Finding Peak with Ryan Hanley

Reddit's stock fell 29% in one day after its Google traffic slid. The lesson: own your audience, write down your process, and never outsource your taste.

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Reddit grew revenue 53% and still had its worst day as a public company after its Google search referrals fell by more than 1 million a week. That's what a rented audience costs. Companies are pulling back on AI agents, and I make the case that the problem is human, not technical. We forgive a $100,000 hire and quit on a $20 agent after one mistake. The fix is a skill file, your process written down once so the agent stops guessing.

From there: Fanta's polarizing AI Halloween ad and why you never outsource your taste, Trump's push to ban the term "AI," one-sided inputs, a Noah's Ark carbon dating story, and the lesson my son Colton took from football: get back up.

Get C.R.E.A.M., my weekly growth-marketing experiment, playbook, teardown, or take for people doing the work in the age of AI. With receipts: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Sources from this episode:

• CNBC on Reddit's drop: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/30/reddit-stock-q3-earnings.html
• Reddit Q3 2026 earnings call: https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/30/reddit-rddt-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/
• KPMG AI Pulse via Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sandycarter/2026/08/09/kpmg-says-nearly-half-of-executives-pulled-back-ai-agents-over-cost/
• The Guardian on the AI pullback: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/oct/13/ai-companies-rushed-workers-fallout
• Badass Breaks: https://badassbreaks.shop
• The Hill on the term AI: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6175633-trump-bans-artificial-intelligence-term/
• Zappi on Fanta's Halloween ad: https://www.zappi.io/web/blog/admiration-feature-fantas-halloween-reveal
• Langbert and Stevens faculty study: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03075079.2021.1957815
• Ancient Origins on Durupinar: https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/durupinar-wood-carbon-dating-fact-check-00128323

Follow Ryan:

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanhanley/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley
• X: https://x.com/rhanley

Watch Finding Peak on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

This is the way.

Hanley.

Disclosure: I currently work for PFS Global, the company behind this episode's sponsor read.

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While his son was at Marine boot camp, Chris Paradiso left his house around 10 p.m. to cover 48 miles on foot, so his son wouldn't suffer alone.

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Chris, founder of Paradiso Insurance and author of Civilized Savage: The Daily War Against Comfort, made his son a promise before Parris Island: "while you are in the Hurt Locker I want to visit the Hurt Locker with you." No water, no social post. "That was a me and Gianni moment." Full disclosure: Chris and I started an early version of this book together years ago. The finished book is his.

I asked the question this episode answers: if work, family, and health are fine, "why do I have to do hard things?" My answer is rehearsal. Chris's answer is his because. We both hate the word balance. I offer harmony. Chris says the people chasing balance are chasing comfort. His fix for the voice that bargains: "Write it down and you will not negotiate with yourself." That's the Easy Mode idea: Hard Mode is real effort pointed in the wrong direction. Chris picks his hard and aims it at his because.

Get C.R.E.A.M., my weekly growth-marketing experiment, playbook, teardown, or take for people doing the work in the age of AI. With receipts: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Connect with Chris Paradiso:

• Civilized Savage (book ): https://geni.us/civilizedsavage
• Website: https://www.chrisparadiso.com/
• Paradiso Insurance: https://www.paradisoinsurance.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherparadiso/ I
• nstagram: https://www.instagram.com/paradiso_insurance/

Follow Ryan:

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanhanley/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley
• X: https://x.com/rhanley

Watch Finding Peak on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

This is the way.

Hanley.

Disclosure: I currently work for PFS Global, the company behind this episode's sponsor read.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nick Friedman and Omar Soliman turned a beat-up cargo van into a $300 million brand. When the market dried up, Nick told his team to stop waiting for rain.

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Nick, founder and president of College HUNKS Hauling Junk & Moving, says the brand will do close to $300 million in annual sales this year. He also says the founder's job is to "create a sense of urgency without creating like a sense of frenzy or panic," and he's honest about who brings the frenzy. He'd text the team ideas after conferences until his people were left guessing: "Does Nick want me to drop everything I'm doing and go do this right now?"

We get into the filter that keeps it in check (an integrator, a weekly same page meeting, and a spreadsheet ), the skeptic AI bot I built for my own ideas, which Nick called "almost like an AI integrator," and what AI can't take from you. The question I'd put in front of every owner's outbox: is this an idea or an assignment? Then a mover stuck in an elevator turns himself into a human bench.

