Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Damns Given with Nick Richtsmeier
| Titre | Date | Durée | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Does Knowing Anything Matter Anymore? | 10 Oct 2026 | 00:36:34 | |
Does expertise still matter when information is cheap, instant, and increasingly generated by AI? Nick argues that knowledge alone is being treated like a commodity—but wisdom remains irreplaceable. Addressing the documented shift away from a literate and written long-form thinking culture to a more digitally distributed oral culture, Nick explains that our era of incendiary, hyper-reactive messaging is by design. Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Deciding who you'll be at $4 Billion... in advance | 01 Oct 2026 | 01:07:38 | |
Welcome to Season 3! We're kicking things off with a bang interview EY Entrepreneur of the Year, Jason Wenk about his $4B (with a B) sale of Altruist to Vanguard. But this is no "how I built it" story... Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Fire the Employee Within: Seven Foundations for a Trust-Made Founder | 24 Sep 2026 | 00:54:45 | |
A lot of founders — even ones who've been running their own thing for ten or fifteen years — are still missing the foundational architecture that makes a knowledge business actually work. They've swapped out who the boss is without actually becoming the owner. They've built a Cheesecake Factory menu of offers instead of one great dish. They've built dependency on algorithmic reach and frictionless stranger contact and autonomous customer experience and hourly pricing, all of which are failing systems, without realizing that's what they've done. Nick opens the episode with something personal: the moment mid-career when his anxiety got so severe he couldn't be alone in his house, and his best friend worked from his dining room for three weeks. He shares it not for sympathy but because it's proof that business design is a mental health issue, and that you can design your way toward something different. From there he walks through the seven foundations that a trust-made knowledge business actually requires: owner mindset and what it actually means to fire the employee within. Designing a customer — one particular psychographic customer, not a list of everyone it could theoretically work for. Building an around-the-block offer — the one great dish people line up for — and killing all the escape hatches from it. Pricing and winning in a way that protects trust. Defining an operating model that protects the time of your most expensive employee, which is you. Building a relational go-to-market instead of a frictionless one. And developing the leader capacity to know what's yours right now and what has to wait. The Damn Rules is out now wherever books are sold. The Wisdom School's next cohort opens in October at https://www.culturecraft.com/venturestock. Chapters:
Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| What it's going to take to heal our economy and what Nick's doing about it | 07 Aug 2026 | 00:49:01 | |
"If we want healthier economies, better markets, freer commerce, healthier neighborhoods, better streets, less dependence on big disgusting tech — the energetic force that's going to make those things happen is you making more money by living your values. Plain and simple." This is a special episode of Damns Given. Season two is wrapped, and while we're on hiatus through the end of August, Nick is sharing the town hall he'd been avoiding for months — the closest thing he's ever done to the full picture of what Trust-Made Growth is actually for, how the economy actually works right now, and what you can actually do about it. Season three launches at the end of August with a new structure, an extraordinary guest lineup, and new ways to go deeper. In the meantime — this is worth your time. The town hall is called The Expansion: Make More Money, Live Your Values, and Save the World. Nick opens with a thesis that runs against everything the cultural conversation is currently telling you: that making more money and living your values aren't in opposition. They're the only way forward. That if you want healthier economies, better markets, more human-scale businesses, and less dependence on extractive tech — the energetic force that makes that happen is you, building your venture, living your values, and generating more than you take. He walks through the two games every business is playing — the Extractive Game and the Expansive Game — and what makes each one tick. He introduces the concept of the shitload fog — the compounding loneliness, overwhelm, anxiety, and distrust that every person you're trying to reach is carrying right now — and why your number one job is to move through it, not around it. He maps out the E7: the seven structural elements the economy needs rebuilt, and why at least one of them is you. And he walks through the practical path from rented growth to owned growth — what it actually looks like to move from being dependent on extractive platforms, extractive capital, and extractive selling models to building something that compounds over time in the direction you actually want to go. This is the map. The book — The Damn Rules — comes out September 15th at damnrulesbook.com. This episode is the context that makes the map make sense. Season three returns end of August. Subscribe so you don't miss it. Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Move Fast and Build Things with Chris McAdoo | 26 Jun 2026 | 00:49:29 | |
