Meikles & Dimes

Tina Seelig is the Executive Director of Knight-Hennessy Scholars at Stanford University, the world’s largest fully endowed graduate fellowship program. She is also Director Emerita of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program and has spent decades teaching creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and leadership at Stanford, including in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and the d.school.

Tina earned her Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stanford Medical School, where she studied neuroplasticity, and has worked as a management consultant, multimedia producer, and entrepreneur.

She is the author of numerous books on creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship, including What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, inGenius, Creativity Rules, and her newest book, What I Wish I Knew About Luck. Her work has earned numerous honors, including the National Academy of Engineering’s Gordon Prize for her contributions to engineering and entrepreneurship education.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• For Tina, improving her luck by saying thank you means looking at her calendar at the end of each day and writing thank you notes to everyone who helped her that day.
• What a powerful story about her college professor. She thanked him 20 years after the class, and 20 years after that, her thank you letter was read at his funeral. As Tina said, there is no statute of limitations on saying thanks.
• Luck is also a long game. For years, Tina invited John Hennessy to speak to her class. And every year she wrote him a thank you note after he spoke. When she recently asked him if he would have kept speaking without the notes, he said, probably not. And she would have never known it was because she hadn’t expressed gratitude. Now Tina runs the Knight Hennessy Scholars program with John.
• I also love how Tina applies this in the workplace and creates a culture of people saying thank you by simply modeling the behavior.

Daniel Zimet is a licensed psychologist and Certified Mental Performance Consultant who specializes in sport and performance psychology, working with athletes, executives, and other high performers on mental performance, relationships, and major life and career transitions. Daniel is a member of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee Sport Psychology Registry and has published research on athlete retirement transitions as well as marriage and divorce. Daniel is also an accomplished athlete himself, having won 43 National Masters titles in handball, appearing multiple times on ESPN+. 

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Bad communication isn’t  the most damaging thing to relationships, but rather It’s no communication that is most damaging.
• As Daniel learned from his breakup, when we don’t communicate, we deny people the opportunity to understand us, respond, or change.
• Daniel’s advice for difficult conversations: start with warmth, assume good intentions, be curious, and keep it brief. One paragraph. One idea. Then give the other person a chance to respond.
• Behavior that seems irrational often starts to make sense once we understand where it comes from. Understanding each other doesn’t always mean we agree with each other, but it can create compassion.

Kelly Poppinga is the defensive coordinator at BYU. As a player at BYU, Kelly earned both All-Conference and Academic All-Conference honors. As a senior, he led the Cougars with 113 tackles and helped BYU win consecutive conference championships in 2006 and 2007. He later spent time with three NFL teams and was part of the Arizona Cardinals organization during its run to Super Bowl XLIII (43). Kelly has coached college football since 2009, with stops at BYU, Virginia, and Boise State. And as a coach, he has helped develop several top NFL linebackers, including Kyle Van Noy, Sione Takitaki, and Fred Warner.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Kelly was crushing it at USU when he got the prompting: follow your dreams. That meant transferring to BYU at a time when players didn’t transfer. He lost friends, lost playing time, and even risked losing his girlfriend. And then when he got to BYU, he doubted himself every day as a scout team player. But because he persisted, he ended up as team captain on an all-time great BYU team.
• Even though Kelly and his wife wanted to stay in Provo, they each individually got the prompting, while sitting in the temple, to head to Virginia. Again it was tough. His wife was 9 months pregnant. They had to move across the country. But it paved the way for an amazing run at Virginia, a 13-year mentorship from Bronco Mendenhall, and now the opportunity for Kelly to return to BYU.
• We have to put ourselves in uncomfortable positions for us to grow. As Kelly said, we’re prone to take the easy path, where it’s hard to grow. But by making ourselves uncomfortable, we’re forced to grow. 

Daniel Newton is a professor of management and entrepreneurship at the University of Iowa. His research, which is regularly published in premier management journals, focuses on speaking up and staying engaged at work. A recipient of an eight-year NASA grant, he has conducted research with astronauts aboard the International Space Station, isolated crews in Houston, and cosmonauts in the Mars training facility in Moscow.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• In a world full of noise, we’re losing our ability to be present. Whether its astronauts coming back from space relieved to be free from their phones, or students checking their screens 10 hours a day, the draw to the digital world is constant. And the more connected we are digitally, the more disconnected we risk becoming as humans.
• And the solution isn’t complicated—it’s to be intentional. Leave your phone behind us more often. Stop trying to rapidly switch between tasks all day. Actually listen to the person in front of us. Because creativity, connection, and even joy don’t come from constant stimulation or attention switching—they come from focusing on the people in front of us.

Bobby Low is a Mental Performance Doctor who helps athletes, teams, and high performers build the mental patterns needed to perform under pressure. As a former NCAA All-American and professional pole vaulter, he learned that performance rarely breaks down due to lack of talent, but because the mind interferes in critical moments. This insight led him to earn a PhD in Sport & Performance Psychology and study how elite performers think and execute when it matters most. He is the author of Wiring Intelligence, a system for developing the mental side of performance. And today, he works with athletes at BYU and across professional sports.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Most people don’t fall short because they lack ability—they fall short because their mind gets in the way.
• Even if performance is 90% physical, the mental side governs the physical.
• Our mind isn’t just something we “have”—it’s something we can train, just like our body.
• The best performers don’t leave their thinking to chance. They build it. They script it. They repeat it. They give themselves clear instructions for how to perform until they’ve rewired and built positive neural pathways. Not just “I’m the best,” but “See the ball, move your feet, make the catch.” That level of precision is what rewires performance.
• It all starts with self-awareness, because we can’t change what we don’t notice.
• Whether we’re an athlete, a leader, a parent, or a student—our thoughts are shaping our outcomes more than we realize. So don’t just train harder. Train your mind better. Because we are a product of our repeated thoughts.

DJ DiDonna is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, where he teaches entrepreneurship. In 2019, he founded The Sabbatical Project to define, explore, and research sabbaticals, and he has since advised organizations ranging from nonprofits to Fortune 50 companies on how to design sabbatical policies. His work on sabbaticals has been featured in outlets including The Atlantic, Time, Fast Company, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Fortune, and NPR. Before his work on sabbaticals, DJ co-founded EFL Global, a fintech social enterprise that helped enable more than $2 billion in capital for underbanked businesses and individuals across more than 20 countries. On his own sabbatical, DJ walked 900 miles on pilgrimage in Shikoku, Japan, and ran a poverty research lab at Notre Dame. DJ's is also the author of the book, Big Time Off: The Transformative Power of Sabbaticals and How to Take One

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Sometimes we need to zoom out before we can know whether we should keep going. DJ had his  dream job, but over time, it stopped being fulfilling. So he took a sabbatical.
• Sabbaticals are different from vacations. On vacation, the work is often still waiting, and part of our brain is still running in the background. But on a true sabbatical, we step far enough away from normal life to see more clearly and focus on what is important, not just what is urgent.
• Sabbaticals also give us room to experiment with different versions of ourselves. When we’re younger, we have socially acceptable ways to do that — school, internships, missions, study abroad, gap years. But as adults, those opportunities become less common, and we often stop experimenting altogether. We get on a track, stay in the lane, and assume the next thing should look a lot like the last thing. The sabbatical helps us break out.
• I love DJ’s phrase that sabbaticals are “regret insurance.” Maybe we can’t take a sabbatical tomorrow. But what are we doing five years from now? What would we regret never having done? And what would it look like to start planning now?

Spencer Harrison is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD, where he studies creativity, coordination, and connection at work. He has studied a wide range of fascinating settings, including Grammy-winning bands, modern dancers, t-shirt designers, rock climbers, architects, NASA teams, Google, and Black Diamond. Spencer’s research has been published in leading management journals and he is also a co-founder of the Creativity Collaboratorium, a working group of the world’s top creativity scholars.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Creativity is not reserved for geniuses, artists, or people struck by lightning bolts of inspiration. Rather it’s often built slowly, through curiosity, repetition, exposure, and effort.
• I loved Spencer’s phrase: “Be kind and curious.” Curiosity helps us discover new ideas, build broader mental maps, and connect things that have not been connected before. But kindness matters because curiosity without warmth can feel like judgment or interrogation.
• The simple phrase — “I’m asking because I’m curious” — can change the whole tone of a conversation.
• To be more curious we can do simple things like take a different route or expose ourself to a new idea. Creativity is not magic. It’s not correlated with genius.  Instead it’s something we can practice.  

