• 699: The Triggers Behind Customer Purchases (with Founder and CEO of Triggers, Leslie Zane)
    Jul 31 2024

    Welcome to an interview with an award-winning marketer, TEDx speaker and authority in harnessing the instinctive mind to accelerate brand and business growth, founder and CEO of Triggers, Leslie Zane.

    In this episode, continuing the discussion from her first interview, we delved deeper into the conventional marketing wisdom and instinctive behaviors that drive people to buy your product.

    Leslie is the author of The Power of Instinct: The New Rules of Persuasion in Business and Life. In her book, Leslie shows that to grow a brand, business, or even a social movement, traditional persuasion tactics fall short. Instead, you must connect to the instinctive mind. And to do this, you need to understand the science of consumer choice and employ techniques that work with a person's brain, not against it.

    Leslie Zane is an award-winning marketer, TEDx speaker and the foremost authority in harnessing the instinctive mind to accelerate brand and business growth.

    In her early career at P&G and Johnson & Johnson, Zane championed the position that what people say is unreliable and that telegraphic cues are more powerful than direct communication, but her unconventional thinking was often disregarded. In 1995, she founded Triggers®, the first brand consulting firm rooted in behavioral science, where she continued to champion the primacy of the instinctive mind in brand decisions.

    With her groundbreaking discoveries in boosting salience, the Brand Connectome® and Growth Triggers®, Zane and her team have delivered over $20 billion in incremental revenue for Fortune 100 clients.

    Today Triggers’ strategies are evident in diverse fields from consumer-packaged goods, health care and insurance to fighting anti-Semitism, showcasing its versatility.

    An alumna of Yale, Harvard Business School and Bain & Company, Zane is a recipient of the Congressional Women of Distinction and the Ogilvy Award. In 2021, she coined the term “Covid-stasis” forecasting the pandemic’s lasting psychological and behavioral effects. Zane has been published in prestigious publications including Knowledge@Wharton, Harvard Business Review, World Economic Forum, Newsweek and Ad Age. Zane is a board member of El Centro Hispano, the leading non-profit empowering Hispanic immigrants with skills to thrive in the United States.

    Get The Power of Instinct here: https://rb.gy/l3ofdo

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    42 mins
  • 698: Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future (with co-founder of FLOODGATE, Mike Maples, Jr)
    Jul 29 2024

    Welcome to an interview with the author of Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future, Mike Maples, Jr. In this book, Maples and coauthor Peter Ziebelman set out to discover the hidden forces that drive extraordinary start-up success. Pattern-breaking success, they reveal, demands a different mindset and actions to harness developments others miss or that may, at first, seem crazy.

    Mike Maples, Jr is an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and the co-founder of FLOODGATE, a leading seed stage fund in Silicon Valley that invested in companies like Twitter, Twitch, Okta, and Outreach at the very beginning of their startup journeys.

    An eight-time member of the Forbes Midas List of Top Venture Capital investors, he was one of the pioneers of the seed investing movement, which started in the mid-2000s and now is a mainstream part of startup funding.

    Get Pattern Breakers here: https://rb.gy/z4l4i7

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    50 mins
  • 697: How to Quickly Build a 500k+ Social Media Following (with Eric Cogorno)
    Jul 24 2024

    Welcome to an interview with golf coach, entrepreneur, and personal development enthusiast Eric Cogorno. In this episode, Eric shares the most effective tips and techniques that he uses to grow his business and followers.

    Eric took his business from $80K to $1.5 million revenue a year -- in less than five years. He has grown an audience of 500K+ followers (and 3-5 million views every month) from zero. All the while, he decreased his work time from 60 hours a week to 10-15 hours!

    In 2017, Eric Cogorno took to YouTube the experience he gleaned from giving more than 20,000 in-person golf lessons. His distinct style of clear language and simplified concepts have attracted close to 400,000 followers across his channels and many millions of view from all across the globe. He’s on a mission to make world-class golf instruction available to everyone and, through the process, create the biggest and best online golf school in the world.

    Born and raised in the Lehigh Valley, PA, Eric was a scratch golfer by the age of 15. He golfed through high school and at Lehigh University. He has been featured on Forbes.com and was voted as a Golf Digest Best in State Teacher.

    Eric is a golf teaching professional who took his business from $80K/year teaching one-on-one lessons by the hour to a multimillion dollar golf instruction brand utilizing these same skills (and strategies). In the process, he was able to also transform his entire lifestyle – from working on the lesson tee 7 full days a week, to having freedom to work when/where he chooses – splitting his time between Pennsylvania and Florida.

    Learn more about Eric Cogorno Golf here: https://www.youtube.com/c/ericcogornogolf

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    52 mins
  • 696: Intentionality: A Groundbreaking Guide to Breath, Consciousness, and Radical Self-Transformation (with Finnian Kelly)
    Jul 22 2024

    Welcome to an interview with the author of Intentionality: A Groundbreaking Guide to Breath, Consciousness, and Radical Self-Transformation, Finnian Kelly. In this book, Finnian Kelly shares his step-by-step process for manifesting Intentionality into success. Through combining both scientific and spiritual principles, Finnian leads you through the five key intentions, including actionable steps and targeted breathing exercises you can incorporate into your everyday life.

    Finnian Kelly is the founder of Intentionality Inc., a sought-after speaker and high-performance coach, and a master breathwork facilitator. He helps world-changing leaders implement his Intentionality® methodology to find new levels of fulfillment and growth in their creative endeavors, relationships, and overall well-being. As a successful entrepreneur and a retired officer in the Australian military, Finnian has been dubbed "the Business Mystic'' because of his unique ability to awaken consciousness in business and inspire CEOs and leadership teams to have a more expansive human experience.

