Hack the Process: Mindful Meaningful Progress on Your Plans

Being a man in modern society comes with a lot of assumptions and negative stereotypes. JuVan Langford took a look at his own struggles with finding a positive masculine identity for himself, and made it his mission to help men identify with their integrated selves. JuVan currently runs a nonprofit that counsels young men in school, and works as a men's empowerment coach, running events and working directly with clients around the world. In this episode, JuVan will share how he turned his feelings of vulnerability as an abused child into an asset, how he trains his clients to choose and use affirmations even when they don't believe them at first, and how he identifies and connects with mentors from the past and the present as part of his personal development.

Dr. Kesha Moore's ongoing focus on understanding how we can thrive as individuals in a complex society helps her integrate her passion for studying across a wide range of fields, including Psychology, Sociology, and Community Organizing. Kesha currently divides her time between working as a professor of Sociology, parenting, activism, and building a business in life coaching. In this episode Kesha will tell us about finding the creativity to frame ideas in the language of specific audiences, staying productive and balanced despite a schedule that is never the same from one day to the next, and how it feels to build a side business as a life coach while maintaining a career in academia.

Lisa Dale Miller is an integrative psychotherapist who uses somatic experiencing therapy to help people deal with trauma, handle internal and external stressors, and learn to become awake and present. She's also the author of "Effortless Mindfulness," an academic textbook positioning the clinical work she practices in the context of traditional western psychotherapy. In this episode, Lisa will tell us why engineers are some of her favorite clients, how her years of mindfulness practice and study have informed the work she does today, and what promoted her to change careers and become a trained psychotherapist after 25 years as a pioneering installation artist.

Omar Zenhom realized a semester into a Wharton MBA program that his ten years of independent teaching experience already gave him the background to teach people what they really needed to know to run a business. His popular $100 MBA podcast now has close to 900 episodes, and it's helping to grow the audience for his library of business training materials. Along the way, he realized he needed a better tool to host his online classes, so he developed the Webinar Ninja service to scratch his own itch, and turned it into a software-as-a-service business by popular demand.

In this episode, Omar will tell us:

- why he believes that having immigrant parents broadened his perspective and strengthened his resolve,

- how leveraging your strengths can help set you in the most sustainable direction for your business, and

- what it's like running a company with a cofounder and partner who's also your spouse.

Finding the confidence to enter the privileged world of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs is hard enough, and all the more so when you come from a different country with a background of poverty. But serial entrepreneur Ricky Yean found ways to turn his differences into advantages by recognizing less obvious solutions to shared problems. After building Crowdbooster, a successful social media analytics firm, Ricky is now planning to disrupt the world of public relations, making metrics-driven journalist outreach accessible to small businesses on a subscription basis. In this episode Ricky will tell us how he positioned himself to attract venture capital, what his experiences with startup incubators taught him, and how he turned his people skills into leadership by helping others around him achieve.

Knowing what you don't want is sometimes just as important as knowing what you do want. That was definitely the case for Nicole Holland, who literally escaped from jail by quitting her job as a correctional officer to discover a more fulfilling way to make a living. Now Nicole hosts online summits about how to build a business, and helps experts learn how to present themselves effectively on podcasts. In this episode, Nicole will discuss some of the possible paths she pursued and abandoned along the way to her current career, tell us what qualities she thinks make podcasts unique in the media landscape, and explain why the process of writing things down on paper is valuable regardless of whether you ever refer to those notes later.

Curtis McHale took his training as a counselor and applied it to his work in web development, writing books and articles and hosting a podcast to help small businesses define their processes. He also coaches freelancers about how to optimize their work around the life they want to lead. Along the way he's learned how to delegate the tasks he doesn't enjoy, while holding onto the ones he finds energizing. In this episode, Curtis will explain how he trains his clients not to send him emails, he'll share the process he follows to separate his work time from his personal time, and he'll tell us how he turned his passion for Lego into a branding tool for his business.

If you're looking to build a business making and selling mobile apps, Carter Thomas has answers for you. His team at BlueCloud Solutions has provided the source code for over 1,500 apps, and sells templates and training to help people with no coding background go from idea to product to market. In this episode, Carter discusses how working with mentors and mastermind groups helps him build his own business while helping others do the same, he'll share his sustainable approach to hiring, training, and managing a remote team, and tell us why it's important to audit your project backlog regularly, and let go of the things that aren't keeping you motivated.

The publishing industry has changed dramatically in the past ten years, and Tom Corson-Knowles is helping new authors navigate the choppy waters. Tom took the lessons he learned when he set out to self-publish his first book and started sharing them, building a following and a new mission along the way. He now publishes courses for writers and provides boutique publishing services. In this episode Tom will explain how his early failures in traditional publishing guided him toward self-publishing, what it took to get his first ebook to monthly sales of over $10,000 in its first year, how he leverages the power of collaboration with other industry leaders, and what techniques he uses to delegate tasks to his team so he can focus on what he enjoys doing most.

Tara Hunt is a networking pioneer who has considered herself a native of the online social landscape since before there were web browsers. Her enthusiasm for learning how people use new tools and techniques to connect with other people still keeps her engaged, even as the context evolves constantly. Tara's work has included writing blogs and books about social capital (aka whuffie), creating co-working spaces, consulting with organizations large and small on social strategy, and developing video channels to support personalized brand marketing. In this episode, Tara will tell us about the challenges she faced being a single parent while her career shifted back and forth from employment to independent consulting, how she turned her own fear of missing out into an asset, and how she's learned to keep herself steady as she surfs the turbulent waters of the social web.