Influential U

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200

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Feb 2025

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About the show

Influential U is the home of Transactional Intelligence™ — the structured methodology for navigating the exchanges that shape your career, your business, and your professional life. Each episode features a practitioner conversation and a teaching segment drawn from the TQ curriculum. Hosted by John Patterson, co-author of Transactional Intelligence: Why It Matters More Than Expertise.

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60 recent

February 17, 2025Episode 128 min

Crafting Your Career Narrative with Jillian Formentin

Jillian Formentin's journey to becoming the Australian Professional Engineer of the Year wasn’t just about mastering technical skills—it was about mastering her own narrative. Through intentional career decisions, embracing her strengths, and crafting a compelling story, Jillian has created a career that not only elevates her but inspires others.Jillian’s journey to becoming an influential leader in the engineering community started long before she was awarded the prestigious title of Australian Professional Engineer of the Year. Growing up, Jillian was always seen as career-focused. However, it wasn’t until later in her career that she realized the importance of directing her trajectory in a purposeful way. She recalls the difficulty in answering the classic career question: "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?" For years, she couldn’t pinpoint a clear direction.However, things began to change about 10 years ago when Jillian was consulting in the fields of safety, leadership, and team development. Though her consulting career was both fulfilling and lucrative, she yearned for more autonomy in her career decisions. It was then that she decided to take control of her professional narrative, diving into FOT (Fundamentals of Transaction) training in 2016.

February 3, 2025Episode 2642 min

Classics - How to Coordinate 10K Super Bowl Volunteers with Laura & David Senior Garcia

As the Personality Diversity Experts chosen to coordinate 10,000 volunteers for the 2017 Super Bowl, Equilibria siblings Laura and David Senior Garcia talk about how studying transactional competence has improved their company's focus and helped bring conscious awareness to a diverse world. Their company works worldwide to help people embrace and leverage diversity to elevate personal, professional, and organizational performance.In this episode's talk, Kirkland Tibbels and John Patterson address how a transactional approach helps people understand the fundamentals of coordinated action.Podcast Bonuses:The stress ball in the photo was placed there in a playful moment and captures their sibling spirit.Laura Senior Garcia is Equilibria’s Global Operations Executive and a Senior Coach.David Senior Garcia is Equilibria’s Advanced Error Reduction in Organizations (or AERO) Product Manager and performs as a Coach, leading some of Equilibria’s most advanced workshops around the world.Equilibria

January 29, 2025Episode 2436 min

Classics - The "Perfect Job" Fallacy with Helen Kearney

Helen Kearney is a sales recruiter for a global software company. Her life's journey and her career specialization allow us to examine the question that we all - at one time or another - find ourselves asking: what is my perfect job (or purpose or life's mission)?As she explains, many people are exceptionally naive about their professional value. They may not understand their involvement in the larger transaction and the realities of their role in the marketplace. As such, she says, they often fail to consider or understand the needs of the employer and their concerns. Like any good marraige or satisfying position, a job is a reciprocal transaction.Near the end of the episode, you'll also hear Helen's tips for your preparing your LinkedIn profile, resume, and job interview.Podcast Bonuses:ThriveCode: 30 DaysHelen Kearney on LinkedIn

January 22, 2025Episode 2351 min

Classics - The Bankruptcy of Magical Thinking with Kristen Moeller

In this episode, Kristen Moeller, a literary agent, published author, three-time TEDx speaker, and passionate advocate for personal growth, joins John Patterson to explore the challenges and revelations of pursuing success and fulfillment. From her mountain home in Colorado, Kristen shares her journey of transitioning from hopeful and magical thinking to embracing the principles of accurate thinking.This episode delves into the lessons Kristen learned through Influential U, including the importance of strategic thinking, confronting naivety, and recognizing the limitations of short-term enthusiasm as a long-term strategy. With transparency and humor, she reflects on the necessity of "growing up" and rethinking approaches to success, action, and fulfillment.

January 15, 2025Episode 2243 min

Classics - A Surplus of Help with Kim Corbett

Having more than doubled her income and moving her company's market position from #57 to #1, Kim Corbett is an account executive who considers herself a turnaround agent, turning around the sales of failing or emerging companies. She's a top performer with a proven track record for growing revenues and increasing an organization’s profitability. Always ambitious, she had previously struggled to get beyond her current income range — until studying with Influence Ecology. In this interview, you'll learn what changed. We'll also hear a segment of a recent Fundamentals of Transaction Program classroom webinar. Here, Vice President Drew Knowles and Co-Founder John Patterson discuss the subject of "Autonomy." Traditionally thought of as a "condition of independence," we reorient our students to think of Autonomy as a "Surplus of Help."Podcast Bonuses:ThriveCode: 30DAYSKim Corbett on LinkedIn

