Action and Ambition

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

Silvina Moschini is the Co-founder & President of Transparent Business as well as the Founder & CEO of SheWorks! An award-winning serial entrepreneur, international speaker, and author, Silvina Moschini has established herself as one of the foremost experts on the digital economy and how the fourth industrial revolution is transforming the global workforce, empowering women accelerating government reform across the world.

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

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

• Silvina was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and she is a technology entrepreneur. She is super passionate about technologies that specialize in future work now with the presence of COVID. 
• She is the CEO and Founder of SheWorks, which is a platform to help professional women find remote jobs, and she is also the founder of Transparent Business, which is a platform to help companies bring transparency and data to manage their remote and distributed teams better. 
• Transparent Business is the holding company, and they are racing within it. Their vision is to create an ecosystem of technology and services that dominate the space of business transparency and apply it to love and work. 
• Silvina’s business is a C Corp. They have four subsidiaries that operate in collaboration with a different company, so they have some transversal things and some things that are dedicated.
• They use their technology to leverage transformation in business technology to build a talent marketplace. They connect the dots between talent opportunities with software to manage remote work. 

How did Silvina come to structure her entities the way she does? (3:24)

• They developed the technology as an internal tool. When Silvina was living in Europe, she was in Verona, Barcelona, back in 2012. She was experiencing a difficult challenge, which was managing her remote team because she had offices worldwide.
• During that time, the great recession was happening in the US, a real-estate crisis, and coffee was scarce. As an entrepreneur and owner at the time, she had an interactive production. 
• To manage her team more efficiently, they developed Transparent Business as an internal tool as a pet project inside her company to manage her team with transparency. 
• Then they started to experiment. They found that managing her business through transparency was game-changing because suddenly, they had data in-store on who was working on what and how much money they were spending in each phase of the project on each client. 
• They started to try and use the technology in different scenarios and cases, building a talent marketplace. They figured if the technology were good for them, it would be good for someone else, so they created a company from that idea. 

How much money did Silvina raise to achieve a billion-dollar validation? (6:59)

• This was different from the usual details that come from Silicon Valley on a traditional start-up ecosystem. They raised less than $30 million, so they retain minority for the equity.
• Silvina and her co-founder are the minority shareholders; they only issue one stock type because they did not want to prioritize investors over others. So, everyone has the same kind of score.
• There are no liquidation preferences, which they believe is more fair and transparent for everyone. They needed a Global EBIT, offering they pause the natural evolution of what they have done before.
• Which were an initial private offering and global private offering, which are nothing more than marketing names that they allocate to regulation demons. This comes from the Jobs Act, which allows companies to publicize the stock's sale to great investors in the US. 
• When Transparent business sends this globally, they advertise the opportunity, which they did a lot of education. They are working to transform how company work is transparent, make talent more readily available, and make it easier to manage that talent to grow companies. 

Transparent Business

TransparentBusiness helps customers securely manage a remote workforce. A digital platform that helps companies manage remote workers. TransparentBusiness helps businesses monitor online connected employees in real-time, coordinate teams, and provide information on projects' cost and status.

Resources

Connect with Silvina: LinkedIn

TransparentBusiness: Website

Connect with Andrew: LinkedIn

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

Alexi is the co-founder and CEO of BetterUp, the first leadership development platform to connect coaching to sustainable behavior change. Recognized as a leadership and development innovator, As CEO, Alexi leads BetterUp on its mission to enable all professionals to live with greater clarity, purpose, and passion.

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

What is the most significant value addition people receive from being coached? (1:53)

• Alexi never had a formal coach, but they did have mentors like a board of directors. Alexi was mentoring high school students and sometimes coaching them after school. 
• However, Alexi was in a position where he needed help, and he didn’t know where to find it. He did not know at the time about 7-8 years ago. He knew he did not need a therapist because it was not a clinical need. 
• He tried an executive coach, and he tried a few sessions, but the price was astronomical, and he could not afford to pay it. He then tried life coaching, like the wild west between quality credentialing because you were never sure what you were getting.
• This is what started the idea for Alexi’s company. He thought about how they could help standardize quality help while making the cost affordable to anyone. What their users get from experience comes down to the value is first and foremost found in having someone other than yourself, a trained expert looking out for your best interest.
• One of the best things they hear repeatedly is that it is someone to help see your blindspots. Coaches give you a different perspective on the same event that may happen and someone to hold you accountable to your values and goals. 

