King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights cover art

King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights

King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights

Written by: Ademola Isimeme Odewade MBA ACA BSc. (Economics)
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The King Dems Podcast is a global Top 2% podcast for ambitious leaders, founders and professionals navigating growth, leadership and the future of business. Hosted by Ademola Odewade, MBA, ACA, each episode features world-class CEOs, CFOs, entrepreneurs, futurists and thought leaders sharing practical insights on growth mindset, AI in business strategy, financial literacy, innovation, resilience, wealth and personal development. Expect bold ideas, powerful stories and actionable strategies to lead better, build smarter and grow sustainably. Instagram: @king_dems1 | TikTok: @kingdemspodcastAdemola Isimeme Odewade, MBA, ACA, BSc. (Economics) Economics Leadership Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • Why Customers Can't Explain Why They Buy (Cultural Anthropologist Explains) | Johanna Faigelman

    Why Customers Can't Explain Why They Buy (Cultural Anthropologist Explains) | Johanna Faigelman
    Oct 11 2026
    Your customers are not lying in your surveys. They simply do not know why they do what they do.Cop a copy of my books NOW: ⁠https://mybook.to/TheAI-PoweredFuture⁠⁠https://mybook.to/HumanLedFinance⁠Host live webinars and restream them to LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook: WebinarGeek (paid link): ⁠https://webinargeek.com/product?red=kdemsc⁠Get paid to put your expert judgement to work training AI: Ethos (paid link): ⁠https://agent.askethos.com/refer/nd01w7e2eelw⁠Earn from your professional expertise on frontier AI projects: Mercor (paid link): ⁠https://t.mercor.com/neABb⁠Turn customer insight into a boardroom-ready deck in minutes: Gamma (paid link): ⁠https://try.gamma.app/f2d4kygskm1h⁠Automate the analytic grunt work so your team can focus on the human questions: Make (paid link): ⁠https://www.make.com/en/register?pc=kingdemspodcast⁠Johanna Faigelman is a cultural anthropologist, speaker and the founder and CEO of Human Branding, the Toronto consultancy she launched in 2006 to apply anthropology to business strategy. She is the pioneer of Applied Anthropology Thinking (AAT)™, studied at York University and ran planning at a large advertising agency before going out on her own. Human Branding now has more than 40 people working across North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America, with clients including 11 of the world's top 20 pharmaceutical companies and brands such as Nestlé, Visa and Logitech. She is an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2026 Ontario finalist, an EY Winning Women 2025 honoree and a 100 Women to Know Winner 2026.In this episode:Why Johanna works on the principle that roughly 80 per cent of decision making sits at the unconscious and subconscious level (her working rule, not a cited study)Why she places almost zero value on the answer to a direct questionEvery business problem is a human problem: why doctors who say in surveys they will prescribe a drug still do notApplied Anthropology Thinking (AAT)™, the approach she created when she founded Human BrandingThe Who Say Do principle: who people are, how they say things and what they actually doTen years with no holidays: the unglamorous reality of building a bootstrapped consultancyWhy saying no protects a company's vision more than saying yesHow Human Branding uses AI: a closed model built about five years ago, with Johanna reporting 30 per cent efficiency gains overall and 80 per cent on analytic grunt workWhere they differ: Ademola asks what AI will do better than humans in anthropology, and Johanna is not convinced it will do anything better, only that it frees people for the human workHer one piece of advice to women founders: your difference is your advantageJohanna Faigelman, cultural anthropologist and founder and CEO of Human Branding, on consumer behaviour, decision making, Applied Anthropology Thinking, bootstrapping and human-led AI, on The King Dems Podcast and Diary of a CFO with Ademola Odewade.What is Applied Anthropology Thinking?It is Johanna Faigelman's approach to using anthropology's methods, especially ethnography, to uncover the hidden drivers of customer behaviour and turn them into marketing and strategy. She built Human Branding around it in 2006.Can AI replace market research?Johanna's view is no. AI speeds up the analysis of transcripts and data, but the insight that changes behaviour depends on human wisdom that is often not captured in language at all.More from Johanna Faigelman: ⁠https://humanbranding.com⁠ · ⁠linkedin.com/in/johannafaigelman⁠Hosted by Ademola Odewade: chartered accountant, author of Human-Led, AI-Powered Finance (foreword by Professor Dave Ulrich) and Founder of K-DEMS Consulting.The King Dems Podcast. Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights. Ranked in the global top 2% of podcasts.This description contains paid links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.#BusinessAnthropology #HumanLedAI #DiaryOfACFO #KingDemsPodcast
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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • Why Great Leaders Sound Different (BBC-Trained Voice Coach Explains)

