In our latest session of Voice of Experts, host Bruno Gavino sat down with Ben Udell, a leading voice in digital innovation and AI strategy for the financial sector. The core takeaway? While power users are living in 2026, the vast majority of the business world is still stuck in January 2023, cautiously poking at ChatGPT without a clear flight plan.

Here is the blueprint for bridging that gap and surviving the “Great AI Separation.”

The 10% Compression: Quality vs. Commodity

The math of AI is staggering: tasks that once took 10 hours now take 10 seconds. If value is no longer tied to hours spent, what happens to the consulting model?

Ben argues that we are seeing a massive market compression.

• The Bottom 90%: Those who use AI to merely “crank out more” will find their work commoditized and devalued.

• The Top 10%: These are the experts with taste. AI can generate content, but it cannot generate perspective, judgment, or a “voice.” As the middle-ground disappears, the value of high-level problem solvers—those who can use AI creatively to solve complex human needs—will skyrocket.

The “Crawl, Walk, Run” Framework

In risk-averse industries like banking and finance, fear often leads to paralysis. Ben suggests a “bottom-up” approach to institutionalizing AI rather than waiting for a million-dollar “top-down” miracle.

The “Intern” Mental Model: Ben’s secret to calming compliance departments? Treat AI like a brilliant but fallible intern. You wouldn’t let an intern publish a shareholder report without a human review; treat AI the same way. The “Human in the Loop” is your firewall.

Leadership: The Biggest Bottleneck

The most surprising insight from the interview? AI adoption isn’t a tech problem; it’s a change management problem.

Ben shared a striking anecdote from a recent bankers’ conference:

“I asked, ‘Raise your hand if you’re using AI.’ 30% did. Then I asked, ‘Keep your hand up if you’re willing to work somewhere that doesn’t allow AI.’ Every hand went down.”

Talent is already ahead of leadership. If executives don’t provide the guardrails and the “green light,” their best people will simply walk across the street to a competitor who does.

Ben’s “Secret Sauce” for Adoption:

• Don’t just give a prompt; give a video. People need to see the iteration—how the human corrected the AI to get the final result.

• The $50 Innovation Bonus: Encourage “micro-innovations.” If a junior staffer finds a way to save 2 hours a week, reward them and scale that prompt across the entire department.

The Final Verdict: Experience as the New Premium

As we move further into 2026, the “death of jobs” narrative is shifting toward a “renewal phase.” We may see fewer credit analysts, but we will see more “AI-enabled relationship managers.”

The goal isn’t to replace humans; it’s to use AI to handle the “Excel drudgery” so humans can return to what they do best: building relationships and exercising taste.

Are you leading the 10% or following the 90%? Ben Udell can be found at BenUdell.ai or on Ben’s LinkedIn for those looking to bridge their organization’s AI skills gap.

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Her new book, The AI Paradox: How to Make Sense of a Complex Future (Get it on Amazon), serves as the foundation for a vital conversation: AI is not an autonomous force happening to us; it is a series of human choices that we must make with intention.

AI as an Extension, Not a Replacement

Dignum challenges the common narrative that AI is a competitor to human intelligence. She suggests we view AI similarly to other tools we’ve built to surpass our own physical limitations:

• The Car Analogy: Just as it would be “idiotic” to compare a human’s running speed to a car’s speed, it is strange to compare human arithmetic to a calculator. We build systems to excel at specific tasks, but they do not replace the human core.

• Irreplaceable Human Qualities: Creativity, empathy, and social/emotional intelligence remain inherently human. AI should be seen as an extension of our skills in decision-making and pattern identification, not as a replacement.

The Fairness Paradox: Fairness is Not Justice

A central theme of the discussion was the limitation of “algorithmic fairness”.

• Mathematics vs. Social Contracts: While mathematical fairness can be solved with equations, true social justice is a complex social contract.

• Data is a Construction: Data is not an objective reality but a human-constructed “choice” of what to collect and how to label it. Therefore, AI only distinguishes what humans make it possible to distinguish.

Challenging the “Big Tech” Narrative

Dignum warns against the “monolithic” view of AI pushed by major corporations—the idea that “more data equals better systems”.

• Concentration of Power: The massive computational power required for today’s LLMs concentrates power in very few hands.

• The AGI “God” Narrative: Dignum argues we should stop obsessing over building a “god-like” Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) to solve our problems and instead focus on collective intelligence—leveraging diverse human capabilities through technology.

• The Environmental Cost: We must balance the claim that AI will “save the planet” against the massive environmental footprint of data centers. Dignum suggests we need to start asking when to forget or delete data rather than defaulting to building larger infrastructures.

A “Questions First” Approach to Policy

For governments and organizations, Dignum advocates moving away from the “Fear of Missing Out” (FOMO) that leads to an “AI-first” mentality. Instead, she proposes a “Questions First” approach:

1. Why is this AI system needed?

2. Who benefits from it?

3. What are the alternatives?

4. What is lost by implementing it this way?

Education Over Restriction

Addressing the impact on youth, Dignum shared insights from her work with UNICEF.

• Awareness in Youth: Students as young as 12–15 are already aware that AI can make them “lazy” by doing their homework, which they recognize as a loss of learning.

• Literacy is Key: Rather than outright prohibition, Dignum advocates for comprehensive AI literacy—training both youth and adults on how to use these tools responsibly and understanding their inherent limitations.

The Path Forward: Local and Transformative

Real transformation, according to Dignum, doesn’t come from generalized chatbots but from localized, targeted systems. She highlighted examples like mobile tools in Africa for detecting cervical cancer and systems in Northern Sweden that help indigenous populations combine traditional knowledge with climate data for reindeer management.

My takeaway: Responsibility isn’t a hurdle to innovation; it is the path to it. As we move forward, the question isn’t just what AI can do, but what it should do for our collective future.

🔗 Links & Resources
Read Virginia’s Book: https://a.co/d/0fXZROeZ
Follow Virginia Dignum on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vdignum/
Subscribe for more expert insights: https://www.voiceofexperts.com/

In our latest episode, we sat down with Benjamin Yuille, an expert at the intersection of B2B complex sales and actual intelligence at Oii.ai (Orchestrated Intelligent Insights). Benjamin shared why the industry’s obsession with Generative AI might be misplaced and how “Probabilistic AI” is the real key to managing the math of uncertainty.

The “Decision-First” Supply Chain

If we were to build a global supply chain from scratch today, it wouldn’t be “ERP-first”—it would be decision-first.

Benjamin points out that our current systems were inherited from an era designed for accounting and control, not for modeling trade-offs in a volatile world. Modern supply chains require:

• Real-time scenario modeling.

• Embedded financial impact analysis.

• Risk range visualization.

