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

Quickly seeing these skills becoming valuable in an AI world:
1.	Reading fast
2.	Generalist education
3.	Passion for liberal arts

Seems like a full circle moment to me.

The people thriving with AI (excluding builders) are the ones who know how to connect dots across disciplines, who see context, who ask better questions than machines can answer.

It's the: "I really like to code but in my spare time I research the intersection between over the board chess strategies and macroeconomics"

or 

"Somedays, I just wanna quit my high-level corporate product job so I can start a woodworking shop, designing custom iPad cases"

That kinda vibe. 

David Epstein called this years ago in Range:

“In a wicked world, breadth beats depth.”

In his lingo, it’s all about kind vs wicked frames.

Kind systems:	
- Clear rules
- Repeating patterns
- Immediate, accurate feedback
- Skills gained through repetition

Think: chess, golf, math

Wicked systems: 

- Feedback is delayed or misleading
- Rules are unclear or incomplete
- Patterns are inconsistent
- Experience can mislead

Think: business, leadership, innovation

Important to notice,
Wicked systems 
(almost always)
Involve people!

(only broke that up for emphasis lol)

As AI takes over kind tasks, 
humans become orchestrators,
Managing chaos thru minion-power. 

Which means the skills of managers become preeminent. 

Really seems like the system of STEM-focus, being technical, is about to flip on it’s head.

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

Anyone else think about how you could kill it as an influencer, because you do such cool stuff on a day-to-day basis, but you don’t want to sell your soul or cheapen the incredible real-life experiences you’re having by manufacturing the setting for content? 

Cuz same.

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’m interested in connecting with AI-enabled PMs.
(product OR project managers)

Know anyone? 

I’m curious to know who’s actually using AI tools to do the product requirements, design, PRD-ing, translation to issues/stories, and follow-up with engineering. 

My theory is that AI is definitely helping,
But no one’s workflow is transformed yet. 

Our tech stack is AI-enabled,
No where close to AI-native. 

For us, we’re utilizing:
- Claude for brainstorming/sparring
- Google Docs for living source of truth
- Claude Code for translating PRD → issue
- Cubic for QA and some of our code reviews
- Linear for project management/accountability

I’m curious if I were to institute Base44 or Bubble to do wireframing or prototyping…is that gonna change our workflow dramatically? Better/worse? 

Curious to poll the audience.
Tag your best PM!

Want to invite your pondering on this:
Lucky versus leverage.

The more entrepreneurs and business folks I engage with, especially the high-flying successful ones, the more I’m convinced your first major win is luck.

Prevailing economic winds.
Problem/pain knowledge.
Right mentors, right time.
Solution earned insights.
Right offer, right time.

List goes on.

Anyone who is super successful and doesn’t give some small nod to luck is kidding themselves, IMO (open to counterarguements).

However!

Once you’ve gotten lucky, all the sudden…
You’ve got leverage. 

You’ve got connections
Equity
Money
Reputation
Previous ‘at bats’.

You can leverage those for additional success.

But that first catapulting?

Lotta luck in there.

Disagree? Agree? Tell me.

Product at early-stage startup means trampoline.
Bouncing from strategic to tactical, up n’ down. 

Acting as:

Product manager
(what are we doing this sprint)

Head of product 
(what are we doing this quarter)

Chief product officer
(what’s happening in five years)

Curious, what are the rules of thumb that guide when you hire to separate and reassign these combined roles? When should we think about giving other people my 3-4 extra jobs?

taplio

The Battle

Shane Arthur

John Linford

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The Battle

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