musician, educator, and business coach, and how he fused those disciplines into an AI-first company. Jason shares his AI for Deep Experts Framework, showing how subject-matter experts can identify an industry pain point, envision a solution, brainstorm with AI, leverage AI tools to build it, and go after high-value impact—turning deep expertise into scalable products and platforms without needing to be technical. He also explains how AI accelerates research and product design, how “vibe coding” enables rapid MVP development, and why focusing on high-value B2B impact creates faster traction with less complexity. — Turn Your Expertise Into Software with Jason W. Johnson Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS Group, developing the Summit OS Business Operating System. And my guest today is Jason William Johnson, PhD, the Founder of SoundStrategies. His team designs AI-powered learning experiences and deploys intelligent coaching systems for enterprises and entrepreneur support organizations blending music, gamification, and experiential learning to drive real skill development and engagement. Jason, welcome to the show.  Thanks for having me, Steve.  I’m excited to have you and to learn about how you blend music and learning and all that together. But to start with, I’d like to ask you my favorite question. What is your personal ‘Why’ and how are you manifesting it in your business?  I would say my personal ‘Why’ is creating and teaching. Those are my two passions. So when I was younger, I was always a creative. I did music, writing, and a variety of other things. So I was always been passionate about creating, but I’ve also been passionate about teaching. I’ve been informally a teacher for my entire adult life—coaching, training. I’ve also been an actual professor. So through  SoundStrategist, I’m kind of combining those two passions: the passion for teaching and imparting wisdom, along with the passion for creating through music, AI-powered experiences, gamification, and all of those different things. So I'm really in my happy place.Share on X  Yeah, sounds like it. It sounds like you’re very excited talking about this. So this is quite an unusual type of business, and I wonder how do you stumbled upon this kind of combination, this portfolio of activities and put them all into a business. How did that come about? So Liam Neeson says, “I have a unique combination of skills,” like in Taken. I guess that’s kind of how I came up with SoundStrategist. I’ve pretty much been in music forever. I’ve been a musician, songwriter, producer, and rapper since I was a child. My father was a musician, so it was kind of like a genetic skill that I kind of adopted and was cultivated at an early age. So I was always passionate about music. Then got older, grew up, got into business, and really became passionate about training and educating. So I pretty much started off running entrepreneurship centers. My whole career has been in small business and economic development. SoundStrategist was a happy marriage of the two when I realized, oh, I can actually use rap to teach entrepreneurship, to teach leadership skills, and now to teach AI and a variety of other things.Share on X So pretty much it was just that fusion of things. And then when we launched the company, it was around the time ChatGPT came out. So we really wanted to make sure we were building it to be AI-first. At first, we were just using AI in our business operations, but then we started experimenting  with it for client work—like integrating AI-powered coaches in some of the training programs we were running and things like that. And that really proved to be really valuable, because one of the things I learned when I was running programs throughout my career was you always wanted to have the learning side and the coaching side. Because the learning side generalizes the knowledge for everybody and kind of level-sets everybody.Share on X But everybody’s business, or everybody’s situation, is extremely unique, so you need to have that personalized support and assistance. And when we were running programs in the entrepreneurship centers I were running and things like that, we would always have human coaches. AI enabled us to kind of scale coaching for some of the programs we’re building at SoundStrategist through AI. So with me having been a business coach for over 15 years, I knew how to train the AI chatbots. It started off as simple chatbots, and now it’s evolved into full agents that use voice and all those other capabilities. But it really started as, let’s put some chatbots into some of our courses and some of our programs to kind of reinforce the learning, personalize it, and then it just developed from there. Okay, so there’s a lot in there, and I’d like to unpack some of it. When you say use rap to teach, I’m thinking about rap is kind of a form of poetry. So how do you use poetry, or how do you use rap to teach people? Is it more catchy if it is delivered in the form of a rap song? How does it work? So you kind of want to make it catchy. Our philosophy is this: when you listen to it, it should sound like a good song.Share on X Because there’s this real risk of it sounding corny if it’s done wrong, right? So we always focus on creating good music first and foremost when we’re creating a music-based lesson. So it should be a good song. It should be something you hear and think, oh, between the chorus and the music, this actually sounds good. But then, the value of music is that once you learn the song, you learn the concept, right? Because once you memorize the song, you memorize the lyrics, which means you memorize the concept. One of the things we also make sure to do is introduce concepts. The best way I could describe this is this, and this might be funny, but I grew up in the nineties, and a lot of rappers talked about selling dr*gs and things like that. I never sold dr*gs in my life. But just by listening to rap music and hearing them introduce those concepts, if I ever decided to go bad, I would have a working theory, right? So the same thing with entrepreneurship, and the same thing with business principles. You can create songs that introduce the concepts in a way where if a person's never done it, they’re introduced to the vocabulary.Share on X They’re introduced to the lived experiences. They’re introduced to the core principles. And then they can take that, and then they can go apply it and have a working theory on how to execute in their business. So that’s kind of the philosophy that we took, let’s make it memorable music, but also introduce key vocabulary. Let’s introduce lived experiences. Let’s introduce key concepts so that when people are done listening to the song, they memorize it, they embody it, and they connect with it. Now they have a working theory for whatever the song is about.  And are you using AI to actually write the song?  No, we’re not. That’s one of the things we haven’t really integrated on the AI front, because the AI is not good enough to take what’s exactly in my head and turn it into a song. It’s good for somebody who doesn’t have any songwriting capability or musical capability to create something that’s cool. But as a musician, as somebody who writes, you have a vision in your head on how something should sound sonically, and the AI is not good enough to take what’s in my head and put it into a song. Now, what we are using are some of the AI tools like Suno for background music. So at first, we used that to create all our background music for our courses from scratch. We are using some of the AI to help with some of the background music and everything and all of that so that we can have original stuffShare on X as opposed to having to use licensed music from places like Epidemic Sound. So we are using it for like the background music. But for the actual music-based lessons, we’re still doing those old school.  Okay, that’s pretty good. We are going to dive in a little bit deeper here, but before we go there, I’d like to talk about the framework that you’re bringing to the show. I think we called it the AI for Deep Experts Framework. That’s the working title right now, but yeah, we’re still finalizing it. But that’s the working title. Yeah.  But the idea—at least the way I’m understanding it—is that if someone has deep domain expertise, AI can be a real accelerator and amplifier of that expertise. Yep.  So people who are listening to this and they have domain expertise and they want to do AI so that they can deliver it to more people, reach more people, create more value, what is the framework? What is the five-step framework to get them there?  Number one: provided that you have deep expertise, you should be able to identify a core pain point in your respective industry that needs solving.Share on X Maybe it’s something that, throughout your career, you wanted to solve, but you weren’t able to get the resources allocated to get it done in your job. Or maybe it required some technical talent and you weren’t a developer, or whatever, right? But you should be able to identify what’s the pain point, a sticking pain point that needs to be solved—and if it’s solved, it could really create value for customers. That’s just old-school opportunity recognition. Number two: now, the great thing about AI is that you can leverage AI to do a lot of deep research on the problem. So obviously, you’re still going to have conversations to better understand the pain point further. You’re going to look at your own lived experiences and things like that. But now you can also leverage AI tools—using Perplexity or Claude—to do deep research on a market opportunity. So whether or not you have experience in market research, you can use an AI tool to help identify the total addressable market. You can brainstorm with it to uncover additional pain points, and it help you flesh out your value proposition, your concept statement, and all of those things that are critical to communicating the offering. Because before we transact in money, we always transact in language, right? So pretty much, AI can help you articulate the value proposition, understand the pain point, all of those different things. And then also if you have like deep expertise and you haven't really turned it into a framework, the AI can help you framework it and then develop a workflow to deliver value.Share on X So now you have the framework, you have the market understanding, and all of those different things. AI can even help you think through what the product would look like—the user experience, the workflow, things like that. Now you can use the AI-powered tool to help you build that. You can use something like Lovable. You can use something like Bolt. You could use something like Cursor, all different AI-powered tools. For people who are newer to development and have never done development before, I would recommend something like Lovable or maybe Bolt. But once you get more comfortable and want to make sure you’re building production-ready software, then you move to something like Cursor.  Cursor has a large enough context window—the context window is basically the memory of an AI tool. It has a large enough context window to deal with complex codebases. A lot of engineers are using it to build real, production-ready platforms. But for an MVP, Bolt and Lovable are more than good enough. So one of the things I recommend when building with one of these tools is to do what's called a PRD prompt. PRD stands for Product Requirements Document.Share on X For those who aren’t familiar with software development, typically, and this is not even really happening anymore, but traditionally with software development, you would have the product manager create a Product Requirements Document. So this basically outlines the goals of the platform, target audience, core features, database, architecture, technology stack, all of the different things that engineers would need to do in order to build the platform. So you can go to something like Claude, or ChatGPT, and you can say: “Create a PRD prompt for this app idea,” and then give as much detail as possible—the features, how it works, brand colors, all of those different things. Then the AI tool—whether you’re using ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini—will generate your PRD prompt. So it’s going to be like this really, really long prompt. But it’s going to have all of the things that the AI tool, web-building or app-building tool needs to know in order to build the platform. It’s going to have all the specifications. So you copy and paste.  Is this what people call vibe coding?  Yeah, this is vibe coding. But the PRD prompt helps you become more effective at vibe coding because it gives the AI the specifications it needs and the language that it understands to increase the likelihood that you build your platform correctly. Because once you build the PRD prompt, the AI is going to know, okay, this is the database structure. It’s going to know whether this is a React app versus a Next.js app. It’s going to know, okay, we’re building a frontend with Netlify. The stuff that you may not know, the AI will know, and it will build the platform for that. So then you take that prompt, you paste it into Lovable, paste it into Cursor, and then you can kind of get into your vibe coding flow. Don’t let the hype fool you, though, because a lot of people will say, “Oh, I built this app in 15 minutes using Lovable.” No—it still requires time. But if you can build a full-stack application in two weeks when it typically takes several months, that’s still like super fast. So pretty much, on average, you can build something in a couple of weeks—especially once you get familiar with the process, you can build something in a couple of weeks. But if this is your first time ever doing this, pay attention to things like when the app debugs and some of the other issues that come up.  Start paying attention because you’re going to learn certain things by doing. As you go through the process, you’ll begin to understand things like, okay, this is what an edge function is, this is what a backend is. You’ll start learning these different things as you’re going through the process, right? So you get the platform built. Now the next step is you want to distribute the platform. So obviously, if you’ve been in your industry for a while and you have some expertise, you should have some distribution. You should have some folks in your space who are your ICP that you can kind of start having some customer conversations with and start trying to sell the platform. One of the things that I always recommend is going B2B and selling something for significant valueShare on X as opposed to going B2C and selling a bunch of $19.99 subscriptions. And the reason for that is a couple of different things. Number one, when you have to do a lot of volume, your business model becomes more complicated. And then you have to introduce things to manage that volume. Whereas if you’re selling a solution that’s a five-figure to six-figure offering, like 10 clients, 15 clients, the amount of money that you can get to with less complexity in your business model. So I always say go B2B, at least a five-figure annual offering, because I know most of the offerings that we offer are at least high five figures, low six figures—subscriptions, SaaS licensing, or whatever. And that way it just introduces less complexity to your business model, and it allows you to get as much revenue as possible. And then as you go to market, you’re going to learn. So the learning aspect, you’re going to learn maybe customers want this or this feature. We thought the people were going to use the platform this way, but they’re actually using it this way. So you’re always learning, always evolving, and adjusting the offering. Okay, so let’s say I have deep expertise in some area—maybe investment banking or whatever. I want to use AI. I identify an industry pain point that I’ve addressed or maybe I personally experienced. I visualize a solution, then I brainstorm with ChatGPT or Claude or whatever, figure out what to do, and then I leverage AI tools like Cursor, Lovable, or Bolt. I set the price point. I go B2B. Is this something that, as a subject-matter expert, is efficient for me to do myself because I have the expertise and the vision? Or is it better for me to hire someone to do this?  It depends on what your bandwidth is. I mean, pretty much I’m of the firm belief that like these are skills that you probably want to unlock anyway. So it might be worth going through the process of learning the tools, leveraging them, and everything, and all of that. And that’s kind of how you future-proof yourself. Now, obviously, if you have bandwidth limitations, there are firms and organizations that you could hire, et cetera, et cetera, that can do it for you. Obviously, developers and things like that. But the funny thing about a lot of developers is, even though they’re using AI, they’re still charging the prices they charged before AI, right? They’re just getting it done faster, and their margins are a lot lower. So you’re still going to pay, in a lot of instances, developer pricing for a platform. Those are the things that you have to consider as far as your own personal situation. But me personally, I believe these are skills worth unlocking.Share on X Because one of the things is, if you get very senior in your career—let’s say you’ve been there 15, 16 years, 20 years—we all know there’s this point where you either move up to the C-suite or you get caught in upper-middle-management purgatory, where you’re kind of in that VP, senior director space, et cetera, et cetera, and you just kind of hover there. At that point, your career moves tend to be lateral—going from one VP role to another VP role, one senior director role to another senior director role, right? At that point, your income potential starts to get limited. So unlocking one of these skills and becoming more entrepreneurial is something I genuinely believe is worth developing personally. And what would you say is the time requirement for someone to get competent in vibe coding?  Three months minimal. You could be pretty solid in three months.  But three months full-time or three months part-time?  Three months part-time.  So three months. That’s about 143 working hours in a regular month. So that’s basically around 420–430 hours if you were full-time.  If you spend weekends working on your project, learning how to build it, taking notes, and actually going through the process, you can get pretty decent in a couple of months. Now, obviously, there are still levels as you continue and to progress and things like that, but you can get pretty solid in a couple months. Another thing you want to consider is who you’re selling to. You obviously wanna make sure that your platform security is really well, is really done. So even if you build it yourself and then you have an engineer do code review, that’s cheaper than having them build it. I think if you spend three months, you can get really good at building solutions for what you need to get done. And then from there, you just get better and better and better and better.  How do I know that, let’s say I hire someone in Serbia to do a code review for me? Let’s say I learn the vibe coding thing and create the prototype, then I have someone to clean the code. How do I know that they did a good job or not?  You really don’t. You really don’t know until the platform’s in the wild, and it’s like, okay, it’s secure. So there are some things that you can do to check behind people. Let’s say you don’t have the money to do a full security audit or hire someone specifically for a security review, a developer for security review. One of the things that you can do is you can do multi-agent review. Like you take your codebase, have Claude review it, have OpenAI Codex review it, have a Cursor agent review it. You have multiple agents do a review. Then they kind of check each other’s work, if you will.  They kinda identify things that others may not have identified, so you can get the collective wisdom of those three to be able to be like, “Okay, I need to shore this up. I need to fix this. I need to address that.” That gives you more confidence. It still doesn’t replace a person who has deep expertise and making sure they build secure code, but it will catch common issues, like hard-coding API keys, which is a risk, right? It’ll catch those type of things that typically happen. But let’s say you do have a security, a code review, you could just kind of take that same approach also to check their work. Because they shouldn’t find any major vulnerabilities. The AI agents that come in after it shouldn’t really find any major vulnerabilities if it was like done securely securely. Another thing to consider is that a lot of these tools use Supabase for the backend and database. Supabase also has a built-in security advisor, including an AI security advisor, that points out security issues, performance problems, and configuration errors. So like you do have some AI-powered check and balances to check behind people.Share on X  Interesting. So basically, I can audit their applications, and the AI will check the code and tell me what needs to be improved?  Yeah. And they can make the fixes for you.  Yeah. Wow, that’s amazing. It still sounds a little bit overwhelming. It’s basically a language, a new language to learn, isn’t it?  It’s not really — it’s English. That’s the amazing thing about it—it’s English. I mean, you literally talk to AI in natural language, and it builds stuff for you, which is, if somebody is like, had a idea for a minute, because I mean, pretty much running entrepreneurship centers, I’ve known so many people who’ve had ideas that they were never able to launch or build, and then they see somebody build it later. If you learn these skills, you get to the point where anything that's in your head, you can kind of start bringing it to life in reality.Share on X And even if you’ve got to bring somebody in to make sure it’s secure and production-ready, it’s way cheaper than having them build it from scratch. And then another thing that you’ll find also is if you’re able to build something, let’s say you want to turn it into a startup or something, right? It’s a lot easier to bring in a technical co-founder when they don’t got to build the thing from scratch, and then they also see that you were able to build something, they’re able to see your product vision, et cetera, et cetera. It becomes a lot more easier to recruit people who actually have that expertise into the company because you’ve already handled the hard part. You got something and it works. And all they got to do is just come in, make it safe, and make it work better.  Yeah, that is very interesting. It feels analogous to writing a book yourself or having a ghostwriter. Because essentially, you are vibe coding with a ghostwriter, right? You tell the stories, and then the ghostwriter writes the book for you. Probably now you can use  AI to do that. Yep.  But that’s a skill. Not everyone has the skill to write it themselves, and then they need to go to the ghostwriter, but still is their book, right?  Yep.  So it sounds a little bit similar. That’s fascinating. So what’s the path to launching an MVP? So let’s say I’m a subject matter expert, and I want to launch an MVP within a few weeks. Is there a path for me to go there?  Once you get good with the platform, once you get comfortable with the tools, yeah. So for example, we’re launching an AI platform. It’s an AI coaching platform, but it’s also a data analytics platform. Basically, it’s targeted to entrepreneur support organizations and municipalities supporting small businesses. So on the front end, it’s an AI-powered advisor — it’s a hotline that people can call 24/7. But on the back end, the municipalities and entrepreneur support organizations get access to analytics from each of those calls. We built this in two weeks. We’re already talking to customers, we’re already having conversations, and all of those things. We literally brought it to market in two weeks. So the thing is, once you kind of get caught up with the tools—and I’m not a developer, I’m not a developer by trade at all. I had a tech startup before, but I was a non-technical founder. I just know how to put together a product. But once you get good with the tools, that's very conceivable. And then you just go out there, and you go in the market, you start having conversations with your ideal customer profile.Share on X As you’re going through that process, you’re learning, okay, maybe this isn’t my ideal customer profile, this is their pain point. Or maybe instead of this being the feature they want, this is the feature they want. And the crazy thing about it is in the past you had to really get that ICP real tight and the feature set real tight because it cost so much money to go back and have to make tweaks and changes and to get it to market in the first place. Now, you can get a new feature added in the afternoon. It allows you to go to market a little bit faster. You don’t have to have the ideal feature set. You don’t have to have the ICP figured out. You get out there, you learn, and then you’re able to iterate a lot faster because the cost of development is super cheap now, and the speed in which like new features can be added or deprecated is a lot faster. So it allows you to go to market a lot faster than in the past.  Okay, I got it. You can do this, you can code. What do you recommend for someone who’s starting out? You mentioned Lovable, Bolt, and then Cursor. Is Cursor like an advanced product?  Cursor’s a little bit more advanced, but if you want to build production-ready software, it’s something you’re going to eventually have to use. But can you convert from Lovable to Cursor?  Yes, you can. Yep. So what you typically do — and I still do this to this day — is every time I launch a product, I build it in Bolt first. You could use Bolt or Lovable, either one’s fine. I use Bolt because Bolt came out first, and that’s what I started using. Then Lovable came out like a month later. But I use Bolt. I’ll spin up the idea in Bolt. And the reason I like doing it in Bolt or Lovable is that it’s really good at doing two things. It’s really good at quickly launching your initial feature set, and then spinning up your backend. Your database — it’s really good at that. So I start off in Bolt, then I connect it to a repository.  For those who aren’t familiar with GitHub, there’s a button in Bolt or Lovable where you can easily connect it to a GitHub repository. So then once I kind of get the app to a point where the basic skeleton is set, then I go into Cursor. Then I pull the repository into Cursor and do the heavy work. The reason Cursor has a learning curve is because there are still some traditional developer things you need to know to spin up a project. Your initial database — it’s a lot harder to spin up your initial database and backend in Cursor. It’s also harder to identify your initial libraries and all of those things. If you’re a developer, it’s not difficult. But if you’re new, it is. Bolt and Lovable abstract those things out for you. So you start it off in Bolt or Lovable. Basically, since they’re limited in their context windows, when you’re trying to build something complex, eventually they start making a whole bunch of errors. They basically start getting stup*d. That’s when you know it’s time to move to Cursor, because Cursor can handle the heavy lifting. So if you build in Bolt or Lovable until it gets stup*d, then you move to Cursor for the heavy lifting.  And then is there a point where Cursor gets stup*d as well? No. Cursor has a couple of different things that allow it to extend its context window, which is his memory. You can put documentation into Cursor. For example, whatever your PRD prompt was, you can save that as a document in Cursor. You can also set rules. One of my rules in Cursor is: I’m not technical, so explain everything in layman’s terms. And then as you’re starting to build code, you can save that code or you can point it to that repository. So there's some more flexibility with Cursor as far as managing your context window.Share on X But with Bolt and Lovable, the context window is more limited right now. So I start off in those, and then once I kind of get the skeleton up, then I move to Cursor. And at that point, a lot of the complicated things like spinning up your dev environment and all those things are kind of abstracted out. Then you can just jump in and use it the same way you use Bolt and Lovable. Fantastic. Fantastic. So, Jason, super helpful information for domain experts who want to build an application that will help them promote their product or manifest their ideas in product form. I think that’s super powerful. So if someone would like to learn about SoundStrategist and what SoundStrategist can do for them in terms of learning and experiential products, incorporating music, or building curriculum, or they would just like to connect with you to learn more about what you can do for them, where should they go?  Jason William Johnson, PhD, on LinkedIn, or www.getsoundstrategies.com.  Okay. Well, Jason William Johnson, you are really ahead of the curve, especially connecting this whole idea of vibe coding to people who are subject matter experts and not technical. And you know it because you don’t come from a technical background, yet you’ve mastered it. I’m living it. Everything I’m sharing—this is not like a theoretical framework. I’m living all of this. So everything I’m saying. Super authentic. And especially coming from you—you understand what it’s like to not be technical person, learning this, applying this.  So if you’d like to do this, learn more, or maybe have Jason guide you, reach out to him. You can find him on LinkedIn at Jason William Johnson, PhD, or visit www.getsoundstrategies.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you follow us and subscribe on YouTube, follow us on LinkedIn, and on Apple Podcasts. Because every week I bring a super interesting entrepreneur, subject matter expert, or a combination of the two—like Jason—to the show, who will help you accelerate your journey with frameworks and AI frameworks in that gear. So thank you for coming, Jason, and thank you for listening. Important Links: Jason’s LinkedIn Jason’s website

https://youtu.be/FC5v2Z3-Lx8 Rich Kahn, CEO and Co-Founder of Anura, is driven by a mission to help businesses grow by eliminating digital ad fraud that silently siphons marketing budgets. A lifelong entrepreneur and developer, Rich is passionate about ensuring that advertising dollars reach real users—not bots, malware, or human fraud. We explore Rich’s journey from launching an early digital advertising platform to uncovering widespread fraud that threatened his own business—and how building an internal solution eventually led to Anura. Rich breaks down his Ad Optimization Framework—Minimize Fraud, Optimize Conversion, Refresh Content—and explains why fraud must be addressed before any meaningful optimization can occur. He also shares how ad fraud impacts ROI, why lifetime value matters more than cost-per-click, and the conviction required to build and scale a SaaS company in a crowded market. — Improve Traffic Quality by 25% Overnight with Rich Kahn Good day, dear listeners. My name is Steve Preda, the Founder of the Summit OS Group, and the creator of the Summit OS Business Operating System. And today, my guest isa Rich Kahn, the CEO and Co-founder of Anura, an ad fraud solution that monitors traffic to identify real users versus bots, malware, and human fraud. Rich, welcome to the show.  Thanks for having me today.   Well, it’s super interesting business you have and the entrepreneurial journey. So let’s start with my favorite question. What is your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in Anura?  My personal ‘Why’ has always been to help people. Fraud is a huge problem. And it’s no longer a question of if you have fraud, it’s a question of how much fraud you have. And I’m watching people spend millions and millions of dollars on digital marketing and getting it siphoned out by fraudsters with bogus traffic. So the ‘Why’ is that, in all the businesses that I’ve done, I’ve wanted to help people grow their business. I want to help people grow their staff. I wanted to help people grow, just in general.Share on X And in this case, with the Anura, I’m able to help them identify, wasted spend, eliminate that so they can grow their marketing campaigns and grow their company. And if they grow their company, then they have to grow their staff, and it’s a good thing for everybody. Yeah, definitely. And until we talked, I was not aware that fraud is rampant, especially in ad spend. It didn’t occur to me. And I kind of wonder why this is happening. But tell me how you found this problem, and why do you want to solve this, and how did you get to this point to launch a company about it?  Well, in 2003, my wife and I launched a digital marketing firm. Think of Google, but really small. So it’s text-based ads you can target by keyword, bid price, geography, audience, like it had all these targeting criteria. We launched it in 2003. By 2004, we had a nice, stable list of clients, but we started getting some complaints about the traffic quality. Something wasn’t right. And I’m a developer, so I started looking at the code and realizing, looking at all the analytics and the data, and realized that it was bad traffic, it was fraudulent traffic. So I figured, you know what? I don't want to solve fraud. I want to go out, buy a fraud solution, bolt it onto my platform, and just continue doing my business.Share on X Kind of like buying McAfee for your laptop. You just buy and let it scan and do its thing. But in 2004, it didn’t exist any fraud solutions. In fact, the first commercial available fraud solution didn’t start selling until 2008 or ’09. So I was a developer, and I said, we’re going to lose our business if I don’t do something. So I figured it out I’d build it myself, and we did. I wrote the software. It worked great. We had to continue evolving it as fraud evolved. And it got to the point where we started having clients ask—if not beg—to use our software outside of our network. And that’s when we kind of got the idea that this might be a good tool to sell by itself, as opposed to baked into our platform. And that’s where we launched it, in 2017. We ended up launching a Anura as a standalone solution.  Wow. I mean, it’s definitely, if this is a big problem, it’s going to affect everyone who advertises. So it could be hundreds of millions of people. How can someone even make money with fraudulent traffic? How does it help them to make money?   Well, what happens is internet advertising fraud is not illegal. There’s no law that says you can’t do it. So if you do find somebody that’s doing it, it’s really difficult to prosecute them in the U.S. But a lot of it happens overseas, so it’s even worse. There’s a lot of countries that allow all kinds of stuff. So basically, what we focus on is that their job is to try to make money. And I read an article one time from another company that was doing stats on fraud detection. They said the average fraudster—and this is why they do it—makes $5 million a year. But how?  There’s a lot of different ways. It depends if they’re buying from Google, Facebook, DSPs, or affiliate marketing. But I’ll give you a simple example. One example, which is affiliate marketing. A lot of companies use affiliate marketing. I think it’s a $20 or $30 billion industry at this point. It’s a big market. So what happens is, right now, you or I can go to Amazon and sign up for their affiliate program, and every time we send them a new client, they’ll give us 5% of what they spend. So I’m getting paid on the spend, right? So what if I sent fake users there? I’m not going to get paid for anything because they’re not spending money. But what if I’m the fraudster? I use stolen credit cards to make those purchases. So if the purchase gets made and shipped, I get 5%. Affiliates usually get paid net 7. So I get paid net 7, somewhere across that month, maybe the next month, the person whose credit card was stolen says, “Hey, wait a second, I recognize charges that don’t belong to me.” And then the investigation starts and takes months before it comes back to Amazon and says, “Oh, you shipped out a product to a fraudulent credit card. You’re not getting paid for this. We’re taking the money back.” But by then, they’ve already shipped the product, so they’re out the hard cost of the product. They’ve already paid out the affiliate. The affiliate has already been paid. The affiliate can continue to do that for weeks, knowing that it’s going to take months for them to get caught. Once they get caught, they just set up another account. And what they’re doing is making those affiliate margins. So if they spend a hundred dollars, they make five. If they create dozens and dozens of accounts, you can quickly see how they can make a lot of money in a short period of time. That’s just one example.  Yeah. That’s very interesting. Very interesting. So, okay, that’s really cool. So you basically help people not have the fake traffic. So whatever traffic they have, it’s real. So they pay real prices for real value. That’s got to be a significant improvement in advertising efficiency. What is the kind of improvement that you see on average happening for people?  On average, it’s 25% improvement. So 25% of the marketing dollars that they’re spending is fraudulent. Now, if they buy from like Google and Facebook, it’s probably around 10%—they’re on the lower side. If you buy from the programmatic space, like The Trade Desk and things like that, it’s upwards of 50%, and then everything else falls in between. All the digital types of marketing. If you’re doing influencer advertising, if you’re doing affiliate advertising, each one has different levels of fraud that we’ve found. But on the high side is programmatic, and on the low side is probably search and social.   Okay, so this seems like a big part of optimizing an ad, and making it perform better. So what I’d like you to share with us—and we’d talked about this in the pre-call is that you have a framework for generally optimizing digital ads. So what would that look like? And one element is fraud, but what are the other elements, and how do you go about optimizing your advertisement?  Sure. Like the heaviest hitter, in my opinion, is fraud. So you start with fraud, you look at where fraud is, and you minimize that, right? The next thing you want to focus on is conversion value. Every campaign has some level of conversion. It could be as simple as a click. It could be as simple as watching a video. It could be purchasing a product. It could be generating a lead for, let’s say, Hey, save money on my car insurance, and you fill out a lead. So what you want to do is look at where that conversion takes place. First off, you want to analyze the conversions because not all conversions are real conversions. You’ll get conversions like credit cards, fake credit cards being used, or fake information being used in fill in forms, and that’s where the fraud comes in. Once you eliminate that, now you can rely on the data that you see in your conversion value, and you start optimizing your campaigns around that conversion value. So as long as hey, this source is generating me a 20% conversion, this source is generating me 10%. Guess what? I want to stop spending on the 10%, spend more than the 20% just optimizing for the conversion value. And that's what's going to get your campaign to perform at its highest level.Share on X  So what are ways to optimize conversion beyond the fraud piece? Yeah, so once fraud’s out of the game, we’ve eliminated fraud, it’s really focusing on the data. What source you buy the traffic from, what sources they get the traffic from. Because sometimes you might buy a source of traffic like Google, and it may not come from Google. It may come from one of its syndicated partners like a CNN or a weather.com or Bloomberg, somewhere where you’re not familiar with, but if they’re getting traffic, that’s their partner network. They’re getting traffic from there. So you want to identify the sources. It could be by keyword, right? You can take a look and break it down by keyword. If you're looking at Google and maybe you have certain keywords that have a much higher performance because it's a better audience to targetShare on X and then you can have some that are much lower, then you got to decide what the cutoff is. So if you say, “Hey, anything less than a 10% conversion, I’m going to get rid of. And anything greater than 10%, I’m going to buy more of.” So that’s kind of where you focus on your conversion value. And ultimately, it’s to try to maximize your conversion while still spending your budget. Because let’s say if you’ve got a source that’s converting at 80%. It’s going to be far and few between, and they’re going to be expensive, and the volume of traffic is going to be light, and it’s not going to be enough. Because if you’ve got one conversion a month, that’s probably not enough to survive your company on. So you got to get somewhere in between, where you get the volume and you get the conversion value that you're looking for to give you the best possible campaign.Share on X So basically, you calculate your ROI on each type of conversion, and you get to a point where you still get a positive ROI. Is there like a rule of thumb? What is the kind of ROI do you need in order for it to generally be worth taking the risk of doing the advertising and putting in the effort?  Yeah. It’s very different from client to client. It’s got to be specific to a client. And I’ll give you an example. I used to work with a company called TigerDirect. They were a huge reseller of electronics, computers, computer components, and stuff like that. And they would spend $110 to generate a $20 sale. So everybody knows that’s losing money, right? You’re losing $80 on every sale you generate, or whatever the number is. If they’re spending $100 to generate a sale just to get a $20 sale, why would they do that?  Well, they know once they get a client in the door, they market. They used to send weekly magazines of all the new stuff that’s out in the market, the new pricing index, constant email bombardments. They would call you and say, “Hey, I saw you bought recordable CDs. We have a special on recordable CDs if you’re looking for them.” They would market like crazy to their client base, and they would average over $300 per client.  So that’s the lifetime value.   Right. Their lifetime value was much greater than their cost for acquisition. And they were comfortable and in a position to spend that money to acquire the client knowing that they would make the money over time. Most companies don’t operate that way. Most companies operate like GEICO—they pay $15 or $20 to get somebody to fill out a form saying they want to save money on car insurance. And they may close 15% of those leads into actual deals. And when they do the math, they’re making money every single lead that they get in, the ones that convert. And on the ones they lose, they’re making enough money on the wins that the losses are outweighed, and they’re still making money. So again, every company, every product—it’s different. I’ve seen the same industries, like car insurance. Let’s stick with car insurance. I’ve seen four or five companies where I’m looking at their conversion rates. Conversion rates are different. Their ROIs are different, their spend is different—everything’s different. It's just targeting different audiences.Share on X  So if I had unlimited funding, let’s say, and I want to ramp up as fast as possible, but I wanted to make it in a smart way. Is there like a rule of thumb that your lifetime value—the profit you make on a customer—has to be 3x the amount you spend on advertising? And the lifetime is measured by the profit, not the top line, but the bottom line.  Yeah, I haven’t seen a specific rule of thumb to give clients. Obviously, your lifetime value of a client needs to be more than the cost to acquire that client.  And if you want to be profitable, not every company starts out profitable. Look at Uber—they were a billion-dollar company before they went profitable. They were able to raise enough money to keep everything going, because all they cared about was client acquisition.  Yeah.  Let me get as many clients and as many drivers and riders in the door, as many drivers and riders in the door as they can possibly get so they can own the market. They had a great idea. Lyft was right behind them. They didn’t care. They were able to raise enough capital to just keep spending like crazy, knowing that in the long game, once they owned the market in all the different markets they were targeting, they were going to be profitable.Share on X So they were spending like crazy.  Doesn’t that mean that there are some actors in the advertising market that inflate prices because maybe they’re venture-funded, and one out of a hundred company is going to make it unicorn? And the other 99 are going to be spending money on advertising, driving up prices. So if someone comes in and they’re bootstrapping, they’re going to be hard-pressed to actually make a return on their Facebook ads, because there’s so much demand chasing results without appropriate expectation.  Well, if there’s enough demand, then the bootstrapper can make it work. I’ve been a bootstrapper my whole life. So if you’re in a market where there’s enough demand, it’ll work. But if you’re in a situation where, let’s say today, you decide to come up with a rideshare app, you’re going to be hard-pressed to win riders and drivers as a new bootstrapped company. Personally, I don’t think Uber would be where it is today if it were bootstrapped. A business model like that required to grow fast, and they needed the capital to do it. So there are certain industries that bootstrappers just aren’t going to be able to touch, because you’ve got a company like Uber that was losing money while acquiring all these new clients, knowing that down the road they would own the network and they would be able to be profitable. That’s a big gamble. Yeah. But it’s also all the other companies that get funding but never actually make it. And the venture capitalists are spreading their risk because they invest in ten companies, and if one blows up, that’s enough.  Yeah.   So that means that there’s a lot of fake demand, basically.  Well, I’m talking about the demand from the client, not demand from the company. The company has the product, and they’re trying to generate demand for their product. So when I say demand, I mean demand from the customer.  No, I mean, demand for advertising.  Oh, okay. Yeah, I see what you’re saying.  So clicks.   Yeah. So there’s a limited number of people that are looking for that term. You’ve got a lot of people spending money. It’s going to make it difficult to get it unless you’re spending a lot per click.   Yeah.  So that means that maybe pay-per-click advertising is not for the faint of heart.  I wouldn’t say that.  Yeah.   It’s not for everybody when you’re talking about every industry, right? Certain industries—I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you’re a roofer. Pay-per-click is going to work great for you because there are only so many roofers in a given area, and there’s a high demand for roofing. You can get away with spending a couple dollars a click, where it’s not going to break the bank, and you get that phone ringing. My son, for example, owns a power washing and holiday lighting company. And he does Facebook and Google ads. He’s a small company, bootstrapped, and generates plenty of demand because of that situation. But again, if he decided he wanted to compete with Uber, he’d be lost. So it really depends on the industry, Insurance. Let’s say you want to start your own Rich Kahn insurance company. Well, I’m going to be competing against Allstate, Progressive, GEICO—all these companies that are spending heavily in that sector. The only way you’re going to get action is to spend more per click than they do. And if I’m spending more per click, and I don’t have the scale like they do, I’m going to lose money. Yeah. Super interesting. So let’s circle back to your framework. So we talked about fraud minimization as a way to optimize ads. We talked about conversion. What’s the third leg of this stool?  For me, it’s content.   So let’s say you’ve got fraud out of the game. You optimize by campaign and your ads are showing up number one every single time, but the copy doesn’t draw. Or you don’t refresh the copy often enough, then it gets stale, and people see it and think, “Eh, let me try somebody new.” So they’re always looking for newer content, a way to hook the client. You really have to optimize campaign copy. So again, working with Google—that’s ones out there—you have the ability to put up multiple ads, multiple creatives. Their system will automatically take titles and rotate them for you so they stay unique. And then they’ll push more traffic to the ones that are getting a better conversion rate or a better click-through rate. So it’s about constantly staying on top of your copy. Just like when you watch TV. You’ll see the same companies advertising over and over again, but it’s always a different commercial because they’re trying to hook you. If they played the same commercial for the last 20 years, you’d just tune it out.  Tune it out. Yeah.   Yeah. But when you see something new, it’s like, “Oh, let me watch that one.” It’s kind of cool. Because the commercials have to have good copy. If it’s boring, stale copy, nobody’s going to pay attention.  And if it’s entertaining, then it’s even better, right?   Exactly. If it becomes memorable and you think, “Oh my God, you’ve got to see this commercial I just saw, it was amazing,” that’s the kind of commercial you try to build—but it’s very difficult to build.  Yeah, that’s very interesting. The creative element is very important. To catch attention and keep it, it has to be creative, curiosity-inducing, and potentially entertaining. That’s wonderful.  Yeah.  So when did you decide to go all in on Anura?  Yeah. We launched it April 1st, 2017. We spent that first year trying to figure out who we were as a business. Because I’d never sold SaaS before, so I was trying to figure out—do I have a pitch deck? How do I talk to people? What works best? How do I get the person to say they’re interested and want to get on a call? There was so many things that we were struggling with that first year. I don’t know if we signed up more than one or two clients that first year. By the second year, we signed up a bunch of clients because we started to figure out what was working, who we’re talking to, the right trade shows to go to, the right Google ad campaigns to run.  And as we started getting that, we started getting our traction and we started growing the client base. So I guess we would say we launched in 2017, but really went all in in 2018. That’s when we saw our first couple of clients jump on the software, fall in love with it, give us case studies and reviews, and say, “I can’t believe how you changed my business. This is amazing.” Once we got into the hands of a client, and we had one or two clients that really embraced it, that’s when we felt, “Okay, we’re onto something special. We’re all in.” That was about 2018.  And then you started winding down your consulting business and went all in on the SaaS business?  Yeah. We left the Google competitor, the really small Google competitor marketing agency. We left it up for a couple years because we had some clients that were still buying and using it. As the client attrition naturally occurred, we got to a point where we said, “Okay, it’s time to shut it down.” That was also around 2018–2019. Basically, in 2018 we pulled all the resources from it and just kept it running for the clients that were still there. They’d been with us for years, so we kept it stable. We weren’t going to trade shows, we weren’t advertising it. Support was handled by two of us, the client support, actually the whole company was run by two of us, three of us, and we just let it run for a couple of years until the last client jumped off, and then we shut it down. Yeah. Actually, that’s a great approach—to evolve from a business that maybe has a ceiling, find another opportunity, start putting more time into it as it takes off, reallocate resources, use the legacy business as a cash cow, your legacy business and then once the new business takes off, then basically cut bait. That’s very interesting. And I’ve seen this happen. I’ve done it myself as well. So what’s the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make in your business?   I’m going over the last 22 years. The hardest decision I ever had to make was firing a best friend. And unfortunately, it actually happened twice. My two best friends—one was a partner and one was an employee. We were working together, and it just got to the point where we had to go our separate ways from a business standpoint, and that hurt the relationship. We stopped talking. It was a bad breakup. And I just ran into them about a year ago, and we picked up where we left off—bygones be bygones. It was tough back then because you have a good friend, and it’s like, “Oh, I want to bring my friends into the business. So I always tell new business owners when they're starting: if you're going to start the business with friends as a partner, that's different.Share on X But don’t hire your friends as employees. Because if you hire them as employees and you have to make a business decision that doesn’t go well for them, they’re going to pull the “friend card.” And you’re going to be stuck between either getting rid of a bad employee, and I say bad, but like an employee that you need to get rid of or lose a friend. That’s tough. Friends are hard to come by, especially good friends. Especially when you get older and your kids are out of school, you’re not hanging out on the sidelines at sports or having coffee with people. As you get older, there are fewer groups you hang out in, so it’s harder to find friends. So it’s not worth losing a friend over business.  Yeah, I agree. I agree. I had this experience as well, and it’s it was super painful for both of us. It did impact the relationship, even though we both put up a brave face over it, but it kind of breaks the trust.  Yeah. It’s not fun.   Yeah. So, final question I want to ask you is: what is the most important question an entrepreneur should ask themselves, in your opinion?  Am I willing to not give up? Like I said, when I started this company, it wasn’t a new concept. If it’s a new concept, it’s a lot easier to say, “Man, I’m going to crush this.” Because when we started this, there were probably about a half a dozen different fraud solutions in the marketplace back in 2017. There was a handful of them that were out. They were already getting a lot of traction. I think all of them were fully funded and doing really well. It’s not the greatest time in the world to enter the fraud detection market when you have traction like that—kind of like entering the market trying to compete with Uber. But I looked at it and thought, based on everything I was doing, I think we have a better product. And once we started getting that feedback from clients who use the other products and realized we had a better product, it made me more convinced that this is the direction we want to go to.Share on X We want to turn this into its own company. We want to grow it. And for me, that question is: is this something I can do and not give up on? But if it’s something like you’re like, “Ah, if it doesn’t do this, I don’t know,” then don’t start. Because one of the things you’ll find with most entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs, they don’t give up, persistence. They’re can be smart about it, but persistent.   It’s also a balance. It’s a belief. Maybe this is what you’re talking about that, do you have this conviction that this is going to work out in the end?  Yeah.  So how do you know? How do you know that you are willing to not give up? What makes you be able to make this decision? Is this a decision or is this like an ongoing question that you keep asking yourself?  For me, it’s: I’ve got to run it through my head and feel that it’s an unfillable business. And then I got to feel it in my heart. If I don’t feel it in my head and my heart, I’m not going to do it. I’ve had cut dozens and dozens of great ideas, some that I think would be phenomenal even in today’s standard, but I didn’t have the resources I wanted behind them. I didn’t really have the heart in those businesses, so I didn’t start them. I wasn’t all in. Like I said before, with this business, when we started it, I was all in with my toe. And then once I started getting feedback from clients, I jumped in. Because then I knew, it wasn’t me saying I’ve got the best solution, it was my client’s telling me I got a better solution. And then as I get client after client, so now you know, you look at seven, eight years later, I’ve got new people in the office. I started working for this new fraud company. I see they’re kind of small compared to some of the other big companies out in the marketplace. And then they’re on the phone with clients who are like ranting and raving about our software. They come back—now they’re all in. And that's really what I want is I want every team member to feel that, to know that they're with the right company. It’s not just for me—it’s for the team too. Share on X Yeah, the team. I agree. That’s super important. Well, I love that. And this whole idea of the client feedback, reinforcing the value, and making people confident to sell it is huge. Yeah.  All right. So if people would like to reach out to learn about your solution—maybe they’re advertising, they’re spending a lot of money, and they want to save the 25% without losing any conversions, or they just want to reach out and learn more about and get to know you—where should they go and how can they reach you?   I would start with anura.io or www.anura.com . We own both. And on there, we have huge amount of resources. We publish several blogs every week. We have dozens of eBooks online. We have the world’s only comprehensive guide on ad fraud, it’s about an 80 page document. So plenty of ways to learn. And then once they want to talk to somebody, once they’re ready, and like they’ve done their research and they’re ready to talk to us, they can fill out a form and we’ll reach out, or they can just pick up the phone and call us. If they want to follow me on LinkedIn, that’s my social media of choice. I post videos like this on there, some wacky videos sometimes with me and my grandkids. The best way to find me is just Rich Kahn on LinkedIn. I’m easy to find.   Awesome. Well, Rich, thank you for coming and sharing your framework—the Ad Optimization Framework. So it’s content, fraud minimization, conversion, and this idea of conviction: when you are willing to not give up concept. It’s fabulous. For those of you listening, if you found this valuable, follow us on YouTube, check out our LinkedIn page, and stay tuned because every week we are going to get a wonderful contributor like Rich Kahn, the CEO of Anura. So Rich, thanks for coming and thanks for listening.  Appreciate it. Important Links: Rich’s LinkedIn Rich’s website

https://youtu.be/z5cb9rT6N4Q Tish Squillaro, CEO and Founder of CANDOR Management Consulting and author of HeadTrash: Cleaning Out the Junk That Stands Between You and Success, is driven by a belief that solutions exist simply because we can create them. A lifelong problem solver and serial entrepreneur, Tish helps leaders identify the internal obstacles that prevent clear thinking, strong decisions, and consistent execution. We explore Tish’s journey from founding the first-ever dog daycare business in 1997 to building a career in human capital consulting and leadership development. Along the way, she uncovered a recurring leadership challenge: people often know exactly what to do—but don’t do it. That insight led to HeadTrash and the Mental Headspace Framework, a practical system for understanding and managing the emotions that silently sabotage performance. Tish explains how everyday emotions are not inherently negative, but become destructive when they cross the line and begin to manage us. She walks through the **seven HeadTrash emotions—control, insecurity, arrogance, paranoia, anger, fear, and guilt—**and shows how leaders can recognize when emotions cloud judgment, stall decisions, and create chaos inside organizations. The episode also explores how HeadTrash shows up in entrepreneurs as shiny-object syndrome and non-listening, and how leaders can manage emotional reactions in themselves and others without suppressing or “fixing” them. — Learn to Manage Your Headtrash with Tish Squillaro Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS Group. And here I am today with Tish Squillaro, the CEO and Founder of CANDOR Management Consulting, and the author of HeadTrash: Cleaning Out the Junk That Stands Between You and Success. Tish, welcome to the show.  Thank you, Steve. I’m excited to be here. Well, I’m glad you are here, and I’m also curious about all the head trash I have coming into this conversation, and hopefully you can help me clear it out a little bit.  I will do my best. Okay. That’s great. So before we get into that, let’s start with my question that I’m always asking every guest: What is your personal ‘Why’, and what are you doing to manifest it in your business and in your practice? My personal “why” is because I can—I love problem solving. I've always found myself interested in not having “no” be the final answer, or someone can't, or it's too difficult.Share on X So for me, I do it because I know we can, and that’s what drives me every day to start things new. I’ve had multiple businesses besides CANDOR. I’ve always tried to bring on solutions to problems. So that’s my ‘Why’.  That’s good. I mean, as Henry Ford famously said, “If you believe you can, or if you believe you can’t, you’re right either way,” and you’re in the latter category, which is great. So tell me about your journey. How did you get to the point where you were writing books about Head Trash and being a management consultant and a coach? What led you to this point in your life?  Sure. I wish I could say it was a clear journey. I’m not as organized, and had a plan, but everything I did was based on what I enjoyed and had passion for—and I think that itself was the journey.Share on X Many years ago, when I graduated from college, my first business out of school was a dog daycare and boarding called Doggy World Daycare, and there wasn’t, and that’s why I created it. There was no place for me to leave my beagle, and I wasn’t about to leave the beagle all day without some less guilt. And I found a couple of people who got involved, had a business partner, and we started in 1997—the first dog daycare on boarding ever. Today, daycares are all over. As a matter of fact, I just had my dogs groomed in a cute doggy spa. I mean, so quite honestly, from 1997 to now, we have greatly evolved, but before ’97, we had nothing. Yes. So I guess I’m one of those change agents from early on. I see something that doesn’t exist, and I don’t even stop to think how hard should I, I just do it. Now, I’m not saying that’s for everybody, but that’s my mantra. So from that business, I started to enjoy working for myself. I enjoyed the entrepreneurial energy, the fear, the unknown — I loved it all, and I just stayed with that.Share on X So when we sold that business, because it had kind of outgrown us, my business partner and I — our lives changed. And that business no longer fit for both of us. And neither one of us was going to run it without the other. So I went into consulting. I started out in HR. Human capital was my dog transition to humans. I went into HR, which, you know, I liked very much. But I found a very solid niche in HR, which was people dynamics — people growth, insightfulness on people collaborating, engaging, communicating.Share on X So in 2000, I launched CANDOR, which is the business that’s focused on individuals, companies, and their people. So I don’t pick up poopy every day, but I certainly get involved with making messes go away, for sure.  That’s interesting. And as you described that you came up with this doggy daycare idea because you had a need and you saw there was no solution for it.This is one of the best way to actually create a business because you really know the customer because the customer is you. So you know the problems and you know what would work as a solution. So that is fascinating. So you became an HR consultant and HR entrepreneur. Then you wrote a book in 2013, which is HeadTrash, and then you had a follow-up book, also called HeadTrash 2.So tell me about this HeadTrash idea and how you stumbled upon it.  So I had been working for quite some time already with individuals, and the tough growing pains of self-awareness—making sure you do your job well, asking, Is this the right job for me? And I was on a project with another consultant, so I co-authored both these books. And there was this constant hesitation of a leader doing the right thing. They know what to do. We talked about it. We scripted it out. We created the environment so that the message that he was going to deliver would be perfect for the business. And at the last hour, he hesitated and didn’t do it. And I looked over at the coach that I was working with, so we were working together. He came in from one angle. I came in from another to help this one company. I said, “What’s up? Why is this guy struggling?” He said, “It’s his head trash.” I said, “Well, what’s that?” He goes, you know all that junk that sits inside your head that you can’t get out of your own way? I said, “Oh my God, I love that. We should write a book about that. I bet other people have this. And so that was the birth of me becoming an author, I had no idea what that meant. Similar to opening up a dog business—if I thought about it, I probably would’ve talked myself out of it, because writing a book isn’t easy. You have to have a passion for it. There’s a lot of time that goes into it, and then you have to launch it. So we did it. We wrote the first book, which was identifying your head trash, and those are everyday emotions.Share on X So what we started to realize, and I knew with that client in particular, there are these emotions that get you stuck, and he had fear. He was too worried to be wrong, so we did nothing. And that was a problem. So HeadTrash is a compiled list of everyday emotions. There are seven: control, insecurity, arrogance, paranoia, anger, fear, and guilt. And if you hear these words, they’re very common emotions. I can have them all in one day. Even driving here in Miami, I probably have all of them in an hour because all these emotions rise up. But not every emotion impacts you to not do what you need to do. And so what I realized is out of the seven, every time we looked at a person’s challenge, one of these emotions sat right in the center. And so we created this index called the HeadTrash Index to help people identify which one of these emotions am I really working up against? Because once you know it, you can manage it. It’s when you don’t know it, you make up excuses why it’s not you — it’s something else — and that keeps you from doing the right thing. So HeadTrash came to birth out of everyday situations that we saw leaders going through, and when we peeled back the onion to help them problem solve, and you need to know what the root cause is, it was one of these emotions. And so that was really the first book. The second book was a couple years later, because as we worked with launching and doing a lot of PR with the book, I kept getting the same question. Well, what if someone else has it? How do you deal with someone else’s head trash? So that’s what the second book is written about. It’s taking head trash as you now are engaging with living with, or someone you have to kind of work with that has these one of these seven. And the first one is very business focused. So my stories that I talk about are real business situations. The second one is actually life situations, so a lot more people might resonate, because I talk about my background. I’m a Catholic, I’m Italian, and I have guilt as a neighbor. I mean, it sits at every table we go to, right? So there’s things that, as a personal side of us, these emotions impact us differently. So that’s the two books. And they do very well for both an individual or companies that are trying to figure out why is my team not making decisions? Because all head trash identifies is why decisions are not getting made.  Okay. So this is fascinating. So you say there are seven of these emotions, which maybe we want to call them negative emotions, or I don’t want to label them because emotions are there for a reason. I wonder that, do we want to suppress these emotions or do we want to help them run their course? What are we trying to do? Are they negative in themselves or just in that situation? And how do we know that it’s not a valid signal from our nervous system that we should be aware, or be cautious, or do something different? You know, Steve, it’s a great question, and to answer your first thought, we never want you to suppress emotions, that’s not healthy. And these emotions when not becoming trash are actually everyday lovely emotions. We should have a little control in our life. We’re all going to be a little insecure, that makes us want to get better, right? We’re not perfect. We all have fear, otherwise we’re reckless. So every one of the seven are certainly not negative until we make them negative, until we allow them to make decisions for us. Cloud our judgment, misalign our priorities. So then I call it the crossing the line. So when some emotion, ‘fear’, is with us, it keeps us on our toes and it makes sure we’re not reckless. But when it crosses the line to head trash, it stifles you and has you not make moves, you stay still. That’s not going to help you. So how does that then translate into what do you do? Well, I'd like to think about how to manage the emotion. So let's have it and it's going to come. So we can't suppress it.Share on X It’s human. But when you have one, for example, fear, I always say, well, think about it more as being cautious. So how I manage fear is I don’t let myself get caught up in this big thing I’m afraid of doing or saying or committing to. I look at it as small bite-sized movements. Everybody can take baby steps.So when you’re cautious, you take each step, but you’re still moving. So I go from a stop sign, which is what a head trash fear looks like to a caution flashing sign, whereas you are managing it so that it doesn’t manage you. And every one of these seven, I have the same methods that you can think about.How do I manage it before it manages me? But I don’t want anyone to suppress it, and they’re not negative until we make them negative.  Yeah, that’s very interesting. I like this idea of managing, because sometimes you get stuck and if you can take a few small steps, then you get unstuck and then maybe you are more rational about the situation, you’re not overreacting. Maybe an emotion is an overreaction, and then you can get back to the balance and have a more reasonable assessment of it. That’s fascinating. So what are these different emotion? I mean, you mentioned some of them, but how do you manage these emotions? Are they all the same? So let’s say fear or insecurity, are they all managed the same way, or you need to do different things for each?   Well, I would say first you want to identify, right? I do think these emotions are so casual. We have them all. So I can’t imagine there’s one person out there that has never felt one of these emotions. The key is to identify which ones catch us off guard, and really cause us the challenges or become our head trash. Once we identify it, then we have to figure out what to do with it, because it’s not leaving, and it is going to cloud our judgment. And that’s the managing part. So each one has their own route to manage. So on fear, I try to give people baby steps to gain confidence. A clear head and everyone can manage things small. Not everyone can manage things really big, so we could probably get through the process. It’s like me and skiing. I learned very late. I look down at that mountain and I’m frightened every time, but I take little baby steps and I get down each mountain and as I go down and I look back up, I realize, wow, look what I’ve done. But if I looked up and all the way to the bottom and didn’t take baby steps and think, how am I going to get from there to there, I probably would stay frozen at the top. So it’s kind of in that same way. Another example is insecurity. Insecurity is something most of us live through. We always question, can I, should I? And insecurity is that negative voice that tells you’re not good enough. No, you shouldn’t do that. Are you sure you know what you’re doing? And I do think we all have that at some moment. I have it. When I meet a new client, can I help them? I always ask myself that. And then the other side of me says, of course you can, because insecurity isn’t one of mine. But if it were, I would talk myself out of it. So how do you get through that? One is, first of all, look at what you are comfortable doing and think about the things you're good at, not always the things you're not good at.Share on X And I always tell people, take out a piece of paper and write two lists. Here’s what I do well and why. Here’s what I don’t do well, and let’s focus on the well stuff.  Because if you pay attention to the positive things, your voice in your head starts to use positive words. And so that’s one example of managing say insecurity, is to be able to really be able to really have you not beat yourself up, but pick yourself up. Because what insecurity means is you don’t have self-confidence. So I have to work ways for people to get confident. In these little baby steps in the book breaks down each head trash by chapter and each one by how to identify. It gives you little basic tools to use, gives you quizzes to take, so you really get familiar with owning how to manage it. And the last one I’ll give you an example of is anger, which is my number one. And anger doesn’t mean I’m mean and nasty. That’s not what anger means. Anger means we react. Someone who reacts to no. Or something that happened they didn’t like, and their immediate reaction to whatever discomfort they have is not nice, that’s anger. Where you kind of react and you don’t give yourself a chance to think it through and then respond. And so for me, I created something called the invisible zipper, which is zipping my mouth real fast. Because I could feel when anger is coming, especially with my 22 and 21-year-old, I could feel it from my pit stomach, ready to rise and out my mouth will say stuff that I can’t take back. But when I do this, because I have to be action oriented. Usually, people who react, use your action oriented, use their hands, show their emotions. They need to do something because they’re about to implode. So the “do something” for me is I zipper up, and that motion reminds me why I’m doing it. Okay. Don’t say it, Tish. This is not a good time. Those are not the good word. I wouldn’t be using those words. So I then talk myself out of reacting in that moment, because time will be a better friend to someone with anger than wasting time.  Yeah. My mother always used to tell me to count to 10 before you say something out of anger.   Yeah. And look, it’s true. My mother would say, it’s not what you say, but how you say it. So someone angry is allowed to be disappointed, upset, not happy. I’m not recommending you look past all that. What I am recommending is how are you going to say you’re angry, upset, or disappointed? That’s what’s going to impact the situation.  Yeah, that’s great. I remember these stories I read about Lincoln, how he controlled his anger. I forget the names of the participants, but there were some generals who didn’t cross the Potomac and didn’t chase the Southern troops. They could have annihilated them and kind of ended the Civil War two years early. But he didn’t do it. He stopped at the river, and then the troops could recover. Those troops could recover, and it dragged out the war. And he basically, instead of reacting with anger, wrote a letter but didn’t send it, and decided it was a better idea not to alienate that general and to use some other approaches. So that’s fascinating. Now, Tish I’d like to switch gears here and ask you about the opposite. I agree with you that when you have an emotion that holds you back, you want to really get out of this lizard brain so that you can more objectively judge the situation. However, the opposite thing is also happening with entrepreneurs, which is the shiny object syndrome. They get so excited about something they shouldn’t be excited about, or they should take a breath and create some distance between that thing and what they’re doing. What that causes, sometimes for entrepreneurs and business owners, they overwhelm themselves and then they create all sorts of chaos around them with their staff, because it becomes stop-and-go. They can’t sustain the effort, and then they lose momentum that way, or they essentially get themselves into a negative cash flow situation. So what is your thinking on that, and is your approach also able to handle this kind of overreaction rather than holding yourself back?  Yeah. I would align the entrepreneur — which I am one, and I’m a culprit of this at times — with arrogance, because we’re not listening. So the one thing I’d always say to entrepreneurs, are you listening to what your people need, what your business is saying, what the market is saying? Because a lot of times we just run on our own theories, our own thoughts, our own energy. And you kind of need that as an entrepreneur. Being one myself, if I listened to everything everyone said, I may not have done half the things I’ve done. But I still listened, because it made me smarter and probably better prepared. I didn’t always take their advice. So what I always say to entrepreneurs is: make sure you’re listening. Because if your company is struggling and you're not paying attention to that, then you're not listening.Share on X If the market is saying your product is not on demand, you may think it is, but it’s not, then you’re not listening. So I do think arrogance is one of those emotions that are shown in a couple of different ways. You could be arrogant, which is cocky, know-it all. And you know what? The good side of arrogance, the healthy side, is that you do have confidence and you stand up for yourself. You’re able to kind of really know the right thing or the right set of data, right? You do know it, so be confident about it. When you become a non-listener and you’re the only voice that’s heard, that’s that crossing the line we talked about. So with entrepreneurs in particular, they’re so sure this is going to be a home run that they stop listening — and that’s a form of arrogance. Yeah. But also, some people say it’s also insecurity in disguise.  It could be. I mean, a lot of these are what I call combinations. I call them a healthy cocktail, because there are two that often work together. So insecurity and arrogance can work together, because people are hiding behind a mask. There’s also control and arrogance — that can be a combo. These emotions sometimes overlap, which is why you really have to identify the root cause, which is why I created this index called the HeadTrash Index, because some of them look alike. And if you’re going to try to cure or manage arrogance, it’s going to be different from how you’d manage insecurity, right? So I want to make sure you work on the root cause of what’s driving it. There’s always one. Now, one may feed into having a combo, but there’s still the root cause. So the one with the insecurity root cause can be displayed as arrogance as one of the things they do, but it’s not an arrogant thing that they’re struggling. They need to build self-confidence in who they are. Then they’ll be able to shed the arrogant approach.  Yeah, that is so true. But that’s a longer-term process to build up.  Well, knowing what it is the key. I do say people should spend the time to get to know who they are. And I think people feel that’s a waste of time because they think, I know who I am. I see myself in the mirror. I know what I do. But the truth is, do we? And the only way you really get to know yourself is you start to look at how you impact others. How you impact situations you’re in. You’ve got to be humble enough to step out of your body and watch what you do and how you do it, and then look at how that impacts. Because then you’ll start to navigate whether or not you really know yourself.Share on X  That’s great. So what about when you are trying to fix the head trash of other people? Is this a different process?  Well, it’s not necessarily fixing it. Again, we’re not going to have these emotions disappear, but when you identify them, you then can counteract and work with that situation. So if you know someone’s insecure, you don’t go in and poke and criticize everything they do. Perhaps, you go in and start to highlight that things that they do well, and tell them they don’t have to be great at everything, but you got these things you’re really good at. No one’s going to be great at everything, so you start having positive conversations with them. So yes, there’s a way to help manage with another person you’re sensing or identify they have it, but you’re not fixing.   Yeah, you’re right. That was the wrong word I used. Yeah. So basically, there’s a process to manage that. Can you give an example? Let’s say someone is angry and they overreact to something. How do you manage that? How do you calm them down?   Well, if someone has anger and I already know it, I would probably start off with, Don’t get upset. I’m going to tell you something. Let me finish it all the way through, because I have it all spelled out. Or we may not be able to do this, but I have another solution. Let’s talk about options. People who get upset, like me, who get an anger reaction, I don’t like when my options are done. I say when they’re done. I think there’s always a way, which is why my ‘Why’ is, if I see a problem, I try to create the solution unless we do a talking through it, right? So I do think someone with anger, you don’t get them to react, but you get them to converse and have a discussion. That would be the goal with them.  Also, if they’re so upset about something and you’re coaching them, or a friend because you see they’re going to do something that’s going to be a problem, tell them write it down and then go read it one more day later and tell me if you still want to do that. Write down what you want to do. Journal the thing that’s bothering you. Before you send that email, write it out, minimize it, go back to it in a couple hours. I guarantee you over time your emotions settle. You’ll be able to read or think through a better plan. And so that would be the two ways I would look at someone with anger. Yeah. I wish I did that in my early thirties. I sent some emails too early.   Oh, we’ve all done it. We’ve all done it, Steve. When I was young, growing up in the dog business, it’s funny — we got dog-like names. I was called the pit bull. Now, that is not attractive dog language. I’ve had to learn not to be the pit bull.  Sometimes it helps. I was called the pit bull as well. I was working with a capital markets team. I was still in Central Europe, in Hungary, and I was talking to the London traders. I was working on a bond issue, and they just wanted to blow me off because my idea was too small for them to spend time.  And I was just very persistent, and I overheard them saying, “Ah, this guy’s a pit bull.” But eventually they helped me, and the deal closed. So it worked out in the end. That’s awesome. So if someone would like to learn more about their head trash and they want to do this assessment that you mentioned, where should they go and how can they do it? And then also how can they contact you directly?  Well, my website probably is the simplest and no one’s intruded. I don’t come after anyone that goes on my website. So if you want to safely navigate and learn about me, my website has everything from the HeadTrash Index, you’ll find it there to go take. There is my background and podcasts like this that I’ve done. A little history on the different client situations I’ve worked in. Testimonials about leaders that have worked with me. I do think step one, hit my website, it’s https://candor-consulting.com. Easy to find. I would say second is, I’m always open to talk to folks, so if you want to email me, I would love to hear from you, it’s tish@candor-consulting. And if it’s an emergency, look, I’m even open to have my phone out there, so you can find that as 610-613-4864.  I believe the work we do is so critical in the moment. Sometimes you can save someone from making a big mistake just by giving them a rational place to talk through. And so I would say that the HeadTrash Index is simple. It’s about 25 or 26 multiple choice questions. You’ll get it immediately once it’s completed, your results, which tell you which of the top one you have with a little bit of a summary of what you might want to do with that. And again, when you get that, if you wanted to ask me questions, you can certainly email me. No one will solicit anyone, so don’t feel that you’re going to be inundated by thousands of emails or marketing. I really put it out there. There’s no cost, it’s very simple, very revealing, and typically accurate. That’s fantastic. I’m going to do it myself when we hang up. Tish, thank you for coming and sharing your HeadTrash management framework. I think we called it ‘The mental Headspace Framework’. So you first have to identify your head trash, how it impacts you, and then manage the seven emotions. And I’m sure there’s more information on CANDOR Consulting that people can check out. So thanks for coming, and if you enjoyed listening to the show, make sure you subscribe and follow us on YouTube, on LinkedIn. And stay tuned because every week I bring a fascinating thought leader or entrepreneur on the show. So thanks for coming and thank you for listening. Important Links: Tish’s LinkedIn Tish’s website Tish’s email: [email protected]

