CardCast

Every growing company has more than one thing that needs fixing. Cash is tighter than it should be, execution still runs through the CEO, the leadership team is not quite right, and the strategy lives in one person’s head. All of it matters. The hard part is knowing which lever to pull next . That question shaped our first in-person CardCast, recorded in Whistler with Shannon Susko, founder of Met...

Ask a CEO which customers are profitable, and you will usually get an answer about revenue. They know who spends the most, they know who has been around the longest, and they know who is easiest to work with. What most cannot tell you is which of those relationships actually make money once you count everything it takes to serve them . It sounds like a simple question. That is what makes it uncomf...

I read an article the other day from a cafe owner who was six months in and still losing money. Their question was: What are we doing wrong? I couldn't tell you from the outside, but I know that you'd better figure it out before you invest more and try to scale. Otherwise, you’ll end up losing money on every sale and hoping volume will make up for it. This card started with a conversation...

"Given where the company is, we don't really have the luxury of a full hiring process." A CEO said that to me while hiring a CTO. His company was already in a difficult spot, and this was the person meant to pull them out of it. It stopped me cold. You cannot afford not to do it. Get this hire wrong, and it might be the end of the company . The point of the process isn't finding...

Strategy is probably the most misused term in my industry. Everything is "strategy." Yet ask a CEO "what is your strategy?" and you’ll rarely get a good answer.  Ged has a story that captures the problem perfectly. He'd just kicked off with a new leadership team, and the CEO kept telling him the same thing: don't spend time on strategy, we're already aligned.   So G...

Today, myself, Ged, and our very special guest, Louis Retief, attempted to define what trust really is. Aaaaaand I'm not sure we managed it. However, Louis was the right person to attempt it with. I've known him since 2020, from his years as founder and CEO of Hubly, a company he took from founding all the way to exit. For Louis, trust is a topic he's been living, not theorizing. He op...

You bring in a coach because you want different results, but you won't get those results with the same behavior. Something needs to change, and that starts with learning something new . It's why I look at whether a CEO is a learner before anything else. If they're not learning, they're probably not coachable, and there is no helping them. Simple as that. The shuffle gave us somethi...

I suggest hiring an assistant quite often. And almost every time, I get the same collection of excuses back. We're too small. I can't afford it. Cash flow is tight. And my favourite: I'm not that kind of CEO. As if only assholes have assistants. But there's one excuse that tells me more than all the others combined: I don't have time to teach them what I do. Let that sink in fo...

Most people who say they want a coach don't actually want a coach. They want someone who has been where they are, who knows the industry, who has solved the specific problem in front of them right now, and can just tell them what to do. That's an advisor. A consultant, maybe. Not a coach. A coach doesn't show up knowing the answers. A coach shows up knowing the questions. The ones that...

You do not need to know every step before you begin. That sounds obvious, but it is one of the places leaders get stuck most often. We want the full picture before we make the first move. We want every priority mapped, every risk solved, every decision validated, and every possible outcome accounted for. Then we call it being strategic. Often, it is just analysis paralysis . This card is called Th...

Language is one of the most powerful tools a leader has. Not because it makes you sound polished, but because it shapes what happens next. A small shift can change the whole conversation. “I disagree” creates defensiveness. “Help me understand” creates discovery. “We can’t do that,” shuts the door. “What would need to be true?” opens it. “I have to” carries reluctance. “I get to” carries possibili...

People love to hate meetings.  Most meetings start late. The purpose is unclear. People arrive unprepared. Decisions do not get made. Actions do not get followed up on, and everyone leaves wondering why they were there in the first place. But meetings are not the problem; bad meetings are the problem . This is why the Meeting Cadence card matters. A good meeting rhythm gives every kind of conversa...

Most companies do not really imagine the future. They look at last year’s numbers, add 8%, 10%, maybe 12%, and call it a strategic plan. But that is not CEO's vision. That is arithmetic. This is why the card Imagining the Future matters so much to me. As a CEO, your job is not simply to manage what already exists. Your job is to see what does not exist yet. To imagine where the organization co...