How does one stay accountable? (6:09)

• This is where analogies will use a lot. A personal trainer or fitness trainer is a lot easier to track in some ways, you start to get yelled at, and you will physically see the results of the training paying off, and you will progress to push more weights or run further, faster. 
•  One of the things that Alexi finds challenging with any psychological intervention, whether it is coaching, leadership development, or therapy, there are no physical markers because they are psychological. 
• They spend a lot of time answer yes to a lot of questions. They build a ton of software to help both the members track their growth and development over time. They also enable 360 reviews so you can have your team’s manager do direct reports, and you can also add your spouse to it. 
• You then get extra cuts of data over months and years and the coach, and you are getting data after every interaction. The best thing about BtterUp is it has the most comprehensive data set of human growth and transformation related to coaching topics and beings.
• When you are a member, no matter your organization, you can aggregate everything confidential regarding you at an individual level. You can even aggregate for a population level. 

What is the vision Alexi has for the next five years? (29:00)

• Their goal and long term vision have stayed more or less the same. This is to become the most reputable partner and brand that people can come to, to realize their needs and wants related to realizing their potential leadership development or self-actualization. 
• They want to create a trusted and credible partner that you can trust your biggest aspirations, dreams, and biggest worries and challenges in your growth and development too. 
• For the next three to five years, they have focused on pioneering the idea of democratizing access to coaching, and they are now building with new types of interventions. 
• Therefore they have been spending a lot more time expanding beyond what has traditionally been thought of as executive coaching. They have been adding to their business and now do evidence-based sleep coaching, nutrition, and adding parent coaching. 
• They will continue to add different facets of people’s lives to the platform over the next five years. They want to be a gym for mental fitness. They want to be a ‘one-stop-shop’ where you can find all the trainers you might need from leadership to parenting to nutrition. 

BetterUp

BetterUp helps you cope and adapt through times of change. Together with your coach, you can build resilience, find a sense of purpose, reduce stress levels, and anchor on self-compassion to thrive like never before.

Resources

Connect with Alexi: LinkedIn

Better Up: Website

Connect with Andrew: LinkedIn

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

Michael Stausholm is the founder of Sprout. Since the company was founded in 2013, Sprout has sold more than 25 million plantable pencils in more than 80 countries from its head office in Denmark. Michael Stausholm began his career in the shipping industry, working for A.P. Møller/Mærsk, and traveled to Indonesia in 1993, where he lived for 14 years. His most significant interests are green entrepreneurship and sustainability. Between 1996 and 2006, he worked for Nike and Walmart companies, helping them establish more sustainable and responsible textile production processes. 

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

What has been Michael’s past experiences with podcasts? (2:32)

• The way Michael usually prefers a conversation over an interview. 
• He thinks Interviews are things you can just Google, but a conversation is like an audience is a fly on the wall, and they weren’t supposed to hear the conversation.
• Conversations also follow a loose arc, usually starting with who are you and where were you before your business.
• In a conversation format, you can go into any detail you want, and it doesn’t have to be by the books like an interview.
• That’s why the conversational format allows for a lot more engaging podcasts for your audience. 

What were pivotal moments for Michael that helped him decide to start a company like Sprouts? (6:33)

• When Michael started working in garments and textiles back in the mid-late 90s, he was in Asia, and it was still sweatshop conditions and factories with workers. 
• It was all about price, but then Walmart came. Along and they started questioning whether it wasn’t possible to give workers better conditions by paying them just a little bit more.
• They gave workers what today are considered fundamental human rights, like allowing them to go to the bathroom during working hours and access to healthcare, and so on. 
• It made Michael realize how you can make a difference in people’s lives with small changes for the people you work with. 
• It doesn’t have to be about the price. If you make your workers happy and give them decent working conditions, they will work more efficiently and better. 

What processes does Michael follow when preparing to speak? (11:22)

• Michael has been speaking publicly for many years. For him, it doesn’t matter if it's 20 people or 1000; he is always nervous. He finds this amusing because he knows he knows what he’s talking about even if he is not the best expert on the subject. 
• Once he gets onto the stage or in front of a TV Camera, It’s challenging for individuals as consumers to understand what we as the human race can do about that. 
• For Michael, it is an essential, enormous impact.
• That is where Sprout came from, Sprout is not going to save the world by itself, but it can help inspire people to do other small sustainable, environmentally friendly things in their everyday lives, eventually making a big difference. 

