20 Minutes with Bronwyn

Mother Warrior: My Conversation with Ana Jones

There are some stories that stop us in our tracks. That make us forget our own dramas and traumas long enough to feel into someone else’s experience. My guest today is Ana Jones, and she has exactly that kind of story. Ana is the founder of Plex65, which is a labor market for caregivers of older adults. It is the first of its kind to use technology as a hiring platform for caregivers using “Rydeshare for Homecare” or the Uber for caregiving concept. But we are here today to talk about Ana NOT as...

How to Say "No": Scripts and Strategies for Life on Your Own Terms

Fun fact: I would rather give a speech to thousands of people than say "no" to someone. Seriously. But the better I get at saying NO, the better my life gets. With a high quality NO, comes the opportunity to say YES to the invitations and adventures that add up to the life I want vs. the life that just kinda happened to me. And in case you can relate, and in case you’re curious to see how your life might improve with the development and cultivation of your Highest Quality “No,” I want to offer y...

Your Story, Well Told : My Conversation 2.0 with Corey Rosen

If you were to ask me: What is the single most important skill to have as a communicator? I wouldn’t hesitate to answer. The single most important skill to have as a communicator is storytelling. Here’s the thing: Facts are important. The ability to make a cogent argument is important. But STORY is what changes people. STORY is probably the ONLY thing that can get someone to see the world through a different lens. And this is as true in business as it is in politics, academia, and science. We ar...

Ask for What You Need: the Power of Self Advocacy

I am a BIG believer in personal development. And, many self-help proponents equate personal power with accepting full responsibility for one’s own life. I don’t disagree. But there’s something missing there. Acceptance is not enough. Authentic personal power must include the capacity to articulate what we need and what we want. And yet, too many of us avoid doing the work of owning and articulating what it is we need because we are AFRAID of what we will discover ... About ourselves, about our p...

Courage is Rewarded: My Conversation with Tina Tran

If there’s one thing i’ve learned in this life, it is this: Everyone you meet has a backstory. Everyone has a history full of highs and lows, celebration and tragedy. And it’s so easy to forget this when we’re in our 500th meeting of the day. That each face (or name if cameras are off) has a story. In our minds, we think in terms of title. Or position in the power hierarchy. Well, my friend, you are about to meet someone with a backstory that will take your breath away. You’re about to meet Tina...

The Power of a Morning Ritual: Change Your Life, One Day at a Time

I have always been fascinated by the human experience of time. How to move through it. How to BE in it. How to make the most of it. We humans seem ill equipped to make time work for us. It’s either going too slow or too fast. I have found that the only way to make some kind of peace with time is to have a set of sacred daily rituals. And by far, the most important of these rituals is the Morning Ritual. Think of this episode as a roadmap ... a guide for constructing a morning ritual that feels l...

Stoic Street-Smarts: My Conversation with Ed Latimore

I am beyond excited for you to meet my guest today, the incredible Ed Latimore. Ed's resume seems like he's lived three lifetimes, not just one. He is a former professional heavy weight boxer—His professional record includes 15 fights, 13 of those were wins. Ed is also the best selling author of two books: "Not Caring What Other People Think Is A Superpower: Insights From A Heavyweight Boxer" and "Sober Letters To My Drunken Self" Ed is also a veteran of the United States Army National Guard. An...

Flip the Script: Three Questions for a Power-Filled 2021

In the last episode, I gave you three questions to close out 2020. And here’s the thing: 2020 served up a million reasons to feel victimized, and the three questions I posed were part ONE of a two part meditation on moving *out of* feeling victimized by circumstance, and *into* feeling the power of our own agency. One of the only true sources of power we possess. 2021 is our opportunity to flip the script ... without burning ourselves out in the process. It's an opportunity to reclaim our imagin...

Give 2020 the Exit Interview it Deserves: Three Questions to Set You Up for a Better 2021

You know what is adorable? My New Years resolutions for 2020. And here we are again on the edge of an ending year, peering hopefully around the corner to 2021. But this time, the phrase “New Year’s Resolution” seems hopelessly naive. Quaint. A throwback to a simpler time. I get it. We all got our asses handed to us this year. It gave new meaning to the old saying, “Want to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans.” But here’s what I know: Resolution and plans and dreams need to be build on the solid ...

You Belong on TikTok : MY Conversation with Keenya Kelly

This episode is for all the solopreneurs and entrepreneurs out there, trying to raise their visibility in this crazy, noisy world. My guest today is someone I’ve been observing from a far for a while now. Keenya Kelly is a branding and business coach who has been blowing up on … wait for it … TikTok. If you’re like me, you probably associate TikTok with your kids, or with impossible choreography. But friends, TikTok actually represents one of the biggest public relations and branding opportuniti...

