In this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Anthony Sapountzis is joined by Deborah Szabo, Digital Marketing Strategist, Video Coach, and founder of The Content Catalyst. With a background in the wine industry and a deep understanding of both strategic content and technology, Deborah now empowers service-based businesses, coaches, and digital entrepreneurs to maximise their visibility through video and AI. She shares her insights on modern content marketing, the shift away from outdated tactics, and how leveraging artificial intelligence can give business owners a powerful competitive edge without sacrificing authenticity or personal touch.

Deborah introduces her signature approach to helping people show up on camera confidently, explaining that understanding one’s personality type, like the hesitant “Penelope Perfectionist” or spontaneous “Wing-it Wendy”, can transform how content is created and shared. By tailoring strategies to individual creators and redefining “content” as anything a business communicates publicly, she underscores the value of intentional messaging across platforms. As AI continues to integrate into tools like Canva and CapCut, Deborah believes the opportunity lies in combining these technologies with personalised, strategic guidance.

The conversation explores how business owners can overcome common hurdles such as lack of time, camera shyness, and creative block by incorporating content creation into daily habits. Deborah champions the use of long-form video, particularly on YouTube, as a sustainable and scalable strategy for building digital presence. Anthony echoes this sentiment, pointing out that unscripted, knowledge-driven content often performs better than overly polished production. Together, they encourage a workflow where live video and AI-enabled repurposing do the heavy lifting, helping brands stay visible without burning out.

Deborah also unpacks her custom-built AI blueprint system designed to align content strategy with business goals in just a few clicks. From planning monthly marketing calendars to producing blogs, video scripts, and even B-roll lists, she showcases how AI assistants can streamline operations without compromising on quality. With tools like Claude, Perplexity, and ChatGPT, she demonstrates how to personalise outputs by training models to reflect your tone and brand. Her goal is to demystify AI and empower everyday business owners to integrate it into their workflows with confidence.

Rounding off the episode, Anthony and Deborah discuss the future of AI in business, agreeing that the greatest risk is standing still. Anthony shares his own method of staying ahead, from curated YouTube roundups to using bots that summarise key insights for his team. He urges businesses to focus on automating repetitive tasks and warns against misusing AI agents for jobs better suited to workflows. Deborah reinforces this by highlighting the power of equipping remote teams and VAs with tailored AI systems, ensuring they’re not just replaced by AI—but elevated by it. Together, they offer a practical roadmap for small businesses ready to embrace the future of tech-enabled marketing.

#AIContentMarketing #DigitalMarketingStrategy #VideoMarketingTips #ContentCreationTools #SmallBusinessGrowth #MarketingAutomation #YouTubeForBusiness #DeborahSzabo

In this episode of the DevReady Podcast, host Anthony Sapountzis is joined by Ross Chaldecott, a seasoned product leader and the Co-Founder & CEO of Kinde. With a background spanning key leadership roles at Atlassian, Shopify, and Campaign Monitor, Ross brings a wealth of insight into building impactful tech businesses. At Kinde, he’s on a mission to remove the burdens of repetitive infrastructure—like authentication and billing—so founders can focus on what truly matters: delivering value. Ross shares how his own entrepreneurial journey, combined with decades of experience in scaling global tech companies, led to the creation of Kinde: a platform designed to simplify SaaS development and empower a new wave of product creators.

Ross traces the roots of Kinde back to his early days as a founder in the late 1990s, where he encountered the same problem time and again: getting bogged down in building infrastructure instead of actual products. This challenge resurfaced even at tech giants like Atlassian and Shopify, where infrastructure complexities slowed down progress. These experiences crystallised Ross’s vision to build a platform that could abstract away these headaches for SaaS businesses, much like Shopify does for e-commerce. Kinde was born to give founders a genuine head start by handling the “boilerplate” code, allowing them to focus on innovation instead of plumbing.

The conversation dives deep into what sets Kinde apart in a crowded landscape of tools like Firebase, Auth0, Supabase, and Stripe. Rather than specialising in just one function, Kinde integrates authentication, billing, and entitlements into a cohesive infrastructure layer. This fusion enables SaaS teams to manage subscriptions, user permissions, and tiered access without the typical complexity of stitching together multiple services. Anthony validates this value proposition through his own development experience, and Ross reveals that anticipation around Kinde’s new billing product is immense and how developers see it as the missing link they’ve long needed.

Cultural foundations are equally critical to Kinde’s success. Ross shares how the company draws from lessons learned at Atlassian and Shopify to prioritise transparency, autonomy, and values-driven leadership. From giving every employee equity to embedding values in hiring and pricing decisions, Kinde operates with intentionality. Keeping the team small and nimble has also enabled them to move with speed and precision. With guidance from industry veterans and a clear strategic vision, Ross emphasises that asking for help and surrounding yourself with people who genuinely care—can be one of a founder’s greatest strengths.

The episode wraps with a look ahead at what’s next for Kinde. The team is focused on launching its billing module and expanding the platform's extensibility with webhooks, workflows, and eventually a full-fledged marketplace. Ross also discusses the company’s nuanced use of AI: while it boosts productivity and supports prototyping, it’s not yet a substitute for experienced engineers when building robust infrastructure. And finally, he shares the quirky story behind the brand’s name “Kinde” with an “e”, explaining that the ambiguity is intentional and reflects the team’s ethos of staying curious and playful, or as their core value puts it: “Stay Foolish.”

#SaaSStartups #ProductDevelopment #FounderJourney #StartupTools #Kinde #DevReadyPodcast #TechLeadership #BuildWhatMatters

In this fifth collaborative episode of the DevReady Podcast and the very first live-streamed on LinkedIn, host Anthony Sapountzis is once again joined by Gareth Rydon, Co-Founder of Friyay.ai, to explore recent advancements and practical insights into AI tools and their implications across businesses. They delve deeply into the evolving functionalities of popular AI platforms, notably ChatGPT’s O3 Pro, highlighting its advanced autonomous capabilities for executing tasks end-to-end, such as coding and deploying applications. Gareth, speaking from a business operations perspective, praises O3 Pro for bridging technical gaps for non-developers, while Anthony underscores its superior deep research capabilities and precision in responses, along with discussing effective prompting techniques to maximise efficiency.

Comparing AI platforms, Anthony and Gareth evaluate their experiences with Perplexity Labs and Claude against ChatGPT. Gareth offers balanced feedback, appreciating Perplexity Labs' decent abilities in deep research and content creation, yet finds it does not significantly surpass existing AI tools. Anthony particularly endorses Claude for coding tasks, emphasising its strengths in technical scenarios and collaborative content creation. They agree that choosing the right AI tool ultimately depends more on personal preference, practical needs, and familiarity rather than inherent technical superiority.

Anthony and Gareth then discuss strategic approaches for maintaining brand consistency through ChatGPT's Projects feature, especially across diverse marketing platforms such as TikTok, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Gareth recounts successful experiences helping startups tailor content to suit different audiences efficiently, although Anthony points out the current limitation around team-based sharing and collaboration. Both remain optimistic, hoping future updates will resolve these collaboration issues, thus enhancing team productivity.

Shifting focus to the broader implications and practical usage of AI, Anthony and Gareth reflect on the rapid pace of AI development. They note how organisations such as Anthropic leverage AI to continually enhance their own tools, enabling accelerated releases and increased productivity through autonomous "background agents." Gareth provides entertaining examples of educational, AI-generated content gaining popularity on platforms like YouTube, while Anthony illustrates pragmatic business applications, including animated testimonials and quickly-produced promotional videos to captivate audience attention.

Finally, the conversation addresses the critical importance of developing clear objectives and structured thinking when integrating AI into workflow automation and content generation. Gareth stresses the necessity for clear articulation of problems before using AI tools, warning against common pitfalls such as incomplete tasks and "scope creep." Anthony offers practical advice, suggesting tools like Kanban boards to manage tasks effectively. The episode concludes by underscoring the need for everyone to achieve fluency in AI tools, citing predictions of substantial economic disruption and highlighting resources such as Anthropic’s AI Fluency course. Both Gareth and Anthony advocate proactive experimentation and deliberate use of AI as crucial strategies for staying relevant in an increasingly automated future.