    Why Great Leaders Sound Different (BBC-Trained Voice Coach Explains)
    Sep 25 2026
    The voice you hear when you speak is not the one your team hears.Cop a copy of my new book NOW: https://ademolaodewade.comTurn communication expertise into paid advisory work: Ethos (paid link): https://agent.askethos.com/refer/nd01w7e2eelwAI labs pay highly skilled experts: Mercor (paid link): https://t.mercor.com/neABbBuild your next keynote deck in minutes: Gamma (paid link): https://try.gamma.app/f2d4kygskm1hAutomate the admin and spend the time rehearsing: Make (paid link): https://www.make.com/en/register?pc=kingdemspodcastDavid Pope is an executive voice coach who has been based in Hong Kong for 32 years. He began in 1980s London at a Soho production company making music videos for Wham!, Dire Straits and A-ha, then joined the BBC as an assistant film editor. In 2010 he founded All Voice Talent, where he is Managing Director. He has spent more than 30,000 hours in recording studios as a producer and director, produced the English-language teen radio drama Songbirds for RTHK and now coaches leaders from law firms, financial institutions, hotels and fashion brands in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Australia, the Middle East and London.About 20 years ago he was told that growing his business meant leaving the quiet of the studio for stages, workshops and online video. He faced that fear, made mistakes in public and built the self-belief he now teaches.In this episode:- The three communication mistakes that weaken executive presence: speaking too fast, a monotone delivery and filler words- A slightly slower pace reads as authority; rapid delivery reads as nerves- The emphasis pause before a key figure and the rhetorical question pause before the answer- Chunking: mark a script with slash marks and stress one word per chunk, what Pope calls "audio punctuation"- Speakers who think they paused for five seconds usually paused for half a second- Gravitas is a balance of authority, energy and warmth, not a booming voice- In 2012 Center for Talent Innovation research, 5 per cent of senior executives named appearance and 28 per cent communication as core to executive presence; 67 per cent named gravitas- Pope's Voice Influence Framework: voice, presence and messaging- Why communication becomes more valuable as AI spreads: voiceover artists are already losing work to AI, but live, bespoke human feedback cannot be replaced- Pope says charisma can be developed; Ademola argues it is largely naturalDavid Pope, founder of All Voice Talent, on executive presence, gravitas, communication in the AI era and his Voice Influence Framework, on The King Dems Podcast with Ademola Odewade.How can I sound more confident in meetings?Slow down slightly, vary your intonation and drop filler words. Record yourself first to find out which one you need to fix.What is gravitas in executive presence?A voice that balances authority with energy and warmth. It is not a low, booming voice.More from David Pope: https://www.allvoicetalent.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/popedavidHosted by Ademola Odewade: chartered accountant, author of Human-Led, AI-Powered Finance (foreword by Professor Dave Ulrich) and Founder of K-DEMS Consulting.The King Dems Podcast. Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights. Ranked in the global top 2% of podcasts.Diary of a CFO. Finance leadership, unfiltered. Ranked in the global top 2.5% of podcasts.This description contains paid links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.#ExecutivePresence #PublicSpeaking #DiaryOfACFO #KingDemsPodcast
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    1 hr and 32 mins
  • She Left Audit at KPMG, PKF Littlejohn and RSM to Rebuild How Finance Works | Esther Adeogun

    She Left Audit at KPMG, PKF Littlejohn and RSM to Rebuild How Finance Works | Esther Adeogun
    Sep 14 2026

    Most finance teams start closing the month before the month has even finished.


    Cop a copy of my new book NOW: ⁠https://ademolaodewade.com⁠


    Turn audit and finance expertise into paid advisory work — Ethos (paid link): ⁠https://agent.askethos.com/refer/nd01w7e2eelw⁠


    AI labs pay highly-skilled experts — Mercor (paid link): ⁠https://t.mercor.com/neABb⁠


    Build the design partner deck in minutes — Gamma (paid link): ⁠https://try.gamma.app/f2d4kygskm1h⁠


    Esther Adeogun spent over a decade in audit and assurance across KPMG Nigeria, WYZE, Sapro, PKF Littlejohn and RSM UK, working between Lagos and London. She audited multinationals with US, Canadian and Australian parent structures. She then left professional services to found Valdore Systems and Intelligence Limited (VSIL), a pre-product platform building what she calls an intelligent operating layer: financial intelligence, controls and real-time visibility embedded directly into business workflows rather than applied after the fact.


    The pattern that convinced her was not jurisdictional. Across Lagos, London and multinational engagements she kept meeting the same problem. Organisations had invested heavily in software, yet finance teams still ran on spreadsheets, manual reconciliations and judgement applied outside the system. Some of her design partners begin their July month-end work in the second or third week of July in order to report to management by 4 August. That is time taken away from professional judgement and scepticism, and Esther argues the gap between activity and visibility is the thing worth closing, not the accounting concepts underneath it.


    In this episode:


    • The one sentence she would give a Fortune 500 CEO: an intelligent operating layer embedding financial intelligence, controls and real-time visibility into business workflows
    • The exact shift from auditor to founder, moving from "what went wrong" to "why did the system allow this to happen in the first place"
    • Why real-time reporting does not overturn the historical cost concept, and what she actually means by real-time
    • What SAP, Oracle and Microsoft would say in response, and where the design philosophies genuinely diverge
    • Where AI earns its place, and the deterministic, rules-based work that should stay conventional software
    • "Consulting is largely constrained by people and time" and why that pushed her to SaaS instead of another consulting firm
    • The four eras of accounting: paper, spreadsheets, ERP, and AI-assisted decision-making
    • Whether the Big Four look the same in 2035, and why she thinks firms evolve rather than disappear
    • Nigeria rewards technical skill, the UK rewards relationships, and what that cost her to learn
    • Why she no longer believes progress is linear, and what experimentation replaced it with
    • Rapid fire: the biggest misconception about AI, the biggest misconception about accounting, and the technology she is watching
    • Her legacy test: not to be remembered for building software but for helping build better businesses


    More from Esther:

    LinkedIn (personal): ⁠linkedin.com/in/esther-adeogun-0b9118125⁠


    LinkedIn (company): ⁠linkedin.com/company/valdore-systems-intelligence-ltd⁠


    Hosted by Ademola Odewade — chartered accountant, author of Human-Led, AI-Powered Finance (foreword by Professor Dave Ulrich), and Founder of K-Dems Consulting.


    The King Dems Podcast. Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights. Ranked in the global top 2% of podcasts.


    Diary of a CFO. Finance leadership, unfiltered. Ranked in the global top 2.5% of podcasts.


    This description contains paid links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.


    #AIinAccounting #ContinuousAssurance #DiaryOfACFO #KingDemsPodcast
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    58 mins
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