Genius Leadership: Overcoming Everything Podcast

Replay #4 out of 9 to help you finish off 2023 strong and prepare for the new year intentionally and proactively. Ever woken up feeling like you're already behind schedule for today? Or had that suffocating anxiety about your work week on Monday morning? Then buckle up and listen in! In this episode, you will hear about: finding uniquely your system for preparing your week an activity that many hi...

Replay #3 out of 9 to help you finish off 2023 strong and prepare for the new year intentionally and proactively. That super word of two letters that is so hard to say so often... How do you say "no" when your whole self really wants it to be the answer to yet another request from a demanding client of a lazy colleague? How do you make sure you don't end up always picking up slack in the projects...

Replay #2 out of 9 to help you finish off 2023 strong and prepare for the new year intentionally and proactively. Ever tried to organize your schedule, mental headspace or your home to help yourself get out of the overwhelm and stress? Only to fail miserably and add even more stress? This episode is for you then! In it, I share why these attempts fail and what you need to do instead, to set yourse...

Replay #1 out of 9 to help you finish off 2023 strong and prepare for the new year intentionally and proactively. It's painful for me to see so much (avoidable) overwhelm among the amazing, smart, ambitious people around me. A common mistake out there is the wrong relationship with the to-do lists people have. So I am giving you a small mindshift and several actionable steps to deal with that mist...

Remember the summer student project I was running to explore ways to support local entrepreneurs? Well, it did not end on the most positive note. Without going into detail about the event itself, I am sharing the lessons I am taking from it - about building relationships, leadership, communication, tough conversations, and more. You will also hear the plan for the Genius Leadership Podcast till th...

Ever been ghosted by someone whom you were supposed to meet? Or has someone failed to deliver what they promised, and that drives you crazy? Or maybe you just feel annoyed by drivers on the roads? Well, I am sharing one approach that helps me a lot!  In this episode, you will hear about: how one assumption can save you a relationship why caring about others is beneficial to you even more than them...

Money cannot buy happiness. So why are we seeking wealth so desperately? Today's conversation with Kim Curtis has definitely shifted my attitude toward money.  Kim is a nationally recognized wealth management advisor, speaker, president, and CEO of Wealth Legacy Institute. For her, how you deal with money says a lot about how you deal with life, and in this episode she shares many thoughts worth y...

Inspired by the conversations after last week's episode, I decided to share one tool that has helped me A LOT in the moments of comparison, while I was working on strengthening my self-esteem years back. Stay safe and #standwithukraine, Anna Resources: "Self-esteem Now" book by Mia Törnblom (for English version, reach out to me): https://www.bokus.com/bok/9789172320369/sjalvkansla-nu-din-personlig...

Ever caught yourself comparing your messy home to that picture-perfect house on Instagram? Or your startup's rollercoaster ride to the smooth sailing of an entrepreneurial superstar in your industry? How about a summer night by the beach where every other man/woman seems to be hotter than you? Comparing yourself to others is not healthy. So I am sharing two personal stories with you that help me d...

If you regularly listen to this show, you have heard me talking about my love for LinkedIn. This platform has brought me fantastic clients and business opportunities, expanding collaborations and deep friendships. So I want you to fall in love with it, too! Our guest today, Donna Serdula, has been using LinkedIn since 2005 and helping others leverage it in powerful ways since 2009. She and her tea...

Whenever I hear "We are a family here" from a CEO about their workplace, it's curiosity time with lots of follow-up questions. Does it mean we have no boundaries? How is it to fire your family member? How do you work with the company's bottom line then? Often, we use the words without fully contemplating what they can mean to the others involved, and that is a slippery slope. I invited Matthew Bra...

Ever had a moment when someone reacts to you in an unexpected way, like snapping, or vice versa, you are ignored completely? How does it make you feel? And, more importantly, what do you make it mean? Often, in our brittle states, it's easy to give these situations a lot of negative meaning about ourselves.  You can handle it better. With the tool I am sharing today, you can learn to snap out of t...

What do you do when you figure out that you burned out? I took on a new job, on top of working on my business. And before you judge me or conclude I'm stupid, hear me out in this episode. In this episode, you will hear about: how I realized I had burnout why I didn't prevent it, even though I help others do just that important lessons about our thoughts, support networks, professional help, and ro...

What do you do when you suddenly don't recognize your reflection in the mirror? Do you just accept the pain in your body every morning as a normal way of ageing? What do those physical changes do to your mind? Jason Donnelly had that bitter aha-moment seeing his photo and not liking the man who stared at him. In his recent book "Cold Feat: How I Froze My Mid-Life Crisis Right Off...", he shared a...

Founders are visionaries whose passion and drive create amazing and valuable things in this world. But are vision, drive and passion automatically make a founder a leader? I invited Patrick Flesner, an experienced growth mindset leadership advisor, board member, TEDx speaker and author of The Leadership House and FastScaling (Amazon's no.1 bestseller), to discuss what it takes for founders to be l...

Jeremy Blain is an award-winning Business Leader, Futurist, New Era Learning Professional, Author & Conference Speaker. Jeremy is the founder and CEO of Performance Works International (PWI) where he and his team are committed to helping organizations and leaders be fit and ready for the future. Our conversation is based on the recent report they have released about trends in the leadership sp...

What do you think of when you hear the word slow? Does it bring up images of being stuck in traffic, or of someone testing your patience? Aside from a delicious method of cooking, is there anything beneficial about going slow? What about if someone had asked you the following question in your formative years: what kind of life do you want? How would you have answered then, and are you living that...

This solo episode is dedicated to the concept that has literally changed my life. I want you to try it for yourself in an honest moment of reflection.  And before sharing the main points of the episode, let me invite you for an "Easter egg hunt" in this episode =) Find some audio surprise from my daughter and send me (via email or LinkedIn) the timestamp and your guess of the nature of the sound,...

How is it to go through the world-known Y Combinator? How does this program affect founders' mental health? What if the founders' startup is actually working on a solution for better, more sustainable high performance in workplaces? To get the answers to these questions, I sat down with Shane Correa, co-founder of NudgeLabs, a Sweden-based startup that was a part of YC W22 cohort. In this episode,...

After nearly a dozen hours of interviews and chats with local and international founders, investors and community leaders, has anything new been discovered? Is there a viable way to reach out to entrepreneurs before they hit the wall? Or are there certain character traits that define the kind of person who’s willing to risk it all for their startup?  In this episode, I talk again with my collabora...

We hear a lot of horror stories about crazy founders and evil venture capitalists. Where are these stories rooted? I sat down with Helga Valfells, the founding partner at Crowberry Capital, and Renata Bade Barajas, co-founder and CEO of GreenBytes, to discuss the myths around startup life, raising capital, and relationships between founders, investors, and boards of directors. In this episode, you...

Does Iceland have a culture that reinforces firefighter mode? Is there anything unique about the island nation that makes asking for and finding well-being support a challenge? And is burnout something that’s on people’s minds? In this episode, I talk with Maria Alva Roff, who’s my collaborator on a project Sustainable Leadership Navigator for Founders, sponsored by Rannis (the Icelandic Center fo...

Being a CEO of a growing company is fulfilling yet often tough, tiring and frustrating. And we don't hear about those challenges and how to solve them enough. That is why my guest David Hemmat, the founder and CEO of Blue Coding LLC, and I are discussing his journey of building a company from scratch. With over 9 years since the start of Blue Coding, David has many experiences and insights to shar...

What's your stand regarding working remotely vs being office-first or going hybrid? My today's guest David Hemmat, the founder and CEO of Blue Coding LLC, shares his decision process to close down the company's office and go fully remote. In this episode, you will hear about: ways to think about bootstrapping your company vs taking external capital getting rid of the company office and going fully...

Many leaders I talk to pride themselves with being very accessible to their employees. Well, I am here to tell you this can be a big mistake with many negative implications... In this episode, you will hear about: why and how well-intentioned leadership act can turn against yourself relation between your accessibility and employees' performance and well-being the way to be accessible without hurti...