The Digital Diaries Hosted by Peter Woods

Almost every executive will tell you they are committed to AI. Very few organisations are actually being transformed by it. So what is really happening in the gap between what leaders say about AI and what they do? This week, Pete sits down with Dr Victoria Mensch, Founder and CEO of the Silicon Valley Executive Academy. With a PhD in Psychology, an MBA from UC Berkeley and over 25 years in Silico...

Episode Overview Jimi Gibson spent 25 years as a professional magician before becoming VP of Brand Communication at Thrive Internet Marketing Agency. In this episode he explains why that pivot makes more sense than it sounds: the structure of a magic trick and the structure of a marketing message activate the same psychology, built on curiosity, anticipation and a satisfying close. The conversatio...

Episode Summary What happens when the smartest people in the room still can’t make a decision? In this episode of The Digital Diaries , Peter Woods speaks with Rujuta Singh, founder of Solve Together, about the hidden human challenges behind business transformation, AI adoption, and organisational change. Rujuta shares how her experience leading complex transformations across global organisations...

Episode Overview Partner programmes are the invisible infrastructure behind most enterprise software revenue, yet they rarely get airtime. In this episode, Pete talks to Joanne John, who spent over nine years at Salesforce moving from incident management through partner operations into transformational change leadership, about what partner success actually means, how AI is reshaping partner progra...

Episode overview David Homan has spent more than a decade building a private community of over two thousand connectors, founders, family offices and impact investors. In this conversation with PeteWoods, he explains why he eventually decided the analogue version of his work needed an AI engine behind it — and how that became SOAR Connect, his relationship intelligence platform currently in beta. I...

Episode Overview Joshua Gould is Group CEO of thebigword, one of the world's largest language service providers, handling around 50,000 assignments a day across translation, interpreting and localisation. He took the company through a majority private equity sale, stayed on to run it, and has spent the last few years rebuilding the business around AI orchestration, automated workflows and the Word...

Episode Overview One in eight ads running across the internet today containsmalware. Most marketing teams have no idea. In this episode, Pete talks to Pamela Slea, CEO of Boltive and a two-decade veteran of ad tech, about the invisible security and privacy risks baked into modern digital advertising and why AI is making the problem dramatically worse.   Pamela has led at Google, YouTube, AppNexus,...

Rich Smith has spent 30 years as a CMO inside financial services, healthcare, and mortgage — managing $100M+ budgets and leading companies through crisis, hyper-growth, and turnaround. He is the founder of Rich M. Smith Growth Studio and host of The Revenue Science Podcast. In this episode, Rich and Pete pull apart why most companies jump straight to tactics without a strategy behind them, what be...

Episode Overview Michael Kalinichenko has earned six promotions across a decade in SaaS, leading high-performing sales teams atIntercom, Zendesk, and Rieke — all while maintaining under 10% voluntary attrition across seven years of management. Before tech, he was selling Swiss-made luxury watches in one of the most relationship-driven, paper-based industries imaginable.   In this conversation, Mic...

EPISODE OVERVIEW Kevin Patrick has spent over 30 years in operations, manufacturing and enterprise technology. He has led more than 120 SAP Business One deployments, launched a brand new Acumatica practice that generated $2 million in revenue within 17 months, and earned Softengine the Acumatica Rookie of the Year award at the 2025 Summit. Today, through his company Trinity One Consulting, he work...

EPISODE OVERVIEW Most leadership frameworks were built for a world that no longer exists. Jon Dario has spent over three decades operating at the sharpest end of retail — from managing the flagship Gap store on 34th Street in Manhattan to overseeing $1.7 billion in operations across North America for Travelex, to sitting in the CEO chair of a 60-property real estate portfolio. Along the way, he ke...

Sjoerd Bak spent 18 years in SaaS sales, including a successful run at Salesforce in the Benelux region — earning well above the national average and yet constantly feeling broke. That frustration became the catalyst for a complete career transformation. Now a qualified financial advisor (and studying to become a certified financial planner), Sjoerd helps tech professionals — zero commissions, zer...

Episode Summary In this episode, Pete sits down with Hiten Sonpal, CEO of Rise Robotics — an MIT-founded, Techstars-incubated company building belt hydraulic actuators that are more than three times more energy efficient than traditional hydraulics. Before Rise, Hiten spent 16 years at iRobot across two distinct careers: leading the government robotics division (shipping 1,200 bomb-disposal robots...

