A Newsletter for Curious Minds

If you're a curious mind who is passionate about finding and pursuing your calling, these thoughts, insights, and resources have been created just for you. 


Magical endings are a sham

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LISTEN IN ON APPLE | SPOTIFY | AMAZON MUSIC Either/or is a choice for a narrow range of categories, and the rest of life generally fits into the wild, tangly box of both/and. You can chase your theater dreams AND be a story coach. You can keep your foot in the corporate world AND build your consulting business. You can […]

Episode 20: Reach more people with tiny stories (solocast with Lindsay Hotmire)

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Podcast

If you want to see what relationship-first marketing looks like, spend a few weeks inside Stephen Woessner’s How to Fill Your Sales Pipeline facebook group. It’s free, and he legitimately gives away every ounce of what he’s got.  He never holds back, and he never stops giving more.  It’s humbling, really, to watch from the […]

Episode 19: What relationship-first marketing really looks like (with Stephen Woessner)

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Podcast

LISTEN IN ON APPLE | SPOTIFY | AMAZON MUSIC Eric White is the co founder of Ponder, a customer insight studio that delivers insight experiences to help growth stage companies increase win rates and explore new segments. Eric will tell you that one of his biggest beefs with data is that most market research companies just email you reports and […]

Episode 18: Turning customer insights into stories that grow companies (with Eric White)

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Podcast

I know. Blasphemous.  I mean, who in their right mind would tell you to look at yourself and embrace your ordinary life? What type of self-love, self-help expertise is that? And how does any human do great things if they just settle for ordinary? Call me crazy, but right now, at this very moment, I […]

Embrace your ordinary life

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Story

LISTEN IN ON APPLE | SPOTIFY | AMAZON MUSIC EPISODE SUMMARY: It’s funny to sit across the Zoom with a man you’ve known since you were 6 years old. The last time Alex Yeater and I talked face to face, I was 11 years old. We shared the same elementary school, and Alex has been a part of my story […]

Episode 16: Standing out as an entrepreneur who leads with faith (with Alex Yeater)

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Podcast

We talk a lot about living a life of meaning and purpose, but the sad reality is that most of us TALK about it, but so few of us actually take action on the things we say we want to do. Bridget Hilton and Joe Huff are on a mission to change that, and they’re […]

Episode 14: Create a life rich in experiences and become an Experiential Billionaire (with Bridget Hilton and Joe Huff)

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Podcast

LISTEN IN ON APPLE | SPOTIFY | AMAZON MUSIC Kevyn Rustici works as a Strategic Human Capital and Business Consultant, where he helps organizations align their “people strategy” with their business strategy to achieve the business’s desired outcomes. He loves helping organizations to better understand how their people directly impact the bottom line to help increase their return on people […]

Episode 13: How to define success on your own terms and make meaning in a challenging world (with Kevyn Rustici)

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Podcast

LISTEN IN ON APPLE | SPOTIFY | AMAZON MUSIC EPISODE SUMMARY: If you want to see what it really looks like to show up without pretense and be completely authentic, then you’ll want to meet Ben Albert. Ben is the owner of Balbert Marketing LLC. He is also the curator of The “Real Business Connections Network,” where he hosts five […]

Episode 12: Growing up: Honoring the shy and bullied child who grew into a successful business owner (with Ben Albert)

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Podcast

EPISODE SUMMARY Rachel Eubanks is a copywriter and the founder of Inspire to Engage, a company helping businesses serve customers well through their written content. In this episode of Storyhouse, Rachel shares how she built her business during her sons’ nap-time hours and shows us how she still uses some of those early boundaries and […]

Episode 11: From nap-time business to full-time success (with Rachel Eubanks)

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Podcast

LISTEN IN ON APPLE | SPOTIFY | AMAZON MUSIC EPISODE SUMMARY: Jason Rhoads isn’t the type of leadership coach who will sell you fluff or help you chase the treasures of the world. He’s going to help you build a life that aligns to who you are and who you want to become. Leading with his mind-shifting concept of Eleutheria, […]

Episode 10: The world tells you to live as you please. Here’s why that’s flawed (with Jason Rhoads)

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Podcast

LISTEN IN ON APPLE | SPOTIFY | AMAZON MUSIC Andrea Butcher has spent more than  20 years as a business leader, executive coach, and advocate in the talent development and the human resources space. She leads organizations and leaders from the big picture to execution with a proven track record of growing and strengthening organizations. Andrea has an inherent ability […]

Episode 9: Why it’s time to rethink leadership development (with Andrea Butcher)

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Podcast

LISTEN IN ON APPLE | SPOTIFY | AMAZON MUSIC Gratitude Guru Chris Schembra shares how he used the tipping point in his life as a force for good. Today, he shares his evidence-based framework of gratitude with leaders around the globe, and he’s teaching businesses, organizations, and humans everywhere how to rewrite their stories with the simple (yet profound) tool […]

Episode 8: Using gratitude to rewrite our stories (with Chris Schembra)

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Podcast

EPISODE SUMMARY: In this solocast, Lindsay Hotmire shares why all marketers do indeed need to be storytellers. She shares what story is and exposes what story is NOT and explains why marketers might feel a little fatigued with pressure to jump on the storytelling bandwagon. EPISODE NOTES: Why does the storytelling bandwagon exist?  What do […]

Episode 7: [Solocast] Yes, fellow marketer. You do need to be a storyteller.

