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The 3-Part Leadership Job Description You Were Never Given

Episode 79 · 24 June 2026 · 56 min

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Show notes

The Three Pillars of Leadership: Clarity, Execution and Sustainability

The three pillars of leadership are clarity, execution and sustainability, and most leaders get only two of the three right. Randy Lorensen and Dr. John Oberg use Alexander the Great, whose empire fell apart without a successor, as the opening case study. They then break down each pillar and explain why AI makes strong leadership more important, not less.

How do great leaders actually win?

In this episode of Tales of Abundance, Randy Lorensen and Dr. John Oberg break down a simple but powerful leadership framework built around three core pillars: clarity, execution, and sustainability. Using Alexander the Great as the opening case study, they explore a hard truth many leaders miss: it is not enough to build something powerful if it cannot survive without you.

The conversation unpacks what clarity really means inside an organization, why execution is often misunderstood, and why sustainability may be the most overlooked leadership skill of all. Randy and John also connect the framework to the modern AI era, arguing that better tools do not replace leadership—they make strong leadership even more important.

In the Abundance Briefing, they cover a remarkable Alzheimer’s case involving psilocybin, more stories from the SpaceX IPO and the employees who became millionaires, and a new abundance index showing how access to key resources has improved over time.

If you lead people, run a business, or want to become a better leader in a fast-changing world, this episode gives you a practical framework you can use right away.

Clarity in Leadership, Succession Planning and Leadership in the Age of AI

What you'll discover:

  • What Alexander the Great teaches about building something that can't survive without you
  • Clarity in leadership: real vs. aspirational core values, and outcomes and direction
  • The four parts of execution most leaders miss: evaluation, alignment, delegation and contribution
  • Sustainability and succession planning: culture, communication, planning and developing the next leader
  • Leadership in the age of AI, and how AI forces leaders to be more precise
  • In the Abundance Briefing: psilocybin and an Alzheimer's case, SpaceX IPO millionaires, and the Simon Abundance Index

Timestamps

  • [00:00] Alexander the Great, Babylon, and the leadership lesson from a collapsing empire
  • [01:57] The three-part leadership framework: clarity, execution, and sustainability
  • [03:01] Why the order matters
  • [03:37] Why sustainability is often the hardest part of leadership
  • [04:47] Why founders and entrepreneurs often neglect succession and long-term structure
  • [06:14] What clarity should look like in a strong organization
  • [06:57] Core values: real values vs aspirational values
  • [07:35] Randy on defining company values the hard way
  • [09:19] Why fake core values do more damage than no values at all
  • [09:30] Outcomes, direction, and what clarity actually requires
  • [11:57] Where clarity goes wrong inside organizations
  • [12:45] The accounting example: solving for taxes instead of the business
  • [13:28] Functional silos and why departments often optimize for the wrong thing
  • [14:38] Execution: the four parts most leaders miss
  • [14:49] Evaluation, alignment, delegation, and contribution
  • [18:03] Why most leaders think they execute well
  • [19:35] Where execution fails in the real world
  • [20:03] A chief revenue officer example of bad evaluation and bad resourcing
  • [21:14] Delegation failures, onboarding gaps, and bad assumptions
  • [22:37] Sustainability: where Alexander the Great failed
  • [23:05] Why sustainability is important but rarely urgent
  • [23:28] Culture, communication, planning, and development
  • [24:24] Tim Cook, Steve Jobs, and the challenge of long-term sustainability
  • [25:33] Elon Musk, one-of-one founders, and the sustainability question
  • [30:23] What leadership looks like in the age of AI
  • [30:47] How AI changes execution without changing leadership fundamentals
  • [33:28] Randy on how AI has forced him to become more precise
  • [37:17] What AI can teach leaders about clarity and communication
  • [40:13] The practical self-assessment leaders should start with today
  • [41:52] Why adding clarity and sustainability can make good leaders much better
  • [42:27] Break — Sponsor: AG1
  • [43:24] Abundance Briefing — Psilocybin and the Alzheimer’s case that shocked researchers
  • [44:56] Dr. John on causality, clinical caution, and health autonomy
  • [47:24] Why psychedelic science is getting serious attention
  • [48:33] More SpaceX IPO stories: welders, interns, and workers becoming millionaires
  • [50:38] Paper wealth, lockups, and what value creation really means
  • [51:10] The Simon Abundance Index and what it says about progress since 1980
  • [52:47] Why abundance has grown, and why the story still gets distorted
  • [55:00] Propaganda, perception, and understanding what is actually improving

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About the hosts

This is a two-host episode with no guest: Randy Lorensen and Dr. John Oberg. Anthony Marino is out this week. (Host bios are on the host pages linked below.)

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Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It was generated automatically from the episode audio, so expect some spelling errors in names and terms.

[00:01] is living his most abundant life on vacation at the beach again. I'm very But John, let's let's go back to 323 BC. The most powerful man on Earth is laying dead dying in Babylon. He's 32 years old. He's never lost a battle. Not a single one. In 11 years he marched his army from Greece to Egypt then from Egypt to Persia and from Persia Persia to the edge of India. He had literally redrawn the maps on three different continents. We're talking about leadership today. Well, he had clarity. He always knew exactly where he was going. He had execution. His tactics are still studied by generals and militaries to this day. But when he was dying, one of the one of his generals knelt beside him and asked "Who do you leave the empire to?" His answer? "To the strongest." Within 48 hours the wars had started.

[01:04] Within 20 years the empire was gone. He'd built the greatest fighting force in human history and when he left it couldn't live without him. And we're going to talk about leadership today. By the way, we're talking about Alexander the Great. Okay? And I know you have a framework that we've talked about in the past, three different aspects of leadership. He got two of them he was really great at and not so much the third one. So John, I mean you're an expert in just I mean so listeners know, I mean John has advised zillions of companies and high-level companies. I mean you you teach in the business school MBA students at USC etc. etc. — Social social social work school running large organizations. Yeah, that's right. — Yeah, so All right. So let's talk about this, leadership. First tell people the three What what are the three things in your framework of leadership that a company or a business or any leader needs? — Yeah, I think execution is the one that's most often talked about. It's number two on my list, but execution is number two and there are several pillars of execution. Before that, I would put clarity and there are several pillars for clarity. And the one that was missed by your story with Alexander the Great with sustainability and there's several pillars for sustainability as well. And I I developed this mental model after looking at, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years of literature and stories like you just told today about like what what do leaders do well? And I have people that come to me all the time. They're like, "Leadership is this." and they give me a characteristic or a skill. But nowhere did I find like the job description of a leader. And so I put together the role of a leader.

