The Stagnation Assassin Show

Todd Hagopian
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Welcome to the world's most BRUTAL business transformation channel!I'm Todd Hagopian, CEO of Stagnation Assassins and Executive Director of the Stagnation Intelligence Agency. Every week, I deliver fast-paced, in-your-face episodes that teach aspiring stagnation assassins how to DECLARE WAR ON STAGNATION!WARNING: This channel contains:⚔️ Uncomfortable truths about why your business is failing💀 Strategic brutality that transforms companies🔥 Zero tolerance for corporate mediocrity💰 Profit-producing insights that your competitors don't want you to hearVisit https://ToddHagopian.com for free content on slaying stagnation.Visit https://StagnationAssassins.com (Coming soon) to join the revolution.SUBSCRIBE and ring the bell to become a certified Stagnation Assassin!

Episodes

  1. 2D AGO

    Innovation Labs Are Expensive Zoos: Why Your $10 Million Sandbox Is Producing Press Releases Instead of Products

    Companies build gorgeous glass innovation labs, hire brilliant people, give them bean bags and ping-pong tables, and wonder why nothing transformative transfers to the actual business. These labs look like Silicon Valley startups trapped inside traditional companies—exotic animals in corporate cages. The hilarious hypocrisy? These labs are designed to protect the core business from disruption, not transform it. It's like building a gym next to your house but never going inside. You can point to it and say, "Look, we care about fitness" while you get fatter every day. The 90% Failure Rate One financial services company spent $10 million on an innovation lab. Three years later: dozens of prototypes, several awards, great PR—and exactly nothing implemented. The lab became a tourist destination for executives to show off to board members while core operations remained frozen in 1995. Research reveals about 90% of corporate innovation labs fail to generate significant value. That's not strategy—that's expensive theater. The best ideas that threaten existing business models get killed faster than creativity at a compliance convention. One telecom's innovation lab developed a breakthrough service that would cannibalize traditional revenue. Result? Buried. What You'll Learn in This Episode Todd Hagopian reveals Embedded Innovation Architecture—putting breakthrough thinking where work happens, not in separate sandboxes. One manufacturing company killed their lab and gave that budget to production. Result: 40% defect reduction, 25% productivity improvement in one year. You'll discover Constraint-Based Innovation. One logistics company challenged their warehouse team to improve efficiency with zero new technology and zero budget. They increased throughput 35% using nothing but ingenuity. You'll learn Innovation Through Subtraction. One company eliminated their 47-step approval process. Innovations that took months happened in days—more breakthroughs in six months than their lab produced in three years. Your Assignment If you have an innovation lab, calculate its true ROI—not patents, but implemented value. If you don't, identify three innovation barriers in your core operations and eliminate them this week. Visit http://stagnationassassins.com and Declare WAR on Stagnation. About The Podcaster Todd Hagopian has led five corporate transformations generating $2B+ in shareholder value. Author of The Unfair Advantage (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FV6QMWBX). Featured 30+ times on Forbes.com, Fox Business, and NPR.

    10 min

  2. 2D AGO

    The Karelin Method: The Simple Formula That Makes Teams 600% More Productive

    The Karelin Method: The Simple Formula That Makes Teams 600% More Productive One simple formula helps teams become nearly 600% more productive. It's not about working harder—it's about working obsessively on what matters. While your competition spreads effort like peanut butter across a hundred activities, giving each maybe 24 minutes weekly, you'll be hammering the handful that drive real results. The Productivity Purgatory You're Trapped In You're running around like a caffeinated chipmunk, checking off tasks, attending meetings, feeling furiously busy. Meanwhile, your focused competitor just ate your lunch, dinner, and tomorrow's breakfast because they understand the math of domination. The average executive wastes 80% of their time on activities generating less than 20% of value. They're in meetings about meetings, creating reports nobody reads. One manufacturing company's engineers invested 80% of technical time on items generating less than 10% of profit. That's like hiring Gordon Ramsay to cook ramen noodles. What You'll Learn in This Episode Todd Hagopian reveals the Karelin Method—named after the legendary wrestler who said, "None of the people who question me train as hard in a single day as I train every single day of my life." The formula: Work 20% more hours (40 to 48). Become 20% more efficient through AI and automation. Focus 80% of time on the 20% of activities driving results. The math: Your competitor works 40 hours across 100 activities—about eight hours on their top 20. You work 48 hours, focusing 80% on the top 20—nearly 39 hours on key activities. That's almost 500% more on what matters. Add efficiency gains and you approach 600%. You'll also learn Strategic Battles that channel energy like a laser, and Energy ROI Metrics. One executive discovered his weekly staff meeting cost $5,000 but generated $500 in value. He killed it, redirected hours to customer visits, and ROI went from negative to 1,000%. Your Assignment List your 100 activities. Identify the 20 driving 80% of value. Schedule 80% of next week on those 20 only. Visit https://stagnationassassins.com and Declare WAR on Stagnation. About The Podcaster Todd Hagopian has led five corporate transformations generating $2B+ in shareholder value. Author of The Unfair Advantage (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FV6QMWBX) and leading authority on Corporate Stagnation Transformation (https://toddhagopian.com). Featured 30+ times on Forbes.com, Fox Business, OAN, Washington Post, and NPR.