January 8, 2025Episode 2150 min

Classics - Money is an Exchange of Help with Dr. Khush Cooper

Her view of money changed (and she made much more of it) when she began to understand that money is an exchange of help, rather than a necessary evil. Dr. Khush Cooper holds a doctorate in social work and her journey is quite relevant to those in the non-profit sector or anyone who has ever struggled with making a living and wanting to do good. This episode's closing segment is from a membership webinar on the subject of 'indifference of the marketplace'.You'll hear Co-Founder Kirkland Tibbels address the State of Mind of an Ambitious Adult. In her interview, Dr. Cooper refers to "passively waiting rather than ambitiously transacting," and this talk underscores the difference between "most people" and those who act with Ambition.Podcast Bonuses:ThriveCode: 30DAYSDr. Khush Cooper on LinkedInKhush Cooper & Associates

January 2, 202550 min

Classics - Worst Advice Ever: Follow Your Passion with Joanna Burgraf

Having endured an expensive journey to consider a career change, Joanna Burgraf found that to follow your passion was the worst piece of advice she'd ever gotten. Joanna is a Chicago-based senior lead for an award-winning creative services team managing ten brands at Enova International, a company using technology to develop innovative financial products. You'll hear how this fashionable but naive empowerment slogan shifted her focus — from working on being a valued cooperative member of a larger team — to the self-engrossed, navel-gazing, isolating habit of finding one’s true "Self."In this episode's talk, Co-Founder Kirkland Tibbels. This talk originally aired earlier this year — and we can't study it enough. Recorded in May of 2015, this webinar introduces three different orientations to action: Self-Action, Inter-Action, and Trans-Action. As we are the leading business education in trans-actional competence this segment is designed to illustrate the naivety and danger of Self-Action.Podcast Bonuses:ThriveCode: 30DAYSJoanna Burgraf on LinkedInEnova InternationalTransactionalismNote: Self-Action, Inter-Action, and Trans-Action are terms introduced in Transactionalism: An Historical and Interpretive Study (Influence Ecology. Phillips, Trevor J., 2015-11-22. Tibbels, Kirkland; Patterson, John, eds.) and in Knowing and the Known (Dewey, John; Bentley, Arthur Fisher. 1949-01-01. Beacon Press).

December 25, 2024Episode 1954 min

Classics - Can You Survive an Indifferent World? with Sean Gillespie

Sean Gillespie is a successful artist who creates award-winning abstract sculptures from his one-man studio in Denver, Colorado. His work can be found in exclusive galleries, national juried shows, and in corporate installations across the United States. Influential U's members include business and creative professionals from all over the world; we educate not only executives and entrepreneurs but also artists, designers, musicians, writers, and filmmakers -- and today perhaps we'll tackle the question: How do you make a living as an artist? It might be common to assume that artists make terrible business people, yet the same can be true in many professions. In all cases, what is required is transactional competence: knowing how to construct a recurrent business offer that meets your individual aims for work, career, and money. You'll hear Sean's journey and, how a little a study -- goes a long way.In this episode's talk, we listen in on a Membership Webinar to hear Kirkland Tibbels explain the nature of indifference and how we might navigate an indifferent marketplace.Podcast Bonuses:ThriveCode: 30DAYSSean Gillespie on LinkedIn

December 18, 2024Episode 1849 min

Classics - Starting Over at 57 with John Baigent

As a property developer, John Baigent lost practically everything in the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, then recovered just in time to lose it all again in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, a quake that caused widespread damage in New Zealand's second-largest urban area. He's not only overcome what would sink most people — he also continues to thrive.In this episode's talk, Co-Founders John Patterson and Kirkland Tibbels discuss how most people just lack the ambition to live as they aspire to live . . . that they'll wait for life to "turn out" and do not produce the situations, conditions, and environments they require to live a productive and satisfying life.John Baigent is not like "most people."Podcast Bonuses:ThriveCode: 30DAYSChristchurch Property Projects

December 11, 2024Episode 1746 min

Classics - Father's Last Words: Get Wise with Troy Frost

Troy's father's last words are a mantra he's lived by. His business plan autobiography reads like a character who suffered not for being dull, but for being way too smart. He talks about the early days and answers the question: How do you make $30K a month in personal income?In this episode's talk, Co-Founder Kirkland Tibbels outlines the fundamental background that underlies the specialized knowledge enjoyed by our members around the world. In it, you'll start to hear for yourself why Troy Frost and so many others are thriving.PODCAST BONUS:influentialu.global/thriveCODE: 30DAYS