Will Stewart, MBA

Will Stewart, MBAAug 23, 2026

Robin Williams…. The times I've laughed until I've cried watching him in movies and TV are too many to count. To say he was funny is an understatement. But what also struck me was his kindness. There are so many stories about it. My guess is that his kindness matched his enormous comedic talent. The day he died broke my heart. I'm glad we have videos like this to remind us of his other side. In 2001, Robin was invited to meet Koko, the gorilla famous for communicating through American Sign Language. But this wasn't a typical celebrity visit. Koko was grieving. Her longtime companion, a gorilla named Michael, had passed away the year before. For six months after Michael died, Koko barely ate. She stopped using her signs. Her caretakers said she hadn't smiled a single time. Six months of silence. Then Robin walked in. He played with her. Made faces. Did what Robin Williams does. And Koko responded. She signed for him to tickle her. And for the first time in half a year, Koko smiled. A gorilla who had gone silent with grief opened back up because a man with the biggest heart in comedy sat down and made her feel safe enough to laugh again. Robin later said the meeting was extraordinary. That it changed how he viewed the connection between humans and animals. But the part of this story I can't shake comes later. In 2014, Robin Williams passed away. Koko's caretakers had to tell her. When they explained that Robin had died, Koko grew very quiet. She bowed her head. And signed the word "cry." Kindness is a system. And sometimes that system reaches so deep it crosses every boundary we think exists between us and the rest of the living world. Robin didn't visit Koko to go viral. There was no camera strategy. No PR angle. He just walked into a room with a grieving soul and did the only thing he knew how to do. He made her laugh. And thirteen years later, she mourned him. That's not celebrity. That's not entertainment. That's a connection built on pure, unfiltered kindness. And it lasted a lifetime. Kindness is a system. Connection is a system. Love is a system. And when the system is right… It doesn't need words. It doesn't need language. It just needs someone willing to sit down and be present with another living being who's hurting. Robin gave us laughter. But he also gave us proof that kindness is the thing that outlasts everything else. ➕ Follow Will for "Kindness is a System" moments ♻️ Repost if Robin Williams made your life better ✉️ Want more stories like this? Sign up for the Kindness is a System newsletter: https://lnkd.in/e9Jj9UaV

Will Stewart, MBAAug 26, 2026

AI would have saved me at least 15 hours of my life in 2022. I know exactly which 15, because I spent them figuring out how to hire a handful of people in Brazil. I was Operations Director at a nonprofit. The work was activist work, on the ground, and it had to be done by people who lived there. Nobody in an office in the US was going to do it for them. Finding the people was the easy part. Then I spent two weeks building the process to actually employ them. → Reading Brazilian labor law. → Cross-referencing it against US requirements. → Working out what a contract had to contain. → Payroll, mandatory benefits, termination rules, what we could and could not put in writing. Every day that took was a day those people were not on the team. None of it was HR work. I am not an HR person. It was operations work. Take a set of rules that already exist, in public, in writing, and build a process that satisfies all of them without breaking. Every one of those 15 hours was retrieval and application. 1️⃣ Find the rule. 2️⃣ Check it against another rule. 3️⃣ Apply it to our situation. 4️⃣ Write it down so the next person could follow it. Rules that already exist, applied consistently, and documented. That is a narrow band of work, and it happens to be the one thing AI is genuinely excellent at. It is also the opposite of what most people point it at. Which is why RemoFirst gets my attention. They are an AI-native Employer of Record (EOR). They already hold the legal entity in 185+ countries, so you choose the person and they carry the compliance, the payroll and the benefits. $199 per employee per month. Contractor management is free. My 15 hours covered one country, once, and went stale the moment the law changed. They have done that work in 185 countries and they keep it current. I would have taken that deal without thinking about it. 1 month free on EOR fees with your first hire. Book the demo through my link below, or mention my name on the call. https://lnkd.in/egjQGwcx #GlobalMadeSimple #Sponsored

Will Stewart, MBAAug 27, 2026

Last Wednesday, I spent an hour on a call fixing gray digital boxes for a Zoom webinar. A client had a webinar the next day. 160 people registered. But parts of her screen share had grey rectangles where her slides should be. Zoom support had already told her it was probably her graphics card and left it there. We found two workarounds. It took the whole hour. Then I closed that window and had six minutes before the next call. Different client. Different industry. The real struggle is quickly switching from client to client. It takes up a lot more brain power to transition so by the end of the day I’m drained. But this meeting was different today…. I opened Granola and to my surprise, my pre-meeting info was already there. I had never seen this in Granola. It’s called a Brief and it was incredibly helpful. Here’s what it covered: → Who I was about to talk to. → What we covered last time. → What has changed since. → Pulled from my own notes, the web, and Gmail because I let it. I never asked for it. It just did it for me. Unprompted. Almost every AI tool I use waits for me (which is not always a bad thing).. I have to know what I need, remember to ask, and phrase it properly. Which means I am still the bottleneck, I am just a faster one. Granola decided something mattered, went and got it, and had it waiting. It sounds so elementary. But to me it meant that I was not the person who had to remember to do that job. The constant context switching wears you down over a day. Not the tasks. A lot of creators will talk about products and not actually use them. I use Granola every day, all day. I can look at what I have next on the calendar to mentally prep. Another thing I love about it is that if I jump on an impromptu call, it will anticipate my needs and ask me if I want notetaking to occur. Check the first comment for one free month of Granola! One less thing for me to worry about. #SponsoredPost