The Balancing Act with Andrew Temte, PhD, CFA

What if the reason your company stopped growing isn’t the market, the team, or the model — but you?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Blake Erickson, co-founder of Scaling.com and co-author, with Dr. Benjamin Hardy, of The Science of Scaling: Grow Your Business Bigger and Faster Than You Think Possible. Blake advises hundreds of companies chasing 100 to 300 percent annual growth instead of 15, and his prescription starts with subtraction: find the three things driving the business, and delete, delegate, or set aside the other ninety-seven — then get everyone aligned on one mission, so there are no sacred cows.

Andy presses on where the Scaling Framework sits alongside EOS, and two mentorship moments put it to work for a founder flat at $4 million and a division head running a P&L inside somebody else’s company.

Tune in to episode 269 to hear the research finding that most entrepreneurs are the bottleneck (and what Blake thinks of the rest), why courage is a top-three leadership attribute, and how storytelling decides which companies get the best talent.

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What if the leaders who land the best roles aren’t the most accomplished on paper, but the most intentional about how they show up?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Kelly O. Kay, partner at Heidrick & Struggles and co-author of Show Up to Win: How to Land the Leadership Role You Want. With more than two decades in executive search, Kelly pulls back the curtain on how CEO and go-to-market searches actually work, why a résumé only gets you in the door, and what companies are getting right — and wrong — as they hire for the AI moment.

His most practical advice may be his simplest: treat an AI chatbot as your interview coach, and build a board of advisors who know the gap between where you are and where you want to go — not the peers who will only tell you you’re great.

Tune in to episode 268 to hear why “it’s not a race,” how Kelly can tell in seconds when a leader isn’t being honest about wanting the top job, and the surprise that has senior executives buying the book for their kids.

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What if joy isn’t something you feel but something you practice — and burnout is what happens when you stop?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Brent Freeman, serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and author of the just-released The Alchemy of Joy: The Life-Changing Method to Beat Burnout, Retrain Your Brain, and Build a Life You Love.

Brent spent two decades building companies and chasing every metric success was supposed to deliver — until a Tuesday morning in San Francisco, a first sunset in years, and a handwritten list of joy changed the direction of his life.

He walks Andy through the method he built from that moment: why willpower snaps back like a thermostat, how the subconscious mind runs the show, and what a Joyful Operating System looks like on an ordinary Tuesday — then takes two mentorship moments, one for the founder who has everything and feels none of it, and one for the leader who has to sell “joy” to the CFO.

Tune in to episode 267 to hear the childhood loss that became Brent’s rocket booster, the three elements of a joyful company culture, and why joy isn’t the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

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What if the moment your company announces layoffs is exactly the moment to spend more on training, not less?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Steve Nolan, CEO of The Ariel Group — the leadership and communication development firm founded by performing artists — and a certified MBTI practitioner with more than thirty years of executive leadership.

Steve has spent his career in and around corporate training, and he is blunt about its biggest problem: in 2026, too many companies still treat it as a cost center and cut it first when AI spending squeezes the budget.

He and Andy dig into where assessments like MBTI still earn their keep, why leadership alignment is the thing CEOs and boards are begging for without having a word for it, and how Steve balances a mission-driven firm against a private equity partner — by refusing to live on Hope Island.

Tune in to episode 266 to hear how twelve Fortune 500 CEOs built Steve’s go-to-market strategy for him, what he would tell a head of L&D with AI landing on her from every direction, and the budgeting trick that keeps a line item from getting crossed out.

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What does a pork chop sent back to the kitchen three times have to do with hiring your next CEO?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Rodney Morris, Executive Vice President at The Elliot Group and a former president of the Council of Hotel and Restaurant Trainers, who has spent his whole career in the people business — twenty-five years on the human capital side of hospitality and twelve leading retained executive search.

Rodney sees what companies say they want in a leader and what they actually put on the table, and he names the gap: transformation expectations without the compensation or the authority to match.

He and Andy dig into how the best companies teach people to think with AI rather than operate it, what to do with the five hours a week AI gives back, and the one word that separates leaders who take care of their frontline from the ones who don’t.

