Decision State with Joe Steele

She built one of Japan's leading organic food brands from a $2,000 investment at a Tokyo farmers market. Fourteen years later, she moved to New York with her daughter to start over — alone, in a language she taught herself, in a market she thought she understood.
She didn't.
To enter the U.S. market and position for an IPO, she hired three C-suite executives and built the structure she believed the next chapter required. Within a year, the overhead nearly bankrupted the company. The executives weren't the whole problem. The assumptions underneath the decision were — and she didn't see it until it had cost her a year.
This conversation is about building in a market you don't fully understand yet, the cost of trusting a playbook past its expiration date, and the moment that actually kept her going.
Better Than Butter:
betterthanbutterusa.com
Midori on Instagram:
@midori_betterthan_butter
Midori on LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/in/midori-sato
If you recognized something in this conversation — joesteele.com.
Follow Decision State on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

CHAPTERS
0:00 — She almost went bankrupt the next day
0:30 — From $2,000 to 3,000 stores
4:27 — The Silicon Valley trip that changed everything
5:50 — Moving to New York: what she thought vs. what she found
9:30 — Building the executive structure
11:44 — When she realized the hires were wrong
16:13 — Four bankruptcies
20:22 — The daughter decision
23:33 — Taylor and the shift
26:52 — Building the U.S. chapter differently
28:44 — Better Than Butter: where to find it

A concern was there before the contract was signed.

Rob Broadhead had worked with the contractor before. The relationship was good. The project looked viable. The timing was right. And when the questions started showing up, he chose to trust rather than push harder.

A few months later, the missing work surfaced.

The result wasn't just rework. It became hundreds of unbilled hours, opportunity cost across the business, delayed growth, and a project that pulled people into work they never should have been doing.

This conversation is about the window between seeing something and naming it out loud — and what it costs when the relationship makes that window wider than it should be.

Guest Links

Website:
rb-sns.com

LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/in/robbroadhead

If you recognized something in this episode — joesteele.com.

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Chapters

00:00 — We Wanted It To Work

01:02 — Trusting The Wrong Signals

05:12 — Assumptions Create Expensive Problems

11:04 — How The Opportunity Appeared

14:20 — The Porsche Problem

16:20 — Why He Never Pushed Harder

19:48 — The First Real Red Flag

20:53 — When The Team Found It

22:33 — Realizing The Cost

24:15 — Opportunity Cost Spreads

28:14 — Looking Back

33:41 — The Silent Failures

36:14 — Where To Find Rob

A partnership with a major company looked like an obvious win.
The reach was there. The brand was there. The market opportunity was there.

What wasn't obvious was the amount of education, alignment, and execution required after the agreement was signed. What looked like a growth engine became a slow-moving operational challenge that continued to absorb time, attention, and momentum long after the excitement of the deal.

In this episode, Kevin Shtofman shares what happened when a partnership that made perfect sense on paper took far longer to gain traction than anyone expected, how leadership kept extending the timeline, and why some risks are difficult to name while you're still inside them.

Guest:

Kevin Shtofman, COO of REBA and former Global Head of Corporate Development at Cherre.
Connect with Kevin:
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinshtofman/

If you recognized something in this episode — joesteele.com.

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CHAPTERS
00:00 The Partnership That Looked Like A Sure Thing
02:21 The Revenue Bet Behind The Deal
05:08 Why Partnerships Mattered So Much
08:47 From Corporate Development To COO
11:49 The New Pace Of Work
15:35 Context Switching And AI
19:17 The Commitments Nobody Defined
21:06 The Game Of Thrones Problem
23:02 The Story The Team Kept Telling Itself
23:49 When Friction Became Risk
25:09 We Saw The Vision Clearly
26:42 The Cost That Didn't Show Up
27:28 Why Naming The Problem Didn't Fix It
29:51 Everyone Has The Same Tools Now
33:09 Moving Fast Without Losing Control
34:29 The Right Amount Of Breakage
38:26 Two Eyes, Two Ears, One Mouth
39:20 Four Term Sheets Out Of Fifty-Six
41:20 The Risk Nobody Could Describe

