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Episode 274
What do Ted Lasso, Korean skincare, a runaway car and being unexpectedly told you’re “foxy” have in common? More than you’d think, apparently.
After Ish narrowly avoids watching his car disappear backwards down his death-trap driveway, he and Sacha get into why Ted Lasso has become such a compelling picture of leadership. Not because Ted has everything sorted, but because he manages to combine optimism, vulnerability and genuine care with standards, honesty and a willingness to have the hard conversations.
Turns out kindness works considerably better when it has a backbone.
This episode is a love letter to Ted Lasso, but less about football and more about the kind of leadership the character represents.
Ish and Sacha unpack why Ted’s combination of kindness, optimism, vulnerability and belief in people feels so refreshing. He sees the person before the performance, takes time to understand what makes people tick and, rather than writing people off when they behave badly, keeps inviting them back towards the best version of themselves.
They also explore why compassionate leadership can look different depending on who is doing it, how Ted challenges some traditional ideas of masculinity, and why being vulnerable doesn’t mean turning your team into your therapists.
Along the way, there’s an All Blacks example of beautifully simple inclusive leadership, Sacha discovers perhaps the greatest unsolicited compliment ever received by text, and Ish shares what happens when someone keeps going after repeated career knockbacks rather than throwing their toys out of the pram.
Key Learnings

1. See the person before the performance
2. Call people in, not just out
3. Kindness needs a backbone
4. Optimism is something you can practise
5. You don't have to be a finished product to lead well

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Episode 273
Do you know your why? Your purpose? The deep, meaningful reason you leap out of bed every morning ready to change the world?
No? Excellent. You may be absolutely fine.
This week, Sacha takes aim at Simon Sinek and the whole “find your why” idea or at least the pressure that comes with it. Do we all really have one big purpose we’re supposed to uncover, or is that just another thing to feel behind on? 
Ish tries to work out whether purpose is something we discover, something we choose, or just a nice story we tell ourselves after accidentally ending up in the same industry for 30 years. Somehow this leads to Dolly Parton, coal, fake boobs, bad coffee and Ish going full Liam Neeson on a couple talking through a movie.
Ish and Sacha unpack why purpose can be useful, where it starts to get a bit wobbly, and why sometimes it’s perfectly okay to just be good at what you do, enjoy parts of it, and build meaning as you go. 
Key Learnings
1. You don’t have to “find” your purpose
Purpose doesn’t necessarily arrive as one giant revelation about what you were put on Earth to do. It may be something you gradually build by noticing what you're good at, what gives you energy, where you feel most yourself and how those things can be useful to other people.
2. Purpose and talent aren’t the same thing
You can be extremely good at something without it being your life's calling. Ish reflects on the idea that the abilities that have helped him succeed in the fitness industry could probably have been applied in plenty of other industries too.
3. A good purpose doesn’t rescue a bad product
You can care deeply about making the world's most meaningful cup of coffee, but if the coffee tastes terrible, people probably aren't coming back.
Purpose can strengthen a good organisation, but it doesn't replace quality, competence or commercial reality. Sometimes making a genuinely useful product, treating people well and running a sustainable business is meaningful enough.
4. Your company’s purpose doesn’t automatically have to become yours
Working somewhere whose values you believe in can absolutely make work more satisfying. But that doesn't mean employees need to absorb the company's mission as their personal reason for existing.
5. Purpose can change
Family, work, experiences and major life events can all change what feels meaningful to us. That doesn't mean your old purpose was wrong or your new one is somehow less authentic.

