Transcript: Thriving in VUCA: The Entrepreneurial Mindset for an Uncertain World | Gali Bloch Liran (The Human Founder)

Eyal David: [00:00] Hey Gali, how's it going?

Gali Bloch Liran: [00:02] Hi, good, thanks, happy to be here.

Eyal David: [00:04] Yeah, this time on the other side — I hear people say that to you on other podcasts too. So give us a quick introduction for anyone who doesn't know you.

Gali Bloch Liran: [00:11] So I'm Gali Bloch Liran, founder and CEO of The Human Founder, a company that guides entrepreneurs, investors and executives — mostly in high-tech organizations and startups — through all the mental aspects of the entrepreneurial journey, through their growth and development across every stage of the startup. What does that mean in practice? Help with decision-making, help mediating between co-founders in times of crisis, help with the founder's own growth in the face of a changing, complex reality — all those areas. I lecture at Reichman University and IDC on conscious leadership and entrepreneurship. And like you, I have a podcast, The Human Founder, that deals with all the mental aspects of the entrepreneurial journey, and I wrote the book "The Human Founder," which distills all my thinking on this topic.

Eyal David: [01:05] Amazing. We'll put a link in the episode description. What we said we'd do is take a few topics from the course, from the book — you didn't mention the course — and really dig into them. I think it's very relevant for entrepreneurs, since the landscape has changed so much right now. So we wanted to talk about what to do with failure, and we tied that to your "why" too — both are big topics. But before that, I heard you talk somewhere about VUCA — tell us what that is for a second.

Gali Bloch Liran: [01:44] Okay, let me tell you a few things first, and then we'll get to what you wanted. It's actually great that you started with VUCA. VUCA stands for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous — words that describe a lack of certainty. It's a term coined by the US Army after the Vietnam War, and over the years it moved from the military world into the civilian world, into organizations. And how we navigate an environment that's fundamentally uncertain — that's the bread and butter of entrepreneurs, and it's also our bread and butter today as human beings, as citizens, as managers. This worldview says — and I think there's a nice connection here to what you talk about, entrepreneurship and product and builders — my worldview takes entrepreneurship way beyond just startups. To me, entrepreneurship is a mindset, it's DNA. I try to give my kids, and the people I work with, the "legs" of entrepreneurship. What does that actually mean? We're here with the ability to build, think and create — and what is entrepreneurship to me? How to take an idea and actually make it happen. That could be a business, it could be real estate you want to buy, it could be a personal goal you want to grow into, it could be a dream to travel to Japan, it could be starting a business, and it could also be starting a startup, or starting a VC fund. To me, all of that is a manifestation of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is a word that existed long before the world of startups and high-tech. And in today's worldview, with all the crazy, changing economic environments — interest rates, wars, tariffs, Trump, technology and AI disruption that nobody has a clue about and we're all just trying to understand and manage our FOMO — all of that creates a huge amount of uncertainty that hits all of us: as professionals, as managers, as human beings, as parents. And in my view, the entrepreneurial mindset is the most effective tool, because it holds so many components inside it. The entrepreneurial mindset is, to me, the tool for how to deal with this uncertainty, and how to even learn to thrive inside it — to grow and to see, in the things our default is often to see as a threat, opportunities instead. Because there's plenty that threatens us if we choose to look through that lens, but there's also endless opportunity, and to me that's the beauty of it — entrepreneurship helps us turn those opportunities into things...

Eyal David: [04:33] Bottom line, in the field. So you come in with a moment of reassurance, first of all, which is great, we can talk about that. I was thinking, as you were talking, about how my wife gets annoyed at me — there's a war, there's everything we've been through the past two years, and I keep going and doing things — like I'm repressing, basically. But yeah, I keep initiating things, I think, because I'm probably repressing. And suddenly I think this has become incredibly relevant not just to entrepreneurs, not just to people who go and start things, but to people who, they are forced to do so, right? It affects such a broad swath of life, whether we're talking about AI or changing interest-rate environments. So everyone finds themselves there now, and you come in with something that's a bit reassuring, I get it, that we're heading there.

