Steven Glod

Adopted from Korea as an infant, I built my first landscaping and snow removal business at age twelve—and sold it when I was twenty. I grew up in a suburb of Chicago surrounded by ‘lifers’ at Fortune 500 companies, and knew early on I wanted my career to look different. 

After graduating from Indiana University with a degree in Chemistry and a stint in derivatives trading, I dove into the world of startups. I co-founded the Rent Nest in 2012 (‘Evernote’ for apartments), which led me to a six-month stint living in Romania and a whole lot of learning. We wrapped up the business in 2014 (key takeaway: your tech infrastructure needs to be flawless), and I joined Machinio later that year.

During my time at Machinio (world’s largest search engine for used industrial assets), I helped scale the organization from a startup of 3 to a company of 100+ spanning the U.S., Europe, and Asia. I relocated to Berlin in 2016 to further scale international operations, and oversaw Machino’s acquisition by Liquidity Services in mid-2018.

I’m now investing a lot of my time into helping startups scale across multiple different continents and I’m always looking to network and connect with anyone passionate about startups, crypto, and SaaS sales.

Advisor & Investor

Next generation piggy banks - Educating our youth in crypto

What makes a work life well-lived? Is it purpose? Growth? Flexibility? Achievement? Work-life harmony? Or maybe belonging? I asked 1000s of employees through my quantitative research to get to the truth, and it will surprise you. I cut through the noise and b.s. with cutting-edge insights that challenges conventional wisdom and popular opinion circulating on the internet. 

✨My research shows only 16% of people are thriving at work, I'm on a mission to change that.✨

Motives Met is redefining what it means to thrive at work with a science-backed human-centered platform that helps teams and leaders meet the 28 human motives that drive well-being and performance. 

Everyone talks about improving culture, leadership, and well-being - yet no one is actually personalizing it. That’s the gap Motives Met fills. We empower people to shift from "one-size-fits-none" with personalized insights from our Motives Met Human Needs Assessment, to make a real impact.

👋  CEO & CoFounder @ Motives Met ---> Creating happy, healthy, high-performing teams through the science of human needs. 

🔥 Check out the Motives Met Human Needs Assessment™ that uncovers each person's top 5 motives out of the 28 they need met to live their best work life--> bit.ly/mm-assessment

⚡️ DisruptHR San Diego Organizer & Licensee --> /bit.ly/disrupthrsd

📚 Best-selling Author of "Work Life Well-Lived" --> motivesmet.com/book

🎤 Keynote Speaker  --> view my speaker page kelly-mackin.com

🎉 Team workshops, offsites, and engaging experiences --> motivesmet.com/workshops

📊 Quantitative Researcher 👉 Download the free work well-being research & culture roadmap https://bit.ly/MM_Wellbeing_Research

📩 JOIN THE WORK LIFE WELL-LIVED NEWSLETTER 👉 motivesmet.com/subscribe

Kelly Mackin

⚡️ DisruptHR San Diego is Officially Back! ⚡️

After several years of silence, DisruptHR 7.0 returns to San Diego on Thursday, April 23rd – revived, reimagined, and elevated into a full-scale community experience at Quartyard. 

DisruptHR San Diego is a high-energy, TED-style event with 5-minute talks where bold thinkers challenge the status quo of people leadership, culture, organizational performance, and well-being at work.

Join a community of human-centered people leaders, visionary HR Pros, the best business minds, well-being advocates, and culture creators ready to disrupt how we work and lead. 

What to expect:

⚡️Powerful, no-BS talks
⚡️Meaningful connection activities
⚡️DisruptHR After Dark for continued connection and conversation
⚡️A high-energy community vibe with music + vendors

DisruptHR SD event page—> https://bit.ly/disrupthrsd

🎤 Speaker applications are open (announced on a rolling basis)
🤝 Sponsorships are available
🎟 Get your early-bird ticket now!

Our organizing team 💜 Hansen Hunt, Brittany Burton, Margaret Juravic can’t wait to make this an epic event!

#disruptHRSD #disrupthr #sandiego

Human Motives ​> One-Size-Fits-None Leadership | CEO, Motives Met | Award-Winning Author of “Work Life Well-Lived” | Keynote Speaker| Human Behavior Researcher

The Art of Redecision. Are You Running on Expired Decisions?

If you’ve never sabered a bottle of champagne, I highly recommend it.
Wildly satisfying. Very memorable. 🍾

This is the last sunset of 2025 after a personal day planning retreat.
Redecision was something I reflected on.

We tend to treat decisions as permanent.
Not intentionally, but over time, decisions turn into habits. Autopilot.
We make a call on a strategy, a hire, a process… and then we keep going, sometimes long past its usefulness.

