Action's Antidotes: Recent Episodes
Stephen Jaye
This podcast is designed to inspire you to create your best possible life through sharing stories of others who already have done some amazing things. To create your best possible life requires putting yourself out there, taking risks and believing in yourself. It requires adapting the right mindset. Far too many of us are trapped in situations that are less than desirable because we hang on to limiting beliefs and poor assumptions. We all want different things and have different definitions of “success”. There is no one formula to get there. Whether our paths involve waking up at 4 A.M. or staying up past midnight, reading 100 books per year or getting all of our information from YouTube videos, the one common thing we all need, to get moving on what we really want, is the right mindset. In our day to day lives in the 2020s, many of us still frequently find ourselves in environments that encourage us to act out of fear, play it safe, not take risks and accept less than what we deserv
What happens when a cybersecurity engineer walks into a fashion boutique? For Harish Chandramowli, it sparked an idea that’s now helping small fashion brands save time, money, and sanity. A chance observation in a New York store became a mission to untangle problems in inventory, communication, and operations many brands struggle with.In this episode, I speak with Harish, founder of Flair Software, about how he went from working at Bloomberg and MongoDB to building a platform that fixes the messy back-office problems fashion brands face. Harish explains why seasonal inventory is a high-stakes game, how communication breakdowns can cost thousands, and why he built his solution to integrate with Shopify instead of competing against it. Tune in now to learn more.---Listen to the podcast here:From Cybersecurity to Fashion Tech with Harish ChandramowliWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. We have a lot of technological advances, a lot of digital technology, and a lot of the efforts around it have been used primarily around digital products, primarily around some of the platforms and everything else, but there’s also an aspect that I’m hopeful around that really takes some of the digital technology that we have and uses it to enhance the physical products and the actual life that we have outside of our computers in real life. My guest today, Harish Chandramowli, is the founder of Flaire Software and he has some interesting solutions for the fashion industry and other kind of inventory-related pursuits.--- Harish, welcome to the program. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you for joining us. Now, first of all, kind of have your feet in both worlds, whether it be kind of our technological world as well as the world of fashion, the world of some of these in-real-life types of pursuits. Tell me a bit about your story, where you started and how you came up with the idea, what you observed that led to Flaire Software. Yeah. Just taking a step back, I am not from fashion industry. It’s all pretty new to me. I did my master’s in cyber security actually in Johns Hopkins, then I worked as security engineer in a bunch of very data-related platforms like Bloomberg, MongoDB. And MongoDB was my last gig where I primarily started as cloud security engineer but moved on to like an Atlas dedicated team where you see how lot of different people use databases. And, interestingly, there are a lot of retail companies using databases very heavily. That made me more and more curious on how software is being used in retail industry and why database is like one of the biggest line expenditures. On top of that, when I was looking into ERPs, Oracle is one of the biggest player in the ERP market, which made me even more curious on what this space is. What happens around here? Why is a database company spending so much on an ERP, on like a data workflow? Yeah. This kind of made me curious but, again, it was more like I don’t think I was into fashion or any of those things. I went to this store called ONS in Soho. It’s a great store you should check out if you are ever in like downtown area in New York. What’s the store called again? ONS. Okay. Orange, Naples, San Diego. So if you go to Soho and like downtown in the fashion districts, you will notice a lot of these small, small brands which is not your typical H&Ms or Zara. Yeah. So I was there, I was actually listening to their team meetings, talking a lot with their founder. I was looking at how they are operating in the back office. The first thing that stood out to me is that fashion as a whole uses a lot of software. One aspect of it which we are all familiar with is designing the fashion, like the threading, modeling and like the cut and everything. Another easier to relate option is like e-commerce site, where you list,
We have more options than ever in modern life, but is that really a good thing? Digital technologies that claim to make our lives easier, like restaurant ratings and dating apps, are all around us, but they usually end up making us feel even more stressed.In this episode,I speak with Emily Pabst, the founder of Remake the Rules and a decision-making coach. Emily discusses how our lives are being shaped by "choice tech" and how to regain control. We look at the mental traps that undermine our thinking, how having too many options can lead to anxiety, and how to prevent decision fatigue. Emily explains how small business owners, corporate executives, and regular people can simplify their decisions, live more clearly, and reconsider their relationship with technology.---Listen to the podcast here:Rethinking Choices and Tech Overload with Emily PabstWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. In today’s world, we just have a lot of decisions to make and a lot of choices to make them from. I often make the reference to doing a Google search for something like a therapist, something that a lot of people will look for at some point in their lives, and if you ever look for a therapist, you’ll see a Google search and you may see the people who do, say, the type of therapy you’re looking for, work with the type of people, whether it’s individual, couples, family, stuff like that, whether it’s specific to addiction counseling versus just kind of trying to get a leg up on life, but it’s really hard to know what you really want because you’re going to meet the therapist and you’re going to find out more about the person and whether or not you vibe, and I think that paradigm applies to a lot of other places in life, especially in our technical world where you just have so many choices and so much information and you’re like how do I sort through it all and how do I avoid getting decision fatigue? My guest today is Emily Pabst, and she is the founder of Remake the Rules, a decision-making coaching service.--- Emily, welcome to the program. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for joining from the other side of town here in Denver. And first, to I guess orient, tell us a little bit about Remake the Rules, because I think the idea may be a little bit new to some people out there listening about someone to coach you to make decisions other than whatever, probably the four or five family members they all have giving them advice. My background is in information science and data analysis, actually, and, throughout these last few decades, what I’ve really noticed both in my professional and then also in my personal life is that the overwhelming addition to what I call choice tech tools to our lives, so those are going to be tools that are digital information tools that impact how we think, how we feel, and, most importantly, how we make decisions. That the addition of those tools, while they promise a lot, a lot of additional knowledge, a lot of additional tools, they often do not deliver and they often do the exact opposite. They create a lot of uncertainty, a lot of frustration, a lot of overwhelm.And so I essentially help people live and thrive well within this sort of overwhelming information environment that we’ve created for ourselves. So, give us an example of a choice tech tool that did overpromise, underdeliver, and essentially make things more frustrating. Sure. I think the number one for many, many people, it’s going to be online dating. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I’ve seen so many videos and essays about how 90 some percent of people involved in it are frustrated with the online dating world, that there’s like this idea that there’s maybe 5 or 10 percent of people that are really thriving in it, and then the other 95, 90 percent are just fed up. Yeah. I mean,
Most of us focus on the obvious when it comes to wellness, what we eat, how we move, and how much we rest. But there’s another daily habit that could quietly be affecting our health: the water we drink. We often think about diet, exercise, and even sleep when it comes to our health, but how often do we think about our water?In this episode, I talk with Cydian Kaufman, water quality expert CEO of Pure Water Northwest, about what’s really in your tap water and how it could be affecting your energy, skin, and long-term health. Cydian explains the difference between “legal” and “healthy” water standards and shares practical tips on improving your water at home, from reverse osmosis systems to dealing with PFAS and other hidden contaminants. Know what you drink. Tune in now.---Listen to the podcast here:Tapping into Health and Water Wellness with Cydian KauffmanWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Growing up on Long Island, my family, we always used some form of a water filter. It was always –– it was before Brita but there was a predecessor to it, now a lot of people use Brita, or we would use bottled water. However, living in Denver, we recently had a project where we reconstructed our water pipelines to get the lead out of the water. Since then, I’ve actually drank all my water out of the tap here in Denver, Colorado. Whether that’s the right decision or not, I am not sure, so I’m going to introduce to you my guest, Cydian Kauffman, who is one of the owners of Pure Northwest Water, to tell me about water as well as whether or not I’m making the right decision with this current situation.--- Cydian, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate being here. It’s Pure Water Northwest, by the way, just so you know. I love talking about water. I’d be happy to jump right in and talk about Denver specifically, if you like, however you want to approach it. Yeah, I mean, I didn’t know. All I do remember is that a few years ago, they reconstructed the pipelines here in Denver and they said the project was to get the lead out of the water and that, since then, I’ve, at least, in my head, felt like just drinking the water out of the tap was perfectly fine. It might be. What zip code are you in? What, if you don’t mind saying that? Oh, wow. Yeah, we’re getting fine-tuned here. I’m in 80205. Right. Let’s get specific. So, you’re on the Denver Water Board, water quality –– Yeah, but I’m not elected to any water position here. I just –– Yeah, I know. I mean, you’re on the main water in Denver, Colorado, Yeah, I assume. I mean, I’m only like a mile and a half east of downtown. All right, so if you look up, and most people in the country can do this, you can actually go look up water quality reports for whatever water quality you’re on, and there’s two ways to go about this. One is to just literally look up the water quality report for your municipality, which I’ve got right in front of me, two seconds of doing a Google search, I got the Denver Water Quality Report. Yeah, that’s going to bring you to a page with a bunch of lists of what they do and how they do it and, eventually, you’re going to get to exact contaminants that they test for and their results. If you don’t want to just take their word for it, though, you can go to a website called the EWG, the Environmental Working Group, then go to their tap water database, type in your zip code and find your municipality that way, and then you can kind of compare those two. Now, unfortunately for most people, this is going to be more annoying than good experience because there’s so much confusion in these lists, like what does it mean to have eight parts per billion of bromodichloromethane, which happens to be in Denver water. If you talk to someone like myself, we will know right away, bromodichloromethane,
You’ve got the skills, the service, maybe even a killer website, but how do you actually get people to notice? In a world flooded with content and AI-generated everything, standing out feels harder than ever. So, what do you do?In this episode of Action Antidote, we’re joined by Reed Hansen, Chief Growth Officer at Market Surge, to break it all down. From finding your true audience to navigating tech overwhelm (hello, AI everything), Reed shares practical tips on marketing smarter, not louder. He also drops insights on how to stay human in your message, even as the internet gets noisier by the minute.If you’re running a business, building a brand, or just trying to get traction in a crowded world, this one's for you.---Listen to the podcast here:How to Get Your Business Noticed Without Losing Yourself in the Noise with Reed HansenWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about getting a business noticed, and this conversation may even get into this broader concept of getting noticed in general, because anyone that starts a business, your product could be amazing but you would need to actually get that product noticed. But, increasingly, in the traditional job market, we’re also seeing people need to find a way to get noticed, in the sense of every single job you apply for online now has 700 or whatever resumes, all kind of pointing in and it’s just a pretty crowded world out there in general with the internet having kind of connected everything with everything, everyone with everyone, and we’ll talk a little bit about whether or not AI tools have the potential to change that. But here to talk about just what you need to do to get your business noticed, I would like to invite my guest, Reed Hansen, the chief growth officer of MarketSurge and owner.--- Thank you. I’m really glad to be here. Oh, thank you for coming on. And so, I’m envisioning a situation a lot of people have where, okay, you’ve developed a product or a service, let’s just say someone just decides to go freelance because they got laid off or their job didn’t really work out well, it wasn’t what they wanted to do and someone just has a skill, say, you’re even like a graphic designer or something like that and this is a great skill set for a freelance option. So, if someone’s doing something along those lines, what do they need to be thinking about as far as, “Okay, I have this great skill set but now I need to get customers. Now, I need to get people to buy it,” essentially? Yeah, no, that’s a great question, and I think really the essential question is you’re going into business for yourself. Obviously, you will have a certain set of skills from previous experience and attributes and talents but you want to be super hyper-focused on the needs of the customers you want to work with. And that is tricky because you want to understand both where are they located? Where are they found? Where is their attention focused on? And we talk about social media platforms. Is your audience more of a Facebook audience or more of a Discord or Reddit audience? And you need to understand those things and put yourself in the shoe, because you are not your customer. You don’t just instinctively have all the same interests and likes as your customer. You have to understand where they are and that’s the first thing. Where are they? And then you want to think about what do they need, what do they value. Some roles might be a little easier, like if you are an expert plumber, you kind of know what is needed and what they need, but if you come in as a creative, you have a wide, broad range of things that you need to tailor your offering. An example, the plumber, right? I mean, your customer is a homeowner who had some sort of plumbing problem happen to their home. That’s just great, like 100 percent clear example.
Ever feel like you're putting your message out there and... nothing? No response, no engagement, just silence. In today’s world of nonstop content and ever-changing algorithms, just showing up isn’t enough. You have to show up the right way.On this episode of Action Antidote, we're joined by Joshua Altman, Chief Marketing Officer at Beltway Media, to talk about what it really takes to get your message to land. With a background in journalism and social media strategy, Joshua knows how attention works and how to earn it. He shares why a message often needs more than one shot to stick, how to find the signal in all the digital noise, and why staying human is your greatest advantage in a crowded space. If you’re tired of guessing what works and ready to start communicating with clarity and impact, this episode is your cheat code.---Listen to the podcast here:Your Message Doesn’t Matter If No One Hears It with Joshua AltmanWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about getting your message out and about all the different ways that we have available to get our messages out and even how this landscape is changing quite a bit. I’m sure you’ve all heard a little bit about AI and the hype around where AI might be taking some things, but there are plenty of other progressions and other trends taking place. To stay updated on that and to give us some information about all the different platforms, all the different methods, all the different places we can go and also the ways we can craft our messages to our audience, I would like to bring on my guest today, Joshua Altman, who is the chief marketing officer of beltway.media, a company that provides fractional services to small- to medium-sized businesses.--- Joshua, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me so. So, yeah, let’s start out by talking about your story. Has marketing, getting crafting messages, getting messages out, has that always been part of your path? In a way. I did not start in corporate or in marketing or anything along those lines. I went to journalism school and started as a journalist, and then went from being a congressional news producer and reporter to being a corporate communications person. I left my job, I was with The Hill newspaper for about five years and I left that to what I thought would be freelance reporting and producing. I was a cameraman, I was an editor, I was a producer, so very hands-on technical side of things in addition to the reporting, doing the interviews, the research. All the things people associate with print reporting, I was doing that plus video. That’s what I went to college for. I did my masters while I was a reporter. I was all in DC. I did that in something called communications, culture and technology and I thought I’d spend my career as a journalist. That wasn’t what ultimately happened. I left my job as a journalist, thinking, like I said, I’d be freelance, and then I kind of just fell into the corporate work, which is kind of what I’ve been doing since. So what made you leave your job? What was the –– was there an event that made you leave it? A certain realization? No. I mean, in terms of an event or a realization, I’ve been there just, like I said, for five years. I was kind of looking to grow and do something a little different than what I had been doing. I had great experiences where I was, was just looking to do more, again, as a reporter. I ended up doing something entirely different. So, when you were on the path of being a reporter, it seems like you had your hand in a lot of the areas of content creation or what we would call content creation now,. You talked about filming the video, video editing, doing everything. Was there certain aspects of it that started to intrigue you more, because you talk now quite a bit about how our messages are crafted,
Are you living life on autopilot, checking all the boxes but still feeling stuck? Ever wonder if the path that feels safe is actually keeping you small? What if the real key to freedom and fulfillment is creativity, not just in art, but in how you live, decide, and grow?In this episode of Actions Antidotes, we're joined by Pia Liechter, founder of Kollectiv Studio and author of Welcome to the Creative Club. Pia opens up about how divorce, burnout, and losing her job became the turning point that helped her reconnect with her creative power. She takes us through her journey, including a bold ride on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and shares what it means to truly direct your own life instead of following someone else’s script. Pia reminds us that you don’t need permission to rewrite your story. Even small “firsts” can be powerful steps toward a life that feels more like your own.Listen in and discover how to tap into your creativity, take meaningful risks, and explore a version of life that’s built on your terms, not someone else’s.---Listen to the podcast here:Why Playing It Safe Is Keeping You Small (And What to Do About It) with Pia LiechterWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about something that can often get ignored in the modern world, and that is creativity, creative pursuits, and creative suits can take on so many different forms but can often fall into this bucket of things that the modern day cult of productivity, if you want to call it that, can really ignore as like, okay, it wasn’t really productive for you to spend a Thursday afternoon drawing a picture or something like that. My guest today has her own story around creativity. Pia Leichter is the founder of the Kollektiv Studio.--- Welcome to the program. Thank you, Stephen. It’s so nice to be here. Yeah, it’s nice to have you here. And let’s start with your story, because you recently published a book covering your story around kind of discovering your creativity. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it’s called Welcome to the Creative Club and it smashes the myth that creativity is reserved for the chosen few and invites everyone to access and apply creativity to the design of their lives, and I do share stories about how I lost and found my creative power and also really exploring what creativity means in moving into a much more expansive definition, because, often, what stops us from being creative is the belief or idea that I’m not the creative type. I want to debunk that one, because if you’re human, you’re an artist at play. So, this sounds like a story that a lot of people have, and if I had a dollar for every time I heard someone around my age say something along the lines of, “I’m just not a creative person, it just happens.” So let’s start with the specifics of your story. So you said you lost and found your creative abilities of some sort. Well, power, really, because, first, it starts with shifting my own experience or definition of creativity, which happened through different moments or pivots or sticky junctures in my life. For me, growing up with an artist father on the Lower East Side Manhattan, abstract, my dad is an abstract painter, creativity was just something we did. It was just a natural part of life. He’d be painting, I’d be writing stories as a little kid or poems or whatnot. And creativity, later on, I moved into the realm of commercial creativity. I worked in creative studios and age brand agencies for the majority of my career, well over –– 15 years, until I left to start my own business. And so creativity was still very much something I did. When life threw me through the windshield of the car I was driving that needed to get fixed, changed, traded in through a series of events that, say, the divorce, unhealthy rebound relationship, and then getting fired from my six-figure cushy creative par...
Are your dreams just ideas floating in your mind or are you ready to turn them into action? Most of us have big goals, but the real challenge is execution. How do you stay focused, avoid burnout, and actually get things done, especially when life gets messy or plans fall apart?In this episode of Actions Antidotes, we’re joined by Joshua Kalinowski, former professional athlete, business leader, and the founder of Kalinowski Enterprises. Joshua shares what it really takes to “dream big and execute bigger”, his personal mantra that goes beyond motivation and into sustainable strategy. From building systems that support success to understanding your own rhythms and energy, Joshua talks about making smart, intentional moves even when life doesn’t go as planned. He opens up about losing his identity after baseball and how that led him to build not just businesses, but people from within.You’ll also hear how his “PILL” framework (Painful, Intentional, Lazy, and Loving) can transform your daily habits into lasting personal wins. Whether you're chasing growth in business, relationships, health, or simply looking to reclaim your time and energy, this conversation is a must-listen.Tune in now to learn how to build a life where your actions match your ambitions.---Listen to the podcast here:How High Performers Break Through with Joshua KalinowskiWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. This year, on this podcast, we’ve been covering a lot about practical tools in which to help you get going. There’s always a period of time to dream, to plan, to figure out what you want is, but, at some point, you have to actually, as my last episode we discussed, take action, and taking action requires some practical tools. So, to talk a little bit more about some of these practical tools that you can use in order to dream big but execute bigger, I would like to invite onto the show Joshua Kalinowski, the president and visionary for Kalinowski Enterprises, which involves a lot of things so we’re going to cover that all in the episode.--- Joshua, welcome to the program. My man, appreciate it. Man, it is so good to be here. Thanks for the intro. Oh, yeah, wonderful. And let’s start right with this whole dream big, execute bigger. That’s kind of your motto. It is, yes. Well, it really came, it’s just kind of, for me, it’s more of like just reminding me constantly that as much as I dream, I’ve got to take action on it so I’ve got to take action and execute on things at an even larger scale because, as we know, it takes so much more to actually get fulfillment out of that. It takes so much more to actually have these things that accomplishes so much harder so it’s just another like a mantra for me to remind myself that if I’m going to dream big, I’ve got to execute at an even bigger stage. So, yeah, so that execute bigger part of it, and I think this is something that, obviously, we talk a lot about people who just talk up a storm and talk is cheap, anyone can say, “One day, I’m gonna write a book,” “One day, I’m gonna do the Grand Canyon rim to rim to rim,” as we kind of discussed before –– Good example, I love it. Yeah, so one day we’re going to do that, but most people acknowledge that you have to do something, but this whole execute bigger, do you encounter a lot of people who dream big but then execute, but their execution is not as big as it needs to be in order to make that dream a reality? Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, you mentioned earlier, I’m the CEO and president of Kalinowski Enterprises and so I get to see a lot of entrepreneurs, and we hire a lot of people within our company so we go anywhere from real estate all the way to roofing and everything in between there. And so, yeah, you see so many people that say, “Hey, listen, I wanna be successful in this industry.
Ever feel like you’re living a life that doesn’t quite feel like yours? Maybe you’re stuck in a job you don’t love, caught in routines you never really chose, or just feeling like something’s holding you back, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. A lot of that might be coming from beliefs buried deep in your subconscious, beliefs you didn’t even realize were running the show.In this episode of Actions Antidotes, I chat with Albert Bramante, psychology professor, talent agent, and author of Rise Above the Script. We dig into what it really means to live “by the script,” how to spot the limiting beliefs that keep us stuck, and why small, consistent actions (not huge leaps) are the real game changers. Albert shares insights from his own journey and the work he’s done helping people shift their mindset and build a life they actually want to live. So if you’ve been saying “someday” a little too often…maybe today’s the day to start taking that first step. ---Listen to the podcast here:Stop Living by Someone Else’s Script with Albert BramanteWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you all about kind of achieving your potential and achieving your potential through various different mechanisms. There’s no one set way, despite what they may have told you in school or some other traditional childhood component of your life, that there is no one set way in which you can achieve your potential. There are plenty of ways that we could all, as my guest today would say, Rise Above the Script. That’s the name of his book. My guest today, Albert Bramante, not only is an author but also a psychology professor and talent agent.--- Albert, welcome to the program. Thank you, Stephen, so much for inviting me. I’m really happy to be here and really happy to be part of the community here and happy to have a conversation, answer any questions and offer any insights that can be helpful. Yeah, that is wonderful. And so the core message behind this podcast is always about different ways that we can kind of achieve the life that we want, and it’s interesting that your book is titled Rise Above the Script because one of the common expressions I use is “living by the script.” When we talk about the script, I’m curious about if your understanding of the script is similar to the way mine is. Yeah, I’m not talking about the literal sense of a script, like for a play or for a movie.What I’m talking about, the script that we use as our internal mind and our internal guiding system, in a sense, so it’s what navigates our life, what navigates our purpose, and particularly our conscious and subconscious mind.And I use the metaphor of a script because the book was written for performing artists who use scripts all the time, so I used that as a metaphor to kind of help understand exactly what the message is and that is really working, rewiring our mindset, and changing our mindset and changing the approach that we live our life on a day-to-day basis. And is this rewiring of the mindset something that spans kind of almost any kind of pursuit? Because you talk about working with performing artists, we’ll encounter people who say, “I wanna level up at my job.” Maybe we’ll encounter some other people that’ll say, “I wanna leave the nine to five and I wanna build my own business,” or even someone that just wants to create a different community or some other aspect of their lives or they’re like, “I want my relationship to better. I wanna have a relationship.” All those different pursuits that we’re all having in order to level up our lives, is it similar subconscious pursuit? A hundred percent, yes, because all of that requires you to optimize your mindset and your subconscious beliefs and your conscious beliefs. And what can hold you back from any of these endeavors that you had indicated is limiting beliefs,
Leadership today isn’t just about managing people—it’s also about managing yourself. With so much change happening around us, how can leaders stay grounded and show up for their teams in the best way possible?In this episode, I talk with Chris Thyberg, a leadership coach and founder of The Serving Way. We chat about what it really takes to lead people in today’s world—whether it’s dealing with AI, figuring out remote vs. office work, or building trust in your team. Chris shares helpful advice on how to lead yourself first, and how being honest, curious, and human can make you a better leader.This is a down-to-earth, thoughtful conversation for anyone trying to grow as a leader in 2025 and beyond. Tune in and learn more.---Listen to the podcast here:Being a Good Leader—Inside and Out with Chris ThybergWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Last fall, I had Chris Thyberg on the program and we talked about leadership from both the perspective of an inner game and an outer game, how you need to take care of yourself in order to take care of the people that you’re a leader for. Since that episode, a lot has changed in the world, because the year 2025 has been marked by just a really rapid kind of pace of change on many different fronts, and that has caused a lot of people who have, say, different reactions. The range of reactions to these changes have been quite variant, as would be expected, and that has caused some additional challenges with regards to group cohesion as well as being able to delegate and trust the people who you’re working with. So, once again, I would like to bring back to the program Chris Thyberg to talk to us a little bit about what we need to do to be good leaders from both internally and externally now where we sit well into the year 2025.--- Chris, welcome back. Thank you, Steve. It’s a pleasure to be back with you after an excellent conversation last time. Well, thank you for coming back. This podcast has had maybe, I’m going to say three or four repeat guests, not that often, but it is something that’s changed quite a bit since we talked in September of 2024. I think we’re all familiar with what types of changes and, as you know, this is not a political show in the sense that I’m not here to tell anyone how they should or shouldn’t be responding to that aspect, nor is it telling anyone how they should or shouldn’t be responding to things such as AI, the number of layoffs, and the additional challenges and anxiety in the workforce today. All we can really do is kind of respond to it. Chris, what are you observing as far as the people that you work with and how they’re responding to all the different forms in which this change is taking place? Yeah, thank you. The last time we talked together, I described the conditions that leaders are under as white water conditions, as paddling down the river in the rapids and they’re starting to get class 4, class 5, maybe there’s even a waterfall that you can see coming up. All right. So, here are a few things that have been contributing to now what feels like windsurfing in a hurricane. If we thought the river trip was a little hard, sometimes, yeah, let’s try windsurfing when the swells are 20 feet high and we’re in driving down rain. Right, so you got a whole new situation here. Yep, let’s go. So, one aspect is the place of AI, how disruptive it is, the anxieties it’s creating for everyone, from longstanding employees to folks coming out of college, those entry-level positions that now people are arguing can be done just as well by a well-trained bot as that expensive college grad. So, what I like to remember in this space is that, right now, generative AI is like a very eager, tireless, relentless, driven intern that absolutely knows nothing at all about you, your business, your people, your leadership. All of it, right?
When life suddenly changes, it can feel like everything is falling apart. You might wonder, Where do I find the strength to keep going? Resilience is about finding that courage inside yourself to face the hardest moments and keep moving forward no matter what.In this episode of Actions Antidotes, we are joined by Kijuan Amey, founder of Amey Motivation—a U.S. Air Force veteran, speaker, author, and resilience coach who shares his powerful story of resilience following a life-changing motorcycle accident. Kijuan recounts his background in the Air Force, his transition to civilian life, and the fateful day in May 2017 that altered his life's trajectory. He discusses the immediate aftermath of his accident, the extensive medical procedures and recovery process, and how he overcame the physical and emotional challenges to regain his sense of self-worth and purpose. Kijuan’s journey from being in a medically induced coma to becoming a motivational speaker and author of Don't Focus on Why Me offers valuable lessons on resilience, the importance of a supportive mindset, and finding direction after a dramatic life event. If you’ve ever faced a major setback or want to build your ability to bounce back from life’s ups and downs, this episode is for you.---Listen to the podcast here:Resilience and Triumph: Overcoming Life-Altering Challenges with Kijuan AmeyWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you all about resilience, and resilience can mean a lot of different things, but if you go about your life long enough, eventually, you’ll have some sort of event, some sort of event happen to you, whether it be something like losing a job, losing a key family member, losing a good friend, and, in this particular case, an accident that can happen anytime you’re going about your day to day life that can really change your life’s trajectory. My guest today is Kijuan Amey and he has a story about an accident as well and his resilience around it. He is an Air Force veteran and a motivational speaker.--- Kijuan, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me here, Stephen. I truly appreciate you having me on to speak about my story on your platform. Well, thank you for your willingness to share your story with my audience. I know we’re all trying to be better people in one way or another or trying to achieve something, and it is a real big deal when something specific happens to you, so tell us a little bit about where your story begins. This was May 5, 2017. I was, at the time, in the United States Air Force Reserve. I did four years active and I said, “I’m done with this.” I wanted to get away from that lifestyle, shall I say. And I think I made the best choice for me, personally. Other people, they love the active duty world, but I made the best decision for my life, and then not only just to be a reservist but to also go to school full time so I was pursuing my bachelor’s degree because I also wanted to become a pilot ultimately, and the job that I was doing in the Air Force was in-flight refueling and that’s where you refuel planes in midair. Amazing. To me, hands down, I think the best enlisted job I’ve ever heard. I don’t care what anybody says. So just amazing to see another plane fly up to you, right behind you as you’re flying in the air and you can refuel them, and I just call it a flying gas station, basically. So, quickly, how did that work? Because I’m trying to picture it in my head now, the idea that one plane is flying and another one is kind of coming up. Does someone have to actually jump out of the airplane and connect it the way we fill up our cars at the gas station? Yeah, no, if we had army guys on the plane, we would make them do that. But, no, we don’t do that. Okay. Yeah, no, so we have this thing we call the boom and what you do is you lower it,
Homelessness is a complex crisis—one that can't be solved by temporary fixes alone. It takes compassion, innovation, and the courage to rethink how we support those in need. What if we could build communities that restore dignity, stability, and hope?In this episode, I’m joined by Ashley Garcia, founder and executive director of Tiny Villages Inc. We dive into the deeper issues behind homelessness and explore bold, community-centered solutions. Ashley shares how her team is building small, self-contained homes and community spaces that give people not just a place to live, but the support they need to move forward. It’s a reminder that even small ideas can lead to big change.---Listen to the podcast here:Innovative Solutions That Are Changing Homelessness with Ashley GarciaWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you a little bit about addressing some of these major societal issues. Now, we all have our different reasons for why we’re taking on the initiatives we have, but some of us are really moved by things that we see in the world, some major issues, and, sometimes, it could be pretty daunting to think about something that has been an issue for sometimes decades, centuries, even millennia, and really dig in and take it on. My guest today is Ashley Garcia and she is the founder and executive director of a Colorado nonprofit called Tiny Villages, the address is tinyvillages.org. --- Ashley is taking on a major societal issue and, Ashley, welcome to the program. Thank you, Stephen, for having me today. I’m excited to talk a little bit more about Tiny Villages Inc. Let’s start out by, first of all, describing your story about the issue that you were moved to address and what made you decide that you have the capacity, have the talent, everything else to dive into it. So, Tiny Villages Inc. is a 501(c)(3) Colorado nonprofit corporation where we’re providing permanent housing solutions to citizens in the United States, and this includes safe housing with high quality of life and we’re folding that into three different parts so there’s housing, agriculture, and innovation. And with that, there’s going to be things like solar panels being used, there’s going to be over 110 acres on each of the tiny villages where we will provide agriculture that will give food to the villagers when they move in. And, with that, right now, we’re focusing on the unhoused population. The reason being is, back in 2021, one of my businesses is real estate investing, and so with that company, myself and several of my business partners went and traveled the United States because we’re looking for property so that we could have landing strips and have resorts and have gated communities, 24-hour security so that all the elitist in the United States could come, or actually in the world, could come and mastermind and just figure out and collaborate how to solve big world problems. And, the reality is, when we went and did this trip, we found out that there’s a lot of land, and every single state that we went to, there was the unhoused population. So that’s when I flipped all of this around and started Tiny Villages Inc. So you noticed a lot of land, and another part of your mission is related to agriculture so did you notice a lot of land not only, and I’m specifically thinking about some places I’ve been to or used to live in like Illinois and Iowa where there’s a lot of land but I just imagine a lot of it being corn fields, soy fields, and stuff like that, but I’m guessing you observed a lot of land that wasn’t also already being used for agriculture? That is correct. There’s a lot of undeveloped land or there’s a lot of like little towns and cities that have folded up because the people have actually left and went to the major cities where jobs are and so it was just eye opening to even see that.
Sales can be intimidating—especially when you're chasing a passion that doesn't come with a natural knack for selling. For many, mindset is the missing piece, not just in business but in life. But what happens when you combine strategy with psychology to unlock real growth?In this episode, I have Christopher Philippi, a seasoned sales consultant and coach for CEOs. He helps people overcome the fear of selling and client acquisition by blending both coaching and consulting to support real growth. In our conversation, Christopher shares how mindset shapes our actions, why clarity and consistency matter, and how to shift your thoughts to get better results in business and life. Tune in to learn how the right strategy and mindset can change everything.---Listen to the podcast here:Mastering Sales and Mindset with Christopher FilipiakWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. A lot of us have ideas, a lot of us have passions, and a lot of us have the impact that we want to make onto the world and maybe you’re listening and you’re thinking about it a little bit, thinking, okay, should I get serious about this? It’s springtime, there’s a new energy going on, maybe it’s time to actually get serious. But we have a series of things that oftentimes trip us up, make us a little bit intimidated, make us kind of question whether or not we want to hit that proverbial Start button. And one of the things that can really intimidate a lot of people is sales or kind of building a client base/audience, how do you actually connect your product to the market that you’re trying to connect it to, i.e., how do you actually sell the thing? Is someone going to ever pay me for this? Today, to talk about that subject, I would like to bring on my guest, Christopher Filipiak, who is a sales consultant and a coach for CEOs.--- Christopher, welcome to the program. Hey, Stephen. It’s so good to be here today. Thanks for having me on the show. Yeah, thank you for popping on. So not kind of a normal combination, sales consultant and coach for CEOs. What does that mean in tandem? Yeah, sure. It’s a good question because consulting is its own unique thing and coaching is its own unique thing so when I think of consulting, you kind of think of three buckets, strategy, planning, and implementation of something, and a consultant is really someone who provides expert advice and a proven process, meaning, know how to get something done and they’re there to be an expert and go, “Hey, this is how you do that.” A coach is more there to help you create clarity on what you want and help you discover your own truths. So a coach isn’t there to tell you how to do it, a coach is really there to help you figure out how you want to do it and provide you some support and some challenge and a container for you to do that. So, when it comes to sales, I think both things are important, because my clients need someone who can help them set up a sales system, a sales process, the skills around the strategy and tactics of building a business that’s competent and making sales, and so much of sales deals with what’s going on in your own head and your own confidence and your own leadership and your own material around money and strangers that having coaching is also really supportive so that’s why I do both. And are your clients often the same for both the coaching and the consulting or is it usually separate endeavors based on what someone at a certain time? Yeah, that’s a really good question. So, they tend to be the same. When I work with my clients, what happens is we’ll have calls that are focused on building skill sets or implementation work around the strategies and tactics around sales and then we’ll have separate calls that are coaching-only calls. And so most of my engagements with my clients, I do both things,
Family legacy means different things to different people. For some, it’s a big part of who they are, with strong traditions and high expectations. For others, it’s something they’re still trying to figure out. But how do you build something new while honoring where you came from?In this episode, I have Leslie Lane, the founder and lead photographer of Studio 13. Photography runs in her family, and she’s been able to take that legacy and shape it into something of her own. In our conversation, Leslie shares what it was like growing up in a photography family, how she found her own style, and what it means to her to carry that legacy forward while doing things her way. Tune in and learn more!---Listen to the podcast here:What It Means to Carry Legacy Forward with Lesle LaneWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you all about a topic that we’ve yet to really cover in this particular podcast, and that is the idea of a family legacy. I know some people have a stronger family legacy than others. For some people, it really looms large and there’s a lot of expectations, and, for others, it’s maybe even lacking direction too much. But my guest today, Lesle Lane, is the founder and lead photographer of Studio 13 but she comes from a family that has a legacy of photography and she’s been able to take their business and kind of move it in a direction that puts her own mark on it.--- Lesle, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me. It’s such a pleasure. Definitely. So, tell us first about how photography is part of your family legacy. I sure will. So, my grandfather actually started the business. He came into the photographic industry because when he was an eighth grader, his father tried to kill him with a garden hoe and so he ran away from home. You’ve got the shocked look on your face. It’s true. He ran away from home and they didn’t have Child Protective Services and so he ended up getting in with traveling salespeople, nomadic people, that’s what they did, and one of the things that they did was teach him how to be a photographer. And so he would go from town to town taking pictures and then going back several weeks later to deliver the pictures and, finally, came upon my grandmother, who he ended up marrying, though he was hired to shoot her engagement portrait so that was quite scandalous. And then they settled, started their portrait photography business in Columbus, Georgia. And then my mother and father divorced where we moved to Indiana together, she married my stepfather and then I took over his version of the photography studio, which was corporate and commercial work. It’s just shocking to hear someone trying to kill their own son with a garden hoe because people will oftentimes joke about it and they’re like, funny, like, “Oh, I could kill you,” or something like that, but like this was a literal attempt to end his own son’s life. Yes, and, actually, I misspoke, it was a stepfather, but still, the man that was married to his mother, and it was during the Depression times, things were not good, there was no work, there was no money. It doesn’t excuse it at all but he had no choice. And so my grandfather, he survived and ended up running a very successful business and dying a multimillionaire. He made something amazing of himself after leaving home in the eighth grade. That is a legacy. That is something you can grab on to. Great father, great grandfather, and I’m blessed to have known him. One of the things that I’ve done personally and I know a lot of other people have talked about recently and it gets a little bit spiritual sometimes is this idea of multigenerational patterns and how they affect anyone’s life going forward. And so you have this family legacy of photography, which I definitely want to talk about as well as that’s your business,
Starting a business is a big decision, and people do it for different reasons. Maybe you have a passion you really care about, or you just want more freedom in how you spend your time. For some, it's about doing something different from the usual 9-to-5 job and having control over their own path. But what does it really take to start a business—and is passion enough to keep you going? In this episode, I have Clara Ansel, CEO and Founder of Business Powerhouse. Clara shares valuable insights into managing business growth sustainably without burning out. The conversation delves into the importance of having a clear destination or 'Point B,' the role of mindset in business success, and practical steps to avoid chaos and inefficiency. Clara also discusses the significance of decluttering one's mind and surroundings, actionable advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, and her personal journey from corporate consultancy to empowering small business owners. Tune in to learn more!---Listen to the podcast here:Starting and Scaling up a Business with Claire AnsellWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidotes to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you all about starting and scaling up businesses. Now, perhaps you have your reasons for wanting to start a business and, usually, it's about passion that you have or just the desire to have a life where you have a little bit more autonomy over what you do and when you do it, something other than the corporate life, but maybe you're looking at these processes of starting a business and seeing how daunting the process is, how much it really goes on, especially if you do end up with an investor that expects you to scale or if you personally have the desire to scale because whatever mission you're serving, you're kind of wanting to bring to more or more people. My guest today is Claire Ansell, and she is the CEO and founder of Business Powerhouse and she has some good thoughts about how we could go about managing this whole process without kind of burning out, without kind of ending up doing too much in a more sustainable fashion.--- Claire, welcome to the program. Hey, Stephen. How are you? I'm doing pretty well today. It's actually a nice 70 degrees here. Nice. That's good. Summer is coming. It always feels nice at this time of year. How are you today? I'm pretty good. It’s been an exciting day with doing lots of –– actually like in the same realm as what you're talking about. We launched a new kind of series in our hub called Awaken, which is all about mindset so it's pretty exciting to be jumping on here with you today and kind of continuing the conversation. Yeah, and that's a good place to start. We can talk a little bit about mindset because I'm assuming you work with a lot of people who are either starting businesses or have a business and they're just starting to become overwhelmed as their web traffic, their client base, something kind of picks up. Yeah, and I think it doesn't really matter what phase of business you're in, whether you're a startup or a ten-million-dollar business, the reality –– or a hundred-million-dollar business. I mean, I've seen it right up to 600 million. I mean, at some point, a business owner is overwhelmed in chaos and facing that burnout. It's just the reality of the way in which we structure and grow our businesses. Now, given your role in your business, is there any way to prevent that burnout? Is there any way someone that's starting a business now can adopt either a mindset or a set of operational practical you want to start a business but you don't want to burn yourself out? Yeah, 100 percent, and I think one of the biggest pieces the business owners really miss is they don't understand what their point B is. We talk about point A is where you are today and point B is where are you going in the future and that could be at ...
Stress is part of life, but learning how to handle it well can make a big difference for your health and well-being. When we don’t have the right tools, even small problems can start to feel overwhelming. The good news is, there are easy ways to bounce back and stay on track. But what if there was a way to actually measure how well you're handling stress?In this episode, I talk with Matt Bennett, founder of Optimal HRV. We dive into heart rate variability (HRV) and how it relates to your body’s ability to recover from stress. Matt shares how HRV tracking can give you early signs of health issues before symptoms even show up. He also talks about affordable tools and breathing techniques that can help anyone improve their stress response and build resilience.---Listen to the podcast here:Understanding HRV and Managing Stress with Matt BennettWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about stress and, in some aspect, our response to stress, because that’s one of the things that can really get in the way of us following our passions, and you can easily ruin a good reputation you built with one terrible stress response and that’s something that is really sad to see because we all are human and we all have the times where we don’t quite respond the right way but it can be a little bit difficult. So, one of the tools that a lot of people are using to manage their stress as well as their overall health is HRV which, my guest today, Matt Bennett, the owner and founder of Optimal HRV, is going to talk to us more about.--- HRV is the heart rate variability and, Matt, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. Big fan of the show so it’s an honor to be on. Thank you so much for coming on and I want to start off with explaining to the audience to make sure we’re all oriented, I know some people are probably pretty familiar with what HRV is, others maybe not as much, but I think most people probably aren’t familiar with it and its significance on the level that you are. Really, when you get down to what is heart rate variability, it’s your body and mind’s ability to handle or recover from stress. And, as you said in your intro, the stress response is so fundamental to everything we do. Now, stress can be an illness. Stress can be a very, very difficult workout. Stress is often you talk about on your show, can be, I’ve got five, six hours of screen time today and we know that can add stress to the system as well. So, your ability to handle or recover from stress is the best foundational definition for heart rate variability that I have seen.Now, we’re doing that by measuring millisecond variations in your heartbeat, and I’m happy to explore the science behind that, but that gives us, I think, a good working definition to start out our conversation with. So you’re talking about like millisecond variance in heart rate and some people might be thinking why there should be variance at all because one of the key aspects of it that might be good to orient people to is that is there a too low, a too high number, or is it just a matter of keeping it at or above a certain level? Right. So, we’re in a time where consistency is usually leading to a good outcome. You and I want to turn our computers on and, for the most part, we want it to do the same thing it did yesterday and the day before. You don’t want to sit in your car and have it operate totally different than it did the last time you drove it. In this high tech environment, mechanized environment that we modern humans live in, consistency is usually equated with good quality. We are biological systems so this variation is actually a positive thing. Now, you could have variation in your heartbeats to an extent where you have a medical issue, arrhythmias and other things are obviously not what we’re talking about here and those need t...
We can’t remove emotion from our lives — it’s always been there since the beginning. Sometimes, when we’re making big life decisions, we have to face and work through past trauma. That trauma can show up in different ways. So how do we start to heal?In this episode, I talk with Regard Tang, an energy healer and channeler who focuses on emotional and social trauma. We chat about how our childhood and our parents’ influence shape our emotional habits as we grow up. Regard shares why it’s important to deal with emotional and generational trauma so we can live healthier lives. She also explains how energy healing works, including how she connects with a person’s ancestors and spirit guides to help uncover and release deep emotional pain. ---Listen to the podcast here:Healing Emotional Trauma and Understanding Energy with Regard TangWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. When we are preparing for whatever our next move is, oftentimes that will be starting a business, starting a new initiative, or starting a new chapter in our lives, we need to do various things to, whether it be purge the old chapters or just kind of heal, reset ourselves, oftentimes, that will involve kind of overcoming or processing some trauma from previous areas of our lives, and that can take on many different forms, but it is a very important thing that I think a lot of people don’t necessarily think of of why am I in this mentality where I don’t seem to ever be able to get a move on what I’m doing or make a decision or really kind of go for what I’m going for. And so I want to present with you various different forms in which we can heal the trauma, because there’s many different ways that we can process our energy. Today, my guest is Regard Tang, and she is an energy healer and a channeler.--- Regard, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me, Stephen. Thank you so much. And I want to start this podcast with a quick explanation, because I’m bringing on a concept that may be new to a lot of people about the two things that you do, which are energy healing and channeling. By energy healing, what does that mean? What does that really entail? So, energy healing, we all carry different kind of energy. Some people, they carry a little bit like a heavier energy and I’m sure that when you walk into the room, you can just stand –– the room is carrying those very heavy energy versus when you’re seeing some people that they’re very bubbly and they’re just like lighter, they light you up. So energy healing, what I do? I do channeling. So energy healing, you can go to sound healing, you can go to reiki. There’s a lot of different methods, but for me, I specialize in channeling. What does channeling mean? It means that I can talk to my client’s ancestors, I can talk to my client’s spirit guides, which is spirit team, and I can also talk to my client’s inner self, means that, because I specialize in emotional trauma and social trauma, so I’m able to tell are their emotion aligned? Means that they’re like, “Well, I experienced X, Y and Z,” but I’m able to tap into their emotion, it’s like, actually, it’s not exactly what you feel on their surface. I can feel very, very deep emotions that they literally put it in the box and put it away when they were younger. And, of course, in a minute, we’ll explain a little bit more, but that is what I do. Okay. And so I want to start the beginning of the story, which is these emotions that are pushed away and the energy that people all kind of come out in the room, because it sounds like this is something that could be really limiting some people from living their best lives and really presenting themselves in a way. So, what does it look like for someone whose energy is not aligned because of an emotional baggage from the past? What does it feel like when you walk into a room and you encounter that person and...
Having a big idea or vision is great—but at some point, you’ve got to share it. Whether you're talking to future customers, hiring a team, or just explaining what you do, people need to get it. And it’s not just about what you say out loud or post online. A big part of it starts with knowing yourself—what you believe in, what you offer, and why it matters. So how do you figure all that out and actually get your message across?In this episode, I talk with Alice Marie Brink, and Ed Moehlenkamp about how to communicate your vision in a way that actually connects. We chat about the impact of social media, communication and leadership. Tune in, to learn more!---Listen to the podcast here:How to Effectively Communicate Your Vision with Alice and EdWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Any vision that you have, you’re going to need to communicate that vision outward somehow. There is just no getting around it. At some point, someone needs to know what you’re doing, whether it is people you hire to enact your vision and do the communication or the communication that you do directly yourself for your vision. And when it comes to communicating your vision outward, there’s actually an internal and an external component of it. The external component is what we often see because those are the words you say or the words you type or the images you put out there. However, there is some also internal work that you need to do in order to understand what you’re communicating, understand who you are, and understanding, in many cases, what your value proposition is, which is important for anyone to understand why they should be doing business with you regardless of what your idea is. To talk about both the internal and external components of this concept of communicating your vision outward, I would like to introduce to you Alice Brink and Ed Moehlenkamp with their Energy Interplay Initiative.--- Alice, Ed, welcome to the program. Thank you. Thank you. Nice to see you. Great to see you as well. And so just to orient us a little bit, we’ll start with you, Alice, as the internal component, which is the first component, and you work with mindset, energy, and mindfulness. That’s right. No matter where we go and what we do, we’re carrying this internal environment with us and so my work helps people get in touch with that, become aware of it, and then learn how to drive that energy, because, after all, it’s all energy. And so, through exercises and then practical application, I love the energy, I’ve been in energy work for almost three decades now, and so that’s shown me a lot of different outpicturings of that. And so one of those, now that I’m with Ed, we’re applying it to our presentation skills offering.So it’s all about what you’re bringing to this presentation internally that drives the energy and the connection of your presentation.Share on XNow, when it comes to energy work, how much of it is kind of overall what energy you bring to every single day interaction, whether you’re attending a networking event, meeting with one of your employees, or even just hanging out with your friends, versus the energy reset that you do in advance of the actual presentation that you’re about to give? This is funny you bring this up. So, in almost every one of my workshops and in my coaching interactions, we get to a point where I share this favorite quote of mine, and it is, “Don’t let the weeds grow on the path to the dear friend’s home.” And I believe it’s an old Chinese proverb of some kind, but the dear friend is you, and so getting familiar with that path that leads you inward and tamping down the weeds, if you will, through repeated trips there allows that connection to be more readily available and to be more authentic to you and more in alignment. So, especially now,
We all experience moments when emotions overwhelm us, especially if we have trapped emotions that build up over time. In today's fast-paced world, it’s easy to feel overloaded with anxiety, stress, and negative news. How can we find balance and set boundaries to protect our well-being?In this episode, I sit down with Vanessa Shippy, an expert in energy work and emotional healing. Vanessa is dedicated to helping individuals release trapped emotions, cultivate self-awareness, and create a more balanced life. Through her work at Dawning Hope, she guides clients on their healing journeys by integrating energy healing, mindset shifts, and self-care practices.We discuss how emotional buildup affects our nervous system, why setting energetic boundaries is essential, and how self-compassion plays a key role in emotional well-being. Vanessa shares real-life experiences from her clients, practical tips on processing emotions, and ways to stay grounded despite life’s challenges. Whether you're dealing with stress, anxiety, or emotional overload, this conversation will provide actionable insights to help you regain balance. Tune in for an enlightening discussion!---Listen to the podcast here:Finding Balance and Emotional Well-Being with Vanessa ShippyWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about a common situation where we have some trapped emotions, and what I mean by that is you want to get some stuff done, you have an important meeting maybe or even just a list of tasks that you would really like to accomplish and do well, yet something someone said or something someone did just kind of stays tracked in your mind, like it triggered you in a way, and you don’t even oftentimes know why do I keep thinking about that but you just can’t stop thinking about it. Why was her tone of voice like that? Why did he slam the door? Etc. So, today, I want to talk to you about how we can possibly get past some of these and other energetic and balanced situations by introducing to you my guest, Vanessa Shippy, and she is the founder of Dawning Hope.--- Vanessa, welcome to the program. Hi, thank you for having me. Thank you and welcome to Action’s Antidotes. First of all, tell us a little bit about Dawning Hope. Yeah, so Dawning Hope is my business. I’m honored to serve in a way. I get to offer intuitive energy reading, clearing, balancing, and channeling sessions, and I’m actually also currently putting together resources and a guide to help people come into touch with their own energy and body. I typically will encourage this through like nervous system regulation and emotional processing, like through gaining knowledge and restoring balance to the mind, body, and spirit as a whole. I myself went from bedridden to feeling better than I ever have. My vision for my business is to let others know that even after the darkest night, the sun always rises and the dawn brings new hope. With my initial statement, am I even thinking about it properly? Because I guess I was thinking about a situation where, okay, this person said something like this, this person was in a bad mood and it’s weighing in my mind, but is that even the situation or is it about something way more than what happened yesterday, what happened this morning that I just can’t stop ruminating on? Yeah, so that can be more of the effects of what maybe actually happened. Typically, some of our deepest, you could say, traumas or trapped energies will occur in childhood. I personally have a theory that children are so open and, in openness, it’s a gift but it can also be a vulnerability, and so, oftentimes, the way that they perceive the world is rather deep and they can internalize it more than adults might just because they don’t have the same understanding or experience as adults. Say, if someone said something to you this morning and you’re ...
In a world that’s increasingly dominated by screens, how does reducing screen time impact our mental health and our connection to the world around us?In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Joan Savage, a multifaceted author and former professor, who transitioned from academia to pursue her passion for writing. She best known for her gripping murder mystery novel Red Fever, which she published after overcoming a challenging journey, supported by her community. With a background in business management and a deep commitment to mental wellness, Dr. Savage spent years researching the significant impact of virtual reality on mental health, particularly for vulnerable populations like young boys and military personnel.Together, we explore the pervasive issue of screen time and its effects on our lives. Dr. Savage shares her insights on how social media and technology can lead to feelings of isolation, and the importance of community in overcoming these challenges. She also discusses the balance between seeking validation online and forming genuine connections in a digital world. This conversation is full of meaningful insights and tips for fostering authentic relationships while reducing screen time—so you won’t want to miss it!---Listen to the podcast here:Navigating Life Beyond Screens with Dr. Joan SavageWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of my initiatives here in 2025 and something I’m trying to showcase is helping people cut down on their screen time. We’ve been seeing a lot more people take notice on how much of the excess time that we’re spending in front of what’s often referred to as attention grabbing or addictive technology is really impacting the lives we live as well as the mindsets that we adapt, so I’m going to be bringing on some guests from time to time that have their own really unique stories about how cutting down on screen time has changed their lives. Today, I would like to introduce you to Dr. Joan Savage.--- Dr. Joan Savage, welcome to the program. Thank you. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s wonderful. So, Dr Savage, like myself, has a lot of different initiatives in life. I think, traditionally, we’ve always thought of people as their job title, or at least for maybe about 100 years in the 20th century mostly where it’s like, okay, you are a broker, you are a data analyst, but we also know that, in life, people are way more than that so I want to start out by introducing you to my audience as all the different things that you’re a part of right now that you have done recently and are doing. Great. Too many things, I think. Well, as long as it make you happy, right? And it does, yes, you’re right. So, yeah, so you start by telling us about all the different things that you’re –- yeah, all your different things. So my –- I’ll try to do things backwards chronologically. I feel like that makes a little more sense. So, right now, my full-time job, I guess, is I’m an author. So, a year ago, I released a murder mystery. It’s got a little bit of eroticism in it but mostly it’s a murder mystery. It’s called Red Fever and it’s my first attempt at fiction so that was a nightmare getting it published. I was really blessed to have just so many beautiful people in my life to speak into that and help me get that done and give me the courage to resign from my job as a professor. I was an adjunct teacher for about three years at Florida Tech and I was so, oh my gosh, that job came at such a time when everybody was looking for a remote position when COVID had hit so I have no complaints about that. Although I never wanted to be a teacher, that’s just –- it fell into my lap. I knew it was what the universe was guiding me and, in COVID, everyone wanted to be home so I loved it. I took it, again, it wasn’t anything that I’ve studied for,
Did you know that trauma and stress don’t just affect your emotions but can also be stored in your body—especially in your spine? How can we release this tension and improve our overall well-being?In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Lauren Stefanik, a chiropractor at Wellness Rhythms, to explore the powerful connection between stored trauma and physical health. Drawing inspiration from The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, Dr. Stefanik explains how everyday stressors and past trauma manifest physically, leading to discomfort and emotional imbalances.We dive into Network Spinal chiropractic, a gentle technique that helps release tension in the spinal cord, promoting higher energy states and better health. Dr. Stefanik also shares her journey into this integrative healing approach and emphasizes the importance of self-compassion, body awareness, and open communication for overall well-being. If you're looking for ways to release stored tension, enhance your health, and embrace a holistic approach to healing, this conversation is one you won’t want to miss!---Listen to the podcast here:Healing Trauma Through the Body with Dr. Lauren StefaniukWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Recently, I read a book called The Body Keeps Score, which talks a lot about the idea of all of our traumas, everything happening in our past, regardless of what it is, kind of being stored in our body, this is oftentimes things that we sometimes tend to forget about, forget about how it’s continuing to impact our lives, such as continued patterns in our childhood that we kind of lived through or even other kind of more acute lived experiences that could be one car accident when you’re 16 and now you’re 35 so it doesn’t really become something you think about in a lot of your minds. Now, there’s been some study about how some of these subconscious patterns continue to emerge through some subconscious programming, but here today, I’m here to talk to you a little bit more about how the body itself keeps score, how certain parts of the body kind of retain the memories of these traumas and how it can still be impacting what we’re doing today and how we’re showing up in everything around. And to facilitate this conversation, I’d like to invite on my guest, Dr. Lauren Stefaniuk with Wellness Rhythms. She is a doctor of chiropractic services.--- Dr. Lauren Stefaniuk, welcome to the program. Hi, Stephen. Thank you so much for having me. I’m really grateful that you have this awesome podcast and that you’ve given me the opportunity to be on it. And, yeah, I do network spinal as a doctor of chiropractor. We’re talking about how the body keeps score, and your focus specifically is on how the spine has kind of kept score of some of these traumas or other items from our past. Yeah. So, what we like to say is that what goes to the back of the mind tends to go to the spine and so what Network Spinal is specifically helping people realize is that there’s events that happen in our life, whether you call them stressors or traumas or just stressful events, your body actually doesn’t really know the difference between a massive stressor like something that we usually, quote-unquote, call “trauma,” or the small kind of everyday stressors, where we’re stressing to get to work on time or we have a deadline or our dog is barking at us and we don’t know why. Your nervous system actually doesn’t know the difference between a massive stressor and a small stressor. It really responds in the exact same way and, sometimes, that is responding by going into fight or flight. So, when we go into fight or flight, there’s a lot of things that people realize happens. So, your eyes, your pupils are going to dilate, your breath becomes a little bit more shallow and more rapid, your heart rate becomes more rapid, your muscles tense, all of those things people recognize,
We spend a lot of time on screens these days, whether it's for work, social media, or just relaxing with a show. It's easy to lose track of time, and hours can pass before we know it. But how much is too much? What exactly is the impact on our health and daily lives?In this episode, I talk with Sumayyah Emeh-Edu, Founder of Embedded Consulting. We discuss the impacts of excessive screen time and social media on mental health and the importance of connecting with people around us. Sumayyah shares her struggles with social media and how she observed its impact on her friends and family. Tune in to hear her insights!---Listen to the podcast here:How to Break Free from Screen Time Overload with Sumayyah Emeh-EduWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. And, today, I want to talk to you about a topic that’s really near and dear to my heart, as in I know I have my own initiative around this, which is cutting down on people’s screen time. I think you’ve probably seen in the news that we do have a lot of problems associated with the excessive amount of time in front of screens and people come up with different numbers depending on which particular study you’re using or if you’re considering phones, TVs, computers, and everything as well, but, regardless, it seems out of control and anyone that’s old enough to remember the world before smartphones and everything took it over can remember a world where we spent a lot more time relating to each other in person as well as doing things not in front of some form of digital technology and it’s hard not to make a clear connection between that and a lot of the mental health and loneliness issues that we’re experiencing today. So, today, I’d like to bring on someone who is kind of taking on an initiative in the same vein, in the same realm, Sumayyah Emeh-Edu, the founder of Embedded Consulting LLC.--- Sumayyah, welcome to the program. Thank you, Stephen. Nice to be here. Yeah, thank you so much, and thank you so much for connecting because it’s always great to meet and connect with anyone else who’s kind of observed the same issue. So why don’t you start by telling me your story about kind of when you first started observing this whole issue, I think it was roughly maybe 15 years ago-ish that we all started in mass adopting these smartphones and excessive social media and the changes started to be visible in everyday life, regardless of whether or not you saw it as a problem. Yeah. So, I was on Myspace back in the day, 2008 I got onto Facebook, and I didn’t really see it as a problem. I was just like, “Wow, this is awesome.” There was a couple documentaries that came out around like 2014, 2015 that I had watched. There was also a lot of ethical folks and whistleblowers that were coming out of all of the big tech companies. And it was just information I digested but, like most people, I’m like, “Well, that does affect me,” and I would say a majority of my time was spent on Facebook. Twitter was always too fast and I wasn’t even on Instagram at that point, and I had already been a person who didn’t have, for instance, social media notifications in my email and on my phone because it just takes up space and I just hate my inbox just filled with a bunch of junk, but I had been in higher education most of my early career and then I made the transition into diversity, equity, and inclusion in 2015-ish, and it was just interesting because the election was going on, the first election with Trump, and it was a lot of negativity, a lot of just ridiculousness going on from a political perspective. And then, on top of it, I was doing diversity, equity, and inclusion work and I was deeply impacted when I would see injustices go viral or, unfortunately, the murder of a black man go viral, and so when I heard all of this thing about how social media is addictive, how it can impact your mood, and again,
Today's job search is considerably different from the busy, fast-paced job hunts of the past. Nowadays, it goes beyond having the ideal CV or applying as soon as possible. Finding a career that aligns with your values, demonstrating your abilities, and establishing genuine relationships are now important. In light of significant shifts like remote work and new hiring practices, how are you preparing to thrive?In this episode, I chat with Wyatt Carr, a partner at The Page Group and a seasoned recruiter. Wyatt talks about the struggles of finding a job and hiring the right people in today’s fast-changing world. We discuss simple ways to stand out when job hunting, how automation is changing the workplace, and what businesses are doing differently when hiring. Tune in now!---Listen to the podcast here:Navigating the Job Search in a Changing World of Work with Wyatt CarrWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about a topic, something that I find one of the most frustrating aspects of the world we’re in today, and that is the process of finding a job or the process of connecting people with jobs. I know a lot of people and I also personally have been in situations where it just seems to just take a long time to find a job and there’s all these things about getting noticed, getting your resume out there, when all it is that you really want is to just find a job that fits what you studied in school, what your background is, what you think you’d be good at and also be interested in, do a good job at it. The process does not seem to be that much better, per se, from the employer side too because they’re just looking for talent and I know that there’s mismatches all around. So, to talk about where we are in the process of job finding, talent acquisition, all that, I would like to introduce my guest today, Wyatt Carr, who is a partner with The Page Group and an experienced recruiter.--- Wyatt, welcome to the program. Thank you so much, Stephen. Happy to be here. Happy to have you. I just see the frustration so many people express to me, whether it be in person or even over LinkedIn, about people really looking for jobs. If anyone out there listening is in that situation where they’re looking for a job, they just need to find something, what do you think people need to be doing? So I think the number one thing to understand when you’re looking for a job is to realize that you are an investment if someone offers you a job. They expect to make more money than you cost to employ and that’s the current challenge with the current market is companies are seeming to do more with less and that is a huge concern about AI and how it will impact the workforce and how it will target or potentially take opportunity from a lot of white collar professions. Everyone thought automation would come for blue collar and it’s come to white collar, everyone’s probably heard that already.You need to understand what value you bring to a business and then find the businesses that need your services, find the businesses that would value from what you can bring to the table.Share on XI think we were very spoiled the last 10 years, literally, in my career, I’ve been in staffing and talent management, the economy has just continued to boom. I think during COVID, white collar workers did better. Blue collar and essential workers, they absolutely were devastated. So much money shifted to the laptop class and the billionaire class. Corporations weren’t hurt. Very few corporations were hurt from the pandemic. The small person was, the blue collar worker, the essential worker, and a lot of people did lose their jobs, but it was somewhat short lived on the white collar side, the skilled labor, laptop class, they call it or college degree educated class, and for the last 10 years with that exception where some people were impacted by...
