Daily Two Minutes Of Greatness

Holy is the tech editor-in-chief at UNTOUCHD Magazine where she covers all aspects of tech, from data science to UX design to programming. In her spare time she hosts Girl Develop It’s Code & Coffee, mentoring workshops by helping others write their first line of code. Her mission is to empower women to embrace their abilities and pursue their passion in technology. Her perseverance led to her building a supportive online community on Instagram which led her to create UNTOUCHD Magazine – to inspire more women to write their first line of code.

Andy Molinsky is a Professor at Brandeis University’s International Business School, with a joint appointment in the Department of Psychology. Andy’s work helps people develop the insights and courage necessary to act outside their personal and cultural comfort zones when doing important, but challenging, tasks in work and life. His research and writing has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Inc. Magazine, Psychology Today, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, NPR and Voice of America. Andy was awarded as a Top Voice for LinkedIn for his work in education. His first book, Global Dexterity (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013), received the Axiom Award (Silver Medal) for Best Business Book in International Business & Globalization and has been used widely in organizations around the world, including Boeing, AIG, the US Air Force Academy, and the Clinton Foundation, among others. His new book Reach was published with Penguin Random House in January 2017.  He teaches, consults, and lectures widely to university and corporate audiences.

Nikki Durkin has founded two companies, the first being 99dresses, a company that allowed women to trade fashion items with other users. 99dresses was a Y-combinator backed startup that had thousands of users and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars before having to shut down. For anyone who is interested in startups or looking to start their own, I highly recommend her post on Medium titled, My startup failed, and this is what it feels like. Nikki’s second startup is called CodeMakers, a company that teaches children how to code using Minecraft.

Austin Knight is a Senior UX Designer, speaker, and author at HubSpot, focusing on web, mobile, SaaS, and VR/AR. As a digital nomad, he works remotely and lives amongst different design communities throughout the world. He mentors students and startup founders at Columbia University in New York, co-hosts the UX and Growth Podcast in Boston, leads a study on South American design in Rio de Janeiro, and speaks at select international events every year. His latest work and in-depth design essays are published at AustinKnight.com.

Chris Brogan is CEO of Owner Media Group , providing strategy and skills for the modern business. He is also a highly sought after professional speaker and the New York Times bestselling author of nine books and counting.   Chris has spoken for or consulted with the biggest brands you know, including Disney, Coke, Google, GM, Microsoft, Coldwell Banker, Titleist, Scotts, Humana Health, Cisco, Sony USA, and many more. He’s appeared on the Dr. Phil Show, interviewed Richard Branson for a cover story for Success magazine, and once even presented to a Princess. Forbes listed Chris as one of the Must Follow Marketing Minds of 2014, plus listed his website as one of the 100 best websites for entrepreneurs. Statsocial rated Chris the #3 power influencer online. Most importantly, Chris provides education and tools to help you make your life and your business thrive, by teaching you which actions will get you what you want. Through books, speeches, courses, and workshops, Chris is dedicated to helping you grow your capabilities and connections and to getting you to that next level of success, no matter where you are in the process right now.

Andy Weir was always passionate about writing but he never expected his first published novel, The Martian, to have the kind of success that it did. In fact he tried so hard to give it away for free. He started by publishing it on his website one chapter at a time and then as an ebook for ninety-nine cents because that was the lowest price you could publish on the kindle. Then soon after, Random House called and wanted to publish the book and shortly after that 20th Century Fox bought the movie rights and Matt Damon played the starring role.  Andy’s second novel, Artemis, comes out in November and while he has high hopes for it he knows it’s very likely that it won’t be as much of a success as his first.

Upon a friend’s suggestion, John began listening to podcasts in order to pass time during his commute and after realizing none of his favorite podcasts offered daily content he decided to start his own podcast. Entrepreneur on Fire was launched on September 22, 2012 and features today’s most inspiring entrepreneurs 7-days a week. To date he has interviewed more than 1,400 people and has featured several entrepreneurs including Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Barbara Corcoran.