    11 min

  3. 3D AGO

    Consensus Is Corporate Cancer: Why Your Leadership Team Is a Decision-Destroying Machine

    Stanford research proves consensus decisions take nearly three times longer and produce 40% less bold outcomes. That's like paying triple the price for watered-down whiskey—while your competitors capture market share during your sixth meeting about the same decision. While your leadership team sits around the conference table nodding like dashboard bobbleheads, your market opportunity evaporates like morning mist. I've seen companies where launching a new product required sign-off from 17 different stakeholders. That's not decision-making—that's decision-destroying. The Consensus Cancer Here's how consensus culture metastasizes: everyone gets veto power, which means the most risk-averse person becomes the de facto decision-maker. It's like letting the most fearful person drive the car—you'll never get anywhere worth going. One tech company needed to update their pricing model. They formed a committee with sales, marketing, finance, ops, and customer success. Six months later, they reached consensus on a 5% price increase. Their competitor made the same decision in one week and captured three major accounts while the committee argued about decimal points. The repulsive result? Consensus doesn't even create buy-in. People agree in the room to avoid conflict, then sabotage implementation. Fake agreement followed by real resistance—the worst of both worlds. What You'll Learn in This Episode Todd Hagopian reveals Decision Dictatorship—not tyranny, but clarity. Every decision needs one owner with authority and accountability. You'll discover the Decision Velocity Framework (most companies find 90% of decisions are reversible—yet treat them like constitutional amendments). You'll learn the 70% Rule: when you have 70% of the information and 70% confidence, move. One retail company cut decision times from weeks to days. You'll also get the RAPID Framework—Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input, Decide—where only one person decides. This isn't autocracy. This is velocity. The Counterintuitive Truth Fast decisions create better outcomes. One startup makes major strategic decisions in 48 hours or less. Their motto: "We can make another decision tomorrow, but we can't get today back." Your Consensus-Killing Assignment Identify three decisions stuck in committee purgatory for more than two weeks. Assign one owner to each with 72 hours to decide. No consensus required. Visit StagnationAssassins.com and Declare WAR on Stagnation. About The Podcaster Todd Hagopian has led five corporate transformations generating $2B+ in shareholder value. Author of The Unfair Advantage (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FV6QMWBX) and leading authority on Corporate Stagnation Transformation (https://toddhagopian.com). Featured 30+ times on Forbes.com, Fox Business, OAN, Washington Post, and NPR.

    10 min

  4. 3D AGO

    Work-Life Balance Is a Lie: Why Your Comfortable Mediocrity Is Getting Crushed by Obsessed Competitors

    While you're perfecting your morning meditation and preserving your precious energy, your hungrier competitors are working 90-hour weeks to steal your market share—and they're loving every minute of the massacre. SpaceX engineers work 70 to 80 hours a week during critical launches, revolutionizing space travel, while you're revolutionizing your sleep schedule. That sustainable pace you're preaching is just corporate code for comfortable mediocrity. The Balance BS That's Bankrupting Your Business Entire industries are infected with work-life balance worship, creating companies full of clock-watchers who treat 5:00 p.m. like a fire alarm. I've seen companies where suggesting weekend work gets you sent to HR for "promoting unhealthy culture." You know what's unhealthy? Bankruptcy. The Balance Brigade has brainwashed an entire generation into believing excellence comes from moderation. Excellence comes from obsession. Look at Tesla, Amazon, Apple during their breakthrough years. The founders worked like maniacs—not because they had to, but because they wanted to. They were building something bigger than their yoga schedule. Here's the repulsive revelation: work-life balance is often just fear dressed up as wisdom. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of finding out what you're really capable of. What You'll Learn in This Episode Todd Hagopian reveals the Intensity Cycle Framework—not constant 90-hour weeks, but strategic obsession. Champions create cycles: six weeks of 90% intensity followed by one week of complete recovery. During intensity phases, you're all-in. During recovery, you disconnect completely. This isn't balance—it's oscillation. You'll learn Sprint Design that structures six-week surges with crystal-clear deliverables. Teams accomplish more in a six-week sprint than balanced teams accomplish in six months. You'll also discover Energy Weaponization—treating energy like ammunition. One startup identified three critical capabilities and poured all their energy there. Their balanced competitor spread effort across 20 priorities and excelled at none. The Counterintuitive Truth Microsoft Japan's four-day work week increased productivity by 40%. Sounds like a win for balance? That boost came from constraint. When you compress time, you create intensity. It wasn't balance that created results—it was pressure. Your Intensity Assignment Choose one project that could transform your career. For two weeks, give it everything—nights, weekends, full obsession. Then compare what you accomplish to your last balanced month. Visit https://stagnationassassins.com and Declare WAR on Stagnation. About The Podcaster Todd Hagopian has led five corporate transformations generating $2B+ in shareholder value. Author of The Unfair Advantage (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FV6QMWBX) and leading authority on Corporate Stagnation Transformation (https://toddhagopian.com). Featured 30+ times on Forbes.com, Fox Business, OAN, Washington Post, and NPR.

