Showing posts with label High-Impact Interview. Show all posts
Showing posts with label High-Impact Interview. Show all posts

Friday, July 3, 2015

Coherence Toolkit with Trusted Sharing - Powered by Awesome Facilitators


Howdy partners, it's me, Ty.  Today I have a video that my friend Charles Wu made for Trusted Sharing.  Learn about our Coherence Toolkit and ask me about it next time I see you down at the saloon or yoga den.



Tuesday, December 30, 2014

5 Posts that you may enjoy from Ty's 2014 writings


Trusted Sharing was very honored to sponsor a series of events that happened in Asheville in October around Dynamic Facilitation and Wisdom Councils. We had many great people including the founders of these modalities, several authors and some renowned filmmakers. Here are 2 articles that I organized and edited that you can read.


Asheville Wisdom Councils Declare our Social Contract is Broken (on System of Abundance Blog) Wisdom Council Intends to Bring Participation to Asheville’s Government ( on Asheville Grit blog)


In March we partnered with the fine folks at Peppermint, an open source operating system built using the Ubuntu (Linux) codebase. In the process of writing the story we reached out to Peppermint's partner in Africa, Marc Stephan Nkouly, and heard some wild stories. The article was picked up by OpenSource.com, they are an online publication focused on how open source is applied to different areas including business, education, government, health, law and other disciplines of life. Read the article here: Peppermint introduces cloud-based open source desktop to Africa (on OpenSource.com)


One of the realizations I had after our podcast, Spark Tech Talk, interviewed Steve Wozniak, was that connecting with your heroes in meaningful ways was possible. Most folks who have "made it" and are thought leaders want to give back and help spread there ideas even further. So one day I reached out to Harrison Owen, a personal hero of mine and the founder of Open Space (tech folks may know unconferences or barcamps) and asked him if we could do an interview. To make it a truly collaborative experience I partnered with my friends over at Mycelium project, Matt and Ashley, and they ran with the interview. Here is the article: Harrison Owen Interview: Inviting Flow and Self Organization
An on-going theme for me and my life is to work in the social enterprise space. Someone I've worked with and connected with over the last couple of years is Paul Polack. An amazing mind, a leading social entrepreneur and to say just an author would be an understatement. He is like Bill Clinton in my book. One thing that stood out to me was Paul Polack's amazing energy. At 80 years old his mind is more active than most 30 years olds I know. Read the article from January here:  Paul Polak interview about his new book The Business Solution to Poverty

Monday, February 17, 2014

Harrison Owen Interview: Inviting Flow and Self Organization

To some, Open Space Technology is a method for organizing meetings or facilitating groups. However, to the vast community of Open Space practitioners, Open Space is a way of life. It’s a philosophical perspective about how the world works, how humans organize, and a method for making visible some of the invisible laws of life and nature. We interviewed Harrison Owen, the founder of Open Space to learn his views on self-organization, structure, invitation and even grief.

 Harrison never expected to find himself in this place of organizational development. He started as an Anglican priest and thought he was going to live his life as an Old Testament scholar. Then the Civil Rights movement came along and he found himself on the streets organizing. His life shifted. His degree no longer felt desirable. He found himself spending time in Africa, working with the NIH, and in various other positions. The constant throughout this life journey, however, has been an ongoing passion for the human process or phenomena of transformation. Seventy-eight years into this life journey, Harrison says, “Open Space - that’s a funny interlude that turned out to be quite significant.”

 “My hope would be to somehow make human life more human.” 
 ~Harrison Owen

Friday, January 31, 2014

Paul Polak interview about his new book The Business Solution to Poverty


Earlier this week I had the honor to collaborate with Paul Polak, author of The Business Solution to Poverty on this interview. Paul has been the social entrepreneur who has inspired me the most and at 80 years old he is both full of wisdom, and has an un-bounding energy. Paul has been in the business of creating markets for the poor for over 30 years. He has authored two books and created several successful companies and organizations. "Polak is best known for his work with Colorado-based International Development Enterprises (IDE), a non-profit he founded in 1981 which is dedicated to developing practical solutions that harness the power of markets and attack poverty at its roots. IDE has ended poverty for 19 million of the world’s poorest people by making radically affordable irrigation technology available to farmers." ~Wikipedia