Gary Muller was a three-star chef and restauranteur in Jersey City and Manhattan. Wanting to take care of guests longer than it takes to eat a meal, Gary and his wife Sylvia purchased a historic property in East Hampton in 1999 and the Mill House Inn is now one of the finest small hotels in the world. The Mill House Inn has been named Travel+Leisure’s “Inn of the Month”, New York Magazine’s “Top 10 Hotels in the Hamptons”, and Zagat’s “Top 50 Small Hotels”, with a coveted “28” for food despite serving only breakfast and not being open to the public. I talked to Gary for much longer than is usual for these podcast episodes and it became very clear that he cares very deeply for the people that work at the Mill House Inn and the guests that stay there.

Eugene Woo started his second company Visualize.me over the course of a weekend with some co-founders he had just met. Unfortunately, some of those co-founders weren’t as passionate about the company as he was and they soon began leaving the company despite more than 200,000 signups before the product ever launched. Eventually, Eugene was able to sell Visualize.me and start his current company Venngage, a platform that helps users create beautiful infographics that tell stories.

Mark Wallace grew up skiing in Saddleback, Maine and his passion for skiing eventually led to a semi-pro ski racing career. After working at a Boston Construction firm and learning how to build skis, Mark started Parlor skis out of a funeral parlor with two of his friends. Today, Parlor is the largest ski manufacturer in New England, producing custom skis for all of its customers. Each ski is built to order and Parlor customizes each ski to the rider for the best fit possible.

The UK might not be the first place that comes to mind when you think of big wave surfing but Andrew Cotton is changing that. When Andrew left school he initially worked at a surfboard factory until age 25 when he re-trained as a plumber and began to realize his passion was in big wave surfing. In 2012 he towed American surfer Garrett McNamara into what the Guinness Book of World Records confirmed as the biggest wave ever surfed. Since then, Andrew has surfed some massive waves himself and is continuously searching for the biggest wave.

This is Part II of my interview with Kevin Kelly. I’m a huge fan of his work and thinking and didn’t want to have all of this gold go unheard by all of you. I talked to Kevin about a wide range of topics, the first of which you can hear in episode 21, with this episode being only just part of his previously unreleased words of wisdom. If you enjoyed his first episode you will certainly love this episode.    

Ami Vitale is a Nikon Ambassador and National Geographic magazine photographer who has traveled to over 90 countries, witnessing not just violence and conflict, but also surreal beauty and the enduring power of the human spirit. She’s lived in mud huts, war zones, contracted malaria, and even worn a panda suit to stay true to her philosophy of ‘living the story’. In 2009, after shooting a powerful story on the transport and release of one of the world’s last white rhinos, Ami shifted her focus to today’s most compelling wildlife and environmental stories. Her work has been commissioned by nearly every international publication and exhibited around the world in museums and galleries.

This is Part II of my talk with David Cancel with Part I being episode 10. I was showing a friend of mine who works in sales the part of the interview that I had to take out from episode 10 in order to make it short enough and his response was basically, “that is gold, you need to release this”. So this is the previously unreleased piece of my interview with David Cancel, the co-founder and CEO of Drift.

Thomas Rowland, better known by his stage name, Rowlan, is an American rapper, songwriter, and producer originally from Cape Cod, Massachusetts and now living in Los Angeles, California whose goal is to create meaningful content for people to feel and relate to. Originally, music was Rowlan’s preferred medium to vent and get thoughts out of his head. Over the last few years Rowlan has built a large following through encouraging content creators to use his music, interacting with his fans, and releasing a lot of music. Currently, he is averaging about one new song every week on spotify and credits that as part of his recent growth.

Colter Hinchliffe is a freeskier from Aspen, Colorado. Competitive skiing was never one of Colter’s interests, instead he focused on photography and films. His first film experience came on a trip he went on to Alaska with some friends. While there, Teton Gravity was filming, they had a seat open up and Colter was given the spot. He now spends a good portion of his winters filming with TGR as well as Stellar Media and Vital Films and has traveled all around the world for films. He’s also been featured on the covers of both POWDER Magazine and Skiing Magazine as well as profiles in FREESKIER Magazine and a segment in one of Warren Miller’s films.

