Christopher Lochhead Follow Your Different™

Bruce Feiler is a legendary thinker and writer and unlike in a normal interview, we go deep in this episode. Bruce has a monster new book out called Life Is in the Transitions. Today, we have a very big conversation about what Bruce calls “life quakes,” both voluntary (new job, getting married, moving) and involuntary (death of a loved one, loss of a job, divorce, etc). We also talk about why the linear, up and to the right “hero story” we get told about life is bullshit, why C19 is a collective, involuntary, life quake, what that means for all of us, and much more! Life Quakes Bruce shares how all the events that have occurred in his life led to his professional career today. He shares what he calls “life quakes” which pertains to a moment of big wrenching change that happens in one’s life. This pandemic has coincided with his book, Life is in The Transitions, which asks “how do you deal with the life quakes that happen in your lives?” Bruce even shares the “life quake” that he went through in order to have this mindset.  Involuntary and Voluntary  Bruce talks about how reading helped him discover the false narrative that is being blocked into human beings. He speaks about the narrative of life, being a linear path with only one bump along the way to success and happiness. This has led Bruce to believe that 53% of life quakes are involuntary and only 47% are voluntary, which he further explains in this episode. “I had to figure out what is going on now. How we see the world and how we need to update the way we look at our life. How do people tell their stories? This is what I uncovered. The linear life is dead. It’s been replaced by nonlinear life. The nonlinear life involves many more life transitions. That became the big idea that emerged from my experience.” – Bruce Feiler  Life Transitions Bruce shares how life quakes can either be voluntary or involuntary. Life transitions, on the other hand, must be voluntary. He advises people to make decisions that will bring back the power to control one’s life. In addition, he discusses how finding a higher calling can make you feel part of the team. A team that will help you get through your life transition together. It may rather be a rough and painful journey but it is a road paved with growth and renewal.  “If we look at life transitions as periods that we have to suffer our way through, we are wasting half of our life. If we look at them as periods, they’re going to be difficult and painful, but there’s also opportunities for growth and renewal. That’s the story of your life.” – Bruce Feiler  To know more about life quakes and the transitions that come with it, listen to this episode.  Bio: BRUCE FEILER is one of America’s most popular voices in contemporary life.  He is the author of seven New York Times bestsellers; the presenter of two prime-time series on PBS; and the inspiration for the drama COUNCIL OF DADS on NBC.  Bruce’s two TED Talks have been viewed more than two million times. Employing a firsthand approach to his work, Bruce is known for living the experiences he writes about. His work combines timeless wisdom with timely knowledge turned into practical, positive messages that allow people to live with more meaning, passion, and joy.  His new book, LIFE IS IN THE TRANSITIONS: Mastering Change at Any Age, describes his journey across America, collecting hundreds of life stories, exploring how we can navigate the growing number of life transitions with greater purpose and skill. “One of those books that’s so profoundly aligned with the zeitgeist that you end up underlining the whole book,” wrote Arianna Huffington in Thrive Global. “Bruce Feiler is the perfect person to lead us on this journey.”  The book was a Top 10 New York Times bestseller. For more than a decade, Bruce has explored the intersection of families, relationships, health, and happiness. His book THE SECRETS OF HAPPY FAMILIES collects best practices from some of the country’s most creative minds. The book was featured on World News, GMA, and TODAY and excerpted in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Parade. THE COUNCIL OF DADS describes how, faced with one of life’s greatest challenges, he asked six friends to support his young daughters.  The book was profiled in PEOPLE, USA Today, and Time and was the subject of a CNN documentary hosted by Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Links: Bruce Feiler Website 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! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.

Today, we have none other than Matthew Cowan of Next47. Matthew and Chris have known each other for almost 20 years now. He’s been both an investor and an entrepreneur and has invested in a lot of category queens and kings companies. In this episode, we have a wide-ranging conversation with Matthew about venture capital, entrepreneurship, and a whole lot more. How The Future Looks Like Matthew shares that the first question we have to take into consideration is with respect to opportunities. Every evaluation should start with the question: can businesses scale and grow in the current economic environment? He cites his company as an example, Visible, a platform that has an event management software. Prior to Covid19, they had their fair share of challenges. However, they found themselves on the positive side of this “new normal” as most companies shifted their conferences and events virtually.  “All of our customers said, ‘look, I know we can’t do these events in person, we still have to do these events. These are mission-critical for our customer relationships, and our forward progress. So we need you to help us figure out how to do events in a virtual construct.’ So very quickly Visible figured out a way to deliver you know, near term and experience that satisfies, you know, the key market requirements, and they just closed their best quarter ever by a factor of two x.” – Matthew Cowan  Invest In Product Development Today is a great time for investors to think about the early stages of a new product. Further, Matthew says this is a good time to invest in a team of engineers, lock them in, and come out with a new product to launch. He further shares why this stage of focus is critical for businesses. “It’s okay to lose a lot of money building a company you have to, but if your unit economics have never been positive, the only metric you’re going to do is figure out how fast you can burn cash.” – Matthew Cowan The Wrong and Right Way In Investing Chris cites that there is a wrong and the right way in investing. Obviously the right way is investing in things that hopefully payoff overtime and the wrong way is in unit economics that will not be fixed. Matthew agrees to Chris saying that the greater fool theory is asking: “how do I just get this to the next level and get someone else to buy it — market investors, private equity firms, and others. “I think we’re at the beginning of what’s going to be an incredible wave of continued consolidation. We’ll probably see that with the scooter companies, as well. Ride-sharing. Companies have to figure out how to create, you know, improve utilization. The way that these businesses could succeed is delivery, density, and utilization. For them to figure out a way to keep the cars full.” – Matthew Cowan on Uber  To know more about Matthew Cowan and unicorn and camel VCs, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Matthew joined Next47 in 2018 and is based in Palo Alto. His investment focus runs the gamut from the high-growth supply and logistics market to vertical software applications for the enterprise.  Though Matthew is a General Partner in the U.S., he also leads the firm’s activities in Israel and views the region as a vital source for deep tech startup activity. Before joining Next47, Matthew was the CEO and co-founder of Breezeworks, a mobile CRM platform for small business owners.  Prior to Breezeworks, he was the co-founder of Bridgescale Partners, a late-stage venture capital fund with investments in companies such as BitGo, Jasper Wireless, Plum Organics and Proofpoint.  Matthew was also the founding General Partner of Bowman Capital’s venture capital group, where he was responsible for leading investments in Arrowpoint Communications (sold to Cisco), Atheros (NASDAQ: ATHR), Broadbase (sold to Kana), epinions (sold to eBay), FastForward Networks (sold to Inktomi), Onebox (sold to Phone.com), ONI Systems (sold to Ciena), RemarQ (sold to Critical Path), SupportSoft (NASDAQ: SPRT), Sycamore Networks (NASDAQ: SCMR) and The Street.com (NASDAQ: TSCM). Matthew spent the earlier part of his career at Intel Corporation, where he was responsible for investments in CMGI (NASDAQ: CMGI), CNET (sold to CBS), Geocities (sold to Yahoo!), Illustra (sold to Informix), iVillage (sold to NBC), Launch Media (sold to Yahoo!), Liquid Audio and Sportsline, among others. Matthew holds a BA from Tufts University. Links: Next47 People – Matthew Cowan Linkedin: Matthew T. Cowan 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! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.

Tim Tully is one of the most legendary technologies and product leaders of this generation. He is the Chief Technology Officer of $35 billion market cap company Splunk. He also runs the engineering, product, and tech operations.  In this episode, we get into all of it, how to execute a big, bold product vision, what it takes to run a major technology organization in the era of COVID. Find out why Tim thinks that software needs to be indulgent in the way that it delivers an experience and much more. Born To Code Tim was at Yahoo for years. He did a ton for Yahoo’s modern business. Most notably, Tim was on the team that helped to create the open-source database Hadoop. If you’re in the tech world, you know how big a deal that is. If you’re not, well Google it and you’ll see but Hadoop is a major contribution to the data world.  He shares in this episode how he grew up from a “tech household,” as both his parents were programmers from Silicon Valley in the 70s.  “Obviously coding is one way that I can do a lot of things in a very flexible way and have a lot of control over a system.” – Tim Tully  Inside Tim’s Mind Tim shares that his thoughts are classified into two things: what he wants to try to do next or what am he wants to try to improve. He is in constant search of how to improve things and how to solve a problem in front of him. He shares that although its innate in him to solve problems on his own, the real challenge of leading a team is how to help your team solve the problems with you. “If you’re like a true engineer, it’s really hard to let go of just solving every problem yourself. You have to very quickly learn that there’s a team that needs to get the job done. You’re not helping the team by solving the problem for them. What your job is to remove roadblocks and help them solve the problem and bring them along.” – Tim Tully Leading The Team Tim also shares how he as Splunk’s CTO is responsible not only for vision but also for delivering products since he is also the head of engineering. He gave a great insight into how his team works and ultimately, how he leads his team of champions. “I learned over time is the very best architects that you can have in a company, I think we have that here at Splunk. You know, they obviously have high IQ, but they have to have high EQ because the problem is they have to be able to influence and persuade large swaths of people without directly managing them.” – Tim Tully To know more about Tim Tully and how to build a legendary software, download and listen to this episode.  Bio: Tim has served as Splunk’s Chief Technology Officer since 2017.  Prior to joining Splunk, he spent 14 years at Yahoo in various roles, including leading engineering for the Media Organization, where his teams developed leading brands such as Yahoo.com, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Fantasy, Tumblr, Huffington Post, and Flurry.  He previously served as Yahoo’s Chief Data Architect, where he led architecture across all data teams and developed much of that stack as well.  Before that, Tim served as a Member of Technical Staff at Sun Microsystems in the JavaSoft team.  Tim holds an M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. from the University of California, Davis. Links: Linkedin: Timothy Tully Splunk Blogs Author Tim Tully Splunk CEO Doug Merritt on Episode 166 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! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.

Today, we speak with entrepreneur turned activist Andy Roo Forrest. He is the founder of a fascinating nonprofit called FeelGoodVoting.org who is on a mission is to get more people in the United States to vote. We dig into why there is a low voter turnout in the past elections, and most importantly, what can be done about it now. Andy and Chris also talk about how political attacks actually destroy the category called “politician.” Moreover, why this “attacks” drives disengagement and dissatisfaction among the voters. Lastly, find out how Feel Good Voting is creatively and innovatively using social media to encourage people to register and to vote. Apathy For President Did you know who won the last election in the United States? We all know that President Donald Trump won the electoral college and that’s why he’s president, garnering a total of 63 million votes. Hillary Clinton got 66 million votes.  “But here’s the truth. Neither one of them is the real winner of the last election in the United States. You see, apathy got 100 million votes because 100 million people did not vote in the 2016 US presidential election in the United States.” – Christopher Lochhead Age and Family Background Andy shares about a recent study from Knight Foundation, surveying 14,000 people and why they didn’t vote. One thing was clear, most of those belong to the 18 to 30 age group. The participants also noted a few more reasons such as “my vote won’t matter,” it doesn’t make a difference,” or “I don’t understand what’s going on,” and “I shouldn’t vote because I don’t know enough.” “A lot of people voted because they grew up in a family where their parents took them to the polling station. They remember their mom voting, and they went into a booth and pulled the curtain, and flipped the levers. A lot of people who don’t vote have no tradition of that in their family.” – Andy Roo Forrest Old, White Voters There are a lot of factors at play for the upcoming elections since Covid-19 happened. The average voting age is 58 years old. It can be noted that over 65-year old, white voters take a huge chunk of the voting turn-up.  “It boggles some of our minds that there’s many white, older Americans who are right now deciding whether they’re going to vote for Trump or Biden, that might seem that decision might seem preposterous to many of us. But most of the money in this campaign, upwards of $2 billion is going to be spent on that demographic because they show up and vote.  – Andy Roo Forrest To know more about Andy Roo Forrest and his organization Feel Good Voting, download and listen to this episode.  Bio: Andy Roo Forrest is a serial entrepreneur, songwriter, and social change activist.   He has created restaurants, nightclubs, design studios, publishing companies, Disney Theme Park attractions, and a few experiences that don’t have names.   In 1999 Andy co-founded the world’s most prolific board game design studio, which he sold in 2019.   At the moment, he is currently the Executive Director of Feel Good Voting, an issues-based media initiative dedicated to the advancement of social justice and environmental action. Links: Feel Good Voting Feel Good Voting 3-minute video Feel Good Voting Strategy Brief 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! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.

Why is there a disproportionate impact against Black-owned and Women-owned Businesses? Today in Follow your Different, Robert Fairlie, a professor at the University of California and a researcher for the National Bureau of Economic Research, shares his research on the impact of Coronavirus on small businesses and black and women-owned businesses. Impact of COVID-19 Rob shares the alarming figures that small businesses faced. From 15 million active businesses to 12 million, to the 15% unemployment rate in just one month  (Bureau of Labor Statistics), Rob gives us facts and figures how devasting Covid-19 has impacted businesses. “I think they are starting to get become more attention focused on the business side of it and the importance of business owners. Not only do they create a route out of poverty or an alternative for income but they also create jobs.” – Rob Fairlie Impact on Black-owned Businesses Prof. Farlie says that there is a hugely disproportionate impact between White-owned businesses and African American-owned businesses. According to the data found from February to April, there’s a 41% decrease of active African-American business owners compared to a 17% decrease of active White business owners. “I’m just worried that this is going to increase racial inequality and gender inequality. It’s not just going to be for a few months as we deal with COVID, but it’s going to be longer. Retirements kind of maybe setting us back and that’s a bigger, much bigger worry.” – Rob Fairlie Impact on Women-owned Businesses One of the reasons why there is a bigger drop in women-owned businesses is because they are in industries that cater to personal services that were shut down because of health risks. Another reason is that women-owned businesses are often smaller in scale and they do not have the resources to face all the regulations to operate during the pandemic. “There has been some new research and I’m working with a couple of co-authors to try to do a little more work on this. This shows that mothers are taking a disproportionate hit compared to fathers in terms of reducing their hours of work, dealing with children, dealing with homecare. This isn’t just evidence from the US, this is evidence from a lot of countries around the world.” – Rob Fairlie To learn more about Prof. Rob Fairlie and the impact of COVID-19 on Black and Women-owned businesses, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Robert Fairlie is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Research Associate, NBER. His research interests include entrepreneurship, education, information technology, inequality, labor economics, and immigration. Further, he received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Northwestern University and B.A. with honors from Stanford University. In addition to this, he has held visiting positions at Stanford University, Yale University, UC Berkeley and Australian National University. He has received funding for his research from numerous government agencies and foundations. He has testified to the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Department of Treasury, and the California State Assembly regarding the findings from his research, and received a joint resolution from the California Legislature. Links: Linkedin: Robert Fairlie UCSC Economics Faculty: Professor Robert Fairlie Research Papers on Impacts of COVID-19 on Small Business Owners Senate Bill referencing research UCSC People: R. Fairlie THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS: EVIDENCE OF EARLY-STAGE LOSSES FROM THE APRIL 2020 CURRENT POPULATION SURVEY IZA Institute of Labor Economics: Robert Fairlie 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!

Today, we have a legendary conversation about schools and education. This is a topic that is not getting enough attention right now. With us today is Ted Dintersmith, the author of a great book called What School Could Be: Insights and Inspiration From Teachers Across America.  We talk about how we can make school work, especially today that we have a new reality. Ted has some powerful insights and some great ideas about that. We even get into how to make the weirdest school year in modern history as an opportunity to reimagine school and reimagine learning. What School Could Be Ted was with us back in 2019, at Episode 117, shortly after his book came out and he’s back as Chris digs into one of two important issues that we face today during Covid19, education. The other topic he will dive deep into is entrepreneurship. (Watch out for the next episode with the University of California. Santa Cruz, Professor Rob Fairley) He’s been talking to a lot of the top educators in the country. Further, he gives us insights as we are standing on the edge of the new school year. If you care about our future, if you care about kids, if you care about education, I think you’re going to love this conversation with Ted. Non-traditional Methods of Learning Ted shares with Christopher how he checked back with parents, teachers, school administrators, and students when Covid19 started. One outstanding finding he got was that those who were practicing non-traditional methods of learning were optimistic during this time.  “The kids they work with were really good — pre-COVID — on identifying what they wanted to learn, turning that into an initiative. They wanted to manage their own time and draw out appropriate resources, other adults’ online stuff, and then sticking with it until they proved something they cared about. In my book, with no sense of a looming pandemic. I said this is a really important skill for adults.” – Ted Dintersmith Anxiety and Stress  This time has caused much anxiety and stress for teachers and school administrators. There is no right formula and it involves a lot of variables in deciding how to operate schools come September. Chris and Ted also discussed how “inconvenient” this set-up is for those who can privileged, but how devastating this set-up could be for a single-parent, juggling multiple jobs. “Even if you had a great plan to reopen, it requires money. Now, you just start marching through everything that has to be done safely for you to say, here’s our plan to reopen. Here’s an effective transportation plan. Here’s an effective disinfected plan. Here’s how we’re going to staff classrooms, here’s what would happen to our students. Here’s how we’re going to add nurses on call. You look at everything that’s required and then you say, ‘oh, by the way, do it with even fewer budget dollars because state local budgets have been hammered.” – Ted Dintersmith To know more about Ted and how school could be during Covid19, download and listen to this episode. Bio: About Ted Links: Ted Dintersmith Twitter: @dintersmith 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! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.

Now you might be asking, why are we dealing with God on a business podcast? Well, first of all, if you’re a regular listener, you should know this is no normal business podcast. When this crisis started, we decided to steer right into this crisis, to frankly, help and scale ourselves to meet the challenge of this time. In this episode, Pastor Dave Ferguson joins us to talk about God. He is an award-winning author and the founder/lead pastor of Chicago’s Community Christian Church. His book Hero Maker: Five Essential Practices For Leaders To Multiply Leaders is a must-read. Pay special attention to pastor Dave’s thoughts on what he thinks God wants for all of us.  Evil Cloaking As Christians Chris shares with Pastor Dave what has been occupying his mind and heart in the past months. Aside from another recent family accident, Chris shares how the case of the murder of his best friend has finally come to a close. The Santa Cruz police brought his murder to justice after they captured the four murderers.  “The other thing you should know is, my dear friend Tushar, was a — and these are his words — a brown guy. They [murderers] we’re young, 19, 22, and 23. These men who murdered Tushar are white Baptists from Southern California.” – Christopher Lochhead Too Much Evil In The World Chris shares he does not expect anything from the baptist church, but at least a public denouncement of evil, especially after they learned that these murderers belonged to the said church. In fact, the father of one of the criminals is a pastor.  “But just like with the discussion around the police, Pastor Dave, are there bad police? Yes, there are. Are there bad Muslims? Yes, there are. Are there bad Christians? Yes, there are bad human beings. Evil is a very real thing.” – Christopher Lochhead Having Important Conversations Pastor David recounts to Chris a few stories he had about the racial disparity and the clamor for equality. He spoke about African-American pastors and colleagues and about his parents (also pastors) who also joined the movement to have important conversations in their congregation. Pastor David also shares what he asks others from other people who are searching for meaning. “For people that are really sincerely seeking, I’m going like ‘just continue to search that, continue to pursue that. If it’s real, because we’re talking about God, in this case, he’ll make himself real to you.’ In fact, I’ll even sometimes challenge people, ‘hey, take 30 days and just pray ‘God, if you’re real, make yourself real to me.’ There have been enough times in your history where God has proven himself real. He’s taking you down a really good path. He has consistently shown up.” – Pastor Dave Ferguson To know more about God from a completely different kind of dialogue with Pastor Dave Ferguson, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Dave Ferguson is an award-winning author, founding and lead pastor of Chicago’s Community Christian Church, a missional multi-site community considered one of the most influential churches in America.  Dave is also the visionary for the international church-planting movement NewThing and president of the Exponential Conference.  You can get more information about Dave at www.daveferguson.org or check out his latest book, Hero Maker. Links: Email  DaveFerguson.org  CommunityChristian.org   Newthing.org Exponential.org HeroMakerBook.org Book: Hero Maker: Five Essential Practices for Leaders to Multiply Leaders (Exponential Series) 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 this episode, we have an amazing conversation with the world’s number one tech analyst, Ray Wang. He’s the founder of Constellation Research and the author of a spectacular, bestselling book called Disrupting Digital Business. We talk about what’s going on with C19, is C 19 a bioweapon, and what’s going on with bioweapons. We also talk about the digital giants and stock investing. Additionally, we talked about the future of enterprise tech and much more. Is C19 A Bioweapon? As a fan of conspiracy theory, Chris asked if indeed, Covid19 is a bioweapon. Ray shares it has not yet been addressed as of the moment but deconstructing the DNA of Covid19 says otherwise. He raised a serious call for treaties among countries as bioweapons are not a thing of the future.  “Do we have offensive or defensive capabilities? And the thought crosses through every government’s mind as to, what’s required? What’s within the limits? What treaties have we signed? So I don’t think it was intentional. I think the safety protocols were definitely broken. I think it’s not necessarily something they were planning to unleash. But it was something that they were studying.” – Ray Wang Currency Crisis and Cryptocurrency Ray also shares some of his views about the current “devaluing of dollars.” They also touched on the efforts of China and Russia to push forward the use of cryptocurrencies. Ray foresees issues with the use of cryptocurrencies, from currency exchange manipulation to funding of terrorists and untraceable purchase of ammunition. “We’re seeing some massive shifts, and it’s really the attack on the dollar that has been happening for some time. It’s as if everybody is not in favor of the dollar being the world’s reserve currency.” – Ray Wang Ransomware Gangs Chris and Ray talk about some recent events where some personalities’ Twitter accounts got hacked and were asked to send back Bitcoin to get back their accounts. Aside from this, Ray shares a much deeper kind of attacks they receive, targeted to tech professionals like him. “We have insider threats, people inside companies that have either been placed, recruited, or turned. I’ll say that again. They’ve been placed, recruited, scooted, or turned to work against the US, the country or a corporation. And this, we have cyber ransom spies going to work for government agencies and or corporations, with the foreign government agencies, whether knowingly or unknowingly, they have been told that, ‘hey, if you just stick into the drive over here, for a bunch of zero-day vulnerabilities, which we’ve packaged together very well, you can take out entire networks. And you can do your part, you know, in part of the revolution, or whatever revolution you’re in.’” – Ray Wang To know more about Ray Wang and what’s going on in the world and tech world today, download and listen to this episode. Bio: R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Principal Analyst, Founder, and Chairman of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research, Inc.   He’s also the author of the popular business strategy and technology blog “A Software Insider’s Point of View”.  With viewership in the 10’s of millions of page views a year, his blog provides insight into how disruptive technologies and new business models such as digital transformation impact brands, enterprises, and organizations.   Wang has held executive roles in product, marketing, strategy, and consulting at companies such as Forrester Research, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and Johns Hopkins Hospital. His new best selling book Disrupting Digital Business, published by Harvard Business Review Press and now globally available provides insights on why 52% of the Fortune 500 have been merged, acquired, gone bankrupt, or fallen off the list since 2000.   In fact, this impact of digital disruption is real.  However, it’s not the technologies that drive this change. It’s a shift in how new business models are created. Wang has held executive roles in product, marketing, strategy, and consulting at companies such as Forrester Research, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Personify, and Johns Hopkins Hospital.  He is a prominent and dynamic keynote speaker and research analyst working with clients on digital, innovation, business model design, engagement strategies, customer experience, matrix commerce, and big data. His Silicon Valley research firm, Constellation Research, Inc., advises Global 2000 companies on the future, business strategy, and disruptive technology adoption.   Ray is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and well quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Bloomberg, CNBC TV, Reuters, IDG News Service, and other global media outlets.  Wang has thrice won the prestigious Institute

Today, we continue our run on top venture capitalists with none other than the legend, Brad Feld. He’s the co-founder of Foundry Group and Tech Stars. He’s on the Forbes Midas List and a Top Five Investor. He has a new book called The Startup Community Way.  We have wide-ranging conversations from C19, making sense of this time of hyper change complex adaptive systems, the future of startups Silicon Valley and work, and why Brad is not leaving his house. Pay special attention to Brad’s thoughts on how to deal with an unpredicted situation and where it can feel like we have a lot less control. The Three Crises Brad shares what’s on his mind at the moment, how he has stepped forward to help the governor of Colorado without leaving the confines of his home, and how he has pondered upon the three crises of the world today. “I referred to the health crisis, which is COVID, which generated an economic crisis, which we wouldn’t have had otherwise, our economy was very strong, which has generated a mental health crisis and which is subsequently generated. racial equity crisis. All of these things are interacting with each other.” – Brad Feld Complex Adaptive Systems Brad shares how he realized that all of these crises were complex systems. In fact, in his book, The Startup Community Way, he bases the entire framework of how startup communities develop and evolve on complexity theory and the notion of complex adaptive systems.  “I’ve really been soaked in that intellectually, not just in the COVID crisis, not just in the book, not just in all the dynamics around the businesses that I’m involved in, and I’m an investor in, but just sort of thinking about how as humans, we do such a bad job of understanding how to interact with complex systems. We want everything to become deterministic, linear or well defined and the vast majority of stuff we interact with isn’t.” – Brad Feld Simple and Complex Systems  Simple is making a coffee drink, complicated is designing a Boeing airplane, or conducting a business audit, and complex is raising a child. “I think a lot of people have been operating against the backdrop of believing that a lot of things are deterministic and predictive, and trying to function in a way where that is not natural. As humans, we want to control stuff. You want to understand what it is you want to do, fix things so that you’re not fighting against them and you want to get to an outcome and you want to set a goal and make a goal.” – Brad Feld To know more about Brad Feld, download and listen to this episode.  Bio: Brad Feld is co-founder of the Foundry Group and has been an early-stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987.  Brad previously co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and Techstars, and prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures.  Feld was an early investor in Harmonix, Zynga, MakerBot, and Fitbit.  A writer and speaker on venture capital investing and entrepreneurship, Brad has written a number of books as part of the Startup Revolution series, and writes the blogs Feld Thoughts and Venture Deals.  He currently is chair of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and on the boards of Path Forward, the Kauffman Fellows, and Defy Ventures.  Brad holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Management Science from MIT.  An art collector and long-distance runner, he has completed 25 marathons as part of his mission to finish a marathon in each of the 50 U.S. states. He lives in Boulder, Colorado. Links: The Foundry Group Team – Brad Feld The Startup Community Way Twitter: @bfeld Linkedin: Brad Feld 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 this episode, our host Christopher Lochhead speaks with Rob Chestnut on why integrity matters more than ever. Rob is the former chief ethics officer of Airbnb and the author of the new book Intentional Integrity. Chris and Rob go deep on strategies for handling a crisis and how leaders have to deal with the speed required in this age of canceled culture to get positive results. They talk about what exactly a chief ethics officer is, and why more companies are adding the position. Pay special attention to what Rob says about corporate MBAs and his thoughts on what the work world looks like after C19. Coping With Change Rob shares that the world is changing so rapidly. He says that he admires how we, especially kids, are coping with this incredible rate of change. He also shares the changes in leadership both corporations and governments.  “I think the world is moving toward integrity, though. There’s a connectedness that has led all of us to think about others in ways that maybe we haven’t been thinking about people in the past.” – Rob Chestnut Cancel Culture Christopher shares a recent incident in a Santa Cruz restaurant and how it got a taste of “cancel culture” from its customers and employees, Rob shares his insights into this current movement, where employees and customers rally online.  “Customers want to do business with businesses that share their values. Employees want to work in places that share their values. What we’re seeing more and more is, if there’s a mismatch, customers leave. Customers will leave very quickly and move their business elsewhere. If they perceive a business that isn’t in line with their values. The same thing with employees, more than ever today.” – Rob Chestnut Chief Ethics Officer Rob also shares what a chief ethics officer does. Rob shares it is important for employees to know that someone is standing up and speaking about issues. He shares how this was implemented in Airbnb who has 5000 employees now.  “The chief ethics officer does not make a company ethical, and a company doesn’t need a chief ethics officer to be ethical. That role can help drive integrity into the culture of the company, by being the spokesperson on the leadership team, for ensuring that the company doesn’t lose sight of its Northstar, of its purpose and its mission and to ensure that the company is thinking about all of this different shareholder, stakeholders, employees and alike.” – Rob Chestnut To know more about Rob Chestnut and intentional integrity, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Rob Chesnut is the general counsel at Airbnb Inc.  As Senior Vice President and General Counsel for Chegg,  Rob oversees the company’s corporate and legal relations.  Rob brings over twenty-five years of legal experience from high profile e-commerce and technology companies.  Prior to Chegg, Rob served as the Senior Vice President and General Counsel for LiveOps, Inc., a leading provider of call center outsourcing services. Before LiveOps Inc., he worked as eBay’s Senior Vice President of the Trust and Safety Department, where he oversaw the development of the company’s global detection infrastructure.  With extensive experience in the U.S. Justice Department, Rob is the recipient of the Department’s John Marshall award for litigation, and the CIA’ Outstanding Service Medallion. When he’s not working, Rob loves to spend time with his family or head out to the golf course. Links: The Intentional Integrity Linkedin: Rob Chestnut Twitter: @chestnutrob Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead An Ethical Revolution 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 listen today to an extraordinary and unique perspective on what is happening in the United States right now. Our guest, the legendary MK Palmore, whose entire background positions him to be a leader of this moment that we all find ourselves in. Not only does MK have this incredible career as a Marine, as an FBI agent, now, but he’s also a Silicon Valley-based executive at a major tech company. He is African American and his perspective on our world right now is like none other I have seen or heard, and we go deep on all of it.  This is a very powerful conversation we hope gets heard by many. To Serve and To Protect Coming from a solid law enforcement background, MK shares the conversations that he is having with his former colleagues. He mentions that there should be an understanding about the basic concept of “being called to serve and protect” among law enforcers. Unfortunately, a number of law enforcers have a different agenda other than this core mission. “It requires, again, an understanding that, ‘hey, a potential problem exists.’ This is from law enforcement to the other side [minorities]. We need to be willing to listen so that we can make adjustments to how it is that we go about policing, which I think will be a huge challenge.” – MK Palmore  Police-ing Is Extremely Hard Work MK describes the demands of police work. There are certain challenges involved in that profession that don’t lend themselves to flow judgments. As these recent situations arise, he believes that there should probably be some training changes that need to happen on the law enforcement side. “Law enforcement officers are trained in a particular way so that they can make quick judgments or assessment of situations so that they can mitigate and bring down a situation as quickly as possible, to de-escalate a situation quickly as possible.” – MK Palmore Comprise To Let Healing Begin MK shares how strong leadership is needed to talk about issues and to compromise. This is the only route where healing can begin. He shares his experiences as an African American former FBI agent and now a Tech professional and how he contributes to the current issues. “While I do not believe that there is an explicit racism present in law enforcement, I do believe that there is implicit racism in our society. To believe that law enforcement is somehow immune to this, I think, is misplaced.” – MK Palmore To know more about MK Palmore, a Marine, FBI Exec & Cybersecurity Advisor and his unique American perspective, download and listen to this episode. Bio: MK was born and raised in Washington, D.C.  It’s no surprise he was influenced daily and at an early age by the formative sights and sounds of our government at work.   As a youth, he had already decided to embark on a career of service. This led him to the shores of Annapolis, where he was a midshipman at the United States Naval Academy, and afterward as a commissioned officer in the United States Marine Corps.  Following his military service, MK began a 22-year journey as a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a key player behind numerous high-level investigations and an early combatant in the fight against cybercrime. During this impressive career of public service, MK honed his leadership skills, rounding out his tenure in an executive position leading the cybersecurity investigative teams of FBI San Francisco. Links: MK Palmore Linkedin: MKPalmore Twitter: @mk_palmore 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!

Today, we have one of our regular guest Dushka Zapata, one of the most prolific and important writers on planet Earth. Her work has been viewed on the Question and Answer site Quora, 165 million times. She’s got a brand new book out called Feelings are Fickle, and Other Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me. We have a great conversation and she will definitely help you make sense of all that is happening in the world today. How Are You? Christopher and Dushka discuss how this question has been asked a lot of time during this time of Covid19. They shared how you can respond to this question or how to ask other the same question. Dushka shares the importance of intently asking since most people are suffering during this time.  “I think that anyone that you encounter today, anyone is isolated, scared, overwhelmed, maybe unemployed, stressed. It’s just like a really, really a moment of reckoning.” – Dushka Zapata Writing During Covid19 Dushka also shares about how she stopped posting online and started listening. She shares her process now as compared to pre-Covid19. The themes of her writing are more about shared experiences and now more than ever, everybody is experiencing the same thing. She finds it universal that everybody can relate now to her writing. “I have friends everywhere. I’ve lived in many places in the world throughout my life, and I have friends in Italy and friends in Switzerland and friends across Asia. We’re all going through the same thing, through similar concerns and similar fears. It’s horrible and fascinating.” – Dushka Zapata Cocoon Time and Optimism Christopher asks Dushka about her thoughts about the world being in a cocoon time, where there is pre-Covid19 and then there’s the future. Dushka describes it beautifully as she says this metaphor is full of optimism, as it relates to a caterpillar turning into a colorful and iridescent butterfly.  “I think I would want to make a distinction between optimism and toxic optimism. Toxic optimism is: ‘I believe that things will work out in a good way.’ That is optimism. Toxic optimism is ‘me believing that things will work out in a good way’ is a wall between me and understanding the possibilities. So am I putting up other possibilities that people have not considered or am I blind to what’s actually happening today?” – Dushka Zapata To hear more about Dushka and why feelings are fickle, download and listen to this episode, Bio: Dushka Zapata is one of the most prolific and popular writers working today.  On question and answer site Quora her work has been viewed over 165 million times. She’s the author of ten best-selling books. Dushka has over 20 years experience as a senior communications executive in Silicon Valley.  When she’s not writing, she works as a communications executive in San Fransciso. Links: Quora: Dushka Zapata Feelings Are Fickle Twitter: @dushkaamateur Linkedin: Dushka Zapata 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!