Let's Talk About Gaslighting

In 1944, Ingrid Bergman starred in a film called Gaslight, for which she later won an Oscar. In case you've never seen it, Gaslight is a film about psychological abuse in the Edwardian age, but the behavior is so archetypal, so familiar, that the term has endured and is popular even NOW in 2020. Maybe even MORE so in 2020 than ever before. I myself have been the target of gaslighting, but I’ve learned how to spot it, how to stop it, and how to fortify my own mind so that I’m not quite so vulnera...

Our Social Dilemma : My Conversation with Dr. Anna Lembke

I recently saw a Netflix documentary that rocked my world, and I'm guessing you've seen it too. It’s called The Social Dilemma. Netflix describes it as a “documentary-drama hybrid” that explores “the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations.” What makes this film extraordinary is that it’s forcing us to face what we already know to be true about social media … That our mental health, our democracy, and our humanity are in the balanc...

Why You Need a "Success Bully" : My Conversation with Keita Williams

I am thrilled for you to meet Keita Williams, professional butt-kicker and founder of Success Bully—an elite accountability practice dedicated to supporting high performing “Type A”s who are looking to take their great to GREATER. I talk to lots of performance coaches, but what interested me about Keita's work is the focus on systems of accountability. Research shows that if we set specific accountability appointments, goal accomplishment goes up to 95%. Success Bully merges this powerful combin...

The Wood Between Worlds : Why You Need a Transition Ritual

If you’re like me, and so many people I work with, people are relying on you to bring your A game every single day. To the sales pitch. To the team meeting. To your family. To your community. The problem is that these days—unlike our pre-Covid lives—there are no natural transitions and breaks in the day. We don’t have the car ride to work. The subway ride home. The shutting down of the laptop so we can pack up our bags and head home to sort out dinner. It's the perfect storm for burnout, friends...

The Empathy Edge: My Conversation with Maria Ross

“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” That is a quote from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and it speaks to something that has become quite top-of-mind for us these days: empathy. The concept of empathy is finally enjoying some well-deserved attention in the zeitgeist right now. We are seeing the limits of a black/white, right/wrong view of the world. We crave connection and understanding not through judgement and confrontation, but throu...

How to Communicate with Mastery : My Conversation with JD Schramm

Have you ever met someone and just known you were going to become friends? That’s exactly what happened to me when I met my guest today, the amazing JD Schramm. JD and I met when I was doing the speaker coaching for the TEDxStanford program, and immediately connected. JD founded the Mastery in Communication Initiative at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where he’s served as a lecturer in Organizational Behavior for 13 years. JD has given not one but TWO TED Talks, which have nearly 2 mill...

In Pursuit of Pleasure

A few years ago, I was in a 1:1 coaching session with a very bright young woman who came to our session with a very specific communication problem: She felt she lacked “presence” in the room. Jane and I worked on lots of different ways to show up in the room … ways to signal her power, her strength, her intelligence. Ways of replacing the negative thought patterns she was telling herself about herself and about the people with whom she was meeting. But one of the pieces of advice I gave her made...

The Art of Reinventing Yourself: My Conversation with Nick Onken

It seems every week, I hear of a new round of layoffs, and more talented people losing their livelihoods. It's tempting to feel helpless, hopeless, and at the mercy of circumstances way beyond our control. But my guest today has the kind of perspective and advice we need now more than ever ... the value of changing the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Meet Nick Onken, a photographer who has shot celebrities like Justin Bieber, Usher, Gerard Butler, Jessica Alba, and entrepreneurs like ...

Eyes Wide Open

Usually, when I plan a podcast episode for you, I plan it from the highest possible vibe I can offer. I pray. I meditate. I call forth my highest self. I create a mental state of Xanadu. It’s where I believe all of the juice is. All of the real inspiration. If I’m honest, I think I’m attached to a self-concept that is dependent on being positive all the time. But this is a season of life that is calling us not to be relentlessly positive, but rather, relentlessly open and awake.

"I'm a Black Man First, Journalist Second" : My Conversation with Deion Broxton

At the beginning of this Coronavirus nightmare, as we sat isolated in our houses glued to screens, we craved laughter. We craved moments of humanity, of humor. My guest today gave us just that. You are about to meet Deion Broxton, a reporter with NBC affiliate KMTV, who became an overnight celebrity when a clip of his went viral for an unintentional moment captured on film … the moment when he faced down a herd of bison. The video has been viewed over 11 million times … And it is hilarious. But ...