Chris Coyier is a web designer and developer. He built CSS-Tricks, a website all about building websites. Going strong for 10 years, it's a blog, forum, almanac, screencast, and more. He is also the co-founder of CodePen, a social development environment for front-end web designers and developers. CodePen is a front-end focused IDE in the browser, allowing people to write HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other related languages. People share what they make, write about code, collect favorites, follow each other, find jobs, and more. It's as much of a community and social network as coding platform.

Chris Guillebeau is a New York Times bestselling author and modern-day explorer. During a lifetime of self-employment that included a four-year commitment as a volunteer executive in West Africa, he visited every country in the world (193 in total) before his 35th birthday. Chris’s first book, The Art of Non-Conformity, was translated into more than twenty languages. His second book, The $100 Startup, was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, selling more than 500,000 copies worldwide. His third book, The Happiness of Pursuit, was also a New York Times bestseller and his fourth book, Born for This, will help you find the work you were meant to do. Every summer in Portland, Oregon, Chris hosts the World Domination Summit, a gathering of creative, remarkable people with thousands in attendance. Chris is also the founder of Pioneer Nation, Unconventional Guides, the Travel Hacking Cartel, and numerous other projects. A few of Chris’s philosophies include: You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect. You can do good things for yourself and help other people at the same time. If you don’t decide for yourself what you want to get out of life, someone else will end up deciding for you. There is usually more than one way to accomplish something.

Wesley Chapman is the founder of A Human Project, an organization that incubates creative, scalable solutions to systemic problems and gathers together the greatest minds to solve global issues in education, health and society. Wes holds patents on several medical advancements, believes that humans are capable of overcoming any challenge, and his message of ‘waking up the hero’ has been adopted by thousands of people around the world. I encourage everyone to check out Wes’s Ted Talk where he talks about his own extremely difficult childhood and how he’s helping others discover self-worth and rise above their circumstances.

Bob Burg’s books have sold over one million copies worlswide and one of the books he co-authored, The Go-Giver, is a WSJ and BusinessWeek Bestseller, selling over 500,000 copies. The Go-Giver has been translated into 21 languages, was rated #10 on Inc. Magazine’s list of Most Motivational Books Ever Written, and was on HubSpot’s 20 Most Highly Rated Sales Books of All Time. The American Management Association named Bob one of the Top 30 Leaders in Business and Richtopia named him one of the Top 200 Most Influential Authors in the World.

Gretchen Rubin has written several books, which have been translated into more than thirty languages and have sold more than three million copies worldwide. Her newest book, The Four Tendencies, comes out in September and focuses on how identifying and understanding our tendencies can help us improve our lives. Fast Company has put her on the list of ‘Most Creative People in Business’, she’s a member of Oprah’s SuperSoul 100, one of Inc.’s ‘Top 50 Leadership and Management Experts’, and one of the ’22 Brilliant Thinkers Everyone Should Follow on Twitter’ by Business Insider. On her award-winning podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin, she discusses good habits and happiness.

Turney Duff. I first read Turney Duff’s New York Times bestselling book, The Buy Side, at some point in college, and was attracted to not only his story but his authenticity. Here’s a guy that lived a very extravagant lifestyle, and eventually, after quite a rollercoaster ride, turned down a job that would have made him seven figures a year, because he knew he would be happier without it. Turney spent fifteen years as a trader on Wall Street, eventually pulling in seven figures a year, but also had a worsening addiction to cocaine. Like a lot of people, he thought that all of his problems would be solved with more money, but when more money came, the problems never went away. It took the second trip to rehab and barely any money in his bank account for him to realize that what he really wanted was not the extravagant life he lived as a Wall Street trader, but his original dream to be a writer. He’s much happier now making far less money, wanting less, and not trying to be liked by everyone than he was during his fifteen years as a trader.

