Finding Founders

Jason Lee grew up in Kansas raised by a family who idolized education. They even said school is “like Disneyland but better…”. School was important because it led to a “respectable job”, that job being a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. Initially that was ok with Jason, but there was something missing. He didn't feel quite whole.  Regardless, he moved forward on the "right" path and attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He assumed his problems would be solved but eventually realized that he still wasn’t fulfilled. That same emptiness remained even as he began making 6 figures at Bain and Company. The turning point of Jason's life began on his 22nd birthday when the Haiti earthquake taught him the importance of empathy. Committed to do something, he decided to film himself bussing at a New York subway station. Jason would make a video that accumulated 10,000 views in a single week and raised hundreds for the cause. Inspired, he decided to pursue his passion for filmmaking, quit his job, and create Jubilee Media which seeks to demonstrate the common ground between people and foster empathy in a divided world. https://www.jubileemedia.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter! https://findingfounders.co/subscribe Website: findingfounders.co Follow Sam: https://www.instagram.com/samueldonner/ Follow Finding Founders IG: https://www.instagram.com/findingfounderspodcast/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/finding-founders/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How does a priest-in-training end up educating the world on anatomy? In today’s Founder Wisdom we speak with Dr. Gil Hedley, Creator and Producer of the Integral Anatomy Series. Beginning his adult life receiving a PhD in Theological Ethics, Gil felt a calling to the priesthood... but at the same time he didn't want to be a priest. Gil describes the winding path that led to discovering the beauty of human anatomy and the courage it took for him to share his knowledge with the world. https://www.youtube.com/user/somanaut/ Subscribe to our Newsletter! https://findingfounders.co/subscribe Website: findingfounders.co Follow Sam: https://www.instagram.com/samueldonner/ Follow Finding Founders IG: https://www.instagram.com/findingfounderspodcast/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/finding-founders/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jay Oliva is an LA-based storyboard artist, film producer, and animated film director. Inspired by comics and the animated cartoons of his childhood, he's climbed his way up to work with major production companies such as Marvel, Netflix, and Warner Bros. His first break was an opportunity at Marvel which came just in time and had him narrowly avoiding gang violence in Orange County. Nowadays, he teaches Cinematic Storyboard courses at his alma mater, Loyola Marymount University. He's also launched his own animation studio and production company, “Lex and Otis” and “Lex on Orange Productions”, in 2018 and 2019 respectively. In addition to creating the show Trese, Oliva is working on other projects at Netflix such as reuniting with Zach Snyder after their original partnership during Man of Steel. https://lexandotis.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter! https://findingfounders.co/subscribe Website: findingfounders.co Follow Sam: https://www.instagram.com/samueldonner/ Follow Finding Founders IG: https://www.instagram.com/findingfounderspodcast/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/finding-founders/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do you create radically inclusive clothing, while still maintaining a profitable business? What does it take to build a company off a kickstarter campaign? In today’s Founder Wisdom we speak with Hanna Baror-Padilla, founder and owner of the inclusive and diverse clothing brand Sotela. From her childhood years working in her dad’s clothing store to successfully launching several of her own inclusive clothing collections, Hanna guides us through her journey and the lessons she’s learned along the way. https://sotela.co/ Subscribe to our Newsletter! https://findingfounders.co/subscribe Website: findingfounders.co Follow Sam: https://www.instagram.com/samueldonner/ Follow Finding Founders IG: https://www.instagram.com/findingfounderspodcast/ https://www.patreon.com/findingfounders --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/finding-founders/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Manuel “MannyJStyle” Jackson has led an incredible career in men’s fashion while also being an advocate for the next generation of stylists and designers. Manny started his fashion journey from his mom's garage hand painting clothes. This led to developing his first company Ekqualyte Abstract Abstract. Not long after he created The Gents Closet, a Hollywood based men Style Haus where Manuel designed a collection of men's accessories including ties and bow ties. He also carried and supplied the latest upcoming labels from around the world to a high-end clientele of stylists, celebrities and influencers. https://mannyjstyle.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter! https://findingfounders.co/subscribe Website: findingfounders.co Follow Sam: https://www.instagram.com/samueldonner/ Follow Finding Founders IG: https://www.instagram.com/findingfounderspodcast/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/finding-founders/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we're talking to Tom Alaimo about his entrepreneurial journey and why it might be better to be an introverted sales person. Tom got his start creating and selling his own sports magazine as a kid. After selling a few issues around his neighborhood, he realized he had a knack for sales but needed some training. Thats when he discovered Cutco, a company whose sales program honed his interpersonal skills and developed his love of sales. Now Tom is a B2B sales professional, blogger, and podcaster. With the Millennial Momentum podcast, Tom aims to create a community to help millennials upgrade their sales game. http://millennialmomentum.net/ Subscribe to our Newsletter! https://findingfounders.co/subscribe Website: findingfounders.co Follow Sam: https://www.instagram.com/samueldonner/ Follow Finding Founders IG: https://www.instagram.com/findingfounderspodcast/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/finding-founders/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The year: 2000. The turn of the century marked the beginning of a whole new world, one with anxiety inducing elections, trendy juicy tracksuits, and technological advances like never before. With a world of information available at the swipe of your thumb, it might take you a minute to remember the sound Web 1.0 made when you tried to load a page. In the early 2000s, the internet wasn't yet a place of infinite knowledge but rather untapped potential. Stephane Roulland saw that potential clearly in a future not as distant as the world may have thought. Described as a Yahoo-esque portal to viral videos, Stephane sets the stage for a world at the cusp of an internet revolution and a stubborn man ready to run into the fight. Subscribe to our Newsletter! https://findingfounders.co/subscribe Website: findingfounders.co Follow Sam: https://www.instagram.com/samueldonner/ Follow Finding Founders IG: https://www.instagram.com/findingfounderspodcast/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/finding-founders/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is an update to an episode we did a while back in April of 2020. And we’re doing an update because Jonathan Skogmo, founder of Jukin Media, has some pretty big news… recently he sold his company for a reported $140 million dollars. In this episode we take a behind the scenes look at that 9 figure deal, and try to understand emotionally what it’s like to sell a company you’ve built from your apartment over the last decade. A bit more about Jon: He’s the founder of Jukin which is an innovative media company that focuses on user-generated content. What is user-generated content? Well, it’s stuff like a video of a mom laughing hysterically while wearing a Chewbacca mask. That video is known as Chewbacca mom and the original video alone received over 140 million views. In fact, the video became so popular that this Chewbacca mask completely sold out around the world. Although the Chewbacca mom, otherwise known as Candace Payne, technically owns the video, the right to license that video belongs to Jukin. By acquiring viral videos, like this one, Jukin media has amassed 200 million fans and receives 3 billion views every month. Subscribe to our Newsletter! https://findingfounders.co/subscribe Website: findingfounders.co Follow Sam: https://www.instagram.com/samueldonner/ Follow Finding Founders IG: https://www.instagram.com/findingfounderspodcast/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/finding-founders/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If there's one thing that drives Laura Osuri, it’s serving her community. After college, she sprang into an expedition that would take her across the globe to Europe and Latin America in search of new perspectives. Coming back to the states she felt listless, but soon sunk her energy into Street Sense media, whose mission was to vocalize homeless issues and provide community support. Realizing that she could help the marginalized, Laura once again saw a calling as the Syrian refugee crisis erupted. Taking action, she joined her church in welcoming and supporting newly displaced families. Her work with these agencies eventually inspired her to found her own resettlement nonprofit--Homes Not Borders right in her hometown of Washington D.C. However, things would get more complicated as the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. https://www.homesnotborders.org/ Subscribe to our Newsletter! https://findingfounders.co/subscribe Website: findingfounders.co Follow Sam: https://www.instagram.com/samueldonner/ Follow Finding Founders IG: https://www.instagram.com/findingfounderspodcast/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/finding-founders/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since Kevin Greene moved to the US from Jamaica at age 6 he's always been hustling. Entrepreneurship was his personality, but at times it wouldn't be fully expressed. In 2006 Kevin got a job at T-Mobile, and quickly realized that the corporate world didn't take kindly to conflict. The same voice that made him such a great entrepreneur, held him back in the corporate world. Although he was passed by for promotions, he did gain insight into mobile phone industry. This would eventually lead him to create Faces International in 2012, a mobile marketing and development firm. Diving deeper into his knack for spotting a trend Kevin noticed the high growth potential of Cannabis and decided someone needed to step in to educationally legitimize the industry. In order to fulfill the need for a qualified workforce in the rapidly-growing cannabis industry, Kevin co-founded the Cleveland School of Cannabis in 2018, the first and only school for cannabis with national accreditation. https://csceducation.com/ Subscribe to our Newsletter! https://findingfounders.co/subscribe Website: findingfounders.co Follow Sam: https://www.instagram.com/samueldonner/ Follow Finding Founders IG: https://www.instagram.com/findingfounderspodcast/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/finding-founders/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices