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Amazing Authorities Podcast with Mitch Carson – Guest Appearance

Todd Hagopian Reveals How to Stop the Slow Decline on The Amazing Authorities Podcast

On December 22, 2025, turnaround expert and author Todd Hagopian joined host Mitch Carson on The Amazing Authorities Podcast to unpack how leaders can reverse stagnation before it turns into a full-blown crisis. The episode titled “Stop the Slow Decline: Todd Hagopian on Turnarounds, Productivity Multipliers, and Winning with Focus” explored why early intervention creates smoother growth, higher morale, and stronger profitability—without the chaos of emergency restructuring. Todd shared his proven frameworks for maximizing workforce productivity, including treating payroll as a strategic asset rather than a cost to slash.

Table of Contents

What Is The Amazing Authorities Podcast?

The Amazing Authorities Podcast is a top 10% globally ranked business and entrepreneurship podcast hosted by Mitch Carson, featuring conversations with turnaround experts, coaches, and thought leaders sharing strategies for business growth and personal development. The show is available on Amazon Music and major podcast platforms.

Host Mitch Carson brings expertise in authority positioning and podcast guesting to conversations that extract actionable insights for entrepreneurs and business leaders. He is the author of “The Amazing Authors of Singapore” and “The Silent Salesmen.”

Listeners interested in becoming podcast guests or scheduling strategy calls can connect with Mitch through getinterviewedguaranteed.com.

How Can Leaders Reverse Stagnation Before Crisis?

Leaders can reverse stagnation before crisis by catching it early through intervention that creates smoother growth, higher morale, and stronger profitability without the chaos of emergency restructuring—treating payroll as a productivity asset instead of a cost-cutting target and reorganizing teams intelligently using productivity multipliers. Todd Hagopian explained why early intervention dramatically outperforms crisis turnarounds.

“Catching stagnation early leads to faster, less painful growth than crisis turnarounds. Leaders can reorganize teams without constant layoffs by using productivity multipliers.”

The conversation explored how to build a culture where teams challenge distractions and stay aligned on profit-driving priorities. Todd revealed that cutting low-value meetings improves morale more than reducing work hours.

Cultural shifts are required to sustain growth. Eliminating wasted meetings, sharpening priorities, and empowering teams to question off-focus work can dramatically increase output without burnout.

What Productivity Frameworks Did the Episode Reveal?

The episode revealed the 80/20 squared framework for doubling down on top customers and products, the principle that focusing on the top 4% of high-value work can increase productivity by up to 600%, and strategies for aligning every department around activities that make the most money every minute of the day. These frameworks maximize workforce productivity without constant restructuring.

The 80/20 Squared Framework

The 80/20 squared framework doubles down on top customers and products. By identifying the vital few that drive disproportionate results, leaders can concentrate resources where they generate maximum return.

Focus on the Top 4%

Focusing on the top 4% of high-value work can increase productivity by up to 600%. This principle connects to ruthless prioritization and eliminating activities that consume resources without corresponding value creation.

Payroll as Productivity Asset

Todd shared how to treat payroll as a strategic asset rather than a cost to slash. Leaders can reorganize teams intelligently and apply productivity multipliers to increase output without constant layoffs.

Decision Discipline

Decision discipline ensures leaders maintain focus on profit-driving priorities. Empowering teams to question off-focus work creates a culture of accountability and alignment.

How Does AI Function as a Productivity Multiplier?

AI functions as a productivity multiplier that will dramatically outperform those who don’t learn to use it, though it won’t replace jobs—making AI adoption a competitive necessity rather than a workforce threat. The conversation positioned AI as a tool for amplifying human capability rather than eliminating positions.

“AI won’t replace jobs—but will dramatically outperform those who don’t learn to use it.”

This perspective reframes the AI conversation from fear of displacement toward opportunity for enhancement. Leaders who integrate AI effectively gain significant advantage over competitors who resist adoption.

Where Can You Listen to the Episode?

