After a close-call with a hippopotamus while canoeing in Africa, Tim Barnes celebrated life with African artists and artisans by commissioning a custom, hand-crafted "hippo chair". After 25 years of consulting and leading IT organizations, Tim decided to give back to a third-world community — but more than aid — by creating awareness and business opportunities via first-world marketing channels and old-school import/export legwork.

The best time to develop a business relationship is well before the critical point that you need it. Chris Britton gets to know his vendors, partners and consultants over lunches and meetings in a low-stress environment. When crunch time comes and he needs to solve a critical business problem late at night or over the weekend, Chris' relationship investments pay off dividends.

Over his head on a project with tight deadlines and technology he didn't understand, Grant Vinson found himself in a vegetated state and discouraged. Today he's excited when presented with a challenge because it means it will make him a stronger developer. In this episode we talk Grunt, SASS, Node.js, Laravel, CSS compatibility issues and virtual reality.

Getting the vision right and effectively communicating that vision to the team is tough to get right. Tyler Thompson has seen both good and bad examples in nearly two decades of video game development. Though this experience he's learned that as a leader, you are responsible for a lot of people's overall happiness. With that responsibility in mind, Tyler and his cofounders have put together a team and are currently developing a new video game.

Working really, really hard and not getting anywhere... sound familiar? As a software development manager, Edward Fry struggled with rapidly changing business needs that resulted in meeting overload. Too much time in meetings meant that his day-to-day programming tasks were not getting finished. After stepping back and looking at the situation, he discovered that he could take control of the situation by managing the flood of meetings and emails.

Song Hee Kang landed in a case of senioritis during her final year of college and had to set a stretch goal in order to push herself to success. Now she uses the same techniques to stay motivated at work and during exercise.

While dealing with PCI compliance issues with EMV in point of sales systems, Robert faced health issues due to stress. Taking his wife's suggestion, Robert sold most of his possessions and bought 20 acres and a 336 square foot micro cabin and shares the property with 2 horses and 9 dogs. There Robert enjoys relaxing and hitting golf balls across the open range.

Brad Thomas is using his experience in the technology services industry to build a new business in the Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP) subcontracting and service space. He believes that every industry can benefit from a higher level of customer experience than traditionally provided and aims to provide that first-class level of service to consumers in need of air conditioning, plumbing and mechanical work.

After a merger with another company, James Wilson was given the choice to change to a new role in the organization or leave. He accepted the opportunity but was not prepared for the culture change he was about to face: suddenly he felt like the new kid on the playground and no one wanted him around. What would you do if your colleague said, "We don't know what you're doing here. We think you're crap and you put out crap work. We don't know why you're still trying to make it here."

Denver Brown discusses the challenge with user interfaces on early sound mixing software, the benefits of social networking platform LinkedIn and the future of IoT including with the Nest thermostat, smart grids and wearables.