https://youtu.be/5rB45BEXQLU Edward Francis, executive coach, IBM alumnus, and doctorate holder in Management Consulting, is driven by four lifelong commitments—family, faith, the city of Atlanta, and experiential learning. That fourth commitment fuels his mission: helping leaders bridge the gap between theoretical competency and real-world performance through outcome-based, measurable coaching. We explore Edward’s distinctive EMF Coaching Framework, which integrates authenticity, mindfulness, equanimity, and neuroplasticity to help leaders develop soft skills for next-level leadership. Edward explains why authenticity protects your future self, how mindfulness deepens connection and listening, why fulfillment (equanimity) must replace “I don’t know,” and how managing the brain—rather than letting it run the show—creates space for vision and innovation. Edward also shares how he teaches passion for the future, why it can be acquired through practice, and how he measures intangible soft-skill growth with precision. For leaders seeking transformation, Edward describes what “serious coaching for serious clients” truly looks like. — 4 Ways to Expand Your Vision with Edward Francis Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS Group, and the host of this podcast. And my guest today is Edward Francis, a seasoned coach who provides soft skills for next-level leading with an outcome-based and measured approach. He’s an IBM alumni and holds a doctorate in Management Consulting, so he knows a lot. Edward, welcome to the show.  Thank you, Steve. Glad I could be here.  Yeah. Great to have you. I always ask our guests because I think it’s very important that we have a mission, a purpose in life. Because if we lean into it, then we are going to get a lot better results. So what is your personal ‘Why’, and what are you doing to manifest it? Good question, Steve. I like that. Well, my personal ‘Why’ are my commitments, and I have four of them. Oh. And those commitments are me, they make me who I am. The fourth commitment is why we are here today talking, but I’ll take a minute and touch on the first three because I think they’re worth touching on briefly. The first commitment, and not necessarily in order, is family. I’m a father, uncle, godfather, caretaker for a dog and cat — family. My second commitment of the four is faith. And obviously, I could talk a lot about that, but I won’t. But that is a big commitment that makes me who I am. The third commitment is actually to the city of Atlanta, because that’s where I am and where I have served throughout the years several boards of directors — the large ones that we all know about, some for profit, some not for profit, and some of the smaller ones that we haven’t heard about. I'm at that stage now where I end up doing on boards and doing things that nobody else wants to do, but I think it's very important.Share on X And so typically I’m raising money for this or helping to promote that, or the kinds of things that are very important. But they’re not the big boards, but I’ve served on all of them throughout the years. Done a lot with the arts community, the leadership community, the city government, some politics, but primarily community activism. But the fourth commitment, which makes me who I am and why I’m here, is to experiential learning. And that is that gap between competency and how it plays out in the real world—the bridge. Not just understanding the competency of business or the competency of consulting, but how does it really play out in the real world? I have a passion for that. And that bridge can be coaching, leadership development, mentoring, and so it is experiential learning.Share on X When I was with IBM, people would inherently come to me, especially young people. I think it’s this white hair, Steve, I don’t know. They’d come to me and we’d be talking about this and that. And I began to enjoy those sessions, but found that they really were important for the person coming as well as me, because I learned a lot as well. And then when I went on to study my doctorate and my MBA, I studied experiential learning, where I began to do research on soft skills.  So what are soft skills? Earning trust. Can you teach someone how to earn trust? I prove that you can. Passion for the future. Can you teach passion for the future? Can that learn? Is that an acquired skill? Is that an acquired competency? Yes, it is. So experiential learning, I have a passion that comes into my coaching, which is why I coach at a business school, at a major university. And I have clients, private clients as well. Those are my ‘Whys’. And because that’s who I am. I am those commitments.  Yeah, that’s fascinating. So let’s talk about some of the things that you do, because I find it very interesting. But I’d like to start with the framework that you developed, which is a unique coaching framework. I’ve not seen anything like that before, and I think you call it the EMF coaching framework after your name. And it involves authenticity, mindfulness, equanimity, and neuroplasticity. Can you explain what this is, how you discovered it, why it’s important, and how do you apply it? Well, my research brought it to the forefront, but my clients have really discovered it for me. When I work with a client, I take them where they are. Typically, it’s someone with a set of outcomes that they’d like to achieve, or outcomes that they want to develop. Sometimes we don’t know outcomes change, and I also have the ability to measure their outcomes, which is fairly unique. I mean, I give them measurements. People say they want measurements, but I can do them and do them well. But the framework is a way of communicating blocks that we build on, and blocks for active listening on my part.  So what is the authenticity? How do you use authenticity in coaching?  To make sure that you are aware of it, to help you measure your authenticity, to make you value your authenticity, to get you to focus on it as an important element of what you want to do and who you are, so that at the end of your career, or when you’re changing careers because you have one behind you, you can look back on it and feel good about it. And you’re not some sad old guy or sad old lady who wishing you had paid attention to your authenticity. Because what happens when you have that sadness, you end up impacting the people that love you the most. Your wife, your children, grandchildren. So you want to protect this period of time by making sure you pay attention to authenticity. And so we spend a good bit of time working on it, identifying, but more than anything else, letting you know how important it is. And of course, authenticity, I mean, we grow, we bend, we assimilate the cultures, but there’s still an authenticity that you want to measure, promote, and understand. I attempt to drive home that meaning, but more than anything else, I listen to what's important to you about authenticity, it's about listening.Share on X I have more questions than I have answers, but I do have some good questions. And where does authenticity fit, and how do you rate your authenticity, and what does authenticity matter to you are important questions.  Okay. So there’s a lot there. We won’t be able to completely unpack authenticity. Maybe that’s what you do with your client so we don’t have to do it on this call. But let’s switch to the next one, which is mindfulness. So is it about meditation? What does it mean?  Well, mindfulness is all over the place, right? We hear it all the time. It’s almost cache. I mean, it’s all over the place. But in coaching and in my building blocks, we want to examine the benefit to you as my client in achieving your outcomes. The benefit of just understanding and listening rather than making an impression.Share on X You want to listen rather than try to impress. Your listening skills, finding out where someone is before you engage with them. The idea of being mindful of the moment of where are they.  So being present with the person?  Not only present, but giving a lead to listening. What does that mean?  It’s hard to hear them if you are talking. And this type of mindfulness, you want to make sure that you are being more listening than you are trying to impress or engage from your perspective. That type of mindfulness in that moment and in each moment. So we spend a good bit of time understanding that level of engagement, and if that engagement is even authentic to you, but the benefits of that. Can you give an example?  Sure. You go to someone and you want them to help you with something, not necessarily small talk, but find out where they are at that moment, where they are mentally, where they are socially, how’s their day? It’s more than small talk before you engage because you’ll find that them even hearing you, if you show that you care about where they are, their level of listening can be increased. So an example is finding out where the person is before you engage with them.  Okay. So let’s switch gears and let’s talk about equanimity, because that’s something I don’t hear people talk about. Mindfulness is a common topic—maybe not your brand of it—but what’s equanimity, and how do you use it in coaching? Sure. Equanimity means a lot of things, but when we talk about coaching in the framework, we’re really talking about fulfillment. Equanimity can mean how you handle stress or how you handle disturbances.Share on X But equanimity in coaching can mean fulfillment, your pursuit of a fulfillment what is it that you really, really, really want? And are you clear on distinguishing that from that tools to get there? The classic one is money, Steve. We all know people with lots of money, and there’s a question even in their mind, if they are really fulfilled. So, an equanimity is understanding fulfillment and that pursuit of fulfillment, and it can change.Share on X When you get to our age, “I don’t know” is not a good answer. What fulfills you? You say, “I don’t know.” I’d say, Steve, you’re too old to be saying “I don’t know.” You need an answer. You can change it as often as you want, but the problem with “I don’t know” is that it breeds “I don’t know.” And if you’re saying “I don’t know” at age 30, my fear is you’ll be saying “I don’t know” at age 45. So being able to pick a horse and ride it, have the flexibility to change whenever you want is critical. Plus, just think about it: let’s say you want help. I remember plenty of times people would come to me wanting help, and if they had a target, it was much easier for me to help them if they had a target. They say, I want this, it’s going to be available. Then this is the decision-maker. Can you help me with this venture capital team to see if I can get it swayed my way? They got a target. But if you come to me and say, Edward, help me figure out what I want to be when I grow up, that’s a whole other discussion. It’s very difficult to help you. So when you have a target, when you have an answer, other than, I don’t know, we have a direction to move in. So “I don’t know” is not good for most people. Yeah. And you can honestly not know, but you going to pick something. Because when you pick something, even if you’re going the wrong way, you may see what’s the right way. But you never would see that right way if you hadn’t taken that first step, even in the wrong direction.  Give the information and then you can iterate from there. Yeah, I agree. And I love it. So let’s go onto neuroplasticity, which was also a very interesting concept that you talked about.  Sure. How do you use neuroplasticity in coaching?  Sure. Well, neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to create additional neurons, but in coaching it’s also the suggestion and the consideration that you move outside of your brain — that you don’t let your brain run you, you run the brain. That brain will get you in trouble if you are just running around following it. First of all, the brain’s number one job is to protect the body. That’s the number one job for the brain. So therefore, it often has a negative bias. The brain will think that things are worse than they are. That’s part of the way it protects you. You think a lion is going to jump out of the bushes and devour you when it’s just a little puppy dog who’s coming up to you. So if you keep going, most of the time you’ll see it’s not quite as bad as you thought it was — most of the time. So following the brain, you have to step outside of your brain and manage your brain. The front part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, is in charge of visioning and innovation. But the funny thing about the prefrontal cortex is that it wants to be filled. It doesn’t want empty space. So wherever you are, it’s going to fill itself with something. And you going to say to your brain, no, we are not doing that. I’m not going to let you get filled up. I’m going to keep room so that I can vision. Visioning and innovation takes time and it takes room, and the brain wants to stock in as much as it can to stay filledShare on X but you going to tell that brain, no, I’m going to sit here. I’m going to eat this ice cream and think about it. And so then that leads into what’s really a coaching dynamic is the art of delegation. In order to clear out that prefrontal cortex, you going to use resources, delegation, so that when that brain is filling up, you have a way of, as we used to say at IBM, getting those monkeys off your back. You create some free space. There was a time when professors, way back in the day, had their sabbaticals. Well, that was well-meaning. That was well-meaning — having that time for visioning. Well, as we have blueprints for business, as we have goals, as we look for moving forward, it requires vision, but vision takes time.Share on X It’s just not going to drop in your lap. Your brain won’t let you do it. Now, we both know people who carry the world on their shoulders, and yet they still get a lot of things done. And it can happen, but it’s just not the best way to do it.  Yeah. And maybe they are giving themselves time. They go on a fishing trip, or a golf trip, or travel. And the best ideas come when you’re not in the office, right?  But I’m talking about more granular than that. Not just vacations or climbing a mountain, I’m talking about just sitting still and breathing. I’m talking about family time, a meal, book, listening to some good music, a walk in the woods, things that help your mind empty out those monkeys, so that you can have space to take the time for the visioning and innovation that’s critical for moving forward. A lot of times you get to where you are by keeping that mind full. You’re always having fires to put out, and that’s fine. We’re experts at putting out fires. But at some point, to take that business to that next level — that soft skill for next-level leadership — you're going to have to manage your brain to create space so that you have time for vision and innovation.Share on X  Yeah. I love that. And I often notice that I’m driving my car and I think, okay, I’m going to switch on the audio book or podcast. I say, no, I won’t do that. I just want to sit here and just daydream over the wheel and just let my mind go different places.  And actually I love that time, and I like the long drives, and I don’t take in information. And I guess that’s what’s happening. I didn’t call it that, but I am emptying out my brain and giving it space.  Well, you have to manage that brain because it will get you in trouble if you just let it run the show. I mean, really, it’ll take you to some odd places. You have to say to your brain, “No. That’s not what we are doing. That’s not the plan.”  Okay. That’s awesome. So your coaching framework is authenticity — being aware and living an authentic life so that you can look back on it with satisfaction. Mindfulness — being present, listening, giving space for other people. Equanimity, which is fulfillment and having that feeling of fulfillment, of living with purpose. That’s why I ask you about the purpose as well, so I totally relate to this. And neuroplasticity, I love that concept. I think few people talk about it, especially this way. It’s very powerful. So before we wrap up, I like to ask you about what you mentioned at the top of the conversation about teaching people passion for the future, I’m fascinated by this idea. I thought passion was more of an internally developed thing. Maybe there’s also talent for passion. Maybe it’s part of nurture, but how can you actually teach it, I’m very curious about that.  Sure. Passion for the future. That’s when you want to be passionate about capabilities and opportunities for impacting your clients, impacting the world, and you deeply believe in the quality and breadth of personal, exceptional capability. And the key with passion for the future, when you really are doing it well, then you are energizing others about unique opportunities, and you are conveying passion for the future with them. I have an exercise—several exercises—that we go through and talk about.  So, Edward, just a quick question. So does that mean that you are passionate about the potential of your own and the other people around you? So your passion is derived not from what the politics is doing, or geopolitics, and I don’t know, AI, and that stuff, but is it about the humanistic potential that you see is there and can be manifested?  Actually, Steve, it is outcomes-driven. So it is outcomes-driven, but what I see—and when it works well, you see it—it spreads. It’s not that you start out saying, I want to have passion for this client, I want to have passion for this business, or passion for this opportunity. But once you grasp it—the wins or the losses, the yeses, the no’s, or the maybes—you take them all. And you are still passionate about winning. You create sense of pride, you’re seeking opportunities, you confront behavior that’s contrary to the values and to reputation. So we teach this and it can be fun, but I’ve also seen tears come from it as well. It can be a tearful experience, but it’s part of what we do, and we do it well. And it’s not cookie-cutter. I take my client where they are. So this is not just some rope that I’m going to take you through. We really have to see this as an outcome that's going to benefit you and an outcome that's desired, and an outcome that you're willing to invest in.Share on X Because look, a lot of people make it, and they are not passionate about the future. So it’s a lot of work.  So you can turn a sheep into a wolf?  Yes. If there is a real support in doing it. If there is personal support in doing it, or corporate support in doing it, or if it’s passionate support in doing it, yes, we can do it. There is a price, but it can be done. A personal price. A mental price, yes.  But doesn’t the mentee or the  coachee have to be willing to pay that price, or can they get the passion without paying any price? Personally, the company will pay, but can they do it?  Sure. Well, first of all, the person needs to be coachable. And it needs to be an objective, or it needs to be an outcome that you see now, or an outcome that you developed over your period of time in working with me. So we can start out that way or it can come, but yes, you have to see that it’s worth it because it does take work. But once you get it, I see it spread, and you in fact are passionate about the future, and you weren’t there in the first place. You might’ve been pessimistic, actually.  That is amazing. I mean, if you can do that, then you can really empower other people that maybe would must be able to empower themselves or be empowered by the usual patterns and approaches.  And we measure it. I have a measurement. I can measure your progress or lack thereof. And let’s be clear, every story is not a success story. But I can measure your progress or lack thereof, and we can agree on a matrix and see how you’re tracking towards that matrix for passion for the future.  So how do I measure my passion, or how do you measure my passion?  I’ll get you to give me an analysis, and I have some questions. And I’ll get you to give me an analysis of those questions, and then I’ll ask you those same questions another way. And then we’ll do training, and then we’ll come back to that and then we’ll do an analysis of where you were and where you are now that we are at the next phase. So that’s one way we can do, we can measure it to see your progress or lack of progress. Now, I also have a role play that we can do. So there's several things we can do. There's role play, there's reading, but primarily it's me listening.Share on X It’s active listening on my part. I don’t have the answers, but I have the questions. Well, the questions are more important than the answers. Because a lot of answers can pertain to one question. That is very fascinating. So if people would like to be coached by you — and I saw on your LinkedIn page that you offer serious coaching for serious clients, so it’s not like dabblers please don’t bother applying kind of thing. So what does it look like?  Serious coaching looks like a commitment of time and resources from someone who’s coachable. It starts when you contact me to schedule a chemistry session. That’s typically can be as short as 15 minutes, most of them are an hour. So it starts with a chemistry session. Then once we get out of the chemistry session, it starts when you pay me, that’s when it starts.  Okay. So if those listeners that are taking in this episode, they’d like to explore whether they have the right chemistry for you to coach them, or whether they are considered serious enough for coaching, where should they go and how can they find you? There are two places you can find me. Of course, you can find me on LinkedIn: Edward Francis. I think it’s Edward Francis, DBA (Doctor of Business Administration). So Edward Francis. Or you can go to my webpage, www.edwardmackfrancis.com.  Awesome. So if you’re listening to this and you want a serious coach with serious coaching, and specifically want to be a more authentic person can be more present for others and feel more fulfilled, and have a bigger brain capacity through neuroplasticity, leveraging neuroplasticity, or you want to be more passionate about the future, then do reach out to Edward Francis. You will not be disappointed. And if you have a company and you want to grow it, then reach out to me at the Summit OS Group. So, Edward, thank you for coming, and for those of you out there, thank you for listening. And stay tuned because we have exciting entrepreneurs and thought leaders joining every week. Important Links: Edward’s LinkedIn Edward’s website

https://youtu.be/ivElg53993A Ian Leaman, Summit OS® Guide, former investment banker, senior finance executive, and investor, is driven by a mission to help entrepreneurs build, scale, and successfully exit their businesses by applying the hard-won lessons he’s learned from more than 100 exit journeys. We learn about Ian’s path from growing up around small family businesses in the UK, to training with Deloitte, advising entrepreneurs through hundreds of M&A processes, co-founding a SPAC, and ultimately relocating to the United States to embrace a more optimistic and opportunity-driven business culture. Ian explains his Can-Do Framework, a mindset blueprint inspired by the contrast between European “can’t-do” thinking and America’s bold, frontier-style optimism. He also breaks down how Summit OS® empowers owners to achieve “private equity–level growth without giving up private equity,” and why the 45-Day Execution Momentum plan creates faster change than a typical 100-day private equity program. Ian closes with a gripping case study illustrating how leadership blind spots and misaligned incentives can devastate exit outcomes. — How to Break Ceilings in America with Ian Leaman Good day, listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS® Group and host of the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today here is Ian Leaman, who is a Summit OS® Guide, a former investment banker with over 100 exits under his belt. He’s also a senior finance executive and an investor. So Ian, welcome to the show. Hi, Steve. It’s great to see you, and thank you for having me on.  Absolutely. And we go way back, and one of your international board positions I think I’m sharing with you, but I’m not going to go into that because it’s long in the past. What I like to explore is what you’re doing now, why you’re doing it, and some things about why you moved to the States. I mean, both of us moved to the States since we were on this particular board for different reasons. And I’d like to explore your framework, which is very intriguing. So let’s start with your ‘Why’. So what is your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in your business life?  What I’m doing right now, Steve actually squares the circle. It brings us back together as working colleagues. You mentioned that we worked previously on an international board. Today we’re working together as Summit OS Guides. How did I get here, and how does this relate to my ‘Why’? Well, my business journey started really in my youth, where my parents had small businesses. And so the conversations over the evening dinner table were all about the trials and tribulations, the successes, failures, challenges, et cetera, of running a small business. So that got into my blood very early. That translated through a career in finance, where I qualified originally as an accountant with Deloitte in the UK, and then progressed into the transaction side of finance, helping entrepreneurs grow and exit their businesses. As you said, having come through more than a hundred successful exits, but many  more which didn’t cross that finish line.  I really became interested in the differences between those who succeeded and those who didn't, what they were doing in their businesses, which made them attractive prospects from an M&A point of view and made their processes successful ones.Share on X And eventually, I came to reunite with you when you’d started your Summit OS® Initiative and understand that we can bring our respective experience, whether it’s as a CEO of a previously exited business or as an advisor to many which have done that, we can bring that experience to there. And how that translates into my personal ‘Why’ is I get huge satisfaction out of being involved in and assisting the process of entrepreneurs building and exiting their business. And I find huge satisfaction in a successful outcome there. So my personal ‘Why’ is to work with entrepreneurs who are building their businesses to help them do so better, faster, more successfully, and, if relevant — which isn’t in all cases — take them across that exit finish line to a conclusion of that particular part of their business journey. Yeah. I totally relate to this, and I often felt guilty even when we sold the company, and I felt like we could have gotten more for it if the company was improved, and there were some low-hanging fruits that we could have helped fix in a short order. And then we can do it now, and that’s very fulfilling. That’s right. I mean, there are many war stories, if you like, from that phase of my working life that illustrate very well the point you just made. For example, on the positive side, I can recall a conversation with an entrepreneur. I met him for the first time at his place of work. It was a distributor of electronic components, so they bought in bulk, stocked, broke into small pieces, and sold and distributed at a good margin, electronic components. They had a big warehouse. He and I had an initial discussion and he was quite an impressive guy. I remember in his very austere functional office, and he said, would you like to look around? I said, yeah, of course. I’d love to. So we walked together from the upper level where his office was down a stairway into the warehouse. And just as we got to the foot of the stairway, we encountered one of the warehousemen. His name was Jim, and he said, the owner said, Hey, good morning Jim. How’s it going today? And Jim said, 81%. Why did Jim say 81%? I asked myself, I left it at that moment, but they were both very satisfied with Jim’s answer. When we returned from the visit to the office, I said, so what’s 81%? He said, well, that’s Jim’s metric. Jim has to measure a certain number of things he’s doing and relate them to that day, and he was well within his range of target, and that’s how this guy ran his business. All that translated into a very successful exit at a multiple one or two points above the regular for a distributor in that sector. Because he was growing fast, he was doing it really well, and he built a business which was somewhat independent of him.  That’s great. And just a quick reference to the LinkedIn post that you put up yesterday, where you mentioned that a lot of people who are trading time for money and working 55 or more hours is basically a leading indicator that they’re not going to build a self-managing business, they’re not going to scale, they’re going to burn out. So it’s great if someone has good KPIs to make sure that they know where they are and where they’re moving towards where they want to be. Okay, so let’s switch gears here. And you have a really intriguing story of how you made it to America and particularly to LA. So what was your calculus, and how did you end up there? I’d been working successfully as an M&A advisor — as you had, Steve — working with entrepreneurs on that journey. And a lot of that was about the growth of their companies, about building them somewhat before they actually made the exit, often through acquisition or financing. And one day I got a phone call from a friend who was a headhunter who joked with me when he got on the call: “Ian, don’t put the call down. I’m going to talk to you about a new role, which is not doing what you’re doing.” I guess his call landed at a particular moment when I was restless for a change, and he described a role as the third co-founder of a startup to be newly listed on the London Stock Exchange as blank check company, often known as a SPAC in the US. Long story short, I was a good fit for the team of two entrepreneurs who had built previous businesses, financed, acquired, IPO’d, and then sold. We got together and set out on a path of acquiring businesses in the US, even though the listing was in the UK, in the oil and gas services sector. That experience was amazing. It put me on the front line as a principal, doing many of the things I'd seen done secondhand and getting my hands into the weeds of operations much more than I had previously. And these were great learning experiencesShare on X but what became most valuable over time was the experience I got working in the US and finally appreciating the fundamental contrast in business ethos between a European starting point — can’t do — and a US starting point — can do. And that framework, that basic business framework of can-do US against can’t-do Europe, really set me on the path that I then pursued. When that job came to an end and my wife and I were deciding what next, we decided to vote with our feet, relocate to the US — now 12 years ago — with three teenagers and a dog in tow, and rebuild our careers over here. That’s awesome. And that’s very similar to what we did in many ways. So tell me about this Can-Do framework. So how do you break it down? How do you make it more tangible? What differentiates an American entrepreneur or American businessperson — or just a general person — and European or UK in terms of their outlook on business or life? Okay, so it’s all about positivity. And that manifests itself with just really at the start of any conversation about anything within business, whether it’s a small change to an existing business or perhaps something at the opposite end of the scale, a big new opportunity that hasn’t previously presented itself. It’s all about the positivity. Americans will enthusiastically embrace change, generally — in my experience — without the cynicism overtaking them. Americans have just as much valid experience of what can go wrong as you build and change businesses as Europeans, but instead they choose to parlay that experience and those learnings into positive aspects of change rather than cynical aspects of resistance to change. So, for example, in America, if as a businessperson you hit some failures and those failures result in a failed business or a personal bankruptcy, those things are not regarded as necessarily negatives, which can impede your progress in the future. Quite the opposite — they can be seen as great learning experiences, which leave their battle scars in a positive way. Yeah, that is indeed amazing. I mean, you can even become president in America after failing several businesses, right? The sky’s the limit.  The sky’s the limit. That’s the point.  Yeah.  And there’s no one else’s negativity, which is going to constrain the optimistic American entrepreneur from striving to achieve their goals. All right. Okay, so there’s the positivity. I get it. So interpreting changes as looking at the positive aspect of it rather than the negative aspect. It’s more of a bold, fearless attitude rather than a conservative, resistant attitude. What else would you say characterizes this ethos? I’d say another facet of it would be the confidence to challenge the status quo. So much of European culture and business is based on history, and that history is a kind of anchor to the past, whereas America still has this frontier feeling — a sense that it’s a new country, a new world. And the status quo, such as it is, isn’t an anchor to the past. It’s actually something to be critically praised and challenged with confidence if relevant. I think that very much resonates with me personally. I recall when I was choosing my firm to join and to become an accountancy trainee, leading through a qualification to becoming a chartered accountant, and at the quality end of the range were the Big Eight in those days. I interviewed with three of the Big Eight, and interestingly, it was number eight of eight, which was the newcomer on the block, the one that resonated most with me. They were confident, they were challenging, and ambitious, and somewhat fearless in the face of challenging the establishments in the UK.Share on XAnd those things really resonated with me. I joined Touche Ross. Touche Ross became Deloitte. Deloitte became the number one in the world.  Yeah, that’s right.  Touche Ross was the number seven or eight, I remember, when I applied, because I went through actual same training as you did. And when I applied it was the Big Eight, and by the time I got accepted it was the Big Six — they merged — and now it’s the Big Four. So anyhow, that’s less interesting for listeners, but you’re talking about describing this underdog mentality or underdog attitude. I resonated with that as well, because when we started the investment banking business in Hungary, actually our number one competitor was Deloitte in Hungary. They were the big 500-pound gorilla, and we were the underdog. I hired some of the people who had been passed over by Deloitte, and they had a stone in their shoe about it. And we made it a kind of quest that we were going to show these snooty, self-important people that we were actually better because we’re scrappier, more innovative, and so on. That was a big driver for us — this underdog attitude. So would you say that this is something that also resonates with Americans?  I think very much so. I think that there isn’t that respect for the status quo, and the 500-pound gorilla on the block is not necessarily there to be feared, revered, or left alone. Quite the opposite. In American business, they’re the incumbent to be challenged. Challenger businesses grow to huge success in America. And actually, that links really nicely with the topic we’re here to discuss — Summit OS® — and how it provides a framework for entrepreneurs to build their businesses using many of the tools and techniques which the big successful businesses have adopted. And using that to their advantage, to creep up on them from behind and sometimes take market leadership.  Yeah, that’s a big objective, obviously, and we would be happy to talk about this, but then we would overrun our time for sure. But what is a specific concept that you enjoy about or which you are intrigued about with Summit OS® that resonates with you? One of the things that really resonated with me, Steve, having a background in investment banking as you have, is the notion that private equity doesn’t have a monopoly on expecting and delivering high growth from businesses. That principle, that objective, that achievement can be something which the entrepreneur, owner, manager can adopt just as validly. So one of the potentials of Summit OS® is private equity without private equity. You can set yourself the objective of, let’s say, 3x value in three years.Share on X You can set yourself the objective of creating a self-managing business that has a valuation way in excess of its peers because of the way you run it, because of the rate of growth you achieve, because of the differentiators it has from its competitors. And in so doing, you create something of high value, high desire, and a high level of marketability if you’re in the market to exit. That’s a really powerful and resonant aspect of  Summit OS® for me.  Yeah, I’ve often seen business owners who sold a large minority or a small majority stake to private equity. And then someone came in with an MBA but with a lot less experience, and they would start telling the business owner what they knew that they had to work on to begin with. Maybe they were not disciplined enough or not focused enough, but a coach — a good coach, a guide like you and I — could have helped them to do that without giving away a big piece of their business. Now granted, putting capital to use can be a very effective way of achieving high levels of growth. And the scale of capital that’s available from private equity may not be available to an independent owner-managed business. But having said that, I was with an entrepreneur last week, one of a group of partners who’d sold his business initially to PE, that PE had been refinanced to an even larger one. And he described his experience with those PEs as being managed by spreadsheet. It sounds like a bit of a cliché, Steve, but it’s real — that’s his actual experience. And another negative experience, from a negative point of view, that a lot of entrepreneurs have shared with me is this notion of inappropriate interference. The young MBAs just don’t get where appropriate boundaries are between them as investors and the leadership team in the businesses, and so the areas they interfere in are often not value-adding. I’ve experienced that myself, actually. I was engaged once by a private equity firm to be a consultant on a transition period. The business in question had been an orphaned subsidiary within a very large multinational corporation. When people talk about orphan subsidiaries, what they essentially mean is this businesses that don’t particularly fit within where the big corporation had moved to, and are kind of left adrift — but within. So they’d sold this business to a private equity, and the private equity engaged me to help with a transition. A transition of the business from this orphan state into an independent business. And the private equity really was clueless. The people there were absolutely clueless as to how best to manage the transition of the team, particularly the team and the way they interrelated to their ownership from how it used to be to how it was now. It’s a very good example of poor management, and I suspect it wasn’t one of one. It was one of a big pattern.  Yeah. I mean, experience is really hard to replicate in the classroom. And some of these MBAs, they come out from great business schools, and they do excellent case studies, but they just don’t have the reps to develop the pattern recognition that some of these business owners who have been in the trenches for 20 or 30 years have, right?  Yeah, you can’t put a high enough value on less experience. Yeah. And if you then harness that experience into a framework which enables people with that experience to share it really effectively with clients, that's a really powerful combination.Share on X  Yeah, I love it. Yeah. By the way, we all know that private equity groups, they often have their 100-day plan. They come into a company and then they want to make a string of changes, like a new prime minister or president would do as well. So is there an equivalent process in Summit OS® to do that? Can you speak to that?  There is, actually. And there’s a big premium today on speed of change. And the private equity guys think that a hundred days is rapid. Well, it’s not. Summit OS® has got a 45-day Execution Momentum plan, which takes the business through some very actionable processes, which result in very rapid and noticeable change. So that the 45-day Execution Momentum takes the business leaders through 2 one full-day meetings in which very heavy agenda is filled with things that really interesting and opposite ends of the scale. What do I mean by that? At the very macro, high end, there will be an examination — possibly for the very first time — of why the business exists, what it’s on the earth for, how is, how’s it going to create a dent in the universe over a 30-year period? What really big changes can an ambitious management team make in the business? And this at the opposite end of the scale, a whole bunch of very day-to-day actionable skills like how to run a really good business meeting that’s super effective and results in measurable change. And then things in between those two, which join the very high macro level to the very daily micro level. Putting these things into action over the 30-day separation period between these two days, and then a 15-day follow-on, gives you your 45 days. And that results in these really measurable, perceivable changes, which catapult the start of a company’s journey with Summit OS® — very quickly, double the speed of PE. Yeah, that’s definitely. I do believe that there’s no reason why every company should not adopt all the good management practices that already exist and widely known. And the faster we get them to adapt it, the faster they’re going to get a big push, a big momentum, and then it’s going to open them up for other changes. And suddenly this whole change management is not going to be that difficult because people will say that it actually works. So why not do more of it? Before we wrap this conversation up, can you share from your experience as an investment banker or senior CFO a story that really you feel relates to the work that we’re doing here? I can, and I’m going to illustrate this with a something negative, not something positive to learn from the negative, as I suggested. It was really valid for me to do learning from all the reasons businesses failed to get across the exit line and what we can do to help build businesses better. So, I was engaged to sell a business — owner-managed, a very successful call center business based in the UK, but with an American client base. And the vertical in which the call center business work was technology sales. So they were being engaged by large American technology houses to generate leads for selling their products into European customers. The entrepreneur who started it was an experienced businessman, but from the moment I met him, what I recognized was a brutish personality. A very tough taskmaster, very unforgiving, and actually very cold and lacking in emotion. He built this business to quite some success with a very high growth rate, and soon I got to meet his management team. These were young, thrusting, ambitious people who had been early enough in their careers for him to mold them into a likeness of his own. So what he’d created was a team of very similar-behaving, similar-acting people who were aggressive, over-assertive, cold, non-emotional in the business context and actually quite a scary team. Well, that could have been okay were it not for the fact that early on in the process, I had a word with him and I said, “Look, Chris, you’re going to need to motivate these guys in the exit. They’re well paid, but you need to give them a little bit of a taste of the proceeds you’re going to receive as the founder and 100% owner of this business. Otherwise, you might see some trouble brewing.” Nope — he wasn’t having any of it. This was his business. He was going to do this his way. Guess what happens, Steve? At the 59th minute of the 11th hour, as we came towards closing the transaction with a great buyer, the animals turned on their master. And they turned with a viciousness that was similar to his own character, and they basically held him to ransom. It cost him 30% of the business. He had to give 30% of the equity in order for them to come along and be supportive in the discussions they were at this stage, having with the buyer around satisfaction with the working there, continuing to work post-transaction and all those things that were super important for the buyer. So there’s an example, a real case study. We did actually get the business closed. It cost him millions more than it could have done had he done this deal with them early on when they didn’t have the whip hand. And here’s a great example of how adapting the way you work, respecting the senior people, and nurturing them into positions of ownership of their parts of the business, not just in terms of being mini CEOs, but actually sharing some of the equity of the business could have made a huge difference, both to the risk in the process and to the dollar outcome for him. Yeah. I think this is a common failing that the entrepreneur, they take under their wings, these young people, and they feel like that they owe everything to them for raising them. But they forget that those people stuck around because they actually had internal drive and they had ambition. It wasn’t the entrepreneur who create these people. These people were there to begin with. They just took advantage of the opportunity to have bigger responsibility, and as they rose in capability, if the entrepreneur or business owner didn’t recognize that and reward it, they’re going to go somewhere else and they’re going to get rewarded another way, or they’re going to turn on their master. Yeah. So this is a very tricky thing and you need a degree of self-awareness to realize that it’s not all you and you have to reward them. Even if you help them get there, you still have to pay them more because they did get there.  That’s right. It’s all part of respecting the people you work with and rewarding them appropriately. Yeah that’s a great way to finish this up. Okay. So, Ian, if the listeners would like to learn more about you, maybe connect with you, learn what you could do for them, where would you advise them to go? Well, it’s very simple.  They can contact me at https://ianleaman.com. There you’ll find some very comprehensive and interesting material all about coaching and about Summit OS® in particular, and how we work with businesses to help elevate them.  Awesome. So do check Ian out at https://ianleaman.com, not hard to remember. He is also has a great LinkedIn profile. And if you enjoyed this conversation, stay tuned, because every week I bring an exciting entrepreneur or business operator, or thought leader in some cases, who come and share their frameworks with us. And if you’d like to learn more about what Summit OS® can do for you, then visit SummitOS.co, and check out all the downloadable tools, videos, process maps, and everything, and client stories to learn more. So Ian, thank you very much for coming and sharing your war stories and experiences, and thank you for listening. Important Links: Ian’s LinkedIn Ian’s website

https://youtu.be/jtNEdTVPrwE Corinne Gavlinski, high-impact leadership and team development coach and creator of the Executive Table Read (XTR) method, is on a mission to help leaders improve communication, understand their people, and drive stronger team performance by transforming how leaders read, interpret, and utilize the strengths of their teams.  We explore Corinne’s Executive Table Read framework: table read the script, understand the actors, get how to utilize them, and optimize team performance—a method that helps executives gain clarity, reduce friction, and build alignment inside leadership teams. Corinne shares why many leadership issues stem from misunderstanding roles, how actor awareness reshapes collaboration, and why structured team conversations are essential for building healthy, high-performing executive groups. — Match Your Client’s Intensity with Corinne Gavlinski Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder and CEO of the Summit OS® Group, and I have as my guest, Corinne Gavlinski today, who is a high-impact leadership and team development coach and the creator of the Executive Table Read, or XTR process.  Corinne, welcome to the show.  Thank you, Steve. Pleasure to be here. Well, it’s exciting to have you here and to learn about your wonderful framework. But first thing first — tell me about your personal “Why,” and what are you doing to manifest it in your practice and business?  Yes, I’d be happy to. If I’m honest, Steve, I’ve enjoyed and led an accomplished career, much like my colleagues, and the clients that I have. And I realized far too late in that great career that I was paying attention to the wrong things. And I wasn’t being intentional about the legacy that I really wanted to leave from a leadership perspective. And that only came on the heels of a pretty big identity jolt, which was losing both of my parents in succession. And so today, I work with leaders who care about their legacy, who care about their people, and have pressures on them to perform that perhaps distract them from that intention. And so I teach that which I, too, had to learn. And I work with executive leaders to do just that.  I like it. This is very noble. So what is your legacy that you are pursuing?  I hope my legacy is that I grew others. And as I said, I’m not sure I did that my whole career. In fact, I’m darn sure I did not. It took me a long time to realize that my own growth would be enhanced and amplified by me allowing others to grow that were on my team. And so if I had to say a legacy that I hope I leave, it’s that I left others with a strong sense of self, that I helped them develop new skills, and that they grew in areas that they hadn’t even dreamed possible, perhaps. Love it. Well, I mean, that’s the beauty of coaching — that if you are able to amplify whatever you learned and pay it forward multiple times, it can have a big impact on people get there 20 years earlier, 30 years earlier, then imagine how much they can achieve in that time.  That’s right.  I love it. That’s great. So tell me about this process that you developed — the Executive Table Read. It sounds like very Hollywoodish.  Yes.  It’s very interesting. What is it?  I put my money where my mouth is. I’m not only a coach, but I hire my own coaches. And this was born out of a working session that I did with one of my coaches, and I was interested in doing something that started with the team. And I wanted to reorient leaders to that focus on their team and not just on the self. Much like a director in a movie or a sitcom might do, they often will get actors around the table to do a table read. And I thought, what a fun play on words if I can get corporate leaders to do a similar exercise whereby they are learning about people around their table in a new way, so that they can understand how to optimize those individuals that are on the team, perform at perhaps a higher level, and agree together what behaviors will make them successful. And so from that was born the Executive Table Read, and it’s a series of activities that, in under 45 days, will arm a leader and his or her team with data, custom analysis, and real performance measures that they can both take on a day one and 90 days later to ensure that they are being accountable to what they said was most important. Yeah, that’s fascinating. So it’s an exercise where, as a leader, you can learn about other people, and then you can get them to commit to goals and to objectives, and then you follow up with them. So is this a repeatable process, or is this a one-off thing?  It takes an evolution. I think there's an initial Executive Table Read, whereby we go through a three-step process of collecting data, analyzing and sharing that data out with the team, determining behaviors that are importantShare on X as I say, and then measuring those behaviors. And there’s a roadmap that leader receives to then take action with his or her team. What comes after that is, customarily, some work with that leader one-on-one. It may result in an evolution of working with that team again. It’s kind of the XTR 2.0, if you will. I’ve done work with teams, particularly sales teams, where we’ve taken the initial Executive Table Read and then taken an aspect of that and gone into a second event with them to do some team development around the aspect that they felt was important to go a little deeper on. So it can evolve, but it is meant to be an initial snapshot in its original form that then can be built upon in a custom way.  Yeah, I like it. And I think a lot of leaders and even coaches miss the opportunity to really analyze the personalities that are around the table.  Yeah.  When they start working with them, they can fail to exploit the opportunity to improve them and improve the communication, knowing the different communication styles and approaches between people. And a dysfunctional team is going to be much, much slower to the momentum.  Yes. That’s right. I think leaders do a very good job of understanding how their team members fit into the roles in which they’re assigned, where they may not do as good a job. And I say that because I did not do as good a job in really understanding how those individuals think. How they inherently behave during times of when they’re not under duress and stress. And when you do, you get a better sense for the capabilities on your team. And moreover, where there may be friction points on your team that might not have been obvious before, but have a reason behind them. And then you can go about addressing that. So you can go about optimizing the talents on your team because you now understand how people think, process information, and innately or inherently behave, and you may have uncovered that if you have team members who are extremely different from one another, you can see where that friction could occur and mitigate any conflict as a result. So it’s a powerful tool when layered with some custom analysis because you get some real insight that maybe you didn’t have the time or the energy to do yourself. So when you do this analysis, do you then use it as a group and facilitate the resolution, or is it a one-on-one tool?  We do. We do. We do both actually, Steve. So an individual will receive a bit of coaching one-on-one as well as the team. So we start with some insight around individual thinking styles and behaviors, and helping that person to understand who they are. And then we, as a team, meet and debrief the results of the analysis and talk a little bit about how that helps the team to be successful, where might friction occur? How can those talents be better utilized, and based on the behaviors identified in the team, what are the most necessary for their specific discipline, whether that’s sales or an executive team, for example, there are differences in what they might want to pursue. And so it’s a little bit of both, but it’s predominantly geared around the team and the team working together to solve some of these questions.  Is it always productive to have the team, let’s say there’s an inherent conflict in the team. Is it always productive to solve it in a team setting, or sometimes it’s better to solve it in a one-to-two settings, or one-on-one setting? I’ve not encountered anything such a conflict that it required individual time and attention beyond what we were able to do in the format that I typically do it in. What has happened is that there’s been an opportunity for me to work with that leader one-on-one subsequently, to help that leader to better work with his people so that those conflicts don’t arise or they get headed off at the pass if you will, before they even start to show themselves. And that’s been very effective because a leader then can understand, what some techniques might be to help those individuals both lean into what is so good about their behavior and see what might be a blindside for them.Share on X Yeah, that’s super interesting. So if someone doesn’t do that, is this what you call lazy leadership?  Yes, a bit. I talk about lazy leadership because again, I believe I was lazy in my career. There were times when I was very centered on self and my own achievement and was a bit lazy about the things that were most important. And so lazy leadership, when we talk about that, is all about not someone lacking leadership prowess or not lacking the ability to lead a group of people, but instead being very distracted. Today’s environment is so pressurized. The political stakes are very high. There’s board demands, private equity demands. The CEO demands perhaps, and leaders have a lot to contend with. It’s very easy to take their eye off the ball of the actions that they want to take. And it’s very seldom that they have quiet space to be able to think about the legacy that they’re leaving or building. So lazy leadership is all about intentionality or the lack thereof. And when I talk about that, what I mean is, how distracted are you? Are you being intentional about the things that you say matter to you? And if not, let us help you get back to that state of being an impactful leader who has influence and control. And if you’re in some of the other places, which we would call the leadership quadrants, you might show yourself in disengagement, you might show yourself in erosion or chaos. And if you find yourself there, how do you thrust yourself back into the impact zone? And one of the best ways to do that is by doing the XTR.  Okay. So, let’s take an example. So I am suffering from lazy leadership. I’m being distracted. I’m the CEO of this company. There is someone who wants to acquire us. The board wants to cut costs. My people want pay rises. We are losing talent, and a competitor is trying to disrupt us. So all these things are happening. I’m totally distracted. How do I use the Executive Table Read process to get back on track, refocus, and get productive again?  Yeah. Yeah. Here’s the thing. Leaders at that level have very little time. There’s a lot of time scarcity. And as you’ve just outlined, they have a lot of pressures. They have pressures to do more with a lot less in a lot of cases. And so the way that you might use the Executive Table Read is to intentionally stop time for a moment to focus on the team and the exercises that we bring so that you can get clear on what is it that you should or want to be focusing on, and how do your day-to-day actions represent that. Once you’ve figured that out, we can go through a process whereby you’re really being very specific with your week and precise about how you’re making decisions quickly for yourself and your team, so that you can get back in control. And that’s difficult. The scenario you just laid out is complex. It takes multiple angles of discussion to be able to work through that, but it can be done. And I think what leaders, more than anything really need is this concept of time and space to think, because they don’t have that in their day-to-day life.  The more senior you become in leadership roles, the less likely you have a confident who doesn’t introduce additional demands on your time or who doesn’t represent some level of political risk. And so the reason that leaders seek out an executive coach is because they crave that confidentiality, that high-trust partnership, and someone who is willing to be a reflection of what their actions are versus what they say they want. And that’s a powerful competitive advantage when you’re an executive leader. But it comes with confidential setting, confidence in the person that you’re working with, and a very high-trust situation. Well, it is very lonely at the CEO spot. It can be. I used to run a couple of CEO peer groups, and we did coaching, we did content speakers, all the stuff, but the biggest reason they wanted to be there was to have a peer group that they could confide in, share some things that they’ve heard about. They have a coach that would listen to them. It wasn’t even so much for any suggestions or ideas. It was just being a sympathetic ear who understands where they are. So that is true.  No question. Leaders really don’t have people that often tell them no or that often challenge them. And I think that’s exactly what an objective partner can do for someone is not just be that reflection back to them of what someone sees, but to challenge them a bit in their thinking and game play out scenarios that may be challenging for them. Where there’s no one asking for them to do anything other than themselves, and there’s no one introducing additional political risk or navigational relationship risk. And so when someone has that, you’re right, it’s someone who understands them, who is there to listen with them and has no agenda or objective other than that support. It’s something frankly, I wish I had sought in my career and I didn’t. It was never even offered or discussed, and I was a fool for not seeking that on my own. I could have had twice the impact, I think I did have, if I had sought some external counsel. Yeah, mentorship is so important. I did a keynote speech two weeks ago and they told me I only had 20 minutes. And what are the three most important things that I want to share with the audience? One of them was to seek out mentors. And I actually look back, I had so many mentors, whether in person, books, or conferences, thought leaders. So I think I did a lot, but then I also felt like I missed out on even more, because sometimes I just didn’t have the self-confidence to go to a mentor. I didn’t want to hear what they had to say. I felt overwhelmed. I felt insecure. Many times people who have been there and done it, they love to mentor younger people because they get a lot of satisfaction for being able to share what they know. Yeah.  What I’d like to ask you about is, so often people think they have a problem, but actually they have something else that is causing their frustration. It’s not what’s ostensibly the problem — it’s the real problem.  That’s true.  So how do you help them dig and find the real problem underlying their pain? Yeah, you’re very right. Executives, especially highly accomplished ones present with a certain framework of problems, right? They’re largely the same from executive to executive. What I find is the linchpin to uncovering what might really be going on is that trusted relationship. Nothing comes without that. And there’s a bit of magic in executive coaching in that you really have to have the right rapport with people, and I can’t undersell that. I often say to people, whether you choose to work with us or not, I want to give you an idea of what it might be like to work with us, so that you then can compare to other programs or other individuals who you might work with, because it’s all about your personal comfort level with someone. Once that occurs, then we quite rapidly can come to what’s really underneath the surface. And for us at The GAV Group, that's really about a sharing of experience.Share on X So it’s not a strict coaching relationship in so much as it’s a session filled with nothing but questions, but it’s a give and take. It is a relationship building exercise. And when that occurs, the questions that we ask of each other around our experiences usually leads to being able to see the kernel of what might really be happening. And what might really be happening is that leader might think that either the game has changed, or maybe the way they’re playing the game has changed. And usually that has something to do with their own identity jolt, whether that’s a loss of someone, or seeing a colleague have some difficulty. It could be any number of things, but sometimes it’s a reduction in force. Sometimes it’s a promotion that they’ve been passed over for, could be any number of things. But when they suddenly feel this like, I’m not sure I’m in the right game anymore, or I’m not sure I’m having the influence I once had. What’s causing that is usually a good kernel of what’s underlying the real presenting problem. And that only occurs with a relationship.  And then just becoming aware of what is causing that, is it enough? Or you actually have to help people move on to something else to be able to replace that lost meaning that they had?  Oh, yes, that’s not nearly enough. Then we have to get to work and action around it. So I am an action-oriented individual. I often joke that I am not a “woo-woo” coach, and I mean no disrespect for those who are more  woo-woo”. But I am all about getting into action around things. So once we start to pull the thread of what may be going on for them, then it’s time to get into action. And that’s where really what they want to build comes into play. So understanding and really doing some reflection themselves of where is it I’m trying to have an impact? Where is it that I want to have influence, and how do I want to be perceived — is critically important before getting into action. And then once we understand that, then it’s a series of “let’s try this and report back,” so that we can continue to move that needle towards where they’re trying to get to. Do you find that just the fact that someone starts taking action is already helping?  Yes, there’s a bit of lightning, if you will. A release of some amount of stress when someone gets back into control because action puts them back into control. And the moment they start to feel that, the moment they really start to show up differently, and it doesn’t have to be this momentous action. Sometimes it’s the consistent attention to some very unsexy tasks or some very unsexy behaviors is what starts to move the needle. And once someone really feels that, the momentum starts to gain, and then we can build upon.  Yeah. I read this somewhere about writers — sometimes writers have writer’s block. Yes, right.  They’re not able to write.  Yeah.  And they are procrastinating and suffering and don’t know what to do. And one of the advice I heard was that if you’re not able to write, just sit down at your keyboard and just start writing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And just by taking the action, you’ll actually start to get the hang of it and you will start to write things up. It breaks the pattern, right? I think sometimes leaders say to me, well, Corinne, I’d love to work with you, but I just need this one thing to happen first, and that’s an immediate tell for me. That’s an immediate sense of, does that really need to happen? What would happen if we started to work together and that thing changed completely? Or you approach that thing with more decisiveness, or you approach that differently because of the influence you want to have. And so this is a human instinct to want to, I just wanna have this all in order before I work with you, but the real thing is you’re feeling a sense of being not in the game you once were in, or not in control of the way things are happening. And the fastest way to get in control is to have a conversation with someone, so that you can get clear on what it is you're trying to do, and take the smallest step possible to get there.Share on X  Yeah, I’m with you. It’s the clarity and knowing that, okay, maybe there are thousand directions that I can go, but if I just go this direction, it’s going to be okay. That’s right.  Love it. Now, we’re close to the end of the time, but there’s one thing that you mentioned in our pre-interview that really struck me — when you said that what’s important, and something I’ve never heard anyone say before, is that you have to match the intensity of your client to be effective. So what does that mean exactly, and how do you do that?  Yeah. I think, beyond the fact that leaders really want someone who is that high-trust partner, they also want someone who is engaging, maybe a bit sarcastic or witty, maybe someone who matches their drive. I think because for me, I have been often, in often cases, in their shoes, I’m able to match their intensity, not just because, frankly, I’m a “get it done” kind of woman, but also because I’m not afraid to be a bit, I refer to myself sometimes, as being sassy. I can be a bit sassy. I can be a bit provocative. I can be a bit challenging. And I’m not afraid to match the intensity with which they manage their business in order to get their attention over something important.  And not all coaches will do that because there is a belief in the coaching world that the client is always the driver, right? The client is always the main architect of what they want out of the coaching relationship. I think I’m a bit different in that I believe that my experience can also lend itself to the conversation, and affords me the opportunity to say things maybe that might not otherwise be said, because I’ve got a lived experience that backs that up. And so I think it’s a combination of I’m not afraid to be that reflective mirror. I’m not afraid to be provocative, and I can be rather direct and have a sense of humor at the same time. So I’m not afraid to poke fun of myself, and I can sometimes poke fun at my clients once we have that trusted relationship, and that usually unlocks another level of our relationship. Yeah, I agree. And sometimes what I find that the more the leader is used to getting their way in their environment in the company, the more they need someone to really push back on them. And they actually realize that they might not enjoy it in the moment, but they realize that this is needed and they don’t get it elsewhere. And it’s kind of a precious thing, and they respect it.  Yeah, it is. When you can find that right partner, even advisor, sometimes it can make a big difference in how you show up and how you lead, and that’s what I hope to do. Yeah. That’s amazing.  So if people would like to engage with what you’re doing and learn a bit more and maybe have a conversation, see if you can help them, where should they go and where can they find you?  Yes. If you are a leader and you are curious about whether you are in the impact zone and how you are leading a legacy that you would be happy with, you can get in touch with me directly at corinne@thegavgroup. You can go to www.thegavgroup.com, or you can find us on LinkedIn.  Well, definitely don’t miss this opportunity and get a kick in the pants by Corinne and The Gav Group. Go visit her, check her LinkedIn out. And if you enjoy this conversation and you felt like it helped you see your business in a different light, then don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter, it’s SummitOS.co./newsletter.  Thanks for coming on the show, Corinne, and for those of you listening, thanks for listening, and please stick around next week.  You’re very welcome, Steve. Thanks for having me. Important Links: Corinne’s LinkedIn Corinne’s website Corinne’s email