"What is the most human, natural, joy-filled way we could solve this problem?" Chris McAdoo has been a musician, a brand strategist, a startup advisor, and an artist since he was 13 years old. He's worked with national lab scientists sending things to space and artists introducing their work to the world for the first time. And he's noticed something: it's the same conversation every time. Why don't people love the thing I made the way I love it? In this episode of Damns Given, Nick and Chris go deep on what's actually going on between craft and market — and why the answer isn't to make better work. The work is fine. The gap is context. The gap is relationship. The gap is the hard turn from seeking attention to paying it. They cover the brief window in internet history when showing up was enough and why that era socialized a generation into believing the algorithm would find their people for them. Why the people building extractive platforms don't actually like people — and how that shapes everything about what those platforms do and don't do. Why the inefficiencies we disrupted out of existence were load-bearing — and what we're left holding now that they're gone. Why the house concert in Knoxville probably made more money than the venue tour. Why your customer persona named Suzy is useless and the conversation with the real Debra who came to your show on a Thursday night is everything. And what it means to ask, as Nick puts it: what's the most human, natural, joy-filled way we could solve this problem? Nick closes with a reflection that came out of a conversation with a colleague: this economy, this uncertainty, this K-shaped gap — it's already creating discomfort whether you acknowledge it or not. Moving toward discomfort isn't going to make things worse. You're already uncomfortable. You might as well grow. Chris McAdoo: chrismcadoo.com | chrismcadoospeaks.com | fightingshapeimpact.com Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| The Crisis Leaders Mistake as Midlife | 18 Jun 2026 | 00:50:21 | |
Damns Given Episode 2.20 - only two episodes of Season 2 yet to go! A lot of people are waking up right now to systems they've been inside of for years without fully seeing them, many of them leaders in tech, marketing, and professional services, and it's producing something that looks a lot like grief. Bargaining with the extractive economy. Fighting it. Sometimes just quietly depressed by it. The quiet despair under the surface is deeper than your LinkedIn feed is going to acknowledge. Nicholas Whitaker spends his days helping people work through exactly that. He's a coach who works heavily with people in tech and corporate America going through what he calls an awakening — a sudden class consciousness about the systems they're embedded in. He's also the founder of the Rebellion Collective, a community built for people trying to reclaim their time, energy, and attention from systems designed to extract all three. This conversation goes deep into what's actually different this time — why this isn't just a classic midlife crisis dressed up in new language, but what Nicholas calls a meta crisis: multiple systems collapsing simultaneously, compounding faster than most people have the tools to metabolize. This meta-crisis is an echo of host Nick Richtsmeier's Five Interregna, described in the first chapter of his book The Damn Rules, available Sept 2026. You can get the first chapter for free at https://damnrulesbook.com The two Nick's talk about the psychological effect of the panopticon, the shift from external colonization by media and social platforms to the colonization of the last things that were still ours — creativity, critical thinking, self-trust. They talk about why the instinct to blog about it, sub-stack about it, or perform outrage about it usually isn't the answer. And they talk about what actually is: stillness, presence, noticing your own nervous system, and slowly building capacity so that courage and confidence become byproducts rather than goals you're chasing directly. Nick closes with a reflection on legacy, stewardship, and why the work might outlast both of them — and why that's not a discouraging thought, but a genuinely freeing one. Nicholas Whitaker: https://www.rebelliancollective.com — including a free capacity audit worth taking More at https://damnsgiven.com and https://CultureCraft.com Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Consulting is a Little Bit F'ed | 09 Jun 2026 | 00:17:06 | |
"In this AI-soaked era, the primary thing we're buying — anytime we're buying anything — is thinking. Consultants, you need a way for people to test the quality of your thinking. Efficiently. With a low financial impact." Nobody sat down and decided to build a consulting offer that was bad for them, bad for their clients, and bad for their industry. It happened anyway. And if you're in consulting, fractional work, agency work, or any kind of advisory role — you're probably working inside a system that came from one of two tainted pools: the agency model or the McKinsey model. Both are imploding in real time. Neither was built for the world we're in now. In this episode of Damns Given, Nick Richtsmeier gets practical. He walks through exactly what goes wrong with the two dominant approaches to getting hired as a consultant — the scoping process that produces 97-bullet-point SOWs nobody reads, and the audit tool that clients pay $5,000 for only to receive a boilerplate proposal recommending they hire you for the work they wanted to hire you for in the first place. He names both for what they are and explains why they exist — and why they need to stop. Then he gets to the fix. The entry level offering. Short. High impact. Structured around thinking with your client rather than selling at them. Priced low enough that nobody has to go through procurement. Valuable enough that the deliverable is worth more than what they paid. A way for people to test the quality of your thinking before anyone commits to a long engagement — which in an AI-soaked world where thinking is the primary thing anyone is buying, is the only sale that actually makes sense. This one is for consultants, fractionals, coaches, and agencies who are tired of the broken cycle and want a way out of it. And it's for founders and leaders who are hiring these people and want to know how to structure the front end of those relationships so everyone ends up doing better work. Trust Forge — Nick's four-week live workshop on offering design — is at trustmadegrowth.com/trustforge Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Only Two Ways to Grow a Business Now - Pick One. | 02 Jun 2026 | 00:35:14 | |
