Rad Awakenings With Khe Hy

Today's guest, Cara Thomas, dared me to buy a coffee for the person in line behind me. I was terrified of the awkwardness and possible rejection - yet once I did it, felt truly alive. Cara created Serenflipity to spark that feeling in each of us after a seven year career as an innovation consultant. The simple flip of a card throws you into wonder and serendipity, feelings that often vanish as we "grow up." Cara's journey into entrepreneurship has (literally) taken her around the world and in this episode we discuss the importance of experiencing both positive and negative emotions, how the body breaks down when the mind breaks down, and why entrepreneurship is not for the faint-hearted. Skillshare is this week's sponsor: Join the online learning community with 16,000+ classes in business, design and more. Get one free month of unlimited access. http://skillshare.com/rad Show Notes: bit.ly/radpod13 Subscribe to RadReads: bit.ly/RadReads

Richard Hughes-Jones did it. After 10 years as a management consultant, he took the plunge to start his own practice - fueled in part by his love for backcountry skiing. Then on a routine check up, his doctor states “That's not supposed to be there.” Stage 3 Colorectal cancer. It's the news we all dread - what happens next? Do you take the Anti-Fragile approach of “that which does not kill me only makes me stronger” or the Buddhist approach of "relinquishing control." How do you deal with experts (i.e. doctors) and is information your ally in the battle? And do you ever get “closure?” Richard is a kind, open, and warm spirit. We talk mortality, second-guessing your prior lifestyle, decision-making, his 26 line item sneaker collection, and making it back to the mountains he loves. Skillshare is this week's sponsor: Join the online learning community with 16,000+ classes in business, design and more. Get one free month of unlimited access. http://skillshare.com/rad Show Notes: bit.ly/radpod12 Subscribe to Rad

Imagine building a business with a heart, with the person who shares your heart. Scot and Jacq Tatelman are the founders of State Bags, a mission-driven company building on the 1-for-1 model for school kids in need. Why backpacks? Because they "represent where you've been and where you're going." Their bags are *fire* and they've partnered with Chance the Rapper, Beyonce, Kevin Durant and the White House. The love, admiration, and pride they have for one another is truly energizing (note the episode's "happy tears"). But they're honest about the challenges of co-founding and co-parenting: how pre-emptive couples therapy helped realign their roles, creating boundaries with their two energetic young kids, and how the heck you achieve work-life balance when Beyonce's peeps are calling while Jacq's in labor. (tl;dr You don't!) FULL SHOW NOTES: bit.ly/radpod11 JOIN THE COMMUNITY: bit.ly/RadReads

Imagine getting a $3.6 million bonus at age 30? The dream scenario, right? This episode's guest, Sam Polk made more money in that a single bonus than his parents had earned over their entire lives. Yet he still needed to repeat the mantra "I am Enough" to reaffirm his own self-worth. Sam was a senior trader at King Street, one of the most successful hedge funds in the world. But behind his rocket-ship trajectory was a story of rage, addiction, arrests, and loneliness - the result of a strained relationship with his parents, especially his dad. Sam began his healing through regular therapy beginning at age 22 (over 400 sessions) to which he attributes some of his Wall Street success. Today, he's a social entrepreneur and founder of Everytable, a mission-driven company delivering healthy meals affordable to everyone. Sam is truly an open book and we discuss masculinity, "the Number," what he'd tell his 20 year old self, fatherhood, and how to forgive. This Week's Sponsor: Skillshare Join the online learning c

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, college grad or retired Goldman partner, you’ve probably experienced some form money anxiety. For a tiny piece of paper, money possesses this incredible power to trigger intense feelings such as FOMO, envy, inadequacy and outright fear (aka the poverty mindset). And it never ceases to amaze me how rational people (and many finance professionals) turn a complete blind eye to this important area of their lives. Today’s guest, Ashley Feinstein Gerstley coaches people (like me) out of their own money madness. Ashley’s a coach and creator of the Fiscal Femme blog. But our listeners will relate to her story: she started as an Investment banker and grew the Fiscal Femme as side hustle until finally jumping off into entrepreneurship. Her advice is particularly spicy for entrepreneurs, and we discuss how much runway is enough, “death by a thousand small withdrawals” (my personal favorite), the dangerous belief that we can out-earn our expenses, and how avoiding the topic is really avoi

This week’s episode is a story of career agility, embracing change, and living with intention. Lisa Shalett is a former Goldman Sachs partner, now board director and startup investor/advisor. At Goldman, Lisa held numerous leadership roles, including Japanese Equities, Global Compliance and Brand Marketing/Digital Strategy. She shares with us her approach to these transitions or “reinventions:” the danger of viewing your skills in narrow contexts (such as your current job); controlling your narrative as you change roles; or simply, asking your boss “What’s keeping you up at night?” We then discuss post-retirement life, driven in part by family considerations. Yet retirement isn’t as worry free as we perceive it to be, especially when identity and career are so intertwined. One must navigate FOMO, the (perceived) loss of relevance, maintaining one’s “edge,” and yes — even for retired Goldman partners — the emotional irrationality of negative cash flow burn arising from entrepreneurship. And her advice to thos