In a stable world, you optimize for efficiency. In a volatile world, you must optimize for uncertainty.

Probabilistic vs. Generative AI

Why is everyone talking about ChatGPT but ignoring the tools that actually move the needle on the balance sheet?

“Generative AI improves language; Probabilistic AI improves capital allocation,” Benjamin explains. While GenAI makes people faster at talking, Probabilistic AI makes them better at deciding. For a CFO or Supply Chain Officer, the goal isn’t a better-drafted email—it’s managing risk and deploying capital effectively.

Probabilistic AI and the implementation of guardrails in digital marketing represent a fundamental shift from traditional, deterministic models to systems designed for decision-making under uncertainty.

Understanding Probabilistic AI

Unlike deterministic AI, which relies on a “single input, single output” model and assumes stability, Probabilistic AI is built to manage volatility by analyzing the most likely paths among various potential outcomes.

• Decision Intelligence over Visibility: Probabilistic AI focuses on “decision-first” supply chains rather than traditional ERP-first models. It prioritizes rehearsing decisions in advance through real-time scenario modeling and risk range visualization.

• Regret Reduction: A core objective of this approach is “regret reduction”—minimizing the potential for future loss by analyzing how different decisions today would materially change outcomes.

• Range Planning: In a volatile environment, an “average forecast” is often the least likely outcome. Probabilistic models plan in ranges, which provide a more accurate and honest distribution of what is and is not possible.

AI Guardrails and Digital Marketing

Guardrails in this context are essential for maintaining data integrity and protecting brand authority.

• Data Quality Control: The principle of “garbage in, garbage out” is mitigated by using AI to proactively review and surface errors in data before they feed into the decision-making engine.

• Hallucination Control: Guardrails include real-time detection of AI-generated errors, such as incorrect procedures or wait times, to prevent a loss of customer trust.

• Authority and Source Legitimacy: Digital marketing guardrails involve double-checking sources to ensure all data inputs are legitimate. For example, ensuring AI models recommend a specific brand for “premium renovations” rather than budget alternatives requires rigorous schema markup and entity optimization to help LLMs correctly index a company’s expertise.

• Zero-Click Era Protection: As AI models like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews begin to synthesize answers directly on search results pages, guardrails focus on ensuring a brand is cited as the authoritative source of that information to prevent becoming “invisible” to consumers.

The Danger of the “Average Forecast”

Benjamin dropped a truth bomb during our session: “I’ve never seen an accurate forecast”.

The problem with “average” forecasts is that they assume stability. In a volatile system, the average is often the least likely outcome. Instead of chasing a single point estimate (which forces you to put buffers everywhere), the smarter move is to plan in ranges.

By optimizing across distributions rather than points, companies can see massive value from even incremental gains—like moving forecast accuracy from 92% to 95%.

Regret Reduction: The Ultimate Goal

Perhaps the most profound takeaway was the shift from “prediction” to regret reduction. Organizations are often trapped in hindsight, looking at what happened. While you can’t eliminate hindsight, you can layer it with foresight.

The real shift happens when leadership realizes that a slightly different decision in the past would have materially changed the outcome. By using AI to model these decisions now, companies aren’t just trying to “predict the future”—they are trying to ensure they don’t regret the decisions they make today.

A Call to Action for Supply Chain Officers

If you want to create value today, Benjamin has one piece of advice: Stop obsessing over perfect visibility.

Visibility without decision modeling is just “higher resolution hindsight”. You can see everything and still optimize nothing. Instead, focus on decision intelligence—understanding how every choice impacts your balance sheet and working capital.

Want to learn more about the “math of uncertainty”? You can connect with Benjamin Yuille on LinkedIn or reach out via email at benjamin.yuille@oii.ai.

Here are the key takeaways from their conversation on leadership, digital intimacy, and the future of connection.1. AI is the Engine, but Humans are the Soul.

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Gallagher emphasizes that while AI and automation are incredible for streamlining processes—moving us from walls of fax machines to instant digital registration—they can never replace the core fundamental that “people buy people”.

• The “Anchor” of Patience: Despite the speed of tech, successful digital experiences require patience and timing. Relying solely on chatbots can frustrate users; the goal is to use tech to enhance, not replace, the feeling that a person’s needs are being met.

• The 80/20 Rule: In global projects, Gallagher notes that while 80% of the lead-up is digitally focused and data-driven, the final 20% must be intuitive and human-to-human.

2. The Death of the “Show Must Go On” Mentality

One of the most crucial parts of the discussion centered on Gallagher’s book, The Show Had to Go On. For years, the event industry was driven by an “excess” mentality where professionals prioritized service above self, often at the expense of their own mental health.

• Leading with Empathy: Gallagher argues that leaders must move away from measuring life solely by productivity. Effective leadership means reaching the top of the hill and then going back down to pull the next person up.

• The Uncomfortable Question: Before diving into the agenda, Gallagher advocates for asking, “How are you feeling?”. Creating a space where teams can be vulnerable actually increases their capacity to deliver.

3. Impact Over Volume: The “Less is More” Strategy

In an era where brands feel pressured to produce endless content, Gallagher’s advice is simple: Keep it simple.

• Belonging is the Metric: You can spend $1 million on a stage, but if the message doesn’t make the audience feel they belong in that room, the ROI is zero.

• Quality Engagement: Big influencers may have millions of followers, but if engagement is less than 1%, the impact is lost. Relatable, organic messages drive more value than high-volume, commoditized content.

4. Scaling Intimacy through Personalization

Can a convention of 20,000 people feel intimate? Gallagher believes it can, provided brands “stick in their lane” and focus on personalization.

• The Power of a Name: Small touches—like seeing your name on a hotel TV screen—create a sense of belonging that AI can help facilitate at scale.

• Gamification: This is a powerful tool for building engagement and creating a shared experience that sticks with the “soul” of the attendee.

5. Finding Your “25th Hour”

The rebranding of Gallagher’s firm to The 25th Hour symbolizes the hour people don’t see—the behind-the-scenes crises, the unseen commitments, and the real stories that happen when the curtains are closed.

For young professionals entering this fast-paced world, his advice is clear: Find what brings you joy and do more of it. Don’t just follow the path laid out by biased friends or family; seek out those with lived experience and “throw things at the wall” until something sticks with your soul.

Connect with Gareth Gallagher:

• Website: The 25th Hour

• LinkedIn: Gareth Gallagher

• Book: The Show Had To Go On (Available on Amazon)

In an era where boardrooms are obsessed with “AI-driven efficiency” and the “Metaverse,” it’s easy to lose sight of the ground beneath our feet. At Voice of Experts, we recently sat down with John Salzinger, a climate-tech inventor and founder of Haven Lantern, who is proving that the most sophisticated technology isn’t always the most complex—it’s the most useful.

