Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom

Kim Miller - Hershon
  • 5.0 (4)
  • Entrepreneurship

Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom: Where clichés come to retire and fresh thinking we inspire. Smart minds don’t think alike—and that’s the point. Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom takes you inside the messy, brilliant, and bold thought processes of high-achieving leaders, entrepreneurs, and out-of-the-box thinkers. We skip the clichés and spotlight the real talk: the strange decisions that worked, the brilliant ideas that bombed, and the thought patterns that defy the rulebook—but still lead to growth, impact, and the occasional mic drop. If you’re tired of surface-level advice and crave the kind of wisdom that makes you pause, laugh, and level up—this is your new favorite listen. Because let’s face it: playing it safe never built anything worth bragging about.

  1. 1d ago

    How AI Is Blurring Every Job Description — and What Smart Leaders Do About It | Scott Wintheiser

    In this episode of Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom, Kim Miller-Hershon sits down with Scott Wintheiser, CEO and founding partner of Lightburn, a Milwaukee-based digital CX agency he co-founded in 1998. With over 28 years in digital and ecommerce, Scott has founded and sold multiple ecommerce businesses and even had a documentary screened at Sundance. In Lightburn's early days, he built a custom CMS and ecommerce platform from scratch because the tools he needed didn't exist yet. Today his 20-plus-person team helps mid-size organizations, especially manufacturers, with web design, development, CMS strategy, digital marketing, and ecommerce, and his approach is refreshingly straightforward: find the right-size solution, not the most expensive one. In this conversation, Scott challenges the conventional wisdom he heard most in the early days: that you should contract everything out and never carry the cost of employees. On paper it sounded smart, hire freelancers, pay only when you're busy, but it never felt right, and he trusted that instinct over the advice. The same went for the constant pressure to assemble an advisory board or join a CEO roundtable. Those rooms understood business in a general sense, but in the 1990s nobody in them understood the internet or an agency that only built websites, and it took the confidence of a couple of 20-somethings to realize that no outside expert understood their business better than they did. A candid thread is what Scott still wrestles with underneath the 28-year track record. Outsiders assume a company that's lasted this long is automatically, effortlessly profitable, and anyone who's actually run a business knows that isn't how it works. Internally, the honest gap is forecasting: he doesn't pretend to know where the company will be ten years out, and doesn't bother trying, focusing instead on the next two or three years and trusting the rest to take care of itself. His answer to the classic small-agency threat ("my nephew can build a website") is the same one he'd give about AI: it can help, but you wouldn't ignore your lawyer just because Claude can review a contract. This episode explores: Why "contract everything out" was the wrong advice for his business Trusting your own read over the advisory board and CEO roundtable Why 28 years in business doesn't mean automatic profit Focusing on the next two or three years instead of faking a ten-year forecast How AI speeds the tedious work while demanding more understanding, not less "Job-description creep" and getting comfortable being uncomfortable The "AI open skate" and setting clear guardrails for safe experimentation Paying your team as much as possible, even against margin benchmarks Moving from one-and-done builds to a continual-improvement model Why recurring revenue lets you sleep at night If you're a founder, agency owner, or leader figuring out where AI actually fits, this conversation offers practical insight, honest talk about profit and imposter syndrome, and a refreshing case that you don't need to clear anyone else's bar to be exactly who your business needs. Connect with me here: Website: https://www.kimmillerhershon.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmillerhershon Newsletter: https://link.kimmillerhershon.com/widget/form/aEdmdA1W5MhoMCMfy5O8 Webinar: https://webinar.kimmillerhershon.com/?utm_source=Podcast Guest Details: Guest: Scott Wintheiser, CEO & Founding Partner, Lightburn Focus: Milwaukee-based digital CX agency (co-founded 1998); web design, development, CMS strategy, digital marketing, and ecommerce for mid-size organizations, especially manufacturers; serial ecommerce entrepreneur with a Sundance-screened documentary Website: http://lightburn.co Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    How AI Is Blurring Every Job Description — and What Smart Leaders Do About It | Scott Wintheiser

  2. 5d ago

    From Venezuela to CEO: How Coming to America Alone at 13 Shaped Her Success | Marivi Bryant