#AI #ChatGPT #Claude #AIFluency #Productivity #FutureOfWork #DevReadyPodcast #AerionTechnologies

In this DevReady Podcast episode, host Anthony Sapountzis welcomes Jonathan Sermon, a seasoned partnerships and alliances specialist with a rich background in business development, foreign exchange, and property. Currently serving as Partnerships & Alliances Manager at Your Empire Buyers Agent and Co-Founder & Director of Bio Australia, Jon brings a wealth of experience across multiple industries. With a career that began in the UK's fintech space, he has become known as a “serial connector”, having spent over 15 years building referral networks and empowering professionals through authentic, value-driven relationships. He also co-hosts the Lifestyle Pirates podcast, where he unpacks life, business, and culture through relaxed, insightful conversations.

Throughout the conversation, Jon underscores the enduring power of human connection, particularly in the context of startups, solo founders, and relationship-led businesses. He reflects on how his community-building efforts began with curiosity and a desire to learn, leading to the creation of Bio, a networking group that connects people through shared passions like music, wine, and motorsport, rather than forced corporate settings. From hosting club nights in Sydney to connecting doctors with aircraft finance over dinner, Jon’s approach to relationship-building is grounded in authenticity, storytelling, and simply showing up. His perspective reaffirms that the strongest connections often stem from serendipitous conversations and shared values, not sales scripts.

Jon also shares how a seemingly casual connection made at a networking event a decade ago evolved into his current leadership role at Your Empire, highlighting the long-term value of investing in people. Together, he and Anthony lament the shift towards transactional interactions in remote work environments, advocating instead for moments of spontaneity and “learning by osmosis”, like the organic chats over lunch that used to shape team culture. They explore the role of podcasts as a learning tool, especially for those who struggle with traditional reading, and stress the importance of time investment: building trust, learning from others, and keeping an open mind are what fuel personal and professional growth.

As the conversation pivots towards the role of AI in business, both Jon and Anthony acknowledge the fast-changing landscape and the increasing pressure to stay ahead. Jon draws parallels between business partnerships and personal relationships, noting that trust is built over time, not through automated outreach. He warns against overreliance on impersonal, volume-driven tactics and instead champions the importance of value-aligned networks and regular feedback between partners. Jon’s approach is firmly rooted in the belief that relationships should be cultivated with care, consistency, and clarity.

In their final exchange, Jon raises a pressing question about AI’s impact on skill development—what happens to junior employees if machines do all the remedial work? Anthony suggests that while tasks may change, learning still happens through supervision and interpretation. They discuss how AI has transformed creative and technical work, making some outputs more disposable, and reflect on how intuition, human insight, and strategic thinking remain irreplaceable. In a compelling analogy, Anthony compares AI to the evolution of tools in construction, from spirit levels to laser levels, not a threat to craftsmanship, but an upgrade in efficiency. The episode closes with a simple truth: be curious, show up, and treat people with respect because that's where the real value lies.

#NetworkingTips #BusinessGrowth #AIandBusiness #PartnershipsThatWork #EntrepreneurMindset #AuthenticConnections #FutureOfWork #DevReadyPodcast

David Colwell, Vice President of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at Tricentis, brings a wealth of industry experience and academic curiosity to the DevReady Podcast. With a background that spans automation, quality engineering, and cutting-edge AI research, David leads the charge in making enterprise AI practical and effective. Having spent years building and training neural networks and raising five "natural networks" at home, David blends technical rigour with a wry sense of humour, offering a grounded and entertaining take on the challenges of AI adoption in business today. In this episode, David joins host Anthony Sapountzis to unpack the reality behind the AI hype and what it takes to build systems that truly deliver value.

The episode opens on a light-hearted note, with David comparing the training of AI models to parenting his children, drawing a parallel between machine learning hallucinations and childhood fibs. He shares his journey from automating his own QA role to spearheading Tricentis’ Vision AI product, reflecting on the early days of experimentation with models like BERT and GPT-2. David recalls how, in the past, it was a struggle to convince stakeholders that AI had practical utility, whereas now, the challenge lies in tempering the overwhelming demand for AI solutions with thoughtful implementation.

As the conversation deepens, David and Anthony discuss the growing trend of companies branding themselves as “AI startups” despite simply integrating off-the-shelf language models. David likens this to previous hype cycles around blockchain and cloud, pointing out that while we’re currently in a “quick wins” phase of AI, lasting value will come from building proprietary tools and tapping into unique data sets. He warns that early movers relying solely on public LLMs may struggle to differentiate, especially as customers become more agile in switching providers.

The duo also delve into the practical limitations of today’s AI tools, especially in areas where precision, repeatability, and auditability are non-negotiable. David argues that while hallucinations can be creatively useful (such as stress-testing systems with unpredictable input), they’re unacceptable in high-stakes environments like finance. He emphasises that any AI-powered system must be designed to tolerate and recover from failure, with humans in the loop where necessary. At Tricentis, generative AI is used to accelerate creative tasks like generating test ideas, but the execution remains deterministic to ensure reliability.

Closing the episode with wit and technical insight, David and Anthony critique the current obsession with AI agents. They explore how unnecessarily complex agent setups often lead to inefficiencies, especially when predictable outcomes could be achieved with simpler workflows. David amusingly describes his ongoing side project—testing how AI models choose between tools based on psychologically manipulative prompts, a concept he calls “SEO for tools.” It's a fitting end to a conversation that blends sharp analysis, ethical considerations, and a deep understanding of the balance between human and machine intelligence.

#ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning #AIStartups #TechPodcast #Automation #AIEthics #DevReadyPodcast

In this episode of the DevReady Podcast, host Anthony Sapountzis is joined by Natalie Tran, Founder of Transition With Purpose and a highly regarded Transition and Business Coach. Based in Melbourne, Natalie supports mid-career professionals to navigate pivotal career changes with clarity and confidence. With a background in finance and over nine years of coaching experience, she now focuses on guiding individuals from unfulfilling 9-to-5 roles into purpose-driven work, portfolio careers, or entrepreneurship. Natalie’s holistic approach combines mindset work, strategic planning, and practical financial considerations, empowering clients to redefine success and take meaningful steps forward.

Natalie opens up about her personal journey from chartered accounting to coaching, a shift catalysed by the sudden collapse of an international career opportunity following the events of 9/11. Raised in a Vietnamese refugee family, Natalie originally pursued a “safe” and stable career path, working at Deloitte and later in funds management. But despite lateral moves and professional milestones, she felt unfulfilled. A series of life events, including the birth of her children and the limitations of part-time work in finance, eventually pushed her to resign without a plan B. This turning point sparked the beginning of her coaching journey and serves as a powerful example of embracing uncertainty in pursuit of purpose.

Throughout the episode, Natalie identifies common themes that emerge in her work with clients, from a deep sense of misalignment to unfulfilled creativity and a longing to make meaningful impact. Many of her clients come from migrant backgrounds and wrestle with the burden of family expectations and financial responsibility. Natalie advocates for the concept of portfolio careers and flexible income streams as a way to de-risk career transitions. Drawing on her background in finance, she helps clients map out sustainable pathways, often starting with side projects and testing new ideas before making the leap into full-time entrepreneurship or consulting.

Natalie also explores the mindset barriers that keep people stuck, particularly the fear of starting, the fear of failure, and the belief that it’s too late to change. She stresses the importance of cultivating daily habits that build resilience, such as exercise, structure, and staying connected to community. These small but consistent actions help restore agency during periods of uncertainty. For Natalie, personal growth often begins not with major breakthroughs, but with showing up in the face of discomfort and reframing failure as learning.

