Grit Daily Startup Show

Edward McGeorge was thrown out of his father’s home at 13, became an elite athlete, sparred with Muhammad Ali, and went on to build one of America’s largest RV dealerships. He joins Phillip Lanos to share the remarkable decisions, setbacks, negotiations, and relationships behind the success, including the $1.6 million bet that changed his future. Now the author of ALL IN, McGeorge explains why getting knocked down was never the problem and why refusing to stay down became the defining principle of his life.

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Startups can go global faster than ever, but their financial operations often struggle to keep pace. Anna Tobin, Business Development Lead at Performa, joins Phillip Lanos to explore how fragmented bank accounts, digital wallets, stablecoins, cross-border payments, reconciliation, and reporting create costly friction as companies scale. Drawing on 15 years across fintech, startups, payments, and digital assets, Anna explains how Performa is bringing fiat and Web3 financial workflows into a unified infrastructure designed for globally distributed businesses.

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After the sudden loss of her husband, Laila France found herself navigating grief while simultaneously confronting financial accounts, legal paperwork, business ownership, probate, and decisions she never expected to make alone. Now, as creator and host of The Laila France Show, she is turning that experience into practical guidance for other women. Laila joins Phillip Lanos to discuss why families need to have difficult conversations before a crisis, the importance of understanding household finances and estate plans, rebuilding an identity after loss, and why preparation is ultimately about empowerment rather than fear.

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Entrepreneur and The Jersey Sound executive producer Randy Dominguez spent 55 years in finance before entering documentary filmmaking and music storytelling. He explains how financial discipline, careful planning, and the right collaborators helped turn a creative vision into a finished film and a growing platform dedicated to preserving music history.

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Leadership coach and consultant Dr. Leigh Byers explains why strategy can break down when leaders focus on tasks while overlooking the people responsible for carrying them out. She shares how self-awareness, collaboration, recognition, and her Seventh Level Leadership framework can help leaders build organizations that function without depending on constant intervention from the top.

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Eywa Biotech founder and CEO Victoria Costa Paz explains why bringing psychedelic medicine into mainstream mental health care requires far more than producing pharmaceutical-grade psilocybin. She shares how Eywa is combining biosynthesis, patient tracking, professional education, and treatment infrastructure to build a system around a new model of mental health care.

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Real Motors co-founder Trent Dingman explains how the company is building “Future Machines,” beginning with Project : ARES, an electric Neo Cafe Racer designed around its Electric Analogue philosophy. He also discusses why Real Motors is rethinking manufacturing alongside the machines themselves, and how the company plans to use engineering, smaller-scale production, and shared industrial capabilities as it raises capital for projects beyond ARES.

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Hooman Tavakolian has built a career spanning Wall Street, wrestling, sports diplomacy, and international humanitarian work. He explains why the discipline that helped him rise from poverty also led him to reconsider the idea of being “self-made,” recognizing the coaches, strangers, colleagues, and small acts of kindness that shaped his path.

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Propulse Your Career founder Robert Saltz explains why artists need to develop the professional skills surrounding their craft rather than waiting to be discovered. Drawing on his experience in hospitality, higher education, career services, and life alongside a successful opera singer, he explores ownership, visibility, resilience, financial awareness, and the career strategy creative professionals are rarely taught.

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Educator and SciEdScrumming founder Heather Cowap explains how Agile Scrum and Universal Design for Learning can give students more agency without sacrificing accountability. She argues that as AI becomes more common in classrooms, schools need to teach collaboration, planning, self-assessment, and the foundational knowledge students must have before technology can become a useful tool.

[email protected]
https://sciedscrumming.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/heathercowap

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