The HX Collective

The HX Collective
  • 5.0 (7)
  • Society & Culture

The HX Collective explores the human experience through three main channels of life: work, relationships, and self. With raw, authentic conversations, the podcast investigates how challenges can become powerful teachers, leading to personal growth and deeper connections. Rooted in humanity-centered design, each episode reflects a commitment to doing good and doing well, featuring diverse voices and generational perspectives. Expect gripping stories of struggle and success, with thought-provoking discussions and concrete tools and tactics that encourage you to rethink your relationship with dis

  1. Oct 5

    work - Colleen Affeldt | between the halls and the walls – how culture elevates human flourishing

    In this episode, Deb Knupp sits down with Colleen Affeldt, Vice Chair at Corient Wealth Management and a lifelong student of why people do what they do. Colleen's path is unusual: fifteen years running her own consulting practice with a parallel foot in academia, then years embedded inside an operating company after joining a Dallas firm, once a consulting client, that was later acquired by Corient, and now, at the end of this year, a return to private practice with what she calls the third period of the hockey game. Two fellow Texans who found each other late and decided they were sisters separated at birth, Deb and Colleen spend the conversation on the thing every company claims to have and very few can actually locate. Underlying the conversation is a distinction Colleen has spent years sharpening. Every company has its mission, vision, and values framed on a wall somewhere. That is the walls. What actually happens on the ground, in the hallways, in the micro moments between people, is something else entirely. That is the halls. Most of us stand in that gap waiting for power to close it, waiting for the corporate team to fly in on the Gulfstream with a chiseled tablet declaring what the culture now is. Colleen's message is that the plane is not landing, and that while everyone waits for power, the influence sitting at their fingertips goes unused. Key Highlights The walls and the halls: the gap between the values in the lobby and the experience people actually have, and why the leaders already good at culture are the ones reading the culture books. Pizza on Fridays and ping pong tournaments are employee engagement. Important, Colleen says, but not culture. The three questions she put to the audience at a recent speaking event: what do you think your culture is, what do you want it to be, and what three things have you done in the last thirty days to make the second one real. Quote of the Episode "Waiting for power that's never coming, while ignoring influence that's standing right at your fingertips, I think, is a mistake." – Colleen Affeldt About Our Guest Colleen Affeldt is Partner and Vice Chair at Corient Wealth Management, an ultra-high-net-worth advisory firm that acquired the Dallas firm she had joined, a former consulting client. She has spent her career at the intersection of human behavior and commercial performance, first as an independent consultant for fifteen years with a parallel foot in academia, and then embedded full time inside the ecosystem of an operating company. She retires from Corient at the end of this year and returns to private consulting with two focuses: helping wealthy families navigate the emotional dynamics of wealth transfer, clearing the emotional noise so they are ready for succession, and helping companies understand how to optimize their growth position, whether for continued growth or for a transaction. She speaks the commerciality of the CEO, points out that we are not job factories, and argues that people are the most strategic lever a business has. When her retirement was announced, more than four hundred messages arrived within 72 hours, and they weren't quick congratulations. They were people telling her what she had meant to their careers, the return on six years of micro moments nobody ever gave her permission to create. Connect with Colleen Affeldt Colleen Affeldt on LinkedIn Reach Colleen at colleen@colleenaffeldt.com About The HX Collective The HX Collective explores the human experience through three lenses: work, relationships and self, through raw, authentic conversations rooted in human-centered design. Each episode offers gripping stories, thought-provoking discussion, and concrete tools that help you rethink your relationship with distress and strengthen your whole human experience.