Ryan Charles scaled a bootstrapped startup from $1M to $20M and led a successful exit. He shares his growth marketing systems, leadership lessons and what comes next. Episode Overview Ryan Charles has lived almost every chapter of the modern business playbook — from industrial engineer on a production floor, to leading growth at a bootstrapped startup, to navigating the chaos of a 300-person publi...

orbes 30 Under 30 honouree Tyler Hochman, founder of SafeStop and Four, shares how AI is transforming engineering output, why execution beats ideas, and the three skills every modern founder needs. Episode Overview Tyler Hochman started his entrepreneurial journey cutting and selling gems in high school. By his junior year at Stanford, he had launched his first company. Since then he has co-founde...

The Knowledge Economy Has Collapsed: Maeve Ferguson on the IP to Proprietary Data TransitionEpisode Overview For years, building a course, packaging your expertise and selling your knowledge online was the playbook. Maeve Ferguson says that playbook is finished. Featured in Forbes and founder of Maeve Ferguson Consulting, Maeve is a former financial advisor and private equity operator who spent ye...

Justin Shriber of Terrat explains how AI revenue agents are transforming B2B sales forecasting, deal execution and personalisation, and what the future of the CRO role looks like. Episode Overview After nearly three decades leading go-to-market at Oracle, LinkedIn, Siebel and People.ai, Justin Shriber has seen every wave of enterprise software transformation. But he says AI agents feel categorical...

Logan Yonavjak co-raised $85M in institutional capital, built 250+ investor networks, and kept seeing the same problem: great strategy, wrong people. Now she's using behavioural science and AI to measure what actually predicts leadership success — before the stakes get too high. Episode Overview Most business failures aren't strategy problems. They're people problems. That's the pa...

Brendan Norman of Classify explains why contextual intelligence beats raw data, how the agentic web is reshaping advertising, and what digital trust really means in 2025. Why Context Beats Data: Brendan Norman on the Agentic Web, AI Advertising and Digital TrustEpisode Overview Most of the conversation around AI focuses on data — who someone is, what they've clicked, what they've bought. B...

Victor Varnado is a creative technologist, comedian, filmmaker, and founder of Supreme Robot — a studio building projects that sit at the intersection of culture, technology, and social impact. In this episode of The Digital Diaries , we explore what it actually means to create in a world where everyone has tools, platforms, and opinions — but very few are willing to build. Victor shares hard-earn...

AI Without Losing Your Human Edge (A conversation with Jenna Nelson) Are small businesses about to be left behind by AI — or are they uniquely positioned to win? In this episode of The Digital Diaries , Peter Woods sits down with AI strategist and brand consultant Jenna Nelson to unpack one of the most urgent questions facing founders today: how to adopt AI without losing trust, authenticity, or y...

What does real, sustainable growth look like — beyond tactics and noise? In this episode of The Digital Diaries , Peter Woods sits down with Neil Ateem , founder of Multiplier Agency, to unpack what actually drives scale in subscription businesses. Neil has helped generate over $300M in revenue across SaaS, fintech, online education, and digital products. He previously led subscription growth at M...

What if the reason growth feels hard isn’t because you’re missing a tactic — but because the structure you’re operating inside is broken ? In this episode of The Digital Diaries , Peter Woods sits down with Justin Michael , executive coach and bestselling author of The Frame , to unpack why most revenue and performance problems aren’t tactical at all — they’re structural. Justin challenges the hus...

Panelists Neda Jawad | CEO & Founder of Itremai Jamie McGrane | GTM and Leadership Advisor Rishi Sharma | Head of Sales & Revenue Enebalement at Stout Summary In this conversation, Rishi Sharma emphasizes the critical role of leadership in driving organizational change, particularly in the context of CRM usage. He discusses the importance of a systematic approach to logging activities and...

Summary In this episode, Dr. Tamara Patzer discusses the intersection of AI, visibility, and trust in the digital age. She introduces the concept of AI suggestibility, emphasising the importance of permanent records and digital identity. The conversation explores the challenges of merging identities in AI, the significance of building trust online, and the role of media literacy. Dr. Patzer shares...