Want the operating notes behind the work? C.R.E.A.M. is my weekly growth-marketing experiment, playbook, teardown, or take. With receipts: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Connect with Nick Friedman:

• Website: https://www.nickfriedman.com/
• College HUNKS Hauling Junk & Moving: https://www.collegehunkshaulingjunk.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/collegehunkshaulingjunk/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nickfriedman1
• X: https://x.com/nickfriedman1

Follow Ryan:

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanhanley/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley
• X: https://x.com/rhanley

Watch Finding Peak on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

This is the way.

Hanley.

Disclosure: I currently work for PFS Global, the company behind this episode's sponsor read.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Three months building a new CRM. Then the staff walks into the first live training and asks, "What's this training for?" Nobody told them the agency was even considering a change.

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Mariah Gates, founder of Accelerated Automation, calls that the most common mistake she sees. The people who will use the tool hear about it last. Her fix starts before anyone logs in: build the why, tell people what you want them doing instead, and give their brains time to spiral. With automation and AI in the room, she says, people are legitimately afraid for their jobs.

I break down more field-tested decisions about trust, selling, and growth inside C.R.E.A.M. One useful experiment, playbook, teardown, or take each week. With receipts: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Then it gets uncomfortable. Mariah says pushback usually comes from one or two loud people, and the owner who keeps caving is feeding it. Her line: "Everybody's replaceable. The business owner is replaceable." In one husband-and-wife agency, the wife was the parent who treats the rules as the rules, so the wife delivered the message.

I bring the question that got me in trouble on the keynote stage years ago. Are you running a business, or are you the best producer in the building who happens to own the most equity? Mariah's advice for owners who hate running the business is blunt: "Stop fighting it. You will just be miserable."

Hard Mode has a tell. The work drains you and still produces ordinary results. I'm writing the operating system for the alternative.

Join the Easy Mode waiting list: https://easymodebook.com

Connect with Mariah Gates:

• Website: https://acceleratedautomation.net
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariah-gates-61459b277/
• Accelerated Automation on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/realacceleratedautomation/
• Accelerated Automation on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AcceleratedAutomation2023

Watch Finding Peak on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

Follow Ryan:

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley
• X: https://x.com/rhanley

This is the way.

Hanley.

Disclosure: I currently work for PFS Global, the company behind this episode's sponsor read.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A CEO search for a big-brand public company. A name comes up, and the chairman of the nominating and governance committee shuts it down. He knew that person 20 years ago, and that person was a jerk. A reputation from two decades back, settled in one sentence, in a room the candidate never saw.

Kelly O. Kay, a partner at Heidrick & Struggles and co-author of Show Up to Win, was working that search. He tells his six kids never to chase money, and he tells executives never to chase a title. Chase the CEO title and you'll get it, at a company you won't want to run.

I break down more field-tested decisions about trust, selling, and growth inside C.R.E.A.M. One useful experiment, playbook, teardown, or take each week. With receipts: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

We get into why saying yes to a conversation while you're happy isn't disloyal, and why competitive leaders win the process and then can't say whether they want the job. I tell Kelly about the job I took for the title and the money, and hated. His answer: they question your judgment, so call out what you missed. Do that, and a short stint stops being a hole in the résumé. His advice for a role you've never held sounds like weakness and reads as strength: ask for a coach as part of the negotiation.

If this made you question whether your next move is built around your edge or around a title, get on the Easy Mode waiting list for book resources and updates: https://ryanhanley.com/easy-mode

Connect with Kelly O. Kay:

• Heidrick & Struggles: https://www.heidrick.com/en/people/k/kellyokay
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kokay
• Show Up to Win: https://www.heidrick.com/en/pages/show-up-to-win-book

Watch Finding Peak on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

Follow Ryan:

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley
• X: https://x.com/rhanley

This is the way.

Hanley.

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There is a gap between knowing what good work looks like and paying the price to do it when nobody is handing out applause.

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A company can look busy, profitable, and respected from the outside while one person is still holding every load-bearing beam. The founder closes the deal, delivers the work, fixes the miss, and approves the decision. Then they call it a business.