Find out more about the new book, The Business Solution to Poverty, on Paul's website: http://www.paulpolak.com/

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Why education isn't broken, but why you should still fix it; an interview with Tosca Killoran

My interview with Tosca was everything, fun, silly and she would frequently challenge my way of thinking (so maybe even a tinge uneasy :).  Among many good experiences, she asked me to break the rules of my interview (which I did) and made me crack up at her jokes or mischief on several occasions. I believe this educator really can change the world.  From across the world, for me at least, I give you Tosca Killoran a human who knows a thing or two about evolved education.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Interview with Paul Zelizer of Wisdompreneurs

Earlier today I had the honor to collaborate with Paul Zelizer of Wisdompreneurs on this interview. Paul considers himself the coyote, the trickster and he says his coyote archetype is what got him to where he is today. It's amazing to me the community he has built and being a new-comer to it I was happy to hear the philosophy from the top. 
Paul's blog is: http://www.paulzelizer.com/blog

By Ty Hallock
You are the founder and the director of Wisdompreneurs.  Can you tell us about how this got started and what your mission is?

Wisdompreneurs is a global network of people interested in the intersection of Wisdom and Entrepreneurship. Our mission is to find creative ways to bring entrepreneurial skills to wisdom teachers (coaches/trainers/consultants/etc) and to bring easy to implement wisdom practices to the entrepreneurial world.

We got started when for Wisdom 2.0 2013 (www.wisdom2conference.com), Soren Gordhammer (the founder and a friend of mine) asked me to lead a breakout session for the "gazillions of coaches we have at Wisdom 2.0". That breakout session was titled Wisdompreneurs: Deep Networking and Community Building for Coaches, Consultants and Trainers. 120 people attended.

We wanted to stay in touch so we created a Facebook group. Word spread very quickly and people have been asking for more than just a FB group.  We’ve created a dynamic executive team of 4 (Alison Raby in San Francisco, Jerome Braggs in Oklahoma City and Oge Okosieme in London) and are going through the process of creating the organizational infrastructure to begin offering the kinds of programs and services that we are being asked to.



What is the most exciting work you are doing with Wisdompreneurs?

The community is freaking awesome.  There can often be lots of isolation - both for wisdom teachers and for entrepreneurs.  The sharing and the collaborations that have been born are remarkable.  And we’re only 4 months old in any sort of intentional sense.  Very exciting!


You’ve been involved with Wisdom 2.0 and left that to start Wisdompreneurs, can you tell us quickly about Wisdom 2.0 and what it was like working with Soren Gordhamer?


Here's the description of Wisdom 2.0 from the Facebook page: "Wisdom 2.0 is a one-of-kind event that brings together people from a variety of disciplines, including technology leaders, Zen teachers, neuroscientists, and academics to explore how we can live with deeper meaning and wisdom in our technology-rich age." Speakers are folks like Marianne Williamson, Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Jack Kornfield on the wisdom side. Tech/business speakers include the co-founders of Twitter, Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn, Arianna Huffington, Bill Ford of Ford Motor Company and many more.

It’s the most dynamic event I’ve ever been to.  We had 1800 people at Wisdom 2.0 2013.  And the conversations are incredibly exciting.  For instance, this year we had Bill Ford of the Ford Motor Company talking about how he feels that the lessons he learned from his 20+ year mentee relationship with Jack Kornfield (founder of www.spiritrock.org) are largely responsible for Ford being the only major US automaker that didn’t need a bailout a few years back.  Fantastic conversation to be present for!

I’ve known Soren Gordhammer, the founder of Wisdom 2.0, as friend for almost 10 years.  Wisdom 2.0 is only around 5 years old.  So I was there supporting Soren as a friend and colleague as Wisdom 2.0 was going through the birthing process.

I was Director of Social Media for Wisdom 2.0 for 15 months until September 2013. Before that, it was mutually supporting each other to reinvent ourselves (he supported me in starting my global coaching practice for wisdom based/spiritual entrepreneurs).  For instance, he was the one who introduced me to the deep uses of social media.  We were early adaptors of Twitter together.  Both of us have had many amazing experiences and great business opportunities due to social media.

What is the vision for Wisdompreneurs?  What is the potential of this organization?


Now, I’ve left Wisdom 2.0 because my passion and focus is growing Wisdompreneurs.  We have the opportunity to grow into one of the premier communities of practice for wisdom based ventures and teachers in the world.  And, to help entrepreneurs across the world - especially those with positive social intentions - to succeed at a much higher rate.

We have leading entrepreneurs - like Seth Godin in this post (
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/01/quieting-the-lizard-brain.html) and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone in this post (http://www.bizstone.com/2011/09/cultural-neuroscience-and-startups.html) talking about what happens when startups don’t build a mindful culture.  They simply fail at a much higher rate.  We know that.  We have the understanding of neuroscience to predict it.

Yet, very few people are doing science based work with startups in this way.  Our community knows the research and best practices in this sector like few do.  With this foundation, we are ready to help a whole new generation of startups succeed, thrive and make the world a better place.

I want to say that there has never - in the history of humanity - been a better or more important time to be looking at the intersection of wisdom and entrepreneurship/business.  And, we’ve been asked by an amazing community of deeply caring humans to create an organization that’s able to birth initiatives that are larger in scope than any one person or organization’s programs or products.  Fundementally, it’s about leverage.  


You were telling me earlier that while working at Wisdom 2.0 you had a chance to hang out with Tony Hsieh of Zappos.  We were discussing mindfulness and you said he "uses frame of positive psychology".  Can you elaborate on that more?

In 2009, thanks to Twitter, Soren Gordhammer and I got to go to Zappos world headquarters to meet with Tony Hsieh and the Zappos leadership team about conscious business and social media.  It was an incredible experience for me - a game changing one in fact.   

Tony is incredibly passionate about what Jim Collins calls a ‘Type 5 Leader”.  Someone who has deep ambition for the greater good plus an embodied sense of humility.   

On the day we were there, they were literally handing out t-shirts thanking all their employees - they had just crossed the $1 Billion per year mark.  Yet everyone we spoke to - and we were allowed to wander the building without a guide and speak to anyone who wasn’t in a closed door meeting - went on and on about how Tony listens and how much he cares.  

I also got that sense about him.  And it comes through loud and clear in his book, Delivering Happiness.  The leadership team was incredibly passionate about ways to help their employees increase their happiness.  For instance, they had a coach that met with every employee each year to find ways to work on their “happiness goals”.  Not how to sell more shoes.  But how to be a happier person.

It was unlike any corporate experience I’ve ever had.  I’m using the past tense here because I’ve heard the culture has changed somewhat since they were bought out in 2010.  I don’t know that it’s the same now.

But Tony has brought this same mindful approach to his new passion based project - revitalizing the city of Las Vegas.  Amazing man!


How can Wisdom help Entrepreneurship?  

“The most powerful technology in the world is an optimized human nervous system.” That’s what I like to tell my clients.  Yet, in the process of starting - and maintaining -  businesses most people tend to focus on just about everything EXCEPT the nervous systems of the people.

As I mentioned above, we now have very strong data.  We have incredibly smart business people - like Arianna Huffington and Harvard Business School’s Bill George and the posts I talked about before that Seth Godin and Biz Stone have written - that are talking about the data.  

But the vast majority of people leading startups right now are not paying attention to what mindfulness can do for business.  It’s not some woo woo theory.  Google understands. That’s why they have their Search Inside Yourself program.  Yet, how many startup incubators or programs are REALLY talking about this?

Mindfulness practices increase our ability to be creative as well as our overall health and wellness.  They reduce conflict between team members, stress and anxiety as well as dissatisfaction and burnout   Here’s a research summary: (
http://ow.ly/qGbf1 )

Simply put, entrepreneurs who implement even very simple practices greatly increase their chances of success.  And success for entrepreneurs with a purpose that’s larger than themselves is what Wisdompreneurs is all about.