The Audacious Living Podcast

What would you learn about your own country if you moved to the place you understand the least?

Signature Quote

"It's the audacity to have the guts to choose curiosity over comfort."

Why this quote matters: Wesley's whole journey runs on that one choice. Every story in this conversation, from a failed knock-knock joke to eighteen months in rural North Dakota, starts with him picking curiosity over staying comfortable.

My guest this week is Wesley Warshawer. By day he is a data analyst at a semiconductor company in Silicon Valley. By choice, he has spent years leaving his bubble on purpose: a semester in India, two years in South Korea, and five years as a digital nomad, including eighteen months in rural America starting in Bismarck, North Dakota, a place he had never been, where he knew no one.

Wesley did not go to prove a point. He went to test one. He had read the polls about his own country and realized the Silicon Valley bubble he lived in did not look anything like America. So he moved to the place he understood the least and asked a different question. Instead of asking people which candidate they supported, he asked them to paint a picture of a fair immigration policy or a fair healthcare system. What he heard changed him from a skeptic into an optimist.

This episode is for you if:

- You catch yourself judging people you have never actually met

- You feel like the country is more divided than it has to be

- You want to grow but you are tired of advice that never leaves the screen

- You are curious about what a stranger's life can teach you about your own

- You are ready to be uncomfortable at least once a week

About Wesley Warshawer

Wesley Warshawer is a data analyst in Silicon Valley who studies numbers for a living and studies people for the love of it. His years abroad and his five years as a digital nomad taught him that growth accelerates the further you get from your routine, and that the most embarrassing moments often carry the biggest lessons.

He writes about the moments that changed his life on Substack, and he would love to hear from you about the moment of clarity that changed yours.

Connect with Wesley

 

READ THE BLOG ARTICLE

 

Explore the conversation further:

 

https://wesleywarshawer.com/

 

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Someone crossed your mind today. Did you reach out, or did you talk yourself out of it?

 

Signature Quote

 

"Send the unexpected note or card. Send a card to someone when they least expect it, because it always comes at the right time."

 

Janice's mentor taught her this practice, and the story she tells to prove it, a thank-you card that stopped a church organist from quitting, is the beating heart of this conversation.

 

Janice Porter asks herself one question every morning: who needs to hear from me today? That simple practice has shaped her entire philosophy of relationships, and it might change how you think about the people in your own life.

 

In this conversation, Janice, host of the Relationships Rule podcast, shares her five relationship rules, from doing what you say you will do to sending the note nobody expects. She tells the story of a thank-you card that arrived on the exact day a church organist was about to quit, and why the note you almost do not send is so often the one that matters most.

 

This is a warm, practical conversation about turning connections into real relationships, one small courageous reach at a time.

 

This episode is for you if...

- You have ever thought of someone and then talked yourself out of reaching out

- You want to turn your network into genuine relationships instead of a contact list

- You believe trust is built in small moments and want a system for it

- You are curious how a simple card can change someone's whole week

 

Janice Porter is the host of the Relationships Rule podcast, where she has recorded nearly 400 conversations with people who believe, as she does, that it is all about relationships.

 

A former teacher of 14 years and longtime corporate trainer, Janice found her way back to teaching through LinkedIn, where she now helps business owners build their presence and turn connections into real relationships. She is known for her five relationship rules: be curious, do what you say you will do, add value, follow up, and send the unexpected note.

 

Janice lives what she teaches. Her daily practice starts with a note on her computer that reads, "Who needs to hear from me today?"

 

Connect with Janice:

Website: https://janiceporter.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janiceporter/

 

Listen on Major Platforms

 

🎧 Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/2jVR6V7X2kRiCCDXE0FTyl?si=IR3TsfEWR3WA6BzfBRnVXQ

 

🍎 Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-audacious-living-podcast/id1547447345

 

📦 Amazon Music → https://music.amazon.ca/podcasts/9f7902bb-dec8-4bd9-918d-d1fef21b7c67/the-audacious-living-podcast?ref=dm_sh_pGv57yQvAmAQVp2IIaXoDwtFt

 

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What if the reason you keep ending up in the same place has nothing to do with willpower, and everything to do with a story you learned before you were old enough to question it?

