The Action Catalyst With Rory Vaden

Gary Garfield shares the truly unique insight he gained first practicing law, and then turning around the financial performance of Bridgestone Americas and the organization’s corporate culture. Through his innovative approach to changing the culture of the organization, Garfield changed the focus of the organization, drove innovation and collaboration, and broke down silos. The result: the company pulled out of its marketplace rut. Under Gary’s leadership, the company had record profits each year, grew profits by more than five-fold during his tenure, and outperformed the S&P 500 over that period. Prior to his achievements as the CEO, Gary served as General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer for Bridgestone. During that time, he helped the company survive the massive Ford Explorer-Firestone tire recall that started in August 2000. Through this experience, Gary also developed an extraordinary experience in crisis management. Show Highlights: Don’t tell people exactly what to do, let them surprise you i

Recognized as one of the 50 leading business thinkers in the world (Thinkers50), Whitney Johnson is an expert on disruptive innovation and personal disruption; specifically, a framework which she codifies in the critically acclaimed book Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work and the upcoming book Build an “A” Team: Play To Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve. (Harvard Business Press, 2018). She is also the author of Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream. She developed her proprietary framework and diagnostics after having co-founded the Disruptive Innovation Fund with Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen. This framework is complemented by a deep understanding of how executives create and destroy value, having spent nearly a decade as an Institutional Investor ranked equity analyst on Wall Street. In addition to her work as a speaker and advisor, Whitney is one of Marshall Goldsmith's original cohort of 25 for the #100 Coa

Officer Bryon Bunitsky was among the first officers at the shooter’s hotel room during the October 1, 2017, mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was recognized for his bravery by President Donald Trump. After being in the law enforcement for 20 years, Bryon has a passion to impact kids. He feels that if we can reach the kids early, not only can we avoid the criminal justice system but we can create a positive influence on the next generation in our society.  He shares his message by speaking in schools. He currently resides in Las Vegas with his wife of 21 years and 4 children. He went to college for music and was a professional musician before choosing law enforcement. He continues to play his guitar in his free time. Show Highlights: God puts everybody on this earth for a reason and you need to figure out what it is and do it ultimately. - Officer Bryon BunitskyNo matter how scared you are, no matter what you're facing, you have to just push through. - Officer Bryon BunitskyOur youth can make good c

David Burkus is a best-selling author, an award-winning podcaster, and associate professor of management at Oral Roberts University. His forthcoming book, FRIEND OF A FRIEND, offers readers a new perspective on how to grow their networks and build key connections—one based on the science of human behavior, not rote networking advice. He is also the author of UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT and THE MYTHS OF CREATIVITY. David is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and his work has been featured in Fast Company, the Financial Times, Inc magazine, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and CBS This Morning. Show Highlights: The better strategy is to figure out where am I in this, who am I already connected to, who do I need to be connected to, how can I chart a path from from me to them? @davidburkusYou're already one or two degrees of separation out from everyone that you need to meet and get to know. It's just a matter of knowing what is my path to them and who could introduce me to them? @davidburkusNuture the connec

Neen James is the author of Folding Time™ and Attention Pays™. In 2017, she was named one of the top 30 Leadership Speakers by Global Guru because of her work with companies like Viacom, Comcast, and Abbot Pharmaceuticals among others. Neen has boundless energy, is quick-witted and always offers powerful strategies for paying attention to what matters so you can get more done and create more significant moments at work and home. Neen is the kind of speaker that engages, educates, entertains, and delivers the real-world solutions that apply in your organization, your home, and your community. She also provides one-on-one consulting in a variety of leadership topics and loves serving her audiences. Find out more at www.neenjames.com. Show Highlights: You and I have the same 1,440 minutes a day. @neenjamesWe don’t have time management crisis; we have an attention management crisis. @neenjamesAn average user touches their phone 2,617 a day. @neenjamesWe made technology more important than people. @nee

