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The Impact Entrepreneur

Mike Flynn takes you behind closed doors and invites you into his conversations with game changing entrepreneurs. These conversations go beyond success and failure, beyond product or service or platform, to uncover what is really behind the decisions these entrepreneurs make and what IMPACT they hope to have in the world.
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Now displaying: February, 2017
Feb 27, 2017

This episode is part of the disruption series. We’re going to discover how incredible people disrupt their lives, their industries, and the world to create a powerful impact.

Stephan Aarstol is the Founder & CEO at Tower Paddle Boards, author of The Five Hour Workday, and one of the most unique success stories from ABC’s Shark Tank.

Stephan didn’t have the most elegant pitch on Shark Tank, but he still secured investment from Mark Cuban. The show wasn’t his endgame – it was just the first stepping stone towards disrupting an industry.

The five-hour workday was the second stepping stone.

“You want to get your employees to where they’ll run through walls for you. To do that in the modern world with knowledge workers, you can’t whip them harder or give them a little bit more money. You have to do something that is meaningful to them.”

Tower Paddle Boards was an attractive place to work, but they still lost some of their top talent. Stephan wanted to sweeten the pot.

How does Stephan change his company to attract the best people?

  • Transition from an e-commerce company to a brand
  • Embrace a consistent company culture
  • Shorten the workday (for the same compensation)

Stephan wanted to attract efficient team members and repel slow workers; he wanted superstars. If you can adapt to a five-hour workday, you are rewarded with more control over your work life and personal life. If you can’t adapt, you’re fired.

This strategy puts full autonomy and pressure on the employee to figure things out, and the end result is that they actually think and act a lot more like entrepreneurs. The friction helps them cut waste and identify better tools. “You turn everybody into their own little productivity expert.”

Think about how you work – don’t be satisfied with just working.

Head over to FiveHourWorkday.com to read the first 48 pages of the book, receive a subscription to Tower Magazine, and download a bonus list of 38 amazing productivity tools… all for free!

“Work is not the point of life. The point of work is to finance this incredible life for us.”

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Don’t be a podcast junkie…

Resources:

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We are also brought to you by the Lawton Marketing Group, a full service advertising and design agency serving companies and entrepreneurs at all levels. The are your one stop shop for all your website, logo, social media, print, app design and reputable management needs.

Visit LawtonMG.com for more info.

Production & Development for The Impact Entrepreneur Show by Podcast Masters

Feb 20, 2017

This week we’re kicking off the disruption series. We’re going to discover how incredible people disrupt their lives, their industries, and the world to create a powerful impact.

 

Today’s guest, Steven Kotler, is a New York Times bestselling author, an award-winning journalist, and the Co-Founder / Director of Research for the Flow Genome Project.

 

He is one of the world’s leading experts on ultimate human performance and he has spent his entire career exploring how people do the impossible.

 

  • Rise of Superman is about how action and adventure sports athletes reinvent kinesthetic possibility.

 

  • Abundance and Bold are about the entrepreneurs who have built the fastest and largest companies in the shortest amount of time.

 

  • Stealing Fire (Steven’s newest book) is about a $4 trillion underground movement to harness alternate states of consciousness to massively uplevel performance.

 

 

Through years of research, Steven has discovered that the secret to disrupting human performance is the same across the board: altered states of consciousness. This includes flow states, meditative states, psychedelic states, and more.

 

“One of the most well-established facts in the whole history of psychology is that altered states are incredibly good for us, and it’s not common knowledge.”

 

If you’re not familiar, altered states of consciousness can be defined as a specific bandwidth of non-ordinary states of consciousness where...

  • our normal sense of self vanishes
  • our normal sense of time disappears
  • we are freed from the drudgery of daily life
  • we get a sense of effortless motivation
  • and we can tap into a level of inspiration information that is normally unavailable.

 

In Stealing Fire, Steven uses the Greek term ecstasis to refer to this phenomenon and bypass the negative stigma placed upon altered states of consciousness. He also discusses the four forces accelerating this movement towards the upper possibility space of human experience, which he calls the Four Forces for Ecstasy:

  1. Psychology
  2. Neurobiology
  3. Pharmacology
  4. Technology

 

Altered states of consciousness aren’t just for team building at Burning Man. They can be directly applied to your life and workspace.

  • After rolling out mindfulness training at Aetna, they gained $3,000 per employee in productivity and saved $2,000 per employee in healthcare costs.
  • At Patagonia, the Founder has a “let my people go surfing” policy to encourage flow.
  • Standing in a power pose for a few minutes can change your physiology and empower you.
  • We get more flow any time the challenge at hand slightly exceeds our skillset.
  • Physical, emotional, psychological, and social risk can all focus our attention.

 

We are all created with the potential to do more than we could possibly ask for or possibly imagine. Steven’s research is a gift that will help us take a few steps towards disrupting what is possible. If you’re interested in exploring the fringes of human possibility, you can’t do better than Steven’s books.

 

These are a few of my favorites…

  • BOLD – This book challenged me to have a bigger vision for my life and the impact I'm capable of having. I still don't believe I am thinking boldly enough.

  • Abundance – Beyond loving the word, this book woke me up to the fact that NOW is the best time in human history to create and innovate amazing solutions to today's problems and tomorrow's challenges. Contrary to past experience or what one may have been led to believe, the resources are abundantly available.

  • Rise of Superman – We all have the ability to perform at super optimized levels. We refer to it as being "in the zone." God created us with an amazing organ - the brain - and if we put ourselves in the right environment it is amazing what each of us is capable of doing.

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Don’t be a podcast junkie…

Resources:

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We are brought to you by the Lawton Marketing Group. A full service advertising and design agency serving companies and entrepreneurs at all levels. The are your one stop shop for all your web site, logo, social media, print, app design and reputable management needs.

Visit LawtonMG.com for more info.

Production & Development for The Impact Entrepreneur Show by Podcast Masters

Feb 13, 2017

The past couple episodes have focused on courage. In today’s episode I am going to highlight the key points from the conversations I had with Justin Constantine and Noah Galloway. I’ll also share some of my thoughts on courage and what it means to me.

  • We all have the skills and ability to overcome the greatest adversity and most difficult challenges... if we choose to.
  • You are stronger than you think you are.
  • Depression has no reason, depression is real, and depression can strike anyone. You can be the most powerful person on the planet and depression can still affect you.
  • It takes both strength and courage to overcome depression, but that process starts by acknowledging that you are vulnerable. When you allow yourself to be vulnerable, no one else can make you vulnerable.
  • Sometimes being courageous simply means talking to someone or seeking help.

You are special. You are created for greatness. You are courageous.

Go out and make an impact by encouraging someone today – by adding to their heart – even if that someone happens to be you.

Resources:

This episode is brought to you by SY Partners and Unstuck, helping you make a change by identifying the things holding you up. Their new program “Life Courses” are based on decades of learning about what inspires people to change. It is created by SYPartners, a transformation company that helps individuals, teams, and organizations become the best version of themselves, so they can create massive positive impact in business and society.

To start making your change, visit Life Courses by Unstuck on the web.

 

We are also brought to you by the Lawton Marketing Group. A full service advertising and design agency serving companies and entrepreneurs at all levels. The are your one stop shop for all your web site, logo, social media, print, app design and reputable management needs.

Visit LawtonMG.com for more info.

Production & Development for The Impact Entrepreneur Show by Podcast Masters

Feb 6, 2017

Today we’re learning more about courage with Noah Galloway, a former U.S. Army soldier, motivational speaker, and author of Living with No Excuses: The Remarkable Rebirth of an American Soldier.

Growing up, Noah’s father worked construction with only one hand. It was a powerful inspiration that ended up affecting him more than he ever expected.

During the Iraq War, Noah lost his left arm and leg.

“Someone is going to read Living With No Excuses and see that they are not alone. Whatever they are going through, they can get through it, get some help, and see there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”

He struggled with depression and denial for a few years before embracing physical activity again. He started running marathons and, in 2014, he was named the Ultimate Men’s Health Guy.

He spoke on The Ellen Degeneres Show, The Today Show, and came in 3rd place on Dancing With The Stars.

Noah’s run on Dancing With The Stars highlights the power of mindset. You have the ability to overcome any obstacle that is presented to you.

“I was glazing over the depression part. I felt like it was unrealistic to people to lose two limbs, have all those things happen to you, and then make it on the cover of the world’s largest men’s magazine and go on Dancing With The Stars. Not having that piece of the puzzle didn’t make sense with me and I wanted to share that.”

War is full of obstacles, but writing Living With No Excuses was an obstacle too. Sharing your most difficult experiences and making yourself vulnerable requires incredible courage, but it is so important.

In Living With No Excuses, Noah emphasizes that struggle is universal. No experience “earns you the right” to be depressed. Depression can happen to anyone.

“Depression is real and can strike anyone. You can be the most powerful person on the planet but depression can still affect you.”

 

Don’t be a podcast junkie…

Resources:

 

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We are brought to you by the Lawton Marketing Group. A full service advertising and design agency serving companies and entrepreneurs at all levels. The are your one stop shop for all your website, logo, social media, print, app design and reputable management needs.

Visit LawtonMG.com for more info.



Production & Development for The Impact Entrepreneur Show by Podcast Masters

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