Latest news with #BillWalsh
FF News
18-06-2025
- Business
- FF News
Sunbit Sees 6% Lift in Acceptance Rates With Checkout.com's AI-Powered Payments Technology
Sunbit has reported a 6% increase in customer approval rates after integrating AI-powered payment acceptance technology. This improvement highlights how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the fintech landscape, especially in enhancing real-time decision-making and customer experience. Sunbit, which is already processing nearly $2B in loans per year at a 30% YoY rate of growth, needed to more effectively support future scale by partnering with to optimize its payment processing. Through its relationship with Sunbit noticed a 6% increase in payment acceptance rates and lowered the cost. This collaboration demonstrates the growing demand for AI-powered payment acceptance in retail, where speed and precision can influence conversion rates. Bill Walsh, Sunbit's Chief Customer Officer, said, 'At Sunbit, we believe in getting to 'yes.' Our tech solution has reached millions of people with financing choices that deliver transparency, great terms, and competitive value that merchants and customers love. In order to deliver this value, we need partners that can help us drive savings and optimization throughout the entire payment lifecycle. smart technology gave our team an easy and early reason to engage, but their collaborative and consultative approach to maximizing value is what led us to expand the relationship.' 'Sunbit technology is transforming how consumers access financing by building solutions that are efficient, inclusive, and built for scale. At we're proud to provide the payments performance and intelligence that underpin this experience,' said Antoine Nougué, Chief Revenue Officer at 'By leveraging our Intelligent Acceptance technology and deep acquiring capabilities, Sunbit has increased efficiency while lowering costs, demonstrating the power of aligning technology, expertise, and shared ambition to deliver better outcomes for merchants and their customers' One of the fastest growing financial technology companies in the country, Sunbit has built the leading pay over time technology in auto dealership services and healthcare markets including dental, as well as a no-fee co-branded card solution designed for retailers, and embedded its technology in leading SaaS, CRM and market platforms. Sunbit technology leverages Intelligent Acceptance — a product allowing analysis of transaction data across the network, turning these insights into real-time operational optimizations to improve payment acceptance rates. Combined with Real-Time Account Updater, which automatically updates a customer's card details when they change, and Network Tokenization, this has increased transaction-level acceptance rates while reducing processing costs. Sunbit's engineering and product teams worked closely with payment experts, who continuously monitor payment performance to fine-tune processes and identify opportunities for improvement. This led to Sunbit qualifying for a favorable interchange fee program. The strengthened partnership comes as deepens its investment in North America, having recently expanded operations in San Francisco to support rapid growth in the region. The company reported over 80% growth in the US in 2024 and continues to scale its team and capabilities to meet growing demand from enterprise merchants like Sunbit. For more information on Sunbit, visit:
Irish Times
17-06-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Owen Doyle: Rugby players seem to think they can interrogate referees. It needs to stop
'If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same . . .' At some stage in our lives, many of us have found inspiration and comfort in Rudyard Kipling's wondrous poem, If. Maybe Leo Cullen has too. Leinster have had their fair measure of disasters over the last few years, with nothing to show on the triumph side of the balance sheet. Losing finals and semi-finals by small margins has been bitter medicine. Not to mention the penalty try that went missing in the Champions Cup semi-final against Northampton . Through all of this, Cullen has remained calm, dignified, not once trying to lay the blame at the door of any match official. Not publicly anyway. It's doubtful I was alone in forecasting that the trophy would be heading south of the equator. Unusually, it's quite a pleasure to have been proved wrong . READ MORE It wasn't just a win, it was a performance of the highest quality where