When did you say ”THAT’S IT! I’VE HAD IT!”? Time to Disrupt and Interrupt with host Karla Jo. Every week KJ interviews professionals who are disrupting their industries and altering economic networks that have been antiquated with bull-headed predecessors holding up the progress. KJ delves into uncovering more from industry rebels and innovators that you didn’t know you needed in your life.
Episodes
Thursday Sep 29, 2022
Thursday Sep 29, 2022
Shane Anastasi has been working in project management for over 40 years. Now, as the CEO and Founder of PS Principles — an organization focused on helping service providers and their customers achieve more successful outcomes from implementation projects — Anastasi is disrupting the way in which professionals approach project management.
Through his own professional experiences and his willingness to push the envelope, Anastasi is transitioning away from the age-old approach to project management. Now, Anastasi is leading the way in training a new generation of project management leaders to approach projects with a higher level of transparency, encouraging tough conversations and improved decision-making.
Key takeaways
- When it comes to the main ingredient of disruption, the intent must be kept pure. Too often, people become distracted by the excitement of the disruption itself. Thinking up new ideas and revolutionizing methods is only as successful as the focus on the pure intent of the disruption.
- Historically, project management has upheld the tenant that projects must be on time and on budget. However, this fails to encapsulate the intent of what a customer-facing project needs to achieve. The pure intent of the project has been lost.
- Project management strategies that are being applied in the world of software development and tech are standards handed down by the construction industry. While these strategies make sense when applied to construction projects, they begin to fall apart when you try to directly apply them to software development. There are simply more unknowns in tech development than in constructing a bridge.
- Customers will force project managers into feeling guilty for not meeting their expectations, and project managers are not being taught how to deal with that. As such, project managers are basically trained from day one that the objective of a project is to stay on time and on budget.
- Projects in software development are actually journeys of discovery. No project actually knows what it’s doing when it starts. It has a very feebly worked out idea based on the loose requirements that a customer provides when they know nothing about the realities of trying to execute that thing.
- It is critical for project managers today to set the tone for a project from the start, showcasing to customers how projects are a learning journey. Decisions about budget and time will need to be continually made as a project progresses. This changes the mentality of a customer and their expectations.
- With the right, pure intent at the core, a new approach to project management is not about trying to gain more money or more time from a customer, but rather ensuring that the end result of the project brings value to the customer.
Quote of the show:
10:43 “People don’t really care about time, as much as we say that they do, because at the end, what they want is a quality outcome... And if we focus on time, and I've seen this before in post-project reviews, I’ve seen teams basically say to me, we gave the customer a crap result because what they wanted was the deadline. And when I asked, did you go back and ask them about that choice? Which is it that you want? The answer is always no.”
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaneanastasi/
Company Website: https://www.psprinciples.com/
Ways to Tune In:
Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption
Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755
Google Play - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGlzcnVwdGlvbmludGVycnVwdGlvbi5jb20vZmVlZC54bWw
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD
Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/disruption-interruption
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf2zbLqmHtSHQ7u1V-Is8cA
Friday Sep 23, 2022
Friday Sep 23, 2022
At age 19, Lauren Randall was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. Her doctor told her she would be on medications for the rest of her life. Refusing to accept the life sentence, Lauren became the CEO of her own healthcare. She researched all the information she could and made radical lifestyle changes. After six months, the disease had disappeared.
Lauren’s experience drove her to a career in employee health benefits, where she consults with CFOs and CHROs on their people and risk strategies to get the best care and rates possible. She does this while meeting cutting-edge needs such as addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace and providing value and mission-aligned benefits to attract and keep top talent.
Key takeaways
- Over 50% of Americans have a chronic illness. The whole concept of insurance is that the many will take care of the few, and that starts to erode if all of us are carrying chronic conditions. That is one reason we struggle to maintain healthcare costs.
- The insurance industry has changed over the past 30 years. The Affordable Care Act added layers of compliance and penalties that changed the landscape for employers and insurance brokers. It created a need for analytics that wasn’t necessary before.
- Technology can serve the health benefits industry in several ways. It helps estimate costs and identify quality service providers. It can help measure the impact of the benefits plan and give employers and brokers insight into how to support employees in better health and productivity. It can also help employers and brokers identify benefits that attract and keep the specific demographic of talent they need the most.
