solving the money problem podcast

What’s Your Problem? Introducing What’s Your Problem

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Former Planet Money host Jacob Goldstein talks to entrepreneurs and engineers about how they’ll change the world — once they solve a few problems. Coming March 17th.

Jacob Goldstein

Jacob Goldstein spent more than a decade as co-host of the Planet Money podcast. He's also the author of the book Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing, which the New…

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20 Best Problem Solving Podcasts of 2021

Are you wanting to learn more about problem solving? Well you’ve come to the right place. This is a curated list of the best problem solving podcasts of 2021.

We have selected these podcasts for a variety of reasons, but they are all well worth a listen. We tried to select a variety of podcasts across the spectrum from hosts with a wide breadth of experience.

We are always keen to hear your feedback, if we have missed a podcast, tweet us @MagazineWelp and we will check it out!

Best Problem Solving Podcasts 2021

With thanks to ListenNotes , Crunchbase , SemRush and Ahrefs for providing the data to create and rank these podcasts.

Solving Problems

• Publisher : Jonathan Carone
• Total Episodes : 7

We talk about the real communication problems your church is facing and give you practicals steps to solve them. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

• ListenNotes
• Listen on iTunes

Lets Crack It {Problem Solving}

• Publisher : Eoin OHanlon

Complex Problem Solving is listed in the top 5 Skills for every career there is in 2020 (Source World Economic Forum 2016). Yet there is a lack of everyday language and discussion for a topic that is so widespread in every part of our lives. The purpose of the Lets Crack It PodCast is to tell stories related to problem solving. Stories that invite you to think and spin up the mental cogs about the topic in such a way that you consider it worthy of your time.

The Driven To Draw Podcast: Self Improvement|Painting|Drawing|Visual Problem Solving|Unleashing the Creativity Within!

• Publisher : Arvind Ramkrishna/Designer/Artist/Engineer

The Driven to Draw Podcast will teach you how to solve problems visually, think outside the box, build your confidence, generate ideas, and innovate. You’ll hear from top creative artists, designers, engineers, and photographers who share their techniques to create products, broaden their creative abilities, and share the benefits of thinking visually. No matter your background or area of expertise, Driven to Draw will be your constant motivator to help you become your best…and Unleash the Creative Within!

(Podcast) Thinking Skills and Problem Solving

• Publisher : Open University Malaysia

Solving Temporary Staffing Problems

• Publisher : Jean-Paul Renard and Brianna Strobel

Welcome to the number one podcast for solving problems related to your Temporary Staffing Programs. Jean-Paul Renard, industry legend and CEO of Distinctive Workforce Solutions (DWS), reveals the secrets and best practices of properly managing a temporary staffing program (Workforce, Suppliers and Technology), so that companies can cut cost, improve fulfillment, build better partnerships with their supplier bases, and ultimately reduce the number of challenges that come with managing temporary staffing programs. Hosted by Brianna Strobel, this podcast is sure to entertain while addressing some of the most common questions DWS receives.

Solving The World’s Problems With My Dad

• Publisher : Austin Morriss

Hi, my name’s Austin. I’m a millennial, and I’m on a mission to solve the world’s problems. As it turns out, that’s a really tall order. So, I’ve called in some help. I brought in my dad to help me make sense of this crazy world, and we share some serious conversations and some laughs along the way. Tune in to join us and solve the world’s problems.

Debt Free Money Society Podcast- solving the big problems of the world

• Publisher : Michael Griffith

A podcast designed to create a society to change the world as we know it.

Business problem solving and improvement – for iPod/iPhone

• Publisher : The Open University

This series of tracks looks at how two quite different industries respond to problem solving. They show that methodology is similar regardless of the industry’s focus or size. Material is taken from The Open University Course T889 Problem solving and improvement: quality and other approaches.

Problem Solving Exercise

• Publisher : Daniel James

Audio journaling and conversations from journeyman Daniel James. Recorded in Courtenay, Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Email me! New episodes every Wednesday. [email protected]

Problem solving

• Publisher : Gladys Monayer

Instructions

Problem Solving

• Publisher : Group 5

this podcast will help you with any current or future problems. big or small.

Problem Solving Plastics

• Publisher : ITZEL GONZALEZ

where we talk about companies that help solve the plastic problems.

Solving The Driver Problem

• Publisher : AvatarFleet

An examination of strategies and tactics used by transportation companies to improve recruiting, compliance, training, and retention.

Tribal problem solving

• Publisher : Kane Stewart

We talk about problems facing our society and how we are trying to fix them. Current problems are discovering worthwhile problems and the education system in Aotearoa.

“What problem are you solving”? TM

• Publisher : Kevin M. Miles, MBA

Commentary about the affairs, foibles , and potential of humanity to re-know itself in the face of rapid change . As Professional Entrepreneurs we serve humanity by creating opportunities for our customers and partners to lead their best lives . As Dr. ML King, Jr., said, “everyone can be great, because everyone can serve “.

What Problem Are You Solving?

• Publisher : Taylar

BeachLogic Venture Partners Founder Kevin M. Miles, MBA talks about using entrepreneurial thinking to solve practical problems.

Problem Solving About Business

• Publisher : Novita Ika

The existence of the Covid-19 pandemic, made the government issue new policies, one of which was the PSBB policy. This policy has an impact on the decline in income in various shops, such as Batik Jaya Shop

Problem solving the world

• Publisher : Emily Harrell

A way to make the world a better place. Things that can actually relate to today’s society and ways to avoid it.

Intellectual Nepali Show | Problem Solving practitioner.

• Publisher : Bishal Yadav

“Intellectual Nepali Show” is an audio experience by Bishal Yadav. Here we share the Solutions of the problems we receive on my Instagram. Beside that you can also expect here, the things which i am learning and applying day to day in my life which can add value to your Life. If you have any problem my friend, Send us @intellectualnepali on Instagram. Intellectual Nepali is the first Nepali social media platform which is trying to solve the personal problems of people through YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Podcast.

Intro to Problem Solving

• Publisher : Christina Terrell

Problem solving occurs in two ways. You wait for a catastrophe to happen and go into firefighting mode to minimize the damage, or look for trends and deviations and use those to prevent a major problem. In this series we’ll look at some tools and methods for identifying deviations and applying problems solving skills to prevent the catastrophe.

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Solving The Money Problem

With steven mark ryan and friends.

Solving The Money Problem With Steven Mark Ryan

Fan Club With Friends

Welcome to the Solving The Money Problems Fan Club ! This site was started as a fun YouTube post. I asked Steven can I make him a Fan Boy website and he said yes. So here it is.  It's 99 Cents a year. Kind of like Facebook. a place to shit post at your own risk.  All memberships are non-refundable.  We have set up a dummy account for steven, sent him his login credentials but he has not officially logged in yet or acknowledged this site as of yet.  I'm currently pulling all the videos over from youtube. Members can comment on posts and have fun in some of the forums. You are responsible for anything you say.

So if you're a Steven Mark Ryan fanboy welcome, if you're not you will be. If your Elon Musk, Munroe, Rob, and you guys are reading this Hello Also! BIG FAN.

Solving The Money Problem's Fan Club!

PS IF YOU'RE NOT A PATRON OF STEVEN'S OFFICIAL PATREON ACCOUNT IT CAN BE FOUND HERE

THIS IS JUST A FANSITE

Are you trying to reach Steven? Do you have a big green bag for him? O.K Good Carry on. This form goes directly to Stevens Gmail.

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How to Overcome Fear and Take Action

When you're afraid to take the leap, what finally pushes you? Sheri Lynch shares her answer. She's cohost of the nationally syndicated radio show Bob...

When you're afraid to take the leap, what finally pushes you? Sheri Lynch shares her answer. She's cohost of the nationally syndicated radio show Bob & Sheri, where she was once just a corporate employee... until she became so frustrated that she took the show independent. But it wasn't easy. And it required a total personal transformation.

Become the Leader Your Team Needs, with Jon Taffer

Jon Taffer is celebrating 250 episodes of his hit TV show Bar Rescue. In this episode, he shares how he evolved into the screaming, food-throwing...

Jon Taffer is celebrating 250 episodes of his hit TV show Bar Rescue. In this episode, he shares how he evolved into the screaming, food-throwing guy you see on TV — and the lessons that any aspiring leader can learn from it. (It won't be what you think!) This episode is sponsored by Okta. The world’s Identity company. To learn more, visit https://www.okta.com/

How to Stand Out From Your Competitors

You're unique, so why can't customers see it? In this episode, you'll get an answer — by dropping in on a real consulting session! David...

You're unique, so why can't customers see it? In this episode, you'll get an answer — by dropping in on a real consulting session! David Lederman is an executive mentor who struggles to stand out among a sea of coaches. Brand expert Kerry Harris helps him, and also gives you the tools to stand out from your competitors.

Don't Let Your Business Ruin Your Life

How can you build a business, without it consuming your life? Kathleen Griffith, author of the book "Build Like A Woman", explains how to keep...

How can you build a business, without it consuming your life? Kathleen Griffith, author of the book "Build Like A Woman", explains how to keep both things healthy — step by step.

When Defeat Becomes a Blessing in Disguise

Jaliyla Fraser is the Founder and CEO of Fraser’s Mathematics Solutions. What started as a STEAM summer camp for students, Fraser’s Mathematics Solutions now provides...

Jaliyla Fraser is the Founder and CEO of Fraser’s Mathematics Solutions. What started as a STEAM summer camp for students, Fraser’s Mathematics Solutions now provides high-quality mathematics learning for administrators, teachers, and parents to help the students in their lives succeed. Fraser’s Mathematics Solutions also produces school supplies for students to help them reach their full potential. Listen to the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or visit: entm.ag/hiscox

How to Make A Million Dollars (with the Co-Hosts of My First Million)

How do you make a million? And what does it actually get you? Sam Parr and Shaan Puri, cohosts of the popular My First Million...

How do you make a million? And what does it actually get you? Sam Parr and Shaan Puri, cohosts of the popular My First Million podcast (who have made multiples of millions themselves), share what they've learned in this candid conversation about money.

Leader vs. CEO, with Whole Foods Co-Founder John Mackey

What does it take to lead a great company? During his 44 years as CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey found his answer: Don't worry...

What does it take to lead a great company? During his 44 years as CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey found his answer: Don't worry about acting like a CEO, serve the business, serve its people, and never abandon yourself. Mackey discusses this, along with his new book The Whole Story. Thanks to our sponsor Hertz Business Rewards for helping small businesses save big. Join for free at Hertz.com/businessrewards.

What's Your Hidden Competitive Advantage?

You can't compete on quality alone, so what do you compete on? Today, Jason takes us on a trip to Costa Rica, where he discovered...

You can't compete on quality alone, so what do you compete on? Today, Jason takes us on a trip to Costa Rica, where he discovered a business that stands out in a wonderful and personal way — and inspires you to find your hidden competitive advantage too. Thanks to our sponsor Hertz Business Rewards for helping small businesses save big. Join for free at Hertz.com/businessrewards.

How Google Executives Become More Productive

Want to be more productive, and use your time more wisely? Take advice from Laura Mae Martin, Google's in-house productivity expert, and author of the...

Want to be more productive, and use your time more wisely? Take advice from Laura Mae Martin, Google's in-house productivity expert, and author of the new book "Uptime". In this conversation, she lays out a plan for focusing your time and your energy. You'll never look at to-do lists the same again. Thanks to our sponsor Hertz Business Rewards for helping small businesses save big. Join for free at Hertz.com/businessrewards

Start A Million-Dollar Business In A Weekend?

Yes, you can start a million-dollar business in a weekend. Noah Kagan, founder of AppSumo and author of the book "Million Dollar Weekend", shares how...

Yes, you can start a million-dollar business in a weekend. Noah Kagan, founder of AppSumo and author of the book "Million Dollar Weekend", shares how the foundations of a great business come together quickly, and why it's worth moving fast. Thanks to our sponsor Hertz Business Rewards for helping small businesses save big. Join for free at Hertz.com/businessrewards.

The Biggest Writing Mistakes That Entrepreneurs Make

Want to get your ideas into the world? Writing coach Amber Rae (see: amberrae.com) has some counterintuitive advice: Don't think about your audience, and don't...

Want to get your ideas into the world? Writing coach Amber Rae (see: amberrae.com) has some counterintuitive advice: Don't think about your audience, and don't write what you "should" write. On this episode, she explains some of the most common mistakes that entrepreneurs make, and how anyone can find great stories and create meaningful, memorable work. Thanks to our sponsor Hertz Business Rewards for helping small businesses save big. Join for free at Hertz.com/businessrewards.

Solving the Staffing Shortage in Hospitality

Resorts around the world face the same problem: It's hard to recruit and retain a great staff. A small, luxury resort group called Nayara Resorts...

Resorts around the world face the same problem: It's hard to recruit and retain a great staff. A small, luxury resort group called Nayara Resorts is experimenting with an interesting solution to that problem — by tackling the housing shortage that often impacts resort workers. Nayara CEO Leo Ghitis explains. Thanks to our sponsor Hertz Business Rewards for helping small businesses save big. Join for free at Hertz.com/businessrewards.

The First Influencer Marketing Agency... for LinkedIn?

Influencer marketing veteran Brendan Gahan has cofounded the first-ever agency specifically for LinkedIn, called Creator Authority. In this episode, he explains the state of marketing...

Influencer marketing veteran Brendan Gahan has cofounded the first-ever agency specifically for LinkedIn, called Creator Authority. In this episode, he explains the state of marketing on LinkedIn, how professionals can become LinkedIn influencers, what kind of money we're talking about, and how both influencers and brands can better use the platform.

Make Better Content With the "Bricks & Mortar" Method

How can you make content that really connects with an audience? In this episode, Jason shares the strategy he uses to make engaging content. It's...

How can you make content that really connects with an audience? In this episode, Jason shares the strategy he uses to make engaging content. It's called "bricks and mortar", and it's a way of structuring content so that it's always relevant to your audience.

How To Find Your First Customers

You've built a product, but how do you take it to market? And who even wants it? To answer that, we've set up a unique...

You've built a product, but how do you take it to market? And who even wants it? To answer that, we've set up a unique call between an entrepreneur and an expert. Birna Dröfn Birgisdóttir built a brainstorming tool called Bulby, and is now ready to take it to market — but isn't sure who her ideal customer is. She gets advice from Brent Tworetzky, SVP of Product at Peloton, who has decades of experience building consumer and SaaS products.

Want A Great Business Idea? Find A "Cohort"

When you're looking to solve a problem or start a new business, Future CEO Rishi Mandal has a brilliant tactic: Find cohorts of people who...

When you're looking to solve a problem or start a new business, Future CEO Rishi Mandal has a brilliant tactic: Find cohorts of people who already solved the problem for themselves, so you can understand their solution, why it works, and how you might scale it. On this episode, Rishi explains how to do this, and how he used it to build his company Future, which is the largest provider of personal training in America.

Start Sales Pitches With Stories. Here's Why!

It's one of the greatest sales tactics, and also one of the most overlooked. In this episode, I explain why stories are so powerful, why...

It's one of the greatest sales tactics, and also one of the most overlooked. In this episode, I explain why stories are so powerful, why you should start with them, and where to get the best stories to tell.

Should You Start A Business With Your Best Friend?

Many people start businesses with friends and loved ones — but if you're not careful, you can destroy both your company and your relationship. So...

Many people start businesses with friends and loved ones — but if you're not careful, you can destroy both your company and your relationship. So how do you do it right? Take it from two women who know: Julie Griggs and Danielle Dietzek, cofounders of FourPlay Social. They share the very personal, often difficult side of their relationship, and how they've learned to thrive.

LinkedIn's Algorithm Changes, Explained

If you want to gain an edge on LinkedIn, there are two people you need to hear from: LinkedIn editor in chief Dan Roth and...

If you want to gain an edge on LinkedIn, there are two people you need to hear from: LinkedIn editor in chief Dan Roth and senior director of engineering Tim Jurka. In this episode, we discuss the impact of LinkedIn's ongoing algorithm changes, how to adapt your content strategy, new LinkedIn features to help you gain visibility, and an interesting new feature called “suggested posts” that could help boost your best posts for years.

