What does it mean to choose your life, even when everything feels stacked against you?

In this episode of GUTS, Topaz Adizes sits down with Luis Velasquez, executive coach, Stanford leadership facilitator, and author of Ordinary Resilience. This is a conversation about resilience that isn’t performative. It’s lived. Through stories of survival, identity, fatherhood, and near breaking points, Luis unpacks how reframing reality can become a tool for transformation and how the smallest shifts in perspective can change everything.

In this episode, they explore:

• Why resilience is built through choice, not circumstance

• The difference between fearlessness and fearing less

• How identity shapes behavior and long term growth

• Reframing pain into purpose and forward movement

• Parenting, legacy, and what it means to truly prepare your children for life

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Listen GUTS:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1GSiahH3NYTiFKZ4mIGQnJ?si=fce013635cfa4947

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/getting-under-the-skin/id1821276933

Follow GUTS:

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/guts.podcast/

LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/topazadizes/

Subscribe for updates: topazadizes.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it mean to truly come home to yourself, and what happens when you stop performing and start creating from your soul?

In this episode of GUTS, host Topaz Adizes sits down with Didier Sylvain, coach and creative practitioner working at the intersection of personal liberation and collective transformation. Didier has guided executives and teams at organizations like Lionsgate, WME, and the NBA Foundation, drawing from a background that spans Deloitte Consulting, somatics, sound healing, and a deep lineage of embodied practice.

Through decades of inner work, loss, and creative discovery, Didier reflects on what it really means to lead from your values, why music is the marrow of his soul, and how the work we do for others is often the work we most need to do ourselves.

Together, they explore:

• What it means to be alive in your soul vs. hiding from it

• How lineage and ancestry shape who we become

• The dance between dreaming and discipline

• Why the opposite of fear might be play

• Creating beauty as a spiritual practice

• Grief, vision, and learning to trust the unseen

• What it feels like to finally come home

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LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/topazadizes/

Subscribe for updates: topazadizes.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What makes a conversation truly good and why are those moments of connection so rare?

In this episode of GUTS, host Topaz Adizes sits down with Emma Templeton, social psychologist and researcher studying the science of human connection. Emma explores what happens in the precise moments when conversation clicks and why some interactions leave us feeling deeply understood while others fade away.

Through her research on real, unscripted dialogue, Emma reflects on the invisible forces shaping how we connect and why meaningful conversation may be one of the most powerful tools we have.

Together, they explore:

• Why we dread social interactions we end up loving

• What makes conversations feel meaningful

• The science of conversational chemistry

• Why social scripts limit deeper connection

• The value of long, undistracted conversations

• Communicating complex ideas simply

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Listen GUTS:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1GSiahH3NYTiFKZ4mIGQnJ?si=fce013635cfa4947

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/getting-under-the-skin/id1821276933

Follow GUTS:

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/guts.podcast/

LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/topazadizes/

Subscribe for updates: topazadizes.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the most painful year of your life was actually preparing you for the family you were meant to have?

In this episode of GUTS, host Topaz Adizes sits down with Andrew Kimler, Sundance fellow and award-winning creative producer, for a deeply personal conversation about adoption, fatherhood, creativity, and purpose.

After enduring three failed adoptions in a single year, alongside profound personal loss, Andrew reflects on grief, resilience, and what it takes to stay open after repeated heartbreak.

Together, they explore:

- The emotional reality of failed adoptions and how to mourn what almost was

- Why you “can’t get matched with the wrong kid” in the adoption journey

- What patience really means and how to use the waiting season well

- The difference between what a story is about and what it’s really about

- How creativity, writing, and fatherhood reveal your deeper purpose

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Follow GUTS:

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/guts.podcast/

LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/topazadizes/

Subscribe for updates: topazadizes.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when the questions that once got you arrested become the foundation of your life's work?