Kevin Kelly has had a lot of accomplishments in his life and it certainly is not able to be summed up in this short intro. But to give you an overview, Kevin is Senior Maverick and the founding executive editor of Wired magazine as well as a former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Review. His newest book, The Inevitable, is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. He co-founded Hackers’ Conference and was involved in the launch of the WELL, an online service started in 1985 considered to be a pioneer in developing online communities and social networks. He has been published in the New York Times, The Economist, Time, Harpers, Science, GQ, Wall Street journal, and Esquire. Prior to pursuing technology, Kevin was a photojournalist, once riding his bike 5,000 miles across America and for most of the 1970’s was a photographer in remote parts of Asia and had his photographs published in national magazines.

Kitti Szasz is a professional freestyle Futballer from Hungary with four world champions to her name. She has performed and competed all over the world including Munich at the Allianz Arena, a half-time show at the Brazilian Corinthians Stadium and several shows during the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. If you search for her on YouTube just be prepared to spend a lot of time watching as it’s mesmerizing to see what she can do with a soccer ball.

Kevin Ross, also known as “The Soul Assassin”, is among the most celebrated Muay Thai fighters of all time, currently placed tenth in the world ranking. His overall record is 47-14 with his professional Muay Thai record at 33-10 with 13 KO’s. Kevin is a Super lightweight WBC International Champion as well as a three-time National Champion. Kevin didn’t start fighting until he was 23 and credits it with saving his life after becoming a severe alcoholic after the death of his best friend. Kevin hopes to inspire others to go after their dreams, have a positive impact on the world, and help the sport grow as much as possible.

Alexandra Climent started her woodworking company, Sustainably Sliced, to bring responsively sourced, rare and exotic wood pieces to the world through her designs. Her journey started when she was working for a marine construction company and saw the need for high-quality sawn lumber that wasn’t readily available and she decided to directly source this lumber and have her employer be her first client. Today, Alexandra sources wood sustainably directly from the source and has become close friends with locals in the areas she’s visited. Her work showcases the beauty in the wood she exports, including many species that had never before been exported, as art, furniture, bowls, and boxes.

Isaac Lidsky has quite the list of achievements from over the years. He was a child television star as “Weasel” on “Saved By The Bell: The New Class”, graduated from Harvard at 19, co-founded a technology company that sold for $230 million, and was a US Justice Department Lawyer where he argued over a dozen appeals in federal court on behalf of the United States and never lost a case. Isaac’s TED Talk has been viewed more than two million times and his book, Eyes Wide Open, is a New York Times best seller. In 2011 Isaac and a partner purchased ODC Construction and have grown it from $11 million in revenue to over $150 million. It may surprise you to know that Isaac is blind, born with a rare degenerative disease of the retina, causing him to slowly lose his sight between age 12 and 25. Isaac has been featured in numerous media, including Forbes, MSNBC, U.S. News & World Report, 60 Minutes, CNN, Business Insider, Men’s Health, People Magazine, the National Law Journal, the American Bar Association Journal, and many more.

Nathan Chan is the founder of Foundr Magazine, an app-based subscription magazine that features interviews with some of the most sought-after entrepreneurs in the world including Seth Godin, Arianna Huffington, Gary Vaynerchuk, Richard Branson, and Tony Robbins to name a few. Nathan started Foundr at a time when traditional print publications were crumbling, and today has over 250,000 subscribers, over a million podcast listeners, and has interviewed over 243 entrepreneurs.

Lee Abbamonte is among the most well-traveled people in the world. He has visited every country in the world, as well as both the North and South Poles. Every country means that he has visited all 193 sovereign nations that the UN recognizes as member states but he has actually visited 318 of the 324 countries and unique destinations per the Travelers Century Club list. Lee has appeared on Fox News Channel, Travel Channel, NBC, CBS, CNN, BBC, and ESPN among many others. He has also been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, New York Magazine, Huffington Post, Forbes, USA Today and many others.