  2. Oct 5

    work - Matt Kocanda | more santa and less stalker

    In this episode, Deb Knupp sits down with Matt Kocanda, office managing partner for the Chicago office of Corient and, by Deb's own description, her collaborator in crime for more than ten years. The subject is one most people would rather not discuss at all: sales. Matt did not arrive here by choice. He spent an earlier stretch of his career actively running away from it, and left a firm specifically because the next role was a pure sales job, the kind that asks you to push your interests instead of the client's. What changed was not his aptitude. It was a single reframe, the one Deb's work at GrowthPlay is built on: sales is at its best when the selling itself is an act of service. Underlying the conversation is a claim Matt makes early and then spends the episode proving: in wealth management, and in professional services generally, nobody chooses you because you have the best widget, because you're the smartest, or because you outperform. They choose you because they trust you. Which means the work is not pitching. It is listening well enough to hear the actual problem, solving it even when solving it earns you nothing, and being honest when the answer is that you are not the right fit. As Matt puts it, the best business developer he ever watched spoke for maybe five or ten percent of a meeting. Key Highlights The washing machine. A widowed client called her advisor about buying one. The average response is "we'll send you the money." Instead he asked how she was feeling about it, learned she had never done it without her husband, and went to the store with her. Telling clients the truth. One of the hardest parts of the job is telling someone their plan won't work. When a client asked an advisor to promise they'd never run out of money, the honest answer was "I can't do that," and that honesty is what builds trust. The dad group. Matt is a father of three young kids, noticed that mothers have affinity groups and fathers largely do not, and built one out of clients and centers of influence. Busy, successful professional men always made time for an hour-long Zoom about how hard the dad thing is. Some became clients. That was never the point. Quote of the Episode "It's inefficient, but relationships aren't efficient either." – Matt Kocanda About Our Guest Matt Kocanda is the office managing partner for the Chicago office of Corient, one of the largest private wealth management firms in the country, where he leads both operations and the firm's growth and sales culture efforts. He has spent his entire career in private wealth, across firms large and small, and describes the work as more than stocks and bonds: helping people take apart a difficult relationship with money and rebuild it into something closer to stewardship than control. He is candid that he once fled a sales role, and equally candid that learning to see selling as an act of service changed the trajectory of his life. Today he coaches junior advisors on the difference between the getter's game and the giver's game, builds community for its own sake and lets the business follow, and argues that the firms that win are the ones whose people believe what they do makes a difference. He is a husband and a father of three, and he shares a birthday with his wife, which he takes off every year. Connect with Matt Kocanda Matt Kocanda on LinkedIn About The HX Collective The HX Collective explores the human experience through three lenses: work, relationships and self, through raw, authentic conversations rooted in human-centered design. Each episode offers gripping stories, thought-provoking discussion, and concrete tools that help you rethink your relationship with distress and strengthen your whole human experience.

  3. Oct 5

    relationships - Heather Heaton | hospitality isn't a gift - it's a posture

    In this episode, Deb Knupp sits down with Heather Heaton, a writer, an unconventional pastor, and Deb's friend and fellow resident of a town of fewer than eight thousand people. The subject is hospitality, but not the version involving hors d'oeuvres and hot dishes. Heather's argument, formed in seminary while she questioned and unlearned a great deal about the role of women in the church, is that hospitality is not an activity and not a gift some people happen to have. It is a posture. She talks with her hands, and by her own admission she'll be doing it the entire conversation. Underlying it is a reframe that quietly upends how most of us use the word. Hospitality is not one person hosting another. It is reciprocal, which means a hospitable person has to know how to receive as well as how to host. Heather traces the idea back through table fellowship in scripture and forward into a divided present, where opening your arms to someone who holds different values feels less like generosity and more like exposure. Her question for that discomfort is a simple one: is there actually a threat here? Key Highlights The salt table. Heather opens her home to any woman in town, and when they RSVP she does not ask them to bring a dish. She assigns ingredients. Bring lemons and butter. Strangers cook a meal together and then sit down and eat it, and the table does the rest. Hospitality as a two-way dynamic rather than a gift or a service. "A hospitable person knows how to host and how to receive," and Heather is candid that receiving love has historically been the harder half for her. Practical starting points: watch your actual body language, notice which way you are angled toward the person who disagrees with you, and remember that unity is not sameness. Also, crack the joke. Humor is an open posture. Heather is clear this applies to everyday disagreement, not unsafe or abusive situations. Henri Nouwen's "Reaching Out," and the line that reframes the whole conversation: the opposite of hospitality is hostility. Quote of the Episode "We cannot love through closed arms. We cannot thrive through closed arms." – Heather Heaton About Our Guest Heather Heaton is a writer, speaker, and self-described unconventional pastor whose work centers on hospitality as a posture rather than a practice. She came to the idea in seminary, in a season of deep theological study spent questioning and unlearning what she had been handed about the role of women in the church, and it took root through the study of table fellowship, a thread running from the Old Testament forward as a way people remember God. After seminary she went to work behind the bar at a hole-in-the-wall whose regulars were retired truckers, and within a year some of them were calling her Pastor Heather. Today she writes the Substack A Holy Ruckus, where her prose has the quality Deb describes as being able to taste the coffee, and she hosts the salt table in her own home for any woman in her small town willing to walk through a stranger's door. She is a mother of boys who have absorbed the lesson well enough that one of them once invited the grocery store cashier home for dinner. Connect with Heather Heaton Read Heather's writing at A Holy Ruckus Listen to Heather on 2FightFor Podcast Heather Heaton on Instagram About The HX Collective The HX Collective explores the human experience through three lenses: work, relationships and self, through raw, authentic conversations rooted in human-centered design. Each episode offers gripping stories, thought-provoking discussion, and concrete tools that help you rethink your relationship with distress and strengthen your whole human experience.

  4. Oct 5

    self - Jay Stark | generosity compounds

    In this episode, Deb Knupp welcomes back Jay Stark, partner and wealth advisor at Sutton Wealth Planning of CI Assante Wealth Management, for a second conversation. The first introduced the HX Collective community to Jay as a father of two daughters, and he shares that it gave his family a chance to reminisce and deepened those relationships. This time the subject is generosity, and specifically what it means to be a philanthropist of the heart rather than a name on a building. Jay's starting point is an admission: he did not believe the old line that it is better to give than to receive. He believes it now, and the conversation is largely the story of how he got there. Underlying it all is a claim that lands harder than it first sounds. Abundance is not a number, it is a mindset, and everything compounds, in both directions. A good decision today and an all right decision tomorrow compound toward something. So do the shortcuts. Which means the question is never whether you have enough yet. For most people on a good path, enough is already coming. The question is what you do now, on the path, with what you have already been entrusted. Key Highlights The kindness documentary. Asked to perform random acts of kindness on camera during Canada's Random Act of Kindness Week, Jay was uncomfortable with being filmed doing good, and did it anyway on a frigid day. What happened outside the grocery store. He quietly covered the bill for someone short on essentials, and a woman he had never met came up to him in tears afterward to tell him what watching it had done to her. His takeaway: get over yourself, because you have no idea who is witnessing the ripple. The batched giving that backfired beautifully. A family faced a large tax bill, so Jay suggested consolidating five or six years of planned giving into one year. Eight or nine months later they called to say they had given it all away. They had seen the impact and wanted more. "It felt like a transaction, but it was actually transformative." Affluenza, and why generosity is the serum. Living in a comparison world where everyone else's life looks like perfection makes "enough" almost impossible to feel. Generosity is the antidote, because giving is proof you already have enough. Why wait? Jay and his wife planned a family foundation for after their deaths, then asked why they shouldn’t start it now. Today the whole family decides together what to support. The best time to plant a tree. Jay’s message to anyone delaying: the best time was 25 years ago, and the second best time is today. Quote of the Episode "I call it affluenza, like I want more, I want more. And the serum to help fight that is generosity." – Jay Stark Resources Mentioned “Give and Take” by Adam Grant About Our Guest Jay Stark is a partner and wealth advisor at Sutton Wealth Planning of CI Assante Wealth Management, where his work rests on the belief that wealth is multidimensional, made up of a client's finances, their values and family, and the community they are part of, and that none of it means much if the person holding it is not well. A returning guest on The HX Collective, he first joined Deb to talk about fatherhood and human flourishing through the lens of raising two daughters, both now in their twenties. His practice concentrates less on the number and more on what the number is for, helping families align their resources with what actually brings them meaning, and helping people, including widows who have never been handed the tools, make the impact they already wanted to make. He is an active volunteer and philanthropic leader in his community, a committed advocate for starting small and starting early, and living proof of his own argument that generosity is a habit built rather than a milestone reached. Connect with Jay Stark Jay Stark on LinkedIn Learn more at Sutton Wealth Planning Watch the kindness documentary on YouTube