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Episode 272
What happens when being “the smart one” becomes part of your identity? Apparently, you get very good at constructing brilliant arguments for ideas that may still be completely terrible.
This week, Ish and Sacha get into the uncomfortable gap between intelligence and good judgement. There’s ego, groupthink, sunk costs, Harvard-sized imposter syndrome, a $200 million floating movie set, and the important reminder that sometimes the cleverest thing you can say in a meeting is: “Hang on… are we sure?”
They explore what happens when intelligence gets tangled up with ego and identity, and winning the argument becomes more important than making the right call. Sacha admits to occasionally wanting to make the other person’s argument for them properly before rebutting it, which is both impressively efficient and perhaps not the strongest foundation for collaborative decision-making.
The conversation moves through book smarts versus broader intelligence, the danger of mistaking confidence and eloquence for correctness, and why genuinely smart people tend to know the limits of what they know.
They also look at groupthink: what happens when a room full of capable people all agree, nobody challenges the direction, and everyone confidently marches towards the same cliff.
Then they ask one very useful question for projects, strategies and decisions that have taken on a life of their own:
If we hadn’t already started this, would we choose to start it today?
Key Learnings
1. Don’t confuse winning the argument with making the right decision
Being articulate, persuasive or quick-thinking can help you defend almost any position. That doesn’t make the position correct.
2. The smartest people stay open to being wrong
Real intelligence includes knowing where your knowledge ends.
3. A room full of smart people can still walk off a cliff
Agreement isn’t proof that a decision is good.
4. Don’t let someone else’s intelligence silence your own contribution
Sacha’s Harvard experience is a great reminder that being surrounded by impressive people can make us start discounting what we bring.
5. Previous investment is not a reason to keep making the same decision
The further we get into a project, the easier it becomes to build a convincing story about why we simply have to keep going.

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Episode 271
Ish arrives with a voice that sounds like it’s been dragged through gravel, but fortunately it’s not illness; it’s karaoke. Ten songs, a bit of Blues Brothers, and a final assault on Sweet Child O’ Mine will apparently do that to a man.
Once the vocal cords have been accounted for, we get into something most of us are probably terrible at: critical ignoring. Because between Slack, Teams, email, Instagram, notifications, hot takes, random rabbit holes and apparently an urgent need to learn everything about Mesopotamia, the problem isn’t just knowing how to think. It’s deciding what deserves your thinking in the first place.

This episode is all about attention: where it goes, what steals it, and why being able to deliberately ignore things might be one of the most useful skills we can build.
They explore the difference between critical thinking and critical ignoring, why businesses can’t be brilliant at everything, and how your diary and internet history may reveal your real priorities more accurately than what you say your priorities are.
There’s also a live inspection of Ish and Sacha’s Instagram algorithms, Sacha’s inability to finish researching skincare, the idea that your attention may need its own nightclub bouncer, and a mildly terrifying detour into AI agents that are apparently prepared to throw Susan out of spin class to achieve their goals.
Underneath all the chaos is a useful question: what are you allowing into your brain, and is it helping you do the things that actually matter?
Key Learnings
1. Decide what deserves your attention before you start thinking about it
2. Protect your best working time
3. Your actual priorities leave evidence
4. Make distraction slightly harder
5. Critical ignoring is not the same as avoidance
“Critical thinking matters. But first you have to decide what deserves your thinking.”

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Episode 270

This episode is about one of the most common promotion traps at work: taking the person who is brilliant at doing the job and assuming they’ll naturally be brilliant at leading everyone else who does it.
Ish and Sacha unpack why technical excellence and leadership ability are two very different things, why promotion has become the default way organisations reward high performers, and what can go wrong when somebody moves from doing the work to enabling other people to do great work.
They talk about paying your stars more instead of automatically giving them people to manage, testing internal candidates against the external market, looking for openness to feedback, and dealing with the awkward truth that the skill or behaviour you ignore now will probably become a much bigger problem later.
There’s also a lost Australian gig and a moment of silence for money never earned. Sacha discovering that relief can tell you quite a lot about the work you actually want to do, and a late recommendation for a TV series involving manipulated CCTV footage. Naturally.
Key Learnings
1. Being brilliant at the work doesn’t automatically make you brilliant at leading it
2. Promotion shouldn’t be the only way to reward great people
3. Leadership means shifting from “me” to “you”
4. Look for people who are hungry for feedback
5. Don’t hire internally just because it’s convenient