Action and Ambition

Personal Development Company With Over 200k Clients in Over 83 Countries

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Phillip Lanos.

Calvin Coyles is the CEO and Founder of WILD Success, A global Coaching and Personal development company with over 200k clients in 83 countries. For the past decade, he’s helped people live life on their terms through his signature “WILD Method.” He’s an international speaker, 3x best-selling author, and self-made multimillionaire.

You’re going to love this episode. Let’s get to it!

How did Calvin get to where he is now? (1:43)

• Calvin does not believe himself to be a great coach. He does, however, think himself a good speaker and trainer, but he does not have enough patience for coaching. Traditionally coaching is about your clients telling you about their problems, and then the coach asks a lot of questions to help their clients figure out the answer. 
• Calvin likes to tell people the answer immediately. He is impatient like that, but he knew from an early age that he wanted to do something that would make a difference in the world. At the time, he did not know what that difference was. 
• Calvin did a lot of charity and non-profit work, and while he was doing that, he went through a period of studying to be inactive for five suggests. He went on to a specialist drama school, where he was selected out of a few hundred kids to participate in the program. 
• He says his school was quite similar to the one in the TV Show Glee. Calvin could not sing or dance, but he could act, and even once he realized he did not want to be an actor, he knew he could use the tools he would gain through the program. After that, he got into a small business, and he had an incredible opportunity to work for a man called Christopher Howard, who was the top dog in life coaching at the time. 
• Tony Robbins would get 1,000 people in a seminar, Chris would have 9,000. Chris lost everything and decided to rebuild his life after moving to Bali. Out of the blue, Calvin managed to jump on a webinar that showcased Chris’s presentation about his $9,000 speaker program.
• Calvin did not have any money at the time, but he knew how to build a team. He had a non-profit organization of about 120 people in his final year at university. Calvin reached out to Chris and told him that he could not pay him, but he could help him build his team. He told Chris he would work for him for free for a month, and then Chris would give him the training program for free. 

Which things did Calvin find worked for him? (5:45)

• He remembers the experience of coming back from working for Chris the most vividly. He spent six months working for Chris, and he went from not knowing the guy to being his right-hand man. 
• Calvin started as Chris’ head trainer to then going through, realizing that he wanted to do the process himself. Calvin knew he could make money for Chris, but it was like selling Tony Robbins. They were selling themselves. 
• Calvin decided to see if he could back himself. He thinks this is a strong point for audience members. He would hope anyone listening to Action & Ambition is willing to put something on the line to make their ambitions happen. 
• When Calvin was looking at moving back to Perth, which is where he is now, his fear was not that he would fail but would never even manage to get started. He felt like he would come back with this fantastic six months of experience and just return to a normal 9-5 job. 
• He felt like the moment would pass him by, and so on his final day in Bali, ready to fly back to Australia, he realized that he needed to find a way to commit himself to take action. He says that a lot of being successful comes from your motivation to be 

How has Calvin’s partner been integral to his success? (13:11)

• Calvin says that he has been a blessed man. He has two wonderful women in his life. His first partner he was with from when he was 16 to 26. He says that relationship was pivotal for him because she did not believe in Calvin going over to work for Chris. 
• Calvin left his fiancé to go work for six months for free, so it was not just about the finances. He was leaving his family. When he returned, they were able to build something special together. 
• The relationship ended up not working out, and it finished the way they wanted it to. She has a beautiful life, and they are still in each other’s lives. Calvin believes if you focus on being of service to the universe, you will attract the right people. 
• Calvin’s first-ever client introduced Calvin to his brother Jason who is now his dearest friend. Jason has been working with Calvin for eight years currently, and Kim works in the office next door to them and works with them. 
• A few years ago, Calvin ended up meeting their sister, and two years ago, they got married in the Maldives. Calvin is delighted t6o be a part of their fantastic family and feels like they have all grown into bigger and better humans as a whole. 

WILD Success

WILD Success is one of Australia's leading personal growth companies. The world needs more people like you. People who want more in life and who are ready to grow and pursue their dreams! And we are here to help facilitate that.

Resources

Connect with Calvin: LinkedIn

WILD Success: Website

Connect with Phil: LinkedIn

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition. Today's guests are Knowledgehook's cofounders, Travis Ratnam and Qamar Qureshi.

Knowledgehook, is a leading educational technology company, that empowers hundreds of thousands of teachers and parents to collaboratively support the mathematics learning journey of millions of students worldwide.

