21st Century Entrepreneurship

David Deane-Spread is a former military and law-enforcement leader who built a decades-long career helping organizations turn cultural dysfunction into alignment, resilience, and performance. We spoke about how he applies the same persistence that kept him “fully booked without marketing for 20 years” to transform leadership teams and entire companies.His approach centers on what he calls the ABC practice of leadership—attitudes, behaviors, and conversations—which he says are responsible for every persistent workplace problem: “The right leader failed to have the right conversation with the right person at the right time.” By training leaders to choose better attitudes, replace unhelpful habits, and learn through difficult moments, he shifts companies from blame and avoidance to cohesion and adaptability. He describes the cultural inflection point as the moment leaders realize “followers are equally important,” which unlocks collaboration and removes fear-based behaviors.David also shared concrete stories, including helping a struggling company become a finalist for employer of choice and then secure a $100M equity injection after aligning its top three leaders. His work extends to individuals in crisis as well—when doctors send him suicidal veterans, he reframes their value by asking them to “pay it forward,” a step he believes restores purpose and agency.This conversation offers a practical blueprint for transforming leadership culture in months, not years, grounded in simple human behavior rather than complex systems.Key takeawaysCulture shifts when leaders value followers equally to themselves.Persistent problems reflect missing or mistimed leadership conversations.Attitudes, behaviors, and conversations form a repeatable leadership system.Fear, habits, and ignorance drive most workplace conflict and errors.Culture change can happen in months with full-team alignment.Paying value forward restores purpose in individuals facing crisis.

Jake Stahl is a psychology-trained communication strategist, NLP master practitioner, and global trainer who has coached over 10,000 people across six countries—and we spoke about how people actually make decisions. His core premise is simple: every person has two profiles, the polished public one and the internal one “that responds to fear and biases and happiness,” and only that second profile makes decisions. Jake teaches leaders, founders, and sales teams how to communicate directly to that internal profile by learning to recognize the caption someone is “saying without saying.”A turning point in his work came from moments like a Zoom call where a prospect outwardly showed interest but subconsciously signaled discomfort by twisting her wedding ring. Jake noted that “her voice was saying we want to do business, her caption was saying you touched a scar,” which forced him to reframe on the spot. His method is a structured process—recognize the signal, identify the trigger, and reframe the moment—to regain trust and “own the room.” He applies the same lens to CEOs who look away, tap their pen, or turn their feet toward the door; every signal is data, and his rule is clear: call it out, never ignore it.Practically, Jake breaks communication into micro-behaviors that shape presence long before words do. He explains why “confidence is the precedent to results,” not the reward, and why people fail when they wait to feel ready. He also offers concrete tools—like the three elements of a trustworthy headshot: a genuine smile, upright or forward posture, and a slight head tilt that subtly signals trust.For anyone who wants to become unforgettable instead of overlooked, Jake’s approach provides a step-by-step way to read signals, control presence, and communicate to the part of people that actually decides.Key takeawaysSpeak to the internal profile that makes real decisions.Read subtle signals: gaze shifts, pen tapping, foot direction.Call out signals directly to regain attention and trust.Recognize triggers and reframe quickly to save the interaction.Build confidence through micro-behaviors, not results.Use headshot cues—smile, posture, head tilt—to pre-signal trust.

