OneSharpSword Dr. Wayne Pernell

Never, ever judge the contents of a package by its wrapper.

Mike Kaeding, an unassuming guy who looks like he’s a coder for a gaming company, is a real life superhero out to change the world. The CEO of a $200M+ company with over 250 employees, Mike runs a residential real-estate development company.

Mike’s company is based on and in solid values. He focuses on making housing affordable and he’s created a fully in-house model to do so. Rather than spend a bit on a developer, and more on a contractor, and more on the sub-specialists, he’s pulled together a strong team.

Mike believes in humanity and in bringing the best both out of people, and also to people. The best, though, comes as an iterative process. This CEO wants his employees to know that they have psychological safety. He’s strategic about creating the environment for people to love their work, while also placing the onus of responsibility for doing that on each employee.

It’s a great model and this unassuming CEO, Mike Kaeding, is an enduring student and grand mentor in leadership, where lessons linger just below the surface of all he does.

Listen in to learn more. And to find out more about his company, go to https://www.Norhart.com

Meet a super under-stated bad-ass!

Mark Ashby is an Australian who was in the special forces and did some exceptionally covert ops. He did numerous tours in Iraq and he helped ensure the completion of some high-end projects. This is vague, on purpose.

With all of that said, when we spoke after this recording, he teared-up a bit talking about the 911 monument in New York. There’s a gentle humanity that comes through and you would never suspect that his background was one of special operations.

He said that returning to school at 48 y/o was a bit intimidating for him. But what did he study? Yeah, he got his Masters in Counter Terrorism.

He now engages in leadership development.

Huge take away points:


We all have our issues, it doesn’t matter who you are.
You’ve got to learn to stay calm under pressure.

Remember that in business, it’s not like someone is going to get blown up if you leave a task undone overnight.


Stay human; don’t forget who you are and where you came from. No matter your rank or position, you’re still human. Relate to others that way.
While connection is human, emotions need to come out of decision making.
As a leader, your job is to bring out the best of the talented people right in front of you.

Talk with them! Learn about them. Build trust together.


Keep learning - in order to be ready, you’ve got to keep training every day.

Go to www.MarkAshbyConsulting.com/masterclass Reach out at Mark@MarkAshbyConsulting.com

Bryan Gillette uses his experience as an ultra-distance athlete as a foundation for his work in leadership development.

The lessons are simple, but not always easy.


Build Communication (but what kind, and how?)
Humanize (should be easy enough, so why isn’t it happening?)
Engage cross-functional teams
Stay curious

This, of course, is a favorite topic of mine. After the show, I showed Bryan the Curious George monkey that I’ll bring to events. The little stuffed guy sparks conversation to which I’ll note that when you stay curious, you cannot be in judgment.

Curious George has been on stages with me and in small group settings so much that when I show up to do a training, someone will inevitably ask where he is!


Dealing with change requires knowing that everything in your life had a new origin for you at some point. There was a time you hadn’t done it before and now it’s a part of your life.
Focus on a bigger purpose.
Think EPIC Performances

Envision the future
Plan to achieve it
Iterate to the plan (and don’t aim for perfection)
Collaborate along the way
And Perform it - Act on what you’ve created.





Find more about Bryan at www.EpicPerformances.com

What do you do when you want to pursue art and you recognize a need to make money? Head to Wall Street! There, Miriam faced trials of having to prove her worth, doing so by making herself visible.

Several leadership lessons reveal themselves as Miriam talked about how she approached her climb on Wall Street and her love of art. One of these focuses on guerilla marketing and getting yourself in the place where your customers are!

Art gives people meaning (as people bring meaning to the art they experience). Become visible or known; move people. Let them experience who you are and what you stand for.

What stops you from standing up and standing out is fear - fear of being rejected. And that’s an anti-survival tactic. Miriam reminds us that brains evolved for survival, not achievement, and that we need to be able to push past the basics of survival in order to truly achieve. Push past fear. You deserve to be seen and heard.

To see and hear more of Miriam Schulman, please go to The Inspiration Place Podcast for marketing and mindset.

Look for her book, at www.ArtpreneurBook.com

And be sure to visit www.SchulmanArt.com/believe for free affirmations and the first chapter of her book!

This is all about self-development and business for creatives. It’s about how to keep going - forward!

John’s bio makes him look like he’s got decades beyond his 21 years. He’s a serial entrepreneur who has been a realtor and investor, coming out of the projects to make his life different from his early start. He learned from others, seeing who was a NON-Role Model for him and choosing another path.

His focus is on teaching and lifting others to see beyond their current circumstances and in this podcast you’ll hear how he encourages entrepreneurs to dream.

Steeped in curiosity, he pushes the audience to take responsibility noting that once you’re at an age to make decisions, your choices and your life falls on you.

He quotes early philosophers and mindset coaches noting that his quest is to continue to learn and in turn enlighten others. Continuing to push toward an ever-moving horizon line, he notes that the thing I have to break through was built by me. We can all take a lesson here.

Find more about him at www.Walk2Wealth.com find his podcast by the same name, and download a free gift at https://www.bit.ly/walk2wealthgift

Hello Detective - a greeting from a Netflix show that I was dying to say that out loud, but didn’t. Here, retired NYPD Detective Vic Ferrari takes us behind the scenes of the NYPD, sharing stories that have relatable leadership lessons woven throughout.

At 10 years old, he was fascinated with the men in uniform he saw around him. He’d poke into police cars to look at their equipment and knew then that he had a path to follow. By 21 he was in the academy. After six months, he was in the field. Shiny and new, there were mistakes to be made and learning to embrace.

He noted that there’s a “terrible twos” phase in which he learned nuance. And I’d say that’s true of pretty much any of us starting into something new. It takes about two years to really feel comfortable learning a new role and settling into it.

Other lessons include becoming aware of who to follow. There are people out there that have flash and want to show off to show the way. In Vic’s world, those people ended up being suspended, removed from the force, and incarcerated.

Vic lets us in on some of the grittier happenings of the force and the road he took. And another relatable lesson for us came from his realization that not everyone or everything is the same. There are people out there who just want to complain. There are people out there who will just show up to do the job. And there are people out there, Vic estimates that between 5% or 10% are there to learn, hone, and believe in the craft.

Listen in as Vic tells us about busting a car-theft ring that was run by organized crime. And if you’re up for some fun reading, please visit Amazon.com and search Vic Ferrari.