[02:33] Like what is the job description of a leader? Whether you're managing a two-person accounting team or a 10,000-person army, there's a job description and it covers clarity, execution, sustainability. That is the job description. Not everyone knows it. Not everyone gets it right. But those are the those are the three things that a leader has to do as a job. Lots of characteristics, lots of styles, lots of but though that's the job description. Those three things: clarity, execution, — Does the order matter? — I think it does. I think I think, you know, you can't really build sustainability until you have clarity and you can't execute well until you have clarity. So I think clarity does come first. I think execution comes second. I think sustainability comes third. So yeah, I do think they matter. And I think that different types of leaders apply those things differently. I think that, you know, an executive has one set of responsibilities and those three areas where a frontline manager has a different set of responsibilities in those areas. But they all have that same general job description they should be asking themselves about. — Do you see what is is it like Alexander the Great? Sustainability is the one most people forget about. Is that Is that your experience?

[03:37] — It's It's the toughest one because it generally comes last and it's it's the hardest It's the hardest one for most leaders because it it takes different you know, so you talk about sustainability, let's get really, really clear. Sustainability is about catalyzing the culture you want to have so that you're actually leading the way that you want people to follow, right? So, you see you're you're you're leading by example. That's That's hard to do. I I heard someone say recently that culture of the organization is the worst behavior that a leadership tolerates. And so, it's about what what a leader does themselves and what they tolerate. And then there's communication and planning and development. Like those are skills that are difficult skills, and they don't really show up in kind of the individual contributor in the same way they show up for a high-level executive. So, you have to cross-apply things. And so, I do think that sustainability is tough for a lot of people, or people think that they want to spend more time on strategy. I hear that all the time. That's a red flag to me. And they want to spend tons and tons of time here. And that also is a you know, can be a real problem. If you spend too much time handling these things versus just living out the the catalyzed culture, planning, development, and communication are just a part of what you do day-to-day. So, yeah. It seems to me just — if you think about the average business owner, entrepreneur, even just a leader they tend to think they're pretty invincible. That tends to be one of the characteristics, and they just doesn't occur to them that they could pass on.

[05:03] It's not It's not that different than people that don't have a will because they think, "Ah, I got plenty of time to get to that, right?" I I I would think, again, no no data here, but that's just what I would think would be logical. — Yeah, and there's lots of ways to slice leadership, right? You can slice it by the job description. You can slice it by the industry. You can slice One interesting way to slice it is the founder CEO executive versus the professional executive who came up learning as a professional manager up through the ranks. Like those have very different experiences and and kind of backgrounds. And so, I think there's lots of ways to slice it, and that was one of the reasons that I put together this this role was because I was I was giving so many leaders kind of guidance on what their job was. And people had these and I see it all the time on LinkedIn, on Facebook like, hey, if you're doing these things, how's here's how you here's how you're successful. And they give good anecdotes, but they don't give the full like mental model of what the job description is. And so, I think what you described would be very typical of a founder CEO. But a professional manager who kind of moves through the ranks to CEO has a very different experience.

[06:11] — Well, let's go let let's start with the first one then. — Yeah. Clarity. What does clarity look like in a strong organization? Or what should clarity look like? — I think the first thing that a a great organization has are are kind of the core principles, right? The the core values, the things that they're unwilling to move on. And you can tell what those are by looking at the leadership's behaviors, right? And you can see what the core values are. And I think there's two types of core values. There's the core values which are actually being lived out in an organization, and then there there aspirational values. And what I'm talking about are the actual values. Like the things that are actually being lived out by the people who are most influential in the organization. And to the extent that people understand those and drive those home, I think it's super super helpful to have. I think it can be devastating to an organization to put aspirational core values on the wall and then not live up to them because then hypocrisy becomes kind of value number one. And that that's really damaging.

[07:14] So, when I help organizations put their core values together, the first thing we do is define them really really clearly. You and I have worked on this before. And then, as you know, we have the executives live these out for 90 days. And every 30 days we check in to see if they're really doing it or if they're failing so that we don't set ourselves up for for failure in the process. That's number one is the core — Yeah, this is something you really helped me with years ago, right? Like you you've got a you've got a framework and a and a skill where there's I don't know three 400 values on a sheet and you go through it and you cross them off and me and my partner spent like a week cutting it down to where we each had no more than six. Then we had to fight over what made the list, right? And we ended up with three and we added a fourth one that wasn't on the list cuz we had a we felt like we had a hole. So I made up a word primafied and gave it a definition to fit on there. You know, clarity by the way was our first and and that wasn't one of mine. It was one of my one of my partners who was since retired and moved on. But you know, he came up with that and I was like a good one, right? So I I can just tell you and we did that and it was hard for me cuz I want to implement stuff. So we spent three or maybe even six months trying to live them and there were a couple of things when we did it, it was like uh a couple of us are dropping it. Like I don't think we can do this. We can't put this on the wall because we're not we're just not capable and even one that made the cut is it is part of our five-star now is five-star experience at the time was excellence with treating people better than they deserve to be treated. And so even if they're an ass we rise above it. And there were a couple of us that that was challenging and but we worked and we decided we could keep that one and we could live that one. But it was you know, it it it took some real soul-searching. So I I think this is really good and it's not I mean what you didn't say is it's not it's not taking a bunch of crap, putting it on the wall and never reading it and applying it. That's the point.