Finding meaning and happiness in your career boils down to how you align your work with your values and passions. When we work on something that feels purposeful, it gives a sense of fulfillment that goes beyond a paycheck. How can we find a career that resonates with who we are?In this episode, I chat with Debbie Morris, the founder of Live, Learn, Serve, a career transition coaching service. We talk about how to create a happier, more meaningful work life by focusing on things like employee engagement, career growth, and aligning your values with your work. Debbie breaks down why so many people feel disconnected at work and shares tips on finding purpose, practicing self-reflection, and adopting a positive mindset. Don’t miss this conversation—it’s packed with insight!---Listen to the podcast here:Finding Meaning and Happiness in Your Career with Debbie MorrisWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about a topic that’s really new to me as I’ve experienced it myself, I know a lot of other people have experienced it, which is how do we make work a better place to be, a happier place to be, a place that you really want to be? And I often comment that hating work is kind of built into our culture, if you think about Sunday scaries, Wednesday hump day, thank God it’s Friday, and I’ve often said to people that it doesn’t have to be that way. We can live a life where work is just one of the things we do along with weekends and you enjoy your weekend, you go, you dance, you party, and then you come to work on Monday and you also get to do something you love doing. To talk about how we can maybe help make that world a little bit more of a reality for more people, I would like to bring to you my guest today, Debbie Morris, the founder of Live Learn Serve career transition coaching service.--- Debbie, welcome to the program. Thank you. I’m happy to be here. Thank you. I’m excited, Well, I’m excited to talk to you about this because you’ve brought up the Gallup surveys that seem to be pretty consistently stuck with only about a third of the people in this country actually being engaged in their work, and then, globally, that number is even worse than the United States. So let’s start there. What leads to this result and this kind of stagnant result that, despite the fact that we’ve understood for so long that results in our organizations would be better if more people enjoy their job, why is it still that only a third of Americans are actually engaged in and what keeps it stagnant? Well, I think first we have to sort of deconstruct the word and the intent of engagement. So, as organizations grow and they bring folks in, they want people to be committed to their work and to find alignment with the organization’s values. So, intrinsically, they want that level of commitment and they know that if you are intrinsically motivated, that you are more likely to stay and be high performing. So, the goal is to have that level of engagement. In order to do that, though, there has to be some level of alignment so there has to be alignment to what I believe in, what that organization believes in, and I think, first and foremost, what we’ve seen lately is that, oftentimes, there is a misalignment. So, people don’t necessarily feel like they are connected and believe in the same things their organization does. So, number one, there’s misalignment. Number two, I think people have said over and over again, we hear this all the time, is that they want opportunities to grow. So, career growth, that is a type of growth, but then as we look across generations, we see growth as meaning different things. So, growth could be vertical movement within an organization, but it could just also mean I want to expand as an individual or I want to expand as a global citizen or I want to contribute to something larger. So,
Managing group finances can be tricky, but it’s all about clear communication and setting shared goals. Whether it’s splitting bills or budgeting for a project, transparency keeps things running smoothly. Have you ever had a financial disagreement that taught you something valuable?In this special episode, I’m joined by Joshua Lee, Co-founder and CEO of Tribe Money Pools. We talk about struggles of managing group finances, from tracking contributions to avoiding awkward money conversations. To deal with these, Joshua introduces his app, designed to streamline group financial management, making it easier to collaborate, stay organized, and maintain trust within the group. Tune in, and learn more!---Listen to the podcast here:Collaborative Solutions for Group Financial Management with Joshua LeeWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today is an important day for Action’s Antidotes because it is my 150th episode, that’s kind of a milestone and, usually, I don’t make these episodes or any of these episodes about myself. Usually, it’s about the guest I’m interviewing, but this particular interview actually pertains to an area of my life personally because I’m the treasurer of an organization called Toastmasters, not the organization International, if you’re familiar, but of a local chapter, I’m a treasurer, and as a treasurer of the group, I oftentimes go to the bank, facilitate transactions with a bank account, because groups like Toastmasters or any other group oftentimes require having a budget, and a lot of people have clubs like that or perhaps you’re out there thinking about what kind of club or organization you want to start. Well, when I go to the bank, I never know what to say to the banker about whether it is a personal or a business account, because it kind of treads that line kind of between the two. It’s not a business, we’re not trying to make a profit or anything like that, we’re just trying to organize all the Toastmasters activities and expenses under this account so that we can fund our operations with our dues and what we owe the international organization and stuff like that. Given that a lot of our pursuits and a lot of us are going to find ourselves in a situation like this, I want to introduce to you today’s guest, Joshua Lee, who is the co-founder and CEO of Tribe Money Pools.--- Joshua, welcome to the program. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me today. Yeah, thank you for hopping on. And so I want to start a little bit about what Tribe Money Pools does about these situations where, okay, you’re not a business but you’re also not a personal account, you’re kind of operating something together in a group. Yeah, absolutely, and I think it would be a little helpful for me to provide a little context as to what Tribe Money is just very quickly. Tribe Money is a digital platform that helps groups share and manage their finances. What we’ve taken are the fragmented processes that occur in group financial management today, such as communication, facilitation, execution, and, most importantly, governance, which is all done with different applications or through different means and different channels. We’ve taken all that and consolidated it all into one platform so the actual financial management, the process of sharing and collecting finances with members of your group, whatever it might be, is much more streamlined, way easier and easier to track, and it’s much more secure than all traditional methods that really exist out there in the market today. So. Really pertaining to what you were talking about earlier, what we’ve brought to this space to really help groups such as yours is provide these quick, virtual, shared bank accounts that people can put together with the click of a few taps.Most importantly, set rules and access controls to ensure that people can monitor who can spend,
Have you ever been in a situation where, if something doesn’t work, it feels like going back to square one? This might make you question where and what you should pursue in life. One thing that prevents us from reaching our potential is limiting beliefs. What’s holding you back, and how can you begin shifting your mindset?In this episode, I’m joined by Taylor Lehn, the founder of Black Raven Coaching. Taylor shares her story, starting as an aspiring coffee shop owner and eventually finding her true calling as a wellness and spiritual coach. We dive into the importance of building community and the value of in-person connections. Along the way, Taylor talks about the power of following your passions, breaking free from limiting beliefs, and creating a life that truly aligns with who you are.---Listen to the podcast here:Breaking Free from Limiting Beliefs with Taylor LehnWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One thing that’s really important to me, in case you haven’t heard it in some of my other episodes, is bringing community together, bringing people together actually in person more and more. We have a lot of online platforms where people are connecting with one another and that’s great and that’s beautiful, but one of my goals going forward is going to be, and has been for years, is how do we reestablish on this community feel, someone to feel like you’re a part of something and that you’re actually interacting with the other people in your community. My guest today, Taylor Lehn, is a life coach and a local wellness event coordinator and the founder of Black Raven Coaching here in Denver, Colorado.--- Taylor, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me. Well, thank you for joining and I want to start a little bit by going into your story. Obviously, when you started this whole journey, you had a very different idea about what you were going to be doing. Oh, definitely. Ever since I was young, I always knew that, as far as my career was concerned, that I just needed to be my own boss. So, entrepreneurship was always where I assumed I would go. However, when I was younger, I had almost no clue what I was passionate about and finding something that I could pursue that would actually fulfill me for my entire life seemed like a very daunting task. So, when I went to college, of course, and I studied entrepreneurship and economics and the only thing I really knew I was passionate about per se was, funnily enough, coffee. I’d always been a coffee snob throughout high school, into college, while going through college, when it came time to find a job, coffee shop barista was the number one. So I dove into that and loved it, absolutely loved it. Knowing that eventually I wanted to own my own business once I got out of college, I really pursued that path of becoming a barista, really thinking that opening and owning my own coffee shop someday was what I was going to do. So I spent about the next six years or so after college really pursuing that. However, as I learned the trade, met some amazing baristas, worked my way up to becoming a coffee shop manager, really learning the ins and outs of what it takes to get a coffee shop started and to keep it running, it is a lot of work. I would say owning a coffee shop is one of the most difficult businesses you could pursue. It usually takes a coffee shop about five years to even break even. Really seeing the inside of it, seeing the people who are at the top of their game and what they had to go through and struggle through just to keep their business and their dream alive, I started realizing that that might not actually be what I wanted to do for my entire life, and that left me feeling very confused and really just not knowing what step to take. I didn’t know what else I wanted to do. Yeah, that’s a tough spot to be in, to be honest.
In today’s world, shared workspaces have become more than just a place to work—they’re hubs for connection and collaboration. They bring people together, creating opportunities to build relationships, share ideas, and grow alongside others who share similar goals. These spaces remind us how important it is to surround ourselves with supportive communities that inspire us to reach our full potential. How can being part of a shared workspace community help us achieve our goals?In this episode, I chat with Ann Marlin, the Owner of Broadway Collective, a co-working space in Englewood, Colorado. Ann shares her insights on creating spaces where entrepreneurs and small businesses can truly connect and thrive. We also explore the impact of a well-designed workspace on productivity and how finding balance between work and life can lead to long-term success.---Listen to the podcast here:Community through Shared Workspaces with Ann MarlinWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the things that I find most important in today’s society is connecting people, rebuilding community. You’re probably aware that compared to, say, 50, 100 years ago, we’ve seen a lot of our traditional sources of community decimated and people don’t really kind of run into each other and people will often talk about this idea of a third place, a third place being somewhere other than the home and other than the work where you still go and regularly interact with people and regularly just bump into people, and that the way a lot of people build connections is just by these chance circumstances in which you run into anyone. And in modern society, in my own life in particular, I often notice that someone has to start taking the initiative to plan meetings. Otherwise, people can easily go weeks, months without seeing their friends, without seeing the people they’re connected with. Today, I would like to bring on my guest, Ann Marlin, who is the owner, founder, and operator of a building where we’re actually sitting in right now, called the Broadway Collective.--- Ann, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. Well, excited to have you. We’re sitting here so we’re on the premise of the very initiative so this is a first for Action’s Antidotes here at the Broadway Collective. Tell us what the Broadway Collective is all about. Thank you. So the Broadway Collective really was born for the necessity of our sister company as we needed office space. We outgrew our previous office space and found an amazing mid mod building right here on Broadway in Oxford in Englewood, Colorado, and we fell in love with the building because of the floor-to-ceiling windows and just the overall vibe. It had not been touched since the 80s so I’m talking wood paneling, purple carpet, baby blue walls, but we really could see the potential in the building in that our sister company, we do real estate investments and fix and flip. The minute we stepped into this building, we’re like, “Gosh, this is amazing.” We knew, however, that this building was going to be too big for our sister company, Elevation, so we thought, well, what can we do with this building? And our passion is to support other small and local businesses and so I thought, oh my gosh, let’s make a co-workspace out of it and invite other businesses into our sphere and see if we can pass back business back and forth. Now, one thing I love about your story is how you were able to come in and play a little bit bigger than a lot of people were thinking because I think a lot of people would look at something like this and be like, “Oh my god, I love this building so much but it’s too big for us. What are we gonna do with all this space? Let’s just keep shopping for somewhere smaller or find a way to get by with what we currently have.” What would you say is it about your experience,
When we hear the word longevity, it’s not just about living longer—it’s about thriving through the years with good health. Adopting healthy habits can make a difference in our day-to-day life. What are the things we can do to promote healthy longevity?In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Cory Goldberg, a distinguished plastic and craniofacial surgeon with a vision for longevity medicine and aesthetic surgery. He discusses how to promote healthy longevity, emphasizing diet, exercise, sleep, and emotional health. He highlights the impact of poor diet and processed food on health and life expectancy. Listen now to explore strategies for a healthier, longer life!---Listen to the podcast here:Unlocking the Secrets of Healthy Longevity with Dr. Cory GoldbergWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about longevity. Now, we’ve covered this a little bit in some of our podcast episodes that have covered health, fitness, wellness, but we’ve never really talked about longevity specifically. My guest today, Dr Cory Goldberg, is at the forefront and using some innovative techniques to promote longevity and some innovative ideas for the future of this entire subject as well as healthcare in general.--- Dr. Cory Goldberg, welcome to the program. Hi, Stephen. It’s a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time. Looking forward to our conversation Where we began here. So you have some innovative ideas about longevity. I know, traditionally, people just talk about stuff like getting regular exercise, eating well, and even we’ve recently talked about some other kind of psychological things people can do, like controlling their thoughts, minimizing stress, and being around the right people and spending good time and good company. Is that part of your program or do you go right to some of these more innovative, less currently mainstream techniques? Well, honestly, what you just hit on are two of the most important pillars of healthy longevity and good diet and exercise are keystone. I mean, you can’t have healthy longevity without that. There’s no quick fix that gets you around those basics. And I would add to that, good healthy sleep and a good emotional state and interpersonal relations so you commented on your episode on thought control and those kinds of things, being present and controlling your thoughts and your emotions and relations with other people really key for healthy longevity. So, no matter what else we add to that now, those four pillars are by far the most important things that anybody can do to make sure that they’re as healthy as possible for as long as possible. And so if you think about the average person, either the average person you encounter or the average person kind of in society today, what do you think is the number one worst thing people are doing for the health on a regular basis? I have to say it’s diet. People follow the diet that their parents taught them, the idea of four main food groups. They follow eating habits that are based mostly on addiction to the foods that we were exposed to on a regular basis in our society. People are eating poison, they don’t even know it, and I think that’s the biggest contributor to poor health. And the reason that in the United States, the past few years, the average life expectancy has actually gone down by a couple years for the first time in over a century and a half and that’s with corrections around the pandemic and COVID. Even with that, the life expectancy is going down and I would say diet is the number one contributing factors to that.Share on X And so what is the biggest mistake people are making in their diet? You talk about the foods that you become addicted to, the foods that you’re trained to eat. What can someone do right now to get out of that? Well, as with any addiction,
In order to grow our business, whether small or large, there are many initiatives to consider. It could be advertising. But one thing that can help you gain leverage, get exposure, and develop new clients is gift cards. How do we do it?In this episode, I talk with Larry Rubin, Founder of Swipe It. He shares his journey, including how he overcame significant debt and the importance of supporting small local businesses. We talked about how small business owners can utilize gift cards to generate revenue and build a customer base. Larry emphasizes the versatility of gift cards, which can be used as promotions, employee rewards, and for online sales. Grow your business with gift cards. Tune in now!---Listen to the podcast here:How Gift Cards can Drive Business Success with Larry RubinWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you a little bit about gift cards and a little bit about the restaurant industry, specifically the manner in which restaurant industry uses these gift cards and what it says about what we might need to do in general to help level the playing field between smaller and larger businesses or give smaller businesses, give the person that’s just starting up their own business, whether it be a restaurant or any other kind of business, a chance to survive, a chance to really make it in this particular current state of affairs in the United States, or in any other country, for that matter, given that a lot of you out there listening are trying to build something, build something that you’re passionate about and really putting your all into it, but, sometimes, when you see these bigger corporations out there, it does feel like that the cards could be stacked against you. My guest today, Larry Rubin, is the gift card guru, the founder of SwipeIt, and he’s here to tell us a little bit about his initiative to help some of these smaller, locally owned restaurants take advantage of this tool that is much more readily and easily available to a lot of the bigger restaurant chains.--- Larry, welcome the program. Thank you for having me and excited to talk to you about hopefully leveling the playing field for these smaller guys. Yeah, so 100 percent because I remember when we first connected, it didn’t feel to me necessarily obvious that gift cards was one of the ways that the bigger, larger chains kind of stomp on their smaller competitors, but you’ve observed something very different when it comes to leveraging this tool. First thing I’m kind of curious about is what makes gift cards such a powerful tool for any restaurant to use in kind of generating sales and customer base? That’s part of our battle is going in and really educating the small business owner who, right now, they think of a gift card as a product that someone walks into my business, they purchase it, and they walk out. And that’s great for people who maybe are living or working within 15 or 20 minutes of your business. Gift cards can be utilized in many, many ways. It’s a huge revenue stream for restaurants and other merchants. It’s a great gift to give someone. I don’t know what clothes they wear, I don’t know what their activities are but I certainly know that this guy loves his chicken parm from this restaurant so I’m going to buy this gift card to his favorite restaurant. I know that you can always use it. And what we’re doing is helping the restaurants look at kind of outside the box. Great, we know that someone can walk in and purchase a gift card but do you have a website? Are you offering them online? Are you capturing last-minute gift giving by offering e-cards? All different ways to bring in revenue. And then we look at it in a different light as well and say, hey, it’s great for people to come in and pay you for gift cards but can we use these gift cards to bring in customers, run promotions,
A lot of us want to have a successful and meaningful business. After many years in our business, we all want to ensure that the business we have worked hard to establish will carry on well if we retire. Succession planning is the key to ensuring a seamless transition and long-term success. But how?In this episode, I sit down with Lowell Mora, President of Impact CFO, who specializes in family- and privately-owned businesses. Lowell talks about the importance of planning for business transitions, especially as founders or business owners approach retirement, including finding suitable successors and maintaining business continuity. Tune in to learn more!---Listen to the podcast here:Align Your Life and Thrive with Diamond DripWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you a little bit about succession planning. We’ve talked quite a bit about the process of starting up a business on this particular podcast, about what challenge you face on the come up, but then, what happens when you’re getting ready to retire and you want to make sure that the business is going to be in good hands and you want to make sure that your own wealth is going to be in good hands. To discuss this topic, I would like to introduce you to my guest today, Lowell Mora, fractional CFO, who specializes in working with a lot of these family-owned businesses around such issues.--- Lowell, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. Appreciate you having me here today. Tell me a little bit about Impact CFO. Tell me a little about your story, what you do with your clients. At Impact CFO, I help primarily as a fractional CFO, which fractional means exactly as it sounds, I spend a portion of my time helping a business that may not be able to afford – it typically can’t afford a full time CFO. So my practice focuses primarily in on the family-owned business in the small to midmarket that is looking towards a transition, either to another family member or to an external exit to maximize the wealth of the family and the value of the business. Now, when you say businesses that can’t quite afford, say, a full-time CFO, what’s a general size? What number of employees is that typical – So the typical, most of us finance guys talk in dollars, but in employees, it’s typically employee levels of 25 to 100, 150. Again, it depends on the complexity of the business as well. So, in dollars, we typically talk somewhere around $5 million in sales, up to $50 million. Now, I’ve worked with smaller and I’ve worked with bigger but that’s the sweet spot. And so you’ve encountered a lot of these family-owned businesses that have gotten to this level. You said like $5, $25 million annually. I assume it means, right? So, what do you notice in some of these family-owned businesses that get to that level? Do you notice any kind of common thread in the type of people that you work with and the type of founders who are in the situation about who they are, what they’ve done to get to where they’re at? Yeah. Typically, in my practice, a lot of people out there is values based. So I look to work with people that share the same values as me, which are pretty basic, which is a high level of integrity, strong, hard work ethic.Share on XA lot of what I do is in the manufacturing, industrials, industrial products, industrial equipment. I also work with services, business services, and IT providers and things like that but, typically, it’s a business of an entrepreneur and they’re overwhelmingly, today in our world, they’re overwhelmingly male, and they’ve gotten to a point where they have a successful business and can support them but they don’t necessarily have a natural heir or successor. In a lot of cases, they don’t know what to do with that. And what typically happens, and it’s common,
Are you working full-time but dreaming of starting something new, like a business or passion project? Balancing a job with a new venture can be tough, and finding the right alignment to make it all work can feel overwhelming. How do you balance your time and energy to turn your ideas into a success?In this episode, we’re joined by Diamond Drip—a coach, speaker, and Human Design enthusiast who’s passionate about helping women break free from the “who do I think I am?” mindset. Diamond Drip empowers women to move past self-doubt and confidently step into their potential, making their big dreams a reality.Together, we dive into the struggles of balancing a new project alongside a full-time job. Diamond Drip shares why this balance can be so exhausting and offers practical strategies for managing dual roles. From time management to energy-boosting tips, this episode is packed with advice you can start using today. Tune in now to align your life, find your balance, and thrive in everything you do!---Listen to the podcast here:Align Your Life and Thrive with Diamond DripWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. A lot of us are in a situation where we're trying to create something new in our lives, whether it be starting a business, starting any kind of endeavor, just do something different, and sometimes we end up struggling a little bit and one of the struggles that we oftentimes end up with is that our lives are not really in alignment. That's some of the challenges that we have where situations that I see a lot of people and, say, you have a full time job and you're also trying to start a business that can be really exhausting, it can be really hard to find time, in the same way I oftentimes find people starting businesses while not having a full-time job, not having a steady source of income, and having to struggle in a whole different way. And in some of those pursuits is where my guest today, Diamond Drip, a coach, speaker, and human design enthusiast who helps her clients overcome some of these challenges and find a life that's in alignment for them because not every person is the same and one of the things we're trying to move past is what I often refer to as the one-size-fits-all solution for life, the one-size-fits-all prescription for life.--- Diamond Drip, welcome to the program. Hey, Stephen. It's so great to be here with you and our listeners today. Yeah, thank you for coming on and sharing some of these ideas with listeners because I think when it comes to starting up anything, and it doesn't have to be a business, it could even be just trying to do better at your current job, when it comes to trying up anything, people often talk about the practical stuff, like you need to do more of this, you need to learn this skill, you need to learn this industry. People might talk less frequently about some of the stuff that you specialize in, which is how to bring your life, your habits, and everything else into alignment with who you are, which starts with an understanding of who you are. So, tell us a little bit about what you do with your clients. Absolutely. I love that you brought in that piece too about people wanting to build up their skills, people wanting to learn these other things, and one of the things that I work with my clients on is making sure that the things that they're adding to that list of to-dos, those skills to add, those classes to take are actually things that light them up, not just because someone said they should do it. And so I have a really simple framework when it comes to how I support my clients. It's called the trust framework. And so the very first thing that we do is we tune in to their authentic self. So, every single one of us has a unique, energetic blueprint, you and I were talking about this a little bit the last time we met, and it is in that blueprint that we can recognize our in...
Starting a nursing career is both exciting and challenging, especially in the fast-paced world of healthcare. New nurses often struggle as they transition from school to real-world practice, navigating complex systems and high demands. How can we improve nursing education to better support them?In this episode, I speak with Morgan Taylor, Chief Nursing Officer at Archer Review. Morgan shares insights into the challenges new nurses face, the structural issues within nursing education, opportunities for innovation in healthcare, and ways to better align incentives in the field. Don’t miss out, listen now!---Listen to the podcast here:Carving Your Own Path in Nursing with Morgan TaylorWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about the many different ways in which we can go about carving your own path because I think sometimes people think about any pursuit and they think about the most common manifestation of it and they think the most common manifestation of carving their own path as being something along the lines of either starting your own business or doing something really, really wild, like going and living off the grid somewhere in, I don’t know, Uganda, for the lack of a better place to think of, but there are plenty of different ways in which you can kind of discover where your path is going and discover how you can get to a place where you once again feel excited about the things that you once felt excited about. --- Today, my guest is Morgan Taylor and she is the chief nursing officer at Archer Review and chief nursing officer, I feel like a different C-blank-O title emerges every other week, so, yeah, Morgan, tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on today. I’m excited to talk. Yeah, chief nursing officer, to me, sounds totally normal, because I grew up as a nurse at big hospitals that always had a chief nursing officer. But, of course, if you don’t work somewhere that has nurses, that’s going to sound a little funky to you, right? Yeah. And really how I got to where I am is kind of funky. It was not a straightforward path at all, not something I had planned out or set my sights on a decade ago. I started out as a bedside nurse at Duke University in the Raleigh-Durham area here in North Carolina. I started working in a – we called it the children’s resource unit. I went to all different pediatric areas of the hospital, spent a lot of time in the ICU, in the emergency department, and I loved it. I learned so much. It was a wonderful experience. And then COVID happened and things got a little dicey there. It was a big challenge, one that I’m proud to have played a part in, but what was most impactful for me and kind of what started me on this path where I ended up today now was I started seeing that the new nurses coming in to join us in this profession were very underprepared, and not to any fault of their own. They just didn’t have the experience that they needed to get prior to coming and working in a level one trauma center taking care of very, very ill patients. So that got my wheels turning. I started to think maybe there’s something I can do in kind of the education bubble, that’s something people talk about. I started kind of looking for ways to dip my toes in the water, so to speak, see what’s out there, and that was when I connected with the CEO, Karthik Koduru, of Archer Review. He was working on trying to put together a platform to really enable nursing education that was accessible and affordable and specifically targeted nurses getting ready to take their board exams. We call those exams the NCLEX and it’s that last test you have to take before you’re fully licensed, you’re out there on your own actually caring for patients. And we had really poor pass rates. They were anywhere from about 80 to 87 percent,
Technology is revolutionizing healthcare, providing innovative ways to enhance patient care and streamline services. Digital tools like telemedicine and health platforms enable better access to information and personalized care. How can we use these advancements to build a more patient-focused healthcare system?In this episode, I have Whitney Isola, a registered dietitian and Co-Founder of Aqua Power. Whitney shares her journey from co-founding a healthcare startup to creating the review platform. She discusses the challenges of working in the healthcare industry and how to leverage technology and patient empowerment to improve care. Don’t miss this insightful conversation—tune in now!---Listen to the podcast here:Transforming Healthcare with Tech and Care with Whitney IsolaWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of my big concerns, and I think a big concern of a lot of people, is what we’re using our technology for. We’ve seen a recent advancement in technology and we’re seeing ongoing discussions about things like AI, machine learning, all these other things, and the question is what are we doing with it and I think we’ve seen a lot of cases where some of our technological advancements were used for purposes that did not necessarily have the best outcome on human health, human mental health, etc. I have in my head a list of the types of things that really are a good use of this technology because technology can do a lot of powerful things and my guest today, Whitney Isola, has some experience using our technology for some of these purposes that seem like they actually have the potential to improve the human experience as opposed to just bombard you with advertisements, like a lot of them try to do. So, Whitney is a registered dietitian as well as the cofounder of OncoPower, now the chief of staff at ArcherReview.--- Whitney. welcome to the program. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I’m excited. I’m excited too because this is a great thing to talk about. Now, let’s first start with your story because you’ve done a lot of different things, like where did it all begin? Have you always wanted to find innovative solutions for these human problems? Is this something that you’ve always been kind of interested in doing? Yes, there’s some sort of natural curiosities and problem solver that live within me. I will say I don’t think I can fully take credit for ever being like the visionary or the idea person, I’m definitely a little bit more of practical thinker and like kind of roadmap best course to get us there but I don’t always have that end state vision but I’m very good at listening to the on-the-ground feedback early and often so I would say that type of critical thinking and product planning is a little bit more of my wheelhouse and expertise. But, yeah, I mean, that said, I think I’ve always had this little bit of hunger for building something that didn’t exist before. I went into college and higher education kind of wanting a very traditional career in healthcare and realized about three-quarters in taking some business classes that I could think more broadly, almost a little too late or it felt too late education wise to make a change. I kind of had that more traditional early career experience in terms of working in a community hospital setting, multidisciplinary medical practice setting, and then health major, New York City health system setting, I kind of always kept the door open to taking on projects or ideas or working with people in terms of executing something new or creating something out of nothing. My first job outside of the hospital, so I guess my second job ever, was with a multidisciplinary medical practice where they didn’t have a dietitian and I pitched them that, “Hey, you have 22 providers but you don’t have one dietician, let’s add those services for your patient population,
Leadership is more than just holding a title; it's about guiding, inspiring, and managing people effectively. Often, new leaders find themselves promoted into roles without the right tools to succeed. How can we better prepare ourselves to excel in leadership, both internally and externally?In this episode, I have Chris Thyberg, Founder of The Serving Way. Chris and I discuss the challenges of leadership, particularly when someone is promoted to a leadership role without the necessary training to manage and inspire effectively. We also explore the difference between the 'inner game' and 'outer game' of leadership. Elevate your leadership skills—listen now! ---Listen to the podcast here:The Inner and Outer Game of Leadership with Chris ThybergWelcome to Action’s antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. How many of you out there have ever had a bad boss? And I say that because there’s kind of two different kinds of bad bosses in my view. There’s the person who’s just not able to tame their ego, that can be a little bit psychopathic, sociopathic, but then there’s a broader category of kind of more low-key bad bosses that kind of arise because, well, oftentimes, we promote people who are good at doing the day-to-day job, who are good at delivering the results but not necessarily the ones that are best suited or even training them on how to be a leader of people, which is an important caveat, and so when we look at that category of bad bosses, one thing I want to impress upon you is that it’s oftentimes not those people’s fault, they were never given the training to learn how best to inspire people, how best to manage people, how best to cultivate a positive and joyous work environment for the people working for them, all they know is how to do the day-to-day job and they did it well. To talk about this topic a little bit, I’d like to introduce you to my guest, Chris Thyberg, who is the founder of The Serving Way and a leadership coach.--- Chris, welcome to the program. Stephen, thank you so much for having me and what a great setup. I need you to write copy for my website, please. That was just on point. Well, my production team does produce a transcript of every episode so when this episode does drop in a few weeks, it’ll come in on the page on my website. It’s a delight to be with you. Let’s go. All right, well, that’s wonderful. So, Chris, it sounds like you’re observing the same phenomenon. We talked a little bit about how there are some people who are just psychopathic or haven’t tamed their ego but this broader category of people where they just weren’t set up to be good bosses, good managers, good leaders, because the training you get when you get promoted doesn’t really emphasize that.That’s exactly right, and as I joked with you on the pre-show, as long as that keeps happening out in the marketplace, I have employment for life. Every single client that I am working with is in that in-between space. I call it the growing edge, where more of what got them there is not going to take them where they need to go at this level of leadership. So, for example, the star individual performer with super high competencies, expertise, skills, experience, knowledge, what I call the outer game of leadership, great, great. And then they get that promotion, almost like the bridge too far, and they are on the other side of this thing and they say, “Oh my gosh, I just got a 360 performance review and everything I built my identity around that I got promoted for is now what my team tells me is killing us. What do I do?” And they come to me in that place of how on earth did I get set up for this failure and I said, “No worries. This is the human condition. You are fine.” You are at a growing edge, which means, and I truly believe this and every coach worth his or her salt must come from this point of view, this point of view is that, Stephen,
There are many details that demand mental energy. You’re likely focused on starting something new and how to bring your vision to life, but smaller tasks—like choosing the right payment processor for your business—can become overwhelming. With so many options, how can we stay focused while navigating these essential but exhausting decisions?In this episode, I have Jeff Maine, founder and CEO of Pay Proudly, a payment processing company. Jeff discusses the payment processing industry and how his company aims to provide a better experience for businesses. He emphasizes building relationships with customers based on transparency and trust, offering personalized solutions tailored to each client's needs rather than competing solely on price. ---Listen to the podcast here:Payment Processing Solutions for Businesses with Jeff MaineWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Now, when it comes to a lot of the endeavors that we’re taking on, particularly starting businesses, there’s a lot to figure out and there’s a lot of things that we need to put mental energy into that we might not necessarily want to be thinking about because, likely, you’re thinking about what your passion is, you’re thinking about what you want to start, and thinking a bit about how you want to do it, but some of these nitty-gritty details, such as selecting a payment processor solution when there are so many out there, can be just a huge use of mental energy that you weren’t necessarily hoping to sign up for and I know how some of this decision fatigue around this and many other issues can cause people to lose their steam. So, today, I would like to introduce you to my guest, Jeff Maine, and he is the founder and CEO of a company that helps you figure out payment processing called Pay Proudly.--- Jeff, welcome to the program. Thanks so much for having me today, Stephen. Looking forward to talking about this fun subject of payment processing. Yeah, it’s just one of the many things that businesses need to think about. And so, to orient our audience here, what do payment processors do and why does nearly every business need a payment processor? The majority of businesses take the majority of their payments today through electronic payments so a lot of people go the Square routes. They go to big box shops, they go to their bank, sign up for credit card processing, but there’s a lot of small, independent sales organizations out there that have relationships with the big banks that this is what we focus on. This is our business. And so, obviously, when we were founding Pay Proudly, we – I’ve been in this business for 25 years and we’ve seen a lot of different things and I apologize to a lot of people for our industry. When I walk indoors, I apologize for a lot of what’s happened in our industry, and we can dive into some of that today, but there’s just a bad stigma around our industry. I tell people sometimes I feel like it’s that used car sales approach and there’s just a lot that goes on. And so one of the big differences that we’ve done in Pay Proudly is we want to know our customer and we want our customer to know us and we know we’re never going to grow as big as the big guys but we’re taking that extra step and the first part of our mission is all about clarity to our merchants. We really want them to understand payment processing and understand why they need to process or how they need to process and what kind of system they need to process on and really dive into it so that they feel more comfortable with making a decision that affects a big part of their business. So how we get paid is often overlooked but it shouldn’t be. So that’s what we’re doing. So what do most people do when they look for a payment processor? Say, the average person just starts a website where, I don’t know, just say you’re selling a basic service and needs to collect $100...
Remodeling is different from other home service businesses. It’s a special industry that needs its own strategies and approach for creating a marketing plan. While other service businesses need a lot of leads, remodelers don’t. How can remodelers create an effective marketing plan without needing so many leads?In this episode, I have Brooks Burnette, Founder of Remodel Reach Marketing. His company specializes in serving residential remodeling contractors. Brooks shares his strategies for working with contractors, generating and converting leads, and building effective websites. He also emphasizes the importance of listening to and understanding clients' needs.Tune in and learn more!---Listen to the podcast here:Lead Generation for Remodeling Contractors with Brooks BurnetteWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about contracting, specifically remodeling contracting, but contracting in general is a kind of topic that’s gotten a little bit more attention lately. I know we just lived through a few decades where a lot of that type of work was looked down upon by some segments of the population, and now, amongst the new generation that’s seeing kind of a greater amount of security in that, there’s a renewed interest, as well as the clear impact that you see with your work right away as opposed to some of the jobs that a lot of people feel stuck in. But, of course, there’s a lot of considerations when contracting or starting any business that you need to get your business off the ground. An important one and a topic that I’ve covered before is also getting noticed, getting your business out there, getting it marketed. To talk about his business around remodeling contractors, how they get their digital marketing done, is the founder of Remodel Reach Marketing, Brooks Burnette.--- Brooks, welcome to the program. Hey, Stephen, thanks for having me. I appreciate it, man. Oh, well, thank you so much. And I like to start a lot of my episodes by getting people oriented. So we know you’re talking about Remodel Reach Marketing so you’re obviously not the contractor yourself, you’re the one handling the marketing for the contractor. Right, exactly. So we’re a full-service digital marketing agency for remodeling contractors. Typically, that’s just residential. There’s not very many remodeling contractors who are solely commercial versus residential, most of them are residential and those are the guys that we like to talk we like to target. The commercial, they typically have their own client base and they go to the same people over and over, like in one industry, like restaurants or like hotels and things like that so they typically don’t need a lot of help. But the residential guys, they’re the ones that we really go after. Now, when you talk about the residential versus the commercial, can we think of this as kind of similar to the difference between a B2B and a B2C play, where the commercial contractors or commercial remodelers are doing B2B and B2B is going to have a very different method of marketing than B2C, the residential, where you’re talking about the individual person who’s looking to do a remodel in their home? Yes, yes, absolutely. So, one thing that we find is B2C, there’s a few different strategies that really work well for them with lead generation and SEO and all those things that you kind of mentioned a little bit earlier, and the B2B, it’s pretty much all about relationships and just building relationships with those other industries and getting their name recognized within those industries, going to shows for those industries, like restaurants, again, for example, and just really focusing in on those individuals rather than trying to build their brand like a residential contractor would have to do in their local area. Now, that makes sense.
In today's digital age, the internet offers powerful platforms for sharing ideas and building connections. Whether through podcasts, social media , or online communities, these tools allow us to reach hearts and minds across the world. How can we use these platforms to make spiritual connections and conversations?In this episode, I have Craig Dehut, CEO and Co-Founder of Appian Media. He shares how he brings the Bible to the world, gathers support, and distinguishes between valuable input and distractions. He discusses his journey into biblical content creation and how the content is used to bring people together. Tune in and learn more!---Listen to the podcast here:Bringing the Bible to Life Through Media with Craig DehutWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you a little bit about connecting people with the content in the Bible. Now, as you know, in this show, I’m not telling you what to believe in or telling you what to think or anything like that, but the Bible has a lot of content that people need to resonate with and I think almost everyone should have some sort of a grounding in something bigger than themselves. My guest today, Craig Dehut, he is the COO and co-founder of Appian Media and a documentary filmmaker.--- Craig, welcome to the program. Hey, thanks for having me. Well, let’s start a little bit with your story. Where did you originate? Were you always interested in creating content and creating stories and also documentary filmmaking? Yeah. So, it took a variety of forms, but growing up, I really was always interested in stories. For a while, it took the form of just writing stories. I wanted to be a cartoonist there for a while, so I was interested in drawing and illustrations. But, eventually, about 13, 14 years old, someone let our family borrow a camcorder and so myself and my siblings went out into the backyard and would create all kinds of ridiculous things and I just kind of fell in love with the medium and decided to go to film school, graduated from there back in 2007, and, originally, that was supposed to be kind of major motion pictures, I wanted to write and direct feature films, but my career kind of took the form of working at television news and other forms where I got to document real stories, actually shoot interviews and follow news stories of real things that are happening, and, eventually, kind of fell in love with that format, that form of storytelling, and was able to combine that with my love for scripture, my love for the Bible, and put those two things together. So, at some point, you decided to go out on your own, or not on your own but be the co-founder of your own company. What prompted that particular move? Sure. So back in 2015, I was working at a video production company at the time, but also had recently met my, who’s now my co-founder, Stuart Peck, another Christian creative who had moved to the Indianapolis area, and he and I were just shooting the breeze, meeting over coffee and talking shop, talking about the industry, and talking about the things that we wish were out there, especially when it came to like Bible videos. We were finding things that were hard to watch. Some of them were just kind of hard to watch. They were not keeping the attention of the kids that we had in our Bible classes. And it was actually Stuart who kind of pitched the idea originally, was like, “Hey, what would it take for us to take a group of us over there, over to the lands of the Bible, and produce the content for ourselves, something that’s biblically accurate but also professionally produced?”’It’s got to be packaged well so that people will actually want to watch it and we wanted to make it freely available.Share on XAnd so we did that by creating a not-for-profit called Appian Media. And we were able to, through donations,
Perseverance and staying true to core values are essential elements for any business to become successful. But along the way, difficult obstacles and failures are unavoidable. How can we turn these challenges into stepping stones for growth and improvement?In this episode, I have Tim Shaffer, Co-Founder and CEO of SearchTires. We discuss the importance of supporting local brick-and-mortar businesses and the model he created to help consumers find the best local prices on car tires. Tim shares how he learned from early mistakes to build a simple, user-friendly platform that solves a real consumer need. Tune in, and learn more!---Listen to the podcast here:Overcoming Failure to Find Success with Tim ShafferWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidotes in the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the things I’ve alluded to in some of my past episodes is this idea of four barriers to success and when I talk about these four barriers, there’s other versions of it, I generally think of awareness, action, persistence, and then, of course, dealing with some kind of a setback or dealing with some kind of a failure often, people oftentimes have to readjust. My guest today is Tim Shaffer, he’s the founder and CEO of SearchTires and has a really interesting story about kind of implementing all of that to go after a specific niche, a specific corner of our business world that he feels really passionate about.--- Tim, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me, Stephen. Look forward to it. Definitely. Now, let’s start out with SearchTires. So, first, obviously, when I talk about this awareness action and then persistence or sacrifice and then failure, the first thing is awareness and action so what made you decide that you wanted to start a business on your own and then what made you decide that searching for tire prices was going to be the objective of your business? I come from a tire background. I worked in corporate America for 15 years in that background. Late 2009, I was in Colorado and I’ll never forget it, I was in a hot tub and I was skiing and another guy behind me was talking about Kayak because Kayak just came out and how he found flights on Kayak or something or something, and I’m thinking I’m in the tire business, why don’t we have something where people can look online, agnostically, at all the prices and then pick the place they want to go to? And so that’s how I came up with, so that was the awareness that we really need a tool like this because it helps people save money and more and more as the prices go up. The average price of tires is $700 a set and we save people an average of $180 a set of tires. So, I wanted to implement that even back then, but then the next step you’re talking to is the big step. I have the idea, how do I go do it? Because you’re afraid. It’s like, holy moly, this is a great idea, how do I overcome the fear of coming out of corporate America, which is a lot of work, but the stability is there, compared to on your own, so I inevitably built this kind of out in the background while I was working, and, in 2012, I went out on my own and started to – started on this project, I should say. Yeah. So, one of the interesting things that people often talk about is niching in businesses and one of the areas where I see this manifest a lot is, of course, when people talk about their target audience and a target audience like, okay, I’m here to serve, you can use traditional demographics or, increasingly, people use psychographics, but your niching seems to be less about who you’re selling to in the sense of I’m looking for people that have this psychographic experience, the person that, I don’t know, goes golfing and watches certain programs on TV and more the micro niche within the human experience in that you didn’t go and try to tackle, say, all auto parts or all transportation or something huge. You stuck with tires.
When we think of CEOs of companies, our initial assumption is that they are very busy people with no time available for socializing. Sometimes, we even wonder how they manage to spend time with their families, friends, and hobbies. But what if I told you that if you want to be a CEO, there is a way to avoid that lifestyle and still have a life outside of this endeavor?In this episode, I have Dr. Jim Schleckser, founder of the CEO Project. We discuss how to achieve work-life balance and effective leadership. He emphasizes the Theory of Constraints, time delegation, schedule control, and workplace autonomy. Tune in and optimize your time now!---Listen to the podcast here:Achieve More by Doing Less with Dr. Jim Schleckser Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Perhaps you’re out there thinking, “Okay, I want something more, maybe I wanna try to move up some levels at my organization or I wanna start something on my own and be the CEO of my own company,” but then you’re looking at other people who are high level CEOs or even other C-level and director-level executives and thinking, “I don’t wanna be this busy. I don’t want this lifestyle. I don’t want the lifestyle where I don’t have any time for my family, I don’t have any time for my hobbies, I don’t have any time to just relax and chill and enjoy myself,” and that can be a real daunting possibility here because you’re thinking yourself, “Okay, I still want to be in charge of my own destiny a little bit or I still want to be something more than just a cog in a machine so how do I get there without giving up my entire life and not having a life outside of this particular endeavor?” And that’s where my guest today, Jim Schleckser, who is the founder of The CEO Project, also a podcast host as well as a bestselling author who wrote the book Great CEOs Are Lazy comes into play here.--- Jim, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me, Stephen. I appreciate it. Well, thanks for hopping on because I’m sure this is on a lot of people’s minds, right? You know, an important person, whether it be rising to the top of the company you’re already a part of or starting your own company and once you get somewhere, you’re going to have a lot on your plate. What inspired you to start The CEO Project? A number of years ago, I was doing acquisitions. I worked for a corporate entity and one of our strategies for growth was to buy companies. And I remember these two founders that I was about to buy their company for, I think it was $6 million, I’m like, man, oh man, these guys are not as smart as me, they don’t work as hard, they’ve got four weeks of vacation every summer. I’m like, my gosh, I’m so much smarter than them, I go, wait a minute, I’m about to give them 6 million bucks and they get four weeks of vacation every year. I go, what’s wrong with this picture? And at that moment, I said, look, really, for the same level of talent, you get a very different, meaning better outcome in terms of lifestyle control, economic outcome, and so forth, by running your own business. And at that point, I said, okay, that is the path I’m on. That was a decade at least before I jumped out and started my own business. So you observed these guys start their own business and have way more autonomy over their lives and decided you want that. What did you experience when you first made that observation? Because you said there was some time of a gap between the two. Was there that similar anxiety of like, okay, how am I going to get there, that type of thing? I had a plan, maybe just there was another element that drove it. I was a member of CEO peer groups for a long time as I ran various companies so this is a mastermind group that helps you think through your problems. So I was a member of one and I saw that people that were founder, entrepreneurs and same profile, better time control,
Skills-based hiring and workforce diversity are important when it comes to performing workplaces. When we focus on hiring based on skills rather than just traditional qualifications, we open the door to a wider pool of talent. How can we make these practices more widespread in our workplaces?In this special episode, I’m joined by Maria Putnam of the DEI Leadership Institute and Stephanie Knight, the CEO of Colorado Inclusive Economy. We discussed the upcoming event on October 11 at the Hyatt Aurora, the 2024 Annual Summit. We talked about the event overview, partnerships, mission, and the progress and challenges in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Don’t miss the date—join us! See you there!---Listen to the podcast here:2024 Annual Summit: Collaboration of Colorado Inclusive Economy and DEI Leadership Institute with Maria Putnam and Stephanie KnightWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. As you probably know if you’ve listened to some of my other episodes, I’m based here in Denver, Colorado, and probably about half of my guests are in the area and I do like to promote events that are happening in person, especially events around the things that people around town are doing that they’re passionate about. As you know, Denver’s a city with a lot of passionate energy, a lot of people that are starting things up, a lot of people that are putting things together, a lot of people that are thinking through the world and how we can kind of even improve upon humanity, to get a little bit woo-woo and high level. One such event coming up in October, I believe in October 11th, is a partnership between Maria Putnam of the DEI Leadership Institute, who you probably already know from one of my earlier podcast episodes, and Stephanie Knight, the CEO of Colorado Inclusive Economy.--- Maria, Stephanie, welcome to the program. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, glad to be on. Well, let’s, let’s start out by talking about the event in October 11th. What are you putting on? What you were exposing to everyone? And what would people expect if someone might be interested in such an event? Yeah, well, the event is going to be in October 11, as you said. We’re going to be hosting this event at the Hyatt Aurora and we are expecting to have 350 people from all the industries. So, this is a really good event to go and to meet leaders, actually, who are really proactive and working in diversity, equity, and inclusion. I would just echo what Maria said, it’s going to be a wonderful event. It is on the 11th, it’s 8 AM to noon, and so, again, it’s going to be two distinct tracks of learning with two separate sessions each and we have engaged wonderful subject matter experts to lead these sessions. They’re highly topical and things that are on people’s mind, like diversity and AI, again, healthcare, inclusion, and scarcity. We’re also going to talk about some legal things, not too deep, but talk about with everything that’s happening in our larger world around diversity, equity, inclusion, how can companies stay the course and stay safe legally so it’ll be a lot for everyone. So excited to host with the DEI Leadership Institute and combine audiences. So we’re really excited about it. And what type of audience are you specifically looking to reach in this event? Is this the CEOs? Is this other leaders, division heads, more kind of small business entrepreneurs? Is there anyone in particular you’re looking to reach more with a lot of the advice that you have for these companies? I will say all together, you just said business owners, CEOs, students, people who’s actually doing the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion at whatever capacity they are. Yeah. It’s open to the public. Colorado Inclusive Economy is a membership organization so we engage C-suite leadership and their teammates and what we...
In this digital age, there is a lot of technological change. Whether you're looking to sell, deciding who to market to, determining how to market, or considering technological advances and employment, all of these challenges can have technological solutions. So, what can you do with all this technology?In this episode, I have Ryan Pollyniak, Cloud Transformation Executive at Western Computer. We talk about cloud transformation, cloud computing, and data management. Ryan emphasizes how important it is to select the right technology solutions that can accommodate future growth and align with a long-term strategic roadmap. Additionally, we discuss the impact of AI on employment and its usefulness during the interview process. Listen and explore cloud transformation now!---Listen to the podcast here:Revolutionizing Business with Cloud Transformation and AI with Ryan PollyniakWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. We live in an era where there’s a lot of technological change and a lot of technology to manage even without that change, and many of you out there are possibly looking at starting your own business and wondering, “What can I do with all this technology?” And it might even look daunting. It might even feel like another large task on top of everything else that you’re looking into, whether you’re looking into what product you want to sell, who you want to market to, how are you going to market, and what are you going to use. So, to help us sort through some of these technological solutions, technological advances, and technological change in employment, even, for those of you out there who are just looking at other employment options as well, I would like to introduce to you my guest today, Ryan Pollyniak, who is a Cloud Transformation Executive.--- Ryan, welcome to the program. Thanks, Stephen. Glad to be on. Well, thank you for joining and, first of all, take us through a day to day. What’s a normal activity for someone who’s a cloud transformation executive? As a lot of people are familiar with other types of executives but this particular one is very specific to our time, being that a lot of people are doing digital transformation and cloud transformations. Absolutely, and so if you ask my seven-year-old’s third grade class when she told them that I was a cloud transformation executive, they all think I’m a meteorologist now, which is not the case. Actually, working with companies, all different sizes of companies, small businesses all the way up to smaller enterprise level businesses, make that digital transformation, key buzzword you hear all the time, you just mentioned it, have their old, legacy, on-premise systems and siloed data into the modern cloud and there’s so many things that go along with that, from keeping your data secure to leveraging the future of AI and everything else. A lot of businesses are making that switch and then you’ve also got startups, of course, which are wanting to take the appropriate foundational steps as they create their initial business systems to make sure that they’re setting themselves up for the future. So, what I’m doing is typically strategizing with the leaders of these companies and pulling in teams of solution architects and project managers and consultants to kind of realize the vision that we set. So just to also orient our audience, in case anyone’s not familiar, like you mentioned, cloud is a term that makes people think of clouds in the air, and I think a lot of people when they put something on the cloud, even anything on their personal computers, probably think that their data just kind of floats around in the air the way the clouds do. So, what does the cloud actually mean? What is it? That’s a great question. There are several different iterations of that. In general, cloud is computing power servers that are not in the server on premise,
When we offer services, one way to connect with our audience is through social media. The challenge is that while we want to reach a large number of people, there are important factors to consider. But how can you truly stand out in the crowded social media landscape?In this episode, I have Wendy Pace, Founder and Owner of PACE Setting Media. We talk about the importance of making content for a specific audience, and marketing strategies for businesses. We also discuss the limitations of algorithmic content creation and how social media algorithms work for content visibility. Learn how to stand out online!---Listen to the podcast here:Strategies to Get Noticed on Social Media with Wendy PaceWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about a broader category of getting noticed. You produce a product, you produce a service, you produce an offering, even wanting to, say, get people together for some sort of a social endeavor. No matter what you’re trying to do, you have to find some way of getting noticed, and as you’re probably well aware of, over the last half a century and particularly even the last 20 years, the landscape of getting noticed has changed quite a bit, there’s a very different way of getting noticed now than it was during, say, the middle of the 20th century. There’s a lot of stuff that involves digital marketing and content creation that I’m here to talk with my guest today, Wendy Pace, the founder and owner of Pace Setting Media, about this endeavor and what getting noticed in the 21st century really looks like.--- Wendy, welcome to the program. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Starting on the topic of getting noticed and how much that has changed, what’s the number one thing that someone needs to think about, let’s say someone just finished building their product or finished outlining their service, outlining their offering, what’s the number one thing someone should be thinking on right now as far as getting noticed? Okay, so they’ve developed a product or a service, they need to be thinking about who is this for? What does my audience look like and where is my audience at?A lot of people just throw stuff at the wall and hope that it sticks and that’s not exactly the way it works in social media.Share on XIf you’ve noticed or paid any attention to your social media feeds, your view of the world has gotten narrower and narrower because of the algorithms. So you really have to have a keen understanding of who your audience is so that you can tell Facebook, you can tell Google, you can tell them, “This is my audience,” and you can get some of that knowing what your hashtag should be, knowing what the lifestyle of your audience is, there are other ways of getting around what Facebook used to, and back in the day, when I started, you could pick your household, right? You’d be like, “I want two-income, I want four kids, I want the dog, I want the cat, I want the white picket fence. I want it in this zip code,” and you could really kind of hand pick who got to see your stuff. Now, you have to be a lot more creative. You need to think about, okay, say it’s a car decaling or car mats, you make custom car mats. Well, you need to think about who’s that lifestyle? Who’s going to be that car person? What are the things they’re going to be interested in? What are the most common job titles they might have? Because you can’t pick all of them. And then what’s the income around base, what kind of generalized income would you be in? And that is where your key audience members are. So, first and foremost, figure out who you’re selling this service to, what do they do, what does their life look like, so that you can pick the right pain points to get into their feeds. And while we’re talking about who your audience is, who you’re selling to,
Decision making is a crucial part of our lives, affecting us regardless of whether we are pursuing our passions, thinking about business, or focusing on our personal lives. Many people believe that the outcome of our lives is the sum of all the decisions we make, which can be a bit overwhelming. How can we improve our decision-making skills to shape the lives we desire?In this episode, I have Greg Williams, VP of Strategy at Western Computer. Our talk revolves around decision-making in business. Greg emphasizes the importance of evaluating technology vendors and building strong relationships with customers. We also discuss the potential of AI to transform business operations and leverage it to attain work-life balance. Tune in to learn how these insights can enhance your business strategy!---Listen to the podcast here:Leveraging AI for Smarter Decision Making in Business with Greg WilliamsWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about a little bit of a broad topic, something that really affects all of our lives, regardless of whether or not you’re pursuing your passions, regardless of whether or not you’re even thinking about a business or a career at all, and that is decision making. There’s a lot of people out there saying that your life’s outcome is kind of a sum of all the decisions you make, which can get a little stressing to the mind, I would say, in that sense. To talk to us all about decision making, all the facets of decision making and how to make effective decisions that really, truly reflect who we are and what we want to see in the world in our lives, I would like to introduce you my guest today, Greg Williams, the VP of Strategy for Western Computer,--- Greg, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Stephen. It’s great to be here. Yeah. Thank you so much. And so, first of all, let’s get a little bit of your background. So, you’re a VP of Strategy, Western Computer, the name doesn’t necessarily clearly stay what it is, so what is it that you do as VP of Strategy? Yeah, so we’re an old company and I like to say that we don’t sell computers and we’re not really Western that much anymore but that’s our name and it has a good brand in the marketplace. We provide ERP and CRM solutions to small and mid-market companies. That’s what we do. We’re primarily a Microsoft partner so we implement the Microsoft Dynamics suite of products. For our customers, we support them long term. Last few years, it’s been their journey in digital transformation. And just so everyone knows what we’re talking about here, ERP and CRM, what are those two acronyms refer to? So ERP is the backbone software of the business, accounting, inventory control, sometimes ecommerce. It’s really the core system that you enter orders in and ship products out of or manage projects and that type of thing. Yeah. And CRM is, there’s two main companies out there, Microsoft and Salesforce, that do that for the most part and it’s for your front office. It’s your sales team, it’s your customer service team, it’s your field technicians, if you’re in a service business, the applications that they use, And in your role as VP of Strategy, are you mostly concerned with the strategy of your company and how to obtain and retain clients? Or are you mostly concerned with the strategy of the companies you work with, helping them pick which business solutions they want for their businesses? A little bit of both. I’m obviously very focused on our strategy but I do advise our clients quite a bit on what IT strategies they can take to optimize their investments in technology. Well, regardless of which side of your business, which side of this dichotomy you’re on, a big part of it is around this decision-making process. Do you have any general ideas or general piece of advice for anyone...
Aging is a natural part of life. As we get older, our physical body changes, our health, and our mind. But what actually happens to us as we age? What does it mean for us and for those we love? And how can we approach aging in a new way?In this episode, I have Dr. Corinne Auman, CEO and Founder of Choice Care Navigators. We discuss the negative views of aging and how we can refrain from it as a natural part of life. Dr. Corinne shares the challenges of retirement, particularly for the baby boomer generation. Tune in to learn more!---Listen to the podcast here:Embracing a Positive Mindset Towards Aging with Dr. Corinne AumanWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, we’re going to talk about a topic that I have yet to really truly bring up or focus an episode around, which is aging. Now, we all know that aging is happening. Some people approach it quite differently than others. You’ve heard me talk a bit about the generations and the different generational experiences, but what happens to us as we get older? What does that mean? And what does it mean for the people that we love and care about as we get older? And also, how can we approach it a little bit differently? You probably know that I am a little bit skeptical or let’s say not fully on board with the traditional ways that we have viewed aging in the past and even treat it mostly today. To talk about this topic, I would like to introduce you to my guest for today, Corinne Auman, and she is the founder of Choice Care Navigators as well as the author of a book called Keenagers, which gives us a different new approach to aging.--- Corrine, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. Happy to be here. Oh, yeah, thank you for hopping on and talking about this important topic because, as we know, everyone out there is getting older, we all have ideas around aging, and we have a lot of different ideas. What are the ideas that you usually encounter, say, in today’s society about what it means to get older and what it means to have your loved ones get older? So I think we are in a pretty ageist society, in the sense that the messaging you typically get around getting older is don’t do it, which, of course, we can’t avoid, so we’ve got this thing that is happening to all of us all the time, we’re going to be older at the end of this podcast than we were at the beginning, and yet we get this messaging from our culture around us that is constantly anti-aging, negative viewpoints on it, prevent it, if at all possible, look as young as you possibly can, which, I mean, it’s a multibillion-dollar industry. People are making a lot of money off of your fear of growing older. So, I think that is the predominant view. When you get to actual like retirement years, people typically view those years in one of two ways. They either view it as kind of a time of earned relaxation where you do a lot of vacationing and you spend time with the grandkids, or they view it as a time of just inevitable decline, the end is nigh and there’s nothing we can do about it and it’s just all downhill from here. So, those are the typical kind of viewpoints you see about growing older. And I have to admit that I’ve kind of succumb to it a little bit. Mostly, it’s because I think that that’s what’s pushed by our society. I think about what happens when people grow from their 20s into the 30s and 40s and stuff like that and it’s pretty emphasized to me this loss, this loss of the adventure, this loss of the independence, whereas I’ve actually experienced a little bit of the things that you actually do gain, like I think people sometimes start to become more self-confident, they start to reduce their give-a-fucks, to be able to just like not freak out over small little things anymore. Is that messaging, is someone turning 30 today hearing just overwhelming negative commentary about where their li...