Chandler Bolt has a cleaner test: if customers are buying you instead of a repeatable process, you do not have a scalable company yet. You have a high-paying job with better stationery. That may be a fine choice. It is not the same choice as building something that can run when you step away.

I break down more field-tested decisions about trust, selling, and growth inside C.R.E.A.M. One useful experiment, playbook, teardown, or take each week. With receipts: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Chandler is the Founder and CEO of SelfPublishing.com. He explains why product-market fit, profit, margin, process, and people have to exist before a founder can move out of the weeds. He also names the story founders tell themselves when they refuse to hand work to capable people: "Nobody can do it the way I do." His answer is blunt. If the people doing the work are not better at it than you, the issue may be your training, process, or hiring.

The practical turn is where this conversation earns its keep. Chandler breaks down the sales-fulfillment yo-yo, why the offer has to be the process rather than the founder, and the question that forces better systems: What would have to be true for this to work without me? Ryan connects that to the honest fork many founders avoid. You can stay a craftsman with strong margins and a life you enjoy. Or you can choose scale. What you cannot do is pretend both paths demand the same company.

This is also a hard-nosed AI conversation. AI does not absolve a founder of judgment. It can take rote operational work, turn process documents into repeatable skills, and help a team protect the work only a person should own. The standard stays the same: make the output better. Do not make more slop.

If this made you question whether your calendar is built around your edge or against it, get on the Easy Mode waiting list for book resources and updates: https://ryanhanley.com/easy-mode

Connect with Chandler Bolt:

• Website: https://selfpublishing.com/ceo-chandler-bolt/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chandlerbolt/
• Book publishing consultation: https://selfpublishing.com/findingpeak

Listen to the audio version of Finding Peak: https://linktr.ee/ryan_hanley

Follow Ryan:

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley
• X: https://x.com/rhanley

This is the way.

Hanley.

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A person can look successful from the outside and still be nowhere they are standing.

Ryan brings Jim Murphy into the question that follows a lot of ambitious people home: Why do I feel guilty at work for not being with my family, then guilty at home for not working? Jim’s phrase for it is being "half a day behind." The fix is not a tighter calendar. It starts with what your identity is attached to.

Get C.R.E.A.M., my weekly growth-marketing experiment, playbook, teardown, or take for people doing the work in the age of AI. With receipts: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Jim is the author of Inner Excellence and The Best Possible Life. He explains why confidence is too fragile to carry your whole performance, why presence and belief matter more, and why chasing a result can leave a person more anxious after they get it. He also lays out a four-part daily reset: give the best of what you have, be present, be grateful, and focus on what you can control.

The point is not to lower the standard. The point is to stop demanding that a result answer a question it cannot answer.

Get Easy Mode book resources and updates: https://ryanhanley.com/easy-mode

Connect with Jim Murphy:

• Website: https://innerexcellence.com/
• Books: https://innerexcellence.com/books/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/innerexcellencejimmurphy/

Connect with Ryan Hanley

• Watch Finding Peak on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley
• Follow Ryan:Website: https://ryanhanley.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley
• X: https://x.com/rhanley

This is the way.

Hanley.

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A promise is not a path.

The American Dream works when people can see a believable route from where they stand to somewhere better. That route does not build itself. It requires memory, opportunity, responsible ownership, and leaders willing to carry the burden that comes with authority.

Get C.R.E.A.M., my weekly growth-marketing experiment, playbook, teardown, or take for people doing the work in the age of AI. With receipts: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

David Rubenstein is the Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of The Carlyle Group and the Chairman, CEO, and principal owner of the Baltimore Orioles. He joins me for a conversation about the American Dream, historical memory, sports ownership, and what leaders owe the people who trust them.

We begin with a real tension. Working families and small-business owners are operating the same lives on thinner margins. David argues that confidence in upward mobility is weakening. But diagnosis is not the destination. The useful question is what makes belief rational again.

History is part of the answer. David explains why a country needs to remember its successes and failures, why he places copies of the Declaration of Independence in public spaces, and why forgetting the operating record makes it easier to repeat old mistakes.

Then we move inside professional sports ownership and David's book, Inside the Owner's Box: Conversations on Power and Leadership in Sports. Sports franchises have become an investment class, but David's reason for buying the Orioles was rooted in Baltimore. He wanted the team to help revive and reconnect the city that raised him.