    In this episode of Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom, Kim Miller-Hershon sits down with Mari V. Bryant, founder and president of HOME Agency, a people-first marketing and branding firm that partners with mission-driven organizations and national brands. With nearly 25 years of experience working with the likes of the Phoenix Suns, the NASCAR Foundation, State Farm, and Blue Cross Blue Shield, Mari is passionate about using marketing to create meaningful impact. She's also a dedicated community advocate and the founder of the Mission Meets Action Award, a $100,000 pro bono initiative supporting nonprofits through strategic marketing and storytelling, now in its second year. Her origin story starts long before any of that: she came to the US from Venezuela at thirteen, alone, to chase a tennis scholarship, living in a house with fifteen-plus other teenagers and calling her mom collect from payphones across two continents. In this conversation, Mari challenges a piece of conventional wisdom she absorbed straight from a lifetime of competition: that success means always chasing the next big thing. Fresh out of a D1 tennis career and into her working life, she treated every job as a stepping stone to the next one, obsessively hunting the following title before she'd fully lived in the one she had. It took years of maturity to see it as the wrong approach. The job you have right now is the right job for right now, and the better move is to be present in it, cultivate the relationships, and do the best work you can rather than always straining toward the horizon. She's clear it's a both/and: two things can be true, that she's never satisfied and that she's genuinely grateful for what's in front of her. Mari and Kim also dig into the nuance underneath outsourcing. You don't need to become a finance expert, but you do need enough knowledge to ask the right questions and keep real accountability in place. Kim sharpens it with a cautionary tale of a client who never asked and got stolen from by a trusted employee, and Mari's takeaway is that asking better questions is one of a founder's primary tools, not just for status updates but for prompts that make the whole team rethink its own approach. She's candid, too, that no one else will ever carry the business the way a founder does at 24/7, which is exactly why the right questions and reminders have to become a regular leadership routine. This episode explores: Why always chasing the next big thing is the wrong way to grow Being present in the job you have instead of straining toward the next one Holding ambition and gratitude as two things that can both be true Focusing on the "who," not the "what": resourcefulness over doing it all Building on your strengths instead of grinding to fix every weakness Why confidence comes from proof, and asking for help isn't failure Outsourcing finance while keeping enough knowledge to ask the right questions Why better questions are a founder's primary tool Protecting an intentional culture as a remote company grows Chasing relationships and the right engagements instead of the money The Mission Meets Action Award and matching nonprofits' exterior to their mission Naming imposter syndrome out loud to release it Wanting validation and the reminder to look at the proof, without dismissal "You always win the game you're playing in your head," so choose it Mari's perspective is a powerful reminder that the strongest founders aren't the ones doing everything themselves, they're the ones who know their strengths, surround themselves with the right people, and ask the questions that move everyone forward. Her journey from a thirteen-year-old calling home collect from a French payphone to the head of a mission-driven agency shows that being resourceful, present, and honest about your gaps isn't a weakness in leadership. It's the whole foundation. If you're a founder, marketer, or leader trying to grow something without losing what makes it yours, this conversation offers practical insight, honest talk about imposter syndrome, and a refreshing case that the right relationships are worth more than the next quick win. Connect with me here: Website: https://www.kimmillerhershon.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmillerhershon Newsletter: https://link.kimmillerhershon.com/widget/form/aEdmdA1W5MhoMCMfy5O8 Webinar: https://webinar.kimmillerhershon.com/?utm_source=Podcast Guest Details: Guest: Mari V. Bryant, Founder & President, HOME Agency Focus: People-first marketing and branding for mission-driven organizations and national brands; founder of the Mission Meets Action Award ($100,000 pro bono initiative, applications open August 17) Website: https://www.wearehomeagency.com Instagram: @wearehomeagency LinkedIn (personal): https://www.linkedin.com/in/marivibryant/ LinkedIn (company): https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearehomeagency/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    From Venezuela to CEO: How Coming to America Alone at 13 Shaped Her Success | Marivi Bryant

  3. Aug 11

    The Invisible Tax of Leadership and success: On Masking, Mental Health, and Showing Up Anyway | Chelsea Byers

    In this episode of Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom, Kim Miller-Hershon sits down with Chelsea Byers, a high-growth operator and C-suite leader who spent years navigating the high-stakes world of education startups, including a growth phase that saw revenues climb to $100 million. But her career wasn't just a series of wins. In her memoir, Course Correct, she pulls back the curtain on what she calls the invisible tax of leadership, from managing clinical depression in the boardroom to navigating infertility and the Me Too era while scaling a company. She describes herself as a human infrastructure builder, focused on how to grow a business without letting the human fabric of the team rip under pressure. Her walk-in song, for the record, would be "Thunder" by Imagine Dragons, for the slow, unmistakable build. In this conversation, Chelsea challenges one of the most limiting pieces of conventional wisdom in business: that a leader has to look a very particular way. Early in her career, watching the tech boom across the water from her Teach For America classroom in Oakland, she counted herself out entirely, because she didn't see herself in the money-first, command-presence, talk-about-yourself archetype she assumed leadership required. Kim connects it to her work with DiSC assessments and the persistent myth that only the demanding, go-go-go style succeeds, when the evidence says every style can lead well. The conventional picture is just that, a picture, not a requirement. On growth and imposter syndrome, Chelsea's advice is refreshingly practical. She's grown most by chasing roles that genuinely interested her instead of climbing toward whatever the next promotion was, because people shine when they follow real enthusiasm. And she treats imposter syndrome not as something to defeat but as a companion to let ride along without letting it hold you back, whether that means picking up work you're curious about or simply asking a senior colleague for fifteen minutes about their career, which almost no one refuses. Being open, she's found, is the very thing that builds trust, because nobody quite trusts the person whose life is always shiny. This episode explores: Why leadership doesn't have to look like the conventional archetype How ruthless middle schoolers teach you that authenticity is table stakes Leading from your real temperament instead of a borrowed persona The invisible tax of masking, and the self-blame that compounds it Why mental health is brain chemistry, not a willpower or circumstance problem Treating health as best effort rather than a skill you can master De-stigmatizing infertility, miscarriage, and the silent grief around them "You're a person too": permission to feel what you feel Why success and struggle are not a binary, and one doesn't cancel the other Letting imposter syndrome ride along without letting it drive Why openness builds more trust than a always-shiny front Chelsea's perspective is a powerful reminder that success and struggle are not opposites, and that the leaders people actually trust are the ones willing to be real about what showing up costs them. Her journey from an Oakland classroom to a $100 million growth story, carried through depression, infertility, and loss, shows that you don't have to have it all figured out to build something meaningful. You just have to stop pretending you do. If you're a leader, operator, or anyone quietly carrying more than you let on at work, this conversation offers practical insight, honest talk about mental health and imposter syndrome, and a refreshing case that being valued for all of you, not just the facade, is worth building a career around. Connect with me here: Website: https://www.kimmillerhershon.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmillerhershon Newsletter: https://link.kimmillerhershon.com/widget/form/aEdmdA1W5MhoMCMfy5O8 Webinar: https://webinar.kimmillerhershon.com/?utm_source=Podcast Guest Details: Guest: Chelsea Byers Book: Course Correct (memoir) Focus: High-growth operator and C-suite leader in education startups; "human infrastructure" and sustainable team-building LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chelseabyers/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    The Invisible Tax of Leadership and success: On Masking, Mental Health, and Showing Up Anyway | Chelsea Byers

  4. Aug 7

    Why "Fake It Till You Make It" Fails — and What Actually Builds Confidence with Andriana Daly

