Episodes

  • Andy McDowell of GenerateYour Value on Spotlight

    Andy McDowell of GenerateYour Value on Spotlight
    Jul 18 2022
    Welcome, everybody. This is Jane Gardner at Finding your Purpose TV. And today on our show, we have Andy McDowell. Andy is an engineer, so I have something in common with him. We know all about the same challenges of being engineers and being a technician, but he's also creative. So this is surprising because I know many engineers and they're not creative, so I'm going to be looking into that, really and he spent 22 years with the Boeing Company, where he always felt more like a life coach than an engineer and a boss. In 2002, he began his journey into entrepreneurship within a corporation when he was asked to develop an Aerospace design consulting business from scratch, wow, that would be hard, that would serve the global government market. Andy has a bachelor's degree from Georgia Tech in electrical engineering and a Master's degree in computer information systems from Georgia State. Naturally, his aviation work took him around the world and enabled him to work on many high profile projects like the Beijing and Sochi airports for their respective Olympic Games. So we're really excited to talk to Andy about basically his purpose and his journey from getting from where he was to where he is now. So, first of all, I better welcome you. Hi. Hi, Jane. Hi. Great to be with you today. Andy, maybe you could tell us. I'm really excited to find out how an engineer can become into the business that you're in. It sounds like your business actually did help you with Finding Your Other purpose. So my husband, he's never really a true engineer, but right now he has to work in engineering. So it's really exciting to see how you manage the journey. Just maybe I can help him get into his retirement. So Andy, please. How did you manage that? So I always had a love for airplanes, built the plastic models as a kid, was fascinated with the fact that such a heavy piece of metal could stay up in the air from that perspective. So I had the opportunity to coming out of grad school and got into a couple of companies that were aviation based, and the last one being that the United States largest exporter, dollar wise company called Boeing. True joy and passion in my life came to be, to be able to work for a company so involved in the aviation community however, it had little to do with electrical engineering. So everything that I learned how to do with airspace design, simulation, modeling, the work that we did was all on the job training, using my technical computer skills at first to help the smaller entrepreneurial company that I work for become digitized and help reduce their expenses by 75% in their delivery time to customers from about two weeks to a couple of days from that perspective. But it was along the journey, 22 years for the Boeing Company, come to find out about the part of the work that I did as I moved up the leadership chain that I enjoyed the most was the engagement with my team members and helping them to grow as individuals as well as growing their position in their careers giving me the most satisfaction and what got me out of the bed every morning regardless of where I was in the world. Because I was spending close to half of the year outside the office and somewhere in the world helping the government bring GPS technology into their flight and ground operations was what we were basically doing, trying to help them be more efficient in their operations using the GPS technology. Wow. Yeah. That's really important. Yeah. That's very exciting that you work for the Beijing and Olympics and everything like that. It must have been high pressure, but you like working with your team members instead of the high pressure. I'm sure. Yeah. So how did you evolve into another business? Obviously, there were certain changes in your position, but maybe you could tell us that. How did you get into coaching? Well, my goal, a career with the Boeing Company was to work for them for about 30 years, I made it to 22 when I, along with thousands of other employees, were laid off because of the Boeing 737 Max crisis, right, that the company went through. So my goal was shortened by eight years. So I decided, instead of doing what originally playing part time, to fully engage with it full time and follow my true joys and passions, as opposed to getting back into the corporate world or the aviation world, I thought I could make a more lasting impact on people's lives doing that, as opposed to sticking to aviation. Right. Yeah. So you did it part time while you were working in aviation, or you felt that working with your team was really a lot like coaching? In a way, because you have to make sure they're all working and doing what they need to do. So you just sort of started in life coaching? Well, I just took the philosophy and mindset, let me take a step back, I feel like there's a lot about life that overlaps business. And so I developed some methodologies in my head about how to approach the whole conversation with either my ...
