Creating a Life that Matters
with Terri Trespicio

March is Women’s History Month and we will be featuring some outstanding female FOMO Sapiens on the podcast all month long for a special break between seasons.

Some people confuse comfort with complacency. Award-winning writer, speaker, and brand advisor Terri Trespicio, however, does not. Following the publication of her new book, Unfollow Your Passion, Terry discusses why her TedX Talk “Stop Searching for Your Passion” was so hugely popular that it has been viewed more than 7 million times while dispelling the idea that following a passion is the only path to a fulfilling or meaningful life.
Terri explores the process of how we identify goals, how we define passion, and why you don’t have to embrace a lifetime outside of your comfort zone in order to create a life that matters. Terry explains how to evaluate your passion or goals: by determining if you are subscribing to the agendas of others and conforming to society’s “ideas” of what success looks like or if you are truly driven by personal desire for meaning and fulfillment.

Meet our guest:

Terri Trespicio is an award-winning writer, speaker, brand advisor, and author of Unfollow Your Passion: How to Create a Life that Matters to You (Atria/Simon & Schuster, December 2021). Her TEDx talk, “Stop Searching for Your Passion,” has surpassed 7 million views, and she was named by Hubspot as one of the “Top 18 female speakers who are killing it” (she came in at #2—Oprah was #8), and one of the world’s leading creatives by Creative Boom magazine.
A former magazine editor and radio host at Martha Stewart, she has appeared on the Today Show, Dr. Oz, The Early Show, The Martha Stewart Show and The Anderson Cooper Show. Her work has been featured in Oprah Magazine, Marie Claire, Prevention, Business Insider, Forbes.com, and Inc.com. Certified in the Gateless method for capturing creative genius, she leads workshops and retreats all over the country to help professionals of all stripes take their stories and ideas from page to stage and beyond.
An in-demand speaker who presents at conferences across the country, she was rated the #1 speaker at Barron’s Top Independent Women Advisors Summit and How Design Live. On the heels of her first TEDx talk, she was invited to give a second, “It’s About Time We Rethink Happily Ever After.” Terri is also a stand-up comic and has performed at famous Manhattan venues including Caroline’s, Dangerfield’s, Gotham, and New York Comedy Club, and was a quarter finalist in the She Devil Comedy Competition.
Terri earned her BA in English from Boston College and a MFA in Creative Writing in 2002 from Emerson College, where her thesis, a collection of poetry, won the Graduate Dean Award. A finalist for the Iowa Award and Glimmer Train, her literary work has appeared in The Greensboro Review, New Millenium Writings, and The Baltimore Review, where she won first place in their 2016 creative nonfiction contest.
Her book, Unfollow Your Passion: How to Create a Life that Matters to You, will be published in December 2021 by Atria Books/Simon & Schuster.