Not changing something is still a decision. And when we don’t revisit our choices, we risk leading our teams and our lives based on outdated decisions.

The New Year isn’t just an opportunity for new goals, but to look back and reflect:
“If I were making this decision today, with what I know now, would I make the same choice?”

Ask yourself:

✨Would I structure roles or meetings on my team the same way?

✨Would I still pour this much energy into this goal?

✨Would I still say yes to these requests, or would I set clearer boundaries?

✨ Would I still align myself with the same people, partnerships, or dynamics?

We aren't supposed to get every decision right the first time.
It's about noticing when a decision has quietly passed its expiration date and having the courage to re-decide.

💌 If you want reflections like these sent to your inbox, subscribe to my Work Life Well-Lived newsletter 👉 http://bit.ly/46D8zIm

#workwellbeing #leadership #culture

TOP BOOK RECOS for 2026! 📚

For all my fellow book lovers, here are a few of my top reads from 2025 that shaped how I think about work, leadership, and communication, plus a few I’m excited to dive into in 2026.

🌿Photo throwback to January two years ago, when I was putting the finishing touches on my book "Work Life Well-Lived" in my forever favorite reading nook: a treehouse tucked into the Sayulita jungle.

TOP READS FROM 2025🔥

📘 Supercommunicators — Charles Duhigg
An exploration of how the most effective communicators tune into what kind of conversation people need, emotional, practical, or social, and respond in ways that transform.

📕 10x Is Easier Than 2x — Dan Sullivan & Dr. Benjamin Hardy
Love anything by Dr. Ben Hardy! A mindset shift that challenges incremental thinking and helps you focus on what actually creates meaningful impact.

📗Unreasonable Hospitality - Will Guidara
A masterclass in what happens when you lead with care, presence, and intention — and how that mindset transforms culture.

📙 The Obstacle Is the Way — Ryan Holiday
 A timeless reframing of challenges as opportunities for growth, resilience, and forward motion.

📒 The Power of Mattering — Zach Mercurio, Ph.D.
 A deeply human exploration of why feeling seen, valued, and significant is foundational to well-being and performance at work.

BOOKS I'M EXCITED TO DIVE INTO IN 2026 ✨

📘 Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion — Robert Cialdini
 A classic on how influence really works — and how to use it ethically and intentionally.

📕 Cornered Office: Why We Need to Talk About Leadership Mental Health  (Upcoming Book) — Melissa Doman, M.A.
A much-needed conversation about the need to prioritize leadership mental health and strategies for change.

📗 Boundaries for Leaders — Henry Cloud
 A practical guide to leading with clarity, accountability, and care, without burning out.

📙 Forward Talk: The Bold New Method for Getting Teams Unstuck — Diana Wu David
 A smart framework for shifting conversations from reactive to future-focused.

📒 Leadership Is Language — L. David Marquet
 A reminder that the words leaders choose can unlock ownership, trust, and better decisions across teams.

“Let’s prioritize more work-life balance this year.”

I hear this goal all the time from teams and leaders. But it’s vague. And vague goals don’t change behavior.

A recent team we worked with took our Motives Met Human Needs Assessment and it revealed that Work-Life Harmony was one of their most important motives (out of the 28!), and it was also the weakest. You can see their top collective motives in this snapshot.

In our workshop, we asked, “What would harmony look like in everyday behaviors, not intentions?” 

Here are a few ways we helped them operationalize it:

⭐️Core working hours: Establishing overlapping core hours to support collaboration, while protecting flexibility and autonomy outside those windows. 

⭐️ Making harmony visible: Weaving small but meaningful practices into existing team rhythms, such as weekly check-ins where team members share one priority outside of work, reinforcing that harmony actually matters, it’s a shared value, and is supported.  

⭐️ Team communication agreement: Creating clear norms around communication and response expectations to reduce the “always-on” pressure that employees shared they were experiencing. 

⭐️Cross-functional training: Expanding cross-training so responsibilities weren’t siloed, helping reduce strain and overload during busy regulatory periods. 

⭐️Anticipation planning: Holding proactive planning sessions to better prepare for predictable regulatory and seasonal spikes, rather than reacting in crisis mode. 

If harmony matters to your team, what’s one behavior you’ve actually designed around it, not just talked about?

If you want to create greater impact for your team to thrive in 2026, check out the Motives Met Human Needs Assessment & our Motive Workshop Experiences 👉 https://lnkd.in/dYemYG8H

#worklifebalance #workwellbeing #culture #worklifeharmony

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Steven Glod

Kelly Mackin

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Kelly Mackin's LinkedIn Performance

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