Prompt and Circumstance

About Prompt and Circumstance

It’s human-friendly banter about code, culture, and CEO reality checks—served up by Mike Richardson, Ryan Niemann, Mark Redgrave, and Tom Adams. No jargon. No hype. Just real talk from four guys who’ve seen it all, and aren’t afraid to say what everyone’s thinking.

Publisher

Mike Richardson, Mark Redgrave, Ryan Neimann & Tom Adams

Category

business · technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

9 Aug 2025

Latest episode

4 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

21 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   4 Oct 2026

   AI Demands Leadership, Not Just Tools

   AI adoption rarely fails on technology. It fails on leadership: teams resist changes nobody explained, annual planning cycles can't keep up, and the real bottleneck is often a person or a process, not a model. Long-time coach Tom Adams joins to unpack what two decades of work with founders, owner-operators and CEOs reveals about leading through this shift. The conversation traces a career from seminary and a menswear chain that grew to eight stores before collapsing, through a decade on the speaking circuit, to 22 years of coaching. Tom explains why he mirrors client problems into deliberate AI play rather than ROI-driven pilots, covering Eli Goldratt's Theory of Constraints, the shift from seasonal to structural uncertainty, and systems thinking, including why an undisclosed ChatGPT memo can trigger organizational rejection. The close looks at consumer agents going mainstream: Meta's Muse watching Facebook Marketplace, ChatGPT's agentic front end, and Gemini planning a complex Bali-to-London itinerary. The through-line: AI is a permanent condition of leadership, and momentum comes from small, reversible decisions. Highlights Treat AI as a permanent condition of leadership, not a project you implement and move past. Mirror real client problems into deliberate AI play instead of demanding ROI from every experiment. Use Eli Goldratt's Theory of Constraints to find the bottleneck before buying a tool. Treat uncertainty as structural and trust your ability to adjust, not to know everything. Map your company's system first: undisclosed chatbot use already creates organizational rejection. Watch Meta's Muse and ChatGPT's consumer agents teaching the mainstream how to use agents. Important Concepts and Frameworks Theory of Constraints — Eli Goldratt's idea that finding the business's biggest bottleneck unlocks more capacity and throughput. https://tocinstitute.org/ (https://tocinstitute.org/) Structural Uncertainty — The condition where unknowns arrive daily rather than seasonally, so leaders must act without full information. Systems Thinking — Seeing a company as visible and invisible dynamics where a push triggers reinforcing or regulating responses. https://thesystemsthinker.com/ (https://thesystemsthinker.com/) Trusted Advisor — What long-term coaching becomes: a truth-telling thinking partner for lonely leaders. Tools & Resources Mentioned Claude — An AI assistant Tom subscribes to and plays with alongside other models. https://claude.ai/ (https://claude.ai/) ChatGPT — Referred to as Chat; Tom's doorway into AI and now a consumer agentic front end. https://chatgpt.com/ (https://chatgpt.com/) Gemini — Planned Mark's Bali-to-London flights and now powers live conversational multi-agent platforms. Grok — The X bot named as the competitor Meta's Muse is responding to. https://grok.com/ (https://grok.com/) Meta's Muse — Meta's agent tool, used to watch Facebook Marketplace for interesting watches. https://www.meta.ai/ (https://www.meta.ai/) Calls to Action Pick one bottleneck in your business this month and run a small AI experiment against it. Block weekly play time and turn problems from client or team conversations into prototypes. Map your organization's system before rolling out a new AI process or memo format. Replace one yearly strategic decision with a monthly review to compress decision cycles. Test a consumer agent like Muse or ChatGPT Dots on a low-stakes task before scaling it. Key Quotes "Chat to me is the doorway drug, but it's not the solution." — Tom Adams "AI is a permanent condition of your role as a leader now." — Tom Adams "A lot of leaders are lonely and a lot of times nobody in their world is telling them the truth." — Tom Adams "You do not need to be a radically different leader today than you were two years ago." — Mark Redgrave "The best antidote is to actually think about the systems." — Mark Redgrave Chapters 00:00 — Why Great Leadership Still Wins in the AI Era 04:20 — From Seminary to Menswear to a Coaching Practice 09:49 — Replace AI Pressure With Deliberate Play 15:31 — Find the Bottleneck Before You Buy the Tool 17:20 — What's Really Behind Your Team's AI Resistance 22:55 — Leading When Uncertainty Becomes Structural 33:59 — Systems Matter More Than Effort 40:04 — When an Undisclosed Chatbot Reshapes the System 45:58 — Treat AI as a Permanent Leadership Condition 49:03 — Consumer Agents Go Mainstream Meet the Crew Mike Richardson – Agility, Peer Power & Collective Intelligence Website: https://mikerichardson.live/ (https://mikerichardson.live/) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agilityexpertmikerichardson/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/agilityexpertmikerichardson/) Mark Redgrave – Agility, People and Performance Website: https://www.shift-transform.com/ (https://www.shift-transform.com/) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mredgrave/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mredgrave/) Tom Adams – Executive Coach, Advisor & Trail Blazer Website: https://tomadams.com/ (https://tomadams.com/) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomadamscoach/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomadamscoach/)

2. 

   21 Sept 2026

   Driverless Cars, Chinese Models and the AI Cost Wall

   End-of-world AI headlines have you wondering whether to keep investing? Keep going, but watch the cost. Tom, Mike and Mark cover Tom's Waymo rides, Grok Bot's three-day training, cheap Chinese models. Mark calls labs' doom talk self-serving; Tom cites $1,000/month in subscriptions and API calls for a one-person operation, while DeepSeek and Kimi K3 run on your hardware. Highlights Riding a Waymo twice — including a tight LA street — turned a skeptic into a believer. Chinese models like DeepSeek Flash and Kimi K3 are fast, cheap and already in daily use. End-of-world warnings from AI labs read as self-serving cover for a first-past-the-post race. Route routine prompts to cheaper models; 99.9% of work doesn't need the newest model. One-person AI subscriptions and API calls now top $1,000 a month, and prices keep rising. Home-built tools are retiring WordPress hosting, Zapier and N8N subscriptions one by one. Important Concepts and Frameworks Grok Bot — Grok's bot platform that runs multiple bots inside your own private zone, working together on tasks. DeepSeek Flash — Chinese model Tom uses daily, built to need less memory because chips are scarce. Kimi K3 — Chinese model praised for development work and called unbelievably cheap at token level. Prompt Balancing — Sending certain prompts to cheaper models instead of defaulting everything to the newest, priciest one. Orchestrator Model — A premium model told to do no work, only pick and hand off tasks to cheaper sub-agents. First Past the Post — Mark's frame for the AI race: whoever gets there first could control every system and network. Open-Weight Models — Models you download and run on your own hardware, like Tom's Mac Mini, with no cloud call. Tools & Resources Mentioned Waymo — Driverless ride-hailing service Tom rode twice in Phoenix; it also cleared a tight LA street. Grok Bot — Bot platform pushed through a three-day money-making training, with a $200 commitment ask. DeepSeek Flash — Chinese model that is extremely fast and designed to run with far less memory. Kimi K3 — Chinese model Tom uses for development work; Mark's friend calls it really good. Fable 5.1 — Newest model Tom loads as an orchestrator rather than as a worker. Netlify — Hosting Mike used to deploy his event site until he ran out of credits. Zapier — Automation service Tom is down to two flows from, saving $300 a year. n8n — Workflow automation tool costing roughly $450 to $500 a year that Tom is retiring. Calls to Action Tally your monthly AI subscriptions and API spend before your next planning session. Inventory where work is hard or stalled, then map AI against those specific points instead of chasing tools. Test one cheap or open-weight model on real work before assuming you need the premium tier. Set a premium model as orchestrator and route the heavy lifting to cheaper sub-agents. Put the youngest people in your company in the room when you set AI direction. Key Quotes "It thought about it for a second, and then it totally did it." — Mark Redgrave "DeepSeek's Flash version, which just came out, is extraordinarily good. It's extraordinarily fast." — Tom Adams "To me, this is a completely self-serving false narrative, right?" — Mark Redgrave "I run an open weight model on my Mac Mini right now, and it works." — Tom Adams "The absolute truth is 99.9% of us do not need the latest fable, right?" — Mark Redgrave "There's a long list of things that could end the world. This might be another thing on the list." — Mike Richardson Chapters 00:00 — Riding a Driverless Car Twice and Trusting It 07:18 — Grok Bot's Three-Day Promise to Make a Bazillion Dollars 10:48 — The Cheap Chinese Models Nobody Talks About 14:01 — End-of-World Warnings Meet Blocked Data Centers 15:47 — Who Actually Benefits From the Doom Narrative 24:31 — A Manufacturer's Spec Sheets Finally Match the Floor 32:55 — Hedge With DeepSeek or Stay All-In on Anthropic? 39:24 — Prompt Balancing: Send Cheap Work to Cheap Models 43:10 — Retiring WordPress, Zapier and N8N Subscriptions 46:01 — Planning for '27: Inventory Your Friction First Meet the Crew Mike Richardson – Agility, Peer Power & Collective Intelligence Website: https://mikerichardson.live/ (https://mikerichardson.live/)LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agilityexpertmikerichardson/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/agilityexpertmikerichardson/) Mark Redgrave – Agility, People and Performance Website: https://www.shift-transform.com/ (https://www.shift-transform.com/) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mredgrave/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mredgrave/) Tom Adams – Executive Coach, Advisor & Trail Blazer Website: https://tomadams.com/ (https://tomadams.com/)LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomadamscoach/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomadamscoach/)

3. 

   24 Aug 2026

   Four Critical AI Bets Every Leader Is Making Right Now

   Most leaders are adopting AI tactically—testing tools, automating tasks, buying licenses—without realizing they’re actually placing big strategic bets about the future. This episode unpacks a simple but powerful framework (from Dan Pupius of The General Partnership) to help you see and shape those bets deliberately instead of accidentally. You’ll hear four key “AI bet axes” that sit underneath every AI decision: Token economics – Are you planning for compute to be scarce and expensive, or abundant and cheap? Model self‑sufficiency – Are you assuming today’s scaffolding, glue code, and workflows will still matter once frontier models get much better? Platform structure – Are you locking into a single AI provider, or designing for multi‑model flexibility? Trust and governance – Are you moving fast and cleaning up governance later, or baking in auditability and control from day one? The conversation connects these bets to real examples: an AI lead‑triage product for insurance (SimparaAI), how companies waste millions on tokens by defaulting to “latest, greatest” models, and the emerging role of routing layers like OpenRouter that sit above all the major LLMs. Layered on top of the four bets is an agility lens: don’t predict “the” future—set up your system to be ready for a range of futures. That means firing “bullets before cannonballs” (to borrow Jim Collins’ language): running small, reversible experiments, watching early signals, and preserving your ability to pivot when you’re wrong. If you’re a CEO, founder, or functional leader, this episode will help you: Expose the implicit AI bets you’re already making. Decide where you intentionally lean (e.g., abundance vs scarcity) and where you hedge. Design pilots, architectures, and governance so you gain AI value now without boxing your organization into fragile, high‑risk choices later. Highlights See every AI initiative as a portfolio of bets, not a prediction about “the” future. Use four axes—tokens, self‑sufficiency, platform, governance—to surface your implicit AI strategy. Avoid overpaying for tokens by routing most work to “good enough” models, not always the latest frontier. Assume models will keep improving; bet on integration, workflows, and change management, not wrappers alone. Architect for multi‑model flexibility so you can swap providers without breaking your business. Bake in audit trails and explainability now to reduce legal, HR, and cybersecurity risk later. Apply agile thinking: small experiments, early signals, and reversible decisions beat big locked‑in bets. Treat “bullets before cannonballs” as a design principle for AI pilots and investments. Important Concepts and Frameworks Four AI Bet Axes (Dan Pupius / The General Partnership) Token economics: scarce vs abundant compute and tokens. Model self‑sufficiency: model‑native capability vs heavy scaffolding. Platform structure: locked‑in provider vs commoditized, multi‑model. Trust and governance: permissive “move fast” vs constraint and oversight. Firm site: https://www.thegp.com/ (https://www.thegp.com/) Thesis: https://every.to/thesis/your-ai-strategy-is-making-bets-do-you-know-which-ones (https://every.to/thesis/your-ai-strategy-is-making-bets-do-you-know-which-ones) Token Economics / Tokenomics Cost dynamics of running LLMs (context window, model size, power requirements). Business implication: load‑balance workloads to cheaper “good enough” models. Model Self‑Sufficiency vs Scaffolding Question: “Would this product or workflow still matter if ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini/Grok got 10x better?” Highlights where integration, process redesign, and domain context create durable value. Platform Structure / Multi‑Model Strategy Risk of deep lock‑in to a single vendor vs benefits of an abstraction layer. Examples: OpenRouter – unified API over many models, with routing flexibility. - https://openrouter.ai/ - Google’s emerging platform approach to plug different models behind a common interface. Trust, Governance, and Auditability Building audit trails of conversations and model reasoning into products from day one. Recognizing AI as a new surface area for HR, legal, and cybersecurity risk. Agile AI / Optionality Thinking Don’t “pour cement” around assumptions that may shift. Design for fast, cheap, reversible changes in models, tooling, and workflows. “Bullets, Then Cannonballs” (Jim Collins, _Great by Choice_) Fire low‑risk experiments (bullets), calibrate, then scale with big investments (cannonballs). https://www.jimcollins.com/books/great-by-choice.html (https://www.jimcollins.com/books/great-by-choice.html) Tools & Resources Mentioned Simpara AI — Conversational intelligence for lead triage; multi‑agent conversations qualify inbound leads and reduce human chasing. | https://simpra.ai (https://simpra.ai) HR Voice Notes Tool — Voice‑note based HR tool (no explicit link given in transcript). Cadre AI — AI platform several peer‑group members are piloting for business impact. | https://www.cadre.ai/ (https://www.cadre.ai/) OpenRouter — Unified API gateway to many AI models; enables model routing and provider flexibility. | https://openrouter.ai (https://openrouter.ai) Kimi / K‑3 Model — Chinese model with generous/free access; illustrates downward pressure on token pricing. | https://www.kimi.ai/ai-models/kimi-k3 (https://www.kimi.ai/ai-models/kimi-k3) Groq — AI hardware and inference platform; cited as launching a powerful new product. | https://groq.com/ (https://groq.com/) Claude — Anthropic’s model family, including the large “Fable”-era model; key in the discussion on prompts and scaffolding. | https://www.anthropic.com/claude (https://www.anthropic.com/claude) Gemini — Google’s AI family; strong on platform and integration capabilities. | https://gemini.google.com/ (https://gemini.google.com/) Grok — xAI’s conversational model; another major frontier LLM. | https://grok.com (https://grok.com) Salesforce (“Clicks, Not Code”) — Example of configuration‑over‑coding philosophy applied to AI integration. |  https://www.salesforce.com/ap/platform/low-code-development-platform/what-is-low-code/ (https://www.salesforce.com/ap/platform/low-code-development-platform/what-is-low-code/) Ramp — Financial automation platform previously led by Dan Pupius. | https://ramp.com (https://ramp.com) Calls to Action Map one current AI initiative against the four bet axes (tokens, self‑sufficiency, platform, ...

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