Over the last 25 years, I’ve spent the majority of my working hours in 1-on-1 conversations with the best leaders out there.

Nothing intrigues me more than the tension they feel between deep impact and personal happiness.

For 18 years in the Christian non-profit sector and now 6 leading my own executive coaching firm, I have had the privilege of walking alongside leaders who are shaping their organizations and their communities.

And quietly getting more and more curious about their own lives. 

I partner with CEOs and business owners who are impacting others in powerful ways - and longing for lives that feel a bit more balanced, sustainable, and fun.

Alongside my team, I support Christian organizations with tailored coaching, leadership development, and consulting services, helping them deepen their missional impact by investing in their key leaders. 

If you’re leading world-changers and need some help - let’s talk. 

Shane Arthur

I build decks (sales & pitches, not patios) | professional magician | out here makin' friends

I used to help founders raise/sell millions with beautiful decks.
Now, I’m using AI to help humans heal their inner world.

Same storytelling skills. Different stakes.

I’m Head of Product & Ops at a stealth mental wellness AI startup, building games that help humans heal their relationship with self (the ‘what happened to you’ pieces).

On here, I talk about:
- Mental health & dopamine: the games our brains play, how tech makes it worse/better
- Storytelling: whether it’s a deck, a product, or a habit… story drives behavior
- Ops & product in the wild: what’s working (and not) as we build
- Books: I read 100+ a year and steal the best ideas shamelessly

For you? Well, you tell me…

Founder? Need a deck or website → DM and I’ll intro you to my partner. 
Ops/prod person? Follow for ops + AI wisdom from the trenches. 
Interesting human? Send me your favorite book rec.

Now we’re friends!

John Linford

Remember that incredible girlfriend? 
The one doing the nonprofit? 
She’s my fiancée now :) 

Happy to share a glimpse of my personal life with my professional circle. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming 😂

Helping humans heal | talking ops, AI, & books | professional magician | out here makin’ friends

Hot take: think Apple’s gonna die.

They’ve done a beautiful job with their products.

I’m an Apple guy, writing this on a Mac.

That said, in the coming days/times, what’s going to be prioritized are the interconnected, well-trained, and ubiquitous AI platforms. 

And for all the merit a closed ecosystem had..
It might be killing them for the future.

Case in point: swapped their AI to Gemini.

I think it’s because they didn’t have sufficient stuff to train models on. 

Couldn’t make it good.

I think they need to pivot, and become die-hard hardware / physical product gurus (more than they already are), open up their ecosystem, and figure out a way to intersect with the growing tide.

Else their phones / computers are gonna get left in the dust by the coming AI-enabled wave.

Right? Wrong? 
Would love to spark some debate here.

I’m trying to split my brain.

One half is slow.
Dialed.
Logical.
Meditative.
Principle-driven.

That’s the brain taking pen/paper notes.
Going on long walks. 
Sitting in silence.
Built for an older time. 

Other half is fast.
Task-switching.
Instictual. 
Keen. 
New. 

That’s the brain running four parallel agents.
Composing and responding instantly.
Referencing internal docs rapidly.
Built for a new age of speed. 

I think both are important. 

And learning about “fast-twitch” and “slow-twitch” brainpower is critical, and Thinking Fast and Slow is one of the best primers I’ve found for that.

Highly recommend, you read this one?

Amazing how many conventions from previous bosses carry over.

I still:
- run trainings like Dave Lainhart
- do sales calls like James Dawson
- do my calendar invites like Matt W Gore 
- adjudicate pro formas like Jed McCarthy
- think about strategy like Mark Josephson
- orchestrate project management like Matt W Gore
- run convergent/divergent thinking like Nathan Wallace
- think about stakeholder needs like Anna Schena Walsh

And so much more. 

Feeling grateful on this Friday. 

I’d love to hear about your conventions.
Who’s inspired you.
Let’s get some feel-good in the comments.

Lenny’s Podcast has been a hack.

One of the recent episodes with Lazar Jovanovic (professional vibe-coder at Lovable) helped me immensely as I’m trying to build out workflows that massively increase my productivity. Two salient points: 

- don’t spend credits iterating
- build in parallel

The first bit is counterintuitive.
How we used to use AI (read: chat) was like this:

‘Here’s an idea’
*ok interesting response*
‘Here’s some clarification’
*ok now that’s slightly better*
‘Here’s even more conversation’
*oh shoot now we’ve lost the plot*

AI loses memory/context quickly.
It’s getting there, but not there yet. 

So, better to start, feed it some ideas, but then take that *slightly* better idea, and toss it into a new chat/tab, then slightly improve with one extra bit of brainstorming. 

Then, when you have all the pieces built out, you feed the final framework, implementation plan, design inspiration in one swoop, and let it run. You can build with confidence then. 

The other piece should have been obvious:
Build with multiple agents/chats at once.

Instead of staring down at the one chat screen,
I’m now in Code, Cowork, and Chat (Claude)
All at one, running different projects. 

Once they have good prompts, the rest is just reading and prompting for the AI to continue on it’s track, which means you can context switch easier.

Starting to feel the additional benefits in a big way.

Feeling like I’m tapping at the promised productivity hacks of AI. 

What’s been a helpful hack you’ve been using as you’re building with AI?

I might have just seen the death knell of Saas. 

We implemented EOS over the last few months.

Highly recommend, gets everyone rowing well.

But we’ve been using this software to run mtgs. 
Called Ninety, it’s…fine. Does the job.

But I’ve been meaning to play around with Replit. 

So, I went to Claude,
Fed it a bunch of context,
Few images and tech docs,
Created a solid Replit prompt…

And in two hours of tinkering,
I remade Ninety.

Full stop.
It works. 

We’re gonna start using it next week. 

For reference, we were about to add a bunch more team members to this platform. At $10/seat, we were gonna be paying $100/mo for this thing.

The money isn’t the point.
The point is that I built it. 

And dumb SaaS should be quaking in their boots. 

If you’ve got a simple web page that you’re charging a comfortable monthly price for…beware. Me and my little army of AI agents is coming for you. 

Whaddya think? There a reckoning coming? 
And if this is ‘dumb SaaS’, what’s smart?

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The Battle

Shane Arthur

John Linford

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