Why Workers Are Disengaged, and How to Fix That

Why are workers disengaged? Scott Greenberg has an answer: It's because of poor leadership, poor management training, and poor company culture. In this conversation, he...

Why are workers disengaged? Scott Greenberg has an answer: It's because of poor leadership, poor management training, and poor company culture. In this conversation, he offers a solution to all of that — by diagnosing his own one-time leadership failures, and the importance of understanding and relating to employees on a human level. Greenberg is the author of the new book Stop The Shift Show.

How to Send the Best Sales Emails

Are you guilty of "fake personalization"? It's when you send someone a sales pitch (or any other cold email), and lazily add some personalization —...

Are you guilty of "fake personalization"? It's when you send someone a sales pitch (or any other cold email), and lazily add some personalization — even though it's clear you haven't spent time getting to know who you're pitching. Stop doing that! In this episode, I'll show you a much better way.

How Failure Can Feel Good

Our jobs are not to do things perfect. We can't! But we can make our mistakes very useful. Here's how — along with a personal...

Our jobs are not to do things perfect. We can't! But we can make our mistakes very useful. Here's how — along with a personal story about a very recent, embarassing failure. (To see the newsletter I talk about in this episode, visit jasonfeifer.com/newsletter)

Where Negativity at Work Comes From, and How to Fix It

Where there's a void in leadership, negativity will fill it. That's Jon Gordon's message. He's the best-selling author of 28 books (most recently, "The One...

Where there's a void in leadership, negativity will fill it. That's Jon Gordon's message. He's the best-selling author of 28 books (most recently, "The One Truth"), and has a company that teaches what he calls "positive leadership." In this conversation, he explains how workplaces become negative, how to diagnose the problem, and how leaders can create positivity instead.

Keeping Up With Rapid Change, With Investor Thomas Tull

Are you ready to adapt quickly? Billionaire tech investor Thomas Tull says you should be—because these days, there’s no other choice. Entrepreneur’s 45th annual...

Are you ready to adapt quickly? Billionaire tech investor Thomas Tull says you should be—because these days, there’s no other choice. Entrepreneur’s 45th annual Franchise 500® ranking shines a light on the unique challenges and changes that have shaped the franchise industry over the last year—and how franchisors have adapted and evolved to meet them. See the list here: https://www.entrepreneur.com/franchise500

Taco Bell's New CEO On How Brands Become Culturally Hot

Big franchise news: Taco Bell is #1 in the 2024 Entrepreneur Franchise 500! To mark the occasion, I talk with Sean Tresvant, Taco Bell's new...

Big franchise news: Taco Bell is #1 in the 2024 Entrepreneur Franchise 500! To mark the occasion, I talk with Sean Tresvant, Taco Bell's new CEO. He spent many years as the CMO of Nike's Jordan Brand, then became Taco Bell's global chief brand officer. Now he's in the hot seat, leading the hottest brand in franchising. We talk about how to make brands culturally relevant, how to build the teams that drive great brands, and his vision for Taco Bell's future. Sponsor: While much of Harvard Business Review’s Content is available for free after signing up at their site, subscriptions to unlimited content start at only $10 a month. Go to www.hbr.org/subscriptions and enter PROMO CODE: SOLVERS right now to take advantage of this great offer.

Vulnerability Can Hurt Leaders, Unless They Do This

Should a leader show vulnerability? That depends on how they do it, says leadership expert Jacob Morgan, author of the book "Leading with Vulnerability." He...

Should a leader show vulnerability? That depends on how they do it, says leadership expert Jacob Morgan, author of the book "Leading with Vulnerability." He interviewed 100 CEOs and surveyed 14,000 employees, and found that, depending on how a leader shows their vulnerability, people are either more drawn or more distrustful of them. In this episode, Morgan explains how to use vulnerability smartly — as a way to build trust, not as a way to unburden yourself.

“I’m Running a Business With My Ex. HELP!”

Would you (or COULD you) run a business with your ex? Today we're sharing an episode from Jason Feifer's other podcast, Help Wanted, where he...

Would you (or COULD you) run a business with your ex? Today we're sharing an episode from Jason Feifer's other podcast, Help Wanted, where he and cohost Nicole Lapin help someone with that exact problem. She's getting a divorce from her husband... and her husband also happens to be her business partner. She wants to know: is it possible to have joint custody of a business? Jason and Nicole give their tips for anyone who is navigating a complicated work relationship.

How to be Heard by Improving Your Listening Skills

If you want to get what you want, you must become a better listener. And be careful — because you might not be as good...

If you want to get what you want, you must become a better listener. And be careful — because you might not be as good a listener as you think. In this episode, expert negotiator Jonathan B. Smith (of the Black Swan Group and EOS) breaks down the tactics and approaches for active listening, and shows how it can be used to better connect with and convince people. The Black Swan Group was founded by best-selling author and former FBI hostage negotator Chris Voss; Smith is Voss's coach and business partner.

Earn a Living as a Writer, Without a Writing Background

Most writers obsess over their words. Sahil Bloom did that too — but he also became curious about how words travel, and why they go...

Most writers obsess over their words. Sahil Bloom did that too — but he also became curious about how words travel, and why they go viral, and the needs that other writers have. That’s because he came from the world of finance, not writing, and was able to apply a business lens to the sometimes-squishy world of content... and now runs a newsletter with 600,000 subscribers that brings in upwards of $70,000 a month, along with a network of businesses that serve other writers (and earn much more). In this episode, he explains how he did it. Learn more about him at sahilbloom.com.

Making "Hybrid Work" Actually Work

Have you heard of "productivity paranoia"? It's what happens when managers lose trust in their remote or hybrid workers, because they can't see them working....

Have you heard of "productivity paranoia"? It's what happens when managers lose trust in their remote or hybrid workers, because they can't see them working. That's a big problem, says hybrid-work expert Gleb Tsipursky, because the research shows something startling: Remote working drives productivity UP, and bringing people back to the office can drive productivity DOWN. So what do we do about this? In this episode, Tsipursky offers a way forward for managers and leaders.

Turn A Crazy Idea Into A Very Real Business

One night, Holden Forrest drew a wild idea on the back of his daughter's math homework: What if he could lower a house into the...

One night, Holden Forrest drew a wild idea on the back of his daughter's math homework: What if he could lower a house into the ground, as a way to escape oncoming wildfires? He couldn't shake this idea, so he started researching whether it's possible — and now, years later, he has a company called HiberTec, multiple patents, groundbreaking technology, and is raising money to build his first prototype. On this episode, Holden explains how to turn a big idea into a real business. You can learn more and invest in HiberTec at https://republic.com/hibertec-homes

When You Have A Solution People Don't Know They Need

Sometimes, a company creates an amazing solution... but clients don't understand why they need it. What do you do then? Garry Cooper has the answer,...

Sometimes, a company creates an amazing solution... but clients don't understand why they need it. What do you do then? Garry Cooper has the answer, because it's exactly what he had to do at his company Rheaply. Here's the problem, as Rheaply saw it: At large companies, employees often buy things the company already has. They also throw out things the company could still use. That's because there's no way for everyone in the company to know what they have, what they need, and how to get items across that divide. Garry and his team built Rheaply to solve that problem. It helps companies reuse products... if only they could get clients to recognize this as a problem, and realize the value of the solution. Here's how Rheaply did it. Sponsor: Paper & Packaging Board. Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com/innovation

How to Leave Social Media and Still Grow Your Business

This may sound counterintuitive, but your business doesn't HAVE to be on social media. In fact, social media might not even be the best tool...

This may sound counterintuitive, but your business doesn't HAVE to be on social media. In fact, social media might not even be the best tool for your growth. Amelia Hruby, host of the podcast Off the Grid, explains how to leave social media without hurting your business — and the many other marketing tools that you should pour your energy into instead.

He Got 450,000 Newsletter Subcribers by Sharing "Nice News"

People often say they want positive news stories, but they rarely read them. Sean Devlin wanted to know: Why? So he set out to find...

People often say they want positive news stories, but they rarely read them. Sean Devlin wanted to know: Why? So he set out to find out — and has since built a newsletter, called Nice News (at nicenews.com), that now has 450,000 subscribers. So how did he do it? And how can you build a strong newsletter for any niche subject? That's what we discuss on this episode of Problem Solvers. Sponsor: Harvard Business Review.  Access's HBR's unlimited content start at only $10 a month. visit www.hbr.org/subscriptions and enter PROMO CODE: SOLVERS to take advantage of this great offer.

Why "People First" Is Better Than "Customer First"

Lots of companies say they put their customers first, but what does it mean to be a truly people-centric organization? According to Rah Mahtani, Alibaba.com's...

Lots of companies say they put their customers first, but what does it mean to be a truly people-centric organization? According to Rah Mahtani, Alibaba.com's head of marketing for North America, it means changing the way you think about your customers — as well as the products you design for them, and the marketing you create to reach them. Here, he breaks down some great "people-centric" examples of product design, and explains how Alibaba brings people (aka customers!) into their process.

Who Should Solve Our Biggest Problems?

How can we solve the biggest problems, in our company or our world, if we can't agree on what the problem is or who wants...

How can we solve the biggest problems, in our company or our world, if we can't agree on what the problem is or who wants to solve it? Here's a case study that'll surprise you. Climate change is described as a “generational battle,” in which young people care and older people don’t. But this is a perfect example of how we think about generations all wrong — and that has big consequences. If we can drop our assumptions about generational divides, we might just have a shot at solving some of the world’s most urgent problems. Sponsor: Paper & Packaging Board. Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com/innovation

How to Be More Human In A Time of AI

Cal Fussman is a master storyteller, and he's been thinking a lot about AI lately. Why? "This debate between authenticity and artificial intelligence is the...

Cal Fussman is a master storyteller, and he's been thinking a lot about AI lately. Why? "This debate between authenticity and artificial intelligence is the battle of the next millennium," he says. When robots can communicate for us, how can we be more human? When we can automate much of our writing and production, how do we share our authentic selves and connect to others? These questinos have never been more important, and Cal — host of the podcast "Big Questions" and former Esquire writer who's interviewed major celebrities and CEOs — has some very surprising answers.

How to Tell Sexy Stories About Unsexy Brands

Not every company has a whiz-bang product, so how can you make it pop? Squarespace Chief Creative Officer David Lee has done that, winning tons...

Not every company has a whiz-bang product, so how can you make it pop? Squarespace Chief Creative Officer David Lee has done that, winning tons of awards and making campaigns with the likes of Adam Driver, Zendaya, Dolly Parton, Keanu Reeves and John Malkovich (which earned him an Emmy). Here, he offers a unique way for entrepreneurs to think about their brands, and some big questions to ask when you start crafting your new stories.

Small Biz Special: How A Magic Show Became Popular

How can a comedy/magic show compete against every other entertainment option, especially when most people aren't thinking of going to magic shows? In this special...

How can a comedy/magic show compete against every other entertainment option, especially when most people aren't thinking of going to magic shows? In this special episode celebrating Entrepreneur and Yelp's list of America's Favorite Mom & Pop Shops, we take an inside look at Trickery in Chicago — by zeroing in on one customer interaction, and what made it so special. This episode is in partnership with the podcast Behind the Review.

How to Sound Smart and Memorable, Anytime

Want to sound smarter? Want to be more comfortable speaking on the fly, whether it's giving a presentation or just rolling with a conversation? You...

Want to sound smarter? Want to be more comfortable speaking on the fly, whether it's giving a presentation or just rolling with a conversation? You don't have to memorize what you're saying, but you do need a structure that helps your ideas stick. Stanford lecturer Matt Abrahams, author of the new book "Think Faster, Talk Smarter", explains how to do it — and offers some specific structures you can start using today.

Can An Entrepreneur Be An Activist?

Seth Goldman wants to change people's behavior, and he sees business as the way to do it. He founded Honest Tea, chaired the board of...

Seth Goldman wants to change people's behavior, and he sees business as the way to do it. He founded Honest Tea, chaired the board of Beyond Meat, and now has a company called Eat the Change. In this conversation, he discusses how to be a pragmatic activist, and what it really takes to build a sustainable, mass market brand. Sponsor: Paper & Packaging Board. Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com/innovation

Small Biz Special: How A Small Gym Stays Strong

How can a small gym compete against a world of big, well-funded chains? In this special episode celebrating Entrepreneur and Yelp's list of America's Favorite...

How can a small gym compete against a world of big, well-funded chains? In this special episode celebrating Entrepreneur and Yelp's list of America's Favorite Mom & Pop Shops, we take an inside look at Ambitious Athletics in Washington DC — by zeroing in on one customer interaction, and what made it so special. This episode is in partnership with the podcast Behind the Review.

Don't Just Sell A Product. Champion An Idea!

Joelle Mertzel is the president of Kitchen Concepts Unlimited, and the self-declared "national advocate for countertop butter." What's that last part about? It's her way...

Joelle Mertzel is the president of Kitchen Concepts Unlimited, and the self-declared "national advocate for countertop butter." What's that last part about? It's her way of drawing more attention and expanding her marketplace — and it's working. Today, she explains the benefits of creating a cause... instead of just selling a product.

Small Biz Special: How A Small Theater Gets Attention

How can a small theater compete against a world of big, well-funded entertainment? In this special episode celebrating Entrepreneur and Yelp's list of America's Favorite...

How can a small theater compete against a world of big, well-funded entertainment? In this special episode celebrating Entrepreneur and Yelp's list of America's Favorite Mom & Pop Shops, we take an inside look at Illusions Bar & Theater in Baltimore — by zeroing in on one customer interaction, and what made it so special. This episode is in partnership with the podcast Behind the Review.

The Most Annoying Tech Mystery, Solved!

Have you ever called a company, given your information to an automated phone system, and then had to repeat that same information to a human...

Have you ever called a company, given your information to an automated phone system, and then had to repeat that same information to a human customer service agent? Why do that twice? It's so annoying! On this episode, we get the answer (and an important lesson on tech adoption!) from Eric Skeens and Brandon Bird of 3 Tree Tech.

Why Eco-Friendly Products Keep Failing

People say they want eco-friendly products, but they rarely actually buy them. Why? Because their marketing is all wrong. Utah State University marketing professor Ed...

People say they want eco-friendly products, but they rarely actually buy them. Why? Because their marketing is all wrong. Utah State University marketing professor Ed Stafford explains.  Sponsor: Paper & Packaging Board. Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com/innovation

Where the Greatest Creative Ideas Come From

Simplicity! In this episode, legendary creative Peter Arnell (who helped shape DKNY, Samsung, PepsiCo, and more) breaks down his creative process — and shares how...

Simplicity! In this episode, legendary creative Peter Arnell (who helped shape DKNY, Samsung, PepsiCo, and more) breaks down his creative process — and shares how to make the most complex ideas memorably simple. Peter's new book is "Peter Arnell: Portfolio 1980 - 2020".

The Greatest Meetings Policy Ever

At The Lactation Network, anyone can opt out of any meeting. Why? Because CEO Sarah Kellogg Neff has a philosophy about meetings and company culture...

At The Lactation Network, anyone can opt out of any meeting. Why? Because CEO Sarah Kellogg Neff has a philosophy about meetings and company culture — and you need to hear it.

Why More Creative People Should Be In Leadership Roles

Advertising legend David Droga, founder of Droga5 and now head of Accenture Song, explains why there should be more creatives in the C-suite — and...

Advertising legend David Droga, founder of Droga5 and now head of Accenture Song, explains why there should be more creatives in the C-suite — and why creatives should start seeing themselves as business leaders.

Prepare for the Worst With "The Flexible Method"

James Burstall is a high-powered entertainment producer, but he's also a guy who saved his business from disaster many times. His new book, The Flexible...

James Burstall is a high-powered entertainment producer, but he's also a guy who saved his business from disaster many times. His new book, The Flexible Method, offers a 16-point way to prepare for and navigate any disaster. He shares some of his points here.

How to Make Customers 28% Happier!

Multiple studies prove it: Sustainable products make people happier, and inspire them to spend more money. We go through the research with Thomas McKinlay of...

