Finding Brave

“I’m grateful for those hard challenges, because I probably wouldn’t have been brave enough to have thought big without them. If my life had been good, and perfect, and wonderful, and there was nothing that I needed to alter, then I wouldn’t have done any of the things that I am so happy to have had the chance to accomplish.” - Ann Louden If you’re a listener of this podcast, there’s a good chance you have big dreams for your life. Today’s Finding Brave expert guest is a walking example of someone who is bringing her own BIG dreams to life, and thinking “when,” not “if,” they will happen. Ann Louden is CEO and Founder of the Ann Louden Company, and consults for non-profits in higher education, the arts, social services, and healthcare. With thirty years in higher education administration, Ann is recognized in the world of philanthropy as a seasoned fundraising expert, a strategic and innovative thinker, an engaging teacher, and a passionate representative for the causes she serves. A new resident of New York City in the last year, Ann relocated from Texas to claim her second chapter of life. Even before her move, two CEO’s in the fields of higher education and adoption retained her to help them “think big” as their full-time consultant. Among Ann’s proudest achievements is the creation of a national cancer advocacy program for which she built the brand and was the spokesperson for twelve years. The stories she shares reveal her extremely innovative approach to dreaming up a brand that has the power to raise visibility, funds, and support, and at the same time, offers a unique way to honor the courage of cancer survivors and their families. As you’ll hear, Ann’s life hasn’t been without its share of struggles on her journey, but these challenges are what she feels have brought her to the new exciting place where she finds herself today. Her story will be an inspiration to others by showing that dreams don’t just “come” to us. We have to actually do the work and attend to all the details along the way to will -- and birth -- them into existence. To learn more about today's guest, visit: http://www.annlouden.com/ 

“There’s no reason for you to work 18 hours a day. You can work 5 and still create a great company, still change the world and still be able to grow yourself in the process and live a great life.” - Ajit Nawalkha Do you ever feel that you need to sacrifice your life, and experience extreme burnout in the process, all just to have success as an entrepreneur? If so you’re not alone, but today’s guest is going to challenge this myth and show you avoid this and how not have to work around the clock to realize your dreams. Ajit Nawalkha, is a serial entrepreneur, global educator and consultant. He is the co-founder of Mindvalley Teach, Evercoach and Global GRIT Institute, author of The Book of Coaching and Live Big. Born in Jaipur, Rajasthan living in a home with 23 other people, he has always pursued the dream of Living Big. Over the past decade, Ajit has helped build training and coaching companies to inspire the coming generation, transform entrepreneurs to live on purpose, while enjoying their lives and increasing profits. Ajit reveals powerful insights that provide valuable clues on how to live a bigger life, and as you’ll hear, it really all begins reframing your mindset and perspective on what it really takes to be successful. To learn more about today's guest, visit: https://www.ajitnawalkha.com/ 

“What I’m seeing here is this absolutely amazing paradox. We live in a world of men’s power, where just by the virtue of birth, half of us have certain privileges, but at the same time, the ways that we have traditionally defined men’s lives comes with a huge cost.” - Michael Kaufman At work and home, the gender equality revolution is critical for the advancement of women. However, today’s Finding Brave guest makes the case that this movement is also a great gift for men. There’s a paradox of men’s power that exists in this male-dominated world, but significant changes are being made to address the challenges it presents. Michael Kaufman, PhD, is a renowned writer, advisor, and speaker focused on engaging men to promote gender equality, end violence against women, and transform the lives of men. He has worked in 50 countries with the United Nations, governments, NGOs, women’s organizations, and businesses. He is the co-founder of White Ribbon Campaign, a Senior Fellow with Promundo based in Washington DC, and last year was the only male member of Justin Trudeau’s G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council The author of eight books, including two novels, Michael’s newest book is The Time Has Come: Why Men Must Join the Gender Equality Revolution. You’ll learn why having an having an open dialogue around gender equality is critical, but we must find positive ways to reach out to men to be part of the gender equality movement. As our expert guest shares, changes are happening that will positively affect not only this generation of men and women, but our children and future generations to come. To learn more about today's guest, visit: http://michaelkaufman.com/ 

