Ep 7 - The O'Leary Review - Guest: Sean Kennedy - Simbiotrek
As the Founder and President of Simbiotrek (sim-bē-ˈä-ˈtrek), Sean Kennedy wears many hats. Sean’s roles include:
- transformation strategist and catalyst
- fractional COO for small- and medium-sized businesses
- small business peer advisory board coordinator and chair
Sean works with entrepreneurs and business owners to unlock the potential trapped by the structure and capacity of their current business organization, and to build beautiful businesses together.
Sean has 20+ years of experience in software development. He’s primarily concerned with Agile and Lean software, of which he is a practitioner, coach, strategist, and digital transformation leader.
We delve into Sean’s role in “digital transformation” and much more.
Sean’s clients range from:
- Multinationals to startups
- In the Americas to over in Europe and Asia
- Within the aerospace and automotive industry to industrial automation and insurance into health care, retail, technology, and telecommunications…he runs the gamut.
Tom Woods
#TomWoods100
My goal is to get at least 100 people within the Tom Woods orbit on this show. We are building steady. Sean is the 5th person within Tom’s orbit to come on the pod…
First, if you don’t know who Tom Woods is, you’ve probably been living under a rock, but Tom is a benefactor of mankind…and to my intelligence level. Check out TomWoods.com for a firehose worth of great content and then work your way to TomSchoolofLife.com.
We need to keep the momentum going for this #TomWoods100 series. (And I apologize to Tom if I hijacked a hashtag he wanted &/or needed for another project…but I don’t think so.)
The point is—The O’Leary Review provides a platform for serious people to get the word out on what they are doing to make this world better.
Also— our mission is to fight back against the crazy in this world. It exists all around us and we must eliminate it.
How I met Sean.
I met Sean a few weeks back when he facilitated an accountability group within the Tom Woods School of Life that I am a part of.
“Blah blah blah…Austrian Economics…blah blah blah… I know nothing about that stuff.”
Well, you should find out. And we provide a platform here—at least on the last few shows—where you can now jump on the Austrian train with relative ease.
Over the last few podcasts, we’ve talked a bit about Austrian Economics and have provided resources in the various show notes.
The following talk, however, is also worth your time if you have any inkling to discover more about why one should pursue Austrian Economics in even its basic forms. You’ll likely discover that economics is indeed a field worth studying or exploring.
“The Attractiveness of Austrian Economics” by Tom Woods from July of 2013.
More About Sean
Lives in the Raleigh-Durham area after moving down from Toronto. Simbiotrek’s office is in “Wake Forest.”
- Wake Forest, the town, is in the Raleigh-Durham area, also called the Research Triangle…not—as I found out doing a little cursory research—near Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. About a 2-hour car ride away!
Notable son of Wake Forest: Bryce Love, former Stanford running back who had a phenomenal junior season at The Farm (Doak Walker Award, Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Year, Unanimous All-American, etc.). Attended Wake Forest-Rolesville High School.
Love had one great college season after backing up Christian McCaffrey for two seasons then got hurt his senior year, playing off-and-on. Got hurt again—ACL tear—in his final college game, but was eventually drafted by the Washington Redskins, yet dealt with more injury trouble and never ultimately played a regular season game in the NFL.
Great ballplayer.
Sean’s early days were spent in Winnipeg, Manitoba and Kitchener, Ontario, however, and not in the Research Triangle.
Sean’s rooting interest in the CFL is for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
A couple of other famous sons of Kitchener, Ontario:
Lennox Lewis
Former Heavyweight Champion of the World. Last heavyweight to hold the undisputed championship. Moved to Kitchener at the age of 12. 1988 Gold medal winner at the Seoul Olympics (representing Canada).
Jamal Murray
Utah Jazz guard. Currently recovering from a devastating ACL tear that caused him to miss the entire 2021-22 NBA season. Interestingly, Murray’s father, Roger, competed in basketball against Lennox Lewis when they were younger and before Lewis started his boxing career. Roger also coached Jamal for a season at Orangeville Prep prior to the younger Murray going on to Kentucky to play for the Wildcats and coach John Calipari in the 2015-16 season.
Murray’s 20.0 scoring average is the highest for any freshman in program history and the highest single-season average for any player under Calipari in his time in Lexington.
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I am still trying to research the Canadian high school football rules Sean played under during his prep days and why it became a such a strange mashup of the Canadian and the American gridiron codes.
Wikipedia has a “Comparison of American and Canadian Football,” but it does not do justice to what we were talking about in this episode. But, if you are not familiar with the code of Canadian football, but know the American code well enough—or vice-versa—this examination is a good start…
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Game mentioned:
100th Grey Cup
November 25, 2012 at SkyDome/Rogers Centre in Toronto.
Toronto Argonauts 35 — Calgary Stampeders 22
Attendance: 53,208
Halftime show included Canadians: Justin Bieber, Carly Rae Jepsen, Marianas Trench, and the ol’ troubadour himself, Gordon Lightfoot.
Sean’s Core Values
- The Golden Rule
- The Stockdale Paradox
Sean Kennedy is a youth hockey coach in North Carolina
One of Sean’s videos takes the lessons learned from a youth hockey tournament into entrepreneurship.
Read Sean’s article and watch the video. He teaches lessons on how coaching translates to the business world.
It struck me when Sean mentioned Carolina Hurricanes head coach Rod Brind’Amour was watching this tournament. I think it was 10U or 11U. One of Brind’Amour’s sons was playing in the same tournament.
It stood out because Brind’Amour was one of my favorite hockey players in the 1990s. I’ve never been a big Flyers fan, but I really liked his Flyers team of that era, where he was the second-line centre. Eric Lindros led the “Legion of Doom” line with John LeClair and Mikael Renberg as wingers. I almost exclusively used the Flyers when I played NHL96 on my computer…and I did that a lot at one stage of my life.
In real life, that Flyers club made it to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1997 but were eventually swept by the Red Wings (who won the Cup for the first time in 42 years).
In that video game, it was hard to choose which future NHL general manager to put in goal for Philly: Ron Hextall or Garth Snow. Coach Terry Murray had a similar problem…both were good tenders.
Rod Brind’Amour
https://www.hockey-reference.com/players/b/brindro01.html
Brind’Amour is now the coach for the Carolina franchise. It surprised me when I looked up his stats that he played for Carolina for so long, too. Ten seasons for the Canes to 7 as a Flyer.
“Rod Brind’Amour” is also one of the great names in sports. Hard to type at times but rolls of the tongue nicely.
Better Entrepreneurial Action Network
Developed by Simbiotrek with the support of Economics for Business, a project of the Mises Institute.
https://mises.org/library/economics-business
- I only heard about this in the last several days
- Mises Institute has such a vast catalog of material…
Building a business, managing a project, launching an innovation – these are journeys from your imagination to the marketplace and customer satisfaction. We’ve systematized the journey steps based on the value generation principles of Austrian economics.
Simbiotrek (sim-bē-ˈä-ˈtrek)
get clarity · get alignment · get going
Whatever The Heck That Means (Sean’s Blog)
- Bikesheds & Dim Sum
- Entrepreneurship & The New Business
- Poems & Personal Things
- Links to YouTube channel
@MacGyver on Twitter
https://twitter.com/AkaMacGyver
… we never got to ask if the alias has anything to do with Richard Dean Anderson being both a Canadian and a hockey enthusiast… for another day.
BrianDOLeary.com for more...