Finally, Natalie shares how her first coaching clients weren’t from her previous finance network but from her time teaching yoga and working in the fitness industry. This unplanned pivot became foundational to her entrepreneurial journey. By leveraging her wellness background, she learned how to facilitate, profile clients, and run a freelance business, skills that seamlessly transferred to her coaching practice. Her story is a testament to starting where you are, using the resources you have, and being open to where the journey might take you.

#CareerChange #PivotWithPurpose #LifeAfter9to5 #MidCareerCoach #EntrepreneurMindset #CareerTransition #FindYourPurpose #DevReadyPodcast

In this episode of the DevReady Podcast, host Anthony Sapountzis is joined by Shanif Dhanani, founder of Nobi and a seasoned data scientist, software engineer, and AI strategist. Shanif shares his journey from building generalist AI tools to launching Nobi, a specialised e-commerce AI sales assistant designed to help online retailers drive conversions and enhance customer interactions. With a background spanning roles at Twitter and TapCommerce, and deep experience in both engineering and product strategy, Shanif offers rich insights into the evolution of AI tooling, startup pivots, and the realities of building meaningful, scalable tech solutions in today’s fast-paced environment.

The conversation begins with Shanif recounting the strategic pivot from his earlier venture, Locusive to Nobi. Although the original product was technically robust, it lacked a clear market fit. Shanif and his team made the difficult but essential decision to shift their focus entirely, eventually landing on e-commerce, a domain he was deeply familiar with from his work in predictive analytics and ad tech. This pivot, while not triggered by direct customer demand, was informed by a sharper understanding of industry pain points and the market’s readiness for AI-driven solutions. The narrower focus led to greater traction and engagement with clients who lacked the internal technical resources to implement advanced solutions themselves.

Throughout the episode, Shanif and Anthony reflect on the developer-founder journey, including the challenge of moving beyond code to embrace storytelling, marketing, and sales. They discuss the concept of "vibe coding", a tendency among non-technical founders to blindly copy and paste AI-generated code without truly understanding it. Shanif stresses that AI should be treated like a junior developer: incredibly helpful, but still in need of clear direction, review, and oversight. The duo also discuss the power and limitations of tools like GitHub Copilot, Claude, and Cursor, and how real productivity gains come only when these are paired with technical knowledge and thoughtful planning.

The discussion also explores the broader impact of AI on the SaaS landscape, including pricing models, startup costs, and investor expectations. Shanif explains how Nobi is navigating the shift from subscription-based models to usage-based pricing, particularly as API and infrastructure costs rise dramatically depending on the AI models used. He also notes the growing demand for self-hosted AI solutions from enterprise clients and shares his optimism for AI's role in amplifying—not replacing—human developers. Both founders underscore that, while AI is revolutionising product development, success still depends on the fundamentals: solving real problems, achieving product-market fit, and delivering measurable value.

Looking ahead, Shanif outlines Nobi’s ambitious roadmap. The team is working toward creating an integrated AI assistant capable of performing both sales and customer service functions within e-commerce platforms. As they gain traction with high-revenue clients, Shanif envisions a future where agents communicate and transact autonomously, drastically reducing human error and creating seamless shopping experiences. He also expresses excitement about emerging infrastructure like the Multi-Agent Collaboration Protocol (MCP) and hints at Nobi potentially becoming a key backend provider for agent-driven commerce. For now, Shanif is focused on scaling sustainably, bootstrapping where possible, generating revenue, and hiring strategically to meet growing demand.

#AIStartups #EcommerceInnovation #ProductMarketFit #StartupJourney #TechFounders #AITools #SaaSRevolution #DevReadyPodcast

In this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Anthony Sapountzis welcomes back Gareth Rydon, Co-Founder of Friyay.ai, for his fourth appearance on what’s fast becoming a regular monthly AI catch-up. Gareth, a seasoned product strategist and startup advisor with a passion for practical AI adoption, brings his signature insight and candour to a wide-ranging discussion. From hands-on use cases with Claude’s Gmail and Calendar integration to big-picture reflections on education, disruption, and the future of work, this episode offers something for tech leaders, builders, and business owners navigating the evolving AI landscape.

