My guest for Episode 5 is Mitch Bliven, founder of Genius Network Solutions, though this conversation is far more about the man than the company.

Mitch grew up wanting to be a short order cook or a stand up comedian. He went to college for business, felt completely out of place, and switched to social work, then left that to become a police officer, and left that too. By 24 he had two careers behind him and, by his own telling, felt pretty lost. Construction taught him a trade. Spreadsheets taught him he loved solving problems. And a pattern of burning out roughly every 18 months finally led him to a 10-minute assessment that, as he puts it, gave him ten years of understanding of his burnout in one sitting.

That assessment was the Working Genius, and it became the foundation of his work. Mitch now describes himself, only half joking, as a "corporate social worker," helping people and teams understand where they find joy and where they find pain, and build work around it. We get into a lot: why "where do you find joy in work" is a question almost no one gets asked, the difference between wanting and needing something, why connection beats every other source of happiness, and what it actually feels like to start a business.

In this episode:

• The line cook, the comedian, the cop, and the social worker: how a winding path led to his real work
• The 10-minute assessment that explained a decade of burnout
• Why "where do you find joy in work" is a question we almost never ask
• Wanting versus needing, and giving yourself permission to want what you want
• Why connection, not the Porsche, is what we are actually chasing
• Being kind to your younger self, and trusting that the dots connect looking backward

Learn more about Mitch's work at leadwithgns.com.

East Side Enterprise is hosted by Sam McKinney and produced locally by McKinney Creative Ventures. Know a business owner whose story should be told? Reach out and tell me who I should talk to next.