Podcast Blog

Hear how to overcome the difficulties that block change

In our podcast today, Linda Coughlin and I get deep into a conversation about the challenges of working with organizations that need to change. You are going to love this interview. Lin is an expert on how to help companies rethink their processes and develop new ways to bring together new teams, engage different generations and successfully build new cultures, often from the merger of different organizations. As you'll hear, she and I are on the same page. Enjoy.

Hear how Blue Ocean Strategy helps you own your market!

In this podcast, Brian Gladden and I go digging into the whys and hows of creating Blue Ocean Strategies®. Brian is a trained Blue Ocean Strategist who helps businesses find unmet customer needs and create uncontested market space by using the tools and methods of Blue Ocean thinking. After conducting 500 workshops and dozens of client engagements, I know the thinking of a Blue Ocean Strategist quite well, and Brian is certainly one of us. He just loves the methodology and objectives behind BOS, as do I. It really works! To learn how to do it, listen in. 

Hear how to launch your own business, successfully

In this podcast you are going to meet Maggie Karshner. She loves to work with people who want to set themselves up in a new business or grow the one they currently have. She and I talk about how to help solo-preneurs take their ideas and become coaches, consultants, therapists, chefs, specialists helping kids get into college, branding experts...you name it and Maggie has done it. During our podcast, we want to help you see what is possible and make it happen. Listen in!

Learn how to publish your very own book! 

Are you interested in learning how to write your first book, or maybe your second or third? Listen in today to hear what Vikrant Shaurya, founder of BestsellingBook.com, will teach us about how to write a bestseller. Enjoy the journey with him. You will hear all about my favorite topics: story creating and storytelling. As humans, we all have this wonderful and unique ability to create meaning through our stories, which we then turn into amazing realities that we share and also live. Why not tell your story? Send it along to us and let’s hear it. We'll put it in our podcast, too.

Learn a new way of thinking for new types of solutions

Have you ever really wanted to know how to think about a problem in a new way? Maybe you need to improve your company’s communications and conversations. Or your employees' motivation and productivity. Perhaps a Design Thinker could help you step back and objectively observe what the problem is and how you could conceptualize different ways to resolve it. Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Lisa Perrine. We have known each other for quite some time, and I am endlessly amazed at what she brings to our audience. Please listen, learn and share!

Learn how to amp up your sales process for amazing success! 

In our podcast today, Doug Brown and I are going to help you sell better. As CEO of Business Success Factors, Doug has amazing ideas about how the sales process really works, and how to help you make yours deliver the results you have always wanted it to. We will also dig into the emotional blocks that hold people back from becoming the sales success they are meant to be. As you know, I am always looking for people to help you see, feel and think in new ways. Doug is just the guy for us today. In this current business environment, I really urge you to take a listen.

Hear how change can really, actually happen for you

While I have known Marie-Claude Stockl a long time and we are both devoted horse lovers, I never had the pleasure of really getting to know her back story, and how she became so successful doing interesting and important things in teaching people how to better communicate. Today we have a splendid conversation about the challenges women face in the workplace, and the slow pace of change taking place in our society today. Both Marie-Claude and I have experienced being the only woman in the room and we have both endured, determinedly overcoming challenges and bias. Yet, we are both optimists at heart and enthused by the possibilities and opportunities we see for women today, and going forward. Do listen in!

Hear how fulfilling customers' needs can lead to a big success!

Marsha Friedman is one of those women entrepreneurs who started with little and built a great business in the public relations and communications arena. She didn’t start with a plan. Her parents didn't enable her to go to college. She was simply supposed to find a wealthy man and get married. She never had much funding or capital. She just listened and believed in herself. As she shares with us, she learned over the years to care a lot, have the courage to try and try again, and to think about the customer as part of your team. Hers is an amazing story, one we should all listen to and learn a great deal from.

Learn how to make "hype" powerfully work for you

This was an amazing interview. I met Michael Schein when he interviewed me for an article he was writing for Psychology Today about my podcast, On the Brink with Andi Simon. That’s right, the one you are listening to right now. Our conversation led to today's wonderful opportunity to interview him and share his big ideas about how to embrace “hype” and use it to build success. I know “hype” sounds suspect, but in Michael's case, it involves learning about how people make decisions, and how charismatic leaders capture our attention and cause us to follow them, even when what they are pushing is a hoax or a sham. Here's your chance to learn from an expert how to capitalize on hype, in a good way!

Hear how to really find more happiness in your life 

What can one say about a man who is on a journey to bring better clarity and purpose to all of us who meet him? Interesting? Inspiring? Passionate? Of course. But what I love about Frank Schaeffer is that he has discovered the beauty in caring for others and the power of love, children and family to bring meaning into our lives. In today's podcast, Frank and I talk about his latest book, Fall in Love, Have Children, Stay Put, Save the Planet, Be Happy, but we could be talking about his entire life. It has been one of discovering himself, what really matters, and how, from this new-found purpose, he has emerged as an author, film director, screenwriter, public speaker...and an inspiration. Frank is a true gem. Enjoy.

Hear how to find your voice, even in the midst of change

What a powerful conversation I had with Leslie Rasmussen, award-winning author of the novel After Happily Ever After. It is a book that tells a story about a woman, perhaps you or me, who realizes that it is time for her to rethink the woman she used to be and wants to become. Sounds both familiar and intriguing, right? It is. While Leslie will tell you in our podcast all about her own journey, she also will shed light on how this novel emerged and why she has used it to give a voice to many women today facing the pain of change. Whether it is pandemic fatigue or watching the house empty as the kids head off to college, I know this is a conversation you will enjoy and a book you will want to read.

Hear how happy employees can drive your bottom line 

Todd Wheeler heard me speak at a Vistage International talk I was giving on Blue Ocean Strategy®. While it was remote (I was in New York and he in Colorado), we hit it off. What we talk about today is his fresh approach to helping people see things that are all around them. We shared so many of the same ideas about what holds people back, their resistance to the unfamiliar and the new, and their attachment to things that no longer have much value. Todd thinks of himself as “The Architect.” I see him as both the architect and the builder, and when you listen in on our conversation, I bet you'll agree. Enjoy.

Hear how great execution is most often the key to growth

At times I have the pleasure of meeting interesting people who bring their breadth of experiences to share with our audience. Jim Cornehlsen is just that type of person. We met through a networking group and found our interests so overlapping that we kept our conversations going. What did we talk about? Everything. It was a splendid conversation about how helping others achieve their goals through innovative ideas and expert execution is a life well-lived. Come join in the conversation and share your journey.

Hear how even bad times can open the door to success

Melody Watts has an amazing story to share with you, but it was hardly a straight line. Rather, nine years ago she had a tsunami of tragedies confront her, pushing her in entirely new personal and professional directions. She was diagnosed with Lyme disease, was newly divorced, and lost her mother in a tragic car accident. Then something strange happened. While looking for a solution to her son’s chronic cough, she discovered doTERRA essential oils. The oils helped her son and equally important, opened her up to a new business. She joined doTERRA in 2013 and two years later was in the top 1% in sales. Talk about lemons into lemonade. Listen in and learn!

Hear what can take your idea from good to great!

Listen in today to a woman who had a client searching for an unmet need and who then helped him open up a new market, literally Blue Ocean Strategy® in action. Jennifer Brazer, my podcast guest, has a new book out that you really should read because it's a “how-to” guide for building a great business, Blue Ocean-style. (It actually happened to be her own business.) She explains how she went from a cubicle to a multi-million dollar bookkeeping service on the cloud, serving accounting firms across the country. And it all started when a client asked her how to manage the bookkeeping for his companies at an affordable price. 

Hear how to grow your big idea into a big success 

Please meet Gina Paoloni. Gina found me through her search for speakers for her upcoming virtual summit, “The Untethered Entrepreneur.” She herself is an exciting entrepreneur who is building her business to help others grow theirs. Entrepreneurs, as you know, have an amazing way of seeing what is possible and then making it happen. Is that you? Do you have a clever idea to solve a problem in a new way? As Gina describes herself, she is often the lifeguard at the side of the pool watching her clients thrashing around trying to find a way out of a conundrum — and splashing each other at the same time. Over time, she has found an approach to help them, and you, reframe the problem and see solutions that might have been there all along. Do listen in!

Hear how you can become a transformational leader!

In this week's podcast, I bring you Tony Martignetti: leadership coach, change agent and entrepreneur. In our conversation, Tony shares with us his approach to helping people and their organizations change. You can guess why we connected from the get-go. As a fellow culture change expert, I also help people and organizations change, either in the midst of a crisis or in order to avoid one. To find out where you are along your own leadership journey, try taking Tony's Leadership Assessment quiz. The answers might just surprise you! Enjoy.

Hear how to make time for strategic thinking and strategic growth 

Richard Medcalf describes himself as "what you get if you were to put a McKinsey consultant, a slightly unorthodox pastor and an entrepreneur into a blender." Richard is an executive coach and leadership consultant to CEOs and their leadership teams. What we hope you'll take away from our discussion is how to build your own career and amplify your story. Sometimes you need a mentor or a coach, and sometimes you are the coach. Both are hard. (I know; I currently have six mentees and it is hard.) For solutions, Richard has a number of big ideas to help you sharpen your listening skills and do things now, not just someday. Listen in, not a minute to waste!

Hear how to embrace change so you can soar!

As I have been working with women thought leaders and innovators, I've been struck by the number of them who are moving mountains during this pandemic and setting up new ways of life and work as we try to emerge from it. Kim Snyder and I met at Peter Winick’s Tuesday Thought Leader gatherings and enjoyed our off-line conversations. They were deep and she was full of fresh perspectives on what people are doing and how they are going to have to change as this new world we are in is changing, faster and faster. I know you will enjoy Kim as much as I do!

Hear how we can all have a positive impact on the world 

We often find that as we move through our lives, we come upon people who instantly become our friends, although we have little understanding of why or how this happened. Denise Meagles, Indrani de Silva and Angelia Allen are just these kinds of friends. Denise and Indrani were introduced to me by Todd Cherches, whom I met through a thought leadership group. At a virtual meeting with Todd, he suggested they read my new book, Rethink: Smashing the Myths of Women in Business. They were so excited about the book that they put together gift boxes of Wax Buffalo candles and other goodies and sent them to a dozen women entrepreneurs, encouraging them to keep growing their businesses and seeking a great purpose. Then Angelia Allen joined them and they became a threesome, with all types of interesting ideas and careers. I feel lucky to have met them and even luckier to call them friends. I think you will too. Enjoy.