Episodes

Make It So is my new eight-week seminar, and this episode is the full walkthrough — what it is, who it's for, and why I built it around practice instead of prediction. The name comes from Jean-Luc Picard: you're telling me you want to do something, so do it. And there's research behind that instinct. Herminia Ibarra at London Business School has shown that identity shifts when you apply what you're learning — you can think about something extensively, but real learning starts when you make it r...

A reader told me my AI-assisted essay didn't sound like me anymore. That critique kicked off a week where reputation and AI collided in public three times: Substack's new Pangram "human-detection" scan, LinkedIn's AI-slop report button, and the backlash over an influencer's OpenAI brand trip. Each one exposes the terms platforms are quietly setting for anyone with a public body of work. This episode is me working out how to stay visible without giving up my own ground. Pillars: Trust · Visibili...

If knowledge I gave a company five, ten, or twenty years ago is still generating value for them, why does the payroll relationship get to end while the value extraction doesn't? That's the question driving this episode. I read and respond to an excerpt from a LinkedIn post by a former colleague about AI systems that capture and index employee knowledge — the recordings, conversations, and stories that make expertise valuable — so all of it stays discoverable inside a company long after the perso...

Episode: What the YAP Challenge Teaches Us About Trust, Presence, and the Future of Work In this episode, I dive into the phenomenon of Jessie Jean's YAP Challenge—a 30‑day video‑creation program that has taken the creator economy by storm. Her first cohort brought in $1.2M, and the second crossed $6M, all at a price point of $297. I'm not interested in the hype or the mechanics of her launch; I'm interested in the trust behind it. Why This Challenge Captured My Attention I explore why so many ...

What Is an Assumption-Ground Audit? Introducing Make It So | Hope + Possibilities Episode description The assumption ground audit is a structured practice for surfacing the beliefs, values, and past experiences that silently shape your decisions — at work and in life. In this episode, Nola Simon introduces Make It So, an 8-week cohort built around everyday futurism and the assumption ground audit as a leadership practice. What is an assumption-ground audit? An assumption-ground audit is a re...

In this episode, I dive into trust through a pop culture moment that became a global case study: the Coldplay kiss cam incident. What looked like celebrity gossip actually opens up bigger conversations about leadership, workplace ethics, public perception, and how we decide who and what to trust. Time-Stamped Highlights 00:00 — I introduce the episode and explain why trust is the real story behind the viral Coldplay kiss cam moment. 02:00 — I recap the incident and how it became a ...