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    34 mins
  • Michelle M Castelli on Growing your Relationships

    Michelle M Castelli on Growing your Relationships
    Apr 4 2022
    Hello, everybody. This is Jane Gardner of Finding Your Purpose TV. And today we're talking to Michelle Castelli. Would you like the M Michelle or for official. You can put the M in . That's great. Yeah, we're talking to Michelle Castelli So let's talk to her. She's a wife and mother of three adult children and one adorable Beagle. Don't get me started. I love dogs. Oh, sorry. She is an author, speaker, and relationship coach. She helps men and women grow stronger, healthier relationships in these keys areas of their life journey, dating, marriage, and self and spiritual. Her professional background includes relationship work, counseling individuals, couples and families in both mental health and Ministry. She is a licensed social worker and a certified relationship coach and spiritual director. You'll have to tell me about that, Michelle, because I'm not sure what that is. And she loves helping others grow stronger, healthier relationships because an unhealthy relationship with self or partner affects all of your other relationships. You are so right, Michelle. So Michelle. And we've already got a couple of questions now. So let's say hello to you, Michelle, and thank you for coming by. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it. And welcome to everyone watching. Yeah, Michelle. So tell me, just because you got me curious, a spiritual director, is that a pastor or what is this? No, I worked in Ministry settings at one point and received my certification in spiritual direction to work with people who were struggling with some spiritual issues. Okay, great. So, Michelle, I'd like to find out how you found yourself here with this business. Actually, it's growing your relationships. Is that in the name of your business? You haven't got that in your bio? Actually, my business is actually my name, but the growing your relationship is the tagline. Yeah, but I like the growing your relationships. So how did you get to where you are now, Michelle? Yes, I spent over 20 years as a therapist working with people, individuals, couples, families. I then went back to school for a theology degree so that I could also do it in Ministry settings. So I've got a long history of working with various kinds of relationship issues. My whole background has been about relationships, what people are getting stuck on in their relationships, what blocks they're experiencing and I'm now doing relationship coaching online. This gives me an opportunity to reach more people and also works with my schedule as well. Oh, wow. So tell me, Michelle, before we start getting any deeper into this, how does doing relationship coaching on the Internet work for you in terms of do you have the couple to come together or on your broadcast? Yeah, I start off with phone calls so people have maximum privacy because some people aren't very comfortable with a Zoom call for something as private as a relationship. So I start up with phone calls first and an opportunity to see if it's a fit, because that's why I do discovery calls opportunity for people to talk and make sure it's a good fit between them and I for moving forward and where they are in their relationships. So that's very important because people start at different places with different issues. Yeah. We'll be talking about the various relationships that you can help with. But what we wanted to first talk about is what do we bring of ourselves to our relationships and maybe how that affects our relationships. That would be great, Michelle. Exactly. I take a very holistic approach to relationships because if you're experiencing stress in one particular relationship, say it's a friendship or it's a marriage, if that's causing you a sense of unbalance or you're not feeling like you're being understood or you're losing that sense of connection in the relationship, or you're experiencing anxiety around the conflicts that are taking place, you then carry those emotional pains into your other relationships. So that may spill over into what you're happening at work or it may happen in your brain. That pain and that stress to your family members and friends. So I start off with a holistic approach that helping one relationship issue that you might be experiencing will help the other relationships as well because you're bringing yourself into each of these relationships. So when you have pain, emotional pain, you're bringing it into the other relationships. So I start there with letting people know it's a holistic approach now knowing what you bring to your relationships. I always start off when I work with people as helping them to identify what they bring of themselves because oftentimes people are in relationships and they are not fully aware of what in fact, they're bringing to the relationship. They might be focusing on what their partners bringing in, their friends bringing in, but not so much awareness of what they bring in. So what I mean by that is I look at a variety of different ...
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    30 mins
  • 20221 Dorothyann O'Dell of Unstoppable Overcomers on finding her purpose

    20221 Dorothyann O'Dell of Unstoppable Overcomers on finding her purpose
    Feb 14 2022

    Welcome, everybody. This is Jane Gardner, and welcome to Finding Your Purpose TV. I’m Jane Gardner. And welcome. We’re so excited today because we have another Purposeful Entrepreneur today and we’re going to be chatting with her about how she found her purpose. Her name is Dorothy Anne O’Dell, and she was born and raised in Ontario, Canada. So we have a lot in common because we’re both Canadians. We talk a lot about that right now. And she’s turned her love of books into her next career writing them and she loves to help people succeed in life. And when she’s not writing or reading, she’s helping her community. And actually remind me, Dorothy, we have to talk about your charity concept at the end. So I’ll write a note for that because it’s a really exciting one. And she’s also a life coach and speaker. And her life’s purpose is to make sure that people feel that they feel worthy and that they don’t feel unworthy. She believes every life matters and has dedicated herself to helping others overcome their own obstacles and learn to feel empowered to move forward in their life. And, Dorothy, we’re going to be talking a lot.

    Let’s get ready. So, Dorothy, tell me, how did your purpose in life make you become the entrepreneur you are now? Welcome.

    Thank you. Thanks for having me, Jane. It’s been an absolute pleasure getting to know you. I guess my purpose all started at the beginning of The Pandemic, and I’ve always loved helping people growing up and things like that. But I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to do that. And I wrote my first book, The Overcomer, facing challenges with faith and courage because I knew that I had a lot of challenges that I had overcome in my life, like bullying, low self esteem, abusive relationships, and family trauma. And I knew that I wasn’t the only one out there. And I also knew that in those moments when you’re going through those times that it is very challenging and that you feel very alone and sometimes you feel like you don’t matter. So I decided that my purpose was to make sure that people knew that they were heard that they mattered and that they never had to feel alone. So that’s when I came up with my purpose at the beginning of The Pandemic, wrote the book in no time at all and had it out for the world to see January of this year. And it’s been an exciting adventure. And I thought, why stop there? Help people overcome their obstacles, coach them on how to have fun, how to have some what’s the word? I’m looking for time to themselves and just really selfcare. Selfcare was key. It’s something that I never had growing up or I never took the time. Didn’t think about it. We weren’t educated in school, and I had a grandmother that said, you need to take care of your man. And it’s basically selfish to take care of you. And she’s old school and love her to death, but I didn’t know any better. So I was always giving, giving until I hit a wall. And my dad was diagnosed with cancer for the first time two and a half years ago, I met a counselor at the cancer clinic in here at Windsor. And the first question she asked me was, what about yourself? Care? And I said, there is none. I don’t have time for that. I’m planning a wedding. My dad just got cancer. Just that got diagnosed and work was insane at the time. So there was no time for me. And that’s when she said, well, you better make a time because if not, you’re going to crash and you’re going to burn hard and she was right. And I decided to put some tools into place to bring the fun back into my life because growing up there was fun and things like that. But there was also a lot of times where it was like I would call it adult times, I guess, where a lot of the time that was taken up was worried about parents that were sick, things like that. And it was a serious time. I took life way too serious, I guess, is the proper word I should use. And so growing up way too serious and being helping around the house my entire life. And I didn’t really have a lot of friends growing up. It’s funny because I talked about that this morning in a conversation with somebody else. And it was a lonely time. And I thought I hit my forties and I’m like, fun is it? And that’s been my word for the last five years. And for my I think it was my 43rd birthday. My husband says, what do you want? And I said, I just want a family balloon fight. Family is everything to me. And what better way. My birthday is in July. So it’s not like it’s cold months. So I said, that’s what we’re going to do. And everybody was receptive. We had my husband’s family over and we had a barbecue. We had a water balloon fight. And he just had some amazing fun.
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    44 mins
  • 18 Spotlight on Adrian Starks of Connect Now Business Network

    18 Spotlight on Adrian Starks of Connect Now Business Network
    Jan 8 2021
    Welcome, everybody. This is Jane Gardner of finding your purpose and today on Spotlight, we are talking to Adrian Starks of Connect Now Business Network. And today he is going to be talking to us about his business. And Adrian is a keynote speaker, best selling author and chief communications officer of Connect Now Business Network. His mission is to help entrepreneurs, students and organizations and teens who are feeling stuck, uninspired or unfulfilled to become their own Change makers. And he gives them tools, some tips and strategies to get out of the rut they are in and will empower them and these individuals to find opportunities within the challenges, no matter how stressful their environment maybe. Adrian lives by his supportive Changemaker philosophy that began with the desire to help others see that they can courageously make their own changes and become their own champion. Thank you, Adrian, for coming on today. And I would like to ask you before you say hello, because you can say it at the same time, how you got into your business that you're in, how you found your purpose. Oh, well, thank you so much, Jane, and thank you for the wonderful introduction, I was like is she talking about me? That's wonderful. So, yes, let's talk about how I got into my business. Oh, for a long time, even I was a little kid, I got the name Motormouth because I had the ability to speak and to capture everyone's attention. So I did quite well with that later on in the years, as we can see now. I started out speaking as a professional in public in Seattle, Washington, where I used to live, and I started doing some spoken word poetry because I was fascinated with the idea of words and wordplay and how do I inspire audiences. And that just led me into finding more things out about special orators like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Winston Churchill. And I started thinking to myself, wow, I really want to start speaking more in front of people. How do I do that? Well, life caught up with me and I found myself working in a call center for eight years, a medical call center. But here's the interesting thing, Jane. That call center was a calling to the center of my life, which was speaking those eight years that I was there, I wasn't very happy because it wasn't the place I wanted to be. I didn't find myself purposeful there in my own way. But what I learned was the power of communication. And I took those skills and I started going to workshops here in British Columbia on psychology and personal development. I started watching other speakers and I said to myself, I'm going to leave this call center job and I'm going to go out here in the world and I'm going to inspire people through my poetry, through my self development, through my inspiration. And what I did was I created my own purpose and that put me onto the path that I'm on now, where I work strategically with entrepreneurs and business owners and helping them create their own opportunities within their challenges. Wow. Wow. I didn't realize, who knew, that being in a call center is actually good for speaking, that it's just amazing. I mean, I can see how it would. You'd be willing to want to change your life quickly, but did you find calling people and everything really helped you understand people more and your business and at least you learn something from being there? I certainly did, Jane. What it taught me was, the best communicators are the ones who say the fewest words and they listen. So in the center, I learned very fast about I learned very fast about empathy, listening to the other person, getting the information down and then finding a way to provide assistance and to do it in a strategic way that allows me to to be on their side. So there is an interesting thing here, jane. I worked for a children's medical call center, so imagine getting parents calling in about their children. No parent really wants to bring their child to the hospital at all. So I'm getting various amounts of emotions on the phones. I had to learn how to understand people emotionally, mentally, socially. And I did not know during this time of eight years in the call center that I was actually growing into the person that I needed to be in order to get out here in the world and to speak and to help people the way that I'm doing right now. Wow. Wow, that's amazing. I know, I know empathy is very important for being successful and listening for sure. So so how do you use that in your new business? Well, it's not a new business. Maybe you could tell us how long you've been in your Connect Now Business Network, because it's a very exciting idea and concept and I'd be interested in participating. So that would be great if you could tell us how you could help me. Thank you. Simply, absolutely. So the Connect Now business network that I am a part of, I am the CCO and I am the chief communications officer. I actually do speaking within this network. And I help entrepreneurs and ...
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    40 mins
  • 17 Spotlight on Michelle Burke

    17 Spotlight on Michelle Burke
    Jan 7 2021
    Hello, this is Jane Gardner of finding your purpose, and today we're on a mission to create awareness that being self-aware of your personality and your purpose in life, can you make you more intentional in your actions and bring you more success in your business, your relationships and your life? So let's go. Welcome, everybody, to find your purpose. This is Jane Gardner and welcome. Today on our show, we have Michelle Burke of bossibly, and she aids young professionals and business leaders to become influential, influential leaders, to maintain the strength and core values, to help them create a culture of engagement which fosters predictable results and accountability. And awesome. I love this idea. So welcome, Michelle. I'm just blown away by you have coming by. So thank you for coming. And thank you, Michelle. Thank you for having me. Jane, I really appreciate it. It's great to have a chat with you today. That's great. Michelle, one of my little things that I love to do is to ask how you got to where you are and what your purpose you feel is what you're doing now and what your purpose is. So if you could give us an idea on that, Michelle, that would be great. That's my little payment back for coming on to my interview. Yeah, I would be happy to. So I have been coaching for years, even in corporate America. I love I have people coming to me for a problem, a problem. B, this is going on. Can you help me? And I think it was a couple of years ago, a former mentor of mine came to me and said, my daughter just graduated college, her master's degree. She was working with a team. She's now a leader in her own right. And he said, so she's having trouble with this team. I know. I know I can help her, but I'm her dad. That's probably going to end badly. I don't think I should be mentoring my daughter as a leader. So would you be willing to help her? And I'm like, oh, I would be honored to do that, Mike. I would love to give back in that way. And then the same. And two days later, I had a friend of mine who's a CEO of a business. She hires individuals and she said, I can attract them. I can hire them, but I can't engage them and retain them. Do you have anything in your bag of tricks that you can give me to help me? And I'm like, this is a thing within two days, three days of one another, these things are happening like there's something here. So that's how it possibly was born. Wow. Wow. Yeah. I love the idea that you're a mentor for for your friend, because I think a lot of people are just not aware of the need for having leadership training when you're hired as as a manager or a leader. And, you know, it's great that people are actually asking you. So this is amazing. Michelle, do you have an idea on maybe a story that you could tell us about one of your how you've been able to have the success that you've had with leadership training? Yeah, so it's a combination of training and coaching. And we were working with an organization right now who is scaling. And part of that scaling means that they're looking at increasing the revenue going from a two million dollar business to a ten million dollar business. And that that in of itself is tricky. When you have people that do they understand the vision, the purpose for the organization. And so this woman owned business has wonderful people on her team. However, they're not all. So let's use the boat analogy. They're all in the boat, but they're not rowing in unison. There's there's challenges, there's conflict. They're not working together. They don't understand their roles and responsibilities. And so while these they have great team members and teammates as part of this business. They're not positioned to scale. They don't have the processes in place, they don't have the roles and responsibilities delineated for the different individuals, they don't know how to handle conflict. And then they, the leaders of the business, are not showing up in a way to navigate where they should go and how they should get there. Wow. So so what when you come in to talk to them, obviously you find out what's wrong and then what's what's the first step. So they had no information on the roles and responsibilities of each of the team members. That's that's that's correct. Now it's not good. And so the first step is usually some type of assessment. Now, Jane, you and I were talking about the assessments are great. It gives you some insight to what's happening, what's happening, what's going sideways, where should they focus first? And provided they have their mission and their vision, they know where they're headed. And that and that they actually had that. They also we did a values exercise. So what is the organization's values? So do they have the right people or are they aligned with the people on the bus? Do they have the right people with the right values on the bus? Are they working with the right clients? And there were some situations where they weren't necessarily working ...
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    21 mins
  • Spotlight on Patrick Reilly of ResourcesInAction.com

    Spotlight on Patrick Reilly of ResourcesInAction.com
    Jan 6 2021
    Hello, this is Jane Gardner of finding your purpose, and today we're on a mission to create awareness that being self-aware of your personality and your purpose in life, can you make you more intentional in your actions and bring you more success in your business, your relationships and your life? So let's go. Welcome, everybody. This is Jane Gardner of Finding Your Purpose TV, and today I'm so excited to have another purpose driven business person on Spotlight for finding your purpose TV. And today it is Patrick Reilly. Welcome, Patrick. Patrick is an executive coach and consultant with more than twenty five years of experience supporting leaders. And I'm really excited because I love talking about leadership and he's looking to develop their executive presence so people listen and learn when they speak. So welcome. Patrick, I just want to say hello. Hello, Patrick. Nice to see you. How are you? Yes, it's a great day. It looks wonderful there. That's for sure. Patrick, I'd like to know how you got to the journey where you are now talking about leadership. That would be great. Sure, you know, it's very interesting, I sort of fell into it to a certain extent, I had a business opportunity that that showed up many years ago and I was invited to work on what at the time was an extremely large organizational change and consulting project. And it was it was really the biggest thing at the time. And it was a lot, quite frankly, I would say I was in way over my head, but they needed resources and apparently I was a quick learner. So that's how literally how I got started. And the other thing I would say that I think pertains to our conversation is that even though at the time what we did was called organizational consulting, it had a lot of the elements of what we call executive coaching today. So it was kind of a blended situation. And what I would say then and what I would say now and certainly you can see it today in many ways in our current world, is how much impact quality leadership has and that when you have a quality leader or leaders, things get done, things get done. Well, the world moves ahead. People have a better, better lives in front of them. And when you have ineffective leadership, things don't go so well. The problems become worse. They multiply. And so to me, when you have someone who is leading an organization or leading pieces of an organization and when they set a good direction that people can follow, want to follow, are excited about following, you can really get a lot of good stuff done, whether it's in the government, whether it's in industry, whether it's in business, whether it's in the nonprofit arena and anything, any place in our societies where it requires more than an individual to get things done. Good leadership makes a very, very big difference. And so I'm about making a difference and helping others to make a difference. And I really find myself ideally suited as being a catalyst, if you would, to helping leaders move themselves ahead and become better at what they do. So then does that answer your question, yeah, that's that's great, that's so exciting because I love talking about leadership. I'll just tell you a quick story in that you would probably be able to know the answer to. When I was working as a drafter, I worked in an engineering firm and it was a pretty crippled environment. And I was wondering if you have any stories on how you helped leaders to do help. I mean, it's not just a leader. It's it's the whole environment and the team and the landscape there would be wonderful if you could give us a story or two or. OK, well, you know, interestingly enough, a subset of what it is that I do is I actually have a niche specialty that I practice sometimes where I work with leaders who are very good at what they do, but are not very good into relating to other people. And so there's a there's a number of occasions where I've worked with people and I have one story at the top of my head. I was working with this gentleman. He was a very effective salesperson in the technology space and he had been recruited to another company. His boss had moved there. And so he used people die for killer salespeople and he knew how to sell. He also had developed an expertise in the industry vertical that the new company had moved into. So he was brought in and he just didn't know how to talk to people in the new environment. And in fact, the very first meeting that I went to with his team at the first break, I was shocked to see a number of people scurry outside and it was warm out and they picked up their cell phones and I asked them what they were doing and they were all calling their people because of some things that he'd said and done in the meeting. And even though he got results, he got them in a way that really alienated people. And in particular, he just didn't know how to adjust to the culture in the new organization, which was much more team oriented consensus building. And I ...
