Hooked On Startups

In this episode I speak to Connor Gillivan – a 27 year old serial entrepreneur who started his first drop-shipping company out of his dorm room at Quinnipiac University building it to over $20 million of sales on Amazon.com in just 4 years. After becoming an expert at hiring, he co-founded FreeeUp, an online hiring marketplace bringing together the top 1% of freelancers with growing businesses. He is also the owner of ConnorGillivan.com, where he writes about entrepreneurship and eCommerce. 1:25 - Background information on Connor and how he started his first business. 2:33 - How Connor got started in his business with his business partner. 3:44 - Some of the obstacles in their business early on. 5:30 - What motivated Connor to continue on in the business and not give up; whose advice he sought. 7:06 - Being accepting of advice from mentors. 8:09 - Recognizing and cultivating a long-term vision while still being focused on issues at hand. 9:56 - What mentoring advice he would give himself now if he could go ba

Working with leaders and entrepreneurs since the late 90’s, JP Morgan Jr leverages his scientific background and life experience in a unique way to train entrepreneurs and creative people to take decisive action so they can get their greatest work into the world. JP has a fascinating background.  After his formal studies in Physics and Mathematics, he built a property investing business and then (from a backpack) built a web media company serving local and global non-profits. He has travelled the world and he lived nomadically for three years, coached human rights leaders, recorded and toured as a musician in bands, funded development of a kids library in Cambodia, published travel writing and photography, competed as a black belt and triathlete, performed as a professional magician, studied with Buddhist monks and spiritual teachers, paraglided the Swiss Alps, cycled solo for thousands of miles and has had many other adventures.

I chat with Matt Callinan - a special forces veteran and ex-war correspondent and news anchor for NBC News Channel. Matt is a serial entrepreneur, an expert in out-of-home media and advertising, the creator of the Eyewitness App, and the founder and managing partner of Retail Outdoor Media. He is also the founder of ‘A Father Forever’ – a unique program that helps maintain the eternal bond between a parent and child. It gives terminally-ill parents a chance to be a continuing part of their kids’ lives and their children get to share and celebrate their most important milestones with the living presence of their parent.

My guest is Ken Dubner, founder and CEO of Mind Training Solutions. Ken is a certified hypnotherapist, an NLP master practitioner and a certified master hypnotist and has dedicated his life to empowering people by guiding them to use their minds more effectively. As a renowned hypnotherapist, speaker and seminar leader, he has been interviewed by Extra, Armed Forces Network, Discovery Health Channel, HBO documentaries, as well as numerous radio stations throughout the nation. Listen to the podcast to find out more about Ken Dubner and how he has positively impacted the lives of thousands of individuals over the last two decades.

I chat with Devin D. Thorpe– a renowned social entrepreneur, journalist, Forbes contributor, author, speaker and champion of social good. His books—read over 1 million times—are about using money for good, personal finance, crowdfunding and corporate social responsibility and draw on his experience as an investment banker, CFO, treasurer and mortgage broker. Previously, he worked on the U.S. Senate Banking Committee staff and earned an MBA at Cornell. Devin describes the work he does as ‘helping the helpers’ and he has devoted himself to writing about, advocating for and advising those that do good.

I meet Stephen Schubert – a hugely accomplished artist, polymath, movie buff, judo expert and specialist in neurogastronomy. He started painting at the age of 33 – as Stephen describes in the interview, he literally woke up from a dream and pursued the creation of what he saw in that dream. The result was a fifteen year run of 3 dimensional birchwood wall sculptures which were exhibited in over forty-five galleries nationwide. Listen to the podcast to find out more about Stephen’s fascinating life and his love of creativity.

Kate is an expert at premium domain consulting and representation, specializing in ultra-premium .COMs. She has personally sold over $1.6M in domains in the past year alone. Kate is also an artist and award-winning poet and author and was recently appointed the first Poet Laureate of Laguna Beach. Kate is also a professional coach and keynote speaker, and the founder and principal of Buckley Media Group, a branding and premium domains agency.

I speak to Ryan Tate - founder and CEO of VETPAW – a non-for-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the survival of critically threatened African wildlife. Ryan is a former Marine, Iraq war veteran and diplomatic security officer for the Department of State. VETPAW stands for Veterans Empowered to Protect African Wildlife. Simply put, under Ryan’s leadership and direction VETPAW employs highly skilled post 9/11 US Veterans to help prevent the irreplaceable loss of African wildlife caused by poaching. Find out how Ryan and his team at VETPAW are helping to protect embattled wildlife and support his fellow veterans.

I chat with David Moss - a career technologist, musician, producer, leadership coach, investor and strategic innovator with an outstanding track record across multiple successful startups and established companies.  We discuss a whole range of topics and explore the critical components for the success of any tech company in search of growth or continual innovation.  David is currently the CEO of Exceed.Team, and provides strategic and tactical technology consulting services for startups and fast-growth companies.