    In this episode of Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom, Kim Miller-Hershon sits down with Andriana Shultz Daly, a partner at McGuireWoods in Richmond with more than a decade of experience handling complex commercial and intellectual property litigation across telecommunications, medical devices, finance, transportation, and higher education. Andriana has first-chair jury trial experience and routinely leads matters from pre-litigation strategy through trial. She also brings a rare dual perspective: nearly four years in-house as associate general counsel for a global pharmaceutical company, where she managed a global litigation portfolio that included antitrust class actions, securities class actions, multiple MDLs, and nationwide opioid and products liability matters. That in-house stretch shapes how she leads, how she advises, and how she thinks about complex problem-solving under pressure. And when asked what she'd do without her law license, she lights up: physical therapist, or the owner of a little cafe making banana chocolate chip muffins for her regulars. In this conversation, Andriana challenges two pieces of conventional wisdom she never bought into for a second. The first is "fake it till you make it." She understands it in principle, being confident in your ability to figure out something new, but in practice she's watched people use it to fake experience they don't have, and that's a non-starter for someone who was always curious to learn what she didn't know. The second is checking your personal life at the door. A self-described oversharer, Andriana doesn't want to work with robots, and she doesn't think you can support your team through the good and the bad if everyone pretends their lives vanish the moment they walk in. Andriana and Kim also dig into the rule she'd throw out of the legal profession first: that more time and more billing is always better. It doesn't serve the client paying for it or your own sanity. The real goal is efficiency plus genuine quality. They get practical about billing in real time (living life in six-minute increments, because you can never accurately reconstruct it later and attorneys who wait tend to under-bill), and Andriana shares the piece of advice that shaped her whole approach: don't line up projects like boxcars. Get curious about the client's actual objective, which often isn't the obvious one, and you move from resolving a single issue to being the trusted advisor they call when anything comes up. This episode explores: Why "fake it till you make it" fails when it becomes faking experience Not checking your personal life at the door, and leading by example Boundaries as a two-way street that protects your team's time Why work-life balance is a daily process, not a fixed state Asking "what do I need to make today great?" instead of just reading the calendar Finding peace in the downtime between big cases Why more billing isn't better, and how to bill accurately in real time Don't line up projects like boxcars: understand the client's real objective Moving from task-doer to trusted advisor by grasping the full context Developing associates when the pandemic and AI have changed the apprenticeship Teaching the "why" AI can't provide, and keeping a human in the lead Reframing imposter syndrome by reading your own bio as a stranger would Turning time away into experience gained, and exercise as mental reset Andriana's perspective is a powerful reminder that the best leaders don't demand their teams already know everything, they teach the why, protect people's time, and stay curious about what actually matters to the client in front of them. Her path from private practice to in-house and back shows that the detours aren't lost time, they're perspective you couldn't have gained any other way. If you're a lawyer, leader, or anyone navigating how to grow people in a rapidly shifting profession, this conversation offers practical insight, honest talk about imposter syndrome, and a refreshing case that curiosity and authenticity beat faking it every time. Connect with me here: Website: https://www.kimmillerhershon.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmillerhershon Newsletter: https://link.kimmillerhershon.com/widget/form/aEdmdA1W5MhoMCMfy5O8 Webinar: https://webinar.kimmillerhershon.com/?utm_source=Podcast Guest Details: Guest: Andriana Shultz Daly, Partner, McGuireWoods (Richmond) Focus: Complex commercial and intellectual property litigation (patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret); former associate general counsel for a global pharmaceutical company Firm bio: https://www.mcguirewoods.com/people/d/andriana-shultz-daly/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    Why "Fake It Till You Make It" Fails — and What Actually Builds Confidence with Andriana Daly

  5. Aug 4

    The Life You Want Is on the Other Side of What You Won't Put Down | Scott Lackey

    In this episode of Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom, Kim Miller-Hershon sits down with Scott Lackey, author of Wake Up To Die Again, a book that's getting a lot of play. From his earliest memories, Scott wanted to do two things: build a business and live a life full of adventure. He's managed both, and then some. He's a patented inventor, an Army combat veteran, an Ironman, an author, a speaker, a weekly newspaper columnist, a husband and dad, and the chief sales officer of the largest US subsidiary of a global manufacturer, all at the same time. He's the kind of person who plans a 12-day, coast-to-coast race across Nicaragua for fun, and who insists that real adventure isn't the extreme feat itself but anything that makes you come alive. In this conversation, Scott challenges one of the most deeply ingrained beliefs in business and in life: that success is always about addition. More skills, more things, the right car, the right house, the next box checked. He got excellent at living a life of addition, and kept arriving at the end of each acquisition to find an empty space and only himself standing there. The counterintuitive shift that's brought him the most satisfaction over the last 15 years is the opposite: subtraction. Not cutting the good things out of life, but shedding the weight, physical and mental, that we were never meant to carry forward, which is exactly what opens up room to acquire what actually matters. That idea runs straight into a second one at the heart of the episode: subtracting the beliefs that no longer serve you. Scott and Kim agree that the biggest danger to absolute certainty is that when you're sure you're right, there's no room left for anyone else, or for correction. Scott describes a training partner whose views he categorically disagrees with but loves like a brother, because he looks at the man's intent rather than his positions. The through-line is a stance of curiosity, the belief that getting curious about other people is not only healthier but far more fun. This episode explores: Why success framed as constant addition leaves you empty Subtraction as a healthier way to live, physically and mentally Subtracting the beliefs and stories that no longer serve you Why absolute certainty leaves no room for anyone else Leading with curiosity and reading people by their intent Why the magic-bullet promise fails, and self-trust is the real fix Why contemplative time is the prerequisite for trusting yourself Protecting culture as a leader's daily, deliberate work Sending team members to meet customers so they're seen as human Asking employees what they actually want from their careers Beating imposter syndrome by buying things because you want them, not to prove you're enough Scott's perspective is a powerful reminder that a full life often comes from taking away rather than piling on, and that the most important promises you'll ever keep are the ones you make to yourself. His journey from a man who measured himself by his possessions to one who can hold the shiny thing loosely shows that trusting yourself is the real adventure, and that you were already enough before you checked a single box. If you're a founder, leader, or anyone tired of chasing the next thing, this conversation offers practical insight, honest talk about self-trust and imposter syndrome, and a refreshing case that the boldest move might be subtraction. Connect with me here: Website: https://www.kimmillerhershon.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmillerhershon Newsletter: https://link.kimmillerhershon.com/widget/form/aEdmdA1W5MhoMCMfy5O8 Webinar: https://webinar.kimmillerhershon.com/?utm_source=Podcast Guest Details: Guest: Scott Lackey Book: Wake Up To Die Again: Breaking Who You Became So You Can Be Who You're Meant to Be (published May 14, #1 New Release and #2 on the Best Seller List) — available on Amazon Focus: Chief sales officer, author, speaker, and weekly newspaper columnist; patented inventor, Army combat veteran, and Ironman Website: https://scottlackey.com Keynote speaking (top 10 most-requested topics): https://scottlackey.com/speaking/ Published short stories and media: https://scottlackey.com/published-work/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    The Life You Want Is on the Other Side of What You Won't Put Down | Scott Lackey

  6. Jul 31

    Scaling a Bankruptcy Law Firm, Hiring, and Leading Through Growth with Chad Van Horn

    In this episode of Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom, Kim Miller-Hershon sits down with Chad Van Horn, Esq., founding partner of Van Horn Law Group, P.A., a bankruptcy and debt relief firm headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with a growing office presence in his hometown of Pittsburgh. Since founding the firm in 2009, Chad has grown it from himself and one secretary, neither with any real experience, into a 120-person firm that's helped thousands of individuals, families, and businesses navigate financial distress and restore their dignity. A certified specialist in both consumer and business bankruptcy, admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, he's the author of Everything You Need to Know About Bankruptcy in Florida and The Debt Life, and a professor at the University of Florida. He's also, memorably, "Player 286" on Netflix's Squid Game: The Challenge, where he finished in the top 10 and came within reach of the $4.56 million prize (his best friend on the show, Player 287, won it). In this conversation, Chad challenges a piece of conventional wisdom that traps a lot of small-business owners: that top-line revenue equals success. He tells the story of hitting his big goal, a million dollars in revenue, only for his accountant to deliver the good news alongside the bad, that he'd lost $17,000 that year. It reframed everything. It's not how much you make, it's how much you keep, and for small businesses that bottom-line number matters far more than the headline one. Kim reinforces it with her own coaching experience: owners with nearly identical revenue can pay themselves wildly different amounts, from $80,000 to over a million, depending entirely on how the business is built. On imposter syndrome, Chad is refreshingly plain. He still drives a Vespa to work, doesn't own a car, and sees himself as the same approachable attorney who started the firm. The discomfort shows up in the big-company CEO role he never trained for, as a first-generation lawyer without built-in mentorship, and in the knowledge that at hundreds of filings a month, one small mistake can replicate into 200. His answer is the through-line of the episode: make the decision, keep moving, and learn from it either way. This episode explores: Why top-line revenue is a vanity metric, and net income is what matters The million-dollar year that lost $17,000, and what it taught him Changing your own role as the company grows Moving from operator to business owner, building a firm that runs without you Why keeping the wrong-fit person sends a message to your best people Being slow to hire the right way, not the paralyzed way What the firm really sells: hope, not just legal services The national shortage of bankruptcy attorneys and mentoring the next generation How AI and self-driving cars threaten the hustle economy his clients rely on Benchmarking against the best companies in the world, not just your industry Why "we've always done it that way" is never a good enough answer Leading from humility while still being clearly in charge Beating imposter syndrome by deciding, moving, and learning Chad's perspective is a powerful reminder that running a great business and practicing a profession are two different skills, and that the founders who scale are the ones willing to change their own job description and build something bigger than themselves. His journey from a two-person startup to a 120-person firm, with a detour through a global hit reality show, shows that staying grounded, taking care of your people, and looking outside your own industry are what turn a practice into a legacy. Connect with me here: Website: https://www.kimmillerhershon.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmillerhershon Newsletter: https://link.kimmillerhershon.com/widget/form/aEdmdA1W5MhoMCMfy5O8 Webinar: https://webinar.kimmillerhershon.com/?utm_source=Podcast Guest Details: Guest: Chad Van Horn, Esq. Company: Van Horn Law Group, P.A. (Fort Lauderdale, FL, with a growing office in Pittsburgh, PA) Focus: Bankruptcy and debt relief; Chapter 7, Chapter 11, and complex debt restructuring Books: Everything You Need to Know About Bankruptcy in Florida and The Debt Life Also: Professor at the University of Florida; competitor on Netflix's Squid Game: The Challenge Free resources for listeners: Fresh Start Blueprint webinar, a free live training walking through your legal options for financial recovery: https://my.demio.com/ref/zX1PBwOtSAcEpu8Y Free consultation through Let's Fix Debt: https://letsfixdebt.com Free consultation page: https://www.vanhornlawgroup.com/consultation Find Chad online: Website: https://www.vanhornlawgroup.com Instagram: @chadvanhorn_law and @vanhornlawgroup Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    Scaling a Bankruptcy Law Firm, Hiring, and Leading Through Growth with Chad Van Horn

  7. Jul 28

    Stop Chasing Growth: Build a Business on Leverage, Not Hustle | Patrick Bell

    In this episode of Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom, Kim Miller-Hershon sits down with Patrick Bell, a doctoral AI researcher and AI transformation advisor who works directly with CEOs to turn AI into measurable business results. His core insight is that most organizations don't struggle with AI because of the technology. They struggle because their leadership systems can't absorb it, so companies end up with activity that looks like progress but fails to deliver real outcomes. Patrick's own path to that thesis is anything but linear: trained as a police officer in Canada, he spent years smuggling Bibles into Eastern Europe during the revolutions, taught English in Japan for 12 years, ran a safari company's marketing in Kenya, and now lives largely out of a single suitcase on the island of Madeira with his wife of 37 years. In this conversation, Patrick challenges a piece of conventional wisdom that costs a lot of founders dearly: build something great and the customers will come. He learned the hard way, several times, that a good product is necessary but rarely sufficient. Distribution, trust, relationships, and timing matter as much or more. So today he's less interested in building things that win by being slightly better and more interested in building things that are simply harder to replace, through ecosystems, network effects, and real defensibility. That leads into one of the sharpest threads of the episode: the false promise of the roadmap. Patrick spent roughly 10,000 hours studying business-growth expert Jay Abraham, eventually building profit-acceleration software used by thousands of coaches. What he learned training hundreds of them personally is that the vast majority, he'd guess 90 percent or more, could run the software and produce a beautiful roadmap but got completely lost when it came time to actually help a client implement, because they'd never grown a business themselves. The tool wasn't the problem. Kim connects it straight to her own mantra: a roadmap only works if you personalize it to the system and to yourself. This episode explores: Why a great product is necessary but rarely sufficient Building for defensibility and network effects, not just being slightly better The false promise of the roadmap, and why the tool isn't enough Why a roadmap only works when you personalize it to yourself Staying curious and importing ideas across cultures and industries Why "AI expert" is nearly meaningless, and expertise is always narrow Why every AI project is really a leadership project The wobbly-bicycle metaphor: AI amplifies every existing weakness The coming backlash against agents that loop instead of helping If you're a CEO, founder, or leader trying to make AI deliver real results instead of just activity, this conversation offers practical insight, honest talk about decision-making under uncertainty, and a refreshing case that the goal was never more growth. It was leverage, and a life worth living. Connect with me here: Website: https://www.kimmillerhershon.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmillerhershon Newsletter: https://link.kimmillerhershon.com/widget/form/aEdmdA1W5MhoMCMfy5O8 Webinar: https://webinar.kimmillerhershon.com/?utm_source=Podcast Guest Details: Guest: Patrick Bell Company: AI Transformation Partners Focus: AI transformation advisory for CEOs; doctoral AI research; leadership and AI adoption Website: https://www.aitransformationpartner.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aitransformationpartners/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    Stop Chasing Growth: Build a Business on Leverage, Not Hustle | Patrick Bell

