Work From The Inside Out

In our increasingly uncertain world, Dr. Jim Karrh helps businesses break through their doubts and grow through more effective and consistent customer conversations. But he knows you don't have to be a Ph.D., a professional speaker, an extrovert, or a brilliant conversationalist to bring your own business story to life.

After several years on Wall Street and a few years in the radio and media arenas in his hometown of Waynesboro, Georgia, Jim realized that he wanted to help people more directly. After earning his Ph.D. in Business, he thought it would be rewarding to teach and secured a position teaching management and marketing in Little Rock, Arkansas. Along the way, he began to take on some consulting projects in addition to his academic responsibilities and one thing led to another.

Today, Jim Karrh offers clients his experience as a consumer researcher, award-winning corporate marketing leader, and now consultant, speaker, and coach to businesses ranging from startups to members of the Fortune 500. 

In this week’s Work From The Inside Out podcast, learn much more about Jim’s journey:

• Jim is the author of the Science of Customer Connections, Manage Your Message to Grow Your Business.  
• He is also the host of the Manage Your Message podcast. 
• Jim has an MBA from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, along with bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from the University of Florida.

Learn more and connect with Jim here:

• Website
• LinkedIn



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Chris Schembra has few memories of his childhood. Growing up on Hilton Head Island, SC, he was diagnosed at 5 with ADHD, always had a lot to say, and many thoughts that he wasn’t allowed to express. While in college Chris sought a new identity, taking on leadership roles, philanthropic activities, and at the same time, abusing drugs and alcohol. That led to crashing cars, fights with police, going to jail a few times, and failed stays in rehab. 

After his last stay in rehab, Chris was medicine free for the first time in years. He moved home to Hilton Head and fell in love with nature. In the next two years, he worked as a kayak tour guide, a stand-up paddleboard instructor, and earned his boat captain’s license. He then went to Patagonia to learn wilderness leadership skills and returned home to work for a year with a therapeutic outdoor program for adolescents. But wait, folks… that’s not all!

Next stage: Chris and two friends started a marketing company on Hilton Head, providing a variety of services to businesses all over the island. The entrepreneurial bug had captured Chris’s soul. Around that time, he was visiting with a woman who was like a grandmother to him. She told him he had outgrown the island and that he should move to New York City. She had never told him what to do before and he took her words to heart. Chris moved to New York City and after a week, he called his Dad and said, “I think I want to be an actor.” And he did!

In this week’s Work From The Inside Out podcast, learn much more about Chris’s journey:

• Chris is the Founder + Chief Question Asker of 7:47, an advisory firm that helps companies give the GIFT of community and belonging to their clients and partners
• Having used his signature pasta sauce to spark over 400,000 relationships around the dinner table, his core hypothesis is that giving gratitude to others is the key to fulfillment, and ultimately good for business.
• His book: Gratitude and Pasta: The Secret Sauce for Human Connection, chronicles his adventures as one of the most sought-after dinner hosts in the World.

Learn more and connect with Chris here: 

• Website



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Lei Wang grew up in Beijing, China. She was an excellent student and easily mastered most academic subjects. Lei told me that as a city child, she had no athletic training. So… you may ask, why is this important in a conversation about career transitions? 

After earning a B.S. in Computer Science from Tsinghua University in Beijing, Lei moved to the U.S. to attend UNC-Chapel Hill for her M.S. in Computer Science. She then worked in IT for a large banking firm and later joined a start-up. Lei’s start-up colleagues were Wharton Business School alumni. They encouraged her to consider a business degree. She applied to Wharton and was admitted... just-like-that. 

For new students, Wharton offers outdoor leadership trips as a team-building experience. Lei opted to go mountaineering in Ecuador. By the end of the 5-week trip, Lei swore she would never look at another mountain again. 

Fast forward… two years post-MBA, Lei was watching a documentary about two British climbers, The White. Something inside her was sparked with excitement, and in a moment she decides that an ordinary person, such as herself, could climb Mt. Everest. That excitement empowered her not only to climb Everest but to become the first Asian woman to complete a journey to the summit of the highest mountains on each of the seven continents. And to the north and south poles, a feat called the Explorers Grand Slam. 

In this week’s Work From The Inside Out podcast, hear about Lei’s incredible journey:

• Lei spent 6 years preparing for her climb of Mt. Everest using all of her free hours and vacation time to train for the biggest challenge of her life.
• She says that when she sees something new, she picks it up fast and takes action.
• Today as a coach, speaker, and author, Lei travels the world to empower individuals and organizations to dream big, take a leap of, and tap into the power of excitement to realize their potential and reach the heights of success.

Learn more and connect with Lei here: 

• Website
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter



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Werner Puchert told me that it is important to add ‘tilt’ to your story. A native of South Africa, I thought he was sharing a special term from his part of the world, but no... Werner adopted the term from a friend who shared it with him in the context of narrative structure in storytelling.  

“If you don't add tilt into the story, nothing's ever going to happen. So you need to add tilt to your story. When I was working at the agency and then I decided to move to go on my own, I really could have stayed there. But then I decided to tilt and when you tilt a door opens.”

