The New Talent Playbook Podcast

Rob Levin argues that growth requires choosing to be "rich," not "king": a founder has to give up control, build a strong hiring process, invest in culture, and stop being the bottleneck. He frames this as a leadership decision with real tradeoffs: more growth and leverage, or more control and a natural cap on scale.

Key Takeaways

• "Rich" means growth, shared decision-making, and a business that doesn't revolve around the founder.
• "King" means control and comfort, but it limits growth.
• To scale, leaders need strong hiring, a healthy culture, and the right people in the right roles.
• If someone is hurting the culture, they need to be addressed quickly.

Timestamps

(02:04) Rob says being rich requires good hiring, a strong culture, and the ability to remove people who bring others down.

(03:02) He explains the trade-offs: king caps growth; rich costs control and requires time, energy, and some money.

(04:05) He adds that the business cannot revolve around the founder and that leaders must accept decisions made by others.

(06:00) He says he was a bottleneck and then explains how Work Better Now was built with Andrew Cohen, with him focused on strategy and Andrew on operations.

(06:39) He describes building a leadership team, staying off the bottleneck path, and growing rapidly while maintaining culture and outcomes.

Other Resources

• Are You the Bottleneck? How to Stop Sabotaging Your Own Growth
• Owners Are Doing $25-an-Hour Work, And It's Costing Them Millions

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More About Rob Levin

Like this show? Click on over and subscribe to our YouTube channel! Follow Rob Levin on Substack. Out now! The New Talent Playbook: The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Dream Team 📕 Available on Amazon.

In this episode, Chris Cornelison breaks down how leaders build stronger teams by praising what they want repeated, writing culture down, and making accountability part of the system. He argues that recognition is not fluff; it is a practical lever for retention, performance, and focus. The conversation also covers the neuroscience behind praise, why specific recognition matters, and how to turn praise into a daily habit.

Key Takeaways

Culture starts with the leader. If you do not define it clearly, you default to drift.

Write culture down and use it early in hiring so expectations are visible from day one.

Praise what you want repeated. Recognition should be specific, frequent, and tied to company goals.

Public recognition creates memorable moments that strengthen connection and belonging.

Timestamps

02:21 The biggest culture mistake: leaders do not define culture clearly.

04:18 AI is accelerating work, which makes appreciation and leadership gaps more visible.

08:01 Rule one starts with the leader; rule four is accountability; rule five is protecting the culture.

14:01 The two biggest praise mistakes: not doing it enough and not being specific enough.

17:21 Leaders often stop praising high performers, which creates disengagement.

18:01 One-on-one praise versus public recognition.

Practical Moves for Leaders

• Define your culture in writing and make it part of hiring.
• Praise behavior that advances goals, not just generic effort.
• Use public recognition for major wins; use private praise to reinforce daily execution.
• Track praise until it becomes a management habit.

About The Guest

Chris Cornelison is the creator of Super Culture™, a five-rule framework that's helping organizations build high-performing, praise-driven cultures. He speaks on leadership, culture, and the power of praise, and he recently recorded a TEDx talk in Houston that's set to release soon on "The Power of Praise." He's also the CEO of SolutionsRx, a pharmacist-formulated supplement company based in Mississippi, where he applies the same principles of excellence and culture to the health and wellness industry.

More About Chris Cornelison

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn

Your next read: Super Culture™

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More About Rob Levin & WorkBetterNow

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Follow Rob Levin on Substack

Out now! The New Talent Playbook: The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Dream Team 📕 Available on Amazon or visit thenewtalentplaybook.com and get the free scorecard.

Rob Levin makes the case that remote work is becoming a talent requirement, not a nice-to-have. Using commute data and hiring trends, he argues that SMBs need to widen their talent pool, manage through KPIs, and build culture intentionally across distributed teams.

Key Takeaways

• Remote is a talent strategy: Commute friction is pushing candidates away from on-site roles.
• Location should not limit hiring: Nearshore and offshore are natural extensions of remote.
• Manage by outcomes: KPIs reviewed weekly are better than watching people work.
• Culture must be designed: A distributed team can still have a strong culture when leaders are intentional.

Timestamps

(01:03) Rob opens with a Monster commute report and says remote is something many companies will have to do.

(01:37) He shares the story of Marty Adelson requiring a 15-minute commute and points to how strongly people react to commuting.

(02:38) Rob cites hiring-market data: most new roles are still on-site, while remote jobs get more applications.

(04:28) He argues that remote expands the talent pool and that geography should not block access to great people.

(05:00) He says WorkBetterNow runs fully remote, uses KPIs weekly, and encourages companies to consider more remote roles.

