Leadership With a Twist

About Leadership With a Twist

Where mindful leadership meets practical action... Empowering Leadership Teams' Podcast, Leadership With a Twist, features mother-daughter executive coaching team Heather McGonigal and Barbara Schindler sharing actionable leadership strategies, team empowerment tools, and mindful practices for today's leaders. Join them and guest experts to elevate your leadership skills and discover your authentic leadership potential.

Publisher

Heather McGonigal and Barbara Schindler

Category

business · business · business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

14 Jan 2026

Latest episode

7 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

37 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   7 Oct 2026

   Navigating Entrepreneurship: Mieko Ozeki on Leadership and Personal Branding

   Setting the Table: Authentic Branding, Community, and the Story Behind Your Business with Mieko Ozeki Barbara Schindler sits down with fellow Vermonter Mieko Ozeki, founder of Radiance Studios LLC and co-founder of Vermont Womenpreneurs. They talk about what it takes to build a business, and a community, that people trust. Mieko's business began while she was still at UVM's Office of Sustainability. She was helping student interns build portfolios, and her boss told her plainly: "We do not pay you for that part." That push turned into Radiance Studios in 2013. Today she helps entrepreneurs "get the chaos out of their head," shape it into a clear website, and then trains them to maintain it themselves so they never need her on retainer. The conversation covers her years as the "Mary Poppins of organizations," cleaning up budgets and systems for other people's ideas. It covers the six-day retreat she walked into two days after quitting a toxic job, and the decision not to "take my burnout to whatever is next." It covers the first Vermont Womenpreneurs meetup at Fletcher Free Library in January 2018, where 19 women showed up after she put out a few posters. Mieko explains why she thinks elevator pitches are "total garbage," why group introductions work as an amuse-bouche for the real connection that follows, and how teaching her daughter about credit cards taught her more about economics than her econ classes did. In this episode: Your website as a base camp, with social media as the amplifier that brings people back to it Why transactional networking feels icky, and how relational networking fixes it Setting the table so people feel safe telling their real story Progress over perfection: business is a series of pivots Why the authenticity of the founder matters more in the age of AI Raising the next generation with entrepreneurial skills, whether or not they ever start a business Key Takeaways Treat your website as home base. Social media is only a call to action that brings people back to it. Name the themes in your body of work before you try to market it. Networking gets easier when you show up to listen, not to prove you deserve to be there. Leaders set the table, even as solopreneurs. The environment you create shapes the work that happens in it. Reputation builds when people see how you operate, often without you ever pitching. Action Steps List your last five years of work and circle the themes that repeat. Audit your website: which pages exist because you never figured out the system? At your next networking event, ask one person about their story before you share yours. Plan one deliberate pause before your next big decision. Questions to Reflect On Where are you taking old burnout into new work? What does your team say about you when you leave the room? Are you rewarding progress, or only outcomes? Connect with Mieko: Radiance Studios LLC | Vermont Womenpreneurs Mieko A. Ozeki is a Vermont-based small business and agriculture advocate, and owner of Radiance Studios LLC, where she provides website strategy, content, and branding support for entrepreneurs and small businesses. She is the co-founder of Vermont Womenpreneurs, a community and event platform spotlighting women business owners across the state. Mieko serves as a Steering Member of Senator Welch's annual Women's Economic Opportunity Conference and the Vermont Farm to Plate Network, sits on Congressman Peter Welch's Business Advisory Council, and is a board member of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont (NOFA-VT). A mompreneur based in Vermont with her husband and daughter, she brings a storyteller's eye and a deep commitment to community-building to everything she creates. info@vtwomenpreneurs.com (mailto:info@vtwomenpreneurs.com) Let's Talk If this conversation stirred up questions about how you're leading yourself and your business, bring them to a complimentary call with Barbara. We'll look at where your work is steering you and what it takes to get your hands back on the wheel: https://www.empoweringleadershipteams.com/discovery (https://www.empoweringleadershipteams.com/discovery)

2. 

