So when I asked her what story she’d been telling about herself, I expected the polished version. Founder. Catalyst. Award-winning author.

Instead, she told me about the voice in her head.

Her most recent book launched in February — while she had pneumonia and couldn’t get out of bed. And right there, flat on her back, a voice piped up: Who cares anyway. No one wants to read it. Eight books in. Nearly 300 authors coached. And still, the voice showed up.

She doesn’t call it a demon. She calls it a catty little thing that follows her around like Tails chasing Sonic, yipping in her ear. So she did what she teaches everyone else to do. She named it. Meet Mara.

That’s the thing about habits. The surface behavior is never really the story. Under Jenn’s calm, catalyzing, help-everyone-else exterior is a woman running the same loop the rest of us run — and quietly, daily, learning to catch it.

That’s who Jenn T Grace is.

Episode 4 of the STORYHabits Podcast is live. We also get into the marathon that wrecked her knee (and what her all-or-nothing brain refused to let her quit), why fear is a perfectly good anchor if you use it right, and a live habit workshop where we build Mara a place she’s not invited — a lakeside villa where Jenn finally gets to be still.

🎧 Listen above.

Find Jenn at jentgrace.com or publishyourpurpose.com — and if you’ve got a book in your head and a voice telling you it doesn’t matter, she is exactly the person to talk to.

— Connie

Rewrite your story. Rewrite your habits. ⚓🎈Join the STORYHabits book launch team at https://storyhabitsbook.com/launch-team

So when Jason talks about habits, he's not speaking from theory.

In this episode, we get into the habit Jason calls his most fundamental one: focus. Not the productivity-hack kind. The intentional, I-have-50-companies-and-10-to-20-calls-a-day-and-I-still-choose-to-be-fully-present-with-you kind. He traces it back to the early 90s when he was publishing magazines with zero digital interruption — and then walks us through exactly how the world engineered distraction into all of us. His take on ADHD will make you think.

We also hear the story of Michael — a founder Jason mentored at an incubator who had a genius product and a terrible pitch. What it took for Michael to break through isn't what you'd expect. It was coachability. Not talent. Not charisma. Openness.

And then Jason goes somewhere few guests go this early in a podcast run. He tells us that at 40, he was diagnosed with early right hemisphere dementia. He's 52 now. And the habit he's actively working on — the one that's hardest — is giving himself grace. Letting go of what he can't remember. Moving forward instead of dwelling. Anchoring back to purpose so that the forgetting doesn't win.

That's where the STORYHabits method comes to life in real time. Jason's value isn't just focus — it's purpose. And once you understand that, his habit of acting immediately, of staying present, of releasing what he can't hold onto — it all makes sense. It's not a workaround. It's who he is.

In this episode:

Why Jason thinks everyone has ADHD now — and why that's actually not a diagnosis, it's a design problem

The Smiley face story: how Jason ended up connected to the global trademark owner of the world's most recognizable symbol, and what it means to him

Michael's story: what separates a founder who takes feedback from one who doesn't — and why coachability is the real differentiator

The dementia diagnosis at 40, and the habit of grace that followed

The STORYHabits moment: anchoring focus and grace onto the value of purpose

Find Jason: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbutcherWeb: http://orbitcapital.net

Looking for mentorship, a different perspective, or just someone to ask for advice? Jason says reach out.

The STORYHabits Podcast is hosted by Connie Kwan. Every episode, we examine the stories that drive your habits — the great ones leaders have built, the bad ones they still wrestle with, and the stories powering all of it.

⚓🎈 Join the STORYHabits book launch team at https://storyhabitsbook.com/launch-team

Episode 1: The Woman Who Couldn't Walk Into Her Own Office

About This Episode

Simone is General Counsel at a Silicon Valley brand. She's led teams, argued high-stakes cases, and never flinched in a boardroom. But after an unexpected layoff, she found herself doing something she couldn't explain — turning around at her own office door and ending up on the couch. Every single day.

In this episode, Connie unpacks what was really going on, and how two almost embarrassingly small habits changed everything.

What You'll Hear

Why high-achievers often freeze hardest when the stakes feel most personal

The difference between a messy office problem and a story problem

How to use your own values as habit anchors

Why your goals might be too big — and what "one is productive" actually means

The unexpected power of a committed Tuesday night

Key Concepts

The Story Habit Loop — the story your brain tells you shapes the behavior that follows

Productive Anchoring — tying a new habit to a core value so it has weight

The One Object Rule — making the ask so small that overwhelm has nothing to grab onto

Quotable

"The goal isn't to clean the office. The goal is to stop fearing it."

"I walked in there trying to move one object." — Simone

Connect Substack: conniekwan.substack.com Instagram / LinkedIn: @conniekwan #STORYHabits

There are a lot of habit books out there. Clear, Fogg, Duhigg, Wood — brilliant people who cracked the mechanics of how habits form. Stack your habits. Reduce friction. Put your running shoes by the door. Hide the chips.

And it works. For a while. Then life happens, and you're standing at the pantry at 10pm wondering why the chips are back.

Here's the problem. Most habit knowledge focuses on the how. What they're missing is a method for the why. And your why — the story behind your habit — drives everything.

This is the intro episode of the STORYHabits Podcast, and I'm kicking it off with a short story about my own habit: dessert.

I wanted to eat less sugar. Not cut it out — just less. My goal was simple: reduce my dessert intake by 30% over a month. It worked for five days. Then I bought a $5 box of cookies from Safeway and ate it down to the crumbs.

Here's the thing. I'm a frugal person. My parents are immigrants. I'm an immigrant, twice. Frugality is a value I inherited that continues to run my life — including, apparently, my cookie consumption. I didn't want the whole box. But at $5, leaving any behind felt wrong.

Once I saw that, everything changed. I made one rule: I only eat expensive desserts. Now every time I walk into the fancy café on the corner and order a $10 single slice of cake, I wince. And I don't go back for weeks.

No willpower. No gritting my teeth. I reduced my dessert intake by 50% — way past my original goal — by working with my value instead of against it.

That's STORYHabits. That's what this show is about.

In this episode, I also talk about why a product manager has a podcast about habits (short answer: because I spent my career building the very products that are engineered to override your willpower, and I think you deserve to know how that works), and how STORYHabits was born from two colliding forces — a digital smoking-cessation company and five years teaching storytelling to product managers.

Every episode from here, I'll be bringing in guests who've done exactly this: broken a stuck pattern not by gritting their teeth harder, but by rewriting the story underneath it.

This is the why layer. The one the other books left out.

The STORYHabits Podcast is hosted by Connie Kwan. Every episode, we examine the stories that drive your habits — the great ones leaders have built, the bad ones they still wrestle with, and the stories powering all of it.

— Connie

Remember: Rewrite your story. Rewrite your habits. #STORYHabits ⚓🎈

⚓🎈 Get notified when STORYHabits comes out → http://storyhabitsbook.com/