Multiple studies prove it: Sustainable products make people happier, and inspire them to spend more money. We go through the research with Thomas McKinlay of Ariyh.com. Sponsor: Paper & Packaging Board. Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com/innovation

How to Speak and Be Truly Understood

What you say is important, but how you say it matters even more. Tone coach Marshall Davis Jones, author of the new book "Tonal Influence",...

What you say is important, but how you say it matters even more. Tone coach Marshall Davis Jones, author of the new book "Tonal Influence", explains how to master the meaning behind your words.

Why LinkedIn Doesn't Want You Going "Viral"

LinkedIn has made some big changes to its algorithm. So what kind of posts does the system now reward? LinkedIn editor in chief Dan Roth...

LinkedIn has made some big changes to its algorithm. So what kind of posts does the system now reward? LinkedIn editor in chief Dan Roth and director of product Alice Xiong walk us through it.

Find Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World

How do you find meaningful work? Start by recognizing what is meaningful. Bruce Feiler, author of "The Search", breaks down the lies we tell ourselves...

How do you find meaningful work? Start by recognizing what is meaningful. Bruce Feiler, author of "The Search", breaks down the lies we tell ourselves about work, the many different jobs we have, and the literal ABCs of meaning.

Everything You Know About Dieting Is Wrong

Entrepreneurs need to take better care of themselves, but the health advice we hear is often so strange and conflicting. What's real? Adam Bornstein, author...

Entrepreneurs need to take better care of themselves, but the health advice we hear is often so strange and conflicting. What's real? Adam Bornstein, author of the new book "You Can't Screw This Up", offers the entrepreneur's guide through the messy world of wellness.

Write Emails That People Actually Open

Expert copywriter Laura Belgray explains what you're doing wrong in your emails (and especially your newsletters), and how a few simple changes can boost open...

Expert copywriter Laura Belgray explains what you're doing wrong in your emails (and especially your newsletters), and how a few simple changes can boost open rates and engagement. Laura's copywriting company is at TalkingShrimp.com, and her new book is "Tough Titties: On Living Your Best Life When You're the F'ing Worst". — Book time with Jason at intro.co/jasonfeifer

Running Ads Inside Fortune Cookies?

How do you take a crazy idea, and turn it into an actual business? Matt Williams, the cofounder and Chief Cookie Officer of OpenFortune, explains...

How do you take a crazy idea, and turn it into an actual business? Matt Williams, the cofounder and Chief Cookie Officer of OpenFortune, explains how he's built a business by creating an entirely new kind of advertising space.

When Someone Has More Power Than You

How do you navigate tricky power dynamics at work? Leadership consultant (and author of the new book "Quick Confidence") Selena Rezvani has the answer. And...

How do you navigate tricky power dynamics at work? Leadership consultant (and author of the new book "Quick Confidence") Selena Rezvani has the answer. And it all starts by working with the person... and not their power.

How to Talk About Hard Things

Our culture is full of difficult, important, hot-button issues — and even if you want to avoid them, you can't always. Sometimes you need to...

Our culture is full of difficult, important, hot-button issues — and even if you want to avoid them, you can't always. Sometimes you need to discuss or address them. So, how? Paul Kix has spent a long time figuring that out with his new book, "You Have To Be Prepared To Die Before You Can Begin To Live." On this episode, he explains how to do it with honesty and humility.

How to Catch and Hold Someone's Attention

In this special 300th episode, Jason reveals some of the biggest lessons he's learned in communications — including a fascinating shift in podcasting, how to...

In this special 300th episode, Jason reveals some of the biggest lessons he's learned in communications — including a fascinating shift in podcasting, how to build a newsletter people really want to read, and more. If you want to reach an audience of any kind, even just an audience of one, you'll want to hear this.

"I Feel Behind in My Career. Help!"

This episode turns into a Sliding Doors special. Jason talks to a former colleague from 20 years ago, whose career didn't turn out the way...

This episode turns into a Sliding Doors special. Jason talks to a former colleague from 20 years ago, whose career didn't turn out the way he hoped for, and then offers advice on how to play catch up. This episode is from Jason's other podcast, Help Wanted, which you can find here: https://link.chtbl.com/LsYdERXQ

Why, Like, It's Good to Use Words Like "Like"

Our speech is full of likes, ums, and you knows, and that's not a bad thing. Sociolinguist Valerie Fridland, author of the new book "Like,...

Our speech is full of likes, ums, and you knows, and that's not a bad thing. Sociolinguist Valerie Fridland, author of the new book "Like, Literally, Dude" explains the critical purpose these phrases play in our speech, and why you should embrace them.

Are You Too Curious For A Traditional Career?

You don't want to be locked down. You'd rather have multiple sources of income. But how? Eloise Skinner, author of the new book "But Are...

You don't want to be locked down. You'd rather have multiple sources of income. But how? Eloise Skinner, author of the new book "But Are You Alive?", explains. Our sponsors: Sunday - Get 20% off when you visit getsunday.com/PROBLEMSOLVERS at checkout. Factor - Head to factormeals.com/problemsolvers50 and use code problemsolvers50 to get 50% off your first box.

Very Real Talk About Launching A Startup

This is how founders should always talk! Chris Mears has been in startups for 20 years, and talks honestly about the challenges of getting his...

This is how founders should always talk! Chris Mears has been in startups for 20 years, and talks honestly about the challenges of getting his new one, Wild Clean, off the ground. Contribute to his Kickstarter at launch.wildclean.com

How to Win Big in a Recession

Pat Flynn and Matt Garland of Smart Passive Income share what entrepreneurs need to do today to improve their business. This is a special bonus...

Pat Flynn and Matt Garland of Smart Passive Income share what entrepreneurs need to do today to improve their business. This is a special bonus "roundtable" episode of Problem Solvers, and the beginning of a fun experiment where Entrepreneur Podcast Network hosts join together to discuss the subjects most important to you. 

His Product Wouldn't Sell... Until He Changed This

When the company Wilde Chips released its "chicken chips", nobody bought it. Then they changed the name, and the product started selling. Here's what happened,...

When the company Wilde Chips released its "chicken chips", nobody bought it. Then they changed the name, and the product started selling. Here's what happened, and a lesson for anyone trying to introduce a new idea to customers.

Why This Brand Shares Its Customers' Worst Insults

The alcohol brand Soso Sake has blown up on TikTok (@sososakesoda). Its strategy? They film supermarket tastings, and post videos of people's worst reactions. This...

The alcohol brand Soso Sake has blown up on TikTok (@sososakesoda). Its strategy? They film supermarket tastings, and post videos of people's worst reactions. This wasn't the brand's first idea, and it came with a lot of risk — but here, their CMO Mike Brown explains how it became such a hit.

Finding Your Company's Deep Purpose

What is your company's purpose? And how can you protect it, even as you grow? Harvard Business School professor Ranjay Gulati, who also hosts the...

What is your company's purpose? And how can you protect it, even as you grow? Harvard Business School professor Ranjay Gulati, who also hosts the podcast Deep Purpose, explains.

The 6-Step Plan to Growing A Small Business

Donald Miller made 537 mistakes in growing his business, and he did six things right. In this episode, the author of the new book "How...

Donald Miller made 537 mistakes in growing his business, and he did six things right. In this episode, the author of the new book "How to Grow Your Small Business" explains all six.

The 3 Most Important Questions, with Naveen Jain

Naveen Jain, serial entrepreneur and founder of Viome, believes that outsiders make the greatest disruptors. So how do you know when you're onto something? In...

Naveen Jain, serial entrepreneur and founder of Viome, believes that outsiders make the greatest disruptors. So how do you know when you're onto something? In this episode, he shares the three most important questions to ask yourself — and how he answered them.

Hey, Leaders: Would You Follow You?

Leadership expert Logan Stout asks his clients that all the time. In this episode, he explains how leaders lose their way, and takes us into...

Leadership expert Logan Stout asks his clients that all the time. In this episode, he explains how leaders lose their way, and takes us into a powerful coaching session where he helped a leader reconnect with the things that matter most.

How This Newsletter Writer Got 325,000 Subscribers

Lenny Rachitsky built a thriving newsletter about product development. Here's how he did it, step by step, and how he's now making more money from...

Lenny Rachitsky built a thriving newsletter about product development. Here's how he did it, step by step, and how he's now making more money from the newsletter than he did as a product lead at Airbnb.

It's Time to Think Differently About Productivity

To avoid burnout, we can't just think about task management. We need to also think about energy management... and how productivity doesn't just mean "getting...

To avoid burnout, we can't just think about task management. We need to also think about energy management... and how productivity doesn't just mean "getting lots of stuff done." In this conversation with psychotherapist Katherine Morgan Schafler, author of the new book "The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control", she offers strategies for building yourself up for the long haul.

Perfectionism Can Be Your Advantage

Have you been told you're a perfectionist — and not in a good way? Psychotherapist Katherine Morgan Schafler says we have it all wrong, and...

Have you been told you're a perfectionist — and not in a good way? Psychotherapist Katherine Morgan Schafler says we have it all wrong, and explains how you can use perfectionism as a strength. She's the author of the new book "The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control". See NordLocker Business in action now with a 3-month free trial here nordlocker.com/creators with code PROBLEMSOLVERS

What People of 1923 Thought About Work In 2023

In 1923, a famous scientist predicted how work would change in 2023. Now, 100 years later, we can confirm: He was shockingly right… and yet...

In 1923, a famous scientist predicted how work would change in 2023. Now, 100 years later, we can confirm: He was shockingly right… and yet totally wrong. What happened? The answers can tell you a lot about what’s coming in the next 100 years, and how technology will (and maybe won’t) change work forever. This episode originally aired on the podcast "Build For Tomorrow".

How to Set Boundaries: A Live Intervention!

Are you setting the right boundaries at work? In this episode, we pick apart a very real relationship between an employee and employer, and see...

Are you setting the right boundaries at work? In this episode, we pick apart a very real relationship between an employee and employer, and see where boundaries end... and where assumptions begin. For more like it, listen to the new podcast "Help Wanted". This episode is sponsored by Target Accelerators. Learn more here: https://entm.ag/targetaccelerators

What Your Time Is Worth (and What to Pay to Outsource It)

Dan Martell says we don't hire people to grow our business. We hire people to buy back time out of our calendar. His new book...

Dan Martell says we don't hire people to grow our business. We hire people to buy back time out of our calendar. His new book is called Buy Back Your Time, and in this episode, he explains how to do that — starting by calculating your specific "buyback rate."

Looking to Buy A Business? These Are the Top 500!

Special announcement! Our annual Franchise 500 list is out, providing you with the best opportunities to buy a business. Which is right for you? Entrepreneur...

Special announcement! Our annual Franchise 500 list is out, providing you with the best opportunities to buy a business. Which is right for you? Entrepreneur magazine Jason Feifer explains what goes into the list, and how it can benefit you. Learn more at entrepreneur.com/franchise500

How This Podcaster Gets 10 Million Downloads A Month

Jordan Harbinger (of the Jordan Harbinger Show) hosts a top podcast that makes big bucks. But how did he build it, and how can you...

Jordan Harbinger (of the Jordan Harbinger Show) hosts a top podcast that makes big bucks. But how did he build it, and how can you build your own profitable show? On this episode, he explains. This episode is sponsored by Target Accelerators. Learn more here: https://entm.ag/targetaccelerators

How I Won This Angry Customer’s Business Back

Here's a strategy for talking people down. And I have the emails to prove it!

Make A Big Impact As An Outsider

Kelly Erhart read about an interesting way to address climate change, but it was stuck in academia and didn't have the funding for real-world application....

Kelly Erhart read about an interesting way to address climate change, but it was stuck in academia and didn't have the funding for real-world application. Even though she isn't a scientist and didn't have connections to people in this space, she threw herself into creating a solution — and now, at age 26, she's running a public benefit corp called Vesta that's raised $6 million and putting this climate-protecting idea into practice. This is how she did it. Sponsor: Paper & Packaging Board. Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com

How This Guy Saved Barbie From Cultural Extinction

When Barbie sales were falling, the company asked Richard Dickson to help save the famous toy. He became its president and COO — and here,...

When Barbie sales were falling, the company asked Richard Dickson to help save the famous toy. He became its president and COO — and here, he explains the four-point playbook he drew up to turn Barbie sales around. (And it worked!)

Hack Your Bureaucracy!

Bureaucracy doesn't have to grind you down, says Marina Nitze, who has fixed government bureaucracies and now has lessons for us all. She's the co-author...

Bureaucracy doesn't have to grind you down, says Marina Nitze, who has fixed government bureaucracies and now has lessons for us all. She's the co-author of the new book, "Hack Your Bureaucracy."

From a Side Hustle to Employing 400 Women In Peru

Christina Fagan Pardy started Shit That I Knit as a side hustle. It's now a thriving knitwear business. She made a decision early to source...

Christina Fagan Pardy started Shit That I Knit as a side hustle. It's now a thriving knitwear business. She made a decision early to source sustainable materials and pay living wages to South American workers, and that has come with many costs, many challenges... and many rewards. Sponsor: Paper & Packaging Board. Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com

How Smart Passive Income's Cofounders Thrive Together

How do you build a great cofounder relationship? Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland have figured it out — and have built Smart Passive Income into...

How do you build a great cofounder relationship? Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland have figured it out — and have built Smart Passive Income into a gigantic success. Here, they explain how.

How FamousBirthdays.com Drives 25 Million Users A Month

FamousBirthdays.com looks simple — it just collects the birthdays of famous (and not-so-famous) people. But the business and thinking behind it is much more complex....

FamousBirthdays.com looks simple — it just collects the birthdays of famous (and not-so-famous) people. But the business and thinking behind it is much more complex. In this episode, a journey into the system behind one of the internet's most curious destinations.

Solve Big Problems By Solving Little Problems

How can a mission-oriented company help tackle gigantic global problems? By narrowing your focus. That's the message from Ryan Jeffrey, senior managing director at a...

How can a mission-oriented company help tackle gigantic global problems? By narrowing your focus. That's the message from Ryan Jeffrey, senior managing director at a VC firm and accelerator called gener8tor, which supports startups that focus on climate change. We discuss how to identify a small problem worth solving inside of a gigantic issue. Sponsor: Paper & Packaging Board. Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com

How to Delegate in Three Easy Steps

Are you bad at delegation? Just follow these three steps: Do it, document it, delegate it. That's the framework that Trainual founder (and operations expert)...

Are you bad at delegation? Just follow these three steps: Do it, document it, delegate it. That's the framework that Trainual founder (and operations expert) Chris Ronzio uses to teach people how to delegate. In this episode, he explains how to put it to use.

How to Promote Yourself, Even When You’re Uncomfortable

The first rule of talking about you: It’s not actually about you. Here's how to do it.

Why Quitting Something Can Be Your Best Move

Entrepreneurs love telling stories of perseverance. But that can be misleading. "In order to succeed, you're going to have to quit the things that aren't...

Entrepreneurs love telling stories of perseverance. But that can be misleading. "In order to succeed, you're going to have to quit the things that aren't worth pursuing," says Annie Duke, author of the new book "Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away". On this episode, she explains why we should see quitting as a virtue — and how to know when it's time to walk away.

The Climate Problem We All Have Wrong

Climate change is described as a “generational battle,” in which young people care and older people don’t. But this is a perfect example of how...

Climate change is described as a “generational battle,” in which young people care and older people don’t. But this is a perfect example of how we think about generations all wrong — and that has big consequences. If we can drop our assumptions about generational divides, we might just have a shot at solving some of the world’s most urgent problems. Sponsor: Paper & Packaging Board. Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com

What Happens When You Stop Checking Email Daily

Yes, it's possible to detach yourself from email! And it might even help you get more work done. Kim Kaupe, founder of Bright Ideas Only,...

Yes, it's possible to detach yourself from email! And it might even help you get more work done. Kim Kaupe, founder of Bright Ideas Only, explains the grand email experiment she's undergone, and how it transformed her business.

Chip Gaines: "Without Change, There's No Growth"

Change didn't come easy to Chip Gaines, who went through an "identity crisis" as he transformed from an anonymous home builder to one of the...

