Productivity Mastery

In episode #102 of Productivity Mastery, we welcomed Hristo Borisov, the co-founder and CEO of the first-ever Bulgarian Unicorn-status company! Starting a business in this part of Europe can be quite challenging, which has made Hristo’s success even more impressive (by the way, he is on the cover of the Forbes magazine at the time of the podcast recording).  In his conversation with Stoyan, Hristo shared with us a broad range of lessons from his entrepreneurial journey, fascinating stories that lead him to success, and various principles of day-to-day work, including: 💡 Hiring the top 1% of your company, 💡 How to build a customer-success oriented company culture, 💡 A founder’s journey is like a rollercoaster, 💡 How your product is the key to becoming a Unicorn, and much more! Hristo Borisov is the CEO and co-founder of Payhawk. Founded in 2018, Payhawk is a leader in B2B payments and expense management. The company's mission is to become the world's biggest bank without holding a single dollar. Businesses from 27 countries actively use Payhawk credit cards and payment products to save time and money managing their company expenses. With a strong engineering and product background, Hristo spent 11 years leading cloud and mobile products at Progress. Hristo studied both Computer Science and Business Administration at the American University in Bulgaria and has developed a patent-pending technology for declarative programming techniques to create conversational intelligence for a chatbot. Enjoy listening and stay #productive!

In episode 101 of Productivity Mastery, we devoted our discussion to scaling. And since we know this is a topic that most of our listeners take a great interest in, we invited Jure Knehtl - an absolute expert in this field! In this episode: 💡 How to surround yourself with successful people, 💡 The 3 stages prior to starting to scale your business, 💡 Some pretty impressive online advertising tips, 💡 How to create user-generated content, and much more! Jure, the CEO of WeScale, is an expert in scaling e-commerce businesses in the EU. He had scaled 10 businesses from 4- to 7 digits by investing more than €42,500,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads. He holds a record 20,000 products sold a day by winning the hearts and minds of customers with localization in Europe, influencer marketing, and UGC. Having started his first successful business at the age of 21, Jure understands and values all aspects of running a fast-growing e-commerce business and provides partnerships to selected founders in his Wescale ecommerce boutique agency. Tune in!

For episode #100 of Productivity Mastery, we welcomed Anna Liebel, a Mindshifter originally from Ukraine, and we talked about how you can turn perfectionism into something good for you. Anna shared a lot on the topic, including: 💡 Not feeling guilt in troubling times, 💡 4 questions to ask yourself every day, 💡 How to establish a healthy relationship with perfectionism, 💡 How to deal with procrastination, and much more! Anna Liebel is a Mindshifter helping entrepreneurs become better leaders of themselves and others. Prior to working with her, Anna's clients are usually facing the feeling of being stuck or lost, or they know they can have more from their professional or personal life but simply don't know how to get there. In the process, they then go from being overwhelmed to being more open and becoming the true versions of themselves in day-to-day life. Tune in! 

For episode #99 of the Productivity Mastery podcast, we welcomed the amazing German Coppola, who is also one of the contributors to PERFORM: The Unsexy Truth About Startup Success. German shared an impressive amount of valuable productivity tips, including: 💡 How to practice Mindful productivity, 💡 3 Powerful Productivity Tools, 💡 How to use your phone more productively, 💡 A morning routine for self-awareness, and much more! German Coppola is the CEO and founder of Yumiwi, an event automatization platform that is helping organizations and brands capture, clean, and integrate event data so that brands can make better decisions. As a tech entrepreneur who focuses on building people skills above all else, he has successfully created and conceptualized several successful companies which revolve around events, technology, and shared experiences. As the Founder and CEO, he works alongside marketers, designers, and technologists to make sense of the event industry by identifying unspoken users’ needs and trends. He is also a Speaker, Mentor, Course creator, and host of his YouTube Channel and Podcast where he dives deep into Productivity, Mindset, and Technology. German loves reading, music, and spending quality time with his family while teaching his three kids values and strategies of what it is to be and think like an entrepreneur. Brain.fm is an app that uses specially designed music to improve your brain activity, help you focus and relax. Visit Brain.fm/stoyan and take the 20% off after your free trial using coupon code: stoyan Enjoy the episode and stay productive! 