   5 Oct 2026

   Exploring the 12 Zodiac Signs: Understanding the Language of Astrology

   In this episode Barbara introduces the language of Astrology beginning with the 12 Zodiac Signs. The signs are grouped within the four elements (Fire, Earth, Air and Water) to understand the characteristics of influence and expression of the signs. The modalities of each sign indicates the natural way of expressing their energy, taking action and handling change. The signs in their element groups are further explored through the modalities of cardinal, fixed and mutable expression. Free Download: The 12 Zodiac Signs https://www.empoweringleadershipteams.com/astrovibes4u (https://www.empoweringleadershipteams.com/astrovibes4u) Highlights All 12 signs are part of your birth chart, not just your sun sign. The four elements describe each sign's approach to life: fire expressive, earth practical, air intellectual, water intuitive. The modalities describe how a sign moves through change: cardinal starts, fixed sustains, mutable adapts. Combining element and modality gives each sign its distinct expression, like Aries as cardinal fire and Leo as fixed fire. Learning astrology works best as layering, with keywords for the left brain and symbols for the right. Action Steps Download the episode slides and keep the combined element and modality chart somewhere you will see it. Find your sun sign's element and modality, then watch for it in one meeting this week. Think of one person on your team and guess whether they lean cardinal, fixed or mutable. Notice what changes when you work with that instead of against it. Email me for your complimentary birth chart so you can see where the rest of the zodiac lives in you. Barbara@EmpoweringLeadershipTeams.com (mailto:Barbara@EmpoweringLeadershipTeams.com)

3. 

   30 Sept 2026

   Harnessing Creativity and Leadership: Andie Asacker’s Entrepreneurial Journey

   Andie Asacker was laid off in December 2020, and by the day she registered her LLC she already had clients. On this episode of Leadership With a Twist, Barbara Schindler talks with Andie, digital strategist and founder of Whirlybird, a one-woman marketing agency in the heart of Vermont, about what happens when a business grows faster than the plan behind it. Andie spent nearly 15 years in sales and marketing managing six-figure advertising portfolios before going out on her own. She is also a musician, dancer, choreographer, fire spinner, potter, quilter, watercolor painter and illustrator, which says a lot about how she approaches work. She and Barbara get candid about the blurry line between work Andie and creative Andie once no employer sets the clock, and why she now chooses no more than three markers each morning that tell her the day is complete. She walks through the practical mistakes of her early years too: an unemployment case she won because she took notes on a single phone call, quarterly taxes she managed to both overpay and underpay, and a fee she paid for five years that she never owed. The deeper lesson took longer to see. If you don't steer your business, even as a solopreneur, it steers you by whatever lands in the inbox. From there the conversation moves into platform instability in digital marketing, why Andie tells clients she learns alongside them every time Meta changes, and something she calls shiny software syndrome. Barbara lays out the stages leaders move through with change, from feeling it happen to them toward co-creation and flow, and both land on a new paradigm of leadership where everyone leads themselves first. Key Takeaways Choose one to three markers at the start of each day that define complete, so an endless to-do list doesn't decide when you stop. Sitting at your desk all day is not the same as being productive. When you're circling the drain, a walk often moves the work further than another hour in the chair. If you don't hold the steering wheel in your business, incoming requests will, and you can drift far from what you intended at the start of the quarter. Foundational skills like communicating clearly, asking good questions and knowing how you'll measure success outlast any platform or algorithm. Getting your lessons faster keeps deliberate pacing from sliding into perfectionism and rumination. The question that makes you nervous to ask is usually the one someone else in the room has been holding too. Action Steps Before you open your inbox tomorrow, write down the markers that will tell you the day is done. Build stop points into big projects so 5:00 has a natural place to land instead of a scramble. Get help with taxes and business setup early, before a letter shows up a year later. Before switching to new software, name the specific problem the current tool is failing to solve. Put one idea in front of other people this week and pay attention to what comes back. Questions to Reflect On Where is your business steering you right now, and is that where you want to go? Which foundational skill have you skipped in favor of the newest tool or tactic? When did you last ask the question in the room that nobody else was asking? Connect with Andie: https://www.whirlybirdonline.com @whirlybirdonline on Instagram Let's Talk If this conversation stirred up questions about how you're leading yourself and your business, bring them to a complimentary call with Barbara. We'll look at where your work is steering you and what it takes to get your hands back on the wheel: https://www.empoweringleadershipteams.com/discovery More about Andie: Andie Asacker is a digital strategist, creative powerhouse, and the founder of Whirlybird—a one-woman marketing agency based in the heart of Vermont. She's spent nearly 15 years in sales and marketing—managing six-figure advertising portfolios, representing Fortune 500 brands, and playing key roles in small businesses and startups. Whether creating stunning visuals or meticulous spreadsheets, Andie is happiest at the intersection between inspiration and execution. She brings a fresh perspective and keen attention to detail to her work, designing logos, websites, theater sets, trade show booths, and SOPs. She is also a musician, dancer, choreographer, fire spinner, potter, quilter, watercolor painter, and illustrator. Andie loves the ins-and-outs of bringing ideas to life! Creativity isn't just what she does, it's how she's wired.