Brandon Stover On Life

Shireen Jaffer is the Co-Founder of EDVO & Founder of Skillify. She went from working multiple part time jobs since the age of 14, even being fired from a yogurt shop, to helping over 50,000 people in their careers over the last 10 years, from recent grads to executives. She is a Forbes 30 under 30, an active angel investor in several successfully growing startups, and a founder of 2 startups that have been aimed at building innovative educational tools to empower lifelong learning for billions around the world.

Changing how people are educated and see work in our society, she has supported 220 schools to equip students with real world skills and worked with hundreds of companies, from Fortune 500s to early stage startups, advising them on recruiting and hiring practices. This year she launched products to help people think think for themselves including the world’s first personal learning management system and a mental models app which was #1 on product hunt with over 15,000 users in the first two weeks.

She shares her wisdom for a life full of meaningful learning, critical thinking, and better results as host of the Edvolution Podcast, as a Ted-x speaker, and has been featured in numerous publications such as Business Insider, Fast Company, Forbes, and more.

Find all the shownotes for this episode at https://www.evolvethe.world/shireen-jaffer

James McKinney is the Founder & Host of the Startup Story, a weekly podcast for entrepreneurs with over 65,000 monthly listeners worldwide. However James has his own amazing startup story. Imagine you are launching a business in the middle of a recession, you score the biggest government contract of your career, leverage 300,000 dollars worth of your own assets, and then lose it all… Would you get back up again and start another business? James has not done this once, but numerous times. From Disney's corporate world to the launch of his SimpleDeal Mobile app, this serial entrepreneur has ventured, stumbled, ventured, succeeded, and then ventured again. Which is why he is so focused on bringing authenticity and transparency to the entrepreneurial journey.

After being director of a Startup grind chapter, he discovered the power of sharing stories about the daily grind, the grit, and business trials of others. So he embarked on launching the Startup Story, which has had over 500,000 downloads, been a Top 10 Entrepreneurial podcast in all of iTunes in the USA, UK, and Australia, and shared the stories of founders such as Ben Chesnut of Mailchimp, Jamie Schmidt of Schmidt’s Naturals, Michael Littig, the co-founder of the Zuckerberg Institute.

Whether from his time in the marines, selling accounting services, having over $280 million in career sales, raising $140,000 for an app, or Increasing Disney’s revenue by 271% within the first two years there, this wealth of knowledge continues to impact hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs every week with guidance and support.

Find all the shownotes at https://www.evolvethe.world/james-mckinney

Scott J. Miller is the Executive Vice President of Thought Leadership at Franklin Covey and has spent the last 25 years championing teams within the world’s best leadership firm, serving under the tutorage of Dr. Stephen Covey. He now leads the strategy, development, and publication of Franklin Covey’s world-renowned content & bestselling books including one of the most impactful nonfiction business books in history, 7 Habits of Highly Effective people, which has sold more than 40 million copies in 40 languages and empowered the transformation of millions of lives worldwide.

Although he has held many leadership roles from project coordinator at the Disney Development Company to the FranklinCovey Company Chief Marketing officer, he has seen plenty of failure and was even demoted from his first leadership position after only three weeks in the role at Franklin Covey. However, since then he has become an unfiltered leader thriving in a highly filtered corporate culture. Being a renowned thought leader in the leadership and personal performance space, he has been featured in 100’s of podcasts, webinars, and articles in Entrepreneur, Forbes, Donald Miller's StoryBrand Podcast, Rachel Hollis's RISE Podcast, The ONE Thing Podcast and more.

Additionally, he is a multi-week #1 bestselling author of Management Mess to Leadership Success: 30 Challenges to Become the Leader You Would Follow which has been proclaimed as a new classic on authentic leadership by Seth Godin. He is also the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Everyone Deserves A Great Manager and wrote dozens of articles as a leadership columnist for Inc Magazine.

Distributed to more than 5 million business leaders worldwide, his On Leadership podcast features interviews with renowned business titans and thought leaders such as John Maxwell, Dr. Daniel Amen, Ed Mylet, Rachel & Dave Hollis, & Ryan Holiday. He was also the former host of the iHeart Radio program called Great Life, Great Career.

