Connecting With Purpose

Hosted by Mark Griffin

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Oct 2026

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Connecting With Purpose is a place for consequential conversations about doing what matters most in times when our families, workplaces, and communities need us. On the PurposeFused podcast, our partners host conversations with leaders from multiple sectors about what's possible when we invest in leading and living with purpose, for ourselves and our teams. By learning from guests' experiences in the purpose journey, as business leaders and humans beyond the workplace, the show serves as a catalyst for action. Connecting With Purpose inspires and guides discovery to embed purpose into people's work and lives, improving wellbeing and performance for themselves, their organizations, and their worlds. We help leaders create the impact they seek and inspire a ripple effect of purpose activation.

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October 20, 2026Episode 351 min

Tell the Truth: How Radical Transparency Drives Performance in an ESOP | Mike Cordova

What happens when every employee is an owner? In this episode of Connecting with Purpose, host Mark Griffin sits down with Mike Cordova, CFO and independent board director of Anvil Corporation, a 100% employee-owned (ESOP) engineering and design firm. Together, they explore what it takes to lead through uncertainty, build high-performing teams, and create a workplace culture where transparency, accountability, and employee ownership drive meaningful results. With more than 25 years of executive leadership experience, Mike shares lessons from navigating organizational challenges, developing talent, and building teams that understand how their individual contributions impact the bigger picture. In this episode, you'll learn about: Leading Through Uncertainty: What Mike learned from joining a company that went bankrupt just nine months later, and why effective leadership requires clear communication during difficult times. Building High-Performing Teams: How Mike uses his "whiteboard exercise" to encourage employees to develop solutions, take ownership, and strengthen accountability. Financial Transparency & Employee Ownership: Why teaching employees to understand financial statements can build trust, improve decision-making, and strengthen organizational performance. The Business Impact of Small Improvements: How a 1% improvement in utilization can translate into $1 million in company valuation. Leadership Lessons That Last: Why Mike believes three simple words are essential to building trust and leading effectively: "Tell the truth." From building a finance function in just 90 days to navigating critical inflection points, Mike offers practical insights for leaders who want to develop their people, strengthen their organizations, and create a culture of shared success. ABOUT OUR GUEST Mike Cordova is an independent board director and CFO of Anvil Corporation, a 100% employee-owned engineering and design firm providing engineering, procurement, and project management services nationwide. With more than 25 years of experience as a CFO and CEO across industrial manufacturing and service organizations, Mike is passionate about leadership development, succession planning, financial transparency, and employee ownership. He is also a longtime soccer referee and a frequent speaker at the National Center for Employee Ownership. Connect with Mike here: / mikecordovacfo CONNECT WITH PURPOSE Connecting with Purpose, hosted by Mark Griffin, explores leadership, performance, and the people and experiences that shape how we lead. Subscribe for more conversations with leaders sharing practical lessons, personal experiences, and insights that make a difference in business and beyond. If this conversation resonates with you, give the episode a like and share your thoughts in the comments. What role does transparency play in building trust within your organization? #EmployeeOwnership #ESOP #Leadership #ConnectingWithPurpose #FinancialTransparency

October 14, 2026Episode 218 min

Playing in Position: Are We Getting The Best of Our People?

What if your biggest leadership problem is not effort, but misalignment? Mark Griffin argues that high-performing people often get pulled out of position, doing more than they should, diluting their impact, and draining the very energy their team needs most. Drawing on founder experience and lessons from rugby, Mark unpacks the idea of "playing in position" as a practical leadership framework for individuals, teams, and organizations. He shows why capable people can still underperform when they're using the wrong strengths, why some leaders become trapped as the "doer" instead of the enabler, and how teams lose momentum when specialists, decision-makers, and support roles are not working in sync. You'll discover: —The three self-level elements of playing in position: what you contribute, what energizes you, and the leadership maturity to adapt under pressure —Why moving from "me" to "we" changes everything about how strong teams create value —How complementary strengths like challenging thinking, making sense of complexity, driving decisions, and filling blind spots build real resilience —Why systems, rewards, and promotion paths often sabotage performance even when the people are talented —What changes when founders step back, leaders shift from delivering to enabling, and employees start behaving like owners Mark also breaks down the hidden cost of asking people to collaborate while rewarding individual output, or promoting top performers without preparing them for the identity shift that leadership requires. If your team is full of talent but not getting the results you expect, this episode will help you see the problem differently. Essential listening for founders, executives, team leaders, and anyone asking how to get the best out of good people without burning them out in the process.