When starting a business, there are several key things to consider, like marketing strategies and financial planning. In the early stages, it's crucial to reach a wide audience to make your business known. What are some effective ways to make an impact and connect with potential clients?Join us in this episode with Nicole Grinnel, an entrepreneur, CEO, and podcast host. We discussed the benefits of guesting on podcasts, especially for early-stage businesses for growth and connection, as well as having an entrepreneurial mindset and remote work flexibility, such as virtual assistants. Tune in to gain valuable insights!---Listen to the podcast here:Podcasting as a Business Growth Strategy with Nicole GrinnellWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. I’ve advocated quite a bit on this podcast about kind of embracing a new way of thinking and I think one of the things that we’ve often thought about in the past is that when someone is doing something similar to what you’re doing, you see them as a competitor, as someone that’s kind of possibly occupying your space. But there’s a saying that the market’s only saturated when you’re trying to be someone else and it’s not necessarily saturated with you. So, I’m always here to support other people on the same journey, and the journey I’m talking about today is showcasing the stories of people who start their businesses or showcasing the stories of people who follow their passions very much here. So, my guest today, Nicole Grinnell, is the host of Mic'd Up, another podcast, as well as a two-time business founder.--- Nicole, welcome to the program. Thanks so much for having me, Stephen. I’m excited to be here. Well, thank you so much for popping on. And let’s first start by talking about Mic'd Up. Now, your podcast has been around for quite some time, even longer than this one. Yeah. So we have, obviously, like our actual show, and then we really serve as a booking agency to get other people on podcasts, which is a way that we’ve actually grown multiple businesses and supported a lot of businesses in that effort and so we really want to do much like the purpose of your show is show other ways that businesses can grow through different avenues and what other people have done and that’s what Mic'd Up plans to do. Nice. And so I guess the first question I have for you about that is, if someone is starting a business or trying to get any of their initiatives noticed, and I want to be all inclusive, not every initiative is a business but want to get something noticed, how should someone be thinking about podcasts? I hear people have advocating, say, start your own podcast or try to be on other podcasts. What’s the best way for someone to think through a strategy as far as building their business that involves the podcasting medium? So, it’s funny because I always say there’s a time and place for either of those. It really depends on the stage you’re at in business. So, when you are just starting out and you’re really trying to build your name, build pipelines, build relationships, that’s a great time to be in a guesting space because, really, what happens is the show is all about you. So, I compare it to having someone over for dinner. What’s easier, being the guest or being the host? When you’re the guest, it’s all about you, they’re doing all the prep, the legwork, they’re promoting it, they’re all of this, that’s really what guesting can be. When you’re in the hosting space, that’s a great time for when you are a seasoned entrepreneur, a seasoned professional, business is running, you’ve got some great pipelines and now you’re kind of at that stage that you want to give back and you want to be able to naturally connect. That’s a great time to be a host. So it really depends on that scale that you’re in and what that looks like for you.
As human beings, we all encounter problems in our lives. Some may be traumatic, and it's just a fact of life. These experiences can make it hard to focus on our daily tasks, especially at work. How can we create a workplace culture that supports employees during these times?In this episode, I sit down with Tamara Fox, a coach and head of consulting at LOEB Leadership. We discussed the impact of trauma on both personal and professional life, and the need for workplaces to address employees’ trauma, and the future of their work. Tamara shared about the approaches to leadership development and the benefits of prioritizing employee’s mental health. Tune in to learn how we can build a more supportive workplace---Listen to the podcast here:Prioritizing Employees’ Well-Being in the Workplace with Tamara FoxWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. On this particular podcast, I’ve talked quite a bit about our work culture and about how many things about our culture that we all encounter at work need some adjustment in our thinking. And one of the topics that I was recently introduced to at the Boulder Startup Week last month is the topic of what happens when one of your coworkers, one of your employees has a traumatic experience. Now, we’re all going to have traumatic experiences in life, it’s just a fact of life that something major is going to happen to you and something major is going to happen to you that’s going to cause you to maybe even focus on that particular aspect of your life a little bit more, even a little bit more than your work, and we need to find a way to, on a broader scale, allow people to be coworkers but also human beings. Today, my guest, Tamara Fox, is a coach and a consultant, and she was the speaker at this particular event on workforce trauma.--- Tamara, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you so much. So, I want to first start off talking about your particular story, your particular journey, when you talk about what made workplace culture something that really interested you and then what made specifically how people endure these traumas at workplaces something that you want to kind of lean into with your career. Yeah, absolutely. So I’m definitely one of those people that I took my own personal experiences and made it into something I’m actually passionate about and doing in the workforce today. And I always start my story back in 2011, when I was 19, I always age myself now when I do podcasts, I think that was 13 years ago, it was wild. But in 2011, I was 19 years old and I woke up and I was living in an apartment in Denver, Colorado, and I woke up to a masked man standing over my bed with a gun who raped me and actually physically assaulted me as well, like dislocated my arm, did a whole bunch of stuff to me that, you know, won’t go into details. I truly saw my life flash before my eyes, thought I was going to die, never see my family again. So that was 19 years old. Wow.Pretty life changing experience, that was the catapult into my experiences with personal trauma myself, like going through something traumatic. Pretty shortly after that, my dad had been battling with an opioid addiction, most of my childhood, it just didn’t really come to the surface or I wasn’t really aware of it at like more conscious level until after my trauma and I think my trauma actually catapulted him a little bit, made him a little bit worse, because when your family experience something like that, of course it has an impact on the family around them so his opioid addiction got to the point that he was verbally abusive, he was blacking out and not remembering things, and he was abusing opioids illegally. So then that happened and he became suicidal and his mental health was just awful. So that had an impact for me on a trauma perspective. Then, from 2016 to 2024, I had nine deaths,
Change is about becoming different in various parts of our lives triggered by our internal desires or external events. Through change, it helps us see new things and grow as a human being spiritually, mentally, and physically, which are all interconnected. How do these aspects of change come together to shape our life?Join us in this episode with Brian de Castro, founder of The Domestic Athlete. Our conversation focused on how we can maintain work-life balance, prioritize well-being, and explore creative projects. We also talked about how to align our passions to achieve fulfillment and avoid burnout through intentional management. Brian shared the benefits of exercise, mindfulness, creativity, and self-awareness. Listen to this episode and start transforming your life today!---Listen to the podcast here:Achieving Work-Life Balance and Fulfillment with Brian de CastroWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. We all reach that point in life where we want to make some kind of a change and there’s so many different catalysts for change. Probably, if you’ve been listening to the podcast, you’ve heard several episodes with people who have had events such as health scares or even just getting laid off from a job perpetuating a new way of thinking, a new line of, “Okay, what change do I wanna make? What do I think through what do I really want?” However, there are so many components to it. There’s obviously the mental stuff, some of the spiritual stuff that’s been on in the last few episodes, but I’ve also covered on some episodes the physical aspect of it and it all kind of, in a way, goes together. And here to discuss how that goes together, I have the founder of The Domestic Athlete, Brian DeCastro.--- Brian, welcome to the program. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to the conversation. Definitely. I want to start by orienting our audience here. So what is The Domestic Athlete all about? Yeah, good question. Back in 2016, I was actually working, I was on my probably 15th, 16th year working in the same organization. For the last, say, nine years, I was actually employed managing the entire fitness department that consisted of 40 trainers, 20 staff, multimillion-dollar department, there’s a lot of moving parts. It was a very exciting position. We went through a $50 million expansion at the time and we cut the ribbon and then, after that, it was kind of like, “Now what?” Yeah. Ironically, the universe responded and they were actually phasing out people in sort of that middle management position as well. My position got phased out. I drove off the lot with a big smile on my face. I can move on to the next thing but also not with the risk of, you know, I had a family and everything so responsibility and all that stuff. When I started The Domestic Athlete within a month of leaving the club, my passion was in working with regular folks in the grind, day to day, parents, professionals perhaps with families that are trying to keep all the balls up in the air that also need the life force, the inspiration, the excitement. They still want that. You don’t want to wait ’til you’re retired to actually start living your life so how do we keep it all together and keep our life force but also manage all those moving parts, the dance class, the hockey practice, all that stuff, and then paying your bills and then you also have a marriage or relationship or something, right? So there’s so many different things going on.So Domestic Athlete is basically people like you and I operating in the sport of life, like I like to call it, so what do you need to operate at your best?Share on XOh, wow. A lot to unpack there. Maybe let’s start with a little bit about your story because you said that you spent 16 years working with the same company, overseeing personal trainers and stuff like that.
We are all trying to build the life we really want, balancing what we are doing with the lifestyle we dream of. However, are we truly making a life that matches our deepest values? How can we be sure our path fits our real goals?In this episode, we have Molly Lou Hollows, founder of Strategy Sculptors. Her business focuses on both the practical stuff we need to build and understanding our true selves, so what we create aligns with the life we genuinely desire. Today, we will explore what human design strategy is for business consultant clients. Molli shares what Unified Field Theory and Morphogenetic Field is and how it actually attracts opportunities and experiences by just being themselves with purpose. Join us and align with your true self!---Listen to the podcast here:Human Designed Strategy for Personal and Professional Fulfillment with Molli Lou HollowsWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. I’ve been doing a bunch of these podcast interviews and I’ve witnessed a whole bunch of different motivations, a whole bunch of different reasons why we all build our businesses and/or passion projects of any kind. Some of it’s based on certain specific circumstances and others based on something that we’re called to do, but at the core of everything that we’re trying to do, the journey that we are all on right now, is trying to build the life that we really want. Then there’s kind of a juxtaposition, a meetup of the physical thing that we’re building, what we’re actually doing as well as the lifestyle we’re trying to achieve, whether it be escaping something we don’t want or whether it be feeling really in touch with having our lives be in alignment with who we truly are. My guest today, Molli Lou, is the founder of Strategy Sculptors, and her business actually works at that intersection of physical, tangible thing we need to build as well as understanding who we are at a course that what we’re building actually matches the life that we really truly want.--- Molli, welcome to the program. Hey, Stephen. Yeah. I’m excited to be here. Super awesome. Oh, that’s amazing. Now, first of all, let’s get a point in time out. How long have you been at it with Strategy Sculptors?Well, in 2020, that’s when I really started my full-time entrepreneurial journey. I think a lot of us did. We were all home so we all were questioning things and really looking at ourselves in a different way. We were all at home and so I really started to be like, okay, I’ve always wanted to do this. So I dove into it and I started going to school for hypnotherapy. I already had gone through and was a certified breakthrough coach, specifically, and I just felt like I needed something more tangible to use than coaching just for me. Coaching is great but I have always felt like I was going towards a framework that I was creating on my own, that I was going to enter the framework eventually.Share on XI ended up working towards other things. I felt limited, actually, by the hypnotherapy. I wanted to use it as a tool but I wanted to be able to make it scalable so that I could make as much income as I wanted and I wanted it to be more flexible because the one on one, it gets old. I didn’t want to trade my hours for dollars. I wanted that to be, for sure, part of the solution, part of my entrepreneurial journey was to find that, and I ended up working with a lot of entrepreneurs to begin with, and I realized maybe I just loved entrepreneurship and then it was kind of this delicate balance of finding a way to have both, to have both entrepreneurship and spirituality merge. And then I ended up where I am now, where, finally, I’ve figured it out. Coming into 2020 when you started rethinking a lot of things, what were you doing? Did you have a full-time normal job? Were you just trading your dollars for hours through this hypnotherapy coaching or was there somethi...
Have you ever felt lost in your own life? Wondering who you truly are beneath all the roles and expectations? How do you rediscover yourself and build the confidence to live authentically?In this inspiring episode, I am joined by Leah Beltz, a passionate Co-Active coach and skilled facilitator with over 23 years of experience across global organizations. She is the founder of Honor The Space and creates a space for people to feel seen, heard, challenged, and supported in their growth, helping them live with more clarity, confidence, and connection to their purpose. Today, Leah shares her journey of self-discovery, how she found her authentic self through The DigⓇ method, and how she now helps others do the same. She discusses the importance of knowing your history to understand your path, the unique process of The DigⓇ, and how creating space for yourself and others can lead to personal growth. Leah's story is one of overcoming fear, embracing vulnerability, and stepping into her true self. Listen now to start your journey toward living a more authentic and confident life!---Listen to the podcast here:Rediscovering Your Authentic Self To Thrive with Leah BeltzWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. I’m a big fan of music. I’m a particularly big fan of Pitbull, I listened to his Globalization channel on XM Radio. I’m a fan of him as a person as well. He has a lot of things he says on the channel, one of them is if you don’t know where you’re coming from, you don’t know where you’re going. Similar to what Bob Marley said, when you know your history then you know where you’re coming from. And so I want to talk to you today about a process that I underwent several months ago around kind of taking my life experience, my life story and trying to distill it down into kind of an easily digestible piece of information for me to keep with me, and there’s a process called The Dig that was administered to me by my guest today, Leah Beltz, the founder of Honor Your Space.--- Leah, welcome to the program. Hi, Stephen, welcome. It’s nice to be here again. Yeah, it’s wonderful to have you. And, first of all, tell us a little bit about The Dig, since I kind of started that whole thing. I know you’re a facilitator, you’ve worked with a lot of clients on this program. I can give you a short answer and I can give you a long answer. The short answer, if I were to describe it in only two words, I would describe The Dig as self-discovery. So similar to what you said with Pitbull, kind of understanding where you’ve come from to understand where you’re going. I would say the longer version of that, The Dig is a one-on-one facilitated method of self-discovery that helps you get epic clarity on who you are and how you operate so that you can then live with more confidence and connection to your life’s purpose. So, we’re talking about clients here and people who have had a lot of life experiences because most people do and most people have a lot of things they’ve gone through in life that just ends up being confusing, because it’s like, “Why this? Why that?” So, what’s the journey, the customer journey, for anyone who speaks product, around that person who comes to you and just like, “Okay, well, I had this happen, I had that happen, and I’ve had these experiences, and WTF?”? Right. What I love about The Dig, what makes it unique is the actual process that we go through. So, I want to acknowledge there are a lot of tools and processes like this. The Simon Sinek Find Your Why or the Pursuit of Happiness, all these different things, but what makes The Dig unique is the process which we go through and it’s done through a matter of storytelling and reflection and it’s all based on capturing different words, so it involves language and we capture words throughout the conversation and then those words, I work with the client,
Have you ever experienced that one life event that completely changes everything? That moment where your life shatters and you're forced to go deep within yourself to rediscover who you are. How do you navigate such a transformation and come out stronger on the other side?In this empowering episode, I am joined by Elizabeth Soto-Baez, the founder of Launch Your Life Coaching. Elizabeth is a life coach, women’s empowerment coach, and trauma-informed breathwork facilitator specializing in helping divorced or separated women. With nearly two decades of experience building communication lines between children and families, she now focuses on empowering women to reconnect with themselves and others. Today, she shares her own story of realizing her marriage was over, the challenges she faced, like financial struggles, loneliness, and finding herself again outside of marriage. She also shares how she helps her clients through similar journeys, using mindset coaching and breathwork to turn grief into empowerment and growth. Listen now and start your journey toward a more empowered life!---Listen to the podcast here:Coming Out Stronger After Life's Toughest Moments with Elizabeth Soto-BaezWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Now, I want to talk to you all about something that a lot of us are going to encounter in one form or another in our lives, and that is that one life event that really changes everything, that one life event that really shatters what your life was and forces you to go inside, look a little bit deeper into kind of who you are in order to create what’s new in order to discover yourself on a whole new level. My guest today, Elizabeth Soto-Baez, specializes in helping women going through divorce, which is oftentimes a situation where they have their world that was just completely shattered by this event and suddenly no longer with their partner and need to kind of learn who they are outside the context of their marriage. She is the founder of Launch Your Life Coaching. She is here today to talk to us about her experience with her clients.--- Elizabeth, welcome to the program. Stephen, thank you so much. I’m excited to be here and to chat with you. Definitely. And so you started your business based on a personal experience. I did, I did. So, in 2019, I realized that after 13 and a half years of marriage, it wasn’t working. It hadn’t been working for a really long time. When I got married in my early 20s, I committed to being a married person. I really wanted what the idealized marriage is projected as, a partner, someone you grow with, your best friend, someone that you do all the hard things and all the wonderful things with and celebrate with. And I came from a family background where divorce was prevalent. All of my aunts and uncles had been divorced except for one. Wow. Many of them had been divorced more than one time. And I thought, okay, my family doesn’t understand how to do relationships. Cool. I’m going to be better. What I didn’t account for in my own thinking and my commitment to do marriage well was that the person you marry has to also be committed to that. Yeah.They also have to want to grow and change and celebrate and work through hard things and be open and that wasn’t the experience that I had. And, in 2019, I had a revelation and I was like, this is not what I thought it was going to be and I’ve done every single thing that I know of to make it good, but if he doesn’t cooperate, whatever that looks like, I’m just dragging myself through the mud. And so I let them know I’m really done, there’s no saving this anymore. We’re all done, and similar to the conversation we’re just having. Then he was ready to go to therapy with me. Then he was ready to talk about what was it, and I thought, I hand wrote you many, many, many letters,
Loneliness and feeling disconnected are common experiences today, affecting how we feel about life. The longing for real connection is stronger than ever. But it's not just about having lots of friends; it's about having meaningful connections that make us feel understood and valued. How do we close this gap and build relationships that truly matter?In this episode, I have the pleasure to chat with Coach Lee Hopkins, the founder of Patterns of Possibility. Coach Lee Hopkins is an expert in helping people build more meaningful connections in both their personal and professional lives.Throughout the episode, Coach Lee guides us through understanding the nuances of genuine connections, both online and offline. He talks about the complexities of modern-day interactions, offering actionable strategies to enhance the depth and authenticity of our relationships. Learn how small, intentional steps can lead to profound shifts in our relationships, bringing us closer to a life filled with genuine connection and fulfillment.---Listen to the podcast here:Building Real and Meaningful Connections with Coach Lee HopkinsWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you selling for less. Today, I want to talk to you a little bit about loneliness, lack of connection. Now, you probably heard a lot of talk about the loneliness epidemic. One of the decisions I often cite in some of my presentations is that a survey was conducted around how many close friends people have, because loneliness is not just about how many people you’re around, it’s not just about isolation, it’s also about the meaningfulness, the depth of the connection. A survey conducted in 1990 showed that over 60 percent of all people said they had five or more close friends, how they would define as close friends. That same survey conducted in 2021 put 48 percent of all people in the one to four category for how many close friends they had and an alarming 12 percent actually reported having zero close friends and this is impacting just our quality of life in general so it’s good for us to kind of regroup and think a bit more about how we actually form meaningful relationships with other human beings. And to that topic, I bring you my guest today, Coach Lee Hopkins. Coach Lee Hopkins is a social connections coach, founder of a company called Patterns of Possibility. With this company, he uses a simple three-step process to help his clients find and maintain closeness in their friendships.--- Coach Lee Hopkins, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me here. I’m so glad to talk about this topic because it affects so many people. Let’s start with what’s affecting people. What are you observing in the world today, like right now, regarding the quality of our connections we’re making between human beings? The quality of our connections. What I observe is there’s all kinds of statistics out there. As you pointed out, there’s some statistics about the relationships that my own observations is searching through TikTok and being on social media, listening to what other people are experiencing as well as watching and seeing my own experiences is that we’re not as connected as we were before and I would love to just tackle that and look at it from a different angle because what I define as connection is a little bit different than what most people do. They think simply because we are focused on being online so much that we’re disconnected.Click To TweetOf course, that keeps us separated but even when we’re in person, we’re also not making the intentional kind of connections there too. We’re just like in spaces with people and not being connected. The phenomenon that I’ve noticed is we’re disconnected online and then we’re so unattached to people that when we get into spaces with people, we don’t know how to be either. And so disconnection is just pretty rampant.
Chronic diseases are on the rise, affecting millions globally. How can we handle and even reverse the progression of these chronic conditions?Our guest, Oliver Eehn is the Founder of Optimum Fitness Systems and brings over 40 years of expertise in health and fitness, specializing in diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and stroke recovery. He holds several certifications, specializing in athletic/sports conditioning, injury/post-rehabilitation, bodybuilding, powerlifting, senior fitness, and other areas. Throughout the episode, Oliver discuss the ways of managing various chronic diseases, from physical injuries to mental conditions like Parkinson's and dementia. He also shares his plans to expand his impact on public health, reaching out to both the general public and fitness professionals. His goal is to raise awareness, educate, and empower individuals and businesses to prioritize health and wellness. Tune in to learn how small lifestyle changes can make a big difference in your health journey. ---Listen to the podcast here:Reversing Chronic Disease & Recovery Strategies with Oliver EehnWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the problems that we’ve observed quite a bit today and had a really big uptick over the past, say, half a century is the prevalence of chronic diseases. This is something we haven’t talked about quite yet on this podcast but we have talked generally about health, both mental and physical health, and health can definitely get in the way of you being able to follow whatever dream, whatever passion that you’re trying to pursue. Today, my guest, Oliver Eehn, who is the founder of Optimum Fitness Systems, is going to talk a little bit about what we can do about chronic diseases, both from the recovery and prevention side.--- Oliver, welcome to the program. Thank you, Stephen. It’s a pleasure to be here. Well, thanks for joining and thanks for talking to us about a topic that we have yet to really talk about these chronic diseases. So, obviously, you’ve seen this, you have a passionate about it. What is making some of these chronic diseases so prevalent today? Unfortunately, it’s just lack of activity, poor food planning, dieting, and everything that ties along with that, and it’s just, of course, not to mention just the quality of the foods that are available today, along with all the added preservatives and processing that goes into it. And so you put all that together, yes, that is definitely an equation for disaster down the road.My quest, if you want to call it that, is to now help educate the public about this as well as to encourage them to just better lifestyle and healthy living.Click To Tweet Yeah, it is disturbing to see how many people are living with some kind of chronic disease. What brought you into this particular pursuit? What did you observe that made you decide that Optimum Fitness System is what you wanted to do? It wasn’t planned that way, it’s just kind of as a lot of your other fellow business people, some of your other guests have talked about, this is kind of how life --- as life just kind of flows along, we just move along and then it’s --- some of it, it’s just more by default, if you will, because that was kind of your tip, growing up as an athlete myself, and endure a lot of my own injuries, football being my main sport, of course, you play football, yeah, you’re asking for injuries over the years, just become my own patient. And then just through that process, just became a weightlifting, fitness enthusiast through that process and just made sense to now, it’s obviously tried to do something business wise in that regard. And so, as I started just working with folks and just the typical like most personal trainers do early on is help people lose weight and just kind of get back in shape and that’s, ’til this day, I mean,
Despite being underrepresented, the truth is, women can thrive, excel, and lead. Their resilience, creativity, and determination often outshine the barriers they face. In this empowering episode, our guest, Rhonda Skallan founder of Spark Alchemy, is here to prove just that. She shares valuable insights and strategies on how women can not only survive but thrive in these challenging environments. Rhonda's passion lies in empowering women to not just join the conversation but to lead it with confidence and authority. Through her work, she ensures that women have a seat at the table and are equipped to make impactful contributions.Listen in as we discuss typical male-dominated industries, the experience of women in these fields, leadership barriers, and the power of building supportive networks. Tune in now and empower yourself to rise above limitations!---Listen to the podcast here:Taking Their Seat: Women Leading in Male-Dominated Industry with Rhonda SkallanWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Now, we all have our dreams, we all have our passions, we all have what we want out of life, and, hopefully, some of the episodes you’ve already listened to is giving you a good idea of how to figure out what it is that you actually want. But once you figure out what it is you actually want, there’s many different barriers that can get in our way. Nothing is really that easy, especially developing a life that’s a little bit outside the box or outside of what’s expected. Some of these barriers could take the form of feeling like you don’t belong, feeling like you don’t really have the right to communicate. So, today, my guest is Rhonda Skallan. She is the founder of Spark Alchemy and she helps women in male-dominated industries.--- Rhonda, welcome to the program. Thank you, thank you, and thank you so much for having me here today. I really appreciate it, Stephen. Well, thank you so much for taking the time out to talk to me and my audience today. So, first of all, I want to start off by asking what is a typical male-dominated industry and what does that feel like for some of your clients? That’s a great question because most industries are male dominated. My background tends to specifically be in construction, technology, finance as well as education, healthcare, and entertainment, and I would say all of those have a healthy dose of male dominance, especially when you think about combining them. So doing healthcare construction and technology construction. I decided I could go ahead and double down on that male dominance in a couple of those industries. Now, are there industries that are female dominant or are there industries that are balanced, that have found a way to kind of work through some of this? I really haven’t seen a balanced industry as much as maybe some female-dominated industries, maybe in the younger children, preschool, elementary-type education spaces, some of the service spaces of retail, sales, things like that, but I really haven’t seen a balance as much as I’ve seen one or the other. I will say what I know from some of the research that I’ve done with the Bureau of Labor Statistics for Women, the only industries where women make more money than men tend to be in childcare or those type of service-oriented businesses, which are also some of the lowest paying businesses. Now, you also talk a lot about how a woman feels in a male-dominated industry. Are there any industries out there that just the percentages work out one way but do a better job of preventing making people feel like outsiders, like a woman in construction versus technology versus a finance industry? Maybe healthcare, where you’re dealing with a lot of more traditional nurses, especially pediatric healthcare, which I have a pretty strong exposure to. I think, at some point,
Ever struggled to decide between doing what you love and finding the right way to do it? Do you wonder about the differences between a standard company and a nonprofit journey? These questions lie at the heart of our discussion today as we talk about the nuanced decisions that shape career trajectory, and influence our creative endeavors, and aspirations.In this episode, I sit down with Hanna Yaritz, a passionate advocate for philanthropy and impact-driven work. Hanna shares insights into the unique aspects of choosing to work in nonprofit versus for-profit entities, emphasizing the role of mission alignment and personal connection to a cause. We touch base into the concept of conscious capitalism and conscious business, where organizations focus on both profitability and social impact. She emphasizes the importance of finding alignment between personal values, career goals, and the organization's mission.Listen in for insights that inspire change! ---Listen to the podcast here:Deciding Between Non-Profit and Standard Company with Hanna YaritzWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. So, perhaps you have your idea or you have your passion, you figured out what you want to bring into the world, and then you get asked a couple of other questions come in, what kind of venue you want to pursue your idea in, and one of the key questions a lot of people ask that has yet to be covered on this particular podcast is the whole standard company versus nonprofit path. A lot of people, whether it is what kind of job you want or what kind of business you want to build, there is a big question, do I want to build it in one format, a standard LLC to start out, or do I want to build a nonprofit? So, here to talk a little bit about the nonprofit space and what that could potentially mean for you, your career, your business, your ideas, your passions, we have Hannah Yaritz, a nonprofit fundraising consultant.--- Hannah, welcome to the program. Thanks, Stephen. I’m really happy to be here. Well, it’s wonderful to have you, it’s wonderful to finally cover this topic as we haven’t covered it quite yet on this particular podcast. Let’s start with your passions, what made you decide that the nonprofit route was the space that you wanted to be in this world? Yeah, thanks. This is one of my favorite questions to answer because, for me, it really is about one of my strongest values, which is being of service to others and I really was inspired, I had the privilege and honor of going to college. I think that that truly is a privilege in our country and I was the first person in my family to do so so there was a lot of weight on my shoulders to be able to --- yeah, to pursue something that was bigger, would provide more opportunities to me and my family. And while I was in college, I volunteered a lot. I got really connected with a number of volunteer groups, learning about social justice, being exposed to different communities, different ways of living, different ways that people are trying to make a difference in our community and uplift others, and so it was through my volunteerism and activism while I was at college that I really started to hone in on what I wanted to pursue as a career. During school, I actually studied television broadcasting and while I loved that, I wanted to do something that really aligned my skill set in broadcasting and media and communications and marketing with volunteerism, with nonprofits, with making a difference so I started to pursue communication opportunities at nonprofit organizations. I thought that would be a really great alignment with my skill set and with my passion. So that’s for me where it really started. So then what brought you to fundraising for nonprofits as opposed to, say, becoming the leader or CEO of a specific nonprofit? Yeah, so fundraising was something I always did on the pe...
Perhaps you've heard of spirituality but aren't sure what it means. Spirituality is a broad concept that provides meaning, purpose and connection to something greater than ourselves. It cultivates a deeper sense of self-awareness and can serve as guiding light during the storms. But have you ever wondered how spirituality shapes our relationship and perception of the world?In this episode, I have Wendy Watson, CEO and Founder of TBR Spiritual Health. We discuss how spiritual therapy works that helps clients tap into their spirituality. Wendy discusses several self-care practices, meditation, energy communication and how peoples’ spiritual practices can change over the course of time. Tune in and connect with your spirituality today!---Listen to the podcast here:Connecting with Your Spirituality with Wendy WatsonWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. In the last episode, we briefly touched a bit on spirituality and on how we’re at a time period where things may be changing, may be evolving, we may be changing the way we’re even thinking about spirituality and how it relates to everything else that we’re doing in life. Today, I would like to bring on Wendy Watson, who is the CEO and founder of TBR Spiritual Health, to talk a little bit more specifically spiritual therapy. --- Wendy, welcome to the program. Hi. Thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it. Beginning with what you do with your spiritual therapy, I know you have a few different offerings with your business and a few different manners in which you work with your clients, but tell us about what it means to go into spiritual therapy and how it relates to any of the endeavors that we all have in our minds. Yeah, so I really focus on getting the individual person in touch with their spirit, their higher self, their intuition, and whatever is above and beyond that for themI have no judgment on whether or not you call it God or Vishnu or Freya or whatever vocabulary, whatever name you use, I just want to get you in touch with it so that you can communicate and develop your individual relationship with yourself and whatever is above and beyond for you rather than what people tell you your relationship with God should look like.And so your clients, when they come to you, are most of them in a place where they already have some sort of a spiritual tradition or do you commonly get people who come with absolutely no, purely like everything’s just logic, science, and how atoms come together, blah, blah, blah? No, I get more --- I get people that already have some sort of relationship already established, whether they grew up Catholic or Christian or very much into the spiritual world, more on what people call the woo-woo side. I get all walks of life. Really, all I do is I try and build on what they’ve already cultivated for themselves and get them to look at that more on their own, helping them to define it for themselves. Like, okay, what does that mean to you versus what has somebody else told you that it means and how can you use that in alignment with yourself and how can we set up a self-care routine in order to keep your spirit clean, in order to keep you in connection with spirit, with God, with whatever you want to call it? We can get really caught up in our day-to-day lives and get really busy so most people that come to you, are they people who just generally have the time, are they generally too distracted, are they generally constantly busy? I’m from New York where everyone’s constantly busy all the time and that’s a code of honor, what state is that relationship with the spiritual usually in when people come to you? So, I get a lot of people with high anxiety, depression, suicidal tendencies or suicidal thoughts. They’re so focused on the right here and the right now that they’re in fear of the future or they just f...
Pivoting in life and business can result in growth. The thing is, making decisions on it is challenging. Moreover, knowing the right time to make changes in our path is quite difficult. How can we be able to confront these uncertainties that lie ahead when we decide to pivot our directions to change?In this episode, I talk with Mike Laezer, Founder of Astrology Wolf. We discuss how pivoting in business and life can lead to new paths and growth. With Mike's experience, he highlights the importance of trusting your guts, intuition, and facing your fears to overcome problems ahead. Additionally, he points out to follow our intuition for career pivots, even if the path is unclear. Join us to learn how to pivot with the expert!---Listen to the podcast here:Thriving Through Change in Business and Life Through Pivoting With Mike LazearWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you all about pivoting, because what we all know about really building anything, whether it be founding a business or starting something else on your own, is that you need a little bit of stick-to-itiveness. You need to stick to it, you need to not give up right away, because it is not an issue of instant gratification as so and so our culture is right now. However, there are times when it does become time to pivot, whether you need to find a new way to promote your business, try a new business, or just try something new in general because the time has come to move on. And one of the challenges that we all have is when is it time to move on and when is it that you're giving up too soon? Today, my guest is Mike Lazear. He is the founder of Astrology Wolf and also the founder of a business he recently sold, 515 Media, to talk a little bit about all the pivots he has made in life.--- Mike, welcome to the program. Hi, thanks, Stephen. It's good to be here. It's good to have you as well. Now, obviously, you've done a lot of pivoting in your life so let's just start with your story from the beginning. When did you first decide that you wanted to found your own businesses as opposed to what I usually describe as living by the script? Yeah, thanks, and it's so funny because when I actually did start my first real legitimate business, I wasn't even necessarily trying to do it. I had always wanted to before I went that direction in my life sort of live more independently and I had this whole thing of like if I could find a way to just have enough time to do as many creative projects as I could and not have to spend all my time earning a living and it felt like it was almost an obstacle or a problem to solve so that's kind of what got me first into it. When I graduated from the University of Minnesota, I had a degree that didn't really have a lot of translatable skills with the bachelor's, I was a psychology graduate. So, I was always interested in programming, computer stuff, got into that. I took some courses at Portland State, mainly HTML, CSS, and I got a job out there working for a really great company called One Economy. They're wonderful, but I don't think they exist anymore. Oh, that’s too bad. The area where I worked, I don't even remember exactly what happened but a bunch of us got laid off kind of at once and I had started kind of getting my own clients doing web development, doing frontend coding, CSS, HTML. This was back in the days too where CSS was kind of a newer thing and I was learning — when dev is a lot more complicated today. It certainly became that way. So it was sort of by accident. I just was getting so many clients that I was kind of frantically looking for another job and I'm like I'm actually making enough now where I can almost see this just continuing. Then I started thinking about my dream of not having to go to a nine-to-five and just do what everyone else is doing.
In the past, the process of finding a job was often laborious and time-consuming, especially in the tech industry where specific skills were in high demand. However, with the rapid advancements in technology, the landscape has shifted dramatically. Today, job seekers have access to a plethora of online platforms and tools that streamline the search process. But how can we easily navigate or get a job with the use of AI?In today’s episode, I have Vilas Tulachan, Founder of JobsGuru AI. We talked about the challenges of the current job search process and how Jobs Guru AI aims to help address these challenges using artificial intelligence. Moreover, we discussed how the application tracking systems, cognitive biases and how Jobs Guru AI analyzes resumes and job descriptions to determine good job matches, generates customized cover letters and interview questions, to help streamline the job search process and reduce frustration for job seekers.---Listen to the podcast here:Streamlining Job Applications Using Generative AI With Vilas TulachanWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. How many of you out there listening has searched for a job lately? And, lately, I mean, since the pandemic, it’s gotten even crazier than it was before. It’s a really tough process and a process that I’ve seen frustrate a lot of people, myself included, as you may have heard about in one of my past episodes. My guest today, Vilas Tulachan, started a company called JobsGuru.ai to help with this process that’s really become frustrating for so many people.--- Vilas, welcome to the program. Thank you, Stephen. Great to be in your podcast. I’m excited to share some of the ideas I have on how to help people get jobs faster with you today. Yeah, so let’s start with where the process is right now. Right now, a lot of people are frustrated by the job search process. What do you think is going on that’s making it so cumbersome, such a hard process when all people really want to do is find a job and then work it? Stephen, great question. It’s amazing. We are living in an amazing time. As Charles Dickens said, the best of times, the worst of times. The best of times, because unemployment rate in the US is the second lowest in the history of 3.7 as of end of last year. Wow. It’s amazing, right? So there’s 1.7 jobs opening for every job seeker. That’s the stats, that’s the economic news. But on the ground level is a different ballgame for job seekers. I’ve talked to job seekers that have applied at 50, 100, 200, 500 job application, they hardly hear anything back. Or they get a good thank kind of response from email back and maybe they’ve gotten maybe two or three interviews and they get ghosted by the employer. It’s been a really weird kind of job market. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And there are a couple of things I see, and the reason I got into this whole idea was as — I met you when you did the startup at Denver a year and a half ago and then I was looking to applying the AI and the ML into helping smaller businesses implement an AI in their businesses. And then I talked to a lot of people who were having issues with jobs, I’m wondering this sounds like a crazy idea, when there are so many jobs and I really did some research and found that a lot of people have a couple of challenges. Number one is called, it’s a cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger effect. So you must have heard about this where people either overestimate or underestimate their skill sets. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it’s strange. So, if you look at the industry stats, about 73 percent of the job application, according to LinkedIn, are rejected right away before even a human sees the resume, and mainly because the resume doesn’t match fully the job requirements. So that’s the first thing. So you only get 30 percent chance of ever getting a resume ...
The subconscious mind is like a hidden library in our brains, quietly influencing our thoughts and actions. When ideas are consistently reinforced, they sink into the subconscious, becoming automatic responses. Positive or negative, these beliefs influence our decisions and behaviors without our conscious awareness. Have you ever wondered how your subconscious beliefs might be guiding your choices without you even realizing it?In this week's episode, I have Austin Tani, Founder of Bringing Balance Back. Today, we discussed how negative beliefs are often formed in childhood based on experiences, and how those beliefs can then impact our lives unconsciously. He also shared transformative techniques for clearing subconscious beliefs, including breathwork and somatic therapies to release emotional charges from the body. Ready to transform your beliefs? Tune in now!---Listen to the podcast here:The Power of the Subconscious Mind With Austin TaniWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. I am confident. I am competent. I am smart. I am good enough. I will make things happen. How many of you out there have said things like this to yourself in the mirror? How many of you wake up every day or have some sort of regular ritual around saying things like that? And what kind of results have you gotten from these affirmative messages that you said to yourself? Now, chances are, those results are kind of mixed. Maybe some of you start to notice a difference as you repeat these mantras to yourself, but maybe some of you did not get the results that you desired. Maybe some of you, for some reason, one reason or another, tried it for a while and still kept falling back into some of the same patterns and some of the same beliefs. My guest today, Austin Tani, of Bringing Balance Back, has a different approach to some of these instances in which this set of affirmations may not have particularly worked.--- Austin, welcome to the program. Thanks. Thanks, Stephen. Thank you. How are you doing today? I’m doing good. Doing good. Had a slight headache this morning but it’s starting to go away. Well, not bad. Now, Austin, have you ever initially before starting a business tried this set of affirmations, kind of those repeated mantras, whether they be in the mirror or meditation or anything like that? Yeah, I’ve tried some affirmation stuff but it didn’t really help me too much, but, yeah, I’ve given them a try. And what kind of experience that you have with these affirmations? Kind of just scratching the surface, you’re using your conscious mind and you’re hoping that you impregnate the subconscious mind with that affirmation and it becomes your belief. But with what I’ve learned and what I’ve seen through experience, a lot of times when we’re trying to drop an affirmation in, that usually means we’re carrying the opposite belief in our subconscious mind. If you’re trying to say, “I’m worthy, I’m worthy, I’m worthy,” probably means you’re carrying the belief of unworthiness in your subconscious mind. That’s why you’re trying to drop that information in and that’s why that worthiness came up as an affirmation for yourself. So I’ll explain it like this. So if you’re trying to drop in, “I am worthy,” into your subconscious mind, which is actually your body, the body is your subconscious mind, so if you’re trying to drop in, “I’m worthy,” in your subconscious mind but you have a big bubble of unworthiness stuck in your body, it’s just going to bounce right off you and you’re going to still feel unworthy, until you remove that feeling of unworthiness out of your nervous system and then you can drop in, “I’m worthy.” So let’s talk a bit about this feeling of unworthiness and talk about a little bit from the standpoint of a personal journey. A person you encounter that has this feeling of unworthiness in their subconsci...
Living a scripted life is like going through the motions, you know? It's when you're not really calling the shots in your own life. Everything's laid out in this script, and the main goal is to make things super comfy and easy, not necessarily exciting or purposeful. It's like we're all on autopilot, just doing what's expected rather than what we really want. So, are you cool with sticking to the script, or are you itching for a life with a bit more personal flair and purpose?In this week's episode, I have Daniel Aaron, the visionary Founder of The Art of Vibrant Living. As a transformational coach, Daniel guides people in elevating their vibration and embracing empowered actions across mindset, health, and emotions. We explored the essence of vibrant living and delved into practical strategies for transitioning from a routine existence to a life filled with genuine vitality. Daniel shared his concept of an 'invincible mindset' and shared valuable insights on breaking free from limiting beliefs. Tune in and unlock your vibrant life now!---Listen to the podcast here:Breaking Limits and Living Vibrantly With Daniel AaronWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote mindset that keeps you settling for less. One thing I talk about quite a bit is living by the script, and what I mean by living by the script is being in a state where you’re not really creating your own life, you’re not really creating anything that you actually personally decided on because the script itself, as of the beginning part of 2024, the script is really created to maximize comfort and convenience as opposed to maximizing, say, enjoyment, maximizing purpose, maximizing excitement. And that’s where my guest today comes in. Daniel Aaron is a transformational life coach and the founder of The Art of Vibrant Living.--- Daniel, welcome to the program. Cool, Stephen. Thank you so much. It’s an honor to be here. It’s an honor to have you here, Daniel, and thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me and talk to my audience. Let’s first by starting a basis. Now, when you talk about vibrant living, what does that look like in your view?Okay. Well, let’s start with what it doesn’t look like and what it doesn’t look like is it’s kind of like Emerson said that the masses of people are living lives of quiet desperation, or what I call sometimes the cult of meh, it’s mediocre, monotony. It’s people just going through the motions of life. And I came to this as a little boy, I remember being three years old in the front yard of my family home and back behind me inside the home, it was like just chaos and pain and drama. My family was all kinds of dysfunctional. That’s why I was hanging out in the front yard as much as I could. Across the street, I saw my neighbors and they were slump shouldered and just going through the motions and I thought there’s got to be more to life than this, and so that awareness just stayed with me. So what is vibrant living? It’s living with passion and joy and excitement and taking ownership for one’s life.So I’ve thought about the cult of meh quite a bit. One we’re just like crazy, living by the script is meh or the idea of escaping of meh and my story behind that is when I talk about 7:15 a.m. on a Tuesday at a train station and you see everybody commuting to work, the same way you observed it as a kid, you don’t see that excitement from that many people. Maybe you see one person, somewhere here and there but the vast majority of people, you don’t see life, in a way, you don’t see that excitement about living life. How do you think it came to be that state? Do you think that’s a natural state of humanity or do you think something happened in our culture to bring us into a world where so many people are living by the script and living by what you would call the opposite or what vibrant living is not? The question is how did we get into this predicament? Yeah.
Everyone possesses a personal brand, often unconsciously, and authenticity is the cornerstone of its development. To construct a compelling brand, delve into understanding your target audience, studying competitors, and identifying the unique aspects that set you apart. But the question remains: how can we embark on this journey?In this week's episode, I sit down with Kim Russo, Founder of On Brand Designs. We explored her journey, starting with packaging design and transitioning to a full focus on branding. We discuss the lessons she learned along the way about establishing systems and processes to run a successful business. Additionally, we delved into the importance of connecting with people and joining a mastermind group that can help take the business to the next level. Tune in for insights that will elevate your branding designs!---Listen to the podcast here:Taking Your Brand to The Next Level With Kim RussoWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, we’re going to generally talk about branding. I think we’ve all heard the phrase, “You are your own brand,” or some kind of iteration on that. My guest today, Kim Russo, is founder of On Brand Designs and also an expert in transitioning people from one level to another in general.--- Kim, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here. And thank you for taking time out. So what is that phrase, I know I didn’t probably say it right, the idea that each one of us is a brand of some capacity? Basically, what we’re saying is we’re all our personal brand so when you’re talking about small business, especially when you’re growing a business, building a business, and being the face of your business, your brand is your personal brand as well, and that’s something that I do strive to bring into account with my clients. So I do a whole strategy process. And, in that, I’m looking at target audience, I’m looking at competitors, but I’m also looking at you, what are your likes, what do you love, who as you as a persona, that shows up in your brand. So, does it ever work out that someone is trying to be a brand that just isn’t them? So, for example, someone might say, “I wanna do this,” but if it’s too much in conflict with their natural personality, you kind of have to tell them, “Hey, wait a second, I know this is the brand that’s gonna sell this product but, sorry, that ain’t you. That’s not who you are. You might wanna go back to the drawing board and think it through again.” Yeah, and I think it goes both ways. There’s that and there’s also pushing too hard to be like somebody else. Yeah. So it’s maybe not following your own brand but it’s also trying to mimic somebody else without pulling in your own self to it is sometimes something I come across, because, at the end of the day, you have to love it and you have to feel it and you have to live it. It definitely helps with the cliché, like know and trust. They’re going to get to know you and know and trust you with how you’re showing up in your brand.Click To TweetI do often work with a lot of uplevels so when people are kind of stagnant in where they are with their brand and need kind of a refresh or there’s too many things going on with it that’s confusing, too many fonts, too many colors, and you’re just confusing who you’re trying to attract and who you are, is a lot of times, I am going to have to come and kind of simplify and really hone in on who they are but also I like to keep an essence of their original brand. So I always say to people who are starting out there’s going to be something in your brand that is going to hold true to you, to be cohesive and give you longevity, but you can always uplevel it, you can always change it. So, if I’m redesigning something that is just not working for somebody, it’s not who they are,
Navigating a career change is often challenging; it's about breaking free from the confines of a single job title. When you're not passionate about your current role and it doesn't bring a sense of pride, contemplating change becomes crucial. It involves self-reflection, identifying your true interests, and embracing the courage to pursue something new. How do you navigate the complexities of transitioning to a career that better aligns with your passions and values?In this week’s episode, I talked with Elizabeth Burke. She shared her journey from feeling disconnected and unsatisfied in her career to making a significant change. She took us through the disconnection and dissatisfaction she experienced in her career to the pivotal moment when she decided to make a substantial change. But that's not all – she also offered valuable insights on navigating the lows of life, whether in your career, relationships, or family. Tune in for a candid conversation filled with inspiration and practical wisdom.---Listen to the podcast here:Journey of Transformation, Growth, and Fulfillment with Elizabeth BurkeWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One question I think so many people are tired of being asked is, “What do you do?” Now, I want you all to think about that question for a second because, first of all, no human being really only does one thing so it’s really kind of compartmentalizing people into just job titles. But, also, how do you respond to that question, “What do you do?” when you’re not exactly in love with what you do right now? When you’re not exactly proud of what you do, you don’t exactly feel it, and it’s not the thing that you want to talk about? I know what it feels like to be in that situation and my guest today knows what it feels like to be in that situation and she even presented a wonderful speech at the recent Denver Startup Week, recent as in two and a half months ago now. --- Elizabeth Burke, welcome to the program. Thank you. I’m so excited to be here, Steven. Really appreciate getting to share. Well, I’m glad you’re here to share this wonderful story because I think that a lot of people listening and a lot of people in the world, in general, out there aren’t necessarily content. They’re not seeing all the purpose as well as the alignment. “I’m doing this for this reason and it’s aligned with how I live my life,” and stuff like that. So, well, let’s start off by telling us a little bit about your story about how you made the career change from when you were in that situation, how it felt and what you did to get to where you are now? Yeah, so I’m happy to share about that. And we’re kind of like not going to start with what I do first purposefully so that you can hold the tension of how does it feel to not know what I do as a first part of my story but you definitely will get to hear that. So, yeah, I have a background in public education and I think, for me, I went into that career and I loved it, I loved working with high schoolers, I taught high school art, built up an amazing program, taught four levels, and always felt like there was room for me to just find new parts of myself as I was teaching. And I started to notice a shift. I think there are times in our life when we maybe have been doing something for a while and we’ve gotten really good at it and we’re kind of looking for that next step, that ability to expand, and I began to just not be able to find it anymore. And I think, for me, that was starting to happen but what really kind of just became a catalyst for really seeing some things that I could no longer unsee was being a teacher during the pandemic and being a teacher during, specifically, the fall of 2021 to the summer of 2022 school year. That school year was my eighth year teaching and it was just truly like the worst school year that any teacher on record has probably ever had.
As we near the year's end, we shift from looking back at the year to thinking ahead to 2024. We take a moment to figure out what challenges we've faced and spot areas where our life might be a bit off-kilter. This sets the scene for considering what we want to shake up in the coming year. What tweaks can we make for a more balanced and enjoyable life in 2024?In this episode, I have Sabrina Morris, a lifestyle Promoter and Entrepreneur. Sabrina shares about the importance of work-life balance, employee wellness programs, and workplace vacation policies. Moreover, Sabrina highlights how being part of a supportive mastermind group can bring positive changes mentally, and spiritually. Tune in as we unravel the keys to a fulfilling life.---Listen to the podcast here:Juggling Work, Life, and Holidays with Sabrina MorrisWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to start talking to you about something a little bit more light, a little bit more fun, and that is going on vacation. We all need rest, we all need time away, and sometimes we all oftentimes need a change of scenery, a different point of view, a different perspective. To embellish on this topic, I’d like to introduce you to my guest today, Sabrina Morris, or Sabrina the Lifestyle Promoter.--- Hi, Stephen, and thank you so much for having me on today. I’m looking forward to working with your audience, having conversation. Oh, for sure. So, I had read somewhere and I don’t remember the exact numbers, the startling facts around how much PTO, vacation time, etc., goes unused in this country right now. We’re in a situation where a lot of people just don’t feel like they can take their time off and they don’t feel like they can essentially take vacation. What do you think people need to do to feel more comfortable and taking what they should see is like just a normal part of their life and something that any person that works reasonably hard deserves to do?Love yourself. And I’ll elaborate. I am known as enterprise architect, and as an enterprise architect, you go in and solve basically executive’s problems. I have an engineering background, a business background, and when you go in as a niche consultant and solve those problems and you’re wanting to take a vacation so that you can reboot, re-energize, and renew your mind, there’s an assumption that, all of a sudden, you’re not, and I’m going to put quotes, “dedicated.” So what I did is allowed that Sabrina’s not dedicated because she wants to take a break, influence a decision to use the time off or to take the time off. Now, even as a niche consultant, we have a little bit more flexibility because we can take time between projects. I did not. I caution each and every one of you not to make that. Take care of you. Love on yourself. Do what you enjoy doing. I really liked the way the Europeans do it. They work so that they can enjoy life. A lot of times, Americans and American companies live to work. The employees live to go work. Get up, you get ready, grind it out, for those of us who are still commuting, you’re commuting, you got the people who cut you off, you got to resist the road rage, then you get to work, deal with the fact that they don’t have enough staff, deal with the fact that they don’t love on their employees or appreciate what you do, you deal with all of this, and then you have to go back in the grind, drive back home, resist the road rage, and if you can rest, then it starts all over again. So you have to make sure that you love on yourself and your family. Especially for those of you who are married or have a significant other, love language is quality time.Click To Tweetf you’re not spending that quality time, I’m sure they have reminded you of that. It’ll come out one way or the other, right? Yes, it will. So love yourself. Focus on taking a healthier approach to your work life...
Climate change is an imminent crisis, fueled by escalating greenhouse gas levels and altering rainfall patterns. The consequences, from disrupted seasons in Guatemala to devastating forest fires in Canada, are evident worldwide. The alarming shift demands a collective focus on adaptation and resilience. Can we navigate the impending challenges, such as water scarcity in Colorado and the relentless fury of unmanageable wildfires, to secure a sustainable future?In this episode, I interviewed Michael Scanlon, the Founder of ClimateCon. ClimateCon was a conference that celebrated climate innovation and encouraged actionable solutions through breakout sessions and workshops. Our conversation revolved around recent advancements, climate sustainability, transportation solutions, and the looming threat of ecological collapse. Moreover, we delved into the impact of greenhouse gasses, citing examples from around the world, including Guatemala, Syria, and Canada. Tune in and take a step towards a greener future! ---Listen to the podcast here:Climate Innovation and Sustainable Solutions with Michael ScanlonWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Now, I’ve been studying quite a bit about what’s gone wrong with society a little bit psychologically, why so many people are in a terrible emotional state, why there’s so much depression and anxiety, and a couple of themes have come around in many of the things that I’ve read, many of the things that I’ve watched, many of the things that I’ve heard from people, and that is what’s lacking in our current society that we used to have plenty of at some point in the past, and that is community and purpose. And so, as a result of hearing this and seeing this, I’m here wanting to support any time people can gather together a community, especially if they can gather together to serve some kind of a purpose, and that’s why I’m here to showcase to you an event coming up here in Denver in roughly two months from when this podcast will initially air called ClimateCon!, and to share a little bit about this event, I’m here with ClimateCon! founder, ClimateCon! organizer, Michael Scanlon. --- Michael, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me, Steven. It’s an honor to be here. Well, thank you for coming on and talking about it. I mentioned in my intro, we all need community and we all need purpose, and one of the things that’s going to help get us out of what I refer to as the little dark age of the last 15 years, a period of time in which we’ve been lacking it, is to bring more people into something like that. So, let’s start from the beginning. Michael, what first brought on ClimateCon!? Because I know you’ve been planning this for several months at least by now. Yeah, yeah. It launched in April 2023, started it in Earth Month. So my background, I had been doing increasingly larger and bigger events leading into the pandemic. In 2019, I actually founded a conference company and I was doing major conferences. I had a conference on March 5th and 6th 2020. The governor was going to come and then the security guy came back and said, “The government can’t come, he has to tell the world coronavirus is here,” and so that company kind of scattered into the wind with the coronavirus. And as I was literally driving rideshare to make a living. I kept thinking at some point, I got to get back into conferences. The series of conferences previous had been around cannabis, cannabis policy in particular, and I wanted to do something more impactful, something more meaningful, something that could have big impact and I kept coming back to climate so that’s where the climate came from was it’s something I’ve been obsessed with for 30 years now and I keep thinking why aren’t we doing more about climate? Why aren’t I doing more about climate? And so, finally, I am.
Upon entering a new job, there's a palpable eagerness and optimism to contribute meaningfully to the organization. Yet, with the passage of time, this enthusiasm dwindles, tainted by strained relationships with supervisors or higher-ups. This all-too-familiar story exposes the harmful consequences of toxic leadership, transforming dedicated employees into disengaged onlookers who actively oppose their own company. How can we disrupt this cycle and cultivate a workplace culture that prioritizes the well-being and sustained productivity of its employees?In this episode, I have Laura Baxter, Founder of The Voice for Leadership, who has helped individuals enhance their voice, body language, and connect with the audience effectively. During our discussion, Baxter talked about her journey from coaching to publishing to becoming an opera singer. Moreover, she discussed cultural differences in leadership and decision-making, and superficial breathing.---Listen to the podcast here:Addressing Toxicity in Organizational Hierarchies with Laura BaxterWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. I want to tell you about a story that I’ve both lived and heard countless times. This is a story of someone who starts a job and starts a job actually quite optimistic about it. They’re excited to do something, they’re excited to join whatever organization that they’re joining, but then, somehow, over time, they become really jaded, usually by problematic relationships with their immediate supervisor, with their boss or someone in a higher leadership position. And there’s so many complicated reasons why that happens but the story has happened so many times that it is definitely something that we need to address because I’ve seen so many people suffer through some sort of situation where they normally would be good productive workers but, as a result of whatever’s going on above them, they just don’t care and sometimes become actively disengaged, which are the employees, they’re actually rooting against their own company, which happens almost a third of the time. Quite terrible. And my guest today, Laura Baxter, is not only an opera singer and a book publisher but she’s also a speaking and leadership coach.--- Hi. Thank you, Steven. It’s great to be here. So you have a lot going on. You have a lot of different endeavors, which is always wonderful. How do you manage all of that? How do you bring it all together? Good question. I was gonna say don’t sleep much, but, I actually get enough sleep. I think the clue is that, really, I love what I do, and all of it, both of the coaching people on the presentation or giving talks or also helping people with publishing their books or whatever it has to do with helping people find their voice. So although it may seem like it’s a lot of different aspects of that process, it really comes together with just helping people get their voice out there, be it their physical voice, that kind with presentation coachings, their ideas in a book or in a talk, it really has to do with finding their voice. And, of course, singing opera, you’re using your voice? Absolutely, absolutely. I don’t do opera anymore. That used to be my life. I do still do concerts, though, and I wouldn’t give that up. I love that. There’s something, some depth with music, so, yeah. And so do you think that’s something that most people are looking for in this life as people try to think through, okay, what job do I want, what do I want to do even in my social circles, personal life, family life, is people looking for a voice? Yes, I do, actually. And it can be something relatively small or seemingly insignificant, just like wanting to have some recognition for what you’ve done in your job or being able to share your ideas and your opinions on your job and your everyday life or it can be on a larger stage.
Managing your reputation is a crucial aspect of success in both business and life. Whether you aim to launch your own venture, pursue a thriving career in a medium to large-scale organization, or simply wish to be a valuable member of your community, your reputation plays a pivotal role. Selecting your associates becomes a pivotal part of this reputation management process, as not all connections are created equal. Some associations might not be the right fit for your goals or values. So, how can you discern which people are truly beneficial for your life and reputation?In this episode, I talked with Amber Wyatt, Founder of Millennial Matrix Media, a dynamic agency specializing in marketing, video production, graphics, and branding, with a strong emphasis on SEO. Our conversation delved into intriguing topics such as media bias, addressing wrongful convictions, navigating the complexities of untrustworthy business partners, and how to maintain energy alignment within the world of business. Don't miss this enlightening discussion!---Listen to the podcast here:Connecting and Building Reputation with Amber WyattWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about one aspect of business that really kind of applies to the rest of our life as well, and that is reputation. Whether you’re trying to start your own business, whether you’re trying to have a good career at a larger or even midsize company, or even if you’re just trying to be a good neighbor and have a good kind of presence in your neighborhood in your community, you need to manage your reputation and part of managing your reputation is choosing the people that you’re going to associate with because not every association is going to be equal to each other and not every connection you make is going to be equally beneficial and, unfortunately, there are some people out there that are, I don’t want to say not worth it because everyone’s worthy of something in life, but maybe not the right match for you and maybe not the right people for you to have in your life. To dive further into this topic, I’d like to introduce my guest, Amber Wyatt, the founder of Millennial Matrix Media.--- Amber, welcome to the program. Hi, thanks for having me. Thank you so much for joining. Amber, we met back in April when you were providing the media for an event that I was at. Tell us a little bit about Millennial Matrix Media. There’s so many different ways that media works for so many different types of events and types of organizations. So, we’re a full service marketing agency that focuses specifically on video production. So, I do video marketing and that’s mainly where all my clients come from but we also do graphic design for branding, we do logos, we do websites, we do copywriting, we do headshots, we do photography and events, so all of it. So all purpose media, and, of course, there’s social media, there’s standard, old school print media, there’s new media. Do you tend to specialize in customers that do the whole package or do you tend to look for people that are more geared toward one or the other? A lot of the clients start out like wanting professional headshots and like blogs or articles, and then we kind of like warm them up to the video, because whereas like blogs and articles may be good for the search engine optimization, putting those keywords, those industry terminologies and things like that in there, you really want to boil that down eventually into a one- or two-minute-long video, because people don’t want to read that stuff anymore. It will drive traffic to your website but if we’re really going to tell a story and we’re really going to brand you and what you do, we got to do it through video.So almost always sell the video eventually but it can start from needing a logo or needing a headshot or needing a blog or an articl...
