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Do you know what it feels like to be duped, or lied to in an extraordinarily manner? Imagine falling in love, and having a whirlwind romance with a doctor, who also serves in the military, claimed to have been stationed at Guantanamo Bay for a time, and claim many other extraordinary things about his life and career. Imagine being proposed to and expecting to marry this amazing man who also worked at the Pentagon. Then imagine it was all a big lie. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Abby Ellin shares her story and more.

Abby Ellin is an extraordinary bestselling author, New York Times writer, and contributor to a ton of other prestigious publications. Her book is called Duped: Double Lives, False Identities, and the Con Man I Almost Married.

In our dialogue, we go deep into her story, and find out why agrees that you can’t see red flags through rose colored glasses.

Abby Ellin on being Duped

The conversation starts off reminiscing about meeting famous people in the past, when we can all actually go outside. The topic then got to Leonard Cohen, and how they were a fan of his work. This segues into the topic at hand, as Leonard Cohen himself was duped by his longtime manager.

Abby Ellin’s book, Duped, seems very personal, and it was radically transparent on what transpired in her life. She didn’t appear to do anything to make herself look good. It was an unembellished account of what she had gone through, and the manipulation that she was subjected to.

“When I write, I can write something but I’m also controlling what you know, and I was totally willing to sound like an asshole and duped because that was part of what needed to be done for that story. I was trying to channel the way other people think about someone who gets deceived, that I was engaged to a pathological liar. He went to jail. And everyone I know who I said that story to have their own story or knew somebody who did. Some of them didn’t want to tell the story publicly or use their names because they felt like such idiots. I was like, “Hey, man. I’m an idiot and I own it. Because it happens and it’s real.” – Abby Ellin

Monetized Suffering

I then comment on Abby’s book, and how it reads and feels like a suspense novel. Abby appreciates the description, and shares that she actually sold the rights to it. So at the very least, someone shares that sentiment as well.

“The operative words here are monetize suffering. So when, when life gives you lemons, you make lemon meringue pie and you eat it and you don’t worry about getting fat. I saw the podcast writes and it’s coming out in September, I think, but it’s going to be like a six part series, and it’s like a suspense thing.” – Abby Ellin

Abby Ellin on Quitting Diet Coke

We then talk about the article that Abby wrote about Diet Coke, and how she quit from it. She has had it since she was around 12 years old, and had been drinking it ever since.

People have told her to quit, but she told them to mind their own business. Yet she knew she was addicted. She was drinking three to four cans a day, and go looking for it when she didn’t have any in reach. But something happened that prompted her to consider quitting.

“My stomach started hurting a lot recently and no one knew why. And I was tasting this diet coke and it started to taste really chemical-y. I asked them if they changed the formula and they said no, but I just was like, I’m done. And I that was it.” – Abby Ellin

To hear more from Abby Ellin and her story on being duped, diet cokes and her thoughts on the Madoff scam, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Abby Ellin is an award-winning journalist and the author of “Duped: Double Lives, False Identities and the Con Man I Almost Married” and “Teenage Waistland: A Former Fat Kid Weighs

In On Living Large, Losing Weight and How Parents Can (and Can’t) Help.”

For five years she wrote the “Preludes” column about young people and money for the Sunday Money and Business section of the New York Times.

She is also a regular contributor to the Health, Style, Business and Education sections of the New York Times.

Her work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, New York, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Psychology Today, Time, Newsweek, the Village Voice, the Boston Phoenix, Salon, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Spy (RIP).

She has been a resident at the Yaddo Corporation and Wildacres Retreat in North Carolina, and has two useless Masters Degrees: an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College and a master’s degree in international public policy from Johns Hopkins University.

As of this writing, her greatest accomplishments are learning to play the cello at age 35, summiting Kilimanjaro (with a broken wrist in a cast!) and naming “Karamel Sutra” ice cream for Ben and Jerry’s.

Links

Follow Abby Ellin today!

Website: AbbyEllin.com

Twitter: @AbbyEllin

Check out the 6-part series, Impostors: The Commander

More on Abby Ellin:

NYTimes: Why do we love scammers so much?

NYTimes: I was powerless over diet coke

Washington Post: A Journalist almost married a con man. It turns out, she wasn’t the only one.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Frederick Nietzsche was one of the most important philosophers of all time. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Dave Jilk and I talk about a new book that fuses Nietzsche and modern entrepreneurship in a fascinating, provocative, and very thought-provoking way. The new book is called Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche, and Dave co-authored it with Brad Feld (FYD 175).

In this dialogue, we go deep on many of the dichotomies we face as company founders and builders. We examine the difference between passion and obsession, and what Nietzsche means by creativity and super abundance. We also talk about how to know you should keep driving forward with your idea or maybe change course. You can also listen to us discuss how founders should evolve their role in the company that they started over time.