The Amazing Authorities Podcast episode “Stop the Slow Decline: Todd Hagopian on Turnarounds, Productivity Multipliers, and Winning with Focus” is available on Amazon Music and major podcast platforms. The episode runs approximately 26 minutes and 38 seconds.

Connect with Mitch Carson:

Connect with Todd Hagopian at toddhagopian.com for resources and transformation frameworks.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is The Amazing Authorities Podcast about?

The Amazing Authorities Podcast is a top 10% globally ranked business and entrepreneurship podcast hosted by Mitch Carson, featuring conversations with experts sharing strategies for business growth, turnarounds, and personal development.

What is the 80/20 squared framework?

The 80/20 squared framework is a productivity method that doubles down on top customers and products. It identifies the vital few activities and relationships that drive disproportionate results, enabling leaders to concentrate resources for maximum return.

How much can focusing on high-value work increase productivity?

According to Todd Hagopian, focusing on the top 4% of high-value work can increase productivity by up to 600%. This requires ruthless prioritization and eliminating activities that consume resources without corresponding value.

Will AI replace jobs?

Todd Hagopian explained that AI won’t replace jobs, but will dramatically outperform those who don’t learn to use it. AI functions as a productivity multiplier that amplifies human capability rather than eliminating positions.

Who is Mitch Carson?

Mitch Carson is the host of The Amazing Authorities Podcast and author of “The Amazing Authors of Singapore” and “The Silent Salesmen.” He helps experts become podcast guests and build authority through his platform at getinterviewedguaranteed.com.

People Also Ask

Why is early intervention better than crisis turnarounds?

According to the episode, catching stagnation early leads to faster, less painful growth than crisis turnarounds. Early intervention creates smoother growth, higher morale, and stronger profitability without the chaos of emergency restructuring.

How can leaders reorganize teams without layoffs?

Todd Hagopian shared that leaders can reorganize teams without constant layoffs by using productivity multipliers. Treating payroll as a strategic asset rather than a cost to slash enables intelligent reorganization that increases output.

What improves morale more than reducing work hours?

The episode revealed that cutting low-value meetings improves morale more than reducing work hours. Eliminating wasted meetings and empowering teams to question off-focus work dramatically increases output without burnout.

How can teams stay aligned on profit-driving priorities?

Todd explained how to build a culture where teams challenge distractions and stay aligned on profit-driving priorities. This requires decision discipline, sharpening priorities, and aligning every department around activities that make the most money every minute.

Podcast Transcript

Mitch: Todd Hagopian is in the house today and I have been looking forward to this — I don’t even want to say interview, I’ll call it conversation — because Todd is in the US. I’m currently in Thailand conducting this conversation. I first want to give it up for Todd Hagopian that made it all the way from his living room into his study to go through this interview process.

Todd: Thank you. I really appreciate this.

Mitch: Todd, we had a little bit of a pre-chat and I want to go over some of these things that you discussed. I read your bio — I mean, you’ve done a lot and you’re not even old. You’ve done a lot at a young age. It’s like you’re a superhuman who understands laziness and what it can do — stagnation. Isn’t that what you’re hanging your hat on? Get rid of stagnation.

Todd: That’s exactly right. The tagline for the website and everything is declare war on stagnation. The idea behind that is there’s 10% of the companies in super growth mode and they want growth consultants. 10% of the companies are in crisis mode and they want crisis consultants. But there’s this 80% of people that are fighting stagnation and they’re slowly going down, and if they don’t fix it, they end up in crisis.

What I realized is not a lot of people work with these companies. These companies are the ones that end up getting the cookie-cutter consulting advice. So they all do the same thing, they end up going down and eventually getting into crisis. I’m a turnaround executive and that’s what I do. I usually get dropped in at that point. One time I got dropped in before that point and it was a huge turnaround — it was so much easier and so much more fun and we made so much more money. I was like, man, people have to start declaring war on stagnation before they get to crisis. It’s so much easier. That’s how it all started.

