Entrepreneur Uncovered

Meet Cory Damon. He, together with his partners Tim Bartlett and Steven Ma, founded The Change Element which seeks to help entrepreneurs and leaders achieve success through holistic coaching, consulting and training. Cory specializes in working with entrepreneurs in helps them to identify and understand their individual value and then creating and maintaining consistent daily routines and habits that have been proven to lead to change. As entrepreneurs, time management can quickly become friend or foe. By taking a holistic approach to an entrepreneur’s entire day, Cory and his team have discovered that true change can occur to unlock our potential. In this episode, Cory speaks of his own entrepreneurial journey as shares many candid moments on discovering his own potential. For additional content and episode extras, visit Entrepreneur Uncovered Contact: TheChangeElement.com Cory's Personal Site: CoryDamon.Me Social Media:  Facebook Twitter: @CoryDamon LinkedIn: CoryDamon  

Meet Octavia Gilmore, founder and Chief Creative Officer of Creative Juice – a boutique creative agency located in Atlanta, GA that specializes in helping businesses clearly communicate their brand identity through creative design and packaging. Octavia has always had an entrepreneurial spirit and in this episode you will hear how, through perseverance and inspiration, Octavia followed her passion and is now helping many others to more aptly express their brand identities through the combined creativity of herself and her team. On her website, itscreativejuice.com you will find words and phrases such as: “small but mighty;” “super powers;” and “juicers” – a moniker that each member of Octavia’s team likes to be referred to as. It is immediately apparent from the first time you visit her website that she and her team are passionate about their work. Learn how Octavia was initially inspired as she shares great insight throughout the episode on being a young

Meet Brandon Adams, an “entrepreneur’s entrepreneur.” After graduating from Iowa State University in 2012, Brandon developed Arctic Stick which is a small cylindrical plastic stick that once frozen, can fit inside virtually any beverage container and has been proven to keep beverages colder, longer. As his business grew, he turned to crowd-funding to raise additional capital through multiple donors throughout the world. From his experience, Brandon authored Keys to the Crowd which has now become the definitive guide to crowd funding and Brandon has now become largely sought after to help other entrepreneurs launch successful crowd-funding campaigns of their own. Brandon is also founder and host of University of Young Entrepreneurs, an energetic podcast geared towards any entrepreneur who is young as heart who is seeking actionable takeaways that they can incorporate into their own entrepreneurial ventures. Brandon has been featured in notable publications such as USA Today and Inventor&rsquo

Meet Matthew Ferrara. Philosopher.  Speaker. Writer. Photographer. Matthew travels the world seeking unique personal experience and perspective and then in turn sharing those insights in a fascinating way through stories that connect history, industry, technology and people. When asked, Matthew views his mission as inspiring others in a noble way. He does so through a combination of speaking, photography and writing, all of which can be found on his website at: MatthewFerrara.com. At Matthew’s core philosophy, he believes that focusing on strengthening individual relationships and creating unique, positive customer experience for every single customer will lead to a much more successful venture as well as more meaningful living. He finds significant correlation through historical examples and great minds of past centuries that is still highly applicable to today’s challenges in any individual circumstance, organization or industry.    To access episode bonus content and see lin

Meet Benj Miller, Founder of Syrup Marketing where his mission is to connect ideas, systems, people and resources to build amazing organizations. Just as the name suggests, Benj focuses on building “brand stickiness” by helping core stakeholders of a particular company to understand (and perhaps even discover) the core fundamentals and identity of their brand and then marketing to their true customers. Benj is also co-founder of two additional companies: Code Smith Development – an agile development team that can bring big ideas to life and Transcend CRE – A Commercial Real Estate Brokerage that utilizes a concierge approach in designing and preparing applicable workspaces that reflect the culture of the business. In this episode Benj shares his personal story of his own personal journey of discovering his own identity at its core and building his life around that by staying true to who he is. He gives outstanding and poignant advice for anyone aspiring to