This is a super-smart, deep-insight bearing conversation about some ideas for company creators with a big-brain, been-there-done-that kind of guy. So fire up your cerebellum and get ready for a fun ride through thinking town!

Dave Jilk on Fusing Nietzsche and Entrepreneurship

The dialogue starts off with the elephant in the room: why fuse Nietzsche and the world of entrepreneurship? Dave explains that he wasn’t very fond of most business books, in general. For him, most of them contain a few important things, but wrapped around in 200 pages of text. Though reading them is an unavoidable occupational hazard for him and his co-author, Brad Feld.

So he and Brad got the idea of writing their own book, containing their thoughts and experiences in entrepreneurship. But they don’t want it to be just another business book. That’s where their attention turned to Nietzsche and his works.

“I was reading him (Nietzsche) a little earlier than Brad. When I was reading it, we notice things that apply to entrepreneurship. It was striking though, and of course his languages is very interesting and colorful, right? So we started playing with, “Hey, could we write something”, and we wrote a few of the essays and grabbed a couple of Brad’s blog posts and stuck them in his stories to see how that worked and, and it kind of clicked.” – Dave Jilk

From there, they managed to get enough content to write an entire book.

Nietzsche, Entrepreneurs, and Being a Little Bit Crazy

There are some people who referred to Nietzsche as sort of a crazy person. Dave thinks the better word to use is “Wacky”, and that Nietzsche himself revels in that description. As someone studying human nature, he was open to exploring different situations and experiences, which might have gotten him this reputation.

Going back to entrepreneurs, Dave thinks that one has to be a little bit crazy and explore the possibility without worrying about looking bad or weird. That is especially true for startups and early stages of most businesses.

“Some people would argue that you have to be extremely rational, analytical about this. But we say, to create something truly disruptive, you have to have a vision. You have to have a vision of what the world could be like, after your disruption is successful. What is the world going to be like, with no evidence whatsoever, no particularly good reason to believe that the world will adopt that. You have to have to be, as you say, a little bit crazy.” – Dave Jilk

Being Brave and Different

When asked if Nietzsche had been very courageous because he was challenging the preconceived norms despite the pushbacks, Dave agreed to some degree. For him, Nietzsche was more like someone who bravely dives headfirst into something before worrying about the consequences to his reputation and the like.

“Nietzsche’s essential project was to transform the moral tradition of Europe. It’s a moral tradition that that went back, at least, two millennia, and possibly longer. He was trying to dis to disrupt that, to change it to, and to explore what it would be like when it did change. And the that exploration is, was frightening to him. And he thought it should be frightening to everyone. But what he was trying to do is it was both brave, and also clueless, right? So yes, he had to be both a little crazy and a little bit courageous. And probably more than anything focused on what he cared about.” – Dave Jilk

To hear more from Dave Jilk about Nietzsche, Entrepreneurs, and their ties to Human Nature, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Dave Jilk is a former serial entrepreneur and startup CEO in information technology.

He now writes on entrepreneurship and artificial intelligence, and he enjoys writing poetry as well. Dave earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from MIT, and currently lives near Boulder, Colorado.

When not writing he is likely to be on a mountain.

Links

Follow Dave Jilk and his works!

Website: Jilk.com

LinkedIn: in/DJilk

Check out his work at Amazon Books

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Welcome to the first of two episodes that we are doing on the new work paradigms that are emerging. In this episode of Follow Your Different, I talk with Joe Sanok about designing a life that works for you by in part, making Thursday the new Friday.

Joe Sanok is the opposite of many hustle porn stars, who’ve been screaming at entrepreneurs, marketers, and executives to work until they drop. When in reality, if you never stop hustling, you’ll likely end up dead with nothing to show for it.

No matter what stage you’re at in your career, this dialogue with Joe will stimulate your thoughts and get you thinking…

Thursday is the New Friday

Joe talks about his new book, Thursday is the New Friday, and how the timing of it seems to be spot on.

There have always been discussions of how to balance your life between work and personal stuff. Though said discussion has hit its peak because of the current situation with COVID, and people working from their homes. People who usually spend the 8 hour daily grind have figured out that they don’t really need the whole 8 hours for it.

“Looking at Spain moving to the four day workweek, Denmark trying it out. There’s so many companies trying a four day workweek. Even if it’s not a four day workweek, to start to think about why are we working the number of hours we’re working. But then we realized that, you know, if you’re in a traditional job, you didn’t need 40 hours. A lot of people started saying, “Well, why are we working this way, our outcomes are the same, we’re doing the same or better work, working fewer hours.

