The Balancing Act with Andrew Temte, PhD, CFA

What if the problem isn’t that you’re distracted, but that nobody ever trained you in the one thing you can actually control? 

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Dr. Justin Anderson, founder and CEO of Premier Sport Psychology and author of Intentional Attention: The Science and Practice of Focus Under Pressure, a licensed psychologist and certified mental performance consultant who has spent more than twenty years with NFL quarterbacks, Olympians, and executives. 

His case is that attention is more controllable than confidence or emotion — a trainable skill rather than a fixed trait — and that for people who never really stop, the question is no longer how to find work-life balance but how to recharge while running. 

Tune in to episode 258 to hear the job Justin didn’t get that redirected his entire career, what context switching is quietly costing you on a day spent bouncing between projects and new tools, and why a book about training focus ends with renewal — and what that actually looks like for someone who can’t simply take more time off. 

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What if the fastest way to fail at AI is to treat it like a race? 

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Don Gregori, Chief Operating Officer of First Factory and author of The Emergent Leader: A Guide to Brand Building, Leadership, and Self-Mastery. 

Don makes the case that leadership starts on the inside and that most AI failures are leadership failures wearing a technology costume — that empathy is operational rather than soft, that bolting AI onto a process you have never questioned is the fastest route to the pile of projects that quietly fail, and that the leader who runs on four hours of sleep is not being tough, just expensive. 

Tune in to episode 257 to hear the rocket-booster moment Don credits to his wife rather than to any career move, the advice he gives a newly promoted manager who is terrified of breaking the very thing that made them good, and why a book about building durable companies ends with the durability of the leader. 

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With a wave of accountants heading for retirement and AI reshaping the profession, is accounting still a smart career bet? 

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Hugh Martin — founder of Procountancy and a CIMA Case Study specialist who prepares finance professionals in more than 45 countries to earn the CGMA designation. 

Together they get behind the acronyms to management accounting itself — the “business partner” role, why a U.S. CPA might add the CGMA, and the human skills no algorithm can replace. 

Tune in to episode 256 to hear why Hugh tells a nervous twenty-year-old that accounting is still worth it, how the CGMA builds the business acumen that earns a bigger seat at the table, and the two-euro rounding error he’d tell his younger self to stop losing sleep over. 

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What does a country actually lose when it makes it harder for the world’s top talent to build a life there? 

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Vasanthan “Vas” Ramakrishnan — founder and principal consultant of Ascend HSI Advisory Partners, who helps high-skilled scientists, engineers, researchers, and founders navigate the extraordinary-ability pathways into the U.S., and who earned his own green card the same way. 

Together they draw the line between wage arbitrage and genuine talent mobility — and make the case that a freer flow of skilled expertise tends to make economies stronger, not weaker. 

Tune in to episode 255 to hear how Vas turned a job lost during COVID into an award-winning global nonprofit, why he tells anxious American workers that keeping talent out won’t protect them, and the reframe at the heart of his work: he doesn’t make his clients extraordinary — they already are. 

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What if you've been chasing success backwards? What if joy isn't the reward you earn after hitting your goals — but the foundation that makes hitting them inevitable? 

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Bose Akadiri — motivational keynote speaker, corporate trainer, and founder and CEO of Goal and Grind LLC, where she's known as “The Joy Amplifier.” 

After a decade leading corporate social responsibility at Boeing, Salesforce, and JPMorgan Chase, she wrote The Stay Joyful Method to make the business case for joy — not as a feel-good perk, but as a strategic advantage that drives retention, sharpens clarity, and moves the numbers leaders actually care about. 

Tune in to episode 254 to hear why the strongest performers spend time backstage before they take the main stage, how the “joy bubble” becomes a force field when work gets hard, and what it looks like to lead with joy that has a spine — joy that's results-driven and impossible to dismiss as soft. 

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In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Suzie Bishop, vice president of product development at The Center for Leadership Studies — the global home of the Situational Leadership® Model — and co-author of the newly released Situational Leadership®: The Model for Leading Others, Navigating Change, and Unlocking Performance. 

A Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coach who has spent more than a decade modernizing the world’s most widely used leadership framework, Suzie makes a deceptively simple case — the best leaders don’t lean on one great style; they read the person in front of them and adapt to what the moment actually requires. 

Tune in to episode 253 to hear why the well-liked “nice boss” who delegates everything can quietly leave people stranded, the first move for a newly promoted high performer who’s about to fall flat, and the humbling parenting moment that reframed how Suzie thinks about leading people who have already outgrown your instructions. 

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Why do so many brilliant, accomplished leaders freeze the moment the stakes get highest — losing the room before they’ve said a single word? 

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Kathryn Janicek — a 3x Emmy Award-winning executive presence strategist, former TV news producer, and founder of Janicek Performance Group, where she coaches Fortune 500 leaders for their highest-stakes moments. 

Drawing on two decades in live television — including her time as the sole spokesperson during the 2007 I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis — Kathryn makes the case that how you show up matters every bit as much as what you say, and that presence is a skill any leader can build. 

Tune in to episode 252 to hear why Kathryn calls fear “a terrible creative director,” what a bridge collapse taught her about leading through a crisis, and why, in the age of AI and deepfakes, your audience can tell in an instant when a leader’s words aren’t truly their own. It’s a practical masterclass in showing up when it counts. 

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What if building a thriving book of business didn’t require working more hours, chasing leads, or scrambling to get yourself out there — but simply getting better at the conversations you’re already having? 

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Deb Feder — founder of Feder Development and author of the Client Conversation Series, including After Hello and her latest, Might I Suggest. 

Deb practiced corporate law for more than fifteen years before turning her attention to how lawyers and professionals actually build lasting practices — and her answer has little to do with the perfect elevator pitch and everything to do with intentional, everyday connection. It’s a refreshingly human take on a skill most professionals are never actually taught. 

Tune in to episode 251 to hear how caring for her grandmother reshaped the way Deb builds a business, why she pushes back hard on the idea that you’re either a “rainmaker” or you’re not, and her case that the strongest careers are still built one five-minute conversation at a time. 

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After 250 episodes of the Balancing Act podcast, the host becomes the guest. Producer Nick Temte steps out from behind the glass to interview his dad — and usual host — Andy Temte, in a milestone conversation about where the show started, what 250 episodes have taught him, and where it’s all going.

Dr. Andrew (Andy) Temte, CFA, is an author, musician, and the former CEO of Kaplan Professional Education. He’s the author of Balancing Act: Teach, Coach, Mentor, Inspire and The Balanced Business, with two more books on the way — The Modern Golden Rule and Stop Standing Still. He founded the Balancing Act in 2019 as a way to have authentic, non-salesy conversations with business leaders, and he closes every episode with the same three words: grace, dignity, and compassion.

Andy traces his own career rocket booster to a sunny August day in 1989, when — rejected by every other Big Ten PhD program — he climbed to the sixth floor of Phillips Hall at the University of Iowa to meet finance department chair Carl Schweser. A scheduled 30-minute interview became a two-hour conversation, and a lifelong mentorship that shaped everything that followed. From there, Nick and Andy retrace the origins of the show, the 2008 Great Recession story behind “grace, dignity, and compassion,” and the home studio where their father-son partnership — and their music — began.

What if the metrics you’re chasing — the downloads, the likes, the impressions — are quietly steering your business in the wrong direction? 

In this episode of the Balancing Act podcast, Andy speaks with Tom Schwab — founder and CEO of Interview Valet and author of Podcast Guest Profits. A U.S. Naval Academy graduate and engineer who found his way into marketing, Tom brings a systems mindset to one deceptively simple question — what are you actually optimizing for? — and to the conversations that actually grow a business, from why most podcasts die in their first ten episodes to what it takes for a leader to step out from behind the brand in an AI-driven world. 

Along the way, Tom makes the case that the more technology we gain, the more human we become — and that we may all be just one conversation away from the relationship that changes everything. 

Tune in to episode 249 to hear Tom’s two mentorship moments — one for the young engineer worried their degree boxed them in, one for the CEO afraid to build a public voice — and his lightning-round reminder that relationships are the one currency inflation has never touched. 

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