Transcript Archive

Jessi Jean's YAP Challenge raised $1.2M in its first cohort teaching people to talk on camera. Nola looks at the trust mechanics behind it — social proof, network effects, low-risk mentorship — and how organizations could adapt the model to build skills, engagement, and belonging.

The assumption ground audit is a structured practice for surfacing the beliefs, values, and past experiences that silently shape your decisions — at work and in life. In this episode, Nola introduces Make It So, an 8-week cohort built around everyday futurism and the assumption ground audit as a leadership practice.

In this episode, I dive into trust through a pop culture moment that became a global case study: the Coldplay kiss cam incident. What looked like celebrity gossip actually opens up bigger conversations about leadership, workplace ethics, public perception, and how we decide who and what to trust.

Nola Simon spent 17 and a half years at a global financial services company, 16 of them in the American division with clients concentrated in Minnesota — which gives her an unusual vantage point on what's unfolding in the US. Her account runs against the common timeline: the pulling-back didn't start with tariffs, it started for her a decade ago, when the Obamacare rollback brought the medical-bankruptcy hardship calls back and she decided to reduce the American exposure in her career and life. The hard conclusion: change has to come from Americans themselves, because the hero narrative woven into American storytelling doesn't leave room for outside voices to land.

Exploring how declining trust in institutions connects to cultivating self-trust and inner practices as a foundation for navigating uncertainty.

Looking at 2026 and why the focus is shifting from hybrid/remote adoption to broader leadership decisions that will shape the future of work.

An honest look at how LinkedIn and social media are changing, and what that means for showing up, getting found, and building a business.

Amanda Cupido, founder of Lead Podcasting and TEDx presenter, on gaps in Canadian podcasting and how thought leadership intersects with broadcasting.

Ingrid Deon, award-winning entrepreneur, on putting the social in social media from a remote, rural location in Canada.

Milly Tamati, founder of Generalist World, on her journey from New Zealand and why being a generalist is a strength.

Hilke Schellmann on how AI systems are making employment decisions and why we need to fight back.

Rosie Sherry, founder of Ministry of Testing and Rosieland, was building communities before 'community manager' was a job — and she runs hers on an 80/20 rule: 20 percent conversation, 80 percent the artifacts around it, from articles to courses to the TestBash conference. She lays out how a deeply introverted founder designs events where nobody stands alone, why AI spam has become a structural threat to open communities, and what happens when the word 'community' gets borrowed as cover for agendas like return-to-office mandates or crypto launches. The through-line is ownership: member portfolios, photo memories, and data on platforms the community controls rather than rents.

Audio version of the conversation with Tamsen Webster on her book Say What They Can't Unhear and strategies for crafting messages that drive lasting change.

Meagan Williamson on her transition from social media to search-based marketing and how AI is changing discovery.

Karen Ferris on her book Be Remarkable — why the current leadership crisis demands adaptability, and what it means to show up as a leader worth following.

Ludmila Praslova on The Canary Code — designing inclusive workplace culture, starting with the design of the book itself.

Sweta Regmi — founder of Teachndo, a career consultancy for immigrants and newcomers to Canada and the US — clicked into a bank internship posting and found an AI assessment rating applicants' verbal communication from average to excellent, with no disclosure of how the rating worked, who reviewed it, or what happened to the qualified candidate whose accent, stutter, or timed-interview nerves the model read as a deficiency. She asked publicly. Nobody answered. A former hiring manager herself, she maps how these tools actually arrive inside companies: vendors sell packages to executives, hiring managers receive scores with no training, and personality tests get calibrated to clone last year's top performer. Nola brings the intersection — a soft-spoken voice Siri refuses to recognize, deafness in one ear, a daughter whose anxiety has nothing to do with capability. Recorded when Canada had no AI-hiring compliance at all, this conversation is an inventory of assumptions being encoded into hiring while nobody audits the auditor.

Cher Jones — personal branding expert, founder of Socially Active Training, and a LinkedIn Creator to Watch named by LinkedIn's editor-in-chief — works from one premise: you bring your brand to work whether you manage it or not. Brand is reputation with tooling, and the work is giving people the language to talk about you when you're not in the room. Nola's sixteen years siloed in the US division of her own company supply the field evidence, and an experiment run minutes before recording supplies the disruption: ChatGPT described Cher almost perfectly and had nothing on Nola — the gap between self-published presence and an externally verified record. From ERG roles negotiated like contracts to headlines that work like dog whistles, the conversation maps what it takes to be recognized, respected, and rewarded — and lands on the version of trust that matters most in hybrid work: a brand strong enough that you can be trusted to work without being monitored.

Nikolas Badminton on his book Facing Our Futures — how to use futures thinking as a practical tool for navigating uncertainty and making better decisions today.

Erica Ehm and Leslie Ehm — sisters, broadcasters, and now co-founders — give their first-ever joint podcast interview as they launch Ehm2, a presentation-skills venture built on a premise the training world almost never sees: two senior trainers in the room, cohorts of six, sold directly to individuals. The conversation covers what made Erica's Kurt Cobain interview endure, why listening is a speaker's secret weapon, the summer-camp childhood that built both sisters' confidence, and Leslie's frank accounting of why retirement isn't in her plan: a daughter who will always need her support. Underneath runs the sister dynamic itself — the quiet black sheep and the loud one, one plus one equals six.

Recorded in early 2022, in the show's first season — back when it was still The Janus Oasis — this is the episode Nola has cited most since. Todd Raphael, then with talent-intelligence platform Eightfold AI, lays out what changes when hiring runs on skills and potential instead of who-knows-who: the applicant tracking system holding a million ignored resumes becomes a pipeline, teachers become product trainers, furloughed cabin crew become a delivery workforce, and a reorganization that would have cut people redeploys them instead. The bias conversation is unusually concrete — vendor demos that promise to clone your top performers from one company's data, versus inferring potential from a billion career paths — and the episode lands on the claim that gives it staying power: used honestly, the technology frees recruiters to be more human, not less.