What if your stress, your “I’m fine,” and your daily grind were actually symptoms of something deeper—dis-ease, not ease? What if there was a way to live with more joy, more vitality, and yes… more bliss? Dr. Roberta Garceau joins me to share the heart of her new book, Bliss, Not Burnout, and her powerful message for anyone stuck in survival mode. We talk about thriving—not just getting by—and how you can reconnect with what matters most. Key points in this episode: • Elemental Wellness • Embodi...
Jun 24, 2025•53 min
From the c-suite to executive leadership coach and author, Emily Sander was a pleasure to have join me on One Sharp Sword. Superman is Emily’s favorite Superhero. As with Clark Kent, Emily is adopted. She also uses - and encourages others to use - the superpowers for good and to never give up. She enjoyed business and leadership and especially loves 1:1 interactions where small points of leverage make a huge difference. Emily notes that the #1 skill someone can have is communication. And, with t...
Apr 16, 2024•45 min
GREAT conversation with Alain today. From the culture he grew up with to how he guides leaders today, you’ll get a lot out of listening. His three Cs are key to leadership, whether at home or in your organization: Connection Communication Collaboration And he spoke of Consistency, which I’d call a 4th C in his model. Alain’s book Cracking the Leadership Code is worth picking up! We connect as human beings. Our world demands people who can think and co-create within an organization. Leaders must ...
Apr 09, 2024•41 min
A performance coach coming from the corporate sector who, after reflecting on what he wished he had been taught, Aaron Trahan set out on his path as a coach. He now helps others in leadership roles. He notes that complacency must be met head on. Current success could block your future success if you allow yourself to get too comfortable. While it’s easy to get comfortable, he also knows that no one says that they don’t want to get better results. The remedy: Get a bit uncomfortable. That discomf...
Apr 02, 2024•49 min
What does a musician and conductor know about leadership? My guest, Hugh Ballou, sees his work at conducting transformations. He defines what leadership is and isn’t and what components go into great leadership. His company, SynerVision is a crossover between synergy and vision. Here are some key points. Listen in for more! Leadership isn’t dictatorship - the leader is an influencer! In an orchestra, the leader knows the score and everyone playing knows their part Infrastructure is everything, w...
Mar 26, 2024•44 min
Can you get excited about conflict? There’s an old movie from 1950 that caught my attention. It predates me, but still enchanted me. The play-turned-movie is Harvey. The main character, Elmer P. Dowd, finds people in an uproar talking about what he believes in. Elmer’s response, “Oh an element of conflict in any discussion is a very good thing. It shows everybody is taking part and nobody is left out. I like that.” Hesha Abrams is an attorney-turned-mediator, something she’s done for the past th...
Mar 19, 2024•53 min
Having grown up in PA, Dr. Kevin Gazzara had a propensity for taking things apart and putting them back together, it was a natural curiosity that drove him. He found himself organizing events for his friends. And what do you get when you have a curious kid who likes to organize? A focus on business and engineering. After decades with Intel and other organizations, Kevin took to entrepreneurship. He became an executive coach, putting his experience to great use. His focus: productivity and buildi...
Mar 12, 2024•53 min
What’s the ONLY thing you need to know about my guest this episode? Roy Osing is the ONLY author, entrepreneur, and executive leader who delivers practical and proven “audacious and unheard-of ways” to produce high-performing businesses and successful careers. His focus is on helping build what he calls The ONLY Statement, identifying what makes each individual or business stand out above everyone else. The key here is that if you claim to be The Only one doing something, you’ve basically owned ...
Mar 05, 2024•46 min
I often have guests with a similar focus to mine as a way to look at differing approaches. Noah St. John has a great message and has managed to distill it into multiple columns, maximizing how that message gets out. He’s a best selling author, a speaker, and an executive coach. And, his results are undeniable. He went from living literally dirt-poor while growing up to becoming a multi-millionaire by helping others become successful. He bounced from a suicide attempt to finding his purpose. He’s...
Feb 27, 2024•35 min
From an entry level position at Enterprise Rental Car spanning over two and a half decades when he left the company as the Regional Vice President, Eric Stone learned a thing or two about CULTURE. Through engagement and other key steps, you create Culture Carriers. Look at: Time Management and Eisenhower’s grid demarcations of Delegate, Do, Defer, or Delete Hiring Practices to include focusing on attitude, effort, and coachability Hold regular meetings to highlight desired outcomes, then back fi...
Feb 20, 2024•49 min
Marco Torres grew up in the Caribbean as his father ran GE Credit Corp from Puerto Rico. He learned about adventure and entrepreneurship. At 12 y/o he was featured in the news for having the largest paper route in the area. 11 years later, with his brother and mother, he opened a series of restaurants. And a couple years after that opened a nightclub. His realization: he wanted to employ others more than be employed by others. While formal schooling was never his thing, as an entrepreneur, conti...
Feb 13, 2024•52 min
So an MD with ADHD walks into… actually, what happens is that the gentleman creates so much presence that time flies and people feel connected. How? Breathing into presence, breathing out ego. Dr Iyer is based in Virginia (via India). He’s writing a new book about neurodiversity, autism, and sensory processing disorders which he refers to as types of personality, not disorders. He also wrote a book called The Reaper’s Dance about how we found our humanity in the midst of the COVID pandemic, comi...
Feb 06, 2024•50 min
Eric Holsapple is an expert on mindful leadership. He shares his wisdom with us noting the importance of presence, especially as a leader. And that’s why I invited him to One Sharp Sword. It’s important work. When you can be mindful and truly present, especially in our distraction-based world, you make a difference in the people around you, your organization, and potentially the world. Eric invites us to reflect internally and think about the vision we have of ourselves and for our future. He no...
Jan 30, 2024•57 min
Ahhhhh Geek Out (he says he’s more of a nerd than a geek, so…) Process Mapping is a thing! It’s the efficient, distilled, visual representation of data, the structured capture of process data. And while that doesn’t sound like a riveting thing to talk about, I assure you, this episode was filled with nuggets you can use in your business and personal life. Key points to listen for: • Have a foundational start point • Communicate - and look for the multiple ways that things are communicated in eac...
Jan 23, 2024•36 min
From Amazon Exec in the early, scrappy days to leadership and strategic consultant, John Rossman’s insights are of tremendous value for anyone in a place of looking at, and impacting their organization. He notes that dissatisfied customers are a gift. This prompted a conversation about curiosity and the need to be open enough to ask for further feedback. Step into customer obsession and really explore who you’re there to serve. Keys to success (among many) include: • Patience AND • Urgency about...
Jan 16, 2024•45 min
How does someone with social anxiety and body image issues do the work to become an entrepreneur with a business doing $2M in revenue? It’s quite a story, but the transformation happened pretty quickly! And yours can too. Having a degree in engineering, she managed to find a job in an adjacent line of work - purchasing and procurement. When it came time to get into sales on her own, she had a horrible fear of rejection . (Don’t we all?) In this episode, Amanda reveals her path to success and giv...
Jan 09, 2024•49 min
Beate Chelette (pronounced Bay-ah-tay shal-Let) immigrated here from Munich, Germany. Having held a senior and highly coveted position at Elle magazine, she realized that she had gone down the path of becoming who she really didn’t want to be. Rebounding from a bad marriage, a massive recession, and a Southern California earthquake, Beate developed her Unapologetic Value Proposition. She’s an expert at helping people through the simple-but-not-so-easy process of growing a business. Key nuggets f...
Jan 02, 2024•51 min
From physics to computer programming to paying attention to how money flows and how to maintain production and quality. That landed him a position at Google forecasting and handling economic and revenue questions. For some that’s exciting and challenging. For others, boring as heck. Eric pushed himself to be the best , to take on more and more. And his reward was to be given more, and more, and more. In the corporate world, it’s not unusual to be punished for doing a good job by being given more...
Dec 26, 2023•57 min
Here’s a guy who REALLY knows how the sausage is made! He also has lessons from Formula One McLaren Racing! From engineer to airplane repair process improvement to sausage making to shipping to working for a container company to consulting in food processing to dairy and banking to McLaren Racing for process improvement! Paul reminds us that it’s about Outcome First - Look at the processes in place. - Don’t make an inefficient process efficient. If you don’t need the process, eliminate it! F1 br...
Dec 19, 2023•39 min
What can a 19 year old “kid” teach us about living life? Plenty! It turns out that in the last 12 years, Logan has done more in his life than many of us ever even think about. He’s a motocross champ who not only knows his way around the track, he can teach us a thing or two about endurance and mindset. Coming from a racing family, he felt comfortable on a motocross bike from day one. Competitive by nature (apparently his little brother helps with that), Logan finds individual sports more fulfill...
Dec 12, 2023•57 min
Chris Miller had what he calls the Harvard Complex, suit and tie job. And, like so many of us that pursue a path for the sake of stability and “supposed to” - we move beyond the ego-based, “look at me; I landed a big-boy job.” And once there, we must question, what’s it all for? That’s where Chris and I connected on this podcast. I’ll likely do a blog about the idea of leaving your partner at home while you’re out on required business travel making the absurd claim, “I love you so much I’m not a...
Dec 05, 2023•53 min
What can an attorney tell us about peace-making? A lot! His big claim: In 90 seconds he can extinguish any argument (and teach you to do the same). What is leadership level listening? • Type One Listening is to get information that you can use and then close out the conversation • Type Two Listening is about validating the other person, making the other person feel heard. When you’re flooded with emotions, yours or someone else’s, try Affective Labeling. A leader’s job is to provide Focus, Direc...
Nov 28, 2023•44 min
R-E-S-P-E-C-T (sing it) Dr Julie Pham brings us her story from joining her refugee parents at 2 months old to earning her PhD at Cambridge. She’s been in operations and has found that relationship building is a positive path to success. In this podcast, Dr Julie and I speak about resilience and how to thrive, being creative and resourceful, and using hope and optimism. We also discuss The Seven Forms of Respect Each of us has a preferred style where/how we desire and demonstrate respect. Curiosi...
Nov 21, 2023•53 min
Chad Hufford is in the financial world now. He was picked on as a kid, used adversity to drive him, went on a pre-med path in taking up biochemistry, became an athletic coach, and let all of that background simmer together to help people make changes and stay on a path toward financial success. He’s in Anchorage, Alaska, and that’s not a typical kind of culture that any of us would be used to. He’s learned a lot in being there and brings his insights. Some of the key points made in this program ...
Nov 14, 2023•56 min
Braith Bamkin is an expert at making connections. On today’s episode we discuss Intention, Purpose, and Connection. He highlights a couple of key questions for growing your business: Who do you want to do business with, and why? We talked about so much on this quick hour, some of the key take-aways were: • Care enough to help others first ○ Doing so engages the law of reciprocity (but don’t do something in order to get back - that just means you’re coming from a place of taking, not giving) • If...
Nov 07, 2023•52 min
What can you learn about leadership and culture from a guy whose background is in music and dueling pianos? A LOT! Greg Offner talks about The Tip Jar culture coming from corporate HR and risk management, he noticed what really got people engaged at work and at the dueling piano bar. His lessons serve us all. Key points for leaders to ponder: • Work is a performance. We perform a task. We are in service to others. • Show up from a place of service pondering, “What do they need from me to make su...
Oct 31, 2023•58 min
From ADD and Sugar Addiction to Rock Climbing, Parenting, and Holistic Wellness, today we welcome Adam Hart who addresses Nervous System Regulation. Nothing in this podcast is intended as medical or other professional advice. Please see a medical professional for your specific situation and symptom management. In this episode you’ll hear about anxiety that developed from an emotionally absent father. The question of worthiness crops up (as it does for most people) and Adam offers a simple soluti...
Oct 24, 2023•58 min
Tim Shurr helps uplevel people from their old ways of thinking to a higher quality of life by noting that you’re just One Belief Away from having the life that you want. Tactical Strategies for changing your life are truly just One Belief Away. (By the way, that’s the name of the book he co-authored with Joe Vitale. I just ordered it myself.) We discussed Tim’s upbringing and how that affected him. His response, “yes, we turn our messes into our message.” Big T and little t traumas. Little t are...
Oct 17, 2023•56 min
Keagen Hadley is a doctor of Occupational Therapy and psychiatric clinical researcher specializing in acceptance and commitment therapy and the holistic care of joint injuries. Keagen notes that his role is to bridge the gap between the physical and psychological, as most people only focus on one or the other. He follows a path that’s similar to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). His is Acceptance And Commitment Therapy, the basics of which are to use your experience as basis for learning and t...
Oct 10, 2023•40 min
Melissa “Liss” Kirby has been changing lives as a management consultant for the past thirteen years. Based in Melbourne, she consults internationally and is tied to Q5Partners, located in the UK. With a background in business, psychology, and political science, Liss began paid internships at some major organizations. Now, several years later, she runs the Melbourne extension of q5partners. Trust and Being Entrusted were key threads of our conversation. As a management consultant, you’re an entru...
Oct 03, 2023•57 min
