Blog

Rosalind Price has been a grief and transitions coach since losing her mother at 16, her father at 23, and her former husband in 2022. Her napkin reframes what resilience means for people everyone else depends on. Inside: cumulative grief, the death of an expectation, and what to say to someone on your team who is grieving.

Mike Batista is an engineer by training who builds healthcare companies for a living. After seven years of assembling the component parts, he says the one part you cannot assemble is the one that predicts success. His napkin reads: you can't engineer PASSION.

Mridu Parikh built a business while avoiding the one activity that would decide whether it survived. Her husband named it in four words on a Sunday morning. Here is what she changed, why the Power Hour works, and what a leader's attention teaches a whole team.

Jim Brown had a heart attack two days after a bike ride through Central Park. He had figured he was healthy enough. Twenty years of advising CEOs and boards later, he names four risks that build inside successful companies long before anything shows up on a financial statement.

Hugo Brooks built, grew and sold businesses for more than 35 years before his wife asked him a six word question he couldn't answer. He calls the pattern ambition autopilot: getting so good at the work that you stop asking whether it's still the work you want. Here's how to notice it, and what to do once you have.

Linda Galindo spent 30 years teaching accountability after broadcast journalism taught her who really owns an outcome. Her napkin reads: "'CULTURE' is where ACCOUNTABILITY goes to hide." Inside: rescue, fix and save, the untouchables test, and the one question that moves accountability back to the leader.

Anna Rosa Parker, founder of EVOKE, says stories create identity and identity makes the decisions. For a founder whose old story has receipts, that is a harder problem than it sounds. This article works through how to notice an identity that is finished doing its job, and what to do before the proof arrives.

Lauragaye Jackson moved through divorce, the death of her mother, a child leaving home and the elimination of her executive role inside eighteen months. She did not treat any of it as erasure. Her napkin, and this article, make the case for taking inventory before you reinvent.

Laura Simms left acting when it was finally starting to work, and spent years learning why that was harder than failing. In Episode 393 she tells Govindh Jayaraman how high performers can tell the difference between a rough patch and an outgrown identity, and why the first question is why rather than what.

Jisook Choi ran operations and finance inside a hedge fund for years, then spent a decade studying something else entirely. Her napkin argues that the effort muscle built for one chapter can block the answer the next chapter needs. Her pre-meeting practice, the listening exercise she ran live on the show, and where it does not apply.

Tim Woodbridge was a registered nurse for more than eight years before buying his first mobile home park in 2019. Today WCG holds 25 communities and more than 1,100 pads. His napkin says resilience compounds faster than capital, and the way he uses rejection explains what that means in practice.

Doug Noll walked away from a commercial trial practice to become a peacemaker, and spent ten years teaching people serving life sentences to stop prison violence. The first skill he taught them was how to name what another person feels. Episode 387 looks at what that does to a leadership team.

Dan Cosgrove, CEO of Better Benefits USA, spent years inside Procter & Gamble, Berkshire Hathaway and Nike before becoming the employer paying the bill. His napkin reads: make yourself obsolete before someone else does. The healthcare argument underneath it belongs in every established business.

Sean Finter's napkin opens with a line every driven founder should hear. You're not broken, you're running old code. What yellow lights cost, how the loop of trigger, story, reaction and proof keeps you stuck, and what to build instead.

Moving slow kills the business, and most single decisions don't. Luis Munoz Aycart and his co-founders left New York for Mombasa with carry-on bags and no business plan. What they learned about decisions that create information, and the friendship that lets them argue fast.

Kim Bode has run 834 for close to 20 years. She lost the house the company is named after, survived an embezzlement and a two-year legal battle, then had her best year ever. Then she made a harder call. Her napkin says find comfort in the uncomfortable.

Dan Cataldi, founder and CEO of Groove, wrote one line on his napkin. Shamelessness is a superpower. A wrestler, a late surfer and a founder on why the willingness to look like a beginner opens more doors than certainty does.

Alexander Kopelman wants us to stop asking children what they want to be when they grow up. His replacement question is simpler. Please tell me about you. Why it changes how we parent, teach and lead, and the small shifts it asks of adults.

Bob Lennon launched Thermalwood Canada in 2008 with a technology North America had never heard of. Four months later the market crashed. His napkin explains what carried him through. Surround yourself with the expertise you need, then truly listen.