Tune in to episode 265 to hear the pork chop rule, what Rodney would tell a chief people officer asked to bring in AI and hold headcount flat, and why the hardest audience for diversity of thought isn’t the one you’d expect.

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What if burnout isn’t something that happens to you — and what if the leadership skill you’re missing lives in your body, not your head?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Marcel Daane, author of Headstrong Performance, Five Energies of Horrible Bosses and How Not To Become One, and the forthcoming Leadership Tai-Chi: The Art of Leading with Clarity, Wisdom, and Humanness in the Age of AI.

Marcel teaches tai chi to senior leaders -- the more relaxed the body, the sharper the mind. He and Andy dig into what a martial art teaches a leader that a leadership book can’t, why AI behaves like an intern that feeds your biases, and the question Marcel asks every CEO who complains about being surrounded by incompetent people.

Tune in to episode 264 to hear the moment in a Gold’s Gym that sent Marcel back to school, why busyness doesn’t happen to you, and what he would say to every version of himself that got fired.

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Why do intelligent, capable, well-intentioned leaders act at their worst under pressure — and what if the answer was a pattern you could learn to see coming?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Ian Stewart, former Head of Applied Behavioural Science at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and author of The Hidden Patterns of Leadership: The Mental Models That Shape How We Lead, Team, and Follow.

Ian has watched the same drama play out in different costumes — military academies, government, boardrooms, a sovereign wealth fund — and it comes down to schemas: the hidden assumptions that decide what a leader reaches for when the pressure is on.

Then Andy puts himself on the table. He took Ian’s assessment, came out an Architect-Commander, and gets a live reading of what that pairing does brilliantly and where it gets a leader into trouble.

Tune in to episode 263 to hear why pressure reveals patterns rather than creating them, what an Architect-Commander’s team quietly learns to do instead of pushing back, and why the loyalist, the dissenter, the skeptic, and the bystander are each telling you something.

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What if change fatigue isn’t a weakness to push through, but a signal worth listening to?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Cassandra Worthy, founder and CEO of Change Enthusiasm Global and author of Change Enthusiasm: How to Harness the Power of Emotion for Leadership and Success.

A chemical engineer who spent nearly fifteen years at Procter & Gamble and led organizations through two multi-billion-dollar acquisitions, Cassandra makes the case that traditional change management was built for a world that no longer exists — one where change had a beginning, a middle, and an end — and that the emotions leaders are told to check at the door are the most useful data they have.

Tune in to episode 262 to hear the mentor’s line that redirected her entire career, the three-step framework she built out of fear, frustration, anger, anxiety, and grief, and her advice to a leader whose integration plan is solid, whose town halls are done, and whose best people are checking out anyway.

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What kind of company do you need to become when intelligence itself is no longer scarce?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Brian Solis, head of global innovation at ServiceNow and co-author of Infinite: How Visionary Leaders Transform Today’s Businesses into AI-Forward Companies.

A digital anthropologist and nine-time bestselling author, Brian has spent three decades in Silicon Valley mapping each major wave of technological change — and his warning here is that AI is quietly repeating the central failure of digital transformation. Companies digitized without ever transforming. Now they are automating without reimagining, and the gap between those two choices is going to decide which of them still matters in ten years.

Tune in to episode 261 to hear why the org chart is giving way to what Brian calls a work chart, what an AI-native company already looks like in Silicon Valley today, the name he gives to what happens to your thinking when you hand it to a machine, and his answer for the capable, experienced leader who is quietly afraid of becoming obsolete.

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What if the real risk of AI isn’t that it takes your job — but that your company only ever uses it to cut costs?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Dave Wright, Chief Innovation Officer at ServiceNow and co-author of Infinite: How Visionary Leaders Transform Today’s Businesses into AI-Forward Companies.

Dave started out as a mainframe operator in the 1980s and has spent the last fifteen years helping enterprises rebuild how work actually gets done. His argument is that most AI implementations stall for a reason that has nothing to do with the technology — leaders reach for AI to automate the past rather than to create room to invent the future.