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    45 mins
  • 15 Spotlight on Dr. Jann Freed of www.jannfreed.com

    15 Spotlight on Dr. Jann Freed of www.jannfreed.com
    Jan 5 2021
    Hello, this is Jane Gardner of finding your purpose, and today we're on a mission to create awareness that being self-aware of your personality and your purpose in life, can you make you more intentional in your actions and bring you more success in your business, your relationships and your life? So let's go. Welcome, everybody. This is Jane Gardner finding your purpose TV and today on finding your purpose Spotlight, we're talking to Jann Freed, PhD. Sorry, my apologies to Dr. Jan Freed, Ph.D. She was a college professor of business management and leadership. And after 30 years as a tenured professor and endowment chair, she started an encore career as a leadership development and change management consultant. And she is the author of several books and co-author of a list of five books. And her last book is Leading with Wisdom Sage Advice from One Hundred Experts, which we'll be talking about. And we'll also be talking about her new book. So, Jann, welcome. Welcome. Please just say hello and say hello. I'm pleased to be here. And it was nice to make a connection with Jane. And thank you very much for inviting me to your show. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Jan, one of the things that I love to talk about with people is finding their purpose. And obviously, you've been doing your purpose for a long time. So but I'd like to talk about your new purpose, which is the Leadership Development and change management consultant and how you got to that journey, because, of course, you previously were in academics. So thank you. How did that happen? Yeah, well, it's interesting. So I fell into higher education teaching and absolutely loved it, had a lot of different courses. And but I had to drive two hours a day, an hour each way to get to my work and. When my kids graduate from college, my husband said, you know, we can afford to take a risk, you're tired of driving. And I wanted to I was at the stage of my life where I want to give back to the community. And I couldn't give back to the community where I live because I worked out of town and I couldn't give back to where I worked because I lived out of town. So I had to make a change and I have not looked back. Fortunately, I was able to teach a graduate leadership course for a different university for the past 10 years. So I kept my foot into teaching. And as a leadership development person, you know, I do workshops, I do speaking, I do some coaching. And it's really the same skill set that I enjoyed so much when I was teaching full time. So I eliminated grading papers, which is always kind of the hardest part about teaching. So I don't have to do that. And I can still use some of the same skills and I have just loved it. And so that's kind of been my journey taking really kind of taking the same skills that I like to use, but to a different audience. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's great. And I guess you probably started writing books when you were in academics because that's probably one of the requirements. But you're now doing maybe you could tell us when you started your leadership book, Leading with Wisdom and that you're writing a new one. And what what we can claim from that. I know that's that's good, Jane. I really started the leadership book. I was on sabbatical in two thousand or two thousand five, and my oldest son was graduating from high school and I wanted to be home more with since that was his last year home. But in order to get a sabbatical, I had a research project. So I started this project. And it's kind of interesting. I met Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, and he was speaking at a big presentation, giving a big presentation where I live. And I was able to kind of chat with him afterwards. And in talking with him, he said, give me a call. We'll talk about this, because I asked if I could be an apprentice, if I could come study under him. I said I was going to be on sabbatical and I wanted to learn from him. Would that be possible? And he said, well, I've never had anybody asked me that before. So he said, why don't you give me a call? So I called him and we had a conversation and he said, you know, you don't need to come learn from me. He said, let's just talk about what it is you want to do. So he asked me several questions and I said, well, I love to interview people. I love to you know, leadership is my focus. I had I held an endowed chair in leadership and character development. And so I said, that's my focus. I love to interview people. And he said, well, everybody's he said there are a lot of people writing leadership books and everybody's got the seven habits of this or the ten principles of that. And he said no one's really tying it together. So he said, why don't you be that person? So why don't you reach out, interview some of the top people and analyze the data and tie it together. So I set off on this journey and it says Sage advice from one hundred experts. But I really interviewed more than one hundred people. And I continue to ...
