Unleashing YOUR Great Work – Details, episodes & analysis

In this solo episode, Dr. Amanda Crowell pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to move from lone wolf to collaborative creator. Born of her own struggles—and the behind-the-scenes story of writing Chapter 7 of the second edition of Great Work—this episode explores the three biggest mindset shifts Amanda had to make in order to collaborate without losing herself.

You’ll hear how she learned to:

• Stop chasing “ease” and start thinking strategically
• Navigate drama with clarity and connection
• Ask for help early (instead of right before the finish line)

Plus, Amanda shares the story of the Great Work book’s near-total rewrite, why perfectionism delays good collaboration, and how to spot the moment when real magic starts to unfold.

Buy Great Work or the Great Work Journal:

amandacrowell.com/book-shop

Snag the Lone Wolf's reflection guide:

https://www.amandacrowell.com/blog/the-lone-wolfs-guide-to-collaboration-a-practical-guide-for-people-whod-really-rather-do-it-all-themselves

Listen to the OG pisode about collaboration:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/great-work-is-done-in-community-encore-uygw070/id1586648710?i=1000612293955

In this electrifying episode of Unleashing Your Great Work, we’re joined by Shantel Love—award-winning VP of Customer Success, keynote speaker, and author of Promote Your Damn Self. From near homelessness to managing over a billion dollars in her career, Shantel shares her powerful story of reinvention, resilience, and rising to the top. Learn how personal branding is more than a buzzword—it’s a path to economic justice and generational wealth. Shantel’s insights will leave you inspired to own your value and advocate for your greatness.

Key Topics Covered:

• Shantel’s journey from stuck at $40K to executive leadership
• Why personal branding is a tool for economic justice
• Strategies to overcome imposter syndrome (Meet Big Bertha!)
• How to use your voice, even when it shakes
• Tactical personal branding strategies for career and business

From being near homeless to managing over a billion-dollars in her career—plot twist: this isn't a Netflix series, it's Shantel Love's actual life story. As an award winning, Global VP of Customer Success and the first Black Woman VP in her division's history, she's living proof that shattering glass ceilings makes for excellent cardio.

Author of the game-changing career and personal branding book, Promote Your D@mn Self, Shantel transforms boardrooms and ballrooms with her electrifying keynotes. While others perfect their elevator pitch, she's busy teaching professionals how to own the entire building. Her secret sauce? Turning professional roadblocks into launching pads with a signature blend of sharp insights, authentic leadership, and refreshingly real talk.

When she's not managing global teams or dropping wisdom on stage, Shantel serves on the board of Elevate Diversity and Girlz Who Sell and champions diversity as an executive sponsor of a Black Employee Resource Group. Her mission? Creating corporate ladders with wheelchair ramps, elevators, and escalators—because everyone deserves access to the top.

Through strategic mentorship and speaking engagements, Shantel equips professionals with more than inspiration—she hands them the tools to rewrite their career stories and build an empire on their own terms.

Website: ShantelLove.com

Book: Promote Your D@mn Self: The 3 Personal Branding Mistakes to Avoid That Nearly Destroyed My Career

Linked In: www.linkedin.com/in/shantellove

Have you ever set a goal and then completely forgotten about it? Or worse—remembered it later and felt frustrated that you never followed through? That’s Goalnesia, and today we’re tackling it head-on.

In this episode, we’ll explore:

✅ Why Goalnesia happens (and why it’s not just procrastination)

✅ Six powerful questions to uncover hidden mindset blocks

✅ How to break free from perfectionism and overwhelm

✅ The Three Goal Strategy for focusing on what truly matters

✅ How to use the Great Work Journal to stay on track

Subscribe and Review the podcast and help other people find it, too.

Host: Dr. Amanda Crowell

Guest: Susan Eckstein, Executive & Leadership Coach, Creator of Unarmored Leadership

What if the very things that once protected you are now holding you back? In this episode of Unleashing Your Great Work, we welcome Susan Eckstein, an executive and leadership coach specializing in Unarmored Leadership. Susan helps leaders dismantle the invisible barriers—thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors—that prevent them from stepping into their full potential.

