Rick Ton is a 20-year veteran of growth and go-to-market, having spent his career scaling revenue at companies like Meta, Sam's Club, Walmart, Under Armour, Walgreens, and several high-growth startups. He was a founding team member on Sam's Club's Scan & Go — a self-checkout app that grew from zero to roughly a third of Sam's Club's total revenue (an estimated $30 billion run rate) in about four years. Today he advises founders on growth, GTM, and the discipline of setting (and hitting) the number.

In this conversation, Rick walks us through the Scan & Go playbook (including the superhero costumes, piped-in rotisserie chicken smells, and tear-away $5 cards used to break customer habits), how to tell a true plateau from a stall, his "good money vs bad money" framework for early-stage founders, why most rebrand and pricing decisions need real benchmarking before you launch, the "print it and show a stranger" idea-validation hack, the 25% IC rule he's followed for a decade, and his single tattoo-worthy GTM truth: get the number, set the number, get the number.

Find Rick

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickton/

Builders & Doers is produced by Horizon Search.

0:00 Intro

0:42 The path: Meta, Sam's Club, Walmart, Under Armour, Walgreens

1:48 The Scan & Go origin — a hackathon, two engineers, and a founding team

2:50 Zero to ~$30B run rate in four years

4:03 Plateau vs stall — the early signals

4:52 Cohorting early adopters from the mainstream

5:35 Disrupting the peripheral plane: signage, superheroes, and rotisserie smell

6:18 The free $5 tear-away card that broke the line

6:55 Lyft's free-ride card story (and what it had in common)

7:03 Coaching founders through step-changes when nothing's working

8:18 The Good Money / Bad Money framework

9:30 The campaign that wasn't thought through — what would success look like?

10:42 Why even seasoned operators fall into vanity metrics

11:09 Pricing without benchmarking the market — a moving-and-storage cautionary tale

12:04 What a Series A vs pre-product team should actually measure

13:07 Validating pricing without alienating customers

14:01 "What almost made you bounce?" — the conversion-rate hack

14:47 Build the basket, not the single-item conversion

15:00 When to push the market vs pivot to meet it

17:04 You can't strategy your way out of testing

17:43 Print your idea and show it to a stranger

18:29 Underrated PMF validation methods

20:01 The most misunderstood thing about growth right now

20:55 Luck vs discipline — and the post-it-on-the-wall workshop

22:42 The cultural hire — why ideas should come from anywhere

22:50 The 25% IC rule (and why managers lose touch)

23:38 Most and least forgiving startup mistakes

24:48 Cooking, hot sauce, and the kitchen as solitary work

26:17 Hosting a tavern-style Chicago pizza supper club

27:18 Tattoo this on every founder's arm: get the number, set the number, get the number

29:07 Why he advises founders alongside enterprise work

30:32 Failing 50% of the time — but in small measures

31:51 Where to find Rick

Blair Huddy is the co-founder of a mission-based PR agency she runs with her husband, focused on companies and projects that help people and the planet. After 15+ years in the corporate marketing world — including a tenure leading the rebrand and growth of a $7B affordable housing company that later sold for over $700M — she went out on her own and took the Clean Creatives Pledge, refusing to work for fossil fuel or tobacco companies. Her work spans Fortune 500 sustainability reporting (mapping clients to the UN's 17 SDGs), a software platform used by NASA and the U.S. Space Force, and a Guinness World Record attempt for the world's fastest fast food delivery with an Indy 500 team.

In this conversation, Blair walks us through how to turn PR and comms into pipeline (her "drumbeat" jam-board process), the rebrand mistake mid-market companies repeat, when a company is actually PR-ready (and the 5% revenue rule), what crisis management actually looks like (the Astronomer-Coldplay and American Eagle examples), why industry publications outperform Forbes for revenue, and a six-week credibility sprint for founders. She also shares her personal experience with vitamin B6 toxicity from a hydration product sold at Costco — a story NBC News covered twice — and what she'd do differently as a CMO if a synthetic vitamin was in her product.This episode includes a personal health experience shared by our guest. This is not medical advice. Always consult a licensed medical professional regarding diet and supplementation.

