Founders Future

In this episode of Founders Future, with host Zach Young, we sit down with Phil Neil, a serial entrepreneur and expert on the founder's journey. Phil opens up about his own path, from bootstrapping a service company to orchestrating a dramatic pivot into manufacturing that led to an 8-figure exit. He gets candid about the internal struggles that followed his success, including a debilitating burnout and a significant financial loss, which revealed a critical gap in the entrepreneurial world.

This personal crisis led Phil to establish Founders Compass, a company dedicated to the new category of "Founder Readiness." He explains that beyond business acumen and mindset work, founders need a specific set of 36 skills to navigate the unique pressures of scaling a company. Phil details his assessment tool and upcoming mastermind, designed to help early-growth-stage founders build the inner capacity, decision quality, and strategic intuition required to beat the odds and achieve sustainable success without sacrificing their well-being.

In this episode of Founders Future, with host Zach Young, we are joined by Donna Kargel, a veteran career discovery and transition coach with over 27 years of experience. Donna shares her powerful personal journey of being a nonverbal, neurodivergent child who was labeled as learning disabled and expelled from school, only to discover that her unique way of thinking was not a deficit but a strength. She passionately argues that our traditional education system is designed for a single type of brain, leaving neurodivergent individuals and their invaluable skills—like critical thinking, curiosity, and systems thinking—on the sidelines, which is a critical problem as we enter an era of automation that demands these exact abilities.

Donna introduces her Lotus Coaching Method, a 10-week program designed to bridge this gap by helping individuals, especially youth, uncover their natural gifts, curiosity, and purpose. She explains how her work, including her nonprofit Community Thrive, is dedicated to providing equitable access to career coaching. Donna challenges the conventional mindset, advocating for a model where we "ask, don't tell" to reawaken the innate resourcefulness in every learner and prepare them to command their future in a competitive global landscape.

In this episode of Founders Future, with host Zach Young, we are joined by Jackie Lapin, a visionary entrepreneur whose career has spanned from breaking barriers as a pioneering female sports journalist to founding Conscious Media Relations and her newest passion project, The Historic Traveler. Jackie shares her incredible journey of transitioning from working with mega-brands to serving conscious changemakers, and ultimately, to creating a hub for history and travel enthusiasts as a way to find joy and combat entrepreneurial burnout.

Jackie delves into the robust, free platform she has built at TheHistoricTraveler.com, which offers historical vignettes, destination guides, curated directories of historic novels and films, a quarterly magazine, and a vibrant community—all designed to help people explore history through travel and literature. She also offers invaluable advice for entrepreneurs on the importance of building a team, focusing on what you love, and the critical role of self-care and joy in achieving long-term success.

In this episode of Founders Future, with host Zach Young, we sit down with Erik Seversen, a 12-time best-selling author and founder of the Self-Publishing Center. Erik shares his incredible journey from studying anthropology and working in corporate America to becoming a prolific author and coach who helps experts and entrepreneurs write, produce, and publish their own books. He delves into the common fears that stop people from writing and outlines his practical, three-part framework for turning an idea into a published manuscript, emphasizing the importance of an accountability partner and demystifying the self-publishing process.

Erik also provides a realistic breakdown of the costs and steps involved in self-publishing, advocating for it over traditional publishing for the control and higher royalties it offers. He discusses the future of his business, including scaling his operations and his work on co-authored projects about AI, arguing that mastering such tools is crucial for modern success. Throughout the conversation, Erik’s passion shines through as he describes the profound joy of helping people achieve their dream of becoming published authors and leaving their legacy in print.

In this episode of Founders Future, with host Milan Kohut, we dive into the entrepreneurial journey of Andres Herrero. Andres opens up about the origins of his multi-million dollar e-commerce brand, Sydney Sock Project, which started as a simple university side hustle and evolved into a social enterprise that has donated nearly $700,000 to charity. He provides a masterclass in scaling an e-commerce business, detailing the critical infrastructure and team-building stages from $30k to over $500k per month, and shares the pivotal mental shift that allowed him to scale his Meta ad spend fearlessly.

Andres also discusses his passion for coaching other e-commerce founders through Ecommerce Equation, where he helps them overcome common bottlenecks and accelerate their growth. He gets incredibly candid about the often-overlooked challenges of entrepreneurship, including the loneliness of being a founder and the internal mental battles that can be the biggest barrier to success. The conversation concludes with Andres’s ambitious goals for the future and the powerful advice he’d give his younger self: to invest in coaching and surround himself with smarter people sooner.