Tune in to episode 260 to hear why the handoffs between departments are where AI efficiency goes to die, what separates the companies getting real transformation from the ones that just get busier, and Dave’s advice to the VP sitting on six months of pilots with nothing to show for them.

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What are you pretending not to know about your own leadership — and what is it costing you?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Mike Staver, executive coach, Speaker Hall of Fame inductee, and author of Leadership Isn’t for Cowards and the just-released Navigating Crazy.

For more than thirty years, Mike has helped leaders close the gap between their good intentions and their actual results. His case here is that most of the stress we carry doesn’t come from our circumstances at all — it comes from the distance between what we expected and what actually is, and from the things we know to be true but keep living as though we don’t.

Tune in to episode 259 to hear the high school choice that cost Mike two brutal weeks and set his work ethic for life, why acceptance and approval are not the same thing and why confusing them keeps capable leaders stuck, and the coaching conversation Mike would have with the person who looks successful from the outside and is quietly running on empty.

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What if the problem isn’t that you’re distracted, but that nobody ever trained you in the one thing you can actually control?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Dr. Justin Anderson, founder and CEO of Premier Sport Psychology and author of Intentional Attention: The Science and Practice of Focus Under Pressure, a licensed psychologist and certified mental performance consultant who has spent more than twenty years with NFL quarterbacks, Olympians, and executives.

His case is that attention is more controllable than confidence or emotion — a trainable skill rather than a fixed trait — and that for people who never really stop, the question is no longer how to find work-life balance but how to recharge while running.

Tune in to episode 258 to hear the job Justin didn’t get that redirected his entire career, what context switching is quietly costing you on a day spent bouncing between projects and new tools, and why a book about training focus ends with renewal — and what that actually looks like for someone who can’t simply take more time off.

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What if the fastest way to fail at AI is to treat it like a race?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Don Gregori, Chief Operating Officer of First Factory and author of The Emergent Leader: A Guide to Brand Building, Leadership, and Self-Mastery.

Don makes the case that leadership starts on the inside and that most AI failures are leadership failures wearing a technology costume — that empathy is operational rather than soft, that bolting AI onto a process you have never questioned is the fastest route to the pile of projects that quietly fail, and that the leader who runs on four hours of sleep is not being tough, just expensive.

Tune in to episode 257 to hear the rocket-booster moment Don credits to his wife rather than to any career move, the advice he gives a newly promoted manager who is terrified of breaking the very thing that made them good, and why a book about building durable companies ends with the durability of the leader.

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With a wave of accountants heading for retirement and AI reshaping the profession, is accounting still a smart career bet?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Hugh Martin — founder of Procountancy and a CIMA Case Study specialist who prepares finance professionals in more than 45 countries to earn the CGMA designation.

Together they get behind the acronyms to management accounting itself — the “business partner” role, why a U.S. CPA might add the CGMA, and the human skills no algorithm can replace.

Tune in to episode 256 to hear why Hugh tells a nervous twenty-year-old that accounting is still worth it, how the CGMA builds the business acumen that earns a bigger seat at the table, and the two-euro rounding error he’d tell his younger self to stop losing sleep over.

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What does a country actually lose when it makes it harder for the world’s top talent to build a life there?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Vasanthan “Vas” Ramakrishnan — founder and principal consultant of Ascend HSI Advisory Partners, who helps high-skilled scientists, engineers, researchers, and founders navigate the extraordinary-ability pathways into the U.S., and who earned his own green card the same way.

Together they draw the line between wage arbitrage and genuine talent mobility — and make the case that a freer flow of skilled expertise tends to make economies stronger, not weaker.

Tune in to episode 255 to hear how Vas turned a job lost during COVID into an award-winning global nonprofit, why he tells anxious American workers that keeping talent out won’t protect them, and the reframe at the heart of his work: he doesn’t make his clients extraordinary — they already are.

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What if you've been chasing success backwards? What if joy isn't the reward you earn after hitting your goals — but the foundation that makes hitting them inevitable?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Bose Akadiri — motivational keynote speaker, corporate trainer, and founder and CEO of Goal and Grind LLC, where she's known as “The Joy Amplifier.”