My Bruce Willis Moment : I'm a Part of the Problem

Remember that Bruce Willis film, The Sixth Sense? Spoiler alert: I feel just like his character felt at the film's end, when he realizes he's a ghost. Only in my case, I realize I'm unconsciously living in and benefitting from a racist societal construct. In this episode, I'm sharing the steps I'm taking, and resources I'm utilizing to evolve as a human being, and to become a part of the solution, vs. staying comfortably inside of the problem.

Motherhood, Work & Surviving the New Normal: My Interview with Kelsey Murphy

I rarely exclude any audience type from this podcastLINK. But this week, I am making an exception. This episode is for one specific type of person: the working mother (or father) of very young children. School is nearly out, and childcare is still spotty/nonexistent, and the all-important, life-saving Summer Camp is just not happening this year. To be managing children, babies, and even pregnancy whilst also working and providing for a family is to be teetering at the edge of sanity. If that’s y...

Forget Your Closet, Declutter Your MIND

Friends, this pandemic is offering us the opportunity of a lifetime: To re-examine our relationship with our own thoughts … our own minds. This moment in history is giving us the space and time needed not just to Marie Kondo our physical closets. It is high time we got our MENTAL house de-cluttered and organized. Because here’s what: Before Corona virus, we were too busy to even notice the incessant stream of thinking happening between our ears. We barely had time to pee let alone sit and bear w...

The Real Spiritual Journey is Paying Attention : My Interview with Rev. Dr. Rob McClellan

During times of crisis, humans tend to turn to religion and spirituality for comfort. We finally come to the end of our tether, of what we’re able to comfort ourselves with, and we reach for something bigger. But the year is 2020, and the role organized religion is playing in our lives is profoundly different. With fewer and fewer of us attending religious services even without a pandemic, and more and more of us identifying as “not affiliated” with a religious group (I didn’t make this up, this...

"Anxiety Does Not Contribute to Outcomes" : My Interview with Ben Kiker

If we ever needed a session with world class business coach Ben Kiker, it is NOW, my friends. In this episode, Ben and I get very real, very vulnerable, but most importantly, we get very practical about how to survive Covid-19 season. You will learn: Ben's number one tip for building emotional resiliency; his go-to mantra for moments of terror, anxiety and all forms of dis-regulation; and so much more.

"It's Not the Opportunity We Want, But it's the Opportunity We Have" : My Conversation with Dr. Adam Dorsay

Life as we know it has changed in a matter of weeks. And what we need right now is guidance and leadership. My guest today is the amazing Dr. Adam Dorsay. We covered a LOT of ground in this conversation: from how to find purpose when suddenly there is no work to be done and no place to go ... to how to deal with overwhelm and how to support your children through this time of self quarantine, as well as tips for extroverts working in isolation for the first time ever, and also how to keep intimac...

The Value of Going Dark

I live in Silicon Valley where productivity is a RELIGION. We worship our ability to get things done with style and flash, and we can at times have an aggressive kind of optimism that borders on spiritual greed. And by “we” in this context, I mostly mean “me.” But I worry about us. I worry that we are over-farming ourselves, eroding our own soil, so-to-speak and we may be in desperate need of some time to just go dark. Whatever that might mean. In this episode, I explore how I plan on going dark...

Negotiate Like You M.A.T.T.E.R. : My Interview with Rebecca Zung, esq.

Do You Need a Soulbbatical? My Interview with Shelley Paxton

Ever get the feeling that something isn’t quite right in your life? My guest today is Shelley Paxton, author of Soulbbatical: A Corporate Rebel's Guide to Finding Your Best Life. Shelley was a rockstar living the corporate America version of the feminist dream: she was Chief Marketing Officer of one of the most macho, badass brands in the world— Harley Davidson— leading a big fancy life. She had *arrived*. And yet Shelley had a nagging suspicion it was all making her soul-sick. Not many of us ar...

Permission to Be Magnificent

Does your vision for 2020 involve you being absolutely magnificent? You may have plotted out a new eating plan or workout situation, or maybe this is the year you’re gonna get that raise, that promotion. And all of that is good. Do not get me wrong. But what is the energy underneath it? Is it the energy of bearing down and being a good girl? A good boy? A good them? Doing all the good things you’re supposed to do, and none of the bad things? Or is it an energy of straight up magnificence? Becaus...