TruthWorks

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Are you ready to dive deep into the world of work, culture and leadership? Join Jessica Neal and Patty McCord each week as they chat with expert guests and explore the issues affecting the workplace — from AI and mental health, to making layoffs and combating toxic cultures. Featuring global industry leaders and specialists that are passionate about reshaping the way work today. Listen in as we redefine the rules to work for us, not against us. Episode 1 of TruthWorks launches March 19! Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

  1. 4d ago

    Why your Employees Feel More Productive but your Revenue Doesn't Show It! - Findem

    Nate Sokolić started and sold companies in college, spent three years in executive search at Russell Reynolds, then led the firm's AI strategy, where he brought Findem in and rolled it out globally. He now works at Findem, helping HR leaders and talent teams adopt AI. Shane Driggers has spent close to 30 years in human resources, starting in Bay Area startups during the dot-com boom and most recently serving as Chief Talent Officer at T-Mobile. He now advises growth-stage companies. Most companies are already using AI. Employees report that they feel more productive, and budgets for tools and tokens keep climbing. Yet very few leaders can point to the result in product innovation or revenue. Nate and Shane argue that the problem is rarely the technology. Companies are adding AI on top of workflows and org structures that were designed for a different era, and they are letting the tools set the strategy instead of starting with the problem they want to solve. In this episode, Jessica sits down with both of them to talk about what it takes to make AI deliver measurable outcomes, why the people function has one of the biggest opportunities in the business right now, and how recruiting is changing from searching keyword profiles to getting verified, finished work back from AI agents. In this conversation, Jessica, Nate and Shane discuss topics such as: ◼️ Why "tech wags the tail of strategy" and how that derails AI programs ◼️ Why employees feel more productive while the business sees no gain ◼️ How to redesign work from a blank page instead of rebuilding the past ◼️ Why AI is creating a new wave of tech debt inside large companies ◼️ How to decide which work should be human-led and which should be AI-led ◼️ Why HR leaders must be human thinkers, business thinkers and systems thinkers at once ◼️ How the CHRO role quietly became the company's chief AI strategist ◼️ Why the best AI adoption starts small, proves ROI, then expands year by year ◼️ How recruiters can search for real experience, like a CFO who has taken a company public ◼️ Why shifting from SaaS tools to AI agents changes how companies buy and use software ◼️ How Findem Studio produces market maps, succession plans and talent inflow/outflow reports ◼️ Why every AI output needs to show its work before a leader can trust it ◼️ Why transparency is the most valuable currency a leader has in an anxious workplace This episode is sponsored by Findem. Findem is the AI infrastructure for people decisions. Its People Intelligence platform turns fragmented people data into context teams and AI can reason over, and act on. The 3D People Graph connects billions of data points across individuals, companies, and time. Expert labeling translates that data into consistent, evidence-backed signals about experience, capabilities, and relationships, with explainability behind every insight so teams can act with confidence. Findem's agents and enterprise applications run on this foundation, and partners can build on this infrastructure and bring the same intelligence into their own products. Findem is trusted by FedEx, Intuit, Nutanix, and Emirates. Learn more about Findem: https://www.findem.ai/platform Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal, bringing honest conversations with the leaders shaping the future of work.

