Abstract Essay

Fredrik Haren, The Creativity Explorer

As a global speaker who has delivered over 2,000 presentations across 75+ countries, Fredrik has spent his career exploring creativity, innovation, and the power of ideas. He has inspired over a million people from the stage and his bestselling book, The Idea Book - has been recognized as one of the '100 Best Business Books of All Time'. Fredrik has been inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame on two continents.

But most importantly: Fredrik is passionate about sharing his insights on what he has learnt during this 25 year journey around the world so that others can discover their full creative potential.

Everyone wants to become more creative - but how can we discover our full creative potential? That is the questions that has pushed Fredrik Haren to travel to over 75 countries on 6 countries over the last 25 years. He is The Creativity Explorer.

Fredrik has interviewed hundreds of business leaders - from heads of innovations to CEOs and travelled the world to interview thousands of creative people from all walks of life: from glass artists in Barcelona to Nomads in Mongolia. He even went to learn about creativity from the people in North Korea! He has learnt about creativity from the children in the slums of Mumbai as well as from the most famous watch makers in Switzerland - and everything in-between.

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I was feeding the homeless at a very young age just out of high school. I n 1997 I found this guy John McCormick a homeless man who needed help. I asked him to come with me and I took him to a hospital. We were not a shelter at the time. When I gave him housing the hospitals found out and they started to send me all their homeless. We became a shelter basically overnight without one ounce of planning. We became the biggest provider in the county. Years later the city sued us but we won the case to stay where we were. I also operate the Mass Shooting Prevention Center Crisis hotline trying to help potential shooters get the help they need.

Been working with the homeless since 1984, operates shelters, food banks, outreach, COVID outreach, Monitor Hospitals for unsafe discharges, Hate Crimes on the Homeless, and NIMBY when it comes to communities that don't want shelters . Networks covered my work, CNN, FOX and Friends , CBS and many local networks. Also on NewsNation for mass shootings and The Hill.

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SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR | ARCHITECT | BUILDER

Lance Cayko is a dynamic serial entrepreneur, award-winning architect, and co-founder of F9 Productions, a leading design-build firm in Northern Colorado. With over two decades in the architecture, engineering, and construction industries, Lance has earned international recognition, including the 2016 Architizer A+ Award for Architecture + Living Small for his innovative Atlas Tiny House project, featured on HGTV. He launched F9 Productions in 2009 alongside partner Alex Gore, transforming recession-era layoffs into a thriving business that has grown from a two-person startup to a team of 10 operating from a custom-designed office in Longmont. Under his leadership, F9 has achieved remarkable milestones, such as topping BizWest's Mercury 100 Fastest-Growing Private Firms in Tier III for 2023 with a 386% growth rate, and securing the Best Architecture Firm title in the Best of Mile High Awards for both 2023 and 2024. In 2024, Lance was honored as one of BizWest's Most-Influential Business Leaders in Construction, and he received the 2021 Horizon Award from the North Dakota State University Foundation for his exceptional professional success and community contributions.

Beyond his firm, Lance shares his expertise as a part-time lecturer at the University of Colorado Boulder and his alma mater, North Dakota State University, where he mentors aspiring architects on practical design and business strategies. He co-hosts Inside the Firm, a top-five global podcast on architecture and entrepreneurship, delivering candid insights on industry challenges, innovation, and growth to over a million listeners worldwide. Committed to community service, Lance founded Longmont Community Gardens in 2020, a non-profit dedicated to urban sustainable gardening, education, and local involvement, evolving from his years of volunteer garden management.

In his personal life, Lance is a devoted father of four, an avid professional fisherman, and the creator of the YouTube channel Fishing with Lance, where he edits and shares his outdoor adventures chasing walleye and paddlefish in Colorado and North Dakota. Whether discussing resilient business practices, sustainable design, or work-life balance, Lance brings a grounded, multifaceted perspective to every conversation, inspiring audiences with his journey from hands-on tradesman to influential industry leader.

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CEO of Next Level University, Top 100 Podcast, 2,100+ Ep, 180+ Countries, Computer Engineer, MBA, 11,000+ Hours of Coaching, Training, and Podcasting.

