Spark Something New

Episode Snapshot:

What if your exhaustion isn’t a sign that you’re failing—but proof that you’re managing far more than anyone sees? This episode reframes the chaos of everyday life as something you can actually lead—with intention, clarity, and systems. 

Summary:

In this episode, Dr. Katie sits down with Lisa Woodruff, founder of Organize 365, to explore what it truly means to run your home—and your life—like a CEO. Together, they unpack the concept of the “invisible CEO,” the often-unseen mental load carried by women and primary household leaders, and why traditional approaches to productivity fall short in the personal space.

Lisa challenges the idea that doing more is the answer. Instead, she introduces a systems-based approach to managing life—one that mirrors how successful organizations operate. From distinguishing between visible and invisible work to implementing tools like the Sunday Basket, this conversation highlights how externalizing tasks frees up cognitive capacity for higher-level thinking, planning, and creativity.

Ultimately, this episode is about reclaiming agency. When you stop reacting to the endless demands of life and start leading with intention, you create space—not just for efficiency—but for purpose, growth, and the things that truly matter.

Key Learnings

• You are already the CEO of your life—the shift is recognizing your agency and leading instead of reacting. 
• The invisible load is real—and it’s often the most exhausting part of running a household. 
• Systems > willpower—externalizing tasks reduces decision fatigue and frees up mental capacity. 
• Perfection is the trap; excellence is the goal—grace replaces judgment when you shift your standards. 
• You don’t have to do everything you see—permission granted to opt out of expectations that don’t serve you.

Resources:

• Explore Lisa's website: Organize 365
• Explore Lisa's book: Escaping Quicksand

Guest Info:

Lisa Woodruff is the founder and CEO of Organize 365, where she helps women reduce overwhelm by creating practical systems for home and life. A former professional organizer, Lisa specializes in helping people manage the invisible mental load that comes with running a household. Her work focuses on increasing capacity, clarity, and freedom—not through perfection, but through sustainable systems. She is also the host of the Organize 365 podcast and author of Escaping Quicksand. 

Connect with Katie on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also get free resources to help you on your purpose journey at www.katiesandoe.com.

Episode Snapshot:

We often think other people cause our emotional experience — but what if our feelings are actually revealing something deeper happening within us? In this thought-provoking conversation, Dr. Katie and Carole Stizza invites us to rethink how we understand emotions, needs, blame, and personal agency. Emotional responsibility, she argues, is not about denying impact or suppressing feelings — it’s about recognizing that our emotions are signals, and what we do with them is ours to own. 

Summary:

Carole Stizza, founder of Relevant Insight, brings a bold but compassionate lens to emotional responsibility: no one else is responsible for our feelings, even when their words or actions trigger something inside us. She explains how quickly we move from an external event to an emotional reaction and then into story-making — often crafting narratives that deepen hurt, resentment, or blame before we ever pause to understand what is actually happening inside us. At the center of her work is one key question: What need is not being met? 

The conversation explores why so many people struggle to own their emotions, including limited emotional language, mismanaged thinking, and learned habits of projection. Carole offers a practical path forward: slow down, name what you feel, examine the story you are telling, and become curious before reactive. Through examples from leadership, marriage, parenting, and workplace conflict, she shows that emotional responsibility is not passive — it actually creates healthier accountability, stronger relationships, and more honest conversations. 

Perhaps the most powerful reframe of the episode is Carole’s reminder that emotions are not enemies: “Your emotions are trying to love you into a new perspective.” Instead of fearing hard feelings, we can learn to see them as invitations toward greater self-awareness, healing, and choice. 

Key Learnings:

• Emotional responsibility begins when we stop saying “you made me feel…” and start asking what is happening inside us.
• Negative emotions often point to an unmet need, not simply another person’s wrongdoing.
• The stories we tell ourselves after an emotional trigger often intensify misunderstanding.
• Emotional literacy matters: if we lack language for what we feel, blame becomes easier than clarity.
• Accountability and emotional ownership can coexist — we can own our feelings and still address behavior constructively.