“Then people with the industrialist mindset are like, “We want butts in the chairs, we want to get back to the cog in the big machine.” And that’s just not gonna work anymore. Like it’s already blown up, we’ve seen behind the curtain and things are shifting.” – Joe Sanok

Joe Sanok on the Evolution of the Work Week

Joe talks about how humans eventually ended up with our current notion of a work week. In his book, he looked into why we have the seven-day week, and how we even got to have weekends. It even delves into how Ford started the 40-hour work week.

The point of all this is that humanity, or at least the business and working people, are the ones to decide what a work week would be like. With today’s tech and the evolution of business from industrialist to a new frontier, people are looking for ways to make lives easier for everyone, without the drop in quality of work.

“I would actually argue we actually are leaving that industrialist mindset behind and that we’re in the messy middle of what’s emerging next. And we get to decide the same way the Babylonians said seven days a week, we get to decide what that looks like. And that autonomy to me is so important that we do this well, that we think about it, we look at the research, we look at case studies, we look at even just how we feel on the inside.

When I tell people I wrote a book about taking Friday’s off they’re like yeah, it’s about time because they know Fridays are a blow off day. But everyone sits there and talks for 20 minutes and we’re already blowing it off. Why don’t we actually just call it what it is and have a three day weekend.” – Joe Sanok

Joe Sanok on Hustle Culture

Joe talks about how he has dedicated a whole chapter to the hustle narrative and why it is wrong. He points out that looking at productivity alone, “hustling” is not a very efficient way of doing it.

“There’s so many better ways to do it. We see it in big businesses or community colleges. (There) are tons of the case studies that I’ve seen and researched that it actually is better for business, for mental health, and for health outcomes (not to hustle). That people actually make more money at it. So why would we keep hustling 90 hours a week so that we can have the “status that Instagram gives us” when it’s not even needed?” – Joe Sanok

To hear more from Joe Sanok and how to be more efficient and not fall into the Hustle trap, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Joe Sanok is the author of Thursday is the New Friday (HarperCollins) releasing Oct 2021. He is a keynote and TEDx speaker, business consultant, and podcaster. He has the #1 podcast for counselors, The Practice of the Practice Podcast.

Joe is also writer for PsychCentral, has been featured on the Huffington Post, Forbes, GOOD Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Entrepreneur on Fire, Smart Passive Income Podcast, and Yahoo News.

Joe has articles releasing in 2021 through Harvard Business Review, CNBC, ThriveGlobal, Inc., and Money. He is the author of five books and has been named the Therapist Resource top podcast, consultant, and blogger.

Joe Sanok helps private practitioners to find innovative ways to start, grow, and scale a private practice. For resources go to: http://www.practiceofthepractice.com/resources

Joe is also the founder of Podcast Launch School, A curriculum that teaches new Podcasters how to attract amazing guests and monetize their podcast nine months.

His podcast is available at http://www.practiceofthepractice.com/category/podcasts/

He does one-on-one consulting, Mastermind Groups, and other approaches to start, grow, and scale a practice: www.practiceofthepractice.com/apply

Links

Learn more from Joe Sanok today!

Website: www.PracticeofthePractice.com

Check out his past and upcoming books here.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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In this episode of Follow Your Different, let’s talk about food. On the base level, food is about survival, sustenance, and safety. Yet it is also a centering point for life and culture, and even expressing love. Joanne Molinaro joins us today to talk more about it.

Joanne Molinaro is a lawyer-turned-author and Tik Tok info-tainer, as well as a social media rockstar. She has developed a massive following by fusing Korean cooking, veganism, life lessons, and story-telling into a legendary stew that her fans can’t get enough of. Her food blog “The Korean Vegan” is one of the top in the world, and her social media and Tik Tok have millions of followers.

She also has a new book called The Korean Vegan Cookbook. We get into it and much more in this episode, so stay tuned.

Joanne Molinaro‘s Relationship with Food

The conversation starts off with checking in on Joanne and how she feels about her new book. Joanne shares that she’s a bit nervous since it was her first cookbook, and she’s worried that people might not like the recipes in it. Though given the quality of her content, it should not be a problem at all.

From there, Joanne shares her relationship with food, in which she loves it so much. She loves cooking, but she especially loves eating, as well as trying out new foods and cuisines. Though she realized early on that she particularly like eating her own food best.

“I realized pretty quickly that I like eating my own food best. Not because I’m persnickety about what goes into my food, although that’s part of it. But mostly because I think my food tastes the best, because I know what I like, and I know how to make my food the way that I like. I think a lot of people are like, Oh, I love eating grandma’s food, I love eating my mom’s food. And sure I love eating my mom’s food too. But a lot of times I’m like, I can make this better for me.” – Joanne Molinaro

For Joanne, food makes her very happy, and it is something she looks forward to.

Joanne Molinaro on the Contradiction of Safety and Danger in Food

For a lot of people, food gives them a sense of safety, because it gives them sustenance, and they are made with love by our parents and grandparents when we are young. It reminds them that they are loved and cared for.

Although for some, it can be a source of insecurity as well, and Joanne had to deal with both when she was younger. As society’s views on a “healthy and proper” body leaned on being slim and thin, eating and enjoying food seems like a bad thing to do. Not being to enjoy what you like can cause anxiety. Not being able to comfort that anxiety by eating your favorite food just adds to the stack.

“In the past, I’ve also had a very fraught relationship with food. I was told very, very young that part of my value was tied to how I look and how thin I was. Unfortunately, food consumption contributes to your size. And as a result of that, however much I love eating food and how much I love cooking food, it also creates a great deal of anxiety and danger. So it’s sort of that very strange juxtaposition where a bowl of kimchi-jjigae makes me feel so safe, but a bowl of kimchi-jjigae also equals calories which makes me feel unsafe.”- Joanne Molinaro

Being at the Forefront of Food Creation

Now that she has become a food superstar, Joanne feels like she has to be more fastidious about guarding against or obsessing about food she eats. While it has become an impulse that was brought on by years of being careful of what she ate, she does not want it to influence her work as a food creator.

“Now that I’m front facing about my relationship with food, and as a food creator, I feel very responsible about not just sending the correct message out into the world, but by living in accordance with that message. I can’t, on the one hand, tell people, “Hey, stop counting calories!” While I, myself, am counting calories. That doesn’t make sense.” – Joanne Molinaro

Instead of focusing on calorie counts, she dwells more on what goes into one’s diet, and how you can make an amazing dish while still keeping healthy.

To hear more from Joanne Molinaro and her thoughts on food and life, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

With over 2 million fans on TikTok, Joanne Molinaro, also known as The Korean Vegan, has appeared on The Food Network and Al Jazeera English, been featured in Salon, Healthy-ish by Bon Appetit, and the Kitchn, and will release her debut cookbook + memoir with Penguin Random House this fall (2021).

Molinaro is a Korean American woman, born in Chicago, Illinois. Her parents were both born in what is now known as North Korea.

Joanne Molinaro started her blog, The Korean Vegan, in 2016, after adopting a plant-based diet. In July 2020, she started her TikTok (@thekoreanvegan), mostly as a coping mechanism for the isolation caused by the global pandemic.

She began posting content related to politics and life as a lawyer during quarantine.

However, after a single post of her making Korean braised potatoes for dinner (while her husband taught a piano lesson in the background) went viral, Molinaro shifted her attention to producing 60 second recipe videos, while telling stories about her family—immigrants from what is now known as North Korea.

Links

Connect with Joanne today!

Website: TheKoreanVegan.com

Check out her new book! The Korean Vegan Cookbook

TikTok: @TheKoreanVegan

Instagram: @TheKoreanVegan

Youtube: The Korean Vegan

Facebook: fb.com/theKoreanVegan

Pinterest: @TheKoreanVegan

LinkedIn: in/Joanne-Molinaro

More on Joanne Molina and The Korean Vegan

CBS: TikTok star Joanne Molinaro shares her Korean culture and life lessons

Today.com: The Korean Vegan serves up spicy tofu, life lessons, and stories from her childhood

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Nothing is more important than your health. Though learning to make smart, complex health care choices is hard and is getting harder, especially in a world of massive healthcare information, and disinformation. In this episode of Follow Your Different, Talya Miron-Shatz aims to help us make the right health choices.

Talya Miron-Shatz has her doctorate in Psychology from the Hebrew University, and studied with Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. She is also a professor at the Ono Academic College, as well as a visiting research at Cambridge University.

Talya offers a clear and useful guidance for the hardest decisions in life. We go deep into her new book, Your Life Depends on It, to find out more on what you and your family needs to know about making critical health care decisions.

Talya Miron-Shatz on Studying Happiness

Talya talks about what it meant to study happiness. She explains that the way they study happiness is not like what most people would think to do it. Rather than just focusing on what activities bring happiness, they look at various activities and find out what brings people happiness in those activities.

One example that she gives was with colonoscopy, which isn’t exactly a happy activity.

“For example, he (Daniel Kahneman) did work with colonoscopies. And he showed with Dr. Reto Meier that when the end is more gentle people remember the whole episode is better. So it can be weird because nobody likes a colonoscopy. But apparently when it’s milder, when the end is milder, it’s better. “ – Talya Miron-Shatz

Measuring Happiness

With regards to measuring happiness, there are what is called Peak and Low moments. Low moments are the parts of the activity that makes us unhappy, and we try to avoid those parts as much as possible.

Yet avoiding all lows would be impossible. Which is why Talya encourages people to cherish the peaks we experience, however small or short they may be.

