Podcasts

I don't run a podcast. But every so often someone invites me onto theirs to talk about Ambiki, The Problem-First Method, building software, or how speech therapy and code ended up in the same career.

Niels Brabandt had me back on the show, this time to talk about leading remote teams rather than product decisions. I've managed a fully distributed team from Japan for years, with teammates across the U.S. and several other countries, so we had plenty to squeeze into twelve minutes: hiring people who can work on their own and write clearly, setting explicit working agreements, defaulting to asynchronous communication, and making decisions in the open. We also got into why separating reversible decisions from irreversible ones speeds a team up, and why micromanagement is the fastest way to lose good remote people.

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Dr. Richard Shuster had me on The Daily Helping to talk about The Problem-First Method and the habit the episode is named for: falling in love with a solution before you understand the problem. We traced the thread that runs through investment banking, teaching English in Japan, translation software, and Ambiki, then got into why teams build too fast, whether the push comes from customers asking in solution language, investors, competitors, or AI making it cheap to ship the wrong thing. Richard's show is about purpose and doing good in the world, so we also talked about where the method applies outside of work, including on everyday family problems. He posted show notes on his site, and the full conversation is on YouTube.

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Vinny Livoti had me on the Assistive Tech Today Podcast to talk about AI in pediatric therapy and the line I think it shouldn't cross. The title is my argument: AI can take the documentation and the administrative work off a clinician's plate, but it won't replace the therapist sitting across from a kid. We covered how Ambiki uses AI to cut the paperwork that drives burnout, why I care about building it ethically, and the idea behind The Problem-First Method, that the tools only matter once you actually understand the problem you're solving.

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Chris Whitaker had me on The Wireless Way to talk through the difference between problem-first and solution-first thinking. We covered the tools from the book, including the feature alignment document, the problem atlas, and the five whys, and I retold the story of the teletherapy privacy feature we shipped without enough discovery. Chris's show lives in the mobility and IoT world, so we spent a good part of the conversation on how the approach applies outside software, and on AI, which has made building so fast that picking the right thing to build matters more than ever.

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Peter Okonkwo had me on P. English Literature, the literary organization he founded in 2020 that has featured more than 1,000 authors and was recognized as the first international BookTube show in Africa, for an author interview about The Problem-First Method. Peter is a poet with seven collections of his own, so the questions went places product podcasts don't: where the title came from, how the book got made, what it feels like when readers interpret your work differently than you intended, and what I'd tell writers still trying to get published. We got into the method too: why smart teams fall into solution-first thinking even when they know better, and how to slow down enough to understand a problem without losing momentum.

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Niels Brabandt had me on The Leadership Podcast to talk about why smart teams keep building solutions that don't solve the real problem. In ten minutes we got through a lot: why customers arrive speaking in solution language, how sales pressure distorts product decisions, and why "the competitor has it" isn't a strategy. We also got into the tools I use to keep a team honest, like feature alignment documents and problem-first statements. The episode is on Apple Podcasts as well, and Niels wrote a companion article for the NB Networks leadership blog.

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Will Holdren, with co-host Rick Segal, had me on the WillPower Podcast to talk about the move from CTO to founder. For three years I was the CTO at Sidekick Therapy Partners, where we grew from 70 to 180 clinicians, and I saw up close how much of a clinician's day gets eaten by software that was never built for pediatric speech, occupational, and physical therapy. Ambiki is the tool I wished we'd had. We also got into why these practices are so hard to run, what still carries over from those years, and the logistics of building for U.S. clinics from rural Japan.

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Mark Kennedy had me on Real Gaijin, his show about foreigners building lives and businesses in Japan, for the long version of how I got here: arriving at Kansai Gaidai with zero Japanese, two years in investment banking, teaching English at an eikaiwa, and teaching myself to code along the way. That path is how I ended up running Ambiki from a 40-home farming village, starting most days at 4 a.m. to overlap with the U.S. East Coast. We also got into the winter night my son had a febrile seizure and every neighbor came out to the end of their driveway to ask how they could help, which retired my complaints about neighborhood duty for good.

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Dr. Caroline Biesalski had me on The Inspired Choice to talk about building Ambiki therapist-first, the teletherapy privacy feature we shipped during COVID that no one ended up using, and the idea behind The Problem-First Method: understand the problem before you fall in love with a solution.

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Kim Dutro Allen and K. Todd Houston had me on Telepractice Today to trace how Ambiki began — where the idea came from, the early decisions that shaped it, and what it took to grow it into the platform speech, occupational, and physical therapists rely on today.

Telepractice Today has been delisted.