That gives us the operator lesson. Owners set the standard, approve consequential capital, and carry the criticism. Experts who live and breathe the work make the day-to-day decisions. Ownership is not permission to play every position. It is responsibility for building the conditions where other people can win.

The American Dream is not self-executing. It is built in the institutions we remember, the opportunities we create, the decisions we fund, and the people we trust.

Get Easy Mode book resources and updates: https://ryanhanley.com/easy-mode

Connect with David Rubenstein

• Website: https://www.davidrubenstein.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-m-rubenstein/
• Inside the Owner's Box: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Inside-the-Owners-Box/David-M-Rubenstein/9781668022498
• X: https://x.com/DM_Rubenstein

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I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

Pressure can produce a yes. It can also poison the relationship that comes after it.

Guffy Wright, author of Attach High: How Elite Advisors Remove Friction from High-Stakes Decisions, joins me to explain why strong value still loses when confusion, fear, or misalignment blocks the decision.

His V3 framework gives advisors and leaders a better sequence. Value creates clarity. Vulnerability creates safety. Validation creates direction. The point isn’t to corner someone into agreement. It’s to clear the path toward an honest decision.

We talk about “commission breath,” why trust alone can’t fix directional conflict, and why detaching from an outcome is not the same as caring less. Guffy calls detachment the highest form of professional empathy because it demands that you attach to the client’s best decision instead of your own payout.

The conversation moves beyond sales. I share the baseball lesson that taught me to stop pressing. Guffy explains his four years of stagnation, why high performers keep adding when subtraction is the better move, and how breath, gratitude, curiosity, and truth bring him back into alignment.

We close with the story behind Attach High. The title grew from grief after Guffy lost his father, mentor, and friend. The book carries that legacy forward as a practical guide for advisors, founders, leaders, and parents facing decisions with real weight.

This is the way.

Hanley.

Connect with Guffy Wright:

• Website: https://guffywright.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guffy-wright-752679b/
• Pre-order Attach High: https://www.amazon.com/Attach-High-Advisors-High-Stakes-Decisions-ebook/dp/B0HF629RD7/

Follow Ryan:

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley

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We will pick the disaster we already know how to live through. We will skip the win we have never survived.

George Bryant said that out loud and I felt it in my chest. He is a former Marine, a New York Times bestselling cookbook author, and the man behind Mind of George. He also spent years using a polished origin story as a moat. Enough pain to look open. Not enough truth to be seen.

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I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

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He grew up outside Boston in a house full of drugs, fists, and sexual abuse. He joined the Marines because home was worse than Parris Island. Honor graduate. Somalia at 21. Almost lost both legs. A year in a wheelchair. Opiates. A night in the barracks when he swallowed the whole bottle and did not want to wake up.

Then a food blog that became Civilized Caveman. An ebook he says did a million dollars in six days. A cookbook tour where he taught people to love themselves with food while he binged and purged before every keynote. Austin. Four thousand people. His ex-wife asked if he was going to walk on stage and lie to them again. The only sentence that would come out was, "I've been lying to all of you."

He later named the gap I keep seeing in high performers: authenticity is a story you can recite on 9,000 podcasts. Intimacy is letting someone close enough to help you. He found God in Costa Rica the hard way, wrote his purpose on a piece of paper, and gave the seven-figure company away because he was told to.

If you run a real company and still feel unseen, this is a map of the hiding places that look like strength. George's close is the whole episode in one move. Nobody will see you until you can look in the mirror without putting yourself on trial.

Connect with George Bryant:

• Website: https://mindofgeorge.com/
• Podcast: The Mind of George Show — https://mindofgeorge.com/podcast/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/itsgeorgebryant
• Book: The Paleo Kitchen (Juli Bauer and George Bryant) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1628600101?tag=findingpeak-20

Follow Ryan Hanley

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley
• X: https://x.com/rhanley

This is the way.

Hanley.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

AI can make your company faster. It can also make your brand sound like everyone else. When competent output becomes cheap, human trust becomes expensive.

Tyler Cerny is an international, award-winning keynote speaker and keynote coach who helps people connect purpose, communication, and authority. We talk about why he is bullish on human connection while companies rush to automate the face, voice, and judgment out of their brands.

