Sara Avant Stover is a business strategist, Internal Family Systems practitioner and author based in Boulder, Colorado. She works with female spiritual entrepreneurs to help them with both the spiritual and practical aspects of building a business and pursuing inner transformation. She draws on 25 years as a yoga and meditation practitioner and a teacher, author, and entrepreneur.    Sara is an "overachiever." She started dancing ballet at the age of three and continued until she went to...

"All the past and all the future are present in this moment." — Blake D. Bauer   Blake D. Bauer is the author of the international best-seller You Were Not Born To Suffer. A speaker and teacher, he has studied a wide range of modalities, including psychology, nutrition, traditional Chinese medicine, and past life regression therapy-hypnosis. All that Blake has learned started as a quest when he was 18 to simply find a way to stop the pain he was experiencing. He found his calling in...

"Relationships are where we receive the greatest fulfillment and the greatest challenge."  — Elysabeth Williamson Today's guest is Elysabeth Williamson, a self-taught yoga teacher of 35 years who developed Principle-Based Partner Yoga,™ a system of yoga that focuses on relationship and connection with others. She also uses this work to encourage people to think and talk about death and dying as a way to live life more fully. She is the author of the award-winning book The Pleasures and...

"Really, death is a journey into and through the mind."  — Andrew Holocek  In this episode, I speak with Andrew Holecek, the author of several books on meditation and lucid dreaming. While he's had a career as a dental surgeon, he has had a lifelong interest in meditation and the wisdom traditions. In 1998, he went on a three-year retreat at Sopa Choling in Nova Scotia, Canada. He calls this experience "transformative," and it was in his last year he had the idea for his first book, The...

"The fundamental idea of gross national happiness is to say that the center of our attention should be the happiness of all people as well as all life forms."  — Tho Va Hinh   This week I speak to a returning guest, Tho Va Hinh, author of The Culture of Happiness and founder of the Eurasia Foundation and the Eurasia Learning Institute for Happiness and Wellbeing. He's designed the Happy Schools curriculum, which started its first program in Vietnam and is now being tried in Switzerland...

“When we're no longer grasping for the money, it often flows more easily to us."  — Spencer Sherman   This week's guest is Spencer Sherman, CEO of Abacus Wealth Partners, a certified mindfulness teacher and author of The Cure for Money Madness. He also teaches people how to have a healthier relationship with money through his online courses and is on the faculty at NYU's Inner MBA program.    In this episode Spencer and I dig into how our relationship with money is shaped by our parents,...

“If we want to be free, at some point we have to plant our staff in the ground and say, 'I am here.'"  — Koshin Paley Ellison This week's guest is Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison, founder and guiding teacher of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care. Ellison is an author, Jungian psychotherapist and ACPE Certified Chaplain Educator. Koshin has served as the co-director for Contemplative Care Services in the Department of Integrative Medicine at Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center and...

"I just believe we were put here for a purpose." – Don Lupo   This week's guest is Don Lupo, an advocate for the homeless and others in need. Twenty-three years ago, Lupo left a career as a successful businessman to start a new career in service to his community, the city of Birmingham, AL. In 2016, he was awarded the FBI Director's Community Leadership Award and was named one of the "Top 50 Over 50" in the state of Alabama; in 2018 he was awarded the Civilian Service Award by the...

Jay Steinfeld |  Experimenting and Enjoying the Ride  "You really never know when you set out to do anything, if it's going to work. If you do know, then you're not experimenting enough."  — Jay Steinfeld    This week's guest is Jay Steinfeld, author of Lead from the Core and founder of Blinds.com, which he sold to Home Depot in 2014. Steinfeld remained the company's CEO until he left in 2020 to not retire but, as he calls it, "rewire." He teaches business and entrepreneurship at Rice...

"I'm on a mission to share with the world that you can have a good quality of life and a successful business."  — Dr. Sabrina Starling    This week's guest is Dr. Sabrina Starling, The Business Psychologist, bestselling author of the How To Hire the Best series and The 4 Week Vacation and host of the Profit by Design podcast. Sabrina's company, Tap the Potential, helps entrepreneurs learn how to build successful businesses without sacrificing their quality of life, health, and...

Nicole Glaros | It's About the How, Not the What “It's so much more powerful to be a 'we' than an 'I.' You get so much further when it's ours, not mine."  — Nicole Glaros   This week's guest is Nicole Glaros, partner and chief investment strategy officer at Techstars, a venture capital firm in Boulder, Colorado. Nicole joined Techstars in 2008, bringing her experience as a three-time startup founder and her work with an early business incubator. Since joining Techstars, she's helped build...

“If you don't know where you're going, how are you making the decisions to get there?"  — Ryan Tansom   Ryan Tansom is founder of Arkona, a company that helps businesses grow with intention through trainings and fractional CFO services. I am thrilled to have Ryan join me on the podcast, since he and his cofounder, Pat Hobby, have been a big help to me in my own business, imageOne, and have helped me learn how to make decisions with more intention. The Intentional Growth™ Framework, along...