Maria is the New York Times-bestselling author of The Confidence Game (Viking/Penguin 2016) and Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes (Viking/Penguin, 2013). She is a contributing writer for The New Yorker, where she writes a regular column with a focus on psychology and culture, and is the host of the longform storytelling podcast from Panoply, The Grift. Her first book, Mastermind, has been translated into nineteen languages. It was nominated for the Agatha Award and the Anthony Award for Best Non-fiction and was a Goodreads People’s Choice Semifinalist for 2013. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, California Sunday, Pacific Standard, The New Republic, The Paris Review, The Wall Street Journal, Salon, The Boston Globe, The Observer, Scientific American MIND, WIRED, and Scientific American, among numerous other publications. I was lucky enough to catch up with Maria in between her time playing in poker tournaments. Currently, Maria is playing poker full-time as research for her next book which uses No-Limit Texas Hold’em as a metaphor for life in exploring the relationship of chance and skill in our lives.

Lolly Daskal is the founder of Lead from Within, a global leadership, executive coaching, and consulting firm based in New York City. Lolly has more than thirty years of experience with clients ranging from Fortune 500 executives to government leaders, to entrepreneurs and nonprofits. Lolly is one of today's most sought-after executive leadership coaches and leadership consultants, and was named a Top-50 leadership and management expert by Inc.com and was named ‘The Most Inspiring Woman in the World’ by Huffington Post. She has written thousands of articles and columns for a variety of media, including Inc., Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Huffington Post, and Psychology Today as well as a couple of best-selling books, the latest being ‘The Leadership Gap: What Gets Between You and Your Greatness’.

Elena Hight is a professional snowboarder originally from Kauai, Hawaii and then raised in Lake Tahoe, California. At just thirteen years-old she was the first female to land a 900 in competition, and in 2013, became the first snowboarder, male or female, to land a double backside alley-oop rodeo, doing so at the Winter X Games Superpipe. Elena is a two-time Olympian, four-time X Games medalist, including a gold medal, and a Burton US Open Gold medalist. I asked Elena about what inspires her to keep pushing herself and the sport and how she stays focused with such a rigorous lifestyle.

Nick Schiffer is co-host of The Modern Craftsman Podcast and is the owner of NS Builders in Boston, specializing in interior renovations. Nick worked eleven years for his father’s fencing company and three years in multi-family high-rise construction before starting NS Builders. In the first episode of his podcast it was mentioned that ‘the craft is slipping’ so I asked him why, what he’s doing to uphold the standard, and the subtle things he looks for when hiring.

David Cancel is co-founder and CEO of a startup out of Boston called Drift, the company using messaging to reinvent marketing and sales. Prior to that he was Chief Product Officer at HubSpot and was a founder of Compete, Lookery, Ghostery, and Performable, all of which were acquired. Dave also co-hosts Drift’s podcast called ‘Seeking Wisdom’. With so many successful companies I figured DC knew a thing or two about building teams so I ask him about that and what makes companies great at communicating with customers.

Jon Moody is an artist from New Orleans and graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Jon has had paintings commissioned by celebrities like Christopher Anderson, P. Diddy, and Lil Wayne, has had his art displayed at the White House, and has had pieces chosen for the set of the hit TV show ‘Empire’. Through his work, Jon brings awareness to social, economic and worldly issues and hopes to inspire everyone to become global ambassadors for change. I talk with Jon about how he was able to establish himself as an independent artist and how he stays humble despite so much success.

Lizzi Hart works in marketing at the Graduate Recruitment Bureau in the United Kingdom and has had her work published in the Guardian, Cosmopolitan, Metro, The Huffington Post, Elite Daily, and Business Insider. I reached out to Lizzi because I really enjoyed the article she wrote on imposter syndrome in Business Insider, and had her on the show to talk about it. If you want to check out that article it’s linked in the show notes.

Adam Kirk Smith is an entrepreneur, life coach, consultant, public speaker, and author of 'The Bravest You'. He often writes about leadership, bravery, and purpose. He has written for Entrepreneur and Success Magazine, among other publications, and has been featured in Newsday. In 2014 he was named one of the most influential people by American Genius. I talked with Adam about leadership, specifically, about the role of anticipation in being a leader, and the difference between passion and what he calls ‘feeding the ego’. 

