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Build Your Teaching Business One Episode at a Time

Mind Of All Trades Podcast

With Pol Cousineau

Get inspired by real stories and actionable strategies from people who’ve built thriving educational businesses from scratch.

Each episode gives you the tools to teach better, market smarter, and scale with purpose.

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Mind of All Trades
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Popular Videos

Part 1 - Sometimes You Are Not' an Imposter - Robin Quinn Keehn - Episode 1

Part 2 - How to Finally Have the Conversation You've Been Avoiding - Robin Quinn Keehn - Episode 2

Most People Are Failing Way More Than You Think - Alan Lazaros - Episode 3

Recent Episodes

Stop Being the Hero of Your Business - Bill Flynn - Part 2 - EP 9

Pol Cousineau

October 15, 2026

“The question you should be asking is: why did this decision reach me?” It’s the question at the center of what Bill Flynn calls decision capital.

In Part 2, Bill and Pol Cousineau dig into the hero trap: why leaders who were rewarded for years for having the answer end up as the bottleneck in their own business, and why pulling back can leave the team feeling abandoned. Bill explains his three leadership identities, the vacation test, and what a Navy submarine captain learned when he stopped giving orders. They close on why Bill sets standards instead of giving feedback, and the two steps he recommends for educational business owners stuck in the weeds.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

  • Why being the hero who always has the answer becomes a trap as your business grows
  • Bill’s three leadership identities: controller, builder, and architect
  • The vacation test, starting with a vacation from a single meeting
  • Decision capital, and the exercise that shows which decisions actually need you
  • How intent-based leadership turned the worst submarine in the US Navy into the best
  • Pre-mortems, after-action reviews, and milestones that keep projects on track
  • Why Bill sets standards instead of giving feedback, and how red, yellow, green check-ins work

Chapters:
02:33 – How Bill’s Books Help Him Reach a Million Lives
05:24 – The Idea Behind The Hero Trap: Controller, Builder, Architect
12:09 – Escaping the Hero Trap: Stop Making Every Decision
20:36 – Turn the Ship Around: Let Your Team Decide
25:33 – Making Failure Okay: After-Action Reviews and Pre-Mortems
30:10 – Milestones: Checking In Without Micromanaging
33:32 – “How Do You Know?”: Testing Your Assumptions
40:25 – Which Metrics Matter: Leading Indicators and Red, Yellow, Green
45:59 – Setting Standards, Outcomes, and Checklists
49:39 – Advice for Educational Business Owners: Vision First, Then Audit Your Offers
54:37 – Where to Find Bill and The Hero Trap

About Bill Flynn
Bill Flynn is the founder of Catalyst Growth Advisors and an executive coach, speaker, and advisor to CEOs of scaling companies. He teaches management science to CEOs and their leadership teams so they can take the guesswork out of growth. Bill brings more than 30 years of operating experience as an eight-time VP of sales, two-time CMO, and general manager of a $100 million-plus division, across 10 startups, two IPOs, and seven acquisitions. He is a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s MG100 coaching community, and his writing has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Training Magazine, and ATD. He is the author of Further Faster and is based in Greater Boston.

Bill’s new book, The Hero Trap, comes out in October 2026 and is available to pre-order on Amazon. It centers on his core idea: great leaders build organizations that make their own indispensability unnecessary.

Check out The Hero Trap book written by Bill Flynn: https://catalystgrowthadvisors.com/the-hero-trap/

Connect with Bill:

Website: https://catalystgrowthadvisors.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billflynnpublic

Want to be a guest on Mind Of All Trades? Apply here: https://mindofalltrades.com/podcast-application

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Customers Don't Buy, They Hire - Bill Flynn - Part 1 - EP 8

Pol Cousineau

October 12, 2026

“People do not buy products and services from you. They hire them to get a certain job or set of jobs done for them.” It’s the idea at the center of how Bill Flynn now teaches CEOs to sell.

In Part 1, Bill and Pol Cousineau dig into why most companies sell on the supply side while their customers buy on the demand side. Bill explains how studying decision science took him from struggling in his first sales job to being the number one or two salesperson everywhere he went, what a dining room table taught one condo developer about why people don’t buy, and how to interview customers so they tell you things they didn’t know they knew. They close on the three things thriving businesses get right, and why cash should be your primary financial metric.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

  • How Bill built a solo advisory business he works about 30 days a year
  • Why he chose Scaling Up over EOS, and why selling takes both competence and confidence
  • How studying decision-making turned his sales results around
  • Jobs to Be Done and Demand Side Sales 101: why customers hire products instead of buying them
  • The functional, social, and emotional reasons behind every purchase
  • How to interview customers like an investigative journalist
  • The three things thriving businesses get right: teams, systems, and cash

Chapters:
00:00 – Coming Up and Intro
03:43 – A One-Person Business Built Around 100 Days a Year
07:12 – Choosing an Expertise: Scaling Up vs. EOS
10:33 – Competence, Confidence, and Learning to Sell
17:58 – Jobs to Be Done: Why Customers Hire You
22:25 – Applying Jobs to Be Done to Training
25:37 – Turning Customer Needs Into Your Message
31:59 – Customer Discovery and Designing for What They Want
38:29 – Fewer Features, Fewer Bonuses, Clearer Language
41:36 – Bending the Curve: Why Most Businesses Struggle
48:51 – Getting Better and Aiming for a Million Lives

About Bill Flynn
Bill Flynn is the founder of Catalyst Growth Advisors and an executive coach, speaker, and advisor to CEOs of scaling companies. He teaches management science to CEOs and their leadership teams so they can take the guesswork out of growth. Bill brings more than 30 years of operating experience as an eight-time VP of sales, two-time CMO, and general manager of a $100 million-plus division, across 10 startups, two IPOs, and seven acquisitions. He is a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s MG100 coaching community, and his writing has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Training Magazine, and ATD. He is the author of Further Faster and is based in Greater Boston.

Bill’s new book, The Hero Trap, comes out in October 2026. Like Further Faster, it centers on his core idea: great leaders build organizations that make their own indispensability unnecessary.

Check out The Hero Trap book written by Bill Flynn: https://catalystgrowthadvisors.com/the-hero-trap/

Connect with Bill:

Website: https://catalystgrowthadvisors.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billflynnpublic

Want to be a guest on Mind Of All Trades? Apply here: https://mindofalltrades.com/podcast-application

Follow Mind Of All Trades:

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How to Turn One Book Into an App, Workbooks, and a Mastermind - Gary Mitchell - Part 2 - EP 7

Pol Cousineau

October 8, 2026

“I don’t know too many lawyers that can sit down and read a 300-plus-page book in their spare time.” That’s why Gary Mitchell didn’t stop at the book.

In Part 2, Gary and Pol Cousineau look under the hood at how Gary turned one book into workbooks, an app, and a masterclass, and how each piece fits into a ladder of offers that runs from a content subscription all the way up to premium one-on-one coaching. Gary explains how he designs each level around how people learn and how much support they need, why sharing your framework doesn’t cannibalize your premium offers, and the simple hiring rule that keeps you from burning out before help arrives. They close on A players, delegation, and the legacy Gary wants to leave.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

How Gary teaches the same message through one-on-one coaching, a mastermind, an app, workbooks, and retreats
Why peer learning works so well for risk-averse professionals
How the book became workbooks, an app, and a masterclass, and why giving away information doesn’t hurt sales
How Gary builds accountability into his mastermind, one commitment at a time
His 60/80/100 rule for knowing when to start hiring
The AI tools Gary relies on, and how he delegates the tech he’d rather not touch
How to spot your A players, and why it always comes back to attitude

Chapters:
02:32 – How One Book Becomes Workbooks, an App, and a Mastermind
09:13 – The Fear of Giving Away Your Content
15:21 – Designing Offers Around Your Clients’ Time
20:22 – Accountability and the Power of a Quick Win
23:29 – Why People Don’t Change Until It Hurts, and When to Hire
27:05 – Gary’s Tools and AI Stack
31:41 – Build Leaders: Strengths, A Players, and How Deep to Delegate
38:31 – Reasonable Expectations and Knowing Your Team
42:18 – Where to Find Gary’s Book and Program

About Gary Mitchell
Gary Mitchell is a law firm architect, business coach, and the founder of OnTrac Coach. Since 2005, OnTrac Coach has helped law firm owners create systems and processes to scale their firms for growth, increase revenues and profits, develop best leadership practices, build extraordinary teams, and gain more freedom. Gary has twice been named a top 10 coach to law firms in North America and is the author of four books, most recently The AND Approach: How to Grow Your Law Firm AND Gain More Freedom. Before coaching, he trained as an actor and singer and performed all over the world.

Chapter workbooks for The AND Approach are now available on Gary’s website, and he is launching The AND Approach Law Firm Growth Masterclass and The AND Approach Podcast.

Check out The AND Approach book written by Gary Mitchell: https://ontraccoach.com/the-and-approach/

Connect with Gary:

Want to be a guest on Mind of All Trades? Apply here: https://mindofalltrades.com/podcast-application

Follow Mind of All Trades:

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Why Letting Go of Control Gives You More of It - Gary Mitchell - Part 1 - EP 6

Pol Cousineau

October 5, 2026

“At the end of the day, you have more control over your time, your firm, your life, because it’s running smoothly.” That’s Gary Mitchell on the irony at the heart of what he calls The AND Approach.

Gary trained as an actor and singer, ran for parliament (and, in his words, thankfully lost), then spent more than 20 years coaching law firm owners exclusively. In this episode, he and Pol Cousineau talk about why so many owners become the biggest bottleneck in their own business, how to let go of control without letting standards slip, and why the people and systems you build are what finally give you your time back. The examples come from law firms, but the lessons carry straight over to any educational business with a team.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

  • How running a campaign for a first-time candidate led Gary to coaching law firm owners
  • Why trying to control everything creates a culture of dependence and makes you the bottleneck
  • The mistake Gary found in his own book after eight rounds of editing, and what it says about perfectionism
  • Why Gary tells clients to hire attitude over resume, every time
  • What McDonald’s can teach you about systems, onboarding, and getting new hires productive faster
  • The question that shows whether your business could run for two weeks without you

Chapters:
03:48 – From Acting and Politics to Coaching Law Firms
09:59 – Understanding the Lawyer Mind
13:16 – Managing Your Team’s Time Without Spyware
18:55 – Perfectionism and Why You Can’t Do It All Alone
23:01 – Starting With the Team You Have
31:00 – Your Right-Hand Person and the Freedom to Step Away
35:09 – Digging Into the AND Approach
41:23 – Asking Your Team What They Actually Want
46:12 – Systems, Processes, and Scaling

About Gary Mitchell
Gary Mitchell is a law firm architect, business coach, and the founder of OnTrac Coach. Since 2005, OnTrac Coach has helped law firm owners create systems and processes to scale their firms for growth, increase revenues and profits, develop best leadership practices, build extraordinary teams, and gain more freedom. Gary has twice been named a top 10 coach to law firms in North America and is the author of four books, most recently The AND Approach: How to Grow Your Law Firm AND Gain More Freedom. Before coaching, he trained as an actor and singer and performed all over the world.

Chapter workbooks for The AND Approach are now available on Gary’s website, and he is launching The AND Approach Law Firm Growth Masterclass and The AND Approach Podcast.

Check out The AND Approach book written by Gary Mitchell: https://ontraccoach.com/the-and-approach/

Connect with Gary:

Want to be a guest on Mind of All Trades? Apply here: https://mindofalltrades.com/podcast-application

Follow Mind of All Trades:

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The System That Keeps Your Business Running Without You - Lara Nieberding - Part 2 - EP 5

Pol Cousineau

October 1, 2026

“There is a time and a place for AI, and there is still a place and a need for an OBM in your business.” That’s Lara Nieberding’s own answer to the question Part 1 left hanging, and in Part 2, she and Pol get into exactly why.

This part picks up right where Part 1 ended: the actual system Lara builds so a business doesn’t depend on any one person’s memory. She walks through her “source of truth” method, the tools stack she relies on, how she manages a founder who never stops having new ideas, and how to structure a team meeting that doesn’t turn into a fight. Then, toward the end, she gets personal about something that’s affected her directly: what AI is already changing about her own industry, and what she believes still can’t be replaced.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

  • Why Lara tells AI the exact same thing she’d tell her own team
  • The tools stack that keeps everything (and everyone) connected
  • How to manage a founder who never stops having new ideas
  • How to structure a team meeting that doesn’t turn into a fight
  • What AI already took from Lara, and what she believes still can’t be replaced

About Lara Nieberding
Lara is a Certified Online Business Manager and the founder of Encore OBM. In her own words: her job is to make sure the right things (planning) get done in the right way (systems), at the right time (project management), by the right people (team management). She works primarily with business, marketing, and life coaches who offer online courses and programs.

Connect with Lara:

Follow Mind of All Trades:

Apply to be a guest here: https://mindofalltrades.com/podcast-application/

Join our membership waitlist: ⁠https://mindofalltrades.com/membership/

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What Happens to Your Business When You Disappear - Lara Nieberding - Part 1 - EP 4

Pol Cousineau

September 28, 2026

What happens to your business if you disappear? Pol has actually been asked that question himself, and Lara Nieberding has spent almost two decades building the answer for other people’s businesses.
Lara, known online as The Purple Lara, is a certified online business manager who has worked entirely virtually since 2007. She’s run six-figure coaching and consulting operations in fields as different as financial advising and holistic healing, and she earned her OBM certification in 2011 after training with Tina Forsyth. Her credo: “proper planning prevents poor performance.” In this episode, she and Pol get into what it actually takes to keep a business running when the person who built it isn’t the one holding it together day to day.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

  • The real reason Lara deliberately gives some clients a deadline that isn’t the real deadline
  • How to tell whether a founder and an operator are actually a good fit, before it becomes a problem
  • What happens when a launch goes sideways mid-campaign, and how to steer it without panicking the team
  • Why “what happens if you die” is a real planning question, not a morbid one
  • How Lara actually structures a project management system so nothing depends on one person’s memory

About Lara Nieberding
Lara Nieberding is a certified online business manager who has worked entirely virtually since 2007, running Encore Online Business Management. She’s a member of the International Association of Online Business Managers (certified 2011) and the International Virtual Assistants Association (member since 2007), and she calls herself a “Jane of all trades.”

Connect with Lara:

Follow Mind of All Trades:

Apply to be a guest here: https://mindofalltrades.com/podcast-application/

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