“We've got to get to a place where the conversations are deeper at a heart level.” — Melvin Gravely   This week's guest is Melvin Gravely, entrepreneur and author of Dear White Friend. Melvin is CEO of TriVersity, a black-owned construction company in Cincinnati that was founded and continues to run under the principle that diversity brings power. He has also written several other books, on entrepreneurship and race.    Melvin credits his successes with "disruptions" that steered him on a...

George Mumford | In the Eye of the Hurricane  “When you get rid of noise and clutter, nothing's there. But because nothing's there, there could be anything there.” — George Mumford   This week I chatted with George Mumford, renowned teacher and coach on mindfulness and performance. George has worked with such athletes as Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal and many other elite athletes and executives. Mumford is the author of The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance.   ...

“Conflict is the hallmark of progress, success and happiness when you deal with it well.” — Gabe Karp    My guest this week is Gabe Karp, former trial attorney, venture capitalist, speaker, and author of Don't Get Mad at Penguins and Other Ways to Detox the Conflict in Your Life and Business. After ten years as a trial attorney, Gabe joined the startup ePrize, now Merkle, which became one of the leading companies in the digital promotions industry. He is an operating partner at Detroit...

“It’s very simple. Decide when you get up in the morning that you’re going to have a terrific day, no matter what happens.” — Dr. Sri Rao   My guest this week is Dr. Srikumar Rao, an elite coach who works with business executives, professionals, and entrepreneurs. He is widely known for his popular course, Creativity and Personal Mastery, first developed for Columbia Business School. His talk, “How Can You Plug-in to Happiness Now?” has had more than a million downloads and he is the author...

“What does it mean to lead from a context of curiosity, to being more committed to learning than being right?” — Kaley Klemp   This week, I chat with Kaley Klemp, a transformational executive and leadership coach and coauthor of The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. She helps leaders align themselves with their priorities and values; she also helps high performing teams overcome challenges using Conscious Leadership practices. Kaley is a master enneagram specialist, a personality...

“A lot of being human is… pinballing around in this world, versus realizing that there's a deeper intention behind why we're here.” — Stephen Dinan   A little more wisdom is never a bad thing. And it might be easier to access than you think, if you’re open-minded. My guest on the podcast this week is Stephen Dinan, a lifelong learner who now helps others on their quest for spiritual growth and awareness. Dinan founded The Shift Network, an online educational platform offering courses and...

“My mind has caused me tremendous pain in my life that has felt outside of my control. But I can build a relationship with it, and ultimately, my mind can be a good place to be.” — Matthew Hepburn Your mind tries so hard to take care of you: Give it a little credit and a little help. This week’s guest is Matthew Hepburn, a meditation teacher who knows first hand how complicated managing your own mental health can be.  While studying to be a jazz pianist in college, Hepburn started...

“We need to find the interruptions that bring us out of the state of anxiety and into the present moment long enough that we can make better choices.” — Lodro Rinzler   You can’t completely avoid stress — so prepare yourself with the best tools available to manage it.    Lodro Rinzler has been practicing meditation since he was a child, and teaching it since he was in college. He’s the author of multiple books that help people apply Buddhist teachings to modern life, and runs courses on...

“Every person has the opportunity to discover what their language is in the business world. The more time they spend living that language, the better they will do.” — Lewis Schiff   Being an entrepreneur gives you the freedom to get hands-on in every area of business. The best entrepreneurs learn which parts they excel at and which ones are better left to someone else — and they do as much of what they’re good at as they can. Lewis Schiff calls this the first habit, and it’s just one of...

“Paying it forward” is not just a nice idea to Nipun Mehta: It’s a way of living and leading that can change our lives for the better. A former Silicon Valley engineer, Nipun left Big Tech to found ServiceSpace, a support network for projects that nurture kindness and compassion. Learn about indirect reciprocity (and how you’re already doing it), why shortcuts are the long route to dissatisfaction, and the connection between uncertainty and compassion.

Sister Lucy Kurien took on a mission that seemed almost impossible: Providing impoverished and abused women and children across India with safe places to live, regardless of their religion or caste. She had no resources — just her faith that it was the right thing to do. Today, she’s housed and fed thousands of people. Learn how she followed her conscience even when it made her mission harder, the impact of COVID-19 on Maher, and Sister Lucy’s message for people of all different religions.

Mindfulness is good for more than a morning meditation or a nighttime wind-down. Nate Klemp, author and co-founder of corporate coaching company LifeXT, draws on his mindfulness practice in daily tasks, from answering emails to taking crowded flights. Find out how changing your breathing can decrease anxiety; how gratitude can instantly shift your mental state; how to manage distractions (beyond just ignoring them); and the value of making an effort in your relationships every single day.