Disrupt Yourself Live

Susan Petersen started making baby moccasins in 2009 after becoming frustrated by the lack of well-designed baby shoes. Using her second child, Gus, as a mocc-tester, and a bag of scrap leather she picked up at a yard sale, she began experimenting. Working at her kitchen table, Susan persisted until she had created a pair of moccasins that not only looked adorable on Gus’ chubby little feet, but stayed on as well. Money was tight at the time Susan started and in order to earn money to start her business she got resourceful. Her brother owns a window installation business and in the summer of 2009 she convinced him to let her keep the old windows that he was removing from the houses. She spent a whole summer banging the glass out of the windows because they were encased in aluminum frames. At the end of the summer she took the aluminum window frames to the scrap yard and recycled them to get money. She made $200 dollars and with that literal sweat equity, she started her business.

Constraints are a tool of creation and innovation and successful disruptors embrace constraint as an ally, rather than battling limitation as an enemy. Nobody needs to be creative more than someone who plies their trade in the arts. Award-winning novelist, poet and playwright Orson Scott Card joins Whitney Johnson to discuss the writer’s craft, its constraints, and how those constraints can be a spur to greater creativity. Orson is a prolific writer, but most famous for Ender’s Game, sequel Speaker for the Dead—and the rest of the Enders series—both of which won Hugo and Nebula Awards and made Orson Scott Card the only author to ever win both in two consecutive years. From word counts to publisher demands to the desire and need to make a living from creative work, Whitney and Orson will peel back the myth about constraint’s power to derail us and expose the truth about how restrictions can be an innovative disruptor’s best friends.

True leadership in disruption involves knowing about and playing to your distinctive strengths. My guest this week is leadership expert Sanyin Siang. Sanyin helps leaders launch and create value by focusing on mindset, behavioral change, and team and culture building. Sanyin is a CEO Coach, Author, and the Executive Director of the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics (COLE). Prior to Duke, Sanyin worked at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest federation of scientific and engineering societies, and publisher of Science. Her initiatives explored the ethical, social, and legal implications of technological advances before they became reality. Her book The Launch Book: Motivational Stories for Launching Your Idea, Business, or Next Career, uses behavioral science principles to help readers build the mindset for addressing major change.

One of the hallmarks of successful disruptors is that they embrace the risk—and opportunity—of playing where others don’t. While being ahead of the game in this manner doesn’t always pay off, when it does it pays off in a big way. In this episode, Whitney Johnson welcomes four-time Olympian, World Champion and multiple-medalist turned successful entrepreneur, Angela Ruggiero, in a conversation about her stellar career as an ice hockey athlete, Olympic Committee member, co-Founder/CEO of Sports Innovation Lab and champion of women in sport. In addition to being a world class athlete, Angela is a two-time Harvard grad with a lot of experience choosing the unlikely path. Whitney also talks with serial entrepreneur and personal business associate Richie Norton about his experiences, particularly in Hawaii, and also about their collaboration in launching an online course.

Change is necessary. Even desirable. But sometimes it happens so fast it feels like it’s happening to you, not for you. Which can make it feel scary, and even lonely. Through twenty-five years of researching, investing, consulting and coaching, Whitney Johnson has created a seven-point framework for managing through change so that whether you are building a team, starting a business or navigating your career you will have a structure to do this. In this first episode of Disrupt Yourself Live she provides an overview of the framework, and then bring these ideas to life as she interviews Carine Clark, CEO of Banyan, and former Chief Marketing Officer of Symantec, and Coss Marte, CEO and founder of fitness company ConBody, a former drug dealer turned legitimate entrepreneur.