Stage One Startup: Interviews With Influential Entrepreneurs & Innovative Startups

THIS WEEK’S GUEST; JEREMY SLATE Do not follow your passion, find your skillset and get so damn good at something you become passionate about it. Today on the show, we have a fascinating guest who we have been fortunate enough to have been good friends with for some time now. Jeremy is the Co-Founder of Get Featured which helps individuals get featured on the some of the greatest podcast around the world (including ours, hint hint). Along with his business partner Daniel Geffin, they have both been on the other side of the mic and have been featured in major publications as well as mainstream media. Both Jeremy and Daniel know first hand how hard it is to be featured on podcasts, having both created their own. Jeremy is the proud host of the Create Your Own Life podcast which has reached over 100,000 downloads in its first year. He started his journey as a personal trainer while obtaining his theology degree at Oxford University. After getting into what he thought was his dream job of becoming a teacher,

This Week's Startup: Should I Sign w/ Naitik Patel & Tej Prakash If you've been listening to this show for a while, then chances are you've heard us stress about how important it is to get the legal side of your startup on the right tracks. If you're worried about that side of your business, then this episode will shed some light on that very subject. To kick things off for the Accelerate Your Startup Series 1, we are proud to bring to the show Naitik Patel and Tej Prakash, Co-Founders of Should I Sign. Naitik and Taj have extensive amounts of experience as two of the highest paid attornies in New York and dedicated 20 years to their profession. During their time in their roles as corporate attornies, they were witness to a common problem that hadn't yet been addressed. That problem was for the startups who needed legal needs for their endeavours, it wasn't easy for them to find the perfect attornies to help them with their issues. They guys undertook a lot of market research and data analysis, they not

Accelerate Your Startup Series 1 We're super stoked to be bringing you another essential piece of content that we hope you can find value in. We bring you the Accelerate Your Startup series. Our main reason for this was simply to elaborate on the growing use of Startup Accelerators being used by innovational startups and entrepreneurs around the world. During the course of the previous 50 episodes, we started to realise a trend when speaking to the guests that came on our show. A lot of them, when asked recommended putting your idea or business through an incubator to help strip it down to the bare basics. This leads us to ask the question; How many people are doing this? And is there enough information out there on this subject? Does it give the startup cohort a higher chance of success at a faster rate? We then thought to ourselves, why not partner up with the accelerators and incubators to find out all of this information. What truly does work when putting your startup through an accelerator? In t

We thought it would be an amazing idea to release a special 5-minute episode that thanks everybody for their support since the release of Stage One Startup. It's been an incredible year, we've learnt so much, not only about business and entrepreneurship but about ourselves. Thank you to every single guest that has appeared on the show, you've shared so much value to our listeners and us. I suppose without you, this none of this would be possible! If you've just discovered us and you would like to know more about what we're up to and our message, we would love for you to join our outstanding Facebook Group! We've built an amazing community of like-minded individuals who are dedicated to growing their business! We hold a tight weekly schedule that is packed full of need-to-know business goodies. Just click the link to join.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This Week's Guest; Andres Ocampo Andres Ocampo, today’s guest on our program, saw exactly that and decided to do something about it. At 19 years old, he -- along with his business partner David -- launched ENTRPRNR Lifestyle, an apparel company dedicated to providing the younger generation with inspiration and the confidence to pursue their journeys to success. Andres, who was born in Cali, Colombia (which he points out is the setting for the Netflix hit Narcos), moved to Miami as a child and has lived there ever since. While in college in Florida, an early failure of another idea led him to come up with the concept of ENTRPRNR. Instead of falling into the easy trap of putting off the idea for later, he and David launched the company in May 2015 with just $3,000. They began with an order of just 108 shirts and used Andres’ mother’s living room as their first workspace. Their idea and hard work paid off, with $100,000 in sales in the first 12 months. The brand’s reach now encompasses celebrities including

This week's Teacher; Danny Buck We have yet another essential startup lesson for you today. If you're sitting there complaining how hard it is to build your side hustle whilst working a full-time job then this lesson is the one for you. Danny is the perfect person for this, we were astonished by the amount that this guy has achieved in such a short space of time. When Danny was 22 he started a marketing agency and grew it to be one of the largest marketing agencies in Europe. But after building a scaling it, he began to start feeling bored of the same thing day in and day out. Danny is now the CEO & Founder of CIRCULR Watches With that boredom to add fuel to his fire, he left and began starting up his own e-commerce brands. From there, the rest was history. He left a multi-million-pound business to go back into the startup phase, simply because it is the most exciting phase of building a business. For full show notes; http://stageonestartup.com/startuplesson-ep018/ See omnystudio.com/listener for p