The American economy is in contraction. That's different than recession. Most people who've been paying attention know it by now. We've got to spend less time debating it, negotiating with it, pretending it's not happening, like bad bargainers at a funeral. And start acting on what to do about it. Nick walks through the two games that every business, every market, every economy runs on: the Extractive Game and the Expansive Game. Not as a moral judgment about which kind of person you are, but as a structural reality about which direction your decisions are flowing. Because the direction matters enormously. It determines what you make, how you run your operations, how you build relationships — and whether those three layers are stacked in a way that builds something or slowly hollows it out. He traces the Extractive Game from Standard Oil to Facebook to your content marketing problem — showing how each one starts at the production layer, taking something communal and making it singularly owned, then builds an operations layer designed to make everything dependent on the thing it grabbed, then covers the whole thing with influence peddling and PR. And he shows how the same logic — in miniature, without the malice — slips into small businesses every day when fear is driving. Then he traces the Expansive Game in the opposite direction — starting at the relationship layer, winning by attention and clarity, distributing power through networks, and building production that actually comes from knowing the people you're building for. He uses the independent bookseller as the clearest example of a business running the expansive game right — and it's more useful than any Silicon Valley case study. This is a preview of the core framework from Nick's book The Damn Rules, launching this fall at DamnRulesBook.com. If this episode speaks to you and you want to go deeper: podcast@culturecraft.com Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| The Hot Topic Knockout: Brad Farris Is Back and Nothing Is Safe | 29 May 2026 | 00:56:02 | |
Brad Farris is back. And if you weren't here for the original run of the show under the old name Working Broken, here's what you need to know: Brad is one of the sharpest executive coaches working today, he was Nick's own executive coach for an extended stretch, and when the two of them get in a room together — even a virtual one — nothing stays safe for very long. This episode opens with something genuinely useful: Brad's honest account of how the pressurization of the COVID era made him play small, and the moment earlier this year he decided that was over. How fear contracted his social circle. How his social circle contracting made things scarier. How that compounded until he realized this was not his best self — and what happened when he dropped it. He's traveling more, seeing people in person, landing bigger deals. The correlation is not a coincidence. From there Nick and Brad play the first ever Hot Topic Knockout — a bracketed game where ten things the internet tells you to care about go head-to-head until only the one that actually matters survives. The bracket includes: Tim Cook's successor and the One Disney speech, tariffs being illegal, the end of entry-level hiring, the OpenAI bubble, middle manager burnout at a 10-year low, social media's big tobacco moment, Oracle's Larry Ellison doing what Larry Ellison does, macro economic signals and gas prices, and the cost of tokens. Along the way they cover why Brad thinks you should go back to 1995 and be a generalist who meets people. Why the real crisis in organizations isn't at the middle manager level, it's at the top, where leaders are navigating fog with no clear destination. Why agile is a response to a goal, not a substitute for one. Why risk management with trust is the only thing that works now — and why American business is terrible at it. And OF COURSE what the winner of the knockout game actually is... Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| My One Big Lesson On Culture - and Why It's So Easily Ignored | 27 May 2026 | 00:08:42 | |
In this episode of Damns Given, Nick walks through the Trust-Made Growth framework's take on culture — one of the six core factors that determine whether a venture is ready to grow or quietly working against itself. He goes back to the literal definition of the word: culture is what you put in a petri dish, the organic matter from which everything else grows. In organizational terms it's simpler and harder than any offsite can address. Culture is just what an organization does, how it works, and what it is without pressure or influence. He talks about how systems self-reinforce — why a good person in a bad team eventually becomes a bad player, because the system wins. How a leader's unspoken resistance to articulating values doesn't create a blank space, it creates a vacuum that people fill with their own interpretations, producing exactly the fractured, directionless behavior the leader didn't want. And why the only thing Trust-Made Growth is actually looking for in a culture is minimal resistance to organic growth — not kombucha fountains, not Silicon Valley theater, just healthy soil that lets things grow. The weeds tell you everything. A garden full of weeds doesn't mean you have a weed problem. It means the soil is broken. Questions about how this applies to your venture? Reach out at culturecraft.com or find the Trust-Made community at trustmadegrowth.com Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Revenue Models: The Hidden Operating System of Your Venture | 22 May 2026 | 00:16:21 | |