Winner of Google’s Game Changer Award and named Top Disruptor by BNN, its platform analyses student understanding through engaging assessments, providing real-time personalized solutions to close learning gaps between classroom teaching and at-home learning.

Designed by leading numeracy and research experts, Knowledgehook’s Instructional Guidance System is known for reinventing how online technology supports education and educators while inspiring the problem solvers of tomorrow.

You're going to love this episode!

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition.

Today's guest is Oren Schneider. He is the CEO of CIRCA, the leading global buyer of pre-owned high-end jewelry and watches. He also co-founded Adama Partners, an operational venture firm focused on the global gem and jewelry industry. Among Adama’s business interests are Blue Nile, the world’s largest e-commerce engagement ring retailer. Prior to co-founding Adama Partners, Mr. Schneider worked at Bain & Company where he focused on private equity due diligence engagements in the internet, telecom, media, and financial institution industries. Prior to Bain & Company, Mr. Schneider co-founded and was EVP of Business Development for Infra-Com Technologies, a fabless wireless chip company. Mr. Schneider holds an MBA from Columbia University Business School and an LLB, BA in Economics from Tel Aviv University.

You're going to love this episode!

Welcome to another episode of Action and Ambition. Today's guest is Andrew L. Nehlig, the founder of Sauna House. He is an entrepreneur who is focused on increasing the mental and physical well-being of humans through sauna, cold therapy, breathwork, meditation and technology detoxing experiences. His life totally changed after he got sober and tried cold immersion for the first time. Since then, he's been inspired to make preventative wellness more accessible to the general public by creating community wellness spaces and online resources. You're going to love this episode.

Welcome to another episode of Action and Ambition. Today's guest is Alex Pollak. He is the CEO and President of ParaDocs Worldwide Inc a global medical company that provides on-site medical services for events and venues. Most recently ParaDocs has shifted focus to help businesses and events return safely by providing covid compliance, health screenings, and covid testing. Alex is an NYC paramedic, holds an MBA in Finance and International Business, and is a Lean Six Sigma BlackBelt. You're going to love this episode.

Welcome to another episode of Action and Ambition. Today's guest is Anna Banicevic.

Anna Banicevic is the CEO and Co-Founder of Zizoo, the leading boat holiday platform, offering over 35,000 boats across more than 500 destinations worldwide.Anna Banicevic is the CEO and Co-Founder of Zizoo, the leading boat holiday platform, offering over 35,000 boats across more than 500 destinations worldwide

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Phillip Lanos.

Trinny Woodall, founder and CEO of the disruptive beauty brand Trinny London has had a successful twenty-year career in the media. She established herself as a fashion advisor, initially as a columnist for The Daily Telegraph, and later as a co-host for What Not to Wear and The Trinny and Susannah makeover shows, filmed across 20 countries. Trinny has spent her career helping people find their most flattering styles, the best skincare, and perfectly matched, foolproof makeup. In 2017, equipped with her unique idea of portable stackable premium makeup, she founded the highly successful beauty brand Trinny London.

You’re going to love this episode. Let’s get to it!

What can someone do to draft a potential workshop or webpage of what they could be? How do they set themselves apart from the rest? (3:12)

• For Trinny, it is easy to think back retrospectively and think what the consistent thing that always brought her joy was. Looking back now, she knows that when she was much younger, she went to boarding school. 
• She stayed at boarding school a lot of the weekends with a few of the other girls, so she had a kind of connection to them, and she loved giving her friends makeovers. She loved the feeling of it. 
• She lived in Germany at the time, and her boarding school was in France. She would bring back slightly unusual clothing that wasn’t in England then, and she liked doing that. As a child, she found it hard to form friendships, and this was the language she had learned that allowed her to make somebody else think. 
• Trinny is happy to see training because she had thought a lot about the imposter syndrome where you feel there is an element you don’t believe you are good enough in. She has been through that personally where she did not think she was good enough in terms of addiction and recovery. 
• She has been through that whole journey. When she was much younger, before starting that war and certainty manifested in partying too much, she did have a sort of joy she felt while giving her friends makeovers. 
• Trinny is the youngest of six kids. Her father was a banker, and there was a part of her that thought she should be in finance, but she was not smart enough to go to college. She had had a dream of going to Harvard, but her imposter syndrome had kicked in and made her believe she was not good enough to even go to university. And so Trinny became entrepreneurial. She started her first business in high school. 

How does Trinny manage her time? (9:15)

• It did not happen overnight for Trinny. At the very beginning, she went from doing a whole bunch of mixed jobs to burning out. In 2016 she realized what she wanted to do was help women, so by a lucky break, she got a column in a paper similar to the New York Times, and she did that for seven years. 
• That position gave her access to about 2 million people who choose to read her column, so it was a platform. She found a platform similar to today’s social media following platforms. She built up her audience. 
• She achieved a fantastic career. She sold 3 million books from the 11 that she wrote, and she even had an interview about one of her books on the Oprah Show, where it went on to become a New York Bestseller. 
• She had an incredible ten years of significant growth and success. She then scaled out, and she got overheads, and there was no apathy in the market she was in, and lots of people started to pop up who was doing the same thing she was, so she was forced to reinvent herself and expand what she was doing. 
• Thinking back on the last 15 years and what she had been doing, Trinn y felt a pull towards business. She tried to do online business in 1999, and she raised $7 million in three months from Whitney and Atlanta’s ventures that gave her an early B fund. 
• She went to the market with the concept, which was partial to women to get personalization, but it was not for a path of profit. There was no way that Trinny could commercialize that. It always went back to the high street or shopping mall, so it felt like it would never work. 
• Trinny had amassed by that time information on 200,000 women, which was an unbelievable data capture for that time, and she always had a sense of personalization. When Trinny did makeup shows, all the women would notice the makeup first, and Trinny loved makeup, but she had never been a professional makeup artist. She decided to give it a try. 

What is next for Trinny? (30:14)

• Trinny is moving into the American market. At least 10% of their customers are in the US, while 59% are in the UK and about 17% in Australia, and the rest are scattered across the world. 
• She would like to get her US market up to 25%, so that is her goal that is coming up. They have about seven to eight months to complete it, and they have bought a PR company onboard that thinks differently to help them achieve this goal. 
• Trinny wants to gently transition into using Facebook ads and other means of advertisement, and she believes there is an art to advertising like this. It needs to capture your audience’s attention while being subtle enough to think it is someone they are already following that caused them to receive the ad. 
• They have used a lot of subtlety while building the brand, and she states that 52% of it is organic, and 48% of it is paid. It is an essential ratio to distinguish for Trinny. A few years ago, many brands were doing the blitzkrieg method of growth, and they have seen a few of these companies succeed. 
• Trinny always felt something strange about that way of growth because of its quick, sound development. You suddenly have a massive amount of customers, and you don’t know where else to go. You end up being a one-trick pony, and these companies do not survive because they do not have adaptability in the long run. 

Trinny London

Trinny London is the ultimately comfortable, modern, do-it-everywhere, premium beauty brand. Cream-based, versatile products are personalized to you.

Resources

Connect with Trinny: LinkedIn

Trinny London: Website

Connect with Phil: LinkedIn

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Phillip Lanos.

Danelle Delgado is an entrepreneur and focused on developing exceptional entrepreneurs. As the owner of Life Intended, which delivers world-class training designed to equip driven individuals with tools to take action & attain the results they desire in life, business & beyond, she helps people raise the bar and achieve their most significant potential monetary equivalent.

You’re going to love this episode. Let’s get to it!

What were the lessons that Danelle learned on the hero’s journey? (2:10)

• Every little girl has those incredible dreams of making a list and checking things off of it. They have a plan that everything will be unique, and she truly believes she would be married, have kids, and the dog with the house and the holidays. 
• They all dream of all these fantastic things, and one tiny decision can change all of that, and in a moment, Danelle went from this joy tornado to an outraged and broken person who was truly alone. 
• It was in that moment that Danelle learned that it is not circumstance that gives you joy, it is what is on the inside of yourself, and she had to start a new journey to finding joy alone, rather than finding it in what she achieved or did.
• It was during this worst spot of her life to writing down gratitude every single day of her life, breath, health, and anything else she could do within a day. It broke it down into the simplest form of existence, and she learned the only thing to choose how you perceive what is happening to you because life will keep happening. 
• She would never be as entitled as she is to make a difference in the world if it hadn’t been for her broken downstate at her most substantial failures. It was during those moments that she realized that joy is a choice you make every single day, and you can choose how strongly the pain affects you, but you can still learn from the aches and failures. 

