The Entrepreneur Way

Joel Milne is the CEO of RepairSmith, which provides mobile car repair and maintenance services. Joel is a serial entrepreneur who previously co/founded four venture-backed technology startups where he served as CEO, COO, and CTO and raised over $100M in venture financing. He is also an advisor to many California-based startups. “remember that start-ups are just a bunch of people doing things, doing something hard together. And you may think you got the best idea or you are the best at something but it’s really just a handful of people working together to solve the problem. And so, thinking hard about who those people are and how you motivate them will be a major driver in your success or failure much more than your individual skills”…[Listen for More] Click Here for Show Notes To Listen or to Get the Show Notes go to https://wp.me/p6Tf4b-7G9

Sean Ammirati co-founded mSpoke, which was the first acquisition of LinkedIn. His next startup was Peak Strategy, which was acquired by Morgan Stanley. Today, he focuses on being a partner at Birchmere Ventures, where they invest into seed-stage SaaS and marketplace startups. Since their start in 1996, they’ve invested in 135 companies with 51 exits. Sean also teaches entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. “the easy advice is just do it. But we want to be more thoughtful than that. So, the way to unpack that a little bit… I think that entrepreneurs before they start the journey, they tend to think too much about the downside. And so, I would encourage you to have a rational conversation with yourself about what really are the different outcomes here. And then once you’ve done that… Once you’ve kind of thought through that and you’ve taken the leap and jumped into it you can never overemphasise spending time with your customers. The more time you spend with the customers and listening to them and understanding the problems they have the better off you will be”…[Listen for More] Click Here for Show Notes To Listen or to Get the Show Notes go to https://wp.me/p6Tf4b-7G5

Our next guest is Craig Handley. He is hard to describe but let me try. He is an author of a best selling book called “Hired To Quit”, he is musician writing music for artists all over the world, he is a bit of a comedian who has done Stand Up on broadway in NYC he also moonlights as CEO of his company ListenTrust which was named #1 in Business Products and Service (#27 overall) on Inc. Magazine’s 500/5000 list where they do about 150M in sales for their clients, and answer 100’s of thousands of CS calls and Lead generation calls and employs close to 1000 awesome people. He has cage dived with great white sharks and rappelled down Table Mountain in South Africa, driven the Baja 500 trail in Mexico, hiked through the jungles of Malaysia, and in Iceland he snowmobiled across a live volcano, swam in the Blue Lagoon, and dove in the famed Silfra Fissure which is the only dive site in the world where your dive is in the crack between two continental plates. He is also the 85th civilian in the world ever to jump out of a plane from over 32,000 feet (HALO Dive)... He's hung out on Necker Island with Richard Branson. He's met Ringo Starr and bumped into Paul McCartney before security escorted him back to his table while trying to get a selfie, and,in Calgary, he had a scarf blessed while meeting the Dalai Lama (which he has since misplaced). He has partied with Akon, and Snoop Dogg and many other celebrities who asked him for his autograph (because they thought he starred in Vikings or Game Of Thrones and he did not correct their thinking) He served five years in the U.S. Army infantry during the first Iraqi war, leaving with an honorable discharge. Handley studied voice and piano in college. He has written and produced hundreds of songs, from rap to pop to ballads to humorous parodies, and even opened for Coolio and hosted the Adult Entertainment Awards. He once turned down a record deal because it would have been “a pay cut” from his profitable businesses - and the required tour schedule didn’t leave him enough time for his business or family... “don’t get down, focus on the positive, seek out mentors… But really understand that being an entrepreneur means you are in for a rollercoaster ride and to try and enjoy the downs as much as you enjoy the highs. Try to understand what you can learn from the worst day of your life, don’t just learn from the best days of your life. And that’s the only way an entrepreneur is going to survive the emotional rollercoaster that you have from being an entrepreneur”…[Listen for More] Click Here for Show Notes To Listen or to Get the Show Notes go to https://wp.me/p6Tf4b-7FZ

As Chairman of American manufacturer Wendell August Forge, Will Knecht weaves together the fascinating story about the devastating fire that could have destroyed his business, but instead became a catalyst for new thinking and opportunities. Earnest and plainspoken, Will compels his listeners to look differently at trials, seeing them as the gateways to breakthrough success. He keynotes events across the country and encourages leaders to live lives worthy of their potential. “believe in what your passion is and what you feel that you are called to do. Believe in it, don’t let the naysayers shoot you down. Believe in what you believe you have been called to do, trust it, go after it. Don’t risk the world on it may be but test it and roll with it. But believe in yourself, believe that you have been uniquely created potentially for such a time as this to start your business, to buy a business and go after it with all you have got. Persevere through the tough times, keep learning and keep growing… Believe in your calling”…[Listen for More] Click Here for Show Notes To Listen or to Get the Show Notes go to https://wp.me/p6Tf4b-7FU