After a decade leading corporate social responsibility at Boeing, Salesforce, and JPMorgan Chase, she wrote The Stay Joyful Method to make the business case for joy — not as a feel-good perk, but as a strategic advantage that drives retention, sharpens clarity, and moves the numbers leaders actually care about.

Tune in to episode 254 to hear why the strongest performers spend time backstage before they take the main stage, how the “joy bubble” becomes a force field when work gets hard, and what it looks like to lead with joy that has a spine — joy that's results-driven and impossible to dismiss as soft.

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In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Suzie Bishop, vice president of product development at The Center for Leadership Studies — the global home of the Situational Leadership® Model — and co-author of the newly released Situational Leadership®: The Model for Leading Others, Navigating Change, and Unlocking Performance.

A Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coach who has spent more than a decade modernizing the world’s most widely used leadership framework, Suzie makes a deceptively simple case — the best leaders don’t lean on one great style; they read the person in front of them and adapt to what the moment actually requires.

Tune in to episode 253 to hear why the well-liked “nice boss” who delegates everything can quietly leave people stranded, the first move for a newly promoted high performer who’s about to fall flat, and the humbling parenting moment that reframed how Suzie thinks about leading people who have already outgrown your instructions.

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Why do so many brilliant, accomplished leaders freeze the moment the stakes get highest — losing the room before they’ve said a single word?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Kathryn Janicek — a 3x Emmy Award-winning executive presence strategist, former TV news producer, and founder of Janicek Performance Group, where she coaches Fortune 500 leaders for their highest-stakes moments.

Drawing on two decades in live television — including her time as the sole spokesperson during the 2007 I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis — Kathryn makes the case that how you show up matters every bit as much as what you say, and that presence is a skill any leader can build.

Tune in to episode 252 to hear why Kathryn calls fear “a terrible creative director,” what a bridge collapse taught her about leading through a crisis, and why, in the age of AI and deepfakes, your audience can tell in an instant when a leader’s words aren’t truly their own. It’s a practical masterclass in showing up when it counts.

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What if building a thriving book of business didn’t require working more hours, chasing leads, or scrambling to get yourself out there — but simply getting better at the conversations you’re already having?

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Deb Feder — founder of Feder Development and author of the Client Conversation Series, including After Hello and her latest, Might I Suggest.

Deb practiced corporate law for more than fifteen years before turning her attention to how lawyers and professionals actually build lasting practices — and her answer has little to do with the perfect elevator pitch and everything to do with intentional, everyday connection. It’s a refreshingly human take on a skill most professionals are never actually taught.

Tune in to episode 251 to hear how caring for her grandmother reshaped the way Deb builds a business, why she pushes back hard on the idea that you’re either a “rainmaker” or you’re not, and her case that the strongest careers are still built one five-minute conversation at a time.

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After 250 episodes of the Balancing Act podcast, the host becomes the guest. Producer Nick Temte steps out from behind the glass to interview his dad — and usual host — Andy Temte, in a milestone conversation about where the show started, what 250 episodes have taught him, and where it’s all going.

Dr. Andrew (Andy) Temte, CFA, is an author, musician, and the former CEO of Kaplan Professional Education. He’s the author of Balancing Act: Teach, Coach, Mentor, Inspire and The Balanced Business, with two more books on the way — The Modern Golden Rule and Stop Standing Still. He founded the Balancing Act in 2019 as a way to have authentic, non-salesy conversations with business leaders, and he closes every episode with the same three words: grace, dignity, and compassion.

Andy traces his own career rocket booster to a sunny August day in 1989, when — rejected by every other Big Ten PhD program — he climbed to the sixth floor of Phillips Hall at the University of Iowa to meet finance department chair Carl Schweser. A scheduled 30-minute interview became a two-hour conversation, and a lifelong mentorship that shaped everything that followed. From there, Nick and Andy retrace the origins of the show, the 2008 Great Recession story behind “grace, dignity, and compassion,” and the home studio where their father-son partnership — and their music — began.