https://youtu.be/NUdn7G2_y4Y Tim Rexius, Serial Entrepreneur and Founder of Omaha Protein Popcorn, shares how he helps people reach their personal greatness through health, fitness, and nutrition. We explore Tim’s journey from homelessness to multiple successful ventures, the strategies behind Omaha Protein Popcorn, and how purpose-driven leadership creates long-term impact.Tim introduces his Entrepreneur Creation Framework—Identify Them, Give Them a Voice, Coach & Mentor, Secure Financing, Let’em Do It Their Way—a system that turns talented employees into entrepreneurs, scales businesses, and drives innovation across industries. — How to Turn Employees into Partners with Tim Rexius Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the host of the Management Blueprint Podcast and the founder of the Summit OS® Group with the Summit OS® Business Operating System. And today I have an exciting entrepreneur on the show. When do I not have exciting entrepreneurs on the show? I always do,  but this is probably next level. So Timothy Rexius, he’s a serial entrepreneur, including the owner of the world-famous Omaha Protein Popcorn, which is launching in like four countries a month. He was Entrepreneur of the year, and he’s creating companies left, right, and center. So without further ado, let me introduce Tim Rexius. Tim, welcome to the show.  Thank you so much for having me. I’m honored to be here.  Well, it’s exciting to have you here, and we’ll have a good conversation talking about your special sauces. So let’s first start with your ‘Why’, your personal ‘Why’. What is driving you, and how are you manifesting it in your entrepreneurial ventures?  My ‘Why’ is, especially when it comes to the fields I’m in, all the companies I own are around health, fitness, and nutrition, and helping people find their own personal piece of greatness is an honorable trait. I wake up every day knowing I get to help people, and that for me is everything. You’ve seen the power of helping someone look and feel their best and what that can do to change them.Share on X And the fact that I get to be part of that is amazing. For me, it still gives me chills up my spine all these years later and that I get to be part of that story. It’s my ‘Why’. I’ve seen the power of helping somebody lose a hundred pounds. I’ve seen what that can do. And helping somebody overcome a death, a financial reversal, a divorce, or whatever it might be. And I get to be part of that story page, and that’s just awesome.  Yeah, that’s great. Shouldn’t all leaders think that way? Because this is what leaders do, right? We help people become the best version of themselves, be more than they imagined they could be,  and that’s highly empowering. Tell me about Omaha Protein Popcorn, and also tell me about how you’re launching all these businesses. Maybe that’s going to be your framework that you’re going to discuss because you are creating entrepreneurs. But let’s first start with the story of how you created yourself as an entrepreneur,  and then how you stumbled upon this protein popcorn concept. I’ll give you the quick and ugly version. I started in nutrition back in high school and into college. Loved it. I got the chance. I was really poor when I was 19, 20. I mean, most people are, but I was really poor. I was sleeping in my car, homeless for a while. And I was like, “Okay, what do I have?”  Well, I’ve got the ability to talk. I can talk like nobody’s business, like I can sell, so it looks like I’m selling myself. Something easy to do in the Midwest here in the United States in the summer is mow lawns. So I started my first business, Poor College Kids Lawn Service, and just started hustling door to door, and got myself out of my homeless situation, and loved it, as far as the money. And I loved being on my own. Wasn’t a big fan of mow and lawns, but I could do it. So I loved the nutrition, and it was in college, and college really didn’t prepare me for the entrepreneurial journey. I didn’t have family money. It was on my own. And it didn’t really prepare me for finding alternative financing measures or how do I start a business. So I worked in corporate America for six and a half, seven years. When I was 29, I was just young enough and dumb enough to go for broke. I quit my really good paying job, and start my first nutrition store in Omaha, Nebraska, called Rexius Nutrition. Named it after myself, brought in the whole mom-and-pop feel back to what I thought was an over-corporatized industry. And one store led to two stores, led to three stores, and I met my amazing wife. And within a year of meeting her, we went from one state to five states. And now we have franchises operating in five, and it just worked out really well. And it was still the highlight of the retail store experience, and we just had a different experience there. And at the same time as we’re scaling that business. I’m sorry, Tim, how is Rexius Nutrition different from other nutrition stores? What was so attractive that you could spread like wildfire?  None of my staff knows what I make on anything. Their job isn’t to know what I make on anything. My job as an owner is to know where the pluses and minuses are. My job as an owner is to know where the gross and net profits are. My staff’s job is to make happy customers. That’s it. And I think that in nutrition, it really got turned into high moving, high sales, high pressure, talking into the most expensive stuff. And realizing when it comes to health and wellness, it’s each person is their own individual storybook. There is no cookie-cutter. There is no one-plan-fits-all. It doesn’t exist. So if you have a bunch of 18- to 19-year-old kids selling products they don’t understand for the highest commission they can get to people of different walks of life, you’re not going to have a lot of success other than a moral standpoint. I felt it morally. I thought it was wrong, but from a business standpoint, it didn’t make sense. Because you’re not creating customers for a lifetime, you’re creating a one-time transaction. And I thought, okay, if I focus on the person and solving their problem, I create a 20, 30, 40, 50 year repetitive business cycle. And the only job I’ going to do every day is add one more person to that cycle. And all of a sudden you can grow an empire. And I’m doing it morally sound. I’m doing it based on your health. If you come in with a list from a trainer of the 20 items they want you to take, and I start asking you questions about your health, your medications, like where are you at? Like your lifestyle. I start asking all the questions. I’m like, hey, you don’t need these 20 things, you need these 2. Yeah, I’m not going to make as much money today, but now that person trusts me for the next three or four decades to the point that they’re bringing in their network, their family, their neighbors, their kids, everybody. that's how you grow a health business is by looking out for the constituents' health and their end goal more than mine.Share on X And all I need to do, if I do that once, is I need to do it a couple hundred more times. And so we are results-driven, not profit-driven. And so most of my staff never knew what I made on anything until they got into the management side. And then I’m like, okay, well, you’ve shown talent here. You’ve shown the drive. You’re doing a great job. Let me show you how the math of this all works. And I explained to them, it’s very tempting to push the high-dollar item. I get it. But that’s the check for today. I want to check tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. Okay. I love that.  That’s how I did it. That’s how I built the structure of it. And so how we built the franchising structure of it was the same thing. Once I had a great manager and they understood it. Okay, cool, you need to be an owner. I’ve taught you, I’ve trained you, you know how to do this. You’re talented. I mean, if you’re really talented, you’re not going to stay working for me. Let me make you an owner. Let me show you the fun of being an entrepreneur and being underneath our cloud of expertise that we have. We can help you, and boom, store after store. And it’s always been kind of true and I got to be for other people what I needed at that younger age that I didn’t have. And that’s also part of my ‘Why’. I can create better, more well-equipped business owners who deserve the opportunity versus just the rich kids who had family that had money to help them start. And so it’s another ‘Why’ for me.  Tim, what does it take for someone to turn into a successful franchisee? So when you see a talented individual who does a good job for you, how do you know that this person is cut out for being a franchisor, for being an entrepreneur?  Well, I look at every person that I employ from top to bottom. It doesn’t matter what stage life they’re in, what position they’re in. As a future either business partner interview or a franchisee interview. I’m going to see what you’re made of, and as you progress up the ladder in whatever organization I own, I’m going to start challenging you with budgets. I’m going to start challenging you with running an event and see how you do. Like knowing that I’m here to help them and I don’t micromanage. I give them an opportunity. I let them figure out where they’re going to screw up. I let them figure out where their talents are and where they need help. Are they egotistical? Are they going to ask me for help or not? And I get to see those things, and I get to kind of nurture that process and help them become more well-rounded in their entrepreneurial capabilities so that all of a sudden, like, and I’m a good judge of talent. I’ve done this a long time. I’ll tell them like, hey, it’s go time. And they know what that means. And if we’re having that conversation, that means they have shown me that drive to do more than what they’re getting paid for. And when they have that, I’m either, I’m going to lose them to my competitor, or I need to lock them down as a partner. So that’s how you build your franchise? And then we’re going to circle back to this whole idea of turning talent into entrepreneurs. But let’s go onto the story. So you had this Rexius Nutrition franchise, what was next?  That same model feeds into all of it. Then in 2017, you know what, we’ve been in the franchising now for 8 years, and it was growing well, and I had good employees still working for me at the Rexius Corporate. And we got into starting our first fitness centers. We own a chain of gyms too called Iron Heaven gyms. And that’s a former employee who has showed an extreme amount of talent and a phenomenal work ethic. And he’s like, I want to partner with you on this. I’m like, no brainer. You’ve already shown me everything I need to know as an employee, as a manager, it was either I was going to talk you into becoming a franchisee, but now here’s this new business opportunity. I already know what you’re made of. You already work for me. You already do much more than you get paid for. No brainer. Now we have a multimillion-dollar, multiple-gym fitness industry business here in Nebraska that grows by leaps and bounds. And so it worked again. At the same time, because I’m nuts, my wife and I got obsessed with the idea of protein snacks, and most protein snacks out there, especially in the US, are garbage. They’re very low quality. They’re just focusing on the macronutrients, the sugar, the carbs, the stuff that basic people who don’t understand health are looking at.  Yeah. They call it glorified candy. Yeah. Well, it is. And they’re using low-grade protein that won’t repair. So here’s the one, but I also have 6 children, and so I have this spread of kids from 25 to 6, right? So I got a real good spread at home. So I have this great market test at home. And then my parents are in their seventies, and they’re another group that doesn’t eat enough protein, that does a lot of muscle wasting. But they’re not going to eat protein bars. They’re not going to drink the shakes. The gen-pop person just isn’t going to eat those things. But there’s the one thing they will eat, popcorn. Popcorn’s the number one confectionary snack item in the world, in every country. And that’s crazy. So my wife and I have a tendency to get obsessed with things a little bit.  And after 600 batches over a year, we finally hit our eureka moment. We were able to blend the highest-grade hydrolyzed proteins into a caramel corn by removing all the bad stuff — no high-ose corn syrup, gluten-free, non-GMO — all the health standards we wanted. The macronutrients fit athletes post-workout perfectly. As a former fitness coach, it’s perfect and we knew it tasted really good. No one could tell. But we knew our family wouldn’t believe us. Because we were always doing healthy stuff. So we put out big bowls of it out at Christmas and didn’t tell anybody it was healthy. And my whole family — and my brothers are doctors — they’re just mowing this stuff down. And then all of a sudden I’m smiling, and my older brother’s like, “Oh God… this is healthy.” I said, yeah, but you didn’t know. And then my daughters, love them dearly, I think they were just doing it to mess with me, but they kept bringing home these gigantic bags of Smart Pop white cheddar. Just because I’m like, okay, game. So we invented the white cheddar, and so the top two flavors in the 16 current countries we’re distributing in are white cheddar and caramel corn. And so for the first five years, I’m not going to lie to you, brother, it floundered. It did not go well. It was called a different brand name, Optimal Performance Popcorn. But I knew there was something there. People who bought it loved it, they just couldn’t get more people to buy it. And now my investors are, some of them are former employees, and some are business partners. We really spread it out. But in 2023, we got the chance to rebrand it to the Omaha Protein Popcorn Company. And my daughters and my wife, who do significantly more shopping than I do, which was the problem. I designed it for me and I don’t buy anything. I work, I’m a dad, I buy the cheapest stuff, I buy by the pallet. When you have a huge family, that’s what I’m trained to do. My daughters and my wife who have more Amazon, TikTok Shop, and Facebook packages show up at my house on a daily basis. I should have had them do it from the beginning. So they redesigned it, they designed a mascot, they designed a new color scheme, new bag, a really good looking product. Wow. That’s crazy. Who would’ve thought that the packaging counts so much?  Apparently not me, until it happened. So, yeah. Yeah, it was amazing difference it made just by targeting our avatar. Who are we marketing? I marketed originally toward athletes because the macronutrients made sense. And they loved it, and they did, but you know, that’s only 5% of the population. And I needed to target the 95%.And so that was where the packaging happened. The 5% athletes still respect it. They love it, they still buy it, but we needed the packaging to get to the other 95%. And we are up 16,000% in 24 months.  Yeah. That’s amazing. Okay. So, very healthy popcorn. Who wouldn’t want that? It makes a complete sense. Although for five years it didn’t make sense, and now it does make sense. Packaging does matter. Let’s drill down on this framework of identifying talented people and turn them into entrepreneurs. So is it just, “Okay, you do a good job, and go on and run a company,” or is there more to it? You actually have to help them finance it, help them believe that they can do it. I mean, there are challenges with any business startup. How do you help them get through it and also not lose your franchisees, not burn them out, or what do you do? What is your process?  Well, the first process when I’m identifying the talent is like, okay, it’s bringing them into discussions and decision-making. Letting them have a voice, and literally knowing that they need to come up with something new. Are you able to think outside the box? As entrepreneur, there is no straight game plan. I mean, you have to be able to think on your feet. You have to be able to adapt quickly, make sound decisions, and don't get stuck into an indecision moment either.Share on X Because you can’t get paralyzed on the fear of making the wrong decision. I mean, because it is something obviously, as entrepreneurs, we’re not sitting on boatloads of cash, especially startups. You don’t want to make a wrong decision, but indecision can cost more money than wrong decisions. So I put them in situations where they start to have a voice. I want to see. Do you think outside the box? Are you regurgitating stuff you heard online, or have you actually done some research? Have you looked into the cause and consequence of this decision? Have looked at the 3, 6, and 12 month result of making this decision? And I start to bring them in here with the financial consequences. That way I can really build their business acumen and see how they respond to that challenge. Honestly, a lot of times they come up with a great idea. How do they respond to being told no? That’s the other thing, and a lot of people aren’t used to it or don’t handle it well. Then when we figure out, okay, this makes sense now, I’ve had guys buy franchises that are able to secure financing. Maybe they’re a veteran, maybe they’ve got a house, and they can co-sign. There’s different things, and we kind of go through that process. I’ve had some franchisees that now  were employees that did such an amazing job, and I knew they had the talent. I knew that they couldn’t scratch two pennies together, and so I financed it to them. I’ve done that. If I believe in them enough, my wife and I will talk it over obviously, and be like, okay, I think this couple, I think this people, like they’re really worth it. And now we get to be for them what we didn’t have and let’s go ahead and make a deal. Let’s finance it to them, or let’s do some seller financing. Where we helps with the bank. A lot of times if you’re doing an SBA loan and they want me to sell our finance 10 or 20% of it, or 30%, depending on the size of the loan. We’ll do that just to assure the bank that, hey, I’m not getting my money either. So you get your money. So that usually seems to help. And if somebody’s got family, and I’ll walk them through the process. Here’s the banks I like and the locality. Here’s the kind of bank you want to go with. Here’s some different financing institutions you could use. Here’s some different grant applications. We’ll pull the thread from every single one that we can to help people, and it’s challenging financing. The last couple of years, especially 2023 and 2024 economy were very rough in the discretionary spend market. So getting banks to finance was a real nightmare. But I know a lot of wealthy people in the venture capital area, the angel investors who like to own physical businesses who don’t have a lot of trust in the stock market. So who like to have little pieces and things, and explaining to our franchisees or our business partners, here’s what they want for an ROI, here’s what they’re going to look for.  Okay. Okay. So, you identify the talent. That’s step one.  Yep.  You give them a voice, you involve them in decisions so that they see what you are going through when you’re making the decision. Then you coach them to make good decisions, how to handle and “No”, which is not easy. Then you help them secure financing, whether through other people or yourself.  Yep.  What’s then they launch and off they go?  Yeah, no, and we’re there the whole step of the way. We’re there at every opening. We’re there when we need them. At the same point, it’s what you find is, even though that we have a great relationship present and let’s say that they know, they’ve learned from me a lot, they’re all going to go do it their own way to a certain degree. And I don’t get overbearing. My franchise disclosure document, as most people know, they’re about 120 pages long. I only enforce two pages of it. I don’t enforce it at all. I have it there for legal reasons, but I’m like, it’s your store. My job here is to help you be successful. Not to tell you what to do. And the reason they’re stepping out into ownership from our system is because they’re ready for that change. A lot of franchise systems, it’s more or less you’re handcuffed to the operating model, and I feel like in the health and wellness field, it needs to be built around the person owning the store and running the location, because it’s all about personality. That’s the story. That’s what buys brand in health and wellness. It isn’t like McDonald’s, which the golden arches, which are so recognizable that they can give you bad service 9,000 times, but you’ll still go. Small business has a lot more on the table. So I do it a little bit differently because everyone has a different skillset. And I’m there to help them. They’re all going to figure it out their own way. And here’s the thing, it’s always funny, even guys who worked for me for say 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years, they get in their own store, they want to try something that I said no to before. I’m going to go ahead and let them figure it out. 90 to 120 days later, we’ll have a conversation. And I never do it from a, I told you so, or a put-down method. I’m like, hey, how do you think this is working for you? Do you think there’s a better way? And it’s more of a coaching aspect. I’m not there to be your boss anymore. I’m there to coach.  So basically you are allowing experimentation, which is the entrepreneurial process. Super interesting.  But let me add a caveat to that. It’s I’ve gotten some flack from people about that before. Like, well, hey, that’s your store. It’s your brand’s, your name. And yeah, there’s risk with that, with them doing it their own way. It has led to some of the most ingenious moves and additions to our chain over the last 20 years that I could begin because one guy started selling essential oils. And I’m like, I’m just not into that. It’s just not my thing. He killed it. He brought in a whole demographic that is discretionary-spend heavy. We’re looking at the moms, right? The 45 to 65-year-old crowd. The moms and grandma crowd, the discretionary. They make 80% of the buying decisions for the household. He brought them in droves by carrying a line that I wasn’t super comfortable or educated on, and I never would’ve allowed as an employer. So when a franchisee does that, I’m like, oh, I don’t know, I’m coming in, tell me how this works. And all of a sudden now everybody’s doing it. So it’s risky, yes, but it leads to a lot of more ingenuity that you would have otherwise with a very structured, you can only do X, Y, Z type franchisee plan. Very interesting. So are you creating entrepreneurs who are not franchisees, or they are all franchisees?  No, some are franchises, some are business partners and businesses with me. Some go on their own. I’ve been an investor in, depending on what it is and how they want to structure it. I mean, they all know that I’m the first person that they should go to. I’m glad that I’ve done a good enough job that I am the first person that they go to. A lot of times I’m just coaching them. They’ve decided to step out on their own and to make a parallel business or horizontal move, whatever it might be. And they’re always coming to me for advice and like thoughts. Sometimes I invest, sometimes I don’t. But I’m part of that process. I get the opportunity every time, which is an awesome position to be in. I had a group of my franchisees who decided to make a vertical, have a secondary business. They started an energy drink company. And get to coach them with that. See how that worked. They wanted me to invest. I wasn’t super comfortable with it. Just because it’s not a field that I’m super familiar with. And I actually advised them maybe it’s not the best idea, but they were super into it, and they really believed into it and I’ve never been more happy to be wrong. Because these guys are killing it, and now they’re at that next stage, and I get to help coach them on that stage. So it just puts me in a great position of opportunity to either be a partner, be an investor, be a franchisor, but it puts me in this position where we leave it open-ended.  So Tim, surely not all of these opportunities stand out. What is your success ratio? How strong did you have to feel that this is going to succeed for you to pull the trigger?  I’d say right now, between franchisee investment, business partner of everything I’ve done, and it might sound crazy, I’m at about a 96% success ratio.  Wow, that’s extraordinary.  Well, because if you find out the integrity of the person, if the person has integrity, they have character, they have drive, and if I’ve done my job when I employed them and taught them, then as they say, if there’s a will, there’s a way. And if the person wants it as bad as they want to breathe, they will find a way to make it work. And that’s the spark that I look for more than anything is how resourceful are you? Do you throw your hands up when things get hard? Or do you get busy? And if you’re a get busy type, okay, cool. All you need is somebody with a little bit more experience to help guide that in the correct direction. But if you have that kind of drive, that kind of, I’m not going to give up mentality, you’ll be successful. My grandfather used to have the greatest expression. There’s well over a million ways to make a million dollars. You just need to pick one and go.Share on X If it doesn’t work, then pick another one. If that doesn’t work, pick another one and go. If you’re not successful, the only person you have to blame is you. Especially in today’s society, with these devices, the cell phones that give us access to everyone on the globe 24/7, 365, there’s no excuse left. If you have the ability to talk to people and sell, you have the ability to be wealthy and successful. You just going to keep grinding. And the only non-successes I’ve had, to be honest with you, were due to government regulations, something that’s completely and utterly out of our control.  So I agree with you in general. Nevertheless, there is risk involved in entrepreneurship. Always risk.  Even if you do things right, you’re very resilient, you keep trying, you keep managing your risk, but something black swan event happens and you can be taken out the game.  Oh, the 2008–2009 housing crash completely bankrupted me. And so I just was starting my first Rexius store, and all my money was invested in real estate. And I had to file a Chapter 13 sub-reorganization bankruptcy and pay it off over five years. And then we’re killing it, right? I got the gyms, I got the stores, I got the brands, everything’s going crazy. And then the pandemic hits. We lose 11 locations due to government regulations. Nothing I can do about it. And yeah, it cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that’s where the closures happen. Then you have the 2023–2024 post-pandemic economy, which discretionary spending was at an all-time low, globally and domestically. And you just have to learn the ebbs and flows of that. So yeah, it’s risk and reward. I always say that I’m willing to take a greater risk, so I should be available for the greater reward. It’s not for the faint of heart. And that’s part of my identification process when it comes to expansion and leveling up with franchisees is do they have the mental stability? The emotional stability to handle the ebbs and flows? And everyone’s happy when they’re raking in dough and they get the new car. What kind of choices do you make when you hit seasonality that goes down? Are you resourceful? I mean, here I was when I started Rexius, lost all my money in real estate, two master’s decreases, selling supplements. And since it was a new venture, the economy wasn’t doing great, I believed in it enough. So what do I do at night? I delivered pizza at night, three nights a week. In my thirties with multiple master’s degrees. Why? Because I’d had to do, I mean, nobody else is going to cry for me. I have to go do what’s necessary to make it happen.  And I don’t blame other people. Yeah. And the black swan is like, who was going to think the whole entire housing market was going to crash in ’08–’09? I mean, I thought real estate was the safest investment ever. I was wrong. And and it’s the post-pandemic economy that I didn’t expect. I mean, I knew that lending would be tight, but I didn’t expect it would get so tight to the point that it destroyed the discretionary spend market. And every one of these things that has happened has cost me money, but me having multiple income sources has in different types of income, where one goes up, one goes down, that diversification in my portfolio allows me to weather those storms.  Okay, so we’re running close to time, but I want to ask you this final question. What do you think is the most important question any entrepreneur should be asking themselves?  What am I good at and what am I bad at? It’s the biggest thing that I have to have conversations with people is having an honest audit of themselves.Share on X And can you be honest with yourself? I have a lot of people who want to own a business, who want to start a business, but are terrible at customer service. I said, okay, so what’s your plan? Who’s going to be the face? Who’s the frontman? Well, it’s got to be me. I’m like, no, you want popularity. There’s a difference. It’s just being honest. It’s with yourself. It’s like, do you want to be an entrepreneur because you don’t want a boss? Okay, well, that I get it. But do you want to work 60 hours a week and have a smile on your face? Well, no. Okay, well, then you’re not built for this. So it’s having an honest audit of yourself. What am I good at and what am I bad at? And if that person can be truly honest and audit themselves, like, hey, I suck at this, I’m super awesome at this, I need help with this, then they have the chance of being successful. Most people, I believe dilute themselves into thinking they’re great at things that they’re truly not. They just want to be great at them. And it’s, are you a good number one? Are you built to be that entrepreneur? Can you take the heat? Can you take the pressure? Or are you better at number two? Or you a good number three? Nothing wrong with either one of those. Us number ones, the crazy entrepreneurs, we need that number two, we need that number three, we need that number six. Not everyone can be an alpha number one. And so just having an honest audit of yourself, and do you want to be an entrepreneur because you just hate your job you’re in now and do you think that’s an escape? Or do you want to actually create something and put it all on you? And so that honest audit of yourself is the greatest thing that can be done.  Yeah. Love it. Self-knowledge. Know thyself. Yeah. I think something you mentioned at the very end is also important. It’s also do you have a worthy purpose that will keep you going when the going gets tough?  Exactly.  If it just the money, it’s not always enough. Because you can make money in an easier way. You can get a cushy job and make money, but do you have a bigger purpose that emotionally drives you that is going to help you through this tough time? When I went from homeless at 19 to working in corporate America, and I made a lot of money for somebody who was homeless to making at that time, this is 20 some years ago, making two, three hundred thousand dollars a year, but in a job that I didn’t enjoy, that I wasn’t morally aligned with. And I think having your morals and your values in line with your career is a huge deal.Share on X What you’ll find is that when you don’t get that passion check from your paycheck, you end up spending all your money on things outside of your work to bring happiness to your life that doesn’t fulfill from your work, and you still end up broke. And here’s what happened: ’08–’09 housing crashed. I didn’t like my job and I made a lot of money. I bought land, I bought all these things, and then it crashes. And so now I don’t like my job, and I’m broke. I’m like, okay, well, let’s go for happiness and purpose instead. And that purpose, that happiness, I knew what I was trying to create drove me on those days that no one came into the store. It drove me on the days when there was too much month left at the end of the check. And I’m like, okay, but I like this. I’m going to figure it out, whatever it is I have to do. And so, yeah, I preach that a lot when I’m at high schools and university speaking. And I’m like, what’s your purpose? Make your passion your paycheck. Literally, it’s then it’s no, like you’re going to have hard days. It’s still work, don’t get me wrong, but there’s a purpose behind it.  Yeah. That’s great. I think Bob Dylan said that: A man is a success when they get up in the morning and go to bed at night, and in between, they do what they love to do, right? Yeah.  So that’s awesome. So, if people would like to connect with you and learn more about your companies, the Popcorn, maybe they want to be a distributor for the protein popcorn, the Omaha Protein Popcorn, where should they go to check you out and to connect with you?  Easiest way to go to my website’s, just timrexius.com. That’s  timrexius.com. That links to all the socials, it links to all five companies, popcorn, speaking engagements, all that stuff. That’s the place to go. You email in, my assistants will probably reply, but they’ll get everything to me. And if there’s any way I can help out anybody, if I get a chance to, I’d love to do that. I like helping people and I think that drives me as much as anything. And just thank you for the time and the honor of being on your show. I really appreciate it.  Absolutely. So where is next?  What’s the next country you’re launching your popcorn in?  The Grand Caymans — I’m heading there next week, the Cayman Islands of all places. I’ve gotta go in November, leaving Nebraska, but the Cayman Islands is top of the list. Because we were at six degrees yesterday here, so I was very happy to go someplace warm. So that’s next, and then right after that we’re looking at Ghana, West Africa, and then going back to London.  So all the southern countries are being launched in the winter, which is a great time. It works out pretty well for me.  Yeah. Alright, Tim, well, I really enjoyed having you. Thanks for coming. And for those of you listening, don’t forget to follow us on YouTube. Check us out on LinkedIn, on Apple Podcast, and while you’re at it, check out SummitOS.co — our new website on the Summit OS® Business Operating System. Thank you for coming and thank you for listening. Important Links: Tim’s LinkedIn Tim’s website Omaha Protein Popcorn

https://youtu.be/l5fLRKRgpQc Alana Dobbins, Executive Director of the Business Owner Success Alliance (BOSA) and Business Development Specialist at W.G. Nielsen & Co., shares how servant leadership and active listening help advisors and entrepreneurs make smarter, faster, and more aligned business decisions. Alana introduces the 5-Step Listening Framework she developed through her extensive experience in investment banking and business development: Mandate, Plan, Team, Execution, and Self-Awareness. This framework helps leaders build trust, uncover risks, and strengthen alignment between vision and execution. She also discusses BOSA, an upcoming mentorship platform connecting business owners with trusted advisors through short, video-based guidance — creating an accessible way to get sound advice at the right time. From building chemistry with clients to balancing empathy with accountability, Alana shares how genuine listening and mentorship drive growth and confidence in the world of M&A. — 5 Steps to Better Listening with Alana Dobbins Good day, dear listener. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint podcast.  I’m the founder of the Summit OS Group, which developed the Summit OS Business Operating System. And today my guest is Alana Dobbins, the executive Director of the Business Owner Success Alliance and The Business development specialist at W.G. Nielsen and Company and Mid-Market Investment Bank in Denver, Colorado. Alana, welcome to the show.  Hi, Steve. It’s such a pleasure to see you again. I enjoy every time I get to share a conversation with you.  Yes, you’re referring to me being a guest on your podcast, which I very much enjoyed, and I’m sure this one is even gonna be better than that one. So let’s get into it. And, you know, I’m very interested in what drives people, and I always ask on this podcast, what is your personal why and what are you doing to manifest it in your professional life?  I love that question. I’ve seen you ask that on the podcast I’ve watched yours. Gosh, everything is different when you get older and over the years you realize what is important to you, and I wanna live a good life. And I don’t wanna walk by somebody that needs help and not help them. I don’t wanna over promise and under deliver like I have in the past. So I think that would be my why, and manifesting that in my career, it's every day we're serving business owners every single day in some capacity we're showing upShare on X and we’re utilizing skill that we’ve built over my 25 year career, your wonderfully distinguished career, but we bring that to the table. So I think manifesting living a good life is to really utilize everything that I’ve honed and I’ve developed, and that can be put to make someone else’s life better.  Yeah, it is so true. And when I was younger, even not that much younger, even a few years ago, like 10 years ago, I wasn’t really aware of this whole idea of why it’s important to think about who you are serving and how we are helping people, but it’s really a huge tool to empower ourselves to do our best work. And also to be able to have a long-term perspective, which helps iron out some of those rollercoasters that we all face. So yeah. You love your servant philosophy. You have developed an organization called the Business Owner Success Alliance. So what made you want to be involved with this organization and what is the mission of this organization? What I’ve seen and witnessed over my career are the business owners who are in growth mode, the business owners who are looking to exit the business owners who are leaning on others for sound advice, to make business decisions. And I’ve been very fortunate to have been exposed to this environment since I was 19. I was very fortunate for that and in seeing so many different types of business owners. The mission around BOSA is to bring together advisors and mentors that have sound advice that can very easily address something that might change the trajectory of a business owner's decision and having that advice at the right time along with it…Share on X We wanted to bring that in a way that was digestible. Connections can be made on BOSA where if an advisor and a business owner want to establish some sort of ongoing relationship, that’s completely up to them. But we wanted to bring an opportunity to have a business owner pop a question out and get a response, a 15, 22-second video response from someone that has valuable advice that can possibly help them make that decision at that moment so they can position themselves to do the best they can do in leading their companies.  Wow, okay, so this is a unique format. It sounds like, that you’re not bringing the peer groups together live, but it’s more about communicating through asynchronous video. And giving them a platform where they can look at other questions that have been posed and review other content as short video snippets that they can easily digest and go, ‘Oh, I need more information on that. Maybe I’ll reach out to that advisor’. But having that video library of other things, business owners in their realm, so questions that mom and pop business owners have are going to be different than established businesses in growth mode. So we have a dynamic way of allowing the person that owns the company in growth mode to see relevant contact and vice versa for the other stages of growth.  I love it. This is very interesting. And how many members are there in this alliance?  So we haven’t launched our platform yet. We are taking pre-registration via our website, and so we have quite a list of business owners and we’re building up our business advisors. When we want to launch, we want it to really add the value that we’ve built it for. So, we’re looking for additional mentors and advisors. We have quite a few business owners who are waiting. So we’re in the process. So if you’re a business advisor with an excellent career that you think you might be able to donate a little bit of your time. Mentors that are leaders in various different spaces, that’s what we’re looking for.  It’s so important. I actually was asked to do a keynote last week and there were only very short time, I only have 20 minutes and I picked three topics. One of the topics was mentorship and how important it is and actually looked through my life and I realized that I used a lot of mentorship, but I also missed out on a lot of mentorship. And I think the better mentors you find, the faster we can grow our businesses. So I allowed this initiative. I think this is very smart and very useful.  We’ve been exposed to so many in our careers. I know you and I have talked offline and so many in our careers have taken the time to lift us up and help us through things and, and teach us. So this is an— it’s giving back, but it’s also allowing an avenue where the newest and greatest tools, you know, forget AI. I love AI. But this is one-on-one real advice from experienced people.  Yeah. And the couple of things there I’d like to mention. So, you know, AI is very useful. It really helps with productivity, but a couple of things AI cannot do. So AI is not always able to filter information. It can create a lot of information, which is sometimes overwhelming. But you need wisdom, not just information, and you need to filter this. And mentors are able to bring that wisdom to the table. Mentors can also give you validation sometimes, you know, because as entrepreneurs we don’t just need good advice. Sometimes we need someone who actually gives us some encouragement so that we are doing good work, even though we are struggling. And the third thing is accountability. So again, it’s not possible to be accountable to a machine, right? But it is to a human being. So AI, ChatGPT is not replacing mentors. For sure.  Well, and when you mention all of those, it’s, you know, the failures that we learn the most from. I don’t think AI can draw from its failure in business. You know, there’s going to be triggers in our mentors and our business advisors history that something that triggers something that they failed on, that they had to really learn the hard way. And, helping business owners avoid that. That’s our mission really.  And really, you are not gonna learn big things without failing big, I believe, because that is the forcing function to push you to be creative, find a solution, and then it could be a unique solution, which then gives you a competitive edge. So it is huge and mentors can help with that. Alright, so obviously the reason you are putting this together, because you are, and I experienced this when I was on your podcast and you were asking the questions. You’re a really good listener.  Thank you.  And I think that’s why you have utilized a five step listening framework that you talked about in, on the pre-call to this interview. I’d love you to share it with our listeners what those five steps are and how do you go about, you know, actively listening with this framework.  And you know, when we talk about framework, we all make whatever we’re doing specific to our world, our universe who we’re helping. And as an investment banker and someone that’s been doing mergers and acquisitions for a very long time, I've found that this process of listening, it not only applies to my industry, but every single person that is running a business that has a specific job, it's helped me immensely for years and years.Share on X I wasn’t the best listener. And when you come, everyone says, well, know your audience. Know your audience. It’s not just about knowing who you’re talking to, it’s about understanding what you’re trying to get. What is the mandate of this conversation? Why am I here? So the first part of active listening for me is really taking a minute and going, okay, what am I looking to get out of this conversation? But what are they expecting? In this conversation that I could bring to the table that they’re expecting me to bring to the table to it speaks to alignment. Alignment in our world is so important. Alignment around what we're trying to do for a client, what our client is trying to accomplish in a merger acquisition transaction.Share on X What are our goals? How are we aligned around those goals? Bernard Ferrari, he wrote a book called Power Listening. Wonderful book. I would suggest anybody, business owner, advisor, anybody listen, read it or listen to it on Audible. So that first part of my listening, active listening process is your mandate. What are you trying to do and aligning around that. Why are we here? You could apply that to, why are you running a business? What are you trying to do? Or why am I here with this client? What are they trying to do? So that, I would say the first part of the active listening processes, understanding the mandate of the conversation. So, now that you’re present and you’ve, you’re aligned and you’ve brought to the table what you’ve come to talk about. What is the plan? So in a conversation about with a business owner, maybe I’m going to ask him, you know, what are the specific objectives that you have in place to accomplish your vision? So getting a plan, conversation going, that is usually pretty scattershot when you’re first talking to someone and your conversations centering around what they’d like to do. There’s going to be a lot of talk about what their plan is, but then what they need to do, their plan, do they have. So if you can kind of drill down and get more granular on the plan related to the conversation, the topic at hand, you could kind dive deeper in every question. So what are you trying to accomplish? What will move your mandate forward? What are the specific initiatives that will move those objectives forward? And then that conversation partner ends up really starting to think through that granular aspect of the plan, no matter if it's selling their business or growing their business, or whatever that looks like.Share on X And a lot of times. Something that isn’t talked about that’s very hard to really nail down is the timing. There’s a lot of plans out there, but what does that timeline look like?  I just wanted to reflect on this because as an investment banker, I also come from an investment banking background, although I left the profession about 12 years ago, but what I really noticed was that those clients who didn’t have a mandate, you know, maybe they just felt burnt out. They just wanted the relief and they want to sell their business, or maybe they wanted the windfall that comes with it, but they didn’t know what to do with their lives afterwards. They didn’t have a mandate. They really struggled after selling their business. They struggled with meaning. They struggled with the new challenge of managing their money, which was uncomfortable for them. And they had FOMO, you know, they had, they missed their business, because  they couldn’t channel their energies. And now I can really relate to this idea of what’s the ultimate objective and then how are we gonna get there? That’s the plan. So if someone knows what their mandate is and what their plan is, what’s the next step?  Okay. And, I wanna just touch on what you said because it’s very important what you just said. You brought up the risk. In that plan along with timeline, which a lot of people have a general timeline, but as you get more granular then you say, well, what are the risks we’ll be facing? And our risks as advisors are a business owner that doesn’t really have a plan after they sell their business. That’s going to bring issues to them greater than they can possibly imagine. So what is the risk to us? What is the risk to them? So addressing risk in that plan bucket is always a really good idea. I’m glad you brought that up. Now that we've identified our mandate and we have a plan and we understand the plan, we've gotten more granular.Share on X Now we’re going to talk about the team, not starting off with who’s on your team, but what capabilities do you need? And then do you have those? And it’s funny when you lead with that question, you know, you get a lot of people talking about how great these key executives are, or how well positioned you are to hit growth. That is going to really skyrocket your trajectory. But the team capabilities often are not met. You have some great key players, but then there’s going to be capabilities that they’re like, yeah, I don’t have a solid sales team or process.  And ultimately, the team is important because any business is basically a group of people with a mission, you can have a software, but someone needs to develop that software and to troubleshoot it and promote it. So without people, it’s really hard to build a business. Maybe in the age of AI, it’s gonna be possible, but not yet. Right. So we got the team.  Another thing that I bring up, I like to bring up in conversations when we’re talking about team members a lot of times there’s promotions within the organization and the management, the owner, whoever is making these decisions, they don’t always ask the question, is this role good for the team member? And I think when you take a step back and you say, oh, you know, I think they would excel there, but is that good for them? And so when those questions are brought to the table, a different lens is able to be brought in. Okay. So there’s not just that one way view.  Can you give an example?  Sure. So if there’s a professional, and it seems like a natural progression for them to promote into a higher role that will manage team members, but personally, they’re in a position in their life where the additional responsibility isn’t timed right, but they have all the capabilities, they’re solid, they’re loyal, they are a huge part of that team. Promoting them might not be the best, the best decision for them. Yeah.  Yeah. I experienced this. I had a very young, talented executive who did really well, investment banking, and I started kind of side business and I promoted him to be the managing director. And I totally burned him out and he ended up leaving and that was a huge loss for us. And one more thing in that vein is the chemistry. You know, we all are so different. All everybody’s so different to find that, you know, is the chemistry right? And if it’s not right, that’s okay. It might just take some shuffling but to address that question, people like to push aside personalities and just say, well there, you know, this is the job at hand and we’re gonna get it done. And we’re all professionals. The truth is chemistry matters and Steve, you know, as well as I do, we don’t take clients on that one principle if the chemistry isn’t there. We are working in very intimate parts of operating businesses and very confidential aspects of a personal and professional life of a business owner.Share on X So if the chemistry is not there, we have to address that. And so I think bringing that question up in conversations around team, it at least opens the door to start thinking about that being a component that needs to be considered.  Yeah. Love it. Love it. Okay, so we have learned about the mandate, we have a plan, we have a team. So what else do we need to listen to?  Well, none of that means anything if you can’t execute. So you can have the best plan, you can have a solid team. You can, everybody could be rowing in the right direction and know and there’s alignment. But how that execution actually plays out is going to determine if it’s successful or not. And so if you’ve planned well, if the team is aligned, if all of this is set to take off and you’re ready to pull the trigger, let’s talk about that execution. So how are decisions going to be made? That’s one of the questions I love to talk about because that is something that can, I’d say an SOP, absolutely can be in place for how decisions are made, but then to go outside that standard operating procedure, have you given your management the knowledge that they should go outside of that, and establishing that ahead of time is going to give everybody independence. Know exactly when to call an audible and when it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Getting to the right decisions at the right time. And you know that execution going hand in hand with managing complexity. You have to have a rhythm for that, you have to be able to look at your progress, look at what you’ve done, understand you need to pivot in this area, and so that execution can continue to improve and you’re not going to make the same mistakes twice if you have a plan in place. To understand how you’re executing, then you’re going to be better positioned to fix anything that’s off kilter or isn’t working at all. That rhythm usually comes in the form of a calendared regularly occurring meeting and you know, it's one thing, bolts from the blue where something comes up and you're going to need to address it.Share on X We all have those, but having a rhythm in place where not only you know what you need to talk about and what you need to review and monitor, but also having that rhythm that other people know what they’re expected to bring to the table and to be prepared to talk about and respond to.  Yeah, I mean, I agree that if you want to have good decisions, you need to harvest the ideas and engagement of your people. And you need a structure for this. It’s not gonna happen by default. You have to communicate that you are, you want their opinion so that they actually should bring it. And then you need to create space for it. And then you are gonna get, you’re gonna teach people to make decisions, and you’re gonna get better decisions by people who are closer to the action. It’s all very good. However, none of this matters without self-awareness. So how is self-awareness plays into this listening structure?  And I love this because all of those conversational, active listening topics that we’ve talked about, we’re here, Steve, you and I are business advisors, and we’re here to gather information so we can help them be better and help them accomplish something, growth, you know, whatever that might be. But there’s a personal aspect to active listening. When you know somebody, it’s easier to understand how they might present information because they believe a certain way or what’s important to them. So when you are working with someone that’s self-aware and understands everything about like if they’re risk adverse, then what they might project to you when you’re talking about risk is that there’s no way that could happen because they are so scared of taking any risk. You know that, well, no, I’m not going to believe that. I know that it might be able to happen. They’re just highly risk adverse, so being able to filter what you hear from a conversational partner and then understanding more about their personality and how they view things. And so some of the questions I might ask somebody I don’t know well, and I like to lead with these is, you know, what do you value? What’s important to you? What are your personal aspirations? And I just spoke to someone yesterday via Zoom that I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting. Very interesting individual, very engaging. I don’t think anyone had asked him what his personal aspirations were outside of what he’s doing right this moment. And it was so interesting to hear him start talking about that. So that gave more depth to see how he’s going to color all of these other areas about his mandate and his plan and his team. But then to get to the, you know, the real understanding, personally, I know what he wants to aspire to do now and then if you’re able to, which I know you are, to see them interacting with their colleagues, you know. How does this person interact with other people? Are they bringing this happy go-lucky attitude? Are they always looking at the glass half full or half empty? Are they, you know, however that goes. It's all of these different little tidbits of information lead you to what is this person's self-awareness. And if you know that, then you'll be able to do better helping them.Share on X  Hopefully. Especially if they’re aware enough, if they have very low self awareness, it’s gonna be difficult to coach them. People are not coachable when they’re not self aware. Now, this is great. This is a great framework. So this is the power listening framework. And mandate, plan, team, execution and self-awareness. One thing that struck my ear, you mentioned that a risk aversion, so sometimes people are risk aversion. Risk averse. It is true, but also entrepreneurs are often poor in risk management. Sometimes they’re risk averse and then they don’t make decisions, but sometimes they are risk unaware, perhaps. And maybe it’s not intentional risk seeking, but risk unaware or not sufficiently careful, cautious. And they make bad decisions. Stupid decisions. Why do you think that in general, the risk management is not so much of a strength of entrepreneurs?  The entrepreneurial journey is up and down. It’s not for the faint of heart, and we attract people to build, grow, establish, build, and grow businesses that tend to take risks and they’re independent. They typically have certain advisors or someone in their network or a few people in their network that they lean on for advice and when their ideas can be confirmed, it’s pedal to the metal. We’re gonna grow this thing, nothing’s gonna stop us. That is what’s in their character to do so as entrepreneurs, experience those ups and downs, that I think is typically why we find so many willing to take risks. But if, you know, if you actually ask enough questions that can get to where those boundaries are, then you can advise from a much better position. Okay.  Yeah.  So this is fascinating. So you are about to start your work at this investment bank, W.G. Nielsen and Company.  Yes.  How are you going to approach your work? I mean, business development has changed so much over the past 15 years since I did it for my investment banking firm. And we used to be able to cold call people and send them your newsletters, printed newsletters, and they would actually read– it’s no longer the case or it’s much harder. So what do you see as being the best practice business development process in investor banking? If you can talk about this.  I’m happy to talk about it. And unlike you, I was in this space before, there were online data rooms. When we would share information with interested suitors, we would literally make Xerox copies and we’d put them in binders and we would FedEx them, and then we’d wait three days to follow up and make sure they had what they needed in the information we sent. So, you’re right, it has changed dramatically. And with all of the opportunities there is a very specific process, I think, regardless of the industry to approach them. And that’s, you know, if I can have an introduction through someone I know, obviously that’s the best. A nice warm introduction. Someone saying, ‘Hey, you need to make meet Alana, she knows what she’s talking about.’ Something like that would be ideal. But, you know, nine times out of 10 we don’t have that, that luxury. So, somehow getting in front of them, whether it be through a video clip and a podcast that has something that interests them, being on LinkedIn and posting something that adds value to a question they had, but we bring a very unique in the investment banking space, and especially the middle market and lower middle market. We bring a very unique skill to a very important problem. So my goal in business development in this day and age is to show our expertise in their space and to offer them an ear for them to ask questions.Share on X An avenue for them when there is something on their mind related to selling or buying a business, I wanna be the person they think of. So establishing a rapport that’s genuine because it is such a unique space, we genuinely do wanna help these business owners clarify their direction. We might not be the right firm. W.G. Nielsen is extremely diverse in the investment bankers that they have on their team. So whether it’s healthcare, telecommunications, industrial, we have the right person that will have the right answers, but getting that comfort with business owners who don’t need you right now. Those are the ones I wanna talk to. They might not need me today, but if I can share with them that you have a place to go, when you do have a question, call me and if I don’t have the answer, I will connect you to the person that does, and that strategic direction that that one little tidbit of value that they might get six months before they’re ready may be the reason they call us when they’re considering who to hire. Yeah. This is very, very insightful. So it’s basically building the trust and building the awareness top of mind awareness that you’re there to help them when they need help. And also, I mean, I think the trust piece is very important in this business. Yeah. I mean, what I experienced was that people were very reticent about sharing their plans because they didn’t want competitors to get wind of it, didn’t want their staff to know. So for them to be willing to even share that they are thinking about exiting required a high level of trust from the investment bankers that they talk to. So if you have a good process to build that trust and you have a good team that is trustworthy then it’s a good spot to be in. And that, you know, it speaks to that chemistry, again, it speaks to if there’s five different investment bankers, which there’s usually 10 or 15 investment bankers talking to the same people, the same attractive business owners that run operations that a buyer would be interested in. But not all of them really care and business owners are astute. They know when they’re trying to be bamboozled. They know when someone’s trying to sell them something. When you come to the table, honestly, offering help and honestly wanting to give them direction, whether it involves your firm formally engaging or not, they sense that, and that’s I think why some people are successful and some people aren’t. Do they really care? Do they really wanna help or are they trying to land a new client, which in our space there’s a lot of both.  Yeah. And that brings us full circle to your why– helping people and the servant,  leadership, why that is so important. So, Alana, if people would like to learn more about the Business Owner Success Alliance and potentially W.G. Nielsen, or you, they would just like to connect with you and maybe have a conversation or invite you to a podcast, where can they find you? Okay, well I’m on LinkedIn. You can search Alana Dobbins,  you’ll be able to find me A-L-A-N-A-D-O-B-B-I-N-S. We are, as I mentioned, we are accepting applications for pre-registration on BOSA, so you can go to bosuccess.com and give us your information. We’ll reach out once we receive it, and we’ll talk you through our projected timeline and if we think it’ll add value to what you’re doing. So looking forward to that. W.G. Nielsen is W-G-N-I-E-L-S-E-N.com.  I’m looking forward to just this next year. There’s been a lot of ups and downs in a lot of different spaces. So the M and A activity is, it’s a very busy space right now. A lot of deals are being done, and a lot of questions people have with tariffs and other things. Speak to a professional. Don’t try to figure it out on your own. We have answers. We can help guide you, and you don’t formally engage anybody, just to get advice on something like that. Reach out to people you respect, you know, or someone like us and we can help guide you.  Okay, well, I can vouch for you, Alana. You are a great person. I would trust you with advice. So when I want to start my company, which is not gonna happen the next five years, I’ll try to keep you in mind.  Thank you. Thank you.  So, yeah, thank you. Thank you for coming to the show, to sharing your wisdom about powerful listening about the Business Owner Success Alliance, for which I wish you success. Thank you.  And, those of you listening to this conversation, if you enjoyed and you found this informational make sure you follow us on YouTube and on LinkedIn and stay tuned because we’ll have an exciting entrepreneur or subject matter expert on the show every week. Thank you for  coming, Alana. Thank you, Steve. This is always so much fun to talk with you. Thank you again.  Thank you. And thank you for listening. Important Links: Alana’s LinkedIn Business Owner Success Alliance (BOSA) W.G. Nielsen & Co.

https://youtu.be/76GQZb8nj_Q Pál Jalsovszky, founder of Jalsovszky Law Firm — Hungary’s fastest-growing commercial law firm — shares how he built a top-tier legal practice by challenging tradition and creating a firm that reflects his values of professionalism, creativity, and clarity. We explore Pál’s journey from international firms to founding his own, and how his Straightforward Legal Advice Framework—being Practical, Specific, and Risk-Weighted—reshaped the client–lawyer relationship. Instead of theoretical opinions, Pál believes lawyers must take responsibility, quantify risk, and give actionable answers that empower clients to decide with confidence. He also discusses building a culture of collaboration, training lawyers to think like business partners, and how AI will transform the legal profession—from due diligence and analysis to redefining what young lawyers should focus on next. — Give Helpful Legal Advice with Pál Jalsovszky Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Pal Jalsovszky, the owner of the Jálsovszky Law Firm in Budapest, Hungary, which is the fastest growing commercial law firm there, with a special focus on tax and the mergers and acquisition law. Pal, welcome to the show. Thank you. Nice to speak to you.  Yes. We go way back with Polly, 20 years probably. We were one of your first clients when you started the law firm in 2005 and we’ve worked together on many ideas and I, we met recently and I thought that would be a great guest on our podcast, sharing your journey of how you built up this very successful market leading law firm in Budapest. But before we go there, I like to ask my favorite question, what is your personal why and how are you manifesting it in your practice upon it?  Well, to tell you honestly, I didn’t have a personal why for quite a long time because if we just go back to my history, I worked for international law firms and 10 years ago I made the decision to separate from the international law firms and start up my own venture. It was an incidental decision at that time, and it was not a well thought and well elaborated, decision and step. I can tell you the story. The story is quite short that  I worked for Linklaters and I was working for the legal industry for seven years and eight years, mainly in the tax department, and I still believe that I need some more improvement in tax, so I wanted to go to an international advisor firm. And then I started my interviews and one of them was very positive to me. And we finalized the deal or this early we said that, okay, I would start working with them. So I was just leaving Linklaters, and, I believe that I would join that firm but there was a turning point when that firm started with the new head of a department who didn’t want to increase the number of employees. And then from one day to another, they said that they are not able to offer me a job. It was actually 20 years ago. And then, from one day to another, I quit a law firm and I didn’t have a new job. So it was just a decision what to do with myself. I start my own career. So it was not a very, well thought and well elaborated decision to start my career. So I didn’t have ‘why’ at that time. So I was just going with the flow. I was giving advice, I was trying to attract clients, and it came up that I’m valuable and I was needed by the client. So I just had one more client and one more employee, one more colleague. So I broadened my spectrum. I broadened my expertise. So when I started my law firm, I didn’t have any such type of a goal or specific vision. But since then, so I’ve been doing this firm for 20 years now. So in the meantime, such type of wise and such type of impact or answers have in fact elaborated in my life and in my way of thinking. And now just starting, so preparing for this discussion, I just put together all the things that I have in the back of my mind that really just may be the idea or the drive  to come to this point. And one was actually to be the law firm that on one hand is professional, but which is also out of box, which is actually reflect my own personality, which is on one hand, services clients in the highest professional manner. On the other hand,  a law firm that is creative, that is exceptional, that is unique, that is actually the corporate myself.Share on X So how I behave, how I work, how I think, how I manage my own personal life, which is not definitely the mainstream, which is a bit unique, a bit out of the box way of thinking. So one hand to create a law firm on my image. Yeah.  The other is to build a community, because a law firm is a bunch of people and the most important asset of a law firm are the people. And, it was so lovely to see that I started to hire people under my own methodology. I wouldn’t say that I have a very good sense of creating personal relationships and in my private life I had some problems with that, but it turned out to be that I had quite a good sense of feeling to select those people around me who fit together each other and who can work in a combined manner and who can cooperate efficiently and who can create a society, can create  a common workshop. And creating a set of people, just the community became a very important part of my goal and my achievement. And then third came the market impact so that it’s not only an impact that I can create for 20-30, and now we are 60 people, but we can create something for the society, for the community, for the country, for professional community so that to create something which can also add something in a bigger manner.Share on X Either university students, we started our academy three years ago, which targets university students, providing them with practical knowledge and practical expertise, and also with the legal community. And also making a footprint, making a type of a brand, an image on how to run a law firm in the modern time, in the 21st century and how to a bit, adopt a new manner in old fashioned and very traditional industry.  Yeah, yeah. No, I love it. And, when we first met, it was actually an interesting story because the building where we met turned out to be located on a plot of land, which was owned by my great-grandfather. So that was kind of a very interesting realization. But what really struck me when we first met was that you were a really good listener and you were very thoughtful how you gave advice and you had some really good out of the box ideas at the time. It was the tech structuring for an M and A transaction. And I was very impressed with your creativity there. And then we started working together on different projects and I remember you were hiring some people who were kind of picking things up and tell, and really following the style that you introduced. So what I’d like you talk more about at this point is your process. So, how is your approach different and what is it that you do differently? And you talk about being, providing straightforward legal advice. Maybe you can call it the straightforward legal advice framework. So what does that framework look like and what are the elements.  So if you speak to lawyers in many countries and also for Hungary, lawyers tend to avoid giving you a straight answer. So in most of the cases, you receive an ambiguous answer from a lawyer telling to you that if you see from this angle you can get to this result. Come and other angle you can get to another result. And then nothing is black and white. Everything is great. And, I don’t believe that it helps the client in any way. I’m sure that you need to give a comprehensive answer to the client, so not just saying yes or no, but I believe that when you give advice, the advice is that what the client should do. So you need to assume the responsibility of providing clear guidance to the clients that in a certain situation where he should go. And, in doing so, it’s not only your gut feeling or your internal belief that you’ll need to take into account, but also the perception of the client because a certain advice is valid for one client, but it’s not valid for another client. I believe that there’s an art in that when you understand the problem of the client, you have the legal reasoning behind, you come to an understanding of what are the risks what are the circumstances, what are the legal aspect of a certain case, and then you dare to go to the client. Tell him that in your situation, I would do this, or I advise you to this, or I would advise you to do that. And, this is very rarely done in the legal profession. And most of the lawyers, they believe that this is an excessive responsibility. That if you say something to the client, then you assume bigger responsibility. If you just described the social situation and leave it to the client what to do, I don’t believe this is the case, especially if you tell the client that he or she should go probably to this direction, but okay, it has this type of, or this amount of risk, you do not just propose the client to take one road or one direction, but also tell him that, if he just opts for this decision that, what consequences it can have. Whether those consequences, they are deep, they are risky or they are negligible. Actually, I’m not only a lawyer but also an economist. And I have a very good mathematical background. And, what I just elaborated is to giving the percentage to the client that what is the percentage of the risk, or what is the percentage of the negative outcome, which is very rarely done by lawyers. Lawyers tend to say it is a significant risk or low risk or medium risk. So they tend to use certain words or certain objectives, which I hate because this really just a type of direction which can be open to many interpretation I like to give percentages. Sorry, I stop you. So how would you describe the right kind of advice? What are the elements to it? You know, this podcast, we are always trying to break things down so that people can more visualize what it is and how to do it and have a clearer understanding about it.  So, on one hand you need to describe the entire situation to the client from a legal perspective. So, you cannot avoid just saying yes or no, such as saying that the final conclusion of your situation is A or B. But give a legal reasoning that in your situation, what are those legal elements that should be taken into consideration? Then the next step is that you evaluate this legal risk and this legal situation and come up to options to the client that actually you have two or three options. And then you clearly describe that, what their options are, and then give a suggestion to the client that in your situation, in your personal situation, in the business situation and, in my best legal and business opinion, you probably, you are best off with this option. Okay, this option, we have this and this risk, but those risks can be mitigated or they have just a low profile or they are not substantial. But, yeah, you should build up on one hand an understanding of the client that what his or her legal situation is,Share on X second part, the options, and then to go with options and to evaluate those options and probably give. A best option or what you believe the best to the client, but also give the implications of choosing that option. Yeah. So what you mentioned to me earlier was that you really want to be practical in your advice, so not a theoretical, but a real practical thing approach that can be implemented. Then be very specific about, what to do. And then as you described, kind of a risk weighted approach that, okay, this is what I would do– it’s 80% chance that it’s gonna work out. These are the risks. 20% chance that we could have complications. Sometimes you go to the doctors and they tell you that, okay, your shoulder has to be operated on because you have this tear in your shoulder, and it’s an 80% chance that it’s gonna heal without any problem. There’s a 20% chance that we might have to go in and do some adjustment. But you still can recover. It’s just gonna take a little bit longer. So is this the kind of approach that you’re describing?  It’s in fact the approach and parallel with the lawyer, with the doctors is extremely well because all profession is for many perspectives are very close to each other. And, yeah, what I expect from my doctor is to give me a clear indication what I should do. And obviously, when I go to a doctor, I just understand half of what he’s saying to me because I’m not a professional and even the best doctor can explain to me not a full extent that exact problem and it’s exact physical biological courses that I have at the moment. And me as a lawyer, I should take into account this example because probably for the clients that came, come to me, they have the same problem with understanding legal concepts.  So, I should not start from a legal point of view or a lawyer’s point of view that you know what representation warranty is, you know it exactly. You know what indemnification is. You need to start explaining from the basics, and obviously the client will not come to the same level of understanding the laws where you are, but you should explain to him in such a manner and in such a simple way that he comes to an understanding of what is at stake, what are the risks and where he should go. One important factor is that what we are talking about at the moment is myself. And, they, honestly, I believed that I was a good lawyer and, I could have, to, lot of the clients like, I helped you and I helped your colleague. But real trick and real beauty is that to transfer this way of thinking also to my colleagues, and you can expect that I recruit colleagues from all over the country,Share on X from individual law firms or Hungary law firms, from the university. And what was a real challenge is to train those lawyers to have the same mindset that I have. And you can expect, and this is really a very funny story, that the lawyers are those ones who work with international law firms and who’ve been with international law firms for many, many years, and they got a type of ideology of those law firms of not assuming responsibility, not to give a clear advice to the clients and then try to limit the responsibility to the highest tax possible. And when I recruit a lawyer from international law firms the first couple of months go on with trying to persuade him that assuming risk or giving a clearer advice to the client is not bad. On the contrary, it is what the client wants, but it needs training, it needs exercises. And I’ve gone through many, many occasions, especially with senior lawyers who come to me, the 10 or 15 year experience and who had a completely different mindset. Yeah, I love that. There’s a thought leader in professional services and who was actually a former lawyer, David Meister, and he wrote about this. He wrote the book, The Trusted Advisor. It talks about this idea that the trusted advisor has to take risks in helping the client, and it’s like a personal risk because you might tell this client something that they don’t like to hear, and they might not like you in the moment for giving them this information. Of course, you have to do it in a tactful manner, but if you’re not doing it, if you shy away from it, then you are doing a disservice to the client. And often these clients are powerful individuals who are not getting pushback from the people below them.  They are not used to frank feedback and there is a risk that they will not enjoy hearing that. And they will you know, want to shoot the messenger. If you don’t do it as an advisor, then you are not giving full value to your client. So.. Correct. And this is again, a very good parallel with the doctor. So if you go to a doctor and you feel bad, what you do not expect is just neglecting your situation. Then telling you an unreasonable advice that, well, you will hear, there is no problem, just make some exercise. You want to understand the whole situation, even if the situation is painful and, it’s negative and, it has complication. So for many respects, we can learn from the doctors. So when you go to a doctor, you would like to receive transparency, a full set of information of your expected process situation. This is exactly what you request from a lawyer.  Yeah. Love it. Okay. So you, you have your straightforward legal advice framework. So be practical in your advice specific and, share what is the risk or different outcomes. Make a suggestion, make a proposal, take some risk, and advise your client. This is very,  very helpful. Now I’d like to switch gears here and talk a little bit about how the legal profession is evolving. AI is impacting, is disrupting many, many professions and almost all types of knowledge work. And I wonder what you see is happening in this profession and what is going to happen? What is your vision? How AI is going to transform the legal profession?  I believe there are two answers for that. The one answer is that I participated a presentation and the presentation started with a quote and the quote said that technology will transform the legal industry completely within five years. This was the quotation and he asked us that what we believe the date of this quotation was. And people started to think 2010, 2015, and no, it was 1985. So the real question is, again, that, when I believe that the the technology will transform the whole legal industry, and I believe it is the case. It has been ongoing for decades now, and people tend to say that the legal industry will be subject to a full technology transformation. And it did not yet happen, or did not yet happen too much. We are still working in a very old start fashion. And especially, I, sometimes I feel guilty that in many industries technology and digitalization has already made a very big part, not yet in the legal profession. We still have a very traditional, very old fashioned profession. So on one hand it may go on and there are old style lawyers who would like to keep up their current status quo, and they would like to maintain their current lifestyle and style of advisory. So on one hand there is a drive to try to avoid the changes and the technology development. On the other hand, I do believe, and actually this is my clear answer that the technology will, the question within, how much time and within how many years completely transformed legal industry and the lack of the lawyers. And, this is obviously accelerated by the rival of artificial intelligence. And we already start using a certain part of artificial intelligence in our daily life. But I would say, it has an influence of 5% of our daily life, not both of 5%. And if you just think it over that open AI just came to the market and made its eruption to the market three years ago. And even at that time, it was told that, oh yes, artificial diligence will completely transform the market and all industries with a very short period of time. Well, in three years, it’s just made a 5% difference in our daily life. So I don’t know how fast this development will be, but there are lots of visions how the legal industry will look like in certain amount of time. And, you can just imagine that what we are doing as lawyers, we are putting together contracts, those contracts are made out of already existing contracts. So they have already been typed, created, put together. And this is an exercise that sooner or later can be taken over by artificial intelligence. Analysis of laws, analysis of pieces of law, analysis of core decisions. It’s again, something, which is at the moment the prerogative of lawyers. But in a couple of year time, it’ll be taken over by AI, and the AI is developing so fast that, in one or two years, I believe, an AI will give a better summary of certain legal regulations or court decisions than a trainee lawyer. The more the IBB develop, the more sophisticated legal factual background can be given to the AI, so that it can formulate in all its own decision. The third issue was the third territories due diligence exercises. So at the moment, what we do with due diligence, we receive thousands of pages of documents we need to review. And there are humans in front of the computer, they’re reviewing, they’re trying to pinpoint the intricacies or the pain points or the red flags in company documentation. And then with hundreds, 200, 300 of job, we are putting together a due diligence report. And on one hand this can be replaced by computer and by artificial intelligence. And the second I believe in a short time, the artificial intelligence will be more accurate than a lawyer. So probably a couple of years time I will more, I will be more confident with the AI than with the junior trainee lawyer who has been given a certain type of training, he has already had a little bit of an experience, but it’s knowledge and it’s capability to review documents being far from the competence of AI. So, where it’ll be if you lead, it’ll lead to a lower amount, lower demand for junior lawyers. So the junior lawyers work will transform, which will create lots of problems for law firms. And, I can tell you just a couple of those, on one hand, this is the practical knowledge and training of young associates. So what we did so far is that we learned, or we taught our junior the associates at the charge of the client. So we have given them a certain job. On one hand, we could invoice it to the client. On the other hand, they were trained. So it’s the best of the two worlds. And this will miss out because the client will not pay for junior associates. They will pay for the artificial intelligence. So if I need to train my lawyers, it’ll be at my own cost and not at the cost of the client. So this is on one hand, the problem. The other problem is also invoicing because we are invoicing hours of lawyers and the biggest invoice is not sent out over a one hour discussion that I have with you, I have with a client, because you can invoice just one hour, you can invoice it with 200 euros, 300 euros, 1000 euros. But it is just 1000 euro, one hour of work. And big bulk of the big amount of invoices were made out of big jobs which included lots of hours of training junior lawyers works, for example, the due diligence or putting together memos or reviewing court files, which be no longer be there. The real question that how we can maintain the amount of billings that we submitted to the client each month these days. So this is just a couple of problems that will be created by AI, but I’m sure that will, this time will come that we question,  is that when it’ll arrive.  That is super interesting what you’re describing, and it’s been since the industrial revolution people were afraid of new technology destroying jobs. And it did happen. New technology was destroying jobs all the time, but at the same time, new jobs were created, which took, absorbed the labor force from those destroyed jobs. And it’s just, became a transition of the new jobs. And the question is– is AI qualitatively different types of this type of disruption than the previous disruptions were, and is it going to eradicate jobs without creating new jobs, or it’s gonna create more wealth and more demand for services that maybe we can’t envisage yet that has to be provided by people and therefore it’s just going to transform our economy? When I read Mr. Hari’s book on the 21st century, he opted for the first alternative so that there will be no further work and, all of us will live a very happy life without the need for working. And we will receive a global salary each month. Okay, there will be a small cush, a small part of the population will still work and who will enjoy working, but the bigger part of our society will just trust in the sunshine, beaches and drink cocktails and get a universal salary. I would rather predict the second option, what you’ve described that even with the AI, new types of jobs will be created and more specifically, we, humans, we need to exercise, or to create a stimulus to our brain we do not like to be lazy and to stay at home without achievement or without goals or without objectives in our life. I would rather predict a world, when we will still have jobs. And we still work,  depending on what part of the world you’re living,  seven hours, eight hours, or even up to 11 or 12 hours per day. But the professions or the jobs, will be different. And,  we will need a different type of contribution to the circle of the world. I think the desires to have meaningful lives, and I mean, you can see it in societies where, for example, a lot of women don’t join the workforce or they quit early, they raise children and then children leave and then they might not need a job because maybe they are financially secure. But they’re going to do, and they’re going to do volunteer work. They’re going to go back to college, they’re going to spend time with their grandchildren because people are always searching for meaning. And it’s the human condition, I think that’s how, that’s how we have worked. So, our time is up. Thank you for this conversation.  Polly, this was the most enlightening. So if our listeners were predominantly in the United States, but some are in Europe, if they would like to learn more, and connect with you and perhaps, seek you out, where should they go? And, where can they find you?  Thank you very much for this conversation. I enjoyed it thoroughly. First, I encourage you to come to website this www.jalsovszky– it’s J-A-L-S-O-V-S-Z-K-Y.com. So, you’re invited to come to our website, but we also have a Facebook account. We also have an account on Instagram and we have some special thematic websites on one hand on asset management, on the other hand, tax or certain investigations, but it is just for deep insight or if you want to get deeper and dive more into activity, I will very happy to invite you on those thematic websites. But the key where you can get some further information on our practices and activities in our general website, jalsovszky.com, so you are more than welcome. So check out jalsovszky.com. If you’re watching on YouTube, you’ll see the spelling of Pal’s surname, so just follow that, or just click on our show notes and it’s gonna be there and you can click through there. Polly, thanks for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom. And those of you listening, if you enjoyed the show, make sure you follow us on YouTube and stay tuned because every week I bring an exciting entrepreneur or subject matter expert to the show. So thanks for coming. And thanks for listening. Important Links: Pál’s LinkedIn Pál’s website