     Meet Shantel Khleif, founder of Imagine Media Consulting based in Atlanta, Georgia.  Shantel founded her company based on a “light bulb moment” in which a trip into a local Atlanta Pie Shop aptly named: The Pie Shop; sparked an idea that has turned into a full fledged, growing business.  Having recently moved Chicago, Shantel was initially seeking to expand her wedding business into the Atlanta market.  As an important aside, serving pie instead of cake at weddings has become a growing trend and Shantel was seeking a boutique pie shop to work with and of course, to try the pie.       Despite the incredible tasting pie, Shantel noticed that the owner had not done anything to justly advertise her amazing pies, especially on social media.  Shantel asked if she could help the owner communicate her brand in a different way so that other people could discover the pies. Almost overnight, Shantel’s social media experiment took off and Imagi

Meet Matt Beall, Founder of Hawai'i Life - a different kind of residential real estate brokerage serving the Hawaiian islands of Kauai, Maui, Oahu and the Big Island. Hawai'i Life was founded in the heart of the recession in 2008 with a singular focus on incorporating a clean, designer marketing approach together with the tenets of what is most important to Hawaiians - building lasting relationships. In this episode, Matt shares the importance of building a brand focused on core values and culture. The Hawai'i Life brand has grown to embody the very essence of its name and Matt explains how all people, especially entrepreneurs, can live a "Hawai'i Life" by keeping focused on  life-style equity and "be expressed in whatever your motivation and your creativity and your self expression" may be. To see interview extras and exclusives, visit: bit.ly/1JI4yy0 CONTACT  Twitter - @MattBeall LinkedIn - HawaiiLife Instagram - MGBeall  HawaiiLife.com

Meet Brett Hagler, Co-Founder and CEO of New Story; a non-profit charity organization that is seeking to build sustainable communities within the developing nations.  New Story's concept is simple and powerful: Families experiencing life-threatening homelessness are identified and introduced to New Story. A picture of the family is taken and posted on NewStoryCharity.org together with a bio about their background, interests and talents. Donors fund each individual home through a crowd-sourcing campaign (either individually or through multiple donors) New Story's local Partner, Mission of Hope Haiti  builds the home Upon completion, a video is taken of the family moving into the home and shared with donors... thus creating a "New Story" for the family to rebuild their lives. Brett shares the experience that moved him to create New Story together with his partners and also provides sound and actionable advice to any aspiring entrepreneur looking to create their own story in

Meet Josh Dorkin, Founder of Bigger Pockets, a online real estate investment networking and information resource platform for real estate professionals, investors, homeowners and any one else really who is interested in learning how to safely invest in real estate.  Josh founded Bigger Pockets on one guiding principle - Trust. He wanted to create a community of real estate professionals and investors that could openly share and communicate ideas without the advent of paying large fees. In addition, he wanted to create a safe community of professionals and beginners a like who could educate themselves through active forums, relevant and accessible information and free tools.  Bigger Pockets has now grown to over 350,000 members, has over 1,200,000 unique monthly visitors as of June 2015, and has over 1,400,000 forum posts and tens of thousands of articles all geared towards real estate investment education. Josh additionally co-hosts a podcast, simply named The Bigger Pockets Podcast w

James Nuttall, one of four original founders of the Indian beverage company, Hector Beverages, initially sought out to compete against RedBull by creating a lower cost, yet premium quality energy drink called Tzinga (pronounced Zeen-ga) which originally debuted as a natural lemon mint flavor.  After repeated momentum shifts and failed attempts to significantly break into the market, the partners took a different direction and created "functional drinks" made of traditional flavors of cultural favorites that promote immunity, digestion, health restoration, relaxation and the like under the brand name: PaperBoat Drinks. Their idea took off and just last year, PaperBoat Drinks sold and distributed over 12,000,000 drink pouches. James explains how after graduating from Wharton Business School with his MBA and having a Bachelors of Science in Chemical Engineering from BYU, he turned down an employment offer from Bain and Company and moved his young family to India to pu