everything clicked. The normally powerful Bulls had no answer . The coach of the San Francisco 49ers, the great Bill Walsh, entitled his leadership book The Score Takes Care of Itself. That's precisely what happened. Now here's a key question. Can the scrum spoil the Lions series? The short answer is yes, but there are a few relevant reasons that might provide a glimmer of hope. We have seen too many top-class matches badly impacted by illegal scrummaging, including the URC final and, for good measure, the English Premiership final. However, Lions coach Andy Farrell and Australia counterpart Joe Schmidt both favour positive play, with Farrell's men likely having the stronger scrum. So, for example, on the Lions put-in, let's hope the intention will be to play the ball away, not to try and pulverise the opposition to win a penalty. On Australian ball, legitimate disruptive actions, including pushing straight, should be ordained. World Rugby elite referee manager, Joel Jutge, is bound to have had discussions with the two coaches with a view to working out an agreed scrummaging modus operandi. Failing that, the appointed referees can help the situation, as well as themselves, by being stronger with scrum decisions. 'This is not what we agreed before the game,' said referee Andrea Piardi as he reset yet another scrum during the URC final. If it isn't what was agreed, by all means tell them, but don't omit a necessary accompanying sanction. Later on, with only eight minutes left, he was still appealing for good behaviour. Otherwise, Piardi had a good match. None of his decisions affected anything very much, certainly not the clear-cut result. It was not the dog-eat-dog fight that had been widely anticipated. It was also important that there was no controversy; there has been far too much of it during the season. There have been some poor refereeing performances for long enough and it is a dreadful blot on the URC landscape. The clubs should be up on the rooftops, shouting 'enough'. Leinster's Jack Conan speaks to referee Andrea Piardi during the URC final against Bulls. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho Piardi is not alone in bringing trouble to his own doorstep by having long conversations with players who are all too keen to disagree with decisions. Players, not just the captains, are constantly appealing, even though they know perfectly well why the call has been made. It's happening far too much and getting worse. Referees are being subjected to interrogations, with players also pointing to real or imagined offences by their opponents. It will be interesting to see how this stuff is handled in the Lions series. Piardi will referee the second Lions test – the first Italian to do so. Molte congratulazioni. He will have an uncomfortable time if he allows players to be consistently in his ear. Piardi must keep his chat to concise, precise explanations and not be drawn into debates. Referees should only deal with the captain. It is clear that match officials have overdone their desire to be seen as the players' understanding friend. That approach is now backfiring. Then there is the TMO. How will that operate on the Lions tour? The Premiership final saw it reach new levels of interruption. The TMO, Ian Tempest, cooked up a different storm by bringing several, very marginal issues to Karl Dickson's attention. These took an age to conclude and could just as easily have been decided the other way around. Referee Karl Dickson points towards Dan Cole of Leicester Tigers before issuing a yellow card during the Premiership final. Photograph:One of these was farcical. The question was whether or not Leicester's Nicky Smith, on the ground under his own posts, had deliberately handled the ball. Solomon was needed to apply his wisdom to this one, but not so easy for a mere referee. Dickson took a long time to find in favour of Smith. Tempest also asked the referee to take a look at Dan Cole thumping late into Russell and the resulting yellow card raised another debate. Cole's coach, Michael Cheika, was livid. The wise referee rule-of-thumb, that only the clear and obvious should be sanctioned, must also apply to TMO intrusions. Otherwise, silence please. Then there is the intolerance of coaches towards match officials' mistakes. If there is a fingertip knock-on in the build up to a vital try, which is only seen afterwards, then the affected team's coach will blow an almighty fuse; we see it often enough. What a pity that rugby's Corinthian spirit has long since left the building.
