Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors

From professional poker to poop stools to fire pumps. This week's guest leaves a career in professional poker to become a CEO twice-over without a college degree. He learns the hard parts by getting it wrong, paying for it, and trying again.  We dig into what it really means to “be your own boss.” We unpack the surprising rise of Step and Go, a bathroom stool that survived competition, Amazon...

What is a house really worth? And who decides? The number on an appraisal can save a deal, sink a refinance, or change what a family can afford, yet most of us have no idea how that number is calculated.  This week, we sit down with a certified residential real estate appraiser who explains what really happens between the knock on your door and the report that lands on a lender’s desk, and why “it...

Think beauty school is all creativity and glow-ups? The unvarnished truth is far more interesting.   This week, on Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors, we sit down with an anonymous guest who grew up working on military bases, found his voice as a late-night radio DJ, spent years in the Air Force, and then used the GI Bill to reinvent himself in barbering, esthetics, and massage before step...

We often refer to conflict at work as workplace drama. This label doesn't tell us much about the lack of trust, lacking culture, and other unmet needs underlying conflict at work. This week, on Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors, we sit down with a professional workplace mediator. He walks us through what he’s learned from years of helping people untangle high-stakes disagreements.  H...

A teacher can change your writing, your courage, and the way you think, and you might not realize it until decades later.  This week, on Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors, we sit down with Robert Pacilio, a longtime English teacher, legendary speech and debate coach, and self-published author, to hear how a kid from Brooklyn builds a life in education and then turns those lessons into sev...

This week, on Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors, Jenelle Nino, owner of Bellani Floral in Valley Center, California, teaches us how flowers can change lives. When Janelle walks into a bridal shower for a friend who is terminally ill, she feels something she has not felt in years: calm, peace, and purpose. After building a career in Marriott hotel sales and then banking, she is tired of wo...

This week, on Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors, we interview Haren Bhakta, CFA, CEO and owner of the Inside Ownership Index ($OWN), the first index fund focused on companies with meaningful insider ownership. The premise of the index is that when major decisionmakers own a meaningful stake, they tend to act like true owners, not hired hands chasing a bonus. Haren breaks down how the S&am...

Your job can look perfect on paper and still wreck your sleep on Sunday night.  This week, we sit down with Eric Reiners, a CTO in cybersecurity and the executive coach behind the Corporate Athlete Program, to unpack how high-stakes tech leadership actually feels when the alerts never stop. Eric walks us through a career that refuses to stay in one lane. From managing a Radio Shack, to studying yo...

This week, on Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors, our anonymous guest starts with a raw confession from his first paying job and reveals what he did to make amends many years later.  From there, the story takes a series of turns through our guest's work in theater and opera to teaching high school students to executive communication coaching, keynote speech writing, and helping leader...

Teaching yoga may look calm from the outside, but the career behind the mat is anything but simple.  This week on Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors, we sit down with a former professional dancer turned yoga instructor who tells the real story of what it takes to build a career in the wellness industry. We talk candidly about what it takes to become a successful yoga teacher in a system wi...

This week, we sit down with an anonymous San Diego real estate agent with 22 years in the trenches to talk about the real work behind buying and selling homes, including the chaos you never see on reality TV. We trace her path from a first job at a grocery store to hotel management ambitions, then the pivot into real estate to build a life without constantly relocating.  Along the way, we get cand...

This week's guest spent decades in Human Resources learning how to read people, navigate conflict, and hold steady in hard conversations. Then she walked away from corporate life to do something most would never dare to. She became a medium.  Our anonymous guest shares how a simple “Is this it?” moment pushed her to explore intuition, and what finally gave her the courage to retire and build...

One “trusted” employee can quietly become a single point of failure for your entire organization.  This week, on Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors, we dig into that reality with Bernadette Jones, founder of Visionova HR, who helps small businesses and nonprofits build practical HR systems that protect people and keep operations running. We also go back to where her drive comes from: an ea...

A single bad decision can shape a whole career, and sometimes it starts with something as ordinary as crashing your car and needing a paycheck.  This week, on Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors, our anonymous guest takes us from coaching youth basketball at 16 to training like a madman for special operations, driven by ego, brotherhood, and the need for a team. Then life hits hard: legal t...

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In this conversation, Dawn and Elsa discuss the goals and experiences of their podcast, which centers on honest confessions from guests. Elsa hopes listeners gain a deeper appreciation for people's journeys, not just their careers, emphasizing empathy and understanding. They share personal anecdotes, including Elsa's experiences with fraud in her former industry, and discuss their excite...

A horse can humble you fast, and so can the human body when you ask it to stay balanced on a moving animal.  This week on Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors, we sit down with a physiotherapist who specializes in physical therapy for horse riders. She walks us from her first pony and after-school riding lessons to building a long-running private practice focused on rider biomechanics, postu...

Midnight bank remodels, vault alarms, and a run-in with eight LAPD officers are only the beginning of this anonymous guest’s work story.  This week on Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors, we sit down with a career electrician and electrical contractor who started earning money in sixth grade, found his way from selling car stereos to the jobsite, and spent 45 years learning how power really...

Insurance is everywhere in our lives, yet most of us only learn how it works when something goes wrong.  This week on Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors, we sit down with an anonymous guest who has done nearly every job in the insurance industry, from claims adjuster to underwriting leader to corporate trainer, and now runs her own Medicare insurance agency. What she brings is the rare ski...

You can feel the difference between wellness that’s marketed and wellness that’s lived, and Grace Van Berkum is firmly in the second camp.  This week, on Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors, we talk with the founder of GLO Health Center in northern Nicaragua about what it really takes to build a detox and nutrition retreat from absolute scratch, keep it going for 10 years, and guide people...

A home birth that was nearly “not allowed” in Iowa planted a seed that never stopped growing, and our anonymous guest follows that seed all the way into a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) apprenticeship.  Along the way, she takes a real detour, walking away from midwifery hierarchy, studying linguistics, working jobs like Starbucks and publishing, and spending years raising and homeschooling k...

One photo can change a life, and sometimes it rewires an entire career.  This week, we sat down with an anonymous C-Suite executive who started out making holiday gifts with his mom. At 23, he was thrown into management at the Four Seasons. Then he walked away to join the Peace Corps. And that's just the beginning. From there, the path gets even wilder: Guatemala, emergency response, becoming...

You think you know what teachers do all day until you hear what happens after the bell rings, after the emails pile up, and after the policies change without anyone asking the people in the room.  This week on Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors, we’re joined by an anonymous high school math teacher with 18 years in California public schools, and she tells the truth about why relationships...

Your hair color is not just “light or dark” or “warm or cool.” It is a full system, and when it is wrong, you can feel it in your mirror, your closet, and your confidence. This week, we sit down with Renee Taglia, a Master Hair Colorist & Educator and Certified Color Analyst, to talk about why personal color analysis is more than a trend and how a true, customized palette can change the way yo...

Court is one of those workplaces everyone thinks they understands until you talk to someone who has actually sat inside it for 20 years. Our anonymous guest takes us from her early detour into teaching to a long career in the courthouse, including 18 years in the courtroom and a newer leadership role supervising data entry and phone intake. Along the way, we get specific about the work. We also di...