The conversation kicks off with Gareth sharing a “discovering fire” moment using Claude’s integration with Gmail and Google Calendar. Despite its limitations, the tool’s ability to categorise emails, find calendar gaps, and prioritise tasks significantly enhanced his productivity. This led into a broader discussion on how businesses are moving away from rigid, custom-built systems in favour of exploring AI-native capabilities within existing platforms like ChatGPT. Gareth and Anthony both highlight the need for teams to simply spend time using these tools, discovering how features like web search integration or native assistant functionalities can streamline daily work.

They also dive into the rising importance of making digital content discoverable by AI agents. As Gareth explains, businesses must begin optimising their web presence not just for Google SEO, but for what he calls “agent search”, ensuring tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity can extract, understand, and act on their content. Despite this being a clear gap in the digital marketing space, few agencies are actively tackling it. Anthony shares strategies around structured data and schema markup, reinforcing that the early adopters of agent optimisation will have a distinct advantage, at least before the landscape becomes monetised and competitive.

The episode then shifts to Model-Connected Plugins (MCPs) and how small businesses can tap into their potential without needing to code. Using examples like Shopify or Stripe integrations, Anthony explains how AI assistants can act on behalf of business owners by interacting directly with their tools. Gareth notes that this evolution in tech is empowering everyday people to take ideas further, faster; especially when combined with user-friendly automation tools like N8N. As he puts it, the time to get fluent with prompting and working alongside your digital assistant is now, not later.

In lighter but equally eye-opening moments, Gareth describes an experiment where he got different AI models: ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini—to critique each other’s writing. The resulting “prompt battle” showed just how rapidly these models are evolving and improving. From there, the conversation deepens into AI safety, with references to new guardrails in Claude, and even reports of companies preparing “AGI bunkers” to protect research teams. Both speakers agree that while we’re far from true Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), the trajectory is steep and public trust will hinge on how responsibly this tech is developed.

The discussion wraps with a thoughtful look at how AI is reshaping education, creativity, and economic opportunity. Referencing a post by Darren Coxon, Gareth questions the ROI of traditional degrees in an era where AI can teach and guide learners for a fraction of the cost. He and Anthony reflect on outdated university curricula, the skill of "learning to learn", and the future of work, from developers to labourers, facing increasing automation. With AI tools flooding the market and even Amazon capping eBook uploads due to AI content overload, Gareth ends with a grounded reminder: focus on what you can control today. Try one thing. Switch on an integration. Ask better questions. And above all, keep learning.

#AIforBusiness #SmallBizInnovation #FutureOfWork #ChatGPT #AgentOptimisation #TechDisruption #ProductivityTools #DevReadyPodcast

In this episode of the DevReady Podcast, host Anthony Sapountzis sits down with Sharbani Dhar, CEO of DotInfinity and a seasoned human-centred design expert with over two decades of experience. Sharbani shares her inspiring journey from a fulfilling corporate role at Australia Post to launching her own consultancy focused on strategic, design-led transformation. Motivated by a desire to truly own the problem-solving process, she stepped away from the security of a 9-to-5 role, driven by a passion for learning and a hunger for challenge. With support from her partner and mentors, she embraced the leap into entrepreneurship and has since built a business that thrives on delivering value through empathy, design thinking, and innovation.

Sharbani reflects on how her career has been guided by an unwavering commitment to learning. When work stops challenging her intellectually, it signals time for a change, something she encourages others to recognise in themselves. At DotInfinity, she’s created a space where learning is continuous and problem-solving is approached holistically. Rather than focusing on surface-level fixes, she champions end-to-end collaboration across teams to design solutions that align business goals with real human needs. She unpacks the essence of human-centred design as a way to solve the right problems by understanding the entire journey of both the customer and the internal stakeholders involved.

