Christopher Lochhead Follow Your Different™

In this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, you will hear one of the most inspiring, horrifying, and yet deeply moving conversations from our guest, Valerie Edmondson Bolaños. Valerie Edmondson Bolaños is the founder of an extraordinary NGO called Warrior Angels Rescue. She started her own NGO in the way of Hurricane Maria. It was a Category Five storm that devastated her home island of Puerto Rico back in 2017. What started off as an effort to rescue her own family grew into a much larger scale over time. Since August of 2021, Valerie and the Warrior Angels Rescue has been evacuating girls, women, and their families from the humanitarian crisis that is escalating in Afghanistan after the United States left. What you’re about to hear is really one of the most inspiring mission-driven founders you can listen to. We hope that it moves you as well. Valerie Edmondson Bolaños on the Afghanistan Situation The conversation starts as Valerie gives a perspective of what the situation is in Afghanistan at this moment after the United States withdrawal last August of 2021. “It’s pretty horrific, which should come as no surprise. We’ve noticed (that) just in the three months that we’ve been working there. It just descended from an absolutely apocalyptic situation into the depths of hell. The messages and videos that we’re receiving directly from the families that we’re helping that are in our evacuation lists are just horrifying. I’ve had nightmares, and I’m not even living through it firsthand.” – Valerie Edmondson Bolaños These horrors stem from the local terrorist organizations who are trying to root out those who have worked with the US forces when they were still on the ground. They torture and beat them publicly, while abducting and interrogating those who they think had close ties or worked directly with the US forces. This was on top of the different terrorist organizations jockeying for power amongst themselves, which adds another layer of suffering for those on the ground. The Taliban Taking Away the Power Valerie shares that are a lot of shortages on the ground. The economy has all but shut down entirely because people are in hiding. People who had decent homes and careers had to leave almost everything to stay with families that are less conspicuous. “The Taliban is literally trying to take away power from the people who have even the slightest bit of power. And so much power comes from being educated and being having a profession. So they want to quash any potential viable resistance to their takeover by not only literally taking away power and electricity and connectivity from everyone, but they’re targeting middle class families and upper class families. So everyone’s gone into hiding, which means that most of the mechanisms that keep society going and keep the economy going are completely shut down.” – Valerie Edmondson Bolaños While the medical care is not completely gone, it’s can still be hard to get in the current circumstances. There are simply too much people that are now relying on volunteer medical professionals who are scared but also want to save as many lives as they can. How the Pandemic Factors In On the topic of medical care, Valerie was asked about the COVID spread and deaths in Afghanistan. She shares that there isn’t really any visible evidence of any data being collected at this point. Not to mention any effort for vaccination programs to speak of. “There’s no data being collected. People aren’t going to hospitals for the most part, because then they’re afraid they’ll be killed. So yeah, I don’t I don’t think any data is really coming out, or being collected. I mean, that would require a functioning government, which is not what the Taliban has created.” – Valerie Edmondson Bolaños The pandemic really added a few levels of complication of how volunteer NGOs like the Warrior Angels Rescue can operate on the ground, as not only are you worried about getting shot, the idea of a virus ravaging the neighborhood just scares both the locals and volunteers alike. The Taliban are definitely not doing anything to alleviate it. For them, it’s just another way of keeping people in check and not banding together to take back the country. To hear more from Valerie Edmondson Bolaños and how she and the Warrior Angels Rescue help those in dire need, download and listen to this episode. If you wish to help them in their efforts, check out the links at the end of this article. Bio Valerie Edmondson Bolaños Valerie Edmondson Bolaños founded Warrior Angels Rescue in the wake of Hurricane Maria, a category 5 storm that devastated her home island of Puerto Rico in 2017. What started out as an effort to rescue her own family quickly grew into a large-scale effort to evacuate hundreds of medical patients, pregnant mamas, and elderly people who could not survive days (let alone months) without electricity. Since then, our 100% volunteer team h

Today on Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, Morgan Wright is back to talk about all things Security: new geopolitical threats, the new domains of warfare, and how they look at evil crimes through the eyes of the legendary public servants who solve them. This is a very fun, insight-packed real conversation with one of America’s highest profile crime fighting voices. Morgan Wright is an internationally recognized expert on cybersecurity and terrorism, identity theft, and privacy. He was also a senior adviser to the US State Department, anti-terrorism program, and a senior law enforcement adviser for the 2012 Republican National Convention. Morgan has developed solutions in defense, justice and intelligence for the largest technology companies in the world. He is now also the co-host of a red-hot new podcast called Game of Crimes. This new podcast shines a light to the men and women who serve and protect. So if you are looking for an in-depth update on how our cybersecurity stands today, stay tuned to this episode. Game of Crimes with Morgan Wright We open up on the topic of Morgan’s new podcast. Game of Crimes is a podcast that he co-hosts with Steve Murphy, and it is a long-form true crime podcast. Morgan shares that they were inspired with Follow Your Different, where they go deep into the topic and explore multiple topics related to the guests. They enjoyed the format so much that most episodes end up as two-parters, because they find a lot to explore on each guest and topic. “Our interviews are long. When I mean (long), we’re they’re always a two–parter. So that’s actually been a fun part because it kind of gets you back into it.” – Morgan Wright There’s a risk to doing two-parters, but the payoff is if you get people hooked, they’d have to hear both episodes to get more of their fix. Morgan Wright on Looking at the Problem Wrong Morgan then talks about the Cybersecurity conferences that he has attended over the years. His shares that his recent favorite opener is what Elon Musk did different to become a rich guy in the world. That is, he thought differently, and revolutionized the space industry through SpaceX. He then explains that sometimes the problem is not the biggest problem, but the way we think about the problem. “What I say is the problem isn’t the problem. The problem is the way we think about the problem. That’s not what counts. What really counts is the way our adversaries think about the problem. And they beat us every time because they out-think us about what to do.” – Morgan Wright Another example he has is about bank robberies. It makes sense that if you want to beef up your security, you need to learn how the people on the other side thinks. Instead, managers and bank owners just get into their conference rooms and say what they think works, which often turns into an echo chamber of sorts. Prevention is ALWAYS Better than a Cure In line with this train of thought, Morgan Wright mentions that cybersecurity experts need to start looking at the problem from a different perspective. Because up until recently, the implications on cybersecurity have always been Response and Recovery. While that it all well and good, the problem with that is your systems are reactionary. Morgan thinks that cybersecurity should be proactive, where you stop and prevent cyber attacks from happening in the first place. “The reason we keep getting the results we have is because of the words you keep using you keep talking about Response and Recovery. That means it’s already happened to you. What you’re saying is that we should continue to buy effective fire alarms that say congrats, your house is successfully burned down. So let’s start talking about stopping and preventing. And the minute we start doing that, we will start changing what we think about the problem.” – Morgan Wright To hear more from Morgan Wright and the current state of Cybersecurity and how the fight against cyberterrorism is done, download and listen to this episode. Bio Morgan Wright is an internationally recognized expert on cybersecurity strategy, cyberterrorism, identity theft and privacy. He is President and Chief Development Officer for RadiusAI. He currently serves as a Senior Fellow at The Center for Digital Government, and is a national security opinion contributor to TheHill.com. Morgan’s landmark testimony before Congress on Healthcare.gov changed how the government collected personally identifiable information. He’s made hundreds of appearances on national news, radio, print and web including CNBC, Fox News, Fox Business, CNN, ABC, NPR, NBC and more. Previously Morgan was a Senior Advisor in the US State Department Antiterrorism Assistance Program and Senior Law Enforcement Advisor for the 2012 Republican National Convention. In addition to 18 years in state and local law enforcement as a highly decorated state trooper and detective, Morgan has developed solutions in defe

As we all know, Context is everything. Around here, we believe that thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking. So if you want to design a different future, the context of your thinking matters. In this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we discuss context and much more with Kevin Maney. Kevin Maney is the co-founder of Category Design Advisors, where he and his partners advise CEOs on how to design and dominate market categories. He is also one of the godfathers of Category Design, and one of the co-authors of Play Bigger, alongside Al Ramadan and myself. We talk about a lot of topics that will help frame your think, and why the barriers to entry for Category Design keep dropping. We also discuss why Category Design is more important now than it was in 2006. To know why that’s the case, stay tuned to this episode. Kevin Maney On Playing Bigger It has been five years since Play Bigger came out, and there have been a lot of changes in Category Design over the years. Kevin suggests that they should get together again and pool together what they have learned over the years. That said, Kevin has noticed a few things that were big drivers of why category creation and design is so important. Some of them they have touched on in Play Bigger, but did not have the bandwidth to delve deeper into. These drivers are what Kevin and the others have been explaining to CEOs over the past years, so they can be aware of how important it is in dominating the market. Though the most obvious catalyst in the recent years has been COVID. COVID has accelerated the amount of category breakthroughs, mostly brought about by necessity. “One of the things that always happens in these times of crisis or radical change like wars, a pandemic, or other things that truly shake up the world (is that) everybody starts doing things in different ways, or looking for new solutions. And it really opens up the possibility of creating new things and new categories that didn’t exist before, solving old problems in new ways or, or addressing problems that have never existed before that arise because of what’s going on.” – Kevin Maney Kevin Maney on the End of Friction In any business or market, there will always be friction present. One of the friction Kevin talks about is the friction of geography, and how that can affect the market. Because of such frictions, most people are limited to choose what is available, instead of the category leader for that market. Fast forward to today, and those frictions are slowly being removed. Now that people have access to a wider variety of the market, they will tend to gravitate towards the category leaders of said category. Which makes aiming to be a category leader is a must now, lest you get left behind. “The more that the friction of geography disappears, the more we can all choose the global, or at least national category leader of any particular category. So that makes it all the more important in whatever business you’re in to try to be that category leader, or you’re really just going to get sucked down the drain.” – Kevin Maney The Prevalence of Disintermediation Today The conversation then shifts to how different things are done today compared to just a few years back. In a way, there’s more disintermediation nowadays compared to the .com era. One of the way it’s very visible now is how we consume entertainment. With the advent of different social media platforms, normal people can interact directly with their idols, rather than having to go to concerts or shows. On the entertainers themselves, the old formula is getting discovered and debuting on TV or film. Nowadays, people could go viral on their own efforts, or at least without the backing of a major corporation and such. All this because we have reduced the friction required to make things possible. In the early 2000s, you’d need a lot of equipment, money, and know-how to shoot a simple video, let alone have it viewed by people. Now, all that can be done with just your smartphone. “That’s an insane decrease in friction, and allows for the creation of these new categories. It allows for a niche player to find their audience everywhere in the world, and not just in some little location or some little pocket.” – Kevin Maney To hear more from Kevin Maney and how you can create different futures for your business, download and listen to this episode. Bio Kevin Maney is cofounder of Category Design Advisors, where he works with CEOs and executive teams to develop and execute strategies to design and dominate markets. He is also a multi-time bestselling author and journalist who writes about technology and society. His most recent book, UnHealthare: A Manifesto for Health Assurance, was co-authored with venture capitalist Hemant Taneja and Jefferson Health CEO Steve Klasko. It came out in 2020, and tees up how healthcare will evolve in the post-Covid era. His previous book, Unscaled: H

In this special solo episode of Christopher Lochhead – Follow Your Different, I just want to share with you an element of conversation around the most recent Kyle Rittenhouse case. What I wanted to talk about is America’s biggest problem when it comes to situations like this. That is, the lack of any authentic dialogue about the matter. Too Much Yelling, Not Enough Listening Regardless on where you come out of the issue, there are some things that wasn’t properly address or we didn’t hear from at all. What I hoped we’d hear more was thoughtful, nuanced dialogue and conversation. Instead, what we got is what we’ve been getting a lot of in the United States of late, which is yelling and hardened positions. You’re only pro or anti-something. As part of that, whatever one side does, if you’re on that side, everything they do is right, and everything the other side does is wrong, and vice versa. I think that’s really sad. Because thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking. And it’s only through dialogue, where human beings can achieve greater levels of understanding. There was no dialogue sparked by this horrible circumstance, horrible situation around what do we as Americans want to do about protests and riots? There wasn’t a discussion about that. Nor was there a discussion about self-defense, what do we mean by self-defense? Who decides where there’s a line where we can no longer defend ourselves or not? “What I do know is we’re not having conversation. We’re not having dialogue. There’s a lot of yelling, and not a lot of listening.” – Christopher Lochhead Bring Back the Willingness to Listen If you’re a long-time listener of this podcast, you know that our mission has always been to celebrate real, authentic dialogue. In our case, dialogue around what it takes to design legendary business and legendary life. In hopes that we can bring back curiosity, we can bring back a willingness to listen, a willingness to co create our lives and ultimately, our culture and country together. I got to tell you: sometimes, particularly of late, it feels like we’re losing that war. We might even have lost it completely, and we might never get it back. But I do know that a conversation about authentic dialogue, and why we don’t have it, and how we can have more is an important thing to do, even if very few people want to participate in that. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

Almost everything academic ever written about drinking and alcohol is centered on why it is bad for us. In this episode of Follow Your Different, we have the audacity to ask, “How does drinking and getting drunk make a difference to humanity?” And to answer that question, we have Edward Slingerland with us. A bit of a disclaimer before we proceed: it is clear that for some people, drinking is a horrible thing. If you’re somebody for whom drinking represents a problem, then please know you have our thoughts and empathy. However, this episode is one that is going to celebrate the difference that drinking has made to society. Our guest today delves into that and more on his new book that studied how drinking is great for us as a society. Professor Edward Slingerland is a distinguished university scholar and professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Canada. His new book is called Drunk: How we sipped, danced, and stumbled our way into civilization. We dive deep into that and more on this episode, so stay tuned. Edward Slingerland on Getting Drunk Prof. Edward shared that he had fun writing his book, Drunk. On one hand, it’s a topic people are interested in a lot, because it’s about drinking. For Edward, it’s also a mystery worth exploring, despite most people not even realizing it. Finding books about different drinks and how to get drunk around the world is easy. Finding one about why people like getting drunk, is not. “I don’t think anyone’s ever explored just the underlying question of why we like to get drunk in the first place. And so, it’s fun to actually problematize something that people take for granted.” – Edward Slingerland Evolutionary Hijacks So, why do we get drunk? The easiest answer is that it makes us feel good. But that’s not really an answer, according to Prof. Edward. That answer just opens up another one, which is “why does evolution allow us to get drunk?” In simpler terms, “Why?” This is the central mystery that Prof. Edward wants to explore. The standard story we’ve been told in psych textbooks is that it was an evolutionary mistake. We somehow discovered something that just happened to randomly hijack reward circuits in our brain. So as clever primates, we figured that we could just take a shortcut and feel good without doing anything. Prof Edward likens it to masturbation, which is another evolutionary hijack. Orgasms given us pleasure, and pleasure is the best carrot that evolution has to encourage us to pass on our genes to the next generation. Yet we have managed to hijack that with all sorts of non-reproductive sexual hijacks. “But evolution lets us get away with that because it’s not interested in a perfect system. It’s happy with good enough. And this system is good enough.” – Edward Slingerland Although unlike masturbation that old people say will make you blind, excessive alcohol consumption will literally blind you. Reasons to Get Drunk Despite all that, people have been gathering around the fire and drinking to their hearts content since the start of civilization. This just makes everything all the more mysterious, according to Prof. Edward. Another thing that Prof. Edward noticed is that the evolutionary mistake story might not have been accurate. For one thing, most of our ancestors that domesticize plants didn’t do it for food. They were hunter-gatherers; they could just simply pick food up in the wilderness. Yet they still tried to grow such plants near their living spaces for easy access. It was the same for the civilizations that discovered the ancestor of maize. It was a terrible grain to use as a food source, yet people chose to settle and raise this crop. All for the sake of getting drunk. So it was by no means an accident. “There’s one estimate from ancient Sumer, is that half of the grain production went to making beer. So you’re taking in a place where people are on the edge of starvation, even in large scale civilizations, you’re taking half of your food stuff, and turning it into a chemical neurotoxin, something that’s going to harm your liver, increased cancer risk, lead to, potentially to social chaos, people drink too much of it. The costs that it imposes on humans means that it can’t be a mistake, there have to be countervailing benefits that that pay for the costs. So that’s what most of the book is trying to focus on what those what those benefits might be.” – Edward Slingerland To hear more from Professor Edward Slingerland and why people love to get drunk, download and listen to this episode. Bio Edward Slingerland is Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, where he also holds appointments in the Departments of Psychology and Asian Studies. Educated at Princeton, Stanford and UC Berkeley, he has taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder, the University of Southern California and the University of Bri

Welcome to part two of our Native Digitals series here at Follow Your Different. On this episode, we have a conversation with Hannah Grady Williams on how your business can tap into the Native Digitals workforce. For those who are not familiar of what Native Digitals are, give part one of this series a quick listen (FYD 250). Hannah Grady Williams is the Gen Z CEO Advisor, sort of like a Gen Z whisperer for CEOs and executive. She is the author of a new book called A Leader’s Guide to Unlocking Gen Z: Inside strategies to empower your team. If you are over the age of 35, which is a Native Analog, this is a must-listen podcast. Because Hannah has a tremendous amount of insight for how Native Analogs can bridge the gap to work, recruit, and build our companies with a whole new slew of Native Digitals workforce. Generation Differences: Gen X vs Gen Z, Native Digital vs Native Analog When asked if the generation differences also coincide with the category of Native Analogs and Native Digitals, Hannah says that there are overlaps, but they are not completely the same. These overlaps are more on how each generation treats technology. “Well, Gen Z, you think about all the kids sitting around the table constantly on their phones, not paying attention to anything. To you, you think it’s a distraction or something that’s taking my mind and my presence away from the people around me. The way I see it is a door that opens me to experiences I never could have had in my natural environment. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized that distinction of the way that my generation looks at the world.” – Hannah Grady Williams How Native Digitals Use Technology, and Why Analogs Don’t Get It Hannah then talks about the time his brother mentioned what he has learned from Tik Tok. If you are a casual user, you might think that the platform is just all dance and viral memes. Yet there are people who use the platform to share important life lessons and tips they have learned themselves, in digestible, bite-size content. Sadly, most parents’ reaction to someone just spending their time on social media is to just strip their phones or tablets from them. Rather than engaging with them and understanding, they just stop the activity. Because again, to them that is all just distraction. “What they don’t realize, you know, if I’m looking from a Gen Xers perspective, or a Boomer’s perspective, I think of technology maybe the same way as any other technological innovation that might distract you from family time at the dinner table. But the way my generation sees it is, not only are we getting access to an entirely new world of people. It’s actually a portal to a new world. it’s a portal, it’s a new way of thinking.” – Hannah Grady Williams Millennials and Gen Z are the New Category of Humans Hannah states that Native Digitals is a great way of describing the New Age of Humans that we have now. She also thinks that it will become more pronounced once the next generation Gen Alpha, comes around. Hannah then brings up a book called Ready Player One. It is about living immersed in a digital world and treating the real world as the alternative. While the real-world economy is at a downfall, it didn’t really matter to its citizens. As their life is spent in their digital selves, they saw no need to be lavish in real life. While it is an exaggerated version, it does mirror how Native Digitals prioritize their digital lives over their physical ones. You see people buying expensive digital products while in real life, they barely buy new clothes and the like. That’s what Native Analogs should take note this early. Otherwise, they might be left hanging once almost everything goes fully digital. To hear more from Hannah Grady Williams and how your business can reel in the Gen Z and Native Digitals of the world, download and listen to this episode. Bio Hannah Williams’s story began in a blue pickup truck when her father handed 12-year-old Hannah the phone and asked her to close a deal on an investment property. After this unexpected introduction to the world of entrepreneurship. She found herself thrust into a climate of innovation, challenge, and opportunity and she enrolled in college at age 14 and graduated with a degree in international business at age 18. Now, as a 23-year old Gen Z, she has consulted businesses from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies and is on a mission to help leaders leverage Gen Z talent as a competitive advantage and build #RadicalEmpathy in the workplace. Links Web:  www.hannahgwilliams.com Email: ha****@*************ms.com LinkedIn: in/Hannah-Williams-Experience-Consultant Read Hannah’s New Book! A Leader’s Guide to Unlocking Gen Z We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

Originally published in ?‍☠️ Category Pirates: It’s not a weekly newsletter. It’s a weekly mini-book. Lately, there has been a fundamental, dare I say, seminal change in the category design of human beings. That is to say, the definition of what a human is has changed. You see, if you’re 35 and up, you are the last of a dying breed called Native Analogs. If you’re 35 or younger, you are the first generation of Native Digitals. Native Digital’s experience life in a digital first way, and an analog way, second. Native Digitals have come of age integrated with the machines. Your smartphone and technology overall is like part of who you are as a person. Most Native Analogs do not get this. Most people are not ready for the fact that everything is moving from an analog paradigm to a native digital world. So in this two-part series of Follow Your Different, we explore Native Digitals versus Native Analogs, and how it is important to realize that we are shifting to a digital paradigm faster than you think. Category Neglect First off, we start as to why it is important to recognize category shifts like the one we are experiencing now. Most category kings and queens tend to fall into a trap, in which they ignore new categories that may be adjacent or indirectly related to theirs. When a new category arises (seemingly out of nowhere), the incumbent doesn’t topple over because they were unaware of the new category queen. More often than not, they fall because they dismissed what was happening right before their very eyes. It’s not ignorance. It is arrogance coupled with the gravitational pull of “the way it is.” Because the people profiting in the present want things to stay the same. This is called Category Neglect. Category Neglect doesn’t come from people being stupid or lacking sufficient data and resources to spot the headwinds and tailwinds of the future. It comes from a refusal to acknowledge which direction the wind is really blowing. Why do they fall to such a seemingly obvious trap? This happens because the gravitational pull is too strong. A company gets used to earning hundreds of millions, or billions of dollars per year, and thinks it can do no wrong. The company becomes deeply invested in the present. Anything that threatens the way it is now is dismissed. Native Analogs vs Native Digitals One of the most profound shifts happening in the world today is rooted in the ever-escalating debate between generations young and old. It is a shift hiding in plain sight. Just like the Tymshare executives staring out the window at Apple’s cranes building the headquarters of the company that would ultimately put them out of business, most people over 35 years old can’t see this shift happening. Instead, they say to themselves, “Eh, we’ve got nothing to worry about.” As Category Pirates, we feel it is our obligation to sound the alarm when we see rocky shores ahead. Some of us are facing a once-in-a-generation set of headwinds that could not just stymie growth, but sink our entire ship. If those of us over age 35 aren’t careful, this divide could result in one of the greatest instances of Category Neglect. However, those who see this mega shift and act on it, on the other hand, will sail into the sunset a lot of happy pirates, make more money, and make a way bigger difference in the world. With that said, let’s first give a better definition of what a Native Analog and Native Digital are. We’ll also define where their biggest difference lies. There are two types of people on planet earth today. The first are Native Analogs. These are Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, born anywhere from the 1940s all the way up to the early ‘80s. Today, they range between the ages of 40 to 75, and make up approximately 136.8 million Americans. The second are Native Digitals. These are Millennials and Gen Zers, born between the early 1980s to as recently as the 2010s. These demographics are around 35 years of age on the high end, down to as young as 6 years old. They make up approximately 140.1 million Americans. The difference? Native analogs grew up in a time where technology was an addition or a distraction from their real lives. Native digitals grew up in a time where their “real” lives were a distraction from their digital lives. This is a profound shift—and no one seems to be talking about it. Even more stunning, some of the largest native digital brands on the planet are run by Native Analogs. Who don’t get it either. To learn why it is important to know more about Native Digitals and how it can affect your category and businesses, download and listen to this episode. You can also check it out at Category Pirates. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best mind

