20 Minutes with Bronwyn

According to a report last year from eMarketer, US adults spent an average of 3 hours, 35 minutes per day on mobile devices in 2018. That's over 25 hours a week! It's like each of us having a second (or third) UNPAID job. For 30 days, I decided to investigate what I might be missing during those 25 hours using Cal Newport's plan based on his new book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. What I learned surprised me, and could inspire you to make your own journey into the wilds of a digital detox.

To me, the most terrifying, death-defying act I can possibly imagine isn’t bungie jumping or free solo climbing. It’s stand up comedy. It’s improv. Today, my guest is someone who teaches stand up comedy and improv. Corey Rosen has hosted 105 live events for The Moth, including The Moth StorySlams and GrandSlams, since winning the first ever Bay Area Moth StorySlam in 2014. He is an award winning writer, actor, and storytelling teacher.  Corey has been featured on The Moth Radio Hour, Backfence PDX, “The Finch Files” and “The B-Sider” podcasts and is an on-air personality for Alice Radio’s “The Sarah and Vinnie Show,” the #1-rated commercial morning show in the San Francisco area.  You can see Corey perform at BATS Improv, one of the world’s foremost centers for improvisational theater. He has written for Comedy Central, Jim Henson Productions, and Lucasfilm. He is also creative director at Tippett Studio, a 2-time Oscar-winning media production company, writing screenplays for seven theme park attractions around the world. There are some communication GEMS to be mined from the standup and improv worlds, and Corey has brought them to you in this conversation.

“If you want to connect with the people you work with and for, you first have to understand them. In order to do that effectively, you must understand yourself.”  My guest this week is Michael Ventura, CEO and founder of Sub Rosa, a strategy and design firm that has worked with names like Johnson & Johnson, Pantone, and Adobe to the TED Conference, Delta Airlines and The Daily Show. Michael has served as a board member and adviser to a variety of organizations, including Behance, the Burning Man Project, Cooper-Hewitt, and the U.N.'s Tribal Link Foundation. He is also a visiting lecturer at institutions like Princeton University and the United States Military Academy at West Point. But get this, Michael somehow also has time for a thriving indigenous medicine practice, where he helps patients address illness and injury of all types on the road to better well-being.  I am thrilled to bring you this conversation as we discuss Michael's book Applied Empathy. Michael's message about empathy isn’t just for designers, it is for anyone solving problems involving other humans. And whether you are a stay-at-home mom or dad, or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, these ideas are game changing.

It is well documented that loneliness is more damaging to our longevity than obesity and even cigarette smoking. So why are so many of us lonely, even INSIDE of our friendships? Our marriages? Why are adult friendships so hard to cultivate and develop? How can we more actively create loving, constructive connections, without seeming like weirdo stalkers? All of this and more in today's episode with the amazing Dr. Adam Dorsay.

If you'd met Stephanie Spence 15 years ago, the word "powerhouse" would have come to mind. She was the CEO of Spence Communications, where she published numerous magazines, and as a journalist, she interviewed big names like Oprah Winfrey and the Dalai Lama. But the truth was that "power" was the very thing she lacked. In her new book, Yoga Wisdom, Stephanie tells of her unbelievable journey out of trauma and abuse, and into freedom.

Larry Kamer is a crisis management expert, which means he’s the guy people call when the shit hits the fan. His list of clients is extensive, but just to name a few: Harvard, Stanford, American Medical Association, Kaiser Permanente, and the Catholic Church. Larry is also an adjunct professor in the Professional Communication Program at the University of San Francisco, the Chief Information Security Officer at Carnegie Mellon University, and the Annenberg School of Communication at the USC.  While watching companies, institutions and/or individual people get drawn and quartered in the press can be “fun” to watch from the outside, Larry jumps in and helps these companies, institutions/individuals do the right thing.  Personally? I find those kinds of stories fascinating. How do people manage through it? What happens behind the scenes? What can we learn from them? That’s what today’s episode is all about my friends.

How do you become less afraid of conflict? How might you defend an idea without getting defensive? How do you empower people without giving them so much freedom they get into trouble? How do you stay real and authentic as a leader when the chips are down? What is power? Is it control or is it trust? These are big questions that my guest Joel Peterson will answer in today’s episode. Joel is the Chairman of the Board of Overseers at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, as well as the Chairman of the Board at JetBlue Airways. He has served on more than three dozen boards over the past 45 years, most notable among them being The Dallas Market Center, Texas Commerce Bank (Dallas), and Asurion. He currently serves on the boards of Franklin Covey and Packsize.

In this episode, I'll offer my candid advice on dealing with big emotions at work.

“Sandwich Generation” is a term that refers to people in their 30s or 40s who find themselves caring not only for their young children, but also their aging parents.  I fell into the sandwich by default—I am the only child of divorced parents, and was the only family member within 2600 miles of my father when his life fell apart. But the moment he moved in with us—into my home office—I learned quickly that the sandwich (and the struggle) was real. It’s not an exaggeration when I say that I wouldn’t have survived those sandwich years with my body, mind, and soul intact had it not been for my guest on this week’s podcast: Ms. Peggy Flynn. Peggy is a writer, caregiver, spiritual director and geriatric care consultant. She brings her 40 years of caregiving and end-of-life experience with 300+ people to what some call the third-third of life or, more poetically, the evening of life. She’s also hilarious, irreverent, and dead honest—exactly the kind of person you need in your corner, mid-sandwich.

Have you ever been on the receiving end of feedback that you are “too much?” What does that mean, anyway? Too what? Too authentic? Too passionate? Too energetic? And what on earth are you supposed to do with that information? Behave with less authenticity? Passion? Energy? But this feedback can be golden if you can identify the reasoning behind it.