Disrupt Yourself Podcast with Whitney Johnson

To kick off 2020 I am talking to Simon Sinek, who is best known for popularizing the concept of “why” in his 2009 TED talk. To date, it is the third most-watched talk at TED.com with over 40 million views. Simon is the author of several best-selling books, including “Start With Why,” “Leaders Eat Last,” and “The Infinite Game,” which was released in October of 2019.

Join us as we discuss how to shift your mindset from finite to infinite, the role of worthy rivals, and how becoming the leader you wish you had can change the future of a company.

Complete show notes and podcast transcript with links mentioned in the episode available at https://whitneyjohnson.com/simon-sinek

Today our guest is Stew Friedman, an organizational psychologist at Wharton. He's one of the most influential management thinkers in the world, as named by Thinkers 50, one of HR Magazine’s most influential thought leaders, and one of America's most influential men who have made life better for working parents according to Working Mother Magazine.

And this is the subject of his latest book, Parents Who Lead, which he co-authored with Alyssa Westring, a management professor at DePaul University. Because for anyone who has become a parent, you will know that parenting is a very big disruption, but if you will let it, it will help you slingshot into who you want to, and can be.

Joining us this week is Tina Opie, author of “Shared Sisterhood: How to Take Collective Action for Racial and Gender Equity at Work”. My conversation with Tina was a tough one, but I hope it’s just as meaningful for you as it was for me.

Our guest today is Tom Rath, the New York times bestselling author of How Full is Your Bucket and Amazon's top selling non-fiction book of all time StrengthsFinder 2.0. For the past five years Tom has served as Gallup senior scientist and he recently co-founded the publishing company Silicon Guild with Peter Sims (a previous guest on this podcast). Tom has sold over 10 million books, including his latest works Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute to the World, and the autobiographical It's Not About You.

While many thought leaders focus on individuals “finding their passion,” Tom believes that we must shift focus outward to find work worth doing.

Join us as we discuss the “buckets” of contribution, how to have conversations at cocktail parties, and the importance of challenging experiences.

Transcript and show notes available at: https://whitneyjohnson.com/tom-rath

My guest today is Claire Diaz-Ortiz, digital strategist and author of the new book Social Media Success for Every Brand. Claire’s journey in social media expertise began as an early user of Twitter, and to put that in perspective, her Twitter handle is @claire. That’s it. No other words, numbers, or symbols. Just @claire. After effectively using the platform to raise funds and promote awareness for her nonprofit organization, Twitter hired her to help others do the same and proactively make a positive change in the world.

Claire took this experience and successfully pivoted into consulting with startups on their branding and marketing strategy. She would create detailed marketing plans, including a strategic social media presence, but she began to notice an unfortunate trend: many clients firmly believed that their best social media strategy was to have a post “go viral.”

“I think there is this crazy mistaken idea that social media is really only good for, quote on quote, going viral. And that, thus, that is your only strategy when it comes to being on social media....[a]nd it was only after kind of this experience and me thinking through it in my head that I really realized that a clear solution needed to be found.”

Her solution was to create the SHARE model, a social media strategy based on the principles of the StoryBrand marketing framework developed by Donald Miller. SHARE is an acronym for the components of the strategy, and you’ll want to have a pen and paper ready to take notes when Claire outlines it on the podcast today.

Full show notes and links at https://whitneyjohnson.com/podcast