Stage One Startup: Interviews With Influential Entrepreneurs & Innovative Startups

This Week’s Guest: Michelle Dale, CEO & Founder - Virtual Miss Friday 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 ever entertained the idea of becoming a virtual assistant, you’ll love our conversation with Michelle Dale! And even if you haven’t, this ambitious and experienced entrepreneur’s story of her decision to take the plunge -- and the success that came from that choice -- is absolutely inspirational. At just 23 years old, Michelle quit her corporate job and stepped away from a conventionally successful career. As she’ll explain in this episode, she booked a one-way flight to Egypt with a limited amount of money, and quickly lost almost all of it. I

This Week’s Teacher: Dee Smith, Founder of Rosie Social Media Before we get into this week’s #StartupLesson, 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! This week's class we'll learn all about Pinterest and why you should be using it for your business. Rosie Social Media provides Pinterest account management services, education, and training for business, bloggers, and entrepreneurs along with a variety of other services such as image creation, ebook design, and other graphic designs. They can actually help increase engagement and traffic to your website because at the end of the day, engagement and traffic to your website leads to being discovered to more potential customers which then leads to more sal

This Week’s Guest: 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! On this episode, we have an amazing guest: Brian D. Evans, the founder and CEO of Influencive. The site is so popular that you’ve probably heard of it, but in case you haven’t, it’s an online publication sharing unconventional wisdom about entrepreneurship, business, lifestyle, culture, travel, life hacking, and mindful living. The contributors are all thoroughly vetted, as Brian explains in this episode. Brian himself is an Inc, 500 entrepreneur who Forbes ranked as the #7 ranked marketing influencer in the world. He’s a startup advisor, business coach, and marketing strategist with a deep enthusiasm fo

This Week's Teacher: Barbara Turley Welcome to first ever special startup lesson, we have an amazing guest who is going to teach you exactly how to master the never ending question of 'How to Hire the Perfect VA' taught by Barbara Turley who is the CEO & Founder of Virtual Angel Hub. Barbara is an investor and entrepreneur with a keen interest in scalable business models, systems, processes and automation, content marketing and the power of inspired and empowered teams. She is he Founder & CEO of Virtual Angel Hub - a business she started by accident that exploded in the space of 12 months to become one of the leading companies that recruits, trains and manages virtual assistants in the digital marketing and social media space for businesses who need to free up time and energy so they can go to the next level. Full show notes; http://stageonestartup.com/lessons-ep002 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This Week’s Guest: Kelly Roach 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! Now, onto this episode! Our guest this time is the vibrant Kelly Roach, who you may recognize as the host of Unstoppable Success Radio. In addition to the podcast, she has an incredible range of accomplishments under her belt. She’s a former NFL cheerleader and Fortune 500 executive who was promoted seven times in eight years. Her book, Unstoppable, is an 11-time international bestseller that managed to beat Tony Robbins off the #1 spot in Amazon’s nonfiction category. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Impressively, she has also found a way to effectively balance entrepreneurship and mo

Welcome to your daily dose of #StartupLessons brought to you by Stage One Startup. *Before we begin, we just wanted to let you all know about our NEW SPONSOR , http://whynotpro.com. Why Not Pro provide affordable business services under one roof! No more messing around trying to find freelancers from all different platforms to get your nitty gritty jobs done! Why Not Pro provide a One Stop Shop! for all your business needs. You can find out more about Why Not Pro within the show notes to this episode!** After heavy demand from our audience, community members and some deep thought from us, we thought it would be a great idea to bring you lessons on certain topics within business that help you better under how to do tasks when creating your startup! Full show notes will be released on 10/02/2017 http://stageonestartup.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Can you believe January is already over? We loved doing our Fownders month, but now we’re back to our regular routine. As much as we’ll miss our podcasts with the folks from Fownders, this guest is exciting enough to make up for it. You may already know about Timothy Sykes, the American penny stock trader who turned his $12,000 in bar mitzvah money into well over $4 million by day-trading penny stocks. As he explains in this episode, in his senior year of high school, he turned that $12k into over $100,000. In his freshman year of college, he came close to hitting the $1 million mark. Throughout this conversation, you’ll come to understand that Timothy isn’t all about making money; he also cares about using it responsibly and generously. He’s dedicated to giving back to the world. He started his charity and has donated $1 million to building schools. So far, he’s at 35 schools, out of a goal of a whopping 1,000. For full show notes; http://stageonestartup.com/ep032 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy

Before we get started on the last of the Fownders episodes, let’s talk about Instagram for a minute! If you haven’t seen our Instagram page lately, go check it out, and make sure to appreciate the new grid posts. (And if you’re interested in doing grid posts yourself, check out the Instagrids app. It’s much easier than Photoshop!) And now onto our final Fownders guest. Cody Ross, the man behind Slingshot VR, originally hails from the Midwest but now lives in New York. Throughout the episode, you’ll learn more about Slingshot VR, a virtual reality ecosystem designed to allow users to experience environments and events that they may never have been able to experience otherwise. (In less techie terms, it’s a cutting-edge virtual reality production company.) If you’re not already excited about the idea -- and you should be -- just listen to Cody’s passion as he explains how this can change users’ lives and bring people closer to each other and to the experiences they cherish. He’s just as enthusiastic as he dis

This Week’s Guest: Nestor Velez First of all, if you haven’t listened to episode 27, you should! It explains what we’re doing this month with Fownders Month and gives you a chance to learn more about our collaboration with Fownders. You’ll also hear about the schedule and who we’ll be interviewing each week. You can also find out more on our website. This is the third of our four Fownders episodes, and we can hardly believe the month is almost over already! You’ve heard from the Fownders leaders. Now, it’s time to hear from the startups! In this episode, we hear from Nestor Velez, the CEO and founder of SanoMind. This platform connects people with mental health-related audio content at a fraction of the cost of therapy. It’s such a hit that if you’ve listened to our previous Fownders episodes closely, you’ll remember hearing about it from both Toby Dattolo and Stephen Bienko. As we learn in the episode, Nestor was born and raised in New York City but has recently moved to New Jersey. He grew up with anxiet

This Week’s Guest: Stephen Bienko - CEO Fownders First of all, if you haven’t listened to episode 27, you should! It explains what we’re doing this month with Fownders Month and gives you a chance to learn more about our collaboration with Fownders. You’ll also hear about the schedule and who we’ll be interviewing each week. You can also find out more on our website. Now, let’s chat about today’s Fownders guest! Stephen Bienko is the CEO of Fownders, as well as the head track and field coach at Newark Academy, a nationally ranked prep school in New Jersey. His journey from stage one to success has been a complete rollercoaster, and, as a result, he has some incredible insight to share. Stephen was the president of 42 Holdings, which was the largest franchise owner of College Hunks Hauling Junk (which he’ll discuss in more depth in this episode). He spent a decade in sports marketing and athletic management, including having worked with marketing for an Olympic gold medalist. As you can see, he’s experience

First of all, if you haven’t listened to last week’s episode, you should! It explains what we’re doing this month with Fownders Month and gives you a chance to learn more about our collaboration with Fownders. You’ll also hear about the schedule and who we’ll be interviewing each week. You can also find out more on our website. Now, onto our first Fownders guest! Toby Dattolo is a partner at Fownders and mentors a lot of the startups going through the process. He went into business as a logical choice but developed a passion for acting during college. From there, he shifted into fitness and wellness for several years, before discovering that monetary-based goals didn’t bring him happiness. Only then did he shift into entrepreneurship and learn about failure in business. Ultimately this journey led him to Fownders. For full show notes; http://stageonestartup.com/ep028 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s January 2017! Welcome to the new year! As we say goodbye to 2016, we are entering a whole new chapter with a whole new set of goals for Stage One Startup. 2016 was a bad year for some, and an amazing year for others - whatever the case be for you, we want you fired up and ready to make this year, your best year yet. So to kick-start the year of 2017, we have something special in store for you. We bring you Fownders Month. We will be teaming up with Social Impact Accelerator based in Newark, New Jersey - Fownders for the entirety of January. The reason we have decided to collaborate with Fownders is because we share a very similar vision, in the aim to inspire & actually educate and help struggling & new startups get the right tools and plans in place to launch their business idea with a bang and take it in the right direction, whilst avoiding many of the pitfalls that startups face. We thought this would be a great way to deliver to our devoted listeners whilst sharing what the leaders & startups at Fow