Cal Newport is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University, who specializes in the theory of distributed algorithms. He previously earned his Ph.D. from MIT in 2009 and graduated from Dartmouth College in 2004. In addition to studying the theoretical foundations of our digital age as a professor, Newport also writes about the impact of these technologies on the world of work. His most recent book, Deep Work (Grand Central, 2016), argues that focus is the new I.Q. in the knowledge economy, and that individuals who cultivate their ability to concentrate without distraction will thrive. On publication, Deep Work became an instant Wall Street Journal bestseller, and received praise in the New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and The Guardian. Newport’s previous book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You (Grand Central, 2012), argues that “follow your passion” is bad advice. Since its publication, it has been selected for several best business books of the year

Laura Stack is an award-winning keynote speaker and bestselling author of eight books. She is a noted expert in employee and team productivity. She is best known by her moniker, “The Productivity Pro®.” Her engaging personality, combined with over 25 years of experience helping organizations achieve RESULTS, have made her one of the most sought-after experts and keynote speakers in her field. Funny, engaging, and full of real-life strategies that work, Laura will change mindsets and attitudes—so your team can maximize its productivity, increase market share, strengthen performance, increase sales, and get the job done right! What makes her unique? Laura is the President & CEO of The Productivity Pro, Inc., a boutique consulting firm helping leaders increase workplace performance in high-stress environments. Her latest book, FASTER TOGETHER: Accelerating Your Team’s Productivity (Berrett-Koehler), hit bookstores in January 2018. Stack is a past president of the National Speakers Association and is a memb

William Vanderbloemen has been able to combine over 15 years of ministry experience as a Senior Pastor with the best practices of Executive Search to provide churches with a unique offering: a deep understanding of local church work with the very best knowledge and practices of professional executive search. Prior to his founding The Vanderbloemen Search Group, William studied executive search under a mentor with over 25 years of executive search at the highest level. His learning taught him the very best corporate practices, including the search strategies used by the internationally known firm Russell Reynolds. William also has experience as a Manager in Human Resources in a Fortune 200 company, where he focused on integration of corporate culture and succession planning. All of these experiences have come together with his pastoral work to form a unique gift for helping churches and ministries connect with the right key people. Prior to executive search, William led growth and innovation in chu

Mark Deutschmann is a community builder who has worked with neighbors, city leaders and nonprofits for 30-plus years while helping shape development in Nashville and revitalizing the city’s most sought-after neighborhoods. Deutschmann started selling real estate in 1986 and founded Village Real Estate Services in 1996, which now employs more than 350 agents and staff. In 2003, he started Core Development Services, a company actively developing Nashville’s urban center with adaptive reuse and mixed-use infill development. The Village Fund, the nonprofit and charitable arm of Village Real Estate Services, has provided $2 million in grants to organizations helping to enrich and strengthen Nashville. Ever engaged in the community, Deutschmann is chair of the Urban Land Institute Nashville and recently stepped down after 6.5 years as president of Greenways for Nashville. He served on Nashville Mayor Megan Barry’s Transit and Affordability Task Force.  He received the Community Service award from the Greater

Adam Grant has been Wharton’s top-rated professor for six straight years. He is a leading expert on how we can find motivation and meaning, and live more generous and creative lives. He has been recognized as one of the world's 10 most influential management thinkers and Fortune's 40 under 40. He is the author of three New York Times bestselling books that have sold over a million copies and been translated into 35 languages. Give and Take examines why helping others drives our success, and was named one of the best books of 2013 by Amazon, Apple, the Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal—as well as one of Oprah's riveting reads and Harvard Business Review’s ideas that shaped management. Originals, Explores how individuals champion new ideas and leaders fight groupthink; it was a #1 bestseller praised by J.J. Abrams, Richard Branson, and Malcolm Gladwell. Option B, with Sheryl Sandberg, is a #1 bestseller on facing adversity and building resilience.​ Adam is the host of WorkLife, a TED original p

Gary Kennedy, general counsel of American Airlines between 2003 and 2013. Kennedy had his dream job in what he calls “the sexiest industry in the world.” His time there was anything but a smooth ride. Kennedy told Corporate Counsel in an interview that from the moment he took the job in 2003 until he retired in 2013, the company was buffeted by crisis after crisis, with the legal department doing much of the navigating. Recently Kennedy’s book, “Twelve Years of Turbulence,” arrived in bookstores telling the inside story of the airline’s fight for survival. Some research and editing for the book was done by former Dallas Morning News aviation reporter Terry Maxon, while former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach, a former AA board member, wrote the foreword. Show Highlights: Gary shares his 9/11 experience with American Airlines.One of our first confirmations was a phone call from a flight attendant on the plane. - Gary KennedyAn important and difficult decision was made to ground all planes

Jack Canfield is most known as the co-creator and co-author of the New York Times #1 best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul book series which currently has 225 titles in the series and more than 500 million copies in print in 47 languages. He is also the founder and President of the Canfield Training Institute, which trains entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, managers and sales professionals in how to accelerate the achievement of their personal, professional and financial goals. Jack has personally helped hundreds of thousands of people on six different continents become multi-millionaires, business leaders, best-selling authors, leading sales professionals, successful entrepreneurs, and world-class athletes while at the same time creating balanced, fulfilling and healthy lives. Jack is a dynamic speaker and was recently inducted into the National Speakers Association’s Speakers Hall of Fame.   He has appeared on more than 1000 radio and television shows including Oprah, Montel, Larry King Live, the Today S

Skip Prichard is President & CEO of OCLC, a global nonprofit computer library service and research organization. Its goals include furthering access to the world’s information and reducing library costs. He is also the author of The Book of Mistakes: 9 Secrets to Creating a Successful Future. Most recently, Mr. Prichard served for five years as President & CEO of Ingram Content Group, a $1.5B+ global content provider. Mr. Prichard formed ICG by integrating multiple companies into a single company with unified strategy. During that time, he returned the company to a profitable position and oversaw significant growth in the past few years. Additionally, he expanded Ingram’s international locations to continental Europe and Australia, strengthened its digital offerings, and repositioned the company as a service provider. With a career in digital transformations, Mr. Prichard’s views on the future of publishing have been featured in various media including the BBC, New York Times, CNN, NPR, Daily Beast, Har

Michael Hyatt is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World and the Wall Street Journal bestseller, Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want. His newest book, Your Best Year Ever was published in January and has already reached the USA TODAY and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. In 2014, the American Management Association named him as one of “The Top 30 Leaders in Business.” This year, his leadership development firm, Michael Hyatt & Company, made the Inc. 5000, a list of America’s fastest growing, privately-held companies. Michael started his career in the world of traditional media. In fact, he spent most of it in the book publishing industry, most recently as the Chairman & CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, until it was acquired by HarperCollins in 2011. At that time, it was the seventh largest book publishing company in the U.S. Michael was an early adopter of social media. His blog, MichaelHyatt.com, is one of the mo

Emmie Brown is one of the world’s most sought after experts at helping leaders develop processes to build sales teams and maximize salesperson performance. With over 100 team members and well over 8 figures in annual revenues, Southwestern Consulting is one of the fastest growing sales consultancies in the world today. Our mission is to help people achieve their goals in life and to elevate the practice and perception of sales. As a Senior Partner and equity-holder of the company, Emmie’s insights are backed by Southwestern Consulting’s frontline research and work with over 8,000 different teams in more than 40 countries.A practitioner of what she teaches, Emmie is an ultra-performer, consistently ranking in the top 1% of sales forces. Her success led her to spend four years on a national tour training sales organizations around the country. During that time, she interviewed and spoke to over 550 teams, learning extensively about what creates breakdowns in communication, why salespeople don’t make the sale