- For example, attracting highly qualified women into a predominately male industry may include offering things like rich fertility benefits, childcare benefits, and equal paternity leave.
- Productivity during the pandemic was higher for employers with employees who aligned with the mission and vision of the organization.
- The mission and vision, and culture of your organization can drive lifestyle outcomes, maybe more than a wellness program, but they’re all tied together. Creating a culture around taking care of people can go a long way toward improving productivity, reducing stress, and decreasing burnout.
- You may not be a doctor. You may not have an M.D., but you are the only one who can make decisions about your own health. If one in three knee surgeries are unnecessary, are you getting a second opinion? There are programs we can implement with employers to allow employees to get world-class, peer-reviewed second opinions.
- You must be CEO of your own health because nobody else has the same skin in the game.
Quote from the show:
8:56 “20% of America’s GDP is healthcare. It’s this big sort of behemoth that encapsulates everything from private equity to hospitals and providers to our government. Everybody, including brokers, has their hand in the pot of this profit center. And that creates a lot of inefficiencies and waste...”
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenrandall1/
Company Website: https://www.marshmma.com/us/home.html
Women to Women Exchange: https://www.womentowomenexchange.com/
Ways to Tune In:
Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption
Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755
Google Play - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGlzcnVwdGlvbmludGVycnVwdGlvbi5jb20vZmVlZC54bWw
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD
Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/disruption-interruption
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf2zbLqmHtSHQ7u1V-Is8cA
Thursday Sep 15, 2022
Thursday Sep 15, 2022
Deep Trikannad, a former sales engineer, pivoted away from his role and started his journey into disruption when he experienced firsthand the frustrations around how productivity and quality are measured in the world of sales. Now, Trikannad is disrupting the status quo by using a new technology that combines data science and business intelligence to provide leaders with better insights into who their top performers are.
Key Takeaways
- There are all kinds of inefficiency in business with respect to the process. A one-size-fits-all approach often leads to business mediocracy.
- Currently, there is a lack of true insight into sales rep performance. For example, is a higher performing rep leaning too much on product marketing? How much is the rep individually bringing to the table? And how much are they leaning on other people in the organization?
- Collaboration in sales is not a bad thing. There is, in fact, a sweet spot for the right amount of collaboration, both internally and externally. The key is how does one measure this?
- Typically, the data that sales leaders use are lagging indicators, such as revenue or closed deals. The problem is that when a sales rep is struggling, sales management doesn’t know they’re struggling until the quarter hits and the lagging indicators are measured.
- Sales teams are still using the status quo to measure success. Management is looking at calls, emails, and simple touchpoints. They aren’t peeling the onion back and trying to figure out the quality of those touchpoints.
- Another key factor that indicates the success of a salesperson is the hierarchy of their contacts. For example, getting a janitor on the phone is easier than getting the CEO on the phone. Therefore, measuring a hundred calls with the janitor is not really an indicator of success.
- The future of measuring sales success is one in which business owners and leaders are looking to see what total contribution an employee is making to the company rather than measuring performance-based metrics alone.
- Becoming a successful sales rep is similar to getting to the top of a mountain. There are multiple paths to get there.
- Most underperforming employees do not want to be poor performers. They are simply lacking the road map they need to become a top performer, which is where the right data sets can help leaders leverage every employee’s strengths and help them overcome their weaknesses before it becomes an end-of-the-quarter sales number discussion.
Quote of the show:
15:47 “Unfortunately it happened to me, which is how I founded Acceledgy. Like I was on the losing end of a political battle. And because of that, I left. After I left, I was thinking this was the third time that happened to me in my 24 years. This is common. If it’s happening to me, it’s happening to everybody. And it’s hurting the business. When someone who’s a high contributor is making a strong impact when they leave, it’s hurtful to the business.”
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deeptrikannad/
Company Website: https://www.acceledgy.com/
Ways to Tune In:
Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption
Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755
Google Play - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGlzcnVwdGlvbmludGVycnVwdGlvbi5jb20vZmVlZC54bWw
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD
Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/disruption-interruption
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf2zbLqmHtSHQ7u1V-Is8cA
Thursday Sep 08, 2022
Thursday Sep 08, 2022
Neeraj Satija has been an innovative disruptor for more than 25 years. With extensive startup experience in many countries, including the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, and Saudi Arabia, Satija is a passionate technology leader, constantly looking for ways to push past the status quo. Now, Satija and his co-founders are building financial products people are familiar with, but in the metaverse — powered by both digital assets within and outside of the metaverse. Through this innovative technology, Satija is ultimately on the path to providing financial education to consumers while also offering improved transparency in the management of consumer financial data.