  2. Sep 22

    How A 27-Year-Old Built A $5.6B AI Company In 21 Months! - Max Junestrand

    Max Junestrand, co-founder and CEO of Legora, explains how Legora became the fastest company in history to grow from $1M to over $100M in annual recurring revenue (ARR), in 21 months. He joins Truth Works hosts Jessica Neal and Peter Clark live from Legora's office. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHO IS MAX JUNESTRAND? Max Junestrand is the 27-year-old Swedish co-founder and CEO of Legora, an AI platform for lawyers, law firms and in-house legal teams. He studied computer science and business, worked at two Y Combinator startups, and is not a lawyer. WHAT IS LEGORA? Legora is a legal AI company founded in Stockholm, Sweden and backed by Y Combinator. It helps lawyers review contracts, research case law and draft legal work. Legora serves some of the largest legal institutions in the world across Europe, the UK and the US, employs 900 people, and acquired five companies in 2026. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ HOW LEGORA STARTED - Founded in 2020 by a psychologist, an engineer, a physicist and a lawyer - Max joined in 2023, after the release of ChatGPT - Started with €50,000 in angel funding before Y Combinator - Rejected by Y Combinator once, accepted on the second application - Built inside Mannheimer Swartling, the largest law firm in the Nordics, for nine months Before Legora, Max applied to 400 jobs and got two interviews. Both rejected him. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ HOW LEGORA HIRES AND SCALES - Headcount grew from 250 to 900 people in one year - 0.3% of applicants receive an offer - Max personally interviews every director-level hire - Recruiting is treated as a privilege, not an obligation - Performance reviews use a 1–5 scale with direct feedback - The company is office-first with almost no remote work ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ KEY FACTS FROM THIS EPISODE - $1M to $100M+ ARR in 21 months - A contract review estimated at $44M was completed in 4 days - A third-party study found Legora helps lawyers catch missed errors in 71% of cases - Legora builds for where AI models will be in 3–6 months ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS EPISODE → How did Legora grow so fast? → Why did Legora's team move into a law firm? → How do you hire at scale without lowering the bar? → How do you give hard feedback in a culture that avoids it? → How do you build one culture across Stockholm, London and New York? → Why is it becoming unethical not to use AI in legal work? → How will AI change the work of lawyers in the next two years? → Can legal AI improve access to justice? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ "You can just do things. You can be a little bit unreasonable in your ambitions." — Max Junestrand, CEO of Legora ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT TRUTH WORKS Truth Works is a podcast about building companies and the people behind them. Hosted by Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, and co-host Peter Clark. Legora: legora.com Legora careers: legora.com/careers Sponsored by Manifest Law, the AI-native immigration law firm. #Legora #MaxJunestrand #LegalAI #AIforLawyers #YCombinator #StartupGrowth #Hiring #TruthWorks #JessicaNeal

  3. Sep 15

    He Studied Gallup's Data for 25 Years: Here's What Makes People Great at Work

    Marcus Buckingham has spent more than 25 years studying what makes people extraordinary at work, and his newest research points to a word most businesses are too nervous to use: love. In this episode of Truth Works, host Jessica Neal sits down with the co-creator of StrengthsFinder and author of First, Break All the Rules to talk about why Net Promoter Score barely predicts anything, why not one of the world's top business schools teaches the most powerful force in business, and how even a Netflix-level performance culture can accidentally train its best people to feel afraid. Marcus traces his own fascination with talent back to a UK brewery with two thousand pubs, the unlikely origin of Gallup's decades of research into what separates great performers from everyone else. He walks through the "five feelings," control, harmony, significance, warmth of others, and growth, that decide whether a customer or an employee ever ends up loving a company, and why skipping the order backfires every time. The conversation also gets personal: what Marcus calls "red threads," the parts of a job someone loves for no explainable reason, why no one else can spot yours for you, and what happens when AI starts writing your performance review before you have said a word to it. Marcus closes with the idea he calls mover and maker, that every person is, whether they notice it or not, making an experience for someone else in every single interaction. Guest: Marcus Buckingham, researcher and author of First, Break All the Rules, Nine Lies About Work, and Love + Work Host: Jessica Neal Subscribe to Truth Works for more conversations on leadership, culture, and what actually makes people great at work. #TruthWorks #MarcusBuckingham #Leadership #Netflix #WorkCulture

  4. Sep 8

    How 2 Netflix Leaders Took "No Rules" Global! And Where It Almost Broke - Alix and Marta

    Alix and Marta were the people who had to make Netflix's culture work outside America. Alix moved from the US to build the Amsterdam office and Netflix's European headquarters from a handful of desks; Marta, a Venezuelan-born recruiter who had just scaled Booking.com from 5,000 to 15,000 people, read the Netflix culture deck and assumed it was "American BS" until she flew in to interview and find out. Together they built the HR function for EMEA during the company's fastest international expansion. In this episode of Truth Works, Jessica Neal and Patty McCord sit down with both of them to talk about what happened when a Silicon Valley operating system met European labor law, "work to live" and a workforce that expected HR to keep the peace. We get into: - Why the culture deck was never a values poster: it was the practical rulebook for how you behaved or got fired - The first time "adequate performance gets a generous severance" was said out loud in Europe, and the reaction it got - Alix's first real piece of constructive feedback, delivered to a senior male executive with Patty sitting in the room - Being "too American": the well-intended US executives who piled onto EMEA and stalled local agency for years - Why the fix was slowing down and explaining behaviour with examples rather than pushing harder - Same destination, different path: how Amsterdam, Tokyo, India, Silicon Valley and Hollywood each got there differently - The people who wanted Netflix to admit the culture didn't scale, and why it did - Whether European regulation is holding back the continent's startup ecosystem, and why Spotify is the exception - Why culture change fails unless the founder or CEO personally drives it - Their consulting firm, two years in, and why they refuse to sell the beautiful transformation deck - Why every consultant is now an "AI transformation expert" and nobody knows the future of work Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix. This episode is sponsored by Manifest Law, the AI-native immigration law firm.