Is Danelle’s career what she always wanted to do? (6:27)

• Danelle says no, she had always wanted to be an astronaut and did go and study science. She also wanted to be a heart surgeon, and she went to nursing school and even taught science and health at some point. 
• She decided that she wanted to have a family, which shifted her ideals, and when she got a divorce, she got sick too, and that moved everything for her once again when life stopped what she wanted to achieve or do. 
• Her life became about survival and creating provision for her children, and so she jumped into where she could earn enough to sustain herself and her kids. She entered a market section where no one could tell her worth. 
• She could work more hours than anyone and earn more than them in that regard, which was in sales. She was terrible at sales, and her mentorship and bosses told her that sales were not for her, which spurred Danelle to show them just how much it was for her. 
• She was a mama bear determined not to go hungry. Danelle does not blame or judge anyone when she divorced her family, even though they were disappointed in her. She knew it was her against herself and that if she put her mind to it, she could succeed in her goals, and what she found has turned out to be pretty amazing. 

Did Danelle experience the feeling of outgrowing her mentors at some point? (8:52)

• She went through stages of outgrowing her mentors at times, but she has always needed at least one person on every level in her life at all times. She still needed a course of adjustment. 
• Sometimes they were business mentors, and sometimes they were friends, mentors, or even just champions and/or professional athletes.
• Sometimes their skill base would be entirely out of Danelle’s realm, but they needed to adjust something within her character. There was always a need for somebody to be cheerleading where Danelle was required to grow. 
• All it takes is one person. Never go without at least one person, but you will eventually outgrow them too. You will learn more and see more if somebody in the same industry mentors you. You will get better and better, and you eventually start seeing yourself become competition, and then the information changes. 
• That is when you genuinely learn your most important lesson from that person. You know these things, and all those lessons are what people are made of, and it was an eyeopener for Danelle for her to keep her character on track as much as she possibly could. 

Life Intended LCC

Life Intended continues to astound audiences across the globe with its gatherings of elite training experts delivering insider information to help high-level guide entrepreneurs to collaborate, execute, and elevate their skill sets and deliver monetized results. They have currently added coaches that have surpassed the requirements to join the Life Intended team. They want to help you truly become the one your products require. 

Resources

Connect with Danelle: LinkedIn

Life Intended: Website

Connect with Phil: LinkedIn

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Phillip Lanos. Today’s guest is Justin Abrams!

Justin Abrams is all at once the CEO of FlagshipRTL vying to reinvent retail by bridging luxury brands with commercial real estate opportunities, a marketing mogul with skills honed from an impressive 8+ years at Red Bull, and a practicing classical cellist who has performed all over the world.

You’re going to love this episode. Let’s get to it!

What was life like before RTL? (2:22)

• Justin was at Red Bull for roughly 10 years before Flagship. He was studying in Montreal, the only place he likes living outside of New York City. He was a music major, and he was studying with an incredible teacher at the time. 
• To satisfy the business outlet, he decided to explore opportunities, and Red Bull came up. Justin was a student brand manager for the company. He said it was an incredible experience. 
• If you take it seriously, which Justin did, you become a GM or CEO of college canvas. You’re looking at sales, marketing, and different distribution channels and gaining experience in those areas. 
• You are constantly chatting with media outlets and sports teams, and so it was a good way to use a brand and an incredible company to explore different avenues that Justin might’ve chosen to pursue down the road.
• When Justin finished school, he ended up in sports marketing in particular. He had no background in the area, but the head of marketing on the East Coast liked that Justin had played the cello and wanted someone different for the organization. 

Does Justin have a musical family, or are they more business orientated. (4:12)

• Justin’s mom was in engineering and then financed, and his father was a narcotics prosecutor. Justin took a completely different path from either of them.
• Justin’s dad’s mother was an accomplished violinist, and so his father always knew his children would have the opportunity to play music. 
• Justin states that he doesn’t think his father realized how far his children might take music. He says he was lucky that they grew up so close to the Lincoln Center, a hub for music and culture in New York. 
• Being in those surroundings and having tough parents and inspiring people around Justin, who were all taking their music skills to the next level, led him to do the same with the cello. 
• Justin’s brother is a bass player, and they perform together regularly. Being in the right environment pushes you to go further than you thought you’d go. 