“We’ve made a social contract to come into this organization, however, contracts can be broken. Whichever direction it gets broken, we have to take the responsibility and either take care of ourselves and get out of it, or help fix it. There’s really very little in between, and we’re not supposed to see how much crap we can take.” - Andrea Goeglein Asking for help, especially in the workplace, often feels like we’re waving a neon sign of weakness. However, today’s expert guest -- who literally wrote the book on being brave regarding asking for help -- explains how asking for the right kind of assistance is essential to reducing stress, positively impacting our results and building a foundation for strong relationships. Dr. Andrea Goeglein has a fascinating personal and professional story, complete with important and powerful lessons learned, starting with what she realized after altering the truth of her age (of 14) to land a job at a Wall Street brokerage firm. By 24, she opened her first operating business – a Haagen-Dazs ice cream store in Reno, Nevada. Many businesses and a PhD in Organizational Psychology later, Andrea has experienced enough stress and anxiety to be an expert. Today she is a Success Catalyst and known as Dr. Success™. Andrea is the founder, curator and author of the Don’t Die™ self-development collection of books. Her latest book is Don’t Die Waiting to Be Brave. As an expert in Applied Positive Psychology, she is her clients’ success Sherpa, guiding them as they climb the mountain of success. In today’s Finding Brave you’ll not only know when to ask for help, but who to ask and how to do it in order to flourish in your professional life. The choice to ask for help is ours, and we will create even more bravery and success when we know how much choice we really have. To learn more about today's guest, visit: https://servingsuccess.com 

“You just have to believe that there’s a higher version of you that you can tap into and that can access higher-level wisdom, insight, solutions, strategies, people and connections. If you believe it, and if you believe it strongly, it’s amazing what happens in your life.” - Kathy Caprino Most of us know from experience that New Year's resolutions and the huge, hairy goals we dream up for our lives often arrive with great gusto, but all too frequently they die on the vine very soon after we've written them down. Today, I’m excited to share a helpful year-end strategy of reflection -- the process of reflecting back on the past year in an in-depth, careful and probing way, exploring all that you’ve learned and experienced, created, and also “failed” at -- as an effective step to get clearer clear on what you really want in your life. This reflection process helps you connect in a powerful, juicy way with your ultimate dreams and desires, and it highlights where you’ve been living “off course” - far away from what your most authentic self really wants. In this episode, I explore what I've found to be six essential reflection questions that are perfect for this time of year, to help us take stock, expand our gratitude and appreciation for all that we are today, and set the wheels in motion for shifting our approach to how we operate, communicate and engage with others and with our core challenges and power gaps. This reflection process hatches important new revelations, and sets the stage for a brand new future. As always, be gentle and compassionate with yourself as you reflect, and remember that everything that’s happened can be used to bolster and uplift you, if you let it. At the end of the show, I sing a little song to welcome in the New Year, from my heart to yours. I’d love to hear how your answers to these six questions impact you. And I welcome your suggestions for any future topics or interviewees that you’re interested in. Please reach out to me by email, or on social media via LinkedIn, or on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and say hello and share your ideas! I wish you and your family very Happy Holidays and I’m looking forward to serving you fresh, new episodes of Finding Brave in 2019 that will move you forward to create life and work as you dream it to be. Happy New Year!

“When you’re getting together with family, friends, your parents, and with your siblings, don’t keep using the stories from the past as an excuse to feel what you feel today.” - Kathy Caprino You may think that pain and conflict with family and friends during the busy holiday season is unavoidable, but on today’s episode of Finding Brave I’m giving you 5 practical and doable strategies that will help. These strategies aren’t just what I’ve encountered when coaching and helping others, but what I talk about today touch on challenges and struggles I’ve personally experienced. Using these strategies will allow you to find ways to be loving, compassionate, joyful, and grateful all at the same time. So dig deep in your heart and spirit this holiday season and embrace the good, kind, the loving and compassionate – in yourself and others. Make a commitment to see good and to emphasize what you have in common, what you love together. And your holiday will go very differently, I guarantee it.