Daniel H. Pink, bestselling author of Drive and To Sell Is Human, unlocks the scientific secrets to good timing to help you flourish at work, at school, and at home. Everyone knows that timing is everything. But we don’t know much about timing itself. Our lives are a never-ending stream of “when” decisions: when to start a business, schedule a class, get serious about a person. Yet we make those decisions based on intuition and guesswork. Timing, it’s often assumed, is an art. In When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Pink shows that timing is really a science. Drawing on a rich trove of research from psychology, biology, and economics, Pink reveals how best to live, work, and succeed. How can we use the hidden patterns of the day to build the ideal schedule? Why do certain breaks dramatically improve student test scores? How can we turn a stumbling beginning into a fresh start? Why should we avoid going to the hospital in the afternoon? Why is singing in time with other people as good for you

Coach Porter won his 250th career game in 2015 and now ranks as the winningest active head coach in Middle Tennessee. He was third on the list in 2016, but Sam Harp of Lebanon (332 wins) and Craig Clayton of Hillsboro (284) both resigned in 2016 to return to their native state of Kentucky to coach. All of Coach Porter’s wins, however, have come in-state at one school. Porter joined former Trousdale County head coach Clint Satterfield as the Class of 2016 inductees into the Tennessee Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame on Dec. 3. He has the most wins in any sport in White House High School history and the school’s longest-tenured coach. On the current staff, he coaches linebackers as a primary position. He has two former players on full-time staff: offensive coordinator Ryan Hamilton and assistant coach Kevin Jackson. His former player and coach Chad Broadrick is now the head coach at East Robertson, and the Blue Devils will play the Indians in week one of the 2017 and 2018 season. It is the first

Steve Frody, along with wife Shelley, launched officially City2Shore Real Estate in February of 2011. Their passion is helping homeowners keep their homes and prevent foreclosures as well as helping sellers navigate selling their homes successfully. After joining Southwestern Consulting's Coaching Program, Steve and Shelley have doubled their income, free'd up time for other important things and beat being busy. Karla Lewis has held many positions over her extensive career mainly focused on sales, service and relationship development. She has a 30+ year sales track record always being a top producer. Karla is an expert in Retail, Service, Non-Profits, Marketing/Media, Event Production and Agriculture. She is most interested in helping people who want to take their lives and careers to the next level and make them MARVELous! Karla is currently working on her first book “Be MARVELous” and enjoys bringing this message to others thru public speaking engagements. Karla has been married to her husband Brad for 2

Ron Alford, Senior Partner of Southwestern Consulting, is a certified Top Producer Consultant Sales and Leadership Coach. He specializes in teaching ethical sales techniques and strategies that individuals and teams can use to immediately grow their sales. He is the former Regional Sales Director for The Southwestern Company, recruiting, training, mentoring and managing over 600 salespeople over 19 years. Ron is a company record holder,  he personally achieved the highest level of sales 70 times with Southwestern and is Six-time “Sales Manager of the Year” with Southwestern. Ron is also the Leadership Record Holder. He has coached and trained more 10,000+ producers than any other manager in the 158-year-old Southwestern history and personally coached and trained 6 of the top 10 lifetime salespeople in the history of Southwestern. Ron is #3 Lifetime Producer out of over 150,000 salespeople from Southwestern Company history. Ron is also an endurance athlete, having completed many marathons, triathlons and

Alan Stein Jr serves as the Director of Performance for Pure Sweat Basketball and is an internationally renowned expert on improving basketball-specific athleticism. He served as the Head Performance Coach for the DeMatha Catholic High School basketball program for 6 years (after a 7-year stint at Montrose Christian). He has over 15 years of experience working with elite high school, college and NBA players including work for the Nike Skills Academies, McDonald’s All-American game, Jordan Brand Classic, NBA Players Association Top 100 Camp and the CP3 Elite Guard Camp. Alan is the creator of the Elite Jump Training Program and is the host of the Pure Sweat Basketball Show. Recently, Alan has added corporate speaking to his repertoire. Alan has spent the past 15 years working with the highest performing athletes on the planet. He now teaches organizations how to utilize the same strategies in business that elite basketball teams use to perform at a world-class level. Alan is passionate about helping compani