What if I told you that the traits you need to get ahead are the exact opposite of what you’ve been told most of your life? What if instead, I told you that in order to be successful you need to be Weird, Selfish, Shameless, Obsessed, Nosy, Manipulative, Brutal, Reckless, and Bossy? Well, that’s what former Google leader and top career coach, Jenny Wood recommends. Jenny counters conventional wisdom about achieving your goals, and she gives us permission to ditch our fear and chase after what we...
Aug 01, 2025•1 hr 20 min•Season 8Ep. 107
Imagine logging 50,000 miles of solo sailing adventures, including a non-stop circumnavigation of the globe, and a 7800 km paddling journey across Canada from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Or, maybe you’re more interested in entrepreneurship and making an impact in the lives of others using technology and artificial intelligence? Or, perhaps you have a desire to be an author? If so, you’re in luck, because in this episode I’m talking with a person who has done all that, and more, the remarkable p...
Jul 01, 2025•1 hr 31 min•Season 8Ep. 106
Are you an ambitious industrious worker and a high achiever who always delivers, but you feel stuck or unseen, and you struggle to move up in your career? Or maybe it’s your peers who seem to get all the recognition and advance, while you're wondering why you’re being left behind. And that is where Lorraine K. Lee can lend a hand. Lorraine is an award-winning global keynote speaker and an instructor for Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Program and LinkedIn Learning, and she is the author...
Jun 01, 2025•1 hr 26 min•Season 8Ep. 105
Dean Karnazes is a force of nature and an inspiration. He’s raced across the globe in support of various causes and modeled unparalleled perseverance and going beyond perceived limitations that serve to unlock an inner strength in others to also attain extraordinary results. He shares real-life examples that explore the topics of dealing with adversity, overcoming obstacles, setting and reaching lofty goals, the importance of teamwork - even in solo endeavors, and excelling in a competitive and ...
May 01, 2025•1 hr 25 min
Sara Fix is a powerhouse. A mother of three, a small business owner, and a woman who’s navigated life’s highs and lows—all while completing 28 Ironman races across the globe, but her biggest challenge is being diagnosed with stage 4 neuroendocrine cancer, yet, she refuses to let her diagnosis define her. She continues to train, compete, and inspire others with her resilience and positive mindset. Sara's story is one of perseverance and advocacy. She emphasizes the importance of being one's own h...
Apr 01, 2025•1 hr 13 min•Season 8Ep. 103
Prescription medications are fairly controversial these days – cost, insurance coverage, efficacy, and too often, medications are dosed incorrectly, cause toxic side effects or just don't work. But what if we could change how we prescribe drugs, what if there was a 3D printer that could design pills that adapt to an individual’s needs, and maybe print-on-demand the medications tailored to the patient? Or what if there was a real-world device that worked like the diagnostic Tricorder we imagined ...
Mar 01, 2025•1 hr 12 min•Season 8Ep. 102
How many Mondays do you have left? Statistically, we all get about 4,000 Mondays in our lifetime, so if you're halfway through your life, you might have roughly 2,000 Mondays to go. The good news is that you are in charge of how you spend those days, the question is will you be toiling away at a job that you hate, or will you be creating a career that you love? Will you choose to scroll mindlessly for hours a day, or will you pursue hobbies and travel that light you up? Will you be dreading the ...
Feb 01, 2025•1 hr 28 min•Season 8Ep. 101
I suspect that there are times you may feel overwhelmed by the sheer number and complexity of nonstop decisions you need to make. To further complicate matters, you may believe that some decisions require rational (brain) decision making, while others call for you to "go with your gut." But what if you could integrate the two - your brain and your gut - in a way to help you become the calm and steadfast person, and leader, you would like to be. What if you could combine both rational logical tho...
Jan 01, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Season 8Ep. 100
Life depends on learning. We spend decades in school acquiring an education. We take pride in mastering a craft, or a sport, or a game. The things we do in our careers or even just for fun are enjoyed to a large extent because we feel we are capable of getting better at them. We yearn for mastery. But learning can be elusive. We may spend hours studying and still not do well on an exam. Improvement can be fickle - if it comes at all. Sometimes we improve effortlessly, and other times it can be a...
Dec 01, 2024•1 hr 29 min•Season 7Ep. 99
It seems that almost everywhere in the world, there is conflict, distrust, and unrest – Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, and even here in the US. Oftentimes, any kind of diplomacy, cooperation, agreement, detente or finding a common ground seems impossible. But what if there was a different way? What if there was an organization that holds as its mission, “ to transform the way the world deals with conflict, away from adversarial approaches and toward cooperative solutions?” What if those tactics included ...
Nov 01, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Season 7Ep. 98
We are not as smart as we think we are. We're busy and distracted in a world that is incentivized to continually make us more of both. The only things that work, the only messages that cut through the noise, are sharp, clear, and direct. We’ve all been advised to “not judge a book by its cover,” to “not count your chickens before they hatch,” and that “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Maybe for you, what comes to mind is something political, like Patrick Henry’s revolutionary “Give me liberty, or gi...
Oct 01, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Season 7Ep. 97
You have likely seen moments of peak performance—perhaps an athlete plays a perfect game or a business that has a quarter with once-in-a-lifetime profits. Perhaps you have experienced something similar – playing a musical piece perfectly, making a faultless shot, or perhaps acing a final. But these moments are often elusive, and for every amazing day, we may have a hundred ordinary or even unsatisfying days. Now, imagine your best day at work - you exceed the goals set for you, your interactions...
Sep 01, 2024•45 min•Season 7Ep. 96
Have you ever found yourself in the presence of someone you love dearly and had nothing to say? The silence, not indicative of your care for the other, nor of your desire to connect with them, and yet there were no words you could grasp to articulate the depth or quality of your connection to them. Or, have you found yourself in the same looped pattern of conversation with someone you love? Feeling as though you were treading the same path repeatedly, and it was simply exhausting? Or, even worse...
Aug 01, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Season 7Ep. 95
Over 20 million copies of one of the most famous memoirs of all-time, “ Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson ” written by Mitch Albom , have been sold since its 1997 publication, and to this day it remains on many a college’s required reading list. Twenty-eight years after Morrie Schwartz passed away, his son Rob Schwartz, has edited his father’s last work, and posthumously published what has become a bestselling new book, “ The Wisdom of Morrie: Living and A...
Jul 01, 2024•1 hr 39 min•Season 7Ep. 94
When you think of modern technologies that aren’t gadgets and gizmos, you probably think of the Web, and with it, the Internet. If so, you aren’t really thinking of modern technologies. We are entering a new age. We’ve moved from the “Read-only Web,” which had little functionality for interacting with content, to the “Read-Write Web,” which offered seemingly endless collaborative opportunities, from sharing things with friends and family to shopping at your favorite brands. But the profusion of ...
Jun 01, 2024•1 hr 29 min•Season 7Ep. 93
We all have an Everest. Even if you are not an alpinist or mountaineer, we are all on individual journeys, facing ascents and descents as we strive toward our personal and professional peaks. Whether yours is to achieve a big, audacious goal, or to find a way to coexist better with your mother-in-law, how you navigate the journey is up to you. You can choose to stop, to turn around, or to keep going. And you can choose to find meaning in the challenges along the way and embrace the joy in the jo...
May 01, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Season 7Ep. 92
How do you get the job, or position, or career, where the work that you do matters - and not just to your employer - but to you? Few experiences in life are as awful as the feeling of being trapped in the wrong career. But how do you find a job that truly resonates with you? And once you’ve found it, how do you develop the confidence to take the necessary steps to arrive at the career of your dreams? Or how do you recover from a career setback and seize new opportunities? Or, what if you are ret...
Apr 01, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Season 7Ep. 91
At the intersection of architecture is art, creativity, design, engineering, sociology, psychology, and inspiration, not to mention survival, sustainability, and comfort. It’s been said that architecture is the art we live in. We’re all impacted by the communities in which we live, the spaces in which we work, along with the places we visit and experience throughout our lives. So what is it that makes for good architectural design? How does a space become iconic? How does an architect go from pr...
Mar 01, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Season 7Ep. 90
To succeed in a fast-changing world, individuals and companies know they must create a culture of growth, where experimentation and feedback are encouraged, and learning is integrated into the everyday. Yet we often get stuck in a well-worn pattern of habits that don’t move us forward. Why? How do you get better at something? You do a lot of it. The 10,000 hour rule. Practice makes perfect, right? Maybe not. What if our focus only on performing doesn’t lead to the hoped for improvements, and ins...
Feb 01, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Season 7Ep. 89
How do you become an innovator? What sparks creativity? What goes into creating something that becomes iconic? Instead of predicting the future, what if you could create it? Well, that is pretty much what Hussain Almossawi does. He easily walks between digital and physical worlds as he creates futuristic concepts, experiences and objects. Hussain is an award-winning industrial designer, CGI/Visual Effects Artist, and best-selling author of The Innovator's Handbook. He has worked across industrie...
Jan 01, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Season 7Ep. 88
Leaders come in a variety of types and approaches. There are the proverbial Chainsaw Al’s - those tough-talking executives who are aggressive in their turning around troubled companies by laying off workers and closing factories. There are the Jack Welch types who at first seem like geniuses, but are later found to not have created sustainable change. There is a litany of heroes and scoundrels, crooks and kings of all stripe, throughout various areas of work-life and the world. But what if there...
Dec 01, 2023•1 hr 24 min•Season 6Ep. 87
On July 6, 2003, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's historic op-ed, " What I Didn't Find in Africa ," appeared in The New York Times . A week later, Robert Novak revealed in his Washington Post column that Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative. It ended her covert career and set off a political scandal that rocked the Bush/Cheney White House. The public disclosure of that secret information spurred a federal investigation and led to the trial and conviction of Vice Presiden...
Nov 01, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Season 6Ep. 86
“I collaborate with the music.” Composer Tina Davidson explores in her memoir Let Your Heart Be Broken: Life and Music from a Classical Composer , described as “ a lyrical reckoning with what it takes to compose a life of cohesion and beauty, out of shattered bits and broken stories.” In Let Your Heart Be Broken , Tina juxtaposes memories, journal entries, and insight into the life of an artist—and a mother—at work. Along the way, she meets Ernest Hemingway and Carl Sandburg, survives an attack ...
Oct 01, 2023•1 hr 19 min•Season 6Ep. 85
Investment research created by large banks, mid-sized banks, and even smaller boutiques is frequently muddled by conflicts of interest, and its value diminished by over-distribution. Analysts often feel pressure to have positive ratings to support bankers or to generate corporate access. And the time horizon of most research is typically very short, causing analysts to miss long-term winners due to near-term considerations. But the biggest issue is that most analysts have no proprietary informat...
Sep 01, 2023•1 hr 33 min•Season 6Ep. 84
Have you ever had the experience of working with someone and they just didn't “get” you? They do all the things that wind you up, put you off, and drive you nuts. And, have you ever worked with someone, and you just didn't “get” them? You couldn't figure out what made them tick, and you know that you were underwhelming, as a manager and leader for them. Of course you have. We all have. So why do those situations keep happening? Particularly when we’ve also experienced the opposite – great workin...
Aug 01, 2023•1 hr 28 min•Season 6Ep. 83
Death might seem to render pointless all of our attempts to create a meaningful life. But Professor Dean Rickles argues that only constraints―and death is the ultimate constraint―make our actions meaningful. In order for us to live full lives, Dean believes it is the finiteness and shortness of life that brings meaning. In this episode we explore how this insight is the key to making the most of the time that we do have. Dr. Dean Rickles is a Professor of History and Philosophy of Modern Physics...
Jul 01, 2023•58 min•Season 6Ep. 82
Is loneliness the new smoking? A number of studies and polls have recently come out that indicate Americans of all ages, socioeconomic, and geographic locations are more isolated and alone that in any other time in recent history. Some postulate this has been spurred by people isolating themselves via increased screen time, alienating and divisive social media posts, remote working, and perhaps augmented by living in a post-Covid era. Regardless of the causes, Nick Gray is wielding name tags and...
Jun 01, 2023•54 min•Season 6Ep. 81
Freemasons , Skull and Bones , Rosicrucians , the Illuminati , 5 Hertford Street , the Bohemian Club , and more, are all so-called secret societies. Not so much because no one knows about them, but more so the question as to what do they do, who belongs to them, and how do you join? Is membership in the Soho House the modern day variant of such societies? What’s the psychology behind their creation and their intrigue? Well, Michael F. Schein, author, and CEO of MicroFame Media , knows a lot abou...
Apr 22, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 6Ep. 80
Quiet quitting has become quite topical in the media as of late. But perhaps the real story is quiet FIRING. That refers to an employer who doesn't give raises, or doesn’t provide promotion opportunities. Or they slight team members and actually diminish or stall their employees’ professional growth. Everyone, both personally and professionally, wants to feel seen, and heard. Some employers struggle to listen in order to learn, and inadvertently cause their staff to shut down. And this can be in...
Apr 01, 2023•45 min•Season 6Ep. 79
A great idea presents as a well-formulated thought or plan of action that spurs growth, change, advancement, adaptation, or new insight. Worthwhile ideas move the needle; they can change the playing field altogether. One of the most innovative thinkers in this area is Professor Robin Landa, author of The New Art of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential , which is designed to help readers consistently produce worthwhile ideas by becoming nimble, and imaginative thinkers. Robin holds the title of ...
Mar 01, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 6Ep. 78
