We're probably seeing more and more people trying to align with working with companies that allow them to flourish as who they are as human beings that recognize more about their whole self. In this episode, Chris Curtin shares how he has allowed himself to align with his purpose.

Chris Curtin is a unique executive who has successfully led transformative initiatives on behalf of three category-leading companies Visa, Hewlett Packard, and The Walt Disney Company. While he was at Visa, Chris spearheaded the transformation of the company's reputation and standing resulting in the company's brand improving from the 20th to the 5th most valuable in the world. In his role as Chief Digital Officer, he led the marketing efforts behind its principal Visas digital services, moving from less than 1 million to over 80 million users worldwide. At Hewlett Packard, Chris led the efforts to revitalize the digital presence of the company. At The Walt Disney Company, he had several roles such as overseeing all new media and media for the destination businesses, including Walt Disney World, Disneyland International Properties, the cruise ships, and the guided tour business.

Here are some power takeaways from today’s conversation:

Episode Highlights:

The Evolution of People and Companies

Invest in the things that you love, that you buy, and that you're willing to put a share of your wallet. It's both a rational and emotional decision.

Companies go through an ongoing evolution of whether their best days are ahead of them, or behind them. People do this as well, not just brands and companies. If you look at the best reinventors in life, they are people and companies that view these periods of times as chapters. It's all one book that has chapters. But people are flipped out thinking the book is just one long chapter when there's actually a series of them. And that's part of the recipe and the key to success.

Reinvention Tips

All too often you can become defined by and as your title or as your affiliation. But that's not how you approach life when you wake up on any given day. The most important titles are dad, mother, brothers, sister, son, daughter, like – those are really important titles that you want to get right and invest in. Everything else is just a moment in time.

Be open-minded to think about what's possible, and how to live that adventure, because there's always going to be some parameters and people in our lives that are going to try to put those barriers up. And you can either choose to listen to them or not.

One of the secrets of life is to effectively get yourself out of any box that's artificially put around you. Then get into a discussion with yourself about where you want to be, what you want to be doing, and how you want to be doing it.

Business is the Assumption of Risk

The more you advance professionally, the more risk-averse, ironically, you become and you have a zero-tolerance for mistakes. And that's not good for the company because it only shortchanges their abilities to be able to expose how talented and how gifted they are. Additionally, business is the assumption of risk.