 |
Rise and Play PodcastRise and Play is a platform designed to empower leaders to level up their self-leadership skills. We're more than just a resource hub; we are a dedicated community of seasoned gaming leaders driving lasting, purposeful changes in the gaming industry. Author: Sophie Vo
Every two weeks, we spotlight the outlier founders and game industry leaders who may fly under the radar but carry hard-earned wisdom about leadership, creativity, and building successful sustainable businesses. Get practical no-fluff insights from over a hundred experienced leaders whove walked the path before you. Learn from their winsand their mistakesso you can focus on what really matters: crafting meaningful games and human experiences that last. riseandplay.substack.com Language: en Genres: Business, Entrepreneurship, Games, Leisure Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
Listen Now...
Introducing A Spark Of Awareness
Sunday, 4 January, 2026
Dear listeners, I am evolving The Rise and Play Podcast. Time has come.Over the past four years, your support, feedback, and presence have meant very much to me and through this work, we’ve explored the leadership lessons of more than 150 founders, CEOs and leaders in the gaming industry, and the podcast reflected the journey.I was living myself as a gaming executive and leader, learning alongside my peers, and now I am evolving, and so is this podcast. Last year, if you have followed my journey, I fully crossed a threshold in my own life and identity, and I stepped away from the role and the structure of gaming leadership and into my full path as an entrepreneur and conscious leadership guide where I support leaders as we cross their own threshold from confinement, old scripts, duty identity into self-mastery, freedom, and truth.From this work. I have also founded ORIN, a sisterhood of conscious women leaders who are crossing the threshold and are doing this in group and in beautiful awareness. And I also now accompany many CEOs and leaders in one-on-one through that deep transformation. So the podcast will now become a reflection of this path and of the evolution I am witnessing in the leaders I work with.To reflect this transition, the podcast is shifting into a new format. And let me be clear here. I wanna respect your time and mine and offer something that is meaningful, grounded, and truly valuable of this time. There’s already so much content competing for our attention. And I don’t wanna add more noise, distraction, or information to consumer.And instead, this podcast will become a practice, a weekly discipline. A pause, a moment to step back, reconnect, and ask yourself the right questions. The same questions I work , with the founders and leaders I coach. And each episode will be between 10 and 15 minutes, what I call a “human prompt”, where I share what is alive in my work with leaders, the patterns I’m observing, because they are repeating over and over again across hundreds of leaders I’ve worked with.In the end, it is about being human and its human patterns, and you will get the wisdom that emerges from real journey of transformation. Maybe you are in yourself and need support, so this content will not be preplanned. And it’s definitely not an AI prompt. It is a human to human conversation and drawn from everything that I’m learning with my clients and with my own experience as an entrepreneur.It’s an invitation to cross your own bridge. From a legacy expectation, maybe a legacy of company or your story to more agency and your inner freedom and truth. And the first series I will open next week is about self-sabotage, patterns in leadership. The patterns I’ve identified across more than 200 leaders I’ve worked with. It’s so funny because they appear again and again, and I thought it is time that I actually reveal them because it’s going to make my work easier as we can start from the same basis, and you can also benefit from them without having to go through this yourself, which will help develop your self-awareness, which is the first step of transformation.So the first pattern. We will explore in my first episode is a disconnection from intuition because many leaders are externalizing the wisdom, living primarily in the intellectual mind and losing more and more of a connection to their inner voice. I hear every week. I would say even every day, people who are outsourcing the authority to chat GPT, they can’t even think for themselves.They don’t even know how to listen to themselves. And they’re, I would say, letting that muscle die by outsourcing it more and more to a machine or to others. And when intuition is discarded, distrusted businesses and the leaders as one with in them become flat. And we see businesses that are built from trends comparison.Imitation instead of authenticity. Conviction, something that is true and original. And this is what is going to emerge in an era where everything is mostly likely produced by an ai.And in this era, people will not seek for more information, but they will seek for what is real. They’ll seek truth. So in each episode, I will share concrete experiences from my work with clients from my own journey and other reflections and practices you can use to transform your patterns at your own pace into self-mastery.The main thing I’m asking from you is discipline. You don’t need more knowledge. You need commitment and discipline, and that’s the work I do in my coaching. This is my invitation. So if you feel you’re standing at the edge of a threshold, something needs to change. You are entering a new chapter of your life, asking yourself whether the way you are living, leading, and spending your time still true to you.The space is for you and you are not alone. If you here to continue to consume content, , without accountability, this podcast is evolving to a place that, it’s not going to be aligned. It is for leaders who are willing to do the work. This is my 15-minute coaching practice for free if you really wanna do the work, but maybe are not in a place yet to work with a coach.So I’m very excited to introduce this new evolution, this next chapter of this podcast. This is: A Spark of Awareness.I look forward to being with you there. See you next week. SophieThanks for tuning in to a Spark of Awareness. Subscribe for free to receive your weekly dose of consciousness. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit riseandplay.substack.com