  5. Oct 5

    self - Roy Sexton | showing up in technicolor – be seen, see others

    In this episode, Deb Knupp sits down with Roy Sexton, Chief Marketing Officer at Vedder and one of legal marketing's most visible advocates for showing up authentically, for a conversation that, as Deb puts it, feels like it started before they even hit record. Roy has spent more than 25 years in marketing leadership, including nearly 15 years in legal marketing at some of the industry's most prominent firms, and served as International President of the Legal Marketing Association. But this conversation isn't really about marketing. It's about the strategy, and the sincerity, behind telling people what they mean to you, and why Roy has built a career, a community, and a life around doing exactly that, out loud, in Technicolor, often in a Sesame Street shirt. The throughline is a piece of advice from Roy's late mother: tell people what they will mean to you in the moment it will mean something to them, not at the funeral, not at the retirement party, and not with a Bundt cake that shows up right when everyone else's does. Roy traces that instinct through a childhood spent making bullies laugh so they wouldn't hurt him, a defining moment on stage at a Legal Marketing Association conference where he sang alongside a drag performer to make space for people who needed it, and a hard-won distinction between being nice and being kind. What emerges is a case for treating small, unscheduled moments, a comment on LinkedIn, a walk to someone's desk, a text after a hard week, as the real work of building trust, long before anyone needs to cash it in. Key Highlights The "Bundt cake" rule Roy learned from his mother: show up with support a month later, when people are alone with their feelings, not just in the first flood of casseroles. The Legal Marketing Association keynote where Roy sang "Born This Way" alongside drag performer Athena Dion, and what it told a room full of allies, and skeptics, about who the conference was really for. The difference between nice and kind, and why the kindest thing is sometimes the direct thing, delivered with care. Why business development can happen in the coffee line: Roy's case for quick, genuine touchpoints, a comment, a reshare, a "saw your kid's off to college," over five-hour golf outings. Quote of the Episode "Tell people what they will mean to you in the moment it will mean something to them." – Roy Sexton About Our Guest Roy Sexton is Chief Marketing Officer at Vedder, where he leads the firm's marketing strategy, business development, and brand positioning. He brings more than 25 years of marketing leadership to the role, with nearly 15 of those years focused specifically on legal marketing at some of the country's most prominent firms. A longtime volunteer leader in the field, Roy served on the international board of the Legal Marketing Association beginning in 2020 and was elected its International President for 2023 to 2024. His advocacy work extends well beyond the office: Roy has been recognized by Crain's, INvolve, and Corp! Magazine for his leadership within the LGBTQ+ community, and he serves on the boards of Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit and the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Michigan. He is also, unmistakably, one of the most enthusiastic and generous connectors in legal marketing, a trait he traces straight back to his mother and grandfather. Connect with Roy Sexton Roy Sexton on LinkedIn Roy Sexton on Linktree (all his socials) Read Roy's film reviews on Reel Roy Reviews About The HX Collective The HX Collective explores the human experience through three lenses: work, relationships and self, through raw, authentic conversations rooted in human-centered design. Each episode offers gripping stories, thought-provoking discussion, and concrete tools that help you rethink your relationship with distress and strengthen your whole human experience.