In this episode of Founders Future, with host Olivia Sammons, we meet Rachel Hechtman, the founder of Sober in Central Park. Rachel shares her powerful journey from using alcohol to numb her feelings and dissatisfaction with life to a moment of clarity during COVID-19 that led her to sobriety. What began as a personal Instagram account for accountability has since blossomed into a global community and lifestyle platform dedicated to helping people redefine their relationship with alcohol and rediscover their purpose and joy.

Rachel delves into the current business model of Sober in Central Park, which includes one-on-one sobriety coaching and partnerships with non-alcoholic beverage brands for events throughout New York City. She discusses the challenges and rewards of turning her personal journey into a multi-faceted business, the importance of living in alignment with your values, and her plans for scaling her impactful venture while maintaining the authentic, community-driven spirit at its core.

In this episode of Founders Future, with host Milan Kohut, we sit down with Alyssa Mance, the founder of Frankly Consulting. Alyssa shares her unique journey from liquor and medical sales into the dental industry, where she identified a critical gap between clinical expertise and patient communication. She explains how this insight led her to launch a specialized consulting agency dedicated to bridging that divide, helping dental practices and manufacturers become more profitable by enhancing case acceptance and streamlining operations through better communication and strategic systems.

Alyssa delves into the core of her business, detailing how she works with two distinct client buckets: dental practices to improve patient flow and case presentation, and dental brands to refine their go-to-market strategies. She discusses the flexible, customized nature of her consulting engagements and her recent pivotal shift from a one-woman show to building a team to scale her impact. Looking ahead, Alyssa shares her ambitious vision for transforming the dental industry, her goals for expanding her team, and her passion for increasing accessibility to quality oral healthcare.

In this episode of Founders Future, with host Milan Kohut, we meet Carrie Hopkins,  the founder of Life's Next Chapter Coaching. Carrie shares her remarkable journey from a professional musician in South Africa to a higher education administrator, and finally to her calling as a spiritual resilience coach. She details how her unique path, including her own profound experience with loss, equipped her to guide others through major life transitions like grief, divorce, and health crises, helping them rebuild with purpose and authentic empowerment.

Carrie provides a deep dive into her coaching methodology, clearly differentiating the roles of a coach versus a therapist and emphasizing the ethical importance of referring clients when necessary. She outlines her high-touch, six-month individual coaching program, which begins with an in-person half-day session to build a foundational connection. The conversation also explores the balance between serving clients one-on-one and her vision for scaling her impact through group programs, book publishing, and expanding into coaching supervision, all while maintaining the core philosophy of serving the person in front of you with excellence.

In this episode of Founders Future, with host Olivia Sammons, we sit down with Shailen Savur, the entrepreneur behind grassfeddemon. Shailen shares his powerful journey from a college wrestler struggling with crash diets and poor performance to discovering the transformative power of an animal-based diet. This personal health revolution not only changed his physique and athletic performance but also improved every aspect of his life, leading him to his mission of helping others reclaim their vitality.

Shailen delves into the core of his business, which offers highly personalized, one-on-one health coaching focused on helping men build muscle and lose fat. He emphasizes his hands-on approach as an accountability partner, crafting tailored protocols for nutrition and strength training that fit his clients' unique lifestyles. Looking ahead, Shailen's goal is to scale his impact, aiming to transition from his finance job to coaching full-time and change as many lives as possible by helping people unlock new levels of confidence and physical well-being.

In this episode of Founders Future, with host Olivia Sammons, we meet Lisa Joyce, the founder of LifeThread Coaching, LLC. Lisa shares her powerful journey from a high-powered career as a Director of Administration at a hedge fund to becoming an executive coach. She reveals the personal catalyst for this change—a struggle with her daughter's mental health that forced her to look in the mirror and realize she was out of alignment with her true self. This experience became the foundation for her mission to help other women avoid similar pitfalls and navigate their careers and personal lives with integrity.

Lisa delves into her coaching philosophy, which focuses on helping women, especially "underdogs" and working moms, reconnect with their core values and personal identity outside of their corporate personas. She discusses the common struggles of imposter syndrome, the challenge of balancing masculine and feminine energies in the workplace, and the importance of community. Lisa also outlines her current one-on-one and group coaching offerings and her future aspirations, including giving a TED talk and creating a broader community for support and growth.