John isn’t interested in tech for tech’s sake. With 27 patents under his belt and a career dedicated to the “triple bottom line,” he builds solutions for fundamental human needs. His latest venture, Haven, is a testament to the power of simplicity in a noisy world.

The Product: A “Hero” for the Off-Grid World

John demonstrated the Haven 10,000, a solar lantern that doubles as a high-capacity power bank. While the tech inside—firmware, hardware, and high-efficiency solar cells—is advanced, the user experience is intentionally minimalist.

• Integrated Design: A solar panel, a high-lumen flashlight, and an expandable lantern orb in one unit.

• Human-Centric Materials: Soft-touch silicone and TPE handles designed for durability and comfort.

• Dual Utility: Capable of charging a smartphone twice or a tablet once, with ample power left for light.

• Durability: Built to last over a decade, a direct challenge to the “single-use plastic” culture often found in cheap solar alternatives.

Why Simplicity Wins in 2026

Bruno and John discussed a common pitfall for modern startups: the “digital elevator pitch.” In a world flooded with dopamine-inducing short-form content, Salzinger argues that authenticity is the only filter that matters.

“People are busy. They don’t have time. Whether it’s a street corner or a digital platform, you have to be authentic. After a while, people get tired of gimmicks. They start looking for purpose.”

John treats digital platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram not as playgrounds for AI automation, but as “digital elevators.” His secret? Content is king. By sharing organic, positive, and verifiable stories of impact—like their work in Jamaica and Mongolia—the brand cuts through the noise of bots and paid ads.

AI: A Tool, Not a Replacement for Soul

When asked about the role of AI in his workflow, John offered a grounded perspective that many “AI-first” evangelists might find refreshing.

1. AI is for Organization, Not Creation: John uses AI to scrub data, conduct market research, and organize information.

2. The Imagination Gap: “AI doesn’t have an imagination,” John noted. It can synthesize 100,000 data points, but it cannot conceive of a new solution based on human morality or spirituality.

3. The Risk of “Efficiency”: John warned against using AI to replace humans solely for the bottom line, calling it a “fast road to moral and environmental disaster.”

The Business Model: Scaling with Soul

Haven operates on a hybrid model designed to maximize impact:

• Retail as an Engine: Higher-margin retail sales (targeting campers and outdoor enthusiasts) fund localized pricing for humanitarian efforts.

• Strategic Partnerships: Working with organizations like the World Food Program, Shelter Box, and Catholic Charities to get light and power to disaster zones and refugee camps.

• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Partnering with large corporations (like MetLife) to help them meet their social impact goals through tangible product donations.

Closing Thought: Choosing a Future

As we navigate the complexities of 2026, John’s parting words served as a powerful reminder of why we build things in the first place. When asked to choose between a perfectly optimized business with no soul or an inefficient one that matters, his choice was clear:

“How can you look any child on the street in the eye when you’re destroying their future? I would choose to do what has a soul.”

To learn more about John’s work and the Haven 10,000, visit havenlantern.com.

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/haven.lantern/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/havenlantern/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/havenlantern.com

TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@haven_lantern

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HAVENLantern

Personal LinkedIn profiles for Business or Impact Partnerships:

• John Salzinger - https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsalzinger

• Seungah Jeong - https://www.linkedin.com/in/seungahjeong

Jessie is the COO of the world’s leading diamond marketplace, but she’s also a lawyer, a venture partner, and an ex-Uber leader who helped scale Uber Eats from its infancy. We didn’t just talk about jewelry; we talked about the architecture of trust in an age of uncertainty.

The “Atomic Level” of Problem Solving

In marketing and business, we often get blinded by the “shiny object”—the solution—before we truly understand the pain. Jessie’s approach is a bracing cold shower for any strategist. She argues that we must break complex business problems down to the “atomic level”.

• Avoid the “Solution Looking for a Problem”: Many businesses fail because they build what they want to build, rather than identifying “the hand that feeds”—the core problem that must be solved.

• The Strategy of “No”: By identifying atomic units of work, it becomes obvious what is a distraction. Strategy, as Jessie puts it, is as much about deciding what not to do as what to do.

Diamonds, Lab-Grown, and the Death of Search

We are moving from a Search Engine world to an Answer Engine world. This has massive implications for how we market luxury versus commodities.

Jessie drew a brilliant distinction using the “Titos vs. Bordeaux” analogy. On one hand, you have commodified products (like certain spirits or lab-grown diamonds) that thrive on “Amazon-style” convenience and efficiency. On the other, you have experiential purchases—natural diamonds and bespoke luxury—where the brand equity follows the experience, not just the SKU.

“For a jewelry retailer selling engagement rings, what they do better than anyone is create an inimitable experience... a love story.”.

Marketing in the Age of Verticalized Agents

Diamonds are forever but the uncertainty of 2026 often stems from a messy “Jenga tower” of tech stacks. Jessie’s vision for 2030 isn’t just about AI-driven search; it’s about verticalized agents becoming the “tech-led operating arm” of small businesses.

This allows the human to focus on the “romance” while the AI handles the “transactional layers”—logistics, trade regs, and data organization. In marketing terms, this means hyper-personalization. Imagine an LLM co-creating an engagement ring design based on the unique traits of your specific relationship.

The Only Metric That Actually Matters

In a world of “vanity metrics,” Jessie is focused on one thing: Retention.

• For B2B, retention confirms you are “Plan A”.

• For luxury, the goal is generational retention—capturing hearts and minds so that the same retailer who sold the engagement ring eventually sells the 16th birthday pendant and the graduation bracelet.

A Personal Twist: The Age of the Builder

As we wrapped up, I asked Jessie about the most obsolete piece of career advice. Her answer was a manifesto for the modern worker: The career ladder is dead.

You are not your title. You are not the brand you work for. You are a “unique, multi-titled brand” that you lease to a company. In an era of uncertainty, your uniqueness is your competitive advantage.

Whether you are marketing a diamond or marketing yourself, the lesson is the same: Focus on the “magic” that only a human can provide, and build your data stack so the “Legos” are ready to be stacked whenever inspiration strikes.

Diamonds may be forever, but the way we connect with them is being rewritten in real-time.

Reach out to Jessie, and get blown away but the way she looks into scale and complexit

I recently sat down with Michael Morris, a man whose daily “office” involves helping NASA conceptualize how we will eventually live on other planets. As the CEO of Codedesign, I spend my life obsessing over the near future of technology and strategic shifts. But talking to Michael—a founding partner of U Morris Studio and Search Plus—felt like looking 1 million times further down the road.

