🧠 Erik’s Take

This reaction is more than a recap—it’s a confession. Erik shares his very real fear of solitude, of discovering he’s off course, and of what clarity might demand of him if he dares to seek it. It’s a vulnerable, reflective breakdown of the Kyle & Eli episode, and a deeper dive into why structured solitude might be the leadership development most of us are avoiding. The hardest part isn’t asking the questions, it’s what the answers will require of us.

🎯 Top Insights from the Interview

• Clarity Requires Commitment: Erik names what most people won’t: certainty obligates us. When you know what’s right, you can’t unknow it. And that’s terrifying.
• Solitude is the Shortcut to Alignment: ResetOS reframes solitude from scary to strategic. It’s all about intentional reflection.
• Conviction Is a Better Compass Than Momentum: When you’re already in motion, it’s hard to pause. But pausing might save you from racing in the wrong direction.
• We Overvalue Comfort and Undervalue Realignment: It’s easier to stay “kind of right” than to be forced into action by clarity.

🧩 The Personal Layer

Erik doesn't hide here. He talks openly about why he's afraid to do a solo retreat—not because he can’t face himself, but because he might realize he has to make changes he’s not ready to make. He also opens up about his admiration for Kyle & Eli’s partnership: the depth of mutual respect, the shared vision, the decision to build with each other, not just next to each other. And in his signature self-coaching tone, he invites listeners to examine the questions they might be running from—not because they're silly or unoriginal, but because they're real.

🧰 From Insight to Action

Here’s how Erik is thinking about applying the episode’s lessons:

• Schedule the Solo Time: Don’t wait for space—create it.
• Name the Fear: Articulate what you’re actually afraid of—action, not awareness, is often the culprit.
• Consider the Cost of Not Knowing: Wouldn’t you rather discover you’re on the wrong road early, before you’ve gone too far?
• Use What Ifs Strategically: Ask: “What if I had clarity?” instead of just “What if I’m wrong?”
• Don’t Disqualify Your Questions: Even the “unoriginal” ones matter deeply when they’re your questions.

🗣️ Notable Quotes

🔗 Links & Resources

• 🌐 ResetOS.co – Take the Clarity Assessment, join the Reset newsletter, or explore solo retreat options
• 👤 Kyle Nelson on LinkedIn
• 👤 Eli Libby on LinkedIn

🎙️ Episode Snapshot

Erik sits down with long-time friends and co-founders Kyle Nelson and Eli Libby, the creators of ResetOS, a clarity operating system designed to help high performers realign their internal compass before life forces them to. This episode dives deep into the transformational power of structured solitude, explores how pain can become purpose, and reveals how friendship and reflection can build more than just businesses—they can build lives.

👤 About the Guests

Kyle Nelson and Eli Libby are the co-founders of ResetOS, a personal clarity system built from their own stories of burnout, tragedy, and healing. Over 12 years of friendship and five businesses, they’ve seen success, suffered major losses, and built a unique process to help others find alignment through solo retreats. Their mission is to help people reconnect with who they are—and why they do what they do—before it’s too late.

🧭 Conversation Highlights

• From Collapse to Clarity: Kyle’s story of losing everything, from home to identity, and Eli’s rapid series of losses reveal the crucible that forged ResetOS.
• The Fear of Solitude: Why most people resist the very stillness that could change their life and how Kyle & Eli help them face it.
• Loneliness vs. Solitude: The program teaches how structured solitude can actually be the cure for chronic loneliness.
• Co-Founder Chemistry: How 12 years of friendship, deep assessments, and mutual respect shape their work and keep ego in check.

💡 Key Takeaways

• Fear Is the Gatekeeper to Growth: Most people resist solitude not because they fear being alone, but because of what they'll discover (and have to do with it).
• Your Answers Are Already Inside: The right structure and questions can help uncover what no coach or course can offer: internal clarity.
• Mature Misalignment Looks Like Success: Even people with the house, the job, the kids, and the money still wonder, “Why am I not fulfilled?”
• Partnership Requires Practice: The relationship between Kyle & Eli is a testament to what’s possible when founders prioritize mutual vision, honest questions, and emotional intelligence.

❓ Questions That Mattered

• “What happens if you don’t disconnect?”
• “Is this really the road I want to be on?”
• “What does fulfillment mean to you, not just to your industry?”
• “Can I be successful without being aligned?”
• “How do I lead my life without knowing what I believe?”

🗣️ Notable Quotes

🔗 Links & Resources

• 🌐 ResetOS.co – Take the Clarity Assessment, join the Reset newsletter, or explore solo retreat options
• 👤 Kyle Nelson on LinkedIn
• 👤 Eli Libby on LinkedIn

🎙️ Episode Snapshot

In this solo episode, Erik takes a sledgehammer to one of the most overused and misunderstood leadership questions: “How do I motivate my people?” He breaks down why motivation isn’t your job, and how alignment is the real lever leaders should be pulling. From hiring to training, development to retention, Erik reframes every step of the employee journey through the lens of alignment and shares the practical conversations that make it possible.