Data is the lifeblood of modern sports. It powers decisions, strategies, and player performance. From advanced analytics that fine-tune athletic techniques to the fan engagement that data-driven insights provide, its role is undeniable. How can harnessing data be the game-changer you've been looking for?In this episode, I had an enlightening conversation with Maya Love, Founder of Mile High Analytics, an organization that helps young student athletes through data-driven curriculum. We discussed the powerful application of data for positive outcomes, differences between generation gaps, and community support. Our conversation also touched upon the significance of support networks, diverse perspectives, and striking a balance between challenges and action.Get in the game – start listening now.---Listen to the podcast here:Elevate Your Game through Sports Analytics with Maya LoveWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. We live in an era of big data. There's a lot of data being collected, a lot of data being used, and a lot of it being used for many different purposes, and one of the things that's always fascinated me is how do we use this data for something good? How do we use this data for something that's really going to help humanity as opposed to the joke I always make, help Instagram identify the moment you get pregnant so they can bombard you with diaper ads? My guest today, Maya Love, is a college basketball player as well as the founder of Mile High Analytics, where she helps people and organizations use their data for a lot of these kinds of good outcomes.--- Maya, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Well, I'm so excited to have you here because I do want to understand we tap into a lot of power with all this data collection that started really in earnest roughly when Google became the default internet search around 20 years ago or something like that and, obviously, kind of like how money is, kind of like how influence is, all these things, they're all tools, they’re tools that can be used for --- they're neither good nor bad until they're used by someone to do a certain thing. What do you see as the biggest challenge in this era that we've kind of somewhat recently entered where we have all this data and want to use it for things that are really going to help humanity? Starting off with the heavy hitters. I think a main challenge is to understand that these things are tools. I think I come from Gen Z and probably on the older side of Gen Z where a lot of our experience with these tools, per se, actually were intertwined with identity. When you look at Instagram, it's less about networking or connecting with maybe a friend you --- I know you used to have pen pals that you kind of met in a nice Discord chat but now, it can easily become an identity, how many likes, how many posts, have to have everything perfect layout, and so I think the first step is acknowledging that it is a tool, a very powerful tool, with so much information and access out there and with identifying it as a tool, I think next comes the educational piece, which I really like to be in that kind of wheelhouse with sports and data. There are so many ways to get out there and play, be active, and you can incorporate the data so whether you're trying to perfect your shot, Steph Curry did that with the researcher at Berkeley using machine learning, or you're really just trying to understand, okay, how does Messi kick, I'm this intrigued six-year-old, and getting out there and still going outside in nature. So I do see a balance of these tools but kind of having to break it down and being very intentional and I think that comes from the leaders around us and being intentional on how they're describing it, kind of the rules of play, but also just being innovative and not scared of it and allowing it in t...
Effective communication is often as crucial as the brilliance of your idea or the quality of your work. Sadly, even a brilliant concept can lose its value without the ability to convey it effectively. How can you become a proficient communicator to ensure your exceptional idea is recognized?In this episode, we were joined by Megan Heffernan, the Founder of Megaphone Coaching. Our discussion covered the nuances of effective communication skills, their application in diverse settings, and the importance of self-awareness in public speaking. Megan is passionate about assisting individuals in improving their presentation abilities, whether in public speaking, sales demos, webinars, and beyond. Tune in to unlock your communication potential today!---Listen to the podcast here:Delivering Powerful and Confident Presentations with Megan HeffernanWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the lessons I learned many years back is that, sometimes, just as important as the quality of your idea or the quality of the work that you do is how well you communicate that with others, how well you convey it. And, most unfortunately, sometimes, you could have a wonderful idea but if you don’t have an effective way to communicate that with others to get anyone else on board, whether it be investors, whether it be customers, whether it be people within your own organization if you’re more in a kind of a large corporate role, then that idea ends up not really being worth that much, even though it could be a truly genius idea, it could be something truly amazing. My guest today, Megan Heffernan, the founder of Megaphone Coaching, helps people with the communication of their ideas and communication of their work as well as building relationships.--- Megan, welcome to the program. Thank you so much. I am honored to be here. Super excited. Super excited. I’m always excited and I always love it when my guests are excited. Anyone out there in the audience listening, I hope we can get you to that point too where you’re in a place where you’re excited to be doing what you’re doing and you’re excited to be talking about what you do. So, Megan, tell us a little bit, just get us a little oriented about the people you work with and how you work with them. Thank you, Steven. I love --- the operative word here is “quality.” I heard you say it a couple of times and I’m in the business of elevating quality communication. That’s the currency I trade in, helping people think better of and put a little more time in and take greater care in their communication. And I use “care” actually as a product and an acronym of have your communication be clear for the C, aware for the A, regardful and refined for the R, putting the little polish on that communication, and engaged, connected to who you’re talking to. I think a lot of people walk around waiting for an opportunity to foist an idea onto a person rather than connect with them deeper in idea and I love, love, love helping presenters, any kind of communicator but presenters in particular, prepare for their upcoming communication, whether that’s a webinar or a gala or a town hall or a sales demo.Anytime words are leaving their mouth and needs to land effectively on somebody else’s ears, that’s the sweet spot, that’s so exciting, it’s organic, it’s in the moment, and it’ll never happen again.And so I love the gift of communication too because there’s this exchange of a person to person or a group to a speaker that won’t ever be replicated really. And I think we’ve fallen back, we’ve gotten away a little bit from protecting that connection and we’re relying on our mediums or our platforms, our resumes, things like that, to deliver our message for us and I think we could do better. So, now, what’s the difference between communicating in a formal sense,
Building a sense of community within the workplace is more than just a trendy concept; it's a powerful driver of employee satisfaction and productivity. When colleagues feel connected, supported, and valued, it not only enhances their work experience but also contributes to a positive work culture. But how can organizations effectively nurture this sense of community that benefits both employees and the company as a whole?Join us in this episode with Kelli Oberndorf, co-founder of Ekatā, a company deeply committed to fostering a supportive and enriching workplace environment. In this conversation, we delved into the topic of improving work culture through community-building. Kelli also shared valuable insights from her own journey of career growth and transformation. Tune in and let’s explore the keys to creating a thriving work culture together!---Listen to the podcast here:Building Community Within The Workplace with Kelli OberndorfWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Something I’ve covered in some previous episodes, although maybe not some of the most recent ones, is how the idea of work being a place you don’t want to be is really embedded into our culture. Think about what people say, “Sunday scaries,” “Wednesday is hump day,” “Thank God it’s Friday.” The premise behind all those statements and so many more is this general idea that maybe work isn’t something you dread, although Sunday scaries pretty much implies dread, but it’s a place you don’t really want to be. You’d much rather be doing something else. And while it’s probably never going to become the case that work becomes your favorite thing to do, and if you found a place in life where your job is the thing that you really want to be doing more than anything in the world, my hat’s off to you, you’ve reached something amazing in life, we can find ways to make our work culture and the environment that we’re around in work something a bit more favorable, something that we want to do, something that we want to be at. My guest today, Kelli Oberndorf, is the co-founder of Ekatā, an organization that helps improve workplace culture through some interesting ideas primarily founded around community.--- Kelli, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me. Well, thank you for taking the time out to talk with me today about this interesting topic that’s kind of on this intersection of community, which is something that many of us are lacking in life over the past quarter century especially, as well as how we feel about our work and what our work culture and how it facilitates what we want to do and how we feel about life. Exactly, yeah. So, at Ekatā, we’ve really created our mission around building community within the workplace, which is definitely a relatively new concept around how we behave at work, although behaving at work is something that is quite a topic these days, especially around the pandemic when we saw the great resignation where hundreds of thousands of people left their work. Now, when we say that number, it’s a huge number and there are a variety of different reasons why people leave their work environments, especially around the pandemic, whether that was they can’t do a full-time job and take care of my kids the same time, which is certainly a different reason to leave work than what maybe we’ll be speaking about here today which is really more around how we behave at work, our interpersonal relationships and the quality of those relationships and the idea that we actually can create work environments that we want to and love to work at and it takes practice, it takes time, and also, mostly, it takes awareness of how we’re behaving now and then the inspiration to want to make that different, want to make it better for the people who work within our organizations. So what inspired you to think about it in this kind of fashion?
The human mindset is a powerful force that shapes our thoughts, behaviors, and life experiences. Understanding and harnessing it is key to personal growth and success. But, have you ever wondered just how much control you have over your own mindset?In this episode, I had an insightful talk with Sean Marshall, a Mindset Coach and Founder of Future Pace Coaching and Consulting. Our discussion ventured deep into the human mindset. Sean discussed the idea of fluid mindset and shares tips for mastering emotional control when faced with triggering situations. Sean shared what Shadow Work is and how it helped his clients. Tune in for an enriching exploration of mindset and the techniques to harness its potential.---Listen to the podcast here:Mindset Matters: Strategies for Mindful Living with Sean MarshallWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. I start with this tagline every single time, “Your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less,” because, in its essence, this podcast is all about mindset. I share all kinds of stories about all kinds of people that have done amazing things and follow their true passions, follow their true dreams, but one of the things that is required in order to do that is the right mindset and it’s my hope that these stories, by being exposed to enough of them and being exposed to enough of the type of content that I provide, will help you improve your mindset so that you believe that whole, “I can, I will, and I should,” as far as whatever it is that you really want out of your life, in essence. My guest today, Sean Marshall, the founder of Future Pace Coaching and Consulting, is indeed a mindset coach and his work is all about improving his clients’ mindset.--- Sean, welcome to the program. Thank you, Steven. Thanks for having me here. Thank you for joining us and let’s start, let’s dive right into mindset. How would you describe your mindset as you approach Future Pace or any of your other endeavors in life? So what I find serves me best, okay, is my mindset, I would imagine, just like most people’s, is fluid. Sometimes, my mindset is better than others than at other times and so what I like to look at my mindset is I’m curious. If I’m on a roll, I’m curious. If I’m having a day or two where things might present some opportunities for me to grab a learning to help me move down the path, that’s where the curiosity comes in. And so I’m always looking at my behaviors and asking myself, by doing this, is this the person I want to become?Click To TweetSo that’s in any situation where you have a choice? Is that what you default to ask yourself? I don’t believe that anybody has arrived. Yeah. We are all on our own journey, we’re all on our own path, and when I find myself presented with situations where I might look at things a little sideways or they might have me curious and just kind of showing up in a way that maybe isn’t who I’d want to be, I have to ask myself, I really have to ask myself, “What’s going on here?”If I remain stuck, if I remain triggered, if I remain angry or trapped in some type of emotion, effectively, what I’m doing is I’m giving all my power away.And it’s one thing to say, “Oh, that person drives me crazy,” and you’re pointing your finger at somebody, it’s not so much that you have three fingers pointing back at you saying, “Well, take a look at yourself,” it’s the fact that the person that you’re pointing at is the very thing or very person that you’re giving all of your power away to. And so when I work with my clients, I have to be able to do this with myself too. Anything that I asked my clients to do, it’s something that I’ve done for myself. I have to be able to be congruent in what I’m asking my clients and for that space, for that reason, for that purpose, I’m constantly running myself through these questions,
Intuition, often our inner compass, plays a pivotal role in life's decision-making. It's the unspoken wisdom that guides us, helping make choices aligned with our authentic selves. By utilizing it, it empowers us to make decisions that deeply resonate. However, how can we harness it to lead a more fulfilling and purposeful life?In this episode, we're joined by Tara McFarland, a civil engineer turned intuitive leadership coach. Tara discusses the importance of tuning into intuition, how intuition and logic must work together in engineering and coaching. Furthermore, Tara provides a sneak peek into the highly anticipated Rocky Mountain Young Professional Summit 2023. If you're ready to embark on a journey of self-discovery and transformation, this episode is a must-listen.---Listen to the podcast here:Tuning into Your Intuition for Lifelong Fulfillment with Tara McFarlandWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. This podcast, I always kind of describe as being a little bit of a fifty-fifty podcast in that 50 percent of it is centered around my hometown of Denver, Colorado, and 50 percent of it is with guests in some other places. In some of the more recent episodes, we featured some guests from other places but this episode is something we’ve kind of done before which we’re featuring a specific opportunity and event in Denver, Colorado, coming next month, October 13th, the Rocky Mountain Young Professionals Summit. In order to talk about that as well as her more recent endeavors is my guest today, Tara McFarland, intuitive healing coach, hopefully I got that right, and the founder of Create Conversation LLC.--- Tara, welcome to the program. Thank you. Yeah, I call myself an intuitive leadership coach. Intuitive leadership coach. I’m sorry, I tried to get that right. Yeah, no worries. Well, and I like the combination between the intuitive and the leadership because my background is in engineering and so a lot of the people that I work with are very analytical types and so when we talk about leadership, people understand what that means. The intuitive part is what they’re learning when they work with me. And one of your key endeavors has been taking people with a similar background to yours, engineering, and introducing them to kind of concepts that don’t necessarily come naturally to a lot of people with the engineering mindset. Tell us a little bit about your journey in that particular realm. Like I said, my background is in engineering and I was a civil engineer for over 20 years. Right about year 20, I hit a very major patch of burnout where I just completely shattered, had absolutely no idea what I was going to do. I thought my career was over. And this was predicated by being in a position where I had been a technical team lead, meaning I had been doing designs for most of my career, and then I shifted into a more non-technical program position and I became a project manager, program manager, I was suddenly leading multidisciplinary teams and I actually didn’t have any idea how to do it. Oh, wow. And I didn’t get the training that was needed to understand what the dynamics are within teams and really how to deal with people, like I had been evaluating dams almost 15 years at that point and now I’m having to lead teams and it’s a totally different skill set. And so I was on this project that was very high profile, it was politically sensitive, it was a really big project. It would have — like if I could have carried this project through to the end, it would have been a launching point for me to continue up the ladder. What happened instead was that it was just like a series of things that kept happening where I knew that something wasn’t quite right in the project but I didn’t know how to bring that up and I didn’t know how to bring it up to the project team and I didn’t really know how...
In our modern world, it's undeniable that we're exposed to various toxins. Over recent decades, we've witnessed a surge in physical ailments like diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. But what about diseases of the mind? Are the diseases of the body and mind interconnected in ways we're only beginning to understand?In this episode, we're joined by Dr. Pat Boulogne, a renowned consultant and coach specializing in health, wellness, and mindset. We delve into the essential 5 pillars of health, stressing the significance of accurate medical assessments. Dr. Pat explains how optimizing brain function and the role of boundaries contribute to the success of high achievers. Tune in for expert insights to enhance your overall well-being and productivity.---Listen to the podcast here:How Your Mind and Body Shape Your Total Wellness with Dr. Pat BoulogneWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. There’s no doubt that, today, we live in a toxic world. Instances of diseases of the body, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, have gone up in recent decades and so have instances of diseases of the mind, things such as ADHD as well as anxiety and depression. My guest today, Dr. Pat Boulogne, is one of the people out there trying to help people overcome some of these challenges that we have in our modern world to create a healthier existence, both physically and mentally. --- Dr. Pat, welcome to the program. Thank you so much. I am so thrilled to be here with you and share time. Thank you so much for taking your time out. And, first, I want to start out by talking a little bit about what it is that you do in your practice. Well, I really don’t have a practice, per se. I am a consultant and I’m a coach and what I do is I help people in their health goals, in their wellness goals, in their mindset goals so that they can go from point A to point C in the quickest way possible that’s safer and also with simpler solutions that are not harmful. So, there’s ways to do that and understanding where somebody’s at to get them to that point, I do and I help people organize that thought process and like simplified steps so that they have the checklist. I love seeing people thrive and I bend over backwards to do it. That’s part of the reason I started this podcast, hope to inspire people to look into what they can do to thrive. One of the questions I have is do you encounter more of the physical or more of the mental challenges or do you see them as going hand in hand? Well, my premise for when I talk about what health is and what health isn’t, because it’s not merely the absence of disease and I agree with the World Health Organization on that part of the definition, the health part of it is much more integrated with our daily lives. How do you perform every day in order to go from point A to point C? And when you start lagging and you start going like, “Oh, I’d rather do something else,” or you’re like, “I gotta take a nap, I’m depleted by noontime, can’t even wait ’til five o’clock and you got to take a nap,” because you have to take a look at what kind of foods that you’re eating. So when you ask about mindset, I talk about five pillars of health and the first part of the health that I talk about is food, exercise, I talk about sleep, I talk about positive mindset and positive mental attitude, and I talk about structured function, which is basically proper posture, but the key component to make all those other four pieces successful is the mindset and the positive mental attitude because if you go in saying like, “I’m gonna try this diet,” you automatically are going to have an issue with it. There’s something that’s going to make you struggle and it clicks off this thing in your head that tells you that you’re like, “Oh, you’re not gonna be successful,” even though you don’t say it to yourself.
Among all the valuable metals, gold stands out as the preferred choice for investment. Unlike fiat currency, gold has consistently retained its value over the centuries. Many view gold as a means to transfer and safeguard their wealth from one generation to another. However, in the present, is investing in gold still a profitable option?In this engaging episode, I sit down with Deven Soni, a seasoned private investor with a strong focus on alternative and digital assets. Join us for an insightful discussion as we dive into the world of gold, exploring its unique characteristics, inflation rates, and what sets gold apart from the world of cryptocurrencies. Tune in and gain valuable insights from our expert guest!---Listen to the podcast here:Gold Investments: Strategies and Insights with Deven SoniWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. I’m back here, episode number 101, after taking a little bit of a summer off. Hopefully, you checked out the 100th episode where I got my friend and podcast host, Luana Bossetti, to interview me and talk about my new endeavors. But here we are at the end of the summer, right back to the same format of interviewing people who pursue their true passions in life, pursue something that they really want to see in the world. We’re going to start off this kind of new season, kind of new time here with my guest today, Deven Soni, who is the co-founder and CEO of the Matador Network. --- Deven, welcome to the program. Great. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thank you very much for joining us from lovely Las Vegas, Nevada. Always a wonderful place. And let’s start off telling us a little bit about the Matador Network. It’s kind of an alternate way that people can invest their money. Absolutely. So, what matter really is that, at the end of the day, is a company, lots of people buy, sell, and trade precious metals, starting with gold in a really easy streamlined fashion, the same way that they could buy stocks with Matador or crypto tokens with Coinbase. It’s just really an easy, streamlined way for people to participate in the precious metals economy. I know we just went through a period, potentially still in this period or have another period again where people are really concerned about inflation and people are wanting hedges against that and hedges against kind of the entire expansion of the monetary supply, which has really been going on in earnest for a little over 15 years now. So what does the precious metals offer that, say, something like bitcoin, what’s the difference between when someone’s going to want to invest in one versus the other? Absolutely, that’s a great question. It’s a really interesting one. I’m going to take a little digression because I think when you think about gold, historically, or precious metals over the last 500 years or hundreds of years, it’s been sort of that mainstream go-to asset when times get rough, when there’s wars, inflation, pandemics, inverted yield curve, all these things, you generally see precious metals outperform the majority of other assets. However, we really haven’t had a time like we have in the last couple of years where you’re seeing some of these issues in the world but you also have a whole variety of new assets, right? Bitcoin wasn’t around in the 80s. And, similarly, there’s just fewer options. You can go on your phone and invest in a bunch of things, fine art, whiskey, whatever, but I think our thought at Matador is really that gold and bitcoin have their own kind of places for people to buy. Digital assets are great because they kind of are investing in the future in some sense, in this idyllic world where a lot more transactions are digital, the unbanked use cryptocurrencies and if you watch crypto for the last 10 or 15 years, I think the world is certainly getting closer to that but I think there’s still a lot of challeng...
You don't have to live your life the way others expect. All of us face constant pressure to live according to someone else's rules and expectations—but there is another way. A way to break free from the chains of societal norms and find true happiness.
Welcome, dear listeners, to a very special episode of Actions Antidote! I'm your host, Stephen Jaye, and today we're marking a significant milestone as we celebrate our 100th episode. But instead of our usual format, I'll be taking the guest seat to share my journey and the story behind this podcast. Join me as I delve into the depths of my life, discussing the pivotal moments, the diverse pursuits, and the jobs I've undertaken along the way.
This 100th-episode celebration is not just about me; it's about you, our devoted listeners. A huge thank you to all of our listeners for sticking with us and helping make this community so amazing! Here's to the next hundred episodes of Actions Antidote!
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Celebrating 100 Episodes of Actions Antidote with Stephen Jaye Hello, everybody, and welcome to Action’s Antidotes today. I’m Luana and I’m your guest host. I’ve been a guest on this podcast for two times and I was so happy when your host, Stephen Jaye, that I will introduce in a minute, came to me to ask me to host this in honor of the 100th episode of the Action’s Antidotes podcast so I’m super happy, so here with me, of course, the host of the podcast.
Welcome to the show, Stephen Jaye.
Oh, thank you very much, and thank you very much for hosting this 100th episode.
Yeah, I’m so excited. So, now, this episode will be about you and so let’s start about what’s your background story. Can you tell us a little bit about your life before you even like had this podcast?
Yeah. It’s kind of an interesting story and I’m so glad because, after 99 other episodes, to get the chance to share a little bit of my story in the podcast and for anyone out there that’s listening, that’s like, okay, I wonder if you have a story as well or if you’re just kind of showboating — not showboating but telling everyone else’s story. And my background is that I actually originally began loving the weather and studying meteorology in college as well as graduate school because I recognized from a very early age, how, growing up in Long Island, how hurricanes, nor’easters, or even changes in weather, where, let’s say it’s March and, one week, it’s really cold, it feels like it’s still winter and you don’t want to go outside, you don’t want to do anything so you’re stuck inside, and then another week, you get like another weather pattern and it would be like in the 60s or 70s, it will say 15 to 23 Celsius, for anyone international out there listening, and that’s like so much different of a week and so much different of a life experience and I just really wanted to understand the mechanisms, the scientific mechanisms of how that worked out. But, early on in life, of course, I very much was what I refer to living by the script. I had kind of a little bit bought into it. I’d always suspected something a little weird and I’ve always suspected that I was going to have to push against something, even from back when I was a teenager or 11, 12, 13, when you’re first realizing what your true identity is, I always knew that something was going to have to be different for me than what I’m seeing all around me but I didn’t kind of maybe come to the full grips of every single idea, like the way I was being educated, the way I was learning that if you get the answer wrong, you fail the test and you fail, that’s the worst thing that could possibly happen to you and now you have these consequences was not the way to go so I tried to find a more normal, typical career, which, for me, was meteorology in the insurance industry and that’s what I did for the first five or so years after I left school.
Oh, wow. So you started with that,
Self-love is not merely a luxury but a necessity for our well-being. It involves acknowledging our worth, embracing our strengths, and forgiving our flaws. By practicing self-compassion and self-care, we create a solid foundation for personal growth and resilience. In a world filled with obstacles and challenges, how can we carve out time for self-love amidst our busy lives?
In this episode, I have an interesting conversation with Arliss Dudley-Cash, a highly esteemed business consultant and self-love coach. Join us today as we delve into Arliss's remarkable personal journey and explore the profound significance of cultivating self-love, not only within the realm of business but also as individuals. With a background in neuroscience, Arliss founded Soullutions to guide clients toward personal growth, utilizing self-love and self-acceptance as catalysts for success.
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Empowering Yourself for a Life You Love with Arliss Dudley-Cash Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you selling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about a situation that you may find yourself in or may already be in and that’s a situation that you have already kind of made some progress or started taking some action toward your goals, you figured out what you want to do, but now you need to take account for a couple of things. First of all, how you maintain that balance, how you maintain that balance of taking care of yourself while you’re, say, potentially working a full-time job but also trying to promote a business or taking on two or three pursuits, trying a whole bunch of things, it can be stressful, it can be a lot, and also how you’re controlling your mindset because nothing’s going to really work that well if you don’t have a positive mindset and there’s plenty of people talking quite a bit about how the information you consume into your brain and the messages you tell yourself, what you believe about yourself eventually becomes the results of whatever pursuit you’re trying to take on. And this is where my guest today, Arliss Dudley-Cash, and her business, Soullutions, comes into play.
Arliss, welcome to the program.
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me here today. It’s such an honor.
Well, thank you so much for joining. And, first of all, I want to ask you, Soullutions, just give us a little overview of what the whole thing is all about.
You know, I had a dream and this is the business name that came to me and, really, it’s the marrying of the business pursuits that we’re all looking at, and it could be in business but it could be in life, those solutions that we’re looking to achieve or those goals that we’re looking to achieve, and really bringing a soulful approach to that, tapping into our humanness and what we need for the caring and feeding of us as humans on this planet as we go through the process of accomplishing our goals.
So, do you think that the business world tends to ignore the human soul, the human needs and focus only on things such as output, things such as numbers and metrics?
Absolutely. I think that that is a huge part of our societal structure and a huge part of the way that business is structured. And other professions as well. This is not just in business, it just is in business as well.
Yeah.
And I think that it’s kind of a short-sighted approach to having success in business because the research shows that the more that we look more holistically at what we need as humans to be successful, the more successful we are.
Yeah, that makes sense, and you showing the research, is this all recent research or would someone 20 years ago have had any reason to be aware of this idea that if we take care of our human needs, our business is also going to be better?
So, 20 years ago, there was some research out there. Most of the research that is discussed now is very recent...
Employee engagement is a topic that often blurs the lines between commitment and engagement. In any organization, having a clear vision, mission, and goals is crucial. However, to effectively achieve these objectives, it is essential to provide employees with a sense of purpose and direction. So, what are the best strategies for organizations to improve company culture and enhance employee motivation and performance?
In this week's episode, we have a special guest, Andrew Kitchner, the Founder of New Wave Solutions, who joins us to discuss the crucial role of employee commitment in organizational success. Andrew illustrates the distinction between commitment and engagement by providing practical scenarios within organizations. His platform, New Wave Solutions, is dedicated to measuring employee commitment and uncovering effective strategies to enhance employees' dedication to organizational goals and values.
Tune in and discover strategies to enhance commitment for your organization. Listen now!
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The Power of Commitment for Success in Organizations with Andrew Kitchner Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. The last couple of episodes, we focused quite a bit on jobs, both how we find a job as well as how we could kind of network to become better connected to some of our potential jobs. The question we’re asking today now is what happens once you get into the job because one of the problems that we have with a lot of organizations these days is employees, you’ll get your job, then it takes maybe a month or two, the new job thing, where it’s off and you wonder, “Is this what I really want? Is this what I really expected, am I really happy?” and as my guest, Andrew Kitchner, will say, “Am I really committed?” Andrew Kitchner is the founder and chief survey administrator, hope I’m getting that right, of New Wave Solutions, and he focuses on commitment rather than engagement, so that’s a good place to start.
Andrew, welcome to the program.
Thank you, thank you for having me.
Definitely. This is great because we’re talking about the last few episodes, the different ways people go about getting to their ideal career. We know that the process of — the applicant tracking system process is broken, the process by which people discover who they are, the way people post postings can be a little bit broken, and, now, we also have some issues that we’re going to talk about today with what happens once someone gets into a job, what employees are doing, because so many organizations, whether you’re the one at a job or you’re the one who started your company and you’re looking to keep your employees, you say that we should be focusing on commitment rather than engagement.
Yeah. I originally he was a believer in engagement. What we found was, when we were looking at what is the best predictor of long-term retention, my hypothesis was engagement. Companies are spending millions of dollars on engagement surveys. I wasn’t cocky enough to say I know better than all these companies, I assumed that these companies are measuring the best metrics. After looking at about a hundred different variables, engagement was about the 35th best predictor of long-term retention. It frankly ruined my hypothesis so it’s not like I came into this wanting this to be true. What was the best long-term predictor of retention as well as performance was a term called organizational commitment and what that means, it’s an employee’s commitment to their company’s goals, values, mission, and people, and just on an intuitive level, what I say now is when you think about something that you worked hard to achieve, whether it’s in your personal or professional life, why did you put in that discretionary effort? Very rarely will somebody say, “I put in that discretionary effort because I was engaged.
Networking is the art of building connections and fostering relationships with individuals who can provide support, guidance, and opportunities. It involves cultivating a diverse network of mentors, peers, and protégés to learn from their experiences and expand one's perspective. But how can we effectively leverage our networks to maximize personal and professional growth?
In this week's episode, we're joined by Andrea Macek, the Founder and CEO of AYM Consulting, to talk about what networking is and how to do it correctly. Andrea shares valuable insights on how to cultivate a strong network that can help you grow both personally and professionally. She enumerates the three types of people you should have in your network and some proven networking strategies.
Tune in and learn practical tips for building a strong and supportive network.
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Networking: Making Connections for Growth with Andrea Macek Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. In the last episode, we talked about my friend Keith developing a whole new system to replace our applicant tracking systems, how we’re going to find a better way to connect employees to employers. However, there are other ways to make connections and one of those ways that a lot of people often ignore is networking. My guest today, Andrea Macek, is a woman that actually helped me quite a bit on my own job search journey last year and is also starting a new initiative around helping people with their networking game. Andrea basic is the founder of AYM Consulting.
Andrea, welcome to the program.
Thanks, Stephen, for having me, it’s so fun to connect with you and support you in a different way so this is really fun.
It’s always interesting to have these relationships that take on a couple of different forms and one of the weird things I always say is that this podcast, the first 10, 12 episodes really began with just me talking to my friends and sharing it out here, so it is important to cover all that networking. First of all, actually, before we get into networking, tell us a little bit about what AYM Consulting, your full business, is all about.
Sure, thank you. So, yeah, my name is Andrea Macek and I am speaking to your community, hi, everyone, today as the founder and CEO of my career coaching business, AYM Consulting. And so I started this business after I got laid off back in 2019 from my corporate healthcare career. I was in healthcare for almost 10 years and this really was out of necessity and out of my own experience, if you will. So, I started my career, like a lot of people, not knowing what I was going to do. I actually was dropped into the job search in 2008 during the Great Recession, two degrees in hand ready to go conquer the world and the market had other plans for me. So, I became my own career coach kind of early on in my career and really had to develop different skills and pivot and understand the market in ways that’s a whole ’nother podcast episode, Stephen —
Well, yeah, for sure.
— in a way college does not prepare you.
Oh, yeah. I’ve mentioned that plenty of times about our education system teaching you, “You get one wrong answer, you’re going to fail and failing is the worst thing ever,” and that’s just not how the world works.
Not how the world works, no. I’m happy to come back and rant with you about that topic. I used to work at a college, I was the career advisor. So, long story short, over the past 10, 15 years, I’ve been able to grow and pivot my career in a multitude of ways and networking has been that foundation. And while I was working, I was an HR business partner, I was in healthcare for a long time, one of my main passions and expertise areas was supporting my team. I grew and developed my team, a lot of my team got promoted and moved on after working with them and coaching them so I’ve be...
Many companies find themselves inundated with over 100 applicants for a single job vacancy, often resorting to traditional job interviews to make their hiring decisions. However, this process can be time-consuming and inefficient, leading to a significant investment of resources for just one hire. How can we address this challenge and ensure that we secure the best talent? Is there a solution that streamlines the hiring process and improves the quality of hires?
In this episode, join us as we sit down with Keith Hulen, the Founder and CEO of SmartRank. Keith brings his extensive experience as a Hiring Manager spanning over two decades to the table, and he's here to discuss an exciting and groundbreaking solution for talent acquisition and optimizing employee-to-employer connections. SmartRank, the AI system Keith developed, revolutionizes the hiring process by not only saving valuable time and effort but also ensuring the hiring of the top talents for your business.
Tune in to discover how SmartRank leverages and predicts top talent for your business success.
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SmartRank: Revolutionizing Talent Acquisition with Keith Hulen Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I’m going to talk to you about something that’s near and dear to me because I think it causes a lot of suffering in this world, and that is this inefficient daunting process by which we go about finding jobs or finding employees, basically connecting an employer to an employee. This kind of really drawn-out process where people are submitting so many cover letters, so many resumes, reading so much, is what keeps a lot of people fearfully clinging to jobs that are making them miserable and a lot of business owners trying to hang on to employees that are just simply not working out and I personally think that we’d be in a much better state if we were to find a more effective way to connect these people so that if something isn’t working out, if someone is miserable or if someone’s not getting the job done, we can much more easily move on without this fear of what comes next and how much work am I going to have to put into what’s coming next. And that’s one of the core motivations for my guest today, Keith Hulen. Keith’s business is called SmartRank, more effective way in which to kind of sort through all the resumes, cover letters, or whatever employment materials that we get when we put out a job posting.
Keith, welcome to the program.
Yeah, thanks, Stephen. Glad to be here.
Glad to have you here. S, Keith, first of all, let’s start by talking about your story. What motivated you to start SmartRank? What were you observing in your field that you had been in for a couple decades before that?
Yeah, so I’ve been a hiring manager for over 20 years, and me along with all of my peers over the last 20 years have all felt the same way about the hiring process, which is that it was fairly dysfunctional and it needed some sort of improvement. The hiring process, as a hiring manager, from just my perspective, hadn’t changed in 20 years.
It didn’t matter if I was at a global 500 company or a startup, it didn’t matter if I was dealing with an internal or an external recruiting team, the process, the tools, everything was almost identical.
I mean, very small nuanced little changes between each one of those but, for the most part, everything was very, very similar and it was very frustrating. And so when I set off to want to start my own company, I knew that this was an area that I really wanted to explore further. What we ended up doing was not coming in with any preconceived ideas. I knew what our problems were from a hiring manager standpoint, I had spent a lot of time hearing from my friends and colleagues and peers about their experiences and I knew what mine were, but what I really wanted to do was understand more from th...
Creating and developing a product can be a daunting task for most business owners. A minimum viable product (MVP) allows customers to provide feedback for future development. Thus, developers can avoid lengthy and unnecessary work. However, how can we go beyond turning this idea into a reality and make it a running and successful venture?
Join us in this episode as I sit down with Allie Reitz, the Founder and CEO of MEEP, to explore the essential steps in building a minimum viable product (MVP). We delve into the world of automation and discuss the significance of creating a functional and captivating website that fosters efficient connections with people.
Tune in to this episode and learn actionable strategies from the expert!
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Building a Minimum Viable Product and Efficient Website Development with Allie Reitz Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. I’m going to talk to you today about a common situation, maybe you’re in it, maybe you’ve been in it, maybe you know someone in it. You found your idea after all this digging in, that idea that’s at that perfect intersection of what the world needs, what you’re good at, and the idea that’s going to bring your life to where you want to bring it, but the question is how do you actually make that idea become a reality? That’s a whole ‘nother daunting task after all this personal reflection that can sometimes actually deter people from really doing anything because it is long, it is drawn out to go from, okay, I have this idea, to, now I’m doing it, now people are buying it, or now people are engaging with that. And that’s where my guest today, Allie Reitz, and her organization, Meep, come into play.
Allie, welcome to the program.
How it’s going?
It’s going pretty well today. How’s it going for you?
So good. I was outside most of the morning so I’m feeling very good now looking at my computer.
Well, that’s amazing because one of the things that inspires a lot of people to pursue any of these paths is the ability to live the life they want and you decided this morning, “I wanna be outside because,” to give a little detail about the Colorado weather today, it was a very sunny morning, and the afternoon is probably going to have a high chance of rain in most places so that’s a great way to orient your day.
Yes, I’m very glad I did it.
So at Meep, you specialize in having someone go from, you talk about from zero to traction, from zero to where you’re actually getting there. How does that process really work? When someone comes in, I assume most people that come in are, as I’ve described, people that already have that idea, they’ve already searched and they figured out what they want to physically do but now, of course, how to get it from, “It’s this thing in my head, I think, oh, it’d be really cool to do this for these people,” to where you’re actually getting these people to engage with you.
Totally. Like you said, it’s a long process, right? And what’s in your head is probably not what you’re going to start with because what’s in your head is probably the big, fancy, shiny, awesome version that’s going to be version 10 or 20 down the line. It’s going to be —- one way that I like to describe it or analogy that I like to use is from Jeff Patton in his book called User Story Mapping. He describes it really simply, which I love. It’s like if you’re wanting to solve the problem for people, that is, getting them from point A to point B, and your idea of the solution is a car, you’re not going to start with a wheel because that doesn’t necessarily solve that problem for them right out of the gate and your first objective is to kind of validate that assumption that you can solve that problem for them. So his analogy is, you start with a skateboard. It still gets people from point A to point B. It’s a lot more janky than a car, much,
Transitioning into a new career can be immensely challenging particularly when the majority of your time has been devoted to pursuits that might not align with your true passion. However, deep within, you may sense a persistent longing for a life that resonates with your authentic self. How can we have the courage to make a decision on a significant career shift?Welcome to today's episode! We are delighted to have Michael Ryno as our guest. In this episode, Michael will take us on a captivating journey as he shares his remarkable transition from the world of corporate banking to pursuing his true passion in photography. With an impressive 25-year career in finance under his belt, Michael's story is one of courage, perseverance, and the pursuit of personal fulfillment.Tune in to this episode to gain a deeper understanding of the personal and professional transformation that occurs when one follows their passion. Stay tuned and get ready to be inspired!---Listen to the podcast here:Career Shift from Corporate Banking to Professional Photography with Michael RynoWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. It’s been a while since I’ve shared a story about a significant career transition and some of these significant career transitions are a little bit harder to come by because it’s so much easier to transition to something with like, quote-unquote, “transferable skills” or even to just move on to, say, a competitor or a slightly different job, get a promotion than to take a whole different path. But sometimes, that whole different path is what you really want out of life. It’s your true passion and it affords the life that you really want. And if you don’t want a certain lifestyle and you want a career that’s going to give you the lifestyle, you’re going to have the adventures you want, the travels you want, the types of things you want to be doing, then that’s a great thing to come by. My guest today, Michael Ryno of Michael Ryno Photography pursued recently his passion of being a photographer as opposed to his prior career.---Michael, welcome to the program. Yeah. Hey, thank you so much, Stephen, for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. No problem. I’m glad to have you because I’ve done a lot of stories about people leaving whatever job they had to pursue what they really wanted. It’s been a little while since I’ve shared one of those that, I’m kind of covering some other topics. So, yeah, Michael, tell me your story about where you were for, I don’t want to say most of your life but for a significant amount of time? Sure, sure. I think most of my life, that’s probably a pretty accurate statement. So, out of college, I went right into banking. I majored in finance so I was in the banking and finance world from 1983 all the way until August of 2021. While an enjoyable career, it sort of got to the point where I was, to be honest, maybe a little bit burned out and so forth with that corporate grind and what had occurred there was over the course of the last, I guess, five, six years while I was doing that corporate banking, I had picked up a camera, I think I learned how to use it properly and really became passionate about photography. So, like I mentioned, in August of 2021, it felt like the right time to let go of that corporate environment, that corporate job, banking, move on and pursue this new career In photography. So would it be accurate to say that at least for well over a decade, potentially, that that job in finance did serve you well? Throughout that time, I had, like I said, great relationships, great people that I worked with. Having said that, there were a few different banks that I had been involved with the last, say, 14 years of that career was in the large corporate food and agribusiness lending, large food processing companies and I still look back and enjoy having had that experience...
In the fast-paced digital age we live in, our ability to stay present and focused has become increasingly challenging. A simple way to create a healthy space in the mind which allows you to relax and always see the bigger picture is attention training. With distractions at every turn, it's essential to explore how we can regain control of our attention and foster meaningful human interactions. In this episode, we are thrilled to have Dr. Mary Meduna-Gross, an esteemed expert in the field of focus and success, returning as our special guest. Dr. Meduna-Gross introduces us to an innovative approach called "The Open Focus Approach," which offers powerful insights into how to transform our mindset and tap into our full potential, and the four styles of attention.Join us as we explore the principles of this approach and discover how it can unlock new possibilities for success. ---Listen to the podcast here:Unlocking Your Potential: The Open Focus Approach to Success with Dr. Mary Meduna-GrossWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Obviously, one really important aspect of anything that we engage in is what kind of mindset we bring in to something. There's a big difference between coming to an event where you're interacting with people but you're constantly pulling out your phone or pulling out your laptop or even getting distracted by every little thing that you see around you or have something prominent on your mind, something you're mad about, something you're really anxious about, versus being truly present somewhere. Today, I bring back to the program the second time, Dr. Mary Meduna-Gross, who you probably remember from a previous conversation, we talked a lot about having the mindset for success and what kind of thoughts we're putting through our head. Today, we're going to talk about a different new approach to how we're actually focusing.---Mary, welcome to the program. Oh, thank you. So good to be with you again. It's always wonderful to talk to you, it's always wonderful to hear about all the different things that you're doing because you have a podcast of your own. Right. And the magazine that really is helping bring people of this type of mindset, of building something new, building something better together. Exactly. The magazine, The ConsciousPreneur Magazine, is really all about conscious entrepreneurship. Validating these values of the conscious entrepreneur, you can build a successful business on them, that how do we do that, so lots of information on how to do that with some inspiration. The podcast I have now is Fully Alive and we dive specifically into mindset for leadership. I know that this episode is mostly going to cover this open focus technique, as promised, but one thing I'm wondering as we're talking about conscious entrepreneurship and I've read conscious capitalism and some other similar books is is there still a lot of resistance to the idea that you can, through business, make an impact while also earning your money and everything else? Is there still a lot of people saying no from either one end saying, “No, business has to be business and being nice and being philanthropy, whatever, has to be separate,” or, “Your business has to focus only on it, you can’t consider all those shareholders,” is that still fully alive, not to use your podcast title, but is that still fully there, fully present in our society? I think so. In fact, I had some conversations recently with some marketers. He was talking about the challenges that he was having in terms of shifting beliefs of his prospects and shift that one belief that I can have purpose or I can have profit but I can't do both. Yeah. You said it so much better than I did. Well, we got to the same point. Again, one of the reasons why I created this magazine was because I think there are a lot of us wh...
In any business, organization, or educational institution, there are core values that guide its operations. These values are crucial not only for establishing a sense of purpose and direction but also for aligning everyone's mindset towards a common goal. But in reality, many organizations simply stick to the script instead of actively following their values. How can we define our vision, mission, and core values and guide our employees and the whole organization to success?Today, I am thrilled to have Brenda Boyle, the founder of Fireheart Coaching, as our guest. We will be diving deep into the importance of core values for organizations, how they can be identified and defined, and how they can be used to drive success. With her Master’s Degree in Organizational Leadership, Brenda’s expertise lies in creating value-based leadership that is ideal for the rest of your team. Whether you're an entrepreneur, business leader, or simply interested in organizational leadership, this episode is for you! ---Listen to the podcast here:The Importance of Core Values for Organizational Success with Brenda BoyleWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. We’ve all found ourselves in this situation, maybe you’re in an organization at a job and that organization will express a certain set of values that they live by and they love to put it on their website, they love to show it off whenever they can, but then when you actually do the day-to-day job, when you enter a situation where those values are put to the test, well, what actually happens doesn’t always match those values and it can be a little bit frustrating when you say to your employer or wherever you are, “Well, you say that you value people first,” or whatever the common phrase is but then when the situation actually went down, the way you were treated, the way that people responded, the decisions that were made did not seem to actually match those values. My guest today, Brenda Boyle, is all about helping organizations live up to those values with her company, Fireheart Coaching. ---Brenda, welcome to the program. Thanks so much, Stephen. Appreciate being here and excited to connect with you all today for this conversation. Yeah, it’s a wonderful conversation to be had because I think we’ve all experienced this or --- well, I’ll just rephrase it that if anyone out there listening has not experienced this, then you’re a really lucky person, but a company, I think the most common thing is, “We value innovation,” but then when you come with a new idea, they say, “No, just stick to the script or stick to the process and procedures manual,” or whatever it is. I know this takes on a lot of different forms. So, my first question would be why do you think that is? Why do you think so many organizations don’t live up to their values? Say something and then do something else? Short answer, it’s hard. Two-word answer. I think it takes a lot of intention, strategy, communication, and perseverance/consistency in communicating those but it doesn’t necessarily often trickle down or throughout the rest of the organization, particularly if the team is growing really big or going through a rapid period of scale, hiring, transitions. The values might start with one particular leader or leadership team but how does it grow from there? And then when things change, like a global pandemic, what do your values, your company values look like throughout that time of change? I think those are two distinct but really hard questions to answer and we’re not necessarily taught that in school or taught that in other places. No. In school, you’re mostly taught how to get the answer right. Exactly. Like from memory, which seems weirder and weirder in an era where everyone has a device where they can easily just look up something. We’re not taught how to like, first of all,
To live a fulfilling life requires bravery and a willingness to make choices and embrace the changes that may come with them, such as starting a new job, changing careers, moving to a new location, or making relationships. How can we have the confidence to make these decisions and believe that they are achievable?In this episode, we are joined by Janet Langmeier, the founder of Phoenix Soaring International. Janet shares her incredible story and the philosophy she lives by that everyone is worthy of the life they desire. With over four decades of experience, Janet has helped countless people overcome their limitations and achieve remarkable success.Join us as we learn from her wisdom and discover how we too can believe in ourselves and create the life we truly deserve. ---Listen to the podcast here:Believing in Yourself and Achieve the Life You Want with Janet LangmeierWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less, and one of the key themes of pretty much every episode of this podcast and how it all comes together, it’s all about the mindset. In order to achieve the life that you truly want, what you really desire, a truly joyous life, to quote my guest today, you need to believe it’s possible. You need to think it’s possible, you need to have the right self-talk, and you need to think about the right things. My guest today, Janet Langmeier, is the founder of Phoenix Soaring Intl and a facilitator of the Mastery Mindset Coaching Services. ---Welcome, Janet, to the program. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you for having me. I’m glad to be here. Oh, yeah, thank you for coming on my podcast and for the workshop in which we met at a few weeks ago at the Mind Body and Spirit Expo. So, Janet, let’s start a little bit about your story because you’re all about what your self-talk is, what you’re thinking about, and what you really believe is possible and making it possible through your thoughts. Is there a background you come from that led you to investigate all these things and want to facilitate it for others? That’s a loaded question, Stephen. I know, I know. I was like --- Of course, the answer is yes but it’s not that simple. Oh, yeah, of course. If it was just yes, this wouldn’t be a podcast. Well, studying what we what might have been in my day considered esoteric things. I’ve always been interested in what drives us, what’s going on inside. The inside of life has always been very, very interesting to me from the time I was very young. And so reading things that a lot of other people didn’t read back when I was a kid opened my mind to think differently, I guess. I did a lot of the normal eight-to-five and what other people expect for a long period of my life, for enough decades that got that down, got that down really, really --- So you know what that’s about, fully know what the eight-to-five is about. Yeah, and I had a lot of success but I worked really hard and I made some choices that were not easy because I was raising children at the same time and I was working and I look at the younger people today and the choices that they make and I just applaud how so often they know how to make choices that support their life as opposed to I felt like I had to do that, I had to do this, there was no other choice for me. And yet that didn’t align with the things I studied and the things I believed in. And, one day, you know, we all have our one day, right? Yep. Well, the one day that I really, really knew that something had to change, I was driving to a job that I was very good at and I liked and everything, I was on the Boulder turnpike, as a matter of fact, and I had my daughter in my ear, I was listening to her talking to me, and I get to the exit to go to my job and I started having a panic attack. Oh my. And my daughter could hear it and she’s like,
Self-sabotage is a common behavior that involves sabotaging our own goals and desires. At its core, it involves engaging in actions and behaviors that directly or indirectly sabotage our progress toward our goals and desires. How can we shift our self-talk in a way that leads us to the life that we want?In this episode, I sit down with Teri Karjala, a Life Transformational Strategist, Speaker, and Author. We delve into the various forms of self-sabotage, examine why we engage in this behavior, and explore strategies for overcoming it. With over 20 years of counseling background, Teri shares her insights and expertise that help us unlock the potential within ourselves.Join us as we explore and learn how to overcome self-sabotaging and achieve our goals.---Listen to the podcast here:Overcoming Self-Sabotage and Unlocking Your Potential with Teri KarjalaWelcome to Actions Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today I want to talk to you about a term that you probably have already heard called self-sabotage. Self-sabotage is something that I think a lot of people didn't hear about 15, 20 years ago. At least, I don't remember hearing about that. But nowadays it's kind of a common vernacular. It's what our thoughts are doing to our life's outcome. And I think we've all heard some version of the phrase, "Thoughts create form. Your thoughts are what your life is going to become." Unfortunately, some studies have shown that up to 80% of all human thoughts can be negative. My guest today, Teri Karjala — who is the coordinator of Talking with Teri — she has coaching events, as well as a podcast of her own about the subject of how we can reframe our talk, our self-talk, in a way that's going to lead us to the life that we really want. ---Teri, welcome to the program. Thank you. It's so great to be here with you. It's wonderful to have you. Can you start by telling us a little bit about Talking with Teri, what you're all about summarized at a really high level? In essence, what is it? Yeah, so, it was really an evolution. I used to be a therapist. I was a therapist for 26 years. I built a very successful business. It went owner-independent about nine years ago. And so, back in about 2010 I — actually, even before that, it was really interesting. Because I was telling my social media person at the time. She goes, "What's your retirement plan?" I was just word vomited on her. I said I'm going to be traveling around the world. I'm going to be sleeping. I'm going to be doing this. It will be called Talking with Teri. She goes, "Oh, my gosh. I love it. You should buy the domains." I knew I wasn't ready for it. It was funny, because when I told her that, I was absolutely terrified of public speaking. Oh, wow. Okay. That's how you and I met. I was speaking at an event. So, I've come a long way. But it was so funny because, again, I think that the counseling — you have a master's degree in counseling and have tons and tons of certifications, and things of that nature. That then created the foundation. As I was counseling, I realized that there were faster, easier ways. I started studying with brain researchers and people that talked about how our brain is formed, but also how our thoughts, our behaviors, our habits all get connected inside of our brain. And what is that programming? And so, really looking at how our brains get programmed based on these previous belief systems. And so, what I've found over the time of working in my therapy practice is that there was faster wait. I mean, I had a client one time. I was her 19th therapist. She's been in therapy for 32 years. I told the person who referred her to — she's like, "Well, Teri does things differently." And so, she referred to me, and she started with like, "I want to tell you, my story." I said, "Well, you know what? Let's not start there." She looked at me, like, "What?
Our life and success as a person have relied on our ability to form relationships with others. The most valuable lessons, chances, and blessings in life come from our interactions with others. However, how can we establish meaningful connections that bring out the best in ourselves and the people around us?In this episode, Work Happiness Project Founder Nini Fritz joins us to talk about genuine connection. She offers valuable insights on how to cultivate genuine, meaningful connections and emphasizes the importance of choosing people who uplift you and enrich your life.If you're looking to deepen your relationships and connections, this conversation is for you. Tune in now to gain valuable insights on fostering genuine connections that bring joy and fulfillment to your life.---Listen to the podcast here:Building Genuine Deep Connections with Nini FritzWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less, and, today, I want to talk to you about a really important topic and that is building genuine deep connections. Looks like an entire culture, a lot of people are suffering from the consequences of not building as deep of connections as we once did. We see a lot of problems with the loneliness epidemic and people that feel like they just really don’t fit in. My guest today, Nini Fritz, is the founder of The Work Happiness Project as well as The Digital Detox Connections Stronger than Wi Fi Program, sharing one of my great passions about getting people off the internet and into real life, connecting with real people and connecting with the real world. ---Nini, welcome to the program. Thank you so much. Lovely introduction. I’m glad. I usually try to think through these introductions a little bit. You did well. All right, well, let’s start with talking about what you’re observing and what we all are observing in the world around us today. We just went through the pandemic but even before the pandemic, there were people increasingly moving their lives online and people becoming increasingly disconnected from one another in the world. Yeah, that’s correct and, well, I think we live in this time age of this loneliness paradox. It’s pretty much a connection paradox. I think that is actually like an even better description. It’s statistically proven that we are like the most connected generation ever existed when you look at all like the online connections we have, but we’re also proven to be the loneliest generation in history. And, yeah, I think that’s very shocking, fun fact that we all have to accept. There’s misconception of having thousands of LinkedIn followers, millions of YouTube subscribers, a few hundred Instagram followers, Facebook friends, whatever it is, but when it comes down to needing someone to call or like a shoulder to lean on, we look at all these connections we have and then we realize the people we can actually go to, if we’re lucky, is like a handful of quality connections. And I think this gap between the perceived connection and the actual connections we have makes us feel much lonelier. When you feel like you share your meal on social media, post a picture of your pizza, but you don’t have anyone to share your meal with, that makes us feel like this is hyper — yeah, this pathetic connection pretty much and that is very dangerous, actually, for human connection to think we have that but we actually don’t have it and then it makes us feel much lonelier and much more disconnected. Now, just to preserve my own innocence, I just looked this up now. My LinkedIn profile only has 960 connections so I’m not guilty of this thousands of connections thing quite yet. So, what do you think is creating these weaker connections? Because it seems like, in the past, we’d have fewer total connections but the connections we had were more likely to be deeper. Is it kind of this whole idea of I just posted,
Finding a connection between what you are doing and what you want has somehow been encountered in our life. What makes it more difficult to transition from point A to point B is that they are not much related to each other. However, if we can overcome this barrier, it can lead to a deeper understanding of our desired path, ultimately resulting in a more meaningful life.In this episode, Kaitlin Borncamp takes us through her remarkable journey of transformation from a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) to a Wellness Advisor. Kaitlin shares her insights on how the principles of financial accounting can be applied to health and wellness, and provides valuable advice on overcoming the obstacles that often prevent people from making significant career transitions.Tune in to this inspiring episode to learn from Kaitlin's experiences and gain valuable insights.---Listen to the podcast here:Making Connection Between Financial Accounting and Health with Kaitlin BorncampWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Oftentimes in life, we want to make some sort of change, some kind of a transition, and we have a limited mindset with regards to the stories that we tell ourselves about what is possible, what is related. We oftentimes hear something along the lines of, “Find your transferable skills,” which, for some people, only means the obvious, and for some people, only means that you can only make small changes, say, from software engineer to data scientist or something that’s quite a bit related. However, my guest today, Kaitlin Borncamp, who is the founder of Feel Great with Kait, made the transition from accountant to nutritional wellness coach, if I’m saying that right. ---Kaitlin, welcome to the program. Thanks, Stephen. Thanks for having me. And is that right? Nutritional wellness coach? Yeah, I like to go by wellness advisor because there’s so much more to nutrition --- or so much more to wellness than just nutrition. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, that’s like one aspect of what you put into your body but there’s like do you move your body, do you get sunlight, do you put yourself under stress, all those things, you probably have a more comprehensive list than I do. Exactly, exactly. So the first thing I want to ask is that there’s probably a lot of people listening and also a lot of people out there in the world that are doing something that they’re not so thrilled with at this point in time, looking to get something different in their lives, looking to make a change, and not seeing maybe even a connection between what they’re doing and what they want. Now, accounting to wellness advising, to nutritional type of thing, does not sound obvious to most people. What is the connection and what makes them in your view related to one another? Yeah, I love this question and I actually get this response a lot when people kind of hear my background and things. So, I would say a few ways that financial reporting accounting are related to health and wellness and one of them has to do with how it impacts us personally. So, when we think of something like accounting and finance, like an organization, the health of an organization, there’s so many different things going on and, most oftentimes, most people in the organization, they don’t really want to know what the accountants are doing. They’re like, “Yeah, you guys got it covered. We appreciate you. We know we need you,” but most people in an organization are like, “You guys got it, you know, I don’t really want to know.” Yeah. It’s a very complex system. There’s a lot of different points of information, data, as we call it in financial systems today, coming from a lot of different parts of the organization. In fact, all parts of the organization, right? They need to be rolled up, they need to be consolidated,
Being ready for unexpected situations can make the difference between life and death. Our world is full of potential crises, from natural disasters to catastrophic accidents. Ignoring these risks and hoping for the best is not a viable strategy. However, by prioritizing emergency preparedness, you can reap numerous benefits and increase your chances of survival in a crisis.In this episode, Golden Hour Preparedness CEO & Founder Emily Jane Zahreddine joins us to talk about emergency preparedness. We dive deep into the importance of emergency preparedness and crisis management, not just from a physical standpoint but also for mental health. EmilyJane shares valuable insights and practical tips on how to respond and keep yourself and your family safe in the face of disasters.Listen to this episode to understand the significance of emergency preparedness and help us share this episode with friends and family.---Listen to the podcast here:Emergency Preparedness and Crisis Management with EmilyJane ZahreddineWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, we’re going to talk about emergency preparedness and this is something that a lot of people, especially if you’re really excited about your idea, you’re really excited about what you’re pursuing, don’t necessarily want to talk about, don’t want to think about but it is something that’s really important because it can make the difference between something that becomes a minor hiccup and something that kind of ruins you. There are times when we have to cover our bases and sometimes we have to cover what happens when something unfavorable happens in so many aspects of our lives, businesses and all of our pursuits. My guest today, EmilyJane Zahreddine, is the founder of Golden Hour Preparedness, an emergency preparedness company. ---Emily, welcome to the program. Hi, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. Let’s start by talking about emergency preparedness. What does it mean? If someone hears the phrase “emergency preparedness,” a lot of times you’ll think about, if you live in California, an earthquake, if you live in St. Louis, a tornado, if you live in New York, a hurricane, but there’s probably a lot more to it than just that natural disaster that’s most prevalent in your region. Absolutely. So, I like to think of a really close to home example. So I’m married and I have an eight-month-old son so if my son had a medical emergency and needed to go to the hospital and be there for several days and be treated, my life would change dramatically from the way that it is today. I would take time off of work, I would cancel my dog grooming appointment and cancel my nail appointment, make sure only essential things that I need to keep myself, my husband, and my son going are happening and that’s what emergency preparedness is. It’s making sure you know what those things are so you can keep going and keep focusing just on the essentials when things get tough. When you don’t have all of your normal bandwidth and you’ve got to reduce what you’re able to do because an emergency or disaster takes up some of your capability, you need to have a plan, a strategy to fall back on that makes sense for you and your lifestyle for you and your family, for you and your business, that makes sense for you to implement and execute so you can keep things rolling in the way they need to to stay in business, to keep your family together, to support people who are going through a hard time in your life. So it sounds like it’s less about even identifying a list of these are the possible emergencies and this is the relative likelihood of it happening and more about understanding what those essentials are. Absolutely. So, every individual has different essentials and FEMA is coming out, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is coming out with a new way to define emergency preparedne...
Before the pandemic, remote work only made up 5% of total workdays. However, it has now become widespread for workers across all levels, ranging from entry-level employees to CEOs, to work from home for at least some part of the week. Given the absence of a shared physical workspace, what strategies can be used to effectively discover, encourage, and cultivate a productive work environment?In this episode, our guest Irina Bgatova shares valuable insights on the current state of work culture and offers practical tips for enhancing engagement, fostering collaboration, and preventing burnout in the workplace, particularly for remote teams. She also sheds light on the innovative platform called Weljo, which provides a unique solution for remote teams to build and maintain strong bonds. Join us as we delve into the world of remote work and explore ways to create a healthy and productive work environment.---Listen to the podcast here:Building a Thriving Remote Work Culture with Irina BgatovaWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. We’re at an interesting cultural moment, especially with respect to our work culture right now. People have put in most of the pandemic or the fear related to the pandemic behind them and now we’re trying to decide what to make of our work culture given that a lot of people have gotten used to remote work, some people have even moved to other cities or other places to work remotely, yet there are some leaders of organizations that are concerned about how to foster the team camaraderie and some are calling for bringing people back to the office or some kind of a hybrid type of schedule where we can still have that camaraderie. It is a challenge that a lot of us are trying to solve and how do you really still feel close and still feel connected to your teammates. My guest today, Irina Bgatova, is a product manager with Weljo, a platform that helps these remote organizations find ways to foster better work environments as well as bring your co-workers together. This represents one of the possible solutions that we may have in this particular cultural moment. ---Irina, welcome to the program. Oh, thank you very much, Stephen. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I’m excited. That is awesome, and so, first, let’s start, tell us a little bit about Weljo, about what your product does. Yes, of course. Weljo, it’s a platform for remote teams that helps with engagement, collaboration, and avoiding burnout. And, actually, it’s like challenges, it’s team challenges that every week, for example, a team can make meditations, workouts, or collaboration challenges that every day, they have short meetings for 15 minutes where they exchange their ideas, learn something new about each other. We believe this kind of solution can help people to just improve their team bonding during remote work because remote work, we understand that it has some disadvantages and we want to help with it. What do you think are like the key advantages and disadvantages of that, you know, working remotely, whether it be from home or whether it be some of these nomads that we see that have a job and then just kind of move around? Yes, of course. We’ve done a lot of research on this topic and I can say that people usually mention that the main advantage of remote work is that you work flexible. Sometimes, you can not only work but, I don’t know, wash your clothes in washing machine or just do something else. You can go outside to walk. You can, I don’t know, cook your food for your lunch. And it’s all advantages. But, disadvantages, that you’re in your home, sometimes, your family can be at home at the same time and they just can distract you. Or if you’re working in the kitchen, once I heard, the girl said that you’re working in kitchen and you’re sitting near the fridge and it’s very difficult to when you’re nervous don’t eat so...