Other Resources

• How to Make Remote Work at Your Company
• The Talent Game Has Changed: Who's Winning and Why
• More Business Owners Are Hiring Offshore. Here's What They've Figured Out.
• Five Ways to Widen Your Talent Pool

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More About Rob Levin & WorkBetterNow

Like this show? Click on over and subscribe to our YouTube channel! Follow Rob Levin on Substack. Out now! The New Talent Playbook: The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Dream Team 📕 Available on Amazon or visit thenewtalentplaybook.com and get the free scorecard.

In this episode, Rob Levin explains why offshore hiring is becoming a major topic for business owners right now. He points to four main drivers: it is harder to find great people locally, engagement and productivity are trending the wrong way, owners are increasingly unwilling to tolerate disengaged team members, and more peers are finding success with offshore talent. His message is practical: offshore should not be treated as a shortcut or a cheap labor play, but as an opportunity to raise talent quality, improve margins, and build one fully integrated team.

Key Takeaways

• Audit your open roles: define what "great" actually means for each one.
• Review engagement risks on your team: address low performance sooner.
• Design onboarding and communication: when working with offshore teams this is fundamental so everyone operates as one team.
• Evaluate hiring decisions based on capability and fit, not just cost: a bad hire costs you more than you can imagine.

Timestamps

02:12 It is getting harder to find great talent.

02:54 Gallup engagement data and why low engagement hurts the business.

04:47 Why business owners are stalling and how disengaged people drive offshore interest.

06:25 How to think about offshore as upgrading the team and integrating everyone together.

07:07 The "cheapest price or great talent?" mindset.

Other Resources

• 88% of Small Businesses Can't Find Qualified People. The Other 12% Are Doing This.
• 5 Steps to Much Better Hires and Stronger Results
• Why "Offshore Isn't For Us" Is Costing You More Than You Realize
• The Talent Game Has Changed: Who's Winning and Why
• The Remote Culture Playbook | Don Gregori

Turn today's conversation into a better team-shaping strategy. Download the free Action Kit.

More About Rob Levin & WorkBetterNow

Like this show? Click on over and subscribe to our YouTube channel! Follow Rob Levin on Substack. Out now! The New Talent Playbook: The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Dream Team 📕 Available on Amazon or visit thenewtalentplaybook.com and get the free scorecard.

In this episode of The New Talent Playbook Podcast, host Rob Levin argues that hiring decisions should be driven by outcomes, not hourly price. The cheapest hire can be the most expensive mistake when it creates rework, constant follow-up, and missed customer value. His core point: start with the opportunity a great person creates, then evaluate price in that context.

Key Takeaways

• Great talent is an investment, not a line-item to minimize: Stop optimizing for the cheapest hire and start asking what a great person makes possible for the business.
• Monthly cost is a more useful lens than annual salary when comparing hires: A monthly view makes the real return on a strong hire easier to see.
• The best people save leaders time, reduce mistakes, and improve customer experience: They are proactive, push the business forward, and remove the need for constant follow-up.
• Consider candidates who are stepping up from the next level: Someone ready for the next stretch may deliver strong value without carrying the highest price tag.

Timestamps

01:25 Are you buying the cheapest talent or the right talent?

02:49 Reframing hiring from annual budget to monthly cost and return on investment.

03:54 Rob explains what "great" looks like at the leadership level

04:25 The standard applies across the company: great managers and staff give time back, reduce follow-up, and keep the role out of the owner's head.

05:19 Strong customer-facing people keep promises and create referrals and repeat business.

06:45 Focus on opportunity first, then price.

Other Resources

• The talent problem AI won't solve – Part 1
• The talent problem AI won't solve – Part 2
• 5 Steps to Much Better Hires and Stronger Results
• Think Twice Before That Big-Company Hire
• Grow Your People, Grow What Your Company Can Do

Turn today's conversation into a better team-shaping strategy. Download the free Action Kit.

More About Rob Levin & WorkBetterNow

Like this show? Click on over and subscribe to our YouTube channel! Follow Rob Levin on Substack. Out now! The New Talent Playbook: The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Dream Team 📕 Available on Amazon or visit thenewtalentplaybook.com and get the free scorecard.

In this episode, Rob Levin sits down with Don Gregori, COO of First Factory, for a conversation about what it really takes to scale a company across locations without losing the culture, clarity, and trust that make it work. They dig into the operational side of growth, why people still drive every outcome, how leaders can build systems that stay sustainable, and what it means to keep adapting in an AI-shaped world.

Key Takeaways

• Growth does not just add headcount: it changes how leaders need to organize, communicate, and develop people.
• Culture has to evolve with the company: Don compares it to a Petri dish, when the organization gets bigger, you need new ingredients, stronger processes, and clearer expectations.
• Leaders should build sustainability into change: First decide how something should work, make it durable, then train someone else to own it.
• People are still the heartbeat of the company, even as automation and AI increase: The goal is fewer, better-skilled people who can move faster and stay adaptable.