In this episode of GUTS, host Topaz Adizes sits down with Bryce Hoffman, bestselling author and the only civilian ever to complete the U.S. Army's Red Team Leader Program. As founder of Red Team Thinking, he helps organizations like Google, Salesforce, and the U.S. Marine Corps challenge assumptions and make sharper decisions.

Together, they explore:

- How radical idealism evolves into disciplined critical thinking

- Why ego is the enemy of great leadership

- Failure as a feature, not a flaw

- What it really means to stop pushing the river

This conversation is about learning to ask the tough questions, and having the courage to listen to the answers.

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Listen GUTS:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeUPrK1EksczxTm35F_GeUA

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1GSiahH3NYTiFKZ4mIGQnJ?si=fce013635cfa4947

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/getting-under-the-skin/id1821276933

Follow GUTS:

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/guts.podcast/

LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/topazadizes/

Subscribe for updates: topazadizes.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when the parts of you that were silenced begin to speak again?

In this episode of GUTS, host Topaz Adizes sits down with award-winning podcaster, empowerment coach, and author Michelle Lamoureux, creator of The Good Life podcast and author of Design a Life You Love.

Michelle reflects on the formative experiences that shaped her: being “othered” as a child, surviving a near abduction, and wearing a scoliosis brace for six years — and how those moments cultivated empathy, resilience, and a drive to create safe spaces for women to reclaim their voice.

Together, they explore:

• Reclaiming your voice after silence

• How early experiences shape identity and empathy

• Success as the courage to try

• Motherhood, safety, and raising a daughter with agency

• Designing a life with intention

This conversation examines what it means to design a life with intention, expand beyond inherited limitations, and stay human in an increasingly AI-driven world.

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Listen GUTS:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1GSiahH3NYTiFKZ4mIGQnJ?si=fce013635cfa4947

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/getting-under-the-skin/id1821276933

Follow GUTS:

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/guts.podcast/

LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/topazadizes/

Subscribe for updates: topazadizes.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does leadership look like when certainty falls away?

In this episode of GUTS, host Topaz Adizes sits down with Yoseph Ayele, Ethiopian-born entrepreneur and founder of LAVA, for a wide-ranging conversation about talent, ego, purpose, and the courage to not know. From growing up in Ethiopia to building across borders, Yoseph reflects on what happens when control loosens and attention shifts toward listening, humility, and service.

Moving between leadership, inequality, and self-awareness, this conversation explores talent as energy, not status, contradiction as a source of truth, and why learning to let go may be one of the most important leadership practices of our time.

In this episode, we explore:

• What talent really is and how it develops

• Ego, humility, and self-awareness in leadership

• Inequality, access, and reframing prosperity

• Letting go of control and certainty

• Purpose as service rather than achievement

• Parenting, legacy, and what we pass forward

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Listen GUTS:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1GSiahH3NYTiFKZ4mIGQnJ?si=fce013635cfa4947

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/getting-under-the-skin/id1821276933

Follow GUTS:

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/guts.podcast/

LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/topazadizes/

Subscribe for updates: topazadizes.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What matters when fear enters your life through the people you love most?

In this episode of GUTS, host Topaz Adizes sits down with Airrion Copeland, a filmmaker, writer, and nonprofit leader, for a raw conversation about fatherhood, fear, and the moments that change how you see everything. After a near-death experience involving his young son, Airrion reflects on what breaks open when control disappears and what’s revealed in its place.

From early trauma and storytelling to compassion, uncertainty, and raising children in an unpredictable world, this conversation explores suffering as a teacher, purpose as service, and why letting go of certainty may be the only honest way forward.

In this episode, we explore:

• Fatherhood and fear

• Near-death experiences and wake-up calls

• Suffering as a teacher

• Letting go of certainty and control

• Purpose as service

• Raising children in an uncertain future

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Listen GUTS:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1GSiahH3NYTiFKZ4mIGQnJ?si=fce013635cfa4947

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/getting-under-the-skin/id1821276933

Follow GUTS:

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/guts.podcast/

LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/topazadizes/

Subscribe for updates: topazadizes.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.