We spent an hour dissecting the bridge between traditional architecture and the extreme frontiers of space. However, as the conversation unfolded, I realized that Michael isn’t just designing habitats for Mars; he is providing a blueprint for how we should all handle uncertainty—whether we are building a base on the moon or a brand on Earth.

The Dichotomy of Innovation: Why Earth is a “Mess”

I started our chat with a question that had been bugging me: why can we design sophisticated habitats for Mars, yet I can’t find a printer on Earth that doesn’t jam?

Michael’s answer was a cold splash of reality: Profit and Obsolescence. On Earth, design is often capital-driven and built for a short shelf life. In space, however, the extreme demands and the staggering cost of launching material necessitate absolute functionality. If it doesn’t work, it’s not just a budget overrun—it’s a catastrophe.

The Marketing Twist: We often focus on “vanity metrics” or “vaporware” because the cost of failure on a digital campaign is low. But what if we marketed with the “Space Mindset”? What if every touchpoint had to be as functional and essential as a closed-loop oxygen system?

The “Beginner’s Mind” in a World of Specialists

One of the most profound things Michael shared was how he, an architect, interacts with “real” rocket scientists. He often enters a room filled with preeminent experts in planetary science or radiation and acts as a “scarecrow to inspire technology”.

He succeeds not by knowing more than the scientists, but by:

• Lateral Thinking: Moving across “siloed” departments to connect dots others miss.

• Asking “Good Dumb Questions”: Approaching a problem at level zero while experts are at level seven.

• Being a “Good Listener”: Synthesizing complex data into a “hard sci-fi” solution that is actually imaginable.

In marketing, we are often siloed into SEO, PPC, or Content. We forget to be the “good listeners” who synthesize the whole human experience. We need to embrace the “Beginner’s Mind”—a Zen concept Michael lives by—to stay creative in a calcified industry.

Scarcity vs. Abundance: The AI Paradox

We are currently living through a “crisis of abundance”. AI can generate 20,000 “intern-level” ideas in seconds, leading to a homogenization of content where everything looks “sexy” but lacks “gravity”.

Michael’s work is the polar opposite: it is defined by Scarcity. In space, you have to account for the shelf life of a pill under radiation or the lack of depth perception on the moon.

He warns that while AI is a “creative partner,” it cannot replicate the one-to-one human experience of light and color. To stand out in an era of AI abundance, we must develop a discerning “voice” and a specific focus.

Final Thought: The Love Letter to the Future

Michael doesn’t try to predict the future; he tries to send it a “love letter”. He views Earth not as a separate entity, but as a “planet in space” that deserves the same meticulous care we give to an astronaut or a precious artifact.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or an artist, the lesson is the same: Refine the question. Don’t just look for the next answer; formulate the next “problematizing” question.

In a world full of “vaporware,” be the person who invests the gravity of thought into your work.

Next Steps for the “Voice of Experts” Community: I’ll be following Michael’s work closely as he spends the next 20 years trying to bring the design philosophies of Earth and Space closer together.

Today I talked to Julia Psitos, and it reminded me why conversations about careers, community, and the future of work feel so urgent right now. Listening to her trace her path from West Virginia to Santiago to WeWork and now to Alfred and Go link up, I kept thinking: this is exactly the kind of non-linear, intentional career story more people need to hear.

From titles to time and impact

One of my favorite parts of our conversation was how Julia approaches career transitions. Instead of starting with “What job do you want?”, she starts with two deceptively simple questions: how clear are you about what you want next (on a scale of 1–10), and where do you actually want to spend your time and have impact.

That framing really stayed with me because as a CEO, most of the bad hiring decisions seen over the years come from over-indexing on titles and under-indexing on time and impact. When candidates or team members anchor on “Head of X” instead of “I want to spend 60% of my week doing deep product work” or “I want to design and run communities,” misalignment is almost guaranteed.

Julia’s insistence on defining non‑negotiables—what must be true in your life and work for it to function—also resonated strongly. For her, that includes things like twice‑weekly Pilates in the middle of a workday and structured time at home where she is fully present, not half‑working on a laptop. For leaders, hearing another operator unapologetically hold those boundaries is an important reminder: if you do not defend your energy, your calendar will eat your strategy.

The discipline of being “best when busy”

I loved this conversation because it forced me to reflect on my own relationship with “busyness”. Julia describes herself as “best when I’m busy,” but not in the chaotic, reactive way that often gets mistakenly glorified. She pairs that busyness with a mindfulness coach and a commitment to stop multitasking—doing one thing at a time, fully.

That combination—high load plus high intentionality—is, in many ways, the modern executive challenge. Many founders and marketers operate at high RPMs, but without the rituals Julia has in place (intentions set daily/weekly/monthly, non‑negotiable health practices, structured focus), the quality of thinking degrades fast. Her approach reminded me of phases in my own journey where the business was scaling faster than my operating system, and the only thing that helped was building my own “rules of engagement” with time.

What I also appreciated is how honest she was about needing help to make that shift. Working with a mindfulness coach to unlearn multitasking is not something leaders talk about enough, yet it is often the missing piece between “always on” and genuinely effective.

Builders, communication, and the real work of culture

Julia calls herself a “builder,” someone who looks for chances to build, fix, or leave a legacy inside any organization she joins. That orientation is obvious when she talks about WeWork: joining at 1,500 employees and seeing it grow to 15,000, while staying focused on culture, internal communications, and alumni engagement.

What struck me most is how quickly she goes to communication as the universal failure mode. Across sizes and industries, the pattern she sees is the same: communication is the thing that breaks first and the thing you can “never do enough of.” As someone who has led teams through rapid growth, this is painfully true. Leaders underestimate how much repetition, clarity, and context people need to feel safe enough to perform.

Her definition of community and culture is also deeply practical, not fluffy. She talks about:

• Creating spaces where people can show up authentically by being intentional about everything from meeting cadences to job descriptions.

• Building around value alignment so performance flexibility becomes possible—if we share values, it matters less how you get the job done.

• Recognizing that going through hard things together is one of the strongest community builders.

In my own experience, that last point is underrated. The teams that remember a product crisis or a market shock as a “bonding” moment almost always had leaders who were transparent, communicative, and values‑driven in the middle of the storm. Julia’s WeWork alums work is a living example of transforming a difficult chapter into a long‑term asset.

Keeping communities alive: value, rituals, and ownership

As someone obsessed with ecosystems and long‑term relationships, I found Julia’s playbook for sustaining communities particularly powerful. Early on with WeWork alums, she felt defeated because engagement was low. The turning point came when she focused the community around something tangibly valuable: sourcing and sharing real job opportunities that were connected to alumni.

There is a simple but crucial lesson here: communities do not come alive because you create a Slack group; they come alive when you solve real problems for members. Julia layers on two more components that every founder or marketer building a community should steal:

• Consistency of cadences and rituals so people know what to expect, which builds trust over time.