“We should just cherish and be happy with those moments and sort of elevate them and give them attention. Whatever draws your attention, whatever you pay attention to, determines how you feel.” – Talya Miron-Shatz

Finding Ways to be Happy

Talya continues with how we use attention, or divert it to something else, to find a way to feel happy. One example is how people try to keep themselves busy with work or other activities when they have recently experienced something unhappy.

Some might put physical distance between their worries, and find that it helps them feel less depressed and think more clearly afterwards. It’s literally taking your mind off the thing that is upsetting.

Though there’s a part of avoidance that Talya doesn’t like, and it pertains to medicine. Particularly, the discussion of death…

To hear more from Talya Miron-Shatz and how to make better choices with your health, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

For two decades author, consultant, researcher, writer, speaker, and entrepreneur Dr. Talya Miron-Shatz has been dedicated to the issue of health and medical decision making.

The questions she asks, and the answers she gives, are increasingly larger, and relate to the intersection of psychology and medicine. How do patients make choices? What do they need to understand their care and options? How can they be brought to enjoy the benefits of digital health? How can the human touch make a difference in times when medical challenges are inevitable?

She identified barriers to better decision making and shows how they can be overcome – by patients, physicians, and healthcare organizations.

She contends that while patients experience their challenges as very personal, these are rooted in institutional practices, and need to be considered as what constitutes good care. Often, it is beyond the doctors’ control, and they too can benefit from an overhaul of the patient role.

Miron-Shatz did her BA, MA at Hebrew University’s psychology department, and worked for over a decade as an organizational psychologist. Then she returned to graduate school at the psychology department, studying heuristics and biases.

Creating and teaching a course on ‘The Psychological Aspects of Medical Decision Making’ to genetic counseling students was her first foray into medical decision making. This was in 2004.

In 2005 she completed her PhD. And went with her family to Princeton University, for a post-doctorate position with Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman, until 2009.

Together, they studied happiness. From 2008 to 2011 she taught consumer behavior to undergraduates and MBA students at the Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, and loved every minute.

In 2009 she joined the business school at the Ono Academic College, where she is now a full professor. She also became a writer for Psychology Today, where her blog, Baffled by Numbers which was read by over 130,00 people.

Since then she has written more than 60 academic papers: some on happiness, but mostly on medical decision making, covering multiple angles of the patient experience, physician decision making, and digital health.

The year 2010 marked the beginning of her now considerable industry involvement, with a white paper she wrote for Global Health, Johnson and Johnson, on The Potential of a Health Scorecard for Promoting Health Literacy. Since then she worked with PR agencies health advertisers (Edelman PR, DraftFCB, InTouchSolutions) on projects around adherence to medication, prescriber behavior, mechanisms of behavioral economics, and more.

Through these agencies, and directly, she worked with numerous pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, Abbvie, Boringer-Ingelheim, BMS, Novartis, and others on projects around leading physician advisory boards, designing patient outreach and communication, training sales reps, and more.

In her work with technology giants, such as NantMobile, she led teams of engineers in introducing an entire layer of psychological drivers to facilitate adherence to medication. Similarly, she has helped multiple startups—from Healarium to Glucome—hone their operating mechanisms in conveying health information to change patient behavior.

For several years, Dr. Miron-Shatz co-organized the eHealth Venture Summit at MEDICA, the world’s largest medical device exhibition (with Dr. Stefan Becker), and ran the Pharma 2.0 series for NYC’s Health 2.0 meetup.

As a keynote speaker for Donate Life America’s 2014 annual conference, she demonstrated the use of behavioral economics to get people to sign up as donors. In her frequent speaking engagements—Financial Times NY and London, Digital Health Congress, Nudge Portugal, and numerous academic and industry events, she demonstrates her commitment to disseminating her knowledge around improving how people engage with their medical decisions and health.

She was the CEO and co-founder of Buddy&Soul, a platform for personal development, that offered comprehensive support for behavior change, and self-management of medical conditions. This marks the evolution of her ideas around shared decision making and health habits, where good intentions don’t suffice, and people need tools and skills to achieve their health and participation goals.

In 2019, Miron-Shatz became a visiting researcher at the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, at Cambridge University. She is a full professor at the faculty of business administration at the Ono Academic College.

Her book on medical decision-making will be published by Basic Books in 2021. This is the culmination of her efforts to improve how people deal with their medical decision making, and how their physicians, and the institutions that care for them, facilitate this process, rather than leaving patients to their own devices.

Miron-Shatz and her husband have three children.

Links

Connect with Talya today! 

Website: TalyaMironShatz.com

LinkedIn: in/Talya-Miron-Shatz

Check out her new book: Your Life Depends On It

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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We hear a lot of talk about courage, grit, and being mission-driven. Well, imagine being a young man who decides to serve his country and become a US Army paratrooper, only to become homeless after his active duty. Now imaging finding a way out of complete desperation to become a successful entrepreneur, and now bestselling author. That is Jaime Jay, and he is our guest in this episode of Follow Your Different.

Jaime Jay is the co-founder of Bottleneck Distant Assistants, and the author of the new bestselling book, Quit Repeating Yourself. Jaime and I have been working together for years, and he has helped me in most of my digital endeavors. This includes building Lochhead.com, as well as handling all of the technical issues with my podcasts and much more.

What you’re about to hear is an inspiring story of how Jaime designed a legendary business and life with his partner, Sara. Pay special attention to how Covid19 almost destroyed Jaime’s business, and how a new category design helped it to come back from the brink and power the company to even greater heights.

Jaime Jay in the US Army

There is a special place in my heart for our vets, and even more so for those who have become entrepreneurs after serving their duty. So I asked Jaime about his military service.

Jaime was part of the elite 82^nd Airborne Division, and was trained as a paratrooper. He recalls how intense the training was to be part of such an elite organization, and be battle-ready for when the country needs them.

“I was part of the elite 82nd Airborne Division, 2^nd 325 Airborne Infantry Regiment and I had a blast. It was is fantastic. I was really proud to be part of that organization. They man, they run a tip top organization. And that was blessed to be be part of the 82nd. That’s pretty cool.” – Jaime Jay

Jaime Jay on Being Homeless

Jaime shares that he has been homeless on two separate times of his life. The first one being related to his younger days, and the latter was after he had left the military. Yet he never let these circumstances weigh him down, and he continued to strive for a better life.

He talks about these points in the book as well, not for people to feel bad for him, but to see that despite all of that, you can still persevere and live a good life.

“By the way, the reason I tell these stories is not for people to ever feel bad for me or anything like that. But I want people to realize what all of this led to. I’m actually blessed that all this happened because all of this led to a better life where I appreciated so much more. The friendships like the friendship that I have with you, I will forever appreciate this for the rest of my life. I was able to find the woman of my dreams. And I appreciate it on such a different level, just the same way that I appreciate the work that we’re doing.

So the reason that I tell these stories in here is because I really want people to understand that, hey, it’s possible to do whatever it is you’re passionate about. So it’s kind of motivating, but there’s a method to the madness. “ – Jaime Jay

Creating a New Category: Distant Assistants

One of the things Jaime and I have worked on this past year was when we created a new category that deals with remote assistance. You might say we already have that, and it’s called virtual assistants.

Though the problem with virtual assistants nowadays is that the category has been inundated with big corporations who deal more with technology rather than the human aspect of it. While there are merits to automated assistance run by AI and such, there is something to be said for having an actual person handling it for you, and that flexible decision-making that can’t be achieved by AI yet.

“People are using a lot of AI and stuff to manage the calendar to send out emails, automation. That’s all fine and dandy, and there are some great use cases for that. I’m not here to argue that, but I also think there’s something to be said for having that human, that intimate-based relationship between one human to another. No matter if it’s an assistant, web developer, CEO, whatever, there’s always going to be something to be said, for having that human based, intimate relationship.” – Jaime Jay

To hear more for Jaime Jay and how you can Quit Repeating Yourself when running your own business, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Jaime Jay is a connector, starter – geek, podcaster and founder of the award – winning Bottleneck Virtual Assistant Services company that offers professional growth opportunities for ambitious leaders by creating an efficient and systematic approach to identify, hire and cultivate team members who focus on specific roles and responsibilities through a single point of contact. He served in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division and worked in corporate America for over 12 years before becoming a full-time entrepreneur in 2006.

Jaime Jay is the host of the ‘Live with Bottleneck’ show. He participates in interesting dialogs with his guests where listeners are able to participate in the conversation during the live format. His guests are some of the brightest minds in business today. Stop the Bottleneck in YOUR business by watching his show today

In addition to running the distant assistant company and hosting his show, he is the author of Quit Repeating Yourself. This book is all about setting up your business with a strong culture, leading with kindness, creating systems and processes, and learning how to recruit and hire effectively. If you are in business, this book i s a must read.

Jaime lives in Springfield, Missouri with his wife Sara and their dog Nikita. He is an amateur hockey player, enjoys spending time on their boat on Table Rock Lake and traveling. Fun fact: Jaime has been playing ice hockey for over 45 years . He also loves traveling, playing guitar, hanging out with friends and doing the occasionally crazy thing like jumping out of perfectly good airplanes.

Links

Follow Jaime Jay today!

Website: Bottleneck.Online

LinkedIn: in/JaimeJay

Youtube: Live with Bottleneck

Check out his new book: Quit Repeating Yourself

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Is peace really possible? Our guest today says it is. In this special episode of Follow Your Different, Prem Rawat talks about how to find peace in a noisy world.

Prem Rawat has been teaching peace since he was a little boy in India. He became a counterculture icon in the 60s and the 70s, as Americans sought out different ideas and beliefs. He’s been a source of great controversy and massive followership over the years. Prem has been sought out and welcomed by spiritual, social and political and business leaders around the world.

Prem Rawat has a new book out, called Hear Yourself: How to Find Peace in a Noisy World. We are here to discuss all that and more, so stay tuned.

Prem Rawat on the Current State of the World

When asked about his current thoughts, Prem talks about the current state of the world. For him, it seems that there’s just too much drama and chaos in the world right now. Though the current situation right now plays a big factor as to why it may be so, people are still whipping it up and causing drama left and right.

While it is the nature of humanity to seek out exciting events and drama, it seems that we have become morbidly so, despite the situation being something as it is right now. Much so that we choose to forgo peace to chase the next drama.

“Well, you know, here’s the paradox, because (when) you look at human beings, human beings are remarkable. We’ve been able to conquer disease, we’ve been able to invent so many wonderful things that that has helped other people. Though at the same time we can create medicine that can that can prolong life, we can also create machine guns that can take away the lives. So we always live in this paradox.

I always feel that we have to choose, and I talk about peace. I feel that we have to choose peace. It’s not just going to happen automatically, that is not going to drop from the sky, on people, whether they like it or not. It’s just that Something that we have to choose. And the question then becomes, is that what we’re choosing?” – Prem Rawat

Choosing Peace

Prem continues on how we should actively choose peace. Because the way we are treating it right now, it’s just something that we expect to happen to us, despite being distracted by everyday noise. If you want peace for yourself, you have to distance yourself from the noise and drama, and choose peace.

“Well, peace is already within you, (but) you have to gain access to it. And that’s what this book is all about: getting in touch with yourself. Because we are so distracted. In fact, being with yourself, in an environment is considered the worst form of punishment you can possibly have. We have become so attracted to everything else that we became distracted from ourselves. That is a pretty sad state of affairs, when it comes to ourselves. That being with you, just being with you, is the worst thing you could ever do.” – Prem Rawat

Can We Really Have Peace?

Prem shares his life of going around the world and speaking to the international crowd about peace. Though he thinks that just doing that was not enough, and that is why he wrote his book. With it, he hopes that it can spark a meaningful conversation or even a debate about peace.

Though there are those who say peace is not possible, that it is in the human nature to seek conflict or drama. For Prem, this is not so, as peace is already within all of us. So for him, these people can be considered sourgraping, in a sense.

“It’s a question of sour grapes. there’s a lot of people say it this way. It’s like, oh no, peace is not possible. It’s not going to happen. But when peace is already inside of us, why isn’t that ever going to happen? And isn’t it up to us? If we can create wars, why can’t we create peace?” – Prem Rawat

To hear more from Prem Rawat and how to find peace in this noisy world, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Prem Rawat

For more than fifty years, Prem has shared his enduring message with people of any age, race, gender, nationality, religion, personal lifestyle or life condition, that peace within is possible and it is your birthright. He has reached hundreds of millions of people in over 100 countries through his powerful storytelling and profound message.

As a best-selling author and public speaker, he has adapted age-old stories for a modern audience, adding his unique perspective on the “business of life.”  These stories continue to resonate and transform millions of people’s lives. His most recent book, Escúchate (Hear Yourself), quickly reached Amazon Spain’s top non-fiction best seller’s list, and precedes the soon-to-be released English version. Other publications by Prem include: Peace is Possible (published by Penguin) previously titled Splitting the Arrow: Understanding the Business of Life, as well as the illustrated books, The Pot With The Hole, and The Stonecutter.

Prem has personally developed an innovative wellbeing series called the Peace Education Program (PEP) that helps anyone interested to discover their inner strength and reflect on their own humanity.

Around the globe, Prem has also shared his practical approach to knowing yourself through a video-based course, Peace Education and Knowledge (PEAK), available free of charge on his media platform, TimelessToday. In these challenging times, Prem’s message, his inspiration and the experience he points to, are more relevant than ever.

The Prem Rawat Foundation, established in 2001, supports charitable activities throughout the world, including Prem’s Peace Education Program, which is now taught in places as diverse as prisons, countries ravaged by war, schools, universities, police academies, veteran centers and in hospitals in over 80 countries across 6 continents. From Cape Town, South Africa to California, from East Timor to Colombia, the Peace Education Program has reached people across wide spectrums of societies and inspires them to discover their innate personal peace.

To further advance his ability to reach people interested in his message, Prem became a pilot, logging more than 14,000 hours of flying time worldwide. He is also a composer, musician, photographer, husband, father of four children and grandfather of four.

Links

Follow Prem Rawat today!

