Sebastian D. P. Hidalgo is usually the one asking questions. Being on the other side of the mic threw him for about ten seconds.

I went through his SWAT sales training last year, and it changed how I have every conversation, including the ones with no offer at the end. Most of it is nervous system work. Ask the question. Then shut up.

He got certified in hostage negotiation at 18. A decade later he sat in a psychological operations class run by a former special-ops guy and realized he’d been telling himself he was bad at sales while closing deals the whole time. He’d been taught by the wrong people. SWAT (Sales With Advanced Tactics) is what he built from the three things he knew: business, negotiation, and influence.

Then we left sales behind for a while and talked about the water we’re all swimming in.

Some of what we cover:

* Influence versus manipulation: same tools, opposite reasons. The line is “can I actually help this person?”

* Sales as service, and the ethical obligation to close when you can and to walk away when you can’t.

* Two TikToks: the one China’s kids get and the one we get.

* Inoculation: how one extreme idea gets planted between ten reasonable ones until it sprouts.

* The manosphere as a case study, and why distribution mattered more than the message.

* Slogans as perfect inoculation. Specific enough to adopt, vague enough to pour yourself into.

* His rule: when a piece of news makes you feel something you can’t control, step back. You’re being worked.

* Rage-posting feeds the machine. Muting words is a political act.

* The AI narrative from the inside: which layoffs are about AI and which are about 2021 overhiring wearing an AI costume.

* ”Maybe AI will save us.” When the internet is bots talking to bots, people go outside.

* Treat the LLM like a pen. When it breaks, get another one.

* On hope: “If you want hope, be hope.”

Sebastian leans conservative. I lean liberal. We disagreed on mic and it was fine.

About Sebastian

Sebastian D. P. Hidalgo is a sales trainer, human behavior specialist, and Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder of DURINDAL. He is one of the few civilians in the world to have received training in both hostage negotiation and psychological operations. He speaks five languages, has lived on two continents, and has been responsible for unlocking deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars for clients. SWAT, Sales With Advanced Tactics, is his hostage-negotiation-based sales method, built on influence, diagnosis, failure mapping, and value alignment.

Links

DURINDAL: durindal.comLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sebastian-dp-hidalgoEmail: [email protected]: medium.com/@sebastian_77597

Recorded March 23, 2026. This episode contains some strong language.

Be Rebellious ❤️‍🔥In Solidarity ✊

Nicholas Whitakerrebellioncollective.com

If you want to see where your capacity is actually leaking, I built a short diagnostic called the Capacity Audit. Ten minutes. Four variables. Take it at capacityaudit.rebellioncollective.com.

If you want to do this work in community, the Rebellion Collective is where we practice it together. rebellioncollective.com/community

Thanks for reading Field Notes From The Rebellion! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Field Notes From The Rebellion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I talked to Joseph the day before this and he called himself a raging optimist. Josh calls himself a chosen one. I’m somewhere back in the tragic-optimist camp with Viktor Frankl. Between the three of us we might add up to one hopeful person.

Josh Allan Dykstra grew up a classically trained pianist, wanted to be a rock star, and has spent the last twenty years in what he calls the make-work-not-suck industry. Organizations spend $400 billion a year on that problem. Nobody has fixed it. His argument is that they can’t, because the fix is a different story about what the whole thing is for, and no program can install that.

This is the most philosophical conversation of the first batch. It’s also the one I’d hand a stranger first.

Some of what we cover:

* Rebels are always optimists. You can’t fight for a future you don’t believe in.

* Appreciative inquiry, the OG AI: start by imagining what would be life-giving, then move toward it. Whatever picture of the future you hold, that’s the one you drift toward.

* The motorcycle rule. Look at the ditch and you’ll ride into it.

* Mike Morrison’s coin: me on one side, we on the other. Most of us fixate on the side that energizes us and forget it’s the same coin.

* Isms tell you what they value in the name. Capitalism cares about capital. That’s a job description.

* Josh’s exit ramp: let capitalism run wild on the things we want (iPhones, weird restaurants) and build a commons for the things we need (water, medicine, care, education).

* Neoliberalism explained in one sentence: “government sucks, privatize everything,” told to us for fifty years.

* Elysium as the techno-feudal picture, and why the unpaid labor you do for LinkedIn is a small version of it.

* Janine Benyus: “We need to change what we desire.”

* The fourth turning. Every 80 to 100 years, a crisis, then a rebirth. Josh’s bet is five to ten years out, and his ask is that we plant seeds now so there’s a vision ready when the moment comes.

About Josh

Josh Allan Dykstra is an optimistic futurist and keynote speaker who cuts through the hype and helps leaders make sense of what’s next so they can make better decisions today. He focuses on AI, change, and the future of work, hosts the weekly Hello Tomorrow podcast and YouTube channel, and is the author of Igniting the Invisible Tribe. He’s at work on his second book.

Links

Website: joshallan.comHello Tomorrow podcast: hellotomorrowpodcast.com (also on Apple, Spotify, and youtube.com/@joshallandykstra)LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joshallanBook: Igniting the Invisible Tribe

Mentioned: Howe and Strauss, The Fourth Turning; Janine Benyus, Biomimicry; the film Elysium.

Recorded April 2, 2026. This episode contains some strong language.

Be Rebellious ❤️‍🔥In Solidarity ✊

Nicholas Whitakerrebellioncollective.com

If you want to see where your capacity is actually leaking, I built a short diagnostic called the Capacity Audit. Ten minutes. Four variables. Take it at capacityaudit.rebellioncollective.com.

If you want to do this work in community, the Rebellion Collective is where we practice it together. rebellioncollective.com/community

Thanks for reading Field Notes From The Rebellion! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Field Notes From The Rebellion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

My layoff email came at 3 a.m. Oracle’s came at 6. Joseph and I were joking about which is worse before we hit record, and then we stopped joking.

Joseph Logan is a friend, a fellow Coloradan, and the person I read when I want the numbers behind the feeling. He publishes a monthly AI job displacement report on Substack. A year ago his model said the acceleration would start in early 2026 while everyone else was saying three to four years. He rebuilt the model over and over trying to make it say something else. It wouldn’t.

So we recorded on April Fools’ Day, the day after the model stopped being theoretical, and talked about what it’s like to be one of the 30,000 sitting at the kitchen table asking “what now?”

Some of what we cover:

* Why grief can’t be abbreviated, and why the loss goes past the paycheck to identity and purpose.

* ”Not this” as the first honest answer most people find, and what comes after it.

* Horses to cars, electricity in one house on the block, and why the shape of work changes every time the tools do.

* Two precedents: the GI Bill (six to eight years, transformative) and the Rust Belt (no happy face to put on it). Which one we get depends on us.

* Red Rocks was a WPA project. We build beautiful things together after periods of strife. Does it have to work that way?

* The end of the dependence contract: with employers, with government, with anyone we’ve been waiting on for permission.

* Joseph’s dinner-party prediction: jobs as the defining issue of this year’s midterms by August or September.

* Radical self-reliance versus the playa providing. Why the Burning Man ethos only works because of the second half.

We have half a dozen more topics queued. He’ll be back.

About Joseph

Joseph Logan reads structural signals, the forces already in motion beneath the surface. A former executive coach with 17 years of strategic coaching and leadership experience, he now publishes research on AI job displacement, the post-wage economy, higher education, and disruption in the coaching industry. His Substack, The Expansion Effect, carries a monthly AI job displacement report timed to the BLS release. He lives in Colorado.

Links

The Expansion Effect (Substack): expansioneffect.comWebsite: josephlogan.comLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/josephloganMentioned: Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength; Ray Dalio on historical cycles; Harry Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands; the Human Innovation Institute; Rafe Furst, “The 2028 Aliveness Economy”.

Recorded April 1, 2026. This episode contains some strong language.

Be Rebellious ❤️‍🔥In Solidarity ✊

Nicholas Whitakerrebellioncollective.com

If you want to see where your capacity is actually leaking, I built a short diagnostic called the Capacity Audit. Ten minutes. Four variables. Take it at capacityaudit.rebellioncollective.com.

If you want to do this work in community, the Rebellion Collective is where we practice it together. rebellioncollective.com/community

Thanks for reading Field Notes From The Rebellion! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Field Notes From The Rebellion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Beck showed up wearing an ampersand on their chest. Their thesis: People-hearted and business-minded. We’ve been friends for a while. This is the first time we’ve hit record.

Beck spends most of their days teaching leaders to regulate their own nervous systems, and they say the words “nervous system” in a room and watch people get nervous. So we went there. The wiring we have was built for a different world. Most people are operating dysregulated most of the time, and most workplace dysfunction is downstream of that. Beck’s answer is small and portable: practices you can do in thirty seconds, anywhere, that nobody around you will notice. They call it “home.base”. I call it arriving.

Some of what we cover:

Hide and seek as a model for adult life, and how everyone forgot the best part of the game.”If I was keeping up, I wouldn’t be doing it right.” Nobody is keeping up. Not with any number of AI agents running.The full stress cycle we’re stuck in: fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and the one that shows up when you’ve pushed too hard for too long, flop.Destination regulation (cold plunge, vacation, the gym) versus the regulation you need right here, right now.Why the prompt worth perfecting is the one you ask yourself: what’s going on?Freedom as something you can only stack in small moments, and why “I’ll feel free when the company sells” never arrives.Julie Penner, breakfast, and the case for walking up to your heroes and asking if they want to be friends.

Beck’s definition of presence is the best one I’ve heard. It’s the episode title. It has a swear in it.

About Beck

Beck Sydow (they/them) is the founder of HumanKind Business Leaders, a business advisory and leadership coaching practice built on being people-hearted and business-minded. Before that they were CEO of StickerGiant, a 130-person hyper-growth manufacturing company named a Forbes Small Giant. Beck works with founders, co-founders, and senior leadership teams, and teaches home.base practices, short portable ways to regulate your nervous system in the middle of a working day. They live in Boulder, Colorado.

Links

HumanKind Business Leaders: humankindbusinessleaders.com (free infographics: People-Hearted & Business-Minded, and home.base Practices for Leaders)LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/becksydowMentioned: Viktor Frankl on tragic optimism. “We create our worst suffering by wishing things were different.”

Recorded April 1, 2026. This episode contains some strong language.

Be Rebellious ❤️‍🔥In Solidarity ✊

Nicholas Whitakerrebellioncollective.com

If you want to see where your capacity is actually leaking, I built a short diagnostic called the Capacity Audit. Ten minutes. Four variables. Take it at capacityaudit.rebellioncollective.com.

If you want to do this work in community, the Rebellion Collective is where we practice it together. rebellioncollective.com/community

Thanks for reading Field Notes From The Rebellion! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Field Notes From The Rebellion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Nick Richtsmeier’s mic died thirty seconds into this one. We started over. It was a Monday.

I’ve been following Nick on LinkedIn for a long time. He’s one of a small number of people there who writes like the platform isn’t watching, and his work on what he calls Trust-Made Growth lines up almost exactly with what I do one person at a time: get your time, energy, and attention back from systems that were built to take them.

We talk about why he’s stopped arguing “AI bad, humans good” and started asking a harder question: what if you didn’t have to lean on these systems at all? His answer is small, deliberate, and old-fashioned. Micro-economies. Networks of people two degrees away from everything you need. Businesses that treat the algorithm as a place to meet people, then leave.

Some of what we cover:

* Why “networks exist but pipelines don’t,” and what that does to your sales strategy if you take it seriously.

* The war-on-drugs analogy for AI adoption: by the time someone is outsourcing their thinking, the system around them already failed.

* Cultural volatility as the water we’re swimming in, and why pendulum swings don’t mean much when the boat is rocking every day.

* Gen Z turning 30 this year and what they will and won’t put up with from brands.

* ”Tactical chunking” versus actual strategy, and why the first step (knowing where you are today) takes most leaders forever.

* Loneliness, anxiety, and mental overload as the three things nearly every client is carrying, and how anything that pushes against one of them is a win.

* His last word on hope: “If you’re looking for it, it’s everywhere.”

Nick and I are going to keep talking. Consider this part one.

About Nick

Nick Richtsmeier is the creator of Trust-Made Growth and the founder of CultureCraft, a strategic advisory firm working with founder-led and relationship-driven companies. He’s spent 25 years at the intersection of culture, commerce, and leadership, long enough to watch the Extractive Game and Trustbroken Economy it created claim otherwise good ventures run by otherwise good people. His new book, The Damn Rules: How Vulnerability, Inefficiency, and Love Liberate Leaders from the Trustbroken Economy, was published September 15, 2026 by Interregna Press. He hosts the Damns Given podcast and newsletter, advises a select number of firms through CultureCraft, and operates Lexicon Farms, an experiential and retreat practice for leaders and communities.

Links

Damns Given newsletter and podcast: damnsgiven.comTrust-Made Growth community: trustmadegrowth.comCultureCraft: culturecraft.comThe Damn Rules (out now): books2read.com/thedamnrulesMentioned: Ben Smith, Traffic; Cory Doctorow on enshittification.

Recorded March 23, 2026. This episode contains some strong language.

Be Rebellious ❤️‍🔥In Solidarity ✊

Nicholas Whitakerrebellioncollective.com

If you want to see where your capacity is actually leaking, I built a short diagnostic called the Capacity Audit. Ten minutes. Four variables. Take it at capacityaudit.rebellioncollective.com.

If you want to do this work in community, the Rebellion Collective is where we practice it together. rebellioncollective.com/community

Thanks for reading Field Notes From The Rebellion! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Field Notes From The Rebellion is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.