This podcast is the second in my series with author Ari Weinzweig the author of “Building A Great Business”.

In my previous interview with Ari we spoke about ” Managing Ourselves” where we discuss everything from visioning to the 12 Tips of More Effective Self-Management.

In this interview Ari weI focus on the 12 Natural Laws of Building A Great Business. One thing that Ari knows for certain is that a strong inspiring and strategically vision leads the way to greatness—especially if you write it down. Ari teaches a great technique for writing your vision. He calls it the “hot pen’ technique. Pick up your pen and just keep writing 15, 20, 30 minutes whatever it takes to articulate your vision in word pictures that you can see and believe your vision manifesting.

He also has a tip that you need to “give your customers a really compelling reason to buy from you”. Now while this seems obvious— when was the last time you had a bad meal at a restaurant and failed to tell anyone, but you said to your spouse we will never recommend or go back to that establishment. It happens all the time, and because the restaurant not only served a subpar meal, but your service was most likely lacking you had no reason to do business with them again. The combination is a disaster in the food service business.

I encourage you to listen to and learn from one of the wisest men in the food service business speak with me about 12 Natural Laws that when applied to both your personal and business life they can transform an organization and the people that work within the organizations.

If you want to learn more about Ari and his trilogy of books please click here, or if you want to learn about his training company Zing Train please click here to get information about the various training programs.

Enjoy this great interview with a wonderfully engaging author, businessman and civic leader Ari Weinzweig.

 

I happen to be listening to a podcast that the Robert Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership was hosting , and I heard an interview with author Ari Weinzweig the author of a trilogy of books entitled ” A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Managing Ourselves”, “Being a Better Leader” and “Building a Great Business” all in the Lapsed Anarchist’s series. I was so taken by Ari’s approach to how he built and ran his organizations that I invited him to be on Inside Personal Growth. In this interview about his book “Managing Ourselves” Ari and I discuss the 12 Tips for more effective self-management, which are truly gems and so important to learn on our path of self discovery and personal growth. Tip one (1)  is “Get to Know Yourself”, now while this seems simple most of us spend a lifetime going deep into our soul seeking to better understand our best attributes and qualities as well as how to improve the ones that frequently get in the way and don’t serve us as becoming better human beings. The second Tip Ari speaks about is “Honoring Your Emotions.” We all know the line “leave your emotions at the door” when you go to work. As Ari states that is utterly impossible—our emotions go with us wherever we go but we can learn to monitor and manage them so they don’t get in the way of what we are trying to accomplish. The entire list of 12 tips are in his book, as well you can go to his website to learn more. I know that you will receive a lifetime of personal and business wisdom from my interviews with Ari. I highly encourage purchasing Ari’s trilogy of books and to  learning more about his organization Zingerman’s by clicking on the link here. He has also created Zing Train a training organization based in Ann Arbor, MI with a mission to help organizations better serve both their customers and employees. To learn more click here to be directed to the Zing Train website, or click here to be directed to the Zingerman’s Facebook page.

We all tap into our intuition from time to time, and wonderfully when we do it as if our lives are altered in mysterious and beautiful ways. Everyone reading this has dialed into and heard the inner voice, the voice of wisdom guiding us— if only we will listen.

“Intuition is a survival tool” write author Simone Wright the author of ” First Intelligence: Using the Science and Spirit of Intuition.” In my interview with her we discuss not only how she has been able to fine tune her own intuition, but how she works with others around the world and coaches them to more powerfully access this great power.

One of the misconceptions about intuition is that it is a supernatural power or paranormal phenomenon. Intuition is a power that we are all born with but we are not taught how to use it. It appears in different ways some people have clairaudience or clear hearing, others are gifted with clairvoyance or clear seeing, and other are clairsentience or clear feeling. No matter what your “intuitive power” it is available to access as a guidance system, states author Simone Wright ” you just need to be open to receiving ideas, and inspirations”.

I hope you enjoy Simone Wright speaking with me about her new book “First Intelligence”. If you listen carefully you will better understand how to access the power of your intuition.

If you want to learn more about Simone Wright please click here to be directed to her website, or watch the video below about her new book.

If you are like many people on our society today you are feeling stress and overwhelmed. It seem like our world is moving at an astronomical pace and people are moving as fast as they can to keep pace. The question we should all be asking is keeping pace more important than our overall health and relationships?

In Paul Huljichs’ new book entitled ” Stress Pandemic-9 Natural Steps to Break The Cycle of Stress and Thrive” Paul provides the reader with practical and compelling advice that can sound simple, but implementing it into our daily routines is the key.

Paul outlines the nine steps which are: 1) Take Charge 2) Kick Your Bad Habits 3) Learn to Say No 4) Affirmations 5) Exercise 6) Nutrition 7) Sleep 8) The Power of Awareness 9) Never Give Up.

Paul’s person story is one of determination and survival a mental breakdown after having build a multi million dollar health foods company in New Zealand. He ended up being institutionalized for his mental breakdown and he lost everything he has worked for, house, cars business. As you can imagine the stress prior to the breakdown, and after were immense. Paul’s personal story is very compelling as are his unique strategies for stress reduction.

If you are like me, you are dealing with stress on a daily basis. Paul new book provides practical guidance on how to eliminate that stress and live a fulfilling life. If you want to learn more about Paul, please click here to be directed to his website or click here to go to his Facebook page.

I happen to be watching CBS Sunday Morning, one of my favorite human interest documentary programs, and I saw the story about Ron Suskind and his son Owen who is autistic. Ron wrote a book entitled “Life Animated” about the breakthroughs their family encountered integrating Disney characters that Owen was deeply connected to as a result of watching hour upon hour of Disney videos.

Probably the most synchronistic and great things about Ron and Owen’s story is that during the week this aired a local non-profit called Teri Inc, in Oceanside CA was interviewing me to help them with their capital campaign to build a school for autistic and special needs kids. This story not only caught my attention, but moved me to tears.

In my interview with Ron we discuss aspects of the journey that Ron and Cornelia encountered while their son Owen was starting to speak and verbalize his needs again.  Owen is now about ready to graduate from a special college for autistic young adults, and is teaching a class called “Disney Club”. The Suskind Family have really come along way since the day Owen mysteriously disappeared within. They are now working with a new technology called ” Affinity Therapy” that is having breakthrough results with many of the children and young adults that have been diagnosed with autism.

I know you are going to really enjoy this compelling story, especially if you are living with and or caring for a child with autism.

If you want to learn more about Ron and his new book ” Life Animated” just click here, or you can watch the video below.

Author Shawn Hunter is truly and out of the box thinker. In my recent interview about his new book entitled ” Out Think, How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes”

Shawn shares with me what is required to be an innovative leader in our new era. We have entered an age of imagination, ideation, conceptualization, creativity, innovation—take your pick. Creativity, mental flexibility, and collaboration have displaced one-dimensional intelligence and isolated determination as core ingredients of competitive advantage states Shawn.

These mindsets that are needed to drive innovation are only found by tapping into the discretionary levels of passion and initiative within us. It is these new mindsets that makes up where “Out, Think” come from. Shawn presents in each chapter key ideas, behavior and or the mindsets so that the reader can practice and put into practical application the “Out Think” principles.

I hope you enjoy this dynamic interview with a really fun and exciting author. If you want to learn more about Shawn you can click here to be directed to his website or click here to go to his Facebook page.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing author and advocate Karen Kain. Her book entitled “A Unique Life Fully Lived”, is the story of her journey with her daughter Lorrin who at six weeks had an adverse reaction to her one and only DPT vaccination. It attacked her brain, leaving her with severe brain damage. Feeling abandoned by modern medicine, karen turned to alternative treatments and spiritual guidance. To this day Karen get messages from Lorrin telling her to have “fun”.

Karen’s heart warming story takes you through Lorrain’s life, which was truly fully lived. She engaged in activities and did many things that special needs kids would never have the opportunity to participate in.

Karen is now an advocate, speaker and author speaking about Lorrain, but also about the challenges that caregivers of special needs children are faced with. It does not matter if you have a special needs child or not, Karen’s story is one of strength, compassion and love and for a daughter that in her eyes was her best friend.

I hope that you enjoy my interview with Karen and if you want to learn more please click here to be directed to her website, or click here to go to her Facebook page.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Frederic Laloux the author of a new book entitled ” Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness”.

I must admit Frederic’s book is a phenomenal look into the extremely profound changes into consciousness, culture and social systems that we are seeing emerge in increasing numbers at this point in human history. Frederic tests all the current organizational models and explores with the reader organizations that are bending the curve and exploring new ways of being.

As Frederic states ” Many people sense that the current way we run organizations has stretched to its limits. We are increasingly disillusioned by organizational life.” We are at the lowest levels of employee engagement in US history, and the trends don’t seem to be shifting. So what is next?

Frederic utilizes a color code system to help identify the characteristics of organizations. He states that the organization will evolve into will be what he refers to as “evolutionary teal” organizations.

These organizations are characterized by 1) Living entity with its own evolutionary purpose 2) Strategy emerges organically from the collective intelligence of self-managing employees 3) The concept of competition is irrelevant 4) Growth is significant only inasmuch as they help achieve the purpose. 5) Profit is a lagging indicator: will come naturally when doing the right thing.

Just these few characteristics of the evolutionary teal organization are so foreign to the way we are currently doing business in many of our organizations today. I am so encouraged by the practices and organizational dynamics of the twelve businesses that Frederic studied and cited in the book.  He truly show how business an evolve, and become more conscious, spiritual and human.

If you are in middle or upper management of an organization, then “Reinventing Organizations” is a must read. If you want to learn more please click here to be directed to the book website where you can download the book, or click here to be directed to the books Facebook page.

Enjoy this great interview with author Frederic Laloux.

There is most likely not a person on the planet that has not run into more that one obstacle during their lifetime. The bigger question that we need to ask ourselves, is just how do we perceived the obstacles that we have encountered. Do we look upon them as negative or are we able to reframe our reference to them as learning lessons?

In my recent interview with Ryan Holiday about his new book entitled ” The Obstacle Is The Way” we discuss his journey he takes his readers through history telling stories about some of the greatest people in history and the immense obstacles many of them encountered, but more importantly the personal power the all obtained by shifting their perspective about the obstacles they encountered and seeing them as learning lessons.

In story after story Ryan shows that when failure comes— Ask what went wrong? What can be improved? What am I missing. He states that entrepreneurs are: 1) Never wedded to a position 2) Never afraid to lose a little of their investment 3) Never bitter or embarrassed 4) Never out of the game long.

If you are currently facing a life challenge around growing your business, money or personal affairs then I highly recommend reading Ryan’s new book. It is inspirational and will provide you with a completely new perspective and reframe of your perceived obstacles.

If you want to learn more just watch the great video below or click here to go to Ryan’s website and or Facebook page for the book.

Enjoy this great interview with Ryan Holiday author or “The Obstacle is the Way”.