Were you aware that astrology is an age-old system that provided assistance to people in numerous ways? In the past, individuals used to regulate their everyday life from sunrise to sunset based on the positions of the celestial bodies, the moon and stars. While horoscopes and birth charts are just a small part of astrology, it's evident that many people are fascinated by what the planets and stars can reveal.In this episode, we are excited to have Luana Bossetti back as our guest. Join us as we explore the fascinating history of astrology and how it has been used in the past to guide daily life and predict the future. Luana also covers how astrology complements various faiths and belief systems, as well as the interpretation of zodiac signs.Tune in to gain a deeper understanding of astrology and its impact on our lives. ---Listen to the podcast here:Astrology: How Birth Charts and Zodiac Signs Influence Our Connections with Luana BossettiWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Us humans have a natural inclination to try to predict the future or speculate about what the future could possibly hold. It’s something we’ve been doing for probably longer than historic records have shown but we can see plenty of examples of it going all the way back to, in the case of Western culture, thinking about Ancient Greece and some of the measurements made by thinkers like Aristotle that kind of speculate about this so none of this is really new. Today, I want to talk to you about astrology because we’re recording on March 1, 2023, which is the start of a really major month in the astrological calendar as far as changes ahead, some things that we could possibly be seeing to change the direction that humanity is going to head. As you all know, we all do have free will and so, as a result, nothing’s set in stone but it’s good to start these conversations and talk about what we need to think about and prepare for. So, today is my first repeat guest on this podcast, Luana Bossetti, who has her own podcast as well. It’s changed names a few times so you have to tell us what it’s being called now. I’ve been a guest on her podcast. She’s also recently studied the field of astrology. ---Luana, welcome to the program. Yeah, thank you so much for having me again and, yeah, my podcast now, it’s The Lost & Found Millennial. Okay. I was speculating about whether you had another name change after that but, yeah. No, I think it’s quite because it’s broad, like Lost and Found, it’s like travel as well, you will get lost in your life and then you get found as well, I think. Yeah. Now we stay like that for a while. Most of us, at some point, have found ourselves lost or out of balance in some way and said, “Okay, I need to make an adjustment in my life of some kind.” Yes, yes. And, well, if we want to see it from the astrological point of view, my career line, to make it simple, it’s in Gemini and Gemini, we know it’s a sign that changes minds so many times. Oh, yeah. So, for me, it’s normal to approach so many projects and then change and change name and since ideas so that’s in line with my astrology, let’s say. My sun sign is a Sagittarius. Is that consistent with me keeping the same name and approaching 100 episodes or is there something that I’m out of line with? No, it’s consistent. It’s not the word for Sagittarius but because you are exploring so different topics and you have people on your podcast that talk about different topics, exactly, so it’s really in alignment, because Sagittarius wants to know everything and explore different things and explore the archetype of the explorer so the seeker of different adventures. I think that throughout your podcast, you go to different adventures, like talking to people from all over the world. So, it’s definitely in alignment.
Our lives have been impacted by many innovative technologies, but we often struggle to find the time to incorporate them into our routines. Although it may seem counterintuitive, working around the clock does not necessarily lead to increased productivity. In fact, it can lead to stress and burnout, which can have a negative impact on the health of a business and yourself.In this episode, Brie Z Operations Founder Brie DeLisi Zoller shares her insights on time management in both the workplace and personal life. She highlights the significance of recognizing tasks that are beneficial to our work and discarding those that are not. Brie also stresses the importance of taking breaks, including spending time outdoors activities and daylight hours.Tune in to learn from Brie's expertise in time management and how it can improve your productivity and well-being. ---Listen to the podcast here:Maximizing Productivity and Achieving Work-Life Balance with Brie DeLisi ZollerWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. We’ve had a lot of disruptive technology come into our lives in recent times and we also have a lot of expectations placed upon ourselves and one of the things that I’ve heard quite frequently is, “I don’t have time for this,” and sometimes that’s a proxy for, “I don’t have energy for this.” My guest today, Brie Zoller of Brie Z Operations, helps people prioritize what’s really meaningful, what you should be doing with your time, and maybe get rid of some of the things that just really aren’t delivering value. ---Brie, welcome to the program. Thank you. So what are you observing with people’s time management skills in the setting of 2020s Western culture? And I could be speaking about this particularly as a woman and working mostly with women is that fill ourselves to the max. If I see a possible free half hour in my schedule and somebody asks for that half hour, I’m going to give it to them. I have several peers and clients who do the same exact thing. We just are an on-demand society. We need to meet with people, we need to meet with them now, we need to give them that conversation, we need to just kind of overload ourselves. And then not only that but just outside of how we’re actually managing our time, on the flip side of that, we then fill our time because we think we have to. So, even if we don’t actually have anything we need to do with that free half hour block, we’re going to find something to do with that half hour, if that means scrolling on our phone or doing extra work instead of just giving that time back to ourselves. Now, is this playing to this idea of productivity guilt? Oh. I love — that’s such a great term because of fighting that for myself personally right now. I think absolutely there’s — if you have the time, you should be using it. That’s this whole thing that we’ve built for ourselves if you need to be working this at a minimum 40-hour workweek and that’s if you’re lucky with a lot of folks. There are other folks who got the 60-, 70-hour weeks that are almost glorified, like you are working at this top huge firm and, “How many hours did you work last week?” “Well, I got 60.” “Oh, well, I got 65.” It’s almost glorified that you should be so then when you’re not, there’s this whole mindset of like, “I’m doing something wrong.” And I experienced that when I was starting my business as well. I would talk to fellow small business owners who would be saying like, “Oh, man, I did 50 hours last week, 30 of them were business development hours,” and I’m looking at my own schedule and going like, “Oh, man, I only did 10 hours of business development last week, I must be doing something wrong.” And that’s something I observed in what I refer to as the 20th century or old school work culture where there seems to be a strong connection with number of hours.
There are numerous essential needs that are important for human well-being, but one key component that is often overlooked is play. Unfortunately, play is frequently viewed as a silly activity that detracts from "serious" work. However, what if we were to reframe our understanding of work and recognize the potential benefits of play in enhancing our productivity and creativity?In this episode, BoredLess Founder Acey Holmes joins us to bring the play to the table. Acey shares with us the importance of play, and how it can positively impact our personal and professional lives. By incorporating more play into our lives, we may be able to unlock new levels of innovation, fulfillment, and joy.Whether you are a busy professional or an individual seeking greater fulfillment and joy, this episode has something to offer you. Tune in to learn more.---Listen to the podcast here:The Surprising Power of Play with Acey HolmesWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about a topic that we have yet to cover on the first 82 episodes of this particular podcast series and that is play because a lot of times we’re talking about personal improvement, how do we get better, how do we achieve the life that we want, but there are other essential human needs and I’ve talked a lot about community, I’ve talked a lot about mental health, and one key component of that actually is play and so my guest today, Acey Holmes, the founder of BoredLess, is bringing play to all of our workplaces and all of our lives. ---Acey, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me, Stephen. Thank you. So, Acey, what inspired you to make play your pursuit? So, during the pandemic, doesn’t every story these days start that way? Lately, yeah. Yeah. I was the clinical full-time practicing pediatric speech language pathologist and, of course, schools and therapy, everything got shut down and after that happened for a while and then longer and longer, administrators and bureaucrats started talking about, “Oh, what are we gonna do to catch the children up?” and they were pitching longer school days and extra summer school and who needs breaks, etc., and so everyone in my field, and we all start digging up all of the research. No, absolutely, that’s the opposite of the answer. Lots of people doing really great work for that and making the point of play is how children will learn. As I was studying this and going through it and reading more and more and more research and realizing that I hadn’t really been learning myself for quite a while and I wasn’t that connected and engaged with my own work that I used to love and I was seeing that story happen with a lot of my friends and colleagues and family and wondered if any of that research about play and the wonders of play, the benefits of learning and growth and development would apply to adults and it does exponentially. So, decided to take the left turn away from kind of the pediatric world because there are definitely people out there already working to bring play to adults but not enough so I wanted to add to that pot. Now, who are the people that are already working to bring play to adults? Because I doubt that many people have actually heard of it, given what adults are encouraged to do on a day-to-day basis in the modern world? Yeah, absolutely. Consultants, global international consultants, they all kind of have their own niche topic but it’s all based around play so Mike Montague, Gary Weir, Dr. Mike Rucker just released a book called The Fun Habit. Jeff Harry, a lot of folks are working in the realm of helping parents understand play and how they can benefit themselves as well as their children, like Laura Haver and Sharon Calderon. We’re kind of all over the place. And then even in Denver, we have --- so we are both in the Denver area so even in Denver loc...
Have you ever observed individuals dancing without any audible music but sporting illuminated headphones? If so, you have witnessed a silent disco, which has been in existence for a while and is now gaining popularity. By donning headphones, one can concentrate on the music and enjoy a high-quality experience. How will this silent disco have the time of your life at your next event?In this unique episode, we are joined by the esteemed Founder & CEO of CiferNoise Productions, Jason Gorley, who shares his insightful thoughts on silent disco. He navigates through the potential of this innovative technology, providing a brief historical background, and highlighting how it creates a distinct connection among people through the power of music. Tune in to discover the many dimensions of silent disco and how it is transforming the way we experience music.---Listen to the podcast here:Exploring the World of Silent Disco with Jason GorleyWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. For most of my life, I’ve had these competing pursuits of wanting to kind of foster people’s individuality but also build community at the same time and one of the problems I encountered was I’d always thought of these particular pursuits as competing with one another, you’re either becoming more close but becoming less individual or going in the opposite direction. My guest today is Jason Gorley of CiferNoise Productions and what they do is they do silent discos, which is one of the areas where I’ve seen people allow people to have an individual experience while also coming together. ---Jason, welcome to the program. Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, no problem. Yeah, thank you for coming on. Yeah, describe the silent disco experience and what motivated you to kind of bring this into the world. Thanks for asking. A lot of things motivated me to bring this into the world but let’s start with silence disco is it’s a unique experience that anyone can travel down with headphones but also, it’s not just wearing headphones, it’s having the options to choose what you’re listening to at a particular event. So, silent disco can have three all the way up to ten channels and each channel can be curated in a way to fit the demographic that is present within your event or any pop-up in general. You could do multiple things from movie nights to conferences to regular parties and it’s just a different way of replacing speakers and creating more of an immersive experience with your ears. How I got into it, I went to a school that partied a lot and I loved throwing parties. University of Arizona, bear down. Oh, yeah, that is known for its party atmosphere, for sure. Yeah, yeah, we do party a lot down there, especially those who don’t even go to college. I always had a knack of wanting to bring people together.The greatest thing is just watching people smile after they leave your events.I’ve always been a people person or gathering people together and putting them in little areas for them to hang out in. So, when I got into my adulthood life, more 30s, leaving the telecom industry, I wanted to find something more invigorating, I guess one would say, and I tell people I got into this on a push from an ex-girlfriend and a cover letter. So that’s a really good punch line. A push from an ex-girlfriend, and a cover letter. Now, I don’t know about anyone listening but I usually don’t think of cover letters as leading to anything fun. It’s one of the BS processes, or parts of the job finding process so you have to tell me about how an ex-girlfriend push and a cover letter brought you too silent disco. Yeah, just like everything else in this world, you got to start from the bottom. I guess during that time in my life and it’s starting to get more look far off in the past, yeah, she was the one that encouraged me to or pushed me to be like,
Your emotional intelligence helps you separate your personal life from your work life, allowing you to concentrate on your tasks. This is called compartmentalization, which is a way our brain manages multiple conflicting perspectives at the same time. But, to what degree do you engage in compartmentalization? Or in other words, do you categorize things to make sense of them?Join me for a fascinating conversation with Mary Meduna-Gross, Ph.D., the founder of Blue Bamboo Leadership. With a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from Indiana State University, Mary is a seasoned expert in the field of leadership development. Mary shares her insights on how to overcome anxiety and make better decisions in less time, by improving relationships and breaking down internal barriers. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from one of the leading voices in leadership development!---Listen to the podcast here:Achieving Mental Resilience with Mary Meduna-Gross, Ph.D.Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote for the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One thing a lot of us tend to do is really compartmentalize our lives and this kind of goes back to some of the old school work cultures we used to have where this time of day, you’re working, this time of day, you’re taking care of this stuff, this time of day, you’re taking care of that, and we tend to do the same thing with our initiatives, with our mindset on everything. Your work is here, your business is here, your social life is here, your whatever else is important to you in your life is over there. However, unfortunately, or fortunately for a lot of people because it can actually expedite some of the improvements we want to make into all of our lives, they are very well connected. The idea of leave it at the door when you come into work, leave your personal life at the door, that is quite possibly one of the 20th century’s most unrealistic ideas. My guest today, Mary Meduna-Gross, has a business called Blue Bamboo Leadership where she advocates to her clients that we actually take care of ourselves in order to take care of our business as well as some other kind of personal initiative. ---Mary, welcome to the program. Thank you. It’s so great to be here. I’m really looking forward to this, particularly this topic about compartmentalizing. It’s something that I am personally well aware of my own habits to compartmentalize and it’s often a topic that comes up in my coaching with my clients. So what I want to do is get to the beginning of this. Where does this urge to compartmentalize our lives come from in your belief? Yeah. Oh, I love that question. Well, literally just before this call, a client and I were having this conversation. We were talking about it. And based on what that part and my own experience, I think that compartmentalizing is one way that we control our experience. I love systems. I just love it. Like if I could put everything on automation, I probably would. I think that is compartmentalizing to the 10th, maybe even 11th degree. But I think we do that as a way, again, to control what is happening. When our work life and our personal life and our relationships and Lord knows if we have kids or pets or anything else, like things just get muddied, and so by compartmentalizing, I get to say, “Okay, I’m gonna just focus on this right now and nothing else matters, and then when I get to my home life, I’m just focusing on this now and nothing else matters.” We literally can’t function that way. Yeah, but is there an advantage to having that level of focus? Because it is really hard to really get anything done when your mind is everywhere all at once. Yeah. I think it’s the middle way again. There’s the everything is automated and just happens on a routine, and the other side of that is nothing’s automated and we’re recreating everything every single day. We can’t live like that either. Yeah.
The COVID-19 pandemic may have subsided in some countries, but the "great resignation" trend is still causing major staffing and hiring difficulties for many companies. Matching employees with the right job can bring about numerous benefits, including increased motivation. What are the effective ways for businesses to connect with job candidates during the hiring process?Join me as I sit down with Metier Executive Management Co-Founder, Andrea Berkholtz. She is an expert in finding exceptional jobs for exceptional people. With her skills in interpersonal and social skills, Andrea has helped both clients and candidates find the perfect match for the position, salary, and company culture.Whether you are looking to build the perfect team for your company, this podcast has something to offer you. ---Listen to the podcast here:Hiring Process and Matchmaking in the Workplace with Andrea BerkholtzWelcome to Actions Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the most interesting things about our current time is that we live in a world that’s more connected than ever yet making those connections seems harder than ever before. The internet connected everyone to everything but anyone that’s tried to find some of the staples of life, a job, a romantic partner, even friendships and certain experiences, knows that sometimes this overload of different options out there has created a challenge for a lot of people, especially people who don’t know exactly what they want. My guest today, Andrea Berkholtz is an executive recruiter for a lot of small businesses and startups with her company, Metier Executive Management. ---Andrea, welcome to the program. Hi, how you doin’? Good, and I hope I said that right. As someone who speaks English and some Spanish, the French phrase, metier, can sometimes trip me up so hopefully I got it right. You know, you’re not alone in that. When we originally started our company, the idea was Metier is a French word that means the occupation that one was born to do or excels and it’s the perfect word for what we’re doing but it does sometimes trip people up a little with pronunciation. So, I have no problem with however it gets said, it gets said. Yeah, but metier is like an important aspect of your business, right? I mean, it’s like what you’re actually trying to do. We help build tech teams for startups. So, for us, it was a word that really translated what we do, which is we are looking to find the right perfect people who were born to do that role that these companies are looking for. What goes wrong in a lot of these recruiting processes with the record lengths of time and number of applications it takes people to find a job and still get people, in a lot of situations, not satisfied with their hires, a lot of turnovers, a lot of things that don’t work out? Sure. I mean, there’s a lot of ways that the process can go awry.There’s essentially three people involved in this decision making process, it’s myself, the candidate, and the client, and there has to be a perfect fit between the two to really make things work.So a lot of times, perhaps, if the client takes a bit too long to get back to me with feedback, then the candidates can sometimes feel ignored or they’re more in the hot of the moment, like they need the job now so they need answers now so, sometimes, that’s something that happens quite frequently is a lack of communication, I suppose, on expected timelines. So, we’re always trying to make that really clear for all parties when we start a project together, but that’s definitely one of the things that pops up. Yeah, so there’s like a timing mismatch. And one of the things as someone who’s done a good amount of job searching in my time, every company acts differently. One, you’ll hear from 15 minutes after the end of the interview was the most extreme example ...
The belief that young people have the potential to achieve great things is the foundation of empowering youth. By providing access to inspiring experiences and resources, as well as building their self-assurance, young people can accomplish anything they set their minds to.In this episode, MBSB Coaching CEO Kurt Ogbewele joins us to share his journey of empowering and inspiring young people to reach their full potential. As someone who has dedicated his career to providing guidance, mentorship, and skill-building opportunities to youth, Kurt has a wealth of knowledge and experience to share on how we can all support the next generation. Through all of his experience, Kurt created Mind, Body, Spirit is your Business (MBSB) to give youth resources that create opportunities. MBSB offers a wide range of services, including training in basketball, music, acting, teaching, and coaching, as well as access to professional speakers and basketball players who can inspire and mentor youth as they work to become experts in their chosen fields.Tune in to hear Kurt's inspiring story and learn practical strategies for how you can help young people and youth in your community. ---Listen to the podcast here:Empowering the Next Generation with Kurt OgbeweleWelcome to Actions Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today’s youth really need some encouragement. I was actually at a church a couple hours away in a small town community church this past Sunday and I heard the story a woman told me about how her teenage son had already lost seven of his friends to suicide, which is a really, really disturbing thing to hear and something that is even more disturbing when I think about this kind of desperation happening in many different places all across the country and all across the world. My guest today, Kurt Ogbewele, is a coach that is actually helping bring a lot of hope to our youth today with his business, MBSB Coaching. ---Kurt, welcome to the program. Steven, thank you so much, man, I appreciate you for having me. Thank you. Well, thank you because this is something that I obviously care about quite a bit, hoping that my upcoming screen time reduction initiative helps relieve some of the pressure and some of the forces that is driving some of our youth to some of these bad places in life away and I know you’re helping the youth get some kind of encouragement for the things that they’re interested in, the things that they want to pursue. And I know that starts from your own story. You have your own story where you needed some encouragement in your youth. Let’s begin with that. You had a pretty sizable family and some turmoil, from what I’ve read, but I’ll let you tell it yourself. Steven, thank you again for having me. Yeah, guys, my name is Kurt Ogbewele, from Brooklyn, New York. Huge family. Dad’s from Nigeria, my mother’s from Trinidad and Tobago. At a young age, we did experience the system. We’re broken up in foster homes and also group homes and reform schools and the whole nine yards and, from that standpoint on, I was able to live with my dad and my older brother. So that right there was a struggle for itself just because I didn’t have a relationship with my dad and living under his system of the household was a challenge because that was something I was not used to. And, for me, I picked up a passion for playing basketball probably around 9 and 10 years old. So my dad, being from his native country, which is Nigeria, basketball, any sports was not a priority, education was, and me being a generation growing up in America, sports can be a number one priority because it can allow you to be able to pay for college and so forth. So, moving forward, I was able to make it to graduation and, from that standpoint on, I knew that I wanted to continue to play basketball so I decided to move back home in Brooklyn, New York,
Have you ever found yourself in a difficult situation where you feel like you've hit a dead end and don't know how to move forward? Maybe something isn't going as planned or you're struggling to make progress. It can be confusing and overwhelming to navigate this kind of uncertainty.Join me as I sit down with Anjali Konojia, an expert in spiritual growth and personal development. In this episode, we explore the benefits of immersive spiritual experiences and how they can help us to reevaluate our lives and make positive changes. Anjali shares her unique approach, which combines travel, yoga, and spiritual practices, to guide individuals on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth. Whether you're seeking new perspectives or looking to break out of patterns of stagnation, this episode is sure to provide valuable insights and inspiration.---Listen to the podcast here:Unlocking Your Potential: Guide to Immersive Spiritual Transformation with Anjali KonojiaWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about connection because it’s ironic that, in the modern world, we have the most devices, the most means in which to connect, yet we’ve created a system where it is harder to connect with people, connect with others as well as connect with ourselves than it seems like it’s ever been before. My guest today, Ashton August, her business, YouAligned, helps you connect with yourself so you can better connect with others and it incorporates so many aspects of what we all need to do in this particular period of time to have a better image of ourselves and a better connection with who we are and become better aligned with what we want our lives to be. ---Anjali, welcome to the program. Namaste. Thank you for having me. For anyone that’s not familiar with everything about yoga, what does namaste, which I think is the first word anyone thinks about when they think about yoga, actually mean? Really good question. Namaste has taken a life of its own but namaste literally means “I bow down to the goodness or the divine in you” so just recognizing that we all have that same potential within us, recognizing that potential in the other person. So just a little bit of humbleness to show the life that is in front of us when we bow down and say namaste. When you say namaste, so that’s what anyone that’s heard this now can start thinking about whenever they hear or see the phrase namaste. Absolutely. Anjali, your program is called Travel to Transform. It’s in June 2023, 2023 is this year because it’s now January at this recording, and it’s like a two-and-a-half-week immersive experience. Well, when I was part of the university, the higher education system, I’ve taken trips with alumni, I’ve taken trips with students, graduate students, people doing research, and not just to India but actually one of the most fantastic in terms of fulfilling trips I’ve taken is to Greece, I took a group of premed students and we worked in the refugee camps, offering some of these yoga services. Yoga entails meditation and breathing exercises as well as well as physical postures. So a lot of these folks, of course, unfortunately, have ended up on the Greek Isles from many different places being displaced. Many, if not most, are experiencing a lot of mental health issues so that has been one of the most dependent highlights in terms of taking such an immersive trip, going to help people, contributing something positive towards their life. So what is Travel to Transform? So this time around, I want to take people to India, to the Himalayas. Why? And I think you and I have a little bit of this in common, we’re interested in health, right? Mental health, physical health. This becomes extremely important in this time when some kind of consider the pandemic to be kind of sort of over,
Self-care doesn't just involve sitting around doing nothing. Listening to one's own thoughts, absorbing, and analyzing all that occurred during the day are all parts of spending time with yourself. In a day with 24 hours, we spend about 15 of them awake after deducting the hours we sleep. How much of it are we spending with ourselves? And what value do we place on ourselves?In this week's episode, YouAligned Founder and Content Director Ashton August delves us into mindfulness; taking charge of your mental health and well-being. YouAligned is a resource to promote wellness of the mind, body, and spirit. Their mission is to provide insightful, motivating, and unique content on a wide range of topics such as wellness, spirituality, yoga philosophy, and more.Listen to this podcast and develop a more positive mindset so you can truly thrive.---Listen to the podcast here:Mindfulness: How to Connect with Yourself and to Others with Ashton AugustWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about connection because it’s ironic that, in the modern world, we have the most devices, the most means in which to connect, yet we’ve created a system where it is harder to connect with people, connect with others as well as connect with ourselves than it seems like it’s ever been before. My guest today, Ashton August, her business, YouAligned, helps you connect with yourself so you can better connect with others and it incorporates so many aspects of what we all need to do in this particular period of time to have a better image of ourselves and a better connection with who we are and become better aligned with what we want our lives to be. ---Ashton, welcome to the program. Hello, thank you so much for having me, Stephen. I’ve been looking forward to our conversation today. I always love connecting people with this health and wellness sector because it is such an important focus right now, especially because I believe we are in a mental health crisis society wide right now and that we need any of these tools that we can get in order to just become better connected and better accepting of ourselves. Well said and I am in full agreement with you. As a mental wellness advocate, I cannot emphasize enough how important our self-care as a means for supporting our mental health is and, you said it, unfortunately, it’s so true that, I agree, we are in a state of mental health crisis. So, currently, right now, and we’re recording at the end of 2022, beginning of Sagittarius season, which we’ll probably get into later, me being a Sagittarius myself, but currently at the end of 2022, what is the main thing keeping people from being mentally well, being aligned with themselves? I think that we are still rubbing up against the problem that we’ve had as a society for quite some time, which is this glorification of the hustle mentality. So even though we’re getting more and more aware of this being the state that we’re in and this perhaps being not optimal for our health, we are not really seeing a collective change yet. So I love that the awareness is there, like people like us are having these conversations and are dedicated to making this change, but I would say that at the end of 2022, society as a whole is still really stuck in “Go, go, go, do, do, do, get as much done,” and you and I both know that when we’re in the state of mind, I’m sure all of you tuning in know, when we are frenzied like that, it’s very, very hard to take a step back, take a deep breath, get present, and find that space for ourselves. For sure, and one of the challenges that I’ve personally encountered is this feeling of guilt, this feeling of I should be doing something. What do you think is the antidote to that? Because there’s going to be a day when you’re just off, that’s part of the cycle of life,
The sole focus on experience and professional skills is no longer the typical approach when it comes to how employers evaluate job candidates with technology. The change to using skill-based talent assessment tools is what businesses are after for. It's not a question of if technology is changing the employment environment anymore; rather, it's a question of how. What does the significant change in the hiring procedure imply for prospective developers and staffing industries?In this week’s episode, Insquad Co-Founder and CEO Alex Svinov tackles us with his platform that helps from small to large tech business to save time on finding developers, software engineers, and programmers. Insquad is an IT services company with a focus on offering excellent remote software developers from all over the world to United States and Europe companies. Insquad runs coding exercises and coding tests to prove their skills which is vital in hiring a developer. If you are looking to hire remote software-developers, listen to this podcast on Actions-Antidote.---Listen to the podcast here:How Tech Is Changing the Hiring Process in 2022 and Beyond with Alex SvinovWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. We all know the workforce is changing and some of the concepts around hiring, retaining, and developing a good talent team is also changing quite a bit and one frustration that I think a lot of people have experienced over the past several years, in particular, even though that may be changing a bit in more recent times, is the challenge that often comes with trying to find good development talent. As you know, nearly every business, nearly every company, anyone that’s trying to do anything, needs to have a functioning website, needs to have some kind of a web presence, and a lot of other businesses are increasingly using data, data analytics, artificial intelligence, everything that comes from these development teams so development has become a really highly sought after talent base, especially senior developers, developers with certain expert level expertise, experience that can really jump in and solve your problem. My guest today, Alex Svinov, has a platform that helps small- to medium-sized businesses from startup to the mid-sized find remote senior development talent, something that I think we can all appreciate being a little bit easier. ---Alex, welcome to the program. Hey, Stephen, thanks for inviting me, great to be here. Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining. And let’s start out with what goes on, I think a lot of people are familiar with but maybe some aren’t, the challenge in finding development talent, whether it be a person to just build and maintain your website or a several-member team that has certain areas of expertise, like certain programming languages or domain expertise. Yeah, I think the challenge in finding a great developer or building development team primarily lies in the part of evaluating and finding the right talents for your team, because everybody who’s been doing software development knows that there are no two identical developers out there. Even though they may be having the same stack, having the same experience, they will still be different type of person, actually different type of code writing pattern, and so on and so forth, and I guess the key problem there is that, to be successful in each and every team, you need a different type of developer. Some teams need somebody who’s doing a lot of coding, some of them do somebody who is very good in architecture, and so on and so forth. And then, essentially, what ends up with technical teams spending a lot of time interviewing candidates just to find the right person. This is what essentially we at Insquad are doing is that we’re trying to shorten this period so that the technical team spend less time interviewing candidates. We do that before them.
Even in a small firm or for yourself, a financial plan is very important. It's a road map, a guideline, and a reminder of what you want to accomplish.. But in this contemporary time, what is the optimal way to maximize money and maximize your life ?In this week’s episode, Ascent Personal Finance Founder Zechariah Schaefer joins us to discuss the ever-changing financial industry for Gen Z and Millennials, crypto, retirement, and much more. Zechariah Schaefer is an Advice-Only Financial Planner for Gen Z & Millennial Crypto Investors & STEM/Healthcare Professionals. He founded Ascent Personal Finance to empower young people to build financial freedom. Ascent Personal Finance empowers young people to reach their financial goals by helping them with their crypto investing, taxes, budget/credit, starting businesses, and more. Zechariah Schaefer ensures to have a methodical financial plan that is updated regularly for a successful life ahead. If you're interested in building your holistic financial plan, listen to this podcast on Actions Antidote!---Listen to the podcast here:Financial Planning May Look Different for Gen Z and Millennials with Zechariah SchaeferWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you again a little bit about our finances. Finances, not always everyone’s favorite topic to talk about because we’re really talking more about our passions, but finance, first of all, can be a source of passion for some people and also can be a source of power for people if people are able to handle their finances properly. My guest today, Zechariah Schaefer, is in the business of helping the younger generation of people handle finances. As you know, there are generational differences and different groups of people like to handle things differently and Zechariah has his own unique formula of not only helping the younger generation handle their finances but also bringing the service to people who are usually not quite served as often by the financial planning community. ---Zechariah, welcome to the program. Yeah, thank you, Stephen. It’s an honor to be here. So, Zechariah, tell me a little bit about your financial planning services. Yeah. So what I do is I run Ascent and Ascent is a registered investment advisory firm with a sister tax prep firm, literally, it’s just a sister firm for legal purposes and what we do is we help Gen Z and millennial really high performers to manage their money well, to manage the life resources well, to pay less taxes, still pay their fair share but not leave the IRS a tip, and then to invest wisely. And really our specialty is working with crypto investors and with tech professionals, we have equity compensation and the reason for that is simply I’ve been in the crypto space for almost a decade and before I ventured into finance, I was well on the path to becoming either a dev or working in cybersecurity, which I’m still very passionate about those spaces, they’re really cool. Yeah. So what makes someone a high performer? That’s how you phrased it, right? Yeah, so what are you looking for in a client? What makes someone that? Yeah, so the people who I work with, which we’ll get into this later in the episode I’m sure, but my passion really is helping people who can’t yet get advice. Gen Z and Millennial high performers, people who are really high income earners, usually $200,000 and up a year. They, surprisingly, are actually part of a group who can’t get advice right now because the traditional financial planning models are either focused on managing investments or selling products. And so if you’re a 25-year-old with a $300,000 total comp package from Meta and you also have a whole bunch of crypto, if you go to a traditional financial advisor’s office, what they’re going to tell you, if they’re one of the really high quality firms is what they’ll most...
A cluttered environment has been shown to deplete energy and have a detrimental impact on our overall mood and self-image. However, numerous interior design techniques and approaches have been found to relieve stress levels. But, what’s more to it? How do the elements of interior design improve our health? Studio Institute Denver Founder and Professor MaDonna Collingwood explores how interior design impacts our physical, and mental health and well-being. Studio Institute Denver offers accelerated programs in interior design and construction management. She helps individuals who are pursuing a career change while still working to keep daily expenses. Professor MaDonna Collingwood teaches students everything they need to know to begin a career in the building trades without the need for expensive college tuition. To know more about what they do, listen to this podcast on Actions Antidote. ---Listen to the podcast here:Interior Design and Its Impact On Our Well-Being with Prof. MaDonna CollingwoodWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I’d like to once again talk to you about career change. Now, a lot of people find themselves in a place in life where they need to make some sort of a career change because whatever you’re doing right now isn’t working, and one of the prospects that a lot of people run into is this idea that, to make a new career, you have to go back to school and get a whole new degree, which is not only really time consuming but also consuming a lot of money. And I think one of the best phrases I’ve heard from people looking at that option and says, “Okay, that’s great. Now, who’s gonna pay my mortgage? Who’s gonna pay my rent during this whole four-year period when I’m going back to school and pursuing something completely different?” Today, my guest is Professor MaDonna Collingwood and she started an organization called the Studio Institute Denver and what makes this one a little bit different than the ones that I had previously engaged with is it’s not tech focused, it actually helps people who want to move away from technology and build a career in the trades. ---Professor MaDonna, welcome to the program. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining today. Now, let’s start off by telling my audience a little something about the Studio Institute Denver. What is it all about and how does the programming work? It’s a 6- to 12-month accelerated trade school. I have two programs, one in interior design and one in construction management. We do mostly night classes hybrid so some are online, some are in person, some are both, and then we do a little bit of daytime on Fridays. So, most of my students work full time and then they go to class at night. So your core audience, your core crowd are people who are pursuing a career change while still working full time and so they don’t have to really deal with some of those issues of, “How am I gonna keep the lights on? How am I gonna pay my rent?” and stuff? Right, and I record every class and every lecture and then I send out a virtual link as well so they can always join and I’ll share my screen and they can watch the whole class from home so if they have to work late or they can’t make it in for whatever reason, they can still attend. You probably have a lot of people who have interesting schedules that can be variant. Do you end up having a lot of students who also have childcare duties, like taking care of kids and stuff like that, that can make it even more challenging to make any kind of a career change? I do. It’s a trade school so the ages of my students really varies a lot. It goes from 18 to like mid 50s right now. Yeah, a few of my students are parents so they’ve got to pick their kids up from school and everything so they can only attend at certain times or on certain days. Not bad.
In this day and age of technological breakthroughs, everyone would agree that it has its impact. One of the activities that people who go through this detox can engage in is exploring the great outdoors like hiking, mountain climbing, or trekking. But, what are the other things that these activities bring into the community?Oso Adventure Meals Co-Founder Felipe Vieyra delves into bringing people from different colors together through going outdoor activities and adventures complemented with delicious adventure meals.Their mission is to provide outdoor food and beverage with uniquely delicious dehydrated meals They are actively working to create an outdoor culture in which BIPOC feels included, safe, and engaged. As a Black and Latino-owned business, Oso Adventure Meals is dedicated to creating a more just, equitable, and sustainable America.To learn more about what they do, listen to this podcast on Actions Antidote!---Listen to the podcast here:Bringing the Community Together Through Outdoor Adventures with Felipe VieyraWelcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, we're going to talk about the intersection of culture, adventure, and close encounters with wildlife with Oso Adventure Meals founder, Felipe Vierya. ---Felipe, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me, Stephen. Really excited to dive into this conversation. Definitely. Now, these are some very interesting topics and one thing that I love to always identify out here in this podcast is ways to think outside the box and ways to think about things a little bit differently. And so, you were on a backpacking trip of sorts when you came up with the idea for Oso Adventure Meals. That's right. That's right. It was two years ago, right outside of Leadville, Colorado, and I had gotten into backpacking so it wasn’t my first time out in the backcountry but it was the first time for one of my best friends, he had never gone backpacking but he loved the outdoors. We decided to go backpacking and we did Jasper Lake Trail, I believe it's called, and so it was super fun. It was definitely a journey that set us up for an even longer journey of entrepreneurship and food and culture and all the things that you named. Yeah, for sure, and so most people go on backpacking trips, especially, it's your first time, it sounds like it wasn't your first time but it was your friend's first time and you're just really focused on some of the basic necessities of life that we often take for granted, like you have to pump the water to get fresh water, you have to set up the tent in every spot to get your shelter and make sure that you get in before the thunderstorms happen, depending on what time of year it is. At the time, though, you were coming up with ideas for a whole new business. It's funny, though, because it was few mishaps. First off, it was like later in the summer too so it was a little — or in the fall, I mean. It was a little like it was a bit of a gamble getting out there and we also started on the trail late, we ended up going to Leadville and stopping for a beer, had — Oh, wow. I forgot the brewery and we ended up stopping for beer and stayed there a little too long and so we got on the trail a little late. It was also a very steep trail. At some point, I remember grabbing my headlamp and my extra one, me putting one on and handing the other one to my friend because we were hiking in the middle of the night. Oh, wow. Yeah, trying to make it to the top and it was his first time so he was like a little anxious. He's like, “Oh, there's gonna be a mountain lion right around the corner. This is never ending,” and so it was definitely an adventurous experience, but I feel like that's what life is about. We finally make it to the top, we pitch our tents, and we're both exhausted and hungry.
The human mind is the source of our thinking. Our ideas, emotions, and behaviors are all interconnected. Thus, influencing how we feel and act. Negative thinking, on the other hand, can contribute to issues such as social anxiety, harmful habits, and stress. So, is it possible to adjust our mindset in order to overcome difficulties and accomplish more in life?In this week’s episode, Matthew Brownstein delves into the different modalities of hypnotherapy, the philosophy of mind, and how it can help to adopt the right mindset to live life happily. Anahat Education Group, Inc. CEO and Founder Matthew Brownstein aim to nurture individual and group success by providing leadership, vision, and purpose for all of our interpersonal relations. Matthew has dedicated his life to offering wisdom and truths that relieve suffering while promoting health and enlightenment.Want to learn more about hypnotherapy? Listen to this podcast of Actions Antidote.---Listen to the podcast here:The Art of Hypnotherapy and How The Mind Works with Matthew Brownstein Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I'd like to have with you a more specific discussion around the topic of mindset. Most of my interviews are about people who pursue their own paths, go after their passions, and hoping that by being inspired by those stories, you would adopt more of the mindset that, “I can, I will, I should, I am going to be the one to pursue the path that I really want to.” Today, my guest, Matthew Brownstein, is someone who actually focuses on helping people adopt the right mindset. He is the CEO and founder of the Anahat Education Group. ---Matthew, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me here, Stephen. This podcast is all about mindset and you've spent a lot of your life studying the human mind and how we can go about adopting the right mindset. Yep, my whole thing is mindset. That's why I felt we'd be a good fit. My background is meditation, spirituality, philosophy, hypnotherapy, neuro-linguistic programming. Yep, all of those modalities just point to the mind and how important the mind is in helping us to live our very best lives. Now, when it comes to those different modalities that you're talking about, whether it be your spiritual background, your philosophical background, meditation, mindfulness, broader practice around it, or even the neuro-linguistic programming or essentially how we're talking to ourselves, do these all go in tandems or do you tend to adapt it more along the lines of which one is going to resonate with this specific person, maybe someone's a more spiritual person, another person is more into the intellectual philosophy, maybe another person's more into how you train your mind? Yeah, I think they all go in tandem, the way that a plumber would walk in with every tool, or at least in the truck there's every tool, but you have to cater, whether, so even for myself, it's not like every time I go into meditation or do hypnosis, I'm using all of those modalities but, generally, the work I do is client centered so I would just say, “What are your goals?” or, “Where are you blocked?” like where's the issue, where's the goal, and then we just pick the best modalities to help to move towards that, and being client-centered work, I will often present the modalities that I think would be best, like, well, we could use hypnotic programming for this, maybe we could do hypnotic regression for this, maybe you just need to learn some self-help techniques. Once I present what I think could be the best options, I love it when the other person, whether it's a client or whomever, actually picks the modality and then they're that much more empowered to realize it's their journey, not me, I'm just the facilitator. I see, and so does it often happen that your client will then either try something and have...
For the past years, covid pandemic has hit us. Making almost all of us isolated in our home. A lot has experienced stress, sadness, loneliness, and mental health disorders including anxiety and depression. How can people help the community at the same time improving mental wellness?
In this week’s episode, Justin Kruger joins us to share the goodness of helping people in need, homeless individuals, foster youth and seniors, and especially to people living with a mental health challenge.
Project Helping Founder and CEO Justin Kruger, helping others having a positive impact on the community that creates happiness within it. Their goal is to improve mental health by providing accessible experiences that foster meaning and connection. Making impactful organization to leverage the mental wellness benefits of volunteering both on you and your community.
To find more of what they do, listen to this episode!
Listen to the podcast here:
Improving Mental Wellness Through Helping the Community with Justin Kruger
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, we’re about to try a little bit different of a format for this episode. Usually, I just come on and interview a guest and my guest today is Justin Kruger, who started the Kynd Kit program, which we’ll be talking about as well today, but I also brought on a couple other guests, Hallie Atencio and Phillip Hill, who are coordinating alongside myself an event next month to actually build some of these Kynd Kits to build a little community through this program. As you know, both mental health and community building are very important, very near and dear to my heart topic as where we are in culture today.
Welcome to the program. How’s everybody tonight?
Justin: Good. Thank you for having us.
Hallie: Yes, thank you so much.
Phil: I’m doing great. Thanks for having us.
Fantastic. Well, Justin, let’s start with you. First, I like to orient my audience here. Tell us a little bit about these Kynd Kits. What are Kynd Kits all about and what do people do when they do a Kynd Kit?
Justin: Sure. So, the Kynd Kits are a program of Project Helping, our 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and we developed the kits about six years ago now, not in response to COVID but in response to the challenge of people are busy, how do we fit volunteerism into their lives, so we developed kits to really be a volunteer project in a box that has 100 percent of the materials you need in it to do something good for someone else. We now have almost 40 different projects that you can do in a box and so there’s a lot to choose from. One example that’s really popular right now is we have a kit where you make sight word flashcards and a reading game for first-grade students. So you open the kit and it has everything you need, you make about 75 flashcards. I have kids so I know what sight words are but for those of you that don’t, they’re words that first graders have to have memorized by sight before they move on from first grade. A lot of kids, if they don’t get to that point, they fall behind in their reading. So we partnered with local schools and we partnered with the Barbara Bush Foundation and we built this kit to have those sight words on them but also you make this little like paper bag monster reading game so when they get a word right, they feed it into the paper bag and that’s how they practice. So that’s one example of almost, like I said, 40 different projects.
So when I think about these projects, I oftentimes think about certain family activities, drawing turkeys at Thanksgiving or making Easter eggs at Easter. Is it a similar arts and crafts type of project?
Justin: Some of them are, some of them are definitely not. Because there’s so many projects, we want it to be a meaningful experience for the kit builder, that meaningful experience is what’s good for your mental wellb...
Sexual exploitation is becoming a well-known issue. Rape and sexual assault cases in our society are rising at an alarming rate, and to combat such crimes, we must encourage people to increase awareness and concern, particularly among women. What will it take to end exploitation in the sex industry?
In this week's episode of Action Antidote, Rev. Bonnie Gatchell joins us to enlighten us and provide hope to those women trapped in the snares of exploitation, as well as to raise awareness of the issue. Rev. Bonnie Gatchell is the Director and Co-Founder of Route One Ministry, a ministry that serves women who have been sexually abused by the sex industry.
Her mission is to provide the church with a theological framework as well as practical means to better serve, receive, and care for women who have experienced domestic abuse, sexual exploitation, and gender-based violence in all of its forms.
Tune in to this episode to find more!
Listen to the podcast here:
Preventing and Responding to Sexual Exploitation, Violence, and Harassment with Rev. Bonnie Gatchell Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the problems that keeps a lot of people settling for less and less than what they really want and really deserve out of life is this feeling of disempowerment, and disempowerment can come in so many different forms we can identify it in our own lives and we can identify in others. My guest today, Bonnie Gatchell, has found a way to not only empower herself to solve some of our biggest problems but also empower some others that are really, really in need, really in a place of some genuine disempowerment with her organization, Route One Ministry.
Bonnie, welcome to the program.
Thank you so much, Stephen. I appreciate you having me.
Yeah, I really appreciate you coming on. So, Route One Ministries, you help women who were tricked into the sex industry. Can you please explain to us, first of all, how it is that this happens to the people that it ends up happening to?
That’s a great question and I even like the wording that you used with “tricks,” kind of the quotes around it. So I think the misunderstanding about women who are working in the sex industry, maybe strip clubs or in prostitution, I think particularly around strip clubs and then maybe even pornography is this belief that they choose to be there or there’s a lot of freedom in being there, that they are sufficiently financially backed up by being there, supplying for, but the truth is, the average age of entry here in the United States is 12 years old.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. I think that’s a great response that you said, “Oh, wow,” and I think a lot of people don’t realize that. I think the other thing for Route One, when we think about women being sexually exploited, I think no little girl wants to be a stripper when she grows up so if we think from that premise, no little girl wants to be a stripper when she grows up or a woman in prostitution, then we have to ask the question what has brought this woman here, and there’s a lot of different reasons for each woman but the biggest driving factor is some source of poverty. Maybe it’s financial poverty or emotional poverty or spiritual poverty, I think a lack of education, so some kind of brokenness that has happened in their life, trauma that has happened in their life that has brought them to a place of being exploited. And I think, directly, some women have even been manipulated through force, fraud, or coercion, and then forced to work in the strip clubs and they’re given a fake name and a fake identity and fake background story for the sake of their clients and to protect the men and women who are essentially pimping them out and trafficking them.
So, you said the average age of entry is 12 years old. What is a genuine story or a typical story of a 12-year-old? Because, I don’t know,
At some point in life, we are hindered from seeing what we desire. Perhaps a lack of self-confidence and motivation drives us to be lost in the path. Nevertheless, how can we overcome these barriers through guidance and predictive science?
On this week's episode of Actions Antidote, we talk to Bryan Dik, Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer of jobZology. Bryan Dik shares his knowledge and the science behind finding the meaning and purpose of workplace worth for life. Bryan Dik is a vocational psychologist and professor of psychology. He focuses on career pathways and guidance among students and for everyone. He has published four books including Redeeming Work and Make Your Job a Calling. Bryan Dik is the co-founder and Chief Science Officer of jobZology which helps people discern their calling and live with purpose.
Want help in finding your own calling? Do you want one? Listen to this episode to find more!
Listen to the podcast here:
Finding Your Calling and Purpose of Work In Your Life with Bryan Dik Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about something that I really wish that I had when I was younger, when I was coming out of college and considering careers, which is a product that really helps us examine who we are, what really is going to make us satisfied and what’s going to make a satisfying day to day life, because, like many people in my general age range, a lot of us went to college and picked something that we’re interested in, picked something that maybe we’re good at in school but didn’t really think about this day to day and what really drives satisfaction with work, which is something that ends up being probably the first or second biggest use of time during adulthood behind sleeping and maybe something else. My guest today, Bryan Dik, is a professor of psychology at Colorado State University as well as the co-founder of a product called jobZology, which is a product that helps a lot of outgoing college students as well as other career change people examine what they really want to do and find a career path that’s going to be way more fulfilling.
Bryan, welcome to the program.
Thank you so much for having me, Stephen. It’s a joy to be with you.
I’m always glad when people are happy to be discussing their pursuits with me on this podcast because it’s such a positive community of people in a way just talking about what we’re doing and I say this because at the time of recording, we’re in the middle of Denver Startup Week, which is another area where you see a lot of people just talking about their pursuits, talking about what really drives them and so, Bryan, what drove you to start jobZology? What were you observing that made you decide that this was worth your time, your effort, your sweat, everything else that people say?
A little context. I’m a vocational psychologist and one of my roles at the university is training our PhD students in counseling psychology to facilitate career counseling. A lot of magic happens in a career counseling relationship, it’s very powerful. But it’s also not always accessible for lots of people. And so one of the motivations behind starting jobZology was thinking about ways to democratize the career assessment and counseling process so that, in a very efficient way, a much broader array of people can experience the kind of support that they might get in career counseling and have access to the information about what makes them unique and how the ways that they’re unique intersect with opportunities and needs in the world of work so that they can make informed decisions about their lives.
And so what prevents people from getting access to the resources they need to really dig deep inside themselves and figure out what’s going to drive them to a satisfying day-to-day life?
Yeah, well, I think lots of things.
For anyone who wants to kick-start their business or reach new audiences with your message, how do you craft articles that top publications would actually want to buy?
In this episode of Action Antidote, Erica Holthausen will walk us through the process of writing, why it's important, and how it compares to other types of writing. Erica Holthausen is the founder of Catchline Communications, a consultancy agency that helps clients get published in esteemed publications. Her clients have by-lines in some of the most prestigious industry trade journals and business magazines, including Inc., Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Thrive Global, and EHS Today.
Listen to the podcast to find out more!
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Writing Articles for Publications and Appropriate Publisher with Erika Holthausen Welcome to Actions Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the things that stops a lot of us in our pursuits is when we see what someone else is doing to manage their pursuits, and we can't picture doing it ourselves. This can be especially true with the mission of marketing or getting ourselves noticed. Now, this is true whether your pursuit is to start your own business and get it to succeed, or whether your objective is to find the right job, the right position, the right role with a company.
My guest today, Erica Holthausen, is the Founder and Leader of Catchline Communications. What she does is, she helps people get their articles published in many different publications, as one of the possible many mechanisms that we have out there to get ourselves noticed. It doesn't have to be a social media blitz campaign. It doesn't have to be the standard methods that you always think about when you think about marketing. Because the mission is just to get yourself noticed, regardless of what your pursuit is.
Erica, welcome to the program.
Thank you so much, Steven. It's great to be here.
Oh, thank you so much for hopping on Actions Antidotes. Let's begin. Tell me a little bit about Catchline Communications. Because you help people not only get their publications out there, but also determine what's the right publication to reach their audience.
Yeah, that's a big part of what I do. It's easy to say I know this publication, like Harvard Business Review, or Inc, or Forbes. I want to be published there. But before you jump in front of all of the other steps, knowing what your business goals are, like why do you want to be published anywhere? Why do you want to write articles for publication? What are you hoping it will do for your business? How do you want to use these? What is the business purpose that underlies all of this?
The more you understand why you want to do this and what your goals are for writing for publications, the easier it becomes to — I call it creating filters.
You use those goals as filters to say, "Okay, this is what I want to do. These publications will help me get there. These won't."
What types of pursuits? What types of businesses and objectives are the types that people should be thinking about writing an article for publication, as opposed to some of the more, I would say, "traditional marketing techniques" that we have now with the social media blitz campaign or everything else?
So, the obvious easy ones are professional services businesses. So, if you're a consultant, if you're a business coach, if you are anything that does professional services, those are easy, easy fits into these publications. Less obvious, but equally true are, if your industry has an association or has a trade journal, that's an opportunity to write for them. Because other people in your same industry are always looking for smart, actionable advice that is going to allow them to do what they do better. So, if you're in the supply chain world, there are a ton of publications regarding supply chain.
One of the reasons you might suffer from a lack of creativity boils down to time. You have become so busy, so there's no time for your creativity. But, what would life look like if you value your time as much as you value other things?
In this week's podcast, join us as we welcome our guest, Katie Burkhart. She is an entrepreneur, author, and keynote speaker. Katie has founded several companies and is currently the CEO of MatterLogic, where she and her team support leaders and organizations clearly define what it means to be a purpose-driven business. She advises business owners on how to align their time with their goals and run a purpose-driven company. Listen in for ideas on how to maximize your time and become more successful in all areas of life.
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Creative Thinking and The Value of Time in Business with Katie Burkhart Welcome to Actions Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One thing that we all need to try to do to achieve the life that we want, no matter what form that takes, focus on what really matters. We live in a world full of distractions, there are distractions everywhere, and we all now have a portable distraction in our phones, purses, wherever we put our mobile phones ready to distract us at any one given point in time and, sometimes, the difference between someone that truly succeeds at achieving what they set out to achieve, achieving the life they really want, and someone that doesn’t quite get there is how often we get distracted and how long we allow ourselves to get distracted for. These distractions can come in, of course, many different forms and my guest today, Katie Burkhart, is all about helping businesses focus on the things that really matter in order to achieve their mission. She is the mastermind behind a system called MatterLogic which she implements through her organization, MatterPulse.
Katie, welcome to the program today.
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Definitely. So, first of all, MatterLogic is the system you implemented. What did you view in the world that made you decide that this system was something that businesses needed to help them really focus on what matters?
That’s a great question. So, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a number of extremely passionate leaders who are excited about their big idea and how they’re going to improve or otherwise change the world, but I’ve also watched those same leaders struggle to pull themselves in one to many directions at any given time and, as a result, really stunt their growth and their ability to do what it is that they set out to do. In particular, I think about conversations with people where it’s like, “Well, this trend is here. We should be pursuing that,” or whatever and, all of a sudden, whether it’s between more ideas and things that they could do, because I find people with big ideas tend to attract ideas naturally, or through other things that are pulling their attention away from what it is they set out to do is that we need to go about fixing this and, inherently, gravitated towards the purpose of the model. But what I found in that process was that it wasn’t overly well defined. I ended up thinking, well, the issue is really that people don’t have the right data, they don’t have the right information, we should be trying to build technology to support that. But quickly, it was, actually, we don’t really even have a good definition for what it means to run a purpose-driven business, really to reap the benefits from it. Most people look at it as, “Oh, you did something impactful and it’s inspiring,” and I’m like, well, okay, but once you have the statement, and we’ll debate whether that’s the right definition later, what does that mean for how you run your business every day and what does that mean in benefit for how you grow your business?
And as you said, focus,
Interested in the cuisine of Ghana? Internationally, West African cuisine is popular. But chances are you don't know or have never tried any of it before. Broaden your knowledge and learn about authentic Ghanaian cuisines and their culture.
In this episode of Action Antidote, we spoke to Joanna Stein, a private chef and event planner about how she immersed herself in new west African cuisine flavors. Joanna is very passionate about cooking and helps their family business in catering services. She is dedicated to having everyone get a taste of Joanna’s kitchen authentic West African Food, Ghana.
Whether you're a wanderlust or you're just someone who just wants a mental vacation, Actions Antidote will take you on a trip. Listen to this episode and get a glimpse into the country’s food culture.
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Authentic Ghanaian Cuisine and Cultural Practices with Joanna Stein Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Those of you who’ve been listening to my podcast, especially the last few episodes, know that I’m really interested in travel, but if you’re really open to travel and travel experiences, you realize that travel is actually a two-way street. Sometimes we get up, we go out, we get in our car, on a train, on a plane and we go visit another place, but sometimes people and experiences from other places come to where we are and that’s something that has happened to me quite a bit this summer, including only a few blocks from my home where food available from my guest today, Joanna, the founder of Joanna’s Kitchen, is available at my local grocery store.
Joanna, welcome to the program.
Hello there. Thank you so much for having me.
Definitely. So, Joanna, you make food from your original homeland of Ghana and I’m sure that there are a lot of people listening to this podcast who have never had Ghanaian food or never even had West African food and so what I’m wondering is what can people expect when they try it and what should people be thinking about going into the experience?
So, Ghanaian food is very flavorful, it’s full of spice. I do definitely try to make it more of a medium mild so everybody is able to enjoy it but I also do have gluten-free option, I have vegan option, and then meat option. I try to make it so that everybody, regardless of your dietary restriction, you’re able to enjoy the cuisines, a little bit of everybody. So it’s just full of flavor. I’ve had a lot of clients from all parts of the world tell me that it kind of reminds them of like their grandma’s cooking or their back home cooking so it definitely feels good to be able to connect with people from all over and not just Ghanaian people.
When you talk about the spices, are you talking about being like heavily spiced, and if someone were to want the full authentic Ghanaian experience, would this most likely be a level of spice that overwhelms the average American here in Colorado or anywhere else?
Yes, I would definitely say the average Ghanaian is more of a high to an extra high so it’s more peppery and more spicy and, for me, my experience is just for you just to try our cuisine. So I definitely have the spice there but my goal is more of the flavor. And so like our bell peppers, we use lemongrass, I use a little bit from every cuisine so we use like curry, we use nutmeg, and so I feel like it’s amazing to be able to like see the same ingredients that we use here make the same dishes and so that’s why I also offer cooking classes because I love to be able to show people that you can make this dish, like it’s not unique ingredients that I’m getting sort of from Ghana, like there is certain things like palm oil but most dishes you are able to create yourself as well.
Oh, wow. Yeah, because your business is not just about the food, it’s about the catering and the cooking classes.
Are you at a crossroads in your life and don't seem to be making progress toward your goals? We all know that we should give our all and aim for excellence in all that we do, but what happens when this desire for success becomes toxic? Everyday, we look forward to something productive, successful and even joyful. However, not everything will go the way we wanted and that could lead to self-doubt and languish. As a person, we also make mistakes leading to unfortunate events. Fortunately, there’s an antidote.
Our guest for today is Audrey Holst. She is a recovering perfectionist who coaches audacious top achievers on how to stop micromanaging their lives with perfectionism. Audrey helps people struggling with the fear of failure and mistakes. Join us as we break down what’s preventing you from success and how you can focus on your progress. Stay tuned to learn more!
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Ditch Perfectionism, Strive For Progress with Audrey Holst Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you a bit about perfectionism and this is something that I’ve observed prevent a lot of people from following their dreams. You’re waiting for the exact right time, waiting for the exact right setup, the exact right thing or excessive amounts of research and perfected your product, you’ve crossed every t, dotted every i, as they say, and you’ve accounted for every possible scenario and I can’t stress to you enough how many times I’ve seen this really get in the way of people’s dreams. My guest today, Audrey Holst, is the founder of Fortitude & Flow and she specializes in helping people overcome this tendency toward perfectionism which is so prevalent in our culture today.
Audrey, welcome to the program.
Thanks so much for having me. I can’t wait for this conversation.
Definitely, Audrey. Now, I want to start off with the foundations. What are the origins of perfectionism? What makes someone really feel like they need to have every last little thing perfect before launching anything or before sharing anything with the world?
Yeah. So I think the first thing to understand about perfectionism and perfectionists is that nobody wakes up at age 30 and says, “You know what, that perfectionism thing, I haven’t tried that yet. I’m gonna try that on for size,” and then they just automatically all of a sudden start with these perfectionist tendencies. That is just not anybody’s story. So I did over 60 hours of interviews with perfectionists, people who self-identified with perfectionists, and every single one of them, I asked them questions, I had them tell me their stories, and every single one of them had origins in their youngest years. They could think back when they were a kid in their household, in school where perfectionism had its beginnings and then how other places in their life either helped to stoke the fires of perfectionism or actually helped them work through it.
So, how I look at perfectionism is it’s a survival mechanism, which is why perfectionism tends to flare up in times of stress.Click To Tweet
When people get stressed out, when people are in new situations, that’s when they tend to go towards that tendency more, which is one of those things that can be really difficult for people that are maybe entrepreneurs or in spaces that require a lot of agility and being uncertain because it really flares up those perfectionist tendencies and it can be a huge issue.
Wow. So you’re saying most of it begins at childhood and then, at some point in life, the people around you either reinforce it or send you in the opposite direction. Have you heard a lot of good stories about people being sent in the opposite direction, saying, “Okay, I grew up perfectionist,” and maybe had a perfectionist family, or I think our education system with our pass/fail grades reinforces perfectionism,
Navigating to the world of business is quite ambiguous. Not everyone has fully understood what it takes to grow the business and understand how intellectual property works. For many businesses, intellectual property secures more than just concepts or ideas; it also insures actual business assets, prevents unauthorized use of inventions, creations, and ideas, and grants one or more inventors exclusive rights.
Erin Austin, a consultant and a lawyer, will indulge us how the concept of intellectual property works and why it is important to understand it fully. She helps entrepreneurs to grow their business. Let's dive in, and listen to her today!
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Intellectual Property Rights, Code and Implementations with Erin Austin Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, we’re going to talk about intellectual property. It’s a topic I think that a lot of people either overlook or don’t completely understand because it is a bit nebulous. Not everyone really understands when you come up with an idea or when you come up with a process, a product, even a logo or a company name, what it means to have that intellectual property, how that resonates with your business, and what you need to do to protect that for your business to operate properly. My guest today is all about intellectual property, Erin Austin. Her business is called Think Beyond IP and she helps anyone looking to grow their business to understand and navigate the world of intellectual property. And she also has a podcast called Hourly to Exit.
Erin, welcome to the program.
Thank you so much. I’m very pleased to be here. Looking forward to this conversation.
Definitely. Thank you so much. I’ve wanted to talk with people about intellectual property for quite a while because it is something that people, they either overlook or don’t know how to wrap their heads around. What does intellectual property mean at its most basic level?
Great. So, first, I’m going to do my lawyer thing and I’m just going to say that what we’re going to talk about today is just information. There’s nuance to everything. Even if we talk about some examples, there’s always going to be something that’s different for everybody so we’re talking in generalities and if you do have specific questions, then you do need to consult with your own lawyer. With that out of the way.
Thanks for the caveat, there’s no one formula, you can just say, A plus B equals C, there’s always going to be something about your situation.