As an experienced design consultant and innovation coach with extensive experience in marketing product UX UI and project management, Werner talks about how tilt took different forms as he progressed through his career. In its various formats, tilt looked like calculated risks, exercises in blind faith, and leaps into uncertainty. 

In this week’s Work From The Inside Out podcast, learn about Werner’s professional journey:

• Werner studied fine arts and wanted to be an artist. Then, as he put it, he fell into the world of technology, combining that with his creativity into the world of ad agencies.
• After ten years in the advertising industry, he left to start his own consulting business. His first big client was a firm named Deloitte. He later joined them on a full-time basis.
• Werner likes to believe that he's one of the last Mad Men, based on his advertising agency experience. 
• He has a background ranging from marketing and advertising, experience design, and mobile digital transformation from various companies including Deloitte.
• Two years ago he established his own firm to work in more creative directions, including two podcasts, Bloc Thinking, and Finding Frequency, and a YouTube channel where he focuses on design thinking.

Learn more and connect with Werner here:

• Instagram
• Twitter
• Website
• LinkedIn



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Jenny Blake says if change is the only constant, let's get better at it. She is the founder of the Pivot Method, a growth strategy company that helps forward-thinking individuals and organizations map what’s next through scalable Pivot programs. Jenny is the author of Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One, which won the Axiom Best Business Books Award in the careers category. She also hosts the popular Pivot Podcast, which CNBC listed among 6 podcasts to make you smarter about your career, and Entrepreneur selected as one of the top 20 female-hosted business podcasts.

While often an international keynote speaker, Jenny offers another perspective based on our current COVID-19 crisis. She says, “During times of crisis and upheaval, we face not a thousand plateaus but a thousand pivot points. The choice is to pivot or get pivoted. Sometimes both: we get pivoted, and we choose how to respond and adapt, creating a new order from chaos as we strengthen ourselves as organizations and individuals.”

In this week’s Work From The Inside Out podcast, learn about Jenny’s work and professional journey:

• After two years at a technology start-up in Silicon Valley, followed by five years in Training and Career Development at Google, Jenny moved to New York City in 2011 where she has been running her company ever since, helping innovative organizations like Google and Microsoft incorporate the Pivot Method into their global career development and manager training programs. 
• Jenny has always liked to write and earlier in her career wrote her first book, Life After College: The Complete Guide To Getting What You Want

Learn more and connect with Jenny here:

• Website
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Facebook 
• Podcast
• YouTube



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Kerrian Fournier was originally trained as a classical violinist, she studied theater and worked off-Broadway, on Broadway, and even went to London’s West End. As exciting as all of that sounds, Kerrian says it was a lifestyle that drained her love of the performing arts. So she completely pivoted and walked in the opposite direction, leveraging her quantitative skills, and landing a job in the financial district on Wall Street.

Kerrian tells the story of a job interview she attended for an equity compensation executive position. She was competing against candidates who had economics degrees or MBA’s, neither of which she had. In the final interview the head of the division asked her between you and one other person what would it take to be successful. Kerrian explained that she brought discipline to do whatever it takes to achieve excellence, like when you perform on stage. She added that if he was hiring for knowledge based on education or previous job experience, then “I'm not your candidate”. She got the job. Hence, the title of this episode, Knowledge vs. Mindset.

In this week’s Work From The Inside Out podcast, learn about Kerrian’s professional journey:

• After attending Northwestern and Oxford University, Kerrian spent 25+ years providing human capital strategy, compensation, and workforce analytics expertise to senior leadership and board of directors of global organizations such as Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and more. 
• As a self-described ‘personal success trainer’, Kerrian’s trademark is to keep innovation high on the agenda and to challenge each of her clients to make the exceptional real. She expects the same of herself and always has.
• Kerrian has a passion for unlocking the highest level of performance in the individuals, teams, and organizations with whom she works by leveraging her unique combination of technical expertise and executive coaching experience.

Learn more and connect with Kerrian here:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Website
• 15 Minute Laser Coaching Session

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Nikita Yajurvedi grew up in the small town of Karnataka, India. She was always a good student, eager to learn new things, and energized about her studies. Nikita completed her B.Tech undergrad from a renowned university where she studied Electronics and Communication Engineering and like most soon-to-be graduates, she began the recruitment process. Yet, Nikita found herself feeling lost. She was interviewing for jobs but wasn’t getting the offers. 

Nikita by nature is a problem solver and this was no exception. She quickly asked herself what am I missing here? Nikita initiated a series of focused, individual conversations with a small circle of trusted people asking them for feedback and gained key insights that helped her to get on track. Today, Nikita is a Business Analyst at Cisco where she serves as a regional relationship lead in pricing operations. She is very passionate about uplifting others and taking others along with her while achieving her goals.

I met Nikita on LinkedIn last summer and we hit it off immediately. We have kept in touch, talking on zoom periodically about all kinds of topics ranging from leadership to career satisfaction and cultural and generational differences. Our plan is to write an article together for HBR Ascend in the near future.