At age 2, my birth father passed away in a car accident. At age 26, after getting into a nearly fatal car accident myself, I questioned everything...

I was already very successful from the outside looking in, but filled with pain, regret, and abandonment challenges, I searched for answers and finally found what I was really missing all this time, Personal Development.

Today I'm grateful to lead a global team of 18 individuals as the Founder and CEO of Next Level University, a Global Top 100 Podcast focused on helping others reach their own unique potential in Health, Wealth, and Love.

With well over 2,100 episodes and more than one million listens in 180+ countries, I've been doing this deeply meaningful work for more than a decade, and after accumulating more than 10,000 hours of Coaching, Training, and Podcasting with all walks of life, I believe in a heart-driven but no BS approach to achieving both external success AND internal fulfillment.

Thank you again for this opportunity. I believe we're all far more capable than we realize when given the right guidance, and I'm honored to help you and your listeners reach their own unique Next Level of success!

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Invasion of the Punk Rockers, Who Drink Blood!

A Vampire Horror-Punk Thriller for Rebels, Outcasts, and Anyone Who's Ever Slammed in a Basement Mosh Pit.

Bax Laywright and his punk band, Ashwood Commons, are used to being outsiders in the buttoned-up Bible Belt town of Ashwood, Kentucky. They've got fire in their guitars, rebellion in their lyrics, and no patience for small-town conformity. But when a mysterious music collective invites them to play a warehouse show in Louisville, it's the break they've been dying for—until the night turns into a blood-soaked nightmare.

The venue? An abandoned slaughterhouse called The Abattoir.

The headliner? A gothic band called Crimson Thirst.

The fans? Not all of them are human.

What starts as a killer show quickly spirals into a trap laid by actual vampires using the underground punk scene to hunt, hypnotize, and harvest the young and rebellious. Bax and his band barely escape with their lives—but the real horror begins when the vampires follow them home.

Now, Ashwood Commons isn't just trying to make it out of their dead-end town—they're trying to save it.

Armed with guitars, guts, and DIY determination, these teens must rally their scene, outsmart an ancient predator, and fight back before their hometown becomes the next stop on Crimson Thirst's never-ending tour of terror.

If The Lost Boys formed a band with Buffy, played a show in Jennifer's Body, and were managed by the ghost of Sid Vicious, you'd get Invasion of the Punk Rockers, Who Drink Blood!—a fierce, funny, and terrifying novel that fuses vampire horror with the raw heart of punk rock.

Perfect for fans of:

🩸 Stranger Things meets SLC Punk

🩸 Fast-paced YA horror with brains and bite

🩸 Found-family punk bands, outcasts, and fierce female leads

🩸 Vampire lore with a fresh, blood-splattered edge

Ashwood Commons showed up to play the gig of their lives. They just didn't know it might be their last.

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Author, Writing and Life Coach, Founder

I was a bad student" is my common answer when asked about my early school years. I could be a teacher's best friend or worst enemy, alternating between charismatic participant and equally charismatic dissident depending on my passion for the assignment. As my brother once perfectly encapsulated: "If Eric doesn't like doing something and it takes longer than fifteen minutes, he's not going to do it."

Let's face it, school is designed for certain types of people. For everyone else, it's an exhaustive marathon of tedium, awkwardness, and social castigation. We're often told that it's a phase that we'll grow out of, but why should we grow out of something we are, just to be something we're not? It hurts to be misunderstood, but it hurts even more to be gaslit into believing your value differences are an illusion, and if you'd only conform to someone else's standards of happiness you'd, in fact, be happy too.

That is why I've devoted the last two decades of my life to helping people forge a path to success that works for them. I founded an education company with individualized growth as its mission statement. I've coached teachers on how to work with their students' personal needs, and provided business professionals, in leadership and non-leadership roles, with the tools they need to attain collaboration, productivity, and personal growth within their team.

My book, The Power of Personality, is the culmination of decades of research and application. I've personality-typed over fifty thousand people during my career, which is no small sample size. The main takeaway? Our relationship to others will only be as healthy as our relationship to ourselves.