I speak to Jay Levin - founder of the LA Weekly, an American journalist, media expert and life, relationship and executive coach. Under his leadership the LA Weekly became the largest urban weekly in the US. In this interview we discuss the important of Emotional Intelligence and Jay’s involvement as the president of the Big EQ Campaign – a grass roots movement to create mass adoption of Social and Emotional Learning in all schools. The Big EQ Campaign intends to be the first-ever mass advertising, marketing and organizing campaign whose sole goal is that every school include in its curriculum the development of students’ and teachers’ social and emotional intelligence and skills

This week I speak to Ryan Crownholm - a serial entrepreneur with a long and successful track record of moving into established, highly competitive industries and transforming them by introducing technology, branding and marketing.

This week I speak to William Henshall - a five times entrepreneur and founder of Focus At Will Labs - a neuroscience based web tool that uses specially composed instrumental music tracks to significantly increase your attention span when working and studying. As you can see from the sea of platinum discs behind him on the video, Will is a musician, scientist, song writer and technology inventor working with audio to find the right music at the right place at the right time. He was the founder of the British pop soul band Londonbeat and had two Billboard #1 hit records. He went on to found Rocket Network, a Paul Allen/Cisco-funded San Francisco company in 1995. Will has achieved notable global success both as a musical/visual artist and as a technical inventor.

'We choose to go to the roof not because it is glamorous, but because it is right there!' 'Go out there and have huge dreams, then show up to work the next morning and relentlessly incrementally achieve them' Luiz Barroso wrote about this in an internal Google+ posting in 2014. Taking small, incremental, achievable steps is so important if we are to achieve our dreams. The math works - if you do something 1.3x every quarter, you'll hit 10x within 3 years. Fascinating book if you want to read more about this - 'How Google Works' by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg.

Yoni is the founder and president of MWR Life. He immigrated with his family to Canada at a young age and ever since he can remember he's been an entrepreneur. He started his first company at the age of 17 and has spent nearly 20 years building profitable organizations with a global reach. His experience lies in a wide range of industries, including international real estate sales and development, energy efficiency technology, financial services, extended warranties and the global direct selling industry. Yoni is an expert in designing and building scalable business infrastructures to market a diverse line of products and services, resulting in extensive long-term growth and profitability for his companies and stakeholders. He is passionate about helping others succeed.

I chat with real estate investor Joe Fairless who controls more than $138,000,000 in real estate assets. He is the author of best-selling book 'Best Real Estate Investing Advice Ever, Volume I' and is host to the world’s longest running daily real estate podcast, the Best Ever Real Estate Investing Advice Podcast.

Hugh advises and invests in startups and is an active practitioner and teacher of Lean Startup Methodologies. He recently concluded a 22-year career at Intuit where his last position was Engineering Fellow and Vice President. During his Intuit tenure, he worked on QuickBooks and several other small business offerings. He has been a serial innovator and helped launch several new businesses at Intuit including Intuit Payments. Hugh is passionate about grassroots innovation and “giving voice to good ideas” wherever those ideas may come from.

I chat with former hit record producer turned real estate mogul Peter Lorimer. Peter is the owner of uber trendy PLG Estates, which fuses together the art of handling incredibly delicate and private VIPs while giving all clients the feeling of being "inside the velvet rope," just like the rock stars and celebs the PLG Estates brand is known to cater to.

Reed Goossens moved to the U.S. in 2012 to pursue a career in structural engineering, however he discovered a passion for real estate investing. 
With limited funds and no credit, Reed went from purchasing a small duplex to growing his own real estate investing firm, RSN Property Group. 
 Reed now syndicates large multi-million dollar deals across the U.S. 
Reed Goossens certainly lives up to the ‘never say die’ Aussie attitude when it comes to being a successful entrepreneur. Reed is also the host of the up & coming podcast, Investing in the U.S. An Aussie’s Guide to U.S. Real Estate, where he invites other distinguished real estate investors and entrepreneurs to speak with him about their success and help guide other international investors who want to successfully invest in the U.S.

Murray Newlands is a published author and recognised online marketing and PR guru. He's a regular contributor to Entrepreneur.com, Inc.com, and VentureBeat where he writes on entrepreneurship, tech and social marketing trends and startup advice. In this episode we talk about the challenges of starting a new business, the first steps for an entrepreneur to get their business off the ground, and how to become the Key Person of Influence in your market.

In this episode I chat with Gerry Kelly, the founder and CEO of Sonas Denim - an inspiring entrepreneur who has built an LA based fashion brand that combines unique products with a keen social mission. I talk to Gerry about how he got the original idea for the fashion range, how against massive odds he has managed to build a truly unique fashion brand in a hugely competitive marketplace, and what his vision is for the future.