Timestamps

03:29 Companies need to mature with more processes, policies, and clarity as it grows.

06:59 Flexibility is essential because if the company cannot adapt, it is out of business.

12:02 Transparency and trust help teams get through hard seasons together.

14:37 Stress control and the challenge of handling the volume of work created by AI.

21:47 Change is normal, growth happens outside the comfort zone, and the human element will matter even more.

About The Guest

Don Gregori is the Chief Operating Officer of First Factory, a multinational software solutions provider with operations in New York and Costa Rica. He is a certified AI business leader with more than 25 years of experience in product development, digital transformation, and AI adoption. He is also a contributing author to AI Journal and the author of The Emergent Leader.

More About Don Gregori

Connect with Don on LinkedIn

Your Next Read: The Emergent Leader

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More About Rob Levin & WorkBetterNow

Like this show? Click on over and subscribe to our YouTube channel!

Follow Rob Levin on Substack

Out now! The New Talent Playbook: The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Dream Team 📕 Available on Amazon or visit thenewtalentplaybook.com and get the free scorecard.

In this episode Bones Ijeoma has a practical conversation with Rob Levin about how leaders should think about AI inside a business. Bones Ijeoma does not frame AI as a magic shortcut or a replacement for leadership. Instead, he shows how to evaluate where AI fits, which work should stay human, and how to use automation and AI to improve an existing operating system rather than disrupt it. The discussion is especially relevant for founders and operators who want leverage without losing judgment, quality, or control.

Key Takeaways

• Start with the business constraint, not the tool: Begin by looking at the business level.
• Use automation for deterministic work and AI for reasoning: The best results come from pairing them deliberately.
• Keep humans in the loop where judgment matters: AI can take on high-volume work, but people should stay responsible for taste, nuance, relationships, and exception handling.
• Treat AI as a thought partner, not a fire-and-forget employee: Bones encourages using contrarian and blue-sky personas to pressure-test ideas.

Timestamps

02:13 Bones explains his three-engine framework: acquisition, delivery, and support/back office, and says AI should target the bottleneck first.

08:03 AI should be used as a thought partner. Bones assigns it different personas like contrarian, blue sky thinker, CEO, and product manager.

11:44 The rule for choosing the first AI use case: find the clearest payoff, the lowest risk, and the least damage if it fails.

16:51 How people shift from repeatable work into judgment, exceptions, and relationship-driven roles as AI takes on more routine tasks.

21:33 Warnings against outsourcing judgment to AI and says teams should improve systems they already use instead of trying to transform everything at once.

About the Guest

Bones Ijeoma is the founder and CEO of Allsafe Intelligence, where he helps businesses identify their highest-value AI opportunities and turn them into working systems. He also leads Allsafe IT, a two-time Inc. 5000 managed IT firm, which gives him a practical view of how systems perform in production before they ever reach clients. Bones sits at the intersection of strategy and execution, helping organizations move from "we should use AI" to a real roadmap with agents and workflows that create measurable business impact.

More About Bones Ijeoma

Connect with Bones on LinkedIn

Check out AllSafe Intelligence

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More About Rob Levin & WorkBetterNow

Like this show? Click on over and subscribe to our YouTube channel! Follow Rob Levin on Substack. Out now! The New Talent Playbook: The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Dream Team 📕 Available on Amazon or visit thenewtalentplaybook.com and get the free scorecard.

In this part 2 episode with Jeff Hyman, Rob Levin about what it really takes to hire better people. The conversation centers on candidate experience, authenticity, project-based interviews, the true cost of mishires, and why leaders need a clear hiring process instead of relying on instinct alone.

Key Takeaways

• Treat hiring like a system, not a reaction: Build a repeatable process so every hire is deliberate, not rushed.
• Design the candidate experience to match the actual job and culture: Make the process reflect the real day-to-day experience, not an idealized version.
• Use a final-stage project to reduce surprises before the offer is signed: Give finalists a real-world project so both sides can confirm fit before committing.
• Measure hiring decisions in ROI, not just compensation: A slightly higher salary can be a better investment than a cheaper hire that becomes a costly mistake.

Timestamps

01:35 Using projects as a strategy to surface surprises before the offer is signed.

04:25 The candidate experience matters because candidates are your first customers.

07:01 Top performers can name their price; the wrong hire can cost far more than salary.

09:16 Budget pressure can push leaders toward B players and create a long-term ROI problem.

15:25 Holding onto a B player sends the wrong message across the organization.

19:47 Having a process puts you ahead of most companies.