We dive deep into:

✅ What armor is and how it limits leadership and personal growth

✅ The four Unarmored Leadership Archetypes: The Knight, The Fencer, The Wrestler, and The Martial Artist

✅ How shedding outdated beliefs leads to more effective leadership, stronger teams, and a more fulfilling life

✅ Susan’s own journey of transformation from corporate PR to triathlete to leadership coach

✅ Practical steps you can take today to let go of self-doubt and lead with confidence

If you’ve ever felt stuck, like you’re playing by outdated rules, this episode is your invitation to embrace your authentic leadership style!

🎙️ Subscribe & Review – If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe and leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Your support helps us bring you more great conversations!

Susan Eckstein is an executive and leadership coach and group coaching facilitator. The foundation of her work is Unarmored Leadership™, a coaching model she created to help leaders dismantle their armor so they can lead without limitations. Susan is passionate about serving ambitious leaders who are armoring up and experiencing crises of confidence. Her coaching focuses on improving communication and executive presence, navigating ambiguity, and overcoming imposter syndrome.

Susan is a certified Group Coaching HQ Master Coach, Facilitator of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® x Coaching, and Clear Beliefs Coach.

With more than a decade of public relations experience, Susan has worked with senior-level executives in the medical, pharmaceutical, and financial industries. She is also a three-time Ironman competitor and former USA Triathlon certified coach who has coached hundreds of people to compete in their dream athletic events.

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/susaneckstein/

Website: www.unarmoredleadership.com

Unarmored Leadership Quiz: https://056drajwooi.typeform.com/to/ymm9glfe

Take the time to reflect on 2025 in a manner guaranteed to make you feel grounded today and hopeful in 2025.

Here are some links you might need:

• Grab the workbook!
• Join me for my free, live, online events, the Great Work Series! 
• Try the Great Work Journals!

I don't know about you, but I've been fighting to keep myself focused on my Great Work in the past couple of weeks. Things seem to be moving at the speed of light out in the world, and I'm struggling to keep up.

To bring myself back into myself, I used my 3B protocol to get myself back on track.

The 3B protocol is a way to prioritize your jumbled, conflicting thoughts and worries.

It involves identifying the Bright Spots, Broken Windows, and Black Holes in your thinking and then moving forward with clarity.

💡 Bright Spots are the areas where things are working. Your job is to lean into them and create even more success.

💔 Broken Windows require immediate attention. Avoiding them will inevitably cause more problems, so addressing them is our highest priority.

⚫ Black Holes, however, reveal where you pour your attention without discernible effect. Black Holes include endlessly relitigating decisions you’ve already made, analyzing past regrets, obsessing over future scenarios, and falling into the doom scroll of world events.

Listen in for concrete strategies and heartfelt advice.

Read my book and try the Great Work Journal for yourself!

Info here: amandacrowell.com/great-work

Want to discuss working together?

Schedule a call: amandacrowell.com/coach-me

Nikki James Zellner is a content strategist who empowers all to use their personal experiences + authentic voices to express themselves, build their legacy brands, and change the world. A dual business owner with a background deeply rooted in community, marketing, and storytelling, she’s launched 15 lifestyle magazines, helped build the success of hundreds brands, and worked in front of and behind the scenes to share written and visual stories in a way that captivated audiences. She was awarded the 2022 Trailblazer of the Year award in the National Veteran and Military Spouse Entrepreneur Awards, and in her spare time, she fought the law for safer schools in Virginia…and won.

Resources Mentioned: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikkijameszellner

https://www.nikkijameszellner.com

https://carbonmonoxideinschools.org

About The Host:

Dr. Amanda Crowell is a cognitive psychologist, speaker, author, and coach focused on changing our perspective on the world of work. It IS possible to do Great Work—the work that calls to you from the inside-- without sacrificing your health, happiness, and relationships.

Amanda is the Author of the book, Great Work: Do What Matters Most Without Sacrificing Everything Else, and the creator of the Great Work Journals. Amanda's TEDx talk has received almost two million views and has been featured on TED's Ideas blog and Ted Shorts. Her ideas have also been featured on NPR, Al Jazeera, The Wall Street Journal, Quartz, and Thrive Global.