I used to think “ Luxury To Waste Time ”  sounded like something a CEO had to earn. Something you got to do once the inbox was empty, the team was aligned, the fires were out, and the business was finally running smoothly. But of course, that day rarely comes. There is always another message, another meeting, another customer issue, another decision waiting for attention. And somewhere along the w...

I used to think meeting prep was just the responsible thing to do before a meeting. Read the dashboard. Check the agenda. Know your numbers. Show up ready. Useful, but not exactly profound. Then Damien Burn said something years ago that I have repeated more times than I can count: “I didn’t have time to prepare for a short meeting, so we are going to have a long one.” That line stuck with me becau...

I keep coming back to one simple hiring question:  What DON’T you want to do? It sounds simple, but in a job interview, it can reveal what a polished resume never will. Most interviews focus on what someone is good at, what they’ve achieved, and what they want next. But this question flips the conversation. It asks for the truth behind the performance. That’s what I love about this card. It doesn’...

Welcome back to CardCast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Reframe. There’s a moment I keep noticing in everyday scenarios where everything just stops… And it usually sounds like, “We can’t do that.” And the second that lands, the room changes, and the energy drops. It’s like we’ve all agreed to shut the door without even checking if it’s locked. That’s where Reframe steps in. Instead of acc...

Welcome back to CardCast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Prioritization. There’s a phrase that sounds harmless… but quietly wrecks more progress than almost anything else: “I didn’t have time.” It’s insane how often that line slips out without being questioned. It feels true. It feels justified. But when you actually stop and look at it, it’s rarely accurate. Because the truth is a lot les...

Are we debating or are we deciding? That is the question. Welcome back to CardCast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Big Debate vs Big Decisions. This card takes me back to every meeting that somehow ends with… “let’s circle back.” It’s not because the team is lazy, but because no one ever decided what the meeting was actually for. The Big Debate, Big Decisions card draws a sharp (and surpri...

Welcome back to CardCast! Today, we’re going to be talking about The Impossible Goal. This card takes me back to a moment where something felt completely impossible: realizing the night before a flight that both my kids’ passports had expired. For a second, our trip was over… But then it wasn’t about options anymore. There was only one question: Is there a way? And there was. We didn’t have time t...

Welcome back to CardCast! Today, we’re going to be talking about The Don’t Do List. We’re all great at building to-do lists. Adding. Expanding… But is anyone intentional about stopping ? And that’s where the real leverage is. Because every low-value task we keep doing isn’t neutral, it’s actively stealing time and energy from something better . That’s the real cost. Not what we’re doing… but what...

Welcome back to CardCast! Today's episode sees us joined by our second guest, Carter Jensen , and the topic couldn’t be more relevant today: Everything A.I. This episode brings three AI cards together: AI, Not How, How to AI, and Value of AI. AI isn’t just another hype cycle like past tech trends; it’s a fundamental shift. The real divide isn’t between companies using AI and those that aren’t;...

Welcome back to CardCast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Metric Ownership. For a long time, metrics have been treated as something that simply exists. A number on a dashboard. A graph trending up or down. Useful, yes, but passive. Something you observe, and maybe even predict. But ownership changes that entirely. A metric is no longer just reporting what’s happening; it’s telling someone w...

Welcome back to CardCast! Today, we’re doing something a little different. Instead of exploring a single card, we’re talking about two: The Art of Slowing (TF) Down and The Cost of Hesitation. At first glance, these cards are about opposite problems. One warns against rushing decisions under pressure, while the other highlights the damage caused when decisions are delayed until the opportunity has...

Welcome back to CardCast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Lovable Losers and the Other Ones. This is a concept I first heard from Greg Crabtree, who paired it with another memorable term: “terrorists.” Unfortunately, that title didn’t play nicely with search algorithms, but the idea behind it is still incredibly useful. These labels describe two very different, yet equally difficult leaders...