“If you’re not feeling so positive and you go engage in a simple positive habit, and then you feel better, you’re reminding your brain that your behaviors matter.” - Michelle Gielan One of my favorite topics is how to speak bravely, and today’s Finding Brave guest is someone who can back up the importance of doing this with strong research. What she shares today reveals how our language shapes and influences our reality so much more than most of us understand. Michelle Gielan is the bestselling author of Broadcasting Happiness: The Science of Igniting and Sustaining Positive Change and was named one of the Top 10 authors on resilience by the Harvard Business Review. She is the founder of the Institute for Applied Positive Research. Michelle is also the Executive Producer of “The Happiness Advantage” on PBS and a featured professor in Oprah’s Happiness course. She formerly served as anchor of The CBS Morning News. Michelle has spent the past decade researching the link between happiness and success and her research has received attention from dozens of media outlets including: The Washington Post, Forbes, and The New York Times, among other major outlets. What you’ll learn in this episode is that although being happy may be challenging sometimes, happiness is indeed a choice. In the long run, we will all have a much great chance of achieving happiness if we are deliberate and committed to achieving it on a daily basis. To learn more about today's guest, visit: http://michellegielan.com/ 

“You have to think about pitching as a two-way dialogue. It’s not, ‘let me sell myself.’ It’s not, ‘let me announce what’s great about me’ to the world. It’s a two-way dialogue and you have to be thinking just as hard about that journalist on the other end of your email as about you and what you have to say.” - Mark Fortier In this episode of Finding Brave, my special guest will reveal not only how you can get the attention of top media, but also how to make the most of your appearance and then absolutely rock it. My guest, Mark Fortier, is a 25-year veteran of public relations work, and President and Founder of Fortier Public Relations, a PR firm specializing in business books and business thought leadership. He has worked on well over a hundred bestsellers, eight #1 bestsellers and books by dozens of Fortune 500 CEOs and 32 of the Thinkers50 list of the world’s leading business thinkers including Jim Collins, Clayton Christensen, and Seth Godin. As you’ll hear, it’s very doable to get picked up in the news, but you do need to be smart in the way you approach it. Mark shares his deep experience and insights on the best strategies to use to be successful in landing great interviews with top media and putting your best foot forward, as well as the common pitfalls many professionals experience when attempting to achieve and attract top exposure in the media. To learn more about today's guest, visit: http://www.fortierpr.com/ 

“You know when you go to a dinner party and you end up chatting to that one person that you didn’t expect to, and you have that really rich conversation that takes you into all sorts of interesting spaces? That’s the voice that I want to have for our authors.” - Lou Johnson Have you ever thought about writing a book, but you weren’t sure of how to approach a publisher after it was written? In today’s episode of Finding Brave, you’ll not only hear how to do this, but you’ll learn powerful tips and strategies from a top publishing expert on how you can entice great publishers to say “YES!” to your book project. Lou Johnson is an experienced, dynamic and highly effective business leader with a deep passion for supporting creators, developing people, workplace culture and business performance. She is a well-known publishing industry figure with over twenty-five years of industry experience including senior roles at Random House, Allen & Unwin and Simon & Schuster, where she was Managing Director between 2010 – 2014, launching her own startup, The Author People and now Publishing Director at Murdoch Books. In addition, her industry representation includes Vice-Presidency of the Australian Publisher's Association (2012–2014), Chair of the Book Industry Collaborative Council (BICC) Distribution Expert Reference Group and board membership of The Stella Prize and founding committee member for The Indigenous Literacy Foundation She has worked on a vast range of books including authors like Rhonda Byrnes, Kate Morton, Elizabeth Gilbert, Khaled Hosseini, Al Gore, Philippa Gregory, Hillary Clinton and JK Rowling. Lou’s insight on how her company considers submissions by authors, along with the clarity she provides about how best to approach publishers, is invaluable. If you’re an author or an aspiring one, and are confused about the publishing process or losing hope, don’t despair because your message is needed. Listen in here to get the best advice and direction on how to spread your book messages with the world. To learn more about today's guest, visit: https://www.murdochbooks.com.au/  https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsonlou/ 

“You are like a thumbprint. You are absolutely unique. Now you have to understand how and leverage it and be strong enough to be powerful.” - Kathy Caprino In this episode, I share key findings from my in-depth research with thousands of professional women around the world about the 7 most damaging power gaps that keep people from thriving and succeeding in both life and work. Here, I outline how these 7 gaps steal away our power, confidence, energy, vision, connection and influence, and I explain how these gaps derail us from achieving our highest and best goals and visions. You'll hear some specific, actionable tips and new approaches to help you recognize the gaps that are impacting your life today, and support you to move forward to close them once and for all.