This Week's Guest: Mayer Dahan Mayer Dahan, a Los Angeles native, is the real deal in the entrepreneurial world and has the titles to prove it: he’s the founder and CEO of Dahan Properties, the CEO of Prime Five Homes, and the founder of The Dream Builders Project. As you may have guessed from his list of roles, Mayer is firmly planted in the real estate industry. Less obvious, but equally important, is his focus within this industry. His emphasis is on homes that balance modern luxury and design with eco-friendly priorities and a strong sense of ethics. Mayer’s commitment to doing good extends far beyond the eco-friendly walls he builds, and extends into the realm of merging for-profit and nonprofit ideas together. He describes his nonprofit The Dream Builders Project as a “charity for charities.” This means that it provides funds and services to charities with high efficiency ratings, ensuring that every dollar donated makes the most difference possible. For full show notes; http://stageonestartup.com/e

This Week's Teacher; German Marchesani The lesson's keep on coming, and this week holds a special place for Stage One Startup. Simply because of this week's teacher, German, helped us with the hit series which was known as Secret Entourage Month. That's how we know he's the perfect guy to teach us this week. During this lesson, we're going to be talking about PR (Public Relations) for you and your startup. For full show notes; http://stageonestartup.com/lesson-ep017 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This Week's Guest; Christopher Gimmer As some of you might already know, Chris has already appeared on the show back in the early days of Stage One Startup. Since then Chris, Brad and I have grown a lot! Chris is the Co-Founder & CEO of Snappa, an online graphic creation tool that Brad and I swear by. Things have changed for us, and even more, has changed for Snappa. We can guarantee that Snappa is still the easiest online graphic creation tool for marketers and entrepreneurs all around the world. If you've ever wondered how we create some of our outstanding images, they are all made in Snappa. In this episode, we're going to be discussing how Chris has grown his SAAS (Software as a Service) business, and the lesson's he has learned on the way. You might be interested in listening to Episode 4, where Chris goes into detail about his journey so far as an entrepreneur. For full show notes; http://stageonestartup.com/ep054 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week's teacher; Jake Knotman Wondering what a "Personal Brand" is? It's a team that is currently being thrown around the entrepreneursphere like it's going out of fashion. Over the past few week's Brad and I have had endless conversations about what a Personal Brand is and how it can help startups just like yours thrive. So, we thought it's about time that we cover this crucial topic during a #StartupLesson so that you guys can better understand what this is. We've now found the right person for the job! Jake Knotman is the CEO of Protop Media as well as a Social Media Guru; he helps businesses gain traction on their Social Media campaigns. Above all of this, Jake has worked extensively on building his personal brand and is going to share that with us today. So, sit tight, get them notepads out. For full show notes; http://stageonestartup.com/episodes/startuplesson-ep016-personal-branding/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, we speak to Gina Catalano; Gina is a strategic coach and the proud, best-selling author of Tandem Leadership & Changing Lanes. We're going to be focusing on Tandem Leadership: How Your #2 Can Make You #1, and we'll go into more detail about that during the episode. We're going to help you gather the basics of how CEO's can find the right time to bring in a COO (Cheif Operations Officer) and finding the perfect person for the role. We're cannot wait for you to hear the wealth of knowledge that Gina brings to the show you today. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey S1S students, If you’ve been wondering how to make money podcasting; you’re going to love this episode! We actually brought in our previous sponsor, Sam Mathie who owns Why Not Pro - you might have heard me mention in the previous episodes. WhyNotPro provides professional services (code for all the stuff entrepreneurs loath) like accountancy, marketing, IT and telecom to name a few. Their target audience are small-medium enterprises otherwise simply known as SMEs.  As this is sort of an aftermath of our sponsorship deal, we’ll all be sharing key lessons learned so that you don’t have to make the mistakes we did. Full show notes; http://stageonestartup.com/startuplesson-ep015 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This Week's Guest: Dinesh Kandanchatha So then everybody this week we have the pleasure of interviewing Dinesh Kandanchatha, he is a founder, mentor, speaker, investor and above all else, another all-around entrepreneur. Dinesh has built, exited, led & invested in over 13 companies - if there is anything to know about transforming your business from stage one to success, Dinesh is the no.1 guy. He has a theory that every business should pass a simplicity test which we are going to talk about in the early part of this show. Dinesh is passionate about the prospect of a business connection over anything else. He believes firmly in transformative coffee after making some of his best and most valuable business relationships over a casual chat in a coffee shop. He’s not just an investor that sits on the sidelines; he is in business with you. Aside from being an all-around entrepreneur, Dinesh is also the operator of Macadamian where he leads business development at one of the hottest product consultancies in Ca

This Week’s Guest: Mandy Menaker Before we start, here’s a shameless plug to check out our Facebook group! It’s a tight and steadily growing community for aspiring entrepreneurs and anybody looking to start their business.                        Today we have the pleasure of talking with Mandy Menaker. Mandy is the head of brand development and PR at Shapr, a fairly new and upcoming networking app that’s something like a professional Tinder. The app helps you connect with inspiring individuals and promotes in-person meetings. Mandy offers some brilliant insight in this conversation into how you can work inside a startup and still have the entrepreneurial experience (with fewer of the responsibilities). She’ll also discuss the importance of focusing on user experience as well as that of staying connected with investors. Another fascinating topic she covers is running a business and maintaining communication when members live and work all over the world. For full show notes; http://stageonestartup.com/ep05