Today, we have a very big conversation about social change, entrepreneurship, Black Lives Matter, and a whole lot more with author, entrepreneur, and speaker, D’Narius Lewis. We believe he represents a voice that is not being heard enough right now — the voice of young African American entrepreneurs. D’narius has gone from homeless to successful. He is the founder of Optimum Outreach, a telecom brokerage firm. Frankly, we need to be asking ourselves “how do we foster an environment where there are a lot more D’narius Lewis’ you see denarius amongst many entrepreneurs?” Living in Ground Zero Christopher probes D’narius what it is like to be a young black male American entrepreneur, living in the “hood” in Minneapolis, which, as you know, is where George Floyd was killed.  D’narius described how on the same day as his birthday, literally just 30 minutes away, George Floyd suffered from police brutality.  “Everyone wants to have this conversation but until you actually put yourself on the ground level and take action and see why people are protesting, see why people are frustrated. There has to be a reform behind everything that’s been created. It’s a never ending conversation.” – D’Narius Lewis What It Would Take For A Breakthrough D’Narius believes having the right conversations are essentially what needs to be done to get something out of the Black Lives Matter movement.  “Right now, we’re still having a debate to why this isn’t even a conversation. Racism is not real and so having that first conversation is really  like ‘let’s actually sit down and break this down. Let’s not be defensive. Let’s actually break down the facts.’ Once we get down that road, then let’s break down defunding the police department. A lot of people want to defund the police department. The police department defunded funds is not completely defunding a police department. It is taking funds that can be allocated to the community, to allocate for individuals and mental health spaces. ” – D’Narius Lewis Crime is Crime By Humans D’narius shares more about humans committing crimes and how people want to be treated as humans. He also shares about what is happening at the local level, especially why the activists are not the person responsible for the riots. “We’re still having the same conversation that Martin Luther King had Malcolm X had. Now we’re in the 2020s many years away from that conversation and we’re still saying, ‘hey, are we’re still being killed on the streets by police brutality,’ ‘hey, we’re still living in poverty from from years of being set free, but not actually given a system to be a part of.’ The list goes on and on of all these different roadblocks and loopholes that I might know I’ve had to go through because the system wasn’t built for us.” –  – D’Narius Lewis To hear more about D’Narius and social change, entrepreneurship, Black Lives Matter, and a whole lot more, download and listen to this episode.  Bio: D’Narius Lewis was born May 25, 1993, in Shelby County, Tennessee. His family then moved to Minnesota in 1998 where he currently resides. D’Narius was raised by his single mother; being the youngest and only boy in his family shaped his outlook on life and the concept of survival and determination. He has stepped up to the plate as being the man of his household to keep his family as a unit. A born entrepreneur, D’Narius Lewis started his sales career at the age of 15 when he began selling iPhones and Androids off Craigslist; this led to his passion for business and entrepreneurship. While in college D’Narius balanced a full time job along with being a student. His balance became overwhelming and he often found himself having to decide to go to work or school. He later got fired from his job and eventually dropped out of college in rebellion to the demanding college lifestyle. During that time, until he was 21, D’Narius had worked over 6 jobs and found his instability to be the result of his lack of passion, lack of freedom, and unfulfilling financial standing. Eventually, in 2012 D’Narius was a homeless-couch surfing kid with nothing but a suitcase and a name. He didn’t have a permit, a license, or a car, so his ability to get around was also limited. Fortunately, things took a positive turn and he found himself blessed to have a friend from high school whose family took him in. By the summer of 2013, the money D’Narius made was used to support rent, bills, and groceries–which was limited to $10. He often found himself left with $7.40 after all his bills were paid. He soon decided that was not the life he wanted to live, so he did something about it. Fast-forward to 2016, D’Narius is now an author, speaker, and social media expert with multiple books on self-help and inspiration. His love for networking, desire for likability, and rebellious attitude towards societies’ monot

Today we have Bob Evans, tech industry icon, the host of Cloud Wars Live Podcast, and a regular guest at Follow Your Different. Yes, he’s back. We have a wide-ranging conversation that intertwines business life, what’s going on right now, technology, and many other things. We also talked about several topics such as moments of transformation, stepping up to your calling in times of challenge, and in times of crisis and particularly, about what Bob calls constructive fear. Positive Transformation Being good friends for years now, Bob recounts his previous phone conversations with Chris and how the past year had been very challenging for him. Bob saw how much Chris had endured from all the personal horrific experiences he had, and how he overcame the challenges and successfully launch the world’s first Podstorm. “There are only two choices, continue to walk through fire or just get in a fetal position with a bucket of back Jack Daniels and a big bag of weed and fucking forget it ⁠— which, by the way, I did a lot of too.” – Christopher Lochhead Christopher shared his realizations where many of us in our country are suffering because of Covid19 and the recession. He also shared about the civil unrest and that moving forward with your life is really a matter of personal choice.  Constructive Fear Bob also shares how life-changing Akshay Nanavati and his book Fearvana. He was particularly moved with the thought of dealing with fear and taking action, which is he also called constructive fear. “I think fear is one of the most potent human capabilities or weapons we have, but only if it’s used in the right way, in a constructive way, when we allow it to overrule our thinking or our higher-level capabilities.” – Bob Evans The Youth, The Future and More Since Chris works with a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of young leaders, who will be big leaders of tomorrow, Bob asked about how to encourage them to answer their calling. They also talk about letting your emotions reign from time to time and how the future will have dazzling opportunities.  “There’s no time in history you’d pick other than now. Human beings have never been more wealthy than they are now. They’ve never been more healthy than they are now. Do we have problems? Yeah, of course, we do. But I think now is an extraordinary time and to your question on younger people, do shit that matters. Make a difference.” – Christopher Lochhead To know more about Bob, his thoughts on technology and more, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Bob grew up outside of Pittsburg, with hard-working parents and his 6 siblings.  Graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978 and entered the business world, flowing his passion for information technology and writing. He rose to become the editor of Information Week, one of the top two publications in technology at the time. He became the SVP and Content Director for Information Week’s parent company TechWeb/CMP After thirty years in the media business, he left to join the world of software vendors, after a quick stop at ERP vendor SAP,  Bob was recruited by the world’s 5th richest person, a legendary category designer, and entrepreneur — Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle.   At Oracle Bob served as SVP and Chief Communications Officer for Larry. Today Bob runs his own strategic communications firm, is a prolific writer, a tech industry commentator, public speaker, and a legendary guy.  He hosts the widely popular Cloud Wars Live Podcast. Links: Cloudwars Podcast Twitter: @bobevansIT Linkedin: BobEvansIT 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!

Today, we have a very big conversation about how to drive real social and political change with a guy who’s a Stanford lecturer, who is a former adviser to Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and today is the founder of Govern for California. His name is David Crane. We go deep on why state and local governments matter so much and matter in ways that the federal government doesn’t, as it relates to yours and my day to day life. What really drives politicians, how the call we are having right now, for social and racial change in the US could actually lead to not much change at all, and what needs to happen in order to make real change occur. Figuring Out Politics David spent 25 years in business until he was 50 and ready to retire. Fate must have brought David to politics because his long time friend Arnold Schwarzenegger decided to run for office and asked for his help. He was a bit shocked when he first stepped into the ring as he didn’t realize how to play the game of politics.  “I thought I knew everything about politics and policy, that was my principal interest in life. I got up to Sacramento and I learned I knew nothing. It just blew me away at the age of 50 to learn that the area that had been my avocation that I thought I really knew, I didn’t know. “ – David Crane Politics is Business New people who get elected into office do not know the way the game is played. It is a business and David placed it into perspective in this episode. He shared how the State operates for its customers, who are the citizens, specifically the students who take Kto12 Education, Medicaid beneficiaries and corporations and business entities. “The State of California alone this year will spend $300 billion 100 billion alone on K through 12. Education, 100 billion dollars alone on Medicaid. For now, more than 13 million Californians one in three Californians is covered by Medicaid. Well, the principal recipients of that 200 billion are employees and corporations and their customers. The state of California will pay very serious attention all the time to what’s going on with that government. They’re in the state capitol every day and the legislators and the governor see them all the time.” – David Crane The Role of The Federal Government David also shares the structure of state government versus the federal government. The former has three to five times the number of employees since they are service-oriented to the people of the state than the latter. He also likened the federal government as an “insurance company with an army.” “State local governments do everything else. Public education, public safety, public transportation, and that’s why there are four times as many employees in the state local government than there are in the federal government, even though the federal government spends much more money.” – David Crane To hear more about David Crane and his thoughts on what drives politicians, and how the call we are having right now for social and racial change in the US will not have much effect, after all, download and listen to this episode.  Bio: David Crane is a lecturer in Public Policy at Stanford University and president of Govern for California.  From 2004-2010 he served as a special adviser to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and from 1979-2003 he was a partner at Babcock & Brown, a financial services company.  Crane also serves on the board of the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California and formerly served on the University of California Board of Regents and as a director of the California State Teachers Retirement System, Environmental Defense Fund, and the Volcker-Ravitch Task Force on the State Budget Crisis. Links: Twitter: @DavidGCrane Website: David G. Crane Govern For California Org  Standford University, Public Policy: David Crane TheHill.com: Coronavirus aid should go directly to the people Medium.com: CA Passes A Disappointing Budget They Count on You Not Knowing TEDx PaloAlto 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 this episode, we continue our run of top Silicon Valley venture capitalists with Navin Chaddha, who leads Mayfield, one of the oldest and most storied venture capital firms in the Silicon Valley startup world. Navin has been on the Forbes Midas list for a long time and is a top-five investor according to Forbes. We have a wide-ranging conversation where we deal with everything from diversity to philanthropy, Navin’s backstory, what he calls superhumans, and pay special attention to why Navin thinks that biology is a technology. Leading a 50-Year Old Company Navin leads the company Mayfield, which is on its 51st year of operations in 2020. He considers this opportunity as a real blessing and one that is filled with responsibility as well. He is optimistic about the future, but is wary of serious impending issues of the world such as this widespread disease and racial disparity. “We have to ensure it’s all about people because one of the founding mottos of the firm is people make products, products don’t make people are everything. So whatever we do, we want to live by the people and do good by others, at the same time, do well as a firm and for our investors and entrepreneurs. – Navin Chaddha Becoming A Conscious Capitalist Navin shares how venture capital needs to change. Instead of investing money and helping entrepreneurs, Navin challenges his fellows to become conscious capitalists. Mayfield pledges to this movement, as they aim to contribute yearly 1% of their management fee and 1% of their carry, to give the opportunity to underrepresented students and entrepreneurs. “There we take a balance of what we can do, not only financially, but what can we do for human and planetary evolution in the form of giving back some of the financial resources we have, but also giving back our time.” – Navin Chaddha Entrepreneurship & Underrepresented Communities Navin shares his thoughts about underrepresented communities and entrepreneurship. He encourages them to reach out to VC’s such as Mayfield, who will launch the program Access For All, with the premise of making capital available across all boards. “It has to be done by people who want to be entrepreneurs. They need to just lean forward and make the plunge. They need to go make sure they get good mentors, whether it’s their advisors, whether it’s former entrepreneurs, whether it’s potential customers, whether it’s legal firms, or people like you, beyond venture capitalists, whom they can look upon and get some advice and I call that mentorship capital. Once they have those things in place, please come approach the venture community because we are all focused around funding innovation, and helping people achieve their dreams.” – Navin Chaddha To hear more about Navin Chaddha and becoming a Conscious Capitalist, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Navin Chaddha leads Mayfield. He has ranked on the Forbes Midas List of Global Tech Investors 12 times, including being named a Top Five investor in 2020.   During his career as a venture capitalist, he has invested in over 50 companies, 17 of which have gone public and 20 have been acquired. Some of his investments include Lyft, Poshmark, SolarCity, Hashicorp, Elastica, CloudGenix, and CloudSimple. As an entrepreneur, he has co-founded or led three startups including VXtreme, a streaming media platform, acquired by Microsoft to become Windows Media.  Navin is a committed philanthropist who directs Mayfield’s 50-year tradition of philanthropy to support many causes including diversity, health, hunger, and education. Interests: Cricket, Bollywood. Links: Navin Chaddha Top VC Unveils Crisis Leadership Strategies For Entrepreneurs 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!

Imagine being able to sit down and have a meaningful conversation about the state of the United States. We speak with a woman who is a Yale-educated lawyer, a graduate of the FBI famed Academy in Quantico Virginia, and a former FBI counterintelligence investigator. This woman is a senior lecturer at Yale and a legal and national security analyst for CNN. That woman is none other than Asha Rangappa. We have a powerful conversation about the state of affairs in the United States and the decline of social capital. We talk about the destructive power of disinformation and disengagement, and more. This is a big insight into what’s going on in our world today. Shakespeare and Current Events Asha narrated how she became a Shakespeare aficionado. She even found herself playing roles in several Shakespeare theatre adaptations. She shares how she finds Shakespeare’s stories as universal, which also explains why these get a lot of modern adaptation. “You can actually look at characters and understand motivations of people today through his words. So I’m a big fan. I don’t know if that answers the question of why Shakespeare but I find him especially relevant to current events.” – Asha Rangappa 30% of Americans Don’t Trust Each Other Asha recounted to Christopher how the United States is at a moment of the lowest level of general social trust since World War Two. Social capital is referred to as “the value that we get from our relationships with other people.” She further explained that strong social capital is essential for a healthy democracy.  A high social capital means there is a generalized social trust. In short, people care about the well being of their fellow man.  “Most Americans don’t trust each other. This is actually a question on the General Social Survey they’ve asked, but asking it since 1972, and we’re at the lowest response, which is about 30% of people say that most Americans can be trusted.” – Asha Rangappa Worst Possible Choices Being Made Asha believes we are currently in a crisis point. She agrees with Christopher that circumstances are forcing people to decide on the future that they want to live in.  “On the roster of choices have been made, whether it’s with the pandemic or the economy or in response to the protest, and I’m talking about, the Trump administration. So, I think that it has brought to the fore what I was talking about before that, we are at a precarious moment. I have felt that this has been a precarious moment, even before this. I think the urgency of it might be brought home to a greater degree, because of this kind of critical state that we’re in at this moment.” – Asha Rangappa To know more about Asha and her thoughts on the destructive power of disinformation and disengagement and the general state of the United States, download and listen to this episode.  Bio: Asha Rangappa is a Senior Lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and a former Associate Dean at Yale Law School. Prior to her current position, Asha served as a Special Agent in the New York Division of the FBI, specializing in counterintelligence investigations.  Her work involved assessing threats to national security, conducting classified investigations on suspected foreign agents, and performing undercover work.  While in the FBI, Asha gained experience in electronic surveillance, interview and interrogation techniques, firearms, and the use of deadly force. She has taught National Security Law and related courses at Yale University, Wesleyan University, and the University of New Haven. Asha graduated cum laude from the Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs at Princeton University and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study constitutional reform in Bogotá, Colombia.  She received her law degree from Yale Law School and served as a law clerk to the Honorable Juan R. Torruella on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She is admitted to the State Bar of New York (2003) and Connecticut (2003). Asha has published op-eds in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post among others and has appeared on NPR, BBC, and several major television networks. She is an editor for Just Security and is currently a legal and national security analyst for CNN. Asha lives in Hamden, Connecticut with her two children. Links: Asha Rangappa Twitter: @AshaRangappa_ Wikipedia: Asha Rangappa 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!

Today, we speak with a very special guest about a critical topic: radical transformation. Doug Merritt of Splunk joins us for a conversation about Splunk’s journey, their radical technology, delivery model, and business model transformation. Pay special attention to Doug’s depth and breadth of detail about their business, their technology modeling stack, business model, and their financial model. I think you’ll find it fascinating to hear what it really takes to be the CEO of a high-growth, high impact company. Radical Transformation Christopher shares that almost all aspects of the world are going through a transformation right now. Doug agrees about the uncertainties and changes in our environment. Likewise, he shares how Splunk has undergone and is continuing the process of radical transformation.  “We targeted over four years ago, four simultaneous transformations. First was shifting our business model. The second was completely rethinking and delivering a different product portfolio. The third was the market shift. Fourth, complete rethinking and reimplementation of our business processes and infrastructure technology. It’s been a lot of work. We’re not done. We’re not done yet, but we continue to make good progress.” – Doug Merritt Risk and Reversibility  Doug shares an important point if you plan to have a radical transformation, that is to consider risks and reversibility. He relates sheltering in place or shifting to a work-from-home arrangement as a reversible decision. On the other hand, transforming the business model or pricing has an irreversible effect, or would entail a lot of work to reverse the risks. “Jeff Bezos talks about it and I think it’s very catchy: is your change a one way door or a two way door? Obviously a one way door, you may get back in, but you have to get an axe and maybe a wrecking ball. It’s going to be a lot of pain and effort to get back in to a door like that. A revolving door in a hotel you go out, maybe you don’t like it, you can choose to go back in. It’s easier to reverse.” – Doug Merritt Growing Splunk Doug shares how fortunate the Splunk team is while undergoing a radical transformation. They initially have revenues and drastically improved it while transitioning, and while maintaining their public status. They also continue to acquire companies, such as their recent $1B SignalFx. “To be able to take on that degree of change of disruption, of difficulty and somehow still over-deliver versus expectations, I think that we are in a category of one right now, but I’m hoping that there are more that come behind us.” – Doug Merritt To hear more about Doug Merritt, CEO of Splunk and more about radical transformation, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Doug Merritt has served as our President and Chief Executive Officer and a member of our Board since 2015.  Previously, Merritt served as Senior Vice President of Field Operations at Splunk from 2014 to 2015.  Prior to joining Splunk, Merritt served as Senior Vice President of Products and Solutions Marketing at Cisco Systems, Inc., a networking company, from 2012 to 2014.  From 2011 to 2012, he served as Chief Executive Officer of Baynote, Inc., a behavioral personalization and marketing technology company.  Previously, Merritt served in a number of executive roles and as a member of the extended Executive Board at SAP A.G., from 2005 to 2011.  From 2001 to 2004, Merritt served as Group Vice President and General Manager of the Human Capital Management Product Division at PeopleSoft Inc. (acquired by Oracle Corporation). He also co-founded and served as Chief Executive Officer of Icarian, Inc. (since acquired by Workstream Corp.), a cloud-based company, from 1996 to 2001.  Merritt holds a B.S. from The University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Links: Splunk Linkedin: Doug Merritt 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!

Monday June 8th, 2020 Yesterday in Santa Cruz, I cried at the vigil for Sargent Damon Gutzwiller, of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s department. He was shot to death on Saturday. Yesterday in Santa Cruz, I paddled out for George Floyd. With over 500 people (A paddle out is how surfers mourn). There have been paddle outs for George Floyd all over the world. Yesterday in the Ocean of Santa Cruz, people of many races screamed “Black Lives Matter”. Together. Yesterday the people of Santa Cruz showed that you can stand against evil racism, and stand for good cops. At the same time. Because both are the same thing. Both are stand against violence. Both are stand against evil. Yesterday in Santa Cruz, I cried for these two men. And so did countless others. Of virtually every race. Of all the tears that were cried yesterday in Santa Cruz, every single last one of them, was colorless. Now, I’d like to share a deeply personal story with you. A story I have never shared before. Last year, one of my best friends was brutally murdered, in Santa Cruz. It will always be unbelievable and unbearable. A walk-through fire I wish on no one. If you are ever in this situation, you’ll discover how badly you need the cops. In the moments after I learned what happened, I was over-come by a Mavericks sized wave of horrible emotions and a profound sense of helplessness. Which is not a feeling I am used to. Sometimes, life gives you no choice. You have to grapple with a soul-crushing reality. You have to accept an absoluteness you cannot change. As this washed over me, I realized something. I desperately need the cops. Because, police have the authority and ability to solve heinous crimes in a way that no one else does. In our case, the agency in charge was the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department. After 231 days, over 3,000 hours of work, by countless professionals, across multiple peacekeeping agencies, in multiple states, the Sheriff’s Department caught them. The four evil men took my brother’s life. Now, you should know, he was a “brown guy” (his words). The four men who killed him are white. Over the past months, I’ve had a front-row seat to a massive, complex murder investigation. He’s what I learned. There are legendary cops. A lot of them. The dedicated public servants at the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department, lead by Sheriff Jim Hart, worked tireless to bring this evil to justice. We saw the sleepless nights the investigators endured. They fought as hard as I have ever seen anyone fight. We are forever grateful for the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department. If I were to name all of the amazing people who worked this case, you’d stop reading this post. What I’d like you to know is, they cried with us. They comforted us. They exhibited extraordinary kindness. Above all, we got to see peacekeepers with an unending commitment to justice. I share this with you, because I have experienced the positive power of policing. I have seen women and men, of every race, get up every day, put on a bulletproof vest and a badge to risk their lives. To serve and protect us. So, the time has come for all of us to demand justice for George Floyd. To demand equality for African Americans and all people of color. And to demand real police reform. It is critical that we remember, that it is possible to demand justice for George Floyd, to demand reform and equality, and support the good cops. At the same time. There are some in our country who would divide us. Let us remember there is no us and them. There is no difference between Black, White, Brown or Blue. Because evil comes in all colors. And tears are colorless. Bless you.