• Constantly reminding members that the community belongs to them, not to the company or to her personally, which shifts people from passive consumers to active owners.

This resonates with how brand communities and customer programs succeed or fail. When businesses hold on too tightly, communities stay transactional. When they design for member‑led behavior, communities become resilient and self‑propelling.

Her concept of a “personal board of directors” also blends beautifully with the community theme. Julia intentionally surrounds herself with a small group of trusted people she can call to pressure‑test ideas and decisions. From a leadership standpoint, that might be one of the most practical takeaways from this episode: nobody should be trying to navigate a portfolio career, a startup, or a senior role without that kind of intentional support structure.

AI, discernment, and the future of work

Julia’s views on AI are refreshingly grounded. She is not as “bullish” as some, but she is very clear about where the upside is: giving people back time for high‑impact work and innovation, and acting as a thought partner for brainstorming and research. She even shared how she advised an executive to use ChatGPT as a first‑pass idea generator before coming to her for a coaching conversation.

At the same time, she is skeptical about AI in recruitment. The mass automation of applications, screening, and responses is burning out human recruiters and creating impersonal candidate experiences. From the vantage point of an employer brand and people leader, this is a real risk: the more AI pushes humans out of the loop in talent processes, the more differentiation will come from the companies willing to put humans back in.

Her point about “AI talking to AI”—AI‑generated emails being summarized by AI on the other side—was both funny and deeply true. For standardized tasks, that closed loop may be fine. But for nuanced, human‑heavy work, Julia insists the final solution must still come from people, with AI playing the role of assistant or research partner, not decision‑maker.

What stood out for me as a CEO is her insistence on transparency. She wants people to be explicit when they use AI, not to hide it, both to build trust and to give junior employees permission to experiment with these tools without shame. That is exactly the culture shift organizations need: AI as a visible, normalized amplifier of human work, not a shadow tool people quietly rely on.

Human connection, physical spaces, and the rise of portfolio careers

Julia believes that as AI and digital tools advance, live and in‑person human connection will become even more sought after, not less. In the WeWork alums context, she uses AI for logistics like invites but keeps content and experience design fundamentally human—either co‑creating with AI or having AI refine her work, never delivering a “purely AI‑driven product.”

Her view of physical space is very intentional: use time “in and around humans” for collaboration, meetings, and brainstorming, and reserve remote, non‑physical space for heads‑down focused work. Anyone designing hybrid work policies should start here. The office is not a default; it is a tool for specific kinds of interactions. That aligns strongly with how many high‑performing teams now think about offsites, team days, and asynchronous work.

We ended up in one of the most important parts of the conversation: the future of careers. Julia predicts that in ten years, most careers will not be linear but “portfolio careers,” mixing roles, freelance work, side ventures, and learning cycles. There is no longer a predictable ladder where “top jobs” stay stable for decades. The meta‑skill will be learning agility—balancing technical skills with people skills and staying open to possibilities.

For students and early‑career professionals, her advice is to develop discernment: the ability to leverage technology well, to learn fast, to question assumptions, and to pause and ask, “Does this make sense?” She also suggests a beautiful, simple diagnostic: pay attention to the moments when you are in “flow” and lose track of time. That is often where your future work should live.

Her new venture, go link up, sits right at the intersection of these ideas: helping people map and activate their networks to find hidden opportunities, especially alumni who lack strong career support from their universities. Starting B2C and then piloting with colleges is a smart way to validate the product while learning directly from individuals navigating complex transitions.

One of the most provocative ideas Julia shared is that future CEOs might come more often from people leadership roles—leaders who deeply understand both the business and employee needs, and who design internal and external experiences with equal intentionality. As someone leading a company today, that thesis feels not only plausible, but desirable.

This conversation reminded me that the future of work is not just about technology or strategy; it is about how intentionally we use our time, how clearly we communicate, the communities we build, and the discernment we bring to every tool at our disposal. Talking to Julia was a powerful confirmation that if we get those human pieces right, the rest—AI, hybrid, portfolio careers—becomes not a threat, but an incredible canvas.

How to connect with Julia?
LinkedIn is where you can find her: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-psitos/

I sat down with Holger Carlsson for nearly an hour, and what struck me most was how his entire philosophy – built across IKEA, the UN, and now AI governance – keeps circling back to the same core truth: supply chains are human systems first.

The guy has stories. Lots of them. But they’re not war stories told to impress. They’re case studies in how to build operations that work at scale and keep people whole.

Here’s what I learned.

Contracts Aren’t Armor – They’re Opportunity Systems

Most people treat contracts like insurance policies. Holger treats them like blueprints for how two teams will actually work together.

At IKEA, he was managing a major supplier relationship for kitchen and wardrobe frames. The traditional move: squeeze as much margin as possible, lock it into a contract, move on.

Instead, he tried something different.

They split the price reduction into two parts:

• Part one: immediate discount

• Part two: triggered only if the product hit agreed volume targets

Simple. Brilliant.

Now everyone was aligned. IKEA’s internal teams knew they had to drive volume. The supplier knew they weren’t being squeezed without upside. The contract wasn’t something that went into a drawer – it became a living operational playbook.

That relationship lasted over six years. No renegotiations. Both sides kept winning.

The insight: Mutuality isn’t nice. It’s operationally smart. If your contracts don’t encode mutual incentives and day-to-day behavior, they’re not contracts – they’re just legal theater.

The Gatekeeper: Your Secret Weapon Against Chaos

When Holger managed quality at IKEA, there was a 90-page documentation on how packaging should look.

Nobody read it. Obviously.

So instead, his team distilled it down to six visual checks – pictures A through F. One person at the unloading dock became the gatekeeper. If a pallet matched any of the “bad” pictures, it was stopped.

That’s it.

Here’s why this matters: every small defect you let through compounds downstream. IKEA’s auto industry contacts told him that recalls are never for 10 cars or 50 cars. They’re always 100,000. Why? Because small issues went undetected for months.

The gatekeeper isn’t a bottleneck. The gatekeeper is how you scale without breaking.

You can apply this everywhere – logistics, admin processes, IT approvals, hiring. Somewhere in your operation, someone needs to be empowered to say “not yet” and have the organization back them up.

That’s not slowing you down. That’s saving you.

Sustainability Isn’t a Mission Statement – It’s a Structure

Holger was blunt on this one: most companies treat sustainability like a poster on the wall.

At IKEA, they did something radical. Every country CEO became Chief Sustainability Officer of their country. Same person. No separate office. No way to hand off responsibility.

Sustainability wasn’t something you reported on. It was how you operated.

What does that look like in practice?

