“Val-Unique” is the term Chip R. Bell uses to describe his unique elaboration on the value-added concept, adding elements that surprise the customer in ways that delight them. A world renowned keynote speaker and founder of the Chip Bell Group, Dr. Bell is the author of several national best-selling books. Discovering what he loves, what gets him up in the morning, changed his life. “I think the degree to which you have the opportunity—and that's a key part—to pursue (what you love) can be important. I learned it early and made it my deliberate effort.
An L.A. Times bestselling author and blogger for Psychology Today, Cathy Scott left a secretarial job and broke into journalism. She wrote eleven books and taught journalism at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine. Recent TV appearances include Dateline and the Today Show. A line of dialog in the film, An Officer and a Gentleman, crystallized her motivation: “If you want something, go get it!” She recalls, “That just resonated with me. You have to go with your gut. That's what I went with. And it was hard.”
With 20+ years’ experience, Alexis Davis Smith is a solid communications strategist, a leader in Atlanta’s public relations industry. She is responsible for creating breakthrough and strategic communications programs for all Precise Communications clients, including leading global companies such as Coca-Cola and Toyota. “I’ve learned that I don’t have to be afraid, and shouldn’t be shy about expressing my strengths, and good work generates referrals. My first client was Coca-Cola Company, working on Super Bowl 34. Coke has been with us 15 years. Most of our current clients come from referrals.”
Through his podcast, the ConsciousMillionaire.com, J.V. Crum III, teaches how to achieve wealth—with a high purpose. He helps entrepreneurs make a positive impact and bigger profits. A mastery of psychology, law, and an MBA enrich his top-ranked podcast. Two new podcasts and a Conscious World Movement top his plans for the future. To succeed, he had to drop two childhood misconceptions: 1) “Wealthy” doesn’t mean you did something wrong to get rich; and 2) Business is not the place you go to lose money. With a conscious approach, “You're doing it from a conscious desire to uplift other people.”
Most Americans don’t negotiate their level of compensation, explains expert Victoria Pynchon, of SheNegotiates.com. Although she specializes in reducing the gender pay gap between women and men, few clients of either gender know the market value of their work. A well-researched strategy can yield enviable results. With hard data about market payscales, and an openness to employer’s concerns, an employee or job-seeker can formulate a negotiating strategy for a win-win situation. Knowing market values helps depersonalize the issue, increasing the prospects for greater personal compensation.
Best-selling author Rob Kosberg, founder of www.BestSellerPublishing.org, teaches entrepreneurs how to stop hunting clients and position themselves as the hunted. His program—Publish. Promote. Profit.—helps clients create their own guaranteed best seller, and grow their income via speaking engagements, free publicity and lead generation strategies. “There are passions and people you're led to have an impact on their lives. You have to do the work internally to discover that and figure it out. When you do, you find a flow where you feel like you're not working at all, and can do amazing things.”
EntrepreneurOnFire.com’s Kate Erickson is Content Creator and Community Leader for, one of the fastest growing podcasts in the world. She blogs, inspires, encourages entrepreneurs and manages marketing campaigns. She leads mastermind Tribe and Podcasters' Paradise, offering support and focused engagement to the Fire Nation community, both online and in person. Getting passed over for a corporate promotion strengthened her entrepreneurial resolve. “…it's one of the best things that have ever happened to me. Nobody else could give what I wanted to me. I could only create and give that to myself.
“Coaching is what I really love doing,” declares Sandy Vilas, owner of CoachInc.com, operator of Coach U and Corporate Coach U. “I love supporting entrepreneurs and professionals in dramatically increasing their business and enhancing the quality of their lives.” He coaches clients from all over the world. “The moment I decided to become a fulltime coach, I noticed this sense of peace and fulfillment washing over me. I was having so much fun. I was so passionate, so excited to use knowledge, wisdom and experience that I'd accumulated over 50 years to help others avoid the mistakes I’d made.
Living and painting in Atlanta, Georgia, Jennifer J L Jones has been creating art for 16 years full time, loving it all. A graduate of the prestigious School of The Art Institute of Chicago, her work is represented in galleries and included in public and private collections worldwide. “Hearing from random people after the disaster of 9/11 that they had seen my artwork and it made them feel better was a huge turning point! I realized my art had a healing effect on other people, not just on me. I felt I was starting to contribute something.”
In creating "NetWeaving"—building trusted relationships by helping others—Bob Littell drew on principles learned from building his own career and company, and by showcasing others who had been “NetWeaving”—before he coined the term over 16 years ago. Learning and living out Netweaving principles continues to enrich Bob’s life. He stays busy sharing them worldwide and enacting the two mottos of NetWeaving: 1) Good things happen to people who make good things happen; 2) When you open the door for someone else, you never know who you will meet as a result.
At The Bee Colony, founder Julie Salisbury helps clients unearth their unique story to blend communications with communities of support and engagement, creating social and cultural movements that support a purpose, belief or brand platform. Her work synthesizes traditional and emerging media to build brands with sustainable social currency. At age 26, she was working at an ad agency that was going downhill. Two clients leaving the agency offered to go with her if she set up shop. Despite never having started a firm, the story of The Little Engine That Could inspired her to take the leap.
Master-protégé relationships have guided James Moore throughout his life, including his transition to his current life as an oil painter from an early analytical career. He captures beauty with a brushstroke, like a musical note, using paint as his music. After the business world stopped being fun. James applied his motto: Move away from things you don’t like, go toward what you do.” He found a master and plunged into his art, foregoing art school. “I could afford to study with an Elvis rather than sit in a classroom. It was essential to overcome feelings of intimidation and fear.”