https://youtu.be/Da2JjKuwqiI Adam Joseph, entrepreneur, 5-time PE-funded CEO, two-time Fortune 100 executive, and Summit OS Guide™, shares how developing people through ownership, mentorship, and trust drives leadership growth and organizational success. We explore Adam’s journey from first-time founder to leading multiple private equity–backed companies, and how his Leadership Growth Framework—Identify Talent, Launch Careers, Mentor, and Allow Them Room to Fail—has helped him build empowered, high-performing teams. Adam explains why potential matters more than experience, why CEOs must coach forward instead of managing backward, and how giving people space to fail builds resilience and confidence. He also discusses the “Burn the Boats” mindset—what it means to go all in as a leader—and shares how to balance ambition with purpose, family, and fulfillment. — 4 Secrets to Growing Leaders with Adam Joseph  Good day. Dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint podcast, and my guest today is Adam Joseph, who’s an entrepreneur, a five time private equity funded CEO. A two time Fortune 100 executive and the Summit OS Guide. Adam, welcome to the show,  Steve. Thank you. It’s been a long wait. I’m thrilled to be a part of blueprint. It’s good to have you here on the show and, you know, let’s dig in. I always ask guests about their personal why and how they manifest it in their professional life, in their business, in the practice. So what is yours?  So, I know this sounds cliche, but you know me a little bit, so I think you can validate that. I really try to live life to its fullest when it comes to my career. I love to fill my days with people that share my passion for building. When I come home, I wanna be with people I love, and when I have time off, I want to enjoy the adrenaline sports that give me energy, whether it’s skiing or biking or hiking. Or climbing, whether it’s with other experts or newcomers who wanna learn. For me, that’s what energizes me. And I have found in my career that it’s possible to do this in business as well. I can remember as a young entrepreneur, building my first company, trying to get my very small team to be as productive as possible and to work as hard as possible. And part of the magic with that was to get the most out of them. I bought two cheap hockey goals at a Costco, and every day at lunch we play a little roller blade hockey. Not only did it make them more fit, but they, we really got to know one another and, and enjoy one another aside from sling and code. And I, not only rewarded them with a little bit of fitness, but we were fortunate to get a trade sale just a few years later.  Wow.  I truly believe in all things you need to savor the journey, not grind to the finish line. It’s true in a bike race, it’s true over dinner, and it’s certainly true with a business. Yeah, I like to say also that it’s so hard to make a business successful if you don’t at least enjoy the ride and you don’t have fun along the way.  Absolutely. I mean, and there was absolutely times in my business career where it was nearly impossible for me to come up with that right balance and it impacted my family, it impacted my personal wellbeing. I would argue that many of the management skills I developed as an operator were so that I could make the time to recover that balance between work and everything else.  So what does it take to create the time? What does it take to have this balanced life as a top executive? It’s not something that CEOs brag about, that they are having balanced lives. Well. A lot of it is being part of or building a great team. To me, the best thing you can do is have people that you know and trust, that you can not only delegate things to, but know that they'll be done as well or better than you can.Share on X ‘Cause quite honestly, particularly as a growth stage, CEO, a lot of your time is spent either doing other people’s jobs that you may not do nearly as well as they do or worrying about how well they’re doing it and, and sometimes sticking your nose in places where it’s just not helpful and oftentimes counterproductive. So what does it take to be at a team, such a team around you? How, how do you attract these people?  Great question. So important and rewarding. One of the things I’m most proud of in my career, you know, are some of the people that I brought along the way and certainly appreciate others doing the same for me, the first piece, and again, this is one of the parts I also really enjoy, is identifying talent.Share on X If you’re in a bigger company, finding people in the organization, if you’re not looking in your network, your friend’s network, right? Good people stand out and I strongly advise to select for potential, what they could be, not their performance in their last job. I assure you, your top seller does not often make the best chief sales officer, I’ve made that mistake.  Sorry Adam. So how do you know who has potential? How does it show up?  So some of it is just, you know, understanding what drives them, understand how they interact with you, how they interact with others that, you know, get, oftentimes you’re finding out about them because of a reputation, because of something they’ve done. Peel under the covers, understand, you know, where they want to go with this, how they got these skills, et cetera, and so forth. And in many cases, it’s giving them a test drive, taking people that have never managed anyone in their lives and saying, today you’re not gonna manage people. You’re gonna manage a project, a blueprint, what have you. And maybe that becomes a business and you get to read it or lead it, or maybe it doesn’t. That the main thing to me, whether you’re developing a leader or an individual contributor, is work with them on an idea that they can own with plenty of wiggle room for them to grow and innovate within that idea, right? The concept of a business within a business or an entrepreneur, working for an entrepreneur makes absolute sense and really gets you to exploit the best of that person, the things that they're passionate about.Share on X  I like what you said about ownership. You  mentioned, you used the word ownership. You’re looking for people who are willing to own their function. What do you mean exactly by owning their function?  Owning their function. So again, it begins with you as their leader, giving them lots of rope saying, we have a problem. Right? We’re trying to, I can look at my, think back to my experience with Dan Grom at Concur. Dan was a star collections manager at Concur. He was collecting millions of dollars from some stingy CFOs who didn’t want to pay us. He came to me and said, I want to be part of your customer success organization. I wanna touch customers on the positive side not take their money after they’re already onboarded. So we came up with some ideas on things he could help me with on a fledgling business that was auditing customer expense reports. I said, Dan, figure out a way to do this less expensively and more effectively than we do today. It took months and months just to come up with the scheme, eventually resulting in us creating a thousand person global operation that Dan, who managed, you know, five collection agents when he joined me, was overseeing and generating over a hundred million in revenue. We applied his ability to connect with people. The idea that we could automate a service that we were previously doing with people to create a business that represented roughly 10% of our company’s revenue before we sold it.  Okay. So, that’s ownership. He had an idea and you let him run with it. And he created a business within the business, kind of an entrepreneur type of situation. So, when you identify the talent, what’s the next step? What do you need to do with the talent that you identified? You give them ownership. What’s the next step?  Oftentimes, when, before giving them ownership, getting them hired means really enticing them, right? And leveraging, you know, their own entrepreneurial spirit. For me, as a grower, right, and someone who’s building businesses, having someone with that passion is important and convincing them. That joining our team, being part of a, a bigger function and taking on a meaningful role is something they really wanna do. You know, once I bring them on board, once we give them that challenge, it certainly requires a great deal of investment in them. Training, mentoring, et cetera and so forth. You know, when it comes to mentoring, my guidance is really think about coaching people forwards, not backwards. Spending a lot of time on the things they should, or could or would’ve done isn’t gonna help them scale, you know, instead provide a framework that allows them to make mistakes. I mean, let’s face it, we’re not surgeons or nuclear scientists. So if a mistake is made, no one’s going to die. But oftentimes, that leader or potential leader learns more from making that mistake and getting collective feedback on how they could have handled it differently than watching someone else do it or telling them how to do it.Share on X Yeah, yeah. Just an aside, so I just got off the call with a client. And he told me that he was very frustrated because one of his team members made a $50,000 mistake. And I said, okay, and what did you do? He said, the first thing I did was I called that person and I told her that her job is safe. This is not gonna count against her, and we are going to figure out how to solve this. And just don’t panic. Do your job and you’ll figure this out. So I think this is super important. Even Jack Welch tells a story when he blew up a factory and then he got a promotion afterwards.  No, I think that’s great. All right. As an entrepreneur, you gotta be in it for the long haul. Right? And bumps will happen, mistakes will be made, and great ideas will evolve over time. But having people with the spirit and the confidence that you’re invested in them just as they’re invested in you and the business is critical. And by the way, just because you’re giving them a lot of rope doesn’t mean that mentoring, you know, in the form of informal conversations and feedback is super important. I strongly suggest having those conversations, if not monthly, then quarterly with your highest potential people. Keep it human, keep it informal questions like, ‘Hey, what’s working great’, ‘What would you have handled differently next time?’, ‘How can I better support you?’, those are all amazing conversation starters, right? You don’t have to end there, but start there and you’re having a conversation as peers and you’re learning. What they’re learning and helping them evolve. Yeah, that’s great. When you actually help the person grow and they feel that you have their best interest at heart and you’re doing it not just for the business, but because it’s the right thing to do for them, that creates tremendous loyalty in my experience.  And it’s better for the business. Right. You know, it just goes along with, you know, when there’s an opportunity to highlight. Those people share the spotlight. Get right, give them the win. Think about their next career step in the business, even if it may not be with you. My best leaders were always promoting their people, not just within their own function, but talking about to their peers and saying, this person really deserves to be a manager. This person would really develop great if they could do a stint in Europe, whatever it might be. We’re all in it for the long haul, and I view leadership development not as a nice to have, but, but really one of the highest responsibilities as a leader and truly your company’s growth, your profitability, your exit value depends on, on developing people. I mean, it’s all about the people that run the business for you. So we talked about identifying talent. We talk about empowering them, having them own their function, and then mentoring them, help them become entrepreneurs and, you know, allow them to make mistakes. Obviously, they, you want, don’t want them to make mistakes. They don’t want to make mistakes. You’re willing to grant them the right to take some risks. Reasonable risks that can have a positive outcome and help them grow and learn what else is needed to grow your people. Anything else that you do or, or you have done over your–.  I mean, those are certainly the primary ones, a lot of it as we’ve talked in past is also creating that framework for success. Things that they can apply to their teams, right? It’s great when you see a smooth running senior leadership team, but after all, everyone in the room has been doing that job for, in some cases, decades. Figuring out how to push it down to the next level. Give them tools, give them examples, give them processes and playbooks that they can use with their teams. And oftentimes they may come back and say, ‘Hey, the playbook that we use up here doesn’t work down there’, so this is what we’re going to do differently. But providing proven tools and being available not just to them, but being available to do the skip levels, to learn from their team, what we may not be doing right in the boardroom, is super important to support those various parts of the business and set those leaders up to be part of your succession plan.Share on X Yeah. And, this is a great segue because I’d like to ask you, you know, having gone and exited five companies as a private equity funded, CEO working for Fortune 100 companies and executive. As an executive, I mean, why don’t you just keep doing what you’re doing and what made you decide to become a Summit OS Guide and help other businesses as a guide climb the mountain, so to say. I certainly loved what I did for, well over 30 years, as an entrepreneurial CEO and operator. I still love working with high energy people who truly wanna build businesses. But honestly, after being hands-on and neck deep for that long, I decided now was an opportunity for me to pay it forward as a professional leadership guide, it gives me a chance to apply my expertise using a framework you might have heard of called Summit OS to continue my work as a coach instead of a team captain. So what is it that most excites you about being a coach rather than working and, and running the business? After all, it’s the CEO who has all the power, right? The coach can only lead people, they can help them see things that they don’t see themselves, but ultimately, you’re not gonna make the decisions and the power is vested to the CEO. But I love working with those CEOs, right? Even in my own businesses. Working with a line of business leaders, right? They’re the ones with the passion, they’re the ones with the vision. I’m helping them identify blind spots. I’m helping them empower their team and get more from their organization. I get to be in the meetings when they’re making some very critical decisions or really thinking about how they accelerate growth, how they apply their profits to expanding their business, et cetera, and so forth. But at the end of the day, I get to go home and see my family, and they get to spend the night doing email they couldn’t do during our meeting. And preparing to, then execute on this grand plan that I got to have some small part of.  Yeah, I totally relate to this idea that you want to work with passionate people. You know, I find the same, that when I work with a passionate entrepreneur and I spend eight hours in the room with them in heated discussions and, you know, solving difficult problems on my feet. And when I leave, I feel energized. I feel I have more energy leaving the room than what I walked into because this passion that they have is so contagious. Right. Well, no, absolutely, and I’m certainly, there’s days where I want to, you know, come back the next day and, you know, figure out what I can do to help. But honestly, I believe at this stage in my career, I'm more valuable providing the tools and helping to tune the operating system of the company and allow people who created that idea,Share on X who have this passion for the business and have risked everything to get to this point, to help them take it to where they want it to go. Yeah. And, and the CEO, you know, as you said, they have to go back and still do their days, work often after the session, and, and they really, have to go the extra mile, and make tough decisions. What was the hardest decision that you had to make in your career?  I’d say I’m not proud to say that I had to do this more than once, but I think the hardest decisions are doing company restructurings. Good people, unfortunately, lose their jobs, even if the drivers are, things like investor issues, or product slips or a global pandemic, it’s always gut wrenching and at some level it’s your fault.  How do you get over this and how do you process it as a CEO, especially when you feel like it’s your fault or partially your fault, maybe you could have done something that you didn’t realize at the time or, and then you have to make the decision and then you have to break the news. How do you process it? How do you move on?  Well, you know, to begin with, regardless of whose responsibility it is. It's your responsibility to be professional in managing the changes, determining what is necessary for the longevity of the company, making sure the team is treating the departing talent with respect,Share on X and then having laser focus on the surviving organization to make sure that we can come back stronger with greater clarity of vision and intention. But that doesn’t mean that you’re not spending your night saying, how did we get so far ahead of our financial capacity with this hiring that when we faced a downturn the only thing we could afford to do was reduce our overhead versus relying on resources we had  in the company to support them.  Yeah, I think there is momentum in businesses is super important, and when you feel like you have momentum, then maybe you are going to keep the stuff on longer because you feel like the momentum is going to carry you through the difficult patch. And often it does, right? And then by the time you are willing to put the plug, it’s already too late to some extent. And then you have to make a deeper cut. And I don’t know if that can be alleviated entirely.  Yeah, no, it’s hard, right? I mean, certainly, you know, in companies where you have a, a direct sales organization for example, and at the end of the day the number of feet on the street, you know, directly correlates to how quickly you can grow. And it’s easy to be mesmerized and say, we need to put people in every NSL city not realizing that, that some markets for some products are going to be stronger. You find that all of a sudden. Putting offices in secondary cities or setting people up that don’t have the resources they need from headquarters or regional experts makes it that much harder for them to get productive. So you’ve made this very significant investment in an organization, in a team that’s not even been given a chance to prove themselves before you say, ‘Hey, you know what? We’re gonna shrink the sales organization and count on the people that are already performing for us.’  Yeah, it does happen. And sometimes it’s a board level decision. Maybe there’s a merger that happens or the board gets jittery and  they are going to mandate a change that is counter to your vision. And,  sometimes this, a CEO, a heightened CEO will have to, you know, execute.  Right. No, it’s a painful process. I will say I learned from every one of those, right. And I bled along the way. Then you find yourself in another situation, or in our current world, right, in the role where you know you are coaching an organization and saying, you know, for whatever reason it appears that you’re really overweighted in this department and you need to figure out how you can do more with less. Yeah, absolutely. So what is the most important question that any entrepreneur should ask themselves on a regular basis in your opinion?  So to me, and, and first and foremost, you gotta do it day one, right? Before you tie other people’s lives to your vision. It’s, you know, are you ready to burn the boats? Right? And not just necessarily for the idea, that first idea you had, that was the spark that motivated you to quit your job and start your own company. But are you so committed to being an entrepreneur in this segment, leveraging your knowledge and passion that you are going to bet everything to turn it into a success, which not only has financial implications about lifestyle implications and you know, certainly is going to be all encompassing as you build that team. ’cause you know, you start out with a team of one and a business plan and your bank account. So unless you’re truly committed to doing those things and then making sure your significant others support you, then you may fail before you start. If you have that passion and you can’t let it go and you’re willing to, to play the long game, it’s a wonderful experience and, and so rewarding, but absolutely not for the faint heart.  So why is it important to burn the boats?  I think if you’re half in, you can’t get there unless you’ve invented some new industry with no competition. There’s someone else who’s staying up later and working harder, I’m not sure. And in the entrepreneurial world, smarter helps, but smarter doesn’t usually get it done. It’s passion and hard work and strategy and execution that get it done. And I think if you’re already thinking of your plan B. Or where you’re going to get a job to rebuild the piggy bank, then you’re not ready to start off as an entrepreneur. We’re a strange breed, but yeah, you need to make sure you’re one of us before you take on the risks and, and the pressures of building a business. Even you have, having done it multiple times, every time I look back and say, wow, that was a lot harder than I thought it would be, with a lot more mistakes than I intended, and it took a lot longer than I thought. It takes twice as long and costs twice as much or more. I relate to that. So who are the ideal clients for you that you can really help climb that mountain? What kind of businesses do you love to work with the most?  Based on my experience, I love SaaS businesses, so I’ve spent my career in enterprise software. Nearly all enterprise software is now software as a service. So that’s an area where I have a lot of passion and experience, I think. Being tested by your customers every day, having to deliver in order to collect that recurring revenue stream is also something that I thrive in. I’ve worked in a number of different segments. I certainly have enjoyed being an early innovator in the cybersecurity world. Even more recently in the physical security world. I had some great experiences in the financial technology world that just continues to scale and scale. I look at the way we did expense reports at Concur, and it seems so antiquated now that people are basically being given a third party credit card, and all they do is spend their money and it allocates and reimburses them in real time. But for me, it’s really tech enabled services and enterprise software that is my core. But honestly, I’ve worked with a number of companies, well outside my domain space, and have come to discover that growth stage companies are independent of the product, whether they’re selling an individual skillset or a hard good or a service, the challenges we face, right? You know, with people, with the performance of the organization, with how we measure against our competition and benchmark what’s possible. And then in turn, ideally, and sometimes it takes a while, turn that into profits that then power new investments for the company. And expansion is surprising how similar businesses that I thought I knew nothing about. Once peeling under the covers  and talking to the leaders and saying, these are the problems I’m facing. Might say, well, yeah, I’ve been there and I’ve been there and I’ve been there. And let’s, you know, talk about  your alternatives. Oftentimes they have the vision and they have the answers. It's just having the conversation of how we put them in order and work with the broader management team to execute against them.Share on X  Okay, so if someone from our audience would like to learn more and, and connect with you and maybe have a conversation about their business, where can they find you?  Well certainly they can find me on LinkedIn. They can go to ACJ Advisors, my website. And there’s also a wealth of information on the Summit OS CEO website. Not just coaches like myself, but there’s always fresh information on the site that you might find interesting as an entrepreneur.  Awesome. Well, Adam Joseph, entrepreneur and five time CEO of private 200 businesses, twice Fortune 100 executive. So been in the trenches and now helping other small to medium sized businesses scale. Thanks for coming on the show and sharing your experience and wisdom, and those of you who enjoy this conversation, stay tuned because every week I bring another seasoned entrepreneur or CEO to discuss their framework that they came up with on the show. So thanks for coming, Adam, and thank you for listening. Important Links: Adam’s LinkedIn Adam’s website

https://youtu.be/7Gq4_nY3n_Q Tinsley Galyean, CEO of Curious Learning, is on a mission to eradicate illiteracy worldwide by helping people reframe how they think, learn, and lead through curiosity. We explore Tinsley’s journey from the MIT Media Lab to co-founding Curious Learning, a non-profit transforming education for children in over 200 countries. He introduces his Eliminate Limiting Beliefs Framework, which guides leaders to let go of defensiveness, open up to curiosity, ask questions to understand, and create awareness of their assumptions. Tinsley explains how curiosity dissolves barriers to change, why awareness precedes transformation, and how these principles can drive both personal growth and global literacy. He also shares stories of communities teaching themselves to read and offers a surprising belief that 90% of leaders would disagree with—challenging traditional notions of control and leadership. — Squash Limiting Beliefs in 4 Steps with Tinsley Galyean Good day, dear followers of the Management Blueprint Podcast. My name is Steve Preda. I’m the host and my guest today is Tinsley Galyean, the CEO of Curious Learning, a nonprofit that is working to eradicate illiteracy around the word. And Tinsley received an Emmy nomination for his work on the Discovery Channel and has recently authored Reframe: How Curiosity and Literacy Can Define Us. So please, welcome Tinsley Galyean to our show.  Thank you, Steve. Thank you for having me here.  Yeah. It’s great to have you and you have a really inspiring nonprofit.  Thank you.  Normally, I don’t have  nonprofits on the show, but yours was an exception because I really like what you’re trying to achieve here. So let’s start with my favorite question, which is, what is your personal why and how are you manifesting it with Curious Learning?  That’s always a good question. Thank you. I’ll take a quick moment to do a little bit of background to lead up to that because I think like most people, my personal why has evolved over time. So I, my background is in computer science, electrical engineering, as well as design and media. I ended up doing my PhD work at the MIT media lab in the early nineties. Then was in the world of technology and media, mostly kids, space, and often had an educational component for a couple decades as a result of that. And then shifted my work more towards kind of nonprofit philanthropic work and was asked to work with the Dalai Lama to start the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT. From there, asked to come back to MIT and teach and start to get involved in research projects. One of those research projects was asking whether children could learn to read if the only resource they had was a tablet with some curated apps on it and left to their own devices. This kind of skunks work research project was done in remote Ethiopia and gave kids that had no access to school and no one in the village that were literate that access to these tablets and left them alone for a year. And after a year, they were roughly at the same place. They would’ve been in a well-resourced US kindergarten, which was an astonishing realization. And I was kind of at the right time, at the right place with the right history and the right skills to say, you know, what does this mean? Can we replicate this? Can we scale it? What could the impact be globally if we could make it a reality? And you know, that kind of became the birth of Curious Learning, you know, in terms of getting back to your real question, which is the personal why during that journey I came to believe and understand that a big part of what we're doing as humans in our lifetime is learning and growing.Share on X That’s one of the most rewarding things we can do, and when we can do it for ourselves and we can promote that and encourage that in others, that that’s at the core of our being. I’ve come to a place where I’m working on an entity that not only allows me to personally grow and learn from the process of working on this kind of global stage. But also help my, all the people within my organization learn and grow during their careers and their process and their connections. And we have people throughout the world working with us. And then I also use that as a  platform for helping as many children in the world learn and grow as well. So I can’t think of a kind of better way to feel like I’m doing the work of the greater good. Yeah. That’s amazing. So how is, how can you achieve that, these kids with a tablet that they even know what to do with it and keep it charged? I mean, you see people who are highly educated, forget to charge their mobile phones. I wonder how can you get this who come from very disadvantaged backgrounds to actually be organized enough to even do this? And I think there’s a distinction between kids, and adults too. Right? You know, when we handed out the devices in those first remote villages and we replicated this experiment in a number of places around the world, we don’t even tell the kids how to turn them on. We just give them. And then, you know, if they ask what they should do, we said, you figure it out. And it usually takes about four minutes at a maximum before some kids figured out how to turn it on. And it usually is not more than 20 minutes before every kid has it turned on, and they’re sharing and collaborating and talking to each other and working. It’s, there’s this innate curiosity that when you facilitate it and enable it. Just kind of takes over. And there is something magic about the touchscreen. The touchscreen is unlike a traditional computer interface where you have a keyboard and you have to know your letters. This, the touchscreen is something you really can’t engage with as a pre literate person. So that kind of innate person curiosity is part of the magic that makes it happen. Yeah, that I mean, curiosity is such a huge motivator of people and it’s a huge, huge driver of progress. So this is amazing. So tell me a little bit about Curious Learning as it is in the name of your company as well, and how do you help people grow in a broader terms, maybe in a, you know, 30,000 view. What is blocking people from growing in general, and how do you help them get envelope?  Yeah. So, I talk about this a lot in the book and we can kind of touch on the high levels of it here and there’s a lot more depth in the book, but a big part of what we’ve kind of discovered over our journey over these last 10 years is that we all have beliefs that we hold about how things should work and how things should operate. And that’s certainly true in the educational system around the world, right? Those beliefs can be very helpful for us. They can frame how we act and what we do and help us make decisions about whether something is appropriate or good to engage with or not.Share on X But when we hang on to those beliefs past the time, past, what I would call their expiration date, which is a date when that belief no longer or is inhibiting us from seeing some new possibilities, I tend to refer to them at that point in time as a limiting belief. So one of the things we try to encourage an organization, whether we’re talking to each other within the organization or talking to prospective partners, is to identify those moments when we feel like the conversation is starting to get shut down and kind of dive into it to better understand what’s at play there and what’s going on. And it’s often what we would call a limiting belief. And we have a kind of framework for doing that.  Okay. So that leads us to the theme of our podcast, which is frameworks that any entrepreneur or business leader can apply to their own business and their own situation. So what is the framework here? What is the framework for alleviating limiting beliefs?  Okay, so I’ll give you the high level one, the starting point. There’s a lot more depth in the book and there are a lot of examples, kind of global examples too that are very helpful to see in here as you go through it. But the general premise is that anytime you’re in a conversation with a prospective customer or a client, even somebody within your own organization, you can usually feel into that moment when there’s some resistance. Where either resistance in yourself or in the other person you’re talking to or both and you bumped up against something where people wanna kind of shut down that conversation and often they say something that does feel like it’s an end of the conversation and you know, it’s at those moments we tend to, we have to kind of fight our internal nature to just kind of say, it’s over. Let’s move on. Right. And the question is how do we do two primary things. One is that if there’s any kind of resistance or defensiveness that builds up in ourselves from that having happened, let go of that, make a conscious effort to let go of that in turn. On the other side of that coin is curiosity that we were just talking about, which is get very curious about what’s behind this without judgment, you know, start asking questions. Now questions like, tell me more about what you’re, what you’re thinking, or what kind of experience are you drawing upon that made you think that way or feel that way? And as you ask these questions, you can start to get down to what is the belief that person is holding or even for yourself, what belief you’re holding that’s creating that resistance. Can you give an example?  Well, I’ll give you an example from our World of Curious Learning. We’ll be in a conversation with, say, a Ministry of Education in an African country, and they’ll put forward the idea of using mobile devices to help the kids learn to read. They’ll be like, you know, that’s, that’s not possible. We’re not interested in it. Right. And there’s, we will start probing. Okay, so what’s behind that? What do you, you know, why do you think that’s not possible? We have a lot of evidence that this is possible. We have a number of examples of how it’s been used, and often what comes up is we kind of dig deeper into it, is that there’s one of two things that tend to come up on that particular conversation. One is that they don’t believe that many of the people in the country actually already have a smartphone. And that there isn’t one there. And the reality is that base is growing so fast and so big so quickly that even they’re unaware of how entrenched it is. The second one is there’s the belief that screen time is bad for children and that they shouldn’t support it. Where, and, and this, that’s one that’s got a lot going on at that particular belief in society, right? There’s a lot of feelings from parents that, too much time on screens right now is bad for kids, but we take the stance that it’s what you do with that screen time. It’s a medium. Anything. There's good things you can do with it and there are non-productive bad things you can do with it, and you need to learn to help your kids choose the good ones.Share on X  Yeah. Is that in your book how to do that?  Yes, it is.  I definitely have to read it, although we are empty nesting now, but we’ll have grandkids at some point and, we wanna apply the knowledge. So, okay, so you basically, you have this conversation you, you let down your guard, your defensiveness, you, you try to be, have an open mind and hear what’s behind their belief, and either they have limiting beliefs or maybe you have, or I have limiting belief in this conversation. Or maybe both of us.  Yeah.  And then how does that unfold? Because if I give assertive examples of, it’s not possible, but I can prove you that it’s possible they might shut down. Right. So how do I do it in a tactful way so that they don’t feel threatened by my argument? Well, yeah, and I think part of what you’re doing is first you unearth the belief and give it voice. Actually say what that belief is. Right. You know, I feel like you have the concern that many of the children that we would wanna reach don’t have access to a smartphone. Right. Maybe that’s true. Maybe that’s not. What could we do to test that? Could we run a campaign and see how many kids we can get and parents can get to download it and look at the numbers and see if that makes it viable or not. And then in that context, kind of have have a discussion about, well, maybe that belief ought to be relaxed. Maybe we should consider modifying that belief. Maybe that belief is more like, you know, a lot of people already have them, but we still, there’s still a base of people that we’re gonna need to reach in the future. And we’ll watch that over time to see when that’s gonna be available. You start to suggest a modification to the belief and then move to that, and you know, like anything that’s a new belief that will have a certain amount of time that is very helpful, and then eventually reach its expiration date. But that's part of learning and growing.Share on X  So Tinsley, if you continue this example that you talked about the education ministry in the African country. So they have this belief, you present the evidence, but then what’s this, the verbiage that you use in order to not be at that resistance wall and help them engage with your idea without losing. Right. Well, I’ll tell you something. I’ll actually tell you a little story about what we started doing a lot of times is that when we started meeting with Ministries of Education, we would sometimes find that they would be resistant to the idea that kids could learn on these devices and would even enjoy playing the apps or have access to them. What we started doing is that a couple weeks before we had the meeting with the Ministries of Education, what we would start to do is run ad campaigns in and around the area that anybody who works in the Ministry of Education lives to try to get parents to download and use the app. Now, what happened when we came to the meeting is inevitably there was at least one person who had seen their kids or their grandkids playing the app before we got to the meeting. They would stand up and talk about how wonderful it was, and we would preempt the first half hour of the conversation about whatever limiting beliefs they had and cut them got the loop before we even got to them.  That is crazy. You hear this kind of advertising happening in some places that, you know, the White House gets a lot of these geo the advertising, for example. And, it is a way to lobby for changes and it’s pretty  interesting. So, moving on to the book, because the title is Reframe, which is kind of what you’re doing is reframing– Yes, absolutely.  Their beliefs. So the title of the book is Reframe: How Curiosity and Literacy Can Be Define Us, and maybe that’s not in the book. I haven’t read your book because it hasn’t come out yet, but one of the thing I was wondering, how’s it gonna change the world if illiteracy was completely eradicated?  Well, you know what I’ve come to learn, which is, you know, one of the reasons this is such a strong passion of mine is that literacy is so foundational. The UN has adopted SDG four, which is that everybody should have the right to education for their whole life, But you know, so we’ve reached a point in the history where we believe access to education is effectively a human right. And one of the reasons we believe that is because it’s such a lever for access to so many things, and literacy is the foundational piece. You have to have literacy to get access to other types of education that are out there. So we know that for every year of literacy, you get your income increases by practically 10%. So it’s a massive impact on you economically. As a result, a massive impact on the globe, in terms of GDP around the world, the estimate for the the global GDP is about $1.2 trillion a year of GDP is lost from male literacy. At the same time, two thirds of the people who are literate are women. So it’s a gender issue, it’s very difficult. The pandemic was a perfect example of how difficult it is to get health information out to people if they’re not literate. Child labor, human trafficking, all of these things are in the long term, mitigated by an educated, literate population. Okay. All those things relax on. The dilemma we have is that, you know literacy is never life threatening. These other things often are, so you have to make a longer term investment in literacy, but you know it’s gonna move the level on all those things in the long term. So one of the premises that we gets us particularly excited about this is that it’s very rare for a literate parent to raise in illiterate child, which you have the skills of some level of skills of literacy, and you know the value of having those skills. You work very hard to find a way to get your child literate. So if you can get a set of parents literate them and all their offspring will remain literate kind of indefinitely. So if we could get an entire generation literate, we could effectively inoculate the world against illiteracy kind of indefinitely, and that's a powerful idea.Share on X  Yeah. So how far are we from this? What is the percentage of population with literate?  Unfortunately, we’re really far from it  Really? There’s about pre pandemic, you know, there’s about 770 million adults in the world that were effectively have no literacy skills. It was expected that about 660 million kids would join them. The number of kids that reach grade level literacy by fourth grade in Africa is only 10%. It’s about 12% in India right now. Those numbers, they were a little better than that before the pandemic. They’re a little worse after the pandemic. So there’s a large group of people that we have to reach to make this change, and the problem’s gonna be exasperated over the next 25 years because of the massive population growth. It’s about ready to happen in Sub-Saharan Africa.  10% of the of the population is electric globally. Excuse me, is of what? Yeah. That’s probably about right. That’s probably about right. And there’s complete illiteracy. There’s a whole secondary group that is, doesn’t have complete functional literacy, that has only kind of partial literacy skills. Wow. This is, this is a very worthy why. This is a very worthy mission. It feels like something that may be doable within our lifetimes.  I think so, and I don’t, and I don’t think it would’ve been without the advent of the new kind of technologies and approaches that we have. I think, you know, a few decades ago you couldn’t have fathomed a way of achieving it, and it’s a byproduct of some of the technological tools we have on hand that could make this a reality. And the fact that infrastructure is effectively being paved by the sale of smartphones and internet connections.  Yeah. That’s amazing. So, tell me about your book. What is it about? And obviously a lot of the stuff that we already covered is in the book, but, right. What was your objective with the book? With the book?  Well, I think there, you know, there are two primary objectives of the book. You know, one is to bring awareness to this issue, to the global literacy issue, and the work that needs to be done by us and others to make it a reality,Share on X because I think it’s a huge opportunity for us as a planet to make that move. The second is that, you know, we really have learned a lot about how to better ourselves and better our organizations through this process, kind of built a framework and an approach to that, and I’m wanting to share that with folks and help that be of help to them and of service to them. And that’s done in the book by, you know, a lot of stories on their travel stories and, you know, that are, become examples of particular limiting beliefs or how we move through them or what they are and how we kind of start discovering those limiting beliefs in ourselves and our organization and the ones that we have discovered, and partially started to overcome and those that are still  in the global society. And then the kind of framework of how to look at those limiting beliefs is in there as well. And, a lot of kind of personal, almost spiritual journey reflection on what that means for me and for others at a kind of deep personal level is in there as well.  So what has been your experience growing your nonprofit and with such a valid mission? Is it easy to attract good people to the company who want to join that mission?  Yeah, I think so you know, we’re very, you know, we’re a very diverse group of people. We have, you know, roughly 20 people that are working with us, you know, all the time. Plus contractors. You know, we have hundreds of contractors that are native speakers of language. We operate in 60 different languages. Our apps are used in all 257 countries and territories around the world. We focus a lot of our effort on kind of 30 to 40 countries. But, you know, so it’s a very, you know, we have folks in the US, folks in Europe, folks in several parts of Africa, and you know, India, Philippines, Georgia, you know, scattered around with a variety of different skills and, you know, they’re there because they’re inspired by the mission and wanna be part of it. And, and that kind of diversity also breeds a lot of learning and growth for all of us.  Yeah, that’s amazing. So how do you manage this organization which is in, you know, diverse time zones. How do you get the culture around.  Yes. It’s, you know, that’s always a challenge, particularly since everybody’s coming from very different cultures, right? Yeah. There’s a lot of work that’s done asynchronously, you know, with all the time zone that’s, it’s done there. We do try to connect to smaller groups at different times. You know, there’s a magic hour for me. The magic hour is 10:00 AM in the morning, which I’m almost always booked ’cause, and it’s very rare for me to be on a call that doesn’t have four or five time zones represented. I think, you know the inspiration of being part of the mission is a big part of it. We do try to convene together at different parts around the planet at different, with different subgroups of our organization at different times, often at sites where we’re trying to do work.  It’s very interesting. And what would you like our listeners to do as a result of our conversation?  Well, I think, I hope that the framework of, you know, and the thoughts around limiting beliefs are of aid to you. So I encourage you to kind of engage with that. Some of my early readers from the book have talked about not only how it has inspired. Them to think about the global problems that are there, but also how the framework of limiting beliefs thing are things that they’re starting to apply to their personal life and how they even interact with them within their families and with their friends. And so I am hopeful that it’s of aid to that. So I encourage people to look at that and use that. Anything people can do to help bring awareness to the cause I’m an advocate for, and you know part of that can be hopefully buying the book and spreading the word so that it’s of help to everybody.  Okay, so your book is coming out on October 24th. Is it October 20—  Yes, it’s October 24th. It’s available for pre-order already. Pre-order, so people can go on Amazon and Google your name Tinsley Galyean and the Reframe: How Curiosity Literacy Can Be Define as is the title of the book.  Absolutely. So do that. If people would like to reach out to you and, and talk to you or contact you, where should they go? LinkedIn. I do monitor, so that’s easy to get me at curiouslearning.org is our website. You can certainly reach me through that. We have, you know, forms there can reach me. I’m pretty visible. They’re not many Tinsley Galyean pretty easy to find me if you remember my name.  Alright, so Tinsley Galyean, the CEO of Curious Learning. So check out Tinsley’s book, Reframe on Amazon. It’s already out on pre-order. And also check out curious learning.org to see what they’re doing. I think it’s amazing mission that you are supporting and I think it’s super exciting that our generation can achieve this potentially to eradicate illiteracy and all the ailments that come with it. If you’d like to reach out to Tinsley, maybe you wanna be part of his mission, then connect with him on LinkedIn. Tinsley Gallian. G-A-L-Y-E-A-N is his surname. Yeah. And Tinsley, T-I-N-S-L-E-Y. My first name, even if you just remember that, [email protected] gets to me as well. Yeah. Okay. That’s the email and, and yeah, Tinsley is not a very common name either. So Tinsley, it was super interesting to talk to you. Thanks for coming on the show. And for those, those of you listening, if you enjoyed the show, then make sure you follow us on YouTube and stay tuned because every week I have an entrepreneurial leader joining us on the show. So thanks for coming, and thank you for listening. Important Links: Tinsley’s LinkedIn Tinsley’s website Tinsley’s Email: [email protected]

https://youtu.be/GAHLR_NnQz8 Bill Ryan, Founder of Ryan Consulting, helps organizations maximize their investment in technology and people by ensuring they work together efficiently and effectively, regardless of location. We explore Bill’s journey from technologist to consultant and his mission to connect people “over time and distance” by giving them what they need at the time of need. Bill introduces his Culture of Curiosity Framework, a leadership model designed to foster innovation, engagement, and problem-solving inside organizations. The framework emphasizes being willing to say “I don’t know”, making it safe to ask “why”, encouraging employees to figure out solutions, and provoking thoughtful conversation that sparks collaboration. Bill also shares why curiosity is the foundation of leadership, how leaders can model vulnerability to build trust, and why he views learning and development not as an expense but as a strategic investment in long-term performance and retention. — Create a Culture of Curiosity with Bill Ryan Good day. Dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Bill Ryan, the founder of Ryan Consulting, helping organizations maximize their investment in technology and people by ensuring they work together efficiently, effectively, regardless of location. Bill, welcome to the show. Thanks, Steve. Glad to be here.  Well, I’m excited to have you and, to hear about your personal why and how you are manifesting it in your practice and activities.  I love that question. You told me you were gonna ask it. It made me think for a little bit and it took me back to like my very, very beginning part of my, of my career and it was all about how to use technology to send the message across time and distance. And I think that’s my fascination is my focus has really been centered on how to connect people over time and distance to the things that they need to support their performance at the time of need. And it’s kind of guided me through the various levels of technology of the various boxes we needed, the various places we stored information. But the way I kind of manifested is that it's all about centered on the person and making sure we meet their need at the time of need so that they can be successful.Share on X  That’s fascinating because ultimately you have to meet your clients where they are, and you can’t just put them in a box or put them on a cookie cutter framework and just hope that it’ll do the job you need to figure out what they need and how you adjust to that. Now, this is a good segue because you developed a framework called Strategy On A Page. It’s really a five step process and you call it SOAP. And other than the acronym I’m trying to still figure out what the connection of SOAP and this process is. Maybe you can enlighten me and also tell me about this process that you have come up with.  Well, and I wanna be clear, I didn’t invent this somewhere earlier in my career. I ran across this idea of a strategy on a page, and it was really, and it stuck with me, it has stuck with me through all of my years about how we as, as leaders, can convey our strategy to both our stakeholders, but also our leaders in a clear and succinct manner. So at the end of a process that I’ll talk about in just a minute, is this one pager, a strategy on a page. But to collect it, I have found kind of takes five key steps. And the first part really is about talking to the people in the organization and at all levels. And you said something just a moment ago that I think is so important because where I focus this idea of this soap results in is that it’s not a cookie cutter. So you have to really go talk to the people at all organizations, the part-timers, the hourly employees, the front office, the back office, the middle managers, supervisors, leaders, executives. But you have to really go talk to them and ask ’em a lot of questions ’cause they’re living the work. And then the second step is you listen. You know, poll questions. I’m a big fan of the five why’s. There’s a book on that, and I just gave the entire premise away. You ask why five times and you’ll get probably the good basic root cause of a problem, but you listen to the people and you kind of start to see themes. You can start to synthesize what they’re saying, what they’re living, what they’re experiencing. And more importantly, the things that they can see that would help them do their jobs better so that they’re successful. And after that, you kind of pull all that together. You go talk to leadership, but you frame it in the language of their people. I have found more success when I quote the people by using their words. I don’t, you know, put it, you know, I don’t put Joe Smith under the tray, under the truck right away, but I use that words and, and I wanna be very specific to leaders can understand and help kind of create that bridge of the context of the worker and their work back to the leader. So that they can kind of see it and you frame it in their own words and then you kind of help connect the dots. You help them understand that strategy has to be linked back to the tactical applications. So you bring focus into what will help make the organization move forward. You kind of help them identify the needs versus the wants.Share on X And you kind of help them go through the steps that says, you know, good, fast and cheap. What can you do with the resources you have, with the people you have, with the money you have, with the time you have? And then help them identify the things that they can either revise, replace, or remove.  And that I think is a key part because that’s when the plan kind of gels together. You know, we’re not adding something new to workplace because too many idea, too many times. I know in my career we had, oh, the next great idea, well, we just had one two years ago and we had another one and we’ve never taken them away. So part of this strategy that I do is to help the leadership understand that you know, your workers only can do so many things. So let's take this now that we've kind of helped connect all these dots. And go from a plan towards how we can people…Share on X  Identifying the things that they have to measure, the things that matter to the operations, so those metrics that really matter, being clear what can be done, and then kind of being clear about what can be done to the entire community. So communication’s really important here. You know, you might come up with 10 things that people have identified as like, these are really important, but you’ve also found out you’ve only got good, fast, cheap, you know, people, time, money, that you really can only do three or four of them to do them well. Okay, so, let me just zoom out here because sure there’s a lot in there and I’m afraid, I mean, I find it challenging to keep up and maybe the listeners who do something else motor loans or drive their cars, they will also find it. So the first thing that I’m really trying to grasp or,  grasping here, or maybe it’s, it’s talking to me, is this idea of crowdsourcing solutions from the people in the organization. So as a consultant, you know, sometimes we are guilty of coming in and we have preconceived ideas and we think we can fix things and, we just, you know, wanna be the smart, smartest person in the room or whatever it is. And then we just, you know, vomit ideas. But the level of buy-in into our ideas is gonna be a lot lower than level by in the ideas and the people inside the organizations, and then the other thing that struck me was that you talk about the language that the people are using on the front lines and feed that language back in and creating the context of the work worker or the lower level employee in the organization and synthesize, use the word, synthesize it back to the leadership so that they understand it may be in their own language. What those people are saying in their language. So are these critical components of this, this whole process that you crowdsource the ideas and then you synthesize it and transmit it to leadership and basically help to bridge the communication divide between them, help them figure out the strategy. Is this, how you see it as well?  Absolutely. I think the best thing I can, I can bring into an organization sometimes is the willingness to ask questions that some people aren’t. But I think the people within an organization, you know, the majority of the time, a high majority of the time, already have ideas on how to do things better, faster, cheaper, safer. If you just ask them. And I think, yeah, I’m willing to go ask, you know, Mike, I’m driven by curiosity. You know, those, those people are highly skilled. Ask ’em, they’re experts.  Yeah, no,  that’s definitely, and you know, it, it takes some level of humility to ask questions and not lead with answers, but lead with questions and let other people take the credit for the ideas. And that’s often in short supply and. Plus you bring,the objective, they are outsider as well, right?  So you are, you can ask those dumb questions that the inside people would don’t dare ask because of, you know, they might feel being shamed for them. Okay. So you basically connected that. So I think some of the things you mentioned her was talk to the people, listen and synthesize,  give the feedback, help connect the dots and craft a plan. So what does it take to help connect the dots? Is there like an, an approach that you take or some, is it just your experience of several decades of doing this? You kind of do this intuitively or is there a madness to the method or method to the madness, rather, how to connect these dots. You know, I got 25 years plus of doing this, so there was a little bit of, I have done this a few times, but a lot of times it’s the partnership that I have created with the people in that organization about getting their understanding of what it makes to the strategy the high executives have come out with to make it actually work. The special sauce is being helpful in, again, asking the questions, but you know, how do we take strategy and make it tactical? How do we bring that focus back to the operational implementation and how do we measure it? Those folks tend to know those in that information in greater detail than I possibly could, but I can help create the link between what the corporate strategy plan is and how to make it actually work. And that, I think is where we help connect the dots. And I can go back up to leadership at that point in time and show them, you know, you wanna do this, here are the steps that will get us there. And a part of that is you know, kind of going through and going, here’s the needs and the wants, and let’s focus on the needs that’ll move the business forward, and we’ll put the wants. And if we have extra time and money, sure we can go for those too.  Yeah. Well. It’s very rare that there’s extra money lying around, but you never know. So you talk about the curiosity of asking the right questions or asking any questions, being curious, what does it take to help an organization be more curious to kind of create a culture of curiosity?  Oh that’s a great question. And I think this is where it does start with leadership. I think this is where, we, as leaders, have to model the behavior. The way how it was impressed in my brain was you know, my leader at the time, very openly coming up at one point saying, I don’t know. How we find out it to this day, I mean decades later. The power of that statement has resonated with me and I have tried to emulate that through my own journey, along my own professional journey. And I think this is when you know, you have to acknowledge what you don't know. And get people around you to help figure it out and to show that it's okay not to know, to not be the expert.Share on X That together we are not only curious learners, but then we become more proficient workers. And I’ve always, you know as a training person, as a learning and development specialist, one of the things I have discovered is that when you say to someone, I don’t know, would, would you go figure it out and share it back with us? That they’re going to learn along the way. I don’t have to do anything. They’re gonna learn anyway. So, you know, this is I think where we have the chance as leaders to model the behavior, to support our teams and our teammates being curious. And a lot of that kind of goes back the ideas that we support  that journey of discovery. Yeah. So if you make it okay for people to not have to know the answers and you empower them to go and search for it and then share it, then you are essentially creating the structure. That I think that, and the idea that if they question your statements, you know, that’s the other part too of that is you don’t take offense. It’s okay to say why. You know, why are we doing that? That’s a good question. I think we’re doing it because of this, you know, instead of coming back, going, you know, ’cause I say. So again, leaders modeling behavior, that opens up discussion that increases the chance for collaboration.  Yes, I’m trying to remember the long time, the name of the long time CEO of General Motors who had this practice that when there was a topic on the board and basically there was a consensus on what to do. He always was suspicious that maybe there wasn’t enough curiosity involved in order to cons to this decision. And then he would adjourn the meeting and say, okay, so gentlemen, don’t come back until you have all the counter arguments against doing this thing, and then we can have a conversation.  I think that is a very healthy attitude. The same manager that I was referring to earlier had one of his favorite catch phrases at the time was he liked to provoke conversations. And I’ve used that line for years because I think it does, it helps  create a healthy discussion. And, you know, I mean, when you’re curious, it starts exploring the, the possibilities pro and con. And it can start saying, well, if this doesn’t work. What will happen and how will we recover? How will we be better prepared? How can we mitigate the circumstances that that might lead us there in a faster, more efficient way? It’s not only, you know, I think being proactive, but it’s also being a growthful and I think it’s allowing people to start stretching, to broaden and build them as participants and partners as well as curious workers.Share on X Yeah, and I think the value of curiosity is just going to go through the roof with all the information being at our fingertips with AI and with all the search engines and it’s not about the information, it’s about connecting the dots and being curious why this is so, does it even make sense? And asking the questions and being a little bit skeptical. Just to reflect on what you said about.  what if it doesn’t work? You know, what’s the worst thing that can happen? How do we recover from it? One of the exercises we used to do in a COP group, I was working with was, you know, let’s put someone out of business. So picked, we picked someone in the group, and okay, we are, let’s put him or her out of business and show them what are the ways that the competitors would come up with to put them out of business and reflect about, what to do about it, how to prevent this happening. Again, having that chance to ask questions. I think just, you know, having other people to pose you– that’s one of the things I ike about AI, which is actually kind of, you know, associated with this is, is to bring something out and, and have it challenge me. You know, go up and go, you know, poke the holes in, in this attached document, you know, to find out what, what could go wrong and, and, and having again, you know, that intuitive process. And allowing you to broaden and build your own thoughts. But I think that, that the result is, especially as I found with my teams, is that when we had that kind of, you know, pro and con and we had to make a decision by then, it was actionable and it was pretty innovative and we were ready for anything that was, could or might go wrong. Yeah, it’s good. It’s good to have the emergency plan in the back pocket for sure.  Always, always.  So let me switch gears here and ask you kind an unrelated question. You’ve been in this business as a consultant for several decades and you’ve seen a lot of things. So what’s one belief that you hold that 90% of leaders would disagree with? I think the biggest thing people would disagree with is that learning and development is not an expense. Most people that I work with look at this and say, oh, training, well that’s an expense. So, you know, it’s one of the first things that want, we need to save money, let’s cut training. And I kind of go with them and I go, yeah, no, it’s not. There is a return on learning and I think they would, most people would disagree. But I’ve been able to have conversations where I can at least expand the idea and the viewpoints. But you know, the key is, is that, you know, I think many leaders, and I’ll throw some of my own L and D folks, you know, into this bucket too. We have sometimes measured the wrong things and we’ve measured metrics that really don’t matter and then make it look like we’re an expense. Things that nobody cares about. How many classes did you offer? How many people were there? What were their test scores or quiz scores? And nobody cares about that stuff. What they care about is, you know, did the people that go through the programs perform better or faster when they, you know, came back? So, you know, did we move the needle on the business metrics? Did we increase retention? Did we reduce on the job injuries? Sick days? Did we have fewer environmental citations or human resource citations? You know, the kind of things that I think are key to the business sometimes. We don’t track them as, as we should. So I think leaders, if I said to them, you know, there is a return on learning, I think they would look and go, it’s an expense. And I go, I disagree.  Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s all about learning. If you don’t turn your company into a learning organization, then you’re gonna be passed by.  Yeah.  By all the other ones that are gonna disrupt you. That’s for sure. So sometimes you have these counter beliefs. So is there, was there a time when you’ve gotten a common advice and you ignored it and it paid off big for you? I had one in particular that still makes me smile. I was part of an organization with a large call center that was out offshoring and outsourcing some of its work. And I had been tracking the learning and development team, the time that we spent on maintaining the content. Now we’re highly regulatory environment. So a lot of changes state by state, all those kind of things. So to make sure that we were still compliant and up to date, it took a lot of work, both from supporting our performance,  support tools within the systems, the assessments and development of the content. So I’ve been tracking that and I’ve been told for a long time, you know, you’re just wasting your time. Nobody cares about that stuff. And I disagreed. So fast forward all of a sudden we’re getting a big audit and we’re gonna reduce our force and we’re going to reduce our employee headcount because we’re offshoring and we’re outsourcing. And I, you know, obviously we won’t be teaching as many, you know, domestic workers. And I was called into, was told my number, and I said, okay. That’s fine. Our vendors prepared to do the following things, and here, by the way is my tracking for the last couple of years of the time we spent maintaining and updating and keeping us compliant with the laws of this content. I’ve got all the stuff that here, but you know, are they ready to take that over as well? At the end of the day, I ended up getting approval to hire additional staff.  That’s pretty neat. That’s very interesting. Well, so if people would like to learn more about your Strategy On A Page and how to interview people and transmit the information and connect the dots for leadership and your turn strategy into tactics, or where should they go and where can they connect to you? I would welcome them to check out my website. There’s a free fill in the blank template of a Strategy On A Page there that they can find too, along with some eBooks and other things. But my website is www.williamjryan, all one word, williamjryan.com and I’m always found on LinkedIn. Or email me at [email protected].  Okay, well that’s a great website. No one’s gonna steal it from you. Bill, thank you for coming and sharing your wisdom with us and your frameworks. And those of you listening, if you enjoyed this, please follow us on LinkedIn, on YouTube, on Apple Podcast. Give us a review and stay tuned because every week I come with a thought leader or entrepreneur who is sharing something smart that you can implement in your business. So thanks for coming, Bill, and thank you for listening.  Thanks for having me. I appreciate it, Steve. Important Links: Bill’s LinkedIn Bill’s website Bill’s Email: [email protected]

https://youtu.be/dQWQko3fGZ8 Jon Ferrara, CEO of Nimble, has devoted his career to helping people grow their businesses by turning contacts into lasting, valuable relationships. We explore Jon’s journey from creating GoldMine, one of the first successful CRMs, to founding Nimble, a relationship-focused CRM that brings contact management back to its roots. Jon shares his personal “Why” — to grow his soul by helping others grow theirs — and explains why relationships, not technology, are the real key to business success. He introduces his signature frameworks: the Five F’s of Relationships (Family, Friends, Food, Fun, and Fellowship) for building authentic connections, the Five E’s of Brand-Building (Educate, Enchant, Engage, Embrace, and Empower) for expanding influence, and the Three P’s (Passion, Plan, Purpose) for achieving personal and professional goals. Jon also describes how Kanban-style workflows and selective automation enable entrepreneurs and teams to manage contacts at scale without losing the human touch. — Build Nimble Relationships with Jon Ferrara Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is John Ferrara, the CEO of Nimble, a pioneering relationship focused CRM company. John has dedicated his career to helping people grow their businesses by turning contacts into lasting valuable relationships. John, welcome to the show.  Thank you, Steve. I’m so excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me for this conversation. Hopefully the listeners are going to be able to take away nuggets that will help them achieve their dreams.  Well, definitely you have a really interesting framework and topic, and business that works on that and in that area. So let’s get to it. But before we start talking about your business, I’d like to ask, what is your personal why and how are you manifesting it through your work at Nimble and Beyond? Steve, I think my personal why is that I am on this planet to grow my soul in the brief period of time that I’m here. And I believe that the best way to grow your soul is by helping others grow theirs. The analogy I like to use is I found that I got better at chess the more people I taught how to play chess. Yeah. I mean, that’s the best way of learning– teaching others.  Yeah. And I think, it’s the best way of growing is growing others. Okay. Well, I couldn’t agree more. It’s the way to multiply yourself or your knowledge in others. That’s definitely a good way to grow.  Yeah. And my summary is the more people you outgrow, the more you will grow.  I mean, it’s the old what was this business?  Zig Ziglar? Zig Ziglar. You know, if you have enough people to get what they want, then you’re gonna get what you want.  It really is the basics, like life is about the basics. It’s not that complicated.  That is true. So tell me a little bit about your work in CRM and then you founded Goldmine, one of the first successful CRMs, and then you are now running Nimble. So what was the lessons from building Goldmine and what inspired you to then move on to Nimble and create something, a next generation CRM.  From my perspective as helping to pioneer contact management– call it Outlook and CRM, call it Salesforce, is at the heart of all that are contacts– their relationships, and that’s why CRM stands for ‘customer relationship management’, and it grew out of the contact management market. You really have to know the past in order to understand the present, and you could actually predict the future if you have a good handle on all of these things.Share on X And contact management started with The Rolodex. As we became civilized into these larger cities, and more and more people were engaging with each other, we had to manage our contacts. And so the Rolodex was the initial step at managing that, and that evolved into what I call the six by nine index card system, which you put a date on a card on the last call and you make a note,  and you file it on the recall date. And then that evolved into the Daytimer, which was a leather based contact tool that had your to-dos and calendars in it. And that’s where I came into this, I was in sales and they basically told me to go get ’em and I had no tools to do it. And I think the best products come from your own need ’cause you’re past about it and you understand the problem. And my problem was not just that I wanted to be better at selling to my prospects and customers, but more than that,  because I recognized that in my sales cycle I was doing enterprise sales to large corporations, but at the same time building relationships with distributors and resellers to try to access customers at their customers at scale. I found that I didn’t work in a vacuum. I worked as part of a larger team, and everybody in that team was touching the customer, and I wanted to run a wire through all of our Daytimers so everybody was on one page, so that no matter who picked up the phone, you knew who you were talking to. ‘What happened? Who did it? What’s gonna happen? Who’s gonna do it?’ That way, you’re all on one page. It’s kind of like when you call American Express, they know who you are, they know what happened and they know what needs to happen. And this didn’t exist in corporate America at that time in 1986, 87, 88. And I wanted to do more than that. I wanted not just a team contact platform, which is the basis of shared contacts with shared history and pending. But I wanted to be able to automate the sales process in order to do not just pipeline management, managing a sales pipeline, which we used to do in spreadsheets, but to be able to do some automation because we all know what we should do, but we don’t do it, ’cause we’re human. We’re too busy, we forget, right? And it’s the follow up and follow through. It takes 22 touches before somebody’s in a buying cycle, and most people give up to the first to third touch. Why? It’s a lot of work to call people up and send them emails and, and manage all those workflows and processes. So I trademarked automated processes and that was the basis of email marketing. And so my history in conduct management, CRM Salesforce automation and email marketing is– I was in the infancy of it and I created it to solve my own problems, but it turned out that millions of people had the same problem.Share on X  Okay. So that is fascinating. Now, a lot of people have misgivings about CRMs because they feel like it’s overwhelming or they don’t have a good overview of what the information is in it, and then you have to update, and the automation makes a lot of sense, if you can update it with automation, but ultimately, how does one use a CRM to build relationships? So what, what does it take? Is it just reaching out and sending email automations or  it’s something more than that.  It’s way more than that, Steve and I like to reduce that to know technology. Let’s just go to the basics. How I used to teach people before there was technology. Do you see my walls, Steve? If you look closely at my walls, you could see the books I read, the degree, the school I went to, the records I collect, the knickknacks, the photographs, all these things give you a clue into who I am. And I, and relationships are built on what I call the five F’s of life– family, friend, food, fun, and fellowship. These are the commonalities of life that build the deeper connections that stay across time. It takes 60% of your energy to get a car up to speed, to get a rocket into orbit, or to initiate a relationship. It takes very little to keep it going. And when trouble hits the road– tariffs, price changes, supply chain issues, your prospects and customers will stay with you. If you've built a relationship, you've done what you said you're going, you've said what you're gonna do and done what you said you're gonna do.Share on X The basics of business. And all this happens by that initial connection where you’ve done your homework, you know who the person is, what their business is about, how you might add value, and you’ve broken the ice with sharing some commonalities to get them. To build the trust and intimacy about your commonalities. You went to the school, you’re from this place. You like that band, whatever it is that gets them to open up to you about their business issues, which as a professional, you could then solve. In today’s world it is overwhelming to be able to do that at the scale of the relationships that we’re building. And so we need a way to organize the contacts. So let’s forget about CRM. I don’t like acronyms, and I don’t like tools that are designed to command and control you, and that’s what CRM has become. When I pioneered CRM, it was about relationships. It was about contacts, it was called contact management. And those things were adopted individually by sales people ’cause they saw the value in it for their engagement and relationships. CRM happened after management saw all those sales people running around with those contact managers and they wanted to command and control the database and to track what the sales reps were doing. And Siebel was sort of evolved and then Salesforce, and that’s why CRM failed is because people don’t use it. It’s not built for them. It’s built for management and it really doesn’t help them. And today, if you buy a CRM, it’s not enough for the sales person. They have to go out and buy ZoomInfo to enrich the leads with data about people and companies. You have to buy Outreach IO to automate the process of scraping leads from LinkedIn and basically putting ’em on sequences to qualify them. And you have to buy a sales navigator to be able to manage your LinkedIn contacts and it’s overwhelming. And so I think that many people, most people don’t use a CRM. There’s 225 million global businesses. Less than 1% use any CRM because CRM isn’t built for relationships anymore. It’s built for command and control and reporting, and that’s what I’m trying to do is bring CRM back to its roots, back to relationships.  Okay, so let’s not talk about CRMs now. Let’s talk about building relationships. Yes.  You mentioned the five Fs. So how do I use the five Fs to build relations? What are the five Fs and how do we how do I use it to build relationships?  You bet. So the five Fs are what I call the commonalities, the softer side of life. Family, friend, food, fun, and fellowship. These are all the commonalities that you might share with another human being. You like the same sports teams. You’re both parents. You like the same band, you went to the same school– the commonalities, and you don’t lean on that. You don’t do it too much, and you don’t do it in an icky way. But you learn how to do it just in the same way as you learned how to behave in the playground, in the classroom. We're taught all these things, through life, but that's just the beginning of it really.Share on X Beyond that, and that’s just an individual related situation. But beyond that, if you really want to build your brand and your network and stand out from the crowd so that you become the trusted advisor of not only your prospects and customers, but ideally their influencers as well, then you need to give away your knowledge on a daily basis. So that people see you as the trusted person. So when they need your products or services, they not only pick up the phone and call you, but they drag their friends with them.Share on X And I call that if you teach people to fish, they’ll figure out you sell fishing poles. Now you might say to yourself, well, how do I do that? I have an acronym for that. I call it the five Es of a building your brand and growing your network. It is to educate, enchant, engage, embrace, and empower. So how do you do this? What you do is you need to be in the places where your prospects, customers, and their influencers are having conversations about how to become better, smarter, faster. That could be Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, any number of places where people are having conversations. You establish an identity and then you begin to listen in the channels where people are having conversations about the promise of your products and services, and you eventually begin to add value to those conversations. And I have an analogy for that– it’s  a cocktail party. You don’t walk into a cocktail party and say, ‘Hey, anybody wanna buy some CRM?’ ’cause people are gonna look at you and say, ‘What the heck?’ You walk in and you look around, you find a group that you might want to connect to, and then you go and stand adjacent to the group and you begin to listen to the conversation and eventually you find your moment that you can add some value and then the person next to you is gonna go. ‘Wow. John, you seem to know a lot about that CRM stuff. What do you do? Tell me more.’ Right? And that’s the same way as you do that out in the digital world where you begin to share your expertise. And an easy way to do that if you’re not a good writer, is just share other people who inspire you. So other thought leaders in around the areas of your product, products and services. And this is the way that I built. The Goldmine brand and the Nimble brand is by identifying thought leaders in and around the areas of our promise of my products and services. Thought leaders in social sales and marketing begin to share their content, hashtag the category pound sales, pound marketing attribute their name. And not just share the title of whatever they wrote, but to rewrite it and add some value. So it actually looks like I took the time to read it and I’m adding value to it. And if you do that in a series of ways over time. Not only will the people who are looking to be better, smarter, faster at those areas of promise and services begin to follow you and connect with you, but also the audience of that thought leader and the thought leader themselves, so that now when new people walk into the cocktail room and they see you standing next to the other thought leaders and business, then they're gonna see you as one of the thought leaders because you've built your brand and your network, and we all know that your network and your brand are your net worth.Share on X Okay. What I find a little bit challenging is the idea of being there for everybody. So you mentioned a different platform, so what do you recommend? How does one prioritize their time? If I can’t be on.. I would basically just stick with LinkedIn.. And then I can’t be in every conversation there. So, how do I prioritize, you know, did they say that a person can have a relationship with up to 150 people?  Yep And then you basically, max out, so.  Yep.  How do I limit the people on LinkedIn? How do I even select them? How, how do I do that?  Right. That’s where a good contact platform comes in. Okay.  Because the biggest problem with CRM and contact management are just databases.  It’s a Rolodex, but the problem with the Rolodex on the Daytimer is you can’t segment, you can’t build sets. And the analogy I like to use for that is your holiday card, or if you’re gonna throw a party. How would you go and determine who to send the card to? Who to send the invite to? So you’re saying that you could only maintain 150 to 200 people at one time, but the reality is for you to get a hundred to 150 people of the key people you need to achieve your dreams. You need to cast a wider net. That’s what building your identity in the places where people are having conversations about how to become better, smart and faster in around the areas of your products and services. Begin to share your ideas. Because you’ve forgotten more about your products and services than most people will ever know in their lives who are gonna buy it. You share your ideas teaching people to fish, so you figure out yourself, fishing bulls, share other people’s idea to build relationships with other thought leaders in your space, and then begin to add people to your database. But you can’t maintain the connection with everybody, but you can maintain the connection with the right people if you put the right information in the database.Share on X And that’s where Nimble comes in. Nimble can automatically build a record from LinkedIn or your email or from a webpage on about page of companies or from an article, enrich it with the people and company data. You need to segment it later on. Record the interactions that you and the team have on email and calendar and social, and then allow you to segment that in order to then. Message and communicate with them and even put them on automated sequences if you like. But the key idea here is having a database that you can determine who you need to contact when, why. And how you might do that. And I think one of the key things to remember is, as I shared earlier, it takes a lot of energy to build a relationship. It takes very little to keep it going because you’ve built that connection. They know who you are, they trust you, they like you. And, you ever seen the guy with the plates on the pencil where basically he gets the plates on the stick and he gets ’em rolling? And then he just goes by every once in a while and it ninjas it. So I can tell you, Steve, that there are friends of mine from high school that I haven’t spoken to in 30 years, and if I met them, it’d be like we never parted because that bond and connection that was there. And the same is true for business friends, acquaintances, colleagues that have worked with over time. And so. You don’t need to be constantly connecting with people in order to maintain relationships. And you don’t need to do that with everyone outside of your key sphere of focus, but you do need a database in order to manage those contacts effectively.Share on X  So one of the things that you talk about is using Kanban, a Kanban process to manage relationship building. So how does that Kanban process work?  Let’s boil it down to how most people manage contacts today. They manage ’em in spreadsheets. There’s 225 million global businesses. Less than 1% use any CRM. Most people’s CRM is a spreadsheet. So why do people use spreadsheets? They’re easy to see and manage, right? But the problem is that they’re static. So if you put a series of rows and columns together to manage an outreach to get some press about a new business, you’re opening. Then essentially the last time you contacted them, the last reply that they had, all the nuanced things that you’re tracking, it’s just a dead sheet of paper. Now, you could look at a process with a spreadsheet with some columns in it, or you could take that same spreadsheet and convert it into a Kanban board because each one of a Kanban board for those that don’t know, is a series of stages that you define for a process you wanna put people through initial outreach, connection, follow up, commitment, close, whatever it is for whatever purpose. And remember that what we’re talking about is not just applicable to sales. Most people are not in sales in a business. Most people are in other roles, PR, bizdev, investor relationships, accounting, HR, whatever. And we all have repeatable processes that we need to manage, and most people are doing it in spreadsheets at best. And so a Kanban board allows you to find what are the stages that you want to put the people and companies through in a repeatable way, and then each card is a contact or a company with the data necessary for you to manage the process. And that card would be the same thing as data in a row, in a spreadsheet. So you could look at Nimble workflows and we call our repeatable process Kanban Boards Workflows. In each workflow you define the stages, you define the data in the rows and columns. And then you can manage those cards and flow them through the workflow, and there can be automations that happen. So I’ll give you an example. We were hiring recently for a new position used Indeed to do it. We used Nimble Prospector to select the people that passed the ‘sniff test’ I call . It basically means that, ‘yeah, this person could be right’ prospector grabs him out of Indeed on the webpage, that’s Nimble’s Prospector Chrome plugin. Puts ’em into Nimble and puts ’em into a workflow. The first thing that happens in that workflow when they go in the first stage is they get an email asking to schedule a meeting. If they schedule a meeting, they’re moved into the second column, in which case  you have the meeting. If they pass that sort of first meeting, then they put into another workflow and we send them an assignment for them to basically do some work, some work product. And if that passes, then they do an interview. And so basically the workflows allow you to manage repeatable people and company business processes that most people do in spreadsheets. And we enhance it with automations because we’re all human and we don’t do it all. And messaging so that you can automate the process of putting people through those workflows.  Okay, that makes sense. So someone comes, basically you can use automated processes to watch certain signals and then transition those people automatically into a workflow. And then they get first message and then you start to pursue them and try to get them to meet with you and, and to qualify them and so on. But I think the key to remember Steve, is in our age of AI and over automation and over messaging, that there needs to be a human aspect involved throughout the whole thing, that it can’t just be automations. There has to be some connection aroused, you’re just going to, it’s not gonna work. And so that’s why Nimble has the workflows and automations, but the humans involved in the work process. But by having the organization of the workflow, the Kanban boards, and the automations, and the automatic messaging. A normal human being can scale much higher and achieve much better results than by them just doing it by themselves or in a spreadsheet.Share on X  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So what is the role of AI very briefly, ’cause we, we are running– coming to the end of the conversation, but what do you see is the role of AI in improving relationship management? You bet. Good question. So number one. Most people are doing some type of prospecting. What is prospecting? That means that you might go to LinkedIn and you are looking for certain type of people, and you’re gonna do that when you’re having, you’re wearing certain hats. It, most entrepreneurs wear many hats. So you might wear a sales hat, you might wear a biz dev hat. If you’re trying to do a business relationship with another company, you might, you wear a PR hat. If you’re trying to get somebody to talk about you, you might wear influencer marketing hat. If you’re trying to get an influencer to talk about you. You might wear an investor relations hat, if you’re trying to get somebody to invest in you. You might wear a HR hat if you’re trying to hire somebody or accounts receivable. So all of these are different hats. And so if I’m using Nimble Prospector in my Chrome browser, our AI will enable you to, based off your role, so the role I might be reaching out for PR purposes, and my intent could be in a PR role just to be able to pay it forward a relationship and I’m not asking them for anything, or I’m actually wanting them to write about a product release I’m doing. So what hat am I wearing and what is my intent? So my hat I’m wearing is PR. My intent is to get them to write about me. Nimble will know– Nimble Prospector over the LinkedIn record will know if this person is a fit for you. And if they are a fit, it can automatically grab that record, put ’em in a workflow, and tailor a message or a series of messages to that person to achieve the goal all without you having to do a thing. Because Nimble uses AI to determine who that person is and what their business is about, who you are, what your business is about, what product or services or intent you have, and what’s the best pathway to achieve that. Is it a LinkedIn invite? Is it a LinkedIn message? Is it a single email? Is it a series of emails? Or is it a series of things that include beyond just an email? So you could basically have, the AI will basically say, well, you don’t want to just send them an email first. What you want to do is you want to begin to walk into the digital footprint, add value to the conversation by commenting on their stuff and sharing their stuff a few times. And then you could reach out for a LinkedIn invite or a message, and maybe about that time they’re gonna reach out to you. And so AI just enables you to scale more, because most people don’t do the homework. They don’t look at, look somebody up, determine who they are, what the business is about, what their problems might be, how they might be able to solve them, and they craft a methodology in order to start a conversation that gets them in the game to achieve their goals. And so AI basically would enable you to do that better, smarter, faster.Share on X  That makes sense. So it helps basically accelerate the front end of the prospecting  process and allow you to talk to people who are already being, to some degree, qualified and express interest. Of sense. So fascinating stuff, John. So if someone would like to learn more about contact management and how to use potentially Nimble, to manage their contact or maybe generate the prospects that they can siphon out of LinkedIn and warm up with their AI process and start messaging and tee them up for a conversation, where can they find out more about that and connect to you? Well, if you want to know more about nimble.com, it’s free. You could sign up for two weeks without a credit card. Try it out at nimble.com, and if you do decide it will fit your needs and wanna subscribe, use the code Jon 40, J-O-N 4-0, and you get 40% off your first three months. If you wanna connect with me and let me know how I might be of more service to you, you can Google me and determine which platform or channel fits you best. Or make it easy, email me [email protected]. But I challenge you today to Google yourself. Do you show up on the first page? Are you happy with what you see? If not, if you follow my five Es of building your brand and growing your network, educate, enchant, engage, embrace, and empower. And  I can define that at another time where I could slip it to you on the side, but the whole idea is just giving you knowledge away with the intent to help other people grow and then engage with them not to see what you can get most out of them, but really what you can, how you can help them grow. These are the ways you can get a hold of me, and I look forward to hearing from your audience.  That’s awesome. I loved the five E’s particularly. I mean, we had the five Fs, which is the finding, the commonalities, the five Es, which is to actually engage people and get them, get closer to them through communication. And I have one more for you, the three Ps if you wanna achieve your goals in life. I read a book called Think and Grow Rich and Napoleon Hill. Many people I know who retired early, like I did read that book and attribute their success to it. And here’s the nuggets I got out of it. Figure out what your passion is. Build a plan to achieve it. Make it your purpose on the daily basis, most people don’t have a passion, and if they do, they’re, they’re not focused on getting there. And so what I say is figure out what your passion is, build a plan to achieve it, and put that plan on your mirror or your refrigerator. And every day you get up and say, ‘What am I doing today to get there?’ You may not get there, but you’re gonna get someplace and it’s gonna change your life.  Yeah. That was an old story in Napoleon Hill when Andrew Carnegie taught him to talk to the mirror every day and tell himself that he’s gonna be a bigger person than Andrew Carnegie. And he eventually achieved it because he touched more people. Awesome. Well, John, thank you for coming on the show, and if you enjoy this episode, stay tuned because we come every week with another entrepreneur sharing their framework. Thank you, John for coming and thanks for listening.  Thank you, Steve. Important links: Jon’s LinkedIn Start a free trial of Nimble Email Jon directly: [email protected]

https://youtu.be/x9I054pknWM Sri Kaza, serial CEO (most recently of BriteCap Financial) and author of Un-Convention: A Small Business Strategy Guide, joins me to share how unconventional thinking and the Trust Equation Framework can transform client relationships and small-business strategy. Sri explains how he discovered entrepreneurship through his own career, from Y2K programmer to global sales executive to CEO, and why developing people is at the heart of his personal “Why.” We explore Sri’s memorable experience selling software in Japan—where karaoke, izakayas, and takoyaki roulette taught him more about trust than any sales manual—and how David Maister’s Trust Equation Framework — credibility × reliability × intimacy ÷ self-interest — later helped him make sense of it. Sri also unpacks the principles behind his book Un-Convention: why small businesses can leverage their proximity to customers, nimbleness, and purpose to outperform bigger competitors, and how to avoid “empty-calorie” expansion by focusing on the right customers. — Drink Yourself to Trust with Sri Kaza Good day. Dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint podcast, and my guest today is Sri Kaza, a serial CEO, most recently of a FinTech company called Bright Cap Financial. But importantly, he is the author of Unconvention: A Small Business Strategy Guide. Sri, welcome to the show.  Thanks for having me, Steve. Appreciate the opportunity to chat.  You have a very fascinating story. So let’s dive in. But let’s start with my favorite question. What is your personal why and what are you doing to manifest it in your businesses and in your practice?  So, you know, my personal why is I love developing people and getting the most out of myself and helping them get the most out of themselves and it’s kind of led me to down the path of writing this book and getting out and working with small businesses because, you know, entrepreneurs are a fantastic, I’d say, lever for me to help somebody kind of build something or get the most got to themselves. To me, giving back in this way is something that’s just, feels almost natural, feels like something that I can really feel good about and do more of. Okay, so why are entrepreneurs so close to your heart?  Well, you know, I didn’t realize it until much later in my career, but I, you know, I learned that I’m kind of an entrepreneur myself, you know, looking backwards. It’s pretty easy to tell that, but I wouldn’t have known, or I wouldn’t have thought about it that way, you know, growing up and when I look around and look at the people I’ve mentored or worked with today, I get most inspired by the people who find ideas and kind of make the most out of them when they put ’em into entrepreneurship.  Well, awesome. So you have been running different companies. I mean, you, you talked before and I learned that you traveled around the world as a sales executive and, and CEO. So what’s the most memorable story from your international travels that you could share with us?  When I was really young, I’d started my career as an engineer. I started out as a, I thought I’d be a chemical engineer. It turned out I was gonna be a programmer because it was around the time of Y2K and every business in the world wanted to kind a rewrite their software to do something different, get out of the big Y2K bug. I flipped that early career being a programmer into sales. When I learned that, you know, an important piece of selling software was to get somebody credible in the room who could explain how the software or the technology worked. I did so well that my superior said, ‘Hey, why don’t you, why don’t you go out to Japan? We’re about to have a product in Japan and we need somebody there to help us sell that product.’ So, of course, you know, at 20, I don’t know, 22, 23, I really didn’t know much about anything. Of course, I thought I could do whatever they asked and I’m perfectly capable. What? Learn a foreign language and live in another country for a few years and, and sell millions of dollars of software to people I don’t know. Sure. Why not? Right? Of course I can do that. So, you know, the stories from there and I’ve gotten probably more than we could possibly share in the time that we have. But then the source from there. One of the first things that started to sink in is I got immediate credibility showing up because I was a foreigner. And at the time, and I don’t know that this is true anymore, but at the time when I showed up coming in from the US, coming from California all of the people I interacted with, you must know a lot about technology because you’re an American and that’s where all of this, you know, you’re from the San Francisco. That’s where all this technology stuff is happening. And you know, maybe I knew a little bit more than the folks around me, but it’s not like I was some genius or it’s not like half of what I was saying was stuff I had I hadn’t learned like days earlier. But nonetheless, yeah, I could really talk to people and, you know, hung on every word about what our technology could do. But what was wild was we got there and the software that was on its way still wasn’t ready. So for folks who don’t know back then in like the year 2000, 2001 computer languages, mostly all the code that was written for American companies, it would share language itself, the English language in single byte characters. So you’ve got 256 bytes that you could, or different combinations of bits and, you know, bits to get to a byte. That means 256 different letters, capital letters, lowercase letters, period, all that wonderful stuff in Japan. You couldn’t represent characters that way. You needed a double byte, right? You need two different bytes, so way more accommodations of possibilities. And just like pre Y2K, there was these issues where, oh wait, the calendar dates for the century weren’t there. Here, the data structures weren’t there for just common language translation. My engineering team at the company I was at was working hard to kind of put that in place, but it took six months to a year to kind of sell some of this expensive software, these big enterprises. So they said, get out there, sell it, and by the time you’re done selling it, we’ll have it ready. So, I’m out there and I’m meeting people doing some, you know, conversations with businesses and mostly I’m showing them slides ’cause there’s no software to show.  Right, right. And half of the meetings didn’t even have slides, just, you know, talked. But what I really found interesting was most of the time I’m interacting with my potential prospects. We weren’t in meeting rooms, we weren’t having meeting discussions on what the software did or anything about their plans for how they might use the software. We were sitting in bars or izakayas or karaoke places, drinking, and the thing that really stuck with me was it took me almost six months to get the first big deal done, right? We drank with these guys twice a month, maybe three times a month. And slowly progressing through their organization, like getting to the next level of decision making. The next level as a super maker, you could tell you were seeing success when the drinking party started to get bigger, like we’d go drinking, we wouldn’t even have a meeting. The next day we’d go drinking again. Okay. We’d have a meeting, you know, three weeks later, four weeks later, we’d go drinking. But now there’d be a new guy, more senior guy who joined. And you’d slowly like, oh, we’re getting there deeper into like the real decision maker. We’re navigating the organization. But really, quite honestly, it was just a lot of drinking. Fun stuff, fun stories. We’d go around and the first time I’d had something called Takoyaki which is this little grilled dough ball with octopus inside, tasty Japanese treat. But a fun game they’ll play when they’re out drinking is they’ll order Takoyaki roulette, which is a Takoyaki balls all look the same. One of ’em has a big chunk of wasabi in there, so when you bite into it, woo yellow wasabi. So, I remember going out, you know, eating with them and you know, we get this order. I’m looking at the table saying, oh, that looks good. Let me grab one, eat it. Great. Everyone’s staring at me and I’m like, did I commit like a faux pa? Did I go too fast? Eh, it seems like I’m okay. I’m okay. And then they all watch me and they watch me eat it and I’m like, huh, this is interesting. And then I, you know, I finish it. Then of course the next couple of guys grab some and then one of ’em like spits it out and like, gross and everybody’s laughing and I’m like, what? Why are you laughing at this guy? He didn’t like it. But I, you know, this whole time I’m going out to meet these guys and all they really want to do is ask me about what my life is like in California, what I think of Japan, what I think of Japanese girls, like nothing to do with work. And just like, you know, goofing off six months in. Right? Finally, what our biggest, biggest meeting comes up and we get the meeting, it’s in like a week or two, and everybody in the office is celebrating because the Japanese partner I was working with realized that actually, because we have that meeting with the boss man who actually is gonna make the decision, the deal’s already done. And I’m thinking to myself, you know, I still haven’t demoed any of the software. We still don’t know like what’s the pricing? What’s this? And the partner I was working with explained to me is, look, this is about relationships, this is about having a relationship with the companies where they really know how to work with each other, where they, they trusted to kind of bring the right software in this whole six months of these interactions, it wasn’t about trying to convince them that your software is good, right? Because the software is good. It’s about convincing them that the partnership is good. And so to me, that really sunk in. I was like, okay, so I haven’t demonstrated any software. I haven’t really put very many slides together. I know I grew my liver by a few ounces, but other than that, right? What did I really do? But it was this kind a building the relationship. It was really just getting to know them, showing up, being there every time they wanted to go do whatever, being there, right. And so, you know, to me, you know, it’s kind of backwards. I mean, even after that, I didn’t really mature to realize what that meant, but to me it felt like kind of backwards way to go do sales. It’s very interesting. So just, just wanna stop for a minute. So, you know, it’s very known that in Eastern Europe people do business. So if you go to Russia and you come down in a bottle of vodka, then you, they’re not even gonna negotiate with you. Right? Yeah. And I always thought that this was more about compromising people and putting them in a position where they do stupid stuff and, and humiliate themselves. But it’s very interesting that you say that this was the trust building process. So, let’s switch gears here and let’s talk about this framework we touched upon last time, which is David Zechmeister, who’s genius when it comes to professional service firms and how to build one and how to run one well, and he came up with this framework and you introduced it to me. It’s called the trust equation. So please share with our listeners what it is and how is the whole story is relevant to this trust equation.  Sure. You know, I again, at the time I didn’t really understand any of that, the framework, what I understood was hit his commission, and I don’t mind drinking beer. But what I learned later in life after business school, you know, after years as a consultant, I read this book called The Trusted Advisor by Zechmeister. And in it he talks about developing trust using a framework and a formula. It was kind of foreign concepts to me and many people saying, well, you can’t put an equation behind trust. But his equation was, trust is a function of your credibility, your reliability, the intimacy that you have with the co party and your self-interest, how much you're worried about yourselfShare on X versus when he lays this out as a simple, it’s a fraction, right? You take the top three elements of the fraction, how credible are you? If you’re a hundred percent credible, it’s good. You know, you’re gonna get a good number on, on the trust value. If you are a hundred percent reliable, you show up all the time, including to the izakaya events. That’s great. This intimacy factor is, does your counterparty believe they really know who you are? Do they feel like they’re in touch with you? Do they connect with you? And then on the bottom of that fraction is your self-interest. Are you, you know, sitting there in these meetings on your watch wondering when is it gonna end? You are constantly asking, so how much are you gonna spend so that you can calculate your own commission in your head, right? That drives the value of that denominator up, and then the overall value of trust comes down dramatically. Or if you’re sitting there thinking about,  Hey, so how do you wanna solve the problem with this tool?’ Or, ‘what are you thinking about for your own growth purposes, et cetera.’ Those conversations really. Shift down and shift away the self-interest and more to the, I’m actually interested in the party I’m working with. So when he lays this equation out, you know, I said to my, think to myself, wow, you know, this explains a lot of the struggles I personally had when I was in sales and, and when I’m trying to close service deals. In that, you know, I always worry about my credibility, right? I always am trying to show that I know what I’m talking about, that I’m, that I’ve got all this data, they’ve got all this experience, and what I’m failing most often on is letting the individuals I’m working with know who I am, right? And that I’m a normal person like them. I have the same kind of challenges and issues, I believe the same way they do. So when you come back, what was I doing in Japan with all of that drinking? And again, I was a kid, I didn’t know at the time, but you can break it apart nicely with this framework and you say, well, they’d already given me a big thumbs up on credibility. I was the foreigner. I was from Silicon Valley. They kind of bought what I had to say. What they didn’t know was what kind of person I was and would I be there? Through thick and thin. So of course we’re getting tested and we’re going out and we go drink, can drink like me, what’s the stories, you know, let me learn. And I think the compromise, you mentioned compromise. I think the compromise is actually quite important. I know something about you. I know something about you that you might not want everybody to know. I’m not suggesting you threaten it, but when you hold that. You now have a tighter bond with that person. And you feel like you know how they’re going to behave. You feel like you understand them better. So when they hear that, yeah, you know, I really can’t handle too much, or I, you know, I was good with my sake and my beer, but if they, when they learn that, you know, I’m struggling to chat with the girls who come up, you know, everybody wants to come and practice English, and I’m struggling to kind of make the connection, they find that funny. They love to know that I’ve got a few weaknesses, and that makes a big difference in trust. And of course if you’re out there saying, ‘Hey, I don’t wanna keep screwing around and going out to the bar, I wanna actually close a deal or move on to the next deal.’ Sure. They’ll see that. They’ll notice that and they’ll understand that. Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, on your timeline, you know, we’re not gonna work, but it’s in our timeline,  Transaction oriented person rather relationship oriented. And you see them as a means to an end, as opposed to the end. You know, it was really interesting. I was talking to this client and he’s going through some tough times, and his cash flow’s not very good. And, you know, he tries to negotiate and stuff like that. And, and I tell him, well, listen, this is what I do. You know, I make sure that you hit your numbers. I make sure that you don’t get distracted by shiny objects. I warn you, then you are about to make a bad decision. And he says, well, well, you really care. And I thought, wow. Yeah. So if that comes across, then maybe it’s valuable. And this is how I feel as well with my vendors. I work with a guy who’s been my graphic designer for 25 years. He is on the other end of the world, and I’m very loyal to him because I know that he cares. Yeah. And if I need something, he is gonna pick up the phone, he is gonna respond and he’s gonna help me out and that’s very valuable. And if you think to yourself there are relationships or there are clients or there are vendors where you don’t feel that, right? You don’t feel this, like this structure that Maister gives us to say, let me think about this relationship in its components. It helps you recognize where you need to invest,  It helps you say, ‘You know what? I get that.’ ‘You know, my reliability hasn’t been great. I get that’, he needed me last year and I was busy because I had three other clients, I couldn’t get to him. And you know, I didn’t think too hard about it at the time, but now I’m looking at it and I realize that he doesn’t think he’s important to me, and I may need to do something to show, first of all, that I made the mistake or I apologize, maybe show some vulnerability, but most importantly just recognize that that’s where the deficiency is in the relationship. That’s not an easy thing to do because we always like to believe that we’ve got the trust because I trust myself. Why wouldn’t you? Right? But it’s always from the perspective of the counterparty, the individuals that you’re dealing with, you have to ask yourself, what can you do to improve? You always want to know what deeper relationships and the other part of that kind of trust equation and, and how you deploy this trust.Share on X It’s really about if you know or you believe in somebody’s best interests, right? The trust that they put in you will actually allow you to drive them to those right choices. So just as you had said, look, there’s a couple of things I’m gonna recommend to you that are painful/ Of course, everybody wants to be skeptical of these recommendations. ‘Cause man, if I don’t actually have to do this, I’d be happier. Right? But if they trust that you are looking for them, looking out for them, right, and that you’re credible. And that you’re a real person that understands them, then they’ll believe in the benefits and the trade-offs, right? If you understand that they’re gonna go through some pain, and if you acknowledge that this won’t be easy, then they can continue and go forward. But if you can’t do that, then you lose your credibility to begin with, and you’re like, well, look, it’s easy for you to say, how many times have you heard that? Right? It’s easy for you to say. But these pieces, when you deploy them intuitively, they work great. You don’t even have to dissect your trust equation. You don’t have to think about it. The reason I use it though is we don’t always have, not every one of our engagements or activities or relationships are perfect and when you look at what could be broken or how to make them better, I like this particular framework to help think about it. Yeah. I’m also thinking that there’s another way to relate to this framework, and it’s more of an emotional approach. So if I invest more emotion in a client relationship, and I’m thinking more about how to help them and feel their situation and, and what would help them in this situation. What can I do that would make things easier for them? Or be keeping an eye open if I see something that may be unrelated to what I’m doing, but it would be really helpful to them, then I make that a connection of the recommendation or introduction. It really goes a long way and. And the thing is it really helps the advisor as well because it’s going to increase your self-esteem. You’re gonna be much more confident because you know that you are doing what is best for them. So you trust yourself more actually.  Yeah. Oh, you should. With empathy, with good empathy, right? Yeah. Right. Understanding where they’re coming. It also, you know, back to the equation, it also helps you reduce your self interest. Right. This isn’t about me. It was another challenge for me in my career as a consultant, me being more interested in the impact and making sure my right answer got implemented as opposed to what is it that the client’s really trying to solve for? And there’s another big eye-opener for me, I don’t see the world really through the politics or the career ambitions of my clients. I kind of just see, saw the world in, in terms of where’s the impact gonna be? How much EBIT can we improve, et cetera. This is good ’cause most people should just agree. But it turns out, you know, executives, business leaders, they often have more than just that in mind. Even small business owners will have other personal drivers behind their business. You can go in and start making some cash or pricing recommendations and say, ‘Hey, take the price up. ’cause you can, you’re not gonna lose customers.’ And they’ll say no. And if you don’t understand the profit margin wasn’t the only thing they were solving for, then you’re not gonna be a good advisor. You got to understand, okay, well the profit is there, and I get that you don’t feel comfortable telling people about the price, but tell me more about why is it that this is better for the business than not? Tell me what is it you’re trying to accomplish by having a lower price? If it’s not, just kind of make sure you hold onto your customers. Maybe they’ll tell you, look, I’d rather have people evangelizing the great deal that they got than I would taking the extra $2 a transaction. Right? Get that out there because then you’ll be a better advisor. Understanding what their real motivations are and helping break it apart makes you a better advisor. That’s very well said. It’s easy to assume that it’s all about the profit and the valuation, but ultimately the profit and the valuation serves a purpose, right? Why do I want to sell my company? Because maybe I want people to respect me to love me more. I want to please my partner, my parents, my children, whatever, myself. But ultimately, if I do it in a destructive way. Then I’m going to be self-defeating, so I’m gonna be a billionaire, but everything’s gonna hit me. Then what’s the point of all that?  Oh yeah, absolutely. And sitting down and being kind of thoughtful about that purpose, right? Early in your conversations with your clients and just being on the same page as them. It’s okay. And in fact, that’s that intimacy because what if there’s more? Right? Actually, the whole reason I started this business is I wanted my kids to be proud of me. Instead, they don’t really see me that much, and I thought I was gonna hand it to them when, when I built it up and it was time for them to take over. They want nothing to do with it. Now I’ve gotta sell it. So when you hear that, you’re like, okay, now I get why you’re bitter about this whole process. Why don’t we reframe it around? How do you then go celebrate the sale with your kids? How do you then turn this transaction into a vehicle to go get that engagement with your children. Whatever that might be, you know, really understanding and drilling into those things makes a difference in terms of can you accomplish the thing that you've been chartered to accomplish.Share on X  Yeah, this is very useful reminder for me personally, this conversation that, yeah, I have to do more, thinking about the emotional side and what the client is really trying to achieve. Maybe they are saying something or, you know, sometimes what happens is they think they are chasing whatever is at the end of the rainbow, but really they are not. They’re just saying this because their neighbor has done that or their friend has done that, or their peers and they feel like this is what they should be doing. But they feel comfortable with it. So really the underlying desire is something different. And by good questioning and good listening, you can go after that and get better and maybe sometimes, help the kind deed. Sometimes they don’t see it themselves. It was super valuable. But, before our time is up, I’d like to ask you about your book, because it’s kind of a counterintuitive book with a counter title, a little bit like the trust building process that we’ve been discussing. So the book is called, Unconvention: A Small Business Strategy Guide. So why did you write this book? Where does the title come from and how is a small business strategy guide different from a large business.  Good questions. Alright, so let me start with why’d I write it. I don’t have the personal capacity or time to go and advise hundreds or thousands of small businesses. I’ve been doing a lot of work that helped them through the lending programs and through the tax credit programs and a couple other businesses that I’ve run. I wanted to hit as many people as I could with what I had learned, and so there’s 32 million small businesses out there. I thought, here’s a way I can share kind of as much as I can, and help a lot more of these entrepreneurs kind of scale up and have impact like we talked about in the beginning. What I love to do is help people get the most out of themselves and out of their endeavors. And, in the small business, there’s a really good opportunity to do that. They’re, they’re, they’re driving businesses. They have something that they’re focused on doing, and how, how do we make them better at it? And, you know, I was inspired by a lot of the stories of the business I had worked with as, uh, the CEO at Forward Line. And what I tried to do initially was let me go and take a look at all of the success stories and all of the failures, and bring a lot of data and analytics insights in to show them, here’s my bias and my kind of hypothesis was to show them that you’ve gotta follow rigorous structured strategies and formulas to be successful. And, you know, the data just kind of didn’t prove me right. Part of it was ’cause I, you know, the way we captured data and the way we structured all of their strategies, you know, it’s how a big business should think about it. It’s purely on the profits, the margins, the growth strategies, the targeting. And instead what I discovered was there’s a lot of these small businesses that survived despite what looked like kind of weird or odd decisions, unconventional decisions. That’s kind of why we called this ‘Unconvention’, is that it didn’t seem like it would fit with what I thought a traditional strategic choices would be. But as I dug even deeper, I got a lot of stories out of it. I learned a lot. I saw a lot of what the outliers did. I was able to reframe, said, look, this is classic business strategy. They still have to deal with the same rules and forces of anybody else, but they have a couple of advantages. They can, because of these advantages, they can do things differently than the big businesses can. This is what was unconventional about it from everything from how they choose to differentiate to how they price or how they optimize their operations.Share on X I learned many different business frameworks, and I’ve included ’em all in my book on how big businesses have to approach these problems. The way I lay it out in the book is I say, look, as a small business, you have a few advantages that are consistent. You have your positioning, you are differentiated, you’re focused, you have a customer base that you serve, and there’s actually a boundary on the customer base that you don’t have to serve or don’t need to serve or don’t want to serve Focusing on the customer base that you serve actually allows you to execute these strategies successfully. The same frameworks that these big guys use. You bring your differentiation, you bring your positioning in, you can succeed. The other big advantage you have is your proximity to the customer. Like you just know how they think. You don’t, you don’t go slow. You don’t have to sit there thinking about what’s going on with your customers and what some survey and gimme some data. You know them, you know them well. You know how they’re gonna interact, react. You can empathize with some upcoming changes about to hit them. Make adjustments before it happens or when it happens. Right. And, and then finally, this purpose, we talked about purpose a, a moment ago. You’re not locked in on the profit maximizing outcome. All these other businesses, they have to pursue the profit maximizing outcome. And there’s fantastic literature on pursuing the profit maximizing outcome could actually be, a death trap for certain businesses. One of my favorite books is Clayton Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma. Right. The big guys have to pursue the profit every time, and they miss out on the innovations, right? Why? Because they know the big innovation. They probably even bought one of the innovations like, but it’s gonna kill my profit, so I’m not gonna do it. As a business owner who has a different purpose, if you’re trying to bring something to the world, if you’re trying to, if change something, you can forsake the profit to make the right choice, the personal right choice, or the right choice for your mission that these big businesses can’t. So what I, what I liked is capturing it all and saying, ‘Hey, look, this should be pretty inspiring.’ For somebody who’s gone, a business who’s been around and thinks that they can make some good decisions from their gut, say, no, it’s not. It’s not because you’re doing it from your gut. It’s because of these three principles. And you should understand these strategies and the strategic frameworks that the big guys use because they still apply to you, but they still do apply. And so you can’t just trust your gun on every move. You can’t just go and apply whatever you think because you’re small. You really still do have to play by the rules, but you can leverage these principles to win in these cases.  And then the business is a lot simpler than a large business. So it’s easier to make decisions, it’s easier to pivot. Your stuff is much more nimble. You are in control of the decisions of the business. So there’s a lot to go for a small business. And there’s no wonder that big businesses often get disrupted because they just can’t get themselves to do, to disturb themselves. So they wait until someone else does it. While a small business has the freedom to not be burdened by the legacy, bad decisions of a big business and, and get faster,  That’s right. But the small businesses that don’t succeed because they’re chasing these big business strategies actually fail the same ways the big businesses do. Right. Go after marginal customers that don’t really mean anything to you, but it’s a kind of an empty calorie expansion. You know, you don’t have loyalty. You don’t have resilience, and you’re overextended. Serve the customers that actually value what you do.  Love it. Love it. Well definitely check this book out. So when is it coming out? The unconventional. September 23rd. So it’s probably out already in bookstores and, uh, online at Amazon.  Well, we are going to publish this earlier. It’s not gonna be out. We are gonna come out probably the second week of September. Yeah. Oh, okay. Get ready for the launch. Is there gonna be a pre-order copy?  Oh, yeah. It’s pre-order on Amazon too, so you should be able to, you’ll find it, it’s ranking pretty high in pre-order sales already, so, should be easy to find.  So, so check out Sri Kaza, Unconvention: A small Business guide. I already started reading it and it’s fascinating. So definitely check it out. So, Sri, thanks for coming on the show and sharing your ideas and experience. So, if people would like to not just read the book on Amazon but would like to reach out and learn more about what you do, where should they go? Where can they find you?  You can find me on my website. I’ve got sub stack, and I’ve got a website. So you can come to me on my website, sri-kaza.com. You’ll be able to download the primer on the principles, learn a little bit more, just a couple of exercises, kind think about your own business there. And then, you know, I post a lot of blog posts about today’s environment for small business, things like tariffs or pricing or online advertising, all kinds of different topics for small businesses.  So very interesting. So do check it out, sri-kaza.com and read Unconvention. Sri thanks for coming to business, to come to talk about your business and your ideas on the podcast. And if you enjoyed the show, stay tuned because exciting entrepreneurs keep coming to the show every week. Thanks for coming, Sri and thanks for listening. Important Links: Sri’s LinkedIn Sri’s website

https://youtu.be/70wPvPbdvwg Patrick Seaton, President and Owner of Innovative Management Tools and creator of the Change OS™ Framework, helps leaders and organizations proactively navigate change with clarity and structure. Drawing on decades as a corporate manager facing growth, chaos, and constant change, Patrick built tools to give leaders a roadmap for facilitating change instead of simply reacting to it. We explore Patrick’s journey from survival-mode middle manager to building 28 frameworks for change facilitation, culminating in Change OS™. Patrick explains why traditional “change management” became a messy junk drawer of tactics, and how the Change OS™ Framework reframes it into seven clear steps. In this conversation he walks us through four of them—Change Management, Change Preparation, Change Enablement, and Change Readiness—showing how proactive preparation of people, skills, and motivation creates far better outcomes than simply “dealing with it.” Patrick also shares why people don’t actually resist change—they resist being changed—how to create internal champions who spread buy-in, and why slowing down up front helps organizations go faster later. — Don’t Change People with Patrick Seaton Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Patrick Seaton, the president and owner of Innovative Management Tools and the creator of Change OS. Patrick, welcome to the show. Thank you very much, Steve. It’s great to be here. Well, I’m into different OS’s, Summit OS, Strategy OS, all that stuff. And when I saw that you created Change OS, I was super excited and interested. as to what this is. So, we’re going to get into it, but let me first ask you, what is your personal “Why” and how are you manifesting it in your business? My personal “Why” really starts back many years ago, even decades, when I was in corporate as a middle manager. And we had lots of growth, lots of change, lots of chaos, and nobody was really helping us. And so, I started my company to create tools to help facilitate change. And it became really my “Why,” because too many people within a company are struggling with how do we drive the change, navigate the changes. And that became my passion to say, you know what, I want to help people, give them a roadmap, if you will, and tools that they need so that they can do what they do best,Share on X which is their job, and not worry about how am I going to get the change. So it started off as survival, turned into 28 frameworks, and then turned into the Change OS. So it’s had a lot of history. Yeah, that’s fascinating. Let me ask you a stupid question. Why is change management even a thing? Why is it important? Well, change management itself is the term that came out 70 years ago. And unfortunately, over those 70 years, everything and anything that has to do with change, we’ve kind of thrown into the same bucket as change management. And that was the impetus for creating the Change OS because that drawer, that junk drawer called change management, has gotten way too messy and unorganized. So change management is a piece of the Change OS, but thinking about it from a level up, it's important for us to go into changes with some sort of roadmap, blueprint, steps, because there are many people involved.Share on X Everyone has different responsibilities, and we have to keep it organized so that we can keep it moving.  Change management in the traditional sense has just a few who really understand it. And the rest of us are just kind of, well, I guess they’ll tell us what to do. So, change management is important. My question is really, why is change such a big deal for companies? I mean, life is all about change. I mean, as an entrepreneur, as a coach, I mean, all I see is everything is changing all the time. The change is happening faster and faster. So even handling it as a separate category is kind of anachronistic in my mind. Is this the opposite state of affairs that like stability is the normal thing and then change is kind of the unusual thing when you have to change something, otherwise you can keep everything as it was? Maybe I’m missing something. No, you’re right. Change is happening faster and faster. And there are statistics showing that just in the last five years, from a company change, departmental change, things are happening faster and faster. The change is always there. But what we’ve done more so in the past is that we react to the change as opposed to proactively navigating the change.  So we’re just trying to deal with it. Something comes up, triggers the change. Yes, there are those strategic changes that we need to make, but a lot of the changes that companies go through is not because of their doing, it’s an outside factor. So we are reacting to it, but even in the reaction, we don’t really have that how are we now proactively going to handle the change? Instead, we just, well, we’re going to deal with it.  Well, dealing with it is not really the best way, especially when you think about the different altitudes within a company.Share on X So is this a big thing, big company thing? No. Oh, no. Or even for small companies too? No, even solopreneurs. I mean, we deal with change all the time. because we have to continually adjust and pivot and move as a company is small and growing, and you’re getting new staff in, new products, new markets, all of that is change. Okay. So let’s talk about change. Let’s talk about Change OS. So this podcast is Management Blueprint and it’s all about business frameworks. Now the Change OS, as I understand, it’s got seven parts to it. So that’s maybe too much for us to absorb on this podcast. But can you tell me the first three or four steps of Change OS and what it does and how it came about and how to use it? Sure. So as I said, I, after 30 years in change and saying, it’s just not really organized because it’s too big. There’s too much in the bucket. So I stepped back and I said, let’s think, let me think about the life cycle of change. and what it goes through and separate the milestones, if you will, into how a company can navigate that change. There is a flow to the seven formulas, but the first one is actually what I call Change Management. So I retained the title, but I defined or redefined what really is Change Management. And Change Management is asking ourselves, what do we want to do? Why do we want to do it?  And who will be the person responsible for championing this? That’s it. That’s the management side. We have to understand that piece. So what, why, and who? What, why, and who? Whereas before it was everything. Now it’s just what, why, and who. After that, the next formula is Change Preparation. So we’ve got this good idea. We need to do this. We want to do this. We’re thinking about doing this. The next stop on the train is, okay, how prepared are we today if we decide to move forward? Let’s take an inventory. Let’s think about it.  What are we missing? Let’s not just go running down the road, not considering what we’re going to need to have and then later stop and have to backtrack and regroup. So let’s spend a little bit of time thinking about. Are we really prepared for this? And if we’re prepared enough, let’s go. If we’re not, maybe we should spend a little bit of time filling some gaps so that we are more prepared before we launch into it and think about the different pieces. So we know what, why, and who. We’re prepared. We want to move forward. So can you give an example? What does the preparation look like? Well, so preparation is, let’s think about the vision and direction, is that really nailed down? What will be the processes and procedures that people will need to, across the company, who’s ever involved in this change, what will they need to have as the processes and procedures? Who are the people and resources we’re going to need in order to carry this out? What are the training and skills that those people will need to have? What is the motivation for the people while we’re doing this? And then do we have action plans? And when you don’t have any one of those elements present or thought through, there is a predictable outcome on the backside. So, for example, if you go into it and it’s really not everything’s in place, but the people are really not clear in the vision and direction because it hasn’t really been nailed down and communicated, the result is you’re going to have confusion when people start going because they’re just going they’re going to make up their own vision and direction. Yeah, that makes sense. If people don’t have the training and skills, they’ll be frustrated because they’re struggling to do the work that’s needed to be done. So there is a predictable outcome for each element if it’s not there. And unfortunately, we run into, we launch projects, initiatives, where we haven’t thought through multiple. So we’re in a, somewhere down the line, a confused state of frustration with anxiety, and we’re not moving forward.  And people go, oh my gosh, this change is just so complicated. Not really. Let’s just start plugging the holes and then we can move forward. Okay, so we plug the holes, we identified, we prepared ourselves, we have the processes, the people, resources, the training, motivation, we know why we’re doing it, what we’re doing, with whom, what’s the next step? What is step three? The next step is what I call Change Enablement. And that is where the people come in, the people side. Who are the change agents? The change champions, the change managers, the change specialists, whatever they’re called. And they could be called supervisors, managers, individual employees. But who are the people that we’re going to need to bring into this initiative in order to take it forward into the organization? Because senior management will define the what, why, and who, and they’re usually a sponsor. They’ll say, yes, okay, we’re ready. Let’s go. But they’re not the ones who are going to carry it down to the front line. So understanding who will be those champions for this project, officially let everyone know these are the champions so that they are doing it in open transparency and they can go to anywhere in the company on the change project and talk about it.Share on X And people are going, why are you doing this? That’s very interesting because 25 years ago I was part of a process like that in a big commercial bank and the bank was making losses and McKinsey & Company came in and they made this big evaluation and then they said, okay, we can fix this and this is how we fix it. So they actually appointed a team of 10, I think it was 10 people from different departments of the bank, and they became the project team, whatever it was called, there was a fancy name to this project, and they were pulled out of their functions, and they said, okay, for the next three months, this is what you are responsible for, this is all you focus on, and it was very powerful. And the whole idea that these people were internal people who were driving the change, it went much better, as compared to if the consultants were driving the change. Absolutely. And they don’t have to be pulled out and put into a full-time position. Depending on what the change is, it can just be cross-functional group, but they all have a responsibility and a role in the change as it goes out across the company. Okay. So that’s the Change OS. And then there are other steps in the Change OS. So just give me the last step. What is the last step, the seventh step? The seventh step is what I call Change Readiness. So we’ve done all of the work. We’ve had all the conversations. We think we’re ready to pull the trigger and say, go, let’s go live. But let’s take one last pause and say, have we thought about it all the way down the line on all the different levels? And so that we may have as the project team and our close associates said, yeah, this is all great. But what if this goes four or five, six layers down? Have you thought about them and are they ready? Because if they’re not ready, the project team spent so much time. It’s been a success in their mind the deadlines here, management’s saying let’s go, and then it falls apart because we didn’t really think about as it went down there. So basically the operation is successful, but the patient has died. Correct. Great way to put it. Okay. Well, that’s very interesting. So change management, change preparation, change enablement, and eventually, change readiness. So this is a whole process of how you take from a company from A to Z, how to create and drive the change with internal champions. That is fascinating. So that’s a great framework. So let’s talk about your experience as a business leader. So, what was the most painful decision that you ever had to make as a leader and what framework helped you through it? One of the most painful decisions, and it’s not just one time because it’s how I think and operate. I’m very much a process and data person. And the biggest wake up calls I’ve had are when I forget to think about the people. I get into the mode of, okay, this is what we need to do. This is how we’re going to do it. Let’s just get moving. And I have to remind myself over and over, just because my brain isn’t wired that way, to make sure the people side of it. So I’m very left brain and I need the right brain. The vision where we’re going, that’s already defined, but getting the people and their emotions and their frustrations and all that. So I’ve had to remind myself when I’m managing a project to do that. When I’m using one of my own change facilitation frameworks, that’s built in the people side. So when I’m facilitating, it’s really good. I have my own check on myself. But if I’m just talking with people, yeah, I’ll admit it. That’s the last stop. And I kind of get into the autopilot of, let’s just start getting some traction on it, that’s probably the hardest one because it’s myself. And I think that’s the hardest decision on anybody. Yeah, I think that we are sometimes falling into a trap of thinking of a company as a machine, as opposed to a group of people who are committed to a mission. Yes. And when we fall into this trap, then it’s easy to overlook the people. So it’s a very good reminder. So thank you. Now, have you ever taken a framework or playbook too far and had to reverse course? Have you had this experience? Yes. And it goes right in line with what I said before, that I get so into the process and moving. And it’s like, at that point, I’m a tour guide in Paris. Imagine this, you’re a tour guide in Paris, and the people who are there, or maybe it’s just one person you’re with. And I’m walking as a tour guide along the Quai of the Seine. And I know that Notre Dame just opened up and was remodeled this year. And I’m so excited. I start talking about the new church and the history of the church and the cathedral. And I stop and turn around and I lost my person. And they’re back taking a picture of the Louvre. And I go back and I say, wait, I want to take a picture of this. And that taught me, just that analogy always teaches me, you have to always be the guide on the side. You can't go faster than them and you can't go slower than them. You can't push them. You'll get the react and push back.Share on X No, I want to take a picture of the museum. I have to adjust to their pace. So yes, there have been times where I’ve been the tour guide and I’m like steps ahead of them. And I had to come back and readjust myself. Not that the framework or what we were doing was wrong. It’s just that I lost the people. Yeah, I think I have fallen into this trap as well, that I have an agenda, I have a plan, this is what I need to make them see, this is what they need to accomplish, and then they are not ready to move that fast because they have other stuff that is more important along the way and they want to fix that first. And then just have to slow down and don’t take it upon myself that we’re not accomplishing the agenda, okay, but we are accomplishing a different agenda, which is more important to them so that they can move forward with that. And sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s just a diversion. And that to make the difference, that’s also an important skill. Or sometimes, it’s just that we think it can go faster than it can. And we have the luxury if we’re guiding those people, that’s all we think about. But the person who we’re guiding has so many other things that they’re responsible for and something pops up and they don’t have the time and they’re slowed down. And I think we agreed on, oh, this will only take a week. Well, then work and life happens, and it takes three weeks. It’s not that the agenda’s off. It’s just we didn’t have a crystal ball to know that we were going to have this issue coming up, so it takes three weeks. Yeah. And it reminds me in this project management, they say that in most projects, the ideal utilization of the people is between 85 and 95 percent or 80 or 90 percent. Because if you go beyond 90 percent, then you have no room to course correct. Everything comes up. There’s no room to deal with it. And that is actually going to create a domino effect on the whole project is going to collapse. So you’re better off going slow to go fast. Absolutely. And I think if the change agents are full-time, absolutely, you need to give them that time because there’s always going to be something that’s going to take longer than we thought. And if they’re part-time, then it’s even more complicated. You cannot put 80 % on them. You might not even be able to put 30% on them. Yeah, that makes sense. Before we wrap up, I’d like to ask you this. So, what is one belief that you hold that 90% of leaders would disagree with? Almost everybody I talk to, if I ask them this question, do you think people resist change? 95% will say, absolutely. And I say, I don’t agree with that. People do not resist change. We make changes every single day. People resist being changed. when they’re forced, when they can’t ask questions, when they can’t voice their concerns, when they don’t understand. We make changes every day. If the sun was coming through my window in front of me and it was blinding me, what would I do? Make a change. I’d shift, close a curtain, whatever it is. But I’m not going to get upset about it. But if someone walks by and the sun’s in and it feels really good and I can see and someone says, you should get out of the sun. I would look at them and say, well, who are you to tell me that I should change? But if they said, you know what? You can sit in the sun like that, and you’re red as a lobster. You might want to think about getting out of it, because it’s going to be pretty painful. Oh, I didn’t even realize. Thank you for explaining, giving me the context. Now I can make my choice. But I’m not going to blame the sun. I’m not going to blame the person. I’m going to say, yeah, maybe I do need to and I will make that change. So we don’t resist change person. We resist when someone forces us to change and we don’t understand why. Yeah. So one of the things that you mentioned when we talked about the change preparation was the motivation. So maybe that is something to do with how do I get people motivated about this change that you’re planning to do? Motivate them, give them a space to ask their questions. When an employee says, yeah, but what about that? And what are we going to do when that happens? And how are we going to respond to that? Because the change is bringing that up. That isn't resistance to change. That shows that the employee actually cares about the company and wants to make it go well.Share on X And they don’t want their life to be full of hell and chaos, honestly. So the preparation is, do people understand what’s the vision? Are they prepared with the skills? Are they the right person? Are they going to be set up for success? Do they have a motivation for it? And do they have some plans that fit with their regular job? That is part of helping them to understand we’re not just going to force this on you. We want you to be part of the change. Yeah, to create buy-in and so people will champion it for you. I mean, a point of the champion is kind of saying the same thing. How do you get people, you get the first adopters, basically champions, and then the first adopters going to everyone else boot into the process. Sure. Absolutely. Love it. So that’s great. So, the Change OS. If people listen to this and would like to learn more about the Change OS, where should they go and how could they connect with you? If you are interested right now, it’s an ebook that I’ve published through my learning management system. It’s not out there on Amazon or anything right now. I did that on purpose because as a new idea in change, I’d like to create a community around change and discussion. So, if someone is interested in it, it’s about 80 pages long and has a nice comparison of all the legacy change models and how they all fit together, has a lot of information, but they can contact me on LinkedIn and I’ll be happy to give them the link. And then as I get more readership, then start some community and just focus groups or. talking about change. Yeah, love it. So, if you’d like to learn more, go to Patrick Seaton’s LinkedIn page. Do you have a website as well? https://Innovativemanagementtools.com/ Innovativemanagementtools.com. Check it out. And if you can’t download it over there, then just ping Patrick and he’s going to send you where you can actually download the ebook. And I might just do this myself because I’m curious about Change OS and anything OS. So thank you, Patrick, for coming and sharing your very exciting framework, which I think you have 28 tools in it. You mentioned something like that. There are 28 different tools for change facilitation, which is one of the stops on the Change OS, change facilitation, all the tools. So they fit in there. Yeah. So if you like to facilitate change, with your people in your organization and you would like a great toolkit then reach out to Patrick. So thanks for coming Patrick to the show and sharing your goodies, and thanks for listening. Important Links: Patrick’s LinkedIn Patrick’s website

What fuels a business? It all starts with the dream. In this episode, we look at lessons from the legendary Michael E. Gerber, author of The E-Myth Revisited, who first championed the idea that entrepreneurs must cultivate their dream before anything else. From there, we explore why emotion is the spiritual energy behind every great business, movement, or mission. Without it, even brilliant ideas and top teams fall flat. With it, you attract missionaries instead of mercenaries—people who believe in your vision and help you build something that lasts. Defining a higher purpose is an overlooked advantage. Bring that spiritual dimension into your company and your people can put a small dent in the universe. — Bring in the Spiritual Dimension Hi everyone. Today I want to share something really special. I recently had the honor on interviewing the great Michael Gerber, yes, the author of The E-Myth Revisited on my podcast. Now, Michael is close to 89 years old, but let me tell you, he’s still sharp as a samurai’s blade. During our conversation, Michael emphasized just how important it is for every entrepreneur to cultivate their dream. Because the dream, it fuels your passion for the business. And once it’s alive, it becomes the energy behind everything else. Your role as a thinker, a storyteller, a leader, a designer, a builder, a launcher, and ultimately a grower. It really hit me. All of this is about tapping into one thing, emotion. Think about it. You can have brilliant ideas, unique assets, and a team of full of A-players. But without emotion, nothing happens. Emotion is the fuel in the tank of your business. And doesn’t that sound familiar? Every great religion, every movement, every political ideology in history, what did they all do? They tapped into the spiritual power of emotion to rally people. So why would it be any different in a business? Here’s the real question. Do you want mercenaries or missionaries helping you to grow your business? If it’s the latter, then you need a mission that excites you and inspires your people. The good news? Every company already has a seed of a great mission inside it. At Summit OS®, we call this the Company Why™. And here’s the thing: it’s not about inventing it—it’s about unearthing it, polishing it, and sharing it boldly. Let me give you a few powerful examples. “Liberate people from unhealthy and unpleasant tasks”. That’s the ‘Why’ of Combi Packaging Systems. A maker of packaging machines that help people not have to climb high ladders or work in dusty and steamy places. “Facilitate people’s independence and self-determination”. That’s the ‘Why’ of RackN that manages physical server parks. “Transform people to help fulfill their potential and enjoy a better social life”. That’s the ‘Why’ of Eos Rejuvenation, a facial plastic surgery in Los Angeles. And finally, “Help entrepreneurs reach their Ideal Lives while creating a positive impact”. That’s our very own ‘Why’ at Summit OS Group. Defining a higher purpose is the number one missed opportunity for business owners, and yet it’s one of the most powerful ways to create excitement, pride, attract top talent, and spark creativity in your business. So don’t forget to bring that spiritual dimension into your company because when you do, your people will begin to put a small dent in the universe. If you’d like to dive deeper, check out SummitOS.co for more videos on this concept. And until next time, keep growing.

https://youtu.be/JgJaZ9-fg-E Steven Wilson, CEO of Parallel 42 Coaching & Consulting, Certified Working Genius Facilitator, and Six Sigma Black Belt, helps leaders unlock potential by applying Patrick Lencioni’s Working Genius Framework to transform teams and organizations. His mission is to guide people and businesses to be better at who they are, what they do, and how they serve others. We explore Steven’s journey from Lean Six Sigma process expert to leadership coach and how the Working Genius Framework helps individuals identify whether they’re in the right seat, boosts productivity by focusing 80% on natural strengths and 20% on personality, and increases team collaboration. Steven explains how the six types of genius align with the phases of any project and how leaders can recognize where people are most engaged to build resilient, high-performing teams.He also shares why organizational “health” often matters more than “smarts,” how hungry, humble, and smart behaviors strengthen culture, and how servant leadership creates accountability, trust, and long-term success. — Build a Genius Team with Steven Wilson Good day, dear listeners. It’s Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Steven Wilson, a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, a Six Sigma Black Belt, and the CEO of Parallel 42 Coaching and Consulting. Steven, I hope I didn’t butcher this. Welcome to the show. No, not at all. I appreciate the opportunity, Steve. Good to be on. Okay, I had to focus on the Parallel 42 because I know another company called Parallel37 here in Richmond, Virginia. And yeah, I just didn’t want to confuse. But anyhow, exciting to have you here and I’m excited about your “Why,” to hear your “Why” and how you manifested it in your coaching practice. Yeah, well, again, appreciate the opportunity and my “Why” really comes from, and I really, I think I discovered this even more so in working with Patrick Lencioni and some of his programs. The “Why” is I really enjoy helping individuals or helping organizations. One of my downfalls, we can always talk about how strengths can become weaknesses. There’s a bright side and a dark side to our strengths. And so, when I happen to hear somebody say, hey, I’d like to do X, I’m generally all in and I’m asking, how can I help? And so that’s really the foundation or the basis behind why I wanted to begin and do what I do is looking for opportunities. How can I help individuals become better at who they are, what they do, and how can I do the same thing within organizations? Yeah, that’s great. Organizations are made up of people and when you help organizations, you help people and then organizations also serve other people, so there’s the multiplier effect. That’s exciting. And I’m excited about you being a kind of a Patrick Lencioni expert because I love Patrick Lencioni’s stuff as well. I think he’s got really good insight in the human element and the human dynamic in companies. So let’s talk a little bit about that. So how did you get to choose Patrick Lencioni’s portfolio of products and tools to work with? Yeah, and I’ve always been a fan of Lencioni and his work. And for those of you that might be familiar, and those that are truly experts of Patrick Lencioni, you may challenge my expert status, but so I appreciate that, Steve. But what I found about them is that they are so down to earth. Their advice. Because there’s many things that are not new under the sun. And Lencioni has taken these concepts and these ideas and all of these things and his practice as an organizational and an industry leader. And he dials into the people. He dials into the people side of things because I think, again, he looks at it from a, yes, a technical, a very high level, but then he’s able to communicate these things in a very applicable way.  And that’s why Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Ideal Team Player, Working Genius, all of those things resonate with me so much. Because even in my work with Lean Six Sigma, I like to focus on the people side of change, the people side of improvement.Share on X Matter of fact, just on LinkedIn today, I saw somebody had made a post that one of their leaders early on after college said, hey, yes, the technical skill set is critical, but you can’t lose sight of the people. And that’s the reality because technical things can be taught. People things, we really have to work with those individuals. And if we’ve got the right people, wow, we can do amazing things. And so I like to work with individuals that recognize their need for change, their need for development, and just help them along that journey. And when we talk about Parallel 42, the name of it comes from, I’m from Iowa, many know it as a flyover state. It confused us with Ohio and Idaho, but we’re right on the parallel, 42 is where we’re located. But then also parallel in the sense that we come alongside, we’re gonna work alongside and walk alongside with our individuals and the organizations. And then we also have parallel paths where I work with profit, nonprofit, faith-based organizations as well. And so in parallel and in working with those organizations, but the emphasis is people. Yeah. And people are really important. I mean, this is all what companies are. They are a group of people committed to a cause, and if you get them to be invested, not just mentally and technically, but emotionally into your cause and work for your company, and you can bring the best out of them, then you’re gonna go a long way. And one of the things I like that Lencioni talks about is this distinction between healthy and smart. So, most companies who are in business for any length of time, they’re smart enough. They’re 80% smart, 90%. You can tweak the dial a little bit, but the healthy, there’s so much upside for most companies to create a more cohesive team and the more healthy, drama-free team that care about the purpose of the company. There’s a huge opportunity there. Right, because when drama increases, productivity goes down, accountability goes down. And so the more things that you can do to eliminate that drama, reduce it at least, the better off the organization is as a whole. Absolutely, absolutely. So let’s talk about Working Genius. This is a book that Lencioni came out with probably two or three years ago, and it turned into a program, and a lot of coaches teach it. I also have taught it to my clients, but I don’t profess, I’m not certified. I don’t want to say it loudly because my clients might listen to this, but I didn’t do a stellar job on it. I think the product was so good that it was easy to do an adequate job. Yes. So tell me a little bit about, and our audience, about the Working Genius framework and what it does. Yeah. So I love tying in Working Genius with some of other, Lencioni’s other works that we talked about, The Ideal Team Player, we’re looking at then also Five Dysfunctions of a Team. And I think what really kind of transpires here is The Ideal Team Player speaks to having the right people.Share on X As you mentioned, hungry, humble, and smart. So Ideal Team Player focuses on that component, having the right people. Working Genius helps us identify that right seat piece. Right people, right seat, and then Five Dysfunctions of a Team, that’s all about right behaviors. And so what I do is I’ll do this trifecta where I’ll include all three of those disciplines in working with individuals and organizations, but specifically, Working Genius is one that I have most recently been working with and working with organizations. And Working Genius came out of, as many times things come out of, frustration of Patrick himself. Why do I feel frustrated at the end of my day? What is it that I do? And why am I frustrating others with what I do? And all of these things there. So Working Genius, the framework, and we talk about it, there’s many different assessment types. There’s Myers-Briggs, DISC. I always like to say, Myers-Briggs, Briggs and Stratton, Braxton Hicks, the mothers in the crowd generally get that joke there. But what’s different about Working Genius is that it’s 80% productivity, 20% personality. So it focuses on how we work and how we work together and how we work best. So if we can dial into the strength and the power of Working Genius and the assessment and the results and get a full understanding of it, we’re going to become a more productive organization. And so Working Genius, it stems from that there are six geniuses and they go Wonder, and it spells out WIDGET if you need it to write something down there, but Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanize, Enablement, and Tenacity. So those are the six. So the framework works and says that we have two geniuses, those things that just really fill our cup. So I’ll use the example of a Yeti. Generally, I have a Yeti sitting around here, but I don’t. A Yeti cup, we pour coffee into that, and it’s going to stay hot for a very long time. So, our energy is gonna be high. So that’s where we want our individuals, our team, ourselves, operating the majority of the time. Because when we're high energy, when we're enjoying what we're doing, we're generally going to produce greater work and have a greater impact upon the organization.Share on X I’ll skip to the end. On the end, we have the frustrations. So that’s that coffee in a paper cup. Those are the things that the minute we begin doing them, they suck the life out of us. As you mentioned, I’m a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and part of that is data and statistics. When I have to sit down and do data and statistics, it just sucks the life out of me. What I think is a half an hour has only been five minutes. So, it doesn’t mean that we don’t have that skill set. It just means that we don’t get energy from doing it. And those are our frustrations. So we’ll have two frustrations. And then in the middle, we have what’s called the working competencies. And the working competencies are those things that we’re really good at, but they don’t give us that energy. They don’t fill our cup. And so what happens is, say, oh, hey, Steve, you really enjoyed, or you’re good at this. So I keep asking Steve to do it. And because Steve is loyal and because Steve wants to do a great job, Steve does it, but then eventually Steve gets burnt out because Steve’s doing something that doesn’t really give him energy. So, the theory is, the thought process behind just the individual is that the more that we can have them working in their geniuses, the more productive, the more enjoyable, the better they're going to be.Share on X And so that’s really what resonated with me because being an individual business owner, having to do all of it, Steve, you know that you’re having to do the wonder piece. And the wonder is all about that individual that stands on the top of the mountain and can look over the horizon and see what’s coming. Are we going in the right direction? Invention then is that individual that takes that idea and says, hey, I got some ideas. Let’s go ahead and let’s move this direction. Discernment then, discernment is all about course-correcting rather than, and oftentimes what we’ll do is we’ll refer to some of these in a negative light. So discernment, many times we’ll have individuals, we’re sitting in a meeting and every time an idea comes forward, they’re going, nope, that’s not going to work. We’ve all been party to those meetings. But in reality, I like to refer to them, that’s not going to work. We’ve all been party to those meetings. But in reality, I like to refer to them, they’re a refiner. They’re the individual that is saying, yeah, that’s a good idea, but have we given thought to, and all of a sudden that puts them in a positive light. We recognize them as bringing more value. They're refining those ideas and we need those individuals.Share on X And then we have the galvanizer. The galvanizer is that oftentimes we could just call it a cheerleader, but they are that individual that rallies the troops, that identifies, okay, here’s the direction we’re going. All right, people, let’s go. And they’re able to generate that excitement around an idea and help bring the team together. And then we have the enablement. And oftentimes say, if somebody says you’re an enabler, that’s not a good thing. But in this case, it is because it’s that individual that recognizes the need to come alongside. And that’s what gives them passion. And then lastly, we have tenacity. Tenacity is that individual that sees something that needs to get done, and they say, let’s get it done, and puts it all together. So those are the individual pieces. And then what I love about this is it translates into teams. So we’ll work with a team, we’ll work with the individual to help understand where they’re at. And for me personally, it was very liberating. So I come out as I have invention and enablement. So there is not a new idea that I don’t like to investigate. I have a garage full of 70% completed ideas that I just love coming up with new ideas and new solutions for things. And then I love coming alongside somebody and helping them. And so it was very liberating to realize I don’t have to be able to do it all. I can operate. It’s best if I operate just how I’m wired, how I’m designed. And that’s where I’m gonna bring the most value to myself and to others as well. Okay, Steven, so let me ask you this, because one thing that I was struck by, and maybe that’s why I didn’t revisit this product in subsequent annual meetings with my clients, and then maybe you can point out what I went wrong. I found that on leadership teams, most people were in one of the four top disciplines and there were few tenacity people and enabling people. Is this normal? Well, generally what you might find is that leaders might be in the wonder and invention piece. But just as I did, as my work with DISC, I’ve worked with that for many years. And over time, what I’ve found is when I began doing work with that in 2010, we were finding more and more leaders were in that D and I, which are more of the outward, more of expressive, more of the verbal and vocal individuals. Sure. Yeah, more driven. But then over time, we’ve recognized that there’s a shift, I think because we’re looking at leadership in a different way. And I love the fact that Lencioni brings out, he does not, and I don’t like it either, the term servant leadership. Because he says if it’s not servant leadership, it’s not leadership. So, why do we have to add this additional word on to further describe when in reality, leadership should include that servant mentality that I am here working with you and for you and to help you. We shouldn’t have to throw in this additional adjective to describe, for me, it’s like active listening. Yeah. I think listening should be active. I’m actually okay. And I see your point. And with DISC it’s the same thing. I agree with you. It’s a lot of D’s and I’s, and maybe you have a CFO who’s more DC. Right. Then you want this quality of the servant leader. I think you can’t have everyone be a servant leader because the servant leaders are often less assertive, they are more understanding, and sometimes you just have to push things through. You need that high D sometimes. But I do agree with you that you also need this. I think Mother Teresa is an example and I think Nelson Mandela, they were these servant leader types. Well, and in that vein, just servant leadership doesn’t necessarily mean that you are not driven, you’re not goal-oriented. It’s how you see yourself. Think about it, when Lencioni is talking about the ideal team player, hungry, humble, and smart. Same thing goes for the leader, hungry, humble, and smart. And that servant leadership, that phrase there, I think, speaks to that humble piece of, hey, it’s not a, well, I earned it, I worked up and I got this leadership position, and now I’m in a position of power and authority. It should be more of like, oh, my, I’m responsible for other people. And it’s very humbling to be in foot in that position where, wow. And so I need to do everything that I possibly can to help these individuals. And I get pushback when I talk about value-added and non-value-added in managers and leaders, because in some respect, the only value that leaders have and provide, and managers particularly, is they're getting things out of the way. They're removing the obstacles that enable the people that are on the front lines to do the work that they need to do.Share on X Okay, so yeah, before we move forward, I’d like to talk a little bit about this humble, hungry, and smart, because that was another concept that I was a little bit confused about. I definitely love these three values. I think it’s the kind of person I would want on my team. So I’d like to preface this with that. However, what I’m confused about is that how do these qualities relate to the core values that a business chooses for themselves? Which are very specific to each business. And there’s some business emphasize customer service and the behavior of serving the customer or learning and growing and getting things done and stuff like that. So how do these three qualities that I fully agree that ideally all your people should have them, do they come in addition to the core values, the core behaviors of a company? So if they have five core values, now they have eight because they also want the people to be humble, hungry and smart, or you use these three as a general core value for all companies? What’s your approach? I wouldn’t necessarily say that they are core values, but they are core behaviors that you want to see in your people. And not distinguishing. So, for instance, my personal core values and of the organization, I look at it. People matter, eternity matters, life matters. And so we look for that people matter. That’s our focus is people matter. Eternity, so we’re looking at things in an eternal perspective and not just short-term, but long-term things. And then life matter. So I feel it’s my obligation to be a good steward of what I’ve been given and helping others with it. So helping others improve their life. So when I look to look at adding individuals, number one, they do have to have those core values. But individuals can have those core values and still not be hungry, humble, and smart. So the hungry piece is they’re not driven to succeed, or they’re not driven to be a team player. They’re not hungry for what we’re trying to do. The humble piece is, again, they’re not willing to be vulnerable, and they’re not letting themselves be transparent, and they’re not allowing themselves to be challenged. And so they take this arrogant approach to working with individuals, peers, or direct reports. And then smart is not so much that technical savvy, but the navigational of relationships and all of the political things that go on within organizations. They have that savvy. So that’s like emotional intelligence? Emotional intelligence, yeah, would be a great way of phrasing it there. So when we look to employees, we say, yes, we want these employees to have these values, these core values. That's who we are as an organization.Share on X But when we’re then identifying, okay, these are the individuals on our team, or these are the individuals we’re hiring, do they have these core values? Yes. But then, do they have these other qualities that we want in an employee. And hungry, can we, as leaders, create hunger? Yeah, I always hear, we talk about- You can starve your employees, I guess. Yeah, right, you could, yeah, to then create the hunger. But we talk about motivation. And so some of the classes that I facilitate, I’m doing for others, I’m using their materials or some of the training I do. And we’ll talk about motivation and ask what motivates you. And the reality is that we as leaders, we really can’t, in a long term, motivate. Yeah, it has to be innate. Yeah, it has to be innate. And so what we can do as leaders and as organizational leaders, we can create an environment in which people are motivated. We can create an environment in which people are hungry. We can give them challenges. We can be going for the right things. We can inspire them. Yeah, things that matter. Humble, that’s a tough one. That’s a tough one. You can’t necessarily as a business leader or team leader instill that into somebody. They have to truly have a heart change or whatever. And then lastly, that’s smart, that one too. We can help them develop that sense of emotional intelligence if they’re willing to. So we look at it as just really kind of a litmus test of sorts of, hey, where are these individuals at? And when we look to hire or performance reviews, those types of things. Yeah, I think I got it now. I think you really helped me understand. I look at the core values a little bit differently than you. So the ones that you mentioned, I consider them more about corporate ideals or company aspirations. And I like to use core values as behaviors. Because I feel like you can hold people accountable to behaviors. You can’t hold them accountable to their beliefs. You can’t hold them accountable to your aspirations as a company, which is an abstract thing for the whole company. But I do think that these are additional because these are innate things. You explained that humility, this is how you grew up, this is your personal experience that you’re humble. Maybe you went through experiences that made you humble and now you have it, but you can’t just force it. The emotional intelligence. Yeah, you can create awareness. You can help people if they are coachable to make them realize that they are missing some things, but at least half nature, half nurture. And then the third one, the drive, I think that’s very innate. Maybe you can’t train it. So perhaps those three are great when you hire someone, because then you can use it as a filter. Do I want this person on my team? When they are on your team, maybe you don’t want to hold them accountable, because if they don’t have that, then it’s your fault you hired the wrong person. It’s not their fault. Yeah, exactly. And then, yes, as you were talking about, with those three that I mentioned, and then we identify behaviors, to your point, within there. What does that look like? People matter. What does that look like? There’s behaviors that are associated with each one of those particular things. And what I love about Lencioni’s work is because he does bring it to that behavioral component. It’s not these esoterical or these existential things, but bring it down into application. And so when we then take and look at it from an individual perspective, and then we look at a team. So say we have a team of seven or eight. And I’ll use an example. I was meeting with, I was part of the team. I wasn’t facilitating the team because the team had all done the map, or had done the assessment. I’m able to then generate a team map, which lets us know where everybody on the team was. So it says, hey, who do we have in the Wonder? Who invents? And all of the different six areas. So it helps us understand where are our opportunities. Because if you have a team that is heavy in the wonder and invention, but light in, say, discernment, you’re going to have a lot of ideas that get into the pipeline and go through the pipeline that maybe never should get through the pipeline. Because we didn’t have that individual to say, okay, what about that? Maybe we should rethink that. Or we spent too much money on it at that time. And then we see, if we don’t have that tenacity piece, we see companies that have all kinds of ideas that have gotten into the pipeline and we’re working on them but for some reason, we just never complete them. We need some more solutions. And they’re just sitting there. So I was sitting in this meeting and the individual that was facilitating was asking for ideas. We were a new team and wanted to know how often do we want to meet and all of these different components. And came to this individual, I knew exactly they said, hey, what idea do you have? And his response was, I don’t have any ideas. Just tell me what you need done, and I’ll help you get it done. It’s a tenacity. Enablement and tenacity. Tell me what I need to do. Tell me what you want help with, and I’ll get it done. And so what this does is it helps us identify, where do people like to operate? Where do they like to engage, and where can we best utilize their skill sets? Yeah, that’s a good point, because you don’t want to frustrate that person to expect something from them that they’re not good at. On the other hand, if you give them stuff to get done, GSD, that they’re going to come through and then you’re going to be happy and they’re going to be happy as well. Absolutely. And then what we do is we’re respecting them. So say we do have that individual that has discernment and is sitting in the meeting and it’s a brainstorm and the whole time they’re going, yeah, but yeah, but the rest of us can become very frustrated with this individual and think, well, Jared, they’re just poking holes in everything. They’re shooting every idea down. But the reality is, is we need them. We just might not need them at that point in the meeting, in the project. We don’t need them. Right now, we just need ideas. So I, as a leader, can simply say, hey, Steve, we need your discernment. And we refer to it as regulating. Just need you to regulate your genius right now. And jot down all of these things that you’re thinking and all of these concerns that you might have. Because at some point, we’re going to need them. And so then also we talk about in this, the work, we talk about meetings where we go from this grand idea, then we’re slowly, the plane is beginning to land, if you will. We’re talking through the big idea and discerning it, and then we almost get ready to land the idea. And then somebody like myself, who has invention, goes, oh hey, have we thought about this? And all of a sudden, the plane shoots back up. And we call that meeting turbulence. And so how we’ll work on it with teams as well is we’ll work to identify, hey, what’s our purpose. Lencioni talks about, he’s got some companies that if you don’t communicate what type of meeting it is in your invitation, people are not obligated to come. Because what it does is it helps. So for instance, that ET individual, if we’d have given notice two weeks ahead and said, hey, when we come together, this is what we’re going to be talking about. We want you to provide some ideas. He would have been able to have some ideas. Yes. But it’s just in that core. There’s a lot of things then that we do with meetings and helping meetings become more productive. Yes. I don’t think we can cover the whole thing. Oh, I know. I know. You can tell I’m passionate about it, Steve. You’ve given a great premiere on it and this whole idea, the Six Working Genius, so you’ve got essentially everyone has two strengths and two weaknesses and you want to put people in the right seat so that they can leverage their strengths and they can downplay their weaknesses and then you basically elevate the whole team. Everyone’s going to be more productive. And then you have to mix them together as well so that you have the different kinds together so that they help each other. And two plus two equals six. Absolutely, because we need everybody, especially then when we look at it in a project phase, we need every aspect of it. That’s awesome. So, Steven, if someone would like to learn more or maybe needs your help to figure that out for their company, where should they go? How can they hit you up? The best way is just email [email protected]. Okay, well, definitely check it out. Lencioni is amazing. He’s got fantastic programs for companies that have team dynamic issues, which means all companies, and help you get more out of your team and make your team happier. And Steven is an expert in that. He can pull on all of Lencioni’s levers for you. So do check him out. [email protected]. And if you enjoyed this episode, then stay tuned because every week, we have a very interesting guest who will tell you a good framework that you can use to elevate your business, to accelerate your growth and to have more fun in your business. So thanks for coming and thank you for listening. Important Links: Steven’s LinkedIn Steven’s website Steven’s email: [email protected]