Find Blair: LinkedIn — Blair Huddy

On all other socials: @realblairhuddy

Builders & Doers is produced by Horizon Search.

0:00 Intro

0:58 PR + comms — what it actually entails

2:07 The "back to office" email that pushed her to start her own agency

5:50 Mapping the Fortune 500 to the UN Sustainable Development Goals

8:40 Taking the Clean Creatives Pledge — using your gifts only for good

10:38 The rebrand playbook that grew a $7B company to $9B

13:54 Why brand experience starts on day one of onboarding

14:40 The rebrand mistake mid-market companies repeat — your rebrand isn't news

15:25 The Ray-Bans stunt that won back 85% of lapsed clients

17:30 The Jaguar and Cracker Barrel rebrands — why you don't touch a legacy brand

18:55 When a company is actually PR-ready — the three signals

21:43 The 5% of revenue rule for PR budgets

22:05 PR KPIs — why no single ember caused the wildfire

22:54 The "jam board" process for finding your three to five core messages

27:12 Crisis management — protecting reputation when something breaks

30:26 The Astronomer-Coldplay crisis (and how they handled it)

32:38 What a six-week credibility sprint looks like for founders

35:23 Memorable PR stunts — Indy 500, Guinness World Records, NYC tents during wildfires

38:05 Vitamin B6 toxicity — a hydration product sold at Costco

40:55 100% of the recommended daily value, every day, for five months

42:40 What synthetic vitamins to watch for (and where they hide)

44:15 If she were CMO of that supplement company tomorrow

47:00 What to do before supplementing — get a blood test

49:50 Healing isn't linear — a year into recovery

53:25 Why LinkedIn is the place for founders right now

53:40 Where to find Blair

Chris Kille is a Boston-based entrepreneur, author, and operations expert with four profitable exits behind him — including a payments business he scaled more than 10x in five years using just one domestic employee and four remote office assistants. After a cardiac event caused by burnout, he founded EO Staff, a premium remote staffing company that places elite virtual assistants into fast-growing businesses. He's the author of The Rise of Virtual Assistants, has been published 100+ times in Forbes and Entrepreneur, and now lives off a dirt road in a 700-person town in Maine — by design.

In this conversation, Chris walks us through why he's "self-employed by force" (and bad at being an employee), the credit card processing company he started out of spite, why 97% of business owners never crack $1M, the operational bottlenecks founders almost always neglect (their email and calendar), the difference between A players and C players, why "80% done by someone else is 100% awesome," how to do a five-day time study to find the work you should delete or delegate, why his health scare became the catalyst for selling his most profitable business, and the marginal-gains philosophy that makes a boring business the most valuable one to sell.

Find Chris: Instagram @iamchriskille

EO Staff: https://eostaff.com

Book: The Rise of Virtual Assistants

Builders & Doers is produced by Horizon Search.

0:00 Intro

0:55 Door-to-door at 10 — growing up hustling

2:21 "I'm very unhireable" — entrepreneur by force

2:41 Four profitable exits and counting

3:12 The C-player hiring trap and the revenue ceiling

4:38 The credit card processing company started out of spite

6:54 Out-of-spite as a motivator (and when it's not)

9:23 Removing yourself from day-to-day operations

10:24 The "business in a box" — what makes a company truly sellable

11:09 Why breaking $1M is an operational problem

13:13 What AI means for virtual assistants — adapt or replace

15:08 Remote vs in-person hiring after COVID

17:33 The delegation trap — why founders pull tasks back

18:12 "It's not an emergency, no one's going to die"

20:13 Building SOPs the right way (show, then teach back)