Mitch: And did you have to come in with a big knife?

Todd: Yeah, usually when you’re a turnaround executive, they basically give you 24 months or less and you’re coming in and just yanking and changing, moving people out, moving people in. But I’ll tell you what, when you catch it before crisis, you can do things a lot differently and a lot smarter. When you do make that turn, the hockey stick is just incredible. Whereas crisis consulting, you have to stop the bleeding, mellow out, and then turn. If you catch it on this slow burn and you turn it, you can hockey-stick this thing. It was a big key learning for me to realize how much money you can make if you declare war on stagnation rather than waiting until you’re losing $2 million a year.

Mitch: Now, in most companies around the world, the biggest line item expense is personnel. Payroll. How does AI factor into what you’re doing today?

Todd: I think AI is obviously going to replace some jobs. But more importantly, what it’s going to do is the people who can learn to use it and become more productive — this whole discussion is probably going to center around productivity — the people who can use AI to become more productive and better at their jobs are going to be the ones that catapult forward. What you’re going to find is that these super achievers are actually going to get lapped by the pretty good that know how to use AI. Because if you can drive productivity, you’re going to move up. And then as you move up, AI becomes even more important because if I can become a multiplier where nine people become more productive because of things I’m doing, then my division is going to do that much better, and then 90 people and then 9,000 people. That’s how I think AI is going to play into it — there are going to be jobs that go away, but for the most part, it’s going to be the people who learn how to use AI in a way for themselves to be more productive.

Mitch: Yeah. And you talk about productivity. We’re all familiar with the 80/20 principle named by the Italian economist Pareto. And you’ve created a system which is more the 4% — 80/20 squared. Where did you uncover and discover this?

Todd: Interesting. Everyone talks about 80/20. Everyone talks a good game. There’s only a handful of companies in the US that really know 80/20. The people that know 80/20 know what companies I’m talking about. But ITW is kind of the king of 80/20. I cut my teeth at ITW in 2015 — Illinois Tool Works, it’s about a $30 billion company. They’re the ones that systematized it. There’s a whole bunch of 80/20 companies now that have spawned off from former ITW folks. It was the first place I ever got to run a whole business. I actually joined as a senior manager and moved on up.

ITW is really, really good at making money. The key to it was their 80/20 methodology where they would do quadrants and quartiles. You would list all the customers by revenue. You would list all the products by revenue. Then every single customer-product combination, you knew revenue and margin. Each quadrant you would treat differently. Your A-customer, A-product you would treat differently than your A-customer and B-product. You had strategies for each quadrant. It was amazing how much money you would lose and how much time you would spend on the B-customer, B-product when you made all your money on the A-customer, A-product and didn’t spend any time on it.

As I got away from ITW, I took the 80/20 to other places. I was in these extreme turnaround situations and I was like, wow, we have to do even more. Then we came up with the 80/20 Matrix of Profitability — 80/20 squared — which basically is just doing the Pareto principle on your top A-customers and A-products. You take the top 20% and then you do it again on the top 20%. The idea here is everyone knows it’s so much easier to sell something to somebody who’s already an avid customer. So it’s just a matter of increasing market share, increasing profit, increasing what you can sell to them that is inside of your 80 — which can mean a lot of different things, but basically that’s really easy to make and really easy to sell and you’re really good at and you’ve got some differentiation from the marketplace.

For example, if you can take your 27% close rate with those folks and turn it to 40%, you might close to double your business. Or you could go out and find 150 other customers. Those are your choices. So the 80/20 is all about focusing on your most profitable, most loyal customers who are buying your most profitable, most easy-to-make product where you have some differentiation.

Mitch: Totally. I love that. And you said something that I’m going to create a sticky note and probably a poster: “Make the most money every minute of the day.”