What is a life coach? What does life coaching consist of? Does it work? In this episode, we'll meet my coach, Kate Bednarski, one of the most impactful people in my life. I’ve asked Kate to throw out all patient confidentiality constraints and crack open all of her notes from our two years of working together. We start with our first meeting, where I showed up “jacked up on caffeine” a 34 year old guy rife with many tensions. I had a messed up relationship with time - there was never enough, yet I wanted to accomplish so much that it was affecting my marriage and relationship with my daughter. I was also in the midst of a successful career in hedge funds, yet my “money madness” as Kate calls it made me constantly second guess myself, as I was anchored to the belief that things couldn’t be savored without delayed gratification and that it was a proxy for success. At the end, as many of our listeners will know, most of these anxieties emanated from a deep rooted fear of my own mortality. Kate coaches many har

And by liabilities, we mean "Angelina Jolie lips." I'm not kidding, I never thought I'd open a podcast by asking another guy about his lips. And that's only one of many similarities I share with this week's guest, Srini Rao, the CEO of Unmistakable Media. Srini and I also had “non-existent” dating lives which led to a deep-rooted fear of never falling in love and spending life alone. Today, at 39 - a self-proclaimed "late bloomer" Srini is still searching for that special person with whom he can grow a family of mini-surfers - but also knows that being alone is infinitely better than being with the wrong person. Srini's had a remarkable professional journey, he's the failed byproduct of the “traditional model of education and work” and graduated into two recessions, the dot-com bust (undergrad) and the global financial crisis (MBA). Now, as the founder and CEO of Unmistakeable Media, he's conducted over 700 podcast interviews, organized massive events, and is a published author of Unmistakable: Why Only Is B

Anastasia was destined to be an options trader since she was a little kid: she loved finishing at the top of the leader board during elementary school games and came up with her own brute-force approach multiplication tables. She then had her first shift, joining McKinsey and 18 months later found herself at a crossroads: Get her MBA or commit the money she would’ve spent and start building stuff. She chose the latter — “The business school of the world” as she calls it. Her thinking is crystal clear — on Love/dating/and relationships, the difference between aggressive and assertive, managing cash flow burn, and how much of our identity, for better or worse, is buried in the question “What do you do?”

Fred Ehrsam is an "OG" in the crypto world. But we barely talk crypto - instead, we talk about his journey. Fred joined Goldman as an FX Trader because it was “the cool kids” job, only to find an industry suffering from the classic Innovator’s Dilemma  — one focused on extracting rents, instead of innovation. Fred’s such a crisp and honest thinker and we discuss chasing objective achievement to define self-worth, the power of executive coaching (“I thought it as armchair therapy for the weak”), the naïve algorithm of life (“getting stuck at local maximums of happiness”), and how we humans are wired to be pleasure seeking, pain avoidant.

Dan is a Wunderkid entrepreneur who has been building web apps since he was a kid. He went to Penn as a Philosophy major and bootstrapped his startup Firefly which he sold the same month as his graduation. So what happens to your internal monologue when you sell your company at a time when most grads are starting their first jobs? There's the common story that says “When X happens, my life will begin.” But you wouldn't say “I'll start exercising once I get promoted to Managing Director?” Dan vulnerably shares deeper insecurities of social rejection, the emotional drain of self talk, and how a relentless drive to improve can be destructive. We riff on writing (how it's like compound interest and creates serendipity), the dangers of putting off working on yourself, not doing “half a push-up” (when it comes to experimentation), and the lumpy nature of progress. And together we have a good laugh comparing how Dan and I, both nerdy, skinny and insecure teenagers hatched up detailed plans for social acceptance. Se

"Do you need to beat the crap out of yourself to succeed?" Today's guest, Shirzad Chamine, has helped countless CEOs answer that question. He breaks down the big lie of fear and achievement. Shirzad's work really helped me realize how much I self-sabotage and how to harness that energy to tap into our creativity. He's coached countless executives and has no time for the "woo woo." This is all about leveling up your mastery.

Tiago Forte is the founder of Forte Labs. He’s an incredible thinker on productivity for knowledge workers. In today’s information-driven economy, legacy frameworks such as to-do lists or inbox zero may no longer be relevant. Tiago draws from principals ranging from Design Thinking to Lean Manufacturing, and helps me answer the simple question: is it possible to be too productive?