October 7, 2026Episode 152 min

What Founders Get Wrong About Succession & Employee Ownership | Jason Wiener

In this episode of Connecting with Purpose, Mark Griffin is joined by Jason Wiener, founder of CurrentShift Legal, a legal and business consulting firm serving mission-driven companies, social impact organizations, and environmentally focused enterprises. Jason specializes in employee ownership, worker-owned and stakeholder-owned business models, business formation, capital raising, restructures, and complex transactions. He is deeply passionate about using better-designed ownership models to redistribute wealth, increase employee agency, and build organizations that are both commercially strong and socially responsible. But this conversation goes far beyond legal structure. Mark and Jason explore the human side of founder transition, including identity, purpose, succession planning, leadership readiness, culture, decision-making, and the risk of founders becoming bottlenecks inside the businesses they built. Jason has lived this personally. He has stepped away from his own business, re-engaged with it, and written extensively about the complexities of founder transition. He shares why succession is not simply about transferring ownership or authority, why culture and psychological safety must come before legal mechanics, and why employees need more than compensation to feel truly invested in the future of a company. They also discuss how employee ownership can create greater agency, dignity, voice, and accountability, especially during a period of economic disruption, AI-driven change, and major generational wealth transfer. If you are a founder, business owner, senior leader, employee ownership advisor, or anyone thinking about succession, purpose, organizational culture, or the future of work, this conversation offers a thoughtful look at what sustainable transition really requires. In this episode, you'll hear about: • Founder transition and succession planning • Employee ownership and wealth redistribution • Leadership readiness and reducing founder dependence • Purpose, values, and identity • Culture, communication, and psychological safety • Decision-making and employee agency • Preparing employees to become future owners • Why legal structure alone cannot fix a broken organization • The role of ownership in building more resilient businesses • Jason's perspective on legacy, family, and long-term impact Connect with Jason Wiener: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jwpcpbc/ CurrentShift Legal on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/currentshift-legal Jason's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrwiener/ Website https://currentshift.legal/ If this conversation resonates, subscribe to Connecting with Purpose for more conversations on leadership, purpose, performance, founder transition, employee ownership, and what it really takes to build organizations that can thrive beyond the founder.

March 11, 2026Episode 2218 min

Founder Transition: The Hidden Pressure Founders Carry Before an Exit

Founder transitions are often framed as financial or structural events. But long before a succession plan, ownership evolution, or exit is announced, founders carry a hidden layer of pressure that few people see. In this solo episode of Connecting With Purpose, I continue the conversation from last week's episode, Founder Transition: Identity Before the Deal. While that episode explored the identity shift from operator → owner → steward, this episode focuses on another critical dimension of founder transition: The weight founders carry while navigating the future of their business. Even when a company is growing and performing well, founders entering a 24–60 month transition window often find themselves holding complex questions about the future of the organization and their own next chapter. They are simultaneously responsible for: • Maintaining operational performance and commercial rhythm • Exploring succession or ownership evolution options • Protecting the long-term sustainability of the company • Considering the impact on employees, investors, and stakeholders • Designing what life and leadership look like beyond the business When this pressure is not processed intentionally, founders often experience: • Decision fatigue • Reduced clarity • Reactive leadership • Becoming the unintended bottleneck during transition In this episode, I explore three practical areas founders must focus on to navigate transition successfully. 1. Creating protected space to process the transition Transition decisions require strategic reflection, not just operational speed. 2. Separating transition work from the operational rhythm of the business Maintaining execution cadence protects performance while transition planning moves forward. 3. Designing the founder's next chapter intentionally Transitions are strongest when founders are stepping toward something meaningful rather than simply stepping away. Founder transitions are not just about transactions. They are about protecting founder capacity, leadership clarity, and decision quality so the business and the founder can both thrive in the chapter that follows. If you are 24–60 months from succession, employee ownership, partial liquidity, or a potential exit, the structural and financial work will come. But the human work starts now. Traditional advisors guide the deal. I partner with founders through the leadership evolution that determines whether transition strengthens or destabilizes the system. Subscribe for more conversations about founder performance, ownership transition, and building businesses that thrive beyond you. And as we say in rugby: I've got your back. #FounderTransition #SuccessionPlanning #FounderExit #OwnershipTransition #EntrepreneurLeadership #BusinessSuccession #LeadershipTransition #PurposeDrivenLeadership