Damns Given Episode 2.15: Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Two Basic Rules for Being Online without Losing Your Mind | 17 May 2026 | 00:14:35 | |
"Trust doesn't look like attention." Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| A Real Life Moment of Resistance & a Heartfelt Debate w/ Janice Porter about Relationships Now | 12 May 2026 | 00:51:30 | |
"The obsession with up and to the right is definitionally gonna make you less effective because it forces you to act in ways because it forces you to act in ways that are contrary to the natural flow of how things change." Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Businesses are Systems & Systems Will Resist Change, Until You Give Them a Really Good Reason Not To | 08 May 2026 | 00:16:50 | |
"Every system is working exactly as designed. Even when those designs weren't intentional. Especially when those designs weren't intentional." Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Why They Like You But Won't Hire You: Selling in a Trust-Made Way | 06 May 2026 | 00:10:50 | |
"People liking you is not the same as people trusting you. It is simply not the same." This episode is about why nice people get ghosted. Why saying "yeah, I can do that" on a sales call is a death trap. And why you're burning trust all the while they are telling you how much they like you... Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Sick Towns, Extraction & the Future of Place: If we change the community, we can change the culture with Jeff Siegler | 29 Apr 2026 | 00:47:13 | |
What does your neighborhood have to do with your business or your capacity to lead? More than you think. Jeff Siegler spent years running Ohio's Main Street program — traveling community to community, dispensing conventional wisdom about economic development, watching none of it work. Until it dawned on him: they had misidentified the problem. And when you misidentify the problem, every solution makes things worse. In this episode of Damns Given, Nick sits down with Jeff, author of Your City Is Sick and founder of Revitalize or Die, to talk about what we've actually built over the last 50 years, why it's making us sick, and what the science of place tells us about human behavior, trust, and the kind of economy we're living in. This conversation goes places you won't expect. They cover:
Nick closes with his own reflection: trust is physical. It happens in the body. It happens in the spaces where we actually live and breathe and see each other. And any organization trying to build trust while ignoring its physical presence in the world is fighting against every human instinct it has. This one will change how you think about where you work, where you shop, and where you live. Jeff Siegler: revitalizeordie.com | Your City Is Sick available now More at damnsgiven.com | TrustMadeGrowth.com | CultureCraft.com Key quotes: "We keep building the sets of zombie movies, and then think it's weird that people are responding like zombies." "Growth is equivalent to improvement — that is such a fallacy. It's like saying putting on weight is getting healthier." "We adapt to our surroundings. When you realize it's more of a science than an art, that there are proportions and ratios... places that we think are beautiful, places we want to aspire to, it's not a mystical thing. It's liberating." "Trust is incredibly physical and personal. It happens in the body. It happens in our physical spaces. It happens where we live, where we breathe, where we see each other. If we're trying to overwhelm the body's system for trust with a ton of digital overrun — it's going to exhaust you, your organization, and everyone involved." "If we could just change the culture here, we could clean up the community. You've got it backwards. Clean up the community and the culture changes." Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| The Three Systemic Changes that Created the Trustbroken Era and the Foundations of Trust-Made Growth | 24 Apr 2026 | 00:18:02 | |
Something went wrong in the way we build companies. Not because anyone was evil. Not because the tools were bad. But because a series of well-intentioned shifts — the social web, the data-driven management era, the touchless transaction economy — accumulated second and third level consequences that nobody planned for and most people still haven't named. Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| How Trust Really Works: Opening the aperture and expanding the pool of meaning so we can hear and see each other | 22 Apr 2026 | 00:21:18 | |
What does a Trust-Made decision actually look like in practice? Don't guage it by the marketing discourse who want to frame it in moralisms, political side-taking, and feel good "integrity" vibes. A starving lion has integrity. It's authentic as can be. And it'll still eat you alive. YOu should not trust it. Quote Referenced: “Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable.” - David Augsburger Links:
Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Don't Wait for Things to Get Better: Recognizing Contraction and Taking Action | 17 Apr 2026 | 00:26:10 | |
