School for Startups Radio

September 13, 2023 - Organic (Food) Marketing Steven Hoffman and Swag Selling Thru Bar Tips Neil Rogers

Steven Hoffman – President and Founder at Compass Natural Marketing
Most cattle are raised in feed lots. It’s not the cow, it’s the how. When theytalk about animal agriculture emitting a lot of methane gas, grass fed beefhas a bacteria that lives in the gas that eats cow burps! The methane nevergets released. Put them in cement floor feed lots while eating GMO corn,which cows were never meant to eat, and you get greenhouse gas emissions!
Steven Hoffman is President and Founder of Compass Natural, a Boulder, Colo.-based PR and marketing agency dedicated to serving businesses and brands in the natural and organic products industry. With a deep commitment to natural health and the environment, Steven Hoffman has dedicated his career to natural, organic, and eco-friendly products, socially responsible businesses, and building mission-based brands. Steve serves as Founder and Managing Director of Compass Natural, a full-service public relations, marketing, brand communications, and strategic business development agency specializing in the $300-billion LOHAS – or Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability – market. He is Co-founder of LOHAS Journal and the LOHAS Forum sustainable business conference, and former Education Director for Natural Products Expo East and West, the world’s largest natural and organic products trade expositions. Steve also served as Editorial Director of New Hope Network’s highly respected natural products trade publishing division, including the Natural Foods Merchandiser magazine. Hoffman also served as National Marketing Director and Rocky Mountain Regional Sales Manager for Arrowhead Mills, now a leading division of the Hain-Celestial Group. As Managing Director of The Organic Center, a nationally recognized nonprofit organization, Hoffman helped advance scientific research and education behind the benefits of organic food and farming. As an Agricultural Extension Agent in the mid-1980s for Penn State University, he served as a Director of Philadelphia’s Urban Gardening Program, where he helped establish more than 125 food gardens in low-income Hispanic neighborhoods in the city over a 3-year period. He received a M.S. in Agriculture from Pennsylvania State University. Hoffman is a returned Peace Corps Volunteer, having served in agriculture and education in Honduras and Costa Rica in Central America. In addition to English, Hoffman speaks Spanish and French. A singer-songwriter and performing musician, too, Hoffman lives in beautiful Boulder County, CO, where he enjoys access to his beloved adopted Colorado and the Rocky Mountain West!Neil Rogers – Owner of Rogers Marketing and Author of Bar Tips 
For over three decades, Neil Rogers has built a successful career in sales and marketing, working with clients in a wide range of verticals, including pharmaceutical, biomedical, manufacturing, logistics, financial services, and government defense contractors. He is the Owner and VP of Marketing & Sales at Rogers Marketing, winner of several Million Dollar Sales awards, the Velocity Award for growth, and Heavy Hitter Awards for large accounts. Neil and his wife Lori are the creators/owners of the Positive Activity 11-Step Process, using scientifically proven activities to increase the quality of life and business through creativity, optimism, and positivity. The two entrepreneurs started the non-profit PASE (Parents Assisting Special Educators) and PASE After 21 for special needs adults. Bar Tips is his first published book, drawing on the lessons learned during his years as a bartender that Neil has applied for success in sales.

September 11, 2023 - Recruit Me App Catarina Matias and Headless Storyblok Dominik Angerer

Catarina Matias – Founder of The Bite Company and The Recruit Me App
The stigma we are trying to change is when you hire an individualand focus too much on where they used to work and their experience.Companies forget that just because they did the same type of job somewhereelse the applicant’s culture, mindset and decision making process couldbe drastically different from your own. You could be hiring a cancer into your organization.
Catarina Matias is the Founder of The Bite Company and The Recruit Me App. Having recently departed from the hospitality industry due to COVID-19, where she spent many years and was chosen as Hotel Management’s 30 Under 30 top rising stars in the hotel industry, Catarina started a health-focused snack delivery business. After being met with the challenges of not only retaining employees but also finding employees who would be a good fit, she wished there was a recruiting tool that followed the path of the dating apps where she could search for an employee who would be a fit. This motivated her to develop an app that allows individuals looking for work to make profiles that show their true personalities, and allow employers to come to them. This allows employers to find better-suited employees, and employees to find work cultures they better align with. Catarina Matias’ expertise comes from her tenure in the hospitality industry. Her tenure with the hospitality industry started with Hershey Entertainment, and most recently continued with Hotels Unlimited. She oversaw daily operations for each of the hotels in their portfolio, including a combination of full and select service properties with brands such as Marriott, Hilton, and IHG. Additionally, she was responsible for the devising of new business strategies, including recruitment, hiring, training, mentoring, and development of all property-level management personnel, and was involved in corporate compliance and budgetary reviews. A respected voice in the hospitality industry, Catarina exudes all the qualities of a polished professional. Catarina is also the host of the Recruit Me podcast where she interviews industry leaders around successful practices related to recruitment, hiring, HR, and landing employment. Topics Catarina is prepared to speak on (however she can speak on whatever you would like): Recruit, Retain, Release – The necessary steps to recruit the right people, retain them, and potentially lose them. How to Recruit Yourself Learn the Power of Hospitality – How incorporating hospitality principles into any business culture will improve morale, retention, and profits. Motivating yourself in order to motivate your employees Why old ways of doing things won’t always work Keeping up with the employees and what they want without having to ask them More About Catrrina Matias Featured in Yahoo Finance, The Chicago Journal Chosen as one of Hotel Management’s 30 Under 30 top rising stars in the hotel industry in 2019.SFS Minute 258: Ideas from NeedSFS Minute 260: Surround Yourself with……Dominik Angerer – Co-Founder and CEO of Storyblok
Usually, content management solutions come with display layouts, how thewebsite looks or how the app will look. In headless content, we get rid of thevisualization part and we are left with just data. We are cutting off the headof the content management solution.
Dominik Angerer is the Co-Founder and CEO of Storyblok. He’s also a web performance specialist and has previously worked for big agencies as a full-stack developer before founding Storyblok in 2017. He is also an active contributor to the open-source community and one of the organizers of Stahlstadt.js. After spending 7 years in the digital agency area as either a consultant or software developer I’m now in the lucky position to call myself CEO of one of the fastest-growing software companies of Austria. With Storyblok we were able to build a content management system that developers actually like and also marketers enjoy using. Dominik Angerer has been grappling with the challenges posed by Content Management Systems (CMSs) in agencies since the inception of the Web and digital projects. Virtually every project entails the need to manage some form of content, ranging from a handful of labels used in an application’s menu to buttons requiring translation, or even comprehensive digital commerce ventures featuring storytelling components and long-form article formats. It was with the advent of Storyblok that Dominik and his team triumphed over these struggles within their agency. In 2017, they made the pivotal decision to extend this solution to developers, marketers, and authors worldwide. From 2017 until the close of 2019, Dominik and a colleague focused solely on the product aspect of Storyblok. Subsequently, they opted to secure a Seed round of $2.5M to drive the company’s growth forward. Relocating to London to take part in the @FoundersFactory acceleration program, they have received ongoing support. By 2020, the team had expanded by a factor of ten. As of 2021, they had reached a stage where they were providing support for 90,000 projects on a global scale, catering to businesses of all sizes. This encompasses rapidly expanding digital commerce endeavors like Stronger, HappySocks, or Marc O’Polo, as well as established financial services such as PAYONE and Unzer. To further bolster their growth, an additional $8.5M in funding was secured. In 2022, Storyblok saw another significant funding round of $47M, propelling the company’s expansion to a team of 230 individuals spanning 44 different countries, with 140,000 active projects distributed across 130 nations. Storyblok, under Dominik’s leadership, stands as a headless CMS, empowering developers and marketers to deliver robust content experiences across any digital platform, one block at a time. Developers have the capability to create flexible components, each independently managed by content teams through a visual editor and customizable workflow. The content, once published, is accessible through an API, ensuring that alterations are reflected universally: on websites, mobile platforms, IoT devices, AR/VR environments, and beyond. Esteemed brands such as Marc O’Polo, PAYONE, and UPC turn to Storyblok to effectively manage and disseminate their content worldwide.

