What if freedom isn't something you earn after making enough money but something you build into the way you live and work? In this episode of Show Up with Priyanka, Priyanka Khandalkar sits down with entrepreneur, creator, designer, musician, and founder Bryan McAnulty to explore what it really means to create a business around your gifts, values, curiosity, and purpose. Bryan shares his remarkable journey from learning design software at just eight years old and freelancing as a teenager to founding companies, traveling to 30+ countries, supporting more than 10,000 creators, and building Heights Platform. Together, Priyanka and Bryan explore freedom, entrepreneurship, purpose, creativity, persistence, risk, truth, systems, AI, and finding problems worth solving. Bryan also introduces his powerful definition of freedom: agency + risk + truth and explains why money can be a tool and a byproduct of meaningful work, rather than the foundation of freedom itself. This conversation is for creators, entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, educators, and anyone who knows there is something inside them that they are meant to bring into the world. Connect with Bryan McAnulty Website: https://www.bryanmcanulty.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanmcanulty/ 🎁 Get Bryan's Free Course Creator Starter Pack: https://heightsplatform.com/free 📩 Connect with Bryan: support@heightsplatform.com
In this episode, Priyanka and Bryan explore Bryan's journey from discovering design software at eight years old to becoming an entrepreneur, founder, creator, and builder of digital products used by thousands of creators around the world. Bryan shares how his curiosity, creativity, and desire to explore led him to start freelancing as a teenager, launch his first company, and eventually choose entrepreneurship over college.
He reflects on how traveling to more than 30 countries shaped his understanding of people, business, and himself, and how The 4-Hour Workweek gave him the belief that a different way of living and working was possible. Bryan explains why "freedom comes first" and shares his personal framework of agency, risk, and truth as the foundation of freedom.
The conversation explores the importance of taking risks, being truthful with yourself, believing in your ability to eventually get there, and finding problems worth solving rather than simply chasing money.
Bryan also shares what he has observed among successful creators, including the importance of persistence, launching before everything is perfect, learning from customers, and allowing your business and ideas to evolve as you do. He shares the story of creators who built a six-figure business teaching music theory for the hammer dulcimer, demonstrating that you don't need to pursue the biggest or most popular niche to create something meaningful and successful.
Priyanka and Bryan also discuss the role of systems, AI, and delegation in creating more freedom, allowing entrepreneurs to focus on their creativity, their customers, and the impact they want to make. Throughout the conversation, they return to a central question: What are you here to create, and are you willing to take the leap to bring it into the world?
Show Up With Priyanka is a Top 1% globally ranked podcast where we have conversations with heart-centered, soul-led entrepreneurs exploring leadership, healing, intentional living, and sustainable success. Hosted by Priyanka Khandalkar, a transformational Business Scaling Coach, and founder of SynrGEE LLC, this show is devoted to helping you rise, reset, and lead from within.
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As founder and CEO of SynrGEE LLC and Fractional COO to multiple businesses, I support business owners in simplifying and systemizing their operations and marketing so they can scale sustainably while staying aligned with their vision.
We provide Fractional COO leadership combined with hands-on team implementation, so you’re not just getting strategy - you’re getting execution that actually moves the business forward. When you partner with us, we embed our SynrGEE Scale Engine System across every area of your business to build a foundation for sustainable, long-term growth. The SynrGEE Scale Engine System helps you:
-Stabilize cash flow and delivery capacity
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-Generate predictable leads that turn into long-term clients
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