Today, we have a super fun episode with American Gladiator superstar Dan Nitro Clark. He’s a former NFL player, best selling author, speaker, fitness freak, and heart attack survivor. For a big, manly, strong, muscley looking dude with a reputation like his, you might be surprised to hear he is incredibly open, candid, and vulnerable. We dig into his life as an athlete and a celebrity. He talks about what it’s like to be among some of the earliest athletes in America to take steroids and what he learned from that. We talked about coming back from major setbacks and a whole lot more! Steroids Use Dan shares he started using steroids back when he was a freshman College. He wanted to secure a football scholarship badly and he resorted to the “in” thing at that time. Back then, it was unregulated and the only information available about it is that the body recuperates faster.  “I think the fallacy in the misinformation is, anybody who takes steroids is going to get huge. No, you’re not going to get huge. You still got to wait. You got to move waves. It still takes in a tremendous amount of work and effort and diet. Man, you got to go be willing to die, every workout.” – Dan Nitro Clark The Downside of Steroids As a strong promoter of steroids use, Dan still warns of the responsibilities one must take before, while and after using steroids. Steroids make the blood clot more so there are indications with regard to medical operations and procedures. It also increases estrogen levels in the body which explains why some men grow “manboobs.” “It puts you out on a fair playing field. So in that sense, I don’t know if there’s a lot of harm. I think the harm comes when you start to do monstrous levels. With anything excess, and there’s equally when you have low testosterone, there are increased cardiac incidences. All these other side effects, as well and both sides too much too little. The idea is to be in the optimum range.” – Dan Nitro Clark Wearing The Meatsuit In a rare moment, Dan shares his personal experiences growing up. Looking back, he shares what he experienced with his divorced parents, the untimely death of his older brother at 12 years old, and how he coped with life as a broken young man.  “I didn’t have anybody to console me. His death my mom was Japanese, she barely spoke the language. So, you know, I learned to take care of myself emotionally. I learned that big boys don’t cry. I learned you don’t talk about your feelings. I learned you sucked it up. I think that was the thing. Nobody can hurt me. Nobody is going to touch me. I think that was the whole idea Why? You know, I wanted to be bigger, stronger, faster. I wanted to have this meat suit on.” – Dan Nitro Clark To hear more about Dan, the American Gladiator, download and listen to this episode.  Bio: Dan is a former pro football player, American Gladiator, #1 Bestselling Author, TV Host, Entrepreneur, and Speaker. He has been featured on Good Morning America, The Early Show, Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, ESPN, EXTRA, People, Time Magazine, Esquire, Men’s Health, Sport’s Illustrated, and the Huffington Post to name a few. If you’re looking for an extraordinary speaker on the topic of resilience and motivation, you just found him. Dan is a thought-leader and storyteller with the rare capability to not only inspire your audience to change but also teach them how. Links: Dan Nitro Clark The Gladiator Way 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!

Today, the second in a two-part series on entrepreneurship with none other than Osman Rishad, the founder of $8B, publicly-traded Chegg and now Convo.com. This is an inspiring conversation with a legendary entrepreneur about building billion-dollar startups. This is an inspiring, timely conversation between Christopher Lochhead and Osman, as the former believes entrepreneurs are going to play an outsized role in carrying us forward in recovering from the situation we all find ourselves in, and most importantly, in designing a future that really works. Fear of Being Irrelevant Osman narrates to Christopher how some people are still asking why he is continuing to “fight” or spearhead more companies and projects. He shares that he has given this question a thought and realized a lot of things why he keeps on pushing forward. “I felt that I wasn’t adding any value. Frankly, that’s when I realized maybe my number one fear in life is the fear of being irrelevant, that you have nothing to do. I actually love what I’m doing. I mean, I love building things. So it is not ‘work’ for me.” – Osman Rashid He further shared that nothing will stop him from doing what he loves, because everything else fell into its righteous place, such as marriage and building a family. Do Something of Value Christopher points out how hustle porn stars sold us a false narrative that entrepreneurship should equate to airplanes and Lamborghinis. Both agreed that although there is nothing wrong with financial independence, there are other important goals that should be celebrated.  “I get happy when people around me get financial independence, economic freedom, as you said. But the goal is to build a great company. If you are doing something of value, then the financial outcome happens automatically. But if that’s your actual focus, I would say the failure rate is going to be even higher than that.” – Osman Rashid Hallmark of Legendary Entrepreneurs Believe it or not, both Christopher and Osman believes you have to be a special kind of stupid to become a legendary entrepreneur. Being stupid means small and ordinary issues do not weigh you down.  “At that time, I had no idea, I thought I was just being dumb about the whole thing. That’s the beauty of it because I never thought about being a legendary entrepreneur. I’m not even sure I’m one right now. There are some amazing people out there. It was all about ‘look, I’ve got this problem to solve for tomorrow. If I don’t solve this, I’m in deep doo-doo. So I’m going to solve this thing. The way I think of entrepreneurship, you have to be a little bit crazy in the head to go for it.” – Osman Rashid Osman further advises to find a specific problem that bothers you and try to solve it and within those process, you become an entrepreneur. To hear more about building a billion-dollar startup and for more information about Osman, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Osman Rashid is an executive and entrepreneur in the field of education technology. Currently he is the founder and CEO of Galxyz, an intergalactic science adventure that he founded in late 2013.  Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of online textbook rental leader and student hub Chegg, remaining involved until early 2010 after dramatically growing the company from its inception in 2005.  He was also co-founder and CEO of Kno, Inc., (acquired by Intel in November 2013) a digital education platform company. Kno, Inc. has received funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Intel Capital, Goldman Sachs, FLOODGATE and GSV Capital, while Chegg was funded by KPCB, IVP, Gabriel Ventures and others.  Currently he is involved with ChildLife Foundation as a member of the Board of Trustees. Osman Rashid was born in London and did his early schooling in Ghana and finished middle and high school from Islamabad, Pakistan.  He later moved to the United States where he received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from University of Minnesota in 1993. Links: Convo Linkedin: Osman Rashid Wikipedia: Osman Rashid Twitter: @osmanrashid 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!

Today, the 1st in a two-part series on entrepreneurship, we have entrepreneur, Co-Founder of FloodGate and host of “Starting Greatness” Mike Maples, Jr. He recently wrote “How to build a breakthrough: the secret of back-casting” and we’re going to go deep on it today! Watch out for our next episode, we’re having founder/CEOs Osman Rashid. He started $8B, publicly-traded Chegg and now Convo.com. Status of Silicon Valley Christopher and Mike starts their discussion about the state of Silicon Valley. Both agreed that most of Silicon Valley companies are the first adopters of sheltering in place and work from home arrangements. It has definitely benefitted some companies who have adjusted early on. However, they also Mike also describes this coronavirus pandemic as a “hand of God” who “punished” some companies and catapulted some to success.  “I’ve never really seen a situation where you have a tale of two types of businesses. Most recessions, they affect some worse than others, but they affect everybody badly to some degree. Whereas what we’re seeing in this one is: it’s almost like a lot of things that were already starting to gather, got accelerated forward — telemedicine, remote distributed work, distance learning, remote work infrastructure. So you could make the case that this has had a dramatic impact in both directions ironically.” – Mike Maples Jr. Moving Forward By Looking Backward Mike recently created an interesting piece about moving forward by looking backward. He mentions that the future doesn’t happen to us. It happens because of us. He further explains why he wrote the piece and how it can help entrepreneurs plan their future.  “Great founders design the future. Design is the right word. It’s not just about drawings or how things look or even how they function or perform. It’s about people with a determined idea of what a better future should be. Not only building that better future, but convincing people in the present to change the trajectory, that they’re on.”  – Mike Maples Jr. Create A Movement To Move A Market For Mike, entrepreneurs don’t discover markets. They create movements that become markets. They move people to their point of view and they move people from the present to a better future.  “I thought it might be useful to try to help entrepreneurs get some lessons that I’d received from some of the super performers that I’ve worked with on how do you build a breakthrough. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years trying to deconstruct what they do and how it’s different from what normal startups look like. That is why I wrote this post on backcasting.” – Mike Maples Jr. To know more about how backcasting can help you design the future that you want and for more information about Mike, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Mike Maples, Jr is a Partner at Floodgate. He has been on the Forbes Midas List since 2010 and was also named one of “8 Rising Stars” by FORTUNE Magazine. Before becoming a full-time investor, Mike was involved as a founder and operating executive at back-to-back startup IPOs, including Tivoli Systems (IPO TIVS, acquired by IBM) and Motive (IPO MOTV, acquired by Alcatel-Lucent.) Some of Mike’s investments include Twitter, Twitch.tv, ngmoco, Weebly, Chegg, Bazaarvoice, Spiceworks, Okta, and Demandforce. Mike is known for coining the term “Thunder Lizards,” which is a metaphor derived from Godzilla that describes the tiny number of truly exceptional companies that are wildly disruptive capitalist mutations. Mike likes to think of himself as a hunter of the “atomic eggs” that beget these companies. Interests: Calligraphy, cinematography, and sporting clays. Links: FloodGate Twitter: @m2jr Linkedin: Maples How to build a breakthrough, Medium 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!

Today, we continue our run of legendary authors and podcasters with Dr. Christopher Ryan, author of New York Times bestsellers, Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What it Means for Modern Relationships and Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress. He has a chart-topping dialog podcast is called, Tangentially Speaking, We have a fun, some times provocative discussion about everything from Muhammad Ali, what’s wrong with modernity, how the world is fundamentally changing, why living in a van is awesome, to what it’s like making a living as roving, smart person. The Legendary Muhammad Ali Christopher Ryan and Christopher Lochhead went into an insightful exchange of stories about Muhammad Ali. Chris shares during this lockdown, he discovered a YouTube channel that featured several classic fights and he enjoyed binge-watching on these.  Chris mentions Pete McCormick, the guy behind a documentary called “Facing Ali” and he interviewed guys who fought Ali. The interesting backstory was, during these tune-up fights, Ali would handpick his opponent.  “He would tell his agent, he heard one guy, his wife had been killed in an accident, so he will get a quarter-million dollars. He’s beating people up in a charitable, generous way.” – Christopher Ryan Podcasting Has Been Instrumental Lochhead describes Ryan as “an insanely smart Ph.D. dude who seems to make a living being a smart guy, writing smart shit, podcasting smart shit, generally being the smart guy in the world.” He says podcasting has been instrumental in getting his message across. “It used to be, if you want to sit down and share your opinions to a hundred young smart people who are interested in hearing an old guy like me, you had a gig in the university. Universities are designed to filter out people like me or Joe Rogan or you, people who are liable to say something outlandish, to challenge this status quo.” – Christopher Ryan He further shares that he is generally pessimistic about the modern world, but one of the wonderful things that happened recently is that podcasting exploded.  “It is almost like a printing press, it just exploded, the opportunity to have direct contact between someone in the audience and the audience chooses whether or not it’s worth listening to. It is not the administrators of the university or publishing house, you know the gatekeepers.” – Christopher Ryan What It Is Like Living In A Van Christopher says he owned an apartment for a while until last fall when he spent 5 months in the van. He ditched his apartment, rented a storage space, and continued living life on the road since then. He traveled across the United States during the summer and flew to tropical countries during the wintertime.  “When this stuff got weird, end of January, I flew back. I didn’t want to get stranded in Asia. I rented a house in a tiny little town in Colorado. I’ve been here, it is fantastic, there’s no problem with social distancing. I like solitude. I like a good solid chunk of quiet and distance.” – Christopher Ryan To hear more about Christopher and what’s wrong with modernity and how the world is fundamentally changing, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Christopher and his work have been featured just about everywhere, including Netflix, HBO, MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, NPR, The New York Times, The Times of London, Playboy, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, and The Atlantic. Chris has been a featured speaker at TED, SXSW, The Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House, the Einstein Forum in Pottsdam, Germany, and is a frequent guest on The Joe Rogan Experience and many other podcasts.  He’s also provided expert testimony in a Canadian constitutional hearing and appeared in dozens of documentary films and television shows. Even before co-authoring the New York Times best-seller, Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What it Means for Modern Relationships (translated into 18 languages), with Cacilda Jethá, MD,  Chris was on a wild ride.  After receiving a BA in English and American literature in 1984 he spent the next two decades traveling around the world, pausing in unexpected places to work at decidedly odd jobs (e.g., gutting salmon in Alaska, teaching English to prostitutes in Bangkok and self-defense to land-reform activists in Mexico, managing commercial real-estate in New York’s Diamond District, helping Spanish physicians translate and publish their research).  In his mid-30s, Chris decided to pursue doctoral studies in Psychology at Saybrook Graduate School, in San Francisco, CA, using his dissertation to critique mainstream views of human sexual evolution — providing the core arguments later advanced in Sex at Dawn. Chris’s latest book, Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress (Simon & Schuster/Avid Reader Press, 2019), questions whether civilization has actually been a net benefit to our species. He hosts a weekly

Today, we continue our run of legendary authors with Kevin Maney. He’s the world’s leading authority on IBM’s history. He shares some amazing insights into what IBM did during the 1930’s that ultimately positioned them for greatness. We also have a fascinating talk about what changes C19 might bring to the world and what that could mean for our businesses and careers. Writing About Thomas Watson Kevin is a multi-time best selling author of Unscaled and Play Bigger. He’s also a co-founder of Category Design Advisors, where he helps companies design and dominate their market categories. Today, Kevin shares how fortunate he was to be able to write a biography of Thomas Watson, the man behind IBM.  “I have been watching what’s happening and there’s all this economic damage and talk of a long term recession or depression everybody has to get through. Seeing companies laying off people, right and left and the jobless rate going through the roof and all these pain that is being caused made me think back to IBM in the 1930s during the Great Depression.” – Kevin Mahey IBM and The Great Depression Kevin narrates the amazing story of how IBM took the lead during a crisis. It was just a few years after the great depression. Instead of ceasing operations just like any other major corporations, he allocated funds to manufacturing and research and development. “Imagine the tension, there’s no revenue coming in, spending all this money keeping these people, building machines and he is running out of time. Then this amazing event happened.” – Kevin Mahey Then-President Roosevelt devised programs to assist companies wherein the government will be needing a lot of reports on salaries. IBM, being the only capable company to fulfill this demand then stepped into the picture. This made IBM as it is now and Thomas Watson, one of the greatest CEOs of all time. Crisis As An Opportunity Rise Kevin shares that similar to the Great Depression crisis, this current crisis could also be an opportunity to build something up, get ahead, and come out of even stronger. “These kinds of moments in time can be seen as a tragedy but it can also be seen as an opportunity. If you can invest in the business, be wise and be careful, come out of the other end in a better position than you went in, and everybody else around you is devastated, I mean you’re in a great place.” – Kevin Mahey To hear more about the inspiring story of Thomas Watson, IBM as told by Kevin Mahey, download and listen to this episode.  Bio: Kevin Mahey – About Links: Category Design Advisors Twitter: @kmaney Linkedin – Kevin Maney Book – Play Bigger Book: Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts Are Creating the Economy of the Future 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!

Today, we have Clint Carnall, CEO of HydraFacial to share an extraordinary story of resilience, creativity, and action in a very short period of time. Clint’s company was one of the many companies that were amassing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, pre-pandemic. Now at zero revenues, they opted to go radically generous and thoughtfully aggressive. This is a legendary and inspiring example of how an entrepreneurial team scaled to meet any challenge, even the greatest challenge frankly that any of us have faced in our lifetime. The HydraFacial Ecosystem HydraFacial, as Christopher described it “is a company that is a part medical procedure, part beauty spa-like experience.” Clint, on the other hand, describes their company as a company built on “partnership.” They are not a “or” company, rather an “and” company, considering hotels, spas, medical physicians as partners rather than competitors. “Absolutely, no matter how good the painter they are, everybody needs a clean canvas. They think about HydraFacial like giving these physician med spas a clean canvas.” – Clint Carnell Clint continues to describe how their company operates in an ecosystem of physicians and nurses and consumers spas, hotels, etc and how this business model helped them to drastically grow the business. From Top-Tier to Zero Revenues A few weeks ago, Clint’s company HydraFacial were on a growth tier, serving different regions worldwide. They were on their A-game until Covid-19 struck their business. Clint shares how he witnessed their markets in China, Japan, Taiwan, and the rest of the world shut down.  However, Clint shares why this is an exciting time to be creative and to brush it off and take off. “I say it is a creative time. You know, it feels like an ambush. You are walking along and things are fine and then something hits you out of nowhere that you couldn’t expect. We are a little stunned. We have to brush ourselves off, were up and back, and ready to go.” – Clint Carnell Finding Opportunities Amidst Crisis Clint believes that good companies and executives, as well as creative entrepreneurs, have the capacity to make today as ‘creative times.’ CEOs all over the world have to make hard decisions, especially when you go from that kind of growth to almost zero revenue overnight. “The things that made us good executing the way up were the same things that are serving us during these challenging times and so strategy, but more importantly, solid execution.” – Clint Carnell To hear more about how a category queen company created three new lines of business in a matter of weeks after their core category collapsed to no fault of their own and for more information about Clint, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Clint was born in Anchorage Alaska but receives no royalties from the pipeline, thus he works for a living as our Chief Executive Officer. He grew up in Washington State and chased a soccer ball well enough to attend Duke University on a scholarship where he received grades good enough to land jobs with the likes of Johnson & Johnson, Chiron, Gambro Healthcare and Bausch & Lomb. He’s always been an entrepreneur starting in his early days when he would skip the school bus, buy jolly ranchers for a nickel and sell them for a quarter. At thirty, he founded Charleston Renal Care, which was acquired by DaVita. This gave him the ability to take a chance and join a VC backed company named Thermage, which went public, made acquisitions, and is now called Solta Medical. In his very spare time, Clint and his wife are busy raising two kids in Park City, Utah. The family has lots of animals affectionately called “the farm”. His biggest fear is breaking all his bones trying to race his kids down the ski slope! Links: HydraFacial Linkedin: Clint Carnell 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!