Resources:

• Carole's website
• Connect with Carol on LinkedIn

Guest Info:

Carole Stizza is the founder of Relevant Insight, an author, keynote speaker, and executive coach who helps leaders and organizations strengthen accountability, communication, and workplace culture. Her work challenges one of the most common habits of modern life — outsourcing our emotions — and teaches people how emotional responsibility transforms both leadership and relationships. 

Connect with Katie on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also get free resources to help you on your purpose journey at www.katiesandoe.com.

Episode Snapshot:

What if listening isn’t about being quiet, nodding, or waiting your turn to speak — but about helping someone feel truly understood? In this conversation, Christine Miles challenges the idea that most of us are good listeners and offers a powerful reframe: listening is not a personality trait, it’s a skill we must learn and practice. 

Summary:

In this episode, Dr. Katie sits down with Christine Miles to unpack what listening really means — and why so many of us misunderstand it. Christine shares that while most people assume they’re strong listeners, very few have ever been formally taught how to listen in a way that creates understanding. Instead, we often confuse listening with paying attention, agreeing, or preparing a response. Christine argues that real listening is about uncovering the meaning beneath the words and getting to the story underneath the story.

Together, Katie and Christine explore the “listening gap” — the space between what someone is actually trying to express and what another person hears or assumes. Christine shares how her personal story, combined with years of professional leadership experience, led her to develop the Listening Path, a framework that helps people move beyond performative listening and into deeper connection. The conversation also highlights practical tools like summarizing instead of reacting, asking better questions, and recognizing that understanding begins after someone speaks — not when they finish.

Key Learnings:

• Most of us have been told to listen, but very few of us have actually been taught how.
• Listening is not about agreement, compliance, or performance — it is about understanding.
• Saying “I understand” is rarely enough; people feel understood when you can reflect the fuller story back to them.
• Strong listening helps de-escalate emotionally charged situations and creates trust in teams, families, and relationships.
• Better listening starts with simple practices: summarize instead of immediately responding, ask “Tell me more,” and make space for emotion, not just facts.

Resources:

• Christine's website
• Christine's book: What Is It Costing You Not To Listen?
• Connect with Christine on LinkedIn

Guest Info:

Christine Miles is a global pioneer in listening intelligence, host of her podcast, “Shine a light,” keynote speaker, emcee, award-winning author of What Is It Costing You Not to Listen?, keynote speaker, and founder of The Listening Path®, a revolutionary system transforming how the world listens and connects. Her work, utilized by Fortune 100 companies and schools worldwide, empowers leaders, educators, and changemakers to leverage listening as a strategic advantage. Christine is also the CEO of EQuipt, with over 25 years of experience helping individuals and organizations create cultures of empathy, drive performance, and achieve lasting success.  Her thought leadership has been featured in USA Today, ABC, NBC, NPR and Sirius XM.

Connect with Katie on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also get free resources to help you on your purpose journey at www.katiesandoe.com.

Episode Snapshot:

Some of the hardest conversations in our lives are the ones we were never taught to have. In this episode, Dr. Katie chats with Betty-Anne Howard about why topics like sex and money (among many others) still carry so much silence, shame, and discomfort — and how learning to talk about them can transform the way we communicate about everything else.

Summary:

In this thoughtful and energizing conversation, Katie sits down with speaker, author, educator, former sex therapist, and financial planner Betty-Anne Howard to explore why conversations around sex and money so often go quiet. Together, they examine how silence is learned, how shame gets passed down through families and culture, and why many of us were never given the language, permission, or emotional safety to talk openly about topics that profoundly shape our lives.

Rather than staying at the level of taboo, this episode goes deeper into what avoidance is really protecting, how our lived experiences shape our relationship with sex and money, and what it looks like to begin talking about difficult topics with more curiosity, compassion, and courage. This episode offers listeners a framework for approaching any conversation they’ve been avoiding.