https://youtu.be/PniriBnM0mo Legacy may not be the number 1 driver for most business owners—but it’s close. Right after financial security, wealth creation, and personal freedom. In this video, we explore why building a successful business is one of the most powerful, controllable, and lasting ways to make an impact that lives on long after you’re gone. You’ll hear real examples of entrepreneurs who started late and still changed the world—like Colonel Sanders, Arianna Huffington, and Ray Kroc—and discover why business can be a greater legacy-builder than sports, politics, or entertainment. We’ll also look at how great businesses multiply impact—helping employees, customers, and entire communities—while setting you up to attract A-players and create something that stands the test of time. If you’re ready to grow your company faster, with less risk and cost, tune in—and remember: it’s never too late to start building your legacy. — What Will Be Your Legacy? What will be your legacy? “Legacy” isn’t the most important driver for most business owners to grow their business—but it’s damn close. Right behind financial security, wealth creation, and achieving personal freedom. I’ve always believed that building a successful business is the most straightforward way to create a legacy that lives on well after you’re gone. Sure, you can do it in other ways through athletic achievement, becoming a rock or movie star, writing bestselling books, or achieving top political office. But creating a business often requires fewer sacrifices of youth, health, and integrity. It’s also far more controllable. Making it big as an athlete is usually decided in childhood. It’s mostly a function of parenting an environment. Becoming a rock star or a movie star also hinges on youth, inborn talent, or early desire. Again, largely environment-driven. Becoming a famous author is exceedingly rare and often takes writing dozens of books before one gets recognized, let alone achieves name recognition. Political careers are mostly self-created, but it can be a long road to breaking free of party whips and agendas—if that ever happens. Turning politics into a lasting positive legacy is even rarer. No more than a handful of examples emerged each century, if that. Now compare all of these to building a business legacy. Business success is rarely threatened by injuries, addictions, or character assassinations. You can start at nearly any age. Martha Stewart was a model, caterer, and author before launching her media company in her fifties. Ray Kroc, a milkshake machine salesman, saw potential in the McDonald’s burger stand and launched a franchise model at age 52. John Pemberton, a Civil War veteran and pharmacist, created the original formula for Coca-Cola at the age of 55 while seeking an alternative to morphine. Arianna Huffington, after a successful career as an author and commentator at age 55, launched The Huffington Post in 2005, which became a leading digital news platform. Colonel Harland Sanders, after a series of jobs and running a gas station restaurant, began franchising his fried chicken recipe at age 65, using his first Social Security check to fund the idea. And you can build quietly sneaking up on competitors until it’s too late for them to catch up. The best part? A great business is an impact multiplier. You can help your employees, their families, and all the customers who benefit from your superior products and services. If you own a viable business, you have a massive opportunity to grow it and make it highly profitable so you can attract and retain A-players and build a lasting pyramid for yourself. The heroes of our age are business entrepreneurs who change the world around us. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Next, and CEO of Pixar. Revolutionized personal computing, digital animation, digital music, and cracked the code on tablet computing and smartphones. Sam Mond, CEO of OpenAI is shaping the future of AI safety and access, aiming to democratize tools that augment productivity and intelligence for all. Manny Perkins, founder of Combo Made Design, simple and Inclusive, empowering millions of small businesses, nonprofits. And educators who communicate professionally, often for free. Voki founder of 23 and Me, disrupted traditional healthcare by giving people access to their DNA data leading to personalized health insights and preventative care. Voyance Sled creator of the Ocean Cleanup is a young entrepreneur that can follow the world’s most visible environmental crisis, removing plastic from oceans and rivers with scalable technology. So what are you doing to create a lasting impact? Are you pulling on all levers, including hiring a leadership team coach who can help you get there faster, with less risk and less cost? Well, check out our guide page on Summit OS for ideas. Remember Colonel Sanders — it’s not too late for you to build a legacy that lasts. Keep growing.

https://youtu.be/ySHMeFn4kPA Andy Hite, Founder of Scaling Minds Coaching & Consulting, is on a mission to help leaders navigate complexity, align their teams, and drive meaningful results by transforming both self-leadership and organizational leadership. We explore Andy’s Six Shifts Leadership Operating System: Trust, Candor, Ownership, Empowerment, Alignment, and Leadership—a framework that turns groups of executives into high-performing, strategically aligned leadership teams. Andy shares why self-leadership is the starting point for culture change, how to move from hub-and-spoke decision-making to empowered departmental ownership, and why peer accountability and “The Gym of Life” are essential for lasting leadership growth. — Take Your People to the Gym of Life with Andy Hite Good day, listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Andy Hite, the founder of Scaling Minds Coaching and Consulting, helping leaders navigate complexity, align their teams, and drive meaningful results. Andy, welcome to the show. Hey, Steve. Thanks for having me. I’m excited for the conversation. Yeah, you’ve got a great story. You’ve got a great business. And let’s get into it with my favorite question, which is, what is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your business? Yeah, I love that question. Because most people can answer what is your “Why.” They might reach for something, but I love the follow-up. What are you actually doing to manifest it? Because that’s the part that a lot of people don’t always consider. I have a personal and a professional “Why.” My personal “Why,” I really landed on seven, eight years ago. My personal “Why” is to show my children that they can do and be and achieve anything they want. My kids are now 19, twin daughters, by the way. And as most parents do when they’re younger, as they’re growing up, we tell them these things. Hey, you can do anything, you could be anything, you can create anything. But I was confronted maybe eight years ago with walking the walk, not just talking the talk. I had a corporate gig and the thought and idea of starting this business was there. And for a while, I kind of put blinders on because truthfully, as many of your listeners can imagine, I’m sure you can imagine as well, leaving something that’s steady and secure to start over in your forties is really, really scary, and most people, I talked to a lot of people, entrepreneurs, they’re like, I can’t do it. I have a family of obligations, I have bills. And I was confronted with that. I’ve been telling my kids this forever, am I living it? Am I actually going after the things that I want? And so I didn’t want my words to be hollow. So I started walking the walk. I left that work and I started this business. And every day, as entrepreneurs know, can be a struggle as we’re building. And so it’s really just showing them, hey, if you're willing to put in the work, you can create anything. You can be anything.Share on X So that’s a long-winded answer, Steve, of what my personal “Why” is and how I get up every morning thinking about, don’t be a hypocrite, go do the work and show them. I tell this to my kids as well, that the biggest thing about being a father is that, or any parent, is that there’s nowhere to hide. So, you really have to evoke, otherwise you are a hypocrite and it’s not always easy. You have to really do the right thing, not just pretend you’re doing the right thing because they’re gonna see it. Yeah, well, and I didn’t want my words to just be for them or hollow. So I was forced to kind of walk the walk and thank God I did. Yeah. Okay, well, I’m sure that there is another motivation behind this. It’s not just the show for the kids. You’ve got to love what you’re doing. So, tell me a little bit about what you do and specifically you develop the leadership operating system called Six Shifts. I’m very curious for you to talk about that and to share with our audience what it’s about. Sure, happy to. Just in terms of what we do, I started out as an executive coach, typically just working with CEOs, senior leaders. My passion is leadership. So, I am on a mission to educate folks the difference between management, getting things done, moving things down the line, and leadership, which is more transformational. How do we take this thing and grow it into a bigger, better thing, something different? And so I really then started working with leadership teams, which is the bulk of what I do now. Working with leadership teams, helping them coalesce as a team and working together. I kind of think of the work that we do like a leadership team mechanic. How do we tighten this, fix this, replace this so that we’re a high performing machine and not just a group of five, six men and women together to move the thing along. And so that’s the work we do. We work with leadership teams in small to mid-cap organizations all across the country. Yeah, that’s lovely. So why did you feel like you wanted to develop an operating system for leadership? Well, a lot of it stemmed from me trying to organize my thoughts. In working with teams, it became clear where the obstacles were and where the misalignments were. And so we would often work on those elements, but in the beginning had no real system to help teams move through. And also no real system for me to help once we get here. And then where do we go? So, it was just sort of born organically from the work that we were doing and what we were seeing teams struggle with. I just sort of codified all those thoughts and put it into something that I frankly can understand and clients can understand so that they can see oh we’re gonna start here and then hopefully we’ll end here. Yeah, okay. So, it’s basically you productized the system so what are the Six Shifts? So, the Six Shifts are starting with trust. This isn’t really unique to me, Patrick Lencioni, Brene Brown, many of the bigger thought leaders in the leadership world are all in agreement that trust is the foundation for all teamwork.Share on X And we’re not talking necessarily just transactional trust. Do I trust that you’re gonna show up on time or do I trust that if I loan you trust that you’re going to show up on time? Or do I trust that if I loan you something, you’re going to return it? Really more, frankly, vulnerability based trust as Lencioni talks about if we can, as Lencioni says, strip down emotionally buck naked in front of our peers and colleagues, they tend to trust us, they lean on us, they allow us to be candid with them and have really good productive conversation without it being personal or without conflict being something that gets in our way. In fact, good conflict helps to build us and the team and the products and services that we deliver. And so we start the first shift in building trust in the team so that we can stack the remaining five shifts on top of that. Shall I just move through them? Do you want to talk to anything about them? You’re talking about trust. So, Lencioni has a pyramid and trust is the bottom. So, I guess that’s the first gear. That’s the first gear. Oh, I like the gear. Maybe we’ll just move with the sort of car metaphor. The second is without trust, we can’t really have handed, open, truthful conversations. So the second shift is candor. How do we say the thing that is real in the moment to the person that can do something about it with care and respect so that we can move our team and what we’re up to along. So, when we have trust, folks allow us to be much more candid so the thing that are unsaid or that we soften can really be true in the moment. I was just working with a team two days ago in Austin and been working with them for over two years. And we’re still finding where when we’re in leadership team meetings, people are holding back. And if we hold back, we’re missing opportunity. And the thing that takes the hit are the results that really matter. Execution stalls, trust, and those things become diminished. It costs human energy. So we really want to build the trust so that we can have the real, honest, candid conversations that need to happen to move the organization and the team along.Share on X That’s shift two. Once candor reveals what is real, and the next shift is ownership. Then we decide what to do with it. Ownership is like accountability, showing up saying, understanding what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and what am I responsible for? What are you responsible for? So that nothing stalls. Ownership is also helping your peers hold their ownership. It’s so interesting as I was talking to this team in Austin and many that I work with, it was clear as we were talking about candor that we got into like feedback. And what I learned is feedback only came from the top, from the CEO to each department. And what I tried to help them see is, that in and of itself creates silos because there’s very little collaboration between departments. And it also has the CEO become a bottleneck because everything moves through them and from them. And what I try and help folks see is we should have horizontal leadership where we are also leading our peers and sometimes that means holding them accountable and that’s okay. Having tough conversations and giving them feedback and that’s okay. But that’s not the norm in most teams. When we talk about ownership, it’s owning who we are and our role in the team. And sometimes that means having tough conversations horizontally, not just upwards to our boss or down to our direct reports. Yeah. So what this brings to mind for me is two ideas. One is peer accountability. I call it peer accountability. Where people are holding each other accountable. The second one is lateral leadership. I don’t know if that’s the right expression. Yep, I say horizontal, but that’s exactly the same thing. I think there’s a book called Lateral Leadership, something like that. And the idea here is how do you lead people who don’t report to you, who don’t have to follow you? How do you compel them to do what needs to be done, and how do you convince them, how do you persuade them. That’s a very important skill, especially bigger organizations. Okay, we talked about trust, we talked about candor, so what’s that after ownership? Yeah, those are the first three foundational, behavioral, leadership competencies. And then we move over into empowerment, which I’m sure you see in the work that you do. Oftentimes, and I’ve mentioned it a bit ago, CEO can become a bottleneck because everything runs through them. I’ve just been working with this group for two years and still discovering that so many things have to go through the CEO before they get executed or decided or move forward. It’s kind of hub and spoke system. That’s right. Yeah, they all have to go through. It’s very inefficient. It drains the energy of the CEO and they’re not able to engage in the high level strategic stuff because they are pulling day to day. That’s right. And we don’t really leverage the genius of the rest of the C-suite for example. Because we’re dependent on the CEO. So what we want to do is empower each leader to own, back to ownership, own their department, their teams, their decisions, their results, so that the CEO can be a leader of that team and think strategically. But all other decisions, they’re almost a little CEO of their own department. And we find when that happens, so much of the energy in the organization is freed up. It can be creative and isn’t dependent on one or two or three people. Love it. Okay. So, that’s the empowerment. And then what’s the gear five and the fifth gear? Yeah. So, once we have leaders who are really empowered to lead their departments, we need to make sure that we’re all in alignment and moving in the same direction towards the same mission. So, shift five is alignment, making sure that we know what we’re doing, how we’re doing it and how we each play a role in the overall strategy of the organization. Oftentimes, we find ourselves just coming in, moving day to day, just trying to get our work done, but we lose sight of what’s the mission, what’s the big vision, and how do we align each person on the team to play their role in achieving the strategy that’s in place. Yeah. Okay. So we trust each other. We speak candidly. We own our functions. We hold each other accountable. We feel empowered. We get aligned. Yeah. What’s the last gear? And then we try and take all of that as leaders on that team. The last shift is leadership, is how do we as individuals on this team take everything that we know and become that for our teams? How do we transfer all of this growth and knowledge throughout the entire organization? Which really becomes how do we create culture shift. We can’t do that until the leaders are living, eating and breathing that vocabulary, that way of showing up, that type of leadership. So we build through trust, candor, ownership, empowerment, alignment, and then we take all of that and we filter it through the entire organization.Share on X So, what happens when a team put themselves into sixth gear? What happens then? What’s the result? Well, then you really start to see big culture shifts and the team functioning like a well-oiled machine. Let’s go back to that car metaphor. Because we’ve released a lot of the friction points that get us stuck. I also like to use the metaphor of, say, five leaders in a rowboat. But before these six shifts, it’s often like they all have an oar, but they’re rowing in different directions, they’re rowing in different tempos and speed. So we’re moving, but we’re not moving in unison. When we can align all of these shifts, we see that we really work together to move the organization with much more speed, power, and clarity so that we can achieve that mission.Share on X Yeah, love it. One of the things that we talked about, which really kind of stuck with me, which is this idea that you have two types of leadership. You’ve got self leadership, you have organizational leadership. What is the difference between these two? I love it. This is part of my professional life, Steve, obviously we think we know what organizational leadership is, or having a C-suite leader lead their team, and then that person is asking each person in the organization and team to be, to change, to grow and evolve. Well, we can’t really ask that unless we’re willing to do it ourselves. I think Lencioni, Simon Sinek all say leaders go first. And so, self-leadership is looking in the mirror and discovering how do I need to grow as a leader? Where is my emotional intelligence not living up or being the example for my organization? How am I being driven by limited perspectives, the lack of curiosity, fear, doubt, pessimism? What’s driving me that’s getting in the way of my leadership so that I can be an inspiration to the folks that I lead, both horizontally or laterally and down. So, it all starts in the mirror. And that’s the thing that I find most leaders are not thinking about. We’re thinking about mostly management. How do we move this thing along? How do we keep going? How do we do it, make more money, more revenue, and make a bigger impact? But we’re not looking in the mirror saying, how am I, as the captain of this ship, holding us back, creating friction points, not being and living up to the leader that gets those results. So, that’s self-leadership. But that kind of chimes back to what we started talking about at the beginning of this conversation, that you’re trying to model to your kids what your values are. And essentially, for you to be able to lead, i.e. be a role model for other people, which is kind of similar idea, you have to first do it yourself. How can you lead others if you can’t even do it for yourself. So first, that’s for yourself. And then you’re modeling the behavior for other people, how to lead themselves and then how to lead others. Yeah, I often make parallels between leadership and parenting. Some people cringe at that because we think of parenting as patting on the head and doing the thing and discipline. I actually see parenting. Our job as a parent is to pull the best out of that kid, to give them every opportunity to grow, to become the best version of themselves. And I think that’s what our job is as leaders. Simon Sinek says, leadership is not being in charge, it’s taking care of those in your charge. And so, I see a lot of different parallels between really good effective parenting and really good effective leadership. Yeah, no doubt. So how do you teach that to people? Is that the sixth shift? That’s if they do that, then they become leaders? Or is there something else? So, this is why I also do executive coaching one-on-one and the Six Shifts Operating System. Typically, we’re getting into the more of the self-leadership and executive coaching because we’re looking at how am I showing up as a team member on this team as a leader in this organization and where am I not being as effective. So oftentimes we’re looking at perhaps there were a 360 evaluation, where’s our leadership limited, what’s creating it, and then how do we move beyond it? I was talking to a leader the other day through their 360. And one of the things that we really saw in their 360 is they’re very protective. They can kind of put up a barrier to protect themselves, but that has an impact on the people in the organization. And so, part of self leadership is first being aware that that’s happening. And then how is that protection manifesting itself in real time and then practicing letting that guard down, for example, in this example of this leader. And so, then it’s like getting into the Gym of Life where, okay, we’re gonna practice not putting up this barrier and being open. And then it gets into trust. How do I trust that the people on my team will accept me if I am not protecting myself? How can I trust them that they won’t judge me? How can I trust that they won’t be punitive judgment if I do or say the wrong thing? Because that’s why people protect themselves. So self-leadership comes mainly through practice. How do we grow as leaders through practice? The Gym of Life as I like to say it.Share on X Yes, but then I’m wondering, don’t people protect themselves because they’re insecure? Yes, all of it comes from, typically, I’m not a therapist, not to get too much into therapy, but we’re programmed in how we see and experience the world from a very, very young age. Our parents teach us, our communities, our siblings. And so oftentimes we get this view of the world that is not helpful for us in achieving what we want to achieve. And oftentimes it’s insecurity, it’s fear, it’s fear of judgment almost always, that kind of thing. So, the Gym of Life is really a kind of a fake it till you can make it exercise. So, you bring all these insecurities and you basically act as if you were not insecure and at some point, you’re going to gain the confidence because you are doing the things that you would be doing if you weren’t insecure and at some point you will be less insecure and stop being insecure to others? Yeah. We approach it a little bit different. Like, rather than pretend it’s not there and to pretend to be someone different, acknowledge that it’s there, accept that it’s there. And in spite of that, take the courageous and vulnerable leap to stretch outside of that limitation. Oftentimes, if we just try and ignore it or say it doesn’t exist, we’re just powering over it and we’re not actually, not to get too psychological, but we’re not actually working and healing whatever that part of us is that’s insecure. I had a mentor once tell me, you can’t leave a place until you’ve been there. And what I mean by that, it’s kind of like, we can’t grow beyond something unless we actually acknowledge that it’s there and this is who we are and we want to move from who we are to a new version.Share on X It’s always like Alcoholics Anonymous that first you have to acknowledge you’re an alcoholic and then you can start to cure yourself. Yeah, because the proclamation at the very beginning is I am so and so and I’m an alcoholic. It’s just the admission of here’s where I’m starting. Yeah, okay. I like that. The Gym of Life and how do you build those muscles so that you can let go of your insecurities and become more self-aware and then step by step become a better leader over time. Love it. Yeah, I like to use Gym of Life because oftentimes in this work, people think, Oh, I’m starting here at A, and I need to go to B. So I’m just going to make a shift and I should be at B. Right. And I try and tell people it doesn’t happen that fast. You don’t go into a gym wanting big biceps and do curls one day and expect that to happen. No, you gotta practice. You gotta put that thing under pressure for us to grow.Share on X So if we think about it like going into the Gym of Life, we see it as a practice rather than just a switch to flip. Yeah, love it. That’s awesome. So this is how to build leadership in your organization. First, maybe build self-leadership by going to the gym and working with an executive coach like yourself and then when you’re ready you take it to your team and help your team become better leaders by building trust, candor, more ownership, empowerment, alignment on the team and then roll it out to the whole organization. So that’s the leadership operating system. But it all starts with doing the exercises, like doing the push-ups, the leadership, in the morning. Awesome. So if someone would like to learn more about the Gym of Life, about the Six Shifts that you can take their organization through, where should they go and where can they learn more? Yeah. We’re in the midst of revamping our website. It’s been needed for three years. But scalingminds.com, you can find out more about the Six Shifts. I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. If any of your listeners are curious how their team is doing, I have a diagnostic that I’m happy to give any of your listeners to, especially like CEOs, to evaluate how their team is doing and where they might be very strong in one of these shifts and where they might need some growth in one or more of these shifts. Happy to share that. Awesome. So if you feel like your team is not firing on all cylinders and you want to put them into sixth gear as leaders, implement the Leadership Operating System, then reach out to Andy Hite, who is the founder of Scaling Minds Coaching and Consulting. Andy, thanks for coming to the show and sharing your goodness, your wisdom with us. And if you enjoyed the show, make sure you follow us on YouTube. Give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. Check out our LinkedIn website so that you can watch short videos of all these episodes that we are sharing here. Andy, thanks for coming and thank you for listening. Thanks for having me, Steve. I really appreciate it. Important Links: Andy’s LinkedIn Andy’s website

https://youtu.be/avv30Z0wD9Q Josh Tarbutton, Entrepreneurial Chairman and Chief Innovation Officer of Bravo Team Engineering Design and Fabrication, is on a mission to restore the dignity of engineers and unleash their creative potential through intentional culture and agile structure. We explore Josh’s journey from soldier and professor to engineering leader, and his Engagement Success Framework, which includes: Scoping/Visioning, Customer Communication, Resourcing, and Solution. Josh explains how this structured process allows Bravo Team to align deeply with client goals, unlock team creativity, and deliver complex, high-impact innovations with confidence. We also discuss how “grooming” a project helps avoid costly misalignments, how AI and Agile methods are transforming the engineering workflow, and why design for sustainability and accessibility will define the next frontier of innovation. — Unleash the Power of Engineers with Josh Tarbutton Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Josh Tarbutton, former professor, soldier, and currently the Entrepreneurial Chairman and Chief Innovation Officer of Bravo Team Engineering Design and Fabrication. Josh, welcome to the show. Steve, glad to be here, thank you. Well, I’m excited to have this conversation because your kind of firm has not been represented on the show for the last 300 episodes. So, we’re definitely gonna have some new insights and the new perspectives. We’ve never had an engineering consulting firm, I believe. And you also have a very inspiring “Why” of why you’re doing this. So let’s start with this. And would you share your personal “Why” and how you are manifesting it in Bravo Team? Yes. So why Bravo Team or why do this? So I think there’s the truth that if you want to create new things, you got to imagine them and put yourself in a position to create.Share on X And I think as engineers, we have that unique opportunity and in many of our careers to be the tip of the spear for creativity in our organizations. And, for me personally, seeing how soldiers are trained in the army, seeing how engineers are matriculated in academia and seeing the career paths that they end up with, I really feel like there’s a little bit of a mismatch in the market between what the engineer is really capable of and what they’re actually able to produce in an organization. And I would say that to the extent that there’s a blockage between the creative capacity of the engineer and the value that they could deliver, I feel like I kind of want to help that. And so what is that? Well, part of it has to do with like just the dignity of the engineer and how we understand the value contribution. And so part of my “Why” is I actually believe that if we actually have intentional conversations and we change some of the ways that we do things that we can get, we can allow people to be much more creative and we can have bigger budgets because we’re reducing waste in other areas and really make a dramatic impact into the way that we do design work. Okay, so that is fascinating. And you mentioned the dignity of engineering. So, what is happening with the dignity of engineering? Why it needs to be restored? So fundamentally, dignity is, I think, mostly just about respect. And I think, sometimes, when two people are having a conversation, our assumptions that we bring into the conversation can really take away from what the other person is saying. And I think that happens a lot in engineering, where the engineer is doing their best to try to communicate what needs to be communicated. And yet, there’s a little bit that’s lost in translation. So, then the engineer comes across as being a resistive or adding some restriction or creating problems or trying to slow things down. When in reality, I’d say almost all the time, these individuals are trying to help and reduce risk and increase the customer experience. And so there’s a little bit of this conflict between, I think, just in translation, between doing the design and development work the right way and then landing it in the marketplace. And we don’t really prepare engineers very well for the economics of manufacturing, design, production. And we don’t really always prepare leaders very well for what engineers are capable of and what they can do. And we certainly don’t create cultures, in my opinion, that foster engineers’ best work. And so I think we have a little bit of a problem culturally where the engineer is really kind of set to the side in a lot of industries. And I’ve seen this across the board. And I think we have an opportunity in the marketplace to just really unlock their power. And it’s really what it’s all about. So, restoring the dignity of the engineers, really more about like unleashing their power for the organization, their creative power.Share on X I love that, unleashing the power of the engineer. So what does it take to unleash that power? How do you create a culture where engineers thrive and they can be creative and they can communicate better and play a bigger role in company? I think it comes down to the culture, really, the culture that we build around development and innovation. I think the reason that it’s hard is because when a company decides to invest in new product offerings or the future or creating something, there’s often substantial risk. And so that pressure is often the financial pressure, the market pressure, hitting the timelines often, that business risk, it lands squarely on the development team. And yet, the development team is trying to create something from nothing. And so, there’s tremendous opportunity for people basically to attack each other. They feel afraid, they feel vulnerable. If the timeline or the budget is jeopardized. And so, this whole activity, if it’s not fostered in the right culture can blow up in people’s faces. And often, it is a source of friction. And I think we haven’t done a great job of resolving that. But I think, primarily, the way you resolve it is is basically if you can understand what the creative and innovative process is fundamentally, and then basically nurture that process while people do development, then I think it'll go a long way to making…Share on X So, it sounds like it’s a combination of culture and structure, how you unleash the power of the engineers. Do I get this right? Yeah, you can’t have one without the other. So that’s a great segway because I’d like you to talk about this structure that you have developed, that Bravo Team, that helps you maximize the performance of your engineers and make them feel that they are self-actualizing as well. So would you walk us through this, I think it’s four stages, four stage process, maybe you call it the Engagement Success Framework or something like that. What does that look like for you guys? Yes, we try to follow the design process and it’s a pretty typical service business arrangement. And I think, I’ll just pause there. Being a service business is a little bit unique because you’re constantly trying to optimize. You need really skilled individuals that you wanna meet their needs and retain. And then you have organizations that have business needs that those skilled individuals can meet. Those resources get sucked up really quickly. And as I say, every great engineer has a full time job. I mean, every great engineer is fully engaged, they’re not waiting around for work, they’re already busy. And so, how do you scale a business? How do you grow business? How do you execute on work in a service business? It’s highly dependent on the individual knowledge of that person. And so, what we have to do is be very careful when we bring the work into the business. So that’s pretty much the first step is getting that alignment, doing the scoping with the customer. Often, we get the lead is generated. Most of the time, the customer needs a technical innovation, and so we have to map that into the knowledge that the team has. We have over 50 people here, over 30 engineers. We have various education levels, various experience. We have 22 mechanical engineers and then 8 computer and electrical engineers. And so we’ve got to map that work properly onto them, the timing and all that is really important. So this first step of the process, we try to spend a lot of time on and groom the work, map it to the right team. And then we start to go through the design process at a very high level to try to capture the concepts what the customer can expect. And then we move towards that alignment, finally getting a scope and a budget. And if we’re all on board, the customer’s on board, we kick off the project, we assign the resources and try to meet the timeline and budget, and then do the post delivery and make sure the customer’s gotten everything that they need and go from there. Yeah, that’s fascinating. When you say groom the project, I haven’t heard this word being used a long time. In my investment banking business, we used grooming. That was the idea of how you prepare a company for sale. You kind of groom it, you fine tune all the various elements, but kind of the word maybe has gotten a negative connotation and not been used. I love it that you are using this in this context. So can you explain? Yeah, absolutely. It actually comes out of Agile and I’m a certified Scrum Master. So I went and took the training from Jeff Sutherland and it comes this idea of grooming the backlog is taking a look at all of the incoming tasks in a very agile approach. And based upon what you’re learning dynamically on a day-to-day basis, you want to rhythmically go back at intervals and look at the incoming tasks and groom that work so that it is mostly seamlessly integrated into the schedule. And so, there’s this complex activity of looking forward and then renegotiating tasks and that whole process in an Agile, which is more from the software recently, that’s called backlog grooming, where you’re grooming the backlog of work. When we say grooming the work, it’s more of like this back and forth with the customer. They say, okay, we want this. We say, yeah, it’ll cost this. This is a way of doing it. Or maybe there’s three or four different ways to do that. One example is, the customer wanted to mark these objects. And so we have a lot of different options. You wanna use a conveyor, you wanna use a bowl feeder, you wanna use a pick and place, do you wanna manually load? And often, when the customer is bringing us a problem, they don’t know the financial implications and we don’t know how they are gonna interact with the technology. And so this process of grooming the work is sort of like really getting alignment, having those conversations.Share on X Because we are at the tip of the spear, and we do innovation, our customers will come to us often knowing what they want, but they don’t know how to get there. And so, what we do is we start to kind of fill in the details for them so they can begin to imagine how they’re going to interact with that technology. And so, it’s a very important step to kind of get that alignment. And we feel aligned when we’re all excited. And so, it’s kind of like if we can get where the customer, where the team is really excited, and the customer is really excited, and we have explicit next steps. We have clarity of the work, then we can just hit the ground running. But you got to go slower in the beginning to go faster through the work. We do have customers sometimes they just want to throw money at us. They want to start. We have a way of engaging work like that. We call it Engineering as a Service. And you can save a lot of time without having to scope everything. But because these projects can become really expensive, hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars, this part of the process is really important for us. Yeah, I like it. So, it’s basically how you brainstorm with the customer to understand their context, how they would want to use that result or that outcome that you’re generating. And then, you have the financial inputs to find an optimal budget and outcome ratio, whatever it is. And then perhaps your resources also an input here. I mean, you can only do what you have resources for. Yeah, that’s fascinating. So, what is the tension between the customer expectations and the engineers’ creativity and innovation? Is there a tension there that you have to also manage? Oh yeah, without a doubt. I mean, I think a lot of the conflict just comes from just not really being able to have the conversations that we need to have at the right time. And it’s kind of like somebody saying that they want you to make a beef wellington for dinner. Well, that particular dish has many steps and it’s a complicated dish to get right and it’s not simple. And so, if the customer is asking for something, sometimes if we’re not given enough time to explain the process, then there can be a mismatch between what they think they’ve asked for and what we think we need to do to deliver what they’ve asked for. So sometimes, we get it wrong and we’re thinking of things more complicated than the customer, and sometimes, the customer is asking for things that are more complicated than they realize. And really, it's just a matter of working together and building that relationship. It's just getting that healthy alignment. And I think making sure that there's that time to get that alignment is really important.Share on X Okay. So basically, as I understand this framework, so you have the customer, you communicate to the customer, you develop the use case that they are trying to achieve, or maybe they bring it to you, and then you are grooming this project so that it’s something that you can get done on time, on the budget the customer has and the way they would be using this thing. And then, you have to resource this project and essentially manage the project to completion. Now the resourcing, how do you resource this project? Is it just that every project has a mechanical, an electrical, a computer engineer, project manager or are there other aspects that you have to take into account when you’re resourcing a project like that? Yeah, I would say the resourcing is a hard thing to do well because it’s just highly dependent on experience. And so, we rely on our most experienced engineers to scope the work. And if there’s something that we don’t know, we tell the customer that we’re going to have to add, we’re going to have to do a little bit of investigation to answer this particular part of it. But most of the stuff we can do in-house, we can scope in-house. And it’s part of the reason that we’ve built the company to the size we have, is so that we can have redundancy of skills and we can have overlap. We staff according to that Agile philosophy of having people that have depth and breadth and so we try to staff the teams so that they’re interlocking in depth and breadth and we also have organized them on different teams. So we have five teams, four engineering teams, and then a machining and fabrication team. And these teams are meeting together. When we get a proposal in, we kind of know who we need. So it might end up going to a particular team. So we’ll have the engineers from that team work with the sales team on the final step of grooming. The sales team, which includes myself and some other engineers, we try to get the work as close as we can. And then we’ll bring in that team and who will be working on it. And then we’ll work together. We’ll introduce them to the customer. We’ll get that final alignment. And then we’ll schedule the kickoff, and then we just run for it. But definitely, it requires experience. Fortunately, I was in academia for nine years and met a lot of people and have a lot of contacts. And so, our network is very strong as well. So, if it is a customer that needs something very, very specific or nuanced, I mean, I can call the professor who wrote the book on the topic and just ask him or bring him in most of the time. Yeah. I guess this is a huge advantage for you. Having been in academia for about nine years, you have a network and you can pull in the resources. So I’d like to switch gears here and talk a little bit about AI because it’s really impacting everyone and every industry. And I’m just wondering, what is your vision or maybe it’s already happening to some extent? How are you guys going to use or are you using AI and how is it going to change your approach and your process? Yes, when I was a professor, I tried to encourage everyone and try to listen to myself to be somewhat technology agnostic. Don’t proclaim your particular faith in any particular technology because technology is always changing, the landscape is changing and the rate of change in our lifetime and this time now is so incredible. You don’t have the luxury of not keeping both eyes open and every day kind of keeping your finger on the pulse of what’s going on. And AI is transforming everything. I mean, we all know this. We’re seeing it creep up in places we never expected. It’s going to change engineering, the way we do engineering forever. The tools aren’t quite here yet, but I’m seeing their echoes. We certainly are using AI to be more productive in many different ways. I mean, the simplest way is just in document generation and communication. It’s just incredible how much more productive you can be. We do image processing and vision and computer vision and a lot of vision-related automation for our customers. And we were creating sort of an internal manual. How do you make all these decisions? How do you pick the camera, the field of view? How do you know what a half-inch versus three-quarter-inch, or one-inch sensor is? What are these weird, nuanced terminologies that have to do with the fact that a camera was historically measured for the one inch tube that the light passed through and now we have these weird. So just things like that that could have taken me hours to generate sort of a guide, but using I think Claude.ai, it took me, I mean, record time to generate high quality content. Of course, I was the one who was the person to validate the quality of the content, but things like that are, those little things are going to be everywhere. But I think with regard to the delivery of engineering, I think the AI tools are going to be showing up everywhere. Automated, exploded drawings for CAD packages with ways of doing the assembly that are attached to specific hardware. I think there’s many low-hanging opportunities for AI to make us more productive in engineering. If you think about the electrical engineering design workflow, where you’ve got to pick a bunch of components of components and then you got to route a bunch of wires, I think there’s tools that are going to show up there to make engineers more productive. But it would be fascinating to see how far AI can take us in design. And right now, design is really kind of one of those things that we've seen AI do very well in two dimensions in terms of art and now movies and graphics.Share on X And so, when you get into sort of the three dimensional design and the CAD space, it’s fascinating to think about how things are gonna change. We don’t use AI as a part of a day-to-day necessarily for a workflow of delivering the design work. But I will say that we definitely are benefiting from the increased productivity. And we’re keeping an eye on the market to see what’s going to change. So, the more availability of these tools to increase productivity, and it’s not just you that’s going to increase productivity, other people in the market. Is it going to make the availability of engineering solutions broader, more democratized for more businesses and maybe individuals? So, do you have like a vision of what it could look like, how the pie could grow and what kind of things could be possible? Yeah, I think, I mean, when it comes to designs, like for example, like a table, should you really have to go find an individual to design a table? I mean, we have enough examples of certain things that AI should be able to get right the first time, but then it gets into like style and color, material, finish, but if you look at the 2D tools, you just say like, oh, can you change this image and make it more art deco and boom, it does it. So I think where you have designs that are sort of classical templars for a solution, you think cups, forks, tables, chairs, beds, etc. Many, many, many classical things. I think those tools should enable anybody to just do it. But then how do you make it? And then you have your joints and your fasteners and you have the assembly and then how you do packaging and then there’s so much that goes into the delivery of a physical artifact to the end customer that’s ripe for innovation. I think we can innovate in all ways that can go there. But there's products that are designed the way they are just so that they are cheaper to package.Share on X Is the AI going to do that? I think the AI will certainly be able to help us make things, but it kind of explodes on itself. Yes, yes it is. I’m just wondering, we’ve got 3D printing, robotization, and AI, and it’s all coming together and maybe we can, at some point, we could produce stuff for ourselves, whatever we need, we can just have AI design it and 3D printing create it or maybe have a robot help with it. I don’t know. This is really crazy. The future is very broad. And the details, the devil’s in the details, making something we can do, making it where it doesn’t wear out for many years, doesn’t corrode, doesn’t fatigue, doesn’t rust prematurely, designing for recovery. I think one of the things that in Europe that they do is they require many manufacturers to take their products back at the end of their life. For example, in Germany, BMW has to deliver their car. They have to take their cars back. They are socially responsible for the product that they put into the marketplace. Well, that’s a whole another design problem. Like how do you design a headlight so that you can disassemble it, get all of the chemicals out and recycle it to 100%. And we have engineers that are working on design for sustainability. And I think when you talk about AI, it’s like, well, you got to design for manufacturing, you got to design for assembly, you got to design for cost, you got to design for packaging, you got to design for sustainability, you got to design all these things, which is a great argument for using AI. Also, I’m 45, so it’s the argument that I use, well, maybe I can make it to the end of my life and still not be replaced by the bot. So I don’t know, it’ll be fascinating. But I’m the kind of guy, I want people to have more tools. I want people to have more access. We don't want to control people. It's sort of like giving them more paint and more brushes to create with. And I think to the extent that we can help each other create faster and cleaner and help each other make…Share on X I mean, maybe I’m naive or people call me naive, but I’m very optimistic. I think that when we improve productivity, it means that everybody can create more value. As a society, we are creating more value, which means people will have access to more, more wealth or more services or whatever, which will increase demand for things that we don’t even know what they are. So, I don’t think that we are going to run out of needs that people can supply in whatever way they’re going to be supplying it. So I don’t think that this mass unemployment is going to be a thing for us. And perhaps one of the needs will be to make it sustainable, to make it recyclable, to make it not spoil our environment. And that’s going to be a huge engineering challenge, as you say, and if you need people to coordinate those AI agents to help orchestrate this whole thing. Yeah, there was time where we didn’t have metal and we didn’t have nails and we didn’t have shovels or hammers. And we are a hundred times more productive in machining than we were just like 50, 60 years ago. I think what we forget about is it’s a tool. So, it’s a tool that you’re giving to other humans. So what are people going to do? They’re going to do the same thing that they’ve done since the beginning of time. Some people are going to help other people, and some people are going to hurt other people. And my hope is that these tools help us also increase our awareness, so that as we’re using them, we are also improving the overall quality of the human experience globally. I think that’s really where the real opportunity is in more of a global stewardship of people.Share on X And I think there’s a lot of people on Earth today that could be having a much better experience in their life if the rest of us maybe figured out how to create more opportunities. And I think technology is one of those promising things that might be able to help increase the quality of life for people globally and AI and these kind of things, even just the education that’s available. We’ve had the internet for some time. I think it’s created a huge change in global awareness. And now we have these agents who actually talk to us like people. They have an opinion. They want you to talk a certain way and think a certain way. And these agents that are going to be deployed all over, it’s sort of like this living, breathing, talking thing that’s talking to all these humans everywhere. I mean, it’s definitely going to make an impact. Who knows? I mean, education, it’s completely democratizes education, information, access to information. You can ask any questions and you get an immediate answer. I mean, how cool is that for curious people anyway? It could be life-changing, transformative. Yeah. And I think it comes back actually full circle from the first question I asked you, which is, what is your personal “Why” that you’re manifesting in the business? I see that the most successful companies, they all have a strong “Why” of why they are doing this, how they are ultimately helping people because all those “Why’s” have to come back to this. We are helping people in one ways or another. And if you put all that energy behind the right projects, we can really make things much, much better for everyone. Yeah, I like to say that the engineer, he or she takes the laws of the universe and they paint them on the canvas of our world to make life better for people. And I think it’s a worthy endeavor. And so from my “Why” is anything that I can do to empower that creative individual that has decided to suffer through years of engineering school, so that they can make things for other people that improve their quality of life. I think that’s really all I want to do is, I want that to be as easy as possible. And I think it could be easier if people were more vulnerable, if they were more honest about what things actually cost and we could just work together in a more open way, then I actually believe we could deliver innovation much faster. Yeah. Okay. That’s super awesome. Well, definitely check out Bravo Team and Joshua Tarbutton. What do you recommend people do in order to get in touch with you or to learn more about what you guys are doing at Bravo Team? I’d say if you have a need for innovation and you want someone to help you create it, create the future, then reach out to us. www.bravoteam.tech is our website. I have a website www.jtarbutton.com. I’m pretty easy to find on LinkedIn because I have a funny name. And we love helping people create new things and really grateful to be here, Steve, and thankful for what you do to help us run better businesses. Well, thanks for the plug, Josh. And if you’re interested in how to create the future and how to engineer the future, definitely check out www.bravoteam.tech and check out Josh’s LinkedIn page as well. So, thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a like, subscribe to us on YouTube, give us a review on Apple Podcasts and stay tuned because every week I come with an exciting personality who will share you about business frameworks and how to take their business and your business to the next level. So, thanks, Josh, for coming and thank you for listening. Important Links: Josh’s LinkedIn Josh’s website Bravo Team’s website

https://youtu.be/w1ZbzfSrdFk Michael Viane, Executive Coach, Strategic Advisor, and Keynote Speaker, is driven by a mission to help people overcome challenges and find the clarity to act. His Marathon Mindset Framework includes Purpose, Preparation, Pace, and Perseverance—four guiding principles that help individuals and teams sustain momentum and avoid burnout in pursuit of long-term goals. We dive into Michael’s journey from a 30-year corporate career to coaching, inspired by a desire to live with purpose and help others do the same. He explains how leaders can use the Marathon Mindset to navigate overwhelm, maintain strategic focus, and build resilience. Michael also shares the concept of DMAs (Difference-Making Actions)—intentional, goal-aligned tasks that counter reactive busyness and drive daily progress. — Make a Difference Each Day with Mike Viane Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Michael Viane, Executive Coach, Strategic Advisor, and Keynote Speaker, empowering individuals, teams, and organizations to overcome challenges and find the clarity to take action. Michael, welcome to the show. Thank you, Steve. Thank you for that nice introduction. I copied it from your LinkedIn page, so it wasn’t my creation, but I think it’s a good one. So as an introduction, by way of introduction, Michael, why don’t you share what is your personal “Why” with our audience? I will give you a rather lengthy answer on it. My “Why” started after 30 years in corporate America of having the recognition that I was waking up each day without any passion for what I was doing, without any sense of fulfillment at the end of my day. And the recognition that I needed to find the courage to move forward and do something that I deserved. And that was to have passion and fulfillment in my everyday life, to want to wake up in the morning and do things. And I had the very obvious and rewarding recognition that my greatest accomplishments in my career were always in coaching and mentoring people on my team to be greater organizational contributors, to be future leaders. And when I said this to people, they said, let me introduce you to somebody. And I met a coach. I met a business coach who explained to me what he does. And then I was introduced to Focal Point Business Coaching. And at Focal Point, we have the idea that we are a pebble in the pond, and that when we help one person and we drop that pebble into the pond, we see the ripple effect go out. My “Why” is literally to help others, to teach others, and make even the smallest of difference in their lives and in their business worldShare on X so that it creates that pebble in the pond ripple effect and it affects and makes people who work for this business owner, their lives better, their family lives better, the community stronger. This is my goal, this is my “Why,” this is my passion. Okay, love it. To be the pebble in the pond and create the ripple effect, that is awesome. And definitely coaching can create that, especially when you coach executives who then coach their direct reports and their family life gets better. Let’s talk about how you do that and one of the things that you talked about earlier when we chatted really struck a chord with me when you talked about the marathon mindset. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. And how do marathonists think about the race and how they pace themselves? So, what is the Marathon Mindset and what are the four Ps of the Marathon Mindset? Yeah, and this was actually the topic of our Focal Point conference this year. The Marathon Mindset and the four Ps. The four Ps are Purpose to begin with. And we just talked about this and “Why.” Our “Why.” So we talk about our purpose. then we talk about Preparation. Preparation is our process, our ability to plan, our ability to practice, to set goals, to have a mental readiness, and to figure out our process that gets us through, whether it’s a specific project or an overall, let’s from an entrepreneurial sense, the preparation for starting and growing our own business. The third P is Pace. I’ve been talking a lot about pace lately, and I’ll come back in a minute because pace is so important. Our business, our project, whatever it is, it’s not a sprint. It’s a marathon. And to avoid burnout and overwhelm, we have to be very, very aware of pace. I’ll come back and talk a little bit more about that. And then Perseverance is the fourth P. And there are going to be setbacks, there are going to be adversity, whether we’re starting our own business, trying to grow our own business, or even something as simple as trying to complete a meaningful project. There are going to be obstacles and setbacks and we have to persevere and have the mindset to be able to overcome those obstacles. It's a wonderful mindset, this Marathon Mindset, that can teach us how to think about not only how to be a key executive or be a business owner.Share on X It can also teach us how to have bigger and better relationships in our lives, how to be a better husband, how to be a better father. All of these things I try to implement in my life, but this overall mindset is the recognition that it’s a journey. I’m looking behind you right now and I see one business’s journey. And that is exactly what we’re talking about. It’s not a business’s sprint. It’s a business’s journey and how they got from where they were to where they wanted to be. Okay, that’s very fascinating. So purpose, preparation, peace and perseverance. So how do you implement that Marathon Mindset? How do you build that Marathon Mindset for your clients? What does it take? So it takes diving into each one of these in a very big way. I always try to start with purpose. And I thought it was great that you started our conversation today with Mike, what’s your “Why?” I find that most people don’t want to work with me because of what I do, but why I do it. So let’s take that and apply it to our own businesses. What is your purpose? There’s a line that I believe I heard from Rob Dial on one of his podcasts and he said, if your “Why” is strong enough, it will reveal your how. So when we talk about how to do something and that comes into preparation. How are we going to accomplish this? How are we going to build your business? How are we going to grow your business? How are we going to conceive and start your business from ground zero? If your “Why” is strong enough, your how will reveal itself. I love that idea because if we are all driven by that “Why,” that how just tends to come in naturally. But one of the four Ps that I’ve really been honing in on lately, and it just seems to be a real topic right now with what everyone’s going on in their lives and in their businesses, is pace. Pace is very, very important. And here was something that I keep referring to our conference, but it was a very powerful conference, that I heard. And there was a panel of coaches up front, but they had all run marathons. And one of the questions was, what do you do when you hit that wall at mile 20? Because we’ve all heard about that wall that marathon runners hit. And one of the coaches said, if I think about the finish line, when I hit that wall, I quit. What I do is I focus 100 feet in front of me and I run that 100 feet. When I get to the end of that 100 feet, I do it again and again and again until I regain a rhythm so that I can continue moving forward towards my ultimate goal of finishing this. Where this comes in and applies to our lives and our businesses is that so many times we become overwhelmed, we spin out of control in stress and anxiety because the uncertainty of how we’re going to create our business, grow our business, finish this marathon, or even simply finish a project that we’re in, the uncertainty overwhelms us and we quit. And I love that line when she said, if I think of the finish line at mile 20, I quit. We have to shrink our focus. It could be 100 feet at a time, it could be many different goals that we’re setting, but we come up with small wins through strategy and tactics to get through a smaller period of time so that we can continue to move forward.Share on X And I just find so many people right now are becoming a little bit overwhelmed with whatever it is in their life or their business. And this is a way to slow down. This is a way to keep focus and keep moving forward. There’s a book I recently read, Steve, and it aligned perfectly with this Marathon Mindset. Rich Diviney just wrote a book called Masters of Uncertainty and he talks about this very concept, but he reframes it and calls it moving your horizon. And he talks about that our brains when we go into any situation, our brains scan for three things, duration, pathway and outcome. So how long is this going to take? What’s the pathway in and out of this situation? And what does it look like on the other side? And if we can’t answer one or more of those questions, that uncertainty starts to overwhelm us and we buy down uncertainty by moving our horizon and shrinking it down. He used another marathon example. He’s a Navy SEAL and he would talked about their training and they have to carry the boat above their head and they go for three hours on the beach with these boats on their head and if that hour one you start thinking about how am I going to get through hour two and three, you will quit. He would start to shrink his horizon and say, I want to get to the end of that sandbar. When I get there, I will reward myself for getting there. And then I will set pace and do it all over again until I can recreate a rhythm where I can move forward and finish. I love this concept for everybody right now. My son went to his first year of college away last year and there was uncertainty in his mind for sure about how he was going to get through a full year away from home and with all of these academic and social pressures that were going to be on him. And we talked about this very mindset. Sometimes, we need to shrink it down to one day. How do I get through my test tomorrow? How do I get through this week? But rather than let the overwhelm of an entire year or an entire semester overwhelm you, let's shrink that focus and create these small strategic wins.Share on X Yeah, that’s very true. And this also, I think, connects to this idea of compartmentalization. Yes. How do you compartmentalize all your other problems so that you just focus on this small slice of it, which you can really, if you focus your energies, you can break through there, you can make an impact. I recall that my business was going through financial challenges and I had all these bills that I had to pay and the debt and there were just so many headaches. And what I decided was, at the same time, the only way forward was to make sales. Now, if I allowed myself to be overwhelmed, I couldn’t make sales. So I decided that I’m just going to do compartmentalize everything. I’m going to deal with my financial situation in the company Friday mornings for three hours. And that’s the place for it. And all other times I’m going to ignore the whole thing. I’m just going to focus on sales and positivity and going forward. And I had a discussion with a client yesterday who was going through the same thing, and I told him, just look at your bank balances at the end of the months and the bank balance at the beginning of the month. Did you make money? If you make money, you’re moving forward. If you lost money, okay, let’s decide what to cut. But if you made money, just keep doing more of what you’re doing and don’t worry about all the debt that you have. So this is great. Yeah, I know it’s very powerful what you just said. And it’s something that we all need to do is when you talk about that, look at that bank account at day one and day 30 of that month. It’s important for us to to reward ourselves for making that money and the recognition that we are moving forward, because that teaches us to start to enjoy the process of growing our business and running our business so that we’re not just trying to, oh my gosh, I want to make a million dollars this year, I’m never going to do it. Well, if you make a thousand dollars in month one, reward yourself as you just said, because it's a micro small win towards this larger goal. It's a great concept.Share on X Yeah. And it’s basically that’s what builds momentum. So say, okay, I go through this month, she made some money. Okay. Let’s do it again. Let’s do it again. Let’s tweak the dial and make a little bit more and keep moving because sometimes there are mountains that you have to climb. Absolutely. Now, let’s dig a little bit deeper in this Marathon Mindset. I love it. In the purpose we discussed it, the pace, it’s really important to keep the pace, to keep moving. Jim Collins talks about the 20 mile march, so every day do your 20 mile march. But there’s also, you share the concept about preparation, which I found fascinating. You call these DMAs. So what are these DMAs and why are they important? So, I first learned about DMAs through a group out of Minnesota. It’s the Trust Edge Leadership Institute. And I am actually a certified partner and coach with them. And David Horsager, he introduced this concept to me of DMAs, meaning Difference-Making Actions. Let me digress for one second and just talk about what many of us have happened to us every day. We find ourselves reacting all day rather than being intentional about our actions. And right now, this world is pulling us in that direction. Even when we try to be intentional, text messages and emails demand our immediate attention. Social media is always distracting us. Our phones ring. There’s all these things trying to draw us away and create distraction. What DMAs do is they create meaningful intention that’s going to create a positive impact towards our business, towards our goal, and towards our own personal growth. Now, one thing I do want to point out about DMAs is it’s not a to-do list and it’s very important to separate it. A to-do list is typically a bunch of tasks that we need to complete and our human just sort of like reaction to a to-do list is I’m going to find the three, four, or five things on this to-do list that I can wipe out in the next 15 minutes. I’m going to check them off the to-do list, and I’m going to give myself a false sense of accomplishment. And I always ask this to groups that I talk in front of. I say, how many people in the room have said to lives I was busy all day but I don’t feel like I accomplished anything and, Steve, everybody’s hands go up there oh yeah that happens to me all the time and it’s because we’re just reacting to things. We go into work, oh my gosh, I have a hundred emails I need to catch up on. There’s two phone messages I need to come up with. An emergency meeting gets called. Two people walk into my office and I deal with that and we look up, it’s the end of the day and all we’ve done is react to things rather than being intentional. So DMAs are specifically aligned to our goals. And what I try to teach anyone I’m working with is either at the end of a day or at the beginning of the day, this is your choice. Sit down and remind yourself of your goals. These goals could be both short-term and long-term. And then write one, two, or three Difference-Making Actions that will move you closer and have a positive impact towards those goals. You talked about just a couple minutes ago about when you were struggling in your business and you said, okay, I am going to focus on sales in the morning on a particular day, a particular time. In many, many ways, those were your DMAs. You said, the only way that I’m going to move closer to my goals and to keep this company going is through sales. So what are my Difference-Making Actions that I can take to move me there? Now I’m going to give you the rules of engagements of DMAs. So, the first thing I’m going to just remind everyone of is DMAs reduce and sometimes, eliminate hesitation because it’s on paper, you know what you need to do. When you have these things written down you need to apply a number to your DMA and what I mean by this is you might say I’m going to spend one hour working on a new contract for one of my clients. I’m gonna spend a half hour with one of my employees in a one-on-one meeting. I’m gonna write four employee reviews. Whatever it is, I’m gonna work for one hour on the marketing plan. This tells us when we’re done because the next rule of DMA is if you’ve written down two or three, you cannot move on to number two or three until you have completed number one. So these numbers help us recognize when we have finished a DMA. You get through one, you can move on to two.Share on X Now, if we only get through one or two DMAs, that is okay because we’ve done something meaningful and impactful for our lives and for our business. And it’s not just a task. It’s an impactful activity. And this is really the difference. There are companies out there that hold DMA meetings with their employees, and employees have to share their DMAs for the day or for the week, that is going to move a company closer to their mission, to their goal for that quarter or whatever it might be. Then what I also like to remind people of is I’m not trying to suggest that we can go through an entire day without being reactionary. We have to. DMAs are meant to be completed in a focused period of time. Typically, the best time to do that is the way to do it in the morning and the way to start your day. Aim to finish any of your DMAs by lunchtime because then you can spend the rest of your day attending meetings or reacting to emails or returning phone calls. But here’s what I love. If you start working on a daily basis with Difference-Making Actions and identifying what’s going to get you closer to your goals, you are never going to go home and say, I was so busy today, but I didn’t accomplish anything because at minimum you accomplish at least one DMA that had a positive impact on you and your business. Yeah, lovely. 20 years ago, I was running my own business and every morning I would get up at 4 a.m. and I did a couple of things. I read something, I was writing, whether my newsletter or book or something like that and I created the stuff, came up with ideas. And I did that every morning between, I don’t know, 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. And basically by 8 a.m., by the time my family, I had young kids, and by the time they would come down, I have done the most important thing that I had to do that day for my business. And then I went into the office and then I was in the action. There was a bunch of meetings and I had to work with colleagues and fix problems. And I do remember that was a very strong, powerful feeling that I felt that I was making progress. And you’re moving forward every day and going back to that marathon mindset. Like even if these DMAs are small wins, it’s moving us forward. And I always say DMAs can sort of track down and trickle down into that pace mindset we were talking about. If we have to shrink our area of focus and we can only look at the next 100 feet of our business, let’s create the DMAs each morning that get us that 100 feet down the road. If our goal is 100 feet, our DMAs are what do I need to do to gain those 100 feet? I think that when I go back to thinking about that shrinking of focus, Steve, just think about businesses in the pandemic just a couple of years ago. All that uncertainty that I talked about with duration, pathway, and outcome. When people ask themselves, duration, how long is this pandemic going to last and how long is my business going to be shut down or running at an anemic level? What’s the pathway in and out? And what’s the outcome? None of us knew the answers to any of those. We didn’t know those answers. So, some people became overwhelmed by that uncertainty and gave up and they quit. Or others said, all I can do is figure out how to get through this week and this month and look at that bank statement. And when I’ve made money, I’m going to keep going to the next month. So I love how DMAs can come in and help you get that extra 100 feet each and every day as well.Share on X Okay, that’s awesome. This DMAs, I love them. We are almost at the end of our conversation, but I wanted to ask you something personal. What was the hardest thing that you ever had to do in business? If you look back on your career, the most toughest situation that you had to deal with? Well, there are certainly times that I could tell you I had some very difficult and stressful deals to make with people. And those seemed to be very difficult at the time. But those definitely weren’t the most difficult because if I didn’t make that deal, the company was still going to move forward and we might need to pivot in another direction. But we were going to still survive. The most difficult thing I’ve ever done in business is being able to recognize that I had so much discomfort in being in a corporate role in a corporate world. And on paper, Steve, I looked very successful, but inside I wasn’t and I couldn’t find that passion. My brain wants to tell me, you know what? Live with that discomfort because you’re doing fine. But I chose a different discomfort and that discomfort was leaving that situation and starting my own business and figuring out how to make it successfulShare on X while still trying to be a good husband, a good father, and have enough money not to have private jets, but to be able to take care of my family and that was the most difficult thing but it was the most rewarding thing that I ever did because I stepped into a new discomfort zone that then became my passion and my “Why” and thank goodness thank goodness that I did that. Yeah, I love that. Actually, I was chatting with ChatGPT this morning and I was trying to come up with a good CTA for my offering and then ChatGPT suggested the sentence which was that, turn your drag into a strategic advantage. So I asked him, how do you turn a drag into a strategic? Basically, it explained that when you have drag, you basically have an opportunity to identify what is holding you back. And if you remove the drag, then you can go forward. So it’s basically a trigger for improvement actions. So I love that because you may have felt the drag in this old job. And that was a wake up call that, hey, I have to fix this. I have to do something. And sometimes you have to take a step back before you can take two steps forward. And you were willing. Yes. And with that, we in the Marathon Mindset, I think one thing I didn’t share was this line that perfectly aligns with the drag concept, which is sometimes you have to slow down to speed up and I just love that concept and it’s identifying that drag so many times. When I work with a business owner, we have to find that underlying problem in drag before we can move forward they might not even recognize it. They just say I’m stuck and I need to create traction. But until we figure out why they’re stuck and what that drag is, that’s keeping them spinning their wheels in the mud. We can’t move forward. So you said it perfectly. Yeah, I mean some companies they get new customers all the time, but they have churn on the other side. So, it’s kind of drag. So, they can get even more customers, but it’s much better to figure out why they are losing the customers. And then the past is much easier. That’s awesome. So, Michael Viane, Executive Coach, Strategic Advisor, Keynote Speaker. So, check him out on LinkedIn and you can see how he can speak about DMAs and other great concepts, the four Ps of Marathon Mindset and stuff. He would be a great keynote speaker for you if you’re listening to this. So Michael, thanks for coming. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you give us a follow, you subscribe on YouTube, you give us a review on Apple podcast and stay tuned, because every week, there’s a new wonderful individual business executive or entrepreneur or coach who will share their frameworks with you. Thanks for coming, Michael. And thank you for listening. Thank you, Steve. Important Links: Michael’s LinkedIn Focal Point Website