Gali Bloch Liran: [05:16] I want to sharpen that a bit, if I may. I'm not coming with some kind of national reassurance. I'm simply saying: let's look reality in the eye, and understand what's in our power, and what our choice is, how to deal with it — in a way that has a very practical place. You talked about "doing" — I think doing is one of the things: calibrated, healthy, sensible doing. Because if we just get stuck in place, if we're just in avoidance every day and in the anxieties that feed us from the whole world, that just keeps digging us deeper into the hole, and into that loop of thoughts we're inside of. Whereas if we're in a state of doing, with more inner direction, and observing our thoughts, and with the ability to separate — okay, there are a ton of voices, versus what's actually in my power to do right now, in this moment, to advance this point — nobody, I think, is exempt from dealing with all the noise there is today in the world: about interest rates, about AI, about our kids' education, about what's happening in the country. Everyone, at whatever stage of life they're at, this meets them. Now, the question is what do we do with it: do we repress, ignore — that's also a strategy, one that will probably hurt us at some point — or do we choose to approach it proactively, with high agency, and ask ourselves: okay, this is the situation, how can I approach it? What's within me that I could do? That's what I call "doing." And it doesn't necessarily mean doing — sometimes it's also being, meaning a kind of presence in which I accept the thing, think about it, and how I approach it from there.

Eyal David: [06:53] Yeah, that's something that calmed me down — focusing on what you can do. But you're actually taking it somewhere — given everything that's happened here in the last two years — that you go through a kind of cycle, right? Repression, acceptance, and then eventually you find yourself in a place where you can actually do something. That's basically what you're describing here, if I understand. And that connects to the "why," right? Because you eventually find yourself at some "why" that probably carries you along this path and puts you in a place of doing something. Tell us a bit about what you actually advise entrepreneurs around the "why"?

Gali Bloch Liran: [07:33] Yeah, I'll tie it together. I think one of the important tasks we have on this journey called life — and this is very practical — is that we need to get to know ourselves along the way, and understand what we bring to the table and how we deal with things. We're not just our title — "I'm so-and-so at Google" or "I'm so-and-so at Amazon" — that's scenery that changes throughout life, through periods, through layoffs, through growth. I think we are the sum of our assets — part of that is strengths, part is our capabilities, part is values, part is life stories, part is traumas, part is our styles — the whole sum of the experiences, stories and abilities we bring into the story. One of those assets, to me, is the "why." At the base of my book, "The Human Founder," and at the base of the digital course I produced together with LahavTech and the Innovation Authority and Perlman Cohen, is a model I sketched that talks about two circles: we have the business circle, and we have the mental circle. And the claim I want to make is that you can't do only business, and you can't do only mental. A lot of times someone comes to start a business and only looks at how the cash flow works — but there's no emotion there, no connection to "why" they're going to do what they're doing. And there are cases where someone comes to start a business purely out of passion, pouring money into all kinds of things with no business perspective on whether the efforts are actually producing results — and if we don't look at that, it's not sustainable. My claim is that we have to constantly look at both of these circles. The mental circle talks about our "why," our values, our vision, our resilience, our relationships and communication. The business circle talks about funding, team, go-to-market, the business plan, IP, and so on. And only when we look at both, overlapping, like an infinity symbol, do we reach growth and success. Now, the "why" — the more we distill and connect to our inner "why," what drives us in life, then even on very hard days, and even when the path is unclear, reconnecting to that thing again and again will remind us why we're doing what we're doing, and what we're willing to sacrifice for it. In the book I give many examples, details slightly changed, of cases I've encountered personally as a coach and advisor to entrepreneurs — of how entrepreneurs lost their mojo because they forgot their "why," not because they wanted to forget, but because it's so hard, so overwhelming, that we disconnect from ourselves. And through tools, methodologies and deep work, reconnecting them to that thing — to a promise they made to someone, or a "why" that sits on something painful, something that happened to us or to someone close to us, and often also on a business level — we saw some arbitrage in the market, we saw huge potential in some trend — but something that touches us specifically at this moment. And I think distilling that and carrying it with you all the time — even when you're in a kind of negotiation with yourself and with the people close to you about why you're investing so much — going back to that point, like it's written on the whiteboard in the room or on the window, has immense value. I can share — I write about this in the book — why I do what I do: my whole life I moved between psychology and business. And when I was thirty, I lost my father — he died by suicide. He apparently had, back then it wasn't talked about, post-traumatic stress, PTSD from the army, from all the wars of the late sixties, seventies, Yom Kippur and so on, and we had no idea, we didn't know, we couldn't see it — only in hindsight did we start connecting the dots. That hit me at a stage in life when I was pregnant with our eldest son, on the way to a relocation, and slowly, inside me, something started brewing — how I connect my love for psychology, for people, for behavior, with my business understanding and my love for entrepreneurship, and with all the life experience and the dots I'm connecting. And somewhere in my mid-thirties, it all came together for me: I want to help entrepreneurs — people who are at their peak performance, who are supposed to know how to stop for a second and connect with themselves — understand how they take care of themselves on this journey and don't end up burned out, or depressed, or having their whole personal lives destroyed because of the price they have to pay. To help them save themselves a little from themselves. And that's where my "why" connected — and I get an echo of this from so many deep conversations I have with my clients, with entrepreneurs: that if I hadn't brought that pain and that trauma with me — which is of course managed and treated, but it doesn't disappear from life — I wouldn't be able to be at that same level of depth, openness, directness, honesty and sensitivity with them, to help them move from that place. And I think today, especially after October 7th and the "Iron Swords" war, and everything our country, our soldiers, our reservists, our entrepreneurs — all of us — are dealing with, each from their own place, this thing takes on much greater power. That value — how to grow out of trauma — is exactly what we all need today, both as entrepreneurs and as a country. And that ability, and the choice to give the world value through your story and through connecting to your own personal "why" — something that becomes a very meaningful impact — is, to me, a kind of self-actualization, a sense of satisfaction, a sense of wholeness. And that's also what I try to carry forward: because in the end, entrepreneurs who build a company or a startup, to me, are doing it as a way to realize a dream — a mindset that allows you to realize a dream connected to a very inner "why." That was a long answer, I hope I got there.