In this week’s Work From The Inside Out podcast, learn about Nikita’s’s career journey:

• Nikita was invited by the editors of HBR Ascend to participate in the HBR Ascend Select community, a group of aspiring leaders who are asked to share their views and opinions with the editorial, marketing, and product teams of HBR Ascend.
• She has won awards for her performance, and for demonstrating core values.

Learn more and connect with Nikita here:

• LinkedIn
• @YajurvediR
• 
  

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Matt Zinman is someone who never does anything half baked. When he takes something on, he goes all the way. Growing up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he went to Canada every summer laying the groundwork for his lifelong passion for ice hockey. Off the ice, he would spend time on the lake learning to water ski and eventually became a competitive water skier. 

He went to Temple University, became captain of their NCAA ice hockey team, and earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism. For many years, he worked in public relations agencies, progressing into management roles, and then opened his own agency, Z Communications. He always offered internships to local students and enjoyed the influence that mentoring had on their experiences. In 2007, Matt decided to establish a nonprofit, the Internship Institute, in order to bridge the gap between education and employment by making experience matter for students, veterans, communities and the economy overall.

In this week’s Work From The Inside Out podcast, learn about Matt’s journey as a “personal success trainer”:

• Matt”s varied experiences as an entrepreneur, athlete, single parent, caretaker consultant, and nonprofit founder, drive him to be a difference-maker.
• His insights about self-discovery, relationships, mindfulness, and life led Matt to write his book, “Z-isms, Insights to Live By”, fulfilling his goal to positively impact as many people as possible. He offers ways to better ourselves, our experiences, and our encounters providing actionable tools and practices throughout the book.
• Matt coins the phrase, ‘earned confidence’ in his book, sharing strategies for outsmarting worry, anxiety, and stress.

He was generous and candid with me in our interview talking about his experience with depression and offers helpful insights about how to ‘mind the mood scale’.

Learn more and connect with Matt here:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn



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at Seton Hall, and even went to Oxford in England to study Economics. When he graduated, he joined PwC and then moved to Ernst and Young a few years later. But as he told me “I was trading my life for money. I was miserable.” For one, he didn’t like the extensive traveling that his job required him to do. 

Then, one day he was recruited by a startup in Florida. He was so desperate to move on, he quit his job on Friday and landed in Miami on Monday. What do they say about youth being wasted on the young? Three months later, he was laid off. George says that unemployment was the best thing that ever happened to him. From there, he started his first business in an industry that he was very familiar with...It took him approximately 18 months to recover the business and move forward in 2010.

In this week’s Work From The Inside Out podcast, learn about George’s professional journey:

• George runs The McGehrin Group, an international executive search and recruiting firm providing executive search and leadership at the C suite level, such as CEO CFO, CTO, CMO, and CIO roles throughout the US, Europe, and South America.
• Based in Rutherford, NJ, his clients include small startups to global organizations.
• George oversees a talented team of 30 recruitment professionals who work remotely.
• Besides managing his recruiting firm, George also works with executives helping them empower their careers with branding and coaching.
• George “tithes” 10% of every sale into a savings account so that he will always be ready for any downturn and can keep his ship afloat.

Learn more and connect with George here:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Website



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As a child Dorie Clark loved to write and use her imagination. Back then, she wanted to become a spy and was intrigued by the character James Bond. Her parents would take her on beach vacations, but she preferred to stay inside and write. By age 12, she was submitting poems to New Yorker magazine, none were published, but that didn’t stop her from trying!  

Dorie went to college at 14, studied philosophy, and went on to earn her Masters in Divinity at Harvard. She then launched a career in journalism as a political writer with a newspaper in Boston. On September 10, 2001, yes… the day before 9/11, she was laid off from her job. Needless to say, it was a devastating time. 

Through her networks, Dorie quickly found freelance writing jobs and realized she needed to develop a plan. She never wanted to be caught off guard ever again. Within a year, she was working as the spokesperson on a presidential campaign and subsequently, worked on other political campaigns. Dorie then pivoted from politics, becoming the Executive Director of a nonprofit in Boston where she improved bike riding safety and accessibility across the region. That experience lit the lightbulb on the entrepreneurial experience that she stepped into next. 

In this week’s Work From The Inside Out podcast, learn about Dorie Clark’s career journey:

• Dorie has been described by the New York Times as an expert at self-reinvention and helping others make changes in their lives. 
• As a consultant, speaker, author, teacher, and coach, Dorie Clark helps individuals and companies get their best ideas heard in a crowded, noisy world.
• Dorie is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review and the author of 3 books: Reinventing You, Stand Out, and Entrepreneurial You.
• She was named one of the top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinker's 50 and was honored as the number one communication coach in the world by the Marshall Goldsmith leading global coaches awards.
• Dorie is a global keynote speaker and teaches executive education for Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and Columbia Business School.

Learn more and connect with Dorie here: 

• Dorie Clark’s website
• Dorie Clark’s Twitter
• Dorie Clark’s Instagram
• Dorie Clark’s YouTube
• Dorie Clark’s LinkedIn

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