21:01 What to look for after the honeymoon period ends

22:17 The 90-day nesting period and zero tolerance for late

24:20 The radar problem — small habits that cost you the job

27:57 Neurodiversity, output, and choosing your battles on lateness

31:27 Specialize: one offer, one avatar, one price point

33:29 The bottleneck founders neglect — their email and calendar

36:36 Defeated by your inbox by 2pm

39:27 Phone on Do Not Disturb for years (and why)

44:42 Health scare, burnout, and exercise as a non-negotiable

45:36 Marginal gains — the British Olympic cycling story

46:55 Boring businesses sell best

48:36 The 5-day time study — find what to delete or delegate

50:00 Where to find Chris

Angela Cox is an executive coach, founder of Purseda 360, and host of the Leader Unmasked podcast. After more than a decade running lean transformation at Lloyds Banking Group, change management at Barclays, and strategy for a half-billion-pound business at Compass Group, she moved into coaching full-time — bringing the operational rigor of root-cause analysis into a profession she felt was still running on 1980s models. In 2021, after her husband Martin's brain injury, she built Purseda 360 into a formal academy training the next generation of coaches. She's pursuing a doctorate in coaching at Cambridge / King's College London, and runs a national coaching conference whose proceeds fund the Blue Light Bursary — coaching training for NHS, police, and ambulance service leavers.

In this conversation, Angela walks us through why operational change leaders make different coaches, the four masks people wear at work (perfectionist, people pleaser, persecutor of self, persecutor of others), the "silent middle" of high-performing employees quietly burning out, why recording sessions destroys the unmasking process, why coaching ROI may be the wrong question (and what the right one is), and how to know when wearing the mask is a conscious choice versus autopilot.

Find Angela

• LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelacoxpaseda360/
• Purseda 360 — https://purseda360.com

Builders & Doers is produced by Horizon Search.

0:00 Intro

0:36 From Lloyds, Barclays, and Compass to executive coaching

2:32 Bringing root-cause analysis from transformation into the coaching room

3:52 Her husband Martin's brain injury and the legacy that built Purseda 360

6:32 What's actually wrong with 1980s coaching models

8:29 The pretending pandemic — and why "open culture" rarely is

9:30 The four masks: perfectionist, people pleaser, persecutor of self, persecutor of others

11:51 The silent middle — high performers quietly eroding12:50 How to surface masking inside an organization13:40 Why she built an academy instead of just scaling her practice

15:41 Cambridge, King's College, and the credentialing problem in coaching

17:20 Why recording client sessions undermines the work

18:02 Integrating psychology and neuroscience without crossing into therapy

19:35 The "swimming swan" she saw years before she had words for it

20:49 Hiring a coach for your leadership team — what to look for, what to avoid

23:10 Coaching ROI is the wrong question — what's the cost of NOT doing it?

24:36 The Blue Light Bursary — coaching for NHS, police, and ambulance leavers

26:13 The question she asks every podcast guest (that she'd ask herself)

27:48 Congruence as a daily reflection practice

28:40 Conscious masking vs autopilot masking — why the choice matters

30:42 The cost of wearing the mask in your own life

31:16 Where to find Angela

Barbara Salopek is an economist, author, and innovation consultant who grew up in Croatia and built her career in Norway. She teaches at BI Norwegian Business School, advises companies on bringing ideas to market, and is the author of an Amazon bestseller on innovation that scored 8/10 with getAbstract editors. Her work sits at the intersection of individual psychology, group dynamics, and the systems that either let innovation thrive or quietly kill it.

In this conversation, Barbara walks us through why suffering only makes sense when there's something better on the other side, why 4,500+ mousetrap patents don't equal innovation, the difference between a creative solution and an innovation that actually creates value, why "innovate!" as a top-down command almost always fails, the hidden cost of big players buying every promising small company, why leaders can't ask their teams to change while staying the same themselves, and the simple reframe that turns change from something happening to you into something you choose.

Find Barbara: https://barbarasalopek.com

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbara-salopek/

Book: available on Amazon and major retailers worldwide

Builders & Doers is produced by Horizon Search.

