It's All About the Questions

If you've written a book, have a business, are a speaker, or just have something helpful to share on a larger scale than your friends and neighbors, then getting on TV, radio, podcasts and more can be your path to getting your message out on a larger scale.

But how do you do that effectively? If you are uncomfortable speaking in public, as many are, how do you craft and deliver your message so that you are ready when you get the email or phone call?

Enter Rachel Hanfling. Former Emmy nominated producer for Oprah and Anderson Cooper, to name drop a few. She is also my go to when I have questions or need some coaching around media and speaking to groups overall.

On this episode Rachel shares how you can craft your signature talk and pare it down to its essence for different types of media. She also answers my questions on three things to focus on when you are preparing your talk or pitch.

We talk about even more, but you'll have to listen or read the transcript to find out all the questions and answers from this episode! Rachel even has a freebie to help you in just 5 short minutes.

Emmy-nominated Rachel Hanfling is your guide to clear, confident, charismatic speech. A former producer for Oprah and Anderson Cooper, she’s coached clients to become go-to experts, land deals on Shark Tank, sell out on QVC, dominate worldwide speeches, generate explosive sales, nail workplace politics and more. She’s taught at Harvard, internationally, and across the U.S. Rachel is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is mom to twin boys and a dog in New York City. To learn more about Rachel, visitrachelhanfling.com/5Minutes .

Ever thought your company needed a board to advise and help you grow but had no clue what was involved? Annette Taber is the Founder of BoardSwap and she answers questions about how anyone can have an advisory board for short or long term and how to manage one. Plus we discuss her advice to anyone starting their own business.

Annette Taber brings over 30 years of experience in the Technology Industry. As Founder and CEO of BoardSWAP, she realized an important need in the Technology Industry to formalize Advisory Boards as a Service, and therefore became a Certified Chair^TM through the Advisory Board Centre. BoardSWAP provides fully outsourced Advisory Board development, facilitation, governance, and executive consulting. Additionally, the BoardSWAP Advisors Concierge service helps clients identify the right advisors and subject matter experts to fulfill their needs. Helping to educate the industry on the many benefits of formalized Advisory Boards is a key passion of hers. www.BoardSwap.com

What happens when you get a master strategist, legal expert and advisor to some of the biggest names in the thought leader/entrepreneur world to come on your show again?

Well you get this episode where Peter Hoppenfeld answers my questions ranging from starting a business to growing a business to what word never to use in business to one of the best summaries on Intellectual property I have ever heard.

Don't believe me on all we covered? I was getting texts and people were chatting during the livestream with questions and comments. I had many more questions but we ran out of time.

Peter Hoppenfeld is widely recognized as the “go to” attorney and advisor in the representation of direct marketers, speakers, authors, information marketers, “thought leaders,” entrepreneurs and domestic and international training companies and their founders in all aspects of their legal and business affairs. Peter is a seasoned transactional, commercial attorney with direct marketing, internet marketing, distribution, licensing, marketing, branding and operational expertise. On a daily basis, Peter helps authors, speakers, entrepreneurs, business owners and thought leaders create effective marketing, merchandising and expansion strategies. His mission is to rapidly, smartly and strategically grow people’s businesses, reach and revenues. Peter’s been described as “a lawyer who understands marketing and a marketer who happens to be a lawyer”. www.peterhoppenfeld.com

For more episodes and insights, checkout https://www.laurasteward.com

Subscribe to my podcast at: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/its-all-about-the-questions/id1008520291

Order my book: https://www.amazon.com/What-Would-Wise-Woman-Questions/dp/1614483442

Entrepreneurial journeys rarely go in a straight line. They have detours, divergences and often life outside the work journey impacts thinking, action and final goals. When one journey ends, another might start along the same path or go in a completely different direction.

My guest on this episode is Vered Neta. A multi-hyphenate entrepreneur who has done several successful exits from companies she has created, Vered is now on a new journey that she chose because she wanted a new challenge. When that new path threw up a lot of road blocks, she pivoted and created another successful divergence.

Take a listen as Vered and I discuss her journey, her favorite questions to ask when she gets stuck and how she hopes to help others who caregive for loved ones with Alzheimers with her latest book, Things We Do for Love, available wherever books are sold.

Vered Neta has lived in three different countries for the last six decades, so tracing her origins is a thrilling quest. Nowadays, she lives in Tenerife on an off-the-grid finca, creating a self-sustained life for her and her partner while writing her novels and scripts.

Her stories are character-driven dramas, giving voice to the untold stories of women and their triumphs in today's society. Her mission? To illuminate the world with kindness and positivity, one story at a time.

Vered's words have touched countless lives through her multiple books on motivation and relationships. Her book "Financial Independence for Women" sold over 50,000 copies.

