Her father called her into his office and asked one question: “What would happen if you were CEO tomorrow?”

Sabrina Parsons had an answer. “Great,” he told her. “You’re going to be CEO tomorrow.”

The title changed overnight. Earning the company’s trust did not. Sabrina took over Palo Alto Software, the company her father founded, and gave it a direction that was visibly hers: moving the business from boxed software to software as a service.

That meant changing the product, the economics, the talent, and eventually parts of the team. It also gave people something new to follow.

In this episode of The Executive, Sabrina and I talk about:

Asking for the future you want without turning it into an ultimatum

Replacing an inherited operating vision with one you genuinely own

Making the people decisions a transformation requires

Respecting the person without lowering the standard for the work

Never asking someone to do something you would refuse to do yourself

This is not a conversation about getting the title.

It is about what happens the morning after.rsation offers a practical and honest look at leadership beyond theory—focused on execution, ownership, and building something that lasts.

🔗 Resources mentioned

Palo Alto Software: https://www.paloalto.com

LivePlan (business planning tool): https://www.liveplan.com

Bplans (free business resources): https://www.bplans.com

🔗 Work with Dr. Benjamin Ritter
https://liveforyourselfconsulting.com

Money was never the problem. Joan DiFuria has spent 25 years inside some of the wealthiest families in the world, and the pattern repeats: the wealth arrives, and the harder questions begin. During the tech boom, she watched 25-year-olds walk into her office with more money than they ever imagined and no idea what their purpose was. She coined the term for it: Sudden Wealth Syndrome.

In this episode of The Executive Podcast, Dr. Benjamin Ritter sits down with the co-founder of the Money, Meaning & Choices Institute to explore why wealth so often produces shame, guilt, and confusion before it produces freedom. Joan shares the difference between personalized power and socialized power in leadership, why emotional intelligence is becoming job security in the age of AI, and how meaning shifts across the stages of a life. She also explains why advisors kill the process the moment they jump to strategy, and offers the deceptively simple question she uses to cut through decades of noise: what is most important to you today, and why.

This conversation is for executives, family business leaders, and anyone who has achieved what they set out to achieve and still feels like something is missing. The answer is not more. The answer is knowing what actually matters to you, and having the courage to keep asking why until you hit it.

What separates a service business that survives AI from one that gets replaced by it? Brian Weiner has spent nearly 30 years advising entrepreneurs and family enterprises through the kind of decisions most people will never face, and he's clear about the answer: heart. The problem is, most firms don't know how to hire for it, train for it, or protect it.

In this conversation, Brian and Dr. Benjamin Ritter dig into what leadership actually looks like when your clients are some of the most demanding people on the planet. They cover why large institutions are losing high-net-worth clients to community banks, what "slow to hire, quick to fire" really means in practice, why Brian has walked away from meaningful-revenue clients to protect his team, and how leadership presence has nothing to do with the title on your door. Brian also shares why he believes philanthropy is one of the most underused tools for keeping families together across generations.

If you lead a demanding business, manage a high-performing team, or care about building a culture that doesn't get eroded by the people you serve, this episode is worth your time. Brian doesn't speak in abstractions. He's lived it.

Connect with Brian at familyofficegp.com