The Human Connection Podcast

Karl Pontau
  • 5.0 (5)
  • Management
  • Biweekly

Is your business’s growth stalled? Employee churn eating into your profits? Struggling with customer retention? You need stronger connections. Every Tuesday and Thursday, connect with an expert who’s sharing actionable advice for building stronger relationships with your customers, clients, and stakeholders. Hosted by Karl Pontau, a storytelling super-connector, content system strategist, and survivor of two childhood brain tumors, this podcast’s mission is to fix the underlying cause of workplace and societal dysfunction: the lack of human connection.

  1. 4h ago

    “That’s Just How He Is” Is Costing You Your Best People | Milena Stankovic

    “I think enablers are the most dangerous structure of all.” — Milena Stankovic Every company has a toxic boss story. Milena wants you to look at the people standing around that boss saying “that’s just how he is.” Milena spent 10+ years in gaming at Microsoft and Epic Games (yes, Fortnite) before she co-founded a mental health charity and ran recovery support groups seven days a week. Now she’s building Chaptly, a gamified self-healing app that turns boundary-setting into daily quests. Therapy costs $200 a session, and the crisis usually hits at 2 a.m. On this episode of The Human Connection Podcast, Karl and Milena dig into toxic workplace culture at scaling companies. They cover co-founder relationships that go sideways, investors who ghost founders, and why the leaders causing the damage usually have no idea they’re doing it. What you’ll get: Why enablers do more damage to company culture than the toxic leader they protectHow “you’re overreacting” becomes gaslighting by proxy, and how to spot it on your own teamWhy most toxic leaders aren’t malicious, and how employees who advocate for themselves can fix culture without anyone quittingA habit-first approach to boundaries, and why New Year’s-resolution-sized change never sticksHow gamification and AI role-play let people rehearse the hard conversation before they have to have itWhere toxic dynamics hide in startups: co-founders, managers, and the investor who never replied(Ghosting a founder takes less effort than typing “not interested.” Milena has notes.) No matter if your business is B2B or B2C, it’s H2H, human to human. Happy connecting. #H2H #HumanConnectionPodcast #CompanyCulture #StartupLeadership #B2BRelationships === You can connect with Milena Stankovic here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chaptly/id6752330051 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chaptly.app&pcampaignid=web_share You can connect with Karl Pontau here: www.vouchedconnections.com www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1 Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

    “That’s Just How He Is” Is Costing You Your Best People | Milena Stankovic

  2. 5d ago

    AI Adoption Strategy: Why Human Agency Still Wins | Chris Heuer

    “Measure twice, prompt once… if we’ve thought about this up front, we can actually get a better result in less time.” — Chris Heuer You rolled out AI to your whole team. Nobody defined what “done” looks like. Now everyone’s iterating in circles and calling it productivity. Chris Heuer is founder and managing director of the Team Flow Institute. He has spent more than two decades helping organizations build collective intelligence, and he was part of the founding team at Deloitte Digital. He also hosts CommunityAssistant.ai. Chris joins Karl to explain why the leaders who get the most from AI are the ones who refuse to treat it as an easy button. (He also reads a laptop sticker out loud mid-episode. It’s a good sticker.) What you’ll get from this episode: “Measure twice, prompt once”: define your conditions of satisfaction up front to shorten what Chris calls time to contextCommander’s intent: what military leadership teaches about delegating to AI, and to your peopleWhy AI is a tool, not a teammate, and how conversational interfaces quietly blur that lineWhy self-awareness has to come before AI, since it won’t discover who you are for youThe case for personal intelligence systems: owning your data instead of paying someone else to hold itThe “AI dividend”: reinvesting the time AI saves into knowing what you actually want#H2H #HumanConnectionPodcast #StartupLeadership #CompanyCulture #KarlTheBridge === You can connect with Chris Heuer here: https://linkedin.com/in/chrisheuer https://hcorp.foundation/ You can connect with Karl Pontau here: www.vouchedconnections.com www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1 Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

    AI Adoption Strategy: Why Human Agency Still Wins | Chris Heuer

  3. 6d ago

    Martyrdom Isn’t a Leadership Strategy | Josh Broward

    “Many leaders have a low-level depression just because of the stress of leadership… It doesn’t keep you from doing stuff. It just makes it harder.” — Josh Broward You’re running a real company and quietly checking LinkedIn job posts at 11pm. That isn’t a career strategy. It’s a signal. Josh Broward is CEO of Wisdom Partners, a leadership coaching firm built to help startup founders succeed. He holds a PhD in organizational leadership, and his team has coached thousands of leaders across hundreds of organizations. Josh joins Karl to explain why founders treat their own well-being as optional, even though their team depends on it. (Spoiler: you’ll skip the gym for yourself, but you won’t skip it for your team.) What you’ll get from this episode: Why self-care is part of your job as a leader, and the reframe from Stripe’s former COO that made it clickThe sleep math most startups ignore: you’d never take a meeting three beers deep, but you’ll take one on four hours of sleepThe “ridiculously small goal” method: start with 60 seconds, celebrate it, and build from thereHow to spot the chronic stress that distracts founders into searching for an escape hatchHow separating your identity from your startup helped one founder find the pivot that made his business grow, and made it fun againWhy it’s easier to make habit changes stick when you start small than when you try one big leap#H2H #HumanConnectionPodcast #StartupLeadership #CompanyCulture #KarlTheBridge === You can connect with Josh Broward here: wisdompartners.llc https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshbroward/ https://www.youtube.com/@WisdomPartners You can connect with Karl Pontau here: www.vouchedconnections.com www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1 Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