  5. Sep 1

    Former Skype Exec: I Nearly Died Mid-Flight, here's The Mistake That Caused It!

    Eric Partaker built Skype's early business team into a multi-billion-dollar exit — then had a heart attack at 35,000 feet from years of 80-100 hour weeks. He rebuilt his entire approach to work around one method, and now coaches CEOs on it worldwide. In this episode, Jessica Neal talks to Eric about his new book Ultra Productive and the science behind doing more by doing less. In this episode: 1. The heart attack at 35,000 feet and the days leading up to it 2. Building Skype's business team from the ground up 3. The 90-minute method behind 2-10x productivity gains 4. Why the average leader only focuses 23 minutes a day 5. The sleep science behind deep work and recovery 6. Digital sunset and shutdown rituals for better sleep 7. Using the 80/20 rule to filter signal from noise as a CEO 8. Why "what to stop doing" matters more than what to start 9. Growing a LinkedIn following past a million by simplifying complex ideas Chapters: 1. Introduction 2. Eric's path: McKenzie to Skype to founding a restaurant chain 3. The heart attack story 4. Matching energy to your most important work 5. Becoming a CEO coach 6. The 90-minute method: focus, sleep, stress 7. Sleep science and the digital sunset 8. Eating close to bedtime and sleep quality 9. Helping CEOs cut noise and find leverage 10. Ultra Productive book and preorder bonuses 11. Closing advice Eric Partaker's book Ultra Productive is available for preorder now at ultraproductive.com — preorder bonuses include a free 5-week Ultra Productive Accelerator with Eric and co-author Christian Poensgen. This episode is sponsored by Manifest Law — the AI-native immigration law firm handling filings across 40+ countries. Subscribe to Truth Works for more conversations with founders, CEOs, and leaders on building without burning out.

  6. Aug 25

    Only 65,000 H-1B visas exist per year! This is what decides it - Jeff Joseph

    For 30 years, Jeff Joseph has been one of the most influential lawyers in American immigration law — and he just joined Manifest Law, the AI-native immigration firm, as President of Immigration Strategy. On this episode, Jessica Neal sits down with him for a rare, no-spin look at how U.S. immigration actually works, who it works for, and why almost nothing about it has changed in decades. Jeff is the 79th President of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), the 18,000-member bar association for immigration attorneys. Before Manifest, he was a Partner at Berry Appleman & Leiden, where his litigation reshaped the rules employers hire under — including beating the State Department's COVID-era visa ban and the Department of Labor's H-1B wage rule. Jeff traces his path from a debate-team kid inspired by "To Kill a Mockingbird" to a public defender, to building a 25-year immigration practice with his wife, to leading strategy at a company betting AI can fix what Congress won't touch. Jessica — who ran global immigration programs as Chief Talent Officer at Netflix — pushes him on the parts of the system most people never see: why the H-1B lottery is decided by luck, not need; why new student visa rules are quietly shrinking the talent pipeline; and why nobody in Washington actually wants to fix the 65,000 cap. What we cover: – Jeff's path from public defender to 30-year immigration litigator – Why immigration is a "creature of the law" that Congress refuses to touch – Inside the H-1B lottery: why higher wages now mean better odds — and why that punishes small business – How new OPT and duration-of-status rules are cutting off the international student pipeline – Why the 65,000 H-1B cap hasn't moved in decades, and probably never will – A better model: allocating visas by real local labor data instead of one national number – What great companies get right about immigration as an employee benefit, from Jessica's own Netflix playbook – Inside Manifest Law's AI-native model: no equity partners, lawyers as owners, and why that changes who does the paperwork – How Manifest's AI learns from every filed case to predict a case's odds before it's submitted – The "sentiment meter": using AI to catch a stressed employee before it becomes an HR escalation – Why every immigration firm will adopt AI — and why in-house, native tech beats bolted-on tools This episode is brought to you by Manifest Law, the AI-native immigration law firm,  real-time visibility, fast filings in 40+ countries, and straightforward pricing for startups through enterprise. Whether you run global mobility for a Fortune 500 or you're the one person in HR handling visas on the side, this conversation will change how you think about immigration as a talent strategy. 🎧 Subscribe to Truth Works for more honest conversations at the intersection of work, leadership, and the systems that shape our careers.

