Are you feeling stuck in your career? Career Coach Angela Choi stops by the show to have an important discussion about getting what you truly want. We talk about change and finding meaning and purpose in your life.

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Angela is an International Life Purpose and Career Coach. She helps driven professionals who feel stuck and unfulfilled to discover their purpose so that they can have both the impact and income that they want. Additionally, Angela completed her 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training in India and approaches coaching from the belief that it is our birthright to lead happy and joyous lives. Previously, she hosted monthly workshops for professionals working at Rockefeller Center in New York City to engage in various discussions and exercises pertaining to personal and professional development. 

Sign up for her FREE guide, 6 Steps to Living Your Purpose and learn more about her coaching program at www.angelachoi.co.

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How can we create more inclusion in our businesses? The co-founder of Racquet stops by the show to talk about founding her company. We talk about inclusion, management, building audience, and change.

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Caitlin Thompson is a co-founder, along with David Shaftel, of the influential and award-winning print quarterly tennis magazine, Racquet. She has worked as a development executive at WNYC, in digital and multimedia roles at TIME, The Washington Post and in public television. She is a former DI college tennis player, and hosts The Racquet Magazine and The Main Draw podcasts.

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D&D Forgotten Realms creator, writer, and game designer, Ed Greenwood comes by the show to share his wisdom. We talk about how he broke into the game industry, how he came to write so much D&D lore, and the experiences of early Gen Cons.

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Ed Greenwood is a Canadian writer, game designer, voice actor, and librarian best known for creating The Forgotten Realms® fantasy world, starting at age six; he still works on the Realms every day, more than fifty years later.

Ed’s 300-plus books have sold millions of copies worldwide in over three dozen languages. Ed was elected to the Academy of Adventure Gaming Art & Design Hall of Fame in 2003, and has won multiple ENNIE and Origins and other awards. He has judged the World Fantasy Awards and the Sunburst Awards, hosted radio shows, acted onstage, explored caves, jousted, and been Santa Claus—but not all on the same day.

He is likely the only Canadian to have scripted comic books for multiple companies and appeared on the pages of comic books published by several companies, as himself.

Follow Ed on Twitter @TheEdVerse for daily doggerel and ongoing Lord Wolf snark fiction.

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What's it like to found and run a tech company? Founding CEO Victory Montgomery-Brown, stops by the show to talk about her new book.  She shares very open advice about dealing with investors, hiring and firing employees, working with a partner, and managing the daily pressures that a startup faces.

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Victoria Montgomery-Brown is Founding CEO, Big Think, the knowledge company that makes people and companies smarter and faster through short-form video with the world’s best thinkers and doers. Since founding Big Think in 2007, Victoria has built the company from a fledgling thought-leadership media platform to the leading knowledge company for ideas and soft skills. Victoria has a BA from McGill University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

DIGITAL GODDESS is about dealing with the way things are, even when you don’t like it, and being yourself, even when it seems like a drawback. It’s about sucking it up, making the hard choices, and dealing with the consequences. Victoria’s been called “the anti-Elizabeth Holmes,” for a good reason— unlike the ill-fated Theranos CEO, she’s transparent with her investors even when she fears they will walk away.

Starting a business is tough. DIGITAL GODDESS serves as a roadmap for any woman who has ever thought about striking out on her own. Raw and real, Montgomery-Brown tells it the way it is—it’s about sucking it up, making hard choices, dealing with consequences, and, above all, staying true and honest no matter what happens. 

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Want to enter into an exciting market like Vietnam? We sit down with a marketing professional that works in Vietnam, Irene Tong. She shares the challenges of women working to build their careers and gives advice on understanding the Vietnamese market.

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Irene was born and raised in Vietnam. She has 6+ years working in Marketing / Business Development / Market Expansion roles for Vietnam and South East Asia markets in some of the most dynamic global tech companies, varying from video streaming to dating apps. She’s also a recurring judge on the Asian Academy Creative Awards and a freelance film critic. Her experience working with people from all around the globe makes positions her to bring innovativeness and world-class strategies to the Vietnam market. Outside of the workplace, Irene is a single mom who's trying hard to keep herself balanced between intensive work life and raising her two kids in fast-paced, vibrant Ho Chi Minh City.

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The events industry was hit hard due to the pandemic and many businesses called it quits, but the founder of Choura Events, Ryan Choura, refused to give up. We sit down with him to talk about how he transformed his events company from concerts and awards shows to helping hospitals with medical tents and testing stations.

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Ryan Choura is the Founder and CEO of Choura, a full-service experience and event production company guided by the mission to build experiences with purpose. This year, COVID-19 challenged Ryan to put this mission into practice like never before.

After 20 years of building and producing some of the country's most iconic events such as Coachella, BNP Paribas Open, San Diego Comic-Con, and the US Open Championship, Ryan led a series of pragmatic pivots to keep his team together and his doors open.

While other event companies went virtual or closed their doors, Ryan fought for a way to bring America back to work by building the largest COVID-19 testing facilities in the nation via his newly founded company, Lifeline Health Services. 

The large-scale COVID-19 testing site is now open in the Inland Empire, provides same-day results, and has the capacity to test over 40,000 people a month. 

Additionally, to help Orange County and Hollywood restaurants keep their patrons safe and their doors open, Choura worked with the city and local businesses to deliver the most extensive build-outs in Southern California — including over 3,600 square feet of level raised decks and curated outdoor dining space for Laguna Beach’s Forest Ave and Craig’s in Hollywood. 

These strategic initiatives follow Ryan and team’s delivery of multiple builds for local hospitals — work which garnered Ryan attention from Marc Cuban, Rolling Stone, The Los Angeles Times, Billboard, and Bloomberg. 

Ryan and the Choura team are using their event and COVID-19 testing expertise to now pioneer the safe return of live events, starting with a live event that took place on July 23rd this year and caught the attention of the Hollywood Reporter.

Ever guided by his mantra “Don’t Be Boring,” Ryan continues to channel goodness and meaning into everything he builds — from festivals and sporting events to testing venues and hospital sites.

About Choura

Choura is a full-service experience company driven by the vision of a world without boring events and operating across four key competencies: Experiential Concepts & Design, Custom Fabrication, Event Production, and Tenting & Structures. Choura executes sporting and entertainment events, activations, festivals, and environments for best-in-class brands and organizations.

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Where are the opportunities in music? An associate over on the music team at Peloton, Jeremy Lamstein, shares his thoughts on how the music industry has changed since COVID. We also talk about how young people are feeling and he gives some inspiring words to make it through these tough times.

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I am a recent graduate of Northwestern University pursuing a career in Entertainment Law. I currently work as an Associate with the Music Team at Peloton, which is an exciting company to be a part of. I deferred my enrollment into law school to next fall as I hope to study law within a healthier world. I am eager to explore the exciting and boundless crossroads of law and emerging technology within music, especially considering the impacts that COVID have had on this dynamic industry. My dream is to start an independent record label focused on connecting emerging global electronic and house talent with American markets. Beyond this, I DJ under the alias GRUDGEMASTERS with my partner Will and we have had the opportunity to spin at some of the most prominent clubs in Chicago. I am also a huge fan of The New York Mets and The Sopranos!

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Do we need to change the way we think about leadership? Axelle Bagot stops by the show to have a deep and transformative conversation about teams and leadership. She shares stories about her fascinating international career that has taken her to several continents and offers advice on how to make it through challenging times.

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Axelle Bagot is an organizational consultant and teacher of leadership. Her work focuses on creating in people the capacity to transform themselves and others to achieve a collective purpose.

Originally from France, where she studied Political Sociology and Arabic, she started her career at the French Embassy in Damascus, Syria. Stationed there at a time of high diplomatic tensions, she worked with artists, organizers and intellectuals who would later be involved in the Arab Spring. Back to Paris, she worked at the City Hall of Paris, where she designed and implemented many projects of international cooperation in the Middle East at the municipal level, which required the French and International public servants to find new ways to communicate, partner and co-create. She moved to Boston in 2014 to attend a Master of Public Administration at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and work as a Research fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. She focused her studies on the nature of innovation, the reactions to it and the conditions of its orchestration at the individual and collective level. She has taught leadership and social innovation in several institutions, including Brown University, Harvard University, the Instituto de Empresa Business School in Madrid, the African Development University in Niger and the Albert Einstein Medical School of Sao Paulo. She co-created her consulting company, the Leadership Lab International with Dr. Houman Harouni of Harvard University in 2019. 

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How do you build a career following your passion? We sit down with Lieutenant Commander Jesse Iwuji to talk about his career in NASCAR. You heard that right, he's in the Navy and races for NASCAR. We also talk about playing football for the US Naval Academy, building relationships in the racing world, and being the son of Nigerian immigrants. We recorded our conversation the night before a big race.

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In all things Jesse Iwuji does, there are two constant elements: his love of country and his fighting spirit. This talented driver went from a D1A college football player to a lieutenant in the United States Navy and is now the only current driver in all of NASCAR at the national levels that has ever been in the military. It has been key for Iwuji, who is currently serving in the Navy Reserves, to honor his country while pursuing and attaining excellence. It should come as no surprise that he has championed companies and charities that give back to our men and women in uniform.

Jesse is also a big supporter of NASCAR diversity. He was recently honored by NASCAR for the second year in a row – the Diverse Driver of the Year Award. He is a champion both on and off the track! NASCAR has never seen a driver like Jesse Iwuji before. While streaking toward the top tiers of NASCAR, the unstoppable Jesse Iwuji is taking us all along for one wild and exciting ride.

Visit Jesse at jesseiwuji.com

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*Show is now called Positivity and Success

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Do you love grass? We sit down with Drew Wagner the CTO at Sod Solutions. We talk about the challenges of entrepreneurship in a business with family, building an entrepreneurship culture, and software development for clients. And of course, we talk about grass.

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Drew Wagner is from Charleston, SC, and is the CTO of Sod Solutions. He graduated from Auburn University with a degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering and is an MBA candidate at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Sod Solutions is a turfgrass technology company that develops and markets innovative turfgrass varieties and software products for the turf industry. At Sod Solutions Drew leads the technology and marketing teams that build and manage the Sod Solutions brands.

A few of our websites:

• sodsolutions.com - Homeowner site for our sod and e-commerce business

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Support the show on Patreon @norlund

Your help goes a really long ways!

Check out more details about the show at chrisnorlund.com/podcast

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