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One of our favorite topics we keep coming back to is Environmental, Social, and Governance, or  (ESG). It’s come up as a critical topic for many companies over the last few years since investors are demanding more from the firms they do business with. There’s a lot of data that shows consumers care, too—and so do regulators.

To learn more and hear a different perspective on the importance of ESG, I wanted to turn to Tim Clover. He’s the CEO and Founder of Australia-based Glow, an online research platform, often compared to SurveyMonkey on steroids. For Tim, it is about a lot more than just creating surveys. It is about the whole workflow for research.

 We talk to Tim about ESG, its impact on consumer perceptions and brand loyalty, greenwashing and the relatively new term of greenhushing, differing consumer expectations from one market to another, and how ESG has the potential to change how we do business in the longterm. I really enjoyed this conversation and I think you will too, so let’s jump right in.

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There are some things that have been part of society forever—like selling. And the art of persuasion. But how are those things changing in the wake of new technologies like automation and AI? Are these very human skills now obsolete—or more useful than ever?

To figure that out, we thought we’d turn to Colin Coggins and Garrett Brown. They teach  Sales Mindset for Entrepreneurs at USC Marshall School of Business, and they’ve written a new book,  THE UNSOLD MINDSET: Redefining What It Means to Sell. It’s a great book that's helpful for people who sell, which is all of us. 

This book isn’t just for people who have a career in sales. We spoke to Colin and Garett about the emotional mindset of great salespeople, if the qualities that make a good salesperson are changing, and the role that technology is playing in transforming sales—and if that’s for the better or the worse.

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We first had the chance to interview Bradley Tusk a few years ago—right before COVID lockdowns, in fact. He’s a well-known venture capitalist, political strategist, philanthropist, and writer who helped Uber break into a number of key markets in the early part of last decade, and now he invests in startups that face regulatory hurdles. 

Given that regulation has been in the news quite a bit lately, I wanted to catch up with him and have a wide-ranging discussion on Section 230—an important part of a 1996 law that created the internet as we know it, what the FTC’s role should be in reining in major platforms like Twitter and if it’s too partisan of an organization, and how better access to the ballot box might actually lead to tech policies that better reflect how most Americans feel.

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Fraud. It’s all around us. Enough so that it got me thinking: has it always been that way? Is it getting worse? 

To that end, I wanted to speak to Kelly Richmond Pope. She’s the Barry Jay Epstein Endowed Professor of Forensic Accounting at DePaul University in Chicago. Pope's research on executive misconduct culminated in directing and producing the award-winning documentary, All the Queen's Horses, which explores the largest municipal fraud in US history. She’s been called one of the twenty-five Most Powerful Women in Accounting.

We discuss some of Kelly's new book, Fool Me Once, which you can purchase here: https://www.amazon.com/Fool-Me-Once-Trillion-Dollar-Industry/dp/1647823919

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With all the talk in the tech community lately around AI, it’s important not to forget the role of actual human beings on the future of the global economy. To dive into that, I wanted to speak to Tony Jamous. Tony founded Oyster, a global employment platform, to help companies everywhere hire people anywhere. Oyster itself is a fully distributed company and has as of last year achieved unicorn status.

Tony’s view that everyone should be able to participate in the global economy regardless of where they live and he’s passionate about discussing the untapped potential within the labor market--one with 90M unfulfilled jobs resulting in $8.5T in economic loss--that can be met through global employment. With 1.5B knowledge workers joining the economy in the next 10 years, Tony’s….a strong perspective on the future of work.

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Years after companies spend millions of dollars on digital transformations, their investors ask why there's no return on investment. It’s not that digital transformations are a waste, but that companies haven't designed them to maximize value. They overpay and get no payback. I’ve worked at companies who might fall into that category, so I know the struggle is real!

In a fantastic, incredibly useful book that came out in December, Digital Transformation Payday: Navigate the Hype, Lower the Risks, Increase Return on Investments, Tim Bottke, senior Strategy Partner at Monitor Deloitte and Associate Professor for Strategy and Digital Transformation at SDA Bocconi business school—that’s one of Europe’s top B-Schools for all you Americans out there—delivers a provocative new perspective on digital business transformation—using research to get beyond the hype and uncover its real financial payback.

This is a book that gives you a legit framework for defining a company’s next digital transformation effort end to end to ensure maximum return on investment and value—and I loved that Tim wrote this book with a very specific audience in mind who know how critical digital transformation is to developing the future state of a company.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play - and make sure to follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn!

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We’ve been talking about AI quite a bit lately, and for good reason: you guys are clearly interested in it. And there’s been so much talk about ChatGPT, but one of the things that’s crystal clear about AI is it has the power to transform so many things about our society, including the way consumers receive customer support. That’s why I wanted to turn to the one, the only, Deon Nicholas.

Deon is the CEO and co-founder of Forethought, the AI company whose mission is to transform customer experiences with human-centered AI. Forethought has raised over $100 million in venture capital, including from NEA, which led Forethought’s $9.52 million Series A.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play - and make sure to follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn!

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Gregory Galant is the cofounder and CEO of Muck Rack, the software platform that enables thousands of organizations including Google, Golin and Duolingo to find the right journalists to pitch, report on media coverage and prove the value of their work. He is also the co-creator and executive producer of The Shorty Awards, which honor the best of social media. 

We speak to Greg today about what PR is meant to do, how it can be better in the future, how journalism is changing, and how AI can change content marketing and writing in the future. 

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There’s been so much talk of AI of late. I think when ChatGPT came on the scene towards the end of 2022, it inspired so much curiosity and concern. And of course, intangible AI has the potential to be hugely impactful—but what about when you combine the power of AI with robotics? Does that become even more exciting or more terrifying to you?

To help illuminate the topic, I wanted to turn to Dor Skuler. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Intuition Robotics. The company's award-winning product, ElliQ, is a proactive care companion for older adults. His company has won several awards for its work with ElliQ including Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies and the CES Best of Innovation award. 

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Over the last few years I’ve seen a greater amount of focus on how much meat we consume as a society—and what the environmental impacts of all that consumption are.

Because of that, we wanted to turn to George Peppou. George is co-founder and CEO of food-tech startup, Vow, which aims to produce meat that is better than the meat we eat today, creating tantalizing and unique culinary experiences. 

Vow does this by culturing the cells of animals, from both species we eat today and those we could never farm, creating a range of cell ingredients which can be turned into a wide variety of products – all produced using the same manufacturing process. 

George began his career as a chef while studying biochemistry at the University of Sydney. George is a serial entrepreneur and inventor, with over 30 patents granted.

We discuss cultured meat, the benefits of cell-grown meat, what's going to happen to this market longterm, and the regulatory problems that govern this emerging market.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play - and make sure to follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn!