Do you want to build a small giant startup? Where do you begin, and what and when is enough? Learn the reasons and mindsets needed to build non-venture track startups. In this episode, I talk with Rob Walling, a serial entrepreneur. Currently, Rob runs TinySeed, the first startup accelerator for SaaS bootstrappers and MicroConf, a conference and community for non-venture track company founders. Rob is also host of Startups for the Rest of Us, a popular podcast for bootstrapping entrepreneurs.

If you’ve ever been interested in starting your own business and thought there must be a 3rd option between a small side project and a billion dollar Silicon Valley VC-fueled unicorn, then you need to hear this.

Please enjoy learning from the master of “startups for the rest of us,” Rob Walling.

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Hope Gurion was the Chief Product Officer of CareerBuilder, the SVP of Product at Beachbody, and led multiple product verticals at AOL. Today, Hope coaches product leaders and teams seeking to grow through customer-centric, evidence-based strategies. She’s led almost 50 products teams in her career, in both consumer and B2B companies. Hope also hosts one of my favorite product podcasts, “Fearless Product Leadership” , where she helps other product leaders shorten their learning curves.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• the things nobody tells you about product leadership
• the root causes of many dysfunctional product orgs (hint, they are at the executive level)
• how to get over the fear of saying no and coming across as “mean”
• Hope shares some of her battle stories from the front lines of organizational transformations—what has, and hasn’t, worked

In short, this conversation is full of gold that anyone working in or around the leadership of a product organization needs to know.

So without any further adieu, please enjoy learning with Hope Gurion.

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As a listener of this show, you’re someone interested in using your time to make things that make things better, and this conversation with David Dylan Thomas will help you do that.

David’s work centers on the intersection of bias, design, and social justice. He’s the author of the new book, Design for Cognitive Bias, serves as a Content Strategy Advocate at Think Company, and is the creator and host of the Cognitive Bias Podcast.

David’s developed digital strategies for major clients in entertainment, healthcare, publishing, finance, and retail. He’s also a prolific public speaker on topics at the intersection of bias, design, and justice, and has presented at conferences such as TEDNYC, SXSW Interactive, Confab, the Wharton Web Conference and many more.

This is a conversation about the power we each have to affect the world around us. David’s work will help you to see the ways that we are each unavoidably biased, and more importantly, what we can each do about it. No matter what it is you do, understanding cognitive bias will help you do it better for everyone that it affects.

Whether you realize it or not, you are a designer — we are all designers of something — whether it be a system, products, meetings, spaces, conversations, or something else. And as a designer, understanding bias will help you do more good with your work.

Please enjoy, David Dylan Thomas.

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Ever struggle with vulnerability as a leader? Me too. 

This year, I’ve been thinking a lot about values, and how I show up and live them (or don’t). 

Karl Kuhnert is all about helping leaders to make their unique contribution. He teaches leadership, organizational change and professional ethics at Emory University, as well as in the Executive Education Programs at UCLA, HEC Paris, and The University of Georgia. He did his undergraduate work at Penn State and earned his PhD in industrial-organizational psychology at Kansas State University. 

In 2000, Karl was awarded the Hammer Award from Vice President Al Gore for outstanding contributions to the federal government, and has served as a consultant and executive educator with many organizations big and small, including UPS, the US Treasury Department, Siemens, The Jet Propulsion Lab @ CalTech, Cox Automotive, The Federal Reserve, Federal Home Loan Bank, The Robert Wood Foundation, Carnival Cruise Line, AECOM, Farmers Insurance, and The American Cancer Society and many more.

This is a conversation about the genius and strength of vulnerability, and the levels of development that we each go through as leaders, and how we each can keep evolving to give our authentic gifts. This is about living our values.

Please enjoy learning from Dr. Karl Kuhnert.

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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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