Hey, it’s Aaron. It’s Tuesday morning, and it’s one of those action-packed weeks.

I started out Sunday flying to Miami for Future Proof Citywide. This was my first time onstage for this event, and I did a joint presentation with Tom Fields of Fynancial and Mike Wilson of Hamachi to talk about what breaks when AI tries to scale. I was especially excited to be there to support the launch of Fynancial Pulse, an entirely new product that Tom and his team have built on top of MeetingOS.

Now I’m on a plane headed for New Orleans and the T3 Conference. My first T3 was in 2013, and Joel Bruckenstein never disappoints. I’ll be doing a fireside chat with my successor at Nitrogen, Dan Zitting, about AI transformation in organizations. I think a lot of wealth management leaders are going to love this session.

SO MANY of you pinged me back and wanted to get started with MeetingOS. I’ve been GREAT feedback from friends on how powerful it’s been to put a brilliant meeting strategist, superhuman memory, and hyper-intelligent Chief of Staff at their side.

I’ve got a special promo code for anyone who wants to try this out for ZERO cost for three months — just reply back and let me know! You can create your account for free by clicking here.

Welcome again to all the new folks! I love hearing from you, so send back questions, thoughts, ideas, or just a hello any time by hitting reply.

Remember, great leadership is contagious. Thanks for being here.

“Where is my new essay,” you say?

For those of you who were on the “OG” list for my monthly email, it was always just a list of links with great reads or listens of the month. Once in a very long while, I’d write something original and share it in that email.

Since I converted this over to an official email newsletter, I’ve managed to pull off a new essay every single month. Which is kind of wild, but every streak must come to an end, and this last four weeks have been PEDAL TO THE MEDAL since the Contio launch!

So my apologies, but no brand-new essay this month. I have one half done — on the topic of how to presume hiring candidates as unqualified until you can find the evidence to convict them of greatness — and I should be able to have that in good shape by next month’s email.

I guess you could call this proof I don’t just spit these out with AI? 😂 

In the mean time — I hope you’re not too disappointed with being presented with a very short but sweet re-run this month. This one got a lot of likes and comments back when I wrote it nearly ten years ago.

1% for you is 100% for them

I bought a tuxedo today. I rented for the Wealth Management Awards dinner, and then found I have three more events coming up where I need one, so it penciled out.

As I left the store, the salesman shook my hand and said “you’re gonna look good.”

It struck me as odd as I walked to my car. Good? Not great? Not amazing? Just good. Interesting. (I know, it’s quite possible that “good” is as good as it gets with this face!)

Then I realized, he’s probably said “you’re gonna look great” about sixty times today. So it felt natural to him to mix in a “good.”

But that one moment was 100% of my customer experience with him.

When you’re working with customers or partners, it’s important to remember that while you may have a lot of interactions with them, they’re only having one with you.

That’s why one of our core values at Riskalyze is delight: we believe in using every interaction with our customers — the product, a phone call, an email, even their bill — to delight them.

Make every customer experience count.

Great Reads / Listens of the Month

A few great articles or podcasts I’ve loaded into my context window this month…

• AI and the Human Condition. One analyst’s take on what is most likely to happen as we transition toward this world of abundance with artificial intelligence.

• Bret Taylor on Uncapped. This was a great interview — Bret Taylor is a top-10 technical CEO, having built Google Maps, served as co-CEO at Salesforce, Chair at Twitter before selling to Elon, Chair at OpenAI, and now CEO at Sierra, which is building agentic customer support solutions. Super smart guy.

If you have a suggestion for a great read or listen of the month, hit reply and let me know — if I love it, I’ll give you credit in next month’s email!

If I can help, let me know.

That’s it for this month! As a reminder, I am coaching five CEOs or leadership teams. That’s all I have time for, but I’m having fun doing it, and it’s allowing me not to pay myself a lot from the new company while we are in the build phase. 😉 

I don’t think I could have been nearly as effective for my team without the help of a CEO coach. There’s just something about having someone who has walked that journey before as a “safe” sounding board who you can speak freely to.

At the moment, all of my coaching slots are full, but I always build a wait list because a few of my coaching engagements are for six to nine months at a time. If you want to discuss, click here to learn more about my approach, and hit reply if you’d like to talk about it.