 

Signature Quote

 

"When we worry, we pray for what we don't want."

 

Rochelle says this about the subconscious mind, which takes our worries as instructions. It reframes anxiety not as a feeling to fight, but as a broadcast we can change.

 

Rochelle Cook has spent more than twenty years as a clinical hypnotherapist, working where real change happens: the subconscious mind. In this conversation she explains why willpower keeps losing, why we keep attracting the same relationships and the same struggles, and why none of it means anything is wrong with us. We simply learned a story as children, and we have been playing it out ever since. She calls it storybook syndrome.

 

She also brings her own story to the table. Childhood abandonment, brain surgery, a lung cancer diagnosis less than a year ago, and the long climb out of depression. She calls herself a wounded healer, and she does not speak from theory. She speaks from the chair on both sides of it.

 

You will hear why hypnotherapy is nothing like the stage show, where the inner critic actually comes from, and the small daily practices that interrupt old patterns: challenging the thought, writing down what disturbs your peace, and the three words she repeats to herself, I don't do that anymore.

 

This episode is for you if...

- You know better but keep doing the same thing anyway

- Your inner critic is loud, convincing, and exhausting

- You keep attracting the same kind of relationship or the same kind of trouble

- You are curious about hypnotherapy but carry the stage-show stereotype

- You want practical ways to challenge the thoughts running your life

 

Rochelle Cook, MA, Cht, is a clinical hypnotherapist with more than twenty years of practice, specializing in trauma. She is the author of The Soul's Coach: Seven Paths to Healing Your Relationship and a co-founder of Joymind.com.

 

Her path into this work runs through her own life. She describes herself as a wounded healer: childhood abandonment, brain surgery twelve years ago with an eight-year recovery, and a lung cancer diagnosis less than a year ago as a non-smoker. She did, in her words, all the therapies in the world, until a friend hypnotized her and her fear of public speaking vanished. She went back to school, and she has been helping people change the perception of the subconscious mind ever since.

 

She joined the podcast to make the case that lasting change does not live in willpower. It lives underneath it.

 

Connect with Rochelle: https://joymind.com

Her book, The Soul's Coach: Seven Paths to Healing Your Relationship, is available on Amazon.

 

Listen on Major Platforms

 

🎧 Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/2jVR6V7X2kRiCCDXE0FTyl?si=IR3TsfEWR3WA6BzfBRnVXQ

 

🍎 Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-audacious-living-podcast/id1547447345

 

📦 Amazon Music → https://music.amazon.ca/podcasts/9f7902bb-dec8-4bd9-918d-d1fef21b7c67/the-audacious-living-podcast?ref=dm_sh_pGv57yQvAmAQVp2IIaXoDwtFt

 

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What if your dream is not stalling for lack of passion, but for lack of a plan?

 

Signature Quote

 

"Audacity without a system is probably just hope. And hope's great, but it's not a strategy and it's not a plan."

 

That line landed like a bell in the middle of this conversation, because it names the gap most of us live in. We have the vision. We have the wanting. What we do not have is the next most important action written down anywhere.

 

Jason Vanderground has spent thirty years closing that gap for brands and movements, including the He Gets Us campaign that reached the Super Bowl. In this conversation he walks through his DREAM framework, Define, Research, Experience, Apply, Measure, the same system he has refined across three decades, and shows why it works just as well on a personal dream as on a national campaign. He also gets honest about the detours: losing his corporate job at forty, missing a live radio interview for his own book launch, and the two words, "only forward," that pulled him out of the spiral.

 

This is a conversation about giving your boldest vision some scaffolding, and about the quiet kind of audacity that does not need a spotlight.

 

This episode is for you if...

