The Impact List

There’s a day every founder hits: you walk through your own company and realize you don’t know everyone’s name anymore. That’s where this show lives.I’m Laurie Fainer. I’m a founder, and I spend my days inside other founders’ hardest people decisions. Twice a month on The Impact List, I sit down with founders and the advisors who work beside them to talk about the stuff that never makes the pitch deck. Expect rapid-fire questions, real answers, and more laughing than you’d think. No 5 a.m. wake-up lectures.The hard people calls founders put off, then have to make anywayPay you made up as you went, and what happens when it catches up with youWhen the leadership team that got you here can’t take you any furtherMaking your first HR hire and what it changesWhat has to change in the founder before the business canSubscribe to The Impact List so you don’t miss the next episode.Connect with us:Learn more about working with us: dynamicalchemyadvisors.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dynamicalchemyadvisors/Subscribe to The Impact List newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7445069201012330496

Over the past six months on The Impact List, Laurie Fainer, founder of Dynamic Alchemy Advisors and leadership advisor to founders, sat down with fourteen leaders and asked them to go past the polished version. Nine of those conversations surfaced a moment that shifted something. Not a framework, not career advice, but the kind of honest leadership stories that don't make it into a keynote or a LinkedIn caption.This episode pulls those nine moments together into one conversation about what real leadership actually looks like.If you're a leader, a founder, or someone in the middle of a career pivot, listen for the one that lands.We talk about:00:00 What actually changes a leader underneath the surface00:39 Hannah Yardley on the 47 classmates who reshaped her identity02:35 Caroline Baird on the report nobody was reading05:18 Michael Murphy on the mentor who spotted his missing spark07:25 Angela Bond on rebuilding her identity three separate times09:05 What Diana Mohan tells her team about being replaced by AI10:35 Why can you only control how you show up, not the outcome13:32 Robin Bailey on recording his mother's voice before she died15:42 Lauren Posesorski on the version of herself she lost17:03 Numrah Irfan on leaping into consulting with no safety net20:12 What nine conversations taught Laurie about her own leadershipConnect with our guests:HannahCaroline Michael  Angela  Diana  Nadia Robin LaurenNumrah Connect with meInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dynamicalchemyadvisors LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dynamic-alchemy-advisors/Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriefainer/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61592450590459Website: https://amplified-authenticity.com/ Music created and produced by Riley Fouchier, DarkSky Productions

You know the person who changed the direction of your career without ever raising their voice. That is quiet leadership, and it works through listening rather than volume. Most workplaces still reward whoever speaks first and loudest, which means the people quietly redirecting careers rarely get named for it, rarely get promoted for it, and often do not see themselves as leaders at all. Jillian Perkins is one of them, and she still resists the word.Laurie Fainer, Founder and CEO of Dynamic Alchemy Advisors, sits down with Jillian Perkins, an alumni career counsellor at McMaster University’s Student Success Centre with a master's in counselling psychology and more than twenty years spent across the table from students and alumni at the exact moment they are deciding what comes next. Twenty years ago Jillian was across that table from Laurie in a Starbucks, and that conversation is part of why Laurie went and did her master's. Learn how she unlearned the belief that leadership has to be loud, how her listen first approach turns introversion into an advantage, what she does when she misses her turn in a room full of louder voices, and how she uses planned happenstance theory to help people choose when the future will not hold still. In this episode, you'll discover:What introversion actually gives a leader, including the pattern recognition that comes from observing a room first.The real cost of staying quiet at work, including missing your turn in a meeting.Planned happenstance theory made practical: the traits of optimism, flexibility, persistence and reasonable risk taking.The difference between managing a room and caring about the people in it.We talk about:00:00 Why quiet leadership changes careers 01:28 The moment this week that gave her pause 04:27 Why she won't call herself a leader 06:50 Unlearning that leadership has to be loud 08:17 The first manager who changed everything 12:34 What does listen first actually mean 14:48 How introverts lead in loud rooms 17:11 The real cost of staying quiet 19:43 From career counsellor to career instructor 22:25 The student who finally felt cared about 31:26 Advice for anyone at a crossroadsIf this conversation surfaced the gap between how you are leading and how you want to be leading, that is the conversation worth having. Reach out to Laurie at https://amplified-authenticity.com/contact Connect with Jillian:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillianmperkins/ Website: Student Success Centre | McMaster University Connect with meInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dynamicalchemyadvisors LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dynamic-alchemy-advisors/Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriefainer/ Website: https://amplified-authenticity.com/ Music created and produced by Riley Fouchier, DarkSky Productions