September 8, 2023 - JobPaths Jack Fanous and Exit Path Touraj Parang

Jack Fanous – Co-founder and CEO of JobPaths
Americans donate $484 billion annually. Of that, $11 billion goes to trans-action fees. Our model covers the transaction fees for our nonprofit clients.
Jack Fanous is the co-founder and CEO of JobPaths, a SaaS Enabled Marketplace (SEM) that fulfills the original goals of the internet community by bringing people together with those who can help them along their journey. JobPaths is designed as an immersive network to bring people together to support one another through sharing employment opportunities, resources, training, and guidance. At the core of the company is the network of platforms JobPaths has established that include nonprofit, governmental, and corporate partners who license the software in order to support their clients. Within each of these licensed platforms lives JobPaths intelligent systems and easy-to-use software that connect Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) users to job openings, resources, career and life trainings, and mentorship opportunities. Jack developed his company based on his years of nonprofit experience as CEO and co-founder of GI Go Fund. Started in 2006 after the death of a childhood friend Lt. Seth Dvorin, GI Go Fund provides military veterans across the country with job training and employment opportunities, as well as access to healthcare, benefits assistance, and connections to housing. The organization has recently expanded its efforts to support all populations within the DE&I community. Through his work at GI Go Fund, Jack discovered the shortcomings in veteran hiring and decided to act. He testified before the United States Senate Veterans Affairs Committee regarding veteran issues in 2008, and serves as the co-chair of the VA’s Community Veterans Engagement Board (CVEB) Newark, NJ chapter, as well as a board member of Habitat for Humanity NJ. Moreover, under his leadership, JobPaths was recognized in 2017 with the Employment and Training Award by the American Legion.Touraj Parang – President, COO, and Board Member of Serve Robotics and the Author of the Book Exit Path: How to Win the Startup End  
When a company acquires another, usually there is a pre-existing relationship.
Touraj Parang is the President, COO, and Board Member of Serve Robotics and the Author of the Book Exit Path: How to Win the Startup End. Touraj is a veteran Silicon Valley dealmaker. He is a seasoned entrepreneur, investor, advisor, and M&A expert who has sat in almost every seat around the table structuring and negotiating strategic transactions since late 1990’s, including as a corporate attorney at legal powerhouses WSGR and O’Melveny & Myers. He has been a founder, executive, and trusted advisor to several fast-growing technology startups with exits to LinkedIn, Instacart, Vistaprint, Postmates, and Amplitude among others. He has also spent nearly a decade on the acquirer side of M&A deals as a corporate development executive at Webs and GoDaddy. Exit Path draws on Touraj’s decades-long unique experience involving hundreds of M&A transactions, strategic partnerships, and venture capital investments totaling billions of dollars in aggregate value. He is currently the President and Chief Operating Officer at Serve Robotics, which he helped spin out of Uber, and an Operating Advisor at Pear VC, an early-stage venture capital firm, where he enjoys collaborating with and providing strategic guidance to mission-driven entrepreneurs. He earned his JD from the Yale Law School and his AB in Philosophy and Economics from Stanford University.

September 6, 2023 - Latin FinTech Edrizio De La Cruz and Melody Cloud Wayne Altman

Edrizio De La Cruz – Co-founder of Arcus and Author of Book The Underdog Founder
Autopay or bill notification didn’t work in Latin America so we were thefirst the company to build the software that lets fintech and banks providethese services in Latin America. In 10 years, we became the biggest platformfor payments in Latin America.
Edrizio De La Cruz is the Co-founder of Arcus and Author of Book The Underdog Founder. Edrizio De La Cruz is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, investor and occasional stand up comic. He’s a Dominican immigrant who grew up in Harlem. He dropped out of college to work as an aircraft technician to help make ends meet. He ultimately went back to college, worked on Wall Street and earned an MBA from The Wharton School. In 2013, he co-founded Arcus, a fintech company. He worked with an incredible team to build the company from scratch to 100+ employees, 100+ clients and raised $19M in funding from Y-Combinator, Ignia, Softbank and Citi Ventures. In 2021, the company was sold to Mastercard.Wayne Altman – Founder of Melody Clouds App 
I can reprice an entire website from my phone at my daughter’s volleyball game.
Wayne Altman is the Founder of Melody Clouds App. Wayne Altman has a strong desire to make a difference to the people around him, so Wayne has worn many hats during his 54 years of life on planet Earth. Born in California but raised in Texas, Wayne grew up knowing he wanted to serve others. U.S. Army Veteran, Death Row Correctional Officer, Corporate Sales Trainer, and Author of 6 books on Mortgage and Credit. Wayne has traveled to 19 countries and visited 49 States teaching Credit to consumers and Loan Officers in the Mortgage Industry. He currently owns multiple (14) online businesses all designed to enrich the lives of his customers and his community. His latest business is Melody Clouds a subscription relaxation website and app. With 8000 hours of Solfeggio, Binaural Beats, Guided Meditation, and 17,000 + Audiobooks all designed to relax and educate its subscribers at a price point other services just will not touch. Wayne has determined that the healing and beneficial effects of this technology should be available to everyone who wants it. So, Melody Clouds is translated into over 100 different languages, and its membership spans across the globe.

September 5, 2023 - Minister of Chocolate Justin Frank Polgar and IP Give Away Robert Cote

Justin Frank Polgar – CEO of YES Cacao
We sell our chocolate bars in 160 stores. We would just walk inand we had a 100% track record closing stores.
Justin Frank Polgar is the CEO of YES Cacao. Over the past decade, Justin has been in service of the cacao bean and its many talents, namely as a delivery system for botanicals. In his early adolescence, he was exposed to several “forgotten foods”, like ginseng and spirulina, that changed the way he felt in his body. This sparked a quest to find more magical botanicals that have beneficial effects on our energy levels. Many of these foods don’t taste particularly yummy, BUT he recognized that folding their flavors into chocolate was highly effective, and more pleasing to the palate. Focusing his perspective on chocolate innovation, and education in the holistic health and wellness category, Justin has formulated over 50 delicious potions blended into wild-harvested chocolate. He personally consumes half a pound of chocolate daily. In true Willy Wonka style and philosophy, he is an inspirational cheerleader for everyone to find their YES. If you happen to meet Justin on the streets, you may find him singing “YES!”, dancing like a wild child, praising freely, and concocting what he calls Yesology. He is inspired by service to humanity, expansive consciousness, wise friendships, and by his beautiful wife, Zoë, and his cosmic son, Orion, and is getting ready to welcome his daughter in the Autumn of 2020 (names are still brewing). He’s a fan of ceremonial tea, adventuring to foreign lands, and engaging plant medicine of the old pharmacopoeias.SFS Minute 252: Chocolate MedicineRobert Cote – CEO of Cote Capital
By learning to share technology, we reap the benefits of a global populationthat can add value. By adding value for others, you actually create value foryourself. The more you help others, the more you can help yourself.
Robert Cote is one of the world’s leading IP lawyers and investors, bringing 25 years of experience in identifying, valuing, and investing in the breakthrough IP assets of technology companies that built new industries in America that are responsible for its prosperity. He has experienced firsthand the challenges technology companies face in funding the growth of their businesses as they enter commercial markets. He developed the IP capital model as a better way of investing in and scaling a new generation of these companies. The model is designed to enable many more companies with breakthrough IP to succeed in having an impact in the world and in bringing long-term growth in jobs and wages to people and their communities while delivering big returns to investors because of the infinite potential of breakthrough IP to bring transformative economic benefits to a company when broadly adopted. Prior to founding Cote, he established and led the New York office of McKool Smith as its Managing Partner, where he was instrumental in helping the firm achieve #1 rankings in IP. Robert is ranked by Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) as one of the world’s top IP leaders.

September 1, 2023 - NYT #1 Best Selling Fiction Partners Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

Douglas Preston – Co-Author of Dead Mountain (Nora Kelly Book 4)
Remember for writers, it’s not a book, it’s a career. Keep going, just keepgoing. You might have a book that fails, you might have a book that getsbad reviews, just to make sure you keep going. Eventually you will gaina readership if you’re any good.
Douglas Preston is the Co-Author of Dead Mountain (Nora Kelly Book 4). Douglas Preston was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1956, and grew up in the deadly boring suburb of Wellesley. Following a distinguished matriculation at a private nursery school, where he was almost immediately expelled, he attended public schools and the Cambridge School of Weston. Notable events in his early life included the loss of a fingertip at the age of three to a bicycle; the loss of his two front teeth to his brother Richard’s fist; and various broken bones, also incurred in dust-ups with Richard. (Richard went on to write The Hot Zone and The Cobra Event, which tells you all you need to know about what it was like to grow up with him as a brother.) As they grew up, Doug, Richard, and their little brother David roamed the quiet streets of Wellesley, terrorizing the natives with home-made rockets and incendiary devices mail-ordered from the backs of comic books or concocted from chemistry sets. After unaccountably being rejected by Stanford University (a pox on it), Preston attended Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he studied mathematics, biology, physics, anthropology, and geology, before settling down to English literature. After graduating, Preston began his career at the American Museum of Natural History in New York as an editor, writer, and manager of publications. Preston also taught nonfiction writing at Princeton University. His eight-year stint at the Museum resulted in the non-fiction book, Dinosaurs in the Attic, edited by a rising young star at St. Martin’s Press, Lincoln Child. During this period, Preston gave Child a midnight tour of the museum, and in the darkened Hall of Late Dinosaurs, under a looming T. Rex, Child turned to Preston and said: “This would make the perfect setting for a thriller!” That thriller would, of course, be Relic. In 1986, Preston piled everything he owned into the back of a Subaru and moved from New York City to Santa Fe to write full time, following the advice of S. J. Perelman that “the dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he’s given the freedom to starve anywhere.” After the requisite period of penury, Preston achieved a small success with the publication of Cities of Gold, a nonfiction book about Coronado’s search for the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola. To research the book, Preston and the photographer Walter W. Nelson retraced on horseback 1,000 miles of Coronado’s route across Arizona and New Mexico, packing their supplies and sleeping under the stars–and nearly killing themselves in the process. Since then he has published other nonfiction books on the history of the American Southwest. In the early 1990s Preston and Child teamed up to write suspense novels; Relic was the first, made into a movie by Paramount Pictures. In Relic they introduced one of the most celebrated fictional detectives of modern times, Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast. Relic has been followed by more than a dozen other books in the Pendergast series, including The Cabinet of Curiosities, Still Life with Crows, and Crooked River. Their last twenty novels in a row have been New York Times best-sellers, including several reaching the #1 position. Relic and The Cabinet of Curiosities were selected by in a poll by National Public Radio as being among the 100 greatest thrillers ever written. Preston has also continued a career in journalism. He writes about archaeology, history and paleontology for the New Yorker magazine, as well as for Smithsonian, National Geographic, Harper’s and the Atlantic. In the course of his journalistic profession Preston has explored lost temples in the jungles of Cambodia, been the first to enter a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, and ridden on horseback across thousands of miles of the American Southwest-which earned him membership in the elite “Long Riders Guild.” In the year 2000, Preston moved with his family to Florence, Italy, to write a murder mystery set in Tuscany. Instead of writing the novel, he became fascinated by the story of a serial killer named il Mostro di Firenze, the Monster of Florence. He teamed up with an Italian journalist, Mario Spezi, who was an expert on the case. In 2008 they published a nonfiction book, The Monster of Florence, which was a huge bestseller, spending four months on the New York Times list. The book won journalism awards in both Italy and the United States. It is currently under development as a film. The same Italian prosecutor who charged Preston with crimes in the Monster case, Giuliano Mignini, was the prosecutor who accused Amanda Knox of murder in 2007 in Perugia. Preston became one of Knox’s defenders. In 2009, Preston argued on “48 Hours” on CBS that the case against Knox was “based on lies, superstition, and crazy conspiracy theories.” Preston appeared on numerous television shows defending Knox and explaining the Italian legal system, including the Today Show, Anderson Cooper 360°, and on Megyn Kelly’s “The Kelly File” on Fox. Preston wrote about the case in a Kindle Single, Trial by Fury: Internet Savagery and the Amada Knox Case. Preston’s most recent nonfiction book, The Lost City of the Monkey God, published in January 2017, tells the true story of the discovery of an ancient, Pre-Columbian city in an unexplored valley deep in the Mosquitia Mountains of Honduras. It was a number 1 New York Times Bestseller and named by the Times as a notable book of the year. In 2010, Preston participated in the first USO tour sponsored by the International Thriller Writers organization, along with authors David Morrell, Steve Berry, Andy Harp, and James Rollins. After visiting with military personnel and wounded soldiers at National Navy Medical Center and Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the group spent a week in Iraq, meeting with soldiers and signing books, marking the first time in the USO’s 69-year history that authors had visited a combat zone. n 2014, Preston founded the organization Authors United. During a contract dispute between Amazon and the publisher Hachette, Amazon tried to put pressure on Hachette and other publishers by delaying shipment, blocking availability and eliminating discounts on 8,000 books, causing severe financial harm to 3,000 authors. Preston garnered the support of like-minded authors, including many Nobel Laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners, as well as hundreds of midlist, debut, and struggling young authors, who signed an open letter protesting Amazon’s unfair negotiating tactics. Preston currently serves as President of the Authors Guild, the nation’s largest and oldest association of authors and journalists. In addition to Authors United, Preston was one of the early founders of International Thriller Writers and served as its Co-President. He was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and was elected to the Long Riders Guild, an international association of equestrian travelers. In 2011, Pomona College conferred on Preston the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa. He serves on the advisory board of the School for Advanced Research. He had received several awards for his work, including an Edgar (shared); 2016 Association of Authors’ Representatives Appreciation Award; 2005 PCA National Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Literature and Popular Culture; 2005 Audi Award for Fiction; NPR Reader Award for Best Thriller (twice); Milan International Book Fair 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award (Italy); Premio Speciale per la Libertà di Stampa (Italy) 2006; Premio Orme Gialle (Italy) 2006. He is an avid skier, mountain climber, and hiker. He counts in his ancestry the poet Emily Dickinson and the obstetrician and early sexologist Robert Latou Dickinson. Preston’s great-grandfather eight times back in a direct line was Samuel Wardwell, who was hung as a witch in Salem in 1692 and is listed in the Salem Witch Trials Memorial.Lincoln Child – Co-Author of Dead Mountain (Nora Kelly Book 4)
Very few writers make enough off the sweat of their brow to make a go of it.
Lincoln Child is the Co-Author of Dead Mountain (Nora Kelly Book 4). Lincoln Child was born in Westport, Connecticut, which he still calls his hometown (despite the fact that he left the place before he reached his first birthday and now only goes back for weekends). Lincoln seemed to have acquired an interest in writing as early as second grade, when he wrote a short story entitled Bumble the Elephant (now believed by scholars to be lost). Along with two dozen short stories composed during his youth, he wrote a science-fiction novel in tenth grade called Second Son of Daedalus and a shamelessly Tolkienesque fantasy in twelfth grade titled The Darkness to the North (left unfinished at 400 manuscript pages). Both are exquisitely embarrassing to read today and are kept under lock and key by the author. After a childhood that is of interest only to himself, Lincoln graduated from Carleton College (huh?) in Northfield, Minnesota, majoring in English. Discovering a fascination for words, and their habit of turning up in so many books, he made his way to New York in the summer of 1979, intent on finding a job in publishing. He was lucky enough to secure a position as editorial assistant at St. Martin’s Press. Over the next several years, he clawed his way up the editorial hierarchy, moving to assistant editor to associate editor before becoming a full editor in 1984. While at St. Martin’s, he was associated with the work of many authors, including that of James Herriot and M. M. Kaye. He edited well over a hundred books–with titles as diverse as The Notation of Western Music and Hitler’s Rocket Sites–but focused primarily on American and English popular fiction. While at St. Martin’s, Lincoln assembled several collections of ghost and horror stories, beginning with the hardcover collections Dark Company (1984) and Dark Banquet (1985). Later, when he founded the company’s mass-market horror division, he edited three more collections of ghost stories, Tales of the Dark 1-3. In 1987, Lincoln left trade publishing to work at MetLife. In a rather sudden transition, he went from editing manuscripts, speaking at sales conferences, and wining/dining agents to doing highly technical programming and systems analysis. Though the switch might seem bizarre, Lincoln was a propeller-head from a very early age, and his extensive programming experience dates back to high school, when he worked with DEC minis and the now-prehistoric IBM 1620, so antique it actually had an electric typewriter mounted into its front panel. Away from the world of publishing, Lincoln’s own nascent interests in writing returned. While at MetLife, Relic was published, and within a few years Lincoln had left the company to write full time. He now lives in New Jersey (under protest–just kidding) with his wife and daughter. A dilettante by natural inclination, Lincoln’s interests include: pre-1950s literature and poetry; post-1950s popular fiction; playing the piano, various MIDI instruments, and the 5-string banjo; English and American history; motorcycles; architecture; classical music, early jazz, blues, and R&B; exotic parrots; esoteric programming languages; mountain hiking; bow ties; Italian suits; fedoras; archaeology; and computer MMORPGs.

August 30, 2023 - Building an Audio eCommerce Biz Johnathan Price and Earth Walking Jonathan England

Johnathan Price – Founder of Down 4 Sound Shop        
Most people give up right before they are about to have a breakthrough.Or when it starts getting a little tough. I had hundreds of YouTube videosout before I sold anything.
Johnathan Price is the Founder of Down 4 Sound Shop. In the span of just five years, he went from working out of his parent’s attic to 20 million in sales annually in the car audio industry – a milestone unheard of in that sector. Now, JP has a thriving youtube community of fellow “Bassheads” with 500k subscribers and coaches others on creating their passion business. He is now a speaker on “How To Turn Your Youtube Channel Into A Client Acquisition Channel.”Jonathan England – Founder of Earth Walker University and Author of If I Die Before I Wake: A User’s Guide to the Five Levels of Consciousness 
If you want to experience a life of complete purpose and fulfillment,get free from the man and then find out what your purpose is.
Jonathan England is the Founder of Earth Walker University and Author of If I Die Before I Wake: A User’s Guide to the Five Levels of Consciousness. He is a transformational leader and community builder, whose achievements include building a multimillion-dollar real estate business and becoming a #1 bestselling author nationally and internationally. He has invested over $500k into personal development and is renowned for creating the Awakened Life Live Event, which tens of thousands have attended and many agree is the most powerful, impactful, and transformational event on the planet. Jonathan is also the co-founder of Earthwaking Eco-Village, a residential village whose purpose is to heal humanity from the inside out, create a world of abundance for all, and participate in birthing the New Earth. He instills foundational skills that enable people to tap into their deepest desires and set into motion the necessary shifts to transition from the “impossible” to become the “inevitable.” Jonathan’s latest book, “If I Die Before I Wake,” offers empowering practices to propel a crucial shift in the way people attract happiness, success, spiritual connection, and fulfillment. His new book is about the Culmination of His Consciousness Leadership and Practical Wisdom for Those Who Seek More Out of Life. Jonathan is on a mission to create a world of abundance for all by taking 100% responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, actions, and reality while working in harmony with nature and eachother.

August 28, 2023 - Green Hotel Supplies Andy De Silva and Industry Analyst Relations Chris Holscher

Andy De Silva – Co-Founder at Hotel Emporium, Inc.
California State banned all the little plastic bottles for hotel amenitiesso we got into refillable systems and are inventing lots of productsaround it, saving plastic.
Andy De Silva is the Co-Founder of Hotel Emporium. Andy is a Sri Lankan-born entrepreneur who has founded companies in Hospitality, International Trade, and the Tech Industries. Growing up in Colombo, Andy had a passion for business enterprise and migrated to the States at a young age to pursue his career in hospitality. Shortly after, he co-founded Hotel Emporium, Inc. which today services 25,000+ hotels & resorts worldwide. Andy De Silva is responsible for the company’s worldwide sales and operations including end-to-end global supply management. His Executive-level experience has amassed strategic supplier relationships of over 1,000+ vendors & factories. He has extensive leadership experience having opened 20+ international offices, building and structuring operating teams, and expanding the business’ reach to over 50 countries. De Silva has 20+ years of manufacturer relations and supply chain management amassing a network of over 1,000+ manufacturers & suppliers. He holds proprietary global patents for sustainable packaging within the food and cosmetic industry along with other cosmetic packaging-related intellectual property. Also, he is currently Co-Founder and CEO of a global hotel supply company with annual sales revenue of $30MM and Co-Owner of a cutting-edge technology company servicing autonomous checkout micro-markets to consumers.Chris Holscher – Startup Analyst Relations Specialist at holscher.one
AI is not the hottest ticket in town! What I find really exciting is processoptimization. The reason is that there is so much innovation in the worldright now but all of these require good optimized, frictionless processesunderneath. Otherwise, you will apply your artificial intelligence tosomething that isn’t properly working in the first place.
Chris Holscher has for a decade, Chris has driven multimillion product and business development in large tech companies through a strategic function called Industry Analyst Relations (IAR). Then he switched sides from large corporates to the startup segment to apply his know-how where it makes the biggest difference. Chris has tailored and focused IAR methods specifically to the needs of startups and scaleups and their priorities along the maturity journey. Today Chris is helping emerging vendors around the world, use this critical part of the b2b tech playing field early, strategically and systematically. Chris has been voted a top 10 expert for Industry Analyst Relations globally, by hundreds of analysts. He has 20+ years in b2b tech product marketing and product management, was Initiator and co-author of the “State of Startups with Industry Analysts” report and was co-Lead of the IIAR> German Chapter.