- You have a dream you have rehearsed more than you have built

- You want a practical system for turning vision into measurable progress

- You are navigating a detour and need the pivot from "why" to "what's next"

- You believe audacity is quiet courage, not loud performance

 

Jason Vanderground is the president of Brand Haven, a Grand Rapids, Michigan agency, where he has spent thirty years using the principles of marketing and branding to build things that matter. His team was part of the work behind He Gets Us, the faith-based campaign that became a Super Bowl advertiser. His first book, DREAM to Reality, was published this September and lays out the framework he has refined across three decades of practice.

 

What sets Jason apart is where he points all of that expertise. His name means healer, and he describes his life's work as healing and reconciliation, finding where things are broken and helping make them whole. He is a self-described introvert and a father of three boys who still feels the same spark he felt in his first college marketing class.

 

He joined the podcast to share the system behind the dream, and to make the case that audacity without one is probably just hope.

 

DREAM to Reality is available on Amazon.

[ADD GUEST WEBSITE LINK]

 

Listen on Major Platforms

 

🎧 Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/2jVR6V7X2kRiCCDXE0FTyl?si=IR3TsfEWR3WA6BzfBRnVXQ

 

🍎 Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-audacious-living-podcast/id1547447345

 

📦 Amazon Music → https://music.amazon.ca/podcasts/9f7902bb-dec8-4bd9-918d-d1fef21b7c67/the-audacious-living-podcast?ref=dm_sh_pGv57yQvAmAQVp2IIaXoDwtFt

 

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Some books take a weekend to read and twenty years to write. Paul Lapsey knows, because his sat on a shelf for eighteen of them.

 

Signature Quote

 

"Whatever you start, you have to finish it. It may not be the outcome you want, but you have to see it done."

 

Paul dusted off a twenty-year-old manuscript after his daughter was born, determined to show her that finishing matters more than the outcome. That decision became his debut psychological thriller, Violent Disturbance.

 

Paul Lapsey started writing his novel when he was a young man, put it down for eighteen years, then picked it back up two years ago after his daughter was born. He wanted her to see that whatever you start, you finish. The result is Violent Disturbance, a psychological thriller with true crime elements that asks what if, and keeps readers up at night.

 

In this conversation, Paul opens up about the grief that reshaped his writing, the faith that pulled him through it, and the hard question at the center of his book: what does revenge actually cost? He and Audley compare notes as two fairly new authors, including the surreal moment of holding your first finished book in your hands.

 

If you have ever shelved something that mattered to you, this one might be the nudge to dust it off.

 

This Episode Is For You If...

 

- You have a project sitting on a shelf that you keep meaning to finish

- You want to hear how grief and faith can shape a creative life

- You are curious what it really takes to publish your first book

- You love a thriller that leaves you thinking about it for weeks

 

About the Guest

 

Paul Lapsey is a first-time author and the writer of Violent Disturbance, a psychological thriller with true crime elements that explores grief, faith, and the cost of revenge. He started the book twenty years ago, shelved it for eighteen, and finished it after his daughter was born, determined to show her that whatever you start, you finish.

 

By day, Paul works full time as a process improvement manager in manufacturing plants, a career spanning twenty-five years. Writing has always been his true passion. He lives in Perry, Ohio, where his book is already finding its way into local stores.

 

Paul is nearly finished with his second novel and is planning a third, a prequel to Violent Disturbance. He joined the podcast to talk about finishing, faith, and what happens when you finally put your work into the world.

 

Connect with Paul

 

https://paullapsey.com

 

Violent Disturbance is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and anywhere books are sold in the United States.

 

Listen on Major Platforms

 

🎧 Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/2jVR6V7X2kRiCCDXE0FTyl?si=IR3TsfEWR3WA6BzfBRnVXQ

 

🍎 Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-audacious-living-podcast/id1547447345

 

📦 Amazon Music → https://music.amazon.ca/podcasts/9f7902bb-dec8-4bd9-918d-d1fef21b7c67/the-audacious-living-podcast?ref=dm_sh_pGv57yQvAmAQVp2IIaXoDwtFt

 

Enjoying the show?

 

Share this episode with someone who needs to hear this.

 

⭐ Leave a review:

 

👉 https://ratethispodcast.com/audacious