Key Learnings:

• Avoidance is often learned early through silence, shame, and lack of language, not because we are incapable of hard conversations.
• Our relationship with these topics (like sex, money, mental health, emotions) is shaped by family systems, culture, lived experience, and the stories we’ve internalized over time.
• Many difficult conversations become more charged when we assign labels, create polarities, or equate the topic with our worth.
• Before diving into a hard subject, it can be helpful to first talk about how to talk about it, including safety, boundaries, and consent.
• Curiosity, better questions, and gentle next steps can help normalize conversations that once felt impossible.

Resources:

• Betty-Anne's website
• Reflection prompt: What messages did I learn about this topic growing up?
• Reflection exercise: Draw your current relationship with money or sex, then draw the relationship you want

Guest Info:

Betty-Anne Howard is a speaker, educator, author, and award-winning financial planner who helps people have more honest conversations about the topics that shape their lives most deeply. With a background in social work, sexual health education, and sex therapy, she brings a rare blend of emotional insight and practical wisdom to conversations around sex, money, relationships, and self-worth. Her work helps individuals, couples, and families challenge shame, break silence, and build healthier relationships with themselves and one another.

Connect with Katie on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also get free resources to help you on your purpose journey at www.katiesandoe.com.

Episode Snapshot:

We all wear masks—some to belong, some to protect, and some to survive. On this episode, Dr. Katie and John Patrick Henry explore what it means to take off the masks and learn to remove shame, find safety, and be fully seen.

Summary:

This episode explores how the "masks we live in” represent curated versions of ourselves that we wear to fit in, stay safe, earn approval, or avoid what we feel inside. John reflects on how his earliest masks showed up as a child and later evolved into other unhealthy coping mechanisms. Over time, he realized the mask wasn’t a problem (it was his solution to deeper fear) until it became a prison. 

Together, Katie and John unpack how masks can be subtle and socially normalized (“I’m fine!”) or more intense (addiction, spending, status, performance), but the common thread is the same: masking is often fear-based protection from emotional pain, disconnection, and shame. They discuss when masks may be appropriate (temporary privacy, professionalism, protecting children during chaos), and how to tell when a mask becomes a cage, like when it costs you peace, relationships, or integrity. 

John shares practical pathways for unmasking that aren’t about ripping everything off, but about building community over isolation, accountability over secrecy, rest over escape, and truth over performance. John shares a powerful first step for anyone who knows they’re hiding: you don’t have to unmask publicly—you just have to stop wearing it alone.

Key Learnings:

• A mask is often a protection against shame—not deception. John describes unmasking as the removal of shame and the fear of being seen.
• The mask isn’t always the problem—it can start as a solution. Many masks are fear-based coping strategies that become harmful only when they turn into a prison.
• Mask vs. identity: A mask is what you numb with. An identity is what you value. Identity connects to legacy—who you want to be and how you want to live.
• Unmasking is a practice, not a moment. You may take one mask off and put another on—growth is learning to notice sooner and choose differently.
• The first step is safety: “You don’t have to rip the mask off in public. You just have to stop wearing it alone.”

Resources:

• John's Linktree
• John's Facebook

Guest Info:

John Patrick Henry is a speaker and advocate whose work centers on honesty, healing, and what it means to live without hiding. Now more than 17 years sober, John shares his lived experience with addiction recovery, mental health, and personal growth—especially the ongoing process of removing shame and rebuilding inner safety. His message is grounded and practical: unmasking doesn’t require perfection, just truth, support, and the courage to be seen. He reminds listeners that recovery and wholeness are possible—one step, one day, one choice at a time. 

Connect with Katie on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also get free resources to help you on your purpose journey at www.katiesandoe.com.

Episode Snapshot:

What if the “truth” you’re living is actually just a story you learned to believe? In this episode, leadership coach Barbara Boselli helps us separate fact from story—so we can lead, relate, and respond with more clarity, curiosity, and choice. 

Summary:

Dr. Katie sits down with Barbara Boselli—leadership coach, facilitator, and former senior leader in corporate environments including Google—to explore how the narratives we inherit and repeat shape who we become as leaders, partners, parents, and humans. 

Barbara shares how she first realized her “truth” wasn’t universal through a powerful childhood example: she grew up believing disagreement equals disrespect, only to witness a family where disagreement was a form of connection and engagement. That moment sparked a lifelong awareness: we don’t only react to what happens—we react to the meaning we assign to what happens.

Together, Katie and Barbara unpack the difference between facts (observable events) and stories (assumptions, judgments, absolutes like “always” and “never”). Barbara introduces her practical ASK framework—Access awareness, Sort fact from story, Kindle curiosity—as a way to interrupt reactive patterns and widen perspective. The conversation applies this lens to real-life leadership moments like missed deadlines and feedback conversations, showing how quickly we can confuse behavior with intent, label people, and create self-fulfilling outcomes. The episode closes with a deeply empowering reminder: a thought can be another thought—and the choice to shift our thinking can shift our entire experience.

Key Learnings:

• Facts are what happened. Stories are the meaning we attach. If you couldn't put it on a calendar, it’s probably a story.
• Your emotional “yuck” is often a signal that a story is running the show—especially when you feel defensive, judgmental, disconnected, or stuck.
• Use the ASK framework: Access awareness (pause, name what you feel), Sort fact from story, Kindle curiosity (“What else could be true?”).
• In leadership, assumptions damage trust fast. Curiosity builds connection—and helps you coach the real issue instead of reacting to a false one.
• Language matters: “What/How happened?” invites dialogue; “Why?” can trigger defensiveness and shutdown.

Resources:

• Barbara's Website
• Barbara's LinkedIn

Guest Bio:

Barbara Boselli is a leadership coach and facilitator with 15+ years of experience in corporate America, including senior leadership work in high-performing environments. Her work helps individuals and teams identify the narratives driving their behavior—so they can lead with greater clarity, empathy, and effectiveness. Through her keynote, “Fact or Story: How the Narratives We Believe Shape the Leader We Become,” Barbara invites people to challenge limiting assumptions and choose more empowering ways to interpret what’s happening around them. Her approach blends practical leadership tools with deep inner awareness to create lasting change. 

Connect with Katie on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also get free resources to help you on your purpose journey at www.katiesandoe.com.

Episode Snapshot: 

Creativity isn’t an artistic identity — it’s a human capacity that helps you make meaning, solve problems, and build a life that fits. In this episode, Dr. Steve Diasio breaks down creativity as a muscle you can train — and shows how to use it as a compass for clarity and alignment. 

Summary:

Dr. Katie sits down with Dr. Steve Diasio — creative strategist, facilitator, coach, and founder of the School of Creativity and Innovation — to dismantle the myths that keep people from claiming creativity as their own. Steve challenges the outdated belief that creativity belongs only to “creatives” or the arts, and reframes it as a learnable process that strengthens through practice. He shares how many of us have been “educated out of creativity,” conditioned to prioritize efficiency, performance, and fast solutions instead of imagination, experimentation, and possibility.

Together, Katie and Steve explore how creativity shows up everywhere: navigating relationship dynamics, resolving team conflict, parenting through uncertainty, and making decisions in life transitions. Steve introduces a simple, practical creative problem-solving framework (inspired by the “double diamond”) that moves from diverging into many ideas to converging on what matters, then testing and iterating with low-risk experiments. He also walks listeners through his “creativity audit” — evaluating the creative self, environment, process, and the tools/products that shape outcomes — proving that creativity isn’t magic. It’s method. And it’s deeply human.

Key Learnings: 

• Creativity is a process, not a personality type. You don’t need to be “a creative” to think creatively — you need practice and permission.
• Constraints can boost creativity. The goal isn’t unlimited freedom; it’s learning how to work creatively within real-world limits.
• Creative problem-solving isn’t rushing to answers. Diverge to generate possibilities, converge to prioritize, then test small experiments to learn and iterate.
• Your environment shapes your creativity. Light, color, tools, clutter, and setup can either support or suffocate your creative capacity.
• In an AI-driven world, creativity becomes more valuable. Steve argues the “human element” — meaning-making, originality, and process — is what will differentiate us going forward.

Resources:

• Steve's website: https://www.stevediasio.com/
• Steve's LinkedIn

Guest Info:

Dr. Steve Diasio is a creative strategist, facilitator, and coach, and the founder of the School of Creativity and Innovation. His work helps individuals and organizations use creativity as a practical tool for clarity, problem-solving, and alignment — far beyond the arts. Steve teaches creativity as a skill you can build through proven exercises, frameworks, and intentional practice. He’s passionate about helping people reclaim creativity as a deeply human capacity for making meaning and progress. 

Connect with Katie on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also get free resources to help you on your purpose journey at www.katiesandoe.com.

Episode Snapshot:

Humor isn’t a punchline — it’s a human skill for making meaning, relieving tension, and creating connection. In this conversation, Kathy Klotz-Guest reframes humor as playfulness + truth-telling that builds trust, unlocks creativity, and makes hard moments easier to navigate.

Summary:

Dr. Katie and humor strategist/comedian Kathy Klotz-Guest unpack the myth that humor is only for “funny people.” Kathy distinguishes being funny (performing for laughs) from humor (sense-making with levity). Humor, she argues, is how we rewrite a healthier story about the hard stuff — the messy, awkward, unchosen parts of life and work — without minimizing them.

They explore why humor works: it lowers perceived threat, releases pressure, and helps people access clearer thinking and creativity. In teams, humor becomes a fast track to trust and psychological safety — when it’s healthy. Kathy breaks down the difference between affiliative humor (laughing with, building together) and aggressive humor (punching down, “steamrolling,” weaponizing laughter). They also discuss how humor can be a cultural signal: the presence (and quality) of laughter often reveals whether people truly feel safe.

Finally, Kathy shares practical ways to apply humor in high-stakes environments: hosting a “funeral” or “roast” for a failed project (with guardrails), naming awkwardness out loud, and using playfulness to surface truth without blame. The closing invitation: if you can laugh, you have access to humor — the work is less “learning” and more unlearning terminal seriousness and giving yourself permission to be fully, authentically you.

Key Learnings:

• Humor ≠ being funny. Humor is sense-making and reframing with lightness; jokes are only one small category.
• Humor lowers the threat level. Healthy laughter helps people shift out of stress mode and back into creative, connected thinking.
• Trust moves at the speed of self-awareness. When leaders can laugh at their own mistakes, it signals safety and accountability.
• Not all humor is healthy. Affiliative humor builds morale and connection; aggressive humor punches down and destroys trust.
• Laughter is a culture signal. Organic, inclusive laughter often indicates psychological safety; forced laughter (or mean laughter) is a red flag.
• Humor is a leadership muscle. Most people “have it,” but they need permission and practice.
• Use humor to process failure without blame. “Roast the project, not the people” can surface truth, reveal themes, and move teams forward.

Resources:

• Kathy's website: Keeping It Human
• Kathy's book: Stop Boring Me
• Kathy's Podcast: Seriously Funny

Guest Info:

Kathy Klotz-Guest is a speaker, author, and humor strategist — and a standup comedian with a background in tech. She helps leaders and organizations keep work human in high-pressure environments by using humor to build trust, psychological safety, and connection. Her work focuses on making humor accessible as a learnable leadership skill, not a personality trait.

Connect with Katie on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also get free resources to help you on your purpose journey at www.katiesandoe.com.

Episode Snapshot:

What if discomfort isn’t something to fix or escape—but something to notice? In this episode, Dr. Katie shares a powerful realization from a long treadmill run that reshaped how she understands growth, discomfort, and presence. Through story, science, and simple practices, she invites listeners to rethink how quickly we label sensations as “bad”—and how that judgment quietly fuels suffering. 

Summary:

Discomfort shows up everywhere—in our bodies, emotions, relationships, work, and growth journeys. And almost instantly, we judge it. We label it as bad, uncomfortable, miserable, or something that needs to stop. Without realizing it, that judgment gives discomfort power.

In this episode, Katie walks listeners through a real-time epiphany she had during a long treadmill run: many of the sensations she was experiencing weren’t painful or dangerous—they were simply sensations. It wasn’t the discomfort that made the experience hard; it was the story she was telling about it.

Blending lived experience with mindfulness research, neuroscience, and somatic awareness, Katie explores how labeling sensations triggers our nervous system into control mode—driving us to fix, numb, escape, or resist. She introduces the concept of interoception (our awareness of internal bodily sensations), explains the difference between discomfort and suffering, and shows how mindfulness helps us stay present without judgment.

Listeners are guided through a short, practical exercise to “feel without fixing” and are invited to reframe discomfort not as a signal of danger—but as a natural and often necessary part of growth.

Key Learnings:

• We judge sensations—physical, emotional, relational—far more quickly than we realize
• Labeling discomfort as “bad” activates urgency, control, and resistance in the nervous system
• Discomfort and suffering are not the same: suffering is the story + resistance layered onto sensation
• Interoception (awareness of internal sensations) supports emotional regulation when paired with mindfulness
• Growth always involves sensations—and discomfort doesn’t mean something is wrong
• Curiosity and presence create agency; judgment gives sensations power

Practices Shared in This Episode:

• Name sensations without judgment (e.g., “tight,” “warm,” “intense” instead of “awful”)
• Stay with discomfort one breath longer before reacting or escaping
• Use curiosity as a regulation tool by asking: What is this sensation asking me to notice?

Reflection Question:

What sensations in your life are you labeling as “bad” that might simply be part of your growth—or just part of being human?

Connect with Katie on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also get free resources to help you on your purpose journey at www.katiesandoe.com.

Episode Snapshot: 

What if “doing less” isn’t quitting? What if it's the most strategic way to reclaim clarity, energy, and real impact? In this episode, Nell Derick teaches us how to stop living on the hamster wheel of gold-star achievement and start making space for what actually matters.

Summary:

Dr. Katie sits down with keynote speaker, leadership advisor, and author Nell Derick to unpack her countercultural framework: systematic subtraction.

Together they name the tension so many high performers live inside—craving simplicity while stacking more habits, commitments, and “shoulds” in the name of becoming healthier, better, and more successful. Nell calls out the system behind our “more” addiction: modern incentives, social conditioning, and the gold-star mentality that trained us early in life to equate worth with output.

Nell introduces a practical three-step process—Stop, Drop, Roll—to help people gather honest data about what’s working, experiment with subtracting what drains them, and then “roll” forward through systems thinking: making one action serve multiple values instead of adding more tasks. From parenting overload and workplace meetings to nonprofit board roles and leadership identity, the conversation lands on a powerful truth: we can have more impact without doing more—especially when we subtract noise, false urgency, and outdated expectations so we can show up more fully human.

Key Learnings:

• Doing less is hard because the system rewards doing more. We’ve been trained—socially and economically—to chase gold stars, streaks, promotions, and productivity as proof of worth.
• Systematic subtraction starts with honest data. The first step is “Stop”—pause long enough to ask, How is this really working? without self-gaslighting or shame.
• Subtraction works best as an experiment, not a forever decision. “Drop” means trying a change (one season without a sport, one week skipping a meeting) to see what improves in your life and nervous system.
• “Roll” is the shift from doing to being. Instead of piling on more tasks, connect actions to multiple outcomes—health, values, relationships, and impact—so life feels integrated instead of stacked.
• High performance is changing. Nell argues that today’s real edge isn’t obsessive busywork—it’s presence, humanity, discernment, and the relational skills no technology can replace.

Resources:

• Nell Derick: Nell3D (website + work)
• Nell's FREE 1-Page "Subtract to Succeed" framework
• Nell's Substack + 100-Day Subtraction Practice

Guest Info:

Nell Derick is a keynote speaker, leadership advisor, and author who helps high-performing, purpose-driven leaders subtract what drains them so they can lead and live with greater clarity, alignment, and impact. Her work blends systems thinking with deeply human insight, offering practical tools that create more space without sacrificing ambition or contribution. Nell’s approach is both compassionate and sharp, challenging the myth that more effort always equals more impact. She teaches leaders how to become fully present, more effective, and more alive—without burning out.

Connect with Katie on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also get free resources to help you on your purpose journey at www.katiesandoe.com.