When did Justin officially decide to leave Red Bull for Flagship? (13:38)

• Justin starters as a student back in college and then spent several years at a broad range of sports marketing functions. He was mostly working with athletes. He considered it the most fun job in the world. 
• Justin really loved his job at Red Bull and the people he got to work with. They had a high-performance department, and he was working with the athletes and employees within it. It was an incredible workspace that was constantly leveling up, so it was quite different from a normal job. 
• Justin always wanted to start his own business, and it hit really close to home was. He loved working at Red Bull; they always found smart and safe ways to go against the grain or bend the rules responsibly. 
• He loved the side of Red Bull that were pushing boundaries, and he was excited about the sleeping real estate industry that needed some disruption, so he started bending the rules within that industry. 
• Landlords have been excited with the outcome because even though they are doing things a little different from the past, many of them are getting faster deals done and getting more cashflow in their spaces. 

Flagship RTL

Flagship RTL is physical retail made easy. They supply flexible access to a turnkey, premium space-optimized to scale your brand. Whether you're an emerging brand looking to open your first store, or an established retailer looking to scale, Flagship supports you every step of the way.

Resources

Connect with Justin: LinkedIn

Flagship RTL: Website

Connect with Phillip: LinkedIn

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Andrew Medal.

Heather Terenzio is the founder and CEO of Techtonic, the premier partner for custom software development that changes how tech talent is sourced, trained, and hired. After being unable to shake the feeling that something big was missing from the tech industry diversity. Terenzio decided to be a part of the solution, launching Techtonic’s Software Development Apprenticeship Program in 2016.

You’re going to love this episode. Let’s get to it!

Who is Heather, and what is she about? (0:23)

• She is the founder of TechTonic, which is based in Boulder, Colorado. They are a software development company that has been around for 15 years. Five years ago, they started an apprenticeship program to train people from different backgrounds on how to be software developers. 
• Heather says they struggle with diversity quite a bit because everybody has a different definition of what diversity means for them personally. They started originally with the definition of being just women and minorities.
• Then the next person to walk through their door was a young white male who had come up through the foster care system, and so immediately, it was apparent that this guy needs a chance as well. 
• Over the years, they have expanded their definition of diversity to include gender diversity, sexual orientation, background, and socio-economic minorities, so diversity takes on many different forms for them.
• They want to cater to folks who maybe would not have the opportunity, to begin with. Now the way they define that is their background agnostic; they do not care where you come from; they care that you love software development and want to learn and improve your skills. 

What type of resources does the company use, and what does the company actually do? (4:25)

• On one side, they are a software development company, and they have an amazing senior-level team of folks who’ve been developing software for over 20 years. Then they have the apprenticeship side of the business. 
• That is where they take people from all different kinds of backgrounds, and they have a very competitive selection process. So sometimes, they will get four or five hundred applications for a 20 pupil cohort. 
• What they are looking for is desire, ambition, and grit. They have a 12 step process to get through to get into their program, and once you are in, there is a 14-week class and what’s really unique about that class is that they pay you to be there on day one. 
• So unlike every other Bootcamp out there, where you are paying $10,000-$20,000 to join the Bootcamp, they are actually paying you to attend their Bootcamp. They found when you take all the barriers to entry away. Diversity starts to show up. 
• They have people without anything, they are only taking the best of the best, they are not screening for certain diversities, but it turns out the best of the best is usually a diverse group of people. 
• They have four times the industry standard of women, minorities, and veterans. Once you complete the 14-day Bootcamp, you move onto the true apprenticeship, and that is where you are sitting side by side with senior-level developers and learning on the job working on client projects. 

What are they working towards as a company? (10:57)

• Today, they impact hundreds of people’s lives with their program, but they would like to move that up to thousands of lives that they touch. They want to get other companies to think a lot differently around how they hire people. 
• All kinds of companies and startups are always talking about disrupting, but nobody is talking about disrupting the hiring process and looking at people and how we find them. 
• It’s been the same recruiting model, hire recruit, give somebody a three-hour interview, make them take a test, hire them, and make sure they have a college degree and all that stuff. 
• They want to throw all that out and make companies think a lot differently around how they hire. They think they have come up with a much better way to hire software developers, and it's never been out there before. 
• Their vision is that they become the gold standard of hiring people going forward, and they want to impact thousands of lives, even that of the unemployed.

Techtonic

Techtonic is the premier partner for developing onshore, product-driven software. We’ve also developed a unique method to simultaneously close the talent gap within technology by tapping into a new and highly diverse workforce. This combination of development services mixed with talent generation allows us to provide value for our clients at any stage and every level of the Software Development lifecycle.

Resources

Connect with Heather: LinkedIn

Techtonic: Website

Connect with Andrew: LinkedIn