Follow the podcast

To get each new episode downloaded automatically, click the + to follow the podcast!

Leave us a review

Ratings and reviews mean everything to us. They help our podcast rank higher, which means more people will be inspired to unleash their Great Work! Your time to leave a review is greatly appreciated!

Obstacles DO NOT scare Sarah Wells.

As a Silver Medalist in the Olympics, and runner-up in Season 7 of Canada’s “Amazing Race”, Sarah has become an expert of overcoming hurdles both literally and figuratively.

The founder of the Believe Initiative, Sarah has used her story to help more than 125,000 people nationwide to understand the importance of believing in yourself and the power that comes with it. 

Resources Mentioned: 

Social Media: @SarahWells400mh

www.sarahwells.ca

www.believeinitiative.com

Click here to get your own copy of Amanda's book, Great Work.

About The Host:

Dr. Amanda Crowell is a cognitive psychologist, speaker, author, and coach focused on changing our perspective on the world of work. It IS possible to do Great Work—the work that calls to you from the inside-- without sacrificing your health, happiness, and relationships.

Amanda is the Author of the book, Great Work: Do What Matters Most Without Sacrificing Everything Else, and the creator of the Great Work Journals. Amanda's TEDx talk has received almost two million views and has been featured on TED's Ideas blog and Ted Shorts. Her ideas have also been featured on NPR, Al Jazeera, The Wall Street Journal, Quartz, and Thrive Global.

Follow the podcast

To get each new episode downloaded automatically, click the + to follow the podcast!

Leave us a review

Ratings and reviews mean everything to us. They help our podcast rank higher, which means more people will be inspired to unleash their Great Work! Your time to leave a review is greatly appreciated!

What better guest to kick it off the 3rd season of the podcast than with Jimmy Diresta, host of the hit Netflix series, “Making Fun”, and YouTube sensation.

Jimmy is an artist, TV personality, video producer, and educator that describes his life-long passion as being a “maker”.

Inspired by the works of Warhol, Picasso, Steven Tyler and Mariah Carey (to name a few), Jimmy always knew that a maker is what he was born to be. In this Season 3 premier episode, Jimmy takes us on his journey of where he began, where he plans to go, and how the unforeseen and unknown are the perfect places to find your inspiration..

Listen in to this week’s episode to learn more on how Jimmy earned his well deserved title, “The Godfather of Makers.”

Resources Mentioned:

Jimmy Diresta's YouTube Channel

Click here to get your own copy of Amanda's book, Great Work.

About The Host:

Dr. Amanda Crowell is a cognitive psychologist, speaker, author, and coach focused on changing our perspective on the world of work. It IS possible to do Great Work—the work that calls to you from the inside-- without sacrificing your health, happiness, and relationships.

Amanda is the Author of the book, Great Work: Do What Matters Most Without Sacrificing Everything Else, and the creator of the Great Work Journals. Amanda's TEDx talk has received almost two million views and has been featured on TED's Ideas blog and Ted Shorts. Her ideas have also been featured on NPR, Al Jazeera, The Wall Street Journal, Quartz, and Thrive Global.

Follow the podcast

To get each new episode downloaded automatically, click the + to follow the podcast!

Leave us a review

Ratings and reviews mean everything to us. They help our podcast rank higher, which means more people will be inspired to unleash their Great Work! Your time to leave a review is greatly appreciated!

Have you ever felt like you needed more? More money, more prestige, more status, and more accomplishment? In this week’s podcast episode Tara McMullin, the author of What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting, helps us peek behind the curtain. Listen in as she unpacks the programming creating this lack of satisfaction and gives us important clues about how to de-program ourselves. Tara will help us focus on being in process with ourselves instead of seeking ever more, ever more.

Join Tara McMullin and Dr. Amanda Crowell as we discuss:

• How our culture creates a need for more, more, more
• How to help our children avoid the burnout and overworking programming from the start
• How to use technological tools as tools, instead of as further indications that we aren’t doing things right