https://youtu.be/FB11MbVTtlo Andrew Jernigan, CEO of Insured Nomads, is on a mission to redefine insurance for the globally distributed workforce. His Globally Distributed Company OS includes communication, documentation, education, and integration—core pillars that help companies effectively manage international remote teams. We learn about Andrew’s journey from banking and global living to founding Insured Nomads—a company providing health, travel, and risk coverage for digital nomads, remote teams, and expats. Andrew shares how cultural nuance, asynchronous collaboration, and documentation help build trust and cohesion in a fully remote environment. We also explore how comprehensive global health insurance differs from standard travel insurance, what digital nomads often overlook, and why benefits like mental health access, cybersecurity, and global lounge access are becoming essential for the international workforce. — Mine Gold in Your People with Andrew Jernigan Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Andrew Jernigan, CEO of Insured Nomads, providing frictionless travel and health insurance for globally distributed teams, expatriates, digital nomads, remote workers, travelers, world schoolers for a successful international lifestyle. Andrew, welcome to the show. Well, thank you, Steve. And hi, everyone. I’m glad you’re tuning in. This is going to be a fun episode. Yeah, it is going to be fun. I’m super excited about what you have up your sleeves about how you built this business, because this really a post-COVID type remotely operated business that you have, and it’s a global business. You have like an interesting background. You lived in Amsterdam for several years. You’re married to a Brazilian woman. I lived in Ghana, worked in England, Thailand, Emirates. Running a cross-border team is something I’ve been part of for a couple of decades now. So this is a valuable conversation for the way the world works today and the future of work as well. Yeah, so basically you are the target market of your company, maybe, that you call the Insured Nomads. So tell me, what is your “Why,” your personal “Why,” that inspired you to start Insured Nomads in the first place? I’ve lived the lifestyle, I’ve had the plans and then fast forward a few years, I brokered over 26 of the international companies in our space and realized, took me back to my banking days back out of university, where I was building online banking and a lot of the FinTech components many years ago. And I realized, wow, insurance needs that kind of change. Healthcare, financing of healthcare needs reform. And so brought together some leaders in the industry and said, let’s do it differently. Took off to build Insured Nomads for health insurance and short term travel insurance that meets today’s standards. And this was before the pandemic was declared. I was working from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro. And my co-founders were oceans apart. And this was birthed and soon after pandemic was declared, and the trigger effect of that, of realizing, okay, flexible, hybrid, remote first, digital first, etc. Work dynamics have affected the world.Share on X Yeah. So basically, you fell into this. So you had this international background, then suddenly the Zoom revolution came and it made it possible, or somehow people’s paradigm shifted and suddenly it was totally okay to meet on Zoom. If you can meet on Zoom, then you can meet with anyone in the world on Zoom, basically, and then suddenly the world becomes your oyster because you can hire people anywhere in the world. So how did that evolve and how do you put the blocks together? Was it hard to start to build a culture with more people? Well, prior to this, we go back in time, we had ICQ, we had AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Instant Messenger, etc. and others in other cultures and regions of the world. Then all of a sudden, Skype was born and Skype was acquired by Microsoft and recently killed since they had Teams. The technology has shifted even though we’ve used forms of it over the last 15 to 25 years. So, companies have used BPOs, they’ve outsourced to other countries, and now that has migrated to outsourcing of task to people and spread around the world to say, okay, don’t just do task or project, be full-time as a contractor with us. Or be full-time as an employee, even though we don’t have an entity there, we’ll just send you money every month and then realize compliance is needed. So, let’s use an Employer of Record or a Professional Employment Organization (PEO) to pay payroll and local taxes. And then you have banking and payroll element, payment transfers that have to evolve cross border. And then you’ve got language issues, communication issues of, oh, I didn’t know when I said that it was interpreted as this. English of your region versus English of my region. Interesting. Then emotional intelligence of having bad bosses always compared to having to have a trust culture in a remote distributed format. You have an emotional educational opportunity to bring people into the type of behavior that’s expected, communication that’s expected through a distributed team rather than a local culture. Okay, that’s very interesting. So let’s dissect this a little bit. Yes. You have developed kind of a framework around this, which you may call Globally Distributed Operating System (OS). So what does that look like? What are the elements of it to build an operating system that can make you effectively manage a global company with virtual employees? There are some key components. As I go back on what I was saying a few minutes ago, communication is one of the four foundational elements.Share on X That word is too generic because there’s nonverbal communication. You have your camera on, all of a sudden there’s visual communication, but does laughter mean the same thing in their culture as yours? Does seriousness versus a smile during a business meeting have the same expectation? So, communication is really learning behavioral interpretations. And so having a core of communication for a globally distributed operating system, you actually to have understanding and empathy and relationship, but yet, you’re not going out and sitting at a dinner table with that person. You’re not in person often. So how do you do it? It truly takes, I think, several elements of trust, empathy, listening, and then understanding.Share on X And a lot of that, I think, is learned and taught so that in each team and department, people actually see beyond the first layer. They hear beyond the first layer of what’s typed in Slack, in Teams, and emails. And that’s very gradual. That’s not an instant. Do you have a training program around this so that you kick some people? It’s under development. Yes, it’s a process. Because even though people have worked remotely before, often they’re working remotely or from home and commuting in every once a month or once a week, they may be working from an unhealthy environment. So still, with a globally distributed, cross-border international team, there’s that communication element, then documentation is key. Because if you don’t have processes and scope of work and just your culture written, it takes many times for us to hear something. And then if we’re hearing it through our own filters. So where do you document all that? Is there like a central repository where you keep this thing? Yes. Have people read it? There is. So online central repository, wiki area. And I think that’s key because onboarding, you can give people, you can send people documents, but something that’s constantly being updated that it’s like, okay, this was added, but the education of it, of going deeper than what’s in print, because words, whether spoken or printed or published, have many layers. A picture paints a thousand words, but a thousand words have ten thousand meanings.Share on X That just, I don’t know if that’s exactly true, but I process as I speak through these things. And so we can have your vision and values written in 20 words, a list of four values and a vision of 16 words. But each one of those needs to be unfolded as the dominoes fall with all the layers of depth that are necessary. So education through every time there’s an all hands call, a community call, there’s reiteration of those, the mission, the vision, the values so that examples are given, that it becomes multi-dimensional. Then the fourth element here is integration. Because when it’s spoken and heard, when it’s read and processed a bit more, is through the illustrations of how these things are applied that people can then integrate. So you’ve got communication, documentation, education, and then integration, those four components. Okay. We can’t integrate them into our behavior unless we truly understand them. Yeah, and the reinforcement and then the integration. In my mind, the integration piece is how you integrate your core values, your vision, your strategy into every fabric of the company. So every tactic, the office, you have an office, but you have a virtual office, perhaps you have maybe a metaverse office, I don’t know. Some people have that, the team name, how people dress, how the Zoom background they use, this can all be integrated into every element. Yes, for example, if you’re trying to integrate the element of a sense of urgency into people’s behavior, we can say, okay, make sure and approach a new opportunity with a sense of urgency. But if we don’t document and say, that means replying within six to 24 hours, ideally within six hours max, have that documented and then educate of, okay, that’s what we mean by this. Not an email saying, hey, I got it, an auto responder, but a solution. And then the integration is seeing it happen, seeing it drop into the CRM with, and seeing that, okay, it’s actually, the behavior has been applied and correctly. When I think about these things in the distributed workforce, the future of work, I'm part of the Future of Work Alliance, which is leaders around the world looking at how do these processes need to change. There's a lot for us all to learn, I believe, in this.Share on X So if you have people from different cultures, is there like a dominant culture? Is there a European or a US common? You use English as a language that kind of determines to some degree the culture. What is it onboarding like? So if you hire someone in Egypt, how are you going to inculcate the culture into that person? It is gradual. And of course, we have to guard because we become like the people we’re with. So as you’re bringing in people from all over, everyone’s values intersect and things rub off on each other. So this is a very cautious thing you have to do, because if you’re in the Netherlands and you only hire people from that small town, it’s going to be a whole lot easier to control the culture if that’s what your ideal is. But if you’re a multinational entity and you’re hiring people from all around the world and you want to have that element, then it’s a whole lot easier to appeal to your customer, your client base, and have your internal conversations much more like your external because you’re dealing with people from all around the world as customers it's actually nice to have people internally from all around the world so that you're learning from each other and you're ready for the client from the unknown culture whether they're Yemeni or a mixed companyShare on X where the founders, ones from India, ones from’s from Sweden, one’s from Singapore, and one’s from Argentina. You can go to that company saying, I identify with you. That happened this morning, actually. Yeah. They looked at us and said, oh, you’re from Uruguay? I’m in Argentina. Oh, you’re from here? I’m from there. Ah, we like you. It’s a thing of camaraderie and rapport building. It’s like we get you. You’re not just talking about insurance. You operate a team like ours. You get it. You see the difficulties. That’s fascinating. I’ve worked many times ago. I’ve worked with a Dutch bank, actually, ABN AMRO Bank. At that time, there was a pre-merger, pre-sale and then repurchase of the brand. And it was a highly international bank, big history, 250 years since the Dutch Antilles when it was founded as a Dutch India company. And it was a very international bank, but still it was at the core, it was a Dutch bank. The board of directors was full of Dutch men and they essentially exported their culture wherever they went, they exported the culture. However, in contrast, I had a friend who was a private equity fund manager and I was living in Hungary at the time. And basically, his office was in London. I said, why did you make this office in London? Why did you do it in Budapest? It’s much, much easier. He said, what we do is we try to invest in different countries in Central Eastern Europe. And if I don’t go to London, I won’t have the access to the best talent from these countries that can help me invest there. So he went to London and then he hired people from all these different countries. And then he could show up as a local, but also with all the connections that the London presence would give him. Interesting. So what does your business look like? You have like a distributed leadership team as well? You have people from different cultures? We do. So as I hear that, I think, okay, a Mauritian Brit who lives in Bangkok, a South Korean that lives in Atlanta, a Brazilian that leads our medical underwriting and all things global assistance, and an American myself who is not very American these days after living around the world for 20 plus years. I think it’s extremely valuable. This week had an opportunity from a Japanese company, a Japanese insurance company that wanted to collaborate with us to distribute our plans. They didn’t reach out to me. They reached out to our chief commercial officer who’s South Korean and they hit it off. Similar age and just cultures much more unique than someone who looks like, okay, I’ve only lived in the US my whole life, not going to reach out there. I think people do see the values of different cultures as they do different ages as well.Share on X Now, how do you crack the code on the time zones? Because if you work around the world, it means you have to be awake around the clock, perhaps. Or have team members around the world? Yeah. But that means there is sacrifice. There is sacrifice on rotation of, okay, we’re going to have an all hands call, a team call of different departments. That means at times some people may have to get up at five in the morning when it’s going to be five o’clock on the other side of the world and the next time on rotation. It may be nine o’clock there when it’s nine a.m. And it requires sacrifice for sure when you’re working with the different time zones and an extra attention to detail. Yeah, it’s going to be exhausting. And then do you also travel to some of your countries of operation? Yes. I got in last night from New York City, but Saturday night I got in from a business trip to Milan. And the week before that, I was back in New York City. The week before that, I was in London. The week before that in Philadelphia. It’s a flow where in real life visits in a global team require travel. A team member from Qatar met me in London and same thing on the most recent trip to New York, team member flew in there. So those are essential elements are that the offsites of everyone, team off sites and then key leadership off sites to where you meet up away from where you normally work in a centralized or a specified location, because communication is different when you’re in person The level that you can educate is different. So therefore, the integration becomes much more applicable. So you then make an effort to do some meetings where the leadership team flies in and you’re all physically in the same location? Oh yes, that’s a necessity. Yeah, that’s awesome. And there are good companies to even help organize those. There’s one called offsite.com that helps companies all around the world. And that’s one of our product areas to serve those companies that are gathering at one centralized location because the risk is there for injury, for travel interruptions. And so they come to us for the travel insurance, for their group, for going to conferences and gathering for regional meetings. Yeah, that’s interesting. So what else is important for a digital nomad or someone who travels a lot, a world citizen, or someone like you who works around the world managing a global company? What kind of insurance elements are applicable that maybe are unique to this kind of lifestyle? Having comprehensive health insurance and not relying on travel insurance is one of the first things I think that people should realize is critical.Share on X Travel insurance was built for a trip, a holiday, vacation, conference, a wedding overseas, etc. It’s being used mistakenly as medical insurance. And people who are living the long-term lifestyle as a solopreneur, a startup founder, a remote worker, a digital nomad, an expat, they need health insurance. It’s automatically renewed every year so that if a major diagnosis happens, they’re not going to say, go to your home country and use your health insurance for that. And you have to pause your whole lifestyle and return to your country’s healthcare system to a place where you may not have a home anymore. You may not have that network because you’ve been on the road too long. And you don’t wanna go to your home country. That’s maybe possibly why you started this lifestyle. This way of working. So comprehensive health insurance is essential. It's more costly, but it's more comprehensive. Getting one that is actually covering your needs.Share on X  You may not be planning on maternity with your benefits being needed by your partner, but those surprises happen. So make sure you’ve planned ahead with that, as well as does your plan cover you where you don’t need coverage?  Sometimes you can exclude a country, say exclude Singapore, and your price is gonna go down when all you are is you’re covering, you’re living in other Southeast Asian countries. And if you can remove Singapore, your rates could go down significantly. If you’re only going to be in Africa, often traveling among different Southern African countries possibly, maybe you reduce it so that’s the only region in your plan because cost of care is much lower there. If it’s worldwide coverage because you need the US, then your prices are gonna be much higher. It’s getting a plan where there’s freedom of hospital, where you can go to the hospital of your choice is one of those key elements, because if they have a network, and they’re not the best hospitals in the city, that’s going to limit you. And people often don’t ask those questions. How much technology do they have? Are they relying on just on the legal contract that’s fine print that you have to search through read through? Or their native apps in the Apple, Google app stores, where you can file claims easily and you can use the services just like you would in a house service. Is it 24 hours a day? Is it multilingual? Do they speak your language?  Those are things that all are yeses with Insured Nomads, the examples I’m giving, but you’re probably healthy. You don’t anticipate using it. Like we insure our homes, and we get fire insurance in case it burns down, but the chances of it burning down are low. We still do it. With our body. We never use it, yeah. Right. So what extra benefits? We provide mental health therapy sessions. I think we all could use that a whole lot more, even if we just treat it like a life coach. We provide 24 hour a day spontaneous speak to a physician anytime within five minutes. You’re talking to a physician after the nurse finishes with you. We provide unlimited airport lounge access all around the world to you, your spouse, your children, anytime that 1600 lounges around the world, like four of them in Amsterdam, six of them at Heathrow. It’s a lot of lounges to get access to. Yeah, it’s impressive. No limitations because your lifestyle requires cybersecurity. We provide McAfee for 10 devices to protect against malware and against viruses, against hackers with VPN included. That’s the travel technology, the health tech, native apps, the customization of what benefits are there. Those are key things. And as you hear these things about running a global business I think it's great to understand your health insurance. A group health plan can include local workers and those with a cross-border exposure when you're with Insured Nomads.Share on X That’s one of the biggest things the entrepreneur, the leader of HR or cross-border team can’t solve currently until the plans that Insured Nomads has brought is that you can include the local worker and the cross-border worker giving different levels of benefits all in one group plan. So it’s completely customized. That’s fascinating. So if someone would like to learn more, they have this kind of business or they travel a lot or they have local employees in the Philippines that they want to insure while they have some team members who are traveling or maybe in the Middle East, where would they go to find out more and how can they connect with you? Insurednomads.com and Insured Nomads on any of the platforms you’re using whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, etc. Insured Nomads. We have easy to utilize contact and quote options and purchase options online. Or ask your broker, your benefits broker, tell them you want a plan proposal from Insured Nomads. We’re represented by leading brokers on every continent. Fantastic. Well, that’s fascinating. I mean, the world is changing. It’s becoming more of a global village and you need to be insured wherever they go. I’m just thinking that I was in the Philippines last week with a client and I actually forgot to take out even travel insurance. And I got a couple of shots. I thought that I’m covered but then there was no travel insurance. So if something happened, it would have been a touch and go. So it’s a good thing to know. So, Andrew Jernigan, the CEO of Insured Nomads, a globally distributed and globally operating insurance company that can customize any kind of insurance, health insurance, travel insurance, cybersecurity for you and for your company, definitely check him out, insurednomads.com. Andrew, thanks for coming to the show and if you enjoyed that conversation, then make sure you subscribe to us on YouTube, you follow us, give us a review on iTunes and stay tuned because every week, I bring an exciting entrepreneur to the show who will share their framework, and we have the Globally Distributed Operating System today. So thank you, Andrew, for coming and thanks for listening. Important Links: Andrew’s LinkedIn Insured Nomads LinkedIn Insured Nomads website

https://youtu.be/vKFULhTQwg0 Katie O’Malley, Founder of (en)Courage Coaching, is on a mission to create workplaces that do no harm by equipping leaders with the skills to prevent toxicity and foster cultural transformation. We dive into Katie’s career path from political campaigns and higher education to leadership coaching, and explore her Power of Listening Framework—the AIR Methodology: Attention, Intention, and Recognition. Katie shares how listening well is one of the most powerful tools leaders have to build trust, increase engagement, and demonstrate respect. We also discuss how she uses LEGO Serious Play to unlock team vulnerability and build connection in a playful but profound way. — Make People Feel Heard with Katie O’Malley Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Katie O’Malley, the founder of (en)Courage Coaching. She has helped over 200 leaders and leadership teams prevent toxic workspace experiences and create cultural transformations across the US and the UK. Katie, welcome to the show. Steve, thank you so much for having me. I’m delighted to be here and really eager for our conversation and to be helpful to your audience. I’m sure you will be very helpful. You bring a different perspectives than what we had, the previous 300 guests, so definitely very interesting. But let’s start with my favorite question, which is, what is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your practice? Absolutely. So my personal “Why” goes all the way back to when I was in college studying political science. I have always wanted to make a positive impact in the world, the communities that I’m a part of, the connections and the relationships that I have. And that thread has pulled throughout my entire career, whether it was working on political campaigns and nonprofit organizations or in higher education. And eventually what I realized is I had this kind of itch for small business ownership, entrepreneurship, having the agency and autonomy to work the way that I wanted to work and took that, combined it with my “Why” of really helping folks at the intersection of mental health and work. It’s where we spend eight, 10, 12 hours of our day. And to think that it doesn’t have an impact on how we move through the world or our overall well-being is bonkers. And so I spend my days really helping folks to align their strengths, talents, and values with the roles and organizations that they're pursuing.Share on X And also working on the other side of the equation, on the employer side of the equation, training up their leaders to do no harm to their teams and employees throughout the workday. And so, yeah, my “Why” is how do we help people have, at worst, a net neutral experience in their workday and at best, a workday that elevates their life outside of work. Yeah, I mean, it’s a huge thing and a lot of companies don’t realize that they have these employees in the company and if they are happy, they’re going to be much more productive. They are going to project a much better impression of the company to the outside world. They are going to make their customers happier. So it’s really worth investing in improving the mental health and the happiness of the people in the company. That’s a big lever that you’re pulling there. So let’s take this as a good pivot point because we are podcasting on frameworks, as you know, and our listeners know. I’m always on the hunt for a good framework that someone has discovered. What you do definitely is an important topic. You talk about the empathy, you have background in counseling. So you came up with a framework called the Power of Listening Framework, and I would love it for you to explain why it’s important and how does it work with our listeners? Yeah. So I call it the AIR Methodology. A stands for attention, I stands for intention, R stands for recognition. And this is actually the amalgamation of my training and education as a counselor, where I spent three years learning how to listen for a living. That was the entirety of the program. And one of the most brilliant books that I ever read was one called On Dialogue, and it was written by an astrophysicist, of all folks. His name is Dr. David Bohm, and essentially what he had come up with were the building blocks of dialogue. So how are we actually communicating with one another. And from there, I started to learn the entire listening skill set, which includes so many different practices that folks need to be engaging in to listen well. But it can be really overwhelming for someone who is not in the field of counseling therapy, helping professionals, coaching, to say, all right, I’m going to spend all of this time, effort and energy learning this skillset that while is important for me as a leader actually is not what I specialize in cause I’m a website developer, I’m a software engineer. I am the chief financial officer of a company. That’s where my expertise lies. And so instead of making the attempt to educate and train folks up on the dozens of skills of listening, I’m really trying to distill them down into three main practices. So the AIR Methodology, what I say is listening is a function of attention.Share on X And if we are unable to start by giving someone our full attention, we’re never gonna be able to actually listen to them, to be able to hear them. And it sounds simple. But there’s nothing easy about giving someone your attention these days. We’re living in a billion-dollar attention economy where our attention is being hijacked every few seconds with pings and emails and interruptions and to overlay that on a brain that constantly wants to be stimulated can be very difficult. And so when we’re talking about intention and recognition, it’s not just about offering those pieces to the person that you are in conversation with or listening to or in dialogue with, but you’re also applying that methodology to yourself as well. How are you attending to the reaction that’s happening in your heart, your mind, your body? How are you intending to also understand what’s happening with you and recognize you are a human and not a robot? You’re going to have an emotional response, but how are you recognizing that simply by listening to what someone else has to share in their perspective, it doesn’t mean you’re rubber stamping it or agreeing with it. You’re just giving them the space to be seen and heard by you, which as humans, it’s the reason we’re here. It’s the reason that Homo sapiens are here and Neanderthals went by the wayside. We lived in community and supported each other in ways that they did not. And so, listening and attention is a big part of that. Yeah. Just to add a remark here. So, when I was a Vistage facilitator, Vistage peer group company, and when I was a facilitator there, we had the saying there among these Vistage facilitators that listening is so close to love that you cannot say the difference. It was very interesting that people are hungry for being listened to and it’s very powerful. Sorry, I broke your train of thought. So attention. What about intention? Yeah. So there’s attention and then intention. I always say your intention is going to be the same for every conversation or dialogue you enter into.Share on X And the intention is simply to truly understand what the other person is trying to communicate to you. That’s it. You are not trying to respond. You’re not trying to agree or disagree. You’re not trying to find holes or points of connection. You are simply there to understand what it is they are trying to communicate. And we can do that by paraphrasing what we’re hearing, summarizing what they’ve said when they get to the end, asking clarifying questions, collecting observations about what it is you’re seeing from them. So even being able to say, oh my gosh, you seem to get really energized when you started talking about X. Can you tell me more about that? The intention is to understand and generate more information until you fully understand what it is they’re trying to communicate, while at the same time trying to understand what’s happening for yourself as they’re communicating perhaps new or differing ideas and perspectives. Yeah, I love it. That it’s about really being present and understand what the other is trying to convey as opposed to thinking about our own response. For example, a sports game from last night. And this is hard work. Listening is much harder than talking. People think that communication is all about conveying messages, but it’s at least as much, if not more, about receiving messages from the other person. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I was on a podcast, recorded a podcast yesterday, and they’re like, oh my gosh, you have the gift of gab. You’re so good at this. And I said, I might have the gift of gab, but that all stems from being able to really listen to somebody else and ask good questions and keep them talking so that I have something more full and whole to be able to respond to. And it is, it’s so difficult to do. As humans, we communicate at roughly 165 words per minute, which is basically a bicycle with training wheels compared to the speed at which our brain can process information. And it’s one of the main reasons it’s so difficult to focus and not have our minds wander to the sports game from the night before or what it is we have to pick up from the grocery store. But it’s one of the reasons that in that attention piece, if we're really engaging in the performance of active listening through our nonverbal affects, it can really help to keep us focused and our attention where it needs to be.Share on X Okay, very interesting. So attention, intention, what about recognition? Yeah, recognition. Steve, I don’t know about you, but I truly feel the world would be better off if each of us moved through the world trying to recognize the humanness and the humanity of the people that we’re interacting with. And one of the very best ways to be able to do that is confer dignity and respect through your ability to attend to them and also have that intention of just sheer understanding, suspending judgment and assumption. So, this is where we pull in some of the research from David Bohm. We get on our own way of being able to connect with other humans because we are making assumptions and judgments that we have and have evolved to have.Share on X And so when we’re able to recognize our own assumptions and judgments, it really clears the way for us to confer greater dignity and respect through our listening and desire to understand. I love how you explained the respect recognition. I’ve been struggling with explaining this. One of the core values of my practice and my company is treating everyone with respect. And I kind of struggled. It was a visceral thing that I wanted to have as a core value, but I couldn’t really explain it satisfactorily to other people why it’s important. I mean, it’s obviously important, but I love how you talk about the humanity of the others, the conferring dignity to the other person and the judgment piece, suspending judgment. That is the challenging thing, not to be courteous, but to actually giving people the benefit of the doubt or the benefit of our doubts, our lack of knowledge or being grounded and being self-aware. So, love it. So, attention, intention and recognition. That’s a great framework. Any user manual that you could attach to this? So how do I do AIR? Yeah. So the user manual for it is actually going to be delivered from a TEDx stage in Boston at the end of next month. So while I love to give it all away, yeah, the best pieces of this, I’m just so excited to share from the red dot on the TEDx stage, but for folks that are really looking to engage in this practice, I think the biggest thing that you can do is just start with the attention focus. Because like I said, listening is a function of attention. If we cannot give our undivided attention to somebody else, it’s going to be really challenging to offer that intention of listening to understand and the recognition of their humanity. If our eyes are wandering, if we’re checking our phones, if we’re being pinged and vibrated away from the person, it makes it really challenging. And so for anyone looking to improve their listening, I encourage you to start with focusing on your attending behaviors. So, things like the non-verbals around making eye contact, leaning in, nodding your head, saying things along the way like, tell me more. That’s so interesting. These are things that we call minimal encouragers that keep people talking, but also keep you focused because you are bringing your physical self to attention, which then also helps your brain.Share on X And those are really speedy neural pathways. Stay focused on the present and in that moment you’re in. Yeah. It just reminds me that actually a well-known thought leader, I’m not going to say his name, in one of his CD recordings, he made this comment, which is actually the opposite. So it’s about faking attention when you really don’t have the bandwidth. He explained a situation that he’s driving home after an exhausting workshop and his wife is picking him up from the airport. He’s got a much younger wife who’s very chatty and basically he wants to give her the space but he doesn’t have the bandwidth anymore to focus. And he kind of shares this practice that whenever his wife finishes a sentence, he just repeats the last word with a question mark. She keeps on going, she keeps on going. But anyhow, I guess this is a negative example. No, no. It’s, I mean, what you’re describing there from this thought leader is a practice called verbal tracking. So how can we demonstrate to someone that we’re listening to perform listening without having them feel like they’re being interrogated by us. And so repeating a word or a phrase that caught your attention or you want a little more information on and putting a question mark at the end, that is a great practice, but do it from a place of actual interest, not fake interest. And I would say sometimes we don’t have the bandwidth to listen the way that we want to and offer that respect and dignity because we don’t have the cognitive or emotional or physical capacity in that moment. And in those times, it’s okay to say, I don’t think I have the capacity to give you the attention that you deserve. Can we find a time later today or tomorrow or in the example that you gave, after we get home, have some dinner? I can then really take that time to attend to you in the way that you deserve. That can go a really long way as well. Okay, that’s good. I’m glad that this is a legit approach. So you say that the upcoming TEDx talk is going to be about that. Is it going to be about the AIR framework? Yeah, it’s focusing in on the AIR framework. And I actually start with a story from childhood where I get essentially punished, grounded by my mom for not listening to a friend. And she was the first person to help me see that listening is a show of respect, listening is a show of dignity, listening is the only way that we can really connect with someone and demonstrate that we care.Share on X And in doing that, it will be reciprocated on the other side. And she caught me in a moment on the phone, in the kitchen, being attached to the wall in the early nineties, not doing that. And it was essentially, this is not how we treat people in this household. And you are now grounded for two weeks. And let’s talk about how you can change this moving forward. And that was 1993. I was 11 years old. And for parents who are listening to this, if you’re wondering if your kids listen to you, I am living proof that they do. That conversation informs what I do for a living now. You just have to ground them for two weeks. Two weeks. And I’d never been grounded before, Steve. I was 11 years old, had never been grounded, and I got grounded for not listening or giving the space for my friend, Jenny, to share her stories with me. What a gift from a parent to do that. Must have been very comfortable for her because as a parent and you ground the child, it just puts more burden on you because then they’re going to be around, you have to keep them engaged, you have to make sure that they don’t break the grounding because then you lose your power to ground them again. That’s huge. That’s huge. Now that you’re explaining this, I just recall that when I was a Vistage facilitator, one of the things we did was we had these so-called coaching sessions where we would meet with the CEOs and spend an hour and a half with them. And what I noticed was that most of the CEOs actually didn’t want to be coached. They just wanted to be listened to. So they wanted a sympathetic ear, someone who actually understood what they were going through, who had a similar entrepreneurial background. And they didn’t want to be coached, but they really wanted to be heard. And the service we were providing was to listen to them. And it actually was a very tiring process, to be honest with you. It was more tiring than as if we had a conversation because the attention, when you speak, you don’t have to focus your attention because you are essentially stream of consciousness. But the other person thinks then you have to control your thoughts and be present exactly what you’re explaining. Yeah, there is nothing easy about listening. It takes a great amount of energy and effort. There’s a reason for folks who are in helping professions like coaching and therapy, so much time in that training and education is focused on, on just how to listen, because especially at the top with CEOs, it’s so lonely up there. The things that they’re feeling really challenged by, it’s hard to necessarily share that with the folks in your C-suite because everyone’s kind of experiencing the same thing. And so to be able to find a partner that is really willing to listen, to understand, and not just offer solutions. It’s what we all want as humans, whether we are in the mail room or in the C-suite. Yeah, it’s easy to be a fixer. It’s harder to be patient and bear the pain of the other person explaining their predicament and be present and share that and empathize with it. It’s much harder. Okay, very great. Well, before we wrap this up, I like to just ask a question because in our pre-interview, you mentioned about the LEGO, that you actually use LEGO not to build castles and houses and playgrounds and other things, but you actually use it to build teams. So how can one use LEGO to build teams? Yes. So my gosh, I love LEGO Serious Play. It’s another methodology that I leverage in my coaching practice. The LEGO Serious Play as an idea actually came from the folks at LEGO. Back in the 90s, they were really struggling with their bottom line. Kids weren’t interested in LEGO, so parents weren’t buying them. And even though adults now are, this is very much hobby central for so many adults, they didn’t have products that were really engaging them. And they said, what if we took our product to solve the problem of selling our product? And one of the things that they realized throughout this process is that there was very little trust within the LEGO organization. So people weren’t sharing their ideas out of fear of having that idea stolen. They also weren’t sharing ideas out of fear that they would be looked at or admonished for it not being a great idea or a great perspective. People weren’t feeling valued. And so, LEGO Serious Play has two different tracks to it. One is about trust building, collaboration and teaming.Share on X And the other is about solving those really wicked problems that require some out of the box creativity from folks. But the main practices of it are everybody builds. Even if you think you are not creative, you’re going to start clicking blocks together until some idea comes your way. So everybody builds, everybody shares, which means everyone around the table, again, whether you are in the C-suite, or you are an executive assistant to someone in the C-suite or anyone in between, everyone gets the same amount of space and time to present their ideas. And at the end, what you have around the table are this brilliant collection of ideas. And the goal, Steve, is not to select the best idea, who built the best solution, the best outcome, the best program from this pile of bricks. It’s the beauty of LEGO is you can break off pieces of a LEGO build and connect it to somebody else’s. So the idea being how are we breaking off the best of the ideas that we have and coming together to build something new. This is how we ended up with all of the LEGO movies, LEGO land, all of the different LEGO kits that now we see LEGO having just a presence, even at the airport. I feel like LEGO is just omnipresent whenever I’m out and about, but from a teaming perspective, it’s really about building trust. So oftentimes when I go in to facilitate a team building session with LEGO, I’ll say, if I asked you right now to turn to your partner and share about your childhood, you would roll your eyes at best and likely walk out of the room at worst, because it’s so vulnerable. But if I say, all right, I want you to build with your LEGO a building that was really meaningful to you in childhood. And then I’m gonna ask you after you finish building it to explain all of the different pieces that you selected to build this building. Suddenly, we’re getting stories about grandma’s special spaghetti sauce. And how important this was to the glue of the family as you were growing up. Stories you would never share necessarily with a colleague or be prompted to share all because you were able to externalize it into a stack of bricks. And suddenly it’s not your experience, but it is this model and it takes the vulnerability out of the equation for a second to let people start to share things that really establish trust on teams.Share on X That’s very interesting. So you externalize an emotion through this plastic toy. You can actually talk about it. That’s fascinating. Well, definitely. Magic. Yeah, it’s something our listeners can try at home. It’s not too dangerous or in their office. Nope, nope. They absolutely can. So if someone would like to learn more about the LEGO Serious Play that you do and also maybe the AIR techniques or anything else, they wanna be at your TEDx talk, they wanna learn where it’s gonna be, where should they go and how can they connect with you? Yeah, so head over to my website, encouragecoaching.org, but also sharing the most up-to-date information in a pretty dynamic way on different social media platforms. So on LinkedIn, give me a follow, linkedin.com/in/kateomalley/, or on Instagram at @encouragecoachchicago, where you can stay up to date on all of the great stuff coming down the pike. Fantastic. So definitely, if you like to listen better to your people so that you get them to engage and do more for your company, or just to build better relationships with them, then definitely check out Katie’s website, encouragecoaching.org and hit her up on LinkedIn and Instagram and other places. And if you enjoyed the show, please give us a follow on YouTube. I guess a review on Apple Podcast or wherever you are listening to us. And make sure that you keep on listening because every week, I’m bringing an exciting guest with good ideas that you can apply in your business to you. So, thank you for coming, Katie, and thank you for listening. Make People Feel Heard with Katie O’Malley Important Links Katie’s LinkedIn Katie’s website Katie’s Instagram

https://youtu.be/lljfWj6VRmc Phil Wofford, Entrepreneur, Fractional CFO/COO, Business Coach, and owner of Scale and Thrive, is on a mission to help business owners scale profitably, improve operations, and build teams that run without them.  We explore Phil’s entrepreneurial journey, including the successful exit of two healthcare clinics, and how he now supports other leaders through coaching and fractional leadership. He shares his Focus Time Framework, which helps owners regain control of their day by:Writing 3 top priorities above a line, 2–3 secondary tasks below it, and staying focused on what’s above the line. We also discuss how strategic financial oversight drives long-term profitability, what makes a business attractive to buyers, and why every owner should be asking what truly matters in life and business. — Focus Your Time with Phil Wofford Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Phil Wofford, the owner of Scale and Thrive, who helps business owners scale, increase profitability, and build teams that run without them. Phil, welcome to the show. Thank you. I’m happy to be here. Well, great to have you here and great to talk about some of your frameworks and what you are doing as a coach, as a fractional CFO, COO, as an entrepreneur. So a lot to get into here. But let’s start with my favorite question. What is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it? Yeah, my personal “Why” is I just really enjoy using my experience and background to help business owners and CEO grow their business.Share on X And really that manifests by us really drilling down into their business and understanding what are the key components that affect their profitability, their operations, all the things that are really important. So I just really enjoyed doing that because I’ve done it in my own businesses over the years and so now it’s my chance to give back as well. Love it. So, you say that you like to drill in and see what prevents people from growing, being more profitable. What do you see as being the most common two or three things that is creating an obstacle for entrepreneurs, business owners? Yeah, it’s kind of a two-pronged thing. Some businesses don’t understand their KPIs or their key performance indicators. And it may be that they just haven’t been exposed to it and they haven’t created those. In my world that I’ve operated in, those have always been really important items that we use to manage the business day to day, month to month, quarter to quarter. And then you have the other side, the business person that’s really into it and they want to measure everything. They have 48 components of KPIs and it just drives them and the staff crazy trying to keep up with that many. When really there should be three to six really key things that we're keeping our eyes on,Share on X depending on the business, that really help guide us to make decisions day by day. Yeah, that is true. And if you have too many KPIs, then essentially you diluted their power and then it just becomes noise. But if you have a few good ones, then you can really drive the business. And Jim Collins even talks about the profit per X having one big differentiating, and that’s going to be very powerful. Okay. So you’re an entrepreneur as well. And you’re in the process of exiting some clinics in Alaska that you created. Tell me a little bit about how that came about and what did you do there and why are you exiting? Yeah, I’ve done many international startups and that led me to becoming a business coach and a fractional COO, fractional CFO. And a few years ago, my friend from kindergarten that we grew up together, we ran across the business opportunity in the healthcare field. And so we created a clinic here in the Atlanta area. And subsequently that led to a second one. And we exited the first one, middle of COVID, but we had started up the second one in the middle of COVID. And we just a few weeks ago, finally exited that clinic successfully. And so now I’m redoing and re-kicking off my coaching and consulting practices again, through all of that, that I’ve learned over the years. Again, it’s my chance to give back and really be effective for other business owners. Because really, I’ve been there and done that. I made that payroll every two weeks and struggled on these things and successful on these things. So I think I bring a lot to the table for the business owner or the CEO.Share on X Yeah, definitely. And so it’s Atlanta, not Alaska. Sorry for my typo there. Yeah. All right. So let’s talk about your frameworks that you have developed as a coach, as an entrepreneur. And we talked specifically about time management and how important that is. You have a framework around that called Focus Time. So please tell me about what you see with time management that is the big obstacle for people and how does your framework help solve that? Okay, if you’re a business owner, you probably know that a lot of times you’re running around putting out fires, what’s happening today, and so you really never get a chance to work on the business. It’s the whole thing working in the business instead of on the business. Well, a couple of frameworks that I’ve utilized with some of my coaching and consulting clients and personally as well. The first one I call the Above The Line method. And, basically, what we're doing is taking a look at all the things we have to do today and really establishing those three top things that we need to get done that will move the business along toward our goals.Share on X Not the ones that necessarily fix things, but those that we’ve said, hey, this is where I want to be in a year, two years, three years. And now I’ve broken that down into a quarterly framework, okay, what moves me forward in that quarterly framework? Well, these two or three items. So, I take those two or three items, write them down on a sticky note, and I draw a line underneath them. Then I take two more items from my to-do list that would be really good if I got to those today. Emphasis on today. So, I add those to that. So I’m always working and focusing on those items that are above the line on that little 3M note. And I take it and stick it somewhere on my monitor or on the wall because as I’m jumping around from things day to day, as I complete one, or if I do put out that fire, I can look back over at my list very easily and say, okay, let’s get back to that. So that concept has really helped me and some of the business owners I’ve worked with to really stay focused. The key is that focus time. As a business owner, you do have to put out some fires. But you need to schedule time with yourself every day to work on these focus items. So I put an item on my calendar every day that says focus time. Sometimes, it’s 30 minutes. Sometimes, it’s a couple of hours, if I know there’s really something important I got to get done and I treat it just like I’m meeting with someone else. But I'm meeting myself, looking at my three focus items and picking those to work through.Share on X And I may not solve that day, but if it doesn’t, it just goes on tomorrow’s. But I’ve moved myself forward toward whatever that goal was. So that’s the idea of focus time. Yeah, that’s very important because it’s so easy to get caught up in the hurly burly of the day to day and just try to put those fires out. And then you get exhausted and you get distracted perhaps afterward. And then you’re just drenched in water and you’re not building the capacity of this business to be bigger and more profitable in the future. So I love that how you kind of get this mind trigger to refocus on those two or three priorities that are going to help you long term. May not be urgent, but important. Right, and the business owner may say, well, how do I decide what’s important? What are those three things? Well, the second part of this method is ABCD time. And so I have my owners or CEOs keep a log for three days, five days, 10 days of all the different things they worked on, I have them classify them into A, B, C, D. And with A being the top priorities, B’s kind of middle level, C’s a little bit low, and D is really those things that you really shouldn’t be working on anyway. Delegate it to somebody or design it out of your process. And if they’ll take that little journal and look at it after that time period, I bet they’re going to find that they spent a lot of time on those C and D level activities that they could have delegated, when really, if they would refocus that now back onto the A’s and B’s, those things that really move the business forward, they’re really going to become much more productive in their company. And they can push that right on down the line to their managers or their supervisors and have them do the same thing. And again, those D-level activities with the automation we have nowadays, we can design out those, decide not to do them, maybe they’re not really necessary. So that's another way that I teach to decide what goes on that Above The Line method.Share on X Does that make sense? Yeah. Why do you think people act like that? Is it because they are not aware that they don’t focus on the right things, or they are just not organized enough to create the delegation, to find that person to delegate to, or customize the process? Some people are not organized, but honestly, nowadays, we are so bombarded with information. It comes from everywhere. And I’m kind of a pack rat with information myself. I see something, I think, oh, I need to remember that, or I need to go take a look at that. And so I store it away somewhere or make a link to it. And a year from now, I look at it, I think, oh my goodness, what was that? So we allow those, what do we call them, shiny objects to pop up during the day. It catches our attention, or a squirrel. And with the information that we have available to us now, it’s just overload. So we need to think about, again, getting back to that first thing I said, what is really important for us to run our business and focus on those.Share on X Now, as I was thinking about this, Steve, I thought, with AI coming along, this may help us. I haven’t tried it yet, I want to look into this. There might be a system where we can store that link and tell AI, go study it. And then when we’re looking to solve a problem, we go to our little AI engine and say, all this information I’ve had you study, here’s what I’m trying to solve. Help me. I think that sort of thing is coming along, and that may help us out with time management. Yeah, it does. I think the challenge is that, again, how do you keep so many different things in mind? And it’s fine to delegate to AI, but you still have to stay organized and your bandwidth has to cover all those things. And so there’s big debate going on whether AI is going to eliminate a lot of jobs and people will be unemployed. I personally don’t believe it because you need to organize the AI. It would get overwhelming without people who can manage it. But it’s kind of digressed there. Okay, so these are great frameworks. Make sure that you keep those priorities. Some people call them Rocks or OKRs for that quarter that you want to accomplish and make sure that you build focus time into your schedule for them and you refocus them after the fires are out. The ABCD time approach, which is about delegation. So delegate all the non 20% items that don’t really move the needle and don’t get caught up with it. Now let’s switch gears and talk about your experiences as a fractional CFO. A lot of people are employing fractional CFOs. It’s a growing area and if you can’t afford at a CFO level, finance person, maybe you can have them fractionally in their business. So what should these fractionals be focused on? Sometimes I know that they get to do low level stuff like bookkeeping and invoicing and stuff like that. What in your experience is the most important for a fractional CFO to direct their focus on? Yes, since I serve in dual roles sometimes as both the COO and the CFO, I come at it from a little bit different angle in that looking at it from the CFO seat, I try to look into the overall business, the operations, sales, everything, and try to find the linkages that affect my profits and my cashflow. Because if I can, again, it kind of goes back to the KPIs, but if I can find the linkages, I can help my organization with those day-to-day decisions. Because my theory is, and in practice I’ve seen it, those day-to-day decisions affect your profitability. You just might not see it for 30, 60, 90 days. As a CFO, if I can study cash flow, profits, our assets and liabilities, and how they’re stacking up, and relate those back to both the strategic decisions and the tactical decisions that we’re making day by day, then we now have some framework to teach or to learn from our organization that helps us manage day by day. Because I’ve been in organizations where I’ve been the head of operations or whatever, and because I had the financial background, I knew my decision was going to have a bad effect on cash flow here in six weeks. And we all intuitively sort of know that, but sometimes we don’t know the formula. And I like to try to get at something that gives us a rule of thumb, all those sort of things that helps the CEO, COO, CFO make day-to-day decisions that will help our financial status. Make sense? Yeah. Can you give an example what would that look like? Yeah, let’s say the purchasing folks are thinking about buying a new piece of equipment. Okay, well, it’s going to affect our productivity, which helps our profits and our operating parameters. So that’s a positive. On the negative side, we’ve got to pay for that piece of equipment. So in those negotiations, if I can get a long-term payback or payment for that piece of equipment, then I can spread that across maybe even several years. And so that affects my cash flow. It helps my cash flow the longer term I can get. So those are the types of things. I mean, that’s a simple one that most purchasing people do get, especially if you’re buying major equipment. But those sort of things would be one in the purchasing area, but for a CFO, they need to be a part of that. An accountant might not be a part of that, but looking at it from the CFO lens, you need to know those things that are going on because it will affect that long-term profitability, your cash flow, and the CFO may be the person that has to go and find the financing to accomplish that. Yeah, I find it so often that small to medium-sized companies, they don’t have a good finance function. They hire a CFO, and then the CFO gets stuck into low level detail work, accounting work, and then they lose that distance from the problem so that they no longer can look at it strategically now. Do you find this being the case? Yeah, often they get pigeonholed into, oh, they’re just the bookkeeper or they oversee the accounting people. And really, they’re an important resource. They should be looked at that, added that way. There’s a reason why there’s a C in front of the CFO. They’re a part of the C-suite. And they need to be a part of the decision-making and the advisement to the company on how those things affect profitability. Because if we don’t have profitability, we’re not going to be around very long. Yeah, and it’s so important to read the P&L, a balance sheet, and sometimes the CEO, if they don’t have the background, the financial background, they may not be able to get enough information out of those financial statements or even realize how important they are to maintain. Then they’re going to miss the big picture. They want to see what’s coming up and the company could get in trouble. Yeah, and the CFO can really provide a lens into that magical, mysterious cashflow type of situation because if they’re using accrual accounting, sometimes that doesn’t really show you what’s happening cash-wise. It shows you profit and losses on paper, but I much prefer the cash flow method of accounting because then I can see how things are actually coming in and going out and how those day-to-day decisions affect that. Yeah, I guess both of them are important because if you don’t have the accruals, then you’re not going to see your gross profit margins, how it evolves and how you can improve it. And it’s more, more granular, but definitely you need to see your cash situation a few months in advance so that you can prepare for any crunches and manage things. Did you find that being on top of the numbers really helped you with the exits of these medical clinics in Atlanta? Oh yeah, absolutely, because I know the fine details and all the moving parts. So yeah, it was tremendously helpful. And investors, they are looking for profit in the future, so they really want to understand the numbers to see whether they can produce them. Yeah, and because I understood the numbers so well, again, I handle both operations and financials, but because I knew how all the different things work together, I was able to put together a great exit package. And that’s one of the challenges for a CFO that’s looking for the company to do an exit, is getting together all the information that’s needed by the buyer. And guess what? It changes. You start off on one thing and you know it may take a year to exit. Well, every month, they want an update. And things change and guess what? Ah, I need to buy this piece of capital equipment. That wasn’t in the equation when we first started talking. So now I’ve got to put a new lease in here. How’s that going to affect our cash flow and those sorts of things? So those are challenges. But again, one of the things I work with company owners are those that are getting the baby boomers are getting on up there and wanting to exit. I can help them plan that and put together a good package for a potential buyer. And a business that can run itself, that has good financials, good operating practices, that’s worth more on the multiplier on the exit versus one that’s just getting by with the owner running everything. Yeah, if it’s not self-managing, I mean, no one wants to buy a headache. People want a business that runs preferably without the owner, because if they have to buy the owner, they won’t be able to pay the owner. The owner might not sell it even, and it’s just a mess. So they want to buy a money making machine that works. They don’t have to touch it if they don’t want to. Some sellers think that the buyer want to reshape the business. Not necessarily. They might just want something that makes money for them. Yeah, I have an example of that I can share with you. I had someone on LinkedIn hit me up and said, here’s my situation. What do you think I could get from my company? And after I looked at their financials and saw that they were really the key person along with a couple of technicians, and I said, you don’t have a business, you have a job. And it’s hard to sell a job to someone else. Exactly what you were saying. Yeah. So how did you guys engineer this medical clinic so that they became self-managing? Yeah, we were very lucky in that we had some close relatives that had some experience that applied and they studied on afterwards. But we became a certified clinic for one thing, which forced us to put SOPs in place, have procedures in place. And really, the only two pieces that the owners ran were, again, the financials and some of the marketing stuff, and we were easily replaced. I’m actually still doing some transition work, but more and more is being turned over to the other team because this buyer had their own teams to do that. So I’m just in the transition part of it. So again, having that business that really runs itself, the people in place that don’t depend on the owner, makes for a much easier exit. Oh yeah, definitely. So as a final question, what do you think is the most important question an entrepreneur should be asking themselves? Yeah, I thought a lot about that. And I think the question is, the same questions we all ask ourselves is, what’s really important in my life? And because an entrepreneur can get really tied up in the time that the company takes. So as an entrepreneur, I have to ask myself, what’s really important? Is it my family? Is it the work? Is it building wealth? What is it? And be clear on that so that I can have some sort of balance and that I can explain to my family why I’m working on weekends. It’s to get us a better life or whatever that definition is. But there’s another key component of that too, is your health as you get a little bit older as well. So it’s taking a step back and saying, what am I really doing? What’s really important to me? And what am I trying to accomplish for me and my family? That's important to know because those should be guiding principles as you build and grow your business and exit your business as well.Share on X Yeah, and that can change over time. So when you’re in your 30s or 40s, you might have a different vision of what you want from your business than when you’re in your late 50s. Your perspective changes, maybe that making this big billion dollar business is not as important anymore as to have a meaningful venture and good relationships and a good family time. So definitely it’s a very good question to ask. Yeah. And you are 100% right. The view changes as we drive down that road and down that path. And so we have to have that reflection time periodically. For some people, it’s every year. For some people, it’s every two or three years. And life happens and it changes our vision. Just as you were saying, things happen in our life and what we thought we were going to do, that’s not important anymore. Other things are. Yeah, which is a good thing. All right. So if people would like to learn more about what you do, how you could help them and would like to chat you up or learn more about what you do, where can they find information? How can they reach out to you? Of course, on LinkedIn, Phil Wofford, you can do the search for me or if you go to philwofford.com, you’ll see some of my offerings and my contact information there. All right. So Phil Wofford, the owner of Scale and Thrive, entrepreneur, fractional CFO, fractional CEO, coach, can really help you grow your business, scale it, figure out what the bottlenecks are, help you manage your time better with his Focus Time framework and other frameworks. So, Phil, thanks for coming and sharing your goodies with our listeners. And if you enjoyed this, then please follow us on YouTube, give us a review on Apple Podcasts and stay tuned because every week we have an interesting entrepreneur sharing their most cherished frameworks with us. Thanks for coming, Phil, and thanks for listening. Important Links: Phil’s LinkedIn Phil’s website Scale and Thrive website

https://youtu.be/GigFOIkP3BI Doug Gray, Family Wealth Advisor, Succession Planning Expert, and Founder of Action Learning Associates, is passionate about helping leaders flourish through agency, curiosity, and collaborative frameworks. We discuss Doug’s ADFIT Protocol for Leadership Development, a simple and effective framework that assumes people don’t need to be “fixed” — they need the structure to grow. Doug also explores how family businesses can navigate succession by understanding emotional dynamics, empowering Next Gen leaders, and shifting from control to collaboration. His latest book, The Success Playbook for Next Gen Family Business Leaders, gives rising leaders the tools to step into their future with clarity and confidence. — Enable Family Transitions with Doug Gray Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Doug Gray, Family Wealth Advisor, Business Change Management Agent, Organizational Leadership Facilitator, Succession Planning Advisor, and Executive Coach. He’s also the founder of Action Learning Associates and the author of three books on leadership. Doug, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Steve. Pleasure to be here. Yeah, great to have you. And let’s start with my favorite question. What is your personal “Why” and how do you manifest this in your practice and in your activities? I like to go big. So, to serve tens of thousands of leaders, I’m not sure how to quantify it, but I think the idea of serving others in their leadership development journey is the most important “Why” I can imagine. Yeah, well, that certainly can be rewarding. Any particular reason it’s important to you to serve others? We don’t use the verb serve enough. I live in the south where Chick-fil-A is abundant and people will openly ask, how may I serve you? Which is a delightful question. Greenleaf was an academic and a Quaker who asked, how may I serve you? And service servant leadership emerged from that philosophy. And I think we need to do a better job of serving one another’s needs. Yeah, I love that. Really, this mindset of looking at the other person and thinking about the other person rather than ourselves and not be self-serving, but be other serving. It’s definitely a resonance with me. It’s primary also in leadership development, but also in learning. Curiosity is the result of, like you worked in executive coaching for a long time. And curiosity is the currency of learning. To what extent can you become curious about the other person on the call? Similarly, right now, your podcasters are thinking, oh, this Doug Gray guy, he’s fairly weird. And they get curious about various things. And they ask questions or they invite you to do so. And that curiosity is what impels us to learn. It’s what enables us to use tools like AI. Coaches are great at writing prompts, thankfully. What I love about AI is that anything that comes to mind, I’m a very curious person. And I hear a word, I say, where does this word come from? And then I can immediately ask AI and then I can go about my business. It doesn’t take any effort and better insight. So yeah, I agree. I was talking to a client just the other day, a new client, and he asked whom should I bring to the team into discussion? And we went through different perspectives and still there was some uncertainty in his mind about who has the potential to be leader. And I asked him, which of these people are curious? He says, oh yeah, some of them are not curious. And then he connected the dots that if they’re not curious, they’re not going to learn, they’re not going to grow, they’re not going to be leaders. That’s right. Yeah, totally agree with that. Okay. So I’m very curious about the framework that you’re bringing to this show. And we discussed in the pre-interview about this idea that people don’t need to be fixed because they have agency and capacity. And this is something that you’ve done a lot of work around. So first of all, I’d like you to explain to me and our listeners, what do you mean by people not need to be fixed and the agency thing, and then talk about your framework that is addressing this, the ADFIT framework. Sure. Probably representative of all of us who have tolerated schools, we’ve tolerated educational systems where there’s a gap. Here’s Doug, here’s what Doug needs to learn. That’s a competency gap of some sort. Same with most companies, especially top-down hierarchical structures, where there’s a skill gap, a competency gap. Doug needs to learn this before he can be promoted, let’s say, or exceed expectations and get a significant bonus at the end of the year. Well, that model is dominant in our culture and it needs to be, probably. There’s always going to be hierarchies that look like this. There’s going to be managers and direct reports. It’s ancient. Thankfully, it creates a sense of order in the world. If we didn’t have it, that’d be a whole different problem. But what is also emerging is that those without agency, without the capacity or the belief that they can speak, too often feel oppressed or suppressed or repressed. And boy, there’s so many examples of this throughout history. We can look at every feudal king and the kleptocracy that emerged from that and the protection they provided, but the servitude they created. And we see it today in countless examples. We mentioned privately, our girls are 29 and 30. We encourage them to be articulate about their thoughts and emotions. They’re both happily employed in large companies and they have agency. They’ve selected companies that are unique in that way. And I’m so proud of them. But not every woman who is that age in our country can say that. And not every father can say that. Agency is a thing. It’s quantifiable. I’m a business psychologist, so I can assess it, measure it, develop it. And when people do a better job of expressing themselves, this disappears and this appears, which is more of a collaborative discussion. In literature, the use of women’s voices in art, the articulation of marginalized groups is more and more expressive. In politics, so when we think about the need for people to express their voices and affect change, I think it’s dramatically shifting. I’d like to hope that at least because then more people will be involved in their own leadership development and then they need a little structure.Share on X And that’s why I developed the ADFIT protocol. Very good. So, the ADFIT protocol helps people leverage their agency or recognize their agency and then manifest it? What does it do? It does in part. Here’s the backstory. I’ve managed executive coaches for a long time and been one since 97. I had two partners in the DC Metro who said, Doug, you’re an executive coach. I said, really, what’s that? And I’ve been ever since trying to answer that question because there are people who say, I’m a coach and they’ll say, here’s your skill gap. You need to step up and here’s what you need to do. Adhere to my plan. And I think that’s fraudulent. It’s absurd. It’s sanctioned and it’s unethical. What if instead we define the client’s agenda and use that to create a process that assumes that they will flourish? I’m a business psychologist, but I’ve studied positive psychology, which is a shift in how we describe behavior. It used to be we’d focus on three things, anxiety, depression and violence. We needed to. So most of the psychological literature described that up until roughly 25 years ago. The shift in the published research now asks questions like how do I lead a fulfilling life? How do I flourish? And how do I serve others? How do I support others so that they might flourish? When I was at doing a bunch of that research and at an international conference, I emerged from that and hastily coalesced all my notes into the ADFIT model. And then I validated it in my dissertation, which I did in my fifties. And the reason I did it is because I met too many people who said that they were coaches but did not assume the best in others. They did not assume that people would flourish. The A and the D are what defines the client. In other words, if I were working with Steve, I would want to assess your strengths and your capacities. And there are many validated assessment tools. Many are free, many are good, and I can give people lists. And then the D is to define a meaningful outcome. What is it that Steve thinks is important in his leadership development? We have the A and the D, then we can work together for a period of time and stay focused on Steve’s agenda. And that’s why they needed to be trademarked. In each session, I’ll ask, what do you want to focus on? That’s the F. And then often the presenting concern is not the real concern. It’s a concern, you go a little deeper. And then the I is what’s the intervention or interaction you might consider doing next. And intervention is just a psychological term for some validated process. It could be practice empathy with an AI assisted coaching tool that I’ve developed. It could be choose to speak with your brother or sibling in private about the family’s wealth, things that people have not considered doing and don’t have the skills to do. So we practice that. And the T is what are you taking away from this call you’re going to do next? So the F and the I and the T, focus, what are you focusing on? Have you considered this intervention or not? And the T, what are you taking away from this call? So in my notes, that’s what I do with each client. And now I provide AI summaries to those who want them.Share on X I edit them carefully before I provide them so that people can have some documentation of to what extent they’re actually doing the work they intend to do. And what’s most powerful about the ADFIT model is in between sessions is really when people do most of their work, thankfully, or not. And if they don’t do it, then they’ll say, here’s what’s my new focus today. And I say, okay, how does this relate to your assessments and your meaningful outcome? Yeah, I love it. It’s very simple. And if I think about it, this is also my experience that this is what a coach needs to do. In fact, I’m kind of doing this with my leadership teams, different words, but assess, we always look back the last quarter, what they accomplish, assess against their goals, which we have defined the strategic planning, then focus is, okay, what is it that we need to figure out together and what is it that they need to learn? And then what are the action items that come out and the rocks, quarterly rocks, and then the takeaway is really the insights. Maybe I could improve on the takeaways and make them, I mean, do I ask them to, yeah, kind of ask them at the end. But it’s great to see this in that simplified form because especially for an executive coach, this is a very useful mind trigger. So assess what is their goal, what are they trying to achieve, their own agenda, define how to get there. And then each time, what to focus on, what to do, what’s the action item and what they learned. That’s very powerful. So I’ll give you a simple hack that’ll make this easier for you to practice with your leadership team or anyone. Near the end of your call, the 10% close. If you’ve got a 60 minute session, the last six minutes, I often will say something like, I’m aware of the time. What do you intend to do next? What are your takeaways? They articulate them. They write them down. They do the work. If they don’t do so, I’ll nudge them because that’s what we are here to do. And if I’ve got something else that they said that they haven’t recalled, then I might remind them of that. So what we're doing really is having them do the work.Share on X They’re summarizing. When I was a manager of a nonprofit, I did the same thing with my leadership teams. And the reason is that I don’t want to be tasked with micromanaging. I want to make sure that they are doing the work they need to do. They’re taking away the actions. And thankfully, if you use an AI note taker, then you can send them a copy of the notes. With their permission. That’s the ethical piece. Yes. Some don’t like it and want it, and that’s just fine. Yeah. Love it. So, when you apply this framework, what is the typical life cycle of a client that you can keep the relationship fresh with this framework? Very significantly. I’ve been doing this since 97. So what I often say is that there’s three buckets where I make money, and then there’s a fourth where I’ve not yet made money, and that’s the AI coaching stuff. So we’ll see if that leads to anything. But the individual engagement is at least six months and varies, but could be as long as two years. It depends on what is needed. I never press that, and I certainly don’t want extensions with certain clients because they don’t do the work. I’m not the guy. With team and family consulting, succession planning is an example, at least a two-year engagement typically. And it needs to be because it’s a process driven too often by financial and legal experts without the psychological expertise that I bring. I played hockey in college. I ref a lot of hockey games. That gives me eminent skills to bring to the emotional complexity of a succession planning engagement. It’s a joke, but it’s partly true because they don’t have the 360 assessment tool that I’ve developed. They don’t have the protocols. So that takes a little time. The third that sometimes I think people skip out on is organizational complexities. An example are family offices that need to become more formalized. There’s a myth. You’re probably aware 70-ish percent of our GDP in new job creation is defined by family-owned businesses, closely held enterprises. And the myth is that they’re loosely organized. The reality is sometimes they’re perfectly organized and they don’t need more structure necessarily. They’re able to increase employee engagement, serve their clients and perpetuate wealth transfers, usually quietly, but not always. The stuff you might see on HBO television, like the succession movies and the Landman and King Lear, all those violent stories are a small fraction of the asset transfers that I experience. And I think the myth is overstated. It’s not a formula that the G3s or G4s are necessarily going to dissipate the family’s wealth and reputation. It’s not statistically true. However, the fear of loss is the number one motivator of human behavior. Number one, we know that from a lot of behavioral economic research.Share on X So if an elder is fearful of a loss of reputation or social impact, boy, there can be countless examples there that will prevent him or her from nominating someone to be their successor. Same thing is for the next gents who could be in their 20s or their 50s. To what extent do they know that they’re capable of doing the job? Well, those are fears that prevent them from confronting their parents. So they need an expert facilitator to make sure those conversations occur in a respectful manner. It is challenging because the founder or whoever the patriarch or matriarch who runs the business, if they are founder, it’s their baby. Even if they inherited the business, they’ve been doing it for decades. So their identity is wrapped up in it and then you transfer it. And what if the next generation doesn’t make a success of it, then that impacts your own identity. Plus you lose the power to control. It is very, very tricky. So when I saw that you are dealing with family succession and family businesses, I thought, wow, I’m impressed because it’s not an easy type of company to deal with. It tells me that you’re the smartest guy in this conversation, Steve. Other smarter people avoid it. It is emotionally complex. There could be material abundance, but lots of emotional complexity. Yeah, and it’s not easy to fire your family members from the business if they don’t perform. What did you find to be the biggest bottleneck for family businesses from growing the business? Yeah, fear. Psychologists know that fear motivates most human behavior. So when I think about the possibility of growth, elders are responsible for the traditions, protecting the assets. Thank goodness they are. Next gens of whatever age are responsible for innovation and growth, thank goodness they are. So there’s an inherent tension, it’s ancient, biblical. It’s in every one of your clients’ stories if they’re closely held businesses. So that fear is a huge motivator, but they’re also fearful of the external predators. The best example are the venture capitalists and the equity firms who are targeting family-owned businesses. And they’re not just looking at the auto mechanic down the street or the dentist or the lawyer. They’re looking at consultancies and pharmacies and every manufacturer you can imagine, every retail client you know of who’s being acquired by Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, pick a gas station. Those acquisitions are sometimes managed responsibly, not always. And the PE owners have a different goal. It’s to extract value for their shareholders within five years and then to leave. The net result for a small town, you’re in Richmond today, near Asheville, North Carolina, is a loss of social capital. When the family doctors are displaced by a staff doc at a bigger hospital, or when a CPA no longer has that access to all your information, then they’ve been acquired by a larger entity, who then dictates how much access to provide and what to charge and all kinds of things. What we lose often is social capital. You don’t know who to trust and it creates chaos in the marketplace. And we’re seeing a lot of examples of this, particularly in the central US where people are leaving the smaller towns. It’s a problem. Yeah. So that means that family businesses are afraid of losing social capital in the process of the business succession? I mean, I understand if it gets bought out by private equity, then they just going to look at the numbers. They won’t care about the tradition, the people in the business. I understand that the environment would be the customers, the suppliers, if they get taken over, then that weakens the business’s social capital. Is this what you have in mind? Yes. And they’re not as articulate or expressive as you are because they wouldn’t attribute it to social capital. They’d say, I don’t know if my kids are capable or interested. And that fear drives them to retrench sometimes and talk to a valuation person or an exit planning person who is inclined to provide an inflated value. Think of every client you’ve ever had. I don’t know anybody who’s ever said, yeah, I’ve got a notion of the valuation of my business and it’s down here. No, they do the opposite. They have an inflated view of the value of their company, their assets and their future earnings always. So, if they’re not able to get objective assessments, there are digital tools now that provide numbers and they have an inflated view of their assets and they don’t know who to turn to, then I think they need experts like you and I to facilitate that process. I don’t know if this would interest you, but they need experts who can provide more guidance about asset transfer. Yeah. And by the way, so in my previous life. I was an investment banker, I had a banking business. Yes. I experienced a lot of what you explained and what I found was that the better the business the more realistic the valuation, the owner was. The worse the business, the more unhinged the valuation was. So client selection was an important thing, but I digress here. No, it’s a perfect example. In that example, as you think about that cohort that had a higher valuation, did they also have more advisors, legal and estate and financial and tax and such? Yeah, that’s true. I mean, they tended to have more because they didn’t know all the answers themselves and they recognized they were aware of that and they were listening to other people. Yeah. And as an investor, you knew that most of the wealth in our country is tied up privately in some of those banks, which we don’t need to name in this recording. But the net result is that they have access to more assets for acquisitions and for different financial terms than ever and probably will continue to have even more. Yeah, possibly. So I’d like to switch gears here and talk about your books because you also is an author. Your recent book is actually about this very topic that we’ve been talking about, the success playbook for next-gen family business leaders. So what made you write this book and what is the gap that this book is purported to fill? A patriarch and his son made me write the book. And the gap is pretty easily explained. If you think about a model, how does the individual fit in the world? That’s the backbone of social psychology. You’ve got kids, we’ve got kids as well. How does the individual fit into the family? It’s an ancient question. And most of the time in the world of family business advising, people talk about three systems and they need to talk about the fourth. So they talk about the family system, to what extent are people supporting that individual? And there’s lots of examples and research there. They talk about the business system, to what extent are people supporting that individual may or may not be a good fit this generation or generations from now? And they talk about the ownership system, which is what defines every succession and success. The owners define the future. So you got the family house or room and the business house and the ownership house. But the fourth house that I think you know, that we share this belief is in the learning system. And it’s Peter Senge’s systems thinking approach. 100% of my clients have a growth mindset and probably yours as well, Steve. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be clients. So the question becomes, how does the individual learn and fit into the learning system? And that’s the model that is the backbone of social psychology and parenting and most family enterprises, including family offices and family firms, even if they get more diverse. So let’s go back a click. About three years ago, I partnered with Kent Rhodes at Pepperdine, who’s a brilliant psychologist and runs their doctoral programs. And we created a family business assessment process, a 360 process, because there’s a gap in the market. And it was validated globally and had 50 behaviors based on those five systems that I just described, 10 for each. And then that led to another client asking, would you please create a peer group so that those behaviors could be practiced by my son? I said, sure. And two years ago, we launched nextgenpeergroups.com. And it was in that where I created a bunch of digital content that was hosted on a platform called Kajabi. It’s a learning management platform that the participants could access and they could see 50 different behaviors if they needed, and they could develop based on the research and resources, any of those skills, and they could assess them and develop them over time. And then that program, one of the participants said, Doug, this is good digitally, but I’d really like it in paper form. And that’s why I wrote the book last January-February. And it’s available in all kinds of formats, audible and digital and paper, obviously. It’s like this, it’s pretty simple. The idea is that people need to know a short summary of what the top 10 behaviors are, the top two for each of those five systems I just mentioned.Share on X So the idea is that the individuals, the next gen and also maybe the current gen, who is still owning or running the business, they need to behave in certain ways in order to optimize these relationships, the family business ownership and learning systems? Is that what it is about? Yep, exactly right. Yep. In part, because they don’t have such a list. They don’t know those behaviors necessarily and we do based on research. Yeah, that’s fascinating. So give me one of the behaviors which is counterintuitive. It might not be counterintuitive, but it goes back to an earlier point. The individual system, if you remember, was surrounded by these other four. And individuals define their own leadership careers and their capacity and their stories. So the number one behavior overall is for people, individuals to express their thoughts and emotions on important topics.Share on X It goes back to agency. If and when people do express their thoughts and emotions on important topics, they’re a practicing agency. And I can’t tell you how often I work with individuals who then say, when we have a family meeting, I can’t raise my voice, I can’t speak. Grandpa suppresses me and they’re frightened, or they just don’t know how to say the right things to that individual. Well, that’s more common than I think we know. It perpetuates all the negative stuff you’re aware of, from suicide to chemical dependence to estrangement and financial decisions. A classic example is we’re going to cut somebody off. If somebody has a trust and doesn’t know who the trust officers are or how they can, if they can, depend on any distribution 10 years from now, or when the patriarch and matriarch should die, how those assets are going to be distributed. That is a reality for too many people. So there’s a desire for transparency. We see this in the digital transparency, the claims that a number of younger people have, that the elders just don’t share. The silent generation is silent for good reason. Why should they share? Yeah, so it’s a lack of awareness. I mean, the next gen cannot do that on their own, can they? Not in my experience. It can’t be successful. They need skillful facilitation. And too many attorneys and well-intentioned attorneys and well-intentioned investment advisors just don’t have the social-emotional skills that we know are the most important thing in family wealth distribution. Love it. That’s a very clear explanation of this. I mean, I always wondered about the family business dynamics and how it can be handled. And I mean, obviously these are very difficult dynamics, but I like how you articulated the behaviors. And so I should translate this, depersonalize these problems and put them on a systems that generate the behaviors and the awareness so that they together can solve this. So that’s fascinating. So what is the most important question that a family business owner should be asking themselves? I’ll give you a loaded one. And that’s how do I build my team of multidisciplinary team of advisors? The reason I asked you earlier about the investment expertise you bring to this call is my experience is that teams of advisors perpetuate the successful wealth transfers. The legal stuff, I don’t know the financial stuff, but I know a lot about the psychological stuff. Yeah. And then how do you create a harmonious relationship between the team of advisors? Or how does the owner, the business owner, family business owner, make sure that the same dysfunction doesn’t appear between the advisors and him or her, then appears between the family members and them? What an insightful question, because we do know that negative genotypes and behaviors can be passed through generations and they can be passed across in one generation. For instance, if somebody’s cut somebody else off and is rude and that’s tolerated, I have a client in New York right now who is, I think, G4, and she is in a very volatile family environment where her voice is not being heard and arguably she’s the most capable. So in that example, she needs a team of advisors to support her family in a bunch of ways. Legally, they need a board of advisors that will eventually have fiduciary capacity. And then interpersonally, she needs to work with an individual coach and her parents also need to work with individual coaches. It's a complex system, but I often think that it's at two levels if we simplify it, individual and team.Share on X That’s it. Yeah. And ultimately, if the owners, the founders, the first gen or whatever we call the gen before the next gen, the current gen, if they are not able to solve this, resolve it, then they’re not going to be as fulfilled and they’re not going to feel that they have been good stewards of that family business. Because they essentially left the mess after themselves and no one wants to do that. Fascinating. So if someone listening to this and maybe they own a family business or they are an ex-gen in a family business and they like to contact you and learn more of how you might help them. Where should they go? What should they do? Other than read your books, which is the success playbook for next-gen family business leaders available on Amazon. So definitely go and buy that book and read it. But if you still have questions, then how can you be reached, Doug? Well, back to the earlier idea of trying to be a servant to try to serve others. There are lots of free resources. Action-learning.com is my mothership, my website. And then there are eight others. So they each have a specific function for specific concerns, but they’re all linked to action-learning.com. All right, so go check it out, action-learning.com. So Doug Gray, Family Wellness Advisor, three times author and entrepreneur and many other things, trusted advisor. Thanks for coming to the show and sharing your wisdom. And those of you listening, if you found this an insightful conversation, then stay tuned because every week we have another entrepreneur or thought leader coming on the show. Make sure you follow us on YouTube, you give us a review on Apple Podcast, and you follow us on LinkedIn as well. Thank you, Doug, for coming and thanks for listening. Important Links: Doug’s LinkedIn Doug’s website