Absolutely, absolutely. Intellectual property, so, as you mentioned, there are four categories: copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, and patents. I will just say right off the top, patents is a very specific area of the law. I do not practice in it. We all are familiar with patents, probably. The pharmaceutical industry, obviously, they get patents on their medications and people who create inventions get patents on their inventions. I work with people in the expertise space and most of what their intellectual property would fall into the first three buckets: copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. Copyrights are things that are original and that have been put down in some concrete form, which also could be digital, so when you write something down, when you paint a painting, when you take a photograph, when you shoot a film, when you create blueprints, those original expressions, once you put them down in whatever the concrete form is, the copyright, meaning the exclusive right to make copies, distribute, create derivatives of that material belongs to the copyright owner.
Trademarks denote the origin of a good or service.Click To Tweet
So, whenever you see the trademarked golden arches of McDonald’s, you know that’s a McDonald’s. Whenever you see the trademarked brown color of a UPS truck, you know it’s a UPS truck.
In this digital age where information is widespread, data is more accessible whether in news, reports and research. In our everyday life, decisions we make are always based on information and data we had at that moment. It is an integral part in a rational sense to make sure that information is accurate and values the truth.
In this week’s episode, Dr. Annette Shtivelband sits with us as she walks us through the phases to make data-driven decisions. She is the founder and principal consultant with an organization called Research Evaluation and Consulting and an experienced researcher in her field. Her area of specialization includes research methods, data collection, survey development and validation, and various statistical analysis techniques. Whether you seek insights on how data and knowledge makes improvements in education, entrepreneurship and life, this podcast is for you.
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Importance of Analyzing Correct Data, and Critical Thinking with Dr. Annette Shtivelband Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One thing that’s become more and more prevalent in our lives in recent years is data and analytics. A lot of organizations are making the push to become more data driven and I personally have a historic career path in data and analytics and also helping organizations achieve this data-driven state. But, of course, there is the proper balance in how we use our data and what kind of role it is to have in our lives. My guest today, Annette Shtivelband, is the founder and principal consultant with an organization called Research Evaluation and Consulting.
Annette, welcome to the program.
Thank you, Stephen, and it’s Research Evaluation Consulting.
Oh, did I accidentally put the and in there?
Yeah, we can start over. And it’s Dr. Annette Shtivelband because I worked really hard for that credential.
Dr. Annette Shtivelband. Now, Dr. Annette Shtivelband, your PhD, tell me a little bit about that story because sometimes people see education and entrepreneurship as somewhat different paths so definitely a unique perspective from your end there.
Absolutely. So I think, for me, I have always wanted to be the type of person who could use knowledge to make improvements and make changes. I think a part of me felt that getting the doctorate would help position me well to have the knowledge and the expertise and the technical skills, but I do not think that the PhD program itself helped me be prepared for the entrepreneurial journey. And I didn’t really expect it to, to be honest with you. I think a lot of it is going to be trial and error, but I think that it helped build my confidence and, also, I think that, as I interact with clients, having a doctor before your name is really handy.
A lot of people talk about the manner in which you present yourself and although there’s a lot of people that wish that that was not really a thing, it really is. The first impression, whether it be the name, whether it be the signature on your email, whether it be the shirt you’re wearing, or anything else does seem to make an impact and so you having that doctor next to your name, how do you think that that has impacted the way clients or potential clients see you in your business?
Absolutely. So on a personal level, I’ve always looked relatively young. It’s kind of comical, it’s flattering, it’s annoying. As I’ve gotten older, I like that I look younger, but, for the longest time, I think earlier in my life, people may not have taken me as seriously. When you enter a room or you have a meeting with the client and you speak well, you’re able to answer questions, you’re able to show your knowledge but you also have that credential, I do find that people take you seriously. I’ve even had situations before as a business owner where we might submit a request for proposal or RFP,
Finding a sense of purpose is important to our well-being. As you grow and live your life, your purpose also grows. Following it can lead you to fulfillment. It’s like your roadmap. Think about this: When you have a sense of purpose, you tend to experience joy, happiness, and satisfaction more often. It gives you the ability to become resilient, hopeful, and optimistic about the future.
When it comes to purposes, our guest Ariel Naftali is an expert on that matter. She is an executive coach for purpose-driven leaders. Ariel loves helping people find their purpose and perform at a high level. Let’s hear more about them today.
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The Power of Purpose and Why It Matters Today with Ariel Naftali Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the problems that we’re experiencing in the world today, and, in my humble opinion, just from my observations, talking with people, reading things, it seems like what a lot of people are missing are three of the building blocks for a good life: purpose, confidence, and resilience. And what I mean by that is that the purpose to understand, get some grounding behind why you’re doing what you’re doing, making it meaningful; the confidence, of course, is the ability to really execute on it, believe in yourself; and resilience is how we respond to bad things that happen. And I see so many of the less fortunate, less happy things going on in the world today, I see a crisis where a lot of people are lacking one or all three of these particular things. My guest today, Ariel Naftali, is an executive coach for purpose-driven leaders. She helps people find their purpose and perform up to that purpose.
Ariel, welcome to the program.
Hi, Stephen. Thanks so much for having me.
Ariel, thank you so much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes. First of all, what is the name of your business?
My business is Perform with Purpose and, I know, a very cliché title there as a purpose coach, but Perform with Purpose and we are located in Denver, Colorado.
And your website brings up both performance and purpose. How do you see these things intersecting with one another and which one comes first and which one’s more important?
Great question. I started my work mostly in the performance realm working with athletes and I didn’t realize this emphasis on purpose was important in the beginning of that work. A lot of the work that I was doing was helping athletes with their mindset to perform at a higher level, but what I realized for myself and for them as well is if they’re not clear on why they’re doing what they’re doing, if they haven’t really attached a meaningful reason behind the effort, the work, the energy, their time that they’re putting into something, when they actually reach that goal that they’re setting, that performance metric, it doesn’t end up feeling as satisfying or fulfilling as they thought it was because they didn’t attach it to something meaningful to them. That had me rethink my whole process and my whole focus and wanting to center more on this purpose lens first to figure out what’s actually important to you, what’s actually meaningful to you, and once we identify that, then let’s set goals in line with it and help you perform at the height of your potential in the pursuit of that to ensure that you’re actually setting yourself up for a career, a life that’s going to be more fulfilling and more satisfying on the other side.
Well, it’s interesting that this came from the world of athletics because I think a lot of us have in our minds what professions feel like they have a lot of purpose and which professions feel like they don’t, and do you see this as varying a lot? Do you see a lot of athletes that understand, say, you’re running for track, for example, understand like, “Why did I pick this sport?
Like any other city, Denver also boasts a thriving entrepreneurial spirit. As a matter of fact, we celebrate it annually during Denver Startup Week. This one-week celebration shines light on local economies across the world and the inherent role that remittances play in boosting local innovation and entrepreneurship globally. It's a great way to meet like-minded individuals who share the same business interests and passion as you.
Speaking of which, our guest Susana González is here in The Commons on Champa. The Commons runs on shared ownership. This incredible community continues to give expertise, time, funding, and volunteerism to build and support Denver’s entrepreneurial circle. Suzana is spending her time getting involved and continuing her quest to bring Denver’s rich entrepreneurial community to her hometown back in Venezuela. Let's hear from her in today’s episode.
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Energizing The Spirit of Entrepreneurship in Local Communities Worldwide with Susana González Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. In a recent episode, we talked with Jodi Fischer of the Adelante Foundation about the entrepreneurial spirit in Honduras. The entrepreneurial spirit can be found in a lot of different cities. Blessed to live in Denver where we have a really strong entrepreneurial spirit. My guest today, Susana González, is here in Denver at The Commons on Champa, which is Denver’s entrepreneurial hub and a place that anyone with that spirit can come drop in and work and talk with other like-minded individuals. Susana is here to talk about her quest to bring the entrepreneurial spirit to her town in Venezuela, where there’s a lot of interest in starting businesses.
Susana, welcome to the program.
Thank you very much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be talking here with you and getting to know the Denver side scenes and the community that I think is very lovely and I like it very much.
Yeah, I love our community here too. I’ve said before in other episodes, one of my favorite weeks here is our Startup Week, which is in the fall every year and we have tons of people and it’s the place where you see people that are doing stuff about their problems as opposed to people that are just complaining, which there’s plenty of that elsewhere in the world.
I think this is the first time I hear somebody saying that entrepreneurs are those who do instead of complain and I love it.
Yeah, for sure.
I think you have said something mind blowing to me. That’s the spirit.
Now, Susana, you notice this spirit in your hometown. Explain the observations that led you to the path that you’re on right now.
Well, the thing about Venezuela is that we are culturally in this type of mindset that we like to do things, like if there’s something wrong in the office, we will clean it, we will fix it, we will just do it, it doesn’t matter that it’s not our job to do it but it’s the mindset that people take responsibility of things that are happening around. And then we have this strange political situation, economical decline, and people decided that they needed to do things to fix the reality and I think those two things together created this very entrepreneurial mindset, where everybody wants to start a business, everybody has an idea, because everybody needs money, and seems attractive enough.
So you’re observing, and I think most people listening are probably familiar with what the situation in Venezuela is like, this spirit of people, the average Venezuelan, as you’re observing, is someone that’s saying, “Okay, we’re in this tough situation, we had all this stuff happen over the past couple decades, now, I wanna do something about it. Now, I wanna help build everything back, I wanna build something that’s gonna make what I see around me better.” Is that accurate?
It is kind of in a way.
When you think about the poor, the helpless, and the one who needs your help the most, what is your compassion that can best help you with? No matter how big or how small the gesture is, one act of kindness can transcend into multitudes. It is true that an individual alone cannot solve the needs of the world. But we can do something together.
Jodi Fischer, Development Director of Adelante, and her team always look for ways to reach out to people below the poverty line. The foundation’s primary goal is to provide small loans and education to women in Honduras , which is one of the poorest countries in Latin America. They empower these women to achieve self-sufficiency, and that journey is what our talk will revolve around today.
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The Tremendous Power of Women Helping Women with Jodi Fischer Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk about helping people help themselves and giving people opportunities. My guest today is Jodi Fischer. She is the development director and a US liaison for a foundation called Adelante and Adelante is a foundation that helps women in Honduras, which is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, get small loans to start their own business.
Jodi, welcome to the program.
Thank you for having me.
Jodi, first, I want to get the audience oriented by talking a little bit about Honduras. A lot of people know it’s one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere but probably not aware of what specifically is going on in Honduras and what’s actually preventing a lot of people there from having the opportunities to succeed that we enjoy here in the US or whatever country you’re listening from.
There’s various statistics that support it’s the second to poorest country, second only to Haiti, in Latin America and that currently means nearly 70 percent of the population lives under the poverty line. There’s a lot of factors that play into that but there are some issues with the government, there is definitely things that happen that make it difficult for people to break those cycles of poverty.
Essentially, and 70 percent below the poverty line, for some context, we think about the poverty line, we think about the line where you’re barely getting enough to eat every day and you’re under stress about what shelter you’re going to have. Is that an accurate way to think of it? Because I know that dollar conversions can be different for different currencies in different places.
True, yes. It usually translates to living under $1.90 per day.
Okay.
There are different levels of poverty. I know that with Adelante Foundation, for example, we do not attempt to serve the poorest of the poor because giving them a debt burden would not be appropriate. However, a lot of the communities that we serve, people often don’t have anything but a dirt floor. They don’t necessarily have running water, they don’t necessarily have the ability to send their children to school so there’s different levels within the poverty index and we do measure those things and we do track the progress of the participants of our program over time.
Tell me about the profile of a typical participant in your program. I know you provide some loans, you give them some economic opportunity to start something up.
Well, 90 percent of the people that we work with are women. We will occasionally work with brothers, husbands, fathers usually recommended by women that have already participated or are currently participating in the program.
They are typically considered unbankable, meaning that they cannot get a loan from a traditional financial institution and they have to be over the age of 18.Click To Tweet
So there are sometimes younger women who would like to receive support but we do want to make sure that we’re doing everyth...
When you are just starting to take the "healthy route," walking down the grocery aisle can be overwhelming. Protein bars, energy bars, diet bars, meal-replacement bars, gendered bars, bars for your brain, you name it! You may be wondering if there are any potential benefits to eating these health bars, and the good news is, there definitely are.
Laura Harris, founder and CEO of Greens Gone Wild, introduced a new product to the market. An energy bar that incorporates spinach and various greens into one nutritional bite. We invited her on the show today to talk more about the product.
Listen to the podcast here:
Greens On The Go: The Right Mix of Protein, Calories and Flavor with Laura Harris Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. In case it’s not obvious from my other episodes or if this is the first one you’re listening to, I live in Colorado and Colorado is known for being a pretty active and health-conscious state. I think I’ve seen on multiple occasions, maybe not the latest numbers, that we have the lowest obesity rate in the country and that’s something I’m pretty proud of. Now, my guest today, Laura Harris, recently introduced a new product to the market, a product called Greens Gone Wild, which is an energy bar that incorporates spinach as well as other greens for various health outcomes and I will let Laura describe it herself instead of being in the business of trying to translate someone’s business from their conversations and their website.
Laura, welcome to the program.
Thank you so much. I’m happy to be here. How’s your day been today?
Day has been pretty good. Weirdly enough, yesterday, I went storm chasing, something I haven’t done in a little while.
Very cool. Where was the storm?
Near the town --- between the towns of La Junta and Lamar in southeast Colorado, which is a part of the state that a lot of people don’t think about or go to that often.
That’s so cool.
I actually submitted a picture of inch-and-a-half-sized hail to the Twitter account of the National Weather Service so I did my part in weather verification too.
That’s awesome. Have you been able to submit other photos previously?
Yeah, yeah. All you have to do is @ whichever National Weather Service office’s zone you’re in so if you get hail at your house, @NWSBoulder is our local office and you can --- usually I like to put like the hailstone next to an object of known size, like a dime, a quarter, something like that.
That makes sense too because then you really get to see, well, just the magnitude of the size of hail.
Yeah. And the bonus, of course, is that if you’re at your home and then eventually need an insurance claim verified for getting a new roof, that’s your proof right there.
That’s a good call. Now, did you have any spinach packed protein bars with you while you were storm chasing?
So, unfortunately, I did not. I made the mistake of relying on gas station snacks, which meant Chex Mix, and, yeah, I could have been quite a bit healthier. But that’s a great segue for us to talk about these spinach packed protein bars that you introduced to the market. Was it last year or earlier this year?
It was actually the summer of 2019, so June 1st was our first sales day and we did the Colorado Fresh Market circuit plus Sloan's Lake and it was so exciting, so busy, and we had a lot of great people loving what we were doing.
Explain to us a little bit about these spinach packed protein bars that are sweeping across grocery stores in Colorado now.
I love that.
At Greens Gone Wild, we created spinach packed protein bars. They’re vegan, gluten-free, non-GMO, soy-free with no refined or added sugars. You’ll get a full serving of spinach in every single shelf-stable bar.
They taste amazing. They’re super chewy.
Every business, every owner, every employee has lots of great ideas. Now the crucial part is how one should nitpick and prioritize their tasks. "Experience" is not getting what you wanted. You can hire seasoned mentors to avoid making mistakes, period. Hiring trained professionals saves you time, avoids costly errors and gives you an edge. If you think that doesn’t make a huge difference, well, think again.
At Align2Compete, you have access to industry experts who could drive you to your fullest potential. Today, we invited Dave Hiebeler and Mike Higgins, co-founders of the organization, to give you a run-through and a clear picture of what they do.
Listen to the podcast here:
A How-to Guide for Expanding Small Businesses with Dave Hiebeler and Mike Higgins Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. My guests today are Dave Hiebeler and Mike Higgins who co-founded an organization called Align2Compete. Now, what Align2Compete does, I will let them describe this more in their own words than in mine, but the basic gist of it is marketing for small businesses and solopreneurs or entrepreneurs so they’re the ones that are actually trying to help a lot of you that are out there listening trying to get some traction, get your business going, getting noticed, and getting noticed is something that I think a lot of people oftentimes don’t think of. I know I haven’t thought of it nearly as much as I should have even though that’s a huge part of the battle. It’s very common to think a lot about the specifics of your product, what you want to build and even why, the why is definitely important, but, oftentimes, this goes, for lack of a better way to put it, on notice.
Dave, Mike, welcome to the program.
Thanks.
Thanks so much. Appreciate it.
So let’s start with talking about Align2Compete. I introduced the topic but, of course, you know your business better than me translating a couple conversations we’ve had and what’s on your website. So what is Align2Compete about? What are you doing with your mission?
I guess I’ll lead off with that, Mike. In essence, we turn strangers into customers for small businesses. That sounds as a simplistic benefit but it definitely is the essence of what we do and makes our feet hit the floor in the morning. Now, no question, it’s more complicated to pull that off and probably the best question that we could ever have anybody asked us in return, “How do you do that?” And so we are a marketing agency and mainly a service agency that helps emerging small businesses get the word out and boost their familiarity and I think you had touched on that, Stephen, that that’s the biggest challenge, like I go to meetup groups, that’s what we do is, yeah, if you’re going to build a deck in your house, for example, and you could go to Lowe’s or Home Depot and buy all the wood and buy all the tools and, yeah, you’ll build something that’s a deck but it’s nice to have a contractor, if you will, or maybe a financial adviser that knows how to use the tools and what tools to use.
Mike and I talk about it a lot about we don’t lead with product, push product. We worked at organizations that were publicly traded on Wall Street, for example, that what’s the product of the month that they want us to push and I just don’t like to work with clients that way and I know Mike doesn’t either and so we really want to focus on what is that business trying to do and one of the questions that we’ll always ask is, “Stephen, one’s the lowest, ten’s the highest, how would you rate from a 1 to 10 the familiarity of your business?” and it’s always an interesting answer we get. Somebody will say, “Well, we’re a 3,” or, “We’re a 5,” and then we’ll say, “Okay, where do you want to be a year or two years from now?” Because we know a lot can change in even those timeframes. “Oh, I wanna get to a seven.” Okay, cool,
Sometimes all you need is to spend time in the great outdoors, where you soak up the sunshine, breathe fresh air, and commune with wildlife. Getting out for a walk in your local park or even birding alone or with your family can have a powerful impact on your brain.
Birding by itself teaches us patience and gently coaxes us to be calm. It’s a great opportunity to just zone out or have a little reflection and think calmly. Our guest for today will definitely agree on that matter. According to Ryan Dibala of Birding Man Adventures, birding is a great way for people to get outdoors and connect with nature.
Listen to the podcast here:
Birding with Benefits: How Nature Improves Your Well Being with Ryan Dibala Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I’d like to switch gears with you a little bit and I’d like to talk to you about birding. Now, this is a topic that we have yet to discuss on this particular podcast because it’s a type of experience that people either know a lot about or know very little about. Some people get really, really into birding and some people just don’t know much about it. But, in life, there’s going to be a lot of experiences like that and it’s good to be exposed to the large depth of experiences that there are out there. According to my guest today, Ryan Dibala of Birding Man Adventures, birding is a great way for people to get outdoors and connect into nature.
Ryan, welcome to the program.
Pleasure to be here, Steve. Thanks for having me.
Oh, thank you so much. And, Ryan, tell me about your experience with birding. What made birding be the thing that you wanted to, first of all, do a lot of yourself and also bring to others?
Right after college, I was working as a biologist on Santa Catalina Island and we were actually restoring bald eagles to the national park after a massive decline in numbers due to DDT, which I’m sure many people are familiar with DDT and what it did as it worked its way up the food chain, essentially with the raptors, like bald eagles, it depleted their egg shells of calcium so the nesting eagles would crush the eggs and then that would prevent successful recruitment ultimately. So we were actually involved in the direct manipulations of eggs and chicks on the island’s eagles’ nests so, of course, I was around other birders, I had my first pair of binoculars and a spotting scope and I was able to tune into some of the smaller birds on the island. That particular island has several different endemics that only are there, like many islands have, they have species that only can be found on those islands so I think I saw, it was a Hutton's Vireo, a Catalina Hutton's Vireo, and that might have been my gateway bird, I guess you could call it.
A gateway bird, never heard it described that way before.
So ever since that moment, I’ve really been paying attention to the birds around me. I found that it really slows me down, it helps me focus. We have these weapons of mass distraction in our pockets and we’re always on them, these cell phones that distract us from the world and prevent us from tuning into what’s in front of our eyes at the present moment. And so, as a result, we’ve seen a lot more ADD and NDD, nature deficit disorder, and realizing that going out into nature and slowing down and looking at the world as it is right around me, that’s helped center me and relieve a lot of anxiety that has come about from the world that we live in with so much technology so that’s one of many reasons that I continue to bird today. I can certainly go into more of the reasons why I think it’s an amazing pursuit and something that more people should do.
What does birding entail? Like if, let’s say, these podcasts usually come out on Tuesdays and if you’re listening in the middle of the week and someone says, “Alright, this sounds really interesting.
Have you ever felt like you’re in your optimal state? Just in pure bliss doing the things you love minus the pressure. You feel your best and perform your best because you’re happy.This is known as the state of flow, my friends. When you’re in this bubble, you’re just simply in the zone. You are completely present, as if your life is unfolding right now. Often, you even lose your sense of time because you’re just enjoying what you’re doing so much that you forget about the world around you. It's both enthralling and relaxing.
Today’s guest specializes in helping people achieve that mental state, bringing them into harmony so they can be their authentic selves. Arnaud Saint-Paul is the founder of Tapuat and also a two-time author. He taps into the power of the heart with the use of The Heartfelt Method. In this interview, you'll learn about how listening to your heart can change your life.
Listen to the podcast here:
Creating A Visual Map of Your Heart Through Harmony, Connection, and Unity Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about kind of living your life in harmony, in a state of flow. Now, we've all heard something about a state of flow but for a general synopsis of it, it's the time when you're truly present in the moment. It's the time when you're not distracted. And people often describe it as when was the last time you were so involved in what you were doing that you forgot to eat a meal or you forgot that you had to go to the bathroom or something like that. Not that I'm advocating meal skipping or intensifying the pressure you put on your bladder when you have to go, but it is a really beautiful state and it's often a state when we're at our most content, our happiest, and our most productive getting a lot done. My guest today kind of specializes in helping people bring themselves into harmony, into flow, and getting that authentic life. Arnaud Saint-Paul is the founder of Tapuat and also a two-time author and the inventor of something called The Heartful Method. He just brings people in so many different settings into the state of authenticity, the state of being truly who you are.
Arnaud, welcome to the program.
Well, thank you. Hello. Thank you for having me.
Thank you so much for reaching out and joining us today on Action’s Antidotes because where the discontent really comes from is the state of not being connected with who you really are. But, obviously, you probably know more than anyone else about this so just elaborate this on where the state of discontent that a lot of people feel, especially in our modern world, comes from.
Right. When we observe these troubled times, all the news and you're going -- and plus when we went through, all of us, in the past few years, you obsess with them and, therefore, you forget all the rest. In other words, each time we're obsessing about something, each time we're identifying with something, we lose contact with ourselves, we forget ourselves, and, hence, that discontent that is not really related, per se, to the actual events but more unconsciously, we're telling ourselves we're not going in the right direction. What if a state of presence of harmony, of interconnection, of flow would be our actual essence or birthright and we can actually allow ourselves to live our lives through that? What if, all of a sudden, everything would come to me without an effort because I'm here now and I exist and I am in my state of flow, to take that example, or harmony or congruence or coherence of alignment. And that's what we can all do if we choose to.
The moment we start to become conscious leaders of our lives, of our businesses, etc., then we can jump or, better said, embark onto a journey where this becomes the norm.
And so when you talk about it being a birthright, does that mean that we're all born with it? If we were to observe,
2022 just flew by so fast, it’s as if we’re playing life at twice the speed. At the beginning of the year, we set goals for ourselves. Things that we want to tick off and put a checkmark on, things that we want to accomplish.I would be shocked if "health and wellness" didn’t make it to your resolution list. Because it would be a waste not to prioritize your health, especially in times like this. And our guest for today would probably agree with me on that matter.
Meet the registered dietitian, mother, podcaster, and cancer survivor, Regina Topelson. She enjoys exploring health and wellness from a variety of perspectives and is eager to share her experiences and knowledge with you.
Listen to the podcast here:
Leaving a Legacy by Living a Life Well-Lived By Regina Topelson Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, we’re going to talk about our health, because our health is very integral to everything we want to pursue in life. We keep ourselves in good health, well, you know, we’re more likely to be more energetic and we’re actually also more likely to be in good mental health. There’s kind of a connection between the two. And, of course, we must take care of our bodies in order to have the energy to pursue whatever it is that’s inspiring us. My guest today has a perspective on the whole field of health from multiple angles. Her name is Regina Topelson and she is a registered nutritionist, a news contributor as well as the host of her own podcast that features people who have dealt with some tough health challenges, mostly cancer.
Regina, welcome to the program.
Hi, Stephen. It’s so great to be here. Thank you. It’s such a pleasure.
Thank you, Regina, and first question I want to ask is let’s start from beginning. What inspired you to make this health and wellness, you know, your life’s pursuit?
Okay, so a couple of things. First of all, both of my children were born with food allergies. Twenty years ago, that was still kind of an unheard of type thing. It was heard of but it was very rare. What made my kids extra special is that they had multiple food allergies. Prior to that, it was one kid with one food allergy, like peanuts or tree nuts or eggs or something like that or dairy, but mine had multiple all rolled into one child. And so we kind of went down this path in our family where we really had to try to figure out how to keep these little guys alive, you know?
Yeah.
So, when my oldest was eight and my youngest was, I think at that time, five and a half, I decided that I wanted to pursue becoming a nutritionist, what I ended up doing was becoming a registered dietitian, but what I thought of in a broad spectrum was I wanted to follow this traditional kind of path with education and evidence-based practices for health and wellness because what I had was a lot of moms coming to me and saying every time I feed my son bagels, he breaks out in a rash around his mouth and my husband thinks I’m crazy but I see it every time he eats bagels, you know what I mean? And so I thought, you know what, if I’m going to be counseling and helping people in my community, then I really should be well versed at this. I should be a professional, not just a lay mom. I don’t know why that wasn’t enough for me. It should have been enough for me, it could have been enough for me, but it wasn’t. I wanted to have the professional background for it.
How much emphasis should be placed in any pursuit on developing some form of traditional education, whether it be going back to school for a degree or whether it be some sort of a certification program? I guess the question is how much do we need to know what the world knows versus kind of the other school of thought being learning by experience, which is just, “Okay, I’ve observed this, I’ve observed that, I started doing this, I interview people,
"The only thing that will change your life, change your business, change your relationship, is that you must raise your standards."
We have goals in life, and nothing in this world has the power to set us in the right direction more than ourselves. We are the authors of our own book. And it’s up to us how we write it and how we act accordingly. Behavior is always something that we overlook, but it is the most important part of success. Nothing in this world is so elusive yet so powerful as our beliefs. When you surround yourself with positivity, you’re more likely to adapt to empowering beliefs and see life happening through your own lens. To reach new heights of success, you must surround yourself with people who not only inspire you but challenge you. Shifting your energy to a more positive one. Hannah Gfeller is a behavioral consultant who has mastered the art of connecting human behavior science to our daily lives.
Listen to the podcast here:
Empowering Beliefs and Behaviors To Live By With Hannah Gfeller Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I’d like to talk to you about behavior. Now, on previous episodes, we’ve talked a little bit about the idea of personality, the idea of finding yourself. What I envision is that there’s a lot of people out there who have done the work of figuring out, okay, who is it that you are, but then, beyond that, how does that manifest into how you are perceived in the world, how you go about creating what you want to create because once you know yourself, you know what you want but does your behavior line up with that and does your actions bring the right people, the right opportunities to you or are you still acting in a way that’s confusing the people around you? My guest today, Hannah Gfeller, is a behavioral consultant with her own business.
Hannah, welcome to the program.
Thank you for having me. Very excited to be here.
Oh, thank you, Hannah. Let’s first start talking about behavioral consulting. I’m envisioning that there might be a couple people out there that aren’t even aware that that’s a profession that someone can pursue. So, describe a little bit what it means to be a behavioral consultant.
Yes. Yeah, nobody knows what I do. So, technically, I’m a behavior analyst and a lot of people like to call themselves behaviorists but they’re not board certified. So, just for clarification, you have people who say that they do that type of work but I had to go through grad school and supervision and hours of that and then sit for a massive board exam, but not everyone passes. And so then you can work behavior analytically. And I call it behavioral consulting because I come in as a third party usually. People looking for advice to change habits. And I do it in a lot of different ways. Most people when they hear behavior analyst, they think ABA, and that is synonymous a lot with autism, but it’s not.
Okay.
It didn’t come from that. The field of applied behavior analysis is what I do and that can go into anything with living humans. We always joke if it’s a dead man, they’re not behaving, so like you just lay there, it’s not a behavior. You got to do something. But I can look at individuals and look at how they want to change their habits or maybe you’re a caregiver and you have a little one that needs to change their habits, for safety or life skills or whatever it is, and I can work in that arena. But then I can also look at massive systems within a company because you have lots of people and, as a big company, in a sense it behaves. It has its habits. But you got to break it down into those little cycles of habits in order to make big change. So I do it in the corporate world and I also do it within the healthcare field as well and that’s, in sum, behavioral consulting.
And so, when you’re consulting someone on their behavior,
Coaching can take on many forms, it's a bond, a connection and it does not end with one-on-one training, as we imagine it to be. Depending on the project, company, team, or individual, any of these coaching approaches can be beneficial and the most effective leaders will use all of these ways to confidently take on leadership roles.
Our guests, Laura Bennett and Kellie Jenkins, founders of "Her Brilliance," are both accomplished leaders. These two bring out the best in women by providing a safe space for them to connect, form deeper bonds, and gain the confidence to transform their leadership. Her Brilliance sought to apply the same coaching competencies to a group environment, so they could gather a powerhouse of women and motivate them to step into their full leadership potential.
Listen to the podcast here:
A Community for Women Leaders With Laura Bennett & Kellie Jenkins Welcome to Action's Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Something we've talked about quite a bit on this program is coaching. When a lot of people think of coaching, they probably think of a one-on-one, an individual relationship where a coach listens to what you have to say, assigns you a bunch of exercises, and gives you advice on what to do next, or gives you questions, and hopefully, you'll come up with the answers. However, there are multiple approaches to coaching and I want to give every approach its fair due.
Today, our guests are Laura Bennett and Kellie Jenkins, who are the co-founders of Her Brilliance Community, a community of women leaders. Kellie, Laura, welcome to the program.
Thanks, Stephen, for having us.
Definitely. First, I always like to orient the audience. Tell us a little bit about Her Brilliance community, what your system is all about.
Sure. Kellie and I founded Her Brilliance a couple of years ago now. We are an organization-focus that uses a women-centered group coaching approach to accelerate the development of women leaders. We're all about helping women really access and tap into their authentic natural strength as a way to amplify their leadership impact and influence.
Yeah. I think I'll just add to that. The idea of community comes from this group coaching approach where it gives women an opportunity to learn in that peer-oriented community environment.
This group coaching approach, you describe it as a community. How does that manifest? I know a lot of people in America and probably a lot of other countries too are missing this idea of community after social media first ripped it apart and then the pandemic ripped it apart even further. What does this community look like?
Yeah. It can look very different ways. Obviously, over the last couple of years, it's been mostly virtual, and has been just as effective as an in-person environment. You're really looking at a small intimate group of peers who have come together around some common theme or experience. It could be, they all belong to the same organization. It could be across industries. They're all at the same level and experiencing the same sorts of challenges. What we're doing is bringing that group together. Instead of learning through this one-on-one executive coaching, we're applying those coaching competencies into the group environment. It's not training where we've come in as experts and share our leadership knowledge.
It is really us bringing together a group of women to share their experiences and us facilitating exercises and dialogue to help them reflect on their own leadership and come up with their own answers.
What did the group sizes look like? You found a way to make it work virtually. Is there a certain size of the group or make-up of the group -- as you mentioned, shared experiences? Are they all from the same industry, or all in the same level of leadership, or something like that?
Yeah.
It is without a doubt that we consequently spend most of our time in the virtual world. Especially at the start of the pandemic, the reality for us all has been spending hours with our personal gadgets. Video calls have become our new channel in order to stay connected. We shop with just one tap and follow other people across the globe through the use of social media platforms. Whether you use it for school, work, business, or entertainment, it's undeniable that the virtual world has been our refuge amidst all the uncertainties.
With that comes the aesthetics and appearance that all of us should maintain online. Even business owners have no excuse for this one. It's important to step up our branding by showcasing creativity and uniqueness so that we become noticeable. Today's guest is an expert on that matter. Shelly Golden from Shelly Golden Style Zoom Makeovers, will walk you through her tips and tricks on how to look your best. Shelly helps you attain better results in both your professional and social life so be sure to catch her in today’s talk.
Listen to the podcast here:
Importance of Virtual Appearance in Your Everyday Business With Shelley Golden Welcome to Action's Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the ways that I envision a lot of you out there listening are going to get to the level you want to be at, achieve the life that you really want, is identifying a need that wasn't previously there or few people were really thinking about, identifying something new, forging a really, truly new, unique path. Identifying new needs and taking action on it is a fantastic way to really live a life that you really want to live, something that my guest today, Shelley Golden, of Shelly Golden Style Zoom Makeovers has done fairly recently.
Shelly, welcome to the program.
Thank you. Super glad to be here.
Definitely. Let's start out with Zoom Makeovers. What does this entail because even though a lot of us have spent a little over two years, spending more time on Zoom than we ever imagined ourselves doing? I'm sure a lot of people are not familiar with the idea of what a Zoom makeover
A Zoom makeover is literally tweaking, transforming everything that you see in your Zoom box – a five-step process to really go through camera angle, sound, lighting.
Lighting is the most important factor. What color clothing works best on you in your space? Your real background -- is it a virtual background? Are you in your garage? Are you in your kitchen? Says so much about you.
For those who wear makeup, this is crazy, what I call Zoom's specific makeup techniques. It's the way you put it on, which is not the same way you would put it on if you're going on the street. People are looking at you on a two-dimensional platform, but you're trying to create a three-dimensional look and work everything that you see in the box. It's almost like creating a new painting. Where does your eye go first, which of course you want to go right here to the other person's eyes, and eliminate distractions. Increase engagement, trust, and credibility, and eliminate distractions.
Obviously, a Zoom makeover takes on a different form than a standard makeover, where you're making over primarily what's on your body. Now, we can talk about the concept of an emotional makeover and all these other types of internal makeover. When people think of makeovers, they usually think of what they're wearing on the face, makeup, clothing, everything like that. A Zoom makeover is the overall purpose, how you present yourselves to people -- the same or is there a different purpose because of what people do on Zoom versus what people do, say when you're out in public, at a restaurant, or somewhere else, and you're going through the regular makeover process.
Look at what story you're telling yourself and then look for places where you could reframe the story....
Power doesn’t come from outside of ourselves, as we often thought it would. Rather, it comes from the inside, our uniqueness, our soul, and our passion to become better. In this world full of negativity, what we need is a ray of light. For us to move forward in the right direction, all of us should feel empowered. No matter where we are in our journey, it is our job to break down barriers that can hinder us from becoming stronger and more confident. Today's guest is here to help us with this subject. Jewel Ray Chaudhuri is an executive leadership and women's empowerment coach. She's on the show to give us some insights into what it takes to be empowered.
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The Power of Empowerment With Jewel Ray Chaudhuri Welcome to Action's Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. We talk about empowerment quite a bit on this podcast, because empowerment is part of the core reason for this podcast edition. It's part of the core motivation for this show. In order to do what we really want to do, we need to be empowered. Lack of empowerment is something that prevents a lot of people from achieving your best life, from going after what it is you really want.
Our world is full of disempowering scenarios, disempowering talk, and disempowering messages, whether it'd be from a really old school, traditional, hierarchical work environment, whether it'd be from the media, the news, or whether it'd be from some of your well-meaning friends that have adopted a victimhood- or doomsday-disempowered mentality. We actually need to, no matter where you are on your journey, be consistently looking into what we can do to counteract a lot of those messages that we're going to find in that ambient world.
My guest today is here to help talk about some of these subjects, Jewel Ray Chaudhuri, who is an executive leadership and women's empowerment coach.
Jewel, welcome to the program.
Thank you, Stephen. It's great to be here. Really enjoying this.
Thank you. The first thing I want to ask you is about what I was mentioning in the introduction, which is what disempowering messages are in the ambient environment where most people are going. I don't think that many people are not subjected regularly to messages of disempowerment. I identified a few sources, but I'm just curious, from your perspective, what I may have missed, are there other places where people are hearing a lot of things that are disempowering to them?
First of all, a lot of it is what we're telling ourselves. We have these – I'm going to call them – little parrots, most Laras, who sit on our shoulder. They're our inner critic, our judge, and they come up with all these messages. A lot of the message, especially for women, is around, "I'm not enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not pretty enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not competent enough." You fill in the blank, and that's what it is. Those judges help us to tell those disempowering stories.
You mentioned being in victim mode. A lot of times, we don't even start because we're hearing the message, "No. You can't go after that job. You have no experience there", or, "Wait till you get this degree or that degree, and then you can have whatever you want."
Would you say that, as far as anyone who needs more empowerment, which I would say is almost everybody -- but you can correct me on that -- the number one thing is the messages we tell ourselves every single day?
Yes, because we're told those messages. When I was about 16 years old in high school, and I can remember what somebody said to me, I've carried that message for a very long time.
Sometimes, you don't even realize that the message is there. It comes from your past, but now, there are things that bring it forward.
My message was about speaking and talking. I carried that into college where my throat would tighten if I raised my hand and things...
We can't deny how we're wrapped up in a fast-paced world. With so much on our plates and little time, we often forget that there's beauty in the little things. Reading a good novel, dancing around, or playing our favourite music, are the little things we should look out for because there's much more to life than just paychecks and job rankings.
Today's guest will surely move your hearts with his words. Singer/songwriter John Brewster is on the show today to talk to us all about how he's been able to make his passion his lifestyle. Tag along with us, and let's hear more from John.
Listen to the podcast here:
Music and All Things that Make Us Human With John Brewster Welcome to Action's Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One thing I've been thinking about quite a bit for at least several years now is what makes all of us human, which is something that I feel is diminished in our modern society. When I talk about this, I talk about things like laughter, things like dancing, things like humor, and things like music -- things that don't necessarily have a specific material value in most corporate settings but provide a lot of value to our lives, a lot of value to our wellbeing.
My guest today, John Brewster, is a Boulder resident and a singer/songwriter who has managed to make a lifestyle out of music, which I'm sure a lot of people would love the possibility of doing if they only knew how.
John, welcome to the program.
Thanks so much for having me today, Stephen. I'm really excited to be here. Thank you.
Yeah, definitely. You're relatively new to Colorado, right?
Yes. I just moved here in August of 2021, and now, we're in March 2022 for the future nerds out there that listen to this. I've been here for a few months, just getting grounded into the mountain energy and just been loving it so far.
Where do you come from most recently?
South Carolina. I was in Charleston last. That's where I got my start in music as far as original music goes.
You do exclusively original music?
I do my own original music. It's my priority. To right now sustain my living, I play cover songs as well -- private events, weddings, knickknack things here and there, bar gigs, whatever has gotten me to this point. I've been open to those opportunities, which has helped to sustain and keep furthering my original music as well.
That's really neat. You said, you got your start in South Carolina, and then, you moved here to Colorado. If I recall correctly, you live on the outskirts of Boulder. What did you have to do to transfer that start, whatever you had going for you, word of mouth in South Carolina, and bring it to a new place?
Yeah. I started planting seeds pretty early. I played music all growing up in South Carolina. I had a pretty good network of connections and was doing it full-time. To give a little miniature backstory, I was in a band for several years in South Carolina. We played all the cover gigs and had a lot of good momentum, singing harmonies and stuff. We ended up touring all over the place in the East Coast, doing our own music. After that chapter came to a close, I decided to do my own music.
About a year ago, I visited Colorado. For the first time, before I released my first album, I was feeling this calling to go somewhere new, to get some fresh perspective. It was almost literally a coin toss between going to Austin or Denver. I was looking at Airbnbs. I was just going to drive -- just leave South Carolina, just go for an experience with myself, and see if I want to move somewhere new. It ended up being Denver. I found a spot to hang out for a couple of weeks. I just immediately knew I had to come back to Colorado.
Fast forward a few months later, my partner, Sarah, and I officially moved out here. That's when we started planting seeds of asking around -- who do you know who i...
“Is there any time when branding isn’t important?”
Your brand represents you and your promise to your customer. With creativity, skill, and a strategic approach, you can establish an identity with your brand. Great branding sells out to your customers because it’s what makes you unique and different.
Here today is brand specialist Kyle Asperger, and he’ll be deep diving into how branding gives “life” to your company. He would walk us through the importance of story making and overseeing creative projects to amp up your business.
Listen to the podcast here:
Branding: Knowing Yourself and Building Relationships With Kyle Asperger Welcome to Action's Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. As you continue along your journeys and build your own things, one of the important aspects of that journey is going to be branding. Branding is something that a lot of people have some weird and interesting thoughts about which we'll cover in this episode. We all have a brand. A brand is a good way of understanding what service someone offers. You think about your favorite brands: Nike, Whole Foods, anything. There's an automatic mental image or an automatic feeling associated with that brand.
Today, my guest is here to talk to us about the importance of branding and how we can go about visualizing and creating a good story for our particular brand. Today's guest is Kyle Asperger, the founder of Studio 301.
Kyle, welcome to the program.
Stephen, thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here. I hate talking about myself, so this is nothing but just pure torture.
Sorry. Most of my guests tell me, "Oh, I love your questions. I love coming on and talking about my things." The first thing I want to dive right into is, a brand is a story. What do people generally think about their brands?
Probably the wrong way. I think that's going to be my default, just because it circles back to what we were just talking about. This is the armchair expert in me. That's the psychological "I've been through therapy. I know myself now," yada-yada, "I'm always working on myself."
As we all should be.
That is the crumbs of it.
Whether it's a brand revolving around the individual or a brand revolving around the product, the key is to do all of that footwork, the heavy lifting.
Go through the painful moments of the conversations that you believe [you physically ill]. It's through those struggles in life that marks/notes. Embrace the struggle. That, I think, is so true within the world of just branding. Know yourself. Know your product. Know it thoroughly. The brand will come to life as a byproduct of that.
With this "know yourself, know your brand, know your product", is there an order to this, or does this all happen in parallel?
It is a bit different. If you're talking purely product, that perhaps is a bit more easy to create and cover a brand around, as opposed to an individual, which is severely more complex. If somebody is a coach or something along that line that the individual is critical and core to whatever value they bring to the table, that versus a product -- a product is pretty self-explanatory, what the uses are for; people are just more complex beings.
Interesting. Do you typically work with products more or people?
We don't really find ourselves working within a niche as far as the services or products that are provided. What I do on a regular basis is strictly work with people. That's what I do all the time. I just go out and try to find friends. That's it. Just being here on the podcast, the part that was fun for me is just chopping it up about the psychological, social psychology course, understanding, "Okay. Where is Stephen coming from with this podcast? What are the tools that he is employing? What makes him truly Stephen?" That's the kind of stuff that makes me excited.
It’s no secret that employees spend the majority of their life working. A nine to five for five days a week is draining, and it’s unrealistic for us to expect employees to shut off their personalities when they feel like a human-machine. That’s why it’s important to establish a more people-centric strategy to empower workforce members.
Today’s guest, Traci Chernoff, is an expert in people, strategy, and innovation. In this episode, she will share a few things about what we can do to help restore humanity in the Human Resource Department. Let’s hear some golden nuggets from this professional.
Listen to the podcast here:
Bringing the Human Back in Human Resources with Traci Chernoff Welcome to Action's Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Have you ever had a job where you felt less than human, you felt like nothing more than a cog in a machine, and had trouble finding your purpose, or why you're really there?
My guest today, Traci Chernoff, is an HR executive, really involved in a lot of initiatives around the future of work, as well as the host of the podcast, Bringing the Human Back in Human Resources.
Traci, welcome to the program.
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Definitely. The first thing I want to ask you -- given that I suspect that a lot of my listeners have had this experience, or maybe even currently having this experience in their place of employment. We're living in a time when a lot of people are reconsidering -- whether you call it the great resignation, the great reshuffle, whatever you want to call it -- their relationship with their work. What does the phrase "bringing the human back in human resources" mean to you?
It's a great question. To me, what's so interesting about this is that the human was already in human resources. It's the reason why it's the title of the department or it's the phrase that we use when it comes to this industry. When it comes to really why I always talk about bringing the human back, it's that we lost our way. For me, the way that I grew up, so to speak, in HR is that it was clear that there were some really, really strong foundations in the industry and in the practice.
My takeaway was that there wasn't really enough of a focus on the people behind the problems or the people behind the solutions. One of the reasons why I started the podcast, Bringing the Human Back to Human Resources, was because I wanted to make a call to action that we had to take a look at the way that we were operating and the way that we were addressing these problems, and solve for them through a people-centric approach.
I always say that people are at the center of everything that we do. It's the reason why our businesses today -- there's not one business I'm aware of, at least, that can operate without a human being. That's really what it means to me.
Oh man. I'm picturing some weird, dystopian, future movie with a robot business and everything's just robots.
There's still going to have to be someone to help that robot. There's still going to be someone fixing the robot. There's not going to be a robot fixing a robot, because then, who's going to fix that robot?
Yeah, exactly. There was a movie when I was younger. Will Smith was in it. It took place in the year 2030. iRobot. That was about robots building robots.
Yeah, but look, you couldn't have a movie without Will Smith. See? Exactly right.
Or the writers, or any other people. Let's start with a little context about the history of human resources. You talk about the human always being there, but then human resources losing its way at some point. How did that whole process, for people who don't quite know what happened in the 20th century, play out?
Yeah. It's a good question. First of all, my understanding of HR is very modern, because I started my career when it wasn't called personnel.
Whether it’s a side hustle, a small racket, or you’re operating a wealth machine, running a business can be nerve-wracking and often stressful. In modern work culture, the term “multitasking” has been overused to the point that it’s counterproductive. Doing all things at once and not prioritizing your mental health can be detrimental to you and your future.
Today we’re joined by an amazing woman and a hotshot entrepreneur who’s proved to support women in their thriving business, Patty Block. In 2006, Patty founded The Block Group to empower women-owned businesses and bring unique solutions, especially to the complex issues in the industry. And most importantly, her organization is on the lookout to bring in more revenue with little to no stress involved. Catch her in our talk today.
Listen to the podcast here:
Women’s Journey to Success: Roadblocks to Building Blocks in Business with Patty Block Welcome to Actions-Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. A lot of us on our journeys are going to be building something, building a business, or building something similar, whether it be a side hustle or your main hustle. One of the problems that a lot of people encounter, especially when your business is a side hustle and you need other forms of revenue to keep yourself afloat, is stress. We, oftentimes, have a lot on our plates. Our work, our side hustles are not the only things we have on our plates. Oftentimes, we have family. We have other social and community obligations. Those things are important as well.
My guest today, Patty Block, is the founder of The Block Group. Her organization helps women entrepreneurs bring in more revenue without creating more stress. Yes, they don't have to go hand in hand. At least, that's what Patty has to say for you today.
Patty, welcome to the program.
Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
Definitely. Thank you for joining us. One of the things I'm wondering is, your main message here is that you don't have to create more stress to create more revenue. What does that generally look like? What should the average person be thinking that that means to create more revenue in their business without creating more stress?
There are several pieces to that. I think everything starts with pricing. The people that I typically work with are women business owners who are experts in their fields -- a lot of accountants, attorneys, engineers, and PR and marketing professionals. The market is screaming at us to get bigger to scale. That's, of course, the jargon that everybody uses, "We have to grow and scale."
Yep. Everyone wants to scale, Have it be a unicorn.
Exactly. First of all, not everyone wants that. Secondly, there's a lot of shoulds in that, "We should get bigger. We should do these certain things," just like "We should spend a lot of money on marketing." For most of the people I know, those marketing strategies don't work. They're very expensive, so we're pouring a lot of money into that. There are things that work better, especially for women, that focus on how you can bring in more money, but not add to your stress of juggling all these different issues, and family, and business. Once you add a lot of employees to the mix and you have management responsibilities, that creates a tremendous amount of stress.
It's really finding the right balance for you as a person and you as a business owner.Click To Tweet
One message I'm hearing, which I'd like to reiterate for my audience, is you don't have to scale. You don't have to become a unicorn. I'm sure there's plenty of people -- maybe their dream is to start their own business and run an operation where they employ four or five people, and have $1 million a year in revenue, and that's all they really want. One of the things you're saying, it sounds like, is that that's okay. Stop pressuring yourself to do what the Silicon-Valley-type lingo ...
Society has set the job standards so high that it potentially becomes a toxic environment for most employees. What’s worse is that people often treat trades, seasonal, and gig economy workers poorly when in fact, these people are working noble jobs that deserve the same level of respect.
And as a values-driven entrepreneur, our guest Jessi Burg is always on the lookout for ways to spread her advocacy of teaching companies how to grow equitably and sustainably. She launched her business called Outgrow Your Garage with the sole purpose of helping business owners find the proper resources for them to utilize. In this episode, let’s take a glimpse and hear how this industry expert has been able to amplify her voice and use it to inspire many.
Listen to the podcast here:
The Future of Blue-Collar Workforce: Filling in the Gap to Grow Trades and Service Businesses Welcome to Actions-Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One thing that often keeps a lot of people settling for less is perceptions and expectations. These could be expectations placed upon you based on your race, your gender, your family name, family history, or could be perceptions around certain specific pursuits, perceptions that will prevent you from pursuing what you really want to pursue.
My guest today has some different ideas around some pursuits that have been placed at a lower level by some segments of society. What I'm talking about here is the traits, the people who do the home construction, the electricity, heating and air conditioning – a lot of things that require a lot of skill, a lot of knowledge, and are also very important to our lives. For some reason, we've placed them at a lower level.
Jessi Burg is the founder of Outgrow Your Garage. Not only does she help these people form their own businesses but is an advocate for correcting these misperceptions.
Jessi, welcome to the program.
Yeah. Thanks for having me.
All right, let's begin. Tell me a little bit about Outgrow Your Garage. You help people in the trades deal with the business side of their affairs essentially.
Yeah. There's a couple of things that are true about how trades businesses operate that are different from the way that a lot of other businesses operate. One is they are mobile, inherently mobile. You want your trades person to come to you and do a job onsite. Some of that actually is changing really interestingly, where you have construction that is now happening in factories, and then being carted to job sites. You still have to do that actual building onsite. Even if you have factory-produced walls, which are really interesting, you still have to install the HVAC. You still have to install the plumbing. You still have to install all of the different pieces of putting a house together. That has to happen onsite.
Same thing with maintenance. You have these different maintenance pieces where the plumbing breaks in your house. You want somebody to come to your house to fix your plumbing. You do not want to watch a YouTube video on how to fix your own plumbing. Some people do, but most of us are like, "Please come fix the plumbing." You have this inherent mobility that's hard to plan on a business front.
The other piece is that if you are, for example, a plumber, and you are a residential repair plumber, you're spending all of your time learning about updates to the plumbing field itself. You also need to know about every single plumbing system that has happened in your area for the last 100 or so years, whenever indoor plumbing became a thing in the place that you're living, and that timeframe varies. You don't have the time to learn about business in the same way, because your field changes all the time. There's new technology. There's new advancements in landscaping and construction right now.
We're seeing this huge shift out of diesel-powered and gas-powered engines ...
Wind energy, also known as wind power, refers to how wind turbines transform the movement of wind into electricity. Humans use this wind flow for different purposes: flying kites, sailing boats, pumping water, and generating electricity. With wind turbines, you can convert the energy of the moving wind into electricity. Domestic wind resources for electric power generation are a great way to stabilize energy costs, enhance energy security, and improve our environment.
Our guest for today is Chris Moore, founder of Harmony Turbines. And he’s on the show to give out facts on how sustainable energy is an effective way to save our environment and stray away from the harmful impact that other power supplies emit. Chris is always on the lookout for sustainable ways to reduce carbon footprint and preserve the earth for future generations.
Listen to the podcast here:
Changing the World One Wind Turbine at a Time with Chris Moore Welcome to Actions-Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. We all face challenges in life. We face individual challenges. We face someone [inside a level]. Whenever we do encounter challenges, there's a few different responses we can take. Some of them that we see a lot are unhealthy, on the extremes a little bit -- unhealthy or disempowering, I'd say. That is first, on one end, to deny that a problem really exists or deny its significance, deny the challenge. On the other end, there are people who tend to adapt a doom-and-gloom type of response to it. They're willing to accept a reduction in their quality of life or some sort of other negative consequence from it. They just hide their heads in shame. In between those extremes, or in a much more healthy way, we can actually look to these problems and empower ourselves. We can empower ourselves and say, "Okay, what can we do about it? What can I do to help? Is there some way we can innovate, some way we can use our brains?"
My guest today is someone who has taken this approach to one of our biggest challenges that we have right now, which is climate change and sustainable energy use. Today's guest is Chris Moore, the founder of Harmony Turbines.
Chris, welcome to the program.
Thank you, Steve. Glad to be here.
Thank you, Chris. First of all, tell us about Harmony Turbines. Tell us about what you're doing for our energy use.
We're trying to just basically bring a product to the market that doesn't exist there today. You'll see small wind turbines out on Amazon and eBay where people can buy a do-it-yourself kit, put it together, and hope that they get some usage for their home. There's really no kits that are good enough for the average homeowner to build, to put into use, and to actually see a return. You can then step up to the level where you have a company come in and do it, and those can range anywhere from $30,000 to $60,000 to do it. The likely payback on those has been as bad as 30 years in many cases.
These companies will prey on the fact that, "In your area, you don't have really great wind or anything, so we're going to bump you up to the 20-kilowatt turbine. That way, when you do get some wind, you'll make up for it in those times." Steve, it's all hogwash. There's so many misconceptions. There's so much bad information out there. It's just unbelievable.
Harmony Turbines is a small company. It's about trying to finally bring a product to market that just makes sense -- convenience, ease of use, features, and costsClick To Tweet
Those are the four things that we're going after to try and balance for a proper product to bring to market.
It sounds like what you're saying is that the current wind energy technology doesn't really work for the average homeowners, especially the average urban/suburban dweller, maybe someone in a condo, and Harmony Turbines, your product, makes a feasible product where most people who own homes can utilize wind energy...
We can’t deny the fact that digital devices are everywhere. Now that we’ve entered the technological age, we spend more time tapping on our screens and less time doing things in the real world. As we go on with our days, nonchalantly using our phones, we often receive a notification that updates us with our screen time. Admit it; this part can be quite alarming. You’ll be shocked at how much time you spend with these highly addictive devices. But you’ll even be more surprised when I tell you that there’s an app that turns your screen time into stock market investments!
Taban Yolo, is the co-founder and CEO of Shilling. He spearheaded the idea to make an app that turns your screen time into profitable investments. Let’s listen to the story of this savvy industry expert in today’s show and learn a thing or two about his useful app.
Listen to the podcast here:
A Productive Escape: Converting Screen Time to a Stock Market Investment with Taban Yolo Welcome to Actions-Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the most interesting and curious observations we have in our time, 2022, the year recording, is the relationship that we all seem to have with our phones, our devices, our screens of all kinds. I cannot even begin to tell you how many times people have expressed, just like me, the desire to spend less time on our devices, desire to spend less time in front of our screens, less time on our phone. It's even been enough that Apple, a few years ago, developed that screen time tracking that you can see. We can actually measure how much time you're spending in front of the screen. Yet, a lot of these people, just like me, continue to basically spend just as much time in front of our phones as we have for years, and years, and years. There's a lot of talk about wanting to do less, less screen time, less phones, but still doing mostly the same thing.
My guest today, Taban Yolo, started a company called Shilling. His idea is to take the time we spend in front of our screens and convert them into financial investments. That's an interesting concept to wrap your head around. I'm going to let Taban tell you what it's all about for himself.
Taban, welcome to the program.
Thanks for having me, Stephen. The concept of Shilling is pretty simple. We get the time someone's spending on their phone and let them just convert that by setting parameters by how much they'll spend on their phone, how much time they think they'll spend on their phone, and then just connect that to a Shilling account that's built through a financial portfolio that they could start investing in. What that means is, if you sign up for the Shilling app, you set up your profile, you'll set your time interval. If you set it at eight hours, every eight hours of screen time that you hit, you'll be able to make automatic investment into a Shilling portfolio based off your risk tolerance.
Is this designed to discourage people from excessive phone use or not thinking about how much time they're spending in front of the screen?
Yes and no. Initially, when we came up with the idea and started building the company, it's solely intended to help people spend less time on their phone. We do this while, obviously, trying to create value for your screen time. As the months have gone along, and we started talking to more customers, we realized that there's this demographic that really don't care how much time they spend on their phone. They just want to get that value of the time they spend on their phone. I would say yes and no to that question.
It could have a couple of different purposes. When you talk about your demographics, are there certain groups of people that you're targeting with this application, or is this something that's for everybody?
Initially, when we came up with the idea, it was solely based off -- I was trying to get my girlfriend to start investing.
Positive work culture is an avenue for greatness. It attracts talent, drives engagement, and impacts happiness. Culture is as influential as your business strategy because it either builds up or undermines your objectives. A multitude of factors plays in developing workplace culture, including leadership, management, philosophies, people, work environment, communication, values, and so much more.
Most of us let our workplace culture form naturally, but what we don’t know is that there should be a system to follow. Not defining your workplace culture is a mistake, and we must end that. Today Amanda HarNess would shift some perspectives and swerve us in the right direction. Don’t miss this out because, in this session, she will talk about rebranding the company culture to create a unique business that harnesses the correct morals and mindsets. Now, let’s take a deep dive and discover more.
Listen to the podcast here:
Rebranding Corporate Culture: Importance of Creating a Positive and Efficient Workplace to Achieve Business Growth with Amanda HarNess Welcome to Actions-Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Right now, we're in a time where a lot of things are changing, a lot of our attitudes about work and everything are shifting. There comes times in all of our lives that we need to shift our own attitudes. A lot of people refer to this as a rebranding. We're shifting our focus, shifting our businesses. Today, my guest, Amanda HarNess, is an entrepreneur who recently rebranded her business. Her business was called Kinetic Spark and now is Business Excelerated.
Amanda, welcome to the program.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Thank you so much for joining in. First of all, tell us a little bit about the nature of your business, because you address a lot of these issues with work culture that we've been observing for quite some time now.
I'm a business growth accelerator, and I'm a fractional COO. When you're in an operation seat, you're looking at a number of different things inside of a business. Not only are you looking at their day-to-day, how are their systems and processes, and how are they operating on a daily basis, but also, who is operating in the business.
Without the people, we don't have the business.Click To Tweet
I do put a strong emphasis on how are we optimizing our people from a performance standpoint, engagement, how are we looking at things from a top-down approach when it comes to the trickle down effect of leadership, and taking a look at how we're communicating the long-term vision of the business, getting people engaged and invested in that, and carrying that over into the type of culture you're also building at the organization.
How long have you been at this business?
I have 11 years of experience in operations, but I've owned my own business for just under two years now.
You've encountered a lot of businesses that are trying to expand and trying to set up the right culture. My question is, are most of your clients, most of the people you've historically worked with, focused on the expansion or focused on the culture? Does it tend to be a little bit of both?
I think it tends to be a little bit of both. There is a little bit of a misconstrued perception of what it means to have a company culture. There is some reeducation that happens while we're working together or even just some adjustments and modifications. If we're making a number of changes in the business, oftentimes, that changes the culture. An example of culture that I like to use is not just we have ping pong tables and pajama Fridays. That might be part of culture, but that isn't culture in and of itself.
Rebranding Corporate Culture: Culture is the norms of the business, how you agree to interact together with your clients.
An example would be if a business is a hub-and-spoke type of model where you've got leadership in the mid...
