Brian is the Chief Philosopher of Philosophers Notes, a website and business I discovered about a year ago and think is absolutely terrific. Brian’s role as Chief Philosopher is to study and share the the world’s greatest wisdom. He has picked the hundred best, wisest, smartest books, he has articulated the thousand best ideas in those books and from those he has extracted the ten core principles behind the real works of wisdom that guide us and shape is in our 21st century.
What makes this sweeter still is that Brian is also a brilliant entrepreneur. He founded an organization called E-Teams that grew, was massively successful and sold it in 2000 to The Active Network then came back and founded another brilliant online company called Zaadz which is now known as Gaia.com and which is also terrific – it’s like a Facebook or LinkedIn for people who want to save the world and change the world.
This is a really juicy call, full of ideas and in it we talk about:
- How you know if you’re ‘following your bliss” (and what Carlos Castaneda has to say on the point)
- One of the deepest choices of life: do you step forward into growth or back into safety
- A brilliant mapping system to help you keep track of your path
- And what Brian learned from Jim Loehr about projecting his shadow
- The importance of ritual
And of course, a whole lot more.
You can find Brian at www.PhilosophersNotes.com and follow him on Twitter at @_Brian_Johnson. (And if you do so, you’ll see he’s just announced he’s getting married. Woo hoo!)
Posted on February 24, 2010
Peggy McColl is the woman behind Destinies.com, a New York Times bestselling author and a force to be reckoned with in the world of Great Work where we stand up, stare in the mirror and ask ourselves: What are my goals? What is my destiny? What is the life that I’m creating for myself?
Part of what’s terrific about this interview is that Peggy sits in that sweet spot between having a message that is important – and being focused and courageous enough to get it out to the world. Let’s just say it wasn’t an accident that Your Destiny Switch became a New York Times best-seller.
In our interview we discuss:
- How she got started – and what it took for her to take the leap that got things really moving
- The importance of marketing for the success of your Great Work – whether it’s a book or any other project
- The power question that invites others in to give you the support you need
- Why you mastering your emotions can help you move to Great Work
Posted on February 17, 2010
I like napkins. I spend time in coffee shops and inevitably end up showing ideas and sharing models on napkins. The subtitle of the first version of Do More Great Work was “napkin-size solutions to stop the busywork”. So I was delighted to speak to Dan Roam, author of the deservedly popular book The Back of a Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures. Dan – who’s just released a workbook version called Unfolding the Napkin – has done a masterful job at explaining just how to make your ideas – your Great Work ideas – powerful, focused and useful.
In this interview we get into:
- Why we must abandon our “endless bullet points and endless paragraphs” if we want our ideas to stick
- Why simplicity isn’t a goal in and of itself – but clarity is
- How drawing a circle – and another and another – can help untangle any problem (Dan explains just how)
- And why we need to stop the meeting madness!
You can follow Dan at Digital Roam and on his blog.
If you enjoyed this interview, you’ll also enjoy my conversations with:
Posted on January 19, 2010
Years ago I first heard Tom Peters championing design as something that really mattered, something that was at the heart of Great Work, not just a last minute make-it-look-pretty addition. Starting the Great Work Interviews rolling with Nancy Duarte is the perfect start. She’s the CEO of Duarte Design, author of the terrific book Slide:ology and the designer behind, amongst other things, Al Gore’s presentation on An Inconvenient Truth. She and her firm have been upping the ante on presentation design in Silicon Valley and beyond for nearly twenty years. This matters. If you work in an organization, if you want to do more Great Work, you need to be able engage people with your ideas, not smother them with bad PowerPoint. That’s what Nancy stands for.
In this interview we talk about:
- Why the recession has helped as much as hindered Duarte Design’s success
- The power of “the controlling idea”
- Why you need to consider the S.T.A.R moment
- And why “Best In Show” in a modern movie masterpiece
You can follow Nancy on Twitter at @NancyDuarte and on Duarte Design’s blog.
If you enjoyed this interview, you’ll also enjoy my conversations with:
Posted on January 18, 2010