Something is happening across almost every industry right now and most leaders are incentivized to ignore it. Nick calls it contractive behavior. And once you know what to look for, you'll see it everywhere. Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Using AI without It Using You: AI Risk, Labor, Dangerous Incentives, What Joe CEO Should Do with Tim Marple | 14 Apr 2026 | 01:08:37 | |
Tim Marple has a PhD in political science, spent time at Google and OpenAI, and left before his equity vested, unwilling to accept what staying would cost him. Now he co-leads Maiden Labs, a nonprofit focused on measuring emerging technologies effects on society and the economy. In short, he's the guy to talk to about what happens when you build AI into your business, and what's really going on with Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and the other big players. Nick and Tim start with the Anthropic Mythos announcement and work their way through some of the most important questions in the AI conversation right now: Why do AI labs have every incentive to scare you? What's the difference between framing and informing? Why is the government their most important buyer? What is the actual impact of AI on careers and job prospects? And what should a CEO who isn't an AI teetotaler actually do? They cover the strategic independence argument — why locking yourself into one AI provider right now is the equivalent of making all your employees sell their cars and take Uber, before Uber raised its prices. They cover the Klarna story and what the CEO didn't tell you when he said he rehired all the humans. They cover labor displacement, the gig-economification of knowledge work, and the project Tim's running at Maiden Labs called Cubit: measuring job vulnerability for almost every role and task imaginable. And they end, genuinely, with hope. Not the utopian kind. The kind that comes from sitting with your disappointment long enough to see what you actually believe. In this episode: The Anthropic Mythos announcement and what to make of it. Why AI labs have strategic incentives to misrepresent their models. The blackmail story and what the documentation actually showed. Why emotional reasoning beats analytical reasoning in a vacuum of meaning. The government as AI's most important and most gullible buyer. The case for strategic independence over AI teetotaling. What Klarna didn't tell you. The ONET and Helm datasets and how Maiden Labs is measuring labor vulnerability. Why the discovery moment ends — and why every lab knows it. The Uber metaphor and what it means for your tech stack. And why Tim left OpenAI before his equity vested. Subscribe at damnsgiven.com Join our community at TrustMadeGrowth.com Work with Nick at www.CultureCraft.com Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| All I Have to Sell You is Scar Tissue: A Quick and Deep Dive in How Change Happens | 10 Apr 2026 | 00:15:47 | |
A CultureCraft client once described working with Nick as "getting smashed in the face and then hugged afterward." Nick can't disagree, and in this episode he unpacks exactly why that's the goal. Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Be Worth Talking To: How to Ask Better Questions in an Attention-Starved World | 07 Apr 2026 | 00:16:07 | |
Ep 2.04 Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| AI Transformation Hype and the Future of Software with Amy Carrillo Cotten | 31 Mar 2026 | 01:01:20 | |
Episode 2.03: In this episode of Damns Given, host Nick Richtsmeier interviews Amy Carrillo Cotten, an expert in engineering transformation who answers the question, "What's the future of software engineering now that AI is here?" Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Radical Specificity, Quitting LinkedIn, and the Challenge of Building ONLY What you Want | 16 Mar 2026 | 01:07:08 | |
Should you quit LinkedIn? Should you move aggressively upmarket? How little can you do to still build what you want to build? Episode 2.02: In this episode of Damns Given, host Nick Richtsmeier interviews Jacob Warwick, who in early 2026 left his network of over 30,000 professionals behind by deleting his LinkedIn account. Given his incredible journey with LinkedIn, Jacob is among the least likely people who should have quit the platform. LinkedIn made his business, so why quit now? Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Reducing Cognitive Load, Freeing Minds, and Digital Minimalism with José Briones | 16 Feb 2026 | 00:56:44 | |
In this episode, Nick Richtsmeier launches the pod into its second season with with guest Jose Briones, a digital minimalism strategist. They discuss the importance of digital minimalism in recovering balance in a technology-saturated world, the decline of trust in institutions, and why we can't all just go buy dumb phones and quit the internet. They explore the need for a low-tech life, the skills we are losing as humans, and the role of AI in degrading not just connection but intellectual capacity and curiosity. The conversation emphasizes the importance of skepticism towards technology and the need for local engagement to foster community connections. A must listen to for leaders who are trying to build anything grounded in trust and for all of us who find ourselves wanting a more analog and less algorithmically defined existence. Takeaways
References Enshittification by Cory Doctorow Moving Offline Substack by Jose Briones Low-Tech Life by Jose Briones Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Internet Poisoning and What to Expect in 2026 with Brad Farris | 03 Nov 2025 | 00:38:06 | |
Sometimes you become a part of the thing you're trying to fix. And as the internet content world crashes around us, pulled to the floorboards by AI, Brad and Nick reflect on the work of podcasting and content creation, focusing on some hard lessons learned in the last year. But beyond just ruminating on what's gone wrong (and how that, in a very meta way, is what has gone wrong with this and many podcasts), the hosts pivot to big changes coming for Working/Broken and what that means for people who want to make a difference in the world we're making together. Chapters 00:00 00:56 03:10 05:54 08:45 11:51 14:43 19:51 23:48 27:42 31:32 34:16 Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Trust is All We Have Left and Marketing Apocalypse with Brad Farris | 09 Oct 2025 | 00:38:37 | |
In this episode, Brad and Nick dive into what marketing is becoming now that we live in a post-trust, post-algorithm, post-authenticity world. They’re not interested in tactics—they’re interested in how the deep cultural forces reshaping trust, commerce, and identity are scrambling what it even means to “market” something. Together, they explore:
This is a powerful conversation for anyone who senses that our current approach to audience, storytelling, and persuasion has gone stale—but hasn’t quite found language for what’s next. As always, the episode lives up to the Working/Broken premise: challenging listeners who followed the rules of the game, only to discover the game changed mid-play. Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| This is the Wrong AI, We Weren't Built for This with Alexandra Pasi, PhD | 23 Sep 2025 | 00:47:52 | |
In this episode, host Nick Richtsmeier sits down with Lexi Pasi, a PhD in Communication and expert in the field of AI, to unpack what’s actually happening to our attention, language, and selves in today’s online environments. Lexi brings academic depth, cultural critique, and personal insight to the conversation—exposing how platforms not only distort what we say, but who we become in the process. Lexi and the hosts explore questions at the heart of the Working/Broken project: What if the reason work—and life—feels so off is because the very mediums we communicate through are bending us into shapes we didn’t choose.They tackle how social media trains us to self-narrate constantly, creates performance-driven personalities, and incentivizes simplistic, binary, hot-take thinking over honest, complex, and often uncertain expression. Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| The Myth of Inevitability and AI's Culture Grab with Brad Farris | 31 Jul 2025 | 00:40:26 | |
This episode isn’t about AI. Not really. It’s about the stories we tell ourselves about technology, power, and what we’re allowed to feel. Nick and Brad take apart the myth of inevitability around artificial intelligence—specifically large language models (LLMs)—and ask who benefits from that myth. Spoiler: it’s not you. Nick’s viral post about saying “no” to wearable AI at the dinner table sets the stage. What followed? A flood of people thanking him for drawing a line—and another flood accusing him of condemning his children to a lifetime of ruin. The episode explores what it means to lead with agency, discernment, and humility in a culture obsessed with optimization. Brad reminds us that the promises of tech are almost always overblown—and the consequences are rarely predicted. (Remember when the internet was going to make us all smarter?) Together, they call B.S. on the assumption that every AI advancement is a step toward progress. They don’t offer easy answers—but they do offer a better question: “What are we becoming as we adopt these tools?” Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Higher Ed vs Hiring: The strange incompatibility of these old friends with Brad Farris | 14 Jul 2025 | 00:30:24 | |
On this episode, we tackle a longstanding battle that has nearly boiled over: the role of college in career-preparation. Or, more specifically, why do hiring managers still require degrees for new roles? And should they? The old biases persist: many hiring managers still view a degree as a shorthand for maturity, responsibility, and readiness. But with roles evolving fast and the shelf life of job-specific skills shrinking, is that shortcut doing more harm than good? In the end, Brad and Nick are do what they always do, plunging us into the fundamental question of what higher ed's job is and should be in a functioning society... and is this a functioning society at all? Together, they explore:
Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Theft is So Cool Right Now - Is Ownership Dead? with Brad Farris | 17 Jun 2025 | 00:28:18 | |
In this introspective and timely episode, Brad and Nick take on a deceptively simple question: Do we really own our ideas anymore? Prompted by Nick’s recent experience of having his writing lifted and reposted—sometimes respectfully, sometimes not—the conversation weaves through authorship, digital ethics, AI scraping, and the deeper emotional terrain of publishing on the internet. What begins as a conversation about plagiarism quickly becomes something bigger: a meditation on intellectual generosity, attribution, and the meaning of creative work in a remix culture. Nick wrestles with the tension between wanting his writing to matter and his desire to be part of the conversation his work sparks. Brad adds reflections on how creative inspiration often flows from one source to another and how acknowledging that is more art than science. In this jam-packed discussion, they also hit:
At the core: the internet changed how we think about ownership. AI is changing it again. So where does that leave creators, thinkers, and leaders trying to say something real? Referenced Resources:
Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Nick Power: The Essential Art of Being Real on the Internet | 30 May 2025 | 00:46:17 | |
In this wide-ranging interview style episode, host Nick Richtsmeier sits down with one of the most unexpected and impactful voices on LinkedIn in 2025: Nick Power, the marketer and writer behind a wave of unfiltered, politically-aware, and often hilarious posts that challenged the business-as-usual tone of the platform. What began as a creative shift away from conventional “thought leadership” turned into something larger: a community movement, a form of resistance, and an experiment in what truth-telling looks like on a platform built for polished personal brands. In this episode, we unpack the unexpected intersection between late-stage capitalism, artful forms of digital protest, and rethinking the religion of personal brand. The Nicks take us through their takes on what the #weirdLinkedIn movement meant, and what happens next. Resources Referenced
Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| More Politics at Work, Please with Brad Farris | 21 May 2025 | 00:42:30 | |
In this timely and unfiltered episode, Brad and Nick explore the increasingly tangled relationship between politics and work culture. They ask the central question: Has politics become so pervasive that it’s breaking our ability to lead, work, and think clearly? Key Themes:
Notable Quotes:
Referenced Resources: The Cult of Creativity by Samuel W. Franklin Tangle Newsletter Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Sex and Fear Still Sell Right? Well, at least Fear - with Brad Farris | 06 May 2025 | 00:40:04 | |
In this thought-provoking episode, Nick and Brad unpack how fear has traditionally been used as a primary tool in marketing and communication—from political campaigns and media to brand messaging. Drawing on personal experience in marketing and spiritual development, they challenge whether fear-based messaging is still effective or ethical in a world that's rapidly waking up. Key Takeaways:
Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| No One Knows What's Going On with Brad Farris | 10 Apr 2025 | 00:37:40 | |
In this powerful and timely episode, Nick Richtsmeier and Brad Farris dive into the pervasive undercurrent of fear that’s shaping both politics and the workplace. From the physiological and psychological roots of fear to its impact on leadership, decision-making, and organizational culture, the conversation explores how fear manifests in leaders and teams alike. Nick breaks down the classic "Four F's" of fear—fight, flight, freeze, and fawn—and how these instinctive reactions show up in modern leadership contexts. Brad adds depth by highlighting how fear hijacks our ability to think clearly, and how leaders can regulate themselves to respond rather than react. This episode is packed with real-life leadership tensions, practical self-regulation strategies (aka “the ice pack”), and some sharp reflections on how fear gets coded into everyday business language. It’s a must-listen for anyone navigating uncertainty, leading in turbulent times, or just trying to stay grounded. We live in a time where leadership is both at risk and never more needed. And the line will be drawn based on how leaders deal with fear. 📚 References & Mentions Books, Articles, and Ideas: Movies:
Psychological Concepts:
Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Being Authentic Kinda Sucks with Brad Farris | 18 Mar 2025 | 00:38:41 | |
Authenticity had a good run, or so it may seem. In this thought-provoking episode of Working Broken, hosts Nick Richtsmeier and Brad Farris dive deep into the concept of authenticity in a world increasingly dominated by artificiality, distrust, and digital noise. As they wrestle with the idea of being true to oneself in an environment filled with deception—fake resumes, spammy AI-generated outreach, and manipulated social trust—they ask: Is authenticity still working, or is it broken? Brad comes into the discussion feeling disillusioned, questioning whether it's even possible to be authentic online without being drowned out by the noise. Meanwhile, Nick pushes back, arguing that authenticity is the last battleground of personal integrity. Together, they explore the overwhelming labor of simply existing in today’s digital world, the impact of a fractured internet, and whether showing up authentically still holds value. Through personal anecdotes, cultural critiques, and practical insights, they reach a nuanced conclusion: authenticity has been weaponized against us, but it remains one of the few tools we have to create meaningful connections. The challenge is not just figuring out how to be authentic but where to show up and engage in ways that align with the world we want to build. Tune in for a candid, insightful conversation about trust, digital engagement, and reclaiming authenticity on your own terms. Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| The Myths of Mentoring OR Why There are So Few Leaders with Brad Farris | 12 Mar 2025 | 00:37:28 | |