[09:20] — it's it's the opposite. It's it's taking it and making sure that every single leadership and management conversation internally and externally could be driven back to those core values. And so and if it can't be then it may be not be a value. And so it takes a lot of thinking in the first 30 60 90 days. But once someone gets it line to what they're actually doing, it's really, really helpful. And then once it's used in the hiring and the onboarding process and the management process, it's how you get to alignment really well. So, it's hard work to do. It becomes easier over time. And finding the core values is is kind of easier today than it's ever been with AI. And you can you can actually dive deep into all the activities of a company and have AI surface what some of those values are more easily. There's still lots of robust discussion that has to happen between humans, but you can surface these things more easily than in the past. And so, have some really interesting conversations around. So, I would say that's number one. The second thing that is part of clarity is like, what are the outcomes? Like, what is the business trying to accomplish? And so, um I try to encourage people to have like money be a byproduct, not the core driver of an organization is a healthy organization. And those outcomes become like, you know, precisely what the goals of the stakeholders who own the company are aligned to the the the managers of the company. Easy when you both own and manage the company, but those things need very tight alignment. And then getting all the employees kind of to understand like, what all the different stakeholders need to be successful. And so, I think you have to balance that between employees and ownership and and management. And all those things need to get balanced. And that's hard work to do. And in some organizations, you know, it can be really difficult where you have like public companies with unions and like there there's some very complex stakeholder groups. And so, it takes some work to really make sure you have aligned outcomes that everyone's trying to get to.

[11:05] And that leads to the third part of clarity, which is direction. Yeah, the the direction is how you get to the outcomes, right? So, it's not just here's the outcome. It's like, here's the way we have to get there for reasons, right? So, it's not it's not the ends justify the means. It's here's the core values. Here's what we're trying to get accomplished and here's the way we do it. Here's the company way of doing this thing. And that's really important you bring, you know, executives together. I have one company I work with today where there's executives from lots of different companies that are coming together an executive team and they've all done something differently in the past and it makes it an unnecessary tug-of-war versus having the same vocabulary, the same methodology of executing later on, right? And so giving the core values, the direction, and the outcomes all together with a very specific form of how we measure success, those things create clarity in a bundle. — Let let's take this I'm going to ask you where where clarity has gone right, but give me a story or two or five, whatever. Throw as many people under the bus as you can and as far as where clarity didn't work in a company. You've worked with several companies and you know, advised and CEO and everything else. Give me some examples of where it didn't work.

[12:19] — Yeah, clarity is when when the the most likely scenario, and I see this all the time, is when one functional area is trying to solve a problem for their functional area and they then make it harder for else, right? And so — Give me a specific example. — I'll give you in one of my companies, my CPA came in and I love my CPA, he's amazing. I'll give a referral to him all day long, but he came in and he wanted to make some changes to the accounting process to make taxes easier on April 15th and I was like, "Hey, this process is designed to manage the business and the finances of the business every single day of the year, not April 15th. So we're going to design this process to work for the business every single day and we're going to make the adjustments we have to make on April 15th. We're not going to solve this for taxes." And there was a light bulb that went off like, "Oh, well, of course that makes sense. We should do that." Right? And so that's the type of thing that happens all the time where in another business I watched somebody in a call center make a change to try to fix a problem for the call center and they literally cut the revenue of the company by 30% by trying to solve a problem for the call center. And And you're talking about, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars within a month.

[13:24] — What What did they do? Like what what was the Like what was What what miss? What was the change? — They they not know that? trying to pre-qualify people without talking to anybody in the sales organization about what that pre-qualification would do poorly or anybody in marketing about how they had taken people to to call in and it was it was a disaster. Yeah, this is always a challenge, right? Somebody that has one you know, the accounting and bookkeeping and HR are solving for one set of problems. Sales people are solving for another set of problems. Operations people are solving for another set of problems and they very seldom do they Even when you think you've created clarity, it's hard because in their mind they have they have different you know, the accountant has very different goals than the salesperson. — Well, and that's that's the problem, right? They shouldn't because the goal should be the company goal, not this not the accounting department's goals or the salesperson's goal. They should be the company's goals and that's the leader's job, right? And so, the leader of the functional area needs to know how they fit into the rest of the functional areas. Like if I'm if I'm the head of accounting, I need to know how I fit into operations and sales and revenue and or technology and HR and like and they have to work together cross-functionally. And so, everyone should be seeing things like one level above them.

[14:41] — So, number two. I think most people think they have this one, right? Like I mean, is that your experience or is that just me? — Let me tell you what execution is, then you tell me let's let's see how how you feel about it. So, I think execution goes into really four different areas. I think for execution, you've got evaluation, alignment, delegation, and contribution. And so, let me talk about each of those for a minute. Like evaluation's a great one. Everyone who is in a leadership role needs to evaluate people. I think that one's pretty obvious, but they also need to evaluate their programs, their processes, the policies, the market, which is like the playing field, the products they have, the path that they're on. Like there's all these different things that leaders need to be evaluating and different leaders at different levels of the organization evaluate these things differently, right? So, a CEO is evaluating the macro kind of economic, you know, marketplace that they're in. And a first-line leader is looking at the process that their team is using to see if it's working for them so they can elevate that to somebody if there something needs to be done more effectively or make sure their team is executing as planned. But a lot of times that evaluation is uh people think that management is like a power thing and it really isn't in my view.

[15:52] It's it's about evaluating and then resources, right? Aligning outcomes, all the things that have to be aligned. So, evaluation is step one. But alignment is getting those things into agreement and making sure everybody is doing what they're supposed to be Delegation is making sure that everyone's swimming in their own swim lane, right? Like doing the things that they're being asked to do and handing things off the way they're asked to be having things hand off. And then getting really clear about what done means. Like it is it is stunning to me still to this day that organizations have a problem with understanding what done means. Where someone does an activity and they send it to the next step and they're like, "Well, I did my part." It's like, "Well, that wasn't your part. Your part is to make sure that things get done all the way and that means that that when you sent it over the over the fence, that person actually picked it up and was able to run with it, not just you sent it over the fence." Right? So, I think that's that's one of the the big problems that I see happening. And then the contribution part is knowing where, you know, a leader is uniquely qualified to give individual contribution that other people aren't actually able to contribute. And so, and and my experience is the the closer to the CEO you are, um the less time you have for individual contribution, the more you have to be delegating. So, there's kind of a balance between. But there are things that a CEO does better than anybody. So, I think about, you know, when I think it was Gary Kelly at Southwest Airlines bought Mesa Airlines, it was him talking to the CEO of Mesa Airlines. That was a unique contribution he had. I think about some of the great work I see Marc Benioff doing in terms of getting in front of clients and talk you like every time you hear Mark talk uh publicly, he's talking about I talked to these clients, you know. Uh I think Mark Hurd at HP it was famous for taking 150 clients out to Tucson for a weekend to listen to that his first kind of month on the job or something like that.