Change didn't come easy to Chip Gaines, who went through an "identity crisis" as he transformed from an anonymous home builder to one of the most beloved people on TV (with Fixer Upper, and now the Magnolia brand he cofounded with his wife Joanna). Here he talks about that evolution, and what he's learned about finding opportunity in the unexpected.

Treat Your Brain and Your Team Sustainably

What does it mean to run a sustainable business? It's about building something that can last. In this episode we look at two unexpected "sustainable"...

What does it mean to run a sustainable business? It's about building something that can last. In this episode we look at two unexpected "sustainable" approaches — what your brain needs after a hard day of work, and how to build a team that'll survive the ups and downs. Sponsor: Paper & Packaging Board. Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com

How to Predict the Future (But for Real)

Do you wish you could predict the future? Not in a street-corner psychic kind of way, but in a more personal, meaningful way — to...

Do you wish you could predict the future? Not in a street-corner psychic kind of way, but in a more personal, meaningful way — to know what’s coming, and to know what decisions you should make? We hear from experts (including the head of a group called the Superforecasters!) who explain how to do just that. And for more just like this, pick up Jason Feifer's new book "Build for Tomorrow".

Spot the Opportunities That Others Don't

If you're struggling to solve a problem, you may be looking at it just 1% wrong. In this excerpt from Jason Feifer's new book "Build...

If you're struggling to solve a problem, you may be looking at it just 1% wrong. In this excerpt from Jason Feifer's new book "Build For Tomorrow", he explains how to reframe the problems in front of you — and see what other people don't.

An FBI Hostage Negotiators Guide to Building Rapport

How do you build a rapport with someone quickly? How do you actively listen for what they need? That's what former FBI hostage negotator Chip...

How do you build a rapport with someone quickly? How do you actively listen for what they need? That's what former FBI hostage negotator Chip Massey is an expert at, and he explains how entrepreneurs can put those same skills to good use.

Solving the Unsolvable Problems, with Russ Roberts

How do you solve the problems for which there are no right answers? That's what economist Russ Roberts set to find out in his new...

How do you solve the problems for which there are no right answers? That's what economist Russ Roberts set to find out in his new book "Wild Problems". Here, he talks through strategies for grappling with the biggest decisions of our lives.

How Values Can Shape Your Business Model

What does it really take to make a brand eco-friendly? For Shine Pet Food, it meant sweating every CO2 molecule—and making hard, expensive decisions. Sponsor:...

What does it really take to make a brand eco-friendly? For Shine Pet Food, it meant sweating every CO2 molecule—and making hard, expensive decisions. Sponsor: Paper & Packaging Board. Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com

The Money Love Podcast

21: solving money problems.

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Dec 8, 2020

Have you ever felt like money is one aspect of your life that is causing you issues and additional stress? Do you feel like you’re dealing with one money problem after another? If so, this week’s episode is for you

In this week’s episode of The Money Love Podcast , learn about why money itself is not the cause of our money problems, but rather, the way we think about our money “problems”. As a matter of fact, money itself is neutral. It has no value or meaning other than what we give it. It’s our thoughts and feelings about money that “stir up” these seemingly negative issues.

Don’t miss this episode’s practical tips and insightful advice on how to change your relationship with money and forever rid yourself of money problems. Enjoy!

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About the Podcast

The Money Love Podcast, hosted by Certified Life Coach Paige Pritchard, is the podcast for high-achieving and high-earning women who are looking to ditch scarcity and confusion with their money and move towards a financial life full of confidence, abundance, and clarity. Each week Paige helps you transform your mindset, relationship, and results with money so you can build your dream financial life. Learn the mindset shifts and actionable strategies needed to make more money, nail the art of budgeting, pay off debt, stop impulse spending, build up savings, build financial intimacy in your relationships and so much more. Learn more at www.overcomingoverspending.com

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#NoStringsCash

How to fix poverty: why not just give people money.

Nurith Aizenman

Denis Otieno is one of the villagers getting $22 each month from the charity GiveDirectly. He and his wife have used some of the money to buy cypress saplings. They hope to sell the trees for lumber in a few years to pay for their children's education. Nichole Sobecki for NPR hide caption

Denis Otieno is one of the villagers getting $22 each month from the charity GiveDirectly. He and his wife have used some of the money to buy cypress saplings. They hope to sell the trees for lumber in a few years to pay for their children's education.

Young guys in dusty polo shirts. New moms holding their babies. Grandmas in bright head wraps. They've all gathered in a clearing for one of the village meetings when something remarkable happens. Practically every person's cellphone starts tinkling.

About #NoStringsCash

This is Part 1 of a series in which NPR explores an emerging idea in the fight against global poverty. Instead of offering poor people traditional aid — seeds or goats or job training — what if you just give cash? Read Parts 2 and 3 of the series here .

Join the conversation with the hashtag #NoStringsCash or tweet us @NPRGoatsAndSoda .

It's a text alert from an American charity called GiveDirectly . Last fall, GiveDirectly announced that it will give every adult in this impoverished village in Kenya an extra $22 each month for the next 12 years — with no strings attached. The money is wired to bank accounts linked to each villager's phone. The alert is the signal that the latest payment has posted. Everyone starts cheering. Some of the younger women break into song.

The payouts are part of a grand and unprecedented experiment that is motivated by an equally sweeping question: What if our entire approach to helping the world's poorest people is fundamentally flawed?

Otieno withdraws money from his M-PESA account, a widely used banking system linked to people's phones. GiveDirectly wires its monthly payouts to the villagers through M-PESA. Nichole Sobecki for NPR hide caption

Dancan Odero checks his phone to confirm that the GiveDirectly transfer has been made. Nichole Sobecki for NPR hide caption

Today practically all aid is given as "in-kind" donations — whether that's food, an asset like a cow, job training or schoolbooks. And this means that, in effect, it's the providers of aid — governments, donor organizations, even private individuals donating to a charity — who decide what poor people need most. But what if you just gave poor people cash with no strings attached? Let them decide how best to use it?

GiveDirectly has actually been advocating for this kind of cash aid for the past decade. Founded by four grad students in economics who wanted to challenge traditional aid, the charity has already given $65 million to people across Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, provided by a mix of Silicon Valley foundations and ordinary citizens who contribute through GiveDirectly's website. And GiveDirectly has shown through rigorous, independent study that people don't waste the money.

Still, those cash grants were relatively modest one-time payouts. With this experiment, GiveDirectly wants to see what happens when you give extremely poor people a much longer runway — a guaranteed "basic income" they can count on for years. Michael Faye, the chairman of GiveDirectly, says they've chosen to set the payment at $22 because in Kenya $22 per person per month is "the food poverty line — the amount of money it would take to afford a basic basket of food for yourself."

This hamlet, near Lake Victoria, is the first to participate in the cash distribution experiment. GiveDirectly plans to expand the payouts to 200 villages and compare them to 100 other villages that don't get the cash. Nichole Sobecki for NPR hide caption

This hamlet near Lake Victoria — about 400 residents living on less than $2 a day in mud-brick huts with no running water — is just the beginning. (GiveDirectly has asked that NPR not disclose the name of the village to protect residents' privacy.) This coming fall, GiveDirectly wants to extend the monthly payments to every adult in 200 similar villages across Kenya, then compare them to 100 "control" villages that don't get the cash. To do this they need $30 million, of which they've raised $25 million.

Some of the world's foremost researchers of anti-poverty strategies will be doing an independent study of the data that emerges — including Alan Krueger, professor of economics at Princeton University, and Abhijit Banerjee , a professor of economics at MIT and director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab .

It will take more than a decade to determine the impact. But just a few months in you can get a hint from two cousins at the village meeting, who are grinning and clapping as the women finish their song.

All his life, Denis Otieno has been striving to climb out of poverty only to find himself blocked by a lack of funds. Nichole Sobecki for NPR hide caption

Denis Otieno is a father of four in his late 30s. He holds up his phone to show his new balance. "I got it!" he exults.

Standing next to him is 30-year-old Dancan Odero, who is single and more soft-spoken, but looking just as pleased as he clicks through his phone.

"I'm more happy," he mumbles. "I'm more happy. I'm more happy."

For each of them the money has already proved life-changing but — and this is the key — in totally different ways.

Otieno: "I'm thinking of putting up a forest"

We'll start with Otieno. I meet up with him one morning in a field by his house as he slashes off tree branches with a machete. He's going to burn the wood to make charcoal.

What you need to know about Otieno is that he's an entrepreneurial sort of guy who all his life has been striving to climb out of poverty — only to find himself blocked by a lack of funds.

Despite a tough start in life — he was orphaned at age 16 — straight out of high school he got himself into a training program for mechanics. He managed to land a job repairing cars, thanks to a relative who worked at the same company in one of Kenya's cities. Then that company closed. Since then, Otieno says, he has found it impossible to find another position. "I've applied! I've applied so many times and it doesn't work," he sighs.

Part of the problem, he explains, is that the person doing the hiring at a company often requests a bribe. "They'll say, 'OK, I want half your salary, before you start.' " Otieno doesn't have that kind of money.

Otieno and two waitresses go over the accounts at his lakeside bar. To start the business he had to take out a loan. Now the payments are crushing him. Nichole Sobecki for NPR hide caption

He has also tried starting various small businesses — including a kind of bar, selling drinks to fishermen out of a gazebo on the shore of Lake Victoria. The trouble: To get the bar off the ground, Otieno had to take out a loan of about a thousand dollars at an interest rate of nearly 25 percent. Now the payments are crushing him. "Each day, whatever sales I make I just send to the bank," Otieno says. "You end up working for the bank."

Then there's this charcoal making. Ideally, Otieno says, he would buy the rights to harvest one of the tall, thick trees that grow on some people's property, then rent a chainsaw to cut it up. But that would require money up front, which, again, he doesn't have. Instead, he has to make do with the thinner shrubs on his own land, hacking off each limb by hand.

Source: Nichole Sobecki for NPR. Otieno prepares the ground to burn wood for charcoal.

Sweat pours off him as he hoists the pieces onto his shoulder and lugs them over to the burn pile. It will take hours to chop the wood. Then he has to cut leaves to cover the pile. Light a fire at the bottom. Shovel dirt on top. The process will take two days — after which he'll have enough charcoal to sell for, at best, $5.

So the combined $44 a month Otieno and his wife have been getting from GiveDirectly is boosting their income by as much as 50 percent many months.

The benefits are already visible, most notably in the case of Otieno's 2-year-old daughter Gloria, who is looking healthy and full of pep as she toddles behind him. "My Daddy's girl," he calls her, because she follows him everywhere. She picks up a stick and pretends it's a machete, thwacking at branches alongside her dad.

Otieno's 2-year-old daughter, Gloria, follows him everywhere. "She's my Daddy's girl," he says. Nichole Sobecki for NPR hide caption

Gloria used to cry all the time, Otieno says, because she was hungry. Before the GiveDirectly payments started there were many days each month when he couldn't afford to buy his children breakfast or lunch. Sometimes there wasn't even dinner apart from what Otieno calls "porridge" — water mixed with flour and sugar, "just to fill the stomach." On those nights, he recalled, "you feel so ashamed as a father."

Otieno and his wife, Bentah, laugh as Gloria munches on some bread. Gloria used to cry all the time because she was hungry. Now Otieno can guarantee her solid food every day. Nichole Sobecki for NPR hide caption

He still wishes he could feed his children more meat and fish. But with the extra charity money, now he can at least guarantee them solid food for both lunch and dinner. And for breakfast they're getting milk from several goats that are chomping on shrubbery nearby. The family used to own just two. With the charity money they've bought three more. They hope to breed them — then sell the offspring. Maybe upgrade to a cow.

Otieno and his oldest daughter plant one of the cypress saplings. He says he'll designate a different section of the grove for each child to help him tend. "It's going to be like their bank account." Nichole Sobecki for NPR hide caption

Longer term Otieno has an even more ambitious plan: "I'm thinking of putting up a forest," he says. Specifically, a grove of eucalyptus and cypress trees. They're used as lumber in construction. Every month Otieno has been setting aside $10 of the charity money to save up for saplings. They should be tall enough to sell in five years. He wants to use the money to put all four of his children through high school. He'll designate a different section of the grove for each child to help him tend. "It's going to be like their bank account," he says, laughing.

Otieno is hoping that his tree venture will be the one that finally boosts his family out of poverty. Nichole Sobecki for NPR hide caption

And maybe something more. Otieno is hoping this venture will be the one that finally boosts his family out of poverty. Because this time, for the first time, Otieno doesn't just have an idea. He has the capital to make a proper go of it. So that 12 years from now when the money from GiveDirectly stops flowing, he won't need it.

Odero: The power of a sofa set

Now to Otieno's cousin, Dancan Odero — the 30-year-old single guy. He's had a different experience.

Odero lives just a 10-minute walk away from his cousin's house along a red dirt path. When I catch up with him he's also hacking at branches. The field belongs to his elderly aunt. He's clearing underbrush while he chats with her.

Dancan Odero at his family's compound. He has epilepsy, which makes it hard for him to work. His family says he's constantly trying to prove he can be useful. Nichole Sobecki for NPR hide caption

She looks worried. Odero has epilepsy. Working in this sun is risky. "I'm scared he could have a seizure right here," she confides in a low voice. She's seen it happen before, she adds. "Many times." But Odero insisted on helping.

His family says he's constantly trying to prove he can be useful — be independent. But people hesitate to hire him for even odd jobs. He'll go out with the other young guys to look for work. Then watch as everyone gets picked but him. Back at his house he says that when that happens, "it makes me so frustrated I start shaking and I feel like crying. But I just keep it inside."

What makes it all worse, he adds, is that he didn't used to be this way. Back in elementary school he was a top student. One of his cousins, Isaac Oguti, remembers how Odero even used to get a little cheeky with teachers, bombarding them with questions. But Oguti says they'd let it slide because "he was so bright, the teachers loved him."

Then, when Odero was in the eighth grade, the seizures started. By the end of the year he had to drop out. He's clearly still intelligent. He loves to read. And he speaks English at a remarkably high level for someone who had to stop studying in middle school. But his family says over the years the attacks seem to have taken a toll on his brain. His speech has become slow and halting. And he often falls into a sort of fog, becoming confused about what's going on around him.

With no real income, he's had to rely on his mother and siblings to pay for practically everything, including food and medicine. His oldest sister Betty says he so hates having to keep asking for money that there were times he wouldn't even tell them he was out of epilepsy drugs. They would just notice that his seizures were becoming more frequent. "Then we'd realize, 'Argh! he's got no medicine.' "

Odero with his mother, Pamela. With no income of his own, he's had to rely on her and other relatives. Nichole Sobecki for NPR hide caption

But these days, Odero says, he can use the new GiveDirectly money to buy his meds. He takes them out, handling them very carefully. They eat up a third of his monthly payment.

Still, he's had enough cash left over to save up for something just as precious to him: a sofa and two armchairs. He explains that in the village, when a guy reaches adulthood, it's traditional for him to build himself a house on his parents' land — a mud hut with a living area and sleeping nook. But Odero never had the money. It wasn't until a year ago that his brothers built a hut for him. Even then he had no furniture. Buying that sofa set was so important he says, "so that when guests came to visit I wouldn't be ashamed."

Source: Nichole Sobecki for NPR. Odero lives in this hut, which his family built for him.

His mother, Pamela, remembers the afternoon when a little white taxi with the new sofa set strapped on top pulled up to Odero's hut. He carried in one of the armchairs and just sank into it, she says, laughing. Then, she says, he started calling over all his friends, saying "Come! Come have a seat!"

"Yes," he agrees. "I couldn't stop smiling."

Odero's pride and joy is his new sofa set. He bought it using money from the payouts "so when guests came to visit I wouldn't be ashamed." Nichole Sobecki for NPR hide caption

There was a hitch, though: It turned out the set only consisted of the wood frame. Cushions for the seat and backrest must be purchased separately, and there wasn't enough money to cover that. So since then, Odero has been carefully husbanding his GiveDirectly payouts to complete the set, buying one or two cushions each month.