Todd: The mantra is make as much money as you can every minute of the day. That’s what we always say every day. We say it and that goes for everybody. I want the product guys thinking that way, the sales guys thinking that way, all the way down to the manufacturing guys and the engineers — which is extremely important. Because there are a lot of jobs out there — supply chain, engineers — where that’s not necessarily their focus. Their focus is maybe a metric or getting a project done. When you center everybody around making as much money as you can every minute of the day, it completely changes your company.

Basically, we do a prioritization and that’s what we base it on. Now, if you’re not working on one of these top five or 10 things, you’re supposed to raise your hand — we have what’s called the raise-your-hand rule — and we have to justify why you’re doing it. You have this list. You know what we’re making money on this year. If I ask you to do something that’s off that list, you get to raise your hand and question me on why we’re doing it. Sometimes it’s going to be, “Sorry, boss man said we have to.” But most of the time we’ll sit back and either have a good answer or we’ll be like, that’s a good point — let’s reevaluate this and see if you should be spending your time doing something else.

Mitch: I want to dig a little bit deeper because this was a profound impact statement — make the most amount of money you can every minute of the day. Can you change the wording? You have four boys and I presume you have a wife that goes with it? Can we change that framework a little bit to apply to kindness? Can it also apply to helping people? How would that spill over — doing some little act of kindness to effect every single day?

Todd: It’s basically a productivity framework. Whatever you’re passionate about, it can be applied to. It can be write as many pages as you can every minute of the day. It can be I’m going to change as many lives as I can every minute of the day. It can be any of those things. The whole point is that it drives back to prioritization. If you want to change as many lives as you can every minute of the day, then let’s look at your calendar because your calendar doesn’t lie. What are you spending your time on? Because if 50% of your time is spent on stuff that’s not helping people, then you’re not helping as many people as you can every minute of the day. And if 50% of your time is on meetings about meetings and report-outs about report-outs and talking about innovation that you can’t afford, then you’re not making as much money as you can every minute of the day. It’s all about how are you spending your time and really evaluating your calendar, because that’s how you can confirm it. It’s really that easy. I walk in, an employee gives me their calendar, and I can tell you if we’re making money or not.

Mitch: Wow. That’s profound, Todd. This is a real game changer for me — not just for business, because I’m at a point where I like to tell myself I’m slowing down, but I haven’t slowed down. I like working. I like being productive. I think productivity feeds me. And I may watch a little bit too much Netflix and binge, and that’s lost time that I can never replace. Is it taking me out of my primary mission? Even like we were talking about when you’re working for a large company like ITW — the engineers are critical. They’re the ones that make the products that work. But when you shifted their thinking from products to profits, what happens to an organization?

Todd: It’s so funny because we were just talking about this today. We’re in year two of our turnaround here and I told them — all these things we’ve done: increased capacity, lowered lead time, doubled sales and this and that — we’ve done all these things and I said, “What you guys don’t get is that the engineering prioritization thing we’re about to do is bigger than all of it, because your engineers will drive your revenue.”

Most people don’t see it that way. But if I can have the engineers working 100% of the time on either projects that are driving revenue or projects that allow me to drive twice as much revenue next year, then think about the 10 things that your engineers are working on right now. I bet seven of them don’t fall into one of those two categories — make as much money as I can today or make as much money as I can tomorrow. They’re working on other stuff. Even if they think they do, look at their calendar and then tell me how many hours a day they’re spending on those two things.

The engineering prioritization is a bear. It sucks for 3 months because you’re all arguing over what the prioritization should be and the engineers want to do this and want to do that. But once you get the prioritization down, all you do is make money. The meetings go from 90 minutes down to 15 and everybody gets it. Here are the top 10. Nothing outside this top 10 gets worked on. If something falls out of the top 10 because you either finished it or decide it’s not good enough, then something else comes up. You have this marketing shelf of good ideas and you know what’s next.

The best part about it is number 65 used to come in and take a whole bunch of engineering resources, and then you’d either do it or you wouldn’t. But now we know ahead of time — when they bring number 65, we know it’s not going to make the top 10. No one spends one second on it. The sales guys start to understand that that’s not going to happen, the manufacturing guys start to understand, so they don’t even bring it. Then you never end up spending time on these time wasters that don’t make you money and that just drive complexity in the organization.

Mitch: All right, I want to bring it down very granular. How often do you check your email?

Todd: That’s an excellent question because it’s a funny one. I always say this — I have 20,000 unread emails. So I’m either the laziest person in the company or the most efficient, because I will scan my emails and I will only read them if I believe they’re in my 80/20 squared. People know me and they know that if they need to get a hold of me, they walk over. My office door’s open. You walk in, you tell me what you need, and we get it done. But email to me is just recordkeeping and I’ll get to it when I get to it. I will scan them and there’s certain people that I read every time and certain topics that I read every time, but I literally have 20,000 unread emails in my work email. You should see my personal email.

Mitch: I think I’m around the same. If I get caught up in it, 95% of it is spam. I spend so much time getting rid of spam, and that’s why I thought — because what you’re really talking about is becoming more productive. Calendar is productivity. This is productivity. Productivity focuses on what matters.

Todd: That’s exactly right. We call it the Karelin Method. A lot of people do this: activity times efficiency equals results. A lot of people know that. That’s basically if you work more hours and you’re more efficient during the hours, then you’re going to get more. 20% more hours, 20% more efficient, you’ll get 44% more results. So it’s really easy to tell people, go work more hours and get better at your job — that solves everything.

What I did is I took it one step further and said it’s activity times efficiency times focus. Because I could have you work 20% more hours and get 20% better at your job — that’s 44% better. But if I take you and instead of 8 hours a week on the top 4%, you’re spending 48 hours a week on the top 4%, you’re going to be 600% more productive. That’s what it’s about. Work more hours — yeah, I’d like you to work 48 to 50 hours a week, but not 80, you don’t have to. Get more efficient — it’s all about outsourcing, automating, systematizing, using AI, doing things so that you spend all the time in your day on things only you can do.

Imagine that. Imagine you’ve got 150 employees and every one of them only spends their time on the things that only they can do. We preach this all the time. If it’s something that anybody can do, outsource it, systematize it, automate it, AI it. But if it’s something only you can do, that’s what I want you spending all your time on. It increases personal autonomy, accountability. They feel good about coming to work. People don’t care about working an extra hour a day. That’s not why they get mad. They get mad that they had to work an extra hour a day because they had two hours of wasted meetings a day. If they feel like they’re contributing every minute of the day, you have a completely different feel in the office.

Mitch: And they’re inspired and feel like they’re part of something.

Todd: That’s right.

Mitch: That’s so important. Because again, I state the obvious — the biggest line item expense is payroll. And it’s your greatest asset.

Todd: We don’t try to lower that line item. Payroll is important. What we try to do is — my rule is the no-backfill rule. Somebody leaves, you don’t backfill them. You do a rapid reorg. Take a look at your team. How can you move people around so that they’re best fit, their strengths are being used? Then you add what we call the multiplier. Instead of rehiring that one buyer, you shuffle your buyers around so that they handle everything. Maybe you bring in a master scheduler who will make all the buyers more productive. Instead of backfilling, we never backfill. It takes an act of God to get me to backfill something — a straight backfill. It’s always reorg, and then come to me and tell me what your multiplier is and we’ll hire somebody better. I don’t care if it costs more. If it makes eight people more productive, we’ll bring in somebody higher priced, but I need a multiplier, not a backfill. We do that almost every time we have an opening.

Mitch: Why do people leave?

Todd: I’m a turnaround manager, so I’m usually coming in when things are not that great. One thing that you’ll find is that your best folks during not-great years don’t like change sometimes. Because they’re really good when things are really bad, and then when you change stuff around, it takes a lot out of them and they have to change how they’re doing things to remain really good. So you do have this weird dichotomy where your best people sometimes start dipping and some of these other people who were very underutilized or incorrectly utilized start rising. But change in general just freaks people out. They get scared. That’s why people leave under me and it usually happens in the first three to six months. After that, it all evens out.

Mitch: There was a movie with George Clooney where he traveled the globe and he came in and terminated people. I think it’s called Up in the Air — where he was celebrated and he made it available for the turnaround. He had to let people go before the turnaround people came in. Do you have to let people go, or is that HR that does it?

Todd: No, I handle every one of those. I think that’s important too. I’ve been on the other side of that table. Once you’re on the other side of the table, it hits you a lot different. Then it makes a lot more sense. No, I make sure I’m in every one of those meetings. I try not to make it a cornerstone of my thing either. A lot of times when I do that, it’s because we’re actually consolidating plants or something like that. Most of the time I try to use attrition and then reorg — attrition and then multiplier. But there are certainly times when you have to do it, especially when you’re in a real bad turnaround position.

I make it — first of all, doesn’t matter whose order it was. It’s my decision. I tell everybody it was my call. I don’t care if my boss made me do it. It was my call. I chose the people and I’m going to sit in the meetings and make the discussion.

Mitch: Do you ever get emotional outbursts from these people?

Todd: Oh yeah. That goes that way all the time. I’d say 80% of the people usually are able to keep it relatively professional, but probably 20% of the time it’s pretty bad. I remember when it happened to me and I sat there and I was professional about it, but I can certainly understand why people wouldn’t be. So I don’t hold it against people when they’re in that situation.

Mitch: But nobody’s come out and physically attacked you or anything?

Todd: No, no. We’ve had people we’ve watched and had to be real careful with and had multiple people kind of walk out and that kind of stuff, but nothing physical.

Mitch: Got it. I’ve been on both sides as well in my early career, and that’s what pushed me to think, well, I’d rather be in control. Being on that side didn’t feel good, but it was a learning experience. You learn from all these experiences. Todd, where can they get in touch with you?

Todd: toddhagopian.com is my website. I have about 200 articles on there. Lots of stuff for free. I believe in giving all this stuff away for free and having great conversations. They can contact me through that website. They can contact me on LinkedIn or Twitter. I’m big on both of those. I love talking about this stuff. If you have questions, I’m not going to charge you. I don’t charge anything for anything other than the book. Just come on in and ask a question.

Mitch: And your book is coming out real soon?

Todd: Yeah. So it’s pre-order on Amazon. It’s called The Unfair Advantage: Weaponizing the Hypomanic Toolbox, and it’s pre-order. It will be launching January 20th.

Mitch: Great. Well, you’ve been a superb guest. My god, I’ve got great notes that I’ve taken down and I love the “make money — make the most amount of money every minute of every day.” I’m going to put some spins on that. I’m going to use AI and put spins on this for helping people, for fitness, for health. Be the healthiest you can every single day. Be conscious of what you eat. Because all of these different little spin-offs — let’s call this the hub and then we’ll create the wheel.

Todd: That’s right. It was huge. And the 80/20 squared — multi-million-dollar gems when you know how to rub them and make them. That’s exactly right. It all goes back to your calendar and it all goes back to your decision making. No matter what you apply that to, it’s just about how are you spending your time and how are you making your decisions. When you can control those two things, you will double your income. You will double your business. You will turn around a loser. It will happen.

Mitch: Well, it’s also your life. Let’s spill it other than profits. Think about just the double underline — you can apply this to your physicality. You can apply this to your marriage. Doing everything you can to love your partner the most every day in order to maintain this relationship at a high level. It can happen.

Todd: That’s exactly right.

Mitch: All of this can apply. And that’s the real takeaway I got — multiple gems. That was my personal biggie right there. Thank you, Todd. Been a great guest and I would love to have you on again because I’m sure you’ve got more under the hood.

Todd: Yeah, I’ve got two more books coming out in the next year. So I’d love to jump back on and we’ve got other frameworks we can talk about. It’ll be fun.

Mitch: Great. Thank you so much, Todd.