Today, a magical, mystical bestselling author and podcaster, Rhonda Smith, is with us today. She’s got a new book out called The Whole Method and a soul-affirming podcast called Cosmic Smith. She’s incredibly open about what she calls “radical fullness.”  We talk about why it’s ok, that not everyone is going to like you and why we want to experience everything in life and so much more. Radical Fullness Rhonda has overcome becoming a self-described “meth head” to transform her life. has been amazed at what little clean living can do for the body. She described how in the past two and a half years, she was battling a mind-blowing, brutal depression with suicidal tendencies. She copes with the whole situation by what she described as “understanding the darkness of her soul.” “I finally remember how to be me, and allowed it. Radical acceptance, radical fullness.” – Rhonda Smith She further shares the void inside every person, which is the center of our force. The dark is the feminine, the light is the masculine.  “Within the dark, and that void, that discomfort, that deep blackness of our soul,  in that quiet space, when we learn how to sit there, that is when creation happens, just like the womb. It was learning how to be in that void of myself and not have to do or change anything and just be able to sit with it.” – Rhonda Smith Dealing With Suffering Christopher asks Rhonda to elaborate on the suffering or that void inside each person. He further shares that we have no choice once suffering “comes for us. We can resist it but we have to go through the fire in one way or another. “The way I can best describe is like the thing people run from, the thing that keeps us in distraction, the things that keep us constantly seeking.” – Rhonda Smith Teaching People Compassion One of the biggest things Rhonda shares in this conversation is that one can’t teach someone to become empathetic or to have compassion. It is something that has to be learned through experience. Christopher and Rhonda exchange their point of view on why humanity has deemed homelessness and hunger as “okay.” To know more about Rhonda and her views on designing your life, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Rhonda Smith was born and raised in picturesque Northern California.  She spends most of her time between the San Francisco Bay area and the Sierra Nevada mountains with her majestic little wiener dog, Saylor Love. Rhonda shares her message on stage, as well as through podcasting, coaching, and her work with sacred plant medicine. She uses all of these modalities to support people in remembering the truth about who they are. Rhonda believes that only when we embrace the darkest parts of ourselves, do we learn the lessons that lead to remembering and living our deepest truth.  The greatest work of our lives is being willing to stand naked with all of our masks removed. The current state of our planet (living earth) and humanity is a catalyst to understand the way we’ve been living isn’t working!  This was the spark that ignited Rhonda’s mission.  Her newest company, “The Expanded Hueman” is set up to answer the question “What comes next after personal development?” It’s an invitation for us all to stop the madness of endlessly seeking outside ourselves. Her book, The Whole Method, is about remembering how to journey back into ourselves and once there, discover everything we need. It’s when you realize that who you are on the inside doesn’t quite match up to the persona you’ve created on the outside – You’ve done well, people look up to you, but deep inside there’s a niggle that something’s not right… Something is missing. You suspect there’s more for you to learn. Links: CosmicSmith.com 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!

Welcome to another amazing episode with Combat Veteran and US Marine Akshay Nanavati. He joined us at Episode 142, which was one of the top-rated episodes. Due to insistent public demand, he’s back. Akshay is a speaker, entrepreneur, ultra runner, non-profit founder, and best selling author. Today, we specifically talk about dealing with life and moving forward in the face of fear and adversity. He of all people is powerfully equipped to empower those who are having a hard time dealing with C19. Listen carefully to Akshay’s ideas on how to change barriers with questions and more! Solitude During C19 Akshay starts the conversation sharing about coins and medals with the iconic Marines raising a flag in the battle of Iwo Jima. He narrated how honored he is to be a part of the Marines who represents courage and valor in battles. He further shares that he has been living in solitude prior to the Covid19 pandemic. He does some amazing activities to meditate and to practice stillness.  “I’m used to it and I don’t mind the solitude. I’ve trained in solitude in the sense like, I spent 7 days in pitch darkness, isolation, and silence, to confront my fear of stillness to master the experience of solitude but at the same time, as we briefly touch on I do have moments that I feel that sense of loss.” – Akshay Nanavati Living in Paradox Living in paradox, Akshay describes himself as someone who is social but likewise, enjoys his solitude. He shares how he cried himself to sleep while reading a book ISIS abducting a woman to become their sex slave.  “I read these intense books to remind me of the pain and suffering in the world and to stay focused on my mission. My solitude allows me to go into space that I would not be able to go to if somebody else was here.” – Akshay Nanavati He further shares another activity that he does, which Christopher describes as an activity he wouldn’t do in a million years.  “When the world is intense, to me, that’s a time to dig deeper into it. I actually put a horrible death metal music. It’s not actually music, its noise, and I put on a strobe light. I meditate and practice stillness with it. It was very intense, but its a great practice to master stillness in the face of chaos.” – Akshay Nanavati Overcoming Solitude in C19 A lot of people have actually improved communications with others during this crisis. A number of people utilized Zoom and social media to communicate with friends, family, and loved ones. Akshay shares that connection is important as humans are naturally tribal creatures. “I think the problem is, what we’re doing right now, is the same as what we’re doing before, which is basically running away from pain, running away to having to confront ourselves and now we’re being forced into that world.” – Akshay Nanavati To hear more about dealing with life and moving forward in the face of fear and adversity and to learn more about Akshay, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Akshay Nanavati (born October 15, 1984) is a United States Marine veteran, speaker, entrepreneur, ultra runner and author.  He served in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom and was later diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. His book Fearvana was endorsed by the Dalai Lama and Jack Canfield. Links: Fearvana Twitter: @fearvanalife Instagram: @fearvana Wikipedia: Akshay Navati 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!

Today, we have a riveting conversation with Dr. Rana el Kaliouby.  She’s a tech / AI entrepreneur and the author of a brand new book out called Girl Decoded. Rana is the co-founder and CEO of Affectiva. Her work on A.I. is bleeding edge, particularly around human and emotional AI and the ethics of AI and more. This is a stunning, inspiring, real dialogue that you’ll surely love. Top Woman in Tech Rana el Kaliouby is a Muslim woman kicking butt in the American tech entrepreneur world. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and a Post Doctorate at MIT. She’s one of Fortune’s 40 Under 40 and Forbes says she’s one of America’s Top 50 Women in Tech. She describes her success as a privilege for having supportive parents who made sure she and her siblings get a top-notch education.  “I grew up surrounded by strong women but it was always understood that your priority is the family and you do your work on the side, that was the context.” – Rana el Kaliouby EI and AI, Counterintuitive Christopher asks about how Rana speaks about Emotional intelligence in the AI world as it is oftentimes, counterintuitive. Rana shares how her endeavors connected the two. “Even 25 years ago, I saw this pattern, with tech, it empowers us to communicate with more people. But I always felt there was something missing. We were communicating with more and more people so the quantity is there but the quality of the connection wasn’t quite there. It was almost like an illusion of a connection. – Rana el Kaliouby Rana shares about her first time living abroad. She was newly married at the time and she found herself away from her family and then-husband who had to stay behind to run a software company. She realized that despite spending a lot of time with her laptop and mobile phone, she always felt alone due to a lack of intimacy of technology.  Importance of Emotional Intelligence During Rana’s study abroad, technology served as the main portal of communication between her and her family. However, it fails to communicate the richness of her voice, intonation, facial expressions, and gestures. Non-verbal communications are lost she was chatting over text with her family. “That just got me thinking, emotional intelligence and our emotions, in general, are so important in how we live our lives, how we make decisions, how we connect with one another, how we learn, how our memory gets encoded yet, in the digital universe, its devoid of all of that. That set me on the path of building technology that has AI and emotional intelligence and maybe even someday, empathy.” – Rana el Kaliouby To hear more about Rana ’s views on human and emotional AI and the ethics of AI, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Rana is co-founder and CEO of Affectiva.  Having defined the category of Emotion AI, Rana is now pioneering Human Perception AI: technology that can understand all things human.   A passionate advocate for innovation, ethics in AI and diversity, Rana has been recognized on  Fortune’s 40 Under 40 and Forbes America’s Top 50 Women in Tech.  Rana is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.   She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and a Post Doctorate at MIT. Links: Linkedin: Kaliouby Twitter: @kaliouby Affectiva Leadership Team 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 continue our run of legendary authors with best selling author of the brand new book Samsung Rising, Geoffrey Cain. He takes us into both South and North Korea, what it’s like to live in both places and how relatively small South Korea gained out-sized economic power. We also talk about how Samsung grew from a fish market to a mega-empirical, multi-national, with 300,000 employees. There’s a ton here you’ll find fascinating. South Korea Geoffrey gives a great visual description of both North and South Korea in this episode. He lived on and off in South Korea from 2009 to 2016 and have visited North Korea as well for two weeks as a reporter. He further describes how South Koreans practice their right to assemble to petition about issues such as powers of major corporations, labor unions, and the like. He relates South Korea to the French who have massive protests, too.  “Korean democracy is quite young, it was only 1987 that Korea became a democracy. It wasn’t until many years later that it really became a full democracy. It was a corrupted democracy for a long time. The fascinating thing was the fact that I’m standing in the Square, and I could turn north and look north and I would realize that about 45 minutes or an hour drive away from me, is the border of North Korea.” – Geoffrey Cain North Korea On the border of South Korea lies what they call the DMZ or the Demilitarized Zone. It is one of the most heavily mined places on Earth. Former President Bill Clinton even visited and said: “its the scariest place on Earth.” South Korea (SK) is described as orderly but with bustling cars and noise, he describes the DMZ in North Korea as barren land. There were no lush trees like in SK and the whole vibe of Pyongyang, the capital was similar to a dystopian sci-fi movie.  Miracle in Han River The unexpected growth of South Korea is often called as the Miracle in Han River. The country was able to come out of nowhere and take on the world. This is what Geoffrey discussed in his book Samsung Rising. “The story of this nation that has been overlooked in the past—it is small, it is seen as inconsequential, it is this little peninsula next to this major giant, China, smash right there with Japan, which is also a big power subject to all kinds of war and sufferings in the past—but somehow managed to become this powerhouse of technology and economy and industry and democracy.” – Geoffrey Cain To hear more about Geoffrey’s views on China and Asia more broadly, the Coronavirus and the battle for worldwide AI supremacy, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Geoffrey Cain is an award-winning foreign correspondent, author, commentator, anthropologist, and scholar of East and Central Asia. His first book, Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korea Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech, from a decade of his coverage of the world’s largest technology conglomerate, was published in March 2020 by Currency at Penguin Random House. A former correspondent at The Economist, Cain is a regular commentator in The Wall Street Journal, Time, Foreign Policy, The New Republic and The Nation, and a frequent guest on CNN, MSNBC, BBC and Bloomberg. Cain writes about the ways that technology is upending our lives, communities, governments and businesses. His work takes him to the world’s most authoritarian and far-off places, from inside North Korea to the trans-Siberian railway across Russia, from investigations into genocide in Cambodia to experiments in technological surveillance in China. Cain is sought out as a consultant on government, business and technology, having advised the World Health Organization, Open Government Partnership, the United Nations humanitarian affairs office, and major multinational corporations and investment firms. A Fulbright scholar, he holds a master’s with distinction from London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and a bachelor’s at The George Washington University, which he attended on a music scholarship. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a security fellow at the Truman National Security Project. Born in Los Angeles and raised in Chicago, Cain lives in Istanbul, Turkey, and Washington, DC. He plays the jazz trombone. Links: Geoffrey Cain Twitter: @geoffrey_cain Linkedin: Geoffrey Cain The NY Times: Samsung: The Tech Monster That Conquered the World 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!

Today, we have a legendary conversation with a legendary American Hero, retired 4-Star General, bestselling author, entrepreneur and educator Stan McChrystal. He is the partner of Chris Fussel who was recently on Follow Your Different Episode #149. We get into these topics: leadership, digital leadership, crisis management, his view on how we got here with COVID19 and how we get out of it. We also discuss the digital divide between the public and private sectors and what we should do about, Pay special attention to The General’s advice for business leaders, State Governors and The President of The United States. An Experience No One Predicted Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates calls Stan “perhaps the finest warrior and leader of men in combat I ever met.” This was definitely one of the greatest descriptions one could say about him. He is the kind of leader any company would want in their team, especially during these unusual times. Stan described this coronavirus pandemic as disorienting. It is highly different from most of the crises in our lives. We face an amorphous viral threat and we get affected economically as well/.  “So the average person is going through an experience he probably has never predicted. He got to get his mind around it and not just their own mind, but also their family, their organization and all the people they care about.” – Stan McChrystal Leadership During Unusual Times Aside from possessing leadership fundamentals, Stan calls for a different kind of leadership during these unusual times.  “Your organization can have had a strategy you’re very comfortable with that was executing in a set of places. Suddenly that strategy, for any number of reasons, appear to be absolutely invalid now. So the leaders got a role to first, give people a sense of direction and then provide direction. And finally, the leaders got to inspire.”  – Stan McChrystal On Digital Leadership Christopher asked Stan about the daily video briefings he spearheaded when he was in the military and Stan gave a nice story back in memory lane. He was citing this as one of the best examples of digital leadership especially in times of crisis. “Out of necessity, we spread our force. That was 2003 and then we realize, how do you synchronize that? We were at the beginning of the technological boom and we latched on the video conferences, laptops and we connected the entire force, every day, for 90 minutes. When I took command, it was 50 people for 30 minutes. Then we opened it to 7500 people for 90 minutes. To some people, it may sound like madness but it was the most efficient thing I’d ever been a part of,” – Stan McChrystal To know more about the digital divide between the public and private sectors and what we should do about it and The General’s advice for business leaders, State Governors and The President of The United States, download and listen to this episode,  Bio: Stan McChrystal is a retired 4-Star US General. He is best known for his command of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the mid-2000s. His last assignment was as Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, United States Forces – Afghanistan (USFOR-A).[5] He previously served as Director, Joint Staff from August 2008 to June 2009 and as Commander of JSOC from 2003 to 2008, where he was credited with the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.  General McChrystal was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey and the Defense Distinguished Service Medal by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. General McChrystal founded McChrystal Group in January 2011 to deliver innovative leadership solutions to businesses globally in order to help them transform and succeed in challenging, dynamic environments.  Links: McChrystal Group Linkedin – Stan McCrystal Leaders: Myth and Reality My Share of the Task: A Memoir Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World Wikipedia – Stanley McChrystal  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 this episode, two mission-driven, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Arisa Amano and Bob Remeika, co-founders of hot startup Internal.IO and they are on a mission to change Internal systems and productivity. We have a real conversation about how technology can positively change the way work gets done, why is it important to protect customer data and how the two of them have built both their relationship and their company. Internal.IO Prior to co-founding the blockchain company Harbour, Anisa and Bob met at Yammer. They went ahead and launched Internal.IO when they realized that they have been building internal tools for different companies in the past.  “When Anisa and I were at Harbor, we realized we built this console internally and we look back and every other company that we’ve ever been at, we built internal tools for every single one. We started thinking about, what would be a good console and why do they get so bad?” – Bob Remeika Access Abuse and More Bob further shares their observation on why consoles are inefficient. Companies always try to determine where to allocate engineering resources and ideally, they should be working for the core product since it is vital to the business. He further shares that consoles often times becomes a “Frankenstein Project” or a hodgepodge of information.  “These internal tools are necessary but what happens is you always go with what is the common denominator. Building them? You usually zap them together and so, you wind up with something that is inherently insecure. You’re giving away way too much customer information to too many employees throughout your organization, so you’re subject to access abuse.” – Bob Remeika Consoles or Internal Tools Anisa shares that Internal. IO aims to replace the internal tools that companies built. She cites Uber as an example, where the main product is the ride-booking service. However, in the background, there are multiple departments that need to share information to be able to fulfill their jobs, such as Customer Service or Operations.  The concern, however, the console is either hard to use or the app does not have proper permissions in place to control the access or the app is partially broken and a lot of different issues because its not the core focus of the company. That is where Internal.IO comes in.  To know more about why it’s cool to disagree, how Anisa and Bob have built trust and to know their thoughts on responsible hyper-growth, download and listen to this episode,  Bio: Arisa Amano began her career at VMware, a software company that provides cloud computing and platform virtualization software and services. As their marketing manager, she analyzed customer usage of products and created marketing campaigns; one of the campaigns was a YouTube video contest called “Run It with VMware.”  In 2010, she worked at MTV Networks as a Product Marketing Lead for Social Games. She worked across Nickelodeon, MTV, and Comedy Central groups.  In March 2011, Amano became the Director of Product Marketing & Design for Yammer. In December 2013, her role changed to Head of Lifecycle Marketing. She was part of the company until they were acquired by Microsoft.  In December 2014, Amano began playing the role of Vice President of Products for Zenefits. owned the complete relaunch of the Zenefits’ product suite, launching Z2 and HROne.  In 2017, Arisa Amano co-founded Harbor (blockchain) with Bob Remeika. Their team is in the process of creating a decentralized compliance protocol that standardizes the way securities are issued and traded on blockchains.   Bob Remeika is Co-Founder and CTO at Harbor, Inc. Links: Internal.io Twitter: @arisa_amano Linkedin: Arisa Amano Linkedin: Bob Remeika Twitter: @bob_remeika A newly funded startup, Internal, says it wants to help companies better manage their internal consoles 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!

Today, we have a riveting conversation with Sachit Gupta. He’s been in the background helping some of the top podcasters and content creators build their businesses. He’s an expert at building and monetizing digital content. Recently, he stepped out and built his own podcast Conscious Creators and he wants to help people “Make A Life Through Your Art Without Selling Your Soul.” This conversation is a great opportunity to learn from a sensei in digital content and regardless of what you do, Second Guessing His Talents A lot more people are looking at podcasting, webinars, youtube shows, and other digital content of course writing books, as either key parts of their business or an extension to their business. In fact, Christopher personally thinks every brand needs to become a media brand. There is no other time than today to start digital leadership in your respective industry.  For 10 years now, Sachit Gupta had been in the background of content creators or digital leaders. He worked with industry giants like Tim Ferriss, Seth Godin, among others. But who would have thought he has always been second-guessing himself in terms of creativity? “My art wasn’t good enough, so I started doing all these things. I graduated and worked with creators and now what I realized is, because I didn’t think my art was good enough, or my creation, I subconsciously entered a career supporting other creators.” – Sachit Gupta The Story of the Starving Artist Christopher asks Sanchit what fascinates him the most. He shares that he has always been fascinated with artists who can remain independent with their craft while still monetizing their talents.  “For me, I think there is a whole story of the starving artist and how creators are always like beholden to big corporations. How can you create and be an independent artist and own your art, own your worth and charge your worth like you can have a career yourself?” – Sachit Gupta Advice To Content Creators What are the things most people get stuck with? Sanchit shares that the people whom he works with—creative people, artists, content creators—are still challenged with defining what their message is and to whom is this message for. “Who’s your market? What are their hopes, fears, and dreams? What are their problems and how do you help them solve the problem?” – Sachit Gupta To know more about Sanchit Gupta, an expert at building and monetizing digital content, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Sachit Gupta helps amplify Creators (podcasters, authors, etc.) & Brands. Creators and Brands want the same things — the right audiences, bigger impact; sometimes, even each other. He provides the tools and strategies to create the right connections at the right time that make these needs, reality — easily, instantly. That’s what he means when he say — Connections, Amplified. Sanchit and his team have worked on campaigns with top podcasters like Andrew Warner (Mixergy) Hiten Shah & Steli Efti (The Startup Chat), #1 NYT best-selling authors (Tim Ferriss, Seth Godin, Oren Klaff), social media influencers (Tessa Arias, Handle The Heat) and international sports stars (Rohit Sharma, Indian Cricket Team). He also worked with 30+ brands including Pilot.com, Toptal, Pipedrive, HostGator, ActiveCampaign, ahrefs, The 5 Minute Journal, ClickFunnels, Outerknown, Brain.fm and more to create win-win partnerships with Creators.  Links: Linkedin: Sachit Gupta Instagram: @sachitgupta Twitter: @sachitgupta Platforms Media Medium.com: @sachitgupta 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!

Today the legendary super agent Darren Prince. We dig into it all, how he went from sports memorabilia to a super agent. Pay special attention to why Darren wants to inspire people to overcome addiction. This is an extraordinary guy and conversation, I know you’ll love. The Man Behind The Man and The Woman Darren is 100% well-known among sports A-listers and celebrities. His client list includes Magic Johnson, Charlie Sheen, Vince Neil, Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Dennis Rodman, Denise Richards, Carmen Electra, Chevy Chase, the late Muhammad Ali, Smokin’ Joe Frazier, and Evel Knievel. “You got to love them like your family. I love people, It’s amazing. You’re getting inside some of these people’s lives and if you do the right thing, the relationships that would come from it, from people that really don’t trust because they’ve been screwed ever so often. They are very very guarded” – Darren Prince  Opiate Addiction Aside from a well-renowned agent, he is also a self-confessed recovered addict with nearly 12 years sober. He describes his experience and how certain religious figures helped him through this challenge. He usually shares this experience when he speaks in colleges, groups or companies. “My opiate addiction took me to a place where I wanted to kill myself every day. I had a dream job, the dream life, the clients, the notoriety, but I was living in a double life.” – Darren Prince  Undesirable Childhood Life Darren shares a lot of his challenges that started in my childhood. He was classified with a severe learning disability. This led him to feel different, less, and uncomfortable with his own skin. He was verbally bullied and he never spoke out.  To hear more about Darren and his ideas on overcoming addiction, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Darren Prince is a sports and celebrity agent who, at the age of 14, founded a mail order company selling baseball cards and traveling around the country participating in trade shows.  At the age of 20 he sold his company and became an industry leader in private autograph signings for sports and celebrity memorabilia with athletes and celebrities. A-List celebrities included the late Muhammad Ali, Hulk Hogan, Pele, Joe Montana, Carmen Electra and Jenny McCarthy. In 1995 Prince started a new venture with Prince Marketing Group (PMG), representing athletes and celebrities for marketing deals consisting of endorsements, licensing, TV, movie and book deals, autograph signings and appearances. His first client to sign with the firm was none other than Magic Johnson.  Soon after Smokin’ Joe Frazier, Dennis Rodman, Pamela Anderson and Chevy Chase followed. With PMG growing at an enormous pace, Prince added Scottie Pippen, Clyde Drexler, Mickey Rourke, Roy Jones Jr, Micky Ward and the late Evel Knievel as clients over the years.  The sports/entertainment industry is a small world and very competitive,” says Darren Prince, CEO of Prince Marketing Group.  “Prince Marketing Group has prospered over the years by delivering out of the box thinking for clients and building relationships through the practice of good business and effective networking.” Prince Marketing Group is currently a multi-million dollar business that has negotiated over $200 Million in deals and currently secures marketing deals, arranges signing/memorabilia appearances, commercial licensing, product endorsement, and voice-overs. Darren is a true entrepreneur as he has been able to continuously reinvent himself and significantly grow his business over the years.  He has been featured in outlets such as Your World With Neil Cavuto, The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, Hannity & Colmes, ESPN, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, USA Today, Forbes’ Sports Money, On the record with Greta Van Susteren, Howard Stern radio, CNBC The Closing Bell and a variety of others for his marketing expertise. Links: Prince Marketing Group Darren’s Website Instagram Sports & Celebrity Agent Darren Michael Prince: “How I was able to recover from my addiction by building self-esteem by doing ‘esteem-able’ acts” 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!

Today the legendary performance coach to rock stars, Phil Towle, joins us today to talk about how we can deal with the coronavirus crisis and how we can make a difference. Phil is a sensei among sensei on life coaching and life design. Kirk Hammett, of Metallica, even said, “If Lennon and McCartney had Phil, the Beatles would never have broken up.” Covid19 Is A Gift Everyone worldwide is grappling with different issues during this crisis. For Phil, he shares that this challenging situation has forced him to believe that Covid19 is a gift we gave ourselves. This gift forces us to transform a lost, sick and divided society. “I think that Covid19 is bringing the best out of most of us. I think that we are going to heal ourselves and the only way that we could do it, is to have something that is drastic that makes it more difficult for us to see ourselves as sinners.” – Phil Towle We Are One Civilization Phil shares that we ought to at ourselves as one civilization. He encourages everyone to set aside personal differences and review oneself instead. He also mentions that social distancing is appropriate at the moment, but a heartfelt connection is a cure. “It is really hard for me to be angry at somebody else now because they have a different viewpoint. I saved my anger because I have some for my own contributions to the way society screwed itself up.” – Phil Towle Making a Difference Phil shares how Christopher stood as a role model at this crisis. Chris placed prime importance on his thought about how companies react to this crisis will greatly define their brand. He himself has been collecting gloves and distributing it to local hospitals in Santa Cruz, California.  “It’s kind of you to say, Phil. When it became clear if I was a legendary leader, what would I do now and I have tasked myself to answer that question every day and it changes every day. so, I just tried to do and be everything I can.” – Christopher Lochhead To hear more about Phil and his ideas on making a difference during this crisis, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Phil Towle is a “performance coach”. He defines “performance coaching” as a proactive psychological strategy that facilitates making your best better.  In addition, Phil works with, “Difference makers” committed to using their God-given talents to fulfill their highest possibilities and those around them…Determined to transform each hardship, setback and self-imposed limitation, into superior achievement… Sample clients include: Metallica; Dick Vermeil (Superbowl Winning Coach with St. Louis Rams); Bill Romanowski (Professional Athlete); Rascal Flatts; Tom Morello (musician with Rage Against Machine/ Audioslave/ Nightwatchman, and Human Rights Activist) Links: Phil Towle Metallica documentary featuring Phil Towle working with the band: “Some Kind of Monster” 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 continue our run of legendary authors with Twitter’s former head of Europe Operations, Bruce Daisley. He’s got a new book out called Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat, He’s also got a great podcast of the same name! This conversation is fun as we talk about some of his “30 hacks” for more joy at work. Expect a lot of laughter, conversations about digital relationships, walking meetings, Chinese Sci-Fi and a lot more. Also, pay close attention to our discussion about why you should turn off notifications on your phone! London To California The conversation with a lot of laughter from the two. They touched on topics such as living in London, how Europeans adjust when they visit the US and the culinary fusion of European dishes. You might also relate to the two who kept on adding movies in their “to watch list” but have never even started watching any on the list. Bruce also shared how he loved buying books, but never actually find time reading them. This is also the inspiration why he wrote the book Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat. Twitter EU Bruce shares when he joined Twitter, he never expected he would face a great challenge. Initially, Twitter was rated as one of the best places to work for. However, somewhere along the way, employees started to leave one by one. In a year, 40 of his top people left Twitter. “Might be something I did, something went wrong. The culture went from being the “biggest party that you never wanted to end” to being this “party that you wished you never had left the house to go to.” – Bruce Daisley He then started commissioning researchers with the hopes of improving workplace and culture. Unfortunately, the people have either not read these papers, or have not implemented it. It was such wasted information so Bruce decided he should write about it. Eat. Sleep. Work. Repeat. Bruce shares he wrote this book, which is intentionally a very short episodic series of interventions that anyone can stage in their office or workplace. One piece of information he shares is that open offices increase employees’ hate to co-workers by 75%.  “Even if you just read one 10-page chapter and you Xerox it, threw it at your boss, I am hoping that even with that just one intervention might marginally improve people’s work.” – Bruce Daisley To hear more about Bruce’s ideas on  hacks for joy at work and more information about Bruce, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Bruce Daisley was previously Twitter’s most senior employee outside of the United States, in his role of Vice President across Europe, Middle East and Africa.  He joined the company in 2012 having previously run YouTube UK at Google.  He has also worked in the magazine publishing and radio industries having got his first break by mailing a cartoon resume of his life to prospective employers. Bruce’s passion for improving work led to him creating the podcast Eat Sleep Work Repeat on making work better. It became a number 1 smash in the UK (also hitting the business top 10 in the US). Links: Book – Eat. Sleep. Work. Repeat. Website – Eat. Sleep. Work.  Twitter – @brucedaisley 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!

Today, we have a very timely conversation about leadership and crisis management with a highly decorated Navy Seal Chris Fussell. He partnered with 4-star General Stanley McCrystal to retool the US military after 9/11. Chris is a legendary American hero, a servant leader in the military, entrepreneur, and now the President of McCrystal Group. Chris and Stan consult and advise organizations around the world on leadership and frankly, they helped a lot of organizations deal with this crisis. We also talk about a recent opinion piece that Chris and Stan wrote for the NY Times. Connected Through Structure Chris describes that tribes are connected through structure and leadership. It also holds true within industries. He further shares that when the ability of those systems starts to be dismantled through the separation physically or something similar to what is happening to us at the moment, we will end up with a disconnected state. He further shares how this scenario in relation to them at Washington DC/ Since there is a “disconnected state” the food shortages among families on the other side of DC do not affect Capitol Hill emotionally. He says this is how inequity stats. Social Cohesion Chris shares that the “fabric” that holds society together is immediate family, community and socioeconomic circles. “This is critical that we reach across those boundaries that’s why, institutions—like a workplace that pulls from many different networks, from the executive, down to the frontline folks, or like a public school or a church, that reaches across the boundaries—those create this fabric that pulls us together anytime you see that disrupted at scale for an extended period. If the fabric is unwoven, its really hard to weave them together.” – Chris Fussell Call For National Level Campaign Chris took the opportunity to call everyone to action to help out in any way they can. Christopher Lochhead shared that he and his family purchased plastic gloves from a local restaurant supplier and dropped it to local hospitals in Santa Cruz. “The people at the bottom are those who are gonna suffer more economically. They’re gonna suffer the worst medically as a result of this pandemic. The economically deprived neighborhoods.” – Chris Fussell To hear more about Chris and how leaders are holding up with this crisis, download and listen to this episode.  Bio: Chris Fussell is the President of McChrystal Group.  He is an author of the 2015 New York Times bestseller, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World as well as 2017 Wall Street Journal bestseller, One Mission: How Leaders Build a Team of Teams.  He joined McChrystal Group as a Partner in 2012. Chris was commissioned as an Officer in the United States Navy in 1997, and spent the next 15 years on US Navy SEAL Teams, leading SEAL elements in combat zones around the globe.  From war-torn Kosovo, to counter-terrorism operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, to highly specialized efforts in the troubled areas of the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa, he experienced and led through the modern evolution of the US military’s Special Operations community, first on SEAL Teams Two and Eight, then in the Naval Special Warfare Development Group. Chris was selected to serve as Aide-de-Camp to then-Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal during General McChrystal’s final year commanding the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), where they served for a year together in Iraq.  He witnessed first-hand the Special Operations community’s transformation into a successful, agile network. Chris is also a Senior Fellow for National Security at New America, a Washington, DC-based non-partisan think tank dedicated to understanding the next generation of challenges facing the United States.  Chris is actively involved in several non-profits dedicated to helping veterans and their families, and holds a seat on the Board of Directors for the Navy SEAL Foundation. He is also a lifetime member to the Council on Foreign Relations. Chris earned a Master of Arts in Irregular Warfare from the Naval Postgraduate School, receiving the Pat Tillman Award for highest peer-rated Special Operations Officer in the program.  His thesis work focused on the interagency collaboration and intelligence sharing processes that drove effective, cross-silo collaboration during the peak of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Links: Christopher Fussell – McCrystalGroup Linkedin – Christopher Fussell New York Times – What 9/11 Taught Us About Leadership in a Crisis 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 speak with Rob Markey of Bain & Co today about his breakthrough piece for Harvard Business Review “Are You Undervaluing Your Customers?”Rob also leads the Net Promoter Score Loyalty Forum and his Firm, Bain, invented the Net Promoter Score (NPS). We have a riveting conversation about why companies with high levels of customer loyalty grow 2.5 times as fast as their peers, how companies should re-orient around customers and why Customer Loyalty is a shareholder priority and more. If you care about customers and growth, I think you’re going to love this dialogue. Pressure To Deliver Earnings Rob shares how his write up started as a source of frustration and curiosity. He shares that the clients he has worked with over the years still abandoned customer-centric companies. He further shares that companies ultimately face pressure to deliver earnings.  “The investors put pressure on management teams, who then are forced to squeeze out every last dollar in order to make a goal. That is just a short term goal.” – Rob Markey Rob also says the importance for companies to have a visionary CEO, those who are willing to sacrifice short term earnings for long term gains. Investors should support these kinds of CEOs. Standardized Metrics Christopher asked if there should be a standardized metric to look at this matter in the context of a quarterly earnings call. Rob shares that it is one way to do this, however, he also says the world is a much more complicated place and it is hard to put a finger on just one metric that will lead you in the right way. Net Promoter Score Christopher asked Rob if NPS is the answer for companies. He shares it was just one of the objective function that they used when they were searching around for the right question to ask “NPS is the best single question metric we have that enables you to see how an individual customer or a set of customers feel about the business in ways that then align with lifetime value.” – Rob Markey There are lots of ways to collect a net promoter score. It can be after an interaction with a customer or as part of a relationship. It can even be a mode of market research, where the researcher can conduct double-blind research to acquire very reliable apples-to-apples comparison among different companies. To hear more about Rob and why customer loyalty is a shareholder priority and more, download and listen to this episode.  Bio: Founder and former leader of Bain & Company’s Customer Strategy & Marketing practice. Customer experience podcast host. Architected customer experience transformations, employee engagement improvement, marketing and sales capabilities development for dozens of the world’s largest companies. Co-authored The Ultimate Question 2.0 (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011), and numerous other publications. Keynote speaker, leader of the NPS Loyalty Forum, and podcaster on customer and employee experience. Creator of the Net Promoter System. Specialties: Customer experience; customer strategy and marketing; customer loyalty; employee loyalty; customer segmentation; new product development; direct marketing; brand management; service operations; digital transformation  Links: Are You Undervaluing Your Customers? Rob Markey – Bain and Co. Linkedin – RG Markey Twitter – @rgmarkey Net Promoter System Podcast 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!

Today, #1 technology analyst, author of the smash hit, “Disrupting Digital Business” and founder of Constellation Research, Ray Wang is back. To add to our list of controversial episodes, Ray shares his thoughts on how Coronavirus really started, It’s impact on society and why we better be ready for a new normal. This is a fantastic, thought-provoking dialogue! The New Normal As we are currently facing a pandemic, Ray shares the new normal that we should all be prepared for. He shares there will be mass testing, so the health officials can compare the figures versus the mortality rates. Governments will also impose the suspension of business operations and will strictly enforce home quarantines and lockdowns. “If you look at the 2019-2020 flu season, we had 15 million cases, 140,000 hospitalizations, and 8200 deaths. We can handle 140,000 hospitalizations over 8 to 10 weeks, that’s not an issue. This is the surge in the hospitalization, that occurs all at once. We can’t handle 140,000 a week, that would just blow up the entire hospital bed capacity.” – Ray Wang Initial Containment Ray refreshes our memory during January, where several reports circulated about a new strain of flu that is affecting China. He spoke with several colleagues from the Chinese scientific community who said they were prohibited to use messaging apps to discuss this. The Chinese Communist Party members decided to play the issue down. “Even if those numbers are not accurate, a lot of people were saying, contain, shut down, all travel in and out of China. If they had done that, we weren’t here today. It’s not “blame game time,” but that’s how we contain a crisis.” – Ray Wang Viral Research Gone Wrong Ray shares some provocative information that he received from several scientists in China. Apparently, in a viral laboratory near Wuhan, some scientists are modifying bat genomes. For some reason, there must have been a breach in safety protocols, which ended in spreading the virus through patient zero in Wuhan Wet Market.  “Nobody wanted to talk about it because there was a dual-use lab. If you’re a government, you don’t want to hurt your own people either. Today, what’s actually happening is they are trying to cover up for that.” – Ray Wang To hear more about Ray and about coronavirus and its impact on the society, download and listen to this episode.  Bio: R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Principal Analyst, Founder, and Chairman of Silicon Valley based Constellation Research, Inc.   He’s also the author of the popular business strategy and technology  blog “A Software Insider’s Point of View”.  With viewership in the 10’s of millions of page views a year, his blog provides insight into how disruptive technologies and new business models such as digital transformation impact brands, enterprises, and organizations.   Wang has held executive roles in product, marketing, strategy, and consulting at companies such as Forrester Research, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and Johns Hopkins Hospital. His new best selling book Disrupting Digital Business, published by Harvard Business Review Press and now globally available provides insights on why 52% of the Fortune 500 have been merged, acquired, gone bankrupt, or fallen off the list since 2000.   In fact, this impact of digital disruption is real.  However, it’s not the technologies that drive this change. It’s a shift in how new business models are created. Wang has held executive roles in product, marketing, strategy, and consulting at companies such as Forrester Research, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Personify, and Johns Hopkins Hospital.  He is a prominent and dynamic keynote speaker and research analyst working with clients on digital, innovation, business model design, engagement strategies, customer experience, matrix commerce, and big data. Hiring a professional photographer to capture the proposal has become popular in recent years, but is it right for you? Here https://proposal007.com/proposal-photography/ the pros and cons. His Silicon Valley research firm, Constellation Research, Inc., advises Global 2000 companies on the future, business strategy, and disruptive technology adoption.   Ray is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and well quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Bloomberg, CNBC TV, Reuters, IDG News Service, and other global media outlets.  Wang has thrice won the prestigious Institute of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR) Analyst of the Year Award. Links: Linkedin – RWang0 Twitter – @rwang0 Constellation.com – R Ray Wang RayWang.org Understanding Case Fatality Rates For #COVID19 #CoronaVirus 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 subs

Today, we have Security Guru Morgan Wright, a distinguished professional in law enforcement and an internationally recognized expert on cybersecurity, cyberterrorism, and privacy. We talk all things security: how to deal with fear, scams, self-defense and most importantly why Morgan is optimistic about our future. This is a fantastic dialogue! Morgan Wright We have conversed with Morgan several times in the past. He talked about Security in episode 84. He was known for his landmark testimony before Congress on Healthcare.gov that changed how the government collected personally identifiable information. On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs Morgan shares about Dave Grossman, an author who has written excellent books and theory on warfare and mindset. Dave, in his writing, says that in every society there are 3 kinds of people: there are sheep, there are wolves and there are sheepdogs. “If you’re a sheep, that’s okay, but recognize you’re a sheep.If you are a sheepdog, that’s the only thing that stands between the sheep and the wolves. Less than 1% of the population in the US, whether its the military or firefighters, says I will stand up and be that sheepdog.” Morgan Wright on Dave Grossman’s Writing However, Morgan believes that when the time is ripe, many “sheeps” are willing to step up and become “sheepdogs.” He narrates how several life-changing events that happened in the US changed the mindset of Americans. Those are the 9/11 attack, Hurricanes, and others.  “Just when we think we have been tested, nature has its own way of testing you again.” – Morgan Wright Keep Calm & Carry On Morgan further shares some insights on how to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. He stresses the importance of keeping calm. He says that there is no amount of panic that can change the situation. In fact, it worsens the current situation. He also shares about expecting nothing and accepting everything. He also quotes Teddy Roosevelt saying “do what you can, with who you are, with what you have.” To hear more about Morgan Wright, how to deal with fear, scams, self-defense and most importantly why Morgan is optimistic about our future, download and listen to this episode.  Bio: Morgan 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 defense, justice and intelligence for the largest technology companies in the world including SAIC, Unisys, Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco.  He’s a contributing author for the 4th Edition Computer Security Handbook, and has been quoted in 2 New York Times best sellers (Sharyl Attkisson: Stonewalled and Carmine Gallow: Talk Like TED).  Links: Morgan Wright Blog – Morgan Wright Linkedin – Morgan Wright Twitter: @morganwright_us  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 guest today has written four New York Times Best Sellers, three of which, hit #1. He was America’s favorite bad boy, turned entrepreneur and philosopher-king, Tucker Max. We have a fantastic conversation about the coronavirus, what he and his family are doing to hunker down and try to stay healthy. We touch on the idea of radical generosity in business and what he and his company scribe are doing to lead during this crisis. Most, you’ll find out why Tucker thinks the virus is going to lead to a new golden age! Humor, Next to Grief Tucker Max had such a huge impact on our culture. He’ s only the fourth writer (along with Malcolm Gladwell Brene Brown and Michael Lewis) to have three books on the New York Times Nonfiction Best Seller List at once. Time Magazine has called him one of the 100 most influential people. He shares in this episode the importance of humor to go through our current pandemic. He thinks that society created certain people, those who are “progressive, social justice warrior and driven by a certain extreme toxic brand of “feminism” who are humorless and are too stern with their beliefs.   “Laughter is next to grief in terms of how emotions are processed. The sadness and suffering are the core part of life and the way you deal with it, one of the ways is to laugh about it. People who are humorless don’t get that.” – Tucker Max Radical Generosity Christopher shares about companies who are winning in the age of the coronavirus are those who are practicing radical generosity. Companies must have a certain “do-good mission” to be able to claim their title as category kings and queen. Tucker shares how he agrees to this move of several companies. He also urges companies to give away information for free. He gives out comments to individuals who sell their downloadable PDFs and monetizes it. Outlook For The Future Christopher believes we will see a huge cultural, societal and business shift. The three that immediately come to mind is office work in general, retail and telemedicine and digital medicine. Tucker chimed in with his outlook for the near future: “I am really happy I’m not in commercial real estate, because I think what’s gonna happen over the next 2 weeks is: everyone is gonna realize how bullshit offices are, how much more work they get done at home or how much they like working from home more. I think long term, we’ve just seen the top long term secular decline in commercial real estate and I think its a big one.” – Tucker Max To hear more about Tucker Max, the coronavirus and how he is coping with it and the golden age that will rise after this pandemic, download and listen to this episode.  Bio:  Tucker Max is the co-founder of Scribe Media, a company that helps you write, publish, and market your book. He’s written four New York Times Best Sellers (three that hit #1), which have sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. He’s credited with being the originator of the literary genre, “fratire,” and is only the fourth writer (along with Malcolm Gladwell, Brene Brown and Michael Lewis) to have three books on the New York Times Nonfiction Best Seller List at one time. He was nominated to the Time Magazine 100 Most Influential List in 2009. He received his BA from the University of Chicago in 1998, and his JD from Duke Law School in 2001. He currently lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife Veronica and three children. Links: Tucker Max Scribe Books School 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 continue our run of legendary authors. Today, one of the most prolific and important writers in the world, Dushka Zapata. Her work has been viewed over 157 million times on question & answer site Quora.  In this episode, we get right into how she’s dealing with the coronavirus. Dushka has a powerful point of view on Social Distancing and why we should be conducting our selves as if we already had it. She also touches on why we need to learn to become “elastic” and how we’re all connected. Living in Uncertainty Dushka is exactly what we all need right now! She shares how to deal with uncertainty, especially in the present time. People have been looking outwardly too much and she says this is not helping them. “We are looking for answers in other people and the fact is, no one has the answers. I think that’s really interesting because you forget that you can look within for certain things. Like managing your anxiety and managing the fear of scarcity, which is one of the things that, we are wired to be fearful of.” – Dushka Zapata Acts of Kindness Dushka reads to us something that she wrote on Quora about acts of kindness in times of coronavirus.  “In my first supermarket visit, the shelves that carried cans, crackers, toilet paper, were completely empty People around me were clearly on edge. Stressed, anxious, haphazardly grabbing things from shelves and throwing them into their carts. I wanted to buy dishwasher detergent and there was one left but I couldn’t reach it. I suddenly felt a sense of powerlessness rise inside of me. That’s when I saw that the box I had been reaching for was right in front of my eyes. I took it, then realized a very tall person was handing it to me. “It looks like you wanted this, yes?” he says this to me very gently. I turn and we just stand there looking at each other, a pause in the middle of a frenzy spinning around us. He smiles at me. His smile feels like someone just dropped a sturdy anchor in the middle of a turbulent ocean. The times we are living in are surreal. Please, stop and be nice to someone.” – Dushka Zapata Kindness and Elasticity Dushka thinks the current pandemic has enabled people to show their best and worst. She cites how people have frenzied over grocery stocks while some other people have also been extra careful and friendly to others.  “One of the things that fascinate me about these kinds of times: one is kindness, that I want to talk about and just like thinking of other people and the other is, the ability to be elastic, flexible. How are you adapting what you’re doing to survive.” – Dushka Zapata To hear more about kindness and elasticity and Dushka’s point of view on social distancing, download and listen to this episode.  Bio: Dushka Zapata is one of the most prolific and popular writers working today.  On question and answer site Quora her work has been viewed over 157 million times. She’s the author of eight best-selling books. Dushka has over 20 years experience as a senior communications executive in Silicon Valley.  When she’s not writing, she works as a serves as communications executive in San Fransciso. Links: Quora: Duskha Zapata Amazon: Dushka Zapata Love Yourself: and Other Insurgent Acts That Recast Everything You Belong Everywhere: and Other Things You’ll Have to See for Yourself  Twitter: @dushkaamateur Linkedin: Dushka 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 continue our run of legendary authors with Courtney Carver, author of Soulful Simplicity and the brand new Project 333. We talk about The Project 333 Challenge, wearing only 33 items of clothing for three months. People who do this report less anxiety and more clarity and focus. We also talk about how to live a more simple life, why having tons of stuff doesn’t make us happy and how easy it is to slide into the mentality of buying stuff that doesn’t make us happy. You Are What You Wear Courtney starts off sharing how both men and women give a lot of attention to their wardrobes. She taps on people who have either overshopped or have thought about other people judging them based on what they wear.  “Whatever it is, we all have this connection to our clothes.” – Courtney Carver Christopher shares that although he doesn’t pay much attention to his wardrobe, he does have a 20 year old Prada suit sitting around in the closet. He is unsure of the reason why he is still keeping it but reading Courtney’s book made him think about it. Fueling Anxieties Courtney shares in one way or another, most of us have purchased clothing to make us look successful or to fit into a specific circle. In fact, in one social activity, Courtney asks for a show of hands asking about their clothes with tags. Half of the room says they do own some unworn and brand new, with tags.  “I think it comes from an obsession with getting a great deal. So we might buy something just because its a good deal when the only good part of the deal is the money part. We never really wanted it in the first place. We might also buy it because we think we need it or should have it, to measure up to the people around us, and our work, and in our day to day lives.” – Courtney Carver Project 333 Courtney described Project 333 as a “fascinating, emotional ride, digging into closets and wardrobes.” It initially started as a personal challenge to mix and match 33 articles of clothing for 3 months. A few fashion bloggers participated in the challenge and it went viral. Soon enough, Associated Press picked up the story.  “I had no idea until I got rid of most of my stuff. I had no idea how emotional it was for me because I was just really used to it all the time. I was used to seeing tags, I was used to understanding at some level that I spent way too much money on things that I don’t wear or enjoy and they were making me feel bad every single day.” – Courtney Carver To hear more about Project 333 and how a life-changing disease became a catalyst for radical, positive change in Courtney’s life, download and listen to this episode.  Bio: Courtney Carver was an Ad Sales Director for a group of luxury magazines. She was in debt, she worked all the time and she was stressed out.  Then, in 2006, she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and was forced to look at her life habits. She started by changing her diet and ended by quitting her job and getting rid of the vast majority of her belongings.  The results: She is happier, calmer and hasn’t had any MS symptoms in the last four years. Courtney Carver is the writer and founder of Be More with Less. The 43-year-old wife and mother launched her blog in May 2010 to share a message of hope in simplicity.  She left a 15-year career in sales and marketing in September 2011 to focus on writing, develop new ways to teach others to live more simply, and live a simpler life herself.  In addition to bemorewithless.com, she created bemorewithless.com/business to encourage business owners and entrepreneurs to focus on the essential instead of getting lost in busy work. Courtney was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2006 and attributes her healthy lifestyle to simplifying every part of her life, from diet to debt.  She moved from New England in 2004 to Salt Lake City where she lives with her husband and 17-year-old daughter. Links:  Website: Bemorewithless.com Instagram: @bemorewithless Twitter: @bemorewithless Youtube: Courtney Carver Facebook: Be More With Less 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!

Welcome to an amazing episode with Combat Veteran and US Marine Akshay Nanavati. He’s a speaker, entrepreneur, ultra runner, non-profit founder and best selling author. We have a stunning conversation about why overcoming extraordinary challenges is the key to a successful life, why we should all pick worthy struggles and the power of “earning your life.” Further, we also touch on why the most important skill is having a positive relationship to suffering and so much more. Body Not Built For Combat Standing at 5”7’and weighing just 138 pounds, Akshay enlisted himself to join the Marines. He was a druggie and an alcoholic at the time when he watched the movie Black Hawk Down. It triggered something within him and in a snap, he found himself reading military books and life in combat genres. It was also shortly after the 9/11 tragedy that moved him and made him ask question himself.  “What kind of human beings would knowingly put themselves in a situation like that and sacrifice their lives for somebody else?” – Akshay Nanavati True Calling To Serve Akshay sharest to Christopher that he felt at that time that he was called to serve. Nothing can stop him, even his pre-existing conditions such as depression, self-destructive tendencies, blood disorder, scoliosis, flat footedness and much more.  “It took me about a year and a half to take in all these medical waivers, but that was the turning point. That is why I wanted to join, to serve an institution where the good of the group matters more than you, the well being of the group. You serve for the people next to you and everything is your men and the mission and that’s beautiful.” – Akshay Nanavati Experiencing Humanity at Extremes Akshay shares his inner desire to go back in his previous assignment because there was something intriguing, unusual and beautiful when you experience humanity in its most extreme form.  “I mean, part of it is an addictive thing, part of it, you cannot experience and understand and taste the human experience at its fullest, unless you  experience it at the most extremes.” – Akshay Nanavati His experiences led him to write his book, Fearvana. The Dalai Lama endorsed his book, saying “Fearvana inspires us to look beyond our own agonizing experiences and find the positive side of our lives.”  To hear more on Akshay’s thoughts on self-development like: “follow your passion” and more about his book, Fearvana, download and listen to this episode.  Bio: Akshay Nanavati (born October 15, 1984) is a United States Marine veteran, speaker, entrepreneur, ultra runner and author.  He served in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom and was later diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. His book Fearvana was endorsed by the Dalai Lama and Jack Canfield. Links: Fearvana Twitter: @fearvanalife Instagram: @fearvana Wikipedia: Akshay Navati 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!

Welcome to part two of our dialogue with the real DEA Narcos Javier Peña and Steve Murphy. These are the two real American heroes who partnered with Colombian Law Enforcement to take down the world’s 1st Narco Terrorist, Pablo Escobar, and their story is the basis for the Netflix smash hit Narcos. In this second episode, you hear the conclusion of how Murph and Javier bring Escobar to justice. We also dig into their thoughts on leadership, management, and life. The End of Pablo Escobar In this riveting conversation, we hear about how Murph and Javier bring Pablo Escobar to his end. They were honest enough to say it was a story of revenge, especially thinking about how many innocent people were killed, some are personal friends of the two . Javier further recounted what transpired the moment Pablo got out of prison in 1991. They had a bounty of 5 million USD to take him down. Eventually, through the initiatives of the Columbian National Police, Pablo Escobar faced his death.  “If you watch the show Narcos, the part that I was on the roof when Pablo was killed, that’s not true, that’s Hollywood. That night, we were expecting retaliation attacks because of the death of Pablo. It was the quietest night I have even spent. I mean, there was nothing. It was quiet. The next day, Javier was back in the country.” – Steve Murphy Narcos Netflix Series Javier and Murph, in all of their appearances, wants to get the record straight that the Columbian National Police was the one who took down Pablo Escobar. The two also share how some of the scenes in Narcos were made dramatic. There were a lot of fictional events that were added to the stories to appeal to the audiences.  It was surely effective because the show was embraced not only in the US but in Europe, Australia, Asia and even in Latin America.  “The writers, directors are phenomenal. They are extremely intelligent. When I get to the writer’s room at Hollywood to work with them, they had a library of books there. I thought I knew everything about Escobar and the cartel, they had books that I never even heard of.” Javier Pena On Leadership and More Javier and Murph had some interesting thoughts on life, leadership and more. For instance, Javier shared the importance of going on the field and listening to the field men who report their surveillance first hand.  “When I retired, one of my men says, ‘Boss, I respected you because you went on the field with us’ even though I’m in the background.” Javier Pena To hear more about the real DEA narcos Javier Pena and Steve Murphy, download and listen to this episode. Bio: You may have seen TV shows and documentaries, or read books about the world’s wealthiest, and most violent drug trafficker, but now you have the opportunity to hear the real story of what happened in the investigation of Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel. DEA special agents Javier Peña and Steve Murphy were assigned as the lead investigators targeting Escobar and his organization. These true American heroes provide a first-hand lesson in history as they discuss their efforts bringing down the world’s first narco-terrorist, the challenges they faced in oftentimes hostile and life-threatening environments, and the innovative strategies they employed to successfully end the reign of terror of the world’s most wanted criminal. Their presentation is followed by a Q&A opportunity during which Javier and Steve will entertain questions related to their investigation, the making of Narcos, what history changing investigation is next for them, and more. Links: DEA Narcos 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!

Welcome to our super, special two-part dialogue with the real DEA Narcos Javier Peña and Steve Murphy. In this first episode, they take us behind the scenes of how they came together, from the US to Columbia, and worked for six years, to get Pablo Escobar. We learn, what it feels like to have a $300,000 bounty on your head and how they dealt with the emotional ups and downs of this long-term, often very lonely and of course extraordinarily dangerous mission. Street Deals to Cartels Javier and Steve are two real American heroes who partnered with Colombian Law Enforcement to take down the world’s 1st Narco Terrorist, Pablo Escobar. Their story is actually the basis for the Netflix smash hit Narcos. Javier recounts how he used to work in Austin Texas, where he runs after street dealers. From street buys to surveillance, he never expected he will be sent to Columbia. It has been months before their superiors transferred them to handle the cartels and Pablo Escobar.  “Pablo Escobar is one of the richest traffickers in the world. He built his empire on terrorism, on violence and its something we had never seen before. This is why we weren’t really ready when we started going after Escobar, cause we had never seen this type of tactics before.” – Javier Peña Narcoterrorism  Javier and Steve recounted this different kind of terrorism that promulgated in Columbia. Pablo Escobar had orchestrated car bombs, which ranged from 10-15 a day which slowly escalated to 50 per day.  “He wanted to kill as many innocent people as he could because this was his fight against Columbia. We try to explain that he challenged his country and we like to say that he actually won.” Steve Murphy He also had a bounty on the head of police officers. In fact, the DEA agents caught a 15-year old hitman who shot 10 police officers. The kid took home 100 USD per police officer he kills and he was able to feed and provide shelter to his impoverished family.  More on this episode Listen to how Murph and Javier had to bend and break the rules and why they think the courage of the Colombian people and why they think their partners in Colombian Law Enforcement ate the “real heroes.” You’re also going to hear in their voices, the powerful bond, and friendship that has developed between them. In part two, you’ll hear the dramatic conclusion of how they ultimately brought Escobar to justice. We also dig into their life and leadership lessons. We touch on their book, Manhunters and their lives today as public speakers and teachers. To hear more about the real DEA narcos Javier Pena and Steve Murphy, download and listen to this episode. Bio: You may have seen TV shows and documentaries, or read books about the world’s wealthiest, and most violent drug trafficker, but now you have the opportunity to hear the real story of what happened in the investigation of Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel. DEA special agents Javier Peña and Steve Murphy were assigned as the lead investigators targeting Escobar and his organization. These true American heroes provide a first-hand lesson in history as they discuss their efforts bringing down the world’s first narco-terrorist, the challenges they faced in oftentimes hostile and life-threatening environments, and the innovative strategies they employed to successfully end the reign of terror of the world’s most wanted criminal. Their presentation is followed by a Q&A opportunity during which Javier and Steve will entertain questions related to their investigation, the making of Narcos, what history changing investigation is next for them, and more. Links: DEA Narcos 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!

Today, we speak with self-made Billionaire, Founder of $30B market cap, Paychex. You’re gonna love this guy! He has a new book: Built, Not Born: A Self-Made Billionaire’s No-Nonsense Guide for Entrepreneurs. We dig into the book and his insights on why and when you start a company. He also talks about how to build a long-term, successful business and what important steps to take before marriage. Encourager of Entrepreneurs Tom found himself as an encourager of entrepreneurs. He understood why people evaluate whether they want to become an entrepreneur or not. He knew that there are a lot of things to take into account, such as risk and hardships exclusive to entrepreneurship.  As risks would be evident in any career, Tom shares that sometimes it is even riskier to work for somebody than it is to be your own entrepreneur. Besides, a business can serve as an heirloom or an asset that one can resell. “If your business concept is well thought off, and you are very well qualified to run your little company, your medium-sized company, whatever. then I think that’s the best of both worlds.” – Tom Golisano Wise Words For Entrepreneurs Aside from a winning concept for an enterprise, Tom shares entrepreneurs must have industry knowledge. Before launching Paychex, he used to sell accounting machines while working for a payroll processing company that caters to large corporations. He believes this industry knowledge affected his success. “Anybody who is considering being an entrepreneur, the first thing that I would ask is ‘what’s your industry knowledge?’ You know about this industry, you’re getting into that you could absolutely make a difference or are you gonna end up getting a very serious or costly education because you got into something you really did understand?” – Tom Golisano Sales Management is a Must For Tom, Sales management is one of the biggest issues with entrepreneurs. Most entrepreneurs mask the issue, saying its a “cashflow problem” but in reality, the company is not making enough sales. Tom advises entrepreneurs to start making calls and to immerse themselves as much to learn about the sales process.  “You’re not gonna be able to develop a good sales team unless you have that knowledge yourself. You might as well dig right into it. start making sales presentations and sales calls, and if you still don’t think you’re the right person to be doing that, at least you’ll be in the position to train somebody you hire to perform that function.” – Tom Golisano To hear more about Tom’s stories about what it’s like being married to Tennis Legend, Monica Seles, philanthropy, investment strategy and many more, download and listen to this episode.  Bio:  Thomas Golisano — entrepreneur, philanthropist, and civic leader — is the founder and chairman of the Board of Paychex, Inc., headquartered in Rochester, New York. With more than 12,000 employees and 100 office locations nationwide, Paychex is a leading national provider of payroll, human resource, and benefit outsourcing solutions for more than a half-million small and medium-sized businesses. Tom Golisano served as Paychex’s president and chief executive officer from 1971, when he founded the company, until October 2004. Mr. Golisano and Paychex have consistently been recognized by the business, financial and national media. Mr. Golisano was listed among the FORBES top 10 bosses in the U.S. for three consecutive years, beginning in 2002; the annual ranking is based on chief executives who provide the best balance between their compensation and shareholder return. In February 2020, his first book, Built, Not Born was launched, providing Tom Golisano’s trademark direct and often humorous style, and no-nonsense advice across all phases of business ownership. Mr. Golisano has demonstrated an ongoing dedication and commitment to a variety of civic issues and organizations. In 1985 he launched his first philanthropic endeavor by establishing the Golisano Foundation, which awards grants to organizations providing opportunities for those with intellectual disabilities. His philanthropic contributions, both personal and through the Golisano Foundation, have totaled approximately $300 million helping hospitals, educational institutions and many other organizations. In recognition of his achievements and endeavors, Golisano has received numerous awards and holds honorary doctorate degrees from five different colleges and universities. Mr. Golisano is a member of the board of directors of several private companies and institutions. He is the former owner the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League, which he purchased on March 14, 2003, demonstrating his commitment to Western New York and the region’s economic climate. Mr. Golisano said that it was important to keep the team in Buffalo because it is an economic and community asset. Mr. Golisano sold the team in 2011 with the stipulation that the team remai

This is our second in our two-part series on Digital Business, with Steve Pratt, CEO of Noodle.AI, the remarkable startup on a mission to changing global manufacturing and supply chain business. We have a real conversation about how the combination of Machine Learning / AI, The Cloud, IoT and deep data analytics can come together to reduce both economic and environmental waste. In case you missed the first part of this two-part series with Business Guru Big Ben Rewis, check it out: Episode 138. Missionary CEO Christopher has known Steve for over 30 years. He has a vast and impressive experience in digital marketing, starting with the creation of CRM business for Deloitte. He was also the founder and CEO of the InfoSys Consulting Practice and he also led IBM Watson’s initiatives. Steve has deep experience in building and managing massively successful, deep technology businesses. He has some powerful insights, through his company Noodle.Ai, into how modern technology can reduce economic and environmental waste. This is what Christopher calls a great example of a missionary CEO, where the E stands for Evangelist. “The intention of the company is to apply data science to create a world without waste. We reject this notion, historically, that you had to choose between profits and the planet.” – Steve Pratt World Without Waste Steve shares how companies have scaled things right now. They have created amazing hyper-growth for their companies, but have also accumulated huge amounts of waste.  “We have over 500 billion dollars of excess inventories sitting in warehouses. We got 50% of trucks driving around, empty. We have about 400B dollar of stuff, that is thrown out in the manufacturing process because of quality defects. These are all preventable.” – Steve Pratt A lot of people analyzed where the waste is in the world and over 90% of the waste in the world is due to manufacturing and logistics. Steve points out that due to bad computations, companies are manufacturing trillion dollars of goods and let it sit in their storage, because they couldnt get it out to the market.  Environmental Sustainability Steve shares about steel manufacturing company Big River Steel, which they granted a lead certification for environment sustainability.  “With our applications, that consumption to reduce inventory levels, reduce quality defects and they are the most profitable, per employee, the highest profit per mil hour, the lowest environmental impact of any steel known in the world.” – Steve Pratt Christopher and Steve then discussed that companies should analyze data that is readily available to them. This is can easily be achieved through the help of various technologies available.  To hear more about how digital businesses can achieve a world without waste and other insights of Steve, download and listen to this episode. Bio:  Stephen is an instigator, agitator, and pioneer in creating world-class technology services organizations.  He has spent his career building innovative ways to create value for the world’s most important organizations.  Prior to Noodle, he was responsible for all Watson implementations worldwide for IBM Global Business Services.  He also was the founder and CEO of Infosys Consulting, a Senior Partner at Deloitte Consulting, and a technology and strategy consultant at Booz, Allen & Hamilton.  He twice has been selected as one of the top 25 consultants in the world by Consulting Magazine.  He has Bachelors and Masters degrees in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University and The George Washington University focused on Satellite Communications.  For fun, Steve plays competitive tennis, races sailboats, and formerly was a crazed rugby player. He enjoys playing acoustic guitar for his children (not ready for prime time). Links:  Linkedin – Stephen Pratt Noodle.AI 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!

This is our first in a special two-part series on Digital Business. The legendary Big Ben Rewis joins us today to have a real, powerful conversation about digital businesses today and how big data can contribute to sustainability. In our next episode, watch out for Steve Pratt CEO of Noodle.AI, the remarkable startup changing global supply chains. Surfer, Snowboard, Advisor Big Ben is one of the most extraordinary adventure athlete’s of this time. He is a skier, snowboarder, sailor, and surfer. In fact, one of his first few sponsors were Jake Burton, the founder of Burton Snowboards. Today, when he’s not surfing or on some kind of adventure, Ben Rewis would most likely be dishing digital business advice to Fortune 100 companies and startups in Silicon Valley. He has deep experience in building and managing massively scalable digital business and payments infrastructure. Digital Business Guru Just to name a few of Ben’s contributions, he created the Internet e-Commerce team for Visa. He was also Head of Security & Fraud Technology for First Data and he’s an advisor to a startup Verdant Robotics, a startup doing amazing things with AI & Machine Learning in the smart agriculture category. “I think there’s a lot of themes, there’s a lot of organizational and technical similarity across all of them. The whole notion of data in the digital business is just fascinating, what’s happening in the industry today. Cause you know, like the industry quote ‘software is eating the world.’” – Ben Rewis Digital Business is the Future Digital businesses are not brand new, as they have been around a long time.Ben now shares that people are realizing the by-product of their digital business can infect more businesses. “Digital businesses don’t necessarily have new value-added services that are data-based. They may have a legacy product or service, that is digital and they realizing that the data that is produced by that service can help them generate new revenues, or cut costs.” – Ben Rewis To hear more about how digital businesses can greatly influence sustainability efforts for the future and other insights of Ben, download and listen to this episode. Bio: Ben Rewis was raised in New England north of Boston, the eldest son of two high school teachers.  After graduation from The Stowe School in VT., he moved to San Francisco, CA at age 17 and have been in technology ever since.  Today, he’s an advisory consultant to startup CEOs, and a deep payments expert with solid leadership and innovation skills.  Facilitator, speaker, communicator, thinker and doer, able to bring different constituencies together around a common digital business vision and set of deliverables.  Able to drive from big picture down to concrete initiatives. Passionate about helping teams solve challenges for strategic alignment. In addition to his business involvement with major companies, he has decades of wilderness and group leadership experience, becoming an Outward Bound instructor at age 21, and taking part in numerous adventure expeditions around the world.  He’s crossed deserts and canyons, sailed the Tasman Sea, and climbed mountains like McKinley.  He enjoys just about all board sports, competed in the first world championships for snowboarding, and learned to surf at age 40.  Ben co-founded the Drop In Coalition, and is an Advisory Board Member of the Save The Waves Coalition, and was honored in 2019 as a Royal Geographic Society Fellow.  Links: Ben Rewis Linkedin: Ben Rewis Instagram: @benrewis Twitter: @benrewis Verdant Robotics Save The Waves Organization 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!

This is a very special episode and a very different episode. Part 1 was with Intimacy Coach Allana Pratt. Today, for Part 2 in our series on Intimacy and Sex, we welcome Alice Little, legal sex worker and #1 Luxury Companion at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch in Carson City, Nevada USA. We get into it! Why Alice loves her job, why she says it’s all about connection, communication, and intimacy, what it’s like to use her service and why nothing is too kinky! Job Unlike Any Other Alice describes herself as a legal sex worker, sex educator, and intimacy expert. She used to travel in the Midwest, educating about sex until she was introduced to brothels. She found out that brothels are a unique place to work. All other sex workers have different work experiences from each other “My job very much so isn’t just sex. It’s so much more than that. It’s communication, connection, intimacy and teaching people how to love themselves.” – Alice Little Radical Self-Acceptance From a different perspective, she shares that one of the things she does is to teach people how to connect to their bodies, through radical self-acceptance. Through the acts of connection with clients, Alice shares it gives them the ability to connect deeper with themselves and appreciate who they are. When asked what it is liked to have sex with her, Alice nonchalantly shared it’s life-changing. “Oftentimes it changes the entire way people have sex moving forward. Like when is the last time you asked your partner and say ‘show me what feels nice’ and people say ‘oh shit, I have literally never uttered those words in the bedroom. I barely had sex with the lights on, let alone had a conversation while getting into that’ and I enable people to do that. It is really eye-opening.” – Alice Little Stigma With Sex Alice continued to share her views about sex, and she says it is something highly stigmatized in this country. A brothel is a safe place for Alice, where people can ask questions and expect not to be judged. Nothing is taboo and there is no judgment in brothels.  “I’m very, very comfortable helping people and enabling them to explore things that they probably couldn’t in their day to day lives.” – Alice Little Alice shared a lot about the process of booking appointments, touring the ranch and the types of experiences she offers. Pay special attention to her advice on how we can improve our sex lives. She even talks about how she markets herself and her marketing advice for you. To listen more about Alice’s advice on intimacy and sex, download and listen to this episode.  Bio: Alice Little is the highest-earning sex worker in the United States. Little wrote in a Huffington Post op-ed that she makes $1 million per year from working in Nevada. Little is a native of Ireland and moved to the U.S. at the age of 5 and grew up in Lond Island, New York. Thanks to her 2017 article, “A Week as a Legal Sex Worker In Mound House, NV, On A $267,000 Salary, and appearances on Tim Ferris’s podcast, Little has become a well-known advocate for sex workers across the world. Little began her career as a sex worker at the Sagebrush Ranch in 2015. In 2017, Little moved to the Moonlite Bunny Ranch where she was the most booked sex worker in the United States for two years in a row. Links: The Alice Little Youtube: Moonlite Bunny Ranch Tour with Alice Little Twitter: @thealicelittle Alice Little 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!

Yup, we’re doing it! For this week, we have a two-part special on Intimacy and Sex. In this episode, everyone’s favorite intimacy guru and coach, Allana Pratt. This conversation is a wonderful, magical mystery tour about intimacy, pain, pleasure, how we actually feel through our hearts, and a lot more! Pay special attention toward the end, when Allana gives her ideas for some fun things to do with your partner on Valentine’s day! Next episode, watch out for Alice Little, the two-time, #1 Companion of the Year at Nevada’s Moonlite Bunny Ranch. It is everything you ever wanted to know about her profession and what she thinks you can do to spice up your sex life. Valentine’s Day is Stupid The conversation started off with Allana sharing her thoughts about the upcoming Valentine’s Day. As much as it feels like an obligation for couples to spend, she also shares its a good holiday to make an extra effort for partners. “I think Valentine’s day is a manufactured, stupid-marketing-hiccup-the-prices-of-roses-and-restaurants and it generally pisses most people off as it feels like an obligation, right?” – Allana Pratt Every day is Valentine’s Day Valentine’s day is a great opportunity to remind ourselves that we might have been taking our partners for granted. Allana further shares that if you don’t take time and energy to plan romantic things with your partner, it’s gonna wither. Because of this, she looks at the blessing of Valentine’s day as a reminder. Christopher also shared his love story in this episode, about how she met her wife Kari and how a similar experience in their lives brought them together. Christopher admits its Valentine’s every day when he is with Kari. Pain, Heart Over Brain and Others Allana shares a lot more interesting insights in this episode. Why it is better to feel pain and be humbled earlier in your lives. What intimacy means and how self-love can define how intimate you can become. She also touches a part about the importance of feelings to be able to tap unto different kinds of powers such as strong intuition. “You can’t think your way to coherence, harmony, kindness, love. You have to feel your way there. That is also been scientifically proven.” – Allana Pratt To listen more about Allan’s advice on intimacy and sex, download and listen to this episode.  Bio:  Intimacy Expert, Allana Pratt inspires open-hearted, unapologetic living with delicious sass.  Her inspiring vulnerability and courage has landed her a featured weekly column on the GoodMenProject, featured as an Icon of Influence, and as Guest Expert on The Jenny McCarthy Show, Huffington Post, People Magazine, Forbes, CBS, TLC and FOX.  This cum laude graduate of Columbia University is the Author of 4 books, has interviewed Whoopi Goldberg, Alanis Morissette and Dr. Bernie Seigel and Hosts the edgy Podcast “Intimate Conversations” where listeners learn to thrive after heartbreak and find the relationship they deserve. A certified coach, Allana was asked by Leeza Gibbons to coach her during Dancing with the Stars. With over 4 million viewers on YouTube, Allana is the go-to authority when struggling to trust again after a harsh breakup so followers can create healthy, thriving intimate relationships with themselves first, which naturally attracts their ideal match.  Links: Allana Pratt Instagram: @allanapratt Twitter: @allanapratt Youtube: Allana Pratt 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!