[17:37] So, I think CEOs have individual contribution as well. Every leader does. And so, knowing where they lean into that contribution like Tim Cook at Apple was really well known for supply chain and and you know, recurring services revenue and building these really nice businesses inside of Apple that were totally different than what Steve Jobs did and what Steve offered to Apple as a company. And so, each CEO is going to lean into their strengths in terms of individual contribution. — All right. I thought I thought we were going to go on the Tim Cook fan tour again like we did a few weeks ago. So, you were going to — No, I was just trying to I was I was I was if you listen to the show a few weeks ago, you know Randy and I had a kind of slightly different points of view on this, but I think it's a great way of highlighting how different CEOs in the same exact job can both be individual contributors in really different ways. — Sorry, it was it was a joke. I just I just thought we were — I I think it's a great one. I just I was just trying to maybe maybe a little bit trolling on my part. It's a little bit of trolling. — So, on execution, give me some examples where it didn't go in your experience and things you've seen. Give me give me some examples of where execution went wrong. And by the way, earlier when I said I think most entrepreneurs to be clear, I think most entrepreneurs and business owners think they have execution. I didn't say I agreed with them. I just think most of them from my experience, however they do it, they think that's the right way whether it is or isn't.

[18:56] — Well, I think when you do Yeah, I think it's really easy to measure the things that I've just talked about and people can measure up against them. And I think that when we measure leaders, we measure a couple things. We measure A, how important is this part of the job to your job? Because not not all all these things are equally important for the role of a leader at every single level. Like each job description has a different importance for each one of these things. Like if And then And then how good are you at this? Right? And so we rate leaders one through five on how important is this particular part of your job? And then how good are you at it? And those two things are both really, really important. — So So stories, examples, how did it where it's gone wrong? — I think the the big one is evalua- like not evaluating where the real problem is. Like, you know, "Hey, um this person sucks at their sucks at their job." — Yeah, I'm going to give you a really specific Yeah. — Yeah, really specifically, it's like sending somebody into a brand new sales role. I saw a LinkedIn post this weekend. The The guy was being recruited for a chief revenue officer job, and he asked the CEO what the budget was, and they expected 100% growth for the job description, and they were budgeting 30% of what was necessary to go get the job done in terms of all the resources they needed. And so, the guy on LinkedIn passed on the job. Somebody took the role, and within 18 Within 18 months, that person got fired for not having And so was that the sales person who got hired? And And was that their fault? Or was it the Was it their bosses' fault for not scoping the role and evaluating it correctly and delegating correctly and and making sure there was alignment with all the resources? And I think I think it's a clear example, if the story was true, that there was a misalignment of resources, that there was bad evaluation for what was necessary. And the guy that posted the article on LinkedIn got it right. Like he was like, "I'm going to pass because there's no way this is — Okay. Give me another one.

[20:50] — I think another one is where people delegate to somebody early on and don't give them all of the resources in terms of learning to do the job well, and they let people flounder or fail, particularly for entry-level jobs. This can be really, really hard. So you bring an intern in, and you ask them to do something, and you let them grind it out versus just, you know, giving them, "Hey, here's precisely what you need to do and here's here's how you do it." So, uh I let me let me give you how this works well. I think when you — I've been guilty of that, right? I bring people in and I'm a big who not how guy. So, sometimes I bring them in and I like to see what they do cuz sometimes they do it better than I do it, right? Or what I find a lot of times is they do it they do it different than I would do it, but it's equally effective and I'm fine. But, I've also been guilty of they come in, they do it like crap, and then it takes me too long to recognize that they did it like crap. So, anyway, where it went well, back to that. — I think there's a but that's a part of evaluating somebody, right? Evaluating if someone's done that role before and can bring the skill set in or if they're taking on a new role and they need to be taught how to do something. And those are two different types of employees that both have I work I work with medical practices that I consult with and, you know, when you bring somebody in who's in nursing who's not worked in a particular specialty, it's a little unfair to kind of bring them in and not tell them like what drugs are being used in that specialty and what what the workflows look like, right? But, if someone's been in that specialty before, then they're going to come in and they're going to need a different type of training, which is like, "Here's how we do things here, right?" And so, I think that that's all a part of like great execution is getting getting the alignment right along with getting the evaluation of all of the different people, processes, you know, all those things and then making sure that that they have the authority to delegate if and when it's appropriate and then they know how they have to contribute — Let's move to sustainability. This is where Alexander the Great fell, right?

[22:42] Built this unbelievable, you know, in this case, war machine. In my mind, the war machine falling apart is probably a good thing, by the way, but nonetheless, it wasn't sustainable and I'm sure he wanted it to be. So, people have to get the clarity before they can really execute and they got to execute before they can really get sustaina- sustainability. But, why do most leaders not get to this one? I feel like most don't. At least in startups, not in bigger Well, sometimes in bigger companies, too. — I think the challenge that I see most often is that sustainability is always important, but it's hardly ever urgent. Right? And so, it never makes it into that firefighting mode because you're talking about culture, right? Which is really being thoughtful about how your standards are from a core values perspective, living them out, holding people accountable to that, which does isn't always easy. You know, you're going to have Christian Galloway back on, I think, coming up soon here, and he and I work closely together, and you know, we've had a couple of core values conversations over 10 years for tiny little values violations that we talk about publicly all the time about how we corrected on those things to make sure that we're on the same page together, and and there it's pretty swift. Like, when there's a values violation, they hardly ever happen. They're generally very, very tiny in our organization because we're so thoughtful about it, but the call is swift. And it's uncomfortable for everyone involved, generally, but it really is helpful to have that correction. And now, I would report to you that we live in an incredibly high-trust environment. I think he'd report the same back to you.

[24:14] You can ask him when you talk to him. And it makes for a really great working relationship from my perspective. And so, when he listens to this episode, he's going to react to that, I'm sure. Back to you. — Yeah, this is This is a tricky one when you think about it because, you know, like Jobs moving to Cook worked because Cook came in and optimized different things than Jobs, and it happened to And I think, you know, in studying Jobs a little bit, the first time when he was forced out of Apple, it was not It wasn't even sustainable with him there, what he had. And he went away and learned lessons in some of his other ventures, especially What was it? NeXT or whatever that computer company was, the square computer that failed miserably. But, he learned a lot of stuff that where he went back and he made it sustainable, right? But I do you know my opinion. I think Cook did some great things. I'm not trying to belittle him, but he wasn't the long-term answer I don't think because he didn't innovate enough, right? And and it's like when families get wealth it's usually gone within a few generations unless it's just ungodly wealth because you know, you have new leaders in charge of taking care of it. I'm I'm thinking — Even yeah, I think I think the Rockefellers were I think it was Rockefellers who were famous for saying like the best thing the government did was force us to sell all of our holdings and put the money into other things so we could keep our wealth because if they keep if you keep running the company is generally the third generation where it's gone.