    Martyrdom Isn’t a Leadership Strategy | Josh Broward

  4. Oct 27

    You Hired for Skills. You Got a Culture Problem. | Stan Gibson

    “Any strength that we have, if it’s overused… can become kryptonite.” — Stan Gibson Your team already knows your kryptonite. They’ve just never said it out loud in a meeting. Stan Gibson spent 35+ years leading Fortune 500 companies. When his number came up in a 30% workforce reduction, he already had a book written, a coaching practice running, and a speaking career built. (He may have been the happiest person laid off that day, out of roughly 20,000.) Today Stan is an executive coach, keynote speaker, author of Living a Rich and Intentional Life, and host of The Inspiration Podcast with Stan Gibson. Stan joins Karl to explain why so many leaders earning seven figures feel like strangers to themselves, and how that disconnection shapes the teams they build. What you’ll get from this episode: Why hiring for skills alone produces a culture that drifts, and how self-aware leaders build complementary teams insteadThe “genius paragraph + kryptonite paragraph” exercise, which turns a team’s strengths and stress-mode blind spots into strategic conversationsHow to diagnose ineffective meetings and stalled sales by mapping what your team has too much of and what’s missingWhy executives who tie their identity to a job title hit an existential wall when that title disappearsStan’s swim-lane principle: find where you swim fastest, then surround yourself with people who swim fast in different lanesHow five-year visioning and working backward surface the hard decisions, and the relationships, you’ve been avoiding#H2H #HumanConnectionPodcast #StartupLeadership #CompanyCulture #B2BRelationships === You can connect with Stan Gibson here: linkedin.com/in/stangibsonspeaks LeadwithStan.com You can connect with Karl Pontau here: www.vouchedconnections.com www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1 Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

    You Hired for Skills. You Got a Culture Problem. | Stan Gibson

  5. Oct 22

    An AI Company That Refuses to Use AI Images | Jennifer Griffin Schaeffer

    “Faster or more efficient is not better when you’re trying to make that quality connection with other humans.” — Jennifer Griffin Schaeffer Your mission statement didn’t die in a boardroom vote. It died one “just this once” shortcut at a time. Your customers noticed before you did. On this episode of The Human Connection Podcast, Karl Pontau sits down with Jennifer Griffin Schaeffer: three-time founder, former VP at Morgan Stanley, former VP IT and CIO of Athabasca University, and co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Synsira, the Canadian company building private, on-device AI that never ships your data off to the cloud. Jennifer explains how her six-person team turned a manifesto into a daily operating system. The example: why they skipped AI-generated images for their own blog (yes, an AI company did that on purpose). She also covers why they’re holding back AI agents until they’re safe, and how they learn their ideal customer profile “the old-fashioned way”: by listening. What you’ll get from this episode: Why every company should publish a philosophy statement, and how to prove it in what you buildHow small efficiency shortcuts quietly erode trust and cause mission drift as you scaleThe case for building customer trust without harvesting or monetizing customer dataWhy people can sense AI-generated content, and what that costs a brand built on trustHow to say “not yet” to hot technology (like AI agents) until it meets your standardHiring for mission alignment, not just skills, in a field where the skills barely have names yetKnowing your ICP through reviews, replies, and real conversations instead of surveillanceNo matter if your business is B2B or B2C, it’s H2H — human to human. Happy connecting. #HumanConnectionPodcast #H2H #StartupLeadership #CompanyCulture #HumanizingBusiness === You can connect with Jennifer Griffin Schaeffer here: https://kind.synsira.com/ You can connect with Karl Pontau here: www.vouchedconnections.com www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1 Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

    An AI Company That Refuses to Use AI Images | Jennifer Griffin Schaeffer

  6. Oct 21

    Nobody Wants to Talk About Your Problem. That’s the Answer. | Garrick Van Buren

    “We’re gonna have to do that anyway, and that’s the hard part. So let’s do it first.” — Garrick Van Buren Your team spent six months building something nobody asked for. Now the hard part (finding people who’ll pay for it) is still waiting for you. It’s just more expensive. On this episode of The Human Connection Podcast, Karl Pontau sits down with Garrick Van Buren: four-time SaaS founder, former corporate venture studio strategist, and the customer researcher whose work shows up in several marketing and product books, including Noah Kagan’s Million Dollar Weekend. Garrick makes the case for finding your customers before you build. He explains why an empty interview calendar is itself an answer, and why your customers will tell a third party what they’d never say to your CEO. Along the way, Karl and Garrick count how many times smart companies step on the same rake (spoiler: at least once more). What you’ll get from this episode: How to validate demand through warm introductions and real conversations before investing in a product buildWhy “we couldn’t find anyone who cares” is a cheap answer, and a pivot that beats sunk cost every timeA jobs-to-be-done approach to customer research that gets useful answers from people who don’t know what they wantThe interview math: patterns start around six conversations, and a dozen per round usually gives clarityWhy customers open up to a third party in ways they won’t with your sales team or CEOThe question that decides everything: once you know what it’s worth to the customer, is it worth it to you to deliver?What to do when you need $10K per client and your most enthusiastic prospects top out at $5KNo matter if your business is B2B or B2C, it’s H2H — human to human. Happy connecting. #HumanConnectionPodcast #H2H #StartupLeadership #B2BRelationships #RelationshipDrivenGrowth === You can connect with Garrick van Buren here: https://pricingfromthestart.com https://forstarters.substack.com You can connect with Karl Pontau here: www.vouchedconnections.com www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1 Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

    Nobody Wants to Talk About Your Problem. That’s the Answer. | Garrick Van Buren

  7. Oct 20

    You Forgot Why You Started This Company | David Mammano

    “Have you gotten so wrapped up in making profits that you forgot about making purpose?” — David Mammano Your product has a feature-for-feature twin somewhere. Your founder story might be the only thing they can’t copy. That only works if you stop telling the version where nothing went wrong. On this episode of The Human Connection Podcast, Karl Pontau sits down with David Mammano. David is a serial entrepreneur, a three-time Inc. 5000 honoree, a two-time TEDx speaker, the founder of his local EO chapter, and the author of Crash and Learn: Lessons in Business. He explains why the stories that win clients, investors, and loyal teams are the ones where you fell down. He also shows how great companies keep their DNA long after the founder leaves the room (and why a spreadsheet makes a lousy mission statement). What you’ll get from this episode: How to use founder storytelling to stand out in a crowded market where AI makes products easy to copyThe “crash and learn” method for finding the story that makes your company human and relatableA gut-check rule before any venture: would it still work at double the time and double the money?The question every founder faces between $1M and $10M: “Am I the right person to take it to the next level?”How Walmart, Chick-fil-A, Southwest, and Wegmans kept their founding DNA, and how PE firms strip it awayWhy “I don’t know, what do you think?” might be the strongest leadership line you’re not usingThe one question to ask when you’re no longer sure what your company’s story isNo matter if your business is B2B or B2C, it’s H2H — human to human. Happy connecting. #HumanConnectionPodcast #H2H #StartupLeadership #CompanyCulture #StorytellingForBusiness === You can connect with David Mammano here: https://www.davidmammano.com/ https://thegoodbusinesstour.com/ You can connect with Karl Pontau here: www.vouchedconnections.com www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1 Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

    You Forgot Why You Started This Company | David Mammano

  8. Oct 15

    Your Happiest Champion Won’t Defend You to Her CEO | Andrea Mulligan

    “They’re going to use the product until they don’t, and then they’re going to leave.” — Andrea Mulligan Your usage dashboard is green. Your NPS is fine. Your champion posts photos of her kids in your swag. None of that means they’re renewing. Full episode below. Andrea Mulligan is a chief customer officer with 20+ years leading customer success, services, and support at VC- and PE-backed B2B SaaS companies. She’s lived through the moment every growth-stage leader dreads. Her loyalty-platform clients showed zero drop in usage before they churned, because they never turned the old system off until the new one was on. One of her oldest customers once gave her an NPS of 2. The reason: he’d already recommended her to everyone he knew (best bad score she ever got). Now that AI budgets have customers signing up for experiments instead of partnerships, Andrea argues the classic “I’m your advocate” CS model can’t protect your gross retention. She lays out what has to change: the success criteria, the scorecard, the CSM job description, and the comp plan. What you’ll get from this episode: Why adoption and NPS can look healthy right up until the account walksHow to tell real recurring revenue from “experimental recurring revenue” in your bookHow to set measurable success criteria per contract, so you know at month nine whether it renewsWhat “moments that matter” are, and how AI can flag accounts drifting off courseWhy CSMs need to push the client, not just advocate for them, and how to rewrite the role and comp to matchNo matter if your business is B2B or B2C, it’s H2H — human to human. Happy connecting. #HumanConnectionPodcast #H2H #ClientRetention #ClientSuccess #B2BRelationships === You can connect with Andrea Mulligan here: www.andreamulligan.com/insights.html You can connect with Karl Pontau here: www.vouchedconnections.com www.thehumanconnectionpodcast.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontau https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1 Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!

    Your Happiest Champion Won’t Defend You to Her CEO | Andrea Mulligan
See All (274)

Trailers

5
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

Is your business’s growth stalled? Employee churn eating into your profits? Struggling with customer retention? You need stronger connections. Every Tuesday and Thursday, connect with an expert who’s sharing actionable advice for building stronger relationships with your customers, clients, and stakeholders. Hosted by Karl Pontau, a storytelling super-connector, content system strategist, and survivor of two childhood brain tumors, this podcast’s mission is to fix the underlying cause of workplace and societal dysfunction: the lack of human connection.

Information