What allows Michael to have the distribution access that he has? (13:46)

• Michael states that itis the natural consequence of having a great product because it is also a great messenger. 
• Broadcast is all about being used as a messenger, and companies are using it as an icebreaker to explain their own sustainable and green messenger. 
• Parents are using it to explain to their kids how sustainability works. Therefore Michael thinks it is a natural consequence of the patented product.
• Sprout is the only company in the world that is and can make seat pencils as they do.
• Because Sprout focuses on sustainability, early on, they got a lot of publicity and media exposure from all over the world, which helped them get into new markets much faster than if they were selling closing products. 

Sprout

Sprout creates unique pencils, and once your Sprout pencil is too short to write with, plant it and watch it grow into luscious flowers, fragrant herbs, fresh vegetables, or even spruce trees. The idea behind the Sprout pencil is that by taking small steps using simple, innovative solutions, positive change is possible.

Resources

Connect with Michael: LinkedIn

Sprout: Website

Connect with Phillip: LinkedIn

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

Ayaan is a 12-year-old kid-entrepreneur born and raised in Shelton, CT. Ayaan and his family are known for being the local family who made it into “the tank” for their product, Kudo Banz. Following his family’s footsteps, Ayaan has big dreams of going back to Shark Tank for his invention. Ornament Anchor. is the founder of Ornament anchor, which keeps your ornament from falling off the tree, keeping them in place, making sure they’re secure.

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

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Phillip Lanos. Today’s guests are Tommy Alastra and Hugo McDonaugh.

Tommy Alastra is a producer and actor, known for The Iceman (2012), Dallas in Wonderland, and Jackals (2017). Tommy is the co-founder of Cryptograph. 

Hugo McDonaugh graduated from Warwick University back in 2013. He went on to work in wealth management at the C. Hoare & Co. private bank in London. After a year of working there, he decided to pursue a master’s at ICBS, which is where he met fellow Cryptograph co-founders. Hugo is a big believer in the idea of sustainable philanthropy, and he is the Director of an Education technology and consultancy business that works between the UK and China.

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

How did Cryptograph come to be? (0:37)

• Back in late 2017, NFT tokenization on unique content was getting started on Aetherium. 
• Hugo and two of his co-founders were looking at the space and decided they had to do something there. 
• They had an incredible opportunity and level of innovation that was happening in the space. 
• The concept of NFT’s and the ability to create digital scarcity was a huge part of the opportunity. 
• They looked at what they could take from the physical world, what people could not collect digitally with this layer of scarcity. They started this idea of autographs. 
• People used to collect autographs physically, so Hugo and his co-founders brought them to the digital world. 
• That was why Cryptograph was created; it then morphed into different beasts. 
• After a year of development, they raised their seed, and they got the idea on paper out there. 
• The technology was built, and they had the platform ready, but they needed to find the supply side of the market. 
• They had to find the content and the creators. Hugo and the other co-founders had a tech background but not an entertainment background, so they needed to find the missing link. 
• Through a relative of Hugo, who was in London at the time. Hugo met with him and told him the idea behind Cryptography and what they were missing. Hugo’s relative had said he needed to speak to a friend of his. 
• From that connection came Tommy, and that was where Hugo and Tommy’s relationship started. 

What piece were they missing to make Cryptograph Succesful? (6:08)

• Hugo and Tommy met and Tommy’s guys in the domain space kind of vetted the tech which was something they needed.
• As an entrepreneur, we often put people in the room who can answer questions we don’t often have the answers to. 
• Being a successful entrepreneur is largely based on bringing in people for your weaknesses. 
• As an executive producer, part of T%ommy’s job is bringing elements in and allow them to do their respective duties and give them the dignity of the experience. 
• Tommy wanted the best answer about this auction system the guys had invented.
•  Tommy thought they could license it outside of the domain space and domain world.
• Because they loved technology, they wanted to participate in the parent company and close their round essentially. 
• They got more than a licensed partner; they got a partner and some significant assets to go along with their business. 
• They are excited for the next phase of Cryptograph to launch in about nine months.
• Cryptograph and digital scarcity and snackfood content, people can connect with their favourite icons and artists and have a little piece of their idols. 
•  Cryptograph was born to be cryptology with autographs.

Cryptograph

Cryptograph Technologies is committed to helping clients solve their business challenges and drive value with comprehensive IT solutions and digital services. Since its inception in 2010 as a Middleware support provider, Cryptograph has come a long way in the technology business—expanding its operations overseas and proliferating service capabilities across more than 16 industries. We now have a growing workforce of over 1500 and are present in 6 countries, including the USA, South Africa, and India. 