Braden Brown is the Associate Athletic Director for Mental Health at BYU Athletics, where he helps student-athletes navigate both the mental and performance demands of athletics. A Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Mental Performance Consultant (in training), Braden works with athletes on everything from anxiety and relationships to confidence, focus, and performing under pressure.

Before joining BYU, Braden spent four years as Director of Mental Performance and Counseling Services at IUPUI, supporting athletes across all 18 Division I programs. He holds a Ph.D. in Medical Family Therapy from East Carolina University, along with degrees from Utah State and BYU.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Confidence is helpful—but it’s not required.
• We tend to believe that success starts with feeling ready, feeling certain, feeling like we belong. But Braden’s story flips that. He didn’t feel like he belonged at BYU. He didn’t feel like he belonged in the NFL. He didn’t even feel like he was “PhD material.” And yet, he showed up anyway. And when he couldn’t believe in himself, he leaned on the belief others had in him.
• Over time, showing up did what confidence couldn’t—it built it.
• There’s also something powerful in how Braden reframes our relationship with emotions. Fear, doubt, anxiety—those aren’t signals to stop. They’re part of being human. And even top performers feel them. The mistake is letting them drive the car.
• Like the athlete he described—who felt great and performed poorly, then felt terrible and went out and set a national record. Feelings don’t determine performance.
• So the better question isn’t, “Do I feel ready?” It’s, “What can I commit to—regardless of how I feel?”
• Who we are today is not who we’ll be in three months—but how we show up today determines who we become.
• Action doesn’t follow confidence. More often, confidence follows action.

Cameron Anderson is a professor of organizational behavior at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on power, status and influence, and he teaches courses on power and politics in organizations, negotiations, and conflict resolution. Before joining Cal Berkeley, Cameron was a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the Stern School of Business at New York University, where he was named Professor of the Year. At Berkeley, he received the Earl F. Cheit Outstanding Teaching Award in 2008. In addition to his research and teaching, Cameron regularly consults with leading organizations and corporations around the world. 

In this episode we discuss the following:

• One of Cameron's most interesting findings is both reassuring and unsettling: being a jerk does not help people gain power, but it also does not necessarily hurt them.
• We often see powerful people who are selfish or manipulative, and we assume those traits caused their rise. But as Cameron explained, we confuse correlation with causation. Powerful jerks are memorable. They stand out. But for every powerful jerk, there is someone just as powerful who is decent, generous, and trustworthy.
• To gain power, it’s not about being a jerk. But it is about being assertive. Assertive and persistent while advocating for our goals. And then if we pair assertiveness and persistence with kindness and morality, which are two of the biggest drivers of status, the outcome, in the words of Cameron, is “magical and unstoppable.”
• To gain power be assertive. To gain status, be kind. And to get ahead, be both.

Tali Sharot is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London and on the faculty of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. Tali’s research integrates neuroscience, behavioral economics, and psychology to study how emotion and motivation influence people’s beliefs and decisions. Tali’s award winning books – The Optimism Bias The Influential Mind, and Look Again, have been praised by outlets including the NYT, Time, Forbes and more. Her two TED talks have been viewed more than 17 million times, and she has written multiple Op-Eds for the NYT, Time, Guardian, Washington Post, CNN, and others.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• I was struck by how Tali’s childhood experience of moving between countries gave her a powerful insight: circumstance matters more than we think. Traits like happiness, sociability, and even patience aren’t as fixed as they feel; they can meaningfully change depending on our environment.
• Thriving isn’t just about changing ourself—it’s about using our agency to find the settings where we function at our best. But doing that requires exploration. And exploration is uncomfortable. We stick with what’s familiar because it feels safe, even if it’s only “good enough.” The risk, of course, is that by avoiding uncertainty, we miss out on discovering what might be an even better fit.
• Different environments don’t just change how we feel—they actually activate different versions of who we are. We’re not just a single fixed person; we’re a range of possible selves, shaped by where we are and what we’re doing.
• Who you are is more flexible than you think—and where you are plays a bigger role than you realize.