Thought Talk

If you look at the greatest innovations of this world, it may surprise you to find deviant personalities and quirky innovators behind them. Melissa Schilling, Professor of Innovation and Strategy at New York University’s Stern School of Business, was inspired to do a multiple case study on serial breakthrough innovators. She didn’t actually try to set out and find unusual or quirky people to study, but ended up being pretty surprised that almost uniformly, they all had this strange social awkwardness or social detachment, a sense of separateness like they didn’t belong or they didn’t feel connected to the social world. One interesting truth is that none of the innovators she studied placed a high priority on money. The more she studied them and the more she connected what she knew about them up to what we knew about innovation and creativity, it all started coming together that this separation is actually a big part of what enabled them to break norms, to challenge conventional wisdom, and to pursue projects

Nilofer Merchant discusses her latest book The Power of Onlyness: Make Your Wild Ideas Mighty Enough to Dent the World. Now that the Internet has liberated ideas to spread and scale through networks rather than hierarchies, power is no longer determined by your status, but by “onlyness”—that spot in the world only you stand in, a function of your distinct history and experiences, visions and hopes.

Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove, the founders of the Thinkers50 Conference, discuss how they search out and honor the top management and leadership thinkers from around the world – and what they have learned from them. At Thinkers50, Stuart and Des’ job is to scan, rank, and share the very best management ideas in the world at work, careers, and lives in the future as they look for the bright and up and coming thinkers. They release ranking of the 50 most important management thinkers in the world every two years and rely on people bringing things to their attention.

Former Apple CEO and Pepsi President John Sculley talks about his past, present and future as an entrepreneur and technology leader as co-founder of Zeta Global, an independent marketing cloud company. John says AI is going to be as foundational to the world of business as oil and electricity was back in the industrial age, and the real disruption is applying the technology. It’s a wonderful time to be an entrepreneur even if you’re starting out with a very small business. Technology in 2019 is geared towards smaller companies getting on a boat on the river of consumerization and taking advantage of the major trends in technology. There will be such commoditization of technology which has exponential growth capabilities that are incredibly cost efficient that even smaller companies can build consumer services using a big cloud platform and be able to pay for it without having to raise millions of dollars.

How do people make money? What are the options? Dorie Clark, the author of Entrepreneurial You, attempts to answer those questions in her book, as well as a few others like if you want to create multiple income streams in your business, what are the possibilities, how do you implement them, and how can a regular person add to their arsenal so that they can become more successful? Dorie discusses why everyone needs multiple income streams and how to create them in today’s social media and online world. She shares it’s essential to differentiate yourself and strive for a more lasting success rather than the easy fish in the barrel.

Over the last ten years, we’ve seen a huge transformation of technology in everyday life, especially on the types of devices that people are using to connect to the internet and how people consume content. One of the biggest changes has been the shift from traditional cable satellite or terrestrial antenna television to streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Go. That means now the average consumer is using the internet almost every hour of every day when they’re home. The access to information has become unprecedented. Nick Weaver, co-founder and CEO of Eero which provides essential Wi-Fi solution for the home, discusses how technology in our homes has changed in the last ten years and what the future may bring.

As a developer of new work and a foodie, director and choreographer, Marlo Hunter, has always been trying to look for a way to marry her two passions, words and food. Her most recent project, the Theatrical Culinary Project, was baked from her goal to see if chefs and playwrights could speak the same language and creates a play with words and food that was greater than the sum of its parts. The Theatrical Culinary Project is an immersive play in development which allows five esteemed playwrights to collaborate with Chef Carla Hall of Top Chef. The play aims to incorporate all five senses where the audience would be submerged in a restaurant setting. As the play takes place around them in the room, they’re also experiencing a four-course meal created by Carla that mirrors the dramatic themes of the play. Marlo hopes to have a production in New York, but also loves to run the play in various cities around the world.

Bernardo Moya is the founder of The Best You EXPO, and editor-in-chief of The Best You magazine. He navigated economic adversity during the 2008-2009 recession by seeking opportunities, where others saw obstacles. Bernardo runs Europe’s largest personal development trade fair. In this episode he discusses the future of conferences and how to get the most out of them.

A lot of leaders and business people turn to technology these days as the easy fix to everything. While that is the intention of technology, we have so much dependency on it that when a certain technology fails, we blame it and don’t look at the human element that was also involved in the process. President of No More Cold Calling Joanne Black is asking people to stop and step back from technology and see that we can seal the deal by having a conversation with the client. Sending emails is the way to go in business these days, but the trend of software technology is making sales people look like they are there for making a demo. Joanne explains how referrals solve this problem for leaders and the organization.

My guest today is Liz Wiseman. She is the founder and the president of The Wiseman Group. She’s also the author of the very popular book, Multipliers; How The Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. The book has just been released in its 2nd edition with new refreshed and new content including: Accidental Diminisher chapter Dealing with Diminishers chapter Building a Multiplier Culture section of the “Becoming a Multiplier” chapter. Multipliers Experiments in appendix I spoke with Liz about her research over the past 8 years on what the best leaders do to build up the people around them.“The most intelligent leaders, really smart, capable people, don’t always engender intelligence in those around them,” says Wiseman. “Their presence as a leader costs the presence of others. They often take up too much space.” Wiseman calls these scene stealers “diminishers” and points out that when they walk into a room, it often goes quiet. Why? Because their employees know that the leader has to be the smartest person in the ro

My guest on today’s podcast is Lolly Daskal, CEO and founder of Lead from Within, a leadership consulting firm. Her extensive cross-cultural experience spans 14 countries, six languages and hundreds of companies. Lolly has also been designated a Top 50 leadership and management expert by Inc. magazine. I am particularly excited to interview her because her new book The Leadership Gap:What Gets Between You and Your Greatness will be released in May 2017 by Penguin Portfolio. In this episode Lolly talks about among other things, the polarity within us that keeps us from being great; the gaps we experience in our leadership greatness and how to bridge them, and how our strengths have a double-edged sword we need to be watchful of.

On today’s podcast I am interviewing Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money and founder of the Soul of Money Institute. Lynne is also a founding member of The Pachamama Alliance, an organization dedicated to rain forest preservation. On today’s show we will discuss branding in the non-profit world, and the significant role that money plays in our business and personal lives.

My guest on today’s episode is Joel Freidlander of Marin Bookworks. Joel is a blogger and book designer who was named by Writer’s Digest as one of the 10 people to follow in book publishing. On today’s program we discuss the power of self publishing a book including: • The most important things you need to know about self publishing • The main differences between self publishing and traditional publishing • On demand print publishing • Major mistakes people who self publish make • What happens after a book is self published

Anthony Meindl is the founder of AMAW and an international acting coach. Tony’s focus is on teaching actors how to be get beyond the typical acting training which teachers actors to be someone else, and instead draw on their own unique way of being, and bring that into the role.  In today’s episode I explore with Tony the branding lessons entrepreneurs,  executives and CEO’s can steal from actors. 

Guest: Ken Courtright, founder and CEO of the Inc. 5000 company Income Store The Internet has created a new way for businesses to brand and market themselves, and Ken Courtright, founder of IncomeStore.com knows just how to help companies do business in the Internet age. Based on his popular system on how to “Grow any business in any industry at any time,” Ken shares his insights on how to build company webpages that avoid coming off “salesy” but build social proof and establish trust.

Guest: Susan Harrow, PR Expert and Media Coach Mastering the ability to create your own personal sound bites is about more than being entertaining; it’s about positioning your business and your brand to the media, and public at large. PR expert and media coach, Susan Harrow’s will discuss how the ever dwindling attention span of today’s audiences requires you to use descriptive and well formed sound bites to get your message across. Learn the main types of sound bites, how to create them, and when to use them.

Guest: Tanya Hall, CEO of Green Leaf Book Group Tanya Hall CEO of Green Leaf Book Group discussed how to use a book to grow your personal, business or CEO brand. By adopting the best of both traditional and self-publishing methods, any author (be they a first timer or best selling scribe) can gain greater and brand recognition. We will discuss how to determine if your content is right for a book, and the biggest publishing mishaps to avoid.

Guest: David Nihill, founder of Funny Biz, and author of Do You Talk Funny. Being funny is not just a natural talent you are born with. It is also a skill you can learn. And it’s a skill that can be invaluable in building your personal brand. My guest today is David Nihill, founder of FunnyBiz – a company that specializes in helping people be funnier in print and in front of an audience. Among other things we will talk about how doing improv comedy can make anyone a better public speaker, how to use humor to connect with your audience, and the tips and tricks you can borrow from professional comedians – to get a laugh

Guest: Marlene Williamson, Chief Executive Officer of Watermark Marlene Williamson, CEO of Watermark, discusses how to create thought leadership for women CEOs and executives. Watermark, which started 22 years ago in the San Francisco Bay area, has a mission to increase the representation of women in leadership positions. Learn about the work required to become a thought leader in more male dominated fields such as engineering and three top recommendations to become a thought leaders in your field.

Guest: Shayne Hughes, Author and President of Learning as Leadership Shayne Hughes, President of Learning as Leadership discusses the connection between personal mastery and leadership presence.  What happens when leaders learn to step away from their aggressive egos, and eliminate workplace politics? We will explore how CEOs and C-suite executives contribute to office turf wars and how they can move from reactive feelings in times of crisis and stress to being their authentic selves.