Resources

Connect with Tommy: IMDB

Connect with Hugo: LinkedIn

Cryptology: Website

Connect with Phillip: LinkedIn

Today's sponsor is Green Chef(https://www.greenchef.com/). Go to GreenChef.com/action80 and use code action80 to get $80 off including free shipping!

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition. Today's guest is Nick Graham, travel expert and head of online travel site Hotwire. As the brand gears up to celebrate its 20th anniversary, we talk all things travel, digital, and the internet. Since its inception in 2000, Hotwire has evolved constantly to accommodate ever-shifting traveler preferences and trends––with countless innovations to stay ahead of the curve, and ultimately solidify its place in the market as the last-minute booking go-to for millennials.

Amid a rapidly changing travel scape, Nick speaks to the key evolutions and travel trends impacting the industry over the years, including the rise of last-minute and on-the-go booking, the rise of the domestic “quickie” trip, and much more.

He also shares how the business has evolved over the last 20 years, including the impact of the recent pandemic and key predictions for the travel booking industry for the next 20 years.

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

Welcome to another episode of Action and Ambition. Today's guest is Eve Goldberg. She's an amazing entrepreneur with a huge heart. Eve founded BIGVISION in January 2015, a year after her 23-year-old son, Isaac, passed from an accidental drug overdose. She was motivated to do something to help young adults in recovery learn to live fun, meaningful, sober lives. You're going to love this epside.

Welcome to another episode of Action and Ambition. Today's guest is Ross Gordon. Ross is the CEO of Catch Co, a company selling products and experiences for the modern angler. Ross turned his hobby into a lifelong dream, and the company is very keen on helping others to explore their passions. Catch Co’s “hero” product is the Mystery Tackle Box. The product is a monthly subscription box with an expertly curated selection of the best bait and tackle to succeed at the local fishing hole. You're going to love this episode, let's get to it!

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

Celona is the Founder/CEO of CLUSTER, a new on-demand social impact platform. It empowers Millennials and Gen Z to create, share, and scale the causes that matter most to them. CR  has 20 years of Digital Media Management experience with National Senior Agency + Client Relationships. Influencer Marketing Founder. He specialized in; Ad Sales, Lean Thinking, Business Development, Social Media, FTC/GDPR Compliance, SaaS Product Development, Scalable Growth, and Emerging Technologies. 

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

What is CR About? (1:03)

• A large part of their mission is tied to the idea that people are powerful. 
• CR believes that the majority of people do not know how powerful they are.
• For example, CR says, imagine you are taking a selfie and you post that selfie you might get 100 followers and 10 interactions, and that would be an achievement. 
• Then say you post a selfie of you with a kitten you just rescued, something very human and you post that out to your friends, and suddenly you see 10x more followers, likes, and comments. 
• What you realize from that is social functionally is social but we need and seek human interactions. 
• We, as humans, seek positivity, and we also seek real things. 
• The irony of digital media is that it extracted the human from a lot of those behaviours and a lot of what we get from that is that these platforms are very insular in nature.
• Each person has functionally built their own micro-publishing platform.
• If everyone is powerful, which they are, a lot of us like giving back because the feeling of it is a quite powerful inside of us. 
• When you help someone else, you feel better about yourself. 
• CR thought what if there was a platform that allowed you to simplify giving back, utilizing your existing digital platform and an echo chamber for the things you care most about. 
• What if all of that gave you better engagement, more reach allows you to be discovered, and eventually, maybe that way of giving back that you love could be turned into a potential opportunity, future for income. 

What does CR mean with our design is our culture? (29:01)

• There is a lot of ethos that we follow.
• CR’s company is fairly new for a lot of his teammates. For CR, however, it is familiar because he came up with the concept and built it. 
• Even though CR lost his father at a young age, he still felt lucky because his father recruited their CTO out of the CIA at the end of the cold war. 
• The CTO is currently CR’s uncle Stuart, and he was CR’s father’s business partner for the 15-20 years they were together where they did some amazing things. 
• They also had catastrophic failures and wild ideas, but whenever CR has called with them, they reflect on everything. It is like having a vision of his father’s life to CR. 
• When CR says or does certain things his uncle will call him up and say his dad used to do that, he’d ask if CR knew he did it and most of the time CR would say no. 
• Not everyone associates their family with their business, but CR has found it largely beneficial even though he is big on working with friends.
• People say do not make business personal, but CR finds that everything is personal regardless. He tries not to let things hurt or phase him, but life business is personal, and his missions are personal.
• CR believes managers make all of the difference, and he was lucky that early in his career, he had a highly reviewed automotive website that discovered him. 
• That was how CR got into technology. CR started as a street racer in New York, even though it was a lot of fun, CR says it is best to do racing on an actual racetrack. 