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Unlocking Divine Identity, Leadership, and Legacy—One Conversation at a Time.

A Journey of Awakening: From Near-Death to Unshakable Faith

When I was six, my best friend, in a fit of rage, hurled a hammer across the yard. It struck the back of my head with brutal force, and in an instant, everything went black. But I didn't just lose consciousness—I left my body. Floating outside myself, I watched as his older brother carried what looked like my lifeless form back to their house. That was 1975.

Some time later, I came to—bandaged, dazed, but alive. The memory of that moment faded into the background of my life, buried under the weight of time. Until the pandemic.

I grew up in a traditional Christian and military family, shaped not only by the discipline of that world but by the richness of cultures I encountered as a child living in Japan. The beauty of the Japanese, Filipino, and South Korean traditions left an imprint on my soul, broadening my understanding of connection, honor, and love. Coming back to the States after three years of living abroad, my life transformed. Even then, I saw love differently—not just in relationships, but as something divine, something woven into the very fabric of existence. I believed in a kind of biblical fairy tale. That belief made me different—an outlier, a dreamer, someone who felt things deeply but struggled to find where I fit in the world.

Following in the footsteps of my father and brother, I became a Marine Corps officer. Yet for all the discipline and leadership the Corps instilled in me, I couldn't make relationships work. One failed marriage. Then another. By 2020, I was a Director at Cisco Systems, carrying the weight of two divorces and the wreckage of a 3.5-year relationship that had just ended. Then the pandemic hit. And I hit rock bottom.

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For years, Katie Baker wore the mask of a woman who had it all together. On the surface, she was a successful professional, a loving mother, and the embodiment of relentless perseverance. But beneath that carefully crafted facade, the cracks were deepening into fractures too wide to ignore. Haunted by a childhood of instability—marked by alcoholic fathers, sexual, physical, and verbal abuse, a lack of protection, and exposure to addiction—she carried her pain like an invisible weight. Pressured by societal expectations to "buck up," she buried her wounds under achievement and resilience, holding onto pain and shame well into her late 40s.

In this raw and unflinching memoir, Katie takes readers on her journey from rock bottom to radical transformation. Guided by courage and therapeutic psychedelics, she confronted the darkness she had spent a lifetime outrunning—unraveling the shame, guilt, and addiction that had stolen so much from her life. Through profound medicine journeys, she unearthed the lost pieces of herself and reclaimed the life she was meant to live.

But this is more than a story of healing—it's a story of rediscovery. With vulnerability, grit, and humor, Katie reflects on the childhood that shaped her, the courage it took to rebuild, and the light that emerges when we finally face our deepest wounds.

For anyone who has ever struggled to find their way back to themselves, When The Universe Holds Your Hair Backis a beacon of hope, redemption, and the powerful reminder that healing is not a destination—it's a journey home.

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Licensed Acupuncturist & Book Author Empowering People to Achieve Peak Performance and Improved Health Through Applied Kinesiology

Today, we're thrilled to welcome Derek Williams, a licensed acupuncturist, certified strength and conditioning specialist, and accomplished author. With a background in competitive sports and personal training, Derek has transformed lives through Applied Kinesiology. He's the author of Turn on the Power: How to Use Applied Kinesiology to Improve Athletic Performance, 3rd Edition, a game-changer for athletes seeking instant performance boosts and injury recovery. He's also written Successful Treatment of Environmental Illness with Applied Kinesiology: A Comprehensive Guide for Doctors and Patients, offering groundbreaking insights into managing environmental health challenges. Join us as Derek shares his expertise and practical strategies to empower peak performance and wellness.

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After a devastating accident, a coma, and a breast cancer diagnosis, Shannon could have easily given up. Instead, she embarked on a transformative journey of healing. Through simple daily practices, she rebuilt her life and discovered inner strength she never knew she had.

With honesty and humor, Shannon's story is a powerful testament to perseverance and self-care. Along with inspiration, her experiences offer practical lessons, reminding us that hope, and healing are possible even in dark times. Whether you're a survivor, a health enthusiast, or just looking for an uplifting read, this book is a heartfelt guide to reclaiming your life, one day at a time.

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