In 2010, Vered was awarded the TIAW World of Difference Award, an award given to women whose efforts have advanced women's economic empowerment locally, regionally or worldwide.

I've followed Dan Rockwell for ages. His Blog, Leadership Freak, combines wisdom and insights with lightness, deep thinking and insidious questions that worm their way into your brain and body until you have a breakthrough of thought and action. Now he and his co-author John David Mann have released a parable novel called, The Vagrant. Expect that book to worm its way inside you too and create breakthroughs of thought and self-reflection.

On today's episode Dan and I sit down and discuss his thoughts on leadership, the birth of his book, self-reflection and how doing that alone can lead to some not great outcomes. We also discuss many other topics over the course of the interview. It was hard to stop.

Let me know what actions you are taking after you listen and don't forget to take advantage of the opportunity to win a free copy of The Vagrant!

DAN ROCKWELL (leadershipfreak.blog) gave his first presentation at the age of sixteen and has been delivering presentations and workshops ever since. Dan’s fascination with leadership led him to launch his Leadership Freak blog in January 2010. Today Leadership Freak is read in virtually every country on the globe, with nearly 500,000 subscribers to its various social media channels. Dan has been named among the “Top Fifty Leadership and Management Experts” and “Top 100 Great Leadership Speakers” by Inc magazine and “Top 30 Leader in Business of 2014” by the American Management Association. His blog has been hailed as “most socially shared leadership blog on the Internet” by Center for Management and Organization Effectiveness.

A bit of an different episode for the show. Just me talking about how a recent photo shoot for a new headshot had me spiraling and the questions I started asking myself.

Research shows that people are searching for happiness.  They want to find ways to be happier, live life more fully and be present to their lives and figure out what makes them happy.

My guest, Marian Edvardsen, has been on that search herself and has written a book, or perhaps it can be considered a primer and reference guide, to helping you find and live your own happiness. Step In To Happy: Simple Steps from A to Z for Loving Your Life opened my eyes up to a few areas that can help me find more happiness in my life and let go some thoughts that aren’t helping that search.

On this episode of It’s All About the Questions, Marian’s shares some questions she has asked herself and how the new questions put her on a path to help others through EFT and more. Based on a question from a Listener on LinkedIn Live, I got Marian to lead my listeners through a tapping session on releasing doubt.

Take a listen and share your happiness journey and let me know if you share any of the four steps I struggle with that I shared on the episode.

#ItsAllAboutTheQuestions #Happiness #StepInToHappy

Marian Edvardsen is an Empowerment and Mindset Coach, a Leader and Wellness Advocate with dōTERRA International, a Certified Passion Test Facilitator for Adults, Kids & Teens and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) Practitioner. 

She specializes in helping people who are committed to living happy, healthy and fulfilled, but sometimes struggle with overwhelm, stress or limiting beliefs that keep them stuck and hold them back from living the passionate, fulfilling lives they want and desire.

Her work with dōTERRA essential oils and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) since 2012 have been two of the most effective and simple tools in helping people find natural solutions to feel better fast on a physical, emotional and spiritual level.

She is the author of the Amazon bestselling book, Step In To Happy: Simple Steps from A to Z for Loving Your Life find out more at StepInToHappy.com

For more episodes and insights, checkout https://www.laurasteward.com

Subscribe to my podcast at: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/its-all-about-the-questions/id1008520291

Order my book: https://www.amazon.com/What-Would-Wise-Woman-Questions/dp/1614483442

What can one say about John David Mann? He has mastered, well he wouldn't say that, but I would, writing non-fiction, parable and fiction writing. He has also shown us how a marriage can be lived fully and be written about, how to start your own school, and how to run a business with over 100,000 people. And those are just a few of his achievements to date.

My favorite is that he has launched almost every book he has written or co-authored on my show since 2015. Yup, that one is special to me because his words lift my spirits, awaken my brain and bring me joy. Well not just to me but to over 3 million people in 38 languages.

Blind Fear is John's latest novel with Brandon Webb and it does not disappoint.
Today we talked about what his latest novel means, how he manages to take a more 'Hitchcockian" approach to writing than many others (my choice of words as you will hear), and how crime writing taught him to fall in love with the world. 

These aren't the usual questions John gets asked, and his answers may surprise you. 

Take a listen as we dive deep with John David Mann on life, fiction, writing mastery mentoring and a few other things.

John David Mann has been creating careers since he was a teenager.

Before turning to business and journalism, he forged a successful career as a concert cellist and prize-winning composer. At fifteen he won the prestigious BMI Awards to Student Composers and received the award at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, where he met such twentieth-century-music luminaries as William Schumann and Leopold Stokowski. He apprenticed as a choral conductor under his father, Dr. Alfred Mann, which gave him the chance to meet more legendary figures of classical music, including Randall Thompson, Leonard Bernstein, Boris Goldovsky, Robert Shaw, and George Crumb. His musical compositions were performed throughout the U.S. and his musical score for Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound (written at age thirteen) was performed as part of a theatrical production of the play at the stone amphitheater in Epidaurus, Greece—the very one, in fact, where the play was originally premiered a few thousand years earlier.