Stephen Warley has been a serial solopreneur for the past 20 years. He’s the founder of LifeSkillsThatMatter.com. He’s a solopreneur business coach on a mission to help you create work that works for you in alignment with your values, needs and abilities. He believes work is fundamentally changing as you know it and we’re all going to have to manage ourselves whether you work for yourself or someone else. “take this deeply think of this as a thought exercise and really ask yourself this question. I really want you to be you. I really want you to be you. I really want you to be able to build a business in alignment with your values, your needs, your abilities. Why? If you can do that that will sustain your motivation unlike anything else you can do for much longer. Money is only going to get you so far… Really define, constantly ask yourself throughout the day, is this what I would want to do or am I doing it to make somebody else happy, to please somebody else? Be you ”…[Listen for More] Click Here for Show Notes To Listen or to Get the Show Notes go to https://wp.me/p6Tf4b-7FO

Tim Fitzpatrick is an entrepreneur/business owner with expertise in marketing and business growth. He has 20+ years of entrepreneurial experience with a passion for developing and growing businesses. His first company grew an average of 60% a year before being acquired in 2005. “I would say a for the long-term. I think a lot of people are trying to get rich quick which to me is a trap that just doesn’t exist. When we see other people’s story and learn about their success, we are really only getting the tip of the iceberg. What we are not seeing is the rest of that iceberg that’s below the surface that is all of the work, the time and the effort that they put in to get above the surface. Being an entrepreneur is a marathon it’s not a sprint. I we are far better off if we can make our business decisions based on the long-term benefit of our company rather than the short-term”…[Listen for More] Click Here for Show Notes To Listen or to Get the Show Notes go to https://wp.me/p6Tf4b-7FH

Robinson Smith was raised in Canada, studied, lived and worked in China for almost a decade and subsequently built up a successful investment advisory. He sold his business two years ago to train other financial professionals in The Smith Manoeuvre financial strategy so many more Canadians would be able to prosper. “number one, budget. You are properly going to spend more than you think you will. I certainly found that out when I started this up two years ago or so… I had an idea, this general roadmap of where I wanted to go and how I would do it and then the deeper you get into something in a new venture the more you realise you don’t know. So, you have got to bring more and more people on to help you do it and do it right. And so, number two is pay for it if you have to”…[Listen for More] Click Here for Show Notes To Listen or to Get the Show Notes go to https://wp.me/p6Tf4b-7FD

With over a decade of business development experience, it’s safe to say Will William Christensen has an elevated passion for fulfilling what the end user desires and efficiently working towards faster iterations. He is the co-founder of DataAutomation, which customizes both automation and integration processes for e-commerce sellers. “fail faster. Do not be afraid to put your baby out in front of the world and get it called ugly. The moment you start to shield your baby, your business, from the feedback of the world you have begun to make yourself obsolete… So do not shield your product from the feedback of the world, put it out there. But you can’t know that it’s ugly… You are inherently blind to the fact that what you are building is not going to do what you needed to do”…[Listen for More] Click Here for Show Notes To Listen or to Get the Show Notes go to https://wp.me/p6Tf4b-7Fz

Madeline Pratt is the Founder/CEO of Fearless in Training, a creative consulting agency specializing in helping ambitious fintech entrepreneurs with marketing, branding and business development. Madeline Pratt has spent her career serving as business development leader for technologies companies ranging from small start-ups to large publicity traded entities. In addition, she is the founder of Womxn Talk Money and the host of the Finding Fearless Podcast. “believe in your ideas but work on your abilities. So what I mean by that is I believe ideas are a dime a dozen and the difference between somebody who is successful is somebody who puts action behind those ideas. But we also have to recognise that we don’t know what we don’t know and so I think that a lot of entrepreneurs fail because they are overly confident about their abilities and they are not willing to admit the areas where they have gaps. And I think to be a great entrepreneur you really need to be constantly investing in your own education and your personal development and building skills that you need to take your company forward further. So always believing in your ideas because you are the one who is going to have to bring that passion and bring that fire and get other people to believe in it. But also be aware of where you need to grow and invest in those areas”…[Listen for More] Click Here for Show Notes To Listen or to Get the Show Notes go to https://wp.me/p6Tf4b-7Fv

Rachael Robertson spent 12 months in the Antarctic, where she led the 58th Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition to Davis Station. She was the second female, (and one of the youngest) to ever lead a team at the Station. She managed a team of 18 people through the long, dark, Antarctic winter and built a resilient and highly successful team based on the foundation that ‘respect trumps harmony’. Since returning to Australia, Rachael has completed her MBA, is an international keynote speaker and has written 2 best-selling books: Leading on the Edge, based on Antarctica; and her latest book, Respect trumps Harmony, was released in April 2020. “get a partner who is different to you. Whether it’s an equity partner in the business whether it’s a life partner… I think my best advice to any entrepreneur is get someone who is completely different to and get them to advise you, offer ideas and suggestions and frank and fearless feedback because you often can’t see it yourself. So, having someone completely different give you a broader range and a broader spectrum of ideas”…[Listen for More] Click Here for Show Notes To Listen or to Get the Show Notes go to https://wp.me/p6Tf4b-7Fr