[25:36] — Yeah. And you know, it makes me think you know, I I I think Elon Musk is amazing and frankly gets all the credit in the world and still probably is underrated. And I'm thinking about the sustainability in his case. I'm trying to think of those companies are sustainable once he's — I don't I don't work closely with him, but but I think you know, I I may not like his culture, but he certainly catalyzes that culture, right? He he does the things he expects other people to do, right? I think I think you know, pure leadership. I think he he's a he's a he's a founder in terms of mentality and a force of nature for sure. And I have a tremendous amount of respect for what he does. I also wouldn't hold him up as like a a leadership icon about like this is the way that things should get done or built. I think that there's once it once in a you know, century talent that comes in and does things as a disruptive thing. But when you talk about leadership, you're talking about you know, people that lead two people again in a county department a PTA a volunteer group, whatever all the way up to leading the size of people and so the skills that I would point people toward I would say he has some gaps that he probably is pretty well aware of and just works around them. I think great leadership organ teams can say hey, we're going to have different skill sets for different people, plug different holes, and that's okay.

[26:55] — I just think his skill set is so unique and he is a one of one that it is going to be very, very hard for anybody to follow in his footsteps — But I would I would hold up as a one of one of one innovator, a one of one disruptor, not a one of one leader of people. Like I think there's lots of people that follow him temporarily or for a time and have made a ton of money and made a ton of difference in the world, but I don't know that that makes him a great developer of people. I'd have to dig more into it, really think about it. But when I think about like sustainability is the catalyzation of culture, but it's also about how you communicate with people. And there's there's a lot of forms of communication, and I think that you know, understanding the impact you have on people as a communication, understanding how to be a great communicator, this is a place where I would score Elon probably pretty highly because he's done such a great job of communicating with mass groups of people in terms of investors, the market, his employees. He's He's actually been, I think, pretty good on this one, right? In terms of communication. So I'd rate him pretty high on this one.

[27:58] — I haven't worked with him either, but I'm thinking I've got lots of neighbors that work in one of his companies, right? I mean, multiple headquarters are 5 miles from my house. And we even had a kid staying with us that was working there interning for a while, a friend friend of my son's. And all of them had good experiences. Like I don't hear any of them. I had I had one friend probably 10 or 15 years ago that went to work for Elon and he got fired after a month. But my guess is he got fired cuz he was incompetent, right? And he didn't complain really until he got fired. But all of the other people like working there and they're happy and so I don't know, I'm just That's not really our topic here. I'm just — Well, but sustainability, like look at it. He sustainability is about is about culture. He definitely catalyzes the culture he wants thoughtfully. Communication, he's thoughtful in his Even though it seems like he's not thoughtful in his communication, some of his outbursts, I I I'd have to wonder how much of that is actually planned or at least aligned cuz it does actually move things in the direction he wants to go in almost every case. The third one is planning and I think he does a really nice job of planning. Like in one of the great examples of that is putting engineering out on the manufacturing line so that people are actually working really well. So, I think from a planning perspective, he seems to do pretty well.

[29:13] And then the last one is development. Like are you developing leaders? Here's the one where I just I don't have an answer for how he's doing, but I do think that part of sustainability is developing people. And this is where Alexander the Great certainly fell down was he didn't communicate who the next person was. He didn't develop the next person in line and when you look at that kind of held up next to like Warren Buffett who just had a transition at Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger passed away, Buffett was going to step away from day-to-day operations, really great transition plan. Apple, really great transition plan. Like I I just think that when you look at great sustainability, these are some of the things that happen is really great transition planning. I think one of the greatest transition stories in human history is George Washington stepping away from the presidency when when they wanted him to stay. And so, I think I think that's that's a part of developing and transition and that is really I would argue that what is in the Constitution and the founding documents and what this country was founded upon 250 years ago, that 250 years is is I mean, it's still here, but we have drifted a long, long ways from those core values, which is actually going to be a topic in an upcoming upcoming episode. But John, let's talk let's I want to get into today's world, okay?

[30:31] world of AI, robotics, 3D printing, flying cars are coming, we're going to be mining the moon. Um but mostly I think what I'm thinking about is AI and robotics. There's going to be a lot of What stays the same in leadership? I think most of it stays the same, but what does you? — Yeah, I would say all of this stays the same and we're going to have to learn in the business world how to apply these things to this new world, this new world order. So, for example, my my companies have a set of core values for the humans, but we've rewritten all of the core values so that AI knows what behaviors are acceptable or not acceptable for the AI. So, just like we have an employee handbook, we have an AI handbook that goes into every AI, you know, LLM that we use that says here are the boundary conditions for the company. That means that we give an AI the outcomes and the direction and the measurement of success when we work with it. And and it's much more granular, right? We work with the the AI in much more specific tasking. And then we evaluate and align the AI. We delegate to AI. I I I just had a conversation with one of my LLM instances this morning where we're developing our accountability chart and I want to have more granularity about the AI agents on the org chart so that they're they're on the organizational chart as kind of processes that are being driven by humans and there's a lot more clarity that way for who's driving what processes and then which processes are being being driven by more than one person and what skills and projects are need to be kind of more available to everybody in the organization.

[32:05] In terms of execution, I think that people who are AI fluent, it's going to be kind of like computer skills that we that had to be developed over the last 30-40 years for people, for sure. And so you go to, you know, delegation and contribution, like all those things I think play a role, alignment. And in sustainability, it's the same thing. Like what you model to an AI is going to be very natural to that AI. It's going to pull out voice and tone. It's going to be far more objective about those things than humans ever were. How you communicate with it, I mean, you you said to me one time that we hope that AI prompting is going to make humans better communicators because when bad information comes out, it's only a result of a bad prompt, generally speaking. And then I think with planning and development, I think people learning how to plan a conversation with an AI to be more effective, and then developing the AI to become more effective at outcomes. Like every single one of these things is still relevant. It just has to be applied slightly different to this new toolkit. Um so, the tool is giving the outcome. I think we're going to see a much more kind of small process-driven environment in the in the workplace, and I I'm really really hopeful about it. I don't think that it's going to replace people in the way people are concerned about because I think we're going to get just if there's 10 times more availability to do work, we're going to find 10 times more work to be done if history is any guide for that.