Key Takeaways
- One of Satija’s core beliefs around disruptive innovation is that it should be something that propels a space forward while helping humanity.
- Throughout his career, Satija has been driven by the urge to educate customers by demystifying some of the most complex concepts.
- The current status quo of financial services is that they are still very centralized. There is usually a middleman — or a number of middlemen — in between the customer and the service provider.
- Middlemen are sometimes a legal requirement, but most often are simply there to facilitate trade and make it easy for the end customers. Because financial literacy is poor, end users are reliant upon middlemen.
- Centralized financial services are error-prone and time-consuming. While consumers need to be offered these products and services, the controls remain with centralized entities. This allows these entities to jack up prices when they feel like it and allows them to have access to more of a customer’s data than they need. Additionally, there is a lack of disclosure around how that data is being sold and shared with third parties, including marketing agencies.
- Control is not with the customer. It’s a lopsided equation.
- Decentralization of financial services means that there is no centralized entity. Two peers, the customer, and the service provider can now deal with each other directly without needing a middleman. Each person decides who gets to access their data and how much of that data needs to be accessed.
- Decentralization is at the foundation of the new metaverse. Instead of viewing the internet as a collection of different websites, apps, and micro sites, the metaverse envisions a virtual world which is interactive. It’s 3D and places each user at the center of that universe. Because it’s built on blockchain technology, the metaverse will allow users to take their assets with them wherever they go.
- He sees the metaverse as the perfect opportunity to create a company where all the financial products and services that he wants to offer to customers are available in a transparent way that simultaneously enables learning.
Quote of the show:
42:40 “It’s not like this is something hidden, or this is not a secret sauce, but when you apply those principles of educating your customers of being fair to customers and your partners and your employees and yourself… When you apply those principles, you build a business where your brand represents trust. It represents openness and transparency. And that invariably leads to customers coming along and customers sticking to you. And customers then bring their friends and family into the fold…”
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neerajsatija/
Company Website: https://lucrisma.com/
Ways to Tune In:
Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption
Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755
Google Play - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGlzcnVwdGlvbmludGVycnVwdGlvbi5jb20vZmVlZC54bWw
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD
Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/disruption-interruption
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf2zbLqmHtSHQ7u1V-Is8cA
Thursday Aug 25, 2022
Thursday Aug 25, 2022
Laura Munkholm has been a yoga teacher, studio manager, and studio owner who knows firsthand both the joys of helping people improve their lives and the technical and business challenges faced by boutique fitness studios. She and her Walla co-founder integrate their passion for fitness with cutting-edge behavioral psychology research and technology tools to empower studio owners and teachers to attract and retain motivated clients.
Key Takeaways
- Existing studio software is not equipped to handle the complexity of the fitness business. Studio owners struggle to get the data they need to understand the profitability of individual classes, students, and teachers.
- Few people understand how complex many fitness business models are. Clients can select from various packages, each with a different per-class rate. Many studios offer a free unlimited period to attract new clients. Without detailed attendance and profitability tracking, it’s impossible to understand the financial impact of many business decisions.
- COVID transformed consumer expectations, and now 60% want a hybrid approach that allows them to take classes at the studio or online. This further complicates the tech demands on each studio owner.
- Without better insight into what motivated individuals to stick with a program, studios relied on discounts and deals. These have limited benefits and can be difficult to sustain financially.
- There’s a whole behavioral psychology movement around fitness, wellness, nutrition practices, and how people can ultimately create a habit.
- Skillpower is a company that worked with leading behavioral psychology researchers from MIT, Stanford, and Penn State because changing your nutrition, fitness, and wellness habits is a mental effort before it’s a physical one. These researchers identified four personality types that are each motivated differently.
- Walla integrates this research into its studio software. Clients take the survey. Teachers can see each student’s photo and profile and use it to communicate more effectively. Studios can adapt their marketing to match the individual’s motivation style.