• Clear rules on materials: allowed, forbidden, and “sunset candidates” that are being phased out

• R&D investments aligned with those rules, not separate from operations

• Vendors selected not just on price, but on how they fit the sustainability constraints

• Long-term financial planning that accounts for material transitions

Even small companies can do this, he pointed out. If you decide “we only use cardboard and shrink wrap,” you’ve immediately reduced your footprint. You’ve also made it easier to communicate with customers and regulators.

The real insight: Sustainability only sticks when it’s embedded in how you actually make decisions, not when it lives in a separate team.

Human-Centric AI: The Underrated Move

Holger isn’t anti-automation. He’s anti-inhuman work.

There are tasks that destroy focus, annihilate mental health, and bring zero value from human judgment. Those are the prime candidates for AI.

His examples stick with me:

• Workers staring at moving textile rolls for hours, trying to spot weaving defects with magnifiers

• People watching a conveyor belt of egg cups, hunting for eggshell fragments

• Staff physically inspecting pallets one by one to check for broken boards and nails

In all these cases, AI isn’t the threat. AI is the more humane choice.

The goal isn’t to eliminate the person. It’s to eliminate the soul-crushing task and free that person for something that matters.

One of his current projects involves using AI for pallet inspection. The system automatically scans pallets, classifies them by compliance, and builds sorted stacks. Result: fewer injuries, 99%+ accuracy, and labor shifted to higher-value work.

That’s not job destruction. That’s human-centric automation.

The warning: If your AI initiative starts with “how many people can we cut?”, you’ve already gone wrong.

Governance: The Unsexy Thing That Saves You

Holger is a partner at Credo AI, focused on AI governance. On paper, that sounds thrilling – like watching paint dry.

But it’s actually the opposite.

With hundreds of AI-related regulations now in effect (especially in the EU), companies can’t just “move fast and break things.” They’ll break regulations.

The smarter move is to:

1. Do risk assessments at the use-case level. Not “is AI risky in general?” – “is this specific use case legal, ethical, and aligned with our values?”

2. Align your warring teams around a shared framework. In most organizations, Legal says “slow down.” Engineering says “speed up.” Risk says “document everything.” This creates internal paralysis.

A structured governance approach doesn’t brake progress. It’s the only way to scale without stepping on landmines.

AI as a Talent Magnet (If You Frame It Right)

Supply chain is facing a massive talent shortage. Most leaders respond with despair.

Holger sees it differently.

Supply chain is misunderstood. In his view, almost everything is a supply chain – whether it’s delivering physical products or services. The world’s 100+ trillion in GDP is essentially a web of interconnected supply chains.

Now layer in AI.

Young people – especially 18-24 year-olds who grew up coding and gaming – love running algorithms, writing prompts, and exploring scenarios. What if you hired them to:

• Compress analysis from three days to one hour using AI

• Model multiple supply chain strategies simultaneously

• Test scenarios that would have taken weeks to explore manually

• Then hand off validated insights to experienced supply chain leaders for decision-making

You’re not replacing experienced supply chain people. You’re amplifying them. And you’re creating a new category of hybrid roles that are genuinely exciting.

But it requires HR and leadership to actually design and sell these roles as future-proof careers, not as “tech jobs in supply chain.”

When Automation Goes Too Far (And How to Know)

Holger believes that fully de-humanized organizations are doomed.

If your company optimizes purely for financial performance and treats humans as expendable, you’ll eventually discover that systems don’t deliver results. People using systems do.

He won’t name specific examples, but the pattern is clear: organizations that try to run on automation alone become brittle. No resilience. No adaptation. No innovation.

The real art is mixing humans and technology intelligently. Not “minimize humans.” Not “technology for its own sake.”

The combination.

White Space Is Non-Negotiable

This one hit different.

Holger had a mentor who told him: “You guys work too much. Next time you travel for work, block out one afternoon. Don’t plan anything. Go to a museum. Get coffee. Take a walk.”

The logic: If leaders are always firefighting, they’ll always have fires.

Strategy doesn’t emerge from inbox triage. It emerges from space to think.

Holger shared a tactic he actually uses – the “fake vacation.” You tell the office you’re off for an afternoon. You actually come in, but with zero meetings. You protect that block for thinking, reading contracts, redesigning processes, reflecting.

It sounds small. It’s not.

Most leaders are proud of how many hours they work. The real signal of effectiveness? How much time you carve out to think.

Owning the “How” Even When the “What” Is Imposed

Holger’s “Atlantico” story is worth dwelling on because it’s about a specific kind of leadership courage.

At IKEA, corporate decided which regions should focus on which product categories. Atlantico – Holger’s region – was flagged as non-competitive in several areas, including lighting.

Most leaders would fight to keep everything.

Holger did the opposite. He went to headquarters and said: “These suppliers aren’t competitive for us. Find someone else to source lighting. We’re not the right fit.”

At the same time, he proved that Switzerland – supposedly the highest-cost country on Earth – could produce the cheapest laminated flooring in the world. Why? Because cost isn’t about wages per hour. It’s about raw materials, energy, and capital costs. All of which Switzerland had optimized.

The bigger lesson came later, when corporate orders contradicted what his team had been told for two years.

His response: “The strategic ‘what’ is settled. We’re going to own the ‘how.’”

In other words:

• Don’t fight the direction decided by the board

• But fight fiercely to shape how it gets executed

• Because execution is where leadership actually lives

That distinction matters. A lot.

KPIs Can Lie – Go Check the Floor

This story still unsettles me.

On IKEA’s dashboard, damage incidents were reported at 0.5% of deliveries. Looked good. Bonus-worthy, even.

Something felt wrong to Holger. The only way to know was to actually look at the goods.

So he went to the unloading bay at 4-5 a.m.

The reality: Around 30% of pallets had issues. Not 0.5%.

The KPI was disconnected from reality. The data collection was broken. The entire dashboard was theater.

To fix it, his team:

• Brought store managers and operations together

• Showed them visually what “compliant” and “non-compliant” actually looked like

• Went through the aisles together, removing anything questionable

Within hours, there were massive stacks of removed products. The managers who’d been rewarded for “good” KPIs panicked.

Holger’s response was memorable: “We can put it all back if you want. Or, if you’re not sure, leave it on the shelf for a day and see what customers do.”

His insight: Never fall in love with a beautiful KPI. Especially when a KPI is positive – that’s when you should doubt it most.

Data collection and definitions must reflect reality, or your entire management model is built on sand.

What I’m Taking Away

Holger’s career spans continents, sectors, and technologies. But the through-line is unmistakable.

Supply chains are human systems first.