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Podcast

LISTEN IN ON APPLE | SPOTIFY | AMAZON MUSIC EPISODE SUMMARY:  Mari Geasair isn’t a stranger to the hard-times of career success. But when life handed her a career-shattering health diagnosis, she sought out the deeper meaning within that diagnosis and made it her mission. How do you pivot successfully when real-life obstacles make it feel so hard? Mari holds […]

Episode 6: How to pivot successfully when real life stands in the way (with Mari Geasair)

Mari Geasair shares how to pivot successfully when real life stands in the way

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Podcast

LISTEN IN ON APPLE | SPOTIFY | AMAZON MUSIC EPISODE SUMMARY Sales Maven Nikki Rausch brings her 25+ years of sales experience to the Storyhouse podcast, sharing some of the same approaches that led to her shattering sales records in her industry and receiving multiple “top producer” awards along the way. Nikki’s robust Sales Maven Society ignites game-changing outcomes for […]

Episode 5: Simplify the Sales Process Using The Selling Staircase with Nikki Rausch

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Podcast

LISTEN IN ON APPLE | SPOTIFY | AMAZON MUSIC EPISODE SUMMARY:   Rain Bennett is an expert storyteller who teaches people how to leverage story to grow their communities, deepen their connections, and maximize their impact in minimal time. In this episode of Storyhouse, Rain shows us how to find our unique story and shares some of the most profound story […]

Episode 4: Want to tell great brand stories? Leverage your weakness (with Rain Bennett)

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Podcast

“Magical endings are a sham,” I said to my husband.  Twelve hours after my daughter graduated from college, she sat on the couch across from me, sharing all sorts of emotions over her final days of college.  Her own feelings forced me back in time, vis-a-vis my own goodbyes.   High school graduation. 1995. College four years later. […]

Magical endings are a sham

Magical endings are a sham

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Story

I remind myself not to speed.  Tillotson Avenue has evolved into a bit of a power path for the university police and the state highway patrol. Digital speed limit signs flash when you’re driving too fast, and ominous, radar-equipped SUVs conspicuously tuck themselves into alleys and driveways.  The courageously feckless disregard the warnings and speed […]

What are we doing all this for?

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Story

He lays his head on the pillow beside me and I make a silent mental note: Keep an early bedtime if you want to reserve an hour of magical conversation with your kids.  I throw my book on the floor and stare at him as he screams back at the invisible Frank Sinatra who sings […]

A journal entry on how story starts and ends

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Story

It’s a weird phenomenon, really >> this fact that for so many of us, drawing the throughline between our stories and our brands can feel. . .  grueling impossible frustrating tiring hopeless pointless [fill in the blank]. I’m sure there’s some super smart psychological explanation for all of this H.A.R.D., too, but brass tacks, real […]

Two Ways to Find Your Brand Story

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Tools

Imagine with me for a hot second that the moment you took your very first breath and cried your first hello to the world, the doctor looked at your mom and said, “Congratulations! Here’s the minute-by-minute guide on how to raise this child. It’s worked with the last 300 children I’ve delivered, so it’s guaranteed […]

With brand story, it’s always personal

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Uncategorized

I don’t know if haunted is the right word, but over the last year or so, I’ve been visited by a memory over and over again, and I can’t seem to let it go.  It’s as if it’s showing up, trying to teach me something, but I’m just not connecting the dots.  When I was […]

A scary woods and a magic mushroom

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Story

When I was 11 years old, I moved to a new school in northwest Ohio that was colloquially referred to as The Academy.   Their motto was “Excellence is our tradition,” and it wasn’t just a feel good mantra, either. They meant it.   For most kids at The Academy, any grade below an A- induced the […]

Challenging the thin storyline

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Tools

A few weeks ago, I permanently closed my business Instagram account.  It was a decision I had been mulling over for months, but like a kid who can never escape the social pressures of junior high, I kept tuning in, kept playing the social capital game, kept trying to fit in to the Millennial-powered platform, […]

Why I left Instagram (as a business owner)

Woman holding a phone looking at her Instagram feed

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Story

In 1910, Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov changed the way films would forever be edited.   He had a hunch that if you just zeroed in on an actor’s face, a whole range of emotions could be communicated. And his theory blew the lid on the whole bag of audience manipulation tricks.   Using the EXACT SAME editing […]

This one tool will change the way you see (and tell) your story

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Tools

We are all stepping into story with a very particular paradigm. We each have a worldview that shapes how we see and how we tell stories, and that worldview shapes the TRUTH we emerge with.

And when you don’t know what your paradigm is, when you’ve not done the work of discovering the pieces of your own worldview, then story loses its power – over you + over everyone else in your orbit.

13 Ways to Write a Story

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Tools

As subject matter experts, it’s hard to leave our expertise behind.  We can be tricked into believing that watering down all the things we know is a betrayal of who we are, and we’re afraid that if we don’t show up with our full field of knowledge, our audience will get cheated.  “I don’t want […]

Lost in the weeds: A parable for business owners

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Business Strategy, Story