March 3, 2026Episode 2117 min

Founder Transition: Identity Before the Deal

Ownership transition isn't just a financial event. It's an identity shift. In this episode, I explore the part of founder transition that rarely gets discussed — the internal evolution required before structure changes. Whether you're considering succession, employee ownership, partial liquidity, or long-term exit planning, the most important work doesn't begin with valuation models or legal structures. It begins with identity. In this episode, we cover: - Why ownership transition is primarily an identity event - The evolution from operator → owner → steward - How unexamined identity shifts create misalignment and execution drift Three practical areas founders must address to align execution with their evolving role - Redefining decision rights - Aligning leadership before structural change - Protecting commercial rhythm during transition When identity expands first: - Alignment strengthens - Leadership deepens - Performance stabilizes - Long-term value increases If you're 24–60 months from succession, employee ownership, or partial liquidity, the structural work will come. But the human work starts now. Traditional advisors guide the transaction. I partner with founders through the identity shift and the other human elements that determine whether transition strengthens — or destabilizes — the system. In the next episode, we'll explore the hidden weight founders carry during transition and how to design your next chapter intentionally rather than drift into it. Learn more: https://www.purposefused.com/ Connect with Mark: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markgriffinpurposefused/ If this resonates, subscribe for more conversations on founder performance, ownership transition, and building businesses that thrive beyond you. And as we say in rugby: I've got your back.

February 24, 2026Episode 2052 min

Impact, Trust, & Ownership: A Founder's Bold Succession Strategy with Miren Oca

In this episode of Connecting with Purpose, Mark Griffin sits down with Miren Oca, founder of Ocaquatics Swim School and founder of Ripples of Impact — a nonprofit expanding access to life-saving swim education in Miami-Dade County. Since 1994, Miren has grown Ocaquatics into a multi-location swim school built on culture, ownership, and purpose. In 2024, she made a bold move: transitioning 100% of the company to an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT), protecting its mission while creating long-term wealth-building opportunities for her team. But this conversation goes deeper than ownership structure. Miren shares three defining leadership chapters — Different, Survival, and Evolve — and how each shaped her approach to growth, culture, and impact. We also explore Ripples of Impact, which provides swim scholarships that remove financial barriers so children in underserved communities can learn to swim, build confidence, and stay safer around water. In Miami-Dade, where drowning remains a leading cause of accidental death for children, access to swim education is life-saving . In this conversation, we discuss: • Why Miren chose an Employee Ownership Trust over private equity • How to protect purpose during succession • The difference between traditional ROI and Ripples of Impact • What it takes to build a true ownership culture • Why every leadership decision is a "pebble" that creates long-term ripples This episode is for founders and growth-stage leaders who want to scale responsibly — proving that profit and impact are not opposing forces, but aligned drivers of long-term success. Subscribe for more conversations with purpose-driven founders and leadership insights from PurposeFused . Connect with Miren here: / miren-oca-80561261 #PurposeDrivenBusiness #EmployeeOwnership #EOT #Leadership #FounderJourney #SuccessionPlanning #Bcorp #SocialImpact #ImpactLeadership #Entrepreneurship #CultureMatters #HighPerformanceLeadership

February 17, 202615 min

Sustainability as a Performance Strategy

You can be aligned. You can be executing. And still be quietly running out of gas. In this solo episode of Connecting with Purpose, Mark explores one of the most overlooked drivers of sustainable performance: capacity. Most leaders focus on strategy and execution. Few pay attention to the nervous system behind their leadership. Capacity isn't just about time. It's about energy. When capacity erodes, leaders narrow their perspective, default to hero mode, become the bottleneck, and slowly drift toward burnout — even while appearing successful on the outside. In this episode, you'll learn: ✔ Why sustainability is a performance strategy — not a wellness perk ✔ How exceeding capacity leads to anxiety, overwhelm, and "playing out of position" ✔ The connection between energy, perspective, and decision quality ✔ Four practical strategies you can apply immediately to increase your capacity Mark breaks down four actionable frameworks: 1️⃣ Boundaries – Protect deep work, recovery, and strategic thinking 2️⃣ Align to Your Position – Play to strengths and stop operating out of alignment 3️⃣ Fuel the Tank – Optimize sleep, movement, and recovery fundamentals 4️⃣ Expand the Tank – Clarify purpose and zoom in/out to increase resilience If you're a founder, executive, or high-performing leader who wants to avoid the Performance Precipice and build long-term impact, this episode will give you both clarity and tools. Reflective Question: Where are you or your team operating beyond sustainable capacity right now — and which strategy would make the biggest difference this week? 🔔 Subscribe for weekly insights on purpose-driven leadership, sustainable high performance, and building ultimate leaders & teams. 🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube 🌐 Learn more about PurposeFused: https://www.purposefused.com/