Stop asking for permission is the practice of trusting your own judgment enough to act before someone signs off on it, and it is the idea running underneath this conversation with executive recruiter Angela Bond, Partner and Head of the Real Estate Practice at Odgers. If you have spent years explaining a decision you already knew was right, or softening a call so nobody can push back on it, this episode names where that habit comes from and what it is quietly costing you. Angela trained as a therapist before she ever placed an executive, and that background shapes how she evaluates candidates, coaches hiring managers past their need for certainty, and rebuilds her own confidence every time her career shifts direction. In this conversation with Laurie Fainer, Founder and CEO of Dynamic Alchemy Advisors, Angela names the moment she stopped seeking permission and adopted a simple rule instead: beg forgiveness, not permission. She has never had to ask for forgiveness since. In this episode, you'll discover:The exact moment she stopped seeking permission and started operating on one rule instead: beg forgiveness, not permission, and why she has never once had to use it.Angela breaks down what she is actually solving for when she puts a candidate in front of a hiring manager who cannot yet see what she already sees.Trained originally as a marriage and family therapist, Angela explains how that clinical background changes what she notices in every executive interview she now runs.We talk about:00:00 The moment that gave Angela pause this week01:32 From a real estate search to a trusted advisor02:18 Starting in psychotherapy before executive search03:53 Why self-awareness matters more than expertise05:50 How she helps hiring managers see what they cannot07:36 Can a recruiter ever promise certainty about a hire09:07 What happens when a candidate does not fit the box10:45 Why she stopped seeking permission and started moving12:23 Building confidence by staying congruent with herself16:00 Rebuilding her identity after her Olympic dream ended21:03 Her advice for anyone who cannot see their own potential26:31 Recognizing your team as whole people not job titlesReady to build the kind of self-trust Angela talks about? The Alchemy Practice at Dynamic Alchemy Advisors works with leaders on exactly this. Learn more at https://amplified-authenticity.com/contactConnect with Angela:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tucker1/ Website: https://www.odgers.com/ Connect with meInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dynamicalchemyadvisors LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dynamic-alchemy-advisors/Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriefainer/ Website: https://amplified-authenticity.com/ Music created and produced by Riley Fouchier, DarkSky Productions

AI change management is the work of leading a burned out team through disruption it did not choose, not just rolling out new tools. If your organization is asking people to adopt AI while they are already stretched thin from years of restructuring, budget cuts, and shifting expectations, this episode is for you. Resistance to change rarely means people reject the technology itself. It usually means they do not understand why the change is happening to them, or they feel like they have lost all agency and control.Laurie Fainer, Founder and CEO of Dynamic Alchemy Advisors, sits down with Diana Mohan, Executive Director of Transformation and Change at Seneca Polytechnic, whose career runs through Deloitte and PwC. Diana shares the framework she uses to explain burnout: a high level of uncertainty paired with a low level of control, and why celebrating small wins, including one team member's first Excel macro, moved an entire AI rollout further than any polished business case. She also opens up about the belief her mother gave her that still shapes how she leads today. If you are responsible for bringing a tired team through change, this conversation will change how you lead the next rollout.In this episode, you'll discover:Why employees resist AI adoption is rarely about the technology itself, and what leaders miss when they treat change as a communication problem.The framework Diana uses to explain burnout.How Diana rebuilt momentum for an AI rollout inside a resource constrained public institution by starting small with senior leadership instead of mandating adoption top down.The difference between being right and being effective, and why data and good intentions alone rarely move a resistant team toward change.Why vulnerability, not certainty, is what builds trust when leaders are asking people to adopt a technology that could change their own role.We talk about:00:00 Why leaders misread resistance to change01:29 Diana's moment of gratitude amid parenting chaos03:05 How Diana and Laurie built trust years before this conversation05:00 What makes higher education so disrupted right now07:00 Why is burnout really about lost control, not workload09:11 Starting small, how Diana built AI momentum with senior leaders12:10 How do you keep a resistant team feeling like they still matter15:07 Being vulnerable instead of certain as a leader17:01 Why data and good intentions were never enough20:00 The difference between getting the work right and the experience of it22:29 The belief her mother gave her that still drives how she leads27:17 Where to connect with Diana MohanSubscribe so you don't miss who's coming next.Connect with Diana:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diana-mohan/ Connect with meInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dynamicalchemyadvisors LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dynamic-alchemy-advisors/Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriefainer/ Website: https://amplified-authenticity.com/ Music created and produced by Riley Fouchier, DarkSky Productions