  6. Oct 5

    work - Eric Schoonveld | whole being is well being

    In this episode, Deb Knupp sits down with Eric Schoonveld, Partner and Co-Founder of The Peak Law Group and a nearly two-decade friend and client, for a conversation about what it actually costs to treat culture as a real priority instead of a talking point. Eric has spent 35 years defending hospitals, physicians, and healthcare systems in catastrophic injury cases across more than a dozen states, but this conversation centers on something he started thinking about back in 2007 and 2008, long before wellbeing became a standard line in law firm CLE credits: what happens to a team, and to the person leading it, when profit stops being the only thing that counts. Eric's central reframe is a hard one for high performers to sit with: when someone on your team is underperforming, that's the leader's responsibility to solve, not a character flaw to manage around. He traces that belief through a StrengthsFinder exercise from his first firm, a near-fatal bicycle accident that ended in a Life Flight and a goodbye message to his family, and a hallway exchange with a partner he brushed past on his way to something more urgent, weeks before she passed away. What he has built at The Peak Law Group since is less about wellness perks and more about what he calls whole being: showing up for people's real lives, unconditionally, whether or not they're billing hours that week. Key Highlights Why Eric considers an underperforming team member his own responsibility as a leader to solve, not their character flaw to fix. The near-fatal bicycle accident, and the Life Flight goodbye message, that reordered what "more" meant to him. The hallway "how are you, fine" exchange with a partner, weeks before she passed away, that still stays with him. How The Peak Law Group's founding partners agreed that when a decision has a clear culture-supporting answer, that's the one they take, no debate, including which health plan to offer when a young associate's wife needed a heart transplant. Quote of the Episode "If we say culture is important, everybody says culture's important. But if we're gonna mean it, we have to do something about it." – Eric Schoonveld About Our Guest Eric Schoonveld is a Partner and Co-Founder of The Peak Law Group, a litigation defense firm built around the belief that culture, not billable hours, is the real engine of a law firm. He earned his J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law in 1991 and spent decades defending hospitals, physicians, and healthcare systems in catastrophic injury and medical malpractice cases, work that has taken him to trials in more than a dozen states. Eric established his medical malpractice defense practice early in his career before co-founding The Peak Law Group, which now has offices across Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Denver, Florida, and California. He is a longtime advocate for workplace wellbeing and culture-first leadership, a perspective shaped as much by decades in courtrooms as by his life outside them: he's an endurance cyclist, skier, and Jiu-Jitsu practitioner, married to Shawna for 30 years, and father to two kids he describes as super adventurous. Connect with Eric Schoonveld Eric Schoonveld on LinkedIn Learn more at The Peak Law Group Resources Read Jen Marr's Showing Up: A Comprehensive Guide to Comfort & Connection Read Jen Marr's Lifting Up: The Transformative Power of Supportive Leadership About The HX Collective The HX Collective explores the human experience through three lenses: work, relationships and self, through raw, authentic conversations rooted in human-centered design. Each episode offers gripping stories, thought-provoking discussion, and concrete tools that help you rethink your relationship with distress and strengthen your whole human experience.

  7. Oct 5

    work - Libby Baney Burstein | thrilling, not chilling: EQ in the age of AI

    In this episode, Deb Knupp welcomes back Libby Baney Burstein, a partner at Faegre Drinker where she has practiced for nearly twenty years in public policy across the pharmacy and FDA space, working to keep unsafe products away from the people they would harm. Libby has been on The HX Collective before, through the lenses of work, relationships, and self, and this time the subject is the disruption everyone in professional services is feeling at once: what artificial intelligence means for the practice of law, and who we have to become as the humans still delivering the service. Her answer arrives in the first few minutes and never wavers. This is a thrilling moment, not a chilling one. Underlying the conversation is a reframe of what a client is actually buying. Libby calls it the stress transfer business. Nobody hires an expensive lawyer for something they could solve themselves, or that AI could solve for them. They are handing over stress, and the job is to be the human sponge that absorbs it and returns something actionable. That is why she describes her plan as future-proofing herself with better emotional intelligence rather than better information. Her agents can scrape the FDA warning letters, draft the analysis, and surface the precedent, and she checks every bit of it as the human in the loop. What they cannot do is sit in a room, hear the question behind the question, and move a human being to make the mission theirs. Key Highlights The stress transfer business: why no one hires an expensive lawyer for a problem they could solve themselves, and what it costs you, your clients, and your firm if you cannot absorb that stress and return something useful.Thrilling, not chilling. Libby's answer to professionals frozen by AI, and the aha that changed things for her more than a year ago: you can simply let AI teach you about AI. No class, no tutorial, no going back to school.The difference between having power and having authority, and why a correct memo changes nothing until someone makes it their mission.Quote of the Episode "I actually think the best thing you can do in the age of AI is be your best human. Because that's the one thing AI can't do." – Libby Baney Burstein About Our Guest Libby Baney Burstein is a partner at Faegre Drinker, where she has practiced for nearly twenty years. Her work sits at the intersection of public policy, pharmacy, and FDA regulation, focused on protecting people from unsafe products sold online and offline, which she describes less as a practice area than as a mission. She has become an early and enthusiastic adopter of AI in her profession, running agent teams alongside her legal work and arguing, persuasively, that the technology's real gift is the room it clears for human judgment. She is also a longtime advocate for wellbeing in professional services, part of one of the earliest firms to treat brain health as essential to the practice of law, and a member of the cross-practice community of high-EQ partners Deb helped design. Outside the practice she is a self-described yes person, a fitness person, a wife, and a mother to a twelve-year-old currently receiving the same lesson she gives her colleagues: getting the right answer is not the point, being the person others trust with it is. Connect with Libby Baney Burstein Libby Baney Burstein on LinkedIn Learn more at Faegre Drinker About The HX Collective The HX Collective explores the human experience through three lenses: work, relationships and self, through raw, authentic conversations rooted in human-centered design. Each episode offers gripping stories, thought-provoking discussion, and concrete tools that help you rethink your relationship with distress and strengthen your whole human experience.