Just a reminder: you can still get 20% off the amazing products from ENTRPRNR by going to stageonestartup.com/entrprnr! Today we have a brilliant and inspirational guest: Case Kenny, who we’ve actually mentioned on the podcast before! Case, the founder and editor-in-chief of PRSUIT.com, is also friends and partners in collaboration with Matt Gottesman, who we interviewed a few episodes back. In addition to his work on PRSUIT, which now has around 400 contributors, Case is the co-founder of TREP MEDIA. Impressively -- and inspirationally for those of us who still need to work day jobs -- Case manages to juggle all of this entrepreneurship with a full-time job. For full show notes; http://stageonestartup.com/ep026 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We have a real treat for listeners this week: an incredibly informative (and inspirational!) conversation with Daniel DiPiazza. Daniel is the founder of Rich20Something, which aims to help and inspire people. He’s also known for being a millennial mentor because he teaches young people how to start their freelance businesses. Thanks to his success, Daniel is approaching 220,000 followers on Instagram. His world-class copy shows up regularly in Entrepreneur Magazine and the Huffington Post. He’s also been featured in Fortune and Business Insider. We hope you’ll enjoy all of his incredible insight as much as we have! If you do, his upcoming book Rich20Something: Ditch Your Average Job, Start an Awesome Business, and Create the Life You Love--at Any Age is available for pre-order before its May 2, 2017 release date. Read full show notes; http://stageonestartup.com/ep025 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Now, onto today’s guest. Sai Blackbyrn is known as the “coach’s coach” because of his brilliance in teaching people how to turn their passion for coaching into a profitable business. He has a combined Facebook community of over 5.5 million members, with three Facebook pages in the personal development niche. The largest of these is nearing 2.8 million people and is on track to hit 3 million soon. Thanks to all this success, Sai is one of the world’s most recognized coaches. In this episode, Sai talks about how he reached this level of success. He’s careful to point out that there’s no such thing as overnight success, and provides some great insight (and inspiration) into how important it is to work toward your goals every single day. For full shownotes head on over to: http://stageonestartup.com/ep024 A quick PSA: you can still get 20% off ENTRPRNR’s awesome products by using our exclusive coupon code! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Before we start this week’s guest, here’s a special offer/reminder: ENTRPRNR is offering Stage One Startup listeners a discount of 20% off any products. To redeem the offer, go to stageonestartup.com/entrprnr. And now, onto our fantastic guest of the week! Chris Brogan is the CEO of Owner Media Group, which helps business owners (and people who don’t yet own businesses) grow their skills and abilities with an eye toward business growth. He’s already a New York Times bestselling author of 9 books and is working on a tenth. His biography is so impressive that it almost sounds fictional. Not only has he consulted with huge brands including Disney, Coke, Microsoft, and Google -- he has also interviewed Sir Richard Branson and presented to a princess. Tony Robbins has had Chris on his internet money Masters Series, and Forbes has ranked him and his website in two separate lists. For full shownotes head on over to: http://stageonestartup.com/ep023 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on Stage One Startups, we have an incredible guest -- and, better yet, the privilege of being his first podcast! A few years ago, Taif Haidar was studying international business and working in his uncle’s liquor store. He got fired for focusing on his exams, but used the opportunity to invest in himself and make good use of his free time. When we say he made good use of his time, we’re not kidding. Just two and a half years later, he’s making over 6 figures with Secrets2Success, which he founded on Instagram in 2014. Today, it has reached over 1.3 million highly engaged followers. He’s grown so popular that LL Cool J, Mark Cuban, 2 Chainz, and Tai Lopez have shared his quotes. Today, Taif himself is the one doing the sharing. In this exclusive podcast, he lets us in on tips and tricks for how to get the most out of Instagram. For full show notes head on over to; http://stageonestartup.com/ep022/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We hear a lot about the struggles of up-and-coming entrepreneurs, but it’s refreshing to hear a genuine rags-to-riches story once in a while -- and that’s what we have on this episode! Just a few years ago, Sam Ovens quit his job and started working out of his parents’ garage. Now, he’s worth over $10 million. After spending some time on a private island, he returned to his job as an intern at Vodafone, but his new awareness of the gap between his current lifestyle and his potential lifestyle convinced him to quit and pursue an idea. His first venture was ultimately a complete flop. He flipped that around, though, and used it as a building block for his current success by learning from it and applying those lessons to his next project. Sam’s success isn’t limited to his own story. Through his training, he has helped to create nine millionaire consultants, and 136 six-figure consultants. This desire to help others live lives of freedom is evident also in this conversation, throughout which he openly shares h

It’s episode 20 -- and that means it’s time for a recap episode! While you won’t hear from a guest this time, Brad and Greg more than make up for it with their announcements, questions, and general insight and information. You’ll have to listen to the show for all of the great details, but here are some teasers: you’ll soon have more chances to hear your hosts, and you won’t just be hearing them. On top of that, a recent guest is offering Stage One Startup listeners an exclusive deal on some products designed just for entrepreneurs. We also hear about the valuable insights that our hosts have taken away from previous interviews, and -- perhaps best of all -- listen to all sorts of sound effects. Without further ado, let’s get started! For full shownotes: http://stageonestartup.com/ep-020/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Digital disrupter Matt Gottesman is back by popular demand…and quite simply, because we couldn’t fit everything into part 1 of this episode… Once again, Matt brings a wealth of practical, inspirational and tried-and-tested advice for anyone looking to establish an online presence. Covering everything from getting started on a website, through to choosing which social media platforms to use, this episode continues to provide something of a reference for anyone starting out, or wanting to re-assess their digital presence. For full shownotes for: http://stageonestartup.com/ep019-2/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.