Her empowerment coaching finds Karina Andersen working with inmates in a South African prison. She takes her Circles of Change work and authentic leadership training wherever she perceives she is led to go. She shares her journey individually and in small groups. “This prison work found me in 2007, because my journey had prepared and molded me,” she tells podcast host Don Hutcheson. “We begin to understand we have imprisoned ourselves in our minds. It doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't mean that I am coming in and telling people what to do. Love is my Essence. Guidance my Passion!”
Mickey Batsell is a leading authority on long-term care planning and related issues, with 40+ years professional experience in helping individuals and families navigate the path of preparing for the devastating cost of a long-term care event. While working with traditional insurance policies in the mid-1970s, his employer introduced a new product called long-term care insurance. Around that time, he began to be faced with aging relatives who would likely need this kind of help. He set about learning everything I could in this relatively new field.
As creative director and co-founder Cara Barineau of Blue Marble Media, a video and motion graphics agency is celebrating 20 years of award-winning creative and production services for companies like Georgia-Pacific, Verizon, McKesson, Ariba, SAP, Sonoco and many others. Starting out in journalism, Cara soon found she could use more of her creativity in advertising. As agency work was becoming increasingly cut-throat, she knew she faced a life-changing career decision to make. Listen as she describes her “fork in the road” that led to video to Don Hutcheson, host of DiscoverTalentPodcast.com.
The dynamic founder of the Media Buyer Association, Charles Kirkland is aiming high: helping one million entrepreneurs, small businesses, and advertising agencies create successful paid media campaigns through advanced training and resources that are developed from real world experiences. Charles brings the “real world experience.” Surviving and thriving through peaks and valleys, Charles persisted in following his passion. Now, he says, “I’ve been broke and successful so many times, I just want to help other people to avoid the roller-coaster—and enjoy the climb.”
After 25 years in high stakes business litigation, Victoria Pynchon took a mediation course that changed her life. Nearly a decade after receiving her degree in conflict resolution from the world-famous Straus Institute, her business, She Negotiates Consulting and Training is prospering by helping individual women close their own personal gender wage gap. Going out on her own she discovered how hard it was to attract business. She introduced herself online. “Now, everything I do is sourced in social media, blogging and networking on the internet, and my business is international.”
A creative adman with a circus in his past, and humor at his side, Patrick Scullin describes himself as an adman, "wordsmitty," philosopher king, blogger, ex-circus advance man and almost-novelist. Currently Executive Creative Director and managing partner for Ames Scullin O'Haire, he uses his blog TheLintScreen as another of his creative outlets. “Writers don’t make much money, but I discovered some ad writers do, if they’re good at it.” Finding the circus job “too lonely an existence,” he re-connected with an ad agency. “Once I was around creative people, my talents blossomed.”
She sees herself as “the new family doctor.”
In her practice in Atlanta, Georgia, chiropractor Karen Tedeschi offers natural treatments—typically a combination of therapies like massage and chiropractic—as well as home health solutions. “I emphasize education and empowerment for people to be responsible for their health. In massage school, rooming with two chiropractic students, “I began to see how I could incorporate those two disciplines, along with other hands-on practices into my own approach.” She tells host Don Hutcheson, “Consistent gratitude will totally change your inner landscape."
At his ‘forced’ chaplaincy internship in seminary, Larry Minnix faced a turning point. His decision set him on a 45-year career path of service and advocacy for aging and mentally ill persons. As President and CEO of the Washington, DC-based nonprofit, LeadingAge, his advocacy work is at the nexus of public policy and money. He traces his career trajectory to a Methodist summer camp in his mid-teens, where he felt a call to minister. “The key is to relate to many different kinds of people,” he tells Don Hutcheson, host of DiscoverTalentPodcast.com.
An artist finds healing in upcycled, recycled and found objects of her collage creations. A self-taught mixed media collage artist, Jennifer DeSantis began her creative journey about five years ago as a form of self-therapy. It remains so to this day, even as her following has grown, especially through social media and online markets. “I keep creating not only for my own fulfillment, but now in hopes that I can reach others by utilizing creative expression for inner healing,” she tells Don Hutcheson, host of DiscoverTalentPodcast.com.
From TV news anchor to super-salesperson to motivator, Bob Burg learned that to sell is to serve. Co-author of the parable of the “Go-Giver,” He learned from masters including Benjamin Franklin that gratitude and serving others is the key to success in life. “Systematically face your Negative traits—change them!” Shifting his focus from making money to serving others brought a huge change in his life. Early in his sales career, a mentor told him, “Don't have ‘making money’ as your goal. The target is serving others,” Burg tells Don Hutcheson, host of the Discover Your Talent, Do What You Love podcast.
He brings a lifetime of practical legal experience to aspiring lawyers at the College of Law at Georgia State University. Along with traditional tax law, Cassady V. Brewer explores the law of emerging hybrid business forms known as social enterprise. Like his own life, the evolving area of law is all about combining business and the world of work with a social mission. Partners in his former law practice could see his gift for teaching before he did, he tells Don Hutcheson, host of the Discover Your Talent, Do What You Love podcast.
Her career journey takes her from musician to lawyer to bar association executive director to a coach for lawyers.
As a practice advisor at Atticus, Nora Riva Bergman founded Real Life Practice, teaching attorneys work-life balance and how to gain self-knowledge, to help lawyers become better lawyers, and better people. “Ampersands” is her term for life passages and turning points. Death of the “Auntie Mame” figure in her life jolted her to rethink her relationship to the law profession. Self-knowledge is key, she tells Don Hutcheson, host of podcast Discover Your Talent, Do What You Love.