Meet Travis Johnson - Entrepreneur, Comedian, Speaker.  Among his many ventures, Travis founded his company, Learn2Win in which he trains and motivates entrepreneurs to establish and work towards their goals, change their mindsets and present themselves and their ideas more effectively. Travis himself is an accomplished speaker and comedian and in this episode he shares brutal insight on his own personal journey as an entrepreneur and how he transformed one of the worst days in his life into inspiring others.  Travis also gives step by step advice on how to deliver a great speech and effectively present a concept or idea.   Visit Travis at: http://travisPHX.com On Instagram: TravisPHX   To see interview highlights and extras, go to: Entrepreneur Uncovered 

Meet 24 year-old entrepreneur, Sam Forline. Sam attended college originally for soccer and discovered that he had a real knack for Chemistry and Math. He decided that he wanted to become a doctor, but reality struck when Sam realized the amount of time and debt that he would accrue over the course of his studies in pursuing that profession so he dropped out of school all together. Falling back on soccer, he coached other soccer players to make ends meet as he figured out what he wanted to do with his life. Through significant trials and setbacks, Sam landed on doing odd jobs for people around their yards when suddenly an idea struck - Sam would go on to create an enterprise level network of college students looking for work to clean yards, remove trees, mow lawns, wees gardens, shovel snow, etc. called Blue Collar Scholars. The business became (and is) so successful around greater Washington D.C. that Sam self-funded a software development company called Scholar Era, that is a consortium of app developer

Meet Will Caldwell, Co-Founder of Dizzle; columnist for Entrepreneur Media and writer for Elite Daily. In this episode, Will candidly and humbly shares his story of being an entrepreneur including lessons learned from his first company ending poorly to his mounting success with Dizzle - an app exclusively designed for real estate professionals and organizations that empowers them to become local experts within their respective communities by creating a trusted network of local vendors and professional services that can be shared with new home owners. Examples include: Insurance Agencies, Plumbers, Contractors, Landscapers, Pool Professionals, Doggie Day Care, Hair Stylists, etc.  

Meet Payton LaCivita: Entrepreneur, Restauranteur, and co-founder of MiaBella - a Traditional Balsamic Vinegar or in Italian, 'Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale' from Modena Italy. MiaBella is DOP certified (Denomicanzione di Origine Protetta) as being a true, traditional balsamic as each 8.5 ounce bottle contains only one ingredient - grape must, resulting from the reduction of Trebbiano grapes aged in wooden barrels over time. Each bottle of MiaBella is hand-signed and numbered and is treated with tremendous care. Perhaps that is Payton's trademark, but MiaBella is unique in that it is sweet, thick and has a robust, full flavor. It has been awarded as the #1 Best Seller Balsamic Vinegar on Amazon.  In this episode, Payton shares his experience in being a part of his family-owned restaurant, Cogburn's located in Gilbert and Mesa, Arizona - a local neighborhood bar known for its hot wings,  as well as his passion for launching MiaBella. You will learn about the difference between

Meet Co-Founder of Student-Tutor, Todd VanDuzer, a private in-home tutoring organization that has a genuine desire to help students "Spark Bright Futures." Together with his partner, Laura Petersen, Student-Tutor is proving to help students achieve substantially better results through time-tested principles of setting, reviewing and being held accountable to their goals. Throughout his life, Todd has found success through following "SMART Goals", that are: Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic, and Time-based.  In seeking to change his own life, Todd began holding himself accountable to personal goals that he set through writing them down and regularly reviewing them.  Not even five years later from doing so, he has earned over $85,000 in scholarships to put towards his schooling, has visited over 33 countries, took up rock climbing where he has frequently summited over 2,000 ft. cliff faces and even found himself 3,200 feet in mid-air, tethered to a highline between two fjord's in Norway and f

