Carey Jenkins had an unconventional path to CEO of Substantial, a Seattle-based digital product studio that has worked with companies like Amazon, Mercedes Benz, and the Wall Street Journal. In 2012, Carey joined the client services team, and six short years later she became the CEO. As the sixth female employee and first mother hired at Substantial, Carey is proud that Substantial has grown the female employee base to 37% overall and 40% on the leadership team, and she is committed to empowering other women to seize more leadership opportunities.
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Beyond the excitement of graduating from college, many students wander out of the auditorium as lost souls. Their failure to recognize opportunity in disguise creates a void of purpose, but it is important to acknowledge that no one in history had a road map to success. Carey Jenkins’ story emphasizes the importance of framing adverse situations differently to become more resilient. Ironically, her success story is more of a collection of failures than successes, but in this episode of Absolute Advantage, she explains how a will to learn from them will only tear you down and rebuild you stronger.
Jenkins’ toolbox as a CEO includes project management, people management, writing, and public speaking, but not a single one of those skills came from her experience in one role or industry. They are the culmination of all her past experiences and failures, which led to greater opportunities that she was already prepared for. Jenkins faced many challenges climbing the ranks to become a female executive, but she made it to the top because of her capacity to lead and adapt to adversity—any one is capable when they start asking “why not me” instead of “why me.”
Throughout her journey, Jenkins was always hungry for feedback and coaching, but what set her apart was the ability to step into really uncomfortable situations and recognize her value to the company. This relentless mindset drove her to fight tooth and nail for the CEO position when the opportunity presented itself, and it proved that you can always pull yourself up if you’re prepared to do so.
Ways to contact Carey Jenkins:
After their business crumbled due to a sudden illness that had Joeel bedridden for a year, Joeel (jo-ELL) and Natalie Rivera (ri-VAIR-uh) decided they never wanted to be in that situation again. So they dedicated themselves to converting their training and speaking programs into online courses that would outlive them and would provide passive income. They reached over 100,000 students from 191 countries in only 3 years. They believe that entrepreneurship is the ultimate form of empowerment. Today they teach INDIEpreneurs how to create a purpose-driven business in this new economy so they can monetize their passion and live life on their terms.
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Joeel and Natalie Rivera both had entrepreneurial dreams early on, but what brought them together was their desire to help others, create a legacy, and make an impact on the community. After their paths merged, Joeel and Natalie found a collective calling to establish a multitude of platforms that would help business leaders in the community grow. As fate would have it, their devotion to the cause quickly caught up with them and Joeel fell severely ill, completely incapacitated and unable to work.
The adversity Joeel faced culminated a desire to build something that would outlive him, so Joeel and Natalie began converting all of their content into videos that were accessible to a much larger audience. All of their students have an expertise that they haven’t acknowledged yet, so the Riveras thrive on helping students identify their passions in order to monetize and share them with the world. The courses are not necessarily complex and a lot of them are built around simple skills that other people are hungry to learn; if it is something you can teach, it is something you can turn into a passive income and anything is possible.
For the most part, a lot of the information being taught is already out there, but the reason people pay for these courses is because Joeel and Natalie’s students provide packaged content that is taught step by step. A lot of changes are taking place as the capacity to do business online grows, so people are searching for more niche information as they develop new skills to keep up with the shift. That demand is only growing with people looking to make a greater impact in this world, by stepping into themselves and assuming a growth mindset. In this episode of Absolute Advantage, Joeel and Natalie explain how you can accomplish that by uncovering your passions and sharing them with others. Click here to listen to the episode.
Ways to contact Joeel and Natalie Rivera:
Kathleen Trotter is a fitness expert, media personality, personal trainer, writer, life coach, certified Pilates and ELDOA instructor, and overall health enthusiast. Her passion is motivating others to find their fit. Kathleen does this through writing, regular TV and media appearances, working with clients (ranging from athletes of all ages to individuals living with Parkinson’s disease and osteoporosis), and speaking engagements.
Kathleen holds an M.Sc. in Exercise Science from the University of Toronto and a nutrition diploma from the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition. She is a C.H.E.K. Level 3 trainer, a Level 2 Fascial Stretch Therapist, Level 1 ELDOA practitioner, and a certified Pilates Equipment Specialist.
Kathleen started her work as a fitness writer at Chatelaine in 2010. Shortly after, she started blogging for the Huffington Post and filming and writing for the Globe and Mail. Kathleen has published articles in magazines, such as Canadian Running, Glow, Todays Parent, Healthy Directions, and Impact Magazine.
Kathleen is regularly interviewed as a fitness expert for multiple news outlets including Global News and the Toronto Star. She also makes regular TV and media appearances on Breakfast Television Montreal, Rogers Ottawa, CTV News, CHCH Morning Live Hamilton, the CBC, ABC News 7, and many others. Kathleen has been a guest on numerous radio shows, podcasts, and is a regular on Zoomer Radios The Tonic.
Her new-found passion is motivational speaking. Kathleen’s speaking engagements have included a series of motivational lectures at the Toronto Public Library, guest lectures at the University of Toronto and Concordia University, Lunch and Learns at the University of Toronto, and corporate presentations, including her recent Cisco Women of Influence keynote talk.
Kathleen loves her job. Her mission is to inspire as many people as possible to adopt (in an intelligent way) a healthier lifestyle and to make healthier choices because they love themselves, not because they hate themselves. Kathleen does not believe in body shame. Kathleen does believe in goals and results. She does not believe in being easy on yourself or letting negative brain propaganda win. She does believe in self-compassion and holding yourself accountable. Kathleen does not believe in being active to create a whole new you. Kathleen does believe in being you, but working toward creating a you who has more healthy habits. She believes in learning and growing, passion, gratitude, and actively finding pockets of joy. Most important, Kathleen believes in actively creating the version of yourself that you want to be, and that the key to health success is finding YOUR fit hence the name of her first book, Finding Your Fit.
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Kathleen Trotter is a speaker, author, and media personality set out to help people ‘find their fit,’ but this process requires a lot more involvement than starting a diet or getting a gym membership. Unless you are willing to act to change, your future self is just going to be a version of your current self. Trotter’s approach focuses on making fundamental changes to your mindset in order to prioritize self-care and become the best possible version of yourself.
It is all about small wins because your health and well being is just an aggregate of every decision you make in the moment. If you can assign more value to health and exercise, you will be able to make small adjustments in real-time that make a significant difference in the long run. You cannot effectively lead others if you are not leading yourself first, and by taking Trotter’s initiative you can start to replenish your energy, self-confidence, and overall happiness that will see a major shift at work and in the household.
The growth mindset assumes that there is no experience good or bad as long as you learn from it. In this episode of Absolute Advantage, Trotter joins host Kelly Hatfield to talk about creating a system to hold yourself accountable and grow as an individual in your pursuit of better health. Learn some of the strategies that Kathleen has used to successfully transform the lives of her clients’ lives.
Ways to contact Kathleen Trotter:
Drew Tarvin is the world’s first Humor Engineer teaching people how to get better results while having more fun. He has worked with thousands of people at 200+ organizations, including Microsoft, the FBI, and the International Association for Canine Professionals. He is a best-selling author, has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and TEDx, and has delivered programs in 50 states, 20+ countries, and 6 continents. He loves the color orange and is obsessed with chocolate.
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The term ‘humor engineer’ might seem completely foreign, because Drew Tarvin coined it himself. His work focuses on becoming effective with humans, and he is driven by the discovery that similar skills are needed to be successful in both comedy and leadership.
In this episode of The Absolute Advantage, Andrew Tarvin discusses a powerful shift in mentality that can generate positive momentum in the workplace and the direct benefits of integrating humor into your communication.
You can use humor to get your team to pay attention, and if you do that consistently people want to experience it in your meetings. But, although it is not a perfect strategy in every situation, humor can be used more than we realized to change perspectives and get people to experience a change of state.
Tune in to this week’s episode of The Absolute Advantage podcast to learn how you can start implementing strategic humor to make a difference in the workplace.
Ways to contact Drew Tarvin: