Podcast
🎙️ 33 CONVERSATIONS PODCAST
Hosted by Michael Abney · EN
33 Conversations Podcast helps mission-driven founders, creators, and leaders in transition turn honest conversation into visible authority.
Each episode goes beneath the polished bio, pitch, or success story to reveal the real person behind the work: the tensions they are navigating, the identity shifts shaping their leadership, and the deeper signal behind what they are building.
This is not performance-driven thought leadership. It is authority built through clarity, presence, and truth.
For listeners, it is a window into the messy middle of meaningful work. For guests, it is a conversation that helps people understand who they are, what they stand for, and why their work matters now.
53episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Rebuilding Identity After Loss
1w ago00:40:06Tap to summarizeWhat happens when life removes the physical evidence of who you thought you were?In this episode of 33 Conversations, Michael Abney sits down with Monica Leigh Rodriquez to explore what it means to lose everything and still find a deeper sense of self. After the Eaton fire destroyed Monica’s home, she was forced into a painful but clarifying process of grief, rebuilding, and identity transformation.Together, they talk about loss, self-worth, creative work, sociology, rebuilding a business, and the surprising clarity that can emerge after trauma.This episode is for anyone moving through grief, transition, reinvention, or the slow work of rebuilding a life that feels more aligned than the one that came before.If you’ve ever asked yourself who you are without the things that used to define you, this conversation is worth your time.
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You Built the Life. But Is It Yours?
2w ago00:21:20Tap to summarizeKenny Zablotsky spent years in corporate facilities and construction, building polished environments for major brands. But the life that looked structured from the outside was no longer aligned with what was happening inside.In this episode of 33 Conversations, Kenny joins Michael Abney to talk about sobriety, leaving corporate identity behind, reconnecting with Jewish heritage, and building JewishJoy.co as a creative business rooted in meaning, memory, and joy.This conversation explores the uncertainty of creative entrepreneurship, the tension between art and profitability, and the deeper process of rebuilding a life from the materials of your own story.For founders, creatives, and anyone in a season of identity reconstruction, this episode is a reminder that clarity often arrives after the exploration, not before it.
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When Uncertainty Feels Unsafe
2w ago00:32:49Tap to summarizeIn this episode of 33 Conversations, Michael Abney speaks with Mitchell, HR executive consultant, speaker, and founder of The Ember Collective, about uncertainty, anxiety, clarity, and the human side of leadership.Mitchell shares how ambiguity first showed up in his personal life through relationship anxiety and spiraling stories, then how he began to recognize the same pattern inside professional environments. When communication shifts, expectations become unclear, or leaders avoid naming what is happening, people often feel unsafe even when no direct threat has been stated.This conversation explores workplace culture, HR leadership, psychological safety, emotional intelligence, gratitude, difficult conversations, and why leaders need to acknowledge what their teams can already feel.This episode is for founders, executives, HR leaders, managers, consultants, and anyone who has ever sensed that something changed in a relationship or workplace dynamic and struggled to stay clear inside the uncertainty.It is worth listening to because it reframes uncertainty not as something to immediately fix, but as something to stay present with long enough to find clarity.
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When Your Strength Becomes Your Ceiling
3w ago00:36:35Tap to summarizen this episode of 33 Conversations, Michael Abney speaks with Heather Esposito, founder of Movora Strategies, about adult development, leadership identity, values misalignment, and the deeper work of growing beyond the version of yourself that created past success.Heather shares her own transition from working inside organizations to building a purpose-aligned business focused on leadership, human systems, and brain-friendly communication. She also opens up about empty-nest transition, moving across the country, redefining freedom, and learning to trust more than just her cognitive intelligence.Key themes include adult development, values alignment, leadership maturity, identity change, intuition, embodiment, AI and human capability, and the uncomfortable realization that our greatest strengths can become limitations when we enter a new stage of growth.This episode is for founders, executives, coaches, consultants, and leaders who feel successful on paper but sense that something deeper is shifting. It is a conversation about letting go, growing up again, and learning to lead from a more integrated place.
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Doing Good Shouldn’t Require Suffering
3w ago00:34:10Tap to summarizen this episode of 33 Conversations, Michael Abney sits down with Andy Choi, founder and CEO of DoGood, for a conversation about profit with purpose, social impact, faith, capitalism, nonprofit scarcity, and what it means to build something that serves without losing yourself in the process.Andy shares how growing up in a Korean immigrant family, being shaped by faith, witnessing nonprofit life up close, and building multiple startups led him to question the old separation between making money and doing good.Together, Michael and Andy explore why mission-driven people are often expected to sacrifice, why the nonprofit system can become scarcity-driven, and how business might be redesigned to support human flourishing instead of extracting from it.This episode is for founders, nonprofit leaders, faith-driven entrepreneurs, social impact builders, and anyone who has ever felt torn between ambition and service.It is worth listening to because it challenges a quiet but powerful belief: that doing meaningful work requires suffering. Andy offers a different possibility — one where purpose, profit, and sustainability are not enemies, but parts of a better-designed system.
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The Missing Human Training in Healthcare
4w ago00:32:42Tap to summarizeIn this episode of 33 Conversations, Michael Abney speaks with Shannon Scandozza, a virtual clinical simulation designer, healthcare educator, patient advocate, and founder of Inspirational By Design.Shannon’s work focuses on building psychologically safe, cost-efficient clinical simulation environments where healthcare learners can practice communication, make mistakes, receive feedback, and prepare for real patient care before lives are at risk.Together, Michael and Shannon explore virtual patient simulation, AI patient avatars, healthcare education, patient advocacy, provider burnout, medical communication, and the deeper human issues inside healthcare systems.This episode is for healthcare educators, nurses, medical students, patient advocates, founders, and anyone who has ever felt small, confused, or powerless inside a medical setting.It is worth listening to because it offers a hopeful but grounded view of how healthcare can become more human: not by pretending the system is fine, but by training people differently, building safer spaces, and refusing to wait for permission to solve problems that are already visible.
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Leadership After the Title Disappears
Jun 400:35:37Tap to summarizeWhat happens to your leadership identity when the title, team, structure, and external validation are no longer there?In this episode of 33 Conversations, Michael Abney sits down with Dr. Julie Armstrong, Doctor of Strategic Leadership, leadership development coach, and consultant, for a grounded conversation about career transition, self-leadership, and rebuilding identity after decades inside organizations.Dr. Julie shares what it has been like to move from 30 years of organizational leadership into independent consulting, including the unexpected emotional weight of losing the structures that once reflected her value back to her.Together, Michael and Julie explore external validation, vulnerability, learning in public, relationship-building, local influence, structured reflection, and the difference between excellence and performance.This episode is for executives, consultants, founders, coaches, solopreneurs, and leaders navigating a transition where the old identity no longer fits but the new one is still forming.It is worth listening to if you are learning how to lead yourself when no one else is watching.
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Stroke Recovery, Identity Loss, and Building Community
Jun 200:33:29Tap to summarizeIn this episode of 33 Conversations, Michael Abney speaks with Ralph Preston, founder of Stroke Buddies, about the long and often unsupported road after stroke.Ralph shares how his own stroke nearly 18 years ago revealed a major gap in recovery support: survivors often receive care at the beginning, but are left to navigate the physical, emotional, mental, and identity challenges that continue long after formal therapy ends.The conversation explores stroke recovery, self-advocacy, caregiver support, physical therapy, emotional resilience, neuroplasticity, community building, and the personal discipline required to keep going when progress is slow.This episode is for stroke survivors, caregivers, health advocates, mission-driven founders, and anyone rebuilding after a life-changing event.It is worth listening to because Ralph’s story is not only about recovery. It is about what happens when someone sees a gap, refuses to ignore it, and builds something that helps others feel less alone.
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Trust, Fractional Work, and Owning Your Value
May 2800:29:09Tap to summarizeIn this episode of 33 Conversations, Michael Abney speaks with Gary Parkinson, a fractional content strategist, copywriter, and author, about the transition from being seen as a service provider to becoming a trusted strategic partner.Gary shares what changed when he left corporate life, built his own path during the uncertainty of 2020, and began helping clients move beyond surface-level content into clearer, more empathetic storytelling. The conversation explores imposter syndrome, client trust, pipeline building, stoicism, business uncertainty, organic content strategy, and knowing when a client relationship has run its course.This episode is for fractional leaders, consultants, solo founders, content strategists, and service-based entrepreneurs who want to build deeper trust, own their value, and become more than the person executing tasks.It is worth listening to if you are navigating uncertainty, trying to position yourself more strategically, or learning how to stop proving your worth and start embodying it.
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Train The Pressure
May 2600:38:49Tap to summarizeIn this episode of 33 Conversations, Michael Abney sits down with Nate Roy, founder of Cortex Flex and co-founder of Capsule Inc., for a conversation about neuroscience, resilience, leadership, authenticity, and what it really means to grow under pressure.Nate shares why mindset alone is often not enough, how the nervous system shapes our response to adversity, and why leaders must learn to move between being the teacher and being the student. The conversation explores how pressure constrains the brain, how training can expand our capacity for precision under stress, and why authenticity may be one of the most important leadership skills we often overlook.Key themes include nervous system regulation, founder resilience, athlete mindset, leadership development, neuroplasticity, emotional adversity, youth athletics, and the role of environment in personal transformation.This episode is for founders, entrepreneurs, coaches, athletes, parents, educators, and mission-driven leaders who are trying to grow without losing themselves in the process.It is worth listening to if you are navigating pressure, rebuilding after adversity, questioning old leadership models, or looking for a more grounded way to develop resilience beyond motivational advice.
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