    10 min

  5. 12/13/2025

    Your Best Customers Are Killing Your Business

    Your Customers Are Killing Your Business: The Profit Parasite Pandemic Customer profitability analysis reveals a shocking truth: your bottom 20% of customers aren't just dead weight—they're corporate cancer consuming 150% of your total profits while you worship at the altar of "customer-centricity." While you're sending thank-you cards to every customer with a pulse, these profit parasites are literally sucking more money out of your business than your entire company makes. Harvard research proves that the most profitable 20% of customers generate between 150% and 300% of total profits. The brutal reality? Your smallest customers are ordering custom configurations that cost more in engineering hours than their entire order value. The Whale Curve Phenomenon This "whale curve" phenomenon means most businesses unknowingly subsidize unprofitable customers through excessive service costs, custom configurations, and resource drain—destroying overall profitability. Unprofitable customers demand excessive customization, frequent service calls, special pricing, and management attention that far exceeds their revenue contribution. The pattern is always the same: businesses hemorrhaging profits to serve customers who should be their competitor's problem. You've been brainwashed into believing all revenue is good revenue, but you're not running a business—you're funding a charity with a corporate logo. What You'll Learn in This Episode Todd Hagopian, CEO of Stagnation Assassins, reveals how to conduct a Customer Profitability Audit that exposes every profit parasite in your portfolio. You'll discover how to implement Strategic Brutality to transform or terminate toxic customer relationships, and create Value-Based Customer Criteria that protect your margins like bouncers at an exclusive club. The Fear Is Worse Than Reality Won't firing customers damage your reputation? Actually, the opposite happens. When you focus on serving fewer customers exceptionally well, you transform from a desperate generalist into a selective specialist. Premium providers don't serve everyone—they serve the right ones. One company sent their bottom 20% a 50% price increase letter. Half left and profits went UP. The other half stayed and became profitable. When you stop subsidizing parasites, you create capacity to better serve profitable customers. Calculate the REAL cost of serving each customer—not just product cost, but every service call, custom request, delayed payment, and executive escalation. Companies often discover their "loyal" small customers cost more to serve than the revenue they generate. Start immediately with a Customer Profitability Audit on your bottom 10 customers. This week. The longer you wait, the more money these vampires drain from your business. Visit StagnationAssassins.com to access tools for conducting your Customer Profitability Audit and join the movement to Declare WAR on Stagnation. About The Podcaster Todd Hagopian has led five corporate transformations across Fortune 500 business units, small businesses and startups, generating $2B in shareholder value across his corporate roles.  He is the author of The Unfair Advantage (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FV6QMWBX) and he is the leading authority on Corporate Stagnation Transformation (https://toddhagopian.com), earning recognition from Manufacturing Insights Magazine and Manufacturing Marvels.   He has been Featured over 30 times on Forbes.com along with articles/segments on Fox Business, OAN, Washington Post, NPR and many other outlets, his transformative strategies reach over 100,000 social media followers every day. 6FEmdQPjkvUwlYrBqOXc

    22 min
  • 5 Episodes

About

Welcome to the world's most BRUTAL business transformation channel!I'm Todd Hagopian, CEO of Stagnation Assassins and Executive Director of the Stagnation Intelligence Agency. Every week, I deliver fast-paced, in-your-face episodes that teach aspiring stagnation assassins how to DECLARE WAR ON STAGNATION!WARNING: This channel contains:⚔️ Uncomfortable truths about why your business is failing💀 Strategic brutality that transforms companies🔥 Zero tolerance for corporate mediocrity💰 Profit-producing insights that your competitors don't want you to hearVisit https://ToddHagopian.com for free content on slaying stagnation.Visit https://StagnationAssassins.com (Coming soon) to join the revolution.SUBSCRIBE and ring the bell to become a certified Stagnation Assassin!

Information

  • Creator
    Todd Hagopian
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    5
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Stagnation Assassin Show
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    The Stagnation Assassin Show