  7. Aug 18

    Rubrik CEO: From A $1,000-A-Month Garage In San Francisco To A Public Company

    Bipul Sinha failed his first shot at India's hardest entrance exam. His father told him to drop out and try again — the only other option was selling tobacco on a street corner. Bipul is the co-founder, CEO and Chairman of Rubrik, the cybersecurity and data management company he took public on the NYSE in April 2024. Before Rubrik, he spent four years as a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, where he was a founding investor and board member of Nutanix and part of the team behind early bets on AppDynamics and Snap. Before venture, he was an engineer at Oracle, American Megatrends and IBM. In this episode of Truth Works (Part 1), he joins Jessica Neal and guest co-host Peter Clarke to trace the full arc: growing up poor in India, the exam he failed once and passed the second time, arriving in America with almost nothing, and the first 45 days at Rubrik when he couldn't hire a single person. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE ORIGIN STORY Bipul grew up in a tier-4 city in India and wasn't a strong student. His father pulled him out of the local track and told him to prepare at home for the IIT entrance exam instead, an exam with roughly a 1% acceptance rate. He failed it once, passed it the second time, and studied electrical engineering at IIT Kharagpur. He took a job at Tata IBM to support his family, then moved to Atlanta for a hardware engineering role at American Megatrends before landing in Silicon Valley in 1999, at the height of the dot-com boom, where he and his wife paid $1,000 a month to live in a garage apartment. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ FROM INVESTOR TO FOUNDER After seven years at Oracle, Bipul moved into venture capital at Blumberg Capital, then spent four years at Lightspeed under Ravi Mhatre, where he backed Nutanix, AppDynamics and Snap. He explains the theory that pushed him from investing to founding: investors operate from a "state of intellect," founders from a "state of will." He left to start what became Rubrik in 2014, sat through 45 days with zero hires, and camped outside the Google and YouTube offices with a pitch deck until he landed his first four. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ TOPICS COVERED → Failing India's hardest entrance exam, then passing it the second time → Moving to Silicon Valley in 1999 and paying $1,000 a month to live in a garage → Leaving Oracle for venture capital, and the $10M check Lightspeed wrote off a slide deck → Early investing wins: Nutanix, AppDynamics, Snap → The "state of intellect vs. state of will" theory of investors vs. founders → Naming Rubrik after almost launching under a different name entirely → 45 days with zero hires, and the pitch deck that turned it around → Why the old world of cybersecurity is dead in the age of AI ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Find Bipul: rubrik.com | LinkedIn: Bipul Sinha Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal & Peter Clarke. Part 2 of this conversation coming soon.

  8. Aug 11

    The Groupon PM Who Built A Supersonic Jet: "I Couldn't Find The Reason It Was A Bad Idea" | Blake Scholl

    A former Groupon product manager set out to bring back supersonic passenger flight. Everyone told him it was a bad idea. He couldn't find a single reason they were right. Blake Scholl is the founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, the company that built the first civil supersonic jet outside of a government or military, and then made the sonic boom disappear entirely. He joins Jessica Neal and co-host Peter Clarke on Truth Works for an honest conversation about audacious goals, telling the truth inside a company, and the leadership lessons he learned the hard way. Blake did not have the aerospace resume for this. He started his career at Amazon, spent years in startups, and was running internet coupons at Groupon when he decided to teach himself aerospace from textbooks and build a spreadsheet that said the whole world should be flying supersonic. A decade later, his airplane broke the sound barrier. In this episode he breaks down why supersonic flight really disappeared (hint: it was not the noise), how he rebuilt Boom's culture after hiring the wrong senior people, and why he now says he has learned to "love the riff." TOPICS COVERED → Organizing every idea by how happy you'd be if it worked → Choosing passion over resume, and why skills are more changeable than what you love → The real reason supersonic flight was banned in 1973 → Solving the sonic boom by accident, and going from breaking the sound barrier to a repeal of the ban in 115 days → Using supersonic technology to power AI data centers and bootstrap the company → The "talent distillery": how Boom grows its own senior leaders → Why he fired every direct report in one day, and what happened to morale → Learning to "love the riff" and saying goodbye without making it personal → The first-flight story and the safety rule: "I might say f**k, but I won't say f**k you" → Velocity over predictability, and why padding your timeline makes you later → Designing for tranquility, and the small details airlines ignore → The birthday his board told him to shut the company down Whether you are building something people call impossible, leading a team through a hard call, or just trying to tell the truth at work, this one will stay with you. New episodes of Truth Works every week. Subscribe so you don't miss what's next.

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5
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About

Are you ready to dive deep into the world of work, culture and leadership? Join Jessica Neal and Patty McCord each week as they chat with expert guests and explore the issues affecting the workplace — from AI and mental health, to making layoffs and combating toxic cultures. Featuring global industry leaders and specialists that are passionate about reshaping the way work today. Listen in as we redefine the rules to work for us, not against us. Episode 1 of TruthWorks launches March 19! Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

Information

  • Creator
    editaudio
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    132
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 TruthWorks
  • Show Website
    TruthWorks

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