At age seventeen, he and a few friends started their own high school in New Jersey (called Changes, Inc.). “Alternative” though they were, his school successfully placed its students in such universities as Harvard and Yale. After graduating, he joined the school’s faculty. In the years since he has taught children in affluent Boston suburbs, Indiana farms, and the poorest neighborhoods on the outskirts of Philadelphia.

John never planned to go into business; it just seemed to keep working out that way. He has founded one school, one food distribution business, one graphic design business, and two publishing companies.

John’s diverse career has made him a thought leader in several different industries. In 1986 he founded and wrote for Solstice, a journal on health, nutrition, and environmental issues. His series on the climate crisis, “Whither the Trees?” (yes, he was writing about this back in the eighties), was selected for national reprint in 1989 in Utne Reader for a readership of over one hundred thousand. In 1992 John helped write and produce the underground bestseller The Greatest Networker in the World, by John Milton Fogg, which became the defining book in its industry. During the 1990s, John built a multimillion-dollar sales/distribution organization of over a hundred thousand people. He was cofounder and senior editor of the legendary Upline journal and editor in chief of Networking Times.

As a public speaker he has addressed audiences of thousands.

John is an award-winning author whose writings have earned the Axiom Business Book Award (Gold Medal, for The Go-Giver), the Nautilus Award (for A Deadly Misunderstanding), and Taiwan’s Golden Book Award for Innovation (for You Call the Shots). The Go-Giver was also honored with the Living Now Book Awards “Evergreen Medal” in 2017 for its “contributions to positive global change,” and cited on Inc.’s “Most Motivational Books Ever Written” and HubSpot’s “20 Most Highly Rated Sales Books of All Time”; The Go-Giver Leader was listed on Entrepreneur magazine’s “10 Books Every Leader Should Read” and Forbes magazine’s “8 Books Every Young Leaders Should Read.” His 2012 Take the Lead (with Betsy Myers) was named Best Leadership Book of 2011 by Tom Peters and the Washington Post. His first novel, Steel Fear (2021, with former Navy SEAL Brandon Webb), was hailed by Lee Child as “an instant classic, maybe an instant legend” and nominated for a Barry Award. Jeffery Deaver called the sequel, Cold Fear (2022), “one of the best crime novels of the year.” You can read his thoughts on entering the world of crime fiction at JohnDavidMann.com

His books are published in 38 languages and have sold more than 3 million copies. John coauthored the international bestselling classic The Go-Giver (with Bob Burg), the New York Times bestsellers The Latte Factor (with David Bach), The Red Circle (with Brandon Webb), and Flash Foresight (with Daniel Burrus), and The Answer (ghost-written for John Assaraf and Murray Smith) and the national bestsellers The Slight Edge (with Jeff Olson), Among Heroes (with Brandon Webb), Out of the Maze (with Spencer Johnson) and Real Leadership (with John Addison). He has written for American Executive, CNBC, CrimeReads, Financial Times, Forbes.com, Huffington Post, Ivey Business Journal, Leader to Leader, Leadership Excellence, Master Salesmanship, Strategy & Leadership, and Wired. You can find his writings on Huffington Post here.

He is married to Ana Gabriel Mann (check out their wedding photos and vows), his coauthor on The Go-Giver Marriage, and considers himself the luckiest mann in the world.

What can one say about John David Mann? He has mastered, well he wouldn't say that, but I would, writing non-fiction, parable and fiction writing. He has also shown us how a marriage can be lived fully and be written about, how to start your own school, and how to run a business with over 100,000 people. And those are just a few of his achievements to date.

My favorite is that he has launched almost every book he has written or co-authored on my show since 2015. Yup, that one is special to me because his words lift my spirits, awaken my brain and bring me joy. Well not just to me but to over 3 million people in 38 languages.

Blind Fear is John's latest novel with Brandon Webb and it does not disappoint.
Today we talked about what his latest novel means, how he manages to take a more 'Hitchcockian" approach to writing than many others (my choice of words as you will hear), and how crime writing taught him to fall in love with the world. 

These aren't the usual questions John gets asked, and his answers may surprise you. 

Take a listen as we dive deep with John David Mann on life, fiction, writing mastery mentoring and a few other things.

John David Mann has been creating careers since he was a teenager.

Before turning to business and journalism, he forged a successful career as a concert cellist and prize-winning composer. At fifteen he won the prestigious BMI Awards to Student Composers and received the award at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, where he met such twentieth-century-music luminaries as William Schumann and Leopold Stokowski. He apprenticed as a choral conductor under his father, Dr. Alfred Mann, which gave him the chance to meet more legendary figures of classical music, including Randall Thompson, Leonard Bernstein, Boris Goldovsky, Robert Shaw, and George Crumb. His musical compositions were performed throughout the U.S. and his musical score for Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound (written at age thirteen) was performed as part of a theatrical production of the play at the stone amphitheater in Epidaurus, Greece—the very one, in fact, where the play was originally premiered a few thousand years earlier.

At age seventeen, he and a few friends started their own high school in New Jersey (called Changes, Inc.). “Alternative” though they were, his school successfully placed its students in such universities as Harvard and Yale. After graduating, he joined the school’s faculty. In the years since he has taught children in affluent Boston suburbs, Indiana farms, and the poorest neighborhoods on the outskirts of Philadelphia.

John never planned to go into business; it just seemed to keep working out that way. He has founded one school, one food distribution business, one graphic design business, and two publishing companies.

John’s diverse career has made him a thought leader in several different industries. In 1986 he founded and wrote for Solstice, a journal on health, nutrition, and environmental issues. His series on the climate crisis, “Whither the Trees?” (yes, he was writing about this back in the eighties), was selected for national reprint in 1989 in Utne Reader for a readership of over one hundred thousand. In 1992 John helped write and produce the underground bestseller The Greatest Networker in the World, by John Milton Fogg, which became the defining book in its industry. During the 1990s, John built a multimillion-dollar sales/distribution organization of over a hundred thousand people. He was cofounder and senior editor of the legendary Upline journal and editor in chief of Networking Times.

As a public speaker he has addressed audiences of thousands.

John is an award-winning author whose writings have earned the Axiom Business Book Award (Gold Medal, for The Go-Giver), the Nautilus Award (for A Deadly Misunderstanding), and Taiwan’s Golden Book Award for Innovation (for You Call the Shots). The Go-Giver was also honored with the Living Now Book Awards “Evergreen Medal” in 2017 for its “contributions to positive global change,” and cited on Inc.’s “Most Motivational Books Ever Written” and HubSpot’s “20 Most Highly Rated Sales Books of All Time”; The Go-Giver Leader was listed on Entrepreneur magazine’s “10 Books Every Leader Should Read” and Forbes magazine’s “8 Books Every Young Leaders Should Read.” His 2012 Take the Lead (with Betsy Myers) was named Best Leadership Book of 2011 by Tom Peters and the Washington Post. His first novel, Steel Fear (2021, with former Navy SEAL Brandon Webb), was hailed by Lee Child as “an instant classic, maybe an instant legend” and nominated for a Barry Award. Jeffery Deaver called the sequel, Cold Fear (2022), “one of the best crime novels of the year.” You can read his thoughts on entering the world of crime fiction at JohnDavidMann.com

His books are published in 38 languages and have sold more than 3 million copies. John coauthored the international bestselling classic The Go-Giver (with Bob Burg), the New York Times bestsellers The Latte Factor (with David Bach), The Red Circle (with Brandon Webb), and Flash Foresight (with Daniel Burrus), and The Answer (ghost-written for John Assaraf and Murray Smith) and the national bestsellers The Slight Edge (with Jeff Olson), Among Heroes (with Brandon Webb), Out of the Maze (with Spencer Johnson) and Real Leadership (with John Addison). He has written for American Executive, CNBC, CrimeReads, Financial Times, Forbes.com, Huffington Post, Ivey Business Journal, Leader to Leader, Leadership Excellence, Master Salesmanship, Strategy & Leadership, and Wired. You can find his writings on Huffington Post here.

He is married to Ana Gabriel Mann (check out their wedding photos and vows), his coauthor on The Go-Giver Marriage, and considers himself the luckiest mann in the world.

What does it take to write multiple books with the same characters? Is it different than writing just one?

Take a listen as I interview Edgar Award nominated author, former journalist and all-around good human Thomas Kies about his latest Geneva Chase novel. He will share what his agent, publisher and editor each said when he was thinking about starting a different series and his own thoughts on it. Then we talk about life as a writer while still working full-time, branching out into other forms of writing like becoming a playwright and so much more.

In January of 2022, Thomas Kies, author of the critically acclaimed Geneva Chase Mystery Series, was Edgar nominated by the Mystery Writers of America for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award.   He has a long history of working for newspapers and magazines, primarily in New England and New York and currently lives and writes on a barrier island on the coast of North Carolina. His newest novel, WHISPER ROOM is being released on Tuesday, August 2^nd.  Motherly.com named WHISPER ROOM one of the Buzziest Books of 2022 and Library Journal said, “Kies’s sequel to the Sue Grafton Award nominee Shadow Hill is a compelling story for readers who want to follow investigative reporters into the crime scenes.”