AI Won’t Replace You. Someone Using AI Will | Ashley Stahl on Career Reinvention
Diary of a CFO | Financial Strategies for Smart Business GrowthShow Notes
Sponsored by BetterHelp. Start your growth journey with a credentialed therapist and get 10% off at https://betterhelp.com/kingdems Ashley Stahl believes the future of work will not simply be about AI replacing humans. The bigger risk is being replaced by someone who knows how to use AI better than you. In this episode of Diary Of A CFO, Ashley Stahl joins Ademola Odewade for a powerful conversation about career reinvention, artificial intelligence, leadership, personal branding, intuition, entrepreneurship and finding meaningful work. Ashley’s own career has been anything but linear. She moved from national security into career coaching, entrepreneurship, authorship and helping experts turn their ideas into powerful signature talks. Her journey demonstrates why the skills developed in one chapter of your career may become your competitive advantage in the next. One of Ashley’s central ideas is simple: you cannot think your way into career clarity. You have to explore your way into it. Careers are experiments. Reinvention requires the willingness to test, learn, fail, recalibrate and move again. We explore: Why successful careers are no longer linear How to know when your career is genuinely misaligned The difference between your values and your skill set Why career transitions should not automatically be feared How Ashley moved from national security into entrepreneurship Why a TEDx talk transformed her career How storytelling can create business opportunities Why intuition matters in leadership and business decisions The difference between intuition and impulsiveness How executives can create space for better decisions Why clarity comes from experimentation rather than overthinking How transferable skills can power career reinvention How AI will reshape careers Why employees who learn to leverage AI could outperform those who resist it Why follower count may be one of the most overrated personal-brand metrics How executives can build authority through ideas rather than virality Ashley explains that her TEDx experience became a major catalyst for her new career and showed her the commercial and professional power of developing a signature message. And on AI, her message is especially important: AI still requires strong prompts, strategic thinking and people who understand how to deploy it effectively. If you are a CFO, finance leader, executive, entrepreneur or ambitious professional wondering how to remain relevant as AI transforms work, this conversation is for you. 🎧 Diary Of A CFO explores the strategies, technologies and leadership principles shaping the future of finance and business. 🛠️ Explore the tools we use to create, grow and scale our podcasts and digital ecosystem: https://kingdemspodcast.com/tools
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Your customers are not lying in your surveys. They simply do not know why they do what they do. Cop a copy of my books NOW: https://mybook.to/TheAI-PoweredFuture https://mybook.to/HumanLedFinance Host live webinars and restream them to LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook: WebinarGeek (paid link): https://webinargeek.com/product?red=kdemsc Get paid to put your expert judgement to work training AI: Ethos (paid link): https://agent.askethos.com/refer/nd01w7e2eelw Earn from your professional expertise on frontier AI projects: Mercor (paid link): https://t.mercor.com/neABb Turn customer insight into a boardroom-ready deck in minutes: Gamma (paid link): https://try.gamma.app/f2d4kygskm1h Automate the analytic grunt work so your team can focus on the human questions: Make (paid link): https://www.make.com/en/register?pc=kingdemspodcast Johanna Faigelman is a cultural anthropologist, speaker and the founder and CEO of Human Branding, the Toronto consultancy she launched in 2006 to apply anthropology to business strategy. She is the pioneer of Applied Anthropology Thinking (AAT)™, studied at York University and ran planning at a large advertising agency before going out on her own. Human Branding now has more than 40 people working across North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America, with clients including 11 of the world's top 20 pharmaceutical companies and brands such as Nestlé, Visa and Logitech. She is an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2026 Ontario finalist, an EY Winning Women 2025 honoree and a 100 Women to Know Winner 2026.
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Most transformation programmes fail because the organisation is quietly protecting the very thing you are trying to change. Cop a copy of my new book NOW: https://ademolaodewade.com Turn transformation experience into paid advisory work — Ethos (paid link): https://agent.askethos.com/refer/nd01w7e2eelw AI labs pay highly-skilled experts — Mercor (paid link): https://t.mercor.com/neABb Build the culture diagnostic deck in minutes — Gamma (paid link): https://try.gamma.app/f2d4kygskm1h
Business valuation isn't a multiple of EBITDA. Cop a copy of my new book NOW: https://ademolaodewade.com Turn expertise into paid advisory work — Ethos (paid link): https://agent.askethos.com/refer/nd01w7e2eelw AI labs pay highly-skilled experts — Mercor (paid link): https://t.mercor.com/neABb Build the buyer deck in minutes — Gamma (paid link): https://try.gamma.app/f2d4kygskm1h Mark Mills OBE started Cardpoint plc from scratch in 2000. Two years later it floated on AIM at a £7 million valuation. By 2006 it was turning over £100 million a year on £19.8 million of EBITDA, and he exited in 2007 at £175 million. He now sells other people's businesses. One owner was told his company was worth £3 million. Mark sold it for just over £10 million. Nothing changed in the accounts — what changed was who the business was presented to, and why they needed it. In this episode: - Why bids from strategic buyers don't resemble a multiple of EBITDA - The £3m-to-£10m sale, and the buyer maths that produced it - Rule one of any business model: recurring income — learned from a payphone business that died in the 1991 recession - How Mark and his CFO reverse-engineered £100m of revenue onto a sheet of paper, then landed within 2% - Why "in three years" is a useless target and "by 31 August 2029" is not - Solving a working capital problem by finding a bank with too much physical cash - The one metric he never ignores when assessing a company for sale - FARM — why people work for Fun, Achievement, Recognition, then Money, in that order - Selling to strangers, and why referrals cannot scale a business - What AI actually changes about client acquisition and KPI monitoring - Realistic exit timelines: 12 to 30 months, not six Mark's book is Making Your Mark: How I Built a Fortune From £1.50 — and You Can Too. He offered listeners a free signed copy — email him at [email protected] with your address and he'll send one out. More from Mark: www.mark.co.uk · linkedin.com/in/markrichardmills Hosted by Ademola Odewade — chartered accountant, author of Human-Led, AI-Powered Finance (foreword by Professor Dave Ulrich), and Founder of K-Dems Consulting. The King Dems Podcast. Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights. Ranked in the global top 2% of podcasts. Diary of a CFO. Finance leadership, unfiltered. Ranked in the global top 2.5% of podcasts.This description contains paid links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. #BusinessValuation #ExitStrategy #DiaryOfACFO #KingDemsPodcast