February 10, 2026Episode 1851 min

Vulnerability, Resilience & Results with Sara Jensen: Building Through Adversity

In this Season 4 episode of Connecting with Purpose, Mark Griffin sits down with Sara Jensen, CEO and co-founder of Hugh & Grace, to explore how vulnerability becomes a leadership advantage and how purpose fuels sustained performance at scale. Sara shares the defining moments that shaped her leadership identity, from navigating 14 years of unexplained infertility to making high-stakes decisions under pressure while building one of the fastest-growing mission-driven wellness companies in the U.S. This conversation goes beyond origin stories and into the real work of leadership: holding belief when outcomes are uncertain, making disciplined decisions during rapid growth, and building teams and communities that perform because they're deeply aligned with purpose. In this episode, we explore: —Why vulnerability is not a weakness but a performance multiplier —How purpose provides clarity during pressure-filled growth phases —The leadership decisions behind Hugh & Grace's sustainable scale —Building trust, alignment, and belief across teams and communities —What it takes to perform at a high level without losing what matters most Sara's journey is a powerful reminder that high performance doesn't come from control or certainty, but from identity, alignment, and trust — especially when the stakes are high. If you're a founder or leader navigating growth, complexity, and pressure, this episode offers a grounded perspective on how purpose-led leadership drives meaningful, lasting results. Subscribe for more founder-first conversations in Season 4 of Connecting with Purpose. Connect with Sara here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarajensen1/ Learn more about Sara's company: https://hughandgrace.com/ #ExecutiveLeadership #ScalingWithPurpose #LeadershipUnderPressure #PerformanceAtScale

February 3, 2026Episode 179 min

From Belief to Alignment: The Missing Link in High-Performing Teams

High-performing teams don't stall because they lack talent or effort. They stall when belief doesn't turn into alignment. In this solo episode, we explore the often-overlooked bridge between belief, identity, alignment, and trust — and why teams can be full of capable, values-driven people yet still struggle to move forward together. Belief lives inside individuals. Alignment and trust live between them. That distinction changes everything. You'll learn: • Why shared belief does not automatically create shared understanding • The simple exercise that instantly reveals whether your team is truly "on the same page" • How alignment creates the conditions for trust — without trust falls or team-building gimmicks • Why misalignment drains energy, slows execution, and quietly erodes performance • How to build alignment as an ongoing team capability, not a one-time strategy session • How clarity of roles and interdependencies actually strengthens individual autonomy Belief and identity give teams heart. Alignment and trust give them coherence and confidence. And coherence is what makes performance sustainable. This episode lays the foundation for the next conversation: how aligned teams turn clarity into consistent execution through rhythm, focus, and practice. Because Ultimate Performance isn't built on talent alone. It's built on a system people believe in, align around, and commit to — together. #highperformingteams #teamalignment #leadershipdevelopment #trustinteams #strategyexecution #purposedrivenleadership

January 26, 2026Episode 1657 min

Regenerative Finance Explained: How Purpose-Driven Leaders Change Business with Jasper van Brakel

Welcome back to Season 4 of Connecting with Purpose — where we put founders first and share the stories of the humans behind the business. In this episode, Mark sits down with Jasper Van Brakel, President & CEO of RSF Social Finance (Regenerative Social Finance), to explore what happens when purpose, capital, and systemic change come together. If you're an impact-driven founder or leader navigating growth, funding, culture, and the messy middle of leadership, this conversation will resonate deeply. Jasper shares three defining "magic moments" that shaped his journey — from an early-career crossroads and a bold international leap, to leading through crisis during a financial turnaround and the early days of the pandemic. These experiences led him to a powerful realization: leadership isn't about going it alone — it's about purpose, perspective, and people. Together, Mark and Jasper explore what regenerative finance really means, how to align money with mission, and why transforming finance can help transform the world of business. They also dive into practical leadership lessons for founders who want to scale impact without burning out themselves or their teams. This episode is packed with wisdom on: —Listening to your intuition while staying grounded in reality —Building high-performing cultures rooted in care, clarity, and connection —Creating agreements instead of expectations to drive ownership —Leading through uncertainty without losing yourself —Why a leader's biggest blind spot is their own "interior condition" Jasper's mission is bold: to help make all finance regenerative — using capital as a tool to serve people, communities, and the future. For founders seeking funding that aligns with their values, and leaders striving to grow with integrity, this conversation offers both inspiration and practical insight. If you're building something meaningful and want your leadership, your capital, and your impact to move in the same direction — this episode is for you. Connect with Jasper: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasper-van-brakel-147434/ Learn more about PurposeFused and Connecting with Purpose: https://www.purposefused.com/ Subscribe for more founder-first leadership conversations: @connectingwithpurpose-est2021 #ConnectingWithPurpose #PurposeFused #RegenerativeFinance #ImpactInvesting #MissionAlignedCapital #FounderLeadership #PurposeDrivenLeadership #SystemsChange #SocialFinance #LeadershipDevelopment