  8. Jul 24

    Rejected Five Times for a Loan — So She Rebuilt How Credit Works | Kristy Kim

    In this episode of Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom, Kim Miller-Hershon sits down with Kristy Kim, founder and CEO of TomoCredit, an AI startup based in San Francisco built on a beautifully simple premise: no credit score, no problem. Kristy immigrated to the US from Seoul, South Korea, and after getting rejected from auto loans five times, she turned her own frustration into a company reimagining how creditworthiness gets assessed for the no-file and thin-file population. Her origin story starts even earlier though. She came to the US alone at eleven years old, living with a host family in Portland, Oregon, because she asked to, having decided as a kid that she wanted to see the world and experience a different culture. In this conversation, Kristy challenges a piece of conventional wisdom that shaped her entire early life: work hard and everything will figure itself out. She did exactly that, studied hard, landed a good job, secured the visa, and still hit a wall when she tried to buy a car, because after more than a decade in the country she had no credit history. Nobody had told her the clock needed to start, and she didn't know to ask. Her conclusion is sharper than the platitude she grew up with: don't just work hard, be smart, understand the system, and get the right information, because that matters more than effort alone in a world moving this fast. The episode closes on something quietly radical. Kristy's parents never asked her to achieve anything. They wanted her happy, nearby, playing golf on weekends. Because she felt fully validated at home, she never needed the external kind, and that's what lets her say the work has value regardless of the outcome. As a runner, she puts it this way: you run faster, you run slower, and nobody really knows but you. This episode explores: Why "work hard and it'll work out" isn't enough on its own Being smart about the system, not just diligent within it You don't know what you don't know, and the cost of no one telling you Building a company from the pain you personally experienced Rethinking creditworthiness with alternative data Why anger burns the house down, and how to step away instead Separating self-worth from external validation and business outcomes Just keep showing up, because the value of the work is there either way Kristy's perspective is a powerful reminder that the systems we treat as neutral often just haven't figured out how to see certain people yet. Her journey from an eleven-year-old arriving alone in Oregon to a founder rewriting how credit gets measured shows that the problems worth solving are usually the ones you've lived, and that the message underneath the product matters as much as the product: the system hasn't figured out how to understand you yet, but you are good. If you're a founder, leader, or anyone who's ever been told you don't qualify, this conversation offers practical insight, honest talk about leadership growth, and a refreshing case that being enough has nothing to do with a score. Connect with me here: Website: https://www.kimmillerhershon.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmillerhershon Newsletter: https://link.kimmillerhershon.com/widget/form/aEdmdA1W5MhoMCMfy5O8 Webinar: https://webinar.kimmillerhershon.com/?utm_source=Podcast Guest Details: Guest: Kristy Kim Company: TomoCredit Focus: AI-driven credit assessment using alternative data for no-file and thin-file consumers Find TomoCredit online: Instagram: @tomocredit TikTok: @tomocredit Facebook: @tomocredit YouTube: @tomocredit LinkedIn: @tomocredit Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    Rejected Five Times for a Loan — So She Rebuilt How Credit Works | Kristy Kim
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Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom: Where clichés come to retire and fresh thinking we inspire. Smart minds don’t think alike—and that’s the point. Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom takes you inside the messy, brilliant, and bold thought processes of high-achieving leaders, entrepreneurs, and out-of-the-box thinkers. We skip the clichés and spotlight the real talk: the strange decisions that worked, the brilliant ideas that bombed, and the thought patterns that defy the rulebook—but still lead to growth, impact, and the occasional mic drop. If you’re tired of surface-level advice and crave the kind of wisdom that makes you pause, laugh, and level up—this is your new favorite listen. Because let’s face it: playing it safe never built anything worth bragging about.

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