- Another pain point for studio owners is easy access to critical data. They need to track the profitability of individual classes, teachers, and students to inform important decisions. Existing software makes this data collection very challenging. Walla brings it all to you.
Quote of the show:
10:27 “Can we adopt this [behavioral psychology research] in a boutique fitness studio when people are walking through the door? And the answer is absolutely because it’s really based on customization, how you communicate, and how you motivate the individual. And we all need different types of motivation… It’s not necessarily what makes [clients] go to the gym. It’s what makes them come back [and] what makes them stick with it. That’s the challenge. So that’s the key.”
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauramunkholm/
Company Website: https://www.hellowalla.com/
Ways to Tune In:
Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption
Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755
Google Play - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGlzcnVwdGlvbmludGVycnVwdGlvbi5jb20vZmVlZC54bWw
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD
Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/disruption-interruption
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf2zbLqmHtSHQ7u1V-Is8cA
Thursday Aug 18, 2022
Thursday Aug 18, 2022
Dimitri Yatsenko, CEO of DataJoint, already had an M.S. in Computational Engineering and Science (University of Utah) when he got his Ph.D. in Neuroscience (Baylor College of Medicine). This put him in a unique position to solve a significant challenge in neuroscience research.
The data neuroscientists have collected on the brain exceeds the technology, resources, and frameworks available to analyze and model it. To maximize the data’s potential, they need to collaborate across departments and teams. With DataJoint, Dimitri delivers a solution to bridge social and technical gaps in the research process.
Key Takeaways
- Obama’s 2013 Brain Initiative has directed a lot of research into mapping the brain, but neuroscientists now have to apply and model that data to understand the live brain and how it functions.
- Neuroscientists have historically worked alone, but the tsunami of data now available and the complexities of the problems being solved require they collaborate across departments and teams.
- Without a comprehensive framework for data analysis, collaboration, and communication, much of the software engineering and systems engineering falls on graduate students.
- When a graduate student leaves a project, continuity is lost because someone else has to come in and understand what they were doing and may not be looking at the same problem or taking the same approach.
- Neuroscience can help solve several severe medical problems, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, depression, and traumatic brain injury. However, the research is hindered by a lack of continuity in modeling, collaboration, and data analysis.
- The process of repeatedly engineering frameworks for data analysis drives up research costs through inefficiency.
- Understanding the brain requires a systematic approach to data and modeling.
- A commercial company can provide researchers with the tools and technology they need to execute things more efficiently and effectively. They can provide computation as a service, rather than having each lab reproduce the same computation with graduate students.
- A commercial approach can provide continuous fluidity in one unified framework.
- DataJoint started as an open-source project and evolved as different neuroscience teams adopted it in their labs.
- Using DataJoint for collaborative, multi-institutional projects, researchers can organize a computational data pipeline that spans multiple labs.
- DataJoint is cloud-compatible, containerized, and web-accessible so that it can be deployed across multiple labs simultaneously. In this way, it bridges both the social and technical gaps currently limiting neuroscience research.
Quote of the show:
20:16 “The only way we can solve the brain is … to bring the molecular people, the computational people, [and] the electrophysiology people into … solving the same problem.”
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dimitriyatsenko/
Company Website: https://www.datajoint.com/
Ways to Tune In:
Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption
Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755
Google Play - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGlzcnVwdGlvbmludGVycnVwdGlvbi5jb20vZmVlZC54bWw
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD
Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/disruption-interruption
YouTube - https://youtu.be/pbP9a8YYHJ4
Thursday Aug 11, 2022
Thursday Aug 11, 2022
With a background in business and investment banking, Oleg Teterin is ready to transform the biotech and anti-aging industries using AI to track 400+ essential health parameters. The emerging technology of AI has been applied to marketing, business, and software tasks, but it can also help individuals avoid disease and prolong their lives.
With his global startup, Longevity InTime, Oleg and his team of engineers and scientists are adding to 50+ years of G20 big data to amass the smartest, most complete online diagnosis technology to detect the early stages of diseases. Their goal is to help prolong individual lives to 95 to 120 years of happy, functional experience.
Key Takeaways
- Each person’s health risks include genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors that the average individual or medical professional cannot accurately track.
- Diagnostic and blood tests are often expensive and only examine up to around 20 factors, while AI technology can track over 400.