[33:28] — Yeah, it's So, I'm thinking about this in the stuff I'm doing in I think clarity was one of my strengths in running a business generally, but I'm even better at it with AI. Like, I spend a lot of time at the beginning saying, "Here's what you're going to do. Now, ask me more questions." Like, one of the things I don't do with humans very much is if I think I've given them clarity, I probably don't do a good enough job of saying, "What questions do you have?" Or what do you, you know, and and with AI, I'm always like, "Okay, what other questions do you have that would make this better?" Or make it clearer, or whatever, right? Or context. And it asked questions, and I'm thinking, "I've got Claude code. It's been running nonstop for 4 days creating something." I spent 30 or 45 minutes at the beginning giving it very good parameters, it asking me question, me asking it questions. It then did 30 minutes of research, asked me more questions, I asked it more questions, and a couple times along the way, I've given it feedback. But, most of what I was give it clarity. Now, I think what's is it's just executing. I mean, it's been running for almost four full days now on its own.

[34:41] It I think it's pretty close to done with what I have it working on. And you know, simultaneously, I have my Hermes agent working on other stuff, right? So, a lot of the execution, but you know, like this morning it sent out a newsletter for one of my companies and then it automatically goes into our CRM, creates the newsletter, emails it out to But, I still had to manage it. I looked at it and there were two or three little things that I wanted to tweak and I wanted it to do better. And so, uh I think I'm doing a better job of the clarity and the management, but the man, it's just it's so much easier, right? It it it it really is. And then sustainability, I would hope if you build it right and and do it with the right clarity, that it will be more sustainable and there's there's fewer human factors and less variance. I would think it would become more sustainable. I mean, would you agree with that? — Yeah, I I think that's true and I think it in particularly in kind of white-collar jobs, you're going to see more and more and more AI processes is my view on what's coming up. I even with blue-collar jobs, I think you're going to see better diagnostics, you're going to see better access to information, you're going to see clearer problem-solving, faster. Like I I just think that it's going to be kind of better all the way around. I think there's some challenges that come with that too, though. I think, you know, you look at, you know, cars that were built in the '60s, people could kind of go in their garage and tinker with them and I think a car that's built in 2025, you need pretty good computer skills to diagnose what's going on inside those engines because they're so much more complicated. And so, I think we're going to see some of that, too.

[36:16] That's not a good thing or a bad thing, it's just a thing. — Yeah. You know, I realized the other day that I was getting a little sloppy in some of my You'll You'll appreciate this cuz you like concise language. And when I was communicating with communicating with my Hermes agent, I would forget what I had labeled these different levels. So, in fact, you can see it here behind me. I've got a whole cheat sheet back here because, you know, I've got the global core, the workspace, the workflow, the orchestrator, and the atomic skills. And I didn't always call like the atomic skills the atomic skills. And and I would call them narrow skills and atomic skills and something else. And so, I realized part of my problem was I wasn't communicating I don't think I've ever done that with a human, right? Cuz I assume the human can figure it out or whatever, which is a stupid assumption, right? The AI probably does a better job than than the average human. But it really has caused me to get more precise. And I look at this thing multiple times a day now. I'm like, "Oh yeah, the orchestrator level."

[37:17] Right? Here's what we're going — is that I mean So, I mean, what does that tell you about like where you could improve in your leadership? Like By the way, I want a copy of that list to see that cuz you know me, I love definitions that help with frameworks. That looks like a framework that I might want to hold up against one of my frameworks, see if I can make mine better cuz I always want to make frameworks better. But what does that tell you about how you're managing — Well, it's that's that's what I'm saying is that that all these lessons can be applied to real life. It makes me aware I need to be more precise. I need to be like make sure that we we have the same It's less For me, it's less about the word than it is for you. But I need to make sure that if it's if I'm talking about the orchestrator level or something in an organization, that we're talking about the same thing. — Well, I don't I don't I don't care about the word. What I care about is we're talking about the same thing. I'm I mean, what what does it mean to you that you're more patient with an AI than you are with a person? — Well, I don't even know that I always am. I think I'm just more John. The the problem-solving when I have the problem and then I start digging into why it happens and I think some of it is the immediate feedback which is a good lesson for a company too. In fact, I think this is a lot of it now that I think through it. With a if they go away confused I think a lot of times you don't ever know. They come back and do the do the not necessarily wrong in how they heard it, not the way you intended it. Where the AI I get really quick feedback.

[38:49] And there's too many variables I think with a human sometimes that it's harder to diagnose. So yeah, probably it's even more important with a human to be to give it the clarity and the steps and the management. You know, for me you you know this. I I am not a micromanager and I don't want to get I just I don't want to have to manage little details. I like hiring self-sufficient people the who not how that can do it without me. That's my style. It works for me. But I take it too far, right? Even though I have really competent people if you know, and sometimes I think there's clarity. It could be that they weren't listening. It could be that they went in with a preconceived notion. It could be that I didn't explain it well or I — could be they came in having often times they came in doing the thing you want them to do with a different set of vocabulary than your existing team and you haven't told them the company way. Like this is the company language. This is the And so sometimes just it's that simple level set that gets missed and so that's it's it's very common and so that's really easy to clean up with an AI and it's a little bit harder to clean up with a person who's got those neural pathways that are kind of laid down. But — And it's what we talked — And it's what we talked about earlier, right? If if you have somebody come in from accounting you got to communicate with them different than the salesperson that's trying to slay the dragon.