Through real-world examples, Sharbani illustrates how businesses often mistake symptoms for root causes. Drawing from her past experiences, she details how initiatives like reducing call centre volumes often miss the point by focusing on digital interfaces rather than underlying process failures and misaligned KPIs. True impact, she asserts, comes from empowering staff, aligning incentives, and redesigning systems from the ground up. Her insights reveal how thoughtful design leads to better outcomes for both employees and customers and ultimately, a healthier bottom line.

The conversation then shifts to the complexities of AI adoption. Sharbani highlights how many organisations rush into AI implementation without addressing data quality, infrastructure, or internal readiness. The result? Frustrating, low-impact solutions that rarely justify the investment. To combat this, she introduces the Responsible AI Canvas, a free, three-stage framework developed by DotInfinity to help businesses plan, assess, and govern AI projects responsibly. With guidance on data, ethics, stakeholder involvement, and human oversight, the tool ensures organisations don’t just adopt AI, but do it right.

Wrapping up, Sharbani outlines the foundational pillars of human-centred design: inclusion, empathy, iterative problem-solving, and the willingness to abandon ideas that no longer serve. She underscores the importance of external consultants who challenge assumptions rather than echoing them, serving as critical sounding boards rather than order-takers. By championing open collaboration and encouraging businesses to value outcomes over attachment to ideas, Sharbani leaves listeners with a powerful reminder: the best solutions are rarely the fastest, they’re the most human.

#AIReadiness #DesignThinking #HumanCentredDesign #TechLeadership #DigitalTransformation #InnovationStrategy #AIUX #StartupJourney

In this episode of the DevReady Podcast, host Anthony Sapountzis is joined by Miriam Wood, Men's Coach, Director at Miriam Wood Coaching, and Business Connector & Member Experience at BIO Australia. With a dynamic and eclectic career path spanning the fitness industry, events, tech, and coaching, Miriam brings a unique perspective on the intersection between technology, human connection, and personal growth. From supporting engineers during lockdown to helping midlife professionals rediscover purpose, Miriam's mission is to empower people with the tools to navigate life transitions and career change with clarity and confidence.

Miriam recounts her unconventional journey from managing nightclubs and working in the fitness world to marketing pharmacy software where she first fell in love with tech and the customer experience. Her curiosity led her to sit alongside developers to understand how products were built and how they ultimately served the wider community. That same drive to understand systems and people pushed her into coaching, a field where she could apply her interest in how people think, operate, and transform. During the pandemic, she was brought into a global managed services company not for her tech expertise, but to support engineers' wellbeing and performance, proving that empathy and insight are as critical to team success as any hard skill.

Transitioning into the tech space was not without its challenges. Miriam describes the difficulty of bridging communication gaps between herself and introverted, highly technical teams. However, this contrast became the catalyst for her passion: coaching men in midlife, many of whom were beginning to question what’s next after years of working in the same industry. Today, through her private coaching practice, Miriam helps clients navigate career and life changes by integrating wellbeing, mindset, and professional development. She highlights the importance of self-awareness and the role of major life events as powerful perspective shifters.

The conversation delves into common struggles faced by tech professionals moving into leadership or consulting roles, particularly the discomfort with communication, self-promotion, and sales. Miriam challenges the notion that sales is inherently “sleazy”, reframing it as helping people and solving problems through genuine conversations. She introduces frameworks like DISC profiling to help clients build emotional intelligence and adaptive communication skills. This, she argues, is the key to unlocking personal growth and leadership potential in a human-first tech culture.

In the final segment, Anthony and Miriam reflect on how small shifts in mindset can create profound change. Whether it's learning to speak up in meetings, overcoming imposter syndrome, or exploring a career pivot, they agree that progress starts with taking deliberate steps. Miriam encourages anyone feeling stuck to start with reflection, using AI tools, coaching, or even a trusted friend to map out values, blockers, and beliefs. From there, it’s about building a realistic, actionable plan that transforms confusion into clarity and momentum. As she puts it, no one climbs Everest in a day, but with the right plan and support, every mountain becomes scalable.

#CareerChange #TechLeadership #MindsetMatters #PersonalGrowth #MidlifeTransition #CoachingForMen #DevReadyPodcast