  8. Oct 5

    work - Beth Sherman | relax, i've seen worse

    In this episode, Deb Knupp sits down with Beth Sherman, a seven time Emmy award winning comedy writer turned keynote speaker and the creator of Audience-First Communication. After thirty years writing for the Late Show with David Letterman, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Ellen, and the Academy Awards, Beth now teaches lawyers, executives, and professional speakers a single discipline she learned in comedy clubs: think about the person receiving the message as much as the message itself. As she puts it, it does not matter if you have the right answer if you cannot deliver it in a way that builds trust and can be acted on. Underlying the conversation is a quiet correction to how most of us were trained. Law school, and most professional education, teaches you how to be right, which puts all the weight on the message and none on the human being across the table. Beth offers the opposite starting point. Notice what is in the thought bubble above the other person's head, acknowledge it out loud, and the friction drops away. Recognition creates connection, connection builds trust, and trust is what makes people listen longer, act faster, and come to you first when something breaks. None of it requires being funny. It requires being a person before being a professional. Key Highlights Why "make me funny" is the wrong ask, and what people actually want when they say it. In Beth's words, it is not about humor, it is about humanity, and the secret of comedy is truth. The forensic accountant with a coffee mug that reads "Relax, I've seen worse," and everything those four words tell a terrified client before he says a single sentence. The paramedic who took a knee, got to eye level, and opened with "Today hasn't turned out the way you expected. What's going on?" and why first responders may have the best sense of humor of any profession. Quote of the Episode "Before you respond like a professional, respond like a person." – Beth Sherman About Our Guest Beth Sherman is a seven time Emmy award winning comedy writer, keynote speaker, and the creator of Audience-First Communication. Over thirty years in television she wrote for the Late Show with David Letterman, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and Ellen, and she has written material for the Academy Awards, including for Tom Hanks, Helen Mirren, and Queen Latifah. For fifteen of those years she worked concurrently as a stand up comedian in clubs, on college campuses, and on military bases. Today she brings that craft into the professional world, teaching leaders and subject matter experts how to make complex expertise clear, human, and actionable. Her clients and audiences range from law firms and professional services organizations to CEOs, Air Force generals, commencement speakers, and professional speakers who have climbed Everest or won Olympic medals. She recently delivered the day two keynote at the College of Law Practice Management Futures Conference, following legal AI authority Richard Susskind, on the human skills that will determine the profession's next chapter. What distinguishes Beth's voice in this conversation is that she models the thing she teaches. She is not selling a technique. She is showing what happens when you tell the truth to the room in front of you. Connect with Beth Sherman Beth Sherman on LinkedIn Follow Beth on Instagram Learn more at bethsherman.com About The HX Collective The HX Collective explores the human experience through three lenses: work, relationships and self, through raw, authentic conversations rooted in human-centered design. Each episode offers gripping stories, thought-provoking discussion, and concrete tools that help you rethink your relationship with distress and strengthen your whole human experience.

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

The HX Collective explores the human experience through three main channels of life: work, relationships, and self. With raw, authentic conversations, the podcast investigates how challenges can become powerful teachers, leading to personal growth and deeper connections. Rooted in humanity-centered design, each episode reflects a commitment to doing good and doing well, featuring diverse voices and generational perspectives. Expect gripping stories of struggle and success, with thought-provoking discussions and concrete tools and tactics that encourage you to rethink your relationship with dis

Information

  • Creator
    The HX Collective
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    64
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © The HX Collective
  • Show Website
    The HX Collective

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