    Get Finnian’s book here: https://www.intentionality.com/

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    53 mins
  • 695: Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times (with Ex McKinsey and LBS lecturer, Dr. Rebecca Homkes)
    Jul 17 2024

    Welcome to an interview with the author of Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times, Dr. Rebecca Homkes.

    How would you stabilize your business to withstand and grow through market shocks, reset your strategy to take account of new realities and thrive through uncertainty?

    Survive, Reset, Thrive is a playbook for leaders derived from the author's first-hand experience working with executive teams across industries from software, technology, retail, fashion, and construction through to manufacturing. Drawing from over a decade of rich real-world experience, the author illustrates how to navigate the most complex strategic situations with a simple, executable approach.

    Rebecca Homkes is a high-growth strategy specialist and CEO and executive advisor. She is a Lecturer at The London Business School, Faculty at Duke Corporate Executive Education, Advisor and Faculty at the Boston Consulting Group focused on AI and Climate and Sustainability, and a former fellow at the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance. A global keynote speaker and recognized thought leader, she is also the global Faculty Director of the Active Learning Program with the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), leads several fintech accelerators, and serves on the boards of many high-growth companies. She earned her doctorate at the London School of Economics as a Marshall Scholar and is now based in Miami, the Bay Area, and London, UK.

    Get Rebecca’s book here: https://rb.gy/aq85ee

    Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times

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    48 mins
  • 694: How to Build a "People-First" Culture (with Unicorn Founder and CEO of One Planet Group, Payam Zamani)
    Jul 15 2024

    Welcome to an interview with the author of Crossing the Desert: The Power of Embracing Life's Difficult Journeys, Payam Zamani.

    In this episode, Payam shares the most important lessons he learned from building a record-breaking billion-dollar IPO called AutoWeb, and how it fell apart. He took those early lessons and created his current company, One Planet Group, with the “people-first” culture he wanted all along for AutoWeb. As a result, One Planet Group’s success has allowed Payam to reacquire AutoWeb and bring it back to profitability.

    In Payam’s book, Crossing the Desert, readers take an intimate look at how the paths we choose, the values we embrace, and the systems we decide to participate in (or not) can make or break us, not only financially, but spiritually. Payam’s story is a timely reminder that enduring and embracing life’s most difficult journeys can lead us to a brighter future—not only for ourselves, but for the people around us, and even the world.

    Payam Zamani is an entrepreneur, investor, and the founder of One Planet Group, a closely held private equity firm that owns a suite of online technology and media businesses.

    Born in Iran, Zamani was forced to flee at the age of 16 due to his religious beliefs as a Baha’i. He was offered asylum in the United States in 1988, settling in the San Francisco Bay Area. Upon graduation from the University of California, Davis, he and his brother founded AutoWeb, one of the first online car marketplaces, which they took public in 1999.

    Since then, he has built and currently owns multiple technology and media businesses, has invested in more than 50 companies, and is striving to redefine capitalism in an attempt to elevate business to serve humanity. He has been named the “Best CEO for Diversity,” is the recipient of Tahirih Justice Center’s Hope Award, and received an Award of Distinction from UC Davis in 2018. Zamani and his wife, Gouya, have two daughters, Sophia and Ella.

    Get Crossing the Desert here: https://rb.gy/pio8ht

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    48 mins
  • 693: Facts, Data, and Evidence: Knowing What to Trust or Can We Really Trust Evidence? (with Professor of Finance at London Business School, Alex Edmans)
    Jul 10 2024

    Welcome to an interview with the author of May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases―And What We Can Do about It, Alex Edmans. In this book, renowned economist Alex Edmans teaches us how to separate fact from fiction. Using colorful examples, he highlights the biases that cause us to mistake statements for facts, facts for data, data for evidence, and evidence for proof.

    Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School and an expert in the use and misuse of data and evidence. He has given the TED talk What to Trust in a Post-Truth World with 2 million views, spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and testified in the UK Parliament.

    Alex served as Managing Editor of the Review of Finance, the leading academic finance journal in Europe. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Harvard Business Review, and been interviewed by Bloomberg, BBC, CNBC, CNN, ESPN, Fox, ITV, NPR, Reuters, Sky News, and Sky Sports. He was previously a tenured professor at Wharton and an investment banker at Morgan Stanley.

    Alex’s first book, Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit, was featured in the Financial Times Best Business Books of 2020 and has been translated into nine languages. Alex was named Professor of the Year by Poets & Quants in 2021 and won 25 teaching awards at LBS and Wharton. Alex has a BA from Oxford and a PhD from MIT as a Fulbright Scholar, and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

    Get May Contain Lies here: https://maycontainlies.com/

    Learn more about Alex Edmans here: https://alexedmans.com/

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    49 mins
  • 692: Building an AI Meeting Assistant in Silicon Valley (with Co-Founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, Krish Ramineni)
    Jul 8 2024

    Welcome to an interview with the CEO of Fireflies.ai, Krish Rameni. In this episode, Krish took us back to the early days of starting their company, Fireflies.ai, and how they stayed motivated despite the challenges. He shared valuable advice from the lessons he learned throughout his career that will be useful for individuals who are starting their careers or planning to transition into the world of startups.

    Krish Ramineni is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, an AI meeting assistant that transcribes, summarizes, and analyzes meetings. Named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, Krish graduated from UPenn. He was one of the youngest Product Managers at Microsoft, leading projects in customer voice and growth. He has guest lectured at Stanford on machine learning and holds patents in workflow automation. Krish is a thought leader in SaaS/AI and an active startup advisor.

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    40 mins