https://youtu.be/DMbYTbpsydw?si=g0KnYGm955EYRZ8P Dr. Chris Fuzie, President of the National Leaderology Association and Founder of CMF Leadership Consulting, is on a mission to elevate leadership into a respected science—and to develop better leaders by grounding them in theory and behavior. We dive into the emerging field of Leaderology and how Dr. Fuzie is working to verify and certify leadership practitioners as “Leaderologists.” He introduces the STICKUM Framework for building team cohesion through Sacrifice, Teamwork, Interaction, Communication, Keeping people focused, Unique norms and symbols, and Mission. Chris also explores the concept of Liminal Leadership—where leaders must seamlessly transition between leading and following—and explains how followership is as critical as leadership itself. — Create Cohesion with Dr. Chris Fuzie Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint podcast. And my guest today is Dr. Chris Fuzie, president of the National Leaderology Association, a non-profit organization that establishes and promotes leaderology, the study of leadership as a respected discipline in science. He is also the owner of CMF Leadership Consulting. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Chris. Thank you, Steve. I’m very happy to be here. Yeah, I’m looking forward to this. Well, I have to tell you that we are 300 episodes in and you’re the first leaderologist that we ever had on this podcast. So it’s kind of a big day for us. Oh, good. So, what is leaderology? I’ve never heard this before, but it sure sounds interesting. Well, okay, so you have psychology, you have psychologists. You have biology, you have biologists. You have all of these other ologies, which is the scientific study of or the study of whatever the discipline is. So leaderology is nothing more than the scientific study of leadership. So as a leaderologist, there’s different levels within leaderology. And as a leaderologist, that means that you are formally educated in leadership theory and leadership practice.Share on X And the different levels, if you have one degree, two degrees, like I have three degrees, so three formal degrees in leadership. And so that’s what a leaderologist is. It’s just somebody who studies just like a biologist studies biology. So, is this a trademark designation or anyone can call themselves a leaderologist who are expert in leadership? Yeah, that’s the thing is that we actually verify that the person is a leaderologist. And so through the National Leaderology Association, what we do is in order to join, you have to submit your transcripts to show that you’ve actually studied leadership, not management, but leadership. I know you know the difference between management and leadership, but that’s why we look at the type of classes that people have taken, what is their dissertation on that kind of stuff. So we look at all that kind of stuff before we designate somebody. That’s why they’re called verified leaderologists, because they have been vetted, they have been verified as a leaderologist before we will say, yes, this person knows what they’re talking about. Okay. That makes sense. So in terms of definition, my favorite definition is that you manage things and you lead people. What is your definition? What is the official designated definition of a leaderologist and the leader? I say the same thing. Manage things, you lead people. But a leaderologist understands the theories behind the concepts of leading people. As an example, let’s use cohesion as an example. There’s different ways of building cohesion. I use the acronym STICKUM. Personal sacrifice, teamwork, getting people to interact. C is communication. K is keeping people focused on the mission. U is unique norms and symbols. And then the M is the mission focus.Share on X If you think about all those things, when you look at cohesion, then it’s important that you use all of those things. Plus cohesion, you have task cohesion and social cohesion, and task cohesion and social cohesion develop differently. You could have a lot of people who are doing their tasks, but don’t get along. That’s task cohesion. But then you could also have the situation where people all get along, but they don’t get anything done. That’s social cohesion. You want to balance those out. How do you balance those out? Well, you have to look at what’s happening with task cohesion and social cohesion. And then in the team dynamic, you look at what’s going on with teams because cohesion is a group structural dimension, but it’s also a group process. So if you don’t know that kind of stuff and you just try to build cohesion by doing a team building, well, you have to understand how that team building works. You have to understand the theory behind that team building. That’s an example of why a leaderologist, they understand those theories behind the acts, behind the behavior, I should say. That’s great. So we talked about a framework before the show, but I would like to pivot and talk about the Cohesion Framework, because it’s very interesting, even more interesting than the other one. So what are the steps? What is the STICKUM process? It's STICKUM. You want to stick them together.Share on X So, some kind of personal sacrifice, not a sacrifice that the company or the organization makes for the employees. You, yourself, make a personal sacrifice for people. And that’s where a lot of people see the servant leadership coming out because that’s where the servant leader is making a sacrifice for people. That’s the S, that’s the sacrifice. The T is teamwork. Sometimes you have to force people into a team. People will not necessarily go into a team. It’s kind of interesting that there’s a show on TV called The Challenge where they took these two rivals and put them together as a team and they had to work together in order to win that however many thousands of dollars. Well, those teams at the end of that show, not only did they understand the other person they had to work with, but they really understood and they came to like the other person. So sometimes you force people to work together. That’s where the social cohesion, maybe you don’t have the social cohesion and you’re creating the social cohesion along with the task cohesion. And then the I is interaction. Basically the same thing. You’re forcing interaction between different people and you’re making that interaction more personal. And it could be interaction between teams also, teams within a team. So let’s say an organization that has multiple functions, those teams may work in more of a silo kind of situation. Well, you don’t want to do that. You want to have them cross training. So you may have to force some of that interaction. The C is communication and communication is one of those that people think they know how to communicate, but we tend to overlook things like active listening. We tend to overlook body language. We do a lot of email, management by email or leading by email, that doesn’t work. And so you have to actually communicate. Not just communicate, get the words across, but find the shared meaning within the words. So that’s one of the things that I focus on is that, what does it mean to be honest? Are you talking about being honest? Are you talking about being transparent? Can we totally be transparent? Sometimes the law says you cannot say certain things. Sometimes, like my experience in courtrooms, that the judge will not allow you to testify to because it might unduly prejudice the jury. And so the lawyers fight about who’s gonna talk about it. And then the judge makes a ruling in that, no, you can’t do that because, and so we get to the shared meaning and what is the definition of something? You asked the question at the beginning, the leaderologist. That’s that shared meaning kind of thing. So that’s where communication comes in. Keeping people focused. The K is keeping people focused. That’s important because who are you serving? Who are you working for? I mean, maybe I have a really boring job. I have a standing post at a winery in the middle of the night in a warehouse. There’s nobody there. But if you weren’t there, what could happen? And keeping people focused and letting people understand what their purpose is and why they’re doing it. In law enforcement, we talk about the victims, especially working at a district attorney’s office. You talk about the victims and we’re prosecuting the criminals and how we keep focused about the victims and society and keeping people safe. The measure of the effectiveness, the sense of safety in a community. So that’s keeping people focused and reminding people of that every single day. The U is unique norms and symbols. And that’s like, well, you have it on your book back there. I have it on my shirt here. We have these unique norms and symbols that we create, but every single one of these can be functional or dysfunctional. The unique norms and symbols is how you identify gang members also. They have certain tattoos. All of these work, whether it’s a benevolent or malevolent kind of organization. And so that unique norm and symbol, if you see somebody with a, let’s say like, somebody in the Navy and they’re wearing one of the crests for the seals. That’s a unique, normal symbol that identifies what they’re doing. And then the last one is missions. It's important for people to feel like their mission is important. And so we want to create missions or jobs or tasks that people feel they could be part of.Share on X That’s where we talk about buy-in, getting the buy-in. So there’s a lot in STICKUM that helps get people cohesive. And then when you think about it as part of the team dynamics, it’s a structure that helps build structure in the team because that helps with the interpersonal communication, it helps with the tasks and it helps with the structure of the team. And then it’s also a group process because that process is always changing. You’re always evaluating from the time you socialize somebody in the organization, you’re always evaluating how they’re doing and that mission is going to be helpful in getting them to do it. That’s a whole 40-minute class at about two minutes. So, yeah, no, I love it. The sacrifice. So, that’s great because often leaders, CEOs, business owners, don’t realize that they have to show a personal sacrifice to the teams to be trusted by the team for them to really feel that they care about them. I like the idea of forcing people. I mean, I’ve never heard this articulated this before, but it really is true that sometimes people, it’s their comfort zone to be in their silos. They don’t want teamwork. It’s an extra layer of responsibility. They have to pay attention to other people. They can’t just imagine that their world is perfect. It is uncomfortable. So you have to force people. The same with interaction. Again, comfort zone thing. Interacting meaning you have to pay attention to other people, you have to split your attention. Communication, I love this distinction of the active listening. People often think about communication that it’s about sending messages, but it’s equally receiving messages and often sending the body language and the other non-verbal messages are more important than the actual verbal ones. And then keeping people focused. I’m wondering the difference between keeping people focused and the mission. So, the overall mission could be like the overarching goal of the organization. And so keeping people focused on either a task, keeping people focused on something that’s important, something they need to do, that kind of thing. It’s different in that the overall mission is creating a mission that they can buy into is going to be important, but keeping people focused on why, that’s the “Why.” The mission is more of the what. Keeping people focused on why they’re doing what they’re doing. Is it just to make money so they can pay their bills and go surfing all day? Maybe. Is it because they really believe in what they’re doing? And most jobs, you have to have both. Most jobs, you have to have the mission and the different missions involved. I keep using the word mission, but it can be a job, task, company. Because if the company doesn’t survive, you’re out of a job. So it doesn’t help. Yeah. I mean, the “Why” and the “What,” in my word, I call it, I call it the Company Why and the Summit Vision, I call it. The long-term, a big, hairy, audacious goal, as Jim Collins would say, that a big overarching North Star goal is kind of the what, but the what can also be the core business. What do we focus on right now? What are we good at? And so on. So that is fascinating. I’m going to reflect on this myself because this is super valuable. So talking about the “Why,” what is your personal “Why” that you manifest in your practice? My personal “Why” is I had some really bad leaders in my life, not all throughout my life, but I’ve had some really bad ones. It was like, there’s gotta be something to make it better. And it makes me better too. I was a cop until age 40. And I looked around and I saw a bunch of people that were starting to, some of my friends are starting to get hurt. At age 40, do you want to still be chasing people, jumping fences and running through backyards? And I said, no, I should probably come up with a backup plan. And so I went back to school, I started looking at this leadership stuff. And I realized that a lot of this org leadership stuff is working with what I was seeing every single day. And then I became a supervisor and seeing how people were interacting, fit right in with what I was learning in the theories and I could start applying those theories. So then for the next almost 10 years, I was using the police department as like a little Petri dish, testing out some of these theories or writing about these theories that were I was actually seeing happen. I had some really, really good supervisors and really good leaders and then I had some really bad leaders and bad supervisors and it’s like what’s the difference? What is the difference? How come some turn out good, some turn out bad? What is it? Well, I’ve come to find out a lot of it is the theory. Not understanding people, not understanding how things are working, and that’s a big factor in all of this. So my personal “Why” is to get better and be better. Okay, well, that sounds simple. It’s probably not easy all the time, but definitely interesting. Now, I’m really curious about a couple of things I wanted to talk to you. I mean, you said that you were a cop for a couple of decades and you talked about leadership and how you discovered some of the systems behind leadership as a cop. What is unique about being a first responder, whether it’s a cop or an emergency technician or a firefighter? What is unique in terms of leadership about being a first responder? So what's really interesting is that you're not just leading and you're not just following. You're actually doing both at the same time.Share on X And I didn’t realize this till about six years ago. I mean, after I’ve been out of law enforcement for 10 years and still studying this leadership, followership stuff, and I realized that even in the academy, we’re trained to lead in that you’re trained how to handle a specific type of call, you’re either the primary officer or you’re the backup. The primary officer is the lead. The backup is the follower. But if things change and the backup sees something that they need to take action on, they could jump in the lead. Or you as the lead, as the primary officer, let’s say you get busy, you’re arresting somebody or you’re taking somebody down or you have something. Now, you’re out of, you still have to control that person. So now the backup becomes the leader. And so in law enforcement, that happens all the time. I should say in emergency services, we get to a scene of a crime and we have somebody who’s hurt or injured. As soon as the firemen and the ambulance get there, they’re taking the lead on dealing with that person. I’ll get my information later on until they get them to the hospital and they deal with them. If there’s a safety concern, the firemen and the ambulance are going to stay back until we’ve dealt with the safety concern. And so everybody’s leading and following in their own right. And then, emergency services, you have a structure for that emergency service. But it’s just like in the military, the mission is what’s important. Not so much whether you’re leading or following, it’s how do we accomplish this mission or how do we accomplish this job that we need to do? And like I said, I didn’t realize this till about six years ago while I was focusing on followership stuff. And I realized that, that’s what I was doing for almost 30 years, leading and following. So let me jump on this one because that’s also a very interesting concept that you talk about, the followership. Before I talked to you, I never heard about leaderology and let alone followership, that it was even a thing. So what is followership? Is this a skill? Well, it’s a real thing. We’re in baseball season now. So let’s talk about baseball. Do you have a favorite team? Do you follow that team? Do you go a favorite team? Do you go to the stands? When you go to a baseball game in a stadium, there’s nine players on the field, another dozen or so in the dugout. There’s a couple down in the dugout, a couple dozen maybe, but there’s nine players on the field. But you have 40 or 60,000 fans sitting there all rooting for their team. That’s followership. Also, just imagine if we could get those 40,000 people or 60,000 people to do something just because somebody hits a home run, we all scream and yell. And if you think about it, if you go to the games and you hear like the organ player or the somebody, they do this thing where get everybody to clap or do the wave or whatever it is. They do all these things to get the audience to keep the audience engaged and responding. And that's part of the game.Share on X So followership is driven by the leader? So, it’s not an active behavior from the followers. It’s something that the leader creates. No, I think it’s both. I think it’s from the leader and the follower. A lot of people think of followership as being the opposite of leadership. That’s absolutely not. I do this thing in my classes where I talk about I’ll do a test. I could do it with you right now if you want. Okay, so I’m going to say a word. You tell me the opposite. You ready? Okay. Okay. Up. Down. In. Out. Fast. Slow. Leader. Follower. Right. Because that’s the mental schema we have. But when you think about follower, the follower is actually going the same direction as the leader. They’re not going in opposite direction. The follower is trying to achieve the same goal as the leader. They’re not trying to achieve a different goal and antithetical towards the ideals of the leader. We try to find people within our organization who have the same ideals. The leader and the follower are actually like two sides of the same coin, whereas you can’t spend just one side of the coin. You can only spend the whole coin. And so followership is, it’s both leading. And that’s where this last book I wrote, it’s called Liminal Leadership, because some people have to lead and follow at the same time. And if you’re a middle manager, if you’re president or supervisor, anywhere in that structure, you’re leading and following. So I’m just trying to relate to this. So let’s say a company have a CEO, the visionary person, and then it has a COO, the second in command, who maybe is more focused on execution. Then would the visionary person be the leader and the COO, the follower? Until it becomes an operational issue, then the COO should probably, there’s things that you know have happened, be the first one to do something. The CEO might trump him in authority, but may not have the expertise that the COO has. But maybe they have a vision and the CEO can realize the vision. Would it not make the CEO a follower or practicing followership in terms of the visionary leader? Correct. They are practicing followership, but they’re also leading all the other people that in that organization. And so I work for a district attorney’s office and I work directly for the elected district attorney. And the elected district attorney, he’s elected. So who does he follow? He follows the will of the people. The people can unelect them, they can kick him out, they can get rid of him, but he follows the will of the people. Well, when he tells me this is what we’re going to do, I have to say, okay, boss, and then I turn around and lead 164 other people in the district attorney’s office to get things done. But I have to follow and lead at the same time. And that’s where followership is sometimes even stronger than leadership because you have, like in my organization, I have 164 people that if they all said, ah, this is not a good idea, and then I turn to the boss, I go, hey boss, I’ve got all these people telling me this, and he may rethink it. And he does rethink it. It’s kind of great to work for somebody like that, who actually pays attention to what’s going on. So that followership does have a strong presence in every organization. I don’t think we’ve tapped into how to use it right, though. That’s interesting. Very interesting topic. Probably we can’t do justice to it in 30 minutes, but there are different ideas that come to my mind. One is that, a good follower sometimes is harder to find than a leader. Yeah. Anyone can have ideas, but someone who can actually focus their attention to executing a set of ideas, it’s a very valuable person. I’m also thinking about the right kind of followership and the wrong kind of followership, because sometimes you have dogmatic followers or people who are uncritically following someone and bad things on their behalf. So there are multiple aspects to this. Before we wrap up, I wanted to ask you about Liminal Leadership. And I see the book behind you, the Liminal Space. Yeah. Right back here. So what does this mean? Liminal Space and Liminal Leadership. Yeah. The word liminal means in a transitionary state. So it comes from anthropology where things would change like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. When it’s in the chrysalis and it’s hanging there, then it’s in a liminal state. So a person, I took that concept and applied it to leadership. A person that is leading and following at the same time, they have to transition from leading and following. And so if we think about the transition of leading and following, if you’re doing it at the same time, then it doesn’t really matter if you’re the leader or the follower at the time that you’re doing whatever it is you have to do. It’s the matter of getting that task or that behavior accomplished. So as an example, in like in my position at the DA’s office, the boss tells me something, I have to turn around and get other people to do it. Well, I’m in a liminal space when I’m in that position of doing both things. I’m not leading, I’m not following, I just have to do it. So as an example, if you’re told to be honest, okay, does it matter if you’re honest as a leader or honest as a follower or as long as you’re honest?  So that’s the thing. This liminal space concept is people who have to lead and follow at the same time.Share on X It becomes less about the position and more about the appropriate behavior. And that’s why the subtitle is Reshaping Leadership and Followership, because we need to stop thinking about leadership as a hierarchical kind of concept. And we need to start thinking, thinking about it more as a behavior-based concept. And all of my books are behavior-based. And so when we talk about the behavior of people, how do you get the appropriate behavior from somebody, whether they’re leading or following? And that’s where the liminal space comes in, is that we focus more on the behavior rather than the role that they’re in. Yeah, that’s fascinating. Well, definitely very deep discussion around the leadership. Sorry. No, that’s great. I mean, that’s this concept of the STICKUM, the cohesion, how to create cohesion. I’ve basically worked with teams and I’m working on creating that cohesion, but I didn’t have the STICKUM formula. And now I’m going to STICKUM together using the formula. I love it. It’s great. It’s very granular and one can work on the individual elements, the sacrifice, the teamwork, the interaction, communication, working on active listening, body language, norms and symbols, the big topic in itself, the mission, the “What,” the “Why.” This is very, very valuable. So if people would like to learn more about your books, your teachings, and maybe want to enroll themselves in the leadership, the Leaderology Institute, they want to become leaderologist themselves, or get a certification because they have done the studies, where should they go and where can they reach you? My website is www.cmfleadership.com and there’s a contact message on there. I’m also on linkedin and facebook and what is it called now? X? Yeah, so I’m on all of those. And you just look for Chris Fuzie. Not too many people with the name of Fuzie, so you’ll find it pretty easy. For the books, they’re all on Amazon. So amazon.com. Again, just do a search for Chris Fuzie books and they’ll all pop up. There’s three behavior-based books. And then the others that are listed on there are workbooks for the classes that we do. And then for the leaderology, if you want to check out more about national leaderology association, go to www.nlainfo.org. It has a page on there to join. It has everything about what we do, why we do what we do. We tend to say it’s chess, not checkers. We’re playing chess, we’re playing the big game. And so it’s important that we talk about this from a scientific level, applying the scientific theories to what we do. That is best. That really helps leaders become more intentional, and they can organically build their skills. They don’t have to just rely on role models and flying by the seat of their pants and figuring out as they go along, they can get into some very tangible concepts. So, Dr. Chris Fuzie, President of the National Leaderology Association, NLA, and the owner of the CMF Leadership Consulting Company. It was great having you on the show. You shared some really valuable stuff. I made some notes and I’m going to use them and check your books out. So if you enjoyed this show, then make sure that you subscribe, give us a review, follow us on YouTube, and stay tuned because every week, we bring either a successful entrepreneur or a subject matter expert like Dr. Fuzie, who will help you become a better leader and even a better follower. Thanks for coming on the show and thanks for listening. Important Links Dr. Chris’s LinkedIn Dr. Chris’s website National Leaderology Association

https://youtu.be/wrIFxgnkJ1A Nathan Miller, Founder and CEO of Miller Ink, is on a mission to help organizations communicate clearly and strategically—especially in moments of high stakes and crisis. We explore Nathan’s journey from diplomacy and speechwriting at the UN to launching one of California’s top crisis communication firms. He shares the Miller Ink Communications Framework, which anchors every campaign with a clear objective, a targeted audience, and a compelling message. Nathan breaks down how to craft memorable messaging using the 3 Cs (Clear, Concise, Compelling) and the 3 S’s (Stories, Statistics, Soundbites). He also reveals how to build a reputation-driven business, navigate hiring decisions, and future-proof your communications in a rapidly changing media landscape. — Communicate in Soundbites with Nathan Miller Good day, dear listeners. It’s Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint and my guest today is Nathan Miller, founder and CEO of Miller Ink. and he’s also a seasoned communication strategist with deep experience in business, government, diplomacy, crisis management and issue advocacy. Nathan, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Steve. It’s great to be here. Well, it’s good to have you. And I’ve got some questions I’m really curious about that I want to ask you. And starting with my favorite one, what is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your business? My personal “Why” really is a couple of things. One, our business makes a huge impact for a lot of people and to feel that impact every day is tremendous and it gives me a lot of satisfaction and pride. The people who work for Miller Ink., the people who work here and launched their careers through this company, our clients, every day you get to be in rooms with people who are solving problems, addressing challenges, navigating different challenges, and helping them get to a better place is incredibly gratifying. You want to be somebody who’s of service in that way. We do a lot of advocacy and mission-driven work as well as an agency. I’ve done a lot of work on behalf of the Jewish community and the State of Israel, which has also been very meaningful. And for me, the most important personal “Why” is I have three kids and so much of what I do is really for them. And that is really one of my big North Stars in life. Yeah, well, lots of meaningful stuff in your life. And you left the UN Security Council, where you were a writer, to become a PR entrepreneur. So tell me about this journey. The journey was crazy. My career began, I got a master’s in public policy here at UCLA. I went to Europe for a little bit. I worked in Brussels with the EU institutions there at a think tank. And then I came back and I worked at a PR firm in LA for a couple of years early in my career. I got a job as the chief speechwriter for Israel’s mission to the UN. And it was a crazy time to be doing that job. I was really young, and it was the outbreak of the Arab Spring. A lot of different things that were happening in the Middle East and in the world. So, fascinating moment. And I did that job for three years. And at that point, my now wife and I were dating, and she was in LA and I was in New York, and we had to figure out a place to be. So I said, you know what, I’m gonna come back. And I think I have a problem with authority is what I learned working in big institutions in different ways. And I like to be able to set the pace of what I do. And so I say, every entrepreneur has a different cross that they’re trying to not bear. And for me, it was really having control of my own destiny, and that mattered a lot to me. So I was a young guy. I saw communications changing rapidly, really rapidly. When I started at the UN, then the ambassador, Susan Rice, they asked her if she was on Twitter and she said, I don’t do diplomacy by haiku. And that was like a funny thing. But then within a year she was on Twitter and it was a big deal. And so, my first job in PR, I remember, I went into a meeting with a professional sports team and I set up their first Facebook page. Facebook came out my freshman year of college or sophomore year, maybe, but it was something that I sort of, when I was very young was very new and I saw how this was going to completely change the ecosystem of how you do communication. And I thought there would be an opportunity for us in starting the firm. And I think I was right. I mean, I think that was an insight that was correct. And so, we’ve been able to build a firm that I think is on the leading edge of a lot of the changes in our space. And we’ve grown over time today. We could talk about that whole journey, but fast forward to now, we’re about 20 people. on the West Coast, on the East Coast, 65 plus clients across a number of different industries. And we’re one of the market leaders in a couple of different important verticals. So that’s impressive. So one of the things that led you to achieve that success is you developed your own communication framework. You just spoke about how communication was changing rapidly. So tell me a little bit about this Miller Ink Communication Framework. What does it look like? Absolutely. Well, I’m really an analog guy in a digital world. I really believe in the principles of communication. When you go back to Aristotle, there’s really nobody who understood the framework for persuasion. There’s a lot of wisdom that’s been passed down through the ages and that people have. I think too much of the people now who are purely digital, they think in a very tactical way, but they’re not getting back to the big strategic framework of what are we trying to achieve and how does communications do that. Communications is a means to an end. It's not an end in itself. Just doing good PR because it makes you feel better or whatever is not a goal.Share on X It always is what are we trying to achieve? Having the experience that I had in diplomacy and in politics, I felt like there’s a lot of skills that I would sort of a shorthand, but they’re analog skills, like really like core building block skills that I think are missing today that we train everybody on our team and those skills, but we also bring a sense of understanding of how the ecosystem has changed and leveraging all the opportunities in a place where the mediated model of communication is no longer as relevant, where everybody is a publisher, where digital is so important, et cetera. We can talk about that. So, but our framework that I teach everybody, and I think this is important for any entrepreneur starting out, Miller Ink 101, every person who comes in and all of our clients, we really talk about this framework. So, every good strategic communications program has a clear objective, a clearly defined objective that’s measurable, specific. The objective is not, we want to get better PR. The objective is what do we want the PR to achieve? Do we want more clients? Do we want more sales? Do we want to raise more money? We want our issue to be seen by a certain segment of the population. So the first thing is that clearly defined objective. A targeted audience, I have yet to have a client that has unlimited budget to reach the whole world. You always have to think about, and people will say, well, everybody matters, but that’s not the truth. The art of this business is understanding who really matters.Share on X And being able to clearly understand your target audience, who is it, define it, and then be able to inhabit the mind of that audience and understand how are they going to receive the information that you’re sharing. It’s not what you say, it’s what they hear. How are they gonna hear what you’re saying to them? And we do a lot of work around trying to understand that our audience, there’s perceptions, there are misperceptions, there are likes, their dislikes, and then how do they relate to whatever it is that we’re trying to talk to them about. How do you do that, by the way? So, there’s many different ways. Sometimes you do formal research where you’ll do quantitative research and survey or you’ll do focus groups. We do a lot of focus groups. A lot of it is using your imagination. We train our team to before they write something, they have to think about who they’re writing it for. How are they going to internalize the information that they’re writing? And I think this is where a lot of people have lost that ability in some sense. It’s really important. Even when you have research, you have to understand how to apply it. So a lot of it lives in your mind. And this is where AI and things like this are never going to really be as strong in my view. It’s in really learning, it’s a combination of formal research and then having the kind of the sense of things from doing this for a long time and from really like thinking about who is the audience. And then the final thing is a message. And the message aligns your audience in the direction of your objective. It drives your audience towards whatever your goal is. If your goal is to sell more chocolate, your message gets your customers to buy more chocolate. If your goal is to help people think differently, a certain segment of the population to think differently about an issue, it’s the message that’s driving a certain segment of the population to think differently about an issue. And so how do you make that message really do that? So we have a framework. We call it the three Cs and the three Ss, and there’s different frameworks, but I developed this working with clients, I have had different positions, training in different educational settings, training CEOs, startup founders, and teaching a bit at some different schools. So I wanted to try to boil down the way I think about messaging into something that’s simple and memorable. So the three Cs, a great message is clear, it’s not full of jargon, the target audience can understand what you’re talking about, they know what you’re saying. It’s concise, especially now in a moment of decreasing attention spans, you need something that’s going to really be able to capture their attention quickly and they’ll be able to understand it. And it’s compelling. The message moves them to action in some way. And the corollary to the three C’s, how do you make a message compelling, are the three S’s. And there’s different tools that we do, but we like to think about stories, statistics, and soundbites. So stories, we’re hardwired as humans since we’ve been cavemen painting on caves and we connect to other human beings and we connect to other human stories. And there’s something very important about being able to help people not just think about something in the abstract, but see the other, the human element, in it in a specific way.  Statistics. Statistics can be used really in an effective way to move our logical sense, but they can also be used ineffectively and generically. So we have a lot of work around how do you use a statistic to your advantage when it comes to messaging. And then soundbites. Boiling down our core ideas into memorable little quips that people will hear. When you read a newspaper article, where you hear a speech, when you watch somebody on TV, at most you’re going to remember one or two things they said. And usually it’s from those little sound bites. So there’s an art to developing soundbites. And we also teach that and we think about that when we’re developing a message for a client. I always tell people the average press release quote is extremely boring and extremely unmemorable and it’s not a soundbite. And many people who come here, especially if they come from other agencies, the first quote they write for a press release, and it’ll say, we’re excited to do X, Y, or Z. They learn very quickly that that’s not our method here. We're always thinking about how do you make that quote really stand out, live off the page, have a reporter really want to pick it up, or somebody who is going to hear it will remember it and it’ll stand out in the article.Share on X So how do you do that? Is there a process for this? There’s a process. There are books. One of the first books when I became a speechwriter at the UN, I really wanted to study it like a science. So I had a book of speeches that sat by my bed every night for three years, and I would read two or three famous speeches every night. William Sapphire wrote a book called Lend Me Your Ears, which is a great book, which has a lot of, like, thousands of speeches, and I’d look at others, and I’d really break it down. So a great speech in some ways is a great soundbite. It feels like you’ve heard it before. It becomes really, like, innate, or it really shocks you when it makes you think differently. There’s a lot of things you can do within the language that makes a soundbite strong. So people like to think, you call them a trisome or a triple. This, this, and this, people’s brains are sort of wired to want to hear a triple. So that’s one thing. Rhyme is another thing. Creating puns that are funny. Our food is fresh, our customers are spoiled. Paradoxes. Things that are like, again, and sometimes it’s too cheesy or whatever, but you want to think about how do you make something stand out and really be different? And then I also want to think about how do you boil down your core idea into something that’s really at its essence. You think about some great core lines like the New York Times is forever. Their line has been all the news that’s fit to print, which I think captures exactly who the New York Times is and what the brand that they’re trying to sell. There’s a lot of thought that goes into that. And part of our job is to develop those ideas and then connect to the client and build a messaging framework, a messaging architecture that we can use for everything we do. But that takes a lot of work at the front end. Yeah, they say that it’s the headline that you will spend 50% of your time on, and 50% on the actual message. 100%. When I’m writing an op-ed, I spend most of my time writing that first paragraph. The rest of it is because you need something that’s going to really stand out and be different and it’s hard to do that. Sometimes even something stands out, it’s not quite right for other reasons. There’s a process by which you think about that. Yeah, I love it. The message has to be clear, concise, compelling, and then you make it compelling with stories, statistics, and soundbites. Yes. With the right mix and tailored to the audience. Yes. I love it. So you’ve been running this business for what? For 10 years? 12 years? For 12 and a half years. 12 and a half years. Yeah. So, what was the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make during that time? So I think the hardest decision was starting the business because it was a crazy idea and I had no business doing it at that point in that stage of my career. For me, the hardest decisions are always around hiring. Over the years, I’ve gotten better at it. But in an agency business, our people are our superpower. And we’re only as strong as the team that we bring onto the field every day. For me, the toughest calls are, should we make this investment in this person or not? Or is this the right person for the role? Is this what we need? And when you hire the right person, it’s like rocket fuel. It really helps the business tremendously. We’re a small enough agency, we’re 20, 25 people. And so every person on the team really matters. And I like this size of a business because of that. I can really have a lot of visibility into and control over what we’re doing and how we’re doing things. So, we made some really key strategic hires over the years and we made some really bad hires. And I reaped the benefits and paid the price respectively. And so for us, I’ve built a much more robust system for hiring now. It’s a longer process. It’s less based on my gut and more based on data and really asking ourselves the hard questions before we pull the trigger. And I have a lot of other people involved. When you’re just making a decision based on I think this person is going to work out, I think you have a lower batting average than when you have a better process. Now, when you sell PR services, is it about the personality of the individual and the knowledge or is it something else? What makes a PR person attractive to a customer? It’s a great question. We work in a number of different verticals. I would say it really varies by vertical. So we’re probably the leading crisis communications company in California right now, just by volume and reputation. And a lot of that is built on the brand reputation and in the cases we’ve worked on and the victories we’ve had, people know us. And just for me, years of working with many people in the field, and it’s a relatively specialized field, so it’s heavily relationship dependent. We get some leads that just come in from the internet because of our brand identity and things like that. But a lot of it is, I’d say most of it is warmly relationships based on experiences with me or others who have relationship with us as an agency. We also do a lot of work connected to the Jewish community. And I would say it’s similar. It’s a brand name and reputation. Other verticals are different. We have a public affairs real estate group. That is, I think, it’s a broader market and it’s more of a national market and people are always looking for, so there’s a lot more shopping around and things like that and people are less specific and there’s more players on the field in some ways. What they’re looking for at the end of the day, I think, is somebody who’s going to be able to solve their problem, who they trust will do that. And I’ve learned that the short-term sale in my business is not always the best approach. I’d much rather find someone who’s the right fit for us to have a long-term relationship. It’s very disruptive to bring on a short-term client who doesn’t work either because they have unrealistic expectations about what’s possible for them because they don’t have sufficient budget to really have somebody on for the long term. So, it’s a joint interview process in some ways. And I’m turning away a reasonable amount of the business that comes in because I’m trying to calculate, is this going to be a long-term fit? Are we going to be able to deliver for this person? The worst thing is to have a client come in and have it not work out for them and for you. It’s a very specific business that we have, and I think a mistake a lot of PR folks make is sort of taking anything that comes in the door and not thinking about, are we the best agency to actually deliver on this piece of business? Can we actually solve their problem and can we achieve what they want us to achieve? So you mentioned crisis communication. Is this the point when you can bring in a new client and they have a crisis and they want safe hands or someone who they get the inkling that they will be able to resolve it?  And then the follow-up question is, how do you then keep these clients? So when the crisis is passed and hopefully you help them navigate it, how do you add, keep adding value so that you keep them for long haul? So many crisis clients are just crisis clients. They come in for a couple of months and they go, and that’s a part of the business model.  And our pricing and everything else accounts for that. Some crisis clients become long-term clients and that’s happened quite often. And also crisis clients become great referral sources for other folks. I randomly was on an event in Colorado with someone who was a crisis client of ours. And our crisis clients are always confidential basically. I don’t talk about that work with others. This person was there and I was with a big group of business leaders. There’s probably 50 of us there and we’re at this bar and it’s like 8:30 at night. And this person, we did tremendous work on his case and he was very, very happy.  And he said, this guy saved my life and I’m buying a shot for everybody at the bar because I did it in his honor. And he bought a bottle of something and it’s just like a way to illustrate kind of what happens when you’re in my business and I take it really seriously, we will give our all to deliver for our clients and people know that and we’ve built that reputation and that goes a long way and you have a mutual loyalty and respect. And so then, these are people who are prominent people, their friend gets in a similar situation or something else happens.  They say, you know what, Miller Ink would be great. And that’s a big part of our business is just doing a good job and being honest with people. I think reputations are about the idea of compounding for me is really important. The seeds I planted 10 years ago are still bearing fruit today, both positive and negative. So if you blow out with somebody or you’re mean to somebody, you do wrong by somebody, that’s going to live with you forever. And similarly, if you do a good job and you’re fair to them and you’re not really greedy, I think it's really important to have that view. And that's what we've tried to do as a business. I think it's always the better strategy.Share on X Yeah. Especially in the professional service, reputations are paramount. I agree with you. So as an entrepreneur, what is it that you would advise other entrepreneurs to ask themselves, what is the question? What is the critical question they should be asking themselves all the time? First of all, I think you have to be very self-critical. I think it’s very important to have people around you who will be your mirror, whether it’s in the business or outside the business, and say, you could have done this or that better. My wife is a great partner for me in that sense. She also has a sister agency, but she’s a very good mirror and sounding board. The fundamental question at the end of the day, and people sometimes, I think, especially the last five years, as I deal with business leaders, it seems kind of obvious, but who is going to pay you money for this good or service, and why are they going to do it, and how are they going to do it over the long term? So many people get caught up in everything else, but that’s the fundamental question. And the same thing is true for PR. How is this advancing you towards a goal, whatever that goal might be? And to have that strategic framework, it seems like really complicated, but it’s pretty simple. And I think that too often people get caught up. We’re emotional creatures. We’re sort of focused on whatever the thing is in front of us. We have a hard time sometimes zooming out and saying, are we moving in the right direction in this way? Tell us to it. Okay, so final question. You mentioned that you love the size of the firm that you’re running. Do you wanna keep it that size or you still wanna grow it? We have some exciting plans for growth right now. I don’t wanna be a mega firm. We have some folks on the East Coast and we’re gonna be building out some of those presence. We have plans to do that soon and we’re kind of actively building that. There are some other businesses that we’re looking at right now that are ancillary that I think will support our core businesses, either both on the crisis side and otherwise, where I think related to AI and sort of where the field is going. I think that the one thing about communications is what works today is not going to work tomorrow and you have to be thinking about where it’s going. And so we’re trying to anticipate that. And so I’m making different strategic investments. I continue to do that over the years in our firm’s capabilities, because I think just as what I said about compounding, it’s really true now. You always have to be putting in the work today for tomorrow. And that’s when you really reap the benefits. You’re going to be much better off. Okay, that makes sense. All right, Nathan, so we’re coming to the end of the recording. If people would like to learn more about your firm Miller Ink and personally want to connect with you, where should they go? What should they do? Yeah, miller-ink.com. That’s our website. And you can feel free, you can contact us through the site and give us a call and we’ll be happy to be in touch. All right. So thank you for coming and sharing your wisdom and insights on communication, and crisis communication, and PR in general. And those of you listening, if you enjoyed this conversation, if you picked up some good ideas how to communicate your situation, your stories, make it clear, concise, compelling with stories, statistics, soundbites. Then stay tuned because every week I bring an exciting CEO to the show to share their wisdom with you. So thank you for listening and coming, and thank you for sharing your wisdom, Nathan. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Important Links: Nathan’s LinkedIn Nathan’s website

https://youtu.be/7kbdcPkeCuY Alanna Levenson, Business Coach and Workshop Facilitator, is on a mission to help driven business owners reach their highest potential through self-awareness and no-excuses action. We explore Alanna’s coaching journey and her Executive Improvement MAP, a framework that guides entrepreneurs to elevate their mindset and mission, align strategy with values, and build legacy-driven, profit-focused teams. She outlines how leaders can reclaim their focus, lead with intention, and foster quiet influence by becoming profoundly self-aware. Alanna also shares the three critical questions business owners should ask daily to stay on a growth path. — Build Your Team’s Self-Awareness with Alanna Levenson Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Alanna Levenson, business coach and workshop facilitator who helps driven business owners reach their highest potential and take no excuses action. Alanna, welcome to the show. It’s good to be here. Well, I’m super curious about how you do that with these business owners, even though they are driven, which is a good given. But let’s start with my favorite question. What is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your practice? Yeah. So, the question of our “Why.” I mean, I asked that of my clients too. It’s an important one, because if we don’t know what it is, then in essence, we’re directionless and we’re disconnected. So when I think about that, I reflect back at when I was very young and I was introverted and very shy and didn’t really feel like I had much of a voice. I was also very insecure. And there were things that I did throughout my life, like I studied dancing, which was more of a physical expression than a verbal one. But I did it in a very committed way for, I mean, I could say from when I was four until I was 18, but I even did it in college. So really my “Why” is about connecting with yourself, finding confidence, knowing your voice, and what does your voice wanna say?Share on X And that will evolve throughout your lifetime because what my voice has wanted to express or is currently expressing is very different than even who I was just a few years ago.  So, my “Why” is really reflecting and connecting with who you are, understanding that we are evolving living beings. And we’re having this incredible experience and that we’re not the only ones on the planet. So, since we’re constantly bumping up against other people in life and in work, how can we be the best that we can be while also supporting others and being the best that they can be too? Yeah, okay. That’s, that’s pretty powerful. Be the best we can be and make other people the best that they can be as well. I love it. So how do you do this? How do you help your clients kind of map out a roadmap to get there? So what does it take to be the best you can be as a business owner as you are traversing this terrain and trying to be in the business and be a better human? Well, I’ve been coaching for 20 years, and even my journey with coaching has evolved over time. My clientele has evolved. The “Why’s” have evolved within the clientele as well. And where I am now, it’s about giving people, it’s not so much a framework as it is guardrails. And then there’s a very intuitive, organic, custom process within that, that I work with people on. But if we’re talking about a roadmap or the word MAP, as an acronym, I am using that as a framework. So what do I mean by that? So the M, if you think of that in terms of your mindset and your mission, if I was to sum that up, it’s about reconnecting to your purpose, your “Why.” It’s reclaiming your focus. So what I’ve noticed about people is they tend to get very distracted and it’s easy and it’s becoming quote unquote easier to get distracted these days, especially because of so many things happening in the world and the world changing so fast. And we’re just all trying to navigate through it and keep up with it. Reclaiming your focus for yourself can be really powerful and important.Share on X And that also what’s underneath all that is your inner excellence. What makes you excellent? And I’m not talking about perfectionism because I know that’s a big problem for people too and how that shows up. But really what is your inner excellence of who you are, what you’re doing and why you’re doing it? So getting a clear understanding of what your mindset is, where it is and how you can transform it to serve yourself and others and the mission that goes with that. That’s what I mean by the M piece. So I don’t know if you have any questions or comments about that before I go on to the A. Yeah, it is a little bit complex, but I like the idea of reclaiming your focus. That’s a really powerful way to express that. We have to resist the distraction and we have to just not allow us to be diverted to maybe other people’s goals, and we have to own our own, and we have to keep our attention on it. I think it’s super important. And it’s very easy to get distracted with the news and with disturbing stuff.  But guess what? We are run out of 300 million. How much can we influence the news? And we have a profession where we are making a difference. Isn’t that a better way to apply ourselves? But that goes into a philosophical discussion that we probably don’t even have time. So love it. Mission is number one. So what’s the A in the MAP acronym? Well, really quick, I want to touch on something you said, because I think it’s really important. Throughout my life, I realized that there were times when I was distracted from my own “Why,” and I was more about, I was avoiding it by supporting somebody else’s. I did get fulfillment in that, but I realized looking back that there was also an element of avoidance and it wasn’t until I gave myself permission to redirect my focus back to me and realize how much more impact I can have. So I think that’s a really important piece that you, I don’t even know if you realize you brought up, but I wanted to just highlight that too. The A has to do with approach and alignment. So what do I mean by that?  Okay. Back to focus. This is now is about focused execution. What are the actions that you’re taking? It has to do with leadership structure, also seeing yourself as a leader and where do you fit within that structure? Let alone, are you a leader really within a hierarchical organization where you’ve got people reporting to you or multiple layers reporting to you? And then a values driven strategy. So each of those words are really important. I’m a very intentional purpose. Verbiage and words to me hold power. And when I say values driven, I mean, what are your personal values? What are your professional values? How does that fit within the collective of the values that you’re working besides with, or that you’re serving within the organization? It there’s so many layers to it. And I don’t think people really take the time out to think about this too much. And then what’s the strategy that you’re using to making sure that those values are being lived out and that you’re what I call honoring them. Because if you’re not honoring them with purpose and intention, then you’ve lost focus. All of it works together. That’s what I mean by approach and alignment. It's aligning with yourself, it's aligning with others, it's aligning to the objectives and the values of the larger organization at hand, or maybe it's just even the team that you're on and how you're approaching that.Share on X So I guess it starts with picking an organization where you can align with the values of. So knowing your personal values, work for an organization or support an organization that you can be aligned with, and then the next step is staying true to that, I guess. Yeah. And that’s within that journey, all the things that you just mentioned is a journey really. And what I love about the way that I get to work with people is using my intuition and all the amazing tools that I’ve learned over the years and personal experience too. I’m pretty good about when I talk to a leader or get to work with say a small business or an organization, I can start to quickly see where the gaps are, what’s missing, where’s there a disconnect. For example, I was recently coaching a sales leader and something that he was trying to work through where it was the sales weren’t where they needed to be, but they were blaming it on his team in that they were doing product demos because it’s a tech company, which I also work a lot in that space. And the more I dug deeper with him, I realized this has less to do with the fact that there’s a gap in their own sales process in when they start to lose sales and more about where are the leads coming from and how is your marketing feeding into the way that the sales process works. And within 15 minutes, I helped him see, which he unfortunately didn’t have control over, I asked him questions about marketing and leads coming in. And I said, how’s that working? And he’s like, it’s not. So we looked at all the different ways that they’re getting leads. And I said, is it staying the same? Is it getting higher? Is it going down? And it was a much larger strategy than just this one nuanced problem that yes, it’s an issue to address in their own process, but it’s a bigger conversation. And so that’s where I’m talking about in terms of approach and alignment. Yeah, that’s alignment. This is very important. Okay, so what’s the P in the MAP acronym? Yeah, so the P is people and profit, which you might think, well, that’s a no-brainer. So you got to focus on the people in one respect. And then what’s the profitability or profit margin and are you even focusing on that? What I mean by that is, okay, legacy teams. What do I mean by legacy? What’s the impact that we’re having? What do you wanna leave people with? What’s the tenure and the longevity of a team and what they’re doing? Also, pointing back to the “Why,” because all of these things are intertwined, although they can be looked at individually as well, or in an isolated way. But if you really want to have a legacy team, you’re clear on the journey that you’re in, your “Why” of why you’re doing it, why are you still doing it? Sometimes that’s a question I like to ask people of like, why are you even still here in the role that you’re in or the team that you’re on or doing the work that you’re doing?  Because people do get to a point where they’re ready for something different or the team or the work is at a transitional point and are people holding it back unnecessarily? And this is where innovation and being open to new directions is important to engage in. And then there’s that scalable impact. So if you truly want to grow, how are you supporting yourself in that way so that you can scale? And what’s the impact of that on the work, the individuals, the team, the organization, your suppliers, your stakeholders, your customers, you got to look at all the players involved and then quiet influence. It’s not about being loud. There's a lot that can happen when you take a pause and you reflect and really look at where you are and where you want to go and why aren't you there yet.Share on X So if you don’t take the time to do that, then, and you’re just in constant putting out fires, problem solving mode, which is a good place to be, but are you approaching putting out those fires in the right way? Are you solving the real problem or is there something much deeper? And so when you take the time to reflect individually and even collectively and having dialogues that might be important to have that you aren’t currently having, that’s what I mean by quiet influence. And that can very much have an impact on the greater whole. Yeah. So, I mean, I agree that basically what is a business? It’s a bunch of people with a purpose working together and you have to have the right people. They say the A-players are free and there’s money left over because they create value for you. So they are profitable to be employed even if they’re more expensive. And you have to have the right people in the right seat because in the wrong seat, they’re not going to be profitable. Yeah. And there’s the short term and the long term. So this is a complex equation here. But I love it. So mindset and mission, approach and alignment, people and profit. Very good. So one of the things that you raised during our pre-conversation was the importance of self-awareness. Do you believe that people can improve their own self-awareness? And if so, how? Absolutely. As a living soul, we all have the capacity to improve our self-awareness. Are you just making it a priority? So in terms of the how, first you got to make it a priority. First, you have to realize, okay, so I sometimes teach clients is there’s a distinction between somebody who is self-aware and somebody who’s profoundly self-aware. So what do I mean by that? If I was to go up to a hundred people and ask them, do you think that you’re a self-aware person? I have a feeling that a hundred percent of those people would say, oh yeah, I am definitely self-aware. And yet, if you look at what’s happening in the workplace and in society, things haven’t in some ways gotten better. Some ways it’s gotten worse and harder and more challenging. Okay, so what do I mean by profoundly self-aware? Let me paint a little bit of a distinction. So the self-aware person will say, if you call them out on something that they do as a behavior, they’ll say, yeah, I know, I do that. Yeah, I know. It’s just who I am and I’ve just accepted that about myself. That’s the self-aware person. And some might say, yeah, well, that’s progress. Okay. And here’s the profoundly self-aware person. The profoundly self-aware person says, I appreciate you bringing that to my attention and you’re right, I do that. And although I’ve accepted that as part of who I am, I’m realizing the impact that it has on me and the impact that it has on other people and I wanna do it differently. And so I’m gonna start as uncomfortable as it is, start to do that differently and really reflect on why am I doing that? What’s the impact and what are some ways I can? And so I’m going to start practicing that. And in the beginning, it’s more of a reflection back on, oh gosh, I did it again. But you catch it and then you start catching yourself in the middle of it and you might even say, okay, timeout. This is not what I wanted to be doing. Give me a moment. I want to pivot here. And then you get so good at practicing it that you get to a point where you actually catch it ahead of time. And then over time, you start to realize, oh, wow, I’m not even doing that thing anymore. Now, does it mean that you’ll never do it again? Sometimes it depends on what it is.  That said, you might default back to your old way of doing things, but yet you have that profound self-awareness so you'll once again be able to catch yourself. That's what I mean by self-awareness.Share on X And I think people, everybody has the capacity to do that. They just have to take the time to do it and stop focusing on the how and just do it. Yeah, that’s a very big conversation. I’m probably not a profoundly self-aware person. That’s the face of madness that I’m recognizing here. What makes you say that? Because I have certain reactions which are not pleasant for people around me. Okay. I don’t want to turn this into a therapy session, but on the other hand, sometimes I don’t know to turn this into a therapy session, but on the other hand, sometimes I don’t know how to negotiate a situation where you have maybe an unattractive response, but it is being triggered by another thing which is still there. So how do you not react? Is it suppressing emotion? Can you always have an objective, cool-headed conversation in the middle of when this is happening? I don’t know how it’s possible to remove those emotional reactions when the emotion itself has a function. It has a function of calling the attention to something that is an irritant. So it’s a big conversation. I don’t know if you can fit it in to this, but I’m definitely not profoundly self-aware and I’m going to work on it. I appreciate you saying that. So well, really quickly too. So sometimes you can catch it and pivot in the moment by just kind of saying, hey, time out, give me a minute. This is not going in the direction that I want it to go. And it’s a matter of sinking well, from your head down into your heart. And I’m certified in heart math tools. And if you’re not familiar with that, you can go to heartmath.org and they have a lot of free information too. That said, I am certified as a facilitator or heart math coach and using some of their techniques, but it’s about sinking, moving from your head to your heart. And the science of the heart is really powerful and stop doing it again. And believe it or not, more information travels from our heart to our brain than from the other direction. And this is about 5,000 times more powerful electrically than our brain. And so being able to sink in your heart and say, hey, wait a second, this is not how I wanted this to go. Can I just share a few thoughts with you. Now, if you can’t do that because you’re in your amygdala going to brain science, which I’m a geek about too. If you go into your amygdala and the other person’s in their amygdala, both of you are in your survival brain, you’re not gonna have a productive conversation. So the most productive thing in that moment is to say, you know what? We could probably have a more productive conversation than this. Maybe this isn’t the right time.  Let’s both go away from this and think about really what we’re talking about, what we’re trying to achieve together here, whether it has to do with the topic at hand, the relationship that we have or how we’re communicating about it. And let’s come back and figure out how we can do this differently. Talk about doing something with purpose and intention and really getting a handle on how you’re maybe getting derailed emotionally. Because yes, we are emotional beings and I’m not saying avoid your emotions, I’m not saying suppress them because that’s not productive either. It's merely a matter of acknowledging them and recognizing that we do have this amazing heart brain connection and we can with intention do things differently when you catch it.Share on X Yeah, that’s a really good point. So final question, maybe it feels a little bit disconnected. What is the most important thing that you believe an entrepreneur or a business owner should be asking themselves on a daily basis? Well, it’s not necessarily just one thing, if I may. I once learned from a mentor of mine, three very simple questions that I also love sharing with. As a leader in a corporate environment, you can use them too. And they’re very much helpful for entrepreneurs and small business owners. The three simple questions that you can ask at different stages, and you will probably get different answers every time is, number one, what needs to change? The second is what do you need to let go of? And the third is who do you need to hire? Because if you are scaling and growing, you can’t do it alone, whether that means you hire a contractor or you hire a part-time employee, or you bring somebody on full-time of which you get to define and what makes the most sense for your business, depending on what your needs are, what your budgets are and where you are in your growth. So those are three simple questions that you could ask yourself. Again, what needs to change? What do I need to let go of? And who do I need to hire? And sometimes the answers to those questions are a person, a thing, it could be a belief system, a mindset, a process. So that’s where having a coach can be really helpful to help you figure out what that looks like for you and how that’s applicable to your business, your team, your organization, and what you’re trying to achieve in the work that you’re doing. Does that answer your question? Yeah, it’s a really good one. What I’m hearing, it’s kind of the idea of the creative destruction. So sometimes we have to stop doing things. We have to do more of a good thing, less good thing. And then maybe we need to hire someone or maybe we had to let someone go. And these are often uncomfortable realizations because you may like that person or you may not want the headache of bringing in someone else who might not work out either. And you take energy. But these are important questions because you’re building a business and the business is made up of people. And if you’re trying to wear all the hats, then you’re not gonna go anywhere with your business. So that’s a very pertinent question. Thank you. Well, so if people would like to learn more, maybe want to have a conversation with you on how you could help them with more self-awareness or asking the right questions, where can they find you and where should they learn more about you? So my website is i-love-my-life.com. It has dashes in between. So it’s i-love-my-life.com. And then I’m also on LinkedIn a lot. So you can find me on LinkedIn, Alanna Levenson. I’m also on Facebook and Instagram, and I do have a YouTube channel where I’ll post tips and videos about some of the aha moments that come out of coaching sessions that might be helpful to other people. I’m not going to spill the beans on it yet, but I am creating my own podcast, even though I’ve been, I appreciate being on other people’s podcasts and I have a couple of other collaborations, but I am in the midst of creating my own and I’m really excited about it. So keep an eye out, cause I’ll be announcing that in the next probably month or two to get that launched. Okay. Well, definitely we’ll be on the lookout for that. I’m sure it’s going to be very exciting. And when you’re the host, you can ask a lot of good questions, probably better ones than I did. So, Alanna Levenson, business coach and virtual facilitator, helping driven business owners take no excuses action. Thank you for coming on the show, sharing your experiences and insights. And for those who are listening, if you enjoyed the show, make sure you follow us on YouTube and stay tuned because every week, we have one or two exciting coaches and business owners come and share their experiences with us. So thank you for coming. Thank you for listening. Important Links: Alanna’s LinkedIn Alanna’s website