New York Times
05-06-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Kwesi Adofo-Mensah's extension shows Vikings ownership believes in the process
Secrets are buried in books like these. Flip through the pages of 'Building a Champion,' one of Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh's manuals on doing what he and his famed San Francisco 49ers did, and you'll find plenty of gems. Perhaps the most relevant one, in the aftermath of Minnesota Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah signing a contract extension last week, focuses on the relationship between coaches and members of the front office. Advertisement Their alliance is always a delicate dance. Why? Their interests don't always align. Or, to use Walsh's words, 'each man's priorities can be diametrically opposed.' The general manager must be mindful of the overall economics and the long-term vision. The coach cares about winning — now. Threading the needle between those two worlds causes many situations to crumble. Toss in other factors, like an owner's potential meddling, the stress of losing, one key decision-maker craving public attention or credit over another, and the dynamics get messy quickly. Walsh walks through all of this. Essentially, he is explaining why so many teams fail. Eventually, he reaches two conclusions: 1) Teams hoping to sustain winning operate with continuity. And 2) a team's leadership must be willing to change when something doesn't work. Sounds easy, right? Stick with a plan, but be adaptable. It's that simple. If only ego and pressure didn't exist. Then it would be more common for teams like the Vikings to do what they've done. By extending Adofo-Mensah and keeping the partnership between him and head coach Kevin O'Connell intact, ownership demonstrated its level of commitment to attaining the elusive trophy. Spending on the roster remains flashy. New resources draw attention, too. But keeping the ship moving in the same direction, captained by the same people, is monumental. #Vikings Owner/President Mark Wilf on GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah's contract extension — Minnesota Vikings (@Vikings) May 30, 2025 'Discontinuity almost always ensures failure,' one former NFL general manager said last spring. 'You keep switching your leadership, and it's counterintuitive. It's not that if you keep the same people, you're necessarily going to be successful. But it's absolutely the case that if you switch people continuously, you will fail. At some point, you have to put your foot in the ground and say, 'I'm going to stick with somebody and stop tinkering, tinkering, tinkering.'' Advertisement Want some proof? OK, how many NFL teams have won 60 percent of their games since 2020? Seven. Who are they? The Chiefs, Bills, Packers, Ravens, Eagles, Buccaneers and Steelers. What do they have in common? Six of the seven have the same general manager now that they had in 2020, and the only one that doesn't (Pittsburgh) made a change when the previous GM retired. Additionally, only the Eagles and Bucs have different head coaches than the ones they began the decade with, and Tampa Bay replaced the former coach with his defensive coordinator. Quarterback play makes a huge difference in the results, but even that subject devolves into a chicken-and-egg conversation. Doesn't the QB have a better chance to thrive if his habitat isn't changing? Doesn't the team have a better chance of picking the correct QB if the team's leadership has experience with developing a consensus? To be clear, time together doesn't mean disagreements will never happen or that no one will ever have opposing views. If anything, the experience of working through those disputes provides a shorthand. Adofo-Mensah knows his scouts. He knows who grades players optimistically, who specializes in particular positions, who seeks to see their evaluations validated. The scouts also understand Adofo-Mensah and why he's going to see players through a historical lens. Adofo-Mensah recognizes the kinds of players defensive coordinator Brian Flores prefers. The coaching staff acknowledges that winning a Super Bowl means parting with the good (Kirk Cousins) in an attempt to find the great (a rookie quarterback offering loads of salary cap space). Working together leads to the types of free-agent classes that earned Adofo-Mensah more time. The Vikings nailed the Za'Darius Smith signing in 2022 and crushed the Byron Murphy Jr. acquisition in 2023. Last year, Minnesota hit the trifecta with Jonathan Greenard, Andrew Van Ginkel and Blake Cashman. The franchise's record is not spotless — looking at you, Marcus Davenport — but the right moves at the right times have created paths for two double-digit-win seasons in three years amid a salary-cap overhaul and quarterback transition. Advertisement Of course, the Vikings wouldn't have needed to be as reliant on free agency if they had more success in the draft. Misses in April cast a pall over Adofo-Mensah's resume. Twenty-three picks since 2022, and only one serious impact player: receiver Jordan Addison. The draft credentials would be more cause for concern, to go back to Walsh's original recipe, if it weren't for Adofo-Mensah's public reflections. 'When a mistake has been made, or a miscalculation has occurred, or a decision doesn't bring the proper results, ego prevents people from admitting error,' Walsh and co-author Glenn Dickey wrote. 'One of the major factors in successful leadership is the willingness to concede a miscalculation or mistake and change course immediately.' At least twice, Adofo-Mensah deferred to analogies to opaquely say he got too cute, tried to do too much. Privately, he has even admitted to focusing more recently on a player's intelligence, aware that O'Connell's and Flores' systems stress the mind. How these different draft priorities affect results in the next couple of seasons will determine whether Adofo-Mensah's early faults can be overcome. The most notable takeaway is that he has that opportunity. The final outcome will almost certainly hinge on J.J. McCarthy's trajectory, which is aimed as well as possible when ownership operates like this.
Forbes
02-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Rays Held Yard Sale Before ‘Turning Over Keys' To Tropicana Field For Roof Repairs
A sampling of the seemingly endless inventory of caps available at the Tampa Bay Rays' yard sale on ... More May 31, 2025. The sale was held in the parking lot of Tropicana Field. Bill Walsh likened the preparation for the Tampa Bay Rays' charity yard sale held Saturday to an average household's spring cleaning. The many items collected range from mugs to shirts and everything in between. In the process, there might a surprise or two in the form of something that had been long forgotten about, but evoked a memory or two. 'Everyone that does spring cleaning in their house, I think they find things they didn't know they had,' said Walsh, the Rays' chief business officer. 'It is pretty much the same here on a different scale.' A different scale? How about 28 seasons worth of promotional items and other inventory. Then there were a few items scheduled to be given away to fans that were, well, not given away. An example would be a Willy Adames bobblehead that was scheduled to be handed out to attending fans at Tropicana Field on May 30, 2020. Nobody was going to baseball games, or doing much of anything else, on that date due to the pandemic. When the season finally began in late July, fans were not permitted to attend. The Adames bobble, and other items, were added to the following season's promotional schedule. Hence, the Rays announced June 9, 2021 would be the date the Adames collectible would finally be handed out. However, the shortstop was dealt to the Brewers on May 21. What to do with all of the bobbleheads? The answer arrived nearly four years later when they were available to those attending the Rays' yard sale in the Trop parking lot. Similarly, and more recently, the Rays were to give away a set of three shoe charms to kids 14 and under last August 11. The players featured were Yandy Diaz, Zach Eflin and Josh Lowe. Eflin was dealt to the Orioles on July 26. Guess which team the Rays played the day the item would have been given away? In fact, Eflin blanked Tampa Bay over seven innings in picking up the win two days earlier with his new team. Kids finally got the charms at the yard sale. 'We have had a chance to put eyes on everything in all parts of the building over the last six months or so in a way that we just haven't in the last 25-plus years,' said Walsh, of scavenging Tropicana Field post-Hurricane Milton and gathering more than 75,000 items for the public to pick through. 'Almost any promotional giveaway we had, there were some left over that we found.' Shoe charms that were to be given away to Rays fans at a game in 2024, but were pulled from the ... More promotional calendar when Zach Eflin was traded before the giveaway date. Such items included bobbleheads, sweatshirts, t-shirts, tumblers, blankets and those related to group nights such as in-state universities (USF Day or UCF Day) and other themed celebrations. The many fans who weathered the rain in St. Petersburg on Saturday morning while waiting to enter two tents that had table after table full of items paid $20 for a bag they could overstuff. When the bag was full, fans could pay another $20 for each additional bag. The opportunity made for yard sale-type bargains considering what someone could walk away with. The city of St. Petersburg announced in early April that it approved $23 million for '…the cost of fabrication, delivery, and installation of PTFE (Polytetrafluoroethylene) roof membrane.' In other words, the Trop will receive a new top. Walsh noted the hope was that prep work would commence in mid-June with exterior repairs visible perhaps eight weeks thereafter. With that in mind, it was time to perform the massive spring cleaning and get out of the way. 'The genesis of this is really the city taking on the repair of the roof,' said Walsh. 'What we are going to do is turn over the keys of the building to the city for that period of time. We need to get everything that is ours out of the way so they can work. There will be hundreds of workers setting up to install (roof) panels, which be in August.' The Tropicana Field parking lot was the sight of a Tampa Bay Rays yard sale May 31, 2025. More than ... More 75,000 items were piled up on tables within two tents. Hence, it was time to get busy with literally taking inventory on what was hiding in storage spaces and other areas of the building and making the items available to fans. Several Rays employees made the day possible with the Rays Baseball Foundation, the ballclub's charitable arm, benefitting from the sale. 'It all came together in three weeks,' said Walsh, somewhat joking the Rays have had to become accustomed to doing most everything in tight windows this year, including the massive chore of getting Steinbrenner Field ready for the regular season in a matter of a few days. 'A lot of folks really rallied and worked very hard to pull this off and get it set up. Our community engagement department and our foundation folks took the lead on it with setting up the logistics.'
Forbes
26-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
5 ChatGPT Prompts To Create Your Internal Scorecard For Career Success
ChatGPT prompts to create your internal scorecard for career success Results deceive you. External validation lies. The charts don't reflect reality fast enough. Most founders anxiously wait for numbers to validate their work. Stripe dashboards. Social media followers. A bank account balance. But champions operate from a different playbook. What if you could guarantee success before any metric shows it? In The Score Takes Care of Itself, legendary football coach Bill Walsh wrote about building a standard so high that outcomes became a by-product. Excellence in, inevitable excellence out. These prompts flip how you measure success, so your business scores take care of themselves. Copy, paste and edit the square brackets in ChatGPT, and keep the same chat window open so the context carries through. Building unstoppable momentum comes from consistent standards, not occasional brilliance. When I sold my social media agency, our culture of excellence mattered more than any revenue figure. We secured the exit because our standards were elite, regardless of what happened outside our control. The scoreboard follows your inputs. Your outcome becomes automatic when you refuse to accept anything less than your best effort. "Help me create a weekly scoreboard based on my standards of effort, focus, and leadership. First, predict what excellence looks like in each area for me specifically, using what you already know about me. Then, create a scoring system with specific metrics I can track daily and average weekly. Help me connect these standards to my long-term business vision. Ask for more detail if required." When the heat turns up, your true character comes out. Winners maintain their standards regardless of circumstances. Your approach to chaos today predicts your results tomorrow. You can't succeed without tracking how you respond when things go wrong. Your reaction to conflict, pressure and unexpected challenges predicts your future success. "Create a self-review template that tracks how I handled pressure and conflict this week. Include 5 specific questions about how I responded to challenges, maintained my principles under pressure, and treated others during difficult moments. Create a scoring system that helps me quantify my performance in each area. End with a section that asks me to identify one specific situation where I could have responded better, and exactly how I'll handle a similar scenario next time." You can't do everything. You can't be everywhere. Your choices of how to spend your time today define your business success tomorrow. The quality of your decisions determines the trajectory of your business. Average entrepreneurs measure results too late, when they've already missed their opportunity to improve. But everything transforms when you score yourself on how you prioritize, decide and execute each day. Your daily choices compound into your future reality. "Score me on decision-making, priority setting, and consistency based on my actions this week. First, ask me to describe (using voice mode) an important decision I made, how I prioritized my time, and where I was consistent or inconsistent with my standards. Give me a score for each area with specific feedback on what I did well and where I can improve. Provide exact steps to level up in each category next week." You become what you repeatedly do. Each day you either reinforce the identity of a founder who wins or one who struggles. Your daily actions vote for the person you'll become in the future. Typical business owners never connect their habits to their future self. They stay stuck because they reinforce the wrong identity through their choices. "Based on what you know about me through our conversations, as well as the calendar screenshot I will upload, analyze how I spent my last 7 days. What identity am I reinforcing through my actions? Identify 3 patterns in my behavior that align with my goals and 3 that might be creating an identity that works against my success. For each misaligned pattern, suggest a replacement habit that would reinforce the identity of someone who achieves what I want to achieve. Create a daily reminder I can use to keep this identity shift top of mind. [Add screenshot]" Winners don't wing it. They reverse engineer success from a clear vision of championship performance. You can't get extraordinary results from ordinary standards. Moving beyond average means imagining how your future self operates, then bringing that reality into today. Conventional founders plan their day based on current limitations. But everything changes when you schedule as if you're already the founder you aim to become. "What would my day look like if I was living as the founder who always wins in the long term? Based on what you know about my business goals and personal values, create a new detailed schedule for my ideal day. Include both specific activities and the mindset I'd bring to each one. Highlight where this 'future me' day differs from my current patterns, particularly in how I make decisions, interact with others, and maintain my energy. Create 3 specific questionsI can ask myself each morning to step into this identity before I start work." Obsessing over the final result is surplus to requirements. Instead, define your standards. Create metrics for how you show up, and your achievements will take care of themselves. Score your effort and focus daily. Track how you handle pressure and make decisions. Check which identity your actions reinforce. Live from your future self's playbook. Don't be held back by your current limitations. Raise your internal standards and external results follow naturally. Become the type of person who wins before anyone else notices. Play the long game and win every time. Access all my best ChatGPT content prompts.