About the Guest

Jeff Hyman is a veteran executive talent acquisition expert, serial entrepreneur, and the author of Recruit Rockstars. He has built four companies backed by $50 million in venture capital, placed more than 4,000 top performers, and regularly shares his thinking in outlets like CNBC, Inc. Magazine, Fortune, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal.

More About Jeff Hyman

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn

Your Next Read Recruit Rockstars

Turn today's conversation into a better team-shaping strategy. Download the free Action Kit.

More About Rob Levin & WorkBetterNow

Like this show? Click on over and subscribe to our YouTube channel! Follow Rob Levin on Substack. Out now! The New Talent Playbook: The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Dream Team 📕 Available on Amazon or visit thenewtalentplaybook.com and get the free scorecard.

In this episode Rob Levin sits down with Jeff Hyman. The conversation centers on why people remain the biggest differentiator in business, even as AI makes technology easier to copy. Jeff explains why most leaders overestimate their hiring ability, why culture matters as much as role fit, and why interviews are a weak predictor unless they are structured and disciplined. For founders and business owners, the message is clear: hiring is not a side task: it is a core lever for performance.

Listen to part 2 of this conversation here

Key Takeaways

• Talent is now the biggest competitive advantage: The companies that win will be the ones with people who can learn faster, adapt faster, and ask better questions.
• AI raises the bar on human judgment: As technology becomes easier to copy, the quality of your team matters more, not less.
• Culture and role fit must both be weighted: Jeff makes the case for judging candidates on both ability and organizational DNA, not just skills.
• Structured interviews beat gut feel: Interviewing should be repeatable, disciplined, and science-driven instead of casual or improvisational.

Timestamps

02:18 — Hiring and retention have changed dramatically, especially in the last six months with AI screening which allows the expansion of the candidate pool and changing expectations.

07:48 — Talent selection is the number one driver of success and a leading cause of business failure.

12:07 — The real differentiator is people: teams that learn, iterate, and analyze faster than competitors.

13:40 — Why should culture and role fit each count for 50%.

19:24 — The best way to know if a person is a good long-term hire is a project. When you see them in action on their day-to-day you're able to see how they perform

About the Guest

Jeff Hyman is a veteran executive talent acquisition expert, serial entrepreneur, and the author of Recruit Rockstars. He has built four companies backed by $50 million in venture capital, placed more than 4,000 top performers, and regularly shares his thinking in outlets like CNBC, Inc. Magazine, Fortune, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal.

More About Jeff Hyman

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn

Your Next Read Recruit Rockstars

Turn today's conversation into a better team-shaping strategy. Download the free Action Kit.

More About Rob Levin & WorkBetterNow

Like this show? Click on over and subscribe to our YouTube channel! Follow Rob Levin on Substack. Out now! The New Talent Playbook: The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Dream Team 📕 Available on Amazon or visit thenewtalentplaybook.com and get the free scorecard.

Rob Levin makes a clear case that the challenge for founders and CEOs is not simply change itself, but the number of simultaneous changes hitting the business at once: buyers are buying differently, talent expectations have shifted, regulations are moving, and AI is reshaping how work gets done. The leaders who win will review strategy more often, protect time for high-value thinking, and decide quickly what capabilities the company needs next.

Key Takeaways

• Audit what's changing across buyers, talent, and operations: Don't look at market shifts in isolation. Buyers are buying differently, talent expectations have shifted, and laws, regulations, and technology are all moving at the same time.
• Protect time for high-value thinking: The CEO's job includes thinking about change at a macro level. If you don't create time for that work, urgent tasks will crowd it out.
• Decide what capabilities you need, then source them deliberately: Once you know what's changed, ask whether the skill should be built internally, bought through a consultant or hire, or developed through upskilling.
• Use AI and modern tools for precision, not just speed: The episode's point is not simply to move faster. It's to use tools like AI to target better, make smarter decisions, and improve execution quality.

Episode Highlights

00:56 — How buyer behavior has changed, especially in B2B, and why marketing and sales must adapt.

03:10 — Leaders must "harness change" or risk being harnessed by it.

05:22 — Strategy and change management usually sit inside the CEO's unique ability and should be reviewed quarterly, not annually.

06:05 — Leaders must protect time for high-payoff work instead of getting buried in urgency.

08:59 — The most important starting point is the CEO's own time, focus, and ability to think strategically.

Turn today's conversation into a better team-shaping strategy. Download the free Action Kit.

More About Rob Levin & WorkBetterNow

Like this show? Click on over and subscribe to our YouTube channel! Follow Rob Levin on Substack. Out now! The New Talent Playbook: The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Dream Team 📕 Available on Amazon or visit thenewtalentplaybook.com and get the free scorecard.