August 25, 2023 - Grassroots To Greatness Lloyed Lobo and City Loo Anastasia Miles

Lloyed Lobo – Co-Founder of Boast and the Author of the Book From Grassroots to Greatness: 13 Rules to Build Iconic Brands with Community Led Growth
What drives most entrepreneurs is a burning anger or spite to provethe naysayers wrong, to change the status quo, and to do things thatare different on their own terms. Happy people often don’t drive change.
Lloyed Lobo is the Co-Founder of Boast and the Author of the Book From Grassroots to Greatness: 13 Rules to Build Iconic Brands with Community-Led Growth. Lloyed Lobo, an entrepreneur, podcast host, and community builder, experienced the Gulf War as a young refugee in Kuwait, witnessing the strength of the community in evacuating the population to safety. As the co-founder of Boast.Al, leveraged the Community-Led Growth model to bootstrap the company to eight-figure revenue and secure over $100m in funding. Boast.ai is the leading platform to help software companies in the US and Canada to redeem available government tax credits, while also co-founding Traction, a community empowering over 100k innovators through connections, content, and capital. After exiting Boast, Lloyed has been writing a book titled From Grassroots To Greatness: 13 Rules to Build Iconic Brands with Community Led Growth chronicling successful communities big and small like Harley Davidson, Nike, Peloton, Crossfit, HubSpot, and many more to teach readers how to attract passionate and raving fans of their own. Lloyed has been covered in Fox Business, Techcrunch, SF Business Journals and several other publications. He has also been a speaker at more than 50 conferences and podcasts including SaaStr, Entrepreneurs on Fire, Marketing School, Mixergy, TearSheet, MarTech Podcast, and Success Story.Anastasia Miles – Founder and CEO of The City Loo
My side hustle has become a full time hustle!
Anastasia Miles is the Founder and CEO of The City Loo. From Manager at Nordstrom, Advertising Sales at Microsoft, Patent on the first video mirror to opening a swim school for children with special needs. Now solving the problem of pet owners living in a high rise – The City Loo addresses those issues. Anastasia’s experience in bringing innovative ideas to market with Microsoft, Impart, Aqua School, and Signature Homes NW led her to develop a much-needed solution to a common pet problem. She developed City Loo so she could have a puppy in the city, who could use a convenient pet potty that fits into the chic design of her home. By using City Loo, Anastasia hopes we can all walk our pets when we want to and when it’s safe and enjoyable.

August 24, 2023 - m00m Jordan Freda and Afformations Noah St. John

Jordan Freda aka Geographic – Founder of Stealth Web3 Startup and mOOm
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Jordan Freda aka Geographic is the Founder of Stealth Web3 Startup and m00m. Jordan Freda started as a video director 16 years ago working with artists like Tyga, Katy Perry, and Kanye. At 18, a random “fan” of his in the movie industry discovered his work and offered to teach him everything he knew if he moved to LA within 48 hours. And within 1.5 years, he WON an EMMY and worked on 5 movies!  He learned from the absolute best & started the adventure of a lifetime. By 21, he worked at a few agencies/VFX companies and decided he wanted to start his own studio. He did, and grew it to a multi-million dollar venture with 120 employees in under 2 years. They worked on movies including Harry Potter, The Avengers and tons of commercials for Fortune500s. After 5 years, he realized that the “Emerging Brands” they worked with actually gave us more creative freedom than movies did. This inspired his exit and the founding of his second company, a marketing/brand growth agency focused on taking $1M brands and helping them scale to $10M+. Today, he is building a community-led Sci-Fi empire called mOOm.Noah St. John, PhD – Founder of St. John Executive Coaching and the Author of the Book Afformations®: The Miracle of Positive Self-Talk
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Noah St John is a communication expert, keynote speaker, and bestselling author of ten books. He is famous for inventing Afformations®, a positive self-talk tool that helps busy people remove mental barriers, build confidence, and make more money. Noah St. John, PhD is recognized as “The Father of Afformations®” and “The Mental Health Coach to the Stars.” Working with Hollywood celebrities, seven- and eight-figure company CEOs, professional athletes, top executives, and elite entrepreneurs, Noah is famous for helping his coaching clients make more in twelve weeks than they did in the previous twelve months, while winning back 1–3 hours per day and 4–8 weeks a year. Noah’s clients are the 0.1% rock stars who love to take action and get amazing results! Noah is also the only author in history to have works published by HarperCollins, Hay House, Simon & Schuster, Mindvalley, Nightingale-Conant, and the Chicken Soup for the Soul publisher. Noah’s mission is to eliminate not-enoughness from the world and he is internationally recognized for his signature coaching services; facilitating workshops at companies and institutions across the globe; and appearing on over 1,000 media outlets including ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, The Hallmark Channel, NPR, Entrepreneur, The Jenny McCarthy Show, Selling Power and SUCCESS Magazine.