Unfortunately, coming up with a brilliant idea or inventing a life-saving product isn’t enough to launch a successful business. Sometimes learning to network is just as important as your business model.

Welcome to Building While Flying!

This weekly podcast is brought to you by the Sasha Group. We’re the consultancy meets agency arm of the VaynerX family of companies. We help ambitious companies build strong brands that flex with the times through strategy, branding media and marketing.

In ever-changing times, businesses and brands have to shift and adapt. And across all sectors, there is an air of experimentation. Business owners are trying new things out in the wild;  building the plane while flying.

Our pilots, Katie Hankinson and Mickey Cloud, will be talking to a diverse range of business leaders and founders. They’ll explore how these guests tackle various challenges while staying resilient and committed to growth. Through these real-life examples of strategies put into practice, we hope to inspire you to experiment and develop your own strategies as we all navigate these uncertain times together. 

Felicia Jackson invented the CPR Wrap to save lives. Now she’s learning how to network.

In a moment of sheer terror, Felicia Jackson, an experienced healthcare worker at the time, realized that even CPR-trained individuals could freeze in a life-threatening situation. When her 2-year-old son was choking, Felicia found herself panicking while her husband took over CPR to save her son’s life. Then shortly after, Felicia had a dream about a way to prepare for those exact moments. That’s how the CPR Wrap was born. This life-saving product gives you a template and instructions on how and where to do CPR so that you can grasp a bit of much-needed clarity in a terrifying moment.

As impressive as her product is, Felicia is still learning how to grow her reach, and ultimately her company. In this episode, Mickey and Felicia discuss all things networking and what she's learned along the way. She gives us some great tips for finding networking opportunities in your local entrepreneurial ecosystem. And she shares some of her biggest challenges in her journey to make the CPR Wrap successful. It’s not every day we get to chat with an entrepreneur that is literally saving lives, so we enjoyed every minute of this one. 

Other in-flight topics:

• The terrifying story of how CPR Wrap was born
• Creative ways Felicia networks
• Finding help in your local entrepreneurial ecosystem
• Being transparent as a business owner
• Chatting with Gwyneth Paltrow
• Chronicles of a Female Founder
• Felicia’s pre-flight checklist

Links:

CPR Wrap - https://cprwrap.com/ 

Connect with Felicia on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/felicia-jackson-42b29a59/

Watch Felicia’s TedX Talk: Three Dynamics to Life-Saving Success - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWCfABs1g0o

Final Thought: In your business, what is that one piece of advice from a mentor that stuck with you over time and helped move your business forward?