Arielle Shipe is a 500 hr Yoga alliance certified yoga and meditation teacher in Colorado. She first began yoga in 2008 for recovery and injury prevention from snowboarding. After a back injury in 2012 she decided to pursue learning the skills needed to share her love of yoga with others. In this episode I ask Arielle about the importance of practicing presence in daily life, and how to extend a yoga practice beyond the studio.

Debbie Millman is a design powerhouse! She is the founder and host of the Design Matters podcast, Editorial & Creative Director of Print magazine, ‘President Emeritus’ of The American Institute of Graphic Arts, chair of the ‘Masters in Branding’ program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and for twenty years she worked as ‘President of Design’ at Sterling Brands in NYC, working with brands such as Pepsi, Gillette, Colgate, Nestle, and Campbells. As if that all weren’t enough, Debbie has also authored six books and Graphic Design USA named her ‘one of the most influential designers working today’. Every year, Debbie assigns a writing exercise with her students called “Your Ten Year Plan For A Remarkable Life” and she constantly receives mail from past students telling her “it all came true!”. Debbie joins me today to share more about the writing exercise “Your Ten Year Plan For A Remarkable Life”.

Frank Celenza, who you might know as just Frankie, or Frankie Cooks, is a 3x emmy-winning cooking show host, chef and producer. Frankie’s cooking videos are very unique and different from the traditional cooking videos as he’s both very entertaining and informative, by teaching you not just how to make a dish but the story behind certain dishes and ingredients. He’s one of the chefs on Tastemade, the cooking show taking facebook and snapchat by storm, he’s been invited to the white house to create recipe’s using Michelle Obama’sWhite House Kitchen Garden, and has cooked for Novak Djokovic and his team during the 2016 US Open Championship. I ask him about how he learned to cook since he isn’t formally trained and how his music background influences his cooking style.

Tasha Eurich is an organizational psychologist, researcher, and a new York times best-selling author. Over the last 15-plus years she’s worked with individuals from executives of fortune 500 companies to startup entrepreneurs. She’s contributed to The Huffington Post, Entrepreneur Magazine, CNBC, and has had her work featured in Forbes, Fox Business, and Fast Company. Tasha’s Tedx talk has been viewed more than one million times, her first book ‘Bankable Leadership is a New York Times bestseller, and her newest book, Insight, discusses the connection between our self-awareness, and our performance and success. And in this episode I talk to her about self-awareness as well as what’s called CEO disease and how to overcome it.

Lexi dupont is a professional big mountain skier from Sun Valley, Idaho, she’s a freeskiing world tour contender, former junior Olympic competitor, she’s been featured in many films including Warren Miller’s Wintervention, PoorBoyz Production’s Tracing skylines, Unicorn Picnic’s Pretty faces, and National Geographic’s Powder Highway webisodes. She’s sponsored by the likes of Eddie Bauer, K2, and Smith to name a few. Her mother, Holley DuPont, was the first woman to land a backflip in competition. These days, Lexi is focusing more of her energy into making films than competitions. In this episode I ask Lexi about preparation, both physical and mental, to get an understanding of how she prepares for potential life and death situations.

Become world-class by learning from those that are world-class.  Ever wonder how a world-renowned artist stays humble? How elite athletes bounce back from defeat? How successful entrepreneurs build great teams? How to defeat the voice in your head telling you no? The goal of the Daily Two Minutes Of Greatness Podcast is to share daily micro interviews with people who are truly world-class at what they do. By sharing their secrets to greatness we can uncover the characteristics they have in common. Whether they are business experts, world-class artists and musicians, elite athletes, influential public figures or anything in between - there is something we can learn from each other to help drive ourselves to be world-class in our own right. Be an exception. Become world-class. The podcast is available on Stitcher, SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Play Music. To learn more about the podcast or get in touch, head over to twominutesofgreatness.com.