This week we bring you one of our most essential lessons yet! Facebook groups; everybody has one, no one's quite sure how to grow it, manage it or take over from it. We appreciated hearing from one of the best who is actually doing it right. It was important for us to find someone who was relatable and someone who had the numbers as well as the substance within the group, to show for it; Arne Giske. Arne is a millennial digital entrepreneur who’s been running a marketing agency for about a year and a half. He’s appeared in more than 40 media outlets, has six figures in sales, he travels all over the world, speaking at events and growing the business. He also owns a Facebook group shy of 10,000 members. In this episode, you will receive insight and practical strategies on how to grow a Facebook group from 0 - 10,000 engaging members in less than 12 months. For full show notes; http://stageonestartup.com/startuplesson-ep014 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Believe it or not, we hadn’t even launched Stage One Startup at this time last year, and here we are in episode 50. That’s right, this is the big 5-0! Instead of doing an interview, as usual, we’re celebrating by doing something of a past, present, and future episode. We’ll touch on where we started, what we’re doing now, and some of what we’re planning for the future (though we can’t give out all of the exciting details just yet). Throughout this episode, we’ll focus on several key points: The growth of the podcast and how we’ve done in terms of download numbers, audience reach, and so on. Our first sponsorship We’ll talk about how it went and touch on what we learned from it. Our plans for (and dedication to) getting only the best types of guests on the show, and our renewed emphasis on stage one of launching the business. (It’s even in our name, after all.) Collaborations with businesses and brands, and how we plan to incorporate these into the podcast. Our rebranding of Stage One Startup, and why we’ve

We bring yet another great episode for you this week. The law side of things in relation to start-ups is something we’ve been wanting to look into for a long time because it is often overlooked and yet it is quite an important aspect of starting and running a successful startup. So we thought it would be fitting to bring Molly Montgomery [Twitter] who is an owner of a consulting firm that targets high growth startups. Her consulting firm does growth consulting, risk management, and all financially related services. She also has professional training as a CPA. Her experience in the litigation world; seeing a lot of things that were happening to startups after-the-fact when they couldn’t really do anything about them is what motivated her to pursue an entrepreneurial route where she’d help these businesses prevent many of these mistakes. In this episode, you will learn about the 7 most common financially crippling mistakes startup founders make and how to prevent them.   See omnystudio.com/listener for p

It’s finally here! The episode we’ve all been waiting for! (If you don’t know what we’re talking about, we’ve been doing a series of episodes in our Secret Entourage month, and this is the grand finale! To learn more, check out the dedicated page at stageonestartup.com/secretentourage.) On our fourth and final Secret Entourage series episode, we hear from the man himself. Pejman Ghadimi, or PJ, has come up in each of the Secret Entourage episodes so far, as our guests have raved about how helpful he’s been (along with the organization itself, of course!) in their current success. Today, we’ll dive into his side of things, exploring why he created Secret Entourage. He’ll cover lots of tips that startups can benefit from, offering his unique (and, as he emphasizes, experienced-based) insight.  As you probably know by now, Pejman is the CEO and founder of Secret Entourage, but he’s also the creator and founder of many other major businesses offline and online which collectively generate multi-millions of doll

If you’ve been keeping up with us, you’re probably as excited as we are for this series of episodes in our Secret Entourage month! This is our second collaboration; the first was with Fownders in January. You can find the panel on the dedicated page at stageonestartup.com/secretentourage. Our third Secret Entourage guest (and the last one before our grand finale with its founder, Pejman Ghadimi) is Damian Otero Reggiori. Damian is the CEO and founder of Restyle Retail, a company operating kiosks specializing in hair products in American malls. Damian’s story is truly inspirational. He is originally from Uruguay, but moved to the United States as a child with his parents. Seeing their hard work inspired him, as he explains in this conversation, and instilled a work ethic that has helped him achieve his current success (though it didn’t exactly inspire him to do well in school, so take heart if you struggled there too!). He started his career at a very young age, and has already worked his way to the top des

This Week’s Guest: David Wongk  Before we get into this week’s episode, let’s take a moment to talk about Why Not Pro. This great company provides professional solutions for startups and small to medium enterprises. It’s a one-stop shop for multiple services, including the things you may not like (like accounting, legal support, and HR). For a limited time, get 20% off their services when you mention Stage One Startup!  If you’ve been keeping up with us, you’re probably as excited as we are for this series of episodes in our Secret Entourage month! This is our second collaboration; the first was with Fownders in January. You can find the panel on the dedicated page at stageonestartup.com/secretentourage.  This week, we’re thrilled to have our second Secret Entourage guest on the show! This week, we’re talking with Dave Wongk, the CEO and founder of PureTropix. You may well have already heard of this company, which produces a variety of all-natural body products made from mango and shea butters. The company