0:00 Intro

0:51 The meaning behind suffering — and why all our heroes had hard lives

1:21 What science actually says about adversity and creativity

2:39 "Better to suffer now for the benefit later" — and why younger generations push back

3:09 Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea at age 14

4:24 Risk-aversion is personal — entrepreneurs as control of one's own destiny

5:58 We're learning what we're willing to tolerate

6:21 What innovation actually is — value, not just ideas

7:10 The 4,500 mousetrap patents that aren't innovation

8:18 Signal vs substance — institutions, prestige, and follow-through

10:29 Big universities and big consulting — and why hungry small firms still matter

11:48 The danger of everyone selling out to the big tech oligarchy

12:53 Imposter syndrome and the desire for external validation

14:36 The generational shift — from CV prestige to quality of life now

15:05 Why a good idea isn't enough — the market has to be ready

17:50 Oversimplification, social media, and the danger of using AI in fields you don't know

19:30 From idea to product-market fit — what actually has to be true

21:18 Functional fixedness and creativity as a survival mechanism

22:33 The Croatia / Norway counterexample — adversity isn't the only path to excellence

23:06 We are individuals AND part of groups — why innovation frameworks miss this

26:05 What leaders should actually do to invite change

28:07 Everyday creativity vs scientific creativity — everyone has it

30:20 Don't change for change's sake — frame the why

30:45 What's the one thing we can stop doing today?

33:09 The founder paradox — you can't be the same person at company size 100

35:20 You can't ask others to change while you resist change yourself

36:00 Small experiments that change team dynamics — who speaks in meetings

40:08 Choose change vs change happens to you — the driving seat reframe

41:18 Early adopters vs naysayers and why both views have value

44:42 High-trust vs low-trust environments (Norway vs Croatia, COVID example)

45:33 The long view — climate, AI, and what actually matters

46:48 Where to find Barbara

Dr. Torkil Færø is a Norwegian general practitioner and emergency physician with 26 years of clinical experience, the author of five bestselling books, and the writer behind The Pulse Cure — translated into 10 languages and the only book to date dedicated to using consumer wearables for preventative healthcare. After his father died at 73, Torkil realized his own lifestyle had him on track for an even shorter life, so he re-educated himself in preventative medicine, lost 40 pounds, and started experimenting with what heart rate and HRV data could actually tell him about his own body. He's also a longtime travel photographer whose first bestseller was on therapeutic photography.

In this conversation, Torkil walks us through what 26 years on the front row of medicine taught him about how much control we actually have over our health, why grip strength predicts how long you stay out of a nursing home, the connection between sunlight and colorectal cancer, how a slice of birthday cake spiked his heart rate for five hours, the difference between Garmin, Whoop, Oura, and Apple Watch, why "junk stress" is the new junk food, what the Blue Zones (and 1800s Native Americans) tell us about longevity, and one breathwork practice you can do invisibly in any meeting.

Find Dr. Torkil

Instagram @dr.torkil

Book: The Pulse Cure

Builders & Doers is produced by Horizon Search.

0:00 Intro

1:10 26 years as an ER doctor on the front row of life

3:25 The one thing the public misses about health

4:08 His father died at 73 — the moment everything changed

5:30 What he changed (and what wasn't taught in medical school)

5:36 Grip strength as a predictor of longevity

6:37 The Norwegian study — strength training delays the nursing home by 14 years

7:14 The rise of colorectal cancer in younger people — the sunlight connection

9:44 The non-negotiables: sleep, movement, sunlight, real food

10:14 How wearables changed his understanding of sleep (and wine)

11:04 Heart rate variability — the most sensitive biometric you can track

13:00 Breathwork in stressful meetings — six breaths a minute, invisibly

15:48 Choosing a wearable: Garmin vs Apple vs Oura vs Whoop

17:40 We're terrible at judging our internal state

19:25 The birthday cake that spiked his heart rate for 5 hours

20:32 Discovering food sensitivities through HRV

22:00 We're as different on the inside as we are on the outside

23:06 What you actually feel when you optimize: clarity, willpower, empathy

24:55 Junk stress — the cousin of junk food

25:51 VO2 max and why it predicts how long you live

27:42 Whoop's edge — AI, journaling, and biological age

30:55 The shift from reactive medicine to taking control yourself

32:50 Why new tech keeps pointing us back in time

35:18 1800s research on Native American longevity — the lifestyle clues

37:04 The amputation problem — community as a regulating organism

38:35 The Blue Zones: Okinawa, Sardinia, Icaria, Loma Linda

40:55 Biohacking, longevity, and the limits of what we can extend

42:43 Mitochondria as the actual key to longevity

43:30 24 extra years — what the research says you gain from doing it right

44:09 The travel photographer side — and the book that started it all

46:00 The Pulse Cure — the only book on using wearables for health

48:01 The PMS / menstrual cycle insight wearables can give

49:09 Where to find Dr. Torkil

Fay Niewiadomski is the founder and CEO of ICTN (International Consulting and Training Network), a strategic intervention and executive coaching firm she's run for over three decades from offices in Beirut, Amman, and New York. A pioneer of strategic intervention in the Middle East, Fay has worked with leadership teams across 40+ nationalities, helping them uncover the values, beliefs, and unspoken rules that quietly shape every decision a leader makes. She describes her work as "non-invasive neurosurgery" — a practice of listening with extreme depth to surface the assumptions, blind spots, and recurrent questions that keep otherwise capable leaders running on a treadmill.

In this conversation, Fay walks us through why "artificial intelligence" is a misnomer, the loop of values-beliefs-rules that traps people in their own way, why self-awareness is often just self-congratulation, the difference between cohesion and consensus on a leadership team, the "Impostorella" syndrome, the three life-changing decisions she made the morning her office in Beirut was bombed, and the one Gordian knot every leader should sit with — the line between deliberate cruelty and stupidity.Find Fay: https://www.ictn.com/blog/author/rima/

Buy Fay's book: https://a.co/d/07B2cgAP

ICTN: https://www.ictn.com

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fayniewiadomski/

Builders & Doers is produced by Horizon Search.

0:00 Intro

0:56 What caught Fay's attention recently

1:02 Why "AI" is a misnomer — it's an information synthesizer

2:26 The Selfish Gene, biases, and what human intelligence actually is

3:49 If we programmed AI to need to survive, would it become intelligent?

4:24 Intelligence vs consciousness

5:30 Why conscious effort is overrated

6:01 Confirmation bias and our model of reality

6:37 The real leadership challenge — same language, shared purpose

8:07 What "non-invasive neurosurgery" actually means

8:50 The "I want to be CEO in 2 years" example — why values block the path

9:27 The recurrent question loop people get stuck in

10:52 Generational rules and unspoken expectations

12:01 Decision-making styles — why fast and slow leaders clash

14:38 Leadership is a set of behaviors, not a position

15:08 The Impostorella syndrome

15:58 Group coaching — what would the company lose if you all disappeared tomorrow?

16:30 What gets AI'd vs what makes a human leader

17:03 Cohesion vs consensus17:49 Living on shifting sands of uncertainty

18:04 Assume you could die tomorrow

19:13 If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans

20:10 Resilience as doing what's needed knowing you have no control

21:17 Constructs, the teapot lid, and dysregulation

21:31 Role-swap simulations and the panic that follows

23:30 The hospital ER simulation — 17 "patients" killed in round one

25:44 Cognitive diversity and the value of being challenged

26:00 Why ICTN doesn't give the solution as consultants

27:30 The thoughts → feelings → actions → results loop

28:50 Self-awareness as self-congratulation

29:56 We don't learn from mistakes — we learn from reflection on mistakes

30:46 The morning her office in Beirut was bombed

31:44 Decision 1: leaving her alcoholic husband

33:05 Decision 2: putting her son on a hydrofoil to Cyprus

33:53 Decision 3: starting her own business from the rubble

36:21 Upon reflection, are you grateful for that experience?

36:50 Don't confuse comfort and predictability with a fulfilling life

39:12 The Gordian knot every leader should sit with — sadism vs stupidity

41:04 The practical first step — your three most difficult decisions

42:51 Psychometric profiling and the competent debrief

43:28 Where to find Fay

44:26 Closing — leadership as a gift, integrity meets credibility

Matt and Jack are co-founders of HeySquibb, an AI research lab modeling human psychology to build digital twins that run your social media. After Matt built an AI therapy clone in 2023 and saw the impact a digital representation of someone could have, the team came together around a bigger thesis: that within a year or two, having a digital twin will be as ordinary as having an email address. They're bootstrapped, fully self-funded, and recently moved six teammates into a four-bedroom apartment in New York City for three months to live, sleep, and ship together.

In this conversation, Matt and Jack walk us through how their digital twins reach 76% accuracy on you, why "sounding human" is the hardest problem in AI right now, the four-product roadmap (Persona, Warehouse, Telescope, and the Omega Suite), why they think AI agents will free us to be more human (not less), the ethics of agent-driven social engagement, and what it actually felt like to bootstrap with the bear in their own cave.

Find HeySquibb: https://heysquibb.com

On X: @heysquibb

Builders & Doers is produced by Horizon Search.

0:00 Intro

0:47 What HeySquibb is — digital twins to run your social

1:34 Matt's 2023 AI therapy clone and the origin story

2:14 Can it be a better version of you? 76% accuracy today

2:47 What if the data you've put online was already AI?

4:00 How long it takes to train your twin

4:48 Templates — sound like Mark Twain or Mark Cuban

6:14 Why X first, LinkedIn second

7:03 A world where bots talk to bots — and what that unlocks

7:16 The vision: get offline by being more online

8:13 The dark mirror — being intentional with what AI reflects back

11:08 The sales prospecting use case

13:01 Is using a digital twin "cheating"? The calculator analogy

17:59 How the agent actually learns — human-in-the-loop reinforcement

19:53 Is AI a net positive for humanity?

22:33 The "in or out" choice — and why dioramas always crash

23:07 Six guys, four bedrooms, three months in NYC

26:14 Bootstrapped from day one — putting your own skin in the game

28:50 The moat against the incumbents

32:08 The 12-month roadmap: Persona, Warehouse, Telescope, Omega Suite

32:50 API risk and staying compliant on X and LinkedIn

34:27 The hardest technical problem — keeping agents from going off the rails

36:21 Humor and context — the edge cases you can't fully anticipate

42:00 Security, privacy, and anonymizing user data

43:54 Will AI sterilize marketing for the human race?

47:00 Digital twins as snapshots in time — the expat analogy

48:23 What if two digital twins have a "child"?

52:24 How bootstrapping actually works when the month is looking low

54:50 The bear in your cave — the strongest motivator

56:30 Where to find Matt, Jack, and HeySquibb

Jon Basford is the founder of Lateral Solutions, a consulting firm that helps founders, CEOs, and nonprofit leaders build the internal operations their growth actually depends on. After a career that took him from law school to association management to the startup world as a fractional COO, Jon now runs operational audits that unpack the gap between what leaders think is working and what their teams already know isn't. He's a champion of what he calls "curiosity as an operating system" — a way of thinking, working, and connecting that he argues is the real foundation of operational excellence.

In this conversation, Jon walks us through why founders under-invest in internal operations (and what it costs them), the four-part audit he uses to diagnose an organization, why the word "change" often fails and what to say instead, how micromanagement quietly pushes out your best people, where AI actually helps leaders versus where it's fancy reporting, and the single question every leader should be asking their team.

Find Jon: https://jonbasford.com

Lateral Solutions: https://think-lateral.com

Builders & Doers is produced by Horizon Search.