Meet Greg Rudolph, Founder and CEO of Board Blazers - an LED underglow lighting system for Skateboards, Longboards or Scooters. Greg started the company after having had a chance encounter on campus at Arizona State University one evening when he happened upon an excited skateboarder who had duct-taped Christmas lights to the bottom of his skateboard. The skateboarder was so excited in fact that he purposely stopped to show Greg, a complete stranger to him, his novel idea. Greg was so impacted by the chance encounter in terms of how cool it really looked at night that he immediately began researching more permanent methods, other than duct tape, (although some would argue that duct tape is in fact permanent), to reproduce the effect. Greg settled on super durable LED lighting and had many skateboarders test his product and was satisfied that none had to sacrifice their tricks such as flips, slides or grinds in order to light their boards at night. Board Blazers can be purchased on Amazon or BoardBlazers.

Jake Pfeiffer, Founder and CEO of EXP Trips based out of Tempe, Arizona has created a business out of simplifying student group travel for large student organization events around the country.  EXP Trips specializes in planning, organizing, coordinating and orchestrating well executed trips for large student organization events such as: DECA, FBLA, FCCLA, HOSA, Skills USA and many more.  In this episode, Jake shares group travel tips and tricks and expounds upon his experience in launching his company and shares direct insight for aspiring entrepreneurs that is candid and profound. He has always associated himself with the proverbial story of "the underdog" and Jake shares how his challenges during the early years of his business had a profound impact on figuring out the right formula for success.    Visit EXPTrips View Trip Leader App Read select interview highlights and extras of the interview at Entrepreneneur Uncovered, including Rudyard Kiplings Poem, "If" Visit EX

Listen to NeatCheeks Founders, Danielle Stangler and Julia Rossi share their experience on launching an entirely new product within the baby wipe industry.  Several years ago, Danielle was out to dinner with her family and needed to wipe her 18- month-old daughter's face after being covered in macaroni. Not wanting to create a scene because her daughter particularly hated having her face wiped, she asked her husband to dip his napkin in his drink instead of using a baby wipe.  Upon wiping her daugter's face, she joyously exclaimed "Nummy, Nummy!"  This is not the reaction that Danielle had anticipated.  Come to find out, Danielle's husband had dipped his napkin in lemonade and suddenly an idea struck!! Danielle quickly recruited her friend, Julia Rossi, a former work colleague and new Mom to launch her new found idea.  Danielle and Julia set out to create the industry's first ever, flavored face wipe with the tag line:  "Wipe on a Smile." Danielle and Julia went through multiple

Shawn Nelson, founder of LoveSac shares his uncanny story of turning a simple idea, practically on a whim, into a international company that is set to change the way most people think about family and TV room furniture alltogether. Shawn shares how he invented the very first LoveSac in 1995 by seeking to build the world's largest bean bag chair out of his living room. In discovering that filling up a massive fabric, self-made "bean bag cover" with beads was going to take him a long time coupled with a lot of trips to the store on a limited teenage budget, he instead began chopping up old foam sleeping bag mattresses to fill the space.  Upon completion, a surprisingly comfortable discovery was made. Learn how Shawn turned his discovery into a national retail business frought with twists and turns along the way. Shawn also shares his experience in 2005 in winning Richard's Branson's "The Rebel Billionaire" as well as what he learned while working so closely with Richard while briefly serving

Parker MacDonell, Managing Director of the Ohio Tech Angel Funds (OTAF), explains how to appropriately prepare and position yourself or your company as a candidate for funding by an Angel Investor.  OTAF was founded in 2004 and is comprised of 340 angel investors who have invested approximately $13.6M dollars in close to 50 different companies through four funds. OTAF invests only in Ohio-based companies within the IT, Advanced Materials and Life Sciences industry sectors.  In the episode, Parker explains the history of angel investing and gives direct insight on when to consider angel funding.  He also shares the do's and don'ts of presenting your product or service. The conversation is highly informative and educational for any entrepreneur seeking funding.  Link to Ohio Tech Angel Funds  Link to Angel Capital Association Link to Podcast Notes Page for Resource Extras Share on FaceBook Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn