598: From Gas Station Cashier to Billion-Dollar CEO with Shirin Behzadi
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
Release Date: 11/03/2025
623: Bain’s Rishi Dave, the Secret of Top Sellers (Strategy Skills classics)
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
In this episode with Rishi Dave, a partner in Bain’s Commercial Excellence practice with deep expertise in B2B marketing and digital marketing, he explains the concept of a “Day 1 List” in B2B sales and marketing and the three things that will get a supplier or seller on the list. Rishi also discussed what a “sales play” is, how to build it, institutionalize the knowledge within the company, and get the sales team to adopt the sales play to fulfill their potential and increase their productivity and sales. Rishi Dave partners with CMOs and management teams to drive marketing...
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622: Leadership and Self-Deception with Arbinger Managing Partner, Mitch Warner (Strategy Skills classics)
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
In this episode, we dive deep into the critical topic of self-deception and its profound impact on leadership and personal effectiveness. Mitch shares powerful insights on how self-deception can undermine our relationships and professional success, often without us even realizing it. He explains the concept of self-betrayal and how it leads to a distorted view of ourselves and others, creating unnecessary conflicts and reducing our influence as leaders. Mitch shares a valuable advice on how to rebuild trust in relationships damaged by self-deception and how to not let it happen again. ...
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621: Business Longevity Principles from Immigrant Entrepreneurs (with University of Oxford’s Neri Karra Sillaman)
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
Neri Karra Sillaman, entrepreneurship advisor at the University of Oxford and author of Pioneers: Eight Principles of Business Longevity from Immigrant Entrepreneurs, discusses why immigrant-founded companies are disproportionately successful and tend to last longer than their counterparts. Drawing on her experience as a former child refugee and on research that began with her PhD, she explains how longevity is built through clear vision, perseverance, community, shared value, and disciplined decision-making. She begins with the formative role of vision. At age eleven, while living in a...
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620: Former McKinsey partner on How to Turn a Profit and Improve Lives in the World's Toughest Places (Strategy Skills classics)
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
This episode examines what happens when strategy is applied in environments where institutional stability, reliable data, and conventional partners cannot be assumed. Former McKinsey partner and University of Notre Dame Professor Emerita Viva Ona Bartkus draws on decades of experience across management consulting, academic research, and frontline fieldwork in conflict-affected regions to explain why many standard strategy doctrines collapse outside developed markets. Bartkus reflects on her path through McKinsey, including what truly determines advancement inside elite professional services...
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619: Founder of McKinsey's Strategy and Corporate Finance Insights Team on Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies (Strategy Skills classics)
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
In this episode, Tim Koller, co-author of Valuation and a leading authority on corporate finance, offers a substantive examination of capital allocation decisions under real-world constraints. The discussion moves beyond theory to explore how CEOs and CFOs should approach resource deployment in mature, capital-rich companies—where investment opportunities are limited not due to lack of ambition but due to economic reality. Key insights include: - Share Buybacks as Rational Policy: Many firms undertaking significant buybacks—particularly in tech, life sciences, and consumer products—do so...
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618: Rethinking Capitalism, Innovation, AI, and the American Dream (with Elizabeth McBride and Seth Levine)
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
Elizabeth McBride and Seth Levine return to discuss the ideas behind their book Capital Evolution and the shifts they see across capitalism, innovation, and work. They describe conversations with young people who believe “socialism is the right answer,” and explain why “nearly half of people under forty now don't think that capitalism works.” They share experiences from a World Bank launch event where one attendee “jumped in his car and raced to get there” because he was “so engaged in entrepreneurship and this idea of we need to build things really rapidly.” Elizabeth explains...
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617: Inc 5000 fastest growing company on Psychology behind leadership influence and human behavior (with MichaelAaron Flicker)
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
Michael explains that people often struggle because “adding and adding must be more effective,” yet humans are “more confident when just one advantage is presented.” He shares that Five Guys succeeded because they “only do burgers and fries” and that “if you say you are best at one thing most of all, they’re more likely to believe that.” He emphasizes that “buyers…have a top force-ranked prioritization of the most important thing,” and focusing on the thing you are “best in the world at” is “more believable and more memorable.” On pricing, he notes that...
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616: NYU Stern’s Prof on How AI Is Rewriting the Future of Work (with Ben Zweig)
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
When most executives discuss AI, they focus on automation. Dr. Ben Zweig, NYU Stern professor and CEO of Revelio Labs, explains why the real disruption isn’t machines replacing people, it’s our failure to rethink how work is structured. “Labor markets are not as sophisticated as capital markets,” Ben explains. “We allocate capital efficiently, but not labor. That’s a huge weakness in how our economy operates.” In this conversation, we explore: Why every company must learn job architecture, seeing jobs not as titles, but as bundles of tasks that must constantly evolve. The...
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615: $12B Investment Firm CEO on Saving the American Dream (with Mark Matson)
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
In this conversation, Mark explains that “we often build our lives on things we are certain about that simply are not true.” He describes how “we don’t actually see the world… we see screens of how we think the world is.” He explains that these screens create “a double paradox” shaping what we think is safe, what we think is risky, and how we choose to act. Mark describes the difference between someone who sees a large employer as stability versus an entrepreneur who sees it as danger, saying “which screen is right? Well, it depends on which screen is going to give you more...
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614: Why Executive Leaders Feel Lonely
The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving
Adam McGraw is a Fortune 100 VP turned entrepreneur and co-founder of a leadership community. “We try and really curate it for folks that are in the VP and above through CEOs as well, founders, etc., so that they have this kind of safe white space atmosphere to really consistently plug in and build community.” “Not just transact network-wise in things that are typically narrow and niche… we really love the idea of a melting pot for leaders.” “This is kind of the new normal: constant change, constant uncertainty, constant transition.” “Being in crew keeps me grounded and...
info_outlineWhat does it really take to go from working as a gas station cashier to leading a billion-dollar company?
In this Strategy Skills Podcast episode, host Kris Safarova speaks with Shirin Behzadi, author of The Unexpected CEO and former CEO of Home Franchise Concepts, where she scaled the business to nearly $1B in sales across 12,000 cities.
This is a remarkable entrepreneurship journey and CEO story filled with powerful leadership lessons, proof that resilience in leadership is a superpower, and insights into how to do well despite adversity.
You’ll learn:
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How to define a vision and reverse-engineer your career growth
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Why asking for opportunities (even when it feels risky) can change your life
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The “secret sauce” of scaling a company to nearly $1B
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How to build personal growth through adversity
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What the future of leadership looks like with AI in business
📖 Get Shirin’s book: The Unexpected CEO
🌐 Connect with Shirin: shirinbehzadi.com | LinkedIn | Instagram
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