- Even with diagnostic equipment and experience, doctors can make mistakes, miss problems until they progress, or diagnose incorrectly.
- AI powered with vast, global data and an individual’s medical history can aid doctors in their analysis and provide a valuable second opinion.
- By tracking over 400 factors and applying an individual’s medical and genetic history, an AI database can make 100% personalized predictions.
- What you don’t know about your health can kill you. Medical institutions are not implementing lifetime health tracking in the way current technology can.
- Predictive technology will help people live longer, healthier lives and reduce healthcare and insurance expenses.
- Oleg Teterin and his group are developing a longevity scientific resort in the Maldives. Customers will be able to visit for a month of scientifically based, longevity-focused treatments.
- The longevity tracking software is available through a mobile app to make it easy and accessible to people worldwide.
Quote of the Show:
36:35 “Lots of scientists are … losing this war with death. They’re underfunded... nations and governments … don’t understand that they need to invest in that. … So our mission is to make our own healthy life [and] earn on it, [so we can] invest the fruits of these revenues into fundamental science to get the product, which can really extend life.”
Links:
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/olegteterin
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TETERINOLEG
Website: https://t.me/LongevityInTime
Ways to Tune In:
Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption
Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755
Google Play - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGlzcnVwdGlvbmludGVycnVwdGlvbi5jb20vZmVlZC54bWw
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD
Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/disruption-interruption
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf2zbLqmHtSHQ7u1V-Is8cA
Thursday Aug 04, 2022
Thursday Aug 04, 2022
With more than 20 years of experience leading global organizations, Ray McKenzie knows a thing or two about workflow management, operational inefficiencies, and digital transformation.
The founder of Red Beach Advisors and StartingPoint, McKenzie, works with private and public sector organizations to optimize performance and drive transformation in all areas of business. His workflow management and customer operations platform are changing the way companies connect and support their clients and employees.
Key Takeaways
- STATUS QUO: The phrase, “This is how we’ve always done it,” creates an environment that lacks innovation and hinders the forward progress of a business.
- The problem with doing things the way we’ve always done them is that technology disruption keeps happening, and things change too rapidly in today’s society. You set yourself back if you don’t keep up with the pace.
- Innovation and disruption are happening across almost every industry, in part because customers want newer products, and they want them faster and easier to use.
- Adapting to changes doesn’t always require massive organizational restructure. Sometimes a quick fix is enough to shift practice, move quicker, innovate systems, expand markets, and pass the competition.
- Small companies can implement change more easily, and they’re developing and experimenting with technologies that can launch them to the front of the competition.
- The challenge for small businesses is overcoming their natural disadvantage when competing in the marketplace. They don’t always have the tools they need or the time to develop them.
- StartingPoint’s workflow management platform lets clients and team members of small- to mid-sized companies see all activity on an account, upload files, ask questions, and manage tasks.
- More than a project management platform, it combines service management ticketing, workflow automation, file storage, and CRM in a streamlined platform that can be set up in 20 minutes. There’s nothing to code, and everything can be done in five clicks or less.
- Companies are looking for ways to do more with fewer people, while employees want better work/life balance. If they can save two hours a week completing tasks at work, they have two more hours to spend with the people and activities they love.
- People want to be more productive and work more efficiently. The four-day work week is gaining traction, and companies want to keep employees happy while still meeting the needs of the customer and client.
- The good news is that there's always an easier, more efficient way to do things and achieve better results.
Quote of the Show
37:59 – “Employers almost have to equip their employees with the right tools to be successful, so they’re not spinning their wheels or doing as many redundant tasks. Instead of it taking 30 minutes, we could do this in three minutes, and so employees dictate what needs to happen inside of companies.”
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondmckenzie/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RayMc209
Website: https://www.startingpoint.ai/
Ways to Tune In:
Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption
Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755
Google Play - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGlzcnVwdGlvbmludGVycnVwdGlvbi5jb20vZmVlZC54bWw
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD
Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/disruption-interruption
YouTube - https://youtu.be/pbP9a8YYHJ4
Thursday Jul 28, 2022
Thursday Jul 28, 2022
Researcher, data scientist, and founder of a FinTech program, Arnav Sheth, started working as an economist with Deloitte Tax on September 15, 2008 (also known as the day Lehman crashed). Since then, Sheth has worked as a tenured professor, startup advisor, and director of a finance program. Now he’s using statistical and machine learning techniques to make predictions about financial markets.
Key Takeaways
- STATUS QUO: People believe that mathematical models and machine learning tools will be able to predict everything, including financial markets.
- Right now, the financial markets are being disrupted by rising interest rates, fears of a recession, COVID supply chain issues, and war. None of these are conducive to smoothly functioning markets.
- Tiny changes within a big machine have secondary and tertiary effects that change the whole machine. Over time, the entire machine becomes new.
- The current war affecting the markets is unlike other recent wars we’ve experienced. Ukraine is strategically located, and the world depends on key commodities that come from the country. Every war is different, but this one is a little more disruptive and has precipitated other fears.
- Most asset managers fail to perform. A small number of people can truly beat the market consistently over long periods of time.
- The U.S. markets have generally returned around 10-12% depending on how it’s measured—and that’s amazing. Some years it’s up 40%, while some years it’s down 40%, but few people can do better than that.
- The markets are what they are and imposing our own views on them makes us bad investors. Just because something is successful in one area doesn’t mean it will have the same success in another area.
- One current question is whether it’s possible to predict where we are in a business cycle. Twenty years ago, Microsoft was a growth stock, while today it’s a value stock. Knowing where we are in the business cycle may help people know what to do with investments.
- Everybody has a system for beating the market, but they can only do it for a short period in a specific area. Once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s not a profitable opportunity anymore.
Quote of the Show
13:36 – “People had this belief that these mathematical models, these machine learning tools are going to predict everything. They’re going to change the world. They’re very powerful tools. We have computational power that we’ve never had before, but it’s not magic because of the human element. We cannot predict the way humans will behave in large groups.”
Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnavsheth/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/arnavsheth
Website: https://www.arnavsheth.net/
Ways to Tune In
Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption
Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755
Google Play - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGlzcnVwdGlvbmludGVycnVwdGlvbi5jb20vZmVlZC54bWw
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD
Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/disruption-interruption
YouTube - https://youtu.be/pbP9a8YYHJ4
Thursday Jul 21, 2022
Thursday Jul 21, 2022
Today's guest, Daniel Powers Jr., has been a disruptor for over 20 years. With a passion for helping others access music education, Powers has been on a mission to provide students with access to customized, results-driven instruction. As a result of the pandemic, he was forced to pivot from running a brick-and-mortar business to an online one, becoming part of the digital disruption of online education. During this interview, Powers shares how he carved out his own unique space in a crowded online market.
Key Takeaways
- To differentiate, it's imperative to be unique. Even in a market such as music instruction, where being unique is difficult, being a disruptor means finding the opportunity to stand out and provide a wholly different experience.
- With the pandemic came immense change. For those who are willing, this change has turned into an incredible opportunity to pivot business models and create a unique value.
- Simply relocating a business model to an online version wasn’t enough for Powers and his team. Everyone was moving online, which resulted in turning his business into the same service as every other online music school. From this, Powers saw an opportunity to create his own platform, a key differentiator in a crowded market.
- Through the unique platform designed for Real Brave Audio, students can now access a whole curriculum custom-made for their goals. Not only that, but this platform has empowered students by documenting their progress, providing a visible path for students to see.
- The homeschool market has grown immensely in the past few years, with around five million children being homeschooled. This has led Powers to embark on a mission to find those five million students and help them learn music through a powerful platform that delivers real results.
- A key differentiator for Real Brave Audio has been centralizing the learning process into one platform. While many online education systems require instructors to jump from one technology channel to the next, the Real Brave Audio platform has created a cohesive and all-encompassing experience for both student and teacher.
- Mirroring his own journey into music, Powers wanted to design a space where students could easily interact with instructors—learning through the process of recording their own practice. This platform is changing how students, young and old, can access the incredible benefits of music.
Quote of the show:
14:43 “ ... The road to riches for me is always paved with punches in the face.”
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danpowersjr/
Company Website: realbraveaudio.com
Ways to Tune In:
Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption
Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755
Google Play - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGlzcnVwdGlvbmludGVycnVwdGlvbi5jb20vZmVlZC54bWw
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD
Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/disruption-interruption
YouTube - https://youtu.be/pbP9a8YYHJ4