As for any planning beyond that? There's not much, he admits. Unlike his cousin Denis Otieno, Odero has no scheme for how to use the charity income to make more money. No strategy for the day the money will stop coming.

I ask him, "Do you worry that at that point you will be back to where you were before?"

"Yes," he says, casting his eyes downward. "I think I might."

Odero has no long-term strategy for how to use the charity income to make more money. But the money has clearly changed his life for the better. Nichole Sobecki for NPR hide caption

Dignity and a rekindled love

So would this make GiveDirectly's grand experiment a failure?

Faye, the charity's chairman, says not necessarily. "There's a lot of talk about this magic bullet that you can apply once and people will no longer be poor," he says. "I think we all hope that to be true. We would obviously hope cash has the long-term impact."

But he points out that this is an unfair standard. Every month that GiveDirectly provides the villagers with $22 the charity is, by definition, lifting them out of extreme poverty. So on some level, it's just a different version of the billions in relief aid that the world currently spends annually to provide desperately poor people with food and other forms of in-kind help. No one expects that type of aid to permanently lift people out of poverty. So it would be enough for this experiment to show that just giving poor people cash is more efficient and effective.

"Let them make the choices," says Faye. "Because the poor are pretty good at making them."

Only they can know the damage that poverty does to each individual. And it's not just the tangible deprivations.

For Odero, what poverty really stole from him was his dignity. And the couch set is what has given it back. He no longer feels like the village invalid, the guy who always has to depend on everyone else, who can't ever be the host. Now he can invite people over — and offer them a place to sit.

"I feel like now I can be counted as a person," he says.

And even practical, go-getter Otieno says the most profound benefits go beyond the material. It's late afternoon. Otieno and his wife, Bentah, are sitting in their hut — heads bent over a notepad as they calculate their budget for the month. Otieno tallies some figures with a pencil, then looks up and says, "I was thinking that since last time we weren't able to give your mother any grain, we should get her some this time."

Otieno and his wife, Bentah, calculate their budget for the month. They never used to talk about money. It was too stressful. Nichole Sobecki for NPR hide caption

Bentah purses her lips. "Hmm, how much do we have?"

Both of them say a conversation like this would have been out of the question before the GiveDirectly payments started. Otieno worried Bentah wouldn't agree with how he was spending their earnings. As the eldest of four siblings, and with his parents long dead, he felt a duty to help his younger brothers and sister with a little cash during tough times, even when he and Bentah were just as hard up. And Otieno felt all the more awkward about it because he has yet to pay Bentah's parents the traditional dowry a groom owes his in-laws — generally two or three cows, a goat and some cash. The in-laws let the marriage go forward on the understanding that Otieno was good for the dowry down the line. But as the years have passed it's become an unspoken point of contention.

For her part, Bentah says she would often put unrealistic demands on Otieno. "We would have our needs as a family, and honestly he wouldn't have enough for it. But I would sometimes fail to understand that and that would bring friction."

So Otieno kept the family finances to himself — doling out pocket money to Bentah so she could buy the groceries but keeping her in the dark about the bigger picture. "I would be like, 'OK wife, do your work. I'm the man. Let me do my part. I'll just bring the money and here's what you should do with it.' "

And the silence over money seeped into the rest of their relationship, says Otieno. "I would come home. If there was a meal, I'd eat the meal. Then go to bed. No talk."

Figuring out how to spend the charity windfall has become a hopeful, joint project for Otieno and his wife, Bentah. And it's brought the fun back into their marriage, says Otieno. "It's like we're married the other day." Nichole Sobecki for NPR hide caption

Yes, agrees Bentah. "It was a little bit gloomy."

But now, figuring out how to spend the charity windfall has become a hopeful, joint project. Adding up their budget has become a monthly ritual. And it's got them doing other fun stuff together. Going on shopping excursions to the market. And, says Otieno, strolling around the village, hand-in-hand.

"It's not normal in our village for couples to walk this way," he adds, grinning a little sheepishly. "But it's like we're married the other day."

"You mean like newlyweds?" I ask.

"Yes," he says, laughing. "You're right."

Was there ever a time in your life when just a little no-strings cash would have made — or did make — a huge difference? Use the tool below to tell us your story. We may feature it on NPR.

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How to Solve Your Company’s Toughest Problems

A conversation with Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei on how to solve any problem in five clear steps.

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You’ve likely heard the phrase, “Move fast and break things.” But Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei says speed and experimentation are not enough on their own. Instead, she argues that you should move fast and fix things. (That’s also the topic and title of the book she coauthored with Anne Morriss .)

In this episode, Frei explains how you can solve any problem in five clear steps. First, she says, start by identifying the real problem holding you back. Then move on to building trust and relationships, followed by a narrative for your solution — before you begin implementing it.

Key episode topics include: leadership, strategy execution, managing people, collaboration and teams, trustworthiness, organizational culture.

HBR On Leadership curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock the best in those around you. New episodes every week.

• Learn more about HBR’s “ Future of Business” virtual conference (November 2023)
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HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR on Leadership , case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you.

Maybe you’ve heard the phrase, “move fast and break things.” It refers to a certain approach for rapid innovation that was popularized in Silicon Valley and invoked by many tech firms. But Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei says that speed and experimentation are not enough on their own. Instead, Frei argues that you should “move fast and fix things.” That’s the topic and title of the book she co-authored with Anne Morriss.

In this episode, Harvard Business Review’s editorial audience director Nicole Smith sits down with Frei to discuss how you can solve any problem in five quick steps. You’ll learn how to start by uncovering your true problem. Then, move on to build trust, relationships, and a narrative for your solution before you dive in on the actual work of implementing your fix.

This conversation was originally part of HBR’s “Future of Business” virtual conference in November 2023. Here it is.

FRANCES FREI: So, I would love to talk to you about how to move fast and fix things. And I’ll tell you the reason that Anne and I wrote this book – and it’s really a quest we’ve been on – is that Mark Zuckerberg, in his IPO for Facebook, famously said, “we’re going to move fast and break things.” And the problem with that is that it gave the world a false trade-off. It convinced so many of us that you could either move fast and break things or you could take care of people, one or the other. And we have found that there is a third, much better way. And that is, we can move even faster if we fix things along the way. And so, that’s what I’d love to talk to you about right now. And the way that we think about this is that if you want to move fast and fix things, we have to do it on a foundation of trust. And so, the first thing to do is to experience high trust. And we’re going to talk about how to build trust. But the way we see the world can be described in this grid. And in the presence of trust, we can move really fast. That’s how we move fast and fix things. We call it accelerating excellence. It’s only when we’re in the presence of low trust that we move fast and break things, or what we call being reckless disruption. And as I said, so many organizations are afraid of reckless disruption that they actually end up in this state of responsible stewardship, which is really just going slowly. And so, we wrote the book to get those that are in responsible stewardship to realize that we could go across the way to accelerating excellence. And we didn’t have to go down to reckless disruption. So, the way that we think about this, and it’s the way we wrote the book, is that there’s a five-step plan to do it. We organized the book for days of the week. We think that the metabolic rate of organizations can be improved significantly and that many, many hard problems can be solved in just one week. So, we wrote the book in the structure of a week. Step one is we have to find our real problem, that if we’re… for far too many of us, we’re addressing the symptom and not the cause. At any problem, there’s going to be trust broken at the bottom of it. And we’re going to solve for trust. We’re then going to learn how to get more perspectives to make our plans even better. Learn how to tell a narrative that works. And then, and only then, on Friday, do we get to go as fast as we can. And what typically happens in the move fast and break things is that we move Friday too forward in the week. So, our goal is to put ourselves in a position to move fast. And you have to wait till Friday to do that. So, what do I mean by finding the real problem? Most of us, a problem gets presented as a symptom. So, I’ll give you a recent example that got presented to me and Anne. We got called by a company. And they said, we’re having a gender problem. Will you come in and help us? And we’ve been able to help many organizations solve gender problems. So, we go in there. And we just wanted to make sure that they really did have a gender problem. The symptoms were super clear. There were no women at the top of the organization. Not very many women were coming into the organization. And great women were leaving the organization. So, they had… it looked like a gender problem. But it took, I don’t know, an hour. It took 60 minutes, certainly not even all of Monday, to uncover that their actual problem was not a gender problem. Their actual problem was a communication problem. And if we did all of the things that we know exist in our gender tool kit on how to fix gender, that would have all been wasted effort. But instead, what we found out is that the founders of this organization, and they were two cofounders, and they were very similar to each other, and they’d worked together and known each other for decades. They had a really uncomfortably and aggressively direct communication style. That communication style repelled all women and most men. So yes, the symptoms were gender. But oh, my goodness, the cause was that the two founders were succumbing to a problem many of us succumb to, which is, we were treating others as we like to be treated. They loved to be treated with aggressively direct communication. But nobody else loved it. And when we simply confronted them with that and taught them that instead of treating others as you want to be treated, now it’s a puzzle. Find out how they want to be treated, and treat them that way. Gets fixed. And all of a sudden, women and lots of other men are flowing to the organization. So, Monday… and we take a whole day for this. Let’s make sure we’re solving the real problem. And symptoms are rarely the cause. So, we just want to do some due diligence, some due diligence there. Once we know we’re solving for the real problem, there’s going to be trust broken down somewhere in the… amidst the problem. Well, very fortunately, we now understand trust super well. If I’m going to earn your trust, you will have an involuntary reaction of trusting me if you experience my authenticity, logic, and empathy all at the same time. When these three things are present, you will trust me. But if any one of these three is missing, you will not trust me. And here’s the catch. If trust is broken, and we know it’s only ever broken for one of these three reasons, we need to know which of the three, because the prescriptions to solve a broken authenticity pillar versus logic pillar versus empathy pillar, they’re entirely different from one another. So, you can think about rebuilding trust. It’s just a matching game. Know which one is at stake. And then bring in the curated prescription for that. There is a myth about trust that it takes a lifetime to build and a moment to destroy. And then you can never rebuild it. None of those things are true, that we can actually build trust very quickly when we understand the architecture of it. We can rebuild it quickly and just as strong as it was before. So, this notion that trust is a Faberge egg, it’s catchy and not true. Trust is being rebuilt all the time. But we want to do it with a deep understanding of the stable architecture. So, Tuesday takes all day. We solve for trust. On Wednesday, we call Wednesday making new friends. And what we mean by that is whichever collection of people you bring to the table who are the people that maybe are on your senior team or the people that you bring to the table to solve problems. And here, I’ve represented a table. And there’s eight check marks for eight seats. I encourage you to bring four extra chairs to that table. If you have eight seats, bring four extra chairs. Point to the extra chairs and ask yourself, who’s not here? Who has a stake in our problem who’s not represented at the table? I was recently in a conversation with our senior colleagues at the Harvard Business School. And we were talking about how to do junior faculty development. And we came up with what we thought were great ideas. And then we looked around and we were like, Oh, my goodness, there’s no junior faculty here. How on Earth do we know if these are good ideas? So, we got the empty seats. We invited people in. And sure enough, the junior faculty helped improve our plans dramatically. The equivalent of that always happens. So, on Wednesday, we want to make new friends. So, one is inviting them into the room. But then the second part is, how do you make sure that their voices are heard? And what we need to do is that when someone comes to the room, they’re going to be awfully tempted to say things that they think we want to hear. They’re going to be awfully tempted to conform to what we’re already saying. So, what we need to do is learn how to be inclusive of their unique voices. And the way we do that is by going through this four-step progressive process, which is, first, we have to make sure they feel safe and that they feel… they’re going to feel physically and emotionally safe, I’m sure, but that they feel psychologically safe. And that’s a shout-out to Amy Edmondson and all of her beautiful work there. But we have to make sure that we feel safe. Once we feel safe, then it’s our job to make sure that the new voices feel welcome. You can think of that as table stakes. Then when we’re doing is we’re really trying to move people up the inclusion dial. And here, this is when it really starts to make a big difference. And now what we want to do is make sure that they feel celebrated for their unique contribution. And so, what we’re doing is moving them up the inclusion dial. Now, here’s why that’s kind of hard. Most of us tend to celebrate sameness. And here, I’m asking you to celebrate uniqueness. And what I mean by celebrating sameness is that for the most part, like, when I watch my students in class, if one student says something, and then another student was going to say that, after class, they go and seek out the first person. And they’re like, you’re awesome. You said what I was going to say. They didn’t realize this. They’re celebrating sameness. They’re encouraging sameness. So, what I do is I advise my students to not share that verbal treat, that what we playfully refer to as a Scooby snack. Don’t share that Scooby snack for when somebody says something you were going to say. Share it for when somebody says something you could never have said on your own, and that it comes from their lived experience and learned experience, and how they metabolize successes and failures, and their ambition, if they’re lucky enough to have neurodiversity, their worldview, all of that. It’s a beautiful cocktail. Wait till they say something that comes uniquely from all of that. Celebrate that. When we celebrate uniqueness, that’s when we get the blossoming of the perspectives. And what we want to do to make somebody really feel included is we celebrate them when they are in our presence. But if you really want somebody to feel included, and we bring folks into the room for this, make sure that you champion them when they’re in the absence. So, let’s not just ask the junior faculty to come along. Or if it’s a senior team, and it’s mostly men, and the board of directors is coming in, and we’re like, oh, goodness. Let’s make sure we can show some women too. So, we bring some women along. We celebrate them in our presence. Let’s make sure that we champion them in our absence as well, which is celebrate their uniqueness in our presence and champion them in rooms that they’re not yet allowed into in their absence. So that’s Wednesday. Let’s make new friends. Let’s include their voices. Let’s champion those new voices in their absence. Thursday, we tell a good story. And stories have three parts to it: past, present, and future. It is really important – if you’re going to change something, if you’re going to fix something, it is critical to honor the past. People that were here before us, if they don’t feel like we see the past, we see them, we’re honoring the past, I promise you, they’re going to hold us back. And they’re going to be like The Godfather movie and keep pulling us back. So, we have to honor the past with clear eyes, both the good part of the past and the bad part of the past. Then we have to answer the question, why should we change now? Like, why shouldn’t we change maybe next week, maybe the week after, maybe the month after, maybe next year? So, it’s really important that we give a clear and compelling change mandate that answers the question, why now? Why not in a little while? I find that if you’re a retailer, and you have the metaphor of Walmart just opened up next door, clear, compelling. We have to… that should be our metaphor. How can we be, with as crisp of a language, clear and compelling about why now? And then we’ve honored the past. We have a clear and compelling change mandate. You want people to follow us in the improved future, we have to have a super rigorous and a super optimistic way forward. We have seen so many people be optimistic without rigor. Nobody’s going to follow. And similarly, rigor without optimism, also, nobody’s going to follow. So, it’s our job to keep refining and refining and refining until we can be both rigorous and optimistic. Now, how do we know when our plan is working? Well, here are the four parts of storytelling that we know. Our job is to understand this plan so deeply that we can describe it simply. When we describe it, we want to make sure if I describe it to you, and you describe it to the next person, that the next person understands it as if I described it to them. So, our job is to understand so deeply that we can describe simply that it’s understood in our absence. And the ultimate test is it’s understood when they go home and share it with their family. They have the same understanding we want. We find this to be the four-stage litmus test to make sure we have been effective in our communication. And when people understand it this well, then they can act on it in our absence. And that’s when we’re now in the position to go as fast as we can. And when all of that infrastructure is in place, well, then we can go super fast. And there are all kinds of clever ways that we can do that. So, I look forward to opening this up and having a conversation with you.

NICOLE SMITH: That was excellent. Professor, we got several questions. I want to just dive right into it. Tessa asked, what tools, practices, and skills do you use to uncover the underlying superficial problems? It sounded like you talked a lot about questions and asking questions.