Eyal David: [15:15] A long answer, and one of the deepest we've had on the podcast. I'll say — you ran through it really fast, you said "briefly" but you ran fast, and it was really interesting, but the segue between your personal story and connecting it to the "why" — there's some path there worth taking a second to talk about, because it doesn't happen all at once. And another thing: taking the different puzzle pieces from your life — you talked about psychology, you talked about business — and tying it together into one thing you can offer. There are strengths here that, along the way, you mapped for yourself and understood — walk us through that process. How can I, tomorrow morning, or the listeners, also get to a place like that?

Gali Bloch Liran: [16:01] That's a really reflective question. I always say: we have "the thing," and we have "the process of the thing." Let me give you an anecdote: I was interviewed on some podcast a while back, and someone said to me, "Wow, you sound so precise" — and it was even a little... and I listened for a second to what he said, and reflected on myself (there's no such word in Hebrew, but I often "make" words like that). What matters to me to say is — it's exactly like you're saying, these are things that are built. I'm 44 today, I've been on this planet 44 years, at this stage of this journey called life. I really believe we're constantly developing and growing, and that our ability to take the sum of our experiences, the things we learn along the way, and observe them, and add them to our toolbox — that's the thing. It's also a belief of mine, but I also really think it's true: the ability to see everything that happens to us, and the stories, and to constantly be in that kind of awareness, and to ask — when will this connect, how will this connect — slowly helps us, when it starts connecting, to see it. And in my view, the basis for all of this is consciousness. What is consciousness? It's holding meditations, practicing mindfulness, being present and in inner dialogue with ourselves — it all comes back to knowing ourselves. Now let me tie this to your question. One of the problems I see with a lot of business people is that maybe they want to start a certain business, or a certain venture, but they don't make the conscious leap. That's exactly the leap I'm talking about. What is that leap? I just got back from a session with three entrepreneurs — I hold ongoing processes with a lot of teams. How are we able, sometimes, to also be the one sitting on our own shoulder, the observer, watching the dynamic that's happening — whether it's with a client, with an investor, or with my team, my co-founders — and to be in a place of observation, not a reactive place that immediately pushes back, or reacts, or feels, but from a place of: let's observe for a second what's happening here, what best serves the situation, how can I choose to respond, what am I learning from this, and what do I take from it going forward. And the stronger we get at these reflective questions, the answers don't come suddenly, but over the years you suddenly feel the impact. So the inner personal work — whether with a coach, a psychologist, or even on your own, meditating and reflecting on things — that's what, over time, builds the mental-conscious muscle, the ability to make those leaps, to know how to articulate them, to connect the dots, and to dive deep or see a lot of things. But that's the conscious axis, and it has to be at a very high performance level. Even when I set out on my own path, after being an officer in the army and coming back from South America, I didn't know what I wanted to study — so I went and studied two things, law and psychology. So what I want to say is: I don't know what the right path is, I don't know which professions are right for today, and I don't know what will be in a few years, and I don't think anyone knows — and even if someone says they know, well, okay, they say what they say. But it seems to me the thing is to constantly be learning — and learning that isn't only in school or university, it's a learning mindset. Alongside learning — because we also don't want to just constantly absorb — we need to be in persistence and in doing. And only that combination brings us results. I went out on my own after 15 years, during which I changed roles every two years — I absorbed a ton, I earned three degrees. That's part of the assets that came with me, along with the personal strengths and capabilities I built over the years. I still work a lot, and I'm very connected to what I do, but I'll call it persistence — I think that persistence, whether you choose to make a podcast, start a business, become an entrepreneur, or publish a book — every one of these projects, which are life projects, requires a lot of persistence, which for me rests on discipline. I'm a person with very, very strong self-discipline, and I think that's one of the most important things there is. But — and I want to double down on this — we don't want self-discipline so strong it takes us to the edge of asceticism and rigidity. That's where it gets dangerous. Sometimes, from too much self-discipline, we end up in a rigidity that doesn't allow us degrees of freedom: "you're going out to the kids for a second," or "you're resting today," or "your body is saying something doesn't feel right" — and the mind says "no, no, do it anyway" — that's already an unhealthy rigidity, and it will create burnout.

Eyal David: [20:55] That connects so much to the "why" you're describing — and also to the house of asceticism: if you take it to an extreme example, it takes us... because when I heard you, you were actually talking about reflection the whole time — does it have a name, a formula?

Gali Bloch Liran: [21:20] There is a formula, but it's not just in lofty words — it's very practical. So alongside consciousness, and alongside self-discipline and communication, there's also practice: you want to go start a business, a startup — the things are similar. Let's sit down, let's think about what our assets are, what our "why" is and our passion, how this can work as a business and what value I'm giving the world. There are a million models for this — a work model, ikigai, various theories — but then you need to sit with a laptop, open Excel or Google Sheets, or talk to a chatbot, and start laying down the building blocks: these are my products, these are my services, this is the talk I want to give, this is the book. How do I price this? Who are the customers? What's the product-market fit? When I went independent, before I'd even given a single talk, I had a vision in my head — I opened an Excel with topics, what image comes to mind from my life story, what message do I want to give. That was about three years before my first talk, but it was creative work that fed me with ideas that later became the basis for the book and the podcast. Even if you want to start a regular business tomorrow — a street shop, real estate, doesn't matter — start thinking: what am I going to do, who's going to buy it, what's the value proposition, how much will they pay, who among the people close to me can help me get it off the ground. When I went independent, I mobilized all the connections I had from 15 years as an employee. And I believe side projects are amazing — we need to manage what's called a "portfolio career." After I stopped being an employee I said: nobody is ever firing me again, nobody is pulling the ground out from under my feet again. Today, in the job market, with AI cutting roles and with changes in the investor-entrepreneur relationship, there's an opportunity: to ask what portfolio I can create for myself — maybe consulting, talks, a book, online services, even a clothing brand if that's my passion, or a musical talent.

Eyal David: [24:28] Wow, okay, I learned a lot about you — and I'm also curious about what you said, "nobody's ever firing me again," it probably connects to another "why" of yours, we can touch on that if you want. But there's an exercise we can take from what I'm hearing: you talked about reflection taking time, because you need to look at situations from the outside. So a possible exercise: once a week, start spelling out what I don't like doing, setting boundaries. Maybe I'm recording this podcast right now and I overdid it — I'll notice that if I do a reflection like this, maybe I'll start identifying what I'm good at. Is that something you'd recommend? Is that maybe also what you did?

Gali Bloch Liran: [25:16] I'll take your question up a level, and give a few examples of how to do this — I'm trying to milk some tips from the book here. So first of all, what is reflection? It's mirroring, observation, looking from above at life events that happened to us. Let me give you a few examples I've applied for years. First, reflection on time management: at the end of the day I always look — I call it "opening the day and closing the day." It helps me get to high performance. I look for two minutes in the evening at what I didn't manage to do today, that I'd set for myself, and I ask myself: is this still important, do I still want to move it forward? If yes — it gets moved on the calendar for later in the week, per the timeline. If not — I released that item from my life. That's basically like an Eisenhower Matrix for time prioritization. Reflection on energy management: I finish a meeting — could be with a client, an investor, or a podcast guest — and I ask myself a really simple question: did that fill me with energy? Do I want more of that, of them, of this interaction, of this presence? That's one of the most amazing questions there is — over the years I've really learned to listen to it, and whoever the answer about is "yes," that's a marker for where I want to explore more, to deepen relationships. And where the answer is no — life is short and precious, I want to be in places that feed me positive energy. So that's a question of reflection on the energy level, which is super critical. Another example, in relationships: say there was a session between three people, or a session between co-founders, or whatever — there was an argument, or shouting, or a product meeting. Another kind of reflection is, at the end of that interaction, to ask: how does everyone feel, what are you taking from this — or you're giving feedback to your employee, and you ask them at the end: is there something you want to tell me, do you want to share how you're leaving this? All those are reflective questions that let us grow — some people think criticism is a bad thing, I just, no — for me it's about growing, developing and improving my whole life. The day that stops, there's nothing left for me to do here. If you need to move from a place of criticism that paralyzes us, into a place of growth mindset — that's amazing. So reflection, to me, is a tool you can use in communication with people, toward ourselves, toward our time, toward our energy. Go ask your kid, by the way — that's the most amazing place for reflection. I have three boys, really, amazing, with very high emotional intelligence. I don't even need to tell them anymore, they tell me. I just got back from three weeks in Australia, I went on a break because I felt I was one second away from crazy burnout and needed a break — I listened to myself, I did it. I came back full of energy, and they said to me: "Mom, chill, give it a second, you just got back." I could have said, in the moment, "what cheeky kids" — I never would have said that before — but that's actually a mirror: breathe, be attentive, smile, what a privilege that your kids know how to tell you these things and that you're listening. That's reflection — it happens all day, if we learn to listen to it.

Eyal David: [28:49] That's the word you were looking for — precision, it all comes back to precision in the end. I'm moving forward step by step here — we also talked about side projects, which is super interesting, I do want to get back to that, a portfolio of products, I really believe in that too. There's something else I want to say for a second — you talked about the issue of feedback, and there's an ego issue there, and how you deal with it — but that took me, in my head, toward dealing with failure, which we can tie into this. Failure, which we're supposed to grow from — but there's coping to do, and it's always really hard. Reflection is a great tool, I think, for coping with failure, because it helps you grow. But take us to your book — where does this show up? How does it come up in conversations with entrepreneurs who right now, wow, are at the lowest of lows? How do you deal with it?

Gali Bloch Liran: [29:24] Great question. We talked about this a lot in this morning's session. One of the best ways: someone asks you something, answer with a question — that already invites reflection, already invites awareness. So let's bring back questions. I'll throw the question back to you: what is failure? A lot of it starts with the question itself, and the definition we give it — like, what is success. Now, not on the philosophical level — it's a question that invites us to notice: maybe what's a failure for me isn't what's a failure for you. So let's get precise and understand things. Now, let me say a sentence you may have heard me say, but I really believe it: for me, there's no such thing as failure — there's only growth and learning. That's my mindset in life, I keep reinforcing it — I'm only in a place of learning from the things that happen to me. Now, if you remember, we talked earlier a bit about rigidity and self-discipline — and if there are people who are really perfectionists, or really critical of themselves, it's possible that if things don't happen exactly the way we want, or even a little differently than we want, we'll experience it as failure. So in my view there are a few distinctions that matter, that can be very effective. First: let's ask ourselves, is this a momentary failure or a persistent one? You constantly fail at math — that's one thing. You failed once on a math test? Okay, it happens, let's move on with life. So is that failure, let's call it, one-time or ongoing? The second thing I think is important to ask: is this an internal or an external failure? For example: I was supposed to give a talk, a presentation, a slide deck, something, and I didn't come prepared, and I had no idea what was going on — that's an internal failure of mine. An external failure, let's say: I'm on a customer call or something, and some question comes up that I wasn't ready for — now, again, from a place of taking responsibility, in the end it's all on me, I could have come prepared — but I'm deliberately separating this out: this is something external that isn't really about me, let's bring it in. Now, here's what I want to say: if it's an internal failure, try to draw a matrix. If it's an internal, ongoing failure — there's a problem, needs work. But if it's an internal, one-time failure — fine, small, let's move on from the event. If it's an external, ongoing failure — again, let's move away from this event. If it's an external, one-time failure — also, okay, it happened, next, don't dwell on it. So I think every time something happens, let's analyze the learning: what happened there, do I have the ability to influence it — because when we take responsibility, the wonderful flip side is that we also have the ability to change it, to take a proactive action that can bring a different result. That's the learning: to do a debrief for ourselves — action, result, investigation, understanding, what possibilities do we have now, what's our choice of how to move forward. That's the debrief loop we can run on anything — it comes from military after-action-review doctrine — and it can really help us move within failure and out of it. Having said that, I don't want to diminish the intensity of what we sometimes experience — say, a hundred investors just told me no, and I feel hurt. A kid comes home with a report card with ten failing grades, and he feels bad. Let's acknowledge, for a second, that there is a moment of failure that in that exact moment I experience as failure. And about that I want to say: it's all okay, it happens. Let's give a moment of space to that feeling, to that thing. Let's pause for a second, let's sit with it for a moment — how do we feel, what's happening — negative feelings are part of life. Feelings of disappointment, of "I didn't succeed," of "maybe someone else is better" — that's natural, I don't want to say it doesn't exist, of course it exists. To me the whole question is, and this is the transformation, how well we know how to get out of there. How many active steps we know how to take to help ourselves get out of that place. So something bad happened at your startup, or your kid dealt with something hard that they experienced as failure — give it space, acknowledge it, even name it, give the people around us the toolkit for how to approach it. But tomorrow, a new day — what opportunities do we have now, how can we approach them? By the way, people have different communication and self-management styles — I'm someone who can approach things in the same moment, because I'm already very deep in the inner work. There are people who need time — and that's fine, we give them time, whether that's an employee or a kid — they can't talk about it in that moment. So it's our kid, they can't in that moment — tomorrow's a new day, it's all fine. So failure is part of life, failure is our learning journey and it's our growth. And to me the more interesting question isn't what the failure is, but what do we do with the failure — how do we turn it into our growth engine.

Eyal David: [34:44] Yeah, and I'll take that — here's water if you want to drink. [Gali: Thanks.] I'll take that to the example you gave, because I think a lot of entrepreneurs are experiencing this right now: the investment market is changing a lot and it's gotten hard, especially for certain kinds of companies, and you hear about it all the time. So we talked about the "why" that's supposed to fuel you to deal with this failure — which is actually both internal and external, and probably also ongoing. So what do you do?

Gali Bloch Liran: [35:21] I ask what this failure is inviting us to look at, and I'll give a couple of examples. I also work with very young entrepreneurs, stage-wise — really early stage — and also with more mature ones in growth, pre-IPO, post-IPO. A young entrepreneur who's really under financial pressure and has already been trying for half a year, not progressing — one of the questions we might ask: I set myself half a year or a year to try, but I don't have money for rent, or a baby was just born — let's ask the questions across a wider spectrum. It's possible the answer, in that moment, is: I recognize that right now this isn't moving in the direction I want, what's my choice — because remember, we said, we always have an active choice in every situation — to move forward from it. And maybe they'll decide, in that moment, that they can't stay in the venture or the idea, or maybe they need to open another channel. That's one way to deal with it. And it's possible that the failure of a CEO leading a huge SaaS company right now, with everything going on around the "SaaS apocalypse" in the headlines lately — whenever this episode airs, maybe there'll be a different apocalypse by then, who knows — the question there, in my view, is: okay, this is what's happening, what steps are required of us now? By the way, this isn't really different from when COVID suddenly hit and turned the whole world upside down — what steps are required of us now as CEOs of a company? The answers will be different, but the questions are similar: what's required of us now — maybe reducing headcount, maybe starting to build a tech agenda that will be relevant in five years and thinking about it today, maybe building a portfolio of products, maybe building an "army" of AI agents that free the team to focus more on customers. I don't know, there's no single answer, but to me it invites us to ask deep questions. By the way, the headline in one of the papers today was exactly this: maybe our question is, maybe I'm no longer right for this role, maybe I'm not the right person to lead the company through the technological challenges it's facing right now? To me, without naming names, that's a question with amazing humility, coming from a very high sense of ownership — maybe I understand that what's right for the company now is a different leader, and I'll stay as founder and shareholder, but I understand that for it to keep succeeding, something a bit different is needed. So let me close this point: you can choose to put on the more decadent glasses, the victim ones — "wow, I'm stuck, there's this hidden wall, the world is over." To me that's a relatively victim-like, non-advancing perception, and in the end the world keeps moving. It won't help you to stay in that place — be there a day, be there two days — get up on your feet and think about how to be proactive and assertive, with high agency, to deal with it. And if you're already, in advance, more in this mindset — recognizing that there are tons of changes, and they're only going to get bigger, we have no idea where — but strengthening an inner resilience that says: I'm listening to myself, I'm capable, I'm resourceful, I'll manage, and whatever comes, I'll deal with it. And that doesn't necessarily give certainty, but it gives an inner locus of control, and a belief in ourselves that we'll deal with whatever comes. And that's really important to me — and it's really important in terms of what we want to pass on to our kids, or to the younger generations of workers who are just now entering the workforce.

Eyal David: [39:48] Wow, I wanted to talk about kids but let's close this out — on the first point, that's a wrap for me: you talked about how we can take this and grow from it, and reinvent ourselves. I was thinking, while you were talking, that whoever's listening to this podcast — product managers in general, I think — already have that connecting-the-dots ability, a really business-oriented, generalist path they've taken, and if you're going to start a business, you're really the most suitable, primary audience for this, there are tons of opportunities here, so you're in a relatively good spot. But I want to tell you about a "pinch": the product manager role itself is also changing dramatically today. If before, the product manager was the hub connecting the business and customer requirements and R&D, and how things get improved, and tickets, and marketing — suddenly there are much higher technical requirements. Not every product manager has that skill set. I see friends who are amazing product managers, at amazing companies, and suddenly — it's not just that they don't have that skill set, it's that they don't even want to deal with it, they have no interest in managing an "army" of AI agents.

Gali Bloch Liran: [41:06] Totally, and we're all dealing with this — I took it somewhere else, like we talked about: suddenly filling out a model like a Lean Canvas for your own needs, answering questions that really grow a business, being creative. In the end, I want to believe that whoever's listening to this podcast comes in with these tools already in their toolbox, because they decided to invest in themselves, so they've already sharpened these abilities. So they're already relatively more ready in their business outlook, but the work has to keep happening in the mental, conscious place too, because even when you're very business-savvy, you'll still hit tons of walls. So the question is, how do you do it — dig under, go around the side, jump over, wait a moment and then do it? I don't know, there are a million... The answer is, I probably need to get to know myself and identify opportunities. And I want to double-click on one more thing I wanted to tie in: you talked earlier about portfolio and side projects — one way to do this is to start building something from the side.

Eyal David: [42:12] Tell us a bit about what you're doing, what side projects are you working on today? You mentioned the book — I'm curious how it came about.

Gali Bloch Liran: [42:28] So let's call it, in quotes, my "day job" — a bit of a downgrade to call it that, honestly, because I love it: I guide startup companies, entrepreneurs, funds, I advise on mental aspects and growth aspects, I mediate between co-founders — that's the base, that's what pays the mortgage and feeds the kids, at the simplest level. But the book, which I'm really proud of — that's a four-year side project that came alongside everything else, by the way, during COVID, during three young kids (one was really tiny then), alongside a full client load. That's a side project, but I'm proud of it and I love it. The podcast — you could call that a side project too, it's really meaningful to me, I love it, it takes a chunk of my life and my time, but it's another side project. But actually, I'm less fond of calling these "side projects" — I prefer to call it "a portfolio of doing." Because if we manage to look at ourselves as each of us generating a kind of mini-ecosystem, where one thing leads to another and one thing nurtures the other — that's a really beautiful cracking of the code. For me, there's the consulting, I teach at university, I have the podcast, I have the book, I lecture to organizations in Israel and abroad, and to funds and accelerators, I do off-sites and workshops, and all of it feeds the others. And it's important to me to say: I'm a very self-aware person, I really care about longevity and my health, I set aside real time for nutrition, sport, all sorts of things — I believe that before you explain things to others, you do them yourself, you need to do as you preach, and that's part of my routine. Because I don't think, as an employee, I could have created this portfolio of doing for myself — one that's full of passion, full of meaningful doing, also makes money, also lets me be a mom, also gives me flexibility, also lets me do sports or SUP or yoga, the things that matter to me, and also lets me create, and lets me develop other ventures that come to me from my entrepreneurs. So for me, that's the right constellation — but I work hard, and a lot, to make it happen. Don't take this — ask yourself what, out of what I'm saying, could fit you, from a place of self-precision, of knowing yourself, your values, the family constellation you're living in — what's right for you, what's precise for you, and build from there. There's no single path, this is Gali's path, mine today, at this time — maybe in a few years it'll be different, and in the past it was definitely different. But if there's one thing I'd really want to give to whoever's listening to us, it's this message of tuning in — of listening to ourselves. We live in a world that tries to please, or to achieve — what do you want to achieve, what is this drive to achieve? I'm a very achievement-oriented, competitive person, I'm not here to say "stay in the cave" — really not. But let it be precise for you — not like your friend, not like the entrepreneur, not like your brother or sister — what's right for you. Because in the end, in this life, where we have no idea how much time we have — how do we want to live through it, what impact do we want, what value do we want to give, and how do we want to feel. Those are questions that guide me a lot and help me sharpen my own doing. It's possible that sitting next to me is someone who's super pragmatic, super task-oriented, super capitalist, very young, no family yet — none of that is said in judgment, that's who they are, and for them, right now, different things are right. Put these things in your own operating system, and adjust the algorithm to what's right for you at this moment. It comes back to knowing ourselves.

Eyal David: [46:47] Amazing. Another interesting thing: to run fast, to actually do all kinds of things — maybe because it's the first time — maybe adding a co-founder is something that can accelerate, but can also help you learn about yourselves and whether it works. There's a meaningful double-click we could do here.

Gali Bloch Liran: [47:11] That's a few whole chapters in the book, we won't get through it in five minutes, and there's a lot in the digital course too — but I'll bring it down to one small thing: the environment around us matters enormously — co-founders, investors, friends, mentors, peers, employees. Who are our A-players? How much cheering-on is there, how much giving, how much forward-looking, positive outlook, how pleasant is it, in the simplest sense? How much attentiveness, the ability to hold things together, how much can we trust, what sense of shared responsibility do we hold together. Those are the right questions for co-founders, the right questions for partners in general, the right questions for a builder who just wants to bring in one person to help them do something. I have a lot to say about co-founder fit, you can read about it in the book and the course, but the main thing is to be attentive. I'll take this up another level — to the relationships in our lives in general. I always ask you: what's the most important relationship in your life? [Eyal: My family, my wife...] No, that's too general — what's the most important relationship you have? [Eyal: Tell me it's the one that grows you] Right — but it all starts there, just like I ask my kids: who do you love most in the world? The little one says, "you, Mom?" No — who do you love most in the world? "Myself" — because it all starts there, with self-love, with self-acceptance, from a good place, not a narcissistic one. And then, if we're in a better place, we'll choose for the people around us to be in a better place too, we'll know ourselves better, we'll know how to choose better co-founders, we'll know how to be better for our partners, our kids, and so on, and that spreads. But yeah, the conversation about who the people around us are is a really significant one — and I'll add one more thing, even in the age of machines, where we're only at the very tip of the iceberg of that: in the end, the human connection — and one of the great epidemics of our lives, of our world today, is the loneliness epidemic. Teens since COVID who finished all of high school not with a partner but with a computer, at home. People who come to the office less because they work hybrid, so there's less interaction. Tons of couples in their 40s-50s who can no longer hold what's happening at home, with everything of the last few years in Israel — COVID, war — and they withdraw into themselves. And also with older generations, that's a whole other issue. That's a whole separate conversation, but the reason I brought it up: even in the age of machines, they don't solve everything. They're efficient, they're effective, they give crazy value — you can even "consult psychologically" with machines, in a way, but that's only up to a certain point. The human connection, human touch, empathy, the smile, that eye-contact spark, the nod, the shoulder, holding, simply experiencing a moment together — those are things that are here, and they're ours, and that's the human differentiator, and that's the most beautiful thing there is, and I hope, I think, that won't change. And I think that's the point: how do we preserve that thing, which is the basis of relationships, inside our businesses, our startups, and outside them too.

Eyal David: [51:09] Well, Gali, so great that you came. Before we say goodbye — if people want to hear more about you, get in touch, how do they do that?

Gali Bloch Liran: [51:18] I have a website, very nice, that has everything on it — the podcast, what I do, the book, the digital course, talks. It's all there, galiblochliran.com. And you can find me on social media, we do nice work there, mostly on LinkedIn. I'm maybe redoing it a bit, but I'm so connected to the book and the course that followed it, because I feel these are insights that aren't written anywhere else in this way — and that anyone who wants to build something, a startup or another business, or buy real estate, whatever kind of entrepreneurial action it is for them, there are tools there that were life-changing for me, they're the life journey I've gone through and keep going through, it never really ends. So I really invite you to read the book or get the course, and I have no doubt you'll get a lot of value from it.

Eyal David: [52:30] Amazing, and if you want growth, that's not a huge investment, so good luck.

Gali Bloch Liran: [52:34] The biggest investment is in ourselves.

Eyal David: [52:37] Really. Gali, and also paying attention to opportunities — that's actually how we met, right? That's part of this. Do you want to tell people how we met, how it started?

Gali Bloch Liran: [52:44] Maybe better not to, but it really happened just like this — I was recording an episode, and suddenly Eyal comes and knocks on it and says "what's this," you need to wrap up, it's my time slot. And I was nice and pleasant about it, because I knew he was wrong, but I chose not to react unpleasantly — why would I react unpleasantly? And afterward he realized he'd been wrong for a second, and he also felt a bit bad and awkward about it, but hey, it created a smile, a conversation, an interaction — and by chance, a few months, or a year, later, we ended up here on the podcast. And in the end, that's life — connecting the dots, the story of stories, and the approach with which we show up to every situation. And that's in real time — we need to choose, at every point in time, with which approach we respond to the things that happen to us. We have full choice over that. That's the human connection.

Eyal David: [53:29] Amazing, Gali, so great that you came, alright, bye for now, thank you so much.

Gali Bloch Liran: [53:31] Thank you so much.