Hack the Process: Mindful Meaningful Progress on Your Plans

As a serial entrepreneur, Justin McGill has embraced the concept of radical transparency, sharing the successes and failures of his ventures openly every week as the co-host of a public podcast, Zero to Scale. That's allowed him to turn both his internal and external research into marketing, and grow the audience for his current company, LeadFuze. In this episode, Justin will tell us how he went from working in a trucking company to launching his first business, what he learned from reaching out to the author of the book that taught him about sales, and how he's integrated both his personal and professional life through the project management tools he uses.

Thriving through adversity is something today's guest, Luis Congdon, can speak about with authority. Having survived a childhood marred by drug abuse, abandonment, violence, and homelessness, Luis has turned his life around, going from trying to help himself to finding ways to help others. From relationship coaching to helping entrepreneurs launch their businesses, Luis now makes it a point to support himself while improving the lives of those around him, and giving away as much as possible for free. In this episode, Luis will share with us some of the personal mindfulness practices he follows to keep himself centered and grounded in difficult situations, tell us how learning to see himself differently helped him present a different face to the world, and walk us through how he manages his own thriving business today.

You don't have to turn off your heart to succeed in business, and Mark Silver wants you to know that every act of business can be an act of love. Mark has been teaching entrepreneurs why it's important to remember the divine while developing solid and sustainable business practices for over fifteen years. In this episode, he shares with us how his own business has evolved, while staying true to its core focus as the online publishing landscape changed. Mark will explain the differences between contemplative and devotional practices for mindfulness, walk us through a brief guided remembrance, and show us how business development concepts as complex as building strategic alliances can boil down to a simple cup of tea.

It takes courage to be funny, and Sarah Cooper can tell you all about it. She left a comfortable position in management at Google to become a writer and a stand-up comedian. But she took inspiration from her work, sharing a series of comics and blog posts with her observations about office behavior that eventually led to a publishing deal and her first book, "100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings." In this episode, Sarah will tell us about how she drew on her childhood dreams to validate the difficult choice to change careers, the value of sharing imperfect ideas early instead of waiting to refine them, and how she's adjusting to the transition from employee to entrepreneur.

Serial startup founder and lifestyle entrepreneur Loïc Le Meur has made a career out of discovering amazing people and helping them share their ideas with the world, from more than a decade running Le Web, a tech conference in Paris, to launching a new company called Leade.rs this year. He's let his own personal passions and frustrations guide him from one business to the next, and according to him, that may be why he's been so successful. Loïc will share with us his thoughts on why most people never manage to get their ideas out of their heads and into the real world, what he learned from the mistakes he made launching one startup that failed, and how his daily mindfulness practice helps him filter reality, recover from upsetting experiences, and maintain his trademark positive attitude.

Ask Kate Swoboda what it takes to start a business and she'll tell you it takes courage. In fact, courage is such a central element in her message that she often goes by the name Kate Courageous. Kate went from college English professor to life coach several years ago, and now trains life coaches to move through their own doubts and fears and accept the challenges they come up against. In this episode of Hack the Process, Kate will discuss how she realized that life coaching was her next calling, why chasing motivation can be a distraction from getting things done, and how one common core fear keeps many of us from pursuing our dreams.

Brennan Dunn is on a mission to get freelancers to start thinking of themselves as business consultants. His company, Double Your Freelancing, grew out of his own experiences moving from independent developer to running his own agency, launching and selling a software-as-a-service product, and eventually publishing books and classes and running conferences designed to help other people selling their services learn the tricks he discovered along the way. In this episode Brennan will explain how he benefitted from joining a $2,000 a month mastermind group, why he prices his conferences to break-even rather than doing them for profit, and why he would never again start a business by launching a software-as-a-service product.

Andi Galpern is the founder of Cascade SF, who open-sourced her own Design education by inviting experts to teach the subjects she wanted to learn. Andi also hosts events she describes as speed dating for mentoring, which give designers the opportunity to share their knowledge and learn from each other without the overhead of giving a presentation to a large group. But small sharing can lead to larger sharing, and Andi talks about how the mentors in her program come to realize that they actually know more than they thought through these interactions, and move on to become leaders in their own areas of expertise. Andi discusses how learning to delegate expanded her potential, and the importance of putting ideas out there and sharing them with more people, to build a brand and develop confidence

A lot of us might say we want to be writers. The trick is doing it sustainably, and in a way that can help sustain us. Jon Dykstra has managed to turn his desire to write into a career running profitable niche authority websites that serve the needs of people who share his own interests. He also blogs and teaches on the side, helping others who might want to follow in his footsteps. In this episode Jon will tell us how he was originally inspired by exposure to early blogging platforms while working as a lawyer, how he developed and adapted his process as the industry grew and changed around him, and how being true to his own interests keeps him motivated as he works with a team of writers and editors to build and run his publications.

Quick, explain the differences among Sales, Marketing, Engineering, and Product Management. If you work in a company with one or more of these organizations and the answer doesn't trip easily off your tongue, then you might want to listen to Rich Mironov. Rich is a Product Management expert who helps companies understand and respect the differences, and improve how these groups work together. Rich makes the case that "Product is not in charge of shipping on time, but Product is in charge of shipping the right thing that customers need and will pay for." In this episode, Rich discusses exactly how he builds and maintains his strong social network, explains how leading workshops helps him stay on top of his industry, and points out the importance of defining a problem/solution set that will allow you to sell a benefit that addresses a problem your customers actually have.