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    32 mins
  • 14 Spotlight on Mitchell Kraus

    14 Spotlight on Mitchell Kraus
    Jan 4 2021
    Hello, this is Jane Gardner of Finding your Purpose, and today we're on a mission to create awareness that being self-aware of your personality and your purpose in life, can you make you more intentional in your actions and bring you more success in your business, your relationships and your life. So let's go. Welcome, everybody, to finding your purpose, and today it's Spotlight, where we talk to purpose driven entrepreneurs. And on today's show, we're talking to Mitchell Kraus of Capital Intelligence Associates, and he's going to be talking about leveraging your wealth and to create the world you want, which sounds like a wonderful thing. Welcome, Mitchell. Please introduce yourself. And I'm Mitchell Kraus of Capital Intelligence Associates. I'm a wealth manager here in Santa Monica, and I've been doing this for twenty seven years now and really love working with people who believe their wealth isn't just their financial wealth, that they're trying to leverage that to create a better world and a better family and everything that they're interested in besides growing rich. Well well, Mitchell, what I like to do is to ask you how you got to where you are, how you found the purpose that is driving your business and creating your success. So could you tell us a little history about your company? That would be great. Thanks, Mitchell. Of course, I graduated in college and found myself in a job life insurance industry, and I learned very quickly that I was good at selling life insurance, but my job was to sell it to a lot of people who didn't need it. And as a fourth generation in the financial services business, my father and I had a conversation and I went to work at a financial planning firm which really found some great passion for because I was selling life insurance to those who needed it or really I was helping individuals create financial plans and reach those financial plans. And it was very fulfilling. But what I learned is in financial planning, the end all be all is sort of helping people retire towards that retirement. And I learned that a lot of people had other goals and needs besides just building wealth so they could retire some day. That I had clients and friends who not only wanted to take care of their nest egg in their portfolio, but they want to help their family, they want to raise their kids in a socially conscious way, they wanted to help their parents more broadly. They wanted to help various organizations, whether it's their church or their local non-profit. And their wealth wasn't, in the financial sense, designed to really leverage for those causes. And then I have other clients who really cared about the world, whether it's political reasons or environmental reasons. And I've learned that through the years that people can leverage the wealth they have their financial wealth to help create maybe it's social wealth, maybe it's community wealth, cultural wealth and leverage it. Sometimes I've helped friends with build their physical, their health through through their finances and realizing where they could leverage that or even build more time. And it's really people are so concentrated on their financial wealth and trying to build the biggest portfolio possible, that looking at those issues and using their financial wealth as leverage might not build as much of a financial wealth, but will create a much more meaningful position for them. So could you tell us a little bit more about socially responsible investing and health investing? I have not heard of health investing for your health, but of course, you know, we live in different countries. So maybe that's one of the reasons. But certainly the social and socially responsible investing, I know that I have legacies in my will, but is there other opportunities where you work? Yes, socially responsible, responsible investing, also known as ESG investing, so environmental, social governance investing is something that's been around for hundreds of years in some ways. And early on, a lot of the Presbyterian's actually decided that they would not invest in companies that supported the slave trade. The slave trade so goes back that far hundreds of years. And I think in a more modern approach to it, there's two fold is first asking yourself, you know, if you inherited this company, would you feel good about the business they're in? Would you want to be in this business when you buy out a business like this? And for some people, that's very much environmental issues. I wouldn't want an oil drill next door. To me, it might be more on a religious issue. And I have clients who are very religious who will not invest in companies that support certain certain things that they believe are against their religion.More on a social matter that lots of clients should not invest in for profit prisons and who doesn't want to invest in GMOs. And it's not my duty to tell an individual what their purposes and what their values are, but it's to work with...
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    28 mins