What happens when you realize your career has been directing you instead of the other way around?

In this Connector’s Edge Conversation, Michael Whitehouse talks with Ken Williams, host of The Unstuck Career Podcast and founder of the Unstuck Career Coaching Program.

At age 55, Ken left a 16-year career and chose himself. After years of career changes, difficult managers, unexpected layoffs, and trying to follow the old advice of “get a good education so you can get a good job,” Ken realized that the safe path is not always safe, and that a career built around benefits is not the same as a career built around purpose.

Ken now helps people get unstuck, follow through, and take action on the things they already know they need to do.

His guiding principle:

Insight without follow-through is just expensive self-awareness.

In this episode, Michael and Ken talk about:

• Why the old “safe job” advice does not work the way it used to
• What it means to choose yourself in your career
• How bad managers can shape your experience of a good company
• Why people stay stuck in jobs they know are not right for them
• How fear of the unknown keeps people from making better choices
• Why believing in yourself sometimes starts by borrowing someone else’s belief
• How Ken helps clients finally act on goals they have carried for years
• Why coaching is often about asking better questions, not giving all the answers
• How networking is really about meeting the person who knows the person
• Why The Connector’s Edge helps people build better-fit relationships before they even get on a call

Ken Williams is the host of The Unstuck Career Podcast and founder of the Unstuck Career Coaching Program.

At age 55, he left a 16-year career and started a coaching practice built around one core principle: insight without follow-through is just expensive self-awareness.

Ken helps people stop drifting through their careers and start making intentional decisions. His clients have turned side hustles into major income streams, finished long-delayed book manuscripts, started businesses, and set meaningful goals for themselves for the first time.

This episode is part of Connector’s Edge Conversations, a series introducing you to the kind of thoughtful, interesting, aligned people you can meet inside The Connector’s Edge.

The Connector’s Edge helps you make better connections by matching you with people based on who you are, what you care about, and who you actually want to meet.

You can find Ken on The Connector’s Edge. If you already have an account, log in and look for his profile. If you don’t have an account yet, you can create one for free at:

https://app.theconnectorsedge.com

Most online courses are not really courses.

They are video vaults, content dumps, or glorified workbooks with a “mark complete” button.

In this Connector’s Edge Conversation, Michael Whitehouse talks with Dr. Catrina Mitchum, a recovering academic and learning designer who helps business owners create courses, programs, memberships, and learning experiences that actually help clients get results.

Catrina brings nearly two decades of experience in higher education, where she taught teachers how to teach adults online. In this conversation, she explains why good course design is not about dumping everything you know into videos and PDFs. It is about helping people apply what they are learning, giving them the right amount of support, and designing around the outcomes you actually want your clients to achieve.

Michael and Catrina also explore how this applies to The Connector’s Edge itself: onboarding, member education, networking goals, user experience, and how to help people take action instead of simply giving them more information.

In this episode, Michael and Catrina talk about:

• Why “a wall of content” is not a course
• The difference between teaching and talking at someone
• Why application needs to be built into the learning experience
• How adults learn differently and why they need to know the purpose behind each activity
• Why expertise can make it hard to explain what you actually do
• How feedback can make a course more effective without requiring live teaching every step of the way
• Why many learning platforms track the wrong things
• How accessibility improves the learning experience for everyone
• How The Connector’s Edge could use learning design to improve onboarding and member success
• Catrina’s developing platform for helping people design better learning experiences

Dr. Catrina Mitchum is a recovering academic and learning designer who helps business owners create courses like they give a shit about client outcomes.

She has nearly two decades of experience in higher education, teaching teachers how to teach adults online. Today, she helps small and mid-sized businesses create learning experiences that get results using learning science, instructional design, and adult learning theory.

She is also the host of Course Creation Crap, where she helps people get unstuck wherever they are in the course, program, membership, or learning experience creation process.

This episode is part of Connector’s Edge Conversations, a series introducing you to the kind of thoughtful, interesting, aligned people you can meet inside The Connector’s Edge.

The Connector’s Edge helps you make better connections by matching you with people based on who you are, what you care about, and who you actually want to meet.

You can find Catrina on The Connector’s Edge. If you already have an account, log in and look for her profile. If you don’t have an account yet, you can create one for free at:

https://www.theconnectorsedge.com

TCE Guest: Dr. Catrina Mitchum

What if the voices in your head are not there to sabotage you?

What if they are trying to protect you, but using old programming that no longer serves you?

In this Connector’s Edge Conversation, Michael Whitehouse talks with Ell Graniel, a mental wellness mentor with more than 30 years of experience helping people get their brains working for them instead of against them.

Ell talks about intrapersonal communication, neuroplasticity, NLP, old labels, self-protection, asking for what you want, and how the brain can be reprogrammed when you learn to recognize the patterns running underneath your choices.

Her rooftop message is simple and powerful:

It doesn’t have to be that way.

In this episode, Michael and Ell talk about:

• Why Ell says she gives people’s brains “a bubble bath”
• How the voices in your head are often trying to protect you
• Why labels like “lazy” or “bad at technology” can become self-fulfilling
• The difference between “I’m bad at this” and “this is not my thing”
• How neuroplasticity allows people to create new patterns
• Why asking is powerful, even when the answer might be no
• How old fear responses can keep people stuck in familiar but unhealthy situations
• Why “what’s your why?” is different from falling into “why me?”
• How complaining can become a default pattern
• Why The Connector’s Edge saves time by helping people identify better-fit connections before getting on a call

Ell Graniel has more than 30 years of experience helping people understand and work with their own minds. With a background in communication, training, neuro-linguistic programming, negotiation, and personality-type predictors, she helps people shift the internal patterns that affect how they speak, feel, decide, connect, and take action.

She is also the author of four international bestselling books. Her most recent book, The Law of Subtraction, teaches people why they have struggled to sustain the changes they want and how to fix that.

This episode is part of Connector’s Edge Conversations, a series introducing you to the kind of thoughtful, interesting, aligned people you can meet inside The Connector’s Edge.

The Connector’s Edge helps you make better connections by matching you with people based on who you are, what you care about, and who you actually want to meet.

You can find Ell on The Connector’s Edge. If you already have an account, log in and look for her profile. If you don’t have an account yet, you can create one for free at:

https://www.theconnectorsedge.com

TCE Guest: Ell Graniel