Andrew Skotzko

If you’re anything like me, you spend a lot of time and energy in your career and want it to be a joyful, rewarding, and positively challenging experience, but probably have struggled with that at times. In this conversation, I’m excited to bring you one of the best thinkers I’ve found yet on crafting a joyful career. 

My guest in this episode is Laura Garnett (@garnettl). Laura is a performance strategist, TEDx speaker, a regular contributor to Inc and Forbes and the author of The Genius Habit and the tactical follow-up, Find Your Zone of Genius, which releases September 1.

As a Performance Strategist, Laura works with highly motivated CEOs, executives, and managers who want to maximize their engagement, tap into their unique talents, and access a whole new level of joy and hunger at work, as well as create that kind of experience for their teams. In a nutshell, Laura helps people identify their unique genius and purpose, and craft an actionable plan to leverage them in their day-to-day work. 

Laura is a global speaker and contributor at leading conferences and publications like Inc, Forbes, Fast Company and has consulted with leading organizations all over the world including Capital One, OpenTable, LinkedIn, and Instructure. Prior to launching her own company, she honed her marketing, strategy, and career-refining skills at companies like Capital One, American Express, IAC, and Google. 

In this conversation, we go deep on how to connect with your unique zone of genius — that integration of the head and the heart where you are intellectually on fire and emotionally invested — how to own the value you bring and create joy in your day to day work, as well as more enlivening ways to think about success. 

On top of all that, for part of the conversation Laura puts me in the hot seat and helps me uncover the core emotional challenge that drives my sense of purpose and impact, and I share openly about some things that I haven’t before. I hope this is useful to you as an example of an important part of the process.

Please enjoy learning to unlock your genius with Laura Garnett.

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Soushiant Zanganehpour (@soushiant) is a social scientist and serial entrepreneur with a long history of working to solve problems at the intersection of public policy, business, technology, and systems change. 

In 2018, he founded Swae, a platform to help organizations create idea meritocracies by sourcing, evaluating, and improving ideas from all people in the organization, to lead to higher quality decisions with greater buy-in. 

Prior to Swae, Soushiant led a global impact strategy consulting firm and was a director at the Skoll Center, a global epicenter for social entrepreneurship.  He’s been a board member of Harvard Business Review’s advisory council, as well an advisor to numerous other startups, as well as having been an adjunct professor or guest lecturer at the masters level at multiple universities. 

In this conversation, Soush and I:

• Talk about the origin of Swae and how to connect your personal narrative to a problem to create emotional buy in
• how to think about systemic problems and intervention design
• we explore Swae as an in-flight case study of how to think about and design interventions for the big systemic problems that we care about

Soushiant is one of the best systems thinkers and most passionate social entrepreneurs that I know and in this conversation, I think you’ll see why. 

Without any further delay, enjoy learning about solving systemic problems with social entrepreneurship with Soushiant Zanganehpour.

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Pam Fox Rollin (@PamFR) is an executive coach, facilitator, and strategist with extensive experience in senior team development, especially in healthcare and tech. She’s worked with many clients in the Fortune 100, fast-growth startups, consulting firms, and NGOs. She was a Guest Fellow and Master Coach at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and has lectured in business schools and boardrooms around the world. She’s the author of 42 Rules for Your New Leadership Role: The Manual They Didn’t Hand You. 

In this conversation, we explore a lot of ideas that will help you show up more powerfully as a leader, and create an environment where people can come fully alive, and be decisive in chaotic, unknown spaces. 

We also discuss how to know when you need to change your approach as a leader, a different definition of what leadership is, and among other things, how we should actually approach personality assessments like the Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram.

This conversation was a lot of fun to have and I hope it’s equally fun and thought-provoking for you to listen to. 

Enjoy learning from Pam Fox Rollin how to be a decisive leader who helps people come alive.

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April Dunford (@aprildunford) is a legend in the product marketing world. She’s an executive consultant, speaker, and author who helps tech companies make complicated products easy for customers to understand and love. She is a globally recognized expert in Positioning and Market strategy. She’s the author of the book “Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It,” which I highly recommend you read.

April’s expertise is built from 25 years as an executive in a series of 7 successful technology startups and 3 global tech giants. She’s launched 16 products as an executive and consulted on the launch of dozens more, accounting for many billions in revenue. In short, she’s seen it all.

In this conversation, we go deep on positioning for products and services, strategy, and market building. I particularly love two stories she shared about Seth Godin, and how one of her companies executed a positioning strategy that led to 40x revenue growth 18 months. If you have an offering that you are putting into the world, and in particular if you need to adjust your business positioning to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic, you need to listen to this.

Happy learning!

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Nilofer Merchant (@nilofer) is one of the world’s top business & management thinkers, and is also one of my new favorite humans. As an operator, she was involved with the launch of over 100 products that collectively generated more than $18 billion (yes, with a B) in revenue, and has gone on to write 3 books, and has taught at Stanford, Santa Clara University, and lectured at Yale as well as to board rooms and audiences globally.

The part of her work that we go deep on in this conversation is the concept of Onlyness, which is that spot in the world only you stand in, a function of your distinct history and experiences, visions and hopes. We explore how to connect with the thread of purpose that only you can see, create belonging with yourself and others, and by doing so make a dent on the world.

Nilofer and I share a belief in the power of including all people’s potential, that if the we could benefit from the ideas and potential in every person, there is no problem we couldn’t solve. This is a conversation about how to connect with your Onlyness and bring it into the world to make the contribution only you can make.

Happy learning!

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Dan is the CTO and cofounder of BiasSync, a company out to create more fair and respectful workplaces by fighting unconscious bias. He cofounded the company in 2018 with Michele Ruiz, a 5-time Emmy Award winning journalist, and Robin Richards, a prolific serial entrepreneur.

Dan’s had a prolific career in technology over the last 20 years, cofounding 3 companies that have been acquired as well as being an investor, advisor and mentor to dozens more successful startups. Before founding BiasSync, Dan was the VP of Technology at Tinder, where he led all the algorithmic, infrastructure, and data science work that helped the company grow to over $1 billion in revenue. Prior to that, Dan cofounded Chill, a video discovery tool acquired by Tinder, and Newroo which acquired by Fox News Corp.

This conversation is both tactical and strategic. We dive into the issues of unconscious bias and systemic inequality that have shaped our society, and we tactically discuss how one can attack systemic problems effectively as an entrepreneur.

Happy learning!

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Josh Seiden helps clients launch new products and services, and create more agile, entrepreneurial organizations. He’s a designer, strategy consultant, coach, speaker, and author of 3 books who has worked to bring new ventures into the world with many clients including household names you would know like Johnson & Johnson, T. Rowe Price, JP Morgan Chase, SAP, American Express, 3M, Taproot Foundation, and many more. He’s also the cofounder of Sense & Respond Press.

In this conversation, Josh gives a masterclass on clear, strategic thinking and how to create order out of the chaos that surrounds any creative endeavor. This is especially useful for anyone trying to create clarity and think strategically to affect change.

His most recent book, Outcomes Over Output, has become one of my favorite resources for creating clarity and is a book I think ought to be read by every person bringing something new into the world.

Happy learning!

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Dr. Matthew Cook, the founder of BioReset Medical, is one of the most cutting-edge doctors I’ve come across. He’s a board-certified anesthesiologist with 20+ years of experience in medical practice, who — as he shares in this conversation — pivoted his practice toward functional and integrative medicine and has emerged a leader in stem cells, regenerative medicine, and psychedelic trauma therapy.

In this conversation, we discuss everything from functional medicine, to the specialized use of ketamine to treat anxiety, depression, trauma and PTSD, what is the biology and psychology of the moments that trigger us (and how to re-wire those triggers), and how we can start scaling these interventions beyond the individual level to groups and companies, and how to think about creating your life.

Please enjoy!

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Holly Hester-Reilly is the founder and CEO of H2R Product Science, where she combines more than a decade of experience in technology companies with years of experience in scientific research to bring her clients a rigorous, research driven approach to developing their growth strategy and coaching their product teams. 

In this conversation, Holly gives a masterclass addressing one of the biggest challenges we face: how to build a team and organization that is deeply connected to the people they seek to serve on an ongoing basis. In product management parlance, this is called continuous discovery or dual-track product discovery.

Even if you don’t work in a tech company or in product management, there is a lot of actionable and principled wisdom here that I believe is going to make an immediate and lasting impact on how you and your organization make the contribution you seek to make. 

Please enjoy!

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Sam Fankuchen is the Founder & CEO of Golden, a platform that makes it easy for anyone to volunteer and for organizers to manage their volunteers and staffing programs.

This episode was important to release now because of the amazing free tool Golden just launched, “Mutual Aid,” which helps anyone organizing responses to the COVID-19 pandemic so they don’t have to worry about the infrastructure and can focus on making a difference. 

Please enjoy!

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