Most people want to have a great life and do great work. But we are told that the way to achieve legendary results is either to have talent, or “practice” 10,000 hours a day. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Dr. Ron Friedman talks about a different, more proven way to achieve greatness that even mere mortals can embrace. Dr. Ron Friedman is a PhD and award-winning Social Psychologist. He is the author of the no.1 bestseller called Decoding Greatness. In this episode, we go deep on how you can decode greatness. We also discuss what legends before us have done using their approaches, models, and thinking to turbocharge our lives, our success, and our ability to make a difference. Dr. Ron Friedman on Decoding Greatness Dr. Friedman talks about his new book, Decoding Greatness and where he got the idea for it. His first book, The Best Place to Work, focused on giving people access to the best research on what it takes to perform at the highest levels and create a great workplace. Though Dr. Friedman felt that there was something missing in his first book. He figured that even within a top-performing business or team, there’s still a range of performance levels. Some people are top performers, while some are still great but not at that level yet. “In this book, Decoding Greatness, I was curious about what is it that top performers are doing differently. And what I discovered is that they’re using a method that most people don’t talk about. And yet it is far more common than we recognize.” – Dr. Ron Friedman What We were Led to Believe Dr. Friedman comments that there are two main stories that we are told about when it comes to achieving the highest levels. One of which is that it takes talent to do so, that you have to be born with certain strengths. You then have to match your talents to the appropriate fields that allow those strengths to shine. Then there’s the big story about Practice. You know the one: 10,000 hours, practice, practice, practice. You have to exert yourself and have the right practice to be able to succeed. Though according to Dr. Friedman, there is a third story that people don’t often talk about. “There’s a third story and people don’t often talk about it. Yet it is remarkably common from entrepreneurs to inventors. to marketers. And that approach is reverse engineering, which simply means finding extraordinary examples in your field. By taking them apart, working backward, and figuring out how they were created, you can then apply those lessons to create something entirely new.” – Dr. Ron Friedman Turning the Gap to a Learning Experience There are those who say that those who perform at the top level are there because of their talents. Which can be insulting to all the work that person has also done to achieve his goals. Sometimes, people forget that even those who have certain advantages need to work their butts off to achieve greatness. Dr. Friedman chooses to view it from another angle. He explains that if you apply Reverse Engineering on these extraordinary people and their achievements, you can turn it into a guideline for yourself. “When you look at extraordinary performances through the lens of reverse engineering, you’ll have a different perspective. That different perspective is, “what can I learn from this? How can I improve my game through unpacking the methodologies and strategies that they are applying?” So now that emotion, which would have been negative and uncomfortable and probably unhelpful in a way, I can turn that into a positive emotion and apply it to new learnings and insights, because now I have a mechanism by which to understand how he succeeded.” – Dr. Ron Friedman To hear more from Dr. Ron Friedman and how to Decode Greatness and become a top performer, download and listen to this episode. Bio Ron Friedman, Ph.D., is an award-winning social psychologist who specializes in human motivation. His new book, The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace, has been described as “stunning,” “eye-opening,” and “a contemporary classic,” and praised by best-selling authors Daniel Pink, David Allen, Marshall Goldsmith, Susan Cain, and Adam Grant. Dr. Friedman has served on the faculty of the University of Rochester, Nazareth College, and Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and has consulted for Fortune 500 companies, political leaders, and the world’s leading non-profits. Popular accounts of his research have appeared on NPR and in major newspapers, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, the Globe and Mail, The Guardian, as well as magazines such as Men’s Health, Shape, and Allure. He is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, CNN, Forbes, Fast Company, and Psychology Today. Links Connect with Dr. Ron Friedman today! Websites: Ignite80.com RonFriedmanPhD.com LinkedIn: in/RonFriedmanPhD Check out Dr. Ron Friedman’s bestselling works today! We hope you enjoyed this

Have you been feeling burned out over the last handful of months? Well, you are not alone. We live at a time that is extraordinarily challenging, yet exciting. This has caused many to freak out, or feel blown out or burned out. Our guest today, Jennifer Moss, calls what has been happening a “Macro Stress Event”. In this episode of Follow Your Different, we explore the Burnout Epidemic and more. Jennifer Moss is the author of the brand-new number one bestseller Burnout Epidemic: The rise of Chronic Stress and how we can fix it. She has an extraordinary point of view on the matter, particularly on how to transform this stress experience into what she calls a post-traumatic growth. We get into what are the real causes of burnout, and what organizations can do to prevent it. There’s also the idea of building an anti-burnout strategy based on prevention, and not offering them after the fact. We also discuss why traditional wellness initiatives seem to fall short these days. Jennifer Moss and Working on Happiness Jennifer Moss has always worked on the domain of happiness. Which makes it seem weird that she is talking about burnout, which is the direct opposite of it. Though according to Jennifer, happiness and unhappiness go hand-in-hand. “You can’t actually experience an increase in happiness set point, unless you’ve gone through some sort of challenge in your life that gives you that ability to experience resilience and rebound.” – Jennifer Moss Having the Right Mindset is the Key For Jennifer, this experience came from seeing his husband come back from being acutely paralyzed to recovering remarkably well in an unanticipated rate. A huge part of this was that athletes go through an incredible amount of psychological fitness training very early on in their lives. They go through that process of learning how to rebound, how to deal with loss, how to have emotional flexibility. All these things that actually lead to high levels of happiness, and be able to have post traumatic growth moments after they go through these pretty serious things. “Part of what we noticed when Jim was in the hospital rehabbing was that this attitude played a big role in his healing. So six weeks later, he was walking out of the hospital. They had said, he may not ever walk again, or then it was a year, yet he’s walking out after six weeks. So it sort of became our mindset shift at that point to understand what it was that that contributed to that healing.” – Jennifer Moss Prevention is Better than Cure With this shift of mindset, Jennifer and her husband founded Plasticity Labs, and worked on the happiness space and how to help companies further develop theirs in the workplace. Though Jennifer noticed that they were working with companies that already have good happiness spaces and burnout prevention strategies in place. They just needed to improve on it and take it to the next level. But what about those companies who didn’t have any semblance of one, and are burning out their employees left and right? Which is why she wanted find a way to let such businesses and companies know how to prevent burnout from happening in the first place, rather than having to put the fires down later. To hear more from Jennifer Moss and how to prevent burnout for yourself and your team, download and listen to this episode. Bio Jennifer Moss is a Harvard Business Review contributor and nationally syndicated radio columnist. She also sits on the Global Happiness Council—a small group of leading scientists and economists that support the UN’s sustainable goals related to global well-being and the Annual Global Happiness Policy Report. Prior to this, Moss worked in Silicon Valley, eventually joining Barack Obama’s California social team during his historic presidential campaign. To acknowledge her contributions to business and public service, Moss was named a Canadian Innovator of the Year, an International Female Entrepreneur of the Year, and recipient of the Public Service Award from the Office of President Obama. Her new book, The Burnout Epidemic, published by Harvard Business Press, launched September 28, 2021. Links Connect with Jennifer Moss! Website: Jennifer-Moss.com Twitter: @JenniferMossInc TikTok: @JenLeighMoss Instagram: @JenniferMossInc Check out her new book: The Burnout Epidemic We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

Our ability to communicate and collaborate is core to our humanity. Yet we live in a time where many of us seem to have a very tough time having real, powerful dialogues. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Celeste Headlee shows us how it’s done. Celeste Headlee is the author of the bestselling book; We Need to Talk: How to have conversations that matter. She has also given out a TED talk, titled 10 Ways to have Better Conversations, which has 25 million views. Her most recent book is called Speaking of Race, which emphasizes the need to talk about racism, and how to do it. What you’re about to hear is a deep conversation on why authentic conversations matter and how to have them. Also, pay close attention to her ideas on how you can be a more powerful conversationalist, and why our brain rewards us when we have real dialogue. Celeste Headlee and the Passion for Conversation The conversation starts off with Celeste sharing where her passion for conversations came from. Celeste shares that there are a few things that bother her as one gets older. Though the one thing that upsets her is when there are things that can be fixed, that are totally fixable, though having proper conversations. “I mean, there’s just very little that we can’t talk through as human beings. And so I’m passionate about it because it’s universal. Every single person on the planet needs to be able to converse with others and communicate with others well, and be it’s just the root of problem solving. I mean, this is what solves problems, period, whatever they are.” – Celeste Headlee Why People are not having Meaningful Conversations Celeste shares her thoughts as to why people seem to have lost the ability to have a meaningful conversation. She has discovered an interesting tidbit while researching for her second book, and it dates all the way back to the Industrial Revolution. While recent developments and social norms may have exacerbated the situation, the turning point seems to have happened when one guy discovered how to use steam to make our lives better. “Prior to the Industrial Revolution. Most people lived in rural areas, most people interacted with maybe 100 or 150 people over the course of their lives. Then all of a sudden, the Industrial Revolution came in. Everybody flips over till most people are living in urban areas. Because of that, most people are encountering 1000s of people over the course of a week or a month instead. And it just happened too quickly. We weren’t able to adjust evolve that fast.” – Celeste Headlee Bringing Back Good and Meaningful Conversations Celeste thinks that most people don’t know what conversation is anymore. There are some who say that they are good conversationalists. That is, they are good talkers. Those are not the same thing at all. In order to be a good conversationalist, you have to not only be a good talker. You also have to listen as well as you talk. “I imagine (Oscar Wilde) was not a good conversationalist. Fantastic talker, but not good in conversation. Why? Because you have to be able to listen as well as you talk. And the smarter you are, the harder that challenge becomes. The wittier you are, the funnier you are, the harder that becomes. But also, listening is just hard. It’s hard for our species. I think that some of the people that we think of as not being good in conversations are much better than they get credit for. And those are the people who speak less than they listen.” – Celeste Headlee To hear more from Celeste Headlee on the importance of having a meaningful conversation, download and listen to this episode. Bio Celeste Headlee is an award-winning journalist who has appeared on NPR, PBS World, PRI, CNN, BBC and other international networks.  She was formerly a host at National Public Radio, anchoring shows including Tell Me More, Talk of the Nation, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition. For many years, Celeste has been a mentor and managing editor for NPR’s Next Generation Radio Project, training young reporters and editors in broadcasting. Celeste is co-host to the Scene on Radio podcast—MEN with the podcast’s producer, Duke University’s CDS audio director, John Biewen. John describes the season: “Co-host Celeste Headlee and I will take a similar approach to the Seeing White series, which explored the history and meaning of whiteness. With MEN, we’ll be asking questions like, What’s up with this male-dominated world? Is male supremacy inevitable? How did we get sexism/patriarchy/misogyny, and what can we do about it?” Celeste will co-host new episodes of The Retro Report with Masud Olufani. Retro Report is a non-profit news organization that produces mini documentaries looking at today’s news stories through the lens of history and context. Until February, 2017 Celeste was the Executive Producer and host of the daily talk

In this episode of Follow Your Different, we are joined by Brittany Fuisz, the founder of Malibu Mylk. She is an entrepreneur and a friend who I respect and admire deeply. When Brittany was trying to have a baby for the first time, she was having some difficulty. So she went to work, specifically on improving her diet. She then discovered some huge problems with some of the major categories of alternate milk, like oat and almond milk. So she got busy in her kitchen. What you’re about to hear is an extraordinarily powerful example of what a mission driven founder is. Someone with a point of view, someone who wants to move the world from the way it is, to a new and different place. Brittany Fuisz and How Malibu Mylk came to be Brittany starts off by sharing how she got the idea for Malibu Mylk. She got the idea for it around March of 2018, when she was still working at Yelp. Though she didn’t really go for it full time until she left Yelp later that year. She had the idea for it when she was trying to have a baby for the first time. After consulting with the doctor, she opted to try a strict diet called the Elimination Diet or Autoimmune Protocol. Basically, she had to eliminate all major allergens in her diet. This means no dairy, nuts, gluten, soy, etc. So while looking for milk alternatives, she discovered a huge problem: most milk substitutes either have nuts, soy, or gluten. That’s when she had the idea to use something different. “I was driving past downtown LA and I thought, what if I make milk from flaxseed? Like it was just a sign in the sky. I needed to make flax milk. And so I went home that day, I pulled out my blender. I did go to culinary school many years ago. So I know how to cook.” – Brittany Fuisz Hitting the Ground Running with Malibu Mylk After trying out and getting her desired results with the flaxseed milk, Brittany did what any aspiring entrepreneur would do. She reached out to Whole Foods Market with her idea. Brittany pitched the idea for Malibu Mylk, and was surprised when the buyer immediately set up a meeting for it. While Brittany wanted to delay the meeting to better prepare for it, the buyer said that the meeting was set. So she had to take a crash course on the food and beverage industry and learn the ropes quickly. “I did a crash course in food and beverage with a friend who’s in the industry the day before the meeting. And I went in with little samples. I had some mock packaging made up. Then I learned about margins, which is how the grocery world works. I went in and I pitched the buyer on the dream that is now Malibu Mylk. She tasted my samples and she said, “Well, I’d love to get this in stores the coming weeks”. I thought well I can’t do the coming weeks, but we can do it in the coming months. Actually, the timing worked out beautifully because I’d have to go into my first production run, knowing that Whole Foods is going to be a customer.” – Brittany Fuisz Brittany’s Challenges with Malibu Mylk Brittany further explains the challenges she had at the beginning of Malibu Mylk. The biggest challenge for her was finding a great manufacturer, a co-packer. There weren’t many that produced her type of product, and the ones she found were awful and expensive. When she finally found one she liked, they said no to her. So she got an acquaintance who was already manufacturing something in that company, and asked for an introduction. She wasn’t deterred by the first and succeeding No’s that she received, and kept pushing on. “You’re gonna hear a lot of No’s that you’re gonna hear no, again and again and again. And if you’re not willing to turn it into a yes, some way or another, it won’t work.” – Brittany Fuisz To hear more from Brittany Fuisz and how she created Malibu Mylk to what it is today, download and listen to this episode. Bio Brittany Fuisz is the Founder/CEO of Malibu Mylk, the world’s first organic flax milk. Allergen-free (dairy free, gluten free, nut free, soy free), full of fiber and omega-3s, Malibu Mylk is creamy and thick and is good for our bodies and our planet. She is a seasoned Marketing Maven and published writer with leadership skills and a track record of driving growth and brand building. A social connector with experience in consumer apps, direct response, media and sales. Brittany attained her degree in marketing and management from Georgetown University, and then a diploma from Le Cordon Bleu. She began her career with Hillstone Restaurant Group in their manager training program. She spent time working on the line at three Michelin star Le Bernardin in NYC, as well as the Food Network in new business development. Brittany has also appeared on KTLA news, as a guide to the City of Angels. Links Website: MalibuMylk.com Instagram: @MalibuMylk We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on&#

Do you know what it feels like to be duped, or lied to in an extraordinarily manner? Imagine falling in love, and having a whirlwind romance with a doctor, who also serves in the military, claimed to have been stationed at Guantanamo Bay for a time, and claim many other extraordinary things about his life and career. Imagine being proposed to and expecting to marry this amazing man who also worked at the Pentagon. Then imagine it was all a big lie. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Abby Ellin shares her story and more. Abby Ellin is an extraordinary bestselling author, New York Times writer, and contributor to a ton of other prestigious publications. Her book is called Duped: Double Lives, False Identities, and the Con Man I Almost Married. In our dialogue, we go deep into her story, and find out why agrees that you can’t see red flags through rose colored glasses. Abby Ellin on being Duped The conversation starts off reminiscing about meeting famous people in the past, when we can all actually go outside. The topic then got to Leonard Cohen, and how they were a fan of his work. This segues into the topic at hand, as Leonard Cohen himself was duped by his longtime manager. Abby Ellin’s book, Duped, seems very personal, and it was radically transparent on what transpired in her life. She didn’t appear to do anything to make herself look good. It was an unembellished account of what she had gone through, and the manipulation that she was subjected to. “When I write, I can write something but I’m also controlling what you know, and I was totally willing to sound like an asshole and duped because that was part of what needed to be done for that story. I was trying to channel the way other people think about someone who gets deceived, that I was engaged to a pathological liar. He went to jail. And everyone I know who I said that story to have their own story or knew somebody who did. Some of them didn’t want to tell the story publicly or use their names because they felt like such idiots. I was like, “Hey, man. I’m an idiot and I own it. Because it happens and it’s real.” – Abby Ellin Monetized Suffering I then comment on Abby’s book, and how it reads and feels like a suspense novel. Abby appreciates the description, and shares that she actually sold the rights to it. So at the very least, someone shares that sentiment as well. “The operative words here are monetize suffering. So when, when life gives you lemons, you make lemon meringue pie and you eat it and you don’t worry about getting fat. I saw the podcast writes and it’s coming out in September, I think, but it’s going to be like a six part series, and it’s like a suspense thing.” – Abby Ellin Abby Ellin on Quitting Diet Coke We then talk about the article that Abby wrote about Diet Coke, and how she quit from it. She has had it since she was around 12 years old, and had been drinking it ever since. People have told her to quit, but she told them to mind their own business. Yet she knew she was addicted. She was drinking three to four cans a day, and go looking for it when she didn’t have any in reach. But something happened that prompted her to consider quitting. “My stomach started hurting a lot recently and no one knew why. And I was tasting this diet coke and it started to taste really chemical-y. I asked them if they changed the formula and they said no, but I just was like, I’m done. And I that was it.” – Abby Ellin To hear more from Abby Ellin and her story on being duped, diet cokes and her thoughts on the Madoff scam, download and listen to this episode. Bio Abby Ellin is an award-winning journalist and the author of “Duped: Double Lives, False Identities and the Con Man I Almost Married” and “Teenage Waistland: A Former Fat Kid Weighs In On Living Large, Losing Weight and How Parents Can (and Can’t) Help.” For five years she wrote the “Preludes” column about young people and money for the Sunday Money and Business section of the New York Times. She is also a regular contributor to the Health, Style, Business and Education sections of the New York Times. Her work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, New York, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Psychology Today, Time, Newsweek, the Village Voice, the Boston Phoenix, Salon, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Spy (RIP). She has been a resident at the Yaddo Corporation and Wildacres Retreat in North Carolina, and has two useless Masters Degrees: an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College and a master’s degree in international public policy from Johns Hopkins University. As of this writing, her greatest accomplishments are learning to play the cello at age 35, summiting Kilimanjaro (with a broken wrist in a cast!) and naming “Karamel Sutra” ice cream for Ben and Jerry’s. Links Follow Abby Ellin today! Website: AbbyEllin.com Twitter: @Ab

Most businesses are now a hybrid of analog and digital. The question is, how do we get the right mix? Also, how do we know what and when to digitally transform, or keep parts of our business analog? These are just some of the questions that board CEOs and executive teams are grappling with. In this episode of Follow your Different, Robert Siegel will help us get a better grasp at it. Robert Siegel is a Venture Capitalist and a Stanford lecturer. He has a new book out called The Brains and Brawn Company, and it cracks open many of these kinds of questions. It also provides real research and insight from leading companies in their respective industries, coupled with Robert’s years in Silicon Valley and the entrepreneurial world. If you’re building companies today, or you want to build a legendary company heading into the future, you’re going to love everything about our dialogue. Robert Siegel on Digital Transformation Digital Transformation seems to have become a catch-all phrase that people in the industry use to describe new technology or migrating certain things online. While it may not seem like much of an issue. It becomes a problem when the supposed “experts” start suggesting that undergoing a Digital Transformation should be done ASAP to improve your company. “I think that what I’ve learned in my time as a venture capitalist, and also in the teaching that I do at Stanford, is that digital transformation is kind of necessary, but not sufficient. That the world that we’re living in, is increasingly a blend of digital and physical. And so if you only talk about digital transformation, everything talks about the ones and zeros. Everyone talks about software and connectivity. But people forget, we actually live in a physical world.” – Robert Siegel The Brain and Brawn Company We then get into the discussion of Robert’s new book, The Brain and Brawn Company. Robert explains that having both Brain and Brawns is necessary for a company. The Brain being the creative and analytical aspects of business, as well as the digital parts of it. While the Brawn is the physical aspects, like dealing with logistics, manufacturing, and such. So the optimal setup is having a good mix of “brains” and “brawn” in your company. According to Robert, they don’t deal with those who wish to have a pure digital software platform, because that is not a sustainable model. “Those companies aren’t going to be successful as we get into a world where things are increasingly blended between digital and physical, and every product and service that we make is connected. And every industry is going to be impacted from not only things like mobility, but healthcare, financial services, there really is education, there isn’t an industry that won’t be impacted by this blend of digital and physical.” – Robert Siegel Of course, there are business that can go pure digital, but companies in general still need a good blend of digital and analog systems in place to function efficiently. The Right Mix of Digital and Analog That said, what is a good mix of digital and analog for a business? According to Robert, it depends for each business. One of the things to look at is how different systems work in your company. After understanding them, find out if going digital can improve the service, or make it more efficient in the long run. Of course, there are certain aspects that still need analog aspects, even within digital spaces. Take for instance ordering online. While the whole thing can be made digital nowadays, there are still analog competencies like logistics and customer experience that need to be accounted for. Or the opposite can also be true, like adding digital improvements to delivery tracking, so that customers know the real-time location of their on-going delivery. So in the end, it’s best to find the right mix for your own company. To hear more from Robert Siegel and how to find the right mix of digital and analog in your business, download and listen to this episode. Bio Robert Siegel is a lecturer in management and has led primary research and written cases on Google, Charles Schwab, Daimler, AB InBev, Box, Stripe, Target, AngelListopen, 23andMe, C3.ai, Majid Al Futtaim, Tableau, PayPal, SurveyMonkey, Medium, Autodesk, Minted, Zuora, Axel Springer, and Michelin, amongst others. Robert is a member of the supervisory board of TTTech Auto AGopen, and is chairman of the strategic advisory board for TTTech Computertechnik AGopen   in Vienna, Austria. He is a member of the industry advisory boards for HERE Technologiesopen   and Tulcoopen, and is the copresident emeritus of Stanford Angels & Entrepreneursopen, an alumni association that fosters relationships to strengthen the Stanford startup community. Robert was on the board of SmartDrive Systemsopen   for 14 years (acquired by Omnitracs), has coauthored several articles for the Harvard Business Reviewopen  &#160

Frederick Nietzsche was one of the most important philosophers of all time. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Dave Jilk and I talk about a new book that fuses Nietzsche and modern entrepreneurship in a fascinating, provocative, and very thought-provoking way. The new book is called Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche, and Dave co-authored it with Brad Feld (FYD 175). In this dialogue, we go deep on many of the dichotomies we face as company founders and builders. We examine the difference between passion and obsession, and what Nietzsche means by creativity and super abundance. We also talk about how to know you should keep driving forward with your idea or maybe change course. You can also listen to us discuss how founders should evolve their role in the company that they started over time. This is a super-smart, deep-insight bearing conversation about some ideas for company creators with a big-brain, been-there-done-that kind of guy. So fire up your cerebellum and get ready for a fun ride through thinking town! Dave Jilk on Fusing Nietzsche and Entrepreneurship The dialogue starts off with the elephant in the room: why fuse Nietzsche and the world of entrepreneurship? Dave explains that he wasn’t very fond of most business books, in general. For him, most of them contain a few important things, but wrapped around in 200 pages of text. Though reading them is an unavoidable occupational hazard for him and his co-author, Brad Feld. So he and Brad got the idea of writing their own book, containing their thoughts and experiences in entrepreneurship. But they don’t want it to be just another business book. That’s where their attention turned to Nietzsche and his works. “I was reading him (Nietzsche) a little earlier than Brad. When I was reading it, we notice things that apply to entrepreneurship. It was striking though, and of course his languages is very interesting and colorful, right? So we started playing with, “Hey, could we write something”, and we wrote a few of the essays and grabbed a couple of Brad’s blog posts and stuck them in his stories to see how that worked and, and it kind of clicked.” – Dave Jilk From there, they managed to get enough content to write an entire book. Nietzsche, Entrepreneurs, and Being a Little Bit Crazy There are some people who referred to Nietzsche as sort of a crazy person. Dave thinks the better word to use is “Wacky”, and that Nietzsche himself revels in that description. As someone studying human nature, he was open to exploring different situations and experiences, which might have gotten him this reputation. Going back to entrepreneurs, Dave thinks that one has to be a little bit crazy and explore the possibility without worrying about looking bad or weird. That is especially true for startups and early stages of most businesses. “Some people would argue that you have to be extremely rational, analytical about this. But we say, to create something truly disruptive, you have to have a vision. You have to have a vision of what the world could be like, after your disruption is successful. What is the world going to be like, with no evidence whatsoever, no particularly good reason to believe that the world will adopt that. You have to have to be, as you say, a little bit crazy.” – Dave Jilk Being Brave and Different When asked if Nietzsche had been very courageous because he was challenging the preconceived norms despite the pushbacks, Dave agreed to some degree. For him, Nietzsche was more like someone who bravely dives headfirst into something before worrying about the consequences to his reputation and the like. “Nietzsche’s essential project was to transform the moral tradition of Europe. It’s a moral tradition that that went back, at least, two millennia, and possibly longer. He was trying to dis to disrupt that, to change it to, and to explore what it would be like when it did change. And the that exploration is, was frightening to him. And he thought it should be frightening to everyone. But what he was trying to do is it was both brave, and also clueless, right? So yes, he had to be both a little crazy and a little bit courageous. And probably more than anything focused on what he cared about.” – Dave Jilk To hear more from Dave Jilk about Nietzsche, Entrepreneurs, and their ties to Human Nature, download and listen to this episode. Bio Dave Jilk is a former serial entrepreneur and startup CEO in information technology. He now writes on entrepreneurship and artificial intelligence, and he enjoys writing poetry as well. Dave earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from MIT, and currently lives near Boulder, Colorado. When not writing he is likely to be on a mountain. Links Follow Dave Jilk and his works! Website: Jilk.com LinkedIn: in/DJilk Check out his work at Amazon Books We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Fa

Welcome to the first of two episodes that we are doing on the new work paradigms that are emerging. In this episode of Follow Your Different, I talk with Joe Sanok about designing a life that works for you by in part, making Thursday the new Friday. Joe Sanok is the opposite of many hustle porn stars, who’ve been screaming at entrepreneurs, marketers, and executives to work until they drop. When in reality, if you never stop hustling, you’ll likely end up dead with nothing to show for it. No matter what stage you’re at in your career, this dialogue with Joe will stimulate your thoughts and get you thinking… Thursday is the New Friday Joe talks about his new book, Thursday is the New Friday, and how the timing of it seems to be spot on. There have always been discussions of how to balance your life between work and personal stuff. Though said discussion has hit its peak because of the current situation with COVID, and people working from their homes. People who usually spend the 8 hour daily grind have figured out that they don’t really need the whole 8 hours for it. “Looking at Spain moving to the four day workweek, Denmark trying it out. There’s so many companies trying a four day workweek. Even if it’s not a four day workweek, to start to think about why are we working the number of hours we’re working. But then we realized that, you know, if you’re in a traditional job, you didn’t need 40 hours. A lot of people started saying, “Well, why are we working this way, our outcomes are the same, we’re doing the same or better work, working fewer hours. “Then people with the industrialist mindset are like, “We want butts in the chairs, we want to get back to the cog in the big machine.” And that’s just not gonna work anymore. Like it’s already blown up, we’ve seen behind the curtain and things are shifting.” – Joe Sanok Joe Sanok on the Evolution of the Work Week Joe talks about how humans eventually ended up with our current notion of a work week. In his book, he looked into why we have the seven-day week, and how we even got to have weekends. It even delves into how Ford started the 40-hour work week. The point of all this is that humanity, or at least the business and working people, are the ones to decide what a work week would be like. With today’s tech and the evolution of business from industrialist to a new frontier, people are looking for ways to make lives easier for everyone, without the drop in quality of work. “I would actually argue we actually are leaving that industrialist mindset behind and that we’re in the messy middle of what’s emerging next. And we get to decide the same way the Babylonians said seven days a week, we get to decide what that looks like. And that autonomy to me is so important that we do this well, that we think about it, we look at the research, we look at case studies, we look at even just how we feel on the inside. When I tell people I wrote a book about taking Friday’s off they’re like yeah, it’s about time because they know Fridays are a blow off day. But everyone sits there and talks for 20 minutes and we’re already blowing it off. Why don’t we actually just call it what it is and have a three day weekend.” – Joe Sanok Joe Sanok on Hustle Culture Joe talks about how he has dedicated a whole chapter to the hustle narrative and why it is wrong. He points out that looking at productivity alone, “hustling” is not a very efficient way of doing it. “There’s so many better ways to do it. We see it in big businesses or community colleges. (There) are tons of the case studies that I’ve seen and researched that it actually is better for business, for mental health, and for health outcomes (not to hustle). That people actually make more money at it. So why would we keep hustling 90 hours a week so that we can have the “status that Instagram gives us” when it’s not even needed?” – Joe Sanok To hear more from Joe Sanok and how to be more efficient and not fall into the Hustle trap, download and listen to this episode. Bio Joe Sanok is the author of Thursday is the New Friday (HarperCollins) releasing Oct 2021. He is a keynote and TEDx speaker, business consultant, and podcaster. He has the #1 podcast for counselors, The Practice of the Practice Podcast. Joe is also writer for PsychCentral, has been featured on the Huffington Post, Forbes, GOOD Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Entrepreneur on Fire, Smart Passive Income Podcast, and Yahoo News. Joe has articles releasing in 2021 through Harvard Business Review, CNBC, ThriveGlobal, Inc., and Money. He is the author of five books and has been named the Therapist Resource top podcast, consultant, and blogger. Joe Sanok helps private practitioners to find innovative ways to start, grow, and scale a private practice. For resources go to: http://www.practiceofthepractice.com/resources Joe is also the founder of Podcast Launch Sch

In this episode of Follow Your Different, let’s talk about food. On the base level, food is about survival, sustenance, and safety. Yet it is also a centering point for life and culture, and even expressing love. Joanne Molinaro joins us today to talk more about it. Joanne Molinaro is a lawyer-turned-author and Tik Tok info-tainer, as well as a social media rockstar. She has developed a massive following by fusing Korean cooking, veganism, life lessons, and story-telling into a legendary stew that her fans can’t get enough of. Her food blog “The Korean Vegan” is one of the top in the world, and her social media and Tik Tok have millions of followers. She also has a new book called The Korean Vegan Cookbook. We get into it and much more in this episode, so stay tuned. Joanne Molinaro‘s Relationship with Food The conversation starts off with checking in on Joanne and how she feels about her new book. Joanne shares that she’s a bit nervous since it was her first cookbook, and she’s worried that people might not like the recipes in it. Though given the quality of her content, it should not be a problem at all. From there, Joanne shares her relationship with food, in which she loves it so much. She loves cooking, but she especially loves eating, as well as trying out new foods and cuisines. Though she realized early on that she particularly like eating her own food best. “I realized pretty quickly that I like eating my own food best. Not because I’m persnickety about what goes into my food, although that’s part of it. But mostly because I think my food tastes the best, because I know what I like, and I know how to make my food the way that I like. I think a lot of people are like, Oh, I love eating grandma’s food, I love eating my mom’s food. And sure I love eating my mom’s food too. But a lot of times I’m like, I can make this better for me.” – Joanne Molinaro For Joanne, food makes her very happy, and it is something she looks forward to. Joanne Molinaro on the Contradiction of Safety and Danger in Food For a lot of people, food gives them a sense of safety, because it gives them sustenance, and they are made with love by our parents and grandparents when we are young. It reminds them that they are loved and cared for. Although for some, it can be a source of insecurity as well, and Joanne had to deal with both when she was younger. As society’s views on a “healthy and proper” body leaned on being slim and thin, eating and enjoying food seems like a bad thing to do. Not being to enjoy what you like can cause anxiety. Not being able to comfort that anxiety by eating your favorite food just adds to the stack. “In the past, I’ve also had a very fraught relationship with food. I was told very, very young that part of my value was tied to how I look and how thin I was. Unfortunately, food consumption contributes to your size. And as a result of that, however much I love eating food and how much I love cooking food, it also creates a great deal of anxiety and danger. So it’s sort of that very strange juxtaposition where a bowl of kimchi-jjigae makes me feel so safe, but a bowl of kimchi-jjigae also equals calories which makes me feel unsafe.”- Joanne Molinaro Being at the Forefront of Food Creation Now that she has become a food superstar, Joanne feels like she has to be more fastidious about guarding against or obsessing about food she eats. While it has become an impulse that was brought on by years of being careful of what she ate, she does not want it to influence her work as a food creator. “Now that I’m front facing about my relationship with food, and as a food creator, I feel very responsible about not just sending the correct message out into the world, but by living in accordance with that message. I can’t, on the one hand, tell people, “Hey, stop counting calories!” While I, myself, am counting calories. That doesn’t make sense.” – Joanne Molinaro Instead of focusing on calorie counts, she dwells more on what goes into one’s diet, and how you can make an amazing dish while still keeping healthy. To hear more from Joanne Molinaro and her thoughts on food and life, download and listen to this episode. Bio With over 2 million fans on TikTok, Joanne Molinaro, also known as The Korean Vegan, has appeared on The Food Network and Al Jazeera English, been featured in Salon, Healthy-ish by Bon Appetit, and the Kitchn, and will release her debut cookbook + memoir with Penguin Random House this fall (2021). Molinaro is a Korean American woman, born in Chicago, Illinois. Her parents were both born in what is now known as North Korea. Joanne Molinaro started her blog, The Korean Vegan, in 2016, after adopting a plant-based diet. In July 2020, she started her TikTok (@thekoreanvegan), mostly as a coping mechanism for the isolation caused by the global pandemic. She began posting content related to politi

Nothing is more important than your health. Though learning to make smart, complex health care choices is hard and is getting harder, especially in a world of massive healthcare information, and disinformation. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Talya Miron-Shatz aims to help us make the right health choices. Talya Miron-Shatz has her doctorate in Psychology from the Hebrew University, and studied with Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. She is also a professor at the Ono Academic College, as well as a visiting research at Cambridge University. Talya offers a clear and useful guidance for the hardest decisions in life. We go deep into her new book, Your Life Depends on It, to find out more on what you and your family needs to know about making critical health care decisions. Talya Miron-Shatz on Studying Happiness Talya talks about what it meant to study happiness. She explains that the way they study happiness is not like what most people would think to do it. Rather than just focusing on what activities bring happiness, they look at various activities and find out what brings people happiness in those activities. One example that she gives was with colonoscopy, which isn’t exactly a happy activity. “For example, he (Daniel Kahneman) did work with colonoscopies. And he showed with Dr. Reto Meier that when the end is more gentle people remember the whole episode is better. So it can be weird because nobody likes a colonoscopy. But apparently when it’s milder, when the end is milder, it’s better. “ – Talya Miron-Shatz Measuring Happiness With regards to measuring happiness, there are what is called Peak and Low moments. Low moments are the parts of the activity that makes us unhappy, and we try to avoid those parts as much as possible. Yet avoiding all lows would be impossible. Which is why Talya encourages people to cherish the peaks we experience, however small or short they may be. “We should just cherish and be happy with those moments and sort of elevate them and give them attention. Whatever draws your attention, whatever you pay attention to, determines how you feel.” – Talya Miron-Shatz Finding Ways to be Happy Talya continues with how we use attention, or divert it to something else, to find a way to feel happy. One example is how people try to keep themselves busy with work or other activities when they have recently experienced something unhappy. Some might put physical distance between their worries, and find that it helps them feel less depressed and think more clearly afterwards. It’s literally taking your mind off the thing that is upsetting. Though there’s a part of avoidance that Talya doesn’t like, and it pertains to medicine. Particularly, the discussion of death… To hear more from Talya Miron-Shatz and how to make better choices with your health, download and listen to this episode. Bio For two decades author, consultant, researcher, writer, speaker, and entrepreneur Dr. Talya Miron-Shatz has been dedicated to the issue of health and medical decision making. The questions she asks, and the answers she gives, are increasingly larger, and relate to the intersection of psychology and medicine. How do patients make choices? What do they need to understand their care and options? How can they be brought to enjoy the benefits of digital health? How can the human touch make a difference in times when medical challenges are inevitable? She identified barriers to better decision making and shows how they can be overcome – by patients, physicians, and healthcare organizations. She contends that while patients experience their challenges as very personal, these are rooted in institutional practices, and need to be considered as what constitutes good care. Often, it is beyond the doctors’ control, and they too can benefit from an overhaul of the patient role. Miron-Shatz did her BA, MA at Hebrew University’s psychology department, and worked for over a decade as an organizational psychologist. Then she returned to graduate school at the psychology department, studying heuristics and biases. Creating and teaching a course on ‘The Psychological Aspects of Medical Decision Making’ to genetic counseling students was her first foray into medical decision making. This was in 2004. In 2005 she completed her PhD. And went with her family to Princeton University, for a post-doctorate position with Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman, until 2009. Together, they studied happiness. From 2008 to 2011 she taught consumer behavior to undergraduates and MBA students at the Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, and loved every minute. In 2009 she joined the business school at the Ono Academic College, where she is now a full professor. She also became a writer for Psychology Today, where her blog, Baffled by Numbers which was read by over 130,00 people. Since then she has written more than 60 academic papers: some on happiness, but mostly on

We hear a lot of talk about courage, grit, and being mission-driven. Well, imagine being a young man who decides to serve his country and become a US Army paratrooper, only to become homeless after his active duty. Now imaging finding a way out of complete desperation to become a successful entrepreneur, and now bestselling author. That is Jaime Jay, and he is our guest in this episode of Follow Your Different. Jaime Jay is the co-founder of Bottleneck Distant Assistants, and the author of the new bestselling book, Quit Repeating Yourself. Jaime and I have been working together for years, and he has helped me in most of my digital endeavors. This includes building Lochhead.com, as well as handling all of the technical issues with my podcasts and much more. What you’re about to hear is an inspiring story of how Jaime designed a legendary business and life with his partner, Sara. Pay special attention to how Covid19 almost destroyed Jaime’s business, and how a new category design helped it to come back from the brink and power the company to even greater heights. Jaime Jay in the US Army There is a special place in my heart for our vets, and even more so for those who have become entrepreneurs after serving their duty. So I asked Jaime about his military service. Jaime was part of the elite 82nd Airborne Division, and was trained as a paratrooper. He recalls how intense the training was to be part of such an elite organization, and be battle-ready for when the country needs them. “I was part of the elite 82nd Airborne Division, 2nd 325 Airborne Infantry Regiment and I had a blast. It was is fantastic. I was really proud to be part of that organization. They man, they run a tip top organization. And that was blessed to be be part of the 82nd. That’s pretty cool.” – Jaime Jay   Jaime Jay on Being Homeless Jaime shares that he has been homeless on two separate times of his life. The first one being related to his younger days, and the latter was after he had left the military. Yet he never let these circumstances weigh him down, and he continued to strive for a better life. He talks about these points in the book as well, not for people to feel bad for him, but to see that despite all of that, you can still persevere and live a good life. “By the way, the reason I tell these stories is not for people to ever feel bad for me or anything like that. But I want people to realize what all of this led to. I’m actually blessed that all this happened because all of this led to a better life where I appreciated so much more. The friendships like the friendship that I have with you, I will forever appreciate this for the rest of my life. I was able to find the woman of my dreams. And I appreciate it on such a different level, just the same way that I appreciate the work that we’re doing. So the reason that I tell these stories in here is because I really want people to understand that, hey, it’s possible to do whatever it is you’re passionate about. So it’s kind of motivating, but there’s a method to the madness. “ – Jaime Jay   Creating a New Category: Distant Assistants One of the things Jaime and I have worked on this past year was when we created a new category that deals with remote assistance. You might say we already have that, and it’s called virtual assistants. Though the problem with virtual assistants nowadays is that the category has been inundated with big corporations who deal more with technology rather than the human aspect of it. While there are merits to automated assistance run by AI and such, there is something to be said for having an actual person handling it for you, and that flexible decision-making that can’t be achieved by AI yet. “People are using a lot of AI and stuff to manage the calendar to send out emails, automation. That’s all fine and dandy, and there are some great use cases for that. I’m not here to argue that, but I also think there’s something to be said for having that human, that intimate-based relationship between one human to another. No matter if it’s an assistant, web developer, CEO, whatever, there’s always going to be something to be said, for having that human based, intimate relationship.” – Jaime Jay To hear more for Jaime Jay and how you can Quit Repeating Yourself when running your own business, download and listen to this episode. Bio Jaime Jay is a connector, starter – geek, podcaster and founder of the award – winning Bottleneck Virtual Assistant Services company that offers professional growth opportunities for ambitious leaders by creating an efficient and systematic approach to identify, hire and cultivate team members who focus on specific roles and responsibilities through a single point of contact. He served in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division and worked in corporate America for over 12 years before becoming a full

Is peace really possible? Our guest today says it is. In this special episode of Follow Your Different, Prem Rawat talks about how to find peace in a noisy world. Prem Rawat has been teaching peace since he was a little boy in India. He became a counterculture icon in the 60s and the 70s, as Americans sought out different ideas and beliefs. He’s been a source of great controversy and massive followership over the years. Prem has been sought out and welcomed by spiritual, social and political and business leaders around the world. Prem Rawat has a new book out, called Hear Yourself: How to Find Peace in a Noisy World. We are here to discuss all that and more, so stay tuned. Prem Rawat on the Current State of the World When asked about his current thoughts, Prem talks about the current state of the world. For him, it seems that there’s just too much drama and chaos in the world right now. Though the current situation right now plays a big factor as to why it may be so, people are still whipping it up and causing drama left and right. While it is the nature of humanity to seek out exciting events and drama, it seems that we have become morbidly so, despite the situation being something as it is right now. Much so that we choose to forgo peace to chase the next drama. “Well, you know, here’s the paradox, because (when) you look at human beings, human beings are remarkable. We’ve been able to conquer disease, we’ve been able to invent so many wonderful things that that has helped other people. Though at the same time we can create medicine that can that can prolong life, we can also create machine guns that can take away the lives. So we always live in this paradox. I always feel that we have to choose, and I talk about peace. I feel that we have to choose peace. It’s not just going to happen automatically, that is not going to drop from the sky, on people, whether they like it or not. It’s just that Something that we have to choose. And the question then becomes, is that what we’re choosing?” – Prem Rawat Choosing Peace Prem continues on how we should actively choose peace. Because the way we are treating it right now, it’s just something that we expect to happen to us, despite being distracted by everyday noise. If you want peace for yourself, you have to distance yourself from the noise and drama, and choose peace. “Well, peace is already within you, (but) you have to gain access to it. And that’s what this book is all about: getting in touch with yourself. Because we are so distracted. In fact, being with yourself, in an environment is considered the worst form of punishment you can possibly have. We have become so attracted to everything else that we became distracted from ourselves. That is a pretty sad state of affairs, when it comes to ourselves. That being with you, just being with you, is the worst thing you could ever do.” – Prem Rawat Can We Really Have Peace? Prem shares his life of going around the world and speaking to the international crowd about peace. Though he thinks that just doing that was not enough, and that is why he wrote his book. With it, he hopes that it can spark a meaningful conversation or even a debate about peace. Though there are those who say peace is not possible, that it is in the human nature to seek conflict or drama. For Prem, this is not so, as peace is already within all of us. So for him, these people can be considered sourgraping, in a sense. “It’s a question of sour grapes. there’s a lot of people say it this way. It’s like, oh no, peace is not possible. It’s not going to happen. But when peace is already inside of us, why isn’t that ever going to happen? And isn’t it up to us? If we can create wars, why can’t we create peace?” – Prem Rawat To hear more from Prem Rawat and how to find peace in this noisy world, download and listen to this episode. Bio Prem Rawat For more than fifty years, Prem has shared his enduring message with people of any age, race, gender, nationality, religion, personal lifestyle or life condition, that peace within is possible and it is your birthright. He has reached hundreds of millions of people in over 100 countries through his powerful storytelling and profound message. As a best-selling author and public speaker, he has adapted age-old stories for a modern audience, adding his unique perspective on the “business of life.”  These stories continue to resonate and transform millions of people’s lives. His most recent book, Escúchate (Hear Yourself), quickly reached Amazon Spain’s top non-fiction best seller’s list, and precedes the soon-to-be released English version. Other publications by Prem include: Peace is Possible (published by Penguin) previously titled Splitting the Arrow: Understanding the Business of Life, as well as the illustrated books, The Pot With The Hole, and The Stonecutter. Prem has personally developed an innovative wellbeing serie

In this episode of Follow Your Different, we talk about all things creativity, innovation, and design. Our guest today is Sarah Stein Greenberg, the Executive Director of Stanford’s Design School, aka the d.school. She has a new book out called Creative Acts for Curious People: How to Think, Create, and Lead in Unconventional Ways. They have taken years of learning and ideas from Stanford’s Design school and put it in this awesome new book, and we get to dive in to all of it. Sarah shares why reflections matter so much, and also tells why metacognition is important. We dig into what it’s like running one of the most well-known design schools in the world, and how design students are different today than they were in the not-so-distant past. Also, pay special attention to Sarah’s ideas on weird and the role of curiosity in creativity and design. Sarah Stein Greenberg on Reflections and Creativity Sarah talks about finally being back in the physical space of Stanford campus. She describes the space that she has a space for reflection, full of writing space to record her thoughts as they come. When asked if reflection is really important in design, Sara shares that it plays a part in it. That it is something that should go hand-in-hand with action. “I think reflection is kind of the underappreciated partner of action. In a lot of cases, when people think about creativity, they think about brainstorming and exuberance, and that that spark of inspiration. But reflection, I think about it as it’s like the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, those two things are, inextricably linked action and reflection. So yeah, I’m a big proponent of those quiet moments, where you’re trying to make sense or really think about what might be the implications of your creative work.” = Sarah Stein Greenberg What? So What? Now What? Sarah shares about the difference between thinking and reflection. Thinking might include everything from coming up with new ideas, charting the vision, or even some parts of analysis / research. Reflection focuses more on thinking about your own process or practice, or looking back at your data more critically. Sarah goes on to say that reflection in particular benefits from specific scaffolding and practices, and brings up one of her favorite one: the What? / So What? / Now What?, which a few of her colleagues have originated. “The scaffold is called What? So what? Now What? You can kind of have a scaffolded reflection and think about, what did I just learn in that particular class or that particular project? How do I want to improve my own work? But if you use a scaffold like What, So What, and Now What, you really get into the details. You might write down everything that happened, then you might think about what did all of that mean? Why is that important? Why did that feel like what I wanted to capture? And then Now What is the opportunity to think for each of those. So what for each of those implications? What do I want to do about that? Is that something I want to practice? Is that something I want to improve?” = Sarah Stein Greenberg For Sarah, the quality of reflections changes dramatically if you have a detailed flow on how to approach and assess what you currently have. Sarah Stein Greenberg on Metacognition The conversation then steers into how a lot of people nowadays aren’t really thinking, or thinking about thinking. Most content or “new things” in the market are just variations of the same things that we already have, just rebranded or given a new “spin”. Sarah agrees with this sentiment, and also talks about metacognition, which is the technical term for “thinking about thinking”. For her, it’s a skill that should be embedded in the heart of our education. “(Metacognition) is one of those kinds of secret skills that I firmly believe should be embedded in the heart of our education. What goes along with that is the idea of learning how you learn, is actually the key to like being able to then continue to be a learner, no matter what environment you’re in. That’s actually where reflection which we just talked about is so important. Because that’s actually how you can start to take control. That kind of self-awareness is part of that practice of learning how to learn.”  = Sarah Stein Greenberg   To hear more from Sarah Stein Greenberg and how reflection and metacognition can be helpful in creating new categories, download and listen to this episode. Bio Sarah Stein Greenberg helps lead the d.school, an interdisciplinary institute at Stanford that nurtures innovators and spreads design thinking. As Executive Director, Sarah supports a multidisciplinary learning program of about 25 courses that reach more than 500 Stanford graduate students annually, taught by more than 60 experts from the d.school, Stanford faculty and the Silicon Valley community; she also launches and supports new or newly iterated d.school initiatives, includi

Imagine the life you love, the freedoms you enjoy, and the opportunities you have. All the safety and security you take for granted, vaporized in a matter of days. Imagine that many in your family, friends, and loved ones are now hostages. Noorullah Akbari doesn’t have to imagine any of that. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Noorullah Akbari talks about the situation of his family and millions of Afghan citizens that are still living in Kabul at this time. Noor is the founder and CEO of a company called Rosalyn.AI, and they are on a mission to use advanced technology in making a difference for students’ education. He’s also a former Afghan refugee living in the United States of America. Right now as we speak, Noor is fighting to get about 20 members of his family out of Kabul, Afghanistan. Our hope is that this dialogue will help humanize the plight of the very real people in Afghanistan who are suffering right now who want out, and that this very real dialogue will be shared, emailed, tweeted and posted broadly in the United States.  Because no matter what you think about the US’ withdrawal in Afghanistan, there are now 35 million people who are experiencing the most horrifying change imaginable in their lives through no fault of their own. Noorullah Akbari on the Taliban We start the conversation by asking about the situation with Noor’s family. He shares that his sisters and their family, as well as some of his relatives are still in Kabul. They are quite afraid, and thought that there would be a massacre once the Taliban solidifies their hold. While the Taliban has said that they will not do such a thing, the family do not trust their word. According to Noor, they think that the Taliban hasn’t done so because they do not want any negative perception at this time. As we live in a technological age, phones and the internet are everywhere. A simple picture depicting their violence could derail the “good image” they want to portray. Though technology might be keeping the Taliban in check for now, there are limits to what it can do. “When there are no cameras, they go after those who they believe have aided the infidels and foreigners. They (The Taliban) tell them now, they don’t do that currently in Kabul. And the main reason is, there are cell phones out there. They haven’t banned the internet yet, so that people can take pictures. That will cause them trouble with the international community. But the practice has always been to come after their enemies, kill them and take revenge. So no, you can’t trust the terrorists.” – Noorullah Akbari Life on the Ground Noor explains that while he wants to get all their relatives out of Kabul as soon as possible, there are some who are in immediate danger due to their previous involvement with the US forces. Though he also stresses that most of the people in Kabul have worked directly or indirectly with the US at various times. So it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to think that all of those people will also be considered as enemies by the Taliban. Yet some might be looking for a way out, simply because they do not want to live under another Taliban regime. “I can tell you, they have all lived a life under the previous regime of Taliban. When you were going to watch soccer, right after there were public executions, or stoning of people, or beating of women. Women did not have the ability to walk around without men or without the Burqa. It was pretty brutal. You didn’t have any personal freedom, the economy was bad. People were walking around like zombies. And everybody remembers that.” – Noorullah Akbari So when the US forces drove out the Taliban from Kabul 20 years ago, it was like a new lease of life was given to the citizens living there. To have that freedom taken away now, it’s understandable why people do not want to experience it all over again. Getting Out of Kabul When asked about the progress on getting his family out, Noor mentions that he has reached out to his connections to see if they could help, but so far they haven’t been successful. He thinks that either the State Department is currently overwhelmed, or that they are still in the midst of negotiations. While Noor and others are still exploring other options to get the family out of Kabul, all of their current plans are dependent on how the US can negotiate with the Taliban. This is the most worrying part for Noor. “All of our efforts are dependent on the negotiation between the US government and the Taliban, to see if they allow these planes to take off right now. From what I know, that’s a difficult thing to do. So they’re trying, but I don’t think the US has footprint there. So when you don’t have footprint and you don’t have leverage, you cannot rely on the Taliban’s mercy to tell you whether you can or can’t fly away.” – Noorullah Akbari Now imagine that situation playing out with 4 m

If you’re a long-time listener, you know that we do not have many celebrities as guests on Follow Your Different. We take a pass on most of them because frankly, they’re not that interesting. However, Moby is not your typical celebrity or Hollywood type. Moby is a breakout musician, DJ, and songwriter. He’s sold over 20 million records worldwide, and he is credited with helping to bring electronic dance music to a mainstream global audience. He is also an animal advocate and a deeply-committed vegan, and he’s got a brand-new cookbook out. It’s called Little Pine Cookbook, which is based on the recipes of Little Pine, a restaurant that he had founded. What you’re about to hear is a real dialogue like none other: from Moby’s tough start in life, to making and breaking it and having it all fall apart, then building yourself back again. You’ll also hear stories on Moby meeting his heroes, including what it was like to hang out with none other than David Bowie. Moby on Meeting Your Heroes To Moby, making the cover for David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ has a personal context. He shares that when he was around 12, he had bought two David Bowie albums. Since then, David Bowie became his favorite musician of all time. Then in the late 90’s, they became friends. Then neighbors. They even went on tours together, worked on music together, and enjoyed each other’s company. “We had this one amazing day where he was in my apartment in New York. We played an acoustic version of heroes together. It was such a magical moment that the version of Heroes on Reprise is sort of a tribute to the song; a tribute to the fact that I was friends with my favorite musician of all time, and a tribute to this moment of playing Heroes with the greatest musician of all time.” – Moby That said, there is a saying that goes, “you should never meet your heroes, because they are sure to disappoint you.” Moby acknowledges that there are times that it is true. Though in David Bowie’s case, it only made him appreciate the person and his music more after meeting him. Moby on Being a Public Figure It’s not unusual to look up to icons and dream of one day becoming one. Being famous or a public figure is a dream that a lot of people have. Though according to Moby, being a public figure can be more stressful than it’s worth. It might sound pretentious or narcissistic coming from a place of having achieved it already, but it is something Moby wishes to share through his book, ‘Then It Fell Apart’. His documentary, Moby Doc, also shines a bit of light into this: “The idea is that the human condition is one of confusion. You know, as long as we’re human, we’re baffled. So It seems like we all gravitate towards things that give us a sense of meaning, structure, and status. And so the book ‘Then It Fell Apart’ and ‘Moby Doc’ is sort of looking at that. Like how I had my own individual experience of bafflement, and how I tried to find anything that would give me that sense of meaning, purpose, status, comfort, what have you.” – Moby Living the Rockstar Life When asked whether he thinks that he’s “living the rockstar life”, Moby thinks that he has lived a life so far that has given him a unique perspective. As someone who has been to the extreme ends of both poverty, wealth, and varying degrees of fame, it has given him an insight that is undenyingly his own. Yet while the specific details are unique to him alone, the general circumstance is not. That is why Moby felt that he had to share his story. Not so much as to show everyone what he has achieved in his life so far, but as a reference for those who are aspiring for such a lifestyle, or those who might be in a similar situation. To hear more from Moby and his insights on meeting your heroes and living an accomplished life, download and listen to this episode. Bio Richard Melville Hall, known professionally as Moby, is an American musician, songwriter, singer, producer, and animal rights activist. He has sold 20 million records worldwide. AllMusic considers him to be “among the most important dance music figures of the early 1990s, helping bring dance music to a mainstream audience both in the United States and the United Kingdom”. In addition to his music career, Moby is known for his veganism and support for animal rights and humanitarian aid. He was the owner of TeaNY, a vegan cafe in Manhattan, and Little Pine, a vegan restaurant in Los Angeles, and organized the vegan music and food festival Circle V. He is the author of four books, including a collection of his photography and two memoirs: Porcelain: A Memoir (2016) and Then It Fell Apart (2019). Links Follow Moby today! Website: Moby.com Instagram: @Moby Check out Moby’s books: Then It Fell Apart Little Pine Cookbook Listen to Moby’s Latest Album, Reprise More on Moby: VegNews: Moby Just Wrote A Vegan Cookbook, And All Proceeds Go To Animal Rescue PRH: The Little Pine Cookbook We hope you enjoyed this e

A few companies have had the impact in the technology industry that Intel has had. Without Intel, the personal computer might never have happened the way that it did. In this episode of Follow Your Different, we go inside Intel, and inside the life of one of the tech industry’s true living legends, Avram Miller. Avram Miller is best known as the co-founder of Intel Capital, the most successful corporate venture group in the history of the technology industry. What Avram and his partners created became the model for corporate venture capital in Silicon Valley. In addition, he’s also famous for spotting and leading Intel’s initiative to create and expand residential broadband internet access. He’s got a new book out, called Flight of the Wild Duck, and improbably journey through life and technology. So for those who call the Internet your home, stay tuned and have a deep, meaningful, and unedited real dialogue with a true legend. Avram Miller on Being a ‘Misfit’ When asked about the term ‘misfit’ and what it means for him, Avram shares that for him, it was somebody who wasn’t really right for the system. Though it’s not like that somebody has a problem or is not doing anything, but more of that they couldn’t do what was expected of them. Which was not to say that he himself was a misfit growing up. Rather, that was how he thought others perceived him. This left him confused and eventually getting the impression that there might be something wrong with him. Nowadays, he doesn’t get the feeling of being a misfit anymore, though there’s still the notion of feeling like the odd man out. “I think I still feel like the odd man out. Often, and not so much because of my life today. If I were to be back in my previous life, I would guess I would still feel like I didn’t quite fit in. You know, I was at Intel for 15 years, I achieved a fairly high position at Intel one of the when I was there. And that’s actually kind of what caused me to use the title of my book, which was the Flight of a Wild Duck, which is what Andy Grove, he referred to me as that. But you know, the, the Wild Duck is the duck does not going in the same direction as the other ducks.” – Avram Miller Life at Intel Despite all this, Avram did not have any problems working for Intel, and the feeling was mutual. That’s because he has something to give to the company that they needed. So while he doesn’t think he fits in completely, he still had a lot to offer on the table, and Intel valued him for it. “At Intel, things really based on results. And I had results, I could make things happen. So once I could show that I could make results, once I could achieve things, everything was pretty much okay, because I was judged on my contributions.” – Avram Miller The Strengths and Weaknesses of Fitting In That said, he thinks that while these systems are great for finding people that fit, there can also be drawbacks to it. While you can get people that might fit in to your idea of a perfect system, you might miss out  on those ‘misfits’ that end up changing the landscape of business. “Most people go through life, and they go through some system, which was devised in the industrial age. You should think of that process is a funnel that’s filtering out people, it’s filtering out misfits. And at the end, you have people that are really, really good at doing certain things, and no good at doing other things. But those other things are needed. And it’s a strength, because you have all these people that are very, very good at doing certain things, like showing up on time. But it’s a weakness, because they don’t have the creativity, the imagination, the intuition, all this has been filtered out. Either they’ve suppressed it, or the people that had it just didn’t make it through the funnel.” – Avram Miller  To learn more about Avram Miller and his thoughts on how misfits can succeed in the tech world, download and listen to this episode.   Bio Avram Miller is an American – born businessperson, venture capitalist, scientist, technologist, and musician. He is best known for his work at Intel, where he served as vice president, co-founded Intel Capital, and led Intel’s successful initiative to create residential broadband. After leaving Intel, Miller founded the Avram Miller Company, providing strategic advice to technology companies worldwide. He currently splits his time between Israel and the United States. He is the author of The Flight of a Wild Duck, an improbable journey through life and technology Links Follow Avram today! Websites: WildDuckFlight.com TwoThirdsDone.com AvramMiller.com Twitter: @AvramMiller LinkedIn: in/Avram We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

Homelessness is a daunting, heartbreaking, and complex problem. There are currently about half a million Americans experiencing homelessness to this day. So in this episode of Follow Your Different, let’s dig into what we can do to make a difference with our guests Linda Gibbs and Muzzy Rosenblatt, two of the authors of a powerful new book called How 10 Global Cities Take On Homelessness. Linda Gibbs served as a Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Resources for New York City from 2005 to 2013. During her tenure, New York City was the only top 20 city in America whose poverty rate did not rise. Today, Linda is a principal at Bloomberg Associates, which is a philanthropic consulting arm of Michael Bloomberg’s nonprofit organization. They work with cities globally to make a difference, particularly in areas of homelessness. Also with us is Muzzy Rosenblatt, who is the CEO of BRC, a nonprofit that has worked for 50 years to provide housing and treatment services to homeless adults in New York City. It’s safe to say that Linda and Muzzy are definitely experts in grappling with homelessness. The insights they share in their book are based on two extraordinary careers that are dedicated on solving the issue of homelessness. So if you have ever been homeless at some point in your life, or know someone who is in this situation, this dialogue is something you will want to hear from start to finish. Linda Gibbs on Solving the Homelessness Problem When asked why we can’t seem to solve the homelessness problem, Linda shares that it’s not really a complex problem, but it is hard one to tackle. It doesn’t take a brilliant idea, or a new, innovative solution to solve it. The solution is easily staring us in the face, but we can’t implement them due to certain factors. One of the reasons is the vast amounts of resources that needs to be allocated to make it happen. You need to have the money to put the basic programs that can help people in motion. Though according to Linda, that’s not even the biggest issue. “The harder part, quite frankly, is it requires people who work in many different organizations at different levels of government. It requires that they all work together, like a well-oiled machine. The biggest problem is that these different systems, they all have their flaws. Also, many of the systems who have to be working together to fix the problem, are the very systems that generate the problem. And so, getting them to the table and working together toward one unified objective is the biggest challenge by far.” – Linda Gibbs Linda Gibbs on Why They Care Before going further with the discussion, we asked both our guests why they people should care about the homeless. Linda shares that this is not something that people choose willingly for themselves. There are multiple factors as to why someone would be homeless. As a community, Linda thinks that we can do better for ourselves and our neighbors, especially those who are in dire need of our help. “We live in, in many ways, a deeply flawed society, and we have to do better. We have to address the consequences of those flaws. And it’s incumbent on us that we need to fix those flaws, and we need to be committed to the longer-term reforms. Though we also have to address the faults now while we focus on those longer-term strategies.” – Linda Gibbs Muzzy Rosenblatt on the Importance of Solving Homelessness Muzzy agrees with Linda’s views, but also recognize that some people might not see the same as them. He would encourage everyone to help, but doesn’t force them to do so. Though he points out that it can be beneficial for cities to tackle their city’s issue of homelessness instead of just doing temporary measures to alleviate them. For one thing, the money being spent on keeping things in the current status quo is coming from taxpayer’s money, so instead of having a stop gap or a short-term solution, why not solve the problem once and for all? Also, getting the homeless back into a financially stable condition means more taxpayers and workforce in the long run. Don’t think about it as spending money on the homeless, but rather investing in the future of the city and the community. If you want to hear more from Linda Gibbs & Muzzy Rosenblatt and their new book, How 10 Global Cities Take On Homelessness, download and listen to this episode. Bio Linda Gibbs Linda Gibbs served as Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services for New York City from 2005 to 2013. Supervising the city’s human service, public health and social justice agencies, she spearheaded major initiatives on poverty alleviation, juvenile justice reform and obesity reduction. Two of the collaborative efforts she shaped to address significant social challenges are “Age Friendly NYC,” a blueprint for enhancing the livability of older New Yorkers, and “Young Men’s Initiative,” an initiative addressing race-based disparities facing Black and Latino young men in the areas of health, education, emplo

In this incredibly special episode of Follow Your Different, we have a person that is like no other that has ever been on this podcast. We know the names of many of the legendary innovators and category creators of the modern era: people like Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and many others are rightfully celebrated worldwide. Yet most people don’t know who the father of the cell phone is. The man behind it all is Martin Cooper, and he is our guest for today. In the last 100 years, there is no category of technological breakthrough more important than the cell phone. While there are others that are equally important, it is not an exaggeration to say that the mobile phone changed the trajectory of humanity. The cell phone created a radically different future that has created and it continues to create exponential benefits for humankind. I’m very grateful that Marty took the time to write his new riveting book, it’s called Cutting the Cord. Because now, we have a first-person account of the life and the learnings of a legendary innovator, engineer, and category creator, and frankly, American, Martin “Marty” Cooper. What follows is an unedited, uninterrupted conversation with Martin Cooper. We cover everything from his definition of what technology is, to why he’s irked by how the mobile companies have rolled out 5G. We also talk about his thoughts on how to bridge the digital divide and how to bring the internet to everyone, which he is really passionate about. So if you want to hear more from the Father of the Cellular Phone himself, stay tuned to this episode. Martin Cooper on Bridging the Digital Divide When asked about his current thoughts on technology, Marty’s initial thoughts were on the digital divide with regards to education. Particularly, it’s due to the fact that people cannot get a decent education in modern times without having access to the internet. One reason is that having access to the internet means having access to anything all the time. You also have access to all the knowledge of society at your fingertips. Unfortunately, that access is only afforded to half the students nowadays, even in an advanced country like the United States. Others either have no access to it because of the cost, while some have no decent service available to them at all. For Marty, the idea is simply ridiculous, especially during this day. “There is no technological reason for that to be the case. The carriers that provide us with service, people like AT&T, T Mobile, Verizon, and many other carriers license the radio spectrum from us. Their licenses have one basic requirement: and that is that the use of the spectrum should be in the public interest and convenience. And yet, there we have it 25% of our country is not covered, and 25% of our population can’t afford the service.” – Martin Cooper Some of Marty’s suggestion regarding the matter is to make it more accessible to the public, either by lowering rates, or building a system where its almost a necessity for each household to have such a connection. Even if it means having the government shoulder the cost. Because the alternative is having a population where half of it is being left behind in terms of education. Martin Cooper on 5G For Marty, 5G doesn’t really affect the average consumer. It is mostly targeted on businesses, companies, and other structures of that nature. What irks him about this is how they are promoting it, saying that they will be useful to industries such as autonomous cars and remote surgery. The main thing about those two examples is that it’s not only fast connection that will enable it to be effective. You also need a network where it can operate at very low latency, so that reaction times will be instantaneous. It would be bad if two autonomous cars that are about to crash to have a few seconds delay on their response. You definitely do not want a doctor doing a crucial operation on someone being hampered by lag. “I think the FCC should be taking some action to either get the carriers to fill this gap in their service, or let other people come in and do it via the radio spectrum.” – Martin Cooper   Cutting the Cord Marty pointed out that nowadays, there are more cell phones out there than people. This is because most people have at least one phone, and there are some who have multiple mobile devices on them. This indicates that a lot of people are naturally mobile, though that might not be the case during this time. The point is, these phones and other mobile devices are being used daily to do pretty much everything in the society nowadays. Yet when you talk to politicians about giving access to everyone, their go-to response is still to provide cable service. The problem with this is that wired telephone is a thing of the past, and it is slowly being phased out even by the cable companies they tout. “In the United States, there are only less than 60,000 wired telephone left, yet

In this episode of Follow Your Different, we’ll have a dialogue that just might change how you think about aging, and maybe even life itself. Who better to have this dialogue than with Sergey Young, author of the book called The Science and Technology of Growing Young. Sergey believes that entrepreneurs and startups are already creating the longevity, technology, and category breakthroughs needed to design a new category of human that lives to 200 and beyond. He also believes that people in the future will have a health span well past 150, and that most of us living right now can get to 120. We dig deep into this new into what’s happening in this new mega category of longevity. We also talk about what Sergey calls the near and far horizons of longevity breakthroughs, and how the conversion of bio and tech is already saving and extending lives. The Science and Technology of Growing Young Sergey talks about the journey on writing his book, The Science and Technology of Growing Young. He misses it so much that he’s already thinking about his next book, which will be as legendary as the current one. When asked about any particular topic in the book that he wanted to discuss, Sergey points to the last chapter, which talked about the morality of immortality. The reason for this is that his publisher thinks that the last chapter deserved its own book. To which Sergey responded: “My response was like, each chapter in the Growing Young book deserves to be a separate book. Because human health, happiness, or desire to live longer is such a complex subject. So you can do like 1000 books on the back of that.” – Sergey Young Sergey Young on the Morality of Immortality Following up on the publisher’s comment, Sergey believes that the morality of immortality is probably the most contentious topic, because it is always very shocking. He shared that most polls, depending on the country, have 60 to 80 percent of the people saying no to life extension. “I was always surprised why. And what I learned is, we have created the science and technology to extend our lives. But we haven’t created life that we want to extend.” – Sergey Young This is because when most people hear about longevity of life, they think it’s just to extend their lives for 5-10 years. Though in this case, Sergey’s book discusses working on healthspan, and not necessarily lifespan. “What I want to do is to insert another 20 to 25 years, right in the middle of your life cycle, to give you more time on Earth, to be with your loved ones, to realize your dreams, to change your career, and to have kids from multiple generations.” – Sergey Young Sergey Young on Virtual Avatars Sergey then talks about virtual avatars, and what he thinks will be a good use for it in the future. He shares that he misses his conversations with his grandfather, and would give anything to be able to talk to him again. Virtual Avatars could be a way to have such moments with your love ones, even as they have moved on. “I’m actually expecting this with a weird combination of excitement and fear. At the same time, like many of us, I always try to think about the application of this new technologies, which sounds scary. But if applied in the right person at the right time, they actually doing a lot of good things.” – Sergey Young Sergey also mentions Elon Musk and the research on neuro link. While some people think this is really against human nature, it might eventually be helpful to those suffering from neuro-genetic diseases. Also, being able to integrate with computers mean that we can explore more depths and harsher environments without sacrificing human life. If you want to hear more from Sergey Young and his thoughts on how to grow young, download and listen to this episode. Bio Sergey Young is a longevity investor and visionary on a mission to extend healthy lifespans of one billion people. To do that, Sergey founded Longevity Vision Fund to accelerate life extension technological breakthroughs and to make longevity affordable and accessible to all. Sergey is on the Board of Directors of the American Federation of Aging Research (AFAR), and is a co-sponsor of the AGE REVERSAL Prize Design. Once ultimately launched, this XPRIZE aims to dramatically delay the biological aging process through widely available interventions that extend the human life and health span. Sergey Young has been featured as a top longevity expert and contributor on CNN, BBC, Fox News, and Forbes. As the author of books such as ‘The Science and Technology of Growing Young’ and the mastermind behind the online life extension platform SergeyYoung.com, Sergey is passionate about sharing news from the exciting world of longevity. Links Follow Sergey today! Website: SergeyYoung.com LinkedIn: in/SergeyYoung Get the book: The Science and Technology of Growing Young We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, conn

In this episode of Follow Your Different, Dr. Avi Loeb makes a return to give us an update about his work after he released his book, Extraterrestrial. If you are not familiar with Dr. Avi Loeb and his work, you can check out our previous conversation with him (FYD episode 202). Dr. Avi Loeb is the most credential scientist and astronomer ever to say that we have been visited by something outside of our galaxy that is alien in nature. In 2021, Professor Loeb published a book called Extraterrestrial, The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth. For me, the ideas shared in this book can be a game changer for humanity. This time, Professor Loeb tells us why you can’t use the internet without using quantum mechanics, and about the connection between theoretical physics and Bernie Madoff. Also, if you have been paying attention to UFOs, Dr. Loeb unpacks what he thinks the US government’s latest disclosures on the existence of UFOs really mean. All these and more on this episode, so stay tuned to the end. Dr. Avi Loeb on Letting the Scientists Handle Science When asked whether he had a particular though he’d like to share, Professor Loeb remarks that he wishes that these unidentified phenomena in the sky be explored through scientific experiments.  There have been a lot of people giving their thoughts on the matter, but they’re simply not qualified to give such statements. While data might be sensitive and are often classified, at the very least have someone with a scientific background deliver the explanation to such events. Rather than a politician who is not equipped to assess the nature of these phenomena, it’s better to have an expert digest the information and deliver it in a concise manner. “These are serious people and they had access to the classified information, they talk about it seriously. But they cannot really assess the nature of this phenomenon, and they were trained as either politicians or administrators. When you go to a shoe maker, you don’t expect the shoe maker to make you a cake. I mean, it makes no sense for them to make statements that are scientific.” – Dr. Avi Loeb   The Stigma and Taboo of Anomalies Regarding the UFO sighting report, Professor Loeb comments that there could be a lot more that have not been reported. This is because of the stigma of bringing up UFOs or certain unusual phenomenon. In this day and age, it’s almost seen as a taboo to discuss such things. Professor Loeb finds it strange that it is the case. For some reason, anomalous evidence is unpopular, almost to the point of being shunned. Though if you look at the history of science, these anomalous evidences are what brought a lot of progress in different fields. “Why is anomalous evidence so unpopular? To me, it’s really strange, because if you look at the history of science, most of the progress was a result of experimental anomalies. We saw something that we didn’t expect, we learn something new about nature. What you need to do, of course, is to verify that the evidence is robust. If it’s robust, then nature’s telling you, you didn’t really understand me. Here is something new that you have to figure out.” – Dr. Avi Loeb Quantum Mechanics Professor Loeb shares that it was the same before with Quantum Mechanics. Nobody really expected it, and it was something that was discovered through experiments. Although scientists like Albert Einstein resisted the notion at first. He even sought out to disprove it at some point. Yet today, we build new technology and instruments that are based on these principles, particularly in communication. We might not fully understand it yet, but it shouldn’t stop us from exploring these anomalous behaviors and find out more about what nature has to offer. “Quantum mechanics is definitely a facet of reality. We know that we use it and so forth, but we don’t fully understand it. And nature is under no obligation to make itself agree with our preconceptions. So every now and then we find some evidence that we were wrong in the way we think about reality.” – Dr. Avi Loeb   To hear more from Dr. Avi Loeb and his thoughts on Extraterrestrials, Quantum Mechanics, and the universe, download and listen to this episode. Bio Abraham (Avi) Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University. He received a Ph.D. in Physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel at age 24 (1980-1986), led the first international project supported by the Strategic Defense Initiative (1983-1988), and was subsequently a long-term member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (1988-1993). Loeb has written 8 books. These includes most recently, Extraterrestrial (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021), and about 800 papers (with an h-index of 113) on a wide range of topics. Topics include black holes, the first stars, the search for extraterre

Many of us would like to be more creative. Some would even aspire to make a living with their creativity. Yet without legendary role models like Melanie Gideon, it’s hard to learn what it really takes. Melanie Gideon is willing to get real with us and go deep about her experience in making it happen. She is a New York Times bestselling fiction author of monster hits like Wife 22, The Slippery Year, The Valley of the Moon, and much more. Her new book, Did I Say You Can Go, is one of the most anticipated novels of 2021. In this episode of Follow Your Different, we dig into what it really takes to be a professional fiction writer and how Melanie works on her craft. If you care about creativity, I think you’re going to fall in love with Melanie and what she has to share on the topic. Melanie Gideon on Tours The discussion starts off with a question about Melanie, and how she approaches book tours as an introvert. She shares that it can be quite an excruciating experience for her. She loves the writing aspect of her craft: from thinking of the story’s design and structure to writing and even editing it afterwards. “I do (love editing) because you’re streamlining the story. You are sometimes finding the story in the editing. And you’re just making it tighter and creating what you want for your reader. What I want for my reader is to create a page turner where they just have to know what happens next, no matter what genre I’m writing in. That is what I endeavor to do. So I love that.” – Melanie Gideon Though Melanie says she’s starting to like the publishing aspect more nowadays, since everything can be done online. Being able to do it from the comfort of your home, and engaging with fellow authors rather than just having a conversation with herself was a nice change of pace. Not only that, her family can attend her virtual book events now that everything is online, not to mention all her fans from different places. How to be Like Melanie A lot of people certainly would love to achieve their dreams like Melanie. I remember asking her once how she did it. Her response was: “I just didn’t stop writing” – Melanie Gideon She thinks not giving up is a huge part of being successful. This applies to a lot of things in life, but for Melanie it is more so when it comes to writing. Plus, her urgency and passion for storytelling was always there to drive her forward. “You know, since I was eight years old, I read voraciously. I always just wanted to be in another world alongside the world I was living in. I was a weird little kid. And I would walk around in the woods, and hope that I would find the portal to Narnia. As I grew older, and I became more serious about writing, I realized that every book that I wrote, I was creating a portal to another world that I got to live in for however long it took me to write the book. So that was magic. I found the secret that solved the mystery.” – Melanie Gideon Melanie’s Approach to Writing While some people get inspiration to hit them from their surroundings, Melanie prefers to go out and look for it herself. She often goes out to find inspiration, to find the story. For some writers, they wait for the story to materialize, to develop in their mind and they go from there. That does not work for Melanie. “I’m always actively looking for the story that will make something flutter inside me. And I know I have to follow that. It might not be the book that I write. But it will probably bring me to another path and another path, and eventually I’ll stumble upon it.” – Melanie Gideon When asked where she goes to find her story, Melanie shares that she reads, a lot. Magazines, articles, sometimes other fiction novels that strike her interest. Which is interesting, as most writers would say, “I don’t have time to read, I’m too busy writing”. Clearly, Melanie is not like most writers. To hear more from Melanie Gideon and her new book, Did I Say You Can Go, download and listen to this episode. Bio Melanie Gideon is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels, Did I Say You Could Go, Valley of the Moon and Wife 22, as well as the memoir The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After. Her books have been translated into 30 languages. She was born and raised in Rhode Island and now lives in the Bay Area. Links Connect with Melanie Gideon! Website: MelanieGideon.com Melanie’s Books: Amazon.com/Melanie-Gideon Twitter: @MelanieGideon See her works at NYTimes.com: Car-Pool Epiphanies: A Memoir About the Ordinary A Diesel Engine Woke Up Our Love We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

We live at a time when there’s plenty of dumb and unquestioned business and live advice floating around the internet. Most of it comes from an avalanche of problematic stupidities from hustle porn stars. There’s also “Follow your passion”, which doesn’t always work out. Of course, there’s the tried and true, “Fake it until you make it.” Our guest today, Sabrina Horn, is the opposite of that. Sabrina Horn has seen those situations play out in her career as a Communications Entrepreneur and eventually, CEO of HORN Strategy, LLC. Her new book, “Make it, don’t fake it” is out, and has hit no.1 on the Amazon charts as soon as it was released. In this episode of Follow Your Different, what you’ll hear from her is a fun, no BS dialogue about what success really takes. If you’re interested in hearing more from Sabrina Horn, stay tuned to this episode. Catching Up with Sabrina Horn I talk with Sabrina Horn about the Silicon Valley days. When asked if a lot has changed over the years, Sabrina shares that it has changed, but not by much. According to conversations she’s heard around, CMOs often last for around 4 years before moving on. A few years ago, the shelf life for CMOs is usually 18-24 months before moving on to another or building their own company. Sabrina then asks if I would go back. “Not for two seconds. I hung up my gloves, I have no desire to, and I got nothing left to prove. Most importantly, I love my life the way it is. Now I get to make a difference at scale through podcasting and writing. I’ll do some advising and I still enjoy that very much, particularly under the right circumstances. But no, I don’t have any desire to do it. I’m at a different stage of my life like you are right, I’m in the throw down the rope stage, not continue to collect merit badges stage.” – Christopher Lochhead Sabrina agrees and thinks that even while outside Silicon Valley, the podcasts and books still fills a hole and affects the overall meta in the industry. Make It, Don’t Fake It We then talk about Sabrina’s new book, Make It, Don’t Fake It. What’s amazing about the book is that it’s almost sort of a hybrid between a business book and a memoir. There were a lot of stories from personal experiences, the most of the advice that was given has a real-life situation that she has personally been through. Sabrina shares that this structure was intentional. “(These are) The stories of my profession and my career, bring the message that I wanted to deliver to life. And I didn’t want to write a book and do a ton of, you know, external research and take yours and do surveys. I thought, I’ve got 25 years of running a company. That’s my research. “ – Sabrina Horn The Problem with Faking It Sabrina then shares one of the things that the book tackles right from the get-go. It’s the mantra of “Fake it until you make it”. Because the biggest problem with this mantra is that you’re exposed. Either you get caught up in the lie, or get exposed right from the onset. “It is initially which was sort of an innocent like tongue in cheek, little quip, right has, has become like a way of doing business a way of living. it’s an it’s a really bad excuse for bad behavior. And it’s not just, you do it at work, you do it in your personal life. And in nine times out of 10, you get caught.” – Sabrina Horn While one would think that the biggest problem with faking it is getting caught, there is another aspect of it. If you think you’ll just fake it and learn along the way, that means you are not working optimally for the job you have. Instead on improving yourself and doing better, you are playing catch-up to get the skills you said you already have. So it is better to just be yourself. Tell them what you can and cannot do, so everyone knows what to expect from you. Nowadays, being authentic can be refreshing, and it might even earn you the respect of the person who you are trying to impress. To learn more from Sabrina Horn and her new book, “Make It, Don’t Fake It”, download and listen to this episode. Bio Sabrina Horn is an award-winning CEO, communications expert, advisor, and author. Horn is currently CEO of HORN Strategy, LLC, a consultancy focused on helping entrepreneurs and CEOs navigate the early stages of their businesses. She serves as an advisor and board member for a number of organizations and is a frequent speaker at industry forums and leadership conferences. Horn’s new book, “Make It, Don’t Fake It: Leading with Authenticity for Real Business Success” (forward by Geoffrey Moore) is published by Berrett-Koehler and aims to help executives make the right decisions as they start and grow their businesses for long term success. She founded Horn Group, a public relations firm, with $500 and five years’ job experience, becoming one of few female CEOs in Silicon Valley in the early 1990s. Over a quarter century, her firm advised thousands of executives and thei

In many circles, Chess is viewed as the ultimate display of intellectual might. If you think about it, chess is a fighting game that is purely intellectual and excludes all chance. In this episode of Follow Your Different, we talk to one of Chess’ ultimate combatants, Garry Kasparov. At age 22, Garry Kasparov became the world’s youngest chess champion, and from 1984 to his retirement in 2005, he was ranked the number one Chess player on the planet for a record 255 months of his career. He is also known as the man who competed against an IBM supercomputer in 1997. Today, Garry Kasparov is a political activist and an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin. He is also the chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, and the author of the best-seller called Deep Thinking, Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins. In addition to all of this, he’s also working with a few advanced technology companies, in which I had the pleasure of meeting him. He has started working with a good friend of mine, Steve Pratt of Noodle.AI. So listen in as the three of us talk about Covid-19, the relationship between humans and machines, and how Garry jokes about being the first knowledge worker to have his job taken by a computer. Garry Kasparov and Steve Pratt on COVID-19 When asked how they were doing nowadays, Steve comments that it felt strange now that everything is slowly opening up. Nowadays, it seems weird when you see people not wearing masks when you go out, as compared to only a few months ago of masks and lockdowns. Garry shared that while it is slowly opening up in America and Europe, the rest of the world is going through a very different experience. He laments the current situation in Russia particularly, where his family and friends reside. “We know from history that the innovative power of undemocratic states is cannot be compared to the power of the free mind. It’s not an accident that the virus came from China, but the response came from the United States.” – Garry Kasparov Garry also points out the disparity on how people trust the vaccines compared to the Russian-made Sputnik vaccine. He attributes this mostly to having the proper data to prove its efficacy, which the Sputnik vaccine is sorely lacking at the moment. While there are vaccines that have lower efficacy rates compared to those made by Pfizer and Moderna, they’re still widely preferred due to the fact that they have data and tests to back those numbers up. Working Together and Freeing the Mind When asked if the low vaccination rates can be attributed to the vaccine or implementation, Garry answered that it was both happening at the same time. While the vaccine hesitancy was expected due to the lack of data on their vaccine, Russian government tried to promote Sputnik as the ultimate cure against COVID. They went as far as donating it to other countries, some of which flat-out refused, which further damaged its credibility. Moving away from Russia, Garry then compared China and the United States’ response to the virus. He notes that while China had a huge head start in studying the COVID virus, it still took them a while to create a vaccine that had low efficacy ratings. Enter US and the combined effort of the public and private sectors, and you have two working vaccines in just 10 months, both of which boast great efficacy. “So again, it’s very important to recognize that it’s this the free world, when we lift all the restrictions on risk. It could realize the wildest dreams, and somehow, I think the pandemics served us well, because it proved that we have to go back to the spirit of innovation and become pioneers, to become explorers. What’s important, again, the free world has potential, and now this potential have been exposed in a positive way.” – Garry Kasparov Human and A.I. We then talked about technology and A.I., how people are still against it in fears of somehow making an evil sentient A.I. that will rule us all. Garry explains that we shouldn’t be afraid of A.I.; rather, we should use it to its fullest potential and keep it away from the hands of bad humans. “The problem is not with the machines. The problem was bad humans that can use these machines to harm us. That’s the story of technology.” – Garry Kasperov Instead, we still blame the machine if someone used it and caused problems. So, we still limit their capabilities, afraid of things we have just fantasized about while ignoring the benefits it could bring. There’s also the argument of machines and A.I. stealing jobs from people. To which Garry comments that we should not despair if it happens. Rather, we should look forward to what we can do next, and adapt to it. Whether to learn the technology to handle the A.I., or develop something that can be used hand-in-hand with the new technology. Rather than fighting with machines, we should learn how it could work to our benefit. Because at the end of the day, machines can decide, but it’s a human’

Welcome to this very special episode of Follow Your Different. We’ll talk about one of the most anticipated startups in Silicon Valley today, HalloApp. We sit down with HalloApp founders Neeraj Arora and Michael Donohue in the first and probably only – for some time – podcast. Michael and Neeraj were two of the senior leaders who built WhatsApp, a category defining company in the messaging category. Facebook purchased WhatsApp in 2014 for $22 billion, in one of the largest tech acquisitions of all time. Today, there are over 2.5 billion WhatsApp users, and it dominates the messaging category. Now, Michael and Neeraj are on route in pioneering a new category of “Real Relationship” app. It is a new model of communication app that is a combination of messaging and social functionality in a simple, private way. They have the audacity to think they can change the future again by being radically different, and I all for it. If you are interested to learn more about what they have to offer, stay tuned to this episode. WhatsApp Never Left Stealth Mode When asked about something that most people don’t know about WhatsApp, Neeraj and Michael share an interesting story. If you’ve ever notice, WhatsApp never really talks to the press that much. It turns out that this particular quirk is something that the WhatsApp founders have developed into almost a culture, or a code if you will. It goes as such: “Brass kicks up dust that gets into your eyes and makes you not focus on the product or the company” Simply put, the higherups on WhatsApp just wants to focus on developing their products and services and let it speak for itself. Why worry about tech press when they can just impress their users with their amazing product? Plus when you create the attention, it just means added distractions and things to facilitate. Which in turn leads to less focus on the product and more on keeping up appearances. So you could almost say that WhatsApp never came out of stealth mode. HalloApp with Neeraj Arora and Michael Donohue It seems that Michael and Neeraj plan to follow the same code on their new endeavor, which is HalloApp. They will follow the same strategy of focusing on the user and the product, with minimal distractions. This practice seems unorthodox and almost counterintuitive to what current companies are doing with their products, which is to hype up their products and make it popular even before its launch. Yet for them, the focus is not to become famous or popular as an app of choice for most people. Their aim is to solve a problem, and find users that are looking for a solution. In the end, they will let the product speak for itself. “I think the product should speak for itself. That’s it. Like if you do a good job of it, if you create user loyalty and trust, you don’t have to talk about anything about yourself or at all. Like, why do you need it, right? In the end, you should ask yourself the question, “why am I doing this?” And if the answer is I’m not getting to build a better product and more users, which is the case then then why would I do it?” – Neeraj Arora Neeraj and Michael on Fast Growth When asked further on PR and marketing, they believe the current way of pre-hyping the product won’t work for them. Their goal is to have users appreciate the product that they will share it to their family and peers, and let it grow almost naturally. It’s almost like they’re going back to the word-of-mouth approach in marketing, but digitally. As for making it big, Neeraj comments that having a fast growth for a company is not always a good thing. Sometimes it even hurts your company in the long run. Neeraj and Michael would rather take it slow and build a product that will last forever, rather than aiming for large numbers at Day One. “It actually hurts you, I think, fast growth. And fast growth is like the worst thing you can do for your product and your company. You would rather take a part of growing in a very thoughtful way and growing slowly and building a product that lasts forever. (For fast growth,) You’re going to have to get a million users at day one. I think that’s not what we’re doing this for.” – Neeraj Arora If you want to hear more from Neeraj & Michael, and their thoughts on HalloApp and building digital relationships, download and listen to this episode. Bio Neeraj Arora Neeraj Arora started his career at the mobile messaging app company in November 2011, heading its business. From June 2015 to February 2018, he was also one of the Board of Directors at the Indian payments giant Paytm. Prior to that, from December 2010 to November 2011, he served Google’s Corporate Development team as the senior member, helming acquisitions and investments in an array of products across different countries. Under his leadership, Google acquired Picnik, Zagat, Talkbin, Slide, Dailydeal.de, and PittPatt among others. Before that, Arora was a Corporate Development Manager at Google from D

In this episode of Follow Your Different, Ray Wang is back to talk about how to survive and thrive in a world of Digital Giants. Ray Wang is the world’s number one Tech Analyst, and the founder of Constellation Research. He has a brand-new book called Everybody Wants to Rule the World: Surviving and Thriving in a World of Digital Giants. We talk about the points he wrote in the book, as well as other recent tech-related events and breakthroughs. This is a fascinating conversation with one of the smartest guys in tech, so you wouldn’t want to miss this episode. Tech Breaches and Cybersecurity When asked on the recent tech security breaches, Ray comments how we are vulnerable at the moment. It seems the current tech for protection available to the public is vastly outpaced by these breachers. As to why these tech breaches keep happening, Ray quotes the Willie Sutton Rule: “Because that’s where the money is.” He also thinks it is scary that if it is occurring here in the US, then how about other countries that might have less defense mechanisms in place? While you can expect corporations to have systems in place to counter that, it can be harrowing for smaller companies. Ray’s advice is that your company should always have a back disaster recovery ready to go. So if your company was unlucky enough to get hit these breachers and ransomware hackers, you can just revert your system using that backup. You might lose a few hours work due to it, but it’s better than succumbing to these malicious entities. Ray Wang: Everybody Wants to Rule the World Ray shares that when you think Digital Giants, you think large corporations. While large corporations can be Digital Giants, the reverse is not always true. It’s not about the size or the market that the company dominates, it goes a bit deeper than that. With the cost of access to fast internet and tech becoming cheaper by the minute, more people are swarming the net as we speak. One commodity that is often overlooked when moving around the web is your personal information. “First thing is, you have to believe in the fact that your personal data, genomics, and digital exhaust should all be property rights. The reason that’s important is because we have laws that talk about how you treat and give consent to property. Land rights, invention, IP and trademarks, right? The good news is property laws exist. And in every state, country, and jurisdiction, you just have to say, “look, your personal data is a property, right?” And if somebody wants to use it, you need their consent. Suddenly, boom, you actually now have a whole economy around data. You’ve actually put the ownership of data back in the hands of the people that are creating that data.” – Ray Wang So why is this important? Because for something that should be property, we seem to be giving it away easily in exchange for simple access. These Digital Giants then use that information to further benefit on our behalf, turning you into a product rather than a user. Amazon, the Ultimate Digital Giant Ray elaborates further by comparing Facebook and Google, and how these two Digital Giants operate. What’s fascinating is how Google is often perceived as the good guy, while Facebook is the bad one. When in truth, both giants have the same aim, it’s just that their delivery varies. While talking about these two giants, Ray brings up the ultimate digital giant, Amazon. Why is it the ultimate digital giant? Unlike Facebook and Google, who are focused on one or two aspects to dominate in, Amazon seems to have its fingers dipped into multiple cookie jars. “Amazon is the ultimate digital giant. I mean, it’s got ads. It’s got search. It even has subscriptions via memberships and prime. It’s got the goods and the services and their own network that’s on the back end. So that’s really what’s going on. We see a rise of these things called Digital Giants that have dominated markets, but they’re battling each other out for every digital monetization model there is.” – Ray Wang Want to learn more from Ray and how to thrive in the world of Digital Giants? Download and listen to this episode. Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and authors a business strategy and technology blog that has received millions of page views per month. Wang also serves as a non-resident Senior Fellow at The Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center. Since 2003, Ray has delivered thousands of live and virtual keynotes around the world that are inspiring and legendary. Wang has spoken at almost every major tech conference. His ground-breaking bestselling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray’s new book about Digital

Trust is a cornerstone of society. It’s the seminal component that’s required for everything to work, including everything in business. Professor Sandra Sucher says that trust at every level of business and society has never mattered as much as it does right now. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Professor Sandra Sucher talks about The Power of Trust, and how companies could earn, lose, and regain people’s trust. So if you are interested in learning about the different levels of trust across different levels in business, stay tuned to this episode. Why Trust is Important When asked what she thinks is the most important thing to learn about trust, Professor Sandra points out that it is important to know that trust is a type of relationship. It’s a relationship of almost like trusting your vulnerabilities to another person and believing in their actions. While not entirely quantifiable, this insight makes us aware of how we should handle trusting another person, whether in business or in our daily lives. “This is not like terra incognita, to any of us. And it says the trust is something you can get your arms around. It’s not ether, nor magic. And it’s not fairy dust. It’s resolved.” – Professor Sandra Sucher Knowing this, we now have an idea as to where to think about how we can become a trustworthy person. Culture and Trust in the Company One of the things Professor Sandra have found in their research is that developing culture in a company is also based on trust. People often associate culture as a kind of reputation management, more on handling how people think about them and the company. Though it’s better defined as building trust from within. When the people in your company trust the management and the company, they will be more invested in making it better. They trust that the company is doing its best, so they should do their best as well. “So if you don’t have trust inside the company, kiss it goodbye. It’s not going to get it outside the company.” – Professor Sandra Sucher   Trust is a Judgement Call Professor Sandra also defines trust as a judgement call people make, based on different factors that they perceive from someone. In terms of business, it could be with regards to their competence, their motives, and whose interests they are serving, among other things. Another thing to note is that people also focus on how companies treat their people. So it’s not just about getting results. How you accomplish your goals also matter. Professor Sandra thinks that one of the key things that set them apart from other research is their focus on Impact. While that previous point pertains to knowing how they interact with equals and those who work below them, a person or company’s impact pertains to how they affected others with their actions, whether directly or indirectly. This is quite important because then, you are basing your judgement on actual experience rather than information from second to third hand information. With all this information, at hand, we make our judgement call. Are they competent? Do they care about other people’s interest? Have their actions impacted you in some way? If that was the case, did they take accountability for unintended impacts? So while you can’t entirely quantify how Trust can be gain or lost by a company, having these parameters to have an estimate is a great way of gauging the current level of trust. To learn more about Professor Sandra Sucher and The Power of Trust, download and listen to this episode. Bio Sandra Sucher Sandra Sucher is a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, where she has been teaching for the last twenty years. She’s an advisor to the Edelman Trust Barometer, and has spoken about trust at Edelman and numerous companies and at Harvard Business School events. She provides expert commentary for Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR and Fortune. Prior to teaching at Harvard, Sucher had a two-decade career as a senior level executive and business ‘fixer,’ specializing in uncovering complex organization problems and creating new ways to address them. She lives in Massachusetts. Links Learn more about Sandra: Harvard Business School Profile LinkedIn: in/Sandra-Sucher Twitter: @SandraSucher Check out her new book: The Power of Trust We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

We are living at a time where the world needs breakthroughs more than ever. People who want to develop the ability to create a different future have never been more in demand. Though in order to do this, we need models and framework, as well as ideas and inspiration to help create those breakthroughs in our lives and businesses. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Dr. Michael Wade shares with us on how to see the world with fresh eyes and the power of different thinking. He also explains how to navigate such that your breakthroughs can actually come to life, and so much more! Professor Michael Wade’s new book, Alien Thinking, blows open much needed research and insight in this regard. ALIEN is actually an acronym that he and his co-authors came up with, and it stands for Attention, Levitation, Imagination, Experimentation, and Navigation. If you want to know the story behind it, stay tuned to this episode. The Definition of a Breakthrough The conversation starts of by establishing their definition of a breakthrough. When talking about a breakthrough, Dr. Mike thinks that it should be something a large improvement, or something that hasn’t been done before. It has to be enough to take something to the next level. “It’s not just having an idea, which is hard enough. It’s about taking that idea and kind of break through the process to become a breakthrough solution.” – Dr. Michael Wade Which is not to say that small changes and incremental innovation is bad. They are great for optimizing those big breakthroughs you have further down the line. It can also help you reach some short-term goals for yourself. Dr. Mike just chooses to focus on studying and looking an eye out for breakthrough innovations. Exponential Breakthroughs are Harder to Reach When asked why people seem to find it easier to go incremental than exponential, Dr. Mike thinks that we are simply not built for it. It takes extra effort to break away from the norm and challenge our usual assumptions about how things are done. If you can’t even bring yourself to challenge those assumptions and preconceptions, making a breakthrough will just be a pipe dream. ALIEN Thinking with Dr. Michael Wade Dr. Mike talks about how they try to break down what it means to do something original in an original way. This is because having an exponential or radical innovation often requires being original. Which is why the title of the book, Alien Thinking, fits so well with the idea. Aside from the acronym it stands for, the metaphor of the alien can help you see things in a fresh perspective. “Every day, we go through life without really questioning things after a while. So what we’re challenging people to do when they read the book is to see the world like an alien, and see things for the very first time without preconceived notions about the way things should work. So a lot of what we talked about in the book is about is about how to do that how to regain that ability to see things in, in new ways with fresh eyes.” – Dr. Michael Wade To hear more from Dr. Michael Wade and how to see the world through Alien Thinking, download and listen to this episode. Bio Michael Wade is a Professor of Innovation and Strategy at IMD and holds the Cisco Chair in Digital Business Transformation. He is the Director of the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation. His areas of expertise relate to strategy, innovation, and digital transformation. He obtained Honours BA, MBA and PhD degrees from the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, Canada. Previously, he was the Academic Director of the Kellogg-Schulich Executive MBA Program. Michael has been nominated for teaching awards in the MBA, International MBA, and Executive MBA programs. RESEARCH AND THOUGHT LEADERSHIP Michael has published works on a variety of topics, including digital business transformation, innovation, strategy, and digital leadership. He has published nine books, more than a hundred case studies and articles, and appears frequently in the mainstream media. One of his articles was among the top 20 cited articles in business, management and accounting worldwide for five years, according to Scopus (the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature). His Latest book, published in 2019, is Orchestrating Transformation: How to Deliver Winning Performance with a Connected Approach to Change. His previous book, 2016’s Digital Vortex: How Today’s Market Leaders Can Beat Disruptive Competitors at their Own Game won multiple awards and has been translated into five languages. Professor Wade has been named one of the top ten digital thought leaders in Switzerland three times by Bilanz, Le Temps, and Handelszeitung, most recently in 2020. CLIENTS & INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE At IMD, Professor Wade directs a number of executive programs related to digital transformation, including Digital Execution, Digital Transformation for Boards, and 

We are living in a time of historical, cultural, and racial consequence in the United States. People are asking very big questions about fundamental design points around their life. How do they want to work, live and play? Many thoughtful Americans are also asking themselves about our country’s design, and the kind of future they want for themselves and their family. In this episode of Follow Your Different, we talk about all these and more with Pastor Quentin Mumphery. Pastor Quentin is a native of Chicago’s South Side and is the founder and senior pastor at New Hope covenant church. Pastor Quentin is also the co-author with Eddie Yun, Pastor Dave Ferguson and myself, of a Harvard Business Review post about justice deposits, encouraging people, people in companies for that matter to move some of their cash deposits to black owned banks. If you want to learn more about it, stay tuned to this episode. Being a Pastor in Today’s Society Pastor Quentin shares how he grew up on the south side of Chicago, and some of his influences growing up. He muses that Chicago has always been a great yet troubled city, and has the best and worst of everything. Everyone is exposed to the same extremes, though their reactions can be quite different. People clamor for change and a better future, while at the same time focus on finding ways to live at the moment. This dynamic tension of sorts is the reality that each of us is living with at the moment, and which Pastor Quentin hopes to understand. “I’m a believer that people want the best, but sometimes do the worst. And I think that part of that is just the human condition.” – Pastor Quentin Mumphery Serving God in Different Ways Pastor Quentin talks about his inspirations in church, and how they approach serving the Lord and the community in different ways. As a teen in a youth ministry of the church, they would go where the hurting people were. Whether it was the best place in town or places where you wouldn’t normally expect a man of cloth to be in, they would go and pray. “Part of what I believe it means to be a man of God and a man of faith is that we don’t just run and turn our head when trouble is there. The scriptures call us to be soft and light. And I believe part of that is showing up where light is needed.” – Pastor Quentin Mumphery When given the example of St. Christopher, Pastor Quentin wholeheartedly agrees and states that there are a lot of ways you can serve God. You just have to find the best way you can do it. Taking Things into Perspective Pastor Quentin talks about the theological and philosophical sides of being good or bad. We often see people do bad things and justify them because they are doing it for a good cause. But according to who though? If you flip that and see it from the other side’s perspective, you’re the bad one doing the awful things to them. “I tell this to people all the time, too. I said, every one of us are the villain in someone’s story. The thing is when we tell our own story, we’re always the hero. We’re always the hero, right? Anything bad to happen, it’s always someone did this to me.” – Pastor Quentin Mumphery So Pastor Quentin tells us to keep this question in mind: “Who determines whether you’re good?” It will help in considering other people’s perspective, and prevent the mindset of always having the moral high ground on things. To hear more from Pastor Quentin Mumphery and his questions for America, download and listen to this episode. Bio A native of Chicago’s south side, Pastor Quentin M. Mumphery is the Founder and Senior Pastor of New Hope Covenant Church, A contemporary urban church with classic experience in a modern environment, located on Chicago’s south east side. Pastor Mumphery previously served as Lead Pastor of Windsor Park Lutheran Church, as well as Associate Pastor of New Life Covenant Church Southeast, under the leadership of Pastor John Hannah. Pastor Mumphery received his foundation in the Kingdom at the Salem Baptist Church of Chicago, where he accepted his call to ministry as a teen in the Youth Church. In addition to his pastoral role and civic leadership, his servitude extends extensively in the field of education. Pastor Mumphery serves as a Vice President for a national education management organization, working with high-risk youth in many of the most challenged communities in the country. Pastor Mumphery is a graduate of Whitney M. Young Magnet H.S and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also received his Master’s degree from North Park Theological Seminary. A prolific preacher and teacher, Pastor Mumphery is committed to excellence in preaching through strong biblical exposition, powerful demonstration of the Holy Spirit’s power, as well as relevant ministry outside of the walls of the church to uphold the cause of the poor and oppressed. Links Website: New Hope Covenant Church Follow Pastor Quentin Mumphery: New Hope Covenant’s Pastor We hope y

According to NOAA, the US National Ocean Service scientists estimate that 50 to 80% of the oxygen production on earth comes from the ocean. Furthermore, the ocean absorbs 50% more carbon dioxide than the atmosphere does. Scientists also estimate that about 1 million species of animals live in our oceans. So to say that the oceans matter is an understatement. It’s a fact that our oceans are the reason for life on our planet. Our guest today Captain Paul Watson says, “We are the ocean.” In this episode of Follow Your Different, Captain Paul Watson shares his experience as a Sea Shepherd and what it takes to dedicate your life to be on a cause that matters to you. Captain Paul Watson is the founder of Sea Shepherd, a nonprofit focused on saving marine wildlife through direct interventions with poachers and the like. He was also a co-founder of Greenpeace, and talks about why he parted ways with the organization. That said, whether you love him or hate him, every second of this dialogue is riveting. So stay tuned. Dedication to His Cause When asked about how he got started in his cause, Captain Paul shares that even as a child, he had always helped animals that needed it. He would free them from traps that he found around his hometown. Captain Paul then took it to the next level by cofounding Greenpeace Foundation back in 1969, and eventually established Sea Shepherd in 1977. As for the challenges he has faced, there was a particular one that stuck with him. This was back in 1973, when he was a volunteer medic for the American Indian Movement. Even as they were surrounded and overwhelmed, Russell Means said this to him: “Well, we’re not concerned about the odds. And we’re not concerned about winning or losing, we’re here because it’s the right place to be the right thing to do in the right time to do it. Don’t worry about the future, focus on the present, what we do in the present will define what the future will be.” – Russell Means   The Sea Shepherd Society Captain Paul talks about the activities of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and their partnerships with several countries to protect marine wildlife. As most of their activities tend to cross over country boundaries, cooperation and coordination with local authorities is important in having an effective campaign. He then further explains that 40% of the fish that is caught in the world is illegally caught. By illegal, it either was caught by fishing vessels crossing country boundaries without permission, by illegal or unsustainable means, or by overfishing certain species of fish due to demand. Yet no one questions how their favorite fish arrives in the market. Worse still, not all of the fish that are caught are for human consumption. “The other problem we have is that a good percentage of the fish caught isn’t even eaten by people. It’s fed to animals to pigs to chickens to house cats, to domestic salmon to fur bearing animals. 2.8 million tons of fish go just for cat food all the time.” – Captain Paul Watson   Plundering the Oceans Captain Paul points out that it’s sad that not a lot of people seem to understand how devastating it would be for everyone if we continue this way. Plundering the oceans is causing incredible diminishment in both its biodiversity and interdependence. As he said before, we are the ocean. If the ocean dies, we die. Simply put, the ocean is the life support system of our planet. The ocean plays a huge role in our lives: from providing many households with food, down to the air we breathe.  Did you know that 70% of the oxygen we breathe are generated by Phytoplankton? Yet since 1950, we have lost 40% of our phytoplankton populations in the sea. This means less oxygen for everyone. This also means less food for certain marine life, which then provide nutrients to phytoplankton to thrive. Hence the destructive cycle continues. “The real problem that we have is we have this anthropocentric point of view, we look on the planet, as it’s all about us. Everything is here to serve us, we have dominion over everything, nothing is more important than we are. But the reality is, is that many species are far more important than we are because we can, we can exist without them, they can exist without us.” – Captain Paul Watson To hear more from Captain Paul Watson and how to be a mission-driven pirate, download and listen to this episode. Bio Paul Watson is the founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society – an organization dedicated to research, investigation and enforcement of laws, treaties, resolutions and regulations established to protect marine wildlife worldwide. Over the years, Paul Watson has exhibited a remarkable diversity in his activism, including: Co-founder of Greenpeace in 1972 and Greenpeace International, 1979 Founder of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, 1977 Field Correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife, 1976 to 1980 Field representative

In 2020, Amazon.com became an essential service in America. The company is now worth $1.6 trillion, and has become one of the greatest B2B companies in history, the Category King of E-commerce. Amazon Web Services is also the fastest growing B2B tech company ever. It’s shocking that one company is dominating on both the consumer and enterprise technology side in a way that we’ve never seen one company do before. On this episode of Follow Your Different, our guest today is the expert on the Amazon Way. As a matter of fact, he wrote the book on it.  John Rossman is an extraordinarily sought-after author, speaker, and thinker in business, because he is teaching all of us how to be like Amazon. John Rossman is the author of The Amazon Way, a former Amazon Leader and Managing Partner at Rossman Partners.   In his new book, John breaks down the Amazon leadership principles and how we can learn to innovate and compete in the digital era. So if you’re interested in learning more, you’ll love everything about this conversation. Compete Differently John Rossman shares what his inspiration was to making the book. For him, it was a matter of getting the word out and letting people know what you can learn from Amazon’s business strategies. You can then use these to incorporate into your business culture and leadership approach so you can better compete in the market. “That’s kind of the fair way that I play. And I just love the notion of like, we got to compete differently and that is what you Amazon is teaching us. That’s what I try to take away and give to my readers.” – John Rossman The American Story John talks about a bit of history on how Amazon came to be, and thinks that it doesn’t get highlighted enough that Amazon and Jeff Bezos is the American Story people aspire to have. He’s someone who bet on himself, left his cushy job and went all in on his idea. It took Amazon literally two decades to become the juggernaut we know them to be right now, and it was not without its problems. Though despite these problems, Amazon continued to push on and in these bad times came the leadership principles that they continue to follow to this day. “Those are the leadership lessons I learned so much from and his consistency in beliefs, like them or not, at least they’re consistent, and they’re super well-articulated. And so I think that that is a big story that that doesn’t get told enough.” – John Rossman Pushing On Despite Criticisms John recalls how it was like in the early 2000s, particularly on how media and the public perceived Amazon. Other entrepreneurs and business leaders didn’t believe that they could succeed, and they were always doubted. Yet when you look at Amazon today, it’s as though it is an essential service for everyone. That’s saying a lot for something that is owned by a private entity. He also shares how Amazon handled the situation once the pandemic hit. Unlike other businesses and services that bided its time and waited, Amazon focused their attention on how to deliver the best service they could despite the on-going situation. To say it paid off would be the understatement of the year. “All you remember the days of like, the grocery store shelves being barren and everything, right? Amazon was the answer, dude on toilet paper for Fox, and food and things like that. They did an amazing job at quickly shifting, and the thing I was pointing out to everybody is like, it didn’t happen by accident.” – John Rossman To hear more from John Rossman and on how your business can be like Amazon, download and listen to this episode. Bio John Rossman Digital and Innovation Advisor Mr. Rossman is an expert at digital business models, operations and organizing programs. He has led engagements on developing innovation processes, Internet of Things strategies, marketplace and API driven platform business models. He is a sought-after speaker on creating a culture of operational excellence and innovation. Mr. Rossman has worked with clients across various industries, including retail, insurance, education, healthcare, consumer products, industrial products and transportation. Mr. Rossman’s notable assignments include The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Microsoft, Nordstrom and several of the world’s leading retail and insurance organizations. Prior to Rossman Partners, John was a Managing Director at Alvarez and Marsal, a performance improvement consulting firm. Prior to A&M, John was an executive at Amazon.com where he launched the Marketplace business and third-party selling platform, and ran the merchant services business. Links Connect with John! Website: The-Amazon-Way.com LinkedIn: in/John-Rossman Twitter: @JohnERossman Get the Book: The Amazon Way:  Amazon’s 14 Leadership Principles We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Faceb

In this episode of Follow Your Different, we continue our run of legendary authors with today’s guest, Scott O’ Neil. He is the author of a hot new book called Be Where Your Feet Are: Seven Principles to Keep You Present, Grounded, and Thriving. Scott O’Neil is the CEO of Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment. Which makes Scott the CEO of: The Philadelphia 76ers of the NBA The New Jersey Devils of the NHL The Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey Dignitas, a pioneer in eSports A number of minor league teams A Venture Fund Real Estate developer / investor An Innovation Lab Today, we get to hear what it takes to manage not one, but two of North America’s elite professional sports teams, and how they have dealt with COVID and its effect on the category. We also dig in to Scott’s view on what sports role is in society, and how leaders should deal with social change and justice. Of course, we’ll have Scott pop the hood on how they turned the 76ers around and make them a winning team again. So if you love taking the long term in business and trying to figure out how business can make a difference as well as be successful, you’re going to love everything about this episode. The Role of Sports in Society Scott talks about his enthusiasm on work, and being able to do so in areas that could use the work generated by his businesses. Though at the end of the day, he says that he is more of a “run to work, run home” type of guy. He also shares his thoughts on the role of sports in a society. While there are some that argue that it shouldn’t have that much of an impact and influence, it is undeniable that it’s there. The question now is, how do you use that influence to make the world a bit better than before. “The argument is, sports shouldn’t have this kind of influence and impact. And I say, great, it does. I actually have an opportunity to help people and drive change in communities and bring people together and create community. Coming off a pandemic, where we’ve had a year of being isolated, I don’t think there’s a better platform to build and deliver what we need more than anything else in the world right now, which is connection, and a bit of escapism, and community. And to do that where I get to do it every day is quite a blessing.” – Scott O’Neil The New Roaring 20’s When asked about how some companies are already gearing up for the end of the pandemic, Scott thinks that we are on the verge of a new Roaring 20s, much like what happened in the 1900s. He is not far off the mark on this. Wall Street Journal has reported that companies today have more cash on hand than at any point in history, and the US consumer is wealthier now than at any point in US history. Which sounds so insane in the heels of this pandemic. As the desire of people to reconnect and the mental health strain of being isolated escalates, there will be a huge demand for the category that builds up community and togetherness in the future, as everything opens up again. “So you can imagine to watch an NBA game and be the only fan which I was at the game. I had this incredible boost of mental health, which I think is going to be the next great challenge over the decade. I think all this isolation and separation and anxiety that that we are feeling is going to put quite a bit of strain on us as leaders, as dads and moms, and people in the community. As we’ve set out to define what that new normal is, I just felt the boost of of kind of happiness and energy and connection. I will say that I think these roaring 20s are going to be coming at us just like they were in the 1900s.” – Scott O’Neil Being Role Models Scott then shares his insights on players and executives as role models for the future. While he thinks that our Frontliners make for better role models, players should not disparage themselves in this regard. Being in a sport that has a massive reach, whether you are an NBA player or an eSport star, means that you have an audience that you can influence one way or another. So be a great role model for them, so that they in turn can be role models for their community. “The reality is the world has changed. Those of my peers who scoff at TikTok influencers, or YouTube stars, or Instagram famous people, I got to tell you: you guys are missing the boat. The reality is, they have as much or more impact and influence, then the athletes that were playing that they’re playing on our courts and skating on our ice. And the reality is, is it’s about scale and audience and messaging, and in our players having to do a phenomenal job.” – Scott O’Neil To hear more from Scott O’Neil and his insights on business and the Roaring 20s, download and listen to this episode.   Bio Scott O’Neil is the Chief Executive Officer of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, an organization with the mission of building passionate, high-performing teams that inspire people to enhance t

Creativity, innovation, and collaboration. These are words that get thrown around a lot in business. Yet too many business environments and company culture cultivate the exact opposite. In this episode of Follow Your Different, we discuss what business leaders, entrepreneurs, and creators of all times can learn from some of the greatest musicians in the world. Our guests today are Panos Panay & Michael Hendrix, the authors of a rockin’ new book called “Two Beats Ahead: What Musical Minds Teach Us About Innovation”. Dr. Deepak Chopra says, “For a long time, researchers have that musical intelligence can awaken the non-linear mind to healing, creativity, and innovation. This book is a roadmap for innovators, entrepreneurs, and those seeking new avenues for exploring and reimagining the future.” You’ll want to stay tuned for this dialogue about the power of music as an insight to innovation and creativity. Pay close attention to why musicians are constantly creating and not editing, the power of curiosity, and their thoughts on how to build a legendary team. Music is Everywhere When asked why music seems to be all around and how it affects us, Panos Panay thinks it’s because music is primordial. Even as we are in our mother’s womb, our sense of hearing develops before everything else and we get exposed to our mother’s heartbeats. For him, there’s something really elemental about music that is unlike anything else. “It’s the most basic human sense. It’s what connects us to our humanity. And I would say what connects us to the broader universe. That’s the universe is made of sound. Ultimately, we are made of sound.” – Panos Panay Building Designs that Delve into the Unconscious Michael Hendrix talks about Embodied Cognition. Simply put, it is the understanding of the world though our bodies, specifically through our five senses. What got him interested on the topic was when he started to wonder why some designs do better than others. What he found is that it all boils down to how it feels when using said design. If you are given two tools with the same functionality but one feels more weighted or balance, chances are you’ll buy that one over the other. “There’s been plenty of studies that show that we humans give importance to thing that have weight. So in design, and we that’s translated, for example, the tension on a car door is increased to make the car deal for heavier when you shut it. So you feel safer in the car, because they’re actually been valued. They’ve been engineered to be so light to make the fuel efficiency better. But if you didn’t have that tension, you wouldn’t have the resistance. And you would go, oh man, this thing’s too flimsy.” – Michael Hendrix Panos adds that this was a problem with the early designs for electric vehicles, which they discussed in the book. They were designed to be lightweight for energy efficiency, but that backfired on itself. People thought it was too light, therefore it might not be as safe as traditional vehicles. So that’s one more thing to think about when creating your product designs. Something Different Michael talks about their book, Two Beats Ahead, and their thought process when writing it. First and foremost, they didn’t want it to be like most business books out there. While they are informative and helpful to some, it’s not exactly fun reading them. So they are committed to not writing one of those books. They want something that is not repetitive and redundant to the point of making you exhausted by the end. Their aim was to write a book that was full of surprises and fun to read from cover to cover, while sharing their thoughts and insights at the same time. “As we were talking about beginning, the first chapter is about listening. It’s about opening yourself up to the things or the unexpected around you, not prejudging them. So we thought what a better way to start the book than to start the book with 12 blank pages. That before you read anything, they force you to confront this idea. And then if you confronted it, and you’ve been confused by it, you’ll get into the book and you’ll sort it out. We wanted that to be the first thing you experience.” – Michael Hendrix   To hear more from Panos Panay & Michael Hendrix and their legendary insights, download and listen to this episode. Bio Panos Panay Panos A. Panay is the founder and current managing director of the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship (BerkleeICE) as well as a passionate entrepreneur, educator, and startup mentor. As the founder of Sonicbids, he created the leading platform for bands to book gigs and market themselves online, building a subscriber network of 550,000 bands and 35,000 promoters from more than 100 countries. He led the company as CEO for 13 years, from its inception until after its successful acquisition in a deal backed by Guggenheim Partners.  Panay is also the c

There’s scams, crimes, and frauds. Then there’s what Bernie Madoff did. CNBC says that he committed the nation’s biggest investment fraud. The Wall Street Journal called it “the biggest ponzi scheme in history.” At sentencing, Judge Denny Chin called Madoff’s crimes “extraordinarily evil”. In the end, many people lost everything they had. For those who are unaware, Madoff stole $19.5 billion, which he said had grown to $64.8 billion. Though not a single dollar or penny was ever invested in anything. He stole it, plain and simple. Jim Campbell joins us in this episode of Follow Your Different, as we cover his book about the topic. His book, Madoff Talks, is already being considered as an authoritative source on this massive crime committed by Bernie Madoff that impoverished thousands of investors around the world. What you are about to hear is a deep, shocking, and riveting dialogue that takes you through it all. From how Madoff did it, to the systemic problems with US regulators and the ongoing failure of the SEC. The Hows and Whys of the Book When asked how the book came to be, Jim talks about how he had built a connection with Bernie Madoff. What started as a simple correspondence culminated in over 400 pages of communication over several years. Jim figured that with all the information he has, it would be a shame to not do anything with it. So began his mission to investigate and sort out the truths and lies about Madoff’s claims. As to why he wrote the book, he had 3 major motives for it: He wanted to know how Bernie’s mind operated The architecture of the whole failure: It was not just Madoff acting alone, but the system enabling him to do so Whether or not Madoff’s family knew about it  “The mission to expose the failure of the system is the real takeaway of the book. People were interested in the sexy part: Bernie talking, what did Ruth know, and how the heck did he get away with it. Which is all fascinating and riveting stuff, but the takeaway is this is what had happened and how it happened.” – Jim Campbell How Madoff Exploited the System Jim shares how Madoff worked his way around the system, subverting 5 SEC investigations before someone finally figured it out. Madoff did so by exploiting the system itself, in small ways to keep it unnoticeable. What surprised Jim is how Madoff ran a legitimate, squeaky-clean company to hide his other dealings. So while the company took the brunt of investigations, they couldn’t catch him on anything. Simply because there was nothing to catch on that front. He further explains that the SEC did not have the right examiners on the case. They kept exonerating him on the wrong crime, which was Frontrunning. The final piece of it was the examiners were never allowed to talk to anyone else in the firm except for Bernie or his right-hand man. “So he blocked them, he took advantage of the silos, and they kept investigating the wrong (thing). They chased the wrong rabbit.” – Jim Campbell Penalties, or Lack Thereof Jim goes on to iterate how Bernie Madoff gamed the system and played to its weaknesses. By studying how individual silos operate and the lack of communication thereof, he got away with a lot of things. What’s fascinating and horrendous at the same time is that he could’ve easily been called out on his subterfuges had people been more thorough in their line of work. Yet Bernie had a trick for this as well, by usually calling in right before the weekend or after trade hours and seemingly burying details in “paperwork”, or having to check in a foreign office that doesn’t really exist. When asked if heads rolled after the whole ordeal was made public, here’s what Jim Campbell had to say: “The SEC reports were excellent reports. None of them were censored, so you got to give them credit. Except they issued it on a Labor Day weekend, with hardly any coverage. Eight people were demoted at the SEC, none at the management level. So yeah, nobody was penalized.” – Jim Campbell   To hear more from Jim Campbell about Bernie Madoff and the damage his actions has wrought, download and listen to this episode. Bio Jim Campbell is the host of the nationally syndicated radio show Business Talk with Jim Campbell. He is known for his hard-hitting interviews of leading figures from the worlds of business, politics, and sports. Known for “firsts,” Campbell snagged the first extensive interview with former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer after his resignation, the first interview with former Tyco CEO Denis Kozlowski after his release from prison, and the first broadcast interview with former stock analyst Roomy Kahn, a government informant in one of the biggest insider trading busts in American history. Campbell’s extensive corporate, consulting, and entrepreneurial business background includes roles at KPMG Consulting, Dean Witter Financial Services (now Morgan Stanley), and IBM. He is founder and president of JC Ventures, Inc., a management consulting business. Links

It’s easy to make the case that we are currently living at the most comfortable time in history. A lot of things are accessible to us with a push of a button. From getting information, entertainment, and even communicating over long distances, there’s an app to solve our problems. Though according to our guest, Michael Easter, we are having a “Comfort Crisis”. According to the US CDC, 73.6% of Americans are either overweight or obese. That said, Obesity is a global problem, with at least 2.8 million people dying from it each year. Our mental health is not exactly doing great either. Nearly 8 in 10 adults say the coronavirus pandemic is a significant source of stress in their lives, as reported by the American Psychological Association. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Michael Easter discusses how we need to be active and outside to have a legendary life. We also talk about how to “embrace discomfort to reclaim ourselves”, and why being hungry is legendary. The Comfort Crisis Michael Easter shares how much more comfortable we are living right now compared to before. You don’t even have to go too far to compare; most of our modern-day comforts didn’t even exist a couple of decades ago. According to Michael, the main issue with all this comfort is that nowadays, getting something you need takes little to no effort. This means have to move around less and being less active. This can lead not only to physical degradation, but mental health problems over time. “We are moving about 14 times less than our ancestors. We spend 95 percent of our time indoors, and spend 11 hours and 6 minutes a day engaging with digital media. So we went from never having these digital media in our lives to now it’s essentially become our lives. And that’s had consequences for our attention, or awareness, how we spend our time and also our interactions with others. Things have really changed, and we’re too comfortable now.” – Michael Easter Changing The Perspective One of the things Michael wants to point out is that we tend to take for granted how good we have it nowadays because we are constantly surrounded by convenience and comfort. We can’t really appreciate them unless there were periods of struggle or challenges to acquire them. It’s like going to your favorite restaurant almost every day compared to only going after a long and tiring business trip. You tend to appreciate it more compared to when you are having the same thing almost every day. “We don’t have these moments that push back and are essential. Essentially, what are First World Problems anymore? So I think getting yourself out of your comfort zone in a variety of ways can do that, and give you a little more perspective on your life.” – Michael Easter   Challenge Yourself Michael talks about how children are raised differently nowadays. Some parents only let their children do what they think is best, rather than letting the children experience it themselves. This often leads to mental health issues when they go out into the world. They can’t cope with the daily struggles and challenges because they weren’t allowed to experience them beforehand. Michael explains this concept as toughening. He adds that it is important that we insert real challenges in our lives from time to time. Not only as we are growing up, but even as adults. “In the book I talked about, there’s a guy whose name is Marcus Eliot, and he’s sort of the foremost sports scientist in the world. He does this concept that he calls Misogi, where once a year, they choose one challenging, truly epic task. The only rules are that it has to be really hard, meaning that you have a 50% chance of finishing it, and number two, you can’t die. These are things that are truly out of their comfort zones and so challenging for them. But they learn something about themselves by getting put into position where “Damn, I really want to quit”, and “this is awful”. When he does this with athletes, those athletes can carry that mindset into the games they play.” – Michael Easter To learn more about Michael Easter and how stepping out of your comfort zone can be legendary, download and listen to this episode. Bio Michael Easter is a leading voice on how humans can integrate modern science and evolutionary wisdom for improved health, meaning, and performance in life and at work. He travels the globe to embed himself with brilliant but often overlooked scientists, thinkers, and people living at the extremes and shares the best of his findings and experiences in books, articles, and other media. Michael’s investigations have taken him into ancient monasteries in Bhutan, US Special Forces training grounds, high-tech genetic labs in Iceland, Fortune-500 boardrooms, the world’s most remote wilderness areas, and more. His work shows science has many answers. But it also shows that many aspects of the human experience and living well cannot be measured. To that end his work often c

As children, most of us had a wide range of interests, ideas, and dreams. We all wanted to do and be a lot of things. Though somehow, Life can beat us up. Sylvie Leotin grew up pursuing those interests and dreams. She did ballet, became a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and now a Healthcare Entrepreneur. Sylvie also has a deep background in engineering, robotics, artificial intelligence, as well as product marketing and management. She is also a cancer survivor.   As a woman of color who have dealt with cancer, Sylvie has had a front row seat to the racial injustice faced by minorities in the American Healthcare System. So like other legendary missionary entrepreneurs, Sylvie decided to do something about it. She founded a company called Equify Health, and is on a mission to “elevate the experience and outcomes of patients of color in healthcare and medical research”. In this episode of Follow Your Different, we have a very real, very deep, and personal conversation with Sylvie Leotin about empathy, survival, entrepreneurship, and many more. Sylvie’s Mission As someone who has navigated through the American Healthcare System, Sylvie Leotin knew the hardships that a person of color goes through to get proper healthcare. So when the COVID pandemic started, she started looking into reports on mortality rates and such. What she found was heart-breaking. She learned that people of color were dying at higher rates. Upon digging further, she observed that it was not just for COVID or cancer-related ones, but every serious chronic illness. “As a cancer survivor and someone that got a second chance to live, I felt really deeply distraught. I really felt that this is unfair. It really shouldn’t be your race, your ethnicity, that is dictating that you have a right to health. So I started to do some research to look into this more deeply.” – Sylvie Leotin  Using Her Setbacks as Motivation When asked why she felt deeply connected to this cause, Sylvie shares that it was probably because she battled cancer and experienced these healthcare issues herself. While she would still be distraught and concerned about these issues regardless, she feels that she wouldn’t be doing all she is doing right now had she not had cancer. “I think cancer took me close to mortality, close to being hopeless, close to feeling the biggest pain that I have ever felt in my life. And I really understood what it’s like to be so sick, that you can die of the sickness. I don’t think I would’ve understood if I just knew people, or even my family who died of cancer. I think cancer really opened up this huge well of compassion inside me, for the suffering of people in the world, but even more specially for the suffering of people that are affected by life threatening illnesses. And if there is anything I can do to help change that and make some people less hopeless, it will be a life worth living.” – Sylvie Leotin Mission-Driven Entrepreneurship Sylvie talks about how she had the insight on her current mission. As a designer, she can see the things that were poorly designed in the system as she experienced things firsthand. If she can relate it to healthcare providers, it can make a difference for future patients. The opportunity to turn her pain and experience into easing the experience for other people felt transformative for her. While it started as something to improve other cancer patient’s experience, it soon expanded to other serious illnesses as Sylvie saw more of the disparity and how Equify Health can help those in need. “I have witnessed so my first experience was more altruistic. But it was very visceral to go to treatment every day. While I was in the waiting room for a long time, and I was very distraught by the fact that I went to one of the top five cancer centers in the country. I didn’t see a single Black patient during my entire treatment, and I knew that this hospital is located less than three miles away from a very large black community.” – Sylvie Leotin Sylvie knew that she not only has to point out these disparities to healthcare providers, but also offer ideas and solutions to help POC and minorities who are often overlooked. To hear more from Sylvie Leotin, Equify Health and her mission-driven style of entrepreneurship, download and listen to this episode. Bio Sylvie Leotin is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, consultant, and polymath. She’s the founder/CEO of Equify Health. Equify Health is on a mission to elevate the experience and outcomes of patients of color in healthcare and medical research. A gold-medal ballerina and computer scientist, she combines a unique breadth and depth of expertise, with a keen eye for connecting the dots between disciplines, thoughts, people and ideas. Sylvie’s multifaceted career path crosses industries, continents, and boundaries. Transitioning from ballet to robotics, she made her way from France to Silicon Valley. Sh

In this episode of Follow Your Different, let’s have a very different dialogue about Sex. It seems like we might be living at a time where the very category of sex is changing, and there are a few megatrends going on. First, we seem to be in what The Atlantic calls a “sexual recession”. The Atlantic reports: “In the space of a generation, sex has gone from something most high school students have experienced to something most haven’t.” It turns out that people in their early 20s are two and a half times as likely to be abstinent. Though it’s not only limited to the younger generation. Even Gen Xers and Baby Boomers are having less traditional sex over the years. The second one is about increased loneliness. According to the HBR, rates of loneliness in the US have doubled over the past 50 years. Nowadays, around 40% of Americans say that they are lonely. The third is about Digital Sex. It has been reported that the porn industry is now worth nearly $100 billion, and uses more bandwidth than Facebook, Amazon, or Netflix. It seems that porn continues to reach new heights with the advent of new technologies and categories: In 2018, a Japanese man spent 2 million Yen on his wedding to an AI hologram. Toronto has opened a new category in the form of Sex Doll Brothels. OnlyFans has seen a spike of creators and registered users since Covid, who are mostly there for adult content. AR and VR sex is on the rise We talk about all this and more with our guests, Amy Baldwin and April Lampert of the Shameless Sex Podcast. They are here for a fascinating, no-holds-barred dialogue about Sex. This is a very frank, descriptive, and dare I say deep conversation. Sex Education Amy and April talk about the current state of sex education in the US. To most families, sex is not a topic that they are comfortable talking with their children. Though there are schools that have sex education classes, it mostly consists of anatomy and topics about abstinence. Most young adults tend to learn on their own, either through their friends, from experience, or from porn. While they do not shun consumption of porn, both think that porn should not be used as an educational tool.    “I think it really depends on where you’re growing up. Luckily, we have the internet now. But like April said, there’s porn, and we are not anti porn. We are anti porn as a sex educator, unless it’s educational pornography.” – Amy Baldwin They believe this is where they come in, to correct misconceptions brought about by bad information or unrealistic expectations people get from hearing stories or watching porn. Shameless Sex Podcast When asked about how open they were when talking on their podcast, Amy shares that they didn’t begin like that. While they do talk boldly and bravely about sexuality in their podcast, it wasn’t the case when they were younger. They also believe that we can all talk boldly about sex if we want to. “I believe we all can speak really openly and boldly about sexuality. Just like with anything, if we practice enough and we want to, (but) not everyone needs to speak the way we do.” – Amy Baldwin “It’s normalizing the conversation around sex. I think someone Emily Morris was specifically saying this treating another podcaster in sexuality, she was saying she wants to normalize sex so we can talk about it like it’s the weather and I think we do the same thing.” – April Lampert Designing Relationships In the topic of relationships, it is weird how rather than sitting down and talking about it, we just end up having to guess each other’s desires and objectives as we go along. April thinks that it’s because we find it easier to point out what we don’t like rather than honing in on the things we do. “In my opinion, and I know from my experience throughout the course of my life, I was always talking about what I didn’t want. I noticed that when I when I speak to folks, they are really great about ‘I don’t want this’ or ‘I don’t want to fight.’ ‘I don’t want to feel isolated in my relationship.’ I’m like, so what do you what do you want, then?” – April Lampert Amy shares that we have been taught and conditioned to believe that sex should be spontaneous. That couples shouldn’t talk about it; we should just let it happen. While spontaneous sex is great, Amy believes that you should have a plan for intimacy. “So I think that people are taught and this is conditioning. It’s what’s hot is spontaneity. It’s just supposed to magically happen. We’re supposed to know everything. We shouldn’t have to have these conversations, when in fact, that’s bullshit. That’s really, really the magic and these conversations can feel really good.” – Amy Baldwin To hear more from Amy Baldwin and April Lampert, the Shameless Sex podcast, and more of their insights regarding relationships and intimacy during this time of isolation, download and listen to this episode

As you know, the United States of America is in a deep, much-needed conversation about race, equality, justice and policing. This was sparked in large part by the killing of George Floyd and now his murder trial. In this very special episode of Follow Your Different, we are honored to bring you this legendary dialogue with one of the most qualified, experienced, and highest-profile law enforcement leaders in America, Dr. Cedric Alexander. You’ve probably seen Dr. Alexander on stage giving a speech or on television. Yet unlike TV, where you only get a few minutes with him today, we go deep, like you can only go on a real dialogue podcast. This is a very special conversation that you’ll surely enjoy. Reimagining Policing According to Dr. Cedric, rethinking policing is not a new thing. They have been thinking of new ways for policing to serve the community and get them involved. He said that they have made significant progress with it under the former President Obama’s directive, as part of the Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Unfortunately, it got shelved as a new administration was ushered in. Though regardless of which administration is in play, police departments and officers have to understand that the times are changing. They might get tired of the community asking for transparency from them, but this is not a bad thing. It only means that the community wants to be involved in ensuring public safety, and they should embrace that.  “Because public safety is only as strong as the public in the police department joined together, police cannot do it by themselves. And the community cannot do it by themselves.” – Dr. Cedric Alexander On Defunding the Police Dr. Cedric Alexander then talks about the calls to defund the police, and how he thinks it is the wrong approach to reimagining Policing as a whole. Police departments need that budget to do the things that solve their cases and carry out their mission to the community. What Dr. Cedric suggests is that the police should be specific on what they have to do for the community, and focus on that alone. Set standards on those specific tasks and duties, and hold them to those standards. As of right now, he believes that people are asking police to do things that they’re not trained to do. “We have to really define and be very clear about what we want police to do in our communities, and not take monies away from them. Though they need to find other monies to fund some of these other social service organizations that can get the people who are struggling with homelessness, mental health issues, and domestic issues. You don’t take that out of police budgets. You let them have what they need in order to provide good public safety. Hold them accountable to that, with some ways to measure that success.” – Dr. Cedric Alexander The Importance of Community Policing Dr. Cedric goes back to his point on Community Policing, and how important it is to build a great relationship with the community you protect. Since no matter how technologically advanced or highly-skilled your police department is, getting information to solve crimes will be harder when no one in the community is cooperating with you. That’s exactly what Community Policing means in its most basic fundamental term. It means that the police and the community have a relationship. It means that both are supportive of public safety in the community. Since at the end of the day, all that authority that comes with the police officers’ job is only as valuable as the community giving them the legitimacy to do it. “I tell police officers this all the time, you’ve been given the authority by the state. But it is the communities that give you alone your legitimacy, in order to carry out your function. When we have a trusting relationship, and we’re constantly working on that relationship, when something happens, we don’t separate from each other, we join together to try to find resolve to it.” – Dr. Cedric Alexander To hear more from Dr. Cedric Alexander and his thoughts on George Floyd, the Capitol Attacks, and more of his insights regarding the current and future state of Policing in America, download and listen to this episode. BIO: Dr. Cedric L. Alexander A visionary leader who has served over four decades in law enforcement and public service, there’s few more qualified to speak on the growing strife between race, communities, and the police. In his frequent, high profile commentary on CNN’s Amanpour, NBC News, and MSNBC, he poses the hard questions about systemic racism in our country and the need for police reform. Cedric remains front and center on these issues that have inflamed our nation. He speaks out on the violence while providing concrete solutions about how to navigate these troubled waters to address the problems plaguing law enforcement and the communities of color they serve. Dr. Alexander brings to the conversation lengthy experienc

Have you ever wondered what it takes to upend one of the oldest categories ever? To create real, radical innovation and do something that almost everyone in the industry said was impossible? If so, you’re going to love this dialogue with our guest, John Spagnola. In this episode of Follow Your Different, John Spagnola talks about how he redesigned an old category and broke through expectations and preexisting ideas in the Spirits category. He is the epitome of a pirate , dreamer, and innovator. John Spagnola is the founder of Ublendit, THE pioneer in custom Spirits category. They create custom blended spirits for hotels, bars, nightclubs, and restaurants so they can have their own unique, custom-branded and blended spirits. Ublendit: Breaking the Fixed Mindset John talks about Ublendit and how he didn’t want it to be just another spirits company. At the time, the formula for making a spirits company was as follows: You build a brand, market it to distributors, and hopefully get your brand into different establishments through said distributors. There were those who commented that while John might start out with this completely new idea he had, he’ll eventually move into the same model eventually. John was having none of it. “The more I go into it, the more I thought: no, you’re totally wrong. The way you’re thinking about is totally wrong. There are so many angles that we can manipulate here, that you’re not even thinking about.” – John Spagnola John has always been into trying new things. Creating something that was game-changing and can disrupt the status quo was the dream. He feels fortunate that his investors shared the same views as he did and were willing to take risks.  Going Against the Grain John further elaborates as to why most spirits companies follow the traditional category model. Eventually, it all boiled down to how big of an investment it can be, that they think it won’t be worth their time. Most of the people who tried having multiple blends end up discarding underperforming ones and just focusing their effort to their best-selling ones. “I kind of understand where people come from for there, but there’s all these new, different elements that have opened up to allow us to, to be so versatile.” – John Spagnola John went against the grain and pushed forward with his custom-blended and branded spirits, and have not look back since. Nowadays, there are technologies that allow businesses to blend spirits in smaller scales, much like what Ublendit is doing. Yet John and Ublendit has the distinction of being the trailblazers for the category. Knowing Your Market As a Category Designer, one has to do their due diligence and know what you are working with. Otherwise, how can you change a category to something your target audience cares about? This is exactly what John did by going around and doing research on the target market. He identified what the pain points of various businesses are, and create something new that solves those issues. After doing his market research, he found two major factors that interest people. The first one was price, because they need to make money. The other one was having custom labels to promote their own brand. So John got to work in combining these two factors, and a new category was born. As for his clients, they wished Ublendit was created sooner. “The thing that stuck with me is (he said,) you’re giving me goose for $5. He literally said, I wish that I had found you 10 years ago when I started this company. I was like, well, we weren’t there yet. We didn’t exist yet. He’s like, well, now you have us forever.” – John Spagnola To hear more from John Spagnola and how to be a legendary category designer, download and listen to this episode. BIO: John Spagnola is the CEO of Ublendit, LLC. Ublendit is a pioneer in the custom spirts category. They are the first to create custom spirits for hotels, bars, nightclubs, restaurants and special events. John is also Managing Partner at Venture Santa Cruz, where they identify new markets to make a difference in and disrupt them. He’s based in Santa Cruz, CA. Links: Website: Ublendit.com LinkedIn: in/JohnSpagnola More about John Spagnola and Ublendit Off The Lip Radio podcast A new blended whiskey draws attention to local bartenders’ secret We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

In Hebrew, the name “Mosha” means “Salvation”. That was the name of a 13-year-old boy who was forced into a Nazi concentration camp, and spent the next five years in 18 more. Yet somehow, he lived. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Daniel Gefen shares a real, raw dialogue about his grandfather Mosha, and how he has influenced Daniel’s life and his drive to become a podcasting entrepreneur. You’ll also hear about how Daniel embraces faith, family, and philosophy to guide his life, and how he turns frustration into fascination. Mosha, the Survivor Daniel shares the story of his grandfather, Mosha. Mosha was a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. He was shot, buried alive, and hanged twice, yet he somehow managed to live on. After the war, Mosha fled to Switzerland. He had no money, no connections, and couldn’t even speak the language. While all he had was himself, he made full use of his talents. He built a farm by himself, and continued to build himself up until he had his own hotel business. Yet even as a multimillionaire hotel owner, Mosha had always strived to live a simpler life. All his focus was on how he could help others be happy. “The reason he opened the hotel wasn’t to make money. The reason he opened the hotel was because he wanted to serve people. That’s how he lived his life. He lived in a very small little apartment above the hotel his whole life, didn’t drive a car, and gave away pretty much almost all of his money to charities.” – Daniel Gefen Giving Voice to Others through Podcasting Daniel talks about how the more recent generations have become too focused on themselves.  While it’s not a bad thing to have some self-love, being too wrapped up with oneself can narrow one’s view. Sometimes, focusing outwardly and living for something or someone else can give you a higher purpose. For Daniel, it was giving voice to those who have long yearned to share their stories through his podcasts. “I kind of feel like my career is all about giving people exposure right through podcasting. My whole career is all about giving people the opportunity to promote and share their stories and get themselves out there on the biggest podcast. Ironically, I feel like I’m doing something that my grandfather couldn’t do.” – Daniel Gefen Don’t Lock Yourself in a Should Prison Daniel describes how his grandfather’s past trauma has also affected future generations of the family. One of the affected parties is his father and Daniel’s relationship with him growing up. Yet he doesn’t blame his grandfather nor his father for it. Instead of letting things stay as it is, Daniel strived to reach out and build a strong connection with his father. Rather than focusing on what other people should do, Daniel decided to focus on what he could do for them. He also learned to choose what’s best given the situation, rather than hoping for that perfect ending. “I have a mentor, a rabbi, who many times has said to me, “You know, do you want to be right? Or do you want to be happy? You can’t always have both. Sometimes you can. But a lot of times, you cannot have both. So what do you want? You get to choose.” ” – Daniel Gefen To hear more from Daniel Gefen and on how his grandfather inspired him to be an entrepreneur, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Daniel Gefen is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Gefen Media Group – a podcast production and booking agency helping clients build a loyal following through the power of podcasting. He is also the host of the top-rated podcast show called ‘Can I Pick Your Brain?’ which has exceeded over 150,000 downloads and was named top 26 podcasts to listen to by CIO Magazine. He has interviewed over 100 thought leaders, Billionaires and celebrities. In 2017, he was named one of the top 25 most influential influencers and has been featured in dozens of media publications including Forbes Inc, CIO, Influencive, Success Radio and over 70 leading podcasts. Daniel lives with his wife Lorren and 4 children in the hills of Bet Shemesh, Israel. You can listen to his show by searching for ‘Can I Pick Your Brain?’ on iTunes or other podcast platforms. Links: Website: Gefen Media Group Get Booked: Podbooker.com LinkedIn: in/GefenMedia Amazon Books: The Self Help Addict We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

Most leaders want to build a legendary business and be socially and environmentally responsible at the same time. Sadly, many get caught in a false dilemma between doing good in business and doing good in the world. In spite of that, there are companies that strive to do both and continue to prosper to this day. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Dr. Gero Leson shares how Dr. Bronner’s has become the pioneer in the global movement to establish socially just and environmentally responsible supply chains. So if you care about building a long term, successful business that dominates its niche and makes a giant difference in the world, you’re going to love everything about this conversation. Having an Impact on the World If you’re looking for a company that has an impact on the world, look no further than Dr. Bronner’s. They have spent 70 years showing everyone that you don’t have to choose just one to maintain good growth. They back up this claim by ranking as the second highest scoring B Corp in the world. Dr. Gero Leson attributes this success to having an authentic brand and being consistent about it all these years. He believes that the causes they address speak to the general public, particularly to people who advocate saving the planet. “There are many other things. Of course, it’s the quality of our product, no doubt. But I think it’s also the messaging and then the action (we take). It’s what we do to have an impact beyond just making soap. I think that package speaks to people, and we have a fantastic team that’s all driven by the same vision.” – Dr. Gero Leson Standing the Test of Time Dr. Gero shares his thoughts on how Dr. Bronner’s is still relevant after all these years. Despite having new ideas and products launched, they have stayed true to their desire to have more natural and sustainable products and ingredients in the market. As for their sustained growth, Dr. Gero explains that they don’t focus on it. He knows it sounds like a cliché, but that mindset helped them explore new ideas that others would find risky. “This is not about cashing out, getting a few millions in the bank and then retire and just sit on the board of philanthropic organizations. The Bronners’ and most of our executive team just love being able to make decisions and bring about change, and that drives me alive. This is the biggest fun ever. I could retire, but that would be so boring. It’s just so much fun to use your business to bring about change, honestly.” – Dr. Gero Leson Precision and Creativity Nowadays, it is normal to have your Executive offices and your production line separate.  Yet for the longest time, Dr. Bronner’s has kept it all in one place. This leads to a unique contrast of seeing everything work with exact precision, but in an environment driven by everyone’s creativity and individuality.  “It is really fun to watch normal people respond to this. I sometimes bring in the chiefs of our projects and they’re very normal people. They come there and they say, “Huh, there’s a very interesting, great atmosphere here”. Its a very unique contrast of normality, efficiency, planning and at the same time, you have wildness and independence driving.” – Dr. Gero Leson To hear more from Dr. Gero Leson and his thoughts on building a business that thrives while making a difference, download and listen to this episode. Bio: DR. GERO LESON is Vice President of Special Operations at Dr. Bronner’s, the top-selling brand of natural soaps in North America. After joining the company in 2005, he helped it transition to sourcing all its major ingredients directly from certified fair trade and organic projects. Under his leadership, Dr. Bronner’s has become a pioneer in the global movement to establish socially just and environmentally responsible supply chains. Leson speaks regularly on business, sustainability, fair trade, and regenerative agriculture. He lives in Berkeley, California. Links Website: DrBronner.com Facebook: fb/DrBronner Instagram: @DrBronner Twitter: @DrBronner Get the Book: Honor Thy Label More about Dr. Gero Leson We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

Most people would like to be more creative, and some would like to make a living with their creativity. Though without legendary role models, particularly those who are willing to get real and go deep about their experience, it’s hard to learn what it really takes. In today’s dialogue with Nasri, you’re going to learn about it and a lot more. In this episode of Follow Your Different, it is all about Nasri. His music has been streamed over 4 billion times to date. He’s a Grammy Award winning songwriter, producer, and singer who’s worked with literally the biggest names in music today. Nasri has won a Grammy Award for his works, including Best Latin Pop Album for his work with Shakira on her record Eldorado in 2017, and Best R&B album for his work on Chris Brown’s F.A.M.E. record. His band Magic! released three successful chart-topping albums with RCA Records, and he’s probably best known for their international smash hit “Rude”. He also just released a brand-new EP, a solo EP called “Here for You” to much critical acclaim. This is also Nasri’s first podcast experience, so join him and Christopher as they discuss Grammys, working with great musicians, and how to live a creative life. On Nasri Winning the Grammys Christopher starts off with the big one, and asks what it was like winning the Grammys. Nasri shares his thoughts on collaborating with a lot of talented artists and producers in the industry, and the experience of creating Grammy Award-winning songs. He also adds that nowadays, producing music is different than before. It’s normal to see five or more people being credited in one song, and that’s okay. All of it is necessary to create great music. Though it is understandable why some might be confused when they see multiple names in the credits. “Now when you make music, everybody has a little piece of everything. It’s kind of confusing when you see four or five names on a credit, or even seven or eight, nine names on a credit of a song. It’s confusing to the audience to like “Seven people wrote this song?” No, seven people didn’t write the song. Two or three people wrote the song, and then it goes through a process of like, “hey, let’s team up with this sound designer”, and they also want a piece of the publishing.” – Nasri   On Creatives Self-Producing Christopher brings up his experience on publications, and on why he chose to self-publish later on. Nasri agrees with the sentiment, and points out that it’s not a bad idea to work with a company first before trying to publish or produce on your own. At the very least, you’ll get some much-needed experience from them first and commit less mistakes when you are on our own afterwards. “I think the beginning stages, if you look at why you may need a publisher, it has made me learn a couple things, you know. To see kind of what the scope of marketing for this medium is, and that’s what I went through. In the band Magic!, we were signed to RCA Records, and I was like, “Okay, cool.” When I went now to make my solo project, I felt like I had a pretty good grip of how to market something.” – Nasri He’s also glad that he got into self-production. He talks about how he’s not on other people’s clock but his own, and he take his time and perfect his craft. “I’m in no rush. I own the master. I have nobody telling me in some sort of meeting that is not moving fast enough. That’s (part of) what I didn’t like.” – Nasri Nasri’s New EP Speaking of producing something, Nasri recently released his new EP, “Here For You”. Nasri talks about how it came to be, and how much fun it was to create. He also got into the finer details and how happy he is with its reception. “So all of a sudden, this whole thing just came together through us just being passionate about it. And some of the stories that in all the years of him making music, this is one of the first times that his wife has actually listened to the music on repeat, you know? Because generally, a lot of the stuff we make our wives are like, yeah, another pop song. They’ll listen to it once or twice and be like, “okay, cool”. But now, we went in and made some real music.” – Nasri To hear more about Nasri and his thoughts on creating great music on his first-ever podcast, download and listen to this episode. Bio Nasri With over 4 billion streams to his name, Grammy-winning artist/producer Nasri Atweh has solidified himself as a certified hitmaker. Lending his songwriting talents for artists including Justin Bieber, Halsey, Robin Thicke, Usher, John Legend, Skip Marley, H.E.R., Chloe x Halle and many more, Nasri has proven his ability to bring the best out of the artists with whom he works and elevate their art to a whole new level. Nasri was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and began singing at age 6. In 2002, Nasri won the John Lennon songwriting contest with a song he wrote with one o

Nowadays, people live at a time when discerning what’s right and wrong is getting more complex. As your choices can have profound, long term implications, it’s best to know where your moral compass lies. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Dr. Susan Liautaud talks about Ethics and why it is more than just common sense. She explains why it matters more today, and how to apply an Ethics lens to critical areas of society. This is a fascinating conversation that will matter to anyone who cares about making the world a different place. Dr. Susan Liautaud is the author of the new bestseller, The Power of Ethics: How to Make Good Choices in a Complicated World. She is an Ethics Advisor to major corporations and institutions, and also teaches Ethics at Stanford. She serves as Chair of the London School of Economics and Political Science Council. Why Ethics is Not Common Sense It used to be that people grew up on stories that gave examples of what’s right and wrong. Everything seemed black and white, and the lines in the sand were clear. In today’s world, where information is but a touch of a screen away, these lines have seemingly been blurred. Dr. Susan Liautaud uses media platforms like Facebook or Twitter as examples for this. On one hand, it serves as a tool to connect people together and have lively conversations. On the other hand, there are some that use it to bully people and spread misinformation. “In today’s world, you know, good and bad are all mixed. We are in this gray zone and things that can be used for the good like social media. Yet they can also be used for harm, like bullying on social media or spread of disinformation. So I think largely because the world has just gotten so complicated and technology and all the forces driving it aren’t really common sense for a lot of people.” – Dr. Susan Liautaud The World is Changing so Fast Christopher shares that for him, changing your opinion on something is not a bad thing. It means that you are open to new ideas and correcting your own. “If you haven’t changed your mind lately, how do you know you have one?” – Christopher Lochhead Dr. Susan agrees with this sentiment, and describes that Ethics can be the same way. The things we find ethical or otherwise can be flipped due to recent events or newly-available information. For her, it’s better to be in-the-know rather than to always stick with the old ways. “I think one of the things about ethics that’s different today is that the world is changing so fast. The complexity I referred to earlier is evolving so quickly that we need to be monitoring, instead of holding our nose and leaping into a decision and being sure that we’re absolutely right. So I don’t call it flip flopping. I call it staying grounded in reality.” – Dr. Susan Liautaud Finding Non-Binary Solutions As more people get access to information and the lines between black and white get even more blurred, people’s definition of Ethics changes even further. For Dr. Susan, this is not a bad thing. Her main concern lies with people still looking for binary solutions to solve ethical problems. Dr. Susan explains how people can get stuck behind a yes or no mindset for different situations, which limits their thinking to binary solutions. She elaborates further by using Christopher’s foil board example: “What I would say is, can’t we find a solution that is non-binary, other than you can’t foil board on a public beach. Maybe you can foil board at certain times of day, in a place where there are only foil boarders who are willing to put themselves at that risk. We get ourselves into this Yes, No, black, white, one side of the wall or the other binary thinking, and we never get to seizing opportunity and mitigating risk.”   – Dr. Susan Liautaud To know more about Dr. Susan Liautaud and how Ethics is not common sense in some companies, download and listen to this episode. Bio Dr. Susan Liautaud teaches cutting-edge ethics at Stanford University and serves as Chair of the Council (trustees) at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She advises corporations, NGOs, and governmental bodies and their leaders on internationally complex ethics matters and is the Founder of the Ethics Incubator. Links Follow Dr. Susan Liautaud here! Susan Liautaud’s website Linkedin: in/SusanLiautaudJDPHD Twitter: @SusanLiautaud Stanford profile: Dr. Susan Liautaud Find out more about Dr. Susan Liautaud in these articles: Washington Post Simon and Schuster Huffington Post We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

In today’s episode of Follow Your Different, we are joined by Behavioral Ecologist and world-renowned Elephant Scientist, Dr. Caitlin O’Connell. She spent more than 30 years studying animals in their natural habitats. Dr. Caitlin has also taught at places like Stanford and Harvard. She’s got a brand-new book out called Wild Rituals, where she explores 10 lessons animals can teach us about connection, community, and our own humanity. Her book comes out at a time in history when the human race is dealing with some pretty deep existential questions. Dr. O’Connell is here to help us deepen our understanding of ourselves by teaching us all about these legendary animals. Taking Social Rituals for Granted As the pandemic continues to keep everyone socially distant, people have started noticing social rituals and activities that we used to take for granted. Dr. Caitlin talks about the rituals in wild animal societies and how intense each social interaction was, even for something as simple as a greeting.  She further explains that in our current isolation, people have realized the importance of these rituals in our lives, no matter how basic it may have seemed.  “The reason I was inspired to write about rituals in wild animal societies was really just to remind us of how important ritual is in our own lives, and how similar our rituals are to other animals.” – Dr. Caitlin O’Connell Different, But the Same Dr. Caitlin discusses how we as a species have evolved, and how tools like language have accelerated our growth. Yet it is important to remember that everyone came from the same humble beginnings, but took different paths.  She reminds everyone we all evolved this need for ritual for the same purpose, despite the differences we display them.  “It’s easy for people to do that because we are the only species that evolved language. Then by that language, suddenly we just accelerated away from the branch on our evolutionary tree. But the thing to remember is that we all came from the same humble beginnings, whether or not we moved in another direction.” – Dr. Caitlin O’Connell The Importance of Rituals Dr. Caitlin and Christopher dive into the importance of social rituals, and why we cling to them almost instinctively. Dr. Caitlin shares that inclusion in such rituals makes us feel comfortable and connected.  “Well, rituals are very calming, they’re very soothing, they comfort us and, and make us feel connected. They, especially group rituals, when you’re doing something as a group, let’s say in a marching band or synchronized swimming, or singing with your friends to cheer your team on. They make you feel included and more bonded to the people that you’re with.” – Dr. Caitlin O’Connell She also explains that as the population grew and society became more diverse, some social rituals have evolved to help identify each other from different groups. Yet as all of these group rituals help people feel bonded to the group, rituals can also lead down a dark path. To know more about Dr. Caitlin O’Connell, as well as the dark path and how we can avoid it as social animals, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Dr. Caitlin O’Connell has been called a modern renaissance creative. She is currently on the faculty at the Eaton Peabody Lab at Harvard Medical School studying elephant low-frequency hearing while also overseeing a non-profit foundation, (Utopia Scientific) promoting the importance of science and conservation. Dr. Caitlin is an award-winning author and photographer and has been studying elephants in the wild for the last thirty years, having written dozens of scientific papers and numerous feature magazine articles and two memoirs about her experiences. She taught creative science writing for Stanford and The New York Times and co-developed the award-winning Smithsonian documentary, Elephant King. Dr. Caitlin is currently developing a new elephant docu-drama, Elephant Crown, and working on several feature movie and television scripts aimed at getting real science into popular media.  She has authored eight popular books about elephants, including an award-nominated thriller series about the ivory trade that is also being released as a graphic novel. Links: Website: Dr. Caitlin O’Connell’s Official Website Amazon Books: Wild Rituals: 10 Lessons Animals Can Teach Us About Connection, Community, and Ourselves Twitter: @Dr. Caitlin O’Connell Instagram: @Dr. Caitlin O’Connell Harvard links: @Dr. Caitlin O’Connell We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!