[40:13] — Yeah. And so I think sometimes that that gets missed a lot in organizations. — Well, you know me, I love mental models. This is This is the mental model for leadership that I think has been like when people say what's the job description, it's like every leader has this job description. If they can just figure out how to apply it with their particular role, they're going to have a lot more success making sure that they operate across all 12 of those different — Uh do you have something we could put in the show notes for people to to — Yeah, I've got a whole page description of these things. It's really simple, but I have to do that. — Listeners, we'll put that in the show notes and then also I will this framework that I mentioned, the cheat sheet, on my uh it it's called Odin context stack, but it's it's a Hermes agent. It's a AI bot. We can put that in there as well. So, John, to wrap this up, somebody's listening to this, where do they start? Right? If it's, you know, this is going to come out on Wednesday, a couple days from now, but if if they start on Monday, Wednesday, Sunday, I don't care. What Where does somebody start with — Yeah, if you're leading people, just ask yourself, like how important is each one of these 12 pillars on a scale of one to five. One being it's not important to my job at all. Five means it's mission critical. Three being I have to be, you know, satisfactorily good at it. And then ask yourself how good I am at this.

[41:31] One is I have no skill on this. Five is I'm a world-class expert, which means you're going to have a lot more threes than fives, right? And then based on those things, like what what are the What are the gaps? Where do I want to improve my skill set as a leader? And then, you know, for me, I I have mentors and coaches that help me with these things. I'm very kind of forward thinking about asking for help. And so, reach out and get some help, you know? — Yeah, and I think the other thing is if somebody's just good at say execution, it doesn't mean they can't run a nice business or have a good career or whatever it is. Like that's what some people can do and you can build, but I think I think you would agree if they add clarity, if they add sustainability, they'll have an even better career, they'll go further, they'll have more free time, whatever whatever it is they're shooting for. That'd be Would you agree with that? — That's right, yeah. All right, listeners, you made it this far. Obviously, you love us, so download, subscribe, tell your friends, and uh we'll be right back after the break with the Abundance Briefing. fitness is just as important as money and milestones to one of our three five depths. But lots of us taking care of my body while I build my life is one of the more time-consuming and difficult goals to chase.

[42:49] That's why we're partnering with AG1. It's a daily drinkable habit. Less than a minute, it's formulated with 75-plus vitamins and nutrients and designed to support energy, digestion, and immune defense. It even has a few grams of protein uh that we're all chasing these days. If you want to try it with our affiliate link, you'll also receive a free AG1 flavor sampler plus vitamin D three plus K2 with your welcome kit when you first subscribe, a $72 value. Go to shop.drink — Listeners, welcome back. John, this first topic This is a Randy topic if if we ever have one. And then maybe a Bitcoin topic, so there's a woman, an 80-year-old Japanese-American woman with advanced Alzheimer's. She'd been nonverbal for five years. She hadn't spoke. They gave her five-gram dose of magic mushroom, Okay, five grams for those of you that have never done it, um that's where you go talk to God, right? Like if you have Like five grams is considered I think they call it a god dose, in fact, and you are going to have some You're going to go deep deep deep. It's It's pretty 19 hours later, she spontaneously produced 4 hours of autobiographical conversation. She talked. She hadn't talked in 5 years.

[44:12] After doing 5 g of mushrooms, she had a 4-hour conversation. Within 2 days, she was walking unaided, dressing herself, she could hold her bladder overnight. She'd been also been wearing diapers for 5 years. Improvements persisted for weeks. They gave her a second 3-g dose a month later, reinforced the gains. You know, this was published in the Frontiers of Neuroscience. Um sharing this here for those of you on video or I am sharing it now. I I mean, wow. And there's active clinic active clinical trials underway in Toronto and also at John Hopkins on some of this. Uh so, I don't know. What's Dr. John have to say about this? I think it's cool as hell. — Yeah, yeah, I haven't read the I haven't read the whole study or series of studies. I was a consultant into a psychiatric uh medical practice years ago that was doing some of this type of science. And we the the thing that we know a lot about is like ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and how effective that can be. And then there's a lot of other new things that are uh you know, being being tried. I think, you know, this magic mushroom part of it was psilocybin. I think I think there's people that hope LSD will have the same kind of impacts. Look, I'm I'm skeptical from a the science perspective in terms of us understanding causality. And you know, when it happens in one person, that doesn't make mean it's going to happen with every person.

[45:37] But I'm also hopeful that we're pushing science forward in ways to to fix problems that we have tools. And hopefully we can use them in some of the right ways. But yeah, I I yeah, I I wouldn't be screaming to like my family like let's go give mom a 5-g dose of psilocybin. But at the same time, if people want to try this in a clinically supervised setting and and you know, and there's little downside risk and the family wants to make that choice or whatever like I support people having autonomy and agency in their own care. I think there's probably a lot of downside risk too that needs to be balanced for people. They need to understand those downside risks. So, but yeah. I I I love that that people are going to have autonomy in their health care. I love that we're trying to push science forward. And I'm going to I'm going to assume that in this case, you know, the the researchers were clear about not understanding causality. I think one of the things they said was there were dormant neural pathways. We don't know if it was forming new neural pathways. We don't understand the brain as much as we'd like to. I was over the weekend separately I was thinking it'll be so great when we have like nanobots that are so small that we can actually get past the blood-brain barrier without harming a patient to understand what's happening inside the brain and start measuring it. I think we're probably still a long way off from that and having the you know, the Star Trek tricorder, but I'm I'm really hopeful about the future.

[46:52] I think technology is continues to push us forward. So, — I'm so glad I'm not the only person that has weird thoughts like that. So, thank — Feel part of it. Uh yeah, I mean that's the big thing, right? Is that you know, the the the key claim is that the the the neuro is the neuro pathways are not dead. They're just not working, not firing. And as somebody that has partaken in this and ayahuasca, this makes perfect sense to me, right? Like connecting those and there's a lot of study. I would encourage people that are curious about this. Michael Pollan has a book but also has turned into a Netflix documentary. I think it's four parts and it's how to change your mind, I believe that is fantastic and it's all from more of a doctor clinical perspective. Uh and I I would I would encourage people to watch that and listen to it and it talks a lot about the studies that have been going on at John Hopkins University. — And to be fair, I don't know like they say that the they say that the neural pathways are dormant or if they're being rewired. I I don't I know nothing about these studies or what they're actually finding, but I just you know I want people who are you know not scientists and they see these science things to understand the difference between correlation which means you know when A happens B happens but we don't know that A causes B or causation which means A causes B and it's much harder to prove causation and and there are lots of things in my life where I don't understand causation but I make choices anyway and so I I'm not saying that you you shouldn't ever do it until you understand causation but I do think it's really important for people to understand the science versus just taking the popular article and running off so and and have really really informed decisions particularly when they're taking on risk.