In this special bonus episode on Productivity Mastery, Stoyan Yankov, the co-founder and co-host of The Leaders Who Care podcast and community platform, interviews Nina Heir, CEO and Partner at Katapult Accelerator, Katapult Climate, and Katapult Africa. Tune in and discover: ✔️ The future of Impact entrepreneurship, ✔️ Finding a balance between being professional and vulnerable, ✔️ Building a culture of trust and openness, ✔️ How taking care of others requires taking care of yourself first, and much more! Nina is CEO and Partner at Katapult Accelerator, a globally leading impact tech accelerator headquartered in Oslo, Norway. She’s leading Katapult’s two new thematic investment and accelerator verticals: Katapult Africa and Katapult Climate. Katapult Climate was launched as a new vertical in 2021, and Katapult Africa is under establishment and will run its first accelerator program in Kigali, Rwanda in 2022. Katapult as a whole has since 2017 invested in an accelerated 108 impact tech startups from 35 countries across its existing verticals. Nina is an angel investor and previous founder, and is passionate about the role technology and entrepreneurship play in making the world a better place for both people and the planet. Enjoy this special episode! 

For episode #97 of Productivity Mastery, we dedicated our conversation to those who are dealing with grief in these uncertain and unsettling times. Dr. Karin Lubin, who is a coach, trainer, and the international director of The Passion Test®, various practical techniques, and wisdom on how to support ourselves and those around us, also covering the following: 💡 Grief is a threshold to finding meaning, 💡 How to build resilience, 💡 What is intuitive leadership, 💡 How to bring balance back to your life, and much more! Karin Lubin, EdD, is a coach, teacher, trainer, speaker, international director of The Passion Test®, and creator of the series, My Life Through the Seasons, A Wisdom Journal and Planner®. Karin clearly remembers the day, twenty years ago, when she decided she would stop obsessing over her thoughts and her career and decided to instead go for what felt better! That realization led her to switch careers and begin to do all that she can to help others to go deeper to be greater. When she was 8 years old and her parents were in the midst of a messy divorce, Karin discovered the power of journaling to help her work through her thoughts and emotions. Over many years of journaling, she discovered that this kind of self-reflection allowed her to get in touch with buried or ignored aspects of herself and helped her to see herself in relationship with herself, with others, and with the natural world of which we are all a part. Karin hopes that counselors, therapists, coaches, and individuals use her Seasonal Wisdom Journals as tools to define, refine, dive in, explore, understand and build emotional intelligence and resiliency in this changing world. She encourages everyone to Go Deeper to Be Greater! Karin is also dedicated to coaching of a different sort—as a personal trainer. She channels her passion for physical health, fitness, and bodybuilding by leading online workouts three times a week. Tune in!

In episode #96 of Productivity Mastery, we were talking about a theme that definitely deserves more attention: Mindful Self-Discipline in a World of Distractions. The author of “Practical meditation” and “Mindful Self-Discipline”, Giovanni Dienstmann, shared a lot on the topic, including: 💡 A unique approach to mindful self-discipline, 💡 How to train your own willpower, 💡 Finding a balance between the “fire” and “water” in you, 💡  How to recognize self-sabotage, and much more! As a self-discipline coach, Giovanni Dienstmann has helped hedge fund managers, CEOs, entrepreneurs, ambitious professionals, artists, and pro athletes to live a more focused and disciplined life. Since 2014 he has been successfully coaching people to overcome distractions, procrastination, self-doubt, fear, and other forms of self-sabotage. Whatever self-discipline challenges you face, and whatever excuse you are telling yourself—Giovanni has seen it and has developed a tool to deal with it. Whether you need help building a consistent morning routine, breaking bad habits, finding your life purpose, increasing motivation and willpower, achieving your goals, or simply being more effective with your time and energy, Mindful Self-Discipline can help. As a meditation teacher, Giovanni runs LiveAndDare.com, which is one of the top five most visited meditation blogs on the web. His first book, Practical Meditation, is available in eight different languages and has popularly been called “the meditation Bible”. Giovanni has over 10,000 hours of personal meditation practice and is a sought-after consultant to award-winning meditation apps. His meditation programs have helped over 20,000 people start a daily meditation practice, improve their psychological well-being, and master their minds. Tune in!

For episode #95 of Productivity Mastery, our topic is Fundraising vs Bootstrapping: Are you ready? This episode is especially valuable for startup founders at an early stage of their business. Our guest, Angelo Burgarello shares his expertise and lots of tips, including: 💡 Common mistakes founders make, 💡 How to understand investors better, 💡 How to know if you’re ready for fundraising or bootstrapping, 💡 What traits you need as a founder in order to succeed, and more! Angelo is the Managing Partner at AI Startup Incubator (AISI, Prague), co-founder of the biggest English language online media outlet for foreigners living in the Czech Republic (PragueMorning) and  co-owner of a Marketing Agency based in Prague. In his career, Angelo has been involved in various managerial positions covering Business Development, Project Management and implementation planning for IT solutions. Angelo's key competencies are shaped around helping founders setting up their companies and raising capital to enable growth, when necessary. Angelo's motto is: "Helping others is always good business! Businesses are made by people and working together enabling synergies between organizations is the only way we can deliver a brighter future for ourselves and those who come after us." Tune in!

In episode #94 of Productivity Mastery, we decided to share with you a Founder's Lessons from Scaling a Global Startup. Sergiu Negut, the Co-Founder and EVP of FintechOS, shared his expertise with us, including such lessons as: 💡 Common problems entrepreneurs struggle with and how to deal with them, 💡 How to understand better team culture, 💡 How to find the sweet spot between reality and ambition and go over it, 💡 Celebrating success, and so much more! Sergiu is a reputed entrepreneur, angel investor, speaker, and lecturer at Maastricht School of Management. He has a positive track record of business growth in different roles (adviser, board member, angel investor, manager) and across different industries (healthcare, IT&C, financial services, HR, consulting). Committed to building powerful teams and backed by a broad experience in business development, including M&A & startups, Sergiu co-founded FintechOS, a company that deploys its technology in more than 20 markets on 4 continents and is backed by some of the most reputable VCs in Europe. Sergiu coordinates Finance & Investor Relations, HR and Operations, bringing his strong contribution to the overall strategy and development of the FintechOS. The company’s centrepiece technology, FintechOS, puts automation and personalisation at the heart of innovation, allowing financial services providers to transform the digital customer experience quickly and affordably. In 2020, FintechOS was recognized as Europe’s hottest fintech startup and ranked among the most well-funded VC-backed tech companies in Europe (CB Insights). Tune in!

In episode #93 of Productivity Mastery, we were talking about Resilience & Team Culture. The founder and CEO of Funderbeam, Kaidi Ruusalepp, shared a lot of valuable information from her personal experience, including: 💡 How to take care of your mentality as a leader, 💡 How to build a strong supportive team, 💡 Having a startup business in the land of unicorns, 💡 How to prevent burnout, and much more! Kaidi Ruusalepp, the founder and CEO of Funderbeam - the global funding and trading platform of private companies. Funderbeam enables companies to raise funds and investors to invest with liquidity, also list existing shares, employee shares, and investments of private companies. The platform has investors from 134 countries and is awarded as the Best European Fintech startup in 2017. Kaidi is a former CEO of Nasdaq Tallinn Stock Exchange and of the Central Securities Depository, co-founder of Estonian Service Industry Association, and a former member of Startup Europe Advisory Board at European Commission. Tune in!