Why is it that a majority of employees find their work disengaging and unfulfilling? The ultimate answer to that is a lack of career introspection and the inability to place the right people at the right job. This process has gotten more frustrating over the years, both from the standpoint of the job seeker and the organizations trying to build a team. Tonia Martinez is the founder of Career Transformations and she has had her foot set on both sides. Tonia talks to Stephen Jaye about this continuous struggle of presenting opportunities to the right people. Learn more as Tonia shares how she manages to ignite career transformations across organizational hierarchies.
Listen to the podcast here:
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Igniting Career Transformations: Aligning Employee And Organizational Values With Tonia Martinez One way, a lot of people settle for less is in their jobs and careers. I have seen some conflicting numbers around what percentage of people are satisfied with their jobs but all of ...
When you start a business, you need two things: a vision and culture. So how do you build these two things? Stephen Jaye interviews the CEO of Management Insight, Todd Wheeler, on the role of leadership and communication. Todd also discusses the importance of community, learning to focus on the right things and understanding. Starting up a business? Or are you looking to improve an existing one? Then tune in and learn valuable lessons from Todd.
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Build Your Business Vision And Culture With Management Insights Founder Todd Wheeler One important aspect of everybody's lives or most people's lives is work culture, organizational culture, the culture that we all spend a good part of our days in. These things are changing. The Great Resignation assertion of what a lot of people have been feeling for years, what they want out of their work culture, which is an organization that benefits, values them and is still pretty early into this whole transformation. We are going to take a little while before we see how this entire thing turns out.
However, there are a lot of interesting things going on in this field, hopefully leading us toward a better and more productive work culture in the future. My guest, Todd Wheeler, is the Founder and CEO and by CEO, he refers to as Chief Enthusiasm Officer of an organization call...
Many businesses felt the shock of COVID19, and more of these couldn’t survive. So what does it take for a business to survive and thrive past a pandemic setback? Stephen Jaye answers these questions and more as he talks to Aaron Uhl, founder and owner of Uhl’s Brewing Company in Boulder, Colorado. Aaron walks us through how he got into brewing, what he learned, and how he helped pilot his business through the COVID19 crisis. Learn more about Aaron and his experiences by tuning in.
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Steering A Business Through A Pandemic Setback With Aaron Uhl Colorado has been my home for years. For anyone who knows what it's like here, it is longer than most people. There are a lot more new entries and a lot of people are moving here. The area of Colorado, especially the Front Range, Denver, Boulder, and Fort Collins, is known for the craft brewing scene. We have a pretty robust scene in that particular sense of one of 5 or 6 places where there is a lot of people doing a lot of experimenting with different types of beer and formulas. My guest is Aaron Uhl, who started his own brewery. He is the owner and head brewer along with 6 or 7 other roles. We talked a little bit about the idea of wearing many hats with Uhl’s Brewing, for anyone interested is located near the corner of Arapahoe and 55th on the East end of Boulder.--Aaron, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
Tell me a little bit about Uhl's Brewing, your story, and what you are all about.
It all started with a passion for homebrewing, competitions, and loving craft beer, in general. When I first started brewing, it was simply because I couldn't get a certain beer from beer trading because beer trading was a big thing back in early 2010 and on. With that, I whined a little bit. My girlfriend bought me the book that everyone gets, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian. That nudged me along to do my first brew with a friend who had an all-grain system. He showed me the ropes on the first brew. After that, I was at home homebrewing.
There was a tile in the kitchen that was available on my side of the table. There was going to be a fermenter there. By the end of the first year, I had the beer that I couldn't trade for a mimic of it, an Imperial stout aging in a five-gallon bourbon barrel in my basement. That was in 2012 or so. Fast forward to 2018, I won a lot of awards at different competitions across the state and region. I ended up winning regional gold medals for an Imperial stout and Imperial IPA with AHA competition that gets run annually. That's the best of the show for me of all things, also a trip to the Great American Beer Festival with Jeff Griffith from FATE Brewing at the time, who is now at Twisted Pine.
The eventful night led me to sign a contract with another brewery to start the brand in 2018 of February at the Fresh Hop Competition. I ended up winning about 5 or 6 awards and then took best to show. The funny thing was people that I would assume to talk with dropped a tank into their system and started brewing. They showed up to the brewery where the competition was having its final rounds of judging and award ceremony. They were like, “What are you doing here? We are honestly not to ask you. You own a brewery.” They live in the area and wanted to check it out. I told them that I had about eight different beers in the competition and they should sit down at the pro-am table, hang out for the award ceremony, and try the brewery’s beers that they were at.
They sat down and their eyes were raising every single time I won an award because when I talked to them, that's what I wanted to start doing, brewing one and done recipes and easy IPAs. They are like, “Everyone thinks they can do that, but can you brew anything else other than that?” It landed in their head that, “If this guy is winning medals across broad spectrums from lager to British bitters to smash American sours,
Everyone has a dream. It could be small or big and vary from person to person. And everyone is looking for ways to possibly achieve those. The question is, what are you doing right now to take a step closer to them? Luana Bossetti, host of A Life Up to Your Dreams podcast, knew what she liked to do even at a young age. Luana is a multi-passionate entrepreneur with big dreams and vision. She wants to travel and see different places. She believes that you can do anything you put your mind and heart into. Knowing what you want will enable you to take one step at a time. Listen and find out more to turn your dreams into reality!
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Actionable Steps To Take To Live Your Dreams With Luana Bossetti Over the course of weeks, months, especially when it's winter, when it's cold and things get stressful for a lot of people, not to exclude anyone in the tropics or Southern hemisphere, they are not experiencing that, but we all get bogged down in the day-to-day. Sometimes we forget about those intentions we made at the very beginning of the year. Intentions, resolutions, goals or whatever you want to call them.
I want to encourage you to go back and revisit them. Think about what you thought about the holiday break when you were reflecting on 2021 and thinking forward to 2022 and say, "Is this still what I want? How am I doing? Did I let other things bog me down? Am I making some progress toward these goals?" In this episode, I'd like to talk to you about some aspects of our mindset that can sometimes limit us. I have had the pleasure of meeting a lot of great people through this show and a lot of great people that have a similar idea and mission. The mission is to help more people live their authentic lives. Live the lives that they want as opposed to the ones that were laid out for you. The cookie-cutter scripted life, as I sometimes like to refer to it.
One of the things that I like to call the traditional mentality that we all oftentimes have is when we see someone doing something similar to ourselves. There's an instinct to say that person's a competitor or a threat. However, this particular mission of ours requires a slightly different way of thinking. I have had one previous episode where I've interviewed other podcasters with a very similar mission.
This particular show that I discovered is called A Life Up To Your Dreams. The host here with me is Luana Bossetti. Her podcast has a very similar mission to mine. I'm here trying to figure out how we can collaborate on the mission because getting through this old limiting culture is going to take as much alliance as opposed to us competing with one another. Luana, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me here.
You are joining us from Majorca, Spain. Tell us a little bit about your place of residence because most of my guests have been other Coloradans thus far. I love exploring other places, cultures and stuff like that.
Majorca is a beautiful island in Spain, not far from Barcelona. It's a beautiful place for people that want to connect with nature. You have everything from the sea to the mountains, waterfalls, and all you like. It's a beautiful island that has a lot to offer. Unfortunately, most of the time, it is viewed, at least here in Europe, as the place to go only in the summer, but it's so much more than that. It's so rich in culture and there are different places to go hiking in nature. It's a beautiful place for everybody if you want to visit Europe.
You mentioned hiking in nature, which is a big thing where I live in Colorado. It's practically like a state religion that people do some hiking, backpacking and outdoor activity. Is that a major part of the culture? I'm thinking right now how Majorca would compare to a couple of nearby places. A lot of people know about Ibiza, which is known as a party place. Also, when you talk about Barcelona, I can't help but think about the Catalonian and all the separati...
Life is all about making the right connections. The people who you want to work with aren't necessarily going to be your best friends. Join your host Stephen Jaye as he talks to the CEO of TealHouse and the creator of Frequency Coder, Jaqui McCarthy. Jaqui explains the frequency coder as an onion with many layers. There are people inside and the distance between them will determine their compatibility. There are also all the layers that you have to keep in mind. Listen in if you want to understand the frequency coder and how it's different from a Myers Briggs test. Start understanding yourself today!
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Using Frequency And Motivation To Make Better Connections With Jaqui McCarthy Of Frequency Coders Sometimes, a part of the journey needs to be understanding ourselves, others, who we are and how we interact with one another. This is where behavioral science comes in. My guest is Jaqui McCarthy. She is a behavioral scientist and serial entrepreneur, which I know a lot of you readers out there will be pursuing entrepreneurship eventually as a path. She has some interesting ideas about understanding our behaviors. We are all familiar with at least one of the personality tests, whether it's the Myers-Briggs or Big Five. Her idea is to measure this personality measure or motivations to understand ourselves on multiple dimensions.
Jaqui, welcome to the program.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for joining. First of all, what would you describe behavioral science to really mean if you were to explain it in a minute or two?
Behavioral science understands how humans interact with others, the technology and then themselves within the technological platforms. You have these algorithms that are trying to understand humans. It's studying that and gathering actual measurable data to determine how these people behave.
It's not just how people think. It's how people are going to behave. A lot of the algorithms might think about what you said. Technology is trying to predict purchasing and shopping behavior. Do you see technology being used to understand behavior on a deeper level about things that matter beyond what you are going to buy?
In a positive light, we are very much struggling with that. Hopefully, we will be seeing a new generation of entrepreneurs coming out and creating more ethical algorithms. A lot of attention is, "How can we better understand consumers so we can sell them a bunch of crap they don't need?" In a few of the projects that I have taken on in the past, what we did is dove into trying to understand the human factor behind interacting with each other on platforms and how to optimize those connections between people.
We live in an era of loneliness and some of the negative consequences of loneliness. We are very disconnected. People are turning to violence, drugs, suicide and all these terrible things because we need human connection. Do you see hope in people understanding human behavior on this level and then designing algorithms to help us make better connections with one another? Do you see that as barely treading water and not making a difference?
It's going to depend a lot on where investors are going to put their money. Where is the return on ethical algorithms? Is there going to be a monetary return? It's not most likely a lot of the time. In the case of WiGo Trips, which was a platform that we developed, it's connecting random strangers to each other but understanding who they are so that when they do connect, their experiences are optimized. We had a way to monetize it by booking travel. It's going to be up to the entrepreneurs to find those monetization strategies or up to the investors to invest in things that aren't necessarily going to return the money but will make the world a better place.
One place I naturally go is some wealthy philanthropy. It's things like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In their case,
We all feel different emotions depending on the circumstances we face every day. In this episode, Kelli Hansen shares her expertise on mental health. She founded the BCC Evolution, a mental health and suicide awareness nonprofit, in 2018 after losing her middle sister to a completed suicide in 2017. She wanted to break the stigma of associating mental health with negative and degrading things. We all need to focus on our mental health. How can we practice positive thinking in our daily lives? It all comes down to conditioning and practicing your mind for positivity. Stay tuned and find out more and maintain good mental health!
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Maintaining Good Mental Health And Conditioning Your Brain For Positivity With Kelli Hansen We're going to talk about mental health. I know I talk about mental health quite a bit but I think it's a topic that deserves a lot of discussion because it's integral to a lot of different aspects of our lives and a very important component of our life's outcome. It's an umbrella term that encompasses many different situations, fears, tragedies as well as states of mind.
One of the things that are interesting is as we become more aware of mental health, its presence and its importance to our life's outcomes, more and more people are taking on mental health as their cause and idea of what they want to do with their lives. My guest Kelli Hansen is the Founder of a mental health organization called BCC Evolution.
Kelli, welcome to the program.
Thank you so much, Steven. I appreciate you having me here.
I appreciate you coming on and taking the time to join us in the show. The first thing I want to do is get our audience oriented to BCC Evolution. What is your approach to mental health? What aspect of the mental health challenge because it's so broad that you are solving? What inspired you to get started on it?
It’s absolutely my favorite subject. I founded BCC Evolution in 2018 after I lost my middle sister to a completed suicide in 2017. I knew that I didn't want to sit around and do nothing. At that time, I was working with another organization that focused on the adolescent aspect. I was hyper-focused on suicide prevention.
Over the years, as I've gained more knowledge and had more collaborations, I've found that mental health is the root cause of what leads people to the complete act of suicide whether it be a moment or a lifetime of some mental health challenge is why people complete the act. If we can get to that root cause, start doing the education, bring more awareness, start having these hard conversations like you and I are having and breaking down that stigma, that's how we're going to start saving lives.
BCC Evolution fits in the pre-crisis space, more of the education, learning how to identify signs, knowing the symptoms. How do we talk to somebody when they come to me and they're like, "I'm suicidal. I'm having this mental health challenge." Instead of locking up like a deer in headlights, you have some tangible ways that you can talk or communicate, ultimately and potentially save their lives. That's what BCC Evolution is all about. It’s the awareness, the conversation and the education.
One thing I love about it is that suicide hotlines at the moment of crisis prevention have been around for a while. I know it was 2017 when the rapper, Logic, wrote that song with the title of the suicide prevention hotline number but with education and with tackling these underlying longer-term issues. Not only it seems like at least to me, do you have a chance to save the person's life but you also have a chance to make that person's life better because it's not that we kept you alive but we're also addressing this underlying root problem that's deeper within.
It's okay to cry. It's okay to be happy. All of the emotions, it's okay to have all of them.Click To Tweet
The more that I've had to have a conversation with peop...
The culture of capitalism and consumption often makes us lose sight of why we work in the first place. In this episode, we’ll attempt to uncover what you really want to make work meaningful and joyous. Nigel Clayton is an entrepreneurial business coach/mentor and the owner of Ultrapreneur Success. His method is helping people pull out that leadership part of them without telling them what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, underscoring the importance of figuring out what you really want in life and in business. Join him and host Stephen Jaye as they dive deep into today’s culture and the issues being brought to the surface by the recent pandemic and the changes that will come with it. Stay tuned!
Listen to the podcast here: How To Make Work Meaningful And Joyous With Nigel Clayton Welcome to the show. In this program, we’re all about opening up to more possibilities, getting you out of what I call the scripted life, and getting you into the life that you really want. That’s going to mean different things for different people. I’m not here to tell you what that thing is, what it means for you, or what your path is going to be. That’s for you to figure out, but for a lot of us, that path is going to involve some form of entrepreneurship. Even if you’re not specifically starting your own practice or starting your own business, there are aspects of the entrepreneurial mindset that can benefit you in any of these pursuits. I bring to you my guest, Nigel Clayton, who is an Entrepreneurial Coach and Mentor and has been for a few decades.
Nigel, welcome to the program.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Thank you so much for joining us. Having been an entrepreneurial coach for so many years, you have so many insights into what makes certain entrepreneurs succeed and fail. My first question for you is, what is the mindset that anyone needs to adapt before going into any entrepreneurial pursuit?
If you can't think about what you want, think about what you don't want. And then think about what's the opposite of that. Click To Tweet
I think that’s a hard thing to do in a way because the majority of our lives have been trained to be followers, whether it’s in school or working for somebody else. Somebody has been there telling us what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. People then get this bright idea of, “I’m going to be an entrepreneur. Everything is going to be great. I got this plan of selling this product or service.” They’re all jumping up and down like Tony Robbins and saying, “I’m going to rule the world,” and then they realize after a while what they’ve gotten themselves into. Part of it is there isn’t somebody telling them what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, so a lot of them are not prepared to be in that situation.
They either react to it positively and they’re able to make the decisions they need to make quickly, or they don’t, and if they don’t, then they try to find somebody that will help them. Much of the time, that person is going to end up being the next trainer that’s going to make them stay being a follower. They need to go from being a follower to being a leader, but you can’t train leadership in the entrepreneurial world. Training somebody means they’re still following somebody.
In Corporate America, since it’s a completed structure and there are little pockets of leadership in there, they can be trained within that little pocket. In the entrepreneurial world, everything is their responsibility. They’re like on stage. All the lights are on them, everybody can see them, and they got to make all the decisions. That’s the biggest problem they have.
What I do is help them pull that leadership part of them out of them without telling them what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. I don’t tell people what to do. I don’t keep them accountable. I don’t say, “Did you do this?” It’s all of those kinds of things that a lot of people do to try and ge...
Success in every line of work or situation can only be achieved by facing every challenge head-on without doubts or fear. Therefore, building confidence is key in establishing a strong character and mindset in whatever you do. Stephen Jaye sits down with Jamie Dandar McKinney to discuss how confidence starts with embracing a burning desire to learn and grow. She explains the power of eliminating negative self-talk and knowing when to shift confidence gears depending on the situation. Jamie also shares her work as the Founder of JMD Consulting, helping women leaders discover their confidence to reach the top of the corporate ladder.
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Jamie Dandar McKinney On Building Confidence Through Curiosity And Openness One thing that keeps a lot of people settling for less is a lack of confidence. The inability to speak up, say what you want or even within yourself, believe that you are capable of and deserving what you want. This is a topic that inflicts a lot of people and is affected by this. It's something that people are even sometimes ashamed to admit and how often this is something that impedes us from getting the life that we truly want. My guest, Jamie McKinney, specializes in helping people find that confidence. She is the Founder and President of JMD Consulting. Jamie, welcome to the program. Thank you, Stephen. I'm so excited to be here with you. A lot of people are thinking about self-confidence and do have issues with self-confidence. What made you feel like it was going to be the thing that you brought into the world with the business you started? What service do you want to provide for humanity? This started very early in my career. The confidence I figured out was my survival skill initially. Once I started to figure out some of the nuances of it, it graduated to my thriving skill and that was important. I started my career in the automotive industry so it was very heavily male-dominated. That was my first job out of college. I was the third female to join a team of 400. I was the youngest, on average, by about twenty years. I hadn't grown up in the automotive industry so I didn't have stories to regale with them. The one thing I did have that some of my comrades did not was a college degree. You remember the game, which one of these things is not like the others. That was me in a variety of categories. There were shenanigans and resistance. I was also learning and new. I figured out though, early on that I didn't have to be the smartest person in the room, the most experienced and certainly the most male as long as I carried myself and with confidence and lead with that confidence. It started out being my secret sauce and my way of having an advantage in an industry and a company in a place where my advantages were limited as I was gaining experience. A lot of people would struggle with the idea of finding that confidence, whether it be survival or a thriving skill. One of the things that happen with a lot of people who lack self-confidence is doing whatever the boss says, not setting boundaries. “The boss told me I need to work over the weekend. I'm not going to say, ‘I'm sorry. My other parts of my life matter too.’” What gave you the courage to develop and show that self-confidence in this automotive industry where you were the one that's not like the other for several different reasons? One, I wanted to be there, be successful in business and learn. I was in an environment and a place that I saw as a challenge. I like challenges. Part of it, I was innately ready to learn and do something that I hadn't done yet. To break it down to a smaller piece and this is something in my book I talk about is figuring out your “hit it to me” skill. The “hit it to me” skill is a reference to a baseball interview that Derek Jeter was on in early 2000. I was listening to this interview while sitting on the couch in my apartment when I was fresh out of college.
Discussions on mental health are increasingly becoming more open and destigmatized. With this, people’s knowledge of what they can do for their mental wellbeing increases. Here to talk about a more direct and biological solution for mental health issues are Angie Noack, VP of Business Development, and Rachel Ragsdale, founder of BrainCode Centers. In this episode, they sit down with host Stephen Jaye to walk us through their neurological methods that involve brain mapping, neurofeedback, qEEG, and more. They talk about attacking the root cause and giving you a chance to treat the underlying issues directly in the brain. Take this time to learn more about this novel approach by tuning in.
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How Brain Mapping Is Changing The Game For Mental Health With Angie Noack and Rachel Ragsdale Those of you who have been reading some of my previous episodes know that I like to talk quite frequently about mental health. It is a major part of the human experience that tragically until relatively has largely been ignored. I think the attitude used to be suck-it-up and do your job and not deal with whatever is bugging you on the inside or whatever's going on with whatever's wrong.
That may lead to an existence that gets the job done. Sucking it up does not lead to a very happy existence. I love to hear stories about people who are taking new approaches and trying to help people out with mental health. My guests are Rachel Ragsdale and Angie Noack from Braincode Centers. Welcome to the program.
Thanks for having us.
Thank you so much. We're excited to be here.
Thank you so much for coming onto this show. The first thing I want to know is Braincoad Centers use a technology called Braincode Mapping. Can you explain to our audience who may be curious about different aspects of mental health and how we can go about improving our mental health? How does this Braincode Mapping process work?
I'll start us off here. I love that question, and I know Angie also loves that question because that is truly what our company thrives on is looking at the root cause of what's going on. Very much so classically and mental health, the two main things that people seek out when they're not feeling well are prescription medications or counseling. Both of those two are good things that you can get involved in. There are no problems with either of them, but we do believe firmly that misses the why, and it misses the root of what's going on.
We look at the organ that we're treating, and we do that through that qEEG Brain Map that you were referring to. It tells us where there are areas of under or overactivity, which we know clinically are going to produce symptoms for people. That is where we start. That is the baseline that gives us the direction to everything that we do from a treatment standpoint.
I apologized when I introduced you. I forgot to introduce your specific roles. Rachel, I know you're the cofounder of the organization and Angie, I know you're the Vice President of Business Development. Please feel free to answer whatever questions I follow up with, whatever pertains accurately to your specific roles with this organization.
This Braincode Map you're saying can explain some of the things that a lot of people observe. What I mean is everything from the obvious schizophrenia, the ones that are diagnosed, to the people who more generically say, “I have anxiety, I have trouble focusing sometimes.” All types of ailments that people talk about.
We treat anything from anxiety, depression, ABB, bipolar, trauma, PTSD, brain injuries and sleep issues. I would say more common. Some of the top things that we treat are the things that I mentioned but what Rachel was saying, rather than treating these mental health issues with synthetic substances, medication and things like that or even talk therapy, which we believe in.
Rachel and I both have licenses in clinical mental health.
Sports and athletics require hard work, sacrifice and a focused mindset. These are the same things that you need to grab on to business success, and former Top 10 in Women’s Racquetball, Dr. Jo Shattuck has these in spades. In this episode, Stephen Jaye and Dr. Shattuck share insights on how the qualities necessary for sports also translate to business. Dr. Shattuck talks about getting her late start in racquetball and bucking that to climb up to a top 10 rank in the sport in the US. We also hear of the creation of PantherTec and the Kinesthetic Awareness Training system based on her experiences as an athlete. Listen in and be inspired by Dr. Jo Shattuck’s journey.
Listen to the podcast here: Athletics, Sacrifice And Mindset: Setting Up For Business Success With Jo Shattuck Pursuing and realizing our passions takes some hard work and sacrifice. The things that are important in life, bring satisfaction, actualization and all the like are going to take a little bit more effort and even some sacrifice. Some people in some pursuits naturally lend themselves to understanding that sacrifice. One community that I've found that understands the idea of sacrificing for something is the athletic community.
I trained and completed Ride The Rockies, which here in Colorado was a 6-day, 400-plus bike ride up and down the mountains in different places. It's one of those experiences that you work hard for and get a certain feeling of that reward for that hard work. My guest, Jo Shattuck, understands that particular aspect of working hard and training for a passion as she is a former racquetball champion and has started a business called PantherTec, which helps people with techniques as well as some other things about their athletic pursuits and everything.
Jo, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Stephen. This is great.
First of all, I'm going to start by talking about your racquetball days because not everyone is an athlete or has an athletic pursuit. Athletic pursuits do have that whole air of you're following a passion and working hard for it. What brought you to racquetball? What was the process of training to become a racquetball champion like?
If you put yourself in some other experience that you have no idea what it is, you don't even plan what it might be like, that's how you get some of the extra sensory inputs and different ways of perceiving concepts and ideas and things in the world.Click To Tweet
I don't know how far back you want me to go but I had a lot of energy as a kid. In the ninth grade, my mom saw the writing on the wall. I was getting in some trouble, staying out past curfew and stuff. She signed me up for 100 different things, Girl Scouts some basket weaving and whatever else. At the local club, I went, played it and lost every game, 21 to 1 or 21 to 0. That was way back in the day. I went on to undergraduate at Louisiana Tech. They had thirteen beautiful glass back quarters. In those days, being a teenager, you could drink, study or play racquetball.
I did the 1st and 3rd. I decided I wanted to be good. I remember the exact moment I decided. I was hitting the ball and it went where I wanted it. I went out to the hallway and asked the fellows. I was like, “This could be something that I might get into. Are there racquetball contests?” They laughed at me because they're not called contests. They're called tournaments. I went to my first tournament with my glove. I won a Ladies B tournament in the middle of Louisiana by myself and all that. I was probably still smoking cigarettes at that time and doing all the things that teenagers do. I did not take the normal path to elite athleticism like some of my other colleagues did.
You tried hundreds of different things. Do you feel like that's a common story as far as people finding that thing that they're truly passionate about? You've tried a bunch of things. Maybe some things didn't work out at all and mayb...
It’s no secret that the corporate world is becoming more and more suffocating. That is why people are finding ways to exit gracefully and break free from that structure. This is true for both Dmitry Smirnov and Dana McGlone who Stephen Jaye knows from his previous life as a meteorologist. Dmitry and Dana worked for the engineering sector and water resources sector. They join Stephen on today’s show to share how they went out on their own and built their own consulting business that allows them to choose the projects to work with in order to serve their clients better. Also, they talk about their possible partnership with a former employer on a fairly sizable project. Find out how that’s working out.
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Exiting Gracefully: How Dmitry Smirnov And Dana McGlone Started A Business And Partnering With A Former Employer To Serve Clients Better Welcome to the show. I originally was a meteorologist. I studied Meteorology and was fascinated with the weather from a young age. A lot of meteorology jobs go in a lot of different directions, and a surprising number of them are all about coding or about writing code, or sometimes even manual data entry.
My guests are people I know from my previous life as a meteorologist who, in their pursuits, have found a way to break free from the corporate structure. As you know, the corporate structure is suffocating a lot of people. We have these old-school ideas, and I won’t go off too much on a tangent about it. I’ll let my guests do the talking. This episode’s guests are Dmitry Smirnov and Dana McGlone, who are the Cofounders of HydroMet Consulting.
Dima and Dana, welcome to the program.
Thanks so much for having us. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Thanks.
To begin, tell us a little bit about your overall job functions. HydroMet Consulting, I want to orient everyone to what that means. Hydro means water, but maybe not everyone is familiar with what hydrometeorology is.
I would caveat all of this by saying that we are one year into our startup. We are a very fluid company now in terms of our vision. We don’t have a niche that has its upsides, but also its downsides, but in terms of what we do individually, I would call myself the Scientist, which involves a lot of coding, but also a lot of brainstorming of ideas and throwing stuff on the wall and seeing what hits both in terms of day-to-day operations as well as pursuits for the future.
It has been a dream project of ours to go out on our own for a while. Our focus is around heavy rainfall both forecasting and doing a little bit of post-season analysis for our clients. Both of our backgrounds overlap with mostly the engineering sector and water resources sector, so we like to define solutions for our clients that are both satisfactory to the meteorological side of science and solve the problems they’re having.
One of the things that drew me to science originally when I selected a major many years ago was the idea of discovering things, being creative, and problem-solving in a way more about figuring things out. In the corporate structure, do you feel like a lot of scientists in general end up more in the realm of trying to figure out how to make a program work rather than the actual process of scientific discovery and the inquisitiveness and curious mindedness that go along with it?
'I don't feel like I'm letting anyone down when I say, 'Nope I don't have time for that.' Obviously one (of the best benefits of owning your own business) is you get to set your own hours and chose your workload.'Click To Tweet
Yeah. I think you’ve hit on one of the key limitations of being in a larger engineering firm like Dana and I both worked for a number of years. It’s the reality of the projects involved. A lot of the projects that the company did were with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, so it was a lot of manual effort in terms of fixing shapefile...
The pandemic has accelerated change and amplified issues within organizations. As a leader, how do you bring in positive leadership moving forward into this new revolution? Today’s guest is Executive Coach Brent Mullins of Brent Mullins Coaching. Brent has over 25 years of experience in executive leadership and organizational complexity at Fortune 200 companies and multi-cultural organizations. He joins host Stephen Jaye to discuss what qualities are required of a leader in these volatile times. Brent underscores a learning mindset as one of the key factors in the evolution of a leader. Tune in for more insights and advice on leadership.
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Brent Mullins On Positive Leadership And The Importance Of A Growth Mindset In this episode, I want to talk to you all about leadership in organizations and leadership in our lives. Leadership tends to set the stage for an entire organization, how people within the organization interact with one another, how they interact with the customers and how the organization ends up being presented to everybody. A leadership that's misprioritized and misguided can have an impact on the employees. It can lead to employees being disengaged, disinterested and dissatisfied with their job.
Given some of the statistics that we've seen about the percentage of employees that are indeed disengaged, it's easy to feel like we're in some multidecade-long leadership crisis at the moment. Here to help with this problem is our guest, an Executive Coach, Brent Mullins of Brent Mullins Coaching. Thank you very much for joining us on the show.
Thanks, Stephen. That was a great intro.
Every executive coach has their own niche or all coaching because coaching is a pretty broad category of people. Each particular person needs to establish a niche and we've covered this in some of our previous episodes about niching. To orient our readers, what is your niche in this executive coaching world?
While I do work across a number of industries, most of my work is working with executives and leaders who have executive aspirations somewhere in the life sciences field, biotech, healthcare technology, medical device, physicians or wherever they are in the life sciences space. In particular, I work one-on-one with leaders, especially those who are wanting to take on bigger strategic challenges, but they're somehow hamstrung or kept from getting to those challenges that they're after. That oftentimes leads into the other part of the work that I do, which is working with the leader and their teams to increase the effectiveness of the team overall.
There are a million ways that we can evolve as learners to make daily incremental gains forward.Click To Tweet
With these aspiring leaders, you talked about them being hamstrung. What are the most common challenges that people experience as they're trying to step into a leadership role or improve their leadership capabilities to create better teams?
Some of the big challenges from a strategy standpoint might have to do with going into new markets. If they're making something, they may be re-evaluating their industrial footprint. I've never met a CEO that doesn't think of more growth on their head every day, day in and day out. When you've got these challenges and you're living in a world like COVID and navigating the pandemic, there are so many issues and people challenges pulling on your time. It's quite remarkable. The question becomes, "How do I as a leader keep everything going and keep my hand on the wheel and still be able to attend to the strategic challenges that are often outside of the four walls of my business?"
When you say outside of the four walls to your business, do you mean challenges that arise from changes in markets, a new competitor emerging or consumer trends and things like that?
A new technology that has popped up, establishing brand-new markets like the Blue Ocean Strategy.
As an actively serving board member for the Special Olympics Colorado and Commission Chair for the Independent Ethics Commission, Liz Krupa has a lot on her plate. But with proper time management and prioritization, she gets it all done and more! Liz doesn’t just have a great work ethic, but her moral ethics as a lawyer is one that should be admired. Her advocacy for – bleeds through all the work she does. In this episode, Liz talks us through her many initiatives to drive positive change in the community and the justice system. She explains the importance of having policies to empower representation and hold the legal system to a higher standard. Listen in to learn more as she chats with host Stephen Jaye.
Listen to the podcast here: Time Management Strategies To Be Proactive In Your Advocacy With Liz Krupa In our past culture or the culture that we’re sunsetting, we’d often get the phrase that I’ve previously expressed that I hate, “What do you do?” One of the reasons I tend to hate it is because it encourages us to define ourselves pretty simply by our job titles. Most people are quite a bit more complicated than what you can get in a job title, a few bullet points or something like that, even more complicated than what you’d see in a resume. Oftentimes, people take on a lot of different types of pursuits but these pursuits are part of the same whole personal brand. Something that I’ve been hearing about quite a bit more is that we all have a personal brand that connects a lot of the things we do.
My guest, Liz Krupa, encapsulates this idea of having a personal brand that manifests in a number of different pursuits pretty much better than almost anyone else that I’ve encountered so far. Liz, I would like to welcome you to the program and quickly talk to you about all the pursuits that you are involved in toward the same goal of protecting the people, the unprotected, as well as the ethics in the legal profession.
I’m happy to be here.
Thank you so much. First of all, Liz, it’s an honor to have you on the program. Tell us about all these different endeavors because you’re in the trial advocacy, the Ethics Commission, Special Olympics. They’re all different places that you’ve got yourself involved with.
Any time I have felt pushed down or doors shut or told no or 'that's cute little girl maybe you should try to do this instead', it has just made me more determined to get through that door, more determined to succeed. Click To Tweet
By training and education, I’m a lawyer. I do mostly criminal defense but I also do some ethics and internal investigation type of work, white-collar work. I serve on several boards and commissions. Two of the boards that I serve are NITA, the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, which is a nationwide advocacy group that tries to help lawyers be better advocates and the Colorado Special Olympics, which is part of the larger National and International Special Olympics, which works with getting developmentally disabled people more recognition through sports and school, giving them the correct access to medical care and the importance of keeping your physical health up as well. Those are two of the nonprofit boards that I serve.
I am also the Chair of the Commission on Judicial Discipline for the State of Colorado, which is the only entity that looks at any rules of conduct for judges, whether those were violated, makes recommendations to the Supreme Court as far as discipline. I’m also the chair of the Independent Ethics Commission, which similarly looks at any violation of the rules of ethics for elected officials.
Numerous of those types of endeavors. I also mentor through law school. Yes We Can, which is a mentoring program that tries to bring interested young people of color through college into the LSAT program through law school and help them pass the bar. We stay with them through their first several years and hope they stay and mentor...
Life is all about making decisions. But are you making the right ones that will set you up for financial success? In this episode, Paul Luchau poses important questions to help you evaluate how you’re handling your finances. Paul is a speaker, educator, and financial adviser. Today he shares how he helps his clients get started on their path to financial freedom. He explains the importance of savings and the concept of lost opportunity costs. If you want to learn more about managing your money, then this is the episode for you. Join in to get more financial know-how from an expert!
Listen to the podcast here: How To Make Decisions That Set You Up For Financial Success With Paul Luchau We are going to talk a little bit about finances, something that we have yet to cover in this show. Some of us are idealists. Some of us are thinking about following our passion and dreams. What this means for humanity don't always want to think about money and finances. Finances are one of the things that prevent a lot of people from doing what they want to do in life. I have seen a lot of different estimates about the number of Americans that live paycheck to paycheck.
Searching through all these estimates, it's consistently over half, which means that finances in a lot of situations are preventing you from fulfilling your mission in life and going for it. To further discuss this topic, we bring on Paul Luchau from The Momentous Group, who has some great ideas about how we can manage our finances a little bit better and free up that time, as well as free up that slack in our cashflow so that we can go out and pursue what we want to pursue. Paul, thank you for joining us.
Thank you for having me.
Tell us a little bit about The Momentous Group and what you do. There are a lot of financial plannings out there I believe anyone can instantly find if you hit the networking circuit, a ton of financial planners. What does The Momentous Group do that's so different from your standard financial planning?
I have done this for a long time. I was fortunate when I’ve got into the business in 2000. I spent fifteen years in mortgage banking from ‘85 to 2000 and then leaped over into what I do now. It's interesting to talk to people over that many years about their money, what they earn, spend it on, save, what their debts are, and so on. We will talk about this, the Law of the Masses and whatnot. I noticed trends. What I noticed were all those years I could count on about one hand the people that I thought had it together financially. The paycheck to paycheck, the numbers of people are high.
I started to realize that most people were doing the same things with their money like everybody else, yet they were expecting a different result. We all know that's the definition of. It became evident to me. I started this study and tried to understand what those trends were and how to combat them. That's an aggressive word. How to look at what everybody is doing, go the other way, and get on a journey that the people were emulating were on versus the ones that everybody was doing.
If you do the same thing as everyone else is doing, you should expect the same results that everyone else is getting. When you think of what everyone else is doing, we know it's more than half living paycheck to paycheck. Even more than that is the number of people that feel like they can't pursue their passions because they have to keep that paycheck going. They can't even take a job that may be more meaningful to them but it has a slightly lower salary because of that you are seeing that cause people end up in that situation.
Most people are doing the same thing with their money as everybody else, yet they’re expecting a different result.Click To Tweet
The people that I work with, I teach them principles. I like that word because the principle is foundational. How do you live your life? What are the principles you live your life by?
Social equity and equality are a purpose and mission that we still work for. With the number of people of mixed-race communities growing, perspectives are also changing. In this episode, Stephen Jaye sits down for an insightful talk with entrepreneur and founder of Hispanics and Technology, James Foy, about diversity and community. James talks about his experiences as an American of mixed race and learning to see through the eyes of others. We also hear about James and his work in promoting diversity in the tech community. Tune in and get more insights and hear what action you can take to change the world.
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Diversity And Equity: The Perspective Of Mixed Race Communities With James Foy We've had some previous episodes and discussions about issues of some divisions and inequities amongst different groups of people within the US. These apply to other places. The common phrase used is diversity, equity and inclusion. However, as we've learned from some of our previous guests some people prefer to leave off the word diversity. Others prefer to add a word belonging or something of a similar context. Either way, it's on a lot of people's minds.
People want to genuinely feel they belong and have the opportunity to go for the passions that they have. I don't know all the answers to the questions but two things are apparent from the conversations I've had, as well as the observations I see is that one, the way we've been approaching the subject for the past several years has not been working. We are still grappling with a lot of the same issues we had at the beginning of these pursuits and a lot of people are grumpier about it now. Two, it seems apparent to me that one of the answers to these issues is that we need to talk, listen, communicate and get to know one another.
It's hard to hate a group of people when you have several quality contacts, good relationships and good friends among them. It's a good idea to get as many perspectives as we possibly can. Here to provide another perspective on the issue, my guest James Foy is the Hispanics and Tech Founder as well as an advocate for the Hispanic entrepreneurial community. James, welcome to the show.
Thank you. It's fantastic to be here.
Let's begin with a little background information for those that may not be aware of it. First of all, within Colorado, as well as within the US as a whole, what percentage of the population is Hispanic?
Colorado is fairly close to being a mirror, Colorado statewide I saw was 22% but there's always because of our immigrant community that's under-reported. The country also mirrors that. Let me also bring up a point, here in Denver, where we met, were 30%. Anywhere from 40% to 60% needed to get the DPS school children.
People of mixed are experiencing the highest rate of change.Click To Tweet
The younger generation is pretty much half Hispanic. There have been more people of mixed race as intermarriage has happened a lot more frequently. Does that include a lot of these mixed-race communities as well?
The biggest soon will be Hispanic. Statewide, the nearest group is Asians. I know African-Americans are about 4% statewide. Asians are right around but nobody else comes close to Hispanics. If you're looking at the rate of change, the fastest-growing by percentage are people like me, who are mixed and one or more. We can go into the anecdotal stories. I could go back 100 years from one of my grandmothers who moved from New Mexico to here. One place, she was White, here she was Hispanic too. The term is nebulous. It also comes from the ‘70s and ‘80s when Hispanics were being reported. To your point is people have mixed, they're experiencing the highest rate of change. Chances are 5 to 10 years from now, you're more likely to run into a Joe Smith that might be White and Hispanic or White and Asian or White and Black. You'll never know it at times.
What do redox molecules do to your body? What are the benefits of these molecules? In this episode, Stephen Jaye talks with Jackie Wetzler and her mother Debbie Wetzler about these redox molecules, which technically is a term wherein they combine the word reductions and oxidants. Their product, called ASEA, is a cellular regenerative technology that helps us replenish these lost molecules to stay healthy and have a better future ahead of us. They want to spread awareness and make this product known to the world to help more people and have a more meaningful purpose in their life.
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Medical Science, Redox Signaling Molecules, And The Health Breakthrough Product To Change Your Life With Jackie Wetzler And Debbie Wetzler This show is all about re-thinking and being open to new possibilities in a wide range of areas of life, from how we set up work, our careers, community, relationships and health. One of the big transitions we have seen over the past decade is a transition that I have been observing from reactive to more proactive health. Reactive health is something we can think about along the lines of you get sick.
The crassest way of putting it is that people get sick and go to the doctor to buy back their health. More people are coming up with solutions that are geared not toward buying back their health but being more proactive. Whether it's diet or exercise or whether it's other new technologies and other new products.
Here, with me are Jackie Wetzler and her mom, Debbie Wetzler, who are involved in selling a product called ASEA, which is a cellular regenerative technology. We have heard people talk about cellular regeneration, cellular aging and how that process impacts our health. As well as how that process and some of these technologies have the potential to help people with some of these other diseases, whether it be cardiovascular disease, cancer and everything else. Welcome to the show, Jackie and Debbie.
Thank you for having us.
Let's start by talking a little bit about this cellular regenerative technology and ASEA, the product itself and how this breakthrough has the potential to change the way we look at our health.
I was introduced to this technology many years ago. I looked at what it was and they were called redox signaling molecules, which I have never heard of. I found that they were made in almost every cell of your body. They are the molecules that literally go and find damaged cells anywhere, send a very clear signal to the immune system with the address of where to go, so the immune system can then go find that damaged cell because our body is a cellular communication network and the body, has to be told what to do, the cells communicate for that reason. The immune system can then come in and find the damaged cells, and either repair or replace them. I had never heard of them and we wanted validation. The friend who told me about this that it had saved three of her best friend's lives.
I trusted her completely but I also wanted to know more about it. I think as humans, we all want to know for sure ourselves that this is real. I happened to have a very smart girlfriend. She was a Molecular Biologist that had graduated from Johns Hopkins. She had done years of research at the National Institutes of Health.
I called her up. I drove to her house that night. I put the information down. I said, "I need to know, is this real? Have you ever heard of this?" She looked at me and almost fell off her chair. She said, "Debbie, I have been studying molecules for many years. We have had scientists from around the world come to NIH to try to do this. Are you telling me that somebody was finally able to stabilize these molecules outside the human body in a bioactive form?"
I looked at her and said, "Yes," like it was no big deal. She said, "You have no idea how massive this is. This will change the health field as you know it.
Have you ever wondered what the future holds like for everyone? Have you assessed the past to understand your present to eventually predict what’s going to happen? In this episode, Stephen Jaye talks with Chet Sisk about the future of humanity and taking another direction. Chet Sisk is a futurist, entrepreneur, author, consultant, speaker and workshop developer. He helps organizations see through the crisis of the moment in order to create plans for the immediate future. Do something different. Make an impact. Tune into this episode! Let’s pull things together, talk about innovation, empowerment, explore your options, and dive deep into the future.
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Predictions On The Future Of Humanity With Futurist Chet Sisk I'd like to talk to you about the future, planning for the future, imagining what trends are going, what possible worlds could have emerged in the future is an important part of any endeavor. Whatever endeavor you're looking to take on or are currently taking on, this is an important aspect of it. It's an aspect that I had been thinking about for quite some time. I had always been interested in speculating about possible future scenarios.
However, I'm relatively new to the field of futurism, which contrary to popular belief is not about predicting specific events. It's more about imagining some possible future scenarios and also figuring out what we all need to do to be prepared to live in this world that is emerging. My guest, Chet Sisk, is a futurist as well as the Founder of Universal Basic Resources. Chet, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Stephen, for having me. It is my pleasure and honor to be here, absolutely.
Thank you for joining us. Just so that we hear it straight from you and get my readers oriented, in your own words, what is futurism? What does it mean to be a futurist?
A futurist is at least my interpretation is that you're a glorified journalist. I came from a journalism background and what journalists tend to do is follow a story in a usual 24-to-48-hour news cycle. Talk about what it means and the characters involved. Futurism does the same process, except it carries that particular story outside of the usual news cycle into decades, maybe even centuries so that you still look for the impact, and how it affects society and all of those things. It's just a bigger version as far as I'm concerned of journalism. I have to say that I use four elements that work for me when I'm doing a prediction. I shouldn't even say use the word prediction because that's not quite accurate.
It's more about making an assessment as to what's happening and then saying, “This is what's happening. This is how this happening will probably affect your immediate world.” I use my journalism skills in order to follow the story, to dig down and say, "Where did this come from? What does it mean?" Two, if it's a really important story, I'll go to the tip of the spear to talk to the people on the front end of whatever that story is and ask them, "What's going on? What's happening?" and they’ll tell you.
Three, You use historical context. Like, "Have we ever seen this before? Where does this come from?" The fourth thing is that you use your intuitive self to try to wrap your arms around what's happening and say, "Have I seen this before intuitively in my own experience? What do I think it will mean?" You put all those things together and then you come back and you say, "This is what I'm thinking is going to happen." Not a guarantee. It's just an assessment.
I never thought of it as being as connected to journalism as you had mentioned but there's definitely an aspect especially the whole looking back into the past. Futurism is about a story that's unfolding and things have already happened or similar events had happened in the past and imagining what's going to continue onward.
The great challenge of our time is being able to create this kind of introspection.
Sustainable living isn't just about the materials and products we choose to use. It's about lifestyle and how we navigate and live life every day. Joining Stephen Jaye on this episode are guests from Simply Tiny Development, Founder/CEO Dr. Sean Dixon and Sustainability Coordinator Megan Blythe. They define sustainability and what inspired their mission and work in helping individuals convert to tiny living. Housing is a big part of creating a sustainable future, and knowing how to discern between short-term versus long-term sustainability is critical. Sean and Megan also share how they inject sustainability not only in their products but also in their culture. Listen in and learn more about how you can start living for the future!
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Simply Tiny Homes: How Innovative Sustainable Housing Impacts Our Lives With Dr. Sean Dixon And Megan Blythe One of the things that keeps us sequestered and stuck in lifestyles that we don't want is this idea of a one size fits all solution that is supposed to be applied to everyone. I think that this solution, in my view, as the traditional solution of you get your job, you get your paycheck every two weeks and you buy a big house and you fill it with lots of stuff that may or may not be bringing people happiness. I'm not here to rag on any particular lifestyle. My object here is to open people up to more possibilities that there are other options and other ways in which we can orient our lives. One other way is this movement toward tiny homes. My guests here are Dr. Sean Dixon and Megan Blythe from the company Simply Tiny Development. Welcome to the show.
Thanks, Stephen. Thanks for having us.
Thank you very much. Dr. Dixon you are the one who started this company. Can you tell me a little bit about what prompted you, what inspired you to decide to start developing more tiny homes and also camper vans?
It all started in my doctoral studies and looking at the ways of the world and where we're going globally. I finished up my studies in Organization Development and Leadership with a concentration in Change Management. A lot of that was looking at large-scale patterns and where we're going especially in the workforce and burnout. Those types of management paradigms are prevalent under those types of studies. I'm also very passionate about the environment. I live in Colorado, Megan formerly lived in Colorado, she's from North Carolina, with very outdoorsy style people.
I looked at some things and said, "How can we make a large-scale impact on what we want to do especially with pressing global paradigms, like climate change and things like that?" I looked at real estate, had a little bit of a background in that and then said, "Here's an opportunity that we can start changing some larger scale things that could have major impacts." Construction is wasteful. Everything we're seeing with the population increases and the way that the housing market is going, the up-and-coming generations are starting to think differently about what is important.
One of his major topics is housing. Providing some alternative solutions that can help the planet and saw a large-scale social problem the exact same time was the way I took this angle for the company, Simply Tiny Development. Launched and brought Meg on as a full-time sustainability coordinator. That is the center of the business model and how everything's guided. Her focus is just to look at all things from a very unique perspective and see how we can be more efficient. How can we use less? How can we do more with better materials? How do we sustain ourselves as people and the environment and then our communities?
That's a broader way of looking at sustainability. When a lot of people think of sustainability, they tend to think of environmental sustainability but the word has a broader definition. It means anything that a system that you can sustain over time.
Are you confident about what you want to achieve in life with the nine-to-five job you have right now? It’s time for you to explore life’s possibilities. Upgrade your lifestyle! Stephen Jaye sits down for a conversation with Emily Drost on the future of networking. Emily discusses the corporate world and why it’s crucial to consider contract employment because it provides more flexibility. Emily is the founder of eNTWKS, and she believes in the power of networks and connections between people for an exceptional business. Learn how you could establish a network of power partners, enrich your life more, and be happy while earning money. Set yourself up for success and tune into this episode!
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The World Of Corporate Work, Mindset Shift, And The Future Of Networking With Emily Drost One of the most frustrating processes I've ever been in is finding jobs in general. I've also witnessed a lot of other people in the same process. It confuses and frustrates me how we can still have such an archaic process. It seems logical that we'll be looking to upgrade this but also, the nature of work is changing quite a bit. Not everyone's necessarily looking for the standard full-time job and getting your business, livelihood or career intact requires networking with people, meeting a lot of people and being connected. It’s essentially connecting your service or product to the person or people that need it the most. I've discovered where the answer is going to come from.
My guest, Emily Drost, is in the process of building a networking platform that is going to make that connection between the product and service you're offering and the people who need it in a way more seamless fashion than what we do which is so much stress. I would like to welcome you to the show, Emily Drost.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you so much. How are you doing?
I'm doing splendidly. Thank you.
Thank you so much for joining and for being willing to come on and talk about this because I'm a futurist at heart. Imagining a future where things are better than certain frustrating experiences nowadays is one of the best ways a lot of people can cope with some things that they're going through. In eNTWKS, I see a little bit of this possibility coming forward. Tell me a little bit about your process. What got you interested in designing this and what you're trying to do with eNTWKS?
My background is in Psychology. I studied Industrial-Organizational Psychology. Primarily what that means is we were studying the motivation of employees and people in the workplace. I did that for quite a bit of time, and then I parlayed that experience into an advertising career where I was still continuing to study motivations for people and consumers.
Over time, what I started to find was that we're in the middle of this shift and people are starting to get frustrated with this idea of the 9:00 to 5:00 work. What's happening is they're starting to seek and figure out how to apply their expertise to the workforce but being able to focus on their expertise. My expertise happens to be understanding how employees are motivated and what they like to do. Also, my expertise happens to be in understanding consumer motivation. Those two come together and I said, "I'm seeing this shift in the marketplace. I'm seeing this shift in the workplace, and I want to be able to support that." I happen to have the technology, experience and background, so I can build that.
The idea started coming together in 2019 for this workplace platform that is based on business networking at its most basic. The idea is that we all have a certain sphere of influence. We all have a network or a tree of people that we know. We all know people that have certain expertise in certain fields. When I say expertise, I don't mean a lawyer. I mean a very specific business litigation lawyer or bankruptcy lawyer.
When I say marketer,
We want more peace or more clarity so we can have fulfillment in our lives. Life coach Michanda Lindsey wants all of us to see the beauty of oneness, the freedom of being enough, the power of presence, and the treasures found in stillness. In this episode, she joins Stephen Jaye to talk about the concept of spending time to look deep within ourselves so that we can head in the right direction. We can never control every outcome in our lives. Michanda shares how we could develop a sense of efficacy. If you’re a leader who wants results for organizational growth or an individual who wants to find clarity and get on the right path, then this episode is for you. So take a deep breath, listen within, and tune into this episode!
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Peace And Clarity Through Presence And Introspection With Michanda Lindsey One narrative that we have in our current day culture that I find particularly suffocating is this narrative that you have to pick just one thing. I observed a lot of people that have also felt suffocated by this. That one thing has to be a clearly defined item from some previously conceived list of jobs. It plays into the whole question, “What do you do?” One of the reasons I tend to dislike that question is because it tends to put your identity into one of however many job description boxes you have, “I am an engineer and that's the only thing about me.” My guest, Michanda Lindsey has a couple of different endeavors as well as her primary endeavor in coaching, which doesn't necessarily fit into the box that we consider coaching. Michanda, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me, Stephen. I'm delighted to be here.
Thank you very much for joining us. One thing I'm wondering is you describe yourself as a coach because that's how people wrap their brains around your services, but give us a little orientation into what your services are about.
I have a challenging time describing myself according to the labels that many people are so used to using. Because I know it helps in understanding, I relent and do use the title of coach. What I provide is a doorway for people to have a safe space to drop down into these parts, the heart, the soul, the spirit and beyond the head. We spend so much time in the head. My services are related to dropping down into this deeper part of who we are and helping people identify their own answers.
I love to tell people that your answer is already inside of you. You don't have to travel to Mount Kilimanjaro to go find your answer. I offer executive coaching, meaning I simply work with executives and leaders, whether in the business world, corporate world, education, non-profit. I also do life coaching, so I help people with areas of their life. I do spiritual coaching. The funny piece is that people ask me, “What's the difference?” I say, “It depends on which doorway someone enters because I provide the same thing.” I'm going to talk about slowing down, making space to look inside-out, and cultivating a knowing of who we are beyond the exterior.
When you talk about these life coaching and executive coaching, and how they're all pretty much have the same theme, what's the profile of the individual that would need your services in this broad category that we discuss as coaching work? It could be pretty much anything. If you love that show, Ted Lasso, he's technically a coach too. It could mean a lot of things.
I got to catch up with that show. One of my sons was watching that show. I need to watch it. I haven't watched it yet. You're my next push to watch it. I would say, yes. What I mean when I say executive coaching, life coaching, spiritual coaching, they're all the same in terms of I'm going to help people go deeper because there's so much more. The ideal or profile clients, I don't have one. I look for people who say they want more. Whatever that more maybe, “I want more peace. I want more clarity. I want more understanding.”
For a business to succeed, you have to find and market to the right customer. Identifying the problem and creating value for your customer ensures revenue and success. In this episode, Stephen Jaye talks to growth strategist John Gies as they explore marketing to your niche. John talks about demographics and psychographics and why you need to pay attention if you want to find your customer. Tune in for more marketing tips and strategies as Stephen and John talk shop.
Listen to the podcast here: Finding Business Success In The Right Customer And Niche With John Gies One mistake a lot of people make when we start trying to build things on our own is to do everything on our own. In that case, we're trying to be not only the technical person or the person physically building the objects but we're also trying to be the person that controls the budget, the person that worries about other aspects of the business. Also, marketing and getting the word out is another daunting task that prevents a lot of people from doing what they want to do.
My guest, John Gies, has a business called RAS, which I believe stands for Revenue Acceleration System. His entire business is based around helping you network your product, network whatever service you're providing and develop the revenue you need to make it a viable business. John, welcome to the show.
The Right Customer: Ask yourself a question, “will your customer's life be better if they do business with you?” If the answer to that question is yes, then you're doing them a disservice by not helping them make that decision.
Thanks. I'm glad to be here.
Thank you very much. The first thing I want to ask you is what made you determine that business development was the field you want to be in?
I was like most people. When I was in college, I took Marketing. I wanted to be the Don Draper of Minnesota. He was the head guy for Mad Men. As I went out and interviewed with companies, they all said, “You should sell something so you understand the whole process, why customers buy.” I got into sales. As I went from company to company, I found that I didn't fit with them or they didn't fit with me. It was time to move along and help small business owners grow their businesses.
When you talk about small business owners, is this a group of people that you feel a certain passion about? Is there a reason you picked small business owners?
I was in the corporate world. I was what you call a road warrior. I was on the airplane all the time. I watched what happened when investors got involved in businesses. They would come in and put some money in and things would be good for a little while. They'd start cutting back on service and cutting people. Pretty soon, customers and employees would suffer. Back when I was in college, they talked about this. Even a few years ago, I heard a DU professor talked about most workers in acquisitions fail to deliver value to shareholders, customers or clients.
I liked the small business owners. COVID is a good example. The government goes through a lot of stuff at the wall. Some are willing. Someone will work most of their relief on someplace else. Wall Street doesn't care but small business owners are the people that are going to buy your tickets to your ball game. They're going to support the community. They're going to be in the Chamber of Commerce, then become the leaders in the community. My passion is to help small business owners on Main Street thrive so we don't have to rely on Wall Street.
Would you be able to elaborate a little bit more? This is a topic that eventually ends up affecting almost everyone's life unexpectedly. What happens when there's some merger acquisition, some buyout and what impact it has on your everyday worker as well as the product? What do you think causes a lot of these things to go wrong in these situations?
If I knew the answer, then I'd be the guru. I can tell you my experience.
Imagine starting a startup a day. That sounds crazy and impossible to handle. But, apparently, for Greg Tanner, this wasn't all too crazy. Greg did 31 startups in 31 days. Having spent the majority of his career in Information Technology, Greg has mastered how to run a business from an IT sense. He is the founder of several companies, including Aspen Capital Fund. Join Greg as he sits down with your host Stephen Jaye to discuss how to successfully start a startup. Learn what are the best high-income skills you need so that you can be more flexible. Discover ways on how to spark your creativity. Learn how to be observant of your surroundings. And remember to take care of yourself. Startups can be stressful. Make sure you don't overwork yourself and ruin your health. Learn all this and more today.
Listen to the podcast here: A Startup A Day: The High-Income Skills You Need To Start A Startup With Greg Tanner There are a lot of people out there who start-up businesses and companies and I have a lot of admiration for that whole process. My guest here is Greg Tanner of Aspen Capital Fund spent his July starting up 31 companies in 31 days. Here to talk about that experience, Greg, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me. I appreciate being here.
The first thing I need to ask you is how busy did that make your July?
Know when to walk away from some of your ideas. You can't be too in love with them.Click To Tweet
It was very busy. It took a lot of discipline and what I call high-income skills to get these all going. I had some of these ideas before. I watched someone do 31 startups in August 2020, a guy named Mark Grimes. I also watched another guy named Doc Williams do 100 startups in 100 days in 2020. He's a phenomenal inspiration. He builds a business every Thursday on a YouTube show and he shows you how to do it. It's cool.
Anyone reading that's wanting to learn more about the process and how to start up a business can check out this Doc Williams' YouTube channel.
He shows you how to do no-code, app-building, all sorts of types of businesses. It's crazy. There are a lot of how-to and good ideas there so that was the inspiration. I was going to do it in 2020 with Mark. However, my August was too busy. I wasn't able to do it. In 2021, I decided to do it and had a lot of ideas since I started Aspen Capital Fund. My nephew and I have this thing called the Tanner Idea Factory. We have all these ideas. Some of them we never got to or that's a good idea but then it was just an idea. I took some of those out of there. I've taken some things that I've been wanting to do for my business at Aspen Capital Fund and some of the other things that I thought were good ideas.
It was a good experiment. I've done startups before but now in this age of creators, it's interesting to try to figure out how do you monetize your idea and how you scale it. That's the biggest takeaway I've learned from it and some of these ideas, I stood it up and I was like, "No one's going to ever give me a dime for this thing." It was a failure the day that it was opened or started. You got to know when to walk away from some of these ideas. You can't be so in love with it. It does take grit but you don't want to be wasting months on a startup that's not going to make any money.
Starting Startups: There is a fine line between taking on any endeavor and giving up on something too quickly, knowing that something is not going to go anywhere despite putting a lot of energy into it.
That's a very good point because there is a fine line between whether it be starting off a business or taking on any endeavor, between giving up on something before you even give it a chance and sticking with something that's not going to go anywhere when you've put a lot of energy into it. How would you say or what would you recommend someone who's reading this starting up their own business or any other thing in life?
The COVID pandemic has shown us that now, more than ever, that authentic connections are needed. Beyond networking, people need to build a conscious community. In this episode, Stephen Jaye sits down to talk to the founder of Conscious Business Connections, Kristin McGinnis. Kristin delves into the effects COVID has had on how we work and do business, and why we need community in these trying times. Tune in and learn more about the conscious community movement and be inspired to build your own.
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Beyond Networking: Building A Conscious Community With Kristin McGinnis We're going to talk about community. Community has been a common theme throughout my life. At a young age, I read the Robert Putnam book Bowling Alone which came out in 2000 and talked about what happened to our communities from the middle to the end of the 20th century. As you're all probably aware of what has happened since with the social media and all this other stuff has only seemed to further weaken our communities, even accelerate the trend a little bit.
One of the things I'm trying to cover on this show is different people who are trying different methods of bringing back our communities for various purposes. Our guest Kristin McGinnis has started a group called Conscious Business Connections, which has a pretty extensive mission and even goes beyond just the business. There are some events that are a little bit more social in nature. It seems to cover the whole range and spectrum. Kristin, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Stephen. I'm glad to be here.
Thank you for joining us. Let's start by orienting the audience to what you're doing. What is Conscious Business Connections? You've put all of yourself into this pursuit. What inspired you to start Conscious Business Connections and what made you feel like this was the thing that you were supposed to be doing right now?
It was during the pandemic when we were in lockdown and I was taking time to understand what my passions were in life, what my calling was in life. I was doing a lot of reading during that time. We were all staying at home, so I had a lot of extra time. I did a lot of soul searching. I have so many interests in life and so many passions.
I wanted to find a way to continue my current career but also wrap in more of my passions for philanthropy and animals. A lot of different elements from my event planning experience and my finance experience. I came up with this concept as I was seeing the world shut down and I saw all of these amazing people with beautiful gifts, namely in the coaching, yoga and hospitality world.
The pandemic has people finding their true passions in life and doing what they love and having meaning and purpose behind that. Click To Tweet
It's all these businesses that were struggling to stay open and make money during the pandemic. With my gifts of entrepreneurship, I thought my skills could help their passions and I can help them start businesses. I started a yoga business and practiced that out a little bit and have some retreats. The belonging that was growing from the community I was building with this yoga business was just beautiful.
That has since dissolved when I started Conscious Business Connections on a larger scale. I have a much larger dream around Conscious Business Connections. I've taken that yoga model and expanded it even further. I'm hosting amazing events and yoga is one of those. It's a way for people to network and do things that they love while they're connecting.
Combining their interests, what lights them up in the world with fun things we want to do and then naturally, we have conscious conversations. We're connecting in ways that are supporting our businesses, bringing target market to you, bringing clients to strategic partners, people that are going to help you keep your mind on and that's the tagline of my email address and my website.
Keep your light on because that,
India is a big country with varied colors, culture and cuisine. The best way to experience India is through a personalized travel experience, and our guest knows the best way to travel. In this episode, Stephen Jaye chats with the founder of Merge Experiences, Mona Contractor. Mona talks about India as only she can, describing the colors and flavor of the country. She discusses her experiences helping western travelers in India and gives some travel tips, too. Tune in for more as we learn about the country, its people, and the unique experiences that it offers.
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Colors And Culture: Experience India Through Personalized Travel With Mona Contractor One of the themes that some of you who have read some of my earlier episodes might see emerging is the theme of travel. Travel is something that's always been quite important to me. One of my other pursuits is writing a travel blog called Jaye Travel Blog. I've always found that travel opens people up to different possibilities, options, and experiences.
One of the great benefits of travel that I've always observed is that you learn to get a little bit outside of the narrow view of just your specific place in your specific time. There are plenty of other places in the world where people do things differently. That means you get into the mindset of understanding that there are different ways to do things than the way your family, your neighbors, and the people in your immediate vicinity do in your current place in time and culture. My guest joins us from Mumbai, India, Mona Contractor, with her business Merge Experiences, which gets groups customized travel experiences. Mona, welcome to the show.
Thank you for inviting me. It'd be a pleasure to speak to you and your guests.
Thank you so much. My guests and I included will benefit from hearing about your business in planning people's travels. Let's start by telling us a little bit about what Merge Experiences is all about. Who is your clientele is and what do you do?
I used to work for somebody doing the same thing where you sell in the Indian subcontinent, but working for a bigger company gives you a lot of restrictions. I was literally living out of a suitcase, and I wanted to get out. I got a bit lucky when I started this particular business because my past clients kept on encouraging me to start on my own. That's what I did. My whole focus was to give clients experiences and that's what I used to do in my job as well. They remember that and said, “We want to work with you because we enjoy working with you.” That's how we started.
What I wanted and I still want to, and I have been pretty successful in giving people, is an amalgamation of experiences as far as the Indian subcontinent is concerned. The neighboring countries are maybe more popular, but India is popular for some different reasons. My whole idea was to introduce the country the way it is, that real India, which is an amalgamation of so many things. For example, I do a lot of mic tours. If you're a first-timer, I would amalgamate the entire experience and give it to you. India offers a lot of cultural experiences.
If you are a seeker, then India is the place for you. It can hit you sometimes and it can be an experience of a lifetime.Click To Tweet
A lot of art, India is full of art and artists are everywhere in terms of paintings, clothes, and color. I would like to introduce India as an amalgamation of all the architecture, the history, the culture, the festivals, the noise, the smell, and the flavors. I call my country a glorious chaos because it is chaotic and crowded. It is overwhelming. We always tell our guests, “It's going to be a bit overwhelming.” We also prepare them nicely when they come to visit the country. That's what I offer.
The advantage of working for yourself is that you get to choose. You choose your suppliers also. When you work for a big organization,
What would you do if you want to be promoted in your job? You would most likely change the way you speak to your boss. You would do things that you normally wouldn't do. Now, you may get that promotion but are you truly being your authentic self? Learn how to get that promotion while still being yourself. Join your host, Stephen Jaye and his guests, Cristina Amigoni and Alex Cullimore, on how to be your authentic self. Cristina and Alex are the hosts of the Uncover the Human podcast and the Co-Founders of Siamo. Understand how you can create your own personal values and boundaries so that you can find your true self.
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A Discussion With Podcasters Cristina Amigoni And Alex Cullimore About Being Our Authentic Selves One thing that I sincerely believe is that we are in a period of transformation. We are embracing a new way of thinking. Some of these new ways of thinking involve what we believe as far as potential competitors and collaborators. In the old days, people would say oftentimes, “If you want to do something new, you have to either be unique in your idea, bring something completely new to the world or you need to outcompete anyone else that's doing anything similar, that traditional view of competition.”
We are looking at a lot of people that are doing similar things in this world and saying to ourselves, “We can collaborate because not everyone reaches the same audiences, the same people with the message like how musicians can have similar lyrics but in different genres and bring the same message to different groups of people. They are not a person that appeals to everyone.”
One thing I say about my particular show is that I'm trying to encourage people to broaden their horizons, open themselves to new ideas and go for the things that they care about. That's all of you in the audience. Whatever your idea is, I want to encourage you to consider following your true passions.
There are a lot of people out there doing it. Tony Robbins has been doing this for years but Tony Robbins isn't reaching everyone the same way. Pitbull isn't necessarily reaching everyone with his From Negative to Positive podcast but he's reaching a whole new audience. To embrace this kind of frame of mind, my guests are podcasters, Alex Cullimore and Cristina Amigoni. They cover topics quite similar to mine. Their podcast is called Uncover the Human. I would like to welcome you to the show.
Thank you so much, Stephen.
Thank you.
The first question I want to ask is, how did the idea of Uncover the Human come together? What made you decide that you were going to do this and bring this message to your audience?
Honestly, it started a lot over a bunch of happy hours. We started working at a company for a long time and we kept talking about, “How do we make this a little bit better experience for people?” We kept coming back to the people's side of things. “How does this relate to how people interact with each other on a day-to-day basis? How can we bring that more into the workplace?” The more we talked about it, we came up with all of these concepts and tons of research. I have a bookshelf full of books that we put together in the first six months there and we have continued adding to that list.
We enjoyed talking about, “How do you bring more people to this?” We want to do consulting or coaching in that space and that started to grow. COVID happened and that shut down. We had always wanted to launch something like a podcast or write books around these topics. The podcast became the go-to method to get the message out and talk more about interacting as humans.
In my show, I always begin every episode, “Your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less.” For Uncover the Human, what would you say is your core message that you are trying to get to your audience?
When we were thinking about the topic, the overall umbrella of the podcast,
Following your dreams and building things are goals we all share, despite generational differences. It is no different with today’s guest, multimedia artist Ben Barr. Stephen Jaye interviews Ben and they talk about how he got his start as a musician and as an entrepreneur. Ben also talks about his future plans as an artist. Listen in and be inspired by Ben’s journey.
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Building The Sounds Of The Future With Multimedia Artist Ben Barr In previous episodes of this show, we've talked a little bit about the different generations that we encounter, both in the workforce and in our places where we go and how each generation has different experiences, different outlooks and sometimes different ways of communicating. We've always had some pretty positive discussions about how to go about understanding one another as opposed to driving one another.
One of the things that I've been encouraged by an emerging trend is amongst the generation behind mine, Generation Z or iGen, that has been referred to in some circles, has had a pretty interesting desire to do a lot of the things that we talked about on this show. There seems to be a strong interest in starting up businesses or starting up something, building something on their own. Representing this particular group of people is the man that produced the intro and outro music to this show, Mr. Ben Barr, who has a multimedia company where he does several different things, including music lessons, video production and producing music for shows. Ben, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
How is everything going for you?
Great. Things are going well. I'm excited to be on the show and have a conversation.
You're in the Gen Z category. You have your multimedia business. What brought you into that? What got you interested in doing that and made you decide that rather than just a hobby or something you do on the side, that you're going to turn it into something where you're going to make money off of it and produce things for lots of different people?
It was an accident. I was just interested in music. I loved it as a hobby when I was younger. I never intended it to be a business, but when I was thirteen, my mom was teaching piano lessons. I've been classically trained on piano. Since I was little, I'd been taking piano lessons. She needed help teaching, so I started to help her teach and take on some of her students. That became the first business thing that I did. It was totally by accident. I even think of it as being a business. I thought of it as a service that I was trying to provide to help educate people. That's where it started for me. It was teaching piano and loving music.
How old were you when you first decided you loved music? Is this something that happened at 4 or 5 years old like you see a lot of people?
As soon as I could walk, my parents made me learn instruments because both of them are musical too. I got a piano right away and then later, I played the French horn for a couple of years. I played the drums a lot and the guitar. I loved music, but the classical music and stuff was boring. I wasn't into that as much. I was eight years old or something when I was messing around on my dad's iPad. I found the app GarageBand and I was making music on that. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. It was like a video game but way better. That's what got me into the music production side of things.
Out of curiosity, what kind of music do you generally enjoy?
I enjoy a lot of kinds of music. I like some pop music, a lot of rap music. I've been a big Twenty One Pilots fan. Their newest album wasn't as great as I've heard, but I still like it. I enjoy it. I'm interested in any kind of music. I've got open ears. Country music is harder for me to swallow, but I like all other kinds of music.
There's always going to be a differential on some types of music and others.
Do you want to become more calm, creative, and emphatic? Then you need to practice Positive Intelligence. Positive intelligence is built on mental fitness, which is your ability to handle life's challenges. Stephen Jaye’s guest in this episode is Darren Kanthal, Founder of The Kanthal Group, where candid career conversations take place with clients. Darren talks with Stephen about how positive intelligence helps you face your insecurities and fears head-on! Doing so motivates you to take the right action for yourself and your business. Tune in!
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How Positive Intelligence Helps You Live A Happy Life With Darren Kanthal My guest, Darren Kanthal, is an Executive and Leadership Coach with The Kanthal Group. He's here to talk to us about a whole new idea behind how we assess ourselves. There are a lot of self-assessments or assessments of others. Everyone here is familiar with the IQ test, the intelligence quota, which is a measure of our intelligence and how smart we are. People have different feelings about whether or not they're biased or useful measures.
What other measure that's coming to a more recent utility that most people probably heard of is the emotional intelligence or the EQ, which is a measure of how well we read our emotions and emotions of others, how mature we are with that. It differs from IQ because it's theoretically something we could improve on overtime. Darren's specialty in his leadership coaching is talking about something called Positive Intelligence or the PQ. Darren, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Stephen. It's great to be here.
Tell us about what PQ or Positive Intelligence is. What does this one measure when it comes to individuals or leaders?
Positive intelligence is built upon what we call mental fitness and we define mental fitness as your ability to handle life's challenges with a positive rather than negative mindset. There's lots of talk about mindset and this positive intelligence has its own vernacular, way of practicing, being more mentally fit, etc. PQ, Positive Quotient, is measured by taking a short assessment to see how often your brain is in positive thought versus negative thought.
Does this relate to that inner chatterbox that a lot of people talking about having in their head that, " I'm not good enough. Something's going to go wrong," and all that type of stuff? Does it go further than that?
That's the starting point. It takes many different names. The internal dialogue and conversations we have, the imposter. In the world of positive intelligence, we call it the judge. Positive Intelligence is built upon a book written by Shirzad Chamine. He too, is an executive coach and his book has been translated into over twenty languages. There are positive intelligence coaches in over 50 countries in all languages and in all cultures. We all have some judge and the judge is judging ourselves. It's judging you and it's judging our circumstance. When we start hearing that voice of, “I'm not good enough, you’re not good enough, my situation isn't good enough,” that's when we know where our judge is at play.
If you have strong roots and you're in the right environment, you flourish. Click To Tweet
There's an internal judge, which we all have in our head, that's telling us and possibly telling some of my readers, "My idea is never going to work. I'm not the one to implement it." We have external judges, which are the people around us, the people who are telling you your unique way of viewing the world is not sufficient. You don't have a right to your unique way of wanting to be or whatever. What I'm wondering is in your view, do you think the external or the internal judge is more dangerous to most people?
I believe the internal judge is. It's interesting how quick a lot of people are to point the finger and say, “It's you. It's your fault. You're the reason why things didn't go right for me,
College planning can easily become a headache, especially when you start to talk about money. So many things factor into the price of a college education. How do you know which school to go to then? Do you focus on the price or on your major? These are the things Tonica Johnson takes note of when dealing with her clients. Tonica is an education consultant of Cardinal College Planning. She helps students and families pick the best-fit college for them. In this conversation with Stephen Jaye, Tonica explains why expensive doesn't necessarily mean high-quality education. Join in and learn what to watch out for when looking for the right college for you.
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Helping Teenagers Find The Right College Solution Through Cardinal College Planning With Tonica Johnson There's a certain common story that I've heard a bunch of times in different forms. This is a story where someone who is both curious and observant, identifies a need and finds a way to fill that need using something about their unique talents. These stories vary in the exact topic. Certain specifics are always going to be different from person-to-person but there are some commonalities amongst all these stories. One of them is of course, as I mentioned before, being observant, curious and looking at what's around you and responding to experiences both your own and the experiences of others.
The other is taking some form of a leap of faith, some leap, some believing in yourself. My guest is Tonica Johnson who started her own service called Cardinal College Planning, which is a service in a topic that I would never think of myself. This is one of the things I find so amazing about hearing all these stories. Some of which are on my previous and will be in my future episodes. It's oftentimes something that I would have never thought of but as soon as I hear what's happening, I'm like, “This makes a lot of sense. This is something that needed to be done.” Tonica, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for joining us.
Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
We're excited to have you here. First of all, to orient our audience, I know college planning can be a daunting task. I think almost everyone remembers the process of submitting applications, getting the letters of recommendation from the right people, having the right extracurricular activities. What does Cardinal College Planning do for the teenagers and parents that you work with?
Maybe what I was pursuing next wasn't gonna work out, wasn't gonna be forever, but it was worth trying instead of something I knew my heart and soul wasn't into anymore.Click To Tweet
It’s definitely a daunting procedure, for sure. Since it is overwhelming and stressful, I advise families through all of this stuff. If I start working with families and they're a little younger, it's got even more crazy and competitive than it has. I'm 30 when I went to college, it wasn't this crazy yet and every year after, it seems like it gets more difficult. It's a matter too of making sure you're choosing the right classes as early as 9th and 10th grade so you can get in the ones in 11th and 12th grade. When you go to apply, they're seeing that you took the courses you needed for their sake competitive business program. I worked with a client and a huge thing that I do is course recommendations. Like you said, adding over those extracurricular activities, won't get too much into detail. There's not a right or wrong but guiding students through their passions and finding activities that they want to do but are also going to look good for their applications.
The big thing is researching the schools. I'm sure we'll get a little bit more into this. Part of why I got into this was realizing students were applying to the same few schools that they knew locally over and over. When there are literally thousands of institutions in our country,
Did you graduate from something you love? Maybe you can find something that has enough common threads to it and see if you enjoy that more. Life is too short to just be focused on one thing. Try to do different things. It's never too late to pursue something you're passionate about. If you are working a day job, find time to work on your passions. The money can come later, all you need to think about is you. Learn how to multitask with your host, Stephen Jaye and his guest Linda Sue Shirkey. Linda is no stranger to dipping her toes into different fields. Right now she is the President of Production and Design, Inc. Learn how she went from photography to skating to interior design and more. Find something you love today and make the most out of it!
Listen to the podcast here: Follow Your Passion; Don’t Get Tied Into Just One Thing With Linda Sue Shirkey One piece of advice we commonly hear is to focus on one thing, do only one thing, and get good at it. That does work for a lot of people. I want to make sure I iterate to anyone in my audience reading that if anyone is focused on one thing and having a successful and life, I am truly happy for you. Unfortunately, this advice, like a lot of other common pieces of advice, doesn't necessarily serve everyone well. There are a lot of people out there that are multifaceted and they will prefer to dip their toes or try out many different things and be in many different places throughout their lives. Our guest, Linda Sue Shirkey, has been doing this for several years. She has been trying out a lot of different things and, oftentimes, has been taking part in 2, 3, or even more endeavors at once. Linda Sue, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you very much for your time. Let's start from the beginning. What were the first endeavors that you took part in?
In high school, I was on a fashion board that was an advisory board that a department store did for fashion for high school. During that time, a local man decided to start a magazine all published, edited, and written by high school students. They came into the fashion board one day and said, “Would anybody be interested in being the fashion editor?” I said, “I will.” I have no idea why but I did. I went to an interview and they selected me. I was the fashion editor of this magazine all put out by teenagers. I was fourteen at the time and I set up fashion shoots, hired the models, picked out the clothes, help find the locations, and wrote the pieces on the fashion. The magazine was called Tempo. It didn't last long. We did it for less than a year.
When pursuing your dreams, relationships suffer more than anything else.Click To Tweet
That reminds me of something that we're starting to see commonly in the younger generation, teenagers that aren't necessarily going about, going to school, living out their social lives. They are getting involved and trying to build things. I know a lot of teenagers are interested in building followers on many social media channels or starting their own businesses. They got interested in that. It seems like you were quite a bit ahead of your time. Was fashion something that you were specifically interested in from a young age or is it the writing and the editing that drew you in there?
I was always interested in fashion, interiors, and animals. I always wanted to either be a fashion designer, an interior designer, or a marine zoologist.
Where did you go from there? Eventually, you started pursuing multiple avenues and weren't necessarily tied down to pick one job and do that one thing.
Throughout this whole time, I was also a competitive figure skater. I continued figure skating and then I got a scholarship then to college. My scholarship was University of Colorado. I wanted to pursue fashion design, interior design, or marine zoology and they didn't have any of those. I thought, “I'll do arts.” That was the closest. I got my Bachelor of Finance degree.
As society evolves in isolation and moves away from in-person work set-ups, it has become more of a challenge to build a strong, genuine business community. Tracy Card, president of Elevated Results Group, talks about how this growing network has helped many businesspeople develop relationships and gain opportunities. Unlike other networking groups, they have maintained a positive environment and expanded each person’s reach while keeping that genuine yet professional connections with people from various industries. In this episode, Tracy talks about the Elevated Results experience and how members benefit from their approach.
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Powered by Podetize The Benefits Of Building A Genuine Business Community With Tracy Card Those of you who have read some of my episodes know that I have a strong interest in community everywhere. I go around me. I see the results of the lack of community. When I look at some of these horrible outcomes such as depression, anxiety, drug addiction, suicide and violence, I see the results of loneliness, isolation and lack of community. Oftentimes, when people think about community, they think about the community that we once had. One of the things that I often struggle with this vision of community is that sometimes, it seems to require some of the restrictiveness that we had in the last century. A lot of people will tell me, “The only time I had community is when I had a rigid 9:00 to 5:00, everyone in the office work schedule.”
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That's something that our society is most definitely moving away from. There are some definite mental health benefits to us moving toward a more flexible and fluid work schedule. That's why I'm hoping to find a whole new way to approach and find community. I was pleasantly surprised when I first attended a group known as the Elevated Results network. I hopped on a Zoom call because everything is remote here during the pandemic. The first thing I noticed was the members were frequent guests that were talking amongst each other seem to have a genuine community-like understanding of each other's lives. It has become the community where you can walk up to someone and you don't have to always be on or always be playing catch up. You are saying, “How did fill-in-the-blank whatever your latest endeavor go?” I have as my guest Tracy Card the leader of the Elevated Results Network Group for a couple of years. --- Tracy, thank you for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me, Stephen. I appreciate it.
The first question I had on my mind is, how did you go about getting this community? You inherited it in 2014 from another former leader but how does this community revolve? How does it work? How do people stay in the known each of their lives?
Thank you so much for asking about this group. I'm a leader since 2014 and it is a community. That's a great word for it. We do know each other's lives. We care about each other not only personal lives but definitely in business life. How can we help each other succeed? Expand each other's circles of influence. It's a lot different from many other groups. I was the same way when I first met this group that you felt and I knew this is my home. It's a different feel. There's a lot of ways that we are different from other networking groups. The group is very engaged. One way that I can share with you is our attendance policy.
All networking groups have, “You need to come or you maybe need to send a substitute if you can't come.” That is not our policy at all. We want our members to be there. Anything else comes up before the meeting, go and take care of that. We'll be here for you when you come back next time. Send us a substitute. Our relationship is with the members. We want our members to be there and we have a great attendance every meeting but it's not required. That's a part of why we have great attendance.
Fractional resources are people who are often freelancers, consultants and contractors whose involvement with a company falls outside the standard 9 to 5 or 40-hour a week setup. Through her company, Khazana Inc., Suraya Yahaya provides fractional resources at the executive level for companies looking to scale their businesses up. Suraya allows founders/ CEOs to focus on growth and investment while she runs the day-to-day operations using the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). In this conversation with Stephen Jaye, Suraya discusses fractional resources, as well as other aspects of work culture important towards achieving employee satisfaction and growth.
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Powered by Podetize How To Use Fractional Resources For Your Business Effectively With Suraya Yahaya I am a big fan of the idea of fractional resources. In our work culture, we oftentimes assume that every single job needs to follow the same format and what people call the 9:00 to 5:00, 40 hours a week when not every need matches that exact paradigm and not every person necessarily wants to work in the same way. My guest has started a business that has a new feel to the idea of a fractional resource. I tend to think of the fractional resource as your freelancer who does twenty hours a week digital design. My guest, Suraya Yahaya, started a business where she acts as a Fractional Chief Operating Officer. Her business is Khazana Incorporated.
Suraya, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me, Stephen. I appreciate it.
This is an amazing idea. You are a Fractional Chief Operations Officer. Tell us about how that works?
It's a little bit of a niche business now. Typically, you see chief operating officers in a company on a full-time basis because the chief operating officer is effectively running the company while the CEO is off doing market impact, talking to investors, large customers and the board is the face of the company. A fractional chief operating officer is to serve businesses that are pivoting, transforming, going through a ton of change and/or growing really fast so they need immediate support but not in a full-time scenario yet. There’s so much change, transformation and growth happening that they don't quite have a niche carved out for a full-time person for a variety of reasons. There are cashflow issues and a lack of clarity on what a full-time person would do as the business continues to change, grow and transform fast. There are also a lot of transformation that needs to happen with a growing team. The idea is bringing someone on a fractional basis, still have them do all the work that a full-time COO would do, and help the company grow, transform, scale and work very closely with the CEO on the timing of when the business is at an inflection point to take the next step.
Am I correct in characterizing this as people will talk about the entrepreneurial experience in starting a business? The common phrase you hear is that people are “wearing many hats,” or if it's individual, it’s you starting the business. As you build it out, you are maturing and eventually, if you build it up to a large business, all your C-Suite leadership is going to be full-time people but there's a period of transition in between when you are growing from 1 to 300 people. Is that the correct understanding of how this works?
I came from a very diverse background myself. I started as an attorney, went into operations strategy and ran big P&Ls. I had GM responsibilities growing and scaling a variety of different functions. The benefit of having someone come into a company that is itself growing and scaling so quickly is someone like myself can wear multiple hats. That's a great benefit of other fractional resources. That person is not coming in and saying, “Stephen, you hired me to be an accountant. That's all I'm going to do.” That person coming in is going to be like,
No matter where we end up in life, we will periodically need to reset. Even in our jobs. Just like the seasons, we must also adjust and change to fully live our lives before we reach our breaking points. In this conversation with Stephen Jaye, Taylor Short, founder of Harmonious Return and author of Reset Your Relationship To Your Job, sheds some light on the different manifestations of burnout and how people reevaluate their lives when change becomes necessary. She also discusses the need to slow down, step back, and look inward, as well as how to do just that.
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Harmonious Return - Job Reset With Coach Taylor Short A major component to our lives especially in the 21st century, although I would argue it has always been a major component to the human experience, is the idea of a reset, a time when you have to re-evaluate. I feel like New Year's in its purest form is a natural built-in reset into our schedules. Every year, we take time to stop, re-evaluate and figure out what it is that we want. On the topic of reset, I bring to you my guest, Taylor Short, the founder of a wellness business as well as an author of the book, Reset Your Relationship to Your Job. Taylor, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much for having me. I'm glad to be here.
Let's start off by talking about Harmonious Return, your wellness business. It seems like you have different types of events and coaching but all around this theme of resetting. Briefly describe what the business is about, what the goal is and what your methods are.
I love that you can see the overarching. We can even start with the book. The book is the catalyst and the most accessible way to work with me or understand the work that I do in the world but on a broader level of this reset. You're so right. The whole idea around this was when I came from Corporate America. Extreme burnout on the inside but on the external, feeling conflicted because I had the corporate salary and title. All of the things that I thought should make me happy but I was feeling this incongruency within myself. Through my own journey, I started to say, "What is going on here doing this reset myself?" Mind you, this was a gradual progression over a few years but in my discovery, I looked around and said, "We are moving at this pace that is unnatural. Us humans, we are nature and nothing in nature moves and expels their energy 100% of the time."
I started to dive deeper into the work that I do to help people. The first step is to pause like, "Is your life working for you?" Because we get so caught up in the days turn into weeks, months and years. I would revel in some of these people that were at the end of their lives. They have lived a long life and looking back at some of the advice they gave to us that we're fortunate enough to learn from what they learned in an entire lifetime. Many of them had many regrets, "I would have paid attention to my life more. I would have done more things that I wanted to do." The reset is around that intentional pause that we don't normally do at this pace to say, "Is work working for me? Is life working for me? If it's not then what do I need to do to reset that?"
To start off the story, what was this corporate job that you had?
It wasn't necessarily just one. As anyone does, I think when we graduate from our undergrad studies, at least I didn't question it. You get a job, work your way up and that's what's going to create your success or happiness. Along the way, I did that. I was successful at jumping promotions to getting salaries. I had been in different industries but in the end, I was spending time in the financial services world and was successful to all my family and people on the outside like, "You've got the salary and this title. This is awesome," but inside it was like, "I am miserable. There is something significantly wrong here." I've started to look at that like, "We're pushing for more, harder and work faster.
The lotus is a flower that not only survives but thrives and prospers in muddy, murky, unclear water. Companies are like that, they need to strive and adapt to hard times. You need to build the right culture so that your company can go through those times. This is exactly what the founder of Leading Lotus, Umadevi Gopaldass does for her clients. She helps them build a strong ecosystem or work culture so that they can achieve success. Join your host, Stephen Jaye as he talks to Umadevi Gopaldass about her many work experiences with different cultures. Learn how to emerge from this muddy, murky place and thrive.
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Powered by Podetize Building A Strong And Thriving Work Culture With Leading Lotus Founder Umadevi Gopaldass For the vast majority of people, work is a major part of our lives. One key aspect that impacts our work experience is the culture of the organization that we work for. Work culture is one area where I believe that we’re in serious need of making work, work better for more people. With that being said, I want to bring up my guest, Umadevi Gopaldass, who started her own business called Leading Lotus. That is leading the charge in bringing us a better, more useful work culture. Thank you for joining us, Uma.
Hi, Stephen. Thank you for having me. It’s my pleasure.
Tell me a little bit about Leading Lotus and what your goal is for our work culture.
I started Leading Lotus a few years ago. I incorporated on February 14th on Valentine’s Day. I had nothing else to do that day, so I was a rebel. I had quit the corporate world. I had 26 years of working and living all over the world. I was in oil and gas, working offshore on oil rigs, platforms, and remote towns. I was with Accenture Management Consulting for several years and then had high-powered jobs and careers, followed by the gold mining industry. Part of it was, I was struggling to find a purpose for my own life, which was pulling at me. Even though I had great careers, the remuneration was great. Work-life balance was an issue, but then financial stability was not an issue.
That was the struggle. I didn’t have to change anything except I had to. It was like a conundrum. It wasn’t like just yesterday. I woke up and decided, “I want to do this.” It was starting to happen six years before I even quit my last high flying job. When it was time to let go of a paid job, the decision was very natural. I quit end of 2016 after finishing all my projects. I didn’t leave. I had a three-year project that I completed and I left. I disengaged from everything for three months and founded Leading Lotus. The company had an underlying theory that we all need to come out of the book, the muddy, murky consciousness of mess that we go through every day in our minds, where a lotus grows.
Lotus is actually like a weed. It only grows in muddy, murky, unclear waters. It always comes out of the water pristine because it’s got a self-cleaning technology built into it. We call it the Lotus effect. It’s a scientifically proven design that’s used in control towers. Not many people know the biology of a Lotus. It’s a revered plant and had been around for 150 million years. I said every day we do need to come out of that muddy, murky messiness. We need to think clearly, see the light, and make the right decisions. That’s a tough call, every day, day in and day out.
I designed my company based on that. The tagline was, “Decide with clarity.” It’s supposed to help people, individuals, professionals, businesses, corporations, and nonprofits get out of the struggling mode and get into the striving mode, and then end up in the thriving mode. Because if you look at the Lotus, they thrive in a murky environment, but it’s an ecosystem where it’s always going to shine bright when the sunlight’s out. That was the premise of Leading Lotus. "I hire people telling them that they can only work for me or in this role for two years.
Few people reach where they are looking to go without some form of personal transformation. In this episode, Stephen Jaye talks with Rick Harrigan, whose story of personal transformation involves having what he thought he was supposed to have but coming to the realization that it was not the right place for him. He reached a point where he could not take it anymore. It's a place a lot of people find themselves in. "I don't know what I want to do; I just know I can't do this anymore." Rick now helps others who are in need of similar transformations through his holistic purpose-driven consulting service. Join in this conversation as he takes us throughout his journey, all the while offering some great insights and inspiration to help those of us who are looking for that personal transformation.
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Powered by Podetize A Story Of Personal Transformation With Rick Harrigan On this show, we are not trying to tell you exactly what your dream, your definition of success should be or specific actions you should take. A lot of it is all about mindset. However, one key component to a lot of different stories about people reaching whatever their definition of success is a story of personal transformation. That being said, I would like to introduce you to our guest, Rick Harrigan, who has his personal transformation story, not only about his transformation but about how he's helping others with their journeys. Welcome, Rick.
Thanks, Stephen. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me on.
How are you doing?
I am doing great.
Let's start by talking about your own story of personal transformation. Where were you before you underwent your transformation? "Purpose is not something that takes place outside of ourselves. Purpose is about a sense of being and living into your sense of being." A large part of it starts even in my youth, the messaging that I received about expectations, success and what they meant. That's to say that I came from a blue-collar background, where the idea of success was very much around this white-collar success was pegged to wealth, the white picket fence and a lot of material things. Money was always a source of frustration and a lot of gnashing of teeth when I grew up. That became somewhat ingrained.
I went on to college, stumbled into media and became a Corporate Executive in the entertainment realm in Los Angeles for twenty years when all was said and done, over that period, it started well. As my career progressed, I started making more and more money, got the family, the kid and the mortgage. I was doing what I thought I was supposed to do, what I should be doing. There was this little voice whose volume increased and increased that was saying, "This is not what you are supposed to be doing. This is not right for you."
By the time I hit my '30s, I was by and largely miserable. It was the classic story of, successful on the outside, miserable on the inside. I ended up feeling constrained by the golden handcuffs where I was making a lot of money, had a lot of bills, expenses, expensive cars and things like that. I felt like I couldn't get out. I felt stuck by the circumstances that I felt I was supposed to create in my life. It was a dead-end street. I ended up completely feeling burnt out, frustrated, stuck, disconnected, kept this sunny, cheery disposition on the outside. On the inside, I realized that what I was doing was not touching any deeper sense of self or contributing to the world or society. I felt like a mercenary who was strictly making money for a corporation.
Finally, when I reached the point where I was probably days away from a nervous breakdown, this was Los Angeles, there were a lot of long commutes, I had an epiphany. I read A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle for the third time. I don't know why. I felt compelled to read it yet one more time. It landed with me because I realized the answers to my frustrations and feeling stuck did not l...
Truly innovating and solving problems often require us to rethink and try new approaches. The DEI Leadership Institute takes a new approach to issues we’ve been working on for longer than anyone’s been alive: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. In this episode, the Institute’s founder Maria Putnam joins Stephen Jaye to discuss how we can adapt a mindset that not only addresses this hot-button issue, but also opens us up to new experiences and has the potential to enrich all of our lives. Listen in and learn why DEI isn’t as straightforward as it seems and why everybody needs to pay attention to it now.
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DEI Leadership Institute: Taking Innovative Approaches To Diversity, Equity And Inclusion With Maria Putnam We’re all aiming for something in this world. We’re aiming to do something to make some improvement. Some of it is personal such as fixing a bad habit. Some of it is larger-scale societal issues that we’ve been dealing with for a while. One important part of that whole process is being willing to change course and taking a different approach when it becomes necessary. Being open to that will often lead to a better result. My guest, Maria Putnam, the Cofounder and Principal of the DEI Leadership Institute, has an idea about how we can find a more effective course of action around some of our most pressing problems right now. Maria, thank you for coming to the show.
Thank you so much, Stephen, for having me. “We are going in one direction where we feel comfortable. Let's be uncomfortable. That's okay. Nothing is gonna happen. It's gonna be just fine. We're gonna survive. Let's just jump on it." I want to start off by getting everyone oriented properly. DEI is a term that’s commonly used in the business and the corporate world. What does it stand for and what is the ultimate aim of a lot of the DEI Initiatives going on in the world?
DEI stands for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Some of the companies are using DENI. The ultimate goal for this is awareness. As we do this work more, to begin and start with us, to be more aware, to become better people and better human beings.
When it comes to that, what is the ultimate goal for people who are involved in the DEI or hear about DEI training at their own companies? Is there a societal need around fairness and equality, or is it mostly all stemming from this idea of becoming better people and better communicators?
The ultimate goal is to create a better world where there is equity, everybody has a voice, there is an appreciation of everybody at the workplace. The DEI work cannot be effective if we as people don’t do our own DEI and if we don’t face our own bias. That’s where the work starts and by working in ourselves, we could become better people. You cannot apply something that you don’t believe yourself.
Before we get into the specifics of your story, what are some of these other benefits? Let’s say we improve ourselves as human beings and give everyone a fair voice. There are some other benefits. It’s not just about having certain makeups on your board or something like that. There are other intangible benefits. Tell us a little bit about some of these other intangible benefits and how we’re all improving through this.
For example, let's focus on the workplace. What benefits do we have when we do the DEI work well? There is higher retention because people feel a sense of belonging. There is a lower turnover. One of the things that I hear in the business and some of the people in the companies that I work with is they spend a lot of money in the process of hiring. The turnover is high. Overall, you’re going to have more committed people. If we’re going to talk about the financial part, you’re going to save a lot of money. That’s what I’m talking about in the workplace.
Let’s back up to your story before starting the DEI Leadership Institute. You’ve lived in a lot of different places and had a lot of your...
Acting upon what we feel passionate about and pursuing good ideas is not just for those who hate their jobs or are desperate for a new source of income. Joe Comsti and his co-founders Vince Ruggeri and Robbie Hall identified a new way to look at one of the most important aspects of the human experience, physical fitness. Their program, Habit of Health LLC, combines aspects of many popular health programs alongside other components of our health, including nutrition and good mental habits. In this episode, they join Stephen Jaye to discuss the importance of taking care of our bodies, the current state of the fitness industry, and the importance of building a brand. They go deep into the struggles that keep people unmotivated about being healthy and then offer some tips on overcoming them. Imparting wisdom to those trying to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams, they also share the things they learned best about building a brand that can support your life and, at the same time, help others. Join Joe, Vince, and Robbie in this engaging conversation to learn more.
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Powered by Podetize Habit Of Health: Building A Brand That Keeps People In Good Physical Health With Joe Comsti, Vince Ruggeri, and Robbie Hall One key aspect of anyone's life is our physical fitness. Our ability to take on whatever challenge we're looking for is limited by how much we can handle in our bodies and being in good physical shape does help us maintain and increase our energy level. I'd like to introduce Joe Comsti along with Vince and Rob, who have started their own LLC around keeping people in good physical health called Habit of Health. How are you all doing?
We are good.
First, tell me the inspiration behind Habit of Health. What made you decide to take on this venture? "If your #1 goal is to make money, then I think you can quickly get away from what your actual goals are." During COVID times and everything, we just hung out with people in the neighborhood. Rob is our neighbor and we're all fitness junkies. That was the closing of the gyms, I went to CrossFit and I had a running coach. Rob coaches at CorePower Yoga and we taught fitness, we love working out. I had a nice home gym built which has expanded into what Habit of Health is now. We talked about it. Why do I CrossFit? Why does Vince power lift? Why does Rob do yoga? Is one better than the other? I think and we believe that the answer is that one isn't better than the other. All fitness and being cardiovascular or being healthy in general is about getting out there and moving.
That's a problem with a lot of the fitness industry, that if you go to CorePower Yoga, you get CorePower Yoga, if you go to CrossFit, you get CrossFit, you go to Orangetheory, you get Orangetheory. CrossFit and CorePower yoga isn't for everybody. The idea of Habit of Health revolves around that idea but instead of telling you how and what you should be doing, it’s, “Here is everything.” We do a little strength, HITT, yoga, running and we're slowly adding to our arsenal of tools that we can teach people how to do. We will never tell anybody that you have to show up to yoga, you have to show up to HIIT or you have to be doing strength stuff. It's about moving. Being healthy is all about getting out there and doing something.
That's one of the challenges of our current times. A lot of us have jobs and lifestyles that are quite sedentary. We see it all around when the human body was meant to move. I've had periods where for one reason or another, a cold snap with temperatures below zero, I didn't move for several days and all of a sudden I realized, “I feel crappy. I don't feel well.” The human body wasn't meant to just sit in front of a computer or some screen for 12, 14, 16, 18 hours a day. It was meant to move. Can you tell us a little bit about this conversation that led to the revelation about what Habit of Health became?
It is often challenging to maintain interest, let alone a passion, for what we are doing for nearly half a century. Yet, that is exactly what Rick Seymour has done. He has been helping people improve their health through individualized nutrition plans for 47 years and reports feeling even more passionate about his business than he did when he started! It was not an easy journey though. Finding the right fit involved exploring many different options and transitioning out of corporate America took years of hard work and sacrifice. Learn more about Rick’s inspiring journey as he bares it all in this conversation with Stephen Jaye.
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Powered by Podetize Living Life On Your Own Terms: How Rick Seymour Found And Maintained His Passion For 47 Years One thing I talk about quite a bit is this idea of living by the script. By the script, what I'm talking about is the standard expectations that we have almost unwritten in our culture now. Every culture has them. In this culture, this manifest says something along the lines of go to school, get good grades, get a good job, gradually move up the ladder, have 2.3 kids. I'm not here to throw shade on anyone that is living according to the script. If you're happy with it, I'm happy for you. One of my goals is to open people up to other possibilities. I want to introduce my guest, Rick Seymour, who began living in a semi-retired state at the age of 38. Rick, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Stephen. I’m delighted to be with you.
Thank you so much. Your journey is going from something that was way more by the script in the sense that you were working a standard corporate job to what you're doing now, which is a state of semi-retirement or working at your own discretion. Describe the overall process. "If somebody is forward thinking enough that they have a growth mindset, they realize that by working on themselves they can accomplish things they weren't able to do in the past. All of a sudden things change dramatically." When I went to school at CU, I had a Major in Applied Mathematics and Physics because it was easy for me. When I got out of school, it's like, “What do you do with that if you want to stay in Colorado?” In those days, there are only two significant corporations to work for that could utilize that talent. That was Martin Marietta, which is now Lockheed Martin, and Ball Brothers. Martin Marietta was very involved in the space program. I came into it early. I'm literally a recovering rocket scientist. I started right at the end of the last Apollo mission and worked on our first space station, which was Skylab. Several years ago, we put a lander on Mars for the first time with less technology than you have in your cell phone. I worked on the early shuttle programs. As interesting and exciting as the work was, the bureaucracy, office politics, all of it made me a little crazy.
Maintain A Passion: Until you're able to have that perspective about what it is you're doing and how you put yourself out there, it doesn't matter how good you are at what you do, you're not going to be very successful at it.
Being a contractor to NASA, with another layer of politics and bureaucracy on top of us, it was a stifling atmosphere to work in. I got to the place where I didn't want to have to put up with all of that. You have to get a little beat up in the corporate world before being an entrepreneur and being on your own makes sense. I got to the point where I was tired of working for people I wouldn't hire. When you add to that, all of the stuff that goes with large corporations, I wanted out. I wouldn't even eat lunch in the company cafeteria because I was afraid somebody would talk to me. You'd know what to do with that. I couldn't figure a way out but knew that I wanted out and kept striving to make that happen. I knew I wanted the freedom of being in my own business. I wanted the flexibility with a good enough income to enjoy the time freedom.
Life can be unpredictable. Often, the best course of action is to have a plan, but we must be flexible enough to pivot and open for that plan to change. In this episode, our host, Stephen Jaye, talks with Alyse Opatowski, the founder and CEO of We Talk Real Talk. The company has taken on several different forms while maintaining its core mission: to bring people together through deeper and more authentic conversation. Alyse shares insights on her journey with us while also discussing how she pivoted on her other businesses and why being flexible is a key attribute. Going deeper, she then shares why it is important to allow ourselves to change; only then can we find a better understanding of ourselves and even of others.
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The Story Of We Talk Real Talk: Changing Course And The Need For Flexible Plans With Alyse Opatowski We all have different pursuits in life and sometimes we need to be a little bit flexible. One of the things I realized a while back is that one of the best ways to go about things is to have a plan, but also be prepared to have that plan change or have a need to change course from time to time. With that being said, I want to bring on my guest, Alyse Opatowski who has a business called We Talk Real Talk that had started out with one mission and the mission was changed in a way. Without further ado, here is Alyse. Thank you very much.
"If we aren't distracting ourselves and we just allow silence and time with ourselves, that's a really great way to start to explore things deeper and start to understand what is a combination of things that excite you and your gifts because everybody definitely has them."
I’m happy to be here. Thanks so much for having me.
Can you start from the beginning with We Talk Real Talk? How did the concept begin from the start?
I am from Denver and have left for about ten years. When I came back, I found that it was challenging to find a community to meet people. I had lived in major cities, which I understood why there was a challenge here. I found it odd coming back to my hometown and seeing how it was challenging first, meeting people, then second of all, a lot of the people that I was meeting only had a few friends or didn’t know a ton of people here. I first wanted to figure out ways to bring people together. The community has always been important for me. I was also hearing from people that a lot of their friendships or interactions were pretty surface level. I love asking deep questions. I would get good feedback on that but I was wondering how I could create more opportunities at dinner parties, bring people together or how there could be deeper conversations there.
Things don’t always turn out how you expected them to be. They can change.
I started with some friends, hosting some dinners and having questions on the table where people can go deeper. That was successful and people enjoyed it. I decided to start a business, We Talk Real Talk, where we would bring people together in a more facilitated way to be able to have these deeper questions. A lot of what came out of it was friendships, business partners and some dating involved. It also allowed people to talk about the things that they’re not always able to talk about and see that a lot of times, we all have this shared humanity and experiences. Another thing that is important to me and was important for them too was this feeling of getting rid of shame. Not having shame around topics when they would talk about something and other people would have similar experiences or be there to support them and listen to what they were sharing.
First of all, where did you move to? You said you’re from Denver and you moved back here. Where did you live between?
I went to school in Michigan and then I did an interesting year-long program where they moved you across the country every four months. I lived in lots of fun cities, Fort Lauderdale, San Francisco, St. Louis,
Ok, Boomer. These are the things millennials would say to make fun of how old boomers are. While boomers would make fun of how spoiled and reliant millennials are on technology. The cycle keeps on going, and it will continue to go until someone puts an end to it. Instead of vilifying each other, we can come together and learn a whole bunch of new things. Barbara Randell, the Founder of Future Image Group, is joining your host, Stephen Jaye, to talk about bridging this generational gap at work. Join Stephen and Barbara as they talk about adopting the correct mindset that will bridge this divide. Learn how taking that first step can fix many of the other divides prevalent in our world and culture today.
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Bridging Generation Gaps At Work With Barbara Randell One thing that's been on my mind quite a bit lately is relationships. This pandemic has been hard on a lot of people, but one of the things I hope that we're coming to the realization to over the course of the past year of being restricted and hold up at home is the importance of relationships in our lives. Sometimes, especially in work environments, we don't get to sit and necessarily choose who we want to interact with. It's not always this like attracts like, this mirroring phenomenon. We have to find an effective way to interact with the people around us regardless of who they are. Without further ado, I bring you Barbara Randell, the Founder and Leader of the Future Image Group, which helps a lot with work relationships. Welcome, Barbara. "You can boil every single human emotion down to two things: love and fear. And if you're coming from a place of fear, which means if you're feeling insecure, you're not going to ask. We all assume that we're supposed to know everything. We're all a work in progress." Thank you. It's good to be with you.
Let's begin by getting the readers oriented to Future Image Group. Tell us about what you do, what your mission is, and how you do it.
In my former life, I was a legal recruiter for many years. The reason that I was successful in that endeavor was because of relationships and the personal interactions I had with my clients. Towards the end of that phase of my career, I started noticing this alarming trend of the senior folks in the workplace complaining about the Millennials and Millennials complaining about the awful dinosaurs of Boomers, and how nobody was talking to each other. You have uniquely five generations all working together at the same time for the first time in history. Each generation looks at work and life through a completely different lens. Nobody was taking the time to get to know or get to understand which lens people are looking through. They were just vilifying each other.
Bridging Generation Gaps: Each generation brings a unique set of skills that each generation can learn from. Nobody is taking advantage of any of that because of factors such as social media and technology.
You've got all of these generations all working together and all speaking different languages. Essentially, I started researching it. I found out that this is in fact, a thing. The generations are not communicating amongst themselves, they are tending to gravitate only towards people that are like them. When in fact, each generation brings an extraordinary, unique set of skills, tools, and brilliant gifts that each generation can learn from and grow from. Nobody was taking advantage of any of that because of a huge number of factors, social media, and technology. We're losing the tools and the skills to communicate with one another and relationships rely on communication, curiosity and interest. How are we doing this? Who are you? Why are you doing what you're doing? Asking people the questions that you asked me. I wrote a curriculum that teases apart the actual components of what it takes to develop, build, maintain and nurture relationships.
Food's a great way to get to know people. Stephen Jaye’s guest in this episode is Kayla Ferguson, founder at The Same Plate, an organization that addresses two critical human needs: connecting with others and exposure to new ideas. The organization was built as a result of Kayla’s international travels and experience bridging cultural divides over shared meals. The success of The Same Plate also demonstrates that not all ideas need to be super complicated and highly technological to have a significant impact! Tune in!
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The Same Plate: Bridging Cultural Divides Through Food With Kayla Ferguson I’m happy to be talking to you about this.
Thank you for joining me. How are you doing?
All good. I’m convincing myself that I enjoy the seasons.
Sometimes you have to make the best of it. I was in Crested Butte where the weather was good. It was sunny and pleasant. There wasn’t enough snow there for a good skiing experience. There were a lot of bare spots. It reminded me that sometimes you need some of the good and some of the bad to make everything flow together.
They have to have the dark and the light, the good and the bad, warm and the cold, the sun and the snow. It’s what makes the world function.
Tell me about The Same Plate Denver, what experiences people have and what the purpose is.
I’ll start by saying how the whole thing got started because that provides some valuable context. I was born and raised in Denver. I love this city, for one. That’s a huge reason why this is a passion project for me. I also went out to California for school. I studied film. I worked in Hollywood for a while. After a couple of years, I decided that wasn’t going to work. I saved up as much as I could which wasn’t much on a Hollywood assistant salary. I bought a plane ticket to Japan. I decided I was going to do a 26-country trip around the world. That was in 2015 and 2016. It straddled those two years. I ended up back in Denver because I ran out of money. I had to move into my parents’ basement. I’m still here.
It was about 1.5 to 2 years after getting back that I was not particularly fulfilled by the job that I was doing and wanting to take off on another round the world trip but I didn’t have the time, money or resources. I was sitting at an Indian restaurant one night with my now fiancé, then-boyfriend. It was like a lightbulb moment of you can travel the world through food. I’m not saying that eating at an Indian restaurant in Arvada, Colorado is the same as going to India but it can open you up to that experience and create some intrigue that can push you towards that adventure.
I decided I would start putting together dinners for my friends. I pick a different culture every month and invite my friends to dinner. It would be like a gathering thing. We could all talk, eat good food, catch up with each other not over beers at a brewery because I found that it’s a little hard to connect with people in that environment. By the third month of bringing together, I had close to 30 people coming. It was amazing that many people wanted to try the food. I realized that sometimes impeded the conversation people were able to have with each other. That’s when I started thinking about doing more curated experiences with the chef, with some intentional conversation and turning it into a whole ticketed event for people. It grew from there. That’s the quick story. "If everyone adapted that, that their life journey and their life experience makes what they want to share with the world unique, regardless of how common we think it is, I think it would just be magical." First of all, it sounds like an idea that you had a lightbulb moment at that time at the Indian restaurant but also an idea that came to you in a couple of different segments. Tell me about that first experience when you were at an Indian restaurant. Was there something that made you think about this experience?
Taking on a new venture is not only for people in a certain age range or of a certain generation. Stephen Jaye’s guest today is Joyce Feustel, a LinkedIn coach and trainer who started Boomers’ Social Media Tutor at the age of 61! Through this business, she is helping many other Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) start and grow their own businesses through the effective use of social media. Each social media platform is unique, so you have to spend time doing stuff in them to get the hang of it. Listen to their conversation and discover helpful tips on how you can navigate social media, especially LinkedIn and Facebook.
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The Social Media Tutor For Baby Boomers With Joyce Feustel Our guest is Joyce Feustel, who started her own company that teaches Baby Boomers how to use social media. Those who know me best know that I spend most of my life around other Millennials and for us Millennials. Social media comes second nature to us. It comes very naturally. It came to us either in high school or for some of us even earlier in life. For a lot of Baby Boomers who began their lives and days before people even had personal computers, let alone getting them connected to the internet, if you remember that whole You’ve Got Mail phase if you are old enough, people who were born before that, it doesn’t come quite as naturally. Without further ado, I bring you, Joyce Feustel and her Baby Boomer social media business. --- Thank you very much for being on the show.
It’s great to be here. It’s always wonderful to even have an opportunity to share what I have learned about teaching people and Baby Boomers in particular about social media, Facebook and LinkedIn primarily, and providing maybe even a few tips throughout our conversation that someone would say, “I came to be inspired and that was good but I also got a couple of practical ideas from Joyce.” How about that? “People are intrigued by the fact that I'm older and a social media consultant-trainer.” That sounds really nice. Is your customer base pretty much all Baby Boomers or do you expand a little bit beyond that particular generation range?
I brand myself with the name of Boomers Social Media Tutor as a Baby Boomer myself born in 1948, an older Boomer and to my fellow Boomers. Let’s get the years straight for the readers. Baby Boomers were born between the years of 1946 and 1964. Therefore, most of my customers are Boomers. That’s the age group I enjoy working with. That said, I have helped people as young as their twenties with their LinkedIn profile, college students even. There I can help people of all ages and very few people go into LinkedIn and hang out. I compare to Tinder to use a more up-to-date dating app, where you go swipe, you’ve got your gal and your guy, whoever you are looking for and you go off of Tinder. At least, I would hope you would because you are set. With LinkedIn, my opinion is that don’t quit LinkedIn because you landed your job or your business is doing better because you went and fixed up your profile, and then you leave LinkedIn alone. You get so much more out of a site like LinkedIn when you actually hang out there and do stuff on it.
I even noticed that some people pop in when they are looking for a job and whenever their current job is not going so well. Some people stay engaged regardless. You can tell by looking at how they are posting. They are not posting to get a new job. You can actually tell that they are posting because they are genuinely interested in it and certainly seems to leave a better impression on recruiters or anyone else who might be.
That’s such a good point because LinkedIn is a place where you are creating your whole persona, your work persona mainly but also your opportunities where you have been involved, perhaps in a volunteer organization and leadership in some way. You can get more of a 360-degree feel for somebody. You are on LinkedIn not for you but other people.
Could you be approaching your social media accounts all wrong? Instead of being drowned in all the unnecessary noise on the internet, everyone could really benefit from sharing bite-sized wisdom. Stephen Jaye talks with Chris Huynh, the creator of "The Minute Wisdom,” who does an alternative approach in online content creation. He talks about how he builds a community of like-minded people focused on self-development and embracing a childlike curiosity, one inspiring quote at a time. Chris also emphasizes how social media should be seen as a platform for healthy and meaningful discussion. He explains the right time to block or mute people and why a huge number of followers doesn’t equate to one’s success.
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The Minute Wisdom With Chris Huynh Welcome to Action's Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. I'm Stephen Jaye AKA Action. In this show, I plan to share with you a series of stories about people who have taken on initiatives that are inspiring to me and hoping that they are inspiring to you as well. I bring in different guests, different types of people from different backgrounds that have all taken on some kind of initiative to improve their lives and the lives of the community around them. I plan to share with you a series of stories that could range from something along the lines of starting a business to something more like overcoming fear, starting community groups or even just getting into shape. My reason for starting this show is observing a lot of people out there struggling with different areas of their lives, trying different things, wanting something new, different and need the courage to go out and do it.
What I have discovered is that I have observed a lot of people with different challenges and desires. We all want different things but the one commonality to all of it is getting into the right mindset, believing that you are deserving of what you want, that you are capable of getting what you want and that you are going to go out and do it. That's like, "I can, I should and I will," type of thing. With that being said, I'm hoping these stories inspire you to take on whatever you want to take on to make your life as good as it possibly can. I have for you my first guest, Chris Huynh, who put together a Twitter account that has somewhat of a similar motivation called Minute Wisdom. Chris, welcome to the show.
Steve, thanks for having me on as your inaugural guest. I appreciate everything that you have done so far in creating this show, seeing it through to fruition and coming together as a guest. I'm glad to be a part of it. Thank you. I'd rather have 100 followers who that are wanting to use my content and apply it to their daily lives than 500 passive followers. I'm inspired by Minute Wisdom. What inspired you to start this Twitter account?
@TheMinuteWisdom is the Twitter handle. The biography of the handle is, "Wisdom you can apply in your daily lives in a minute or less." It comes from modern-day philosophy that we have attention spans as long as microwave popcorn. I thought it was funny in the sense that we are all looking to improve professionally and personally or improve any other avenue of life but we want to do so in quick bite-sized pieces. During March time, when the world had gone down to hell and people were trying to figure out ways to cope with this new normal, the reality of being locked down and working from home, I thought, "What better way to take advantage of all this extra time that I had working from home and also the desire to have a creative outlet in the form of writing?"
I thought, "Twitter would be a great place to start." Having experience with a personal Twitter account and knowing how that social media platform works, I thought, "Why not create an anonymous Twitter handle called @TheMinuteWisdom, share some of my thoughts that I have been having the last three months of this lockdown and at t...
Fractional resources are people's whose involvement with a company falls outside the standard 9-to-5 40 hour a week setup. They are often freelancers, consultants and contractors. However, through her company Khazana Inc., Suraya Yahaya is providing fraction resources at the executive level for companies looking to scale up. Through this service Suraya allows founders/ CEOs to focus on growth and investment while she runs the day-to-day operations using the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). Opening up more options for different work setups is an important part of creating a world where more people can properly align their lives with who they are. In this episode, we discuss fractional resources, as well as other aspects of work culture important towards making work more enjoyable for more people.
No matter where we end up in life, we periodically need to reset. To reset means to consider where we are overall, and make some sort of change or adjustment. Resets can come in many different forms. Taylor Short founded Harmonious Return and wrote a book titled Reset Your Relationship to Your Job to help facilitate these necessary life transformations. In this episode, Taylor and I discuss the different ways people go about re-evaluating their lives when changes become necessary, burnout and the need to slow down from time to time, as well as the importance of getting into nature.
The lotus is a flower that not only survives, but thrives and prospers in muddy, murky, unclear water. That is exactly what The Leading Lotus helps businesses, as well as individuals do. Many organizations find themselves in places that are muddy and murky in nature due to work cultures where priorities are misaligned and employee experiences don't match expectations. In this episode, Leading Lotus founder Umadevi Gopaldass describes how she helps organizations emerge from this muddy, murky place and thrive. We also discuss how her experiences working in many different industries and countries inspired the vision that became Leading Lotus.
Few people reach where they are looking to go without some form of personal transformation. In episode 9, we talk with Rick Harrigan, whose story of personal transformation involves having what he thought he was supposed to have but coming to the realization that it was not the right place for him. He reached a point where he could not take it anymore. It's a place a lot of people find themselves in. "I don't know what I want to do, I just know I can't do this anymore." Rick now helps others who are in need of similar transformations, through his holistic purpose-driven consulting service.
Truly innovating and solving problems often times requires us to rethink and try new approaches. The DEI Leadership Institute takes a new approach to issues we've been working on for longer than anyone's been alive: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. In this episode, DEI Leadership Institute founder Maria Putnam and I discuss how we can adapt a mindset that not only addresses this hot-button issue, but also opens us up to new experiences and has the potential to enrich all of our lives.
Acting upon what we feel passionate about and pursing good ideas is not just for those who hate their jobs, or are desperate for a new source of income. Joe Comsti and his co-founders Vince Ruggeri and Robbie Hall identified a new way to look at one of the most important aspects of the human experience, physical fitness. Their program, Habit of Health, combines aspects of many popular heath programs alongside other components of our health, including nutrition and good mental habits. In this episode, we discuss the importance of taking care of our bodies, the current state of the fitness industry and the importance of building a brand.
It is often challenging to maintain interest, let alone a passion, for what we are doing for nearly half a century. Yet, that is exactly what Rick Seymour has done. He has been helping people improve their health through individualized nutrition plans for 47 years and reports feeling even more passionate about his business than he did when he started! It was not an easy journey though. Finding the right fit involved exploring many different options and transitioning out of Corporate America took years of hard work and sacrifice.
In many of our pursuits, the best course of action is to have a plan, but be open for that plan to change. In this episode, we talk with Alyse Opatowski about her organization We Talk Real Talk, which has taken on several different forms while maintaining its core mission: To bring people together through deeper and more authentic conversation.
One of the most important aspects of our work experience is the relationships we build (or fail to build) with our co-workers. In 2015, Future Image Group founder Barbara Randell discovered that despite the growing divide between Baby Boomers and Millennials, nobody had formed an organization to focus on the issue. In this episode we discuss how, through bridging this divide, we can adapt the mindset that will help us bridge many of the other divides prevalent in our culture.
The Same Plate is an organization addressing two critical human needs, connecting with others and exposure to new ideas. The organization is inspired by Kayla Ferguson's international travels and experience bridging cultural divides over shared meals. The success of The Same Plate also demonstrates that not all ideas need to super complicated and highly technological to have a significant impact!
Taking on a new venture is not only for people in a certain age range or of a certain generation. Joyce Feustel started Boomers Social Media Tutor at the age of 61! Through this business, she is helping a lot of other Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) start and grow their own businesses by helping them effectively use social media.
Could you be approaching your social media accounts all wrong?
Many people simply try to get as many followers and likes as possible. Chris Huynh, creator of The Minute Wisdom, has an alternative approach. In this episode, we discuss the community and discussion he has created through this account.
The Minute Wisdom is a twitter account that offers quick to absorb pieces of advice we all can apply to our lives.