[48:33] Mushrooms the mushroom network is unbelievable actually it's one of the coolest things in nature and how it works and and what it does it's really interesting when you look into it it makes perfect sense and some of the different studies I mean we there's a whole bunch we could go but we'll we'll move to the next topic. This is a This is a little bit we we talked about this last week the SpaceX IPO and we talked about how there are 4,400 millionaires made out of the SpaceX IPO but a couple of just specific and there's all kinds of there you can find this everywhere. You know there's there's all kinds of different articles this one that I'm showing happens to be from Fox Business but uh a contract welder from Mexico earning 28 bucks an hour. Um he got $10,000 in company stock. He didn't even really fully understand he says. He didn't and he he had no idea it was going to be this big. He stayed 10 years bought additional shares from his paycheck and in 2020 he sold part of his stake to start a real estate business in and still holds 6,500 shares that are worth a million bucks even after he sold some right? Um you know so I mean pretty cool.

[49:49] Uh another woman Mary Mary Ellen Musselman, 27. Uh she worked at drone ship recovering booster rockets. She put 10% of her paycheck into the company during a 2-year tenure. Now again, over the threshold. And these stories go on and on and on. This guy Trevor Wise has 13.5 million. Um this other kid that you know, his parents told him not to go get a real job. He'd worked there as an internship and worked there is worth millions. I mean, it goes on and on. So, um we talked about this, but I think it's really cool hearing the regular stories. I mean, there's cafeteria workers that are millionaires now and um I just I I think this is awesome that it's really creating abundance and wealth in that organization. — Yeah, I mean, Peter Diamandis talked about value created, not value extracted. So, we have to remember like this is paper value. And so, most of these people are probably in a lockup period for some period of time before they can actually sell some of those shares. And so, that may have an impact. But I think, needless to say, lots of abundance created, right? And so, people go out there, um they did really good work, I'm assuming.

[51:00] Um they had equity as a part of their compensation package. And um you know, the company made good on that. I I love to hear those stories. So, — All right. And our last topic, the Simon Abundance Index, which I don't know about you, John, but I'd never heard of before now, but I'm I'm pretty big fan of this study. Uh so, it is a 2026 report, so brand new. basically, what it does is it it tracks the average person's access to 50 core resources. And it found that it is 536% more abundant today than in 1980. So, in other words, in the last 45 years, people have five almost five and a half uh as much access and abundance in these different commodities. And it ranked it amongst 42 different So, I don't know, had you heard of that? I'm assuming you also hadn't heard of the Simon What's it called? The Simon Abundance Index. — I hadn't heard of it before this episode, but what's cool is we had this conversation a few weeks ago on the air, remember? We talked about should should countries be measuring gross domestic product as the first thing? And I I I wonder if this isn't a better measure than that or at least something to be considered, right? Where you think about like how are people doing today? And I just, you know, I I I'm just interested in like over the history of the last, let's call it 3,000 years, access to indoor plumbing and to like, you know, just basic sanitation. Like just start there, Basic medications. So, I think it's a cool read for people to check out this index and see, you know, what how do you get access to these 50 things? Pretty cool.

[52:47] — Yeah, I mean, 42 countries, all 42 countries have improved, right? And they should over 45 years. We have a lot more technology. I would argue if it weren't for broken fiat money, I got to bring up Bitcoin. Like there's that is actually like the anchor. This should be growing a lot faster, but if you look at the chart, you know, this thing starts at a baseline of 100 in 1980 and it grows, grows, grows into the early 2000s and you notice it drops during the great financial crisis, the housing crisis, right? And that didn't just happen in America, it happened in multiple countries and the timing was off by a year or two. And then they printed enough money, it went way up, we got out. If you notice in 2020 before COVID, it was actually 7x. Yeah, it's only 5. little less than 5.5 right now, but before COVID it had got up to 7x, dropped down to about 5x and now it's back you know, back up. So I anyway — driven by commodities, right? I mean so for people that haven't seen it, it's driven by commodities primarily. I would love to see just how we track things like, you know, availability to you again like sanitation and basic food sources and like foods in here obviously. There's are some cool things here that are there's for me at least — Yeah, I mean if you look at it, it's it's cotton and sugar and salmon and rice and pork pork and shrimp and lamb and blah blah blah pulp wood and lead and natural gas, tobacco, you know, coconut oil, zinc, gold, copper, coffee, you name it. It's you know, are the 50 things on here. So pretty cool. I just think it's good news and especially you know, in in today's world of there's so much conflict. I think so much of it's made up by media, social media, politicians and everybody trying to keep everybody fighting. I think it is good to remind ourselves that we are getting better off and there's you know, there's less war, there's less killing, there's a lot of stuff has gotten better even if the media doesn't want us to know that, politicians don't want us to know that.

[54:57] I I think it's always a good reminder that that's where things are going. — Propaganda is the thing, right? We just need to make sure that people understand what what we're what's propaganda and what's information. That's an important thing that I don't have my arms fully around, but I'm trying to start to think about like how are people trying to put propaganda in front of me that that tell me that my abundance is not what it really is and so — Yeah, I I think I think what happens you you've talked multiple times about marketing. I think the marketing that the government and the politicians do makes the marketing that corporations do look like child's play. And — It's propaganda, right? Like that's the thing that I'm talking I don't fully understand all of it, but I do want to make sure that I'm I'm you know there's there's there's there's facts that are right in front of me. I just want to make sure that I'm I'm at least have that filter on so that I know how to how to take that information in. — Yeah. So. All right. Well, you got it here. You didn't get it on the constantly negative news network, but but we yes, that's my name for CNN anyway. Here we got a little bit of good news. listeners, thank you and go out and spread a little of abundance. We should have Anthony back next week and next week we're going to have Christian Jallow on for part three as well talking about some really just I don't know, some weird Randy questions from the Bible that, you know, two of our best most watched listened to episodes ever were his previous ones. So, I'm looking forward to that next week as well.

[56:20] — Awesome. Thanks, Randy. Good stuff good stuff today. — Listen and subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcast. Click follow for more content like this or go to talesofabundance.com to join our community and get free tools.