Peter Maher is the U.S. expansion lead for Ovanti—recently rebranded as Flote—and we spoke about why he left a stable, well-paid role in fintech leadership to build an alternative to what he calls a “very, very broken” credit system. With 12+ years in payments, partnerships, and market launches, he brought a career’s worth of operational and commercial experience to a problem he personally lived through.Maher’s motivation is rooted in his early setbacks. A single poor decision at 19 “cost me the better part of the next 10 years,” teaching him that a traditional credit score can deny people opportunities even when their real financial behavior is healthy. He argues that “credit score is not an indicator of affordability,” especially for the half of U.S. adults—gig workers, young earners, and credit-averse consumers—locked out of conventional financing.That belief underpins Flote’s model: instead of backward-looking credit data, they use linked bank accounts, real-time cash-in/cash-out analysis, and account-age patterns to understand someone’s actual financial stability. As Maher puts it, they assess consumers based on “the financial health or situation that they’re in now, not a snapshot of the past 10 years of their life.”He also detailed the realities of building a responsible lending infrastructure from scratch—earning trust in a market full of failed promises, making daily build-versus-partner tradeoffs, and convincing institutions to back a new underwriting model. Maher relies on endurance principles: don’t “boil the ocean,” focus on the next milestone, and keep the mission front and center for a small team wearing multiple hats. For him, the ethical imperative is clear: “Innovation does not have to mean exploitation.”Listeners will walk away with a concrete understanding of why affordability-based underwriting matters, how Flote’s model works in practice, and what it truly takes to build credibility in modern financial services.Key takeawaysReal-time cash flow often predicts affordability better than credit scores.Many gig workers are excluded due to inconsistent employment data.One financial mistake can suppress traditional credit scores for years.Building trust requires transparency after years of false industry promises.Focus on the next milestone instead of the entire long journey.Strong past relationships accelerate early-stage partnerships.

Jeff Abraham is an entrepreneur who retired after selling a semiconductor engineering company, and we spoke about how he later built a sexual wellness brand by using medical credibility instead of hype. He explained that “even in healthy couples, the average man finishes in 5 minutes and 40 seconds” while “the average female takes 18 minutes,” a difference he called “the arousal gap.” Rather than compete with “197 products online—shark fin, deer antler extract,” he chose to power statistically significant clinical trials and have board-certified experts speak for the results.He said that the turning point came from listening to customers, educating doctors, and refusing to rely on embarrassment or gimmicks. As he put it, “people said, is that an educational site or are you trying to sell product? I said both,” because correct dosing and informed use drive repeat outcomes. He also shared how leadership means joining employees “changing these labels” and spending hours in live chat to hear exactly how buyers discover solutions and what obstacles they face.For listeners, his story shows how data, humility, and customer understanding can outperform shortcuts and noise—especially in markets filled with stigma and misinformation.Key takeawaysUse clinical proof to differentiate in crowded, distrustful marketsEducate customers so correct use drives repeat resultsListen to buyers to shape products and messagingEarn credibility through real experts, not stock imageryLead by working alongside employees and customersPlan exit strategy early: joint venture or acquisition

AJ Cassata is an entrepreneur who has spent more than a decade building companies using one core mechanism—outbound lead generation. We spoke about why so many founders struggle with lead flow and how, as he says, “leads are the lifeblood of your business,” yet most assume they need ads, a large audience, or influencer status to grow.His turning point was realizing that targeted outbound—“starting conversations with your target market at scale”—can outperform paid channels when done with precision. AJ walked through his three-step Repeatable Revenue Method: identify the exact ICP, message them directly, and follow up fast. Throughout our conversation he stressed specificity, noting that if you aim broadly, “you’re going to be so generic that you’re not really going to speak to anyone.” He also broke down why cold email must be treated as a one-to-one conversation, not a broadcast, and why the goal is simply to “pique their interest… and move them to the next step.”AJ shared the practical side too: how tools like Instantly can build lists, verify emails, and automate simple 2–3 step sequences so that outreach runs in the background. He emphasized that outbound works because it’s low cost, targeted, and quick to activate, saying you don’t need to be a tech expert—“within half a day” you can have a list, write templates, and have campaigns sending.For anyone looking to fill their pipeline without ads or a big audience, this episode offers a simple, proven structure you can begin using immediately.Key takeawaysLeads grow fastest when outreach is targeted to one clear ICP.Cold email works best as a short, conversational opener.Avoid selling in the first email; invite interest instead.Fast follow-up dramatically increases response likelihood.Build lists using proper databases, not generic purchased lists.Use cold-email-specific tools to protect deliverability.

Paul Cecil is the VP of Strategy at realpha and we spoke about how a young founder-minded strategist thinks through scale, pressure, and the role of AI in real business results. He began as a pre-med student, switched into business after realizing he “liked trading stocks a lot more,” and later worked for years without pay to learn capital formation. Joining realpha as employee number ten, he helped drive seven acquisitions, eight capital raises, and a NASDAQ listing in under three years.A key turning point for him was understanding what it really means to consider going public. As he put it, you must be “ready to figuratively get naked in front of the public,” with every detail, from lawsuits to losses, made visible. And once public, you “live and die by the quarter,” with pressure coming from every direction—yet that transparency unlocks credibility, national exposure, and new capital options such as ATM offerings that can provide next-day liquidity.We also discussed strategy in an era where AI acts as both leverage and potential customer. Internally, his team reduced week-long research cycles to “20 to 30 minutes,” allowing faster iteration and clearer decisions. He contrasted this lived experience with reports claiming AI yields no results, calling them “noise” compared to the signal he sees daily. He also argued founders must prepare for a future where AI agents—not humans—will evaluate products, make requests, and perform consumer tasks.Paul’s approach is shaped by a philosophy he learned from the book There Is No How: people chase prescriptions instead of clarity. By removing the “how” question and drawing insight from unexpected experiences—from guitar to skydiving to a six-day phone-free hike—he found sharper intuition about what to build, with whom, and when.Listeners will walk away with a grounded view of public markets, AI leverage, and strategic clarity in a world moving faster than ever.Key takeawaysGoing public demands full transparency and constant quarter-to-quarter pressure.ATM offerings give public companies flexible, immediate capital access.AI compresses research work from a week to under 30 minutes.Founders must design products for both humans and future AI agents.Strategy improves when you stop seeking prescriptions and focus on clarity.Non-work experiences can sharpen strategic thinking.

Bogdan Micov is a former CEO who led 700 people in Dubai before a stroke at 32 forced him to confront what he calls “how stress affects us” and how much of his success was built on pressure rather than wellbeing. We spoke about his shift from operating on cortisol to operating from calm, and the method he later developed to help high performers do the same.His approach is built on a simple chain: thinking creates emotion, emotion shapes behavior, and behavior determines results. As he puts it, “you are incapable of experiencing the world outside of you directly… only your own thinking about it.” Instead of adding more tools or motivation, he focuses on subtraction—removing the emotional and cognitive templates that keep people stuck. He explains that most recurring issues trace back to early, unconscious decisions and emotional “templates” created in childhood, and that change comes from deleting those patterns at the root, not endlessly reframing them. “You don’t need more courage, you need less fear,” he says, describing how he guides clients through releasing fear, anger, sadness, guilt, and other core states before addressing beliefs.Micov’s proprietary process, blending modalities from NLP to cognitive science, aims to rewire the original emotional imprint so that “the nervous system becomes a blank slate.” He emphasizes that meaningful change doesn’t require years of processing: “interrupt the strategy, make one small tweak, and the train goes in a different direction.” Once the emotional glue dissolves, limiting beliefs can be replaced in minutes, not months, and people often feel as if they finally “remember who they were before conditioning.”For listeners, this conversation offers a grounded, experience-based roadmap for shifting performance, motivation, and identity by working on the real source code rather than the symptoms.Key takeawaysBehavior follows emotion, and emotion follows thinking patterns.Changing meaning-making can shift emotional states rapidly.Early emotional “templates” drive adult fear, stress, and self-sabotage.Removing negative emotions dissolves resistance to change.Limiting beliefs begin as childhood decisions, not fixed traits.Identity shifts often come from subtraction, not adding new skills.

Srikar Yeruva is an engineer-turned-serial entrepreneur, and we spoke about why he believes healthcare transformation starts with respecting the problem—not throwing technology at it. After years building technical companies, exiting one to Bain Capital and selling another in smart contracts, he realized “technology doesn’t sell—solutions do.” That shift pulled him into the heart of U.S. health systems, where he learned firsthand how hospitals operate, why workflows break, and why efficiency has become a survival issue.His approach centers on a simple sequence: digitize the entire workflow, analyze what the new data reveals, then optimize using AI only when it’s actually needed. As he put it, “AI without PI is not going to work out,” because applying algorithms without practical intelligence usually makes things worse. He described gaps that create real harm—blood shortages, lost tumor samples, misused biomedical assets—and how digitizing from “A to Z” exposes the hidden friction that drains time, money, and patient safety.Yeruva also shared clear advice for young builders: “Respect the problem first,” talk to people who’ve tried solving it before, and be patient enough to understand the pain points before designing anything. Bootstrapping taught him that every dollar and every hour matters, but it also taught him the value of outside validation and surrounding yourself with people “smarter and wiser” than you.Listeners will walk away with a grounded, practical view of how real innovation in healthcare happens—and why understanding the problem beats chasing the newest technology.Key takeawaysDigitize workflows fully before analyzing or optimizing with AI.Practical intelligence is required; AI alone will fail.Identify workflow gaps causing waste, errors, or lost samples.Respect the problem first and study failed attempts.Bootstrapping builds discipline; outside money validates products.Efficiency gains free resources for patient care, not overhead.

Melissa Faith Hart is a public-safety innovator with 20 years of experience, and we spoke about how personal survival, technology, and community systems shaped her mission. She began her career at Xerox helping police departments modernize, eventually co-building the first criminal e-discovery system in Colorado. As she put it, she always asked, “how can I make the system better… so that we can help victims?”A major turning point came after a brain surgery and a domestic-violence crisis that forced her to “face my death” and rebuild her sense of safety from the inside out. She describes the journey as rediscovering the “whole-brain” self—“the math behind the music”—that fuels her ability to innovate. That integration of creativity and logic led her to design accessible, mobile safety tools grounded in a simple belief: “people deserve safety… it’s a primal right.”Her approach is practical: individuals can access support for $5.99 per month, governments can adopt a full workflow from emergency response to courts, and nonprofits can receive victim-support access at no cost. She emphasizes patience and emotional regulation in leadership—“I don’t have to respond in this moment…I could even wait”—as essential to solving complex problems sustainably.Listeners gain a concrete view into how personal adversity, disciplined routines, and integrated thinking can transform public safety in everyday life.Key takeawaysSafety is a universal human need requiring accessible tools.Personal trauma shaped her mission to modernize public safety.Whole-brain integration fuels her innovation approach.Governments and citizens need shared systems for safety.Victims and nonprofits receive free access to support.Leaders can pause before responding to solve problems better.

Brandon Williams is a lawyer, entrepreneur, and business executive with over twenty years of experience bridging law, business, and entertainment across the globe. We spoke about how he turned persistence and practical judgment into the foundation for billion-dollar deals and international success stories.After representing Fortune 10 companies and global icons, Williams learned that growth begins with grit: “Everything starts small. Learn to build. It’s going to be hard.” His journey took an unexpected turn when a client called and said, “I want to do television in Africa,” and hung up. Six months later, Williams had built a team from scratch, secured funding and networks, and produced the number one television show in both Johannesburg and Accra. That process—building something global out of nothing—became the essence of his approach.From his years as a partner at a major firm to running major media ventures, Williams emphasizes that persistence beats prestige. “It isn’t about money. It isn’t about your experience. If you have a passion for what you do, everyone will come around to support.” His blend of legal rigor and entrepreneurial creativity shows how consistency, relationships, and belief can turn ideas into lasting enterprises.Listeners will leave with a clear sense of how to build global credibility, start small, and stay unshakably persistent—no matter how big the vision seems.Key takeawaysBuild from scratch by focusing on persistence, not resources.Treat every client as a partner in long-term growth.Use legal structure as a foundation for entrepreneurial creativity.Transform one opportunity into many through relationships and follow-through.Global success starts with saying yes before you know how.Passion attracts support more reliably than credentials or funding.