That means:

• Design mutuality into contracts and partnerships

• Protect the gatekeepers – the people who say “no” at the right moment

• Use technology to eliminate inhuman work, not to eliminate humans

• Own execution even when direction is imposed

• Go to the floor and let reality challenge your dashboards

• Carve out time to think

He’s not anti-technology. He’s anti-cargo-cult thinking. Anti-theater. Anti-the-idea-that-good-intentions-and-nice-dashboards-equal-good-operations.

That’s refreshing.

Because supply chain, at its core, is still about trust. Movement. Delivery. Relationships.

Add in the tools – AI, automation, better data – and you get something powerful.

Subtract the human judgment, the accountability, the willingness to actually look at what’s happening?

You get a disaster in slow motion.

Holger’s bet is that the companies that figure out how to keep both – tools and people, scaled and humane – will win the next decade.

I think he’s right.

Want to hear the full conversation? It’s out now on Voice of Experts podcast. Holger gets into even more depth on his time at the UN, scaling Carson International, and why he’s still excited about the future of trade.

For more content read our notes at https://codedesign.org/voice-experts-holger-carlsson-human-centric-ai-supply-chain-wisdom

I left my conversation with Michel Laporte Godorn feeling like I’d just stepped out of a sparring session, not a podcast booth. My mind was spinning. Because he articulated something I’ve been struggling to explain to clients for years: entrepreneurship isn’t a career path. It’s a full-contact sport. And most people have no idea what they’re signing up for.

Michel is a serial entrepreneur, a full-contact karate black belt since childhood, and someone who has spent the last decade building what he calls a “black belt sales” methodology for founders and small business owners. He’s been through the highs and lows—built six companies, worked his way from immigrant kid with a thick accent in Sweden to sales director managing 120-million-kronor turnovers, and then chose to step away from safety to build something uncertain. Again.

What struck me most wasn’t his credentials. It was his calmness about the brutality of the journey.

Entrepreneurship as a Full-Contact Sport

There’s a narrative about entrepreneurship that I call the “Ferrari narrative.” You see it on Instagram, in TED talks, in founder profiles. It goes like this: you have a great idea, you build it fast, you raise money, and suddenly you’re living a dream life with unlimited freedom and exponential growth.

Michel laughs at this narrative. Not unkindly. He just says: that’s the 1%. For the other 99%, entrepreneurship is the hardest way of life you can choose.

His background in martial arts is key to understanding why he’s so calm about this. He’s been getting hit his entire life—literally. When you grow up in full-contact karate, you don’t romanticize pain. You respect it. You learn that pain is information. You learn that your reaction to getting knocked down matters infinitely more than how hard you got hit.

I kept thinking about one line he shared: “It’s not about how hard you can get hit, but how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”

That’s Rocky Balboa’s speech, and it’s also the entire game of entrepreneurship.

This week, I was sitting with a founder who was two months into a funding round. She’d raised some money—enough to feel real, but not enough to feel safe. And she was in that weird space where the pressure had actually increased. Now she had a burn rate. Now she had people depending on her. Now every week without traction felt like a countdown timer.

I told her what Michel told me: “The toughest moments are often the closest you’ll ever be to your next level. Most people throw in the towel right there.”

She went quiet for a moment. Then she said: “So I’m not supposed to figure it out quickly. I’m supposed to figure it out while I’m getting punched.”

Exactly.

The implication here is huge for any leader building a team or culture. You can’t opt out of the hard moments. They’re not bugs in the system; they’re features. The question is whether you’ve built the mentality, the process, and the culture to keep moving through them.

Your Product Is Always Second

Here’s a statistic that stopped me in my tracks: seven out of 10 solopreneurs can’t pay their bills with their own business. And nine out of 10 startups fail within the first 18 months, even with funding.

Let that sit for a second.

Michel didn’t throw these numbers at me to be depressing. He threw them at me to make a point. And that point is this: having a good product or service is not enough. Not even close.

Most entrepreneurs get this backwards. They obsess over the product. They refine it, perfect it, add features, polish the pitch. And then they go to market and wonder why no one cares.

Michel’s insight—one he’s tested across dozens of founder relationships—is that the product or service is always second. What comes first is a deep, real understanding of the problem your buyer is facing and the buying behavior behind that problem. Not the intellectual understanding. The real one. The one grounded in economic stress, frustration, and the actual way people decide to change.

Most entrepreneurs never do this homework. They think the solution is obvious and that everyone will just see it. Instead, they end up in what Michel calls the “discovery phase”—which is really just months of confusion, burning money, and wondering why their thing isn’t selling.

When Michel finally cracked the code around 2020–2021, it wasn’t because he had a better product. It was because he started talking to founders about what was actually stressing them out. Survival. Cash flow. Not knowing where the next paying client would come from. And suddenly people started listening. Because he was talking to their pain, not his solution.

I see this all the time on the agency side. A brand will come to us and say, “We need a new campaign.” What they really mean is, “We’re not getting enough leads, and we don’t know why.” So we dig. And nine times out of 10, the problem isn’t the campaign. It’s the positioning. Or the pricing. Or they’re talking to the wrong person. Or they don’t have a real sales process. It’s rarely the creative.

But because “creative” is tangible and “let’s rethink your entire buyer experience” is scary, brands keep throwing money at campaigns.

The pattern Michel described is almost universal: companies invest heavily in what they’re selling and underinvest catastrophically in understanding how their buyers actually buy.

Here’s what I tell clients now, borrowed directly from Michel’s framework:

1. Start with the problem, not the solution. What economic stress or frustration are your buyers facing? Write it down. Be specific.

2. Map the buying journey, not the funnel. Where do they actually find information? Who do they talk to? What conversations happen before they’re even looking?

3. Test your understanding. Go talk to 10 buyers who chose not to buy from you. Why? What did you miss?

4. Then, and only then, adjust your positioning, messaging, or offering.

Most companies skip straight to step 4.

From Pressure to Partnership: Redesigning Sales Culture

Michel used a metaphor that I haven’t stopped thinking about. He said: when you have a closed fist, you can only punch. But when you open your hand, you can invite. You can collaborate. You can receive.

Pressure is a closed fist. Partnership is an open hand.

I immediately thought about sales teams I’ve worked with. The ones built entirely around quotas, daily targets, and “make the numbers” mentality. There’s a specific energy in those places. It’s desperate. Transactional. Tactical. People are hunting for wins, not building relationships. And buyers can feel it. Michel mentioned this—we don’t communicate through words first; we communicate through intention. If you’re desperate for the deal, your buyer senses that. And they pull back.

Partnership-driven sales organizations operate differently. They’re still ambitious, still hungry for growth. But the urgency is reframed. Instead of “hit the number this quarter,” it’s “do we understand why our buyer should change?” Instead of “send more emails,” it’s “are we solving the right problem for the right person?”

The incentives are different too. Instead of rewarding closed deals at any cost, you reward deep buyer conversations, accurate forecasting, and retention. Instead of “how many conversations can you have?” you ask “how many good conversations can you have?”

I was at a conference last month where someone on stage was talking about “growth at all costs.” And I realized: that phrase is the war cry of the closed-fist sales culture. It sounds motivational. It isn’t. It’s exhausting. It leads to churn. It leads to small teams burning out. And it usually leads to a product or service that no one actually wants.

Michel doesn’t argue against ambitious growth. He argues for intelligent growth—growth grounded in a real understanding of the market and a process that can be repeated without burning out.

The shift from pressure to partnership isn’t small. It requires:

• Redefining KPIs: Not just deals closed, but quality of pipeline, forecast accuracy, and customer lifetime value.

• Redefining rituals: Weekly team stand-ups where people share what they learned from buyers, not just how many calls they made.

• Redefining hiring: Looking for people who want to build relationships, not just close deals fast.

It sounds soft. It’s actually the hardest work because it requires patience and a willingness to let go of the immediate hit of the closed sale.

Black Belt Sales in the Age of AI

The question Michel gets asked constantly is: “Should I automate this with AI?”

His answer is elegant. First, be humble about it. Second, understand that a tool is only as good as the person using it.

He explained what he means by “black belt sales” through a story. He brought a client who practices martial arts to his sparring session. Afterward, the client said something like: “I noticed you and the other black belts didn’t rush at me like the lower belts did. You were patient. You waited. And then you destroyed me.”

That’s black belt sales. It’s not about being aggressive. It’s about patience, precision, and understanding the opponent. Beginners swing wildly and hope something lands. Black belts observe, wait, and strike with economy of motion.

For decades, sales has been measured in outputs: calls made, emails sent, meetings booked. But a black belt in sales is measured in understanding, in reading the buyer’s state of mind, in timing. It’s about process, not just results.

Here’s where AI comes in—and where it doesn’t.

AI is perfect for the repetitive, low-complexity parts of sales. Reminder calls? Absolutely. Initial qualification sequences? Yes. Data enrichment and list building? 100%. These are the things that free up human sales time and attention for what actually matters.

But AI is not a substitute for understanding. Michel gave the perfect analogy: “I can get a tractor, some water, some seeds, and a piece of land. But that doesn’t make me a farmer.” You still need to understand the earth. You still need to understand agriculture.

The same is true in sales. You can buy every AI tool on the market, but if you don’t understand how your buyer makes decisions, you’ll just accelerate your current level of incompetence. You’ll send more bad emails, faster.

I’ve seen this exact pattern. A Marketing Director gets excited about an AI outreach tool. They load it up with their list of 10,000 people. And suddenly they’re reaching way more people with their mediocre message. The unsubscribe rate goes up. The spam complaints go up. The “do not contact” list explodes. And they’re left wondering why a tool that promised to save them time actually made their situation worse.

The truth is, the tool did exactly what it was supposed to do. It amplified their current approach. If their current approach was flawed, all they did was scale the flaw.

For leaders trying to navigate this right now, here’s what I’d suggest:

Where to automate:

• Outbound scheduling and reminders (especially for people already in your funnel)

• Data collection and enrichment

• Follow-up sequences once a real conversation has started

• Analysis of customer data to identify next-best actions

Where to stay human:

• Initial discovery conversations with prospects

• Complex deal navigation

• Relationship building with key stakeholders

• Strategic account planning

• Any moment where the buyer is deciding whether to change

The hybrid approach wins. You use AI to handle the routine so your people can focus on the complex. But you only do this after you’ve invested in understanding your buyers deeply.

Breaking the 1M Ceiling and Staying Sane Doing It

Michel works a lot with small business owners stuck between 500K and 1M in revenue. There’s a specific wall there. The business is real enough that it feels viable, but it’s not yet big enough to feel safe. The founder is doing the work of three people. The margins are tight. One customer leaving feels like a catastrophe.

His advice is practical and unsexy. Start at the roots of the tree.

First, do your competitor research. Michel asks founders: who are your top five competitors? Why do people buy from them? What’s their weakness? Most can’t answer these questions. They’re too busy executing. But without this foundation, you’re flying blind.

Second, work backward from a realistic number. If you need to make 100K a month to survive and grow, how many customers at what average deal size gets you there? Now, what does your sales process need to look like to hit that consistently? Most businesses don’t design from this anchor point. They just “sell” and hope.

Third, fix your pricing and packaging. There are so many underpriced businesses out there. A founder will have a service that’s worth 5K a month and they’re charging 1.5K because they’re not confident enough to ask for more. This keeps them in survival mode forever.

Fourth, build a real digital strategy. Not a social media presence that makes you feel productive. A strategy for where your actual buyers are and how to reach them with substance. For a lot of B2B businesses, that’s LinkedIn. For others, it’s somewhere else entirely. But the strategy should be intentional, not reactive.

This week, I realized something while working with a new client. We were redesigning their go-to-market, and I kept coming back to Michel’s framework. And I realized that this work—the unglamorous stuff of understanding competitors, fixing positioning, building process—is the real work of scaling. It’s not sexy. It doesn’t make for a good LinkedIn post. But it’s what determines whether you break through the 1M ceiling or get stuck there for five years.

There’s another part of Michel’s advice that I think is underrated: the importance of routine for emotional survival.

Michel spars every Monday. Fifty rounds. He walks in the forest. He has a rhythm that grounds him. He told me that entrepreneurship without routine is a recipe for burnout and bad decision-making.

I’ve noticed this in my own life. The weeks where I protect my early mornings for a run, where I have tech-free time in the evenings, where I’m intentional about disconnecting—those are the weeks where I make better decisions. The weeks where I’m “always on”? That’s when I make dumb calls and get reactionary.

For any founder reading this: routine is not a luxury. It’s infrastructure. It’s how you stay sharp enough to keep punching back when life hits you.

Build a Process, Not a Persona

I think the thing I’ll take from Michel forever is this idea of process over personality, of maturity over aggression, of staying in the fight long enough to learn.

The world doesn’t need more charismatic founders or salesy sales people. What it needs is more people who understand their market deeply, who build repeatable processes, and who have the discipline to trust those processes even on the hard days.

You don’t need to look like LinkedIn’s version of success. You don’t need the Ferrari or the three exits or the perfect pitch. You need to understand your buyers, build a sales process that’s grounded in that understanding, and keep showing up.

In the end, both on the mat and in the market, the winners are rarely the ones who hit the hardest. They’re the ones who stay in the fight long enough to learn.

Read more at: https://codedesign.org/voice-experts-michel-laporte-godorn