In this episode of Working Broken, hosts Nick Richtsmeier and Brad Farris explore the complex and often misunderstood topic of mentoring. Is it truly about passing knowledge from an experienced leader to a junior employee, or is it a two-way street that transforms both mentor and mentee? Nick and Brad examine how business leaders struggle to delegate responsibilities effectively, often clinging to the idea that “no one can do it like me.” They discuss the distinction between training, managing, and mentoring, highlighting why mentoring is the most challenging yet rewarding of the three. True mentorship is more than just transferring skills—it’s about modeling leadership, fostering growth, and embracing change in both the mentor and the mentee. The conversation delves into why many leaders resist mentoring, fearing the vulnerability and openness it requires. They also unpack the generational shifts that create friction in the workplace and challenge outdated notions of leadership. Is mentoring broken, or is it simply that today’s leaders are struggling to embrace it? By the end of the episode, Brad makes a compelling case: mentoring isn’t broken—leaders are. When done right, mentoring can build stronger organizations, create lasting relationships, and develop the next generation of business leaders. Join Nick and Brad for an insightful, sometimes therapeutic, discussion on what it truly takes to lead in a way that fosters trust, growth, and lasting impact. Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| The Strange State of Email Marketing | 21 Feb 2025 | 00:26:32 | |
In this episode of Working Broken, Nick Richtsmeier and Brad Farris take a deep dive into the world of cold emails—why they’re everywhere, why people swear by them, and whether they actually work. Spoiler alert: they’re not fans. The conversation kicks off with a story about a salesperson convinced that blasting out 50 cold emails a day would bring in business. Months later? One booked meeting. That sets the stage for a bigger discussion about why businesses keep turning to cold outreach, even when it’s painfully ineffective. They explore how digital marketing strategies have changed, why email is still hanging on as a go-to tactic, and the psychological appeal of avoiding rejection through automation. But the real heart of the episode isn’t just about why cold email doesn’t work—it’s about what does. Nick and Brad reflect on how business used to be done, back before inboxes were flooded with generic pitches. They talk about the power of relationships, trust, and actually taking an interest in potential clients rather than treating them like numbers in a system. The contrast between transactional outreach and genuine engagement is a big theme, and they make a compelling case for why businesses should rethink their approach. By the end of the episode, they address email marketing's impact on company’s culture in ways that might not be obvious at first. Turns out who we spam and how says a lot about who we are. Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Growth vs Scale: The Silicon Vallyification of Everything | 04 Feb 2025 | 00:31:49 | |
In this episode of Working/Broken, hosts Nick Richtsmeier and Brad Farris dive deep into the burning debate: Is it better to grow naturally, or should you aggressively scale your business? With wit and candor, they explore how the meaning of “growth” has evolved over time—from organic, sustainable expansion to the manufactured, high-speed push for scale that risks sacrificing client experience. Drawing on industry insights, personal anecdotes (including Brad’s weight-loss journey as a metaphor for shrinking old habits), and even a nod to that iconic Jerry Maguire moment, they challenge the status quo. Whether you're an investment advisor, a creative services leader, or simply a business owner questioning the path to success, this episode will inspire you to rethink your strategy and decide which game you really want to win. Tune in and join the conversation—because friends don't let friends work broken! Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Measurement Mafia: Examining the Religion of ROI | 04 Feb 2025 | 00:34:57 | |
In this episode of Working/Broken, Nick Richtsmeier and Brad Farris peel back the curtain on the wild world of marketing metrics. They dive into how even the biggest advertisers are left scratching their heads—overspending on TV ads that mysteriously boost sales, while 30-50% of online clicks turn out to be fraudulent. With plenty of humor and hot takes, the hosts break down insights from Lindsay Slaby—the “CMO Whisperer” at David Baker’s MYOB conference—and ponder if our obsession with precise ROI is just a modern-day myth. They question whether chasing data-driven attribution is really working, or if it's time for service firms to ditch the digital funnel and focus on building genuine trust instead. Tune in for a refreshingly candid discussion that challenges the status quo of digital marketing measurement. Outside Resources Referenced: Join Nick and Brad as they unravel the complexities behind digital metrics and challenge you to rethink what really drives value in today’s marketing landscape. Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||
| Hustle Culture: Can You Productivity Your Way to Success? | 04 Feb 2025 | 00:33:35 | |
In this lively debut of Working/Broken, hosts Nick Richtsmeier and Brad Farris dive headfirst into the world of hustle culture—tracing its evolution from the early days of knowledge work to today’s digital grind. With a mix of humor and sharp insight, they debate whether the “work harder” mantra truly paves the way to success or if it simply sets us up for burnout. Along the way, the duo dissects modern hustle icons like Mr. Beast and Elon Musk, unpacking how their narratives—full of bold risks and alleged simplicity—might actually mask a more complex reality. Ultimately, Nick and Brad challenge listeners to rethink relentless hustle in favor of creative balance, arguing that sometimes stepping back can be the smartest move in an era where the old rules just don’t add up. Outside Resources Mentioned:
Tune in for a thought-provoking and entertaining look at why hustle culture might just be broken—and what we might do instead! Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. | |||