Website: PremRawat.com

Twitter: @PRBookFans1

Youtube: @PremRawatOfficial

Instagram: @timelesstoday

Check out the book:  HearYourselfBook.com

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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In this episode of Follow Your Different, we talk about all things creativity, innovation, and design. Our guest today is Sarah Stein Greenberg, the Executive Director of Stanford’s Design School, aka the d.school.

She has a new book out called Creative Acts for Curious People: How to Think, Create, and Lead in Unconventional Ways. They have taken years of learning and ideas from Stanford’s Design school and put it in this awesome new book, and we get to dive in to all of it.

Sarah shares why reflections matter so much, and also tells why metacognition is important. We dig into what it’s like running one of the most well-known design schools in the world, and how design students are different today than they were in the not-so-distant past. Also, pay special attention to Sarah’s ideas on weird and the role of curiosity in creativity and design.

Sarah Stein Greenberg on Reflections and Creativity

Sarah talks about finally being back in the physical space of Stanford campus. She describes the space that she has a space for reflection, full of writing space to record her thoughts as they come.

When asked if reflection is really important in design, Sara shares that it plays a part in it. That it is something that should go hand-in-hand with action.

“I think reflection is kind of the underappreciated partner of action. In a lot of cases, when people think about creativity, they think about brainstorming and exuberance, and that that spark of inspiration. But reflection, I think about it as it’s like the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, those two things are, inextricably linked action and reflection. So yeah, I’m a big proponent of those quiet moments, where you’re trying to make sense or really think about what might be the implications of your creative work.” = Sarah Stein Greenberg

What? So What? Now What?

Sarah shares about the difference between thinking and reflection. Thinking might include everything from coming up with new ideas, charting the vision, or even some parts of analysis / research. Reflection focuses more on thinking about your own process or practice, or looking back at your data more critically.

Sarah goes on to say that reflection in particular benefits from specific scaffolding and practices, and brings up one of her favorite one: the What? / So What? / Now What?, which a few of her colleagues have originated.

“The scaffold is called What? So what? Now What? You can kind of have a scaffolded reflection and think about, what did I just learn in that particular class or that particular project? How do I want to improve my own work? But if you use a scaffold like What, So What, and Now What, you really get into the details. You might write down everything that happened, then you might think about what did all of that mean? Why is that important? Why did that feel like what I wanted to capture? And then Now What is the opportunity to think for each of those. So what for each of those implications? What do I want to do about that? Is that something I want to practice? Is that something I want to improve?” = Sarah Stein Greenberg

For Sarah, the quality of reflections changes dramatically if you have a detailed flow on how to approach and assess what you currently have.

Sarah Stein Greenberg on Metacognition

The conversation then steers into how a lot of people nowadays aren’t really thinking, or thinking about thinking. Most content or “new things” in the market are just variations of the same things that we already have, just rebranded or given a new “spin”.

Sarah agrees with this sentiment, and also talks about metacognition, which is the technical term for “thinking about thinking”. For her, it’s a skill that should be embedded in the heart of our education.

“(Metacognition) is one of those kinds of secret skills that I firmly believe should be embedded in the heart of our education. What goes along with that is the idea of learning how you learn, is actually the key to like being able to then continue to be a learner, no matter what environment you’re in. That’s actually where reflection which we just talked about is so important. Because that’s actually how you can start to take control. That kind of self-awareness is part of that practice of learning how to learn.”  = Sarah Stein Greenberg

To hear more from Sarah Stein Greenberg and how reflection and metacognition can be helpful in creating new categories, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Sarah Stein Greenberg helps lead the d.school, an interdisciplinary institute at Stanford that nurtures innovators and spreads design thinking.

As Executive Director, Sarah supports a multidisciplinary learning program of about 25 courses that reach more than 500 Stanford graduate students annually, taught by more than 60 experts from the d.school, Stanford faculty and the Silicon Valley community; she also launches and supports new or newly iterated d.school initiatives, including the fellows program (a creative leadership accelerator), a new version of the K-12 Lab focused on innovators changing education, curriculum experiments like “pop-up classes,” and a new project to help university leaders imagine the future of the on-campus experience at Stanford.

Previously, she worked in the innovation practice of Monitor Group in the US and India and advised multinational companies on developing innovation capabilities. Her background includes developing new products and services in a number of emerging markets in Asia and Africa.

In the classroom Sarah has co-taught the d.school’s foundational Design Thinking Bootcamp, and its legendary course on design for the developing world, Design for Extreme Affordability. This year she helped start a new course that aims to spark students’ appetites for disruptive innovation in addressing poverty in the Bay Area.

Sarah holds an MBA from Stanford University and a BA in History from Oberlin College.

Links

Follow Sarah today!

LinkedIn: in/Sarah-Stein-Greenberg

Check out her new book here: Creative Acts of Curious People

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!