0:00 Intro — curiosity as an operating system

0:36 From law school to fractional COO to operational consulting

1:43 Nonprofit vs for-profit — the same dysfunctions

2:19 What curiosity looks like in an operating world

3:32 Creating a curious culture and "see it, say it, sorted"

5:13 The 4-part operational audit

5:47 The fastest win — duplicate payments and $0 accounting fixes

6:53 The biggest hidden cost — under-investing in internal operations

7:56 Why founders can't see what an outsider can

10:27 You have to convince leaders there's a problem before you can fix it

11:00 Change management and the regression to the status quo

12:02 Why the word "change" backfires — and what to use instead

13:48 The CEO who couldn't envision video (20 years after he started)

14:23 Global expansion, cultural nuance, and rowing the same boat

16:39 Multi-generational teams and allowing people to speak up

17:58 The burned out founder — 68 hours a week and nothing moves

19:16 Why letting go is the hardest part

20:13 Where AI actually helps leaders vs fancy reporting

21:22 A curiosity KPI: psychological safety as the leading indicator

22:14 What CEOs should stop doing today

23:29 The human body analogy — 18 quintillion processes you don't manage

25:30 Why it's chronic with founders (it's their baby)

26:57 The micromanager who thought she wasn't — and the star she lost

28:19 Jon's final ask: stop asking how people are doing, start asking what they're seeing

30:00 The 500-700% ROI of leadership coaching

30:55 Where to find Jon

Dr. Emily Anhalt is a clinical psychologist, co-founder of Coa (the gym for mental health), and author of Flex Your Feelings: Train Your Brain to Develop the 7 Traits of Emotional Fitness. After interviewing 100 psychologists and 100 entrepreneurs, she identified the seven traits emotionally healthy people are working on all the time — and built a practice around helping founders, leaders, and teams treat mental health the way they treat physical health: proactively, consistently, and as an ongoing practice rather than a crisis response.

In this conversation, Dr. Emily walks us through why most people go to therapy (it's not what you think), the catch-22 of being healthy in an unhealthy society, why she tells people to strive for agency instead of control, the 7 traits of emotional fitness and why mindfulness is the foundation, how to tell emotional fitness from emotional performance, and one "emotional pushup" you can do today.

Find Dr. Emily: dremilyanhalt.com

Instagram: @dremilyanhalt

Book: Flex Your Feelings — available anywhere books are sold

Builders & Doers is produced by Horizon Search.

0:00 Intro

0:57 Growing up with ADHD in Silicon Valley

2:57 What ADHD actually is (and what it's not)

3:25 Why everyone now has "ADHD-like" symptoms — the dopamine machine in your pocket

4:34 Spectrum vs disorder — when does it become a problem?

5:34 Explanation vs excuse — the responsibility you still own

6:00 Strive for agency, not control

7:17 The catch-22: healthy individuals, healthy society

9:44 The pre-modern mind — what did we trade away?

11:14 Why emotional fitness is like physical fitness

13:30 Why psychology isn't taught in schools

15:42 Emotional fitness and the zombie test

19:50 Why success doesn't fix unhappiness (Morning Brew and rock stars)

22:22 Why people don't change even when they know what to change

23:45 The British "stiff upper lip" problem

25:31 Emotional pushups — 5 minutes of feeling without judgment

27:19 Where and how to feel your feelings appropriately

32:26 The 7 traits of emotional fitness

37:06 Can you fake emotional fitness? (Steve Jobs, success, and manipulation)

40:15 Emotional fitness isn't about being happy all the time

43:02 Pharmaceuticals and psychedelics — the "fever" framework

47:34 5 days of darkness and the all-or-nothing problem

49:09 Writing a book, AI, and the loss of humanity in writing

51:20 What she wants readers to walk away with

52:07 Dr. Emily's favorite emotional pushup — the text message

53:28 Coaching vs therapy — you don't have to wait for a problem

56:13 Where to find Dr. Emily