Find all the shownotes at https://www.evolvethe.world/scott-miller

Madison Campbell is the Cofounder & CEO of Leda Health & Creator of the MeToo Kit. Her company within 1 month of starting received 16 ceases and desists, 5 subpoenas, and 2 statewide bills introduced to ban a product that has aimed at helping the millions of sexual assault survivors across the globe which includes an estimated the 2 million a year in the U.S. alone. This young sexual assault advocate and technological innovator’s hope to revolutionize the care on a holistic scale created a frenzy of over a thousand mentions in press outlets such as CNN, Buzzfeed News, ABC, USA Today, NBC and over 1 billion impressions throughout the world and growing.

However this serial entrepreneur understands there is no such thing as bad publicity, especially when it is helping bring attention to the 77% of sexual assault cases that are never reported each year including her own. After overcoming the trauma of her own sexual assault in college, she sought out to give survivors time with processing their trauma by developing an at-home sexual assault examination kit and provide the care and resources needed for a full recovery.

With an expertise in epidemiology, mathematical modeling, policy and women’s rights, and work in multiple prestigious research institutions, this revolutionary thinker has called her moonshot against the many systemic shortcomings of current government and healthcare systems. Hundreds of thousands of kits have already been requested by colleges, corporations, military, non profits, and even cruise ships and participants of burning man.

Find all the shownotes at https://www.evolvethe.world/

Colin Keeley is Co Founder & CEO of Avocado Audio, Host of the Tech in Chicago Podcast, and has been ferociously building & growing internet companies for the past decade. He’s been on both sides of the fence as a serial founder and venture capitalist, and done everything from building a personalized tv/movie guide, a stretchy denim company for men, a sharing economy startup, and a multi-million dollar software marketing business. With no plans of slowing down, he has just launched a platform for the world’s best audio courses with instructors who range from best selling authors, youtube stars, investment bankers, to Wharton professors.

With the audio industry booming, it is easy to see why this insightful entrepreneur is on a mission to turn your spare listening time into productive learning time. Podcasting alone is forecasted to reach over 160 million listeners by 2023 and will continue to grow an extra 20 million each year after. Streaming giant Spotify has invested hundreds of millions of dollars on podcast-related acquisitions while behomeaths like Amazon are expanding their audio library into podcasts within the next few months.

This explosion of growth is something Colin knows well. Through his highly acclaimed podcast Tech in Chicago, which has been a top 100 business podcast with 100,000+ downloads to date, and has been sharing the inspiring stories of Chicago’s top founders and investors and their startups like Chowly, Leaftrade, and Cameo.

Find all the shownotes at https://www.evolvethe.world/

As I mentioned in my last solo episode I was going to start sharing my founder journey as it happens in real time. One of the most important things a founder can do before developing a solution is to truly understand the problem. Well today I wanted to understand the financial problem of higher education from a perspective I couldn't find elsewhere. So after hearing her captivating interview on The Portal Podcast with Eric Weinstein, I decided to invite Kimberly De La Cruz on the show.

Kimberly is an Award-winning journalist-turned-publicist who transitioned from covering nightlife and entertainment at Nevada's largest daily, to a career in public relations. She is currently the spokes person for SeekingArrangement and "Sugar Baby University.” who has created an uncanny solution to the American student debt crisis and insane tuition rates. The world's largest Sugar Dating website is challenging this enormous burden on young people by connecting them with Sugar Daddies -- generous individuals with the means to help with tuition, books, living expenses and everything else that results in fewer college students having to incur a lifetime of crippling debt.  

This discussion is not about whether this Sugar Baby University is right or wrong, its about the 1.6 trillion dollar student debt in higher education that has created the foundation for this to be possible. The greatest challenge for higher education today is to decrease its price premium and increase its contributions to students and society. My desire to speak with Kimberly was to pull back the curtain on the areas the present institutions, as you will found it in this interview, are just unwilling to look. As a someone dead set on building a better university for the future, its going to require knowing all angles of the problem.

Get more of the Evolve Podcast at https://www.evolvethe.world/

Leigh Mathews is the Founder & Expert Consultant at ALTO Global. Leigh is also is an author, speaker, social purpose coach, & highly experienced consultant with over 15 years in Corporate Social Responsibility, philanthropy and international development sectors. Starting in her early 20’s, she founded an NGO in Cambodia working on child rights issues after witnessing children living in extreme poverty. No good deed goes unpunished as she was awarded the Victorian Young Australian of the Year, Australian Leadership Award and the JCI Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World Award. Yet she would soon learn the world was not as it seems.