Clusters of Change

Clusters of Change provides mentorship and tools to inspire and help clusters, ecosystems, innovation agencies and governments employ new scalable models and become entrepreneur-driven entities that spur exponential growth. It's time to move away from 'clusters-as-usual' and join the movement for 'clusters-of-change'!

Resources

Connect with CR: LinkedIn

Clusters of Change: Website

Connect with Phillip: LinkedIn

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

Lorna Johnson is a spiritual teacher, genius alchemist, transformational coach and author. She teaches SuperConscious Awakening. Lorna was an executive in corporate America for 15 years where she helped build and run multimillion-dollar businesses and then went through a soul death, experienced several nervous breakdowns, became suicidal and was diagnosed with two mental illnesses. She then underwent a profound awakening and the birth of her new soul, which led her to launch her ground-breaking transformational business, bringing it to $1 million in revenue in ten months using unconventional means.

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

How did Lorna find success during her darkest times? (0:21)

• Lorna had an excellent career for about 15 years. She was part of corporate America, and during the time of following the path that everyone follows, Lorna was doing well, she sat on boards of companies, she helped build and grow great companies. 
• On the outside, everything was great, but on the inside, everything was falling apart. The people that Lorna works with now generally have the same story. Lorna now works with people who have a spiritual calling, and have spent their lives scared of that calling. 
• They were unsure if that calling would bring them money and allow them to live the life that they want to live. There’s a lot within their culture and their myths that spirituality is a noble path of its own and you shouldn’t have to make lots of money from it. 
• You should be comfortable in the sense that you aren’t starving. Lorna travelled the path herself; she chose to push through the course. She realised that her corporate job did not allow her to live her purpose.
• Lorna came from a lot of priests and missionaries, but her message was quite different from their belief systems. Lorna talks a lot about a feminine God or the feminine divine. She feels she is now living her purpose. 

How does Lorna teach her message to others? (8:58)

• One of the most confronting aspects of Lorna’s teachings is that there are no victims in life. Lorna is not a victim to her mind; she chose her mind.
• Before she incarnated she picked this mind not knowing it was going to be very “wet”. When she checked herself into the clinic, and she got all of the neuropsychological tests, she was there for three days, and they scanned her brain.
• The doctor said he would talk to her about the ADT stuff later, but he wanted to show her her brain compared to others, and he showed her how her brain was wired opposite of most people. 
• She chose that because that is what’s required for her to bring through the next level of spiritual teachings that are here and ready for people to hear. She has a different way of looking at the world and processing information. She sees it as her blessing. 
• It is also her curse. She says it was not the universe that was against her, but instead, she wouldn’t let her higher self have the driver’s seat in her life, and that is what caused her suffering, and eventually, she found the courage to pursue her higher self. 

During her corporate jobs, how did Lorna cope with things before diving into metaphysics? (20:55)

• Lorna says that she was living two lives, her nine to five life and then her evening and weekend life. During the evenings and weekends, she was going to retreats and going to workshops.
• Daily she was talking to her intuitive or psychic self or her shaman, getting readings. She studied a lot of archetypal work and a lot of Yung’s work until she got certified as a union dream analyst. 
• She studied metaphysics and philosophy in college, and she already had a robust, holistic base, She devoured all knowledge she could find, but the problem was that they did not apply to the message she was trying to convey. 
• Most people know, but they think that alone is enough. It satisfies the realisation that there is no meaning in their nine to five job and feels a lack of authenticity. She found a home between the people who are considered the black sheep of the world.
• But it allows people to be disingenuous with their spiritual path because they don’t apply it to their nine to five world and that is what Lorna did for 15 years until she came into her spiritual path. 

Dark Euphoria 

Home of the Luxe Godhead, this is a portal of consciousness that will transport you through a black hole, and out into the multiverse. The rules are different here. It's dark and uncomfortable. They will show you where consciousness began. They will show you how to play with the codes of the time. They will show you real magic. Prepare to become a true master of manifestation and alchemy.

Resources

Connect with Lorna: Instagram

Dark Euphoria: Website

Connect with Phillip: LinkedIn