❓ The Big Question

What if the problem isn’t that your people lack motivation, but that your leadership lacks alignment?

💡 Key Takeaways

• You can’t motivate people. Motivation is internal. You can inspire, but inspiration fades fast.
• Alignment is the lever. Match what your people naturally want with what the business needs.
• Three alignment questions revolutionize interviews:
  1. What skills do you want to grow?
  2. What experiences do you want to live through?
  3. What responsibilities do you want to bear?
• Training fails when it lacks connection. Tie learning and feedback to what matters to the individual.
• Retention thrives on trust. The best way to keep your team is to understand their evolving motivations and speak directly to them.

🧠 Concepts, Curves, and Frameworks

• The Alignment Loop:
  1. Hire for it
  2. Train into it
  3. Develop through it
  4. Retain because of it
• Rules of Engagement: Questions to ask your team to understand how they operate, what drives them, and how to give feedback that actually lands.
• Misalignment ≠ failure: Acknowledging misalignment with honesty builds more trust than false positivity ever will.

🔁 Real-Life Reflections

• Erik shares the frustration he felt in early interviews hearing everyone say they wanted to be a manager until he changed the question set.
• He walks through powerful real examples of using alignment to shape feedback: reframing “you’re late” as a barrier to earning peer trust.
• Reflects on a personal turning point—realizing that trying to "motivate" people was exhausting and ineffective. Alignment made the job feel energizing again.

🧰 Put This Into Practice

• Update your interview flow: Start asking about skills, experiences, and responsibilities.
• Build alignment profiles: Know what each team member is actually trying to get out of work.
• Lead with why it matters to them when giving feedback, not just why it matters to you or the company.
• Have alignment check-ins: Especially for team members in year 2–5, when coasting and quiet quitting often sneak in.
• Be honest about misalignment: It’s okay to say “this task doesn’t align with your goals—but we still need to crush it.”

🗣️ Favorite Quotes

🧠 Erik’s Take

In this reflection, Erik breaks down his conversation with Alex Kudelka and extends the dialogue into a deeper meditation on one of the hardest (and most human) aspects of business: adding the right people. Whether it's a co-founder or a hire, getting the “who” right is make-or-break—and Erik’s vulnerable look at how pressure can lead to premature decisions is a powerful leadership check-in. This episode is a mirror for every founder and operator navigating the tension between urgency and fit.

🎯 Top Insights from the Interview

• The “New Color” Phenomenon: When you finally hire the right person, it’s like seeing a color you didn’t know existed. You can’t believe you ever settled for less.
• Mental Readiness > Job Description: Before writing the external job spec, leaders need to do the internal work, clarifying what they really want, and whether they’re willing to wait for it.
• Co-Founders vs. Hires: If you can name the deliverables, it’s a job. If it’s about mindset or relational complement, then it might be a co-founder.
• Rules of Engagement Matter: Whether it’s hiring or partnering, success often depends on how well you’ve defined the rules for when things get hard.
• The Universal Lesson: Whether in business, friendships, or life, being intentional about who you bring close is worth slowing down for.

🧩 The Personal Layer

Erik opens up about his own past pressures in hiring—especially in sales roles—and how easy it is to “cave” when urgency outweighs clarity. His honesty about never having a co-founder is refreshing and prompts meaningful reflection about the risks and rewards of sharing the entrepreneurial load. This episode captures Erik’s growing conviction that the people decisions in business are the deepest, hardest, and most impactful.

🧰 From Insight to Action

Erik suggests these real-life applications of the episode’s lessons:

• Pressure Test Yourself First: Ask, Am I willing to wait for the right person, or am I just trying to solve a short-term problem?
• Create Your Rules of Engagement: Whether hiring or partnering, define how you’ll handle conflict, misalignment, and tough calls.
• Revisit Your People Circle: Are you intentionally curating the right people in your business and in your personal life?
• Practice Better Questions: Vetting people well is a learnable skill. It starts with the right questions and active listening.

🗣️ Notable Quotes

🔗 Links & Resources

• Outdo Growth – Alex's company helping digital founders scale
• Alex Kudelka on LinkedIn – Follow for startup wisdom and leadership insight

🎙️ Episode Snapshot

Erik sits down with startup builder and Outdo Growth founder Alex Kudelka for a deeply honest and tactical conversation on what it really takes to build early-stage ventures. From co-founder dynamics to hiring pitfalls, from founder-led sales to the myths of scaling too early—this episode is a goldmine for founders navigating the messy middle of growth. The conversation balances strategic frameworks with hard-won lessons, all wrapped in Alex’s direct, insightful delivery.