Tyler explains why successful businesses are built on successful human relationships, how the five senses shape memorable experiences, and why “do it, teach it, sell it” protects leaders from selling expertise they have not earned.

I make the case against AI avatars pretending to be human presence. If software writes the script and another tool delivers it through your face, the audience has no proof that you own the idea. That gap damages trust long before a customer needs help with a hard problem.

We also separate transactional companies from relational companies, break down Tyler’s three levels of communication, and show how adversity, values, and lived experience create a one-of-one message.

Tyler closes with the framework that ties the conversation together: purpose precedes design. Decide what the talk, business, relationship, or life is meant to do before you copy someone else’s structure.

Use AI to remove Workslop. Keep the human work human.

Connect with Tyler Cerny

• Website: https://tylercerny.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylercerny/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tylerdcerny
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tylercerny
• Pre-order *The Life of Purpose*: https://tylercerny.com/book/

Follow Ryan Hanley

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley

This is the way.

Hanley.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

AI access is not the advantage anymore. Ryan Doser makes the case that the real marketing moat in 2026 is expertise, context, and distribution. The model matters, but the model is not the business.

Ryan brings a useful anti-hype posture to a category packed with fake automation demos and borrowed confidence. We talk about why frontier models can be overbuilt for normal knowledge work, how cheaper open or alternative models can fit the job when you provide strong context, and why generic “tell AI to do it” advice breaks once the work gets messy.

The practical path is cleaner than the hype. Define the bottleneck. Build a context vault. Create granular skill markdown files. Treat those skills like SOPs for agents. Run the work in a space like VS Code where instructions, files, examples, and outputs can sit together without turning into a junk drawer.

Ryan also explains how he pairs different models for critique, keeps skill files narrow, and learns from failed experiments without turning every mistake into another tool subscription. The goal is not more AI. The goal is a system that makes better decisions, lowers waste, and helps good marketers ship work their customers can use.

We also cover guardrails, agent permissions, review loops, and model cost. If AI has felt noisy, expensive, or slippery, this conversation helps you move from prompt collector to operator.

Connect with Ryan Doser

• Website: https://ryandoser.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-doser-ai-marketing/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RyanDoserAI
• AI Marketing Insiders: https://www.skool.com/ai-marketing-insiders
• Claude Skills Stack: https://skills.ryandoser.com/

Follow Ryan Hanley

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley

This is the way.

Hanley.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

If you buy Salesforce to avoid fixing a broken sales process, you fail. If you buy AI to avoid fixing a broken business, you fail faster.

David Bach, MD, is the founder and CEO of Optios. Optios is a neurotechnology company building the human-state layer for AI. He is a Harvard-trained neuroscientist, a physician, and an entrepreneur who understands what happens when hard science hits the reality of the market. We break down why treating AI like a magic bullet is destroying capital, and why the leaders who win will be the ones who pair aggressive adoption with disciplined skepticism.

We cover the danger of outsourcing your judgment, why most enterprise AI pilots stall, and the story of an investor who made a capital decision based on a competitor deck that ChatGPT hallucinated out of thin air. We also explore the future of physiological AI. Sensors that measure your attention and brain state could train you to perform like an expert in a fraction of the time.

The question is not whether your company uses AI. The question is whether the tool improves a clear process or hides a weak one.

AI does not lower the standard for leadership. It raises it. You cannot outsource taste, positioning, or strategy to a machine.

Connect with David Bach

• Website: https://optios.ai/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-bach-md-0b81b29/

Follow Ryan Hanley

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

You don't need to build a rocket to make money in space. You may already depend on space technology without knowing it. The leaders watching launches while ignoring the infrastructure underneath them are staring at the mascot and missing the team.

I brought Mark Boggett, CEO and General Partner of Seraphim Space, onto Finding Peak to explain what the commercial space economy looks like when you remove the Mars fantasies and billionaire theater. Mark argues that SpaceX is the public face of the market, but the bigger founder opportunity is in the other 80 percent.

We get practical fast. Radar satellites are helping insurers assess flood damage through cloud cover. New positioning networks are being built because today's GPS cannot support the accuracy and security demanded by autonomous vehicles, drones, and robots. Orbital tracking companies are creating what Mark calls the "Google Maps of space."

We also cover space-based solar power, compact nuclear batteries, off-planet manufacturing, and the founder flywheel forming around experienced space operators.

The rocket is the distraction. The infrastructure is the business.

For founders and executives, this episode offers a sharper way to study platform shifts. Don't stop at the category leader. Look for the data, security, power, logistics, software, and service companies the platform makes necessary.

This is the way.

Hanley.

Connect with Mark Boggett

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-boggett-5044631/
• Website: https://seraphim.vc/

Follow Ryan Hanley

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley

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A friend of mine sold American Express at $5 a share during the financial crisis. Six months later it was $120. Panic turned a temporary loss into a permanent one, and that story is this entire episode in miniature.

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I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

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Jim Lebenthal is a Partner and Chief Equity Strategist at Cerity Partners and a regular on CNBC's Halftime Report. Before markets, he was a Navy nuclear engineer who drove submarines. He thinks in systems and decades, and his core truth is simple: stay in the market. Jim ran the numbers on the last five crises. Invest the day before each crash, stay in, and your annualized return is about 10%. The people who got destroyed sold low and chased the market back up.

We get into why your emotions aren't the enemy, denial is. FOMO? Scratch the itch with a small buy and keep dry powder. Fear? Find the data. We cover diversification, why 80% of the portfolio he runs sits in tried and true companies, when an ETF beats stock picking, and what he found hiding inside ESG funds.

Then the big stuff: crypto, gold, and private markets (liquidity first), why he tells clients not to borrow to speculate, and why patience is the biggest investment virtue. He closes with a story he's never told before, about a client's financial autopsy, and the line I can't shake: your portfolio is a fingerprint of your personality.

Stay in. Size it right. Write it down.

This is the way.

Hanley.

Connect with Jim Lebenthal

• Website: https://ceritypartners.com/team/james-lebenthal/
• X: https://x.com/jlebenthal
• CNBC: Halftime Report, two to three times a week, noon to 1pm Eastern
• Book: How to Ride the Subway: Getting Around on Wall Street and in Life (Regalo Press, 2026): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FVMJFJXL?tag=findingpeak-20

Follow Ryan

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

I spent years believing the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be was a work problem. Michael Bernoff calls it what it is: a language problem.

Michael has spent more than 25 years studying how language drives behavior. Jim Rohn mentored him from 1999 to 2009. His book Average Sucks took nine years to write, because he wanted a book people finish. His framework, Human Interaction Technology, is built on one idea: the words you choose program the results you get.

We cover why capable people stay stuck, the success script nobody handed you, and why confidence without competence is noise. Michael breaks down problem language versus solution language and what each does to your brain chemistry. Problems push your body toward cortisol. Solutions push it toward serotonin.

Then he drops the line I can't shake: "Work hard and be a good person. That's a shitty plan for a business owner."

We also get into the three words that rewire any limiting belief, up until now, and his missing Step 13: the way you talk about you is how the world learns to treat you.

This one changed how I hear my own self-talk.

This is the way.

Hanley.

Connect with Michael Bernoff:

• Website: https://michaelbernoff.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michael_bernoff/
• Text the word INFLUENCE to 480-800-8051
• Book: Average Sucks: https://amzn.to/3RzS1O3

Follow Ryan:

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/ryanmhanley

Lee Benson pulled weeds for 25 cents an hour when he was six. By senior year of high school he was living on his own. Forty-six years later he calls himself an overnight success: a nine-figure exit after growing Able Aerospace from two employees to more than 500 across 60 countries.

Today Lee is the CEO of Execute to Win, and this conversation is a masterclass in what execution means. Not grinding. Not hustle. Creating objectively measurable value, and building the environment where every person in the company creates more of it over time.

We cover the 3% rule of strategy versus execution, why job descriptions fail your team, the compensation system that ended salary negotiations at Able (open books plus 22% of pre-tax profit paid monthly), earned decision rights, and the category Lee puts most strategic initiatives in: please do your job.

We also get personal. Kicked out senior year. Credit cards opened in his name. A thousand shows in a rock band. Why the struggle is the point, in business and at home with your kids.

And we close on AI: why the leaders trading their coaches for chatbots are getting amazing answers to the wrong questions.

If you lead a team, this one follows you into Monday morning.

This is the way.

Hanley.

Connect with Lee Benson:

• Website: https://etw.com/
• Dinner Table: https://dinnertable.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lee-j-benson/

Follow Ryan:

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley

Full transcript, clips, and more: https://ryanhanley.com/podcast/the-3-rule-why-your-strategy-sessions-die-by-monday-lee-benson

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Your strategy may not be the bottleneck. Your self-image might be.

Most leaders train the craft. They study the market, improve the offer, tighten the process, and push for better execution. Then pressure arrives and the mind they never trained grabs the wheel.

Collin Henderson is a mental performance coach, founder of Master Your Mindset, author, and host of the Master Your Mindset podcast. His work has taken him from Fortune 500 boardrooms to Division 1 locker rooms, including the UCLA women’s basketball program.

Collin’s central argument is simple: You never outperform your self-image.

If you see yourself as the person who folds under pressure, avoids conflict, or needs permission, your behavior will keep proving that label correct. The first move is not another tactic. It is learning to question the beliefs running beneath the tactics. Is that thought true? Said by who?

We also get into the comfortable middle. This is the dangerous place where the bills are paid, the title looks good, and nothing is broken enough to force a decision. A leader can survive there for years while his ambition quietly dies of boredom. Collin puts a clean edge on it: “I have to respect your right to be average.”

That line will sting if it is supposed to.

I share why I have treated therapy as routine maintenance and how an accountability partner helped me build the systems behind a national digital commercial insurance agency. Adults celebrate coaching for kids and athletes, then act like asking for help becomes weakness after age 30. That is backward. Collin says, “Nobody should worry or win alone.”

The conversation moves from identity to environment, vulnerability, proximity, fear, flow, comparison, service, and ownership. It closes with one question that cuts through every excuse: “What are you doing for that?”

For founders and executives, this is not soft work. A shaky self-image can turn clear strategy into hesitation, defensive leadership, and inconsistent execution. Collin offers a practical operating rhythm: notice the thought, name the feeling, question the belief, choose the response, then use accountability to keep the new behavior from disappearing when the week gets ugly.

If your team keeps repeating a problem it already knows how to solve, the missing skill may be mental, not technical.

You do not need more motivational wallpaper. You need a mind, a system, and a circle that can hold up under pressure.

## Chapters

00:00 Opening

00:28 Why Mindset Is the Missing Performance Skill

05:27 You Never Outperform Your Self-Image

08:06 Why We Default to Negative Self-Talk

13:57 Conditioning and Automatic Negative Thoughts

16:19 How to Move the Comfortable Middle

21:59 Vulnerability Is Not Weakness

30:46 Accountability and the Power of Proximity

48:00 Reality Comparison and Flow

59:20 The Oz Method

## Connect with Collin Henderson

Website: https://www.thecollinhenderson.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/collinhendersonmindset/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/collinhenderson/

Podcast: https://www.thecollinhenderson.com/podcast

## Follow Ryan

Website: https://ryanhanley.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryan_hanley

This is the way.

Hanley.

Full transcript, clips, and more: https://ryanhanley.com/podcast/rewire-your-self-image-to-perform-under-pressure-collin-henderson

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I help founders & executives generating more than $10M in revenue find their Easy Mode. Start here: https://ryanhanley.com/subscribe

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ryanmhanley

The internet we use today is only half built. We spent the last 40 years digitalizing communication and content. Now, we are digitalizing value, intelligence, and work.

Matthew Le Merle, Managing Partner of Fifth Era and Blockchain Coinvestors, calls this the autonomous digital economy. And if you are running a business today, it is coming for your margins whether you are ready or not.

We break down why blockchain adoption feels slow when it is right on schedule. We look at the hidden taxes built into our current financial system and how tokenization removes that friction. We also look at AI agents doing work humans were never designed to do in the first place.

You can choose the axis of fear, worrying about what innovation will cost you. Or you can choose the axis of the innovator, believing new technology will solve today's problems and open opportunities we cannot even imagine yet.

This is the way.

Hanley.

Connect with Matthew Le Merle:

• Website: https://www.matthewlemerle.com/
• Fifth Era: https://www.fifthera.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewlemerle/
• Fifth Era LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fifthera
• X: https://twitter.com/BCoinvestors

Follow Ryan:

• Website: https://ryanhanley.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryan_hanley

Full transcript, clips, and more: https://ryanhanley.com/podcast/the-autonomous-digital-economy-is-here

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.