FRANCES FREI: Yeah, it’s right. So, the Toyota production system would famously refer to the five whys. And they had… and that was root cause analysis, which we all know. But essentially, what they found is that it’s about five… why does this exist? Well, why does that exist? Well, why does that exist? Like, if you ask why five times, they found that that’s how you got to the root cause. We find, in practice, the answer is closer to three. It’s rarely one. So, it would be, the symptom and the cause are usually a few layers. And you want to keep asking why. So, that’s the first thing I would say, is that we want to have… make sure that you’re doing root cause analysis. But the second thing on a specific tool, the tool that we like the most, we call the indignities list. And what you do is that… and the way we found out the symptom is we went to women in this company, because that’s what… they said they were having a gender problem. And we asked the women, is there anything that’s going on at work that just… it feels like it’s just nicking your dignity? And it occurs for… is it happening to you, or you observe it happening to other women? So, you go in search of the indignities list. Every time we do this, you’ll get a list of issues. Often, they will sound trivial. When you start to get convergence on those indignities, we then ask you to convert those indignities to the dignity list. And in this case, it was the communication style. And you know what the awesome thing about that was? It was free.

NICOLE SMITH: Wow.

FRANCES FREI: You can’t beat free.

NICOLE SMITH: Monique asks, can you speak more about how to amplify others’ ideas and perspectives, especially when they’re from underrepresented stakeholders?

FRANCES FREI: Oh, I love that question. Thank you very much. And so, I’m going to go to… here is my favorite visual on the amplification part, which is the team I’ve drawn in the middle, it’s a three-person team. And each circle represents a person on the team. And I’m showing that there’s three circles in the middle, that those folks are very similar to one another. And then on either side, we have a team where there’s difference among us. And this is where the underrepresented might come in. If we’re not careful, when we have underrepresented voices, we’re only going to be seeking from them the parts that overlap with us. So, this is when we’ve invited them to the table, but we’re not inclusive of their voices. What we want to do is make sure that everybody feels comfortable bringing all of their richness to the table, not just the part that overlaps. And so, what we find we need to do is be very solicitous about… and same with questions. From your perspective, how does this sound to you? What else are we missing? What I’m trying to do is get you off the scent of saying what you think I want to say or even asking you to say what I want to say because it makes me feel better. But I want to be inclusive of all of the gorgeous uniqueness. And this, of course, ties to diversity, equity, and inclusion, which I know has gotten a rocky go of things in the press. But what I’ll tell you is, if I got to rewrite diversity, equity, and inclusion, I would have written it as inclusion, equity, and diversity, because I have seen teams bring… I have seen organizations bring in diverse and underrepresented talent and not get the benefit from it.

NICOLE SMITH: Yeah.

FRANCES FREI: So, diversity may or may not beget inclusion. But I have never, ever seen an organization that was inclusive that didn’t beget gorgeous diversity.

NICOLE SMITH: Right.

FRANCES FREI: So, be inclusive first.

NICOLE SMITH: I appreciate you saying that, not just sitting at the table, but actually including and giving lift to people’s voices. I also want to talk about this friends thing you keep talking about, making new friends. First of all, how do I identify who’s a friend?

FRANCES FREI: Yeah. So, in this case, I want the friend to be someone who is as different from you as possible. So, the new friends. Like, who’s worthy of friendship? Not someone who you’re already attracted to, not somebody who you’re already hanging out with. So, here’s the thing about humans. We really like people who are really like us. It doesn’t make us bad people. But it just makes us human. And so, what I want you to do is seek difference. Find people from different perspectives. And that will be demographic difference, different lived experience, different learned experience. And so, if we’re senior faculty, let’s invite in junior faculty. If we’re all women, let’s invite in a man. If we’re all engineers, let’s make sure we’re bringing in the perspective of marketing. So, what I would say is my guiding principle is seek difference. Those are your potential new friends.

NICOLE SMITH: OK, so Steve wants to hone in on Friday, right? And Steve asks, can you paint a quick sketch of what’s going fast after this being slower – a slower, more thoughtful process?

FRANCES FREI: I sure can. Thank you, Steve. And so, here’s how I would think about Friday. We need ruthless prioritization. And what I mean by that is that for the most part, organizations have… that we work equally on everything. We think everything is equally important. But what we know is that organizations that win, they have ruthless prioritization. And they know, this is what I’m designed to be great at. And this is what I’m designed to be bad at. Not bad for sport, bad in the service of great. And if an organization can’t discern between these two, they’re going to end up with exhausted mediocrity. And so, what we have to do for our employees and the rest of the organization is, here’s what we’re going to optimize on. That’s half the story. And here’s what we’re not. So, I’ll give you an example of this. And the example is from Steve Jobs. And if those of you that are a bit techie, and you remember 20 years ago, when Steve Jobs walked out on that Worldwide Developer Conference stage with a manila envelope, and it had a MacBook Air in it. And he slid out that MacBook Air. And the crowd and the world went crazy, because it was the lightest-weight laptop in the world. Well, he very, very openly said, we are best in class at weight because we are worst in class at physical features. We could have been best in class at physical features. But then we would have been worst in class at weight. Or we could have chosen to be average at both. But then we would have had to rename our company. And then he made fun of another company that I won’t say here. So, we will end up… if we aren’t deliberate, we’re going to end up with exhausted mediocrity, constantly getting better at the things we’re bad at, which, without realizing it, means we’re getting worse at the things we’re good at. So, the most important thing we can do on Friday is to articulate, this is what we want to be disproportionately good at. And thus, this is what we want to be disproportionately bad at. And there’s a whole other series of things. But that’s the most important one.

NICOLE SMITH: Mm-hmm. Speaking of Steve Jobs, we have a question where they ask, do you think that the culture in Silicon Valley is changing from break things to fix things, particularly as it pertains to not only their own companies, but broader societal problems?

FRANCES FREI: Yeah, so I – not in all of Silicon Valley. So, I think we can famously see, it’s not clear to me that Twitter is moving fast and fixing things. But what I will say is that, look at Uber today. And I had the pleasure of going and working with Uber back in 2017, when they were going to move fast and break things. They are moving fast and fixing things now, and going at a catapulting speed. Or ServiceNow didn’t ever even go through move fast and break things. It’s just moving fast and fixing things. Stripe is doing the same thing. Airbnb is now moving fast and fixing things. So, what I would say is that Silicon Valley can now choose to move fast and fix things, whereas, in the past, I think they only thought they had the choice of going slow or moving fast and breaking things. Today, we have the choice. And more and more companies are making that choice.

NICOLE SMITH: Mm-hmm. And so, Bill asked, which one of these steps do you find the most commonly in need of… that companies need the most help with? So, you laid out Monday through Friday. Is there something that sticks out often?

FRANCES FREI: Well, I’ll tell you that if companies are really pressed for time, they skip Thursday. And that’s to their peril, because if we skip Thursday, that means we have to be present. And we’re a bottleneck for everything. That means people need us to translate why this is important. So, I would say that Thursday is the one that’s most often skipped. And I encourage you not to. And then I would say that Tuesday is the one that’s most often misunderstood because of all of the myths I mentioned that we have about trust. And we just think, oh, if trust is broken, we have to work around it, as opposed to going right through it and rebuilding trust.

NICOLE SMITH: So, Thursday, that’s the storytelling, honoring the past, describing it simply, right? So why do we struggle to describe things simply?

FRANCES FREI: Oh, I don’t know what your inbox looks like on your email. But you tell me how many long emails you have.

NICOLE SMITH: I refuse to deal with my inbox. I’ll deal with it later.

FRANCES FREI: So, Mark Twain was right. I apologize for sending you a long letter. I didn’t have the time to send you a short letter. It’s the metaphor for all of this, that when we understand something in a complicated way, we want to benefit people from the entirety of our knowledge. And we just throw up all of it on people, as opposed to realizing the beautiful curation and skill that’s required to go from understanding it deeply to understanding it elegantly in its simplicity. So, I think it takes time. It’s also… it takes skill. Like, this is… there are professional communicators for a reason. They’re really good at it. But if you’re on your second draft of something, you have no chance of describing it simply. So, I would say, unless you’re on your 10th draft, you’re probably describing it in too complicated of a way.

NICOLE SMITH: Yeah. So, can I ask you a little bit more of a personal question, Professor?

FRANCES FREI: Yeah, anything.

NICOLE SMITH: So, Abby asks, how do you apply the essential steps to moving fast and fixing things in your own consulting role? So, Uber and all the places that you go.

FRANCES FREI: Yeah. Yeah, so I’ll tell you, when we’ve been successful, it’s when organizations come to us, and they say, here’s our problem. Will you help us? When we’ve been unsuccessful is when we go to the organizations, and we’re like, we think you’re having a problem. So, pull works. Push doesn’t. So, the only thing we can’t provide is the desire to change. And so, I would say personally, make sure there’s an opening. And then you can be super helpful in fixing a problem. And I also would say that all of this applies to yourself. I mean, that ruthless prioritization – so many of us are trying to be good at as many things as possible – at work, at home, daughter, sister, cousin, parent, friend – as opposed to, I’m going to kill it at work, kill it at home. And I am not going to be good… not now. I’m not going to be as good at all of these other things. So, you can either choose exhausted mediocrity, or you can have the nobility of excellence. These things are choices. So, I think all of this applies to ourselves.

NICOLE SMITH: So, let’s go back to Tuesday, where you drew that triangle with logic, and empathy, and authenticity. So, Hung asks, between logic and empathy, which one would you say an individual should develop first? And Hung really describes just having a left foot and right foot and not knowing which one to go forward.

FRANCES FREI: Yeah. So, here’s what I would say, Hung, is, ask yourself… I bet you’re trusted most of the time, which means people are experiencing your authenticity, logic, and empathy most of the time. But ask yourself, the last time, or the most recent times you had a skeptic, you had someone who was doubting you, who they were wobbling on your trust, ask yourself, what is it that they doubted about you? And if it’s that they doubted your logic, double click there. If they doubted your empathy, double click there. And that is, each of us has what we call a wobble. Each one of us has a pattern where the distribution of these is higher for one or the other. That’s the sequence I would go in. There’s not some generic sequence that is better. All three of these pillars are equally important. But I bet, for each one of us, one tends to be more shaky than the other. And that’s what I would go after. Now, I will just tell you the distribution in the world. The vast majority of us have empathy wobbles, then logic wobbles, then authenticity wobbles. But that doesn’t help any of us specifically. It just tells us we have lots of company.

NICOLE SMITH: OK. So, we got a lot more questions and a little time. I want to get as many as I can in, but…

FRANCES FREI: OK, I’ll go super quick. Yeah.

NICOLE SMITH: No, take your time. But I just want to let you know, you’re pretty popular in this conversation. Rock star, as Allison said. Tara asks, how can company leadership make sure that their messaging is actually heard and understood? I feel like you touched on this a bit with simplicity.

FRANCES FREI: Yeah. Yeah, and I think that the way to do it is, talk to people about your message that didn’t hear it directly from you. And see how well they understood. That tells you whether or not it’s reaching. So, don’t ask the people that were in the room. Ask the people that were spoken to by other people in the room. That will tell you how well it’s there. And if it took you a long time to describe it, I promise you, it’s not going to be heard.

NICOLE SMITH: Mm. Oh, wow. Yeah, thinking about it, probably need to shorten my own stories a little bit here. So, Karen asks you, how do you handle employees who are not willing to accept others’ points of view and be open minded? I mean, you described this uniqueness and diversity. But there are people who are holdouts that don’t see the advantage of that.

FRANCES FREI: So, I often find those folks are an education away, because if I can let you know that if I get to benefit from everyone’s point of view, and you only get to benefit from some people’s point of view, I will competitively thump you. So, let’s say you don’t have the moral imperative wanting to do it. Well, the performance imperative… we have found that organizations that are inclusive get a 200% to 500% boost on employee engagement and team performance with no new people, no new technology, simply the act of being inclusive. So, the person who doesn’t want to be inclusive, I’m going to ask them, can they afford… can their career afford performing so suboptimally?

NICOLE SMITH: Mm. And so, we have a question. The person didn’t leave their name, so I don’t have a name. But how much time do you spend on each stage? Some folks like to spend more time on stages than others. Does the team not move forward until everyone’s satisfied with the current step? What do you do when you hit a roadblock on each stage, and not everyone is in agreement?

FRANCES FREI: Yeah. Well, I don’t like consensus, so I’ll just… I’ll say there. And so, what I try to do is work on momentum, which is that I want to make sure that everybody’s voices have been heard. But then you have to leave the decision to someone else. So, we want to do is make sure everybody’s voices are heard, and they had a chance to do it. But we don’t hold out until the very last person. We move forward. And then we can retrace and see if the momentum can bring people forward. So, not consensus. I would consider it not consensus, and we have to make sure that everybody gets to air out what their problems are.

NICOLE SMITH: OK. Well, Christopher asks our last question. How does transparency fit into this model, specifically this trust, authenticity, logic model? Does it have a place?

FRANCES FREI: Yeah. It sure does. And I find that the most important part for transparency is on the logic side. So, if you’re going to say… if you’re going to inspect whether or not I have good rigor, and I have a good plan, I could say, oh, just have faith. I did all of this hard work. Or I could give you a glimpse inside so that you can see the inner workings. Now, I often call it a window of transparency, because there’s actually a cost of full transparency that I’m not always willing to take. But a window of transparency, I think we always need. So, to me, the transparency part is, let’s be transparent about our logic so people can see it for themselves, and they don’t have to do it in too much of a faith-based way.

NICOLE SMITH: Professor, that was all dynamic. And thank you for the illustrations. You made it simple with the illustrations.

FRANCES FREI: Yeah, all right. Awesome. Thanks so much.

NICOLE SMITH: Thank you for your time.

FRANCES FREI: OK.

HANNAH BATES: That was Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei in conversation with HBR’s editorial audience director Nicole Smith at the “Future of Business” virtual conference in November 2023.

We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review.

When you’re ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world’s top business and management experts, you’ll find it all at HBR.org.

This episode was produced by Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Dave Di Iulio, Terry Cole, and Maureen Hoch, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.

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The money talked and the Knicks didn’t have enough.

Isaiah Hartenstein agreed to a three-year, $87 million deal with the Thunder on Monday morning, multiple sources said, leaving the Knicks with a hole to fill at center as they navigate the remaining lower tiers of free agency.

The Knicks gave it their best effort to re-sign the starting center, offering their maximum of four years, $72.5 million as soon as the NBA Finals finished.

That offer remained on the table until Hartenstein agreed to the balloon offer from the Thunder, which is front-loaded and not guaranteed in the third year, a source told The Post.

Hartenstein’s salary next season will hover around $30 million, whereas the Knicks could only start at a shade more than $16 million in Year 1 of a new deal.

Hartenstein, per multiple sources, wanted to return to the Knicks, but multiple factors made OKC’s offer impossible to turn down.

First, the Thunder, while maybe not guaranteed to have a starting spot for Hartenstein because Chet Holmgren plays center, are a legit championship contender after winning 57 games last season.

OKC’s biggest issue was rebounding, and Hartenstein, a bruiser in the paint, will help alleviate that problem.

Second, the money is not just about the salary, but also the cost of living/taxes for a fresh first-time father who spent much of his NBA career on relatively low-paying and non-guaranteed contracts.

Follow all the latest updates on NBA free agency, including signings, trades and rumors.

According to Spotrac, Hartenstein’s career earnings since 2018 are $22.65 million.

He’ll easily surpass that in one year of his new deal.

The reason the Knicks were limited in their offer is because they’re in the luxury tax and have no cap space.

Their only avenue toward re-signing Hartenstein was using his Early Bird Rights, and the market dictated that wasn’t nearly enough.

After Nic Claxton re-signed with the Nets , Hartenstein became the No. 1 center on the market.

As The Post reported, OKC, historically a tough place to recruit free agents, was viewed as the “top threat” to pry away Hartenstein.

Then, the Thunder executives made the 26-year-old a priority by traveling to Eugene, Ore. — where Hartenstein was born and still has family — to meet with him in the opening hours of free agency Sunday.

So, where does this leave the Knicks?

They still have an obvious replacement at starting center in Mitchell Robinson, whose biggest drawback is his history of health issues.

Robinson missed a combined 74 games the last two seasons and is coming off surgery to his ankle. Even when available, he’s only averaging about 25 minutes.

Jericho Sims (45) has been the Knicks’ third-string center but could get an increased role.

They recently picked up the contract option for Sims, as The Post first reported.

He’s raw but with upside in his athleticism and defense.

Tom Thibodeau started Sims in 27 games over the last two seasons.

They still own the Bird Rights on Precious Achiuwa, who is probably more of a power forward but showed aptitude at center last season when thrust into the mix because of injuries.

Center depth is the one glaring hole in the Knicks roster construction.

They used one of their draft picks last week on a center, taking 7-foot German prospect Ariel Hukporti at No. 58.

The free-agent market for centers is pretty slim and the Knicks, if they stay below the second apron of the luxury tax, will have access to only the taxpayer midlevel exception (roughly $5 million starting salary) and just minimum contracts after that.

The Heat’s Thomas Bryant is one low-end free agent possibility and Charlotte’s Nick Richards could be a trade target.

Others — Jonas Valanciunas, Andre Drummond, Drew Eubanks, Alex Len, Mason Plumlee, Luka Garza, Richaun Holmes, Mo Bamba — signed elsewhere in free agency.

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Losing Hartenstein was inevitable, in the end.

He became a lesson in development from Thibodeau, who has taken undervalued centers (Nerlens Noel, Joakim Noah, Taj Gibson, Robinson, Hartenstein) and got them all paid big bucks.

But Hartenstein was more than just the latest center triumph from Thibodeau.

He was a strong fit with the current Knicks — a physical paint protector with a growing role in the offense — with the analytics backing up his impact on winning.

He will be very difficult to replace.

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• JUN 28, 2024

Causes: How Does Wage Inequality Cause Poverty?

This video explores wage inequality—its definition, causes, and consequences on poverty. It starts by explaining wage inequality as the disparity in earnings due to differences in skills, education, and job roles, fueled by the free-market economy. The video discusses how wage inequality exacerbates poverty by preventing low-wage earners from meeting basic needs and accessing quality education and healthcare, thus trapping them in a cycle of poverty. It highlights the broader social and economic impacts, including social unrest, decreased consumer demand, and slowed economic growth. Solutions such as implementing progressive income tax systems, encouraging living wages, enforcing labor laws, and providing quality education and training are proposed to address wage inequality. The video concludes with advice for students interested in solving these issues, emphasizing the importance of understanding economic systems, advocating for equitable policies, and recognizing the interplay of social and cultural factors with economic disparities. ----- How to Solve Poverty is a course presented by Plato University. Enroll in the course for FREE to get exclusive access to: A community of passionate learners like youVideos with every lessonAdvanced resources Additional skillsAnd much moreEnroll at plato.university/courses/poverty

• JUN 27, 2024

Systems Thinking Iceberg Model for Poverty

This video script delves into the application of the Iceberg Model as a crucial tool in systems thinking, particularly for understanding and solving poverty. The Iceberg Model metaphorically illustrates both visible elements and hidden dynamics of a system or problem, akin to an iceberg's visible tip and its larger submerged portion. The model encourages looking beyond immediate, visible problems (e.g., the rising rates of type 2 diabetes among children) to explore underlying causes at different levels: patterns of behavior, systematic structures, and mental models including psychological, biological factors, and belief systems. Through asking 'why' questions at each level, the script emphasizes the importance of identifying root causes and interconnectedness in systems, ultimately leading to leveraging points for effective and sustainable solutions. The goal is to foster a deeper understanding of the complex systems underlying global challenges like poverty, moving beyond superficial fixes to target the root of the issue systematically. ----- How to Solve Poverty is a course presented by Plato University. Enroll in the course for FREE to get exclusive access to: A community of passionate learners like youVideos with every lessonAdvanced resources Additional skillsAnd much moreEnroll at plato.university/courses/poverty

• © Brandon Stover | Plato University

Top Podcasts In Education

Solving the Money Problem: Retirement Income Planning

by GeorgeG | Jun 21, 2022

There was a time when retirement was straightforward. You worked for the same company for 30 years, had a retirement party, then rode off into the sunset with a gold watch, a pension, and Social Security. 

Not so much today. 

In fact, it might be the opposite. Solving the money problem is more complicated than it used to be. 

Today, no one spends 30 years at one company (no gold watch), Social Security is shaky, not only are we responsible for accumulating money for retirement, we’re also responsible for designing our retirement income. 

Over the course of my 20+ years as a financial advisor, some aspects of this type of planning have changed, but the fundamentals have remained the same. That’s what I want to help you to better understand. 

Here’s what we’ll cover:

The protection phase

The accumulation phase

The distribution phase

Risks in retirement

Taking ownership

One more thought before we get into it; it’s imperative to get clear on how you want your life to be. What do you want it to look like tomorrow, 10 years from now, and 30 years from now? In service of helping you explore your future, you can access our Goals course for free. 

Let’s get started.

We all go through the same three phases of our financial lives; protection, accumulation and distribution. Understanding the important planning considerations during each phase is essential. 

This is all about setting your financial foundation. It means knowing your monthly cash flow, establishing and maintaining an emergency fund, having the proper insurances as well as legal documents. 

As you’re saving and investing for retirement, your planning will be different than when you’re actually in retirement. Your cash flow, budgeting and emergency fund needs will be similar, but there will probably be some meaningful differences once you retire. It’s important to keep this in mind as you’re planning. 

What is your plan for retirement? Will you use your 401(k) at work as your primary accumulation vehicle? Will you develop a portfolio of real estate? Is your business your retirement plan? Whatever it is, it’s important to consistently monitor your progress and make any necessary changes.

Too often, we avoid thinking about our retirement plan because we think it’s too complicated. And while there’s a lot to think about, there are only a handful of truly important variables. 

The key variables to consider are:

• When you’ll retire- What age do you want to be able to step away from full-time work?
• How much income you’ll need- Perhaps you don’t intend to ever stop working, and you’ll continue working part time. Maybe you never want to work again, so you’ll need to replace 100% of your income. 
• What interest rate you’re going to plan with- Are you comfortable using a 10% rate of return, or does a more conservative 6% seem realistic?

Getting your initial plan together is an important step. From there, you’ll consistently monitor it as your thinking as well as outside variables change. 

You worked hard, saved and invested, and now it’s time to retire. How best to take what you’ve saved and turn it into an income that will last for as long as you need it to? For better or worse, there’s not a right or wrong way to do this. 

Here’s a helpful rule of thumb; plan for enough guaranteed lifetime income to cover your fixed expenses. Your fixed expenses include:

• Housing 
• Transportation

Where does guaranteed lifetime income come from? Here are the primary sources:

• Social Security
• Guaranteed lifetime income annuities

Certainly, there are other ways to create sustainable streams of income, but the previous three are guaranteed to be there for as long as you need them, even if you live well past 100 years old. 

We plan for our futures, and try to look at our situation from as many different angles as we can. We want to position ourselves for success. What are the biggest risks or threats in retirement?

• Healthcare costs- It’s estimated an average couple may need upwards of $300,000 to cover medical care costs in retirement.
• Inflation- The cost of living continues to increase every year, eroding our purchasing power. 
• Market risk- All markets have a degree of risk. 
• Liquidity- Emergencies happen when we least expect. 
• Longevity- While it sounds odd, living longer than expected can be financially negative. We don’t want to outlive our money. 

Like all risks, we protect against them by planning, saving, and maintaining the proper insurances. 

There will never be anyone more concerned about your financial future than you are. It’s essential you take 100% ownership of your retirement. 

Taking 100% ownership doesn’t mean you need to do everything. You can certainly outsource some or all of the planning to professionals. But it does require you to pay close attention, and take an active interest to ensure everything you want to happen, actually happens. 

So much of success in planning your retirement is in giving it the attention it deserves. The sooner you can start, the easier it is to accomplish your goals. 

If you’d like to learn more, check out our Retire Happily course. You can connect with one of our Certified Partners to get any question answered. 

We’ve got three free courses as well: Our Goals Course , Values Course , and our Get Out of Debt course. 

If you’re ready to take control of your financial life, check out our DIY Financial Plan course. 

If you’d like help getting on the same page with your partner, check out our Same $ Page Course. 

Stay up to date by getting our monthly updates .

Check out the LifeBlood podcast .

LifeBlood is supported by our audience. If you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more.

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Will Biden Withdraw?

Democratic worries about the president’s age have surged after thursday’s debate..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Natalie Kitroeff. This is “The Daily.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week set off a furious discussion among Democratic officials, donors, and strategists about whether and how to replace him as their party’s nominee. Today, chief White House correspondent Peter Baker takes us inside those discussions and Biden’s effort to shut that conversation down.

It’s Monday, July 1.

Peter, you’ve been reporting on what I think can be best described as the great Democratic freakout that started basically from the moment the debate began at 9:00 PM on Thursday night. Tell us about the aftermath.

Yeah, I’ve been covering politics for 38 years, and I’ve never seen a political panic like we saw after that debate. It was like a run on the bank. Everybody in the Democratic Party was suddenly confronted with what they didn’t want to admit up until then, which is that they have an 81-year-old candidate who would be 86 at the end of his second term. And it’s very possible that he was not capable of completing this campaign in a vigorous and competitive way against Donald Trump. That’s what really it comes down to for many Democrats. Can Joe Biden take the campaign to Donald Trump and stop what they think is an existential threat to the country?

I want to know more about who you were hearing from. Who are the people that are calling you? What are the big questions they’re asking? What are they struggling with?

Yeah, I don’t want to get into too many names. A lot of people don’t want to be out front. But you did see even publicly, people like Senator Claire McCaskill.

Joe Biden had one thing he had to do tonight and he didn’t do it.

The former Senator from Missouri, red state Democrat, was on MSNBC just minutes after the debate.

He had one thing he had to accomplish, and that was reassure America that he was up to the job at his age. And he failed at that tonight.

She talked about this was a crisis, that her phone was blowing up with a lot of Democrats. And she was very forthright about it. It was very striking that she said that.

I think there’s a lot of people who are going to want to see him consider taking a different course now,

People like van Jones, who was on CNN, he used to work in the Obama White House.

We’re still far from our convention. And there is time for this party to figure out a different way forward, if you will allow us to do that.

He very candidly talked about how this was going to raise questions about whether the President should continue as the candidate.

Some Democrats are calling for Biden to step down. Andrew Yang —

Andrew Yang, who ran against Biden in 2020 for the Democratic nomination, popular with some younger voters, he said on social media it was time for Biden to step aside. Those are some of the public people. And obviously, in the hours and days that followed, more came out and said, well, this is something we need to think about.

But the people I was talking to were people behind the scenes, people who have run White Houses before, people who work for President Biden in this administration. I heard words like, “He can’t win.” “This is a disaster.”

“This is a nightmare.” And they were very, very concerned that he could not beat Donald Trump.

Right. And you saw these really prominent media figures, outlets, “The Times” as an actor in this situation calling for Biden to step aside. Our editorial board did this. We should say this is entirely separate from our newsroom from the show, but there was this real crescendo. And there was a sense that this was a turning point, right?

Absolutely. But it’s not just the media. I think what the Biden campaign would like it to be is about the media. It’s just that the media tends to be more out front and say things more openly than Democrats were saying. It really was rank and file Democrats. It really was high ranking Democrats, and they were absolutely flipped out.

Right. These doubts are coming from all over, from many corners. Take me through, Peter, the argument for why this poor performance meant that Biden should be replaced. How do they explain that thinking?

Well, look, a lot of people who defended President Biden will say is that incumbent presidents don’t do well in their first debate, and that is true. Historically, that’s been true. Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump all lost, arguably, their first debate when they were running for re-election.

But the difference is, if Obama doesn’t register a good performance against Mitt Romney, first of all, nobody thought that Obama wasn’t capable of being president as a result. And second of all, he had another debate about a week or two later in order to try to recover. Neither of those factors works here.

Biden’s problem from this debate is much more existential. It’s much more profound because it’s about whether he is able to perform the office of president, not just for the next few months, but for the next 4 and 1/2 years. And there’s not going to be another debate until September. So he doesn’t have another big audience opportunity to change people’s minds, to show that, in fact, he does still have it and can run the country. And that’s a real problem for him.

And there’s this broader context here, right. Voters have been telling pollsters for a year now that Biden’s age is a major concern for them. We’ve seen Biden’s age before our very eyes. We’ve seen him stumble in speeches, in public appearances. And, Peter, we had talked to you about this very issue a few months ago after a special counsel investigating Biden’s son, Hunter, issued this report focusing on Biden’s mental state, in part, saying that the president was, quote, a “well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory” and had, quote, “diminished faculties in advancing age.”

But at the time, the White House dismissed that report as a partisan hit job. So in a sense, this debate performance was the capstone of something that’s been in the air for a very long time. It’s just that this time, it was undeniable. There was no spinning it.

Well, I think that’s exactly right. There was no spinning it. One Democrat put it to me. He said, for a long time, the fear of Trump stifled Democratic criticism of Biden. People didn’t want to criticize him because they desperately want to beat Trump.

But now, that same fear, he said to me, now meant that they could no longer stand behind Biden, that they worried that he had been diminishing over a period of time and that his staff and the people around him had hidden that from the public. There’s a real anger out there among some Democrats. Now, what the Biden circle would tell you is, no, we didn’t hide anything from you.

Yes, he does have moments where he is not as lucid as you would want him to be, but that, broadly speaking, when they see him operate, when they’re sitting with him in the Oval Office or in the situation room, he is sharp. He asks good questions. He understands and grasps the issues that he is confronting.

And I mean, we all have good days and bad days. But when you’re 81, your good days and bad days may be more pronounced.

And if he has good days and bad days, well, Thursday night was a very bad night.

Peter, I want to ask you about that, about your view on all of this, because I do think all this has raised this fundamental question for a lot of Democrats, for a lot of journalists, for voters, which is what you’re getting at. Was what we saw on the debate stage the real Biden? And had the White House been hiding him from us? Or were the people around him just unable to recognize the perils of this themselves? Like, have they been gaslighting us all, or are they in denial?

Yeah, it’s a good question. That’s the question in some ways, right. I think that people who work closely with the president and like him, admire him, respect him want to see the best in him and want everybody else to see the best in him. And they have been unwilling to admit whether or not he has slipped in the last 3 and 1/2 years.

And part of it may be strategic. They recognize in their view that he is the president. They’ve got to build him u and make him as successful as possible. And they have shielded him as much as possible from public scrutiny.

He hasn’t give as many interviews or as many press conferences as any of his predecessors going back to Reagan. He’s never getting interview to “The New York Times,” or “The Washington Post,” or “The Wall Street Journal,” or the “LA Times,” or any other newspaper, which is, I think, the first president, certainly in my lifetime, who hasn’t done that. And that’s been part of a pattern of them trying to protect him. And I think there’s kind of a reckoning right now among other Democrats, wondering whether they went too far.

OK. So we have this huge reaction to this moment, the debate from the Democrats in the news media. Can you walk us through how the Biden team responds to the full-blown panic?

His campaign was thrown into full-blown damage control over the weekend. And the President himself set out to do two things. First, privately, he met with donors and assured them, yes, he’s still a viable candidate and that they should still support him.

And then publicly, he went on a campaign blitz, traveling to seven events in four states. And his first stop on Friday, in fact, was at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina.

[CROWD CHEERING]

Hello, hello, hello.

This was already scheduled before the debate, but it gave him an opportunity to both show that he can do the job —

Thank you, North Carolina.

— to demonstrate vigor and vitality —

I don’t know what you did last night, but I spent 90 days and 90 minutes on the stage debating the guy who has the morals of an alley cat.

— and to address his own performance.

I know I’m not a young man. State the obvious. Well, I know.

And he says pretty candidly, he says, yeah, I’m not a young man.

I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to.

But he goes on.

Well, I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.

And I know how to tell right from wrong.

And I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. And I know, like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down, you get back up.

And, you know, he comes across as pretty vigorous, pretty energetic. Of course, he’s reading from a teleprompter. Always a lot easier to read from a teleprompter. But I think more important than that was the body language and the spirit that he brought to the moment.

It sounds like teleprompter, not the Biden who appears at the rally is meaningfully different, at least in style from the President that we saw on the debate stage. I’m wondering if you think this has changed anything. Has the conversation changed?