👤 About the Guest

Alex Kudelka is the founder of Outdo Growth, a startup builder and marketing services company powering the growth engines behind multiple digital entrepreneurs. A multi-time founder with exits and failures under his belt, Alex thrives in the zero-to-one stage, bringing an unmatched ability to build, test, pivot, and scale emerging ventures. He’s commercially minded, operationally savvy, and refreshingly transparent about what works (and what doesn’t).

🧭 Conversation Highlights

• Startup Love Language: Alex thrives in the pre-50M, pre-500 employee zone where curiosity, chaos, and creativity collide.
• Iteration with Paranoia: Testing quickly is vital, but over-pivoting kills momentum. The magic is in data and discipline.
• Co-Founders Are Like Spouses: Your partner must be battle-tested, supportive, and complementary. Otherwise, it won’t work.
• Founder-Led Sales Isn’t Optional: Until you've sold it yourself (a lot), you don't have product-market fit.
• Hiring Fails and Frameworks: Outdo hired 50 people in 6 months. Only 18 remained. The lesson? Hire slow, ask better questions, and match energy to the actual role.

💡 Key Takeaways

• Love the Process, Not the Outcome: Founders who fall in love with testing and tinkering—not just the end goal—have more success (and fun).
• Healthy Debate Builds Stronger Startups: Co-founders must disagree well. Set “rules of engagement” for how to spar and commit.
• You Can’t Skip PMF: Selling something 10 times doesn’t mean it’s ready to scale. Rinse and repeat until signals are undeniable.
• Scope Creep Kills Service Businesses: Don’t be everything to everyone. Know your lane and stay ruthlessly focused.
• Responsibility is Revealing: In interviews, ask about the skills they want to build, the experiences they enjoy, and the responsibilities they crave.

❓ Questions That Mattered

• “How do you know when you’ve found true product-market fit?”
• “What do too few founders ask themselves before scaling?”
• “How should co-founders disagree, and how often should they?”
• “What do you listen for in a great interview answer?”

🗣️ Notable Quotes

🔗 Links & Resources

• Outdo Growth – Alex's company helping digital founders scale
• Alex Kudelka on LinkedIn – Follow for startup wisdom and leadership insight

🎙️ Episode Snapshot

In this solo episode, Erik unpacks the deeper leadership challenge that AI is creating—not just how to use the tools, but how to lead people who are using them. From data aggregation to automation to creation (and now even talent development), Erik lays out the evolving landscape and what it demands of leaders. He calls on listeners to ask better questions, adopt new hierarchies, and build resilient, QA-rich systems that keep humans accountable, creative, and connected.

❓ The Big Question

How do you lead people who are armed with AI superpowers without losing clarity, accountability, or culture?

💡 Key Takeaways

• AI isn’t just a toolset—it’s a leadership test. The speed and scale of AI output challenges how leaders assess, guide, and trust their teams.
• The top three business uses of AI today—aggregation, automation, and creation—each carry serious leadership risks.
• The fourth emerging use of AI—talent development—is a game-changer and a hopeful counterpoint to fears of job loss.
• Leadership structures must evolve: Think more editors, fewer creators, more QA layers, and a rethink of how strategy is built.
• If you lose your talent pipeline, you lose your future leaders. AI could flatten that path unless you actively rebuild it.

🧠 Concepts, Curves, and Frameworks

• 3 Primary AI Functions: Assimilation & aggregation, automation, and creation.
• 4 Core Leadership Risks in an AI-augmented workplace:
  1. Data without understanding (false insights)
  2. Automation without purpose (efficiency ≠ effectiveness)
  3. Content without clarity (more ≠ better)
  4. Team structures that don’t evolve (hierarchy misalignment)
• QA/QC Layer: Not optional. Needed to catch hallucinations, false causality, and mission drift.
• The Strategic Pyramid Shift: From strategist → creator → editor… to strategist → agent → many editors.

🔁 Real-Life Reflections

• Erik shares a cautionary tale from a global manufacturing firm that measured the wrong data for 10 years—up and to the right… until it wasn’t.
• He reflects on his early experiences at Yahoo! and the long tail of technological adoption lag in the workforce.
• Compares historical tech transitions (Internet, smartphones) to what we’re seeing with AI now and how the leadership failure modes are eerily familiar.

🧰 Put This Into Practice

• Install a QA layer: Don’t trust AI outputs blindly—teach your team how to verify, synthesize, and question.
• Don’t automate confusion: Only automate what’s been clarified and vetted.
• Rethink your hierarchy: Especially in creative teams, consider where you need editors and where strategy needs to scale.
• Protect the development path: Find ways for people to learn the craft before they wield the super tools.
• Invest in AI-powered learning: Tools like Erik’s Speechcraft offer a powerful counterweight to skill erosion.

🗣️ Favorite Quotes

🧠 Erik’s Take

Coming off a powerful interview with Alex Boyd, Erik takes a moment to unpack the core themes that resonated most. This reflection is a masterclass in translating deep conversation into leadership action. What stood out was Alex’s but his clarity, vulnerability, and the fearless questions he asks himself. For Erik, this was a model of self-aware leadership worth emulating.

🎯 Top Insights from the Interview

• Self-Reflection without Shame: Alex models the power of examining yourself honestly, without layering guilt or judgment. That subtle but crucial distinction makes real growth possible.
• Don’t Over-Forecast: Inspired by Warren Buffett, Alex warns against getting too specific in future predictions. Planning matters, but adaptability wins.
• Commitment to Process: From daily financial check-ins to larger business rhythms, Alex’s success is built on intentional, repeatable systems.
• Ease ≠ Comfort: A powerful juxtaposition. Ease allows for flow and clarity; comfort often signals stagnation. Leaders should know the difference.
• Rethinking AI & Talent Development: The episode opened with a strong take on how AI will reshape organizational structures, leadership, and skill-building. Alex and Erik challenge us to design with intention.

🧩 The Personal Layer

Erik doesn’t just observe Alex’s ideas—he tests them against his own life and leadership. His resistance to daily financial reviews? That’s real. But so is his recognition that routines—like workouts and journaling—are his equivalent “process.” He reflects on the tension between his desire to engineer outcomes and the reality of unpredictability. This episode became a mirror: how are you setting up your process? Are you confusing comfort with ease?

🧰 From Insight to Action

Here’s how Erik suggests applying this episode to your own leadership:

• Audit Your Self-Talk: Are you layering judgment onto your reflections? Practice nonjudgmental awareness.
• Define Your “Process Stack”: Identify 3–5 processes that consistently help you perform at your best—personally and professionally.
• Revisit Forecasting: Be specific in effort, flexible in outcome. Don’t build brittle projections.
• Ease vs. Comfort Check: Where are you staying “comfortable” at the expense of real progress?
• Rethink Your Organization for AI: If you’re using AI, are your leadership systems adapting alongside your tools?

🗣️ Notable Quotes

🔗 Links & Resources

• 💼 Connect with Alex Boyd on LinkedIn
• 📈 RevenueZen
• 🧠 Wildfront (coming soon)

🎙️ Episode Snapshot

In this layered and laugh-filled conversation, Erik sits down with multi-time founder and investor Alex Boyd to talk about the collision of AI, leadership, and personal transformation. What begins as a conversation about technology and team-building morphs into a masterclass on intentional leadership, career evolution, and building with clarity. From building software tools in 20 minutes to learning when (and how) to fire someone, this episode is equal parts real talk and roadmap for the next-gen leader.

👤 About the Guest

Alex Boyd is a founder, investor, and product strategist with deep roots in the startup and agency world. He’s the co-founder of:

• Wildfront – a micro PE firm focused on product-led growth and lean teams.
• Aware – a tool for managing relationship-based influence on LinkedIn.
• RevenueZen – an agency known for thought-leadership marketing.

Alex blends technical curiosity with a philosopher’s mindset. With a background in philosophy and a long career in GTM strategy, Alex brings rigor, creativity, and deeply human insight to how products—and people—grow.

🧭 Conversation Highlights

• The three primary applications of AI—and why only one of them really excites Alex.
• Why AI isn’t killing creativity, but is redefining what counts as creative value.
• How to avoid “perception gaps” when AI creates the illusion of competence.
• Alex’s evolution from agency operator to product investor, and how he built a life of ease, not hustle.
• Why the most dangerous employees are the ones you know should go—but feel like you can’t fire yet.
• Erik and Alex unpack what it means to lead imperfectly but powerfully in the face of complexity.

💡 Key Takeaways

• AI requires a team re-architecture. The best companies are replacing typers with thinkers and editors, not just automating.
• Output isn’t everything. Quality still trumps quantity, and leaders must coach teams through false confidence from AI-generated work.
• You don’t need a five-year plan. You need a strong feedback loop and the courage to pivot when the data tells you to.
• Leadership is learning to tolerate storms. Holding discomfort while staying honest and curious is the real job.

❓Questions That Mattered

• What happens when creativity becomes editing, not ideation?
• Are we eliminating the training grounds that once produced great leaders?
• How do you build a business that supports your best thinking?

🗣️ Notable Quotes

🔗 Links & Resources

• 💼 Connect with Alex Boyd on LinkedIn
• 📈 RevenueZen
• 🧠 Wildfront (coming soon)