OneSharpSword

What if your stress, your “I’m fine,” and your daily grind were actually symptoms of something deeper—dis-ease, not ease? What if there was a way to live with more joy, more vitality, and yes… more bliss? Dr. Roberta Garceau joins me to share the heart of her new book, Bliss, Not Burnout, and her powerful message for anyone stuck in survival mode. We talk about thriving—not just getting by—and how...

From the c-suite to executive leadership coach and author, Emily Sander was a pleasure to have join me on One Sharp Sword.    Superman is Emily’s favorite Superhero. As with Clark Kent, Emily is adopted. She also uses - and encourages others to use - the superpowers for good and to never give up.    She enjoyed business and leadership and especially loves 1:1 interactions where...

GREAT conversation with Alain today. From the culture he grew up with to how he guides leaders today, you’ll get a lot out of listening.   His three Cs are key to leadership, whether at home or in your organization: Connection Communication Collaboration And he spoke of Consistency, which I’d call a 4th C in his model.   Alain’s book Cracking the Leadership Code is worth picking up!&nbsp...

A performance coach coming from the corporate sector who, after reflecting on what he wished he had been taught, Aaron Trahan set out on his path as a coach. He now helps others in leadership roles.   He notes that complacency must be met head on. Current success could block your future success if you allow yourself to get too comfortable.   While it’s easy to get comfortable, he also kn...

What does a musician and conductor know about leadership? My guest, Hugh Ballou, sees his work at conducting transformations. He defines what leadership is and isn’t and what components go into great leadership. His company, SynerVision is a crossover between synergy and vision. Here are some key points. Listen in for more!   Leadership isn’t dictatorship - the leader is an influencer! ...

Can you get excited about conflict?  There’s an old movie from 1950 that caught my attention. It predates me, but still enchanted me. The play-turned-movie is Harvey. The main character, Elmer P. Dowd, finds people in an uproar talking about what he believes in. Elmer’s response, “Oh an element of conflict in any discussion is a very good thing. It shows everybody is taking part and nobody is...

Having grown up in PA, Dr. Kevin Gazzara had a propensity for taking things apart and putting them back together, it was a natural curiosity that drove him. He found himself organizing events for his friends. And what do you get when you have a curious kid who likes to organize? A focus on business and engineering.   After decades with Intel and other organizations, Kevin took to entrepreneur...

What’s the ONLY thing you need to know about my guest this episode? Roy Osing is the ONLY author, entrepreneur, and executive leader who delivers practical and proven “audacious and unheard-of ways” to produce high-performing businesses and successful careers.   His focus is on helping build what he calls The ONLY Statement, identifying what makes each individual or business stand out above e...

I often have guests with a similar focus to mine as a way to look at differing approaches. Noah St. John has a great message and has managed to distill it into multiple columns, maximizing how that message gets out.   He’s a best selling author, a speaker, and an executive coach. And, his results are undeniable. He went from living literally dirt-poor while growing up to becoming a multi-mill...

From an entry level position at Enterprise Rental Car spanning over two and a half decades when he left the company as the Regional Vice President, Eric Stone learned a thing or two about CULTURE.   Through engagement and other key steps, you create Culture Carriers. Look at: Time Management and Eisenhower’s grid demarcations of Delegate, Do, Defer, or Delete Hiring Practices to include focus...

Marco Torres grew up in the Caribbean as his father ran GE Credit Corp from Puerto Rico. He learned about adventure and entrepreneurship. At 12 y/o he was featured in the news for having the largest paper route in the area. 11 years later, with his brother and mother, he opened a series of restaurants. And a couple years after that opened a nightclub. His realization: he wanted to employ others mo...

So an MD with ADHD walks into… actually, what happens is that the gentleman creates so much presence that time flies and people feel connected. How? Breathing into presence, breathing out ego. Dr Iyer is based in Virginia (via India). He’s writing a new book about neurodiversity, autism, and sensory processing disorders which he refers to as types of personality, not disorders. He also wrote a boo...

Eric Holsapple is an expert on mindful leadership. He shares his wisdom with us noting the importance of presence, especially as a leader. And that’s why I invited him to One Sharp Sword. It’s important work. When you can be mindful and truly present, especially in our distraction-based world, you make a difference in the people around you, your organization, and potentially the world. Eric invite...

Ahhhhh Geek Out (he says he’s more of a nerd than a geek, so…) Process Mapping is a thing! It’s the efficient, distilled, visual representation of data, the structured capture of process data. And while that doesn’t sound like a riveting thing to talk about, I assure you, this episode was filled with nuggets you can use in your business and personal life. Key points to listen for:     &n...

From Amazon Exec in the early, scrappy days to leadership and strategic consultant, John Rossman’s insights are of tremendous value for anyone in a place of looking at, and impacting their organization. He notes that dissatisfied customers are a gift. This prompted a conversation about curiosity and the need to be open enough to ask for further feedback. Step into customer obsession and really exp...

How does someone with social anxiety and body image issues do the work to become an entrepreneur with a business doing $2M in revenue? It’s quite a story, but the transformation happened pretty quickly! And yours can too. Having a degree in engineering, she managed to find a job in an adjacent line of work - purchasing and procurement. When it came time to get into sales on her own, she had a horr...

Beate Chelette (pronounced Bay-ah-tay shal-Let) immigrated here from Munich, Germany. Having held a senior and highly coveted position at Elle magazine, she realized that she had gone down the path of becoming who she really didn’t want to be. Rebounding from a bad marriage, a massive recession, and a Southern California earthquake, Beate developed her Unapologetic Value Proposition. She’s an expe...

From physics to computer programming to paying attention to how money flows and how to maintain production and quality. That landed him a position at Google forecasting and handling economic and revenue questions. For some that’s exciting and challenging. For others, boring as heck. Eric pushed himself to be the best , to take on more and more. And his reward was to be given more, and more, and mo...

Here’s a guy who REALLY knows how the sausage is made! He also has lessons from Formula One McLaren Racing! From engineer to airplane repair process improvement to sausage making to shipping to working for a container company to consulting in food processing to dairy and banking to McLaren Racing for process improvement! Paul reminds us that it’s about Outcome First   -     Loo...

What can a 19 year old “kid” teach us about living life? Plenty! It turns out that in the last 12 years, Logan has done more in his life than many of us ever even think about. He’s a motocross champ who not only knows his way around the track, he can teach us a thing or two about endurance and mindset. Coming from a racing family, he felt comfortable on a motocross bike from day one. Competitive b...

Chris Miller had what he calls the Harvard Complex, suit and tie job. And, like so many of us that pursue a path for the sake of stability and “supposed to” - we move beyond the ego-based, “look at me; I landed a big-boy job.” And once there, we must question, what’s it all for? That’s where Chris and I connected on this podcast. I’ll likely do a blog about the idea of leaving your partner at home...

What can an attorney tell us about peace-making? A lot! His big claim: In 90 seconds he can extinguish any argument (and teach you to do the same). What is leadership level listening?         •   Type One Listening is to get information that you can use and then close out the conversation         •   Type Two Listening is about validating...

R-E-S-P-E-C-T (sing it) Dr Julie Pham brings us her story from joining her refugee parents at 2 months old to earning her PhD at Cambridge. She’s been in operations and has found that relationship building is a positive path to success. In this podcast, Dr Julie and I speak about resilience and how to thrive, being creative and resourceful, and using hope and optimism. We also discuss The Seven Fo...

Chad Hufford is in the financial world now. He was picked on as a kid, used adversity to drive him, went on a pre-med path in taking up biochemistry, became an athletic coach, and let all of that background simmer together to help people make changes and stay on a path toward financial success. He’s in Anchorage, Alaska, and that’s not a typical kind of culture that any of us would be used to. He’...

Braith Bamkin is an expert at making connections. On today’s episode we discuss Intention, Purpose, and Connection. He highlights a couple of key questions for growing your business: Who do you want to do business with, and why? We talked about so much on this quick hour, some of the key take-aways were:       •   Care enough to help others first       &nbsp...