No, not fundamentally. I think fundamentally that people still recognize that there’s an issue here. Now, there was pushback among Democrats saying, OK, take a breath. Get a hold of yourself. He’s not dropping out.

I don’t think you judge a person’s — the body of their work on one night. They don’t always go the way you want to. I have confidence in the President because he’s delivered.

And I understand that he had a raspy voice. But like I’ve told folks, who cares? We have a choice this November between someone that’s a good person, a good president with a real record of results, and someone that has brought shame on the presidency.

Don’t let 90 minutes define a career of a president who’s been in office for 3 and 1/2 years, been in politics for 50 years, and overshadow the important issues that he stands for. And so you heard that line of thinking in the spin room and on TV.

Look, I think Joe Biden had a bad debate night, but it doesn’t change the fact that Donald Trump was a bad president.

And by the way, Trump did terribly, too, which is a fair point. Trump may have been more lucid in the sense that he sounded stronger. But if you actually looked at what he said, listen to what he said, he said so many things that were just not true. And it helped Biden that former President Barack Obama put out a statement saying, hey, guys, I’ve seen bad debates. It’s fine. Don’t freak out, in effect, is what he said.

And Jim Clyburn —

And if he asked my opinion, I would give it, as I always do —

— who is his very close ally in Congress from South Carolina, the Congressman who helped get him the nomination in the first place, said, stay the course.

He should stay in this race. He should demonstrate going forward his capacity to lead the country.

So it was important to have those voices out there among prominent Democrats trying to calm the waters. But it only went so far because the waters are still churning underneath.

Peter, I’m curious how his donors are reacting to all this. I mean, you mentioned that part of his full court press is to reassure them that he’s got the mental acuity to run. How successful has he been at that?

Yeah, I think that there are certainly some donors who are resigned. They feel like there’s not much choice. But there are others who actually are considering jumping off the boat. Jumping on what Mika Brzezinski on “Morning Joe” called the hysteria train. And I think that it’s an open question.

But part of the thing is, of course, they’re waiting to see how the polls really shake out. The initial polls after any debate are often not really representative of how an event settles into the political narrative. And the polling and data so far have been kind of contradictory. On the one hand, it shows that Trump clearly beat Biden. Biden clearly lost, and that Biden has only reinforced the doubts that most voters have about his age and mental capacity. That’s absolutely true.

At the same time, there’s some polling showing that the overall horse race number, who are you going to vote for, hasn’t moved dramatically yet, if it does at all, and that it’s possible this is baked in that people who were going to vote against him are still going to vote against him. The people who would vote for him, holding their nose, may not be happy about it, may still be voting for him.

But there’s a tell. The tell was from the Biden campaign. When they put out a memo by Jen O’Malley Dillon, who was his top political person at the campaign, and she says if you see polls go down in the next few days or weeks, what’s telling is that she is, in fact, anticipating that polls would be bad for them and trying to set expectations for supporters and voters and donors saying, don’t let that panic you any further. That’s normal, and we’ll get past that just as we have other bumps in the road.

It seems like the Biden effort over the weekend has, in some sense, quieted some public doubts from key Democrats, right? There’s not a — we didn’t see a deluge of senior lawmakers going on Sunday talk shows and saying, Mr. President, step aside. But from what you’re saying and based on the reporting that we’ve seen from our colleagues, the effort has not, by any means, ended the discussion about replacing Biden. That is very much still happening under the surface.

Yeah. That discussion is very much alive among Democrats. Will Biden and should Biden remain as the candidate? And the question then becomes is if he doesn’t, what then?

We’ll be right back.

Peter, given that this discussion of Biden stepping aside is still, as you said, very much alive, what would it look like for someone to replace him on the presidential ticket at this point in the campaign just a few months before election day? It sounds like it would be pretty daunting.

Yeah. I mean, look, we have never had a situation like this, not certainly in modern times. No president has ever dropped out of the race so late in the cycle. And you have to remember a couple of things.

First of all, the Democratic National Convention, which would anoint a new nominee, is in late August. But they’re actually scheduled to take a roll call vote before the convention begins on August 7. So that means we have five weeks between now and when the roll call is scheduled to be held to decide a nominee.

If the president were to drop out, that would create this truncated, incredibly intense, incredibly wide open, incredibly volatile, short campaign to figure out who would be the nominee. And it’s complicated logistically. It’s complicated politically, it’s complicated in all sorts of ways. And we don’t really know what’s going to happen or how it would happen because we’ve never seen it before.

But it is conceivable. It is possible. The President has to decide that he’s not going to run. If that doesn’t happen, then there’s no contest. There’s no way anybody sees a forcing him off the ballot if he chooses to continue to run. That doesn’t seem to be any appetite for trying to find a way to undo his nomination other than with his consent.

He controls the 3,900 delegates that are going to be at the convention. They’re obligated to vote for him on the first ballot. So it has to be first, his decision on whether he continues to run. If he does, then that’s it. That’s the end of that question. But if he doesn’t, then it’s jump ball.

Would his replacement automatically be Kamala Harris as the vice president?

No, not at all. If it were after the convention and they were both nominated, and then he stepped aside at the last minute, then they probably would simply go to Kamala Harris because she had been ratified by the convention as the vice presidential candidate. That’s possible. But if we’re talking about a situation before the convention, it’s anybody’s guess. There’s about a dozen other prominent Democrats out there who are looking at jumping in if suddenly, the nomination is up for grabs.

But so who are we talking about? What are some of the most prominent names that have come up?

Well, other than Kamala Harris, you have a number of governors, particularly Gavin Newsom of California, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. There are, of course, those who ran last time who might jump back in, in theory. Senator Cory Booker, Senator Amy Klobuchar, potentially even maybe Pete Buttigieg, who is currently the transportation Secretary.

But the ones who are going to have the best chance are those who have an apparatus already, who have a set of donors and fundraisers who can raise money instantly, and who have the ability to get on TV and get media attention without having to work as hard for it. And that does suggest, obviously, a sitting vice president or a sitting governor.

Basically hitting reset on the whole nomination process requires embracing a moment of genuine political chaos. I mean, that’s the theoretical downside of this. But of course, I mean, there’s also a potential upside, right? Massive media attention potentially for whoever the replacement Democrat is, the possibility that that replacement could energize a lot of Democratic voters and independents, and even potentially moderate Republicans out there who dislike Trump but just couldn’t get excited about Biden.

Yeah, absolutely. Whoever emerges will have a certain advantage of freshness, right. And that person will have a generational argument to make against Trump because whoever it would be would be younger than Trump. And suddenly, Trump is then the old candidate. He’s 78.

And that new Democratic candidate would be able to say, I’m the next generation. This guy is also too old to be president. And if you’re concerned about our guy was, can he make it through four years, then you should be picking me because the other guy can’t make it either through four years.

Now, the downside, of course, is these are people who are largely untested on a national stage, at least in this kind of an environment. And you don’t know how people will do once they actually jump in. They didn’t have the advantage of a year-long primary contest to prove themselves.

Before you jump into a race, you can look really attractive. Look at Ron DeSantis. Before he jumped in to the Republican primaries, on the Republican side, they all thought, wow, he’s really great. Didn’t turn out to be so great once he got on the campaign trail. The magic didn’t actually appear. So that’s the danger here, is we don’t know which of these Democrats, if any, would have the ability to shine when the big giant klieg lights are on them.

And we’re clearly in a delicate moment right now. But are any of these potential contenders trying to signal interest at this point? I mean, what does that look like? It sort of seems like the art of raising your hand for something but not wanting it to publicly.

Yeah, it’s a really good question because you obviously can’t do anything that seems disloyal to Biden, right. Nobody’s willing to take on Biden directly and say, I’m now running, and you should take him down. So the trick here is you have to be loyal, loyal, loyal right up to the minute that Biden says he’s not running, at which point then suddenly you’re off to the races.

And doing that from a standing start is not a good idea for any campaign. So they have to find ways of talking to their people, lining up donors, thinking about what kind of a campaign would look like, who might be their strategist, without letting anybody know that they’re doing that, or at least not let anybody in our business know that because it would obviously backlash on them. And that’s a very hard thing to do. I mean, I heard that there are people out there making phone calls who want to run, but nobody’s going to admit that outright because it would be damaging to them.

And in terms of logistics here — I know this is all very hypothetical — but if a new candidate were to become the nominee, do they get all the money Biden raised? Do they get his campaign team, or are they literally creating a presidential campaign from scratch with four months to go?

I mean, presumably, they would adopt a lot of Biden’s apparatus. As for the money, a lot of the money these days is in kind of superpacs and these sort of amorphous structures that can go immediately to a different candidate. And everybody who contributed to Biden can now contribute to the new candidate. And then Biden can still spend his money as he chooses in support of whoever the candidate is.

So there’s that advantage in a way it could actually increase some fundraising. But you’re right, they would be starting from scratch in a lot of ways, at least in terms of a national organization.

And obviously, for this to even happen, it relies on Biden stepping aside here, as you said. Everything you’ve laid out so far suggests that he is, for now at least, closed off to this suggestion. And I have to ask what you think from your reporting would change that.

Well, President Biden is a proud man. He’s a stubborn man. As a lot of people of any age are, he is reluctant to confront and face his own weaknesses, and he’s not going to be talked out of running by a bunch of media chattering class, pundits, and junior Democrats. I mean, think about it. He’s been running for president since 1987. And the idea that he is now in office and running the country and as he thinks it, running it pretty well, that he’s going to simply step aside because a bunch of people tell him he should, he reacts viscerally to that. Of course, he doesn’t want to do that.

In fact, when you talk to Democrats, they’re very conscious of not trying to push him because it could have the opposite reaction. It could trigger him to want to stay even more. The people who have influence with him, not that many people.

I mean, at this point, he’s been in politics since 1972 when he was elected to the Senate. And the people he considers his peers, most of them are gone. He’s not surrounded by people whose opinion he truly respects.

Obama and Clinton, the only two former presidents out there other than Jimmy Carter, who are Democrats, I don’t know that if they told him it was time to pull the plug, that he would listen to that. In fact, he might, again, do the opposite. He still resents Obama for discouraging from running in 2016.

Obviously, congressional leaders like Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, Jim Clyburn, people like that, could have an influence if they were to go as a group to him in a way like the Republicans went to Nixon in 1974 and said that he wasn’t going to survive. Maybe that might influence him. But I don’t think they’re likely to do it. It doesn’t look like they’re likely to do that.

Who does have his ear? I mean, who does he really listen to? Who do we know he’s going to be listening to in this moment?

Well, the real people he listens to the most are his family. He’s a very family-oriented guy. Remember, he went home to Wilmington almost every night when he was a Senator. Even now as president, he flies home to Wilmington most every weekend.

And he’s at Camp David this weekend with his family. They’re there because they had already planned to be together for a photo shoot, ironically, with Annie Leibovitz. So the family was already gathering at Camp David —

— gives him an opportunity. Right. And it gives him an opportunity to have a heart-to-heart conversation with the people who mean the most to him, in particular, Jill Biden, of course, the first lady and his sister, Valerie, the kids, and the grandkids. We don’t know what that conversation looks like.

I mean, that’s as private as it comes. Someday they’ll be histories written and memoirs written. And I’m fascinated to read what’s happening this weekend at Camp David, because I think it’s kind of pivotal. But what we do know is that up until now, at least, Jill has been all in.

She’s been encouraging him to run. And it sounds like she’s been encouraging him to stay in. And a lot of people think her voice is the most important voice in this.

And just to pause on this for a second, Peter, it sounds like you’re saying something pretty remarkable, actually, which is that this very small handful of people have influence over what is going to be a massive decision that affects hundreds of millions of Americans and really the entire world.

Well, don’t underplay it. But yeah, that’s exactly right. And you’re right to point out the stakes here, because it’s not just about Joe Biden and his future. It is about this presidential race. And it is about whether you want Donald Trump back in office. That’s the way most Democrats look at it. And the difference between a Biden presidency and a Trump presidency is about as stark as you can imagine. And this will have consequences that will ripple out for years to come.

Peter, I kind of want to end where we began this conversation, which is with this question of Democrats’ mindset right now, post-debate, and the question of what’s motivating them in this moment. Privately, they’re talking about replacing Biden. They seem too scared to do that publicly for all the reasons we’ve discussed, including that the White House is basically telling them to stop talking about it and that Biden probably won’t step aside anyway. So all of this may just be useless hand-wringing.

And all of that raises a pretty essential question for me, which is, are Democrats about to recommit to a damaged nominee who had a disastrous debate, who may only get worse over time out of loyalty to President Biden? Or do you think on some level they really believe this is all just overblown, that it’s one debate, everybody has bad days, and Biden really can recover from all this?

I think there’s a lot of doubt in the party that he can really recover from. This is the argument obviously the Biden campaign is making. And it’s really the only argument they have available to them to say, look, don’t overreact here. It’s just the media hyperventilating. We will recover like we’ve recovered before.

And it is what they have to say because they don’t have anything else that they can say. But almost every Democrat outside of the inner circle that I talk to says this was a complete disaster. They are not sugarcoating it. They saw what they saw with their own eyes, and they think that it’s not tenable for the campaign to pretend otherwise.

And it’s particularly devastating because the weakness of the Biden campaign has always been concerns about his age. People have expressed that to pollsters and in interviews with reporters going back more than a year. And now they just saw it for themselves on TV, in their living rooms, more than 50 million of them. And to convince them not to believe what they saw with their own eyes is just a monumental task politically.

So for Biden’s team and for the Democrats, it’s a big roll of the dice. Do you stick with him and try to correct the damage in the four months you have? Or do you say, it’s time for somebody else, which is going to be a roll of the dice itself?

And assuming Biden continues, Peter, it sounds like we won’t know if that bet, that bet that he’s the only one that ever beat him. He’s the only guy that can get this done, if that was solid or diluted thinking until November 5.

On November 5, or whatever day of the election is resolved, we will know how history judges this. And maybe everybody looks back on this and says, well, that was close, but they were right to stick it out because they won. Or in fact, it was a disastrous decision, and they wasted an opportunity to fix campaign that was already having trouble. Hindsight will be perfect, but there’s no question that this weekend will be remembered as perhaps the most decisive of this campaign.

Peter, thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

After we spoke with Peter, “The New York Times” reported that while at Camp David, Biden’s family urged the president to stay in the race, arguing that, yes, he could still show voters he’s capable of serving another four years.

Here’s what else you need to know today. Early projections show that France’s far-right national rally party won a decisive victory in the first round of voting for the country’s national assembly on Sunday. National rally, an anti-immigrant party long on the fringes of the French political scene, captured about a third of the vote, according to polls, and now appears poised to become the largest force in the lower house of parliament.

The results dealt a blow to French president Emmanuel Macron, who took a gamble by dissolving parliament last month and calling for snap elections. But his bet that the far right wouldn’t repeat its recent success in European parliament elections backfired. A run-off election between the leading parties will be held on July 7.

Today’s episode was produced by Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Will Reid, and Rob Szypko, with help from Olivia Natt and Lynsea Garrison. It was edited by Lexie Diao, with help from Ben Calhoun, Paige Cowett, and Mike Benoist. And special thanks to Michael Barbaro.

Contains original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Natalie Kitroeff. See you tomorrow.

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Produced by Rachelle Bonja ,  Will Reid and Rob Szypko

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Original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano

Engineered by Chris Wood

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President Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week set off a furious discussion among Democratic officials, donors and strategists about whether and how to replace him as the party’s nominee.

Peter Baker, who is the chief White House correspondent for The Times, takes us inside those discussions and Biden’s effort to shut them down.

On today’s episode

Peter Baker , the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times.

Background reading

President Biden’s allies can no longer wave away concerns about his capacity after his unsteady performance at Thursday’s debate.

Mr. Biden’s family is urging him to keep fighting .

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

Special thanks to Michael Barbaro .

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson, Nina Lassam and Nick Pitman.

Natalie Kitroeff is the Mexico City bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. More about Natalie Kitroeff

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The Times. He has covered the last five presidents and sometimes writes analytical pieces that place presidents and their administrations in a larger context and historical framework. More about Peter Baker

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