Everybody agreed on the problem.
The recommendation was clear. The meetings happened. The conversations happened.
And nothing changed.
In this episode, Joe Steele sits down with Brandon Moon of TD Pine Advisors to explore what organizations reveal after agreement has already been reached. The conversation moves through founder bottlenecks, perceived authority versus actual authority, why people say they understand when they don't, and how organizations often mirror the behavior of the leader at the top.
If you've ever watched a company acknowledge a problem while continuing to operate exactly the same way, you'll recognize this one quickly.
Guest:
Brandon Moon
TD Pine Advisors
linkedin.com/in/brandonmoon
Book: Job to Asset — available on Amazon
If you recognized something in this episode — joesteele.com.
Follow Decision State on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

A fast-growing company fixes a checkout problem in days — and quietly creates a much bigger one underneath it.

This episode with James Lang explores what happens inside organizations when speed starts overriding understanding. From payment systems to vendor relationships to engineering conflict, the conversation stays focused on a pattern most operators recognize immediately: everyone in the room thinks they're solving the same problem, but they're actually protecting different things.

James spent years scaling a MedTech company from startup stage into rapid growth while managing the friction between executives, engineers, marketers, vendors, and organizational momentum. What emerged from that experience shaped how he now thinks about leadership, AI implementation, and the hidden cost of misalignment inside growing companies.

If you've ever watched a room agree too quickly, ignored a concern because the outcome looked obvious, or realized later that nobody actually owned the handoff — this episode will feel familiar.

James Lang
OverLang Venture Partners
overlang.com
LinkedIn: James Lang

If you recognized something in this episode — joesteele.com.
Follow Decision State on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Chapters
00:00 — Nobody made the call
01:12 — Growing into the COO role
02:35 — The payment gateway decision
07:42 — The hidden cost of speed
09:18 — Managing up and down at the same time
13:01 — Engineers, ego, and decision-making
18:48 — When meetings stop being honest
20:18 — Vendors and missed opportunities
24:08 — What the COO years taught him about AI
27:42 — Solving symptoms instead of causes
30:03 — AI is built in our image
33:01 — Connect with James

Jerry Brazie has built, bought, and sold more than a dozen companies over thirty years. He was doing $25 million a year in revenue and clearing a quarter million a month in profit when a $4 million transportation company came across his desk.
He took the financials to his peer group — the same people he'd been sitting with for twelve years, whose advice had helped build everything he had. They said no. He came back the next month with more answers. They said no again. He bought it anyway.
The integration started falling apart almost immediately. It took three to four years of working through the wreckage to discover that the quarter million he thought he was making should have been $310,000 — his core business had been leaking while he was looking the other direction. Six years and roughly $10 million later, he was out.
"I was high on my own supply."
Guest links: KronosGroup.org
If you recognized something in this episode — joesteele.com
Follow Decision State on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

CHAPTERS
00:00 — “Everything Is Your Fault”
00:34 — What Jerry Is Running Right Now
03:24 — “I’m The Rock Everyone Crashes Against”
05:57 — Running Multiple Companies Simultaneously
08:01 — The Acquisition Everyone Told Him Not To Make
13:07 — When He Realized They Were Right
15:43 — “I Was High On My Own Supply”
15:52 — The Hire You Already Knew Was Wrong
19:13 — The Difference Between A Bad Hire And A Bad Deal
21:57 — Why Speed Felt Safer Than Hesitation
25:25 — Momentum Over Clarity
31:24 — The Voice He Never Forgot

Eric Hoffman spent years as an attorney before building a legal tech company on his own. What started as a conversation about cold calling and startup pressure turned into something more specific: what happens when nobody is around to interrupt your thinking while you're carrying too much.

In this episode, Eric talks about the Reddit post that made him question whether he was really building a company or just hiding inside one, the $35,000 coaching decision he almost made, and the moment where AI recognized a pattern in his behavior before he fully did himself.

This conversation isn't about entrepreneurship advice. It's about what judgment starts to feel like when there's no co-pilot in the room.

Eric Hoffman: aiesquire.ioLinkedIn: Eric Hoffman, Esq.Book: The Runway Is Behind You — available on Amazon

If you recognized something in this episode — joesteele.com.

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Chapters

00:00 — The pricing build

02:45 — No one catches it but you

04:16 — What AI Esquire actually is

06:41 — Following the rule book

10:35 — The Reddit post

12:34 — Checkbook in hand

15:00 — Cold calling for a company nobody knows

16:15 — Claude as co-pilot

19:03 — What hasn't worked

21:07 — Razor sharp at 10 AM, gone by 7 PM

23:22 — Where to find Eric

Angelo D’Amico runs a $25M+ manufacturing company and a second consumer brand with 60 people between them. When the wrong people started accumulating inside the business, he did what a good leader does — he tried to help them. Coached them. Gave them time. Gave them the benefit of the doubt.
It didn’t work. And while he was trying to fix the individual, the people around them were quietly absorbing the cost.
This episode is about the difference between a performance problem and an alignment problem — and what it costs when you treat one like the other.
Angelo on LinkedIn: Angelo D’Amico
canadarubbergroup.com / softstall.com
If you recognized something in this episode — joesteele.com

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Chapters

00:00 — He Thought He Was Doing the Right Thing
00:21 — The Decision He’s Still Thinking About
01:17 — What He’s Actually Running
05:23 — What a Tough Stretch Looks Like
06:56 — When the Blinders Go On
09:06 — Problems Sound Smaller Than They Are
10:38 — Narrow Thinking and Tolerating the Wrong Things
11:20 — When to Act and When to Wait
13:48 — The Weight of Being the One Who Has to Change It
17:10 — What the Team Was Holding That He Didn’t See
19:17 — The Fear of Destabilizing What Was Left
21:34 — The Fix That Made It Worse
23:35 — Making Calls Inside the Uncertainty
26:01 — The Signals He Moves Faster On Now
27:49 — What Would Feel Different Today
29:35 — Where to Find Angelo

The partnership looked strong on paper. High volume. Big dollar figure. A sales leader confident enough to move it forward. But the product team knew the call would pull the company away from its roadmap. They talked about it with each other.
They just didn't have enough political capital to make the concern reach the person making the decision. Six months later, the contract was canceled and the roadmap was delayed by at least two years.
Petar Kralev has spent his career inside organizations where the signal exists but doesn't always reach the room where the real call gets made. This episode is about what that looks like before anything visibly breaks — and what it costs when people know something is wrong but don't say it loudly enough to matter.
Petar Kralev: ⁠mirror360.org⁠ | LinkedIn | Substack
Joe Steele: ⁠joesteele.com⁠
If you recognized something in this episode — ⁠joesteele.com⁠. Follow Decision State on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
00:00 — When the dashboard looks right
00:18 — The partnership that cost two years
02:44 — Building Mirror 360 03:17 — How information gets filtered
04:56 — Leaders who may not want visibility
06:00 — Clean signals vs people signals
07:11 — Screaming into the void 09:53 — Why no company is exempt
10:33 — When alignment is only surface-level
13:26 — Smart people, incomplete information
14:57 — Trying to raise the concern
16:12 — When politics shapes the call
18:11 — Reading between the lines
19:31 — Early mistakes building the company
21:03 — How he tries to avoid the same pattern
24:01 — Where to find Petar

Most hiring decisions don't fail immediately. The candidate checks out. The process is clean. The client signs off. And then something small goes sideways — sometimes eight months later.

Darren Tompkins runs a multi-division recruiting firm with no debt, no office, and no outside capital, placing people into engineering, construction, and data-center projects where a wrong read has consequences on both sides. This conversation is about what it actually costs to make judgment calls about people for a living — and what happens when the placement that looked clean turned out it wasn't.

Darren Tompkins — Vader-Rey

Companies vaderrey.com 

LinkedIn: Darren Tompkins

If you recognized something in this episode — joesteele.com.

Chapters
00:00 — When decisions start to stack
00:30 — What the day actually looks like 

00:45 — Why you can't turn it off

 01:16 — When a placement goes wrong 

02:11 — High-stakes hiring decisions 

03:20 — Army vs business pressure 

05:26 — What looks easier than it is 

06:32 — When hiring decisions fail 

09:02 — A different kind of hard

10:39 — Building without debt 

12:59 — Slow seasons and pressure cycles 

14:54 — When the work doesn't stop 

16:46 — AI and hiring decisions 

21:06 — Losing a client 

23:18 — Where to connect