LAUNCH! Podcast

Afifa Siddiqui is a rare breed of entrepreneur being a minority woman and self-funded. In this episode, we explore her success and failures as a serial entrepreneur, starting from her side gigs to what we see as her empire. We explore the challenges she went through starting and managing each of her businesses as well as her transitions between each one. Afifa truly understands what it is to build an empire as each business fits with the next, helping to grow each other. Her businesses Cronos, CareerLeaf, and Canadian Payroll Services all lie in the talent management industry. Tackling the industry from 3 different perspectives makes Afifa quite the expert in talent management, therefore we also take the opportunity to pick her brain on everything talent management.

If you liked this episode,

then you may like podcast episode, “Jenny Leung & Bellanove: Female Entrepreneur Defies Odds” which also talks about leading as a minority female entrepreneur.

Our guests on this episode are two LA journalists turned entrepreneurs who explore social issues, even those that we get uncomfortable talking about. As you, our aspiring and rising leaders, it is you who has the burden to bear to break down these social barriers and address these topics, rather than ignore them, as so many of us do. It is those of us who have a platform and who other’s look up to, that can make a difference in how we view these issues as well as what we choose to do about them. So let’s get comfortable with getting uncomfortable as we listen to our guests and gain insights into how to be a leaderin the hard to lead areas of life.

Our guests on this episode are two LA journalists turned entrepreneurs who explore social issues, even those that we get uncomfortable talking about. As you, our aspiring and rising leaders, it is you who has the burden to bear to break down these social barriers and address these topics, rather than ignore them, as so many of us do. It is those of us who have a platform and who other’s look up to, that can make a difference in how we view these issues as well as what we choose to do about them. So let’s get comfortable with getting uncomfortable as we listen to our guests and gain insights into how to be a leaderin the hard to lead areas of life.

Our guest on this episode is a woman whose mission it is to help women go confidently into motherhood and look great doing it!. She just recently was featured in Forbes and is now sharing her story with LAUNCH! to help striving entrepreneurs go confidently into business.

Her name is Jenny Leung and she is the founder of BellaNove, a revolutionary rentable clothing line that adapts with your pregnancy.

Jenny shares with us her journey from starting in the corporate world to attending a few pivotal entrepreneur programs that changed her life. She is now the successful owner of her own business with a social responsibility objective as so many millennials are doing today. In this episode, we open up about battling gender issues when trying to break out as a woman entrepreneur, why we should dismiss our preconceived notions when we travel to new places, how growing up in an immigrant family can be influential, and the risks it takes to launch.

Get Up Close With LAUNCH! and explore why people are leaving their jobs and starting their own businesses. To you make it in today's business world I explore the expectations of today's leaders. With a new young generation on the rise, we need strong, capable leaders to solve global degeneration and lingering social issues. We expect today leaders be more than just company leaders, we expect them to be leaders of society. 

Our guest on this episode is a startup aficionado.

He is currently the co-founder and chief growth officer of Siëo, which helps entrepreneurs launch, manage and grow their businesses through service and software-based solutions. Siëo’s mission is to inspire independence, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Kyle Herron lives that mission by teaching startup knowledge to underserved high school communities in Southern California and was the Winner of 2017 Leatherby Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics Award.

As with any true entrepreneur, they go through a series of failures before finding a breakthrough success. On this episode, Kyle shares with us how he figured out he was going to set himself on this path of entrepreneurship and how his failures have led him to be successful.

Striving leaders who are looking to get their startup going or move up the ranks in their organization struggle with frustrations such as rejection, failure, and getting stuck. It’s important that they stay empowered so they can continue to positively lead and impact this world with their contributions. In this podcast episode, Rebecca Bennett and Dr. Mark Leonard help to find ways for professionals to move past failure and plateaus through productivity tools, mindset changes, and character tweaks.

As an entrepreneur not only do you have to understand your customer, your industry, and how you can competitively fit into the picture, but you also must understand investors and what they are looking for. Many entrepreneurs throw themselves into researching how to build out their idea and raising money becomes an afterthought. We want you to be a successful entrepreneur and therefore will show you what it’s like to be in the shoes of an investor. We want you to start thinking about it now so that by the time you are ready to raise capital, you are stepping into the investor world with your best foot forward.

Marcia Dawood is a general partner of MindShift Capital, a global investment firm that focuses on supporting female entrepreneurs particularly in technology, health, & education. She is also a board member of the Angel Capital Association. In this episode, she shares with LAUNCH! valuable insights about being on the other side of the table from the entrepreneurs. Learn about capital investing in entrepreneurs, what it’s like being an investor, what VCs and angels are looking for in a business, what are some of the current issues and challenges in the investor world, and how the landscape is opening up for women.

Sean Biscelia, serial founder and chief executive officer of Curion, shares his business playbook that he has perfected over his career to help executives and entrepreneurs lead successful businesses.

Learn the 5 basic tenets of his playbook. Learn why do successful entrepreneurs fail? How do you create repeatable success? How do you lead disruption? How can you quickly learn an industry? How do you select the right talent for your team? Should you hire culture over domain expertise or domain expertise over culture? How do you avoid over-competition in your salesforce that could negatively affect the customer experience? How do you go about getting everyone to communicate a consistent message? How do you measure that?