After the hit of the 2008 financial crisis, she closed her NGO and started questioning the effectiveness of the charity sector and if doing good was actually having a positive effect on social problems. And so began her work with organisations such as UN Women, World Challenge, Intrepid Group, and dozens more to achieve aligned, ethical and sustainable impact.

Still disturbed by the institutionalisation of children inside orphanages, she Co Founded the ReThink Orphanages Network which is shifting the way countries in the global north engage with overseas aid and development and has expanded operations from Australia to Europe and the US.

Internationally recognized as an ethics expert for the intersection between development, business and philanthropy, she has been featured in ABC, the Guardian, Project Syndicate, Swinburne University of Technology, Global Journalist and dozens more media outlets. Additionally she sits on the Victorian Government School for Student Leadership School Council, and is a member of the Advisory Board for Australian Volunteers International’s ChildSafe Volunteering Hub. And if all that wasn’t enough, she is also the co author of Modern Day Slavery and Orphanage Tourism and host of the The Good Problem Podcast.

Find all the shownotes at https://www.evolvethe.world/

The first solo episode of host Brandon Stover in a long time. He shares the beginning of his journey quitting architecture, failing multiple side hustles and small businesses, and his decision to focus on a market that has not seen disruption in over 100 years... Higher Education.

Get more of the Evolve Podcast athttps://www.evolvethe.world/

Dan Demskey is the Co-Founder of Unbound Merino. Dan has taken not one, not two, but four companies to 6, 7, & 8 figures over the last decade. From starting a digital video agency in his mom’s basement to selling funky socks, this entrepreneur has consistently seen the heights of success and the lows of trying to keep the lights on in the business. Even though his digital agency had reached 7 figures working with brands such as Coca-Cola, Microsoft, General Motors, & GE he was tired of chasing the next contract in order to get paid. 

Deciding to scratch his own itch & seeing an industry that could be done better, Dan set his sights on creating stylish, simple Merino wool apparel that can be worn for weeks or even months - without ever needing to be washed. His best friends and him decided to trade in their Friday nights to start grinding away on the idea and launch a crowdfunding campaign, raising $380,000 in its first 2 months. After just 3-years in business, they are now doing $4m in revenue selling to over 100 countries around the world.

This life long entrepreneur and his industry leading company has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, USA Today, Travel & Leisure, & Lonely planet. Additionally he shared his wisdom with hundreds of entrepreneurs as mentorship director of the Entrepreneur Organization’s Canadian Chapters.

Find all the shownotes at https://www.evolvethe.world/

Eric is the founder of Beardbrand, author of the Book of Reminders, and is the forefather of the urban beardsman movement which turned a $30 investment in a side project into a 7 figure eCommerce business dominating a market. With a value for freedom, this bearded entrepreneur and his team have bootstrapped the entire way by focusing on community, experience, and educational content which has amassed a 1.59 million subscriber count on youtube that fuels over two thirds of their purchases.

However the journey started as many beards do, patchy, unpredictable, and going astray. With the entrepreneurial spirit in his blood, he attempted dozens of businesses from selling vinyl graphics to graphic design and most failing to make any money at all. So it was back to putting on a corporate veil and working in sales. In a culmination of feeling caged working as a financial advisor and tired of hearing duck dynasty or grizzly adams references about his beard, he set out once again and this time to change the way society views beardsmen.

Starting in 2012, the humble brand was nothing more than a community that gained the attention of a New York Times reporter seaking expertise on beard care products and started a roller coaster of events that grew them $0 to over $120k per month in sales. From getting beard rubs by the sharks on shark tank, being featured in a World Series commercial by Shipstation, to partnering with retail juggernaut Target, this small but mighty ecommerce business has received plenty of exposure. Yet the truth to their success has not been predicated on one hit wonders and hyper growing profits at all costs, but rather grown consistently month over month with a dedication to making men awesome.

Sharing his story and helping thousands of other entrepreneurs, he has been featured in Forbes, inc, the wall street journal, fast company, & dozens of entrepreneurial podcasts including Foundr and Entrepreneur on Fire.

Find all the shownotes at https://www.evolvethe.world/